On Draft’s Second Day, Giants Add Depth at Wide Receiver

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Without trading for a veteran to fill their experience void at wide receiver, the Giants improved their depth at that position over the weekend by using two of their first four draft choices on pass catchers. They traded up six positions Sunday to select Ramses Barden of Cal Poly in the third round, with the 85th pick over all. On Saturday, they drafted Hakeem Nicks of North Carolina with their first-round pick, No. 29 over all. Nicks and Barden will join at least eight other wideouts who will contest to replace the veterans Plaxico Burress, who was cut from the team, and Amani Toomer, who has not been offered a new contract. Barden, who is 6 feet 6 inches and 227 pounds, sounded confident in a conference call Sunday. “I’m a complete receiver,” he said. “I can’t wait to compete and try to earn a job. My size will give me an advantage off the ball.” Neither General Manager Jerry Reese nor Coach Tom Coughlin directly answered the question when asked whether the draft choices had filled their needs. “We’ll see,” Reese said. “We’ll leave all our options open. We consider ourselves a power running football team.” When speaking of the team’s future at receiver, Coughlin said, “That’s for the future to hold,” and added that he was eager to see what the young players could do. He spoke enthusiastically about using Barden against smaller cornerbacks on pass plays near the goal line. Barden, unlike most high draft choices, played in the Football Championship Subdivision, formerly Division I-AA. He was asked about an extensive collection of YouTube clips showing his highlights. “That’s only the tip of the iceberg,” he said. He was also asked about off-field issues. Burress, a star in the league and a Super Bowl hero in 2008, wore out his welcome after accidentally shooting himself in the leg last season while in a Manhattan nightclub. “I’ve never been in trouble,” Barden said. “I’ve never been suspended. I’ve never been arrested. I’m fairly clean-cut off the field. I have moderate fun with my friends and that’s it.” To get Barden, the Giants traded their third-round pick and their fifth-round pick to Philadelphia. Last season, in 11 games, Barden caught 67 passes for 1,257 yards and 18 touchdowns. In four years, he had 50 touchdowns and accumulated 4,203 yards. Of the returning wide receivers, Steve Smith and Domenik Hixon have the most experience. The Giants could still try to trade for Cleveland’s Braylon Edwards and Arizona’s Anquan Boldin, who are thought to be available. With their second pick in the third round Sunday and the 100th pick over all, the Giants chose Travis Beckum, a tight end from Wisconsin. He is 6-3 and 243 pounds but played only six games last season because of a fractured left fibula. Reese said Beckum could become an H-back, who may not block much but could be sure-handed in bad weather late in the season on short pass patterns against smaller linebackers and safeties. In the fourth round, the Giants selected Andre Brown, a running back from North Carolina State, who could replace the departed 1,000-yard rusher Derrick Ward. An intriguing pick came in the fifth round Sunday when they took quarterback Rhett Bomar of Sam Houston State. Bomar played well for two seasons there after missing a year following his departure from Oklahoma. He was dismissed from the Sooners after having been found to have accepted money for a no-show job. Bomar will join David Carr and Andre Woodson as Eli Manning’s backups. In their final two choices Sunday, the Giants took cornerback DeAndre Wright of New Mexico in the sixth round and cornerback Stoney Woodson of South Carolina in the seventh.

Football
New York Giants
National Football League


Egypt’s Stunned Mubarak Brothers Adjust as Inmates

Abstract: CAIRO — The prison is called Tora Farm, but there is nothing agricultural about it. It is a two-story block of poured concrete, and for years its massive gray walls have held those deemed enemies of the powerful. Now they hold the full tableau of state power under President Hosni Mubarak : Gamal Mubarak, a prince of the political scene, now prisoner No. 23, and his older brother, Alaa, leader among the business elite, prisoner No. 24; the prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, a patrician man who once said Egyptians were not ready for democracy; Zakaria Azmi, the president’s closest confidant; Fathi Sorour, the party loyalist and speaker of Parliament; and more. They make docile inmates, their captors say, still stunned to find themselves behind bars. They eat food brought from outside, the right of any detainee who has not been convicted. But Gamal appears badly shaken and often refuses to eat. He shares a cell with Alaa. “Bear in mind they are very broken,” said a prison official who described the situation inside and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “They do everything they are asked. They don’t raise their voices.” The former president is not in Tora Farm, but he has been detained, and if his health improves, he is expected there soon. Officials said Saturday that the elder Mr. Mubarak had been moved to a military hospital in Cairo and that, like all the others, he would be interrogated by a special corruption unit within the state prosecutor’s office. In Tahrir Square, people crowded the newspaper seller, staring at the headlines declaring that on Tuesday Mr. Mubarak would be questioned again. All over Cairo, Egyptians sat in coffee shops and cafes, they gathered on corners and in their homes, marveling at what not long ago seemed impossible. These detentions, perhaps as much as the day Mr. Mubarak resigned, have captivated the nation, given a sense of hope for the future. The men in custody represent the core of the power structure, not just the head. With its leaders jailed, the once-supreme National Democratic Party has already been relegated to history, but Egypt ’s Supreme Administrative Court made it official on Saturday, ruling that the party would be dissolved and its assets seized by the government. But it is also a bittersweet moment for Egyptians, many people said. They sense that even if these fallen power brokers are tried before a court, and even if they are convicted and sentenced, though it may help settle the past, it will not provide a clearer path to the future. “I am not sure that this in itself is going to make us move forward, because so far we have not moved forward, we have been walking with our heads backwards, looking to the past, talking about what happened, putting people on trial,” said Mohamed Salmawy, a novelist and head of the writers union. “But the actual constructive effort has not yet begun, and I personally don’t know why it is being postponed.” Since the popular revolt that toppled the president and redefined the calculus of power, Egyptians have not united behind a vision for the future, many people said Friday. Protesters have grown suspicious of the military, which still rules by decree. Parliamentary elections will not be held until September. Government offices barely function and tourism, the lifeblood of the nation, has dropped sharply. Some people are bitter that it took the military leaders two months to begin interrogating the former leaders, and that then they acted only under the pressure of persistent demonstrations. “I feel bad about the feeling that is growing in me, this rejoicing about how this guy was caught or that guy is now in prison,” said Mohamed el-Sawy, the founder of a youth cultural center trying to promote a dialogue about the future. “We now need revolutionary ideas; there is so much to change and do on all levels and in all directions.” Even so, the detentions are the first tangible promise of justice, or at least revenge. “There was so much injustice,” said Khalid Yousef, as he sat with friends in an open-air coffee shop off Tahrir Square. “God is great now that they are in jail.” Al Ahram and El Akhbar, state-run newspapers once controlled by the men in prison, offered details of their lives behind bars. Some had cellphones hidden from the guards, El Akhbar reported. The tidbits that suggested privilege stoked the outrage of the men at the coffee shop as they smoked cheap, bitter tobacco and sipped sweet tea. “Why should they be treated special?” shouted Ahmed Hosni, a carpenter angry at the slow pace of change. “It’s true, we are all astonished they are in jail. But they are there because they are corrupt.” The prison, with about 600 inmates, is in a town called Tora, crowded with uneven brick apartment blocks and dusty, litter-strewn roads. It is part of a complex of buildings — a campus more than a farm — easily viewed from the rooftop of a building on its perimeter. The entire structure is gray but for the black bars on the windows and the sand out back. “It’s not a five-star residence,” said the prison official, who has worked there for more than a decade. “It is a normal prison. People call it a five-star prison because those who come to it are from the elite of society.” Inside the walls, the president’s younger son, Gamal, has lost a lot of weight, and Alaa keeps to himself, the officials said. Like all prisoners, they have two beds, a television without satellite service and a small refrigerator. Like all inmates, they wear white track suits and are allowed three or four hours a day to walk around outside their cells. “I think that Gamal is worse than Alaa,” the prison official said. “He looks a lot more in shock, and he lost half of his weight. He eats very little, doesn’t sleep very well. He is not hanging out with anyone. He is in his cell most of the time and alone.” The men have for now lost their freedom. But they have not been convicted, or even charged. They are only under investigation, though expected to stand trial. When the men arrived, there was a familiar inmate, Hisham Talaat Moustafa , a former real estate tycoon and member of the upper house of Parliament convicted of having his former lover, the Lebanese pop diva Suzanne Tamim, killed. Mr. Moustafa has treated his new neighbors to food from the Four Seasons hotel, which he has delivered, newspapers reported, suggesting rules can be bent for some. “There is a lot of pain and frustration and sadness,” the prison official said. “At the end of the day, they have lost their freedom. They are in a very, very bad psychological state.” The prison official was not suggesting that these men deserved sympathy. Their incarceration proves, he said, “We are now in a state where there is a rule of law, where the biggest is held accountable like anybody else.” That point rang true for the former presidential candidate Ayman Nour, once sentenced to five years in that same prison in a case that was widely seen as driven by a political vendetta. “The tables have not turned; the tables have been set right,” Mr. Nour said. “The thieves are inside the prison now, and the honest people are free.”

