Obama Seeks Rebound at APEC Forum in Yokohama

Abstract: YOKOHAMA, Japan — President Obama , looking to wrap up his sometimes rocky economic tour of Asia on a high note, said Saturday that he made “no apologies for doing whatever I can” to bring jobs to the United States. And he vowed to pursue trade partnerships and American investment in the region so that he could put the United States back on a path of “discovering, creating and building the products that are sold all over the world.” Mr. Obama arrived in this bustling port city on Friday evening for the second of two back-to-back summit meetings, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. In a speech on Saturday morning to a group of business leaders here, he seemed to be aiming his message as much at a domestic audience in the United States as to an Asian one. “As president of the United States, I make no apologies for doing whatever I can to bring those jobs and industries to America,” said Mr. Obama, who will return to Washington on Sunday. “But what I’ve also said throughout this trip is that in the 21st century, there’s no need to view trade, commerce or economic growth as zero-sum games, where one country always has to prosper at the expense of another. If we work together, and act together, strengthening our economic ties can be a win-win for all of our nations.” Yokohama is the president’s final stop on a 10-day, four-nation journey that took him to India, Indonesia and South Korea. In the wake of the battering his party took in the midterm elections at home last week, Mr. Obama has cast his Asia trip as mission to revive the American economy and bolster job growth. But his policies, contentious at home, have proved contentious overseas as well, and he faced stiff challenges during the Group of 20 gathering in Seoul, South Korea, from the leaders of China, Britain, Germany and Brazil over currency policy and his contention that the United States could pump money into its economy to stimulate growth before concentrating on reducing the deficit. During a news conference on Friday afternoon in Seoul, Mr. Obama attributed the conflict to his administration’s efforts to even out global trade imbalances, by pressing other nations to accept numerical targets for limiting trade surpluses or deficits. In the end, the leaders of the world’s 20 most affluent economies drafted a communiqué that fell short of Mr. Obama’s goal, leaving most of the work on creating ways to monitor and correct such imbalances for future meetings. “Part of the reason that sometimes it seems as if the United States is attracting some dissent is because we’re initiating ideas,” the president said at the news conference in Seoul. “We’re putting them forward. The easiest thing for us to do would be to take a passive role and let things just drift, which wouldn’t cause any conflict. But we thought it was important for us to put forward more structure to this idea of balanced and sustained growth. And some countries pushed back.” Mr. Obama arrived on the world stage two years ago to a fawning reception by world leaders. They arrived at global conferences carrying copies of his memoir, hoping for autographs. They angled for handshakes and “bilats” — diplomatic jargon for one-on-one meetings. They maneuvered to get near him in photo opportunities. But in Seoul, he grappled with questions about the role of the United States as a world power, about his stature on the world stage in a post midterm environment and even about his own diplomatic touch. “It’s not just a function of personal charm,” the president said. “It’s a function of countries’ interests and seeing if we can work through to align them.” When a reporter asked what kind of complaints he was hearing from fellow leaders, Mr. Obama laughed it off, asking, “What about compliments?” As to whether the elections at home have weakened him overseas, he served up a one-word answer: No. And while he told reporters before leaving Washington that his relationship with the American people had gotten “rockier and tougher” over time, he said in Seoul that his relations with foreign leaders had actually grown stronger since he took office. “When I first came into office, people might have been interested in more photo ops because there had been a lot of hoopla surrounding my election,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he now had a “genuine friendship” with a raft of world leaders. Still, he said, “That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be differences.” “It wasn’t any easier to talk about currency when I had just been elected and my poll numbers were at 65 percent than it is now,” Mr. Obama said. “It was hard then and it is now.” Despite his stumbles in Seoul, Mr. Obama’s first two stops — India and Indonesia — were quite successful for him. In India, he lifted export controls that had banned American companies from selling sensitive technologies and backed India’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council — moves that foreign policy analysts in both parties credited with turning around a relationship that had been faltering. In Indonesia, where he lived for four years as a boy, he had a sentimental homecoming — even though it was cut short when a cloud of volcanic ash interfered with air travel, forcing him to leave several hours early. In Yokohama, Mr. Obama tried to sum up those highlights, as he sought to link America’s own history of innovation and discovery — “the idea that led us westward and skyward” — with Asia’s own economic transformation, and the economic development he had witnessed here. “In different ways and different places over the last week, I have seen this idea alive in the teeming, thriving democracies of Asia,” he said. “ It gives me great confidence in the ties that bind our people, and great hope in our ability to move toward the future together — not as drops, but with the strength of an ocean.”

United States International Relations
Obama Barack
Group of Twenty


Brazilian Air Controllers Partly Responsible for Crash, Inquiry Finds

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 2 — A Brazilian military investigation into the causes of a fatal air crash above the Amazon rain forest last year has found that five officers who worked as air traffic controllers were among those responsible for the crash, according to a report that became public on Tuesday. Brazil ’s air traffic control system is run by the armed forces, and the internal military investigation indicates that “crimes were committed” by the five men, the inquiry stated. They could now face suspension, prison or discharge. However, a military judge rejected those findings on Tuesday, calling them “inept” and saying the investigation did not specify which military norms had been violated. The inquiry was completed on July 19, but the findings were made public only on Tuesday, when the report was leaked to Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest-selling newspaper. An air force spokesman refused to comment on the investigation or the judge’s decision, but confirmed that an investigation was continuing. The fatal accident occurred on Sept. 29 last year when a Legacy private jet clipped the wing of a Gol Boeing 737-800 and sent it spiraling to the ground in the middle of the Amazon. All 154 people on board died. The Legacy survived the accident but was forced to land at a nearby airstrip. None of the seven people aboard were hurt. The Legacy was flown by Joseph Lepore and Jan Paul Paladino, two American pilots who were delivering the Embraer-built plane to ExcelAire, a charter company based in Ronkonkoma, N.Y. In June, a Brazilian federal judge ordered the two Americans and four air traffic controllers to stand trial on charges of “exposing an aircraft to danger,” but proceedings have not begun. A lawyer for the two American pilots, meanwhile, said Tuesday that the leaked military report confirmed the pilots’ version of events. “I haven’t read the report, only the Folha article,” said the attorney, Joel Weiss. “But I think to the extent that it outlines crucial mistakes and mishaps on the part of the air traffic controllers, it is accurate.” Both planes were flying at the same height in the same air lane. Controllers said they did not receive a signal from the Legacy’s transponder, the device that indicates a plane’s speed and altitude. The Legacy was flying at a different altitude from that logged in its flight plan, but the pilots said they had been given permission to fly at that altitude by air traffic controllers. The military inquiry also suggested that controllers were unable to communicate with the pilots because they had not told them to change radio frequencies when entering a new airspace zone. The report criticized Mr. Lepore and Mr. Paladino, accusing them of “negligent conduct” and of “contributing to the accident by action or omission.” However, its main targets were its own officers. The 77-page report used words like “carelessness,” “complacency,” “lack of diligence” and “excessive delay” in describing the actions of the five, the paper said. Four of the five men identified were air traffic controllers who worked in Brasília and had already been summoned by the federal judge. They were identified as Sgts. Felipe Santos dos Reis, Jomarcelo Fernandes dos Santos, Lucivando Tibúrcio de Alencar and Leandro José dos Santos Barros. A fifth man, João Batista da Silva, worked in São José dos Campos, the city where the Legacy took off on its maiden flight before heading north to Brasilía.

