Greenspan Cites Economic ‘Momentum’

Abstract: Alan Greenspan , the former chairman of the Federal Reserve and a self-described Republican libertarian, on Sunday reinforced increasingly confident assessments by the Obama administration that the nation’s latest job numbers reveal a resurgent economy. “There is a momentum building up which is really just beginning, and it’s got a way to go,” Mr. Greenspan said on ABC’s “This Week” television program, when asked about Friday’s report that 162,000 jobs had been created in March. Mr. Greenspan pointed out that corporate investment in new equipment “is coming back in a fairly substantial way” and that purchasing managers are building up product inventories for the first time in months. “The momentum is very clearly there, and I doubt very much that we’re going to run out of that momentum until very late in the year,” he said, adding that the odds that the country would plunge anew into a recession have fallen significantly. His remarks supported comments by Lawrence H. Summers and Christina D. Romer, administration officials who also appeared on the Sunday talk shows. Mr. Summers, the president’s top economic adviser, predicted “continued progress in job creation” and said the economy is “running somewhat ahead of what the administration was forecasting.” “We’re in a very different place than we were a year ago,” he said about the jobs situation on “This Week.” “A year ago we were losing 600,000 jobs a month. Now the process of job creation has started. We expect that it will accelerate.” He took pains to add that it was important to pump up consumer demand with measures that President Obama is pressing for, like increasing spending on construction projects and boosting the flow of credit to small business. Mr. Summers had predicted in December that the economy would stop losing jobs by the spring. Despite the addition of the 162,000 jobs in March, 48,000 of which were temporary U.S. Census hires, the monthly payroll report also showed that the rate of unemployment had remained unchanged at 9.7 percent. Mr. Summers tried to account for this paradox, noting that “as conditions get better, more people decide to look for work and are counted in the labor force, so sometimes it’s frustrating and the progress doesn’t show up immediately in the unemployment rate.” Mrs. Romer, chairwoman of the Council of Economics Advisers, agreed that the jobless figures may not turn around quickly. Given the large number of new entrants into the nation’s labor pool, she said, the economy’s 3 percent growth rate may not be enough to make a strong dent in the unemployment rate. Mr. Summers was asked about a delay, confirmed by the Treasury Department on Saturday, of a report to Congress on currencies and exchange rates in which some congressmen hoped the administration would label China a “currency manipulator.” Mr. Summers denied that the report was put off because the Obama administration wants China’s cooperation on sanctions against Iran. Rather, he said, the administration felt it would be prudent to wait until it had “taken stock of what kind of measurable progress we were able to generate” out of meetings with Chinese officials at three upcoming economic meetings.

Greenspan Alan
United States Economy
Obama Barack


Fight Isn’t Over for Soldiers in Remote Afghanistan

Abstract: COMBAT OUTPOST RAHMAN KHEL, Afghanistan — Lt. Col. Shawn Daniel, standing in the middle of this dusty little outpost beneath the Afghan mountains, reassured the 70 soldiers gathered close around him that they would be going home soon. In 2014, “we are getting out of this,” he told the circle of expectant, upturned faces he had beckoned near. The United States is withdrawing all of its combat troops by 2014, but the soldiers at this base are scheduled to leave before the end of the year. Some of the soldiers stood stiff. Others knelt. All intently watched their 43-year-old commander, a sturdy man with silvery hair from Little Rock, Ark., who had driven in especially from the battalion headquarters to bolster their spirits and their courage. Until they leave, Colonel Daniel warned them sternly, they have a difficult job to do. “Afghanistan will have the best chance possible to stand on its own feet,” he said. “Until then we have to look after ourselves.” America is preparing to end its longest war . It is already getting ready to draw down its troops so that in two and a half years nearly all will be gone from this country. Back home, the attention of most Americans has long since shifted elsewhere. But out here in what feels like the edge of the world, in remote eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, the battle is a tough day-to-day reality for these soldiers. They fight to keep one another alive in a war that has already been called off. Their base, Combat Outpost Rahman Khel, is a couple of acres of gravel, mustard-colored barracks, a gym tent, a medical hut and a fluttering American flag, hedged by tall, gray Hesco blast walls . The soldiers posted here, one company of the Fourth Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division , have their home base in Alaska. Now, they peer out from shaded watchtowers at miles of flat water meadows where sheep graze and, on the northern horizon, at a low brown mud-brick village with some trees. In the east are grand hills and a tall, snow-streaked mountain range the soldiers call the Whale. Sgt. Christopher Keeney was standing in the wind on Watchtower Four holding a pair of binoculars in one hand while he pointed with the other. These mountains are where coalition forces carried out Operation Anaconda in March 2002 to rout Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from remote valleys , one of the highest profile operations in the early years of the war. Ten years later, insurgents are still coming down out of the mountains from Pakistan and the Shah-i-Kot Valley, gathering at a shrine in the foothills and using the plain around Rahman Khel as a transit route to head to the fighting farther west. “It’s a breeding ground,” said Sergeant Keeney, from Washington State. “At night we see flares and lots of light signals from the villages. It ends up here in the mountains.” There are other worries, too: at one point during his watch, a stray dog wandered onto the base, and Sergeant Keeney climbed down from a tower to shoot it, trying to keep rabies off the long list of challenges here. The job of the soldiers at this outpost is to patrol a space of land stretching almost as far as the eye can see. They disrupt Taliban supply lines, search for caches of explosives, clear the roads of land mines. “We’ve got a pretty big sector,” said Sgt. First Class Jacob Nestor, a short, tough man with a sunburned face and rolling shoulders. He was wearing shades as he scanned the hills. “It’s from those mountains, 35 clicks out, and 10-20 clicks the other way.” Most days they travel out in convoys of brown armored trucks, posting letters at night in the villages to assure the local Afghans they are there to protect them, collecting fingerprints from would-be mine planters, resolving tribal disputes, meeting elders and trying to gain their trust so the villagers will pass on information when the fighting season begins in earnest. “We talk to them, we try and see what they need, try to get intelligence about what the enemy is doing,” Sergeant Nestor said. So far, the men here have been lucky. The camp has received blasts of mortar fire from the village across the meadow to the north, but no one has been hurt. But this is eastern Afghanistan, and luck holds only so long. Around midday, the camp learns that a convoy from an outpost five miles away has been ambushed on a road to the north. It sounds bad: A platoon sergeant from another company in their battalion was shot in the thigh and abdomen. But then word comes that he will live: He has been airlifted to Bagram Airbase, and on to Landstuhl , the military hospital in Germany. The camp settles into some kind of normalcy. Its own patrol, in a line of three huge, mine-protected vehicles called MRAPs , rolls in from the surrounding villages. Soldiers climb out, dusty, tired, but safe. Stretching, some get out their chewing tobacco. As the afternoon wears on, a white civilian aid helicopter of a type the soldiers nickname the Jinglebird descends loudly from the cloudy sky. Soldiers emerge in clumps from the rec room, hoping the Jinglebird has brought them mail from home. Colonel Daniel tells them they will be replaced at this outpost after they leave. But after that, who knows? He says the next year or so will be about closing posts like Rahman Khel, figuring out where the Afghans are strong enough to take control on their own and where they still need help. It is going to get tough, he warns. He is about to leave for another base, and his convoy of MRAPs waits impatiently behind him in the brownish morning light that settles on the camp. He tells them again the reason he came here in the first place: to plant the American flag on Afghan soil and teach the insurgents a lesson for what they did in New York City, he says. He says reintegration back in America will be difficult for the soldiers. He recounts his own fights with his wife at home, and the joy of helping his son. Out here, he promises, he will come to their aid if they need him with all the force the American military possesses. But the fighting is going to intensify before they leave. For these soldiers, the war is still going on. “We have been very fortunate,” he said in an interview. “It will come.” And he told the soldiers: “Some of the things you are going to see are hard.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


Prisoner Swap With Taliban Was Illegal, Investigators Say

Abstract: The Pentagon broke the law when it swapped Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban leaders, congressional investigators said Thursday. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said the Defense Department failed to notify the relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance of the exchange — a violation of the law — and used $988,400 of a wartime account to make the transfer. The Government Accountability Office also said the Pentagon’s use of funds that had not been expressly appropriated violated the Antideficiency Act. Five senior Taliban members were released from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for Sergeant Bergdahl, who disappeared from his post in Afghanistan in June 2009.