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


It's Clay, So Nadal Beats Federer

Abstract: HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — Rafael Nadal beat Roger Federer , 7-5, 6-7 (3), 6-3, on Sunday, winning the Hamburg Masters and adding the only major clay-court title missing from his résumé. It was the reverse of last year’s final, when Federer won his fourth title in Hamburg and ended Nadal’s 81-match winning streak on clay. Nadal rallied from big deficits in the first two sets, although he lost the tie breaker in the second. He raised his record against Federer, the world’s top-ranked player, to 8-1 on clay and to 10-6 over all. “All the week has been very special for me,” Nadal said. The second-ranked Nadal has 26 career titles, 21 of them on clay, including the last three French Opens. Nadal previously won in Monte Carlo — beating Federer in the final — and Barcelona this year. “It was a strange match,” Nadal said. “Roger made some mistakes in the first set that helped me.” Federer lost his seventh match of the year. He has won only one title, at a relatively minor clay-court tournament in Estoril, Portugal. The Hamburg Masters is a major warm-up tournament for the French Open, which is the only Grand Slam title that Federer has not won. “I could have served a little better; it wasn’t my best performance, maybe,” Federer said. Federer has been No. 1 since February 2004, but Nadal is the top player on clay, a slower surface. Since April 2005, he has lost only twice in 110 matches on clay — to Federer last year in the Hamburg final and to Juan Carlos Ferrero in Rome last week. Federer led by 5-2 in the first set and wasted two set points before Nadal recovered and won seven straight games. That gave Nadal the first set and a 1-0 lead in the second. Federer won the next four games and later led by 5-2, but he could not close out the set until the tie breaker. Nadal had a three-hour match Saturday in beating Novak Djokovic in three sets, but he appeared fresher in the third set Sunday. Serving for the match, Nadal won the first three points, then hit a backhand crosscourt winner. “I am happy that I won and that I beat the No. 1 in the world and the best player of the year,” he said, referring to Federer and Djokovic. “And that should give me some more confidence for the French Open.”


Free Same-Day Tickets to ‘Hamilton’

Abstract: Dear Diary: On Sunday in late November I walked over to the Richard Rodgers Theater to see if there was any chance I could pick up one ticket to “Hamilton” for my daughter as her Christmas present. I knew the show had been selling out every performance, but I thought maybe I could get a singleton for the week after Christmas when she’d be home from out of town. Nothing doing. No more tickets all year. But while I was waiting in line, at about 2:59 with a 3 p.m. matinee, a very handsome couple came up to the box office, asked a question and then came to the line of people like me waiting to buy tickets for future performances and asked if anyone wanted two tickets for that day’s show. Their friends had canceled at the last minute. A representative from the theater rushed over and told the woman she couldn’t sell her tickets right there like that. The woman exasperatedly explained that she didn’t want to sell them; she wanted to give them away so they wouldn’t go to waste. At which point someone in line immediately took her up on the offer. Sometimes ya just gotta be in the right place at the right time.


NATIONAL BRIEFING | SOUTH | Georgia: Court Upholds Mayor’s Conviction

Abstract: An appeals court upheld the conviction and 30-month sentence of former Mayor Bill Campbell of Atlanta. Mr. Campbell was appealing his sentence for tax fraud on the basis that it was too long. His lawyers also argued at his June 8 hearing before the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that his Sixth Amendment rights were violated because he was not allowed to have the counsel of his choice at trial. Mawuli Davis, one of Mr. Campbell’s lawyers, said he was disappointed. But, Mr. Davis said, “we’re prepared to continue to fight.” During the proceedings leading to Mr. Campbell’s trial, he tried to hire Craig Gillen, an Atlanta lawyer, but the government opposed the move because Mr. Gillen’s law partner represented one of Mr. Campbell’s co-defendants in the federal corruption case that focused on members of his administration.

Decisions and Verdicts
Atlanta
Bill Campbell


Blue Jays Sign a Pitcher

Abstract: The Toronto Blue Jays signed the right-handed pitcher Gavin Floyd to a one-year, $1 million contract.


California: Tahoe Fire Is Under Control

Abstract: Firefighters have contained a weeklong fire near Lake Tahoe after it destroyed more than 250 homes and consumed 3,100 acres of forest, officials said. The blaze, the worst in a century to hit the area around South Lake Tahoe, forced more than 3,000 people to evacuate their homes. Losses are expected to exceed $150 million.

Forest and Brush Fires
Lake Tahoe (Nev)
Fires and Firefighters
Forests and Forestry
California


When It Comes to Politics, Burmese Say, Government Is All Too Helpful

Abstract: MEE LAUNG KWIN, Myanmar — As the fisherman sat mending cyclone -damaged nets in his riverside hut here on Saturday, he said he had not known it was the day he and other residents of the Irrawaddy Delta were supposed to vote on the new military-backed Constitution. But the fisherman, 54, did remember that a village leader affiliated with the ruling junta told him and his neighbors a few days earlier that he had already marked ballots for them and sent them to the regional authorities. “He said he made the right choice for us,” the fisherman said with a shrug. “So we said, ‘O.K., no objection.’ ” The fisherman’s name was not used because of the possibility of retaliation by the government. In Yangon, more than 60 miles northeast of his delta village, an official at a government-run company said the 1,000 or so workers there had not voted either: the company marked ballots for them as well. “This was my first chance to exercise my right to vote, but the government did it for us without our knowledge,” said the official, in his late 30s. “None of our staff dared say that we wanted to vote ourselves. This is standard in Myanmar.” The same thing happened at the military-run company where his wife works, he said. At least 135,000 people are dead or missing since a cyclone struck Myanmar, formerly Burma, on May 3, in the world’s biggest natural disaster since the Asian tsunami in 2004. For the junta that runs the country, however, politics has consistently trumped aid, local residents said and some government officials acknowledged. On Tuesday, officials allowed foreign aid workers to travel to the hardest-hit areas of the Irrawaddy Delta for the first time. But the numbers reaching devastated coastal communities were still tiny — fewer than 20 by some estimates — suggesting that the government was still determined to keep an iron grip on the provision of aid. The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million people who survived the cyclone are still struggling to find food and clean water and that the death toll could rise sharply unless supplies reach them soon. But the Burmese government claims that it can handle relief work by itself and that foreign nations should instead provide billions of dollars to help the junta rebuild the country later. Over the weekend, military leaders pressed ahead with the vote on the new Constitution, which would prolong their rule by, among other things, allotting 25 percent of parliamentary seats to the military. Saturday’s referendum in Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, and the Irrawaddy Delta, the regions most affected by the cyclone, took place after two weeks of delay. The rest of the country voted May 10, as scheduled, just a week after the storm. Even before the final round of balloting, state radio said that round could not reverse the Constitution’s approval because 92.48 percent of the 22 million eligible voters had already voted for it on May 10. In any case, The New Light of Myanmar, the state-run newspaper, reported Tuesday that voters in Yangon and the Irrawaddy Delta had affirmed the Constitution by an even more resounding 92.93 percent. Critics said the referendum as a whole was a sham. In the days before the Saturday referendum in Yangon, homeless cyclone victims taking shelter in schools and other public buildings were evicted to make room for polling places. In four delta villages visited Saturday, villagers gave the same answer: The government had voted for them; they did not even get to see the ballots. “We are not interested in voting; we are starving for food,” said a villager at Zee Phyu Chaung, a delta hamlet where those interviewed were aware that Saturday was referendum day. “Our village leader voted for us two days in advance, and we don’t know how he voted.” Such stories did not surprise the Yangon government official, who compared living in Myanmar to “living in a prison with a very big border.” The man spoke in English during an interview arranged on the condition that his name and personal details not be disclosed for fear of government retribution for criticizing the junta to outside journalists. Interviews with Burmese farmers and fishermen in the Irrawaddy Delta and with businessmen and officials revealed the frustration and quiet perseverance of people in this poor and politically repressive country. The official and several businessmen in Yangon said the government’s attitude toward its people was best illustrated by the discrepancy between its swift and harsh reaction to a popular uprising led by Buddhist monks last September and its foot-dragging in aiding victims of Cyclone Nargis. “You saw what happened in 1988 and last September,” the official said, referring to the junta’s bloody crackdowns on pro-democracy demonstrators. “In other countries, if you stand up against the government, you may get tear gas. Here you get the bullet. I have a wife and a child to support. I can’t risk my life.” When asked about his future, the official pulled on his cigarette and mentioned what other young, relatively well-educated Burmese call “voting by foot.” “If you can’t fight it, if you can’t reform it, it leaves you with just one option: leaving this country and going abroad to find a decent job and give your child a better future,” he said. That is not easy. As is the case with other officials, his passport is held by the government. If he wants to travel abroad, he must apply to have his passport returned, a process that he said takes two months, assuming it is successful, and requires a fair amount of bribes. “Otherwise, all government officials would emigrate,” he said. “We Burmese are born oppressed.” The signs of that oppression are pervasive, even in the Internet cafes of Yangon, where young people in crowded rooms play computer games and exchange news and photos of the cyclone’s victims with friends overseas. Employees are deft at helping customers bypass government firewalls to visit foreign Web sites. When a user logs out, the computer usually shows a notice reminding him to erase all his Internet download history, a bizarre snippet of life in a society where one Yangon businessman said “fear is a dominant motivator in everyday life.”

