It’s a Vision Thing for Nash in Soccer and in Basketball

Abstract: It was easy to tell who the sports fans were in Central Park on Tuesday afternoon. They were the ones doing double takes, pulling out their camera phones and snapping photographs of two top professional athletes who were nudging soccer balls around in the grass. Steve Nash, a two-time most valuable player in the N.B.A., and Claudio Reyna, once a mainstay on the United States national soccer team, were warming up for what was supposed to be a pickup soccer game in the Sheep Meadow between one of Nash’s recreational-league teams and several players for the Red Bulls, Reyna’s professional squad in Major League Soccer. Nash spends most of the year running the point for the Phoenix Suns , but in the off-season, he can be found playing soccer in rec leagues in New York. “It’s better for me than just running lines,” he said. “I don’t want to play a lot of basketball until September’s over or I’ll burn myself out. I just shoot, work out and play soccer.” But not in the Sheep Meadow. The 15-acre patch of grass is for passive recreation only, park officials said as they shut down the game Tuesday between Nash’s team and the Red Bulls players before it started. Employees of the Central Park Conservancy established that the group did not have a permit, then asked the soccer players to remove their cleats — “there is a reason the turf is in such nice shape,” one of them said. That prompted vigorous but futile protests from Nash’s team, Promotion Factory, which is composed almost entirely of Italian transplants. “Soccer is not loved,” shouted one player from Nash’s team, winning a round of laughing cheers from his teammates. “They are always trying to contain it,” said another, insisting that the incident illustrated why soccer was not more popular in the United States. To appease the park officials, the match was moved to a nearby patch of dirt. But concern about the potential for injury on such the surface led a Red Bulls official to forbid the players from participating. Reyna and his teammates stood by and watched as Nash’s team split into two groups and played on their own. Standing on the sideline with his children, Reyna, who was captain of the United States national team in last summer’s World Cup, said Nash was an excellent soccer player. “He’s got the vision like on the court,” Reyna said. “When you have vision in soccer, you can connect the pass. It’s the same idea. You can see that from playing basketball, and also from growing up playing soccer, he understands the game.” Soccer was Nash’s first love — he said his first word as an infant was goal. His father played professionally in South Africa and England, his sister was the captain of her university team, and his younger brother, Martin, has played on Canada’s national team. “I think my dad, more than anything, gave me the passion,” Nash said later, in a telephone interview Tuesday night. “I remember sitting on the steps waiting for him to come home, and we’d be playing in the backyard before he even had his tie off.” Nash’s other recreational team plays in an eight-a-side league at Pier 40, in a league populated by college friends trying to stay in touch and desk-job dreamers trying to stay in shape. Nash’s team wears T-shirts adorned with the name Phebe’s, a bar and grill on the Bowery where they sometimes adjourn for postgame camaraderie. “At Pier 40, it’s better because everyone’s there for our league,” Nash said. “There’s not a lot of people around. I can just be one of the guys.” At a game there in June, the Phebe’s team beat a group of Cornell graduates, 8-4. Jeremy Freyer, the opposing squad’s goalkeeper in that match, said he initially was not aware that one of the N.B.A.’s biggest stars was in the game. “I didn’t even realize it was him until it was the second half and he scored a couple goals on me,” Freyer said. “It made me feel a little better.” Nash travels to Europe occasionally to attend soccer matches; he said he followed the English Premier League the closest — particularly his favorite team, Tottenham Hotspur. “The atmosphere is electrifying,” Nash said of England’s top league. “The pace is great, with the fans singing along. They demand a passionate performance. The fans are right on top of the players. Anyone who’s ever had a chance to go to a premiership knows there’s nothing like it.” Certainly not Central Park, where the only fans who watched Nash’s entire pickup game were his wife, Alejandra, and his twin daughters. By the end, Alejandra seemed excited to leave. As Nash grinned and shook hands with his teammates, she said, “The one time I come to one of these games, it’s just three hours of eating dust.”

Nash Steve
Soccer
Basketball
Reyna Claudio
Athletics and Sports
National Basketball Assn
New York Red Bulls
Major League Soccer
Phoenix Suns
Central Park (NYC)


Texas and Texas A&M Will Say Farewell for Now

Abstract: The fight songs are finally accurate. Since the 1920s, we Texas A&M fans have sung “Goodbye to Texas University/So long to the orange and white” and swayed from end zone to end zone as we “sawed” the horns off the University of Texas . And since about the ’30s, Longhorns fans have countered with “Texas fight, Texas fight/And it’s goodbye to A&M.” But most people barely noticed the Aggies reference until this fall, until it was too late. On Thursday, the Aggies and the Longhorns will say their goodbyes in the last scheduled game of the rivalry, which began in 1894 (and became a Thanksgiving tradition in 1900). The end, after 117 games, is a consequence of conference realignments. A&M, which bolted the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference, says that it still wants to face the Longhorns. Texas, whose $300 million Longhorn Network almost imploded the Big 12, says that its nonconference schedule is booked through 2018. Besides, Texas has the enduring Red River Rivalry against Oklahoma, an early-season game often with poll implications. Richard Tapia, who was the Longhorns’ costumed mascot from 1999 to 2003, called the relationship between Oklahoma and Texas fans “mean-spirited.” He added with a laugh: “I can’t stand those O.U. fans — hate ’em. I don’t know them, have no use for them.” A&M and Texas, however, draw from the same well-populated counties and have what is considered a friendly sibling rivalry akin to “The Brady Bunch.” If the administrations’ longstanding snit could be reduced to Marcia (pretty yet snooty Texas) versus Jan (neglected yet overwrought A&M), the Longhorns and the Aggies fans are more like Greg and Peter, wrestling in the yard before the turkey is served. Sorry, Texas Christian, Baylor and Texas Tech — you are the Cindys and Bobbys of this extended metaphor, and few Aggies or Longhorns want to play you on Thanksgiving. “Your best friend from high school might have gone to Texas A&M,” Natalie Butler, the Texas student body president, said. “And we know that it’s a very good school. It’s more like in the family.” Texas has dominated the series, 75-37-5, with A&M having the excuse of being an all-male military institution until the mid-1960s. The Corps of Cadets and its marching band, even as they make up about 2,000 of the 40,000 undergraduates, remain A&M’s most enduring image. When the Longhorns hosted the game, as recently as last year, the Corps paraded in downtown Austin . “You march over the bridge and straight up toward the Capitol,” said David Benac, a member of the Corps and the Aggies’ head yell leader. (Aggies don’t cheer, they yell.) “You’re playing the ‘Aggie War Hymn’ or ‘Noble Men of Kyle Field,’ songs that Aggies have heard for years. And you have people just whistling, hooting and hollering and loving it. I’ve had numerous people come up to me and say, ‘I’m not an Aggie, but I wanted to show my kids this, show them what the Corps is and it’s such a great thing.’ ” But things change. When I graduated from A&M in 1981, the lighting of the bonfire was the pregame highlight of the rivalry. But the current A&M freshmen were entering grade school when the bonfire collapsed in 1999, killing 12. “Bonfire was a relic from a different time,” said W. K. Stratton, the author of the 2002 book “Backyard Brawl: Inside the Blood Feud Between Texas and Texas A&M.” “It survived till 1999, was canceled permanently in 2001, and that sort of portended the end of this rivalry as it once was.” Because the Longhorns and the Aggies are currently slightly above average, expect non-Bowl Championship Series bowls in Texas to try to artificially renew the rivalry by inviting them. In the meantime, Jeff Pickering, the Texas A&M student body president, said he might try to pass legislation urging its continuation. “We want to go the SEC, but we also do not want to lose our rivalry with Texas,” Pickering said. “And the reason that we said that is because the rivalry doesn’t belong to us. It’s not ours to say yes or no to — it’s not the University of Texas or the Longhorns — this game belongs to the state of Texas.” Butler seemed less optimistic. “I think that’s a great rivalry for a lot of reasons that, for a lot of reasons, should be preserved,” she said. “But I think there are people way above my pay grade that made that decision, and I don’t exactly know what all their rationale was.” Because it’s complicated. Or as simple as the two-page ad A&M bought in Texas Monthly, which recently profiled the messy breakup of the rivalry: “The Time Is Right for Change.” Even for the “ Aggie War Hymn ”? Although Louisiana State and A&M played regularly — my cousin Hugh McElroy, the Aggies’ first black starter, caught a last-minute 79-yard pass to upset the Tigers in 1970 — other SEC fans might mock the Aggies’ preoccupation with Texas. Pickering said the remedy was to replace the oft-heard second verse with the first, which was actually written later and ignored by students. “We saw varsity’s horns off, and that will never change,” Pickering said. “I think this would be a great thing during this time of stepping out on a national stage in the SEC is to start singing the first verse,” which “mentions some of these terms that are so important to our culture here at A&M: the Aggie spirit, yelling, talks about maroon and white, so it will help us with our branding.” The 21st-century Texas A&M is indeed a brand, even if tradition is part of the package. On Thursday, watch the Aggies trying to sway and snap photographs with their smartphones at the same time.

