In the Newest War of the States, Forget Red and Blue

Abstract: CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Call it the Tin Cup scandal. A charity golf tournament created a stir in this state last August when a drug industry lobbyist was paired with Scott Brown, the governor's point man for reining in West Virginia's pharmaceutical costs. "It raised eyebrows," recalled Dan Foster, a state senator and medical doctor who also played in the Tin Cup Challenge, a fund-raiser for the Special Olympics. Mr. Brown, he said, "was riding in the same cart with the chief pharma lobbyist." Mr. Brown said later that he did not know he would be teamed with the lobbyist, Philip A. Reale, until just before they teed off. The tempest in a Tin Cup quickly passed. But industry critics saw the episode as evidence of influence-wielding by the drug industry, which has more than two dozen lobbyists registered in West Virginia. Although best known as the richest lobbying force in Washington, the drug industry also protects its flanks -- all 50 of them. Drug lobbyists are active all around the country at the state level, because even with bright political lines dividing the nation into red and blue, the industry knows that controlling drug costs is a subject with nearly universal popular appeal. Five years after Maine adopted the first state drug price regulations, which force drug makers to finance discounts to the uninsured, legislators in all 50 states have been active on the pharmaceutical front. Around the country last year, state legislatures considered more than 600 proposals involving pharmaceuticals, and 43 states passed bills, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many drug industry issues are on legislative agendas again this year. And this Friday in New York, an association of lawmakers from New York, West Virginia, eight other states and the District of Columbia plan to meet to discuss their plans for pursuing industry regulation. Some of those 600 proposals around the country last year were pro-industry, including efforts to protect manufacturers from product liability claims and expand access to brand-name drugs. But the states also tread on crack-down territory that, in other eras, had been considered federal turf, like measures to regulate the drug industry through cost-cutting, limits on advertising and requirements that the results of clinical trials be disclosed. The drug industry, which has managed to stave off federal price control, has also been successful in defeating many of the toughest state measures. Its best-publicized victory came after it spent an estimated $80 million to help defeat California's Proposition 79, which was modeled after Maine's plan, and to promote its own alternative ballot initiative. Neither was adopted. Despite the industry's successes, several states have passed laws that represent a barely perceptible shift toward regulation -- something that could end up looking like rate-setting for a public utility, in which the needs of users are balanced against the supplier's right to a fair return. It is a trend that elicits fear and loathing among drug makers. Billy Tauzin, the former Republican congressman from Louisiana who runs the industry's big trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, lambastes the idea of price controls every chance he gets. In the industry's view, such control would stifle the innovation needed to develop life-saving drugs. "We're going to continue to aggressively try to defeat what we consider bad legislation," said Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the trade group, which is known as PhRMA (pronounced FARM-ah). Some local lawmakers like David Catania, a District of Columbia councilman, describe laws to control pharmaceutical costs as part of a grass-roots movement that will spread and eventually force national price controls. "What we're doing is chipping away at the privilege that the pharmaceutical industry has, day by day," said Mr. Catania, who complains that District of Columbia residents pay the fourth- or fifth-highest drug costs in the country. PhRMA recently sued to block a price-control law adopted by the District of Columbia council. A federal judge ruled in late December in the drug organization's favor. The district has not yet said if it will appeal. PhRMA will not disclose how much it is spending to influence state legislation, and Mr. Johnson denies that the industry employs an army of lobbyists. But given signs of the group's expansion, it is likely that its state advocacy budget has grown since 2003, when The New York Times reported that it was $48.7 million. PhRMA has recently opened two regional offices, in Indianapolis and in Baton Rouge, La., adding to eight other such offices around the country. Mr. Johnson likens the field offices to World War II listening posts. "If you have just one office in Washington, D.C., you're so insulated from what's happening in the heartland of America," said Mr. Johnson, who says the regional offices help the industry understand issues at the state and local level. "We have ongoing efforts in all 50 states," Mr. Johnson said, adding that, at times, some states require extra attention. Take West Virginia. There, nine lobbyists have registered on behalf of PhRMA, while individual pharmaceutical companies employ 24 lobbyists in the state, according to state records. Mr. Johnson said that four of the registered PhRMA lobbyists were local people under retainer, while the others were PhRMA employees who might visit the state only occasionally. In many other ways, West Virginia -- where mountain vistas display a hinterland unmarred by development -- seems stuck in a simpler time. For one thing, the terrorism threat is deemed so low that state lawmakers have never financed X-ray machines or metal detectors at the limestone Capitol building. Visitors may enter at will. But those same lawmakers have decreed that the state, where a relatively old, poor and sick population means high health spending, will be in the vanguard in at least one area: controlling prescription drug costs. Robert S. Kiss, speaker of the House of Delegates, who sponsored the 2004 legislation that set up a state Pharmaceutical Cost Management Council, says that a "revolution" is necessary to control costs to state residents. "The feds have basically punted on the issue of cost containment," Mr. Kiss said. Gov. Joe Manchin III appointed Mr. Brown, a pharmacist, last year to the post of pharmaceutical advocate, which functions essentially as an executive director for the council. Mr. Brown, who resigned in November, said the criticism over that round of golf had no effect on his decision to leave only 10 months after taking the job. He is simply more comfortable at a pharmacist's bench than in the political arena, he said. But Mr. Brown was also criticized for the council's slow pace under his leadership. At one point, a local newspaper referred to the council as "moribund." The 11-member council, made up of the heads of six state departments and five appointed public members, must accomplish whatever it will before a sunset provision that will put it out of business in 2008. And some members of the council have complained that the pharmaceutical industry -- in contrast to its splashy advertising campaign in California and its tough litigation strategy in Washington -- is trying to kill cost regulation in West Virginia via slow death. "They've been successful in slowing down the process," said Dr. Foster, the state senator, who does not serve on the panel but frequently attends its meetings. On a recent Friday afternoon, as the council discussed federal drug pricing and briefly considered a proposal that West Virginia make it easier to import cheaper drugs from Canada, the room was lined with industry lobbyists. But the industry worries even more about a proposed regulation, already adopted in principal but not yet formally written into law, that would force drug makers to disclose details of their marketing activities. Companies would have to disclose their advertising expenses in West Virginia, as well as the number of sales people they have operating in the state, their salary ranges, their minimum requirements for getting the jobs and a listing of the gifts they give to doctors. "The public doesn't realize how much money is spent on selling to doctors, probably two to two and a half times the amount spent on advertising," Dr. Foster said. In a letter to the council in November, Marjorie E. Powell, PhRMA's senior assistant general counsel, argued that the marketing disclosure requirement overstepped the council's authority. Her letter also pointed out that the industry had donated more than $55 million in free drugs to West Virginians in the last year. The council approved the disclosure rules in December, but several council members expect the industry to try to get them watered down by a legislative committee before they go into effect in 2007. Mr. Brown, who views the disclosure requirement as the crowning achievement of his tenure as pharmaceutical advocate, said critics of the drug industry viewed marketing and advertising disclosure as an important step in controlling costs. "They see it as one of the first dominoes," he said, "to get disclosure on the advertising costs."

