Cost of Subsidizing Fossil Fuels Is High, but Cutting Them Is Tough

Abstract: BRUSSELS — The bankruptcy this summer of Solyndra — a solar company heavily subsidized by the U.S. government — unleashed a torrent of concern about the risks of wasting taxpayer money on renewable-energy projects. There have been similar worries in Europe, where bountiful state support led to a boom and bust in the Spanish solar sector and where targets for some biofuels may contribute to greenhouse emissions. But what are the effects of subsidies that continue to flow to fossil fuels? Two years ago, in Pittsburgh, the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations acknowledged that many of these subsidies were wasteful, impeding investment in clean energy and undermining efforts to deal with climate change , and they pledged to step up efforts to get rid of them. These subsidies are fiendishly difficult to dismantle because of the political risks involved. In December, Bolivia had to rescind fuel price increases less than a week after announcing them, after violent protests. Early this year, Iran managed to institute sweeping changes, but only after overcoming major obstacles. In the developed world, some of the beneficiaries include French taxi drivers, who receive an annual rebate on diesel and gasoline; British householders, who pay a reduced value-added tax for heat and power; and oil and natural gas companies in Alaska, which receive tax credits to offset the cost of drilling and exploration. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group in Paris that advises mostly high-income nations on their economies, said this month that these supports were worth as much as $75 billion each year in 24 of its 34 member countries. Ángel Gurría, the secretary general of the O.E.C.D., did not specify where cuts should be made. But he said the current drive to tighten budgets provided the ideal opportunity to trim the fat. “There are very few quick wins” when looking for spending cuts, but “one of them is the reform of fossil fuel subsidies,” he said. Making comparisons among countries is difficult, because governments often do not provide complete information. For example, many developing and emerging nations do not report support to fossil fuel producers. What can be measured are subsidies to consumers in the form of cheap oil, natural gas and electricity. Egypt, Libya and Venezuela were among countries that kept the costs of fuel at less than half world market prices last year, according to a report this month from the International Energy Agency, which is part of the O.E.C.D. and advises member countries on energy policy. In Saudi Arabia, low energy prices represented a subsidy of $1,587 for each citizen, according to the I.E.A. All told, this form of subsidy rose $109 billion to reach $409 billion last year, as governments tried to shield citizens from pricier fuels on world markets, the I.E.A. said. Under current trends, that sum will hit $660 billion by the end of the decade, it said. Mr. Gurría said rolling back these consumption subsidies could reduce greenhouse gas emissions 6 percent in 2050 compared with business as usual. The executive director of the I.E.A., Maria van der Hoeven, said this month that these subsidies skewed the playing field for renewable technologies by encouraging people to keep using large quantities of fossil fuels and diminishing the competitiveness of alternatives. To be sure, most forms of renewable energy still are more heavily subsidized than fossil fuels based on each unit of energy produced. But, over all, subsidies for fossil fuels dwarf the amounts governments spend on sources like wind and solar energy and biofuels. These renewable sources received $57 billion in 2009, according to the most recent figure from the I.E.A. Moreover, citizens and companies that rely on fossil fuels usually do not pay the full cost of resulting environmental problems like oil spills , sludge from coal mines and greenhouse gases, and for health problems from polluted air. Estimates of the cost of these effects — or “externalities” in the ungainly jargon of economists — vary. One study published in August in The American Economic Review and written by economists from Yale University in Connecticut and Middlebury College in Vermont found that air pollution from coal-fired power plants cost the United States more in health damage than those plants contributed to the U.S. economy. Yet another form of implicit subsidy identified by environmentalists and by some economists is the benefits that flow to another form of low-carbon power — nuclear energy . Electricity ratepayers and taxpayers have long helped to shoulder the costs of constructing reactors, uranium enrichment and waste management, according to these experts. Citizens also implicitly have covered the costs of any major accident, because utility companies would never be able to pay for the damage themselves, they said. Since the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan in March, when an earthquake and tsunami wrecked reactors and released dangerous contaminants, it has become even clearer that current levels of private insurance are inadequate, said Doug Koplow, the founder of Earth Track, a group that studies global energy subsidies. Mr. Koplow pointed out that liability estimates for the Japanese disaster were between $47 billion and $130 billion, and that Japanese taxpayers would pay most of that. Despite exhortations of international officials, supports for fossil fuels seem unlikely to disappear any time soon. In the Middle East and North Africa, where subsidies for oil and natural gas are among the most generous in the world, popular uprisings have swept aside old regimes. But new leaders seeking acceptance may be as hesitant as their predecessors to cut benefits that would raise the cost of living. Meanwhile, in the developed world, the authorities are developing new supports aimed at bolstering energy security and cutting pollution that could, in turn, keep up demand for fossil fuels. The European Union is helping utilities that burn coal to cope with emissions restrictions by offering them billions of dollars to develop ways of storing carbon dioxide underground. And in the United States, Congress is considering a bill that would offer tax incentives to encourage the manufacture of heavy-duty trucks powered by natural gas.

Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Coal
Air Pollution
Politics and Government


Wind-Damaged Brooklyn Begins to Straighten Up

Abstract: It was the day after in southwestern Brooklyn yesterday: work crews pushed brooms, steered street sweepers, shoveled bricks, lifted tree trunks and started the rebuilding in the aftermath of the unlikely tornado that swept through the area early Wednesday morning. Men in hard hats loaded up a construction backhoe with aluminum siding and other debris outside damaged row houses on Bay Ridge Avenue. Around the corner at the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, workers used plywood to cover a giant hole — the space where a 51-year-old stained-glass window with the image of Jesus Christ had been a beacon for the neighborhood. Blocks away, trees that littered a playground, a basketball court and a baseball field waited for the chain saw. Residents of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge surveyed the streets around them yesterday with a mixture of concern and gratitude. The concern stemmed from the fact that the storm, which produced a Category 2 tornado with winds from 111 to 135 miles an hour, caused damage expected to total millions of dollars once the final toll is determined. The gratitude was twofold: Residents said they were thankful no one was seriously hurt and pleased that the city was working quickly to clean up the mess. Standing outside her daughter’s home on 68th Street in Bay Ridge, Frances Bernacchi said she did not recognize the block from the debris-strewn wreck it had been on Wednesday. “You would never believe this is the same area,” she said. Ms. Bernacchi’s daughter was one of the lucky ones on 68th Street: the roof of her two-story brick building received some damage from the storm — more than $5,000 worth, Ms. Bernacchi said — but it was safe to occupy. The residents of several other homes on the block of 68th between Third and Fourth Avenues were forced to move because of roof damage. About 30 buildings in the city remain temporarily off limits to residents, the majority in the Bay Ridge section, because of storm damage, a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings said. Inspectors have examined damaged properties around the city, and some have received red tags, prohibiting access, and others were given yellow tags, allowing access only to undamaged portions of a home. A total of roughly 60 properties reported some damage, officials said. Numerous cars were destroyed or damaged by falling debris and crashing trees. The tornado had several flashpoints, first touching down on Staten Island shortly before 6:30 a.m. and then skipping across the water on its way to Bay Ridge. In the West Brighton section of Staten Island, cleanup was centered at Richmond University Medical Center, where 30 mature trees fell and a water line was damaged. A hospital spokesman said there were no disruptions to patients’ care. At the edge of Leif Ericson Park in Bay Ridge, a tree that once stood more than two stories tall lay on its side, exposing a deep gash in the ground where its roots were yanked out. A few steps away, a white flagpole stood on solid ground. At the Bay Ridge Nissan dealership nearby, at 65th Street and Fifth Avenue, men climbed ladders to work on the damaged roof. Across the street, a Chrysler dealership appeared to have come through the storm unscathed. Trees seemed to take the hardest hit. The city’s parks department reported that 292 trees in its jurisdiction came down, the majority in Brooklyn. In addition, more than 300 downed tree limbs were reported to 311. “This has been one of the most damaging storms in the parks department’s history,” said Warner Johnston, the department’s spokesman. Trees leaned on chain-link fences and swing sets at Leif Ericson Park. In the Prospect Park South neighborhood, roughly three miles from Bay Ridge, some were split down the middle and others were uprooted. Al Cleary, 53, a real estate broker and the president of the neighborhood association, said at least a dozen large branches flew onto the roof of his Victorian home on Albemarle Road. “I ran outside and the trees were shredded as if someone had ripped the tops off of them and thrown them over the house,” said Mr. Cleary, who estimated the damage to his home at about $15,000. “It helps that the houses are spread apart. The trees had somewhere to land.” The pastor of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where the front stained-glass window and three other smaller windows were blown out by the high winds, was calmly taking everything in stride. A sign on the gate outside informed passers-by that Sunday services would be held as usual at 11 a.m. The stained-glass window, located at the back of the church’s upstairs sanctuary and overlooking the street outside, was about 25 feet tall and 12 feet across. The pastor, the Rev. David Aja-Sigmon, said repairs would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Do I think God made this happen?” Mr. Aja-Sigmon said. “No, I don’t think God would wish this on anyone. I don’t think God makes people suffer. More likely, if you’re looking for God in a catastrophe, you’re seeing it in all the people that have been great in trying to reach out and help us.” Seventy-five people, including 17 children, who were unable to return to their homes because of storm damage slept overnight Wednesday in the gymnasium of the Luis Muñoz Marin elementary school at 60th Street and Third Avenue. The Red Cross was moving 35 families to a hotel last night. Susan Fedele, 46, normally resides at 350 68th Street with her husband, her son, her son’s girlfriend, her mother, a cat named Nala and a dog named, as it happens, Chance. Everyone — except her son’s girlfriend, who is in Florida, and the pets — relocated on Wednesday to two rooms at a Best Western hotel in Bay Ridge. The cat was with her son’s friend and her daughter was watching the dog. The tornado peeled off the roof of their home, but no one was hurt. Mrs. Fedele had been recuperating at home after undergoing double bypass surgery. “When I was in the hospital I just wanted to feel the comfort of my own home, and here I am in a hotel,” she said yesterday. Still, she said, she remained in good spirits. “I am just glad we are O.K.,” she said. “One of the rooms the roof was ripped off of is the room where one of my grandchildren sleeps in. We’re all healthy, we’re all together and we’ll all get through it.”


