Nuclear Inspection Visit to Iran Deemed a Failure

Abstract: DUBAI , United Arab Emirates — American and European officials said Friday that a mission by international nuclear inspectors to Tehran this week had failed to address their key concerns, indicating that Iran ’s leaders believe they can resist pressure to open up the nation’s nuclear program . The assessment came as Iran’s supreme leader lashed out at the United States , vowing to retaliate against oil sanctions and threats of military action and warning that any attack “would be 10 times worse for the interests of the United States” than it would be for Iran. While the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency , who returned to Vienna after a three-day mission in Tehran, said nothing substantive about their trip and were planning to return to Iran later this month, diplomats briefed on the trip said that Iranian officials had not answered the questions raised in an incriminating report issued by the agency in November. That report cited documents and evidence of experiments with detonators that strongly suggested Iran might have worked on technologies to turn its nuclear fuel into working weapons and warheads. Tehran has insisted its uranium enrichment activities are peaceful and has dismissed the evidence suggesting otherwise as fabricated or taken out of context, and has refused to engage in substantive discussions or inspections. Members of the I.A.E.A. delegation were told that they could not have access to Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an academic who is widely believed to be in charge of important elements of the suspected weaponization program, and that they could not visit a military site where the agency’s report suggested key experiments on weapons technology might have been carried out. “The agency expressed interest in all the areas of concern,” said a diplomat based in Vienna, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The team asked for access in the future to different types of sites and personnel, and that was denied.” One senior American official described the session between the agency and Iranian nuclear officials as “foot-dragging at best and a disaster at worst.” But a diplomat at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna said “disaster is too strong a word.” He added: “Iran has refused to address the issue for three years now. To be fair, you have to give them credit for at least discussing it. The dialogue is continuing, and that’s a good sign.” In Tehran, the speech by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , made during Friday Prayer and broadcast live to the nation, came amid deepening American concern about a possible military strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites by Israel , whose leaders delivered blunt new warnings on Thursday about what they called the need to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran a threat to its existence. Israeli leaders have issued mixed signals regarding their intentions, suggesting that they are willing, for a short time at least, to wait and see if increasingly strict sanctions, including a European oil embargo, will force Iran to give in to inspectors’ demands, and to cease the production of at least some of the uranium that outside experts fear could be turned into bomb fuel. The ayatollah also issued an unusually blunt warning that Iran would support militant groups opposing Israel, an action that some analysts said could be held up by Israel as a casus belli. Reinforcing the concern, ABC News reported on Friday that Israeli consular officials were warning of possible attacks on Israeli government sites abroad and synagogues and Jewish schools. ABC quoted an internal Israeli document as saying, “We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase.” Without being specific, Ayatollah Khamenei said that Iran “had its own tools” to respond to threats of war and would use them “if necessary,” the Mehr news agency reported. Ayatollah Khamenei referred to the sanctions as “painful and crippling,” according to Iranian news agencies, acknowledging the effect of recent measures aimed at cutting off Iran’s Central Bank from the international financial system. But he also said the sanctions would ultimately benefit his country. “They will make us more self-reliant,” he said, according to a translation by Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency. In recent weeks, senior American and European officials have visited Israel to counsel patience, warning that a military attack could backfire and strengthen what they called Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons . Two senior Israeli officials, including the head of the Mossad, the intelligence agency believed to be responsible for the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, visited Washington over the past week, for what officials described as sometimes contentious meetings. Israeli officials say they are worried that Iran may soon be immune to the threat of airstrikes as its enrichment facilities are moved into deep mountain bunkers. Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak , said at a conference in Israel on Thursday that if sanctions failed to stop Iran’s nuclear program, Israel would need to “consider taking action,” according to the newspaper Haaretz. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta , at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday, echoed the sentiment. “My view is that right now the most important thing is to keep the international community unified in keeping that pressure on, to try to convince Iran that they shouldn’t develop a nuclear weapon, that they should join the international family of nations and that they should operate by the rules that we all operate by,” he said. “But I have to tell you, if they don’t, we have all options on the table, and we’ll be prepared to respond if we have to.” In Washington, there was evidence on Friday that a new Senate bill for tougher sanctions, which could effectively sever Iranian banks from a global financial telecommunications network, was having an effect, even before a full Senate vote. The network, known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, would face unspecified penalties under the legislation if it failed to sever sanctioned Iranian banks. Swift, based in Belgium , said in a statement on Friday that it “fully understands and appreciates the gravity of the situation,” and was working with banking regulators “to find the right multilateral legal framework which will enable Swift to address the issues.” Expulsion from Swift could be catastrophic for Iran’s economy by blocking a major conduit for foreign revenue.

Ali Khamenei
Sanctions
Nuclear weapon
Iran
US Foreign Policy
Israel
International Atomic Energy Agency


Integrity Bank Executives Indicted Over Bribery

Abstract: ATLANTA — When government regulators here shut down Integrity Bank at the height of the recession , in August of 2008, the bank was seen as just another failed lender that had overvalued the real estate market and collapsed. But a federal indictment unsealed on Friday accused two former vice presidents at the bank of hastening its downfall by selling fraudulent loans to a hotel developer in exchange for bribes. The two executives, Douglas Ballard and Joseph Todd Foster, were charged with conspiracy, insider trading and bank fraud, according to the indictment. Mr. Ballard was also charged with bribery. The developer, Guy Mitchell, who received $80 million in loans, was charged with conspiracy and bribery. Founded on Christian principles in 2000 in an Atlanta suburb, Integrity used the motto “In God We Trust.” The bank gave customers free Bibles, and employees prayed together at meetings. Onetime investors included a Georgia state senator and the former CNN host Lou Dobbs. But in announcing the indictment, the United States attorney Sally Quillian Yates said Mr. Ballard and Mr. Foster had not lived up to the bank’s name or mission. “A number of banks have suffered from the plummeting real estate market, but this bank was robbed from the inside,” she said. Mr. Ballard, 40, and Mr. Foster, 42, could not be reached for comment on Friday and will be arraigned at a later date. Mr. Mitchell, 50, pleaded not guilty at a federal courthouse in Atlanta. A lawyer for Mr. Mitchell, Edward Garland, said his client had been a law-abiding, profitable customer for the bank. “The collapse of the economy caused the bank failure, not his activity,” Mr. Garland said. Georgia leads the nation in bank failures, with 38 banks having closed since 2007, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The state’s woes have generally been blamed on underregulation and overinvestment in real estate. But the Integrity case is a different matter. “These indictments are very unusual,” said A. James Elliott, associate dean of Emory University School of Law, an expert in banking law. From 2004 to 2006, Mr. Mitchell, who lives in Coral Gables, Fla., and has developed hotels, shopping centers and other commercial real estate, received the $80 million in loans from Integrity, the indictment says. His holdings include the upscale Casa Madrona Hotel and Spa in Sausalito, Calif., and the Royal Palm Hotel near Miami. The indictment charges that he obtained much of the money under false pretenses and deposited nearly $20 million in a personal checking account, with which he bought luxury items, including a $1.5 million private island in the Bahamas. The indictment charges that Mr. Mitchell made few, if any, payments on the loans. Instead, it says, he took additional loans, and his debt ballooned. In return for lenience, Mr. Mitchell paid Mr. Ballard more than $230,000 in bribes, the indictment says. It also accuses the two bank executives of engaging in insider trading by selling Integrity stock. “After passing out $80 million to the developer like it was Monopoly money, both officers dumped their Integrity stock before the failed loans came to light,” Ms. Yates said. But Mr. Garland, the defense lawyer, said Mr. Mitchell was in compliance with banking regulations and merely used a central bank account for both personal and business expenses, adding, “We expect to show that he is completely innocent.” Integrity reported assets of $1.1 billion when it was sold to a unit of the Regions Financial Corporation in 2008. The bank had been a prominent example of faith-based banking in Georgia, with five locations. The bank’s founder, Steven M. Skow, a Lutheran, said it gave away 10 percent of annual profits to churches and faith-based charities, donating $1.7 million in 2007. Mr. Skow said it did not discriminate against non-Christians. “We weren’t selling religion,” he said. “We just managed the bank on godly principles, like the golden rule.” Mr. Skow, who left the bank in 2007 and was not implicated in the indictment, said he knew nothing about the activities at the heart of the indictment. He said he had lost $22 million in stock when the bank failed. Ms. Yates, the United States attorney, said the investigation into Integrity was continuing.

Banks and Banking
Frauds and Swindling
Bribery
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry


Contractor on Oil Spill Has Settled With BP

Abstract: LONDON — The British oil company BP said Friday that Cameron International, one of its contractors in the oil well that burst last year in the Gulf of Mexico, had agreed to pay $250 million to settle claims related to the ensuing spill. Cameron, based in Houston, designed and manufactured the so-called blowout preventer on the drilling rig, which failed to stop the oil from spilling. The settlement, which is BP’s fourth so far with companies that worked on some parts of the well, was not an admission of liability by either party, BP said. The “settlement allows BP and Cameron to put our legal issues behind us and move forward to improve safety in the drilling industry,” Robert W. Dudley, the BP chief executive, said in the company’s statement. “Unfortunately, other companies persist in refusing to accept responsibility for their roles in the accident and for contributing to restoration efforts.” BP had already agreed to similar settlements with Anadarko Petroleum; a unit of Mitsui Oil Exploration, MOEX, which had stakes in the well; and Weatherford International, which made a part of the well. Those settlements totaled about $5.1 billion. Legal fights over claims worth tens of billions of dollars continue with Transocean, which owned and operated the rig, the Deepwater Horizon, and with Halliburton, which was responsible for cement work. BP plans to use the cash payment from Cameron to help settle individual and government claims and pay for costs related to the oil spill. The company had set aside about $41 billion to cover all costs related to the spill, including a $20 billion compensation fund. It said Friday it had already paid out about $7.5 billion to local businesses and individuals. BP said Cameron agreed that the well failure and the explosion of the drilling rig was the result of several complex and interlinked issues and not the fault of one single company. BP said it agreed to indemnify Cameron for compensation claims resulting from the accident as part of the settlement. Cameron said Friday that the settlement was “the right action as it removes uncertainty facing Cameron in the litigation associated with the Deepwater Horizon event.” “Though this agreement does not provide indemnification against fines and penalties, punitive damages or certain other potential noncompensatory claims, we do not consider these items to represent a significant risk to Cameron,” Jack Moore, the chief executive, said in a statement. Cameron said its insurance would cover at least $170 million of the settlement and that the company would have to take a charge in the fourth quarter for the remaining amount. The explosion in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, killed 11 workers and caused a spill of nearly five million barrels of oil. BP has continued to invest in exploration in the United States and the Gulf of Mexico, and in October received its first permit from United States regulators since the oil spill to drill a new well in the region.

