Stress of Sliding Plates Builds Near Chile

Abstract: When a magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Chile last February, geophysicists and seismologists were not surprised. The quake’s epicenter was on a roughly 200-mile stretch of a fault where stresses had been building for nearly two centuries, and experts had expected that one day the strain would be relieved in a cataclysmic event. But as scientists have pored over volumes of data from what may turn out to be the best-studied major earthquake yet, they have concluded that the ground movement during the quake did not relieve the stresses as anticipated. The greatest seismic slip was outside the 200-mile segment, known as the Darwin gap since Charles Darwin happened to witness the last earthquake along it, in 1835. “The pattern of slip was quite different from what would have been expected,” said Stefano Lorito, a geophysicist with the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology in Rome. While there was one area of slip south of the epicenter that was within the Darwin gap, he said, the area of greatest movement was north of the gap in an area where an 8.0 earthquake occurred in 1928. Dr. Lorito said the findings show that “there is a fraction of the gap that probably did not rupture.” In addition, he said, the 2010 quake may have added to the stress in the unruptured area, increasing the odds of another major earthquake, although it would probably not be as large as the one last year. Dr. Lorito is the lead author of a paper published last month in the journal Nature Geoscience describing the slip patterns, based on analysis of tsunami observations and land deformation data from GPS and satellite-based sensors. But his study is far from the last word on the Chilean quake. At a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union about a dozen slip patterns were presented, according to Onno Oncken, a geophysicist with the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam. Dr. Oncken himself was an author of a study published in Nature in September that showed a different slip pattern. His study analyzed only seismic data — recordings of the shock waves, which do not show how the land deformed — from the event. He said it was not unexpected that the patterns would change when GPS and other deformation data was analyzed. “It’s not surprising anybody at this early stage of data evaluation,” Dr. Oncken said. “We are learning more and more on a practically daily basis.” “I expect this is going to be the best-observed large earthquake that we’ve ever had,” he added. But as for Dr. Lorito’s suggestion that the 2010 event may have increased the chances of another earthquake, Dr. Oncken expressed caution, saying there were relatively few data points in the area where a new quake was forecast. “Personally I would not have dared make such a strong statement,” he said. The quake, which killed more than 500 people, occurred in a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate is sliding beneath another. In this case, the Nazca plate is sliding eastward beneath the South American plate at a rate of about three inches a year. The movement causes stresses to build up at the plate boundary. In the 2010 quake those stresses were relieved when the western edge of the South American plate suddenly moved westward and upward. Because much of the movement was underwater, the quake spawned a tsunami that was responsible for many of the deaths. Jian Lin, a geophysicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution , is also studying the earthquake, although his analysis is focused more on the buildup of stress before the quake than its release. Dr. Lin said that although the various slip patterns presented so far differ in some ways, researchers generally agree that the slip occurred in two “patches,” one to the north of the epicenter and one to the south. Although the quake started at the epicenter, off the Maule region, much of the rupture occurred elsewhere. “The southern patch did indeed fill some of the Darwin gap,” he said. “This is where the models differ — some models have more slipping in the southern patch, some have less. But I think with all models, part of the Darwin gap remains.” While the Chilean quake may end up being a particularly well-studied one, Dr. Lin argued that the discrepancies in the slip patterns among the various research groups demonstrated there was still not enough data. “Much of the quake occurred underwater, and underwater we have no instruments,” he said. “Now that we know that this part could still rupture, now it’s time to put instruments in the ocean as soon as possible,” Dr. Lin said. “If we don’t do it, we’ll have exactly the same problem the next time.”

Earthquakes
Chile
Oceans and Seas
Navigation


The Philippines: Bombs Kill 4 in South

Abstract: A powerful bomb hidden in a parked motorcycle taxi exploded and hit the passing convoy of a vice mayor in the southern Philippines on Thursday, killing four people and wounding at least six others, the police and military said. The blast happened about an hour after a bomb blew up on a passenger bus about 190 miles to the west, wounding at least 18 people in the town of Polomolok, officials said. No group claimed responsibility for either attack. Col. Rolando Joselito Bautista, the military commander in Basilan Province, where the second blast occurred, said Abu Sayyaf militants were suspected in that attack because of their history of bombings in the area. The roadside bomb struck the convoy of Vice Mayor Abdulbaki Ajibon of the city of Isabela, killing her driver, another passenger and two pedestrians, Colonel Bautista said. Ms. Ajibon was uninjured.

Philippines
Bombs
Abu Sayyaf
Fatalities,casualties


Military in Honduras Backs Plan on Zelaya

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Honduran armed forces issued a communiqué on Saturday indicating that they would not stand in the way of an agreement to return Manuel Zelaya , the country’s ousted president, to power. Meanwhile, in Las Manos, a town along the border between Nicaragua and Honduras, Mr. Zelaya made his second symbolic appearance in two days, defying calls from foreign leaders to avoid any moves that might provoke violence in his politically polarized country. The communiqué was drafted in Washington after days of talks between mid-level Honduran officers and American Congressional aides. Posted on the Honduran Armed Forces Web site , it endorsed the so-called San José Accord that was forged in Costa Rica by delegates representing President Zelaya and the man who heads the de facto Honduran government, Roberto Micheletti . The accord, supported by most governments in the hemisphere, would allow Mr. Zelaya to return as president, although with significantly limited executive powers. Mr. Micheletti has steadfastly rejected Mr. Zelaya’s return as president. In its communiqué, the Honduran military added its support to the proposal. Officials involved said it was meant to dispel any perceptions that the military would block civilian efforts to resolve the crisis. The officials said the military communiqué was significant because it was the first sign of support for the San José Accord by a powerful sector of the de facto government. And the officials said it could make it more difficult for the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court to reject the accord when they consider it. American officials who met here with the Hondurans said that they were two colonels who were concerned about the tensions generated by the political conflict. Joy Olson, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit human rights group, said she was told that the officers were showing Congressional aides a recording of the day Mr. Zelaya was detained, as evidence that no abuses had been committed against him. In the meantime, however, thousands of troops had been deployed to tighten security along the border to prevent Mr. Zelaya from returning. And thousands of his supporters defied government curfews and military roadblocks, by abandoning their cars and hiking for hours to reach the remote border post to see him. Mr. Zelaya vowed to try a third time to re-enter Honduras . "We are ready to take this to its final consequences," he told his supporters. "We are not afraid.”

Honduras
Zelaya Rosales Jose Manuel
Micheletti Roberto


One-Liner Childhoods

Abstract: A new Facebook group was formed last summer, well before “Parenthood,” a television series set in Berkeley, made its debut on NBC this month. The group, called “Your Mom Is So Berkeley,” began as an inside joke among friends who grew up there and came up with one-liners about Berkeley mothers, said Roberto Santiago, 33, the page’s creator. “Your mom is so Berkeley she’ll sign anything given to her outside a grocery store,” Mr. Santiago wrote in an early post. Hundreds of people joined in as the group evolved into a place where Berkeley’s sons and daughters reminisce about growing up in the ultimate counterculture community. The group has more than 1,160 members — many still remember their family’s co-op number — and more than 750 posts, some of which are below. (Almost all begin “My mom is so Berkeley ...” A few have been condensed. ) FOOD AND FASHION For Halloween one year, she handed out bananas. YIGA JOSAYMA She grounded me for eating McDonald’s but not for smoking weed. JED BROWN She made us drink lumpy, instant nonfat powdered milk to protect us from radioactive fallout from above-ground nuclear testing. RACHEL BLAU The first time I saw a bowl of table grapes I had a panic attack. KOKO MULDER She used to volunteer in my classroom wearing men’s work boots. ANNELISE LOE CHILD-REARING I was born at home on homemade tie-dyed sheets. MIWA SOTO She drew braids on Babar, so she could show a woman (O.K., a female elephant) in a leadership role. LISA KINGSTONE Since I wasn’t allowed to have a Barbie doll, she gave me a doll made out of mud from Africa. JILLIAN HOPEWELL She was disappointed when I majored in neuroscience/pre-med. She kept asking why I didn’t want to become a painter. AMAYA KATHLEEN WEBSTER RELATING TO THE WORLD AND THE COSMOS Her social life used to consist of going with friends to get arrested outside Livermore lab. CAROLYN McMILLAN I had a nightmare that President Reagan was going to get me when I was 5. GABY RAYMOND When she was arrested for yelling at a cop over a parking violation, she stayed overnight in jail just so she could have the “experience.” CYNTHIA WANG When I asked her who God was, she told me he was kind of like a ‘make-believe friend’ that a lot of people had. Then she told me that my make-believe friend was probably a better friend to have. TAMARA JACOBSON THE FACEBOOK GROUP I am such a Berkeley mom that I joined this group to see what my kids are saying about me! ELIZABETH RAYMER