Bowe Bergdahl
Afghanistan War
GAO
Prisoner of war
Pentagon
Taliban


Serena Williams Strikes the Right Note in a Time of Turmoil

Abstract: INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Serena Williams officially ended her 13-year boycott of the annual tennis tournament held here when she addressed members of the news media Thursday to explain why she returned. “I just felt like it was time,” she said. At the same time, Williams said there was a time when she felt this day might never come: “I didn’t think I would come back, to be honest.” In March 2001, Williams, then 19, was booed without mercy as she played a championship match here. Fans were angry that the much-anticipated semifinal between her and her sister Venus never materialized after Venus pulled out with an injury. Their father, Richard Williams, was accused of orchestrating the outcome. Many say they are not clear about what happened over that weekend, but Richard Williams is very clear about what happened. In his autobiography, which was published last year, Williams described the events in detail. He wrote about the chorus of boos that greeted the announcement that Venus would not play, and charged that accusations and racial epithets “flew throughout the stadium” when he and Venus arrived two days later to watch Serena play in the final. “My daughters were treated without an ounce of dignity or respect,” he wrote. “They were treated like criminals.” When the Williams sisters and their father left the tournament, they vowed never to return. They stood by the vow with steely resolve until February, when Serena Williams revealed, through Time magazine, that she would return to Indian Wells in March to play in the BNP Paribas Open. I cheered the stance the Williamses took when they decided not to return to Indian Wells, and I have long felt that Serena should continue to stay away. Along with Althea Gibson’s rise from Harlem to back-to-back championships at Wimbledon and Forest Hills in the late 1950s, the rise of Venus and Serena Williams is one of the most phenomenal — and underappreciated — stories in American tennis history. Like Gibson, the Williams sisters became lightning rods for race and class. Richard Williams added the extra dynamic of power, and that, as much as anything else, set off many fans at Indian Wells 14 years ago. A black man controlling the product in an almost all-white, country club sport was bad enough. Possibly exercising the power that went with that control seemed to be too much to bear. The result was outrage from the fans, followed by a boycott from the Williamses. Acts of racism must be punished whenever they occur, and while we certainly can forgive — African-Americans have been in the forgiveness business for centuries — one can still make sure there are consequences. In this case, the consequence would have been one of the greatest players in tennis history sending a painful but clear message to a community that she felt had wronged her and her family. Image Serena Williams during her win over Kim Clijsters in the 2001 final at Indian Wells. She discussed her return Thursday. “I didn’t think I would come back,” she said. Credit John Mabanglo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images On the other hand, journalists sit on the sideline and record — even cheer — acts of defiance by athletes ranging from Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos in past years to today’s athletes wearing “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts to protest police brutality. These acts of defiance carry consequences; there is a price to be paid for challenging the status quo. Just ask anyone who has. John Thompson, the former Georgetown coach, used to lecture me about chiding athletes like Michael Jordan for not taking stronger public stances. Thompson said that when you had nothing to lose, it was easy to criticize people for not taking stances that might cost them millions of dollars or, in another time, perhaps even their lives. During a 10-minute session with the news media on Thursday, Serena Williams said she wanted to look forward, not back, but she made references to the events of 14 years ago. Asked if she could remember being happy after she won the championship, Williams said, “No, not at all.” Williams said that when she told her father she was thinking of coming back, “He said it would be a big mistake if I didn’t go back.” She added, “In order to forgive you have to be able to let go of everything, and I kind of let go a long time ago, and I kind of forgave, but I still wasn’t at a point where I was ready to come back to Indian Wells.” Time heals all wounds, but the scars remain. Much has changed in the intervening years. The tournament has changed its name, and Williams has done fine without it while becoming the best player of her generation. The two weeks here will be Williams’s 231st and 232nd as the world No. 1. The Indian Wells tournament, which dates to the 1970s, has done fine without her. But this affluent community has been tarnished, some would argue unfairly, by the charges of racism stemming from the 2001 event. Williams’s presence here provides a level of absolution no amount of wealth could buy. Before Thursday’s news conference, I felt that Williams should have continued her boycott. But after hearing her remarks, it became clear that she had made the wise choice. Without mentioning events in Ferguson, Mo., in Cleveland and on Staten Island, as well as the recent racist rants by members of a fraternity at the University of Oklahoma, Williams said she was convinced that returning and sounding a note of forgiveness were the right things to do, and this was the right time. “I think a lot of the things that have been happening lately, I think definitely played a part in the whole picture,” she said. “I thought it was really good timing, not just for me but for Americans in general, to step up and say, ‘We as a people, we as Americans, we can do better, we can be better, we are better.’ ” When Williams plays her match Friday evening, the fans at Indian Wells should give her an ovation for that thought alone.

Tennis
Serena Williams
Discrimination
Venus Williams
Richard Williams
Indian Wells


In Kashmir, Pakistan Questions India’s ‘Surgical Strikes’ on Militants

Abstract: MANDHOLE, Kashmir — The sound of gunfire awoke Malik Rustam and his family around 4 a.m. on Thursday. Within minutes, they headed for cover in a community bunker, as residents here in the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir have been trained to do. Cross-border fire between Pakistani and Indian troops is nothing new, but on Thursday, the Indian military claimed it had carried out “ surgical strikes ” against four camps, including one near Mandhole, used by militants intent on attacking the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir. The village of Mandhole is along the banks of the Poonch River, just across the Line of Control, the de facto border between Pakistan and India in the disputed Kashmir region, which both sides claim in its entirety. Indian military posts within 500 yards are visible. On Saturday, Mr. Rustam, 22, pointed in that direction and said the Indian troops never left their posts. “They are lying,” he said. “They never crossed the L.O.C.” A group of villagers standing nearby nodded in agreement. As the latest escalation between India and Pakistan threatened to break the fragile peace between the estranged, nuclear-armed neighbors, residents in Mandhole seemed unusually calm. Image Pakistani children gathered on Saturday at their school in Kashmir to watch an army helicopter land. Credit Anjum Naveed/Associated Press Schools have remained open. Grocery stores were serving customers, and buses moved slowly on patchy, winding roads along the hilly terrain. As the afternoon sun sank behind the hills, several women could be seen working in the fields, cutting grass and herding cattle. Pakistan seemed eager to play down any tensions in the area. Mr. Rustam and his fellow villagers had gathered on Saturday to talk to a group of journalists who were ferried in by Pakistani military helicopters to the Bhimber District of the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir, about 100 miles from Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. But on the other side of the Line of Control, in the village of Silikote, Raja Nazir, 37, a shopkeeper, said Saturday that residents were still uneasy. “There is fear in the air, and villagers are on their toes fearing a retaliation by Pakistan after the strikes,” Mr. Nazir said. His village is near the Indian Army base where militants killed at least 17 soldiers last month . “Those who shout on TV for war should come and live here with their children,” he added. “Then they will understand the cost of war.” Image Indian Border Security Force soldiers patrol near the India-Pakistan international border area at Gakhrial boder post in Akhnoor sector, about 48 kilometers from Jammu, India. Credit Channi Anand/Associated Press Farooq Abdullah, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir State, appealed to both sides to avoid escalating the conflict. “We hope cooler heads will prevail and the cease-fire of 2003 will be upheld,” Mr. Abdullah said. Earlier Saturday, Pakistani military officers, including Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, the Pakistan Army spokesman, gave a briefing in Baghsar, a picturesque, hilly village about 60 miles from Mandhole. Pakistani officials said Thursday that the weapons fire had killed two soldiers and wounded nine. General Bajwa reiterated Pakistan’s claims that Indian troops had fired only small arms and mortars at Pakistani military posts. Indian troops opened fire at 2 a.m. on Thursday at five locations over an area spanning 155 miles, he said. The gunfire lasted about five hours, but the Indian troops never crossed the Line of Control, and Pakistani troops returned fire. India said that it had destroyed bases from which militants carried out attacks in the part of Kashmir it controls, and that it had inflicted heavy casualties on the militants. General Bajwa rejected those claims. “Where did all the dead bodies go?” he asked. “Where were the funerals? Why haven’t the Indians produced any dead bodies if they took them back?” “Where is the damage?” General Bajwa said of India’s claims of “surgical strikes,” adding that he welcomed an independent inquiry. “Our side is open to the United Nations observers and journalists.” He pointed toward the Samahni Valley, behind the command post briefing area, and said there had been no civilian casualties or damage to civilian property. At least 100,000 people live in the valley, he said, where small clusters of houses are interspersed with agricultural tracts of land. Maj. Gen. Muhammad Chiragh Haider, the commander of the 23rd Infantry Division of the Pakistan Army, joined General Bajwa in the briefing. General Haider has been posted in Kashmir for the past two years and is a battle-hardened commander, having served in the North Waziristan tribal region. He expressed surprise at India’s claims. “We are observing the cease-fire agreement in a very serious manner,” he said. “We only respond if India opens fire.” General Haider said the claims were “totally incomprehensible,” adding, “A surgical strike took place against us, and we were not even aware of it?” Brig. Furqan Moazzam, a brigade commander, echoed his fellow officers when asked how residents were coping with the aftermath of the border clashes. “The valley is right in front of you,” he said, pointing to the vast area. “Life is going on normally.”

Kashmir and Jammu
India
Pakistan
Military


Of Course It’s Fresh: The Chef Grew It

Abstract: RINGOES, N.J. — It is near midday, and the parking lot of the Harvest Moon Inn is empty. Stanley Novak’s shift as chef is hours away, but he has been working already, cutting the grass on the restaurant’s five-acre property, taking particular care around the rows of some 300 heirloom tomato plants, the cucumbers, the raspberries, the eggplants and other crops. He has been weeding, too, in the raised beds stuffed with salad greens and herbs. Mr. Novak and his wife, Theresa, opened their upscale New American restaurant in Hunterdon County in 1995, and Mr. Novak has grown a portion of the food for its kitchen ever since. Some New Jersey chefs have been growing their own specialty crops since long before the locavore trend took hold. Alice Waters, the owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., recalls a visit in the 1990s to the kitchen garden of Craig Shelton, chef of the Ryland Inn in Whitehouse, now closed. Ms. Waters said, “Here was someone who understood both” gastronomy and the garden. If New Jersey has been on the leading edge of the grow-your-own trend, “thinking of New Jersey as the Garden State has a lot to do with it,” said Ms. Waters, who grew up in Chatham. “It’s a mindset.” The immigrant populations, too, with their food-growing traditions, have “a lot to do with it,” she said. At the Harvest Moon Inn, Mr. Novak, a 1985 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, picks arugula just minutes before dressing it with a lemon-garlic vinaigrette and pairing it with duck confit. In the spring, he tossed just-picked sugar snap peas with house-made fettuccine. He gardens, he said, to obtain peak flavors, to know how produce was grown, for the convenience of picking, say, a single cucumber rather than ordering in bulk, and to save money. “With heirloom tomatoes , you’re paying $6 a pound,” he said. “Produce costs more than putting the protein on the plate.” Cost-cutting is also an incentive for Robert Minniti, chef and co-owner of Bàcio Italian Cuisine in Cinnaminson, with his wife, Pam. He uses three gardens — the couple’s own, at home, started in 2007 a few doors from the restaurant, and those of his grandmother and of his aunt and uncle, both in Moorestown. He says he saves $2,000 in fresh herbs alone during the summer; at the same time he guarantees himself a steady supply of basil, sage, rosemary, tomatoes, zucchini and other crops that are as local as possible, free of chemicals and synthetic fertilizers and harvested at peak quality. Mr. Minniti, a 1997 graduate of the Culinary Institute and a founder of the South Jersey Independent Restaurant Association, has used homegrown produce since he and his wife opened Bàcio in 2004. His interest in growing things is a re-creation of a “Jersey experience” from childhood that included vast gardens, Sunday dinners and his father’s ethereal tomato-basil-red onion salads. “There’s nothing better than picking something fresh, cooking it, throwing it on the plate and eating it,” Mr. Minniti said. He picks garden basil for pesto in his dish of fettuccine with seafood, sautés early-ripening Roma tomatoes with baby spinach and roasted garlic, and layers fontina cheese with roasted zucchini on flatbread. For Corey Heyer, executive chef of the Bernards Inn in Bernardsville, 20 raised beds provide food he would otherwise have shipped in for use in the restaurant’s New American cuisine. Building on his own gardening experience, which began in childhood, Mr. Heyer is now in his second growing season for the restaurant at the 102-year-old inn. The garden, seven miles away and down a dirt road on property belonging to the restaurant’s owners, is yielding nasturtiums (served with an appetizer of seared ahi tuna); johnny jump-ups and other edible flowers; shiso (a leafy herb often used in Asian cuisine); dill and seven varieties of mint. Other crops include berries, arugula (served alongside grilled Wagyu beef with cilantro pesto from the garden), salad greens, potatoes, squash (mainly for the blossoms), eggplants, cucumbers, six types of thyme, Hungarian peppers, habanero peppers and Thai chili peppers, among other crops. Mr. Heyer, a 1996 graduate of the Culinary Institute, says an employee gardens about 12 hours a week. He and two other cooks are there for about eight hours total a week; as they plant, weed and harvest, they get ideas for the menu, he said. Mr. Novak, who says he does almost all the gardening himself, finds that his menu is always evolving, depending on what needs to be used. In mid-August, when he is “hit with all the tomatoes — the Pineapple, the German, the Green Zebras,” he will use them “all over the place,” he said. He picks greens at the last minute, and makes bruschetta with fresh tomatoes and basil from out back, he says, “at the last second.” It’s worth the effort, Mr. Heyer said. “When you’re in the garden and getting your hands and feet dirty, you think about what you can do with the items,” he said. “But in the kitchen — tasting them, cutting them and cooking them — it’s a happy marriage. It’s not really extra work. It’s just an extension of the culinary world.” Just PickedRestaurants whose chefs growsome of the ingredients:BÀCIO ITALIAN CUISINE 2806 Route130 North, Cinnaminson. (856)303-9100. baciorestaurant.com.Entrees, $22 to $45.BERNARDS INN 27 Mine BrookRoad, Bernardsville. (908) 766-0002. bernardsinn.com. Entrees,$28 to $45.HARVEST MOON INN 1039 Old YorkRoad, Ringoes. (908) 806-6020.harvestmooninn.com. Entrees,$20 to $35.