BP Plc
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)
Cameron International


Sorry, Shoppers, but Why Can’t Amazon Collect More Tax?

Abstract: BEFORE settling on Seattle as the home of Amazon.com , the founder, Jeff Bezos, considered placing the company on an Indian reservation near San Francisco. “This way, we could have access to talent without all the tax consequences,” he said in a 1996 interview with Fast Company. The reservation couldn’t be used as a sales-tax haven, after all, Mr. Bezos said he learned, so he had to look elsewhere. Offering prices free of sales tax to customers in California, the most populous state, would be possible only if the company were placed elsewhere. “You have to charge sales tax to customers who live in any state where you have a business presence,” he said then. Today, Amazon collects sales tax in only five states, which gives it a continuing advantage over companies who do collect them in all or most states. Competitors aren’t the only ones hurt by Amazon’s stance on sales taxes: it also means the loss of considerable revenue to states and localities that badly need it. The final tally on this holiday season’s sales are not yet in, but Amazon’s revenue for the four most recent quarters, ended Sept. 30, approached $21.7 billion. Amazon will not disclose how much tax it collected on those sales. In addition to its home in Washington State, Amazon has facilities in North Dakota, Kentucky and Kansas, and collects sales taxes in these states. The company also collects sales tax in New York, but not cheerfully: Amazon has gone to court to overturn a law passed last year that compels it to collect from New York residents. Yet these five do not exhaust the roll call of states in which Amazon has additional corporate offices, fulfillment and warehouse operations, customer service and other facilities. Thirteen more (among states with sales taxes) are listed in the company’s last annual report : Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin. But Amazon.com does not collect for any state on that list. Amazon has found a way to put portions of its business into the tax-haven equivalent of reservations. By creating wholly owned subsidiaries for the parts that are treated separately for tax matters, Amazon is under no obligation to collect sales tax. This legal technique is called “entity isolation,” said Michael Mazerov, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. Amazon has offices in four cities in California, for example, including those that are home to the subsidiary that developed the Kindle . “Because the subsidiary isn’t selling the Kindle directly to consumers, Amazon can drive a truck through the loophole,” Mr. Mazerov said. He argued that Amazon is deliberately maximizing “the significant competitive advantage it gains over its rivals when they must add the typical 5 percent to 10 percent tax to their prices, but Amazon does not.” An Amazon spokesman declined to comment about Mr. Mazerov’s assertion. But in its last quarterly report , the company told investors in its discussion of risk factors that the imposition of sales-tax collection by more states or Congress could “decrease our future sales.” In 2000, Mr. Bezos appeared before booksellers attending BookExpo America and presented the case why his company shouldn’t be compelled to collect sales taxes for purchases made by customers other than those who lived in Washington. “In Washington State, where we have a presence, we get police protection, we get fire protection. We send our kids to local schools,” he said, according to The Associated Press. He said he didn’t understand why, “since we get no services from North Carolina, that they should be able to force us to collect taxes for them.” That was then. Today, employees of Amazon’s wholly owned subsidiaries presumably get police and fire protection and other services even though the company is not collecting sales taxes in the states where they’re located. And this may be a good time to point out that states and localities are having a bit of a tough time paying bills. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that state budget gaps for this year and next year combined will be more than $350 billion. Wider collection of the sales tax is not going to plug a hole of that size, but every billion or two would help. In California, the State Board of Equalization estimates annual tax revenue losses of $1.085 billion from unpaid “use taxes,” which are supposed to be paid for out-of-state purchases. Some 147 million people, or half the nation’s population, live in sales-tax-levying states where Amazon has facilities but does not collect tax on residents’ purchases. An Amazon spokesman described today’s sales taxes as “very complex,” but said the company would welcome a “simplified system, fairly applied to all business models.” If the complexities that its retail competitors have mastered really are an insuperable difficulty for Amazon, it could contract with a commercial vendor that specializes in these calculations, like Vertex, as Netflix does. Meeting the tax-collection obligation is “not very hard,” said Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive, in a comment posted last year on a New York Times blog. IT would seem hard for Amazon to argue that the complexities of collection are too overwhelming. It already handles the online sales of its partner, Target.com , for whom it collects sales taxes for all but two states that assess them. If Mr. Bezos wanted to do his part to avert layoffs of schoolteachers and firefighters and, yes, professors at state universities, he should start collecting the sales tax. Amazon’s in-house counsel should help the company meet its civic obligations — and toss “entity isolation” in the trash can. Amazon’s employees are too scattered, its customer base and its sales too large and the states’ fiscal crisis too grave for it to continue to play tax-avoidance games.

Amazon.com Inc
Taxation
E-Commerce
Sales Tax
Computers and the Internet


Small-Business Owners Await New Tax Breaks

Abstract: WITH the economy in terrible shape, owners of small businesses could use a break. The tax code offers many to choose from, including some recent additions, and others may be on the way. Businesses received a batch of concessions late last year, when several measures that expired in 2007 were extended to cover 2008, said Barbara Weltman, a lawyer and author of “J. K. Lasser’s Small Business Taxes.” These include a 20 percent credit on research expenditure and a provision that allows businesses that lease office or other space to recover the costs of improvements over 15 years instead of 39. A separate break, introduced as part of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, was a doubling, to $250,000, of the amount of equipment and other purchases that businesses could write off immediately, instead of a bit at a time through depreciation formulas, she noted. The figure may go even higher. J. D. Foster, a researcher in tax and entitlement policy at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, pointed to “a consensus in Congress to extend and expand small-business expensing.” It would help redress an inequity that pervades the taxation of business, he said: the fact that income is generally taxable immediately, while many costs — the other side of the ledger — must be deducted only over time, often a very long time. A more liberal expensing regimen “seems to be something that has broad consensus politically and is certainly helpful for small businesses,” Mr. Foster said. Just how valuable a benefit it is in a time like this, though, is debatable. “It doesn’t do any good if you don’t have enough income to use the deduction,” he pointed out. Ms. Weltman agreed, saying that the same applies to many other breaks. Doing even less good for small business are changes in some states that are seeking ways to shore up their depleted treasuries. She advised vigilance for “piddling kinds of tax increases that can impact small business.” One change to federal tax rules that could be useful in today’s climate, especially for businesses that were on a winning streak before slamming head-on into the recession, is found in the stimulus package now snaking its way through Congress. A provision would allow businesses that had a loss last year to offset it against profits earned as far back as five years. Businesses could immediately recoup tax paid on the profits that the 2008 loss wiped away. “Ordinarily when a business suffers a net operating loss, it can carry back the loss two years,” Ms. Weltman explained. Lawmakers “want to extend that to five years, so if you have a very big loss, you’re going to be able to get a refund now. They’re trying to let businesses get some money back so they can use it to survive.” The amount that can be carried back is limited to 90 percent of the loss; the rest is forfeited. This piece of the provision is known as “Rangel’s wrinkle,” she said, a reference to Representative Charles B. Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the panel that oversees budget matters. Deductions and accounting devices won’t prevent some businesses from being unable to pay their full tax bill. As with individual taxpayers, the Internal Revenue Service is willing to show businesses some leeway, a spokeswoman for the agency said. Debt collections may be postponed if matters have gone that far, and leniency may be granted when payments are missed under installment agreements. Whether or not they get a hand from Congress or the I.R.S., owners of small businesses can give themselves a break by structuring their affairs in a tax-efficient way. Fred Freifeld, an accountant in South Florida, tells fledgling entrepreneurs that they can reduce their liability by incorporating, but that doing so can also make tax matters more complicated, with more kinds of taxes to pay and more frequent payments. Small-business owners must make payments of estimated personal and, if relevant, corporate income tax, as well as self-employment tax, the equivalent of Social Security and Medicare taxes paid by employees and employers. That requires discipline and, of course, cash, which can be hard to come by when a business is new or operating in a weak economy. “Don’t get behind the eight ball as far as taxes go,” Mr. Freifeld said. “You’re not used to estimated tax payments; you’re used to being an employee and having taxes withheld. Taxes have to be paid quarterly, and there are penalties if you don’t. A lot of times people who start their own businesses don’t think about it.” IT is not as though business owners have nothing else to occupy their thoughts. The complexities of taxation and a concentration on other aspects of running a business may mean that new tax breaks are not as beneficial as these owners hope. “The tax code is a pain in the neck,” Mr. Foster said. “My sense is that small-business people have very little time or inclination to follow the threats or opportunities developing in Washington. If there were a proposal to reduce tax rates on small businesses, it would be more eye-catching.”