Face of Hope Reflects Calm in Kashmir

Abstract: NEW DELHI — There was the smell of hay and soil in the crowded village hall in the Kashmir Valley. The men were on plastic chairs in the front rows, and the women were in the back ones. The doorway was packed with adolescent boys and young men with fierce, translucent eyes. The only sound in the room belonged to the speaker, with occasional deep-throated exclamations of men and honest applause of all. A district magistrate in India usually does not enjoy such attention. But in this cluster of farming villages on the slopes of a hill, 60 kilometers, or 40 miles, from Srinagar, a city of paradisiacal beauty and the capital of the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir , people will listen with great care to any man who tells them how he plans to bring roads, electricity, jobs and good schools to their villages, which have been impoverished by decades of strife. In recent times, especially the last year, there has been relative calm in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, a mostly Muslim region held by India and claimed by Pakistan. The attacks of militants demanding that the region be removed from India’s control have abated after nearly two decades of violence. Local support for the militants has diminished considerably, although the desire for freedom from India and to become a sovereign republic has not, nor has hatred for the Indian Army, which has a formidable presence here. Facing the villagers in the hall was one of Kashmir’s stars, the 29-year-old deputy district magistrate, Dr. Shah Faesal, who has a degree in medicine. Almost everybody in Kashmir is beautiful, and Dr. Faesal’s clean, studious, good-boy charms are somewhat unremarkable in this room. What made him the center of attention is the fact that two years ago, he ranked first among more than half a million candidates in the Union Public Service Commission examination, one of the most prestigious in India. Dr. Faesal was the first Kashmiri to top the civil service exam, an achievement that brought a procession of ecstatic, drum-beating people to his home when news broke on television channels. When it was Dr. Faesal’s turn to speak to the gathering, there was spirited applause. A young woman, a local journalist whose head was covered, blushed as she stood holding a recording device close to his face. She almost never met his eyes through the course of his speech. Dr. Faesal has a firm but reverent style of speaking. He told me after the meeting: “I respect everyone. It is very useful to be that way, but I am not putting on an act. I address every person I meet as ‘Sir,’ including the village women. They love it when I call them ‘Sir,’ and they start laughing. Nobody has ever called them that.” He said that the recent period of peace in the region was not a window of deceptive calm, but the first sign that common sense was finally winning. He wants to make the most of it to bring development to Kashmir’s poor. Vivanta by Taj, one of the two five-star hotels in Srinagar, is an immediate beneficiary of peace. The hotel is set on top of a hill of tulips and ancient trees and is surrounded by great, snow-capped mountains. It is guarded like a fortress by armed men, but many of its defenses are not visible to the pampered guests. A security official, who had undergone a month’s counterterrorism training in Israel, told me that the hotel had its own intelligence gathering system, which includes using a network of local residents for information about anything unusual in their neighborhood. It had been about 10 months since the hotel opened, and all its 48 operational rooms were booked, even though February was not peak season in Srinagar. The revival of the tourism business is evident all over Srinagar. Honeymooning couples from across India are arriving in droves, confident that they will return alive. The simplicity of peace can end at any moment in Kashmir. There can be another attack by militants, or street protests of Kashmiris against the Indian Army that can last days. But the people here are growing confident that this may be a new beginning they had wished for. The restaurants and cafes are filled with happy conversations. The joy is visible in the people walking down the streets, many of whom look pregnant because they are holding, under their long checked robes, a cane-wrapped pot filled with burning embers of coals to keep warm. They are so used to it that they, including Dr. Faesal, can go to sleep with the pot of red coal between their legs. When the meeting in the village hall was over, some elders, the district magistrate and Dr. Faesal went upstairs for a feast. There were huge pieces of fried river carp, and chicken and lamb, which the men tore into with both hands, their fingers growing luminous with oil. And they boisterously discussed things to be done in the villages. Dr. Faesal has a cheerful face even though his life has been marked by tragedies that are common to thousands of Kashmiris. His father, a schoolteacher who spoke against violence, was killed by unidentified gunmen a decade ago. Before that, Dr. Faesal’s father was one of the thousands of Kashmiris who were routinely humiliated by the Indian Army, he said. “Once, after a terrorist strike, the army just picked up some men in revenge and beat them up,” he said. “My father was among them.” According to Dr. Faesal, his father was also forced to recite a Hindu chant, “Ram, Ram.” After the meal, the district magistrate left in a car that had a red light on it, and he was followed by armed guards and an old, battered ambulance, which had nothing in it but a narrow bed. It might as well have been a hearse. As the ambulance made its way through the unpaved village lane, two little girls mimicked the sound of the ambulance siren. During the long years of conflict here, that had been the predominant sound of childhood. Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “Serious Men.”

Kashmir and Jammu (India)
India
Muslims and Islam


Caltrans Asks Tech-Savvy Commuters to Spread Word of Bridge Closing

Abstract: The seismic upgrade of the Bay Bridge, California’s biggest and most complicated highway construction project, will cost taxpayers more than $6 billion and has taxed drivers with a series of bridge closings. Next weekend Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, is once again asking many of the 280,000 drivers who traverse the bridge each day to find another way across the bay. Appropriate to the tech-savvy population of commuters, Caltrans is asking Bay Area residents to help spread the word on blogs, local Web sites and Facebook pages. The agency has created a series of plug-in banners for commuters to embed on their favorite online sites. It has also created an online animated simulator (at baybridgeinfo.org ) to help explain the changes. The agency has spent about $500,000 to spread the word via more conventional advertisements, public service announcements and fliers, along with its 300 changeable message signs throughout the state. Unless weather delays the planned President’s Day weekend closing, it will be the second-to-last bridge interruption before the new span opens in late 2013. Westbound lanes to San Francisco will be closed from 8 p.m. on Friday until 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, so that construction crews can demolish part of the old bridge and begin building the approach to the new span. Eastbound traffic will not be affected. After the closing, there will be what Caltrans calls “a slight detour” after the toll plaza. Though Caltrans has gone to great lengths to warn drivers before each bridge shutdown, it has sometimes had trouble preparing commuters for the changes once the roadway reopens. During work to strengthen the western span against earthquakes in the mid-2000s, Caltrans tried closing single lanes and bridge entrances, but found that caused hourlong tie-ups. “People would line up like lemmings,” said Bart Ney, a Caltrans spokesman. So when the agency needed to replace a milelong stretch of road on the San Francisco side of the bridge in 2006, it closed the entire lower deck for the first time and began using large-scale outreach, including an animated simulation, to warn drivers. The techniques are not fail-proof. After a Labor Day weekend closing in 2009, drivers had trouble getting used to a detour, known as the S-curve, on the upper deck. One trucker missed the turn, drove off the bridge and was killed. For last year’s shutdowns over the Memorial Day weekend, Caltrans devised an interactive game to reach a “younger, more tech-based group of folks” who use the bridge at night to go to bars and restaurants. We had to “get the message where they live,” Mr. Ney said. “They live in the app store.” The game was downloaded more than 10,000 times, he said.

Bridges and Tunnels
Commuting
Roads and Traffic
San Francisco (Calif)


Rents Fall in Manhattan’s Lower-Cost Buildings

Abstract: During the recent economic boom, rents in the priciest Manhattan office towers skyrocketed. A similar trend occurred in the city’s less well-heeled office buildings, known in real estate jargon as Class B buildings. But today, vacancies are rising and rents are falling sharply in both classes of buildings, especially in Midtown. “I think the general feeling was that Class A was going to get hit” because the economic decline was “first and foremost, a financial industry problem,” and that industry tends to favor Class A buildings, said Robert L. Sammons, the managing director in charge of research at Colliers ABR. So he was surprised to notice that Class B rents were swooning just as hard — or harder. Asking rents for both classes of buildings in Midtown Manhattan almost doubled during the five years from the beginning of 2003 to their peak in early 2008. Then, in the last year, average annual asking rents for Class A office space in Midtown fell 19.1 percent, to reach $76.54 per square foot by the end of February. In the same period, average asking rents for Class B office space in Midtown fell 23.4 percent, to reach $48.74 a square foot a year, according to Colliers ABR. Mr. Sammons said that many Class B buildings were also occupied by financial companies, often for “back office” functions like accounting and human resources. He pointed to two large Class B blocks that were on the market. He said Wells Fargo had notified the landlord that it would give up a lease expiring at the end of this year for 62,000 square feet in 119 West 40th Street, between the Avenue of the Americas and Broadway. The landlord, George Comfort & Sons, has begun offering this space for direct lease, but has not set an asking rent. Farther west, at 333 West 34th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, Citigroup has been trying to extricate itself from a lease that expires at year-end for the entire 350,000-square-foot building. SL Green, a large real estate investment trust, purchased the building from Citigroup in a sale-leaseback deal in 2007. SL Green, which is marketing the space directly to potential tenants, has leased all of the second through fourth floors and part of the fifth, totaling 156,000 square feet, to the Segal Company, a human resources consulting firm. The space on the remaining floors, from the fifth to the 10th floors, is still available. In general, Class B buildings are older, with smaller floor areas than Class A buildings, but the definitions are not rigid. Class B space can be in new buildings in nonprime sites or in old buildings in prime locations. Space can even be classified as Class C, but there is not much of that in the major Manhattan office markets, especially not in Midtown. Manhattan has more than twice as many Class B buildings as Class A buildings, but the amount of Class A space is approximately 50 percent greater because the buildings tend to be much larger. That is especially true in Midtown, which has 163 million square feet of Class A space and 71 million square feet of Class B, according to Colliers. By now, the economic pain in Class B buildings is not limited to those with a lot of financial tenants. As the recession drags on, it is hurting many industries that dominate Class B office space in Manhattan — including advertising and media companies, law firms and accounting firms. “Large institutions prefer Class A space, but a lot of media companies prefer Class B space because it’s cooler,” said Andrew Peretz, an executive vice president at Cushman & Wakefield. Further pressure could come if some tenants in Class B buildings decide to trade up to Class A buildings as they become more affordable. But brokers say this is not happening as much as they would generally expect by this point in a recession, apparently because many tenants are uncertain about what their space needs will be a year or two from now. “This is the first time that I have seen a downturn that is so deep in the tenants’ psychology,” said Mr. Peretz, who represents many buildings for landlords in Midtown South and downtown office submarkets. But Matt Barlow, an executive vice president at Studley, a brokerage firm that specializes in representing office tenants, said good deals were available for tenants in Class B office buildings who were willing to sublet space in Class A buildings. “It used to be that staying put was deemed to be the low-cost alternative,” Mr. Barlow said. “But in this environment, where there is an abundance of prebuilt space, that is changing the natural equation.” Moving into a space previously occupied by another tenant can sometimes save a new tenant the expense of finishing off and decorating the area. The overall vacancy rate — covering sublet space as well as space that is available directly from landlords — has widened more for Class A buildings in Midtown than for Class B. But that is primarily because the market was very tight for the most sought-after space one year ago. The vacancy rate for Class A space in Midtown has jumped to 11.3 percent, from 6.4 percent at this time last year. The vacancy rate for Class B space in Midtown has risen to 14 percent, from 9.9 percent, Colliers ABR reported. R. Stuart Gross, an executive managing director at Eastern Consolidated, a real estate investment services company in New York, pointed out that some owners had purchased Class B buildings in recent years at very rich prices with the intention of converting them to residential condominiums or limited-service hotels. When the economy was flush, some of these landlords began emptying out these buildings as the tenants’ leases expired. Now the owners are unable or unwilling to proceed with the conversions, and they are left with empty space on their hands. “Because of the slowdown in the condominium marketplace, there is very little financing to convert office to residential now,” Mr. Gross said. “So a lot of these will remain office buildings.”