Growing Comb Jellies in the Lab Like Sea-Monkeys

Abstract: Comb jellies, or ctenophores, are wildly different from humans and, in fact, most other animals. They’re not even in the same group as common jellyfish. These gelatinous, hermaphroditic sea creatures come in various shapes — eggs, ribbons and bells — and can be as short as a grain of rice or as long as a broomstick. They use their “combs,” rows of tiny paddlelike structures, to swim. Despite how unusual they are, William Browne , a biology professor at the University of Miami and a research collaborator at the Smithsonian, thinks that comb jellies can teach biologists a great deal about other animals. So he and his colleagues at the Monterey Bay Aquarium have figured out how to grow comb jellies in large quantities in the lab. They are now authoring a paper to share their methods with other scientists and aquariums. Depending on who you ask (it’s hotly debated ), the ancestors of comb jellies may have been the first creatures to branch off the animal tree of life . That would mean that for about 600 million years , comb jellies have been on an evolutionary path that’s different from that of all other animals. In spite of this, they evolved common body traits, like muscles and a nervous system. Image A lobed comb jelly, close up. Genetically, comb jellies appear to be “built from a different set of instructions” than other animals, said William Browne, who studies them. Credit Monterey Bay Aquarium It’s precisely because comb jellies are so far removed from other animals that Dr. Browne wants to study them. They have all these features that are recognizable, but they seem to be “built from a different set of instructions,” he said. He believes that understanding the comb jelly’s unique biology could one day help researchers find novel solutions to problems in fields like medicine and materials science. So far, Dr. Browne and his collaborators have refined methods for culturing four comb jelly species, with more to come. Before this, researchers have struggled to keep comb jellies alive beyond a few months in the lab. For one, they’re incredibly fragile. Many species won’t tolerate fluctuations in water quality, salinity or temperature, said Wyatt Patry , a senior aquarist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Comb jellies also use huge amounts of energy relative to their size. They are the largest creatures to swim using tiny hairlike structures called cilia , billions of which beat in rhythm to drive the animals forward. Image A visitor at the lobed comb jelly exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Until recently, researchers have struggled to keep comb jellies alive beyond a few months in the lab because of their fragility and high energy needs. Credit Monterey Bay Aquarium “Even though they appear to move slowly, you can think of them as being propelled by little fires, each one burning really bright — so they need a lot of fuel,” Dr. Browne said. To solve these problems the researchers made two changes. First, they devised a special tank to allow for a constant exchange of clean water. Second, they developed a new feeding technique for the comb jellies, which they realized feed continuously in the wild. Rather than large meals of tiny crustaceans two or three times a day, they started feeding comb jellies live larval fish throughout the day. The changes helped the jellies spawn more babies that survived longer. “Instead of having 10 fertilized embryos, we had hundreds and hundreds,” said MacKenzie Bubel, an aquarist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. She and Mr. Patry have now kept a batch of comb jellies alive for a year and counting. Culturing comb jellies en masse, combined with recent advances in gene editing, could have powerful implications for biomedical research. Instead of the usual suspects, like fruit flies, mice and human cell cultures, Dr. Browne is using comb jellies to study biological processes, like how certain proteins help stem cells proliferate and stay alive. “Comb jellies are on the cusp of being an awesome genetic model system,” he said. The ability to grow comb jellies could also yield insights into the evolutionary origin of certain anatomical traits, such as anuses. Biologists have long believed that digestive systems that run from a mouth to an anus, so-called through-guts, emerged after comb jellies split off from other animals. But in a study that will soon be published in Current Biology, Dr. Browne was able to show that comb jellies have through-guts — throwing a wrench in the traditional evolutionary timeline. “There’s no way we could have done that study without being able to culture the animals,” he said. There are other potential areas of research: using comb jellies to find the origins of bioluminescence , the process by which many sea creatures glow in the dark; examining the sticky cells in their tentacles to develop waterproof glues and studying their unusual nervous system to find treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In aquariums, being able to cultivate comb jellies may lead to year-round displays, Ms. Bubel said. Many comb jellies produce a pulsing rainbow effect as their beating cilia diffract light . Some look like basketballs with two tentacles. Others resemble long strips of floating plastic. One deep-sea species, the bloodbelly comb jelly , has a fearful scarlet hue. For all the interesting scientific developments linked to culturing comb jellies, the best news here may be that more people will get to marvel at these outlandish creatures in person. After all, who doesn’t love a biological light show?

Fish
Jellyfish
Evolution
William E Browne
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Current Biology Journal
Research


Rangers Show That a Rotation Without Lee Can Still Thrive

Abstract: Cliff Lee pitched a shutout with 12 strikeouts for the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday. The two other teams that tried to sign him, the Yankees and the Texas Rangers , met in the Bronx the next night, offering a snapshot of how they have dealt with rejection. The Yankees stashed Phil Hughes on the disabled list , essentially because of a sudden inability to throw hard. Their rookie right-hander, Ivan Nova, then failed to complete five innings for the second start in a row. In one night, two rotation spots looked fragile. The Rangers, meanwhile, lined up three pitchers who did not start in their run to the World Series last fall. The Rangers had hoped to start the season with the injured right-handers Tommy Hunter and Brandon Webb in the rotation, and strongly considered shifting closer Neftali Feliz. Yet they started Saturday with a 2.50 earned run average, the lowest in the majors. Matt Harrison lasted eight innings in a victory on Friday, and Derek Holland went seven and two-thirds innings in a 5-2 loss on Saturday . Alexi Ogando, who faces C. C. Sabathia on Sunday night, has won twice this season, allowing no runs. “They have great stuff and they’re young,” said the left-hander C. J. Wilson, who started on opening day. “That’s the thing, people always discount guys that haven’t done it yet, but nobody has until they do it. So you have to look at the guys who have potential to do it.” Holland, another left-hander, said he talked much more with Wilson than he did with Lee, who arrived last July with the Rangers comfortably in first place. Lee helped the team immensely in the playoffs, but not so much in the regular season; the Rangers won just 6 of his 15 starts. The Yankees, who never had Lee, probably needed him more, especially after Andy Pettitte retired. They were smart to sign the veterans Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia, though their upside is limited. Hughes, 24, was supposed to be embarking on his prime, but for now he is lost, a slide that began well before the Rangers thrashed him twice in the American League Championship Series. Hughes looked terrific last April, the way the Rangers’ pitchers look now. A lot can change in a long season. But Ron Washington, the Texas manager, said he sensed that Harrison, 25, and Holland, 24, had matured. “When you’ve got youth, you never know when there’s going to be that hiccup,” Washington said. “In the first inning last night, when Harrison came out and threw all those balls? “Last year, that would have snowballed. When he got into the fifth inning and couldn’t find the strike zone? That would have snowballed. When he got into the eighth inning and they started rattling him? That would have snowballed. But he stopped every threat.” Holland, who beat the Yankees in relief in the playoffs, matched his career high with 118 pitches Saturday. Washington said he liked the matchups in the eighth inning, and Holland still seemed strong. With Nolan Ryan atop the organization and Mike Maddux guiding the pitchers, the Rangers preach endurance from their starters. Wilson switched to the rotation from the bullpen last season and worked 204 innings, going 15-8. A hamstring injury slowed him this spring, but he has pitched well enough so far and sees a side benefit to his lighter workload in camp. “I feel like, physically, it’ll allow me to maybe peak a little bit later this year,” Wilson said. The Rangers, who sat out the playoffs in the first decade of the 2000s, can think confidently now about the postseason. The A.L. West is challenging, loaded with dominant starters. But the Rangers — who salute good plays with claw-and-antler hand motions — play with an endearing style. “I saw it last year, with the claw and all that stuff,” said catcher Mike Napoli, a former Angel. “You can always tell when teams have fun, and they’re loose and they go out and play hard. We didn’t like it because they were our rivals in the division. But I’m glad I’m a part of it now.” The engine of the Rangers’ offense is Josh Hamilton, last season’s A.L. most valuable player, who could miss the next two months after breaking a bone in his right arm on a headfirst slide at the plate last Tuesday. But the Rangers lost Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and Ian Kinsler for long stretches last season, and still wound up in the World Series. Cruz and Kinsler are healthy now, and Michael Young — who had asked to be traded after the signing of Adrian Beltre bumped him off third base — is hitting .339. If their pitchers keep performing, the Rangers could stay in first place for a while. “Character- and makeup-wise, this group’s off the charts,” Young said. “It’s a great group to be around every day, and I think it’s just the way every guy’s wired here. When you have 25 guys who are the same way, we feel like we can overcome a lot of things.”

