Banks Ignored Signs of Trouble in Foreclosures

Abstract: At JPMorgan Chase & Company , they were derided as “Burger King kids” — walk-in hires who were so inexperienced they barely knew what a mortgage was. At Citigroup and GMAC , dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on home foreclosures was outsourced to frazzled workers who sometimes tossed the paperwork into the garbage. And at Litton Loan Servicing, an arm of Goldman Sachs , employees processed foreclosure documents so quickly that they barely had time to see what they were signing. “I don’t know the ins and outs of the loan,” a Litton employee said in a deposition last year. “I’m not a loan officer.” As the furor grows over lenders’ efforts to sidestep legal rules in their zeal to reclaim homes from delinquent borrowers, these and other banks insist that they have been overwhelmed by the housing collapse. But interviews with bank employees, executives and federal regulators suggest that this mess was years in the making and came as little surprise to industry insiders and government officials. The issue gained new urgency on Wednesday, when all 50 state attorneys general announced that they would investigate foreclosure practices. That news came on the same day that JPMorgan Chase acknowledged that it had not used the nation’s largest electronic mortgage tracking system, MERS , in foreclosures, since 2008. That system has been faulted for losing documents and other sloppy practices. The root of today’s problems goes back to the boom years, when home prices were soaring and banks pursued profit while paying less attention to the business of mortgage servicing, or collecting and processing monthly payments from homeowners. Banks spent billions of dollars in the good times to build vast mortgage machines that made new loans, bundled them into securities and sold those investments worldwide. Lowly servicing became an afterthought. Even after the housing bubble began to burst, many of these operations languished with inadequate staffing and outmoded technology, despite warnings from regulators. When borrowers began to default in droves, banks found themselves in a never-ending game of catch-up, unable to devote enough manpower to modify, or ease the terms of, loans to millions of customers on the verge of losing their homes. Now banks are ill-equipped to deal the foreclosure process. “We waited and waited and waited for wide-scale loan modifications ,” said Sheila C. Bair , the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation , one of the first government officials to call on the industry to take action. “They never owned up to all the problems leading to the mortgage crisis. They have always downplayed it.” In recent weeks, revelations that mortgage servicers failed to accurately document the seizure and sale of tens of thousands of homes have caused a public uproar and prompted lenders like Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and GMAC Mortgage to halt foreclosures in many states. Even before the political outcry, many of the banks shifted employees into their mortgage servicing units and beefed up hiring. Wells Fargo , for instance, has nearly doubled the number of workers in its mortgage modification unit over the last year, to about 17,000, while Citigroup added some 2,000 employees since 2007, bringing the total to 5,000. “We believe we responded appropriately to staff up to meet the increased volume,” said Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Citigroup. Some industry executives add that they’re committed to helping homeowners but concede they were slow to ramp up. “In hindsight, we were all slow to jump on the issue,” said Michael J. Heid, co-president of at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. “When you think about what it costs to add 10,000 people, that is a substantial investment in time and money along with the computers, training and system changes involved.” Other officials say as foreclosures were beginning to spike as early as 2007, no one could have imagined how rapidly they would reach their current level. About 11.5 percent of borrowers are in default today, up from 5.7 percent from two years earlier. “The systems were not ever that great to begin with, but you didn’t have that much strain on them,” said Jim Miller, who previously oversaw the mortgage servicing units for troubled borrowers at Citigroup, Chase and Capital One. “I don’t think anybody anticipated this thing getting as bad as it did.” Almost overnight, what had been a factorylike business that relied on workers with high school educations to process monthly payments needed to come up with a custom-made operation that could solve the problems of individual homeowners. Gregory Hebner, the president of the MOS Group, a California loan modification company that works closely with service companies, likened it to transforming McDonald’s into a gourmet eatery. “You are already in chase mode, and you never catch up,” he said. To make matters worse, the banks had few financial incentives to invest in their servicing operations, several former executives said. A mortgage generates an annual fee equal to only about 0.25 percent of the loan’s total value, or about $500 a year on a typical $200,000 mortgage. That revenue evaporates once a loan becomes delinquent, while the cost of a foreclosure can easily reach $2,500 and devour the meager profits generated from handling healthy loans. “Investment in people, training, and technology — all that costs them a lot of money, and they have no incentive to staff up,” said Taj Bindra, who oversaw Washington Mutual ’s large mortgage servicing unit from 2004 to 2006. And even when banks did begin hiring to deal with the avalanche of defaults, they often turned to workers with minimal qualifications or work experience, employees a former JPMorgan executive characterized as the “Burger King kids.” In many cases, the banks outsourced their foreclosure operations to law firms like that of David J. Stern, of Florida , which served clients like Citigroup, GMAC and others. Mr. Stern hired outsourcing firms in Guam and the Philippines to help. The result was chaos, said Tammie Lou Kapusta, a former employee of Mr. Stern’s who was deposed by the Florida attorney general’s office last month. “The girls would come out on the floor not knowing what they were doing,” she said. “Mortgages would get placed in different files. They would get thrown out. There was just no real organization when it came to the original documents.” Citigroup and GMAC say they are no longer giving any new work to Mr. Stern’s firm. In some cases, even steps that were supposed to ease the situation, like the federal program aimed at helping homeowners modify their mortgages to reduce what they owed, had actually contributed to the mess. Loan servicing companies complain that bureaucratic requirements are constantly changed by Washington , forcing them to overhaul an already byzantine process that involves nearly 250 steps.

Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis


Dow Jones Considers Selling 23 Papers

Abstract: Dow Jones & Company , publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said yesterday that it was considering the sale of the rest of the Ottaway community newspaper group. Dow Jones, which is on track to be acquired by the News Corporation by the end of the year, sold six community newspapers last year and used the proceeds to buy from the Reuters Group the half of the Factiva news database business that it did not already own. Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation, had said previously that the company would probably sell the remaining community newspapers once the deal to acquire Dow Jones was complete. Ottaway operates 8 daily newspapers and 15 weeklies in seven states, including The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y.; The Cape Cod Times in Hyannis, Mass.; and The Inquirer and Mirror in Nantucket, Mass. Dow Jones shareholders are set to vote on the transaction Dec. 13, but the outcome is a foregone conclusion since the company’s controlling shareholders, the Bancroft family, have agreed to support the $5.6 billion deal.

