Big Question on New York State Tests: How Many Will Opt Out?

Abstract: The state tests for New York’s third- through eighth-grade students that began on Tuesday are shorter this year. Students will now be able to take them without the strain of a time limit. And the results will no longer affect the job ratings of teachers. But those changes were not enough for Ilana Greenberg, a parent at Public School 261 in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Her fourth-grade daughter is not taking the tests this year, her second year of sitting them out. “What was done, some of the things were very good,” Ms. Greenberg said. “But there is so much more to go.” As the testing got underway at schools around the state, education officials and activists on both sides of the testing issue were waiting to see how many parents felt the same way. Last year, 20 percent of students declined to take the exams statewide , though the number in New York City was just 1.4 percent. Members of the so-called opt-out movement, a cocktail of parent and union activism, were unappeased by the changes to the tests and pushed this year for even more students to refuse. On the other side was a coalition of business organizations and civil rights groups, who urged parents to have their children take the tests, arguing that they were necessary to hold schools accountable and reveal gaps in achievement among racial groups and between rich and poor students. In recent weeks, the state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, visited schools to spread the word about the changes, and has encouraged parents to have their children participate. Any hope for a coherent push from state education officials was badly muddled, however, when the newly elected chancellor of the Board of Regents, Betty A. Rosa, the state’s highest-ranking education official, said that as a parent, she would opt her children out of the tests this year if they were of testing age. This was a remarkable change from the stance of her predecessor, Merryl H. Tisch, who was a supporter of the tests. One of the loudest voices in favor of testing in recent days has been that of the New York City schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, who said that opting out would be “teaching kids that it’s O.K. not to do the whole work.” At P.S. 261, Ms. Greenberg said that the most recent numbers given to her by the school administration suggested that the number of students opting out would be down somewhat from last year, when 65 percent of eligible students did not take the test. She said there had been some concern early in the year that a high opt-out rate might lead to the school’s not being in good standing with the state. While those concerns were largely allayed, she said, the opt-out activists got a late start in trying to persuade parents to refuse the tests. P.S. 261 has a racially mixed student body, with white students making up a plurality, and 41 percent of students come from families receiving some form of public assistance. In 2014, 43 percent of students passed the reading tests, and 49 percent passed the math tests. Last year, with so many students opting out, the passing rates went up to 60 percent in reading and math. Citywide, last year, 30 percent of students passed the reading exam and 36 percent passed the math. Alfred Zollinger, another parent at the school, said he and his wife opted their daughter out last year, in third grade, but had decided to let her take the tests this year. Mr. Zollinger said he was pleased by the decisions to shorten the tests and make them untimed. He said the temperature of the discussion seemed to be lower at the school this year, with parents receiving fewer fliers and emails about opting out. “Last year it was really in the air, it was everywhere, and that just kind of died down,” Mr. Zollinger said. But Eric Mihelbergel, an opt-out activist in Tonawanda, N.Y., near Buffalo, said he believed the rallies, social media messages and word-of-mouth among parents would lead to even higher refusal numbers this year. “Parents see through those minor, cosmetic changes” made by the state, Mr. Mihelbergel said. “I think the numbers are going to be just as big as last year, or bigger.” In New York City, the opt-out movement has not caught on with many black and Hispanic parents, whose children overwhelmingly sit for the tests. That seemed likely to be true again on Tuesday at P.S. 173, an elementary school in Washington Heights, where most of the students are Hispanic and many of them come from poor families. Last year, 22 percent of students were proficient on the state reading tests and 35 percent scored as proficient in math. Sumaya Ali, who has two children at the school and a third in middle school, said on Tuesday morning that they were taking the tests. “I think it’s important, testing, to see how your children are actually doing,” Ms. Ali said. “I want to see how they score.” Though she never considered having them refuse, she too was pleased by one particular change in the tests. “The best thing this year is that the tests are untimed,” she said. “So there’s no pressure.”

Tests
K-12 Education
NYC Department of Education
New York


Lyft Hopes to Coax Commuters to Leave Their Cars

Abstract: Today, like every weekday, about three-quarters of the nation’s adult workers — more than 100 million Americans — drove to work alone. It was ever thus: Americans, it seems, just don’t like to travel together. John Zimmer and Logan Green, the founders of the ride service Lyft, say they want to change that. Lyft, like its better-known rival Uber, lets you call a car using a smartphone app, and a driver who is also using the app rushes over to pick you up. This week, beginning in San Francisco, Lyft will introduce a new feature, Lyft Line, that instantly matches riders who are traveling between similar places at similar times, and offers each of them a deep discount to share a ride rather than go solo. The plan is a clever way for a car-sharing app to go beyond reducing our dependence on private car ownership — with car-pooling, it could end up reducing the number of cars on the road. The discounts offered by Lyft Line range from 10 to 60 percent off a standard ride; on average, the company expects people to save about 30 to 40 percent for sharing. These discounts would mean traveling from San Francisco’s popular Mission neighborhood to the Financial District for about $5 a ride; using standard Lyft, Uber or a taxi, the same ride might cost $9 or more. Even better, unlike Uber and Lyft’s regular service, Lyft Line will show you a guaranteed price before you book the car, rather than after your ride. Image Credit Stuart Goldenberg At these prices, Lyft Line could become one of the cheapest ways to travel between many parts of the city — so cheap that people might use it to go to and from work daily, instead of driving alone. Though the service will be available in San Francisco at first, Lyft has run simulations of Line using its data from other regions, and it believes the service will work well in many suburbs and cities across the nation. It plans to begin rolling out Lyft Line elsewhere within a few months. The company’s high hopes for Lyft Line have yet to meet the real world, where any number of fiascos could intervene. For one, there is likely to be competition. Lyft’s archrival, Uber, announced on Tuesday that it was testing a similar service, UberPool, at first available to a limited number of users on an invitation-only basis. Uber gave few details about what its service would look like, saying only that its car-pooling could save riders 40 percent. Last month, Lyft’s New York introduction was delayed by regulators . The company is introducing Line cautiously to avoid any surprises. At first, it will be available only through Lyft’s app on Apple devices; Android will come later. Also, for now, rides are capped at three people — a driver and two passengers. The company plans to lift that cap eventually. But that gets to the biggest unknown — whether people will be willing to share rides with strangers. So far, Lyft has tested the service only with employees, not with people who have no connection to one another. It’s worth remembering that sharing has never been particularly popular in America; according to the Census Bureau, car-pooling hit a recent peak in the 1970s, when about 20 percent of Americans commuted to work by car pool. By 2008, just over 10 percent did. Lyft is betting that it can use economic incentives to change those attitudes. The company expects people to still use its standard, single-rider service when they’re in a hurry, but Lyft’s founders say Lyft Line is the future of the company’s ambitions. Image Logan Green, left, and John Zimmer started Lyft, a ride-sharing service. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times “We don’t want to be the option that people use only when they’re heading out for a nice evening,” said Mr. Green, Lyft’s chief executive. “We want to be something that people use twice a day, every day.” One persistent criticism of ride-sharing apps is that they don’t do much to reduce the number of cars on the road. When you call up a Lyft or Uber ride, you are simply replacing your own car with one driven by a paid driver. Mr. Zimmer and Mr. Green say they have been vexed by this criticism, because encouraging car-pooling has always been one of their goals. In some ways Lyft Line is a reprise of Zimride, a company the pair started in 2007. A car-pooling service in which people arrange shared long-distance trips through a website, Zimride was inspired by Mr. Green’s visit to Zimbabwe, where private high-occupancy minivans are one of the most popular ways of getting around. But like other tech-enabled car-pooling services, Zimride, which was purchased last year by the car rental company Enterprise Holdings, hasn’t pushed many people to share. One problem is that to be flexible and reliable enough to replace people’s cars, a car-pooling service needs to have a lot of riders and drivers, but to get a lot of people, it needs to offer a flexible and reliable service. “You need a substantial database so that when people request a ride, the service can fulfill it without long wait times,” said Susan Shaheen, the co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a history of car-pooling in North America . Image The company’s new Lyft Line app matches travelers on similar paths. That’s where Lyft may have an advantage. In its years as a single-ride service, it has built a huge ridership; the company says it is now completing millions of rides a month, and the number of drivers and riders using the app have tripled since January. What’s more, Lyft has cultivated a casual brand identity that may be better suited to car-sharing than that of its more upscale rival Uber. Lyft cars display a pink mustache on the grille, and when you get in, you are supposed to sit in the front seat, not the back. The driver greets you with a fist bump, an implicit invitation to chat, and sometimes goodies. A few weeks ago, one Lyft driver served me homemade lemon bread. The experience feels less mercenary than taking an Uber ride, as if you’re engaging a friend rather than a chauffeur, which is exactly the atmosphere you’d want in a daily car pool. In a live demo that the company showed me last week, Lyft Line worked elegantly. To start a shared ride, you load up the Lyft app, select the Line service and type in your destination. The system then analyzes Lyft’s ridership data to calculate the odds that another rider will be heading the same way; the higher the odds, the greater the discount. If you accept Lyft’s price, a car is dispatched to pick you up. While the car heads out, the app searches for another person who is heading your way. It will match only people whose routes won’t take you more than five minutes out of your way. If Lyft finds someone to ride with you, the driver will pick you up, then pick the other person up, and will then drop each of you off. Sometimes the app won’t find someone to ride with you, in which case you luck out — you get to ride solo, but you get the discounted price anyway. Lyft says that it may lose money when matches fail, but it has designed the system to be profitable over all. It also expects Line to spur ridership. Lyft’s drivers might do well under the plan, too, because each shared ride will be longer than a standard ride, making for less downtime. If it takes off, then, Lyft Line would be a win for commuters, the environment and for drivers. Unless, that is, we all balk at sharing. That wouldn’t be a surprise. But it would be a shame.