Baseball
New York Yankees
Texas Rangers
Lee Cliff
Hughes Phil


Small-Business Owners Lobby to Cut Credit Card Fees

Abstract: Small merchants have long chafed at the fees they must pay banks every time a customer swipes a debit or credit card. But now, with business slowing and every dollar important to their bottom line, some merchants are pushing for changes. The merchants are lobbying for legislation that would compel banks to negotiate fees with them and are supporting a second measure that one of its sponsors calls a “credit card bill of rights for merchants.” At the same time, some merchants are seeking class-action status for litigation claiming antitrust violations by banks and the MasterCard and Visa card networks. Alan L. Carsrud, professor of management and entrepreneurship at Florida International University in Miami, said small-store owners have little choice but to accept the cards. “If a mom-and-pop merchant doesn’t like paying them, it can’t just stop taking cards — it would bleed customers because Americans have been socialized to use plastic,” he said. “Although all merchants are facing real problems about profitability,” he added, “this may be a life-and-death matter for the small ones.” A typical merchant card payment has two parts: an “interchange fee,” which includes an average 1.7 percent of the sale price and a flat per-transaction fee, and a separate fee that goes to the merchant’s bank. Take, for example, a driver who pays for a $1,000 car repair with a credit card. The bank that issued the consumer’s card receives an interchange fee of $17.10 (including a 10-cent flat fee), while the repair shop’s bank gets $4, or four-tenths of 1 percent of the total sale. The repair shop pockets $978.90. In 2007, merchants paid $61.56 billion in electronic payment fees, up from $48.58 billion in 2005, according to the Nilson Report, a payment systems industry newsletter. The report estimated that lenders took in 82.5 percent of those dollars. “What merchants are getting for their money is convenience, risk management and guaranteed payment,” said Denise Dunckel, a spokeswoman for Visa Inc. Various factors make every interchange fee unique. If the magnetic strip on the consumer’s card does not work and a cashier has to enter its number manually, for example, a higher charge results. If the card “rewards” the consumer with cash back or airline miles, that, too, has a higher charge. Beyond setting fee schedules, card agreements also reach into merchants’ daily operations. Merchants who take cards are supposed to accept them for purchases of any size. But to protect profits from customers who use plastic for everything — a recent Visa television advertisement campaign humorously suggested that only social malcontents pay with cash — some small merchants break the rule and set minimum amounts for card purchases. “Why shouldn’t you be able to set a minimum?” asked William Dennis Jr., senior research fellow for the National Federation of Independent Business in Washington. “Some of these small guys may actually lose money on a $2 or $3 credit card charge.” Mitch Goldstone, who owns ScanMyPhotos.com , a photo-imaging venture in Irvine, Calif., and blogs about interchange fees at www.WayTooHigh.com , said he decided to challenge the fees in 2005 after learning that fees on reward cards were going up. “I can barely understand them and I’m a lead plaintiff in the merchant litigation,” he said. The credit card industry contends that merchants are getting good value for their contribution to the rewards card programs. “Merchants derive significant gain from the electronic payments system, which has evolved new features such as rewards programs,” said Trish Wexler, spokeswoman for the Electronic Payments Coalition, an advocacy group in Washington. “Ultimately, merchants benefit from rewards programs because people buy more when they use cards. Higher fees for rewards cards are justified because merchants and consumers both share in their expense — but merchants want to pass their fair share to consumers, who’d be hit with higher credit costs and reduced rewards if the merchants succeed.” Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat who has sponsored one of the measures in Congress, said he planned to reintroduce a “credit card bill of rights for merchants,” as he calls it. “Our American merchants are paying the world’s highest interchange fees, a fast-increasing cost of business for them, with literally no protections,” he said. The congressman said the merchants told him about their card problems when he set up tables at Vermont country stores. “Some Vermonters who owned multiple gas stations said that to deal with rising gas prices and interchange fees, they wanted to experiment with cash-only at some and the status quo at others, but were told this would violate their card agreements,” he said. In July, the House Judiciary Committee, with bipartisan support, narrowly passed legislation that requires banks and merchants to negotiate interchange fees. The measure is sponsored by Representatives John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the committee, and Chris Cannon, a Utah Republican who was defeated in the summer primaries. Small banks and credit unions testified that fee reductions would take away badly needed income. Kenneth J. Clayton, director of card policy for the American Bankers Association in Washington, called the bill “a dramatic proposal by big retailers to use political muscle to lower their costs.” Smaller retailers, he said, “are being put up as poster children to show how challenging it is for them. But behind the scenes are big-box stores that see an opportunity to lower their costs of participating in the electronic payments system that benefits them greatly.” Professor Carsrud said that while card fee reductions would save large merchants the most in terms of absolute dollars, small ones would gain, too, because they have few options to reduce costs. “They can’t easily raise prices now, and they may not survive if they slash payroll or marketing,” he said. The National Federation of Independent Business and the National Small Business Association, also based in Washington, remained neutral on the Conyers-Cannon bill and on a companion measure sponsored by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. A spokeswoman for the National Small Business Association, Molly Brogan, explained in an e-mail message: “While we recognize the significant issues surrounding the inability of small businesses to properly negotiate interchange fees — especially with the nation’s top 10 banks controlling 88 percent of credit-card receivables — we are focused on broad credit card reform. Given our diverse membership, interchange fees impact our small businesses differently — some members rely on credit card rewards, offered at the cost of our other members who are forced to pay for them.” Ronald Mann, a law professor at Columbia University and a credit specialist, said he expected that there would be “a tremendous push in Congress in 2009 to adopt important credit card reforms” because of the increased sensitivity to banks’ lending practices. But, he added, “Merchants’ card problems — even though especially pressing for small ones — do not top most legislators’ agendas.” Not far from the Capitol in Washington, the owner of the Cleveland Park Valet dry cleaner, Robert Kotchenreuther, said he counted on customer relations, not legislation or litigation, to keep his card fees down. “I hate credit cards,” he added, “but I’d lose too much business not taking them.” Mr. Kotchenreuther said he had “quite a few customers who are very understanding and caring and pay by cash or check because they know it costs me each time I use the card machine.” He estimated that he paid $5,000 to $6,000 in card fees each year — money, he said, that could “help me upgrade my 1994 van with 125,000 miles.” Mr. Kotchenreuther carries two cards of his own: a small-business credit card and a Upromise credit card that rewards users with college tuition dollars. But Mr. Kotchenreuther said he could not remember the last time he used either card. “If I go to another small merchant, I know he has to pay a fee to use his machine, and I don’t like that — I pay cash.” Nor does he pay with cards at bigger businesses. “If I need a hotel room or rental car,” he said, “I’ll use a card to hold them and pay cash when I get there.”

Small Business
Credit and Money Cards
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Law and Legislation
Visa Inc
Mastercard International Inc


Chelsea Hotel’s Sale Suggests Yet Another Era

Abstract: The Chelsea Hotel seems like the last place that would go quietly into the night. After all, some of the last century’s most notorious deaths took place within its walls. It was where Sid Vicious’s girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, was stabbed to death. Where Dylan Thomas stayed during his last drinking spree. On the flip side were the boldface lives lived there: Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Mark Twain, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frida Kahlo and Tennessee Williams were among the dozens of illuminati who once called the Chelsea home. Yet when the news came in October that the Chelsea, a 12-story Queen Anne behemoth built in 1883 on West 23rd Street, was up for sale, New Yorkers reacted with little more than a shrug. Never mind that the same families had owned and more or less nurtured the place for 65 years. Never mind that it had long been the breeding ground for boundless creativity and bottomless self-destruction. The closing of CBGB, the punk pantheon, elicited much breast-beating, though its demise was slow and steady. But the prospect of the Chelsea changing hands, ushering in an unknown future, barely registered a whimper. “Its legend has been slowly evaporating,” said Michael Musto, the longtime night-life columnist for The Village Voice. “People aren’t viewing this as the demolition of a downtown Lincoln Center: it’s a place to stay.” And, Mr. Musto noted, the Chelsea was not necessarily closing. “It could just keep going the way it’s going,” he said. “That’s why there isn’t a whole lot of terror in the streets.” Yet by most accounts, things have not been going all that well at the Chelsea. Many long-term tenants have been in a state of uproar since 2007, when the longtime, beloved and eccentric manager, Stanley Bard, was ousted by the hotel’s board. A quick succession of management turnovers followed. The boutique hotelier BD Hotels was hired and fired within a year, and sued the Chelsea for wrongful dismissal. Andrew Tilley, the former manager of the Paramount Hotel New York, lasted seven months before walking out in early 2009, claiming incessant tenant harassment. “I find the whole thing absolutely disgusting,” he told The New York Observer. In 2008, a tenant said he had been attacked by a security guard. All of which may have barely merited a lifted eyebrow in the Chelsea Hotel of two decades ago, when the hotel’s grit and bohemian soul mirrored the spirit, and perils, of downtown Manhattan. Back then, residents said, an in-house heroin dealer operated freely. At least one room was used as a brothel. It is said that a resident once called the front desk to request a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread, inadvertently using code words for a special delivery: a tray of drugs soon appeared at her door. Fires were periodically lighted by people who had passed out smoking in their beds. There were frequent suicides, with the despondent leaping down the well of the hotel’s lacey wrought iron staircase. Gerald Busby, a 74-year-old composer — he wrote the score to Robert Altman’s “3 Women” — remembers stepping into the hall and encountering an agitated neighbor shakily sipping a beer. Moments later a crowd of police officers arrived: the man had just shot his wife. As Manhattan cleaned up its act in the 1990s, the wildness began ebbing from the Chelsea. The hotel became less a symbol of the cutting edge than a relic of it. Priced out of Manhattan, young artists began colonizing the other boroughs. Still, Mr. Bard, the manager, continued to usher in artists, and whoever else caught his fancy, as long-term residents, even though the rest of the board found his management style somewhat slipshod. “He had a heart, an organizing principle, he gave it integrity,” said Rose Cory, 53, a performance artist who has lived at the Chelsea for 25 years. Residents said that Mr. Bard’s exit was a crucial turning point. “The energy changed,” said Robert Lambert, 59, a painter who is moving out of the hotel next month. The shareholders assumed control of the hotel, and Marlene Krauss and David Elder, the public faces of the management, fast became the targets of vituperation on the residents’ blog . The hotel stopped accepting long-term residents; about 90 remain, down by about 40 since Mr. Bard left, said the current manager, Arnold Tamasar. Several tenants said the owners began evicting people by any means, a claim the owners said was untrue. Residents said they began feeling as if they were living in a museum, if a hugely disordered one. “It just seems like a headless monster,” Mr. Cory said. Some rooms were renovated in soulless approximations of boutique hotels. The hallways, meanwhile, remained dimly lighted, lined with old paint and, as is the hotel’s tradition, residents’ art. David Barton, the gym-chain owner, who moved out of the Chelsea three years ago, said the place assumed the feel of a theme restaurant. “There was a moment where the hotel rooms were really expensive,” Mr. Barton said. “Japanese tourists would come with 12 Louis Vuitton trunks, and we would laugh at them. Now it feels like Priceline.com . Whole families from Cincinnati were coming in saying, ‘We want to see where Sid killed Nancy.’ ” Paul Brounstein, a hotel board member, said one reason the hotel was put up for sale was factionalization among its 15 shareholders, mostly members of three Hungarian families: the Bards, the Krausses and the Grosses. They did not share a vision. None possessed Mr. Bard’s single-minded passion for the place. “Times changed, the area around the Chelsea grew up, but the hotel is not keeping pace,” Mr. Brounstein said. Expenses are rising, he added, but rent-stabilized units are diminishing the income stream. Residents also said the place seemed to have trouble filling its 226 rooms, though Mr. Tamasar said that occupancy had hovered at 84 percent. Offers on the hotel, expected to be from $90 million to $120 million, will be accepted starting next week. Mr. Brounstein said tenants would be protected as long as their leases were in effect. But there are no guarantees that a new owner will renew the leases. Still, many of the residents cling fast to the hope that the Chelsea will remain their home. “It’s been piece by piece dismantled,” Mr. Cory said, “but I love the place.”