Brazil
Air Traffic Control
Airlines and Airplanes
Accidents and Safety


Israeli Nonprofits, Shaken by Madoff Scandal, Regroup

Abstract: JERUSALEM — The collapse of Bernard L. Madoff ’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme , whose victims included many American Jewish organizations and philanthropists, has also hammered a number of Israeli social service groups and wiped out at least three foundations that supported Israeli causes. The aftershocks are still being felt here, but it appears that the scheme created losses in Israel amounting to at least hundreds of millions of dollars. It also damaged dozens of organizations, from the venerable matriarch of the American Zionist movement, Hadassah , whose hospital employees in Israel are taking pay cuts, to lesser known groups, like one that works with runaway Jewish and Arab teenagers and is weighing layoffs. The Madoff scheme’s collapse has forced educational institutions and organizations that aid the sick and the needy to reassess their investment strategies, and Israel, which depends heavily on the nonprofit sector to provide such services, has been forced once again to confront its dependence on American donors’ largess. The crisis “has exposed a very substantial weakness” among nonprofits here, said Eliezer Yaari, executive director of the New Israel Fund , an advocacy organization that promotes equality and social justice in Israel. Some Israeli philanthropy experts say the crisis, compounded by the recession, could force the large and unwieldy array of nonprofit groups to streamline and consolidate. Others think it could help spur a redefinition of Israel’s financial relationship with the Jewish diaspora, which, since well before the establishment of the state in 1948, has been based largely on Jewish giving and Israeli taking. “Everything could change,” said Hillel Schmid, director of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy in Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, noting that young American Jews in any case identified less with Israel than their parents and grandparents did. “The crisis is also an opportunity to rethink.” Mr. Madoff’s intricate and overlapping ties with the American Jewish community and its organizations make it difficult to assess the damage precisely. Some groups, like Hadassah, invested directly with Mr. Madoff, while many others depend on the philanthropy of people and organizations that did. Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, which supports hospitals and other institutions here, said it lost $90 million that it had invested with Mr. Madoff. The group is going ahead with a $300 million project to build a tower at the main Ein Kerem hospital campus near Jerusalem. But because of the financial crunch, hospital staff members are being asked to accept temporary reductions in pay and vacation days. The American branch of Elem , also known as Youth in Distress in Israel, a nonprofit organization for runaway, homeless and neglected Jewish and Arab youth, invested $850,000 with Mr. Madoff about six years ago. That was an endowment fund for a “rainy day,” said Zion Gabai, Elem’s Israel director. “Our safety net has been erased.” Elem has already reduced staff salaries and is considering laying off employees and closing programs, not least because donations from Israeli businesses have dropped 50 percent as a result of the recession. Yad Sarah , a volunteer organization that aids sick, disabled and elderly Israelis, said it lost about $1.5 million. The money had been invested by J. Ezra Merkin, a New York financier with close ties to Mr. Madoff. Mr. Merkin is a cousin of the wife of Uri Lupolianski, the group’s founder and a former Jerusalem mayor. The money invested with Mr. Madoff was meant for buying respirators, said David Rothner, a spokesman for Yad Sarah. “We were shocked and we felt betrayed,” he said. Mr. Rothner said the organization, whose $17 million operating budget comes largely from donations within Israel, had continued its regular operations. The donations from overseas are generally for expansion. “If we could skip 2009 we would,” Mr. Rothner said, “but our clients cannot.” In addition, several foundations have shut down or frozen all operations because of losses with Mr. Madoff. They include the Chais Family Foundation, which worked on educational projects in Israel, and the Yeshaya Horowitz Association, which financed applied research projects here. The effects of such closings are particularly acute because of Israel’s heavy reliance on the nonprofit sector, which is the world’s fourth largest as a proportion of national economy, according to a Ben-Gurion University study. Israel has at least 12,000 active nonprofit associations, which employ more than 10 percent of the work force. While most of the nonprofits’ revenues come from the government and from services they provide, about 20 percent of their overall budgets come from philanthropy, and about half of that from abroad, an estimated $1.5 billion a year. But some Israeli nonprofits, like Haruv, which specializes in detecting and treating child abuse and neglect, depend entirely on a single private American foundation. Mr. Schmid, who directs Haruv, favors a reduction in government financing of nonprofits, arguing that their ties with state bureaucracy stifle innovation. But he said that huge private donations were no longer out there and that his university, for example — some of whose donors had invested with Mr. Madoff — would have to seek out a larger number of smaller grants. One organization that aims to change the traditional relationship of giving and taking is Taglit-Birthright Israel , a program that has brought more than 200,000 young Jewish adults on free 10-day educational trips to Israel. Established nearly a decade ago, the organization pioneered a partnership among individual philanthropists, the Israeli government and the organized Jewish community federations in the United States. Gidi Mark, Taglit’s chief executive, said he wanted to show Americans the successful side of Israel, to present it “not as a small, weak, miserable sibling but as an equivalent partner.” “We want to introduce them to potential partners, not potential beggars,” he said. Unfortunately, that costs money, too. Mr. Mark said that none of the organization’s major donors were directly hit by Mr. Madoff, but that many were experiencing difficulties. Sheldon Adelson, the American casino mogul who has donated tens of millions of dollars to the program, has seen the value of his company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, plummet in recent months. After bringing a record 40,000 young adults to Israel in 2008, Birthright will limit this year’s beneficiaries to around 25,000. An additional 40,000 applicants will be waitlisted for lack of money. The Madoff effect is likely to be long term. While many philanthropists may ride out the general economic crisis, the trauma of the Madoff case has made them more cautious and conservative in their giving, said Ahava Zarembski, founder of Yesod, an Israel-based consulting group focusing on social change in Israel and the rest of the Jewish world. Ultimately, though, the shock may lead to a more balanced relationship. “You have wealthier Israelis, and American communities that are more in need,” she said. “It evens out the playing field.”

Madoff Bernard L
Nonprofit Organizations
Ponzi Schemes
Israel
Jews and Judaism
Hadassah
New Israel Fund
Philanthropy
Taglit-Birthright Israel


3 Candidates in State Races Get Backing of Bloomberg

Abstract: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plunged into the waters of hotly competitive Democratic politics on Tuesday, making three endorsements for the Sept. 9 primary. He endorsed a state assemblyman in Manhattan and backed challengers to two state senators in Brooklyn. In making the endorsements, Mr. Bloomberg, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent, is largely rewarding officials who he feels have supported him on a number of issues — like his congestion pricing plan and a proposal to build a recycling center on a pier in Manhattan near Gansevoort Street. Mr. Bloomberg endorsed Assemblyman Adriano Espaillat, a six-term incumbent representing Washington Heights. Mr. Espaillat faces a strong challenge from his onetime political confidant and protégé, City Councilman Miguel Martinez. At the same time Mr. Bloomberg endorsed Daniel Squadron, a first-time candidate who is running against Senator Martin Connor, a former Democratic leader of the State Senate. His district includes parts of Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. The mayor also made official his endorsement of Councilman Simcha Felder, who is challenging Senator Kevin S. Parker in a district anchored in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. In the case of Mr. Squadron, the mayor indicated he was impressed by his independent views on a number of subjects. In a statement, he spoke of Mr. Squadron, a former aide to United States Senator Charles E. Schumer. “We’ll never get reform in Albany if we don’t send reformers there, and Daniel Squadron’s independent voice is exactly what New York City needs in our State Capitol.” Assemblyman Espaillat, the mayor said, “has been a clear voice for our environments and against entrenched special interests and shortsighted parochial concerns.” Mr. Bloomberg added, “It is exactly this kind of independent leadership that we need to send back to Albany.” Senator Connor, who was first elected in 1978 and is one of the state’s best-known election lawyers, said he had no idea why Mr. Bloomberg would endorse his opponent. “To my knowledge there is no particular reason why he would do that,” Mr. Connor said in an interview. “I agreed to vote for his congestion pricing plan. I guess this is my reward for that.” Councilman Martinez, on the other hand, voiced little in the way of disappointment. Instead, he used the endorsements to attack Mr. Espaillat. “It’s interesting that he seeks the mayor’s endorsement, when it’s the same mayor who wants to shut down senior centers in our communities,” Mr. Martinez said. As for the backing of Mr. Parker’s rival, “Last minute endorsements really don’t matter,” Mr. Parker said. “Voters know me and my record. They know I’ve delivered for my community.”

Endorsements
Bloomberg Michael R
Espaillat Adriano
Squadron Daniel
Politics and Government
Albany (NY)
Legislatures and Parliaments
Felder Simcha


Romney Foundation Tax Return Offers a Glimpse

Abstract: Ann Romney, the wife of Mitt Romney , increased her donations to a family foundation by $1.5 million last year, raising its total assets to $10 million, according to a tax return filed on Tuesday. The foundation was set up in the 1990s by Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, and his wife, at right. It represents just a small part of the wealth that has made him by far the richest candidate in the Republican presidential race. Mr. Romney’s campaign aides have said that the Romneys have $190 million to $250 million in personal assets, mostly in blind trusts. They also have set up trusts holding about $100 million for their five sons. But they have yet to detail much about their finances, and the tax return filed Tuesday offers a rare glimpse into one element of their financial doings. The foundation handed out $647,500 in donations last year, bringing its total to $7.1 million since 1999. The largest donation in 2010, $145,000, went to the Mormon Church, to which Mr. Romney and his wife belong. Over the years, the foundation has given about $4.8 million to the Mormon Church and at least $525,000 to Brigham Young University, a Mormon institution where Mr. Romney earned his bachelor’s degree. The foundation gave $100,000 to a library for former President George W. Bush and $5,000 to $65,000 each to health organizations, children’s groups and schools. The organization, called the Tyler Charitable Foundation, is run by a Boston lawyer, R. Bradford Malt, who also makes the investment decisions for the blind trusts. It is not known how much else the Romneys have donated to charity because they have not released their tax returns. In 2007, during Mr. Romney’s first presidential run, his Republican rivals criticized some of the stock holdings of the personal trusts and the foundation. The holdings included companies that had done business with Iran or were involved in stem cell research, which Mr. Romney opposes. Mr. Malt said then that he would sell any holdings that conflicted with Mr. Romney’s positions. Mr. Romney filed a personal disclosure statement in August indicating that most of those stocks in the personal trusts had been sold. The foundation did not include a detailed list of its stock holdings in the tax filing. CHRISTOPHER DREW

Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)


