G-20 Leaders Urge Balance for Growth

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — Finance officials meeting here Monday from the world’s largest economies warned that efforts to deal with debt troubles in Europe and the United States must be balanced with actions to spur the global economy. The meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 countries came as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast that the euro zone economies would endure a third year of recession in 2014. But over the past six months concern over economic risk has spread from the focus on the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis to a wider array of problems, including Washington’s political stalemate over its persistent deficits, Japan’s debt burden and slowing growth in China and other emerging markets. “The economic context remains difficult, and the fragile recovery remains at risk if the needed policy actions are not implemented,” said the International Monetary Fund ’s managing director, Christine Lagarde , at the end of the two-day meeting. Ms. Lagarde listed several countries and regions where she said policy makers needed to act quickly, beginning with the United States “first and foremost,” where a $600 billion package of tax increases and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff are to take effect on Jan. 1. Analysts fear that if the measures go into effect as planned, the United States economy could tip into recession, dragging global growth down with it. Europe “remains a challenge,” Ms. Lagarde continued, and Japan needs to take action on its debt. “It is my impression over the last few days that the membership has shared a sense of urgency,” she added. Striking the balance between reining in deficits without harming growth was the principal theme at the meeting here. While the final communiqué contained a pledge that the group’s members “ensure our public finances are on sustainable paths,” it also opened up space for countries to adjust their budgets to support recovery. “We have weak growth and high risk,” Finance Minister Felipe Larrain of Chile said of the global economy. Chile attended the talks as an observer. “This is a very delicate equilibrium.” “There is nothing more important to the global economy than to lift growth in the world’s major advanced economies,” the Australian treasurer, Wayne Swan, said in a prepared statement released by Reuters. As expected, the meeting, which took place just before the presidential election in the United States and as China begins its leadership transition, produced no major decisions, Indeed, several important players skipped the meeting, among them Timothy F. Geithner, the American Treasury secretary, and Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank president. With recession and weak growth in Europe and the United States, emerging markets will account for much of the world’s forecast growth of 3.6 percent next year. For their part, though, officials in developing countries are concerned about monetary easing in advanced economies that can push up their exchange rates, making their exports more expensive. The meeting turned attention to a 2010 pledge the group’s members made in Toronto to halve their deficits by the end of next year. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany told the group that Germany and the euro zone as a whole were on track to meeting those targets. Other countries, including the United States, are much further off, though. In response to the concerns about the approaching fiscal cliff, the final communiqué included a commitment from the United States to “carefully calibrate the pace of fiscal tightening.” Ministers also discussed financial industry regulation. A series of measures, known as Basel III, intended to shore up banks’ capital reserves to protect against future financial crises are supposed to go into effect on Jan. 1. But several countries, including the United States, the European Union and Britain, are unlikely to meet the deadline. Mr. Schäuble and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne of Britain called for international cooperation on harmonizing corporate tax collection, leading a drive by several G-20 countries, including the United States. Larger multinational companies have been able to take advantage of e-commerce to lower their tax burdens by shifting their profits to lower-tax countries, the ministers said.


India Will Step Up Security at Commonwealth Games

Abstract: NEW DELHI — India’s plans for the 2010 Commonwealth Games include roof-top snipers, food tasters for the athletes and their families, and the closing of schools and courts to cut traffic, officials said Monday. “We’re quite determined to provide a safe and secure games,” Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said at a press conference in New Delhi. A bomb blast that killed 15 people in Pune this month has heightened concerns about security in India, which is scheduled to host several international sporting events, including the Commonwealth Games in October, in the coming months. Mr. Pillai dismissed recent reports that the Commonwealth Games were being targeted particularly by terrorists. “We are aware” of these alleged threats, Mr. Pillai said, adding that they were “not credible.” New Delhi is scheduled to host the field hockey World Cup, which will start Sunday, and an Indian Premier League cricket tournament in mid-March. But it is the Commonwealth Games that are the greatest source of anxiety. The games will be by far the largest international sporting event ever in India, and officials want to prove that the country is capable of putting on a world-class show. About 100,000 spectators and thousands of athletes from 52 countries are expected. The Commonwealth Games bring together teams in countries from Britain’s once-sprawling empire. So far, the run-up to the 2010 games has been marked by controversy, discord and missed construction deadlines. On Monday, Mr. Pillai and several officials from the Home Ministry, the Ministry of Sports and Delhi’s police department detailed the stepped up security that they have planned for the Commonwealth Games. New Delhi’s plans include a 4.3-meter, or 14-foot, fence and grill around the main stadium, closed-circuit camera surveillance and a heavy presence of armed guards. In addition to a food taster, athletes and their families will protected by helicopter surveillance and snipers. Officials have made “elaborate plans for the entire city,” the Delhi police commissioner, Y.S. Dadwal, said Monday, and they include vehicle checkpoints and stepped-up patrolling by the police. Indian officials are working with security and intelligence experts from Australia, Britain and Canada to track terror threats ahead of the sporting events. The biggest challenge, Mr. Pillai said, is the “real lone wolf,” an unknown terrorist who acts without the support of a group.

India
Commonwealth Games
Terrorism
Athletics and Sports


On Eve of White House Meeting, Israel Advances Housing in West Bank

Abstract: JERUSALEM — On the eve of a White House meeting between President Obama and President Shimon Peres of Israel , officials here took steps on Monday to advance controversial new housing in the West Bank and a disputed area of Jerusalem. The steps, by two separate agencies, are the latest in a succession of awkwardly timed housing announcements. International players are seeking ways to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which stalled last September when a partial Israeli moratorium on new building in the settlements expired. Washington has given up its efforts to persuade Israel to commit to an additional settlement freeze; the Palestinians refuse to negotiate with Israel as long as settlement building continues. On Monday, a municipal planning committee in Jerusalem gave preliminary approval for nearly 1,000 new housing units in the residential district of Gilo, in the south of the city. And the Israeli Ministry of Defense said it had completed zoning plans for several Jewish settlements in the West Bank, retroactively legalizing construction that was already under way. Aides traveling with Mr. Peres, who was in Washington on Monday, refused to comment on the building plans. Elie Isaacson, an adviser to Mayor Nir Barkat of Jerusalem, said there was no connection between the Gilo action and the timing of Mr. Peres’s visit. “There are no secrets whatsoever,” Mr. Isaacson said. “The plan is merely going from one bureaucratic stage to the next bureaucratic stage. The building policy in Jerusalem has been the same for 40 years.” He added that the area of privately owned land was zoned for construction 10 years ago, and that it would take at least five years for the new housing to receive final approval and for the contractors to break ground. And he said the municipality was also considering hundreds of requests by Palestinians for building in Jerusalem, though Palestinian projects tend to be on a smaller scale. Mr. Peres is expected to talk to Mr. Obama about security cooperation between Israel and the United States; the recent upheavals in the Middle East and the potential for democratization in the region; and possible ways of restarting the peace talks. One issue that may come up is whether Mr. Obama will go to Israel this year to make a major speech, and if so whether he will put forth an American peace plan. Administration officials say Mr. Obama has indicated that he would like to address Israelis about a range of issues, including the turmoil unfolding in the Middle East. But timing remains an issue, one administration official said Monday. The role of president in Israel is mainly a ceremonial one, but Mr. Peres, who is regarded internationally as an elder statesman, has played a more active role than most of his predecessors. Relations between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were chilly from the start, and in a departure from diplomatic norms, Mr. Peres met with Mr. Obama in 2009 before Mr. Netanyahu did, to try to smooth the way. The issue of settlement construction has severely strained Israeli-American relations since Mr. Obama took office. Gilo is in a part of the city that Israel annexed after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 war. Most Israelis consider it an integral neighborhood of Jerusalem, but to the Palestinians and much of the world, it is a settlement built in occupied territory in violation of international law. Israel’s claim to sovereignty in the area of Jerusalem beyond the 1967 lines is not recognized internationally, and the Palestinians claim it as part of their future state. In February, 14 of the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council backed a resolution demanding a halt in what it termed illegal construction in Israeli settlements. Only a veto by the United States blocked the resolution. Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that opposes any Israeli building beyond the 1967 lines, said the Defense Ministry had approved development plans for four West Bank settlements. But it is not clear whether the plans relate to areas that are already built up or for additional sites. Tensions over building in Jerusalem peaked in March 2010, when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was on a visit here meant to underscore American support for Israel. The Israeli Interior Ministry announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in Ramat Shlomo, in East Jerusalem, infuriating the Obama administration. Mr. Netanyahu said at the time that he had been surprised by the move; the interior minister, Eli Yishai, leader of the right-wing Shas Party, insisted that the timing was coincidental. After that episode, the prime minister’s office said it would track the advancement of building plans more carefully to avoid new surprises. But in November, Israel published plans for more than 1,000 housing units in other disputed areas of Jerusalem. That announcement came days before Mr. Netanyahu met with Mr. Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the United States, drawing criticism from Mr. Obama. Mr. Netanyahu’s office announced three weeks ago that hundreds of new units had been approved for West Bank settlements in areas Israel intends to keep under any deal with the Palestinians. The news came shortly after five members of one family, including three children, were killed in the Itamar settlement.