New Jersey
Chefs
Gardens and Gardening
Local Food
Restaurants


Photographs of Valencia Bakery by Martine Fougeron

Abstract: If you give a photographer coffee, she’s going to want cake. And if she wants cake, she’s going to Valencia. And if she goes to Valencia, she’s going to stay and shoot. A lot. That’s how Martine Fougeron ended up in the sugar-frosted, pineapple-stuffed warm world of Valencia Bakery , a South Bronx institution that has made birthday, baptism and wedding cakes for generations of jubilant Latinos. She had been photographing a scrap recycling yard across the street, and needed a jolt of caffeine, which she found at the tiny counter of the Valencia cafe. As she stepped out of the cafe, she spied a plain door. Curious, she rang the bell and was ushered into a multicolored cake showroom. “It was a magical place,” Ms. Fougeron said. “It was a huge bakery and factory. In the back they did everything from mixing the dough, baking and decorating the cakes, with workers who did things old-style.” A World of Sugar Frosting and Sculptured Roses 13 Photos View Slide Show › Image Martine Fougeron Dazzled, she made it part of “Trades/Oficios/Metiers,” her continuing project on the craftspeople and factories of the South Bronx. Behind closed doors, immigrants slice fresh fish for Manhattan restaurants, print banners, reclaim metal from garbage and cut steel to size. There is nothing ironically artisanal about this. Granted, some photographers walk the same streets and persist in portraying areas like Hunts Point as grim landscapes of addicts and prostitutes. Ms. Fougeron, who moved to the nearby Port Morris neighborhood five years ago from the West Village, sees it as a hidden community abuzz with industry and skilled craftspeople. “So much of New York is about finance and banking. It’s people in offices. There’s no charm to it. Here, it was back to reality where people do real, differentiating tasks. They’re very involved in it, and there’s a dignity to that.”

Photography
Cake
South Bronx
Valencia Bakery Bronx NY
Martine Fougeron
Bakeries


If It Involves Jews, Chabad’s Tiny but Far-Flung News Organization Is on It

Abstract: When the news broke on Thursday of a freakish traffic accident that injured several people at the Chanukah Wonderland workshop run by the Lubavitch community of Woodmere, on Long Island, the story was picked up by the usual suspects: Newsday, The Daily News, The New York Post and The Associated Press. It also happened to be that day’s top North American offering of a much smaller — and somewhat more specialized — journalistic venture: Chabad.org News. Written and produced from a small home office in Israel by a husband-and-wife team, Chabad.org News is a nonprofit international reporting operation that focuses on stories of interest to Jews — and more specifically the Lubavitch community — around the globe. On any given day, it might cover the opening of a new kosher cafeteria at the University of Miami or a fatal bus crash in Eilat, Israel. Its headlines reflect the tenets of the movement and the interests of its readers: “Light Again Issues Forth from Mumbai Chabad House” or “Mountaintop Circumcision a First for Southeastern Peru.” “It really runs the gamut, from identifying new trends in Jewish outreach being trailblazed by Lubavitch emissaries worldwide, to exploring what’s going on in far-flung Jewish communities,” said Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, a spokesman for the Lubavitch movement and a key player in the news team’s Brooklyn office. While Rabbi Shmotkin oversees logistics in New York, the editor and tireless chief writer of Chabad.org News is a journalist, Rabbi Joshua Runyan, formerly of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia, whose byline runs on perhaps 90 percent of the Web site’s stories. Rabbi Runyan is a busy man. On a Tuesday morning, for example, he could easily find himself composing a story on the first Torah scroll ever to be written in the state of Arkansas and the following afternoon be editing a dispatch on a menorah-lighting ceremony in Calgary, Alberta, filed by his wife, Tamar. (The Runyans could not be reached for comment as, by Friday morning in New York, the Jewish Sabbath had begun in Israel.) With 10 to 12 stringers throughout the world from New York to Australia, Chabad.org News is truly global in its reach. It relies on tips and information passed on by the movement’s many emissaries as well as leg and phone work conducted by members of the Media Center based in the Lubavitch world headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The movement, which has an extensive public relations operation, has cultivated useful relationships with newspaper and television reporters who are often happy to pass on information about breaking news in exchange for, say, a good tip on a feature story, Rabbi Shmotkin said. The Woodmere crash was an example of that. A local television reporter tipped off the Lubavitch office so that Rabbi Runyan, working from Israel, knew to call officials on Long Island in time to bang out a dispatch posted online not quite two hours after the crash occurred. Chabad.org News sprang into action last month during the terrorist siege of two hotels and the Lubavitch community center in Mumbai. Feeds were collected from a Lubavitch emissary arriving from Goa; tips were received from a friendly CNN reporter on the scene; phone calls were made from Brooklyn to various government officials; and the whole package was sent to Rabbi Runyan, who is still writing updates on the story (“Menorah Shines from Scene of Mumbai’s Prior Devastation”) weeks later. With such diverse sources of information, Chabad.org News stands at the intersection of professional reporting, citizen journalism and movement boosterism, apparently pleased to have its feet in all three worlds. The stickiest question may be how to cover the institution that spawned it. While the outfit’s stories are broad in scope (“Jewish Community in Iowa City Joins Sandbagging Effort”), they are rarely, if ever, critical of the Lubavitch movement itself. “Obviously, it’s a house organ to some extent,” said Ari Goldman , a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a self-described fan who receives regular RSS feeds of stories from Chabad.org News. “But I also think it’s a reliable source of information.” So, apparently, do numerous others. Beyond the stories it publishes online, the outfit offers a twice-weekly e-mail newsletter to 85,000 subscribers and automatically “streamlines content” to the Web sites of more than 1,000 local Chabad affiliates from Paris to Pittsburgh. “It’s similar to the A.P.,” Rabbi Shmotkin said. “But much more integrated.”

