Principals’ Union Says Mayor de Blasio Has Lost Focus on Students

Abstract: When Mayor Bill de Blasio took office, it seemed like the start of a bright new day in the relationship between City Hall and the people who run New York City’s schools. Rather than close struggling schools, as his predecessor Michael R. Bloomberg had done, Mr. de Blasio promised to support them. In November 2014, he and his schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, announced a program to funnel resources, training and social services into 94 of the lowest-performing schools . At the time, Ernest A. Logan, the president of the union that represents the city’s principals and assistant principals, lauded Mr. de Blasio, saying that the initiative demonstrated a “philosophy of collaboration over competition” and reflected “the deeply held values of most of our school leaders.” Now, however, Mr. Logan says he — and by extension, the 6,000 members of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators — has lost confidence in the de Blasio administration. In a column to be published in the union’s newsletter this month, Mr. Logan writes of the Education Department, “Sadly, in the timeworn tradition of the D.O.E., there are so many cooks running around in the kitchen, the chefs don’t know what kind of dish they’re concocting.” So many different mandates have been thrown at these schools, he writes, that “all we have is a recipe for disaster.” In an interview last week, Mr. Logan said of the school-turnaround effort, “This became a political mess, because the mayor made this his political thing.” He added, “They’ve lost their focus on kids.” Mr. Logan said principals in the 94 schools were being overwhelmed with paperwork and meetings and micromanaged to the point that they could not do what they thought was best for their schools. He said he believed the mayor’s approach was destined to fail if the city did not change its strategy. While it does not have the political clout of the city’s teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, with its nearly 200,000 members and millions of dollars to spend on lobbying and political contributions, the administrators’ union is a critical ally in any effort to transform the city’s schools. Losing its support would make the task more difficult. Few principals were willing to comment publicly on their relationship with the Education Department, fearing repercussions. But Santiago Taveras, the principal of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, one of the schools in the turnaround program, said one of the biggest issues was the department’s pulling teachers and administrators out of school for meetings and training. Image Santiago Taveras, the principal of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, a school in the mayor’s turnaround program. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times Mr. Taveras was a deputy chancellor in the Bloomberg administration and oversaw many school closings. In 2013 he became a principal again with the aim of reinvigorating Clinton, whose enrollment has dwindled in recent years to about 1,700 students from 4,000. Mr. Taveras is being investigated for accusations that he changed students’ grades to improve the school’s outcomes, which he has denied . Mr. Taveras says five of his teachers and one assistant principal are required to attend a full day of training every other week in a writing program that is being implemented in the high schools. Making things worse, he said, is that the program, while good, was announced on Sept. 3, six days before the start of the school year, leaving almost no time to prepare or to train teachers. Another high school principal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid becoming a target of either the Education Department or the teachers’ union, was more blunt. Not only did he feel inundated by meetings and paperwork, he said, he was frequently overruled by the bureaucrats overseeing the turnaround effort. “I feel like I can’t actually get anything done, because I have to go through this chain, and if the chain decides that that’s not what they want,” he cannot proceed, the principal said. “It’s completely annoying to be constantly second-guessed.” He added, “There’s so many things that everybody is asking you to do that half the time you can’t even read your emails, let alone actually go into a classroom.” In an interview, Ms. Fariña defended the administration’s approach and said the work of improving schools was urgent and was “not about how we make certain people happy — it’s about how we get outcomes in our kids.” Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Mr. de Blasio, said: “When you change the status quo, you’re going to have critics along the way. These schools are getting the new leadership and support they need to succeed.” Efforts to transform schools are contentious, of course, and school leaders who are deemed to be failing are not likely to be pleased. Some principals in the turnaround program said they were excited about the resources and support they were getting. “This has been a windfall for my school,” said Brian Bradley, the principal of Renaissance School of the Arts, a middle school in East Harlem. He is now able to offer programs until 6 p.m. for all of his students, he said. And while before his students had arts classes only twice a week, now they were getting them every day. He said he also valued the guidance he was receiving from his superintendent’s office. Image Carmen Fariña, the city’s schools chancellor, defended the administration’s actions. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times As to principals’ feeling micromanaged, Ms. Fariña said that oversight was necessary, and that she believed autonomy was something principals had to earn. Referring to having replaced roughly a third of the principals in these schools, she said, “We didn’t put in one-third new principals to continue to do the same old, same old.” Mr. Logan, for his part, said the fact that Ms. Fariña had been able to choose the principals she wanted made the interference particularly galling. “If you have selected these people to run your schools, then let them run it,” he said. He had other concerns, as well. He said the 94 schools were being subjected to numerous, redundant assessments, by different authorities and according to different standards, all of which consumed principals’ time. One assessment, for instance, involves three days of visits and data gathering and has to be conducted three times a year, meaning that it eats up nine days. Retired principals assigned to coach principals of struggling schools, who the union believed were to be confidential advisers, have instead been instructed to report back to the principals’ supervisors, Mr. Logan said. He said he would be sending a notice to his members warning them that the coaches “are not people who are necessarily there to support you.” An even more serious problem, he said, is the number of principals across the system who are under some kind of investigation. The number of complaints received by the special commissioner of investigation for the school system, Richard J. Condon, is at a record high, with 5,566 in 2015. Mr. Logan said 1,400 of the union’s members currently had an open investigation, and that he and his members felt many of them were dubious, touched off by disgruntled staff members. He said principals at the schools in the turnaround program were particularly at risk, because they were aggressively trying to make changes in their schools, pushing teachers hard and in some cases giving them negative evaluations. During the Bloomberg administration, Mr. Logan was a frequent critic of the Education Department, including of the policy of closing schools. In the interview this week, he said many of his members had initially been pleased by the appointment of Ms. Fariña, a former teacher and principal, who as chancellor spoke about respecting educators. Nonetheless, he said, if he were to ask all of his members now, “I think a majority of them would say they probably had a better shot of being able to effectively do their job under the old administration.”

Bill de Blasio
Principals School
K-12 Education
Ernest A. Logan
Labor Unions
NYC


President of Sri Lanka Dismisses Chief Justice

Abstract: NEW DELHI — President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka removed the nation’s chief justice from office on Sunday in the culmination of a widely criticized impeachment process that has crippled the nation’s courts and may precipitate a constitutional crisis. Mr. Rajapaksa’s decision to sign a decree dismissing Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake came two days after Parliament, packed with Rajapaksa loyalists, voted to impeach her in defiance of a Court of Appeals ruling. The court had nullified the verdict of a parliamentary panel that had found the chief justice guilty of financial irregularities. Separately, the Supreme Court had ruled that the impeachment process was illegal. Religious leaders, pro-democracy activists and lawyers groups have denounced the impeachment process as a naked power grab by Mr. Rajapaksa and members of his family who serve in his government. Lawyers across Sri Lanka boycotted courts on Thursday and Friday in protest. Many lawyers have vowed to oppose anyone appointed to fill the chief justice’s post. Ms. Bandaranayake was seen as a Rajapaksa loyalist until she ruled in September that Mr. Rajapaksa’s younger brother, Basil Rajapaksa, needed to submit a $600 million development bill to the nation’s nine provincial councils before it could be approved. In November, the governing party filed impeachment motions against her, and in December a parliamentary panel appointed by another of the president’s brothers found her guilty. The United States government has repeatedly expressed concern about the impeachment process. Ms. Bandaranayake has yet to announce whether she will accept the president’s decision to remove her from office. She had earlier protested the rapidity of the parliamentary proceedings and her inability to confront or cross-examine her accusers. President Rajapaksa and his government ended one of the world’s longest and bloodiest civil wars in 2009 by defeating the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, bringing stability to much of the country and increasing opportunities for tourism. But he and his brothers have been accused of being involved in unlawful killings of civilians, and a United Nations panel ruled that accusations of war crimes against the Sri Lankan government were credible and should be investigated.

Impeachment
Shirani Bandaranayake
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Sri Lanka
Decisions and Verdicts
Legislature