Back From Suspension, Braun Hopes to Get Back in Game

Abstract: PHOENIX — Ryan Braun’s second chance began Thursday at Maryvale Baseball Park, the site of his greatest embarrassment. It was here, two years ago, that Braun said he would bet his life that he had never used performance-enhancing drugs. Braun lost the bet, of course, but has emerged with his life and career intact. After serving a 65-game suspension to finish last season, Braun reported to the Milwaukee Brewers’ spring training camp and spoke with reporters on a patio outside the clubhouse, a long foul ball from the spot where he declared his innocence. “Different tone today than it was that day,” he said. Braun’s decision to cheat in 2011 will stain him forever. He said he could not control what people thought of him, which stands to reason. His attempt to shape his image by playing the victim backfired horribly, compounding a mistake he still refers to in the singular. Braun could have saved two years of anguish for himself, his teammates and the Brewers’ front office by coming clean immediately. But the thorny process, at last, is untangled. It really is time to move on, and Braun was not about to break into tears to please the cameras. “I’m very confident and secure in who I am as a person and my abilities as a baseball player,” he said. “All I can do is focus on this year, on moving forward, on continuing to be one of the best players in baseball, as I’ve been throughout my career.” Braun, 30, was indeed among baseball’s best in his last two full seasons. Playing under heavy scrutiny in 2012, after winning his appeal of an initial suspension, Braun essentially repeated his most valuable player season of 2011. A thumb injury limited him last year, before he surrendered to the Biogenesis cops in July. In Braun’s absence, with their season already a lost cause, the Brewers went 33-32 and gave playing time to rookies like Scooter Gennett , a second baseman who hit .324, and Khris Davis , a left fielder who slugged 11 homers in 136 at-bats. Davis was so impressive that the Brewers are moving Braun from left field to right to make room for him. “The game just felt really simple at that time,” Davis said. “I surprised myself a few times.” The Brewers could surprise people, too. St. Louis remains the class of the National League Central, but Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, the wild-card teams from the division, did little to improve. The Brewers added Matt Garza to their rotation and Francisco Rodriguez to their bullpen. But for the Brewers to contend, they need Braun to be the player he was before the suspension. Braun has never acknowledged using banned drugs outside the 2011 season, and the team must take him at his word. “He had a lot of good years with not doing anything wrong,” Manager Ron Roenicke said. “So I expect him to be the same player. He’s in great shape. He’s in a good frame of mind. He knows this stuff is behind him, and I expect him to come out and be the kind of guy he’s always been.” Braun addressed the team after the suspension, and later spoke with teammates individually. Roenicke said he did not need to hear anything else from Braun about it. Whatever players, deep down, might think about Braun, they understand how much they need him. The idea of Braun’s being a distraction is far overblown; the number of questions players actually field about teammates who have cheated is low. Handling the fallout, whatever it is, is almost entirely on Braun. “Just be honest, be yourself — that’s what we all want from him, that’s all we need,” starter Kyle Lohse said. “As far as building the trust within the clubhouse, we’re co-workers; we’ve got each other’s back. That’s how that works.” He added: “For the fans — or maybe it’s the nonfans of baseball — it’s a career-long process, and he’s not going to do it no matter what he says on Day 1, Day 2, Day 365, it doesn’t matter. He’s got a ways to go to prove what kind of person he is.” In truth, we rarely know what kind of people the players are, anyway. They interact with members of the news media and the fans, and over time, we have some sort of idea. Braun was considered a good guy — if perhaps a bit too polished — before the drug scandal, and his misdeeds revealed an unseemly side to his character. He insists he should not be defined by his choices. “I made a huge mistake,” Braun said. “I wish that I could change it. I can’t change it. My whole life I’ve tried to do nothing but good, and just because I’ve made a mistake doesn’t mean that I will stop doing good. That’s who I am, that’s how I’ve lived my life, and that’s what I intend to do moving forward.” Braun would not talk about why he turned to banned drugs. He offered no new details about what he used and when. He would not characterize his relationship with Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who had vigorously defended him. But Braun has called Brewers season-ticket holders to apologize. He has had dinner with the urine-sample collector he blamed for the positive test. He took part in a food drive in Milwaukee in November and was greeted warmly at a fan event last month. Road crowds have booed Braun before, and they will probably do so again. He said he thrived on the challenge of playing in hostile environments and knew how to handle it. “I think I’m pretty strong mentally and emotionally,” said Braun, whose physical strength will always be under suspicion.


Qing Hong Wu, Detainee Pardoned by Paterson, Savors Freedom

Abstract: After four months locked in a New Jersey immigration jail facing deportation, Qing Hong Wu, 29, was told by guards to pack his things on Tuesday evening. Fearing that he was being abruptly transferred to a detention center in Texas or Louisiana, like many detainees with families in New York City, Mr. Wu asked other inmates to try to alert his fiancée. Even as guards at the front desk told him to walk out of the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold, N.J., no one at the jail had told him why. With no way for his lawyers or family to call him, he was unaware of the news that they and a widening circle of supporters around the world had been celebrating since Saturday: Gov. David A. Paterson had pardoned Mr. Wu, an information technology executive whose rise from poverty and street crime in Chinatown had almost ended in deportation to China, a country he left at 5, and where he knew no one. “I can’t thank him enough,” said Mr. Wu, 29, Wednesday morning. “I’m very, very lucky.” After his release on Tuesday, and a two-and-a-half-hour nighttime journey home on foot and by bus, Mr. Wu still had no clue of the governor’s pardon until he reached his Spring Street apartment building at 9:30 p.m., and a cousin, who also lives there, congratulated him. Mr. Wu’s relatives and fiancée, Anna Ng, had driven to the jail to pick him up, but despite their repeated calls to jail officials, no one informed Mr. Wu they were on their way, so they missed him by a few minutes. They were still driving around New Jersey, trying to find him in the dark, when he called Ms. Ng from his cousin’s apartment. The case of Mr. Wu, who immigrated to the United States legally as a child, had drawn support from many, including the judge who sentenced him to a reformatory in 1996 for a series of muggings committed at 15, and who promised to stand by him if he redeemed himself. An article in The New York Times last month described how the judge, Michael A. Corriero, now retired, wrote to Governor Paterson appealing for the pardon . The governor’s action erased the grounds for mandatory detention and deportation, and could open the door to citizenship for Mr. Wu. After three years in the reformatory, where he earned a high school equivalency diploma, Mr. Wu went on to college and became a vice president at Centerline Capital Group , a real estate financial and management company. His application for citizenship, in which he disclosed his criminal record, brought him to the attention of immigration authorities, who sent him to detention. Because of publicity about the pardon, Elizabeth R. OuYang, president of OCA-NY , an Asian-American civil rights organization that championed Mr. Wu, said she had expected immigration and jail officials to handle Mr. Wu’s release better than most. Instead, advocates said, it was typical, underscoring the isolation and vulnerability of immigration detainees in a disjointed system with vast power to transfer people out of reach of lawyers and family members. Without his identification, money or cellphone, Mr. Wu said, he was released from the jail with two bus tickets and the balance of his commissary account — a check for $103 that he had no way to cash. Local criminal inmates released at the same time led him to an express bus stop a half-mile away. He took the bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and walked to Spring Street, which took him about an hour. “It was a great hour,” he said. “Even though I was tired, I was so happy. I thought immigration made a mistake, so I figured I’d enjoy it before they come and get me.” “It was great to see the city again,” he added, describing a walk through Herald Square and down to Union Square. He had no key for his apartment, but buzzed his cousin, who let him in. By 11 p.m. Tuesday, his mother, fiancée, brother-in-law and Ms. OuYang had made it back from New Jersey for a reunion. “I couldn’t sleep the whole night,” Mr. Wu said. “Many things were racing through my head.” Among them, he said, were thoughts of the detainees left behind in the Freehold jail, including “people with mental health problems, two pre-operative transsexuals, elderly folks that can barely walk.” “It’s just wrong,” he said. “It’s sad.” But he said he also had grateful thoughts about the encouraging letters he had received “from random strangers” across the country who had read about his case. On Wednesday, Mr. Wu’s immigration lawyer sent a note to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, thanking the agency for its assistance in his release. And at a noon news conference at the headquarters of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City , joy and gratitude prevailed. For the first time since his 1996 sentencing, Mr. Wu found himself face to face with the judge who had fulfilled his promise to stand by him. “I simply want to say to Qing, ‘Welcome home,’ ” Judge Corriero said. “This has always been your home — New York City has been your home. We’re so proud of what you’ve accomplished and the way you have endured to come back.” The judge, who grew up in the same Chinatown neighborhood 40 years before Mr. Wu, recalled how the sight of Mr. Wu’s mother, Chang Juan Wu, at the sentencing reinforced his decision not only to hold the teenager responsible for his crimes, but also to give him a chance at redemption. Like his own mother, she was a seamstress in a garment factory, struggling to raise her son in a new land. “This is an American story,” Judge Corriero said. “And Qing is a model of what America can do.”

Wu Qing Hong
Immigration and Emigration
Immigration Detention
Amnesties Commutations and Pardons
Monmouth County Correctional Institute
Corriero Michael A


Channeling Lance Armstrong — Leading Off

Abstract: O.K., so you find yourself with another day to kill while frantically searching your on-screen cable TV guide looking for the Oprah Winfrey Network — Honey, you sure it isn’t the Alerta TV network? I found that in the 400s. Halogen TV, maybe? — and you’ve decided to wonder whether you will be sick of Lance Armstrong’s big staged confession before it even starts. This is a distinct possibility. After all, Winfrey has already done interviews about the interview (sigh), let people know Armstrong will not come off as contrite (eye roll) and will quite likely try to paint cycling’s leadership as the truly bad guys (stomach churn). Winfrey’s network helped exactly nothing by deciding to drag the thing over two nights, so you can be doubly preannoyed at the whole sideshow. Less is more? Not on a network you can’t find with a search team. If you are having a good time, however, dissecting the possibilities of Big Tex’s big Oprah moment, The Telegraph’s Thom Gibbs will help you dissect what everything on the interview set means, including all those mystery bottles. Mike Lupica of The Daily News ruminates on why anyone should think someone so good at lying is going to stop now. And William Fotheringham of The Guardian howls at the irony of Armstrong as a whistle-blower. Yes, everyone is getting in their licks before the broadcast even gets rolling. The head of the World Anti-Doping Agency is totally not preimpressed with a talk-show confession and the British cyclist Nicole Cooke used part of her retirement news conference to lob some verbal bombshells at Armstrong: “When Lance ‘cries’ on Oprah this week and she passes him the tissue, spare a thought for all those genuine people who walked away with no rewards – just shattered dreams.” Armstrong’s Livestrong foundation is far from immune to the mess, with the latest development being the Major League Soccer team Sporting K.C. dropping its name from its stadium, a breakup not directly connected to Armstrong’s doping, but a messy one nonetheless . Read this stuff long enough and it will send you scurrying back to the relative sanity of the N.F.L. coaching bonanza, where teams are snapping up new coaches like crazy these days. The Chargers settled on Broncos offensive coordinator Mike McCoy because, well, he’s young and can he be any worse than Norv Turner? The Bears interviewed everyone with a pulse and decided to raid Canada for Marc Trestman , who had been happily winning Grey Cups for the Montreal Alouettes. The teams still in the playoffs are quietly preparing for the conference championship games, if you can call quiet putting Ray Lewis’s celebration dance in a laser light show on a Baltimore building. Actually, the big turnaround for the Ravens came with the elevation of the very quiet Jim Caldwell to playcaller, Don Banks writes on SI.com . Baseball poked its way into the news with the Nationals showing they are all in on this season with the signing of closer Rafael Soriano, Thomas Boswell writes in The Washington Post , and with Terry Francona blasting Red Sox owners in a new book, Gordon Edes writes on ESPN.com . Tennis got its season rolling at the Australian Open, where the news was already bad for American tennis with a new injury to Brian Baker, Richard Evans writes on Foxsports.com . And the N.H.L. will soon try playing hockey soon, too, with the rare sight of a new captain in Detroit, where Henrik Zetterberg takes the reins from the retired Nicklas Lidstrom, Nicholas Cotsonika writes on Yahoo.com . The Red Wings are one of the few teams not trying to get out from under a bad contract signed by the Rangers’ Glen Sather. The N.B.A. has its season well under way, but finds itself preoccupied with bizarrely low attendance in many places and the equally bizarre case of James L. Dolan, the Madison Square Garden chairman, miking Carmelo Anthony and Anthony not having a clue . O.K., enough of that. Back to channel surfing. Honey, there’s a channel named Velocity. Think that’s it? Follow Leading Off on Twitter: twitter.com/zinsernyt