Hotels and Motels
Hotel Chelsea
Chelsea (NYC)
Bard Stanley


Police in Iran Shut 24 Internet Cafes

Abstract: TEHRAN (Reuters) — The Iranian police have closed down 24 Internet cafes and other coffee shops in as many hours, detaining 23 people, as part of a broad crackdown on immoral behavior, official news media said Sunday. The action in Tehran Province was the latest move in a campaign against Western fashions and other practices deemed incompatible with Islamic values, including women flouting strict dress codes and barber shops offering men Western hair styles. “Using immoral computer games, storing obscene photos and the presence of women wearing improper hijab were among the reasons why they have been closed down,” said Col. Nader Sarkari, a provincial police commander. Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005, promising a return to the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution, hard-liners have pressed for tighter controls on behavior. Colonel Sarkari told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that the police had inspected 435 coffee shops in the past 24 hours, and 170 had received warnings. The report did not make clear whether they were all Internet cafes, which have mushroomed in Iran over the past few years and are popular, especially among young people. The police were not available for comment.


Cadel Evans, Ex-Champ of Tour de France, to Retire

Abstract: Cadel Evans, 37, the only Australian to win the Tour de France, will retire next February. Evans won the Tour in 2011 and the world championships road race in 2009.


E. Coli Death Toll Grows in Europe

Abstract: The authorities in Europe stepped up efforts on Monday to halt a deadly E. coli outbreak, and Spain and Germany argued over the source of the bacteria. Officials in Germany said the death toll had climbed to 13 in one of the largest outbreaks ever reported. Hundreds of Europeans have suffered from diarrhea, cramps and other symptoms, and vegetables have been pulled from shelves in a number of countries. Germany said Spanish cucumbers could be a source, an announcement that Spain called “an irresponsibility and an atrocity.” A crucial question was whether the disease could have developed on delivery routes between Spain and Germany, or in storage areas.


China’s Top Taxi-Hailing Apps Say They Will Merge

Abstract: HONG KONG — If you can’t beat them, join them. That seems to be the thinking behind a Saturday announcement that China’s two largest taxi-hailing mobile applications, Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, will complete a “strategic merger.” The unlikely tie-up comes after a year of cash-fueled competition between the two companies. With the gaming giant Tencent backing Didi Dache and the e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba supporting Kuaidi Dache, the two start-ups spent hundreds of millions on promotions in what was widely seen as a proxy war between China’s two largest Internet companies. Drawing on the massive support from Tencent and Alibaba, each app offered rebates to customers who used it, as well as large daily tips to drivers. The idea was that through the taxi apps, Tencent and Alibaba could lure users to other smartphone services. Kuaidi is connected to Alibaba’s mobile payment system, while Didi works through Tencent’s enormously popular messaging application WeChat. The merger, which is expected to be worth about $6 billion, was likely driven in part by a recognition from each side that the huge expenditures had failed to win the market. Despite investment and spending well over $1 billion in total, Didi and Kuaidi are at a stalemate, with each controlling about half of the market for taxi-hailing applications. In an unconventional move that indicated the tie-up might be more about eliminating competition than cooperating, the companies said that they would operate independently and retain their separate brands. Though Tencent and Alibaba dominate different sectors, competition between the two has grown heated over the past two years, as both have moved beyond their core competencies to woo China’s more than 600 million smartphone users to their services. Still, there is precedent for the two cooperating. Both companies are shareholders in an online insurance operation run in cooperation with Ping An Insurance. In the statement Saturday, Didi and Kuaidi said that they would release more information after the Chinese New Year holiday, which begins next week. Also likely after Chinese New Year, according to analysts, could be scrutiny of the deal by Chinese regulators. China’s antimonopoly regulator has mostly left alone the domestic players in the country’s booming Internet industry, many of which have dominant market share positions. But a major fine imposed this week on the U.S. chip maker Qualcomm may add pressure on regulators to consistently apply their scrutiny to domestic and foreign companies. The merger will create a company with a combined market share well above 90 percent. That could also be bad news for Uber, the U.S. ride-sharing app, which cooperates with the Chinese search giant Baidu in the country. But when Uber entered the Chinese market, Didi and Kuaidi were already dominant. More likely, Uber is positioning itself in China as more of a niche service, which could bring in handsome earnings even with a tiny share of the country’s enormous market.

China
Car Service
Didi Dache
Kuaidi Dache
Mobile Apps
Mergers and Acquisitions
Alibaba


Working the Santa Shift (and Hiding the Tattoo)

Abstract: WILMINGTON, Del. Two o’clock; lunch break is over for Santa A. Claus and his wife, Dolores. They take their seats beside an artificial fireplace and pretend once again to nestle in their cozy living room, somewhere between a Foot Locker and a Kay Jewelers. Their first visitor, 9 weeks old and the size of a fruitcake, is carefully placed on Mr. Claus’s considerable lap. The baby greets him with a display of spittle. A helper working behind the camera shakes a jingling Elmo doll to draw her gaze, but the baby is being a baby about it. Click. “O.K.?” Mr. Claus says. Then, with a gentle roll of his chubby fingers, he beckons the next in line for a photo op and some brief catching up that, when stripped of its forced seasonal cheer, comes down to this: Santa: “Long time, no see. Staying out of trouble?” Child: “Yep. Or trying to. Heh-heh.” What a strange ritual it is to go to a mall expecting to find Santa Claus, as if, in the crazed weeks leading up to his annual night of fleeting relevance, he has nothing better to do than loiter outside Macy’s, inhaling the blended aromas of a Sbarro’s and a Cinnabon. What a risky ritual too: depending on the mall, your excited children might encounter a Santa who leaves you frantically trying to remember whether Charles Manson has been paroled. He hasn’t; Merry Christmas. But at least this Santa, plying his merriment in this mall-like-any-other-mall, the Concord Mall, has the requisite look. He is 67 years old, stands 5-foot-4, weighs 242 pounds and always takes care to shield that anchor tattoo on his left forearm (oh, those Navy days) from the eyes of the innocent. He’s not Popeye, after all; he’s Santa. Really. He had his name legally changed years ago, and proves it by whipping out his driver’s license — he wore red for the photo — and grabbing his framed birth certificate from a fake windowsill. Both say: Santa A. Claus. “Dolores!” he shouts, holding up the framed document. “Put that back up on the windowsill.” Mr. Claus, a mall Santa veteran who has worked the Christmas season here for nearly 15 years, learned long ago how to infuse the magical into the mundane. The other day, for example, one of the wee ones soaked Mrs. Claus’s Christmasy skirt. Mr. Claus says this has never happened to him in his many years as the Jolly Old Elf, then adds, “They know not to do it to the real Santa Claus.” “Thanks a lot,” mutters Mrs. Claus. The 2-to-5 shift is a steady stream of smiles, sobs and that singular shyness rooted in abject terror. Mr. Claus handles every situation with sweet patience — because, he notes, he and Mrs. Claus work for the mall and not for the contractor who sells the photos, a company called SantaPlus. “The picture shouldn’t be that important,” he says. “To have a child get hysterical just for the sake of having a picture, that irritates me no end.” Other things that irritate Santa: a lack of manners, cellphones for children, and those who say there is no such person as Mrs. Claus. The Clauses, married so long that they are now great-grandparents, have been clocking 13 hours a day, six days a week, since the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Even their lunch and dinner breaks are public events, with customers invited to join them for lunch on Tuesdays at Burger King, or maybe dinner on Saturdays at China Express. Oh-oh-oh. As for the number of children who sit on his lap every day, Mr. Claus does some quick calculating: three minutes a child, though he moves things along when the line has snaked all the way to Macy’s ... Three hundred a day? Maybe more? Here is another one, a boy who smiles angelically at Elmo but then rubs his eyes. Click. He smiles again but closes his eyes. Click. Smiles again but looks away. Click. “Good enough,” his father says. And the boy clambers off the white-bearded stranger’s lap. But who, really, is this white-bearded stranger? Five o’clock; dinner hour for Santa. He sits back in his green sofa — behind which he stores “Keep Christ in Christmas” car magnets, $7 apiece — and explains how a guy from Eastern Pennsylvania became Santa A. Claus. Twenty-five years ago he was driving a tractor-trailer for a living, hauling items like Mrs. Smith’s frozen pies, when a car accident laid him up for a year. He gained a lot of weight, grew a beard and began to look like Orson Welles during his Paul Masson, we will sell no wine before its time, period. Soon he was having a beautician bleach his dark hair white (“Dolores, who did my hair the first time? Come here.”), which enabled him to land Santa gigs at local malls and got him to thinking about changing his name. Another Santa, Santa C. Claus from upstate New York, passed along some advice that he still recalls: “Do not say that you are Santa Claus. Use a middle initial and become that man. You can’t lie to the children.” What can you say about a man who has set aside his own identity for that of a mythical character? A man who is raising reindeer on his property “up north,” in rural Pennsylvania? A man who now has the responsibility — the burden, really — of constantly meeting the outsize expectations of others? Perhaps this: It’s a living. Mrs. Claus is pushing him to eat his slice of pizza and drink his Diet Coke. People are beginning to gather on the other side of the ropes, including a woman and a child now peering into his living room. Santa calls out to them, sweetly but firmly, “We’re closed until 6.”

