Shunning the Bright Lights

Abstract: THURSTON MOORE isn’t prone to sentimentality, but there are times when what he calls “rightful romanticism” gets him in its grip. Mostly this happens when he is discussing the backdrop of his career as a pioneering rock ’n’ roller: In the early ’80s, when he left his hometown, Bethel, Conn., to form the acclaimed alternative band Sonic Youth in Manhattan, he found himself in the center of a creative force field so fierce no suburb could contain it. “The city in those days, especially the downtown scene, was wild territory,” said Mr. Moore, who recently released the solo album “Trees Outside the Academy” (on the independent label Ecstatic Peace!). “New York attracted this dynamic array of people — people from Jersey, people from Connecticut, people from all over who recognized this idea of a bohemian culture and were interested in creating their own experience. It was really kind of cool and beautiful.” Some of that energy can still be found in Brooklyn, he said, but gone are the days when clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City defined the music scene. Rock acts hoping to bust out of the New York suburbs and onto the charts no longer need to conquer the city first. Instead of converging in Manhattan to join forces, forge a scene and leave another storied club in their wake, they are making music in their own towns, on their own terms. The Internet has become an indispensable promotional tool and link to other musicians. Web sites like backpage.com , MySpace and TagWorld make scouting for producers or replacing rogue drummers as simple as sending out an e-bulletin; no flier-posting in sticky-floored nightspots necessary. The new formula for launching a rock career has indirectly delivered a shot of cool to a number of suburbs. My Chemical Romance’s jittery sound comes directly out of Belleville, N.J. Taking Back Sunday’s string of gold-selling albums have issued straight from Amityville, on Long Island. And although John Mayer made a name for himself in Atlanta coffeehouses, he cut his musical teeth in his hometown, Fairfield, Conn., where copies of his first recording, an unnamed eight-song tape made when he had just finished high school, now sell for hundreds on eBay. While some bands in the past may have been quick to disown their staid suburban roots, emerging from the land of picket fences and Little League fields is now more often a point of pride. Just ask Matt White. “My mom calls me four times a day — I’m very big into family, ” Mr. White, a 27-year-old singer-songwriter, said recently from across a booth at the Royal Cliffs diner in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., a restaurant he has been coming to since he was in sixth grade. Another thing he’s big into is not coming across like a jaded city guy. He has already won raves in People and Details magazines for his September release “Best Days” (Geffen Records). He has also been named one of Rolling Stone’s “10 artists to watch” for his relatable love songs. But Mr. White maintains a laid-back un-self-consciousness that he says could only have come from growing up the way he did, where he did. “In New York there’s a certain hip factor, but I’m not that hip,” he said. “The hipsters don’t really like me too much. Because, you know, it’s pop music — I’m not like the Strokes.” Mr. White grew up in a musical family in Englewood. “We’re kind of sandwiched-in with New York in this part of Jersey, but we’re very Jersey,” he said. “It’s definitely Bruce land. You can’t be a music kid here without being inspired by Springsteen.” Before Mr. White talks about opening for Mr. Mayer or Sheryl Crow, or about having his song “Best Days” selected for the “Shrek the Third” soundtrack, he talks about his family, including a grandmother who is 89, a masseuse and lives in South Orange. “My grandma was one of the first women orchestra leaders,” he said. ”And my dad is from Paterson, which is like being from Brooklyn. It’s really close-knit. People from Paterson recognize each other all over the world.” If family doesn’t factor as heavily into other suburban musicians’ identities, a sense of place does. “Any success we’ve taken with us comes from being from Connecticut,” said Kurtis John, the mohawk-topped lead singer of the Last Goodnight, a six-piece pop band based in Enfield. The group released its debut album, “Poison Kiss,” on Virgin Records in August. Its current single, “Pictures of You,” has reached No. 19 on the Billboard Hot Adult Top 40 chart. According to iTunes, it was downloaded free 420,000 times in the first week of October. “We’ve played New York a lot, but our story didn’t come out of New York or Boston,” said Mr. John, 27. “Everything we had that mattered came from building around Connecticut.” Mr. John traced the band’s progression from a bunch of Enfield High School kids desperate to play for anyone who would have them in the late ’90s to a musically tight outfit called upon in 2003 to open for Avril Lavigne at the Connecticut Expo Center in Hartford. He said the suburbs are now a band’s best bet for honing a sound that gets noticed nationally. “You can focus on your music a lot more when you’re from somewhere like Enfield,” he said from the road the day before an October homecoming show at Lake Compounce amusement park in Bristol, Conn. (The Last Goodnight will also play at Webster Theater in Hartford on Nov. 21, as the opening act for Elliott Yamin.) “We used to play in the basement every weekend, and we loved it,” Mr. John said. “It’s really hard to keep a band together in the city — everybody wants to do their own thing, and then you start splitting up and changing members. We grew up together, and we stick together. Why move to the city when you live two hours away?” Or, as bands from Long Island might ask, why move to Manhattan when there is so much credibility to gain in your hometown? “Even though it’s easier to say you’re from New York when you’re in a place like this, we always say we’re from Long Island,” said Ryan Hunter, the 20-year-old frontman of the Merrick-based Envy on the Coast, during an early October tour stop in England. “There’s definitely such a thing as Long Island pride — there’s a certain honesty and a certain rawness to the music that’s there in Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Glassjaw. We’re inspired by all those bands.” Early buzz about “Lucy Gray” (Photo Finish), Envy’s debut CD, released in August, landed the five-man band a spot on this summer’s Warped Tour. The act owes its out-of-the-gate success, Mr. Hunter said, to early fans who routinely went to see them at V.F.W. halls on Long Island and later followed them to Manhattan. “For a while we hated coming to New York to do shows,” he said. “We had to deal with parking and all these mundane details when we were so close to home, where you don’t have to deal with that stuff. There would always be this awkward buildup, no real climax. And then, fortunately, fans from Long Island came out, and that made us feel at home.” In a reversal of the pattern, the Brooklyn-based group Fire Flies, a four-piece alternative band that formed at Purchase College in 2002 and beat out 6,000 international acts to win the Emergenza Festival in Germany this summer, counts its days at Purchase as crucial to its development. The frontman, Dan Romer, a Brooklyn native, said he considered his home borough mostly somewhere to live affordably within proximity of many small places to play (including Crash Mansion in Manhattan, where Fire Flies recently attracted a packed house to celebrate the release of its debut, “Two New Sciences,” on its own Asteroid B-612 Records). Purchase, Mr. Romer said, is where the band won recognition and a fan base. “We became a band around a bunch of bands,” said Mr. Romer, 24, who cited Moby, Regina Spektor and Langhorne Slim as former Purchase students. “Purchase is this incredible school, with this incredible songwriting program. It was the most creative environment I’ve ever been in. And nobody played outside college. That was the only place everybody played.” Now, despite shows at Manhattan clubs like Crash Mansion and Arlene’s Grocery, Fire Flies routinely heads back to Purchase: On Nov. 8 they will play a show at the university’s student center. They will also perform at Tina’s in Stormville, N.Y., on Oct. 21 and at Spark Contemporary Art Space in Syracuse on Nov. 9. “Shows in the suburbs are pretty important,” said Alex Nackman, a 23-year-old singer-songwriter who lives in Manhattan but was raised in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. “You realize through touring you have to go to small cities.” Mr. Nackman has had a taste of success opening a 2005 Manhattan show at the Living Room for Norah Jones and getting his introspective songs played on MTV, but he finds himself playing as many small shows near his hometown as in his adopted city. He will appear at the Space in Hamden, Conn., on Nov. 4. “I started out with the mentality that I have to do a lot of big cities,” he recently explained over coffee in Manhattan before heading to Sleepy Hollow to work on songs for a forthcoming album in his parents’ basement. “But getting into those smaller areas provides a nice way to connect with people. It’s a pace thing — in the suburbs, you can have a drink with people after the show. In the city, people stop in and leave pretty quickly.” Or else, said Dylan St. Clark, lead singer of the Jersey City-based classic rock band the Milwaukees, they stop in and check one another out without much regard for who’s performing. “In the city everybody has their guard up — no one admits when they like something, and that rubs me the wrong way,” Mr. St. Clark said between shows throughout the Midwest to promote the group’s CD “American Anthems Vol. 1” (City Desk Records), released in September. “In the suburbs, people come out to hear rock ’n’ roll. For the band in those smaller-city settings, it’s not about who’s cooler than who, or who can shoegaze best. It’s about playing music.” Mr. St. Clark, 29, plays a regular gig with his three bandmates at Bar Majestic in Jersey City every other Thursday. When the Milwaukees do play city shows, he said, they are often better prepared than their urban counterparts. “We show up in a van,” he said, “and guys in New York don’t have a van, so they want to borrow all our equipment.” Also, he said: “In Jersey City, we have our own space, the room where we write and where we became a good band. In the city, we’d be sharing a room with 20 other bands. They’d give us from like 11 to 11:30 on Wednesdays to practice, and that’s not going to work for us.” If the suburbs are on their way to outshining the city in the race to produce rock greatness — if stability and humility are giving chicness and bohemianism a run for their money — certain regions may not have shucked off all their cool-squelching stereotypes just yet. “One thing that’s great about being a band from New Jersey is there’s a toughness associated with it,” Mr. St. Clark said, reflecting on why he would never move to Manhattan. “When you tell an audience you’re from Jersey, people automatically assume your dad worked in a factory and drank six beers a night.” Bands from Connecticut, he said, don’t have it quite so good. “Tell an audience you’re from Connecticut, and they’re still going to think your dad’s the president of Merrill Lynch.”