DRUGS (PHARMACEUTICALS)
LAW AND LEGISLATION
LOBBYING AND LOBBYISTS


Putin Tested on Principles and Practicality in Syria

Abstract: MOSCOW — For months now, Western policy makers have been racking their brains to figure out what strategic interests have made Russia so intent on supporting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad — a leader who, facing a popular uprising, seemed to be on his way out anyway. It is an understandable question, but perhaps the wrong one. Decisions are flowing from President Vladimir V. Putin , whose career has left him overwhelmingly wary both of revolutions and of Western intervention. This is a man who, during the death throes of the Communist system, personally defended the K.G.B.’s headquarters in Dresden against an angry crowd of Germans. And Mr. Putin’s already suspicious view of street politics only deepened with the “colored revolutions” of the mid-2000s, in which pro-Western protests, some supported by the United States, ousted a series of Moscow-friendly leaders. Since the recent Arab uprisings began, Russian leaders have viewed them through this lens — as a product not of social change but of interference by the West, intended in part to damage Russia. Mr. Putin takes little interest in the details of foreign policy, but this notion touches him personally. He memorably blew up in April 2011, when NATO warplanes were attacking Libya against Russia’s protestations, delivering a speech that scoffed at the notion that Western intervention aimed to advance democracy. “Look at the map of this region, there are monarchies all around,” he said during a visit to Denmark. “What do you think they are — Danish-style democracies? No. There are monarchies everywhere, and this basically corresponds with the mentality of the people, as well as longstanding practice.” “Libya, by the way, has the largest oil and the fourth-largest gas reserves in Africa,” he added. “This immediately presents the question: Isn’t this the basis for the interests of those now messing around there?” From the first, Russia’s Middle East experts, most of them Soviet-trained, have been suspicious of the notion that street politics had the power to change governments. In February 2011, when crowds of more than a million were thronging Tahrir Square, a Russian deputy foreign minister visited Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak. He delivered the soothing message that Egypt’s domestic crisis should be settled through dialogue, and affirmed Russia’s firm stance against foreign intervention in Egypt’s internal affairs. As it turned out, it was Mr. Mubarak’s last meeting with a foreign envoy — he stepped down two days later. It is impossible to fully disentangle these reactions from what has been going on inside Russia over the last year, as a decade-long contract between Mr. Putin and his citizens began to fray. Though there is little comparison on the ground between the Arab uprisings and Russia’s unrest — the Russian opposition movement remains small, Moscow-centered and moderate in its tactics — the sudden change has left the government wary of legitimizing any popular dissent. State-controlled news media paint a bleak picture of Arab countries that have seen uprisings, and Russian diplomats have approached new authorities in the Arab world slowly and awkwardly. Meanwhile, Russian leaders fear that rising Islamism in the Arab world will breathe new life into the armed insurgency in the northern Caucasus, which is mostly Sunni. In short, Syria has provided Russia with an opportunity to say no — to Western intervention and to the specter of revolution. The argument has been framed as a matter of principle, making it difficult to dial back. Leonid Medvedko, who covered Syria for Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, said Russia could not publicly call for Mr. Assad to step down, because it would create “a very serious precedent for anyone who doesn’t like their government.” “I don’t want to allow such ultimatums, because they could then be presented to any country,” said Mr. Medvedko, who is now a regional analyst at the Russian Academy of Sciences. “We cannot allow this precedent to be established. Now they don’t like Assad. Next they may not like someone in Lebanon. We’ve already seen how they didn’t like someone in Libya — we saw the fate of Qaddafi.” Nevertheless, Russia is backing away from explicit support for Mr. Assad, albeit at a glacial pace. Last week, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said that to accommodate the factions in Syria “it is necessary to have a transitional period, this is obvious.” Each incremental move is followed by demonstrations that Russia is standing firm: for instance, its refusal, last weekend in Geneva, to approve language suggesting that Mr. Assad could not be part of a transitional government. These tactics serve to draw out the diplomatic process for weeks or months — not such an inconvenience, perhaps, for Western governments that are themselves deeply conflicted about intervening. As the body count rises, one of Moscow’s real concerns may be the hardening of Arab public opinion against Russia, said a senior Arab diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with protocol. With the increasing reach of news channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya — which regularly run gruesome video of massacres in Syria — Russia’s officials have been forced to accept that “unlike the last four decades, now the Arab street has a voice,” the diplomat said. “I think they are now waking up to a new reality,” the diplomat said. “They are realizing that their analysis was wrong and they have to take a new approach.” This realization conflicts with the desire to stand on principle, and to repay the abject humiliation of being ignored on Libya, he said: “The question is, will they make a stand in Syria to the end?” The answer will hinge on the calculations of Mr. Putin. He may judge that bending to Western pressure would hurt him more than losing Syria. Or, if he accepts the idea that Mr. Assad cannot extend his rule past the end of the year, he may seek to trade Russia’s stand for a concession. All that would remain would be to sit back and watch in silence as opposition crowds celebrate their victory. Not a simple choice for the man who, two decades ago in Dresden, spent panicky days inside the K.G.B. compound, burning documents that represented years of work. Then — convinced he had been abandoned by the country he served — he walked out to defend himself and his colleagues from the crowd outside.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


A Divide on Voting Rights in a Town Where Blood Spilled

Abstract: McCOMB, Miss. — In the refined air of the United States Supreme Court, the questions posed by justices on Wednesday seemed so big as to be unanswerable: Are parts of the Voting Rights Act an unfair infringement on state sovereignty? How different is the South these days from other regions, and from itself in bloody years past? Here in southwest Mississippi, those questions are as real and solid as the longleaf pines. A run-down brick house on this street was bombed by segregationists in the summer of 1964; a few blocks away is a boarded-up supermarket that was bombed the same summer. Down the road is the town where a Mississippi state representative shot a black voting-rights activist. A black man who was witness to that shooting was killed soon after, and the men sitting in the back of the local drugstore still debate what the witness, whom they knew, was planning to say. The McComb project, as it was called by civil rights workers in 1961, was one of the early battles in a long and bloody war for voting rights in the South, a crucible for future leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who drilled black residents to pass the constitutional literacy tests and in return for their civic engagement were shot at, jailed and beaten. Most people here, whites and blacks, agree that that was a very bad time. They also, generally, agree that things are much better now. But on the more specific question on the necessity of Section 5, which requires nine states, most of them Southern, to submit voting changes for federal approval, opinions begin to separate. And by and large, there is a relatively easy test here to tell what a person is likely to think, and it comes down to the person’s skin color. “I have to agree that it was very bad,” said Hollis Watkins, 72, a leader of the McComb project who sang spirituals to his fellow civil rights workers as they languished in jail in 1961. “But based on where we are now, and understanding their way of camouflaging things, instead of it being very bad, it’s bad,” added Mr. Watkins, who is still active in civil rights work in Mississippi. The voting battles in Mississippi did not end in 1965. The state dragged its feet for four years before the first Justice Department review, and since then the federal government has objected to voting changes in Mississippi 173 times, 116 of them coming since the act was renewed in 1982. Image Percy Pittman has been the Pike County coroner for nearly 20 years and now is one of two black countywide elected officials. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times With a black population of 37 percent, by far the largest in the country, Mississippi did not have a black representative in Congress from Reconstruction until 1986. As recently as 1990, only 22 out of the 204 members of the Mississippi State Legislature were black. While no black statewide official has been elected, there are now a black congressman and 49 black state lawmakers. Many of these changes came about through application of Section 5; the Mississippi attorney general, Jim Hood, filed a friend of the court brief in the case now before the Supreme Court, arguing that the section continues to play a “vital role” in the state’s progress. Mr. Hood’s filing did not go over well with everyone here. A column in The Enterprise-Journal , the daily newspaper here, was titled “Jim Hood doesn’t trust us.” Wayne Dowdy, who as a Democratic congressman in 1982 voted to extend Section 5 for 25 years and has no doubt that it was necessary then, is also skeptical. “I have mixed feelings about the Voting Rights Act,” he said. Mr. Dowdy is now the lawyer for Pike County, where McComb sits. When the 2010 census numbers were released, it was revealed that for the first time, the county had a black majority. Some black residents were outraged when the county’s new redistricting map, just as before 2010, left three of the five county supervisor districts as majority white. The map was submitted to the Justice Department as required, and was approved. Mr. Dowdy has his concerns about suppression of minority votes, but thinks the nature of the suppression has changed from the time of Section 5. “Rather than the literary tests and poll taxes, the problems we have now are different,” Mr. Dowdy said. “There are long lines in certain neighborhoods, there are voter ID requirements. And those kinds of problems are not restricted to the Southern states.” Sitting in the combination beauty salon and laundromat he owns in the historically black Summit Street District, Tazwell Bowsky, one of Pike County’s two black supervisors, agrees that times have changed. But better, he insists, is not perfect. “I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I think McComb would be all right,” he said, contemplating the prospect of Section 5’s demise. But the law is still essential, he said, saying, “There are other places around here,” before deciding to remain discreet about where those places may be. “I’ll tell you if he won’t,” said Johnny McCray, 37, overhearing the conversation from his haircutting station. “Amite County and Tylertown.” Image From left, Winbourne Sullivan, James Cook, David Roberts, Murray Higgins and Frank Boyd talked politics and Liberty Drugstore. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times Amite County, which is spoken of in similar chilled tones by black residents in McComb, sits next door. Redistricting and poll watchers have such a history in Amite County that the older white men sitting around at the drugstore in the county seat, Liberty, can swap their favorite election stories, many of which tend to have punch lines showing federal involvement as misguided and ineffectual. The Justice Department is not amused. As recently as 2011, it struck down the county’s redistricting map, charging that county leaders had decreased the number of black voters in one district in favor of another, while fully knowing that black turnout in the latter district had historically been very low. The district belongs to Max Lawson, a 60-year-old rancher. Sitting in his sun-filled kitchen, Mr. Lawson, who voted against the proposed map along with the one black county supervisor, began to detail his objections to federal intervention, which mostly involved the fact that roads he arranged to have paved were now in another district. On the question of race and the need for voting controls, he seemed puzzled. “That was generations ago,” said Mr. Lawson, adding that many of his supporters are black. “It wasn’t us.” Percy Pittman, who as a teenager spent nights keeping an armed vigil at his church to guard against firebombers, differed in his recollection of just how far away the bad times were. But he expressed similar sentiments. “I don’t want stay angry because of something that happened a long time ago,” said Mr. Pittman, for nearly two decades the Pike County coroner and for now one of two black countywide elected officials. “I don’t even allow my children to watch ‘Roots.’ ” Now 65, Mr. Pittman, believes that people in McComb, the largest city in Pike County, think in terms of personality rather than skin color. That is, he clarified, most of them do. Asked what he thought about people’s claims that racially motivated politics were completely a thing of the past in the South, Mr. Pittman hesitated for a moment. “I think they’re full of it,” he said.

