Leon A. Gorman, Who Made L. L. Bean a Household Name, Dies at 80

Abstract: Leon A. Gorman, who transformed L. L. Bean from his grandfather’s folksy store and catalog business into a billion-dollar global outdoor-gear retailer and made its signature rubber-soled hunting boot as synonymous with Maine as lobster, died on Thursday at his home in Yarmouth, Me. He was 80. The cause was cancer, the company said. Mr. Gorman joined Bean, a family-owned company, as an $80-a-week treasurer in 1961 and became its president in 1967 after the death of his grandfather, Leon Leonwood Bean, the founder. He held that post for 34 years, then served as chairman for 12 years before retiring in 2013 with the title chairman emeritus. He was succeeded as president and chief executive by Christopher J. McCormick and as chairman by Shawn Gorman, his nephew. One of Maine’s richest residents, Mr. Gorman still lived in the same house in Yarmouth in which he was raised. Mr. Gorman was an accomplished fly fisherman and ardent conservationist. He donated more than $6 million to the National Park Foundation, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and other environmental groups and thousands of acres to state parks. “Without Leon, Maine wouldn’t be the place it is today environmentally and economically,” said Lisa Pohlmann, executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Like his grandfather, he was an avid practitioner of the outdoorsy existence and rigorously committed to customer satisfaction. Those two sensibilities combined to produce the ethos that may have informed his grandfather’s decision in 1912 to return the money paid by 90 of his first 100 customers after the leather accidentally separated from the rubber soles of their hunting boots. In 1990, Mr. Gorman participated in the Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb, an expedition to Mount Everest involving American, Soviet and Chinese climbers to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Earth Day and to clear the debris left by scores of previous expeditions. His company supported the operation with a $100,000 grant. When Mr. Gorman became president, L. L. Bean had one store, in Freeport, Me. He modernized, computerized and expanded operations to process orders more quickly, and added inventory to include sporting goods and home furnishings. The changes generated annual growth of as much as 20 percent. Image Leon Leonwood Bean, the founder of L. L. Bean, surrounded by his grandchildren, including Leon A. Gorman, far left. Credit George Strock/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images In 1995, the company presciently began taking orders on its website. Within 13 years, online sales outpaced orders placed by telephone and catalog. (Mr. Gorman acknowledged being computer illiterate and wrote his 2006 memoir in longhand.) By 2013, L. L. Bean was selling more than $1.6 billion worth of clothing, gear and other merchandise through its 24 retail stores in 14 states (in addition to the flagship store in Freeport), its website and its catalogs. Last year it distributed 50 distinct catalogs to customers in every state and in 170 countries. Some of the company’s 140,000 products, like the Field Coat and the Chamois Shirt, have been around for decades. Prototypical modern versions are tested in Bean’s own laboratory. With 5,000 workers, Bean is one of Maine’s top private employers. In his memoir, “L. L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon,” Mr. Gorman wrote, “My proudest accomplishment is growing my grandfather’s company from employing less than 100 people in 1960 to employing tens of thousands of good Maine people over the generations; building a company based on solid Maine values of integrity, customer service, respect for people, a love of the outdoors, and above all, perseverance.” Leon Arthur Gorman was born in Nashua, N.H., on Dec. 20, 1934, the son of John Gorman, a company vice president, and the former Barbara Bean. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1956, trained in Filene’s department store in Boston and, after a stint in the Navy Reserve, joined the family firm. In 1967, L. L. Bean was succeeded by his son Carl, who died a few months later. Mr. Gorman, whose own father had died, became president when he was 32. Survivors include his wife, the former Lisa Davidson; his son, Jeffrey; two daughters, Ainslie Boroff and Jennifer Wilson; two stepchildren, Shimon and Nancy Cohen; several grandchildren; and a brother, James Gorman Sr. Mr. Gorman’s death prompted tributes from Maine’s business and political leaders, who described him and his company as vital to the state: as an employer, as an economic engine there and as a promoter of Maine’s way of life and values. Former Senator Olympia J. Snowe said he reflected “the very soul of Maine.” Senator Susan Collins hailed “his belief in our state’s future and his determination to preserve its legacy.” And Ms. Pohlmann said his company defined Maine for the rest of the world. “When people think of Maine,” she said, “they think of L. L. Bean: a place to get your gear and get out in nature.”


UBS Posts $1.9 Billion Profit in Second Quarter

Abstract: UBS of Switzerland on Tuesday reported a profit of 2 billion Swiss francs in the second quarter, as investment banking income rose. UBS’s profit, equivalent to $1.9 billion, was a major improvement from the 1.4 billion franc loss of the same period last year, when global markets were still struggling to recover from aftermath of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, and when UBS was caught up in a major controversy surrounding its handling of U.S. tax fraud investigations. The bank’s earnings were helped by a 10 percent increase in pre-tax profit from the investment bank, which totaled 1.3 billion Swiss francs. UBS has been clawing its way back to profitability after the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown led to massive losses, as well as change in chief executive last year. Last week, UBS passed a closely watched “stress test” that assessed the ability of European banks to withstand the impact of any renewed economic downturn. Still, fresh market turmoil, set off by global nervousness about the sovereign debt of Greece and several other European nations, has crimped trading activity for banks around the globe this year. Oswald Grübel, who took over as chief executive of UBS in February last year, said in a statement accompanying the earnings release, “This was a good result in volatile market conditions, and demonstrates the progress we are making as we move towards our mid-term targets.” He added, “I remain confident in our future and I firmly believe that we have the right strategy in place.” Though the bank’s earnings exceeded Reuters analysts’ expectations for a 1.34 billion Swiss franc profit, the second-quarter figures were down from a profit of 2.2 billion Swiss francs in the first quarter. The quarter-on-quarter dip in UBS’s earnings echoed results reported by other global banks in recent weeks. Citigroup and Bank of America earlier this month reported lower profits in the second quarter as weak trading results overshadowed the benefit they received from dwindling losses on loans to consumers and businesses. Both companies reported lower revenue, largely from a drastic slowdown in the trading of stocks, bonds and currencies by investors rattled during the quarter by fears of a European debt crisis and by wild stock market swings in May. Similarly, Credit Suisse, UBS’s main Swiss rival, last week reported revenues at its investment banking operation dropped 53 percent as nervous clients cut back on trades.

UBS AG
Company Reports
Banks and Banking


Partnership Plans to Bring Ultrahigh-Speed Internet to Six Communities

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — A start-up company plans to announce Wednesday that it has raised $200 million to deliver ultrahigh-speed Internet service in six communities surrounding research universities around the country. The company, Gigabit Squared, will work with Gig.U, an alliance of public and private universities that want to build islands of superfast networks to foster economic development and to promote services like education, health care and scientific research in the communities. The six communities have not been named. Gigabit Squared, based in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, is in negotiations with its first university and says it will make announcements about timing and participation later this year. Mark Ansboury, the company’s president and co-founder, said the investment in high-speed wired networks was needed because American telephone and cable companies had shifted their focus to wireless systems, which are convenient but much slower. “The big carriers built their fiber-to-the-home systems, but we have really seen them pull back in recent years,” he said. He noted that the United States was falling behind other nations that have moved aggressively to build high-speed Internet infrastructures. It ranked 13th in average connection speed in a survey last year by the network service provider Akamai; the world leader was South Korea, followed by Japan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Latvia. The world’s fastest city was Daegu, South Korea, at 21.8 megabits per second, followed by five other South Korean cities and eight cities in Japan. Boston, with an average bandwidth of 8.4 megabits, was fastest in the United States but ranked just 51st on the Akamai list. The United States has not always trailed in broadband speeds. In 1996, @Home, an Internet service provider started by a number of cable companies, charged $40 a month for download speeds up to 5 megabits. “A decade and a half later we’ve basically doubled our download speeds and we charge roughly the same,” said Milo Medin, the designer of the @Home network service. Today he is vice president of access services at Google, where he is leading an effort to demonstrate the value of ultrahigh-speed networking. Last year Google selected Kansas City, Mo., to build a prototype for speeds of at least a gigabit — 1,000 megabits per second. The company originally said it would offer the service in the first half of this year, but the date has slipped and Mr. Medin said the details would be announced soon. Google has already deployed a small demonstration network in homes next to the Stanford campus. “When our first user was installed, the first thing they did was test the speed of the network and then they downloaded a movie from Apple’s iTunes service,” Mr. Medin said. The service said the movie would take about two and a half hours to download, but it took five minutes. Gigabit Squared described the next generation of Internet service as two gigabits — about 2,000 megabits per second, roughly 71 times the speed of a standard cable modem. Still, there is some debate about the value of ultrahigh-speed networking. Most Internet engineers agree that very few applications require such high speeds, except in specialized areas like scientific research and remote medical technology. But proponents argue that the same thing was true in the period between dial-up Internet service and today’s higher-speed links. “If you treat the communications space as entering into an era of abundance rather than scarcity,” said Reed Hundt, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, “you can imagine very different use cases.” Only by deploying next generation networks will it be possible to determine whether services like advanced online education systems and remote medical diagnosis and health care are really the wave of the future. Gig.U is the brainchild of Blair Levin, former director of the government’s 2010 National Broadband Plan , which originally called for high-speed network islands around military bases. Mr. Levin later settled on university communities as a better starting base for future Internet services. Even though major communications firms are not pushing toward higher speeds, there are pilot efforts at gigabit networking in several states, including Tennessee, Louisiana and California. For example, Sonic.net, a regional Internet service provider based in Northern California, is offering gigabit networks to homes on several blocks in Sebastopol, north of San Francisco. The service is $59.95 a month, said Dane Jasper, Sonic.net’s chief executive, who added, “It’s the fastest and cheapest broadband in America — although it’s admittedly a small footprint.”