Small Business
Taxation
United States Economy
United States Politics and Government


Issue Is Payback, Not Bailout

Abstract: WASHINGTON So are you for the bailout or against it? Many people, I’m guessing, don’t have an immediate answer to the question. They understand that the financial crisis is serious enough to require a big response from the government. But they also hate the idea of rewarding Wall Street for its failures and are wary of yet another assurance from the Bush administration that this step will be the one that contains the crisis. Imagine, then, what it’s like to be in Congress this week. Most members of Congress have no expertise in the byzantine details of mortgage finance — or even have aides on their staff with such expertise. “The problem here is none of us has that kind of advice,” Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, who knows more about Wall Street than most of his colleagues, told me. Yet in just a few days’ time, members of Congress have to figure out how to improve the bare-bones $700 billion plan submitted by Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, and ultimately whether to vote for it. Their best shot at success depends on keeping the debate tightly focused on the questions that matter most. There are really only two: What steps are most likely to solve the immediate crisis? And how can the long-term cost to taxpayers be minimized? Everything else — reducing executive pay on Wall Street, changing the bankruptcy laws, somehow slowing the descent of home prices — is either a detail or a distraction. Over the last few days, Congress has done a pretty good job of identifying the biggest weaknesses in the Paulson plan, like its vagueness. But as was obvious at Tuesday’s much-watched hearing , members of Congress have also been spending a fair amount of time on sideshows. Usually, it would be easy enough to dismiss these sideshows as the inevitable gear-grinding of democracy. This is an extraordinary time, though. The credit markets are nearly dysfunctional, leaving the economy at risk of falling into a downturn unlike any most of us have lived through, and the government is about to commit billions of dollars after only a week of political debate. There’s no time to waste.  The first thing to understand is that a bailout plan doesn’t have to cost anywhere close to $700 billion, so long as it’s designed well. The $700 billion number that you see everywhere is an estimate of how much the government would spend to buy deteriorating assets now held by banks. Eventually, the government will turn around and sell these assets, for a price almost certain to be greater than zero. So this $700 billion is very different from $700 billion spent on a war or on Medicare . “Much of the discussion of the cost of the bailouts is getting it wrong,” David Colander , an economist at Middlebury College, says. “What matters is what price they buy the assets for and the price they sell them for. That’s where the real action is.” Figuring out how much to pay for the assets is the first problem. The drop in house prices and rise in foreclosures have made it clear that these securities are worth considerably less than banks expected. But there is enormous uncertainty about how much less. Based on the underlying fundamentals (like the current foreclosure rate and the one forecast for the future), many of the securities appear to be worth something on the order of 75 percent of their original value. But thanks to the fear now gripping the market — not necessarily an irrational fear, given that most forecasts have proven far too sunny over the last year — very, very few of those securities are trading hands. Among those that have, the sales price has been roughly 25 percent of the value. Which price is the government going to pay? As Mr. Colander puts it, that’s where the action is. It clearly shouldn’t pay 75 cents on the dollar, or anything close to it. That would mean the Treasury Department — which, in the end, is really you and me — was assuming nearly all the risk. But it probably can’t pay 25 cents. That might fail to fix the credit markets, because it would do relatively little to improve financial firms’ balance sheets. Firms might then remain unwilling to lend money to businesses and households, which is the whole problem the bailout is meant to solve. The most obvious solution is to pay more than 25 cents on the dollar and then demand something in return for the premium — namely, a stake in any firm that participates in the bailout. Congressional Democrats have been pushing for such a provision this week, and it’s one of the most important things they have done. The government would then be accomplishing three things at once. First, it would take possession of the bad assets now causing a panic on Wall Street. Second, it would inject cash into the financial system and help shore up firms’ balance sheets (which some economists think is actually a bigger problem than the bad assets). And, third, it would go a long way toward minimizing the ultimate cost to taxpayers. Why? The more that the government overpays for the assets, the larger the subsidy it’s providing to Wall Street — and the more it is pushing up the share prices of Wall Street firms. As Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, notes, the equity stakes allow the government to recapture some of the subsidy down the road. It’s a self-correcting mechanism. Some details of a bailout will have to remain vague, in part so that Treasury officials have the flexibility to respond to an obviously fluid situation. But Congress can still do a lot this week to make sure the final cost is a lot closer to, say, $100 billion than $700 billion. Instead of a laserlike focus on the big issues, though, Congress has been devoting a good chunk of energy to secondary matters. Some of the proposals, like changing bankruptcy rules to help some homeowners avoid foreclosure, are perfectly reasonable but just won’t do much to cure the credit markets. Others may not even meet that standard. One of the fashionable ideas of the week, supported by both Democratic leaders in Congress and John McCain, is to limit the pay of top executives at any Wall Street firm that sells assets to the government. In effect, this is an attempt to tell Wall Street how to split up a government subsidy among its various employees and shareholders. Personally, I couldn’t care less how much of the subsidy goes to Wall Street’s chief executives and how much goes to Wall Street’s shareholders. I care about the size of the subsidy that we taxpayers are paying. And in a frenzied week, any time spent on talking about C.E.O. pay is time not spent on designing the toughest possible bailout package. I found it telling that the relentlessly pro-business United States Chamber of Commerce has said it can support executive pay restrictions. The efforts to punish executives and help Main Street are based on a worthy instinct — to address not just the crisis but also larger problems like inequality. The best way to solve those problems, though, is to make sure the government spends as little possible on an effective bailout. A few hundred billion dollars saved today will leave a few hundred billion tomorrow to spend on a better health care system, a saner energy policy and a healthier economy.

Law and Legislation
United States Economy
United States Politics and Government
Stocks and Bonds
Executives and Management
Mortgages


Playwright Anna Mashutina Among Victims in Moscow

Abstract: MOSCOW — Anna Mashutina hated compliments. When praised for her plays, she would look down in embarrassment, or respond by listing their shortcomings. She was so bashful about her success that she sometimes seemed to be apologizing for it. When Ms. Mashutina was late to accept an award in Moscow on Monday for a screen adaptation of her play, “Pagans,” at first it seemed there were reasonable explanations for her delay; the master of ceremonies promised to keep it for her, a friend said. By then, though, Ms. Mashutina’s husband was repeatedly dialing her Ukrainian cellphone number to make sure she was all right. It rang and rang, and then a Russian man picked it up and answered, identifying himself as an agent of the Federal Security Service. That is how he found out she was dead, said Natalia Antonova, a friend. At least 35 people were killed at Domodedovo Airport on Monday when a suicide bomber set off an enormous explosion in the international arrivals hall. By Tuesday, it was clear that most of the dead were middle-age men who lived in Moscow, but others were passengers who had just threaded their way through customs into the crowded hall and paused for some reason. Among the youngest was Ms. Mashutina, who had just flown in from her home in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. At 29, she had the rippling blond hair and perfectly arranged features of “one of those fairy tale characters,” relieved by a lazy eye that signaled mischief, said Ms. Antonova, a Moscow journalist and playwright. “I fell in love with her,” Ms. Antonova, 26, said. “I think a lot of people did.” Using the pen name Anna Yablonskaya, Ms. Mashutina wrote plays that had drawn rapt admiration in Moscow, though not in her hometown, Odessa, where she joked that cultural grandees “cross themselves at the mention of new writing.” She depicted modern life with a severity that could be lacerating, but somehow in her plays, “the depressive, dehumanizing world reverses itself, like a falling cat, and lands solidly on its feet,” wrote the theater critic Pavel Rudnev. Even after her plays had been performed in Moscow and St. Petersburg, after she won an international residency in London, she had the diffidence of a neophyte, friends said. “She could never believe that Moscow would so easily accept and understand her – a provincial woman, a non-resident, a foreigner,” Mr. Rudnev wrote. “The terrible city of Moscow, that has now played such a tragic part in her life, somehow favored her, though according to all laws it should not have. She had the shyness of a provincial woman, the bashfulness.” Ms. Mashutina was increasingly reluctant to leave Odessa, not only because she was afraid of flying but because she hated to be away from her daughter, Masha. The girl’s birth three years ago had ushered in a period of extraordinary productivity in her work, Ms. Antonova said. Ms. Mashutina said that when she became a mother, “this whole question about the meaning of life became completely irrelevant,” Ms. Antonova said. Mikhail Ugarov, the director of Moscow’s Teatr.doc , said each of her recent plays was more interesting than the one before, culminating in “Pagans,” which will be featured at London’s Royal Court Theater in April. “Something opens up in your life when you have a child,” Mr. Ugarov said. “You begin to understand much more about people, especially in terms of drama.” Ms. Mashutina had seemed somber and preoccupied recently, Ms. Antonova said, and on Dec. 21 she set down this entry in her blog: “It seems to me that I have very little time left.” “To her, it wasn’t sudden, somehow,” Ms. Antonova said. “Her intuition maybe told her something was going to happen.”

Moscow (Russia)
Domodedovo Airport
Writing and Writers
Terrorism
Theater
Mashutina Anna
Bombs and Explosives


Murdoch Hears Critics as His Board Wins Election

Abstract: For a second year in a row, Rupert Murdoch faced shareholder critics of his News Corporation at the company’s annual meeting. And for a second year in a row their proposals for management changes were shot down. At the meeting, held at the Fox studio lot in Los Angeles, all of the company’s 14 proposed board members were elected. The company also defeated efforts to eliminate News Corporation’s dual-stock structure that ensures Murdoch family control and to require that its chairman be independent. Mr. Murdoch, 81, is both chairman and chief executive of the $59 billion media and entertainment conglomerate. Similar protests were mounted last year, after a phone-hacking scandal in Britain rocked the company, causing the demise of the 168-year-old News of the World and resulting in the arrests of dozens of people. As last year, complaints by big investors failed to override the Murdoch family, which controls about 40 percent of the voting shares. In his opening remarks, Mr. Murdoch spoke in contrite tones about the company’s efforts to deal with the fallout of the phone-hacking scandal. “We’ve had to work hard to make amends,” he said. “Very hard.” Mr. Murdoch described the company’s new compliance procedures and noted that last month Ofcom, the British media regulator, found British Sky Broadcasting — of which News Corporation owns 39 percent — “fit and proper” to hold a broadcast license. He also said that details about News Corporation’s planned split into two companies — one for its news and publishing divisions and the other for its more lucrative entertainment properties — could be revealed by the end of the year. Several people representing large shareholders were bluntly critical of the management. Julie Tanner, assistant director of socially responsible investing for Christian Brothers Investment Services, argued (as she did last year) that the company should establish an independent chairman. “The lack of internal controls at the company has had real and lasting repercussions,” Ms. Tanner said. “It has resulted in shuttering a newspaper, criminal investigations, canceled the BSkyB acquisition, eroded public trust and it has tarnished the company’s reputation.” Other investors, including the two big California pension funds — the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers, and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs — lodged protest votes by not backing the re-election of the full board, whose members include Mr. Murdoch as well as his two sons, Lachlan and James. The vote tallies, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Tuesday, show that Mr. Murdoch’s sons suffered significant nays, but won re-election by wider margins than they had last year. Two new directors were elected: Elaine L. Chao, a former labor secretary under President George W. Bush, and Álvaro Uribe, a former president of Colombia. Mr. Uribe’s appointment has been criticized because intelligence forces under his control have been accused of illegal wiretapping of journalists, human rights advocates and others. Among the other questions Mr. Murdoch fielded was a request to include more left-wing commentary on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which News Corporation owns. “We don’t interfere with the editorial page,” he replied. Perhaps anticipating the objections, Mr. Murdoch noted the company’s financial success. Its stock is up about 45 percent over the last year, he said. It closed on Tuesday up almost 1.7 percent, at $24.77. Last week, Mr. Murdoch drew criticism for some typically candid statements on his Twitter account, in which he said, “Any shareholders with complaints should take profits and sell!” On Tuesday, he made a similar statement. “When you buy the stock, you know what the company is,” he said. “If you don’t like the company, don’t buy the stock.”