Dow Jones & Co
Newspapers
Ottaway community newspaper group


U.N. Set to Cut Force in Darfur as Fighting Rises

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — Under intense pressure from the government of Sudan , the United Nations is planning to shrink its floundering peacekeeping force in Darfur, even though renewed fighting there has chased more people from their homes this year than during any other in the past decade. The withdrawal plans come right after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court , Fatou Bensouda, announced that she had decided to suspend the genocide case against Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, because world powers have done nothing to secure his arrest. The twin retrenchments are emblematic of the limits of international attention at a time when Darfur has been overshadowed by newer crises and conflicts around the world, from the civil wars in Syria and South Sudan to the Ebola epidemic. Once the world’s largest peacekeeping operation, with 20,000 blue-helmeted soldiers on the ground, the United Nations force in Sudan’s Darfur region has already been trimmed by 4,000 troops, and plans are underway to cut more in the coming months despite the surge in violence. Even at full strength, the mission has been criticized for failing to protect civilians in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Since 2003, when an armed rebellion in Darfur was met with a brutal government crackdown, the conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands, and displaced more than two million people. Now, as rebel groups splinter and the notorious pro-government janjaweed militias re-emerge , renewed fighting has chased 457,000 people from their homes this year alone, according to the United Nations. But United Nations officials say that their forces are routinely attacked by Sudanese forces and their proxies; that it is virtually impossible for their peacekeepers to remain in the country without Sudan’s blessing; and that some of their units have performed poorly and could be eliminated. “The heart of the matter for us remains the protection of civilians affected by the conflict and ensuring that any drawdown does not have a negative impact on this critical task,” said the United Nations’ under secretary general for peacekeeping, Hervé Ladsous. “My sense is that while we have by no means been perfect in this regard, without us many, many more would have been killed, displaced, put in harm’s way.” One plan being considered is to limit peacekeeping activities to guarding the camps that shelter displaced civilians. A final decision will be made by the Security Council and the African Union, which jointly run the mission, sometime next year. United Nations officials say Sudanese obstructionism is mostly to blame for the setbacks, while critics accuse the United Nations of ineptitude and cover-ups. The mission remains one of the world’s most expensive, with an annual budget of $1.4 billion. “Darfur was always a gamble,” said a United Nations diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “The political coalition that was putting pressure on Sudan evaporated, and once that happened, and the Sudanese continued to demonstrate extreme ruthlessness, we found ourselves unable to do our job.” Image Women and children in North Darfur, where Sudanese soldiers were accused of mass rape. Human rights groups say that peacekeepers botched an investigation into the matter. Credit Abd Raouf/Associated Press The growing sense of international resignation toward Darfur stands in jarring contrast to the passionate activism that it stirred only recently, when “Save Darfur” was a household term, with thousands of people around the world chanting “Not on my watch!” and Hollywood celebrities like George Clooney using their fame and fortune to draw attention to Darfur’s misery. Activists say they are stunned that Darfur has become a largely forgotten crisis given that some of their old allies have risen to positions of power. Eight years ago, in a sunlit hut on the border of Chad and Darfur, a freshman American senator stood surrounded by refugees, thoughtfully absorbing their stories of massacres. “I’m going to be working hard when I get back to the United States,” he reassured the survivors. “The people of Darfur who are here in Chad are not going to be forgotten.” That freshman senator was Barack Obama, and activists complain that he has done little with his presidency to help Darfur. They say that his ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, an outspoken advocate for the need to prevent mass atrocities, has likewise let Darfur down. “I’m afraid the time has come for her to put up or shut up,” said Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College and one of the leading American voices on Darfur. If Mr. Obama does not toughen his policies toward Sudan, Mr. Reeves argued that Ms. Power should resign in protest. An American official countered that Ms. Power had used her position on the Security Council to improve the weak peacekeeping mission, pushing for greater accountability and a clearer focus on the protection of civilians — all despite Russian resistance on the Council; the Kremlin staunchly backs the Bashir government. Ms. Power’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Another senior American official said that despite “many competing conflicts,” the Obama administration continued to work behind the scenes on diplomatic efforts for Darfur, adding that the American government had provided $1 billion in humanitarian assistance over the past six years to the region. Critics, including inside the United Nations, point out that the peacekeeping mission has capitulated too often to government pressure. In the most recent example, after Sudanese soldiers were accused of raping more than 200 women and girls in a remote village in North Darfur in October, United Nations peacekeepers botched the investigation, human rights groups say. A recent internal United Nations review found that in a sample of 16 instances of violence against civilians and peacekeepers, the mission had failed to properly investigate about a third of them. Mostly, the mission omitted details of “possible wrongdoing by government or pro-government forces,” the review said. “Keeping silent or underreporting on incidents involving human rights violations and threats or attacks on U.N. peacekeepers cannot be condoned under any circumstances,” said a statement from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, describing him as “deeply troubled” by the findings. In a measure of how divided the Council remains, one American diplomat said Russia sought to block a briefing by the chief of the review committee. Mr. Bashir, Sudan’s president, who is running for re-election in 2015, has publicly called for all blue helmets to leave Sudan. In November, he put that demand in writing, urging the United Nations to “prepare and implement an exit strategy.” Some analysts said that Mr. Bashir may just be posturing and that his government benefits enormously from the money and veneer of peace that the mission generates. Still, a spokesman for the secretary general said in a statement on Thursday that the Sudanese authorities had asked two top United Nations officials to leave the country. It seems unlikely that the Security Council will take new punitive measures against Sudan, with relations between Russia and the West at their lowest point since the Cold War. A case in point: The International Criminal Court wrote to the Council eight times in recent years, urging the world body to help secure Mr. Bashir’s arrest. The Council did not even write back. A former Council diplomat said that Russia and China said no response was necessary. Years ago, when its relations with the West were less antagonistic, Russia did go along with an effort to refer Mr. Bashir to the international court. But things are different now, said Al Tayeb Zain El Abdin, a political scientist at the University of Khartoum. The Sudanese government used to ask Russia to use its veto on the Council, he said, “especially when referring Darfur to the I.C.C., but Russia refused.” Now, he said, “Russia is in a new mood.” This month, Ms. Bensouda, the court’s chief prosecutor, said without concrete help from the world’s most powerful body, there was nothing more she could do to advance the case. “If there was full political will of all the members on the Security Council, then something would have happened,” she said in an interview in New York. She took pains to say that she had no intention of dropping the charges against Mr. Bashir. A warrant for his arrest remains in effect, she warned, and countries that belong to the court have a legal obligation to arrest the Sudanese president when he visits their territory. But Mr. Bashir has traveled freely to countries like Kenya, Djibouti and Chad, all members of the treaty that created the court. At no point did the Council even scold those countries, let alone sanction them. The United States has refused to join the court, undercutting its ability to agitate on the Bashir case. But activists argue there is a long list of other things the Obama administration could do to put pressure on Sudan, including tightening economic sanctions, pushing for more humanitarian access in areas under siege, pressing allies to arrest Mr. Bashir and trying to label Sudanese gold — a crucial revenue source for the government — as a conflict mineral. John Prendergast, a longtime Darfur activist, said key administration officials, including Ms. Power, who is a close friend, remained concerned about Darfur, though “right now the foreign policy is overwhelmed by a tidal wave of crises.” “Popular mobilization can’t be sustained for that long for something so far away,” he said. “Once that happens, the political will weakens.” In Darfur, fear is growing. Even though few are satisfied with the United Nations peacekeepers, they are terrified about what will happen if they leave. “It would get worse,” said El Tahir Ismail, an elder in a displaced persons camp in North Darfur. “We are in a big prison; we can’t leave the camps, there is no police, no security — there is no law.”

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


Ticketmaster Accuses 21 of Fraudulent Ticket Buying

Abstract: Ticketmaster, trying to fight the computer tactics used by some of the most advanced ticket scalpers, has sued 21 people, accusing them of fraud and breach of copyright in circumventing the company’s online security system to try to buy huge numbers of tickets. In the lawsuit, filed on Tuesday at United States District Court in Los Angeles, Ticketmaster accused Joseph Shalom, a producer of live entertainment events in New York, of being the central figure in a coordinated series of attempts over the last two years to obtain large numbers of tickets and resell them at a profit. According to the suit, Mr. Shalom and his associates used “bots,” or specialized computer programs, to bypass online features like Captchas — series of distorted letters or numbers — that test whether a potential ticket buyer is a person. Ticketmaster, a division of Live Nation Entertainment, says Mr. Shalom and others linked to him used these systems to gain access to as many as 200,000 tickets a day ahead of the public, aiming for the most desirable tickets.The suit claimed Mr. Shalom and the others violated Ticketmaster’s terms of use, which prohibit bots and limit the number of tickets a customer may request in a single day. It also accuses them of committing several offenses as part of the ticket-buying process, including copyright infringement and the assumption of false identities. Ticketmaster seeks unspecified damages in the suit and does not say how many tickets were bought by the 21 people. It also says the use of bots damages Ticketmaster’s reputation and harms the public. As a result of the behavior outlined in the lawsuit, the company says, “the inventory of tickets available to consumers who do not use such devices is substantially diminished, which has led some consumers to question Ticketmaster’s ability to ensure a level playing field for the purchase of tickets.” Bots have become a major source of consumer and industry complaints about the ticketing market. Consumers grow frustrated when concerts often sell out moments after tickets go on sale, and listings then appear for those tickets at inflated prices through online secondary markets like StubHub, owned by eBay, or TicketsNow, part of Live Nation. The concert industry has also been frustrated at the difficulty of cracking down on the use of bots. Three years ago, federal authorities charged a group of men with using similar tactics to make $25 million in profit. But the men were sentenced to probation , which music executives say has not served as a deterrent. Concert promoters and others have said that the use of bots has become increasingly common, particularly for the most popular shows. In a statement, Ticketmaster said: “We care about protecting fans and the integrity of our business. We are doing exactly what we have repeatedly said we do: stand up for the fans who use our site in the proper manner.” Mr. Shalom did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment.

Ticket Scalping
Lawsuits
StubHub
eBay
Live Nation Entertainment
Ticketmaster
Los Angeles


Samsung’s Profit Drops as Apple Squeezes Mobile Sales

Abstract: TOKYO — Samsung Electronics, the largest maker of smartphones, confirmed on Friday that growth in sales and earnings slowed sharply in the fourth quarter of 2013, and the company said business conditions would remain challenging in the first few months of the year. Samsung, which is based in Suwon, South Korea, cited a range of macroeconomic and company-specific factors, including the recent strength of the won currency and concerns that a move by the Federal Reserve to scale back its stimulus efforts could curb economic growth. A special bonus that Samsung paid out to employees on the 20th anniversary of a new management initiative to improve quality also cut 800 billion won ($745 million) off the company’s quarterly earnings. “Looking at the quarterly earnings trend, we expect 2014 to follow last year’s pattern of a weak first half and a strong second half, as usual,” Robert Yi, senior vice president and head of investor relations, said in a statement. Analysts said increased competition in smartphones, which account for a majority of Samsung’s earnings, also played a role. At the premium end of the market, which is dominated by Samsung and Apple, Samsung faces a renewed challenge from its rival, which recently secured agreements to distribute its phones via the largest mobile carriers in Japan and China. At the low end, Chinese smartphone makers offer increasingly sophisticated phones at bargain prices. Samsung posted operating income of $7.74 billion, which was in line with a forecast issued two weeks ago. Net income in the fourth quarter was $6.8 billion, up from $6.56 billion a year earlier but down from $7.67 billion in the third quarter of 2013. Fourth-quarter sales of $55.20 billion were up from $52.20 billion a year earlier but flat compared with the third quarter of 2013. Profit margins in the smartphone business have fallen because of increased competition and marketing expenses, analysts say.

