Greek Leaders Fail to Reach Consensus on Austerity Measures

Abstract: ATHENS — At an emergency meeting on Friday, the country’s political leaders failed to agree on new austerity measures proposed by the government, but Prime Minister George Papandreou said there was still hope that an agreement would be reached. “Essentially, there are many points on which we can agree,” he said, speaking to the nation in a televised speech. “But there is a need for political will from all sides.” “Over the next few days we will continue efforts to reach a consensus,” he continued, adding that “the government has assumed the responsibility to extract the country from the crisis and will do this with or without consensus.” But leaders of the opposition parties have refused to fall in behind the president, Karolos Papoulias, who had called the meeting. The measures have been proposed by Mr. Papandreou’s Socialist government. The aim of Friday’s meeting was to convince officials of the European Union and International Monetary Fund that Greece is serious about repairing its finances, and has the political will to impose more tax increases and spending cuts on a public already weary after a year of belt-tightening. The effort came amid mounting speculation about the Greek government’s ability to avert a default, which would very likely lead to a new financial crisis across the euro zone. Olli Rehn, Europe’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said in a statement that the commission “regrets the failure of Greek party leaders to reach consensus on economic adjustment to overcome the current debt crisis.” “An agreement has to be found soon,” Mr. Rehn said. “Time is running out.” Earlier in the day, Antonis Samaras, the leader of the country’s main conservative opposition party, New Democracy, said he would not back a program that would “raze Greece’s economy and destroy its society.” He called for the renegotiation of the terms of an agreement with the union and the I.M.F., which last May pledged 110 billion euros in loans to Greece in exchange for the country’s getting its fiscal house in order. Mr. Samaras also reiterated calls for an alternative approach to Greece’s finances, one that favored the lowering of taxes and faster privatization of state assets. Other leaders also criticized the Socialists’ plan. Among them was the leader of the Communist Party, Aleka Papariga, who said Greeks were being subjected to “ideological terrorism” and should not give in to “coercive dilemmas.” On Thursday, the head of the group of euro zone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, said again that the European Union would be unlikely to step in if the I.M.F. withheld its portion of a fifth installment of emergency funding to Greece — 12 billion euros ($17 billion) scheduled to be disbursed next month. Greece’s lenders are demanding additional measures after the country missed its deficit-reduction target for 2010, putting the goals for this year and beyond further out of reach. A mission from the European Commission, the I.M.F. and the European Central Bank is currently compiling a much-anticipated report on the Greek government’s progress, after which European ministers will have to decide how to react. The situation is difficult because public opinion in creditor countries is hardening and some euro zone governments, including that of the Netherlands, have made it clear that they will not step in and fill the funding gap if the I.M.F. does not believe that it can justify releasing its portion. That has increased pressure on the Greek government to agree to revenue-raising measures, including privatization, that will be sufficient to win over the I.M.F. At the Group of 8 meeting in Deauville, France, on Friday, the United States expressed support for European efforts to prevent a renewed debt crisis in Greece from mushrooming into a larger problem for the euro monetary union, said two European diplomats who were present during the discussions but did not want to be named. The Americans said that Europe’s ability to manage these problems was important to the United States, but that President Obama did not specify what kind of help the United States would be willing to extend, other than statements of support, the diplomats said. The European leaders said during the discussions that Europe’s problems were limited to Greece and that they did not believe Greece risked infecting the rest of the euro zone, which covers 17 countries. They pointed to the continued strength of the euro vis-à-vis the dollar as proof that the situation was still under control. The leaders agreed, however, that Greece needed to be more aggressive in adjusting its own finances, and said they believed that the country would ultimately be able to avoid defaulting on or restructuring its debts. Greek media has speculated in the last week that the country will hold snap elections or possibly return to the drachma. The European marine affairs commissioner, Maria Damanaki, who is a Greek Socialist, added fuel to the fire when she suggested on Wednesday that talks were already taking place about Greece’s possible exit from the euro zone. Apart from tax increases and public spending cuts, the Greek government’s proposed austerity program also includes a privatization drive that foresees sales in stakes of state utilities and assets including the state telecommunications company OTE. On Friday, Deutsche Telekom, which already has a 30 percent stake in OTE, confirmed the receipt of a letter from the Greek finance ministry asking to arrange talks to discuss increasing its stake. But a few dozen employees of the phone company protested a further sell-off by blocking one of Athens’s busiest roads, in front of the company’s headquarters, during the morning rush hour Friday. Larger protests have been held over the last three days as Greeks, facing a deepening recession and mounting unemployment, seek to air their grievances.

Greece
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
International Monetary Fund
European Union


Facebook Says an Investigation Found No Evidence of Bias in a News App

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said on Monday that an internal investigation found no evidence of systemic political bias in the selection of news presented in a section of its app called Trending Topics. Even so, the social network, which is making a tour of contrition after accusations that it actively suppresses conservative content, said it would make some changes to Trending Topics, including no longer referring to a list of national news sources — like Fox News, The New York Times and BuzzFeed News — to “boost” topics appearing on its Trending Topics. “These improvements and safeguards are designed not only to ensure that Facebook remains a platform that is open and welcoming to all groups and individuals, but also to restore any loss of trust in the Trending Topics feature,” Colin Stretch, Facebook general counsel, said in a statement posted to the company’s site . The move is the latest attempt by Facebook to control political criticism after a report from Gizmodo , the technology news site, which cited two former Facebook news curators as saying some conservative news was not promoted on Trending Topics, depending on the individual biases of staff members. Trending Topics shows up as the list of the most-talked-about items of interest on Facebook, and appears in the top right corner of the desktop site for hundreds of millions of users. To counter the accusations, especially from Republicans who said they could no longer trust Facebook as an impartial platform, the company held a meeting with a group of conservatives at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters and published its internal editorial guidelines. Facebook has pushed back hard against the criticism. On Monday, it said that it could find no evidence of any systemic suppression in the section and that “conservative and liberal topics are approved as trending topics at virtually identical rates,” according to a blog post . The Silicon Valley company published results of the internal investigation and its changes in a letter to Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, who had earlier demanded answers about how Trending Topics works. “Private companies are fully entitled to espouse their own views, so I appreciate Facebook’s efforts to address allegations of bias raised in the media and my concern about a lack of transparency in its methodology for determining trending topics,” Senator Thune said in a statement. At least one conservative-leaning publication was skeptical of Facebook’s findings. Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News, which declined to attend the meeting at Facebook last week with other conservatives, called for more transparency from the company and said in an emailed statement on Monday: “It comes as no surprise that Facebook did an internal investigation and declared itself innocent. We don’t need more dissembling, photo ops or happy talk.” The New York Times found no widespread examples of intentional bias on Trending Topics, based on interviews with current and former Facebook employees. Instead, the company’s Trending Topics team was characterized as having a problematic culture made up largely of contract journalists, some of whom said there was a lack of oversight from and communication with management. Still, Facebook on Monday noted it could not rule out the isolated biased actions of any particular individual, nor could it dismiss unintentional bias in its guidelines or policies. To combat that, the company will make some changes to how Trending Topics functions, including eliminating the list of external media sites and RSS feeds to judge which material should be shown as trending across Facebook. “We want people to feel confident that our community welcomes all viewpoints, and we are committed to designing our products to give all people a voice and foster the free flow of ideas and culture,” Mr. Stretch wrote.

Facebook
News media,journalism
Social Media
Republicans
Conservatism in the United States


Joining the Car Pool, in the Internet Age

Abstract: TWO years ago, Tina Amarante began to look around for a way to share her 25-mile daily commute to Hartford from Cheshire. She found the solution on the Internet through a Web site that allows commuters — or people who want to share a ride anywhere — to find others going their way. Ms. Amarante, 26, a systems analyst at UnitedHealth Group in Hartford, joined NuRide, a national ride-sharing Web site ( www.nuride.com ), and now she rotates the driving with two colleagues. She said the parking garage near her office charges $85 a month, “so that’s a huge incentive to car-pool right there.” Besides saving money on gas and parking, she said she has become friends with her car mates, women ages 37 and 48. “Being in a car pool, you really have to get along with people,” Ms. Amarante said. NuRide, founded in 2002 and based in Essex, has about 26,000 members, who live and work mostly in and around New York, Washington and Houston. With gas prices skyrocketing in the past year, membership has increased 28 percent, with the largest increase coming in the last two months, said Rick Steele, a co-founder of the service. In the past year in the New York area, ride-sharing organized through the NuRide Web site has jumped 27 percent in Westchester County, 25 percent in Connecticut and 17 percent on Long Island, Mr. Steele said. Unlike traditional car pools, NuRiders can switch their rides, enabling those who sign up to, say, ride to work with one person and return home with another. “Traditional car pooling is like getting married,” Mr. Steele said. “This is like dating. You can be flexible. That’s essential.” The service also offers rewards — discounts from retailers, restaurant coupons, free car washes — in exchange for points that participants accrue each time they log a shared ride. Ms. Amarante said she had received rewards that included theater tickets. Mr. Steele, who was chief executive of kinkos.com before co-founding NuRide, said the goal of the service was to harness technology to help reduce global warming . “The Internet was perfectly suited to the goal of collecting groups of people, which is otherwise hard to do,” he said, adding, “Sixty percent of our members say they have never shared a ride before. That means they’re changing their behavior.” Based on log-ins, the company said, its members have shared 1.28 million rides. After the 1970s gas crisis, the federal government mandated van- and car-pooling services, Mr. Steele said, so NuRide has contracts with governments to provide links to its Web site. (New York and Connecticut provide commuters with links to NuRide through the MetroPool Web site, www.metropool.com , sponsored by both states’ transportation departments.) One NuRide safeguard requires every member to have a verifiable institutional e-mail address linked to an employer, school or other organization, giving riders some security about their travel partners. Participants can also set parameters for fellow riders (will not ride with smokers, for instance). Marc Alston, 36, of Wappingers Falls, N.Y., hooked up with three others from his area who were commuting to White Plains, each to a different workplace. “We drive on a rotating schedule,” he said. “I’m saving $300 a month in gas costs, easy. And while one person is driving, others can nap, so my energy level is higher.” The only drawbacks, he said, are being unable to run errands at lunchtime when he is not driving and being unable to leave work later than usual. But Mr. Alston said that his experience had “gone above and beyond” simply sharing rides with his car-pooling partners. He, like Ms. Amarante, has developed friendships on the way to and from work. “It’s been a great experience,” he said, “both financially and socially.”