Slippery-Slope Logic vs. Health Care Law - Economic View

Abstract: THERE are lots of important things to worry about these days: terrorism, the economy, climate change and, for Yankee fans, the loss of Mariano Rivera. But worry is a scarce commodity. Even a mother — Jewish or not — can’t worry about everything. So it is important that we limit our worries to real as opposed to imaginary risks. One pernicious category of imaginary risks involves those created by users of the dreaded “slippery slope” arguments. Such arguments are dangerous because they are popular, versatile and often convincing, yet completely fallacious. Worse, they are creeping into an arena that should be above this sort of thing: the Supreme Court , in its deliberations on health care reform . There is a DirecTV ad that humorously illustrates the basic form of the slippery-slope argument. A foreboding announcer intones a list of syllogisms that are enacted on screen: “When your cable company puts you on hold, you get angry. When you get angry, you go blow off steam. When you go blow off steam, accidents happen.” Later, we reach the finale: “You wake up in a roadside ditch. Don’t wake up in a roadside ditch.” Although this ad is intended to be funny, arguments that make no more sense can and do affect public policy. The idea is that while Policy X may be acceptable, it will inevitably lead to the terrible Outcome Y, so it is vital that we prevent Policy X from ever being enacted. The problem is that such arguments are often made without any evidence that doing X makes Y more likely, much less inevitable. What percentage of people who are left on hold on the telephone end up in a roadside ditch? The anecdotal track record of people making slippery-slope predictions in the political domain is replete with bad forecasts. An opponent of women’s suffrage once predicted that giving women the right to vote would create a “race of masculine women and effeminate men and the mating of these would result in the procreation of a race of degenerates.” Another opponent, noting that women represent more than half the population, predicted that allowing women to vote would mean that all our political leaders would soon be women. For the record, women now hold 17 percent of the seats in Congress. Of course, it sometimes happens that society takes successive steps in one direction. Although women don’t control the government, there is thankfully much more gender — and racial — equality now than a century ago. But I think that few would be tempted to compare the pace of that progress with that of an skier on a downhill training run. Eugene Volokh , a legal scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, has written extensively on the theoretical mechanisms that could cause such effects. But he rightly notes that the topic “cries out for empirical research” to determine whether slope risk is predictable. Such research does not exist, he says, perhaps because it is so hard to do. ONE reason for the lack of conclusive research is that a society evolves slowly, and it can be impossible to attribute any particular change to the initial step that sent us sliding. Additional complications arise because our laws and norms often ebb and flow. The passage of Prohibition did not start us down some puritanical slippery slope, for example. Instead, Americans noticed that it was bad policy and repealed it. Michael Klarman , the Harvard legal historian, has even argued that court cases can create what he calls a backlash. The idea is that some law or legal ruling creates such a stir that people rise up and push things back further away from the initial starting point. In this case the slope is up, not down. Given how flimsy slippery-slope arguments can be, it is downright scary that they might play an important role in the Supreme Court decision on the new health care law. The case before the court is whether it is constitutional for the federal government to penalize people who fail to buy health insurance . As everyone concedes, we can’t include the popular rule that forbids insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions unless we encourage nearly everyone to buy health insurance. Although most legal scholars seem to think that the law is constitutional, there is considerable question about whether the Supreme Court will rule that way. And the slippery-slope arguments being used here are just wacky. Consider these now-famous comments about broccoli from Justice Antonin G. Scalia during the oral arguments. “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food,” he said. “Therefore, everybody is in the market. Therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.” Showing remarkable restraint, he did not mention anything about ending up in a roadside ditch. Justice Scalia is arguing that if the court lets Congress create a mandate to buy health insurance, nothing could stop Congress from passing laws requiring everyone to buy broccoli and to join a gym. He and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. were asking the solicitor general to explain what the principle would be to stop the government from going so far. If the law stands, Justice Roberts suggested, “it seems to me that we can’t say there are limitations on what Congress can do under its commerce power.” He added, “Given the significant deference we accord to Congress in this area, all bets are off, and you could regulate that market in any rational way.” Please stop! The very fact that a slippery slope is being cited as grounds for declaring the law unconstitutional — despite that “significant deference” usually given to laws passed by Congress — tells you all that you need to know about the argument’s validity. Can anyone imagine Congress passing a broccoli mandate law, much less the court allowing it to take effect? The irony is that Justices Roberts and Scalia are warning of a risk that they and their colleagues have the power to prevent. Surely, the justices have the conceptual resources to draw a distinction between the health care market and the market for broccoli. And even if they don’t, then all the briefs, the zillions of blog posts and a generation’s worth of economic literature can help them. More generally, we would be better off as a society if we could collectively agree to ignore all slippery-slope arguments that aren’t accompanied by evidence that said slope exists. If you are opposed to a policy, state your case based on the merits — not on the imagined risk of what else might happen down the road. The path of that road is so unpredictable that it may even produce a U-turn.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010)


Giants’ Umenyiora Perfects Pass-Rush Move, Building Career Around It

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora can trace the transformation of his career back to a single game film he watched in 2005. Umenyiora was poring over tape of a pass-rush move employed by the veteran James Hall when he became transfixed by the technique’s potential. It was sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful on the film. But Umenyiora thought he could make a minor adjustment and turn it into a tool of his own. And he was right. That day in the Giants’ film room was a seminal moment for Umenyiora because it led to the development of his signature technique: the freeze-chop-club move. Umenyiora distilled what the move has meant to his career: “Everything.” Umenyiora was so anonymous when the Giants drafted him from Troy University, in the second round in 2003, that he was not listed in a book of prospects distributed by the N.F.L. After nine quarterback-crunching seasons, though, he is one of the most feared pass rushers in the game, in large part because of his dangerous move. In fact, Umenyiora estimated that roughly half of his 62 career sacks came from the move. The move is at once remarkably simple and highly nuanced. The simplicity is in the logic of the move, which is essentially a stutter step. The nuance is in Umenyiora’s execution. As he rushes off the edge, Umenyiora starts the move by appearing to cut toward the inside of the blocker, usually an offensive tackle, temporarily stopping his feet. This is the freeze. Then Umenyiora cuts outside and swats away the blocker’s hands as he tries to stop him. This is the chop. Then Umenyiora shoves past the blocker. This is the club. “That’s one thing he’s perfected over the years,” the defensive coordinator Perry Fewell said. “It’s devastating. I like seeing it. It’s a work of art more so than just a move.” Umenyiora adapted Hall’s version of the move by adding the stutter step. Umenyiora thought the move would be more successful if he could force the offensive tackle to pause with the fake inside. That would enable him to zoom past the flat-footed blocker. So he tested it in practice against Luke Petitgout, and it worked. And that was how it started. Not coincidentally, Umenyiora had his breakout season in 2005, when he was named first-team All Pro after recording 14 ½ sacks. He had 13 sacks in 2007 and 11 ½ in 2010. At 6 feet 3 inches and 255 pounds, Umenyiora is undersize for a defensive end, and despite his deceptive power, his speed and quickness are his greatest assets against bigger, less nimble offensive tackles. The move takes advantage of those strengths. “He’s as fast as a safety and in a linebacker’s body,” said Jacksonville tackle Guy Whimper, who faced Umenyiora in the Jaguars’ Week 12 loss last season and in practices while playing for the Giants from 2006 to 2009. “As soon as you as an offensive linemen slow your feet down, he takes advantage of it. That’s what he wants you to do.” Umenyiora’s freeze-chop-club move has gained such acclaim that it has been replicated around the league, with Jared Allen of the Minnesota Vikings as one defensive end who has started using it in recent seasons. (Umenyiora said he was at first surprised to see another All Pro like Allen duplicating the move, but that it did not bother him.) Umenyiora’s game is more than one move, however. He can speed rush. He can bull rush. He can use a spin move. He will sometimes bull rush or use a spin knowing it will probably be unsuccessful simply to keep offensive tackles honest. It is Umenyiora’s ability to employ each technique well that makes his move so successful. “When he comes out of his stance, each move looks the same at the point of contact,” linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said. “Until he shows you what he’s doing, they all look the same. For a tackle who’s setting, you can guess, but if you’re wrong, that’s a sack.” Defensive tackle Chris Canty referred to Umenyiora as “a tactician” for how he uses his freeze-chop-club move in concert with his other pass-rush moves. Umenyiora’s devotion to film study helps, too. His teammates alternately call him a “film junkie” and a “film freak.” They sometimes will find him at the Giants’ practice facility at 7:30 a.m., alone, studying tape of offensive tackles. Umenyiora often works in private. Umenyiora scrutinizes film down to details like how offensive tackles make their first step, how far off the line of scrimmage they set their stance and how many hands they use to attack. He is so cerebral that Fewell consults with him: “So what do you see?” Umenyiora also continually practices the move. He chops and clubs his way past doors in the Giants’ facility. And if he passes teammates in the hallway, he might use it on them. “As a pass rusher, you have to a have a go-to move that you know you can do in your sleep,” defensive end Dwight Freeney, the Indianapolis Colts star known for his skillful spin move, said by telephone. “You have to develop a move that’s like second nature.” The highlight that perhaps best illustrates Umenyiora’s success with the move came in the Giants’ win over the Washington Redskins in Week 17 last season. It was a third-down play in the fourth quarter, and Umenyiora matched up with the 318-pound rookie Trent Williams, who was drafted with the fourth pick over all. Williams is remarkably agile and quick for his bulky frame, but Umenyiora made him spin like a top. For the slightest of moments, Williams’s feet stopped as he tried to counter what appeared to be a move to the inside by Umenyiora at the snap. Realizing too late that he was in trouble, Williams lunged at Umenyiora and punched at him with both hands. But Umenyiora swatted away Williams’s attempt and used his right arm to club his way past Williams. In a scramble, Williams dived helplessly after Umenyiora. By then, however, it was too late; Umenyiora was almost at his target. Umenyiora reached out with his right arm and smacked quarterback Rex Grossman’s right hand as he cocked to throw a pass. The football squirted free, and Umenyiora dived on it, recovering the fumble he had forced. Umenyiora celebrated by skipping off the field. Another sack, another forced fumble, another offensive tackle who ended up looking foolish because of one masterly move.