Lyft
Carpool
Car Service
Mobile Apps
Uber
San Francisco


Obama Dedicates 9/11 Memorial Museum

Abstract: President Obama on Thursday dedicated the long-awaited museum commemorating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with a mournful elegy to the victims, a stirring tribute to the heroes and a firm resolve to never let terrorists shatter the spirit of America. “No act of terror can match the strength or the character of our country,” Mr. Obama told a crowd that included family members of those slain and other invited guests in the cavernous underground hall of the National September 11 Memorial Museum. “Like the great wall and bedrock that embrace us today,” he added, “nothing can ever break us. Nothing can change who we are as Americans.” The president’s remarks highlighted a somber ceremony at the new institution marking the worst foreign attack on American soil, one that shocked the world and ushered in a new era of fear, war, determination and clashes of values while redefining America’s place in the world. Surrounded by the twisted and graffiti-inscribed steel remnants of New York’s twin towers, the president and the other guests vowed never to forget. Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg played host for the event, joined by a plethora of other major figures from the region, including Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Gov. George E. Pataki. Outside, flags were at half-staff on the memorial plaza, where bronze panels bear the names of the nearly 3,000 people who perished in New York, Northern Virginia and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, and in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. A New Story Told at Ground Zero A guided tour of the National September 11 Memorial Museum. Inside, the event was held in the museum’s Foundation Hall, 70 feet beneath ground level, at bedrock, with around 700 invited guests attending. Mr. Obama, solemn and quiet, used his remarks not to talk about the events that followed that day, the wars he has tried to end and the policies he has reshaped but continued. Instead, he focused on the victims who perished in flames and smoke and those who tried to save them. “Here we tell their story, so that generations yet unborn will never forget, of co-workers who led others to safety,” he said. He singled out the heroism of a young man with a red bandanna who helped save people in the south tower before it collapsed. His identity was long unknown until months later when his mother read an article about the mysterious savior with the red bandanna and recognized him. He was Welles Crowther, 24. “He had a big laugh and a joy of life and dreams of seeing the world,” Mr. Obama said. “He worked in finance, but he had also been a volunteer firefighter. And after the planes hit, he put on that bandanna and spent his final moments saving others.” 9/11 Artifacts, and the Stories They Tell At the National September 11 Memorial Museum, artifacts help tell the story of the nearly 3,000 people who died that day. A collection of videos looks at a few of those objects. Joining Mr. Obama for a tour of the museum before the ceremony were former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. A spokesman for former President George W. Bush, who was in office on the day of the attacks, said he was invited but could not make it because of a scheduling conflict. Mr. Obama’s remarks were crisp and short. He was given just three minutes on the program, although he took nine, an unusually short speech for a president at such a high-profile event. But he was not the main focus of the day. In addition to the political figures, survivors and relatives of victims told their stories in videos projected on the wall or from the podium — including Alison Crowther, who was Mr. Crowther’s mother, and Ling Young, who was among those he saved that day. Eileen Fagan, whose sister Patricia died on the 98th floor of the south tower, also attended the ceremony. Some of her sister’s remains have been identified, and she chose to leave part of them in a specially built medical examiner’s repository at the site, which is separated from the museum by a wall. “Everyone here can feel the presence of their loved one, in a very real way,” she said. “I walked with Pat through the World Trade Center so many times and I feel like I am walking with Pat again. It’s a good feeling, a little bit sad, but a good feeling.” As for Mr. Obama, he was a state senator in Illinois on the day of the attacks. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” he recalled hearing about the first plane hitting the tower while listening to the radio in a car on the way to a legislative hearing in Chicago. By the time he arrived, the second tower had been hit and the government office in Chicago was evacuated. Video Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York delivered his remarks during the dedication ceremony in Foundation Hall at the National September 11 Memorial Museum at ground zero. Credit Credit Pool photo by Richard Drew/Getty Images “Up and down the streets, people gathered, staring at the sky and at the Sears Tower,” he wrote. “Later, in my law office, a group of us sat motionless as the nightmare images unfolded across the TV screen.” While he was not seared by the experience in the same way as Mr. Bush, who took from it a mission to tackle terrorism around the world and protect America from any further attack, it fell to Mr. Obama to inherit the wars that followed when he took over the Oval Office in 2009. He has spent the last five years trying to find what he considers the right balance in the nation’s struggle with terrorism. He continued many of Mr. Bush’s counterterrorism policies, including drone strikes in the tribal regions of Pakistan and surveillance programs that have stirred international controversy, and brought to a dramatic finish the global manhunt for Osama bin Laden with a bold special forces raid that ended in the death of bin Laden. But Mr. Obama has sought to move away from what he sees as a permanent, all-consuming war on terror. He pulled all American troops from Iraq and plans to pull nearly all from Afghanistan by the end of the year. And yet many of his ideas for reshaping American national security have not been brought to fruition, whether it be restricting the C.I.A. involvement in drones or closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Obama talked about none of that on Thursday. With Michelle Obama, Mr. Bloomberg and the Clintons, he toured the exhibits beforehand, stopping to stare at photographs of victims mounted on a wall, examining a battered New York Fire Department ladder truck and passing a wall engraved by a Virgil quote: “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time.” He called it “a profound and moving experience,” and he noted that one of the items on display was a red bandanna that once belonged to Welles Crowther. “And from this day forward,” Mr. Obama said, “all those who come here will have a chance to know the sacrifice of a young man who, like so many, gave his life so others might live.”

National September 11 Memorial and Museum


Test for a Court as Prosecutors Face Liberia’s Ex-Ruler

Abstract: PARIS — Charles G. Taylor , the former president of Liberia , has appeared as a confident witness at his own war crimes trial through more than 50 days, casting himself as a man striving for peace — not the warlord who brought death and havoc in West Africa, as prosecutors portray him. Time and again, he has denied accusations that he enriched himself from the nation’s coffers or ran smuggling operations of weapons and diamonds. He said he had nothing to do with enslaving child soldiers or killing or hacking off the limbs of villagers outside Liberia’s borders. Rather, he claimed, he had settled disputes between warring factions and obtained the release of abducted United Nations peacekeepers . The charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity brought against him at his trial in The Hague, he said, “are all lies.” Now that he has told his side of the story, it is the prosecutors’ turn to cross-examine, and they say that Mr. Taylor’s long testimony in the trial will provide even more ammunition for them: they accused him of lying repeatedly under oath. They said they would now also seek to impeach him as a witness, which could seriously weaken his defense. Mr. Taylor’s long and direct testimony is unusual for international war crimes trials, where only a few defendants have spent even short periods on the stand. Defense lawyers usually warn talkative clients of the perils of being questioned during cross-examination. Mr. Taylor’s cross-examination, now under way, is expected to last several weeks. One of the prosecution’s first steps has been to challenge Mr. Taylor’s testimony under oath that he had never funneled government funds into private accounts. On the witness stand, he repeatedly dared his accusers to show any financial wrongdoing. In a surprise move this month, prosecutors presented records of a bank account opened in 1999 in Mr. Taylor’s name, with deposits adding up to more than $14 million. “This was a covert account,” Mr. Taylor conceded, appearing uncomfortable. The money was the government’s, not his own, he said. Bags of cash were withdrawn from the account and taken to his mansion to pay for arms, ammunition and special operations, he continued. “It was used covertly, and I’m under no obligation to tell you what those covert operations were.” A close to $2 million deposit came from a timber company, and a $3.5 million deposit was made by the government of Taiwan, the prosecutor noted. “Why is it covert?” the prosecutor asked. “Because it is going directly into your pocket?” No, Mr. Taylor replied. These were secret government funds, he explained. If the money had gone to the central bank, he said, “the I.M.F. and the World Bank would know about it.” And at the time, Liberia was under an international arms embargo, he recalled. The exchange was a telling moment in a complex trial that touches on a web of violence and corruption reaching from Liberia into Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast. Prosecutors say that Mr. Taylor, in his drive to expand his power in the region, was at the center of it all. An international panel of four judges, based in The Hague, is trying Mr. Taylor specifically for arming and controlling a brutal rebel force in Sierra Leone during the country’s 1991-2002 civil war that led to the deaths of some 200,000 people. His indictment holds him accountable for the rebels’ crimes as they pillaged, killed and raped, used children as soldiers and hacked off hands to terrorize civilians. Many others died in his home country, Liberia, but events there are not within the mandate of the court. Much is at stake at this first war crimes trial of an African president. It is seen as a new test for trying a former head of state in an international tribunal. The case against Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president, ended inconclusively when he died in his cell in The Hague. The court has also come under greater scrutiny from some African governments since another African leader, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, has been sought by a different international court on charges similar to those leveled against Mr. Taylor. African leaders so far have said they will not cooperate in detaining Sudan’s president. Mr. Taylor’s trial, which began in earnest in January 2008 after a halting start and an initial boycott by the defendant, has seemed to go smoothly, not least because of the calm and respectful court manners displayed by Mr. Taylor and his defense team. But budget problems continue to haunt the Special Court for Sierra Leone , which is backed by the United Nations but financed through voluntary contributions. Eight other defendants have been tried and sentenced by the court, and Mr. Taylor’s is the last case. But in recent days anxious court officials said the Taylor case could come to a standstill for lack of money early next year because so far they had pledges for less than half of the $18 million needed for 2010. More than $1 million a year goes to salaries and rent for Mr. Taylor’s defense team. He has claimed penury, even though he is accused of having built a fortune in kickbacks from licenses and sales of the array of natural resources of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Mr. Taylor, when forced out of office in 2003, claimed to own real estate worth $1.5 million. But he said that he had no hidden fortune and that his presidential salary was only $2,000 per month. British lawyers and investigators on several continents have been hunting for Mr. Taylor’s legendary missing wealth. He has not been charged with stealing in Liberia, but any hidden accounts or assets are considered vital for prosecutors. No one knows how much money was stolen during the violence of the 1990s or raised from the diamond fields of Sierra Leone or parts of Guinea. Prosecutors said that timber exports from Liberia were stepped up during the war, and several witnesses, including members of Mr. Taylor’s inner circle, have testified that rebel commanders brought raw diamonds to Mr. Taylor’s mansion and left with weapons. Even though prosecutors rested their case earlier this year, after presenting 91 witnesses, they are now permitted to enter new evidence as they cross-examine Mr. Taylor. The defense is also expected to call several dozen witnesses next year.

