Medal Denied to South Korean Soccer Player Over Political Sign

Abstract: LONDON — A South Korean soccer player was barred from receiving his bronze medal at the London Olympics on Saturday for displaying a sign with a political message after a victory over Japan in the third-place game. The player, Park Jong-woo, held up a sign after South Korea’s 2-0 victory over Japan, claiming South Korean sovereignty over a set of barely inhabitable islands that are also claimed by Japan. Mr. Park, a midfielder, played all 90 minutes of the game on Friday in Cardiff, Wales, then was photographed carrying a sign that read, “Dokdo is our territory.” The islands, called Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan, lie in an area of rich fishing grounds and natural gas deposits. Mr. Park faces investigations by both the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, soccer’s governing body, both of which strictly enforce rules forbidding athletes from making political statements on the field. His protest came hours after South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, paid a surprise visit to the islands. The visit infuriated Japan, which withdrew its ambassador from Seoul in protest. Olympic officials asked South Korea’s Olympic committee to take action against Mr. Park, 23, while it investigates, and the Koreans responded by preventing him from taking part in the medal ceremony on Saturday. Mr. Park’s 17 teammates received their medals; his absence was not noted to the crowd of more than 80,000. “We are looking into this incident but we are taking it very seriously,” a South Korean Olympic official, John Moon, told Reuters. Mr. Park is the first medalist to get in trouble for making a political statement at these Games, but not the first political controversy here for the Koreas. When the North Korean team marched onto the field before a first-round game against Colombia in Glasgow, the stadium’s video boards flashed an image of the South Korean flag. The North Koreans turned and left the field. They were eventually persuaded to return, but the game began more than an hour late.

International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)


Mets Bring a Global Audience to America’s Sport

Abstract: Several baseball teams hold ethnic theme dates to build their fan bases, and with the New York Mets playing in Queens — perhaps the most polyglot spot on the planet — it might stand to reason that they schedule a veritable mosaic. The Greeks had their day on June 5; the Israelis had theirs the week before. The Japanese celebration was on Aug. 27, followed by Scandinavian Night and then Jewish Heritage Day. In all, there were 19 such events on the Mets’ schedule this year. But with baseball entering its last week of regular-season play, two heritage nights held in previous seasons — one for Koreans and one for Caribbeans — were missed this year. Dave Howard, the Mets’ executive vice president of business operations, blamed problems making arrangements with the ethnic associations the team wanted to partner with for the absence of the nights. He said the Mets, who have had three Korean pitchers and countless players from Caribbean nations, would like to hold those events in the future. “We’re open to both nights next year if we can get a group to work with us,” Mr. Howard said. He would not identify the groups the Mets tried to work with this season. One Caribbean group acknowledged they were approached by the Mets and blamed miscommunication for the lack of a Caribbean ethnic night this season. Roy Hastick, president of the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said his group had been asked about cooperating on a Haitian night to raise money for victims of January’s earthquake — a night held April 7 — and that discussions began to address a broader Caribbean night, but never went very far. “I don’t know what happened,” Mr. Hastick said. “We lost contact.” He added: “This is something we’d love to collaborate with them on.” Mr. Howard said that Korean nights had been held for the past five years, but that this season the group that had arranged the previous events could not do so. “We reached out to other Korean groups,” he said, “but weren’t able to get a group to work with us.” Caribbean nights were held in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Several teams, including the San Francisco Giants and the Tampa Bay Rays, hold ethnic heritage nights. The Mets have been holding theirs for 15 years. Mr. Howard said that the Mets first sponsored an international week but “found we couldn’t accommodate enough ethnic groups by doing it for a week.” About 12 years ago, they began spreading the ethnic theme dates throughout the season. This year, the Mets have held dates for Haitians, Asians, Israelis, Greeks, Venezuelans, Chinese, Irish, Poles, Italians, Japanese, Scandinavians, Jews, Taiwanese and Filipinos. There was Fiesta Latina Night, sponsored by Budweiser, and a second called Hispanic Heritage Night, sponsored by Goya Foods. A 17th night — for Germans — is scheduled for Friday. The Mets offer the sponsoring organizations discounted group tickets, which allow fans to sit together in the same few sections. Depending on the group, a themed event can strengthen ticket sales, Mr. Howard said. Games with Italian and Jewish themes drew more than 5,000 additional fans, when in 2009, average attendance for the season was almost 39,000 a game, according to the Baseball Almanac Web site. “We’re creating new fans and reaching out to old fans,” Mr. Howard said. “Their heritage is being celebrated, and they’re having a great time.” Japanese Heritage Night on Aug. 27, sponsored by the group Japanese Americans and Japanese in America, included taiko drumming and a folk dance traditionally performed during the Obon festival . Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa, who is of Japanese and Hispanic heritage, sang the national anthem. Jewish Heritage Day on Aug. 29, co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council, featured the singing of “God Bless America” by an a cappella group, Six13 (named after the number of commandments a Jew must observe). Fans who came to Fiesta Latina Night on Aug. 13 got free foam drink holders to keep their beers cold, and they heard Mets players from Venezuela and Puerto Rico recall childhoods in their homelands. Filipino Heritage Night on Sept. 15, which drew 400 Filipinos, according to news reports on Filipino Web sites, featured Filipino rappers, singers and dancers before the game. Meanwhile, at Yankee Stadium, there are no similar events. The Yankees do not hold ethnic theme nights, said Alice McGillion, a team spokeswoman, because “their philosophy is that everyone is welcome to every game.”

New York Mets
Queens (NYC)
Korean-Americans
Jews and Judaism
Hispanic-Americans
Haitian-Americans
Japanese-Americans


In General’s Court-Martial, Selection Begins for a Jury of High-Ranking Peers

Abstract: FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Two dozen United States Army generals converged here this week from their posts around the world, not for high-level discussions on the future of warfare, but to be considered as jurors in the court-martial of one of their peers. The defendant, whose trial is scheduled for September, is Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, who was a deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division when the Army began investigating him amid allegations of sexual misconduct in 2012. The charges stem from General Sinclair’s once-secret romance with a captain that prosecutors say became criminally violent. General Sinclair, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is now facing eight charges, including sodomy and adultery. General Sinclair’s decision to go before a jury will culminate in a rare proceeding for the Army: a court-martial for a general, who, like any other soldier, will be judged by peers who are more senior. That means every court member — the Army’s term for jurors — should be at least a one-star general appointed before December 2010, when General Sinclair’s promotion was confirmed, though there are rare exceptions to the mandate. “Years and years go by without ever seeing a general officer being court-martialed,” said Thomas J. Romig, a former Army judge advocate general and dean of Washburn University School of Law. “It could even be decades.” One general’s court-martial, which included Maj. Gen. Douglas MacArthur as a juror, became the subject of a movie — “ The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell ,” about an early advocate of air power who was convicted of insubordination in 1925 for public remarks critical of the United States’ military preparedness. The process of picking a panel began long before the officers arrived, when Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, who is head of the Army’s Forces Command and who convened the proceedings, selected 26 generals to serve as potential jurors, including a group of alternates. Lt. Col. William Helixon, who is leading the prosecution, said that there are only 230 generals throughout the Army who are eligible for the assignment. This week, 24 of those officers crowded into a courtroom for questioning about their fitness for jury service, answering pointed queries about their willingness to judge General Sinclair as they would a corporal and whether family members had been victims of sexual assault. Despite General Allyn’s efforts to pick a suitable pool, the challenge of empaneling a jury from the tight-knit community of leaders quickly became apparent. Image Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair with Afghan villagers in November 2011. He is accused of sexual misconduct. Credit Sgt. Amanda Hils, via DVIDS On the first day of the selection proceedings, Col. James L. Pohl, the judge in the case, asked how many of the officers were acquainted with General Sinclair. Five raised their hands. “We moved in the same circles when we were younger officers,” Maj. Gen. Michael X. Garrett said later. “Professionally, I’ve known him for my whole career.” More pervasive conflicts emerged when every prospective juror acknowledged ties to at least one potential witness. Many also said they held generals to greater standards than lower-ranking soldiers. “We’re expected to properly represent our service,” said Lt. Gen. Mark S. Bowman, a member of the Joint Staff who has been in the Army for 35 years. “Whenever we do something, it is pretty public.” Richard D. Rosen, a former Army lawyer who now directs the Center for Military Law and Policy at the Texas Tech School of Law, predicted that the generals would be able to set aside their personal opinions. “They really will deliberate,” said Mr. Rosen, who added that he never encountered a general as a juror when he was a military lawyer. “You’re going to get a very mature panel in terms of experience, age and everything else, and they’re going to be quite independent in their deliberations.” With the military under pressure from Capitol Hill to reduce the number of sexual assaults in its ranks, Congressional debates — and their possible consequences for the generals — also seeped into the courtroom. Because the Senate must approve high-level military promotions, lawyers repeatedly asked the officers whether they feared that serving on the jury could adversely affect their opportunities for advancement, especially if the panel acquits General Sinclair. Although all the generals pledged to return an appropriate verdict without regard for their career prospects, one who has clashed with senators, Maj. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo III, worried openly that his participation could further strain the Army’s image with policy makers. “I worry about the baggage I bring,” said General Cucolo, who was sharply criticized for personnel policies he implemented while leading troops in Iraq. “Since my judgment is being questioned by those outside the Army in influential locations, perhaps my name should not be associated with this case.” Colonel Pohl ultimately dismissed the first batch of 12 prospective jurors, and on Thursday, lawyers began working through the alternates. The jury, which must have at least five members, could eventually include senior officers from other branches of the armed services.