Israel
Israeli Settlements
Palestinians
Politics and Government
Security Council (UN)
Barkat Nir
Netanyahu Benjamin
Obama Barack


Obama Plans to Push Congress on Immigration Overhaul

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to push Congress to move quickly in the coming months on an ambitious overhaul of the immigration system that would include a path to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, senior administration officials and lawmakers said last week. Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats will propose the changes in one comprehensive bill, the officials said, resisting efforts by some Republicans to break the overhaul into smaller pieces — separately addressing young illegal immigrants, migrant farmworkers or highly skilled foreigners — which might be easier for reluctant members of their party to accept. The president and Democrats will also oppose measures that do not allow immigrants who gain legal status to become American citizens one day, the officials said. Even while Mr. Obama has been focused on fiscal negotiations and gun control, overhauling immigration remains a priority for him this year, White House officials said. Top officials there have been quietly working on a broad proposal. Mr. Obama and lawmakers from both parties believe that the early months of his second term offer the best prospects for passing substantial legislation on the issue. Image Credit Roger L. Wollenberg/Getty Images Mr. Obama is expected to lay out his plan in the coming weeks, perhaps in his State of the Union address early next month, administration officials said. The White House will argue that its solution for illegal immigrants is not an amnesty, as many critics insist, because it would include fines, the payment of back taxes and other hurdles for illegal immigrants who would obtain legal status, the officials said. The president’s plan would also impose nationwide verification of legal status for all newly hired workers; add visas to relieve backlogs and allow highly skilled immigrants to stay; and create some form of guest-worker program to bring in low-wage immigrants in the future. A bipartisan group of senators has also been meeting to write a comprehensive bill, with the goal of introducing legislation as early as March and holding a vote in the Senate before August. As a sign of the keen interest in starting action on immigration, White House officials and Democratic leaders in the Senate have been negotiating over which of them will first introduce a bill, Senate aides said. “This is so important now to both parties that neither the fiscal cliff nor guns will get in the way,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat who is a leader of the bipartisan discussions. A similar attempt at bipartisan legislation early in Mr. Obama’s first term collapsed amid political divisions fueled by surging public wrath over illegal immigration in many states. But both supporters and opponents say conditions are significantly different now. Image Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York has been writing a bill with colleagues of both parties. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times Memories of the results of the November election are still fresh here. Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing electorate, turned out in record numbers and cast 71 percent of their ballots for Mr. Obama. Many Latinos said they were put off by Republicans’ harsh language and policies against illegal immigrants. After the election, a host of Republicans, starting with Speaker John A. Boehner, said it was time for the party to find a more positive, practical approach to immigration. Many party leaders say electoral demographics are compelling them to move beyond policies based only on tough enforcement. Supporters of comprehensive changes say that the elections were nothing less than a mandate in their favor, and that they are still optimistic that Mr. Obama is prepared to lead the fight. “Republicans must demonstrate a reasoned approach to start to rebuild their relationship with Latino voters,” said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, the director of immigration policy at the National Council of La Raza , a Latino organization. “Democrats must demonstrate they can deliver on a promise.” Since the election, Mr. Obama has repeatedly pledged to act on immigration this year. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, he again referred to the urgency of fixing the immigration system, saying it was one of the “difficult missions” the country must take on. Image Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has been working on his own bill. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Parallel to the White House effort, Mr. Schumer and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, have been meeting with a group of at least four other colleagues to write a bill. Republicans who have participated include John McCain of Arizona, who has supported comprehensive legislation in the past; Jeff Flake, also of Arizona, who is newly elected to the Senate; and Mike Lee of Utah. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida participated in one meeting last month. Democrats in the meetings include Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat; Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado. Basic tenets for the bill, Mr. Schumer said, were that it would be comprehensive and would offer eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants who follow a prolonged process to correct their status. “This is a bottom line,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview on Thursday. “The Democrats have made it clear we will not accept a bill without a direct path to earned citizenship.” He said senators from both parties had been “pleasantly surprised” at how rapidly the talks had proceeded. Mr. Rubio, a Cuban-American who has emerged as a star in his party, is making immigration one of his primary issues. He has advocated taking changes in pieces, arguing that lawmakers will get better results if the politically and practically tangled problems of the immigration system are handled separately. Video TimesCast Politics: Activists speak out in Arizona. | An interview with a conservative voice. | Can legislation actually pass the House? Mr. Rubio has been preparing a bill that would provide legal status specifically for young illegal immigrants, known as Dreamers, who came to the United States as children. Mr. Rubio said Thursday that the piecemeal approach was “not a line in the sand” for him. But he said he would insist that any legalization measure should not be unfair to immigrants who played by the rules and applied to become residents through legal channels. His proposals would allow illegal immigrants to gain temporary status so that they could remain in the country and work. Then they would be sent to the back of the line in the existing system to apply to become permanent residents, without any special path to citizenship. Mr. Rubio said he hoped to rally Republicans to support changes. Speaking of Latinos, he said, “We are going to have a struggle speaking to a whole segment of the population about our principles of limited government and free enterprise if they think we don’t want them here.” In the Republican-controlled House, the future of a comprehensive bill remains unclear. Representative Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican who follows immigration issues, said he remained opposed to “amnesty of any kind.” He said that the Obama administration had been lax on enforcement, and that he would “continue working to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law.” But groups backing the overhaul say they are bigger and better organized than in the past. Last month, the labor movement, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and other sometimes-warring factions, affirmed a common strategy. Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would work with labor, Latino and church organizations to pass the overhaul this year.

Barack Obama
Immigration
Legislation
Hispanic Americans
Chuck Schumer
Democrats
Republicans
US Politics
Illegal immigration


Editor in India, Known for Investigations Into Corruption, Is Accused of Rape

Abstract: NEW DELHI — The police in the coastal state of Goa filed charges of rape and sexual assault on Friday against Tarun Tejpal, the editor of a liberal-minded magazine that has influenced a generation of young Indian journalists with its exposés of corruption and abuse of power. The police are expected to interview Mr. Tejpal on Saturday, and they said they had footage from surveillance cameras showing what happened. Kishan Kumar, the director general of police in Goa, where the attack on a young woman is alleged to have taken place a week ago, would not say whether Mr. Tejpal would be arrested. “Let us leave it to investigating officers,” Mr. Kumar said at a news conference. “It is a process under law which has logical consequences.” The case burst into view late on Wednesday after the magazine’s managing editor, Shoma Chaudhury, sent an announcement to her staff that “there has been an untoward incident” and that Mr. Tejpal had apologized and would “recuse himself” for six months. A remorseful letter from Mr. Tejpal, which was leaked to other publications, described “a bad lapse of judgment, an awful misreading of the situation.” An account in an email posted on a social media site shortly afterward, evidently written by the victim, described two episodes of assault that took place when she was cornered in a hotel elevator. Many journalists and activists fumed over Ms. Chaudhury’s treatment of the episode as an internal matter, especially because the magazine, Tehelka , has pushed for Indian society to confront hidden cases of sexual violence. Image Tarun Tejpal The matter swiftly took on political significance because of Tehelka’s institutional stature. The magazine’s investigations have captured senior officials who were taking bribes or consorting with prostitutes, ending political careers. An investigation in Gujarat implicated state officials, including the chief minister, Narendra Modi, in sectarian riots that took place there in 2002. The young woman, who worked at the magazine, has not made a complaint to the police, but officials in Goa said the account on social media had provided evidence of a crime. “I am not saying someone is guilty, but the girl’s email is explicit,” the chief minister of Goa, Manohar Parrikar, said Friday, according to The Times of India . Mr. Tejpal defended himself on Friday, urging the police to examine footage from the security camera in the elevator “so that the accurate version of events stands clearly revealed.” He said that he had apologized at the insistence of Ms. Chaudhury, “as desired by the journalist,” but that his apology did not reflect “the complete truth.” The investigation commanded extraordinary attention in journalistic and political circles, more accustomed to seeing Mr. Tejpal as the accuser than as the accused. Arun Jaitley, a leader of Mr. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, argued on Friday that Mr. Tejpal should be prosecuted, even if the woman did not complain to the police. “A criminal offense is a crime against a victim. It is also a crime against society,” Mr. Jaitley wrote on Facebook. “This is precisely why the state pursues a criminal action. The public exchequer pays for it. There is a larger public interest in punishing a criminal.” Some of the toughest criticism on Friday came from colleagues of Mr. Tejpal and Ms. Chaudhury, who said journalists bear an extra burden to handle sexual assault cases transparently. Siddharth Varadarajan, former editor of the newspaper The Hindu, wrote that the case offered “unsettling insight” into why a public discussion of rape prompted by a brutal attack in December had not reduced sexual violence. “The disturbing answer is because the friends, relatives and colleagues of men accused of violence against women are often prepared to make excuses for the perpetrators. Or to find some way to minimize the enormity of the crime,” he wrote in an essay published on the website of NDTV, a television station. “Allowing Tejpal to ‘atone’ for what he has been accused of doing is part of the same process of erasure.”

Shoma Chaudhury
Goa
Tarun Tejpal
Rape
News media,journalism
Tehelka
Corruption
India


Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit of Former Guantánamo Detainee

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit filed by a former Guantánamo detainee who was repatriated to Afghanistan in December 2014 but has continued to seek a judicial ruling clearing him of accusations that he was linked to terrorism. The case was notable for two reasons. First, the former detainee, Shawali Khan , is no longer in custody but has pursued his habeas corpus lawsuit because he said the allegations that he had connections to a terrorist group have left a cloud over his life. Second, at an earlier stage in the lawsuit, while Mr. Khan was detained at the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the government introduced evidence against him that it kept secret at the time from his lawyers . While the courts upheld his detention on that basis, the government apparently later changed its mind about the credibility of that evidence, the details of which have not been disclosed. In 2014, court documents showed, officials provided unspecified information to Mr. Khan’s defense team, which cited it in asking Judge John D. Bates to reopen the case. The government then transferred Mr. Khan. But his lawyers pressed forward, asking the judge to rule that Mr. Khan had never been lawfully detained in the first place, to “correct a substantial injustice” related to the previously withheld information. On Tuesday, Judges Bates said that while he was sympathetic to Mr. Khan, he agreed with the Justice Department that the case was moot because Mr. Khan was no longer in American custody. He cited a 2011 appeals court ruling finding that factors like reputational harm were not enough to keep such a case active for a former detainee. Judge Bates noted that more was known now than in 2011 about the effects of detention on those eventually released, citing two recent New York Times articles about the challenges faced by former detainees . But, he said, the 2011 precedent still controlled the legal issue. In court filings, Mr. Khan raised several arguments. Among them, he said that the Afghan government had seized his lands after he was captured in 2002, and a ruling that he was innocent might help him get the deeds back. He also said that because of his past, he could not obtain a passport, which he needed to travel to a medical clinic in India for treatment for hearing loss he suffered as a result of “loud blaring music” used “during interrogations, mostly at C.I.A. facilities before” he was sent to Guantánamo. But Judge Bates noted that it was the Afghan government, not the American government, that would decide whether to return the lands or issue him a passport. Assuming that Mr. Khan’s statements were accurate, Judge Bates wrote, “the court is sympathetic to the pickle” in which he found himself. “He is unable to receive medical treatment for injuries allegedly sustained while in U.S. custody because of his history of being held in U.S. custody,” the judge wrote. “However, this injury is not redressable by a federal court.”