College Athletics
Football
Texas A&M University
University of Texas
Football (College)


Iran’s Next President Faults Ahmadinejad on Economy

Abstract: TEHRAN — Iran’s president-elect, Hassan Rowhani, painted a bleak picture of the country’s economy on Monday, blaming the departing administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for high inflation and unemployment, and saying it “has left much work to be done.” Mr. Rowhani said Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government had presented a far-too-optimistic picture of the economy, which even according to official statistics is stumbling. “We asked current officials about the situation of the country,” Mr. Rowhani said, “but their reports and those of our teams were very far from each other.” Speaking in Parliament, Mr. Rowhani said the inflation rate, officially listed as 32 percent, was 42 percent, the local news media reported. Iran’s economy actually contracted during the past two years, he said, for the first time since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. He said he was especially concerned about unemployment among educated young people. “According to our statistics,” Mr. Rowhani said, “we will have 4.5 million unemployed university graduates four years from now.” But Mr. Ahmadinejad picked up some unexpected support from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other conservatives, who for months have criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad as incompetent and as someone who surrounded himself with corrupt elements. “The respected president and his colleagues faced enormous tasks and operated rapidly in comparison with all the other governments,” Ayatollah Khamenei said during a speech broadcast on Iran’s state radio. “We must consider their huge workload, tireless efforts. This cabinet avoided comfort and grants, whereas most officials in the world and in the country benefit from them.” Mr. Rowhani’s close aide Akbar Torkan, who acts as a liaison with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government, told the local news media that the economic state of the country was “much worse than expected.” Several lawmakers also criticized some last-minute decisions by the departing government. In one instance, Mr. Ahmadinejad transferred the largest plot of buildable land in the capital to the Voice and Vision organization, Iran’s state broadcaster. That decision was accompanied by a ceremony lauding the president organized by the state broadcaster. Image The Iranian president-elect, Hassan Rowhani, attended Friday Prayer last week at a university in the capital, Tehran. Credit Atta Kenare/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In another move, the central bank quietly cut the official value of the local currency, the rial, in half, so that a dollar now buys 24,500 rials, up from 12,260. While economists say the new figure still does not reflect the rial’s true value, more than 30,000 to the dollar, it will help the government pay off outstanding debts to banks, but at the price of further stoking inflation and raising the prices of basic goods. “They hypothetically made a huge amount of money,” which they used reduce their debts with banks and other state organizations, Ahmad Tavakkoli, a lawmaker, told the semiofficial Mehr News Agency on Monday. “This is illegal and dangerous.” Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was barred by the Constitution from seeking a third four-year term, had seemingly fallen from grace in the months leading up to the June vote. He clashed with Parliament, the judiciary and the hard-line clerics who accused him and his entourage of secretly plotting to oust them from power. The judiciary opened several corruption cases against Mr. Ahmadinejad’s close associates, and the state newspaper, Kayhan, accused him of mismanaging the economy and undermining Ayatollah Khamenei. On Sunday, however, the newspaper’s editor in chief, Hossein Shariatmadari, accused reformists and enemies of the state of hatching a “big plot” against the departing government. “His government has been unprecedented,” Mr. Shariatmadari wrote of Mr. Ahmadinejad. “His services are everlasting.” The change in attitude might signal a behind-the-scenes compromise, analysts say, or illustrate the tendency of Iran’s governing establishment of hard-line clerics and commanders to close ranks in the end. Mr. Rowhani has signaled his intention to pursue improved relations with the United States, though it remains unclear if he has the desire or the authority to soften Iran’s position over its disputed nuclear program, an underlying cause of the estrangement. Iran insists that its program is peaceful, while the United States and other Western nations suspect that Iran is seeking the ability to build nuclear weapons. Negotiations stalled before Mr. Rowhani’s successful election campaign. On Monday, a group of 29 former, prominent American government officials, diplomats, military officers and national security experts sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to take advantage of Mr. Rowhani’s signals. The letter called Mr. Rowhani’s ascendance “a major potential opportunity to reinvigorate diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.” The letter was submitted a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has said many times that he regards a nuclear-armed Iran as an “existential threat,” sought to increase the pressure on the Obama administration to take a tougher line with Iran and its newly elected president on the nuclear issue. Mr. Netanyahu said that the United States should intensify its sanctions and that the Iranians “have to know you’ll be prepared to take military action; that’s the only thing that will get their attention.”

Iran
Economy
Ali Khamenei
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Sanctions


China Rejects U.N. Arbitration of Maritime Dispute

Abstract: China said Tuesday that it had rejected the Philippines’ attempt to seek international arbitration over conflicting claims to territory in the South China Sea. The Foreign Ministry said the proposal was historically and legally incorrect and included unacceptable accusations against China. The Philippines informed China last month of its plan to take the matter to a tribunal under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It wants the panel to declare Beijing’s moves in the potentially oil-rich waters unlawful. The Philippines’ Foreign Affairs Department said Tuesday that China’s rejection would not interfere with the arbitration. If a tribunal ruled against China, Beijing could choose to ignore the ruling.

South China Sea
China
Philippines
Arbitration
Law of the Sea


Outcome of Eric Garner Case Bares a Staten Island Divide

Abstract: In the hours after a grand jury decided not to indict a white New York police officer whose chokehold helped cause the death of an unarmed black man on Staten Island, the city seemed to throb with a single cry of bafflement and fatigue. This time, a cellphone camera had captured the encounter. This time, the protesters had hoped, the video would act as a bulwark against the unpredictability of a grand jury. But the wave of disappointment that followed the jury verdict on Wednesday barely touched the South Shore of Staten Island. The borough where Eric Garner died is home to thousands of New York police officers, and in the neighborhoods where many of them live, the same video engendered a sense of deference to the officer involved, Daniel Pantaleo. Far from evidence of brutality, the video was seen as a snapshot of the daily risks that police officers face, risks that are not helped by the broadsides of elected officials. At strip malls and restaurants a few miles from the spot where Mr. Garner died, many people interviewed were reluctant to draw any conclusions from the video. “I feel there’s two sides to every story,” Kathy Gambardella, 53, said. Reflecting on the experience of a close friend who is a police officer, she said, “They don’t want to pull out their gun, but no matter what their training says, at some point they have to defend themselves.” Some people recalled nights spent waiting for sons or brothers who are police officers to return from patrol. They said they felt the same sense of unease bubble up as they watched the video, in which Mr. Garner, weighing over 300 pounds, became agitated as Officer Pantaleo tried to restrain him. Image Of the grand jury’s decision, Emmanuel Rogers said, “Blacks are not treated fairly on Staten Island.” Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times “When you’re an officer, your own life is in danger,” said Angela, 60, whose brother is a police officer and who, like several of those interviewed, declined to provide her surname. Officer Pantaleo, she said, was in danger that day. “He could’ve died himself.” In testimony to the grand jury, Officer Pantaleo described the fear he felt during the encounter with Mr. Garner. He said he had worried about crashing through a glass window, or being thrown off balance by the larger man, his lawyer said after the announcement that the grand jury had found no basis to charge Officer Pantaleo. Staten Island has about 470,000 residents, and some of its neighborhoods have historically been home to many civil servants, particularly firefighters and police officers. About 3,000 of the 17,000 uniformed police officers who live in New York City make their home in the borough. The borough’s population is more than 60 percent white, while blacks account for less than 10 percent, with most of them living along the borough’s North Shore. Protests against the police have unfolded there, including in the Tompkinsville neighborhood where Mr. Garner died and elsewhere. Even on the South Shore, support for Officer Pantaleo was not universal. Some people bristled at the steadfast backing he has received locally, saying that it was racially motivated. They argued that only on Staten Island, where support for police officers is virtually a prerequisite for elected office, would Officer Pantaleo not have been indicted. “We want his badge, and we want his pension,” Peggy Blair, 81, said. “What you have on this island is a lot of white Republicans, and they’re racist bigots.” For others, their own experience in law enforcement left no tolerance for what they said was disrespect for the work police officers do. “A majority of people don’t understand what officers face on a daily basis,” said William, 57, a retired New York detective who also declined to give his surname. “Did he violate department guidelines? Yeah, but he didn’t have any intent to cause the guy’s death.” Image Paul Anthony Morris Jr. described the protests on Wednesday as “a total overreaction.” Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times As he left a home supplies store, William added that the focus on low-level offenses and a surge of public hostility toward police officers had made the job more dangerous. “There were a lot of situations where I almost got killed,” he said. One man who described himself as an aspiring police officer, Paul Anthony Morris Jr., 28, mimed the chokehold used by Officer Pantaleo as he scanned images of protesters on the front page of a newspaper. “It’s a total overreaction,” he said. “It was a headlock just to get him on the floor.” For some residents, the verdict highlighted the racial divisions that continue to cleave the borough, and that, they said, leave black residents feeling harassed by police officers. Emmanuel Rogers, 45, a security guard who lives in the Port Richmond neighborhood but works in the largely white area of Oakwood, said officers had stopped his car on the suspicion that he had stolen it, and even stopped him while he was working to ask what he was doing in a shopping mall frequented by many white residents. “Blacks are not treated fairly on Staten Island,” Mr. Rogers said. He added that the decision by the district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., to convene a grand jury, rather than to bring the charges himself, was a reminder of the cozy relationship between prosecutors and police officers. One table away in the coffee shop where he was sitting, Brian Bellamy, a former inspector with the United States Postal Service, said it was uncooperative residents, not police officers, who were responsible for deteriorating police-community relations. When Mr. Rogers turned his chair to complain to Mr. Bellamy about the “conflict of interest” that had allowed Officer Pantaleo to avoid charges, Mr. Bellamy spoke over him, protesting that police officers would quit their jobs if they did not receive more public support. “The scariest job in the world is being a police officer,” Mr. Bellamy said, as Mr. Rogers rubbed his brow in frustration.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Meeting on Climate Opens With Calls for Urgent Action