New York Giants
Umenyiora Osi
National Football League
Football


Russia Sees a Threat in Its Converts to Islam

Abstract: ERZURUM, Turkey — As a teenager in St. Petersburg, Maksim Baidak hung out with neo-Nazis and right-wing nationalists, but the Russian security services mostly left him alone. It was not until he abandoned white-Slavic supremacy and instead found God — as a convert to Islam and leader of a group of ethnic Russian Muslims — that he came under near-constant surveillance and was often forced into cars at gunpoint by security agents. Then, one morning in 2013, masked commandos from a special counter-extremism unit busted into his apartment and arrested him. For two days, he was interrogated, at times with a black hood over his head — “tortured,” he said, by choking, electric shock and death threats. “I was arrested like a terrorist,” said Mr. Baidak, 28, who now lives in Erzurum, a university town in northeast Turkey, where he fled after a judge released him for lack of any criminal charges. “Look at me, I am a journalist. I am a blogger,” he said. “I am a political activist, pro-democratic oriented, Sufi-oriented, but I was arrested like — I don’t know — bin Laden.” While nations across Europe are grappling with the relatively recent peril of homegrown Islamic terrorists, Russia has long lived in fear of a jihadist uprising within its own borders, particularly in the Caucasus, where it fought two brutal wars to suppress Muslim separatists. For President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, Slavic, ethnic Russian converts to Islam like Mr. Baidak pose an especially subversive threat, not only by stoking Russia’s deep paranoia over separatist extremism, but also by challenging the Orthodox Christian national identity that Mr. Putin has used to unite the country in place of Soviet Communism. The government also worries that ethnic Russian Muslims have shown a willingness to link up with an array of other anti-Kremlin forces, including nationalists, pro-democracy groups and even gay rights organizations. “I worked with the L.G.B.T. society; it’s unbelievable for Muslims, yeah?” Mr. Baidak said, describing a group, Islamic Civil Charter, now banned in Russia. “I don’t support this orientation of men and women, but I cannot change them,” he said in an interview. “If they are agents of freedom and we fight for freedom also, we fight for our common values. Let’s fight together, not be divided.” Russia’s security services, however, were not about to let that happen. An aggressive crackdown that began before last year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi never ended, leading to widespread arrests not just in the predominantly Muslim Caucasus but throughout European Russia and as far north as Novy Urengoi, just below the Arctic Circle, where the authorities this year demolished a building that had housed a mosque and an Islamic preschool. The pressure by the security services, in the name of combating extremism, has set off a wave of refugees seeking safety and religious freedom, especially in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Muslim leaders and human rights advocates say that Russia’s often brutal approach has also added to the appeal of the Islamic State, with the Russian authorities saying recently that hundreds of Russian Muslims have gone to Syria. For moderate converts who have fled Russia, one obstacle to obtaining political asylum, or even more basic social service help, has been a lack of awareness among some officials that Slavic Muslims even exist. “Lawyers who were to speak about our problem with the authorities, they said that the first thing to do was to explain to the Turkish government that there is a group of ethnic Russian Muslims, because no one has the slightest idea of this,” said Dmitri I. Chernomorchenko, who was born to Christian parents in Cherkessk in the North Caucasus, but took the name Khamza when he converted and now lives in Istanbul. “We know Tatars, Chechens; we know that Dagestanis of various ethnicities are killed, but that there are suppressed Russians and that you actually have a large ethnic group, we don’t know about this,” Mr. Chernomorchenko said, explaining the reaction he faced when he moved to Turkey. The aggressive scrutiny by the Russian security services on converts to Islam is based partly on a belief, shared by some experts on religious fundamentalism, that they are more likely to embrace extremism and carry out terrorist attacks. Many converts are adherents to the Salafist movement of Sunni Islam, which is often linked with extremism, if unfairly so, because it espouses more orthodox religious practices. Still, human rights advocates say the Russian security services take a heavy-handed approach that often persecutes innocent people, including native-born Muslims and converts alike. “Statistically, the number of converts who turn to fundamentalist Islam, as opposed to traditional Islam, is disproportionately high, so it’s not surprising that they draw the attention of the security services,” said Tanya Lokshina, the Russian program director for Human Rights Watch. Vyacheslav Ali Polosin, a former Russian Orthodox priest who converted to Islam in 1999, said that Christian Russians became Muslims for many reasons. Some women adopt the religion after marrying a Muslim man, and others are hoping to find a Muslim husband because of the religious prohibition on drinking alcohol. “They know Muslims don’t drink,” said Mr. Polosin, noting Russian society’s long struggle with alcoholism. Others, he said, are drawn for political or financial reasons, preferring Islam’s approach to money matters. And still others, he said, are drawn purely as a matter of faith. In any event, Mr. Polosin said, converts encounter the same deeply entrenched discrimination that all Muslims do in Russia, including efforts to prevent the construction of new mosques even as the population swells. Estimates of Russia’s Muslim population now range from 16 million to 20 million, including more than two million in Moscow, where there are just four mosques. “The Russian Orthodox believers are saying Moscow is our holy city, and we only want traditionally the cupolas of Russian churches,” Mr. Polosin said. “In Stavropol, there is a mosque which was built in the czar’s time, and they don’t allow it to reopen. They say that Stavropol would cease to be Stavropol, because Stavropol means city of the cross.” Grigory A. Mavrov, 35, a corporate lawyer who converted to Islam, now lives with his wife in a tidy apartment complex in Istanbul, where there is a community swimming pool. Mr. Mavrov, who helped found two Muslim groups now banned in Russia, has been arrested three times. The first time was at the center of the National Organization of Russian Muslims in Moscow. The second time was in St. Petersburg, where he and his wife were both arrested at the apartment where they lived with her aunt and grandmother. After that, they decided to leave for Turkey. Last year, Mr. Mavrov was arrested in Turkey at the request of Russia and ordered deported, although, he said, officials gave no reason. He is now fighting that decision and hoping to receive political asylum in Turkey or elsewhere. “Our activity was very peaceful,” Mr. Mavrov said in an interview in his kitchen. “We had no connection with anything which is extremist, terrorists, et cetera. We had not, and have not now, of course.” Still, he said, Moscow opposes any Islamic activity not affiliated with the Kremlin-sanctioned Council of Muftis, viewed by many Muslims as promoting a watered-down version of Islam. “They don’t want independent structures, independent organizations in Russia,” Mr. Mavrov said of the Russian government. “They are afraid of them. They need to control everything. If they don’t control it, they recognize it as an enemy.”

Russia
Islam
Vladimir Putin
Human Rights
Terrorism
Freedom of religion
Russian Orthodox Church
Caucasus


Politicians, and a Town in Flux, Come Calling

Abstract: NEWTON, Iowa With evening shadows encroaching, Nancy Watt has already worked a dozen hours at her coffeehouse on the courthouse square. But this is one of those strange, busy days when all of America seems to come to her door, so she bakes and cleans while waiting for a man who wants to be our president. She arrived so early this morning that the fall sky still held the pitch of night. But soon a soft glow emanating from Uncle Nancy’s Coffee House put on silent display a round, bespectacled woman of 59 in constant movement, sliding trays of dough into the oven, testing the espresso machine, grinding coffee. She always drinks that first hot shot of black energy, a sort of toast to herself, before opening for business. Ms. Watt moved here from Des Moines several years ago after seeing a storefront just crying out to be a coffeehouse. Soon she was her own boss, all but introducing Newton to the notion of sitting on a couch, sipping cappuccino, and enjoying an Iowan, bohemian moment. She is an outsider, of course, but found acceptance because her husband, Bill, grew up around here before going off to war nearly 40 years ago. He even worked as a bellboy at that large, weary building on the square, back when it was the place in town, the Maytag Hotel. Once, Newton was Maytag and Maytag was Newton; as late as eight years ago, the appliance company employed 3,900 people in this city of nearly 16,000. The factory workers in Plant 2 would stop at Uncle Nancy’s for preshift pick-me-ups, and the executives at Maytag headquarters down the street would come for lunch. But Maytag spun out of balance. Whirlpool bought it last year and began shutting down the Newton operations. In three weeks the last few hundred workers at Plant 2 will punch out, and that will be that. Say so long to Ol’ Lonely, the Maytag repairman, lonely because people here did their jobs so well. With the sun high over the courthouse clock tower, the lunchtime customers had no problem finding seats at Uncle Nancy’s; they haven’t since all those Maytag executives moved away. At one table, discussion focused on health insurance and layoff packages. But Ms. Watt, resting a moment to chat, said that Newton was working hard to redefine itself, that Iowa Telecom had bought some of the old Maytag buildings, and that, strange as it sounded, this was an exciting time. “I don’t know how to explain it,” she said. “It’s a different city.” Midafternoon evaporated like steam from an espresso machine, and now it is evening, nearly time for that campaign event. Two campaign workers arrive to festoon Uncle Nancy’s with posters, finding wall space between the displayed artwork of inmates at a local women’s prison. Here, a pastel called “Promise”; there, a poster saying “Biden.” Here, “Patience”; there and everywhere now, Biden, Biden, Biden. Bill Watt, the owner’s husband, lugs in a sound system. He is 61, large, with a gray-white ponytail and a way of sidestepping talk about his time in Vietnam. But he is still thinking about the reunion that he and four Army buddies shared here in Newton the other day. Seeing one another for the first time in 37 years, they talked about their youth given to war, and cried freely at a dinner table down at LaCorsette Maison Inn. “Eyes got wet,” he says. But his buddies had gone home, and now here is Mr. Watt, asking where he should place the speakers. Some 80 people trickle in; there are only three months until the caucus, and Iowans take it seriously. A local Democratic leader removes his “Hillary” button — “out of respect,” he says — and slaps on a Biden sticker somewhere low on his jeans. Everyone is whispering politics: Which way you leaning? Who you for? Everyone, that is, except Ms. Watt, who opens her place to any presidential aspirant — Hillary Rodham Clinton recently stopped by — and who refuses to reveal her own leanings. “I don’t talk politics in the coffeehouse,” she says. At 7:35, with dusk turned to night, the man who would be president, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. , Democrat of Delaware, arrives. He shrugs off his jacket, removes his red tie and takes his place near a sign at the counter that says, “Uncle Nancy’s Flavor Menu.” For most of the next three hours, Mr. Biden demonstrates why he is known as much for his prolixity as for his intellect. But these complicated times, these times of war, require complicated answers. As he speaks, Ms. Watt putters behind him, washing pots, drying mugs, working into her 15th hour, her 16th hour, occasionally sitting to listen, or to rest. At 8:47, Mr. Biden is discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At 9:45, he is reminiscing about a humbling moment he experienced as a young senator more than 30 years ago. At 10:04, he is talking about D-Day. By now, Ms. Watt is thinking about all those campaign signs that have to come down before she can go home. Finally, a few minutes before midnight, she leaves. Hers is a small place in the middle of this country, one that on this day played host to the interwoven past and present, to the fresh memories of old wars and fresh fears of current ones, to the presidential ambitions of Senator Biden and the modest hopes of Uncle Nancy and her city. Less than seven hours from now, Ms. Watt will have the soup on, some muffins in the oven, the espresso machine working. And when her first customer of a new day walks in, she will greet him with, “The usual?”