Lance Armstrong
Oprah Winfrey
Terry Francona
Henrik Zetterberg
Biking


Donkey Ball Holds On Despite Criticism

Abstract: GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — With her fearsome nickname, unpredictable style of play and two pairs of custom-fit, rubber-soled shoes, the athlete known as Timebomb thundered onto the court at Mountain View Middle School. But even as the crowd whooped and the loudspeakers shook to the strains of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” before a recent game, other details made it clear that Timebomb — along with her teammates Reckless, Ginger and April Surprise — was no ordinary athlete. She plays for carrots. She has hairy ears. She is not potty-trained. Timebomb is a donkey, and she and the others arrived at this gym to play a quirky twist on basketball in which humans ride donkeys. Called donkey ball, the pastime has been around since at least the 1930s, kept alive by fewer than a dozen family businesses that truck the donkeys to school gyms across the country in exchange for a cut of ticket revenue. Company owners say that their donkeys are beloved, spoiled pets, and that their work helps local charities that host the events to raise money. But the practice has drawn criticism from animal-welfare groups that say the donkeys are mistreated, leading some schools to cancel the events. That, along with a handful of lawsuits, has left some operators to wonder how long this peculiar slice of Americana will survive. “I would ask people to actually go see a donkey basketball game before they jump on the bandwagon of trying to put it down,” said Brenda Amburgey, who owns Circle A Donkey Ball in Henry, Tenn. Between animal-cruelty concerns and liability issues, she said, “there’s going to come a day when there’s no longer going to be a donkey ball.” The rules of the game are straightforward enough: teams of four players must be astride their mounts in order to shoot, pass or play defense. Dribbling is nonexistent. Participants wear elbow pads and helmets, and they usually attend a briefing on the rules and treatment of the animals. If the game is simple, playing is not. The sport turns on the donkeys’ stubborn nature, a quality that is encouraged by the referees. Some are trained to buck or to duck their necks — sending the players sliding to the floor — and referees reward the mischief with carrots. Other donkeys plant themselves under the hoop, providing players with a reliable scoring opportunity. “It’s like a rodeo with a basketball involved,” said John Sisters, who along with his wife owns the Vermont-based Green Mountain Donkeyball , which ran the event here. Bob Crosby, who owned a donkey ball business from the 1950s through the 1990s, said the game was played outdoors in the early days and was a modified version of baseball. It morphed into basketball in the 1950s and ’60s, he said. The oldest company still in operation is believed to be Ohio-based Buckeye Donkey Ball , which was founded in 1934 and is owned by a nephew of Crosby’s, Pat Barthen. The handful of remaining companies around the country follow a common business model, taking 50 percent to 60 percent of revenue from sales of tickets priced at about $6 each. Some, like Green Mountain Donkeyball, operate fewer than 20 events a year. Others, like Buckeye Donkey Ball, hold as many as 300 and have several teams of donkeys on the road. The game is most popular in rural communities, where the event is often a sellout, said Jessica Cordell, Crosby’s granddaughter and the owner of Dairyland Donkey Ball in Wisconsin. Half the fun is watching the school principal or the mayor fall off a donkey, she said. But, she added, “if you play in downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul, they just don’t know each other.” Despite its popularity, donkey ball has been criticized by animal-welfare groups that say it is stressful to the animals, who travel long distances and are ridden by inexperienced players. The Humane Society of the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals all oppose the sport. PETA’s campaigns have persuaded schools from Idaho to North Carolina to cancel events. “Donkeys have no place in a gym,” said Kristie Phelps, a PETA spokeswoman. “They are very easily confused, and they have no idea what’s going on.” Unlike circuses and zoos, donkey ball companies are not required to be licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture because their events are considered a competition, not an exhibition, said Jessica Milteer, a spokeswoman for the agency. Regulation of competitions is left to the states, she said. Phelps said enforcement of potential animal-cruelty violations was difficult because the companies moved from town to town and state to state. Camie Heleski, an instructor in Michigan State’s Department of Animal Science who has studied donkey behavior, described the game as mostly harmless. “I think it is probably somewhat confusing to the donkey,” Heleski said, but no more than pony rides or novice horseback-riding lessons are to those animals. Unlike horses, she said, donkeys tend to be calm and stoic. “And if they get confused,” she said, “they just plain stop.” Although donkey ball players are required to sign waivers before they ride and some companies say they hold liability insurance, participants have sued after being injured. In 1997, a federal jury awarded an Illinois man $110,000 after a donkey kicked him in the knee. A fifth-grade teacher in Florida settled a lawsuit last year with the Diocese of St. Petersburg after falling off a donkey in a game in 2003. “It sounds funny and laughable, but people get hurt,” said Louis Kwall, the teacher’s lawyer. “The real issue is the unpredictable nature of dealing with an animal.” Donkey ball operators say that the claims are exaggerated and that their animals are well cared for. At the game here, Sisters dug his fingers into the thick coat of Timebomb, who answers to Cuddles when she’s not on the court, and gestured to the other donkeys standing nearby. “Feel them,” he said. “They’re spotless.” His wife, Letitia, said the animal-welfare groups had never called or visited to learn about the company’s operations. “We invited PETA here,” she said. “I tried to contact them, and not once has anybody visited our farm. Normally when you see animals, people are in control. In this forum, the reason it’s so entertaining to children is that the donkeys are totally in control of the situation.” Phelps said that PETA had never received an invitation to visit a donkey ball business but that the organization regularly received complaints from spectators. To some who watched the game here, the event seemed to evoke another era, before liability waivers and animal-welfare protests. Gina Busiak, who attended with her daughter and son, said she watched donkey ball games when she was in high school, in the 1970s. “I was surprised they were doing it,” she said. “I thought it was a thing from the ’70s. There’s a lot of things from the ’70s that we don’t do anymore.”

Cruelty to Animals
Athletics and Sports
Donkeys
Donkey Ball


The Bloomberg Test of the Democratic Process

Abstract: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg scheduled no public events during Rosh Hashana, which ushered in a 10-day period of reflection for Jews. When it came to reflection, none appealed to Mr. Bloomberg more than his own. Much like the queen in “Snow White,” he looked in the mirror and saw the fairest of them all. And so on Thursday, with Rosh Hashana over and the reflection very much to his liking, the mayor formally announced what everyone already knew: He will collaborate with leaders of the City Council to undermine the results of not one but two plebiscites so that they may all cling to office well after the existing law governing term limits would require them to go home. Understandably, some New Yorkers have begun describing the scheme with phrases like “self-serving” and “power grab.” Twice in the 1990s, New Yorkers approved referendums that put a limit of two terms on the mayor and some other officeholders, including the Council’s 51 members. There was nothing equivocal about those votes. Now, rather than go back to the voters once again to see if perhaps they have changed their minds, the mayor and the Council are maneuvering to give themselves third terms all on their own. Legally speaking, they probably can do it, though they can also surely expect lawsuits. But legal and proper are not necessarily one and the same. Many in New York are likely to agree with the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit advocacy organization, which said in a statement on Thursday that “the move is worthy of ‘democracy’ in a banana republic.” Not surprisingly, the mayor cast himself on Thursday as a champion of the people. All that he wants is to expand their voting options next year, he said; if they don’t like this ploy, they can always give him the heave-ho in November 2009. But “this is not the time for fantasy,” he said. We are trapped in a national economic crisis and “may well be on the verge of a meltdown.” All he wants is what’s best for New Yorkers. It just so happens that he’s sure that what’s best for them is Michael Bloomberg. On that score, he has won over many of the city’s oligarchs and editorialists. Some of them have done enough back flips on term limits to qualify for the United States gymnastics team in the next Summer Olympics. It has been argued that letting the politicians alter the rules on their own is somehow more democratic than asking the people directly what they think in a referendum early next year. It has been argued, too, that term limits as endorsed by voters are merely an “abstract notion.” What’s really at issue for many people are not term limits themselves. In fact, some who oppose this mayoral gambit are no fans of imposing any artificial limits. For them, the core issue is not whether but how the law should be changed: by the voters who brought it about in the first place or by the politicians who stand to benefit from their own back-room dealing. What’s really at issue is the very nature of democracy. It is about the expressed will of the people and the rule of law, which in America are supposed to withstand any peril, whether it be war or terrorism or financial uncertainty. Mr. Bloomberg used to say as much himself. He once went so far as to call attempts to tinker with the law “disgusting.” Equally firm against undermining the people’s will was the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn. That was last December. Now she’s gone all wobbly. After being practically invisible for days, Ms. Quinn surfaced on Thursday to say that the Council will seek to make permanent the sort of change that the mayor wants. MIND you, Mr. Bloomberg said on Thursday, he still favors term limits as a concept. “It’s not that anybody is indispensable,” he said in a nod to Charles de Gaulle, who observed that “the graveyards are full of indispensable men.” It’s just that he now believes — mirabile dictu, as the end of his mayoralty looms — that three terms are better than two. Who knows? Maybe he won’t get his way. There might be enough democrats among all those Democrats in the City Council to defeat this scheme. But Mr. Bloomberg sounds like a man who expects to prevail. In recent months, with the clock ticking, he has often cited the exact number of days he has left at City Hall. At a news conference on Thursday, his language shifted subtly but noticeably. He referred instead to “the 455 days I have left in this term.” Mr. Bloomberg was somber in manner. But he provided, unintentionally, one laugh line. Given his Kleenex approach to political parties — for him, they are to be used and then discarded — he was asked what party banner he would fly in a 2009 campaign. The mayor deflected the question. “This is not the time for politics,” he said. He actually kept a straight face as he said it.