Changing With Times, a Parish Prospers

Abstract: The morning service begins with the swift tap-tap-tap of drums, accented with horns. “El Señor es mi pastor,” the band sings out, echoed by loud claps from the pews. Hours later, another set of parishioners listens in reverent silence to an operatic rendition of “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain” as the faint sweet smoke of incense floats above. That evening, yet another band belts out, “People get ready, there’s a train comin’ — all you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’,” to the thumping bass of a three-piece jazz combo. Three services, three music styles, three very different congregations, one parish: Church of the Ascension on the Upper West Side. At a time when the Roman Catholic Church is grappling with sexual abuse scandals, a shortage of priests and the consolidating of churches and schools in many urban areas, including dozens in New York City, Ascension stands as just one example of a parish that remains a vibrant presence in the lives of its ever-changing — and still growing — congregation. The church has remained relevant for more than 1,500 parishioners not just by varying music styles, but by adapting to the shifting neighborhood and times. At a shrine in one corner of the church, there are pictures of Virgin Marys from across the world. A martini night has replaced coffee hour after Sunday evening Mass. There are citizenship and English classes for immigrants, an active lay leadership and welcoming messages to gays and lesbians. “We have a great richness in the city here, in our neighborhood, and that has to be reflected in our parish, in our worship,” said the Rev. John P. Duffell, the pastor. “You have to observe and respond to what you have and see.” In many ways, Father Duffell, 64, strays from the orthodoxy and formality preached by Pope Benedict XVI , who arrives in New York City on Friday. But the pope is also expected to praise the vibrancy of the American church; and in New York City, with 2.5 million to 3 million Roman Catholics, few parishes are as alive as Ascension. Tucked between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue on 107th Street, the parish draws Latino immigrants, scholars with ties to Columbia University nearby and a growing number of affluent young professionals who have moved into the neighborhood in recent years. For the young, there are more avant-garde ways of worship, like the Sunday evening jazz Mass. Started in 1999, the service attracts 200 to 300 people, and a vast majority are under 40. The jazz service has all the traditional rites, and Father Duffell delivers a nearly identical homily as at the more formal morning service. But instead of a choir there is a jazz trio, and parishioners are often young Catholics who are attending Mass for the first time in years. “It doesn’t feel like you’re in church. For some people that’s a bad thing, but for a lot of us, it’s a great and exciting feeling,” said Rosa Arenas, 33, a legal translator who grew up in the neighborhood and returned to the parish as an adult. “This is my sanctuary, at any time. There’s just a sense of hope and renewal that I have every time I walk in.” Several months after the jazz service began, a woman told Father Duffell that she enjoyed the service so much she felt she should have a martini in hand. The next week, Father Duffell announced from the pulpit that he was looking for volunteers to organize a martini night. By the time Mass had ended, he said, a committee had already formed. The monthly event now includes an elaborate potluck dinner and attracts hundreds of people, many nonmembers and even non-Catholics. That sort of ad hoc appeal is essential to the growth of Ascension. Father Duffell has conspicuously reached out to such young people, in often very simple ways. Every week, he ends Mass by asking for first-time visitors to announce where they are from, then leads the congregation in a round of applause to welcome them. The informational fliers for the church proclaim, “No matter your age, your race, your gender or your sexual orientation, there is a place for you at Ascension.” In his speeches each week, Father Duffell expresses the same sentiment, each time mentioning sexual orientation. The message is not lost on the parishioners, gay or straight. “Regardless of the issue of homosexuality, I’ve always been a practicing Catholic — I took what I wanted and left the rest, so to speak,” said John Gasdaska, a 43-year-old real estate agent who has attended Ascension since he moved to the neighborhood with his partner in 2000. “But the simple fact that he includes talking openly about that makes a world of difference. There’s just no question that everyone is included in the message of Christ.” Altragracia Hiraldo echoed Mr. Gasdaska’s views. Since moving to the neighborhood after emigrating from the Dominican Republic, Ms. Hiraldo has attended Ascension for more than three decades and says it has changed “100 percent.” “We did not have enough people; there were no Americans, just Dominicans and maybe some Puerto Ricans,” she said. “Now, it’s everybody: Americans, Peruvians, Mexicans, Ecuadoreans, everyone.” More importantly, she said, the attitudes have changed. “People are not afraid of each other, because everyone knows this is all of our church,” she said. Still, there are undeniable cultural divides, largely because of language. Many of the parishioners who attend the Spanish services are older and do not speak English, and so have little interaction with the younger English-speaking members of the church, aside from occasional bilingual services, like those during Christmas and Easter Week. On a recent Sunday morning, as the 9:30 a.m. Spanish Mass let out and the 11 a.m. English Mass was about to begin, there were scattered greetings between the two groups, but mostly they passed each other on the steps without much acknowledgment. A woman selling hot chocolate and coffee for $1, shouted “chocolate y café,” and a small group of young men walked in holding cups from Starbucks. Joe Hickey, the president of the church’s newly established parish council, is working with others to integrate Spanish and English speakers, perhaps by adding more bilingual services. Mr. Hickey views it as a model for the entire church. “What we don’t have here is Latinos or anyone else voting with their feet and leaving,” Mr. Hickey said. “To be able to have all these people coexist is a microcosm of what the church is facing all over the world.” In some sense, the outreach and diversity in the church is a result of Father Duffell’s own religious philosophy. While some view the Catholic Church as a tightrope, he sees it as a “very broad river, with some to the right and some to the left.” “There are some who cling to the rocks as long as they can, and others who just go with the flow,” he said during an interview in his rectory living room. He still harbors some reservations about Pope Benedict’s conservative history, but says he has been pleasantly surprised. Father Duffell has placed a premium on persuading more parishioners to be involved in formal church programs and the day-to-day running of the church. Edwin Madera, who grew up attending Ascension and its school and returned to the neighborhood after graduating from Boston College, was just appointed as the youth minister of the parish. Mr. Gasdaska is considering restarting a gay and lesbian ministry. Ms. Hiraldo is looking for new classes to reach out to more recent immigrants. “We know the importance of being involved, not just sitting in Mass and saying O.K., bye-bye,” Ms. Hiraldo said. “This is our church.”

Religion and Churches
Upper West Side (NYC)
Roman Catholic Church
Benedict XVI


Daily Report: Google Pixel and the New Long Game

Abstract: Google has a new smartphone. More than buy it, you may want to watch its progress. Brian X. Chen has spent some time with the phone, called the Pixel. His verdict : It’s an underwhelming phone with a lesser-quality camera, but with Samsung’s top-end products off-limits because of exploding batteries , it is a good new model for people using Android apps. This is more than just a product review, though, because some of things Mr. Chen points to say much about the current tech scene, and how hard companies are fighting to make consumer products with unprecedented amounts of complex software and hardware. Short version: A successful company has to build a lot of things quickly, learn from them and adjust the products. One thing about the phone, the first to carry the Google brand, that Mr. Chen likes is the way it connects to Project Fi , Google’s cheap, high-speed wireless service. Fi is just getting started, and Google is eager to see how its commercial device network functions. One of the things that vexes Mr. Chen is the way Google Assistant, Google’s artificial intelligence-based personal aide, still fails to deliver on the promise of helping you manage your days. That is surprising, considering how long Google has used A.I. in other areas, but quality A.I. personalization requires its own stream of data. Google will get extra information by having its own phone. Image In both these good and bad aspects, the Pixel is working off a much larger ecosystem of Google endeavors, including the world’s largest private network of computers, and a global sales machine. It’s notable that Google’s own w eb page about the Pixel shows Assistant giving information about the weather in Mumbai. This “be everywhere possible” urgency is, to some extent, playing out at several consumer companies, and all the companies are experiencing some shortfalls. Apple’s iPhone is a leader, but the company must worry that its heavy emphasis on consumer privacy and tight control of how the phone is used limit how much data it gets to improve A.I. Amazon has repurposed its failed Fire phone into Echo, the smash home device, but isn’t getting much information about people on the go. Microsoft has no phone, but lots of search technology and some device information from its laptop, the Surface . It’s telling, perhaps, that while Google remade itself as Alphabet over a year ago partly to ensure more accountability among divisions, the Pixel is part of Google, where there is ample cash from search ads. Google has previously pulled out of misbegotten hardware ventures, like Glass or the Nexus Q . With the Pixel, or Google Home , its answer to the Echo, Google is likely to hang in far longer — watching, learning, adjusting and gathering ever more data on us.

Google
Nexus One
Artificial intelligence


North Korea Moves Missile to Launch Pad

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has placed a long-range missile on a launch pad before a test that the United States, Japan and South Korea said would violate a United Nations Security Council resolution, a news report said Thursday. Spy satellites detected what looked to be a Taepodong-2 missile in place Tuesday at the Musudan-ri launch site near North Korea’s northeastern coast, said Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s leading daily, quoting an unidentified diplomatic source. Once the rocket is installed on the pad, missile experts said, the North Koreans can technically launch it within three or four days — the time needed for the fueling of a three-stage rocket. North Korea has said it would launch a rocket over Japan and the Pacific between April 4 and 8 to deliver an experimental communications satellite into orbit. But Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have said the launch is a cover for testing its Taepodong-2 ballistic missile. Both missions — the satellite and the ballistic missile — use the same rocket technology. If North Korea successfully launches its rocket, it would demonstrate that the North has the technological skills to send up a missile that could travel as far as the western United States. Washington and its allies also consider North Korea’s missile program an additional threat because the North has sold missile technology to the Middle East and is developing nuclear weapons that could potentially be loaded on its missiles. After North Korea detonated its first nuclear device in 2006, the Security Council adopted a resolution banning North Korea from further nuclear and missile tests. Washington warned that it would seek punishment at the Security Council — probably more sanctions on the already isolated country — if it goes ahead with the planned launch. And Japan has vowed to press for new sanctions if the rocket is tested. But North Korea warned this week that further sanctions would cause it to quit the so-called six-party talks. The United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia have been trying for years to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs in return for economic aid. The North’s defiance is the first major test for President Obama in dealing with Pyongyang. “We intend to raise this violation of the Security Council resolution, if it goes forward, in the U.N.,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday. “This provocative action in violation of the U.N. mandate will not go unnoticed, and there will be consequences.” South Korea fears that a launch would raise military tensions, discouraging foreign investors away from South Korea amid a global recession. Seoul also favors punishing North Korea for a rocket launching. Won Tae-je, spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, declined to confirm the news report but said a launching would be “a serious challenge and provocation against the security on the Korean Peninsula and regional stability in Northeast Asia.” A successful launch in the first week of April would give a timely boost to the domestic reputation of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. The country’s parliament is scheduled to convene April 9 to re-elect him as leader. Mr. Kim, 67, was reported to have suffered a stroke last August. His declining heath has raised questions about his grip on power and the future of his regime, where no clear successor has emerged. Some U.S. officials, including Adm. Timothy Keating, the head of U.S. Pacific Command, have said the United States has a capability to knock down any North Korean missile heading for U.S. territory. But such an intercept is highly unlikely, according to experts in Seoul, because Washington is trying to win the release of two television journalists North Korea recently detained. The North has charged them with illegally crossing the Chinese-North Korean border.