Presidential Election of 2008
Iowa
Coffeehouses
Biden Joseph R Jr


Man Arrested in the Killing of a Dentist

Abstract: It was a crude device, a silencer fashioned from a plastic bleach bottle wrapped in duct tape and left behind among the leaves in a Queens playground where a 34-year-old orthodontist was shot and killed as his estranged wife and 4-year-old daughter looked on. But the homemade silencer provided a crucial clue in the murder of Dr. Daniel Malakov, the police said yesterday, and led to an arrest that linked the killing to an extended family feud. Fingerprints on the duct tape were matched to a man with a family tie to Dr. Malakov’s wife, Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova, the police said. The original fingerprints had been taken when the man was arrested in 1994 for evading the fare at a Manhattan subway station. On Sunday, New York City detectives traveled to Chamblee, Ga., a community of about 10,000 near Atlanta. With deputies of the DeKalb County sheriff’s office, they arrested the man, Mikhail Mallayev, 50, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who is related to a sister of Dr. Borukhova. Dr. Borukhova, a specialist in internal medicine, was involved in a contentious divorce and custody battle with Dr. Malakov when he was murdered on Oct. 28. Mr. Mallayev was charged with second-degree murder and possession of an illegal weapon. At a hearing in Georgia, he declined to sign an extradition order, and he was being held without bond in the DeKalb County jail. The arrest appeared to reignite suspicions between two large families of immigrants in Queens who had fought bitterly over the breakdown of the marriage of Dr. Malakov and Dr. Borukhova, and over the custody of their daughter, Michelle. Relatives of Dr. Malakov have maintained in court and in public statements that they were threatened by Dr. Borukhova’s family. “Finally, they find it,” Joseph Malakov, 40, a pharmacist and a brother of Dr. Malakov, said, referring to the arrest. Mr. Malakov joined other members of the family yesterday at the Rego Park home of Malka Malakov, 63, their mother. Dr. Borukhova has repeatedly denied any involvement in her husband’s death. She could not be located for comment yesterday, but a woman who identified herself only as one of Dr. Borukhova’s sisters said, “She was not involved, she never had a thought of killing him.” “She just wanted him to be out of their lives, but in a peaceful way, not through death,” the woman said through the partly opened front door of a Rego Park apartment building. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who announced Mr. Mallayev’s arrest at a news conference, declined to say whether anyone might have helped Mr. Mallayev in planning or carrying out the murder. But Mr. Kelly said the arrest of a murder suspect in Georgia based on a set of 14-year-old fingerprints qualified as an example of solid police work. “I think it just shows the importance of accurate record-keeping and making sure that when you do arrest someone fingerprints are taken,” he said. Still, the arrest of Mr. Mallayev left questions about motive, and about his relationship to the dentist or his wife. Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department, said late yesterday that he did not know how Mr. Mallayev was related to Dr. Borukhova’s sister, but said he was a citizen who had been living in the United States for 19 years. Members of the Malakov and Borukhova families said either that they did not know Mr. Mallayev, or had only vague recollections of him. Malka Malakov said she recalled seeing someone who looked like Mr. Mallayev only at a family wedding on Long Island in 2002. The brazen attack on Dr. Malakov, who was shot three times by a gunman when he arrived at 11 a.m. to pick up Michelle from her mother at the Annadale Playground, sent tremors through a section of Rego Park that has attracted a close-knit community of Jewish immigrants from Russia. Resentments between the two families appear to have heightened in custody proceedings since the death of Dr. Malakov, who had been granted temporary custody of Michelle during bitter divorce proceedings. Dr. Borukhova has been charged by the Administration for Children’s Services with neglecting Michelle, and the girl remains in foster care despite her mother’s appeals. Mr. Mallayev was arrested without incident outside his Georgia home, the police said. At a hearing on Monday before a magistrate in DeKalb County, he declined to sign a waiver for extradition. Mikki Jones, a spokeswoman for the DeKalb County sheriff, said that another hearing was scheduled for Dec. 19, and that Mr. Mallayev would be brought to New York to face charges after a governor’s warrant was issued, a routine procedure in which the governor of one state formally requests action by his counterpart in another state. Commissioner Kelly yesterday attributed the arrest of Mr. Mallayev to “very difficult work, done manually” by detectives in the latent-print section of the department’s detective bureau. The name of Mr. Mallayev, who was arrested for subway fare evasion 14 years ago, was the 23rd turned over to the fingerprint team, Detective Daniel Perruzza said. “It takes patience,” he said. “But when we get a match like that, we get excited.”

Murders and Attempted Murders
Families and Family Life
Police
Queens (NYC)


Kenyans Win Chicago Marathon

Abstract: CHICAGO — It was quite a day for the Kenyans. Eliud Kipchoge had an ear-to-ear grin as he pulled away to win the Chicago Marathon on Sunday. Minutes later, Rita Jeptoo raised her arms in victory and then sank to her knees. Kipchoge led a 1-2-3 finish for his country on Sunday, while Jeptoo again took home the women’s prize in Chicago. Kipchoge pulled away over the last two miles for his first major marathon victory, finishing in 2 hours 4 minutes 11 seconds. He was followed by Sammy Kitwara in 2:04:28 and Dickson Chumba in 2:04:32. Jeptoo was timed in 2:24:35 in winning her fourth consecutive major marathon. She also won the Boston Marathon in April and in 2013, and she captured the 2013-14 World Marathon Majors points championship. Mare Dibaba of Ethiopia (2:25:37) was second, and Florence Kiplagat of Kenya (2:25:57) finished third. “Today was a great day for me and my fans,” said Jeptoo, who struggled with the wind on a day when the temperature was ideal. “I’m happy to be here.” The winners earned $100,000. Jeptoo received an extra $500,000 for winning the series championship, and Kipchoge picked up a $55,000 time bonus. With a flat course and an ideal forecast, there was plenty of talk before the race about fast times. The skies were clear, and the temperature — 46 degrees — was just about right when the race started. But the wind picked up and the men’s and women’s leaders did not break away until the latter stages of the race. The men’s pack stayed together for about 20 miles before Kipchoge, Kitwara and Chumba broke away. But Kipchoge made it look easy down the stretch. He made a quick burst and was in command as he headed toward the finish, grinning for the final few miles.

Chicago Marathon
Rita Jeptoo
Marathon
Chicago
Eliud Kipchoge


Phillies 5, Braves 3

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 12 (AP) — No matter the injuries, the Philadelphia Phillies are fighting hard to stay in the playoff chase. Ryan Howard hit a three-run homer to back another solid outing from Jamie Moyer, leading the Phillies to a 5-3 victory against the Atlanta Braves on Sunday night. Moyer (11-8) allowed three runs and seven hits in six and a third innings, winning his fourth consecutive decision. Antonio Alfonseca pitched out of trouble in the seventh and Brett Myers worked a perfect ninth for his eighth save in nine chances. The Phillies remained three games behind the first-place Mets in the National League East, and Atlanta fell three and a half games back. “What we’ve gone through all year with the injuries, being where we are is a great feeling,” Howard said. The All-Star second baseman Chase Utley, right fielder Shane Victorino and starters Freddy Garcia and Jon Lieber are among several players on the disabled list for Philadelphia. Right fielder Jeff Francoeur threw out two runners at the plate for the Braves, who went 3-3 during a six-game trip against the Mets and the Phillies. Helped by Francoeur’s assists, starter Buddy Carlyle limited Philadelphia to one run over the first four innings. But Carlyle (7-4) did not get through the fifth. Jimmy Rollins started with a walk and Tadahito Iguchi followed with a grounder to second baseman Martin Prado. Rollins was safe at second because shortstop Yunel Escobar missed the bag on an attempted double play and Iguchi beat the throw to first. Braves Manager Bobby Cox came out and argued briefly, but he was not ejected for a record-breaking 131st time. He is tied with John McGraw for the most ejections by a manager. After Pat Burrell popped out, Howard drove his 33rd home run into the left-center seats to give the Phillies a 4-2 lead. Howard, the reigning N.L. most valuable player, leads the league with 97 runs batted in, despite being on the disabled list earlier in the season. “It was a little fly ball,” Cox said of Howard’s 391-foot home run. “It was out here and Cincinnati, and maybe Houston.” Prado’s R.B.I. double in the seventh got the Braves to 4-2. Prado advanced to third on pinch-hitter Chris Woodward’s flyout, but Alfonseca entered and struck out Escobar and Matt Diaz to end the inning. An enthusiastic Alfonseca celebrated with an odd-looking windup fist pump and leg kick.