Bloomberg Michael R
Term Limits (Political Office)
New York City


Rise Reported in Factories and Consumer Confidence

Abstract: Busier factories and growing optimism among consumers this year could help the economy withstand the drag from government spending cuts and tax increases, data released on Friday suggested. Manufacturing grew in February at the fastest pace in 20 months, according to a report from the Institute for Supply Management. And a survey from the University of Michigan showed that consumer sentiment rose last month to its highest level since November. Other data showed strength in job growth and the housing market. Americans spent a bit more in January compared with December, despite a sharp drop in income that partly reflected higher taxes. Image Credit The New York Times “Consumers are spending, confidence is rising and manufacturing activity is accelerating,” Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, said in a note to clients. “Just about all of today’s reports point to an economy on the rise.” Businesses and consumers appear to be shrugging off changes in federal policy that will probably slow the still-weak economy. In January, Congress and the White House struck a deal that raised income taxes on the nation’s top earners but also allowed a temporary cut in Social Security taxes to expire. Across-the-board spending cuts were set to begin Friday. The cuts could reduce government purchases and lead to temporary layoffs of government employees and contractors. The reductions were expected to shave about a half-percentage point from economic growth this year. Image Credit The New York Times The economic data Friday was mostly positive. The Institute for Supply Management said its index of factory activity rose last month to 54.2, the highest since June 2011, from 53.1 in January. Any reading above 50 indicates growth. The report showed a jump in new orders, higher production and more hiring at factories. Manufacturing has grown for three consecutive months, indicating that factories could help the economy after slumping through most of 2012. Separately, the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index rose to 77.6, the second consecutive monthly increase, from 73.8 at the end of January. The rebound suggests that some people have begun to adjust to smaller paychecks stemming from the restoration of the full Social Security tax. The Commerce Department reported that consumers increased spending 0.2 percent in January from December but cut back on big purchases like cars and appliances. Income plunged 3.6 percent, though it followed a jump in December driven by dividends and bonuses that were paid early to avoid higher income taxes. In a separate report, the Commerce Department said that spending on construction projects fell in January by 2.1 percent, the largest amount in 18 months. But the decline followed a nearly 10 percent increase in construction spending in 2012, the first annual gain in five years.

Manufacturing
US Economy
Consumer Confidence
Construction


Progress in Promoting Black Officers, but Police Department Faces Hurdles

Abstract: The fatal police shooting of Sean Bell , a black man killed in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day, spurred widespread public anger and put the Police Department’s relationship with some black New Yorkers under a microscope. Tension rose last week after the acquittals of three police detectives indicted in the 2006 shooting. More than 1,000 demonstrators blocked traffic in Manhattan and Brooklyn and scores were arrested. That tension coincided with the release of new figures about the police practice of stopping and sometimes frisking people on the streets, a tactic in which blacks account for more than half of those stopped. The figures showed that police officers stopped more people — 145,098 — during the first three months of 2008 than during any other quarter in the six years the department has reported the data. Another set of police figures touching on race came to light at a City Council hearing last week. Those numbers detailed the makeup of the department’s top command and underlined the challenges of maintaining a large urban police force whose members reflect the racial makeup of the city they patrol. The new figures show that the number of blacks among the roughly 700 officers who make up the department’s top tier — in the ranks of captain and higher — has remained unchanged from 2002 through 2007: 28. Despite that stagnation, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly says he has promoted blacks in greater numbers and at a faster pace than he has promoted members of any other racial or ethnic group. As a rule, civil service exams control promotions up to the rank of captain. Promotions above the rank of captain are discretionary, and Mr. Kelly uses the pool of captains to staff his executive corps, from deputy inspector up to chief. Today, more than 50 percent of the blacks in the upper tier are in the discretionary ranks above captain: of the 28 blacks in the rank of captain and above, 12 are captains and 16 are in higher-ranking positions. Of the 48 Hispanics in the rank of captain and above, 32 are captains and 16 are at higher ranks. For Asian-American officers, 8 are captains and 3 rank above captain. In a polyglot city, where the issues of race and the police use of deadly force can be a combustible combination, everyone from Mr. Kelly to the Rev. Al Sharpton, a spokesman for the Bell family, agrees on the need for a racially diverse Police Department. To that end, Mr. Kelly, who started his second stint as commissioner in 2002, has forged strong ties with minority communities including, since the Bell shooting, creating a program for police cadets to spend time with civil rights advocates at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He also held meetings with members of minority groups after the shooting. “I think we have the best community relations that we’ve ever had, and I think a lot of it has to do with diversity,” Mr. Kelly said in an interview on Friday. “Will there be some tensions, in some places? Yes, because of the nature of what we do. No other agency does what we do. That is, we’re charged with the responsibility of enforcing the law, of sometimes using force. Yes, sometimes using deadly force, giving out summonses, being the bearers of bad news.” He added: “So, we know that we constantly have to work at keeping strong relations with our community, and I think that the diversity of the department is the vehicle that makes it easier for us to do our jobs.” Others, including Mr. Sharpton and Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, see a need to improve diversity in the upper ranks of the department. A failure to address that, Mr. Sharpton said, “does rob the department in times of crises, like the Bell verdict aftermath, of having different voices that may be more grounded in the communities in question, that may have more understanding about different scenarios.” A high-ranking black police official got firsthand knowledge recently of the way officers in routine operations can treat minorities. The department said on Saturday that a plainclothes police officer had been placed on modified duty for discourtesy to a superior officer after he tried to open the car door of a black police chief, Douglas Zeigler, after the chief had already identified himself. Two plainclothes officers had approached Chief Zeigler, who is the head of the department’s Community Affairs Bureau and who was off duty at the time, after he had parked his department-issued sports utility vehicle near a fire hydrant in Corona, Queens, on May 2, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. Mr. Kelly pointed out the difficulties in promoting blacks. “We can’t force people to take the test” for captain, said Mr. Kelly, adding that he has met with black officers and fraternal organizations to “get more African-American officers to take promotion exams.” The figures about racial breakdown in the department’s top tier were prepared after the civil liberties group sought them from the department through a freedom of information law request in December. They were handed over in April and released at the hearing on Monday, partly because of “the renewed controversy over race and policing ever since the Bell shooting,” said Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Much of the anger triggered by the Bell shooting is rooted in a widespread belief that blacks are a target for the police, and that the department’s leadership is insensitive to the concerns of the black community in New York,” Mr. Dunn said at the hearing. “Diversity seems like a particularly important topic to have information about.” In the lower ranks, the number of blacks has increased in the department; minorities have represented 53 percent of the officers hired during the Bloomberg administration. The 36,000-member department is 54.3 percent non-Hispanic white, 16.4 percent black, 25.7 percent Hispanic and 4.2 percent Asian-American. Those figures are getting closer to mirroring a city that, based on 2006 figures from the Census Bureau, was 34.7 percent non-Hispanic white, 23.7 percent black, 27.6 percent Hispanic and 11.6 percent Asian-American. Mr. Kelly’s tenure has also been characterized by Police Academy classes that more closely resemble the racial makeup of the city’s eight million residents. The class that graduated from the academy in July 2005, which was 18.3 percent black, was the first predominantly minority class in the department’s history. “We have recruits born in 50 countries,” Mr. Kelly said. Thomas A. Reppetto, a police historian and a retired commander in the Chicago Police Department, said that achieving diversity among the ranks of those who run police departments can be done, but is slow going. “It certainly is desirable that the top command of the Police Department reflect the social composition of the city,” Mr. Reppetto said. “But in the system we have, from the long-term perspective of the N.Y.P.D. and other major police departments in the nation, over time, the top command does come to reflect the composition of the community. But it doesn’t happen overnight. There’s always a time lag.”