US Army
Jeffrey A Sinclair
Court-martial
Rape
Jury
US Politics
West Point
US Military


Democracy Advocate Wins in Hong Kong

Abstract: HONG KONG , Monday, Dec. 3 — A victory on Sunday by a popular figurehead of the democracy movement in an election for a legislative seat here has given fresh momentum to demands for the early introduction of promised democratic reforms. In one of the most fiercely contested and symbolic elections since China assumed control of Hong Kong a decade ago, the democracy advocate, Anson Chan, a 67-year-old former leader of the civil service, won a decisive victory on a platform that called for full democratic rights to be granted to voters of Hong Kong within five years. Mrs. Chan, whose service as chief secretary straddled the last years of British rule and the early years of Chinese rule, won 54.6 percent of the vote, or 175,874 of the 321,938 ballots cast, according to official results announced early Monday. Her main rival, Regina Ip, 57, who oversaw an attempt to introduce a deeply unpopular anti-subversion law as security secretary of Hong Kong in 2003, won 137,550, or 42.7 percent, of the vote. Although both candidates contested the election as independents, Mrs. Chan was supported by a coalition of democratic parties. Mrs. Ip was supported by pro-Beijing parties. “The result of this election indicates that Hong Kong people are anxious to put forward democracy,” Mrs. Chan said after her victory was announced, The Associated Press reported Monday. “We think we’re all ready to implement universal suffrage in 2012.” She said she expected that the governments in Hong Kong and Beijing “would listen to the genuine voice of Hong Kong people.” The current electoral system in Hong Kong allows voters to directly elect only half the members of a 60-seat legislature; the remainder is elected by limited franchise from special interest groups. The chief executive, Hong Kong’s leader, is chosen by an electoral college of 800 representatives, most of them loyal to Beijing. In some quarters, the election was billed as a referendum on the nature and timing of democratic reforms long promised to Hong Kong. But analysts say Beijing is in no hurry to see Hong Kong become a model for democracy on Chinese soil and is unlikely to agree to significant reforms by 2012, when elections are due for the chief executive. With democratic reform emerging as the central issue of Sunday’s election, the campaign generated more political emotion than Hong Kong has seen in a long time. Scuffles broke out at several political rallies during the campaign, on one occasion leading to the arrest of a young supporter of Mrs. Ip. Election day, however, was peaceful, the electoral office said. The results are a fillip to the democratic cause as the Hong Kong government prepares a proposal on democratic reform that it will put to the Legislative Council and the central government in Beijing for approval next year. Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, China is obliged to introduce democracy, but the document is vague on when and how that should happen. Democrats and pro-Beijing conservatives are deeply divided over several issues, including how soon democratic reforms should be introduced and the rules for screening candidates for chief executive elections, which is a stipulation of the Basic Law. Mrs. Chan championed a liberal model for reform that would allow an open field for chief executive elections and a fully elected legislature by 2012. Michael E. DeGolyer, a political scientist who has observed elections in Hong Kong since 1988, said the democratic reform model to be proposed next year by the chief executive, Donald Tsang, could be influenced by the outcome of the election. But he said the total votes received by Mrs. Chan might have fallen just short of what Mr. Tsang viewed as a decisive endorsement of her model. “If 60 percent of the people agreed on a certain model, that would influence what he takes to Beijing,” Mr. DeGolyer said. During the election campaign, Mrs. Ip argued that Beijing would not allow Hong Kong to move too far or too fast with democratic reform. She advocated a more modest package of democratic reforms and supported 2017 as a possible alternative date for free elections. “Unless we come together, Hong Kong’s dream of democracy will forever remain beyond our reach,” she said in a campaign speech to foreign correspondents.

Hong Kong
Chan Anson
Elections
Voter Registration and Requirements
Constitutions


4 Brooklyn Neighborhoods Lose Power

Abstract: At 4:05 p.m. on Sunday, the National Weather Service extended a heat advisory for New York City, telling residents to avoid sun exposure, drink plenty of fluids and stay in air-conditioned rooms. By then, police officers with bullhorns had been walking around for hours in four southwestern Brooklyn neighborhoods, asking people to turn off their appliances — air-conditioners included — or risk losing whatever power the area had left. Early on Sunday, 4 of the 12 big feeders that provide electricity to Park Slope, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge and Borough Park malfunctioned, at one point leaving roughly 2,000 homes and businesses in the dark. Overheating or overloading of the underground electrical system that services the area was the likely cause of the failure, a spokesman for Con Edison said. “It was like an oven in my bedroom,” griped Noelila Rodriguez, 36, who said she lost power overnight and again in the afternoon at her home in Sunset Park. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was like I was taking in steam.” The feeders were fixed by midafternoon, and power was restored to all but about 15 residential and commercial customers, the spokesman, Michael S. Clendenin, said. He said some of those buildings were expected to remain without power until early Monday. Crews were still working to replace distribution lines that were damaged when the feeders gave out, he said. Even where the power stayed on, television sets flickered, washing machines halted midcycle and fan blades turned at lower-than-usual speeds all day as Con Ed reduced voltage in the area by 8 percent to prevent the power failure from spreading and to allow its workers to make the repairs. Thousands of people who live and work in the affected areas received phone calls from Con Ed on Sunday morning, asking them to conserve electricity. The utility suspended that request by evening. There were scattered power failures elsewhere in the city on Sunday, but “nothing out of the ordinary” after four straight days of boiling-hot weather, Mr. Clendenin said. “The heat wave is the cause, especially after several days of baking.” To withstand the oppressive temperature and humidity, Raymond Torrens, 39, of Sunset Park, said he went for a long drive, blasting the air-conditioner in his car. Others, like Rosalind Vasques, 42, who lives in Bay Ridge, headed to a coffee shop. Zak Kneider, also from Bay Ridge, took his daughters to the mall. Jessica Ferree, 29, of Sunset Park, said she spent Saturday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. But on Sunday, she had other plans. “I’m leaving now for the beach,” Ms. Ferree said as she walked out of her home. “And I’ll absolutely be swimming.” The heat advisory was to remain in effect until 6 p.m. Monday, with a weak cold front expected to stall over the region.

Blackouts and Brownouts (Electrical)
Brooklyn (NYC)
Electric Light and Power
Weather
Consolidated Edison Inc


Facing 76ers, Knicks Earn a Win. Someone Had To.

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — What happens when an anemic force meets an infirm object? That premise was tested on Wednesday when the Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers, who had combined for 14 wins, met at Wells Fargo Center. At best, the game had a perverse appeal: What sort of absurdity might materialize on the court? Who would win? Did either organization even want to win? In the end, the Knicks, whether they liked it or not, took home the victory, 98-91. With such doubts, the game brought into question the nature of its own existence. The Knicks improved their record to 7-36 and their winning percentage to .163, still the lowest in the N.B.A. Just a shade better were the Minnesota Timberwolves (7-34), who finished the day at .171. The 76ers (8-34) were third worst, at .190. The numbers, while comical, carry serious and potentially beneficial implications: The team that finishes with the league’s worst record has a 25 percent chance of winning the top pick in the draft lottery. “I hear it, but I don’t listen to it,” Carmelo Anthony (27 points, 11 rebounds) said of the persistent debate over the benefits of losing. “Tonight the message was not to play the record on either side.” Anthony insisted that a team would never consciously try to lose. Still, both organizations have acknowledged that their visions, as far as employing competitive rosters, lie beyond this season. Interestingly, though the two organizations have had comparably poor seasons, they have walked differing routes to their current incompetence. The 76ers’ ineptitude, on one hand, has been finely cultivated on the cheap. They finished 19-63 a season ago, producing one of the ugliest 82-game runs in recent memory. By design, it has been more of the same this season, providing hope that they can continue to stockpile young talent. The Knicks seemed to begin earnestly carrying out a rebuilding plan — and truly adopting the language of a rebuilding team — only when they traded a pair of key rotation players, Iman Shumpert and J. R. Smith , to the Cleveland Cavaliers this month. The Knicks’ positioning for the lottery was not intentional, but now they threaten to undermine all of the 76ers’ hard work and planning. The Knicks, despite their struggles, have continued to draw sellout crowds to Madison Square Garden. But at Wells Fargo Center, the teams played before half-empty stands. The atmosphere had a shoddy charm. High above one sideline, the first four letters on a gigantic sign that was supposed to read “Welcome to Comcast Country” were malfunctioning, rendering it nonsense. All game long, the teams wallowed in their inelegance. In the first quarter, an errant Knicks pass went flying into the fifth row of the stands, nearly knocking a tray of food and drinks out of the hands of a server, who exhaled with relief as she walked back down the aisle. In the fourth, Amar’e Stoudemire and Tim Hardaway Jr. ran into each other on defense and fell down, opening the lane for Michael Carter-Williams (27 points, 7 assists) to dunk. With under a minute to go, the 76ers had the ball and trailed by 4 points, but Robert Covington dribbled down the court and inexplicably committed an out-of-control turnover. On the other end, Langston Galloway saved a broken possession with a wild 3-pointer as the shot clock expired, helping to secure the victory. “It’s a work in progress, but I think we’re getting better day by day,” Jason Smith said. The win was no great achievement. Their dearth of talent aside, the 76ers were extremely short-handed. Tony Wroten, the team’s leading scorer, missed his fifth straight game and was headed to California to see a specialist about a right knee injury. Nerlens Noel, the 76ers’ best rebounder, was ill. Luc Mbah a Moute was ruled out just before the game with a left knee contusion. Brett Brown, the 76ers’ coach, gave Furkan Aldemir, a 23-year-old forward from Turkey, his first N.B.A. start, saying he created a favorable matchup against the Knicks. Brown described Aldemir as having a “C-minus” body. It was a typically honest and colorful assessment from Brown, who has earned admiration around the league for the energy and enthusiasm with which he has approached his suboptimal situation. Before the game, Knicks Coach Derek Fisher voiced his own praise of Brown, appearing to view him as something of a kindred spirit. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for who he is — not just what he’s trying to do with this team, but just the way he approaches his job and the passion he has for the game,” Fisher said of Brown. “He appears, to me at least, to be a teacher, and he enjoys coaching, and that’s something I’m trying to learn here in my first year.” Both men have endured a difficult season, and on Wednesday, their paths collided — or at least clumsily intersected. REBOUNDS The Knicks on Wednesday afternoon were hidden from yet another national television audience, as the N.B.A. announced that the team’s Feb. 1 game against the Lakers would no longer be broadcast on ESPN. The only remaining nationally televised Knicks game, as of Wednesday, is a March 12 meeting with the Lakers on TNT.