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


Developers Have High Hopes for a Washington Area

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A decade ago, NoMa, a stretch of the nation’s capital north of Massachusetts Avenue, was nowhere. Today, although still a work in progress, it’s Washington’s newest and hottest commercial neighborhood, with residential development expected to follow. The name itself, which began as a marketing ploy to mimic trendy New York neighborhoods like SoHo and TriBeCa, has caught on among a fraternity of developers, builders and city planners, if not yet with the general public. But with a sluggish economy, NoMa had a second-quarter office vacancy rate of 14.5 percent, much of it newly built space. This rate is the highest of Washington’s submarkets, according to an analysis by Grubb & Ellis, and there are concerns in the current economic crisis about the pace of development. The corridor is two or three blocks wide and stretches about a mile north from Union Station, Washington’s train terminal, and within sight of the Capitol dome. The area formerly held mainly parking lots, warehouses and light industry. Train tracks and an elevated Metro subway line run north-south through the neighborhood, dividing but also anchoring it with two Metro stops, at Union Station and New York Avenue. The newer station, the one at New York Avenue, is “really the catalyst,” said Elizabeth Price, president of the nonprofit NoMa Business Improvement District, an association of commercial property owners formed to promote and enhance the area. The $100 million rail station, which opened in 2004, was financed in part with $25 million from commercial property owners. It is the only one in the 86-station, 103-mile system that received private funds, as well as $50 million from the United States Department of Transportation and $25 million from the District of Columbia. The construction of the station was part of a building boom that is rapidly bringing daytime office workers to NoMa. In 2001, the area became home to XM Satellite Radio; the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms moved in, with 1,500 employees, in September 2007. They are to be joined by major offices of the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and National Public Radio. Several office buildings and hotels are under construction, totaling about 2.8 million square feet. Rental apartments are scheduled to be built, and retailing is starting to appear. Since 2004, NoMa has received $1.5 billion in new private investment, and the total might grow to $7 billion as the neighborhood develops. “It’s greatly underserved, and there’s going to be huge demand” for stores and restaurants to serve the workers in the area, said William Orlove, leasing director of JBG Rosenthal Retail. “In last two years, we’ve seen things go from two or three retailers to half a dozen to a dozen. The growth is going to be meteoric.” NoMa seemed to gain momentum in March with a flurry of announcements. One day, NPR said it planned to move its headquarters in 2012 into a former telephone company warehouse. The next day, the Justice Department said it had agreed to a 15-year lease, starting in 2010, for 521,000 square feet to house 2,000 criminal division employees in a proposed 12-story office building, part of a 1.4-million-square-foot mixed-use project known as Constitution Square, which is being developed by StonebridgeCarras, based in Bethesda, Md. “That was a seismic change in people’s perception of NoMa, all within three weeks,” said Doug Firstenberg, a principal of StonebridgeCarras. “Until then, I think people’s perception was, ‘Great plan, great vision, lots of promise, but who are going to be first beside A.T.F. to come to NoMa?’ ” Construction of Constitution Square began in April. Adjoining the New York Avenue Metro station, the project will also have a Harris Teeter supermarket, a 440-unit rental apartment building and a 204-room Hilton Garden Hotel. “By the time D.O.J. moves in, the NoMa neighborhood will be well on its way to realizing its mixed-use vision with a total of some 20 million square feet of new office, retail, residential and hotel space,” Ms. Price, the head of the business improvement district, said in a statement at the time of the announcement. For now, however, NoMa has 836,000 square feet of vacant office space, according to Grubb & Ellis, and that may rise as a major office building recently opened and another is to be completed next summer. “It’s really too early to tell” how the current financial crisis will affect NoMa, Ms. Price said, “because things are changing so quickly. We were already in a tight credit situation this summer. I guess I’m cautiously optimistic.” It is possible that greater government regulation of the financial system could bolster the demand for office space as agencies are beefed up, she said. “I’m hopeful this will play out and we’ll get back to a more healthy market sooner rather than later,” Ms. Price said. Builders and leasing agents say they are hopeful that the economy will have rebounded by the time the new buildings under construction or planned for NoMa are completed. “Our job is to procure financing to do our business as we move forward, and we’re still doing that,” said Robert Seldin, senior vice president of Archstone-Smith, a national apartment development company with ties to Lehman Brothers. The company is still looking for a construction loan to build a 469-unit rental building in NoMa. “The fundamentals of business are still sound,” he said. “It’s a question of who has money to lend and under what terms.” For District of Columbia officials, NoMa represents a logical eastward extension of the city’s recent economic boom, which caused vacancies to decline and rents to rise in its central business district. Tenants and builders saw NoMa as attractive, in part because of cheaper rents resulting from lower land costs. City officials initially thought the area would develop as a high-tech corridor, but that notion evaporated with the dot-com bust of the late 1990s. Then XM Radio moved there, and the New York Avenue Metro rail station opened. “Frankly, it’s taken a long time,” said Chance Patterson, XM’s vice president for corporate affairs. “While the last two or three years has been sort of like gangbusters, with one site broken ground after the next, there was a five-year period when it was a challenge.” Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting delegate in Congress, said she pushed the General Services Administration to steer federal agencies that might have preferred downtown locations to NoMa, primarily because of its attractive prices. Mike McGill, a spokesman for the G.S.A., said: “We’re now at a point where NoMa is becoming a prestigious enough address that it’s fine. All the cards indicate NoMa’s going to be a hot address.” The city government has lured private developers to NoMa with long-term tax abatements, amounting to as much as $35 million near the New York Avenue Metro station, according to Neil Albert, the deputy mayor for planning and economic development. The resulting lower rents may attract nonprofits to locate in the neighborhood, he added. Bill Dickinson, senior director of brokerage for the Rappoport Companies, leasing agent for two large office buildings and one residential project in NoMa, says he thinks the long-term outlook is bright. “In eight or 10 years,” he said, “it’s clearly going to be a thriving urban environment.”

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


Decline in Value of Canadian Dollar Could Affect N.H.L. Salary Cap

Abstract: The N.H.L.’s general managers count on the salary cap to rise every year. But what if, as some fear, it does not go up next season? The defending champion Los Angeles Kings might not have the cap space to retain Justin Williams, scorer of more Game 7 points than anyone else in league history. The Boston Bruins might have to part with Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug or another of their defensemen of the future. The Rangers would have to make some hard decisions about Martin St. Louis, Derek Stepan, Mats Zuccarello, Carl Hagelin and Marc Staal, who all become free agents next summer. The reason for all this trepidation? The falling Canadian dollar. But league officials say the speculation is overblown. “I expect there to be a healthy rise in the salary cap for next season,” Bill Daly, the deputy commissioner, said last week. “The Canadian dollar would have to continue to fall in a material way for that to change.” For the N.H.L., a strong Canadian dollar means strong business growth. But with the Canadian dollar skidding, speculation is rife that the league’s bottom line may suffer, triggering a cascade of side effects, including a stagnant salary cap for the 2015-16 season. Next season’s salary cap is certain to be a main topic of discussion when the N.H.L.’s Board of Governors meets Dec. 8 and 9 in Boca Raton, Fla. The salary cap is tied to league revenue. When the Canadian dollar falls, the portion of league revenue generated by the N.H.L.’s seven Canadian teams diminishes as well. That affects the salary cap. “It’s like throwing a dart at a dartboard — you make your best guess,” said Cyril Leeder, president of the Ottawa Senators. “We’ll be making contingency plans for if the cap goes up, cap stays the same, cap comes down. The league will advise us throughout the year.” The salary cap has climbed steadily every non-lockout year since it was instituted for 2005-6, and general managers have come to count on that rise when they sign players. This season the cap is at $69 million per team. Early forecasts predicted it to increase to $74 million for next season, but that may prove optimistic. Image The Boston Bruins might have to part with Dougie Hamilton, right, Torey Krug or another of their defensemen of the future. Credit Claus Andersen/Getty Images The Canadian dollar, which matched the American dollar as recently as February 2013, now trades at just over 88 cents. A Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce report issued in September estimated that the loonie (so called because it is engraved with an image of a loon) will fall below 85 cents. How can the state of the Canadian dollar affect the fiscal health of United States hockey clubs? “Canadian teams earn in Canadian dollars but pay their players in American dollars, so in U.S. dollar terms they’ve lost more than 10 percent of their revenues from a year and a half ago,” said Glen Hodgson, chief economist of the research group The Conference Board of Canada . Even though Canadian teams make up only 23 percent of the N.H.L., by most estimates they contribute about 35 percent of revenue. “So there clearly has to be an effect on overall revenue for the league, on the salary cap, on revenue sharing,” Hodgson said. Last season, Commissioner Gary Bettman conceded that the falling loonie lowered the league’s financial performance slightly. It also cut into growth of this season’s salary cap by about $2 million (to $69 million, from $64.3 million in 2013-14). Image The defending champion Los Angeles Kings might not have the cap space to retain Justin Williams, left. Credit Chris Carlson/Associated Press Even the bulk of the league’s television money comes from Canada. But Rogers Communications’ 12-year, $5.2 billion broadcast deal is paid in Canadian dollars, so while that contract was worth $4.9 billion in United States dollars when it was signed a year ago, it is worth $4.6 billion today. A weaker Canadian dollar could have other side effects. If the league expands or existing teams in Florida or Arizona move, a faltering loonie could hurt Quebec City’s bid to land a franchise since, as a small Canadian city, it would contribute less revenue to the N.H.L. If Quebec City’s chances diminish, the odds improve for Seattle and Las Vegas. Still, an 88-cent loonie is a far cry from the mid-1990s, when it traded below 75 cents and was a major factor in moves to the United States by Quebec’s previous team, the Nordiques, and the original Winnipeg Jets. The currency continued to plunge, hitting a low of 62 cents in 2002. That period, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, was not a good one for the N.H.L. Franchise shifts, negligible television revenue and shrinking visibility in the United States were some of the biggest problems confronting the league. After 2005, the league rebounded financially — a period that has coincided with a surge in the Canadian dollar. Image The Rangers might have to make a hard decision about Marc Staal, who becomes a free agent next summer. Credit Bill Streicher/Reuters That was only one factor, others being the creation of the Winter Classic; Stanley Cups in Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Boston; N.H.L. participation at the Winter Olympics; cost certainty for owners after two lockouts; and lucrative television contracts on both sides of the border. But the influence of a stronger Canadian dollar is unmistakable. It is reflected in Forbes magazine’s annual estimates of N.H.L. franchise values. In 2002, the average Canadian-based team ranked 21st in value out of the league’s 30 franchises. In 2013, the average Canadian team’s value had risen to ninth. Despite the loonie’s recent drop, the Forbes list released last Tuesday still puts the average Canadian team’s value at 10th. Daly agrees that a stronger Canadian dollar helps the N.H.L. as a whole. “The league is obviously healthier when the dollars are closer to par,” he said. “But I think the business success of the league and the clubs over the last several years stands on its own.” Hodgson and other Canadian economists say the loonie would have to drop well below 85 cents to have a significant impact on the N.H.L.’s nearly $4 billion-a-year business. But, as Bettman has noted, the league watches the exchange rates every day. Its financial health depends on it.

