Clash Over Who Is Allowed to Whiten Your Smile

Abstract: GUNTERSVILLE, Ala. — In the middle of the enduring conflict between liberty and public welfare stands Joyce Osborn Wilson and her teeth-whitening business. After 26 years of running The Hairport, Ms. Wilson, who now lives in this pretty lakeside town in northern Alabama, invented a whitening system called BriteWhite and began selling it to other salons and spas. It was all smiles for a year or so. Then in 2006, she received a letter from a lawyer representing the state dental board. She was practicing dentistry without a license, the letter read, and must immediately “cease and desist” selling her products in Alabama. Last month, Ms. Wilson and another owner of a teeth-whitening business sued in state court, arguing that a law declaring teeth whitening the exclusive province of dental professionals is unconstitutional. Though Ms. Wilson did not know it when her trouble started, this dispute is one of many taking place all over the country between nondentist teeth whiteners and state dental boards. This issue is itself part a much broader debate over the proper limits of occupational licensing and the amount of leeway that professional boards should be given to set up barriers of entry. “Licensing is a labor market institution that’s been growing dramatically,” said Morris M. Kleiner, a professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, who has written books and papers on the subject. Five percent of United States workers had jobs that required licenses in the 1950s, he has found, and that has risen to around 30 percent now. For Ms. Wilson, though, this is just about teeth. “Teeth whitening is for everybody,” she said, describing it in the context of permanent makeup, microdermabrasion and various other procedures that perhaps explain why she does not look 71 years old. Teeth whitening began to flourish in the 1990s, with dentists using forms of peroxide to essentially bleach the teeth (as opposed to removing stains, which is part of routine cleaning). The service generally costs around $300 or more, according to court documents; by 2006, a survey by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentists found that dental practices were making an average of $25,000 a year from teeth whitening. Later, whitening strips or kits — which often consist of peroxide gel, an application tray and in some cases a little LED light that activates the gel — began appearing online and in pharmacies, where they can be bought over the counter like cosmetics. Teeth whitening also began to be offered as a service in salons and spas and at mall kiosks. There, employees provide the devices and explain how to use them, but, such business owners emphasize, nobody puts hands or fingers into anyone else’s mouth. The services at salons and kiosks generally cost around $100. Altogether, teeth whitening has become a multibillion-dollar industry. Image Joyce Osborn Wilson displaying her teeth-whitening kit at her office in Guntersville, Ala. The state dental board wants her to stop selling it, saying she is practicing dentistry without a license. Ms. Wilson has filed a lawsuit in state court to be allowed to continue her business. Credit Art Meripol for The New York Times Starting in 2005, state dental boards began adopting polices and pushing for legislation that would make teeth whitening illegal for anyone to perform but dentists or dental hygienists. According to the Institute for Justice , a law firm that is taking up Ms. Wilson’s suit, at least 14 states have, by policy or statute, defined teeth-whitening services as the practice of dentistry. The Institute for Justice has long been involved in campaigns against what it regards as overzealous licensing requirements, arguing that in areas like interior design or hair braiding, they are simply anticompetition measures. What sets the teeth-whitening debate apart, said Paul M. Sherman, an attorney at the institute, is that the same products prohibited for use in salons in Alabama and several other states can be bought over the counter in those states with no trouble at all. “The equal protection argument is particularly compelling because these are the same products that people buy and use at home every day,” he said. While the institute says there have been very few reported complaints from consumers about teeth whitening, dentists say there are real health concerns. “A thorough oral examination, performed by a licensed dentist, is essential to determine if whitening is appropriate and whether the patient has other oral health issues that may affect his or her decisions about whitening or other treatments,” the American Dental Association said in a statement. The association has also petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to take another look at “tooth-whitening agents” sold in stores and online; they are currently classified as cosmetics. The crusade of teeth-whitening entrepreneurs has had some help from the Federal Trade Commission, which in 2011 ruled that North Carolina’s Board of Dental Examiners — which also sent a letter to Ms. Wilson — had illegally thwarted competition with its cease-and-desist letters. But the situation in Alabama is somewhat different. In 2009, the State Supreme Court ruled that a dental service is any “helpful act or useful labor of or relating to the teeth,” and by this rather basic definition, teeth whitening is dentistry. Soon after, the Legislature passed explicit language to that effect. A nondentist administering teeth whitening could now face a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. “The board is formed to uphold the law,” said Susan Wilhelm, the executive director of the Alabama Board of Dental Examiners. “They are looking out for the health, safety and public welfare as they are directed by the Legislature.” Ms. Wilson and her lawyers say the board is not simply carrying out law but helping make it, too. As far back as 2008, the board was considering legislative language that would explicitly prohibit anyone other than dentists from performing teeth whitening. In any case, Ms. Wilson insists that she will not back down in her legal fight. She also added that she never liked going to the dentist anyway, and had only been twice in her life. Two fillings, she said, smiling.

Joyce Osborn Wilson
Teeth
Lawsuits
Alabama
FDA
American Dental Assn
Cosmetics and Toiletries
FTC


‘Nightly Business Report’ Sold by PBS Station

Abstract: “Nightly Business Report” on PBS , by some measures the nation’s most-watched business newscast, has been acquired from its owner, the public station WPBT-TV in Miami, by a private company headed by Mykalai Kontilai, a former manager of mixed martial artists and distributor of instructional television programs. The acquisition of the program, which Mr. Kontilai said was completed on Friday, was announced to the staff on Wednesday. The move is the second major change in the last year for the half-hour program. In December, Paul Kangas, an anchor who had been with the program since its founding 31 years ago, retired, and the program was redesigned, with Tom Hudson in Miami and Susie Gharib at the New York Stock Exchange as anchors. About 500,000 viewers tune in nightly. Like many public television programs, “Nightly Business Report” has struggled recently to find enough corporate underwriting sponsors. Mr. Kontilai, in a telephone interview, said he and his business partner, Gary Ferrell, a former president and chief executive of North Texas Public Broadcasting, approached WPBT in February. “I identified ‘Nightly Business Report’ as a program I felt could be expanded, could be propagated on a worldwide level because of the topic being a broad topic,” he said. Mr. Kontilai said that he had already begun talking to international distribution outlets and that international deals could attract more corporate sponsors. In addition, he said he saw educational licensing opportunities and was approached about a radio spinoff. The program will have a new Web site separate from its current presence on pbs.org . Rick Schneider, WPBT’s president and chief executive, said the program was not for sale when Mr. Kontilai made the approach, but that the sale made sense for WPBT. “They are committed to what ‘N.B.R.’ does, and they have the ideas and resources and potential to take it to the next step,” he said. “It is at a point where they as a company can do more things with it than we as a station could.” The program will continue to be produced at WPBT. The price of the program was not disclosed, but Mr. Schneider said: “Is it a huge windfall and that’s why we did it? No.” Mr. Kontilai, 40, declined to say how the acquiring entity, NBR World Wide, was paying for the program. He is the new company’s chairman and chief executive, and was previously a major distributor of instructional television programs that public stations broadcast overnight, for recording by teachers. That business has largely moved online. More recently, according to his online biographies, Mr. Kontilai managed mixed martial artists, including Tito Ortiz and David Loiseau. Mr. Kontilai said that business “was a hobby of mine for a short period of time” and that he represented “a couple of mixed martial artists on a pro bono basis.” He said he was not currently representing anyone. Mr. Kontilai and Mr. Ferrell also own a production company called Public Media , whose main production is a series called “Collector’s Café,” for which Mr. Kontilai is looking for funds to complete production. Stephanie Aaronson, a PBS spokeswoman, said that the program’s new owner “knows the system well.” She added, “The expansion plans would be great as ‘N.B.R.’ continues to evolve.”

Public Broadcasting Service
Television
Nightly Business Report (TV Program)


Schneiderman Issuing Ethics Plan Aimed at New York Legislators

Abstract: ALBANY — Staking out a broad vision of ethics reform amid a swirl of other proposals in the capital, New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman , called for an elimination of all outside jobs for state legislators and the end of a widely criticized system of per diem payments . In remarks to a panel in Manhattan on Monday by Citizens Union, a government watchdog group, Mr. Schneiderman articulated a deeply pessimistic view of Albany, calling it “the nation’s most consistent epicenter of public corruption,” which has left New Yorkers “living in a golden age of graft.” He cast doubt on whether promises of reform by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and others would be substantive enough, characterizing past ethics initiatives as “one charade after another.” “Sadly, every time incremental reforms have been called ‘sweeping’ or ‘groundbreaking’ — billed as a solution to the problem — those words have been proven false,” Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat, said. “In fact, the primary impact of many highly touted, marginal reforms has been to allow business as usual.” To that end, Mr. Schneiderman suggested a series of changes, including a ban on outside jobs for legislators, who work part time and earn a base salary of $79,500. He said that it was “impossible to avoid conflicts, or the appearance of conflicts, if legislators have outside employment.” Mr. Schneiderman also proposed ending per diem payments to legislators, who receive $172 each day they are in Albany and are not required to submit receipts — an honor system which has been cited as ripe for abuse. Under Mr. Schneiderman’s plan, legislators would instead be reimbursed for their travel costs, with such payments capped. But those restrictions would be coupled with a salary increase of between $33,000 and $94,500 a year, equivalent to the base salaries earned by members of the New York City Council and Congress, respectively. Cost-of-living increases would be automatic, avoiding what the attorney general called “the vicissitudes of Albany sausage-making.” Mr. Schneiderman made his comments as ethics have taken center stage in budget negotiations in Albany. Last month, Mr. Cuomo, also a Democrat, said he would not approve any budget that did not include his five-point ethics plan , including proposals on income disclosure. Several of the attorney general’s proposals echoed similar calls from government reform groups, including lowering campaign contribution limits and drastically limiting campaign contributions from any entity with business before the state. Mr. Schneiderman also called for matching public funds for all state elections, like the system used in New York City elections. But public financing, and several of Mr. Schneiderman’s other proposals, are unlikely to get much traction in the Legislature, where Republicans control the State Senate and oppose using public funds for elections. Another of Mr. Schneiderman’s ideas, to extend legislative terms to four years from two, would require a constitutional change. It was met with a muted response from a prominent Democrat. “There may be members who support it; it depends what other reforms it’s tied to,” said Joseph D. Morelle, the State Assembly majority leader. He observed that the two-year term “does require you to be out in your community, at community events, to continue the engagement with voters.” “And I see that as a positive thing,” he said. Mr. Schneiderman is far from the only lawman to rail against ethics in Albany, and he made a point in his speech of praising Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Bharara is investigating the Cuomo administration and recently brought an indictment against Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat who stepped down last month as speaker. But, the attorney general said, “Prosecutors can only respond to the symptoms of a very, very sick system.” Mr. Cuomo’s ethics proposals also called for greater disclosure of outside income and campaign spending, stiffer penalties and reform of per diems. In his speech, Mr. Schneiderman praised the governor’s efforts but chided him for not expanding the attorney general’s powers to investigate public corruption. Mr. Schneiderman’s call to professionalize the Legislature and raise legislators’ salaries could help him find lawmakers willing to sponsor bills with his changes. State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Democrat from Manhattan, said Mr. Schneiderman’s speech came at a “real Watergate moment” in Albany, and praised the comprehensiveness of the reform ideas. “These are really the least we can expect from our legislators,” Mr. Hoylman said. Mr. Schneiderman also appeared to anticipate a guarded response from some legislators, asking them at the tail end of his speech “to set aside the instinct to defend the system.” “You are not being attacked,” he said. “It’s the system that’s being attacked.”

