Russian Enclave Seen as a Fault Line of East-West Tensions

Abstract: KALININGRAD, Russia — The maritime museum in this Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea caps each summer with its international Water Assembly, an antic parade of small historical vessels from around the Baltics, their crews wearing period costumes as they sail the Pregolya River. But this year, said Svetlana G. Sivkova, the founding director of Kaliningrad’s Museum of the World Ocean, regular participants from neighboring Lithuania and Poland threatened to stay home. “They said they could not come to us because Poles and Lithuanians are being beaten on the streets of Kaliningrad,” said Ms. Sivkova, appalled at what she called an abrupt and unwarranted change in mood. “These are intelligent, educated people,” she added. “It’s horrible propaganda. We had to explain that it’s not true, that we are an open people.” Kaliningrad — the city and surrounding province share the name — was once the heart of East Prussia and a German redoubt for 500 years before the Red Army captured it from the Third Reich in 1945. In the first 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow worked hard to bury Kaliningrad’s reputation as an armed garrison closed to foreigners. These days, the Kremlin seems determined to do the opposite, and senior Western military officials and other experts now regard the Baltic region as a main fault line in revived East-West tensions. One of the most confrontational incidents in years occurred on Tuesday about 70 nautical miles off Kaliningrad, where two Russian Su-24 planes buzzed the American guided missile destroyer Donald Cook , simulating an attack. One plane roared within 30 feet of the ship, Pentagon officials said, and prompted protests from Washington. In another episode on Thursday, a Russian warplane intercepted an American reconnaissance plane at an unsafe distance over the Baltic Sea, CNN reported, citing Capt. Danny Hernandez, a spokesman for the United States European Command. Image A tour of a submarine at the Museum of the World Ocean in the city of Kaliningrad. Credit James Hill for The New York Times In the immediate post-Soviet era, Moscow tried to reinvent Kaliningrad, which is more than 200 miles from mainland Russia, as its own duty-free Hong Kong. Factories producing cars, electronics and furniture blossomed. After the provincial government negotiated visa-less travel to Polish border areas, the Ikea outlet in nearby Gdansk became a Russian colony. “More people visited Europe than big Russia,” said Ilya Shumanov, the local representative of Transparency International , an anti-corruption organization based in Berlin. In recent years, however, Moscow has heavily armed Kaliningrad, analysts say, equipping secretive bases with the advanced, long-range S-400 antiaircraft missile system and mobile, medium-range Bastion anti-ship missiles. Russia has also held maneuvers here deploying Iskanders, a short-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. During congressional testimony in February, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the NATO commander, described Kaliningrad as a “very militarized piece of property” and a “complete bubble” capable of repelling attacks by air, land or sea. With recent Russian military adventures in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria, President Vladimir V. Putin has left the world guessing — as he so relishes — when or where he might intervene next. Given his stated policy of safeguarding ethnic Russians who were severed from the motherland after the Soviet Union disintegrated, some fear the next target might be the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All three former Soviet republics are now members of the European Union and NATO. An attack on them would trigger NATO’s mutual defense treaty. Any attempt to defend them would have to get past Kaliningrad, wedged between Poland and Lithuania. In the few conflicts where NATO has intervened, it has always displayed overwhelming force, experts said, but Kaliningrad would be different. “The overall balance is very hostile to NATO,” said David A. Shlapak, the lead author of a new RAND Corporation study on the Baltics. Image Technicians working at the new water treatment plant for the city of Kaliningrad, which has been using a decrepit system. Economic sanctions, imposed on Russia because of the Ukraine conflict, are expected to stall plans for further development. Credit James Hill for The New York Times Russians here tend to agree, although they mainly scoff at the idea of such a war. At Baltiysk, home to the Baltic Fleet and Russia’s most western outpost, grizzled fishermen lined the sea wall, barely glancing up at the modern corvettes steaming out to sea. Any NATO forces attacking Kaliningrad “will get their teeth broken,” one gruff angler said. A navy veteran, he stood beneath a symbol of Russia’s might and glory: a hulking equestrian statue of the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna facing the West. Kaliningrad residents, watching NATO forces edge ever closer to Russia in recent years, generally seem to support buttressing the military. “If you are my neighbor and you sit there with an ax, I will get an ax, too,” said Ms. Sivkova, the museum director. “It is foolish, but people say that weapons have been moved to Russia’s borders, so there has to be some parity.” Yet people here find being cast as a Russian fortress disorienting. In downtown Kaliningrad, the Vorota Cafe and gallery fills the neo-Gothic Sackheim Gate, a leftover from the 17th-century city walls. Parts of the city still resemble Germany, including some suburbs of red-tiled, Gründerzeit villas. The cafe’s young founders wanted an art space like those in Amsterdam or Berlin, and they were surprised by a question about life on the new East-West fault line. “It is a strange question, because we look at ourselves as being a bridge, not a fault line,” said Eugene Makarkhin, 26, a computer engineer. Yet fallout from the deteriorating relations between Russia and the West rains down on Kaliningrad. BMW, one of the province’s largest employers, recently shelved expansion plans in the face of a 40 percent decline in Russian car sales. Decades of Swedish development aid are coming to a close. Cultural exchanges have been sharply curtailed. Until the Ukraine crisis, the most dangerous flotilla dispatched from Kaliningrad toward Sweden was raw sewage dumped into the Baltic. “Kaliningrad is really one of the last big hot spots,” said Anna Tufvesson, the regional environmental project coordinator for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Kaliningrad, home to almost half the province’s one million people, was the last major Baltic city without a modern water treatment plant. Sweden has helped build about 30 in the southern Baltic region since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kaliningrad’s German system, built around 1928 and still in use, basically filtered out old bicycles, dead dogs and not much else, Ms. Tufvesson said. The modern Kaliningrad sewage plant, delayed for years, should be operating by the end of this year. Ms. Tufvesson expects all Swedish aid to be terminated by 2018. The aid is another victim of the economic penalties imposed because of the Ukraine conflict. Sanctions cut off European bank loans for development here. “Cooperation with European countries was a good source of cheap loans, and now we don’t have that possibility,” said Alexander N. Ivaschenko, who runs the Kaliningrad city waterworks. “Due to the sanctions, future projects are frozen.” Confrontation is eclipsing cooperation. Mr. Putin has fed Western concerns about a possible Baltic conflict by ordering snap military exercises in northwestern Russia and deliberate violations of NATO airspace. While military officials and other experts on both sides say war is unlikely, contingency planning proceeds. Sweden and Finland, Russian neighbors that once professed neutrality, are considering the once unthinkable prospect of joining NATO. Russia, too weak to confront NATO directly, relies on two methods to punch above its weight, military analysts say. In Crimea and eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin conducted “hybrid warfare,” deploying anonymous Special Forces soldiers nicknamed “little green men,” nationalistic local militias and a news media blitz to seize territory without provoking a large, conventional military response. Kaliningrad embodies the other method, a concentration of highly effective conventional weapons lethal enough to thwart any invader. “Hybrid warfare represents one pillar of Russian defense policy,” said a new report on Kaliningrad from the International Institute of Strategic Studies , a research organization in London. “Air defense and guided missile strength represents another.” There is also the Baltic Fleet. In the post-Soviet years, it shrank to 190 ships from 450 and to two submarines from 42, before the decline was reversed and some new corvettes were delivered in recent years, according to the London institute. The fleet remains strong enough, analysts say, to turn the Baltic into a deadly caldron. For Americans, the Baltic trip wire revives an old Cold War conundrum, said Dmitri Trenin , the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. The question used to be whether Americans would sacrifice Chicago to save West Berlin, he said. The assumption was that if the United States intervened to rescue the German city from a Soviet incursion, nuclear missiles would have annihilated Chicago. “This is the same question posed about the Baltic States,” Mr. Trenin said. “Whether the United States would risk a military conflict with Russia for the sake of the Baltic States, knowing full well that Russia is still a nuclear power and when push comes to shove, nuclear will be on the table.” Kaliningrad residents worry far less about war than about an economy battered by low oil prices, sanctions and a weak ruble. “A passing Mercedes has always proved stronger than the birch trees,” said Solomon I. Ginzburg, an opposition deputy in the local Parliament, meaning that economic aspirations trump nationalism here. The fact that the “free economic zone” expired on April 1 causes far more consternation than a renewed Cold War. “Nobody knows what will happen,” said Ivan A. Vlasov, the publisher of the Kaliningrad edition of the national RBC website. The collapsed ruble means Russians have scaled way back on shopping in Poland or attending concerts in Lithuania. They also feel less welcome. “If you listen to the news from Latvia and Lithuania, it is laughable,” said Albert Prokhorchuk, the general director of Baltma Tours , which last year lost about a quarter of its 4,500 annual visitors from Germany. “The president of Lithuania has basically been saying that people should head for their basements because the Russians are coming.” Poles still cross the border for cheap gasoline, cigarettes and vodka, but a certain unease prevails on both sides. “I don’t think it is a place for development anymore,” said Mr. Shumanov, the anticorruption activist. “I think that it is a place for militarization. There is no investment, no money, no real federal interest in the region itself and bad relations with the neighbors.”