Jews
Chabad-Lubavitch
News and News Media


Praying for Christian Unity, When Diversity Has Been the Answer

Abstract: Has the movement for unity among Christians gone into a coma? The annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity began Friday, a century after the first such celebration. In many countries, Christians deeply devoted to unity among their separate groups will gather in one anothers’ churches to pray and reflect on passages from Scripture. Since 1968, prayers and readings for the week have been jointly planned by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches. But for most Christians, the week, centennial or not, carries no more resonance than, say, National Secretaries Week (now officially Administrative Professionals Week). Has the ecumenical movement lost steam? Or has it, perhaps, fallen victim to its own success? One way or the other, does it make any difference? In 1908, it certainly did to the Rev. Paul Wattson and Mother Lurana White, an Episcopal priest and nun, founders, in Garrison, N.Y., of a small Anglican religious community in the Franciscan tradition. They initiated eight days of prayer between what were then feast days associated with Saints Peter and Paul. These two leaders and their Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement soon became Roman Catholics, so the week of prayer naturally had little appeal to Protestants. Still, all sorts of other streams fed into the cause of joining in prayer for Christian unity: the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, often described as the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement, and efforts by the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. Christian unity was, of course, a chief goal of the Second Vatican Council, when the world’s Catholic bishops invited Protestant and Orthodox leaders, now known as “separated brethren” rather than “heretics” and “schismatics,” to observe and consult during the council’s four sessions from 1962 to 1965. That work has been carried on by Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox ecumenical officers and theologians engaged in interchurch dialogue. These highly committed people track the progress of unity the way brokers watch the stock ticker. But people in the pews appear to have other things on their mind. They take for granted the lowering of what were once painful barriers dividing spouses and family members and even citizens. In the question period after John F. Kennedy’s oft-cited presidential campaign speech on church and state to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, several ministers worried out loud that a Catholic president could not fulfill the ceremonial responsibilities of the office because the church normally barred Catholics from attending non-Catholic worship services. For those ministers, it was unthinkable that a president and two former presidents might be photographed, as they were in 2004, attending the funeral of a pope. Today, for younger Americans, it is unthinkable that anyone might have once considered such a sight unthinkable. So the success of the movement for church unity has itself removed much of the urgency behind it. There are three other reasons, however, why the cause has cooled, and they reveal much about the religious landscape generally. First, in the eyes of many, thanks to the understanding and fellowship generated by dialogue, what was once the scandal of division now looks more like the virtue of diversity. The diversity of Christian traditions has kept neglected facets of the faith alive and emphasized in some quarters — to be recovered when their absence was felt. Sociologists of religion have argued that Christianity has flourished, in fact, where a diversity of church forms and practices have met the needs of different social groups. Second, the relationship between Christianity and other world religions — Islam, in particular — has supplanted Christian unity as a pressing concern. To the extent that religion currently abets violence, it is hardly in conflicts over papal authority or whether worshipers sharing in the Lord’s Supper should partake of both bread and wine. Today, the greatest need for dialogue, building relationships and learning what really animates another believer seems to lie in yawning and dangerous differences between Christianity and other religions, rather than among the different Christian churches, denominations and sects. Third, the looming question for many Christian churches and denominations is no longer whether doctrinal boundaries are too absolute and exclusive but whether these groups can define and maintain any clear-cut identity at all. Years ago, a study of the drift of Presbyterian baby boomers away from their religious roots highlighted the difficulty parents and leaders of the denomination had in answering a simple question: “Why be a Presbyterian?” One Presbyterian journalist rather unfairly cracked that the question might have been posed as “What is a Presbyterian?” This anxiety about identity is most evident in a stream of conservative positions taken by Pope Benedict XVI, his predecessor John Paul II, and their Vatican offices. It has been easier to question the wisdom of these measures than to argue that the anxiety behind them is unwarranted. The battle over whether this or that Christian group’s boundaries are unjustifiably exclusive has not gone away: it is currently being fought around the issue of homosexuality. Yet this battle, too, is being fought within, not between, different Christian churches and denominations, again confirming the priority that identity has taken over unity. Those joining in prayers for Christian unity during the next week will be well aware of the insight, imagination and empathy that the ecumenical movement has fostered; for the near future, however, these gifts are likely to be directed primarily to other challenges.

Christians and Christianity
Roman Catholic Church
World Council of Churches


Veteran Times Reporter Denied Entry to Turkey

Abstract: Border officials in Turkey detained a veteran New York Times correspondent as he arrived at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul on Tuesday, then forced him to take a flight back to London without explaining why he had been refused entry to the country. The action against the correspondent, Rod Nordland, who has reported from more than 150 countries , including from Turkey last month, appeared to be part of a broader government crackdown against the domestic and foreign news media. There was no immediate explanation from Turkish officials about the action taken against Mr. Nordland. Dean Baquet, executive editor of The Times, denounced the action as unjustified and an affront to press freedom. It appeared to be the first time a Times correspondent had been denied entry into Turkey, according to David McCraw, the news organization’s vice president and deputy general counsel. Dozens of Turkish journalists have been jailed , and several foreign journalists have been harassed, detained, denied entry or expelled from Turkey in recent months, particularly since an unsuccessful coup attempt in July. A Wall Street Journal correspondent, Dion Nissenbaum, was held incommunicado for three days in December without explanation before leaving the country along with his wife and infant daughter. After having arrived at the Istanbul airport from London, Mr. Nordland said in an email that he had been stopped by the border police. They told him that his name was on an Interior Ministry order denying him entry and that they were placing him on the next flight back, “no reason given,” he wrote. A Turkish lawyer for The Times, Orcun Cetinkaya, said the airport police had told a colleague that the reason was “national security,” with no further details. A spokesman for the Turkish presidency, who spoke on condition of anonymity under government protocol, and Huseyin Muftuoglu, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said they would investigate the circumstances and had no further immediate comment. Telephone attempts to reach Ali Ozturk, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, were met with a busy signal. Turkish officials had earlier expressed unhappiness over some articles by Mr. Nordland from November and December, particularly one from the southeast city of Diyarbakir , the former stronghold of an outlawed Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K. The article described the aftermath of months of fighting there between P.K.K. guerrillas and government forces. In a statement, Mr. Baquet said: “The Turkish government’s action is an affront to freedom of the press and an effort to keep the world from having access to independent reporting from Turkey. Rod is a veteran correspondent who has done groundbreaking journalism from around the world. There was no justification for today’s action. The Times remains committed to covering Turkey fairly, accurately and fully.” Turkey has become the world’s leading jailer of journalists under the government of Mr. Erdogan, who has increasingly denounced news reporting he deems inaccurate, unfair or even seditious. The Committee to Protect Journalists, an advocacy group, said in an annual report last month that at least 81 journalists had been imprisoned in Turkey , all facing anti-state charges, amid intense repression of press freedom following the coup attempt. More than 100 news outlets in Turkey have been ordered closed. Even before the coup attempt, Turkish officials had taken a range of punitive actions against foreign news organizations. They particularly singled out the German media. Last March, Hasnain Kazim, the Istanbul correspondent for Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, left after months of uncertainty over the government’s apparent refusal to renew his press accreditation, needed to work and live in the country legally. Mr. Kazim wrote in a farewell dispatch that he had received death threats and that Turkish prosecutors had warned that if he had stayed in the country, he could possibly be accused of supporting a terrorist organization or insulting the president. The next month, officials at Istanbul airport denied entry to Volker Schwenck , a journalist for the public television broadcaster ARD in Germany who had planned to travel to the Turkey-Syria border. They also denied entry to an American journalist, David Lepeska , who has written for Foreign Affairs and Al Jazeera America, putting him on a flight to Chicago.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Freedom of the press
Turkey
Rod Nordland


The Rebirth, and the Beat, Goes On

Abstract: At times, central Harlem seems to be an urban scene straight out of central casting: Step off the No. 2 or 3 train at the 116th Street stop one evening, and the air is filled with the snap-snap of double Dutch jump ropes hitting the pavement and girls tensely debating just whose turn it is. Old men hunker down over folding domino tables, and young men preen and spar with one another. But mixed with these Spike Lee-esque vignettes is another Harlem, chugging on in defiance of the recession. It includes slick boutiques and cafes, bars that attract Hollywood types and places for music that make you wonder when exactly Harlem’s Renaissance happened — then, or now? 4:30 P.M. At the start of World War I, said Jeffrey S. Gurock, the author of “When Harlem Was Jewish, 1870-1930,” central Harlem had a Jewish population of 125,000. That heritage lives on at Lee Lee’s Baked Goods, 283 West 118th Street, (917) 493-6633, where Alvin Lee Smalls bakes the most buttery rugelach (70 cents each, but try and buy just one) in a small bakery appointed like a country kitchen. Mr. Smalls, who is black, is known for his old tongue-in-cheek window sign that once advertised the cinnamon and raisin pastry as “rugelach by a brother.” 5 P.M. Sit at the communal butcher-block tables at Society Coffee, 2104 Frederick Douglass Boulevard, (212) 222-3323, and wash down the rugelach with the house Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee ($1.75 small, $2.25 large) or a single shot of espresso from Trieste, Italy ($1.50). With all the media types inking movie deals at the tables, you’ll want to double-check that you’re not on the set of “Entourage.” 6 P.M. Walk down 116th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Malcolm X Boulevards, and you’ll catch strains of French and blasts of Malian pop music as you pass African shops selling shea butter, palm oil, bright fabrics and dazzling jewelry. The center of this area, Little Africa, is the Malcolm Shabazz Harlem Market, 52 West 116th Street, (212) 987-8131, where West African vendors sell native handicrafts of wood, shell and bone, from a few dollars for beaded earrings to a few hundred for a goatskin-covered djembe drum). English is little heard, and women wrapped in Technicolor fabrics plait microbraids into customers’ hair as their colleagues beckon passers-by. If you demur, be warned: These hairdressers are not turned down easily. 7 P.M. Mojo, 185 St. Nicholas Avenue, (212) 280-1924, is an opulent restaurant in a purple hue that opened last spring. The husband-and-wife owners, Mounir Jabrane and Helena Greene, attend to customers who have included Danny Glover and Gov. David A. Paterson. Try the Sexy Grits, grits dressed as polenta with truffle oil and wild mushrooms ($9), perhaps washed down with one of the $11 cocktails named for Harlem locales. 9 P.M. Minton’s Playhouse was the birthplace of bebop, the fast-tempo jazz pioneered by greats like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, and its latest incarnation is called Uptown Lounge at Minton’s Playhouse, 206 West 118th Street, (212) 864-8346. Opened in 1938, it was shuttered in 1974 and then, three years ago, it was reopened with an Art Deco aesthetic and a nightly jazz lineup. There’s a two-drink minimum and a $5 cover charge on Fridays, $10 on Saturdays. Don’t fear the occasional gaggle of tourists deposited by tour buses; the club still offers world-class jazz (a video is online at nytimes.com/nyregion). 10 P.M Head back east on 118th Street, and along the way say hello to some neighborhood residents, like the Carr family. The Carrs’ building, between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, has been in the family for more than 60 years, said Janella Carr, 22, adding that some Carr or other has sat on its stoop just about every warm evening over those years. If you’re feeling spry, ask the youngest Carr for a turn at double Dutch.