North Korea
Missiles and Missile Defense Systems
Tests and Testing
International Relations
Nuclear Tests


Baylor Guard Sees a Title as She Regains Her Vision

Abstract: WACO, Tex. — When Baylor’s Melissa Jones dived for a loose basketball on Feb. 27, it did not seem risky for a hard-nosed guard who played football in junior high, had gone skydiving and once acted on a dare by drinking a cup of hot sauce. This time, though, Jones collided with a player from Oklahoma, who landed on her. Jones’s head slammed to the court just above her right eyebrow. She got to her feet quickly, but her vision in her right eye began to grow dim, as if the lights were being turned down. Her head throbbed. In two or three trips down the court, all vision disappeared from the eye. At first, Jones thought it had swelled shut, and she tried to hold it open with her hand. Then she realized that her right eye was open but lacked even the perception of light as a frightening blackness had set in. Her neuro-ophthalmologist declined a request for an interview, but university officials said the contact with the floor had led to bruising and swelling of Jones’s optic nerve, which carries visual signals from the eye to the brain. Her left eye was unaffected. After missing a game, Jones has played in six games while wearing protective glasses. She had 13 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists Tuesday as Baylor, 33-2 and the top seed in the Dallas Region, defeated West Virginia, 82-68, in the second round of the N.C.A.A. tournament. On March 14, Jones began to see color and shapes with her right eye, although her vision remains extremely blurry in the eye and headaches have returned along with partial sight. Kim Mulkey, Baylor’s coach, and Alex Olson, the athletic trainer for women’s basketball, said the neuro-ophthalmologist treating Jones told them she was expected to regain normal vision in time. “We’re assuming normal vision means 20/20, since that’s what it was before the injury,” Olson said. “It may not be. But I think the main thing is to be as positive as you can.” Playing basketball while wearing protective glasses is not likely to further harm the optic nerve, said Dr. Mark J. Kupersmith, the director of neuro-ophthalmology at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. But he cautioned that complete vision recovery in such cases was “very rare.” He could not speak specifically about Jones because he did not examine her. Jones, 21, is Baylor’s only senior starter , a co-captain and the Bears’ most experienced player, the kind to whom terms like gritty and scrappy are invariably applied. She is popular enough to have been named to Baylor’s homecoming court last fall. Mulkey calls her the glue of the team, someone who can play all five positions at 5 feet 11 inches. Jones was named all-Big 12 Conference for her hustle and versatility in shooting a high percentage and relentlessly pursuing steals, rebounds and assists, while seldom turning the ball over. “The toughness, the flat-out effort, spreads to her teammates,” Mulkey said. “She has the experience and calming effect a coach wants on the floor. It’s amazing what she’s been able to do with one eye.” Though she did not examine Jones, the injury seems to have been a freakish “one in a million” occurrence, said Dr. Julia A. Haller, the ophthalmologist in chief at Wills Eye Institute in Philadelphia. In such accidents, it is believed that rapid deceleration forces concentrated in the bony optic canal, where the optic nerve passes from the eye to the brain, cause a shearing effect that can produce bruising and swelling and even ripping of some of the million-plus fibers that form the nerve, ophthalmologists said. A CT scan taken about an hour after the late February game showed no abnormalities, Olson said. The next day, Jones was treated by a neuro-ophthalmologist in Temple, Tex., and was given corticosteroids intravenously for 30 hours to relieve swelling of the optic nerve. Tests given to Jones at the time, and subsequently, showed no evident vascular damage to the optic nerve or disruption in the transmission of visual signals along the nerve, Olson said. For 10 days after the injury, Jones could perceive no light in her right eye, though she reported after a week that her vision had gone “from pitch black to fuzzy black.” She considered that her career might be over, Jones said, but added: “I was still going to try. As a little girl, you always dream of being a college athlete. You don’t want anything to stop you from doing what you wanted your whole life.” On March 9, while Baylor was in Kansas City, Mo., to play in the Big 12 tournament, Jones noticed light coming into her hotel room. She passed a test when Olson flashed a penlight on and off in her right eye. She played in the conference tournament, removing her protective glasses as she went to the bench and opening her eyes wide as if to coax additional light. She learned to adjust to her new limitations, just as Jordan Underwood did as a pitcher at Southeast Missouri State less than two years after losing his left eye to a line drive. Underwood, who returned to the field a year ago, is 1-0 with a 2.76 earned run average in five starts this season. Jones, to compensate, cradled rebounds with her body, swiveled her head from side to side and ran down the right side of the court when possible, using her left eye to survey ahead and behind. Her peripheral vision was severely impaired, though, leaving Jones vulnerable to losing sight of the ball or the player she was guarding and to running into screens. “Literally, it was like running in circles at times,” she said. “Really frustrating.” Shooting the ball was not as difficult as anticipated, though, Jones said, explaining, “A lot of it is like muscle memory.” Early on March 14, Jones told Mulkey in a text message that she had a headache but could see colors and shapes with her right eye, however blurry. “She said if I write my name on a piece of paper, I can’t read it, but I know there’s something dark on the paper,” Mulkey said. “That was great news.” Last Friday, Jones likened her vision to a face blurred on television to conceal someone’s identity, saying, “That’s how everything looks to me.” By Tuesday, she said vision in the right eye progressed to a “moving blurry”: “It’s like a mirage when you’re driving and you see water and it’s kind of moving.” At least she can now detect another player in the vicinity with her right eye. “It’s a lot better than not seeing anything at all,” she said. Ophthalmologists speaking in general said there could be a number of impediments to regaining full vision: damaged cells that form the optic nerve cannot regenerate. Blood supply to the nerve could be impeded. Even those who regain 20/20 vision tend to have some impairment in part of the visual field. Dr. Marc J. Dinkin, the director of neuro-ophthalmology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, cited a 1999 study in which 3 of 40 patients who had no perception of light regained 20/40 vision or better within a month, while 16 of the 40 regained some vision. “Already, she is in the minority group,” Dinkin said of Jones. “Maybe she’ll be one of the rare, lucky patients.” Told of the limited acuity in Jones’s right eye, Haller of the Wills Eye Institute said it did not appear encouraging but added that since Jones was young and otherwise healthy, “certainly there still is hope.” And so Jones plays out her final season as Baylor seeks its second national championship in seven years. “She’s by far the toughest kid I’ve encountered,” said Olson, a trainer at Baylor for 11 years. “She’ll never back down from a challenge.”

Jones Melissa
Basketball
Baylor University
Eyes and Eyesight
College Athletics
NCAA Basketball Tournament (Women)
Basketball (College)
NCAA Basketball Championships (Women)


M.L.B. Panel Beginning Search for Selig’s Successor

Abstract: The announcement Thursday that Major League Baseball has created a succession committee is the latest sign that Commissioner Bud Selig might truly retire next January. The St. Louis Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt Jr., the chairman of the committee, provided a wish list for the qualities he was seeking in the next commissioner — if the next commissioner was someone other than Selig. “A strong C.E.O., a visionary leader who has a passion for the game, who will look to maintain the integrity of the game and continue to grow the great game of baseball,” DeWitt said at a news conference at M.L.B. headquarters in New York. DeWitt, who was asked by Selig to head the search, added that Selig had done “a wonderful job.” Selig, 79, has grown accustomed to the reality that he will end his final term in eight months, he said, and he does not intend to reverse his retirement decision. “I know they’ve rehired me four or five times, and people thought it might happen again,” Selig said. “But it’s not.” He would not comment on whether any owners had asked him to stay. The panel will operate on the belief that the 30 teams will be able to identify a comprehensive group of candidates, and it will not, for now, hire an executive recruiting firm. Selig led the commissioner search committee that resulted in the hiring in 1984 of Peter V. Ueberroth to replace Bowie Kuhn, a process that took about 15 months. Reflecting on the difficulties of overseeing that search, Selig said, “I wondered what I’d done wrong to deserve that job.” Another search committee in 1994 was believed to be ready to recommend Arnold R. Weber, the president of Northwestern University, to fill the commissioner’s position left empty by the ouster of Fay Vincent in September 1992. But a group of 11 teams united to say they would not vote on a new commissioner until a new collective bargaining agreement was reached with players. As the chairman of baseball’s executive council, Selig, then the Milwaukee Brewers’ owner, had become acting commissioner soon after Vincent was forced out. Yet another search committee, established in early 1997, deliberated for 18 months and considered hundreds of candidates. Selig, who had been saying he did not want the job permanently, was nonetheless elected unanimously. He spoke in 2003 of retiring three years later. But he has endured for a generation. DeWitt said the committee has already met twice and would solicit Selig’s opinion about his own preferred successor. Selig is believed to favor Rob Manfred, baseball’s chief operating officer. The other members of the committee are Dick Monfort, owner of the Colorado Rockies; David Montgomery, general partner of the Philadelphia Phillies; Arte Moreno, owner of the Los Angeles Angels; Robert Nutting, chairman of the Pittsburgh Pirates; Jim Pohlad, chief executive of the Minnesota Twins; and the Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, a longtime baseball power broker. DeWitt would not provide a timeline for his committee to finish its work, other than to say that he respected Selig’s desire to retire from baseball when his term ends Jan. 24.