Kaliningrad
Russia
NATO
US Foreign Policy
Military


Unsteady Hands, but Steely Play by Jason Day

Abstract: UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. — Jason Day made the birdie putt on the 18th green that gave him a tie for the lead at the 115th United States Open, but Day knew that rolling the ball into the hole was not going to be the hardest part. Bending over to get the ball out of the hole was a bigger challenge. Day, whose vertigo was so severe a day earlier that he collapsed on his final hole, slowly and gingerly stooped to retrieve his ball. Inspired by Day’s gutty round of 68, the packed grandstand crowd at the 18th hole on Saturday rose to its feet for an ovation. Day, who had spent the round blinking, rubbing his eyes and avoiding sudden movements with his head, could offer only a faint wave. He removed his cap but used it to wipe his brow before he warily walked off the green. Image Dustin Johnson hit out of the rough on the eighth hole during the third round. Johnson led for long stretches of the day and finished in a tie for first place, despite a double bogey on the 13th hole. Credit Matt York/Associated Press During a roller-coaster day on the zany Chambers Bay Golf Course, a host of fast-striding, bright-eyed contenders for the championship stalked the third-round lead. But in the end, it was Day, with a sluggish gait and a weary countenance, who rose up the leaderboard and stirred the galleries. The third round concluded with Day, Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson and Branden Grace tied at four under par for the tournament. Day will be scheduled to play in the final group of Sunday’s fourth round with Johnson, who, like Day, is seeking his first major championship. “I felt pretty groggy on the front nine just from the drugs that I had in my system, then kind of flushed that out on the back nine,” Day said after his round. “But then it kind of came back — the vertigo came back a little bit on the 13th tee box. I felt nauseous all day, and I started shaking on the 16th tee box. “I just wanted to get it in. The goal was just to go through today and see how it goes.” Day, who began the day three strokes behind the second-round leaders Spieth and Patrick Reed, was two over par for his first nine holes. He seemed on his way to being an afterthought in the tournament — a golfer with an illness that was limiting his effectiveness. Colin Swatton, his caddie, later indicated that Day had almost walked off the course a few times because he felt so poor. Instead, Day decided to press on. Image Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa shot a four-under 66 and finished the round tied for fifth. Credit Andrew Redington/Getty Images On the back nine, Day had two birdies in his first three holes (he also had a bogey). But even as he appeared to be in an unsteady haze, and as the pace of his play began to slow more and more on the closing holes, Day started to play his best golf of the afternoon. He birdied the tricky par-3 15th hole, then made par on the 16th despite an unlucky bounce. He rolled in a 12-foot birdie putt on the 17th to move to three under. For his third shot on the par-5 18th hole, he ripped a 9-iron from 155 yards that stopped 6 feet from the hole. Day wobbled slightly on his way to the final green, rubbing his eyes repeatedly. But his birdie putt was straight and easily found the center of the hole, which capped a remarkable late rally. On Friday, Day lay on the grass near the ninth green, his final hole of the second round, for several minutes after crumpling to the turf. Severe dizzy spells have plagued him for nearly a year, a condition that doctors later on Friday called positional vertigo. Image Day was tied for first with three others. Credit Ted S. Warren/Associated Press If he can remain relatively unaffected by his vertigo, Day could be a formidable contender in the final round. He was second in the United States Open in 2011. He tied for second in 2013 and was tied for fourth last year. Earlier Saturday, it seemed that the day’s focus was going to be on Spieth. As he walked down the fourth fairway, a fan yelled, “Run away with it, Jordan, baby.” Spieth had just birdied the last two holes and appeared to be leaving Reed, his playing partner, in the dust. Spieth was soaring up the leaderboard as Reed, who would finish one over par, was plunging down it. So Spieth, the reigning Masters champion and the second-ranked player in the world, listened to the exhortations from the gallery and ran away from Reed. Leaving behind the rest of the field was another matter. Spieth bogeyed three of the next four holes, the beginning of an up-and-down round that had him muttering to himself on nearly every hole. Spieth, customarily a reliable putter, needed three putts to get the ball in the hole on four greens. Image Patrick Reed started the day tied for first but shot a 76 and finished the round in a tie for ninth place. Credit Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images Johnson, who has contended at multiple majors, led for long stretches of the third round but faltered badly on the 13th hole with a double bogey. Grace, the world’s 40th-ranked player, also made a charge but slipped back with consecutive bogeys on the 12th and 13th holes. J. B. Holmes, another player without a major title, made a late run up the leaderboard on the momentum of an eagle on the 16th hole. Holmes finished at one under par. He was tied with another unexpected contender, Louis Oosthuizen, the former British Open champion, who shot 66 on Saturday and should not be overlooked. Phil Mickelson, who began the tournament with a one-under-par 69 in hopes of winning the only major he has not claimed, had nine bogeys in the third round and shot 77. Mickelson, now 10 over par, will have to wait another year to dream of his first United States Open victory after six second-place finishes. Rory McIlroy, a prominent pretournament favorite and the world’s top-ranked player, missed seven makable putts on his back nine Saturday and faded to four over par for the tournament. McIlroy had four birdie putts of 10 feet or less that he failed to convert. Day, who is staying in a recreational vehicle parked on the Chambers Bay grounds, slipped out of sight shortly after his birdie putt on the 18th hole. He said he needed to rest and seek medical treatment. He will at least be able to sleep late, if that helps. His tee time with Johnson is 3 p.m. Pacific time.

Golf
Jason Day
Jordan Spieth
Dustin Johnson
Branden Grace
US Open Golf


L.A. Police Blame ‘Art in the Streets’ for Rash of Graffiti

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Walk into the Museum of Contemporary Art here and urban graffiti — scrawled on walls, buses, a subway car and behind glass — is being celebrated by this city’s art lovers in a hugely popular show. Walk a block away and the same sort of scrawling could get you thrown in jail. An exhibition of street art that opened last week has been responsible, the authorities say, for a new wave of graffiti on buildings, lampposts and mailboxes in downtown Los Angeles, forcing a fresh crackdown on an activity that the police thought they had brought under control. And it has put them in the awkward position of trying to arrest people for doing something that is being celebrated by the city’s cultural establishment. On another level, the exhibition, “ Art in the Streets ,” has fueled a 40-year dispute about the nature of graffiti and the appropriateness of a mainstream arts institution, like the Geffen Contemporary wing of MOCA, conveying legitimacy on an activity that some people see as nothing short of vandalism. “It sounds like every nitwit around is down there trying to take advantage of these admirers of graffiti,” said William J. Bratton, who served as police chief in Los Angeles and commissioner in New York and in both places made eradicating street graffiti a top priority. Mr. Bratton said he was not going to call on the museum to shut the show down — but he would never visit it. “What was expected to occur has occurred in the surrounding areas,” he said. A French tagger known as Space Invader was detained and released by the authorities after climbing down a building near the museum this week. The police now believe he was responsible for a tag later found there and are trying to find him again. Jack Richter, a senior lead officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, said that was one of a number of graffiti episodes in the neighborhood of Little Tokyo that he argued had been, at the least, encouraged by “Art in the Streets.” He vowed to prosecute anyone caught defacing public space, even those whose work might have made it to the big leagues of the Geffen. “They will go to jail, sir,” he said. “This not a ticket. I will put them in jail myself.” Jeffrey Deitch, the director of MOCA, said that reports of tagging linked to the show were exaggerated, and that the museum was ready to send a crew of workers to paint over any graffiti found in the neighborhood. “It’s actually very minimal,” said Mr. Deitch, and paying too much attention to it was only going “to encourage vandalism where the exhibition discourages it by emphasizing the positive direction that young people can take to channel their talents.” The exhibition, a year in the making, fills 40,586 square feet and is the most ambitious of its type, museum officials said. As such, it suggests a final validation of graffiti as an art form. Forty years ago, Taki 183 , a graffiti writer in New York, became a symbol of urban life run amok as his distinctive tag turned up on subway cars, bridges, schoolyards and walls across the five boroughs. Taki’s tag is on prominent display here, and the artist himself turned up for the opening. The exhibition includes a sweep of street artists, including Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, Chaz Bojórquez , Henry Chalfant and Banksy . The show itself appears to be a huge success. On Thursday morning, a line snaked up the sidewalk waiting for the doors to open at 11. By noon, the huge expanse was filled with people examining the galleries in an atmosphere of intense interest. “I was skeptical before I came, but I think graffiti like this is art,” said Eric Watson, 42, a filmmaker. “Look at the way kids here are engaging in it.” Cynthia Miltenberger, 39, an arts educator, scoffed at the notion that this had anything to do with what was going on outside — or in fact, that there was anything wrong with graffiti. “It’s a way of encouraging people to express themselves,” she said. Niels Kantor, an art dealer with a gallery on Melrose Avenue, said: “People have to realize that art has to start somewhere. Cavemen drew on walls.” In many ways, the battle in Los Angeles reflects what has been a recurring argument in cities around the world: Is graffiti a legitimate form of art? Should society be trying to quash it or validate it with exhibits like this? Indeed, the conflicting sentiments could be found right inside the museum the other day, where graffiti over sinks in the men’s room had been painted over. Mr. Deitch said the exhibition was designed to present graffiti in a historical and critical context, showing the chronology of the development of street art and the connections between various artists. “I want people to look at this and understand this is an important contribution to contemporary art,” he said. Officer Richter said he had been over to look at the exhibit a few times. “I think graffiti is so yesterday,” he said.

