Concern in Britain as Schoolgirls Seek to Join Islamic State

Abstract: LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said Saturday that the country’s authorities would do everything they could to help three British schoolgirls who were believed to be traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State militant group. European officials say they are increasingly concerned by reports about Western Muslims who have shown an interest in joining radical Islamic groups in Syria and Iraq, including young women who want to either fight for groups like Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, or become the wives of jihadists. Estimates from Europe’s counterterrorism coordinator suggest that more than 3,000 Europeans may have traveled to Syria and Iraq since early 2014, and could now represent roughly one-quarter of the foreign fighters in the region. Mr. Cameron said that the latest case, which involves three teenagers from London — Kadiza Sultana, 16; Shamima Begum, 15; and an unnamed 15-year-old girl — was “deeply concerning,” and he called on community and religious groups to do more to stop the radicalization of young British Muslims. “It does make a broader point, which is the fight against Islamist extremist terror is not just one that we can wage by the police and border control,” Mr. Cameron said, referring to the disappearance of the three girls. “We all have a role to play in stopping people from having their minds poisoned by this appalling death cult.” The British police have appealed for information about the three girls, who flew to Turkey last week without informing their families and are thought to be traveling to Syria to join the terrorist group. The teenagers told their families on Feb. 17 that they would be out for the day, but security camera footage at Gatwick Airport, near London, showed that the girls had boarded a flight to Istanbul, according to British police. “We are extremely concerned for the safety of these young girls,” Richard Waldon, the commander of a British special operations police counterterrorism unit, said in a statement. “The choice of returning home from Syria is often taken away from those under the control of Islamic State, leaving their families in the U.K. devastated and with very few options to secure their safe return.” The family of one of the teenagers, Ms. Begum, also released a statement on Saturday, calling on her to return to Britain. “We understand that you have strong feelings and want to help those you believe are suffering in Syria,” Ms. Begum’s family said in the statement. “You can help from home, you don’t have to put yourself in danger.”

Great Britain
David Cameron
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Islam
Syria
Women and Girls


Madoff Paraphernalia, of All Sorts, Landing on eBay

Abstract: One way that people actually are making money from Bernard L. Madoff is by selling items on eBay . Mr. Madoff, who was arrested last month after being accused of losing as much as $50 billion of investors’ money in a Ponzi scheme , put the firm’s name on everything from T-shirts to beach towels, tote bags and umbrellas. Now, those keepsakes are being sold to the highest bidder. Some of the sellers say they are former clients and employees. Others, like John Mitchell, of Fox Grove, Ill., sold a cigar humidor bearing Mr. Madoff’s name. Mr. Mitchell said he also sold Lehman Brothers items after the firm declared bankruptcy. “People are buying that stuff,” he said. “It’s sad, but it’s still humorous.” Other items for sale on eBay from Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities include insulated coolers, binoculars, golf caps and flashlights. Several eBay postings are prodding buyers to “own a piece of history.” The Madoff name was not fetching top dollar on the Internet. Bidding for many items did not rise above $50. Eleven bidders were hoping to take home a fleece jacket, size L, on Sunday; the highest bidder had offered $147.59. One seller said simply, “A family member used the services of Bernard L. Madoff Securities in New York and was given this beach towel.” Also up for bid was a photocopy of a client financial statement, postmarked Dec. 3, a week before his arrest on Dec. 11.