Baseball
MLB
Bud Selig
Bill DeWitt Jr
St. Louis Cardinals


Russia and Ukraine Lock Horns Over Naval Base

Abstract: MOSCOW — They have bickered over NATO expansion, energy prices and how to commemorate a 1930s mass famine. Now, Russia and Ukraine are locked in a new dispute over a naval base in the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol. The base lies in Crimea, a verdant, mountainous peninsula that was part of the Russian Empire and later Soviet Russia until Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in 1954. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine kept control of the region, but signed a lease allowing Russia to base its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol until 2017. This month, however, Moscow’s mayor, Yuri M. Luzhkov , called for Russia to assume ownership of Sevastopol. In remarks delivered from the naval base on the 225th anniversary of the Black Sea Fleet’s inception, the mayor said that Khrushchev had never intended to give Sevastopol to Ukraine and urged a review of the current arrangement. Many Russians, and some of Crimea’s ethnic Russian majority, would like to see Russia regain control of the region, particularly Sevastopol, a strategic port city that they consider integral to Russia’s national security. The statements rankled the government in Kiev, which, in response, banned Mr. Luzhkov from entering Ukraine, saying his comments threatened Ukraine’s national interests. Moscow, already annoyed by Kiev’s Western-leaning policies and particularly angered by its drive to join NATO, vowed to retaliate. “Regarding the Ukrainian decision to ban Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov , from entering the territory of Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry informs that Russia has been forced to take adequate measures against those Ukrainian politicians who, with their actions and words, do harm to the Russian Federation,” the ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Ukraine’s deputy justice minister appears to be the first official to suffer retribution. After the minister, Evhen V. Kornichuk, suggested this month that Vladimir V. Putin , Russia’s newly appointed prime minister, be banned from Ukraine as well, Moscow has made it clear that Mr. Kornichuk will not be welcome in Russia. “Considering what Evhen Kornichuk said in his public address, we assume that he will not be planning to visit the Russian Federation,” Andrei Nesterenko, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Thursday. A spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry could not confirm Friday whether Mr. Kornichuk had been officially banned nor whether more entry restrictions would follow.

Ukraine
Russia
Military Bases and Installations
Luzhkov Yuri M
Luzhkov Yuri
Putin Vladimir V
USSR (Former Soviet Union)
International Relations


A Sample Sale at Hermès Defies the Wall Street Malaise

Abstract: The line stretching along 18th Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue at lunchtime this week did not look like a crowd of women accustomed to waiting. A few wore dark pinstripes or carried Wall Street Journals; many wore heels and oversize sunglasses. About a third seemed to be wearing some variation of the ubiquitous cloverleaf charm necklace (the one made by Van Cleef & Arpels; on the Upper East Side, it’s the modern-day version of pearls), and some significant percentage were casually toting a Birkin bag, or at least a pretty faithful knockoff of that classic Hermès tote, which starts at a cool $8,000 (before tax — and isn’t discounted anywhere). Women dressed like that hop out of driver-navigated Escalades to wait in only one kind of line: the kind that leads to a killer sample sale. This particular line was for Hermès, best known for its luxury leather goods, scarves and ties, whose sample sale started, by invitation only, on Tuesday, and then was opened to the public until Sunday. Wall Street may have turned into one big fire sale, but that is apparently not enough to dampen the perennial feverish enthusiasm for a sample sale, even one where bargains are defined as a $900 pair of boots or a $280 leather-bound hunting horn the size of a comb. It’s not that the women in line were unaware of the scent of financial disaster hovering in the air. To the contrary, more than one was waiting there to get away from it. “I just needed a break,” said a banker who waited, on crutches no less, for well over an hour on Tuesday. “You know it’s not going to be a good year for anyone. But some things are recession-proof, and this sale is one of them. Even if I don’t find anything, I still spend a thousand. It’s like Costco.” That shopper would not give her name or say where she worked, since she probably should have been at the office, under the circumstances. “Let’s just say my bank’s still around,” she demurred. “That narrows it down to about four.” “Stop bragging,” said someone ahead of her in line. The women (and it was mostly women) said they were shopping for relief; they were also shopping because in their world, that kind of shopping represented a form of economizing. “Even if the economy’s down, a sale is all the more reason to buy something nice,” said a young woman in a dark, sharply tailored suit. Like the banker ahead of her, she declined to give her name, on the grounds that she was supposed to be at the office — in her case, helping to prepare Securities and Exchange Commission filings to comply with new hedge-fund regulations. She folded her Wall Street Journal under one arm. “Buy something nice, it makes you look good. If you look good, you feel good. If you pay full price and things are unstable at your job, it takes away the enjoyment.” There is always that other option. “Not to buy?” she asked. She shook her head. “That wouldn’t work.” No one seemed to be considering the possibility that a few months from now she might not have a job to dress up for. Then again, there’s no more pressing time to buy a high-prestige morale boost than when you might be dressing for job interviews. Some were there because scarves, unlike stocks, at least look pretty forever. “I used to buy Sirius stock to keep myself from buying more Hermès scarves,” said Jan Goode, who was wearing a coral one and carrying a tote she had had made to showcase another one. Ms. Goode, who is in her 50s, considers herself a serious collector of Hermès scarves, stopping just short of considering herself someone with a serious problem. “Now my Hermès holdings are much more valuable than my Sirius stock,” she said. “Sirius is at 90 cents a share. I should have been buying scarves all along.” After 9/11, there were many public arguments that seem vaguely absurd in retrospect — that irony was over, or that getting out and shopping to bolster the economy could be an act of patriotism. Oddly, that particular rationale — shop to keep America strong — did not come up in the Hermès line on Tuesday afternoon, although almost every other one did. “It makes you feel a little better — like maybe there’s some normalcy in the world,” said a tall woman. “Driving in, I was feeling guilty all the while,” said the woman behind her, who lives on Long Island. Her husband’s construction business, like so much else, has been dead. “What right do we have to be here?” she asked. “We don’t!” said the woman in front of her. “I’ll only buy if it’s something I really need,” resolved the woman from Long Island, as if she might enter the sale to find, alongside $2,000 jackets, $300 change purses and $200 toddler robes, essentials like light bulbs, toilet paper or toothpaste. When the prices of vintage Hermès scarves go down on eBay — then we’ll really know we’re in trouble.

Retail Stores and Trade
Wall Street (NYC)
Recession and Depression
Women


Acquitted Israeli Politician Returns to Job as Foreign Minister

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Avigdor Lieberman, the powerful Israeli nationalist politician whose blunt talk has often stirred outrage at home and abroad, was reinstated on Monday as the country’s foreign minister. Mr. Lieberman, who was acquitted last week of corruption charges that had dogged him for more than a decade, was back at the diplomatic helm on Monday night after a stormy debate in Parliament and a vote confirming his reappointment. A Russian-speaking immigrant from the former Soviet Union who lives in a settlement in the West Bank, Mr. Lieberman was foreign minister in the previous Israeli government from 2009 to late 2012, a tenure marked by several episodes that critics deemed highly undiplomatic. Famously skeptical of the prospects of reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians, Mr. Lieberman, a hard-line populist, accused the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, of engaging in “diplomatic terrorism.” Last year, addressing an audience of foreign diplomats in Israel, Mr. Lieberman gave vent to his government’s anger over European support for diplomatic gains by the Palestinians at the United Nations and over international rebukes for Israeli settlement plans. Comparing Israel’s situation to that of Czechoslovakia in 1938 before the Nazi invasion, he said, “When push comes to shove, many key leaders would be willing to sacrifice Israel without batting an eyelid in order to appease Islamic radicals and ensure quiet for themselves.” He quit the post shortly before the last government ended its term when he faced indictment on charges of fraud and breach of trust. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since acted as his own foreign minister. After forming his new government eight months ago, Mr. Netanyahu held the job open for Mr. Lieberman pending the conclusion of his trial. Image Cleared of corruption charges, Avigdor Lieberman, right, was welcomed back to government on Monday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Finance Minister Yair Lapid. Credit Amir Cohen/Reuters Mr. Lieberman returns at a time when Israel is trying hard to stop what it views as a poor nuclear deal shaping up between the world powers and Iran. Israeli-American tensions have been rising over the Iranian issue and the peace talks with the Palestinians, which are now taking place under a cloud of mutual recrimination. Israel is also involved in delicate negotiations with the European Union over the bloc’s move to ban the financing of Israeli institutions that work in territory seized during the 1967 war. And relations with Turkey, once Israel’s closest Muslim ally, remain strained despite Mr. Netanyahu’s apology for operational mistakes that led to nine deaths in a 2010 raid on a Turkish ship that was trying to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Mr. Lieberman opposed making the apology. Israel’s most diplomatically fragile relationships — with the American administration, the Palestinians and others — are largely handled by the prime minister’s office, not by the Foreign Ministry. Still, Israeli opponents of Mr. Lieberman worried that his return to office was hardly likely to enhance Israel’s international standing. “I can’t think of anybody less suited to serve as the diplomatic face of Israel than this person, who lacks inhibitions and sows discord,” Zahava Gal-On, the leader of the leftist Meretz Party, wrote on her Facebook page soon after Mr. Lieberman’s acquittal. In Parliament on Monday, she said that appointing Mr. Lieberman as foreign minister was like “planting a bomb under the peace process.” Foreign policy insiders in Jerusalem seemed hard pressed to point to any resounding successes during Mr. Lieberman’s first term at the Foreign Ministry. He toured South American countries hoping to cement relations, but there appears to have been little follow-up. When the United Nations General Assembly voted last year to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state , 138 countries voted in favor, while only nine voted against and 41 abstained, a diplomatic blow for Israel after months of lobbying. One relationship that Mr. Lieberman has worked hard to promote is with Russia. Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Moscow later this month.