Graffiti
Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art
Art
Vandalism
Los Angeles (Calif)
Los Angeles Police Department


Crane That Collapsed Had Defects in Hoisting System, Officials Say

Abstract: The crane that collapsed this week at a project on the Far West Side of Manhattan, killing a worker, had a number of defects in its hoisting system, city officials said Thursday. Just before the collapse, a steel-wire cable of the crane snapped, according to a city official, sending its boom crashing down and killing the worker, Michael Simermeyer. An official cause of the crash on Tuesday, at a project to extend the No. 7 subway line, has not been fully determined. On Thursday, in his first public comments on the accident, Robert D. LiMandri, the commissioner of the city’s Buildings Department , said, “Our engineers have found defects in the hoisting system of the crane that failed, and as a result, the maintenance and operation of the crane in the days and weeks prior to this tragic accident has become the focus of our investigation.” He added, “Any contractor who operates cranes on a job site must perform daily and monthly checks to ensure their equipment is safe to use.” When the boom fell, it swung down onto Mr. Simermeyer, 30. “One of the reasons could be poor maintenance over a period of time,” said the city official, who was briefed on the investigation but spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. “What is being looked at, at the site, is something that would have occurred within weeks,” he added. A central issue in the investigation will be determining whether the crane — a 24-year-old, 170-foot Manitowoc model — was in proper working condition and who was responsible for keeping it fit to do the heavy job being demanded of it, bearing loads of up to 90,000 pounds and working at a fairly steady pace. “Cranes are supposed to be inspected, at a minimum, once a year with records kept,” said Ronald L. Brodek, the owner of Brodek Crane Inspections, in Phoenix. “Then, depending on the hours it works and what it is being used for, you do maintenance and other inspections during the year. If you’re doing a lot of lifts, you might inspect it twice a month or three times a month because the wire rope is what is going to wear out on a crane first.” Many contractors demand that every on-site crane undergo an inspection by an independent third party before being put to work. There are national standards for the maintenance and operation of mobile cranes, said S. Scott Orr, the owner of Paradise Crane Consultants, in Edgewood, N.M. Also, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration published a new crane standard in late 2010, he said. “I investigate a lot of crane accidents,” Mr. Orr said. “And these kinds of things shouldn’t happen, but they happen a lot. And they usually happen not for one single reason, but for a series of reasons.” No load was being dropped off or retrieved by the crane when part of it snapped at the site, on 34th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. The crane, owned by Yonkers Contracting, was registered with the city’s Buildings Department, and therefore subject to annual inspections by the agency. Adam Lisberg, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which controlled the work site, said Thursday that a contractor, not the agency, was responsible for maintaining the crane. The crane received a full inspection by the Buildings Department in July and passed. Another inspection by the city agency was initiated in January, but was interrupted because the crane was in use. Only part of the examination occurred; the rest had been rescheduled for Thursday — two days after the accident.

Accidents and Safety
Derricks and Cranes
Buildings Department (NYC)
Simermeyer Michael J
Yonkers Contracting


From Clinton, Evocation of Nostalgia in a Crucial State

Abstract: This 30-second television advertisement for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton , Democrat of New York, is one of five that the campaign began running Tuesday in Pennsylvania. (The other four advertisements include one with the state’s governor, Edward G. Rendell, one with Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, a third about the economy, and the last, a general message commercial in Spanish.) PRODUCER The Clinton media team. THE SCRIPT In a voice-over, Mrs. Clinton says: “This is me in Scranton, where my father was raised and my grandfather worked in a lace mill. Every August, we’d pile into our car and head to our cottage on Lake Winola. There was no heat or indoor shower — just the joy of family. I was raised on pinochle and the American dream. I still have faith in that dream — it’s just been neglected a little. We all need to dream it again, and I promise we will. I’m Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message.” ON THE SCREEN The spot begins with a grainy black-and-white shot of a 3 1/2 -year-old Hillary Rodham, scampering toward the camera and smiling. The words “Hillary 1950” are etched in the corner of the screen. It then cuts to an image of Hugh S. Rodham, Mrs. Clinton’s grandfather, followed by a shot of the mill where he worked, then the white clapboard Rodham family cottage. An image appears of Mrs. Clinton’s mother, in a trim white suit and hat, leading her daughter down the cabin stairs. The initial shot of Mrs. Clinton as a toddler returns, then fades and is replaced by a picture of Mrs. Clinton standing on a stage at a campaign rally, clutching a microphone and beaming. At the end, the words “a President who will be strong for us” appear on screen. ACCURACY There is little to verify beyond the biographical details Mrs. Clinton presents. Voters in Pennsylvania, particularly in northeastern city of Scranton, have heard about Mrs. Clinton’s childhood summers there and her grandfather’s blue-collar background. SCORECARD The Clinton campaign is playing up Mrs. Clinton’s personal side while also using her family history to make a direct connection to Pennsylvania voters. The video scenes were recently unearthed by an elderly Scranton neighbor of the Rodhams, and have a soft, antique, intimate feel. For the older voters who have proven to be Mrs. Clinton’s most ardent supporters, the advertisement also offers a nostalgic trip back to the days when men wore fedoras and little girls wore shiny patent leather shoes. With images of a shuttered mill and a modest cabin, the advertisement should also appeal to the working-class voters that Mrs. Clinton is depending on to deliver her a victory in the state’s primary on April 22.

Clinton Hillary Rodham
Presidential Election of 2008
Advertising and Marketing


Long Island Rail Road Ends Service to Belmont Park

Abstract: For more than a century, the Belmont Special carried throngs of thoroughbred lovers, inveterate gamblers and people who just craved a festive day in the Belmont Park grandstand to the doorstep at one of the grand palaces of American horse racing. Operated by the Long Island Rail Road , the train shuttled thousands of people from Manhattan and elsewhere, curling along a half-mile spur off the main line to the western entrance of the park. But this spring, the special is silent, severing a nostalgic link to the racing industry’s glory days and serving as a palpable signal of more drastic cuts to train and bus services. The Belmont line is the first in a long list of service reductions planned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority , the railroad’s parent agency, as it struggles to close a growing budget gap. Many of the cuts are scheduled to begin next month, which, coupled with proposed fare increases, will mean a slew of hardships for bus, train and subway riders across the region unless Albany passes a financial rescue plan. The Belmont Special has been losing ridership for years — a sign of a sharp decline in racing attendance across the nation. Railroad officials say that made it a logical choice to cut. “We’re talking about 100 customers a day, on average,” said Joe Calderone, a railroad spokesman. That average would be considerably smaller if not for the 20,000-plus who ride the train each June to see the Belmont Stakes, the third leg of racing’s Triple Crown. The railroad will continue service on that day, running 18 trains to the park. On Saturday, race fans taking the train to see live races and the Kentucky Derby simulcast on big-screen televisions had to get off at Queens Village and take a shuttle bus the remaining half-mile to the park. Few seemed to mind, as women in spring Derby hats and some men in suits and others dressed more casually filed in, though it did not quite have the feel of riding a train straight to the track. The buses were provided by the New York Racing Association, the track’s operator. The park’s spring racing season began on Wednesday, and already officials are seeing a small but clear falloff in attendance. On Kentucky Derby day last year, for example, the train brought in 385 passengers to Belmont, said Kenneth T. Cook, vice president for security at the racing association. On Saturday, the shuttles carried just 96 people. Overall attendance at the park fell to 8,222 on Saturday, from 11,310 last year. “Don’t forget, the Belmont Special was pretty convenient,” Mr. Cook said. “You got on at Penn Station, and it dropped you off right here.” On weekdays, the train carried 30 to 35 people last year; so far this spring, the shuttle has carried 7 to 9 passengers a day, Mr. Cook said. It is a far cry from when train service to Belmont began, on May 4, 1905, the day the park opened. Forty thousand people journeyed to see the inaugural running at the track, most traveling by train in a “pall of soft-coal smoke,” The New York Times said, adding that “when the trains were full the throng had to stand wherever it was when the gates closed until fresh trains could be run in.” Racing association officials, who lobbied against the elimination of direct train service, estimate that the park will lose more than $5 million this year because of the cut, while the authority says it will save about $112,000. A clear signal of the impact could be seen at the park’s western entrance near the train platform, which on Saturday was desolate. “It’s different,” said Nora Martinez, a ticket seller, as she sat at a lonely turnstile at the west entrance. “There used to be long lines of people coming off the train. Now there’s nobody.” Raymond Andujar, 70, has been going to the park since 1959, often by train. “In those years the train was completely full,” he said. “Lately, everything’s completely different; people don’t come anymore.” Diane Smith, 68, and Cynthia Howard, 51, sell beer, wine and liquor at a concession inside the grandstand lobby. But on Saturday, they were mostly sitting around waiting for customers. “I think it’s making a big difference,” Ms. Howard said of the lost train service. “Last year the line here was six deep, and four years ago it was 10 deep. Now there’s no people here.”