Santa Claus
Shopping Centers
Retail Stores and Trade
Christmas


Rising Memberships Raise Profit at Costco

Abstract: Costco’s net income rose 3 percent in the third-quarter as the warehouse club operator’s sales and membership fees improved. A key sales figure rose both in the United States and abroad, but its earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations. Its shares edged up in afternoon trading Thursday. Net income for the 12 weeks ended May 11 rose 3 percent to $473 million, or $1.07 a share. That compares with net income $459 million, or $1.04 a share. Analysts expected $1.09 a share, according to FactSet. Revenue rose 7 percent to $25.79 billion from $24.08 billion last year. Analysts expected $25.68 billion. Revenue in stores open at least one year rose 5 percent in the U.S. and 3 percent internationally.


U.S. Says Military Can Respond to Domestic Cyberthreats

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has adopted new procedures for using the Defense Department’s vast array of cyberwarfare capabilities in case of an attack on vital computer networks inside the United States, delicately navigating historic rules that restrict military action on American soil. The system would mirror that used when the military is called on in natural disasters like hurricanes or wildfires. A presidential order dispatches the military forces, working under the control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Under the new rules, the president would approve the use of the military’s expertise in computer-network warfare, and the Department of Homeland Security would direct the work. Officials involved in drafting the rules said the goal was to ensure a rapid response to a cyberthreat while balancing concerns that civil liberties might be at risk should the military take over such domestic operations. The rules were deemed essential because most of the government’s computer-network capabilities reside within the Pentagon — while most of the important targets are on domestic soil, whether within the government or in critical private operations like financial networks or a regional power grid. The new approach will begin with a Department of Homeland Security team deploying to Fort Meade, Md., home to both the National Security Agency, which specializes in electronic espionage, and the military’s new Cyber Command. In exchange, a team of military networking experts would be assigned to the operations center at the Homeland Security Department. The rules were detailed in a memorandum of agreement signed in late September by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, but they were not released until last week. Robert J. Butler, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for cyber policy, said the memorandum was intended to cut through legal debates about the authority for operating domestically, and to focus on how best to respond to the threat of attack on critical computer networks. Mr. Butler said teams of lawyers would watch for potential violations of civil liberties. “We have put protection measures in place,” he said. The Pentagon is expected to release a full National Defense Strategy for Cyber Operations this year, to be followed by broader interagency guidance from the White House, perhaps in the form of a presidential directive, in 2011. Congress also is weighing legislation that would update domestic law to deal with advances in computer-based surveillance and cyberwarfare. William J. Lynn III, the deputy defense secretary, underscored the Pentagon’s “need to protect our military networks,” but said that “it’s a national challenge as well.” In an interview with Charlie Rose broadcast Monday by PBS, Mr. Lynn added: “We need to protect our critical infrastructure. We need to protect our intellectual property. And that’s a whole-of-government effort.” During a visit last week to NATO headquarters in Brussels, Mr. Gates lobbied for new partnerships to combat computer threats, while warning that the NATO networks were vulnerable. “On cybersecurity, the alliance is far behind,” Mr. Gates said. “Our vulnerabilities are well known, but our existing programs to remedy these weaknesses are inadequate.” Mr. Gates said he was not concerned that secret intelligence shared with allies would be compromised, but he said NATO had weaknesses in its defenses for computer networks at its headquarters and throughout the shared command structure.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Krishna Prasad Bhattarai Dies at 87; Nepal Ex-Premier

Abstract: KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, a former prime minister who led a popular movement to restore multiparty democracy to Nepal in 1990, died here last Friday. He was 87. The cause was multiple organ failure, said Mr. Bhattarai’s physician, Dr. Bharat Rawat. Mr. Bhattarai served as prime minister twice, beginning his first term in 1990. He served again in 1999 and 2000. After multiparty democracy was restored in 1990, he was appointed prime minister of an interim government comprising representatives from his Nepali Congress Party and several Communist parties. During his year in power, he conducted Nepal’s first free elections in 30 years and enforced a new Constitution that guaranteed democratic rights. He became prime minister again at the end of the decade after the Congress Party won elections. Feuds in that faction-ridden party, however, forced him to step down after nine months. As prime minister, Mr. Bhattarai made official visits to India, Japan and Britain, and led the Nepalese delegation to a meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in 1990 in the Maldives. His strong stands against corruption and nepotism helped him gain popularity. Mr. Bhattarai spent nearly 14 years in prison for opposing the autocratic system imposed in Nepal in 1960.

Bhattarai Krishna Prasad
Nepal
Politics and Government
Deaths (Obituaries)


In Turkey, a Capstone to a Violent Year. In Germany, a Realization of Fears.

Abstract: ISTANBUL — A trim and well-dressed man, dapper in a black suit, flashes a badge to enter the most genteel of events — an exhibition of photographs — pulls out a pistol and guns down an ambassador, right in the middle of the diplomatic quarter of the Turkish capital, Ankara. Around the same time, in the shadow of a great church in Berlin that still bears the scars of bombs from World War II, a man plows a truck through a Christmas market , killing a dozen people. The two terrorist attacks — one in Europe, the other on the periphery of Europe — came within hours of each other Monday night, bookends to a terrible year that saw the wars of the Middle East metastasize across Europe and beyond, spawning terrorism, upending the lives of ordinary citizens and energizing right-wing political movements. The attacks could not have been more different in style, but each showed, in simultaneous fashion, the modern era of terrorism brought on by the expanding blowback of the wars in the Middle East, which have defied international efforts to end them. For Turkey, the murder of the envoy, from Russia, was a capstone to one of the most turbulent years in its modern history. The threat of terrorist attacks became a fact of everyday life. A botched coup was followed by a purge of civil society. A war against Kurdish separatists spiraled into ever-greater levels of brutality. Video Security measures have become more visible in several cities in the wake of the deadly truck attack on a Christmas market in Germany's capital. Credit Credit Andrew Kelly/Reuters For Germany, which until Monday had been spared the terrorist violence that had struck other European countries like France and Belgium, the attack was the realization of concern that it would be next. The future could be ominous: As the threat of terrorism becomes a reality, fears are growing that Germany, which had welcomed refugees from the Middle East, could see its politics upended by the rise of its own right-wing, populist movement. The killing of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey was a choreographed display of precision and purpose, captured on video. The elegance of the setting — the white walls, the colorful, museum-quality photographs — lent the whole episode the feel of performance art, with the killer prancing around, waving a gun and declaring his act revenge for Russia’s bombing of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Image President Joachim Gauck, right, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Norbert Lammert, the president of Parliament, attended a memorial service at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Tuesday. Credit Michael Kappeler/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The German attack remains to be sorted out, as the authorities on Tuesday released the Pakistani migrant they had earlier identified as a suspect. Instead, they faced a nationwide hunt for an unidentified attacker that the Islamic State announced had answered the terror group’s call to strike out at Europeans and Americans. At his apartment in Berlin, Can Dundar, a prominent Turkish newspaper editor, watched the news coverage Monday night of both events on separate televisions, as terror gripped his home country and his adopted one. Mr. Dundar moved to Germany to escape prison, having been convicted in a Turkish court on treason charges for publishing an article about Turkey’s support for Syrian rebels. “It’s impossible to get rid of it,” he said. “These troubles are following me.” In Germany, he said, “everyone I talked to was waiting for such an attack.” “You could feel the tension,” Mr. Dundar said. “Berlin was untouched so far. People were waiting for such a thing. But not the German police, perhaps. I didn’t see so much security around.” As he watched the two attacks unfold, he thought about how they were both connected. “Whatever it is, it is something to do with Syria and the Middle East,” he said. The only solution to terrorism, he said, was to find a solution for Syria. “You can’t get rid of the consequences from such a big war,” he said. The gunman in Ankara, who shouted jihadist slogans, has been identified as an off-duty policeman. But little other solid information about his background has emerged. Turkish news outlets have suggested he was affiliated with Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim preacher who lives in exile in Pennsylvania and has been accused of orchestrating the coup last summer. But analysts dismissed that notion, saying it was more likely that the man was linked to jihadist groups operating in Syria, or was acting alone. Turkey may be accustomed to frequent terrorist attacks — a recent bombing at a soccer stadium in central Istanbul killed dozens — but Germany is not. The effect of the threat of terrorism on an open society like Germany’s could be profound. “As a Frenchman, my first thought was, this was Nice all over again,” said Marc Pierini, a former European Union ambassador to Turkey who is now a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe. He was referring to an attack in France last summer in which a man drove a truck through a busy pedestrian thoroughfare, killing more than 80 people. “This has been the threat that everyone knows about. We are open societies. Western Europe is not Israel. You walk around Israel and everything is protected.” Image A Turkish honor guard carried the coffin of Andrey G. Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey who was killed Monday, during a ceremony at the airport in Ankara. Credit Emrah Gurel/Associated Press Europeans, he said, are “slowly going through the motions that terrorism is our new normal.” “Our societies are not used to that,” Mr. Pierini added. Turkey and Germany have been at odds over a number of issues, including a deal to stem the flow of migrants from Turkey to the European continent and Germany’s opposition to Turkey’s crackdown after the failed coup. But they are bound together in other ways: For decades there have been thousands of Turkish citizens working in Germany, and more recently intellectuals and others have sought asylum there to escape the growing authoritarianism in their home country. Tulin Yazici, a Turkish-German academic, moved back to Frankfurt, where she was born, after the Turkish government began targeting academics for arrest after the failed coup. “Nowhere in the world felt more like home than Istanbul,” Ms. Yazici said. “I established my career there, fell in love, had children and bought a home. But after the coup attempt the country spiraled out of control, and the level of threat just kept creeping closer and closer to home.” Even after Monday’s attack in Germany, she said, “it’s obvious to me that I made the right decision.” “Terrorism is a threat everywhere, as we have seen with the various attacks across Europe and the horrendous attack in Berlin last night, but it still feels more secure here,” Ms. Yazici said. Even so, life in Germany may now become a little bit more like life in Turkey, where people try to avoid crowds and are ever vigilant of those around them, and of what they may be carrying. As he spoke from Berlin on Monday, Mr. Dundar said he was looking out his window at a Christmas market — not the one that was attacked — that the day before had been bustling. “My apartment is just in front of a Christmas bazaar,” he said. “There is one policeman, and no one else. It was so busy yesterday, and today there is no one.”