Abstract: COPENHAGEN — A much-anticipated global meeting of nearly 200 nations — all seeking what has so far been elusive common ground on the issue of climate change — began here on Monday with an impassioned airing of what leaders here called the political and moral imperatives at hand. “The clock has ticked down to zero,” said the United Nations’ climate chief, Yvo de Boer. “After two years of negotiation, the time has come to deliver.” From now until Dec. 18, delegates will try to hammer out some of the most vexing details involved in the pursuit of a global climate accord. While the critical action will unfold much later in the process, when higher-level ministers and, ultimately, heads of state arrive, the opening day of the conference was an opportunity for the United Nations to nurture a sense of mission and for delegates to begin staking out their positions. Among the most difficult hurdles, many participants acknowledged throughout the day, are achieving adequate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions — particularly from big polluters like the United States and China. So, too, are securing commitments from wealthy nations to deliver what could ultimately be hundreds of billions of dollars in financing to poor countries, which argue that they are ill equipped to deal with a problem they did little to create. Several countries announced new emissions goals in the days leading up to the meeting, including China, Brazil, the United States, India and South Africa — although many participants have noted that the targets are far too low to keep rising temperatures in check in coming decades. The pledges so far are “not going to get us as far we need to go, to really stay within the two-degree limit,” said Koko Warner, an observer with the United Nations University in Bonn, Germany. He was referring to scientists’ recommendations that temperature increases be capped at two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. “We don’t want to admit it, because the consequences are so bad,” she said. Still, speakers at the conference’s opening plenary session — which began with a video appeal from children across the world to save them from what looked like an apocalyptic future of deserts and rising seas — were clearly aiming to spur negotiators forward. After several hundred delegates and observers settled inside the main conference hall of the Bella Center to music from a trumpeter, a harpist and the Danish Girls Choir, Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister presiding over the conference, noted the recent string of emissions commitments by various countries. “Every positive announcement will improve our chances of staying below the two degrees Celsius target,” she said. “But as we all know only too well, we are not there yet.” “This goes for financing as well,” Ms. Hedegaard said, noting that arriving at a consensus on that issue “may be an even bigger challenge” than emissions cuts. Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, spoke before delegates of the urgent need for action. And, alluding to a recent controversy over e-mail messages between scientists hacked from a university computer server, he had pointed remarks for those who “find it difficult to accept” climate change science. Climate change skeptics have argued that the e-mail shows that the evidence for global warming is less unequivocal than scientists assert. But Dr. Pachauri ticked off a list of trends that robustly reflect the warming of the global climate. “Internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific community, including the individuals singled out in these e-mail messages,” he said. Both inside and outside the plenary session, the mood among negotiators and other participants was one of cautious optimism. Alden Meyer, who directs climate policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he was encouraged that the meeting appeared to have nudged previously reluctant nations to begin offering up emissions cuts. “It has focused attention and gotten all the major players to put their initial offers on the table,” Mr. Meyer said. “I think that’s good news.” Still, negotiators who have spent the last year working out the technical details of a potential treaty are now coming up hard against political pressures at much higher levels that will ultimately shape any agreement. The challenge, Mr. Meyer said, will be getting parties to “rise above the politics as usual” that threatens to bog down the process. Jonathan Pershing, the State Department’s special climate envoy, who represented the United States at the opening plenary, said he saw strong signs that the conference would prove critical in getting traction on curbing emissions and helping poor countries that are urgently threatened by climate change — particularly given the decision by more than 100 leaders, including President Obama, to attend. He said he saw no indication that efforts could be blunted by Saudi Arabia and other countries that have cited the e-mail flap in challenging climate findings. At a subsequent news conference, however, Mr. Pershing faced questions from European reporters about the adequacy of Mr. Obama’s plan for emissions cuts, which is roughly parallel to what is laid out in legislation in the House and Senate. Mr. Pershing said the American proposal — which calls for a reduction in emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, 42 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050 — was in keeping with cuts that scientists say would avert the worst dangers, but only if all countries, including emerging economies, did their part. “It’s a vision that moves the United States down the curve of greenhouse gas emissions at a level that no other country has even begun to seriously contemplate,” Mr. Pershing said. While the United States produces one-fifth of worldwide greenhouse emissions, he noted, four-fifths are coming from elsewhere. “Unless the world can combine its efforts, we won’t solve the problem,” he said. Outside the Bella Center, calls were growing for conference participants to overcome their differences and deliver results in coming days. An open letter from a coalition of groups, including Friends of the Earth, the Third World Network and others, accused Danish leaders of “undemocratic practices” and of “convening small and exclusive groups of countries before the Copenhagen meeting.” The assertion is a reference to rumors that “alternate” treaties are being readied by some big players, including conference organizers, should efforts to resolve differences on the current text prove fruitless. Meanwhile, 56 newspapers around the world published the same editorial calling for “decisive action” in Copenhagen. “In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage,” read the editorial, which was widely distributed in a campaign led by Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.” Continued inaction will ravage the planet and wreak havoc on economies and livelihoods, the editorial’s authors warned. “The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it,” the editorial said. “We implore them to make the right choice.”

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change


Falcons Reach Three-Year Deal With Steven Jackson

Abstract: Atlanta found its replacement for Michael Turner on Thursday, agreeing to terms with Steven Jackson on a three-year, $12 million deal. Jackson has run for at least 1,000 yards in eight straight seasons. He has 10,135 rushing yards, the most of any active player. The Falcons released Turner on March 1. CHANGES IN GIANTS’ SECONDARY The Giants took steps to improve their defensive backfield, agreeing to deals with safety Ryan Mundy and cornerback Aaron Ross in free agency. Ross played for the Giants from 2007 to 2011 and played last season with Jacksonville. Mundy arrives by way of Pittsburgh. One of the Giants’ N.F.C. East rivals, Philadelphia, also upgraded its defense, adding the former Giants safety Kenny Phillips, the former Houston Texans linebacker Connor Barwin and the former Baltimore Ravens cornerback Cary Williams. CASSEL ON THE MOVE The Kansas City Chiefs released Matt Cassel with two years left on his contract. Multiple reports said he had agreed to terms with Minnesota. The Vikings also hosted the free-agent receiver Greg Jennings for a visit AVRIL LANDS IN SEATTLE The Seahawks completed a contract with defensive end Cliff Avril, formerly of Detroit. BRONCO FACING CHARGES Denver’s Quinton Carter is facing felony charges in Nevada alleging that he cheated at a craps game last weekend at a Las Vegas-area casino, the authorities said. Security officials reported that he was videotaped adding a $5 chip to three bets after the dice had already been rolled, according to a police report. AROUND THE LEAGUE The free-agent safety Ed Reed, Baltimore’s franchise leader in interceptions with 61, met with Houston. ... Detroit tackle Jeff Backus is retiring, ending a 12-year career in which he missed only one game.

Football
Free agent
Atlanta Falcons
Steven Jackson


Volcano in Alaska Simmers Down

Abstract: ANCHORAGE (AP) — Mount Redoubt in Alaska has simmered down after spreading a coating of volcanic ash over scores of communities, including this city, the state’s largest. The volcano was emitting low-level tremors but did not erupt on Sunday, monitors at the Alaska Volcano Observatory said. A plume rose 25,000 feet above sea level, but scientists said that it appeared to be only vapor and that they were not adding the incident to the 18 eruptions over the past week. The calm follows several strong eruptions on Saturday that spewed an ash cloud 100 miles northeast to Anchorage and beyond. Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport shut down because of the ash, which can cause serious damage to airplane engines. Crews were cleaning up runways and passenger gates on Sunday. The airport is expected to be fully operating by Tuesday evening. A volcanologist, R. Game McGimsey, said the accumulation of ash at Nikiski, about 50 miles from Mount Redoubt, was as thick as a dime.

Redoubt Volcano (Alaska)
Volcanoes
Alaska


David Rosenblatt of 1stdibs, on Teamwork at the Top

Abstract: This interview with David Rosenblatt, chief executive of 1stdibs, an online marketplace for high-end goods including art, antiques, jewelry and furniture, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Were you in leadership roles early on? A. I was president of my class and co-president of my debating society in high school. But leadership was never my goal. I studied liberal arts, and majored in East Asian studies in college. My father was in Foreign Service roles, and I always assumed I would end up in the Foreign Service. After I graduated, I lived in Asia for a few years. My first real work experience after school was in investment banking. I learned pretty quickly that that wasn’t a world I wanted to be a part of. What I love about the Internet is the ability to create or change an industry as opposed to simply participate in one that already exists. Tell me more about your parents. My father had a lot of work in the Pacific. I traveled quite a bit with him, which kind of stoked my interest in Asia in particular. He’s a lawyer by training and he’s very much a linear thinker. My mother’s a psychotherapist, author and teacher, and she’s much more of an intuitive and empathetic thinker. I probably skew more to her side than I do my father’s. Leadership is about people, so having that sensitivity is important. There’s a story about my mother that had a big impact on me. When I was a kid growing up in Washington, I used to take the same bus home every day. One day, my mother happened to take the bus with me, and the place we were going to was between two stops. She’s Israeli, so she has the same healthy disregard for rules that many Israelis have. She walked up to the bus driver and said, “Excuse me, but would it be possible to stop the bus in between these two stops so we can get out?” The bus driver agreed to do it, and probably two-thirds of the other people on the bus got out. I just remember thinking that all these people are taking the bus every single day of their lives, and two-thirds of them really wanted to get off at a spot other than the bus stops. Yet it took someone to ask the bus driver a question to do something different, and many people benefited from it. That story has always stuck in my mind as an example of the importance of not taking things as a given. That’s sort of the philosophy of the Internet as a whole. Image "Companies are like families, in the sense that if the parents get along, then it’s likely that the rest of the family will be relatively harmonious." Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times Other important lessons you’ve learned over your career? When I was first promoted to C.E.O., the hardest thing to figure out was, how do I spend my time? On any given day, a C.E.O. could do almost anything or nothing, and it would likely have little or no impact on the company, at least in the short term. So I had to develop a set of rules to figure out how to manage my time. I learned Rule No. 1 from Irv Grousbeck, who teaches an entrepreneurship class at Stanford Business School. And that is, very simply, “You can hire people to do everything but hire people.” Rule No. 2 that I think about every day is, “Only do the things that only I can do.” So if it’s someone else’s job to do it, I try not to do it. If I find myself doing too many of those things that are actually someone else’s job, then it relates back to Rule No. 1 — I probably don’t have the right person in that role. But just like anyone in any role, it’s important to understand, where is my comparative advantage? What am I better at than almost anyone else? To the extent that there is something you’re better at than most other people, you should do it, and then you should just make sure that your team complements you. The hard thing for many C.E.O.’s, because this job requires a certain level of confidence, is to figure out what you’re not good at and acknowledge that, and then hire to offset your own limitations. What else about your leadership approach? I try to invest quite a bit of time in developing chemistry and sense of team among my direct reports. Generally my feeling is that companies are like families, in the sense that if the parents get along, then it’s likely that the rest of the family will be relatively harmonious. But if the parents don’t get along, it’s highly likely that there’s going to be conflict in the rest of the family that, to some degree, mirrors the conflict between the parents. And if the executive team is talented and unified in their approach, treats each other with respect and communicates openly, their behavior will be mirrored by everybody in the company. How do you hire? What questions do you ask? My approach is pretty straightforward. I like to ask people to walk me through their lives from the time they were young through the present. I pay particular attention to transitions, because I think that says a lot about people’s values and judgment, and the basis on which they make decisions. Why did you pick this school instead of that school? Why was this the right first job? Why did you take two years off? When you left that company, what choices did you have, and why did you pick Door No. 1 instead of Door No. 4? I find that if you listen to the narrative of people’s lives, you get a better sense of them as people and as professionals than any other approach I’ve taken. It can also uncover whether there might be problems. People are creatures of habit, and they tend to repeat patterns, even in different contexts. Do they have a pattern of job-hopping? That is a particularly deadly characteristic, in my point of view. It’s O.K. — in fact, it’s a positive — to make mistakes in judgment at some point in your life. But did the person understand it? Did they take the time to figure it out? Did they then repeat it? It’s not really what they did that is important to me. It’s how they reached those decisions.