Ice hockey
Canada
Currency
Wages and salaries
NHL


21st Century Fox Sells Stake in Chinese TV Company

Abstract: The television, cable and movie conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch, 21st Century Fox, said on Thursday that it would sell its 47 percent stake in Star China TV. The move was the latest step the company has taken to reduce its position in China. Mr. Murdoch had once held out hopes that China would be a vast new and lucrative market, but he and other American media companies have been frustrated by tight regulations imposed by the Chinese government, which have prevented them from building mass audiences in many parts of the country. The 47 percent stake will be bought by Star China TV’s majority shareholder, China Media Capital, a Chinese media company. Formed in 2010, Star China had been a joint venture with News Corporation that operates three 24-hour Mandarin channels. Last summer, 21st Century Fox was separated from News Corporation, which retained the company’s publishing assets. Mr. Murdoch recently divorced his wife, Wendi Deng, who was born in China and worked at Star China TV. While 21st Century’s Asian operations are run by Mr. Murdoch’s son James, Ms. Deng had played a role in seeking media opportunities there for her husband.

TV
21st Century Fox
News Corp
China
Rupert Murdoch
James R Murdoch


New Ambitions for the Symphony of Westchester

Abstract: What’s in a name? Plenty, according to the conductor Barry Hoffman. For 26 seasons, the ensemble Mr. Hoffman founded in 1984 stuck to one name — the Westchester Chamber Orchestra — and with it, repertory of modest scale. But in 2010, the group changed its name to the Westchester Chamber Symphony, and opened the season with a Tchaikovsky symphony for which it added a dozen musicians to its ranks, bringing the roster to 60. That move was followed by the occasional programming of other big pieces, which set in motion a push to expand the orchestra permanently — and to change its name yet again. Hoping that a fuller sound and larger-scale repertory will draw interest, Mr. Hoffman, who is also the orchestra’s executive director, says he is now committed to hiring 60 to 70 musicians for three of its four regular-season concerts. At the same time, he has dropped “chamber” from the orchestra’s name, rechristening it the Symphony of Westchester and aggressively programming works that befit the reconfigured enterprise. The 2013-14 season opened in December with a well-received account of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. “So far, so good,” Mr. Hoffman said at his home in New Rochelle last month, sipping tea and thumbing through programs from the orchestra’s 30-year history. That history is one with moments of real distinction, including the commissioning of works by the composers Seymour Barab, Charles Griffin and Jon Deak, whose “Duo Concertante for Violin and Chamber Orchestra” had its premiere in 2000 with the Westchester Chamber Orchestra and, as soloists, the New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and his wife, the violist Karen Dreyfus. Image The flutist Carol Wincenc will perform Feb. 9 with the Symphony of Westchester. Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times Mr. Hoffman will build on that history when, on Feb. 9, he presents the flutist Carol Wincenc as soloist on Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 1 in G. The concert will represent a return engagement for Ms. Wincenc, a longtime professor at the Juilliard School who enjoys an international reputation. Ms. Wincenc has also agreed to sit in as a section player on Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor. In consenting to return, Ms. Wincenc praised the quality of Mr. Hoffman’s recruitment — “He gets wonderful people,” she said — and the consistency of the orchestra’s sound. But, she said, maintaining that consistency as the orchestra expanded its string section by about a third, to 40, was a “very difficult” undertaking. “It’s a very dramatic change in texture,” she said. Mr. Hoffman noted the care with which the expansion was being carried out, from the vetting of new players to the scrutinizing of the stage at the Christopher J. Murphy Auditorium at Iona College in New Rochelle, where the orchestra has played since 1996. Before the expansion was confirmed, he said, he took to the stage, measuring tape in hand, and painstakingly calculated whether it could accommodate 70 musicians, including a piano. He will close the season on May 3 with an all-Gershwin program, featuring “Rhapsody in Blue,” that will fill the stage to capacity. “It’s a very tight fit,” Mr. Hoffman said, “but it will work.” That kind of drive is typical of Mr. Hoffman, who fashioned an ensemble from almost nothing, and has kept it going on a relative shoestring. Mr. Hoffman said his annual budget was approximately $100,000, about one-tenth that of Westchester County’s biggest regional orchestra, the Westchester Philharmonic. (The level of talent and competition among New York-area musicians is great, helping keep budgets down for freelance slots in top community orchestras like Mr. Hoffman’s.) Image Barry Hoffman, the conductor and executive director of the Symphony of Westchester, founded the group in 1984 as the Westchester Chamber Orchestra. Credit John Vecchiolla The expansion has its downside. Mr. Hoffman said he was paying for the additional musicians by eliminating a rehearsal, leaving the schedule with two four-hour sessions: one for strings alone and the other for full orchestra with soloist. For the moment, he is also avoiding the commissioning of new works. On the upside, Mr. Hoffman says he will now be able to shape an image of an orchestra transformed, one that offers expansive productions with regularity. Among the possibilities: Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” and, in tandem with a choral group, Handel’s “Messiah.” Next season, he is planning an all-Brahms concert, which will include the Second Symphony and the “Academic Festival” Overture. What he will not do, he said, is deviate from “bread and butter” repertory. That doesn’t mean programming Classical- and Romantic-era pieces to the exclusion of more recent material; Copland’s postwar works, for example, have proved popular. It does mean avoiding serialists like Schoenberg and Webern, whose music, in the single concert on which it was programmed, barely filled half the hall. “I’d like to be a little bit more experimental,” he said, “but you can’t gamble with the income of the orchestra.” Image Mr. Hoffman hopes to offer expansive productions with regularity. Credit John Vecchiolla Recent performances have filled about two-thirds of the auditorium’s seats, he said. But some shows do sell out and, should that begin to happen with frequency, he might run a repeat performance the next day. What he does not envision is seeking a different venue. Though Iona’s stage has not attracted concertgoers seeking a glamorous setting, he said, the area’s theaters generally have too much seating or stages that are too small. Just as Mr. Hoffman is expanding the orchestra’s size, he is also extending community programs, the latest being an instrumental competition organized with the Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale. The winner of the inaugural competition, Adam Jackson, 10, will perform part of a Mozart piano concerto at the concert on Feb. 9. Mr. Hoffman said interacting with schoolchildren took him back to the day his mother, a music teacher, saw how skillfully he handled himself with fellow students at the Hartt School in Hartford, which he attended before receiving his degree in violin performance at the Manhattan School of Music. “I started to direct a rehearsal,” Mr. Hoffman recalled, “and she said, ‘Gee, you should think of being a conductor.’ ” The rest, he said, is part of a history that is still being made.

Barry Hoffman
Classical music
Westchester
Music


Profit Declines for Owner of Olive Garden

Abstract: Darden Restaurants said on Friday that sales continued to slide at Olive Garden and Red Lobster, with other costs dragging down its profit by 35 percent in the latest quarter. Despite efforts to fix the marketing for the chains, sales at Olive Garden fell 3.5 percent at established locations during the quarter. At Red Lobster, the figure dropped 5.6 percent. Under pressure to deliver better results, Darden announced late last year that it planned to sell Red Lobster and focus on fixing Olive Garden. So far in June, the company said Olive Garden’s sales at established locations were flat, an improvement from the negative results over the last fiscal year. For its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended May 25, Darden earned $86.5 million, or 65 cents a share. A year earlier it earned $133.2 million, or $1.01 a share. Stripping out one-time charges, such as those associated with the sale of Red Lobster, earnings were 84 cents a share. That was still short of the 94 cents a share Wall Street expected. Total revenue rose slightly to $2.32 billion.