Terrorism
Germany
Turkey
Berlin
Ankara
Andrey Karlov


Paterson Assailed Over Bill to Cap Property Tax Increases

Abstract: ALBANY — He is not campaigning for office — at least not yet — but that has not immunized Gov. David A. Paterson against the political attack ad. Starting on Tuesday, the left-leaning Working Families Party and the education advocacy group Alliance for Quality Education began broadcasting commercials in the state’s biggest television markets that assail the governor for his support of a cap in property tax increases. The commercials, which are being broadcast at a cost of $1.5 million and will run repeatedly on cable and network television from now until Aug. 19, the day the Legislature convenes for a special session, refer to the cap as a “gimmick” and a “scheme.” The measure, which would place a mandatory limit on property tax increases, was approved by the State Senate last week. In the State Assembly, however, a similar bill faces an uphill battle. The ad campaign represents an aggressive attempt by the Working Families Party, which would seem to be a natural political ally of the governor’s, to try to influence the public dialogue on property taxes and the New York economy as a whole. Mr. Paterson, a Democrat, has made a property tax measure one of the central policy objectives of his young administration. He has crisscrossed the state in recent weeks on a campaign-style tour to promote the plan. “The governor does have a big megaphone,” said Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party. “This is a bad idea that will harm our schools, and we want to drive that home as the Legislature heads back into session.” Billy Easton, executive director for the Alliance for Quality Education, said, “Millions of New Yorkers will see this ad buy multiple times, and it’s our hope that Governor Paterson will hear from them.” The 30-second commercial opens to ominous-sounding piano music as a narrator says, “Everyone agrees property taxes are a problem, but Gov. David Paterson’s property tax gimmick is the wrong answer.” The narrator then cites what the Working Families Party and the Alliance for Quality Education say were some of the effects of plans to cap property tax increases in other states: larger class sizes, billions of dollars in education cuts and laid-off teachers. The commercial ends with the narrator saying, “Tell David Paterson hurting schools is the wrong answer.” Mr. Paterson’s office responded to the advertisement on Tuesday in a written statement calling the cap plan “sensible” and citing progress by students in Massachusetts, where a cap on increases was put in place. It also tied the cap in with the governor’s plan to turn New York’s economy around. “There is widespread recognition among New Yorkers that runaway increases in property taxes are deeply hurting our state,” the statement said. “Anyone who does not acknowledge this trend is out of touch with working families. The longer we wait to approve a property tax cap, the more we will hamstring New York from reaching its full economic potential.” The timing and size of this advertising campaign raised questions about whether opponents of the plan suddenly feared that it was gaining momentum. “We do not see a groundswell of support in the Assembly for the tax cap,” said Bob Master, a co-chairman of the Working Families Party. “Nevertheless, you know, we want to send a clear message to the governor and to all members of the Assembly, and really to all citizens of the state, that this tax cap gimmick is not a solution. It is only a sound bite that has not been thought through.”

Paterson David A
Property Taxes
Taxation
Legislatures and Parliaments
Political Advertising
Albany (NY)


Vivek Wadhwa, Voice for Women in Silicon Valley, Is Foiled by His Tone

Abstract: Silicon Valley has lately come to the realization that it is not the meritocracy it has long pretended to be — at least not for women and most minorities. Now, after years of ignoring the issue, and some serious prodding by the likes of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, tech companies say they will do something about the hiring gap between white and Asian men and nearly everyone else. But what should we make of the fact that one of the most outspoken voices for women in tech has been — rather oddly — a man? Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur-turned-academic who is a co-author, with Farai Chideya, of the book “Innovating Women.” Mr. Wadhwa, 57, holds affiliations with Stanford, Duke and a Silicon Valley-based think tank called Singularity University. He is also a fixture on the lecture circuit and in the media, where he has frequently called on technology companies to address gender diversity. At least he did, until he swore off speaking out for gender diversity after intense criticism from women in tech who saw him as neither their ally nor their spokesman. “I’ve done what I needed to do,” Mr. Wadhwa said in an interview. “I’m not needed anymore, and I know it.” Men who would like to become allies in the fight for women’s equality in tech will find in this story a lesson on how to conduct themselves: Look at the way Mr. Wadhwa behaved when faced with criticism from female technologists. Then do the opposite. Women in tech criticized Mr. Wadhwa for clumsily articulating their cause. They said he was prone to outrageous gaffes, including once referring to women at tech companies as “ token floozies ,” a phrase Mr. Wadhwa later blamed on his poor English . Critics also argued that Mr. Wadhwa’s message to women — that they should become more confident to survive in the tough world of tech — was outdated and could backfire on the women who followed it. And when he was called out on those points, Mr. Wadhwa, who conceded that he can be “a hothead,” adopted a defensive — even wounded — tone on Twitter. He said he was under assault by “extremist feminists,” claimed that he had “done more for the cause of women in tech than almost anyone,” and frequently deflected criticism of his language by saying that he was an immigrant who did not understand web slang. “He pulls the immigrant card, the victim card, and it is so much work to stay on point,” said Mary Trigiani, a management consultant who has gotten into a few dust-ups with Mr. Wadhwa. The whole episode could be written off as a mere Twitter-fueled kerfuffle. But the women who have criticized Mr. Wadhwa say the battle carries a bigger message. That he became a spokesman for women in tech despite their questions about his message is, they say, symptomatic of an industry that seems bent on listening to men over women, even when the men aren’t especially qualified to comment. “I don’t think he has done much good,” said Karen Catlin, a former software engineer and vice president of Adobe Systems who now works as a consultant and advocate for women in tech. “He has burned a lot of bridges with the women’s community.” Image Vivek Wadhwa, shown here during a congressional hearing on immigration reform in 2013, became a fixture on the lecture circuit and in the media, where he frequently called on technology companies to increase gender diversity. Credit Christopher Gregory for The New York Times Mr. Wadhwa began writing about women in tech in 2010, after his wife pointed out how few women were at the Crunchies, an annual awards show for start-ups. He had been researching entrepreneurship and immigration, but he found the women-in-tech issue to be an unexplored niche. So he took up the mantle, exploring the imbalance in dozens of guest op-ed columns as well as in lectures. Soon he was a fixture on the issue, a go-to source for reporters looking for a sheen of expertise. Mr. Wadhwa was interviewed recently by a Newsweek reporter, Nina Burleigh, for a February cover story called “What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women.” In the article, for which she also interviewed more than 30 women, Ms. Burleigh paraphrased Mr. Wadhwa’s ideas this way: “Wadhwa says women not only are reluctant to overstate their accomplishments and goals; they habitually understate them.” That didn’t sit well with Amelia Greenhall, a web designer and the executive director of Double Union, a community workshop for women in San Francisco, who wrote a widely shared blog post condemning Mr. Wadhwa. Some of Ms. Greenhall’s charges were over the top. In her post and in a podcast produced by the public radio station WNYC (which was later taken down and replaced with a follow-up because, the station said, the producers had initially failed to call Mr. Wadhwa for comment), Ms. Greenhall speculated that Mr. Wadhwa was financially benefiting from his advocacy, a charge he fiercely denies and for which there isn’t much evidence. She also suggested that there was something inappropriate about his inviting a female critic to his office to discuss her ideas about women in tech. Though Ms. Greenhall didn’t quite spell it out, what she did write — “ew ew ew” — could be read as a questioning of his motives. Ms. Greenhall declined to discuss her post with me. But Mr. Wadhwa insists that he has a sincere interest in seeing more women succeed in technology. Several women who know him and who have worked with him back up that claim and say his heart is in the right place. Others blamed his critics for not giving him the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t think that the feminist movement, as a whole, was ever that interested in figuring out how to work with Vivek,” said Elissa Shevinsky, co-founder of a messaging company called Glimpse . But it is not enough, in this complex and delicate issue, to simply have one’s heart in the right place. “I think his intentions are good, but his message and his voice are actually damaging women,” said Sarah Szalavitz, the chief executive of 7 Robot , a design agency. “It has nothing to do with his gender or his ethnic identity, but what he’s saying and how he’s saying it.” Take Mr. Wadhwa’s claim that women in tech often underplay their accomplishments and that they should adopt a brash tone. In an article responding to the WNYC podcast, Mr. Wadhwa wrote that his findings were the product of two research reports , but those do not mention the confidence problem. When I asked him about it, he said the idea was born out of many interviews with women. His critics concede that women do sometimes underplay their strengths, but they point to another concern: Studies show that when women speak up in negotiations or other meetings, they are often penalized for doing so. And should women get ahead by aping the air of overconfidence and bravado that characterizes the Valley’s most cringe-inducing men? “I think that in 2015 we can give women better advice than ‘Behave more like men,’ ” said Cate Huston, a software engineer who has worked at Google and IBM. Instead, Mr. Wadhwa’s response to women who questioned his ideas often reinforced their belief that men don’t like it when women speak up. “I think there’s value in men talking about this — I absolutely do,” said Melinda Byerley, a marketing consultant who has worked at several tech firms. “But if you’re telling us to be tough, to lean in, to speak up — we’re going to do that.”