McComb Miss
Voting Rights Act
Voter registration
Redistricting and Reapportionment
gerrymandering
State legislature
US Politics
Mississippi
Supreme Court
Southern US


Jake Arrieta Enters N.L.C.S. Carrying Fewer Innings and a Clearer Head

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — The last time Jake Arrieta allowed a hit at Dodger Stadium, in August 2013, he was driven from the game by a sixth-inning double from Nick Punto. His E.R.A. was 5.91. A month earlier, Arrieta had been pitching for the Iowa Cubs, in baseball purgatory between the Baltimore Orioles and the rest of his life. Arrieta’s next turn on the mound here catapulted him to stardom. He spun a no-hitter on Aug. 30 , 2015, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth with three different pitches. Everything was working then for Arrieta, who was in the midst of a 13-start stretch in which he went 12-0 with an 0.37 E.R.A. It culminated with a shutout in the National League wild-card game in Pittsburgh. His highlights ended there. Arrieta would win the N.L. Cy Young Award, but he labored through his last two starts, allowing four runs in both and failing to complete the sixth inning. He lost the final one, in the N.L. Championship Series, part of a four-game sweep by the Mets. Arrieta will start Game 3 of this N.L.C.S. against the Dodgers on Tuesday, carrying a much lighter burden on his right arm. Last October, he arrived at his N.L.C.S. start having thrown 243 ⅔ innings since opening day. This time, he has thrown 203 ⅓ innings, meaning the Cubs shaved more than 40 innings off Arrieta’s workload in preparing for this moment. Image Arrieta, who went 18-8 with a 3.10 E.R.A. in the regular season, limited the Giants to two runs in six innings last Monday. Credit Ezra Shaw/Getty Images “Listen, you’re going to be upset with me sometimes, taking you out of games a little bit earlier,” Manager Joe Maddon recalled telling Arrieta in a spring training conversation in the clubhouse food room in Mesa, Ariz. “But understand it’s going to pay off in the latter part of the season. Our intention is to play deeply into October, and possibly into November this year. You know what it felt like. So now, going into this year, we have to be smarter about monitoring that workload.” Maddon relented once, on April 21 in Cincinnati, when Arrieta threw the only no-hitter in the majors this season . He threw no other complete games, and finished in a tie for 22nd in the majors in innings pitched. Last year, he was third. Arrieta went 18-8 with a 3.10 E.R.A. this season, and fired seven scoreless innings against the Dodgers at Wrigley Field in May. Over all, though, he struggled at times with control, ranking fourth in the N.L. in walks, and his second-half E.R.A. was 3.69, a run higher than it was before the All-Star break. Still, Arrieta said, he feels a tangible difference from the way he felt during last year’s N.L.C.S. “More so than I think being drained physically, I think it’s the mental side of it,” Arrieta said. “You’re drained in that aspect as well, just from last year, the wild-card game and getting past the Cardinals in the division series, I think that weighs on you a lot mentally. “So I think going through that last year has prepared myself, as well as the rest of the guys, for a longer run this year, and I think we’ve been able to handle the moments mentally a lot better, as well as physically. Personally, moving forward, I think I’m in a much better place.” Arrieta had no decision in his division series start, allowing six hits, two runs and a walk over six innings against the San Francisco Giants last Monday. After splitting with the Dodgers at Wrigley Field, the Cubs will send Arrieta, John Lackey and Jon Lester to the mound for Games 3 through 5. Lackey and Lester have combined for 15 career postseason victories, including three World Series clinchers. The Dodgers will start Rich Hill in Game 3, followed by the rookie Julio Urias in Game 4 and Kenta Maeda in Game 5. But Manager Dave Roberts did not rule out the idea of using Clayton Kershaw on short rest instead of Maeda. Kershaw, who saved Game 5 of a division series in Washington on Thursday, blanked the Cubs for seven innings Sunday to complete a superhero sequence. “I told my wife after the game, ‘I think Clayton’s going to go back to the Bat Cave and we’re all going to hop on a plane and go back to L.A.,’” Hill said. “He’s been unbelievable. Absolutely inspiring.” Arrieta inspired his teammates last fall, too, but he could not quite haul them into the World Series. By using him more conservatively this season, the Cubs may have given him a better chance to make another fond memory on Vin Scully Avenue. “I’ll use some of my experience from the last time moving into tomorrow, but at the same time, it’s a completely different game, being in the postseason,” Arrieta said. “It’s going to be a little different feel.”


In ‘Black Liquor,’ a Cautionary Tale for Deficit Reduction

Abstract: WASHINGTON — As a member of the “Gang of Six,” Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho has emerged as something of a hero among advocates of bipartisanship, one of three conservative Republicans working with three Democrats to cut the deficit by closing loopholes that allow businesses and households to avoid paying taxes. Yet earlier this year, the senator made sure that a $3 billion loophole — protecting “black liquor,” an alcoholic sludge used as fuel in timber mills and factories — remained open in the negotiations over the highway bill that President Obama signed this month. Many budget experts criticize the loophole as a tax dodge because it allows the sludge to qualify for an energy subsidy created to wean the country off imported oil for vehicles, which black liquor does not do. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers casually point to closing loopholes as the answer to much that ails the country. Negotiations to avoid automatic military spending cuts in January, to enact sweeping deficit reduction and to lower corporate and personal income tax rates all hinge on closing unidentified loopholes. But the back-room actions on black liquor point to just how difficult it will be to lower the budget deficit through painless changes in the tax code. Even for a self-proclaimed deficit hawk like Mr. Crapo, one man’s loophole can be another’s vital constituent interest. An Idaho company “feared losing the write-offs could affect employment decisions,” said Lindsay Nothern, a spokesman for Mr. Crapo. Mr. Nothern would not identify the company, but Matt Van Vleet, a spokesman for Clearwater Paper, a Spokane company with a large pulp mill in north-central Idaho, confirmed that his company had gone to Mr. Crapo seeking to keep the tax break open. “We would have felt significant pain,” he said. Federal tax receipts are reduced by more than $1 trillion a year by various tax deductions and credits, known as tax expenditures, often tied to a policy aim. Ending them would nearly eliminate the federal deficit, which is projected to be $1.2 trillion in the current fiscal year. But the three largest are as popular as they are expensive: the mortgage interest deduction has cost about $75 billion a year recently, the employer deduction for health care has cost $120 billion a year, and the charitable-giving deduction has cost $38 billion a year, according to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. Others are more hotly debated, like the exclusion or deferral of taxes on overseas corporate earnings. Legislation by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, to end a tax deduction for the expense of moving business overseas fell to a Republican filibuster in the Senate this week. Still other tax breaks verge on the unpopular, criticized by aides of both parties. Offshore tax havens and other tax shelters cost the government about $150 billion a year, said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. For tax aides in both parties, black liquor falls into the category of the hard to defend. Mr. Nothern, the spokesman for Mr. Crapo, confirmed the senator’s role in the disappearance of the provision that would have eliminated the loophole, which happened sometime between its approval by the Senate Finance Committee and its arrival on the Senate floor this spring. But he added that those actions bore no impact on the deficit negotiations that Mr. Crapo helped start. Mr. Nothern said in an e-mail: “Instead of discussing individual loophole closures to save a buck here or there (more than likely so the bucks can be immediately spent elsewhere), the Gang of Six and bipartisan partners remain talking about a much larger agreement — a simultaneous effort to agree on spending caps, tax reforms (including loophole adjustments and lowering of tax rates), plus reforms to Social Security , Medicare and related programs to keep them solvent.” The company in question did not appear to be a political contributor to Mr. Crapo, but the forestry and forest products industry has given him $216,286 over his career, ranking 13th among industry givers, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Since the 1930s, the timber industry has used an alcoholic sludge produced as a byproduct of wood processing to power its mills and plants. In 2009, black liquor became something else — a tax haven. The timber industry labeled black liquor an alternative fuel under the provision Congress created to encourage ethanol production for cars and trucks. Congress never agreed, but the Internal Revenue Service did, backing the timber industry’s interpretation. That year, black liquor cost the Treasury more than $4 billion. Congress reversed track later in 2009, saying black liquor would not count as an alternative fuel after 2009, and lawmakers went further in the 2010 health bill, also barring the timber industry from claiming black liquor as a cellulosic biofuel, which receives even bigger tax advantages. But the I.R.S. gave black liquor one last chance. It ruled that the health care provision did not prevent the timber industry from redefining black liquor produced in 2009 as a cellulosic fuel, worth $1.01 a gallon, even if a company had claimed it as a regular alternative fuel, worth 50 cents a gallon. In other words, companies were permitted to give back one credit already claimed for another worth double, a $2.8 billion bonus for the industry. Senator Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Finance Committee, saw the money as a way to help pay for a transportation bill this year. But Mr. Crapo protested, saying at a hearing that changing the law would “cause very significant damage to a number of people and impact jobs around the country, not the least of which is a major facility in my state.” Mr. Baucus, a Democrat, tried to assuage his colleague’s concern, whittling down the black liquor provision to save $1.6 billion. It still was not acceptable. Finance aides said a bipartisan vote on the committee was more important than a fight over black liquor. By March, the bill reached the Senate floor with the provision gone, and Mr. Crapo was the first Republican to back the Baucus measure. In the demise of the provision, members of the Gang of Six, including Mr. Crapo, see a cautionary tale: Go big or don’t go at all. Little provisions can be picked off by members in ways that a comprehensive deficit reduction cannot, they say. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who is participating in the deficit talks with Mr. Crapo, said: “We have to invite the American people to be part of a conversation about how to rationalize this tax code, reduce its complexity, try to bring rates down in a reasonable way and still reduce the deficit.” He added: “I drink red wine. I’m not into black liquor.”

Crapo Michael D
Tax Credits Deductions and Exemptions
Federal Budget (US)
Federal Taxes (US)
United States Politics and Government
Logging Industry


Italy: Witness Describes Sex Games With Former Prime Minister

Abstract: At a party he hosted when he was prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi asked young women to simulate oral sex with a Greek statue, a witness said Monday at a trial where he is accused of paying for sex with an underage prostitute. The witness, Chiara Danese, a 20-year-old beauty contest winner, had tears in her eyes as she told a Milan court that Mr. Berlusconi asked the women to play sex games with a nude statue of the ancient fertility god Priapus. “He touched the girls while they simulated oral sex with the statue,” she said, adding that he also had the women kiss his private parts. Prosecutors said that dozens of showgirls and aspiring starlets received cash and other gifts for taking part in sex games at his Milan home. Mr. Berlusconi, 75, is charged with paying for sex with a 17-year-old and abusing the powers of his office to free her from police custody after she had been arrested on theft charges. He denies the charges.