Basketball
Brett Brown
Derek Fisher
Knicks
76ers


Son May Challenge Father for Westchester County Executive

Abstract: MAMARONECK, N.Y. — In Westchester County, where the Spano name has dominated politics on both sides of the aisle for a generation, voters are used to seeing double, even triple, on ballots. There is the affable three-term county executive, Andrew J. Spano , a Democrat from northern Westchester. Then there are the Republican Spanos of Yonkers — a father and two sons who had held state and county positions — who are no relation. One of the sons in that family, Assemblyman Mike Spano, ratcheted up the confusion in 2007 when he turned Democrat. But voters will face a bigger challenge this November: Two Spanos are planning to run for county executive — and they are father and son. David Spano, one of Andrew Spano ’s four adult children, is collecting signatures for a spot on a third-party line, tentatively called Abolish County Government. Mr. Spano, 49, a former auto mechanic and car salesman, has joined a small but noisy movement taking aim at county government as a symbol of waste and rising property taxes. “For me, it’s about predatory government,” he said at a diner here. “We want their hands out of our pockets.” While the two men are estranged, David Spano insists his planned run is not personal. “My father is somebody that I love, and I wouldn’t want to see him hurt for even a moment,” he said, but added, “I’m getting sick of paying for his wheels and tires on his Lincoln Town Car and his office staff and their cabinets and air-conditioning and laptops.” For his part, the 73-year-old county executive has chosen not to personally address the challenge by his son. But Andrew Spano’s campaign manager, Paul Bader, called the planned run a “very uncomfortable” situation. “He hasn’t been the easiest person to deal with for a number of years,” he said of David Spano. For political observers, the expected challenge — first hinted at in the spring when David Spano appeared in a commercial for an tax protest rally — seems like an impending train wreck. “I think a contretemps in the public arena between a father and son is unfortunate and unseemly,” said William O’Shaughnessy , a self-described Rockefeller Republican and president of Whitney Media, which owns the Westchester radio stations WVOX and WVIP . “In some ways it’s almost biblical.” David Spano, who plays French horn and has a blues band, collects unemployment benefits and suffers from carpal tunnel syndrome. He said he had considered running for county executive for a number of years. But the idea crystallized, he said, after he met Sam Zherka, a strip-club owner and provocative publisher of a weekly newspaper called The Westchester Guardian , which castigates Republicans and Democrats alike. Mr. Zherka , a local leader in the fight against county government, has made millions in real estate and is backing David Spano’s bid. Some supporters of the county executive say they believe Mr. Zherka, long a critic of Andrew Spano, is simply using his son to embarrass him. “People just think that it’s unfortunate that maybe the son would be taken advantage of,” said William J. Ryan, chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators. Susan Tolchin, the deputy county executive, agreed, saying Mr. Zherka’s support of David Spano was part of a history of creating public spectacles at the expense of elected officials. Last year, for instance, Mr. Zherka offered a $100,000 reward for any information about the Westchester County district attorney, Janet DiFiore, that would lead to her conviction of any crime. “Zherka is a showman — it’s theater of the absurd,” Ms. Tolchin said. “I was at his Abolish County Government rally , and he called everyone a moron. The governor was a moron. Every politician was a moron.” She added, “This is the thug who’s exploiting David, and it’s really a pathetic situation.” In a phone interview, Mr. Zherka denied those claims, saying of David Spano, “He’s a mindful, educated 50-year-old man with his own opinions, and he came to me.” Commenters on local Web sites have speculated that David Spano has psychological troubles, while individuals close to the county executive have spoken privately about a possible history of substance abuse. But David Spano strongly denied those assertions, saying his drug use was confined to smoking some marijuana in high school. “That’s the mud that people sling,” he said, “and it means I’m affecting them.” As to suggestions that Mr. Zherka is using him, David Spano said: “I know he’s using me. I told him to use me. He helped me put the pieces of the puzzle together to become a more complete guy.” The father-son relationship deteriorated a year ago, David Spano said, after the death of his mother, whom Andrew Spano had divorced some 35 years before. But Mr. Spano said his motivation to run sprang from a dissatisfaction with government. He complained about the condition of county roads, saying they were “the worst in the nation,” and criticized what he called the high salaries and perks enjoyed by his father and his commissioners. “It’s ironic that my father is the guy I’m trying to get out,” he said. “My ultimate goal is to be the last county executive.” Paul Feiner , the longtime supervisor of Greenburgh, has a similar interest in eliminating the county government. Mr. Feiner, who helped create the civic group Rethinking Westchester Government , pointed out that Connecticut had no county government and that Massachusetts gave counties the option to abolish themselves. Still, he said, he was not sure David Spano was ready for the top county post. “Everybody has a right to run, but I think that you have a $1.8 billion county budget, and it’s going to be a difficult job even dissolving the county government,” Mr. Feiner said. “I think it’s a little premature for him to run for that.” Some say the whole debate is moot. County taxes represent less than 20 percent of a homeowner’s property taxes, while school taxes are more than half. Moreover, there is no mechanism for dissolving county government in New York, said Lester D. Steinman , director of the Edwin G. Michaelian Municipal Law Resource Center at Pace University. “With all due respect to those who are raising the issue, I don’t believe there’s any substantial fuel behind the so-called movement,” he said. But David Spano, whose voice gets louder the longer he talks, is undeterred. “There’s a big fire in my belly,” he said. “I am 20 years ahead of most politicians. The world is really not ready for me, but the world is going to get me.”

Politics and Government
Spano Andrew J
Feiner Paul
Zherka Sam
Spano David


Association of Southeast Asian Nations Points to Freer Trade

Abstract: CHA-AM, Thailand — After a year of uncertain economic prospects, Asia’s leaders expressed cautious optimism at a weekend meeting here as they returned to the business of increasing trade within the region, lowering tariffs and discussing plans for a wider Asian free-trade zone. “Recovery has taken hold in Asia,” Kasit Piromya, the Thai foreign minister, said Saturday in a news conference summarizing the findings of a summit of the 10 leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations , or Asean, as well as China , Japan and South Korea . The gathering at this beachside town south of Bangkok also included meetings with leaders from Australia, India and New Zealand on Sunday. Leaders focused in large part on the nuts and bolts of expanding trade, especially one of the crucial impediments to regional commerce: the lack of good transportation in the less-developed parts of the region. The gathering appeared to serve as a coda to the economic crisis in Asia, during which many trade-dependent Asian economies suffered sharp contractions. Asia now appears to be bouncing back rapidly, especially when compared with the United States and Europe. “There’s greater self-confidence,” said Rodolfo C. Severino, head of the Asean Studies Center and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “The financial systems have weathered the crisis quite well because their conservatism shielded them.” The Thai prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, said a major concern raised by leaders Sunday was finding new avenues for economic growth that were not dependent on the markets of the United States and Europe. “The old growth model where, simply put, we have still to rely on consumption in the West for goods and services produced here, we feel will no longer serve us,” he said. A statement issued after the final meetings Sunday said the leaders were “encouraged that the global economy had shown signs of recovery” but urged governments to remain vigilant. Leaders discussed many other issues here, including climate change and the formation of a human rights commission in Southeast Asia. But there were also reminders of the tensions accompanying Asia’s economic rise, especially jockeying by Japan and China for the top leadership role in the region. The Japanese and Chinese governments have competing proposals to finance infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia, and the two nations appeared to disagree at the meeting about the future of an East Asian free-trade zone. The Japanese delegation stressed the importance of the involvement of the United States, perhaps in part to appease concerns in Washington over possible shifts in Tokyo toward a more Asia-centered Japanese foreign policy. “Japan places the U.S.-Japan alliance at the foundation of its diplomacy,” Yukio Hatoyama, the Japanese prime minister, told the leaders at the summit meeting, according to a Japanese government spokesman. There are several proposals for a future East Asian free-trade zone — the Japanese version is called the East Asian Community — but all are vague, and leaders say they are a long way from reality. The proposals are often compared to a European Union-style single market, but analysts say a pan-Asian economic bloc would be unlikely to have open borders, free movement of labor and common security policies. China did not publicly offer its vision of an East Asian community, but a statement issued after a meeting of what is known as Asean plus three — the leaders of Asean, China, Japan and South Korea — said those 13 countries would form the “main vehicle toward the long-term goal of building an East Asian Community.” That would seem to exclude a role for the United States. Asean leaders said they “commended” and supported China’s efforts to expand the use of its currency, the renminbi, instead of the dollar in some regional trade transactions. And the leaders said they “welcomed” China’s initiatives to build roads in south-central Myanmar and western Cambodia and its financing of a bridge over the Mekong River between Laos and the Thai town of Chiang Khong. China told Asean leaders that they were eligible for a $15 billion Southeast Asian infrastructure loan program sponsored by the Chinese government. During the summit meeting, Mr. Abhisit was asked if Southeast Asian countries risked being caught between competing superpowers. “I see it as Asean providing balance,” he said. The leaders said they were “well on track” for the Asean free-trade area by January. The agreement, long in the making, eliminates tariffs for 87 percent of imports within Asean countries. Asean’s 10 member countries are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