Gigabit Squared
Computers and the Internet
GigU
Sonic.net


Shaka Smart to Leave V.C.U. to Coach Texas

Abstract: Shaka Smart is leaving Virginia Commonwealth to coach the Texas Longhorns. The V.C.U. sports information director, Scott Day, confirmed that Smart, who met with V.C.U. players Thursday evening, was making the move.

College basketball
Shaka Smart
Coaches
Virginia Commonwealth University
University of Texas at Austin


A Merry Band of Rights Pranksters

Abstract: BEIJING — They call themselves the Volunteers — a growing band of young Chinese who stage playful, but pointed, public protests for greater rights for women. They dance and sing on the street wearing oversize “underpants” to assail invasive gynecological examinations for female civil servants, stroll through shopping precincts in bridal gowns spattered with red paint to combat domestic violence and shave off their hair in protest at higher university admissions standards for women. And while their style is somewhat more subtle than that of Pussy Riot, Russia’s feminist punk collective, it hits home in a country where politics is conducted behind closed doors by men in look-alike dark suits. Against the secrecy and uniformity, the Volunteers’ “happenings” are a flash of color. “We choose this wild and happy style because if we dance and sing, people pay attention,” said one Volunteer who asked that she be identified by the name she uses widely online, Zhu Xixi, because the group’s actions are risky in a country where the authorities are quick to crack down on public protests. “We want to be spirited and positive. And it works,” said Ms. Zhu, who plans to take up postgraduate studies. “We want to show we are not victims. If we were too serious, we would scare people off.” The women, and a few men, are mostly well educated, in their early or mid-20s. While Ms. Zhu wasn’t sure how many Volunteers there were, she said they were in every major city. “And I think people are watching in every area of the country,” she said. “I think the movement will grow.” There are certainly scores — perhaps hundreds. Many are students, often specializing in law or sociology, Ms. Zhu said. They are not highly organized, instead relying on social media and word of mouth to stage an event. They are goaded on by entrenched gender discrimination, long visible in politics and elsewhere, several said in interviews over the last few months. That discrimination just got worse. When the 18th National Congress of the ruling Communist Party appointed the country’s new leaders last month, the number of women in top positions not only failed to grow, but actually shrank. The number of women on the party’s new, 205-person Central Committee fell to 10 from 13, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Women now make up just 4.9 percent of members. On the new Politburo, the 25-member body above the Central Committee, there are two women — one more than before. But the only woman with any chance of moving onto the most powerful body, the Politburo’s seven-member Standing Committee, Liu Yandong, failed to make the final selection. She remains on the Politburo, joined by Sun Chunlan, the only female party leader for any of China ’s 33 provinces and administrative districts, who has been appointed party secretary of Tianjin. Ms. Liu, despite her solid credentials, was never going to make it into the inner circle of power, said a researcher at a central government institute with professional and personal ties to her. He requested that his name not be used for fear of the impact on his career. “The Politburo is as high as a woman gets,” he said. The Volunteers say they were struck by the contrast between the situation of women here and the gains women made in elections last month in the United States, where there will be more women than before in Congress — 20 of 100 in the Senate, and 78 of 435 in the House of Representatives. So expect more protests in 2013, probably involving costumes, singing and synchronized dancing. Days after a protest in which Ms. Zhu took part in the city of Wuhan, against requirements that women applying for civil service jobs undergo rigorous gynecological examinations and answer detailed questions about their menstrual cycles, another set of protests were staged in five other cities. On Dec. 2, in Dongguan, Guangzhou, Xian, Hangzhou and Shanghai, women reprised the “Injured Brides” protest of Beijing last February, donning bridal gowns spattered with “blood” and holding up placards saying: “Love is not an excuse for violence,” part of a campaign for a law against domestic violence that has been debated for years but is not making visible progress. Earlier this year, too, Volunteers attracted widespread media attention with their protests at public toilets in Guangzhou and other cities, saying women needed more facilities. In August, Volunteers danced to a song they wrote, “Violence Is Intolerable,” in front of a Beijing courtroom where Kim Lee, a U.S. citizen, was seeking to divorce her Chinese husband, who had admitted physically abusing her. They carried a letter with 1,000 signatures calling for justice for Ms. Lee. The lyrics weren’t Pussy Riot punk, but in China their appeal to Confucian-style moral rectitude resonated: Crazy violence reverberates through the country. Public apology has no sincerity at all. Repeated violence forces Kim to leave. Domestic violence should be severely punished. Dad, why are you beating Mom? Is it really all right to hurt her? Mom gets hurt, and we are so scared. We just want a happy and lovely home.

Women and Girls
Women's Rights
China
Beijing (China)
Shanghai (China)


Yemen’s President Again Backs Out of Deal to Step Down

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Yemen ’s political crisis deepened on Sunday as President Ali Abdullah Saleh once again and at the last minute scuttled an agreement that he step down, and hundreds of his armed supporters blockaded an embassy, trapping American, European and Arab diplomats for hours. Officials of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the regional group that has been acting as an arbitrator between Mr. Saleh and the Yemeni opposition, announced that they would suspend the proposal, under which Mr. Saleh would receive immunity and step down within 30 days. The deal’s collapse was a setback for the United States and Yemen’s Arab neighbors, who have pressured Mr. Saleh to sign it and who fear that the stalemate could lead to factional fighting in Yemen. Mr. Saleh — who has withstood months of street demonstrations calling for his ouster — has backed away from signing the agreement at least twice in recent weeks. But his about-face on Sunday was a piece of bizarre political theater, as tensions between Mr. Saleh’s followers and their rivals rose to new levels. Mr. Saleh was scheduled to sign the agreement on Sunday, a day after leaders of the country’s political opposition endorsed it in a separate ceremony. But hundreds of men, many of them carrying pictures of Mr. Saleh and urging him to refuse to step down, flooded Sana, the capital, witnesses said. The men, some armed with guns, knives or swords, surrounded the United Arab Emirates Embassy, where diplomats had gathered to witness Mr. Saleh sign the agreement, according to Yemeni officials and people who were there. The diplomats were trapped for hours, and the signing ceremony could not take place. Finally, some of the diplomats were driven to the republican palace, witnesses said. There, several high-ranking members of the ruling party signed the agreement. But Mr. Saleh refused, saying he wanted the opposition leaders to be present too. Later, Mr. Saleh said on state television that the opposition was “dragging us to a civil war, and they will be responsible for the bloodshed.” Although Yemeni forces eventually broke up the demonstration around the embassy, the armed men continued to block streets and chant slogans late into the night, witnesses said. The opposition leaders may have refused to show up at the signing ceremony in an effort to increase their credibility with the protesters who have opposed the agreement since it was shaped last month. The protesters — who have led the popular uprising in Yemen and have unexpectedly turned into a political force — fiercely oppose immunity for Mr. Saleh and his family members. They insist that he should be prosecuted, and they have accused Yemen’s formal political opposition of opportunism for trying to forge a deal. Whatever their motive, the opposition’s decision to stay away from the ceremony appears to have offended Mr. Saleh and pushed him to refuse to sign. The rising level of distrust has also raised questions about whether his opponents can follow through on the agreement, which calls for them to collaborate in forming a government when Mr. Saleh steps down.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


‘Collyer’ Conditions Hamper Firefighters in Fatal Harlem Blaze

Abstract: One person died Sunday night in Harlem when a fire swept through an apartment and firefighters were delayed because of debris inside, the Fire Department said. The fire, in a high-rise at 25 West 132nd Street, was reported at 10:44 p.m. and was under control by 11:19 p.m., a fire official said. The official said late Sunday that emergency workers had not yet disclosed details about the victim, including the person’s sex. The firefighters’ efforts were delayed because of “Collyers’ mansion” conditions, the fire official said. The phrase refers to the legendary booby-trapped brownstone in Harlem where the brothers Homer and Langley Collyer were found dead in 1947. They lived amid more than 100 tons of stockpiled junk and possessions, including stacks of telephone books, newspapers, tin cans and clocks. Such conditions, which can hamper movement, are a danger to firefighters in burning buildings. The fire was not considered suspicious, but its cause was being investigated. There were no other reported injuries.

Fires and Firefighters
Hoarding
Harlem (NYC)


NASA Delays Shuttle Flight by Six Weeks

Abstract: WASHINGTON, March 14 — Additional space shuttle flights will be delayed from May until July, at the earliest, to replace faulty fuel tank sensors, a NASA official said Tuesday. N. Wayne Hale Jr., the space shuttle program manager, said that replacing questionable sensors in the external fuel tank to be used by the shuttle Discovery would make a launching impossible during the planned target window of May 10 to May 23. At a televised news conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Mr. Hale said the next target dates would be July 1 to July 19. "We wish it had worked out differently," Mr. Hale said. However, he added, the extra six weeks will ease the hectic preparation schedule that engineers and technicians had been working under and perhaps allow for some optional work. Even with a delayed launching, Mr. Hale said, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could still mount three shuttle flights this year and resume construction on the International Space Station. "I remain optimistic," he said. NASA plans to fly 17 shuttle missions before retiring the fleet in 2010. That schedule will require a return to the steady launching rate that was disrupted by the loss of the Columbia and its crew on Feb. 1, 2003. The Discovery's flight last July, the first since the Columbia disaster, was plagued by a problem with the fuel sensors. If they erroneously register that the tanks contain fuel when they are actually empty, a catastrophic engine shutdown could occur. Mr. Hale said that although only one of four major engine cutoff sensors had given questionable readings in tests, all of them would be replaced with updated versions for safety reasons. The older sensors, made in 1996, have platinum wires that appear to come loose with movement, resulting in unpredictable readings, he said. Other work that must be completed before the next flight includes testing recent fuel tank modifications in a wind tunnel. Foam debris caused the fatal damage to the Columbia, and NASA engineers were surprised when sizable chunks fell from the Discovery's tank last July despite corrective measures.