Darden Restaurants
Stocks,Bonds
Earnings Reports


Massey Energy’s Ex-Chairman Disputes Panel’s Finding in Mine Blast

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Two weeks after an independent government commission concluded that Massey Energy was to blame for the explosion that killed 29 coal miners last year, the company’s former chairman released a report on Thursday disputing the panel’s finding. The circumstances of the release were peculiar. It was made public this week by Bobby R. Inman , Massey’s former chairman. Mr. Inman no longer has a role in the company, after its purchase last week by Alpha Natural Resources , a Virginia-based company, but he is named in multiple lawsuits by shareholders. In a cover letter on his own letterhead dated Thursday, Mr. Inman said that the report was completed before the merger with Alpha, but that it was held at the request of Alpha executives who wanted to “minimize publicity” pre-sale. In a terse statement, Alpha stated that it “did not commission or authorize the release of this report or the letter, and was not given the opportunity to review either this report or the letter before their public release.” Alpha added that it had warned Massey before the merger that it would be “inappropriate” to release any findings before Alpha had a chance to conduct its own review of what happened, a warning that Mr. Inman, a retired Navy admiral, apparently chose not to heed. “It would have been easy just to let it slide, and I certainly don’t need any additional publicity,” Mr. Inman wrote. He chose to “release the report now on my own,” out of “a strong sense of responsibility for all those who mine coal.” The 102-page report reiterated Massey’s earlier assertion that the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia on April 5, 2010, was caused by a sudden and massive inundation of natural gas , essentially an “act of God” that would have been impossible to predict or control. That conclusion directly contradicts the May finding by a commission, led by a former federal mine safety chief, J. Davitt McAteer, that placed the blame for the explosion on Massey’s negligence and culture of putting production over safety. The Massey report also disputed the panel’s conclusion that coal dust, which had been allowed to accumulate, had carried the explosion through the mine, making it far more lethal than it might otherwise have been. It defended the mine’s ventilation system, which the commission said had helped create conditions for the blast. The report spent considerable space detailing what it said were the failures of the federal Mining, Safety and Health Administration, including, it said, secrecy, witness intimidation and obstruction of Massey investigators. Mr. McAteer disputed that assessment in a telephone interview, and said that some of the report’s conclusions “simply don’t make any sense,” like the assertion that the high levels of natural gas in the mine after the explosion were evidence that a big gas infusion was the cause. “Quite frankly, that conclusion is uninformed,” Mr. McAteer said, explaining that spikes in methane occur after virtually every mine disaster.

Massey Energy Co
Mines and Mining
Explosions
Accidents and Safety
West Virginia
Alpha Natural Resources Inc


Fear of Ruin as Disease Takes Hold of Italy’s Olive Trees

Abstract: RACALE, Italy — Across the stony heel of Italy , a peninsula ringed by the blue-green waters of the Mediterranean, olive trees have existed for centuries, shaping the landscape and producing some of the nation’s finest olive oils. Except now, many of the trees are dying. Sprinkled among the healthy trees are clusters of sick ones, denuded of leaves and standing like skeletons, their desiccated branches bereft of olives. The trees are succumbing to a bacterial outbreak that is sweeping across one of Italy’s most famous olive regions, as families who have manufactured olive oil for generations now fear ruin, even as officials in the rest of Europe fear a broader outbreak. “It is devastating,” said Enzo Manni, the director of ACLI-Racale, an olive cooperative in the heart of the outbreak area. “It is apocalyptic. I compare it to an earthquake.” Today, scientists estimate that one million olive trees in the peninsula, known as the Salento, are infected with the bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, a figure that could rise rapidly. For Italy, which trails only Spain in annual olive oil production, the outbreak has forced a bitter bargain: To prevent the bacterium from spreading north, officials are trying to quarantine the outbreak in the lower half of the Salento, where most of the contaminated trees are, by carving a buffer zone that would serve as a sort of biological firebreak. The Italian olive industry endured a terrible 2014 from bad weather and a nasty infestation of the olive fruit fly. But those are familiar problems. The bacterial outbreak — which is believed to have arrived with plants imported from Costa Rica and has already destroyed citrus trees in Brazil and vineyards in California — poses a new danger for all of European agriculture. In Brussels, the European Commission has backed off earlier proposals to cull millions of trees in the Salento and instead endorsed the Italian buffer zone as well as other surveillance ones north of the peninsula. The commission is also expected to soon enact a policy that would demand swift culling in the case of any new outbreaks in other regions. And France has moved to protect its vineyards by banning the importation of certain species of plants from Puglia, the region of Italy that includes the Salento. “The most important thing is that the disease doesn’t spread to the north,” Enrico Brivio, a European Commission spokesman, said. Of olive growers in the Salento, he added: “We sympathize with them. There are trees that have been there for hundreds of years. They are like monuments.” To drive through the southern half of the Salento is to realize that the hardest-hit areas surround the coastal town of Gallipoli and radiate southward, toward Racale and then down to the tip of Italy. The bacterium steadily restricts water flow from the roots of a tree to its branches and leaves. The olives are not affected, but production gradually diminishes as a tree dies. “It is like they have a slow stroke,” said Ettore, a local olive producer who would give only his first name because he did not want his company to be associated with the epidemic. “Slowly, it is as if the blood is no longer flowing, and the branches dry out and stop producing olives.” Standing in the middle of a grove, Ettore, 32, and Mr. Manni, the co-op official, nodded toward a tree with a trunk easily 25 feet in circumference. It is called the Giant of Alliste, and local growers say it is 1,500 years old (a figure scientists say is unlikely). It appears healthy, except for one branch in which the leaves are reddened and curled, an early sign that the bacterium has struck. Mr. Manni reached down into a patch of grass, picking through weeds until he pinched what appeared to be a glob of spit but was actually the protective casing for the nymph stage of the spittlebug. The spittlebugs will start flying this month and have served as a primary vector of the outbreak, chewing on the leaves of infected trees and then carrying the bacterium to other, healthy trees, like an unseen wildfire. Scientists say no one yet knows the extent of the outbreak because some infected trees may not yet be showing symptoms. “There are many,” Mr. Manni said, pointing to a few globs in the grass. “Here, here.” Italian officials, whom olive growers have blamed for reacting too slowly, have divided the affected region into quarantine areas, with the buffer zone extending across the peninsula. Infected trees and plants were supposed to be cut down in one of the quarantine areas north of the buffer zone, while growers in the contaminated region south of the buffer zone were supposed to prune infected trees and cut surrounding grasses to better control insects. But last week, an Italian administrative court suspended olive tree culling in Puglia. Italy’s Agriculture Ministry has appealed the decision, and culling could resume soon. Maurizio Martina, Italy’s agriculture minister, said that at most, about 35,000 trees could be uprooted under the government plan — of the estimated 11 million olive trees in the area. So far, the ministry said, officials had cut down only six trees, with farmers culling an additional 100 or so. But the culling numbers could grow far higher assuming the new court ruling is overturned. “This is a European emergency that we need to address with a uniform response,” Mr. Martina said in an emailed response to questions about the outbreak. Scientists say a buffer zone may be useful but warn that simply cutting down infected trees will not solve the problem in southern Salento. “The only feasible option is coexistence — and to create an open sky laboratory in that area,” said Donato Boscia, a scientist at Italy’s National Research Council. To some degree, Europe is simply now facing a problem long entrenched in the Americas. One recent study estimated that Pierce’s disease — a strain of Xylella that affects grapes and vineyards — costs California $104 million a year . Farmers in Brazil, which produces about 60 percent of the global juice supply, face similar problems. “They have essentially learned to live with a very high prevalence of Xylella,” said Rodrigo Almeida, an associate professor of environmental science at University of California, Berkeley. Image The bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, believed to have arrived in plants from Costa Rica, is leaving olive trees in the Salento barren. Officials are trying to keep the outbreak from spreading north. Credit Davide Monteleone for The New York Times Professor Almeida, who visited the Salento in November 2013, said the genetic testing of the Italian strain showed a perfect match with a strain in Costa Rica — prompting scientists to hypothesize that the outbreak originated several years ago with imported plants. Professor Almeida said the buffer zone was a “worthwhile idea” but warned that it was too soon to know how far north the bacterium had traveled. “It is difficult to know if it is going to work or not,” he said. In southern Salento, growers are alarmed but determined to learn how to adapt to the presence of the bacterium. It takes seven years or longer for a new tree to begin producing olives, and farmers were initially furious at reports that the European Commission wanted to cut down a million or more trees, and possibly even healthy plants in proximity. Growers note that about 10 percent of all olive trees in the southern part of the province are infected — meaning that about 10 million trees are still thought to be healthy. “Our main goal is to save Salento from the bacteria,” said Giovanni Melcarne, a producer and head of a consortium of olive growers. “We need to coexist with it. Eradication is not a feasible goal.” The other question is who will cover the economic losses for culled trees. Mr. Martina, the agriculture minister, recently said 11 million euros (about $12,260,800) would be made available to compensate growers. But the economic effect on Puglia could be much worse. Most of all, olive growers fear that a way of life that has sustained generations could disappear. Already, production is dropping at many farms in the region. “We are scared to go to the fields in the mornings,” said Pantaleo Piccinno, a major olive producer who is also president of the local branch of Coldiretti, one of the country’s largest farm associations. “You leave in the afternoon, and everything looks normal. Then you return in the morning, and you see the first symptoms,” he continued. “It’s going to get much worse.”