Baseball
Philadelphia Phillies
Atlanta Braves


North Korea Test-Fires 4 Short-Range Missiles

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea test-fired four short-range missiles into the sea that lies between it and Japan on Thursday, amid simmering tensions over the latest international sanctions against the Communist state, according to news reports and a spokesman for the South Korean government. North Korea fired two missiles from a base near Wonsan, a major city on the North’s east coast, at 5:20 p.m. and at 6 p.m. local time, said a spokesman at the South Korean Defense Ministry who spoke on condition of anonymity because a formal announcement had not been made yet. Later Thursday, the North fired another short-range missile, the spokesman said. The South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that a fourth short-range missile was also fired. The spokesman did not provide additional details, but Yonhap called the weapons surface-to-ship cruise missiles and reported that each flew about 60 miles before falling harmlessly into the sea. While such missiles are routinely tested by the North Koreans, they raised speculation that North Korea might launch a long-range ballistic missile in defiance of a United Nations ban, further heightening regional tensions after the North’s last long-range rocket launching on April 5 and its nuclear test on May 25. The latest missile launchings had been expected, as North Korea declared a no-sail zone last month in waters off its east coast through July 10. News media reports have said that North Korea may launch a barrage of missiles on July 4 to highlight its provocative stance. The North tested a long-range missile on that day in 2006. The missile tests came as Philip Goldberg, an American special envoy who is coordinating sanctions against the North, was scheduled to meet Chinese officials in Beijing. He is seeking support in carrying out the new sanctions outlined in a United Nations resolution passed after the North’s recent nuclear test. The resolution also demanded that the North stop testing ballistic missiles. The new sanctions allow nations to hail a North Korean vessel suspected of carrying weapons and force it into port for an inspection. In recent weeks, an American Navy ship has been trailing a a North Korean freighter, but the vessel reportedly turned around in Southeast Asian waters, aborting what was believed to have been a voyage to Myanmar. The North Korean ship, which American officials suspect was sent out as a ruse, is the first vessel monitored under the new United Nations sanctions, which were adopted after the North’s nuclear test. Meanwhile, North and South Korea failed on Thursday to resolve a dispute over fees paid at a joint factory park in the North where South Korean firms hire cheap North Korean labor. The park is a major source of cash for the North.

North Korea
Missiles and Missile Defense Systems


Copters in Syria May Not Be New, U.S. Officials Say

Abstract: WASHINGTON — When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Russia on Tuesday of shipping attack helicopters to Syria that would “escalate the conflict quite dramatically,” it was the Obama administration’s sharpest criticism yet of Russia’s support for the Syrian government. What Mrs. Clinton did not say, however, was whether the aircraft were new shipments or, as administration officials say is more likely, helicopters that Syria had sent to Russia a few months ago for routine repairs and refurbishing, and which were now about to be returned. “She put a little spin on it to put the Russians in a difficult position,” said one senior Defense Department official. Mrs. Clinton’s claim about the helicopters, administration officials said, is part of a calculated effort to raise the pressure on Russia to abandon President Bashar al-Assad , its main ally in the Middle East . Russia has so far stuck by Mr. Assad’s government, worried that if he were ousted, Moscow would lose its influence in the region. In response to Mrs. Clinton’s allegations, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, accused the United States of hypocrisy on Wednesday, saying it had supplied weapons that could be used against demonstrators in other countries in the region. Mr. Lavrov, during a visit to Iran , repeated Russia’s claim that it is not supplying Damascus with any weapons that could be used in a civil war. “We are not providing Syria or any other place with things which can be used in struggle with peaceful demonstrators, unlike the United States, which regularly supplies such equipment to this region,” Mr. Lavrov said. He singled out a recent delivery to “one of the Persian Gulf states” — perhaps a reference to Bahrain . “But for some reason the Americans consider this completely normal.” Syria has long been a staunch Russian ally and is home to Russia’s only naval base on the Mediterranean Sea. But American officials have warned the Russians that Mr. Assad’s exit is inevitable, and that if Russia wants to preserve its influence in Syria, it needs to be part of the effort to arrange a political transition. If Russia is viewed as complicit in the Assad government’s attack on its own people, these officials said, it would be shunned by any new Syrian government, as well as by the rest of the Arab world, which is increasingly appalled by the violence. Mrs. Clinton underscored this point in remarks Wednesday after meeting with India ’s foreign minister: “Russia says it wants peace and stability restored. It says it has no particular love lost for Assad. And it also claims to have vital interests in the region and relationships that it wants to continue to keep. They put all of that at risk if they do not move more constructively right now.” Though Mrs. Clinton’s remarks about the helicopters came in answer to a question at a session sponsored by the Brookings Institution , they were part of a lengthy discussion of the West’s options in dealing with Syria and seemed anything but accidental. Administration officials declined to give details about the helicopters, saying the information was classified. But White House and intelligence officials have backed up the substance of her comments. Some officials said that whether the helicopters were new or refurbished, they were equally deadly when turned against the civilian population. “What Secretary Clinton said was a continuation of what we’ve been saying,” the White House spokesman, Jay Carney , told reporters. “The situation in Syria is obviously terrible. Assad’s brutality is unacceptable. He will go down in history as a tyrant who will be loathed by generations of Syrians who are the victims of his brutality.” Timing may have also driven Mrs. Clinton. In her remarks, she noted that the United Nations Security Council must decide by mid-July whether to extend the mandate for Kofi Annan ’s six-point peace plan, which included putting monitors on the ground to try to ensure the government and rebel fighters were abiding by the terms of a cease-fire. Mr. Annan is the special envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League . “Certainly, if there is no discernible movement by then,” Mrs. Clinton said, “it will be very difficult to extend a mission that is increasingly dangerous for the observers on the ground.” There have been scattered reports since April of the Syrian government’s firing missiles from Russian-made helicopters rather than just the machine guns used previously. A video of a helicopter shot near Aleppo in May shows the distinctive smoke of what would appear to be a missile, although the authenticity of such recordings is difficult to prove. A single Russian state-owned arms monopoly, Rosoboronexport, handles all or nearly all formal weapons exports, including helicopters produced by a variety of enterprises in Russia. Rosoboronexport is also the sales agent handling the American-financed contract for Mi-17 helicopters for the Afghan military. A company spokesman, Vyachislav Davidenko, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that Rosoboronexport is fulfilling its contracts to Syria because they do not violate United Nations sanctions. Russia has blocked any effort at the Security Council to impose sanctions against Syria. The company, he said, has not adjusted its arms trading because of the violence. It is sending “no extraordinary supplies, not speeding up contracts, and sending no additional shipments.” Asked if helicopters could be en route to Syria after undergoing repairs in Russia, Mr. Davidenko said “that seems to be the case” but said he could not verify it. Other sources indicate that the Syrian arsenal included Russian helicopter gunships long before the outbreak of violence. The Armed Forces Review, for example, reported in an article published on June 6 that Syria has a total of 86 Mi-24 and Mi-25 helicopters. It also has dozens of older Mi-17 helicopters, which can be used as transport or attack aircraft, American military officials said. One prominent independent Russian military analyst, Ruslan Pukhov, the director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said in a telephone interview that Syria purchased its helicopter fleet in the 1980s and 1990s, and has not bought a new Mi-24 aircraft in at least a decade. Rosoboronexport often services client helicopters in Russia for regular overhauls and repairs, Mr. Pukhov said. Syria signed such a contract “well before the Arab Spring began,” perhaps four or five years ago, he said. Day-to-day maintenance on the helicopters is performed by “legions” of Russian technicians working in Syria, a senior Defense Department official said. For major repairs, the aircraft are sent to Russia in batches, overhauled at their required service intervals, and returned to Syria, Mr. Pukhov said. American analysts said the Syrian government’s use of helicopters has not only escalated the conflict but could make it more difficult for the United States and other countries to avoid being drawn into it. “We can no longer say the regime is not using air power against the civilian population,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “That brings the discussion of intervention and ‘no-fly zones’ closer.”

Syria
Helicopter
Russia
US Foreign Policy
Military
Hillary Clinton
Bashar al-Assad
Arab Spring