No Ducks Contract for Koivu

Abstract: Center Saku Koivu will not be offered a contract with the Anaheim Ducks for next season. Koivu, 39, has spent the past five seasons with the Ducks, scoring 29 points in 65 games last season. He was the longtime captain of the Montreal Canadiens.


Gianpiero Moretti, Modernizer of Racecar Steering Wheels, Dies at 71

Abstract: Gianpiero Moretti, who designed a sleek, easy-to-grasp steering wheel that has improved the performance of championship racecar drivers for more than half a century — though he himself had limited success behind the wheel in hundreds of races — died on Jan. 13 in Milan. He was 71. The cause was cancer, said Marco Cattaneo, a friend and business associate. Mr. Moretti started his automotive accessories company Momo in Verona, Italy, in 1966. That was two years after the champion Formula One driver John Surtees had one of Mr. Moretti’s new steering wheels installed in his Ferrari 158 F1. Mr. Moretti designed the new steering wheel in his garage. It was smaller in diameter than the ones then in use; the wheel was wrapped in leather rather than made entirely of wood and metal; and it was contoured for better greater control. It was also more stylish and soon became standard in many racing and road cars, including special Ferrari models. Momo — whose name is an amalgam of “Moretti” and “Monza,” a town north of Milan near a well-known racetrack — expanded to make an array of racing products, including helmets, shift knobs, road wheels, fireproof driving suits, gloves and shoes, all carrying the familiar red-and-yellow label. “Momo is to Formula One racing like Nike is to most other sports: omnipresent,” Jamie Kitman, New York bureau chief for Automobile magazine, said on Wednesday. He added, “Moretti helped lead the charge into more modern materials — leather, aluminum, suede and synthetics.” One championship driver who relied on Momo products, and also became a close friend of Mr. Moretti’s, was Mario Andretti, who had known him since their early racing days in the late 1950s. “He was a very flamboyant, likable guy,” Mr. Andretti said in an interview on Wednesday. “He didn’t win too many races,” he added. “We would kid him about it; we kept needling him.” Although there were wins earlier in his career, real racing success came to Mr. Moretti when he was nearly 60. In 1998, he teamed with Mauro Baldi, Arie Luyendyk and Didier Theys to win the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in a Ferrari 333 SP, driving the last laps himself to take the checkered flag. That year, Mr. Moretti was part of a team that won the 12 Hours of Sebring and Six Hours of Watkins Glen races. Gianpiero Moretti was born in Milan on March 20, 1940. His family owned a pharmaceutical company. He was a political science student at the University of Pavia when he began racing. Mr. Moretti, who never married, is survived by two sons, Matteo and Marco. Momo was sold to Breed Technologies in 1995. It is now owned by a group of private investors. Mr. Moretti never quite retired from racing. He built an indoor go-kart track, Mokart, in Cisinello Balsamo, outside Milan.

Moretti Gianpiero
Automobile Racing
Deaths (Obituaries)
Italy
MOMO Srl


Spaniard Wins Men’s Figure Skating Title

Abstract: ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Javier Fernandez became the first Spaniard to win the European figure skating title after an exceptional performance in the men’s free skate Saturday. Carolina Kostner of Italy successfully defended the women’s title, edging 16-year-old Russian Adelina Sotnikova by less than a point to claim her fifth European crown. Sotnikova led after a sparkling debut in Friday’s short program but could manage only third in the free skate, allowing Kostner, who placed second on both days, to win gold with a personal best score of 194.71 points overall. Another 16-year-old Russian, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, placed first in the free skate to allow her to claim the bronze with 188.85 points overall. Earlier, Fernandez, performing to a Charlie Chaplin medley, had a quadruple toe loop, a quadruple salchow and a quadruple salchow and triple toe loop combination for a personal best 186.07 points, giving him 274.87 overall. Florent Amodio of France, who led after Thursday’s short skate, had to settle for silver, finishing with 250.53 after placing third in the free skate behind Czech skater Michal Brezina, who claimed the bronze with 243.52 points overall. Three-time world champion and 2006 Olympic gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko dropped out Thursday after aggravating a chronic back condition.


No Longer the Insurgent, McCain Courts Wary Party

Abstract: BOSTON — He says he is not enough of a masochist to listen to Rush Limbaugh. He jokes at a Republican dinner about a looming foreign policy crisis: “I have a four-hour speech on the North Korean nuclear buildup that I know you’ve been waiting for.” And he still treats the media as his No. 1 constituency, plying them with nonstop talk and stories, like one about a date from his Navy days who cleaned her nails with a switchblade. But now the money is rolling in, more than $7 million in January alone. The candidate jets around the country on a White House-like charter with security, baggage handlers and flowing food and drink. He is reveling in big-time Republican endorsements that may soon include, he hopes, support from the National Rifle Association. Senator John McCain , Republican renegade, is making a head-spinning transition, seeking to win over the Republican establishment and harness all that comes with it. After winning the New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida primaries, a candidate whose campaign once consisted of a handful of unpaid aides suddenly has a shot on Tuesday at becoming the de facto leader of a party he has often defied and exasperated. But in enveloping himself in the Republican cloak, Mr. McCain, his aides acknowledge, risks the outsider status that appeals to the independents and Democrats he might need to win in November. Mr. McCain learned that the hard way: The maverick who ran against George W. Bush in 2000 headed into the 2008 race with all the expensive accouterments of the front-runner, only to lose some of his political identity when he embraced evangelicals and the Republican orthodoxy of tax cuts, not to mention an unpopular war. By last summer Mr. McCain’s campaign had all but collapsed and he was flying into New Hampshire alone to meet with small clutches of voters. Now his goal is to stand with a foot on each side of the divide. He wants to maintain his role as an independent-minded candidate who offers endless access to reporters and “straight talk” to voters in intimate settings. But at the same time, he must mend the deep rifts within his own party, convince wary conservatives that he can be counted on when it comes to issues like judicial appointments and tax cuts, and run a national campaign aimed not just at the White House but at helping his party in Congress. “He’s trying to run this writ large in the way he ran in New Hampshire,” said Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest aides, on a flight Saturday when Mr. McCain flew to rallies in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, without a single town-hall-style meeting. “What he will resist is turning this into a bubble.” But Mr. Salter and Mr. McCain’s other advisers acknowledge that they do not have a plan for how to do that after Tuesday’s nominating contests. “It took a lot of energy and creativity to get to this point,” Mr. Salter said. “You’re going to have to give us a few weeks to figure it out.” The logistics alone will be daunting, as was clear on Friday when Mr. McCain tried to recreate the rolling media seminar of his campaign bus in the narrow aisle of his chartered plane. As a large crowd of reporters climbed over seats and pushed and squeezed to try to get close to him, Mr. McCain, en route from St. Louis to Chicago, acted as media handler and traffic cop. “If you will lift that boom a second,” he told one television sound technician. “This is the problem with not having a bus,” Mr. McCain added. “We should have gone to Chicago by bus.” But the more substantive challenge for Mr. McCain is how to retain independents and moderate Democrats as he increasingly woos the right to try to rally the party around his candidacy. Last week, he released his first national television commercial, “True Conservative,” which showed him in a meeting with Ronald Reagan and declared that he was “a proud social conservative who will never waver.” Mr. McCain, who has long opposed abortion rights, has been announcing endorsements from leading conservatives almost hourly — the former presidential candidate Steve Forbes and Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general, came on board Friday — although he still faces intense opposition from many conservatives, including Mr. Limbaugh, the talk radio host, who is one of his most vocal critics. Still, Mr. McCain’s aides say they believe voters know who he is and insist he will not cater to the right as he tries to secure the nomination. “We are acutely aware that McCain has a unique brand,” said Trey Walker, Mr. McCain’s South Carolina political consultant. “The brand is working right now, and if you try to inject a new Coke into this presidential race, we’ll lose to the Democrats.” With the nation facing the possibility of recession, Mr. McCain’s aides also acknowledge that he will have to become as fluent in economic policy as he is in his specialty, foreign affairs. In the primary races in Michigan and Florida last month, Mr. McCain often had Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, at his side to answer questions from voters about the subprime mortgage crisis. At a hot-tub plant in Orlando, Ms. Fiorina served as Mr. McCain’s moderator at an economic forum. But even in such a setting, Mr. McCain could not seem to help himself from veering into foreign policy. When he was asked in Orlando about what he would do about rising oil prices, he first wandered into a discourse on the confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz between three American warships and five Iranian speedboats last month and then segued into talk of the evidence that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, was supplying Venezuela with ammunition. Charles Black, a veteran of every Republican presidential campaign since 1976 and one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers, said that Mr. McCain would sit down with his economic team after Tuesday and burrow into more policy detail. “He’ll get more in depth about the micro issues,” Mr. Black said. Mr. McCain will also travel this weekend to Germany, where he will attend an annual NATO meeting in Munich on security policy. Mr. McCain is expected to meet with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and perhaps with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. Although Mr. McCain attends the conference every year as part of his Senate business, this year there will be far more attention on him. His advisers anticipate that he will make other foreign trips this year to promote his foreign policy credentials to voters who are just now tuning in. In the meantime, Mr. McCain sounded like a good party man in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” and also at a Friday night stop in suburban Chicago at the annual dinner of the DuPage County Republicans. “The first thing we have to do after Tuesday,” Mr. McCain told the cheering crowd in Chicago, in a sentiment he carefully echoed on Fox News, “is unite this party.”