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


U.S. Growth Revised Lower in Fourth Quarter

Abstract: Amid fears of an oil shock and a further slide in housing comes news that America’s economic recovery is weaker than previously thought. Growth in the fourth quarter of 2010 was slower than initially reported, at an annual pace of 2.8 percent rather than the previous estimate of 3.2 percent, according to data released on Friday by the Commerce Department. Economists had been predicting an upward revision, to about 3.3 percent. The latest number is particularly disappointing because it is so far below what the country needs to put a significant dent in the unemployment rate, now at 9 percent. In fact, the latest growth rate is lower than the average of the last 80 years, which was 3.4 percent. Given how quickly the economy shrank during the recession , and how much the population has grown since then, the country desperately needs faster growth to help the millions of people who have lost their jobs. “Normally you’d expect growth above trend, so we’ve got some catch-up,” said Paul Ashworth, chief United States economist at Capital Economics. “But we’re not absorbing much of what we lost during the recession.” Developments since the end of last year, including the unrest in the Middle East and the disruption of some oil production, could depress growth this quarter. Each 1-cent increase in the price of gasoline takes about $1 billion out of the pockets of consumers over the course of a year, leaving them less money to spend on other goods and services. “Consumers stumbled a bit to start the year, and while we expect them to pick up the pace some in coming months, the recent rise in energy prices poses a notable headwind,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. Shortly after the Commerce Department report was released, JPMorgan cut its forecast for growth this quarter to 3.5 percent from 4 percent. One of the more significant revisions last quarter was in state and local government spending, which contracted at an annual pace of 2.4 percent rather than the 0.9 percent previously estimated. Continued government budget shortfalls indicate that more cutbacks could be coming. “There’s no denying that state and local governments are going to be a modest drag on the economy this year,” Mr. Ashworth said. “Cuts will probably go on for another few quarters, possibly a year, and then start to see a gradual rebound.” Tax revenue has already started recovering, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York, Albany. But that revenue may not rise quickly enough to make up for the dwindling dollars in emergency assistance that the federal government approved for states last year. Federal spending cuts sought by Republican Congressmen could similarly threaten the economic recovery, analysts say. Economists at Goldman Sachs earlier this week estimated that a spending bill recently passed by the House — which would trim $60 billion in spending in the current fiscal year — would shave 1.5 to 2 percentage points off growth in the second and third quarters of this year. Such cuts in government spending can reverberate partly because they throw more people into the unemployment pool, and they in turn have less money to spend. They also strip government services from others who are already unemployed or who are trying to get back on their feet. The engines of economic growth last quarter were a shrinking trade deficit and consumers, who account for more than two-thirds of the economy and whose spending grew at an annual rate of 4.1 percent. The contributions to growth of both these categories was slightly less than initially estimated, however. A separate report released Friday, from Reuters and the University of Michigan, showed that an index of consumer sentiment rose to 77.5 in the February final release, from 75.1 in the preliminary report, the highest reading since January 2008. Another potentially positive indicator in Friday’s output report was that business inventories — that is, what companies keep on their stockroom shelves — were very low last quarter. That means that businesses should be increasing their orders early this year to replenish their shelves, and perhaps putting more workers into jobs in the process. The Federal Reserve recently estimated that the economy would grow 3.4 to 3.9 percent over the course of 2011. “Although the unemployment rate will rise a bit in the first half of 2011, as stronger job gains draw more of the unemployed into the labor force, it will move consistently lower toward the end of 2011,” said Augustine Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody’s Analytics.

Gross Domestic Product
United States Economy


It’s 3 P.M. on Wall Street. The Hungry Bear Is on the Prowl.

Abstract: It has become the scariest hour on Wall Street. On Wednesday, in what has become an almost daily occurrence, the stock market lurched at 3 p.m. — this time, down. What had been a bad day ended as one of the worst in history, with the Dow Jones industrial average plummeting 733 points, or nearly 8 percent. The late-day move — the Dow shed nearly 400 points in the last 45 minutes of trading — mirrored the market’s pattern over much of the last week. On Friday, the Dow plummeted more than 500 points in the last hour of trading. On Monday, it soared about 300 points. Market experts offered a variety of explanations for the late sell-off on Wednesday. Some pointed to gaping losses at hedge funds, among them the Citadel Investment Group, the big fund run by Kenneth C. Griffin. Others cited margin calls that forced investors and executives to dump shares into a falling market. Still others saw panicky selling by individuals and money managers. There was also a simpler explanation: the economy is in trouble and the recession may be longer and deeper than initially feared. Those concerns were reinforced on Wednesday morning by a report that showed that retail spending declined in September, and in the afternoon by downbeat comments by the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke. “This sell-off is about the economy and it will be exacerbated by margin calls,” said Todd Steinberg, head of global equities and commodity derivatives at BNP Paribas. “The primary reason for the sell-off today is the realization that the impact on the real economy will be greater and longer than people had anticipated.” Whatever the cause, it is clear that this is one of the worst bear markets in postwar history. The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 8,577.91, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell 90 points, or 9 percent, to 907.84. It was one of the worst days for both indexes. The last two days have erased most of their 11 percent rally on Monday. The S.& P. 500 is now down 42 percent from its Oct. 9, 2007, peak. The downdraft has hit many big investors, including executives and hedge funds. In a letter sent to its investors on Wednesday, Citadel said it lost 16 percent in September alone. But given the market’s moves over the last week, the final hour of trading is coming under scrutiny on Wall Street. Many analysts are asking the same question: Why is the market moving so violently between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.? While trading often spikes in the last hour, according to a review of stock exchange data, the pattern has been much more pronounced in recent days. One explanation, analysts say, is that brokers typically demand that clients pay down margin loans by the end of the day. As some of those clients begin to sell to raise money to cover those loans, prices fall further, forcing others who bought on margin investors to sell as well. “This smells like that sort of forced selling, the margin calls and liquidations, that you get in the midst of a bear market,” said Barry Ritholtz, chief executive of Fusion IQ and author of the popular blog the Big Picture. Evidence is mounting that some executives are being forced to sell stock to meet margin calls. Bruce A. Smith, the chief executive of the Tesoro Corporation, a oil refiner, disclosed in a securities filing late Tuesday that he had to sell 251,000 shares because of a margin call by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank. Shares of his company fell more than 18 percent after his sale was made public. Top executives at the Scholastic Corporation, the publisher and Boston Scientific, the medical device company, also disclosed forced sales this week. Still, banking executives said they did not think the margin calls on their own were leading to the drop in stock prices. Forced selling always increases when the price of stocks and bonds falls, but by and large, they said, the selling was driven by the bearish attitude of investors. “I have not seen any waves of fund selling because of systematic changes in margin levels,” said Alex Ehrlich, global head of prime services for UBS. “It’s more like climbing down a ladder, rather than falling down a cliff.” Hedge funds, which control nearly $2 trillion in assets and are big users of borrowed money, were also among those forced to sell, say analysts and industry officials, though it remains unclear how big a role they are playing in the recent sell-off. Banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had been increasing the rates they charge hedge funds to borrow all year long, but in the last three weeks, Wall Street firms increased those rates aggressively, according to some officials. That was partly because the banks themselves were paying more to borrow money. For hedge funds, the added pressure could not come at a worst time. Hedge funds are down 17 percent for the year, with most of the losses coming since the end of August, according to Hedge Fund Research. At the same time, investors are withdrawing billions of dollars from the funds, which has also caused managers to sell. In his letter to Citadel’s investors, Mr. Griffin said the firm’s losses in September could be traced in part to its use of a strategy involving convertible bonds, an approach that requires money managers to short-sell shares they do not own in the hopes of buying them back later at a lower price. Mr. Griffin said he began increasing his holdings of convertible bonds in the middle of summer, taking more risk in an area where he has a lot of experience while reducing his positions in “poorly performing strategies.” But the strategy became a big money loser after the Securities and Exchange Commission temporarily banned short-selling in nearly 1,000 shares. The S.E.C. said it put the ban in place temporarily. On Wednesday night, it said it would extend a requirement that big investors disclose their short positions to the agency until August 2009. “Regretfully, I did not foresee the financial disaster that was to unfold in September,” Mr. Griffin wrote. “In the weeks to come, I expect we will continue to see significant volatility in our earnings as the world manages through the unfolding crisis.” Citadel is hardly the only troubled hedge fund. Scores of hedge funds have lost money since Lehman Brothers, the investment bank, filed for bankruptcy protection in early September. Greenlight Capital, a fund run by David Einhorn, was down 12 percent in September, and Harbinger Capital Partners, one of the big winners of 2007, was down 18 percent for the month, according to a report by HSBC, the bank. Many individual investors are also suffering, of course. Edward W. Gjertsen II, a vice president for Mack Investment Securities outside Chicago, said his clients appeared to be more unnerved this week than they were last week, when the market fell day after day without pause. “I have started to see the first signs of worry today amongst clients relating to both the markets and the economy,” he said. Mr. Gjertsen has taken to staying up late to watch trading in Asia and Europe on CNBC and Bloomberg TV. He said he was watching for signs that the market had hit bottom so he could put more of his clients’ money into the market. He said he was hopeful a bottom was close but he was not comfortable enough to tell his customers to buy. “My wife has been asking me, ‘What are you doing?’ ” he said about his market watching. “I say, ‘I am absorbing.’ ” The sell-off continued in Asia. In early trading Thursday, markets in Japan were down more than 9 percent, and in Australia they were down about 6 percent. As stocks fell, investors sought safety in government debt. The benchmark 10-year Treasury bill rose 1 2/32, to 100 14/32, and the yield, which moves in the opposite direction from the price, was 3.95 percent, down from 4.08 percent late Tuesday.