1stdibs
Management
Job Recruiting and Hiring
David Rosenblatt


Romania Parliament Votes to Impeach Traian Basescu

Abstract: BERLIN — The political crisis in Romania deepened Friday after the Parliament in Bucharest voted to impeach President Traian Basescu amid rising international criticism of the government’s apparent attempts to usurp power and subvert the country’s young democracy. The impeachment was one step among many that critics say Prime Minister Victor Ponta has taken in recent months to consolidate his rule. The governing coalition has already fired the speakers of both chambers of Parliament — an action the opposition called unconstitutional — and replaced the country’s ombudsman, who has the power to challenge emergency legislation before the Constitutional Court. The court’s justices have been threatened with removal before their terms were up, although that idea was scrapped after an international outcry. But Mr. Ponta reduced the court’s power and is moving ahead with the impeachment. Mr. Ponta and his left-leaning Social Liberal Union contend that Mr. Basescu has violated the Constitution and accuse him of acting as a dictator, although the powers of the Romanian president are limited compared with the prime minister’s. The Constitutional Court ruled Friday that Mr. Basescu had not violated the Constitution, although the decision was nonbinding. “What dictator lets the opposition have the post of prime minister?” Mr. Basescu asked in the debate leading up to the vote, which he lost decisively, with 256 members of Parliament voting to remove him and 114 voting against. In the next step, Romanian voters will decide in a nationwide referendum, planned for July 29, whether Mr. Basescu can remain in office. In a statement on Friday, the European Commission said it was “concerned about current developments in Romania,” in particular the moves to reduce the power of independent institutions like the Constitutional Court. “The rule of law, the democratic checks and balances and the independence of the judiciary are cornerstones of the European democracy and indispensable for mutual trust within the European Union,” it said. A spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said Friday that she was watching the situation “with deep concern.” It is the second time that Mr. Basescu — a former sea captain, anticorruption crusader and polarizing political figure — has faced a referendum to remove him from office. A similar effort in 2007 failed when 74 percent of the voters opposed the move. But Mr. Basescu’s association with detested austerity programs has taken a toll on his popularity, and opinion surveys show he could lose this time. Romania’s political class is divided by bitter personal rivalries and a public that has taken to the streets in sometimes destructive protests against the austerity programs, as well as the stagnant growth. Parliament already passed a law that would ease the removal of the president through a referendum, requiring a majority of those voting. Previously, a majority of all eligible voters was needed. After a recession in 2009, Romania was forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund for emergency loans, which required the government to take drastic measures to curtail deficits, including cutting government salaries and raising the sales tax. The recent political turmoil, and the stern warnings from foreign leaders, have helped to drive the country’s currency, the leu, to a record low against the euro. The situation in Romania was the latest example of instability and weakening democratic institutions in the former Communist bloc. Civil society groups have criticized Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, for undermining democracy there. But the attention of European leaders appears to be so absorbed by the euro crisis that problems elsewhere seem to attract attention only when they reach a critical point. “There’s a greater and greater political trend toward an emphasis only on the euro zone,” said Hugo Brady, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, referring to the 17 countries that use the currency. “It’s almost as if it is now a 17-member European Union and other countries just by-the-by in terms of their problems.” Romania has exhibited growing signs of political instability. The previous government fell at the end of April, two months after taking office, and Mr. Ponta became the country’s third prime minister to hold the office this year.

Legislatures and Parliaments
Basescu Traian
Ponta Victor
Romania
Impeachment
Referendums
Bucharest (Romania)
International Relations
Politics and Government


Italian Business Faces Lose-Lose Situation in Libya

Abstract: MILAN — One hundred years have passed since Italy invaded the provinces of Libya to liberate them from the Ottomans and install colonial rule in Italian North Africa. Now, with NATO aircraft flying daily from Italian bases to pound targets controlled by the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Italy’s longstanding post-colonial business ties risk taking a hit, too. Italian companies are at risk of collateral damage whether Colonel Qaddafi hangs on to power, the rebels take over, or the country splits into a rebel-governed east and a Qaddafi-ruled west. “This is the worst scenario,” said Arturo Varvelli, research fellow at the Institute of International Political Studies in Milan, arguing that Italy and its business interests would be left in a lose-lose situation: Colonel Qaddafi, still in power in the Tripolitania region, would be little inclined to do big business with Italian companies as in the past, while in the east, the rebels of the Cyrenaica region would instead turn toward other European business partners “less compromised” by ties with the regime in Tripoli. “Italy’s position on the Libyan crisis has been shifting progressively as the situation on the ground has evolved,” Mr. Varvelli said, “and now it’s the first enemy of the Libyan regime.” That assessment has a lot of historical significance. Italy’s long colonial rule of Libya morphed into a love-hate relationship that crystallized in 2008, when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi apologized to Colonel Qaddafi for colonial-era transgressions and agreed to invest $5 billion in Libyan infrastructure over 20 years. The two signed an Italy-Libya friendship treaty in the city of Benghazi, now capital of the rebel movement sweeping Libya, and deepened economic cooperation on oil , banking, construction and even in the realm of top-rank soccer. Not everyone in Libya fully embraced the relationship, and it was up to Italy to pave the way, which it did by deepening its business ties with Colonel Qaddafi to the benefit of both countries. “For a long time, Italian citizens and politicians were not very appreciated in Libya,” said Sebastiano Sali, an academic in the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London. “To settle this bitterness” left over from the colonial era, “especially on the African side of the Mediterranean,” he said, “most of the previous Italian governments have increased bilateral relations with Tripoli, and also openly supported Colonel Qaddafi as a ‘not as bad as the other’ African dictators to let him gain some legitimacy on the international stage.” Dozens of Italian companies got in line for the lucrative contracts, while Eni, the oil conglomerate, and Impregilo, the construction company, quickly strengthened their longstanding positions in the North African country. Eni, in which the Qaddafi regime holds a 2 percent stake, is the biggest foreign company operating in Libya. But with conflict raging across the country, the energy giant recently expressed doubts that it would reach its 2011 targets. Other Italian companies were just finding their footing in Libya when the conflict broke out this spring, as Tripoli sought to diversify its economy away from oil and increase its property and tourism sectors. Ansaldo, a construction company, won contracts worth over $1 billion for work on a coastal railroad between Surt and Benghazi. On all these kinds of projects, Italian companies were favored over other European firms, as the special relationship between Rome and Tripoli deepened. Now, Italian companies could end up being the biggest losers if the Qaddafi government falls. “For some small and medium-sized companies, orders from Libya were the only ones they had,” said Mr. Varvelli. “I imagine, however, that Eni will be the most worried. The Libyan market was fundamental to the group’s strategy. Libyan oil was of good quality and was close by, so transport and refinement costs were low.” The extent of Libyan investment in Italy’s fragile economy is another red flag for Rome’s policy makers. Holdings by the Libyan Investment Authority in many of Italy’s most prized assets climbed steadily over the past years and underpinned many of these companies when the financial crisis struck in 2008. The Libyan Investment Authority has a 7.5 percent stake in Unicredit, to make it the second-largest shareholder in Italy’s largest bank; it also has shares in the Mediobanca Group. Likewise, the authority is very active in Italy’s industrial sector, with a 2 percent stake in Fiat; and it owns 7.5 percent of Juventus, the soccer club. While it is not clear what the outcome of the civil war in Libya will be, the Chamber of Commerce for Italy-Africa said that Italian companies could lose as much as $140 billion in disrupted trade as the war in Libya drags on. An illustration of the vulnerability of major Italian companies to the events in Libya came on Feb. 21, when Colonel Qaddafi’s stated determination to stay in power wiped out up to 6 percent of the share prices of Eni, Impregilo, Ansaldo, Sapiem, Finmeccanica and Unicredit on the Italian stock exchange. Since that day, analysts have remained highly cautious about the stocks of Italian companies with heavy exposure to Libya. Should a new government take power in Tripoli, Italy will face tough decisions as regards Libyan assets it was required to freeze under Europe-wide sanctions imposed on the regime in February. In an interview with the Italian television network RAI in March, Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti raised the possibility of revolutionary forces in Libya saying, “These funds are ours and we want them back.” Luca Fiorita, a senior professor of economics at the University of Palermo in Sicily, said that if Libya repatriated all the money it has invested in the Italian economy, the result would be disastrous not only for the Italy but for the war-torn Libyan economy as well. He added that the Italian finance minister had “participated in several discussions at the E.U. level to avoid damages to the interests of all nations.” Whatever the outcome of the conflict, the ensuing instability in Libya will have long-term ramifications for the Italian economy and its special relationship with its Mediterranean neighbor. Mr. Varvelli said there was a “real risk” that a “‘new Libya’ might not be predisposed toward Italy, the old friend of Qaddafi,” adding that even so, “Libya will always need certain technologies and know-how for its oil industry.” The same largely applies even under a scenario in which Colonel Qaddafi somehow remains in power. Giuseppe Sacco, editor in chief of The European Journal of International Affairs in Rome, said: “He will have to re-establish relations with a number of countries, starting with potential buyers of Libya’s oil and gas.” Mr. Sacco believes that Italy, for a host of historical reasons, will be best positioned to get back down to business in Libya, noting, for instance, that Italy is linked to the country by an undersea pipeline and that “it will be in Libya’s, as well as Italy’s, interest to keep it working.” No matter who ends up ruling Libya, Mr. Sacco said, “Libya has preferred to deal with Italy among all possible European partners.”