Presidential Election of 2008
McCain John
Republican Party
United States Politics and Government


China: Brother of Tibet Religious Leader Details Circumstances of Sibling’s Death

Abstract: The brother of a prominent Tibetan religious leader, Choje Akong Rinpoche, who was stabbed to death in China on Oct. 8, has said Mr. Akong had not been “assassinated.” The brother, Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche, the abbot of Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland, released a statement that said: “Unfortunately I used the word ‘assassination’ in respect of the killing of my brother Akong Rinpoche. English is not my first language and I did not appreciate that the word means killing with a religious or political motive. I never intended to imply that there was such a motive.” State news media reported three suspects had been detained and had had an “economic dispute” with Mr. Akong.

Assassination
Choje Akong Rinpoche
China
Murders


Video Game Awards Show Features Trailers

Abstract: LOS ANGELES WHEN the Video Game Awards are held here on Sunday, game publishers and voice-over actors will line the red carpet. But the viewers will be watching to see something else: sneak peeks at the most anticipated games of 2009. The program, to be broadcast on the Spike cable channel, will include the premieres of 10 video game trailers. Although not called commercials, they are exquisitely produced previews of new games, similar to the movie trailers that theatergoers are accustomed to. For Spike, a subsidiary of Viacom’s MTV Networks division, the game trailers are meant to attract young male viewers — a sought-after demographic for advertisers — to the Video Game Awards, which are being shown live. As video games become more cinematic and technologically sophisticated, trailers are turning into valuable marketing tools. “Exclusive video game trailers are kind of like the Angelina Jolie of this business,” said Geoff Keighley, the executive in charge of publisher relations for Spike. “That’s what gamers want to see.” The premiere of a trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned scheduled for Sunday’s show was the result, Mr. Keighley said, of “six months of talks” with the game’s publisher, Rockstar Games. Spike treats the first looks at trailers as editorial content, not as ads, and it chooses which ones to show during the awards program. The network already devotes half an hour to game trailers each week with “GameTrailers TV,” or “GTTV” for short. MTV Networks acquired the video Web site GameTrailers.com in 2005.  Publishers know that the trailers are also sales pitches, and they cut 30-second versions for television commercials and online video ads accordingly. Mike Quigley, the global head of marketing for Electronic Arts, said that trailers are an increasingly important part of the company’s marketing mix. “Games are a visceral, visual medium, and we’ve found that there is no better way to communicate the energy and emotion of a game than by demonstrating it visually,” he said. Over the years, “the marketing has become more intense and the trailers have become more spectacular,” said Albie Hecht, the founder of Spike TV. Peer Schneider, the publisher of the gaming network IGN Entertainment, said the relevance of trailers has changed a great deal in the last decade. “Games are now visually sophisticated enough that gameplay footage can really stand on its own,” Mr. Schneider said. He cited the trailer for Dead Space, an action horror game released by Electronic Arts in October, that mimics a horror movie trailer. “The outcome is that viewers are intrigued whether they own a console or not — but no longer do gamers feel that they’re being explicitly marketed to,” he said. “Many game trailers are now as much an informational tool as a promotional one.” During Sunday’s show, Sony will unveil footage of God of War 3, EA Sports will showcase Fight Night Round 4, and Double Fine will present Brutal Legend. The actor Jack Black, who is the awards show’s host, will be a walking, joking advertisement for Brutal Legend, as he voiced the main character for the game. Two of the other trailers to be shown are video game versions of coming films, “Terminator Salvation” and “Watchmen: The End is Nigh.” Between the trailers, Spike will honor the best games of the year. No cable channel now seems complete without an awards show, with Bravo presenting the “A-List Awards” and CNN honoring “Heroes” with a marquee event. The awards allow channels to differentiate themselves and solidify their audience. G4, another cable channel geared toward 18- to 34-year-old men, presents awards within its daily “X-Play” video game show.  While it remains unclear whether video games are a recession-resistant business, sales of the Nintendo Wii and other game systems have remained strong in recent months. According to MTV Networks, ads sales in the video game category at Spike have risen 35 percent in 2008. The awards also have attracted a row of gamer-friendly sponsors, including Burger King, GameStop, Energizer, Verizon Wireless and the Army, according to Spike. But the network does not allow game publishers to sponsor the program. Publishers also are not allowed to place game ads near a segment of the show where their titles are nominated. Jeff Lucas, an executive vice president for ad sales for MTV Networks, said the rules were enforced to “maintain our editorial credibility.” These rules mirror the policies for other award shows. For decades, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not allow commercials for forthcoming movies during the Oscars, to avoid any appearance of undue influence. Beginning with the 2009 show, each distributor will be able to buy one commercial in the show.

Computer and Video Games
Advertising and Marketing
Spike TV
Awards Decorations and Honors


In Beyoncé Deal, Pepsi Focuses on Collaboration

Abstract: FOR its campaign with Beyoncé next year, Pepsi doesn’t just want to sign up the telegenic pop star for another TV commercial. It also wants to get into the Beyoncé business. In an expansion of the recent marketing experiments that have brought PepsiCo ever closer to the music industry, the company has embarked on a hybrid project with Beyoncé that will include standard advertising like commercials as well as a multimillion-dollar fund to support the singer’s chosen creative projects. “Pepsi embraces creativity and understands that artists evolve,” Beyoncé said in a statement. “As a businesswoman, this allows me to work with a lifestyle brand with no compromise and without sacrificing my creativity.” The campaign will coincide with a blitz of promotion for her next album, which has no title or release date so far but is expected in 2013. Sometime after she performs at the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 3 (also sponsored by Pepsi), Beyoncé will appear in a new TV ad — her fifth for the soft drink since 2002 — and her face will be on a limited-edition line of soda cans. The less conventional aspects of the deal are meant as collaborative projects that indulge Beyoncé’s creative whims, and might well have no explicit connection to Pepsi products. They are still at the brainstorm stage, but could include live events, videos, “a cool photo shoot” or almost anything else, said Lee Anne Callahan-Longo, the general manager of Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé’s company. For Pepsi, the goal is to enhance its reputation with consumers by acting as something of an artistic patron instead of simply paying for celebrity endorsements. “Consumers are seeking a much greater authenticity in marketing from the brands they love,” said Brad Jakeman, president of PepsiCo’s global beverage group. “It’s caused a shift in the way we think about deals with artists, from a transactional deal to a mutually beneficial collaboration.” The multiyear campaign is estimated at $50 million, the bulk of it for media placements and promotions around the world, and the remainder split roughly equally between Beyoncé’s fee and what Pepsi calls a creative content development fund.  According to the tracking firm Kantar Media, PepsiCo and its archrival the Coca-Cola Company each spent about $148 million in the United States to advertise their soft drink brands in the first six months of 2012, across all measured forms of media, like television, print, digital and radio. Over the last decade many consumer brands have been taking more active roles with artists, particularly in pop music. Converse, Red Bull and Toyota’s Scion line, for example, have become as familiar in the music business as any label or concert promoter by paying to help create and promulgate music. Bands always risk fan disapproval when shaking hands with big corporations. But with record company budgets diminished, Madison Avenue money is often seen as essential. PepsiCo has been part of this trend through Green Label Sound, a label financed through its Mountain Dew drink, which over the last four years has paid to release free music by under-the-radar groups like Matt & Kim and the Cool Kids. “We recognize that there have been massive disruptions in music industry: lower investment in artist development, fewer points of distribution, financial constraints,” said Frank Cooper, a top marketing executive in PepsiCo’s beverage division who has been a force for such projects. “We look at those disruptions as opportunities for Pepsi.” These deals are not limited to music. In 2010, Jay-Z (Beyoncé’s husband) teamed with Microsoft to promote his memoir, “Decoded.” According to a case study led by Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School professor, the publisher could contribute only $50,000 for marketing, but Microsoft paid $2 million for an elaborate scavenger hunt that promoted the book as well as its new search engine, Bing. For Jay-Z, the campaign was a success. But the effect of such deals on corporate partners like Microsoft is hard to measure, Professor Elberse said in an interview last week. “Even if they see an increase in market share,” she said, “it’s hard to attribute that to this one thing they did with a star at one point in time.” Mr. Cooper, however, was confident that its music projects, like “Tonight Is the Night” by the little-known rapper and singer Outasight — which sold 1.1 million copies after a push in 2010, when the song was featured in a commercial and Outasight appeared on the Pepsi-sponsored show “The X Factor” — bring a return on investment. “We believe all that transfers into brand equity for Pepsi, and, ultimately, sales,” he said.  Pepsi’s deal with Beyoncé is an outgrowth of ventures like Green Label Sound, but on a scale befitting her superstar stature. In addition to the commercial — a collaborative effort between 180 LA, TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles and Organic, all part of the Omnicom Group — and the soda can, the deal will involve sponsorship of Beyoncé’s world tour next year. All the standard sponsorship elements will be present on the tour, like prominent Pepsi logos. That kind of marketing, Mr. Jakeman said, is “still important, but insufficient” to reach savvy young consumers. So Pepsi will also play a role in selecting local talent as opening acts at various points around the world. And who knows — a concert stage would seem a perfect spot for some fund-supported video or social-media experiment. “It’s wise for a brand like Pepsi to give an artist the ability to truly express herself,” said Ms. Callahan-Longo, of Beyoncé’s company, “instead of just the old-school way of, ‘Do you want to be in an advertisement?’ ” “This is much bigger,” she added. “This is, ‘How can we create something together that is truly unique?’ ”