Stocks and Bonds
Dow Jones Stock Average
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Banks and Banking


As Yankees Fall in Ninth, Questions Surround Rotation

Abstract: As Adam Warren, the forgotten man of the Yankees’ pitching staff, was surrounded by a group of reporters on Tuesday, reliever Dellin Betances walked past and chimed in plaintively: “Don’t go, Adam. Don’t go.” But Warren is indeed leaving, heading from the bullpen back to the starting rotation — where he began the season — now that Nathan Eovaldi appears likely to miss the rest of the regular season with right elbow inflammation. That turn is just the latest in the rotation’s revolving door, with Eovaldi becoming the fifth starter to miss time this year because of injury. The diagnosis could not have come at a worse time for the Yankees, who lost to the Baltimore Orioles, 2-1 , on Tuesday as Chris Davis hit his major-league-leading 41st home run off Chasen Shreve in the ninth inning. The loss, combined with Toronto’s 10-inning win at Boston, ensured that the Yankees would remain behind the Blue Jays at least until their four-game series begins Thursday at Yankee Stadium. A stout performance by Yankees starter Masahiro Tanaka and two sublime defense plays by third baseman Brendan Ryan were for naught because the team scored only one run, on a homer by Alex Rodriguez. Still, as the Yankees try to make up their one-and-a-half-game deficit in the American League East with the season entering its final stretch, the question they will be facing does not concern their offense but rather their starting pitching. The Yankees entered the season knowing that their staff was brittle: Tanaka, C. C. Sabathia, Ivan Nova and Michael Pineda had all missed significant time last season. And they have done so again. Asked if he was surprised the team was where it was — with the third-best record in the American League — General Manager Brian Cashman shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I know one thing. I still remember the narrative for years being, you’ve got to get younger pitching; you’ve got to get younger pitching. Well, we got younger pitching — bottom line, you just need a lot of pitching, young and old. You need more than the roster limits supply.” Sabathia, who has been out since injuring his knee on Aug. 23, is scheduled to return Wednesday with a sturdier brace that he hopes will keep his knee from hyperextending. But the Yankees’ health woes extend beyond their pitching staff. First baseman Mark Teixeira, who has missed most of the last four weeks after fouling a ball off his right shin, has made so little progress that on Tuesday he received two injections. Left fielder Brett Gardner was given his second consecutive day off after Manager Joe Girardi acknowledged that Gardner hurt his shoulder when he ran into a wall during the weekend series against Tampa Bay. While Gardner, who had a cortisone shot in his shoulder, expects to be in the lineup Wednesday, Cashman and Girardi both expressed doubt that Teixeira would return this season. “Yeah, I do wonder,” Cashman said. “First and foremost, it’s been a long time, and he’s still having issues. Again, I can’t predict what’s going to happen here.” The rookie Greg Bird has performed well in place of Teixeira, who was leading the Yankees in home runs and R.B.I. when he was injured, but on Tuesday, Bird struck out in both of his encounters with Kevin Gausman, the Orioles’ prized rookie right-hander and Bird’s old high school teammate. The two played together in Aurora, Colo., but had never faced each other. Gausman came out on top this time, pitching out of trouble frequently and allowing only Rodriguez’s leadoff homer in the sixth. That blast was Rodriguez’s 30th, making this the 15th season he has hit that milestone, a total that matches Hank Aaron’s record. Early on, one run looked as if it might be enough for Tanaka, who retired the first 12 batters he faced and did not allow a hit until an infield single by Matt Wieters with two outs in the fifth. Tanaka allowed six hits, walked one and struck out 10 in eight innings. But the most meaningful number may have been his 104 pitches. Girardi said before the game that he was uncertain how the rotation would unfold against the Blue Jays beyond Luis Severino in Thursday’s opener. Nova and Pineda would normally be next, but Warren could be slotted in on Friday, allowing the other two to be pushed back an extra day and leaving Tanaka to start in the next series. Tanaka said after Tuesday’s game, however, that he wanted to pitch against the Blue Jays, against whom he was superb in a 4-1, complete-game win last month. “Obviously it’s going to come down to what Joe wants us to do, but for me, I’m ready to go,” Tanaka said through an interpreter. “We’re facing the team that’s in our division that’s still ahead of us. For me, I’d like to be out there.” With such a daunting schedule — the Yankees have one day off scheduled for the rest of the season — this may be the time they miss Eovaldi most. Eovaldi, who was acquired from Miami in December and leads the Yankees with 1541/3 innings and 27 starts, said he felt no discomfort during his start Saturday, when he pitched five and a third innings in a 3-2 loss to Tampa Bay. Afterward, though, his shoulder, chest and elbow felt tight, he said. He had a massage Sunday, but when his elbow did not feel better Monday, he was told to get a magnetic resonance imaging exam, which showed inflammation in the elbow. That there was no ligament damage was a relief for Eovaldi, who had Tommy John surgery at the end of his junior year of high school. But with a pennant race at hand and the Yankees in need of pitching, he said, “I feel like it’s the worst timing that it could be.”

Baseball
Masahiro Tanaka
Yankees
Orioles


Mother Accuses Doctors of Forcing a C-Section and Files Suit

Abstract: After two cesarean sections, Rinat Dray wanted to give birth naturally. But when she arrived at Staten Island University Hospital in labor, the doctor immediately began pressuring her, she said, to have a C-section. The doctor told her the baby would be in peril and her uterus would rupture if she did not; he told her that she would be committing the equivalent of child abuse and that her baby would be taken away from her, she said in an interview this week. After several hours of trying to deliver vaginally and arguing with the doctors, Mrs. Dray was wheeled to an operating room, where her baby was delivered surgically. The hospital record leaves little question that the operation was conducted against her will: “I have decided to override her refusal to have a C-section,” a handwritten note signed by Dr. James J. Ducey, the director of maternal and fetal medicine, says, adding that her doctor and the hospital’s lawyer had agreed. Mrs. Dray is suing the doctors and the hospital for malpractice, charging them with “improperly substituting their judgment for that of the mother” and of trying to persuade her by “pressuring and threatening” her during the birth of her third son, Yosef, in July 2011. But more broadly, her case is part of a debate over the use of cesarean sections. It also raises issues about the rights of pregnant women to control their own bodies, even if that might compromise the life of a fetus. Across the country, nearly 33 percent of births, or almost 1.3 million, were by cesarean section in 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization recommends that the rate should not be higher than 10 to 15 percent. The rate has been climbing since 1996, despite warnings from health officials that C-sections are more likely than natural births to cause problems for the health of the mother and the baby. It has recently leveled off. Indeed, in Mrs. Dray’s case, her bladder was cut during the procedure, according to court papers. The increase in the number of C-sections has been attributed to a rise in high-risk pregnancies; a desire by doctors and mothers to schedule their deliveries; and fears of malpractice lawsuits should the baby be injured during a normal delivery, which typically takes far longer than a cesarean. Obstetricians pay some of the highest malpractice insurance premiums of any medical specialty because of the frequency of birth-related lawsuits. A spokesman for the hospital, Christian Preston, said Friday that he could not comment on the case because of the litigation and privacy concerns. But he defended the hospital’s record, saying it had a 22-percent C-section rate compared with a state average of 34 percent. Its 2012 rate of “vaginal birth after C-section” was almost 29 percent, much higher than the state average of 11 percent, he said. The lawsuit, filed last month in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, where Mrs. Dray lives, also names Dr. Leonid Gorelik, who delivered the baby, as a defendant. Dr. Gorelik, in court papers, denied that he had taken Mrs. Dray for a C-section against her will. He said that her own “culpable conduct and want of care” contributed to any injuries she may have sustained. Dr. Ducey’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment. In the medical record, he wrote that the fetus was “at risks for serious harm without the C-section.” Dr. Howard Minkoff, chairman of obstetrics at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, whose articles on the subject of patient autonomy have been published in medical journals, said he believed that women had an absolute right to refuse treatment even if it meant the death of an unborn child. “In my worldview, the right to refuse is uncircumscribed,” Dr. Minkoff said, cautioning that he was not commenting on the particular facts of Mrs. Dray’s case. “I don’t have a right to put a knife in your belly ever.” Such a person might be accused of being immoral or a terrible mother, he said, “but we won’t tie you down.” As she describes it, Mrs. Dray’s experience illustrates the debate over C-sections. Now 35, she is the mother of three healthy boys. She found her doctors through word of mouth and the Internet, she said, speaking in the office of her lawyer, Michael Bast. She said the first doctor, at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, began urging her to have a cesarean after her water had broken and she had labored for a few hours. Hoping for a different outcome for her second pregnancy, she went to Lenox Hill Hospital, with the same result. Still hoping for a vaginal birth, she changed doctors again for the third pregnancy. She also hired a doula to help her with the childbirth. At first, she said, Dr. Gorelik appeared to relent, saying he would give her an epidural for the pain and then reconsider. “I was begging, give me another hour, give me another two hours,” Mrs. Dray said. Her mother, who was there, supported her, and the doctor said, “I’m not bargaining here,” Mrs. Dray said. Mrs. Dray said she kept begging on the operating table. His answer, she recalled, was, “Don’t speak.”