Israel
Avigdor Lieberman
Legislature
Corruption
Benjamin Netanyahu


At This Auction, Even Millard Fillmore Gets Respect

Abstract: GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Politicians like to say they cannot be bought. But this weekend, here amid the rolling Civil War battlefields and the kitschy souvenir shops, anyone can buy a politician — a president no less — deftly shaped by skilled manipulators of wax and other polymers. At auction is the collection of the Hall of Presidents and First Ladies , a 60-year-old wax museum that has earnestly presented every occupant of the Oval Office — and their female counterparts — in varying degrees of accuracy. “Franklin Pierce has the wrong color hair,” said Bruce Larson, a professor of political science at Gettysburg College, who had come to case the collection on a boreal winter day. “And Taft, to me, looks too thin,” said John Tormey III, an entertainment lawyer who had driven from New York, and was nevertheless planning to bid on a figure for his home office. “I’ve already been told that if I take back more than one wax figure, the locks on my house will be changed.” A trip through the museum, which closed in November but has been open for previews of the auction , is like a walk through a dim basement neatly filled with presidential memorabilia. Look into history and see the piercing eyes of James Madison, with wiry gray hair and a tributary of wrinkles along his brow, staring stiffly back. Image A wax figure of President Obama in the Hall of Presidents and First Ladies wax museum in Gettysburg, Pa. The museum closed in November and the figures are to be sold at auction. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times Wax figures are lined up, numbered (according to their auction lots, not their place in history) and lit partly from behind, with barely concealed fluorescent lights. There is Thomas Jefferson, whose regal jacket does not hide the screw where his hand should be, and Abraham Lincoln, sitting stiffly in his chair. See a pale-looking Jimmy Carter, with a smile or a grimace, and a Bill Clinton looking almost cherubic. They are not perfect, like the men they are (or were). But they are memorable. So, with the variously lifelike sculptures up for grabs, the question is: Who wants whom? “We’re a divided country,” said Randy Dickensheets, an auctioneer, who, with practiced optimism, predicted a bidding war over Abraham Lincoln and prices of at least $1,000 to $5,000 for the other presidents. “These guys always meant to do well for our country, so they do all have people who do like them.” Even Millard Fillmore, Mr. Dickensheets added, referring to the much maligned 13th president. The museum also has a room of first ladies in painstakingly reproduced inaugural gowns who are, for some reason, about a third of the size of their husbands. Image Wax figures of the first ladies, in their inaugural gowns, are about one-third the size of their husbands. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times “I think it’s a function of space,” said Max Felty, who has owned the museum since 2008, but decided to close it after several years of anemic attendance and no noticeable lift from a roller-coaster of a presidential campaign. “We sort of thought, ‘If it’s not going to be this year, it’s not going to be any year,’” Mr. Felty said. Also being sold are photographs and other memorabilia. The museum, which sits between the downtown and the national military park, was founded in 1957 as something of a sideshow for Gettysburg’s battlefields and a celebration of the fact that Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president, had a home here. A handbill advertising its opening said viewers would see the presidents as they had appeared in life: “the color of their eyes, the color of their hair, the texture of their skin.” The collection was expanded and tweaked over the years. Some changes were small — in 1963, according to one receipt seen by Mr. Felty, the museum spent $27 for improvements like repainting and changing the eyelashes of Mr. Truman. Some were bigger, like 1964, when the museum spent $300 for a President Lyndon B. Johnson, who became president after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Image President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the museum, which has one of the few complete wax figure collections of United States presidents. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times In those years, business was brisk — Mr. Felty said the museum received about 100,000 visitors a year in the 1960s and 1970s — which dropped to about 60,000 visitors a year in 1985, and was about 11,000 visitors, paying $7.50 per adult, by last year. Other specialized wax museums, like the Movieland Museum in Buena Park, Calif., or the American Civil War Wax museum here, have also closed or auctioned off their collections over the years, although the world’s most famous, and much flashier, wax museum — Madame Tussauds — is still drawing a crowd. Some visitors at a recent auction preview came to remember. “It was real creepy at night, because it was only you,” said Joyce Coulter, 56, who worked there during the 1970s, adding that President Lyndon B. Johnson had the most unsettling eyes. Laurie Fertitta came because she said her father, Charles Sponsler, worked on many of the early figures. From her purse, she pulled out a hand that he had made (no, not Jefferson’s). In recent years, the museum became a tourism relic, with modern presidents. Barack Obama — whose face seems broader here than in real life — is presented in an Eisenhower-era display. A button starts a presentation in which each figure is lit up and a disembodied voice says a few words about their history, with excerpts from their own speeches. The first ladies — like Hillary Clinton, looking almost Barbie-like, and Michelle Obama, in her white inaugural ball gown, do not speak. “A static museum does not compete with computerized museums,” James Kralik, 73, a retired county sheriff who owns a handful of small museums here, including a Civil War diorama and the Lincoln Train Museum, said with a sigh, adding that times are getting harder for some of his museums, too. Mr. Kralik was not planning to bid on the wax figures, because he already had some. He recycled a Richard M. Nixon, from a different museum, as a Union soldier in his diorama. And a disused Harry S. Truman has a new life, as an anonymous companion of Abraham Lincoln, in his train museum. But Kim Yates, the owner of Kim’s Krypt Haunted Mil l, in nearby Spring Grove, Pa., planned to bid on whoever she could get. She was particularly taken by the elegance of the frills on James Monroe’s brocade jacket. “It’s a little frightening,” Ms. Yates said, “and I want to add it to my haunted attractions.” For Gene Eyler, 69, the auction offered a chance to reconnect — in a sense — with distant relatives. Holding 19 pages of genealogy records, Mr. Eyler explained that he was the third cousin of the first husband of Woodrow Wilson’s second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. He hoped to buy President Wilson, Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, and donate them to a museum. “I was hoping maybe Edith would be a little bit better,” Mr. Eyler said, although he was undeterred. And President Wilson, he added, did not look quite right. “Maybe the glasses are too new,” Mr. Eyler said. “Maybe that’s what it is.” Image Potential bidders at an auction preview. The wax figures and other memorabilia will be sold on Saturday. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times Other presidential relatives, however, are not as interested. “I don’t know if I have a good place for a large wax figure, and of course, President Taft was a pretty large man,” Bob Taft, the former governor of Ohio and the great-grandson of William Howard Taft, said in a phone interview. “I have a bobblehead of William Howard Taft from the Washington Nationals baseball team,” Mr. Taft added. “That’s enough for me to have in my office.”

President of the United States
Museum
Auction
Sculpture
Gettysburg PA


After 15-Inning Game, Mets Give Catcher John Buck a Rest

Abstract: MIAMI — John Buck arrived Tuesday afternoon in the visitors’ clubhouse at Marlins Park and declared himself rested and ready to play. Manager Terry Collins quickly scuttled those plans. There was no way Buck was starting for the Mets on Tuesday, not after he caught all 15 innings of their loss to the Marlins on Monday night, a marathon that extended into early Tuesday morning. “I was begging him to play,” Buck said. “But Terry was having none of it.” The Mets were hoping to bounce back from Monday’s 4-3 loss, which featured 5 hours 31 minutes of listless offense — an emerging theme for the Mets this season. They had 11 hits in 54 at-bats. Considering their recent stretch of futility, that counted as something of an offensive onslaught, except for the fact that they went 1 for 18 with runners in scoring position. Monday’s game was so long that there were a pair of seventh-inning stretches. (The few hundred fans who hung around were treated to a bonus stretch before the bottom of the 14th.) It also was so long that Buck, immediately after the game, had trouble recalling his fourth-inning home run. Buck was one of the few players who actually produced in April. He was hitting .241 with 25 runs batted in before Tuesday’s game, and his nine home runs had tied the major league record for home runs by a catcher before the end of April. He joined Johnny Bench (1971) and Charles Johnson (2001). Buck, though, was the exception rather than the rule, and Collins has continued to search for solutions to get his offense going. He said he would love to find more at-bats for the utility infielder Justin Turner, who was hitting .368 in limited duty before Tuesday’s game. With that in mind, Collins has been having Turner take fly balls in left field. Collins said Turner could see time in the outfield if Lucas Duda has a day off. “This guy is a good offensive player,” Collins said. “He’s not intimidated by any situations. He’ll hit the ball from line to line, which I think makes him very dangerous.” Monday’s game was costly in its own way for the Marlins, who lost outfielder Giancarlo Stanton, their best player, to the disabled list when he strained his right hamstring running out of a groundball. As a result, the Marlins’ lineup against the Mets on Tuesday was even more depleted than usual. REGRETS OVER SANTANA Johan Santana had shoulder surgery last month, but Terry Collins continues to think about Santana — and the no-hitter he threw last season that may have imperiled his career. On Tuesday, Collins expressed regret over his decision to leave Santana in the game. Santana wound up throwing 134 pitches in his no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals last June 1. His performance deteriorated in the wake of that effort. “It turned out not to be a very good idea,” Collins said. “A lot of people are happy they saw the no-hitter, but I wish he was starting today. I can tell you that.” Collins’s views came in response to a question about Matt Harvey, who threw a career-high 121 pitches for the Mets in Monday’s loss. Harvey looked just as strong at the end of his outing as he did at the start. His final pitch, a fastball, was clocked at 96 miles per hour. But Collins, who removed Harvey after five and a third innings, said he would not jeopardize Harvey’s health by leaving him in a close game. “I don’t care who’s sitting in this chair, my chair: I don’t think you sacrifice the organization’s future — this guy has a chance to be very, very special,” Collins said. “I’m not going to sacrifice Matt Harvey or this organization for 10 more pitches. It’s not worth it. It just isn’t worth it.” IN CASE OF EMERGENCY In the 14th inning of Monday’s game, Terry Collins approached the backup catcher Anthony Recker in the dugout. “He said, ‘Hey, can you pitch?’ ” Recker said. “I said, ‘Absolutely.’ ” Having exhausted his relievers, Collins would have called on Recker to pitch the 16th inning had the game gone that long. Recker, 29, said he pitched in a handful of games as a college player at Alvernia University in Reading, Penn., but it was still a foreign feeling when he made his way to the Mets’ bullpen in the 14th inning. Recker said he threw about 10 warm-up pitches, just to get loose. “I’d say I have the knowledge, from catching, to be able to throw an array of pitches, but I wouldn’t say any of them are any good,” Recker said. “Honestly, I would have relied on luck.”