Shawali Khan
Guantanamo Bay
Lawsuits
John D Bates
Detainees
Justice Department
Terrorism


Dolans’ Bid to Take Cablevision Private Is Rejected by Shareholders

Abstract: Shareholders blocked the Dolan family’s $10.6 billion bid for Cablevision Systems yesterday, the largest rejection of a buyout ever. The outcome leaves Cablevision, which also owns Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers, as an independent company. And it ends, for now, two years of work by the Dolans, the colorful dynasty that controls the cable empire, to take it private. While the rejection was not unexpected, it demonstrated the increasing skepticism about public-to-private transactions and whether shareholders are getting a fair price. No other deal of this size has ever been rejected; the next-largest deal to be voted down was an effort by the investor Carl C. Icahn to buy Lear, the auto parts maker, for $2.4 billion last year. Though Cablevision did not provide a breakdown of the vote, many large shareholders, proxy advisory firms and analysts had expressed reservations about the offer of $36.26 a share. The largest outside shareholder, ClearBridge Advisors, and the fund manager Mario Gabelli both opposed the buyout, saying the price was too low. They contended that if the company were sold to a rival like Time Warner, it would command a premium of more than $40 a share. The Dolans said early on that they would not sell the company, which is based in Bethpage, N.Y., to anyone but themselves. Mr. Gabelli, furious about the bid, had filed a notice before the vote that he planned to exercise his shareholder appraisal rights , which would allow a Delaware court to determine the fair value of his shares and could have led to a protracted legal battle had the deal been approved. In a statement, Charles F. Dolan and James L. Dolan tried to spin a positive angle yesterday. “While we are disappointed that shareholders did not approve the transaction, there is really nothing negative about today’s outcome,” they said. “We see today’s outcome as a vote of confidence in the prospects of Cablevision, its management team, its 20,000 employees and the industry’s future.” Yet the vote was clearly a repudiation of the family’s bid. “The rejection is due to minority investors believing the offer is too low,” said Espen Eckbo, director of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth’s Center for Corporate Governance. “One issue is why the Dolan family would lowball in a setting where minority shareholders have the right to an independent fairness opinion provided by the board.” Some analysts see a silver lining in the outcome, despite Cablevision’s dropping 3.26 percent to $30.82 a share. Richard Greenfield of Pali Research, who lobbied against the Dolans’ previous efforts to take the company private with missives titled “Do Not Let Chuck and Jim Dolan Steal CVC,” put out a note to investors yesterday suggesting a 12-month price target of $47 a share. He suggested Cablevision could issue a big dividend and might look to sell noncore assets, like some of its cable channels, “to bring down leverage, either to enable a large dividend payout and/or drive yet another Dolan attempt to take the company private.” Mr. Pali also raised the prospect of finally selling the company to Time Warner. “While TWC has enough trouble with its own operations today, we continue to believe they want/need to own CVC long-term. Given that it is now abundantly clear that CVC shareholders do not want to sell CVC unless it is auctioned to all parties, could the Dolans actually decide to sell CVC? Unlikely, but always remains a possibility.” One unlikely group that is happy the deal did not go through: the banks that were financing the bid. Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, which have both been hard hit by the credit squeeze, led the financing and committed to rates that probably would have cost the banks millions because they would have had to sell the debt at a discount to other investors. Less clear is the reputation of the independent directors who approved the deal and the banks — Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers — that advised them. At the time the bid was announced, both groups were heralded for blocking two previous efforts by the Dolans to take the company private at lower valuations. But now that shareholders have rejected the deal, some investors are questioning whether the directors should have approved the transaction.

Cablevision Systems Corp
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Dolan James L
Stocks and Bonds


Split Up by Holocaust, Top Collection of Yiddish Works Will Reunite Digitally

Abstract: Like a family split apart by the upheaval of war, what is now known as the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research , considered the world’s foremost collection of Yiddish books and cultural artifacts, was torn apart as a result of the German occupation of Vilna, Lithuania, in 1941 and the Nazis’ plan for studying a people they determined would be extinct. Much of the prewar collection was soon turned to pulp. But a large part was shipped to Frankfurt for an anti-Semitic institute for “the study of the Jewish question.” The American Army recovered that material and sent it to YIVO’s new home in New York. Still, much of the collection remained in Vilna, now Vilnius, where in a gripping saga it was rescued during the war by enslaved Jewish laborers who risked their lives to squirrel away precious books, diaries, paintings and sculptures in underground bunkers, attics and crannies. Now, 70 years later, YIVO has announced a $5.25 million project to reunite the scholarly treasures, digitally. The Lithuanian government did not want to surrender what it considers part of its national heritage, but it has agreed to assist in having all 250,000 pages of documents and 4,200 books digitally copied and integrated into a web portal, where they will be available to scholars around the world. The YIVO collection at 15 West 16th Street in Manhattan — an archive of 24 million items that includes the immigrant Jewish experience in America as well as the almost vanished Jewish culture of Eastern Europe — will also be digitized. The project is expected to take seven years. Image A Nazi stamp in a book in YIVO’s collection. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times “These materials are Holocaust survivors,” said David E. Fishman, a professor of Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary who is working on a chronicle of the YIVO collection’s rescue. “Like a survivor, these materials were controlled by the Germans. Like a survivor, they were in hiding. The fact that they were saved is miraculous.” Vilna was known as “the Jerusalem of Lithuania” for both its intellectual and religious eminence, though members of a nationwide community that once numbered over 200,000 Jews — half in Vilna — sometimes speak of it as if it were the Jerusalem of all of Europe. Indeed, YIVO (an acronym in Yiddish for Yiddish Scientific Institute), which was started in 1925 to foster consciousness of the rich 800-year-old history of Eastern European Jews, housed materials from across the continent. Among the materials that will be made available are many that offer a flavor of how Jews lived: Yiddish theater posters; student geometry notebooks from a Yiddish school, complete with rough sketches; records of synagogues, rabbinical schools, charities, fraternal and professional associations and Zionist movements; early editions of Hebrew books, some dating from the 1500s; the original script of Jacob Gordin’s “ Mirele Efros ,” a classic of Yiddish theater sometimes known as the “Jewish Queen Lear”; missing script pages from another dramatic classic, “The Dybbuk,” by S. Ansky, in the author’s own hand; and two etchings by Marc Chagall. Some of the materials had been hidden, crumpled into balls and covered with earth. Those will now have to be flattened, cleaned and paired up with their missing pages. “This is cultural paleontology,” said Jonathan Brent, YIVO’s executive director. Arranging the project involved a delicate diplomatic minuet and included meetings in Vilna with Mr. Brent, government officials and leaders of the Jewish community, which now numbers 5,000. Mr. Brent wanted Lithuania to send the materials to New York, since it felt YIVO was the owner. But when Lithuania balked, he said: “I proposed to Lithuania that we hold moot the question of ownership. Our job is to preserve materials for future generations and make them available to scholars worldwide who can make sense of these materials. We’re able to create an electronic bridge over a troubled stream.” Ultimately the Lithuanian Central State Archives, with a fund of 200,000 euros (about $250,000), will assign four employees to describe, restore and digitize the documents. YIVO will pay an additional two employees (it already has pledges of $375,000 for the project). YIVO archivists will make periodic trips to Vilna to supervise the cataloging and digitization, which will take place at the Lithuanian Central State Archives and the Lithuanian National Library. Image Items in 1947 after their rescue; some remained in Lithuania. Credit Courtesy of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research “The Litvaks’ culture and history constitute an integral part of Lithuania’s culture and history, so we are interested to preserve these documents because they are part of our heritage,” Mantvydas Bekesius, a vice minister in Lithuania’s foreign affairs ministry, said in an email, using a term for Lithuanian Jews. The Lithuanians, perhaps eager to cement their image as an enlightened democracy in the wake of the Soviet Union’s breakup, have been extraordinarily cooperative, Mr. Brent said. The breakup of the collection started with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and his subordinates rounded up Judaica collections for their so-called research institutes, but they needed people who could expertly analyze Yiddish works and so forcibly drafted intellectuals like the Yiddish poets Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski to sift through the material and pack it. Just as the Jews were selected for deportation to concentration camps, books and documents were selected for shipment to paper mills. But over several years Sutzkever, Kaczerginski and others stuffed thousands of books and documents — including works from another important Jewish collection, the Strashun Library — inside their clothing and smuggled them into the Nazi-demarcated Jewish ghetto. There, they were hidden behind apartment walls, beneath floors and in a ventilated bunker 60 feet underground that had been constructed by an engineer for his paralyzed mother. After Vilna was liberated by the Soviets in July 1944, those workers who had not been killed at the Ponar mass murder site unearthed the hidden papers. But they had to rescue them all over again because the Soviets under Stalin, trying to wipe out any ethnic chauvinism, started to destroy the collection. Some items were smuggled to New York, and some were hidden in the basement of a Catholic church by a gentile librarian, Antanas Ulpis. Starting in 1989, about two-thirds of the surviving collection in Vilna was shipped in crates to New York for copying and then returned. But that was the age of Xeroxes and microfilms, which are not permanent and cannot be easily disseminated worldwide, and the new project will include the material that was not sent over then. Worldwide access, Mr. Brent said, is the beauty of digitization, something the scholars who assembled YIVO decades ago could never have imagined.