New York
Eric T Schneiderman
State legislature
Budget
Corruption
Campaign finance
Wages and salaries
Bribery and Kickbacks
Politics


Texas Primary Could Face New Delay Over Redistricting Lawsuit

Abstract: SAN ANTONIO — A federal three-judge panel here is considering delaying the Texas primary election for the second time in two months, posing a number of logistical and political challenges for Republican and Democratic leaders and candidates as a redistricting dispute between the state and several minority groups remains for the most part at a stalemate. The primary had been scheduled for April 3, but at the end of a two-day hearing on Wednesday, Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that a primary in April was “extremely unlikely” and that the new date would probably be May 29. But the judges stopped short of selecting a new date, asking lawyers with the state Democratic and Republican Parties to outline new candidate filing periods and other deadlines using May 29 as a tentative date. Democrats and the minority groups had urged a later primary, while Republicans had argued for an earlier one, in part because a late May or June primary delays Texas from having a significant voice in the Republican presidential race. The primary had been scheduled for Super Tuesday, on March 6, but in December the federal panel pushed back the date to April 3. If the new date becomes May 29, Texas will hold one of the last primaries in the country; all but six states will have voted in the Republican race by then. State party officials for the Democrats and the Republicans said that if a primary was held on May 29, their state conventions, both set for early June, would proceed, although Republican leaders said they would have to change how they picked delegates and would need a court order allowing them to do that. The chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, Steve Munisteri , had told the judges that choosing between a May 29 primary or one in June was like asking him if he wanted to be shot in the stomach or in the head. Outside the courthouse on Wednesday, he said that although a May 29 primary would pose a number of challenges, it could allow Texas to play the role of a kingmaker in a tight Republican presidential race. “If the race is still going on, Texas has a chance to be the deciding factor, or in combination with California, a deciding factor,” Mr. Munisteri said. The redistricting lawsuit has put Texas in a kind of political paralysis, with no viable electoral maps for Congressional and State House and Senate districts and no definitive primary date. Candidates have struggled to raise money and mount effective campaigns. “It’s completely unprecedented,” said Michael Li, a Dallas lawyer who specializes in election law and runs a Web site following the case, Txredistricting.org . “For 40 years, Texas has had lots of redistricting litigation, but there’s never been a situation where the whole election process has been put in a state of suspended animation.” The plaintiffs, which include the Mexican American Legislative Caucus and the Texas N.A.A.C.P., sued the state over the electoral maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature. They assert that the maps discriminate against minorities, diluting and fracturing their voting strength at a time of tremendous growth in the Hispanic and black populations in the state. Lawyers for Attorney General Greg Abbott have argued that the maps are not discriminatory and that any effect on minorities would have nothing to do with race, but be the result of efforts to help Republicans keep power. The panel had asked the state and the minority groups to agree to a set of proposed maps, after a ruling on the case by the United States Supreme Court , but the resulting compromise maps released last week did not have the support of all the groups involved in the lawsuit. Still, some progress was made. On Wednesday, lawyers for the minority groups said they had reached an agreement with the state’s lawyers on a proposed State Senate map, one of the three sets of disputed maps.

Redistricting and Reapportionment
Primaries and Caucuses
Texas
Presidential Election of 2012
Supreme Court


New Engineering Firm Called Upon to Fix Squibb Park Bridge

Abstract: The Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation has finally acknowledged what everyone else has known for months: The $4.1 million Squibb Park Bridge, closed for 17 months, is not reopening anytime soon. At a meeting of its board on Friday, park corporation officials said they were suing the firm of the bridge’s designer — a MacArthur “genius grant” winner — and removing his company from the repairwork, with plans to replace it with an international engineering firm. The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court, alleges breach of contract and professional malpractice. Squibb Park Bridge, a 400-foot wooden pedestrian bridge that is supposed to connect Brooklyn Heights to the 1.3-mile-long Brooklyn Bridge Park, opened in 2013. But a year later, its gentle up-and-down movements — part of the its allure — became too pronounced, and the bridge began to sway and tilt. In August 2014, it was abruptly closed by the park corporation, which operates Brooklyn Bridge Park. As weeks gave way to months, officials from the park corporation refused to say what, exactly, was wrong with the bridge. In July, as local elected officials and residents grew frustrated, park corporation officials insisted that the repairs were finished and that the bridge was set to reopen as soon as New York City inspectors signed off on the work. Still, the bridge, which starts in Squibb Park, at Columbia Heights and Middagh Street, remains closed. The bridge was designed by Ted Zoli, a noted structural engineer with the HNTB Corporation. He was chosen in 2009 as a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. While the closing of the footbridge certainly did not affect the economy or traffic patterns, it was nonetheless an embarrassment for a park that has garnered much attention for its high-design touches. It has also been the subject of debate over its financing model — relying on private, luxury housing to pay for the park’s maintenance. State Senator Daniel L. Squadron, a Democrat whose district includes the park, has been critical of the way the corporation has handled the closing. “From the beginning, there was a distinct lack of communication and transparency on the bridge’s closure,” he said at the board meeting, noting that he had been told multiple times that the bridge would soon reopen, only to see it remain closed. He said Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation officials had never offered anything more than “vague assurances” about the bridge, and had not been forthcoming about what was wrong with it. “This is a public amenity, in which the community and its representatives have an interest,” he said. “The pattern of scant information sharing and collaboration are unacceptable.” Regina Myer, president of the park corporation, rejected assertions that the organization was being evasive last summer when it said the bridge was fixed and just needed city approval to reopen. “That was our understanding at the time,” Belinda Cape, a spokeswoman, said in an email. But Ms. Myer, speaking of HNTB, said in a statement, “Unfortunately, it’s now clear that the firm was either unwilling or unable to provide a workable solution to fix the bridge, and that its design was inherently flawed — that’s why we’re bringing them to court.” The lawsuit seeks $3 million in damages. Park corporation officials said Arup, the international engineering firm, would design and oversee a plan to stabilize the bridge. That will involve a retrofit that modifies the original design and is focused on safety, which could mean sacrificing the original bounce. It was unclear why HNTB was unable to design such a retrofit itself. Messages left for Mr. Zoli and an HNTB spokesman were not answered. In a statement, Ms. Cape said Arup would work with the New York City Transportation Department’s Division of Bridges on the design of the retrofit. The park corporation, she said, would also work to “recoup costs related to HNTB’s professional failures.” The park corporation said it expected to pay Arup about $516,000 for its services. That is on top of $955,000 already spent on the unsuccessful repairs. Arup was asked in 2014 to conduct a “peer review” of HNTB’s efforts to solve the problem with the bridge. But residents will continue to wait for the bridge to reopen: Park corporation officials say that once Arup completes its proposal, which will take about six months, the corporation will put the repair work out to bid. Arup has its own history with problematic bridges. It was one of three designers chosen for the Millennium Bridge in London, a steel-suspension footbridge that crosses the River Thames. The bridge closed two days after it opened in 2000, because it began to sway underfoot, and Arup worked on the repairs. It was closed for two years.