A Surge in Gold Nears a Limit

Abstract: Worried about the euro zone? Buy gold. Worried about the federal deficit? Buy gold. Fancy a quick speculative bet? Well, you can’t lose with gold or silver, which has almost tripled in price in just over six months. But precious metals can’t be both havens and speculative plays. The gold and silver bugs will say global sovereign risks justify their outlook. Standard & Poor’s has just put a negative outlook on its rating of the United States. Uncle Sam isn’t about to default, but still lacks a plan to straighten his finances. Gold bugs fear the Federal Reserve will buy more domestic debt, devaluing the dollar and precipitating inflation, making gold — now at more than $1,500 a troy ounce — all the more precious. A weak dollar ought to favor the euro. But that saddles investors with different sovereign risks. The euro zone won’t print money, because Germany has had high inflation before and doesn’t want a repeat. But countries on the periphery of the euro zone can’t pay their way, hence fears that Greece must undergo a debt restructuring that would be messy for its banks and risk contagion. This combination would be compelling if the interest rate outlook were benign and gold didn’t already look pumped up by speculative buying. But the specter of inflation means rates are already rising outside the United States. The European Central Bank, for instance, is already raising rates. And global recovery is well under way, with the likes of Intel and I.B.M. reporting strong earnings. The latest Institute for Supply Management survey of United States manufacturing says the recent trend of “rapid growth” continued in March. Surveys confirm a German manufacturing boom. China’s gross domestic product grew at an annualized 9.7 percent in the first quarter. The likelihood is that the Fed will join the global trend and raise rates late this year or early next. The opportunity cost of holding precious metals will then rise. The end of ultra-cheap money in the United States threatens buoyant equity and commodity markets too — but they get an offsetting benefit from the growth that is driving monetary tightening. With these markets rightly signaling global recovery, the precious metals bubble looks set to be pricked before long. Oil Thirst in Mideast Middle Eastern demand for its own oil could be a bigger threat to the global energy balance than unrest in the region — at least in the long term. Rising demand at home threatens to limit Saudi Arabia’s major role as the world’s swing producer and could spell structurally higher prices for global markets. A Saudi official this month expressed unusual public concern about the nation’s energy use. Oil consumption, bolstered by car use and air-conditioning, has risen by half in the last decade to an estimated 2.7 million barrels a day this year. Saudi Aramco, the national oil group, estimates demand could reach 8.3 million barrels by 2030. Currently, after exports and domestic consumption, Saudi Arabia has spare capacity estimated at 2.8 million barrels a day, a crucial buffer amounting to about 3 percent of global oil consumption. Aramco’s forecast suggests that could be fully absorbed by domestic demand this side of 2025. Meanwhile, oil consumption in Kuwait is rising fast enough to start reducing exports within a decade, the Brookings Institution says. The Middle East is likely to be consuming 11 million barrels a day by 2035, up from roughly six million in 2007, according to the International Energy Agency, a rate of increase second only to fast-growing Asian economies. Indonesia offers a cautionary tale. In 1980, it exported 1.2 million barrels of oil a day. A tripling of domestic consumption since then — driven in part by hefty subsidies — has made it a net importer. Low oil prices at home play their part in encouraging Middle Eastern demand, too. The cost of gasoline in Saudi Arabia, for instance, is less than a sixth the level in the United States. Attempts to remove such subsidies are politically perilous. But almost giving oil away at home when it could draw $100 a barrel abroad doesn’t make economic sense. Though Saudi Arabia has outlined plans to increase capacity significantly if needed, some believe it may already be near its peak production. For now, the world remains amply supplied with oil despite the turmoil in Libya. But the long-term trend suggests a less comfortable future. Too much delay by the United States and others in finding alternatives to imported oil could eventually become very expensive.

Gold
Economic Conditions and Trends
United States Economy
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline


How to Get Financial Advice That Is in Your Best Interest

Abstract: In April, financial advisers for the first time will be required to put retirement investors’ best interests first. But there is a catch. The new requirement, known as a fiduciary rule, was imposed by the Labor Department during the Obama administration, and could be blocked by the Trump administration or congressional action before it takes effect. With its fate uncertain, investors can still protect their interests, by exercising vigilance, finding advisers who will act as fiduciaries, and understanding the issues involved in the first place. “What’s been most striking to me is that when I talk to consumers, they say that they thought advisers were supposed to be working in their best interests all along,” said Linda Leitz, a fee-only certified financial planner in Colorado Springs. The reality is that many advisers are not required to act in investors’ best interests. That was supposed to change for retirement investors under the fiduciary rule, pushed by Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor, and strongly supported by Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat. The rule, scheduled to take effect in April, bans potential conflicts of interests for advisers in retirement accounts; a broader fiduciary rule, covering all investment accounts, has been under consideration by the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not been approved. The fiduciary rule has opposition. The insurance industry and Wall Street have been fighting it, and several business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have sued to stop it. Republican congressional leaders have said they want to eliminate it, and Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, this month introduced a bill that would delay it for two years. The House of Representatives last year considered legislation to eliminate the fiduciary rule, along with most of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. While the rule could be postponed or eliminated, it has already caused many companies to curtail the sale of retirement mutual funds and insurance vehicles that charged high commissions and fees or were clearly unsuitable for clients. And retirement investors can still benefit from trends that have been reshaping the financial service industry for decades. Low-expense funds that largely cut the cord with broker-advisers have become more popular. Last year, investors moved $375 billion into low-cost exchange-traded funds, according to preliminary figures from BlackRock, the investment manager. Fund giants like BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard Group and Charles Schwab offer low-cost funds and have been lowering expenses in recent years. The companies also offer robo-advising services or provide funds for automated platforms. Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard also offer direct, personalized financial planning services. The low-expense trend has been aided by the emergence of automated “robo” portfolio managers like Betterment, Personal Capital and Wealthfront, online platforms that combine low-cost portfolios of mutual- and exchange-traded mutual funds with investment advice. The industry’s longstanding product-oriented marketing machine also is being disrupted by a more people-centered model adopted by fiduciary advisers who give specific advice on taxes, college planning or estate planning. That momentum will be difficult to stop. “The industry is increasingly putting the person at the center of the equation,” said Tricia O. Rothschild, chief product officer for Morningstar. “There are something like 310,000 financial advisers in the U.S. now, which is about 40,000 fewer advisers than there were 10 years ago,” she said. “The only part of the market where we’re seeing growth is from advisers moving from commission-based to more fee-based models.” With products sold on commission, investment advisers typically have greater incentives to make decisions that are profitable for themselves and their firms. Fee-based advisers, however, tend to have incentives to provide information that is tightly aligned with clients’ financial goals. Combined with a greater awareness of investment expenses — billions of investor dollars have flowed into low-cost index funds — the tide continues to shift away from commission-based products. Some 80 percent of investor funds flowed into cheap, passive mutual and exchange-traded funds in the third quarter of 2016 alone, according to Broadridge Financial Solutions, which tracks mutual fund assets. The ranks of fee-only personal financial planners have been growing as well. Many of them are fiduciaries who eschew commissions, charge hourly or flat rates and favor low-cost passively managed investment portfolios based on traditional mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that track indexes and do not try to beat the market. The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, which represents fee-only financial planners, has grown to more than 2,700 members, from about 1,700 members in 2007, an increase of 60 percent. “Napfa’s growth over the last 10 years is due to a variety of factors that include growing consumer preference for fiduciary-level advice delivered under a fee-only compensation model,” said Geoffrey Brown, the association’s chief executive. Yet the asset management industry is still dominated by broker-advisers, who operate on a loosely defined legal standard for investment “suitability.” Broker-advisers often cannot be sued by customers, who typically are required to use an industry-sponsored arbitration forum in a dispute. Many investors are not even familiar with what the fiduciary standard — which gives them the ability to sue advisers — means. Even without the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule, there are ways to determine whether an adviser is likely to work in your best interest. Many certified- and fee-only financial planners, registered investment advisers and personal financial advisers who are also certified public accountants operate under the fiduciary model. The key question to ask an adviser is: “Are you a fiduciary?” Next, ask how the adviser is compensated. While earning a commission is not necessarily a red flag, those who charge flat or hourly fees or a set percentage based on assets under management may have fewer conflicts. To determine whether advisers have conflicts, ask to see their Form ADV , a government disclosure form about their sources of compensation, which they must provide on request. Consider your needs. If you need pre-retirement or estate planning, or divorce or retirement advice, you may want specialists in those areas. Looking for a comprehensive, soup-to-nuts financial plan? Then a certified financial planner may be the right person. You can always combine an automated service such as a robo-adviser for portfolio management with an adviser who can provide customized advice on estate plans, retirement income and college planning. In any case, it is wise to find out whether the advice you receive is really intended to benefit you.

Financial planner
Mutual fund
Retirement
Conflict of interest


Many Teachers Feel Undervalued, Survey Finds

Abstract: LONDON — Secondary schoolteachers around the world mostly love their job, but many say they are not valued by society, according to an international survey published last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Teaching and Learning International Survey questioned more than 100,000 lower secondary school teachers and about 6,500 head teachers from 34 countries on a range of issues. It followed a similar but smaller-scale survey in 2008. Among the findings: As few as 4.9 percent of teachers in France said that society valued their work, and 5 percent in Sweden, compared with highs of 83.8 percent in Malaysia, 67.6 percent in Singapore, and 66.5 percent in Abu Dhabi and South Korea. Finland scored highest in Europe, with 58.6 percent of teachers saying they felt properly appreciated. In the United States, the figure was roughly a third. These figures were “shocking,” Michael Davidson, head of the schools division at the O.E.C.D., a policy consortium for developed countries that is based in Paris. If teachers felt undervalued, Mr. Davidson said at a media briefing, the best candidates would be less likely to enter the profession or stay in the job. Yet overall job satisfaction was high, the survey found, with nine out of 10 teachers positive about their work and eight out of 10 saying they would choose teaching again, if starting anew. An important issue highlighted by the survey was the need to ensure that the most experienced and qualified teachers were employed where they were most needed, said Julie Bélanger, one of the survey’s authors. “We find that for a majority of surveyed countries, few attract the most experienced teachers to the most challenging schools,” Ms. Bélanger said. “Teachers with more than five years’ teaching are less likely to work in the more challenging schools,” she said. “Challenging schools are schools where more than 30 percent of the student population comes from a low social-economic background.” The survey provides policy makers with some basic data on the state of the teaching profession, such as gender and age. For example, it shows that most secondary school teachers are now women in all countries surveyed, except Japan. It also shows that England has one of the youngest teaching work forces, while Italy, Bulgaria and Estonia face an imminent shortage, with large numbers of their teachers approaching retirement.


Winnipeg Jets’ Rick Rypien Is Found Dead

Abstract: COLEMAN, Alberta (AP) — Winnipeg Jets center Rick Rypien has been found dead in his home, the police said. An official with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed Rypien’s death on Monday, and said it was not suspicious. Rypien is the second active N.H.L. player found dead this off-season. The former Rangers enforcer Derek Boogaard died in May because of an accidental mix of alcohol and the painkiller oxycodone. Rypien, 27, signed a one-year, $700,000 deal with the Jets (the former Atlanta Thrashers) last month after spending parts of six seasons with Vancouver. He had nine goals and seven assists in 119 career N.H.L. games. Rypien, a cousin of the former N.F.L. quarterback Mark Rypien, was granted an indefinite leave of absence last season to deal with an undisclosed personal matter.