International Trade and World Market
Summit Conferences
Assn of Southeast Asian Nations
China
Japan
South Korea
Economic Conditions and Trends
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Exports From China Slow as Imports Shrink

Abstract: HONG KONG — Exports from China inched up in August and imports shrank unexpectedly, data released Monday showed, cementing the view that the Chinese economy has slowed abruptly in recent months despite a string of government measures devised to bolster it. The data, released by the Chinese customs agency, capped a series of feeble statistics for August and fanned expectations that the government would speed up the flow and range of stimulus measures. Growth in exports, which represent about 25 percent of the Chinese economy and account for millions of jobs, slowed sharply in recent months because of weaker economic growth and austerity measures in Europe. Exports were up 2.7 percent from the level of a year earlier. Although that increase was better than the 1 percent growth recorded in July, it fell short of analysts’ expectations and was well below the double-digit growth rates that the export sector has managed in the past. Given the lingering turmoil in Europe and the anemic pace of recovery in the United States, there is little prospect that exports will rebound anytime soon. An unexpectedly sharp slump in imports to China showed that domestic demand, too, had weakened. Imports fell 2.6 percent in August from a year earlier; analysts had expected, on average, a gain of 3.5 percent. “Demand for the hard commodities, such as iron ore and coal , is likely to remain soft for a while, given a large amount of port inventories,” Liu Li-gang, chief economist for China at Australia and New Zealand Banking, said in a note. The government has moved to counter the slowdown by approving more infrastructure investment and trying to get banks to increase lending. The measures have come in dribs and drabs, however, and judging from the weak data, they have failed so far to provide the punch needed for a marked increase. “We believe government policy will become more proactive, and further supportive policies will be rolled out in September,” Zhiwei Zhang, China economist at Nomura in Hong Kong, said in a research note. Further stimulus measures are likely to take the form of tax rebates for exporters, incentives to encourage consumption, more infrastructure projects and further cuts to the reserve requirement ratio for banks, which would free up more cash for them to extend as loans. Although many economists say they believe that such measures will bolster economic growth later this year, many have cut their forecasts for China. UBS, for example, lowered its forecast for 2012 on Friday to 7.5 percent from a previous projection of 8 percent. Its 2013 forecast was cut to 7.8 percent from 8.3 percent.

China
International Trade and World Market
Economic Conditions and Trends
Inflation (Economics)


A Boost for the Offense, and Team Coffers

Abstract: By 1 a.m. Thursday, after news of their trade for Brett Favre , the Jets were well into launching e-mail messages to thousands of season-ticket holders, telling them that “Favre Is a Jet” and inviting them to spend $79.99 on his No. 4 replica jersey. “I was up and heard the news, and then the Jets sent me their announcement,” said Al Taxerman, a lawyer from Manhattan who is part of a group that shares four season tickets in the upper reaches of Giants Stadium. His e-mail message arrived at 12:52 a.m. “Picture Sept. 14, Jets-Patriots and Favre runs out of the tunnel,” he said. “The place will go berserk.”  Beyond directly sharing the news with their fans, the Jets’ missive implied that with Favre, the capper to their $100 million-plus off-season overhaul, fans should feel mighty bullish about the team and, by extension, the personal seat licenses that will soon go on sale. Favre’s acquisition was intended to reinvigorate the Jets and increase their revenues as they prepare to move, with the Giants, into their jointly financed, $1.6 billion (or more) stadium in two years. And little is more crucial to them than the revenues they will reap from selling seat licenses, those pricey rights that will be required to buy season tickets. The Jets need Favre more than he needs them. He can only add to his multiple N.F.L. passing records however long he plays in East Rutherford, N.J. If he leads the Jets to a Super Bowl victory, it would be his second in 12 years, but their first in a very long 40. If he plays well, Favre will raise the Jets’ profile in a region dominated by the Super Bowl-winning Giants, possibly expand the markets that their Sunday afternoon games will be carried in, thrill sponsors and increase the sale of caps, T-shirts, jerseys and beer. His presence cannot hurt selling personal seat licenses. Favre’s indecision about his retirement, and his demands to play for Chicago or Minnesota, obviate cynical speculation that the Jets had a plan for him to return the team to glory and be their chief P.S.L. spokesman. But it is certainly a lovely coincidence that he arrived in time to distract from the certain discontent and anguish about the Jets’ misplaced loyalty that will attend their personal seat licenses plan. So will the Jets be happy if their fans — happy to see Favre playing and expecting better times ahead — buy licenses with less trepidation than if Chad Pennington were still under center? Certainly. Fans should feel like they have received unexpected bonuses on their 2008 season tickets. But it’s a mixed blessing, coming so soon before they will be required to commit to spending thousands extra ($1,000 to $20,000 each if the Jets charge what the Giants are charging) to relocate to the new stadium — or stay home. “This gets me more excited for this season, but I don’t think it’ll change my mind about the big purchase,” said Jon Butters, a psychologist in Carmel, N.Y., who has two third-row, end-zone seats that will cost him $5,000 each if the Jets adopt the same seat license pricing as the Giants. “I’m assuming that Favre might make it easier to sell licenses a little bit, and if I want to resell my season tickets this year.” Whatever excitement Favre’s acquisition produces, there is no guarantee he will play past this season or will ever see the inside of the new Jets/Giants stadium — except perhaps to announce his (final?) retirement. His status, at nearly age 39, is much different than it was in 2000, when he was in his heyday and the Packers were campaigning for a countywide sales tax increase to finance Lambeau Field’s renovation. Favre’s current status is also different from Joe Namath’s when he was summoned to elicit support for the Jets’ failed plan to build a stadium in Manhattan.  So it is comforting to learn from the Jets that Favre will not be used to sell personal seat licenses. His unshaven mug will not be on deluxe brochures or in television, radio and online pitches. Licenses will not, for Favre, be like selling Wrangler jeans. Matthew Higgins, the Jets’ executive vice president of business operations, said: “Brett was brought here to help our team win on the field, period. It’s our job to explain to our fans why the new stadium will transform Sundays at the Meadowlands.” Steve Rosner, a partner at 16W Marketing, whose clients include Phil Simms, Cris Collinsworth and Boomer Esiason, said Jets fans “aren’t naïve enough” to think Favre will be quarterbacking the team in 2010, and will make their decisions accordingly. “But right now, he becomes an integral part of the franchise, and as a member of the team, there’s nothing wrong with using him and other players in photos to sell sponsorships and P.S.L.’s,” Rosner said. “If your team is better on the field and there’s excitement about going to the stadium and buying P.S.L.’s, it’s a franchise situation.”

Favre Brett
New York Jets
Football
Stadiums and Arenas
Trades (Sports)


Coalition Soldier in Afghanistan Dies as Insurgents Stage Rocket Attack

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — A service member with the United States-led coalition in Afghanistan has been killed as a result of an insurgent attack near the large American base at Bagram, the coalition said on Wednesday in a statement. The soldier’s name and nationality were not released. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place Tuesday night. Insurgents fired at least one rocket at the base, and coalition soldiers began patrolling the surrounding area in search of launch sites, according to the Afghan police chief for the Bagram area, Col. Masoom Khan. That patrol soon came under attack, the colonel said. He said he did not know whether the service member who died had been killed by a rocket or in the attack on the patrol. Officials said in June that Bagram Air Base, which is about 30 miles north of Kabul, the capital, had been coming under an increasing number of rocket attacks. One such attack killed a civilian employee of the Defense Department that month. Separately, an American soldier, Specialist Kyle E. Gilbert, 24, died at Bagram on Monday in “a noncombat-related incident,” according to a statement from the coalition. It said the circumstances of his death were under investigation. Despite the winding down of the American role in the war, more than 17,000 coalition soldiers remain in Afghanistan, more than half of whom are American.

Kyle E Gilbert
Afghanistan War
Bagram Air Base Afghanistan
Military Bases
Taliban
Fatalities,casualties
Afghanistan


New Trial Likely for Man Convicted of Intern’s Death

Abstract: A man serving 60 years for killing the Washington intern Chandra Levy is expected to get a new trial after government lawyers on Friday withdrew their opposition to one. Lawyers for the man, Ingmar Guandique, had sought a retrial because they said a key witness in the case, his onetime cellmate, gave false or misleading testimony during his 2010 trial. “The government’s case against Ingmar Guandique was based on a lie,” his lawyer Jon Anderson said. The disappearance of Ms. Levy, 24, of Modesto, Calif., created a national sensation in 2001 after she was romantically linked with a congressman, Gary Condit, a California Democrat, who was ultimately ruled out as a suspect. Her remains were found in Rock Creek Park in 2002.