Smartphone
Earnings Reports
Samsung Electronics


Prosecutor Says Arrests Disrupted ‘Imminent’ ISIS Attack in France

Abstract: PARIS — Five men who were arrested on Sunday in France were Islamic State operatives planning an “imminent” attack under the direction of a commander based in the terrorist group’s haven in Iraq and Syria, the authorities announced on Friday. The news immediately raised worries in France, which has been struck by three major terrorist attacks since January 2015, killing more than 200 people. The five men, ages 26 to 37, appeared before a special terrorism judge on Friday and were being investigated on terrorist conspiracy and weapons charges, according to the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, whose office handles terrorism cases nationwide. The five were among seven arrested in Strasbourg and Marseille on Sunday; the other two have since been released. The arrests came shortly before the popular Christmas market in Strasbourg opened on Friday; the annual tradition attracts 2 million visitors every year. Four of the suspects were arrested in Strasbourg. They were planning an attack for Dec. 1, Mr. Molins said, while adding that it was not yet clear what their target was “among all those that the group envisaged.” Referring to news reports this week that militants were targeting the Disneyland Paris amusement park outside the capital, the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and several other places, Mr. Molins said that the information was “detrimental to the ongoing investigations,” but he did not deny the reports. “It appears on one hand that the offenders were in possession of, or searching for, weapons and money, and on the other hand that they were about to take action and were looking for targets,” Mr. Molins said. He added that the findings were made with the help of an antiterrorism law that allows investigators to seize data during house searches, among other things. Mr. Molins identified the suspects arrested in Strasbourg as Yassine B., 37, a school employee; Hicham M., 37, a warehouse worker; Sami B., 36, a French-Tunisian father of three who worked in a grocery store; and Zacaria M., 35, a French-Moroccan whose employment status was not disclosed. The four men were longtime friends who saw “each other on a regular basis” and communicated via a dedicated telephone line, Mr. Molins said. The fifth suspect, arrested in Marseille, was identified as Hicham E., a 26-year-old Moroccan citizen who left his country in 2013 to emigrate to Portugal, from where he took multiple trips back and forth within Europe using fake identification papers. (The prosecutor earlier gave his age as 46.) The arrests followed an eight-month investigation led by France’s domestic intelligence service, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Monday. A tip by a “partner country” led to the arrest of Hicham E., officials said. The team in Strasbourg and the suspect in Marseille were given “common instructions” by a commander in the “Iraq-Syria zone” on how to obtain weapons, Mr. Molins said. They received their orders via encrypted mobile apps. Mr. Molins did not identify their commander. Hicham M. and Yassine B. went to the Turkey-Syria border in March 2015 via Cyprus, while Hicham E. was turned back in the summer of 2015 when he attempted to enter Turkey, Mr. Molins said. On a USB memory stick found at Yassine B.’s house, the authorities found a document mentioning the “delivery of a sum of money,” as well as GPS coordinates and detailed instructions on how to obtain weapons and ammunition. Investigators also found Google Maps screenshots of searches of different places in Yassine B.’s laptop and phone, which Mr. Molins said amounted to “a clear will to find and spot targets, to take action in the very short term.” The suspect arrested in Marseille, Hicham E., had 4,281 euros, or $4,539, on him when he was apprehended, money that investigators believe was intended to buy weapons. Mr. Molins said that arms, documentation on potential targets and pledges to the Islamic State were found at the houses of members of the Strasbourg team. Guns and bullets were found at the homes of Yassine B. and Zacaria M.; it was not clear how they were obtained. The authorities also said writings glorifying martyrdom and “openly” referring to the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were found in a notebook in Yassine B.’s house, and several documents mentioning “threats against the integrity of our country” were contained in a notebook found in Hicham M.’s house. Mr. Molins said it appeared from the investigations that Yassine B. and Hicham M. had downloaded the Periscope app onto their phones, possibly to record themselves committing violence. Five people suspected of having links to the same network as the seven men were arrested on June 14 — a few days into the Euro 2016 soccer tournament being held in France — and two of them were kept in custody. Also in June, an Islamic State sympathizer, Larossi Abballa , pledged loyalty to the group in a Facebook video after killing a police captain and his companion outside Paris. “The attacks or attack plots which we have been, currently are, or will face again are shape-shifting,” Mr. Molins said.

Terrorism
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
France


Heineken Faces Possible Bidding War Over Stake in Asian Brewer

Abstract: SINGAPORE — Heineken’s commitment to buying out Asia Pacific Breweries, the maker of Tiger Beer, is being tested by a group linked to one of Thailand’s richest men, as the fight for a bigger slice of the world’s last growing beer markets intensifies. A surprise counteroffer Tuesday for a direct stake in Asia Pacific held by the Singapore conglomerate Fraser & Neave, topping Heineken’s bid by 10 percent, came from a company owned by a son-in-law of the Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi. And Wednesday, the counteroffer drove Asia Pacific shares to a record of 52.20 Singapore dollars, or $41.94 — higher than Heineken’s bid of 50 dollars per share. Fraser & Neave shares rose 2.5 percent to 8.49 dollars and have surged 33 percent this year. Kindest Place, the company owned by Mr. Charoen’s son-in-law, Chotiphat Bijananda, has offered 55 dollars a share for the Asia Pacific stake. Heineken said in a news release Wednesday that it was continuing its discussions with Fraser & Neave and that Kindest Place’s offer for the Asia Pacific stake was not comparable to Heineken’s. Last month, companies controlled by Mr. Charoen paid $3 billion for stakes in Fraser & Neave and Asia Pacific, prompting Heineken to make a $6 billion bid for Fraser & Neave’s direct and indirect stakes in Asia Pacific. “If push comes to shove, Heineken would have to raise its offer” for Asia Pacific, said Roger Tan, chief executive of SIAS Research. Mr. Charoen and his companies, including Thai Beverage, may seek greater control by making a general offer for Fraser & Neave, the Japanese bank Nomura said in a research note, potentially forcing Heineken to make a counteroffer for the conglomerate, which has holdings in food, beverages and property. If the parties clash in a bidding war, Heineken, worth €25.7 billion, or $31.7 billion, might have the upper hand. Thai Beverage, the maker of Chang beer, has a market value of 8.29 billion dollars. Already, Thai Beverage has taken out a loan of 2.8 billion dollars to pay for its purchase of Oversea-Chinese Banking’s 22 percent stake in Fraser & Neave. It had 3.5 billion baht, or $111 million, in cash and equivalents at the end of 2011, a fraction of Heineken’s €827 million. But analysts said it was hard to estimate how much Mr. Charoen’s other companies, which are unlisted, had in their war chests. Despite the speculation about a bidding war, a person at Thai Beverage, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the Thai company was willing to share control of Asia Pacific with Heineken. Both the Thai company and Heineken, which is based in Amsterdam, are vying for greater influence over Asia Pacific, Fraser & Neave’s crown jewel, because of its dominant position in fast-growing emerging markets in Southeast Asia. For Heineken, control of Asia Pacific is crucial, as it would raise the proportion of Heineken’s total profits from Asia to 15 percent from 6 percent. With Asia Pacific, Heineken would get ownership of Tiger, Bintang, Anchor and other brands of beer, plus two dozen breweries in 14 countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. If it sits still, Heineken could face opposition to its investments and growth in the region, notably in Thailand, where Thai Beverage’s beers, like Chang, are rivals. “We are convinced that our bid is richer and offers more value to shareholders,” a Heineken spokesman said Tuesday. If the Kindest Place offer succeeds, that company would control about 16 percent of Asia Pacific, having already agreed to buy 8.6 percent of the beer maker from Oversea-Chinese Banking and its affiliated groups at a lower price, 45 dollars a share. Thai Beverage is Fraser & Neave’s biggest shareholder, with about 24 percent. Kirin Holdings of Japan is the second-largest.


A Protégé Honors His Mentor’s Legacy

Abstract: ABOUT 10 years ago, Leonard J. Lehrman, a onetime protégé of the composer and Great Neck resident Elie Siegmeister, realized that the music of his late mentor was in danger of being forgotten. “I saw fewer and fewer of his works performed,” Mr. Lehrman said. “He had a certain stature in the musical world, and I saw it slipping away.” A man of populist ideals, Siegmeister had championed the development of a distinctly American musical style rooted in folk song, jazz and blues. In his earlier years, his orchestral works were performed by leading conductors of the day like Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski and Dimitri Mitropoulos. A writer and educator as well as a composer, he left his mark on a host of young musicians while on the faculty of Hofstra University, from 1949 to 1976. Over time, though, interest in Siegmeister’s compositions declined, Mr. Lehrman said. After his death in 1991, especially, his name was hard to find on concert programs; his recordings were out of print. So in 1999 Mr. Lehrman, a conductor and composer who lives in Valley Stream, set out to put Siegmeister back on the classical-music map. With his future wife, Helene Williams, a soprano, and with the help of other Siegmeister supporters, he founded the Elie Siegmeister Society. His plan was to promote the performance of as much Siegmeister music as possible for this year, the centennial of his birth. “There are going to be more concerts of his music this coming year than any year since his death,” Mr. Lehrman said, with performances on Long Island, in New York City and Washington and elsewhere around the country. On the Island, centennial events will include a free performance of the 1967 cantata “I Have a Dream” on Jan. 11 at the Great Neck Public Library. Based on the historic speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the concert will feature the Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus and soloists, including Ms. Williams, with Mr. Lehrman conducting. On Jan. 15 — the composer’s 100th birthday — the American Chamber Ensemble, with Mr. Lehrman and Ms. Williams as guest artists, will perform “Elie at 100 — A Master of American Music,” a concert for woodwinds, piano and voice, also free, at the Massapequa Public Library. With several former Siegmeister students, including the ensemble’s co-director and clarinetist, Naomi Drucker, participating, reminiscences are virtually assured. The various Siegmeister celebrations will draw on different periods in the composer’s long career. According to one scholar, Carol J. Oja of Harvard University, his heyday came early on: “The 1930s — that’s Elie’s decade, extending into the 40s,” said Ms. Oja, a professor of music and the history of American civilization whose research centers on 20th-century American musical traditions. “That’s when he was really cooking.” Part of a Depression-era circle that was loosely linked to the older composer Aaron Copland, Siegmeister, like his peers, wrote music with a proletarian bent and supported leftist causes. The American Plains, with its buckaroos and round-ups, also fascinated the Manhattan-born, Brooklyn-raised composer: One of his biggest successes came in 1945, when his “Western Suite” had its premiere on national radio, with Toscanini leading the NBC Symphony. Yet not many years after his popular breakthrough, Siegmeister was having a “very, very rough time,” Mr. Lehrman said. In the early 1950s, Siegmeister was called to testify at a Congressional hearing investigating Communism in the musical ranks. (Asked to name party members, he replied that he knew none, he later recalled.) “I was around 12 at the time,” said a daughter, Mimi Koren, of Larchmont in Westchester. Her parents kept the news of the hearing from her for years, Ms. Koren said: “It was definitely something that you didn’t talk about in public.” Meanwhile, “the politics of the music world” also changed, Ms. Oja said. Many composers had adopted an abstract style, and the tonal populism associated with Siegmeister “was really looked down on,” she said. Siegmeister continued to compose steadily and to get commissions, but few came from major East Coast orchestras. “If you had a lid put on your career, it’s often really hard to re-emerge,” Ms. Oja said. Herb Deutsch, a composer from Massapequa Park who studied with Siegmeister at Hofstra, said his teacher did change with the times. “He came to be much more dissonant and rhythmically exciting,” Mr. Deutsch said. But for the music establishment, “it didn’t make much of a difference.” More recently, a few of Siegmeister’s contemporaries have been rediscovered, though “Elie’s legacy is kind of floating,” Ms. Oja said. “Elie’s fate is probably not going to be [as] one of the greatest composers of the 20th century,” but there is “a lot of energy, a lot of soul and passion in his music,” she said. “It’s a matter of timing for this sort of thing,” Ms. Oja noted. “In Elie’s case, his moment might not quite have happened yet.”