Myanmar
Elections
Politics and Government
Constitutions
Frauds and Swindling


On 9/11 Anniversary, a Small and Somber Ritual in Lower Manhattan

Abstract: At 8:48 a.m., 14 years and two minutes after a plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, the recitation of the names began. A crowd of hundreds gathered on Friday under a canopy of swamp white oak trees in the plaza between where the twin towers once stood, having come out for what has become a rite of remembrance each year — a reading of the victims’ names. The turnout this year was noticeably smaller than in years past. Fourteen does not carry the weight of a milestone, like 10 years, or 25. But for those who convened on the overcast morning — most of them family members of the 2,977 people who were killed on that day in 2001 — the event was critical. They vowed to never forget their loved ones and the way they died. They acknowledged that some grieved differently, or could not get away on a weekday morning or had many other valid reasons for not attending, but for them, this event remained a way to keep that promise. “Some parts of it feel like it was yesterday, and some parts feel like it was so long ago,” said Denise Matuza, whose husband was killed. “It’s peaceful for us,” said Ms. Matuza, who has come every year from Staten Island with her two sons. “It’s not stressful for us. This is where we find peace.” Her son Walter, 23, who shares a first name with his father, agreed. He said he visited the site as often as once a month. “It helps us find sanctuary in each other,” he said. Many in the crowd carried signs or mementos memorializing their loved ones. Some clutched framed photographs close to their chests or wore T-shirts emblazoned with their relatives’ faces. Posters bobbed above the crowd. Some were elaborately designed with images of the towers and the American flag, and others looked more homemade, like one declaring in glittery block letters, “We love you! We miss you!” The simplicity and modesty of the event stood in stark contrast to the gravity of the trauma that led to it. The readers — mothers, fathers, siblings, daughters, uncles, cousins, nephews — ended their turns with the name of a loved one, followed by a personal note. “We’re just empty without you,” said one. “He taught me so much about love and kindness every day,” said another. “I know you’re watching over me,” said a boy who was just 3 months old when his father was killed. “We miss you like crazy.” The annual ceremony, in numerous ways, has served as a kind of case study in grief and the passage of time. Some recalled years when the crowds could be counted in the thousands, and when the event was held in a dusty pit. Carole DiFranco, whose son Carl was on the 100th floor of the north tower, remembered one year when the wind had whipped through, blowing up dust and dirt. “It was so eerie,” she said. “Like God had gotten mad.” The site that had once been like a gaping wound, a kind of metaphor for how the city and nation felt, has now been sutured, with a gleaming new tower, 1 World Trade Center , looming over the event. Still, Mr. Matuza was troubled by the transformation of the area — with its reflecting pools in the footprints of the towers, as well as the National September 11 Memorial Museum — into a tourist attraction. He thought that, for many who visit, it had become less a place to mourn and more a place to learn about and remember a piece of distant history. “They remember it like they remember Pearl Harbor,” he said. But even after 14 years, many of those who went were not ready to let go of the tradition. “If this goes away, people are going to forget,” Ms. DiFranco said, “and it’s going to happen again.” Tom Acquaviva, whose 29-year-old son, Paul, was killed, said that his remains had never been recovered. “This is his burial ground — his cemetery — and we treat it as such,” said Mr. Acquaviva, 81, who wore a placard with a photograph of his son around his neck. “This is where everything happened,” he said. “My son had a bright future, and this is where it all ended.” His wife, Josephine, teared up. “I feel a great sense of closeness,” she said of the event. Even with the somber tone and many in the crowd dabbing their eyes, there were moments when the morning had the feeling of a reunion, with the matching shirts and the hugs of close friends who could have very well been strangers had they not been connected in their grief. As the day progressed, and as the readers made their way down the alphabetized list, the crowd dwindled. A few minutes after noon, the final name was read. Mr. Acquaviva said he had not found closure since his son’s death and that he was almost certain he never would. But the day did bring him a measure of comfort. “As long as I can breathe,” he said, “I’ll be coming every year.”

National September 11 Memorial and Museum


N.H.L. and Players Union to Continue Talks Tuesday

Abstract: The N.H.L. and the players union will return to the bargaining table on Tuesday in New York, hoping momentum generated over the weekend can lead to a labor deal. The sides held negotiations Saturday, the first since Oct. 18. So far, 327 games — including the outdoor Winter Classic — have been called off.

Hockey Ice
Lockouts
National Hockey League
Organized Labor


Patriots’ Harrison Out for Season, Probably Ending His Career

Abstract: FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Rodney Harrison would race downfield with the kickoff team in practice, tackle the returner and stir up mayhem. As part of the group that mimics the New England Patriots ’ next opponent, he showed the physical play and passion that was his hallmark until his latest, and probably last, injury as an N.F.L. player. “He goes on the scout kickoff team,” tight end Benjamin Watson said Wednesday. “He runs down there, makes the tackle every play, gets everybody in trouble. Everybody’s mad at him, but that’s Rodney.” Harrison’s season officially ended Wednesday, when he was placed on injured reserve. Realistically, his career probably ended two days earlier when he tore the quadriceps muscle in his right thigh, an injury that usually takes 8 to 10 months to heal. Harrison turns 36 on Dec. 15. He is in his 15th season, the final year of his contract. He sustained his fourth serious injury in four years on the final play of the third quarter of Monday night’s 41-7 victory over the Denver Broncos. He was not in the locker room Wednesday. “He’s a loyal and dedicated player to the game, and the way he played the game is really how all of us should play it, man, 100 percent all the way,” cornerback Ellis Hobbs said.


García Wins in Thailand

Abstract: Sergio García shot a final-round 68 to beat Henrik Stenson by four strokes and capture the Thailand Golf Championship, an Asian Tour event in Chonburi. García had six birdies and two bogeys on Sunday to finish with a 22-under-par 266. The victory was García’s first this year. His most recent win had come at the Johor Open, an Asian Tour event in Malaysia last December. ■ Matt Kuchar and Harris English ran away with the Franklin Templeton Shootout in Naples, Fla., shooting a 14-under 58 in the final-round scramble to break the tournament course record. The pair beat Retief Goosen and Fredrik Jacobsen by seven strokes, matching the tournament record for margin of victory set by Curtis Strange and Mark O’Meara in the inaugural event, in 1989.


Stocks Are Potential Bright Side to Lower Wall St. Compensation

Abstract: It’s bonus day at Goldman Sachs. It also happens to be the day that the Wall Street company reports earnings for the final quarter of 2015. So employees are getting a peek at the lay of the land before sitting down for their annual pay review. It’s not, on the face of it, encouraging: Compensation has fallen on average 8 percent from 2014. But the news at Goldman and other rivals may have a silver lining. First, Wall Street professionals are still making enviable pay. Average overall compensation last year was $344,000 at Goldman. At Morgan Stanley, it was $285,000, even after an 11 percent cut. Investment bankers and traders bore the brunt of the drop as Morgan Stanley slashed the division’s compensation pool 17 percent even as revenue rose 6.4 percent. It’s a smart move by a bank that is not yet earning enough to cover its cost of capital. Wall Street’s 4th Quarter Earnings Investors are eagerly awaiting guidance from management about when higher short-term interest rates will impact the banks’ bottom lines. Employees at JPMorgan Chase’s investment banking unit fared better. They face an average cut of just under 1 percent to $203,000, even though the overall pool is 4.5 percent lower – the division employs almost 4 percent fewer people. For those not cheered by reminders of their relative wealth, there’s something else to think about. The shares of the three banks – along with those of many other financial companies – have fallen in value so much in the last couple of weeks that all now trade below book value. In fact, Goldman and Morgan Stanley shares trade below the even-lower tangible book value. That means Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan shares are worth less than each bank’s theoretical breakup value. On the other hand, it may signal that a broader crisis is in the offing, one that might hurt earnings or the value of assets on the balance sheet. That would be bad news for most banker wallets, with the exception of restructuring experts. If, though, shareholders are overreacting to fears about China, oil and other issues, Wall Street employees paid partially in stock may be getting one of the best deals in years. Goldman shares, for example, have not traded below tangible book value on bonus day since January 2012. If markets shrug off the current jitters, the rise in bank stock prices should more than make up for the bonus shortfall. DealBook readers : The Reuters Breakingviews predictions book, “Stairway to Heaven, Highway to Hell,” offers smart financial ideas for the 2016 playbook. Click here to read the book. (Or download the PDF .)

Executive Compensation
Earnings Reports
Goldman Sachs Group
JPMorgan Chase
Morgan Stanley


Signs of Trouble at Agency Assigned to Protect Children

Abstract: The last eight weeks for the city's child welfare agency have been, by any measure, grim and jarring: four children dead, all from families known to the agency, one because of what prosecutors have called criminal neglect, others allegedly killed outright by their parents. All died in Brooklyn. Now, with this week's death of a 7-year-old girl -- the circumstances of which bear a striking resemblance to that of the 6-year-old child whose case a decade ago set off an overhaul of the child welfare system -- the agency's own statistics indicate there may have been warning signs of trouble building for months. The statistics, from the Administration for Children's Services, show that caseloads for child abuse investigators are up 18 percent from a year ago, with those caseworkers now tracking some 11 children each. The statistics also show that, as the number of abuse complaints has increased, the city's speed in investigating the cases, and the frequency with which its investigators find abuse or neglect, have been dropping. At least one of the Brooklyn field offices has a particularly low rate of confirming abuse and neglect. Zeinab Chahine, the child welfare agency's executive deputy commissioner, acknowledged the greater number of reported cases of abuse and the growing caseloads for investigative workers, but attributed them to temporary fluctuations. She said caseloads remained safe and manageable. "We watch all of this very closely," she said, "and we still think our people have the resources to do the job." Others, though, including people who have applauded the city's effort to improve its child safety work over the last 10 years, expressed concern. "There are early-warning signs," said Gail B. Nayowith, executive director of the Citizen's Committee for Children, an advocacy group. "The agency has the staff and the resources, but the performance data is showing some slippage." Officials at the Administration for Children's Services said yesterday that they are undertaking both a thorough review of all their policies and a review of all the open cases involving children who have been the subject of abuse or neglect complaints. They attribute the deaths to individual mistakes, not systemic failures. Not even the fiercest critics of the city's child welfare system are claiming that it is as bad as it was in 1995, when Elisa Izquierdo had her head smashed in by a parent despite a nearly six-year involvement with city child welfare authorities. That scandal revealed a system starved of cash, in which caseworkers managed loads of 40 children and up, and the nonprofit agencies responsible for providing foster care had little oversight or accountability. Now, nearly $600 million in investments later, caseloads for all of the agency's workers average between 12 and 15 children, and the foster care agencies are evaluated annually. In fact, the system has half the number of children in foster care that it did a decade ago. Still, the recent deaths have brought intense scrutiny to an agency whose reforms had been considered by many to be national models. The deaths have also moved concerns that were discussed only behind closed doors just days ago out into the open. "We have raised some concerns about safety in the past months," said Jim Purcell, executive director of the Coalition of Child Caring Agencies, the umbrella group that represents the private nonprofit agencies that contract with the city to provide most of its foster care and support services for troubled families. Mr. Purcell said that the performance of some of the Brooklyn offices has been of particular concern. "Over the course of time, we have raised with A.C.S. the fact that there have been fewer referrals to Preventive Services from the Brooklyn field office," he said. Yesterday morning, the city's commissioner of child welfare, John B. Mattingly and the city's new deputy mayor for social services, Linda I. Gibbs, visited the managers of the Brooklyn field offices. Meanwhile, as the agency faced an onslaught of second-guessing, there were many people who insisted that if it required fixing, it was on a small scale. "Child welfare was broken when Elisa Izquierdo happened. This is far, far, far from that," said John Courtney, a senior adviser to Child Welfare Watch, an independent research and advocacy group. "If there have been mistakes made, then the agency should be held accountable, but this is not the result of some ideology run amok." Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, an independent advocacy group that insists child welfare systems too often err in taking children away from birth parents, was more explicit in his concerns. He pointed out that after Elisa Izquierdo's death, there was something of a "foster care panic" in the city, meaning that the number of children removed from possibly troubled homes spiked as the authorities feared additional deaths. It backfired, he said, for the number of children known to the agency who wound up dead remained the same or increased in subsequent years. "Children have been dying in the City of New York who are known to the system at a rate of roughly one every two weeks at least all the way back to 1993," said Mr. Wexler, "but the blunt truth is that when the emphasis is on taking away children, the press doesn't pay attention. When the system is emphasizing family preservation, reporters rush to assume cause and effect where there is none."

ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN'S SERVICES
CHILDREN AND YOUTH


Israel Reaches Agreement to Relocate Amona Settlers

Abstract: AMONA OUTPOST, West Bank — With just days to go before a looming deadline for a court-ordered dismantling of this illegal Israeli settler outpost, Amona’s residents agreed on Sunday to a government proposal to relocate many of their homes to an adjacent plot of land on the same West Bank hilltop — a solution critics have denounced as just as illegal. The deal was intended to avert a forced evacuation that many feared could turn violent . Tires were piled up by the roadside on the approach to the outpost, ready to burn and hamper the arrival of the security forces. Hundreds of supporters, mostly teenagers, had holed up in a makeshift synagogue and in residents’ homes, poised to resist the removal of the outpost’s 42 Orthodox Jewish families, around 300 people. Protesters banged on the car of a visiting government minister and threw eggs at it. Hours before the residents voted on the deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel urged them to accept it. “There has not been a government that showed more concern for settlement in the Land of Israel, and no government will show more concern,” Mr. Netanyahu said. In the case of Amona, he said, “we have done the maximum.” Image Jewish settlers ate lunch in Amona on Sunday. The settlers have accepted a government proposal to evacuate and move to a nearby location, but critics have decried the solution as just as illegal. Credit Oded Balilty/Associated Press A flagship of the settler enterprise, Amona, established 20 years ago, is testing how far Israel’s right-wing government is willing to go to protect the 100 or so outposts that were built without authorization across the West Bank. The case of Amona has also stretched the country’s democratic system, with right-wing politicians pushing to flout the 2014 Israeli Supreme Court order to demolish the outpost, and advancing contentious legislation in an effort to reverse the judgment. While Israel allows settlement on public, not private, land, most of the world considers the West Bank to be occupied territory and views all settlement there as an obstacle to the establishment of a Palestinian state and a violation of international law. The Obama administration has vehemently condemned Israel’s continued settlement activities and its efforts to relocate the residents of Amona to another contentious site. The vote in favor of the deal may have mitigated the prospect of an imminent clash, but it is hardly likely to put an end to the yearslong legal and political wrangling over the outpost. It was ordered removed by Dec. 25 because it was constructed on privately owned Palestinian land. Under the new arrangement, more than 20 of the outpost’s mobile homes are to be relocated to nearby property that, according to Israel, has been abandoned by absentee Palestinian owners. The settlers will be offered temporary but renewable leases for use of the land. Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization that represented the Palestinian landowners in the case that led to the 2014 ruling, said on Sunday that it had made contact with a Palestinian claiming ownership of the supposedly abandoned lot to be handed to the settlers. The group did not identify the claimant. “The various proposals based on takeover of private Palestinian land and presented as an alleged solution to appease lawbreakers — the residents of Amona — are illegal, immoral and unreasonable,” the group said in a statement. Image Israeli settlers blocked the entrance to Amona on Thursday. The outpost, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was established in 1997. Credit Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Atallah Abd al-Hafez Hamed, 63, a resident of the nearby Palestinian town of Silwad, said he and his siblings had inherited land on the edge of Amona from their father. “Settlers are now living on my land that they once claimed was absentee land, and now their own government is forcing them out,” said Mr. Hamed, who was one of the original petitioners to the Supreme Court. “The land they have agreed to move to is also not absentee land, but is rather owned by residents of my village.” Aware that their deal with the government could face more legal challenges, the residents of Amona said in a statement that if the government did not meet its commitments, they would “renew the struggle.” Shortly before Sunday’s vote, Orya Yahav, 19, was sitting in her family’s trailer, which was filled with youths sleeping on couches and studying Torah. They had come from all over the country, and she did not know most of them. Ms. Yahav has lived all her life in Amona and is in the middle of performing a voluntary second year of national service, an alternative to military service for religious girls. “I want to serve the state,” she said, “so it is a bit disappointing. The state encouraged us to live here and now is not doing enough to keep us here. It’s unfair. It feels a bit like a betrayal.” The government is now expected to ask the court for a month’s delay to prepare the ground for the relocation. By then there will be a new administration in Washington, which is expected to be more forgiving of Israel’s settlement activities. President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, has been an avid supporter of Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

Israeli settlement
Palestinians
West Bank
Benjamin Netanyahu
Yesh Din
Israel


Minutes Show Fed Debate Over Crucial Program

Abstract: Behind closed doors during their most recent meeting, members of the Federal Reserve grappled with whether they should expand a crucial program aimed at loosening credit markets, or begin to scale it back as the economy clawed its way back from recession. Minutes from a September meeting of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, released on Wednesday, opened a window onto the debate inside the sometimes secretive central bank. Some members of the committee, which sets interest rates and makes other crucial decisions about monetary policy, believed that the Fed could speed up the recovery by increasing the central bank’s $1.25 trillion program to buy mortgage-backed securities. “Some members thought that an increase in the maximum amount of the committee’s purchases of agency MBS could help to reduce economic slack more quickly than in the baseline outlook,” the Fed said in the minutes . Another member of the panel said that recent improvements in the economy could merit reducing the maximum purchases. Ultimately, however, the Fed opted to do neither, and said it would extend the program through March before gradually winding it down. “All members were able to support an indication by the committee of its intention at this time to purchase the full $1.25 trillion of agency MBS that it had previously established as the maximum for this program,” according to the minutes. Earlier this year, the Fed began buying billions of dollars of Treasury notes and bonds backed by home mortgages in an effort to lower loan rates and get frozen credit markets flowing again. Markets have responded, and now, officials inside the Fed and Treasury Department are facing questions about whether they should withdraw some of the extraordinary programs propping up the financial markets. Economists worry that pulling back too soon could drag the economy into a “double dip” recession; investors worried about big deficits and the Fed’s expanded balance sheet say inflation could occur if the government is not watchful. The Fed seemed more concerned with withdrawing its supports too soon. “Because the improvement in financial markets was due, in part, to support from various government programs, market functioning might deteriorate as those programs wind down,” the committee’s minutes read. The Fed’s benchmark interest rates are still hovering at record low levels near zero, and officials say rates are unlikely to rise anytime soon. But in August, the Fed said its purchase of $300 billion in Treasury securities would slow gradually through the autumn before concluding at the end of October. The debate inside the Fed reflected both the renewed confidence in the economy, and the fragility of the recovery. Although stock markets are racing ahead and big banks are posting billion-dollar profits, millions of workers, consumers and homeowners are still suffering. The unemployment rate has hit 9.8 percent, consumer credit is contracting, and personal incomes are stagnant for many who still have jobs. In the face of that uncertainty, the Fed said it needed to keep its options open. “Members discussed the importance of maintaining flexibility to expand the asset purchase programs should the economic outlook deteriorate or to scale back the programs should economic and financial conditions improve more than anticipated,” the minutes said.

Economic Conditions and Trends
Federal Reserve System
Credit


30 Seconds With Scott Blackmun: A Case of Five-Ring Fever

Abstract: Scott Blackmun has had a case of what he calls five-ring fever since 1992, when he received his first legal assignment for the United States Olympic Committee. Now he is getting ready to begin what he considers his dream job as chief executive of the U.S.O.C. Blackmun, 52, had been the acting chief executive of the organization in 2000 and 2001. Then he went on to work as the chief operating officer for the Anschutz Entertainment Group, overseeing the development of the company’s stadiums, theaters and arenas. He returns to the Olympic committee Jan. 26; the Vancouver Olympics begin Feb 12. And his three teenage children approve. KATIE THOMAS Q. Did you play a sport in college or high school? A. I played tennis and soccer in high school, and I played soccer all four years at Dartmouth College. Q. Have you been active playing sports since then? A. I fell in love with squash about 15 years ago, but my hips aren’t cooperating. I also love to play golf. Q. You’ve said that you have a love for the Olympic movement. When did it take root? A. We all love the Olympic Games, right? We all love the vignettes that the broadcasters spin because they are inspirational stories. But I really couldn’t have articulated that I had a passion for the Olympic movement until I started working in the midst of it. When I left my practice in late 1998 to go to the U.S.O.C., I took a 40 percent pay cut to do that because it was something meaningful to me. It gave me a bolt of energy that really was something that I could get behind. Q. You’re heading to Hawaii for vacation before you start. Was that planned? A. When we realized I was going to be between jobs for some period of time, I tried to squeeze an extra five days in there so that I could do a little decompressing and some quiet planning time on my own. Q. What do your children think of your new job? A. The kids are all incredibly excited. They were bummed out when I left A.E.G. to go back to practice law, so they are excited about being able to do more fun things with me.