Squibb Park Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp
Bridges,Tunnels
HNTB
Brooklyn Heights
Brooklyn Bridge Park


For Rolle, a Star F.S.U. Player and Scholar, This Game Day Is Different

Abstract: TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — By 5 p.m. on Saturday, Florida State safety Myron Rolle will find out if he is among the 32 winners of a Rhodes Scholarship, perhaps the world’s most prestigious postgraduate academic award. At 7:45, Rolle’s Seminoles teammates will play at Maryland in a pivotal Atlantic Coast Conference matchup. Because Rolle’s final interview is in Birmingham, Ala., a private plane and about 700 miles will play an integral part in one of the most compelling story lines in college football this weekend. Rolle’s decision to risk missing all or part of the game in order to be interviewed for the Rhodes Scholarship, and find out if he joins elite student-athletes like Bill Bradley in winning the Rhodes, has resonated deeply at Florida State. The university is in the final stages of dealing with an academic scandal in the athletic department that affected the eligibility of 60 athletes and resulted in three firings and self-imposed probation. “He’s almost carrying a university and a football team right now, from a public relations standpoint, on his back,” the Florida State president, T. K. Wetherell, said Monday. “That’s a pretty heavy burden to lay on somebody.” Considering all that Rolle has achieved in his three years at Florida State, his dealing with the frenzy of Saturday is just another accomplishment in an academic and athletic career filled with them. A native of Galloway, N.J., Rolle arrived at Florida State from the Hun School in Princeton as the country’s No. 1 football recruit. He has had an all-American-caliber junior season, but Rolle’s list of off-field accomplishments is as lengthy as it is daunting. He graduated from Florida State in two and a half years with a degree in pre-med and a grade point average of 3.75. He is so studious that the Seminoles’ defensive coordinator, Mickey Andrews, publicly criticized him for studying too much last year, saying it affected Rolle’s preparation for football. Rolle said the criticism was a “little unfair.” “I gave him the benefit of the doubt,” Rolle said of Andrews. “I don’t think he’s ever sat through an organic chemistry lecture and seen just how difficult it is. He’s been through a couple ballgames, but that’s a different arena right there.” Outside of class, Rolle was awarded a $4,000 grant for cancer research over the summer, and also started a program to help educate Seminole Indian children in Okeechobee, Fla., about the importance of health and physical fitness. He belongs to a fraternity, helps tutor his teammates, has studied in London and has written for The New York Times. As he has been deluged by interview requests this week — including three reporters traveling with him on the plane to College Park — Rolle said he welcomed carrying the brand of the university. “I have no problem holding the weight of that on my shoulders,” he said. “I think it’s more of a privilege and an honor than a burden.” Those around Rolle say that he always has a plan. When Rolle arrived at the Hun School for his junior season of high school, he told the athletic director Bill Quirk his plan. He wanted to play big-time college football, graduate in three years, become a high N.F.L. draft pick, become a doctor and open a clinic to help needy people in the Bahamas, where he has family roots. Quirk has marveled at how Rolle has stuck to that plan, and considers Rolle a “once in a lifetime” student-athlete whose legacy resonates off the field as much as on it. He calls Rolle a role model for time management and remembers his spending hours tutoring his teammates. “He had this endless clock where he never seemed to run out of time for helping people out,” Quirk said. Tim Logan, a professor and chemistry and biochemistry at Florida State, said he recalled having two football players in class in 14 years there. “The other one was a walk-on,” he said. Logan said he did not know Rolle was in his class until Rolle approached him after class to see if a television station could tape one of his lectures for a segment it was doing on Rolle. Logan then winced, because he is a football fan and had made a few disparaging remarks about the team’s performance. He apologized, and Rolle politely said that the comments had been “killing me.” Despite the digs, Rolle enjoyed Logan’s biochemistry class so much that he applied and was awarded a research grant to work with Logan over the summer. He spent three hours every morning studying the growth of proteins in different kinds of cancer. Rolle found himself so intrigued with the research that he occasionally went back at night, by himself, to do extra work. “Myron has such a tremendous mind and intellect that it’s exciting to think about what he could do if he didn’t have all the distractions of football,” Logan said. Along with extra research, Rolle is particularly proud of the project called Our Way to Health that he created to educate fifth-grade students at Pemayetv Emahakv Charter School, for Seminole Indians in Okeechobee. The project was hatched when a group of Seminole students visited Florida State on a field trip to the state capitol in Tallahassee. Rolle spoke to them and was touched by the demeanor of the children. He approached a professor, Sally Karioth, about the project and started it with funding from Florida State. Rolle’s program has been instituted in fifth-grade classes, which compete in teams in everything from physical fitness to “Jeopardy”-style questions about diabetes and heart disease. The winning team was introduced on the field between quarters at Florida State’s game against Virginia Tech this year. Rolle spent a week in Orlando last summer with tribe leaders, and he has twice taken the six-hour drive to Okeechobee to monitor the program’s progress. Karioth has a pile of thank-you letters written to her and Rolle from the students. They include everything from the confession of a converted Miami Hurricanes fan to the lyrics of an educational rap song a student wrote about the signs of a heart attack. “That was the first time I got to feel I had changed the life of someone,” Rolle said. On the field this year, Rolle’s play has improved to the point that Andrews said that Rolle was having as good a season as any safety who had played at the university. That is especially high praise considering Florida State’s history of success. Rolle has had the full support of the coaching staff to risk missing all or some of the game against Maryland on Saturday to be interviewed for the Rhodes Scholarship. “In my 55 years coaching, I’ve never had one quite like him,” Coach Bobby Bowden said. Rolle and all the Florida State administrators interviewed stressed that the competition for such an elite academic award was overwhelming. Of the 15 finalists in Birmingham on Saturday, only two will receive scholarships. As the day unfolds, football fans will be watching to see if Rolle can help deliver huge victories for Florida State on and off the field.

Florida State University
Football
College Athletics
Scholarships and Fellowships


In Doha, Major Oil Exporters Fail to Agree on Production Freeze

Abstract: DOHA, Qatar — Officials from 18 oil-producing nations failed on Sunday to reach a deal to freeze oil production at current levels. The meeting of officials, representing most of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries as well as Russia, had been intended to calm the markets and convince them that the two leading oil exporters, Russia and Saudi Arabia, were cooperating. But with officials coming up short on Sunday, the meeting may end up being a blow to confidence that could send oil prices tumbling. A sharp fall in oil prices could also feed into equity prices, which have recently tended to rise and fall along with oil prices. Oil fell sharply in early trading on Monday in Asia, at one point dropping nearly 6 percent to fall below $38 a barrel. Asian stock markets were mixed. Japanese shares were down nearly 3 percent in morning trading, but stocks across the rest of Asia saw more modest declines. Markets in Shanghai and Hong Kong opened around 1 percent lower. “There will be a lot of people who they have disappointed,” said Bill Farren-Price, chief executive of Petroleum Policy Intelligence, a British firm that advises hedge funds and other businesses on the oil markets. The oil exporters, he said, “raised expectations.” A major stumbling block in the talks appears to have been pressure from Saudi Arabia for Iran to participate in the freeze, a measure to address the current global oversupply of oil. The Iranians, who are rapidly increasing production after the end of most sanctions over their nuclear program, have refused to cap production at current low levels. The oil producers seemed to head into the meeting full of confidence that a deal to stabilize oil markets could be reached. In fact, a draft agreement calling for a freeze at January levels through October was circulated Saturday. Talk of a potential freeze had already helped lift the oil markets from their January lows below $30 per barrel to about $43 per barrel for Brent crude. “I think at least the discussion and expectations around the Doha meeting have contributed to higher prices,” Eric Lascelles, chief economist at RBC Global Asset Management, said in an interview before the meeting. A deal was unlikely to quickly change the amount of oil on the market because most participants in the freeze were pumping at high levels. And the failure is unlikely to have much of an impact on supply and demand balances. What might limit the reaction is a strike on Sunday by Kuwaiti oil workers. That has cut into the country’s oil production by what appears to be a substantial amount. “You would expect the market to sell off but the downside might be limited, “ said Mr. Farren-Price, who was observing the Doha meeting. Analysts on Sunday also raised the question of how Saudi Arabia and the other countries could have scheduled the meeting if they knew it was doomed to failure. After all, the idea was to calm the markets, not roil them. Oil Prices: What to Make of the Volatility Over the last two and a half years, the oil industry experienced its deepest downturn since at least the 1990s. “This implies really poor communication by the lead members of the group,” particularly Saudi Arabia and Russia, said Richard Mallinson, an oil analyst at Energy Aspects, a London-based market research firm. “Why even schedule this meeting if you did not have a compromise agreed over Iran.” The idea of a freeze in production emerged in February, after oil prices plunged below $30 per barrel. OPEC members had been unable to agree on production cuts to manage the market. Instead, most members pumped oil at full capacity, trying to maximize revenues in the face of falling prices. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar and Venezuela agreed in principle on a freeze at a meeting in February, but made it contingent on participation by other major producers. The idea of a freeze gained favor because it would involve little or no sacrifice for anyone. Analysts and some OPEC officials thought that a way could be found to accommodate Iran’s desire to make up ground lost under sanctions. Either they misread the Saudis or the kingdom’s leadership hardened its position. Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter rivals in the Middle East, clashing over Yemen and Syria. The competition increasingly extends to oil, where a resurgent Iran is vying with the Saudis for market share among customers in Asia and Europe. In the days before this meeting, a mixed message emerged from Saudi Arabia. Its oil officials, led by Ali al-Naimi, an 80-year-old veteran oil minister, evidently sought accommodation with other big producers, including Iran, while, the deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has become the kingdom’s chief policy maker, indicated that Saudi Arabia might not go along with a freeze if Iran did not also comply. “If all major producers don’t freeze production, we will not freeze production,” Prince Mohammed told Bloomberg News recently. The deal was scuppered by Saudi Arabia’s insistence that language requiring that all OPEC members participate in the freeze be inserted in the draft. There was little question that Iran, which was not represented at the meeting, would agree. After lengthy negotiations among Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Qatar, which convened the meeting, the talks broke up on Sunday. “The meeting concluded that we all need time for further consultation,” Qatar’s energy minister, Mohammed al-Sada, said at a news conference. He said that “participating countries would consult among themselves and with others” until the next OPEC meeting, which is scheduled for June in Vienna . Saudi tactics on the freeze appear to be a part of a shift in the kingdom’s oil policy, analysts say. The Saudis, analysts say, increasingly seem to accept that they can no longer control oil prices through OPEC, in part because the huge increases in supply from the United States in recent years have undercut OPEC’s leverage. “This is the new world of oil,” said Jim Burkhard, head of oil markets and scenarios research at IHS, who was also observing the meeting. “The oil market is a reflection of the world. Power is more decentralized.” The Saudis are shifting instead toward producing whatever oil they need to supply their growing network of domestic refineries and petrochemical plants and their expanding body of overseas customers. How Oil Prices Are Falling Again, Explained in Four Charts A glut of crude oil on the markets is pushing the price of oil down to levels not seen since the global financial crisis. Prince Mohammed, who has authority over the Saudi oil industry, warned that the kingdom could increase production by a million barrels per day in the coming months if it chose. With low production costs, estimated at $3.50 to $5 per barrel, Saudi Arabia can compete on price with any producer. So can Russia, which can produce oil for about $4 per barrel, according to IHS. While Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, are feeling the pinch of lower revenues, they are in far less immediate trouble than OPEC members like Venezuela and Algeria, analysts say. Some of the less well-off oil producers clearly wanted a deal in hopes that it would raise prices and revenues. “This is something that affects the whole oil industry whether you are in OPEC or not,” Ecuador’s oil minister, Carlos Pareja Yannuzzelli, told reporters on Sunday. While plans are far from fully delineated, Prince Mohammed appears to be charting a more independent course for the Saudi oil industry. For instance, he has said he plans a public listing of the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil-producing company. A public listing might require the company to pay more attention to the requirements of outside investors than to other OPEC members. Prince Mohammed increasingly seems to see oil as a potential political instrument — an approach that Mr. Naimi eschewed. “There is a lot of change happening in Riyadh,” Mr. Mallinson said. Oil policy is becoming “less insulated from politics.” Some analysts speculate that Mr. Naimi — who has long been skeptical that other producers, including Russia, would honor production ceilings — is going along with the idea of a freeze to help insulate Saudi Arabia from criticism. The Saudis might have been “covering their backs,” said Paul Stevens, an analyst at Chatham House, a London-based research firm. “They can say, ‘We tried.’” Russia had reason to go along with a freeze. Russia’s economy, which depends heavily on oil revenues, is in recession. The Kremlin’s desperation for higher prices is palpable; the country is committed to two wars, in Ukraine and Syria. At home, wages are being cut, bringing signs of social unrest ahead of a parliamentary election in September. Russia’s energy minister, Alexander Novak, who attended the Doha meeting, has been a crucial supporter of a freeze. A role assigned to Mr. Novak was to bring in Iran, but he has failed so far. Russia and Saudi Arabia trade places for the top spot among oil producers. Russia has been in the lead of late, pumping 10.9 million barrels of oil a day in January compared with Saudi Arabia’s 10.2 million. But because of Russia’s larger population and industrial base, it consumes more oil at home, leaving Saudi Arabia the leader in exports. Since the Soviet period, OPEC has looked on Russia as a freeloader on price-boosting production cuts: Russia benefited but never joined in. Analysts say that OPEC’s efforts to involve Russia and other outsiders underlines its diminished clout. Joining with Russia is “what is left for an organization that has lost its core reason for being, at least for now and possibly for the longer term,” said Bhushan Bahree, an OPEC analyst at the market research firm IHS, who was observing the meeting.