Malpractice
Pregnancy
C Section,C-section,Caesarean
Staten Island University Hospital
Staten Island
NYC
Rinat Dray


To Hang In, a World Series Winner Must Learn to Let Go

Abstract: More than any other team in American professional sports, the Yankees cannot afford to rebuild. The team’s partnership with the YES regional sports network is too lucrative when the Yankees are winning, their hulking palace of a stadium is too much of a cash cow, the local and national news media are too demanding, and the fans are too hooked on success. Fortunately for them, they do not have to rebuild. Blessed with far and away the biggest revenue stream in Major League Baseball, the Yankees never have to ask whether they can afford to keep a player. If they cannot afford it, no one can. That does not mean the Yankees should want to keep all their players from one year to the next — not even after winning a World Series. Getting too attached to the players who won a title can prove costly for a championship team. A survey of the 25-man rosters of the 14 World Series winners since Major League Baseball added wild-card teams, the same teams’ rosters a year later and their subsequent results, found that 97 players did not return for the season after a championship. That is an average turnover of almost seven players per team, a rate of about 28 percent. Delete the 1997 Florida Marlins, who celebrated their World Series win by dumping 60 percent of their roster in a fire sale, and the turnover rate falls to about six players per team for the remaining 13 clubs, about 25 percent. In the year after a World Series victory, 6 of the 13 defending champions turned over one-quarter or less of their rosters. Those six low-turnover teams combined to lose 47 more games the next season, an average drop of nearly eight games from one year to the next. On the flip side, the seven teams that had greater than 25 percent turnover combined to lose three more games in the season after their World Series triumphs — a difference of less than one victory per team. So what happened to the stand-pat teams that made them fare so much worse? The 2002 Anaheim Angels provide a useful illustration. As is often the case on a World Series-winning team, several players had career years. The team’s top right-handed starter, Ramon Ortiz, had career bests in earned run average, strikeouts and innings pitched. The left-hander Jarrod Washburn posted career bests in victories, E.R.A. and strikeouts. The herky-jerky relief pitcher Ben Weber had the best season of his career. First baseman Scott Spiezio had the best year of his career in the regular season, then did a mean Albert Pujols impression in the postseason. Adam Kennedy, another playoff star, set career highs in batting average and on-base plus slugging percentage. Statistical analysis was not yet mainstream, with “Moneyball” still a few months from hitting the baseball world. Still, it did not take Bill James to know that a starter who had yielded 40 home runs in a season (Ortiz) might not be all that good or that a first baseman entering his 30s (Spiezio) who had never hit more than 17 homers in a season might not be championship-caliber. Moreover, someone had to know that batting average was a highly variable statistic that owes a lot to luck and opposition defense, making the Angels ’ majors-leading .282 a shaky pillar upon which to build an offense. Or that the team’s major-league-best .290 average with runners in scoring position might be tough to replicate, unless the Angels found a way to assemble a roster of players imbued with clutch-hitter pixie dust. All World Series-winning teams face the prospect of regression to the mean, meaning one-year great performances inevitably, eventually, pull back to career norms. Spitting in the face of player- and team-related regression fears, the 2002 Angels replaced just two players from their championship team. In 2003, they lost 22 more games , finishing below .500 in third place in the American League West. The Yankees face another regression-related situation. They had an old roster in 2009 . Two of the top three starters, five of the nine starting batters as well as the Hall of Fame closer were 33 or older. It is possible that 35-year-old Hideki Matsui’s knee problems are behind him and that 28-homer seasons will remain the norm. It is conceivable that Johnny Damon’s tying a career high for homers at 35 (he turned 36 on Nov. 5) means we should expect a big power threat for the next half-decade. It is imaginable that Andy Pettitte, a 15-year veteran who has flirted with retirement in recent years and has nearly 3,000 regular-season innings under his belt, will keep winning games well into his late 30s and beyond. But it is not likely. Few players are more likely to see a regression in their numbers than those getting well into their 30s who have suddenly had a big bounce-back season. The Yankees caught lightning in a bottle with Matsui, Damon and Pettitte, who are free agents, as well as incumbent 30-somethings like Jorge Posada. Even (gasp) Mariano Rivera cannot fight Father Time forever. The 2002 Angels are the prime example for teams that ignored the risks of regression. And history is littered with World Series winners who grew complacent and paid the price the next season. This off-season, if the Yankees want to repeat, they should try to add younger players. By doing that, they will also avoid the trap of complacency.

Baseball
World Series
New York Yankees
Los Angeles Angels
Trades (Sports)


Israel Scours Palestinian Village in Hunt for Killers

Abstract: AWARTA, West Bank — In the rolling hills of the northern West Bank , Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements exist in a geographical intimacy that belies decades of mutual hostility, suspicion and fear. Here neighbors are also enemies, and the brutal killing of five members of the Fogel family in the settlement of Itamar three weeks ago has done nothing but harden that division. The Israeli military and security services have focused their search for the suspected killers in Awarta, the Palestinian village next door. The army has repeatedly raided the village, searching homes, forcing doors and breaking furniture, residents said. Hundreds have been arrested, they said, and about two dozen remain in custody. Awarta lies a few hundred yards across a valley from Itamar, and the villagers say the settlement and its satellite outposts are built on their confiscated lands, in territory that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. Itamar is surrounded by a security fence that the assailants apparently scaled that Friday night. Contact between the two communities is limited to occasional confrontations in the fields, and residents said that settlers stoned houses on the edge of the village the day after the murders. Yet residents of Awarta, who denounced the killings, said they did not believe that anyone from their village could be responsible for such an act. Standing outside his house on the edge of the village, across from the distant row of houses where the Fogels lived, Asad Abd al-Karim Lolah, 70, said it was “impossible for any Palestinian Muslim Arab to have committed that crime.” The March 11 killings, which occurred late on the Sabbath eve, were reviled by all Israelis, regardless of their politics. The victims included parents in their 30s, two young children and a baby who were stabbed and slashed to death in their beds. The Israeli authorities have not revealed any details of their investigation, other than to say it is continuing. But the night after the killings the Israeli military’s regional brigade commander, Col. Nimrod Aloni, told reporters that the event seemed to be “something local.” About 2 a.m. on March 12, some two hours after the bodies were found, Israeli troops “invaded” Awarta, according to the deputy mayor, Hassan Awad. The village, a few miles south of the city of Nablus, was put under curfew for the next four days and was divided into four sections, with soldiers taking over a house in each quarter as a military post. All men and boys over age 15 had to report to the posts, where they were questioned, fingerprinted and given mouth swabs for DNA testing, Mr. Awad said. Residents said at least half of the 1,500 homes have been searched. Of the 7,000 people in the village about 300 have been arrested, Mr. Awad said, adding that while most were released within days, some 25 males between the ages of about 18 and 45 remained in detention on Monday. Mr. Awad said he did not know of any arrests or raids in villages other than Awarta. No charges have been filed. The Palestinian Government Media Center took reporters to Awarta last week, primarily to highlight the damage wrought by the Israeli Army. Children cried and ran away in fright at the sight of strangers. Mr. Lolah, who had two sons aged 30 and 33 in detention, said the soldiers had raided his house four times and “left nothing untouched.” According to the Islamic calendar the Itamar killings took place a year almost to the day after two 19-year-old cousins from Awarta, Muhammad Qawariq and Salah Qawariq, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers on the village lands. At the time the Israeli military said the cousins had tried to attack a soldier with a pitchfork and an ax. After an investigation the military admitted that the shooting was unnecessary, and that if the soldiers had operated in a more professional manner they could have avoided the need to open fire. Muhammad Qawariq’s father, Faisal Mahmoud Masar Qawariq, said his house had been raided seven times since the killings at Itamar. Four of his sons were rounded up and two of them, aged 21 and 24, were still in detention. “My son was murdered while he was working the land,” Mr. Qawariq said. “We have a lawsuit against the Israeli Army in the Israeli courts. This is why they are targeting us.” The dingy, sparsely furnished interior of the house, with bare cement-block walls and a bare cement floor, attests to the family’s poverty. Mr. Qawariq, who has seven surviving children and is unemployed, said the soldiers broke all the closets and the family’s first, newly acquired washing machine. Even so, he said, “Whoever committed the crime” in Itamar “deserves the harshest punishment.” Echoing other Palestinians residents here he said it was not in their culture or tradition to kill children, but settler leaders have circulated what they say is a partial list detailing nearly a dozen Palestinian terrorist attacks over the past decade in which a score of Israeli children have been killed, including two, aged 12 and 15, who were shot in their home in Itamar in 2002. Although none of the residents of Awarta who were interviewed had ever set foot in Itamar, some settlers are familiar with Awarta. Some have visited at night, under the protection of the army, to pray at shrines traditionally believed to be the burial sites of the family of the biblical prophet Aaron. Mr. Awad, the deputy mayor, said Israeli peace groups had come to the village last year to show solidarity after the two youths were killed. But he said no settlers from Itamar had made contact, nor would they have been welcomed if they had.