Yivo Institute for Jewish Research
Archive
Lithuania
Holocaust and Nazis
Judaism
Vilnius
Manhattan
Arts and Antiquities Looting
Yiddish


Fatal Suicide Attack on Pakistan Police Station

Abstract: PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into a police station in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing 19 people and injuring at least 46, according to officials and local news outlets. Among the dead were nine police officers, eight civilians and two children, local and provincial authorities said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion immediately turned to Taliban militants, who are believed to have been behind a wave of suicide attacks across the country in the past week. Militants have repeatedly attacked law enforcement officials and government buildings to batter public and government morale. The attacks came as Pakistan’s government grappled with record flooding that has displaced millions of people. Monday’s attack occurred in Lakki Marwat, a town in the restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. The bomber rammed the vehicle into the rear wall of the police station, according to the authorities. Several people were trapped in the debris as the police building collapsed after the blast. The blast also hit a school van that was passing by the police station, according to initial reports. The intensity of the blast damaged a nearby mosque and a government building. The wounded were taken to hospitals in Lakki Marwat and Peshawar, the provincial capital. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa was formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province. “The militants are taking advantage of the flood situation,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for the provincial government, said Monday. “They know that we are busy in the relief and rescue work.” Suicide bombers last week attacked Shiite processions, first in the eastern city of Lahore in Punjab Province, and then in Quetta in southwestern Baluchistan. The death toll from Friday’s attack in Quetta rose to 65, Pakistani officials said. The attack in Lahore , which took place last Wednesday, left 31 people dead and set off violent demonstrations.


Kentucky: Facebook Posts Lead to Charges of Threatening Governor

Abstract: A Lexington man has been charged with threatening to kill Gov. Steven L. Beshear, his wife and their family in a series of Facebook postings. Federal agents say in court documents that they believe the man, William Collin Bordt, 22, also may have posted threats to a former employer and a politician in South Carolina. A criminal complaint filed federal court in Lexington says the Kentucky State Police and federal agents arrested Mr. Bordt on Wednesday and charged him with using interstate communications to make threats. A Department of Homeland Security special agent wrote in an affidavit that Mr. Bordt posted “Your both dead if he doesn’t step down” and other messages on the governor’s Facebook page.

Steven L Beshear
Facebook
Assassination
Kentucky


Warming and the Right

Abstract: LAST June, Jim Manzi, a longtime software executive, laid out a case in The National Review for the need for conservatives to accept the “reality” of global warming ( nationalreview.com ). It is, he wrote, “no longer possible, scientifically or politically, to deny that human activities have very likely increased global temperatures; what remains in dispute is the precise magnitude of the human impact.” Conservatives, he added, “should accept this reality — and move on to the question of what we should do about it.” “This would put us in a much better position to prevent a massive, counterproductive intervention in the U.S. economy.” Mr. Manzi was lambasted by liberals as well as conservatives, including the radio host Rush Limbaugh ( rushlimbaugh.com ), who questioned his knowledge of physics and declared that he was relying on “junk science.” Undaunted, Mr. Manzi followed up this week in The American Scene, a Web site focused on politics and culture, arguing against proposed carbon taxes. Imposing them would create a worldwide “economic drag” that could actually be worse, economically speaking, than global warming itself, he wrote ( theamericanscene.com ). Far better, according to Mr. Manzi, would be to create technologies that would “use energy more efficiently, emit less carbon per unit of energy, remove carbon from the atmosphere, and/or reduce the harm done by carbon dioxide.” Ryan Avent writes on the environment-focused site Grist that he is happy that “some conservative thinkers are beginning to wrestle with warming in an intellectually honest, if mistaken, manner.” But he says he is perplexed by the notion of a conservative arguing in favor of planned government investments over the choice-driven incentives that carbon taxes would create ( gristmill.grist.org ). “A ‘conservative’ approach to emissions reduction that favors the wisdom of central planning over market allocations?” he wrote. “The mind boggles.” REVENUE VéRITé Video sites need to draw a minimum of 50,000 views a month before getting serious interest from advertisers, Dina Kaplan, a founder of the video-sharing site Blip.tv, told Daisy Whitney of TVWeek. And getting to that level is no easy task. It is one thing to get attention, but quite another to build a big enough audience to make real money, Ms. Whitney wrote ( tvweek.com ). “Some Web video stars, like the ‘Ask a Ninja’ guys, are raking it in. Some, like the Beet.tv video blogger Andy Plesser, are earning a hefty supplement to their day jobs.” “Ask a Ninja,” which features a guy in a ninja outfit answering viewer questions, is particularly hot just now, taking in about $100,000 a month for its two founders from advertising, merchandising and licensing, Ms. Whitney reported. BACK TO THE FUTURE It’s easy to make fun of decades-old films that tried to predict the future: the Internet is rife with clips depicting jet packs, hovercraft, and anthropomorphic robot butlers. This week, though, a short, uncannily accurate clip from “1999 A.D.,” a film made in 1967 by Philco-Ford, got lots of attention online when it was posted to the Ultimate News Flash blog ( ultimatenewsflash.blogspot.com ). The film’s depictions of electronic commerce and e-mail are about as spot-on as they could be, though the filmmakers failed to forecast changes in attitudes toward sex roles. “What the wife selects on her console will be paid for by the husband on his counterpart console,” the narrator declares. She is in the kitchen, buying clothes; he is in the den, paying bills.

Computers and the Internet
Global Warming
Carbon Dioxide
Blogs and Blogging (Internet)
National Review
Manzi Jim
Limbaugh Rush


A Lifesaver of Bone Marrow or Cord Blood, Out of Reach

Abstract: Scrambling to get 60 seconds out of every minute, Katie Meacham finally got the boyfriend to take her for a carriage ride in Central Park. He hated it, she reports. “He said, ‘You know this is a pity ride, don’t you?’ ” she said, laughing. Even though she is just 26, her days and time are at a premium. Ms. Meacham lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but she is also a citizen of another country: cancer land. She has a kind of aggressive lymphoma, a disease that ruins the blood. Her journey is worth a moment or two of reflection. For Ms. Meacham and thousands of others with similar illnesses, the best chance for a cure would be a transplant of cells from the bone marrow of a living person, or from the umbilical cord blood of a newborn. One way to sign up as a possible donor for Ms. Meacham or others is through the Web site of the National Marrow Donor Program, at join.marrow.org/4katie . Every few months, stories like Ms. Meacham’s are broadcast on television and radio, or appear in newspapers. This year, a drive was held to recruit potential donors for Jasmina Anema, a 6-year-old girl in Greenwich Village who has leukemia. Perhaps 40,000 people a year come down with blood cancers. As much as their personal struggles engage us, they also tell us about the hard limits of market-based medicine. There is no easy way to make money from the cures to these diseases. Millions of people are willing to donate cells from their bone marrow, but commercial blood banks are not interested in bearing the cost of figuring out who wants to do it or in tracking them down when they are needed. “It’s not a business,” said Robert Baitty, the director of the blood stem cell transplantation program at the Health Resources and Services Administration. Similarly, more than four million babies are born every year in the United States, each one with an umbilical cord containing blood that is highly prized because it is less likely to be rejected when cells are transplanted. “Most of the cord blood is just thrown in the garbage,” Ms. Meacham said. The reason for this squander is simple. No one has figured out a way to make money by salvaging the blood and making it available for therapeutic use. It is expensive to collect the names and tissue types of millions of people, or tens of thousands of units of umbilical cord blood. For these lifesaving therapies, there is no business model. Over the last four years, the federal government has stepped into the vacuum and taken on greater responsibility for the blood transplant programs. It financed an expansion of the National Marrow Donor Program, which has a registry called Be the Match . And for the first time, a coordinated program was started to collect cord blood. In the four years since it began, the federal program has collected a little more than 40,000 units of cord blood, at a time when 16 million babies were born. The main obstacle, Mr. Baitty said, is cost. The collection and storage of each unit of cord blood costs $1,500 to $2,500. None of that money can be recouped until the cells are provided to a patient for transplant. “You incur all the cost of recruiting donors, shipping it to the bank, putting it in the freezer,” Mr. Baitty said. “Then you wait for someone to need it. It’s not attractive to private companies.” The federal appropriation for collecting cord blood is about $12 million annually, which covers the cost of about 10,000 new units. If the national banks had 400,000 units of cord blood, that inventory could provide matches for 90 percent of the people with dozens of serious blood diseases, Mr. Baitty said. It would be ideal. It would also cost 40 times as much as is now being spent. In New York City, mothers can donate their newborn’s cord blood at many hospitals , although they are urged to make their wishes known by the eighth month of pregnancy. And then there are the drives inspired by individuals like Ms. Meacham, who, besides taking a horse carriage ride through Central Park, ran five miles a few weeks ago and is known as a person of great verve. She works in public relations. The bone marrow registry programs typically ask for contributions of $50 to $100 to cover the costs of listing a person as a possible donor. But Ms. Meacham’s friends and relatives have raised money so that anyone who goes to the National Marrow Donor Program site will be able to sign up without paying. And the information about their cells will be available not only to Ms. Meacham but to anyone else who might be able to use it for a transplant. “We don’t want any obstacles,” she said. “For me or anyone else.”