Italy
Berlusconi Silvio
Women and Girls
Courts and the Judiciary
Prostitution


Billy Frank Jr., 83, Defiant Fighter for Native Fishing Rights

Abstract: The crime was fishing. The year was 1945. The boy was 14. It was his first offense, but it would not be his last. Billy Frank Jr. continued to fish, and he continued to get arrested — more than 50 times over the next decades. He was not out to cause trouble. The goal was to preserve the traditions he had been taught as a member of the Nisqually tribe, people who had fished for millenniums in the waters that flow from the foot of Mount Rainier into Puget Sound in Washington. For Mr. Frank, who was 83 when he died on May 5 at his family’s longtime home on the Nisqually River, that arrest at 14 was the beginning of his leading role in what would become known as the “ fish wars ” in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s and ’70s. He became one of the most recognizable faces of a unique and successful civil rights movement that included years of highly publicized “fish-ins” (Jane Fonda showed up, as did Marlon Brando, who was briefly taken into custody), protests at the State Capitol in Olympia, confrontations with non-Indian fishermen, and lawsuits waged with the help of the N.A.A.C.P., the American Civil Liberties Union and eventually the Department of Justice. “I wasn’t a policy guy,” Mr. Frank liked to say. “I was a getting-arrested guy.” Salmon, once abundant, had been in sharp decline, in large part because of overfishing by commercial fishermen. Yet it was Indians like Mr. Frank, fishing where they had always fished, who were increasingly being sought out by state game wardens for fishing in restricted areas, out of season or without licenses. Mr. Frank wanted the state to honor treaties written in the 1850s in which Native Americans ceded more than two million acres in exchange for the right to fish their “usual and accustomed grounds and stations.” Mr. Frank and others frequently cited the treaties while they were being arrested. In 1974, Judge George H. Boldt of Federal District Court in Tacoma, Wash., ruled with startling and historic force that they were right. Nisqually and other tribes in the Northwest, he wrote, had a right to catch up to half the salmon in their traditional waters. They would also become co-managers of the fishery, with the state. Image Mr. Frank, left, fishing on the Nisqually River in the 1960s in January. Credit Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, via Associated Press The ruling, upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 1979, drastically changed fishing in the Northwest and helped give momentum to assertions of Indian rights elsewhere. Mr. Frank was transformed from an outlaw to a voice of wisdom and authority, a national figure recruited to serve on boards and commissions. For more than 30 years he was chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission , a support and advisory group, and he became a constant presence in discussions about protecting salmon from pollution, protecting habitat and slowing climate change. He received numerous awards, including the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1992 . President Obama said of Mr. Frank in a statement after his death: “Today, thanks to his courage and determined effort, our resources are better protected, and more tribes are able to enjoy the rights preserved for them more than a century ago. Billy never stopped fighting to make sure future generations would be able to enjoy the outdoors as he did.” Mr. Frank was born in Nisqually on March 9, 1931, and grew up on Frank’s Landing, the six acres on the Nisqually River that his father had bought after the expansion of an Army base nearby drove them from their reservation. He dropped out of school after ninth grade, working construction jobs before serving in the Marines for two years in the early 1950s. His death was confirmed by members of the Nisqually tribe. No cause was given. Survivors include three sons, James, Tanu and Willie. Mr. Frank struggled with alcohol abuse into the 1970s, but at the insistence of his family, he quit drinking after the Boldt decision. He never stopped fishing. The day in December 1945 when he was arrested, he went out early to check a net he had set the night before to catch chum salmon on the Nisqually. “You’re under arrest!” he heard someone call, according to the 2000 book “Messages From Frank’s Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way,” by Charles Wilkinson. He tried to get away but was taken into custody by two game wardens. “Leave me alone,” he screamed. “I live here!”

Billy Frank Jr.
Native Americans
Salmon
Obituary
Washington
Civil Rights
Treaties


Knicks May Delay Their Spending Until the Summer

Abstract: Now that David Stern’s nuclear winter has turned into a mere snow day, the N.B.A. will most likely sign a new collective bargaining agreement in a few days and resume operations on Dec. 9. That will give teams a little more than two weeks before games begin, which means a full summer of off-season moves will be compressed into a couple of days. Although the owners lobbied for a hard salary cap and a restriction on sign-and-trade deals, neither is in the new agreement. This is good news for the Knicks , because either would have hindered their main goal of acquiring a third star to assist Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony. Currently, the Knicks have only a handful of salaries that run longer than the coming season, which means that if they practice fiscal restraint they will have the cap space next summer to sign another one of the league’s top players. The Knicks have nine contracts on the books, and their first-round pick, Imam Shumpert, will almost certainly be signed, bringing that number to 10. The Knicks also tendered a qualifying offer for the seldom-used forward Derrick Brown, giving them the ability to match any team’s offer to him. In addition, the Knicks have five unrestricted free agents: Anthony Carter, Jared Jeffries, Roger Mason, Shawne Williams and Shelden Williams. It seems certain one or more of them will be back. Save for a half-season with Dikembe Mutombo, the Knicks have lacked a rebounding, defensive-minded center since the days of Marcus Camby, who was traded away in 2002. Given their financial restrictions, it is highly unlikely that the Knicks will now sign a top-tier center like Tyson Chandler, or even a second-level player like Joel Przybilla or Samuel Dalembert. Even if the Knicks sign a third-tier big man on a one-year contract, how much playing time would someone like Josh Powell, Etan Thomas or Leon Powe see under the offensively minded coach Mike D’Antoni? Most likely, the Knicks will find depth at center from their free-agent veterans (Shawne and Shelden Williams) or one of their recent second-round picks (Jerome Jordan and Josh Harrellson). Harrellson was a robust rebounder at Kentucky, but many scouts doubt he has the physical ability to become even an average defender at this level. Jordan has seen his time increase for KK Krka in the Adriatic League and has shown some scoring ability, especially with his ability to draw fouls. But Jordan’s rebounding remains mediocre and his defensive ability inconsistent. Shumpert, meanwhile, could give the Knicks another solid perimeter defender. A backcourt of Toney Douglas and Shumpert could make life difficult for opposing guards. But the team still lacks a viable defensive stopper at forward. Renaldo Balkman has been unable to garner serious court time wherever he has played, and New Yorkers have grown weary of Jared Jeffries’s deficiencies , especially after his fumble cost the Knicks Game 2 of the playoffs last season against the Boston Celtics. Actually, Balkman could fall victim to the bargaining agreement’s new amnesty clause, which allows each team to release one player without detriment to its cap space; he is one of the few Knicks whose contract runs past this summer and hence could be jettisoned to increase the amount of money the Knicks would have available next summer. Ultimately, Knicks fans should not get their hopes up when scanning the current free-agent list . To paraphrase Rick Pitino, Nene isn’t walking through that door. Nor will Tayshaun Prince or Chandler. The Knicks will most likely dig through the clearance bin for a player the caliber of Kwame Brown or Maurice Evans. But they are not going to risk their precious cap space when Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and Deron Williams are at least possibilities down the road.

Basketball
Free Agents (Sports)
New York Knicks


Only Applause for Mets Comes From Nationals

Abstract: It was a night for parkas and wool caps and chattering teeth, which could have been tolerated had the home team played crisply, not turned every inning into an adventure better suited for a comic book. The Mets and their fans, then, had plenty of reasons to be displeased — poor pitching, two errors, a scarcity of clutch hitting — after a dispiriting 10-4 loss to the last-place Washington Nationals on Monday night at Shea Stadium. But nothing the Mets did left anyone as riled up as Nelson Figueroa was after what he called “unprofessional” behavior by those in the opposing dugout. It was the third inning, and the Nationals had the bases loaded. In the Washington dugout, a few players, led by Elijah Dukes, started clapping rhythmically to try to unnerve Figueroa, who had walked Nick Johnson to force in a run. Figueroa retired the next two batters and looked over toward them, clapping in his glove. As he neared the Mets’ dugout, he lifted his arms over his shoulders and gave a mock cheer. “They were cheerleading in the dugout like a bunch of softball girls,” Figueroa, the losing pitcher, said. “I’m a professional, just like anybody else. I take huge offense to that. If that’s what a last-place team needs to do to fire themselves up, so be it. I think you need to show a little bit more class, a little bit more professionalism. They won tonight, but again, in the long run, they are who they are.” In the Washington clubhouse, Dukes said, “It was funny, kind of softball-ish,” but Lastings Milledge, the former Met, gave a more expansive answer when told that Figueroa was offended by their actions. “What were we supposed to do?” Milledge said. “We’re not supposed to cater to anybody on the opposing team. We’re not going to cater to him or anybody else. Whatever. We’ve been down the last couple of days, so we want to get something going. If he don’t like it, then he’s got to deal with it. If anybody don’t like it, then they got to just deal with it.” The Mets have answered more questions than they care to acknowledge about a burgeoning rivalry with the Phillies or a fading one with the Braves, all while one with the pesky Nationals has simmered. They had a bench-clearing skirmish with them two years ago, when José Guillén charged Pedro Martínez, and the Nationals marched into Shea Stadium last September, during the final throes of the Mets’ collapse, and swept them in three games. The faces, naturally, have changed, with Brian Schneider and Ryan Church switching teams, just as Paul Lo Duca and Milledge have joined the Nationals. Washington, coming off being swept at home by Florida, has scored at least 10 runs three times this season, twice against the Mets. The Nationals snapped a 3-3 tie in the fifth by scoring three off Figueroa, who surrendered six runs and five walks while hitting two in five innings. They added four in the sixth off his successor, Jorge Sosa, who gave up four hits, including a two-run double to none other than Milledge. The game was played in 54-degree temperatures — accompanied by 20-mile-an-hour winds — and conditions described beforehand by Manager Willie Randolph as more like “early April or late September or late January.” For the fifth time in six games, the Mets had more than 10 hits. But they were frustrated by the left-hander Odalis Pérez, who added insult to insult by going 3 for 3 with two runs batted in. Trouble mounted in the fifth, when with two outs and Johnson on first, Figueroa walked the No. 7 hitter Rob Mackowiak to bring up Jesús Flores. “We’ve done a lot of that this year, when it comes down to it,” Randolph said. “We, as a staff, have done a poor job of getting through the seventh, eighth and ninth hitters. It’s so important to put those guys away.” Flores, naturally, drilled a two-run double, putting Washington ahead, 5-3, and Pérez followed by scoring Flores with a sharp single to right. Throughout the inning, the bullpen remained silent, as if Randolph were somehow willing Figueroa on to finish the inning, which he did on his 108th pitch. On his way back this time, Figueroa did not look over. He was upset, taking the blame for “the walk to Mackowiak, the walk to this guy, that guy and every other guy, hitting Flores, pitcher getting three hits.” The Nationals in the dugout proved just as bothersome to Figueroa. INSIDE PITCH Although Willie Randolph said they were still evaluating their options, the Mets seem set to push back Johan Santana’s start by a day so he can pitch Friday at Yankee Stadium, where he has excellent career statistics, and keep Mike Pelfrey in position to start Thursday against the Nationals. ... Pedro Martínez (strained left hamstring) is scheduled to pitch a simulated game Wednesday in Port St. Lucie, Fla. He will probably need to pitch at least one more time before beginning a minor league rehabilitation assignment. ... Matt Wise, who flew to New York last Wednesday expecting to be activated from the disabled list, returned to Port St. Lucie to stay fresh as the Mets ponder how to create room for him in the bullpen. ... The Mets are leaning toward starting the left-hander Adam Bostick on Wednesday.