Olympic Games
Appointments and Executive Changes
Blackmun Scott


Trump’s Health Plan Would Convert Medicaid to Block Grants, Aide Says

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Trump’s plan to replace the Affordable Care Act will propose giving each state a fixed amount of federal money in the form of a block grant to provide health care to low-income people on Medicaid, a top adviser to Mr. Trump said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. The adviser, Kellyanne Conway, who is Mr. Trump’s White House counselor, said that converting Medicaid to a block grant would ensure that “those who are closest to the people in need will be administering” the program. A block grant would be a radical change. Since its creation in 1965, Medicaid has been an open-ended entitlement. If more people become eligible because of a recession, or if costs go up because of the use of expensive new medicines, states receive more federal money. If Congress decides to create block grants for Medicaid, lawmakers will face thorny questions with huge political and financial implications: How much money will each state receive? How will the initial allotments be adjusted — for population changes, for general inflation, for increases in medical prices, for the discovery of new drugs and treatments? Will the federal government require states to cover certain populations and services? Will states receive extra money if they have not expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, but decide to do so in the future? Ms. Conway, speaking on the NBC program “Sunday Today,” said that with a block grant, “you really cut out the fraud, waste and abuse, and you get the help directly” to intended beneficiaries. Medicaid covers more than 70 million people at a combined cost of more than $500 billion a year to the federal government and the states. More than 20 million people have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act, more than half of them through Medicaid. The new Congress has approved a budget that clears the way for speedy action to repeal the health care law, President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. And Mr. Trump has said Congress should take action to repeal and replace the law at the same time, putting pressure on lawmakers to agree on an alternative. As a candidate, Mr. Trump said he wanted to “maximize flexibility for states” so they could “design innovative Medicaid programs that will better serve their low-income citizens.” On Friday, in his first executive order , he directed federal officials to use all their authority to “provide greater flexibility to states” on the health law. As part of their “Better Way” agenda, House Republicans said in June that they would roll back the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid and give each state a set amount of money for each beneficiary or a lump sum of federal money for all of a state’s Medicaid program — “a choice of either a per capita allotment or a block grant.” Governors like the idea of having more control over Medicaid, but fear that block grants may be used as a vehicle for federal budget cuts. “We are very concerned that a shift to block grants or per capita caps for Medicaid would remove flexibility from states as the result of reduced federal funding,” Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Republican, said this month in a letter to congressional leaders. “States would most likely make decisions based mainly on fiscal reasons rather than the health care needs of vulnerable populations.” Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama, a Republican, said that if a block grant reduced federal funds for the program, “states should be given the ability to reduce Medicaid benefits or enrollment, to impose premiums” or other cost-sharing requirements on beneficiaries, and to reduce Medicaid spending in other ways. In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said he was troubled by the prospect of a block grant with deep cuts in federal funds. “Under such a scenario,” he said, “flexibility would really mean flexibility to cut critical services for our most vulnerable populations, including poor children, people with disabilities and seniors in need of nursing home and home-based care.” Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado, a Democrat, said that block grant proposals could shift costs to states and “force us to make impossible choices in our Medicaid program.” “We should not be forced to choose between providing hard-working older Coloradans with blood pressure medication or children with their insulin,” Mr. Hickenlooper said.

Medicaid
US states
Donald Trump
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Kellyanne Conway
Legislation
US Politics


Corporations Take a Low-Key Approach to Event Sponsorship

Abstract: Even in these tough times, major corporations are spending to entertain valued clients at golf tournaments and exclusive receptions. But where these companies once splashed their names and logos on every polo shirt and tote bag in sight, they are now going to extraordinary lengths not to be noticed. Take the U.S. Open golf tournament at Bethpage Black, where the nation’s biggest banks held parties this summer at the Heritage Club, an exclusive corporate hospitality center just off the 18th hole of the Long Island club. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley all brought clients to watch the tournament and dine at a buffet and open bar. But an observer would never have known the banks were there. Guests of the banks sat at tables, each costing $50,000, with no indication of who was paying for them. Nor were the bank’s names on any of the other displays of corporate sponsors. As a group, the banks paid $750,000 — Goldman had two tables at $100,000; Bank of America and its Merrill subsidiary took eight tables at a cost of $400,000; and Morgan Stanley shelled out $250,000. “Clearly, they did not want to be identified,” said one volunteer at the Heritage Club, who also declined to be identified because he was not authorized to talk publicly for the club. “I thought maybe I’d just put a generic ‘TARP Recipient’ sign at the center of each table.” Those who plan corporate events call the new practice “stealth spending.” In some cases, a corporate gathering is so well disguised that the event planners may not even know whose event they are working on. The subdued approach — no greeters at airports with corporate signs, no large banners — stems from worries that anything too lavish will suggest the companies are out of touch with the painful financial circumstances of many Americans. But it does not mean the parties have stopped. The biggest trend “is having an event, but no one knowing whose it is,” said David Beahm, a Manhattan event planner. There is more than just an invisible hand of the market at work. The banks in particular are worried about attracting more scrutiny and criticism from government officials and taxpayers after receiving financial assistance through the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program , among others. They saw the public disgust over the A.I.G. corporate retreats and the way the auto executives were chided for taking their corporate jets to Washington. And they have heard plenty about Wall Street bonuses. More recently, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, introduced legislation to ban banks receiving the relief money from being corporate sponsors. While that bill has been buried in a blizzard of other legislation, it touched a nerve among financial institutions still smarting from previous Congressional tongue-lashings. So this year, Bank of America put its traveling hospitality tent called “Hogan’s Alley” in mothballs. The luxury tent is described as “a step back in time to the golden era of golf” in the 1950s with “hardwood panel interior walls, vintage leather couches, help desk and concierge services and a museumlike collection of historical P.G.A. Tour mementos.” Since 2003, it has been used by tens of thousands of guests of the bank. Joseph L. Goode, a spokesman for Bank of America, said that the bank decided to operate almost anonymously at the U.S. Open because it was sharing a suite with other companies, rather than pitching a tent of its own. “Symbolism matters,” Mr. Goode said, adding that the bank’s decision not to promote its brand at the tournament was deliberate. “We are right-sizing our hospitality for the current environment and tone and mood of the country, with fewer bells and whistles.” Goldman and Morgan Stanley did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Even entire conferences now lack the name of the company sponsoring them — especially if they are being run by a financial services company, now in the cross hairs, or a pharmaceutical company, in the spotlight because of health care reform. Typical is a large banner at a conference saying “Reaching Forward 2009,” with the company’s name in fine print, if at all. Corporations that write big checks to support cultural events want to make sure that their money is not being used in a showy way. “The chief executive does not want to walk into an event and be embarrassed,” Mr. Beahm, the event planner, said. At a recent fund-raiser at the Museum of Modern Art, corporations were pleased to see a chandelier made out of recycled soda bottles and tablecloths created from recycled potato chip bags, according to Matthew David Hopkins, who heads 360 Design Events Ltd. in New York. “It’s not that corporations don’t have the money,” said James Etkin, president of ME Productions, an event planning company in Miami. “They don’t want to show they have the money. There’s a difference.” In that vein, out go the “gobos,” or projected patterns of lights with the company’s name. No more branded pillows and mugs. Mr. Etkin said that a high-level corporate officer recently met his truck of supplies as it pulled up to an event — something that had never happened before. “He was looking as we brought things off the truck and was rejecting things as they came off — saying this is too high or elegant and rich.”

Banks and Banking
corporate sponsors
Advertising and Marketing


Manhattan Rezoning Fight Involves a School Called ‘Persistently Dangerous’