Siegmeister Elie
Music
Long Island (NY)
Birthdays


A Texas Showdown Over Same-Sex Marriage

Abstract: AUSTIN, Tex. — Fourteen states allowed same-sex marriage when Cleopatra De Leon and Nicole Dimetman filed a lawsuit late last year challenging Texas’ constitutional ban on marriages that are not between a man and a woman. The couple, who had married in Massachusetts in 2009, live in Austin and collided with a Texas law when they could not both be listed on the birth certificate of their first child. They hope the law is changed before the birth of their second. “There are moments in our lives that are flashbulb moments,” Ms. De Leon said during a town hall event last week, describing the decision she and Ms. Dimetman reached to challenge the state’s same-sex marriage ban. With the case heading to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans next month, Ms. De Leon, Ms. Dimetman and gay rights advocates are hoping that Texas is on the verge of its own flashbulb moment. A federal district judge has already ruled in their favor , and if Texas’ appeals fail, the state may be compelled to join the almost three-quarters of the country that now allows same-sex marriage. That sort of societal change would come at a time when Texas, the largest state with a same-sex marriage ban, is ushering in a new slate of Republican leaders and lawmakers with an even more conservative bent, including staunch opposition to gay marriage. “There is such a body of legal precedent now,” said Chuck Smith, executive director of Equality Texas , a gay rights advocacy group. “That all sort of collectively reaches the conclusion that the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution applies to gay and lesbian people as well.” That is the argument that Ms. De Leon and Ms. Dimetman are pursuing, citing the birth of their first child, whose birth certificate allows only one parent’s name because the state does not recognize their union. In February, Federal District Judge Orlando L. Garcia ruled that the state’s ban was unconstitutional because it “violates plaintiffs’ equal protection and due process rights.” Anticipating an appeal, Mr. Garcia stayed his ruling, leaving the ban in place while the case worked its way through the courts. Gay rights advocates, citing a raft of other recent court decisions, believe the conservative Fifth Circuit may swing their way. Conservative activists say that is improbable, and would be at odds with the beliefs of Texas voters. In the November election, Texans handed Republicans an even wider margin of control. Greg Abbott , who has defended the same-sex marriage ban as the state attorney general, was elected governor, and Dan Patrick , a state senator and Tea Party darling, was chosen lieutenant governor. Mr. Abbott’s office has argued that the courts should respect a state’s sovereignty and not overrule Texas voters, 76 percent of whom voted in 2005 to define marriage in the state’s Constitution as “solely the union of one man and one woman.” In a brief filed with the Fifth Circuit, the attorney general’s office also argued that the same-sex marriage ban was in line with the United States Constitution’s equal protection clause, which mandates that laws “be rationally related to a legitimate state interest.” Texas Republicans have long made their opposition to overturning the state ban clear. Mr. Patrick was among 63 state lawmakers who signed a federal brief arguing that legalization of same-sex marriage could lead to the legalization of bigamy and incest. “I think it’s important, when people talk about the momentum, for them to look at the election we just had,” said Jonathan Saenz, president of the conservative group Texas Values , adding that an adverse court ruling was likely to lead Republican lawmakers to “address that” during the next legislative session, which begins in January. Texas gay rights advocates point to polling data by Equality Texas that indicates a majority of Texans now favor legal recognition of same-sex couples. “Nowhere in my stream of consciousness did I consider this would even be where it is right now,” said Victor Holmes, who with his partner, Mark Phariss, is serving as a co-plaintiff in the case. “People know people who are gay now. It’s not those people over there anymore. It’s actual people that they know and they love.” As a steady stream of states has begun allowing same-sex marriage, either by choice or through court decisions, impatience is growing among those who believe Texas will inevitably be forced to join their ranks. After the Fifth Circuit agreed to expedite consideration of the state’s appeal, the plaintiffs asked Mr. Garcia to lift his stay. In anticipation, county clerks in Bexar, Dallas and Travis counties said they were prepared to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and some promised to extend their hours to accommodate an expected influx of couples looking to wed. Mr. Garcia eventually declined to lift the stay, saying it would open the doors to “confusion and doubt” as the appellate court considered the case. A three-judge panel of the court, which includes 10 Republican-appointed judges and five Democratic appointees, will hear arguments. The panel has not yet been announced. The Texas case is among dozens of challenges to state same-sex marriage bans that cropped up after the United States Supreme Court struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. The cases have barreled through the judicial system, with the Texas case among the last to be heard at the appellate level. All but one appellate court has ruled against bans on same-sex marriage. The sole dissenter, the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit, created a split with other appellate courts on the issue in November, making it likelier that the Supreme Court will have the final word. Depending on how quickly the Supreme Court moves, one of the legal challenges could be taken up as early as January, with a decision next summer. Many legal experts consider it unlikely that the Supreme Court will uphold same-sex marriage bans, citing the court’s action earlier this year when it declined to consider appeals from supporters of same-sex marriage in other cases. By declining to hear the cases, the court allowed same-sex marriage to stand in five states. “It’s hard to imagine that now, after allowing that to happen, that the court would say there is no right to same-sex marriage,” said Aaron Bruhl, an associate professor of law at the University of Houston who studies federal courts. “I think the court has, in a way, tipped its hand on what the final outcome would be.” (The University of Houston is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.)

Texas Tribune
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Texas
Greg Abbott
Gay and Lesbian LGBT
Cleopatra De Leon
Nicole Dimetman


Afghan Policewoman Is Killed, Fourth in Last Six Months

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed a policewoman in western Afghanistan on Thursday, wounding her daughter and two other family members who were with her. It was the fourth killing of an Afghan policewoman in the last six months. “Her name was Masooma, and she was very active in her job,” said Gen. Abdul Rahim Chikhansori, the acting police chief for Nimruz Province. “The enemy of Afghanistan didn’t tolerate her great service and active approach, and unfortunately she was martyred.” There were conflicting reports about which relatives were with her and the extent of the injuries to her daughter and the two others, who may have been her children or her daughter’s children. The attack took place on the outskirts of Zaranj, the provincial capital, early Thursday morning, as Ms. Masooma, who like many Afghans used only one name, was taking her young relatives to school before going to work. Female police officers, especially in more rural areas, are extremely vulnerable. That is partly because there are so few of them that they are easily spotted, and also because of an ingrained cultural resistance to women taking public roles. “For a woman, being a member of the police force is not acceptable to many in Afghan society,” said Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for the United Nations in Afghanistan. There are just 37 policewomen in all of Nimruz Province, said Farida Hamidi, a member of the Parliament from the province, who was nearby at the time of the shooting. Ms. Masooma worked as a searcher and was often stationed at the governor’s compound to frisk women as they entered the building, said Ms. Hamidi, who said she recalled frequently seeing the policewoman at her post. Like many women in the police force, Ms. Masooma took the job out of necessity. “She was 48 years old, and she was a widow. She had children and was the breadwinner for the family,” Ms. Hamidi said. “She used to come to me whenever she had problems as a woman and police officer because I used to serve as director of women’s affairs before going to the Parliament.” The police have not caught the gunmen, and no one has claimed responsibility for the killing. Two of the three other policewomen killed this year were in Helmand, a predominantly Pashtun province that borders Nimruz. The third was in Nangarhar, also a predominantly Pashtun province, but in the far east of Afghanistan. In much of Afghanistan, the idea of a woman working outside the home is only beginning to be accepted, but employment as a policewoman is still viewed as shameful by many people because it often means working side by side with men. Nimruz, a province in the far west of the country that borders Iran and Pakistan, has become increasingly unstable, according to local officials. And the audacity of the crime, taking place in broad daylight on a public road, is a signal of the increasing lawlessness in the area, said Mohammad Nader Baloch, the deputy chairman of the provincial council. “This is not the first incident in which the terrorists are conducting an assassination attempt in daylight in the middle of the city,” Mr. Baloch said. “But the authorities have failed to control them.”

Attacks on Police
Afghan National Police
Afghanistan
Murders
Women and Girls


Regulator Votes to Block Merger of Pepco and Exelon

Abstract: Before Tuesday, Exelon seemed close to sealing its $6.8 billion takeover of a fellow utility operator, Pepco Holdings, having secured support from most of the power regulators it needed to satisfy. But the utilities commission for Washington, D.C., has upended those plans, sending shares in Pepco tumbling as much as 20 percent. The Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia voted unanimously on Tuesday to block the merger of the two companies, arguing that the combination did not offer enough benefits to the region’s customers. That decision casts doubt on a merger that would create the country’s biggest utility operator, with about 10 million customers. It comes just a day after another big power company, the Southern Company, agreed to buy AGL Resources for about $8 billion. Utilities have turned to mergers and acquisitions in part to cut costs, as the industry grapples with sliding electricity sales and low gas prices. Utility regulators in Delaware, New Jersey and Virginia approved the deal. A judge in Maryland overrode a move by that state’s attorney general to block the transaction. And the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission signed off on the combination. But Washington’s commission said that the deal was not in the public interest, having considered the possibility of rate increases, lessened competition in the retail and wholesale power markets and effects on the environment. The regulator said it had received written testimony from more than 3,000 residents, nonprofit organizations and small businesses. “The public policy of the district is that the local electric company should focus solely on providing safe, reliable and affordable distribution service to district residences, businesses and institutions,” Betty Ann Kane, the commission’s chairwoman, said in a statement. “The evidence in the record is that sale and change in control proposed in the merger would move us in the opposite direction.” Another commissioner, Willie L. Phillips, added a partial dissent. “I agree with my colleagues that the merger application as filed is a bad deal for the district,” he said in a statement. “However, I am disappointed in the loss of the many opportunities that could have achieved benefits for our local communities and across the region.” By Tuesday afternoon, shares of Pepco were down 14 percent, at $23.17. Under the terms of the deal, Pepco shareholders would receive $27.25 a share in cash. Exelon shares were down about 3 percent, at $31.68. Exelon and Pepco have 30 days to appeal the commission’s decision. In a joint statement , the companies said they were disappointed with the decision and planned to review their options. “We continue to believe our proposal is in the public interest and provides direct immediate and long-term benefits to customers, enhances reliability and preserves our role as a community partner,” they said.