Belmont Stakes
Long Island Rail Road Co
Metropolitan Transportation Authority


Thirsty Plant Dries Out Yemen

Abstract: JAHILIYA, Yemen — More than half of this country’s scarce water is used to feed an addiction. Even as drought kills off Yemen ’s crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by most Yemeni men (and some women) for their mild narcotic effect. The farmers have little choice: qat is the only way to make a profit. Meanwhile, the water wells are running dry, and deep, ominous cracks have begun opening in the parched earth, some of them hundreds of yards long. “They tell us it’s because the water table is sinking so fast,” said Muhammad Hamoud Amer, a worn-looking farmer who has lost two-thirds of his peach trees to drought in the past two years. “Every year we have to drill deeper and deeper to get water.” Across Yemen, the underground water sources that sustain 24 million people are running out, and some areas could be depleted in just a few years. It is a crisis that threatens the very survival of this arid, overpopulated country, and one that could prove deadlier than the better known resurgence of Al Qaeda here. Water scarcity afflicts much of the Middle East, but Yemen’s poverty and lawlessness make the problem more serious and harder to address, experts say. The government now supplies water once every 45 days in some urban areas, and in much of the country there is no public water supply at all. Meanwhile, the market price of water has quadrupled in the past four years, pushing more and more people to drill illegally into rapidly receding aquifers. “It is a collapse with social, economic and environmental aspects,” said Abdul Rahman al-Eryani, Yemen’s minister of water and environment. “We are reaching a point where we don’t even know if the interventions we are proposing will save the situation.” Making matters far worse is the proliferation of qat trees, which have replaced other crops across much of the country, taking up a vast and growing share of water, according to studies by the World Bank. The government has struggled to limit drilling by qat farmers, but to no effect. The state has little authority outside the capital, Sana. Already, the lack of water is fueling tribal conflicts and insurgencies, Mr. Eryani said. Those conflicts, including a widening armed rebellion in the north and a violent separatist movement in the south, in turn make it more difficult to address the water crisis in an organized way. Many parts of the country are too dangerous for government engineers or hydrologists to venture into. Climate change is deepening the problem, making seasonal rains less reliable and driving up average temperatures in some areas, said Jochen Renger, a water resources specialist with the German government’s technical assistance arm, who has been advising the water ministry for five years. Unlike some other arid countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Yemen lacks the money to invest heavily in desalination plants. Even wastewater treatment has proved difficult in Yemen. The plants have been managed poorly, and some clerics have declared the reuse of wastewater to be a violation of Islamic principles. At the root of the water crisis — as with so many of the ills affecting the Middle East — is rapid population growth, experts say. The number of Yemenis has quadrupled in the last half century, and is expected to triple again in the next 40 years, to about 60 million. In rural areas, people can often be seen gathering drinking water from cloudy, stagnant cisterns where animals drink. Even in parts of Sana, the poor cluster to gather runoff from privately owned local wells as their wealthier neighbors pay the equivalent of $10 for a 3,000 liter-truckload of water. “At least 1,000 people depend on this well,” said Hassan Yahya al-Khayari, 38, as he stood watching water pour from a black rubber tube into a tanker truck near his home in Sana. “But the number of people is rising, and the water is growing less and less.” For millenniums, Yemen preserved traditions of careful water use. Farmers depended mostly on rainwater collection and shallow wells. In some areas they built dams, including the great Marib dam in northern Yemen, which lasted for more than 1,000 years until it collapsed in the sixth century A.D. But traditional agriculture began to fall apart in the 1960s after Yemen was flooded with cheap foreign grain, which put many farmers out of business. Qat began replacing food crops, and in the late 1960s, motorized drills began to proliferate, allowing farmers and villagers to pump water from underground aquifers much faster than it could be replaced through natural processes. The number of drills has only grown since they were outlawed in 2002. Despite the destructive effects of qat, the Yemeni government supports it, through diesel subsidies, loans and customs exemptions, Mr. Eryani said. It is illegal to import qat, and powerful growers known here as the “qat mafia” have threatened to shoot down any planes bringing in cheaper qat from abroad. Still, the water crisis could be eased substantially through a return to rainwater collection and better management, Mr. Renger said. Between 20 and 30 percent of Yemen’s water is lost through waste, he said, compared with 7 to 9 percent in Europe. In Jahiliya and other areas around the capital, the World Bank is leading a project to change wasteful irrigation patterns. Mr. Amer, the farmer based here, proudly showed visitors his efforts to irrigate fruit and tomato fields using rubber tubes, instead of just funneling it through earthen ditches that allow most of the water to evaporate unused. Little hoses spray the crops with water instead of wastefully soaking them. But he also pointed out two local wells where the water is dropping at the astonishing rate of almost 60 feet a year, causing the land to subside. Nearby, sinkholes in the arid soil of his property are growing longer and deeper every year. “We have been suffering for years from this,” he said, gesturing at a cast-off drill rig that broke after going down too deep into the earth. The Yemeni engineers working on the World Bank project concede they have had tremendous difficulty convincing other farmers — and even government agencies — to take their efforts seriously. “There is no coordination with other parts of the government, even after we explain the dangers,” said Ali Hassan Awad. “Prosecutors don’t understand that drilling is a serious problem.” Mr. Eryani, the water minister, takes the long view. Yemen has suffered ecological crises before and survived. The collapse of the Marib dam, for instance, led to a famine that pushed vast numbers of people to migrate abroad, and their descendants are now scattered across the Middle East. “But that was before national borders were established,” Mr. Eryani added. “If we face a similar catastrophe now, who will allow us to move?”

Yemen
Qat
Drought
Flowers and Plants
Agriculture
Water


Fashion Week’s Diesel Generators Draw Complaints

Abstract: Some neighbors call the 311 help line. Others say they now take a different route to walk their dogs. Parents complain of headaches. Children say they cannot sleep. A year after organizers announced that it was going green, Fashion Week has become an environmental worry for people living near Lincoln Center . As models in striking ensembles dazzle the crowds inside the tents day and night, residents outside fret over what they say is the constant noise and smell of the event’s diesel power generators. “They got to do what they got to do, but they make people suffer for it,” said Hector Velez, 52, a painter and father of two who lives nearby at Amsterdam Houses, the public housing complex. “What can that pollution do?” he asked a reporter worriedly. Fashion Week, which ends on Thursday and is also staged each September, moved to Lincoln Center last fall from Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan. For over a week, nine portable generators scattered around the temporary fashion village erected at Damrosch Park have been burning diesel fuel to power the event’s lighting, heating and blow dryers. Such generators have long been part of outdoor events in the city, like street fairs and movie shoots. City Health Department officials say they have not studied how much pollution they emit. But other health experts say the city already fails to meet federal clean air standards as a result of emissions from heavy traffic, boilers and other sources of pollution. Of particular concern with diesel emissions is fine particulate matter, airborne material that can worsen lung and heart diseases and cause developmental problems in children, among other health effects. “Any addition to the exposure levels we’re already experiencing in New York is something that should be avoided to the extent possible, given what we know about the toxicity and potential health effects of diesel emissions,” Dr. Frederica P. Perera , director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health at Columbia University, said in an interview. Officials with IMG Fashion , which produces Fashion Week and rents the generators from Aggreko , a power provider with offices in Linden, N.J., said Wednesday that they had met all city requirements on noise and smoke and had not received any complaints on the organizers’ “command center” telephone line. “We’re very proud of our team and vendors’ continued efforts to be green and are striving to grow those efforts each season,” Zach Eichman, an IMG spokesman, said in a statement. This event is using energy-efficient lighting and heating and cooling systems, eliminating printed press materials and reusing tents and site materials for other events, the company said. That does not satisfy some environmental campaigners. “Most diesel generators are not meeting the most stringent emission standards and are therefore still very polluting,” said Isabelle B. Silverman, a lawyer with the Environmental Defense Fund who works on air quality issues. Farrell Sklerov, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection , said the generators used at Fashion Week run on low-sulfur diesel fuel. But they have no diesel particulate filters to further reduce soot, he noted. Because of the “high-profile nature” of Fashion Week, city inspectors have visited the site and verified that the generators have mufflers to reduce noise and produce no detectable odors or dense smoke, he added. But Mr. Sklerov noted that emission standards were set by the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency, which had imposed fairly modest emission controls on “nonroad” diesel engines like those used by generators, began phasing in stricter standards in 2008, and they will all be in place by 2015. Many residents interviewed at buildings in the Lincoln Center area argue that Fashion Week and its power needs are too big for its new perch in Damrosch Park. They point out that they are already coping with diesel exhaust from idling tour buses awaiting theater, music and dance fans outside Lincoln Center and from heavy traffic along Broadway and Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. Perhaps Fashion Week should move again, some suggested. “The noise, the fumes — I smell it all day and all night,” said Violetta Ungar, another resident of Amsterdam Houses. “Why don’t they go to the Javits Center?”

Air Pollution
Noise
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Fashion and Apparel
New York Fashion Week


F.D.A. Orders Genetic Testing Firm to Stop Selling DNA Analysis Service

Abstract: In a crackdown on genetic testing that is offered directly to consumers, the Food and Drug Administration has demanded that 23andMe immediately cease selling and marketing its DNA testing service until it receives clearance from the agency. In a scathing warning letter that the agency posted on its website on Monday, it said that 23andMe had failed to provide adequate evidence that its product, Personal Genome Service, provided accurate results. “F.D.A. is concerned about the public health consequences of inaccurate results from the P.G.S. device,” the agency said in its letter. Of the personal genome testing companies, 23andMe may be the best known, in part because it is backed by Google. The company is also run by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of a Google founder, Sergey Brin, though they are separated. Its $99 test is sold only through the company’s website, and has been used by about half a million people. It analyzes the DNA in a saliva sample to tell consumers, among other things, whether they might be at a higher or lower risk of developing certain diseases. As such DNA tests have been released in recent years, questions have been raised about whether they require F.D.A. approval and whether using them constitutes the practice of medicine, with a doctor needing to be involved. Ms. Wojcicki’s company has long held that consumers are entitled to the information in their own DNA, though it has also been talking to and meeting with the agency about how its tests could receive regulatory approval since 2009. In its letter, the agency said, “Even after these many interactions with 23andMe, we still do not have any assurance that the firm has analytically or clinically validated the P.G.S. for its intended uses, which have expanded from the uses that the firm identified in its submissions.” The F.D.A. also said it had not heard from the company since May. “Instead, we have become aware that you have initiated new marketing campaigns, including television commercials that, together with an increasing list of indications, show that you plan to expand the P.G.S.’s uses and consumer base without obtaining marketing authorization from F.D.A.” The company responded Monday with a statement emphasizing its relationship with the agency. “We recognize that we have not met the F.D.A.’s expectations regarding timeline and communication regarding our submission,” it said. “Our relationship with the F.D.A. is extremely important to us, and we are committed to fully engaging with them to address their concerns.” The company now has 15 business days to respond to the F.D.A. The F.D.A. letter said it considered the Personal Genome Service a medical device that required approval. The letter noted that 23andMe applied last year for approval for some uses of the test. It said, however, the company did not provide the additional information requested by the agency, so the company’s applications had lapsed. The agency seemed most concerned about a test for mutations that indicate a woman would have a very high risk of getting breast cancer. It said a false positive on such a test could lead to an unnecessary preventive mastectomy. Scott R. Diehl, director of the center for pharmacogenomics at Rutgers, welcomed the F.D.A. action. He said tests for breast cancer risk and drug side effects required guidance from doctors and genetic counselors, and “really have no place” being offered directly to consumers. But Misha Angrist, an assistant professor at the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy at Duke, said that with DNA sequencing becoming cheaper and easier, the F.D.A. would ultimately fail in keeping people from having access to their own genetic information. “Is the only pathway for me to get access to the contents of my cells via some guy in a white coat?” he said. “F.D.A. clearly thinks the answer is yes. I find that disappointing and shortsighted and naïve.” Dr. Angrist said it was “borderline absurd” to think someone was going to get a mastectomy based on a $99 test, without follow-up. Elizabeth A. Mansfield, director of personalized medicine in the F.D.A.’s medical device division, said the agency agreed that people had a right to their genetic information. The concern, she said, was that 23andMe was also providing interpretations of what that data meant medically. The company, which is privately held and based in Mountain View, Calif., also offers information on ancestry. Part of the company’s business plan is to use genetic information amassed from the tests to perform biomedical research, like finding genetic causes of diseases. Ms. Wojcicki recently said the company hoped to reach a million customers by early next year. The F.D.A. sent letters to 23andMe and some of its competitors in 2010 saying that regulatory approval would be required for the tests. Afterward, some of the other companies stopped offering tests to consumers. “This issue has to be fundamentally settled,” Dr. Mansfield of the F.D.A. said. “It can’t go on like this.”