Baseball
New York Mets
Washington Nationals


Indian City Overwhelmed by Air Pollution – New Delhi Journal

Abstract: NEW DELHI — When an acrid blanket of gray smog settled over India’s capital last month, environmentalists warned of health hazards, India’s Supreme Court promised action and state officials struggled to understand why the air had suddenly gone so bad . The heavy smog has dissipated for the moment, but it has left behind a troubling reality for one of India’s most important cities: Despite measures to improve air quality, pollution is steadily worsening here, without any simple solutions in sight. “This is like a ding-dong battle,” said Sheila Dikshit, the chief minister of the State of Delhi, moving her fingers like the flippers of a pinball machine. “We catch up with something; the pressures catch up more than that.” Delhi, a growing metropolis of nearly 20 million people, has struggled to reconcile its rapid economic growth with environmental safeguards. Over a decade ago, the city introduced a host of policies that raised emission standards, closed polluting industries and expanded green spaces. It made a costly investment to convert the city’s buses and auto rickshaws to compressed natural gas. For a time, air quality visibly improved. But those gains have been overwhelmed in recent years. “We have already plucked the low-hanging fruits, so to speak,” said Anumita Roychowdhury , the executive director of the Center for Science and Environment here. “Now it’s time for aggressive, second-generation reforms.” Ms. Roychowdhury and other environmentalists say the government must now concentrate on slowing the rising number of vehicles on New Delhi’s roads. Each day, about 1,400 new vehicles hit the roads of the city, already home to over seven million registered vehicles, a 65 percent jump from 2003. As a result, fine-particle pollution has risen by 47 percent in the last decade. Nitrogen dioxide levels have increased by 57 percent. Environmentalists recommend a hefty tax on diesel vehicles, a steep increase in parking charges and a rapid upgrade of the public transportation system to ensure more timely bus service and a better integration of buses and the metro rail system. “These strategies can be implemented immediately and will have an immediate impact on the numbers of vehicles,” Ms. Roychowdhury said. “We have to stop this untamed motorization now.” But government officials say that a mere crackdown on vehicles ignores other aspects of the problem. They note that New Delhi is landlocked and lacks the coastal breezes that flush polluted air out of other major Indian cities like Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. Ms. Dikshit said New Delhi’s rapidly growing population and prosperity add to the pollution. “It’s an epicenter of trade, of commerce, of governance for this entire northern area,” she said. As a consequence, Delhi “bears a much bigger burden.” Officials say much of the pollution comes from neighboring areas, where emissions standards are lower and environmental policies virtually nonexistent. For days after November’s smog spell, many Delhi officials responded by blaming a coincidence of factors, including agricultural burnings in the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana and the impact of a cyclone off the southern coast. Weather conditions played a role, environmentalists agree, but that is no excuse for ignoring the underlying problems. “The government cannot say that the smog was solely because of bad weather,” said Mukesh Khare , a professor of environmental engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. “They are making excuses to avoid facing the fact that Delhi has a pollution problem once again.” Until two years ago, environmentalists and city officials in New Delhi lacked monitoring equipment to determine air pollution levels, and scientists and policy makers were dependent on ad hoc surveys conducted manually or on data from the national pollution body that often were incomplete or arrived too late. In 2010, the Delhi government posted six state-of-the-art monitoring machines around the capital that now constantly measure a host of pollutants, sending real-time data to a publicly accessible Web site. “We didn’t really understand the situation before,” said Mohan George, a scientist at the Delhi Pollution Control Committee . “Now we have authentic, continuous and reliable data.” In November, the machines recorded pollution levels at least six or seven times greater than the national standard for safe air. On Nov. 9, for instance, the levels of particulate matter called PM10 near the University of Delhi measured 908 micrograms per cubic meter, against the standard limit of 100, falling into the “very unhealthy” category. The city’s doctors are worried. Dr. Randeep Guleria, who runs the pulmonary medicine department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, said the number of emergency visits relating to respiratory and heart problems had risen sharply this winter. What is going on in New Delhi reflects a larger trend. A recent study published in the medical journal Lancet shows air pollution has become a major health risk in developing countries, contributing to about 3.2 million premature deaths worldwide. South Asian countries are particularly vulnerable, the study found. The local government has commissioned a study to understand what exactly caused the smog, and is working on an “air action plan” that would expand the subway system, introduce a network of bike lanes and make the city’s roadways more friendly to pedestrians. The Supreme Court, which has played the role of environmental watchdog in Delhi for more than a decade, has recommended a more politically delicate measure: imposing an “environment compensation charge” of 25 percent on new diesel vehicles and requiring a much smaller fee for existing gasoline- and diesel-powered cars. Ms. Dikshit, Delhi’s chief minister, has agreed to consider such a “green tax” and welcomed other solutions, even as she denied that the city’s pollution was reaching alarming levels. “What is alarming is the impact that Delhi’s prosperity and its comfortable living is having on attracting more and more people to come here,” Ms. Dikshit said. “How much we will be able to sustain that impact of people coming and never going out is a big question.”

New Delhi (India)
Air Pollution
Environment
Automobiles


Egypt May Hold Presidential Vote Before Election of Parliament

Abstract: Egypt’s interim president said on Sunday that a presidential election could be held before voting for parliamentary seats, raising the possibility that the country’s military-backed government was preparing to deviate from the transitional plan it unveiled after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in July. The plan had called for parliamentary elections to be held first, after a constitutional referendum. The government has repeatedly emphasized its commitment to the transitional plan, offering it as evidence of its support for democracy. Analysts have said that switching the order of the elections could help Egypt’s leaders maintain tighter control over the outcome, by allowing the newly elected president to influence the makeup of Parliament, possibly by forming a political party. One of the most frequently mentioned candidates for president is Egypt’s defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, though he has not said whether he will run. The interim president, Adly Mansour, said on Sunday that holding the presidential vote first would be legal, state media reported. Both the presidential and parliamentary elections would be held within six months of the ratification of a draft constitution, he said. A referendum on the charter will be held in January. In the past week, the government has moved forcefully to eliminate its principal foe, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been Egypt’s most successful political party in elections after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. On Wednesday, the government designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist group, outlawing its activities and even membership in the organization. Days of unrest have followed the decision, including protests by Brotherhood supporters on the campus of Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The government announced its decision after blaming the Brotherhood for a bombing that killed 16 people, even though a different group claimed responsibility. Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation in New York, said the government “seized on the moment and the grotesque nature of the attack” to accomplish several goals. While hard-liners in the security services aim to eradicate the Brotherhood, the terrorist designation gives other officials a “rhetorical” tool to stir interest in the coming elections, Mr. Hanna said. It also provides them with a firmer legal basis to detain protesters and further suppress dissent ahead of the vote, he said. As the government tries to consolidate its power, it has faced an unexpectedly sharp challenge from militant groups that have been able to strike security targets at will. On Sunday, a car bomb exploded outside a military intelligence building north of Cairo, wounding at least five people and causing part of the building to collapse. It was the third such bombing in less than a week, suggesting a quickening pace but also a growing sophistication in the militant attacks. Interior Ministry officials said the bomb appeared to have been detonated by a timer, or by remote control.