Wisconsin G.O.P. Plans to Work Without Democrats

Abstract: MADISON, Wis. — With the Capitol braced for another week of protests and deadlock over a budget bill that would severely restrict public employees’ unions here, the top Republican in the State Senate announced that the body would resume consideration of other matters. The move seemed intended to increase the discomfort of the Democratic state senators who have fled the state as a way of preventing a vote on the union legislation. Starting Tuesday, those senators, who are in Illinois, will have to watch from afar as Republicans continue the work of governing without them, taking up matters from the mundane to the controversial. “By not being here, they’re basically deciding to let things go through the body unchecked,” said Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate majority leader. “They’re not here to represent their constituents. We’re here to work.” The issues scheduled for consideration in the Senate on Tuesday were routine: an appointment by the governor, tax breaks for dairy farmers and a resolution commending the Green Bay Packers for their Super Bowl victory. But Mr. Fitzgerald said more significant legislation could also be in play, including a bill requiring voter identification that Democrats strongly oppose. Gov. Scott Walker, in comments delivered against the din of the raucous protesters gathered outside his office, praised the Senate Republicans for the move, which he said he hoped would entice the Democrats home. “It’s time for them to come back and participate in democracy,” he said. It was another strange twist in a standoff that has captured the nation’s attention but seems no closer to resolution than when it began. Each party maintained an unwillingness to compromise on the most divisive elements of the bill, with Democrats accusing the Republicans of refusing to negotiate and Republicans accusing Democrats of shirking their duties. Other states, including Ohio, are considering similar legislation, and both sides are hoping to use a victory in Wisconsin to establish momentum in their favor. The plan proposed by Mr. Walker in Wisconsin has stirred the passions of many union workers; tens of thousands of protesters have flocked to the Capitol for days to contest his effort to limit collective bargaining. Dozens of rallies — promoted as “solidarity events” — have been scheduled around the country this week, including one in Las Vegas that drew several hundred protesters on Monday. “We are supporting the people in Wisconsin and other people in this country that are out to stand against those who want to take away collective bargaining,” said Steve Harney, vice president and director of operations of Teamsters Local No. 14, at the gathering in the parking lot of the Grant Sawyer building in downtown Las Vegas. The details of Governor Walker’s proposal include prohibiting collective bargaining for issues beyond wages, limiting pay raises to a certain level without approval by public referendum, exempting employees from paying union dues and requiring unions to hold annual votes on whether they should remain in existence. Those elements have been strongly opposed by union leaders, though they have backed the immediate fiscal elements of the plan, which would raise the amount government workers pay into their pension to 5.8 percent of their pay, from less than 1 percent now, and increase the amount of health care premiums they pay to 12.6 percent, from about 6 percent now. Compromise legislation being promoted by a moderate Republican that would put a two-year sunset clause on the collective-bargaining restrictions was rebuffed by both parties. Governor Walker said that part of the reason for the fiscal challenges was that previous governors and legislatures pushed fiscal problems down the road with short-term fixes. The State Assembly is to begin debate on the budget bill on Tuesday morning. The debate was expected to take much of the day, if not longer, with Democrats warning that they may introduce numerous amendments. And there were many questions but few new insights about how the Senate impasse would end and what legislation the Republicans were prepared to pass in the meantime. Barring an unexpected return by the Democrats, it seemed that the Republicans would have the run of the chamber and be able to introduce, debate and pass legislation without the minority party to stand in opposition. At issue is a normally obscure Senate rule that requires a quorum of 20 senators to vote on fiscal matters but just 17 to vote on other matters. There are 19 Republicans and 14 Democrats in the Senate. However, shutting down speculation to the contrary, Mr. Fitzgerald pledged not to take any action on any part of the budget bill until the Democrats returned. “They can vote on anything that is nonfiscal,” said Senator Jon Erpenbach , a Democrat, from his hotel across state lines. “They can take up their agenda; they can do whatever they choose to do.” Mr. Erpenbach said that his caucus was determined not to return until the restrictions to collective bargaining were off the table. But he worried aloud about what legislation could emerge in the meantime.

Wisconsin
Politics and Government
Organized Labor
Budgets and Budgeting
Republican Party
Democratic Party
Walker Scott K