FDA
23andMe
Regulation and Deregulation
Genetics and Heredity
DNA
Medical test
Anne Wojcicki


Obscure Law Is Getting Its Sexy On

Abstract: When some bondholders bought debt in casinos operated by Caesars Entertainment, they didn’t think they were gambling. Instead, they were relying on the guarantees of the parent company that it would stand behind the debt payments even if something went wrong. But after Caesars got into trouble and the company eliminated the guarantee, the investors turned to an obscure, rarely invoked Depression-era law devised to protect bondholders from abusive tactics. And when federal courts agreed with bondholders that the law might have been violated at not just Caesars but also at another troubled company, Education Management Corporation, they turned the sleepy Trust Indenture Act of 1939 into something that is becoming, well, sexy. Companies in financial distress usually ask their debt holders to restructure the terms of the obligations they hold. Reducing the interest rate on the debt or retiring it for less than 100 cents on the dollar, can help a hobbled company return to health. Naturally, debt holders often object to such changes. But many companies win these battles because of a powerful threat: a bankruptcy filing that bondholders would rather avoid. That’s where the recent restructurings of the two companies enter the picture. Before these restructurings, certain debt issued by units of both Caesars and Education Management was guaranteed by their parent companies. Such guarantees provide an important protection for bondholders concerned about receiving the interest payments and principal they are owed. But in the face of the restructurings, both companies changed the documents governing the debt, known as indentures, and rescinded those guarantees. The companies, however, didn’t seek the approval of all debt holders before doing so. This upset Marblegate Asset Management, which owns debt in Education Management L.L.C., and MeehanCombs L.P., an investment firm that holds debt in Caesars Entertainment Operating Company. Both investors sued, contending that removing the guarantees left them unable to receive payments they’re owed, a violation of the trust indenture law. Recent rulings from two Federal District Court judges in Manhattan supported the investors’ views. The act was intended to prevent back-room deals that stripped bondholders of their rights, a common practice before the law was written. Trying to ensure that changes to debt issues’ terms were made in the light of day, the law states that debt holders’ rights to receive interest and principal payments “shall not be impaired or affected without the consent of such holder.” But over the decades, few cases have explicitly invoked this aspect of the law. That two recent cases do is noteworthy, Mark Roe , a professor at Harvard Law School, said, and may change the way debt restructurings are handled. “This statutory provision affects all bond issues and has long been dormant in litigation,” Mr. Roe said in an interview last week. “But now we’ve had two recent rulings in a row taking seriously the statute’s prohibition on voting outside of bankruptcy. People doing these restructurings will have to pay attention to it.” Image Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, whose parent company changed a debt guarantee. Credit John Locher/Associated Press In the Education Management case, Judge Katherine Polk Failla , a Federal District Court judge in Manhattan, ruled on Dec. 30 that the questions boiled down to a dispute over the scope of the protections afforded by the Trust Indenture Act. “Is it a broad protection against nonconsensual debt restructurings, or a narrow protection against majority amendment of certain ‘core terms’?” she asked . Her answer: The former interpretation is more persuasive, and “plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits.” A spokesman for Education Management declined to comment on the ruling. But Andrew Milgram, Marblegate’s chief investment officer, said the firm had recognized “a unique interaction in law and regulation, which brought the protections of the Trust Indenture Act to bear in the case.” About two weeks later, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled similarly in the Caesars case. She characterized Caesars’ removal of the parent company guarantee on some of its debt as “an impermissible out-of-court debt restructuring achieved through collective action.” Her ruling means the lawsuit , filed against Caesars last summer, can go forward. Judge Scheindlin’s ruling came in the middle of efforts by Caesars to restructure its $18 billion in debt. The company filed for bankruptcy on Jan. 15; its reorganization plan would cut its debt to around $8 billion and reduce annual interest costs by $1 billion. The amount of debt at issue in the case being heard by Judge Scheindlin is a small fraction of the company’s overall obligations. Stephen Cohen, a spokesman for Caesars, said in a statement: “We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling, which was based simply on the plaintiffs’ allegations and that we believe is inconsistent with the provisions of the Trust Indenture Act. Given the size of the claims at issue and our strong defenses, we do not expect the ruling to impact the planned reorganization.” In a broader sense, Lewis Lowenfels, an expert in securities law, said, the courts seem to be advancing the tenet that is central to the federal securities laws: Sunlight is the best disinfectant. “One thing we can all agree on is that it’s not normally in the public interest to have somebody behind a curtain pulling the strings on these transactions,” he said. “Proper disclosure is the best solution.” Eli Combs, president of MeehanCombs, said he welcomed the judge’s ruling. “We hope that this will prevent large sophisticated investment firms and the companies backed by them from taking actions to disadvantage average investors,” he said. It may not be a coincidence that private equity firms, accustomed to dictating the terms of their deals, control both of the companies that are accused of making impermissible changes to their debt. Education Management is controlled by Goldman Sachs Partners, Leeds Capital Partners and Providence Capital while Caesars’ majority shareholders are Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital. With the Trust Indenture Act gaining traction, Mr. Roe of Harvard Law School said that amending it to allow for simple votes among bondholders outside of bankruptcy could reduce the likelihood of deals that hurt some investors. “This is a New Deal rule barring votes outside of bankruptcy in the belief that only a judicially supervised bankruptcy can be fair,” he said. “But today’s marketplace operates by deal-making, and institutional bondholders know what they’re doing. The Trust Indenture Act should be updated to the 21st century to permit bond contracts that allow for unconflicted, uncoerced votes of bondholders. If a vote and a recap could save the company from bankruptcy, the vote is beneficial.”

Caesars Entertainment
Education Management
Shareholder Rights
Bankruptcy
Debt
Lawsuits
Guarantees and Warranties


Families Tell Lawmakers of Americans Held Hostage in Iran

Abstract: Relatives of three Americans imprisoned in Iran and of a fourth who vanished there eight years ago gave emotional testimony Tuesday to lawmakers in Washington, pressing the Obama administration to do more to free the captives before the June 30 deadline for reaching an international agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program. It was the first time that the relatives of all four Americans — Amir Hekmati, 31, Saeed Abedini, 34, Jason Rezaian, 39, and Robert A. Levinson, 67 — appeared together, in the hearing room of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to publicly share their anguish and frustration over what they described as Iran’s illegal seizure of their loved ones. They said their family members had committed no crimes and were essentially political prisoners and hostages. Those themes have echoed through a history of mistrust between the United States and Iran ever since the countries broke off diplomatic relations more than three decades ago over the Tehran hostage crisis, in which 52 Americans were held for 444 days. While the fates of the three Americans imprisoned now and of the fourth, who is missing, are not part of the nuclear negotiations, lawmakers have increasingly framed these cases as barometers of Iran’s trustworthiness in honoring its international pledges. “If top Iranian officials cannot be counted on to assist these wrongfully jailed Americans, can they be counted on to honor the commitments they make at the negotiating table?” asked Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California and chairman of the committee. Representative Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat who represents Flint, where the Hekmati family lives, and who has introduced a bipartisan resolution demanding the immediate release of all Americans held in Iran, said in remarks to the committee , “Iran cannot hold American prisoners like Amir Hekmati if it wants to be taken seriously by the global community.” Later on Tuesday, the committee approved the resolution . American officials have said they are doing everything possible to free the prisoners and have repeatedly raised the issue with Iran on the sidelines of the nuclear talks. But it is yet another challenge for the Obama administration as it tries to persuade lawmakers suspicious of Iran’s motives. Iran has said that it regards the three imprisoned Americans as Iranian citizens because of their Iranian family backgrounds, making their cases an internal matter. Iranian officials have also said they have no knowledge of the whereabouts of the fourth American, Mr. Levinson, a former F.B.I. agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007. Some of the most poignant testimony was from Mr. Hekmati’s sister, Sarah , who recounted how he had first visited his family’s ancestral homeland in August 2011, having been reassured by Iranian officials that his Marine Corps service was not an issue. He was seized by Iranian intelligence agents, detained without his family’s knowledge, tortured, convicted of espionage and sentenced to death, Ms. Hekmati said. The punishment was reduced to 10 years in prison at a secret trial he did not even know about, she said. “For over three years, our family has been living a nightmare,” she said. Their father, a cancer patient, is steadily weakening but “holds on, hoping to hold Amir in his arms again, but fearful that he will not.” Ms. Hekmati chided the White House and the State Department for what she described as insufficient efforts, asserting, “We know they can do more.” Daniel Levinson, the eldest son of Mr. Levinson, said that the United States had “a moral obligation to help bring him home” and that negotiators must “take a more aggressive approach than merely asking for Iran’s help in locating him.” Naghmeh Abedini , the wife of Mr. Abedini, a pastor sentenced to eight years in prison for holding a Bible study in Iran, said: “This is the time that Saeed needs his country the most. Please do not abandon him.” Ali Rezaian, brother of Mr. Rezaian — a reporter for The Washington Post held since last July, whose closed trial on espionage and other charges began a week ago — expressed thanks for the attention being paid to the prisoners. “I am convinced that our efforts will soon lead to his release,” Mr. Rezaian said, “as well as the release of other Americans who have been unjustly held.”