Murdoch Rupert
News Corporation
News and News Media


Iraq to Greet New Year in a Hush, Officials Say

Abstract: BAGHDAD — The government ordered hotels and private clubs in Baghdad to cancel their New Year’s Eve celebrations, disappointing many Iraqis who had hoped they could celebrate the new year now that the streets are safer than they have been in years past. The parties were canceled because New Year’s Eve coincides with Muharram, a mournful religious period for Shiites. The government, which is dominated by religious Shiite parties, issued the order on Sunday. Several hotels and private clubs in the capital, which have been hosting boisterous parties recently, given the improved security situation, said none would be held on Wednesday in compliance with government orders. “The orders of the Ministry of Interior have been enforced at clubs, party venues and family clubs,” said Maj. Gen. Ali al-Yasseri, a police commander in Baghdad. “These places will be closed in accordance with Iraqi law.” He added, “We have no objection to those who want to have a dinner party without fanfare, noise, dancing and music.” Two Interior Ministry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety, said that several police officers sympathetic to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr had also been “politely” informing Baghdad liquor stores that recently reopened that they must close for the holiday. Many Iraqis, including Shiites, said the ban was unfair because this could be a momentous year for Iraq , with American soldiers beginning to pull out from urban areas. Last year there were several big parties and fireworks displays on New Year’s Eve. Mahdi al-Khayat, a Baghdad-based singer from a Shiite family in the holy city of Najaf, said that while the observance of Muharram was important, the rules should have been relaxed this year to allow Iraqis to revel in the improved security situation. “The country has been in a miserable state over the past three to four years,” he said. “It needs a jump-start with parties and optimism.” The Islamic New Year, which follows a lunar calendar and shifts each year, started on Monday. The first month of the year is called Muharram. It is a joyous time for Sunnis but not for Shiites, for whom its start begins the 10-day countdown to Ashura, which marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, in A.D. 680 at the hands of Sunnis in the battle of Karbala, south of Baghdad. Shiites in Iraq mark this occasion with the erection of symbolic black funeral tents in their neighborhoods. The death of Imam Hussein is lamented with prayers, rituals of chest beating and self-flagellation with chains. The bloodiest attacks against Shiites in Iraq over the past several years have been during Muharram, prompting the government to mobilize considerable resources each year to protect the mourners. “Everyone is free, but I will not have parties and singing,” said Dhia Namnam, a popular Baghdad D.J. and party promoter, who is Shiite. “If you want to have a party, do it at home. Most Muslims here are Shiites.” Managers at popular party venues like the Sheraton and Babylon hotels on Abu Nuwas Street in central Baghdad and the Hunting Club in the upscale Mansour district said all plans for New Year’s Eve festivities had been shelved. Mr. Khayat, the singer, said that he had been contracted to sing at a New Year’s Eve party in Beirut, Lebanon, but that he would not be going because he could not get a visa in time. Indeed, most well-to-do Iraqis, including many Shiites, have already made plans to celebrate New Year’s in Amman, Jordan; Damascus, Syria; or the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Ali Mohammed, a Shiite Kurd living in Baghdad, is headed to Sulaimaniya in Kurdistan for a party. In Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil, the upscale Erbil International Hotel plans two New Year’s parties with open bars, bands and dancing until dawn, according to the manager, Nabaz Ghafour.


Veteran Dispatcher Tries to Keep the Buses on Time

Abstract: Vincent Lepani has been dispatching buses on their crosstown routes from the same Upper East Side intersection for 21 years. And, in a city so vast that New Yorkers compartmentalize it into little villages and even blocks, Mr. Lepani has become the unofficial mayor of his corner at York Avenue and East 67th Street, where he stands outdoors, without the benefit of shelter. He lives with his wife, Marie, in the Country Club section of the Bronx and drives to work. On late buses, the passengers’ biggest complaint: We tell people the scheduled time. Then we give them an excuse that something happened in the neighborhood that caused a delay. And, if it’s a personal friend, I try to change the subject. We try to maintain and regulate service at intervals according to circumstances, traffic, fire, blockage by construction. The M66 goes to the West Side, so I always have to worry about what’s happening at Lincoln Center, too. Statistics will show there are more accidents on a clear, balmy day than in snow and rain. People are not as observant. They’re careless. On passengers, the drivers’ biggest complaint: I’m with the Transit Authority 40 years. I began driving a bus in 1969 and was an operator for 11 years. You get the same question 50 times on a route, and it may be that the 51st person is the extent of your courtesy. Also, you’re going through neighborhoods that are different night and day. These poor drivers have to have multiple personalities to deal with the people coming on. Taking a break: There are bathrooms all around — I use staff bathrooms at the hospital or the doctors’ locker rooms. The car is my locker. I have extra clothing, because weather is the biggest part of my day. I have tools if a bus breaks down. Also, my paperwork. No pigging out: I usually don’t eat during the day. We always have a big dinner, and I try to maintain my weight. On this job you can eat yourself to death without exercise. I don’t take a lunch if things are really crazy. A tree grows in Manhattan : This tree behind me is decorated with items that the children who pass by on their way to P.S. 183 or Woodward lose. If they see it, they can claim it. Making connections: Being on this corner for 21 years, I’ve seen children very young that are now in college. One kid who I drove to junior high school when he was 13 still calls me every Saturday from North Carolina. People who are visiting Sloan-Kettering will come out to clear their thoughts and we start talking. I meet people there who become friends. The only problem is, you never want to see people come back except for just a checkup. And if you lose contact, you don’t know if the worst has happened. Neither shy nor retiring: I’ll be 66 in January. I could have retired 15 years ago. I like people. I like my job. I like communicating. If I stayed home, what would I do besides listening to my records? And now, with CDs, I can listen on my way to and from work. Busman’s holiday: When was the last time I took a bus? I tell you the truth, it was last August. We were on vacation and went into the city. We live a mile from the subway station, so we took the bus home.

Transit Systems
Vincent Lepani
Upper East Side (NYC)
Careers and Professions


‘Flash Boys’ Fuels More Calls for a Tax on Trading

Abstract: It’s not every day that you find a fan club for new taxes, especially among economists and legal experts. But a burst of outrage in recent days generated by Michael Lewis’s new book about the adverse consequences of high-frequency trading on Wall Street has revived support in some quarters for a tax on financial transactions, with backers arguing that a tiny surcharge on trades would have many benefits. “It kills three birds with one stone,” said Lynn A. Stout, a professor at Cornell Law School, who has long followed issues of corporate governance and securities regulation. “From a public policy perspective, it’s a no-brainer.” Not only would the tax reduce risk and volatility in the market, Professor Stout said, but it would also raise much-needed revenue for public coffers while making it modestly more expensive to engage in a practice that brings little overall economic benefit. Despite these arguments, and support from many economists on the left for what European advocates have called a “Robin Hood tax,” even backers acknowledge the idea faces a struggle to become law, especially in the United States but also more broadly in Europe. Not only are Republicans in Congress against new taxes in general, as are many Democrats, but opposition from deep-pocketed campaign donors on Wall Street is enough to persuade even politicians who might favor the idea to back off. Last Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling allowing individuals to make much larger campaign donations to candidates and political parties strengthens the hand of donors. “The power of Wall Street can’t be overestimated,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, and a longtime supporter of a financial transaction tax. The concept of a financial transaction tax is hardly new. The economist John Maynard Keynes floated the idea in the 1930s and it has antecedents dating at least as far back as the introduction of Britain’s stamp duty in the late 17th century. Britain still imposes a modest tax, of 0.5 percent, on many share transactions, as do other countries at varying levels. But the publication last week of Mr. Lewis’s new book , “Flash Boys,” a devastating take on the rise of high-frequency trading in recent years, provided fresh ammunition for transaction tax advocates like Mr. Baker. It also taps into anger over various matters, like the widening income gap between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of society, the lingering threat of too-big-to-fail-banks and Wall Street’s remarkable comeback after being bailed out by taxpayers during the financial crisis. Image High-frequency trading accounts for roughly half of all stock market volume in the United States. Credit Brendan McDermid/Reuters Powered by high-speed computing and ultrafast fiber-optic connections, high-frequency trades take place in milliseconds, essentially anticipating big buy and sell orders to capture tiny variations in prices. Advocates say the practice improves liquidity by bringing more buyers and sellers into the market, in turn reducing the spread between bid and offer prices for individual stocks and lowering trading costs for everybody. Opponents of high-speed trading don’t buy any of that, to say the least. Mr. Lewis says high-frequency trading is essentially “computerized scalping” that allows trading firms with the fastest algorithms and speediest machines to front-run other investors. The spreads are tiny, but multiplied billions of times those fractions of a cent add up rapidly, whether as a windfall for traders or slightly higher prices for ordinary investors. The stakes are not small, nor is the issue academic. High-frequency trading accounts for roughly half of all stock market volume in the United States, and the rise of the machines has been blamed for May 2010’s “flash crash,” when the Dow Jones industrial average fell by 600 points in the blink of an eye, for no apparent reason, then recovered. The imposition of a financial transaction tax of three basis points, or three hundredths of a percent per trade, advocates say, would be small enough not to penalize investors but big enough to discourage high-frequency trading. On a trade valued at $30,000, it would yield $9 in taxes. “It eliminates the incentive to engage in this form of extremely short-term trading,” Mr. Baker said. “They may be very sophisticated in terms of their computer skills, but trading half a second ahead isn’t helping the economy.” It could also be a big revenue raiser, helping to narrow the budget deficit with a minimal effect on the economy. Estimates vary depending on exactly what trades would be taxed and by how much, but it’s a safe assumption that it could raise hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of a decade. Skeptics say a tax on financial transactions might seem appealing at first glance, but would not work so well in practice. Alan D. Viard, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argues it would essentially be a tax on savings, hitting people who invest in the stock market via mutual funds and 401(k)s. It would also create plenty of incentives for avoidance, he argues, something Wall Street has always been adept at. But that’s a long way off, especially in an election year in which rich donors and big corporations are expected to have more influence than ever. “This is a long-term project and we have the exercise of naked political power by Wall Street,” Ms. Stout said. Whatever its advantages, she said, before any such tax becomes law, “we may need to have campaign finance reform first.”