eBay Inc
Ponzi Schemes
Madoff Bernard L
Auctions


Mexico Massacre Victims Found

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — The bullet-pocked bodies of 72 people, believed to be migrants heading to the United States who resisted demands for money, have been found in a large room on a ranch in an area of northeast Mexico with surging violence, the authorities said Wednesday. Initial reports after the victims were found Tuesday suggested that the mass of bodies was the largest of several dumping grounds, often with dozens of dead, discovered in recent months and attributed to the violence of the drug business. But if the victims, found after a raid on a ranch in Tamaulipas State by Mexican naval units, are confirmed as migrants, their killings would provide a sharp reminder of the violence in human smuggling as well. It was not clear if the victims, from Central and South America, were shot all at once. The police were relying on a harrowing but sketchy account from a wounded survivor, published by the newspaper Reforma and confirmed by government officials, who said several people were killed in short order after the migrants refused to pay or cooperate with the gunmen. A law enforcement official said all were found in a large room, some sitting, some piled atop one another. Alejandro Poiré, the government’s spokesman for security issues, said that though the investigation was just beginning, the killings seemed to be an outgrowth of pressure on drug gangs by a government crackdown. “This act confirms that criminal organizations are looking to kidnapping and extortion because they are going through a difficult time obtaining resources and recruiting people willingly,” Mr. Poiré told reporters here. United States law enforcement officials have warned that drug trafficking groups have increasingly moved into the lucrative business of human smuggling, extorting fees from migrants for safe passage across the border and sometimes forcing them to carry bundles of drugs. Smugglers are also known to rob, kidnap and sometimes kill migrants on both sides of the border. The unidentified survivor, an Ecuadorean traveling with people from Ecuador, Brazil, Honduras and El Salvador, told investigators that the migrants had entered Mexico from the south and that they were making their way to Texas when they were confronted by the gunmen in San Fernando, about 100 miles south of Brownsville, Tex. In a statement to the police, he said the leaders of the armed group had tried to extort fees from them and, when the migrants resisted, ordered their gunmen to open fire. Wounded in the neck by the gunfire, the survivor heard screams and pleas for mercy. Once the men retreated, the witness said, he ran from the ranch where they were being held Monday and found a military checkpoint. The military units reached the ranch on Tuesday and engaged in a firefight in which one marine and three suspects were killed. One Mexican, a minor, was taken into custody. The authorities said 58 men and 14 women had been killed in the room by the gunmen. It was unclear how long they had been dead or detained. The discovery of the bodies was the largest of at least three such finds this year. In May, 55 bodies were pulled from an abandoned mine south of Mexico City, and in July, 51 bodies were discovered in a field near Monterrey, an industrial and commercial hub in northeast Mexico that had been relatively quiet until this year. A shootout last week in Monterrey outside the American School Foundation, a private school popular with American expatriates and Mexican business executives, prompted the United States Consulate to advise families to keep their children home pending an assessment of security at the school. More than 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began a crackdown on organized crime in 2006. In a meeting with mayors on Wednesday, Mr. Calderón said, “We’re in the middle of a criminal spiral that we have to cut.” “I don’t know of any crime that isn’t organized,” Mr. Calderón said. “They are all very organized, and much more than the police.”

Mexico
Migrant and Foreign Workers
Murders and Attempted Murders


Marion Rolland Wins Downhill at World Championships

Abstract: SCHLADMING, Austria — The most successful women’s speed squad in United States ski team history failed to win a medal on Sunday in the downhill, an event it was favored to dominate at the Alpine world championships. Despite missing their downhill star, Lindsey Vonn, who is out for the season because of a knee injury, the American women have collectively earned 12 top-three finishes in the nine speed events this season. But Marion Rolland of France raced to victory under a clear sky on the 1.9-mile Streicher course, in 1 minute 50 seconds. Nadia Fanchini of Italy took second, 0.16 of a second behind, and Maria Höfl-Riesch of Germany, Friday’s super-combined winner, took third in 1:50.70. Julia Mancuso was the top American, placing fifth. Undoubtedly, Vonn’s absence presented an opening for others. “Of course there was a huge opportunity in downhill because Lindsey is definitely a dominating force there,” Mancuso said after the race. “I’m sure she would have done incredible if she was racing today.” Image Marion Rolland of France won the downhill at the Alpine world championships. Julia Mancuso finished fifth. Credit Olivier Morin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Rolland’s best result in the event this season had been a fourth-place finish in January in Cortina, Italy. She had only been on the podium two times before Sunday. “Since I was a child, I wanted to be a champion,” Rolland said. “If you believe in your dreams, you will reach them one day.” All four American competitors finished in the top 20, the best collective team result of the race, but the United States team seemed dissatisfied with the outcome. The team’s skiing did not reflect its motto: best in the world. “We’re striving for podiums right now,” said Chip White, the speed coach for the United States women’s ski team. “So in that case, we’re a little disappointed. The girls are a little disappointed.” The American women had been unstoppable this season, with six wins in nine speed races; with four skiers, including Vonn, in the top 10 of the World Cup downhill standings; and with five of the six racers on the speed squad having reached the podium. Three women — Alice McKennis, Leanne Smith and Stacey Cook — claimed the first top-three finishes of their careers. “The cards didn’t fall the way we wanted them to,” White said of the race. “But we’re still contenders for a globe in downhill.” Image Rolland won in 1 minute 50 seconds. Her previous best finish in the event this season was a fourth. Credit Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Cook, who placed sixth Sunday, is second in the World Cup downhill standings, behind Vonn. Victory was a surprise for Rolland. After the race, she said she had been struggling this season to stay confident. But she had been successful on this hill. At last year’s World Cup finals, Rolland earned a second-place finish in the downhill behind Vonn, who won by nearly a second, and a third in the super-G. Even Rolland said she expected big things from the Americans. Just a few weeks ago, after a super-G in Cortina in which she was disqualified, Rolland said: “They are really amazing. Every year that there is a big event, the world championships or the Olympics, they are always ready. When Lindsey’s not here on the podium, there’s always another American girl.” Instead, it was Rolland who skied a fast, clean and solid line down a course racers described as icy, unforgiving and difficult to maintain speed on. Where others lost time in the middle flat section of the track, Rolland held on to her blistering pace. Smith, who placed 12th, said, “Today, we didn’t get anyone on the podium, but that won’t be the case for the rest of the season.” If the success of the United States women’s speed team this season is any indication, Smith is probably right.