House G.O.P. Raises Stakes in Debt-Ceiling Fight

Abstract: WASHINGTON — With no serious negotiations in sight, a disorderly and divided Congress slipped closer to a double-barreled fiscal crisis on Thursday as House Republican leaders tried to shift the budget dispute to a fight over raising the government’s borrowing limit. Trying to round up votes from a reluctant rank and file, House Republicans said they would agree to increase the debt limit to avert a mid-October default only if Democrats accepted a list of Republican priorities, including a one-year delay of the health care law, a tax overhaul and a broad rollback of environmental regulations. At the same time, Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio signaled he was not ready to abandon a spending fight that could shut down the federal government as soon as Tuesday. Asked whether he would put a stopgap spending bill to a vote free of Republican policy prescriptions, he answered, “I do not see that happening.” President Obama, who has faced three years of down-to-the-wire standoffs that have nearly ended in default or shutdowns a half-dozen times, fired back with a broadside of his own. “No Congress before this one has ever, ever, in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget,” Mr. Obama said before a friendly audience in suburban Washington. The bitter back and forth in the absence of any high-level discussions between Republicans and Democrats was seen as increasing the possibility of a shutdown or default. It was a marked contrast from past showdowns when talks were taking place behind the scenes even as the parties traded public partisan shots. The Senate faces a critical vote on Friday to cut off debate on legislation to keep the government open. If Democrats muster 60 votes, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, will move to strip out House language that guts the health care law and pass a stopgap spending bill that finances the government through Nov. 15, without Republican policy prescriptions. At that point, no one is sure how the House will react. “There is no secret room where everyone is sitting down and hashing this out,” said Senator Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee. Image The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, with a countdown clock at a news conference Thursday. Credit Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, encouraged Democrats to come to the table. “We call on the president to sit down with us, Harry Reid to sit down with us, and let’s resolve this problem,” he said. But in their efforts to unify restive Republicans, House leaders were only widening the partisan divisions. Behind closed doors on Thursday, they laid out their demands for a debt ceiling increase that include the health law delay, fast-track authority to overhaul the tax code, construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, offshore oil and gas production and more permitting of energy exploration on federal lands. The legislation would also roll back regulations on coal ash, block new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on greenhouse gas production, eliminate a $23 billion fund to ensure the orderly dissolution of failed major banks, eliminate mandatory contributions to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, limit medical malpractice lawsuits and increase means testing for Medicare, among other provisions. Even with that legislative Christmas tree, many Republican backbenchers balked. After introducing the measure to his divided troops, a sheepish speaker of the House faced the press with a grimace. “Oh, this ought to be a blast,” Mr. Boehner sighed as he opened a news conference for questions. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 2 Democrat, derided the proposal. “The House is attaching the Republican Party platform to the debt ceiling,” he said. “In a week full of absurdities, this one takes the cake.” Republican divisions in the Senate burst into full public view on Thursday. Incensed that hard-liners in his party were slowing final votes on legislation to keep the government open, Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, went to the Senate floor to accuse two fellow Republican senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, of grandstanding for the benefit of their conservative-activist followers. “Y’all have sent out releases and e-mails, and you want everybody to be able to watch,” he charged. Economists of all political persuasions have warned that a failure to raise the debt ceiling by the Treasury’s deadline of Oct. 17 could be catastrophic. The world economy’s faith in the safety of Treasury debt would be shaken for years. Interest rates could shoot up, and stock prices worldwide would most likely plummet. “Defaulting on any obligation of the U.S. government would be a dangerous gamble,” Doug Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, told the House Budget Committee on Thursday. “In a very uncertain world, the one thing everyone has been able to count on is that the U.S. government will pay its bills on time.” Image Speaker John A. Boehner left a meeting of House Republicans on Thursday. Credit Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times But many House Republicans put little stock in such pronouncements. “Economists, what have they been doing? They make all sorts of predictions,” said Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana. “Many times they’re wrong, so I don’t think we should run government based on economists’ predictions.” Those who do believe in the dangers said that they provide precisely the leverage they need to win passage of their priorities. “People have to recognize there’s never any compromise until the stakes are high,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California. “In our society, that’s the nature of democratic government.” With the twin clocks ticking, Democratic leaders seem paralyzed by rage, claiming Republicans are relying on Democrats to be “the responsible adult in the room” and cave to their hostage-taking. “They have a responsibility to the country. They have a responsibility to their constituents and their children,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House’s No. 2 Democrat. “They are damaging the country, and the public ought to make them pay a price.” Democrats — and some Republicans — worried that the shift to the debt-ceiling fight is leaving the government heading to a shutdown on Tuesday with no resolution in sight. “I’d like to see us keep that focus there,” said Representative Tom Graves, Republican of Georgia, who led the fight to link further government funding to gutting the Affordable Care Act. “We’ve got a responsibility to finish this up and let it play out.” Ms. Murray said the shift in focus from a short-term stopgap spending bill that keeps the government open to the debt ceiling is coming because “Republicans realize fighting a small battle over a small bill is a waste of time.” She called the House debt ceiling “Christmas list” unserious. “This is not the time to throw in your 50 favorite flavors,” she said. “You can’t just throw everything against the wall and see what happens.”

House of Representatives
Congress
Republicans
John Boehner
Barack Obama
US Politics
US National Debt
Federal Budget


Hydrating the Masses While Defending Her Turf

Abstract: With the sun pounding down on Church Avenue in central Brooklyn, Johanna Washington dipped her fingers into an ice-cold cooler and shook her head as a man in a blue T-shirt approached, water bottles in hand. He and his dripping shopping cart marked the fourth competitor to set up shop at her intersection on Thursday afternoon, and she was not pleased to find herself part of a chorus chanting the same song: “Cold water, cold water.” A 59-year-old woman with dark blue eyes and bright pink toenails, Ms. Washington has spent most days of this likely-to-be-New-York’s-hottest month behind a cooler strapped to a shopping cart at Flatbush and Church Avenues, hoping to hydrate the masses, one bottle, and one dollar, at a time. Her pitch, often delivered beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat that rests atop a cascade of gray dreadlocks, is simple. Her water can be bought without having to break stride. (It also comes with a “Thank you, dear” in a lilting Caribbean accent.) As July’s historic heat wave has done its best to suffocate New York, the dollar-water brigade has popped up in sun-drenched parks and, amid honking intersections, is the latest small-scale entrepreneur to dot the city. They are the hot-weather counterparts to the umbrella vendors who materialize outside subway stations at every drizzle. And though the city considers it against the law to sell water without a license, many sidewalk peddlers are doing record business. Ms. Washington, who has been selling water for five summers, said she usually picked up three cases of Poland Spring for a total of $16.62 from the local Pioneer supermarket. She arrives on her corner about 2 p.m. and generally stays until 8. If she sells all 72 bottles, as she has several times this month, that is about $55 in her pocket, or about $9 an hour. She does this two to four days a week, depending partly on the weather, between her other odd jobs, like baby-sitting and flower arranging. Ms. Washington said she found the hot weather as draining as anyone else, but each morning she wakes up hoping for a scorcher. “If somebody has a snowplow, wouldn’t they like to see snow?” she asked. “I don’t like hot weather, but it is my business.” She has had to make some sacrifices for the work. She has no air-conditioner at home because the overburdened freezers that chill her bottles keep her electricity bill high enough. After an afternoon on the corner, evenings are spent soaking her aching feet in a warm bath. “I can’t sit when I’m selling,” she said. “I always have to be moving and talking.” Ms. Washington, who lives a few blocks away, chats up neighbors and makes friends with customers. The other day, she wore a flower pin on her pink tank top that the daughter of one thirsty patron had stuck to her shirt. On less humid days, she has found, people turn to sweets — soda, juice, ices. But on the stickiest days, bountiful this summer, she is very popular. “I’m good at selling,” she said with a shrug and a sly smile. Case in point: “Poland Spring reminds me of water I used to drink from the river in Trinidad as a child. It’s very natural.” Before water, Ms. Washington sold hair accessories, grilled corn and Caribbean snacks from the sidewalk. Those each involved more work and higher overhead. But this summer of swelter has brought increased competition on the dollar-water circuit. “I have to beat the iron while it’s hot,” Ms. Washington said. “I have to sell water right now.”

Weather
Vendors Street
Brooklyn (NYC)
Bottled Water


Itavia Flight 870 Ruling Adds Support to a Theory

Abstract: ROME — Itavia Flight 870 was entering the final leg of a routine domestic trip from Bologna, Italy, to Palermo, Sicily, one clear summer evening when it suddenly plunged into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the small island of Ustica, killing all 81 people aboard. Mechanical failure was ruled out early on, and almost 33 years later, the causes that led to the crash on June 27, 1980, are still a topic of passionate debate in Italy, fueled by three decades of inquiry boards, parliamentary commissions, countless expert reports and one of the longest judicial inquiries in recent Italian history. But despite all that, no formal charges have ever been filed in connection with the crash. The crash, known as the Ustica affair, has produced legions of conspiracy theories here, the way the Kennedy assassination — or, on a lesser scale, the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996 — have in the United States. But in the Ustica affair, the case for a cover-up is far stronger. Last week, when Italy’s highest court ruled that the country’s Defense and Transportation Ministries had to compensate the families of some of the victims, the court implicitly acknowledged the most widely accepted theory behind the crash: that a missile fired by a warplane had hit the twin-engine McDonnell Douglas DC-9 on Itavia, a now-defunct domestic Italian airline. But the court did not say where that missile came from. To conspiracy buffs, it was vindication — to a point. “It’s like the O. J. Simpson affair, where he got off in criminal court but was found guilty in a civil procedure and had to pay damages,” said Andrea Purgatori, an investigative reporter whose exhaustive book on the disaster and the presumed cover-up was made into a 1992 film . Over the years, several Air Force officials have been investigated for withholding evidence — wiping clean flight tracks and radar scans — and four generals were tried on charges of treason and obstructing investigations. But no one has been convicted. In this hothouse atmosphere, it is not surprising that conspiracy theories have proliferated over the years. The crash has been blamed on U.F.O.’s (several Web sites subscribe to this reconstruction) or domestic terrorism (the Bologna train station was bombed not five weeks later, killing 85 and wounding dozens more). In this scenario, the plane went down after a bomb exploded onboard, most likely in the toilet. The missile theory gained a new impetus in 2008 when Francesco Cossiga, the prime minister at the time of the Ustica affair, said in an interview that the flight had been shot down by French military planes. Mr. Cossiga did not provide further details, nor can he. He died in 2010, at age 82. Cover-up theories have been fueled through the years by what news reports have described as a “suspiciously high mortality” among military personnel and others connected to the case. (Mr. Cossiga is not included among them.) Through traffic accidents, shooting deaths and suicides by hanging, there were 36 untimely deaths by 2011, according to a television report about Ustica. The program also cited a number of “bizarre accidents” that befell Ustica witnesses, like being run over by a tricycle and slipping on a banana peel in a Rome subway station. “What terrifying truth warranted a cover-up at the cost of the lives of all these people?” asked the show’s host, Adam Kadmon, who plays a mysterious masked vigilante who investigates topics like Ustica, underskin microchip implants and, more recently, Michael Jackson’s prophecy about Sept. 11, and favors the French missile theory. At the time, proponents say, Italy was covertly allowing Libyan aircraft to fly through its airspace undisturbed. They did so by gliding in the slipstream of Italian domestic aircraft, where they could not be detected by radar. On the night of June 27, 1980, there were unsubstantiated reports that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was on one of those planes, the theory goes, and French forces tried to shoot it down to kill the Libyan leader, but hit the DC-9 by mistake. Don’t ask why. It has to do with rebels in North Africa and jockeying for oil concessions between Italy and France. But Colonel Qaddafi had been warned of the plan and never boarded his plane, according to this reconstruction, which also says the pilot made a successful emergency landing at sea. There, a British submarine reached it and deployed scuba divers to plant explosives to sink the plane and to silence potential witnesses to the assassination attempt. One hypothesis, detailed by an investigative journalist, Claudio Gatti, holds that the plane was shot down by Israeli forces that mistook it for a plane carrying enriched uranium earmarked for Iraq. “No country would attack in the Mediterranean for anything but extraordinary reasons,” and Israel “had that reason,” Mr. Gatti said. “It’s the only scenario that makes sense.” The Western warplane scenario has gathered weight through the years, as Italian prosecutors disclosed that several NATO planes were flying in the same airspace that night. But the dynamics of the grisly accident are still hypothetical. Was there a near collision with the DC-9? Was there a dogfight between NATO aircraft and Libyan jets (a theory substantiated, for some, by the recovery three weeks later of the wreckage of a Libyan MIG fighter in the remote Calabrian countryside)? Was the missile fired from a launcher based on land or sea, specifically from the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau or the United States aircraft carrier Saratoga? (The United States military denies any involvement.) “We’ve known since the judicial inquiry issued in 1999 that a missile was involved, but the perpetrators are still missing. We don’t know which country shot it,” said Daria Bonfietti, who heads the association of families of the victims that has relentlessly spurred the justice system to pursue the case. The truth lies under an elaborate cover-up, she said, one in which “everyone has something to lose.” Prosecutors in Rome are still pursuing the Ustica affair. Several international rogatorie — legal requests for information — have since been sent to Belgium, France, Germany and the United States, but responses have been slow in coming, leading the victims’ families to accuse those countries of dragging their feet. Prosecutors say there are no time limits to such requests, which “depend solely on the collaboration that countries see fit to give,” said Erminio Amelio, one of the prosecutors currently leading the criminal investigation, which has passed through various hands over three decades. Even though much has changed since that night in the Mediterranean almost 33 years ago — like, for instance, the end of the cold war — official sensitivities are still high, and no one expects any of the governments thought to be involved to come clean anytime soon. “This is an incredible story, where a series of colossal lies have been told,” Mr. Purgatori, the investigative reporter, said.