Bacteria
Italy
Trees
Olive oil
Quarantines
European Commission
Zoning
Olive
Agriculture


Brewers Give Reds Sixth Straight Loss

Abstract: Mark Reynolds homered twice Wednesday to help the host Milwaukee Brewers hand the Cincinnati Reds a 5-1 loss, their sixth straight defeat since the All-Star break. Kyle Lohse (11-4) pitched six and two-thirds innings, allowing four hits and two walks and striking out three, but it was his slide as a base runner in the fifth that got Milwaukee back in the game. After singling with one out, Lohse raced around the bases when Reds right fielder Jay Bruce lunged for Carlos Gomez’s sinking liner and missed. Lohse slid across the plate, barely beating the relay throw. TIGERS 11, DIAMONDBACKS 5 Miguel Cabrera hit a three-run homer, Austin Jackson added a three-run double, and visiting Detroit wore out Arizona. Detroit roughed up Trevor Cahill (1-7), going ahead, 7-0, after four innings behind Jackson’s big hit and three runs batted in by Alex Avila. PIRATES 6, DODGERS 1 Josh Harrison had two hits with two runs batted in, and host Pittsburgh jumped on Dan Haren early in a win over Los Angeles. Harrison’s two-run double on the left-field line capped a four-run spurt in the first against Haren (8-8). RAYS 3, CARDINALS 0 Alex Cobb struck out 10 and drove in a run with his first major league hit, leading visiting Tampa Bay to a victory over St. Louis, the Rays’ seventh straight win. Cobb (6-6) blanked the Cardinals on five hits in seven innings. BRAVES 6, MARLINS 1 Freddie Freeman hit a three-run homer, Ervin Santana won his second straight start, and Atlanta beat Miami at home. The victory moved Atlanta one game behind first-place Washington in the National League East. BLUE JAYS 6, RED SOX 4 Jose Bautista homered and drove in two runs, R. A. Dickey won for the first time in three starts, and host Toronto beat Boston. Bautista hit a run-scoring double in the first and added a leadoff homer in the seventh. David Ortiz hit a three-run homer for the Red Sox. TWINS 3, INDIANS 1 Anthony Swarzak pitched five innings in a fill-in start, Oswaldo Arcia homered, and host Minnesota beat Cleveland. Danny Santana scored after two of his three hits for the Twins, and five relievers totaled six strikeouts in four scoreless innings. ROCKIES 6, NATIONALS 4 Jorge De La Rosa struck out a season-high 11 as he pitched efficiently into the eighth inning, and Colorado’s bullpen held off Washington’s late rally, helping Colorado snap a seven-game skid with a win at home. ROYALS 2, WHITE SOX 1 Mike Moustakas scored the tiebreaking run in the top of the ninth when White Sox catcher Tyler Flowers could not handle a throw home, and Kansas City edged host Chicago. Wade Davis (6-2) pitched a scoreless inning, and Greg Holland retired the side in order in the ninth inning for his 26th save. GIANTS 3, PHILLIES 1 Hunter Pence drove in all of San Francisco’s runs with a double in the ninth, and Madison Bumgarner pitched eight scoreless innings to lead visiting San Francisco to a victory over Philadelphia. Bumgarner (12-7) gave up five hits, struck out six and walked none. MAYBIN SUSPENDED San Diego Padres outfielder Cameron Maybin was suspended for 25 games without pay, effective immediately, after testing positive for an amphetamine, violating the joint drug prevention and treatment program in Major League Baseball. (REUTERS)


Venezuela: Call for Inquiry on Politician Stirs Concerns of a Broader Crackdown

Abstract: Days after the mayor of Caracas was arrested, Socialist Party legislators called Monday for an investigation of another opposition leader accused of conspiring against President Nicolás Maduro. Such an inquiry into the opposition leader, Julio Borges, a member of Parliament, could signal a wider crackdown. Pedro Carreño, who heads the Socialist bloc in Parliament, said on Twitter, “Proof was presented,” without giving details. Critics of Mr. Maduro accuse him of trying to distract Venezuelans from an economic crisis and intimidate the opposition before elections later this year. Government officials and the state news media have claimed that Mr. Borges and the arrested mayor, Antonio Ledezma, have a history of plotting violence against the government.

Venezuela
Nicolas Maduro
Antonio Ledezma
Julio Borges
Legislature


Libyan Rebels March Toward Qaddafi Stronghold

Abstract: TRIPOLI, Libya — American and European bombs battered Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi ’s most important bastion of support in his tribal homeland of Surt on Sunday night, as rebels seeking his ouster capitalized on the damage from the Western airstrikes to erase their recent losses and return to the city’s doorstep. Their swift return, recapturing two important oil refineries and a strategic port within 20 hours, set the stage for a battle in Surt that could help decide the war. There were unconfirmed reports early Monday that rebel forces had routed pro-Qaddafi defenders in Surt, but there was no corroboration. Even so, rebels in Benghazi, the birthplace of the uprising, drove through the streets, blaring horns and firing weapons into the air to celebrate. The ease of the rebel march west along the coast underscored the essential role of Western airstrikes, now focused mainly on Colonel Qaddafi’s ground troops, in reversing the rebels’ fortunes. But it also framed anew the question of how the poorly equipped and disorganized rebel forces might fare against Colonel Qaddafi’s garrison in Surt, where air cover may be less useful. As Western warplanes again bombed sites around Tripoli and other Qaddafi strongholds, NATO agreed at a meeting in Brussels to take over the mission . The decision effectively relieved the United States of leading the fight, and ended a week of squabbling. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the change, pushed by the United States, would allow the military to begin reducing its presence. In interviews on Sunday, Mr. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton left open how long the American commitment would be. President Obama plans to address the nation on Monday night about the American role in Libya amid continuing questions about its objectives and duration. An official with the Pentagon said Sunday that it was already beginning to reduce the number of American warships involved in the operation. The official said that at least one of the Navy submarines that had fired Tomahawk missiles into Libya had left the area, and that a further naval pullout was likely. Mr. Obama will be able to cite some early success, as the airstrikes have lifted the rebels back from the brink of defeat in the eastern city of Benghazi and enabled them to rush west along the coast past their farthest gains of their previous peak weeks ago. After clashes with government forces overnight near the town of Al Uqaylah, rebel fighters met little resistance on Sunday as they pushed from the city of Ajdabiya past the oil towns of Brega and Ras Lanuf, recapturing the two important refineries. By the evening, they had pushed the front line west of Bin Jawwad, according to fighters returning from the front. “There wasn’t resistance,” said Faraj Sheydani, 42, a rebel fighter interviewed on his return from the front. “There was no one in front of us. There’s no fighting.” In Tripoli, the explosions of about 10 large bombs near the city were heard downtown on Sunday night, followed by barrages of antiaircraft fire and cascades of tracers. At a news conference, a short time later, Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, declined to comment on the exact location of the battle lines. But he argued that Western powers were now attacking the Libyan Army in retreat, a far cry from the United Nations mandate to establish a no-fly zone to protect civilians. “Some were attacked as they were clearly moving westbound,” he said. “Clearly NATO is taking sides in this civil conflict. It is illegal. It is not allowed by the Security Council resolution. And it is immoral, of course.” In western Libya, however, the rebel-held city of Misurata was still under siege by loyalist forces. By Sunday evening, rebels were again reporting street fighting in the center of the city as well as renewed shelling and mortar fire from Qaddafi tanks and artillery from west and northwest of the city. Allied airstrikes outside Misurata had kept up through the previous night, rebels said, destroying a major ammunition depot that exploded in a blaze of light. It was still burning 13 hours after the initial blast, said Muhammad, a rebel spokesman there whose full name was withheld for his family’s safety. Speaking over a satellite hook-up and hospital generator, he contradicted statements from the Qaddafi government that it had restored power and water to the city. He said that rebels had used a local generator to restore electricity to about half the city. But he said that water remained cut off and that residents were using a small supply from a desalination facility there. The reports were impossible to confirm because the Qaddafi government has prevented journalists from reaching the city. Muhammad said he believed the airstrikes had not killed any civilians in the area, but had struck barracks and airfields, killing many Libyan soldiers. “Thousands of them, I hope,” he said. In Tripoli on Sunday, most stores were closed. Usually busy streets were deserted. Officials said the port had been closed to ships carrying refined fuel as well as food and other goods. Gasoline was in increasingly short supply, and lines of cars at gas stations stretched for several blocks. Some motorists said they had turned out before dawn for a chance to fill up, or waited in line for more than two hours to reach the pump. Residents also stood in long lines for bread at bakeries, mainly because the migrant workers Libyans rely on to bake and do other service jobs have fled the country. The NATO agreement was announced Sunday evening by its secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He said that “NATO will implement all aspects of the U.N. resolution. Nothing more, nothing less.” He said the decision would take “immediate effect,” but it may take up to two days for the transfer to be completed. NATO had agreed to take on the no-fly zone late last week, but the decision on Sunday expanded its command to the entire military mission, including the air campaign. Until now, the bombing campaign has had no central command, although the United States has been coordinating the effort. The alliance was divided over the issue, because France did not want to cede control to NATO, arguing that it was American-dominated and therefore an uncomfortable brand for another war in an Arab country. But other countries like Italy and Norway said that their participation depended on NATO running the war under the political control of its governments. Turkey also insisted on NATO control. The Security Council resolution, adopted 10 days ago, authorized a no-fly zone over Libya and “all necessary measures” to protect civilians. The coalition has interpreted the protection of civilians to include attacking Qaddafi forces. But the resolution also calls for an arms embargo that applies to the entire territory of Libya, which means that any outside supply of arms to the opposition is being done covertly. The military campaign will be led by Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard , a Canadian who is the deputy to an American commander and serves under the supreme commander, Europe, who is also an American. In interviews in Tripoli under the close supervision of Libyan government minders, several people complained about the Western airstrikes. But even under those circumstances several people voiced their dissent. One person waiting for gas volunteered that he blamed Colonel Qaddafi’s rule for the shortages. “Please, I want to say something to the world,” another man said in a store nearby, pointing to a group of six men. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, we all don’t like Colonel Qaddafi. We like Libyan freedom.” One member of the group, who outside the store moments before had told a particularly florid story about the evil of the international airstrikes, abruptly walked out the door. “Dangerous,” he muttered as he left. In Green Square, the site of a continuous pro-Qaddafi rally for more than a month, the crowd was unusually small and subdued; some said Qaddafi supporters had shifted their energies to a rally inside his compound, where his supporters say they have gathered as civilian shields against Western bombs. Many people in Tripoli, including those supporting Colonel Qaddafi and those opposing him, said they were focused closely on the battle for Surt.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