Alpine skiing
Marion Rolland
France
US
Skiing


Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps: Twin Titans of the Modern Olympics

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — Over to you, Usain Bolt, and the bar is even higher than usual. Michael Phelps and Bolt have been an Olympic one-two punch since 2008 in Beijing, where Bolt emerged to tear up the track while Phelps was already an absolute ruler in the pool. On Saturday they will overlap briefly once more, with Phelps, now 31, finishing up one of the most remarkable meets of his career, and with Bolt, fast approaching 30, launching his meet with the first round of the 100 meters. Neither had anything left to prove when they arrived here. Phelps was already the greatest swimmer of all time. Bolt was already the greatest sprinter. But that has not stopped Phelps from pushing himself to more gold medals against new and familiar rivals. And it will not stop Bolt from doing his falsely nonchalant best to hold off old foes like Justin Gatlin and young threats like Trayvon Bromell, who are hungry to chase him down before he sprints into the sunset. There are rumblings about the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 for Phelps, who came out of retirement in 2014. Bolt, who has said Rio will be his last Olympics, has been an unreliable source on his plans in the past. But this certainly looks like last call, and the Games will not be the same without them. It takes a decade of succeeding under biggest-race pressure to become this level of must-watch Olympian. A Day of Finals Won and Records Broken 16 Photos View Slide Show › Image Quinn Rooney/Getty Images. “Bolt dominates his field in a way that is unique in living memory and has achieved a global celebrity that is almost comparable to Pelé and Muhammad Ali,” said Tony Collins, a British sports historian. “Phelps’s achievement at the Olympics is unlikely ever to be matched. The sheer enormity of his medal haul, not to mention his non-Olympic record, makes him the greatest Olympian of all time. “But the Olympics have entered very turbulent waters. As with the FIFA World Cup, the Olympics are increasingly weighed down by scandal, hubris and existential doubt. Whether they can continue in their current form is open to question, and that means that we may never again witness athletes dominating global tournaments in the same way as Bolt and Phelps.” The glass-half-full crowd could argue quite rightly that the Olympics, warts and all, have proved resilient enough to overcome wars, boycotts and doping scandals every bit as big as the state-sponsored Russian affair that dominated the conversation in the run-up to the Rio Games. Other dominant athletes will inevitably emerge: driven characters like the American swimmer Katie Ledecky, who at 19 is just getting started. But the odds do seem long on getting the two best of all time at the same time again in the major Olympic sports of track and swimming. They are beneficiaries of their historical timing. Others might have approached their Olympic numbers if they had been able to keep competing, but Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in swimming in 1972, retired at 22. Jesse Owens, the track and field star, only took part in one Olympics in 1936. Image There are rumblings about the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 for Phelps, who came out of retirement in 2014. Bolt, who has said Rio will be his last Olympics, has been an unreliable source on his plans in the past. Credit Jeffrey Furticella/The New York Times With Phelps and Bolt continuing to work in different mediums, it is still not the most straightforward game of compare and contrast. “It’s hard to compare water and land,” said John Smith, the veteran American track coach. “But my view is for an athlete when you are dealing with gravity, it’s a little harder. When you are dealing with buoyancy, it’s a little easier.” Aquatic types can certainly disagree, but running a straightaway seems to hold more universal appeal than doing laps in a pool. There is no debate that Phelps has always had the edge in medals and Bolt the edge in charisma. So it remains as Bolt’s inimitable pre-Olympic press event — full of samba and shenanigans — made clear. But Phelps, long viewed as something of an automaton internationally, has also narrowed the personality gap in Rio. He has not only continued to win, but has also opened up and connected more directly with his public in the wake of his personal struggles. Unlike Phelps, Bolt has not lost an Olympic race since 2008, sweeping the 100 and the 200 and the 4x100 relay with Jamaica in Beijing and then in London in 2012. Image On Saturday, Bolt, fast approaching 30, launches his meet with the first round of the 100 meters as Phelps finishes his remarkable showing. Credit Dan Mullan/Getty Images Nor has he been beaten at the world championships during that span, his only loss coming when he was disqualified after a false start in the 100 in 2011 in Daegu, South Korea. But his mathematical edge has been shrinking and his world-record times from 2009 of 9.58 seconds in the 100 and 19.19 in the 200 are receding in the rearview mirror. His winning times in major championships in the 100 since 2009 are 9.63, 9.77 and 9.79. This decline is reassuring in a sense in a track world understandably full of suspicion about doping and Jamaica’s testing program. But it also makes him look beatable, and defeat could not have been closer than at the world championships in Beijing last year, when only Gatlin’s late stumble allowed Bolt to eke out a victory in the 100 by one-hundredth of a second. In Rio, he again comes into a big meet having raced little and with lingering doubts about his health. But Ato Boldon, the NBC analyst and former sprinter who predicted Bolt’s demise in the 100 in Beijing, watched Bolt train and start this week and said he believed Bolt was “fine” physically and deserved to be the favorite in Rio. “Nothing has changed in my mind,” Boldon said Friday. “The rounds will reveal a lot, but no one can get away from Bolt far enough to escape his finish in the 100. In the 200, well, forget it.” And if Bolt ever finds himself short of inspiration in Rio, he need only to picture Phelps in Rio: reaching the wall first and setting the standard again for enduring excellence.