Economic Conditions and Trends
Italy
Libya


Fee to Be Charged for Video of South Carolina Shooting, Publicist Says

Abstract: NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — The video of a North Charleston police officer shooting an unarmed man in the back will now cost news outlets that want to run it $10,000, according to a publicist representing the man who shot it. Cease-and-desist letters went out this week to news outlets around the world from Markson Sparks, a publicity and celebrity management company based in Sydney, Australia. The video, taken April 4, showed a North Charleston police officer, Michael T. Slager, shooting a man who ran from him after a traffic stop. A bystander, Feidin Santana , took the video and then turned it over to the family of the man who was killed, Walter L. Scott. The officer was charged with murder and remains jailed. The video, viewed more than one million times on YouTube alone, quickly came to represent the excessive use of force by the police. The announcement about the fee seemed to come as a surprise to Mr. Santana. He later recalled that his lawyer mentioned something about charging for it, but said he did not understand. The lawyer, Todd Rutherford, said it was only fair for Mr. Santana to start getting paid for something that news outlets benefited from. “The search for justice is served by turning the video over to law enforcement,” Mr. Rutherford said. The news media, he said, appeared to be in the “search for revenue.” Copyright experts agreed that although news agencies are allowed to use even copyrighted material under what is called “fair use” clauses in the law that time period has passed. “At some point it’s not newsworthy anymore and you are using it for commercial benefit,” said Frederic Haber, a vice president and general counsel of the Copyright Clearance Center , a collective licensing organization that works on behalf of copyright holders such as The New York Times. The issue could change once the video is played in court during a trial, he said. The Times has used the video with the family’s permission and not received a cease and desist letter. Max Markson, chief executive of Markson Sparks, said by phone from Australia: “I think that the people who might be put off by this are the media outlets that had it for free. Now they will have to pay.” He said the fee amount would be negotiable, although another person familiar with the negotiations who was not authorized to speak publicly said news media outlets were being charged a one-time fee of $10,000. A lawyer for Mr. Scott’s family said the relatives remain grateful to Mr. Santana and have no problem with him receiving a financial benefit. “Without the video, we would not be where we are right now,” said Justin Bamberg, one of the family’s lawyers.


Relaxing Privacy Vow, WhatsApp Will Share Some Data With Facebook

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — When Facebook bought the start-up WhatsApp in 2014, Jan Koum, one of WhatsApp’s founders, declared that the deal would not affect the digital privacy of his mobile messaging service’s millions of users. “We don’t know your birthday. We don’t know your home address,” Mr. Koum wrote in a blog post at the time. “None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that.” Two years later, in a move that is rankling some of the company’s more than one billion users, WhatsApp will soon begin to share some member information with Facebook. WhatsApp said on Thursday that it would start disclosing the phone numbers and analytics data of its users to Facebook. It will be the first time the messaging service has connected users’ accounts to the social network to share data, as Facebook tries to coordinate information across its collection of businesses. WhatsApp is changing its policy as it begins building a moneymaking business after long placing little emphasis on revenue. The company plans to allow businesses to contact customers directly through its platform. A similar strategy is already being tested on Facebook Messenger, a separate messaging service Facebook owns. “We want to explore ways for you to communicate with businesses that matter to you, too, while still giving you an experience without third-party banner ads and spam,” WhatsApp said in a blog post announcing the changes to its privacy policy. Among the changes, Facebook will be able to use a person’s phone number to improve other Facebook-operated services, such as making new Facebook friend suggestions, or better-tailored advertising, WhatsApp added. It said the data-sharing would also be used to fight spam text messages across its service. WhatsApp emphasized that neither it nor Facebook would be able to read users’ encrypted messages and that individual phone numbers would not be given to advertisers. WhatsApp users are still required to provide a phone number only to sign up for the service, and can opt out of giving it to Facebook. While WhatsApp operates autonomously from Facebook, Mr. Koum sits on Facebook’s board. The changes were immediately viewed with a critical eye by some who were concerned when Facebook bought WhatsApp that their data could one day be misused. WhatsApp made early inroads with people worldwide partly for its hard-line stance on privacy and individual liberties, which was rooted in Mr. Koum’s youth in the 1980s in the Soviet Union, where, he has said, he lived in fear of his communications being monitored. Mr. Koum has also been outspoken against advertising in the app in general. Many WhatsApp users have appreciated just how different the service is from Facebook. In some countries, like Brazil, WhatsApp’s focus on privacy has led to criticism from law enforcement agencies that they cannot gain access to users’ encrypted messages. “Our values and our respect for your privacy continue to guide the decisions we make at WhatsApp,” Mr. Koum said in a post on Thursday. “It’s why we’ve rolled out end-to-end encryption, which means no one can read your messages other than the people you talk to. Not us, not Facebook, nor anyone else.” He added, “Our focus is the same as it’s always been — giving you a fast, simple and reliable way to stay in touch with friends and loved ones around the world.” WhatsApp’s privacy policy overhaul raises concerns about potential legal challenges. Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group in Washington, said it would file a complaint on Monday with the Federal Trade Commission to stop WhatsApp from sharing users’ data with Facebook. The group filed a similar case in 2014, citing promises that WhatsApp had made to protect individuals’ privacy. “Many users signed up for WhatsApp and not Facebook, precisely because WhatsApp offered, at the time, better privacy practices,” Mr. Rotenberg said by email. “If the F.T.C. does not bring an enforcement action, it means that even when users choose better privacy services, there is no guarantee their data will be protected.” Similar legal steps could be taken abroad, where data protection rules are tougher. In Europe, for instance, several national regulators have already taken legal action against Facebook, claiming that it illegally collected information online about people who were not signed up on the social network. Facebook has denied the accusations. Facebook has also been at the heart of a debate over how people’s information held in Europe — the company’s users outside the United States are regulated from Dublin — should be transferred to the United States. In a legal case involving Facebook last year, Europe’s top court ruled that American privacy standards did not offer sufficient protections to the region’s citizens. The court, the European Court of Justice, also invalidated the so-called safe harbor agreement that permitted technology giants and 4,000 other companies to routinely move data across the Atlantic. A new data-transfer pact, known as the E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield, recently came into force , but it is facing legal challenges as privacy campaigners remain concerned that data held in Europe could be improperly read by government agencies when moved to the United States. WhatsApp’s new privacy policy may put it in the middle of this tussle, pushing the company to reassure concerned users about how Facebook may use their data.

WhatsApp
Facebook
Data Mining,Big Data
Social Media
Privacy
Jan Koum
Instant messaging