Harlem (NYC)
Bakeries and Baked Products
Jazz
Subways


Rival Tickets Are Redrawing Battlegrounds

Abstract: Fresh from the Republican convention, Senator John McCain ’s campaign sees evidence that his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is energizing conservatives in the battleground of Ohio while improving its chances in Pennsylvania and several Western states that Senator Barack Obama has been counting on. Mr. Obama’s campaign intends to focus heavily on the economy, especially in light of the mounting job losses, and to keep up the effort to tie the McCain-Palin ticket to the policies of President Bush. It is banking on holding all the states Senator John Kerry won in 2004 and picking up the additional electoral votes it needs by flipping some combination of Ohio, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa and Virginia into the Democratic column. With just over eight weeks left until Election Day, the two sides are settling into an unusually broad set of state-by-state face-offs, with an increased focus on turning out supporters and tough decisions looming about where to invest time and money for new advertisements. Yet the two men issued a joint statement on Saturday announcing that they would appear together at the World Trade Center site on Thursday, an idea that aides said originated last week when Mr. Obama called Mr. McCain to congratulate him on accepting the nomination. Aides to Mr. Obama said the campaign was preparing advertisements tailored to issues important in specific states, like ones about the auto industry in Michigan and nuclear waste in Nevada, even as the Democrats pull back ads in Georgia, a reliably Republican state he had sought to put in play by investing heavily in registering new Democratic voters. Strategists say that Mr. McCain can now count on a more motivated social conservative base to help him in areas like southern Ohio, where the 2004 race was settled. While fortified turnout from this base is probably not enough to assure victory for Mr. McCain, strategists said, it would be very difficult for him to win without it. In that sense, Ms. Palin’s presence on the ticket — depending on how her candidacy fares under the scrutiny it is receiving — could be vital. Some campaign officials hope that Ms. Palin, an Alaskan, can broaden the ticket’s appeal in the Northwest, possibly gaining traction in states like Oregon and Washington, as well as shore up Mr. McCain’s standing with social conservatives who had, up to now, been lukewarm at best about his candidacy. “Thursday morning our phones started ringing about how do we get involved, where are the phone banks, where is the literature to distribute,” said Mike Gonidakis, executive director of Ohio Right to Life, explaining that many people had been motivated by Ms. Palin’s convention speech on Wednesday night. “It’s amazing to see the attitude and enthusiasm — especially compared with what it was about 10 days ago.” Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said that his team was not concerned that independent voters and undecided women might be drawn to Ms. Palin, and that the Obama camp did not plan to run hard against her. “As the post-convention dust settles, we believe a lot of the battleground states will be close, and that this will remain a race between John McCain and Barack Obama,” Mr. Plouffe said. “She’ll be out there promoting John McCain’s economic message, which is fine by us because it is so bad for middle-class voters.” Yet several Republican leaders, both moderates and conservatives, said they were comfortable with the economic message of the McCain-Palin ticket. The Republican ticket is asserting in its advertising and campaigning that electing Mr. Obama would mean higher taxes and policies too liberal for most voters. “Even in the face of job losses and the mortgage crisis, the core Republican message is still appealing: No higher taxes, get government off your back, cut regulations and make us more competitive,” said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. While McCain aides once believed that his appeal to independents might help him win a traditional Democratic state like New Jersey, and Obama aides thought their candidate’s broad appeal could be a lift in traditionally Republican ones like Montana, the emerging battlegrounds picked by both campaigns so far resemble the Bush-Kerry electoral map in 2004 and the Bush-Gore map in 2000. But Democrats say that they will still have the advantage, thinking that Mr. Bush’s unpopularity, economic discontent and lingering anger over the Iraq war will make it hard for Republicans to carry all the Bush states. Republicans are hoping that positioning Mr. McCain as a maverick now, even after he courted the right with his pick of Ms. Palin, could help them hold the Bush states and win some like New Hampshire, which Mr. Bush lost in 2004 but where Mr. McCain is popular. In one indication of how Mr. McCain defines the battleground and the message he will emphasize to counter the Democratic strategy, the Republican National Committee recently bought television time in 14 states — including five that Mr. Kerry won last time around — for an advertisement calling Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats “ready to tax, ready to spend, but not ready to lead.” That advertisement will be shown in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia — all Republican states in 2004 that Mr. Obama is contesting aggressively this time — and Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democratic states four years ago that Mr. McCain is trying to win over. A sign of the shifting battlegrounds can be found in the itineraries of both campaigns. Mr. Obama on Saturday warned voters in Indiana, a state where Democratic presidential candidates seldom plant their flag, to be wary of Republicans promising change. “Don’t be fooled,” he told several hundred people at the fairgrounds in Terre Haute. “These are the folks who have been in charge.” Mr. McCain had rallies scheduled on Saturday with Ms. Palin in Colorado and New Mexico, and the campaign exulted in the thousands of people that Mr. McCain’s running mate was drawing to the Colorado event. A crowd waving American flags and chanting “Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin” had gathered by noon at the airport in Colorado Springs, solid Republican territory, to catch a glimpse of her. Ms. Palin, who had planned to split off from Mr. McCain on Monday, will now travel with him through Tuesday, aides said. Mr. Obama chose not to participate in the public financing system for presidential campaigns, freeing him from limits on how much he can spend in particular states. One indication of the Obama campaign’s priorities can be found in a breakdown of how it is distributing large donations to a special fund-raising account it has set up for state parties. The breakdown, provided by an Obama fund-raiser, shows the campaign funneling money to traditional battlegrounds like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but also allocating substantial sums to normally solid Republican states like North Carolina. Obama aides, while pulling back commercials in Georgia, are mulling new ads in other states that Mr. Bush carried, like Arizona and West Virginia, where the poor economy could help them. Both sides are intensifying their efforts in a less visible but potentially more important aspect of presidential politics: identifying their likely supporters, household by household, and ensuring that they show up to vote on Election Day. Mr. Obama has long been seen as having had a head start in that area, drawing in particular on his campaign’s vast army of volunteers for the grunt work of making phone calls, knocking on doors and distributing literature. Mr. Plouffe said the Obama campaign had recruited thousands of neighborhood and precinct captains to concentrate on voter turnout: The campaign has seven offices in Allegheny County alone, around Pittsburgh, and has teams devoted to turning out the estimated 600,000 black residents of Florida who were registered in 2004 but did not vote. “You have a lot of sporadic Democratic voting in Florida and other states in different years,” Mr. Plouffe said, “but we believe the clear contrast between the candidates will drive Democrats out in record numbers this year.” But the McCain campaign, after a slow start, is increasing its efforts as well, building on the sophisticated voter-targeting operation built for President Bush four years ago. Mike DuHaime, the McCain campaign’s political director, said that right after Ms. Palin was chosen, more than four times as many volunteers as usual showed up, even though it was Labor Day weekend. Even before the pick, he said, the campaign had stepped up its efforts: While it made only 20,000 volunteer phone calls and knocks on doors a week two months ago, the McCain campaign made 800,000 the week before Ms. Palin was selected. The campaign is using technology to help identify likely voters, including having volunteers to call supporters using Internet phones that can help collect data for the Republican National Committee. “If the person you’re calling says, Yes, I’m voting for Senator McCain, you push a button on the phone and it automatically goes back to the R.N.C. database,” Mr. DuHaime said. “If the person says it’s a wrong number, there’s another button and it wipes that number out, so that nobody ever calls that again.” He added: “You can take all that data and analyze it, figure out things that are working and things that are not and how to allocate resources,” he said.

Presidential Election of 2008
McCain John
Obama Barack
Palin Sarah
Republican Party
Democratic Party
United States Politics and Government


Iran Court Finds Reuters Journalist Guilty of ‘Spreading Lies’

Abstract: TEHRAN (AP) — A special media court on Sunday found the Tehran bureau chief of the Thomson Reuters news agency guilty of “spreading lies” against the Islamic system for a video script that briefly described a group of women involved in martial arts training as killers. The state-owned news Web site YJC.ir quoted Ali Akbar Kasaeian, a spokesman for the court panel, as saying that the Reuters bureau chief, Parisa Hafezi , was convicted of propaganda-related offenses for a February video that initially carried a headline saying that the women were training as ninja “assassins.” Iran ’s state Press TV also reported the court decision. The Reuters headline was corrected, but it led to the suspension of the Reuters bureau in Tehran in March. Most of the Reuters staff members shifted to Dubai, but Ms. Hafezi, an Iranian citizen, was not allowed to leave Iran. Barb Burg, a spokeswoman for Reuters , said: “We understand that the jury has stated its view and we now await the court’s ruling. We do not intend to comment further until a decision is issued.” A sentence by the court is expected within a week. The media court rarely deals with international news outlets, but often issues rulings against domestic media for various violations with punishments including fines, closings or jail sentences. Last week, the moderate newspaper Shargh was ordered shut over a caricature that hard-liners have interpreted as insulting to war veterans. In the past, Iranian authorities have revoked the credentials of the staff of foreign media or expelled foreign staff members over reporting deemed objectionable, like interviews with opposition figures.