Israeli Settlements
Palestinians
Murders and Attempted Murders
West Bank


Hedge Fund Founder Sentenced for Fraud

Abstract: A founder of several Bayou Management hedge funds was sentenced to more than four years in prison Tuesday for a scheme to defraud investors. Judge Colleen McMahon in Federal District Court in Manhattan sentenced James G. Marquez, 59, to 51 months in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release. He also was ordered to pay nearly $6.26 million in restitution. “I made the terrible choice to take the easy way out when things started going wrong at Bayou,” Mr. Marquez said. “My actions and inactions directly injured investors of Bayou.” Mr. Marquez, who left Bayou in 2001, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in December 2006. Prosecutors said that Mr. Marquez conspired with Samuel Israel III, Bayou’s chief executive, and Daniel Marino, its chief financial officer, from 1996 to October 2001, to induce investors to contribute to funds by misrepresenting that the money-losing funds were highly profitable. Mr. Marquez founded the Bayou funds with Mr. Israel, the government said. Bayou Management abruptly closed its doors in July 2005. The fraud ballooned from more than $6 million when Mr. Marquez left the company to more than $400 million when Bayou closed its doors. In September 2005, Mr. Israel and Mr. Marino pleaded guilty to conspiracy, investment adviser fraud and other charges in connection with a scheme to defraud investors through the improper inflation of the value of Bayou’s funds. They are awaiting sentencing.

Frauds and Swindling
Marquez James G.
Sentences (Criminal)
Hedge Funds


A Universal Basic Income Is a Poor Tool to Fight Poverty

Abstract: Why doesn’t the government just give everybody money? Figure out a reasonable amount — the official poverty line amounts to about $25,000 for a family of four; a full-time job at $15 an hour would provide about $30,000 a year — and hand every adult a monthly check. The minimum-wage worker stretching to make it to payday, the single mother balancing child care and a job — everybody would get the same thing. Poverty would be over, at a stroke. Being universal — that is, for the homeless and the masters of the universe alike — the program would be free of the cumbersome assessments required to determine eligibility. It would also escape the stigma typically attached to programs for the poor. And it would be politically secure. Programs for the poor are often maligned as poor programs. Indeed, defunding antipoverty programs rarely carries political consequences because the poor rarely vote. It’s another story entirely when everybody benefits. The idea of universal basic income sounds extravagant, right? Well, the Finns and even the Swiss are thinking about it. On Sunday, Swiss citizens will vote in a referendum on whether to hand out 30,000 francs a year — just over $30,000 — to every citizen, regardless of wealth, work status or whatever. In the United States, the idea has the support of thinkers on the left like Andrew Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union. Some thinkers on the right, too, have managed to overcome their general distaste for government welfare to support the idea. This month, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute will publish an updated version of his plan to replace welfare as we know it with a dollop of $10,000 in after-tax income for every American above the age of 21. Readers of my conversation with a fellow Times columnist, Farhad Manjoo, a few weeks ago know that I think the idea is, let’s say, poorly thought out . Given its resilience, however, it is worth taking apart more methodically. Its first hurdle is arithmetic. As Robert Greenstein of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put it , a check of $10,000 to each of 300 million Americans would cost more than $3 trillion a year. Where would that money come from? It amounts to nearly all the tax revenue collected by the federal government. Nothing in the history of this country suggests Americans are ready to add that kind of burden to their current taxes. Cut it by half to $5,000? That wouldn’t even clear the poverty line. And it would still cost as much as the entire federal budget except for Social Security, Medicare, defense and interest payments. Thinkers on the right solve the how-to-pay-for-it problem simply by defunding everything else the government provides, programs as varied as food stamps and Social Security. That, Mr. Greenstein observes, would actually increase poverty. It would redistribute wealth upward, taking money targeted to the poor and sharing it with everybody, including you and me. As Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and onetime top economic adviser to President Obama, told me, paying a $5,000 universal basic income to the 250 million nonpoor Americans would cost about $1.25 trillion a year. “It would be hard to finance that in a way that wouldn’t burden the programs that help the poor,” he said. The popularity of the universal basic income stems from a fanciful diagnosis born in Silicon Valley of the challenges faced by the working class across industrialized nations: one that sees declining employment rates and stagnant wages and concludes that robots are about to take over all the jobs in the world. That might lie in our future — I will devote my next column to discussion of such a universe. But it’s certainly not our present. Men at their prime working ages, 25 to 54, have been falling out of the labor force since the 1960s. Still, today more than eight out of every 10 Americans in their prime are working. Work, as Lawrence Katz of Harvard once pointed out, is not just what people do for a living. It is a source of status. It organizes people’s lives. It offers an opportunity for progress. None of this can be replaced by a check. A universal basic income has many undesirable features, starting with its non-negligible disincentive to work. Almost a quarter of American households make less than $25,000. It would be hardly surprising if a $10,000 check each for mom and dad sapped their desire to work. A universal income divorces assistance from need. Aid is fixed, regardless of whatever else is going on. If our experience with block grants serves as precedent, it is most likely to become less generous over time. To libertarians this will sound more like a feature than a flaw, but replacing everything in the safety net with a check would limit the scope of government assistance in damaging ways. Say we know the choice of neighborhood makes a difference to the development of poor children. Housing vouchers might lead them to move into a better one. A monthly check would probably not. And those who think a universal benefit would be more politically resilient than a means-tested one might stop to ponder the unceasing chatter about trimming Social Security. It is undoubtedly true that the American safety net needs fixing. Fifty million Americans live in poverty. Sixteen million live on the equivalent of $8.60 a day. Providing more income security for the struggling working class would not only produce a more equitable society, it would also increase spending and improve economic growth. In this world, though, where work remains an important social, psychological and economic anchor, there are better tools to help than giving every American a monthly check. How about subsidized employment? The government could subsidize jobs as varied as school repairs and fixing potholes. “This would provide employment while doing things that improve productivity and improve people’s lives,” Mr. Greenstein said. Perhaps we could expand the earned-income tax credit, the country’s most successful antipoverty tool, which increases the earnings of low-income workers. Or take the idea pushed for years by Edmund Phelps from Columbia University: Instead of providing a subsidy to workers that phases out as their income rises, why not subsidize workers’ wages instead? As Mr. Summers told a gathering last week at the Brookings Institution, “a universal basic income is one of those ideas that the longer you look at it, the less enthusiastic you become.”

Income
Poverty
Welfare in the US
Productivity


Who Has the Horse Tranquilizers?

Abstract: The Olympics in Beijing are nearly upon us, and if the previous Summer Games—not to mention the events of the intervening four years—are any indication, drug scandals will be part of the festivities. In March, 11 of 14 weight lifters on the Greek Olympic team tested positive for steroid use, and the Greek coach, in turn, blamed a Chinese manufacturer for providing them with tainted supplements. And so it begins. “There will always be someone who tests positive at the Olympics,” says Gary Wadler, a New York University medical professor and the chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Prohibited List and Methods Committee. “Somebody will do a dumb thing, thinking they can get away with it.” To some athletes, apparently, doping remains an unofficial Olympic sport. Time for a tutorial on the drugs of summer. WHAT THEY’LL TRY NEXT By the 2012 Olympics, drug testers will likely have a new problem on their hands: some athletes will have moved beyond drugs. They will be gene doping, or altering themselves genetically. “This is infinitely more complicated,” Wadler says. By transferring synthetic genes into human cells, athletes could stimulate muscle growth, increase metabolism or boost endurance. Those transferred genes would blend seamlessly into the athlete’s DNA. Some experts say that the future is already here, and that athletes are probably gene doping for Beijing. “This is very much on our radar screen,” Wadler says. So far, the only sure way to detect gene doping is by taking a biopsy of the affected muscle tissue — not a practical solution. Which is just the kind of test that cheaters love. HOW THEY MIGHT GET AWAY WITH IT Cheaters adapt, and crafty athletes are continually concocting ways to avoid positive results. Some athletes dilute their urine with water. Others use catheters to inject drug-free urine into their bladders shortly before their events. Certain methods, however, are out: male athletes will no longer get away with taking diuretics or other masking agents like the female fertility drug Clomid; those substances are now caught by the normal drug screening. A cheater’s best asset is often time. Drug users rely on detailed calendars to determine when to stop using banned substances. EPO, for instance, can be detected only for a few days after use — but the drug is said to be effective for several weeks after that. Then there are certain male athletes who may be able to take testosterone and not worry about testing positive: a recent doping study showed that two-thirds of Asian men and 10 percent of Caucasians are missing a gene function that converts testosterone into a form that dissolves in urine. These athletes could use the steroid and still test clean. BOLSTERING THE FIRE WALL This is the first Olympics in which H.G.H. testing will be widely conducted; the test uses antibodies to differentiate the structural variations between H.G.H. produced by the body and the synthetic kind. The catch: An athlete will test positive only if he or she injected the drug in the previous 12 to 24 hours, according to some scientists. So the test is most effective when given by surprise. Officials have been careful not to say when such testing will begin — perhaps at training sites before the Games. TESTERS IN OVERDRIVE Some 4,500 drug tests will be performed in Beijing, 25 percent more than at the 2004 Olympics. About 900 of those will be blood tests, and another 700 to 800 will check for EPO. Who will be tested? The top five finishers in each event and two randomly selected competitors. Each will provide a urine sample, a blood sample or both. The samples will be transported — by armed guards — from 41 collection stations to a facility near the National Stadium where some 150 scientists and volunteers will work 24 hours a day. Besides looking for banned substances, they’ll look for clues that an athlete is taking something new. Low natural hormone levels, for example, indicate an athlete might be taking hormones in synthetic form. WHAT’S ON THE MENU? For endurance athletes, the preferred poison is synthetic EPO (erythropoietin), a hormone that stimulates red blood cell production and, thus, oxygen-carrying capacity. Athletes in strength sports use steroids, which increase muscle mass. Human growth hormone is thought by some users to strengthen connective tissue and increase lean body mass, so it may work for most any sport. But athletes often combine drugs. A regimen might consist of steroid drops under the tongue, an EPO shot and a cream that is part testosterone and part epitestosterone (a masking agent). H.G.H. is often combined with steroids to build strength and aid recovery.