Hockey Ice
Deaths (Fatalities)
Winnipeg Jets
Rypien Rick


Coca-Cola to Buy Fuze Beverage

Abstract: Coca-Cola said yesterday that it had agreed to buy Fuze Beverage to add more juice, tea and energy drinks in an effort to catch up with PepsiCo. Coca-Cola gains a half-dozen new products, including Fuze Tea, NOS energy drinks and Fuze Slenderize, which has chromium and amino acids that Fuze says help promote weight loss. Coca-Cola, which is based in Atlanta, did not disclose terms of the purchase. Fuze beverages may help Coca-Cola win back customers who switched from sweetened sodas to drinks such as PepsiCo’s SoBe tea. It is Coca-Cola’s biggest acquisition in the United States since it bought Odwalla Inc. in 2001 for $186 million to gain protein drinks and juices, said John Sicher, editor of the industry journal Beverage Digest. “This represents Coke aggressively getting itself into a better place in the noncarbonated business in the U.S.,” Mr. Sicher said. “Fuze is small but growing strongly.”

Coca-Cola Co
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Fuze Beverage


Sales Surge 50% for Maker of Monster Energy Drinks

Abstract: The Hansen Natural Corporation , the maker of Monster Energy drinks, posted a 50 percent increase in quarterly sales, setting off a 4.5 percent gain in its share price on Friday. The company said after the close of trading Thursday that its sales rose to $356.4 million, and profit rose to 59 cents a share, topping the 49 cents analysts had expected. Stock in Hansen, which is based in Corona, Calif., rose $2.80, to $64.74 a share.


When Family Fortunes Beget Vicious Power Struggles

Abstract: Consider the plight of Shari Redstone, the daughter of the billionaire media mogul Sumner Redstone. Much of her family’s fortune is tied to the ailing 92-year-old Mr. Redstone. He owns 80 percent and she owns 20 percent of National Amusements, the private business that controls two giant media companies — Viacom and CBS. Upon Mr. Redstone’s death, his interest passes to a trust with his grandchildren as beneficiaries. But Mr. Redstone hardly set the stage for an orderly transition. He stubbornly held on so long as executive chairman of both CBS and Viacom that shareholders began to question his ability to run the company, especially after a former companion, Manuela Herzer, filed a lawsuit in November questioning his mental competence . He has lavished a fortune — about $140 million, according to court filings and lawyers’ claims — on Ms. Herzer, who at one point was a romantic partner and was designated to take charge of his health care in the event he was found not to be capable. She also claims that Mr. Redstone’s health worsened after he learned that another former girlfriend, Sydney Holland, was involved with another man. Viacom stock has been plunging under the direction of its chief executive, Philippe Dauman, Mr. Redstone’s handpicked successor and longtime confidant. Shares have dropped 27 percent this week and are trading at a roughly six-year low. Restricted from seeing her father until last year, Shari Redstone, 61, spent the holidays with him and appears to be reasserting her interests. In October, Mr. Redstone barred Ms. Herzer from his mansion, revoked the health care directive and cut her out of his will . Ms. Herzer responded with a salacious lawsuit alleging that Mr. Redstone was mentally incompetent and had an insatiable appetite for sex and steak. Last week, Mr. Redstone resigned as executive chairman of CBS and Viacom. Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, who has Shari Redstone’s support, assumed the role of CBS chairman. But over Ms. Redstone’s objections, Mr. Dauman was named executive chairman of Viacom. As long as Mr. Redstone is alive and deemed mentally sound, there is little Shari Redstone can do to dislodge Mr. Dauman, who has a friendly board. She was the only Viacom director to vote against Mr. Dauman’s nomination. All this drama would make for a delicious TV mini-series on CBS, or even a feature film from the Viacom-owned Paramount. But students of the richest of the 1 percent have seen this movie before. The annals of business are studded with messy succession struggles and late-in-life romantic entanglements, especially in family-controlled companies coping with an aged entrepreneur like Mr. Redstone. Image Anna Nicole Smith, holding a photo of her husband J. Howard Marshall II, testified during a probate trial in Texas in 2001. Credit Pool photo/Carlos Antonio Rios, via Associated Press “Though often undisclosed, these are common in the history of corporate America,” said William Zabel, a leading trust and estate lawyer at Schulte Roth & Zabel. “The femme fatale often plays a significant role.” Entrepreneurs like Mr. Redstone often resist retirement, said Nigel Nicholson, co-author of the book “Family Wars” and a professor of organizational behavior at the London Business School. “They’re afraid of dying, and that they will die if they have nothing meaningful to do,” Mr. Nicholson said. “Add jealous wives and mistresses and angry children, and you’ve got a recipe for mayhem.” Anyone old enough to remember the Haft family? Herbert Haft, the family patriarch known for his flamboyant pompadour, founded discount drug and bookstore chains, amassed a real estate empire and emerged in the mid-1980s as a feared corporate raider armed with the seemingly unlimited resources of Michael Milken’s junk bonds. After several failed takeover bids and a falling-out over company strategy, Mr. Haft fired his son and handpicked successor, Robert; divorced his longtime wife and business partner, Gloria (after agreeing to pay her $50 million); broke off relations with his other two children; and took up with a younger romantic companion, Myrna Ruben. At 84, Mr. Haft married Ms. Ruben while he was a patient in intensive care. He died two weeks later. In a welter of litigation, most of the family’s assets were sold. A son, Ronald, emerged with control of the real estate. Then there was the case of J. Howard Marshall II, an oil billionaire, investor in Koch Industries and founder of Marshall Petroleum. His family is still embroiled in litigation more than 20 years after his death in 1995. Mr. Marshall, too, turned against his son and designated successor, J. Howard Marshall III. The elder Mr. Marshall dated a succession of former strippers and, at age 89, married the model and former Playboy centerfold Anna Nicole Smith, then 26 years old. He died 13 months later leaving an estate valued at $1.6 billion. (Ms. Smith died in 2007 with the estate still tied up in litigation. Her life has been the subject of books, films and even an opera.) Perhaps an even more extreme case was the family feud that engulfed Gucci, the Italian fashion house, culminating in the killing of the 46-year-old Maurizio Gucci in 1995. An Italian court convicted Mr. Gucci’s ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani, of murder for hiring a hit man after Mr. Gucci divorced her and embarked on a series of affairs with much younger women. Mr. Gucci had inherited 50 percent of the company from his father and was already feuding and litigating with other family members and heirs. Image Maurizio and Patrizia Gucci, before he was murdered and she was convicted of ordering his killing. Credit Associated Press After Mr. Gucci’s murder, the company went public, enabling family members to cash out. Despite a bitter takeover battle over Gucci between France’s biggest luxury conglomerates, the Gucci brand flourished under the creative director and designer Tom Ford. François Pinault’s French holding company finally acquired a controlling stake in 2001. Ms. Reggiani was released from an Italian prison in 2014 after serving 16 years of her 29-year sentence. As these cases suggest, irreconcilable infighting among families often ends up in a sale. “There’s an awful lot of energy spent on the family dynamic and conflict rather than what’s best for the company moving forward,” said Andrew Keyt, executive director of the Family Business Center of Loyola University Chicago. In such cases, “the only solution may be to get liquidity and go their separate ways.” That could be Viacom’s fate. If Mr. Redstone dies or is declared mentally incompetent, his 80 percent stake will be controlled by a trust with seven trustees: Shari Redstone and her son, Mr. Dauman and four lawyers. (Sumner Redstone has a second child, Brent, who about a decade ago sued National Amusements and cashed out his stake in the family business. He lives on a ranch outside of Denver.) Mr. Zabel said trusts like Mr. Redstone’s, in which family heirs are represented but don’t have a majority, had often worked well, citing the Hearst Corporation, which is governed by a trust. But Hearst has thrived for decades as a private company and none of its trustees or family members are at loggerheads with its management. Its chief executives were selected because they worked well with the family. Mr. Zabel pointed out that the Redstone trustees have a legal duty to act in the interests of the trust’s beneficiaries. That could mean pressing for a sale, or replacing Mr. Dauman. “They can’t just blindly back Dauman,” Mr. Zabel said. “The stock has done so poorly that you could argue they’re violating their duty if they keep him as chief executive.” By comparison, the handoff from Mr. Redstone to Mr. Moonves at CBS seems to have gone smoothly. But CBS has fared much better than Viacom, although its stock is down nearly a third over the last year. And Mr. Moonves isn’t also a trustee. Shari Redstone has argued that it’s a conflict of interest for Mr. Dauman to be both a trustee of the Redstone trust and chief executive of Viacom. Family business transitions can go smoothly and many do, Mr. Keyt said, but it takes years of careful planning and discussion. “It’s a process that, if done well, can take five to 20 years,” he said. “One reason families invest so much time and effort is they don’t want to read the kinds of stories about themselves that they’re seeing now about Sumner Redstone.”

Viacom
Sumner M Redstone
CBS
Shari Redstone
Manuela Herzer
Mass media
HNWI,Wealth,Billionaires,1 Percent
Philippe P Dauman


Genentech Profit Rises 48% as Sales of Cancer Drugs Surge

Abstract: Genentech, the biotechnology company, said yesterday that first-quarter profit climbed 48 percent as more doctors prescribed the Avastin and Herceptin cancer drugs. Net income rose to $421 million, or 39 cents a share, from $284 million, or 27 cents a share, a year earlier, the company said. The year-earlier results did not include stock option costs. Revenue surged 36 percent to $1.99 billion, from $1.46 billion. Sales of Avastin, which is approved to treat colon cancer, almost doubled, to $398 million, in the United States, the company said. Genentech said stronger-than-expected drug sales led the company to raise its forecast for profit growth this year to as much as 55 percent compared with 2005. "The key here is the surprisingly strong Avastin number," said Michael King, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw in New York. Genentech, majority-owned by Roche Holding of Basel, Switzerland, released its results after the close of trading. The company finished the session up $1.07, at $81.70 a share, but fell in after-hours trading to $80.34. The company said earnings per share excluding some items will rise by 45 percent to 55 percent, higher than a March forecast for 40 percent to 50 percent profit growth. Genentech did not provide a more specific number. Genentech is benefiting from growth in Herceptin sales, which had slowed until a study released last year indicated that the treatment might help twice as many women as previously thought. The research showed Herceptin cut the risk of relapses among breast cancer patients after surgery to remove tumors.