In FIFA Politics, Blatter Is the Consummate Player

Abstract: Sepp Blatter is not a king. He is not a chancellor or a viceroy and he is, most assuredly, not a congressman or people’s representative. Technically, Blatter is a president, the president of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. To use that label alone, though, is to sell short the dominating (if not domineering) stature with which Blatter rules. Think of it this way: how many people can arrive in virtually any country with a minimum of pomp or protocol and then request an audience with the head of state, and receive one? Blatter can. (And he has. In the past few months he has met with the president of Cuba, the prime minister of Guinea and the president of South Africa.) Such is the influence of soccer around the globe. In more private moments, Blatter has likened FIFA to a sovereign nation. He may not be so far off: after all, FIFA has its own flag and anthem. And it has, in Blatter, an outspoken and commanding figurehead who has led it through periods of prosperity, and a fair bit of shame and scandal, too. In nearly four decades with FIFA, however, Blatter has never overseen an issue as hotly debated as the one in front of him now. Beginning Thursday in Zurich, Blatter will preside over a meeting of FIFA’s executive committee, which consists of 25 voting members who essentially make soccer’s most important decisions. If Blatter has his way, one of the issues called for a vote will be whether to shift the 2022 World Cup in Qatar from its traditional summer schedule to the relative cool of late fall and winter in the Middle East. On the surface, the change of just a few months for a tournament that takes place nine years from now should not amount to a crisis. But the ramifications of such a switch would be multiple and momentous. Despite the large (and loud) group of soccer officials preaching pragmatism and patience before a potential move, Blatter, who declined to comment for this article, has made it clear that he believes a change in dates is necessary. Doing so will disrupt schedules around the world, but when Blatter states a preference, that has historically meant only one outcome is possible. “Put it this way,” said Alan I. Rothenberg, the former president of the United States Soccer Federation, who has known Blatter for more than 30 years. “In the mid-2000s, after the success of the ’94 World Cup, I was asked by Morocco to help them win the bid for the 2010 World Cup.” Even though Blatter was publicly neutral, Rothenberg said, it was clear he was intrigued by South Africa as a potential host. “So I went to him beforehand and asked if it would bother him for me to do this, to work with Morocco,” Rothenberg said. “He said: ‘No, no, of course. Go ahead and do it.’ ” The night before the vote, after Morocco had made its final presentation, a confident Rothenberg said he thought, “We’ve got this locked up.” Then he hesitated. “To this day I’m not sure what happened, but I suspect that Sepp was doing some things to make sure that people voted the way he wanted,” Rothenberg said. He sighed. “I don’t have to tell you what happened.” South Africa won the vote, 14-10. The Politician There are 209 members of FIFA, and Blatter has worked for the organization in several positions for decades. Not surprisingly, opinions of him run the gamut from savior to scoundrel. Some consider him a visionary for what he has done to expand the reach of the game to less developed countries and regions shredded by strife. Others describe him as an entrenched overlord who revels in FIFA’s lack of transparency. More casual observers might find him entertaining, a man who appears to have no internal filter. In recent years, he has noted that a female member of the executive committee is both “good and good-looking”; advised fans in England to pray to God if they ever hope to host the World Cup again; and suggested, apparently jokingly, that gay fans who attend the World Cup in Qatar “should refrain from any sexual activities” because homosexuality is illegal there. Image Blatter, right, was welcomed by Mohammed bin Hammam, the former president of the Asian Football Confederation, upon his arrival in Doha, Qatar, in 2010. Credit Osama Faisal/Associated Press Whatever one’s opinion of him, a trait mentioned by almost all who know Blatter is his political savvy. His strategy is not subtle. While FIFA’s financial power base might be in Europe, which is home to soccer’s richest players, clubs and leagues, Blatter, a Swiss, is far from beloved there. Rather, he is known for currying favor, and votes, in Africa and Asia, seeing the future of the game in its two most populous confederations. Optimists point out that those countries have greater needs than the European powers, and so the attention is merited. Cynics note that FIFA rules play into the hands of a smart politician: the 25-member executive committee consists largely of representatives of FIFA’s six confederations, but Africa (four) and Asia (four) have more votes than Europe (seven). That gives Botswana, Iran and Thailand as much voice as, say, Germany, England and France. “This is what he does — just look at what he’s been saying on Qatar,” said Damian Collins, a British parliamentarian and a longtime advocate for FIFA reform. Collins was referring to Blatter’s recent comments, made in an interview with the Web site Inside World Football, in which he said that those who did not support shifting the dates of Qatar’s World Cup to cooler months were essentially saying that a World Cup could never be held in the Southern Hemisphere. “It’s completely crazy — the World Cup has already been played in the Southern Hemisphere and will be played in the Southern Hemisphere next year,” Collins said. “But this is Blatter; it’s very calculated. You can see who his audience is for that: all of the small countries who will never have a World Cup but want to dream they will and want to feel important. “He’s basically pushing this notion of imperialism in Europe and how he is fighting with them against it. It doesn’t matter that his larger point makes no sense.” Shaping a message has been a perpetual part of Blatter’s background even if his professional career has been eclectic. Though his playing career was limited to Switzerland’s amateur leagues, his primary fame has come from his work in soccer. Since 1975, he has risen from technical director for FIFA to general secretary to president in 1998. A polyglot who speaks German, French, English, Spanish and Italian, Blatter conscientiously built a deep network of influence as he advanced. Rothenberg worked with Blatter while leading the 1994 United States World Cup Host Committee, and he recalled that even then, while still an underling to the former FIFA president João Havelange, Blatter “combined the talent of being the executive and operational head with also being a political mastermind.” Defenders of Blatter are quick to note his achievements. He has taken the game’s biggest prize to virgin territory, overseeing the first World Cups in Asia and Africa, and the awarding of the first to post-Communist Eastern Europe, in Russia in 2018. One of his first acts as president was to push through the recognition of Palestine as its own soccer-playing nation, when FIFA became one of the only major international organizations to recognize the Palestinians in this way. Blatter also has been at the forefront of getting Israeli and Palestinian representatives to discuss easing the tight restrictions on athletes in that region, and he has twice committed money to having a stadium in Gaza rebuilt after conflicts with Israel. “Blatter always gave the green light to things that were good for the Palestinians and Israelis,” said Jerome Champagne, who worked as Blatter’s personal adviser and ran his successful re-election campaign in 2002. “When we started collecting money for the new stadium to be built in the West Bank in 2006, the first-ever Palestinian stadium meeting FIFA’s international requirements, he said, ‘Do it.’ Blatter was fantastic in the way he supported that fully.” Champagne, who was later forced out at FIFA, believes this will be a part of Blatter’s wider legacy. “His legacy will be the universality of the game being taken to new territories and becoming the world’s No. 1 sport, unquestionably,” Champagne said. “His difficulty will be the ‘but’ which will come after that. People will say: ‘Blatter’s done a tremendous job of promoting the universality of the game, but. ...’ And that ‘but’ is the controversy and allegations.” Surrounded by Scandal In addition to his more innocent verbal missteps, there are numerous examples of Blatter’s tendency toward tone-deafness. At last summer’s Confederations Cup in Brazil, he responded to violent protests throughout the country by suggesting that demonstrators should not use soccer to further their causes — just as FIFA announced its official Champagne provider for the World Cup. Less benign are the allegations of corruption that have lingered over FIFA for years. Havelange resigned from FIFA after the organization’s ethics committee detailed his involvement in bribery schemes , and a significant number of former executive committee members, many of whom worked closely with Blatter, have also stepped down. Some cited ill health rather than looming investigations, and several continue to deny wrongdoing . Image The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, right, greeted Blatter during a meeting in 2011. Credit Thaer Ganaim/Palestinian Press Office, via Getty Images Andrew Jennings, a British journalist, has been pursuing Blatter and FIFA over allegations of corruption for more than a decade. Much of his work has covered ISL, a now-defunct company that held the rights to FIFA’s enormous international marketing contract. The company collapsed in 2001, mired in debt. In the fallout it was reported by Jennings and others, and confirmed in a FIFA ethics report released in April, that bribes had been paid to members of FIFA’s executive committee. The report cleared Blatter of receiving any money, a verdict he accepted “with satisfaction,” and to date he has not been linked to anything illicit. But FIFA’s critics frequently note that Blatter has stayed remarkably upright as the people around him seem to topple amid charges of bribery, conflict of interest and other unsavory activity. “I tell you: I know Mr. Blatter personally, he is not corrupt,” Champagne said. “Maybe they have a few black sheep. But Blatter is not corrupt.” Nonetheless, he has been surrounded by scandal. Of the 24 men on the executive committee who were set to vote on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids in December 2010, two were suspended and later removed for taking bribes before the ballot took place. Blatter does not outwardly dismiss the notion that organizational change is needed, and he has attempted to bring FIFA a little closer to the modern standards of business ethics and operations through the formation of ethics committees. But there remains a question of how committed he is to putting substantive changes in place. That was the reason Alexandra Wrage resigned from FIFA’s Independent Governance Committee this year. Wrage is the president of Trace International, an organization that works with companies to help them raise their antibribery measures. She is an expert on compliance and best business practices and was, ostensibly, included on the FIFA committee to help engineer a significant overhaul. Instead, Wrage described a reaction of “indignation” from FIFA executives at any significant proposals for change. She acknowledged that Blatter had made some positive moves with regard to governance — adding a two-chambered investigative committee was “a big step,” she said — but said, “A lot of the really tough decisions, especially the ones that impacted Blatter himself and the people at the highest levels, were not implemented.” Ultimately, Wrage said, she felt compelled to resign from the committee because she did not sense a genuine desire for change from Blatter and his staff. “It kept appearing that the decisions that impacted the most senior people were put off,” Wrage said. “That sort of thing happened fairly frequently: you’d make a very robust recommendation and it would get scaled back. In many ways, it’s bizarre: the public perception of FIFA and FIFA’s view of itself don’t seem to connect in any way. The disconnect is pretty alarming.” Decision 2022 Against that background Thursday, world soccer’s most powerful group will meet in FIFA’s gleaming, state-of-the-art offices in a quiet suburb of Zurich to take a decision that could reshape the future of soccer as well as Blatter’s legacy. A tournament in Qatar in January and February would clash with the Winter Olympics — the new I.O.C. president, Thomas Bach, said Monday that he had spoken with Blatter and “ there would be no conflict ” — and one in November and December would disrupt not only Europe’s top club competition, the Champions League, but also play in most major European leagues. Equally problematic are the broadcasting agreements FIFA has signed, including a $1 billion rights deal with Fox and Telemundo, and recent news media reports of abuse and mistreatment of Qatar’s huge migrant work force. All of it piles up to be a considerable headache for Blatter, who insisted as late as last year that the 2022 World Cup must take place as planned in the summer. As the prevailing wind has changed direction, though, so too has Blatter. Some believe that Qatar will be the final piece of Blatter’s legacy, but even that is uncertain. Among the myriad criticisms levied by Wrage and others against FIFA is an absence of term limits on its presidency, and so it does not matter that Blatter is 77. It does not matter that he has been president for 15 years. It does not matter that he said before his last election that this would be his final one. Ever the politician, Blatter has remained coy on his future. All that is sure is this: There is another election in 2015, and Blatter may not be done.