Exelon
Pepco Holdings
Energy industry
Mergers and Acquisitions


Huge Aquifers Are Discovered in North Kenya

Abstract: NAIROBI, Kenya — The United Nations and Kenyan officials on Wednesday announced the discovery of a potentially enormous underground supply of water, a find they said could improve the lives of generations of people in impoverished northern Kenya, if not the entire nation. With water security a growing concern around the world, the discovery of five aquifers in drought-plagued Turkana County could help secure Kenya’s access to the most critical of natural resources, particularly in the arid north. Out of a population of roughly 41 million people, 17 million Kenyans lack sufficient access to safe drinking water and 28 million are without adequate sanitation, said the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, known as Unesco. “This newly found wealth of water opens a door to a more prosperous future for the people of Turkana and the nation as a whole,” Judi Wakhungu, Kenya’s secretary for the environment, water and natural resources, said in a Unesco statement on Wednesday. “We must now work to further explore these resources responsibly and safeguard them for future generations.” In addition to potentially providing drinking water, the vast underground supplies could be used as a source of irrigation for crops or to water livestock. Malnutrition has been a growing problem among the Turkana people, and a new supply of water could help head off conflicts over scarce resources in the region, where deadly cattle raids are common. The finds were a product of cooperation between the Kenyan government and Unesco, with the financial support of Japan. According to Unesco, further study is needed to determine exactly how much water there is and its quality. It also remains to be seen how easy and expensive tapping the new supply will be. The Lotikipi Basin Aquifer — which by one estimate is roughly the size of Rhode Island — and the smaller Lodwar Basin Aquifer were discovered using advanced satellite technology and confirmed with drilling. The other three aquifers still need to be confirmed through drilling, Unesco said. Gretchen Kalonji, Unesco’s assistant director general for natural sciences, said in the statement that the find “clearly demonstrates how science and technology can contribute to industrialization and economic growth, and to resolving real societal issues like access to water.” Radar Technologies International, the natural resources exploration firm that discovered the aquifers, said that they contained “ a minimum reserve of 250 billion cubic meters of water,” or about 66 trillion gallons, and that rainfall in Kenya and Uganda refilled them with about 898 billion gallons annually. Unesco described the find as a scientific triumph and one that it hoped to replicate elsewhere. “We will continue to support Africa to unlock the full potential of its invisible water wealth,” Ms. Kalonji said.

Kenya
Water
Aquifer
United Nations Educational
Scientific and Cultural Organization
Radar Technologies International


Private Toll Road Across Maine Is Proposed

Abstract: CHARLESTON, Me. — Central Maine is so vast and so empty, with so few roads, that it has given rise to a classic bit of New England humor. An old Yankee is asked for directions, whereupon he replies, “You can’t get there from here.” The problem in Maine is that most of its major roads run north-south. Very few run east-west, which makes traversing the state one long, slow slog. Peter Vigue, the chairman and chief executive of the Cianbro Corporation, a large engineering and construction company based in Maine, is hoping to change that. He has proposed a $2 billion private toll road running 220 miles across the state. He says it could make Maine a vital link in the global economy, speeding commerce across the Northeastern United States to markets in the Midwest, as well as help revitalize the lagging local economy. The expansions of the Panama and Suez Canals make this highway even more urgent, he said in an interview last week. Bigger ships from around the world, carrying more cargo containers, will be looking for bigger, less congested ports on the East Coast, he said, and Maine already has one in Eastport. The idea of an east-west highway has been kicking around for decades. But Mr. Vigue’s proposal stands a good chance of becoming reality. As such, it has struck a raw nerve within the Maine psyche and has prompted a fierce debate over the state’s brand, character and future. Opponents say a major thoroughfare slicing through the state would destroy the very qualities of peacefulness, natural beauty and remoteness that make this region desirable in the first place. “It would just completely change ‘the way life should be,’ ” said Chris Buchanan, referring to the state’s unofficial slogan. Ms. Buchanan is the statewide coordinator for Stop the Corridor , a coalition opposing the highway. “Maine is a rural state,” she said, “and this is a businessman who is trying to make it the Northeast trade gateway.” That is exactly what others hope Mr. Vigue (pronounced VIG-you) can achieve. “You can think small and be small, or you can think big and be big,” said Christopher M. Gardner, executive director of the Eastport Port Authority. Eastport has the greatest natural depth of any port on the East Coast, but it gets less traffic than many others. “A big ship could come in here now, but we lack the connectivity to the rest of the world to warrant it,” Mr. Gardner said. “But,” he added, “we’re not in the middle of nowhere, we’re right in the middle of the supply chain. We just have to seize the opportunity.” The main reason that Mr. Vigue — and his opponents — believe that his proposal could succeed now where others have failed is that it would be financed privately. “We have no state or federal participation,” Mr. Vigue said in the interview, “and we are confident that this is achievable.” He said he was in discussions with other private partners and was following a recent trend of more private industry involvement in highways around the country. “You find that cities, states and the federal government do not have adequate funding to support the demand for infrastructure,” Mr. Vigue said. But to the consternation of many, he has not specified the exact route from the east, in Calais, to the west, in Coburn Gore. He said he would buy and string together existing roads and rights of way; because the project is private, he cannot use the state’s right of eminent domain. For those reasons, he said, the corridor would not disrupt local communities. But opponents say they have been left in the dark on important details. They fear a 2,000-foot-wide corridor carrying not only long-haul trucks but also oil and gas pipelines and communications cables. (Mr. Vigue said the corridor would be 500 feet wide and says he has had “no such conversations” with utilities.) Bob and Joan Morrison moved their family from Southern Maine to a farm here in Charleston, a rural area about 25 miles northwest of Bangor, in the 1970s because they fell in love with the gently rolling hills. They also saw the area as affordable and thought it would keep its rural character. Their son Steve now lives in their original farmhouse with his own family, while Bob and Joan live in another house on the property, a dairy farm of about 1,000 acres. They sell their milk to an organic co-op that processes it in New Hampshire, but plan to start shipping it this winter to a new company in Maine. They grow a lot of their own food and prefer supporting the local economy to the global economy that Mr. Vigue envisions. “This area has been left behind, and that’s the way we like it,” Joan Morrison, 72, said as the family sat around the kitchen table. The Morrisons spend a lot of time poring over maps and trying to figure out where the corridor will run and how it will affect them. “Losses due to the proposed corridor will make it harder, not easier, for my business and other farms in the area to find quality fields to rent or buy,” said Steve Morrison, 47. Contrary to Mr. Vigue’s promises, the Morrisons see little benefit to Maine itself, beyond a few gas stations to serve the trucks that are hauling goods and waste for international conglomerates. Environmentalists say the road would be a “nightmare” for the land, air and animal habitats as well as for recreational activities. The private financing has also raised red flags. A 2009 report by the United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund found that some other privately financed toll roads had failed, leaving taxpayers responsible. The next step here is a financial feasibility study, for which the Legislature has approved $300,000, to be reimbursed by the builders if the project goes ahead. The state is paying for the study because it has an interest in the economics of the project, said Ted Talbot, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Transportation; it is not being done for Mr. Vigue. “We want to know, if it’s a toll road, how does it become profitable for a private company to operate?” Mr. Talbot said. “Someone has to plow it, police it, maintain it.” Mr. Vigue would not say how much he expected to charge at the tollgates. He dismissed reports that the cost for the whole route could run as high as $100 for cars and $200 for trucks. “It will be financially attractive or people won’t use it,” he said. Once the feasibility study is done, Mr. Vigue said he expected to take three years for the permitting and design of the project and another three to build it. Tony Brinkley, a professor who works on economic development projects for the Franco-American Center at the University of Maine, said many in the state were torn over the proposal. There is scant information about the road, he said, and no one is really in a position to judge whether it would be more harmful or more beneficial to Maine in the long run, or whether it would help Canada at Maine’s expense. For everyone worried about wrecking Maine’s way of life, he said, others fear that doing nothing would leave the economy stagnant. “The Maine brand,” he said, “should not be poverty.”