Bone Marrow
Transplants
Medicine and Health
Leukemia
New York City


European Aid Plan Swings Markets Higher

Abstract: For a day, at least, investors could exhale. After a bruising five sessions last week that erased all of the year’s gains — including a momentary free fall on Thursday that remains largely unexplained — stock indexes roared back on Monday. Credit markets also recovered from their malaise. Feeding the rally was an extraordinary agreement among European leaders to provide a rescue package of nearly $1 trillion to stop the spreading debt crisis. Financial stocks received a particular boost as fears receded, for now at least, of a default on Greek sovereign debt that might have hit the balance sheets of some big banks. “I looked at the numbers and said ‘My goodness, that must be a misprint,’ ” Anthony Conroy, head equity trader for BNY ConvergEx Group, said of his initial reaction to news of the European intervention. “They are really sending a statement that we are going to fix the issues and we are going to fix them now.” The United States indexes opened sharply higher and stayed there. The Dow Jones industrial average soared 404.71 points, or 3.9 percent, to 10,785.14. It was the largest point gain since March 23, 2009, when the Dow closed up 497.48 points as it was recovering from lows that month. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 48.85 points, or 4.4 percent, to 1,159.73, and the Nasdaq composite index climbed 109.03 points, or 4.81 percent, to 2,374.67. The rebound was reminiscent of the reaction by investors to the United States government’s plan, in September 2008, to buy up hundreds of billions of dollars worth of distressed mortgages. It was Washington’s initial attempt to shore up banks that had been hobbled by the credit crisis , and it sent stock and credit markets sharply higher. After rallies in Asia and Europe on Monday, Wall Street was primed for a rowdy opening. Traders said they returned to their desks early on Monday and were deluged with orders. Phones rang nonstop. Market strategists held conference calls with institutional investors and reset their portfolios. Treasuries sold, the financial sector rallied, and market indexes jumped. “We were busy at 6:30, already busy trading,” Mr. Conroy said, adding, “Normally there would be just a couple of orders, but this morning, multiply that exponentially.” Tom di Galoma, the United States head of fixed-income rates trading for Guggenheim Partners, said the day started with a string of phone calls as investors measured the effect of the plan. “There has been a tremendous amount of conference calls with customers related to what we think the plan actually does for the market place,” he said. “Spreads are tightening in the corporate bond market, and people are taking more risk in equities.” That sentiment was reflected in the credit markets, where the cost of insuring against default on both European government debt and banks fell sharply, after rising steadily for weeks. So did the yield premium that investors demand on Greek, Spanish and Portuguese debt, suggesting that investors were less fearful of default. Referring to the market turmoil on Thursday, he added: “I still think people are in a state of shock because of what happened last week.” The rally in the United States was preceded by renewed market confidence in Europe, where shares jumped on word of the nearly $1 trillion support package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, which was followed by a pledge by the European Central Bank to intervene in the bond markets. The Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, rose 10.35 percent. The FTSE 100 index in London increased 5.16 percent. The CAC 40 in Paris climbed 9.66 percent and the DAX in Frankfurt 5.3 percent. As traders returned to riskier investments, gold and bond prices tumbled. Crude oil settled up $1.69, at $76.80 a barrel in New York. The Treasury’s 10-year note fell 30/32, to 100 22/32. The yield rose to 3.54 percent from 3.43 percent. The moves also took the pressure off the euro , which bounced back from 14-month lows. The 16-nation currency jumped above the $1.30 barrier for the first time in a week before settling back to $1.2804 in trading in New York. Some investors said they were still waiting on the sidelines, fearful that European leaders had just papered over the growing problems in Greece, Portugal and Spain, using new debt to cover old debt. “At least for the moment it puts aside any concerns,” said one cautious investor, Marc Harris, co-head of global research at RBC Capital Markets. Officials involved in the rescue said they were relieved by the market’s reaction. “We wouldn’t want to make too much of one day’s response, but it looks like the involvement of the I.M.F. and the final approval of this joint program — Greek, European, I.M.F. — has had a very sharply positive impact on markets,” John P. Lipsky, the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Monday in a conference call with reporters. Justin Golden, a senior strategist for Macro Risk Advisors, said he and colleagues worked through the night on Sunday, calling clients and exchanging messages on a chat system to try to make sense of the European announcement and to gauge how it would affect stocks and options prices. The last time they worked through the night was in January, when news of Greece’s troubles emerged. On Monday, he was glued to the screen early to get a sense for how the euro, specifically, would respond because United States equities investors had recently been taking their guidance from the currency. Some analysts had said the European Central Bank had missed an opportunity to take bold action last Thursday, so the size, if not the action, was a real surprise. “I think that is pretty typical for the E.C.B.,” Mr. Golden said. “Apparently they tend to downplay what they are working on and are a little less quick to the trigger.” He said the size of the bailout had been a surprise. “We are calling it a financial bazooka,” he said.


Service Companies Ticking Up as New Orders Expand

Abstract: Growth picked up last month at United States services companies, which have been a source of strength for the American economy. The Institute for Supply Management said on Tuesday that its services index rebounded to 54.5 in March from a two-year low of 53.4 in February. Anything above 50 signals growth. Business activity and new orders grew faster. A measure of export orders surged to the highest level in a year. A measure of employment in services registered 50.3 after contracting in February. Over all, “this is the best reading since December but still a far cry from the torrid figures seen through most of last year,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities, wrote in a research report. The index averaged 57.2 last year. The institute, a trade group of purchasing managers, covers businesses that employ the vast majority of workers.

Service Industries
US Economy
Institute for Supply Management


Prosecutors Drop Charges Against E.M.T.

Abstract: Prosecutors on Tuesday dropped charges against an emergency medical technician who had been accused of not helping a pregnant woman who collapsed and later died in a Brooklyn cafe. The technician, Melisa Jackson, was at an Au Bon Pain in Downtown Brooklyn in December 2009 when workers there, seeing the uniform she wore, asked her to help a cashier who was having a severe asthma attack, according to court papers. Ms. Jackson called an ambulance, but left without providing more help. Ms. Jackson was arrested in October 2010 and charged with one count of official misconduct after her boss, Abdo Nahmod, now chief of the New York Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Services, informed prosecutors that she could be held liable under a rule requiring emergency workers to treat patients when they are flagged down for assistance. On Tuesday, Kevin Richardson, an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, told a Kings County Criminal Court judge that Mr. Nahmod had reversed his opinion and asked that the charges be dismissed, according to a transcript. Mr. Richardson said that Mr. Nahmod told him last week that under the “flag-down rule,” emergency personnel not assigned to an ambulance or a special event have no duty to offer aid even if they are in uniform. “There is absolutely no possible way to sustain a criminal charge against Melisa Jackson,” Mr. Richardson said. “Our case was based upon her clear violation of a rule which we were assured applied to her during the time of the incident.” On the day of the episode, Ms. Jackson was on a coffee break with her boyfriend and colleague, Jason Green. Both were assigned to the 911 dispatch center, which at the time was in the same building as the restaurant. After calling for an ambulance, neither went to check on the cashier, Eutisha Reveé Rennix, 25, who was in a back room. She later died of cardiopulmonary arrest. Her unborn baby also died. Ms. Jackson and Mr. Green said in a 2010 interview that no one had told them that Ms. Rennix’s condition was so serious. In July 2010, Mr. Green was shot to death during an argument outside a nightclub. Benjamin Heinrich, Ms. Jackson’s lawyer, said he had argued that his client was a dispatcher and had not been in the field for years, so could not be held liable. The family of Ms. Rennix has filed a civil suit against Ms. Jackson.

Emergency medicine
Brooklyn
Fatalities,casualties
Melisa Jackson
Eutisha Revee Rennix