Mets
John Buck
Matt Harvey
Baseball
Johan Santana
Miami Marlins


Ethics Report Faults Ex-Congressman

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Nathan Deal, a former Republican congressman who is running for Georgia governor, resigned from the House last week in a move that seemed certain to end an ethics investigation that could have proved politically embarrassing. But on Monday, the Office of Congressional Ethics released its report anyway, concluding that Mr. Deal appeared to have improperly used his office to pressure Georgia officials to continue a vehicle inspection program that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for his family’s auto salvage business. The 138-page report details how Mr. Deal and his chief of staff intervened in 2008 and 2009 on behalf of the company, Recovery Services Inc., also known as Gainesville Salvage and Disposal. The report also said Mr. Deal had improperly failed to disclose that he was a corporate officer at the company, meaning that the $75,000 he earned from the business in 2008 violated a House limit on members’ outside income. The release of the report is certain to complicate Mr. Deal’s bid for governor . He is in a tight race for the Republican nomination, facing opponents who include Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, and John W. Oxendine, the state’s insurance and safety fire commissioner. Mr. Deal, in a statement, rejected the ethics office findings. “This is a politically motivated witch hunt,” he said. “I have done nothing wrong and am not going to let this tarnish my 30-year record of public service.” Reports by the office, which essentially serves as a grand jury that does preliminary investigations, usually become public only when the House ethics committee formally takes up a matter and votes to punish members or to clear them of accusations. After voting against the health care bill, Mr. Deal resigned on March 21, just minutes before a deadline that would have required the House ethics committee to investigate the accusations further or dismiss the case. The committee must take such a step within 45 days of receiving a preliminary investigative report from the ethics office. Once Mr. Deal resigned, the formal ethics office inquiry apparently ended because the office generally has jurisdiction over only sitting members of Congress. But Mr. Deal knew of the accusations, which were first reported in August by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Unwilling to be outmaneuvered, the Office of Congressional Ethics — created in 2008 to serve as an independent ethics watchdog on Capitol Hill — decided by a 6-to-0 board vote on Friday to release its findings anyway. “Providing information to the public, improving transparency, is a central element of the O.C.E.’s mission,” Jon Steinman, a spokesman, said Monday. Eric Gray, a spokesman for the Georgia Democratic Party, predicted that the report would destroy Mr. Deal’s candidacy. “It tanks it,” Mr. Gray said. “Deal has been in office for nearly two decades. He knows better.” But Bill Crane, a Georgia political analyst and former aide to a Georgia governor, said the ultimate impact on Mr. Deal’s race for governor was unclear. “I don’t believe anything in politics is fatal, except for a bullet,” Mr. Crane said. “But it is certainly not helpful.” The ethics office inquiry found that Mr. Deal had described his income from the salvage business in his official financial disclosure report as dividends, indicating that he was a passive investor. But his 2008 tax return showed that the money was paid as wages, according to the report. Those wages — $75,000 in 2008 — exceeded a House rule that prohibits members from collecting more than $25,830 in outside earned income that year. Mr. Deal, 67, who had served in the House since 1993, acknowledged to ethics investigators that he and his House chief of staff had met with state officials last March to raise objections to a proposed change in a state program requiring that vehicles involved in accidents undergo inspections before they could be resold. The auto salvage company has long operated one of a half-dozen state-sanctioned inspection stations, earning a total of $638,400 in 2007 and 2008, the report says, even though state inspectors performed the work. Under the proposal, the inspection program would be turned over to the private sector, eliminating the regional monopoly. Mr. Deal, in a statement he provided to the ethics investigators, said his objections were based on his belief that the proposed changes would compromise public safety because state inspectors would no longer do the vehicle checks. “I was acting as a public servant addressing matters of public interest in which I had some expertise,” he said in the statement, blaming his political opponents in Georgia for the inquiry. The report by the Office of Congressional Ethics, however, concluded that Mr. Deal had apparently used his House office to promote his self interest. It also raised questions about the actions of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who it said helped Mr. Deal press his case to state officials. Mr. Cagle’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington , said she was glad the report had been made public. “I don’t think members should be able to short-circuit ethics investigations by resigning,” she said. “When someone is a public figure and is alleged to have engaged in wrongdoing, the public has a right to know what happened, particularly in this case, where Deal is running again for public office.”

Deal Nathan
Ethics
House of Representatives
Office of Congressional Ethics
Georgia


With Johnson on Top, Winds Blow British Open’s Finish to Monday

Abstract: ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — It was dry and sunny at the Old Course on Saturday, a welcome change from the deluge that flooded the links here on Friday and sent the British Open into a tailspin after a soaking three-hour delay. Yet while the drenching rain clouds did blow out into the North Sea overnight, they were replaced by biting and staggering winds. The powerful gusts, which reached up to 40 miles per hour, sent weathervanes spinning off their poles, golf balls rolling off their greens and an entire tournament careening off its schedule. In the end, tournament officials declared that — for the first time since 1988 and just the second time in history — the British Open would finish on a Monday, a result of a 10-hour-28-minute delay in play. Instead of the third round concluding in the twilight here as expected, it was only the second round that finished, with Dustin Johnson leading at 10 under par, a 134 total. The third round had not begun. Johnson, who is playing his first event since losing the United States Open last month following a disastrous three-putt on the 72nd hole, had a one-shot advantage on Danny Willett and a two-shot edge on Paul Lawrie. Six players, including Adam Scott and Jason Day, were three back. Jordan Spieth, who is chasing the third leg of the Grand Slam, was five shots behind, at five under. And Tiger Woods shot 75 to finish at seven over for two rounds, missing the cut in a second consecutive major for the first time in his career. Spieth and Johnson, along with the third player in their group, Hideki Matsuyama, were among the 42 players who returned to the course at 7 a.m. Saturday after not finishing their second rounds Friday. They played for only about 30 minutes in the howling winds before play was suspended again, a decision that prompted a variety of reactions from players: Some thought play should have continued, while others thought play never should have started at all. “Yesterday, when we started the round, it was difficult on the way out, and then coming back in, it even played more difficult,” Johnson said. “This morning when we started, it was almost impossible.” Weather delays are rare at the British Open, as the links courses in the United Kingdom are famous for their extreme and ever-changing conditions. One joke making the rounds here Saturday was that the Old Course was “the only golf course in Scotland closed today,” while Ernie Els joked earlier in the week that when he was told there was a “weather warning” in place for Friday, he responded, “I don’t know what that means in Scotland.” What it meant on Saturday was brutal, blast-force, peel-back-your-eyelids wind. Some of the heartier fans groused about it being a soft stoppage — remember, this is the place where a caddie once told Alistair Cooke, “If there’s nae wind, it’s nae golf” — but it was not just the golfers who were affected. Seagulls gathering on the 10th fairway were blown up into the air by strong gusts. Hats flitted off heads all over the course. Even the dark mesh netting that is often wrapped around television towers and grandstands (mostly for aesthetic purposes) was removed because it was being shredded. In deciding whether to play, tournament officials primarily used as their barometer the 11th hole, which is the most exposed, buffeted on one side by the Eden Estuary and on the other by St. Andrews Bay. Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A, which runs the tournament, said officials spent about 45 minutes before the 7 a.m. start time on No. 11. “We putted and we marked balls and we placed them back and we putted again,” Dawson said, “and while it was very windy, we did not get one ball to move at that time of the morning right up to quarter to seven. So we took the view that the course was playable.” But the winds picked up shortly after play resumed, Dawson said, leading to some farcical scenes. Brooks Koepka tried, unsuccessfully, to mark his ball several times on No. 11 and finally refused to keep playing despite pleas from officials. Louis Oosthuizen was, in his words, “lucky and the unlucky” as his ball was first blown to about a foot from the hole on No. 13 before rolling to about six feet away. On No. 14, Johnson hit a less-than-perfect chip and then, as he bent to mark the ball, saw it roll even farther from the hole. Image Jordan Spieth waiting to play on the 16th green of the Old Course on Saturday. Spieth, chasing the third leg of a Grand Slam here, is five shots behind the leader. Credit David J. Phillip/Associated Press Johnson ultimately made a bogey on the hole while Spieth three-putted for a par, and play was suspended not long after. During the delay, several players, including Johnson, vented their frustrations to R&A officials. Johnson said afterward that he was frustrated by what he perceived as waffling. “When they blew the horn to start and then when they blew the horn to stop, to me the conditions hadn’t changed at all,” he said. “It was the same.” Over the course of the next 10-plus hours, officials monitored the wind and issued regular updates while the players whiled away the time. Naps were common. Johnson went to the gym and did a light workout. Ian Poulter did a Periscope chat with a few other players, including Lawrie. Patrick Reed, who is staying in a house about 25 miles away, hunkered down on a couch in the players’ dining area. It seemed play might resume at 4 p.m. and then again at 5 p.m. At that point, the putting green and practice area began to fill with players — including a few, such as Scott, who had finished their second rounds on Friday and were just looking to stay sharp — but then play was pushed back once more. During one spell, Spieth lay on the ground and rested his head on his golf bag. Finally, a few minutes after 6 p.m., play resumed. Spieth bogeyed No. 17 with his fifth three-putt of the round but then birdied the 18th to finish where he started. Johnson continued to blast his drives but also showed his creativity, such as on the Road Hole, where a deft knockdown shot from the rough led to a solid par. On the 18th, Johnson drove the green and two-putted for a birdie, putting him in position to play from in front as he seeks the ultimate rebound from his final-round collapse in the United States Open. Spieth, who watched Johnson up close during the first two rounds, said that catching Johnson — on Sunday, Monday or any day — would be difficult. “I still believe I can win this tournament,” Spieth said, “but I need a really solid round tomorrow, because Dustin is just not letting up.”