Pepsico Inc
Knowles Beyonce
Advertising and Marketing
Music


Full Tilt Poker Site Misused Players’ Money, U.S. Says

Abstract: The millions of people who signed up for a Web site called Full Tilt Poker knew they were there to gamble. But it turns out they were taking on far more risk than they realized, even when they had no chips on the virtual table. That is the essence of a civil complaint that federal prosecutors filed on Tuesday. It asserts that players around the world entrusted Full Tilt with $390 million in gambling money, and that the company promised to keep those funds in secure accounts. In reality, prosecutors found, the money wasn’t there; instead, much of it had been transferred to the owners and management of Full Tilt, some of whom were themselves among the most prominent and popular poker players in the world. “Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company but a global Ponzi scheme ,” said Preet S. Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, whose office filed the complaint on Tuesday. Barry Boss, a lawyer for Full Tilt, which had its headquarters in Ireland, was on a flight and unavailable to comment, a person at his office said. Prosecutors said they first exposed the scheme this spring while investigating other problems at Full Tilt Poker and two other poker sites, Poker Stars and Absolute Poker, all of which were based outside the United States. In April, the government shut down access to the sites for American players, arguing that they were violating fraud and money-laundering laws. Before that, American players had wagered hundreds of millions of dollars on the sites. From their home computers, players would put money into accounts with the virtual poker clubs and then bet against one another. Full Tilt, like the others, told players that it kept their money — including their winnings — in accounts that they could tap into or close out at any time. And the company had a reputation for paying back players in a timely fashion. When the sites were shut down, prosecutors worked out agreements with them to help them repay players what they were owed. But reimbursements to Full Tilt players slowed or stopped altogether. The money available turned out to be insufficient, according to prosecutors, because the owners and board members of Full Tilt had themselves tapped those accounts for $440 million since April 2007. The management’s luck, it would seem, ran out. Among those profiting, the complaint claims, were some of the biggest names in poker: Howard Lederer, nicknamed the Professor, is said to have received payouts of $42 million. Chris Ferguson, nicknamed Jesus in the poker-playing community for his long hair, received at least $25 million and was “owed” $60 million more, prosecutors said. The two men could not be reached for comment. Greg Brooks, an accomplished poker player who was once a regular player at Full Tilt, said the federal complaint was a painful eye-opener about what was happening behind the scenes at Full Tilt. In the past, he said, he regularly received sums in excess of $100,000 from Full Tilt, paid within a week of his request, suggesting that he could get access to his money whenever he wanted. “My impression was that things were working well for years. I had no inkling, not even the slightest guess it wasn’t like that,” he said. Mr. Brooks, who lives in New York, said he was owed a sum in the “low- to mid-six figures” by Full Tilt that he doubts that he will get back. (He said he was reimbursed a substantial but lesser amount by Poker Stars.) And he added that he was particularly upset with some of the fixtures in the poker community who, he said, paraded around as “brand ambassadors” for Full Tilt. Their behavior, he said, represented a major breach of trust and honor among players. “There’s an inherent level of trust and handshaking in the poker community that is unique to it,” he said. In its complaint, which is meant to amend the original criminal complaint unsealed in April, the government asks that the members of Full Tilt management forfeit illicitly gained funds. Under federal rules, Full Tilt players could have the opportunity to petition for their money once the lawsuit is resolved. Some advocates for legalizing online poker pointed to the complaint as another reason that the activity should be federally licensed and regulated. “This is a system that has been forced into place by the failure of the U.S. to regulate online gambling,” said Lawrence Walters, a Florida lawyer who specializes in gambling and First Amendment law, arguing that players had to send money to risky overseas accounts. “The prohibitionists have gotten their way so far.” He also quibbled with the government’s characterization of Full Tilt as a Ponzi scheme. He said that the government was using a “focus-group” tested term to get attention, when the allegations suggest that the management of Full Tilt may simply have been lying to players and possibly embezzling funds. He also said he didn’t think that what prosecutors said happened at Full Tilt was happening in the rest of the industry. “This is not endemic to the industry,” Mr. Walters said. “Sites live and die on their reputation. To the extent sites get a reputation for slow pay or no pay, that will quickly circulate.”

Poker (Card Game)
Frauds and Swindling
Full Tilt Poker


Incomes Flat in Recovery, but Not for the 1%

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Incomes rose more than 11 percent for the top 1 percent of earners during the economic recovery, but not at all for everybody else, according to new data. The numbers , produced by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, show overall income growing by just 1.7 percent over the period. But there was a wide gap between the top 1 percent, whose earnings rose by 11.2 percent, and the other 99 percent, whose earnings declined by 0.4 percent. Mr. Saez, a winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, an economic laurel considered second only to the Nobel, concluded that “the Great Recession has only depressed top income shares temporarily and will not undo any of the dramatic increase in top income shares that has taken place since the 1970s.” The disparity between top earners and everybody else can be attributed, in part, to differences in how the two groups make their money. The wealthy have benefited from a four-year boom in the stock market, while high rates of unemployment have continued to hold down the income of wage earners. “We have in the middle basically three decades of problems compounded by high unemployment,” said Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center research group in Washington. “That high unemployment we know depresses wage growth throughout the wage scale, but more so for the bottom than the middle and the middle than the top.” In his analysis, Mr. Saez said he saw no reason that the trend would reverse for 2012, which has not yet been analyzed. For that year, the “top 1 percent income will likely surge, due to booming stock prices, as well as retiming of income to avoid the higher 2013 top tax rates,” Mr. Saez wrote, referring to income tax increases for the wealthy that were passed by Congress in January. The incomes of the other “99 percent will likely grow much more modestly,” he said. Excluding earnings from investment gains, the top 10 percent of earners took 46.5 percent of all income in 2011, the highest proportion since 1917, Mr. Saez said, citing a large body of work on earnings distribution over the last century that he has produced with the economist Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. Concern for the declining wages of working Americans and persistent high levels of inequality featured heavily in President Obama’s State of the Union address this week. He proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $9 from $7.25 as one way to ameliorate the trend, a proposal that might lift the earnings of 15 million low-income workers by the end of 2015. “Let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty,” Mr. Obama said in his address to Congress. Mr. Obama’s economic advisers say that he has been animated by the country’s yawning levels of inequality, and the administration has put forward several proposals to address the gap. Those include higher taxes on a small group of the wealthiest families and an expansion of aid to lower- and middle-income families through programs like the Affordable Care Act. The data analyzed by Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez shows that income inequality — as measured by the proportion of income taken by the top 1 percent of earners — reached a modern high just before the recession hit in 2009. The financial crisis and its aftermath hit wealthy families hard. But since then, their earnings have snapped back, if not to their 2007 peak. That is not true for average working families. After accounting for inflation, median family income has declined over the last two years. In 2011, it stagnated for the poorest and dropped for those in the middle of the income distribution , census data show. Median household income, which was $50,054 in 2011, is about 9 percent lower than it was in 1999, after accounting for inflation. Measures of inequality differ depending on whether they are measured after or before taxes, and whether or not they include government transfers like Social Security payments, food stamps and other credits. Research led by the Cornell economist Richard V. Burkhauser, for instance, sought to measure the economic health of middle-class households including income, taxes, transfer programs and benefits like health insurance. It found that from 1979 to 2007, median income grew by about 18.2 percent over all rather than by 3.2 percent counting income alone. In an interview, Mr. Burkhauser said his numbers measured “how are the resources that person has to live on changing over time,” whereas Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez’s numbers measure “how are different people being rewarded in the marketplace.” “That’s a fair question to ask, but it’s a very different question to ask than, ‘What resources do Americans have?’ ” Mr. Burkhauser said. Notably, many of the Obama administration’s progressive policies have been aimed at blunting the effects of income inequality, rather than tackling income inequality itself. Mr. Saez has advocated much more aggressive policies aimed at income inequality. “Falls in income concentration due to economic downturns are temporary unless drastic regulation and tax policy changes are implemented,” Mr. Saez said in his analysis. The recent policy changes, including tax increases and financial regulatory reform, he wrote, “are not negligible but they are modest relative to the policy changes that took place coming out of the Great Depression. Therefore, it seems unlikely that U.S. income concentration will fall much in the coming years.”

Income Inequality
Minimum wage
US Economy
Emmanuel Saez
Thomas Piketty
Richard V Burkhauser
Economics
University of California
Berkeley
HNWI,Wealth,Billionaires,1 Percent


N.C.A.A. Frozen Four: Ferris State and B.C. Advance

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — The prohibitive favorite Boston College’s march to a national championship rolled on Thursday night with a dominating 6-1 victory over Minnesota in the marquee matchup of the N.C.A.A. men’s hockey national semifinals at the Tampa Bay Times Forum. The overall top-seeded Eagles will meet upstart Ferris State, a 3-1 winner over Union College, for the title Saturday night. “We were very opportunistic, particularly in the second period,” Boston College Coach Jerry York said. “When you look at the game, timely saves from our goaltender, opportunistic scoring and then a bounce-back goal were the keys to bring us to Saturday night’s game. We’re very excited for the possibility of winning a national championship. It’s right there in front of us.” Boston College (32-10-1), which has not lost since Jan. 21 and carries an 18-game winning streak into the final, once again rode the stellar goaltending of the junior Parker Milner. Milner, who had his postseason scoreless streak snapped at 161 minutes 26 seconds, was brilliant in recording 30 saves, including spectacular goal-mouth stops on Taylor Matson late in the first period and Jake Hansen near the end of the second period. “I kind of rushed it, I had way more time than I thought,” said Hansen, who scored Minnesota’s lone goal early in the third. “That was a Grade-A scoring chance, right in front. If I score there, it’s 2-1 and we’re right back in the game. I think they scored on the next shift; it just kills you.” The Eagles, shooting for their third N.C.A.A. title since 2008, got goals from Steven Whitney, Kevin Hayes, Chris Kreider and Paul Carey to take a 4-0 lead after two periods. In all, 11 Eagles were involved in the offensive onslaught. Kreider, a Rangers first-round draft pick in 2009, notched his 23rd goal off a feed from Destry Straight. The Rangers assistant general manager Jeff Gorton was in attendance, and it is believed that the Rangers will try to sign Kreider after Saturday’s final in time to participate by the start of the N.H.L. playoffs next week. The Gophers (28-14-1) outshot the Eagles, 21-14, through two periods and broke through against Milner on Hansen’s goal from just outside the crease to create a stir from the crowd of 18,605. The buzz did not last long as Carey answered 22 seconds later with his second goal to make it 5-1. Defenseman Brian Dumoulin completed the scoring with a harmless shot that deflected in off defenseman Justin Holl. In the opener, the charmed run for Ferris State continued as the Bulldogs, appearing in their first Frozen Four, outlasted their fellow underdog Union College. Ferris State wing Kyle Bonis scored the winner with less than five minutes to play to back the stellar play of goalie Taylor Nelson, who made 27 saves. The Bulldogs (26-11-5), champions of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association, also got a pair of goals from Aaron Schmit that included an empty-netter in the closing minute. “The game pretty much unfolded like I anticipated,” Ferris State Coach Bob Daniels said. “I knew it would be a tight-checking, close-scoring game.” Ferris State came into the game outscoring opponents, 51-31, in the third period and carried the play for much of the final 20 minutes. Union goalie Tony Grosenick, a Hobey Baker finalist, kept the Dutchmen (26-8-7) in the game but failed to cleanly handle a shot from the point and left a rebound that Bonis knocked in to snap a 1-1 tie with 4:43 left. For Union, the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference champion also competing in its first Frozen Four, it represented a sour ending. “It’s been a good experience, but it’s tough to swallow right now,” Union defenseman Greg Coburn said.