Obama Sets Sights on Romney in State of the Union

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama did not mention Mitt Romney on Tuesday evening, but he didn’t need to. Mr. Romney, whom the president’s aides still view as his most likely opponent in the fall, was the unspoken adversary in Mr. Obama’s call for a more equitable society — the natural foil for his proposals to level the playing field for middle-class Americans, from taxes to trade policy. When Mr. Obama talked about levying a millionaires’ tax, he might have been referring to Mr. Romney’s newly released tax return, which disclosed he paid a tax rate of 13.9 percent on income of more than $20 million in 2010. When he referred to his administration’s bailout of the auto industry, noting that “some even said we should let it die,” he could have been talking about Mr. Romney’s argument that the carmakers should have been allowed to fail. And when he said he would oppose “any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place,” he could have been referring to Mr. Romney’s call for a rollback of regulations on Wall Street. Nine months before he faces the voters, Mr. Obama seized what is likely to be one of his most prominent platforms of the year to draw a bright line between himself and Mr. Romney — and, in the process, try to appeal to those frustrated by the deepening economic divide. Gone was the soaring language of his last State of the Union address , when the president spoke of winning the future — a challenge he likened to “ our generation’s Sputnik moment .” With the tents of the Occupy protesters catching snow in American cities, he was tapping into a national sense of grievance. “When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich,” Mr. Obama said, answering Mr. Romney’s charge that the president engages in the “bitter politics of envy.” “It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit or somebody else has to make up the difference.” It is a theme he has struck repeatedly as his campaign has geared up, and nowhere more forcefully than last month in Osawatomie, Kan. , where he invoked the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt , a Republican aristocrat who nevertheless broke up monopolies and campaigned for a progressive income tax. Mr. Obama’s appeal on Tuesday, studded as it was with the policy proposals that fill these addresses, did not match that populist fury. But in the august setting of the Capitol, squaring off against an often-hostile Congress, the president rolled out an election-year message that offers voters a stark choice between his vision and what he paints as the Darwinian approach of Mr. Romney and other Republicans. To some extent, Mr. Obama was also aiming his words at Florida , where Mr. Romney and the rest of the Republican field are competing in a primary next week over the right to challenge the president. Every word in a State of the Union address is carefully chosen. So it was no accident that when the president discussed the auto industry and the future of American manufacturing, he said: “What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh .” Those cities happen to be in Michigan , Ohio , Pennsylvania and North Carolina — battleground states totaling 69 electoral votes. But much of the president’s message was clearly intended to push back at his Republican rivals and their critiques of his record. Lest anyone forget Mr. Romney’s background at Bain Capital as an avid buyer and seller of companies, Mr. Obama offered a paean to permanence — to companies built on a sturdy foundation of manufacturing and skilled workers. These businesses, he said, are the basis of a competitive economy. Mr. Obama also seemed to have Mr. Romney in mind when he announced new housing assistance and declared that “responsible homeowners shouldn’t have to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom to get some relief.” Last year, Mr. Romney went to Nevada , the state hardest hit by foreclosures , and told a Las Vegas newspaper that the housing market needed to bottom out. Mr. Obama also said he would oppose efforts to repeal financial regulations , and he drew a direct link between the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush , and the economic mess that has consumed his own presidency. In recent weeks, Mr. Obama has had a useful surrogate in Newt Gingrich , the former House speaker, who has accused Mr. Romney of destroying jobs while at Bain and pressured him to release his tax returns. But Mr. Gingrich, whose victory in the South Carolina primary has turned him into a real competitor, did not escape a few jabs Tuesday night. Mr. Obama called for new rules to reduce the influence of lobbyists. Left unsaid was Mr. Gingrich’s disclosure on Monday that he had been paid $1.6 million to advise the mortgage giant Freddie Mac . Mr. Romney was not silent on Mr. Obama’s big day, earlier laying out his own case for leadership in a speech at a shuttered factory in Tampa , Fla. He argued that his 25 years in business had given him the skills to turn around the economy. The president, Mr. Romney said, “puts his faith in government; we put our faith in the American people.” “Ours is the party of free enterprise, free markets and consumer choice,” he said. “The Republican Party stands for personal responsibility and equal opportunity. We don’t demonize prosperity; we celebrate success.” Mr. Obama countered that he had turned things around, pointing to the revived auto industry, a recovering economy and three million private-sector jobs. And he flatly rejected the contention of Mr. Romney, Mr. Gingrich and other Republicans that he is presiding over a country in decline. “Anyone who tells you otherwise,” the president said, “anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

State of the Union,SOTU,State of the Union 2015


Berber Rebels in Libya’s West Face Long Odds Against Qaddafi

Abstract: DHIBA BORDER CROSSING, Tunisia — For decades, the remote mountains of western Libya have simmered with resentment. An enclave of the Berber minority, mistrusted and neglected by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi ’s Arab nationalist government, the region’s isolated hamlets were among the first to join the uprising, raising the rebel flag on the first day of the revolt. But the Nafusah Mountain range, which rises out of the desert at the Tunisian border as a sudden, hazy shadow and runs several hundred miles east in a narrow chain, is hardly a rebel stronghold. Rebel fighters in the region estimate their ranks at just a few hundred ill-equipped and untrained young men. It came as a shock, then, when they captured a border crossing near Wazen last week, a strategic victory for the beleaguered rebel forces that thrust the desert region under the world’s gaze. Colonel Qaddafi has also turned his attention to the region, escalating a low-grade war of attrition into what may prove an important battlefront. Having put down more serious challenges to his rule in Zawiyah and Zawarah, on the northern coast between Tripoli and Tunisia, and pulled troops out of Misurata , the second largest western city, on Saturday, Colonel Qaddafi has massed troops along the mountains and launched missiles on its towns, according to residents and rebel fighters. The fighting has driven about 30,000 Libyans into Tunisia, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Libyans there said they had been under siege weeks before the recent escalation. Government troops have held the desert plains below the mountains since mid-March, they said, cutting off supplies of food, gasoline and medicine, and, several witnesses said, poisoning the wells of at least one town. “He has been trying to starve us,” said Jamal Maharouk, 47, a gaunt, weathered former soldier of Colonel Qaddafi’s army, now a rebel fighter. He had driven to a Tunisian hospital in Tataouine, about 50 miles northwest of the Libyan border, to visit a young cousin wounded in battle outside the town of Zintan and secreted across the border for treatment. Like other fighters, Mr. Maharouk insisted that rebel actions in the area were purely defensive. “By my god, these are peaceful people fighting against an evil regime,” he said. The government denies that it has cut off food and utilities, poisoned wells or even that the refugees in Tunisia are really refugees. Moussa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Qaddafi government, said the refugees were lying in order to win support from NATO. He said the government had intercepted and recorded phone calls among rebels planning to stage a bogus refugee crisis by forcing members of their families to cross the border into Tunisia and report atrocities. “They are fake refugee camps,” he said. “Qatar is paying for them.” Before the rebels captured the border crossing at Wazen, the region seemed to hold little strategic value, raising questions about why the government would divert resources from more pressing battles elsewhere. The border crossing, which now gives the rebels a supply route in the west, may be part of the explanation. But Colonel Qaddafi has long harbored antagonism toward the Berbers, a non-Arab ethnic group of mostly Ibadi Muslims in a country that is majority Sunni. He has accused them of being Zionists and agents of the C.I.A., said Mansouria Mokhefi, the director of the Middle East and Maghreb program at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. Berbers and the region in general have been largely excluded from the distribution of oil revenues, she said, and residents complain of little government investment in schools or infrastructure. “Development never came all the way to them,” she said. “They have truly lived in a sort of exclusion.” Beyond neglect, Colonel Qaddafi has forbidden citizens from giving their children Berber names, disallowed the teaching of the Berber language in schools and banned Berber festivals and holidays. Protests in the 1990s demanding the right to practice their culture openly were put down forcibly by the police and followed by a series of public hangings, instilling a profound animosity toward the government. Shortly after the uprising began in mid-February, Colonel Qaddafi offered the families of Zintan and other towns across the Nafusah range a bribe, residents said, a onetime payment of about $1,200 in exchange for their allegiance. Most declined. The missile strikes began soon after. Salim Issa, 50, an electrician, fled the town of Nalut on Friday after what he called heavy missile strikes the night before. He arrived in Medenine, Tunisia, with his wife, sister and nine of his children. Fearing for the two sons he left behind, he declined to give his full name. He said there were rumors that loyalist forces had orders to kill everyone in the city, and that soldiers had been given Viagra and explicit orders to rape. The town of Yafren, about 100 miles east of Nalut, was reported to have been captured by government forces over the weekend. But by then the town was all but deserted. Just a handful of rebel fighters and elderly residents, too weak to flee, were thought to remain, hiding in basements. Salim, 32, a nurse’s assistant, said Yafren had been surrounded by Qaddafi forces and under fire for about a month, leaving it with no water, food or electricity. “No nothing,” he said, adding that the only food had been smuggled in across the desert. Perhaps even more than on the eastern front, the rebels in the Nafusah Mountains are outmatched. Mounir Ramdan, 25, a youthful fighter from Nalut who was visiting his family in Tataouine, said about 40 government pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns and rocket launchers were stationed near the road between Nalut and Zintan, to the east. Mr. Ramdan, who has no gun, has been acting as a scout. For each rebel fighter with a weapon, “you find 50 without guns,” said Fathi, a rebel being treated at the hospital in Tataouine. He had been operating a machine gun mounted in the back of pickup when he was tossed from the vehicle during a skirmish near Zintan, breaking his left femur and dislocating his right hip. At the time of his injury, the rebels in Zintan had four or five 14.5-millimeter machine guns, stolen from government troops, he said, but most were armed with antique Italian rifles, knives or home-forged iron swords. The government forces have been ordered to “clean” Zintan, he said, and he had little doubt about their ability to do so. Without heavier NATO airstrikes against Colonel Qaddafi’s armor and more weapons, he said, it will be “90 percent impossible” for the rebels to hold their ground in the western mountains. Colonel Qaddafi, he warned, “will kill us all.” Other fighters were less bleak. Puffing on the stub of a cigarette at the Tunisian border, a tall, bearded fighter named Toufik guessed that the rebels in the region were outnumbered by loyalist troops five to one. Asked how they had succeeded in capturing the border post last week, he grinned and pointed an index finger to the sky. “God gave us a victory,” he said.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Robinson Is Either Standing Out or Sitting Out