2016 Summer Olympics
Swimming
Track and field
Usain Bolt
Michael Phelps
Olympics


G.M. Plans $4,000 Profit-Sharing Bonus for Workers

Abstract: DETROIT — General Motors said on Monday that it would pay the largest profit-sharing checks in its history to 45,000 hourly workers in the United States. The checks will be worth “upwards of $4,000,” a G.M. spokeswoman, Sherrie Childers-Arb, said. That is more than double the company’s previous record of $1,775, paid in 2000. About 3,000 G.M. workers at four plants in New York, Michigan and Indiana that were formerly part of the Delphi Corporation will receive about $3,000 each. In all, G.M. will give at least $189 million of its profit back to plant workers. The exact amounts will be disclosed when G.M. reports its fourth-quarter and full-year 2010 earnings in the coming weeks. G.M., which had lost money every year from 2005 through 2009, when it filed for bankruptcy protection, earned $4.2 billion from January through September 2010. Workers will receive the money on March 25. The amount is determined by a formula in G.M.’s contract with the United Automobile Workers union. G.M. is not adding a bonus to the checks, as the Ford Motor Company is in giving its hourly workers checks averaging $5,000 each, Ms. Childers-Arb said. Chrysler is voluntarily paying its workers $750, even though it lost money in 2010. “It’s strictly what it would have generated under the agreement,” Ms. Childers-Arb said. G.M. last week said 26,000 salaried workers in the United States would receive bonuses, generally ranging from 4 to 16 percent of their pay, but that several hundred employees would receive bonuses of more than 50 percent of their pay. The U.A.W. profit-sharing formula is calculated from G.M.’s profits only in the United States. In the first three quarters of 2010, G.M. earned $4.9 billion in North America. (Its overall profit was less because European operations lost money.) “Just the fact that we’re seeing a profit-sharing check, that’s great stuff,” Dana Rouse, shop chairman at G.M.’s assembly plant in Flint, Mich., with U.A.W. Local 598, said recently. Even though the checks will be much larger this year, G.M. paid out $84 million more in profit sharing in 2000 because its hourly work force at that time was more than triple the size it is today. Profit sharing began at the Detroit automakers in 1982. The practice has historically led to G.M. workers getting much smaller checks than their counterparts at Ford and Chrysler. The checks paid in 2000 were the only ones before this year that exceeded $1,000. Compensation for workers as G.M., Ford and Chrysler improve financially is expected to be a major point in contract negotiations with the U.A.W. this fall. G.M. executives last month suggested that hourly workers should have more of their pay tied to vehicle quality and overall company performance.