Roads and Traffic
Maine
Cianbro Corp
Vigue Peter G


Matsuzaka Running Out of Gas in the Fast Lane

Abstract: BOSTON, Sept. 13 — Daisuke Matsuzaka slowed everything down Wednesday at Fenway Park, working on his pitching motion in slow motion. Matsuzaka slowly, very, very slowly, brought the ball in his right hand from behind his back, past his shoulder and down below his knees. Then he did it in reverse. It was a picturesque yet painstaking scene. There was Matsuzaka delicately moving the ball through his delivery at about an inch per second, trying to keep his arm in the same slot. The routine was part of Matsuzaka’s prestart workout, but it was also part of his search for why he has been so futile. Five and a half months into Matsuzaka’s hyped first season with the Boston Red Sox , he has deteriorated into a pitching punching bag. Matsuzaka is 1-4 with a 9.57 earned run average over his past five starts, becoming a question mark at an inopportune time. He starts against the Yankees here Friday night. There are several theories about why Matsuzaka has fizzled. He has relied too heavily on fastballs. He has not consistently thrown breaking pitches for strikes, so his patterns have been predictable. He is fatigued after a draining season. He has not adjusted as powerful American League hitters have adapted to him. After the Baltimore Orioles torched Matsuzaka for eight runs in two and two-thirds innings last Saturday, the pitching coach John Farrell said Matsuzaka was depending too much on fastballs. Farrell said the emphasis on fastballs was forecasting to hitters that they need not expect off-speed pitches. “There’s a combination of a couple of things,” Farrell said Wednesday. “He has certainly shown in the past that he can be unpredictable with his pitch mix, which I think has been an asset for him for the most part of the year. Except for a couple of starts where he’s hit the wall a little bit.” Matsuzaka has hit the wall at a terrible time. The first-place Red Sox, who lead the Yankees by five and a half games in the A.L. East, surely felt a lot more confident about their starting rotation a month ago. With October looming, the Red Sox have to be concerned about Matsuzaka and maybe others, too. Besides Josh Beckett, an 18-game winner, there is uncertainty in the rotation. Curt Schilling is 2-3 with a 3.35 E.R.A. since missing seven weeks with a shoulder injury. Tim Wakefield had been consistent until hurting his back and has not lasted past the fourth inning in his past two starts. And, clearly, the Red Sox did not expect Matsuzaka to regress. Matsuzaka is 14-12 with a 4.44 E.R.A. and has struck out 179 and walked 70 in 184 1/3 innings, solid statistics for an ordinary rookie. But Matsuzaka was not supposed to be an ordinary rookie. He was supposed to be one of the best pitchers in the world. Right now, he is not close to being the best pitcher on his own team. While Farrell acknowledged that Matsuzaka is “showing a little fatigue,” he added that it was natural for any starter in September. Matsuzaka started every six days, not every five, in Japan. Boston has given him extra rest before three of his past five starts. He needs 10 more innings to reach his second-highest innings total. Bobby Valentine, the manager of Japan’s Chiba Lotte Marines and a former major league manager, said in April that Matsuzaka would develop in the majors as long as he did not get worn down by pitching every fifth day and threw only about 35 percent fastballs. Matsuzaka’s performance has made Valentine sound like a soothsayer. Matsuzaka has struggled with a heftier workload and he has thrown fastballs more than half the time. According to Inside Edge, a scouting service, 56 percent of Matsuzaka’s pitches have been fastballs. If Matsuzaka is behind in the count, the number increases to 58 percent. “I have seen some games and I cannot believe that he does not throw more changeups and split-finger pitches,” Valentine said in an e-mail message. “It looks like he is trying to prove he can pitch like the American pitchers and, as I said, that would be a formula for failure.” One A.L. talent evaluator who has scouted Matsuzaka’s recent starts said Matsuzaka grew exasperated when he could not throw strikes with his changeup or his splitter. The umpires in Japan, where Matsuzaka pitched for eight years, tend to call more strikes on high pitches. When Matsuzaka does not get strikes with his other pitches, he can get flustered and resort to throwing fastballs, lots of them. Farrell said pitchers sometimes “revert to aggressiveness” when they are in a tough spot, and rely on the pitch that secures the most strikes. Matsuzaka seems to think that is the fastball. Valentine said he thought Matsuzaka’s changeup was his key pitch. Matsuzaka declined an interview request Wednesday. But before the game against Tampa Bay, about 25 Japanese reporters assembled outside the Red Sox clubhouse. They were not there to ask questions. Instead, they had something for Matsuzaka, who was a day away from turning 27. When Matsuzaka exited the clubhouse to meet them, he froze. There was a sheet cake with “Happy Birthday Daisuke” and a K made out of dice written across the icing. Matsuzaka bowed to thank them and posed with the cake. But, less than two minutes later, his fun was over. He was thinking about baseball again. “Next year,” Matsuzaka said, “I want to have a better birthday than this year.”

Baseball
Matsuzaka Daisuke
Boston Red Sox
Athletics and Sports


E-Mails Capture Palin’s Meteoric Rise

Abstract: JUNEAU, Alaska — Few could have been more surprised than Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska when Senator John McCain picked her as his running mate in 2008. “Can you believe it!” she wrote in response to a staff member’s “Wow governor” message that Friday in late August when the choice was announced. “He told me yesterday — it moved fast! Pray! I love you.” Not two days earlier, Ms. Palin had been dealing with the sometimes mundane matters of one of the nation’s least populous states: a ballot initiative on mining, thorny personnel issues involving her ex-brother-in-law, and her personal request for “Alaska pins and governor pencils (or pens) to drop off at gladys wood elem school today after my afl cio speech.” A scan of Ms. Palin’s e-mails in the weeks just before and after she was chosen as Mr. McCain’s running mate on the Republican ticket — among some 24,000 pages of them released by the State of Alaska on Friday — show in minute detail how she went overnight from being a small-state governor who was midway through her first term to a dominant figure in Republican politics. One moment she was immersed in board appointments and the Miss Alaska beauty pageant, the next she was receiving advice from the likes of Newt Gingrich and fielding questions from the national news media, including whether she believed that dinosaurs and humans had walked the earth together. “Arghhhh!” she wrote in one message. “I am so sorry that the office is swamped like this! Dinosaurs even?!” The release here of Ms. Palin’s e-mails — which are sprinkled with mentions of God and Palinisms like “flippin” as a G-rated exclamation — were an extraordinary event in their own right, providing the sort of intimate look into a governor’s day-to-day interactions that is rarely available to the public. But the intense media coverage of the e-mails was also criticized by Ms. Palin’s supporters as overzealous. Timothy Crawford, the treasurer of Ms. Palin’s political action committee, said the messages “show a very engaged Gov. Sarah Palin being the C.E.O. of her state.” But noting that the e-mails could show only the partial story — given how much state business takes place over the phone, in person and in old-fashioned correspondence — he said that the messages “are only one aspect of communication in any office.” The state shared the e-mails in response to requests from news media and local activists that were filed under Alaska’s open records law at the start of Ms. Palin’s run for vice president — when the rush was on among journalists, Democrats and even Mr. McCain’s own staff to illuminate and define the record of the then-obscure Alaska governor. Released in hard copy and covering most of Ms. Palin’s months in office, the vast trove will take days to read and decipher. But a close look at the crucial period when she rocketed onto the national stage shows that there was almost no warning of what was about to happen to Ms. Palin. And, as many asserted at the time, the vetting process of the vice-presidential candidate appears to have taken just a few scant days. As governor, the e-mails show that Ms. Palin was intensely involved in certain issues, like an energy rebate for all Alaskans, labor talks, and a ballot initiative regarding mining in the fragile ecosystem of Bristol Bay, home to one of the world’s largest salmon runs. But she also showed flashes of resentment at the way she was being treated by her opponents in Alaska and the local news media, whose characterizations became part of her national political persona. Venting that she was being criticized for speaking out on the ballot initiative in a way that her predecessor would not have, she wrote to a staff member, “The double standard we face in so many areas is almost comical.” Speculation that Ms. Palin could emerge as a dark horse vice-presidential candidate had been simmering for months, given her popularity among some highly placed Washington conservatives. But it was considered such a long shot that she did not seem to take it seriously. In one e-mail in early August, in which she described a short visit with President George W. Bush, she wrote, “He also spoke about (and we joked about) VP buzz.” Days before the Republican convention, her office was focused on her speech, which had been scheduled earlier in the proceedings, with one aide asking her to try to shoehorn in a meeting with Mr. McCain “or his people” to discuss a drilling issue. It is not until Aug. 24 that the e-mails between Ms. Palin and her senior staff members and advisers indicate that something is afoot. That is when she asked her office in Juneau to send two years of her financial disclosure forms to Anchorage for unspecified purposes. From the start, she tried to straddle the dual roles of sitting governor and vice-presidential candidate, writing to her chief of staff, Mike Nizich, “As often as possible we’ll need to have announcements come under my name in these next weeks.” She added: “Remember we talked about having almost daily announcements coming from our office w my name on it so Alaskans know that still my #1 priority is serving them as Gov.” But the incoming soon became overwhelming. When her spokesman, Bill McAllister, forwarded reporters’ requests for information, including details about a tanning bed in the Governor’s Mansion here in Juneau, she wrote, “Yes, we paid for it ourselves.” “I, too, will continue to be dismayed at the media and am thankful you and Sharon are not part of the stange going’s-on in the media world of today,” she said, misspellings included. Just a few weeks earlier, Ms. Palin had seemed happy to have any national attention. In early August, when Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois and the leading Democratic candidate for president, mentioned a natural gas pipeline that was proposed for Alaska, Ms. Palin complimented his “great speech” and asked that her staff “take advantage of this” by publicizing it. “Pretty cool,” she said in a follow-up note. “Wrong candidate.”

Palin Sarah
Presidential Election of 2008
Politics and Government
Alaska
Electronic Mail


Mrs. Clinton Has Support in Stronghold of Obama

Abstract: Idealism used to be the hallmark of young voters, and many of Yale ’s undergraduates appear to be supporting the fresh-faced candidate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. But as the campus played host Monday morning to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton , Mr. Obama’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, there were plenty of young voters expressing a preference for her as a leader who speaks to their heads, not their hearts. Mrs. Clinton herself has noted that her brand of politics probably appeals more to issue-oriented policy wonks than class poets and dreamers. Borrowing a line from former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York, she has recently been saying, “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” Ron Arpin, 23, said he would take prose any day. Stumping for Mrs. Clinton outside the Yale Child Study Center, where she was holding a round-table discussion with invited participants before an invited audience, Mr. Arpin said he regretted that he was too young to have voted for Bill Clinton and that he was solidly in Mrs. Clinton’s corner in this race. “She has an older demographic, and a female demographic,” Mr. Arpin noted. “I want to make clear that she also has my demographic as well: 20-year-old males.” His parents, Mr. Arpin added, “are actually supporting Obama.” “Again, it’s the prose versus poetry thing,” he said. “I’m looking past this feeling and looking at substance. Barack is inspirational. In the end, she’ll make the change happen. He’s better at talking about change. She’s more likely to get it done. “Just because she doesn’t have charisma doesn’t mean she would not be better,” he added. Standing among a group of Yale Students for Hillary, Timothy Orr acknowledged that they are outnumbered on campus by Mr. Obama’s boosters. An informal poll in his dormitory showed Mr. Obama winning “by a significant margin,” said Mr. Orr, a 20-year-old junior. “Most college campuses are for Barack.” He and his companions on the sidewalk are nonetheless staying loyal to Mrs. Clinton. Traits that others might consider flaws, such as her reputation for pragmatism, they applaud. “I like the way she tones down the rhetoric and goes for the practicalities,” said Rek LeCounte, a Yale freshman who described himself as an “Army brat” from Virginia. “The fact that she comes off as calculating,” he said, does not trouble him. “She’s very strategic and weighs all options and is not quick to jump to conclusions. She’s not dogmatic in her politics, and that’s good.” As for Mr. Obama, Mr. LeCounte said: “He’s a great candidate. I hope he’ll be veep.”