Murders and Homicides
Ingmar Guandique
Chandra Ann Levy
Judiciary
Washington DC


Clues Gradually Led to the Location of Osama bin Laden

Abstract: WASHINGTON — For years, the agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan , and wrote down the car’s license plate. The man in the car was Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, and over the next month C.I.A. operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet 35 miles from the Pakistani capital. On a moonless night eight months later, 79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on the compound, the officials said. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and would not take off. Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation. Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy Seals snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial recognition program. And just like that, history’s most expansive, expensive and exasperating manhunt was over. The inert frame of Osama bin Laden, America’s enemy No. 1, was placed in a helicopter for burial at sea, never to be seen or feared again. A nation that spent a decade tormented by its failure to catch the man responsible for nearly 3,000 fiery deaths in New York, outside Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, at long last had its sense of finality, at least in this one difficult chapter. For an intelligence community that had endured searing criticism for a string of intelligence failures over the past decade, Bin Laden’s killing brought a measure of redemption. For a military that has slogged through two, and now three vexing wars in Muslim countries, it provided an unalloyed success. And for a president whose national security leadership has come under question, it proved an affirming moment that will enter the history books. The raid was the culmination of years of painstaking intelligence work, including the interrogation of C.I.A. detainees in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, where sometimes what was not said was as useful as what was. Intelligence agencies eavesdropped on telephone calls and e-mails of the courier’s Arab family in a Persian Gulf state and pored over satellite images of the compound in Abbottabad to determine a “pattern of life” that might decide whether the operation would be worth the risk. As more than a dozen White House, intelligence and Pentagon officials described the operation on Monday, the past few weeks were a nerve-racking amalgamation of what-ifs and negative scenarios. “There wasn’t a meeting when someone didn’t mention ‘Black Hawk Down,’ ” a senior administration official said, referring to the disastrous 1993 battle in Somalia in which two American helicopters were shot down and some of their crew killed in action. The failed mission to rescue hostages in Iran in 1980 also loomed large. Administration officials split over whether to launch the operation, whether to wait and continue monitoring until they were more sure that Bin Laden was really there, or whether to go for a less risky bombing assault. In the end, President Obama opted against a bombing that could do so much damage it might be uncertain whether Bin Laden was really hit and chose to send in commandos. A “fight your way out” option was built into the plan, with two helicopters following the two main assault copters as backup in case of trouble. On Sunday afternoon, as the helicopters raced over Pakistani territory, the president and his advisers gathered in the Situation Room of the White House to monitor the operation as it unfolded. Much of the time was spent in silence. Mr. Obama looked “stone faced,” one aide said. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. fingered his rosary beads. “The minutes passed like days,” recalled John O. Brennan , the White House counterterrorism chief. The code name for Bin Laden was “ Geronimo .” The president and his advisers watched Leon E. Panetta , the C.I.A. director, on a video screen, narrating from his agency’s headquarters across the Potomac River what was happening in faraway Pakistan. “They’ve reached the target,” he said. Minutes passed. “We have a visual on Geronimo,” he said. A few minutes later: “Geronimo EKIA.” Enemy Killed In Action. There was silence in the Situation Room. Finally, the president spoke up. “We got him.” Filling in the Gaps Years before the Sept. 11 attacks transformed Bin Laden into the world’s most feared terrorist, the C.I.A. had begun compiling a detailed dossier about the major players inside his global terror network. It wasn’t until after 2002, when the agency began rounding up Qaeda operatives — and subjecting them to hours of brutal interrogation sessions in secret overseas prisons — that they finally began filling in the gaps about the foot soldiers, couriers and money men Bin Laden relied on. Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ; and Al Qaeda ’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure. As the hunt for Bin Laden continued, the spy agency was being buffeted on other fronts: the botched intelligence assessments about weapons of mass destruction leading up to the Iraq War, and the intense criticism for using waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods that critics said amounted to torture. By 2005, many inside the C.I.A. had reached the conclusion that the Bin Laden hunt had grown cold, and the agency’s top clandestine officer ordered an overhaul of the agency’s counterterrorism operations. The result was Operation Cannonball, a bureaucratic reshuffling that placed more C.I.A. case officers on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan . With more agents in the field, the C.I.A. finally got the courier’s family name. With that, they turned to one of their greatest investigative tools — the National Security Agency began intercepting telephone calls and e-mail messages between the man’s family and anyone inside Pakistan. From there they got his full name. Last July, Pakistani agents working for the C.I.A. spotted him driving his vehicle near Peshawar. When, after weeks of surveillance, he drove to the sprawling compound in Abbottabad, American intelligence operatives felt they were onto something big, perhaps even Bin Laden himself. It was hardly the spartan cave in the mountains that many had envisioned as his hiding place. Rather, it was a three-story house ringed by 12-foot-high concrete walls, topped with barbed wire and protected by two security fences. He was, said Mr. Brennan, the White House official, “hiding in plain sight.” Back in Washington, Mr. Panetta met with Mr. Obama and his most senior national security aides, including Mr. Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates . The meeting was considered so secret that White House officials didn’t even list the topic in their alerts to each other. That day, Mr. Panetta spoke at length about Bin Laden and his presumed hiding place. “It was electric,” an administration official who attended the meeting said. “For so long, we’d been trying to get a handle on this guy. And all of a sudden, it was like, wow, there he is.” There was guesswork about whether Bin Laden was indeed inside the house. What followed was weeks of tense meetings between Mr. Panetta and his subordinates about what to do next. While Mr. Panetta advocated an aggressive strategy to confirm Bin Laden’s presence, some C.I.A. clandestine officers worried that the most promising lead in years might be blown if bodyguards suspected the compound was being watched and spirited the Qaeda leader out of the area. For weeks last fall, spy satellites took detailed photographs, and the N.S.A. worked to scoop up any communications coming from the house. It wasn’t easy: the compound had neither a phone line nor Internet access. Those inside were so concerned about security that they burned their trash rather than put it on the street for collection. In February, Mr. Panetta called Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command , to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., to give him details about the compound and to begin planning a military strike. Admiral McRaven, a veteran of the covert world who had written a book on American Special Operations, spent weeks working with the C.I.A. on the operation, and came up with three options: a helicopter assault using American commandos, a strike with B-2 bombers that would obliterate the compound, or a joint raid with Pakistani intelligence operatives who would be told about the mission hours before the launch. Weighing the Options On March 14, Mr. Panetta took the options to the White House. C.I.A. officials had been taking satellite photos, establishing what Mr. Panetta described as the habits of people living at the compound. By now evidence was mounting that Bin Laden was there. The discussions about what to do took place as American relations with Pakistan were severely strained over the arrest of Raymond A. Davis, the C.I.A. contractor imprisoned for shooting two Pakistanis on a crowded street in Lahore in January. Some of Mr. Obama’s top aides worried that any military assault to capture or kill Bin Laden might provoke an angry response from Pakistan’s government, and that Mr. Davis could end up dead in his jail cell. Mr. Davis was ultimately released on March 16, giving a freer hand to his colleagues. On March 22, the president asked his advisers their opinions on the options. Mr. Gates was skeptical about a helicopter assault, calling it risky, and instructed military officials to look into aerial bombardment using smart bombs. But a few days later, the officials returned with the news that it would take some 32 bombs of 2,000 pounds each. And how could the American officials be certain that they had killed Bin Laden? “It would have created a giant crater, and it wouldn’t have given us a body,” said one American intelligence official. A helicopter assault emerged as the favored option. The Navy Seals team that would hit the ground began holding dry runs at training facilities on both American coasts, which were made up to resemble the compound. But they were not told who their target might be until later. Last Thursday, the day after the president released his long-form birth certificate — such “silliness,” he told reporters, was distracting the country from more important things — Mr. Obama met again with his top national security officials. Mr. Panetta told the group that the C.I.A. had “red-teamed” the case — shared their intelligence with other analysts who weren’t involved to see if they agreed that Bin Laden was probably in Abbottabad. They did. It was time to decide. Around the table, the group went over and over the negative scenarios. There were long periods of silence, one aide said. And then, finally, Mr. Obama spoke: “I’m not going to tell you what my decision is now — I’m going to go back and think about it some more.” But he added, “I’m going to make a decision soon.” Sixteen hours later, he had made up his mind. Early the next morning, four top aides were summoned to the White House Diplomatic Room. Before they could brief the president, he cut them off. “It’s a go,” he said. The earliest the operation could take place was Saturday, but officials cautioned that cloud cover in the area meant that Sunday was much more likely. The next day, Mr. Obama took a break from rehearsing for the White House Correspondents Dinner that night to call Admiral McRaven, to wish him luck. On Sunday, White House officials canceled all West Wing tours so unsuspecting tourists and visiting celebrities wouldn’t accidentally run into all the high-level national security officials holed up in the Situation Room all afternoon monitoring the feeds they were getting from Mr. Panetta. A staffer went to Costco and came back with a mix of provisions — turkey pita wraps, cold shrimp, potato chips, soda. At 2:05 p.m., Mr. Panetta sketched out the operation to the group for a final time. Within an hour, the C.I.A. director began his narration, via video from Langley. “They’ve crossed into Pakistan,” he said. Across the Border The commando team had raced into the Pakistani night from a base in Jalalabad, just across the border in Afghanistan. The goal was to get in and get out before Pakistani authorities detected the breach of their territory by what were to them unknown forces and reacted with possibly violent results. In Pakistan, it was just past midnight on Monday morning, and the Americans were counting on the element of surprise. As the first of the helicopters swooped in at low altitudes, neighbors heard a loud blast and gunshots. A woman who lives two miles away said she thought it was a terrorist attack on a Pakistani military installation. Her husband said no one had any clue Bin Laden was hiding in the quiet, affluent area. “It’s the closest you can be to Britain ,” he said of their neighborhood. The Seal team stormed into the compound — the raid awakened the group inside, one American intelligence official said — and a firefight broke out. One man held an unidentified woman living there as a shield while firing at the Americans. Both were killed. Two more men died as well, and two women were wounded. American authorities later determined that one of the slain men was Bin Laden’s son, Hamza, and the other two were the courier and his brother. The commandos found Bin Laden on the third floor, wearing the local loose-fitting tunic and pants known as a shalwar kameez, and officials said he resisted before he was shot above the left eye near the end of the 40-minute raid. The American government gave few details about his final moments. “Whether or not he got off any rounds, I frankly don’t know,” said Mr. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief. But a senior Pentagon official, briefing on the condition of anonymity, said it was clear Bin Laden “was killed by U.S. bullets.” American officials insisted they would have taken Bin Laden into custody if he did not resist, although they considered that likelihood remote. “If we had the opportunity to take Bin Laden alive, if he didn’t present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that,” Mr. Brennan said. One of Bin Laden’s wives identified his body, American officials said. A picture taken by a Seals commando and processed through facial recognition software suggested a 95 percent certainty that it was Bin Laden. Later, DNA tests comparing samples with relatives found a 99.9 percent match. But the Americans faced other problems. One of their helicopters stalled and could not take off. Rather than let it fall into the wrong hands, the commandos moved the women and children to a secure area and blew up the malfunctioning helicopter. By that point, though, the Pakistani military was scrambling forces in response to the incursion into Pakistani territory. “They had no idea about who might have been on there,” Mr. Brennan said. “Thankfully, there was no engagement with Pakistani forces.” As they took off at 1:10 a.m. local time, taking a trove of documents and computer hard drives from the house, the Americans left behind the women and children. A Pakistani official said nine children, from 2 to 12 years old, are now in Pakistani custody. The Obama administration had already determined it would follow Islamic tradition of burial within 24 hours to avoid offending devout Muslims, yet concluded Bin Laden would have to be buried at sea, since no country would be willing to take the body. Moreover, they did not want to create a shrine for his followers. So the Qaeda leader’s body was washed and placed in a white sheet in keeping with tradition. On the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, it was placed in a weighted bag as an officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker, according to the senior Pentagon official. The body then was placed on a prepared flat board and eased into the sea. Only a small group of people watching from one of the large elevator platforms that move aircraft up to the flight deck were witness to the end of America’s most wanted fugitive.