News and News Media
Iran
Thomson Reuters Corporation
Hafezi Parisa


Billions in Storm Damage Claims May Strain Texas Insurance Pool

Abstract: Hurricane Ike caused as much as $16 billion in property damage, by some estimates, but the state-led insurance pool that will pay much of the cost has only $2.3 billion, leaving the Texas government on the hook potentially for billions of dollars in claims. Insurance companies all but stopped offering hurricane coverage for property on the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 cost them billions of dollars in claims and as property values soared, raising their exposure to disaster claims. The pullout of commercial insurance carriers forced most property owners on the coast to turn to the state-run insurer of last resort, the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, or the wind pool, as it is called. Tens of thousands of owners of homes and businesses have bought storm coverage through the state insurance pool in the last few years. It now has about 225,000 policyholders, up from about 68,000 in 2001. Property in the hurricane risk zone was worth about $895 billion in 2007, an increase of 24 percent since 2004, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Fiscal watchdogs in Texas, which has had budget surpluses, have been warning for some time that the insurance pool’s exposure was growing much faster than its finances, and that a major adjustment had to be made before a disaster like Hurricane Katrina wiped out the fund. Measures in the Legislature failed because lawmakers could not agree on how much of the cost should be borne by people with homes and businesses on the coast. Now a significant storm has hit, forcing the issue. “It’s clear now that the Legislature is going to have to do something, because it’s no longer a hypothetical,” said Jim Oliver, chief executive of the Windstorm Insurance Association, a private company chartered by the state. “This could happen again next week, for crying out loud.” Although Hurricane Ike did not send a 20-foot surge of water up the Houston Ship Channel, which some officials thought was possible, it did batter big hotels, high-rise condominiums and other residences and businesses on Galveston Island and along the coast. Because the insurance industry had pulled out of the coastal market, an estimated 60 percent of the insurance cost in Galveston will be borne by the insurance pool. But insurance companies did not pull out of the Houston area, other than a small slice along the water, so the insurance pool faces less exposure there. Just how much the insurance pool will have to pay will depend on how much of the hurricane damage is concentrated on the coast. Risk Management Solutions, a company in Newark, Calif., that estimates the effects of disasters, is predicting that the cost of Hurricane Ike’s damage from wind and the storm surge will be $6 billion to $16 billion. That estimate does not include the cost of inland flooding, a type of damage not covered by conventional insurance policies. Insurance companies are not completely out of the picture in Galveston and the coastal counties. All carriers licensed to sell property insurance in Texas are required to participate in the state insurance pool and pay assessments based on their market share in the rest of the state. The wind pool also has rights on a $500 million state catastrophe reserve fund and reinsurance worth $1.5 billion. These resources, plus customer premiums, have given the state insurance pool a total of $2.3 billion to cover all of this year’s claims. But smaller storms this year have reduced the total to $2.1 billion. When that money is depleted, the insurance pool can impose unlimited assessments on insurance companies. They, in turn, can recover the money through state tax breaks, spread over several years. The resulting decline in tax revenue could drain millions from the state’s general revenue fund. “While it’s definitely a burden, because they’ll have to find ways of shifting the money around, it’s not a crisis,” said Mr. Oliver, the wind pool’s chief, noting that the state’s huge oil and gas industry has kept its budget flush. Mr. Oliver is scheduled to provide estimates of the insurance payouts Wednesday in a public meeting, which will probably raise anew the questions over the wind pool’s finances that the Legislature could not answer before. “The real rub is, who pays?” Mr. Oliver said.

Insurance
Hurricane Ike
Texas
Hurricanes and Tropical Storms


Jeb Bush May Be One Bush Too Many for Rank-and-File Iowa G.O.P.

Abstract: JEFFERSON, Iowa — Sheryl McDonald, a retiree, voted for both Presidents Bush. “But I’m finding out they did some things we got stuck with,” she said. “I do not want to see Jeb Bush run,” she added. “He turns me off.” Scarcely anyone at a meeting of the Greene County Republican Party here in central Iowa recently had anything kind to say about Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor. They objected to his moderate stances on immigration and education standards. But they also complained matter-of-factly about fatigue with his family — especially after the presidency of George W. Bush, whom they blamed for a misguided war and big deficits. Another activist, John Thompson, a West Point graduate who served in Iraq, called it “a wasted war.” Jeb Bush, he said, was the last of the potential Republican candidates he would consider. This is the paradox of Mr. Bush’s early campaign: He is well out in front in the race for elite Republican donors and for the support of the party’s establishment. But he is unpopular with many in the rank and file, who can pick from a large crop of younger White House contenders who pass the conservative litmus tests that Mr. Bush fails. Mr. Bush will have a chance to break through that grass-roots resistance on Friday, when he arrives for his first visit to Iowa in more than three years. Far from the offices of Washington lobbyists and the private homes where he has romanced affluent donors for months, Mr. Bush’s two-day trip includes stops at a Waukee barbecue joint and a Cedar Rapids pizza place. It is part of the first retail campaign swing by Mr. Bush in early-voting states, and he will follow it up with visits to New Hampshire and South Carolina in the coming weeks. His strategists say Mr. Bush plans to tell Iowans that he is a “reform-minded conservative” with a record of results and a vision for overcoming stagnating incomes and tax reform. Yet Mr. Bush appears so far to be bypassing the extensive networks of supporters, and strategists, that his father and older brother each built in Iowa en route to winning its first-in-the-nation caucus. On Monday, Mr. Bush named an outsider to head up his prospective Iowa campaign: Annie Kelly, a Pennsylvania native who worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee. And veterans of the “Bush Brigade,” a group of up to 300 activists who met annually during the 1980s, said they had not heard from Jeb Bush. Of course, Mr. Bush’s campaign is just getting going in Iowa; one Bush strategist said it would enlist elements of the old guard before long. But it is unclear how many, if called, would rally behind Mr. Bush. “He’s at a different point in history than his brother George was,” said George W. Wittgraf, a lawyer in Cherokee, Iowa, who was state chairman for the first President Bush. “People were looking for an alternative to Bill Clinton then. While they’re looking for an alternative to Barack Obama, there are lots of other potential candidates.” Ralph R. Brown, who worked for both earlier Bush candidacies in the state, said Mr. Bush was wise to seek out a fresh team in Iowa. “There will be a new generation,” he said. “That’s what it takes to win.” Although Mr. Bush has said he wants to be his “own man,” he is inescapably in his family’s shadow. “We’re tired of the same old same old,” said Kellie Paschke, a lawyer in Waukee and a Republican activist in Dallas County west of Des Moines. Mr. Bush’s “name is something he’s going to have to overcome,” she said. “He is going to have to be more articulate with his fresh ideas.” On Friday, Mr. Bush plans to meet privately with potential volunteers and staff at Jethro’s, a barbecue restaurant in Waukee. On Saturday he will appear with a dozen other 2016 hopefuls at an agriculture forum in Des Moines, then attend a meet-and-greet at a Pizza Ranch restaurant in Cedar Rapids — the city where George W. Bush first publicly declared his ambition to reach the White House, in 1999. Jeb Bush’s own memories of Iowa include some that are less rosy. On the night of the statewide caucus in 1988, he spoke in Council Bluffs in support of his father, who ended up losing the precinct on his way to finishing third in the state (although he won the nomination and the presidency). “It was a humbling experience” for the 34-year-old Jeb, said Douglas E. Gross, a Bush family friend. “He trudges back to the Holiday Inn Express by himself like he doesn’t have a friend in the world.” Polls show stiff resistance to Mr. Bush so far in Iowa. More than one in four likely Republican caucusgoers said they would “definitely not support Bush,” a Quinnipiac University poll found last week. Forty percent had an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Bush, with 41 percent favorable — the worst ratio of any potential candidate except Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Significantly, the No. 2 issue cited by Republicans in the survey in picking a candidate, after the economy, was immigration — a persistent problem for moderates in this Midwest state with a 5.5 percent Latino population . Last week, Mr. Bush reaffirmed his view that millions of undocumented workers in the United States should be given a path to legal status, which is anathema to many conservatives. “We have litmus tests that Iowans will expect candidates to answer the right way if they’re deemed to be viable candidates, and those litmus tests in many cases are a turnoff in the general election,” said Mitch Hambleton, the Republican treasurer of Dallas County. “We tend to beat ourselves up in the process.” Although Iowa strategists unconnected to Mr. Bush said he would have to work the state hard to win over caucusgoers, it remains unclear that he has decided to do so. A strategist for his campaign promised more trips to Iowa, but declined to say how many. And David Kochel, a top Iowa operative whom Mr. Bush moved to Miami to manage his national campaign, has a record of lowering expectations. Four years ago when he ran Mitt Romney’s campaign in Iowa, Mr. Kochel kept him out of the state until very late. (The strategy worked — Mr. Romney nearly won the 2012 caucus anyway.) But there is danger in treading lightly in Iowa this cycle. The field is stronger and broader than it was in 2012, Republican strategists say. Although Mr. Bush might be tempted to hedge his bets, to avoid the humiliation of a poor Iowa showing, that could allow others who also appeal to center-right voters, like Mr. Christie, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, to gain ground. “What happens in Iowa becomes a reflection of your momentum in the race,” said Mr. Gross, who was an Iowa finance chairman for George W. Bush but is unaffiliated this time. As his rivals seek to persuade the party that they are best suited to win the general election, Mr. Bush will also need to make primary voters forget the past. “All year the question will be, ‘Can Bush beat Clinton? Can Walker beat Clinton?’ ” Mr. Gross said. “To answer that question about Jeb Bush, they’re going to have to answer in a way that doesn’t relate to his dad or his brother.”

Jeb Bush
Iowa
2016 Presidential Election
Primaries
Republicans
US Politics


American Pharoah Draws No. 1 Post in Eight-Horse Preakness Field

Abstract: BALTIMORE — It is a compact field of eight horses for the 140th running of the Preakness Stakes, but perhaps it is the deepest group to contest the second jewel of the Triple Crown in nearly two decades, with the top three finishers in a hard-fought Kentucky Derby entered. Small fields have not been kind to Triple Crown dreams. Over the past 25 years, the Derby winner has been beaten all five times when there were nine horses or fewer in the field. It happened most recently to Orb, in 2013 . American Pharoah’s trainer, Bob Baffert, says he is not worried. His colt, the Derby winner, will break from the No. 1 post as the 4-5 favorite. Baffert’s confidence comes with experience. His three previous Derby champions — Silver Charm (1997), Real Quiet (1998) and War Emblem (2002) — blew through here on the way to Belmont Park and a Triple Crown bid. He considers the Preakness the easiest leg of the series because the hardest work has already been done. “Once you get through the Derby, you know your horses,” said Baffert, who also won here with Point Given (2001) and Lookin at Lucky (2010). Image American Pharoah with Baffert at Pimlico Race Course. Credit Rob Carr/Getty Images “You have to be in top form to win the Kentucky Derby, so it’s a matter of keeping them galloping and just getting them there,” he said. “If your horses are coming off a big effort in the Derby and they’ve run well, then they’re pretty tough to beat.” That description is apt for Baffert’s other horse, Dortmund, who will line up next to his stablemate in the No. 2 hole. The strapping colt is 7-2 in the morning line after finishing three lengths behind in the Derby. “Dortmund, he’s a big horse,” said Baffert. “Once he gets rolling, he’s got that big, long stride. He ran well and earned his trip here.” The Derby’s runner-up, Firing Line, will break outside from the No. 8 hole as the 4-1 third choice. His trainer, Simon Callaghan, believes his colt has the edge in freshness — Firing Line has had six weeks between his three races this year — and will benefit from the Preakness’s shorter distance, a sixteenth of a mile shorter than the Derby’s mile-and-a-quarter track. His colt battled deep into the stretch before losing to American Pharoah by a length. “I think the spacing that we had in our two prior races is going to help us out,” said Callaghan. “I think that should enable us to have a slightly fresher horse going forward. He’s got a very good cruising speed during his races, and I think that should lend itself to a slight cutback in distance. I think this could be an absolutely perfect distance for him.” Image Dortmund, a stablemate of American Pharoah’s, is set for the No. 2 spot on Saturday. Credit Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Danzig Moon, who finished fifth in Kentucky after a brutal ride, will start from the No. 4 hole at 15-1. “He got knocked around pretty good in the Derby, but he’s a fighter,” said his trainer, Mark Casse. “You always like smaller fields; there’s less horses you have to beat. Normally, there’s less traffic in the Preakness, so we’re looking forward to a little smaller field.” The field would have been even shorter if it were not for an 11th-hour coup engineered by the Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas. He has won the Preakness six times — most recently with Oxbow, who defeated Orb, but began the day without a horse for the race. He conditioned the Derby’s 13th-place finisher, Mr. Z, who was owned by American Pharoah’s owner, Ahmed Zayat. Earlier this week, Zayat announced that Mr. Z would not run in the Preakness. On Wednesday, Zayat sold the colt to another Lukas client, Calumet Farm, which is owned by the billionaire Brad Kelley, and which also owned Oxbow. “I don’t know that I pushed the sale,” said Lukas. “The sale just came through conversation and dialogue. Mr. Z is a pretty well-bred horse. He might be the best-bred horse in the Preakness if you look at it real critically. Brad flat asked me, ‘Would you run him?’ and I said, ‘If I owned him, I’d run him.’ ”