Automobiles
General Motors Co
Labor and Jobs


Manchester United's Invaluable Veteran

Abstract: LONDON — Managing the age gap might be the biggest challenge in pro sports. Ryan Giggs and Javier Zanetti are the oldest competitors in the Champions League. But, while Giggs, just shy of his 38th birthday, scored a thrilling, match-saving goal for Manchester United in Lisbon on Wednesday, Zanetti, three months older, suffered an embarrassing defeat with Inter Milan . Both have fine pedigrees. Both have sustained more than a decade and a half at a single club and have become part of their teams’ DNA. But Giggs, the attacker, and Zanetti, the defender, have started this season in such different ways that the age question becomes relevant. Manchester United has freshened up its squad in every part of the field. Its coach of 25 years, Alex Ferguson, shopped around for youth this summer, and threw into the first team five players who were not even born when Giggs made his debut 22 years ago. By finding new energy, Ferguson has been able to rest senior players. Giggs, for example, did not play a full game before Wednesday, when his craft and experience were surrounded by players happy to run for him. United suffered an early setback when Óscar Cardoza, Benfica’s Paraguayan striker, scored the opening goal. His control in taking a pass on his chest, his power in turning and brushing aside a meek challenge from Jonny Evans and his shot from 18 yards demonstrated the full range of Cardoza’s talents. Giggs equalized just before halftime, with technique that was even finer. Antonio Valencia carved out the chance with a pass that invited Giggs to show his quality. And boy, did Giggs do that. Sensing the opportunity, preying on Benfica’s hesitation, he turned up his still quite potent Turbo boost. Five, maybe six strides, took him to the ball more quickly than any opponent. One touch of his foot to change its course, he then shot from just outside the penalty box. The shot had little back lift, so it was pure timing that enabled Giggs’s left foot to scoop the ball, like a wedge shot in golf, toward the top corner of the net. Goalie Artur had no time to lay a hand on the ball. “Sometimes,” Giggs said afterward, “you’ve got to rely on individuals to score, and tonight it was me. Other nights, it will be someone else.” Sure it will, Ryan. But the records show that, at least once a season for the past 22 seasons, Giggs has scored for United. Indeed, he alone is the one player to score in 16 consecutive Champions League seasons. “For my second chance,” Giggs said, “the goalie came sprinting out, and probably I should have tried to dink it over him.” Perhaps that was an option, but Giggs’s modesty disguises the fact that he can still be magical. His short, sharp, exquisite run with the ball at his feet had tricked three defenders before Artur showed his own agility and experience in diving to save the shot. The 1-1 result in the Luz stadium, the Stadium of Light, was fair. United had rested most of its senior side because on Sunday it faces Chelsea in the English league when Giggs, quite likely, will be on the bench. Inter Milan does not have that luxury or that depth of reserves. In the two years since Inter won the Champions League — and the Italian league and cup in the same season — three different coaches have tried to emulate what José Mourinho did with that squad. Mourinho knew it was aging and took his chance to move on to coach Real Madrid. Rafael Benítez, and then the Brazilian Leonardo, were offered Mourinho’s old team but were fired within months of their appointment. Gian Piero Gasperini, the new coach on Inter’s managerial carousel, is already under pressure. He is trying to introduce new tactics, and new faces, but a 4-3 defeat at Palermo at the weekend was followed by a shocking 1-0 home defeat in the San Siro on Wednesday. Shocking because Inter was beaten by a Turkish side that was only there by default. Trabzonspor was eliminated from the qualifying rounds by Benfica back in July but reprieved and given a place in the group phase of the competition when Turkish champion Fenerbahce was expelled because of match-fixing allegations in its domestic league. So here was Trabzonspor, a team from the Black Sea area, capitalizing on a second chance to make up the numbers in the group. Fodder, some people thought, for an opponent like Inter. Fate, perhaps, determined otherwise. With 19 shots, Inter could not beat Tolger Zengin in the Trabzonspor goal. High and low he sprang, left and right, to make seven saves. And in between those, Ondrej Celustka scored on the rebound for Trabzonspor after Halil Altintop had rattled the Inter crossbar midway through the second half. “Scoring was like a dream for me,” the Czech Republic player Celustka said later. “It was special to come back to Italy and score the winner.” When he says “come back,” he refers to half a season he spent on the bench at Palermo, scarcely given the opportunity to take off his tracksuit during a six month loan from his club at the time in Prague that led to nothing. He took his chance Wednesday while Inter squandered theirs. “We have to keep our heads low and keep working hard,” said Zanetti. The Inter captain had previously called for calm and for the players to have faith in Gasperini, the seventh coach of Zanetti’s 17 years at the club. One of those coaches, Roberto Mancini, is now at the world’s richest club, Manchester City. On Wednesday, City drew its first match in the Champions League, 1-1, against an opponent Mancini had warned his players would be resolute in defense and sharp on counterattack. Napoli proved all of that. It led on 69 minutes through a sharp, rapacious break finished off by Edinson Cavani. City came back through a free kick expertly struck by Aleksander Kolarov who then immediately left the field for treatment to a broken and bloodied nose. Mancini, though, thought a draw a decent start. He knew that Bayern Munich, City’s next opponent in the Champions League, had won convincingly, 2-0, at Villarreal, but confidently predicted: “I’m not worried, because we will win in Munich.”