NCAA Ice Hockey Championships
Ferris State University
Union College (Schenectady NY)
Hockey Ice
College Athletics
Daniels Bob
University of Minnesota


Two Angels Are Hurting

Abstract: The Angels’ Jered Weaver, dealing with chronic neck pain, missed a spring training start to see a spine specialist, and Los Angeles said doctors had confirmed a diagnosis: He has “mild, degenerative changes in the cervical spine.” The Angels said they were uncertain when he or the left-hander C. J. Wilson (shoulder) would resume throwing.

Baseball
Jered Weaver
C J Wilson
Los Angeles Angels


As Russia Draws Closer to China, U.S. Faces a New Challenge

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama flies to Beijing on Sunday to renew efforts to refocus American foreign policy toward Asia. But when he lands, he will find the man who has done so much to frustrate him lately, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “You are pivoting to Asia,” Russia’s ambassador to Washington said last week, “but we’re already there.” Mr. Obama is returning to Asia as Russia pulls closer to China, presenting a profound challenge to the United States and Europe. Estranged from the West over Ukraine, Mr. Putin will also be in Beijing this week as he seeks economic and political support, trying to upend the international order by fashioning a coalition to resist what both countries view as American arrogance. Whether that is more for show than for real has set off a vigorous debate in Washington, where some government officials and international specialists dismiss the prospect of a more meaningful alliance between Russia and China because of the fundamental differences between the countries. But others said the Obama administration should take the threat seriously as Moscow pursues energy, financing and military deals with Beijing. “We are more and more interested in the region that is next to us in Asia,” said Sergei I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington. “They are good partners to us.” He added that a recent natural gas deal between Moscow and Beijing was a taste of the future. “It’s just the beginning,” he said, “and you will see more and more projects between us and China.” The Russian pivot to China factors into a broader White House-led review of American policy toward Moscow now underway. The review has produced several drafts of a policy to counter what officials call Putinism over the long term while still seeking silos of cooperation, particularly on issues like Iran, terrorism and nuclear nonproliferation. Though there is not a wide divergence of opinion inside the administration over how to view Mr. Putin, there is a debate about what to do. The review has pitted officials favoring more engagement against those favoring more containment, according to people involved. The main question is how the Ukraine dispute should define the relationship and affect other areas where the two countries share interests. Within the administration, Mr. Putin’s efforts at accord with China are seen as a jab at Washington, but one fraught with a complicated history, mutual distrust and underlying economic disparity that ultimately makes it untenable. “They’ll use each other,” said one government official, who declined to be identified discussing the internal review. “And when one of them gets tired or sees a better deal, they’ll take it.” But others warned against underestimating the potential. “There’s just so much evidence the relationship is getting stronger,” said Gilbert Rozman, a Princeton scholar who published a book, “The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order,” this year and an article in Foreign Affairs on the subject last month. The rapprochement began before Ukraine, he added, but now there is a “sense that there’s no turning back. They’re moving toward China.” Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, said Mr. Putin seemed to have forged a strong bond with President Xi Jinping of China. “There’s a personal chemistry you can see,” he said. “They like each other, and they can relate to each other. They talk with each other with a candor and a level of cooperation they don’t find with other partners.” Mr. Xi made Russia his first foreign destination after taking office and attended the Sochi Olympics as Mr. Obama and European leaders were boycotting them. Each has cracked down on dissent at home, and they share a view of the United States as a meddling imperialist power whose mismanagement of the world economic order was exposed by the 2008 financial crisis. While past Chinese leaders looked askance at the Kremlin leader, “Xi is not appalled by Putin,” said Douglas Paal, an Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The twin crises in Ukraine and Hong Kong have encouraged the alignment. State television in Russia portrays democracy protests in Hong Kong as an American-inspired effort to undermine China, much as it depicted the protests in Kiev as an American effort to peel away a Russian ally from Moscow. Chinese media present Mr. Putin as a strong leader standing up to foreign intervention. In May, as the United States and Europe were imposing sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine, Mr. Putin sealed a $400 billion, 30-year deal providing natural gas to China. Last month, China’s premier, Li Keqiang, signed a package of 38 deals in Moscow, including a currency swap and tax treaty. Last week, Mr. Putin said the two countries had reached an understanding for another major gas deal. The two had already bolstered economic ties. China surpassed Germany in 2010 to become Russia’s largest trading partner, with nearly $90 billion in trade last year, a figure surging this year as business with Europe shrinks. “The campaign of economic sanctions against Russia and political pressure is alienating Russia from the West and pushing it closer to China,” said Sergei Rogov, director of Moscow’s Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies. “China is perceived in Russia as a substitute for Western credits and Western technology.” Masha Lipman, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the pivot to China “is taken very seriously” in Moscow and that “commentators regard this shift as a given, a done and irreversible deal.” Yet talk of a Russian-Chinese alignment has persisted for decades without becoming fully realized, given deep cultural differences and a Cold War competition for leadership of the communist world. And Beijing has long opposed separatist movements, making it uncomfortable with Moscow’s support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. In Moscow, some fear Russia, out of weakness, has made itself a junior partner to a rising China. While China is now Russia’s largest trading partner, Russia is only China’s 10th largest — and the United States remains its biggest. Moreover, big Russian state companies can make deals, but China will not replace Europe for most corporations and banks, as there is no developed commercial bond market for foreigners in China akin to Eurobonds. John Beyrle, a former American ambassador to Moscow, said discussions with Russian business leaders revealed nervousness, a sense that the turn to China was out of necessity as loans and investment from the West dry up. “One of them said that dependence on China worries the Russian elite much more than dependence on the West,” he said. Lilia Shevtsova, a Moscow-based analyst with the Brookings Institution, said: “The pivot is artificial. And the pivot is to the disadvantage of Russia.” Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin will cross paths twice this week, first in Beijing at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and then in Brisbane, Australia, at a meeting of the Group of 20 nations. Mr. Obama hopes to advance a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. Russia and China are acutely aware they have been excluded from the proposed bloc, and Mr. Putin says it would be ineffective without them. Such issues only fuel Russia’s move to China, Russian officials said. If the United States and Europe are less reliable, long-term partners, then China looks more attractive. “We trust them,” said Mr. Kislyak, “and we hope that China equally trusts us.”

Russia
China
Barack Obama
Vladimir Putin
Xi Jinping
US Foreign Policy
Ukraine


Ban on Internet Access Taxes Given a 7-Year Extension

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 (AP) — A moratorium on Internet access taxes received a last-minute extension Wednesday, one day before it would have expired. The White House said President Bush would sign legislation approved by Congress to extend the ban for seven more years. There was strong support in the House and Senate for a permanent moratorium, but concerns over the potential long-term impact on state and local governments forced a compromise. The tax ban, first approved in 1998 and twice renewed, was set to expire Thursday. In addition to extending the ban, the legislation contains a provision aimed at preventing state and local governments from assessing taxes beyond those levied on simple Internet access. The legislation specifically prohibits taxation of e-mail and instant messaging services “that are provided independently or not packaged with Internet access.”