High Frequency Trading Flash Orders
US Economy
Books
Corporate tax
Michael Lewis


Garden School in Queens Will Sell Land to City, Not Developer

Abstract: A financially troubled private school in Jackson Heights, Queens, has agreed to sell an athletic field to New York City rather than follow through on a controversial plan to sell it to a private developer. In an agreement made final on Wednesday, the city will pay the Garden School $6 million for the land, nearly 30,000 square feet of open space that will be conjoined to one of the area’s few parks, Travers Park, a largely concrete expanse on 78th Street. Last year, the school, which was then over $2 million in debt, rejected a bid from the city, theorizing that a developer with cash on hand would be able to pay the school more quickly. “The school was saying at that time that they needed the city to hurry up because they were afraid of the length of the process,” said Daniel Dromm, a Democratic city councilman who represents the area and pushed for the city’s offer. Under the terms of the agreement, the school will receive about $800,000 in interest-free bridge loans from two organizations that preserve open space, to tide it over until the city money comes through, said Michael F. Rakosi, the vice president of the school’s board of trustees. The school will also have exclusive use of the field from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays. Those factors caused the school, which has 300 pupils and charges about $15,500 tuition, to change course, Mr. Rakosi said. He added that the often-heated campaign the community had waged did not sway the decision. “They were extremely rough on getting it, rough on me, rough on the school,” Mr. Rakosi said of those in the community who opposed selling the land to a developer. But, he added, “our job as board members is to do the best we could for our kids.” “We would like to do as well for the community,” he continued, “but my first charge is to take care of my kids.” City Hall officials took a lead role in the discussions. Howard Wolfson, a deputy mayor who was directly involved in the negotiations, said the talks “at times got very passionate.” “The community was very passionate about doing everything it could to preserve this as open space and have it for community use,” Mr. Wolfson said, “and the school very much wanted to reap fair value for the land. And we were asked to kind of step in and see if we could help mediate.” “At the end of the day,” he added, “everyone got something they wanted.” The bulk of the money for the purchase came from Mr. Dromm’s discretionary fund; the fund of the Queens borough president, Helen Marshall, and the city budget each contributed $1 million. Mr. Dromm said it would take additional contributions to renovate the park, which will not break ground for over a year. That cost and the financing source has not yet been established, he said.

Garden School
Private and Sectarian Schools
Jackson Heights (NYC)
Travers Park (NYC)
Land Use Policies
Education (K-12)
New York City
Queens (NYC)
Parks and Other Recreation Areas


Mets’ Davis Shares His Family’s Holocaust History

Abstract: Mets first baseman Ike Davis is half Jewish and not religious. But he is acutely aware of the two distinct branches of his family history, which have a common thread in World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. Davis, whose father is Baptist and whose mother is Jewish, had many relatives on his mother’s side who died in the Holocaust, and one great aunt who survived it. And his grandfather on his father’s side was a paratrooper in the United States Army who landed in France on D-Day in 1944 and later helped liberate one of the concentration camps. Davis said his grandfather’s experience there made him more sensitive when his son, the former major league pitcher Ron Davis, brought home a Jewish girlfriend, Millie, who would become his wife and eventually Ike’s mother. Davis said his grandfather was from a “particular time” and that “his family was a certain way” but that his “experience of opening those doors to the camp and the suffering he saw gave him an affinity for the Jewish people.” He said of his parents, “I think it made things easier for their marriage.” Davis embraces both sides of his family’s history, and on Monday, at Citi Field, he shared his story with a group of grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Davis met with about 30 members of 3GNY, a New York City organization, and told them the story of how he came to be aware of his own family’s ordeal on his mother’s side. As the group’s members listened intently in a lounge on the ground floor of the stadium, Davis told them how he first learned his great aunt’s fate after he began making a family tree in high school and realized he did not know much about his mother’s ancestors in Europe. “They didn’t make it out of the Holocaust,” Davis recounted his mother telling him. “That’s when I realized how brutal it was and how many people were killed.” In Monday’s meeting, Davis did not have the chance to tell members of the group about his grandfather’s role in liberating a camp, but he did recount how his great aunt had made a two-hour videotape detailing her experiences, and told them that he would like to meet with them in the future and share it with them. “I thought it was really cool meeting with them,” Davis said. “These are people around my age who are trying to keep alive the memory of their family members and loved ones, maybe even people they never got to meet, so people never forget what happened.” The founder of the group, Dan Brooks, said the organization began with six people and has grown to about 1,000. The mission is to educate people about the Holocaust by telling the stories of their families, to provide a forum where the grandchildren of survivors can connect, and to fight intolerance and ethnic violence wherever it exists. They have had speakers from Darfur and Rwanda address the group in the past. The meeting with Davis, Brooks said, was exhilarating. “The fact that he would take the time to meet with us and share his story was great,” Brooks said. “It really means a lot that he’s willing to do this.” One member, Leora Klein, said she was the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors and mentioned to the group how important it was that Davis was willing to identify himself with this cause because he was “young, successful and hot.” When everyone laughed, Klein added, “Hey, we celebrate life here.” Davis has not asked to be a spokesman for Jewish causes or to be a representative of any aspect of his heritage. But he readily accepts the role that he naturally fulfills as a promising player with Jewish roots playing in New York. “I understand that there’s going to be some attention on me for that, especially in New York,” he said. “But I’m not trying to be a role model for any religious reasons. I’m trying to be a role model, period, for everyone, by just being a good person, a responsible person who leads the best life he can. That’s for everyone, I think.” The Mets’ chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon, who is a member of the board of directors for the Holocaust museum in Washington, joined the meeting briefly and was there when members asked questions of Davis. One questioner was from Arizona, where Davis went to high school, and he asked the Mets’ rookie if he would ever play for the Diamondbacks. Before Davis could answer, Wilpon interjected with a firm “No,” to the delight of the others in attendance. Playing in New York just seems like a good fit for Davis, from both sides of his family.

Davis Ike
New York Mets
Holocaust and the Nazi Era
Baseball
Jews and Judaism
3GNY


Strokes Found Rising in Pregnant Women

Abstract: Even as the rate of strokes in Americans age 65 and older is falling, it is rising sharply among pregnant women, researchers reported Monday . Pregnancy-related strokes are “rare and deadly and increasing,” said Dr. Lisa Leffert, the lead author of the report and the chief of obstetric anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital. Increasing obesity rates among women of childbearing age; inactivity in people in their 20s, 30s and 40s; and older maternal age are contributing to the rise in hypertension and, consequently, strokes, experts say. A 2011 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a roughly 50 percent rise in strokes in women during pregnancy or after childbirth from the mid-1990s to 2006-07. The new study, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, documented a 61.5 percent increase from the mid-1990s to 2010-11. The study analyzed administrative data from nearly 82 million hospitalizations of pregnant women, and found about 31,000 hospitalizations for stroke over a 17-year period. “The trend definitely holds true, and the trend is alarming,” said Dr. Vineeta Singh, an associate professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, who specializes in stroke in women. “It reaffirms what stroke experts have been saying all along: Hypertension is the No. 1 risk factor for stroke, and it is preventable.” But high blood pressure is not the only risk factor. The new study found that about two-thirds of strokes hit women who did not have hypertension. “The unmeasurable factors that the study couldn’t address, like obesity and lack of physical activity, may also be playing a role,” said Dr. Ralph Sacco, who is chairman of neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and was not involved in the research. Researchers also found that the stroke rate increased 103 percent for women ages 15 to 44 who had high blood pressure during pregnancy or disorders related to hypertension, including pre-eclampsia. “It’s very worrisome,” said Dr. Cheryl D. Bushnell, lead author of the American Heart Association’s guidelines to prevent stroke in women, published in February. She did not work on the study. One limitation of the study is that it may be picking up on increased detection of strokes, not just rising incidence, because of the growing use of magnetic resonance imaging to find them, the study’s authors said. Women who are thinking about getting pregnant should be counseled on the risk factors for pre-eclampsia , which include obesity, diabetes and pre-pregnancy hypertension, said Dr. Bushnell, the director of Wake Forest Baptist Health’s stroke center in Winston-Salem, N.C. And they need to “be told that preventing pre-eclampsia could help prevent a stroke.” Many women who have high blood pressure during pregnancy do not realize they are five times more likely to have a stroke, or that certain conditions like congenital heart disease, sickle cell anemia and migraine also increased stroke risk. And often, women do not realize they can have a stroke well after giving birth. “We used to think after delivery, women get better,” said Dr. George Saade, the director of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “Now we are seeing more of these patients who had a type of hypertension during pregnancy showing up days or weeks later with complications.” There is growing momentum to tackle hypertension in mothers-to-be. In April, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a government panel, recommended that women at high risk for pre-eclampsia use a daily low-dose aspirin after the first trimester. In February, the American Heart Association said that expectant mothers with severe high blood pressure (160/110 or above) should take an appropriate blood pressure drug, and that those with moderately high blood pressure (150-159/100-109) should consider medication. “I’m glad this study came out the same year we are making a recommendation for aggressive treatment of high blood pressure in pregnancy,” said Dr. Singh, a co-author of the guidelines from the American Heart Association. Women who had pre-eclampsia face long-term risks, too. “Their risk of high blood pressure later in life is fourfold, and risk of stroke doubles,” Dr. Singh said.