Iran
Political prisoner
Kidnapping and Hostages
US Politics
Washington Post
Amir Mirzaei Hekmati
Robert Levinson
Saeed Abedini
Jason Rezaian
Barack Obama


Ex-Reserve Deputy in Oklahoma Is Convicted in Shooting Death

Abstract: A former volunteer deputy for a sheriff’s office in Tulsa, Okla., who fatally shot a suspect by accidentally firing his handgun instead of a Taser , was convicted on Wednesday of second-degree manslaughter, the volunteer’s defense lawyer said.. The volunteer, Robert C. Bates , 74, was a reserve deputy with the Tulsa County sheriff’s office when the shooting happened on April 2, 2015, during an illegal gun sales sting. He faces up to four years in prison. Image Eric C. Harris, 44, was fatally shot after fleeing an arrest in Tulsa, Okla. Credit Tulsa County Sheriff's Office The shooting was captured on video by a body camera worn by another deputy. It showed the suspect, Eric C. Harris, 44, who had fled from deputies, being knocked to the ground and ordered to roll on his stomach as officers struggled to subdue him. A voice on the video could be heard saying “Taser, Taser.” A moment later, there was a single gunshot, and a voice saying: “Oh, I shot him. I’m sorry.” Mr. Harris, who was black, was unarmed. Mr. Bates is white. The defense called Mr. Harris’s death an “excusable homicide” and argued that methamphetamine in his system and his cardiac health caused his death, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Bates’s lawyer, Clark O. Brewster, said an appeal would be filed. The shooting prompted several investigations, which revealed that Mr. Bates, a close friend of Sheriff Stanley Glanz and a volunteer reserve deputy since 2008, had donated thousands of dollars in cash, vehicles and equipment. Also discovered was a 2009 memo that questioned Mr. Bates’s qualifications. Sheriff Glanz defended the program . He told The Tulsa World that Mr. Bates was an old friend “who made an error.” A grand jury recommended that Sheriff Glanz be removed from office. He was charged with two misdemeanors for refusing to release the 2009 report and for false expense reimbursements. He resigned on Nov. 1. Vic Regalado , who was sworn in as the new sheriff on April 11, has outlined plans to reform and restore the reserve deputy program.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Armenian Power Members Arrested in Southern California Sweep

Abstract: GLENDALE, Calif. — Law enforcement officials cracked down Wednesday on a growing Southern California criminal organization with extensive international ties, arresting 74 members and associates of the Armenian Power crime group. The United States attorney’s office said that more than 100 people affiliated with the Armenian Power organization — some of them still at large — had been charged with narcotics trafficking and kidnapping as well as sophisticated white-collar crimes like a bank fraud scheme that cost victims at least $10 million. Nearly 100 of those charged were in Southern California, with the rest in Miami and Denver. In a region that has been plagued by gang activity, the Armenian Power syndicate evolved over the last few decades from a traditional street gang, based around East Hollywood, into a crime organization with ties to local Mexican gangs as well as international organized crime groups in Eastern Europe and Russia. Steven M. Martinez, assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles field office , said the technical sophistication of Armenian Power’s members set the organization apart from other gangs in the region, and helped it forge “thieves-in-law” relationships with other crime groups. “Armenian Power members are considered to be exceedingly resourceful, and have seized opportunities to collaborate with other crime syndicates,” Mr. Martinez said. “Sophisticated cybercrimes and identity theft are now as important a part of their criminal portfolio as traditional violence and fraud.” In one complex scheme, the organization’s members, according to federal indictments unsealed on Wednesday, installed credit card “skimming” devices at cash registers in 99 Cents Only stores across Southern California that they used to steal information from hundreds of customers and create counterfeit credit and debit cards. In another scheme that went after elderly victims, Armenian Power members, in collaboration with a local African-American gang, bribed insiders at banks in Orange County to gather information that allowed them to take over bank accounts. In all, United States attorney’s office officials estimated that the organization’s activities had cost victims at least $20 million. Andre Birotte Jr. , a United States attorney, acknowledged that members of the crime group had often been able to operate from inside prison. Still, he called Wednesday’s arrests a major step toward crippling the organization. “I think we have made an important first step in disrupting and hopefully dismantling this gang,” Mr. Birotte said.

Organized Crime
California
Armenian Power


Exonerated of Murder, Dewey Bozella Makes a Boxing Debut

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — The television crew had him up at dawn doing the Rocky fandango, dashing up the 72 stone steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and dancing around in triumph like another over-the-hill, underdog pugilist who had made it big. Cliché or not, it is hard not to imagine the familiar trumpet score along with the thwock, thwock, thwock of fists on punching bags as Dewey Bozella trains for one of the least likely boxing matches in history. After 26 years in New York State prisons, and two years after he was exonerated of murder, Mr. Bozella will make his professional boxing debut on Saturday in Los Angeles, at age 52, on the undercard of the light-heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins. (A mere 46 himself, Mr. Hopkins became the oldest fighter to win a major world championship this May.) Mr. Bozella’s other fight, in which he is seeking compensation for the half of his life he spent behind bars, may be even more daunting than chasing victory in the ring. But for now, Mr. Bozella is focused on what he says will be his one and only professional bout. “I want to go out there and give 100 percent and then move on with my life,” he said. “This is not a career move. It’s a personal move and a way to let people know to never give up on their dreams. My favorite quote is ‘Don’t let fear determine who you are and never let where you come from determine where you’re going.’ That’s what this is about.” The product of a violent broken family and a hard life on the streets, Mr. Bozella was a troubled 18-year-old in 1977 when Emma Crapser, 92, was murdered in her Poughkeepsie, N.Y., home after returning from playing bingo. Six years later, based almost entirely on the testimony of two criminals who repeatedly changed their stories, he was convicted of the murder. There was no physical evidence implicating Mr. Bozella. Instead, there was the fingerprint of another man, Donald Wise, who was later convicted of committing a nearly identical murder of another elderly woman in the same neighborhood. Mr. Bozella was retried in 1990, and was offered a deal that would let him go free in exchange for an admission that he committed the crime. He refused. A jury convicted him again. At Sing Sing, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Mercy College and a master’s from the New York Theological Seminary. And he boxed in the prison’s “Death House,” once the scene of electrocutions, then a boxing ring, where he became Sing Sing’s light-heavyweight champion. At parole hearings, he repeatedly refused to express remorse for the crime he did not commit. He would get out one way, he said, either in a box or as an exonerated man. The box seemed more likely. In the end, he was saved by a miracle. The Innocence Project, a legal clinic dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions, believing in his case but unable to pursue it absent DNA evidence , referred it to the law firm WilmerHale. Lawyers there eventually found the Poughkeepsie police lieutenant who had investigated the case. He had retired, and Mr. Bozella’s was the only file he had saved. It included numerous pieces of evidence favorable to Mr. Bozella that had not been turned over to his lawyers. On Oct. 28, 2009, he walked out of the courthouse in Poughkeepsie finally a free man . He struggled to find work, eventually counseling former convicts while teaching boxing at a Newburgh, N.Y., gym until ESPN became interested in his story. In July, at its annual ESPY Awards, he was given its Arthur Ashe Courage Award , whose past recipients have included Muhammad Ali, Pat Tillman and Nelson Mandela. The offer to box professionally came as a result of that appearance. But when he took the rigorous California State Athletic Commission test on Aug. 24 to get licensed to box in the state, he failed. After Labor Day, he began working out in Philadelphia with the trainers for Mr. Hopkins. They were skeptical. “I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to kill this old guy,’ ” said Danny Davis, one of Mr. Hopkins’s trainers. “There’s no way this guy can make it through my training.” But Mr. Bozella got tougher, leaner and more nimble, dropping 10 pounds in little more than a week. He sparred with, and took serious lumps from, a world-class fighter: Lajuan Simon, a middleweight title contender. Mr. Bozella took the test again on Sept. 29. This time he passed. Officials said Mr. Bozella was believed to be the oldest fighter ever licensed to box in California. Fighters that age are extremely rare but hardly unknown. “The Ultimate Book of Boxing Lists,” by Bert Randolph Sugar and Teddy Atlas, has a section on “Boxing’s Greatest Methuselahs” that includes Mr. Hopkins; Jem Mace, the legendary 19th-century English boxer who fought at 59; and Saoul Mamby, a former junior welterweight titleholder who fought in 2008 at the age of 60, making him the oldest fighter ever to appear in an officially sanctioned bout. Mr. Bozella, a cruiserweight — between light-heavyweights and heavyweights — will not be fighting for a championship; he is taking on Larry Hopkins, 30, of Houston, who is 0-3 as a professional (and is not related to Bernard Hopkins). His purse in the pay-per-view bout will be in the very low four figures. But even if hype and marketing are as much a part of boxing as quick feet and sharp jabs, Mr. Bozella said the bout was anything but a stunt. “You’ve seen the workout I went through, the pain, blood and bruises I’m getting,” he said after four rounds sparring with Mr. Simon last week. “No one’s giving me nothing for free. I can go out there and get knocked out, or I can knock the other guy out. It’s that simple.” Mr. Bozella hopes to open his own gym as a way to mentor youngsters, but beyond its Hollywood touches, his feel-good story turns cloudier. The day after he passed the boxing test, a federal judge threw out his lawsuit against Dutchess County and the City of Poughkeepsie over the evidence that was not turned over to his lawyers. The decision was primarily based on a controversial Supreme Court ruling in the case of Connick v. Thompson. By a 5-to-4 margin, the court, in a decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas in March, threw out a $14 million jury award to a former death row inmate freed after prosecutorial misconduct came to light. The decision stated that only a pattern of misconduct in properly turning over evidence could warrant financial compensation, no matter how egregious the misconduct against a single defendant. “I’m not going to disrespect the courts,” Mr. Bozella said. “I’d just like the justice system to be fair. Same thing with boxing. If the judges are fair, then the real winner wins. Just be fair. That’s it.”