Soldier Says Syrian Atrocities Forced Him to Defect

Abstract: HATAY, Turkey — Ammar Cheikh Omar recalled the first time he was ordered to shoot into a crowd of protesters in Syria . He aimed his AK-47 just above their heads, prayed to God not to make him a killer and pulled the trigger. Mr. Omar, 29, the soft-spoken and wiry son of Syrian parents who immigrated to Germany in the 1950s, grew up in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, a prosperous village of half-timbered 16th-century houses, where he listened to Mariah Carey and daydreamed about one day returning to Syria. Today, he is still trying to make sense of his unlikely transformation from a dutiful German student to a killer for the brutal Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and, ultimately, a defector. “I was proud to be Syrian, but instead became a soldier for a regime that was intent on killing its own people,” Mr. Omar said on a recent day, chain-smoking at a cafe in this Turkish border town. “I thank God every day that I am still alive.” Human rights groups and Syrian activists said he was one of thousands of Syrians who had inadvertently found themselves deployed as foot soldiers for a government that the United Nations estimates has killed more than 5,000 people since the crackdown on demonstrators began in March. Soldiers are typically conscripted at age 18, with members of Syria’s Sunni majority making up the bulk of the army ranks and minority Alawites, who come from the same religious group as Mr. Assad, often serving as high-ranking officers or in the state security apparatus. Mr. Omar, a highly educated Sunni with flawless Arabic, gained entry to a security unit attached to the Interior Ministry. Human rights groups estimate that there are at least 5,000 defectors; an exact number is difficult to confirm because many remain in hiding. “Mr. Omar’s harrowing tale fits an all-too-familiar pattern in which soldiers are deployed away from their hometowns to help ensure that they will be less likely to refuse an order to kill,” said Ole Solvang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who has interviewed dozens of Syrian defectors, including Mr. Omar. “He was one of the lucky ones, as he managed to escape.” There is no way to corroborate much of Mr. Omar’s account of his journey to becoming an enforcer for the Assad government. Though human rights groups and activists operating in Syria say it fits the pattern of hundreds of defectors who have fled the country, it is simply one man’s tale. It began in 2004 when he left Germany for Aleppo, in Syria’s north, with the aim of getting in touch with his roots, studying law, improving his Arabic and finding a wife. He managed to do all that, entering law school, marrying a doctor and, eventually, having a child. His parents, meanwhile, had moved back to Aleppo because his father wanted to live out his final years in the old country. In late 2010, Mr. Omar was conscripted into the Syrian military, just weeks before a Tunisian fruit seller immolated himself and set off the wave of regional protests that eventually buffeted Syria. At first, said Mr. Omar, who had always felt like an outsider in Germany, he was proud to be serving the government. Soldiers were initially told that their main task was to defend the country against Israel , he said. But when demonstrations erupted, they were told that the protesters were “terrorists” or “armed gangs” sponsored by foreign forces. Access to cellphones, non-state television or the Internet was strictly prohibited; breaching that rule was punishable by up to two months in jail. Mr. Omar’s first deployment was in the southern city of Dara’a, near Jordan , where he and his 350-strong unit were sent in March to help crack down on intensifying demonstrations. He said he had been ordered to arrest and shoot at dozens of protesters, including many young students, who had scrawled antigovernment graffiti on the walls of the town. “The army needed everyone. It was very brutal,” he said. “But if there’s an officer of the Mukhabarat next to you,” he added, referring to the country’s feared security services, “you don’t have a choice but to shoot.” Every soldier was armed with 60 bullets and given new ammunition each night, Mr. Omar said. His unit shot at the protesters from above a roof overlooking the mosque, killing at least six people and wounding dozens more. One of his fellow soldiers began to scream uncontrollably when he realized that his 18-year-old brother, demonstrating below on the street, had been shot. The soldier buried him two days later. Shaken by what he had seen, Mr. Omar said, he was determined to defect. But before he could act, he was sent to Duma, northeast of Damascus, the capital, to work in a security unit interrogating detainees. Mr. Omar said he had been asked to take notes during the interrogation of prisoners, some as young as 15 years old. He said demonstrators had been blindfolded and forced to strip to their underwear before their hands were tied behind their backs. Interrogations were conducted by four or five soldiers and officers in a dark, windowless room. He said the interrogating officer had ordered him to write down confessions naming protest leaders, confessions that detainees were then asked to finger stamp rather than sign, since their hands were bound. To force confessions, Mr. Omar said, the soldiers tortured the detainees with electrified cattle prods, beat them or urinated on them. Some passed out. Others bled heavily. Many disappeared. “The soldiers demanded to know why they had gone to the streets and who had paid them,” he recalled. “It was painful to watch. At the beginning I couldn’t sleep, but after a while, I got used to it. But I could not live with myself if I had remained.” As the protests gathered pace over the summer, Mr. Omar was sent to the central city of Hama, where he was relieved of his AK-47 and instead given a shield and a stun gun , he said. With tens of thousands of people on the streets in Hama, he said, he hoped he could disappear into the crowd. At noon on July 26, he said, he and two fellow officers decided to defect from their army base, changing into civilian clothes and jumping over the base’s wall. They found refuge in the homes of people opposed to the Assad government, Mr. Omar said, and wrapped scarves around their heads to conceal their faces. Fearing that he would be kidnapped or “disappeared” in Syria under some false pretext, Mr. Omar made a video, which he posted on YouTube , to establish that he had defected. The defectors traveled to the Turkish border in daylight, eventually abandoning their car and walking through woods to avoid detection. At 7 a.m. on July 30, he said, they crossed illegally into Hatay, where they met up with members of the rebel Free Syrian Army, settling in a refugee camp. At the camp, a gaunt and pale Mr. Omar produced another video to post on YouTube , in which he said he was ashamed that he had been part of Mr. Assad’s forces. “I will never forget the dead bodies of young and old men, but also women and children on the streets,” he said, dressed in a uniform of the Free Syrian Army and appearing with a Syrian flag. Appealing directly to Germany, he added, “ Hitler died in Germany, but awoke in Syria.” Germany eventually helped get him out of the camp so he could get a stamp in his passport to remain in Turkey. Mr. Omar joined the rebel army, a scruffy group numbering around 10,000 soldiers, whose mandate is to protect civilians from the government. He is now helping to smuggle wounded rebels into Turkey, some of whom he houses in his home He said he supported the political demonstrations but warned, “We cannot afford to meet guns with only talk and slogans.” He fears for his family, including his wife, their 1-year-old daughter and his parents. After his escape, he said, his brother-in-law was fired from his architecture job, and the family’s house in Aleppo was vandalized. But he said he had no regrets. “My family knows I made the right choice.”


A Road Paved With Good Intentions?

Abstract: The yellow trucks from the Department of Transportation were out in force a couple of weeks ago on a four-block, tree-lined stretch of Jewel Avenue in Fresh Meadows, Queens. Burly workers were installing stop signs and attaching one-way arrows to poles; street corners were newly grooved in preparation for speed bumps. “This is the best thing they could have done,” said Irving Givre, a 95-year-old former truck driver who watched from his porch. With a piece of mail, he gestured at the intersection of Jewel Avenue and 164th Street. “They almost have accidents there every day,” he said. That corner, which is dominated by Public School 200, was the scene of an accident last year that set the roadwork in motion. A teacher at the school was killed in December while crossing the street, prompting parents to petition the city to make the intersection safer. After four months of study, transportation officials decided, among other things, to make one stretch of the avenue one-way and to remove a lane in each direction from another stretch, in part for bike lanes. But the tale of Jewel Avenue is not quite a textbook lesson in civics. The changes have generated a backlash from local residents, including some parents who had originally petitioned the city. “I have not met a single person who supports this plan,” said Nora Perkowsky, 34, the president of the school’s P.T.A. Several local officials, including Councilman James Gennaro, have argued that removing the lanes from Jewel Avenue will back up traffic and create chaos as school buses double-park to pick up children and force vehicles to go around them. They also claim the changes exceed or are unrelated to the parents’ requests for traffic control. But in an Aug. 24 letter to local officials, Maura McCarthy, the Queens borough commissioner of the Transportation Department, said that “very experienced engineers and planners” had designed the changes. “You must understand,” she added, “that when a school community such as that of P.S. 200 approaches the department with a petition signed by nearly 150 parents and others proclaiming that ‘Our Children Are in Danger,’ we have no choice but to act.”


U.S. Expected to Issue Stock Option Rules

Abstract: WASHINGTON, July 7 — A member of the Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday that he expected the agency to issue new rules by the end of July for companies to disclose executive compensation and accounting guidance for stock options granted to top officers. "We are going to be coming out this month with executive compensation disclosure changes," the commissioner, Paul S. Atkins, said in an interview. "Hopefully, we'll have some sort of guidance regarding options grants." Mr. Atkins, a Republican member of the panel, did not elaborate on what would be included in the final compensation rule or the accounting guidance. More than 50 companies have said they are being investigated over how they dated stock options granted to senior executives.

Securities and Exchange Commission
Stock Options and Purchase Plans
Atkins Paul S