Doping
Olympic Games (2008)
Steroids
Tests and Testing
Testosterone


Early Exit for Djokovic

Abstract: Novak Djokovic lost, 7-6 (2), 6-3, to Janko Tipsarevic in the Madrid Open quarterfinals, becoming the latest big name to lose on the new blue-clay court. Djokovic last lost this early in a tournament in November at the Paris Masters. On the women’s side, Serena Williams cruised past No. 2 Maria Sharapova, 6-1, 6-3, to advance to the semifinals along with top-ranked Victoria Azarenka, who rallied past the French Open winner Li Na, 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Tennis
Madrid Open (Tennis)
Djokovic Novak
Tipsarevic Janko


Part-Time Schedules, Full-Time Headaches

Abstract: A worker at an apparel store at Woodbury Common, an outlet mall north of New York City, said that even though some part-time employees clamored for more hours, the store had hired more part-timers and cut many workers’ hours to 10 a week from 20. As soon as a nurse in Illinois arrived for her scheduled 3-to-11 p.m. shift one Christmas Day, hospital officials told her to go home because the patient “census” was low. They also ordered her to remain on call for the next four hours — all unpaid. An employee at a specialty store in California said his 25-hour-a-week job with wildly fluctuating hours wasn’t enough to live on. But when he asked the store to schedule him between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. so he could find a second job, the store cut him to 12 hours a week. These are among the experiences related by New York Times readers in more than 440 responses to an article published in Wednesday’s paper about a fledgling movement in which some states and cities are seeking to limit the harshest effects of increasingly unpredictable and on-call work schedules. Many readers voiced dismay with the volatility of Americans’ work schedules and the inability of many part-timers to cobble together enough hours to support their families. In a comment that was the most highly recommended by others — 307 of them — a reader going by “pedigrees” wrote that workers were often reviled for not working hard enough or not being educated enough. “How can they work more jobs or commit to a degree program if they don’t know what their work schedule will be next week, much less next month?” the reader wrote. “It’s long past time for some certainty for workers. They drive the economy.” Some readers were shocked by the story of Mary Coleman, who, after an hourlong bus commute, arrived for her scheduled shift at a Popeyes in Milwaukee only to be told to go home without clocking in because the store already had enough employees working. She wasn’t paid for the day. “What happened to Ms. Coleman should be criminal,” wrote “JenD” of New Jersey in the second-most-recommended comment. “These types of stories sound like they were written by Charles Dickens in the mid-19th century.” Image Courtney Moore took a second job at McDonald’s after her hours were cut at Walmart. Credit Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times A reader from South Dakota, “JDT,” wrote that he was baffled as to why so many employers created turmoil for their workers by assigning them a different schedule every week, making it hard to juggle their jobs with child care or college. “As a small-business owner for over 30 years, I have always been able to provide my part-time employees with a firm, steady and predictable schedule,” JDT wrote . “My employees are a vital and important asset. I treat them right, and they do their best for me. It’s so easy ... Why can’t big business run by M.B.A.s and highly compensated executives figure that out?” JDT, whose name is Jim D. Taylor, runs a combined law and real estate firm in Mitchell, S.D. In a follow-up interview, he said: “In a small business, if you’ve scheduled someone to work, there should always be enough to do — you don’t send them home. I don’t know why big business is any different.” Mr. Taylor said his 26-year-old son, a graduate of Minnesota State University who works at a Target warehouse, had a schedule that bounced around from week to week — 22 hours some weeks, 32 hours others, some day shifts and some night shifts. “Why is it so hard to schedule someone for regular shifts?” Mr. Taylor asked. A reader calling himself “Polish Ladies Cleaning Service” wrote that in the housecleaning business, it was “a particularly devilish problem” to maintain predictable schedules for employees. “If a client cancels and there’s no work, there’s no work,” he wrote. “We try to let everyone know ASAP, of course, but there are times when clients do cancel literally at the very last minute!” In a follow-up interview, David Chou, the spokesman for Polish Ladies Cleaning Service, a company based in Brooklyn, told of a woman with a $19,000-a-month apartment who failed to confirm a housecleaning appointment scheduled for that day. So the company had to tell the scheduled housekeeper she was not needed that morning. “We try to reschedule the ladies with other clients if that’s possible, but probably about half the times that’s not possible,” Mr. Chou said. “Mary,” a reader from Atlanta, said it was understandable why so many employers relied on part-time workers. “We do still have issues with supply and demand that make it difficult for some businesses to hire full time (e.g., retail brick-and-mortar stores struggling with seasonal slowdowns and competition from Internet stores),” she wrote. Image Jim D. Taylor said that as a small-business owner he tried to give his part-timers predictable schedules. Credit David Eggen for The New York Times “How is it so many, and Obama, believe that workers have the right to tell their employer what hours they will work?” she added. “I’m thinking many here need to go to Europe or some other country. See how that works for you. Our government has no right to dictate, only to protect workers from abuse, and part-time is not abuse.” One reader, a sales employee at an Apple store, complained in a letter that her work schedule varied every week, although she praised Apple’s medical, dental and vision benefits, even for part-timers. In a follow-up interview she said she was essentially required to be available anytime from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. six days a week — she has designated Wednesday as her day off. “Having to give them that much availability, it means you’re at their mercy,” she said, noting that her husband works Monday through Friday. “You don’t know until the schedule comes out what your life will look like.” Courtney Moore, a cashier at a Walmart in Cincinnati, said in an interview that she had been assigned about 40 hours a week until she told store management in June that she would begin taking college classes most mornings and some afternoons. She said she asked her manager to put her on the late shift, but to her dismay, the store reduced her to 15 hours a week. “They said they need someone they could call whenever they need help — and they said I’m not that person,” Ms. Moore said. She said she would prefer being a dedicated full-time employee at Walmart but had to take a second job at McDonald’s instead. A middle-aged New Yorker who lost his teaching job of two decades because of a budget squeeze in his school district said he had applied for retail jobs and was shocked by what he found. “You had to be available every minute of every day, knowing you would be scheduled for no more than 29 hours per week and knowing there would be no normalcy to your schedule,” he wrote. “I told the person I would like to be scheduled for the same days every week so I could try to get another job to try to make ends meet. She immediately said, ‘Well, that will end our conversation right here. You have to be available every day for us.’ “I asked, ‘Even though I’m trying to get another job?’ ‘Yes.’ Then she just stared at me and asked me to leave. What kind of company does this? What kind of company will not even let you get another job?”


Minor Crime Leads to Fatal Cycle of Revenge, Police Say

Abstract: On a Saturday last October, Terrence Davis Sr., a peddler of bootleg DVDs, sold some marijuana to Lee Smith Sr., according to the charges. The deal did not go smoothly. Officials said a police officer saw the transaction and arrested both men. By the standards of the Bronx courthouse, the case was a paltry matter. But it stuck with Mr. Davis, 42, who seemed to blame Mr. Smith, 51, a building superintendent who had long struggled with crack cocaine addiction. When he next saw Mr. Smith, Mr. Davis threw a punch and stole a chain from the man’s neck, according to the police. But rather than fading, Mr. Davis’s fury has ricocheted murderously throughout the streets of the Bronx, investigators believe, claiming the life of his own son. Now the police are examining whether it resulted in a second death: that of Mr. Smith, who was found on Saturday night in his apartment building with a gunshot wound to his head. “Unfortunately this situation seems to have spiraled out of control,” said a lawyer for Mr. Smith’s son, Lee Smith Jr., 29. The younger Mr. Smith has been jailed since June on charges that he murdered Mr. Davis’s son, Terrence Davis Jr. Asked about the enmity between the two families, the lawyer, Troy Smith (who is not related to any of the Smiths in the case), said, “It’s got a little ‘West Side Story’ to it.” No charges have been filed in the death of the elder Mr. Smith, but homicide detectives are exploring the possibility that it may be retaliation for the death of Mr. Davis’s son, said John J. McCarthy, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. The bad blood between the two families has led one Davis family member to say she fears for her life and has asked her friends to accompany her when she leaves her home. “It’s kind of crazy — I don’t know what to do,” Dannatte Davis, a sister of Terrence Davis Sr., said. “I need to be somewhere safe — protective custody.” Detectives in the Bronx are piecing together past encounters between the two men, stringing together a timeline of slights and grievances. After the botched drug deal and ensuing confrontation, Mr. Davis was arrested in November based on Mr. Smith’s account of being punched and having his gold chain stolen. With the court case hanging over his head, Mr. Davis grew “very angry,” his sister said. He professed his innocence to his family, maintaining that he had never stolen anything from Mr. Smith, and certainly not a gold chain, which was not his style, Dannatte Davis recalled. On May 31, the two men crossed paths outside a barber shop in Fordham Heights, near where both lived. A fistfight broke out after Mr. Davis accused Mr. Smith of being an informer and a liar, Dannatte Davis said. The police responded and cited both men for disorderly conduct, Mr. McCarthy said. That evening, the police found Mr. Davis’s 24-year-old son, Terrence Jr., dead on the street, shot several times. The young man, a father of two himself, worked as a security guard and also sold bootleg DVDs, just as his father was doing, neighbors said. The police charged Mr. Smith’s son, Lee Smith Jr., with the murder after witnesses identified him as the gunman, Mr. McCarthy said. The police described the younger Mr. Smith as a member of the Bloods street gang. His lawyer, Troy Smith, said, “The father had a beef with the other father and there is a mistaken belief that my client exacted revenge for his father.” In the months that followed, Mr. McCarthy said, officers in the 46th Precinct — where there was concern about further retaliation — were routinely dispatched to various intersections on Burnside and Jerome Avenues, where Mr. Smith Sr. and Mr. Davis Sr. were believed to be likely to run into each other. On Friday, members of both the Davis and Smith families appeared in State Supreme Court in the Bronx for a hearing in the case of Terrence Davis Jr.’s killing. The next evening, on Saturday, the elder Mr. Smith was found dead in the vestibule of his apartment building, Mr. McCarthy, the police spokesman, said. Since then, a brown corrugated cardboard box has been placed outside the building, filled with 17 glowing votive candles and decorated with flowers. Neighbors recalled the Smith family as having been riven by crack cocaine. But to neighbors, Mr. Smith Sr. appeared to have turned a corner in recent years, holding down a job, an apartment and even a car. Dannatte Davis said she anticipated that detectives would soon be looking for her brother. Mr. Davis Sr. “is going to be the No. 1 suspect,” she said, but she said she hoped detectives would cast a wide net. In an interview, she urged the authorities to consider that Mr. Smith Sr. “had problems with other people in the Bronx, too.”