Horse racing
Triple Crown Horse Racing
Horse Jockeys and Trainers
Joe Drape
Bob Baffert
Preakness Stakes


A.I.G. Bailout Losses Hidden, Report Says

Abstract: The United States Treasury concealed $40 billion in likely taxpayer losses on the bailout of the American International Group earlier this month, when it abandoned its usual method for valuing investments, according to a report by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program . “In our view, this is a significant failure in their transparency,” said Neil M. Barofsky , the inspector general, in an interview on Monday. In early October, the Treasury issued a report predicting that the taxpayers would ultimately lose just $5 billion on their investment in A.I.G., a remarkable outcome, since the insurance company was extended $182 billion in taxpayer money in the early months of its rescue. The prediction of a modest loss , widely reported as A.I.G., the Federal Reserve and the Treasury rushed to complete an exit plan, contrasted with an earlier prediction by the Treasury that the taxpayers would lose $45 billion. “The American people have a right for full and complete disclosure about their investment in A.I.G.,” Mr. Barofsky said, “and the U.S. government has an obligation, when they’re describing potential losses, to give complete information.” An official of the Treasury disputed Mr. Barofsky’s conclusions, saying the department appropriately used different methods for different purposes. He said the smaller loss was a projection of future events, and the larger one was the result of an audit, which includes only realized gains and losses. The Treasury will include more information about A.I.G. when it issues its own audited financial statement in November. Because those numbers must pass an auditor’s scrutiny, the loss it reports is likely to grow once again, to more than $5 billion. Members of Congress who have been critical of the federal bailouts jumped on Monday to commend the special inspector general and challenge the varying numbers. “If a private company filed information with the government that was just as misleading and disingenuous as what Treasury has done here, you’d better believe there would be calls for an investigation from the S.E.C. and others,” said Representative Darrell Issa, the senior Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He called the Treasury’s October report on A.I.G. “blatant manipulation.” Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said he thought “administration officials are trying so hard to put a positive spin on program losses that they played fast and loose with the numbers.” He said it reminded him of “misleading” claims that General Motors had paid back its rescue loans with interest ahead of schedule. Mr. Barofsky said he had written to the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, in mid-October, after widespread reports in the news media about the possibility that the Treasury could wind down its position in A.I.G. with just a $5 billion loss. He recommended that the Treasury correct the October report, perhaps by adding a footnote saying the methodology for calculating its losses had changed. The Treasury declined. It sent back a letter saying its methodology for calculating losses had not really changed, although its assumptions had. For instance, it based the values of several future transactions on the current price of A.I.G.’s common stock. The letter, signed by Timothy G. Massad, the acting assistant secretary for financial stability, said this reflected the fact that a crucial component of its exit strategy would be the exchange of preferred for common stock. Mr. Barofsky said the government failed to account for the volatility of A.I.G.’s common stock. A relatively small portion of the company is publicly traded, and that portion will be soon diluted further. The government now has a 79 percent stake, which will rise to about 92 percent, in the form of common stock, under the exit plan. It is not clear whether the Treasury will be able to sell so much stock without making the price fall. Mr. Barofsky said the Treasury’s projection also assumed that all the other steps for the federal government to withdraw from A.I.G. would go smoothly. He said the Treasury’s statements tended to contribute to a “widespread, but mistaken, belief that TARP is at or near its end.” As inspector general, Mr. Barofsky has extensive powers of investigation but no enforcement power.

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (2008)


Phillies Waste No Time Taking Control of World Series

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Philadelphia Phillies won their first World Series game in 1915, and for 65 years they did not win another. Fortune rarely smiles on the franchise, but the Tampa Bay Rays have known misery, too. The 104th World Series, which started on Wednesday at Tropicana Field, is bound to upend the image of the team that wins it. The Phillies took the first step in Game 1 with a 3-2 victory behind Cole Hamels, who won a duel of 24-year-old left-handers with seven strong innings. Hamels outpitched Scott Kazmir, who lasted six innings and allowed three runs. It was the fourth victory in four October starts for Hamels, the most valuable player of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The offense went 0 for 13 with runners in scoring position, but the Phillies still managed their first World Series victory in 15 years and a day. They are seeking just their second championship in 125 seasons, and a road victory behind their best starter was vital, especially after a six-day layoff. “Our thing is, we’ve got Cole Hamels on the mound in Game 1, and we need to win,” said closer Brad Lidge, who earned the save. “When your ace is on the mound, you’ve got to take care of business.” Thanks to a rocky first inning for Kazmir, Hamels pitched with a lead all night. He allowed two runs, five hits and two walks, with five strikeouts, and his postseason earned run average actually rose — to 1.55. “Last year, Chase Utley said something in the paper about hitting with the bases loaded, and that’s the spot you want to be in,” said the pitching coach, Rich Dubee. “That’s Cole’s mentality, too. He knows he’s got stardom written all over him, and he thrives on being in that position.” The Phillies led the National League in home runs, and their boom-or-bust offense was on display in the early innings. After a one-out walk in the first, Utley tried to bunt against an infield shift but pushed the ball foul. “You’ve got to pick your timing if you’re going to try to bunt there,” Utley said. “Obviously, the more base runners the better. I thought it was a good opportunity to try to get on base.” Swinging away with a 2-2 count, Utley drove a fastball into the right-field seats to give the Phillies a 2-0 lead. Pockets of Phillies fans erupted in the stands, and the Rays ’ fans stopped clanging their cowbells. “I can’t think of any other way to quiet them down,” Manager Charlie Manuel said. “If you want to take the wind out of the sails and you shut the cowbells up and get some home runs, that will do it.” The Phillies kept pressure on Kazmir, but without a homer, they left a runner in scoring position in each of the next four innings, scoring just once. Kazmir is notorious for running high pitch counts, and his 20th pitch of the second inning was blooped to shallow center by Jimmy Rollins with the bases loaded and one out. B. J. Upton caught it for the second out, then nailed Shane Victorino with a one-hop strike to the plate for the inning-ending double play. The Phillies’ base runners created a run in the fourth. Victorino and Pedro Feliz started with singles, and they were running on the pitch as Chris Coste grounded out to first. Another ground out, by Carlos Ruiz, scored Victorino to make the score 3-0. The Rays had not trailed by three runs at any point in their seven-game victory over the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series. With a chance to cut into the lead with the bases loaded in the third, Upton bounced sharply to Feliz, the third baseman, who started a double play. “B. J.’s the type of guy that can change a game in an instant,” Hamels said. “Being able to get that groundball out and getting that double play was definitely the kind of momentum swing in our favor.” A homer by Carl Crawford, the Rays’ franchise leader in games played, gave Tampa Bay its first run, in the fourth inning. A double by Akinori Iwamura scored another in the fifth, but that was the last hit Hamels allowed. “He’s a very impressive young man,” Rays Manager Joe Maddon said. “The thing was, he didn’t make any mistakes. He didn’t have any hanging change-ups. They were where he wanted to throw them. More power to him, he had a great game.” It was Hamels’s first appearance against the Rays since his rookie season, in 2006, and Tampa Bay was impressed with a changeup that rivals the best in the majors. “The best way to put it is, I faced Johan Santana and Cliff Lee — divide the two,” Iwamura said. “One of the best pitchers, that’s for sure.” The Phillies kept failing with runners on base, stranding seven in scoring position and 11 in all. They wasted two runners in scoring position in the ninth, but by then Lidge was standing on the mound in the bullpen, eager to enter the game. As he warmed up before the bottom of the ninth, the scoreboard showed a montage of film clips to rile up the fans. It ended with a snippet of Sylvester Stallone in a sweat suit, thrusting his arms to the sky at the top of the art museum steps in Philadelphia. If the Phillies needed another positive omen — as if surviving 13 hitless at-bats with runners in scoring position were not enough — there it was. Lidge retired the side in order to end the game.