Osama bin Laden
Abu Faraj al- Libi
Abbottabad
US Special Operations Command
US Military
CIA
NSA
Barack Obama
Intelligence agency


Insurgents Seize Much of Key Syrian City

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — A coalition of Islamist insurgents, including a branch of Al Qaeda, seized most of the northern Syrian city of Idlib on Saturday after four days of heavy fighting. It was an unusually dramatic front-line shift in a four-year war that has long appeared to be at a stalemate even as it grows more bloody and complex. If the insurgents cement their hold on Idlib — as they appeared to be doing in videos that showed them in control of government buildings in the city’s center — it would be only the second time during the war that the government has entirely lost control of a provincial capital, after the loss of Raqqa two years ago. The northeastern city of Raqqa was seized by fighters that included members of the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria. It was a victory celebrated at the time even by more moderate opponents of President Bashar al-Assad but it later proved to be disastrous for the opposition. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, soon took over the city and used it as a base to expand its extremist rule. The group not only terrorized many Raqqa residents but dealt a strategic blow to the opposition, as global powers came to see it as a security threat and made stopping it a higher priority than ousting Mr. Assad. So while some Idlib residents celebrated Saturday, cheering as fighters ripped down posters of Mr. Assad or embracing insurgent relatives who returned to the city for the first time in years, others streamed out of the city, with convoys of loaded cars and trucks blocking roads. Syria After Four Years of Mayhem A look at the conflict that has dismembered Syria and inflamed the region with one of the world’s worst religious and sectarian wars. The Syrian American Medical Society estimated that 100,000 more people could be displaced by the fighting in Idlib, which is already crammed with people displaced from elsewhere. Given the dire experience of other cities during the war, there is a formidable list of ways things could go wrong. The government could unleash a new campaign of aerial bombing, the tactic it has used in insurgent-held areas of Aleppo and in the Damascus suburbs. Insurgents could take revenge on pro-government residents. Or Nusra, seeking to compete with the Islamic State, could attempt to declare an emirate, its answer to ISIS’s self-declared caliphate. Nusra and the other groups that participated in the takeover oppose ISIS, but Nusra and others have their own records of extremism and brutality. The operation, which fighters said was planned for months, was directed, they said, by a new organization formed for the battle, called Jaish al-Fatah. Under it were Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, an ultraconservative group, and other Islamist groups. In previous joint operations Nusra, which includes foreign fighters and Syrians, has influence greater than its numbers because it is willing to use suicide bombers. Ahmad Kara Ali, a spokesman for Ahrar Al-Sham, said in an interview that his group would not allow any other group to “monopolize power” in Idlib. “We are counting on the awareness of the Syrians and the rebels not to let any of the parties to repeat the experience of Daesh,” he said. But he acknowledged that the group had no guarantees from Nusra that it would not attempt a takeover, adding: “We have no guarantees from any faction. We don’t eliminate any scenario.” Videos from Idlib after the battle showed men waving the black flag used by Nusra and other jihadist groups. “Crush them, we crush them, the Assad family, we crush them,” a crowd shouted as one man waved a sword. “All the people are happy.”

Syria
Al Nusra Front
Al Qaeda
Terrorism
Bashar al-Assad


Filing Reports With S.E.C. Too Soon Can be Costly

Abstract: The contractors who file earnings reports and other documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission live in fear of pushing the “send” button too soon. These agents, who use an electronic system called Edgar, know that a new S.E.C. filing becomes instantly available online. Timing is a matter of strategy, with companies calibrating their releases to market hours. Deadlines can be missed, deals can fall through and stock prices can plunge unchecked if financial information is disclosed unexpectedly. “It doesn’t happen often,” said Ron Passaro, a former filing agent in Manhattan. “The risk is insane.” He added: “There’s really no way to pull it down once it’s up. You have to go through a lot of hoops and hurdles to pull it down, and by that time the damage is done.” Posted information is quickly replicated by third-party Web sites. Once several Web sites pulled Bill Gates ’s Social Security number from S.E.C. filings and publicized it. On Thursday, Google said its filing agent, R. R. Donnelley & Sons, released its earnings several hours earlier than planned. The company’s stock dropped by nearly 10 percent, and trades were frozen for several hours. Donnelley responded, “We are fully engaged in an investigation to determine how this event took place and are pursuing our first obligation — which is to serve our valued customer.” Thankfully, several filing agents said, such errors are rare — and rarely are newsworthy. “I can’t remember one that’s been apparently as bad as this one,” said Alexander Zervakos, the president of Securex, a Denver-based filing service. Mr. Zervakos said his company had several safeguards against early posting and that employees were trained to look for signs of an unfinished document and personal information, like Social Security numbers or home addresses, that is sometimes inadvertently included. In Google’s case, the document filed said “pending Larry quote,” indicating the place where a quote from the chief executive, Larry Page , was supposed to be inserted. It is not clear how much liability R. R. Donnelley might bear for any losses Google incurred because of the early release of the report. Some have suggested that it will not be much because the earnings reported were accurate. But James Plumb, a longtime filing agent in Massachusetts, said he knew of at least one case in which an agent had to pay for its error, though it was two decades ago. “Could you get sued? Sure,” he said. “The way I look at it, yes, if I make a mistake, I’m responsible.” R. R. Donnelley is the largest filing agent , according to secinfo.com , and has filed more than half a million documents with the S.E.C. over the last decade. It handled the filings for the Facebook initial public offering and files reports for large companies, including General Motors, Toyota and Michael Kors Holdings. But filing documents is a tiny part of Donnelley’s huge printing business — providing about $225 million out of $10.5 billion in revenue, analysts said. The company prints catalogs, mailers, textbooks and magazines, among other items. R. R. Donnelley recently expanded its financial printing operation, acquiring two companies that also specialize in filing, Edgar Online and Bowne.

Computers and the Internet
Computer Security
Company Reports
Initial Public Offerings
Donnelley & Sons
Google Inc
Securities and Exchange Commission
Gates Bill
Page Larry


Lufthansa Pilots Approve Four-Day Strike

Abstract: FRANKFURT — Pilots for Lufthansa, the largest airline in Germany , and two of its subsidiaries voted Wednesday to hold a four-day strike next week, raising the prospect of delays and cancellations for passengers. The Cockpit Association, which represents about 4,500 pilots at Lufthansa and the two subsidiaries, said that 94 percent of members had voted to strike. Work would cease from 12:01 a.m. Monday to midnight Thursday and affect flights by Lufthansa as well as the Lufthansa Cargo unit and the no-frills carrier Germanwings. The airline and the union broke off talks in December after failing to reach agreement on the pilots’ demand that Lufthansa promise not to lay off any cockpit crew members. The pilots said that the airline, which uses Frankfurt International Airport as its main hub, wants to shift passengers to subsidiaries like Austrian Airlines and British Midland, which pay their flight crews less. Jörg Handwerg, a pilot and spokesman for the union, said that the pilots would consider forsaking a pay raise in return for job guarantees. “For us, job security is crucial,” Mr. Handwerg said during an interview by telephone. “We want to keep the jobs in Germany.” Lufthansa said that it was ready to offer assurances on jobs, but that pilots made unacceptable demands. “The union also insisted on a greater say on fundamental entrepreneurial issues, equating to intervention in business management at the airline,” Lufthansa said. “That demand cannot be accepted.” Both sides said they remained willing to bargain. Lufthansa continues to suffer declines in bookings and profit. In the first nine months of 2009 , its last reported period, the company lost 32 million euros ($44 million), in contrast to a net profit of 529 million euros a year earlier. Sales fell 13 percent, to 16.2 billion. A Lufthansa spokeswoman, Claudia Lange, said that it was too early to say how severely the strike would disrupt air traffic. The airline might be able to partly compensate by using partners or other carriers. Passengers will be able to rebook flights without paying a penalty, Ms. Lange said, and will receive full refunds if they choose not to fly during the strike period or if their flights are canceled.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG
Airlines and Airplanes
Germany
Strikes
Pilots


Hawaii: Minimum Wage to Rise

Abstract: Gov. Neil Abercrombie on Friday approved a gradual increase in the state’s minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. The move makes Hawaii the latest in a string of Democratic-dominated states, including California and Maryland, to pass or enact legislation raising the minimum wage to $10 or more, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The new law, approved overwhelmingly by Hawaii lawmakers in April, will raise the state’s base wage in stages to reach $10.10 by January 2018 from a current level of $7.25, which is also the federal minimum.