Murders
Marijuana,Pot,Weed
Drug Abuse
Bronx
Lee Smith Jr
Lee Smith Sr
Terrence Davis Jr
Terrence Davis Sr
NYC


Charlie Powell, a Standout Regardless of the Sport, Dies at 82

Abstract: The often-told story about Charlie Powell is that as a 20-year-old defensive end playing his first game for the San Francisco 49ers in 1952, he sacked Bobby Layne, the legendary quarterback for the Detroit Lions, 10 times. It’s a difficult claim to either believe or disprove, but in any case Powell, who died on Monday in San Diego at 82, was the sort of athlete about whom Bunyanesque mythology was reasonably applied. There’s another story about his hitting a home run not only clear out of a ballpark but over the highway cloverleaf beyond it. The verifiable facts include these: He ran 100 yards in under 10 seconds. He put the shot more than 57 feet. He was signed as a slugging outfielder by the St. Louis Browns. He played seven seasons of pro football, with the 49ers and later with the Oakland Raiders in the fledgling years of the old American Football League. And, oh yeah, in the off-season he boxed: In 39 bouts as a professional fighter, Powell was 25-11-3, including, in 1959, an eight-round technical knockout of Nino Valdes that elevated him to the top ranks of the world’s heavyweight contenders. He knocked out 17 opponents. Toward the end of his career, he lost to a future champion, Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali), in 1963, and a former one, Floyd Patterson, in 1964. Last year U-T San Diego (formerly The San Diego Union-Tribune) called Powell “arguably the greatest athlete ever to come out of San Diego County” — a place that also produced Ted Williams, Marcus Allen and Greg Louganis. He was attending a reunion of his wife’s family when he died. His brother Jerry said the cause was undetermined. “When the conversation veers around to all-around athletes, it gets to Charlie Powell in a hurry,” the venerable Los Angeles Times sportswriter Jim Murray wrote in 1998. “There’s Jim Thorpe, Jackie Robinson, and, well, how about Charlie Powell?” Charles Elvin Powell was born in Dallas on April, 4, 1932, the second of nine children of Elvin Powell and the former Johnnie Mae Martin. His father, who Jerry Powell said was a scratch golfer and a leading tennis player on Texas’s segregated black tennis circuit, moved the family to San Diego in 1937, and he worked in construction there as a cement finisher. A standout athlete from a young age, Charlie took boxing lessons from a neighbor, Archie Moore, later the world light-heavyweight champion, and boxed at the local boys club. But, Jerry Powell said, “they had to stop him because he was knocking too many guys out.” Image Powell, left, during a fight against Cassius Clay in 1963. Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, won in three rounds. Credit James Drake/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images At San Diego High School, he earned 12 varsity letters, three each in football, basketball — reportedly the Harlem Globetrotters offered him a tryout after seeing him play, but his parents wanted to keep him in school — baseball and track, in which he competed in sprints, the high jump and the shot put. He often competed in a meet and a baseball game on the same afternoon. The St. Louis Browns signed Powell to a minor league contract, and after graduating from high school he played a summer for the Stockton Ports, their Class C affiliate. But he decided he did not care enough for baseball and switched sports, joining the 49ers and playing his first game when he was just 20. (Many articles about Powell say that he was the youngest ever to play in the National Football League, but according to the Elias Sports Bureau, the N.F.L.’s official statisticians, younger players had preceded him.) Statistics from that era, especially defensive statistics, are sketchy, but in five seasons he played in 55 games with the 49ers, and after skipping two years to focus on boxing, he returned to football with the Raiders, playing 28 games during the first two seasons, 1960 and 1961, of the A.F.L. Powell, who had also skipped a year of football in favor of boxing in 1954, always thought he’d have come closer to a crown if he had concentrated only on the ring. He played football at between 225 and 235 pounds; his boxing weight was between 210 and 220. “Trouble was I’d have to take weight off in the summertime and put it back on in the wintertime for football,” he told the writer Gay Talese, who covered the Patterson fight for The New York Times. “It was off and on, off and on, and I couldn’t concentrate on either sport.” After his days as a pro athlete — he hung up his gloves in 1965 — Powell worked as a salesman in the aerospace equipment industry and for an industrial cleaning supply business. Powell, who lived in Altadena, Calif., married Irma Wesson in 1954. In addition to his wife and his brother Jerry, who was a receiver and a kick returner for the Honolulu Hawaiians of the short-lived World Football League in the 1970s, he is survived by a sister, Carmen Powell, and three other brothers: Tony, Ellsworth and Art, who played 10 seasons of professional football, mostly as a receiver. So what of those 10 quarterback sacks? The official record for sacks by a single player in a single game is seven, by Derrick Thomas of the Kansas City Chiefs against the Seattle Seahawks on Nov. 11, 1990, but the sack did not become an official statistic until 1982. According to box scores compiled by Pro-Football-Reference.com of the games between the 49ers and the Lions in 1952, the Lions quarterback was not sacked in one game and was sacked five times in another. Still, there are witnesses, including Art Powell, who was 15 at the time and said he watched the game on television. “He killed Lou Creekmur, just killed him,” Art Powell said in an interview, referring to the Lions tackle his brother overpowered, evidently again and again. “He sacked Bobby Layne a zillion times.”

Charlie Powell
Football
Boxing
Obituary
Baseball


Bynum Out for a While

Abstract: Los Angeles Lakers center Andrew Bynum said he would probably miss the first month of the N.B.A. season after having arthroscopic surgery on his right knee two months ago. Bynum, a 7-foot center, had hoped to make a full recovery by the start of the regular season on Oct. 26.

Bynum Andrew
Los Angeles Lakers
National Basketball Assn
Basketball


California: Ex-Senator Pleads Guilty in Racketeering and Corruption Case

Abstract: Leland Yee, an ex-state senator, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a racketeering charge in an organized crime and public corruption case centered in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in October. The F.B.I. arrested Mr. Yee and 19 other people in 2014 during a series of raids, one of which targeted a Chinese fraternal organization, Ghee Kung Tong. Mr. Yee was accused of soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for providing help from Sacramento. The F.B.I. also alleged that Mr. Yee, a San Francisco Democrat who was running for secretary of state, conspired to connect an undercover agent with an international arms dealer in exchange for campaign contributions. The F.B.I. says undercover agents laundered $2.6 million in cash from illegal bookmaking through the organization.

Corruption
Organized crime
Racketeering
Chinatown San Francisco
Leland Y Yee


Afghan Bomb at Meeting Kills 2 G.I.’s and a Child

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide attacker in a police uniform blew himself up inside a police station in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan on Monday, killing two American soldiers and an 8-year-old boy, Afghan officials said. The blast wounded several other people, including one American soldier, officials said. Baghlan is a relatively peaceful province, and there is said to be no active insurgency there. But it was the scene of one of the bloodiest suicide attacks last year, in which as many as 72 people were reported killed, including 5 lawmakers and more than 50 schoolchildren. The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday. A spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, identified the suicide bomber as a man named Abdul Ahad and said the attack had caused many more casualties than those reported by Afghan and American officials. An American military spokesman, Maj. John Redfield, said that two coalition soldiers had been killed and three wounded. He did not give the nationality of the other two wounded coalition soldiers, nor did he say what they were doing at the police station. United States personnel are involved in police training and mentoring and work closely with Afghan security officials in many provinces in Afghanistan. The attack happened as American police trainers were in the building talking with Afghan police officials, and their guards were in the yard where the bomber detonated the explosives on his body, Afghan officials said. “Two American soldiers and a child were killed, and one American and five Afghan soldiers were wounded,” said Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili, the police chief of Baghlan. He said the attacker had managed to infiltrate the compound by wearing a police uniform during a large meeting of district chiefs, who arrived with many bodyguards. In Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul, an American helicopter came under fire from Taliban insurgents and was forced to make “a hard landing,” said Col. Gregory Julian, a spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan. No one was injured, he said. He indicated that the helicopter could have been forced down by small-arms fire or a rocket-propelled grenade. Mr. Mujahed, the Taliban spokesman, said Taliban insurgents had opened fire on the helicopter and brought it down while the pilot was trying to land at a compound where coalition forces were looking for militants.

Afghanistan
Afghanistan War (2001- )
Bombs and Explosives
United States Armament and Defense


Chief of PepsiCo to Get Chairman’s Post

Abstract: PepsiCo said that its board had elected its chief executive, Indra K. Nooyi, to succeed Steven S. Reinemund as chairman when he retires in May. Ms. Nooyi, 51, joined PepsiCo, based in Purchase, N.Y., in 1994 and led its global strategy for more than a decade. She told analysts in October she planned to increase budgets for products like Tava calorie-burning drinks and to spend $500 million a year on acquisitions like the Stacy’s Pita Chip Company. Mr. Reinemund, 58, announced his departure in August. Ms. Nooyi will retain the chief executive post. Ms. Nooyi served as chief financial officer before being named chief executive in October. She oversaw the acquisitions of Quaker Oats and Tropicana and the spinoff of Yum Brands restaurants, including KFC and Taco Bell. Shares of PepsiCo fell 21 cents, to $64.83, on the New York Stock Exchange.

PepsiCo Inc
Appointments and Executive Changes