Abstract: It is as though the neighborhood were divided by an invisible wall. On one side, children attend a public elementary school where test scores are high, the students are mostly white and well off, and the parent-teacher organization can raise $800,000 a year to pay for things like a resident chef. On the other side, children attend a public elementary school where 87 percent of the students are black or Hispanic and 84 percent receive some form of public assistance. Just over a tenth pass the state reading and math tests. There is no library or art teacher. The first school, Public School 199 on West 70th Street in Manhattan , is also seriously overcrowded, with a waiting list of nearly 100 children for kindergarten in recent years. The second, P.S. 191 on West 61st , has many empty seats. Now, to address the overcrowding at P.S. 199, the New York City Education Department is proposing to redraw the line, transferring to P.S. 191 several blocks of apartment buildings where children are currently zoned for P.S. 199. The change would be controversial under any circumstances, but it is particularly so because the state this year put P.S. 191 on its list of “persistently dangerous” schools . At heated public hearings, some parents on the Upper West Side have said they will move if they are rezoned to what they see as a failing school. Many have expressed resentment that some new buildings under construction would be zoned for P.S. 199 while their own buildings would be cast out. At a public meeting this month, when P.S. 191’s principal tried to speak about how she was addressing her school’s problems, she was shouted at. The passion is not limited to people whose children attend city schools. “I’m not a racist — it’s not that I don’t want my children to go to school in a mixed school,” Jared Larsen, who lives in a building that would be rezoned and has two children currently attending private school, said at a recent hearing. “But at the same time we want the best for our children. We want the best for our property value.” The situation mirrors a rezoning battle playing out in Brooklyn, where the department wants to reduce crowding at a school similar in its demographics and popularity to P.S. 199. There, too, the department is proposing to move some students into a school with a mostly black and Hispanic population drawn from a large housing project. In that case, the department was unprepared for the intensity of opposition, not only from the parents whose homes would be rezoned, but also from current parents at the mostly minority school, who fear that their children will be displaced. Image Lauren Keville, the principal of P.S. 191, greeting students and parents. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times Parents at P.S. 191, which draws many of its students from a nearby housing project, Amsterdam Houses, have been less vocal. Conversations with several of them outside the school on Monday suggested that many did not have accurate information about the rezoning proposal, and that the timing, coming just after the school received the “persistently dangerous” label, had sown confusion and mistrust. The designation is used for schools that have a high rate of violent episodes over a two-year period. Students at a school that has been designated “persistently dangerous” can request a transfer to a different school. The department has received 28 transfer requests from P.S. 191 so far. Amalia Battle, whose grandson is in fifth grade at P.S. 191 and whose four daughters also went to the school, said she thought the designation was a tactic being used by officials to scare the current families into taking their children out of P.S. 191 so the school could be taken over by someone else. “I think somebody wants this school,” Ms. Battle said. The Education Department has floated two possible rezoning plans. In one plan, P.S. 191 would share a now larger zone with P.S. 342, a school on West End Avenue that is supposed to open in 2018 . Students in the combined zone could attend either school. In the second proposal, the department would create a so-called superzone, in which parents would be able to request a placement in P.S. 199, 191 or 342, and any school with more applicants than seats would admit students by lottery. That could potentially reduce the racial and economic segregation in the district, depending on where students applied. To further reduce the crowding at P.S. 199, both plans would also shift some blocks in the northeast part of the school’s zone to P.S. 452 on West 77th Street, which opened in 2010. That has caused less controversy than the other proposed changes, because the differences between P.S. 199 and P.S. 452 are less stark than those between P.S. 199 and P.S. 191. A small group of parents have urged a more radical plan: linking P.S. 199, 191 and ultimately 342, so that all children in the shared zone would attend one school for kindergarten through second grade and another school for third through fifth grade, with the third school being a middle school. That plan would create more racially and economically integrated populations at all the schools. Department officials say that the rezoning is intended to address the imbalance in enrollment, but that diversity is one factor they consider in redrawing zone lines. A report last year by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that New York City had the most segregated schools in the country. Image Public School 199 on West 70th Street is part of a rezoning fight. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times A few people, including some P.S. 191 parents and a former P.S. 191 principal, have argued in favor of the rezoning, saying an influx of wealthier families would help that school. Kim Watkins, the chairwoman of the zoning committee of the District 3 Community Education Council , the elected body responsible for voting on zone lines, said that before P.S. 191 received the “persistently dangerous” designation, she had planned to support the rezoning. Her daughter attended P.S. 191 for kindergarten before being admitted to a gifted and talented program at another school, and Ms. Watkins said she loved it. But now, she said, parents are asking, “‘Why would we rezone families to this school with low performance on one hand, but also this ‘dangerous’ school designation?’ And no one is answering the question.” The principal at P.S. 191, Lauren Keville, is a first-time principal who started at the school last year. She said in an interview that she had been taking steps to improve the school’s academic performance and safety. “We believe that we have a great school, a safe school, and we’re moving forward,” Ms. Keville said. The city’s schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, is scheduled to hold a town-hall-style meeting at P.S. 191 on Wednesday evening. Although the session is not meant to be about the rezoning, Ms. Fariña almost certainly will get questions about it. The current schedule is for the department to present a final proposal to the council on Monday and for the council to vote by Nov. 20, so that the changes can take effect next fall. Given the opposition, however, it is possible that the council may ask to postpone any changes for another year. Clara Hemphill, the editor of Insideschools.org at The New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, said the Education Department’s approach to the rezoning efforts both on the Upper West Side and in Brooklyn had been poorly thought out. The public presentation of the plans, Ms. Hemphill noted, consisted mostly of data analysts from the Office of District Planning delivering PowerPoint presentations about enrollment projections. She said the department should be telling parents that it would put more resources and new programs into the schools whose zones it is proposing to expand. “Parents don’t really care about enrollment projections,” she said. “What they care about is whether their child’s going to be safe and happy.”

Upper West Side Manhattan
K-12 Education
NYC Department of Education
Zoning


Bombing in Pakistan and a Wave of Attempts Point to a New Drive by Militants

Abstract: PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Amid a wave of bombing attempts in this northwestern Pakistani city on Thursday, a bomb rigged to a timer exploded inside a passenger van, killing seven and wounding six, the police said. Although the attack was the only one of eight attempted bombings to succeed here, the police said, the mass of attempts pointed to a concerted effort by militants to intensify their attacks on government targets. “The bombs were intended to destroy an electrical tower, and to target police and a convoy of the law enforcement agencies,” said Shafqat Malik, the head of the Peshawar bomb disposal unit, noting that the bombs all had “a level of sophistication.” “The bomb that went off was to target civilians. Imagine what would have happened, had they all gone off,” he said. “Today was the worst day in my professional career.” The van that was bombed was set to carry passengers to Parachinar, the main town in the Kurram tribal region. In an interview, a policeman investigating the case, Ejaz Khan, said that a man had left two bags in the van, then asked the driver to wait for him while he went to bring more passengers. The bomb, with roughly 10 pounds of explosives, went off after he left. Although Kurram has in the past been a center of sectarian violence between Sunnis and minority Shiites, police officials said it was more likely that the bombing was a randomly chosen terrorist act rather than a targeted killing. “People are heading home for Eid holidays,” Mr. Khan said, referring to the Eid al-Adha festival this weekend. “There is a lot of rush. No one could have known which passenger was heading where.” A senior police superintendent, Najib Bhagvi, suspected that Pakistani Taliban militants were behind the attacks. That organization, along with some of its allies and splinter groups, has come under increasing pressure since the start of a military offensive against militant bases in North Waziristan in June. “Peshawar is heating up, and this is the blow back of the operation in Waziristan,” Mr. Bhagvi said. “All the terrorist outfits, including Al Qaeda, have joined forces and are hitting back.” Peshawar has seen a surge in militant attacks this year, particularly against the police. Twenty-five policemen have been killed since January, including a police inspector who was shot dead outside his house on Thursday. Mr. Malik, the bomb squad commander, worried that more attacks were sure to come. “Tough days are ahead,” he said.

Pakistan Bombs Peshawar Waziristan Terrorism


2 Men Charged With Murder After Buried Body Is Found in New Jersey

Abstract: Two men were charged with murder in Manhattan on Thursday, a day after the body of a Connecticut man they had partied with over the weekend was found in a shallow grave on the Jersey Shore. The men, James Rackover, 25, of Manhattan, and Lawrence Dilione, 28, of Jersey City, were charged with second-degree murder, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence in the fatal stabbing of Joseph Comunale, 26, of Stamford, Conn. Mr. Dilione was also charged with hindering prosecution. They were awaiting arraignment on Thursday in Manhattan Criminal Court. Robert K. Boyce, the New York Police Department’s chief of detectives, said investigators recovered 32 pieces of evidence from Mr. Rackover’s blood-spattered apartment at 418 East 59th Street, including sheets, towels and clothing that belonged to Mr. Comunale. The men had tried to clean up the scene with bleach, Chief Boyce said. The police said Mr. Comunale was stabbed 15 times in Mr. Rackover’s fourth-floor apartment on Sunday, after the three men had met in Greenwich Village on Saturday night. The police did not offer a motive for the killing, and neither suspect was cooperating with the investigation, Chief Boyce said. The three men were part of a larger group that had moved their party from the Village to Mr. Rackover’s apartment early Sunday morning, and Mr. Comunale was last seen entering the building around 7 a.m., the police said. Three women had joined them there, the police added, but left before the attack occurred. Image Joseph Comunale, 26, of Stamford, Conn. After the killing, the police say, Mr. Rackover and Mr. Dilione carried Mr. Comunale’s body out of the apartment, loaded it into a car and drove to Oceanport, N.J., about 50 miles away. There, in a wooded area behind a florist shop, the police say, the men dug a shallow grave and buried Mr. Comunale. Chief Boyce said gasoline found at the grave site indicated that the suspects had tried to burn Mr. Comunale’s body when they buried it in a foot of dirt. Mr. Dilione is listed on his LinkedIn page as the owner of Shore Point Roofing in Long Branch, N.J., near where the police discovered Mr. Comunale’s body. It was unclear how the two suspects knew each other. At the luxury apartment building in Manhattan where the police said Mr. Comunale was killed, residents said they knew Mr. Rackover as the son of Jeffrey Rackover, a well-known jeweler whose clients have included Oprah Winfrey and President-elect Donald J. Trump. Some said the jeweler had introduced the younger man as his long-lost son. Bo Dietl, a friend of Jeffrey Rackover’s for 30 years, said on Thursday that the jeweler had taken on the younger man as a son about three years ago, and in the spring had allowed him to take his name. “He’s devastated,” he said. “His heart’s broken for the family of this young man who was killed, and he feels sorry for Jimmy.” Mr. Dietl said that the jeweler had gone to the younger Mr. Rackover’s apartment on Sunday to walk his dog and had not noticed anything wrong, and that he learned what had happened when the police arrived the next day. Image Mr. Rackover, left, with Jeffrey Rackover, a prominent jeweler. Credit Rob Rich On Thursday, outside the Stamford home where Mr. Comunale grew up, his father, Patsy Comunale, spoke about his athletic son who “was the life of the party,” loved sports and played baseball and hockey through college at Hofstra University. “This should never happen to anybody, let alone my son,” he said, standing in his driveway, which was filled with cars as friends and family members came to grieve with the family. Mr. Comunale said his son had gone to New York City on Saturday night, and when he could not reach him on Sunday, he filed a missing-persons report with the Stamford Police Department. “He’s a great kid,” Mr. Comunale said. “He kissed you when he came into the house, and he kissed me when he left.” He covered his eyes for a moment, then turned to greet a group of friends. Mr. Comunale added: “I’m telling you, he was universally loved by everybody. You can’t find anybody to say a bad word about this kid. Unfortunately, he ran into the wrong guy at the wrong time. The wrong guys at the wrong time, because if it was just one guy he certainly could have handled himself.” Image James Rackover, who used to be known as James Beaudoin II, graduated high school in 2009. Mr. Comunale said he did not know the men accused of killing his son. An aunt of James Rackover’s, whom she knows as James Beaudoin II, instantly recognized a Facebook photo that shows James Rackover holding a puppy, which he had called to tell her. “No way,” the aunt, Rachel Boyd, repeatedly said during an interview after midnight on Thursday from a hospital bed in Florida. “I love him. He’s not the type of person that could do this.” Ms. Boyd said her nephew’s parents and four siblings were in Florida. At the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home of Mr. Rackover’s family on Thursday, a woman who identified herself as his sister told a reporter to leave. Ms. Boyd said her nephew left Florida about five years ago, and they had spoken frequently until about a month ago. “He just wanted to go away and have a fresh start, and leave the drama here,” she said. The drama included robbery convictions in 2007, when he was a juvenile, and in 2009, when he pleaded no contest to burglary of an unoccupied dwelling. His Florida record also shows multiple arrests for probation violations. “That’s why it was really great to see that he wanted to go in a completely different direction,” Ms. Boyd said.