Obama Barack
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Yale University
Presidential Election of 2008
Colleges and Universities
Elections


Steelers' Ward Is No Longer Feeling Unappreciated

Abstract: DETROIT, Feb. 5 - It sounds crazy now, the idea that the most valuable player of Super Bowl XL felt unappreciated. But it was true. Before Hines Ward could show the world his worth, he needed proof that he was valued by his team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The 2005 preseason games were about to begin and Ward, a former third-round draft pick, was in the midst of a contract holdout that had reached 14 days, with no end in sight. Ward, an eighth-year receiver, had been instrumental in persuading running back Jerome Bettis to put off retirement for one more run at a Super Bowl ring. So in mid-August, Bettis decided it was time to do some persuading of his own. In separate telephone conversations with Ward and Coach Bill Cowher, Bettis counseled each to reach out to the other. Cowher ended up calling Ward and telling him, unequivocally, how important Ward was to the Steelers' success. Whatever he said was what Ward was desperate to hear. He ended his holdout, and with that, the Steelers' storybook season began. The final chapter was written Sunday at Ford Field, in the city where Bettis grew up. Ward caught five passes, including one thrown by fellow receiver Antwaan Randle El for a 43-yard touchdown, to help the Steelers to a 21-10 victory against the Seattle Seahawks. A night that started with Ward dropping a pass in the end zone ended with him digging the keys to a luxury sport-utility vehicle into his palm, to make sure he was not dreaming. "This is truly a dream come true," Ward said. "As a kid, watching Jerry Rice and Joe Montana and all those guys playing in the Super Bowl." He added: "To have my name mentioned among some of the M.V.P.'s that played in the Super Bowl, words can't describe it. It's totally a dream come true." There was no dreaming for Ward Saturday night. He could not sleep. "I had nerves all night," he said. "I think I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and it didn't really hit me until probably the second quarter that man, I'm playing in the Super Bowl." Ward did not have a catch in the first quarter. Not coincidentally, the Steelers were held without a first down. In the second quarter, he dropped a ball in the end zone, but then came back and caught a 37-yard pass from quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to set up Roethlisberger's 1-yard touchdown run. The touchdown made the score 7-3 and put the Steelers ahead to stay. Ward went to the sideline muttering to himself about the dropped pass. After all was said and won, that one was still gnawing at him. "I was too worried about my feet staying in bounds," he said. "I took my eyes off the ball. I just wanted to go out and redeem myself." The ending was sweeter, he said, because of the way the season began. "It was a wild ride, from the contract negotiation to winning the Super Bowl M.V.P.," Ward said. "I'm at a loss for words." Ward talked about what it meant for Cowher to come up with the right words in August. "It was something I needed to hear from Coach Cowher," Ward said. He likened it to a father-son talk. "Nobody ever came and talked to me and said, 'Hines, this is what we think about you as a wide receiver,' " he said. He added, "It was something we needed to have." The last words Cowher said to Ward before he hung up were, "Let's go out and win the Super Bowl." Ward said: "I remember those words vividly." In November, Ward signed a five-year, $27.5 million contract. On Sunday, he got the kind of validation that is priceless. "I did everything the right way," Ward said. "That's why it's so gratifying to be in this position right now."

PITTSBURGH STEELERS
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS
WARD HINES
SUPER BOWL
FOOTBALL
AWARDS DECORATIONS AND HONORS


Pope Tries to Soothe Tensions With Jews

Abstract: ROME — Pope Benedict XVI , in a visit to Rome’s main synagogue, sought to soothe tensions between Catholics and Jews on Sunday, though he and Jewish leaders aired one main point of contention: whether the church did enough against the Holocaust. At least one prominent Italian rabbi boycotted Benedict’s visit after a move by the pope last month to advance Pope Pius XII, who led the Roman Catholic Church from 1939 to 1958, one step closer to sainthood. Many Jews, especially in Rome, say Pius did not do all he could have to stop the deportation of Jews. His defenders say his silence was diplomacy aimed at saving more lives. Benedict said that during World War II, “the Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.” In provocative remarks minutes earlier, the president of Rome’s Jewish community, Riccardo Pacifici, criticized “the silence of Pius XII,” even as he became emotional while praising Catholic religious orders for saving thousands of Jews, including some of his relatives, by hiding them during World War II. The pope and the audience rose as Mr. Pacifici greeted a group of survivors in attendance. The chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, who presided over the event, said that while “the silence of God” is inscrutable, “the silence of man is on a different level” and “neither does it escape justice.” Despite the clashing memories of the Holocaust, the visit was cordial, and after a year of tensions , Benedict and Jewish leaders affirmed a commitment to strengthening ties. Before entering the synagogue, the pope, 82, who was an unwilling member of the Hitler Youth in his teens, stopped to place roses by a plaque honoring the more than 1,000 Roman Jews deported to Auschwitz in 1943. “How could one ever forget their faces, their names, their tears, the desperation faced by these men, women and children?” he asked in his speech. In well-received remarks interrupted several times by applause, Benedict said, “The church has not failed to deplore the failings of her sons and daughters, begging forgiveness for all that could in any way have contributed to the scourge of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism.” He added, as the audience clapped, “May these wounds be healed forever!” Benedict said that “it is our duty, in response to God’s call, to strive to keep open the space for dialogue, for reciprocal respect, for growth in friendship, for a common witness in the face of the challenges of our time.” The event began with a minute of silence for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti . Before an audience of more than 1,000, Benedict and Rabbi Di Segni sat in adjoining armchairs on the podium of Rome’s ornate, high-ceilinged synagogue, flanked by Vatican officials, members of Rome’s Jewish community and a delegation from the chief rabbinate of Israel . The mayor of Rome, several leading Italian politicians, Israeli and American diplomats and the Nobel laureate Rita Levi Montalcini also attended. Rabbi Di Segni recalled John Paul II’s historic visit to the same synagogue in 1986, where he called the Jews “our beloved brothers.” It was the first visit by a pope to a Jewish house of prayer and was one important step toward largely improved relations under John Paul. “If ours is a relationship of brothers,” Rabbi Di Segni said, “we should ask ourselves quite sincerely what point of this journey we have reached, and how far we still have to travel before we recover an authentic relationship of brotherhood and understanding, and what we have to do to achieve this.” Benedict, who visited Israel and the Palestinian territories in May, did not mention Israel by name, although he said a prayer for peace in the Holy Land. He closed his speech by reciting part of a psalm in Hebrew. Afterward, he met privately with Rabbi Di Segni and other members of the Jewish community. Outside the synagogue, Stefano Spugnini, 46, from Rome, praised the pope for his “beautiful words, which were absolutely calming in a difficult moment.” Rabbi Arthur Schneier of Park East Synagogue in New York, which Benedict visited in 2008, said that the pope’s “very presence in the synagogue makes a clear symbolic statement to a priest in Argentina or Poland or Bolivia that the dialogue with the Jews is still very much on.” Both Jewish and Catholic leaders said that they appreciated Benedict’s calling the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s “a clear landmark to which constant reference is made in our attitude and our relations with the Jewish people, marking a new and significant stage.” Benedict set off global outrage last January after he revoked the excommunications of the ultratraditionalist, schismatic Society of St. Pius X, one of whose bishops had denied the scope of the Holocaust. The society was founded in opposition to the liberalizing changes of the Second Vatican Council. Although most said Sunday’s event helped clear the air, controversies remained. In a news conference afterward, Silvan Shalom, a deputy prime minister of Israel, said that in the private meeting he had asked the pope to facilitate opening the archives from Pius XII’s papacy. Rabbi Di Segni said he had asked Benedict to urge dioceses in Europe to make available records about Jewish children who had been baptized by the religious orders that saved them during World War II, and who often did not know their true family histories.

Benedict XVI
Jews and Judaism
Holocaust and the Nazi Era
Israel
Roman Catholic Church


Mets Confront Replay System; It’s Not as Easy as It Looks

Abstract: PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The Mets were playing the Cardinals at Tradition Field on Friday when, with two outs in the bottom of the third, Eric Young took off for second base. He slid and appeared to be safe, but he was called out. The Cardinals started jogging off the field. “I knew I was safe,” Young said later. But what he did not know was that this was the first spring training game in which it was the Mets’ turn to try out baseball’s new, expanded replay system. Starting this season, many calls will be reviewable, although balls and strikes will not be. For the Mets, the grand experiment has begun, even if the spring training version of instant replay is a little more improvised than the formal system that will be in place when the regular season begins. In the Mets’ clubhouse, four pitchers — Dillon Gee, Zack Wheeler, Jeremy Hefner and Jon Niese — sat around a table, watching the game on the team’s SNY telecast. In the event of a close play, they were to communicate, via walkie-talkie, with the Mets’ bench coach, Bob Geren, who would signal to the manager, Terry Collins, whether the umpire’s verdict was worth challenging. Sure enough, the pitchers saw Young called out and wondered if it was the right call. But because the play was the last out of the inning, the telecast went right to a commercial. Gee and the others did not see a replay until the fourth inning was starting. On inning-ending plays, managers have about 10 seconds to approach the umpire about a call, after which they are then given more time to decide whether to challenge. Without word from the clubhouse, Collins never left the dugout. As a result, there was no appeal. “That won’t happen during the regular season,” Gee said. During the regular season, a replay with multiple camera angles will be readily available for whoever will be monitoring the game in the Mets’ clubhouse. Every other team is sure to do the same. In fact, the Mets plan to have someone stationed in a video room near the clubhouse, with a direct phone line to Geren in the dugout. The review system itself will also be different once the season starts. Every challenged call from a major league game will be reviewed in a replay command center in New York. During spring training, the calls are being reviewed in video trucks on site at the various stadiums. Even if the system in March is not as rigorous as the one that will be in place in April, the purpose in spring training is to get everyone used to the process, with each team in Florida and Arizona getting at least five games to try it out. In the case of Young’s steal attempt, Collins was later told that the replay was, in fact, inconclusive. If he had challenged the call, it would not have been overturned. Five innings after that play, Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny used a challenge. Mike O’Neill had been called out on his attempt to steal second. It was a close play and seemed to warrant a challenge, so Matheny took a shot. He lost. Entering play on Friday, eight replay reviews had been requested in games this week, according to Major League Baseball. In one instance, no replay occurred because of a power failure. In six other replays, it took, on average, about three minutes for the review to be completed. In the eighth instance, broadcast issues prevented M.L.B. from getting an accurate read on how long the replay took. In the end, none of the calls reviewed were overturned. It took managers an average of about 56 seconds to decide to challenge the play. Most of the challenges were made in the sixth inning or later. Each one related to a safe-or-out call. For the Mets’ first seven games this spring, leading into Friday, Collins kept track of the umpires’ calls. He said there were about four plays he would have challenged had he had the chance. While it is still unclear who will review plays for the Mets during the season, Collins said, “You’ve got to have someone on that computer who has the ability to replay this stuff in a hurry.” Geren, who will be the relay man, said he figured the challenge process would be easy at Citi Field, where everything will be familiar, and a little more challenging on the road. Ultimately, he said, “it’s pretty simple.” “Terry and I just have to have our timing right,” he said. There is a strategic element in choosing when to use the challenge because a manager starts each game with just one challenge. A successful challenge allows a manager one more challenge before the end of the game. But if a manager incorrectly challenges a play, he is out of luck for the rest of the game unless the umpires on their own choose to review a play from the seventh inning on. All that is weighing on Collins’s mind. Say it is the third inning, two outs, nobody on base, and there is a close call at first base. The opposing runner is ruled safe, and Collins gets word that it looks like the runner is out. Should Collins ask for a replay? It is still early in the game, and if he is wrong, he is out of challenges with six innings still to play. But that is only half the story. “What do you think is going to happen if I don’t challenge that and we give up four runs with two outs?” Collins said to a group of reporters. “What are you guys going to say when the game’s over? “Believe me,” he added, “if you can get an out, get an out.”