A Retiree on Oxygen Trying to Pay His Power Bills

Abstract: Wherever Emmanuel Morantus goes, a long length of plastic tubing trails behind him. Whether he is padding into his tiny bathroom or stepping outside to retrieve his mail or resting on his living room hospital bed, he always makes sure the line does not get tangled. That is because one end plugs into an oxygen tank. The other inserts into a nosepiece that sighs oxygen into his 73-year-old lungs damaged by pulmonary arterial hypertension. It is not this extra appendage, though, that bothers him most. His biggest fear is that one day the oxygen will stop flowing because of unpaid utility bills. “I tell you,” Mr. Morantus said, for the third time in an hour. Each time he wiped tears that sprang into his eyes. “Last year, if God don’t send me this guy,” pointing to the gentleman sitting next to him, “I don’t know what I’ll do.” He was referring to Nathan Krasnovsky, a site director for the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, one of the seven organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Mr. Krasnovsky entered Mr. Morantus’s life when he could not pay the rent for his apartment in Canarsie, Brooklyn, and his utility bills. The Met Council used $994.18 from the Neediest Cases Fund to pay his December 2011 rent and applied an additional $750 toward his next three months’ rent. “I don’t have any money,” said Mr. Morantus, who retired five years ago after working three jobs to support his wife and daughter. During the week, he installed coffee grinding machines. He drove a taxi at night. On weekends, he worked in a factory that made electrical panels. The night before, he said he had dreamed of an old boss, who created a profit-sharing plan for his employees. When the boss’s son took over, he ended it. “They make an exploitation of you,” he said. “That’s why when I retired, I don’t have money to live.” Although Mr. Morantus receives $200 a month in food stamps and $907 from Social Security, that is not enough to cover his recently lowered monthly rent of $947.71 or his utility bills. As of early October, he owed Consolidated Edison $377. “The oxygen,” he said, “has to work all day long and all night.” His prescriptions are another concern. A pill organizer contains the 147 pills he takes weekly. On a living room table sits his nebulizer, from which he inhales medicine four times a day. Recently, Mr. Morantus confided to Mr. Krasnovsky that he passed on one prescription because he could not afford the co-payment. “Sometimes they ask you $10, sometimes $30,” Mr. Morantus said. “Sometimes you cannot pick it up.” He was not always so frail. An old photograph on his wall shows a strapping Haitian man with a thick black mustache and a bowler hat. He was an artist then, selling his oil portraits to tourists. Even while in Haiti he maintained a second job, working for Unicef. “If you don’t sell,” he said of his paintings, “what you going to get for your family?” He and his wife, Marcelle, disillusioned with their limited prospects in Haiti, moved to the United States in 1985 with their daughter, who has helped him with bills when she could, but cannot afford to do so regularly. Mrs. Morantus died a few years ago. “She was a good one,” Mr. Morantus said. He wants to remain in his quiet apartment attended by his daytime home health aide. “When you’re in a nursing home,” he said, “you’re not long to live.” His daughter, a single mother, does his grocery shopping and visits regularly with her two young sons. Although he gets breathless easily and often, his eyes light up when a visitor spies a guitar. “When I feel comfortable,” he said, “I play my guitar. When I want to satisfy myself, I play my guitar. And when I am sad, I play my guitar.” “Let me see if I can do it,” he said. His fingers pluck at the strings. He even manages a few French verses of a melody translated as, “A little tear betrayed me,” before pausing again for his breath to catch up.

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Philanthropy
Metropolitan Council
UJA-Federation of New York
New York City


A Daughter Dies Suddenly, and a Mother Loses Her Way

Abstract: During the months after her daughter’s death in May, Felesha DeGracia eventually made a plan. “I had to make a schedule for myself,” said Ms. DeGracia, 47. “Get up out of bed, go take a shower — because I was sitting in this house not bathing, not combing my hair, not doing nothing.” On May 7, Ms. DeGracia’s daughter, Yasmine Tirado, was found drowned in the Hudson River at Battery Park. (Ms. DeGracia said the police considered the death a suicide, a finding she disputes.) The shocking loss left Ms. DeGracia, 47, reeling from grief, in a state that she describes with a single word: “psychotic.” Ms. Tirado was 26 when she died and was just starting to put together her fragile life. At 22, she had received a diagnoses of schizophrenia. “She was already living on her own, she was working, she was doing fine, and then out of the clear blue sky this happened,” Ms. DeGracia said. About four years after her diagnosis, Ms. Tirado entered Project Renewal, a group that helps homeless and mentally ill people become independent. At the time of her death, she was doing volunteer office work and looking forward to the future. “I talked to her two days before it happened, and she was full of life, vibrant,” Ms. DeGracia said. “She was getting her own apartment; she was so gung-ho about that. She had opened a bank account, and she went on an interview.” Ms. DeGracia does not accept that her daughter committed suicide. “That doesn’t seem like her, not after she told me all the things that she was planning for her future,” she said. “This tragedy,” Ms. DeGracia said, “it’s separated my family. I have prayed about it. I have cried about it. I don’t know what else to do.” Since his sister’s death, Ms. DeGracia’s son and only other child, Kevin DeGracia, 17, has been living mostly with his grandmother in Manhattan. He declined to be interviewed. “Ever since his sister passed away, he has a lot of resentment, a lot of anger,” Ms. DeGracia said. “Not to mention the stress that you ordinarily have as a teenager.” This summer, after taking three days of bereavement leave, three weeks of vacation and two weeks off without pay, Ms. DeGracia said she was still in no shape to return to her job as an account representative at Verizon. “I told them, ‘I can’t come back to work, I can’t function, I haven’t slept in two and a half weeks,’” she said. “I slept sitting up, standing up. I was a bundle of nerves.” She began seeing a psychiatrist and taking antidepressants, and was put on disability, taking home $363 week, half of her regular pay. By August, Ms. DeGracia owed $1,800 in back rent and $672 to Consolidated Edison. Her landlord was starting eviction proceedings on her $850-a-month apartment in Queens. “My apartment is like a little box, but I can’t lose it,” she said. She turned to Catholic Charities, Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund , for help. The charity gave her $672 that was intended to cover the Con Ed bill but went toward the rent when a grant from the city’s Human Resources Administration covered her utilities. An older brother lent her some money, also to help with the rent. Ms. DeGracia said she had nearly caught up with her bills. She started back at work full time on Oct. 29 and is grateful for the help she received from Catholic Charities. “Whenever I can give something toward the Catholic Charities, I will do that,” Ms. DeGracia said, “because, I don’t know, you kind of just saved my life.” Her brother too, is a continuing comfort. “He doesn’t leave me alone, he bugs me — which is good, you know?” she said. “Because you could just die, you know, your soul, you could rot away. And I was rotting. I was sitting here rotting away, and he didn’t let me.”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Philanthropy
Depression (Mental)


Mormon Missionaries Recruit the Deaf in the South Bronx

Abstract: “EXCUSE me, sir,” a sandy-haired 20-year-old named Jeffrey Westra asked a man leaning against a car outside a bodega one recent muggy afternoon in the Highbridge section of the Bronx. “Do you know anyone that’s deaf?” The man shook his head. And so Mr. Westra, who was dressed this day in somber charcoal-gray pants, a crisp white shirt and a navy tie, continued down the street. With him was his missionary companion, Jacob Frost, a 19-year-old Ohioan who is hearing-impaired and holds doors open for strangers, even the doors of city buses. When Mormon men are 19 to 25, they apply for two years of full-time mission work. They receive a letter informing them where they will live and in which language they will minister. Chinese, Russian and Spanish are possibilities, as is American Sign Language. Mr. Westra had never been east of Minnesota when he moved last summer from Lehi, Utah, to the South Bronx and began missionary work for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, assigned to serve the neighborhood’s hearing-impaired. Before arriving in the city, he studied sign language for two months, 14 hours a day, at a training facility in Utah. In August, he moved to an apartment off the Grand Concourse on 167th Street that had three sets of bunk beds, one bathroom and five missionary roommates. The church’s efforts to minister to the deaf in New York began in 1991. By 1998, the church had formed a deaf congregation, which today has some 250 members, about 100 of whom live in the Bronx, according to Brent Belnap, who until recently oversaw 14 congregations in the city, including the one for the deaf. From noon until 9 p.m. six days a week, Mr. Westra and his counterparts spend their time visiting current church members, recruiting potential members and reaching out to those who have strayed. The other day, Mr. Westra and Mr. Frost stopped by the dimly lighted apartment of Michael Powell, a member who hadn’t been to church in two months. “How are you feeling?” Mr. Westra signed. Mr. Powell, a 28-year-old custodian at a McDonald’s near Yankee Stadium, signed back that he had been tired out by work and getting headaches. Mr. Westra and Mr. Frost spent a half-hour with Mr. Powell, signing and reading Scripture. Before they left, they asked him if he knew any other deaf people nearby. “All around the area, there are many,” Mr. Powell signed back. “You just have to look for them.” The missionaries are always looking. They saw a man signing in the library one day and got his address. They stop by apartment buildings and public housing projects if they hear that someone who is deaf lives there. When no one is home, they slip notes under doors. Someone once threw eggs out a window at Mr. Westra. He took it in stride and crossed the street.

Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)


Armstrong Associate Goes Before Grand Jury

Abstract: One of Lance Armstrong ’s close associates testified Wednesday before a federal grand jury looking into possible crimes relating to doping in cycling, according to people briefed on the investigation. That associate, Stephanie McIlvain, served as Armstrong’s liaison to the Oakley sunglasses company and worked closely with Armstrong during the years he won the Tour de France . McIlvain was expected to be questioned about the events that unfolded in a hospital room in 1996, when she and others were visiting a cancer-stricken Armstrong. A former teammate of Armstrong’s and his wife said they had heard Armstrong tell doctors that day that he had used performance-enhancing drugs. In a civil lawsuit, McIlvain testified that she never heard any sort of admission from Armstrong, who has vehemently denied ever doping. But in a secretly taped phone call from 2004 with the three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond, McIlvain said that she had heard the conversation in the hospital room and would admit that if ever called to testify. In that phone call, though, she never explains what she heard Armstrong say.