New York City
Blacks
Police
Police Brutality and Misconduct
Hiring and Promotion
Bell Sean
Kelly Raymond W


Melee at Newark Council Meeting Shows a Rift in Cory Booker’s Support

Abstract: A showdown between the two archrivals of recent Newark politics, Mayor Cory A. Booker and his predecessor, Sharpe James, exploded into a melee Tuesday night as the City Council struggled to fill a vacant seat. While the mayor’s adversaries were pushing the candidacy of the son of Mr. James, who served time in federal prison after leaving office, Mr. Booker, who became famous as the face of reform in Newark, successfully installed a candidate allied with the city’s biggest political boss. As the mayor arrived under police escort to cast a rare vote on the Council after some controversial parliamentary maneuvering, residents rushed the elected officials on the dais. Police officers in riot helmets shot pepper spray to try to restrain the crowd. The mayor’s onetime supporters shouted accusations of betrayal and of sowing divisions as deep as in 1967, when the city erupted into race riots. The mayor issued a statement Wednesday saying his action “was in the interest of good government,” necessary to ensure the city’s “efficient operation.” But the fracas was a reminder that the mayor’s support at home is not as easy or enthusiastic as it was nationally, where he has become a political celebrity with his appearances on “Oprah” and Sunday morning talk shows, his leadership writing the platform of the Democratic National Committee and his Twitter account, where he feeds 1.3 million followers news about his adventures saving a woman from a burning building or delivering diapers to a mother left in the dark by Hurricane Sandy. “I have voted with the mayor, but I don’t recognize this guy,” said Ronald C. Rice, a councilman who ran with Mr. Booker’s slate but now frequently opposes him. “That’s what hurts, because this is not who we said we were going to be. He’s shown us, like a lot of his predecessors, that it’s either my way or the highway.” The confrontation comes at a time when Democrats have been championing Mr. Booker as the best candidate to challenge Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican whose popularity in a mostly Democratic state has soared with his response to the storm. If Mr. Booker runs in 2013, he will need the support of the city’s political boss, Steve Adubato, who backed the Council’s choice of Shanique Speight. The mayor declined e-mail and phone requests for comment. Mr. Booker’s relationship with the nine-member City Council has become more difficult over the last two years, since the election of two councilmen not aligned with his slate. The immediate issue Tuesday was an opening created by the election of Donald M. Payne Jr. to the Congressional seat long held by his father, who died in March. Ras Baraka, one of the newer council members at odds with the mayor, said he had received a text message that the Council was going to vote on a successor to Mr. Payne. Mr. Baraka and others called in residents supporting John Sharpe James, who was the closest runner-up in a 2010 Council election. Mr. James’s father — who held off a Booker challenge in 2002, but was later convicted of fraud — himself turned up at the council chambers. As Mr. Booker cast his vote for Ms. Speight, the scene turned into chaos. Eventually, residents charged council members, knocking down Ms. Speight. The police sprayed Mace. The city clerk ushered out Ms. Speight and administered the oath of office. “It was something out of ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ” Mr. Baraka said. “It was completely crazy.” He and other council members supporting Mr. James then left the chambers and declared that they would challenge the mayor’s move in court.

Newark (NJ)
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Booker Cory A
James John Sharpe
Elections City Councils


Giuliani, After Treatment at Hospital, Says He Feels Fine

Abstract: ST. LOUIS — A day after “flu-like symptoms” led him to turn his airplane in mid-air and seek medical attention, Rudolph W. Giuliani smiled and said he felt “great” as he walked out of a hospital here Thursday afternoon. But his campaign provided few details of what had caused the problem that led him to spend more than 14 hours in the hospital. Mr. Giuliani was admitted to Barnes-Jewish Hospital here on Wednesday night after he fell ill on a campaign swing through Missouri. His aides said that he had felt increasingly ill as the day went on, and that after his plane left for New York he experienced such a severe headache and flu-like symptoms that the plane returned to Missouri. After spending the night in the hospital, and being given a series of tests, Mr. Giuliani walked out shortly before 3 p.m. “I’m feeling fine, thanks to the hospital,” Mr. Giuliani, clad in a dark suit and a blue necktie but no overcoat, told reporters. Just what had ailed Mr. Giuliani was unclear. His communications director, Katie Levinson, said he had been given “a clean bill of health” before he left the hospital. “Doctors performed a series of precautionary tests and the results of all the tests were normal,” Ms. Levinson said in a statement. The campaign declined to elaborate on what his symptoms were or to specify which tests were performed. Hospital officials said the campaign had asked them not to provide any information about Mr. Giuliani’s health and to refer questions to the campaign. Back in New York on Thursday, Mr. Giuliani appeared outside his apartment and said he was doing fine. Earlier, his wife, Judith, said he was in good health but planned to have a “follow-up visit with his routine physician.” An aide said she was not sure if Mr. Giuliani, 63, had had a flu shot. Mr. Giuliani canceled a campaign appearance in New Hampshire that was set for Friday, but was expected to be back on the campaign trail in New Hampshire over the weekend. His hospitalization came at the end of a long day in which the candidate unexpectedly had to drive across Missouri — from Kansas City to Columbia to Chesterfield — after his private jet broke down. “We were going to take an airplane, and when we got on the plane they said, ‘Oh, one engine just went out,’” Mr. Giuliani told supporters in Columbia on Wednesday afternoon after arriving a couple of hours late to a planned event there. “We thought it was better not to take the airplane.” Along the way, he gave two news conferences, held a town-hall-style meeting, attended a fund-raiser and gave a lengthy interview to CNN. Mr. Giuliani, who had appeared tired at a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday, seemed more animated on the Missouri trip. But his aides said he felt sicker as the day progressed. “The symptoms worsened as the day wore on, and shortly after taking off from Chesterfield, Mo., for New York, the mayor became uncomfortable enough that our plane returned to the airport in Chesterfield,” Ms. Levinson said in a statement. In New York, Mrs. Giuliani said: “A decision was made last night when he had a severe headache and flu-like symptoms on his way home from Missouri to land the plane. E.M.S. then performed a small evaluation and decided that for precautionary measures they would take him to Barnes-Jewish Hospital.” An aide said Mr. Giuliani was admitted to the hospital around 11 p.m. Wednesday. The campaign informed The Associated Press of his hospitalization around 1 a.m. Thursday. In 2000, Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the Senate race in New York against Hillary Rodham Clinton after receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer, and Mrs. Clinton went on to victory. He has said since then that he is in good health. His illness comes as his campaign has hit a rough patch. His lead in national polls has been shrinking, with several showing him essentially tied for first place among the Republican candidates after months in which he led more comfortably. In Iowa, the Republican field of candidates thinned on Thursday when Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado ended his campaign and in an unexpected move endorsed Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Mr. Tancredo focused his campaign on an anti- immigration theme, and on Thursday in Des Moines he took credit for pushing the issue to the forefront of the presidential race. He said he had met with Mr. Romney that morning and was “convinced that he will do the things he said he will do.” He also said he was confident that Mr. Romney would “go the distance.” On the Democratic side, Mrs. Clinton said Thursday that Americans needed a president “who is up to speed on foreign affairs and military matters” — implicitly comparing one of her rivals, Senator Barack Obama, with the candidate George W. Bush of 2000. The Obama campaign denounced Mrs. Clinton’s “attack,” with its spokesman, Bill Burton, saying Mr. Obama was “the only major candidate who opposed both the Iraq war and the rush to war in Iran.”

Presidential Election of 2008
Giuliani Rudolph W
Medicine and Health
Missouri
Endorsements
Influenza
Tancredo Tom
Romney Mitt


Russia Updates Plan to Counter Cyberattacks and Foreign Influence

Abstract: MOSCOW — The Kremlin published a new plan on Tuesday to defend Russia against what it described as stepped-up cyberattacks and “information-psychological” methods by foreign intelligence agencies bent on influencing its population with online information. The plan updates a similar information security doctrine put in place by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2000, early in his first term, that staked out a renewed role for post-Soviet government in monitoring information. The latest iteration of the doctrine comes as American officials have mulled retaliating against Russia for what the Department of Homeland Security said was government-orchestrated hacking before the presidential election, including stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee. The plan, signed by Mr. Putin on Monday but published on Tuesday, described a threat to Russia of technological malfeasance similar to what the United States has accused the Russians of committing. It did not mention, however, any specific online strikes against Russia indicating that American retaliation could be underway. Russia, the document says, is at risk of attacks on systems of “information support for democratic institutions” and the spread of harmful, false information. It notes the “increasing scale of certain countries and organizations using information technologies for military and political goals.” The 16-page document sketches out what the Kremlin sees as the main threats to its security and national interest from foreign information making its way into the country, and sets priorities for countering them. It identifies terrorist recruiting and financial crime as dangers. Under Mr. Putin, the Kremlin has staked out a role as a defender of conservative values, notably pushing back against gay rights, and the new doctrine is no exception, with a clause raising concern about risks to “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” of Russian young people. It also notes the risk to Russia of “a tendency toward an increase of materials containing biased assessments of the state policies of the Russian Federation in foreign media.” The doctrine supports a plan, in the works for some time, to gain control over the Russian segment of the web by basing more servers inside the country. The plan envisions operating the Russian internet autonomously, if needed in time of war, by switching it off from the rest of the world. And it directs Russian diplomats to pursue the Kremlin’s policy goals on information security at international organizations like the United Nations. Russia has advocated, without much success so far, replacing the nonprofit group that now controls top-level domains with a global agency, the International Telecommunication Union. The document calls attention to “information-psychological actions” from abroad undermining Russian “patriotic traditions of defending the Fatherland.” Russia has already passed laws aimed at regulating internet content and forcing foreign companies to base data servers in Russia. Last month, a Moscow court ordered internet service providers to block LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, for failing to comply. Under a separate law governing news aggregators, sites with daily traffic exceeding 1 million users would bear responsibility as publishers, including a requirement to verify the truthfulness of the articles reposted on their websites. The law would apply to Google, among other aggregators. A spokesman for the regulator, Roskomnadzor, on Tuesday denied a report in the Izvestiya newspaper saying Russian officials had already instructed Google to comply.