Plane Crashes and Missing Planes
Decisions and Verdicts
Itavia
Italy
Rome


Batteries and Rumors Fuel New Talk of Cheating in Cycling

Abstract: Cycling’s long history with doping means that any dramatic victory is as likely to create suspicion as admiration. But the whispers surrounding Fabian Cancellara’s decisive wins in two of this spring’s most important races have a novel twist: they accuse him of using a tiny electric motor to help power his legs. Although no one offered proof, and Cancellara dismissed the allegations as “stupid,” online speculation reached such a point that on Wednesday it crashed the Web servers of an Austrian company that makes an invisible motor system for bicycles. And the International Cycling Union , while carefully noting that it is not investigating any specific rider or team, is reviewing the need for a new bicycle inspection system to detect motorized cheating. Several weeks have passed since Cancellara, an Olympic champion from Switzerland, won the Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders . The suspicions about his winning methods were outlined in a report shown last week by RAI, the Italian broadcaster, that did not mention his name. In the report, Davide Cassani , a cycling commentator for the network and former professional rider, displayed a racing bicycle that looked normal. When he pressed a button hidden under the rubber hood of a brake lever, the pedals began turning, powered by a motor and batteries tucked into its frame. Cassani, 49 and long retired, said the assistance of a motor might enable him to return to racing and win a stage of the Giro d’Italia, which ended Sunday. Such bicycles, he said, had been used by professional riders in races, but he offered no names. The idea of motorized cheating strikes many in the cycling world as absurd. Nevertheless, some prominent professional riders are concerned that some of their race competitors may be motoring away from them. Marco Pinotti, an Italian who races for HTC-Columbia , said that when he first heard about the hidden motor, “it seemed a stupid thing.” “But then I came to know the technology,” he added, “and I started making connections.” Because he lacked hard evidence, Pinotti, who finished ninth over all in the Giro d’Italia, declined to say who he thought might be using motorized assistance or in what races it might have been used. Cancellara is an exceptionally powerful cyclist and, as a result, often the subject of rumors. His victories in the Paris-Roubaix and Flanders races followed unusually strong attacks, swiftly prompting speculation about conventional doping in the cycling world. The talk turned to mechanical cheating after Michele Bufalino, an Italian, posted a YouTube video combining Cassani’s RAI report with video from an electric motor system maker and footage of Cancellara’s big moves in the two spring races. Bufalino slowed the action, somewhat like analyzing the Zapruder film, to focus on Cancellara’s hand movements. The video’s suggestion was that Cancellara pressed a hidden button to switch on a motor. “It’s so stupid, I’m speechless,” Cancellara told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday. “It’s quite funny, but it’s become a bigger story and is no longer so funny. It’s a sad and really outrageous story.” The speculation in the cycling community is that the powered bicycle contains a Gruber Assist motor from Austria. Monika Schweitzer, the chief executive of Gruber, said she was surprised by the suspicion that her product could be used for professional-level cheating. Her staff struggled to revive her company’s overwhelmed Web site on Wednesday. The company’s product, which sells for 2,000 to 2,200 euros, or about $2,400 to $2,650, depending on the battery, was intended for the aged, the injured and the infirm, and for recreational cyclists who want the boost of an electric motor without the embarrassment that comes from riding an obvious electric bicycle. “It’s an old person’s look,” she said of other electric bikes. The Gruber Assist boosts riders’ efforts rather than transforming their bicycles into motorbikes. Schweitzer said the system supplements a rider’s input by an additional 100 to 110 watts. Given that a pro cyclist might typically produce about 400 watts during the final 30 minutes of a race, the device offers a significant gain despite a weight gain of about four pounds for the stock system. Cyclists speculated that it would be used only to provide a short boost during races. To accommodate a Gruber Assist, Schweitzer said, a racer’s bike would have to be modified to hide the batteries inside the frame (they normally rest in an obvious saddle pack) and to alter the motor’s gearing to match a high pedaling rate. When operating, the Gruber Assist emits a distinctive whir, although Schweitzer acknowledged that the sound could easily be overwhelmed by the noise from crowds, helicopters, motorbikes and team cars that surround riders in major races. Bicycle inspections are rare. Sometimes before high mountain stages in major races like the Giro d’Italia, they will be checked for compliance with minimum weight rules. Time trial bicycles are also scrutinized for compliance with complex aerodynamic regulations. In a statement , Cancellara’s employer, Team Saxo Bank, dismissed the accusations. “We are confident that the majority of those people who have come across this video see it for exactly what it is: a creative amateur artist’s attempt to express a purely hypothetical idea that has no basis of fact or truth,” the team, which is based in Denmark, said. “We are confident that the public can see through the nonsense this myth has presented and respect Fabian for what he is.” The cycling union expects to issue a statement on its plans, if any, to look for motors within two weeks, Enrico Carpani, a spokesman, said from Switzerland. “Maybe we are facing a general problem,” he said. “You never know with technology.”

Cancellara Fabian
Bicycles and Bicycling
Giro d'Italia (Bicycle Race)
Cheating
Batteries
International Cycling Union


How to Add Oomph to ‘Organic’

Abstract: THE organic industry has gone wild in the last decade, but you wouldn’t know it at the Department of Agriculture. Despite year after year of double-digit growth, organics receive a pittance in financing and staff attention at the department, which is responsible for writing regulations about organics and making sure that they are upheld. The National Organic Program, which regulates the industry, has just nine staff members and an annual budget of $1.5 million. A Florida real estate developer named Maurice Wilder received more than that in farm subsidies in 2005, some $1,754,916, to be exact, according to a subsidy database maintained by the Environmental Working Group. Other parts of the Department of Agriculture spend roughly $28 million or so a year on organic research, data collection and farmer assistance. It may sound significant, but the department spent far more than that, $37 million, subsidizing farmers who grew dry peas in 2005. (The farm value of dry peas is about $83 million a year. Consumers spend more than $14 billion a year on organic food , up from $3.6 billion in 1997.) It’s not entirely surprising that organics are such a low priority at the department and in Congress. Both the agency and farm-state members of Congress are reliable cheerleaders for industrialized agriculture, and Big Ag has often viewed organics with suspicion, if not outright disdain. But the Department of Agriculture is crucial to the future success of organics, which depends on the credibility of the U.S.D.A. organic seal. If you are shelling out $6 for a gallon of organic milk, you deserve to feel confident that the cows that produced the milk weren’t shot full of growth hormones or fed soybeans sprayed with pesticide. Lately, however, the credibility of organic products has been under nearly constant attack. Hoping to cash in on the organic trend, all sorts of entrepreneurs, overseas farmers and conventional food companies have jumped into the business and are pushing the definitions of organic into new and questionable territory. What began as a label for produce and dairy products is now being slapped on frozen dinners and macaroni and cheese, and the National Organic Program is constantly being asked to define standards for other commodities like fish and yeast. As organic processed foods have proliferated, companies have pushed the Department of Agriculture to approve the use of non-organic ingredients like food colorings, hops and sausage casings. Huge organic dairies have been built to replicate the low-cost methods of conventional factory farms, but in doing so, some have skirted an organic rule that requires that cows have access to pasture. Most important, perhaps, as demand for organic foods has outstripped supply, an increasing amount is being imported from overseas, particularly China, where regulatory oversight clearly has some problems. No one knows exactly how many organic products are being imported to the United States because, amazingly, the federal government doesn’t keep track. But everyone agrees that the amount is increasing. The National Organic Program doesn’t try to verify the authenticity of organics by itself, but instead relies on a network of third-party certifiers who are required to inspect organic farms and food companies and submit periodic reports. That still leaves the organic program’s staff with plenty to do. It must write new regulations and shepherd them through the bureaucratic maze at the Department of Agriculture, work with the organic advisory board, review the accreditation of certifiers and help to investigate complaints. With just nine employees, one of whom performs clerical duties, the National Organic Program would be lucky to effectively oversee the organic industry in Vermont, let alone the rest of the world. “It’s a joke,” said George L. Siemon, who is chief executive of Organic Valley, a Wisconsin-based farmers’ cooperative, and is a former member of the National Organic Standards Board, an advisory board for the National Organic Program. “This is a pitiful amount of money, and we are running into all kinds of trouble.” Mr. Siemon cited a rash of bad publicity about organics that has suggested that companies were trying to bend the organic rules. One problem with such a small staff, he said, is that regulations take years to complete because so much work is stacked up. New pasture requirements for livestock, for instance, have been languishing for years. As for the increase in organic imports from China, Mr. Siemon said: “Maybe everything is great and maybe it’s not. But it would be great if the U.S.D.A. had done a lot more work over there to find out what’s going on.” Caren Wilcox, executive director of the Organic Trade Association, an industry group, agreed that the National Organic Program needed far more funding. Noting the double-digit growth of organics in the United States, Ms. Wilcox said in an e-mail message, “We need to be sure that N.O.P.’s resources are sufficient to keep up with that growth.” She said in an interview that she felt “comfortable with their work on oversight, but I would feel more comfortable if they weren’t so stretched. They definitely need more.” Kenneth C. Clayton, an associate administrator at the Department of Agriculture who oversees the National Organic Program, declined to comment specifically on the budget. But, he said: “Any additional resources we can get will be helpful. We have lots of work to do.” The Bush administration’s proposed budget for 2008 calls for a major increase in funds for the National Organic Program, pushing its overall budget to about $2.7 million. The House version of the farm bill, passed late last month, authorizes more than $60 million a year in funding for various organic programs, including research and help for farmers who convert to organic methods. Realistically, though, there’s little chance that $60 million will be spent each year because only a fraction of the money is mandatory spending. Whether organic foods are healthier than conventional products is open to debate. But that doesn’t mean Congress should give short shrift to research and regulation of organics. The growing popularity of organic products helps small farmers stay in business. They’re also better for the environment and help ease farmers away from crops that require government subsidies. Besides, voters like organic food better than dry peas.