Russia Threatens Cut in Belarus Gas Supply

Abstract: MOSCOW, Aug. 1 — In the latest of Russia ’s many disputes over energy payments with neighboring countries, the natural gas monopoly Gazprom warned Wednesday that it would reduce supplies to Belarus by 10 a.m. local time on Friday unless the former Soviet state pays an outstanding gas bill of $456 million. The tough tactics could also affect Gazprom customers farther west along Europe’s natural gas pipelines, again raising worries about the reliability of Russian supplies and the wisdom of Europe’s growing dependence on Russian energy. Poland, Lithuania and parts of Germany and Ukraine are supplied via the pipeline that crosses Belarus, Gazprom said. The dispute is the latest in a long series over pricing with Ukraine and Belarus. For Belarus, the standoff is the second in seven months, after an agreement to raise prices narrowly averted a gas shutoff last New Year’s Eve. Gazprom said the national gas company of Belarus was in arrears on payments agreed to during that Dec. 31 compromise. The Moscow-based company issued a statement Wednesday that said it would reduce by 45 percent shipments of natural gas intended for the Belarusian domestic market if the payment was not received. “There will be no more discussions,” Sergei Kupriyanov, Gazprom’s spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “The Belarusian side is not fulfilling its obligations, so we are going to take measures.” Gazprom took pains to emphasize that it would not reduce the volume of gas shipped via Belarus for export to Western Europe. “We have a clear contract saying how much they should pay and when,” Mr. Kupriyanov said. “The Belarus side is in direct violation of the agreement.” By evening Wednesday, the Belarusian gas company, Beltransgaz, had not responded publicly to the ultimatum. If past practice is a guide, Russia will follow through on the threat if Gazprom is not paid. The dispute is reminiscent of Gazprom’s demands in 2005 that Ukraine pay roughly twice its previous rate for natural gas a year after street protests known as the Orange Revolution put a pro-Western government in power in Kiev. When Ukrainian authorities balked, Gazprom reduced the pressure in the Ukrainian pipeline system on New Year’s Day. Ukrainian gas customers, including municipal utilities that heat homes, responded by drawing down fuel from volumes in the pipelines intended for export. As a result, pressures dropped throughout the interconnected European gas pipeline system until Gazprom reversed its decision and restored the pressure two days later. Any impact this time, however, would not be as great as during the January 2006 standoff because less gas is shipped via Belarus than via Ukraine and demand is low during the summer. In 2006, jittery authorities in Italy implored customers to put lids on pots to reduce the energy needed to boil water. The dispute is the latest of dozens between Gazprom and former Soviet states since the collapse of the Soviet Union fragmented control of the sprawling web of pipelines built in the 1960s to export Siberian natural gas to Western Europe. On the level of economics, the breakup of that pipeline network has led to competing claims for the profits from energy exported via the system, played out in disputes over gas prices and transit fees. The disputes also have a political dimension, critics say. The price increases have affected pro-Western governments in the former Soviet Union like Ukraine and Georgia. The small countries to Russia’s west, called transit states, have bargained for a larger share of the profits at a time of record world prices. Governments lay claims to a share of that profit either in the form of subsidized energy from Russia for their domestic markets, or as fees charged for transshipping natural gas over their territory. Gazprom’s position is different. It says the demands for higher payments are in line with rising world energy prices. Belarus paid $47 per 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas until this year, the lowest of any former Soviet state, reflecting once warm relations with Moscow that have since soured, partly because of disputes over energy prices. Belarus’s current price, however, is still the lowest of any former member of the Soviet bloc. Under the terms of the agreement reached Dec. 31, Beltransgaz agreed to pay $100 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas this year, but would defer the higher payments until July 23, when a lump sum of $456 million would come due, Gazprom said. It is that sum that Gazprom says Belarus has not paid.

Russia
Belarus
Gazprom
International Trade and World Market
Gas (Fuel)


Sending Instant Messages to a Cellphone

Abstract: Q. How do you send an instant message with AOL Instant Messenger from a Windows computer to someone’s mobile phone? Does the person need to have AIM installed on the phone? A. Most instant message programs — including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, iChat and Yahoo Messenger — include the ability to send messages to wireless phones that are equipped to handle text messages. Your friend does not need to use AIM to get the message, but depending on his or her phone plan, there may be a small fee for receiving text messages. To start, click on the Setup button and select Buddy List Setup in the AIM Buddy List window. Click on the Add Mobile icon. In the resulting window, type in your friend’s country and mobile phone number, and a name for this new entry in your Buddy List, then click on the O.K. button. To send a message to that phone, just select that name on your list and send an instant message as you normally would to a computer. Messages to phones should be brief, however, and your friend’s ability to reply may depend on the wireless carrier’s support for the AIM service. A user guide for Mobile AIM can be found at http://mymobile.aol.com/portal/im/sms.html . Reviving an Ailing Browser Q. I use Mac OS X 10.2.8, and I understand that Internet Explorer is no longer available for the Macintosh. My copy of Internet Explorer won’t open, so when I click on links in e-mail messages, nothing happens. Is there a way to fix this? A. Microsoft stopped development of the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer in 2003 and removed the program from the software area of its site this year. Apple’s own browser, Safari, was included with later versions of Mac OS X, but if you do not have an alternative browser installed on your Mac that you can use as your default program, there are a few basic troubleshooting steps to try. You might try moving Internet Explorer’s Preferences file to your desktop. If this file is corrupted, it may be causing the browser to crash when you try to open it. To find this file, open the Users folder on the Mac’s hard drive and open the Home folder, which has an icon that looks like a house. Once inside the Home folder, go to the Library folder, then to the Preferences folder, and look for files called “com.apple.internetconfig.plist” and “com.microsoft.explorer.plist.” Drag these files to the desktop and restart your Macintosh. If Internet Explorer starts up fine, then corrupted Preferences files were the likely culprits. Some versions of Apple’s QuickTime multimedia software have also been known to cause problems with Internet Explorer. If you are still having problems, try removing the QuickTime Plugin.plugin file from the Library’s Internet Plug-Ins folder as well. This may hamper your ability to see Web pages that use QuickTime audio and video. If you can get Internet Explorer up and running, you may want to take the opportunity to download an alternative browser like Firefox ( www.mozilla.com ) or Camino ( www.caminobrowser.org ) to use instead of the outdated Internet Explorer. When you install the new software, you usually have the chance to choose the new program as the default Web browser — which means Web links that you click on in e-mail messages open with the selected browser. If you cannot even open Internet Explorer to get a new browser, downloading a copy on another computer (and transferring it to your own by CD or U.S.B. drive) is another option. When a Computer Won’t Turn Off Q. Pressing the power button on my computer won’t turn it off if my system crashes, and I have to resort to pulling the power plug. Why is this? A. To prevent the computer’s accidentally shutting down if the power button is bumped, some machines have a power button that requires pressure for a longer period of time than just a quick tap. The next time you need to escape an unresponsive computer, try holding the power button down for a few seconds. If that does not work, there may be more of a mechanical problem under the hood, and you may want to have a computer repair person examine the machine.

Wireless Communications
Computers and the Internet
Computer Software


Why Dodd-Frank Has Little to Fear From Constitutional Challenges

Abstract: One of the ways that businesses have fought back against greater financial regulation since the financial crisis has been to claim that the new oversight threatens the bedrock principle of separation of powers. These arguments have earned some sympathy from the federal judiciary. Courts in Denver and Washington have recently declared some aspects of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act to be unconstitutional on separation of powers grounds. But these declarations have been almost entirely empty of content. The courts have fallen over themselves to assure everyone that the unconstitutional agency powers should continue to be exercised almost exactly as before. It is these hollow remedies, rather than the findings of liability, that are the most interesting aspects of these challenges. They raise one of the enduring mysteries of the federal judiciary: Why hold a government program to be unconstitutional if you aren’t going to do anything about it? At the end of December, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s administrative enforcement strategy, bolstered by Dodd-Frank, was found by a federal appeals court to have vested too much power in agency adjudicators. The adjudicators could preside over high-profile enforcement actions, but had not been selected under the authority to appoint important government officers, which is given to “the president alone, in the courts of law or in the heads of departments,” as the Constitution’s Appointments Clause puts it. In October, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has cracked down on various sharp practices by lenders, was found by an appeals court to be too independent from presidential oversight to be consistent with the authority vested in the White House to “ take care that the laws be faithfully executed .” As Peter J. Henning observed in his White Collar Watch column, “The idea behind the Appointments Clause is to maintain the separation of powers in the federal government by placing the authority in the executive branch that will be politically accountable, rather than creating fiefs that are beyond the reach of the president.” The same observation might be made of the Take Care Clause. By assigning the faithful execution of laws to the president, Congress cannot give executive powers to someone else, ensuring that the buck stops in the Oval Office. These are important values, so you would think that a group of administrative adjudicators, or an entire agency, that threatens them would get some strong medicine from the courts. Not so. One judge emphasized that, although the Securities and Exchange Commission’s administrative adjudication scheme violated the Appointments Clause, an easy fix “portends no change to any” administrative adjudicator’s “robust protections” and independence. As for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, its illegal independence could be fixed with a “targeted remedy [that] will not affect the ongoing operations” of the agency. The courts have done this sort of thing before. The Supreme Court found that the government’s plan for overseeing accountants violated the Appointments Clause, but let the plan continue with the smallest of changes. The court concluded that the National Labor Relations Board had relied on some illegal appointments, but let it quickly redecide most of the cases that had been decided by the illegal appointees in almost exactly the same ways. An appellate court found that a program requiring companies to certify that they were not using certain conflict minerals to make their goods violated the First Amendment, but only if the government insisted that the firms use the words “DRC [for Democratic Republic of Congo] conflict free” in their disclosures. The problem with many constitutional law remedies is that they are too big to succeed. Taken literally, they would require dismantling vast apparatuses of the government. The Securities and Exchange Commission has to be able to tell publicly listed companies what they must put on their disclosures, even if it looks like required speech. Agency adjudicators have been around for decades and have been affirmed hundreds of times by the Supreme Court. Their independence from their agency bosses is usually thought to ensure more evenhanded decision making. It is unrealistic to order that these programs be dismantled, even if pitiless constitutional logic suggests otherwise. The constitutional law remedies therefore cannot be taken seriously. It’s a wonder corporations bother. They could bring other lawsuits that could actually affect government operations. Forcing agencies to conduct extensive cost-benefit analyses before passing rules really does limit regulatory power. Cost-benefit analysis challenges have hamstrung Securities and Exchange Commission rule making, and disrupted the government’s strategy for overseeing too-big-to-fail insurance companies and asset managers. But court challenges to the separation of powers principles have repeatedly revealed themselves to be like the folk wisdom about March. They come in like a lion, purporting to hold powerful and well-established bureaucracies to be unconstitutional. But they go out like a lamb, leaving everything the way it was.

US Constitution,United States Constitution


Support for Move to Broaden Definition of Rape

Abstract: Police officials and women’s groups on Thursday applauded a recommendation by a Federal Bureau of Investigation subcommittee that the definition of rape used by the agency be revised. The definition, written more than 80 years ago, has been criticized as too narrow, resulting in thousands of rapes being excluded from the F.B.I.’s annual Uniform Crime Report. The subcommittee recommends a broader definition, to include anal and oral rape, as well as rapes involving male victims. Currently, only sexual assaults that involved force and vaginal penetration are included. The proposal is subject to approval of a full advisory board, which meets in December. Women’s groups have been trying for years to get the definition changed. “What I’m happiest about is that such a clear consensus is emerging from law enforcement officials all over the country that this has to happen,” said Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia.