Weather Channel’s Parent Company Is Renamed

Abstract: In a move it compared to Apple Computer’s shedding of the word computer, the Weather Channel Companies has dropped “channel” from its name. It’s not ridding itself of the actual Weather Channel, a staple of cable lineups across the country. The channel’s name will remain the same. But the corporate re-branding reflects the fact that most of the Weather Company’s growth is coming from the Web and from specialized products for businesses, not from television. It senses huge opportunities in international markets where it will not have a television channel, but will have apps and Web sites. “The word ‘channel’ is too limiting. The Weather Company better defines who we are,” said David Kenny, who was named the chairman and chief executive of the company in January. Mr. Kenny proposed the name change while presenting a three-year plan to the company’s board in September. (The company is owned by NBCUniversal and the private equity firms Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group.) In the board meeting, Mr. Kenny cited Apple’s name change: “When Apple Computer decided to just be Apple, it broadened their minds to what was possible,” he said. Apple put the iPhone on sale the same year it streamlined its name. The iPhone now brings in more revenue than Apple’s computers do. The change by the Weather Channel Companies reminded Mike Vorhaus, a digital media analyst who heads Magid Advisors, of the companies that dropped “dot-com” from their names a decade ago. “Now I think many companies will want to drop any reference to platform in their name,” he said. “They aren’t a channel or online or mobile — they are just media. Bye-bye channel, hello cross-platform.” The flagship Weather Channel, available in 100 million homes in the United States, still accounts for more than half of the Weather Company’s revenue, thanks in large part to the per-home fee it receives from cable and satellite distributors. But the channel business has been slowing significantly, Mr. Kenny said. Already the company’s advertising revenues are fairly evenly split between television and digital media. He expects digital media (including mobile devices, an area of focus) to overtake television in that category. Products for businesses — weather forecasts for airlines, energy traders, local television stations and others — account for 10 percent of the company’s revenue now. That proportion could double in the next three years, Mr. Kenny said. Over the summer the company bought another supplier of professional products, Weather Central. It also bought Weather Underground, a competitor to its consumer Web site, Weather.com . Last week, just before the new name was announced internally, the company laid off about 75 people, 7 percent of its work force. The layoffs were attributed to a reorganization, partly necessitated by the recent acquisitions. Additionally, Mr. Kenny said the television division wasn’t “altogether efficient” in its production, suggesting it was overstaffed. Driving the acquisitions and the name change is a sense that the company’s unit of measurement is not a minute or an hour of TV programming. Instead, it’s a local forecast — one that can be shared on television, distributed to apps and sold to businesses. The company wants to offer a 30-day local forecast in the future. At an all-staff meeting last Wednesday, Mr. Kenny emphasized science and innovation, saying the Weather Company’s focus was on “connecting people with the world’s best weather forecasts.” His comments foreshadowed a shift for the flagship television channel, as well. The previous chief executive of the company, Michael J. Kelly, oversaw the addition of taped reality shows and documentaries, some of which were only tangentially connected to weather. The changes sometimes lifted the channel’s ratings, but alienated fans who wanted live weather news. Mr. Kenny seems to be pulling back a bit: taped shows in the future will have weather as a “main character,” he said, not just a background character. A documentary series about ironworkers in New York is not being renewed, for instance. Some new programs will emphasize stories from Internet users who submit weather videos and photos. “The TV division has really doubled down on weather enthusiasts as their core audience,” Mr. Kenny said. “We’re not trying to serve everybody,” he added. “We’re trying to serve our core audience really well.”

Names Organizational
Weather Channel
Weather Co
Kenny David W
Weather Channel Cos


Brazilian Goes From Afterthought to Defending Champ

Abstract: Marilson Gomes dos Santos was invited to run in last year’s New York City Marathon as an afterthought. Race officials invited Gomes, a native of Brasília, because of the large Brazilian community here and because Brazilians have made an impact on marathon running. In a race that included Paul Tergat of Kenya, then the world-record holder, and Stefano Baldini of Italy, the Olympic champion, few people thought Gomes would be a factor. “I had no real plan,” he said yesterday, with his agent, Luis Felipe Posso, acting as interpreter. “I thought I would run with the top group, and late in the race I would attack. At 30 kilometers I attacked, and nobody came with me.” Gomes, who had run four previous marathons without winning, finished in 2 hours 9 minutes 58 seconds, becoming the first South American to win here. He will defend his title Sunday against a strong international field; the best American men will run here Saturday in the United States Olympic trials. Since his victory in New York, the 30-year-old Gomes said, he has been overwhelmed with invitations to race. He has run in four races on the track at 5,000 and 10,000 meters, and four on the road. He has run one marathon, in April in London, where he finished eighth in 2:08:37, his best time. In the world half-marathon championship Oct. 14 in Udine, Italy, he placed seventh in 59:33, the fastest time ever by a runner from the Western Hemisphere. “I was a little surprised by that,” he said. “I knew I could run a fast half-marathon, under an hour, but I was surprised by that time.” In training for this marathon, Gomes has been running 120 miles a week at a mile above sea level. “I hope that is enough to win,” he said. “I’m in good shape, better than last year. I gained a lot of confidence from the world half-marathon. “My race plan here? Stay in front.” Gomes started running at 12 and started competing at 13. He is so famous at home now that he has been accorded the highest honor Brazilians give their athletes: like Pelé, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and other Brazilian sports heroes, he has become known by one name, Marilso. He is a star everywhere in Brazil, except at home. His wife, Juliana Paula, won the 1,500 meters at the Pan-American Games in July, and her club sponsor gave her as a bonus a gold bar weighing 2.2 pounds. In those championships, Gomes finished second in the 10,000 and third in the 5,000. He received 1.65 pounds of gold bars. “Besides,” he said, “we once ran in a relay, and her team beat mine.”

Gomes dos Santos Marilson
New York City Marathon
Running
Marathon Running


Hedge Fund Manager Merkin to Pay $405 Million in Madoff Settlement

Abstract: Clients of J. Ezra Merkin , a prominent Wall Street hedge fund manager who invested his clients’ money in Bernard L. Madoff ’s epic Ponzi scheme , will recover more than $400 million under a civil settlement negotiated by the New York State attorney general’s office. The deal, the first settlement of a government action against Mr. Merkin, was approved by a New York State judge late on Friday, according to the office of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman. The agreement, which is also one of the largest settlements by an individual investor in the extensive Madoff case, is expected to be publicly announced on Monday. Mr. Merkin, whose funds lost roughly $1.2 billion when Mr. Madoff’s fraud collapsed in December 2008, has agreed to pay $405 million over three years to compensate his investors. He also will pay an additional $5 million to the state to cover fees and investigative costs. The agreement settles a civil fraud case that the attorney general’s office filed against Mr. Merkin in April 2009. That case accused Mr. Merkin of deceiving his clients by collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in management fees when, in fact, he was simply handing money over to Mr. Madoff, not managing it himself. The settlement, however, will almost certainly face a legal challenge from Irving H. Picard, the bankruptcy court trustee who has a lawsuit pending against Mr. Merkin as part of his effort to collect money to compensate all eligible Madoff victims. “To the extent any third-party settlement seeks to divert funds” sought by the trustee, “we will have to consider taking appropriate steps,” said Amanda Remus, a spokeswoman for Mr. Picard and his law firm, Baker Hostetler. In March 2009, Mr. Madoff confessed that he had operated a long-running Ponzi scheme, one that affected thousands of investors around the world. Cash losses in the scheme are estimated at a minimum of $17 billion, but the paper wealth wiped out by the fraud totaled more than $64 billion. Mr. Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina. The attorney general’s settlement with Mr. Merkin would benefit investors in his four private funds: Ariel Fund Ltd., Gabriel Capital L.P., Ascot Fund Ltd. and Ascot Partners. According to Mr. Schneiderman, more than 10 percent of the money invested in those funds belonged to charities and other nonprofit institutions, including Bard College, New York Law School, the Harlem Children’s Zone and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty in New York. “We have recovered over $400 million for the investors and charities that were harmed by history’s largest Ponzi scheme,” Mr. Schneiderman said. He called the agreement “a victory for justice and accountability” and added: “By holding Mr. Merkin accountable, this settlement will help bring justice for the people and institutions that lost millions of dollars.” Andrew J. Levander, a lawyer for Mr. Merkin, said in a statement on Sunday that his client “is pleased to have achieved a resolution that is fair to his investors, many of whom are friends and institutions that he and his family have cared about deeply for generations.” The state’s complex formula for distributing the money to Merkin investors calls for those who were not aware of Mr. Merkin’s ties to Mr. Madoff to recover a larger percentage of their losses than those who knew of Mr. Madoff’s involvement. The funds will be distributed under the direction of David Pitofsky and Bart Schwartz, the receivers overseeing the liquidation of the Merkin funds, with New York State Justice Richard B. Lowe III, who approved the settlement, as the ultimate arbiter. Mr. Merkin, an investment manager and philanthropist who was well known on Wall Street and served for many years as the president of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, has denied any knowledge of Mr. Madoff’s fraud and any deceptive dealings with his own investors. The lawsuit filed against Mr. Merkin by Mr. Picard, the bankruptcy trustee, seeks to recover $500 million to be added to the fund that Mr. Picard will ultimately distribute to all eligible Madoff investors through the bankruptcy court. An aide to Mr. Schneiderman said on Sunday that the Merkin settlement was “structured in a way that didn’t require the approval” of Mr. Picard. But Mr. Picard and his lawyers do not share that view — indeed, the trustee’s lawyers have been arguing privately against a separate state settlement with Mr. Merkin for more than a year. In their view, Mr. Merkin’s management fees were paid with cash that Mr. Madoff stole from other people and paid out to Mr. Merkin’s investors. Therefore, they contend, any settlement with Mr. Merkin should benefit all eligible Madoff victims, not just Mr. Merkin’s clients. Moreover, Mr. Picard is determined that all Madoff claims should be handled through the federal bankruptcy court, not through piecemeal litigation that benefits only small groups of investors. On those grounds, Mr. Picard’s lawyers have already gone to court to challenge a number of other separate legal actions involving Madoff claims. This settlement is likely to be additionally contentious because it involves indirect Madoff victims, those who invested in a feeder fund that was a direct Madoff customer. The federal bankruptcy judge handling the Madoff matter has ruled that indirect investors are not eligible for direct compensation and must wait to be compensated by the fund through which they invested. The New York State settlement seems to short-circuit that process for the subset of indirect investors who invested with Mr. Madoff through Mr. Merkin’s funds. Ms. Remus, the trustee’s spokeswoman, said on Sunday night that Mr. Picard and his legal team would not comment directly on the settlement until they had a chance to see the final documents approved by the court. But she noted that the trustee’s obligation was to seek funds “for equitable distribution” to all eligible Madoff victims. Mr. Picard’s position is that the “trustee’s claims, by law, take precedence,” she added.