Sepp Blatter
Soccer
FIFA
2022 FIFA World Cup
Qatar


Supreme Court Appears to Back U.S. on Material Witnesses

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The current Supreme Court is considered a hot bench, meaning one from which advocates may expect a barrage of challenging questions. But the bench was cool on Wednesday at the argument of a case testing how far the government may go in using the federal material witness law to detain and interrogate people it suspects have ties to terrorism. The justices’ lack of engagement at the argument probably signaled a victory for the government. Neal K. Katyal, the acting United States solicitor general, talked uninterrupted for extended stretches and ended his main presentation 10 minutes early. Several of the questions he received from the justices seemed to seek guidance about which route the court should take in ruling for Mr. Katyal’s client, John Ashcroft , who was President George W. Bush’s first attorney general. The case was brought by Abdullah al-Kidd, a United States citizen who contends that policies set by Mr. Ashcroft after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, resulted in the misuse of the material witness law to detain him. The law is meant to allow prosecutors to hold witnesses with evidence of others’ crimes for fear they will not appear to testify at trial. Mr. Kidd contends that the law was improperly used to detain him as a suspect in a terrorism case. He was held in harsh conditions in three states for more than two weeks and was never called to testify against anyone else. The question for the Supreme Court was whether Mr. Ashcroft is immune from Mr. Kidd’s suit either because what Mr. Ashcroft was accused of doing was at the core of a prosecutor’s duties or because he did not violate a clearly established constitutional right. Much of the limited questioning concerned which sort of immunity was more appropriate. Mr. Katyal argued that lawsuits seeking money from public officials were not the right way to deter the conduct Mr. Kidd complained about. “Improper motives are easy to allege and hard to disprove,” he said. “Allowing such suits to proceed would result in burdensome litigation and interfere with the ability of prosecutors to do their jobs.” “No doubt that certain individuals will be harmed,” he added, “but the cost of rooting out the bad apples through damages lawsuits is far worse” in that “it causes prosecutors to flinch in the performance of their duties.” Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Mr. Kidd, said that if the United States is to have a law authorizing preventive detention it should be enacted by Congress and not cobbled together by prosecutors. He added that the misuse of the material witness law after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in abuses in Mr. Kidd’s case and others. “It went on in cities all over the country, people being held under horrendous conditions for long periods of time, interrogated about their own activities,” he said. Only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seemed troubled by the conditions in which Mr. Kidd had been held. “There are allegations here that this man was kept awake, the lights shining in his cell for 24 hours, kept without clothes,” she said to Mr. Katyal. “Now that doesn’t sound like the way one would treat someone whose testimony you want,” she said. “Is there a remedy that he has for that obvious mistreatment?” Mr. Katyal said that suits against Mr. Kidd’s jailers may be possible but that suits against prosecutors were improper. “To hold either the attorney general or prosecutors liable is something that would, I think, ultimately open the door to, at least there are a few hundred lawsuits at the federal level if not more,” he said. Mr. Gelernt said Mr. Kidd should be allowed to try to prove that he would not have been arrested but for an improper motive. The problem with that theory, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. responded, is that “the allegation can so readily be made in every case under the material witness statute.”

Ashcroft John
Kidd Abdullah al-
Supreme Court
Terrorism
Suits and Litigation
Witnesses


Christie Says No to 2012 Bid, but G.O.P. Keeps Calling

Abstract: So many people want to talk to Gov. Chris Christie about the 2012 presidential campaign that he probably could not drop the subject if he wanted to. Not that he wants to. Despite months of insisting that he will not enter the race, the New Jersey governor has become an increasingly busy presence on its fringes. Conservative politicians and talk-show hosts are still clamoring for him to jump in, and he has agreed to meet this month with a group of fund-raisers from Iowa who want to persuade him. While Republican consultants say he would be a leading contender, and journalists keep asking whether he will run, Mr. Christie keeps finding new and ever more provocative ways to say no. The Republicans who have considered running want his imprimatur, lining up for dinner dates at the governor’s mansion in Princeton. Candidate or not, Mr. Christie is a force to reckon with in the contest, someone who political analysts say could influence his party’s nomination, or make a splash as a choice for running mate — another prospect he rules out. The governor shows no sign of fading into the background, and by his own admission, he loves the attention. “I’m a kid from Jersey who has people asking him to run for president,” he said last week in a radio interview , laughing off the idea that he had “become tired and annoyed” by the subject’s coming up time and again. “I’m thrilled by it. I just don’t want to do it.” His denials are striking enough to stoke the fire, generating still more news media coverage. He once told reporters that “short of suicide, I don’t really know what I’d have to do to convince you people that I’m not running,” and on another occasion he told an interviewer that while he would not run, “I already know I could win.” Last week, he posed a tart comparison with his Democratic predecessor, observing that “a few years ago, nobody from Iowa was coming to New Jersey to beg Jon Corzine to run for president of the United States .” Since January, Mr. Christie has played dinner host to a string of potential presidential candidates: former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts (who followed with a $25,000 contribution to the New Jersey Republican Party ), former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi , before Mr. Barbour decided not to enter the race. A date with another, former Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah , was scheduled for last week but had to be postponed, and there has been talk of a meeting with the former House speaker Newt Gingrich . Governors, who usually control their state party machinery, are always courted by presidential candidates, particularly in the states with the earliest contests, like Iowa and New Hampshire . But for contenders to make the pilgrimage to New Jersey — not a pivotal primary state — with aides in tow, for face-to-face sessions with a governor long before any votes are cast, is something else. “There hasn’t been any parallel to this, not in my memory,” said David P. Redlawsk, a political science professor at Rutgers University . “He’s a hot commodity, and the candidates clearly think his endorsement would be significant. He can attract crowds and raise a lot of money. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re thinking about him as a potential V.P. candidate.” But the meetings have included no vice-presidential talk, or even much direct appealing for the governor’s support, according to people who have attended some of his sessions with candidates, and who discussed them on the condition of anonymity so as not to alienate those involved. They say Mr. Christie listens to each candidate’s presentation and asks questions about policy and political strategy. And though the governor, a former federal prosecutor, has said that presidential hopefuls must be able to handle tough questioning, these people say the tone of these exchanges is relaxed. His advisers say that while Mr. Christie relishes the attention, he does not court it. “I don’t think people understand how much more often we say no to invitations than we say yes,” said Mike DuHaime, the governor’s chief political consultant. Mr. Christie turned down an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February and a chance to give the Republican response to President Obama ’s State of the Union address in January — openings that no presidential candidate would be likely to pass up. He supports a move to switch New Jersey’s presidential primaries from February back to their traditional June date, potentially lessening the state’s influence on nominations. The governor’s political team is aware that his recent approval ratings have been fair — generally in the high 40s — and most New Jerseyans who are interviewed say they do not want him to run for president. He is embroiled in major fights with the Legislature, unions, the courts and the Obama administration, and he risks alienating voters at home if his attention appears to be elsewhere. The Iowans scheduled to meet with Mr. Christie on May 31 include wealthy business owners who raised money for Gov. Terry E. Branstad’s campaign last year, and saw the New Jersey governor when he campaigned for Mr. Branstad. They describe themselves as focused on fiscal issues, and disappointed with the current presidential field. “I’m going to tell him that it’s a call to duty, and see if we can’t persuade him,” said one of them, Gerald M. Kirke. “We started calling his people around February to see if we could get out there to see him, and they didn’t rule it out, but at first they said he had no interest, or he didn’t have the time. They have emphatically told us he’s not running, so there’s no indication we have an aperture here.” Another member of the group, Denny Elwell, said: “I think he’ll have to get in eventually because there will be enough pressure on him. Right now, we don’t have anybody who can beat Obama.” The Iowans are the only Republican operatives to make an organized appeal to Mr. Christie, but informal inquiries are common, said William J. Palatucci, one of the governor’s closest confidants. “I think a lot of people think that in private they’re going to get a wink or a nod, some kind of hint from me or DuHaime,” he said. “But the answer’s the same.”