Manchester United
Inter Milan
UEFA Champions League (Soccer)
Soccer


Opposition in Egypt Urges Unity Government

Abstract: CAIRO — Facing dire warnings from the military about the country’s growing chaos, Egyptian opposition leaders banded together for the first time on Wednesday and pressed President Mohamed Morsi to form a national unity government as a way to halt the violence that has led to dozens of deaths over the past week. But even as secular-leaning and Islamist groups crossed an ideological divide to try to find a way to end the simmering violence, Mr. Morsi rejected the idea during a visit to Germany, where he said a new government would be formed only after parliamentary elections in April. “In Egypt there is a stable government working day and night in the interest of all Egyptians,” Mr. Morsi said after meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. Still, the opposition’s gamble offered the first recent indication that the nation’s political leaders were searching for common ground and a way out of the chaos. Egypt’s largest secular-leaning opposition bloc, the National Salvation Front, joined a hard-line Islamist group, the Nour party, which had been allied with the president and his movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in calling for a new government. The political maneuvers came a day after Egypt’s defense chief warned of “the collapse of the state” if the country’s quarreling political forces did not reconcile. The statement, by Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, was a stark reminder that Mr. Morsi’s authority had been weakened after days of protests led him to declare a state of emergency in three cities along the Suez Canal when the police lost control. Egyptians have reacted with growing frustration to the political feuding in Cairo, the sense of lawlessness and the deteriorating economy. Many have warned that the standoff — between a weak and often intractable opposition movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, which has grown increasingly dismissive of its critics — could lead to even worse political violence. Days of street clashes have intensified those fears. As he left for Germany, Mr. Morsi abruptly backed down from some of the emergency measures he had imposed — and which the public had already ignored — saying that he would leave it to the provincial authorities to set their own curfews. On Wednesday, all three cities on the Suez Canal reduced curfews to just a few hours early in the morning. The visit to Germany further highlighted Mr. Morsi’s troubles. The president, who had scheduled the visit before the protests started, was forced to cut it short, and he canceled a trip to France. At several public appearances, Mr. Morsi appeared defensive while describing the situation in Egypt. He attributed much of the violence to remnants of Egypt’s deposed government, or so-called infiltrators, including a little-known group that the Egyptian authorities have turned into a scapegoat and called a national security threat. On Tuesday, Egypt’s public prosecutor declared that the group, which calls itself the Black Bloc, was a terrorist organization and issued warrants for its members’ arrests. Five people were detained on Wednesday, state news media reported. Image The riot police beat an Egyptian protester in Cairo on Wednesday. Days of unrelenting violence appeared to have eroded President Mohamed Morsi’s authority. Credit Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times If the president hoped to leave Egypt in search of a friendlier audience, he did not find it in Germany. Mr. Morsi was asked repeatedly over the course of several appearances — at least five times by his count — about anti-Semitic statements he had made in 2010 in which he spoke of nurturing “our children and our grandchildren on hatred” of Jews and called Zionists “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.” In his first public response since the comments surfaced, Mr. Morsi said that they had been taken out of context and that he was “not against Judaism as a religion” but had been condemning Israeli attacks on Palestinians. “Children in Egypt grow up watching blood being shed,” he said before speaking at length about events that he said he had witnessed as a teenager when Israeli airstrikes killed Egyptian civilians at a school and a factory. Mr. Morsi did not apologize for the slurs. In Berlin, Mr. Morsi also met with the economic minister, Philipp Rösler, and representatives of German businesses. Germany is Egypt’s third most important trading partner, and Mr. Morsi is relying on investment and aid from Germany to rescue the teetering Egyptian economy. Ms. Merkel made it clear that Berlin would continue its support of Egypt’s transition to democracy only if Mr. Morsi’s government upheld certain ideals. “One thing that is important for us is that the channels of dialogue are always open,” she said. On Wednesday, Mohamed ElBaradei, a former United Nations diplomat who is the coordinator of the National Salvation Front, said the group was calling for a dialogue with the government, reversing its refusal to sit down with Mr. Morsi. In a Twitter post, Mr. ElBaradei called for a meeting with the president and the defense and interior ministers — highlighting the perception that Mr. Morsi did not speak for central pillars of the sprawling Egyptian bureaucracy. Mr. ElBaradei also asked that members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, and ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis join the talks. “Stopping the violence is the priority,” Mr. ElBaradei wrote, adding conditions for the talks that included a commitment to a new cabinet and the creation of a committee to amend Egypt’s recently ratified Constitution. In a sign of the ways that the crisis is redrawing Egypt’s political landscape, a Salafi party called Al Nour announced that it was joining the call for a unity government. The Salafis, considered the strongest political force in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood, have fractured politically in recent months, creating a crack in the Islamist front that dominated the last parliamentary elections. In announcing a tentative agreement with the secular opposition groups, Al Nour’s leader, Younis Makhyoun, seemed to endorse further erosion of the Brotherhood’s political supremacy. Among other aims, the tentative agreement called for “prohibiting the domination of a single faction over political life.”