False Arrests Convictions and Imprisonments

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP


Major League Baseball Embracing Twitter and Facebook

Abstract: CHICAGO (AP) — Bridget Houlihan rifled through her gift bag and pulled out a gray T-shirt with a circular Chicago Cubs emblem on the front and FOLLOWER emblazoned across the back, resting on a row of logos from the top social media Web sites. “This is awesome,” she said. Baseball thinks Houlihan is pretty sweet, too, and major league teams like the Cubs are hoping to entice more fans like her to come out to the ballpark. Social media nights have become a common part of the promotional schedule, and some of the best ticket deals and giveaways can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Savvy franchises are trying to create the right mix online — part content and part business opportunity — keeping their followers engaged while also padding the bottom line. Players like Cincinnati Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips and Miami Marlins outfielder Logan Morrison are Twitter superstars, but devoted fans across the country also are responding to the personal touch provided by the teams’ online presence. Social media nights vary from ballpark to ballpark, but some aspects are fairly consistent. The Cubs offered specially priced tickets and put together contests for their online fans. They encouraged their Twitter followers to use the hashtag CubsSocial to mark their posts throughout the night. “I think it’s going to be mandatory for all clubs to be not just involved in it, but go all-in, not just dip your toes in the water,” said Jamie Ramsey, who works in the Reds’ media-relations department and writes a blog for Major League Baseball’s Web site. “Teams are going to realize how important it is to help sell tickets, generate revenue and keep the fan base interested and engaged. “I think it’s still kind of new to everybody. Once teams realize how to master it and do what works for them, it’s going to keep growing and become as important as your marketing department, your sales department.” Houlihan, 33, from Chicago, attended the first social media night at Wrigley Field on Wednesday with her boyfriend, George Hayman, and his brother, Pete. She pounced on her phone when the Cubs announced a Twitter contest, and managed to post in time to win an autographed pack of the social-media-themed cards that were part of the promotion. “I think it’s really awesome to put together events like this,” Houlihan said. “I’ve been going to social media events for several years now, and I find it’s the perfect way to network because you meet people through Twitter and then you go meet them in person, and it gives an entree into what they like to talk about, things that you have in common.” The Cubs put about 500 specially priced tickets on sale for the promotion and sold each one. They are planning a second social media night for September. Kevin Saghy, a public relations and marketing specialist for the Cubs who helps run their Twitter account, said the key to generating revenue in the field was content. “If your focus is revenue and your content reflects that, I don’t believe that’s a wise strategy,” he said, adding: “That’s not why people are there. They’re there to converse. So we’ve taken the other approach where it’s definitely a priority for us, it’s something we track, and I can say from 2010 to last year, as we got more involved and offered better content on our platforms, we quadrupled our revenue. So we’re up about 300 percent.” Major league teams also are finding loads of intangible benefits to their social media presence, from increased brand awareness all the way down to a connection with a single customer who leaves a positive impression. Saghy will monitor Twitter for Cubs fans celebrating their birthday or making their first trip to Wrigley Field, then put together a bag of free goodies to place under their seat before they arrive. The Cleveland Indians have a designated social media suite at Progressive Field, and the team president, Mark Shapiro, has stopped by to visit with fans and answer questions. Several teams hold in-game scavenger hunts that award autographed memorabilia or team apparel, and some clubs put together contests that result in upgraded tickets for their online followers. “From a business standpoint, we use social media mainly as a way to connect with fans, give them unique access and provide a different perspective,” said Tom Garfinkel, the interim chief executive of the San Diego Padres. “Obviously, it can be used to communicate promotions and sell tickets, and we do that, to a lesser extent. We try very hard to maintain an authentic voice and make sure our followers are getting value from the content we are posting — not just being sold on something. We also use it to crowd-source ideas. It’s a living focus group.” The Washington Nationals will host a gathering of Twitter users on July 3 that includes discounted tickets and a commemorative poster. There are plans for a player meet and greet and a Twitter request line for pregame ballpark music. But the most compelling aspect of the promotion involves the location of seats for the event, which will improve as more fans say they will go to the game before tickets go on sale June 22. “It’s about fan engagement and the ability then to be able to enter into that discussion, and not being too corporate, but helping lead and participate in that conversation,” the Nationals’ chief operating officer, Tom Feffer, said. “Why? Because the social media platform is now an access point — to the club, to the players, to promotions, to ticket sales, to the story that’s being told. And the story really lives now in the social media world. It’s extended into that community more than it ever has before.” Dan Migala, a founding partner of Property Consulting Group who worked for the Padres and has consulted for other major league teams, says social media will become even more important for sports teams in the future. “I don’t think that there’s ever been a better time to be a fan than right now because for the first time really, as a fan, you have a two-way relationship with your favorite team,” he said. “For some teams, that’s a very exciting proposition and some, they’re probably scared to death. “But my dad and his generation, it was a one-way relationship. You bought a ticket, they took your money, you came to the game and you bought as much stuff as you could and they never responded to you. Now they can know when your birthday is. Now they can communicate and answer questions in real time. It’s a really powerful vehicle, but you have to embrace it.”

Major League Baseball
Social Networking (Internet)
Baseball
Chicago Cubs
Twitter


Stalled Economy Will Take Years to Regain Speed

Abstract: As the recession grinds on, more and more of the nation’s means of production — its workers, its factories, its retail outlets, its freight lines, its bank lending, even its new inventions — are being mothballed. This idled capacity, like baseball players after a winter off, takes time to bring back into robust use. So even if the recession miraculously ended tomorrow, economists estimate that at least three years would pass before full employment returned and output rose enough for the economy to operate at full throttle. While stock market investors have embraced tentative signs of improvement in the mortgage market and elsewhere, even a sharp pickup in demand for products and services will take considerable time to play out. The mathematics are daunting. The shortfall is running at more than $1 trillion in annual sales and other transactions. Only once since the Great Depression has there been such a severe loss of output — in the 1981-82 recession — and after that downturn, it was seven years before the economy regained the lost production. Recovery from the current recession could be similarly sluggish. New occupants have to be found for empty stores. Factory owners who are hesitant to ramp up production will wait until they are sure of demand. Hiring the right people for an operation will take time. And imports, entering the country in ever greater quantities, will slow any expansion by siphoning sales from domestic producers. Then there is the growth rate itself. In the six years of recovery from the 2001 recession to the current one, the economy grew at an average annual rate of only 2.5 percent, adjusted for inflation. If that growth rate were to resume, just $350 billion a year would be added back, requiring three years to restore the $1 trillion in lost capacity. But getting the economy to grow at all after so much output has been lost, and so many jobs, is no easy task. “Excess capacity, once entrenched, perpetuates itself, and that is what is happening now,” said James Crotty, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Companies cannot hire workers to make more goods and provide more services until their sales go up. But people can’t buy goods and services until they are hired — so the excess capacity just sits there.” It shows up everywhere. Lawyers are booking fewer hours. Retail space goes begging. Tourism is down. So is cellphone use, airline bookings, freight traffic and household borrowing, which is less than half what it was on the eve of the recession, the Federal Reserve reports. With orders dwindling, manufacturers are using less than 68 percent of the nation’s factory capacity, the lowest level since records were first kept in 1948. And while entrepreneurs are as inventive as ever, they may not be able to get venture capitalists to bankroll their creations. “We and others are funding start-ups as slowly as possible, or not at all,” said Howard Anderson, a founding partner of Battery Ventures in Waltham, Mass., and a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He cites as an example a hand-held device, similar in shape to an iPod, that restaurant diners would use to order food and drink electronically. Waiters would bring the orders, but not take them. “The prototype just sits there,” Mr. Anderson said, “and maybe the inventors will get funding to produce and market their device — and maybe their company never gets born.” If there is an upside, it is the absence of inflationary pressure. With so much excess capacity rattling around, shortages do not develop that would push up prices. Indeed, interest rates are kept low to encourage more borrowing and spending. Neither is happening. Instead, demand continues to shrink and idle capacity to build up. The Obama administration, like the Roosevelt administration 75 years ago, is trying to break this logjam through government spending, using it in effect as a substitute for consumers who are jobless or short of credit. The spending is also a substitute for companies that hesitate to extend themselves or see no profit in doing so. But the president’s solution, the recently enacted stimulus package , spreads $787 billion over two years. So even if every dollar of spending restored a dollar of output, President Obama would be nearing the end of his first term before output approached the level achieved just before the start of the recession in December 2007. Or so says Robert J. Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University who specializes in tracking the gap between actual output and potential output, a k a full capacity. The Roosevelt economy also languished well below full capacity, Mr. Gordon said, until the summer of 1940, when France fell to Hitler’s armies. From then until the attack on Pearl Harbor, 18 months later, a galvanized administration more than doubled federal outlays — soon accounting for $1 of every $4 spent in the country — and the United States entered the war with its economy operating almost at full capacity. (Government currently accounts for $1 of every $5 spent, barely more than in 2007, and most of that spending is at the state and local levels, the opposite of 1940-41, when federal outlays shot up.) “What you had was a revolution in the labor force,” Mr. Gordon said. “Women poured into jobs in droves, often replacing men, and every factory went to three shifts.” By V-J Day in 1945, the economy, propelled by war spending, was operating beyond what the experts thought of as full capacity, demonstrating the “squishiness” of the concept, as Mr. Gordon put it. Just the swing from one to three shifts alters capacity, he said, and so does the more intensive use of floor space. Capacity stretched again in the 1950s and ’60s, to feed demand created by the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and then again in the late 1990s, propelled by the dot-com boom. And there were downdrafts as recessions sapped demand, but none as punishing as the current one. Sixteen months into this recession, the economy is operating at 7 percent below its potential capacity, the Congressional Budget Office reported last month. If that were to continue, today’s $14 trillion economy would be a $13 trillion economy by this time next year. Labor is contributing hugely to the shortfall. More than 24 million men and women, or 15.6 percent of the labor force, are either hunting for work or working fewer hours than they would like to work, or are too discouraged to seek work, although they would take jobs if offered them, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. The ranks of this “underutilized” group — the bureau’s label — are up by 10 million since early last year. Generating work for so many people would take several years, even if the nation’s employers stopped shedding more than 600,000 jobs a month, as they have done since December, and began hiring robustly. “We have rarely been in this deep a hole,” said Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist for IHS Global Insight. His concern is that nearly every nation — not just the United States — is suffering from idle capacity as the recession that started in America grips Europe and Asia. Struggling for sales in a marketplace swamped with goods and services, companies are cutting prices and shutting down operations, trying to keep supply in line with dwindling demand. The cutback is particularly severe in the auto industry, which had the capacity, going into the recession, to make nearly twice as many cars in the United States as are now being sold here. Indeed, some of the factories being closed are unlikely to ever reopen. “Eventually, once this recession is over, we will fill up capacity,” Mr. Gault said. “Not only that, capacity itself will inevitably expand as the labor force grows and innovation kicks in. But the new capacity won’t be as great as it would have been if we had not gone through this terrible experience.”