Cyberwarfare
Politics
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
International relations
International Telecommunication Union
Russia


Prison Rate Was Rising Years Before 1994 Law

Abstract: “Gangs and drugs have taken over our streets,” President Bill Clinton said in 1994 as he signed a far-reaching anti-crime bill to bipartisan acclaim. Defending the law at the time, a frightened era of crack cocaine wars and record murder rates, Hillary Clinton, as first lady, warned about an emerging generation of “super-predators” — a notion she later repudiated. Confronted last week by protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement, Mr. Clinton defended his tough crime stance, even though he, like Mrs. Clinton, has joined in recent calls for sweeping reforms in criminal sentencing. For some critics, the 1994 crime bill has come to epitomize the late-20th-century policies that sent incarceration to record levels and ravaged poor communities, taking a particularly devastating toll on African-Americans that political leaders are only now working to reverse. History and statistics tell a more complex story, according to criminologists. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was a composite measure, with elements reflecting opposing impulses. It offered incentives to states to build more prisons if they toughened sentences, and it added some mandatory minimum sentences to those that already existed. But it also promoted the expansion of community policing and drug courts as alternatives to jail. It established a federal “three strikes” law and expanded the federal death penalty, but outlawed assault rifles. Some critics portray the law as a critical turning point as the country rushed to put more low-level offenders in prison, ravaging low-income communities. But in fact, the data shows, the startling rise in imprisonment was already well underway by 1994, with roots in a federal government war on drugs that was embraced by Democratic and Republican leaders alike. “The trend of increased incarceration had already started two decades before 1994,” said Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Justice in New York. Mr. Travis led federal research on crime during the Clinton administration and was an editor of a 2014 report by the National Academy of Sciences, “The Growth of Incarceration in the United States.” “To lay mass incarceration and the damages to black communities on the doorstep of the 1994 crime act is historically inaccurate,” Mr. Travis said, although elements of the law added to the problem in a modest way. What the historical record does show is that many federal and state changes in criminal justice policy led to a fourfold rise in the incarceration rate from the early 1970s until it declined modestly in the last few years. The rise in incarceration was driven by state laws like the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws in New York. And it was stoked by a major 1986 federal drug act, which expanded mandatory sentences and set the now-notorious 100-to-one ratio in the quantities of powdered versus crack cocaine that could trigger severe penalties. Still, the incentives offered to the states in the 1994 law — nearly $10 billion for prison construction on the condition that states adopt “truth in sentencing” policies — may have added somewhat to the prison populations of the 28 states that took advantage of the provision. There, the results may still be playing out decades later as prisons are forced to establish geriatric units for inmates they cannot parole. Incarceration’s disproportionate effect on African-Americans continues: In 2014, the Justice Department reported, 6 percent of all black men age 30 to 39 were in prison; the rate was 2 percent for Hispanic men and 1 percent for white men. The steady rise in incarceration into the 21st century calls for further explanation because it persisted through a steep decline in violent crime. No one could have known for sure in 1994, but the violent crime rate had already peaked. It plummeted over the next quarter-century, even as more people were sent to prison. The crime bill passed with enthusiastic and bipartisan support, including a yes vote from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the current rival to Mrs. Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr. Sanders, who was an independent in 1994, has said that he opposed certain parts of the legislation — like mass incarceration and death penalty provisions — but voted for the bill because it included an assault weapons ban and language dealing with violence against women. Mr. Clinton, too, has decried some of the more worrisome parts of the law. In an address before the national convention of the N.A.A.C.P. last July, he acknowledged that the law had gone too far in toughening sentencing standards and that it had contributed to mass incarceration. “I signed a bill that made the problem worse,” he said. “And I want to admit it.” Image Camden, N.J., is among the nation’s poorest and most dangerous cities. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times But when confronted by Black Lives Matter protesters last Thursday during a campaign event for his wife in Philadelphia, Mr. Clinton strongly defended his 1994 crime bill. “I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children,” Mr. Clinton said to a protester who repeatedly interrupted him. “Maybe you thought they were good citizens.” “You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter,” he said “Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns.” A day later, Mr. Clinton said that he regretted the confrontation. Criminologists have debated how much of the fall in crime can be ascribed to the rise in incarceration. Most, including the National Academy of Sciences panel that Mr. Travis helped lead, have concluded that extra incarceration played only a modest role compared with wider social changes. One contributing factor to the seemingly odd persistence of high incarceration is suggested by John Pfaff, a professor of criminal law at Fordham University. Beyond the spread of mandatory sentences and other policies, he said, district attorneys became much more likely to bring felony charges and seek long sentences, perhaps reflecting a changing public mood. Particularly in the years before the mid-1990s, he said, sentencing laws in the states — which account for 87 percent of the country’s prisoners — had become more severe. But on top of that, he said, local prosecutors became much more aggressive. Across the country, the probability that an arrest would result in felony charges roughly doubled between 1994 and 2008 — a trend that Mr. Pfaff said seemed unrelated to anything in the 1994 federal law. Douglas A. Berman, a professor of criminal law at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, agreed with other experts that the direct effects of the 1994 law on incarceration rates had often been exaggerated. He also said that Mr. Clinton’s embrace in the early 1990s of anti-crime rhetoric may have been a political necessity, considering the drubbing that Michael Dukakis received in the 1988 presidential campaign for being considered soft on crime. And Mr. Clinton is right to say that black Americans were disproportionately victimized by runaway crime, and wanted help. But the Clintons share blame with many others from that era, Mr. Berman said, for overemphasizing “tough” responses at the expense of more thoughtful solutions that did not involve the endless expansion of prisons.

Bill Clinton
Crime
Prison
Hillary Clinton
2016 Presidential Election
Mandatory sentencing
Criminal Sentence
Legislation
Cocaine and Crack


C.D.C. Head Says Fight on Ebola Will Be Long

Abstract: There are reasons for both hope and continued worry about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Monday. Just back from a weeklong trip to the affected countries — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — Dr. Frieden said at a news conference, “I’m hopeful about stopping the epidemic, but I remain realistic that this is going to be a long, hard fight.” The World Health Organization on Monday reported 19,340 Ebola cases, including 7,518 deaths in West Africa. Sierra Leone had the most cases, 8,939; Liberia had 7,830 and Guinea 2,571. How Many Ebola Patients Have Been Treated Outside of Africa? Questions and answers on the scale of the outbreak and the science of the Ebola virus. On the hopeful side, Dr. Frieden said he had visited a remote part of Guinea, where just a few months ago there was no treatment center and where resistance to visiting health workers had been intense. Now there is a center, established by the French Red Cross, with acceptance by the community, good care and patients surviving, Dr. Frieden said. On the other hand, he said, he was alarmed to hear that on a recent day in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, there were not enough beds for all the patients who needed them. Leaving infected people in the community can lead to exponential spread of the disease, Dr. Frieden said, adding, “That’s what Conakry is at risk of.” He said he had met with Guinea’s president, Alpha Condé, who told him that the country was working hard to open more treatment units in Conakry. Dr. Frieden said he was also dismayed to hear about a nurse at Donka Hospital in Conakry, Guinea’s largest hospital, who contracted Ebola after starting an intravenous line on a patient who turned out to be infected. Even though it was six months into the epidemic, the nurse had failed to put on gloves. Sierra Leone has also been struggling, Dr. Frieden said, noting that many health workers at Connaught Hospital in the capital, Freetown, have died of Ebola and that the hospital is still “largely closed.” At least 10 people a day have been dying in the surrounding community, sometimes at the hospital entrance. But he said efforts to fight the disease in Freetown were being scaled up, and cases should decrease significantly in the next few weeks. Of the three countries, Liberia is in the best shape, Dr. Frieden said, adding that cases had decreased quickly there. “As of today, Liberia has the upper hand against the virus,” he said. One important step, he said, was the opening of a new cemetery for people who died of Ebola. Earlier insistence on cremation had backfired because the culture frowned on it; families resorted to secret burials, which led to infections in relatives who handled the bodies. Corpses are highly infectious. But problems remain. For instance, Dr. Frieden said, some people in Monrovia, the capital, think treatment centers outside the city provide better care and take long taxi rides to those clinics, potentially infecting the drivers and making it harder to trace their contacts. The epidemic will not end, he said, until every contact is traced and every chain of transmission broken.

CDC
Thomas R Frieden
Ebola
Fatalities,casualties
Sierra Leone
Liberia
Monrovia
Guinea
Epidemic