A Golf Fashion Statement Beyond Checked Pants

Abstract: A good belt is more than what you need at the 19th hole after shooting 118. Golf belts are now midsection fashion statements. And they may reveal something about your swing, too, because a fancy buckle should be in view if you’ve properly turned your hips toward the intended target of your shot. So if you’re feeling daring, there are bold new belts, like the SUMI-G Dormy ( sumi-g.com , $85), which has a stylish flat buckle with a built-in ball marker. The Puma Golf Rivet Belt has a brushed metal buckle and the Puma cat logo, available in black or white ( puma.com , $70). Another popular choice is the Trophy leather belt by Adidas, with the company’s trademark three-stripe logo made into a metal buckle ( adidasgolf.com , $49.99). Want to branch out? Try the Sligo Buckled Belt, which is Italian leather with a buckle that has an enamel background and green dot Sligo logo ( fairwaystyles.com , $69). Druh Belts and Buckles ( druhbeltsandbuckles.com ) allows you to design and order your own. It’s a popular product with European professional golfers. All this attention to belts and buckles is a throwback to the wilder days of golf fashion in the 1970s, when Tom Watson was near the top of the leader board of the British Open. So maybe things haven’t changed that much. What is it they say about fashion? Nothing of good quality ever truly goes out of style; it is just waiting to be rediscovered.


Canada: Sears Bid for Shares Set Back

Abstract: Canada’s main securities regulator, the Ontario Securities Commission, halted an attempt by the Sears Holdings Corporation to buy out the minority shareholders in Sears Canada for 892 million Canadian dollars ($775 million). Sears Holdings is the majority owner of Sears Canada, but a majority of minority shareholders would have to support its offer to take the Canadian operation private. Sears won the support of most of the minority shareholders earlier this year, but several institutional shareholders banded together to challenge the deal. The commission ruled that Sears Holdings failed to disclose certain arrangements it made with several shareholders regarding the purchase of their shares and that as a result, votes cast by those shareholders could not be counted. The commission halted the offer until Sears Holdings discloses all the details about the support agreements in its bid proposal.

Canada
Sears Canada Incorporated
Ontario Securities Commission
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Retail Stores and Trade
Sears Holdings


Margaret Russell to Lead Architectural Digest

Abstract: Margaret Russell will succeed Paige Rense — once known as the archduchess of decorating — as editor in chief of Architectural Digest, Condé Nast announced on Thursday. Ms. Russell, 52, previously vice president and editor in chief of brand content at Elle Decor, began her career as an editorial assistant at Glamour. She had been with Elle Decor for two decades. “Margaret is a brilliant editor, and she’s been a formidable competitor,” Thomas J. Wallace, editorial director of Condé Nast, said in an interview. “There’s no one in the world of design who hasn’t felt the impact of Paige Rense, and perhaps no one more personally than Margaret.” Since joining Architectural Digest in 1970, Ms. Rense, 81, led the magazine to a circulation of more than 850,000, from 50,000. Under her guidance, the magazine often featured the glamorous homes of celebrities on the cover and became one of the world’s leading design publications. “I have a network the C.I.A. would envy,” Ms. Rense once told The New York Times. The magazine will move its headquarters from Los Angeles to New York City, and Ms. Russell will take her new position in early September.