Organic Food
Agriculture
Department of Agriculture


With Hope Dwindling, 115 Are Rescued From China Mine

Abstract: BEIJING — From the start, China ’s latest coal mine disaster seemed likely to end as so many others had in a country where an average of seven miners die every day: a failed rescue effort, grieving relatives, few if any survivors. But then, more than a week after the half-built Wangjialing mine in northern China was flooded with millions of gallons of water, rescuers heard taps on a metal pipe. They furiously pumped water out of the shaft and sent glucose injections down through a pipe. By late Monday, rescuers had dragged 115 men up to safety, though 38 others remained missing. Survivors said they had strapped themselves to shaft walls with their belts so they would not drown, hung there for days, then jumped into a mine cart that floated by. Others said they ate bark from the pine pillars used to construct the mine. By any standard in the dangerous world of mining — and certainly by those of China’s especially deadly industry — it was a marvel of good fortune. “These trapped people have made it through eight days and eight nights — this is the miracle of life,” said Luo Lin, head of the State Administration of Work Safety. “Secondly, our rescue plan has been effective. This is a miracle in China’s search and rescue history.” David Feickert, a coal mine safety adviser to the Chinese government, told The Associated Press, “This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere.” Investigators blamed the usual culprit in China’s regular mine accidents: a lack of safety precautions. For days before the mine flooded, managers ignored water leaks that presaged trouble, according to preliminary findings by the State Administration of Work Safety. Miners had been ordered to step up the pace of construction to meet an October deadline to begin production at the mine, the agency said. “The miners should never have been put in this situation in the first place,” Mr. Feickert said. Had rescue efforts failed, the mine disaster would have been China’s deadliest in more than two years. Although the government has managed to significantly reduce the death rate at coal mines since 2002, its safety record remains among the world’s worst. The accident occurred on March 28 as workers digging tunnels broke through a wall into an old shaft filled with water, flooding their V-shaped shaft. Five of the workers’ nine platforms were submerged. The exit out of the pit was blocked. Of the 261 miners underground that day, 108 made it to safety. The rest were trapped and feared dead. More than 3,000 workers participated in the rescue operation. At least half a dozen pumps were installed, draining the mine of more than 11 million gallons of water a day, officials said. By Friday, the water level inside the mine had dropped nearly 11 feet. Workers had drilled a hole through the dirt and pumped oxygen to the area where they hoped to find survivors, according to news reports. But there were no signs of life until rescuers heard the tapping on the pipe Friday afternoon. Rescuers tapped and shouted into a pipe in response. They also sent down bags of glucose, milk, a pen, paper, a phone and a plastic bottle. And, requisite for a high-profile rescue effort that could have political consequences, they sent exhortations from both Communist Party and government leadership bodies. “Dear fellow workers, the Party Central Committee, the State Council and the whole nation have been concerned for your safety,” one letter began. It ended, “Hold on to the last.” When rescuers pulled one pipe to the surface, they found an iron wire tied to the end, apparently a signal from survivors, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Rescuers also spotted swaying lights at the opposite end of the shaft, another possible sign of life. On Saturday afternoon, a team of divers was sent down. But the divers returned within a couple of hours, reporting that the black murky water made it hard to reach the workers’ platforms. On Sunday, as water levels continued to drop, rescuers in inflatable rafts paddled into the dark, watery pit, letting air out of the rafts when they got stuck in the narrow passages. They found survivors that night, most of them stranded on a single platform. One miner spotted a raft and called out, “Can you get me out of here?” “Since we got in, we will definitely will be able to take you out of here,” a rescuer yelled back, The Associated Press reported. The first nine survivors were carried out of the mine’s mouth very early Monday morning, seven and a half days after the accident, on a holiday called Tomb-Sweeping Day when Chinese commemorate the dead. Rescuers burst into tears and hugged one another in relief. Thousands of people keeping vigil along the roadside cheered as ambulances raced the miners to the nearest hospital. The number saved grew throughout the day as hundreds of rescuers entered the mine. CCTV, the state-run television network, showed rescuers clad in blue and orange jumpsuits carrying out stretchers laden with barefoot miners, wrapped in green blankets, eyes covered with towels to shield them from the light. One reached out his blackened hands to grasp those of rescuers in thanks. Another was still gripping his miner’s lamp. A third showed rescuers a pocket full of sawdust, describing it as hard to chew. The rescue team’s chief medical officer told reporters that the survivors were weak, severely dehydrated and suffering from hypothermia and skin infections. Some were in shock. Although none were in critical condition, he described 26 as more seriously ill than the rest. “I have not slept for several days,” one rescuer, Wei Fusheng, told CCTV, weeping with joy. “Our efforts have not been in vain.” Still, some relatives, carefully sequestered and kept under watch in nearby hotels, seemed destined for bad news. As of Monday night, there was no word on the status of the 38 workers still trapped. Some rescued miners said they had seen bodies of dead co-workers, but how many workers might have died was unknown.

China
Mines and Mining
Accidents and Safety
Rescues


Comptroller John Liu and Agency Battle Over Contract Cost

Abstract: In a scathing critique of the Bloomberg administration’s oversight practices, New York City ’s top fiscal watchdog has accused the city’s main agency for economic development of allowing a contract with a construction company to balloon by tenfold in three years to nearly $74 million, and authorizing over $3 million in dubious payments. The accusations, leveled against the New York City Economic Development Corporation , are detailed in an audit that is scheduled to be released on Thursday by John C. Liu , the comptroller. The audit is the latest in an increasingly hostile battle between the agency, which has become a vital vehicle for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s aggressive development agenda, and Mr. Liu , whose office must approve the corporation’s contract with the city every year. According to the audit, the agency approved 21 changes between July 2008 and January 2010 to a contract with Turner Construction Company , which was asked to provide facility management and construction management services at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, Essex Street Market building and other sites. As a result, the contract’s value jumped to $73.5 million, from $7.5 million. The audit says the agency authorized $3.3 million in “inappropriate and questionable payments” to Turner. They include improper reimbursements for unsubstantiated expenses and unnecessary costs for loading, storing and transporting contaminated soil from the Brooklyn Army Terminal site. Referring to an alarming “lack of involvement,” the audit says the agency demonstrated a “total reliance” on the construction company and “relinquished far too much control and supervision in reviewing and overseeing the work carried out by Turner.” Mr. Liu said, “Given the ongoing economic and budget uncertainties, we can neither tolerate nor afford business as usual at the E.D.C.” What is unusual about the audit, though, is the equally scathing and exhaustingly detailed response. In a 30-page letter, serving up a point-by-point rebuttal, the agency says Mr. Liu is “displaying an unfortunate misunderstanding” of the contracting process. Indeed, the agency says “20 of the 21 completed projects included in this audit came in under budget, for a net aggregate savings of $2.7 million.” In a statement supplementing that letter, the agency accuses Mr. Liu of trying to “sensationalize the record.” “We are disappointed that after a 16-month review, the comptroller’s office has issued an audit report that is flawed, misleading and draws unsupported conclusions,” Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for the Economic Development Corporation, said in the statement. The agency is one of New York’s most powerful entities. With a mission of encouraging economic growth through redevelopment programs and other efforts, it is now managing roughly 600 capital projects valued at $1.6 billion, including planned redevelopments in Coney Island in Brooklyn and Willets Point in Queens. But Mr. Liu, a former member of the City Council, has long questioned the agency’s transparency. In one audit that he released last April, Mr. Liu accused the agency of failing to turn over to the city more than $125 million in payments, taxes and fees through leases on buildings in Times Square and the sale of city properties. Bloomberg administration officials strongly took issue with the audit, but agreed in July to hand over more than $120 million in rental payments by 2014. In another audit, released in February, Mr. Liu said the agency was doing a poor job overseeing the Water Club restaurant on the East River between 30th and 32nd Streets. Auditors had a hard time tracking down cash receipts for the restaurant — something that “shortchanges the city,” the audit said. This time, the audit, which was actually initiated under Mr. Liu’s predecessor, William C. Thompson Jr., focuses on the agency’s dealings with Turner, which has worked on numerous projects in the city. One of the most controversial was its work on the new Yankee Stadium, which the current audit did not mention. Even though a contract to do some of the work was awarded to a company called Central Excavators, the Yankees and Turner acknowledged that the work was performed by Interstate Industrial, a company that city investigators have long said had connections to organized crime, and that had been prohibited from doing city work since 2004. As a result, the Yankees said they had hired an independent construction monitor to oversee the stadium project, including the hiring of subcontractors by Turner. In the case with the current audit, Chris McFadden, a spokesman for Turner, said that under the contract with the Economic Development Corporation, the company provided “on-call” services as needs were identified and financing was made available. He also said the company had cooperated fully with Mr. Liu’s office, and stood behind its work, as well as that of the Economic Development Corporation. “This is a typical form of agreement that Turner has in place with private and public sector clients,” Mr. McFadden said. “This is an efficient process that the N.Y.C.E.D.C. has in place and we look forward to continuing to work in partnership with them.”