Stroke
Pregnancy
Women and Girls
Hypertension
Pre-eclampsia
Research


New York Pays Settlement to Families of Two Men Shot by Police in 1995

Abstract: Fourteen years after two young robbery suspects were slain in a barrage of 28 police bullets as they lay on the floor of a Bronx apartment, New York City agreed on Friday to pay the victims’ families $1.15 million to settle a $20 million lawsuit that accused two detectives of inexplicable, execution-style killings. The settlement was reached by lawyers for the city and the families as a two-week trial drew to a close in the civil division of State Supreme Court in the Bronx. Both sides had completed a presentation of evidence and rested their cases, but no verdict had been rendered by the six-member jury. The case — one of the most notorious of a series of police shootings during the Giuliani administration that included the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999 — led to investigations by city and federal officials, protest demonstrations and a verbal confrontation between the mother of a victim and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on a radio call-in program. It also generated a 2002 documentary film, “ Justifiable Homicide .” The police concluded that the shootings were legally justified, saying the detectives felt they were in imminent danger. A grand jury declined to issue an indictment. The shootings involved two veteran detectives, Patrick J. Brosnan and James Crowe, who had been bodyguards for Mr. Giuliani during his 1993 mayoral campaign, and two youths with criminal records, Anthony Rosario, 18, and Hilton Vega, 21, cousins who, along with Freddie Bonilla, a companion who was wounded in the shootings, were all armed with semiautomatic pistols. At the time of the shootings, in the ensuing investigations and during the trial, the two sides offered drastically different versions of what happened in the apartment at 1740 Grand Avenue, in the Morris Heights section, shortly after 11 p.m. on Jan. 12, 1995. The city said the tenants, Jorge and Hermilinda Rodriguez, had called the police to report that Mr. Rosario and Mr. Vega had forced their way in the previous night and stolen $50, and said they expected them back a night later for more. The detectives — who retired on disabled status after the shootings — staked out the apartment the next night and confronted Mr. Rosario, Mr. Vega and Mr. Bonilla when they showed up. Detective Brosnan, with two revolvers, and Detective Crowe, with a semiautomatic handgun, screamed at the men to get down on the floor. The three went down, but a major point of dispute was the position of the suspects when the shooting started. During the trial, the officers testified that all three were lying face up, contradicting earlier depositions that they were face down. The officers said Mr. Rosario rolled to his side, drew a large silver gun and aimed it at Detective Crowe. Mr. Rosario was shot first, and the detectives said they opened fire on Mr. Vega after he grabbed a gun on the floor. Mr. Rosario was hit by 14 bullets, 6 of them in the back, and Mr. Vega was hit with 8 bullets, 5 in the back, 1 in the buttocks, 1 in the back of the head and 1 in an arm, autopsy reports showed. Seth Harris, a lawyer for the victims’ families, challenged the officers’ account in cross-examinations and testimony by Mr. Bonilla, and introduced forensic evidence that indicated many shots were fired into victims who were face down. He also introduced police tests showing that, while each of the victims had been armed, none of their weapons had been fired and none had had a round in the chamber. To inject a bullet into the chamber of a semiautomatic pistol, he said, the slide of the gun must be drawn back and released, an action that he said not only took time but “required both hands and some force,” a combination that he called highly improbable to execute while lying down and covered at gunpoint. “It would be suicide by cop,” he said in an interview. “The police used excessive force. There is no logical evidence that any of the boys drew their weapons.” Mr. Harris also insisted that the victims went to the scene to collect a debt, not commit a robbery, adding: “They made the mistake of bringing weapons.” The victims’ families issued no statement after the settlement, which was approved by Justice Alan S. Saks. Fay Leoussis, chief of the tort division for the New York City Law Department , which defended the case, said: “We believe our police officers acted appropriately when confronted with three armed gunmen after being called by a man in fear of his life. However, we have agreed to resolve these cases in light of the uncertainties of litigation.”

Rosario Anthony
Vega Hilton
Decisions and Verdicts
Police Brutality and Misconduct
Police Department (NYC)
Giuliani Rudolph W
Bronx (NYC)


Supreme Court Hears Arguments in International Child Custody Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday struggled to decide whether it was capable of doing anything to affect the outcome of a custody dispute before the Sheriff Court in Airdrie, Scotland . The case arose from the breakup of a marriage between Jeffrey L. Chafin, an Army sergeant and an American, and Lynne H. Chafin, a British citizen. The couple had a daughter in 2007 while Sergeant Chafin was stationed in Germany. Later that year, Ms. Chafin and their daughter moved to Scotland while Sergeant Chafin was deployed to Afghanistan. Shortly after the family was reunited in 2010 in Alabama, Sergeant Chafin sought a divorce in state court and asked for custody. Ms. Chafin, for her part, asked a federal judge in Huntsville to allow her to take her daughter to Scotland under the Hague Convention, which requires courts to make sure that custody decisions are made in the country of the child’s “habitual residence.” “The idea of the Hague Convention is just to get the case to a forum that’s an appropriate forum to decide the custody question,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained on Wednesday. The federal judge ruled that the child’s residence was in Scotland, and mother and child returned there 14 months ago. The question for the justices was whether Sergeant Chafin should be allowed to appeal to the federal appeals court in Atlanta or whether the exercise would be pointless. “Why would it make any difference?” Justice Ginsburg asked Michael E. Manely, a lawyer for Sergeant Chafin. Mr. Manely listed several possible consequences of an appellate ruling in favor of his client, including that the Scottish court might decide to stand down and allow the Alabama state court to determine custody. In making his case that an appeals court ruling would not be moot, Mr. Manely received repeated assistance from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote an influential dissent in an international child custody case while a federal appeals court judge in New York. (“I know this area very well,” she said Wednesday.) Justice Sotomayor noted, for instance, that Sergeant Chafin had been ordered to pay about $94,000 in legal fees, court costs and other expenses by the federal judge. But Mr. Manely resisted relying on his client’s financial exposure as a way to show that an appeals court ruling in his case could have real-world consequences. That aspect of Mr. Manely’s argument seemed to mystify several justices. “I don’t understand your answer,” Justice Antonin Scalia told him. Mr. Manely finally embraced the argument that the possibility of wiping out a $94,000 award against his client meant the case was not moot. But he did so gingerly, noting that the federal government had pressed the point in a brief supporting his client . Nicole A. Saharsky, a lawyer for the federal government, made a more vigorous argument on Sergeant Chafin’s behalf. An appellate decision could matter in several ways, she said, and that was reason enough to let an appeal go forward. A ruling from an appeals court, she said, “is a piece of paper in the world that has consequences.” Stephen J. Cullen, a lawyer for Ms. Chafin, made a simple and emphatic argument in the case, Chafin v. Chafin, No. 11-1347. Mr. Cullen was educated in Scotland and once practiced law there, and his accent seemed to lend authority to his position. “The effect that any appeal court could give would be zero in the Scottish court,” he said. “Nothing.” Justice Stephen G. Breyer initially resisted the argument, saying that Scottish courts, like American ones, should and would take account of the views of foreign courts on questions relevant to cases before them. Justice Ginsburg interceded, saying that the Scottish court would say of the child that “what her habitual residence was then” — in October 2011, when the judge in Huntsville made her decision — “doesn’t matter one whit to us.” Rather, Justice Ginsburg said, the Scottish court would want to know only where the child is living now, 14 months later. Justice Breyer appeared persuaded. “Thank you for Justice Ginsburg’s answer,” he told Mr. Cullen, jokingly. “She is quite helpful.”