Women and Girls
Job Recruiting and Hiring
Vivek Wadhwa
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Women's rights,Feminism


Civil Union Dispute Pits Methodist Retreat Against Gays Who Aided in Its Rebirth

Abstract: OCEAN GROVE, N.J., Aug. 30 — At their annual meeting on Monday, leaders of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association are expected to report on the season’s successes: the active youth ministry programs, the wide range of musicians who performed here, the revenues generated from beach badges. They are less likely to address the subject that has been dominating discussions in this seashore resort all summer: the escalating litigation over the Methodist group’s efforts to block civil union ceremonies from taking place on its property. But gay rights groups have planned a large rally outside the meeting to make sure the matter is not forgotten. At stake is the future of Ocean Grove, where, dating to 1870, all the land, beach and 1,000 feet of the sea itself have been owned by the Methodist organization — and which, at least for the past decade, has seen the opening of a large number of gay-owned restaurants, hotels and shops. “They’re pitting people against people,” Randy Bishop, an Ocean Grove innkeeper and deputy mayor of Neptune Township, Ocean Grove’s governing body, said of the Methodists. “This is one of the towns that embodies the spirit of what a community is, and to have this happen, it’s a shame to see it being torn apart.” The conflict began earlier this year when two lesbian couples asked to have their civil union ceremonies at the group’s Boardwalk Pavilion, a site used for Sunday services, weekday gospel concerts, weddings, concerts and Civil War re-enactments. The couples’ requests were rejected, and they complained to the state’s Division on Civil Rights, which began a discrimination investigation. Then last month, the Camp Meeting Association sued the state, claiming that the investigation violated its First Amendment rights and that civil unions were contrary to the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline. Last week, United States District Court Judge Joel A. Pisano refused to issue a temporary injunction halting the state investigation, and the state filed a countermotion asking the federal government not to interfere in a state legal matter. A hearing was scheduled for Oct. 1. The public versus private status of not only the pavilion but also much of the Camp Meeting Association’s property is at the crux of the debate. Since 1989, Ocean Grove’s beach, boardwalk and oceanfront road have received tax-exempt status under the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Green Acres Program, which was created to encourage use of privately owned space for public recreation and conservation. In its original application for the exemption — which saves the group about $500,000 a year and is up for renewal on Sept. 15, according to Bernard Haney, the Neptune Township tax assessor — the association noted that the properties were open to the public and that the pavilion had been used by outside groups. Some see an inherent conflict between the association seeking tax-exempt status as a public open space with one state agency while suing another state agency for violating its rights as a private religious group. “They’ve taken state, federal and local funds by representing that they are open to the public,” said United States Representative Frank Pallone Jr., a Democrat who represents the area, noting that beyond tax exemptions, the group has gotten numerous government grants over the years for building and boardwalk repairs and beach replenishment. “Until now, nobody has ever said that you had to abide by the tenets of the church in deciding who uses the buildings or owns the houses.” Lee Moore, a spokesman for the New Jersey attorney general’s office, which oversees the Division on Civil Rights, would say only, “We are aware of the Green Acres application.” Mr. Pallone sent a letter to the Camp Meeting Association’s leaders on Aug. 15 reminding them of $250,000 that he helped procure when he was a state senator to repair the Great Auditorium’s roof and of federal funds he secured for boardwalk repairs after a 1992 storm. But Brian Raum, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a family and church rights legal organization that is representing the Camp Meeting Association in its federal lawsuit, said the group had never represented itself as anything but a religious organization, and challenged the idea that receiving government aid meant relinquishing one’s rights. Indeed, many religious groups get state and federal grants of various types. “A religious organization does not give up any First Amendment rights because it avails itself of services available to anyone,” Mr. Raum said. “Disaster relief is available to anyone, you don’t have to denounce some of your fundamental beliefs.” Founded in 1869 by a group of ministers seeking a permanent seaside retreat, the Camp Meeting Association bought its first six acres here as a “site to assemble from year to year and enjoy our summer rest in bathing, fishing, worshiping or sauntering socially along the shore,” according to the writings of the Rev. Ellwood Stokes, a founding member. Within a few years, the association had bought all the land now called Ocean Grove — about one square mile — and was granted a charter from the state allowing it to remain a religious retreat. Today, home and business owners own their buildings and hold 99-year renewable leases on the land, paying the association $10 per lot each year. Over the years, Ocean Grove has tried to establish itself as its own borough. The Camp Meeting Association sets most of the rules governing the community, including prohibitions against building anything in one’s front yard that would block a neighbor’s view of the ocean. In the past it even dictated when laundry could be hung outside — on Mondays only, so as not to offend weekend vacationers. One rule that residents and visitors found particularly onerous was the dictate that all cars, parked or moving, be removed from the roads from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday. The car ban, along with the blue laws that prohibited shops from opening on Sundays, was ruled unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court in 1979. Longtime residents like Gail Shaffer, vice president of the Historical Society of Ocean Grove, refer to that period as “when the gates came down.” “There used to be a chain across the road with a lantern hanging telling people not to bring their cars in here,” said Ms. Shaffer, noting that even President Ulysses S. Grant had to abide by this rule and walk into town when he came to visit his sister. The Methodists’ sway over the community remains significant. No alcohol is sold in Ocean Grove, and on Sundays, the beach does not open until 12:30 p.m. But since the end of the blue laws, the town once derided as “Ocean Grave” has seen a commercial rebirth, driven largely by gay-owned businesses. The two constituencies have coexisted peaceably — until the recent scuffle over civil unions. “We’re going to tell the Camp Meeting Association that enough is enough,” Steven Goldstein, executive director of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said about Monday’s protest. “This is public property. The law is on our side.” Representative Pallone, for his part, expressed hope that “if the suit is dropped, we can go back to a situation where everybody lives together and tolerates each other. And they can go back to getting their federal funds.”

Homosexuality
Methodist Churches
Civil Rights
New Jersey
Marriages
Discrimination
Ocean Grove (NJ)
Christians and Christianity


After Storm, Toxic Water Overflows in Japan

Abstract: TOKYO — The operator of Japan’s wrecked nuclear plant said Monday that rainwater from a weekend storm became contaminated as it collected behind barriers meant to stop radiation leaks. The toxic water overflowed those barriers at several locations, with some of it possibly spilling into the Pacific Ocean. It was the latest in a litany of lapses and aggravations for the problem-plagued cleanup of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said water from heavy rain on Sunday had accumulated behind foot-high concrete walls that encircle clusters of storage tanks. Tepco built those barriers to contain spills from the storage tanks, a problem that has led to intense public criticism of the company. However, on Sunday the barriers acted as dams to trap the rainwater into ponds. Water levels in 11 of those ponds rose high enough to spill over the barriers, Tepco said. It said some of the spilled water may have flowed down a drainage ditch into the Pacific outside the plant’s artificial harbor. After the rain, Tepco said, it tested water in the ponds that overflowed and found that a half-dozen were contaminated with levels of radioactive strontium-90 above the limit of 10 becquerels per liter set by regulators for releasing water into the sea. Radiation levels at the most contaminated site were 71 times that limit, Tepco said. Releases of strontium are particularly worrisome because it can collect in human bones and possibly cause leukemia, experts say. Tepco did not say where the strontium had originated, though the most likely candidate appeared to be radioactive particles scattered on the ground, possibly by the explosions that followed the triple meltdown in March 2011. Another puzzle was why the rainfall Sunday, which the Japan Meteorological Agency measured at about four inches, was enough to overwhelm the foot-high barriers. On Monday, Tepco offered one possible explanation, saying the barriers had already trapped water during a typhoon that swept through eastern Japan last week. Tepco has installed pumps designed to drain rainwater into tanks, where it is tested for radiation before it is released into the sea. However, the pumps appeared unable to cope with the large amounts of rain dumped by the typhoon, so when the rain struck Sunday, water was still up to nine inches deep in some spots, Tepco said.

Japan
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Radiation
Tokyo Electric Power


Bloomberg Soda Limits Tested at Barclays Center

Abstract: At the amenity-laden Barclays Center in Brooklyn, hungry concertgoers can dine on fresh-from-Maine lobster rolls, gourmet barbecue brisket and slices of cheesecake from Junior’s on nearby Flatbush Avenue. What they cannot buy is a jumbo soda. Call it life at 16 ounces — the only soda-cup size available at the arena’s concession stands and, not coincidentally, the maximum quantity allowed under new rules that seek to combat obesity by limiting the size of sugary drinks in New York City restaurants, stadiums and movie theaters. Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets and host to a series of opening concerts by the borough natives Jay-Z and Barbra Streisand, will now serve as an 18,000-seat petri dish for an unusual and nationally watched social experiment: what happens when big appetites meet little sodas. The restrictions, proposed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and approved by the city’s health board, do not take effect until March, but Barclays volunteered to comply with the regulations from the moment it opened on Friday. Minutes before Jay-Z took the stage for the arena’s debut show, Blair Morris, a clinical psychologist from Manhattan, stood by a ketchup cart in the shiny concession hall and squinted at two 16-ounce cups of Diet Coke. “Is this the Bloomberg thing?” she asked, in an annoyed tone. Sixteen ounces is larger than a typical can, but, by arena standards, it can be downright diminutive: at Madison Square Garden, soda cups start at 24 ounces for $5, and 25 cents more buys an upgrade to 32 ounces. “I’m used to seeing something so gigantic,” Alex Vallis, who is a co-author, with the noted chef Alain Ducasse, of a new guide to New York City restaurants, said Friday as she sipped a 16-ounce Diet Coke on the Barclays Center’s concourse level. “It’s a French-sized soda,” Ms. Vallis said. “I wouldn’t have minded if it was a little bit cheaper, too.” Ms. Morris, the psychologist, had just spent $8 — $4 apiece — for the drinks, thinking that one would not be enough to last her through the concert. “I don’t want to have to come out to get more,” she explained. Ms. Morris appeared captivated by the petite container, and had snapped a photo with her iPhone that she planned to post on the photo-sharing site Instagram. “I still think it’s the right thing to do,” Ms. Morris said of the mayor’s plan, adding that she had worked with obese patients. “It’s just never impacted me personally before.” When the restrictions take effect citywide, all of the major sports and entertainment arenas, along with street carts, movie theaters and restaurants that receive a letter-grade from the health department, will have to adjust to Mr. Bloomberg’s plan, assuming it is not halted by a legal challenge. At the Barclays Center, the official souvenir cup had to be redesigned, downsized to 16 ounces from 32. (The cup, emblazoned with Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center logos, will sell for $5, one dollar more than the same-sized regular cup.) “Moving to the one size, which is the smaller size typically, is a little bit different for us,” said Julie Margolin, who oversees the arena’s food and beverage offerings on behalf of Levy Restaurants, a firm that runs concessions at stadiums around the country. Coca-Cola, the “official” soft-drink brand of Barclays Center and an opponent of Mr. Bloomberg’s size restrictions, declined to comment on the impact of the cup size, referring questions to a trade group that argued consumers should be able to make their own decisions. But Bruce C. Ratner , the arena’s developer, said at a news conference last month that Coca-Cola was “fine about it.” “I guess they didn’t have a choice, but they agreed,” Mr. Ratner said. Thirsty arenagoers will still have some bigger options: large domestic beers come in a 24-ounce plastic cup for $9.50. Refrigerators are filled with 20-ounce bottles of Dasani water ($4.50). And at sports events, although concessionaires will have only 16-ounce cups, hawkers in the stands will sell 20-ounce bottles of diet sodas, which are exempt from the restrictions. The hawkers will carry no fully sugared sodas. Luxury suites offer 12-ounce aluminum soda cans. Kerem Altan, of Long Island, seemed disgusted with the limited soda size. “I want a 48-ounce!” Mr. Altan said Friday as he sat in a Budweiser-branded bar in the arena. “I don’t want to wait on that line again three times.” But another customer, Michael Harris, of Brooklyn, offered measured support, pronouncing his soda “medium-ish.” “I guess it’s enough if Bloomberg thinks it’s enough,” Mr. Harris said. “Maybe they figured less trips to the bathroom, more time to enjoy the show.” The Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, had been a vocal opponent of Mr. Bloomberg’s soda restrictions. As he left the arena around 11 p.m. on Friday, while Jay-Z was still performing, he said, “Management decided to comply with the mayor’s recommendations; that’s their prerogative.” “Not that I’m in favor of obesity,” Mr. Markowitz added, patting his not insignificant belly. “I got my own problems.” Had Mr. Markowitz indulged in a sweet drink that evening? “I’m strictly a wino,” he replied with a laugh.