Baseball
Instant replay
Mets
Eric Young
Terry L Collins


A Star Keeps Rocking in the Not-So-Free World

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Russia REVERENCE for Russia ’s leaders, be they czars, general secretaries or presidents, has never come easily to Yuri Shevchuk. A bespectacled, slightly graying rock star, Mr. Shevchuk has spent much of the last three decades growling into a microphone in an effort, he says, to awaken in his compatriots a passion to break from their long history of bowing to heavy-handed authority. These days, at 53, Mr. Shevchuk remains a guttural voice of defiance, just as he was when he began dodging Soviet censors by holding secret concerts in apartments throughout Russia in the early 1980s. But now he rails against Vladimir V. Putin ’s government in his packed shows and openly scorns other musicians he accuses of selling out. Last month, he put his preaching into practice, stunning Russians by making an off-the-cuff speech against official abuses during a meeting with Mr. Putin himself. “I have questions, honestly speaking,” Mr. Shevchuk told the prime minister at the meeting. “They’ve accumulated for some time, and I will use this opportunity.” The confrontation was broadcast on government-controlled television, and the video uploaded to Mr. Putin’s Web site, sending Kremlinologists into a tizzy. Sipping instant coffee in the kitchen of his St. Petersburg recording studio last week, Mr. Shevchuk played down the significance of the exchange, suggesting that he would have gone further if he could have. “I asked questions,” he said. “But I was not able to ask every question.” Seated beneath a clock that ticks backward, Mr. Shevchuk spoke of a 1,000-year-old split between Russia’s elite and everyone else. Mr. Putin, Russia’s paramount leader, and the country’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, are just the latest incarnation of the aloof and disconnected authority that has stymied Russian society for centuries, Mr. Shevchuk said. “Earlier it was on horses, and now it’s in a Mercedes,” he said. “The essence hasn’t changed.” That is certainly not to say, however, that there has not been some progress. Mr. Shevchuk’s maternal great-grandfather, a Tatar Muslim spiritual leader, was killed in Stalin’s purges. His paternal grandfather, a Ukrainian Cossack, met the same fate, and his family was exiled to one of the epicenters of the gulag prisoner system, the far eastern province of Magadan, where Mr. Shevchuk was born in 1957. Though he studied to be a painter — some of his work hangs in his studio here — Mr. Shevchuk said he was drawn to rock ’n’ roll as a way to escape the morass of 1970s Soviet Russia, the Brezhnev era of stagnation. “The sound of the electric guitar with fuzz freed our generation from this darkness and slavery,” he said. “We sought out the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin and Van Morrison, and we were thankful for every song because it was fresh. It was the energy of modern times.” In 1980, he founded DDT , a band that ultimately became a mainstay of the perestroika-era rock scene in St. Petersburg, though it did not play its first public concert until 1987, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev began easing the stultifying restrictions of Soviet rule. “There was a list of banned groups in the culture department of the Central Committee, and we were not permitted to play in the Soviet Union.” Mr. Shevchuk and DDT spent seven years bounding around the country, playing underground shows wherever they could — even in forests — to avoid the K.G.B. In 1985, the secret police did catch up with him. He was called in for a meeting in Ufa, a city in the Ural Mountains where his family had settled. Because of his music, he had been fired from his regular job as an art teacher, he said. “And then they threatened me with prison for not working.” He was told to leave Ufa or face arrest, and so moved to St. Petersburg. It was here in the dingy, smoke-filled clubs of Russia’s cultural capital that Mr. Shevchuk and a small group of musicians began performing the songs that helped shape the coming revolution. IT was a generation of “romantics and idealists,” Mr. Shevchuk said. But the results turned out less rosy than expected. With new freedoms, Russians got economic collapse, rampant corruption and criminality, two wars in the separatist southern region of Chechnya, and a string of deadly terrorist attacks born of those conflicts. The chaos led to the rise of Mr. Putin, and even Mr. Shevchuk said Russia needed a strong leader at the time. The problem, he said, was that Mr. Putin took hold and never let go. In addition to heightened pressure on journalists and opposition figures, Mr. Shevchuk and other musicians describe a kind of soft censorship on performers that accompanied Mr. Putin’s rise to power and has continued under President Medvedev. The music critic Artemy Troitsky described it as “a kind of secret protocol” between artists, musicians and the authorities. In return for avoiding criticism of Russia’s leaders, performers are invited to lucrative government-backed concerts and corporate parties. “Shevchuk is one of the very few people who dared to break this secret protocol,” Mr. Troitsky said. Mr. Shevchuk says his refusal to toe the line has cost him. Though he retains a fairly large fan base, his concerts are rarely televised. He has accused radio stations of censoring his songs — a recent tune that includes the line “When the oil runs out, our president will die” is rarely played. Mr. Shevchuk has refused to take part in government-sponsored events and has lashed out at musicians who do. Shortly after manicured elections ushered Mr. Medvedev into power, he took part in a large antigovernment protest in St. Petersburg. SO it was perhaps an exercise in futility when an official called Mr. Shevchuk recently with a warning not to ask contentious questions a day before he was to join several other intelligentsia types for tea with Mr. Putin. Leaning over a table laden with fresh flowers, strawberries and sweets, Mr. Shevchuk denounced abuse of power, restrictions on free speech and the “rich dukes with their privileges,” as an uncomfortable-looking Mr. Putin stared into his tea. “The only way forward is making everyone equal before the law, both the dukes and the common people,” Mr. Shevchuk concluded. Unaccustomed to such a public dressing down, Mr. Putin snapped back, defending the police, but also the people’s right to demonstrate against the government. Protesting to “draw the government’s attention to some problem, there is nothing wrong with that,” he said. (A day later the police broke up several opposition rallies, arresting more than 100 people.) Perhaps it was a testament to Mr. Shevchuk’s status here that in the presence of Russia’s most powerful man he could say things that if shouted in downtown Moscow could get someone tossed into a police van. Or maybe it showed that the authorities view Mr. Shevchuk as harmless. Whatever Mr. Shevchuk’s popularity, Mr. Putin is Russia’s biggest celebrity, and no amount of criticism has eroded his support. Mr. Shevchuk acknowledged that his influence and that of other musicians had eroded since the perestroika days. His latest project, which will be the first major album by DDT in five years, will capture some of this frustration. And events in Russia will help determine what he calls it. “The working title is ‘Before the Flood,’ ” he said. “But now I am thinking of a new name: ‘Tomorrow Will Be Different.’ They are both the same, but in the second name there is more hope.”

Shevchuk Yuri
Freedom of Speech and Expression
Putin Vladimir V
Russia
Politics and Government


N.B.A. Playoffs - Grizzlies Beat Clippers to Force Game 7

Abstract: Marc Gasol scored 23 points, Zach Randolph had 18 points and 16 rebounds, and the Memphis Grizzles rallied in the fourth quarter to beat the Los Angeles Clippers, 90-88, on Friday night, forcing a decisive seventh game in their first-round Western Conference series. Rudy Gay and Mike Conley added 13 points each to help the Grizzlies win at Staples Center for the first time in the series. Blake Griffin scored 17 points despite a sprained left knee that limited his jumping ability, and Eric Bledsoe added 14 off the bench to lead the Clippers, who blew an 8-point lead in the fourth along with a second consecutive chance to close out what would have been a landmark playoff victory for the beleaguered franchise. Chris Paul scored 11 points playing with a strained right hip flexor and a jammed right middle finger. The Clippers are seeking only the third playoff series win in franchise history. Game 7 will be Sunday in Memphis. Only eight teams in N.B.A. history have come back from a three-games-to-one deficit to win a seven-game series. The top-seeded San Antonio Spurs will play the winner in the conference semifinals. LAKER TO RETURN The Lakers’ Metta World Peace will be back from a suspension to start Game 7 of the team’s series against the Denver Nuggets on Saturday in Los Angeles.  M.V.P. ON WAY FOR JAMES Heat forward LeBron James will be named the N.B.A.’s most valuable player for the third time on Saturday, according to The Associated Press.

Basketball
Playoff Games
Memphis Grizzlies
Los Angeles Clippers