Supreme Court
Child Custody and Support
Decisions and Verdicts
Scotland
Chafin Jeffrey L
Chafin Lynne H


Pirate’s Stumble Turns a Routine Catch Into a Winning Hit for Cubs

Abstract: Pittsburgh right fielder Gregory Polanco tripped and fell while trying to catch an easy fly, and the ball dropped for an R.B.I. single in the 12th inning that sent the host Chicago Cubs to an 11-10 win over the Pirates on Friday. The Cubs won their fifth straight game in unlikely fashion and matched their longest winning streak since last June. Chicago loaded the bases with one out in the 12th against Radhames Liz (0-1), and Matt Szczur lifted a routine fly to shallow right field that did not appear to be deep enough to score the winning run. “That’s not how we drew it up,” Szczur said. “That’s for sure.” Polanco came running in, with plenty of time to make the catch, then slipped and stumbled to the ground. He reached up with his bare left hand in an attempt to make a play, but he had no chance. It was a crazy ending, considering that in the exact situation in the 10th — bases loaded, one out — Polanco caught a longer fly by Szczur and threw out Castro at the plate to end the inning. PHILLIES 4, DIAMONDBACKS 3 Pinch-hitter Jeff Francoeur hit a go-ahead single in the seventh inning, helping Philadelphia beat visiting Arizona for its first three-game winning streak this season. Freddy Galvis hit a tying, two-run single before Francoeur came through. Elvis Araujo (1-0) retired the only batter he faced in relief to earn his first major league win. GIANTS 10, REDS 2 Brandon Belt hit a three-run homer, and Buster Posey added a two-run shot off Jason Marquis, leading San Francisco to a victory over host Cincinnati in a game that was uninterrupted while an outfield smokestack burned for an inning. One of the two smokestacks that shoot off celebratory flames and fireworks caught fire in the top of the sixth because of a malfunctioning propane valve. Firefighters extended a ladder from outside the ballpark and sprayed it. Belt and Posey homered off Marquis (3-3), who lasted a season-low three innings and allowed a season-high six runs. BRAVES 5, MARLINS 3 Todd Cunningham had three hits in his first major league start, including a tiebreaking single in the eighth inning, and Atlanta overcame two solo home runs by Giancarlo Stanton to beat Miami. Dee Gordon, the major league batting leader, went 3 for 5 for Miami, increasing his average to .433. INDIANS 8, RANGERS 3 Nick Swisher had three hits and his first three R.B.I. of the season, helping Cleveland spoil the celebration over Adrian Beltre’s 400th career home run in a win at Texas. Jason Kipnis singled four times, and Michael Brantley reached base in all five trips, with two doubles among his three hits. They combined to score five runs. ANGELS 3, ORIOLES 1 Jered Weaver allowed one run and three hits while pitching into the eighth inning, leading Los Angeles to a win at Baltimore. Albert Pujols hit his sixth home run for Los Angeles, which has won seven of its last nine. TWINS 3, RAYS 2 Danny Santana’s triple spurred a late two-run rally, and Phil Hughes pitched seven strong innings to lead Minnesota to a victory over visiting Tampa Bay. Hughes (3-4) gave up two runs and five hits and won his third straight start. ASTROS 8, BLUE JAYS 4 Dallas Keuchel remained unbeaten as Houston backed him with plenty of home run support in a home win over Toronto. Jose Altuve hit a three-run homer, and George Springer and Luis Valbuena also connected as the Astros won their third in a row.

Baseball
Gregory Polanco
Matt Szczur
Chicago Cubs
Pittsburgh Pirates


Success Brings Scrutiny to Chinese Mystic

Abstract: HONG KONG — Wang Lin, an exponent of the ancient Chinese practice of qigong, claims he has used his powers to cure cancer and has performed other mysterious feats, like conjuring snakes out of thin air. But none of his abilities were enough to ward off the fury of the Communist Party, which has accused him of using superstition to draw in gullible citizens and officials. For weeks, Chinese Web sites, newspapers and television have presented a swelling pile of accusations against Mr. Wang: bewitching and swindling patients, dodging taxes and associating with criminal gang members and corrupt officials. On Tuesday, The People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Communist Party, raised the pitch of the official condemnations and accused Mr. Wang of doling out “spiritual opium” to credulous cadres. Hiding in Hong Kong, where he fled to avoid possible arrest, Mr. Wang said Tuesday in an interview that he was the innocent victim of a political vendetta that has rippled outward from a business dispute in his hometown in Jiangxi Province in southern China. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China with considerable legal autonomy. Mr. Wang said he hoped that discussing his case would show he was the target, rather than the perpetrator, of corrupt political dealings. “It’s as if the whole country has turned against me, turning black into white and white into black,” Mr. Wang said from a chic hotel room where he has been hiding out from reporters and, his associates said, Chinese officials. “It’s truly beyond my comprehension.” While China’s leaders present their country as a model of resolute modernization, Mr. Wang and his sudden celebrity are flamboyant testament to the attractions and dangers of traditional, mystical beliefs that the government has often sought to suppress. After years of tolerating Mr. Wang, the government has turned against him as an example of the lurid excesses and ideological rot threatening the Communist Party, a theme that Xi Jinping, the party leader appointed in November , has emphasized. “The likes of Wang Lin are spiritual opium for some officials,” The People’s Daily said. “He is also a mirror that has exposed the unchecked avarice and ugly souls of certain officials.” The newspaper called on officials to renew their faith in Marxism-Leninism, a theme repeated several times by Mr. Xi. “The brilliant performances and string of swindles of Wang Lin and his ilk will not become chicken soup for certain officials’ souls,” the paper said. Separately, an official from the National Health and Family Planning Commission, Xue Xiaolin, said on the agency’s Web site that Mr. Wang was under investigation for illegal medical work, and warned “there will be no soft handling” if he is found culpable. “If I go back, I’ll certainly be arrested,” said Mr. Wang, wearing the glittery style of ring and watch favored by many newly wealthy Chinese people. He said he had made his money honestly, and never took money from officials or from ill people who sought his help. “I’ve always kept to myself, never promoted myself, but now it seems the media can treat me as a criminal, say anything about me.” Qigong is the ancient Chinese belief that the body’s energies can be channeled using breathing, massage and meditation techniques, and turned into a force for healing, health and — some followers maintain — uncanny supernatural abilities. Under Mao Zedong, qigong survived and adapted to Communist control, but along with other traditional beliefs it came under official suspicion. From the 1980s, though, qigong enjoyed a revival, becoming one of a number of traditional beliefs that found ardent followers and official patronage under Deng Xiaoping. After 1999, qigong again encountered official suspicion after the party suppressed Falun Gong, a spiritual movement whose beliefs included elements of qigong. A diminutive 61-year-old whose sculptured eyebrows and slicked-back hair are reminiscent of Liberace’s, Mr. Wang has attracted a following among businessmen, officials and others, according to Chinese news reports. His recent downfall started with a burst of publicity about his meeting Jack Ma, one of China’s richest entrepreneurs, and Liu Zhijun , the former railways minister recently jailed for graft. “The pictures of those meetings dragged Wang Lin into the limelight, and then the publicity became fatal when it attracted official attention,” said Sima Nan, a media commentator in Beijing who has denounced Mr. Wang. “Wang Lin has attracted a following among officials, and not just the ones who have been exposed on the Internet. We should make an example of him and those who abetted him.” Mr. Wang said his dealings with officials were entirely innocent. He said he met the former railways minister to discuss a business deal involving a friend. But he denied reports that he had assured Mr. Liu that he would not fall from power. Successful Chinese people can feel drawn to mystical beliefs that promise guidance in a giddily materialistic society, said Yu Shicun, a writer in Beijing who has studied traditional beliefs. Officials have also embraced feng shui , the ancient practice of arranging rocks, waterways and other physical features to fend off ill fortune and attract positive forces. “The education is so rigid that people then feel they lack a solid system of their own beliefs, and then they can easily fall into believing most anything,” Mr. Yu said. “China has these many traditions that appeal to people, but those traditions have become distorted or ruptured by the environment they must survive in these days.” Mr. Wang was coy about discussing reports that he has claimed to use psychic power to move heavy objects, and he said his performances involving conjuring snakes from thin air were “tricks” to amuse friends. “You can put the qigong label on many things,” he said. “I never promoted myself as a qigong master; others called me that.” But a friend accompanying him in Hong Kong was more enthusiastic about Mr. Wang’s powers. “I’ve known him for 20 years, and you wouldn’t believe the things he’s capable of unless you were actually there,” said the friend, Peng Taifeng, a coal trader from Shenzhen, the Chinese city next to Hong Kong. Mr. Wang said he had a permanent residence permit to stay in Hong Kong and for now had no intention of returning to mainland China. He likened himself to Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who briefly hid in a Hong Kong hotel after disclosing information about the United States’ intelligence-gathering efforts.