Sex Crimes
Federal Bureau of Investigation


Cameras Show if Surf Is Good, but Surfers Are Getting in Way

Abstract: EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — Ever since Jimmy Minardi mounted his $8,500 video camera last summer and aimed it at the Atlantic Ocean, the surfers here have been complaining. The camera streamed video straight to Mr. Minardi’s Web site, letting surfers check the waves without having to pack up their boards and head to the beach with fingers crossed. These surf cams, or wave cams, which have gained in popularity in recent years, help advertise lesser-known beaches to outsiders who are looking for new surfing spots. But the cameras have also caused problems in the territorial world of hard-core surfers, many of whom blame them for leading crowds to once-secluded beaches. Today, there are perhaps a dozen cameras along the South Shore of Long Island and another dozen along the Jersey Shore, surfers said. Vandalism is common enough that the operators — from surf shops that run a single camera to large surfing-related companies that own dozens of them — keep the locations confidential. Officials at Wavewatch.com and Surfline.com , two of the larger surf cam sites, said they tried not to pick spots where the regulars would be riled. Still, Jonno Wells, the chief executive of Surfline.com, which operates about 100 Web cameras at beaches from the Hamptons to Hawaii, said his company regularly received angry e-mail messages from “squawkers blaming cameras for crowding.” Rafael Patterson, the brand manager for Wavewatch, which operates 18 cameras nationally, said his company also received complaints, but it tried to be sensitive in selecting surf cam locations. Mr. Wells said several of his company’s cameras had been damaged; Mr. Patterson said he did not know of any vandalism. Mr. Minardi, 45, a native of East Hampton, is a fitness instructor whose celebrity clients include Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld. He said he shrugged off the complaints he received — until someone ran off with his camera last month. The East Hampton Village police are questioning local surfers in search of a suspect. Was it the actor and surfer who sent Mr. Minardi an e-mail message saying that as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, he would bill him at union scale every time he appeared on camera? Was it the person who threatened to block the camera by putting a sign in front it? The camera was planted just east of the Georgica Jetties, a good wave break that does not attract the crowds that flock to better-known spots like Ditch Plains in Montauk. The problem, said Matt Norklun, the surfer-actor who sent the e-mail message, was that the camera attracted too many surfers, many of them neophytes (known to experienced surfers as groms or kooks). As a result, there were jokes among the tight-knit surfing community here about how to block the camera. But after its disappearance, Mr. Norklun said, not even a whisper surfaced about who might have taken it. Or why. Mr. Minardi said the camera could simply have been stolen for its value. An outspoken critic of the camera, Mr. Norklun said the police questioned him after it disappeared. “I don’t know who took it, but whoever it is, he’s a folk hero around here,” he said. “The police asked me, ‘Would you tell us if you did know?’ And I said, ‘Probably not.’ ” As for his demand to be paid union wages, he said, “A lot of guys were angry with Jimmy, and I wanted to drive the point home that the camera was a nuisance.” Mr. Minardi received permission to install the camera on the oceanfront property of the advertising executive Jerry Della Femina, in the rarefied Georgica Pond section of East Hampton, where Steven Spielberg and Mortimer B. Zuckerman, to name just two, have large summer homes. The camera was mounted on a wooden post, tucked between two juniper bushes, that was cut down in a clean, smooth swipe, perhaps with a power saw. “Someone definitely planned this,” Mr. Minardi said last week at the spot where the camera had been placed, a good walk from the public access at Main Beach to the east. The person who cut it down had to climb the sand dunes almost to Mr. Della Femina’s back deck to reach it. Mr. Della Femina — who likes to hang out but not hang 10 — said he was unhappy that someone would cut down the camera on his property. “If I would have walked out while it was happening, would there have been a chain saw massacre?” he said. As for the surf cam controversy, he said, “I find it incredible that there are surfers who think they have the right to a spot in the ocean.” Not that this was the first case of surf cam rage. In Montauk, efforts to put up a camera at a well-known surf spot were met with angry threats. The camera never went up. Mike Colombo, who owns the Right Coast Surf Shop in Seaside Park, N.J., said the installation of a camera at the Casino Pier in Seaside Heights aroused intense opposition. “There was a big stink — like 80 guys sent angry e-mails to the owner saying, ‘Why do you have to point it at the best break around?’ ” he said. “Then it got ripped down last year. Some enraged local took a sledgehammer and smashed it to pieces. Now they have it on a long extension pole.” Mr. Colombo explained it this way: “People don’t want their spot exposed to the entire world with the click of a mouse. If I put a camera up, people would boycott my shop.” Back on Long Island, Luke Hamlet, who owns the Long Beach Surf Shop, would not say where his camera was placed, especially after one mounted near the Boardwalk in Long Beach was repeatedly vandalized. “You definitely hear stories about people who hate them and throw rocks at cameras,” said Doug Parent, chairman of the New York City chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to the protection of beaches, although he noted that nothing like that had ever happened to two cameras at Rockaway Beach in Queens. “I’m not one for vandalism, but I could definitely see what would drive someone to do that.” But Mr. Minardi, a regular at the Georgica Jetties here, dismissed the problems caused by surf cams and said the crowding was the result of a surge in surfing’s popularity. Besides, he said, he set up his camera as a guide for environmentalists who were tracking beach erosion as well as for surfers. The camera, he said, had been pulling in up to 7,000 hits a day at MinardiTraining.com , his Web site. Mr. Minardi said he had raised most of the money needed to replace the camera stolen from behind Mr. Della Femina’s deck. “This time, we’re putting it up on the chimney,” Mr. Minardi said. “And I’m putting up a second, hidden camera to watch it. They’re not touching this one.”

Surfing
Computers and the Internet
Vandalism
Beaches
Cameras
Long Island (NY)
New Jersey


ISIS Says It Has Killed 2nd Japanese Hostage

Abstract: AMMAN, Jordan — The Islamic State claimed to have beheaded a Japanese journalist in a video released Saturday night, the culmination of a two-week-long drama that appears to have cost the lives of two Japanese men. The video of the killing of the journalist, Kenji Goto, came two days after a deadline set by the extremist group expired, and the Jordanian government did not give in to its demand that a convicted would-be suicide bomber be exchanged for Mr. Goto’s life. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, reacting to the release of the video, said Sunday that Japan would not give in to terrorism. President Obama issued a statement in which he said the United States “condemns the heinous murder” of Mr. Goto, whom he described as a courageous journalist. Left unclear by the video, which was posted on a Twitter account associated with the Islamic State’s media organization, Al Furqan, was the fate of a Jordanian pilot, whom the extremists also threatened to kill if Jordan did not release the would-be bomber, Sajida al-Rishawi . Japan had not yet authenticated the video. Jordan did not publicly comment. Jordan had agreed to release Ms. Rishawi only if the extremists provided proof that the pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, was still alive. He was shot down over Syria on Dec. 24 during airstrikes on the Islamic State. The 67-second video released Saturday showed Mr. Goto in an orange jumpsuit kneeling while a black-masked extremist, who appeared to be the man known as Jihadi John because of his British-accented English, blamed Mr. Abe for Mr. Goto’s fate. “Abe, because of your reckless decision to take part in an unwinnable war, this knife will not only slaughter Kenji, but will also carry on and cause carnage wherever your people are found,” the extremist said. “So let the nightmare for Japan begin.” He then began cutting Mr. Goto’s neck, but the screen went black, and then showed a still shot of his apparently decapitated body, hands still handcuffed behind his back, and with his severed head placed on top. Mr. Abe had promised $200 million in nonlethal aid to countries fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Speaking to reporters in Tokyo early Sunday morning, Mr. Abe said Japan would not back down from its policy. “We will increase our humanitarian aid, including food and medical support,” he said. “Japan will resolutely fulfill its responsibility to the international community in the fight against terrorism.” Image Mr. Goto spent more than two decades covering conflict zones as a freelance television cameraman and author. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The extremists had produced a photograph showing the other Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa , also beheaded, a week before. The extremists had demanded $200 million to release both men, but after a previous ultimatum expired, they said they had killed Mr. Yukawa. Then they changed their demand to a swap of Ms. Rishawi for Mr. Goto. While there was widespread support in Jordan for a swap, officials insisted that they wanted their pilot released as well, or at least wanted to see evidence that he was still alive before they would release Ms. Rishawi, who was convicted for her role in a series of bombings of hotels in Amman that killed at least 57 people in 2005. The video of Mr. Goto’s apparent execution began with the extremist brandishing a knife toward the camera, while Mr. Goto knelt and stared calmly at the camera, closing his eyes just before the knife was drawn across his throat. They appeared to be in a dry streambed. “To the Japanese government,” the killer said, “You, like your foolish allies in the satanic coalition, have yet to understand that we by Allah’s grace are the Islamic caliphate, with authority and power. An entire army thirsty for your blood.” The top Japanese government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, called the killing “a terrorist act of extreme brutality.” Live television coverage in Japan showed officials rushing into the prime minister’s office soon after the video was posted. Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the United States National Security Council, said American authorities were working to confirm the authenticity of the video, and called for the release of all remaining hostages. The Islamic State message released Sunday was uploaded with a second video, which purports to show the beheading of a man the extremists said was an intelligence agent working for Jordan in Syria. Mr. Goto, 47, was known as a respected journalist and the author of five books who knew his way around conflict zones after having spent more than two decades covering them as a freelance television cameraman. He appeared drawn to Syria and Iraq by a lifelong idealistic zeal to cover the plight of the weak, particularly refugee children. He was apparently captured by the militants in late October when he crossed into territory held by the Islamic State, which has taken over large swaths of Iraq and Syria, in a bid to win the freedom of Mr. Yukawa. They met in April after Mr. Goto helped negotiate Mr. Yukawa’s release from detention by the rebel Free Syrian Army during an earlier trip into Syria. “My son’s final act was to go to Syria to help a fellow Japanese,” Mr. Goto’s mother, Junko Ishido, said Sunday. “Please understand his kindness and courage.”