With Vote Approaching, Third-Party Candidates Face Uphill Climb

Abstract: If third-party candidates have not won the modern American presidency, they have shaped elections in unpredictable ways. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein hold the wild cards this year, but the value of those cards typically diminishes as the election draws closer. The pattern of decline determines whether, and how, they influence the outcome. At the moment, Mr. Johnson, the Libertarian nominee, is drawing around 8 percent in an average of national polls . Ms. Stein, the Green Party nominee, is getting around 3 percent. As expected from a party focused on environmental issues more identified with Democrats than Republicans, Ms. Stein’s support tends to diminish Mrs. Clinton’s effort and help Donald J. Trump. Though the Libertarian ticket includes two former Republican governors — Mr. Johnson of New Mexico and William Weld of Massachusetts — its influence is less clear. Mr. Johnson’s campaign includes support for smaller government and for the legalization of marijuana. He pries away some older voters from Mr. Trump with the former, and some younger ones from Mrs. Clinton with the latter. That is why the pattern of his decline matters. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Sunday , Mr. Johnson fell to 5 percent nationally, from 9 percent in the survey conducted by the news organizations two weeks earlier. Most of the support that Mr. Johnson lost came from Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, and the shift to Mr. Trump helped narrow Mrs. Clinton’s lead to two percentage points from five. To the immense frustration of critics of the two major parties, third-party candidates have failed to significantly influence presidential races. None has captured a single state since the segregationist Alabama governor, George Wallace, running in 1968 as a nominee of the American Independent Party, won five and grabbed 46 electoral votes in the South. Image Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, after she was nominated at the party’s national convention in August. Credit Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times None has drawn as much as 10 percent of the vote since Ross Perot recorded 19 percent in 1992. Despite widespread dissatisfaction with the government in general and the two 2016 nominees in particular, Mr. Johnson has never reached the Perot level in polling. The reasons third-party candidates tend to decline as Election Day approaches remain unclear. Telephone polls in the fall may exaggerate their standing. A study by Joe Lenski, a pollster for Edison Research, found that reading the names of third-party candidates to voters slightly inflates their support by giving respondents an option some did not know they had. The printed ballots voters encounter at the polls, which typically list major party nominees at the top, do not similarly place alternative choices on an equal footing with their major-party rivals. Third-party candidacies are caught in a vicious cycle. Because supporters of alternative candidates tend to feel alienated from the political system, they sometimes end up not voting at all. Because third parties have less money and organization, they struggle to find and motivate voters. The absence of Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stein from the presidential debate on Monday may also depress their support, because their absence signals to voters that they will not be central to the outcome. Mr. Johnson has said that he has no chance to win without participating in the debates, which are restricted to candidates receiving at least 15 percent in an average of major polls. Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stein, who both were nominated by their parties four years ago, drew 3 percent and 2 percent in late-September polling by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal before the 2012 presidential debates. They received 0.99 percent and 0.36 percent of the popular vote on Election Day. Feelings about Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump could break the pattern of declining support. If Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump repel viewers in their debate encounters, Mr. Lenski said, they may wonder, “Is this all we’ve got?” Yet history shows third-party candidates can make a difference by attracting even tiny percentages of the electorate. In 2000, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan ran under the Green Party and Reform Party banners. Together, they drew slightly more than 3 percent of the popular vote. In Florida, their combined percentage was even smaller. But that smaller percentage amounted to 114,000 votes. In the final official tally, George W. Bush won the state by 537 votes. Florida’s 25 electoral votes, in turn, gave him the presidency.

2016 Presidential Election
Third Party Politics
Polls
Gary E Johnson
Jill Stein
Libertarianism
Green Party of the United States


Bobbleheads Remain a Popular Baseball Promotion

Abstract: Are bobbleheads old hat? That is the question some baseball executives are asking. Teams have been giving the latest generation of bobbleheads since the 1990s. Yet in an era when youngsters are hooked on iPods, iPads and iPhones, some people feel the kitschy ceramic or polyresin figures may have seen their day. At least that’s what Marc Gold heard. Gold is the co-owner at Gold Pure Food Products, which is best known for its horseradish, a staple at many Seders. The company also produces the official mustard of the Mets . As part of its sponsorship with the team, Gold’s has had its name on bobbleheads since 2002, when the Mets gave away a likeness of Mike Piazza (emphasis on likeness, since the doll did not look much like him). On Sunday, the Gold’s name will adorn the Jason Bay bobbleheads that will be given to the first 25,000 fans entering Citi Field. Gold said the bobbleheads had helped increase mustard sales about 10 percent a year since the company started sponsoring them. Sales have grown regardless of the team’s performance or the commemorated player, a group that has included John Franco, David Wright and even Kaz Matsui, a less than popular infielder. “People are going to put it on their fridge or desk and connect it to Gold’s,” he said. “We’re moving up in the mustard business.” This year, though, Gold was told by a team executive that the promotion might be getting, well, a little stale. “There’s concern that they might want us to go another direction,” he said. While the Mets have not begun their marketing plans for next year, the team says it remains committed to bobbleheads. “Bobbleheads are unique to baseball,” said David Newman, the Mets’ senior vice president for marketing. “It is a staple and our fans love them.” In 2000, Tom Seaver was the first Met to be featured on a bobblehead. Some years, the club has given away more than one bobblehead with different sponsors. In 2005, for instance, Pedro Martinez, Carlos Beltran and Willie Randolph were honored. Along with T-shirts and caps, bobbleheads remain the most popular promotions. According to the blog Baseball Daily Digest , 25 teams will give away at least one bobblehead this year. Now that the initial fascination with bobbleheads has worn off, fans expect more from them, said Vince Gennaro, the author of “ Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball ” and a consultant to several teams. Campy renditions of, say, Matsui, whose head was almost as big as his body, are not as cute anymore. So teams and bobblehead makers are making dolls that more accurately reflect the player’s face. They are also finding new poses. The Mets gave out a bobblehead in 2007 that showed Endy Chavez making a leaping catch like the one he made in the 2006 playoffs. Not coincidentally, the bobblehead was sponsored by the American International Group, whose logo was on the wall where Chavez made the grab. Malcolm Alexander, the president of Alexander Global Promotions in Bellevue, Wash., created a bobblehead for Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers with a dial that counts strikeouts. “It’s much different than just throwing a player on top,” Alexander said. “When you look at adding pieces that include a sense of humor or engagement, then a lot of the marketing departments can’t say, ‘Not another bobblehead doll.’ ” Bobbleheads make financial sense because they cost about $3 each to produce and deliver, though they are time-consuming to design, Gennaro said. Once pictures of the player are sent to the bobblehead maker, the team and manufacturer go back and forth about six times to adjust the proportions, skin color and so on. The sponsor must approve the design. Teams do not want to be left with any inventory, and they must pick the right player. Last season, the Indians gave away Victor Martinez bobbleheads after the catcher was traded to the Red Sox. Gennaro estimates that bobblehead giveaways produce sales of between 2,500 and 6,000 extra tickets. But it is often unclear how many of those fans might have gone to that game because of, say, the opponent that day, or whether they substituted one game for another, said Ira Mayer, the editor of The Licensing Letter, a newsletter that tracks the licensed goods industry. The Mets said it was difficult to determine how many fans buy tickets just to receive a bobblehead, because the team generally gives them away on summer weekend games that often draw the largest crowds — and when sponsors like Gold’s can get the most exposure.