Icahn Says He Would Remove Yahoo’s Chief

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — The investor Carl C. Icahn stepped up the pressure on Yahoo on Tuesday, vowing to remove Jerry Yang , its chief executive, if he succeeds in replacing the company’s board with his own slate of directors. Mr. Icahn said newly unsealed court documents show that Mr. Yang and Yahoo’s board had not seriously considered a $44.6 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft and imposed a costly employee retention plan that is a barrier to any acquisition. “I don’t think anybody ever understood the magnitude of what Yahoo did to do avoid making a deal,” Mr. Icahn said in an interview. Mr. Icahn had already started a proxy fight to replace Yahoo’s board, which includes Mr. Yang, but had not previously said that he also planned to strip Mr. Yang of his chief executive role. “In my opinion, you might have to get rid of Jerry and part of the board to bring back Microsoft,” Mr. Icahn said. Microsoft withdrew its offer for Yahoo on May 3. The two companies resumed discussions about a more limited deal recently. Mr. Icahn suggested that even if Yahoo were to be open to a merger, Microsoft executives have lost confidence that Yahoo would do its best to push it through the lengthy regulatory review. “Microsoft will have to tie up $45 billion for an entire year, and they might want to do it with someone they trust,” he said. Separately, Yahoo said that its annual shareholder meeting would be on Aug. 1. The court documents, which are part of a shareholder lawsuit against Yahoo and its directors, were unsealed Monday. The plaintiffs argue that Mr. Yang pushed for the expensive employee retention plan despite reservations from the consulting firm it hired to devise it. Using estimates prepared at Yahoo’s request, the plan would have cost $462 million to $2.1 billion if Microsoft had acquired Yahoo for $31 a share, the price it initially offered. If Yahoo were acquired for $35 a share, the costs could range from $514 million to nearly $2.4 billion. Yahoo’s management, however, advised the board that the actual cost of the plan would most likely be near the low end of those ranges. According to the lawsuit, Microsoft had told Yahoo that it was willing to spend $1.5 billion in employee retention. Microsoft declined to comment on the suit or on Mr. Icahn’s latest statements, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. People with knowledge of Microsoft’s plans said that any figure discussed between the two companies would have been earmarked to retain employees at Yahoo and at Microsoft. In a statement, Yahoo again disputed Mr. Icahn’s claims that the company had done everything possible to thwart Microsoft’s takeover attempt. “Yahoo’s board of directors including Jerry Yang has been crystal clear that it would consider any proposal by Microsoft that was in the best interests of its shareholders,” Yahoo said. “To that end, Yahoo has engaged in extensive discussions with Microsoft over the last several months, culminating in Microsoft’s decision not to pursue an acquisition of Yahoo. Mr. Icahn’s assertions ignore this clear factual record.” Mark Lebovitch, a lawyer representing two Detroit pension funds in the shareholder lawsuit against Yahoo and its board, said he was not coordinating efforts with Mr. Icahn. “I am glad that he agrees with us,” said Mr. Lebovitch, a partner at Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossmann. “We believed for three months that the board hasn’t done the right thing. Our objective is to press Yahoo’s board for the way they mishandled this.” Yahoo has said the shareholder suit is without merit. It fought unsuccessfully to keep the records under seal. According to the lawsuit, Yahoo lawyers argued that exposing nonpublic information would have the effect of “inappropriately influencing the ongoing proxy contest.” Experts in shareholder activism said Mr. Icahn was smart to try to exploit allegations and revelations made in the suit. “Proxy contests have a lot to do with emotion and shifting opinions of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,” said Barry H. Genkin, who heads the activist shareholder group at Blank Rome, a law firm in Philadelphia. “The lawsuit is acting as the stalking horse for Carl Icahn, validating the story he is trying to tell vis-a-vis Yahoo.” The employee retention plan offers enhanced benefits, including cash and faster vesting of stock options and other equity awards, to any Yahoo employees who are fired or leave because their duties or responsibilities are diminished after a merger. The shareholder lawsuit calls it an “employee severance” plan and argues it would “impose tremendous costs and risk for an acquirer, throwing sand in the gears of Microsoft’s plan for a smooth integration.” According to the suit, Timothy J. Sparks, the president of Compensia, a company that Yahoo hired to help devise the plan, said it was “nuts” to devise a plan that would provide accelerated vesting to all employees. Yahoo has disputed that claim. The court documents also allege that in October 2007, four months before Microsoft made its offer, Mr. Yang and the board authorized the drafting of a “standby press release” to reject a likely offer from a “third party.” The release said Yahoo would consider an offer carefully, but that it had “very recently determined that it was not the right time for the company to seek to sell itself.” Microsoft and Yahoo had held unsuccessful merger discussions earlier that year. The revelations in the lawsuit have angered some large Yahoo shareholders who believe the company mishandled negotiations with Microsoft. Even if Mr. Icahn were to win a proxy fight against Yahoo, it was not clear that Microsoft would resume efforts to buy the company. Microsoft has said it is no longer interested in buying all of Yahoo, and it has recently made various proposals that fall short of an outright acquisition. Yahoo has been reluctant to accept proposals that would break up the company, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Icahn Carl C
Yahoo Inc
Yang Jerry
Boards of Directors
Executives and Management
Computers and the Internet
Microsoft Corp


Louisiana: U.S. Joins Inquiry Into Death in Police Car

Abstract: The United States Justice Department said on Tuesday that it was investigating the death of Victor White III, 23, who died while in the custody of Iberia Parish sheriff’s deputies in March. The local coroner determined that his shooting death in the back of a police cruiser while his hands were cuffed was a suicide. His family has disputed details of the shooting and called for a federal investigation, comparing his death to the fatal police shooting of another young black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo. The United States attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, Stephanie A. Finley, said on Tuesday that the F.B.I. had been “working parallel” with the current investigation by the Louisiana State Police, and that the federal investigation would “supplement, rather than supplant,” the state investigation. Officials from the F.B.I., the United States attorney’s office and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will review the results of the investigation and determine whether to investigative further and whether any civil rights violation occurred, Ms. Finley said.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Catalog of Wounded in Afghan War Could Be Model

Abstract: FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — To those unfamiliar with a battlefield’s bleak routine, Col. Michael D. Wirt’s database could be read like a catalog of horrors. In it, more than 500 American soldiers are subjected to characteristic forms of violence of the Afghan war. Faces are smacked with shrapnel, legs are blasted away near knees, bullets pass through young men’s abdomens. Vehicles roll over, crushing bones. Eardrums rupture. Digits are severed. Dozens of soldiers die. Hundreds more begin journeys home, sometimes to treatment that will last the rest of their lives. Each was listed in a small but meticulous computer entry by Colonel Wirt, a doctor intent on documenting how soldiers were wounded or sickened, how they were treated and how they fared. For those seeking to understand war and how best to survive it, the doctor on his own initiative created an evidence-based tool and a possible model. His database is one part of a vast store of information recorded about the experiences of American combatants. But there are concerns that the potential lessons from such data could be lost, because no one has yet brought the information together and made it fully cohere. Colonel Wirt was a brigade surgeon from the 101st Airborne Division during the American-led effort in 2010 and 2011 to dislodge the Taliban from their rural stronghold along the Arghandab River. His database was part official record, part personal research project. His commander required him to keep tabs on ailing and wounded soldiers, and to inform him of their prognosis and whereabouts in the medical system. To this, Colonel Wirt added layers of information. He documented which weapons caused which wounds. He tried to record increased or decreased risk factors — whether the victim was wearing larger or smaller body armor, whether a bomb-sniffing dog was present, when a tourniquet was applied. He recorded which accidents and diseases took which soldiers off duty, and for how long. He mapped where on a human body bullets most often struck. A year after he returned to the states, Colonel Wirt and his database point to the promise and obstacles related to studying more than a decade of American war. The amassed information on combatants over 10 years amounts to the most detailed data ever assembled on battlefield trauma and its care, American military officers say. But the records are scattered. The Defense Department’s trauma registry has information on roughly 66,000 patients who were admitted to modern military hospitals, including American and coalition troops, Afghans and Iraqis, contractors, and the odd journalist, diplomat or aid worker. It is a record, largely, of those who survived. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s Office maintains separate sets of records, including full-body CT scans , for service members killed in action. And each patient’s medical records, often with narrative details of wounds and a thorough chronicle of treatments, are available in electronic form, but only to those involved in each person’s care. Supporting documents for Purple Heart awards can also include medical and tactical data. In certain contexts, some of the data is merged, as at quarterly meetings of a special committee that has been seeking ways to improve prehospital care. So far these disparate storehouses of information have not been joined in a permanent place, much less made widely available for cross-disciplinary study. Col. Jeffrey A. Bailey, a surgeon who directs the Joint Trauma System at the Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston, confirmed what several military doctors noted: There as yet is no standardized medical database that enables researchers to look back comprehensively on the experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Bailey said his institute, a research arm to promote improvement in medical care, eventually hopes to combine a “K.I.A. module” from the medical examiner with the registry of patients treated in hospitals. He added, however, that discussion of merging the data is in its early phases, and that while “I think we will get there, I can’t tell you when it will happen.” Against this background, Colonel Wirt, a neuroradiologist who volunteered for duty in an infantry brigade, set out in 2010 to make his own record of one brief but bloody chapter of the Afghan war. “This was a way to take something away,” he said, “so that all of the casualties mean something.” His commander wanted a high level of detail, he said. Curiosity drove him further. “If you don’t take data and analyze it and try to find ways to improve, then what are you doing?” Colonel Wirt asked in an interview at Fort Campbell, where he is a deputy commander at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital. “In my humble opinion, a consolidated database with standardized input consisting of mechanism of injury and resulting wounds, classified by battle and nonbattle injuries, would be something you could actually use.” Other officers agreed. Maj. Kirk W. Webb, formerly responsible for compiling casualty data for the 101st Airborne Division, said each unit tracked its casualties, although not to the detail that Colonel Wirt pursued. Most of the information has probably vanished, he added. “It’s kind of sad, actually, because there is a lot information out there that gets lost,” Major Webb said. Dr. Dave Edmond Lounsbury is a retired colonel and medical doctor who was co-author of “ War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq ,” a textbook from the Office of the Army Surgeon General that, over considerable internal dissent, published case studies of combat wounds. He said that data like that compiled by Colonel Wirt would also be valuable for those who study workplace safety, for historians and for officers who hope to rise above collecting anecdotes to examine how insurgent and counterinsurgency forces fought each other and evolved. But he and other officers noted a potential obstacle: Many people in the military have opposed sharing detailed medical data. The reasons, Dr. Lounsbury said, include concerns about patient privacy and a desire to present an airbrushed picture of war for public consumption. One military official also said restricting access to the data could prevent potential enemies from studying it. (The Office of the Surgeon General forbade Dr. Wirt to share with The New York Times his data on how American soldiers were wounded, even though the newspaper asked for the data in the format in which the data is released and updated monthly by the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the entire Iraq and Afghan wars.) The data can be politically charged. Records from the Arghandab offensive, for example, show that 530 Americans from Dr. Wirt’s former unit were wounded in a roughly one-year period, compared with 150 Afghan soldiers and police officers. The contrast belies the official insistence that Afghan forces led the campaign, or even participated equally in it. Dr. Lounsbury suggested that whatever the political content or concerns, compiling data and circulating it broadly was important for the practice of wartime medicine, and for the American military and public to understand better a long period of war. “I can’t think of a higher lesson learned than to put all of that data together and find out what weapons were used and who got killed and who lived and with what therapy and treatment,” he said. Dr. Wirt, he added, “should be applauded for what he has done.”

United States Defense and Military Forces