Kenji Goto
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Japan
Kidnapping and Hostages
Jordan
Sajida al-Rishawi
Moaz al-Kasasbeh


Texans Reach Playoffs, Remain in the Shadows

Abstract: When the star pass rusher and the starting quarterback were lost for the season, when the best running back and wide receiver missed time, when the backup quarterback broke his collarbone in his first start, this seemed like another doomed season for the Houston Texans . They are used to those, the team having spent its entire history waiting for Peyton Manning to falter, waiting, too, to find its own killer instinct. The Texans have drafted smartly, signed good free agents and have been in contention before, only to stumble down the stretch, contributing to an identity as perhaps a team that lacked the appropriate mettle to be a champion. But on the day the N.F.L. playoff picture gained a measure of clarity, the Texans clinched the first playoff spot in franchise history Sunday because their rookie third-string quarterback, T. J. Yates, threw for almost as many yards as the defense allowed the Cincinnati Bengals ’ offense in a 20-19 victory . This is a new-age Texans team, with quarterback Matt Schaub standing on the sideline on crutches as Yates led the winning drive in the closing seconds, and the defensive coordinator Wade Phillips, laughed out as the Dallas Cowboys’ coach last season, engineering a remarkable turnaround in which the Texans have held the last seven opponents under 20 points . It has made the Texans an unpredictable playoff team in a season that promises more of them. “It’s pretty crazy,” Yates told reporters after the game. “A lot of people in this organization have waited a long time for this. This is a special day for this team and this organization.” And yet, the Texans were not even the headliner Sunday. Tim Tebow , the unorthodox quarterback whose staggering ability to save the Denver Broncos from the brink of disaster, led the Broncos to a 13-10 overtime victory over the Chicago Bears after they trailed by 10-0 late in the fourth quarter. The Broncos, 1-4 when Tebow was made the starter, are 8-5 and lead the A.F.C. West by a game over the Oakland Raiders . Tebow remains a highly inefficient — and deeply enthralling — quarterback. The Broncos’ defense is the real cornerstone for most of those victories. But Tebow’s penchant for elevating his play late in games has captivated the N.F.L., and it will get its truest test next week, when the Broncos host the New England Patriots. New England can score so many points that Tebow’s late-game heroics would have to start much earlier. But the Patriots’ 34-27 victory over the Washington Redskins on Sunday spotlighted the problems with their defense. The Patriots allowed 463 yards, getting hurt by the run and the pass against a last-place team. Defense has been a problem for the Patriots all season, but with the secondary banged up, and no improvement in sight, it is clear that a New England playoff run will be predicated almost completely on Tom Brady’s arm. Last season, the Patriots were eliminated in the first round with a defense that struggled to hold leads. “You kind of don’t want to give up those yards in the first place,” Patriots safety James Ihedigbo said. “But at the same time, we’re going to bow our necks once we get down there and say, ‘Hey, they’re not getting in the end zone.’ ” The Texans were the third team to clinch a division title — the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers had already done so — and the Broncos’ victory then secured a playoff spot for the New Orleans Saints. But Sunday dented the hopes of the Bengals and the Tennessee Titans, resuscitated the Jets and the Atlanta Falcons, and highlighted the difference in the Saints’ offense when it does not play under a roof. It did, though, confirm one thing. The Green Bay Packers are a terrifying team. Their 46-16 demolition of the Raiders — one of the three teams in contention in the A.F.C. West — might have been their most complete game of the season. Aaron Rodgers was routinely brilliant, but the running game — often a nonfactor as Rodgers has carved up the N.F.L. — broke several big runs. And the defense, which has been susceptible to deep passes this season and is statistically among the worst in the league, shut out the Raiders in the first half. After the Saints, playing outdoors for the last time in the regular season, scored 10 fewer points than their season average in a 22-17 victory at Tennessee, and after the Patriots allowed the Redskins to move the ball effectively, it is clear that the Packers are in a class by themselves. The only thing that seems able to foil another run to the Super Bowl is the one thing that cast a pall over Lambeau Field on Sunday: injuries to key players, like receiver Greg Jennings, who was carted to the locker room with a knee injury. That is why the Packers will soon have a difficult decision to make. San Francisco’s surprising loss to the Arizona Cardinals imperils the 49ers’ hopes for a first-round playoff bye. If the Packers win next week, they will secure home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. That will leave them two games with nothing except perfection to play for . It is a delicious decision, and in the final three weeks of the season, it may not even be the most thrilling one.

Houston Texans
Playoff Games
Schaub Matt
Tebow Tim
Yates T.J.
Cincinnati Bengals
National Football League
Football
Denver Broncos
Chicago Bears


Genetic Differences That Let Octopods Flourish

Abstract: Thanks to a protein that delivers oxygen to their tissues, octopuses live as comfortably in the tropics as they do in the Antarctic. Now it turns out that the protein, a blue pigment called hemocyanin, has different genetic properties in different climates. Michael Oellermann , a biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, presented the findings last week to the Society for Experimental Biology. The research, conducted with his colleagues Hans Pörtner and Felix Mark, is part of his doctoral project. Octopuses “evolved to become very active, so they consume a lot of oxygen,” Mr. Oellermann said. “They need very efficient oxygen transport systems.” The researchers gathered specimens of Pareledone charcoti, a fist-size octopus that thrives in the Antarctic, then compared the properties of hemocyanin with that of species living in warmer waters. Like the iron in hemoglobin that makes human blood red, the copper in hemocyanin colors octopus blood blue. By studying the genetic differences of hemocyanin in various species, the scientists hope to learn how octopods modified the structure of their proteins so they could live in different climates. “We can better understand what happened over the course of evolution,” Mr. Oellermann said.

Octopus
Research
Evolution
Genetics and Heredity
Experimental Biology Journal


Penn-to-Penn Relay Tries to Create Neutral-Ice Advantage

Abstract: NEWARK — The long train that included Car No. 5324 pulled out of Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station, on the rails below the Rangers ’ home ice at Madison Square Garden. It was a little before 6 p.m. on Wednesday, and the train dipped under the Hudson River and stopped again at Newark’s Pennsylvania Station. And that is where anyone wearing Rangers garb stepped off, hoping to turn a Devils home playoff game into something closer to a neutral-site affair. A couple of rows from the front of the train car, five New Yorkers — representing Brooklyn, Long Island and Westchester County — turned the benches to face one another. All wore Rangers jerseys and held tickets to the game. One held a brown sack filled with beer. “I think it’s going to be about half,” said Andrew Hetzler of Atlantic Beach, N.Y., predicting the ratio of Rangers fans to Devils fans at the sold-out Prudential Center. “Considering that lots of tickets were around a couple of days ago, and today they’re sold out — that has to be Rangers fans.” The Devils and the Rangers were embarking on the fifth playoff series between the cross-river rivals, but this one came with a new twist. With the Devils playing their first season in a new downtown arena, rather than at their former home at the Meadowlands, the series is now connected by a few direct miles of railroad track. Call it the Penn-to-Penn Relay. Inside the arena, the majority of the 17,625 fans cheered the Devils. About one-quarter of them rooted for the Rangers. The majority went home sad, as the Rangers won, 4-1. The Devils had earned home-ice advantage in the best-of-seven series, but they had reason to worry they might not control the advantage in the stands. The Rangers, with their deep history and central geography in the metropolitan area, often play in front of relatively friendly crowds when traveling to play the Devils, or the Islanders at Nassau Coliseum. “We make every arena our home arena,” said Vincent Messano of Brooklyn as he traveled on the train to Newark. The Devils tried to sell their playoff tickets in a two-series bundle, something that team officials said was typical and was decided before the Devils knew who they would face in the first round. The strategy discouraged Rangers fans from buying multiple-game sets, because they potentially would be holding second-round tickets for a Devils series. But individual-game tickets for the series were made available, too, and countless others were bought and sold through brokers. That assured the wide split of allegiances that was evident Wednesday. Among the Rangers fans in the upper tier was Dancing Larry, a widely recognized fixture at the Garden. The New Jersey Transit train from Manhattan was one of 15 that regularly leaves between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. and makes a stop at Newark on its way to more suburban destinations in the Garden State. They were filled mostly with quiet commuters dressed in muted tones, but nearly every car held a sprinkling of excited Rangers fans dressed in the team’s bold blue. They streamed out of Newark’s Penn Station for the two-block walk to the arena. Along the way, they were joined by rivers of Devils fans pouring in from nearby parking lots, bus stops or the Broad Street train station. The combination eddied at a block party on Mulberry Street, below the giant video screen on the side of Prudential Center that can be seen from parts of Manhattan. Once the game began, Devils fans — waving white towels handed out before the game — routinely booed Rangers forward Scott Gomez, who spent seven seasons in New Jersey before signing a free-agent contract with New York last year. Rangers fans were vociferous enough to start chants of their own. “Hen-rik! Hen-rik!” followed any series of good saves by Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. When the Rangers’ Brendan Shanahan opened the scoring early in the second period, the cheers were loud enough to sound like a home game. But when the Devils countered with a power-play goal later in the period, the noise level was significantly higher. It probably was not loud enough to be heard in Manhattan, but the message was clear.

New York Rangers
Hockey Ice
New Jersey Devils
Prudential Center (Newark)