Merkin J Ezra
Madoff Bernard L
Ponzi and Pyramid Schemes
Hedge Funds


India Trumpets Ties With U.S. Amid Iran Oil Deal

Abstract: NEW DELHI — Ranjan Mathai, the Indian foreign secretary, made the rounds in Washington last week, describing India ’s relationship with the United States as one of growing comfort, depth and candor, if not perfect harmony. On that last point he could have been talking about the recent frictions between the two countries over Iran . India’s determination to continue buying Iranian oil, despite sanctions and growing political pressure from the United States and Europe, has frustrated officials in Washington at a time when the forward momentum in the United States-India relationship has slowed, with differences over issues including civil nuclear cooperation, trade protectionism and military sales. The situation was exacerbated last week by news reports that India had become Iran’s top oil customer, while an Indian official announced plans to send a trade delegation to Tehran. In New Delhi, diplomats and analysts say India’s purchasing of Iranian oil is a matter of economic necessity, given its dependence on imported oil. Some say the purchases also represent diplomatic hedging in a region bracing for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by 2014, or possibly sooner. Indeed, many Indian officials, even those supportive of a stronger partnership with the United States, caution against turning issues like Iran into diplomatic litmus tests, considering the complexities of a neighborhood in which India represents a bulwark of stability, democracy and economic opportunity compared with Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries. “This can’t be a test of our friendship,” said Lalit Mansingh, a former Indian ambassador to the United States. “Washington must realize that we are in a neighborhood where Iran is a factor.” India’s most immediate concern is fueling its economy, which has slowed in the past year. India buys about 12 percent of its crude oil from Iran, and many Indian refineries have been built to run solely on Iranian crude, meaning they would have to be retrofitted in order to process oil from other countries. “To shift is not something that can be done very easily,” said one senior Indian official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity given the delicacy of the situation. The official added: “Where would we get that refining capacity? Who would be our new suppliers?” Even so, India has tried for several years to reduce its dependence on Iranian crude oil, partly because of the new sanctions by the Obama administration punishing any banks that do business with Iran. To work around these sanctions, Indian oil companies have made payments to Iran through a bank in Turkey that fell outside the American restrictions. However, Indian officials are preparing for the likelihood that the Turkish avenue may soon be closed. The senior Indian official confirmed recent reports that India and Iran had agreed on a deal in which Indian companies would pay for 45 percent of their imports in Indian rupees — thus avoiding the need to pay in dollars — and might even settle the remainder of the debts through barter. Last month, Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and leader of the India Caucus in Congress, met with several government ministers in New Delhi. “The issue came up,” Mr. Warner said of Iran in an interview last month. “The Indians raised the concern that this has immediate economic impact upon them. We acknowledged that this was a blunt instrument, sanctions, but that the status quo in Iran was not working.” Like the United States, India is alarmed at the possibility of Iran’s developing nuclear weapons , and it has called on Iran to fulfill its obligations as a nonnuclear weapon state under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Indian diplomats, though, also worry about the economic impact of greater instability in Iran and the Persian Gulf region; they say more than six million Indians work in the gulf, sending home roughly $40 billion a year in remittances. Iran is also a factor in the uncertain endgame in Afghanistan. K. C. Singh, a former Indian ambassador in Tehran, said India and Iran cooperated to support the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance before the fall of the Taliban in 2001. But that relationship cooled as American troops settled in Afghanistan, and India and the United States moved closer together. Now, though, Mr. Singh said India was “scampering to recover” its relationship with Iran as a hedge to prepare for an uncertain future in Afghanistan. “They are attempting to do it now out of some serious concerns about what may happen after 2014, or earlier,” Mr. Singh said. Even so, India’s current leaders remain committed to ever-strengthening ties with the United States. In a speech on Monday in Washington, Mr. Mathai spoke of the great potential of the two nations’ partnership, if also the complexities embedded into it. “Given our different circumstances, history, location and levels of development, we will occasionally have differing perspectives and policies,” he said, according to a transcript of his speech . “But this can be a source of great value and strength.”

United States International Relations
India
Politics and Government
Economic Conditions and Trends
United States
Iran
Embargoes and Economic Sanctions
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Nuclear Weapons


‘Jihadi John’ Stirs Britain to Defend Spy Agencies

Abstract: LONDON — After disclosures that the man who posed in videos of the murder of Western hostages was known to British intelligence, Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday defended the security services, saying they faced tough decisions and had prevented deadly attacks. “All of the time, they are having to make incredibly difficult judgments, and I think basically they make very good judgments on our behalf,” Mr. Cameron said at a news conference. “I think while we are in the middle of this vast effort to make sure British citizens are safe, I think the most important thing is to get behind them,” he said. Mr. Cameron was speaking the day after news media identified the man in the videos , nicknamed Jihadi John, as Mohammed Emwazi, who was born in Kuwait in 1988 but grew up in West London. He said the authorities would do “everything we can” to track down Mr. Emwazi and other terrorism suspects. 'Jihadi John,' in His Own Words Mohammed Emwazi, 26, who was identified as the ISIS militant known as “Jihadi John,” encountered British security forces on his path to radicalization. Wearing a black mask and speaking with a London accent, Mr. Emwazi is thought to have appeared in a video last August, showing the beheading of the American journalist James Foley . Mr. Emwazi is also thought to have been featured in videos of subsequent beheadings of American and British hostages. In Britain , the failure of the security services to prevent him from joining the Islamic State in Syria has provoked questioning about the effectiveness of the surveillance of suspects and of the wider effort to prevent the radicalization of young Muslims. One advocacy group, CAGE , has suggested that harassment by MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, may have contributed to the radicalization of Mr. Emwazi, after his arrest in 2009 when he flew to Tanzania with friends, claiming to be going on a safari. At that time, British security officials are said to have tried to recruit Mr. Emwazi as an informer. But the claim that MI5 had contributed to his radicalization was rejected as “reprehensible” by Mr. Cameron’s office. Iraqi Army Retakes Government Complex in Central Ramadi Efforts to stem the rise of the Islamic State. John Sawers, the former chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, defended the tactic of approaching suspects, which he said provided an “opportunity for the individual to draw back from the terrorist group” with which one might be considering a relationship. Through such contact “you also give them a warning,” he told the BBC, adding, “but the idea that somehow being spoken to by a member of MI5 is a radicalizing act — I think this is very false.” Mr. Sawers also noted the scale of the challenge facing intelligence agencies. “There are probably several thousand of these individuals of concern, and the numbers are rising as more people go to Syria and Iraq and are radicalized out there,” he said. “No one is talking about rounding up all these people or keeping 100 percent coverage of them; there is just not the resources for that and it would be contrary to our principles of human rights to do that,” Mr. Sawers said. Video How has ISIS, a 21st-century terrorist organization with a retrograde religious philosophy, spread from Iraq to Syria, Libya and beyond? Speaking in Wales, Mr. Cameron defended the security services, praising the work of people he described as “extraordinary men and women.” “I meet with them regularly. I ask them searching questions about what they do, and in my almost five years’ experience as prime minister, I think they are incredibly impressive, hard-working, dedicated, courageous and effective at protecting our country,” Mr. Cameron said. In Britain, as in other Western countries, intelligence officials face a daily challenge in deciding how to spend their stretched resources and how to prioritize their efforts. They also have to confront the quandary of dealing with those they suspect of having links to terrorism groups, but against whom they have insufficient evidence to prosecute. Mr. Cameron argued that their “dedication and work has saved us from plots on the streets of the U.K. that could have done us immense damage” within the past few months. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said Friday that the government had made a mistake in 2011 when it replaced a system of control orders, used as a form of house arrest against terrorism suspects, with a less restrictive regime. “I do think that was a mistake, we are now back on the right track,” Mr. Johnson told the BBC. “The politicians who made that mistake need to think very carefully about why they did it, and I think the benefit of the doubt was, I’m afraid, given too much to those who wish us serious harm.”

Great Britain
David Cameron
Spying and Intelligence Agencies
Terrorism
Jihadi John,Mohammed Emwazi,Jailer John
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Security Service MI5
Murders and Homicides