GENENTECH INC
GENENTECH INC
DRUGS (PHARMACEUTICALS)
CANCER
MEDICINE AND HEALTH
COMPANY REPORTS


Spike Pursues an Older and More Female Audience

Abstract: A CABLE channel that has changed names and focus several times is being retooled again, in this instance to try reaching a somewhat older — and more female — audience. The channel is Spike, part of the MTV Networks unit of Viacom, which since its founding in 1983 has also been known as the Nashville Network, the National Network, TNN and Spike TV. Spike is to stay Spike, but its programming, most recently seeking to appeal to men ages 18 to 34, is being broadened to reach men ages 18 to 49 — the demographic group that most advertisers desire to reach. Spike ranked 19th last year in cable advertising revenue, according to data compiled by the research firm SNL Kagan, ahead of channels like ABC Family and History but behind others like VH1, A&E, Comedy Central, Food Network, HGTV and Lifetime. And Spike suffered large losses in certain types of viewership in the prime-time evening hours from September through December, according to a report from the RPA agency that analyzes Nielsen ratings data, in one instance falling to 20th place from ninth. The revamped Spike will also be aimed at women ages 18 to 49, who may have previously been deterred by the guy-centric, fratty tone and attitude of the channel, which was exemplified by the double entendre in its slogan, “Get some action.” The slogan is disappearing from Spike’s promotions and advertising, executives say, along with the more overt expressions of the so-called laddish behavior that the channel has celebrated. The executives, borrowing comparisons from another medium, say the new Spike will be less like Maxim magazine and more like Esquire. “We don’t want the women leaving the room when the guy’s watching the stuff,” said Jeff Lucas, who is the head of sales for the music and entertainment groups at MTV Networks in New York. The new voice for Spike is emerging through work being produced by the channel’s departments like programming, digital, marketing and sales, and through its partnership with a new New York agency, Co Collective. Viewers will see the initial changes in commercials on Spike for a new series, “Coal,” that begins on Wednesday, and for returning series like “Auction Hunters” and “The Ultimate Fighter.” The shifts at Spike come as members of the television industry, cable and broadcast alike get ready for their annual presentations to marketers. It is important for participants in those events — known as the upfronts, because they begin before the start of the TV season — to have good sales spiels as they compete against myriad other networks and channels for advertising dollars. Spike executives have already been discussing the programming and promotional makeovers in meetings with advertising and media agencies. Other channels that have been talking or will soon talk to potential advertisers include Bravo, Cartoon Network, FX, Hallmark, the Hub, IFC, Nickelodeon, Ovation, Oxygen and Syfy. As marketers worry about how the broadcast networks are struggling to keep viewers ages 18 to 49, Spike is “positioning itself perfectly” as an alternative, Mr. Lucas said. The overhaul is also intended to help Spike add more dollars in categories in which it already does well, he added, like alcoholic beverages, automobiles, fast food, films and telecommunications. The film category “is not just about action movies,” Mr. Lucas said, adding that the Hollywood studios “don’t live by men alone.” Revising TV brands can be challenging because of the time it can take for viewers to realize that channels like Discovery Health has become OWN, short for the Oprah Winfrey Network; Court TV has become truTV; Discovery Home was made over into Planet Green; and Fine Living Network changed into Cooking Channel. “There is nothing wrong with changing your focus,” said Steve Sternberg, the longtime television research analyst who writes a blog, The Sternberg Report , but the trick in building a new audience base is “getting more viewers to watch quickly than you lose.” With Spike, he wrote in an e-mail, “I would think it would take a couple of years before you could start to determine how successful the switch is.” In a business that was based on speedy decisions even before Internet time, that can be confounding. Additional risks were described by Ty Montague, co-chief executive at Co Collective: “How do you expand the business without losing the clear focus on men and without diluting a brand that is so strong it stands out in people’s minds?” The answer, according to Mr. Montague, is not to “walk away altogether” from the more appealing qualities of guy-hood, like “being a bit of a rogue, a bit of a risk-taker” while also “reframing the Spike story to talk about how a man is much more than a guy.” “The goal is to have the brand begin to think of itself as a service,” Mr. Montague said, “helping men become more fully realized, better men” — men who watch shows that women may want to watch, too. The term being used by Mr. Montague and the Spike executives to describe this approach is “utilitainment,” echoing words coined to describe TV genres like infotainment and edutainment. “We want to be a bigger brand,” said Niels Schuurmans, executive vice president for brand marketing and creative at Spike, one that is “still talking to that male audience, but not necessarily the young guy.” Series on Spike like “Auction Hunters,” “Coal” and “The Ultimate Fighter” feature working men “trying to put food on the table,” he added, a point that will be highlighted in promotional spots. One, for “Coal,” shows a miner declaring, “I’ve got a family to provide for.” Spike will spend $6 million to promote those series, Mr. Schuurmans said, which will make its debut in the next two weeks. Coming reality series on Spike will also take that tack, Mr. Schuurmans said, citing “Bar Rescue,” about a consultant who helps failing bars; “Car Boss,” a consultant who helps failing auto dealerships; and “Repo Games,” which will offer owners of cars about to be repossessed a chance to avoid the dreaded repo man. It is no coincidence that Spike is wooing older viewers after many younger men have been hit hard by the economy, “displaced” from jobs, Mr. Schuurmans said, and “living at home” again. It is also no accident the courtship begins as more marketers come to believe that younger viewers are not the only ones who try new products and change brands.


Lebanon: Hezbollah Says It Won’t Let Members Be Arrested in Hariri Death

Abstract: Hezbollah will not allow the arrests of any of its members if they are indicted by investigators into the 2005 killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri , the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah , said Thursday. Hezbollah and Western diplomats say that the United Nations -backed tribunal is expected to indict members of the group, possibly by the end of the year. “Whoever thinks that we will allow the arrest or the detention of any of our fighters is mistaken,” Mr. Nasrallah told supporters in the southern suburbs of Beirut. “Any hand that will touch any of them will be cut off.” Hezbollah has repeatedly denied any link to the killing and has called on Lebanon to repudiate the tribunal.

Hezbollah
United Nations
Hariri Rafik
Nasrallah Hassan
Lebanon
Murders and Attempted Murders


Stocks End Mixed, Giving Top Indexes Weekly Loss

Abstract: Stocks finished mixed on Friday, leaving all the major indexes with their first weekly loss since early May. Technology, financial and retail stocks gained, while utilities and energy stocks were lower. The stock market began the day stronger, after surprisingly good reports on Thursday on employment and manufacturing. But the early gains gave way to selling in the afternoon, leaving the Dow Jones industrials with four days of losses over the last five. With little corporate or economic news on Friday, prospects were poor for restarting a rally that propelled the market up as much as 40 percent this spring after it fell to its lowest level in more than a decade in early March. Traders have worried in recent weeks that an economic recovery will be more subdued than originally hoped and that the huge run-up in stocks may have been overdone. “There’s no question in my mind that the economy is improving,” said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors. “But investors are betting on some sideways consolidation rather than a continuation of a sharp spike in share prices.” Trading was also jumpy because of the occurrence of a quarterly quadruple witching, the simultaneous expiration of four kinds of options and futures contracts. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 15.87 points, or 0.19 percent, to 8,539.73, with 16 of the 30 stocks that make up the average posting losses. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 2.86 points, or 0.31 percent, to 921.23 and the Nasdaq composite index gained 19.75 points, or 1.09 percent, to 1,827.47. All the major stock indexes ended the week down for the first time since the week of May 10. The Dow lost 3 percent, the S.& P. 500 index fell 2.6 percent, and the Nasdaq declined 1.7 percent. Stocks tumbled early in the week as a handful of weak economic reports, including news of a seventh consecutive monthly decline in industrial production, conflicted with the gradual improvement traders had grown used to with other economic readings. Stocks rebounded modestly on Thursday, spurred by better data on economic activity, including a report that showed the overall number of people drawing unemployment benefits fell last week for the first time since early January. Traders had been expecting a pullback after such big gains in such a short period. Usually, a 40 percent move like the one in the S.& P. 500 index takes years to develop, not months. “It’s not going to be a one-way ride,” said Keith Walter, portfolio manager of Artio Global Equity Fund. Analysts were divided over whether the pullback would continue, or if the market would now rise after back-to-back weeks of relatively sideways movement. Last week all the major indexes rose less than 1 percent. Many predict choppy trading through the summer, when there is typically less volume, and as the market heads into earnings season in July. Reports on home resales and durable goods orders are among those due next week. Investors will also be looking to the Federal Reserve for any clues on its monetary policy as the central bank meets for two days. Bond prices rose slightly after sliding Thursday before several auctions next week. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note rose 12/32, to 94 20/32, and the yield, which moves in the opposite direction from the price, fell to 3.78 percent, from 3.83 percent late Thursday. Technology stocks rose as the latest version of Apple’s iPhone reached stores. Apple shares added $3.60, or 2.7 percent, to $139.48, while a rival smartphone maker, Palm, rose more than 6 percent, gaining 87 cents, to $13.93. Oil prices reversed early gains and fell $1.82 to settle at $69.55 a barrel in light trading.

Stocks and Bonds
Futures and Options Trading