Golf
Dustin Johnson
Rain
Weather
British Open


Georgia: New Aquarium Residents

Abstract: Two whale sharks arrived at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, after making an 8,000-mile journey from Taiwan . Their arrival comes just over four months after the death of Ralph, another whale shark who was a star of the aquarium when it opened in 2005. Ralph had stomach problems that led to an inflammation of a membrane in his abdomen, aquarium officials said. But some animal rights groups have questioned whether his death involved a chemical used in the tank to treat parasites.

Sharks
Aquariums
Atlanta (Ga)
Taiwan
Georgia
Fish and Other Marine Life


Falun Gong Marchers Are Jeered in Chinatown

Abstract: Anguish over the recent earthquake in China helped set off a small ideological disturbance in Chinatown on Sunday when a Falun Gong parade was jeered by supporters of the Chinese government who hurled water bottles and pieces of pastry at the marchers, as well as insults. On Sunday morning, men stood near the Grand Street subway station soliciting money that they said would be used to help victims of the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province, which killed more than 60,000 people. At some point, Chinatown residents said, rumors spread that Falun Gong was discouraging donations and telling people that the Chinese government would steal the money. Tensions between Beijing and practitioners of Falun Gong, a form of exercise and meditation, are nothing new. After the Chinese government outlawed Falun Gong in 1999, the group began mounting international publicity campaigns accusing the government of repression. Those tensions do not usually boil over here as they did on Sunday, but the rumors seemed to arouse anger just as the parade was moving through Chinatown. Falun Gong members denied the rumors and attributed them to provocateurs conducting a campaign of misinformation. “Our message is very benign” said Erping Zhang, a Falun Gong spokesman. “We have compassion for the people in the earthquake.” He also charged that the opposition was organized, a claim that could not be verified. Things were calm along much of the parade route, but as the marchers moved down East Broadway and beneath the Manhattan Bridge overpass — some of them holding aloft banners and placards that read “Only Without the Communist Party There Will Be a New China” and “Earthquake Cover Up Cost Lives” — the atmosphere became charged. People on the sidelines hooted and booed. A brass band in the parade competed with a scratchy version of the Chinese national anthem that blared from unseen speakers. The marchers raised their thumbs in the air and, in return, spectators gave the thumbs-down sign while chanting a derisive oath in Chinese. Plastic water bottles flew through the air, aimed at the marchers. At times, members of the crowd surged into the street and were pushed back by police officers, who also escorted stragglers from the parade who were wearing yellow T-shirts linking themselves with Falun Gong. “These people all grew up in China,” said a young man in the crowd who would identify himself only by his first name, Lin. “They listen to the Chinese government.” The parade ended shortly after 1 p.m., and many of the marchers gathered in a park near Grand and Chrystie Streets. Among them was Mr. Zhang, who said he had relatives in Sichuan who had been displaced by the earthquake. “We have seen that schools fell,” he said. “We are concerned.” The police said that while there were scuffles during the parade, no one was arrested.

Falun Gong
China
Earthquakes
Demonstrations and Riots
Chinatown (NYC)
Religious Cults


Colorado: Legal Setback for Contraception Mandate

Abstract: In a health care decision giving hope to opponents of the federal birth-control coverage mandate, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that Hobby Lobby stores will not have to start paying millions of dollars in fines next week for not complying with the requirement. The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, decided that the company, an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain, can proceed with its case and will not be subject to fines in the meantime. The reprieve gives Hobby Lobby more time to argue in a lower court that commercial businesses, not just religious groups, should be allowed to seek an exception. The company had sued to overturn the mandate on the grounds that it violated the faith of founder and its chief executive, David Green, and his family.

Fines
Birth control
Decisions and Verdicts
Health Insurance


Business Jet Owners Say Proposed Rules Won’t Improve Security

Abstract: FROM company headquarters in Riverhead on Long Island, the executives of Hapco Farms oversee a fruit and vegetable empire that extends from potato fields in Maine to lime groves in Florida. To reach the remote farm communities where they do business, they travel in the company jet, a 16,000-pound Beechjet 400 that seats six. Sally Pezza is often the pilot in command. “I’ve been flying for this company for 23 years; we fly the same people to the same places,” Ms. Pezza said. “We’re solid American citizens.” But to the Department of Homeland Security , the corporate jet represents a potential hole in national security big enough for a terrorist to fly through. Neither the Hapco jet nor 15,000 other private planes as big or bigger are regulated by the Transportation Security Administration. That may soon change. The T.S.A. has proposed regulations that would extend its jurisdiction to all general aviation airplanes larger than 12,500 pounds. The agency conducted the first of five meetings nationwide on the regulations on Tuesday at the Westchester County Airport. The regulations would have a special effect in the Northeast, home to Westchester County and Teterboro Airports, two of the busiest general aviation airports in the country. “The T.S.A. is looking at addressing the risks associated with general aviation,” Michal Morgan, general manager of business operations at the agency, said in an interview before the meeting. “That includes the use of aircraft as a weapon or as a conveyance mechanism for dangerous materials.” The proposal would require operators of private planes to conduct fingerprint-based background checks on pilots, cross-check passenger names against a government watch list, establish a security program, submit to regular audits and limit what items may be taken on an aircraft. “God bless them, but what happened on 9/11 didn’t happen on general aviation airplanes,” said Jeff Lee, a corporate pilot and president of the Westchester Aviation Association here. He was one of 60 people who spoke against the proposal at the meeting. Paul Anderson, a corporate pilot who directs aviation operations for a large Connecticut company, said: “We’ve seen in Iraq that a Toyota packed with explosives can be an effective terror tool; the question is what will be the likelihood of that happening? This proposal does not truly enhance the nation’s security.” As one private-plane operator after another predicted that the burdens and costs of the new security provisions would force many small and midsize businesses to give up their airplanes, they quoted Benjamin Franklin and Winston Churchill, perhaps because, as Ms. Pezza put it, “It’s so ridiculous, we’re speechless.” Hearing the comments of operators who are now exempt but would come under T.S.A. jurisdiction is part of the rulemaking process. Mrs. Morgan said the agency would take into account the unique nature of general aviation and that many private airplane operators already had programs to safeguard their planes and passengers. “Much of what is being proposed is based on best practices implemented and adopted by this community,” she said. To increase its regulatory control from 650 airplane operators to 10,000 over the next two years, the T.S.A. plans to outsource parts of the oversight. From smaller companies like Hapco to large ones like United Technologies, every affected plane operator would have to pay for security audits and matching of passenger names against the federal terrorist watch list. Eighty-three percent of the cost, estimated at $196 million a year, would come from the airplane owners, the T.S.A. projected. At Hapco, officials are accustomed to flying in their private plane; they have had one kind or another for 45 years. What the jet saved executives in time was worth the cost of operating and maintaining it, said Jamey Friedman, a principal with Hapco. But as Ms. Pezza ticked off on her fingers the new services the company would pay for under the proposed rule, she wondered if the balance would change. “It’s going to cost me $10,000-plus to get some guy to put this program together and X amount of dollars for F.B.I. fingerprint checks,” she said. “Another X for the security audit, X for each passenger to be approved by the T.S.A. for each flight. It’s just too much.”