Murders and Homicides
Joseph Comunale
James Rackover
Lawrence Dilione
Manhattan
Oceanport
NYC


Republican Policies for Iran Differ Little From Obama’s

Abstract: WASHINGTON — To rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Mitt Romney says he would conduct naval exercises in the Persian Gulf to remind Iran of American military might. He would try to ratchet up Security Council sanctions on Iran, targeting its Revolutionary Guards , and the country’s central bank and other financial institutions. And if Russia and China do not go along, he says, the United States should team up with other willing governments to put such punitive measures in place. As it turns out, that amounts to what President Obama is doing. As their tone on Iran escalates in advance of appearances via satellite Tuesday morning before the country’s most influential pro- Israel lobbying group, the Republican candidates for president have tried to draw stark contrasts between themselves and Mr. Obama when it comes to stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Mr. Obama’s Iran strategy, Rick Santorum said recently on “Meet the Press” on NBC , risked turning the United States into a “paper tiger.” Newt Gingrich said that on Iran, “we’re being played for fools.” On Sunday, Mr. Romney, appearing in Atlanta , offered this: “If Barack Obama gets re-elected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon.” And on Monday, he wrote an op-ed article in The Washington Post comparing Mr. Obama to President Jimmy Carter , who he said “fretted in the White House” as Iran held American hostages for 444 days. Mr. Obama and his backers have cried foul, saying the Republican candidates, in the quest to appear tough, are playing a dangerous game that could end up driving Iran closer to a nuclear weapon, as Mr. Obama implied in his own address Sunday to a pro-Israel group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee . Senator John Kerry , chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, echoed that in an interview on Monday. “To be making a blanket statement that if he’s president they’ll have one, and if Romney’s president they won’t have one, is the most craven political thing to say,” he said. “To make up differences is to play in Iranian hands.” Mr. Kerry said it could further drive up the price of oil, which helps Iran, as traders on world markets build in expectations of a military strike. Though advisers to Mr. Romney say they see significant differences between his Iran policy and Mr. Obama’s, other Iran experts and former officials in Republican and Democratic administrations say they do not see how the Iran policies being espoused on the Republican presidential campaign trail would do much more to stop Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon. In the case of Mr. Romney, they said, his Iran policy is essentially Mr. Obama’s Iran policy. “They seem to talk more in the realm of their imagination, and what they think will pass as good policy in an election campaign, as opposed to taking into account the realities on the ground,” said Abbas Milani, an Iran expert at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who has advised the administrations of both Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush on Iran. R. Nicholas Burns, the State Department’s top Iran negotiator under President Bush, said: “The attacks on Obama basically say, ‘He’s weak and we’re strong.’ But when you look at the specifics, you don’t see any difference.” For instance, Mr. Romney’s Iran issues statement, available on his Web site, argues that to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, he would “repair relations with Israel, increase military coordination and assistance, and enhance intelligence sharing to ensure that our allied capabilities are robust and ready to deal with Iran.” In addition, Mr. Romney calls for restoring the “regular presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region simultaneously.” But in recent years, the United States has always had one or two aircraft carrier strike groups deployed in the Persian Gulf region at a time, although there has generally not been one in the Mediterranean since 2003. However, American carriers do routinely transit the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal on passages to and from the United States and the Persian Gulf. There are also a number of American destroyers and cruisers regularly deployed to the Mediterranean. As for assistance to Israel, while Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel have had a rocky personal relationship, the United States remains Israel’s most dependable ally. Last year, Mr. Obama drew global criticism when he opposed a Palestinian bid for statehood through the Security Council, and his administration boycotted a racism conference in Durban in 2009 on the grounds that it allowed anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denial views. Mr. Obama has also increased military aid to Israel and promoted sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program , with Europe agreeing to impose an oil embargo on Iran, a step unthinkable four years ago. Mr. Romney’s backers insisted Monday that the two men were far apart on Iran. “President Obama for three years refused to build on previous administrations’ work to penalize Iran for its enrichment programs with the hopes that the regime would come around to his reset policies and softer world view,” said Richard Grenell, who was the spokesman for the American mission to the United Nations under Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama, he said, “is now scrambling to talk tough just in time for the U.S. elections.” Eric S. Edelman, a Pentagon under secretary in the Bush administration and a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, said a key difference between the president and Mr. Romney was that Mr. Obama had spent too much time minimizing the military option. Although Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that using military force remains on the table, “he didn’t say, ‘I’m ready to use force to stop Iran from getting a bomb,’ ” Mr. Edelman said. “He has made the credibility of the U.S. military option very low. If you talk to the Saudis and the Emiratis, they don’t think the president is really ready to pull the trigger.”

2012 Presidential Election
Barack Obama
US Politics
Iran
Newt Gingrich
Mitt Romney
Rick Santorum
US Foreign Policy
Nuclear weapon


Video Analysis Suggests Egyptian Officer Shot Protester, Rights Group Says

Abstract: A detailed forensic analysis of video recorded in Cairo on Jan. 24 strongly suggests that an Egyptian police officer fired the shotgun pellets that killed her, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Sunday. The rights group’s investigation of the fatal shooting of Shaimaa al-Sabbagh , 31, compared the testimony of four witnesses with evidence from video and photographs recorded before, during and after the Egyptian police used force to disperse a small group of socialist activists who were marching to Tahrir Square with flowers. The march, on Jan. 24, was in memory of more than 800 protesters killed in the 2011 uprising that began with antipolice street protests that Jan. 25, national Police Day in Egypt. According to the Human Rights Watch analysis , an examination of video posted online by the Egyptian newspaper Youm El Sabea shows Ms. Sabbagh crumpling to the pavement a split second after a masked officer fired a rifle in her direction from close range. A video analysis of the fatal shooting of the Egyptian activist Shaimaa al-Sabbagh in Cairo on Jan. 24, Credit Credit Human Rights Watch, via YouTube The very public and well-documented killing of Ms. Sabbagh, in a busy section of downtown Cairo on a Saturday afternoon, outraged Egyptians who had taken to the streets four years earlier to protest police impunity. Efforts by the Interior Ministry to pin the blame for her killing first on an unseen Islamist gunman — who would have had to fire into a street crowded with police officers without attracting attention — and then on an elderly activist standing near her as she was shot only added to the uproar . Human Rights Watch noted that video and photographs showed that when the masked officer fired, he was standing next to a uniformed police brigadier general who was pointing at the protesters. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former military chief who took power after deposing Mohamed Morsi, the president elected after the revolution, offered his first public comment on the killing on Sunday, The Associated Press reported . After offering his condolences to Ms. Sabbagh's family, Mr. Sisi said that one “individual’s mistake should not be used to undermine an entire institution,” in an apparent reference to the nation’s police force. According to local news media reports, in his remarks to a gathering of police and army commanders, religious leaders and politicians, the president also urged Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim to reveal “the truth behind” the protester’s death. While Ms. Sabbagh, who left behind a young son , was relatively unknown in life, outrage over her death — and the arresting image of a colleague trying to save her — has made her into an icon of resistance to the authorities. Last week, when female activists gathered at the site of her death to protest the shooting, they were met by counterdemonstrators chanting in favor of the police and the president. After the female activists reportedly dispersed of their own accord, a man believed to be a plainclothes officer was photographed removing flowers left on the sidewalk where Ms. Sabbagh was shot. Against this backdrop, Ms. Sabbagh’s husband released a video tribute in which he said his wife had been motivated by her love of Egypt to continue pressing for the original aims of the 2011 revolution: “bread, freedom and social justice.” Ms. Sabbagh and her colleagues were chanting for those things when their demonstration was attacked by the police.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Germany 101: Refugees Get Guidebook to Their New Home

Abstract: BERLIN — How to get along in Germany : Follow its laws, including showing respect for all religions, especially in the case of Jews, to whom the country has a historical obligation. Don’t be late. Do shake hands. And learn a few basic phrases, from “Cheers” to “I don’t eat pork.” These are among the tips in a new guidebook intended to help immigrants adapt to life in Germany. With figures released Thursday showing that some 758,400 asylum seekers arrived in Germany in the first 10 months of the year — 181,000 in October alone — officials face the daunting task of integrating people from vastly different cultures, who speak different languages and are largely Muslim, into a mainly Christian nation. The latest tool is a bright-blue, 142-page book, “Germany: First Information for Refugees.” Written in German and Arabic, it is available for about $10 in bookstores and free online. “We hope this book will serve as an initial contribution to integration,” Manuel Herder said in a statement. His company published the book with funding from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is close to the governing Christian Democratic Union. The book addresses the rule of law, the role of the police and cultural norms, especially those that could pose conflict for a largely Muslim refugee population. It also provides a legal definition of who is a refugee in the eyes of German law, and what happens if this status is not granted. The Scale of the Migrant Crisis, From 160 to Millions The latest E.U. proposal addresses just a fraction of a human crisis numbering in the millions. In the “Home and Car” section, one of “33 Useful Tips” notes that “many Germans value cleanliness and order, especially in their homes.” What may sound like clichés or parodies are meant as practical advice to help newcomers avoid conflict while paving the way for their integration — a sore point for Germans, who in the past have made little effort to enfold immigrants, on the theory that they would not be staying long. This was especially true of migrants from southern Europe and Turkey who were recruited to fill jobs in factories in booming West Germany in the early 1960s. “It was assumed that many of them would go back home again, but many have remained over generations,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an address last month. “Consequently, we are handling it very differently.” With Germany expected to have to absorb the equivalent of nearly 1 percent of its population of 81 million in the next year, the book is not the only effort it is making at outreach. It is also allowing every refugee 600 hours of “integration classes,” paid for by the government. More training will be available to help refugees get jobs, and hundreds of children are receiving welcome classes or other services to help them integrate into schools. Public television stations have produced guides in German, Arabic and English, and last month, the mass-circulation Bild newspaper published a special edition in Arabic.