Baseball
Advertising and Marketing
Dolls
New York Mets
Piazza Mike
Bay Jason


Community Leaders Share Ideas on How to Quell Urban Violence

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — More than 300 community leaders at a convention about 100 miles from the turmoil in Baltimore are pondering issues of policing, urban poverty and the effects of law enforcement on urban life. But for the 13 mayors and more than 300 officials from 57 communities at the second annual convening of Cities United , a national organization dedicated to ending violence among African-American men and boys, the issues playing out in Baltimore are raw, immediate and pressing. “When you see something happening of the magnitude of Baltimore, any of us as mayors of urban communities know that it could happen in our community just like it has,’’ said Karen Freeman-Wilson, mayor of Gary, Ind., where black people make up 85 percent of the population and 60 percent of the police force. She continued, “And so there is a sense of urgency that we not only need to address it, but we need to engage in a much more thoughtful way collectively.” Mayors said on Thursday that they are implementing policies that include the use of body cameras, the independent investigation of police shootings and the promotion of job-training programs in an effort to mend relations between the police and local communities after confrontations in Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and other cities. Initiatives also include involving opening police stations to community members, training officers to be sensitive to underlying racial tensions and allowing the police to lead community rallies. William A. Bell, mayor of Birmingham, Ala., said that his city is one of six participating in a national pilot program to improve community-police relations after the Ferguson unrest. The program is looking at the effectiveness of an existing Birmingham policy that refers any criminal investigation of a police shooting to be conducted by state, not city, officials. “We want to get away from the appearance of the fox guarding the hen house,” said Mr. Bell, who helped to evaluate the performance of the Ferguson Police Department after the disturbances there. For about the past five years, Birmingham has required new police officers to be trained in sensitivity to the city’s history during the civil rights era, and it is now considering requiring officers to wear body cameras, Mr. Bell said in an interview. He said the calls for improved relations between communities and the police have been amplified by the use of social media to instantly transmit reports and images of confrontations. Social media increases the transparency that is essential to rebuilding trust between the two groups, Mr. Bell said. “The most important way is to gather up as much data about incidents that have happened and make sure you convey that unfiltered, unadulterated, to the general public,” he said. In Kansas City, Mo., police precinct houses regularly open their doors to community members who want to discuss their concerns, said the city’s mayor, Sylvester James. In a further effort to win the community’s cooperation, the Police Department will lead a peace rally on Saturday in response to the events in Baltimore, Ferguson and other cities, Mr. James said. The turmoil in Baltimore should direct attention to its underlying causes, he said. “Yes, it’s an opportunity to talk about that, but the real issue is deeper than that,” he said. “Education, poverty, lack of jobs, all of those things contribute, and then when you get this layer on top of it, you get this shaken beer — take the top off, and it explodes.” The Philadelphia conference was planned long before the Baltimore disturbances, but black leaders said that the latest spasm of urban violence renewed national attention to the underlying challenges of poverty, crime, unemployment and low standards of education. Ms. Freeman-Wilson said that Gary has begun a program in the past 30 days to provide more opportunities for unemployed people who may lack job skills or have criminal records to enter the work force. Winning the participation of alienated groups is not just a matter of tougher policing, she said. It also involves business people and educators being program participants. “There has to be something other than law enforcement at the table,” she said. Michael A. Nutter, mayor of Philadelphia and a co-founder of Cities United, argued that the unrest in Baltimore underscores the need for the group’s work, and said that city officials are on the forefront of efforts to find solutions to it. “Baltimore is the most recent example of why we need to do this work,” he said in an interview. “We keep going through these cycles of something bad happens, everyone’s upset, people demand action — and before you know it, it’s three months later and folks have gotten back into their routines.” “No matter how much training you have with the community, any incident can touch off something that has the potential to escalate,” he said.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Venerable Pomnyun’s Earthly Mission Is to Aid North Korea

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea IN August 1996, the Venerable Pomnyun, a Buddhist monk from South Korea, was cruising down the Yalu River between China and North Korea when he saw a boy squatting alone at the North Korean edge of the water. The boy was in rags, his gaunt face covered in dirt. Pomnyun shouted to him, but the boy did not respond. Pomnyun’s Chinese companion explained that North Korean children were instructed never to beg from foreigners. And when Pomnyun asked if the boat could be steered closer to the child to bring help, he was reminded that they could not enter North Korean territory. “Never before had I realized the meaning of a border so painfully until that day,” said Pomnyun, 59. “Never before had I felt so acutely that Korea is a divided nation.” The encounter led him to establish one of the first relief campaigns for North Korean refugees and to take on an unlikely role for a Buddhist monk. Today, rather than leading a secluded life of quiet contemplation, he is a well-known commentator on North Korea, his online newsletter an important source of information smuggled out of the isolated country. Before his Yalu trip, Pomnyun had refused to believe his Chinese acquaintances’ stories about countless North Koreans dying of hunger as the country’s food rationing system collapsed in the midst of a famine. But once he was confronted with the evidence, the monk, who was already running a charity in India, sent volunteers to northeastern China, providing food and shelter for the thousands of North Korean refugees who had begun straggling over the river border. When his organization, Good Friends, released photographs of the bodies of North Koreans who had drowned in the river, too exhausted to complete the last leg of their desperate journey for food, it provided some of the first documentation of what was later recognized as one of the most horrific famines of the late 20th century. As many as three million people out of a population of 22 million died of hunger or hunger-related diseases. WHAT shook Pomnyun was not only the tales that refugees told of families trying to live on pine tree bark and wild roots, but also the outside world’s ignorance of their plight. “World leaders and the media talked obsessively about Kim Jong-il and his nuclear weapons and missiles,” Pomnyun said. “But what about the North Korean people?” Pomnyun’s group began to chronicle the disaster, interviewing more than 5,000 refugees as they arrived in China and publishing a series of reports and books on their struggles. When Good Friends began publishing its newsletter in 2004, it quickly became a must-read among South Korean policy makers and journalists. The first of its kind, the newsletter provided timely accounts of life in North Korea from anonymous informers inside the country, some of whom had returned home after being aided by the charity. They communicated via smuggled cellphones and other means that Pomnyun refused to disclose. When the newsletter, North Korea Today, also went online, it became a prototype for other Web sites. Together, the sites have helped breach what had been a near-total information blackout on North Korea for decades. They monitor the price of food and carry running, though sometimes conflicting, updates on floods and epidemics. Pomnyun leads his own temple in a provincial town, as well as study programs in meditation and Buddhist scripture across the country. Born to a rural farming family, Pomnyun grew up with older brothers who were religiously and politically active; one was sentenced to death under the military dictatorship of the time for antigovernment activity, but was later released. The younger Pomnyun at first hoped to become a physicist or an astronomer. But when he was in high school, a chance meeting with a revered monk named Domun persuaded him to become an activist, starting campaigns for environmental protection, religious reform, aid for the hungry and unification of the two Koreas. He was arrested and tortured by government agents cracking down on dissidents during the military rule. Today, Pomnyun pursues his mission very much amid the secular world. His office in Seoul is in a back alley crammed with restaurants, bars and “love hotels,” where people meet for trysts. Government officials call to compare notes on North Korea. He travels to the United States to give lectures attended by academics and government analysts. His writings and appearances — he gives an average of 12 lectures a week on a range of topics, including how to be a good mother — have made him among the country’s best-known monks. “Pomnyun quotes” are widely shared online. A recent one went: “Even if the North Koreans are said to be our enemy, they are fellow Koreans. While we are turning our surplus rice into animal feed, North Korean children are dying of hunger. What would our ancestors say of this?” His social activism has even drawn him into the tumult of South Korean politics, especially after lectures that he organized for young audiences on topics like how to fight for social justice provided a platform for Ahn Cheol-soo, a software developer and a vocal critic of the governing New Frontier Party. Mr. Ahn is now cited in opinion polls as a leading contender in the presidential election in December, should he choose to run. Allinkorea.net , a rightist news outlet, has made Pomnyun a favorite target, calling him a “political demagogue wearing the mask of religion.” POMNYUN’S tireless appeals for more aid for North Koreans have not always been popular in the South, where sentiment toward the North vacillates between compassion and fear. In 2006 and 2009, his group’s reports on destructive floods and an outbreak of swine flu in North Korea prompted the South Korean government to set aside politics and send aid. But his appeals have gone largely unheeded under President Lee Myung-bak’s conservative administration, which has accused Pomnyun of exaggerating the latest food crisis. Pomnyun has countered that the government is playing politics with people’s welfare. In 2008, he went on a 70-day hunger strike to highlight North Koreans’ plight. Good Friends’ statistical methods in its early studies led even some relief experts to accuse the group of exaggerating the famine, either unwittingly or to promote its case for aid. But Rajiv Narayan, a researcher on North Korea at Amnesty International, said the early work, even if flawed, “helped us understand what was going on in North Korea.” He added of Pomnyun, “People in our circles listen to him.” Pomnyun says he takes the criticism in stride. “Progressives criticize me for drawing attention to human rights violations in the North, and conservatives attack me for calling for aid for the North,” Pomnyun said, adding that he had also, depending on the critic, been accused of working for the C.I.A. or the North Korean government. “My aim is neither to support nor to oppose North Korea. I am just drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis.” For that reason, Pomnyun is deeply skeptical not only of his own country’s policies toward North Korea, but also of the United States’ focus on the threat the country poses. “The problem,” Pomnyun said, “is the more you squeeze the North Koreans, the more desperate they become to develop nuclear weapons. The Americans keep asking, ‘Why do the North Koreans make nuclear weapons while their people are starving?’ That may be a good way of criticizing North Korea, but it’s not a good way of influencing a paranoid regime whose overriding priority is self-preservation.”

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Pat Perez Gets Attention, for Right Reasons

Abstract: Pat Perez found himself in the middle of all the action for the second week in a row. At least this time, everyone wanted to talk to him about his golf. Four shots behind as he stood on the 13th tee at the Wells Fargo Championship on Friday in Charlotte, N.C., he ran off five birdies over the last six holes for a six-under 65 and a two-shot lead going into the weekend. He was the third player in a group at New Orleans last week that featured a profanity-filled argument between Rory Sabbatini and Sean O’Hair. Perez has turned down several reporters’ requests for comment, saying it didn’t involve him. "Sean O’Hair is one of the greatest guys in the world; I love playing with him," Perez said. "And Rory has his moments. I’ve always along with Rory. I know how to deal with him. For the most part, Rory doesn’t even bother me in the least. It was a tough situation.” Jonathan Byrd rallied from a double bogey on the 14th — he went bunker to bunker to water — for a 68 that put him two shots behind along with Bill Haas, who shot 70. Phil Mickelson shot 66 to position himself nicely for the weekend. Mickelson was three shots back, with Lucas Glover, whose two late bogeys made him settle for a 68. WOODS BACK AT PLAYERS Tiger Woods is returning to competition at the Players Championship. A PGA Tour official confirmed that Woods had entered the tournament, which starts Thursday. Woods is not playing this week because of what he called a minor injury to his left knee. CALCAVECCHIA LEADS Mark Calcavecchia surged to a three-shot lead in the Regions Tradition with a seven-under 65 in the second round in Birmingham, Ala. Calcavecchia opened the round one shot off the lead, but he birdied Nos. 10-12 to move into strong position to contend for his first Champions Tour win at the year’s opening major.

Perez Pat
Golf
Sabbatini Rory
O'Hair Sean
Haas Bill