Airlines and Airplanes
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Homeland Security Department
White Plains (NY)


Ciudad Juárez Weighs a Neglected Notion: Hope

Abstract: CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The scars of years of fighting in this city across the border from El Paso, Tex., can be seen in the faded missing-person fliers posted years ago or in the far-off stares of residents at the plaza. But beneath the memories of what some observers call the region’s most violent period since the Mexican Revolution, there is also a guarded sense of a new beginning. With a steep decline in violence and a new mayor taking office, some residents are so bold as to talk of “hope” for their city, though others are not willing to go that far. People are out in Ciudad Juárez again, almost six years after a drug war that started between the Sinaloa Cartel, led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, and the local Juárez drug organization resulted in a staggering death toll. (Estimates vary from 10,000 to 12,000 killed from 2007 to 2012.) On Sunday, the city elected Enrique Serrano Escobar of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, as its next mayor. Campaigning on a pledge to continue the crime-fighting efforts of the last three years, Mr. Serrano soundly defeated María Antonieta Pérez Reyes from the conservative National Action Party, or PAN. Mr. Serrano will take his oath in October, but residents are not certain what to make of the transition and its effect on crime in the city. Several credit the decline in murders, which peaked at more than 3,600 in 2010 and fell to fewer than 1,000 in 2012, to a possible agreement between the drug organizations or a victory by one over the other. “I don’t know why,” said Jose Gregorio Romo, who frequents the plaza, when asked what he thought had brought about the peace. “Maybe they’ve killed everybody they had to kill. They finished with everyone.” Armando Rocha, who shines shoes across the street from the Plaza de Armas, voted for the PRI candidate on Sunday. He calmly discussed how at the height of the violence, a gangster could be seen on every corner of the plaza, acting as a lookout or awaiting a payoff. Now, he said, one is spotted more infrequently. He believes the peace is the result of a gang accord and said that life was better in the city. But he also conceded that his vote on Sunday was for more of the same, a government many are suspicious of, but is the lesser of two evils. “When the PRI robs, at least they distribute some of what they take,” he said, lowering his voice and looking over his shoulder. “The PAN doesn’t.” Mr. Serrano will succeed Héctor Murguía, known as Teto, who brought in Julián Leyzaola, the former Tijuana police chief, instead of keeping the Mexican military to police the city. Some have credited his efforts with directly helping to clean up Ciudad Juárez, but he has also been accused of strong-arm tactics that violate basic rights. From her beverage and snack stand on Avenida Juárez, Maria Flores said there had been dramatic but positive changes since 2011. She has noticed more people visiting recently. But her thoughts on the mayoral candidates were that, despite different campaigns, they were all the same. “To each their own,” she said. “I prefer a person who tries to fight crime and corruption, but who is balanced.” So instead of casting a ballot on Sunday, she said, she chose to support a higher being. “Only the almighty God governs us, so that’s why I don’t vote,” she said.

Texas
Crime
Ciudad Juarez Mexico
Mayoral races
Murders


Pro-Russian Insurgents Balk at Terms of Pact in Ukraine

Abstract: KIEV, Ukraine — An American-backed deal to settle the crisis in eastern Ukraine fell flat on Friday as pro-Russian militants vowed to stay in occupied government buildings, dashing hopes of a swift end to an insurgency that the authorities in Kiev portray as a Kremlin-orchestrated effort to put Ukraine’s industrial heartland under Russian control. But the agreement, reached in Geneva on Thursday by diplomats from the European Union, Russia, Ukraine and the United States, appeared to arrest, at least temporarily, the momentum of separatist unrest in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east. Armed pro-Russian militants, who have seized buildings in at least 10 towns and cities since Feb. 6, paused their efforts to purge all central government authority from the populous Donetsk region. It was clear all along that for the pact to have a chance of success, the Kremlin would have to pressure the militants to leave the buildings they had seized. So far, it has shown no inclination to do so, blaming the Ukrainian government for the turmoil and denying that Russia has any ties to the rebels. Western officials said the United States planned to reassure Eastern European members of NATO by conducting company-size — about 150 soldiers — ground force exercises in Estonia and Poland. The exercises would last a couple of weeks and would most likely be followed by other troop rotations in the region. With militants vowing to ignore the agreement but halting what had been a daily expansion of territory under their control, officials in Kiev voiced some hope that a settlement was still possible. They were skeptical, however, about Russia’s willingness to push the separatists to disarm and vacate occupied buildings. “If Russia is responsible before not just Ukraine but the world community, it should prove it,” said Andrii Deshchytsia, the acting Ukrainian foreign minister, who took part in the Geneva talks. In a sign of the chasm separating Russian and Ukrainian views, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday that made no mention of the pro-Russian militants driving the unrest. It said the call for militants to disarm “meant in the first place” the disarming of Ukrainian nationalist groups hostile to Russia, like Right Sector “and other pro-fascist groups which took part in the February coup in Kiev.” The state-run Russian television channel, reporting from an occupied building in Horlivka in the Donetsk region, featured a masked gunman who pledged to “fight to the end for his convictions.” He displayed an armband emblazoned with a swastika-like symbol, which he said had been seized from supporters of the Ukrainian government. Doubts about the Kremlin’s readiness to push pro-Russian militants to surrender their guns have been strengthened by its insistence that it has no hand in or control over the separatist unrest, which Washington and Kiev believe is the result of a covert Russian operation involving, in some places, the direct action of special forces. “I don’t know Russia’s intentions,” Mr. Deshchytsia said, noting that during the negotiations, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had repeatedly asserted “that Russia was not involved.” He said Mr. Lavrov had been “cooperative and aggressive at the same time.” Russia’s denials have stirred concerns that it went along with the agreement not to curb the turmoil in eastern Ukraine, but to blunt American and European calls for tougher sanctions that could severely damage Russia’s already sickly economy. Western sanctions have so far been limited to a travel ban and asset freeze on a few dozen individuals and a Russian bank. Secretary of State John Kerry called Mr. Lavrov on Friday and urged Russia to ensure “full and immediate compliance” with the agreement, a senior State Department official said. Mr. Kerry, the official added, “made clear that the next few days would be a pivotal period for all sides to implement the statement’s provisions, particularly that all illegal armed groups must be disarmed and all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners.” Mr. Kerry also spoke with Ukraine’s acting prime minister and praised him for moving to carry out the deal, including by increasing transparency and guaranteeing amnesty for militants who disarm and leave occupied buildings. In Washington on Friday, Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, denounced anti-Semitic fliers distributed in Donetsk, which instructed Jewish residents to register, as “utterly sickening” and said Mr. Obama had “expressed his disgust quite bluntly.” “They have no place in the 21st century,” she said. American officials gave no firm timeline for when they expect militants to pull back, but said it should be days, not weeks. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to travel to Ukraine on Tuesday, which could be a moment to assess whether the agreement has yielded results. Russia responded with fury on Friday to remarks the day before by Mr. Obama, who said that the deal offered a “glimmer of hope” but that the United States would take more punitive action if Russia did not abide by it. The Foreign Ministry criticized Washington for making “ultimatums” and for moving “to threaten us with new sanctions, which is absolutely unacceptable.” The diplomatic accord, while limited in scope and skirting the contentious issue of the Crimean Peninsula, was the first time Russia and Ukraine had found common ground since protests toppled a pro-Moscow government in Kiev in February, leading the Kremlin to seize Crimea and mass about 40,000 troops on Ukraine’s eastern border. Speaking to reporters on Thursday at the White House, Mr. Obama sounded a skeptical note. “My hope is that we actually do see follow-through over the next several days,” he said. “But I don’t think, given past performance, that we can count on that, and we have to be prepared to potentially respond to what continue to be efforts of interference by the Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine.” Militants holed up in the headquarters of the Donetsk regional administration — which they seized on Feb. 6 at the start of a well-coordinated campaign of assaults on government buildings across the region — showed no sign on Friday of abiding by the agreement. Gunmen in Slovyansk, a city in the north of the region, also seemed unwilling to leave the local police station and other seized buildings. Denis Pushilin — the leader of a separatist group that seized the Donetsk government headquarters; proclaimed an independent nation , the Donetsk People’s Republic; and demanded a referendum on the future status of the region — said he was not bound by any commitment made by Russia. He added that he would ignore the Geneva agreement until the interim Ukrainian government, established after the Feb. 21 flight of President Viktor F. Yanukovych, disbanded. “They did not sign anything for us. They signed for the Russian Federation,” Mr. Pushilin told reporters. “They do not ask our advice, but I believe all the actions of the Russian Federation were intended to solve the situation peacefully.” Mr. Pushilin said he would carry on preparing for a referendum, but was coy when asked what he would recommend if people in the region voted for independence. Would he seek for the region to become part of Russia, as occurred in Crimea, or to remain part of Ukraine under a new constitution that granted greater autonomy to the country’s regions? Mr. Deshchytsia, the acting Ukrainian foreign minister, dismissed as irrelevant Mr. Pushilin’s demand that the government in Kiev step down. He said this was not part of the agreement and added that the government would press on with a stalled “antiterrorist operation” to dislodge the militants if they refused to leave. The government’s efforts to confront the pro-Russian militants with force came to an ignominious halt on Wednesday after members of an elite Ukrainian military unit joined militants in Slovyansk, allowing Russian flags to be hoisted on their armored vehicles. At a news conference in Kiev, Mr. Deshchytsia declined to set a deadline to resume the military operation if the rebels refuse to disarm. He instead called on Russia to honor what he said was a commitment made in Geneva to persuade the militants to give up their weapons and leave seized buildings. Seeking to calm separatist passions, Ukrainian leaders on Friday repeated assurances that they would, as Mr. Deshchytsia promised in Geneva, pursue changes to the Constitution that would grant more power to local councils to run their own affairs and enshrine Russian as an official language — bedrock demands in the largely Russian-speaking east. Parliament also began preparing an amnesty law, honoring a Ukrainian pledge in Geneva not to prosecute rebels if they voluntarily disarm and hand over occupied buildings. On a visit to Donetsk on Friday, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who was jailed by Mr. Yanukovych and is now a presidential candidate in elections to be held in May, backed calls to grant Ukraine’s regions more authority. But she ruled out any “negotiations about the division of the country,” an apparent reference to Russian demands for federalization, a proposition widely seen as a ruse to divide Ukraine into a patchwork of semi-independent entities. “We can talk only about giving the regions more autonomy,” Ms. Tymoshenko said at a news conference. With hopes of a diplomatic settlement battered, Ukraine’s acting minister of economic development, Pavlo Sheremeta, summed up the mood in Kiev. Saying “it is much better to shoot with words, not bullets,” he described the Geneva deal as “a step in the right direction” but added, “We are not totally excited.”

Donetsk Ukraine
Denis Pushilin
Vladimir Putin
Ukraine
Russia
International relations
US Foreign Policy
John Kerry
Sergey V Lavrov
Andrii Deshchytsia