United States Economy
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Economic Conditions and Trends
Layoffs and Job Reductions
Recession and Depression


R.B.S. to Rename Investment Bank as It Walls Off Retail Units

Abstract: LONDON — The Royal Bank of Scotland said on Friday that it would rename its investment bank as the lender outlined plans to comply with new rules intended to protect British retail banking businesses in a financial crisis. Banks in Britain are required to wall off their retail banking operations by 2019, a practice known as ring-fencing. The rules are intended to shield the retail business from the impact of investment banking and other activities in the event of another global financial meltdown. R.B.S., which is 73 percent owned by the British government after a bailout during the last financial crisis, said on Friday that it would transfer a majority of its British and Western European banking businesses to a ring-fenced entity by the end of 2018. The investment bank would be renamed NatWest Markets at the same time and would be outside the ring-fenced bank. “Our proposed future structure under the ring-fencing legislation and our brand strategy are key elements of the bank we are becoming,” Ross McEwan, the R.B.S. chief executive, said in a news release . R.B.S. said that NatWest would serve as the main brand for its retail banking operations in England, Wales and Western Europe, and that the Royal Bank of Scotland would be its core brand in Scotland. It would continue to operate under the Ulster Bank brand in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Ring-fencing has been one of the main issues Mr. McEwan has had to juggle as he seeks to turn around the lender’s fortunes. Last year, R.B.S. announced plans to dismantle its global investment bank and to reduce the number of countries in which it operates. The bank says it wants to focus primarily on retail and on corporate banking in Britain and Ireland. The bank is also seeking to sell its Williams & Glyn branch network. European regulators have ordered R.B.S. to spin off the network by the end of 2017 as a condition of its bailout. R.B.S. warned this year that there was “significant risk” it might not meet that deadline.

Banking and Finance
Royal Bank of Scotland
Ross M McEwan


Supervisor at Iowa Meat Plant Asks That Judge Step Aside

Abstract: A packing house floor supervisor who is facing criminal immigration charges stemming from his work at a meat plant in Iowa has asked the federal judge hearing his case to recuse herself, claiming she is not impartial. The supervisor, Martin de la Rosa Loera, worked at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, where 389 illegal immigrant workers were detained in a raid on May 12, the largest immigration enforcement operation at a single workplace. In a motion filed late Wednesday, Mr. de la Rosa called on Linda R. Reade, chief judge for the Northern District of Iowa, to step aside from the case, arguing that “a reasonable person might harbor doubts” that she would be neutral. The motion echoed criticism from criminal defense and immigration lawyers and some Congressional lawmakers about hearings, conducted after the Agriprocessors raid, that Judge Reade worked to organize and then presided over. In rapid prosecutions in temporary courts at a cattle fairground, 297 illegal immigrant workers were convicted and sentenced in four days. Most of them pleaded guilty to using fraudulent documents to hire on at the plant and were sentenced to five months in prison. Mr. de la Rosa’s motion argues that Judge Reade engaged in “extensive involvement and apparent cooperation with the government in developing a process which, by all appearances, was designed to produce conveyor belt justice.” Another Agriprocessors floor supervisor, Juan Carlos Guerrero Espinoza, filed a motion on Thursday seeking a change of venue for his trial. Mr. de la Rosa and Mr. Guerrero were arrested on July 3, charged with helping illegal immigrants obtain false documents to hire on at the Postville plant. Both men, the highest-level Agriprocessors managers to be arrested so far, have pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors declined to comment on the motions.

Agriprocessors Inc
Immigration and Refugees
Iowa
Illegal Immigrants
Meat
Reade Linda R


Alabama Has a Quarterback, McCarron, Who Can Win It

Abstract: TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Under Coach Nick Saban, the Alabama quarterback has been asked to go 50 miles per hour in a 55-m.p.h. zone. On third-and-12, the Saban quarterback will not always be asked to make the big throw downfield; often, he will be told to throw short and count on the receiver to break a tackle. Whether the quarterback was John Parker Wilson or Greg McElroy or, nowadays, A J McCarron, there has always been another firm hand — Saban’s — at the wheel of the offense. Tony Jones, McCarron’s middle school coach in Mobile, Ala., and the father of Alabama defensive back Phelon Jones , hears that kind of thinking and becomes agitated, especially when it comes to McCarron . He thinks it is a myth that the Alabama quarterback is a mere bystander who simply benefits from the talent the Crimson Tide boasts on defense and at running back. “Look at the Tennessee game this season,” Jones said. “Alabama tried every running play they could in the first half and didn’t get anything. It was 6-6 at the half because Tennessee had eight in the box to stop the run. Did you see Alabama then come out and start throwing the ball to start the second half? What was the final score, 37-6? “A J McCarron can win a game with his arm. You bet he can.” The running game and defense for No. 1 Louisiana State and the running game and defense for No. 2 Alabama might fight to a draw on Saturday night. If that happens, McCarron could get the opportunity to kick away those alleged crutches — defense and running back Trent Richardson — that have supported him through the Crimson Tide’s 8-0 start. “There’s no choke factor with that kid,” said Tyler Siskey, McCarron’s high school coach at St. Paul’s Episcopal in Mobile and currently the wide receivers coach at Arkansas State . “If he has to throw and win the game, he can throw and win the game.” McCarron, a 6-foot-4 sophomore, has certainly shown the ability to win a game. He has completed 134 of 200 passes (67 percent) for 1,664 yards and 10 touchdowns. At the same time, he follows the Saban mandate for his quarterbacks, which is to avoid losing the game with careless plays. He had a streak this season of 152 passes without an interception, the third longest at Alabama. The Crimson Tide might need McCarron to make special plays Saturday night because quarterback play has figured prominently in its recent games against L.S.U. Two years ago in Tuscaloosa, McElroy flipped a short pass to Julio Jones , who went 73 yards for a touchdown that gave the Crimson Tide a fourth-quarter lead on its way to a 24-15 victory. In 2010 in Baton Rouge, L.S.U. quarterback Jordan Jefferson threw a 75-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Reuben Randle as part of the Tigers’ 24-21 win. Alabama’s McElroy threw 34 passes in that game. McCarron was not permitted to talk to reporters this week because Saban felt McCarron had enough to handle in preparing for L.S.U. and perhaps the nation’s best set of pass rushers and skilled defensive backs. Tony Jones insisted that the hype around this matchup would not unsettle McCarron, and neither would the L.S.U. pass rush. Jones first met McCarron when he was 5. Jones had just walked into a crowded gym in Mobile. McCarron, who was trying out for a basketball team, became the starting point guard. The next fall, when he was 6, McCarron was the starting quarterback on a football team with 7-year-olds. Over the next 10 years, Jones said there were hints that McCarron had a certain something about him. In the seventh grade, Jones said, McCarron started throwing the regulation-size football used in high school while classmates were comfortable only with throwing the smaller, middle school football. “He’s always played beyond his years,” Jones said. Brandon Gibson , an Alabama wide receiver who played against McCarron in high school, said McCarron would manage the pressure of Saturday night’s game just fine. “It was always pretty hard to get A J intimidated because he always got back up swinging when we played them,” Gibson said. “He is the same way here.” L.S.U.’s ferocious speed can scare quarterbacks into turnovers and make them cautious. McCarron will have to guard against turning the ball over, but at some point Saturday night, he will probably have to make a difference. “He is aggressive in nature,” said Siskey, his high school coach. “When he reads the field he believes in touchdown, first down, check down. He likes to push it, and he’s accurate, but he also believes you can’t have negative plays. I think he’s going to perform Saturday night. I think he’s going to thrive on that big stage.”

University of Alabama
Louisiana State University
Football
Saban Nick
College Athletics
Football (College)
McCarron A J