World Series
Philadelphia Phillies
Tampa Bay Rays
Hamels Cole
Baseball


Nadal Wins 46th Straight Monte Carlo Match

Abstract: Rafael Nadal recorded his 46th consecutive win at the Monte Carlo Masters on Saturday by beating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 6-3, 7-6 (3), to set up a repeat of last year’s final in Monaco against top-ranked Novak Djokovic. Nadal has reached five straight finals since returning from a seven-month layoff because of a left knee injury. He will go for his fourth title of the season against Djokovic, who cruised past unseeded Fabio Fognini, 6-2, 6-1. Djokovic showed no signs that his right ankle was still bothering him two weeks after twisting it during a Davis Cup match against the United States. He and Nadal have not played against each other since last year’s French Open final, which Nadal won. Nadal has won their last three encounters, after Djokovic took the previous seven; all 10 were in tournament finals. Nadal leads their career series, 19-14. The sixth-seeded Tsonga saved four match points, rallying from 5-1 down to force a second-set tiebreaker. He tied it, 3-3, before making unforced errors by hurrying his shots. Nadal clinched the victory with a forehand winner and took a step closer to his ninth straight Monte Carlo title and to extending his Masters titles record to 23. Tsonga started well but missed three break-point chances in the fourth game, including one that left him shaking his head in disbelief after Nadal scooped the ball off his ankles and whipped it down the line. The flustered Tsonga lost his next service game and totaled 17 unforced errors in the first set, compared with 4 for Nadal. It looked as if Nadal would wrap up the second set more quickly than the first, breaking for a 2-0 lead and holding three match points at 5-2. Tsonga saved those with some excellent shot making and turned the set around. “I always try to be aggressive when I play him,” Tsonga said. “It’s the only way for me.” With Nadal serving for the match in the ninth game, Tsonga held two break points that were erased by two aces. Nadal made two unforced errors to drop serve, and Tsonga tied the set at 5-5. Tsonga saved a fourth match point in the 12th game when an off-balance Nadal sent a forehand well wide. But Tsonga ultimately made too many unforced errors — 39, to Nadal’s 12 — costing him a chance to take Nadal into a third set. Grigor Dimitrov won a set off Nadal before losing in Friday’s quarterfinals. SLOVAKIA LEADS IN FED CUP Slovakia took a 2-0 lead over favored Russia by taking after the opening singles in the Fed Cup semifinals in Moscow. Dominika Cibulkova rallied to beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 5-7, 6-1, 6-4, in the opening singles. Daniela Hantuchova followed with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Maria Kirilenko to put Slovakia one point away from advancing to the final for the first time since winning the title in 2002. In the other Fed Cup semifinal, Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci gave Italy a 2-0 lead over the two-time defending champion Czech Republic in Palermo, Sicily. Errani opened with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Lucie Safarova, and Roberta Vinci defeated eighth-ranked Petra Kvitova, 6-4, 6-1. The Fed Cup finals are Nov. 2 and 3.

Rafael Nadal
Tennis
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Novak Djokovic
Fabio Fognini


Shoe Allows Martínez to Get Off on Right Foot

Abstract: PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., Feb. 15 - The most anticipated arrival here was not delivered by armed guards or a police escort or in a helicopter with an oversized swoosh on the door. It came rather unceremoniously, in a Federal Express truck, and was taken by a clubhouse attendant to the Mets' minor league clubhouse. There, Pedro Martínez could finally audition his custom-made right shoe from Nike. His response after a brief workout and his first throwing session in a week and a half indicated that this comical saga was edging toward a resolution. "It allowed me to do what I have to do," Martínez said. His optimism, at least for the moment, allays the Mets' fears that Martínez's inflamed right big toe will worsen and become more of a distraction throughout the spring. Martínez said he would immediately resume his throwing program, and he hoped to be available to pitch pain free for the Mets and for the Dominican Republic in the coming World Baseball Classic. He will do so wearing two different shoes. The styles match: black, size 10 1/2, with a white swoosh atop a section of royal blue and a splash of orange. His left shoe is a midtop. But the right shoe -- the specially designed one -- is a hightop and contains extra padding, but, interestingly, no built-in cushioning by the injured toe. Mike Herbst, the assistant trainer who created a makeshift model for Martínez's workout Tuesday, inserted additional silicone gel inside the shoe to protect the side of Martínez's toe. Before his throwing session, Martínez unrolled his sock and revealed the toe. A bone protrudes slightly, and he feels pain when he puts pressure on it. "It doesn't look good, does it?" he said. During a 15-minute catch with Mike Venafro, in front of curious and concerned observers like the assistant general manager John Ricco, the pitching coach Rick Peterson and the trainers Ray Ramirez and Herbst, Martínez simulated his pitching motion but did not throw close to full strength. The shoe, Martínez said, prohibits his toe from bending during his delivery. When it bends, he feels discomfort, and that has aggravated the injury over the past 16 months. "Inside, it feels really comfortable," Martínez said. "I feel well protected." That is not to say everything went perfectly, however. Nike mistakenly inserted a spike beneath the ball of Martínez's right foot, near the big toe, and after touching the ground with the cleat during his follow through, Martínez said he could feel the spike through the added cushioning. The Mets will speak with Nike engineers to remedy the problem, but Martínez intends to wear the current model until he receives the corrected version. The new shoe will also have to make the trip from Taiwan, where it is manufactured, to Nike's headquarters in Oregon, before it arrives here. And when it does, little fanfare will accompany it because it is, after all, a shoe. But to Martínez and the Mets, it represents much more.

NEW YORK METS
MARTINEZ PEDRO
BASEBALL
WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC


Kate Brown, New Governor in Oregon, Seeks Public’s Trust

Abstract: SALEM, Ore. — Kate Brown took the oath of office as governor here on Wednesday, capping a decades-long climb through the ranks of state government but also commencing what is certain to be a wrenching transition fraught with political risk. Her predecessor, John Kitzhaber, announced his resignation last week, just weeks into his fourth term, amid an onslaught of criminal and ethical investigations and a collapse of support from his own party. Ms. Brown, who is a Democrat like Mr. Kitzhaber and as secretary of state was the first in line to succeed him under Oregon’s Constitution, has promised to make a series of immediate moves that she says are “needed to restore the public’s trust in government.” She also said she would address economic issues facing working families. The swearing in of a new governor also brings a kind of cultural shift to the state capital. Mr. Kitzhaber, 67, a former emergency room doctor, forged his political identity as a moderate Westerner, usually in boots and jeans, who often reached out to the state’s rural and more conservative areas, which have struggled economically. Ms. Brown, 54, by contrast, is more a product and a reflection of the state’s largest and perhaps most liberal city, Portland. She is a yoga enthusiast and a cyclist who often rides tandem with her husband, Dan Little, from their restored early-20th-century home in southeast Portland. She is also bisexual, having come out in an essay on a website about elected officials who are “out,” and is being recognized by gay rights groups as the first openly bisexual governor in the nation. Ms. Brown was born in Spain, where her father was serving in the Air Force, and grew up in Minnesota. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado Boulder, and her law degree at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. Her sexual identity became part of her political stamp while she was in the State Legislature, where she focused in part on pushing economic and health legislation aimed at women. She served there for 17 years before seeking statewide office. Image Kate Brown, second from right, was sworn in as governor Wednesday at the State Capitol in Salem, Ore. She succeeded John Kitzhaber, also a Democrat. Credit Leah Nash for The New York Times Her career has not been without criticism. The Oregonian, the largest newspaper in the state as well as Ms. Brown’s hometown paper, endorsed her Republican opponent in her re-election race for secretary of state in 2012, partly because she had delayed an election — elections are a function of the secretary of state’s office — in ways that seemed, the paper said, politically calculated to help a Democrat. “Brown is a smart, energetic official with a long record of public service,” the paper said in its endorsement. “But she’s had her shot at this office, and it’s time for a change.” She won a second term that year anyway, with 51 percent of the vote. Ms. Brown got a black eye last month, though, when the online publication The Verge , citing email records, said she was among a group of politicians around the country who had sent letters supporting the cable giant Comcast’s merger with Time Warner Cable — letters that had been drafted, the paper said, by Comcast itself, which had contributed to Ms. Brown’s political campaigns, the article said. The mayor of Portland, Charlie Hales, said in a statement that he believed Ms. Brown had demonstrated her ability to handle tough times. “The challenges ahead of her are enormous, and she is exactly the right person, at the right time, to take them on,” Mr. Hales said. “I have great faith in Kate Brown as a partner in governance, as a civic leader, and as a Portlander.” Ms. Brown will come before voters as governor in her own right in a special election next year, and if she wins, she could run for a full four-year term in 2018, when Mr. Kitzhaber’s term would have expired. In socially liberal Oregon, her sexual orientation is unlikely to raise much of a fuss, and in some areas, it could probably be a plus. “I just learned that she’s bisexual,” said Jared Dahle, 28, who works as a window cleaner and in a bar in Portland. “That’s cool.” Image A state portrait of Mr. Kitzhaber, who resigned Friday amid federal and state ethics investigations, just weeks into his fourth term. Credit Steve Dipaola/Reuters Mr. Dahle, who is gay, said he had met Ms. Brown a few times when he was working at a hotel and she came in for meetings. He said what struck him then was that she always spoke to him, something not all politicians did. “I’m optimistic about her,” he said. Mr. Little, Ms. Brown’s husband, is an outdoorsman who has worked for the United States Forest Service, giving her the opportunity to regularly visit rural parts of the state. She served in the Legislature during periods when Democrats did not control both chambers, as they do now. As a legislator, Ms. Brown worked on an ethics law overhaul and with a bipartisan group that passed legislation making campaign contributions more transparent by creating an online database for reporting. Mr. Kitzhaber announced his resignation on Friday as criminal investigators were looking into the business dealings his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, had with his administration. In a simple ceremony in the State Capitol, Ms. Brown was sworn in as governor on Wednesday, and her remarks to the Legislature afterward were brief and low on specifics, although she said she would push for stronger powers for the Government Ethics Commission. She mentioned Mr. Kitzhaber just once — to praise him, faintly, and damn him, a bit, in the same breath. “Governor Kitzhaber dedicated most of his life to serving the people of Oregon,” she said. “His contributions to our state are well woven into the fabric of our public life. But now we must restore the public’s trust.” Ginny Burdick, a Democratic state senator and longtime colleague of Ms. Brown’s from Portland, said the sudden transition in power was “a very shocking thing for our political process.” But she added that Ms. Brown’s diversity of experience was a big advantage, giving her a perspective few have had on becoming governor. “You couldn’t have invented somebody who has a better chance of actually making this work,” Ms. Burdick said.

Kate Brown
Oregon
John Kitzhaber
Cylvia Hayes
Governors