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


With the Taxis of Tomorrow, Seeking a Softer Honk

Abstract: The Bloomberg administration has vanquished indoor smoking and trans fats. Its latest goal? A kinder, gentler taxi horn. The city announced last week that its Taxi of Tomorrow, the Nissan NV200 van, would be equipped with the latest in honk-reduction technology: a so-called low-annoyance horn to reduce screechiness. In short, New York City wants to build a better beep — complete with an exterior light that turns on whenever a driver honks, so the police can better spot violators of oft-ignored honking laws. Honking, the ear-splitting scourge of the urban symphony, is the aural equivalent of jaywalking: a crime that is constantly committed and rarely punished. A car’s “claxon” should not be used on New York streets “except as a sound signal of imminent danger,” according to the city’s administrative code. The minimum fine is $350, higher if one of those hapless “DON’T HONK” signs are nearby. Yet according to the police, a mere 286 summonses were issued last year for honking; only 448 such summonses were handed out the year before that. “It’s a staple complaint we get on 311 and our e-mails: ‘Cabdrivers honk too much. Can you stop them?’ ” said David S. Yassky, chairman of the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. But what would a “low-annoyance” horn sound like? No one seems to quite know for sure. Nissan, which must deliver the new cab by late 2013, had no immediate answers when a reporter called, and even city officials had trouble specifying what they wanted. “Less grating,” Mr. Yassky said when asked to describe his ideal horn. “Less sharp and jagged.” How about mellifluous? “I think mellifluous might be aiming too high,” he said. A Nissan executive, Joe Castelli, said his company would come up with something appropriate, but warned not to expect “a parakeet chirping or something like that.” “I don’t really know what low annoyance means yet either,” he said. “But the horn can be tuned. We can tune this in a way that is less offensive.” It turns out that not every yellow cab honks to the same tune. The Ford Escape expels something akin to a saxophone player’s blue note. The Nissan Altima , one of the smaller taxis, chirps a trumpetlike vibrato blast. The Ford Crown Victoria , a stalwart of the taxi fleet, boasts a Gershwinesque sound befitting the car’s status as a city icon. Its horn plays a sprightly little chord that is almost, if not quite, a major third — a sophisticated tone for a taxicab. (Gershwin himself imported a few Parisian taxi horns for the New York debut of “ An American in Paris ,” in 1928. A critic in The New York Times said the Parisian horns “did not bray discordantly,” as their New York counterparts did.) The city expects to be presented with samples of horn sounds from Nissan before it agrees to the definitive toot. Nissan plans to hold focus groups with drivers, taxi owners and passengers to determine the most pleasing honk, but the company already has a few horns on file. “Some are louder than others; some have unique sounds,” said David Reuter, a Nissan spokesman. “It’s not always the same pitch, not always the same overall impact.” The idea for a “horn light,” which would illuminate the exterior of the cab, was devised by the city. Nissan has committed to the technology, but has yet to determine the color of the light or its placement on the vehicle. Such an amenity is exceedingly rare in the commercial vehicle market. “It’s very unusual,” said Morty Garber, owner of Superior Horns in Queens, a horn wholesaler that offers horns and sirens “for virtually every conceivable application.” Cabbies worry that the horn light will only make their lives harder. But Assa Assa, 43, who said he used his horn only about five times a day — “when it’s necessary” — said he could live with a horn at less than full blast. “If the pedestrians or other drivers can hear me, that’s good enough,” Mr. Assa said as he drove down Second Avenue. “If they can’t hear, and I’ve got an emergency, that’s a problem.” At Punjabi Express on East Houston Street, two cabbies finishing lunch took a more philosophical view. “If the T.L.C. approves this cab, then it’s O.K.,” said Subash Saha, 47. His friend, Zahidul Islam, 35, shrugged. “We’re just drivers,” he said. “We can do nothing. We can’t solve these problems.”

Taxicabs and Taxicab Drivers
New York City
Noise


Dave Levitt, Klezmer Musician, Lifts Old Spirits

Abstract: When Dave Levitt was 8 and living in North Miami Beach, his parents, musicians who played the Jewish wedding and bar mitzvah circuit, often put him onstage to show off on clarinet and drums. The old people oohed and aahed. “Oh, what a beautiful young boy, and so talented!” he remembers hearing. He’s 40 now, and old people still throw compliments his way, but this time the old folks are clients of Jewish Home Lifecare’s daytime program in the Bronx, where Mr. Levitt works as what is called a music specialist. “I was brought up with an elderly audience,” he told a visitor the other day, “and this brings it full circle.” The program’s 300 clients, burdened with ailments like stroke, diabetes and flawed hearts, are brought by bus for a few hours of medical treatment, an ample lunch and a frisson of fun. Mr. Levitt is the fun. On piano or trombone, he mingles standards like “Stardust” with Yiddish melodies, some merry like “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen” and some drenched in heartbreak about a lamented love or a vanished village or street. He comes from a culture that knows of vanished villages and streets. At any session, barely half of the crowd is Jewish, and many of those are relatively recent Russian émigrés unfamiliar with Yiddish. But Mr. Levitt is striving to preserve a four-generation family tradition — klezmer, the music of Eastern European Jews. Outside of work, he leads a group called the Levitt Legacy Kleztet, but he’s no different from many people who let their enthusiasms infiltrate their bill-paying jobs — unite their avocation and vocation, as Frost put it. In fact, every two months, Mr. Levitt brings the Kleztet to the home. Each time he plays a tune like “Shein vi di Levone” (“Pretty as the Moon”), he’s paying homage to his great-grandfather Max Levinsky, a shtetl violinist who emigrated from Ukraine in the 1880s; his grandfather Jack Levitt, a trombonist who honed his klezmer chops with the legendary Boibriker Kapelle; and his parents. His father was bandleader of the Marty Levitt Orchestra, and his mother, Harriet Kane, its songbird. It was an intermarriage of Bronx and Brooklyn. With rolling eyes and dancing eyebrows, Ms. Kane put across numbers like “Litvak and Galitz,” which mocks a geographic rivalry between more intellectual and more emotional Jews. His parents live on today on YouTube, his father, with horn-rimmed glasses and a spiraling clarinet, and his auburn-haired mother vibrant and frolicsome a year before she died of cancer, in 1985. It was his father who taught him the wiles of drawing out klezmer sounds — making a clarinet weep, giggle or kvetch, and a trombone groan or sigh. His father also left a trove of memorabilia — including 80-year-old handwritten sheet music — which he tenderly curates to pass on to his children, Ruby, 7, and Quincy, 5. “When my father died, I realized I had a museum on my hands,” he said. The Marty Levitt sound is familiar to at least one of the home’s clients, Herbert Wolf, who worked as a trucker delivering mattresses for poolside chairs at bygone Catskills hotels like Grossinger’s. Mr. Wolf is a rumpled 79-year-old, riddled with, by his count, eight sicknesses, including cancer in two organs, but his memory is sharp. “His father was a kibitzer,” Mr. Wolf recalled. “ ‘Do you think it’ll rain if it keeps up?’ he used to ask me, then he’d say, ‘If it keeps up, it’s not coming down.’ ” It would be misleading to suggest that the crowd of 25 that listened to Mr. Levitt the other day was as fervent as a mosh pit. With all those illnesses, there was a weary, fatalistic air about the room, and as Mr. Levitt performed, some played solitaire or read novels. Everyone was impatient for lunch. But people perked up at a haunting or lively snatch of melody. Shirley Williams, 78, an African-American grandmother who uses a wheelchair and has been coming to the program since she had a stroke, is familiar with klezmer because she was raised in an “international neighborhood” and her mother worked as a domestic for a Jewish family on Park Avenue. “I grew up to love Jewish food and culture and songs like ‘Hava Nagila,’ ” she said. Of course, Mr. Levitt, a man with a dry sense of humor, does not fool himself into thinking he is playing for connoisseurs. But the tug of childhood ghosts invigorates each workday. “I started being around this demographic when I was a kid,” he said, “and here I am again.”

Music
Elderly
Levitt Dave
Bronx (NYC)
Jews and Judaism


Brazilian Stadium Could Ban Shirtless Fans

Abstract: Brazilian soccer fans could be barred from standing up, taking their shirts off, waving flags and playing musical instruments at Maracanã, the stadium’s administration said. Rio de Janeiro’s four top-flight clubs, Flamengo, Fluminense, Vasco da Gama and Botafogo, are expected to share the refurbished Maracanã, which reopened in June. ■ Fans who paid $2,500 for tickets to Lionel Messi’s charity game last weekend in Chicago will be eligible for refunds after he failed to show for a promised meet-and-greet after the game. The V.I.P. package was to include a private session with Messi, on-field seating and signed memorabilia. But Messi left the game in the 69th minute and Soldier Field shortly after. (AP) ■ The Red Bulls signed the Ugandan defender Ibrahim Sekagya, 32. Sekagya has played mostly as a central defender with Red Bull Salzburg of the Austrian league. He was a member of the Ugandan National Team as part of its 2006 and 2010 World Cup qualifying campaigns. (AP)

Soccer
2014 World Cup
New York Red Bulls Soccer Team
Lionel Messi