Liu John C
Economic Development Corp
Turner Construction Company
New York City


Former Acting Governor of New Jersey Is Accused of Harassing a Colleague

Abstract: TRENTON, Oct. 24 — Donald T. DiFrancesco , a former acting governor of New Jersey who was also president of the State Senate for nearly a decade, has been accused of sexual harassment by a former partner at his law firm, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The suit, filed by Michele D’Onofrio, 48, a former partner in the law firm DiFrancesco, Bateman, Coley, Yospin, Kunzman, Davis & Lehrer, contends that she “was regularly subjected to unwelcome and sexist comments and advances” by Mr. DiFrancesco. The suit also contends that she was wrongfully dismissed. In particular, the suit says that in November 2002, at a convention in Atlantic City, Mr. DiFrancesco asked Ms. D’Onofrio “to stay an extra night in his suite and to attend a Beach Boys concert with him.” She said she refused. According to the suit, Mr. DiFrancesco, 62, also made what Ms. D’Onofrio said were lewd comments in connection with her plans to have reconstructive surgery after breast cancer. And the lawsuit claims that other female employees have complained of “unwelcome comments and touching” by Mr. DiFrancesco. Reached by phone on Wednesday, Mr. DiFrancesco said, “It’s a whole bunch of nonsense,” and deferred to his lawyer, Christine A. Amalfe. In a statement, Ms. Amalfe said Ms. D’Onofrio was upset because the firm “asked Plaintiff to take her practice elsewhere because of several issues, including Plaintiff’s account receivables.” Ms. Amalfe said Mr. DiFrancesco and a partner, Assemblyman Christopher S. Bateman — who is favored to win a State Senate seat next month — “are public figures and easy targets for these types of allegations.” Mr. DiFrancesco, a Republican who was acting governor in 2001 and 2002 after Gov. Christie Whitman left office to lead the federal Environmental Protection Agency, was once one of New Jersey’s most powerful politicians. Since leaving office, he has been a partner in the politically influential law firm in Warren, N.J. Until recently, Ms. D’Onofrio led its family law department. Ms. D’Onofrio’s lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said the suit was filed in State Superior Court in Essex County rather than in Somerset because some judges from Somerset might be called as witnesses. The suit also accuses a municipal judge, described as a friend of Mr. DiFrancesco and his partners, of improper behavior, including being drunk on the job. The suit says that after Ms. D’Onofrio complained to her colleagues of the judge’s behavior, Mr. Bateman warned her not to take any action. But she filed a complaint with a state judicial oversight committee in June, according to the suit, and the firm dismissed her in September.

Difrancesco Donald T
Sexual Harassment
New Jersey


Antitrust Case Could Have an Impact Far Beyond the N.F.L.

Abstract: Is the National Football League a single entity, or a collection of 32 teams that compete against one another every week? The question forms the core of an antitrust case that will be heard by the United States Supreme Court next week. How the court rules could shake some pillars of sports law by reshaping the definition of a sports league, which would in turn affect professional leagues, teams and players, as well as the constellations of companies that do business with them. The roots of the case, American Needle v. National Football League, date to 2000, when the N.F.L. chose Reebok to become the exclusive provider of its licensed apparel. The league determined that the 10-year, $250 million deal would generate more money than the agreements it had with American Needle and others. American Needle sued the N.F.L., arguing that the Reebok deal violated antitrust statutes because the league conspired to stifle competition and inflate prices. Although experts consider it unlikely that the court will issue a broad ruling for the N.F.L., defining the league as a single entity rather than 32 competing ones has the potential to adversely affect fans through higher prices for merchandise, concessions, parking at stadiums and even in fees to join fantasy football leagues. Salaries could be unilaterally capped and strikes or lockouts could increase. Companies that have done business with the league could be shut out. Conversely, if the court rules in favor of American Needle, the N.F.L. may be forced to annul its exclusive contracts, opening the door for more competition and potentially lower prices. American Needle is not the first company to challenge the N.F.L.’s single-entity argument, which has often been rejected by courts. But a trial court in Chicago and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals surprised some experts when they agreed with the N.F.L. in the American Needle case that it could act as a single entity when forging licensing deals. The league argued that although its 32 teams compete against one another on the field, they are economic partners of necessity off it. The teams are so intertwined, the league said, they share more than 80 percent of their revenue. (The players union says the figure is 40 percent.) “For nearly 50 years, the N.F.L. has promoted its entertainment product through collective, integrated licensing of the names, markets, colors and logos of its member clubs, all of which derive their economic value from their association with N.F.L. Football,” the league said in a filing to the court. American Needle appealed to the Supreme Court , which will hear arguments Jan. 13 and is expected to rule by late June. According to Mark Conrad, a professor of legal and ethical studies at Fordham, the court took on the case partly to prevent court shopping, whereby plaintiffs take advantage of inconsistent lower court rulings by filing suits where they feel they have the best chance of winning. In what legal experts called a calculated move, the N.F.L. backed American Needle’s application to the Supreme Court, reasoning that if the court sides with the league, other companies will have less recourse to sue on antitrust grounds. A victory by the N.F.L., lawyers say, could allow it to sign even broader commercial deals with everything from banks to beermakers. A victory could also help the N.B.A. and the N.H.L., which have filed briefs in support of the N.F.L. Major League Baseball, unlike the other leagues, has a longstanding antitrust exemption. “The biggest story coming out of that case is not the immediate implication for the parties and whether American Needle can get a headwear contract, but the downstream repercussions that would treat the league as anything but a single entity,” said Ben Mulcahy, a partner with the law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton. Those repercussions could include a significant shift in the leverage sports leagues have over players unions, a concern now that the N.F.L. and its union have begun to renegotiate their collective bargaining agreement. The other three major sports leagues will discuss their deals in the next 18 months. A broad ruling for the N.F.L., however unlikely, could give the league latitude to implement a salary structure of its choosing without fear of antitrust scrutiny and penalties for collusion. That prospect has led the players unions of all four major sports, none of which were a party to the American Needle suit, to submit a joint brief disputing the N.F.L.’s logic. In that filing, the N.F.L.’s players union even disputes the exclusivity of the N.F.L.’s deal with Reebok, noting that the Dallas Cowboys have opted out of the agreement, paid the league a fee and decided to strike their own deal for licensed apparel. Other teams have challenged the league’s attempts to present itself as a single entity, including the Raiders, who won the right to move from Oakland to Los Angeles in the 1980s. Michael Weiner, the executive director of baseball’s players union, said that conferring antitrust immunity upon sports leagues would restrict legal options that unions have for exerting leverage, leading to more work stoppages. “If athletes were to be in a dispute, their only alternative to fight against what they perceive to be an unreasonable demand would be to strike or withstand a lockout,” he said. Jeff Pash, the general counsel for the N.F.L., disagreed. “The American Needle case arose out of an issue that could not possibly have less to do with labor,” he said. “We think it would be good to get a ruling on this that would apply nationwide in all courts to the extent to which the clubs are required to compete in their own lines of business with one another.” Since the 1960s, sports leagues have used a specific exemption from antitrust laws to negotiate exclusive national television contracts. If the Supreme Court grants the N.F.L. even broader immunity, the league could push for more control over the digital rights to its games, whether they appear online, are embedded in video games or are part of fantasy sports leagues, lawyers say. The N.F.L. insists that it is not out to gouge consumers or throw its weight around in negotiations with companies and the players union. Rather, it says it wants to prevent what it calls frivolous lawsuits from companies objecting to exclusive licensed agreements. Still, fans may ultimately feel an impact. According to American Needle, prices for licensed hats jumped immediately after the N.F.L. signed its deal with Reebok, which is now owned by Adidas. If the court rules in the league’s favor, the N.F.L. might consider exclusive deals with stadium vendors and parking operators, deals that for now are done by individual teams. This could drive up the price of attending games. “It’s not just headwear,” said Robert Kronenberger, the president of American Needle, whose sales fell 25 percent after the Reebok deal was completed. “It could be beyond that: television, concessions, food, beer. It’s not just about me.” Legal experts said that the N.F.L. would not necessarily strong-arm consumers, because Congress could respond with laws addressing any court decision. (A subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee is planning a hearing Jan. 20 to discuss possible ramifications of the case.) Higher prices could also hurt sales and public relations. “If the N.F.L. wins partial or full exemption, that doesn’t mean we’ll suddenly see player salaries at some floor or that an N.F.L. logo sweatshirt will be $200,” said Gabriel Feldman, the director of the Sports Law Program at Tulane. “Even without Congress stepping in, the N.F.L. won’t do it because people would just go buy a baseball sweatshirt instead.”

Supreme Court
National Football League
Antitrust Actions and Laws
Football
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Reebok International Ltd