Wang Lin
China
Communist Party of China
Xi Jinping
Hong Kong
Falun Gong


Bedeviled by the Churn, Sprint Tries to Win Back Disgruntled Customers

Abstract: OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Sprint Nextel was in a crisis as Daniel R. Hesse took over the chief executive’s job last December. Sprint was reeling from an ill-fated merger with Nextel. Customers were leaving in droves. Executives were threatening to leave, while those who wanted to stay were worried they would lose their jobs. To motivate the staff, Mr. Hesse gave them DVDs of a documentary about Ernest Shackleton, the famous explorer whose ship was trapped in ice on an expedition to Antarctica. He liked the movie for its optimistic message: the crew survived. Shackleton’s ship did not. It was crushed by the ice and swallowed by the unforgiving sea. That parallel to Sprint was probably not lost on Sprint employees because many have been asking the question: Can Mr. Hesse save his crew and stop the company from sinking? The task will be as challenging as Shackleton’s. AT&T and Verizon, the industry’s behemoths, are recruiting Sprint customers who have grown tired of years of inattentive customer service and a lackluster array of cellphones. Investors too have lost patience: the share price has dropped 58 percent since May 2007. And despite early success with the new Instinct smartphone, Sprint’s challenger to the iPhone , the company still lags behind its peers. Mr. Hesse has much to do to repair a corporate culture so tattered that executives made bets he would not even show up his first day. “What do you do when you hit rock bottom?” asked Roger Entner, a senior vice president at IAG, a market research firm. “It’s going to take a lot to turn this company around.” In an interview in his office, with its remote-controlled fireplace and hand-carved wooden mantle reminiscent of Sprint’s headier days, Mr. Hesse was both practical and hopeful. He is realistic about how much work he and his management team have to do to save Sprint from being irrelevant. “It’s like trying to drink out of a fire hose,” he said. But at the same time he needs to inspire a team beaten down by bad press and even worse reviews from Wall Street and customers. Morale was so low last year that some workers called Sprint headquarters “Shawshank” after the Maine prison in the 1994 film, “The Shawshank Redemption.” “We’ve gotten some bad press and think we don’t deserve it,” said Brett Collins, who oversees one of Sprint’s customer care centers in Kansas. “We’re kind of tired of hearing about it.” Consumers, more to the point, are the ones who are tired. Tired, that is, of surly customer service representatives who do little to solve their problems. In the first quarter of 2008, 1.1 million of Sprint Nextel’s 53.9 million customers fled, and such churn — a measure of how unhappy customers are — is on the rise. Sprint has the highest churn rate among its peers, 2.45 percent, which is why Mr. Hesse’s first order of business was to make sure customers knew that someone was listening. Mr. Hesse, who once ran AT&T’s wireless unit, ordered new commercials and ended up starring in them himself. Mr. Hesse had complained to his advertising agency that he had not liked earlier ads, using glowing light drawings, because they weren’t personal enough. Mr. Hesse is an affable but imposing 6-foot-6 figure whose lanky frame posed a problem for producers of the commercials. The sleeves of a shirt they brought to the shoot were too short and had to be lengthened with a two-inch band of gray cloth. In the commercials, Mr. Hesse asks customers to e-mail him with complaints and to give Sprint another chance. In what it calls its most successful ad campaign in years, Sprint has received thousands of e-mail messages from customers who are only too happy to give Mr. Hesse a piece of their mind. “We needed to put a face on the company, let customers know someone was accountable,” Mr. Hesse said, adding that he reads daily summaries of those complaints. “I’m too busy to read every one,” he said, although notable messages make it to his desk. Mr. Hesse talks about accountability a lot, because he found there was little of it when he joined Sprint, he said. At Mr. Hesse’s first operational meeting with senior managers in early January, he demanded to know which of three top executives was responsible for appeasing disgruntled customers. No one raised a hand. One of them has since left the company. At a finance meeting the next day, he asked managers to explain how they came up with earnings projections. “I got blank looks,” he said. Mr. Hesse ended the meeting after 20 minutes. “Executives were not talking to each other; there were conflicts in our objectives,” said Paget L. Alves, whom Mr. Hesse promoted to Sprint’s president for sales and distribution. “If our biggest problem was customer service, we didn’t have one single person accountable.” The responsibility for Sprint’s performance, Mr. Alves said, had rested solely with Gary Forsee, the company’s former chief executive. “I hated that,” Mr. Hesse said. “I want someone else losing sleep too.” So much so that he made every executive in every department responsible for customer service, the most pressing problem facing the company. Mr. Hesse starts every weekly meeting with an update from Bob Johnson, Sprint’s chief service officer, who is in charge of overhauling the customer service operations. So far, Mr. Johnson said, the results are promising, although it is too early to tell if the campaign is successful enough to stem the tide of defections over several financial quarters. Sprint has hired enough people to answer 80 percent of the calls in 30 seconds. And Mr. Johnson wants to encourage more helpfulness with every call. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Sprint’s call service satisfaction has dropped 8.2 percent in the first quarter of 2008 compared with 2007. Mr. Johnson contends that the perception of its service lags behind the reality. Recently Mr. Johnson began sending out thank-you notes to helpful customer service representatives. They also get a bobblehead doll made in his likeness — bright smile, bald head, thumb turned up — with the phrase “Be the Reason” inscribed along the bottom. Mr. Hesse has made recent strides to improve Sprint’s position. He quickly cut the price of unlimited voice and data plans to $99. He completed an all-but-abandoned $12 billion deal with an upstart, Clearwire, to create a fourth-generation network to rival AT&T and Verizon Wireless. And Samsung’s Instinct phone, which Sprint began offering this month for $129, is selling out at Sprint stores, according to Mr. Hesse. But he really wants to change the corporate culture. Mr. Hesse raised anxieties among his executives by not announcing a new management team right away. Instead Mr. Hesse held meetings with midlevel managers to gauge who he thought was worthy of a promotion. He asked department heads who were the rising stars in rival departments, hoping to get an unbiased view of the performance of the midlevel managers. “Everybody sucks up to their boss,” Mr. Hesse said. To help him sift through the company’s priorities, Mr. Hesse brought in Steve Elfman, a longtime colleague and friend, to oversee technology and product development. The two had worked together at both AT&T and TeraBeam Networks, a Seattle start-up where Mr. Hesse was chairman and chief executive after he left AT&T in 2000. “I have no context of what Sprint was like yesterday,” Mr. Elfman said. “But coming from a smaller company, I’m saying to people here, we have to move faster. It’s not complex, it’s just hard work.” Mr. Hesse says he knows change is hard. He said that during the first meetings with employees, “the more honest the discussions, the uglier it got.” But those talks too were necessary if Sprint was going to put its past behind it. “A number of people hadn’t had a chance to vent; I think it was cathartic.”

Sprint Nextel Corp
Hesse Daniel R.
Cellular Telephones
Customer Relations
Wireless Communications
Telephones and Telecommunications
Advertising and Marketing
Executives and Management


Removal of Official Shows North Korea’s Kim Consolidating Power

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — In the first months of Kim Jong-un’s rule over North Korea , Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho was one of the officials most often seen with him. They inspected military barracks and reviewed parades together. Photos often showed the young leader leaning in to listen to the general, and laughing. Just a week ago, Vice Marshal Ri was seen standing next to Mr. Kim at an important state ceremony. But North Korea watchers were startled this week by the state-run Korean Central News Agency’s announcement on Monday that Vice Marshal Ri, chief of the general staff of the Korean People’s Army and until now widely seen as one of Mr. Kim’s most trusted mentors, had been removed from all posts because of “illness.” Since Mr. Kim replaced his father, Kim Jong-il, at the top of North Korea’s opaque hierarchy after the elder Kim’s death in December, analysts have scanned nearly every scrap of information coming out of the country for clues to the new leader’s intentions. With Monday’s development, some analysts said, one thing at least is clear: Mr. Kim is wielding his family’s favorite tool of control — using and discarding the senior officials around him like pawns on a chessboard. The inner workings of political power in North Korea have long been shrouded in mystery, with top officials often demoted, made to disappear, reinstated or killed in suspicious “traffic accidents” in North Korea, where few cars run. Ensuring such unpredictability was seen as a crucial method used by Kim Jong-il, and his father Kim Il-sung before him, to tame generals and party secretaries. “These guys live the life of a fly,” said Lee Byong-chul, an analyst at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul. “This signals that Kim Jong-un’s consolidation of power is proceeding faster than expected.” Early Tuesday, the official Korean Central News Agency said Hyon Yong-chol was named vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army, replacing Mr. Ri, The Associated Press reported. The circumstances of Vice Marshal Ri’s dismissal, which was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea on Sunday, looks highly unusual. Few analysts had thought he had health problems. Rather, the 69-year-old vice marshal looked vigorous, compared with the other aging officials surrounding Mr. Kim. Besides, octogenarian party secretaries and generals with serious illness were often allowed to keep their jobs until they died. But the Kim dynasty has a long history of seemingly wanton political persecution. In late 2009, when its attempt to crack down on black market activities and arrest inflation by radically devaluing its currency backfired, aggravating a food crisis and triggering highly unusual outbursts of protest in the totalitarian state, the government executed its top party financial official. The official, Pak Nam-gi, faced trumped-up charges of antirevolutionary activities, according to intelligence officials in Seoul. North Korea also cited “health issues” when it fired a police chief and a vice prime minister last year. It cited a traffic accident when it announced the 2010 death of Ri Je-gang, a key party official said to be a rival of Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of Kim Jong-un and another influential power broker. Vice Marshal Ri’s dismissal came as Mr. Kim has begun projecting himself as a leader self-confident enough to attempt significant departures from his father’s ruling style. Earlier this month, he was shown on state television clapping hands at such icons of American pop culture as Mickey Mouse and Rocky Balboa. He also appeared with a young woman believed by some to be his wife, which would mark the first time in many years for most ordinary North Koreans to see a first lady on television. Outside analysts and officials have closely watched how Mr. Kim would control of the People’s Army, a loyal guardian of his family’s dynastic power whose role grew even bigger under his father’s “military-first” policy. Until now, Vice Marshal Ri had been seen as a central figure in helping him consolidate his grip on the military. Vice Marshal Ri, once virtually unknown to outside observers of North Korea, rapidly ascended within the military and party hierarchy and gained political prominence when Kim Jong-il started grooming Kim Jong-un, his third son, as his successor after a stroke in 2008, and reportedly designated Vice Marshal Ri, a career soldier, as a mentor. He was made chief of the military’s general staff in 2009. He was promoted to vice marshal in 2010 and made vice chairman of the Central Military Commission at a party conference where Kim Jong-un joined the commission and was introduced as his father’s official successor. Analysts, however, began noticing a subtle shift in Vice Marshal Ri’s fortunes in April, when Mr. Kim promoted Choe Ryong-hae, a party official with little military background, to vice marshal and director of the military’s General Political Bureau, which oversees the political life and allegiance of top generals. Mr. Choe is considered a trusted ally of Mr. Jang, Mr. Kim’s uncle, who was entrusted by Kim Jong-il to safeguard his son’s transition to power, but whose personal ambition is cloaked in mystery. The post of the military’s top political officer had long been vacant under Kim Jong-un’s father, and Mr. Choe’s appointment was seen as Mr. Kim’s attempt to reassert the party’s — and by extension, his own — control on the military, analysts said. “It is likely that Ri Yong-ho was sacked while resisting the party’s attempt to control the military,” said Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the Sejong Institute. Vice Marshal Ri was one of the seven senior generals and party officials who joined Mr. Kim as he walked alongside the hearse during Kim Jong-il’s funeral in December. They were considered major figures who the Web site of the North’s main party newspaper once said “will lead the party and military during the Kim Jong-un era.” But another one of the seven, U Dong-chuk, once believed to head the secret police and spy agency, has disappeared from North Korean news reports since mid-March, prompting speculation about his fate. Although Kim Jong-un officially stuck to his father’s the military-first policy, the party’s growing control of the army and the fall of Vice Marshal Ri, a hard-liner, may soften North Korea’s external policy, said Mr. Lee, the South Korean analyst.

Defense and Military Forces
Appointments and Executive Changes
Korean Central News Agency
Workers' Party of Korea
Kim Jong-un
North Korea
Ri Yong-ho