New Hertz Chief Faces a Tough Road

Abstract: The new Hertz Global chief executive, Kathryn Marinello, faces a tough drive out of the ditch. She has a great résumé. The problem is that she is the $2 billion rental car outfit’s third boss in two years — and the activist investor Carl C. Icahn is in the back seat, fidgeting with a 35 percent stake. Moreover, the company’s engine is sputtering, despite her predecessor’s attempts to get it firing more smoothly. The outgoing boss, John Tague, took over in late 2014 with Mr. Icahn’s backing. The former United Airlines executive’s overhaul included spinning off the equipment rental division this year. His latest, and last, set of quarterly earnings was a wreck, though. Last month, the company missed estimates for the third quarter by a mile and cut full-year guidance by one-third as it admitted it bought too many compact cars and had not achieved cost-cutting goals. In an ominous message for his successor, Mr. Tague told investors he had “underestimated the depth and the breadth and the complexity of the transformation” he had undertaken. Ms. Marinello can draw upon an early career in banking, a decade running various General Electric businesses including auto-related financial units, and experience as a chief executive. She also has a view into other parts of the car business as a board member of both General Motors and the truck maker AB Volvo. That should afford her some insight into the effects of new technology on the Hertz business, like driverless cars, ride-hailing or other developments. G.M., after all, has a stake in and a car rental agreement with the ride-hailing upstart Lyft. In an effort to get on the bandwagon, Mr. Tague struck agreements with both Lyft and the market leader Uber over the summer. But Hertz’s problems show how app-driven rides and the sharing economy in general are undermining its traditional rental model. The disruption has left Ms. Marinello with financial matters to deal with. Hertz’s debt ratio has increased to 4.8 times the pruned estimates for this year’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, according to Morgan Stanley. Its rival Avis, by contrast, has a relatively safe 3.4 multiple. Mr. Icahn expressed his support for the new chief’s appointment. He liked Mr. Tague, too, however. Ms. Marinello’s journey could be a stressful one.

Careers and Professions
Appointments and Executive Changes
Hertz
Kathryn V Marinello


New York Police Department Is Undercounting Street Stops, Report Says

Abstract: Some New York City police officers have been stopping people for questioning but not documenting the encounters as required, calling into doubt the official accounting of a significant decline in stop-and-frisk activity, according to the first report of the federal monitor overseeing the Police Department. The finding is included in an 87-page report that was filed on Thursday morning in Federal District Court in Manhattan by the monitor, Peter L. Zimroth , who was assigned to carry out the court’s orders after its 2013 decision finding the department’s stop-and-frisk tactics to be unconstitutional . The report also addresses new training and revisions to the policies that guide how stops are used, as well as the court’s call for greater involvement of supervisors in making sure stops are constitutional and free of racial bias, and the use of body cameras. Mr. Zimroth, in a letter to Judge Analisa Torres filed along with the report, said that while “there is much to do,” he found that the Police Department was “moving in a positive direction.” The revelation about undercounted stops reflects the challenges city police leaders face in altering officer behavior and repairing tears in police-community relations. To address problems in how stops are being conducted, the department needs accurate measurements — a task that has proved to be challenging for the Police Department. During the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, when total stops numbered in the millions, a small fraction of them probably never occurred, city police leaders have quietly acknowledged. Under pressure to account for their activity, some officers may have simply filled out the forms with fictitious names and turned them in. Now, the opposite is happening, though the extent of the undercounting requires further study, the monitor’s report said. Changes to New York Police Practices and Policies A federal monitor filed his first review of how the New York Police Department is complying with court orders to outfit officers with body cameras, provide new training on the laws surrounding street stops and develop policies that guide those tactics. Late last year, the Police Department began auditing its figures to find instances when stops were conducted but not recorded. A limited review turned up 17, the number cited by Mr. Zimroth. Even before that, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent city watchdog for the department, tracked a rising percentage of stops that were never officially counted. In 2007, when the stop-and-frisk program was ramping up, the board, investigating complaints about stops, could not find documentation in 4 percent of cases. That increased to a high of nearly 20 percent in 2012, or 76 undocumented stops out of 383 that were investigated. Beyond that, police figures show such steep declines in street stops that in some corners of the city, an entire precinct has recorded an average of less than one stop each week. In the 73rd Precinct in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where tit-for-tat shootings between gang members regularly occur, officers recorded just 10 stops over the first three months of this year. Officers in the 69th Precinct in Canarsie, Brooklyn, recorded just two stops over that period; in the 115th Precinct, in Jackson Heights, Queens, there were four. The report does not allege misconduct by officers in failing to record stops. But the importance of accurately tracking stops is vital for understanding officers’ actions on the street, particularly in the minority neighborhoods that absorbed the brunt of the stop-and-frisk tactics that the court found often lacked legal justification. “Without that knowledge it will be difficult for the department’s policy makers to account for and perhaps respond to what communities are in fact experiencing,” Mr. Zimroth wrote. “It is essential in a democratic society that the public have confidence in what is being reported by the police.” The number of recorded stops fell to just over 46,000 last year from a height of 685,000 stops in 2011. That decline is regularly cited by Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, and the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, as the strongest proof of a waning era of rampant police intrusion into the lives of New Yorkers. Beyond the undercounting, the monitor’s report sheds light on another possible reason for the steep drop: Officers are holding back from conducting lawful stops because of a new uncertainty about the law and what is expected of them. Image In his report, the federal monitor said that the Police Department was “moving in a positive direction" but that some street stops were not being properly recorded.” Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times On a recent night out on patrol, a supervisor watched people go in and out of a bodega that residents had flagged as a possible drug-dealing location. During the stakeout, officers passed up chances to stop several people whom the supervisor deemed suspicious. “Unless I know I’m going to find drugs on that person, I am not going to stop them,” said the supervisor, who insisted on anonymity to discuss elements of an investigation. “In the past, if we stopped somebody, to question them, we felt like we were doing our job, we were doing what the Police Department and the city wanted us to do,” he added. “Now, there is uncertainty over what the city wants.” As part of the court’s order, supervisors will soon be required to go over officers’ stop paperwork and determine whether the reasons provided were lawful. If not, a supervisor must say if the officer was “instructed, referred for training or disciplined.” Mr. Zimroth wrote in the report that “good-faith mistakes” on the street should be addressed with training and not discipline. For lasting change to take hold, the report observed, the department has to come up with a new way of evaluating officers’ job performance recognizing “quality” police work, not just quantifiable actions. The department has yet to settle on the formula it will use, he wrote. “First,” he wrote, “the N.Y.P.D. needs to decide what officer behavior or characteristics it wants evaluated.” Police officials moved in October 2014 to audit the figures using new software that could search for certain words in radio transmissions by officers to find instances where a stop might have occurred, Mr. Zimroth wrote in his report. Officials searched transmissions in the department’s computer-aided dispatching system for terms indicative of a stop, including “warrant check,” “show-up,” “holding” and “stopped. They examined three-day or seven-day periods in 19 precincts. They then looked to see how often a required stop form — known as a UF 250 — had been filled out; in 17 instances they found it had not been, Mr. Zimroth wrote. The audit did not capture the total number of stops during the short periods under study. “It is of utmost importance to the N.Y.P.D. and the public that all stops are properly documented,” the Police Department said in a statement, noting that many of the court’s orders were already being carried out. “The N.Y.P.D. has developed and implemented enhanced auditing of precincts.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Britain Agrees to Renegotiate Contract for Airbus Plane

Abstract: PARIS — Britain agreed Friday to join six other European countries in renegotiating a contract for the much-delayed Airbus A400M troop transport, allaying concerns that it would drop out of the project. The contract is valued at 20 billion euros ($27.7 billion). The French defense minister, Hervé Morin, who hosted a meeting of his counterparts in the French village of Castellet, near Nice, said that the governments hoped to agree to new terms with Airbus and its parent, European Aeronautic Defense and Space, by the end of the year. Quentin Davies, the British minister for military procurement, said London had agreed to an additional six months of talks “on an equal footing” with other governments, Reuters reported. “We hope to save the program,” Mr. Davies said. Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Turkey ordered 180 of the planes in 2003, making it the largest-ever European military contract. But engine development and other problems have put the project 5 billion euros ($7.1 billion0, over budget and nearly four years behind schedule. Britain, which needs new transport planes to support its NATO commitments in Afghanistan, has threatened to cancel its order for 25 planes. European governments have paid Airbus 5.7 billion euros, which the company says has already been spent, to develop the A400M. EADS wrote off an additional 2.3 billion euros related to the program in 2008 and says it spends about 100 million euros a month on it. Airbus has requested a moratorium on cancellations through the end of the year to work out a delivery schedule and a financing arrangement under which more of the development costs would be borne by the governments. In a joint statement , EADS and Airbus welcomed the governments’ decision, saying that they were “fully committed to finding an agreement that is technically and contractually acceptable to both sides.” Analysts said that Britain’s willingness to stick with the A400M negotiations was a positive sign, but added that it was still possible that it might cancel some of its orders for the plane. “The U.K. is in a very difficult position,” said Alexandra Ashbourne, an aerospace and military industry consultant in London. “It has a finite amount of funds and a definite need for capability.”