Teammates Again Expected to Be Top Picks in N.H.L. Draft

Abstract: TORONTO — Cam Russell was not going to make the same mistake he made with Sidney Crosby. Russell, the general manager of the Halifax Mooseheads of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, failed to draft Crosby, a native of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, at the league’s 2003 draft. With that memory still haunting him, Russell was relentless in his pursuit of another Cole Harbour native, Nathan MacKinnon. Nearly six weeks after the 2011 draft, Russell landed MacKinnon through a trade, with the hope of pairing him with Jonathan Drouin, Halifax’s first-round selection in the 2011 draft. Drouin and MacKinnon are expected to go within the top five picks in the N.H.L. draft on June 30 at Prudential Center in Newark. Seth Jones is the popular choice to go first over all, and Valeri Nichushkin of Russia is also in the mix. Drouin and MacKinnon would be the latest junior teammates to go early in the first round of an N.H.L. draft. Last year, it was Nail Yakupov and Alex Galchenyuk from the Ontario Hockey League’s Sarnia Sting. In 2011, Ryan Strome and Dougie Hamilton of the O.H.L.’s Niagara IceDogs went fifth and ninth over all. During the 2010 draft, the Portland Winterhawks teammates Ryan Johansen and Nino Niederreiter were the fourth and fifth overall selections at the draft. Image Halifax’s Jonathan Drouin had 105 points and was the Canadian Hockey League’s player of the year. Credit Liam Richards/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press “You can argue that Drouin and MacKinnon were supposed to kind of go like this,” said David Burstyn, the director of scouting for McKeen’s Hockey. “Two years ago, these were the No. 1 and No. 2 guys in the Quebec league draft.” In its annual N.H.L. draft guide, McKeen’s has MacKinnon ranked second with Drouin third over all. Russell, who is responsible for bringing the latest pair together, says it is about timing. “It was fortunate for us to have the first and second overall pick in our draft,” he said. “At that time, they were two great hockey players.” MacKinnon and Drouin, forwards for the Mooseheads, head to Newark fresh off capturing the franchise’s first Memorial Cup as the top team in the Canadian Hockey League. With Drouin and MacKinnon leading the way, Halifax tied a league record with 58 regular-season victories. MacKinnon, a 6-foot, 182-pound center, had 32 goals and 75 points in 44 games with Halifax this season. He was also part of the Canadian team that finished fourth at this year’s world junior championships in Ufa, Russia. MacKinnon had just one assist during six games of the tournament. “I think my speed is what my strength is,” said MacKinnon, 17. “I try to get hard on pucks and play a pretty physical game and get involved, so a lot of it is that.” Comparing MacKinnon to Crosby, the agent Pat Brisson, who represents both players, said: “He’s got very similar work ethic. They’re a little bit different players, but they do have the compete level. They’re both powerful skaters.” Image From left, Drouin, the prospect Seth Jones, and MacKinnon last month. Credit Michelle Siu/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press As for a knock on MacKinnon, Burstyn said: “Sometimes, he gets a little bit stubborn. Sometimes, he wants to do too much. He’s got to learn that not every single shift needs to be a highlight-reel shift.” Drouin, a 5-11, 185-pound native of Ste. Agathe, Quebec, was the C.H.L.’s player of the year, scoring 41 goals and 105 points in 49 games. Drouin also took home awards as the Quebec league’s top player, personality of the year and best professional prospect. “I’m a pass-first guy; I know I’m a playmaker,” Drouin said. “I’m not a selfish guy; I just try to move the puck to my teammates and help them out.” To play alongside MacKinnon, Drouin, 18, who played center until this season, moved to left wing. He was ranked 26th by International Scouting Services in May 2012 and shot up to No. 3 in January after the world junior tournament, where he had 2 goals and 4 points in six games. “He has to get a little bit more aggressive,” Burstyn said. “He has to get a little bit more assertive. He’s got to get a little bit more involved.” The players not only share the ice but also live together, drive to school together and attend classes together. But they insist they will be fine on their own next season, when they will probably be driving to separate rinks. “We’ll be all right, we’ll still keep in touch, but we should be fine,” MacKinnon said. Drouin said: “It’s going to be different without Nate. It’s been a year and a half now. He’s going to do fine on his own, and same for myself.”

Ice hockey
Sports Drafts and Recruits
NHL
Prudential Center
Nathan MacKinnon
Jonathan Drouin
Seth Jones


Cars in Clinton Motorcade in Accident

Abstract: Three vehicles in a motorcade taking former President Bill Clinton to Yale University to give a speech on Sunday afternoon were involved in a minor accident, the Connecticut State Police said. The vehicles from Mr. Clinton’s motorcade and two other vehicles were involved in the accident, which took place on the Merritt Parkway just north of New Haven, Lt. J. Paul Vance of the State Police said. One person was taken to a hospital with a minor injury. Initial reports said Mr. Clinton’s vehicle had been rear-ended, but Mr. Vance said it had not been struck. The accident did not prevent Mr. Clinton from delivering a speech to Yale seniors on Class Day.


Dueling Protests in Yemen Remain Peaceful

Abstract: SANA, Yemen — More than 100,000 demonstrators returned to the streets of the Yemeni capital, Sana, on Friday, some chanting for President Ali Abdullah Saleh and, about two miles away, many against. In what has become a weekly ritual, Mr. Saleh delivered a speech in front of tens of thousands of supporters following midday prayers. Many carried banners with pro-Saleh slogans or slurs against the political opposition and Al Jazeera, the satellite news channel. Others climbed to the top of flagpoles and waved Saleh posters. Clashes were reported in the central city of Taiz between plainclothes government supporters and protesters. More than a dozen protesters were injured by thrown rocks and daggers, according to a local doctor. “I swear, we knew that they were going to attack us today,” said Mahmud al-Shaobi, 33, an antigovernment activist at the Taiz demonstration, who said that men dressed in civilian clothes attacked the protesters with rocks and the traditional Yemeni dagger, called the jambiya. “But we, the sons of Taiz, came to protest anyway. And we will keep doing it until Ali Abdullah Saleh leaves.” By contrast, the opposing demonstrations in the capital took on a more relaxed — at times, even jovial — feel, a month after government-linked snipers opened fire on antigovernment protesters here, killing 52 people. The military was notably less present on the streets on Friday than it was in previous weeks. Even Mr. Saleh appeared less defiant, focusing on how, as he put it, the masses “come to these squares to say yes to the constitutional legitimacy, yes to freedom and democracy, yes to Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of this nation.” Mr. Saleh tried a religious jab at his opposition, condemning the antigovernment protest at Sana University for allowing men and women to mix. “I call on them to prevent the mixing on University Avenue, which is not approved by Islam,” he said. But that line of attack appeared unlikely to gain much traction among average Yemenis, who do not view the president as particularly devout. Antigovernment protesters gathered at their usual place in front of the university. As on previous Fridays, the sit-in swelled to tens of thousands, as large portions of Sana’s population participated in the noon prayers. By midafternoon, a thunderstorm soaked the protest area, a near daily event as Yemen enters its rainy season. Protesters have promised to ride out the poor weather, and many of their tents are fortified with wooden planks and risers to protect against rain and winds, making the sit-in feel like a small town within the capital. “If I go home, I get bored and I want to come back,” said Bassem Moghrum, 24, a protester who has been at the sit-in for two months. With protests showing no signs of abating and political stagnation taking hold, international support for Mr. Saleh’s rule has diminished in recent weeks. According to high-ranking Yemeni officials, the United States and the European Union, in conjunction with the regional Gulf Cooperation Council, are working on a plan that would ensure his departure in the months to come and include an immediate transfer of presidential powers to his deputy.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Tina Maze Wins the Alpine Combined and Basks Atop the Skiing World

Abstract: BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — Tina Maze kicked a cartwheel across the finish area. She had reason to celebrate: She had just won the combined event at the World Ski Championships for her third medal, and her second gold, in three events, firmly establishing herself as the most dominant woman in ski racing. “It’s special for me because I was always one of the favorites, but I never managed to win it,” Maze said Monday. The combined event, designed to determine the best all-around skier, features one downhill and one slalom run. Maze’s win came in an aggregate time of 2 minutes 33.37 seconds. Nicole Hosp of Austria took silver, 0.22 of a second behind Maze, and Hosp’s teammate Michaela Kirchgasser finished third. Laurenne Ross was the top-placing American, in 14th. Fifth after the downhill, the American Lindsey Vonn was disqualified from the slalom after skiing out in the top section. “I’m really disappointed,” Vonn said, visibly upset. “I tried as hard as I could, but I came up short.” It has been an impressive couple of years for Maze, a 31-year-old Slovene. In 2013, she collected 2,414 World Cup points, breaking Hermann Maier’s record for the most in a season. That was followed by one of her worst seasons; she finished fourth in the 2014 World Cup overall standings, just over a month after winning two gold medals at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. Then, two of her coaches, including her boyfriend, Andrea Massi, quit her team. At the end of the 2014 season, Maze’s skiing future was in question. Image Lindsey Vonn skied off the slalom course after missing a gate and did not finish the race. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times By the beginning of the 2015 season, Maze had rebuilt her squad and recommitted to her career. She hired a new coach, Valerio Ghirardi, formerly of the Italian ski team, and Massi returned. She brought on a new female physical therapist because she missed female companionship during the long months of traveling on the World Cup circuit. But mostly, Maze found the desire to win again. “My goal last year was Sochi, and I wasn’t doing World Cup races with the same passion as in the Olympics,” Maze said. “But doing so many mistakes didn’t feel good, so I said, If I go another season, I want to not do so many mistakes. I want to do 100 percent in each event.” Maze leads the World Cup overall standings by 184 points over Anna Fenninger of Austria, who won gold in the super-G and silver in the downhill at Beaver Creek. Maze has seven top-three finishes in the World Cup this season. What is perhaps most impressive about Maze’s skiing is that she wins in all five disciplines, one of only six women to have done so. This season alone, she has victories in slalom, downhill, giant slalom and now combined. “It’s always hard to go from one discipline to another — to get the right timing, to be fast in slalom, to be smart in downhill,” Maze said. “It takes a lot of training, a lot of work, a lot of experience.” Originally from the iron-mining town of Crna na Koroskem, Maze travels the World Cup circuit independently. She split from the Slovene national team in 2008, when officials objected to her relationship with Massi, who is 16 years older than she is and was a fitness coach for the national team. She met Massi when she was a promising 15-year-old on the Slovene national squad and he was a coach, but they did not start dating until she was 22. Image Michaela Kirchgasser of Austria at the finish line as she won the bronze medal in the super combined. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times The decision to split from the national team yielded success. In their first year as a two-person squad traveling the World Cup circuit in a van, Maze won silver in the giant slalom at the 2009 World Championships in Val d’Isère, France, her first major championship medal. The next year, she won two silver medals at the Vancouver Olympics, and the duo continued to climb skiing’s ranks. Despite their success, the romantic and professional partnership does not come without some difficulty. “It’s hard with Andrea, because we work all the time together, so that’s a lot of work every day,” Maze said. “Then you need to be able to put that away and have a nice dinner and have a nice afternoon. Sometimes that’s not so easy.” This season, the couple decided that Massi would take a step back from his primary coaching duties and let Ghirardi take control. “I still create the recipe and Ghirardi executes, but we are in synergy,” Massi said on Monday. With three medals already, Maze now has her eye on collecting five world championship medals at one event, a feat accomplished only by Lasse Kjus in 1999, when the world championships were last held on American soil. “I know I can be the one who does the same thing,” Maze said. “I’m looking forward to that.”

Skiing
Tina Maze
World Cup Skiing
Alpine skiing
Lindsey Vonn