Chris Christie
2012 Presidential Election
Republicans
US Politics


Beyond Petraeus Biographer’s TV Interviews, a Family-Focused Life

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Paula Broadwell became a fixture at the Kabul headquarters of the American-led coalition in Afghanistan soon after Gen. David H. Petraeus assumed command in 2010. She was seen as ambitious and a striver who aimed to join Washington’s national security elite, and was resented by some officers for playing up her connection to their boss. In television interviews, Ms. Broadwell — a Petraeus biographer whose affair with him led to his resignation on Friday as director of central intelligence — appears assertive and confident, appearing on “The Daily Show” sporting bare, toned arms that have been the subject of considerable comment on Twitter and elsewhere. But back in her home city of Charlotte, N.C., a far more nuanced, even ordinary, picture has emerged of the woman at the center of Washington’s latest sex scandal. There, neighbors say, Ms. Broadwell is the soccer mom, married to a radiologist, who serves her family dinner by candlelight and walks her two boys to the bus stop every morning before school. She is the nice woman in the two-story brick house who wore a costume to hand out candy on Halloween. She is the friendly neighbor who organized an impromptu backyard barbecue to welcome newcomers to the neighborhood. She is the superbusy woman who raises money for veterans’ support groups and takes time to mentor her friends’ children — especially girls — by reading their school papers and introducing them to soldiers they might interview. “It wasn’t uncommon to look in their dining room at night and see the candles lit as they were eating,” said Sarah Curme, a neighbor and friend. “Nobody put Paula on a pedestal; it was more about Paula the neighbor, the mom and the wife than it was about everything else she did.” Since news broke on Friday of her extramarital affair with Mr. Petraeus, Ms. Broadwell — a North Dakota native whose résumé lists her as valedictorian of her high school class, homecoming queen, state student council president and fitness champion at West Point — has become a national curiosity. News crews have converged on her home, but no one is home. Ms. Curme said the family was on vacation. Ms. Broadwell’s relationship with Mr. Petraeus was uncovered by an F.B.I. investigation ; government officials said the inquiry began with a complaint that Ms. Broadwell had sent “harassing” e-mails to another woman who knows the retired general. That woman was identified Sunday as Jill Kelley of Tampa, Fla., a friend of the Petraeus family. When F.B.I. officials followed up on the complaint, they stumbled across e-mails that revealed Mr. Petraeus, 60, and Ms. Broadwell, 40, were having an extramarital romance. The two met in 2006, when General Petraeus spoke at Harvard University, where Ms. Broadwell was awarded a master’s degree in public administration. The Charlotte Observer, in an article about her book , reported in January that when she told him of her interest in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, he gave her his business card and offered to help. Soon afterward, she asked him if she could use him as a subject of her doctoral dissertation. “Petraeus agreed,” Ms. Broadwell later told Claudia Chan , who edits a Web site devoted to women and leadership, “and I began to write an ‘intellectual history’ exploring how he’d developed his role as a maverick who galvanized organizational innovation.” When President Obama chose General Petraeus as the new commander in Afghanistan in 2010, Ms. Broadwell proposed turning the dissertation into a book. She teamed up with a newspaper editor, Vernon Loeb, now of The Washington Post, to write it. The Observer reported that she made six trips to Afghanistan, living with combat troops and conducting extensive interviews with the general. “Here she has two young kids, a husband who’s a doctor, and yet ... she’s writing a book of this magnitude and hardly breaking a sweat,” The Observer quoted Mr. Loeb as saying. But Ms. Broadwell told Ms. Chan that it was tough juggling her work and home life. “I used to think I was invincible and could do it all,” she said, “but having children helped me to realize my limits.” Ms. Broadwell met her husband, Dr. Scott Broadwell, when the two were in the military and stationed in Germany. She told The Observer that they were both training to become ski patrollers, and described herself and her husband as “adventure junkies.” After they married, they decided that they would take turns choosing where to live; they moved to Charlotte about three years ago with their two young sons, Lucien and Landon, after Dr. Broadwell took a job with a medical group in the city. They live in Dilworth, an upscale neighborhood with old-growth trees and many Craftsman-style homes that date to the 1920s. Ed Williams, a retired editorial page editor of The Observer who lives two doors down from the Broadwells, says he often sees Ms. Broadwell out running in the morning. “She’s kind of energetic, but not boisterous,” Mr. Williams said. “She’s quiet.” She has also thrown herself into Charlotte’s civic life, with an emphasis on charities that help veterans and their families. The Observer reported on Saturday that Ms. Broadwell has been a guest speaker for the World Affairs Council of Charlotte , and recently spoke at a black-tie benefit for the Patriot Charities , a nonprofit group that supports wounded members of the military from the Carolinas and their families. Last week, the newspaper said, she attended a tandem parachute jump in Charlotte for Cpl. David Bixler of the Army, who lost both of his legs in an explosion in Afghanistan. In September, during the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, she co-hosted a fund-raiser for wounded soldiers and persuaded Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” to attend. After the revelation of Ms. Broadwell’s affair with Mr. Petraeus, her friends and neighbors do not quite know what to expect next. “We’ve been trying to have a book party for her and invite some people from the neighborhood,” said Mr. Williams, the retired editor. “We talked about doing it in early December. I’m not so sure that’s going to go on now.” Ms. Curme, who said she had been in touch with Ms. Broadwell by text message and e-mail on Saturday, said the Broadwells are “very united and will get through” the emotional turmoil of an infidelity that is playing out in public view. “Obviously she has made a mistake,” Ms. Curme said, “but I really do believe she is probably better equipped than about anybody I know to figure her way out of this in a really positive way, without destroying anybody. That’s just not her nature. Whatever has happened, I suspect Paula will step up and take accountability, and nurture her family.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


Central Bankers Hear Plea: Turn Focus to Government Spending

Abstract: GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — Central bankers who gathered here to discuss better ways of jump-starting slow economic growth received a surprising message from their lunchtime speaker on Friday: Stop. You’re making things worse. Christopher A. Sims, a Nobel laureate in economic science, told the annual conference that increased government spending was required to lift the world’s major economies from stagnation. The pursuit of innovations in monetary policy, he said, is diverting needed attention from the inaction of fiscal policy makers. “So long as the legislature thinks it has no role in this problem, nothing is going to get done,” said Mr. Sims, a professor at Princeton. The best hope, he said, “is that people at central banks are willing to say publicly that this is what is necessary.” Developed nations have leaned heavily on their central banks since the 2008 financial crisis. The United States, Europe and Japan have all relied on low interest rates to encourage increased spending by businesses and consumers even as government spending has remained relatively austere. Mr. Sims is among a growing number of experts who warn that this experiment has reached its limits. The central banks have pushed rates to historically low levels. The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have even imposed negative interest rates, effectively taxing savings to encourage spending. Yet job growth and inflation remain stubbornly weak. Benoît Coeuré, a European Central Bank official, drew laughter from the audience when he noted the “good news” that eurozone inflation had doubled last month — from an annual rate of 0.1 percent up to 0.2 percent. In the United States, the Federal Reserve responded to the crisis more forcefully than other central banks, and the federal government initially spent more freely. Yet here, too, growth remains slow, inflation remains weak and millions of middle-age people are no longer working. Mohamed A. El-Erian, the chief economic adviser at Allianz, warned in a recent book, “ The Only Game in Town ,” that time was running out. If developed nations do not increase spending and pursue structural reforms in the next few years, Mr. El-Erian predicted, they will be locked into a new reality of slower growth. Moreover, he said central banks would be handicapped in fighting future crises — they have little room to cut rates should economic conditions deteriorate. “It is dangerous to continue to focus the debate on what central banks can do,” Mr. El-Erian, who is also the head of President Obama’s Global Development Council , wrote Saturday in an email. “What is needed — not only in the U.S. but even more in Europe and Japan — is a policy pivot away from excessive dependence on central banks.” Central bankers profess to regard this pessimism as overstated. Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, and the heads of other major central banks have repeatedly urged lawmakers to lend a hand — albeit with considerable diffidence. However, they also describe their own efforts as effective even without fiscal support. They are increasingly resigned to slower growth and lower interest rates, yet they insist they still have the means — by buying government debt, for instance — to help reverse future downturns. “Even if average interest rates remain lower than in the past,” Ms. Yellen said at the conference, “I believe monetary policy will, under most conditions, be able to respond effectively.” The annual meetings here , hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in the shadow of the Grand Tetons, often mix technical discussions and loftier debates. This year, as academics presented proposals for minor improvements in the mechanics of monetary policy, some in the audience suggested that monetary policy makers should be spending less time talking about themselves. Peter Blair Henry, the dean of the Stern School of Business at New York University, asked a panel of central bankers whether they were doing enough to explain the limits of their own powers, to focus the public on the importance of fiscal policy. “Everyone is sort of waiting for the next pronouncement about monetary policy when that’s really not the central issue,” Mr. Henry, an expert on international development, said in an interview. “I think it’s important to communicate the limitations of what central bank policies can actually do to drive long-run growth. Central banks have done a real good job restoring stability, and we’re at a point now where most of what needs to happen, needs to happen through structural reform.” Ms. Yellen and other central bankers do make this point with some regularity, but they also tend to do it with considerable circumspection. On Friday, Ms. Yellen waited until the final paragraphs of her speech to mention that “fiscal policies and structural reforms can play an important role in strengthening the U.S. economy.” Both Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, have called for increased government spending in areas including infrastructure . Those plans, however, would require support from Congress, where Republicans, worried about the federal debt, have prevented spending increases in recent years. The debt already is large by historical standards. And running up the tab during a period when the economy is growing, if slowly, may make it harder to spend freely during a future recession, when the need for government stimulus is more acute. But Douglas W. Elmendorf, the dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard, argued in a recent paper written with Louise Sheiner, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that the sensible solution is to spend money now and deal with the debt later. “A rush to reduce budget deficits after 2010 was the biggest error in this downturn,” Mr. Elmendorf, former head of the Congressional Budget Office, said in a May presentation on the nation’s economic woes. Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, chose this conference two years ago to declare that European governments should increase fiscal spending even as the bank expanded its own stimulus campaign. (Such spending would be “helpful,” he said, in the understated language of a central banker.) But that speech and subsequent pleas have not produced any noticeable effect on Germany, the country whose trade surplus is at the heart of Europe’s problems. At this year’s conference, Mr. Coeuré described the efforts of European governments as “half-baked and halfhearted.” But he made clear that the E.C.B. would press on by itself. “I would argue that this fundamentally doesn’t impair our ability to achieve our objective, but it has a strong impact on the way we do it,” he said. Haruhiko Kuroda, the governor of the Bank of Japan, expressed a similar mix of helplessness and optimism. Japan has struggled with low inflation and slow growth for decades, and the bank’s recent campaign to address the problem is perhaps the most aggressive of any developed nation. Yet the Japanese government has undermined those efforts, for example by imposing a large tax increase. “I agree that monetary policy cannot do all things without the help of fiscal policy and structural policies,” Mr. Kuroda said on Saturday. Asked what could be done to secure such help, he said that he met with the prime minister once or twice a month. “In that sense,” he said, “the Bank of Japan is provided the opportunity to speak up.”

US Economy
Interest rate
Economy
Banking and Finance
Inflation
Federal Reserve
Christopher A Sims
Janet L Yellen