Defense Contracts
Airbus Industrie
Airlines and Airplanes
Great Britain


U.S. Attorney General Predicts More Charges in FIFA Case

Abstract: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Monday that the United States’ crackdown on corruption in global soccer was expanding, with new charges expected in the coming months. Ms. Lynch made the comments in Switzerland, not far from the headquarters of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, at the start of a week in which the FIFA investigation will take center stage in Europe. Law enforcement officials from around the world are congregating for conferences in Zurich and Amsterdam to hear how the case came together and how it might unfold. “We anticipate pursuing additional charges against individuals and entities,” Ms. Lynch said Monday of the United States’ inquiry, a coordinated effort among the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Lynch spoke in a joint appearance with Michael Lauber, the Swiss attorney general, who is leading a parallel investigation of corruption in FIFA. Their news conference took place at the Renaissance Zurich Tower Hotel, two miles from the luxury hotel where seven top soccer officials were handcuffed at dawn in May in a wave of arrests that have left FIFA in turmoil. Closing with a warning “to anyone who seeks to live in the past and to return soccer to the days of corruption and bribery, cronyism and patronage,” Ms. Lynch said, “You are on the wrong side of progress.” Swiss investigators, eager to show that they are just as vigilantly policing an organization headquartered in their country, announced developments in their own inquiry. Mr. Lauber said the Swiss authorities had seized properties in the Alps and identified 121 bank accounts in connection with the case. He called the Swiss financial intelligence unit’s expertise particularly helpful to the investigation, as the I.R.S.’s has been to the United States. “However, this positive input comes with a high price,” Mr. Lauber said, calling the process of reviewing individual bank transactions time-consuming and adding that it was too soon to estimate the value of frozen assets. “This investigation will take much more than the legendary 90 minutes,” he said. In their investigation, Swiss prosecutors are focused on allegations of bribery related to the bidding for the next two World Cups, which were awarded to Russia for 2018 and to Qatar for 2022. The United States’ case centers on bribery and kickback schemes related to the sale of media and marketing rights, exceeding $150 million over 24 years. Since the arrests in May, little information has been released about the investigations, which have prompted several other countries whose nationals have been charged to open their own inquiries; those countries include Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago. In May, Kelly T. Currie, the acting United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, whose office brought the case, called the 47-count indictment unsealed that month “the beginning of our work, not the end.” Citing their continuing inquiries, the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. declined to comment Monday. Ms. Lynch was in Zurich on Monday to participate in a conference held by the International Association of Prosecutors, whose main theme this year is international cooperation. Mr. Lauber, who led the news conference, said he had invited Ms. Lynch to Zurich, giving his country’s investigation a shared spotlight with that of the United States, which opened its case in 2011, before Swiss prosecutors did. Discussion of the FIFA case this week will extend beyond Monday, and beyond Switzerland. In Amsterdam on Thursday, Richard Weber, the chief of criminal investigations at the I.R.S., will deliver the keynote speech at an international tax conference. Hundreds of law enforcement officials from dozens of countries are expected to attend the conference, whose theme of international tax crime is pegged to the FIFA investigation. In his speech, Mr. Weber is expected to discuss international corruption, cooperation and the role of banks in investigations like the FIFA case. Mr. Weber’s I.R.S. unit, working with F.B.I. agents in New York, is credited with having helped break open the case with its investigation of Chuck Blazer, a former United States soccer official who did not file personal income tax returns. In 2013, Mr. Blazer secretly pleaded guilty to tax and corruption charges, providing key cooperation that helped the United States charge 17 other men. Three of them have pleaded guilty, and three others have been arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn, having pleaded not guilty as cases against them proceed. The rest remain abroad, and some are contesting extradition. Meanwhile, FIFA’s leadership in Zurich has remained intact. Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, and his deputy, Jérôme Valcke, have said they plan to stay in their positions until February, when the organization’s 209 member countries are due to gather in Switzerland — as they last had in May, when the arrests took place — to elect a new leader. Before then, the organization’s executive committee, a smaller group of 24, will meet this month, with officials from countries including the United States expected to attend.

Soccer
FIFA
Loretta E Lynch
Michael Lauber
Justice Department
FBI
IRS
Bribery and Kickbacks


Chile Offers Recognition for a State of Palestine

Abstract: SÃO PAULO — Chile formally recognized an independent state of Palestine on Friday, becoming the seventh South American country to take such a step in the past month. The government of President Sebastián Piñera had been under growing pressure from the nation’s large Palestinian population, more than 300,000, to recognize a Palestinian state. But the fact that so many countries in Latin America have done so at the same time underscores the unwillingness in the region to wait until Israel and the Palestinians resolve their disputes over territory and other issues, political analysts said. The decisions by Latin American governments come in response to an effort by Mahmoud Abbas , the Palestinian president, to seek such recognition following the breakdown in negotiations. It was the announcement by Brazil on Dec. 3 that seemed to inspire other countries in the region to follow suit. Brazil’s president at the time, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who left office last week, had tried to insert his nation into the Middle East peace negotiations and had forged warm relations with Iran, creating tensions with the United States. “Brazil’s role in this process is fundamental,” said Michael Shifter, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “To some degree, other South American governments are following Brazil’s lead.” In addition to Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela have all announced support for a Palestinian state. Paraguay and Peru are expected to offer recognition soon, said Eugenio Tuma, a senator in Chile who pushed for the measure. “South American countries are acting every day with greater coordination,” Mr. Tuma said Friday. With the move by Chile’s government, he said, “we are demonstrating that South America can play, together, a role in the great global issues affecting humanity.” The Chilean senator did not comment on whether Brazil had been coordinating the wave of recognitions, saying only that the region was taking a “common view” about the “need to contribute to the peace process, despite the distance that separates us from the Middle East.” Analysts said it was difficult to interpret Latin America’s recognition of a Palestinian state along strictly ideological lines, or even according to how countries viewed the United States. Argentina, with Latin America’s largest Jewish population, suffered terrorist attacks in the 1990s and has adopted a tough stance on Iran. Yet it made the same decision as Brazil on the Palestinian question. Economic factors could also be playing a role, with Latin American countries betting that recognition of a Palestinian state would draw more foreign investment to the region, Mr. Shifter said. Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s new president, is scheduled to attend an Arab-Latin America summit on Feb. 16 in Lima, Peru. Mr. da Silva hosted the first such summit in Brasília in 2005. Under Mr. da Silva, Brazil made more inroads into the Middle East than its neighbors have in recent years, sometimes at odds with American policy initiatives in the region. Last year, Brazil and Turkey helped negotiate a deal with Iran on its nuclear power program to try to head off more United Nations sanctions, an effort Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called a “transparent ploy” by Iran. Ms. Rousseff has already indicated that she will “cool off the relationship with Iran,” said David Fleischer, a political science professor at Brasília University. But the closer relationship with the Arab world continues. Mr. Abbas attended Ms. Rousseff’s inauguration last week in Brasília. Mr. Piñera met with Mr. Abbas there as well, and he plans on visiting the West Bank in March to “strengthen the ties of friendship between Chile and the states of Israel and Palestine,” the Chilean government said in a statement.

Palestinians
Chile
South America
Abbas Mahmoud
Pinera Sebastian


Rutgers Is Hoping to Get Back on Track

Abstract: PISCATAWAY, N.J., Oct. 5 — Next for Rutgers is a critical Big East game at home Saturday against undefeated Cincinnati, a challenge that would be tough enough if the Scarlet Knights did not have issues. For the first time this season, Rutgers must overcome a loss. Maryland manhandled the Scarlet Knights during a 34-24 victory last weekend. Asked Tuesday if the loss was as shocking to the team as it was to those on the outside, defensive end Eric Foster replied: “Shocking isn’t the right word. It’s regret — regret that we weren’t the best we could be out there.” It is not as if the Scarlet Knights (3-1) were unprepared for Maryland, but the Terrapins were apparently not their only foe. The Rutgers players said that they were not ready to play a full, tough game and that they needed to worry about themselves more than any opponent. “We’ve got to do what we do better,” Foster said. “We just want to focus on us, to make sure we’re prepared to play this game.” Before the season, Rutgers’s first seven opponents were unranked. Cincinnati (5-0) is now No. 20 in the Associated Press poll. South Florida (4-0), Rutgers’s opponent Oct. 18, is sixth. After playing No. 13 West Virginia (4-1) on Oct. 27, Rutgers will meet Connecticut (5-0). Rutgers, which dropped to 21st from 10th in the poll, looks more vulnerable, particularly on defense. Maryland amassed 458 total yards against the Scarlet Knights and held the ball for almost 37 minutes. “We played a good team,” running back Ray Rice said. “But now we know there’s a fine line between winning and losing when the chips are down.” Cincinnati is a handful. The Bearcats effectively run a no-huddle spread offense that Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano said looked more like the run-and-shoot. Cincinnati’s cornerbacks, Mike Mickens and DeAngelo Smith, are among the best tandems in the country. “Something, somewhere, has to give,” Rutgers quarterback Mike Teel said. “If it’s coming out and playing even harder, that’s the way it is.” Schiano said he was particularly concerned about his team’s turnover margin — a lackluster minus-1 through four games. Rutgers lost two fumbles, and Teel threw an interception against Maryland. The Terrapins had no turnovers. “We’re going to start to have to get turnovers to help the team out,” the sophomore cornerback Devin McCourty said. Maryland also slowed down a Rutgers running attack that had amassed 685 total yards in lopsided victories against Buffalo, Navy and Norfolk State. Rice gained 97 yards against the Terrapins after rushing for 431 yards in the first three games. “We were not really getting into the flow,” Rice said. “We’ve got to do a better job of putting points on the board. We’ll take care of that this week.” All five of the Bearcats’ victories have come against teams with losing records: Southeast Missouri State (2-3), Oregon State (2-3), Miami of Ohio (2-3), Marshall (0-5) and San Diego State (1-3). Brian Kelly, Cincinnati’s first-year coach, says he expects Rutgers to be much more formidable. “I don’t know, at this point, when you’re dealing with teams that have had success, that they need rallying cries,” Kelly said on a telephone conference call Monday. “They’re going to play, and they’re going to play up to their ability.”

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey