South Korea Launching a Rocket of Its Own Into Space

Abstract: HONG KONG — South Korea was set to launch a satellite from its own territory on Wednesday, a first for the country, while North Korea said it hoped the international community would apply the same sanctions against Seoul that followed the North’s firing of a rocket in April. Tensions on the Korean peninsula have eased in recent days, with the North’s release of two detained American journalists and its declared intention to reopen its highly militarized border to tourists and business ventures with the South. But the South Korean launching seemed likely to anger the North, which drew international scorn — and United Nations sanctions — for the launching of what it said was a communications satellite aboard a powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, in violation of previous United Nations strictures. The North claimed the satellite went into orbit, but American officials said the rocket and its payload merely dropped into the ocean. The official North Korean news agency, in a statement released via Twitter, said the North “will closely watch” to see if the South Korean launching draws similar denunciations and sanctions from the Security Council. In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, said the South Korean space program has been developed “in a very open and transparent way” under codified international agreements. “This is in stark contrast,” Mr. Kelly said, “to the example set by North Korea, which has not abided by its international agreements.” Earlier this week, the North strongly objected to military exercises currently being conducted by South Korea and United States forces, calling them “warmongers” engaging in what are “obviously maneuvers for a war of aggression against the North.” The debut South Korean launching was set for 5 p.m. from the Naro Space Center, in southeastern Korea, and television footage from the site showed the gleaming white rocket being readied on its launch pad at midday. The center was developed with Russian assistance, and the main stage of the rocket to be used on Wednesday is Russian-made. The satellite itself, South Korean aerospace officials said, was domestically built. Since the early 1990s, South Korea has launched 11 satellites, according to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. All those launchings have been from overseas sites. “A successful liftoff could officially herald the country’s entry into the space exploration arena,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that the space program aimed to fully build its own rockets by 2018 and reach the moon by 2025.

South Korea
Space
Rockets and Rocket Propulsion
Satellites


Job Losses Bolster Calls for Extension of Benefits

Abstract: Job losses in the national economy combined with a surge in new claims for unemployment insurance are giving a boost to proposals — pushed for months by Democratic leaders and labor groups — to extend unemployment benefits beyond their usual limit of 26 weeks. Bolstering the case for an extension, its advocates say, are indications that laid-off workers are having an especially tough time finding new jobs, even compared with past recessions. Over the last year, more unemployed workers have exhausted their benefits before finding new jobs than in the years preceding the recessions of 1990 and 2001, according to a new analysis by a private research group, the National Employment Law Project, which will present its findings to Congress on Thursday. There were 407,000 new applicants in the week that ended March 29, an increase of 38,000 over the previous week, according to federal data. Nearly three million workers were collecting state unemployment insurance as of March 22. But from March 2007 to March 2008, 2.7 million workers saw their benefits, averaging $290 a month, run out, putting intense financial pressure on families and worsening other problems like mortgage defaults. Extending benefits can reduce personal hardships and also, economists say, provide a quick and sure boost to the economy since recipients nearly always spend the money to meet immediate needs. In 2002 — after the recession had ended, it was later determined — Congress passed an extension of 13 weeks, and more in states with particularly high and rising unemployment. In 1990, what started as an addition of 13 weeks was later expanded to 26 weeks, with some states authorized to pay benefits for an extra 33 weeks. Most of those laid off over the last 12 months eventually found work, but about 821,000 workers exhausted state unemployment insurance benefits and remain unemployed today, according to a new calculation by the Employment Law Project, based in Oakland, Calif., using a method developed by the Labor Department. The call for extending benefits, which is normally done during recessions, has taken on sharp political tones at a time when the White House has avoided declaring an economic downturn. Democrats in Congress had wanted to include an extension in the stimulus plan passed in February, but the White House opposed it. The main proposals would allow payments for an additional 13 weeks in most states, and 26 weeks in states with especially high unemployment, by drawing down the federal unemployment trust fund, which holds more than $35 billion. On Monday, President Bush again rejected the idea, urging Congress to “give the pro-growth package that was passed overwhelmingly a chance to work.” Both Democratic presidential candidates have renewed their calls for a benefits extension as part of a “second stimulus.” Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has not supported the idea. Congressional Democrats are stepping up their efforts and hope that more Republicans, especially from states with high unemployment, will join them. In a report issued Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee said that “nearly 1.3 million workers have been unemployed for more than six months” and that “Congress should quickly extend unemployment benefits.” According to a report by the Congressional Budget Office, extended benefits would cost $1 billion to $2 billion per month, and would be a quick way to increase spending and aid the economy. Advocates of a benefits extension note that long-term joblessness is a bigger problem now than it was at the start of past recessions. The average duration of unemployment for laid-off workers was 16.2 weeks in March 2008, compared with 12.6 weeks in March 2001 and 11.9 weeks in July 1990, according to federal data.

United States Economy
Unemployment
Economic Conditions and Trends


New Technologies Aim to Foil Online Course Cheating

Abstract: MILLIONS of students worldwide have signed up in the last year for MOOCs, short for massive open online courses — those free, Web-based classes available to one and all and taught by professors at Harvard, Duke, M.I.T. and other universities. But when those students take the final exam in calculus or genetics, how will their professors know that the test-takers on their distant laptops are doing their own work, and not asking Mr. Google for help? The issue of online cheating concerns many educators, particularly as more students take MOOCs for college credit, and not just for personal enrichment. Already, five classes from Coursera , a major MOOC provider, offer the possibility of credit, and many more are expected. One option is for students to travel to regional testing centers at exam time. But reaching such centers is next to impossible for many students, whether working adults who can’t take time off to travel, or others in far-flung places who can’t afford the trip. But now eavesdropping technologies worthy of the C.I.A. can remotely track every mouse click and keystroke of test-taking students. Squads of eagle-eyed humans at computers can monitor faraway students via webcams, screen sharing and high-speed Internet connections, checking out their photo IDs, signatures and even their typing styles to be sure the test-taker is the student who registered for the class. The developing technology for remote proctoring may end up being as good — or even better — than the live proctoring at bricks-and-mortar universities, said Douglas H. Fisher , a computer science and computer engineering professor at Vanderbilt University who was co-chairman of a recent workshop that included MOOC-related topics. “Having a camera watch you, and software keep track of your mouse clicks, that does smack of Big Brother,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem any worse than an instructor at the front constantly looking at you, and it may even be more efficient.” Employees at ProctorU , a company that offers remote proctoring, watch test-takers by using screen sharing and webcam feeds at offices in Alabama and California. ProctorU recently signed an agreement to proctor new credit-bearing MOOCs from Coursera, including one in genetics and evolution offered at Duke and one in single-variable calculus at the University of Pennsylvania. MOOC students who want to obtain credit will be charged a remote-proctoring fee of $60 to $90, depending on the class, said Dr. Andrew Ng, co-founder of Coursera, based in Mountain View, Calif. Other remote proctoring services offer different solutions. At Software Secure in Newton, Mass., test-takers are recorded by camera and then, later, three proctors independently watch a faster-speed video of each student. Compared with services where proctors are monitoring students in real time, this combination of recording first and viewing later “gives greater latitude for the institution to adjust the timing of exams to whenever they want,” said Allison Sands, Software Secure’s director of marketing. The cost is now $15 per exam. Employees at ProctorU say they are well-versed in the sometimes ingenious tactics used to dodge testing rules. “We’ve seen it all,” said Matt Jaeh, vice president for operations. “After you’ve sat there a while watching people, the patterns of behavior for normal people versus the people trying to sneak in a cellphone to look up information are very clear.” Each proctor can monitor up to six students at a time, watching three side-by-side camera feeds on each of two screens. If a student’s eyes start to wander, the proctor gives a warning via videoconferencing software, just as a classroom monitor might tell students to keep their eyes on their own papers. For an overwhelming majority of people, that warning suffices, said Jarrod Morgan , a co-founder. With the system in place, “cheating usually isn’t a problem,” he said. But if it does occur, ProctorU follows the rules of the institution giving the exam. “Some schools ask us to cut off the exam on the spot if there’s a suspicious incident,” he said; others ask that the exam be continued and the incident reported. Beyond the issue of proctoring, MOOCs are also addressing the problem of making sure that credit-seeking test-takers are the same students who enrolled in the course. In that effort, Coursera is offering a separate service, called Signature Track and costing $30 to $99, that confirms students’ identity by matching webcam photographs as well as pictures of acceptable photo IDs. Students also type a short phrase, which is analyzed by a software program. It takes note of the typing rhythm and other characteristics, like how long the keys are pressed down. Then, when a student submits homework or takes a test, the algorithm compares a bit of new typing with the original sample. (And if you’ve broken your arm, there’s always your photo ID.) Online classes are hardly new, but earlier courses typically didn’t have to handle exam proctoring on the scale required for vast MOOCs. The University of Florida in Gainesville, for example, has long offered many programs for students studying far from the campus, with some monitoring done by ProctorU, said W. Andrew McCollough , associate provost for teaching and technology. Now the school has set up its first MOOC, on human nutrition (enrollment 47,000), and is working on four others, all through Coursera. The question of proctoring is being debated, he said, as faculty members worry about academic integrity amid the growth of open, online classes. “They don’t want any fooling around,” he said. “But as we get more experience and evidence, the faculty are getting familiar with ways technology can replicate a classroom experience.”

E-learning
Cheating
Tests
College
Coursera
ProctorU
Software Secure


Alcohol, Mounted Police and the Rush Hour

Abstract: Bottoms Up Q. Does New York City have a maximum alcohol content for liquor? Does that limit differ from any in other parts of the state? A. The short answer is no; New York State liquor law does not set alcohol content for liquor anywhere in the state, and there is no city law on the subject. In fact, if you’re looking for a government list of alcohol maximums for bourbon or gin or vodka or rum, it doesn’t really exist anywhere. With some exceptions, the federal and state governments do not regulate the alcohol contents of liquor that way. What they do regulate, and carefully, is the label; they want to make sure that the customer knows the alcohol content of what’s in the bottle and that it is accurately described. Tallest of the Finest Q. Why does New York City have mounted police? I am not an animal-rights person; I just wonder about their practicality here. A. Instead of thinking of “police on horseback,” think of “10-foot cops.” They are very practical. At demonstrations, parades and festivals and in Times Square on New Year’s Eve , mounted officers can do some things much more easily than a regular patrol officer: clear a path, spot a disturbance a block away, observe the direction of a fleeing suspect, and provide an instantly visible police presence. The horses are bought from farms (the department no longer accepts donated horses) and are trained to stay calm in crowds. At least one horse in the Mounted Unit used to pull a buggy in an Amish community. Four-legged graduates patrol in all five boroughs. There are five stables, including the unit’s headquarters at Pier 76 on the West Side, which features a covered, heated ring. The department has developed its own special feed. The horses retire to farms upstate and in New England. “They’re great ambassadors, and more photographed than Lindsay Lohan,” said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s spokesman. There are 112 uniformed officers and supervisors and about 80 horses in the Mounted Unit, which was established in 1871. A video podcast about the unit can be seen online at “Inside the N.Y.P.D. ” The Two-Hour Hour Q. What is the origin of the expression “rush hour”? It sounds as if it was made for New York. A . It would appear so. But one longs for those days of old when it lasted only an hour! Barry Popik , an avid etymologist who edits a Web site on the origins of New York City terms, noted: “ ‘Rush hour’ is often believed to have originated with the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge on May 24, 1883. ‘Rush hour’ traffic occurred in the morning (when people left their homes in Brooklyn for work in Manhattan) and the evening (when people left work in Manhattan to return home to Brooklyn),” all of them funneled onto the bridge. Recently, however, he and contributors to the site have discovered references that predate the building of the bridge. On Dec. 18, 1878, an opinion article in The New York Herald said: “Morning and evening there are hours when the rush of passengers to the rapid transit trains overtaxes the proper carrying capacity of the roads under the present arrangements and leads to the dangerous crowding of the cars.” The article noted that “there are several points along the road where central tracks could be laid which would afford facilities for the operation of special trains that would carry off the crowds that collect at some of the way stations during the ‘rush’ hours.” MICHAEL POLLAK

New York City
Alcoholic Beverages
Police
Horses
Commuting


Juror Imperils Conviction of Peter Liang, Ex-Officer, in Brooklyn Killing

Abstract: One of the biggest police misconduct cases in recent New York history, a criminal proceeding that riveted the city this winter and was swept up in the national debate about race and law enforcement, was threatened on Wednesday by an unusual and unexpected question: Did one of the jurors, a retired carpenter, hide his father’s criminal past in order to be a panelist at the trial? From the start, the case of Peter Liang, a former Brooklyn police officer convicted in February of manslaughter for the shooting of Akai Gurley in a housing project stairwell, has seen its share of twists and turns. Though the three-week trial was entangled in the furor over the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, it never neatly fit the narrative of other police killings of unarmed black men around the country. There was, for instance, no direct confrontation between Mr. Liang and Mr. Gurley, who died from a ricocheting bullet that Mr. Liang fired while on patrol in November 2014 in a dark stairwell of the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York. And even the man who pursued the case, Ken Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, recommended after the trial that Mr. Liang should not face time in prison, acknowledging that while he acted recklessly, there was no real proof that he meant to kill or injure Mr. Gurley. But the story that unfolded on Wednesday — that of the retired carpenter, Michael Vargas, 62, and whether he had lied about his father — took the case into its strangest place yet: It was suddenly possible that the entire prosecution could be thrown out because of what a juror had said about his private life. Picking a jury has long been a crucial maneuver that can make or break a criminal trial, and yet it was remarkable that the case of Mr. Liang, which has been going on for nearly a year and a half and was scheduled to end on Thursday with a sentencing, now hinges on the veracity of Mr. Vargas, a silver-haired man with a bushy white Santa Claus beard. The development began last month when The Daily News published an article about jurors in the case and their reactions to Mr. Thompson’s decision not to seek a prison term for Mr. Liang. In the article, Mr. Vargas was quoted as saying that the recommendation was “a slap on the wrist” and that his father, Norberto Vargas Sr., had once served seven years in prison for an accidental shooting — a crime eerily similar to Mr. Liang’s. When Mr. Liang’s lawyer, Paul Shechtman, learned about the article, he reviewed the transcripts from jury selection and found that Mr. Vargas had told the court before the trial that none of his close relatives had ever been accused of a crime. “The record demonstrates that Mr. Vargas lied knowingly and for the purpose of securing a seat on the jury,” Mr. Shechtman wrote last week in a motion to Justice Danny K. Chun, who is presiding over the case. The falsehood, Mr. Shechtman added, was “not accidental or inconsequential” but rather was “a major lie.” Image Michael Vargas, a juror. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times If that was not enough, The News reported that on the same day Mr. Vargas said that none of his close relatives had been accused of a crime, he told the court in a different case in which he was a potential juror that someone in his family had indeed once been arrested — namely, his father. Seizing on this discrepancy, Mr. Shechtman set about parsing Mr. Vargas’s answers in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Wednesday. How, he asked, was it possible that someone in the juror’s “family” had been arrested but that none of his “close relatives” had suffered the same fate? “I was never close to my father,” Mr. Vargas said, adding that he had been raised in a series of orphanages and boys’ homes. “So you lied,” Mr. Shechtman said. “That’s your opinion,” Mr. Vargas answered. “I don’t believe I did.” After sparring like that for 20 or 30 minutes, Mr. Shechtman asked Mr. Vargas about several posts he had made on Facebook before the trial began. The posts had an anti-law-enforcement flavor: “What’s up w/the police?” one asked. “Are the police a legal gang?” another said. “Didn’t you think it was important to tell the court you had these feelings?” Mr. Shechtman asked, referring to yet more posts: some about revolution, others about martial law. Looking annoyed, Mr. Vargas said, “If someone does something that makes me angry, I speak out.” While there is no universal question form for jury selection, it is standard practice in trials of police officers to ask jurors about their own and their family’s interactions with the police. But lawyers — and judges — can ask those questions in their own way and in their own words. Mr. Vargas, for one, said he was simply responding to the inquiries in their most literal sense. “It is not unusual for jurors to shade their answers differently to different questions,” said Roy Futterman, a jury expert at Doar, a litigation consulting firm in the city. “Judges are not keen to overturn a jury’s final verdict, and this judge will have to decide if this juror did something truly egregious and was trying to get on the case as a stealth juror.” The hearing is set to continue on Thursday.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Nine in G.O.P. Vie to Succeed Arizona Governor, With Party Identity at Stake

Abstract: PHOENIX — State Treasurer Doug Ducey takes every opportunity to highlight his “real-world experience” as the former president of a chain of ice-cream parlors. Christine Jones , a former Internet company executive, says her “technological sophistication” is just what Arizona needs to become more efficient. Al Melvin , a state senator, asserts that the Tea Party “saved the United States as a country in 2010,” when it took control of Congress, and “will save the country again this year.” In the weeks since Gov. Jan Brewer announced that she would not run for re-election , the already crowded field of Republicans looking to replace her has grown noisy, with nine candidates of widely varying interests and experiences vying for attention. The very definition of “Republican” in this state of traditional social conservatism and a booming Latino population is up for grabs — perhaps a harbinger of a national identity crisis as the 2014 elections approach. “The choice is about the kind of Republican Party the 1.1 million Republican voters in the state want to have,” said Tim Sifert, the party’s communications director. Scott Smith , the mayor of Mesa and one of the leading Republican contenders, described the coming elections as “a political race, but also a social experiment,” in a nod to Arizona’s changing electorate. Image Fred DuVal, a Democratic candidate for governor. Credit Samantha Sais for The New York Times For the first time, Arizona has more independent than Democratic or Republican voters , a sign that residents are moving away from the hyperpartisan brand of politics that came to define the state in recent years. Also the state, pegged as intolerant after passing one of the nation’s most restrictive laws against illegal immigration in 2010, is projected to become majority Latino by 2030. The shift injects a complicating element to a decidedly open Republican primary. Some campaigns have been struggling to strike the right tone: conservative enough to entice the party’s reliable base of conservative voters, but not too conservative to alienate the more moderate independents. Voters in the latter group could easily have the power to decide the election for governor, unless apathy, frustration or other factors keep them from the polls. Their share of the electorate climbed to 35 percent from 25 percent in 2004, mirroring a national trend that reflected negative perceptions of Congress, the major political parties and government in general among American voters, according to an analysis by Gallup of the results of several polls that it carried out last year. But independents have invariably logged the lowest turnout rates among voting blocs in Arizona — 41 percent in the general election in 2010. (The turnout was 68 percent among Republicans and 56 percent among Democrats.) “It’s very hard to motivate independents, because they don’t have this ideological zeal that motivates the right-wing extremists,” Bruce Merrill, a senior research fellow at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University, said in an interview. Ms. Brewer, who decided recently not to challenge term-limit rules in the Arizona Constitution that require her to leave office, may be out of the race, but she is definitely not out of the picture. She has hundreds of thousands of dollars stored up in a pair of political action committees, and she told Capitol Media Services this month that she planned to use the money to help the Republican Party elect “pragmatic” candidates instead of “ideologues.” Image Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Ariz., a leading Republican contender. Credit Samantha Sais for The New York Times “I’m not going away,” she said, giving no hints about whom she would support among the party’s candidates for governor. But if they are looking to her time in office for clues on a political path to victory, Ms. Brewer offers no certain guidance. While her unforgiving stance against illegal immigration made her an icon among the party’s firebrand conservative wing and essentially drove her to victory in 2010, her unrelenting push to expand Medicaid , one of the key components of President Obama’s health care law, prompted those same conservatives to call her a traitor . She mixed moderation and pragmatism in her veto last month of a bill that would have given business owners the right to invoke religion to deny service to gay men, lesbians and others. While yielding to pressure from the business community, she also framed her decision as the right thing to preserve the state’s image and mend its bruised reputation. It is in these muddied waters that the Republican aspirants for governor, many of them still fairly unknown to voters, are trying to establish their brand. Strategists on several of the campaigns described social issues as a political minefield, too divisive to use as a means of securing the election. So far this year, promoting corporate credentials has become the safest path. “Everybody has become the business candidate,” Ms. Jones, 45, a former executive vice president at GoDaddy, said disapprovingly, having herself staked a claim on the title. Image Christine Jones, right, another Republican, with a constituent. Credit Samantha Sais for The New York Times At his campaign kickoff, Mr. Ducey, 49, said he had built his company, Cold Stone Creamery, “without tax incentives for waffle cones,” drawing cheers from the select audience at the event. It included Bill Montgomery, the attorney for Maricopa County and chief defender of a state ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy (later struck down by the courts) and Representative Trent Franks, who told a congressional committee last year that the incidence of pregnancy from rape was “ very low .” Mr. Smith of Mesa, 58, a homebuilder and accountant, has made a name for himself in Washington as president of the United States Conference of Mayors, a group more commonly known for its urban-liberal agenda. He is banking on the transformation he engineered for Mesa — which was long dismissed as an unappealing bedroom community of Phoenix, but is now seen as a beehive of economic development — to establish his reputation as “C.E.O. of government,” as he put it. “There comes a time when we need to reorganize our priorities to dispel the image created by a small group of legislators whose primary purpose in government is to retain the support of the base,” Mr. Smith said one morning from the seats overlooking first base at the Chicago Cubs’ new spring training facility, one of the signature accomplishments of his broad and costly economic development strategy. Arizona leans right. Republicans are the majority in both legislative chambers and occupy every statewide office. But six of the 10 governors before Ms. Brewer were Democrats, including Ms. Brewer’s immediate predecessor, Janet Napolitano, who won in 2002 by less than 1 percent of the vote. Now, with the state’s changing political dynamic, the Democratic Party senses an opportunity. One recent afternoon, at the headquarters for Fred DuVal , a former chairman of the state’s Board of Regents and so far the party’s only viable candidate for governor, strategists and volunteers fired off emails and worked the phones, hoping to use the uproar over the right-to-refuse bill vetoed by Ms. Brewer to galvanize what they called the “rising electorate” — Latinos and single women, mainly, but also young parents who have moved here from other states. “People are emotionally tired of these divisive debates,” Mr. DuVal, 59, said in an interview. “The people moving here these days, they’re different — they’re young families from California, not Midwestern retirees, and they want leadership that can lead them in a different direction, in bipartisan fashion.”

Gubernatorial races
Polls
Arizona
Republicans
Democrats
Jan Brewer
Scott Smith
Christine Jones
Doug Ducey


Knicks’ Shumpert Is ‘Day to Day’ After Shoulder Injury

Abstract: Knicks Coach Mike Woodson said the sprained right shoulder Iman Shumpert sustained in Tuesday’s victory over the Boston Celtics would be re-evaluated Thursday morning. Appearing Wednesday on ESPN Radio, Woodson said Shumpert was “day to day” but cast doubt over his availability for Thursday’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Shumpert appeared to sustain the injury in a collision with the Celtics’ Kris Humphries and departed for the locker room in the first quarter. He did not return to the game and was unavailable for comment afterward. The team did not practice Wednesday. Despite having knee surgery last summer and being the subject of early-season trade speculation, Shumpert is the only Knick who has appeared in all 45 games. His production, though, has been hit or miss. He is averaging 7.1 points and 4.8 rebounds. Also Wednesday, Tim Hardaway Jr. was selected to participate in the N.B.A.’s Rising Stars Challenge on Feb. 14 during All-Star Weekend. The game will match the league’s top rookies against its top second-year players. Hardaway, a swingman the Knicks selected with the 24th pick in the 2013 draft, ranked fourth in scoring among rookies entering Wednesday’s games, with an average of 8.6 points. SCOTT CACCIOLA

Basketball
Sports injury
Knicks
Iman Shumpert
Mike Woodson


Spitzer Aide Charged With Drunken Driving

Abstract: BUFFALO, Nov. 4 (AP) — The campaign manager for Eliot Spitzer , the Democratic candidate for governor, was charged with driving while intoxicated last month after his car rolled over on the Niagara Thruway. Less than two hours after the arrest of the campaign manager, Ryan Toohey, his father, Timothy Toohey, was himself arrested on suspicion of drunken driving on the way to a police station to pick up his son, The Buffalo News reported Saturday. Ryan Toohey, 31, of New York City, suffered a scratch above his eye in the crash, which occurred on Oct. 22.. Investigators believe Mr. Toohey’s car was going “well above the speed limit” when it rear-ended another car, Capt. Michael Nigrelli of the state police said. He said Mr. Toohey’s car “then spun out of control and rolled over several times.” He also said a breath test indicated that Mr. Toohey’s blood alcohol content was above the legal limit. Mr. Toohey’s lawyer did not respond to a telephone message.

Drunken and Reckless Driving
Accidents and Safety
Spitzer Eliot L


Workers at Nuclear Waste Site in New Mexico Inhaled Radioactive Materials

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Thirteen employees who worked the night shift at a nuclear waste burial site in New Mexico after an underground leak are carrying radioactive materials in their bodies, but it is too soon to say how much health risk this poses, Energy Department officials said on Thursday. The workers inhaled plutonium and americium , which if lodged in the body bombards internal organs with subatomic particles for the rest of the person’s lifetime. The dose calculation is a bit arcane because the dose in such cases will be delivered over many years. Calculating a lifetime dose will require several urine and fecal samples, taken over time, to determine the rate at which the body is eliminating the materials, said Joe Franco, manager of the Energy Department’s Carlsbad, N.M., field office, which oversees operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant , where bomb wastes are buried in an ancient salt bed deep beneath the desert. “Right now we have one single data point; there was one reading,” Mr. Franco said at a news conference in Carlsbad, explaining that more readings were necessary. Sensors in the salt mine detected a leak at about 11:30 p.m. on Feb. 14. At that hour, no one was in the mine, and automatic systems reduced the ventilation and ran the exhaust through high efficiency particulate filters, officials said, minimizing the flow of materials to the surface. The next morning, after officials realized that the surface was contaminated, they told the workers at the site to “shelter in place,” and all were scanned for external radioactive materials before they were sent home; no contamination was found. The mine has not been operating since then. The Energy Department also took fecal and urine samples to a laboratory, which reported the results this week. Another way to determine the amount of radioactive materials taken into the body is by using a whole body counter, which measures all radioactive emissions coming from the body, and points out the ones that do not come from naturally occurring isotopes. Russell Hardy, director of the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center , an independent monitoring organization that is part of New Mexico State University, said that he had received such a scan after visiting the site on Feb. 18, and it showed nothing unusual. But the fecal and urine tests can detect radioactive material in far smaller quantities than the whole body counter can. Mr. Franco said that several employees had made appointments with outside laboratories to have whole body scans, but that if the scans were not ordered by the department, the results would be protected by health privacy laws. He said he planned to order such scans for workers, to establish an upper limit to what their doses might be. Drugs can be given to people who have absorbed radioactive materials: chemicals that bind with those materials and speed up excretion. But these drugs have health risks of their own and may introduce extra risk if the level of contamination is low, Mr. Franco said. The contractor that operates the mine has developed a plan to lower instruments down a shaft to measure radiation levels and air quality before sending workers back in. The plan still needs approval by the Energy Department.

New Mexico
Radiation
Nuclear Waste
Energy Department


Norwegian Newspaper Taps Into Web’s Efficiencies

Abstract: PARIS — Last summer, as the crisis in the newspaper business worsened, executives at Edda, a publisher in Norway, met to discuss the Internet. As managers fiddled with their iPhones, someone suggested a novel approach: If the company was serious about securing a place in the digital future, why not devote half its resources to the Web and other new media? “In the beginning it seemed like just a wild thought, but after I thought about it for a while, I decided it would be interesting to try it,” said Erling Omvik, the editor of Fredrikstad Blad, one of Edda’s newspapers, in the southern city of Fredrikstad. Previously, he said, employees were spending about 90 percent of their time working on the printed newspaper and 10 percent on the online version. Like other small-town newspapers with limited resources, Fredrikstad Blad had found it hard to grow on the Web. Since that meeting, the paper has transformed its operations, demanding that reporters, advertising representatives and the rest of its 64 employees devote equal time to the print edition, which has a circulation of 21,000, and the Web. Journalists had to reapply for new, hybrid jobs. Ad reps were required to sell across both media. The Web site was enhanced with faster, more thorough coverage of local events. A social networking area of the site was developed, and the paper solicits articles from its members — about their clubs, church groups and other Fredrikstad institutions, for example. Some of the material on the site veers beyond traditional newspaper content. Local moviemakers, for example, have provided short fictional films that are included in a video section. “Online newspapers have to be something very different from print,” said David Montgomery, chief executive of Mecom, the London company that acquired Edda four years ago. “The online proposition is infinite in terms of content.” Since Fredrikstad Blad reallocated its resources, the Web site has shown significant growth. The number of daily visitors has risen 27 percent, to 26,000, according to Mecom. Advertising revenue in the first half of this year more than doubled from a year earlier, to €812,000. Should other small-town newspapers, many of which are struggling for survival, pay attention to what is being done in Fredrikstad? Norway is certainly not a representative newspaper market. Readers remain more loyal to their local papers than in other countries, yet they are also early adopters of technology. The changes at Fredrikstad have also come at a cost. More time spent on the Web means less time for the print edition. Even before the 50-50 split was initiated, the staff had been reduced nearly 20 percent as Mr. Montgomery imposed companywide cuts. Mr. Montgomery insists that the contents of Mecom’s newspapers have not suffered, because employees work more efficiently. Reporters, for example, generally write the headlines, format their articles for the newspaper and post them to the Web — jobs that at most newspapers are done by a copy desk. As a result, Mecom has largely eliminated copy editors. “As an industry, we need to cast off this mistrust of individual journalists and let them live up to the training and education they’ve been given,” he said. Mr. Montgomery’s tough-guy approach has not made him popular in newsrooms, but it seems to be helping the bottom line. Last week, Mecom reported a 48 percent increase in earnings for the first half of this year, after two difficult years. Mr. Omvik, who has been the editor of Fredrikstad Blad for 12 years, acknowledged that it had sometimes been “difficult to be a leader” since Mecom acquired Edda. But now, with the paper making a serious commitment to its digital business, he added: “I think the last year has maybe been my most exciting year as an editor. There are no more certainties, but there are so many possibilities. It would be tragic if newspaper people were the last to realize that the old way of giving out information is shrinking.”

News and News Media
Computers and the Internet
Norway
Newspapers
Edda


Sharpton Refuses a Deal on Charges for Sean Bell Protests

Abstract: Most of the people who were arrested while protesting the Sean Bell police shooting verdict will have their cases dismissed. But prosecutors refused on Tuesday to drop charges against one defendant, the Rev. Al Sharpton . The Manhattan district attorney’s office wanted Mr. Sharpton to plead guilty to disorderly conduct because of his history of arrests for similar actions. Mr. Sharpton is often ready with calls of injustice, but he viewed his treatment in this case as a distinction. “I am very honored that the court recognizes my background for standing up for what is right,” Mr. Sharpton said outside the criminal courthouse in Manhattan, where court officers rerouted foot traffic to avoid disturbing his almost ceremonious news conference. “We have always stood to disobey when we felt the system was not working.” His legal team was not willing to accept the district attorney’s offer for Mr. Sharpton to avoid jail time or fines by pleading guilty. (Disorderly conduct is a violation, not a crime, and would not result in a criminal record.) So the case was put off to July 28 while Mr. Sharpton’s lawyers try to negotiate a better deal. They hope to convince the district attorney that “it is more appropriate to give everyone the same disposition,” said Wylie Stecklow, one of Mr. Sharpton’s lawyers. “Everyone had, technically, the same culpable conduct.” More than 200 people were arrested on May 7 after they blocked several bridges and intersections in Brooklyn and Manhattan in protest of the acquittal of three police detectives involved in the shooting death of Mr. Bell. Among those arrested, and at Mr. Sharpton’s side on Tuesday, was Nicole Paultre Bell, the woman who was to marry Mr. Bell the day he was killed in November 2006. Most of those arrested, including Ms. Bell, will have their charges dropped as long as they stay out of trouble for six months. Like Mr. Sharpton, two other protestors — Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, who were in Mr. Bell’s car and also were shot — were not offered dismissals because of previous arrests, according to a spokeswoman for the district attorney. Mr. Benefield has no criminal convictions, but has been arrested in the past, including a robbery charge that was dismissed, said his lawyer, Michael Hardy. Still, Mr. Benefield and Mr. Guzman, who has served prison terms for armed robbery and selling cocaine, will refuse to plead to the straight disorderly conduct charges, Mr. Hardy said. “They were the victims, and, therefore, their position is they will be willing to do a day in jail since the cops did none,” he said. Mr. Sharpton has been willingly arrested at least 10 times since 1984, Mr. Hardy said. And it’s not about showmanship, he added. “In the movement, getting arrested was a badge of honor,” he said. “In the ’50s and ’60s, if you didn’t get arrested, you were suspect.”

Bell Sean
Sharpton Al
Decisions and Verdicts


Hachette Says Amazon Is Delaying Delivery of Some Books

Abstract: Amazon has begun discouraging customers from buying books by Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Colbert, J. D. Salinger and other popular writers, a flexing of its muscle as a battle with a publisher spills into the open. The Internet retailer, which controls more than a third of the book trade in the United States, is marking many books published by Hachette Book Group as not available for at least two or three weeks. A Hachette spokeswoman said on Thursday that the publisher was striving to keep Amazon supplied but that the Internet giant was delaying shipments “for reasons of their own.” Hachette is one of the largest New York houses, publishing under the Little, Brown and Grand Central imprints, among many others. The affected books are a mixture of new and old. A just-published memoir, “Everybody’s Got Something,” by the “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts, is taking as long as three weeks to ship, customers were told. So is Stephen Colbert’s “America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t.” James Patterson’s “Alex Cross, Run” published at the end of February, is taking as much as five weeks. “NYPD Red,” by Mr. Patterson and Marshall Karp, will take as much as three weeks. Other Hachette books by the prolific Mr. Patterson are readily available, however. Generally, most popular books are available from Amazon within two days. An Amazon spokesman declined to comment. Publishers say the bookseller, whose shares have tumbled 25 percent this year as investors itch for profits, is determined to squeeze as much margin out of its suppliers as possible. “We have been asked legitimate questions about why many of our books are at present marked out of stock with relatively long estimated shipping times on the Amazon website, in contrast to immediate availability on other websites and in stores,” said Sophie Cottrell, a Hachette spokeswoman. “We are satisfying all Amazon’s orders promptly.” But, she added, “Amazon is holding minimal stock” and restocking some of Hachette’s books “slowly, causing ‘available 2-4 weeks’ messages.” For at least a decade, Amazon has not been shy about throwing its weight around with publishers, demanding bigger discounts and more time to pay its bills. When a publisher balked, it would withdraw the house’s titles from its recommendation algorithms. “Typically, it was about 30 days before they’d come back and say, ‘Ouch, how do we make this work?’ ” an Amazon buyer told the journalist Brad Stone in his book about the company, “The Everything Store.” Sometimes, though, more action was needed. The bookseller pulled all the “buy” buttons for Macmillan books in 2010 in a dispute over e-book pricing. Two years later, Amazon was negotiating for a higher discount with the distributor Independent Publishers Group. “They decided they wanted me to change my terms,” the IPG president, Mark Suchomel, said at the time. “It wasn’t reasonable. There’s only so far we can go.” Amazon promptly removed more than 4,000 IPG e-books from its site. After lengthy and quiet negotiations, the parties came to terms and the books were restored.


U.S. Skier Is Punished After an Altercation

Abstract: TURIN, Italy, Feb. 24 - Jeret Peterson, an aerialist on the United States freestyle skiing team, was asked to leave the athletes' village Friday, after the police said he punched a friend in the face during an argument outside a bar in Sauze d'Oulx. Officials from the United States Olympic Committee and the United States Ski and Snowboard Association asked Peterson to leave the Olympic housing, and he agreed to go, said the U.S.O.C. spokesman, Darryl Seibel. Attempts to reach Peterson through the ski association were unsuccessful. "This type of conduct is irresponsible and will not be tolerated," said Jim McCarthy, the United States Olympic team's chef de mission. "Like every athlete, Jeret had an opportunity to represent himself, his sport and his country in a positive manner. He chose to do otherwise, and because of his unacceptable actions, his Olympic experience is ending early." Competing Thursday, Peterson was the United States freestyle team's final hope for a gold medal. He landed a jump he calls the Hurricane, which is three flips and five twists, but he finished seventh. The American freestyle team earned only one medal, Toby Dawson's bronze in moguls.

PETERSON JERET
SUSPENSIONS DISMISSALS AND RESIGNATIONS
FREESTYLE SKIING
OLYMPIC GAMES (2006)
SKIING
WINTER GAMES (OLYMPICS)
OLYMPIC GAMES


Ronaldo May Be Retiring, but His Joy Lingers

Abstract: LONDON Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima — the great Ronaldo — has quit his game. Three times the world player of the year, twice the winner of the World Cup, the record scorer in the World Cup — the list goes on. “I wanted to continue,” he told the Brazilian news media before confirming his retirement Monday. “But I can’t do it the way I want to. The head wants to go on, but the body can’t take it anymore.” To the umpteenth microphone shoved in front of his nose in São Paulo, he confessed Sunday, “In recent days, I have cried like a baby.” Not a baby, perhaps, but ever a child in a man’s body, Ronaldo did something very few players in history ever could. He defined not one World Cup, but two. At St.-Denis, the stadium on the outskirts of Paris, news broke on the afternoon of the final in 1998 that Ronaldo had had a seizure, reportedly epileptic, in his hotel room. He was in a hospital and would miss the game. But when the team lineups were handed out minutes before the kickoff, Ronaldo’s name was on Brazil’s. It was overwritten in ink on the typed script. He appeared, but he barely figured in the match . It was as if Ronaldo was there in body but not in spirit. Brazil lost, and Zinédine Zidane was what Ronaldo should have been. Four years later, in South Korea and Japan, Ronaldo reversed that puzzle. His knees, gutted of sinew through operation after operation, clearly pained him. His frame was heavy, and the top end of his once-searing speed was withered. Yet by his presence, by his desire, by his belief and, above all, by his astonishing accuracy with either foot, he outscored every player in that tournament, scoring two goals that beat Germany in the final in Yokohama, Japan. By common opinion, he should never have started the 1998 final. By acclamation, he transcended the tournament in 2002. And by medical and sporting standards, his triumph over doubt was, and probably will always be, beyond the call of duty. His desire overcame all things. Even Brazilians put him in a hallowed ring of three incomparable World Cup achievers — with Pelé and Garrincha . And his career span sits somewhere between those two, because Garrincha, a fantastic wing who triumphed over childhood adversity, had a glorious decade from the mid-1950s to 1960s but died tragically lonely of alcohol poisoning before he reached 50. Pelé, of course, still enjoys global fame in his 70th year. Ronaldo is 34, and if he sticks to his decision to retire, he has the rest of his life to find a new meaning. He has been called by fans in Italy, one of three European countries where he played and conquered, the Phenomenon . It is a description that has fit him like a soccer shoe. At 17, he followed Romário’s path to PSV Eindhoven. He possessed some of Romário’s uncanny instincts around goal, and developed some of his appetite for nightclubbing, partying and womanizing. From Eindhoven to Barcelona, where Ronaldo had one brief but memorable season, scoring 34 goals in 37 games, he then moved on to Inter Milan, to Real Madrid, to A.C. Milan and finally to Corinthians in São Paulo. He collected injuries and accolades along the way, and children born in and out of wedlock. His responsibilities to the teams he played for were never doubted. His irresponsibility, to his own body and to the lifestyle that coaches tried to impose on him like a corset, was legion. But he will be remembered for his absolutely boyish openness. To meet him was to know instantly that with all his distractions, he lived for his game and through it. When the specialists opened and reopened his knee joints, and when the skeptics prematurely pronounced him finished on at least three occasions, he just kept coming back, and delivering. At his best , he displayed a clarity of mind and an ability to strike out of nothing that defied all manner of attempts to stop him. His 62 goals in 97 games for Brazil’s national team pretty much squared with the hundreds he accumulated with seven clubs in two hemispheres. So much for statistics. They tell you nothing about the joy of seeing him in action. They reflect little of the sheer defiance he displayed in playing at all when his body was breaking down. A big athlete at 6 feet, he carried weight that in his later years prompted opponents and spectators to chide him as the Ice Cream Man or just, crudely, Fat Boy. But at his farewell news conference Monday, Ronaldo wanted to put the record straight. “Four years ago at Milan, I discovered I was suffering from a complaint called hypothyroidism,” he said, describing the diagnosis as a thyroid problem that slows down the metabolism. “To control it,” he added, “ I was told I would have to take some hormones that are not permitted in football because of antidoping.” The sporting cycle turns. As time and pain at last caught up with Ronaldo, Brazil’s under-20 team crushed Uruguay , 6-0, in the South American youth event. A heralded Neymar scored twice and an 18-year-old midfield player, Lucas, struck three excellent goals on a bog of a field in Peru. We might hesitate before calling these boys phenomenal.


Kiwis Take Lead in Vuitton Regatta

Abstract: Team New Zealand beat Italy’s Mascalzone Latino by 56 seconds Sunday to clinch a 2-0 win in the best-of-three final of the Louis Vuitton Trophy regatta off Auckland, New Zealand.

Sailboats and Sailing
America's Cup
New Zealand
Louis Vuitton Trophy


SnackWell’s Nudges the Portion Pack Up a Few Calories

Abstract: WHEN introduced in 1992, SnackWell’s, the Nabisco line of nonfat and low-fat snacks, sold so well that there were shortages, and early television commercials featured a frazzled grocer trying to restock the products as women pushing carts stampeded toward him. In 1995, sales reached about $490 million, and the brand topped both the cookie and cracker categories — but then SnackWell’s got an object lesson in how the cookie crumbles. Competing brands, which had dabbled mostly in sugar-free products to attract dieters, introduced their own successful fat-reduced temptations, and SnackWell’s sales plummeted. Revenue for SnackWell’s was $32.3 million in the 52 weeks that ended March 20, a drop of 8.6 percent from the previous year, according to SymphonyIRI Group, whose totals do not include Wal-Mart. Advertising for the brand, which totaled an estimated $60 million in 1998, ceased after 2005 as parent company Kraft aggressively marketed its 2004 introduction of another craze for dieters: the 100-calorie pack. Now, in what Kraft marketers are calling a reintroduction of SnackWell’s, the brand has new products, and a new advertising campaign aimed at weight-conscious women. The first print ad in the campaign features a closely cropped photograph of a pair of stiletto-heeled black leather boots with the new slogan for the brand, “Be bad. Snack well.” The ad, by McGarryBowen, New York, a unit of Dentsu, introduces Fudge Drizzled Caramel Popcorn, and a new approach for the brand: portion control.  “Deliciously indulgent, perfectly portioned,” says the new ad, which is scheduled to begin appearing Friday in magazines, including People, Cosmopolitan and Glamour. “At 130 calories, they let you be bad, and still be good.” SnackWell’s will continue to sell in two older varieties, Devil’s Food Cookie Cakes and Crème Sandwich Cookies, in standard packaging. But in a new twist on premeasured portions, the brand is nibbling past the common 100-calorie limit. Another popcorn snack with white chocolate is also packaged in 130-calorie portions and two other varieties, Fudge Crème Brownie Bites and Rich Vanilla Crème Brownie Bites, contain 150 calories in a portion. “There is a group of women out there who struggle with temptation and want responsible alternatives that allow them to really enjoy sweets, but with an off switch because they have a difficult time stopping,” said Steve Siegal, a senior brand manager for SnackWell’s, who added that sometimes the cutoff should exceed 100 calories. “When it comes to portion control, consumers really want satiating products, and at the end of the day they don’t want to feel deprived,” Mr. Siegal said. “They will have a few more calories if it satisfies their sweet craving.” Women are far more interested in snacks and drinks sold in portion-controlled packages, with 19 percent of women saying they buy such products, compared with 8 percent of men, according Mintel, a market research firm. But prepackaged portions are often too small, in the opinion of 25 percent of men and 20 percent of women. Brian Wansink, who wrote “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” said in a telephone interview that in his research, when experiment subjects were presented with 100-calorie packs, about 70 percent were satisfied with just one, while the remainder helped themselves to seconds or thirds. In another experiment by Dr. Wansink, who directs the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab , participants who had eaten at around noon were gathered for snacks of either chocolate or cheese and crackers between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. With no inkling that their intake was being monitored, “most people stopped between the 170- to 190-calorie mark,” said Dr. Wansink. Applying that to SnackWell’s 130- to 150-calorie portions, “that might present a happy medium” because it is midway between 100 calories and what seems to be a natural point of satiation, he said.  But SnackWell’s two popcorn snacks that combine sweet and salty flavors could undermine “sensory-specific satiety,” the term for the feeling of having had enough of a certain flavor, he said. “Sensory-specific satiety causes you to get bored if you just eat potato chips, but if you take a break from potato chips and then eat chocolate, you want more potato chips again,” said Dr. Wansink. Sweet-and-salty snacks “are very tasty, but I could see this combination of flavors triggering a gigantic craving for more than just 130 calories of it,” he said. Four varieties that had been sold under the Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs label — Petites Fudge, Petites Mint Fudge, Fudge Drizzled Chocolate Chip Cookies and Fudge Drizzled Double Chocolate Chip Cookies — will now instead be sold under the SnackWell’s label (still in 100-calorie portions.) All of the new SnackWell’s products have a suggested retail price of $3.19 for a box of five servings. The brand declined to reveal what it will spend on the new campaign, except that it’s “a significant investment in the millions of dollars,” Mr. Siegal said. As for why Kraft elected to introduce the products and approach under a brand it had not advertised in five years, rather than a new one, Mr. Siegel said that 85 percent of consumers still report being familiar with SnackWell’s. “A lot of snacking companies would die to have 85 percent brand recognition for a brand that has stood for better-for-you indulgent snacking,” Mr. Siegal said. “It’s been a long time since the brand was out there in a big way, but this really is all about a new attitude and edge for the brand.”

Kraft Foods Inc
Snack Foods
Calories
Cookies
Popcorn
Weight


Mario Monti Set to Unveil New Austerity Plan for Italy

Abstract: ROME — Prime Minister Mario Monti enjoys broad popular support as he takes on the daunting mandate of turning around the moribund Italian economy. But the honeymoon may end as soon as Monday, when he is scheduled to announce austerity measures aimed at saving up to $25 billion to balance the budget by 2013. While the details are not yet known, he is expected to ask for higher taxes on the super-rich and luxury items like yachts, an increase in the retirement age and the reintroduction of property taxes — political third rails that are expected to meet fierce opposition with the public and Parliament. Mr. Monti, an economist who is also acting as finance minister, has told Italians that such changes are essential for Italy to boost its anemic growth, stave off a recession and pay down its staggering public debt, which is $2.5 trillion, or 120 percent of gross domestic product, in order to stabilize the Italian economy and protect the euro. It is a tricky balancing act, and already labor unions are objecting to pension reforms, to say nothing of changes to Italy’s labor market, which Mr. Monti has also said are on his agenda, though not immediately. “The road will be very rocky, very bumpy,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political science professor at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. “This is a government that doesn’t have friends in Parliament,” he added. Members of Parliament “aren’t convinced of the gravity of the crisis, because it’s a mediocre political class, not to say anything worse,” Mr. D’Alimonte said. It will also be a test for Italy’s technocracy: the cabinet of specialists widely seen as towering figures in their fields but lacking grass-roots political support. The welfare minister, Elsa Fornero, ran a highly regarded pension research institute. The defense minister, Adm. Giampaolo di Paola, was chairman of NATO’s military committee. Corrado Passera, who holds the economic development and infrastructure portfolios, is a former chief executive of Intesa Sanpaolo, a leading Italian bank — an appointment that prompted widespread criticism about conflict of interest, both from left-wing critics and from right-wing supporters of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, skeptical of what they see as a government of bankers. A former European commissioner, Mr. Monti has a sterling reputation abroad that will not necessarily help him navigate the difficult political waters at home. His government won a confidence vote in Parliament last month by a wide margin with the support of the center-left Democratic Party and Mr. Berlusconi’s center-right People of Liberty party. But it lacks a political base of its own. Angelino Alfano, People of Liberty’s leader, whom Mr. Berlusconi has often called his dauphin, said on Friday that the party would give Mr. Monti’s government a chance. “We think it’s right at this moment that the new prime minister have all the opening possible to propose the measures most useful for Italy and most balanced in terms of their contents,” he said in televised remarks on Friday. Mr. Berlusconi removed property taxes on first homes in 2008, making good on a campaign pledge, and his party has said it would oppose their return. The People of Liberty also counts in its ranks many professionals who are largely opposed to Mr. Monti’s plans to liberalize Italy’s professional guilds, such as those of lawyers, notaries and pharmacists, which they see as a threat to their power and incomes. Mr. Monti faces an equally serious challenge from the Democratic Party, the cornerstone of his parliamentary support. Made up of former Communists with close ties to labor unions and neo-liberals pushing for more reforms, the party is badly divided over economic issues. Mr. Monti’s government is expected to fast-track changes that would base pensions entirely on the number of years of contributions, rather than on salary at the time of retirement, as was once the case. It is also expected to raise the number of years required to qualify for a pension, which can now be collected after 40 years of contributions. A majority of Italians who retired after 2004 qualified to do so at an average age of 58 — in a country where life expectancy is 82 — and raising that bar could save Italy billions a year. After initially dismissing calls to meet with labor unions, which have been vehemently opposed to any pension changes, Mr. Monti said he would meet with them on Sunday. Susanna Camusso, the leader of Italy’s largest union, C.G.I.L., said that the 40-year mark was “untouchable.” In the end, many believe that Mr. Monti will prevail for a simple reason. “There’s no choice,” Mr. D’Alimonte said. “In the end, even this mediocre political class knows that there’s no choice and they need in some way to adapt.”

Monti Mario
Economic Conditions and Trends
Italy
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )


Marlins Fire Ozzie Guillen After Only One Season

Abstract: In their grandiose visions from last off-season, the Miami Marlins could have dreamed of a different way to spend Tuesday. With their many changes, the Marlins considered themselves a strong contender to host postseason games at their stylish new ballpark. But instead of preparing for the World Series, the Marlins made the latest move in a swift and startling change of direction. They fired their combustible manager, Ozzie Guillen, who had three years remaining on a four-year, $10 million contract. “After careful consideration following the disappointment of the 2012 season, we decided to dismiss Ozzie,” the Marlins’ president for baseball operations, Larry Beinfest, said in a statement. “Our managerial search begins immediately and our hope is that a new manager, along with roster improvements, will restore a winning culture.” The Marlins believed that Guillen, a lively personality who had guided the Chicago White Sox to the 2005 championship, could help the team win while energizing a skeptical fan base. Instead, the Marlins finished last in the National League East for the second season in a row, at 69-93, and Guillen’s mouth caused him trouble before the end of April. Guillen angered Cuban-Americans by expressing his respect for the former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in an interview with Time magazine. The Marlins suspended him for five games and Guillen apologized, but he never could connect with fans, who had a lukewarm reaction to the new stadium. The Marlins ranked only 12th of 16 N.L. teams in attendance. Their poor play, of course, was a big factor. The team spent $201 million on Guillen and three top free agents: shortstop Jose Reyes, starter Mark Buehrle and closer Heath Bell. Last week, the Marlins traded Bell (and $8 million) to the Arizona Diamondbacks for a prospect. The Marlins also traded infielder Hanley Ramirez, a former All-Star, to the Los Angeles Dodgers in July, the same month they shipped starter Anibal Sanchez and second baseman Omar Infante to the Detroit Tigers. Now Sanchez and Infante are preparing for the World Series, and the Marlins continue to reel from a fiasco they never expected.

Guillen Ozzie
Baseball
Miami Marlins
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations


The Ghosts of Clinton Street

Abstract: NORA GERAGHTY and Dan Kahn moved into the four-story brick house on Clinton Street in the summer of 2001, a week after graduating from college. By day, their life resembled that of any young couple in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn: coffee from a patisserie on Court Street and commutes on the F train to entry-level jobs in Manhattan. That was by day. By night, the couple retreated to a world suspended in time, a house in which virtually nothing had changed in the hundred or so years since a construction crew had arrived at the door bearing a supply of the miraculous invention known as electrical wiring. Ms. Geraghty’s great-great-great-grandmother bought the house at 312 Clinton Street for $4,000 in 1866. At the time, an outhouse stood in the backyard and horses were quartered next door. For the next 140 years, a period spanning Brooklyn’s consolidation with New York, the family discarded practically nothing: not the trunks of hand-woven bedspreads and frilly Victorian undergarments, not the boxes of handwritten grocery receipts dating to the 1880s, not the chunks of petrified laundry starch now piled in a 19th-century beer pail called a growler. Last year, the house underwent an extensive and much-needed renovation. A water-damaged beam was braced with pillars, and an old sofa was heaved onto the sidewalk decades after collapsing in the parlor during a wake. Yet 312, as the family calls it, remains the rarest of places, a Brooklyn home whose residents eat at the same oak table, within the same brick walls, and among many of the same well-worn possessions as no fewer than five generations of ancestors. I came to know the house because my parents have known Ms. Geraghty’s parents for many years. Without the personal connection, her family might never have shown anyone their collections of bottled fainting remedies, thigh-high men’s socks, and mint-green sales slips for coal. The couple acquired this inheritance not because they had any plans for their accumulated top hats and tax forms, but simply because neither they nor their forbears ever had the heart to throw anything away.  Michael Geraghty, Nora’s father, is a doctor in his 60s, a man with a soft gray beard and a prankster’s twinkling eyes. Every morning, he sets out by bike from the town house in Park Slope where he and his wife raised their three children and pedals toward the house on Clinton Street where he, his mother and his grandmother were raised. He makes his way to the kitchen, past a retired gas-powered Easy brand washing machine, circa 1940. After brewing a cup of coffee, he changes into a suit and heads off to Long Island College Hospital, four blocks away. On the way home, he stops into the kitchen again and fixes himself a gin and tonic, dropping the ice cubes into a glass that belonged to his father. He turns on a portable radio, an amenity modern by the standards of a house that contains a working Victrola. On occasion, he sits at the scarred table and thinks about the people who sat there before him: people like his mother, Dorothy Walsh, nicknamed Sweetheart, who was born in 1906 in the second-floor front room and died on Valentine’s Day in 1968, or his great-grandmother Maryann Cassidy, his great-grandfather Peter, and their only son, John, all of whom died of a mysterious cause within a few days in 1874. Dr. Geraghty has maintained this routine for 20 years. “I’ve tried communicating with them,” he said of his ancestors, smiling wryly. “They’ve never tried communicating with me.”  His daughter, Nora, is 28, with a slender face framed by long taupe hair. At the catering company where she works as a chef, she cooks on high-tech ranges with thousands of B.T.U.’s; then she goes home to heat up dinner in a 1935 Detroit Jewel. That “tin box,” as Ms. Geraghty calls it, is the home’s “modern” stove. “The old one,” she said, “is a wood-burning hearth that my dad would pop popcorn on.” By Ms. Geraghty’s account, she and Mr. Kahn have sometimes found it challenging to make room for a personal life amid the clutter of so many family stories and remembrances, not to mention boxes. “There’s almost an inability to live a modern, normal life,” she said. Until the recent renovation, for example, the house had no shower, so every morning she and Mr. Kahn were required to draw baths in a claw-foot tub. When the couple held parties, guests sometimes acted as if they’d walked into the period room of a museum. “They didn’t want to touch anything,” Ms. Geraghty said. “And that’s sort of how we felt. It’s pretty, but when you’re living somewhere, really living, you want to be able to touch things and use things.” Two years ago, Ms. Geraghty moved to San Francisco. She was beginning to feel as though the house were much smaller than it was, and in a sense, she was right. She and Mr. Kahn had been living in just two of the eight rooms: their bedroom and the kitchen. The top floor was crammed with falling-apart antiques, feather mattresses, books, the entire wardrobes of nearly everyone who’d ever lived in the house, and much, much more. Nor had the couple ever felt comfortable in the grand Victorian parlor, with its massive candelabras and floor-to-ceiling gilded mirrors. During Ms. Geraghty’s absence, Mr. Kahn, who works for a fashion company, remained at 312. After a few months, Ms. Geraghty came home, as though pulled in by some powerful tide. Less than a year later, the couple were engaged, with plans to marry in November 2006. Dr. Geraghty wanted to hold the rehearsal dinner in the house, so he ordered a full-scale renovation. To clear space for the contractors, he, along with his daughter, her fiancé and their friends, filled perhaps a hundred garbage bags with stuff Ms. Geraghty reluctantly classified as “junk.” Among such items were the piles of mail that her great-great-grandmother had never gotten around to opening. “The problem,” Ms. Geraghty said, “was that as time goes on, these things stop being junk and become antiques.” She wouldn’t hesitate to throw out five-year-old mail, she said, but these pieces were much older than that. “Some of it was advertising for corsets, things like that,” she said. “You had to make agonizing decisions over what to keep, because it’s beautiful and it’s your great-great-grandma’s, and what to throw out, because, quite frankly, they should have thrown it out themselves 100 years ago.”  For as long as Ms. Geraghty and Mr. Kahn had lived in the house, they had talked about buying their own apartment. About a year ago, they found a 700-square-foot duplex on the southern end of Park Slope. They loved the idea of hanging their own pictures on the walls, and going out on Saturday afternoons instead of staying home to dust the family’s mantelpieces and vacuum its carpets. But after much deliberation, they decided not to leave 312. “It wasn’t just the money,” Ms. Geraghty said. “None of us had the guts to do it.” In part, that was because the house had a sort of magnetism for them. As Brian Epstein, a close friend from college, put it one day last summer, standing in the couple’s garden where a pair of rosebushes have been squeezing out pink and fuchsia blossoms every June since the 1930s, “It’s the place where nothing ever leaves.” Ms. Geraghty still talks about the feeling of being “suffocated by the things,” but at the same time, those things and the feelings they evoke have fostered in her a profound gratitude. “The way I feel about my great-great-grandmother,” she said, “my great-great-grandchildren will feel about me, unless New York is gone by the time they’re born. Because in a thousand years, this place will never be sold.”  Ms. Geraghty’s great-great-great-grandmother Catherine Hamilton was already twice a widow when she bought 312 in 1866. She had two daughters from her first marriage: Catherine Quinn, who could not hear or speak, and Maryann Quinn, the woman who would die along with her husband and young son in 1874. Maryann’s daughter, Catherine Cassidy, was 6 when she lost her parents and brother. She survived to bear seven children and attain what was then the reasonably advanced age of 43. Twenty years after her death, her son Jim contracted pneumonia. It was said that he was days away from the grave when his father, a police captain named James Walsh, knelt at the foot of the young man’s bed with a picture of Jesus and prayed for the Lord to take his own life instead of his son’s. A week or two later, Captain Walsh went down to cellar and never returned. His family found him on the cellar floor, felled by a heart attack or a stroke. They had his wake in the second-floor parlor, with mourners sitting on the ill-fated couch, while his son lay in the room directly above, recovering. By that time, Mr. Walsh’s eldest daughter, Marion, ran the household. She would never marry; the house, with its eternal needs — washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday — was, in a sense, her husband. Dr. Geraghty would come to know Marion Walsh as “Aunt Mar” (pronounced “Mare”), and for a time in the 1970s, he and his wife, Laurie, shared the house with her. When Nora came along, the couple took it upon themselves to clear some furniture out of the way. Aunt Mar was not pleased. Dr. Geraghty did an impression of his aunt defending a worn-out carpet. “I just bought that 40 years ago!” he declared.  As it turned out, the renovations weren’t finished in time to hold the rehearsal dinner at the house. While the work was being done, however, some old chests were unearthed, and one day last summer, Dr. Geraghty and his daughter headed up a flight of stairs to examine them. For years, the five cases had filled the back of what the family called the dark room, a storage space packed solid with framed portraits, hatboxes, electric train sets, two swords and other items. As far as Dr. Geraghty knew, some of the chests hadn’t been opened since the family had clamped them shut on the Irish side of the Atlantic. He and his daughter positioned themselves at either end of a wooden trunk. As they slowly raised the curved lid, it made a low, moaning sound. Reaching inside, Dr. Geraghty removed a long, straight object wrapped in a newspaper. A flurry of dust particles shimmered in the light from Clinton Street. Ms. Geraghty carefully peeled away the newspaper (The New York Times, “Hitler Predicts Triumph”), and she and her father stood gazing at an intricate pattern of black lace. “It’s a parasol,” Dr. Geraghty said. “Look, it’s mended,” Ms. Geraghty added, running her finger along a seam of black stitching. A while later, from the pocket of a flannel jacket, Dr. Geraghty produced a matchbook bearing the words “The Hotel St. George, Brooklyn Heights” and a small picture of the establishment in its heyday. All the matches had been torn out, but Dr. Geraghty slipped the item back into the jacket pocket. The next few hours were devoted to the exploration of the contents of a small trunk sheathed with tin and filled with an infinite number of tiny compartments. A stencil on the outside indicated that it had belonged to Catherine Quinn, Ms. Hamilton’s deaf daughter. In a red cardboard gift box, Dr. Geraghty found a lock of brown hair; in a leather purse, someone’s molar. “An actual piece of somebody!” his daughter exclaimed. Letter after letter brought news of death and catastrophe: Someone had lost his eye in an accident, someone had succumbed to consumption, someone else had simply been “called away from this world.” Many of these old-timers had left no direct heirs. “It’s a kind of immortality for them,” Dr. Geraghty said, referring to the decision to keep so many of their possessions. By way of example, he mentioned a 19th-century boarder named Michael Campbell who rose from the kitchen table one night to use the lavatory and instead, under the influence of an unknown amount of beer or whiskey, made the fatal mistake of stumbling down to the cellar. “He died having a good time,” Dr. Geraghty said.  By the time Dr. Geraghty came upon the receipt for his great-great-grandmother’s funeral, the light in the plainly furnished bedroom was fading. “Check this out,” he said, gazing at a sheet of ivory-colored ledger paper. “Brooklyn, March 15, 1888,” he began. “Estate of Mrs. Catherine Hamilton. To John H. Newman, Dr., general furnishing undertaker, 181 Court Street.” He read on: “Four-horse hearse, nets, and plumes, $25. Five couches, $20. Chestnut box, $25. Draping parlors, $10.” “Draping parlors!” his daughter exclaimed. There was more: “Preserving book, $8; opening grave, $8.10; candles, $4.63; chairs, $3; gloves, $2.” After nudging the undertaker’s receipt into an envelope, he returned it to the chest. Finally, he and his daughter closed the lid and went downstairs. They had been going through Catherine Quinn’s belongings for more than three hours. The room darkened. The chest sat alone on the wood-planked floor. Its main compartment had still not been opened.

Families and Family Life
Antiques
Brooklyn (NYC)


With No Warning, House Republicans Vote to Gut Independent Ethics Office

Abstract: WASHINGTON — House Republicans, overriding their top leaders, voted on Monday to significantly curtail the power of an independent ethics office set up in 2008 in the aftermath of corruption scandals that sent three members of Congress to jail. The move to effectively kill the Office of Congressional Ethics was not made public until late Monday, when Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced that the House Republican Conference had approved the change . There was no advance notice or debate on the measure. The surprising vote came on the eve of the start of a new session of Congress, where emboldened Republicans are ready to push an ambitious agenda on everything from health care to infrastructure, issues that will be the subject of intense lobbying from corporate interests. The House Republicans’ move would take away both power and independence from an investigative body, and give lawmakers more control over internal inquiries. It also came on the eve of a historic shift in power in Washington, where Republicans control both houses of Congress and where a wealthy businessman with myriad potential conflicts of interest is preparing to move into the White House. Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, spoke out during the meeting to oppose the measure, aides said on Monday night. The full House is scheduled to vote on Tuesday on the rules, which would last for two years, until the next congressional elections. In place of the office, Republicans would create a new Office of Congressional Complaint Review that would report to the House Ethics Committee, which has been accused of ignoring credible allegations of wrongdoing by lawmakers. House Republicans Move to Weaken Office of Congressional Ethics Here is an excerpt of the proposed House rules detailing the changes slated to be made in the Office of Congressional Ethics. “Poor way to begin draining the swamp,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, said on Twitter . He added , “Swamp wins with help of @SpeakerRyan, @RepGoodlatte.” Mr. Goodlatte defended the action in a statement on Monday evening, saying it would strengthen ethics oversight in the House while also giving lawmakers better protections against what some of them have called overzealous efforts by the Office of Congressional Ethics. “The O.C.E. has a serious and important role in the House, and this amendment does nothing to impede their work,” the statement said in part. But Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, joined others who had worked to create the office in expressing outrage at the move and the secretive way it was orchestrated. “Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House G.O.P. has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions,” Ms. Pelosi said in a statement on Monday night. “Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress.” The Office of Congressional Ethics has been controversial since its creation and has faced intense criticism from many of its lawmaker targets — both Democrats and Republicans — as its investigations have consistently been more aggressive than those conducted by the House Ethics Committee. The body was created after a string of serious ethical issues starting a decade ago, including bribery allegations against Representatives Duke Cunningham, Republican of California; William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana; and Bob Ney, Republican of Ohio. All three were ultimately convicted and served time in jail. The Office of Congressional Ethics, which is overseen by a six-member outside board, does not have subpoena power. But it has its own staff of investigators who spend weeks conducting confidential interviews and collecting documents based on complaints they receive from the public, or news media reports, before issuing findings that detail any possible violation of federal rules or laws. The board then votes on whether to refer the matter to the full House Ethics Committee, which conducts its own review. But the House Ethics Committee, even if it dismisses the potential ethics violation as unfounded, is required to release the Office of Congressional Ethics report detailing the alleged wrongdoing, creating a deterrent to such questionable behavior by lawmakers. Under the new arrangement, the Office of Congressional Complaint Review could not take anonymous complaints, and all of its investigations would be overseen by the House Ethics Committee itself, which is made up of lawmakers who answer to their own party. The Office of Congressional Complaint Review would also have special rules to “better safeguard the exercise of due process rights of both subject and witness,” Mr. Goodlatte said. The provision most likely reflects complaints by certain lawmakers that the ethics office’s staff investigations were at times too aggressive, an allegation that watchdog groups dismissed as evidence that lawmakers were just trying to protect themselves. “O.C.E. is one of the outstanding ethics accomplishments of the House of Representatives, and it has played a critical role in seeing that the congressional ethics process is no longer viewed as merely a means to sweep problems under the rug,” said a statement from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an ethics watchdog group that has filed many complaints with the Office of Congressional Ethics. “If the 115th Congress begins with rules amendments undermining O.C.E., it is setting itself up to be dogged by scandals and ethics issues for years and is returning the House to dark days when ethics violations were rampant and far too often tolerated,” the statement continued. One Republican House aide on Monday disputed the suggestion that the Office of Congressional Complaint Review was a new entity, arguing that the current staff would largely remain and that the outside board overseeing it would also continue to exist. “It’s the same office, same people, most of the same rules,” said the House aide, who was not authorized to speak on the record. Among the most prominent cases brought by the Office of Congressional Ethics since it was created was an investigation into Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, who was accused of intervening with the Treasury Department to try to assist a struggling bank in which her husband owned stock. Ms. Waters was ultimately cleared by the House Ethics Committee, but the committee criticized the actions of her grandson, who was then her chief of staff, and urged the House to consider broadening a ban on lawmakers’ hiring their relatives to include grandchildren. By moving all of the authority to the House Ethics Committee, several ethics lawyers said, the House risks becoming far too protective of members accused of wrongdoing. Bryson Morgan, who worked as an investigative lawyer at the Office of Congressional Ethics from 2013 until 2015, said that under his interpretation of the new rules, members of the House committee could move to stop an inquiry even before it was completed. “This is huge,” said Mr. Morgan, who now defends lawmakers targeted in ethics investigations. “It effectively allows the committee to shut down any independent investigation into member misconduct. Historically, the ethics committee has failed to investigate member misconduct.”

House of Representatives
Congress
House Committee on Ethics
Office of Congressional Ethics
Robert W Goodlatte
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance
Republicans


You Mean It’s Next Week? Why Some G.O.P. Senators Will Skip the Convention

Abstract: In a normal convention season, most politicians are working every lever to try to get a prime speaking slot and bathe themselves in the glow of the party’s nominee. Then there is this year. Far from straining to get close to Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, more than a dozen senators suddenly have scheduling conflicts for an event that has been on the political calendar for more than a year. Image Senator Steve Daines of Montana Credit Illustration by Bob Eckstein Gone fishing Instead of being in Cleveland, for instance, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona says he will be “mowing my lawn.” The state’s senior senator, John McCain , the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, has a conflict, too: He is planning to trek the Grand Canyon (Mr. McCain, who said he supports Mr. Trump, also has a tougher-than-expected re-election fight). Steve Daines of Montana will use the time to hone his “fly fishing.” _____ Image Senator John McCain of Arizona Credit Illustration by Bob Eckstein Campaigning: Me first Senators in tough races had an easy call when it came to buying a ticket to Cleveland: no mistake by the lake for them. Rather than get national exposure, along with being associated with Mr. Trump, many vulnerable incumbents like Mr. McCain are going it alone. Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Mark S. Kirk of Illinois, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Marco Rubio of Florida and Roy Blunt of Missouri all say they will be campaigning, for themselves. _____ Image Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona Credit Illustration by Bob Eckstein Home fires Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Dean Heller of Nevada say they just want to reconnect with constituents. Michael D. Crapo will be conducting town hall-style meetings in Idaho. Jerry Moran of Kansas will be on a “listening tour” in his state. Thad Cochran of Mississippi will not be going for personal and family reasons. _____ 4,000 miles away Image Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska Credit Illustration by Bob Eckstein Winning the medal for putting the most distance between a senator and Mr. Trump: Lisa Murkowski will be almost 4,000 miles away in Alaska flying around remote areas of her state on a bush plane. _____ Image Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire Credit Illustration by Bob Eckstein Call me maybe Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky, John Thune of South Dakota, Jim Risch of Idaho and David Vitter of Louisiana. _____ Image Senator Rob Portman of Ohio Credit Illustration by Bob Eckstein Multitasking Distance is not an excuse for Senator Rob Portman of Ohio. Mr. Portman’s staff said he will stick around his home state and attend the convention. But the senator will be off campus at least twice when he does volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity and a Wounded Warriors kayaking event. _____ R.S.V.P. Yes Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Boozman of Arkansas, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Dan Coats of Indiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, John Cornyn of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, John Hoeven of North Dakota, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Pat Roberts of Kansas, David Perdue of Georgia, Michael Rounds of South Dakota, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

Republican National Convention,RNC
2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump
Republicans
Senate
Congress


Raiders Lose Appeal

Abstract: The Oakland Raiders lost their case in California’s top court after contending in a lawsuit that the N.F.L. sabotaged the team’s effort to build a stadium at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles. The case dates back more than 20 years when Al Davis, the Raiders’ managing partner, accused the league of purposely not doing enough to help the team move from the antiquated Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to a new stadium. The Raiders returned to Oakland in 1995 after spending 13 years in Los Angeles. The N.F.L. won a 9-3 verdict in 2001, but a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered a new trial amid accusations that one juror was biased against the team and Davis, and that another juror committed misconduct. A state appeals court overturned that decision, and the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ruling.


Clemens, Given Chance to Be Quiet, Forced Action With Testimony

Abstract: Days before Roger Clemens was to testify before a House committee in February 2008, Congressional leaders gave him one final chance to change his mind and not speak publicly. For two months, Clemens had openly questioned the veracity of George J. Mitchell’s report and its allegations that he had used performance-enhancing drugs. But as the hearing approached, lawmakers realized that Clemens’s testimony was not necessary because he — and other witnesses — had already given detailed depositions. On Thursday, Tom Davis, the former congressman from Virginia, recalled telling Clemens and his lawyers, “We’ll give you a chance to clear your name, but you don’t have to do this.” At the time, Davis was the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which called the hearing. Clemens chose to testify anyway and soon after, Davis and Henry A. Waxman, the committee chairman, recommended that the Justice Department investigate whether Clemens had lied under oath. A federal grand jury indicted Clemens on Thursday on charges of perjury and making false statements stemming from his testimony. Davis, in a phone interview, said the committee probably would not have asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Clemens had lied if had not chosen to appear at the televised hearing. “If he let it go at the deposition level, I don’t think we would have referred it,” Davis said. “But when it’s high profile like that, you can’t let it go. And we didn’t.” The hearing was dramatic and not just for the clash between Clemens and Brian McNamee, his trainer turned accuser, sitting one seat away. The proceedings unfolded in a starkly partisan way, with many Republicans fawning over and backing Clemens while Democrats questioned him aggressively. But in the end, the sides reached consensus that Clemens had lied, according to interviews Thursday with four people connected with the committee — a Democratic congressmen, two former Republican congressmen and a Republican staff member. Rusty Hardin, Clemens’s lawyer, has previously contradicted statements, made by Waxman, that his client was offered a chance not to testify. At a news conference Thursday, Hardin said: “Roger is looking forward to his day in court. He is happy this has finally happened.” In a statement, Waxman, who is now the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said: “Perjury and false statements by witnesses before Congress are serious crimes that undermine the ability of Congress to perform its duties. Congressional investigations are to learn the facts. When a witness, such as Roger Clemens, lies, as I think he did, he should be held accountable.” Davis said he believed Clemens ultimately decided to testify because “he was so far out on a limb.” The Mitchell report, which came out in December 2007, tied 89 major league players to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens drew attention because he issued forceful denials in a “60 Minutes” interview and a nationally televised news conference. The hearing was called, Davis said, because “the Mitchell report had been called into question.” He added, “We were invested in the Mitchell report, and it was important historically to show that the Mitchell report was correct.” Some lawmakers said they were inclined to give Clemens the benefit of the doubt, noting that his reputation outshone that of McNamee, an admitted steroid dealer. And Clemens and his team clearly wagered that his fame would work in his favor — the week before the hearing, Clemens worked the halls of Congress, posing for photographs with members of the committee investigating him. But that bravado also rubbed some the wrong way. “Sometimes fame brings an arrogance with it,” said Bruce Braley, a Democrat from Iowa, adding, “They were convinced that the hearing was a chance to clear the air and tell his side of the story, and I think the problem is in an atmosphere like that, that the truth does tend to come out.” Mark Souder, a Republican member of the committee who resigned from Congress in May after he acknowledged having an extramarital affair, said he read Clemens’s tour of Congressional offices as “I’m trying to use my fame to kind of bowl over you stupid Congressmen.” Clemens, Souder added, failed to follow a basic rule for public figures who are caught up in scandal. “When somebody confronts you, lying doesn’t work,” he said. Souder was one of a handful of Republicans to be publicly skeptical of Clemens’s testimony at the time of the hearing. Clemens had endorsed Republican candidates, and Davis said he and his colleagues felt a debt of gratitude. Some lashed out at Democrats for what Davis described at the time as a “lynching” of Clemens. J. Keith Ausbrook, who was then the Republican counsel to the committee, said Republicans were merely trying to ensure that the hearing was fair, and that all sides of the story were told. What eventually persuaded Republicans that Clemens had lied, Ausbrook said, were the matching stories of McNamee and Andy Pettitte, Clemens’s friend and former teammate, who each described a conversation between the two about Clemens’s steroid use. Davis said Republicans went out of their way to be fair. “We were very defensive of Clemens and tried to give him every break,” he said. “But when it was over and we looked at the evidence, I said, ‘I think we ought to refer this thing.’ ”