Barclays Center (NYC)
Soft Drinks
Diet and Nutrition
Bloomberg Michael R
New York City


With Posada on Injured List, Molina Is the Yankees’ Starter Again

Abstract: Francisco Cervelli was asleep in Bowie, Md., at 2 a.m. Tuesday when his manager with the Class AA Trenton Thunder, Tony Franklin, called and told him to pack his bags. Cervelli had a train ticket to New York to join the Yankees because Jorge Posada injured his right hamstring. “What a call, huh?” Cervelli said. “I was surprised. I couldn’t sleep very well.” Cervelli was hitting .190 for Trenton, but with no other catchers on the 40-man roster, the Yankees promoted him to back up Jose Molina. Posada has a Grade 2 strain in his hamstring, just above the knee, an injury sustained Monday while sliding into second base in the sixth inning. Posada iced the hamstring before Tuesday’s game and said he was told he would miss two or three weeks. The good news, Manager Joe Girardi said, is that Posada’s surgically repaired shoulder has held up fine. That was no consolation to Posada, who had never been on the disabled list before last season, but he is back there again. “I know I can come back,” Posada said. “But it’s tough on me, because I worked really hard to be here. I worked really hard on everything on my body to be back. It’s just one of those things you can’t control.” The Yankees missed Posada’s bat badly last season, although they benefited from Molina’s exceptional defense, in calling games and in controlling the running game. But Molina struggled at the plate, hitting .216 in a career-high 100 games. Molina said Tuesday that he had trouble with his right knee for most of the second half of last season after being hit by a pitch to end a game July 19 against Oakland. But with Posada hurt, Molina played on. “I never make excuses,” he said. “That’s the way I am. I was getting treatment, but I really didn’t care. I just wanted to be there for the team.” Molina also acknowledged that he was generally worn down last season, the result of years of preparing as a reserve instead of as a starter. “When you’re a backup, you prepare yourself differently,” said Molina, who was batting .257 in 13 games through Monday. “I learned last year I was wrong. I should have prepared myself every day like I was the everyday catcher, and then you’re not feeling tired. I’ve been doing that now. I’m still a backup, but not in my head.”

Posada Jorge
Molina Jose
New York Yankees
Baseball


Woman Is Found With Slashed Throat in Brooklyn

Abstract: Before sunrise on Thursday, someone passing by a community center in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn noticed a woman sitting on a bench and alerted the police. Her throat had been slashed, the authorities said, and hours later, blood splatters were drying on the sidewalk, forming a trail from the nearby public housing complex where she lived. In Red Hook, residents said they were not unfamiliar with crime, long a source of frustration even as they saw their neighborhood improve in recent years. Still, the killing of the woman, who was identified by the police as Sharon Whigham, 51, unsettled many. “Our community can’t accept this happening,” said Damien Scott, 36, who grew up in the neighborhood and works at the Joseph Miccio Community Center, near where Ms. Whigham was found. The police were called around 4:30 a.m. to the sidewalk in front of the community center, on West Ninth Street, where officers found Ms. Whigham unconscious and unresponsive, the authorities said. Emergency workers pronounced her dead at the scene. A police spokesman said he had no information on a possible killer or a motive. Later on Thursday, a strip of sidewalk in front of the community center remained cordoned off as investigators worked the scene. John Reid, a cousin of Ms. Whigham, stood by the police tape outside the community center, taking in the scene before shaking his head and turning away. “I’m lost for words,” he said. “But I came for answers.” Darryl Curry, 50, said he had grown up in the neighborhood with Ms. Whigham. He passed her on the street on Wednesday afternoon, but he did not stop to talk. “I didn’t think that would be the last time I’d see her,” Mr. Curry said. “That’s tragic, man,” he added. “I don’t know why someone would do that.” The trail of blood led to an apartment on Henry Street, about a quarter of a mile from where Ms. Whigham was found, in the Red Hook East Houses, a sprawling New York City Housing Authority complex. She lived in the same complex, two blocks away. She had several children and helped care for her grandchildren, friends and relatives said. Those who knew Ms. Whigham hinted at tumult in her life. “She had her ups and downs,” Mr. Curry said. “She struggled like anybody else.” Police officials said that Ms. Whigham had been arrested seven times in New York, at least twice on narcotics-related charges. She had spent much of her life in the neighborhood, and would often sit on the bench where she was found on Thursday. “She wasn’t a stranger to Red Hook,” Mr. Scott, the community center worker, said. Mr. Scott said Ms. Whigham’s death was a painful reminder of another loss in his life: His mother was fatally stabbed in the housing complex in 1984. “I know what the family is going through now,” Mr. Scott said. “I’ve had the time to go through the grieving process,” he added. “But it’s nothing you can ever completely get over.” The neighborhood in South Brooklyn, which struggles with crime, has seen a considerable transformation in recent years amid an influx of new residents, upscale restaurants and retail outlets, much of it centered on Van Brunt Street. This year, one other homicide has been recorded in the 76th Precinct, which covers the neighborhood: In January, a 33-year-old man was found with gunshot wounds in the lobby of a building in the same complex. Near the scene where Ms. Whigham was found on Thursday, residents said they were dismayed and frustrated. “I’m in shock,” said Miram Acosta, who was on her way to the community center for breakfast. “Now I’m scared to walk around there. I think I’ll go to McDonald’s for breakfast instead.” Cathy Melendez passed the scene as she walked her daughter to school. “The neighborhood has changed a lot,” she said. “It’s better than it used to be. But I’m still not surprised it happened. It’s just what happens here. It’s like, again?”

Murders and Homicides
Red Hook Brooklyn
Public Housing
NYC


Spanish Regions Agree to Central Government Deficit Plan

Abstract: BARCELONA, Spain — Spain’s 17 regional governments agreed on Tuesday to stick to budget deficit targets set by the central government, giving Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy some breathing space as he faces pressure from investors and his European partners to clean up Spain’s banks and public finances. After a meeting in Madrid with leaders of the regional governments, Mr. Rajoy said, “Spain was giving a good message.” He added that he was “very grateful to everybody” for backing his government’s budget plans and avoiding a full-blown confrontation between the central and regional governments. The meeting came at a delicate time for Mr. Rajoy. Some regional leaders had publicly questioned austerity measures included in the 2013 budget plan the central government presented last week. In addition, there is a growing separatist movement in Catalonia, Spain’s most powerful regional economy. Last month, Artur Mas, the Catalan leader, called an early regional election for Nov. 25 after failing to persuade Mr. Rajoy to negotiate fiscal concessions for Catalonia. On the heels of a giant pro-independence rally in Barcelona on Sept. 11, the vote could turn into an unofficial referendum on whether Catalans want to split from the rest of the country. Mr. Mas, however, did not raise the issue of separation at the meeting of regional leaders on Tuesday, according to other participants, and left Madrid without issuing a statement. Instead, some regional leaders from Mr. Rajoy’s conservative Popular Party called on the regions to close ranks in the face of a deepening recession and budgetary problems that could require Mr. Rajoy to request additional bailout money from the European Union. Spain has already requested up to 100 billion euros, or $129 billion, in aid for the country’s banking sector, though government officials suggested last week that Madrid would ask for only 40 billion euros. The pact reached Tuesday said, “The regions are not the problem but part of the solution, which needs to be found within a climate of collaboration and institutional loyalty.” Still, the regions are struggling to meet the deficit target of 1.5 percent of gross domestic product set by Mr. Rajoy for this year. Some of them have tapped an 18 billion euro emergency fund set up by the central government to meet their debt financing obligations and pay suppliers of health care and other basic services. So far, five regions have asked for a combined 15 billion euros, including a request for 5 billion euros from Catalonia. Mr. Mas and other regional leaders have called for a redistribution of the burden sharing between the central and regional governments in meeting deficit targets Madrid has agreed to with the rest of the euro zone. On Tuesday, however, Mr. Rajoy convinced the regions that such an overhaul should not be negotiated until next year, to avoid unnerving investors already concerned about Spain’s lack of budgetary discipline.

European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Spain
Catalonia (Spain)
Rajoy Mariano
Budgets and Budgeting