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y., March 20 - Nate Robinson may lose his focus, his playing time, his self-control and his better judgment, but his popularity at Madison Square Garden appears to be as enduring as "Leave it to Beaver" reruns. Consider Sunday night's events at the Garden. In an otherwise unremarkable Knicks loss to the Miami Heat, fans seized two moments to stretch their vocal cords. One was a spectacular dunk by the Heat's Dwyane Wade off a 45-foot lob from Jason Williams. The other was Robinson walking to the scorer's table to check in late in the third quarter. There are precious few reasons for the Garden faithful to roar in a 19-46 season. Robinson is one of them, and he may be headed back to roster oblivion. Quentin Richardson's sprained left thumb is healing quickly, and he could return to the lineup as soon as Tuesday night. When he does, it will push Robinson back down the depth chart, and possibly back to the inactive list. It will be another disappointment for Robinson, the frenetic 5-foot-9 rookie, but he is getting used to these little setbacks. He was hailed last fall as a pace-changing point guard until Coach Larry Brown declared him to be no more than a highlight reel. Robinson won the N.B.A.'s slam-dunk contest last month, only to have his achievement mocked because he missed 14 dunks before he converted in the final round. And his personal celebration was quickly doused when the Knicks traded for Steve Francis, forcing Robinson onto the inactive list. He spent eight games in a silk suit and tie, until injuries to Eddy Curry and Richardson opened a roster spot last week. Despite his clutch play in victories against Atlanta and Detroit -- and the loyal following in the stands -- Robinson is probably headed for another date with his tailor. "Every day, I'm just taking it slow," said Robinson, who in fact does nothing slowly -- playing, talking or walking. "If it happens and I've got to go back in the suit, I'm more than willing. Because when I was out, I learned so much." Faulted by Brown for his sometimes-reckless play last fall, Robinson said he used the down time to observe and learn. He worked out twice a day, once with the team and once at a health club with the assistant Mark Aguirre. He pondered the merits of help defense, patient offense and taking good shots -- "just little things," he said. The studiousness paid off. Over the past four games, Robinson made 16 of 30 field-goal attempts and averaged 9.5 points in 16 minutes. He had nine assists and just three turnovers. And he teamed with Jamal Crawford for the critical minutes of the Knicks' victories against the Hawks and the Pistons. "I love what he's done," Brown said Monday. Robinson repaid his fans Sunday night with a running bank shot shortly after he entered the game. No one seemed to mind much when, minutes later, he foolishly drove on Alonzo Mourning and had his shot rejected. There is a resiliency and a brashness to Robinson that naturally endears him to the paying public, if not always to the coaches, the referees or the opponents. "Last night, he got a little bit carried away, not realizing Zo is back there," Brown said. "He's gotten better every day in practice. And it shows. It shows when he plays. He's more under control, he understands more. It's been terrific to watch him progress like that." It makes Brown's next roster decision all the more difficult. Richardson has traded his wrist brace for a splint that would allow him to play. Whenever Richardson is ready, Brown said he planned to put him back in the starting lineup. That means Francis will go back to the bench and Robinson will slide to fifth in the guard rotation, or back to the inactive list. "It's going to be hard," Brown said, although he also stressed that with the season down to 17 games, "the younger guys have got to play more." The Knicks initially invoked the Walt Frazier-Earl Monroe backcourt when Francis was acquired to join Stephon Marbury. But they have started together only five times. They may not be paired again until next season, assuming neither one is traded during the summer. "Quentin's 25 years old, he's played pretty good," Brown said. "He's done the things I've asked our team to do -- he's tried to defend, he's gotten better. I got Jamal and I got Nate. I told you, this is the end of the year. And I've been telling guys, 'If you defend and share the ball, you'll play.' That's the way we're going to have to reward guys." REBOUNDS Malik Rose had a magnetic resonance imaging examination on his sprained ankle Monday. Results were not immediately available. He is listed as questionable for Tuesday's game against Toronto.

NEW YORK KNICKS
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSN
NEW YORK KNICKERBOCKERS
ROBINSON NATE
BASKETBALL


Microsoft Wins Jury Ruling in Motorola Patent Case

Abstract: SEATTLE — Microsoft said on Wednesday that a jury in federal court had decided in its favor in a dispute over Motorola Mobility’s licensing of so-called standard, essential patents used in Microsoft products. The jury, in Seattle, agreed with Microsoft’s claim that Motorola, which is owned by Google, broke agreements with standard-setting bodies to license certain patents at a fair and reasonable rate. The company said that the jury awarded it about $14 million in damages, about half what it had sought. That amount consisted of $11 million for the costs of relocating a warehouse in Germany because of an injunction on certain Microsoft products brought by Motorola in that country, and about $3 million in legal fees for fighting that injunction. A Motorola spokesman indicated the company would appeal. The victory for Microsoft follows a decision in its favor in a related trial in Seattle federal court last year in which a judge found that the appropriate rate for Motorola to license certain wireless and video technology used in the Xbox game console was only a fraction of what Motorola had sought.

Inventions and Patents
Lawsuits
Motorola
Microsoft
Mobile phone
Google


Shabab and East African Front Militants Compete for Notoriety

Abstract: NAIROBI, Kenya — Apparently there is no brotherly love among East Africa’s Islamist militants. This past week, a new militant group called Jahba East Africa, or the East African Front, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, publicly insulted the Shabab, the top militants in the region. “Al Shabab has now become a psychological and physical prison,” the East African Front said. It went on, in a letter written in English and published on Twitter , to complain that the Shabab was wrongly purging Kenyans, Tanzanians and Ugandans. “Sadly,” the letter said, “Al Shabab has forgotten the resolved need to work for the establishment of the rule of Allah.” The Shabab, who have terrorized Somalia for years, have not offered a response directly. Emails sent to the group’s press office went unanswered. But two days ago, the Shabab released a triumphant — and graphic — video showing their prowess on the battlefield. The video features slickly produced footage of the militants overrunning a Kenyan military base in Somalia, where scores of Kenyan soldiers were killed. “The Shabab are really good at countermessaging,” said Matt Bryden, chairman of Sahan Research , a research organization that specializes in the Horn of Africa. “They’ll take a message that they’re weak and on their last legs, and use countermessaging to undermine the credibility of their adversaries.” The video, called “The Battle of El-Adde,” shows young Shabab fighters wearing red headbands steadily advancing through the bush, firing rifles and heavy guns mounted on pickup trucks at Kenyan soldiers huddled in defensive positions. Some of the scenes are gruesome: Shabab fighters are seen firing at the heads of fallen soldiers at close range. The battle took place in January. But the Kenyan government has yet to release casualty figures. According to Western diplomats, at least 160 Kenyan soldiers were killed and 20 were captured, the single worst military defeat in Kenya’s history. The Kenyan military maintains several bases throughout Somalia as part of a regional peacekeeping mission. Several military analysts said the Shabab video showed how poorly prepared the Kenyans were at that base. Kenyans on social media have deplored the video as propaganda and urged people not to watch it or share it. Little is known about the East African Front, which said it recognized Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, as the rightful leader of all Muslims. Mr. Bryden of Sahan Research said it was not clear how many fighters, if any, the East African Front has. The organization’s Twitter account shows masked men riding all-terrain vehicles rigged with enormous guns. Many analysts have said that the Islamic State is steadily making gains across Somalia, increasing the likelihood of fighting between rebel groups, as has happened in Syria.

Al Shabab
East African Front,Jahba East Africa
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Terrorism
Somalia
Kenya


Pole Leaves Mark, but Not on Outcome

Abstract: Out in Section 28, Box 108, Row G, Seat 2 at Yankee Stadium, Chris Rom displayed his souvenir. “Look,” said Rom, extending his left hand. “Here’s the proof.” There, on the baseball that Carlos Delgado smacked in the fourth inning of the Mets ’ 11-2 victory against the Yankees on Sunday night, was a black scuff mark, a few inches wide. It was the same color as the base of the left-field foul pole. The call was initially ruled a home run — a three-run homer, at that — by the third-base umpire Mike Reilly, but the crew convened and reversed the decision. The Mets’ bench coach, Jerry Manuel, was ejected for arguing the call (after he saw the replay), and Manager Willie Randolph, who argued passionately, came close to being tossed, too. Asked if he was a Mets fan, Rom, from Allendale, N.J., said that he was but that he was a baseball fan first. Turning to a nearby security guard, he said, “It’s a home run, that’s what it is,” as the guard smiled, shrugged and walked away. “That’s why we should have replay.” According to The Associated Press, Reilly said: “My three partners were adamant that the ball was foul. It was a tough call to make.” Luckily for the Mets, the blown call, which television replays confirmed, did not factor into the outcome. The struggling Delgado wound up driving in a run that at-bat with a single — “If I can’t have three, I’ll take one,” he said — and the Mets added six runs in the eighth. Oliver Pérez surrendered a two-run homer to Hideki Matsui (definitely fair) but nothing else, and he held the Yankees to three hits over seven and two-thirds innings. He was the third consecutive Mets starter to last that long, and improved to 3-0 against the Yankees in the last two years. If, for Mets fans, watching Pérez pitch that well after four inconsistent starts seemed difficult to fathom, it may be harder to believe what their team did. The Mets had looked helpless in losing three of four to last-place Washington in their previous series. These Mets were the same team that needed a 45-minute team meeting Friday to address critical comments from Billy Wagner and their ragged play. Now they are one game — one game — out of first place in the National League East heading into a seven-game trip that begins Tuesday with a day-night doubleheader in Atlanta. “Hopefully this is a nice building block,” Delgado said. Speaking before the game, Randolph said he loved how the Mets manufactured a big fourth inning Saturday, when they drew two walks and had four hits. As consistency goes, how’s this? The Mets, again, had four hits, and, again, they drew two walks in the fourth. The result? Four runs and one happy manager. “We needed to play better and more consistent baseball,” Randolph said. “That’s the most gratifying thing for me.” When Delgado stepped into the batter’s box with runners on first and third, the score was 3-0, and the Mets were pounding Yankees starter Chien-Ming Wang. On Wang’s first pitch, Delgado sliced a ball to left field that started in fair territory but curved back toward the foul pole. Rom followed the ball from contact and saw it coming toward him. He bent his body back so that he did not inadvertently touch it. “I didn’t want to be like that Bartman guy,” said Rom, referring to the Cubs fan Steve Bartman, who interfered with a ball in Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series. The ball slammed against the bottom edge of the pole, off his chest and onto the floor. He picked it up and saw the scuff mark. Glenn Barton, a friend of Rom’s, was sitting behind Rom’s wife, Eileen. They were there celebrating Rom’s 38th birthday, which is Monday. “Anyone who saw the play has to know it wasn’t a foul ball,” said Barton, from Forest Hills, N.Y. Sitting a few rows back, William Bonomo, a Yankees fan from North Massapequa, N.Y., tugged on his Yankees cap. “He’s lying, he’s lying,” Bonomo said of Rom. “He scraped the ball himself.” Rom said he had 10 voice-mail messages and 3 e-mail messages — he did not even try to count the number of text messages. The ball was for his 8-year-old daughter, Madison. “I think she’ll like it,” Rom said.


A Front-Row Seat to Germany’s Long Reckoning With Its Past

Abstract: DETMOLD, Germany — In many ways, it is fitting that Germany’s last trial of a former SS guard at Auschwitz played out far from the spotlight, in this pretty provincial town of 70,000. It was from places like these — a rural corner of North Rhine-Westphalia, modern Germany’s most populous state — that the Nazis formed their bedrock, the millions of men and women who signed up to Hitler’s apparently triumphant cause and with little questioning executed its murderous maxims. They were people like Reinhold Hanning, 94, who on Friday was sentenced to five years as an accessory to at least 170,000 deaths during his time as an SS guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, from January 1943 to mid-1944. After World War II, Mr. Hanning was in British custody, and he was released in 1948 to live out his life in his hometown, Lage, six miles from Detmold. He said he never spoke about Auschwitz to anyone, not even to his wife, two sons and grandchildren. His four-month trial yielded a brief, carefully crafted apology of sorts from him for being a member of “a criminal organization, which is responsible for the death of many innocent people, for the destruction of countless families, for misery, torture and sorrow on the side of the victims and their relatives.” That apology fell far short of the reckoning sought by 57 co-plaintiffs, Holocaust survivors like Leon Schwarzbaum, also 94, who on the trial’s opening day in February urged Mr. Hanning to break his silence , since “we will both soon meet our maker.” “His statement does not go far enough for me,” Mr. Schwarzbaum said as the trial neared its end. “He should have talked more about what he did, what he took part in, saw. I learned nothing.” On that same day, I sat with Thomas Walther, the German lawyer most responsible for the recent handful of prosecutions — seven decades too late — of SS guards at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the death camp where more than one million people were killed — gassed, shot, hanged, injected. After he retired as a judge, Mr. Walther went to work at Germany’s office for Nazi crimes in Ludwigsburg. For decades, German jurists had argued that prosecution of death camp guards was possible only if they could be tied to specific crimes. That was a corollary to the dilatory pursuit of war crimes prosecutions by a West German justice system that was riddled with lawyers and judges who were former Nazis. Image Leon Schwarzbaum, a Holocaust survivor who was at Mr. Hanning’s trial on Friday. Credit Pool photo by Bernd Thissen Only last year was this failing clearly portrayed in a hit movie, “The State vs. Fritz Bauer,” which chronicled the lonely fight of the Frankfurt state prosecutor who instigated Germany’s only Auschwitz trials in the 1960s, and who tipped off Mossad that Adolf Eichmann was in Argentina. Of approximately 6,500 SS guards who had worked at Auschwitz, only 29 people were tried in West Germany. (Twenty more were tried in the Communist East.) Working with Eli Rosenbaum, an American investigator at the United States Justice Department, Mr. Walther reinterpreted German law to allow for the prosecution of John Demjanjuk, the Ukrainian-born American who was eventually extradited to Germany and sentenced in 2011 to five years in prison as an accessory to approximately 28,000 murders in the Sobibor death camp. He died the next year. The Ludwigsburg office pursued other former guards, resulting in the trial and sentencing last year of Oskar Gröning, 95, and now of Mr. Hanning. Another two people have been charged, but ill health has made completion of their trials unlikely. Another former Auschwitz guard died in April, just before his trial was to start in Hanau, near Frankfurt. “Whether in 30 or 40 years these few trials will appear in political and juridical history as a footnote, or a real chapter, only the future will show,” Mr. Walther said. Mr. Gröning, who had talked in interviews of his Auschwitz past a decade before his trial, and Mr. Hanning were typical of lower-class Germans who saw joining the SS as a way to rise, even shine. “Many of the underlings came from the provinces,” Mr. Walther said, unlike city dwellers, students or employees at big firms, “who had a certain openness to the world.” Openness to the world affected post-Nazi justice, too. At my first war crimes trial in Cologne, Germany, in 1980, many spectators were from France, where Serge and Beate Klarsfeld had led the fight to prosecute one of three former Nazis who were sentenced to six to 12 years for assisting in the deportation of 73,000 French Jews to Auschwitz. En route to that sentencing, I encountered a middle-aged West German man who, like so many Germans still, refused to give his name, but knew that he resented foreign meddling. “It just brings it all up again,” he complained. “If we did not have these trials, then foreigners might forget the Nazis.” In 1981, I reported the end of the last big war crimes trial, of nine defendants who worked at the Maidanek death camp where 250,000 people were killed. After six years in court, Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan, who married an American man after World War II, was the only one sentenced to life. The courtroom emptied out once the sentence was pronounced. Hours later, I was almost the last person left listening to the judges’ reasoning. It all felt thorough — West Germany working through its history, serving justice — but there was no escaping an impression of living a footnote. My next encounter with war crimes trials came in the Soviet Union, in June 1986 in the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Fyodor Fedorenko, a Ukrainian and the first war crimes suspect extradited from the United States to the Soviet Union, was on trial, accused of working for the Nazis in the Treblinka death camp. Hailing from the same region as Mr. Demjanjuk, Mr. Fedorenko received nothing like the thorough hearing of a German court. His long-estranged peasant wife was produced, and suggested that Mr. Fedorenko had opposed Soviet collectivization. He was depicted as a willing servant of the invading Nazis. Soviet justice was summary: Pronounced guilty, he was executed . The trial last year of Mr. Gröning, in another pretty, provincial town, Lüneburg, might have seemed unspectacular. Yet like all the others, it was a reminder of how 20th-century history marched through the lives of perpetrators and victims — and that we all always have choices, and make them. Mr. Hanning’s choice was the SS. He was wounded in fighting around Kiev, wound up in convalescence at a facility used by Auschwitz guards — and then joined them, under circumstances not clarified by the trial. Leonie Figge, 16, and Stina Ulbrich, 17, among 25 teenagers who had visited Israel in March, came to Mr. Hanning’s trial a few times. “I am so glad to have had the opportunity to be here,” Ms. Ulbrich said. “It simply moves you.” They were avid to learn from Leon Schwarzbaum, who, like other Holocaust survivors and co-plaintiffs, regularly visits schools to pass on his experiences of the death camps. Ms. Ulbrich imagined in turn passing his words to her own children someday. Perhaps that will be this trial’s most lasting achievement. In the meantime, Mr. Walther and I sat in Detmold’s pristine old town, which has fine timberwork buildings. When the Nazis held sway in places like these, he reflected, “there were so many swastikas hanging that they covered all the beams.”

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


Bloomberg Names New Head of Live TV Unit

Abstract: Bloomberg has appointed Claudia Milne, a veteran news producer for the BBC, as its new head of live television in the United States. Ms. Milne, who has overseen elements of the BBC’s coverage in the United States as part of a 20-year career, started Monday, Josh Tyrangiel, the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, told employees in an internal memo. Mr. Tyrangiel has been charged with overseeing the company’s television operations, part of a plan to revamp its entire media operation, and will work alongside Ms. Milne. “Claudia knows global news as well as anyone in our business and has the highest standards and expectations,” Mr. Tyrangiel said. The appointment comes just days after the company announced layoffs in its television operations, with a focus on its Washington offices. Its rethought television operation, which includes a show helmed by the political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, will be based in New York.

News media,journalism
Appointments and Executive Changes
Bloomberg LP
Claudia Milne


Iran Denies Halt to 20 Percent Uranium Enrichment

Abstract: TEHRAN — Iran has never stopped 20 percent uranium enrichment, Iran’s top nuclear official said on Wednesday, contradicting an influential lawmaker who last week said the country had voluntarily halted its production. “Twenty percent uranium and nuclear plates are being produced inside the country and there has never been a halt in the production trend,” the official, Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was quoted as saying by the Icana news agency, which is the mouthpiece of Iran’s Parliament. Iran has a stockpile of nearly 300 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 20 percent, which it says is needed to power a reactor in Tehran, but analysts say Iran has produced enough fuel to last years. Last week Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, a lawmaker who is the deputy head of the national security and foreign policy committee, announced that the country had stopped enriching uranium up to 20 percent, telling Icana that “the site has the required fuel at the moment and there is no need for more production.” The remarks by Mr. Hosseini were seen as a possible indication that Iran was willing to compromise over its enriched uranium stockpile in negotiations with the big powers over the country’s disputed nuclear program, which the West says is a guise for reaching the capability to make nuclear weapons. Iran says its activities are purely peaceful. Mr. Hosseini later said he had been misquoted but did not specify how. The committee’s chairman, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, denied Iran had ceased production. While Mr. Salehi was correcting Mr. Hosseini, Mr. Salehi was corrected concerning another matter on Wednesday by the minister of intelligence, Mahmoud Alavi. He said Mr. Salehi’s recent claims that four “nuclear saboteurs” had been arrested after they tried to steal nuclear secrets from a power plant were inaccurate. Mr. Alavi said the four suspects had been seeking scrap metal, according to the semiofficial Islamic Students’ News Agency. The men had dug a hole under a fence around the power plant in order to sneak the purloined scrap metal out and sell it, he said. “These people were thieves, not nuclear saboteurs,” the minister said. “They were from a village close to the power plant, and they had done such things before.”

Iran
Nuclear energy
Nuclear weapon
Uranium


Sudan’s Critics Relieved That Obama Chose a Middle Course

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A day after the first details began to emerge of the Obama administration’s long-awaited policy for Sudan — one that proposes working with the government rather than isolating it — advocates of a tougher approach toward Khartoum said they wished the administration had been stronger. But they also expressed relief at what has been released so far, saying they had feared the White House would take an even more conciliatory line toward the government, whose leader has been charged with crimes against humanity. During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama had pledged a harder stance, but on Friday, Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration , retired, said the policy to be announced Monday would make use of a mix of “incentives and pressure” to seek an end to the human rights abuses that have left millions of people dead or displaced in Darfur. Two members of Congress who are deeply involved with Africa issues said that they had been alarmed by recent statements made by General Gration, suggesting that the administration was considering easing sanctions and taking Sudan off the list of nations that sponsor terrorism. “I think the only thing the government of Sudan understands is bluntness and power,” said Representative Donald M. Payne, Democrat of New Jersey, a co-chairman of the Sudan caucus. And Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from Virginia and another co-chairman of the caucus, said: “Considering the rumors we’ve been hearing, this policy seems very positive. Seems they are going to take a more balanced approach.” Mr. Payne said President George W. Bush’s mix of incentives and pressures on Sudan had failed to achieve a lasting peace in the country, and he worried that President Obama ’s policy would produce the same result. Most of the details of the policy are expected to be announced Monday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton . Administration officials said the policy aims to compel Sudan to end to its attacks against civilians, to abide by the terms of a 2005 peace agreement with rebels in southern Sudan, and to stop its support for terrorist organizations. White House officials refused to give details about the types of incentives and pressures they would use, saying that parts of the policy would remain classified. And they acknowledged the policy marks an evolution in Mr. Obama’s position on Sudan, one that is likely to reignite criticism that the White House has often softened positions he espoused as a candidate. “Things have changed in Sudan from a year ago, or two years ago, and this policy is an effort to take that reality into account,” said Susan E. Rice , the United States ambassador to the United Nations and a leading architect of the Sudan policy. In recent months, analysts both inside and outside the United States government have reported that “low-intensity” skirmishes have replaced systematic slaughter by government-supported militants on one side and rebel groups on the other. However, systematic abuses continue to occur. Millions of people are still displaced, and the administration continues to characterize the actions of the Sudanese government as genocide. Ms. Rice said the administration would insist that Sudan show real evidence that conditions for civilians had begun to improve before offering incentives. The administration said that the policy calls for quarterly reviews of conditions in Darfur. The administration said that pressures on Sudan would increase if the United States saw signs either that it was backsliding or simply maintaining the status quo. When asked why the administration was willing to engage at all with a government it believes is responsible for genocide, Ms. Rice said: “Engagement is not a reward. To definitively end the killing and dying ultimately requires a solution the government is willing to implement. There’s no way around it.” The administration is expected to say that its policy is consistent with its philosophy of engaging with even the most notorious actors on the world stage. John Norris, executive director of the Enough Project, one of the leading groups advocating peace in Sudan, said he saw some hypocrisy in a policy that calls for engagement with a government that the administration accuses of genocide. “It raises some real philosophical problems,” he said, referring to administration assertions that Sudan has provided important support for the United States’ fight against terrorism. “In exchange for some cooperation on terrorism issues, are we not going to hold Khartoum accountable for the displacement of millions of people?”

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


Click Fraud Is Growing on the Web

Abstract: A year ago, DiamondHarmony.com , an online jewelry store, decided that it had outgrown its sole source of advertising, which was eBay. The company added an elaborate marketing effort on search engines that included a pay-per-click advertising campaign based on keywords and phrases. For its trouble, DiamondHarmony became ensnared in click fraud. Instead of actual prospects, the clicks were coming from fraudulent sources. The fraud, which cost DiamondHarmony $17,000 over seven months, was uncovered through analytical software the company installed from ClickTracks of Santa Cruz, Calif. Click fraud most commonly happens when renegade partners, who get a portion of the fees earned by a search engine each time a paid link is clicked, deliberately generate excessive clicks with no chance that any of the clicks will result in a sale for the business that is paying for them. The spurious clicks can be generated through automated programs or by paying people to spend time clicking over and over on a link. As for DiamondHarmony, the company was initially spending about $45 to $50 a day on each of the eight search engines where it placed advertising, said Joe Tedd, its manager for search strategies. The week before Thanksgiving, however, Mr. Tedd started seeing a large increase in clicks from one engine in particular, while its corresponding conversion rate — the number of sales in relation to clicks — kept going down. “In November, we saw the number of searches going up on all the engines we had placement on,’’ Mr. Tedd said. “But while all the other engines were seeing higher conversion rates, this one engine was doing so poorly, we actually took the campaign offline.” “The search provider was syndicating the keyword to partner publishers, but while the clicks were being counted on the publisher’s site, they weren’t coming through to our site,” he added. Businesses can also fall victim to click fraud at their competitors’ hands. Companies vying for the same position on a list of paid search results may click often enough on a competitor’s ad to push the rival over its spending limit — knocking them out of paid search listings temporarily. Companies typically set a daily budget for individual search terms as well as their entire campaign. This year eMarketer Inc., a research firm, estimated that the overall online advertising market for 2006 would be $16.7 billion; paid search was expected to reach $6.9 billion by the end of the year. The company on Monday will revise those figures. The overall online market is being re-evaluated down by 3 percent to 6 percent. Search engine marketing’s share of that market, however, remains constant. The scope of the problem depends on who is describing it. Business owners like Iain Burton, the chairman of Aspinal of London, a manufacturer and seller of fine leather items, says click fraud is much more pervasive than the search engines acknowledge. Mr. Burton, who spends about $50,000 each month for paid search advertising, said he was amazed at how blatant it could be. “I used to make money on pay-per-click advertising; I’d say it used to be really good. But it has become ridiculously expensive. I’ve lost tens of thousands on click fraud over time.” Search engine providers disagree and say the overwhelming majority of fraudulent clicks were never seen by advertisers because they were discovered and removed. A Yahoo spokeswoman, Gaude Paez, did say, however, that click fraud is a serious, but manageable, challenge. “We believe that our entire industry must be vigilant in staying one step ahead of spammers,” said John Slade, senior director for Yahoo’s Clickthrough Protection. Click Forensics, a consulting firm based in San Antonio, puts the number of fraudulent clicks at about 14 percent of total clicks, based on a recent survey of more than 1,300 online marketers. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, said Danny Sullivan, the editor of SearchEngineWatch.com , an online industry newsletter. Google, the search leader, agreed to pay $90 million to settle a click fraud class-action suit — with up to $30 million of that allocated for legal costs. In July, Google’s proposed settlement was approved by an Arkansas judge who called the ruling “fair, reasonable, and adequate.” Still, 556 advertisers opted out of the class-action suit, leaving the door open for additional lawsuits. And in June, Yahoo agreed to pay litigants’ legal fees, estimated at $4.95 million, and provide credits to any company that could prove it was a victim of click fraud from January 2004 through this year. What makes the problem worse, industry followers say, is that many instances of click fraud go undetected. “We’re not at a point in Internet history where we can easily point to a number and easily point to a solution,” said Dana Todd, president of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. Moreover, “the technology solutions out there to combat the problem are neither free or easy, especially for small businesses that are already overwhelmed by search engine marketing.” Indeed, while larger companies expect — and can usually afford — to pay for some measure of click fraud, smaller companies have no choice but to ferret out inaccuracies, Mr. Sullivan said. The best way to start, he said, is to measure conversions to see if the ads are working. But for many smaller business, Ms. Todd says, the only way to monitor the problem are either manually auditing clicks or using campaign management software or services. And often that seems not worth the bother. “You have to look through all your data and see what clicks came in from where, and why they didn’t convert, which is fairly time-consuming and technical,’’ she said. “You can use some of the freebie trackers, but they may not give you the level of transparency to be able to understand what’s happening on your site.’’ “We believe that some of the biggest offenders,’’ she added, “are doing it in such minuscule amounts that it stays below the radar — a nickel here, a penny there — but it adds up in a huge way.” Mr. Burton of Aspinal said he was forced to hire a professional pay-per-click management company to address the issue, and found that he had lost $10,000 over three months to click fraud. “It’s a bigger problem with companies outside of Google,” he said. “When you look at your stats and find that — with a popular keyword — some smaller engine is sending through 10 times more traffic than Google, which gets by far the largest amount of traffic, then you know there’s a problem.” Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, said a company’s search provider should do the sleuthing. “We’ve got a system of real-time detection filters that constantly scan for suspicious activity based on the rules we’ve set up,” he said. “The vast majority of invalid clicks are handled by them. We’re also manually reviewing to detect publishers who might be generating fraudulent clicks. When we do find out, we terminate that publisher.’’

Computers and the Internet
Frauds and Swindling
Advertising and Marketing


Some Economies Show Signs of Less Reliance on U.S.

Abstract: HONG KONG — For a while, when the economic crisis was at its worst, it was a dirty word that only the most provocative of analysts dared to use. Now, the D-word — decoupling — is making a comeback, and nowhere more so than in Asia. Put simply, the term refers to the theory that emerging markets — whether China or Chile — will become less dependent the United States as their economies become stronger and more sophisticated. For much of last year, the theory held up. Many emerging economies had steered clear of investments that dragged down banking behemoths in the West, and saw nothing like the turmoil that began to engulf the United States and Europe in 2007. But then, last autumn, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused the financial system to convulse and consumer demand to shrivel, emerging economies around the world got caught in the downdraft, and the D-word became mud. Now, the tables are turning, especially in Asia, where many emerging economies are showing signs of a stronger recovery than in the West. And economists here have begun to talk of the decoupling once again. “Decoupling is happening for real,” the chief Asia-Pacific economist at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, Michael Buchanan, said in a recent interview. To be sure, the once sizzling pace of Asian economic growth has slowed sharply as exports to and investments from outside the region slumped. Across Asia, millions of people have lost their jobs as business dropped off and companies cut costs and output. Asia is heavily dependent upon selling its products to consumers in the United States and Europe, and many executives still say a strong American economy is a prerequisite for a return to the boom of years past. But for the past couple of months, data have revealed a growing divergence between Western economies and those in much of Asia, notably China and India. The World Bank last week forecast that the economies of the countries that use the euro and the United States would contract 4.5 percent and 3 percent, respectively, this year — compared with 7.2 percent and 5.1 percent growth forecast for China and India. Forecasts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that were also published last week backed up this general trend. Major statistics for June, due Wednesday, are expected to show manufacturing activity in China and India are on the mend. By contrast, purchasing managers indexes for Europe and the United States are forecast to be merely less grim than before but still show contractions. Why this diverging picture? The crisis hit Asia much later. While the American economy began languishing in 2007, Asian economies were doing well until the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September. What followed was a rush of stimulus measures — rate cuts and government spending programs. In Asia’s case, these came soon after things soured for the region; in the United States, they came much later. Moreover, developing Asian economies were in pretty good shape when the crisis struck. The last major crisis to hit the region — the financial turmoil of 1997-98 — forced governments in Asia to introduce overhauls that ultimately left them with lower debt levels, more resilient banking and regulatory systems and often large foreign exchange reserves. Another crucial difference is that Asia, unlike the United States and Europe, has not had a banking crisis. Bank profits in Asia have plunged and some have had to raise extra capital but there have been no major collapses and no bailouts. “The single most important thing to have happened in Asia is that there has not been a banking crisis,” said Andrew Freris, a regional strategist at BNP Paribas in Hong Kong. “Asia is coming though this crisis with its banking system intact. Yes, some banks may not be making profits — but it is cyclical and not systemic.” The lack of banking disasters also has meant that, unlike in Europe and the United States, Asian governments have not had to spend cash to clean the balance sheets of faltering banks. Add to that the fact that companies and households in Asia are typically not burdened with the kind of debt that is forcing Americans and Europeans to cut back consumption and investment plans. Asians are generally big savers; those in developing nations have limited health care and pension systems to fall back on. So they put aside cash for retirement, sickness and their children’s education, rather than maxing out multiple credit cards. Paul Schulte of Nomura said this difference was leading to a long-term shift. Western nations and consumers will struggle for years to pay down debt — and in some cases face higher taxes as governments try to rein in their swelling budget deficits. Consumers there, he said, will thus spend less. In developing Asia, by contrast, incomes are expected to rise gradually and savings rates to fall as improving health and welfare systems make the region’s fast-growing population less determined to save. Taken together, Mr. Schulte said, this means Asian consumers, as a whole, will become more important in global terms — another example of how the region will become less dependant on the West. Similarly, companies in developing Asian nations tend to have fewer debts — partly because the region enjoyed several years of strong economic growth. Low corporate and household debts mean governments in the region have had more firepower to pursue aggressive stimulus measures, said Jonathan Garner, head of emerging markets strategy at Morgan Stanley. The Chinese stimulus package of 4 trillion renminbi yuan, or $585 billion, announced last November, has led to a boom in spending and is a major reason why economists are optimistic about China, and about much of the region as a whole. Asia’s generally lower debt levels also mean there has been no credit crunch of the kind that has handicapped companies and consumers elsewhere. “Asia does not have a credit crunch. It has excess liquidity,” Mr. Neumann of HSBC said. “The banking system is stuffed with liquidity.” This is benefiting Asian asset markets — from stocks to property — and is leading to a gradual “financial decoupling” from the United States and Europe, Mr. Neumann said. “For the past two decades, equities markets have been driven by Western risk capital, not Asian investors themselves,” he said. “Now, you’re finding that Asian money is increasingly driving the market.” Analysts at Merrill Lynch agree. In a recent research note they said the Hong Kong stock market, for example, had performed much better than markets in the United States, and property prices in the city have risen, partly because of capital inflows from mainland China. Of course, none of this means Asia has become completely independent from the rest of the world. Asia remains heavily reliant on exports for economic growth. The result, despite increased “decoupling,” is that growth in Asia has slowed down, in some cases sharply. The Indonesian economy, for example, is expected to grow 3.6 percent this year, the Asian Development Bank forecasts. This compares to more than 6 percent in 2008 and 2007. The bank expects the Indian economy to grow to 5 percent this year, and the Chinese economy 7 percent — down from 7.1 percent and 9 percent, respectively, in 2008. Nor has the effect been uniform. Developed Asian economies, like Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, are much more tightly tied into the world economy and financial system. All three are in recessions. “The United States has deep structural problems that are coming home to roost — Asia hasn’t got those, and that has been very, very important,” says Mr. Garner of Morgan Stanley. “Emerging Asian nations went into recession last,” he says. Increasingly, they are looking like they will also to come out first — and strongest.”

Far East South and Southeast Asia and Pacific Areas


Iraqi Military Extends Control in Northern City

Abstract: MOSUL, Iraq — The recent successes in quieting violence in Basra and Sadr City appear to be stretching to the long-rebellious Sunni Arab district here in Mosul, raising hopes that the Iraqi Army may soon have tenuous control over all three of Iraq’s major cities. In this city, never subdued by the increase of American troops in Iraq last year, weekly figures on attacks are down by half since May 10, when the Iraqi military began intensified operations here with the backing of the American military. Iraqi soldiers searching house to house, within American tank cordons, have arrested more than 1,000 people suspected of insurgent activity. The Iraqi soldiers “are heady from the Basra experience,” Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, the commander of American forces in Mosul, said in an interview. “They have learned the right lessons.” The crucial lesson, in fact, over the past month appears to be that all sides — the Iraqi military as well as various insurgent groups — prefer, at the moment, not to fight. Rather, as in Basra and Sadr City, the huge Shiite enclave in Baghdad, the Iraqi military appears to have allowed many insurgents to slip out of Mosul, after scores of negotiations with militias and their leaders. This approach could make any gains temporary: The insurgents, here as elsewhere, are alive to fight another day. And little progress has been made on political reconciliation among rival sects and ethnic groups that could help reduce violence in the long term. But the negotiations have allowed the military to expand both its area of control and the government’s zone of sovereignty, burnishing the once-poor reputations of the Iraqi military and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. While the American military was never far away — it offered air support and additional firepower — the operation here was largely led by Iraqis. And that paid dividends here in Mosul. More than two dozen insurgent leaders who might not have surrendered to the Americans turned themselves in to the Iraqi generals. Out in the dusty streets, for example, Gen. Nooraldeen Hussein, the commander of the Iraqi Eighth Brigade, hunted one insurgent leader until the day he sat down and had tea with the man. The insurgent, whom General Hussein identified as Muhammad Saffo, living in the Rashadia neighborhood, was suspected of killing five Iraqi soldiers with a roadside bomb. At a meeting with his American advisers two weeks ago, the general said he arrested 14 members of Mr. Saffo’s tribe and killed three others before Mr. Saffo came forward to negotiate along with six other tribal members. “I have all his numbers right here,” General Hussein said, tapping his cellphone. He would call, he said, and negotiate the amnesty in the presence of a tribal sheik. The American advisers glanced at one another, not quite sure what to make of this new twist to the American effort to tamp down the Sunni insurgents in the city. “If the Iraqis are comfortable, we are comfortable, too,” General Thomas said of the negotiated surrenders of insurgent leaders sometimes described as members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American officials say is led by foreigners. As the decline in attacks in Mosul became clear in late May, Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador in Iraq, said, “You are not going to hear me say that Al Qaeda is defeated, but they’ve never been closer to defeat than they are now.” American and Iraqi officials have called Mosul the last urban bastion of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other Sunni jihadist groups. The trash-strewn streets on Mosul’s predominantly Sunni Arab western half, separated from the Kurdish and Christian neighborhoods by the Tigris River, had been in a state of more or less continuous uprising since 2004. The recent operation was necessary after northern Iraq, an area about the size of Georgia, with seven provinces and bordering three countries, became what the American military called an “economy of force” region as troops were diverted to Baghdad during the surge. Conditions were dismal. By last fall, only 700 or so American soldiers were stationed in Mosul, the multiethnic fulcrum of the region. American commanders conceded that that was not enough. The government in nearby Iraqi Kurdistan has sought to annex parts of Nineveh Province around Mosul. That tension has also driven some local Sunni Arabs to allow the insurgents to operate in the province. Insurgents in western Mosul, the Arab city across the Tigris River from the biblical town of Nineveh, took to hanging the bodies of their victims from a bridge to intimidate residents. For the past several months, American and Iraqi forces have been slowly applying pressure on the city. The operation, named Lion’s Roar, began officially on May 10. In it, the Iraqis have relied on significant American military assistance, after similar and tentatively successful assaults in Basra and Sadr City. American tanks have formed cordons while Iraqi soldiers have searched house to house. Forts built and operated by Americans in western Mosul also greatly helped to stem the car bombings that had plagued this city. The Iraqis, though, drew up the arrest lists and conducted the parleys. To soothe ethnic tensions, a Sunni Arab general oversaw the operation. In all, 83 percent of the military action had a majority of Iraqi troops participating. American military statistics show that significant acts of violence, including roadside bombings, sniper shootings, and mortar and rocket grenade attacks, fell from 195 in the week before the operation to 93 in the week after it, according to Lt. Col. Eric R. Price, the chief American adviser to General Hussein. While Iraqi and American politicians lump the Sunni insurgency under the banner of Al Qaeda, the military operation here relied instead on accurately identifying the many fractured groups of Sunni insurgents, and in some cases opening talks with those considered reconcilable. Owing to the splintered nature of the Sunni insurgency, rather than a single truce as in Basra and Sadr City, amnesties were negotiated with neighborhood insurgent bosses. By Monday, 27 insurgents had surrendered, according to the American military. Organizers of suicide bombings were not eligible for amnesty. Maj. Adam Boyd, the intelligence officer for the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, described the Sunni insurgency here as a dozen groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq, a radical Islamic group that insurgents have put forward as an umbrella group for jihadist fighters in northern Iraq, and Sunni nationalist organizations like the 1920 Revolution Brigades and a Baath Party revival group called Al Awda. Mosul, and the area around it, is also believed to be a hide-out for some top fugitive Baath Party officials, including Izat Ibrahim al-Duri, one of the kings in the original most-wanted deck of playing cards distributed to American troops. Other Sunni insurgent groups active in the city are the Army of Islam, the Army of Muhammad and Ansar al-Islam, the group formerly based in Iraqi Kurdistan. Still, it is unclear how many remain active in the city. In the Abi Tamam neighborhood on a blistering midmorning in May, Lt. Rusty Morris parked his convoy of armored Humvees beside a reeking field of garbage to begin a mission to show the American presence and speak with residents. Some cows picked around the piles of refuse, while children ran up to the trucks. Two helicopters buzzed overhead. Lieutenant Morris sidled up to one resident, who introduced himself as Muhammad Ahmed. The man was standing in an alley. Looking bewildered and nodding obsequiously to the American lieutenant, Mr. Ahmed said nervously that he knew of no insurgents still operating in the neighborhood. He explained that he had three wives and six children, and no time to watch for insurgents. Lieutenant Morris thanked him and moved on, walking past a wall with blue graffiti praising a leader of the Islamic State of Iraq.

Mosul (Iraq)
Iraq
Iraqi Army
Armament Defense and Military Forces
Politics and Government
United States Armament and Defense


On the Trail of a Mentally Ill Brother, Lost in Brooklyn

Abstract: Ever since they were children, Aukejshia Boyce-Gaskins made sure to look out for her younger half brother, Birshon Daley. Their mother, addicted to crack cocaine, dumped them with their great-grandmother when Ms. Boyce-Gaskins was 10 and her brother was 2. Ms. Boyce-Gaskins helped raise Mr. Daley in a small town in Georgia, even taking him in after she graduated from high school. Eventually, she sent him to live with his father in Brooklyn. But then came his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. His father died. Almost three years ago, he disappeared. His sister was frantic. Was he on the streets? In a homeless shelter? In a mental hospital? She asked a relative to check Mr. Daley’s old haunts, like the barbershop where he used to sweep for spare change. She scoured the Internet, plugging his name into Google again and again. But Mr. Daley was nowhere. “I had to put it in the back of my soul, but it’s always been eating at me,” said Ms. Boyce-Gaskins, 42, who runs a nonprofit center for disadvantaged youths in Atlanta. “My mom charged me with the responsibility of making sure he was O.K. I’ve been in havoc, spiritually.” On a recent Tuesday morning, Ms. Boyce-Gaskins again woke up thinking about her brother. This time, she was shocked by what Google delivered: Mr. Daley, now 34, had been featured in a May 30 investigation by The New York Times into cramped, unregulated rooming houses known as three-quarter houses. The homes, seen as somewhere between regulated halfway houses and actual homes, had multiplied in recent years across New York City, catering to poor people recovering from substance abuse, homeless people who wanted to avoid shelters and people with mental illnesses like Mr. Daley. Their rent was usually paid by the $215 monthly housing allowance for people on public assistance, or by about $300 a month in cash for people on disability. The houses were often decrepit. Tenants were sometimes forced to go to certain doctors and programs, raising questions about Medicaid kickbacks. Mr. Daley’s life had been particularly miserable. He had been given only $5 a day to live on. He smoked cigarette butts he collected from sidewalks, ate food he found in the garbage and slept on a lower bunk bed with no sheets, in a grimy room that he shared with three other men. In all, 10 men squeezed into his three-bedroom apartment. Mr. Daley, who had a long beard and a large knot on his forehead, spoke in non sequiturs and appeared to hear voices. “I’m sort of anemic, don’t you think, sort of a vampire of a eater?” Mr. Daley, wearing an orange lei and a black leather jacket, asked me, the reporter, in December. “I love ketchup, too.” Video Birshon Daley, who has paranoid schizophrenia, was one of 10 people living in a three-quarter home in Brooklyn in 2014. He said he received $5 a day from his landlord for his expenses. Credit Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times After reading the article, Ms. Boyce-Gaskins called Mr. Daley’s half brother — the two men share a father — still in the Bronx. She called her father, who lives in Brooklyn. She emailed and called me. “Please help me locate him to bring him home for the love and care he deserves,” she wrote. But just before the article was published, Mr. Daley had been tossed into the streets. I had given Mr. Daley a prepaid cellphone so I could stay in touch with him. But he could not seem to remember how to use it, even though I had shown him repeatedly. I had not seen him since the end of May. I figured he had joined the legions of homeless people on the city’s streets, many of them struggling with mental illness. After the article, the city formed an emergency task force , inspected dozens of three-quarter homes and moved many residents from overcrowded homes into hotels. But others were left behind. Mr. Daley had fallen through every possible crack. Losing a Home and Help Ms. Boyce-Gaskins thought of herself as Mr. Daley’s guardian. After their mother left them with their great-grandmother in Thomaston, Ga., a town of about 10,000, she talked to her children on the phone, but rarely saw them. Mr. Daley moved in with Ms. Boyce-Gaskins after she graduated from high school. But it did not last. “I needed help from his father,” she recalled. “It ended up he got into trouble, and I couldn’t carry the load at that time. His dad stepped up.” At 16, he moved to Brooklyn with his father, a city sanitation worker and artist. Eventually, the two moved into the basement of Mr. Daley’s aunt’s home, in the East New York neighborhood. At some point, Mr. Daley had his first psychotic break. He was soon given a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Ms. Boyce-Gaskins talked to her brother on the telephone, seeing him occasionally. When their mother died of a stroke about four years ago, Ms. Boyce-Gaskins came to Brooklyn. She tried to take Mr. Daley to the funeral, but he did not appear. About a year later, the phone calls ended. Mr. Daley’s aunt stopped answering Ms. Boyce-Gaskins’s calls, she said. Mr. Daley, his father and his half brother did not have cellphones. Relatives did not know where Mr. Daley was. Through a Facebook search last summer, Ms. Boyce-Gaskins learned that Mr. Daley’s father had moved to Atlanta without telling her. Then he had died. Image Two officers on patrol in Brooklyn helped a New York Times reporter find him. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times It is not clear where Mr. Daley landed. He told me later that he used to live in his aunt’s house, but ended up in a homeless shelter when his father left Brooklyn and his grandfather died. He said the shelter sent him to Back on Track, a network of three-quarter houses, in 2012. Back on Track, run by Yury Baumblit, put Mr. Daley in one of six neighboring houses on New Lots Avenue in East New York, just off the last stop on the No. 3 subway line. About 120 men and women lived there at any one time. The federal government had deemed Mr. Daley incapable of managing his disability check, which he said was about $645 a month. So at Mr. Baumblit’s direction, Mr. Daley said, he designated one of Mr. Baumblit’s employees as his official “payee” to manage his money and make sure his needs were met. But Mr. Baumblit gave Mr. Daley only $5 a day, Mr. Daley and his housemates said. A housemate, John McLeod, 58, had the job of giving Mr. Daley his medications — an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer and a blood-pressure pill, all kept in a plastic bag on the floor. Mr. McLeod, also on disability, said in December that he had no idea what pills he was handing out. Mr. McLeod also sometimes hit Mr. Daley and threw spoons at him, Mr. Daley and housemates later said. Mr. McLeod could not be reached for comment. The week before Christmas, everything changed. The evictions started. Mr. Baumblit had been pocketing rent money paid by the government for more than a year, but not paying his own rent. With no notice for tenants, six of the 12 apartments were locked up. The others were scheduled for eviction. Mr. Baumblit abandoned New Lots. Mr. Daley’s apartment remained open. But in the beginning of January, Mr. McLeod locked Mr. Daley out, housemates said. For more than six weeks, Mr. Daley was homeless, riding the subways, sleeping where he could and begging for spare change. On Feb. 19, he slipped on the ice and was taken to the hospital with a head injury. He was given a shot of his antipsychotic medicine and his mood stabilizer. His hair was clipped short, his beard trimmed. And then he was released, told to follow up with a doctor in one week. He did not. Mr. Daley returned to New Lots. Tenants in one of the four remaining apartments, still waiting for their impending evictions, let him sleep on a mattress in the living room. He had no medication. He had no money. Mr. Baumblit’s employee was now getting his entire disability check. Mr. Daley had two modes of operating when he was off his medication: He was either talkative in bursts, in thoughts that did not track, or he was quiet. At times, I sat with Mr. Daley for an hour, without exchanging a word. Other times, he would greet me with a huge smile. “Oh hey, Kim,” he said once, when I found him sitting outside a nearby bodega, as if he were expecting me. Image Mr. Daley, left, looks at a picture of his half-sister in August on a phone handed to him by Melvin White, her father. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times When he was on his medication, he was dopey. His hands shook so much so that it was difficult for him to light a cigarette. He hated the shaking, probably a side effect of haloperidol, his antipsychotic. The men in the apartment fed Mr. Daley and supplied him with cigarettes. But the days ticked down toward eviction. Finally, at the end of May, the last Back on Track apartment was locked up. Finding Mr. Daley When his sister called, I had not seen Mr. Daley in months. I guessed that he was either in the New Lots neighborhood, riding the subways, in the hospital or in jail. That afternoon, I met Melvin White, Ms. Boyce-Gaskins’s father, near the bodega where I used to visit Mr. Daley. Mr. White, 62, had not seen Mr. Daley since he was a boy. Now we planned to find him. We started by walking from store to store, handing out my business card. Had anyone seen the man with the large bump on his forehead? We had photographs of Mr. Daley from the article. The man at the bodega said he thought he had seen Mr. Daley the night before. We walked down to another bodega, near the entrance to the subway station. The man behind the counter was fairly sure he had seen Mr. Daley that morning. Two police officers stood nearby. They did not normally work in East New York, but one of the officers said he had seen Mr. Daley a half-hour earlier. “It was definitely him,” he said. But his partner was not sure. We checked on two nearby soup kitchens and two parks. We left a card with a mechanic who said he had seen Mr. Daley. Then we walked into the library. My phone rang. It was the police officer. “He’s here,” the officer said. “Right near the entrance to the subway.” We turned a corner, and there he was. Finding Mr. Daley in a city of almost 8.5 million had taken only 47 minutes. Dirty, unkempt, his beard long and scraggly, he held up his baggy shorts with fists inside his pockets. His shirt improbably read “Billionaire Boys Club.” He wore shoes with no laces. I called his name, and he turned around. We were overjoyed. He was impassive. I asked how he was. “Fine,” he said, looking suspicious. Mr. White showed Mr. Daley a photograph on his phone. Image Mr. Daley watched as his half-sister, Aukejshia Boyce-Gaskins, prepared dinner for him at her father's home in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The siblings were reunited Aug. 15. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times “Who’s that?” Mr. White asked. “It looks like my sister,” Mr. Daley said, and then Mr. White called Ms. Boyce-Gaskins and held out the phone to Mr. Daley. “Hello,” Mr. Daley said, full of politeness as he listened. “This is he.” “Oh well, I didn’t know,” he said at one point. “It’s on you because you’re telling me what kind of help I need,” he said at another, before handing the phone back to Mr. White and sitting on the ground. His wallet was gone, as was his Medicaid card, as were the two bags of belongings he once had. He had no money, had not in months. “Do you remember me?” I asked, looking to connect with him, to find out what had happened. “Where have you been staying?” He paused for a few seconds. “I remember you helping me,” he said. I tried again. “Where have you been sleeping lately, Birshon?” “Just around. A park bench. A couple benches.” He thought he had been homeless for only 15 days. It had been two and a half months. Mr. White took Mr. Daley back to his apartment. He had him sit on a sheet on the couch, so the couch would not get dirty. He fed him a ham-and-cheese sandwich and Chef Boyardee Beefaroni. Mr. White threw away Mr. Daley’s old clothes and gave him clean ones. Mr. Daley took his first shower in months. The next day, Mr. White tried to get Mr. Daley to go to the hospital to get his medicine. Mr. Daley said nothing. Image Mr. Daley watches television at his half-sister's home in Douglasville, Ga., near Atlanta, where he now lives. Credit Bryan Meltz for The New York Times “Do you feel you need it?” Mr. White asked. “Not actually,” Mr. Daley said. He did not want to take another shower. He did not want to brush his teeth. He did not want any pills. ‘A Bigger, Better Chance’ Ms. Boyce-Gaskins decided to pick up her brother that weekend, to take him to her home near Atlanta. I asked Mr. Daley, who liked the winter, how he felt about leaving. “Very well,” he said, before pausing. “Somewhat distressed,” he continued. “Pretty much, the danger’s far away, but not exactly destroyed. A bigger, better chance.” Ms. Boyce-Gaskins left work that Friday and rode the train all night, arriving at Mr. White’s apartment around 5 p.m. the next day. When she saw her brother for the first time in four years, she asked him if she could hug him. “Yes,” he said. Mr. Daley would later tell his sister that seeing her made him feel “sort of like Santa Claus.” After greeting each other, they walked outside, sat on the building’s stoop and smoked a half pack of cigarettes, talking about their lives. On Sunday morning, Ms. Boyce-Gaskins washed her brother’s feet, and she got him into the shower. He was different with her than anyone I had ever seen him with, calm and trusting. When she told him not to smoke around company, he listened. When she told him that she had his back, he gave her a fist-bump. She told him that they would stop by the hospital before taking the bus home to Georgia. He grimaced but did not say no. “Just to get the meds,” she told him. “We’re not staying.” “We’re leaving,” he replied. “Indeed,” she said. “We need some meds, and we don’t want the kind that make you shake. O.K.?” “All right,” he agreed. At home in Douglasville, Ga., she said, her husband was getting a room ready for Mr. Daley. Their daughter, 12, and nephew, 13, whom they are raising, were happy that she had finally found her brother. Ms. Boyce-Gaskins planned to enroll him in an outpatient program for people with mental illnesses. “I promised him we would never have to worry about homelessness again,” Ms. Boyce-Gaskins said, before starting to cry. Talking like this is no fun for Mr. Daley, who often grows weary of my questions and has admitted he finds them annoying. He does not feel sorry for himself, does not dwell on Mr. Baumblit from the three-quarter house and does not talk much about how he has lived in recent years. At one point, he closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. “You O.K.?” Ms. Boyce-Gaskins asked, touching him on his shoulder. “Just fine,” he said. “No resentment.” “None,” she replied. “You know why? Because life has its paths, and you know what? Our paths still crossed back up, no matter how people tried to keep us apart.” Her brother shook his head and looked at her. “I didn’t see how that was going to happen,” he said. His sister looked him in the eyes. “But it did,” she said softly.

Group Homes,Supportive Housing,Halfways Homes,Three Quarter Homes


General Motors Receives Welcome News in Automotive Survey

Abstract: DETROIT — While General Motors was under fire in Washington at a House hearing over its failure to recall defective cars, the automaker received some welcome news at home on Wednesday with a strong showing in the annual J.D. Power quality survey of new vehicles. G.M. ranked third among major automakers, behind Hyundai Group and Toyota. Although it fell from the top ranking that it held last year, the company won the most category awards, bolstered by its strong performance in trucks and sport utility vehicles. The J.D. Power survey ranks cars and trucks by how well they perform over the first 90 days of ownership. This year’s survey of consumers was based on 2014 models registered between November and February. Those vehicles were largely not among the more than 17 million cars in the United States that G.M. has recalled this year, including 2.6 million older models with a defective ignition switch that spurred G.M.'s safety crisis. David Sargent, vice president for global automotive at J.D. Power, cautioned that while the results were strong, the recalls could still have an effect on consumer perception. While Mr. Sargent said he believes G.M. can weather the recall storm, it’s going to have a challenging road ahead with consumers — much like Toyota had with unintended acceleration several years ago. The main worry for G.M., he said, is not so much current owners, but with potential ones — those considering their first G.M. purchase. “The bigger concern is the wider audience,” he said. In Toyota’s case, most customers remained with the company despite the bad publicity. But far fewer people considering a Toyota showed up to buy one after the scandal. It took several years for the Japanese automaker to win back their trust. Toyota also had a sterling reputation for quality, which the company relied on to persuade new buyers to purchase vehicles. G.M. can’t point to that kind of solid pedigree, with too many Americans still harboring memories of its quality problems in recent decades. “It’s a little more risky for them,” Mr. Sargent said of G.M. Jesse Toprak, chief analyst for Cars.com, said that while he agreed that those considering their first G.M. vehicle were at the largest risk for staying away, the company cannot take its current customers for granted. “Current owners aren’t completely immune to the news, especially first-time owners,” he said. “With so many choices out there, it’s conceivable they could rethink their next purchase.” Mr. Toprak noted that G.M.'s sales numbers remain strong, although that could stem from the recall itself. “There’s a kind of silver lining created by a recall, because you have to go to the dealer, and once you’re there you may start thinking about just getting a new car altogether,” he said. “Dealers are able to capitalize on all the new traffic and make new sales.” In May, G.M.'s sales increased 13 percent over the same month a year earlier, and the company’s loyal customers — including numerous people who have traded in their recalled cars for new G.M. cars — have yet to jump ship. Overall, Mr. Sargent said he thought G.M. was pursuing the right strategy. “They’re doing the right thing, in my view, to be transparent and get it all out there,” he said. “What you don’t want is to be dealing with recalling cars in a year’s time. If they know there are models they need to recall, it’s better to do it now.” Despite the bad publicity of the recalls, he said, “there’s really no choice here if they want to get this behind them.”


California: Man Charged in Police Officer’s Killing

Abstract: Prosecutors in Alameda County filed murder charges Friday against a Bay Area man accused of shooting a police sergeant in the head during a traffic stop. Mark Anthony Estrada, 21, was charged with murder of a peace officer, lying in wait and discharging a firearm from a motor vehicle in the death of Sgt. Scott Lunger of the Hayward Police Department. Sergeant Lunger, 48, of Brentwood, was shot Wednesday after he stopped Mr. Estrada for swerving and driving erratically. As he radioed in the shooting, another officer shot back, striking Mr. Estrada. The police later found Mr. Estrada’s pickup truck in Oakland.

Murders and Homicides
Attacks on Police
Mark Anthony Estrada
Scott Lunger
San Francisco Bay Area
Oakland CA
Alameda County
California