Conde Nast Publications Inc
Russell Margaret
Architectural Digest
Rense Paige


Defying Moscow, Ukraine Threatens to Blockade Pro-Russian Militants

Abstract: KIEV, Ukraine — The interim central government in Kiev threatened to blockade the eastern city of Slovyansk on Friday, defying warnings from Moscow not to confront pro-Russian militants entrenched in towns across eastern Ukraine. In another affront to the Kremlin, Kiev also warned that any Russian troops crossing the border on maneuvers would be treated as an invasion. The declarations heightened concerns that the government’s efforts to move against forces aligned with Moscow would incite a Russian military incursion that the Kremlin would characterize as a humanitarian or peacekeeping initiative. But on Friday night Western powers sought to stay Russia’s hand. “We have now agreed that we will move swiftly to impose additional sanctions on Russia,” the Group of 7 said in a statement issued by the White House. The sanctions could be imposed as early as Monday. The statement was released hours after the Pentagon said that Russian fighter jets had made about half a dozen incursions into Ukrainian airspace over the previous 24 hours. Col. Steven H. Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had spoken with his Russian counterpart on Thursday, but offered no details. Also Friday, a group of foreign military observers traveling under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe , along with their Ukrainian hosts, were detained by pro-Russian separatists in Slovyansk, the separatists and the Ukrainian government said. The government said seven foreign observers and five Ukrainian military officers had been seized. The detention appeared to give the rebels, who on Thursday had released an American journalist held for three days, a new set of foreign prisoners. Unconfirmed early reports had identified the detainees as monitors from the security organization, but the organization’s officials said all of their permanent staff members and monitors had been accounted for. Tatyana Baeva, a spokeswoman in Vienna, said the reports evidently referred to a separate German-led group of unarmed military inspectors. The German Embassy in Kiev referred questions to the German Defense Ministry spokesman in Berlin, who could not be reached. The self-declared mayor of Slovyansk, Vyachislav Ponomaryov, was quoted by Russia’s Interfax News Agency as saying that rebels were trying to verify the identities of the detainees, who had been on a bus that he said was carrying ammunition. Reached by phone Friday night, his spokeswoman escalated the language, saying the observers had been detained “on suspicion of being spies.” She cut short the call before providing details. Interim Ukrainian leaders said operations to expel pro-Russian militants in eastern cities would continue, even though military action so far had done little more than harden local sentiments, prompt Russia to stage military exercises on Ukraine’s border and raise concerns about Moscow’s next move. “Attempts at military conflict in Ukraine will lead to a military conflict in Europe,” Ukraine’s acting prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, told the interim cabinet, according to remarks broadcast live and posted on the government’s website . “The world has not yet forgotten World War II, but Russia already wants to start World War III.” The acting head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Serhiy Pashynskyi, said the operation to dislodge what he called terrorists was continuing in and around Slovyansk and would now focus on “totally blockading” the city to prevent militants from getting reinforcements and supplies. He also claimed that Russian military movements overnight at four locations on the Russian side of the border had involved “400 tanks, armored vehicles and rocket launchers.” Near Slovyansk, a Ukrainian infantry unit patrolled in the farmland northwest of the city, a day after Ukraine sought to dislodge pro-Russian forces from checkpoints . At a checkpoint on the road just outside of Izyum, northwest of Slovyansk, a combined force of soldiers and Interior Ministry troops were equipped with rifles and machine guns, backed with armored vehicles and at least one transport helicopter. “We have a good commander, and we believe him,” said Sergei, a major with Interior Ministry troops who gave only his first name. “But this will all be decided up above,” he added. “The politicians should resolve it.” In nearby Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian military transport helicopter and a civilian An-2 aircraft were destroyed by mysterious fires on the airfield that caused both aircraft to explode. The cause of the blazes was unclear. Officials gave conflicting explanations, including a helicopter being struck at takeoff by sniper fire, an incoming rocket and a mechanical problem. The airfield, however, was calm, with the pro-Russian and Ukrainian troops separated by a short distance and displaying no signs of hostilities. On Facebook, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Ukraine’s military operations in the east — known as “ATO,” meaning antiterrorist operation — had not been suspended, despite local news reports to the contrary. “The ATO goes on,” he said. “The terrorists should be on their guard round the clock. Civilians have nothing to fear.” Residents of Slovyansk, the city the government said was under blockade, reacted bitterly. “What, they will allow no food in, no products?” asked Natalya Ivanyuk, a retired teacher standing with pro-Russian men near a barricade guarded by armed men. “It is like Leningrad. Is it the Second World War?” “Blockade!” she added, with disgust. She sharply criticized the interim government in Kiev. “No one comes here and asks us what we want,” she said. “Instead they send tanks.” At the edges of the city, rebels and work brigades alike could be seen fortifying older positions and building new ones. At one partly erected bunker, beside a canal, women worked beside men until almost sunset, filling and hauling sandbags. The heightened tensions and continued actions have buried already faint hopes that a deal reached April 17 in Geneva by diplomats from the European Union, Russia, Ukraine and the United States might calm a crisis, stirring fears of a wider conflict over Ukraine, a nation of 46 million on a volatile fault line between Europe and Russia. The threat of intensified Western sanctions was underscored on Friday when the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded its assessment of Russia. “In our view, the tense geopolitical situation between Russia and Ukraine could see additional significant outflows of both foreign and domestic capital from the Russian economy and hence further undermine already weakening growth prospects,” the agency wrote. In his most detailed accusation of interference yet, Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that American intelligence services had concluded that Russia’s military intelligence services and “special operators” were “playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, operational planning and coordination.” On Friday, Mr. Kerry’s Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, hit back, accusing Washington of seeking only to further its interests in Ukraine. “The West wants to take control of Ukraine while exclusively putting its geopolitical interests, not the interests of the Ukrainian people, at the forefront,” he said at a conference of diplomats from former Soviet republics. “This is not our method. We will not blackmail, we will not threaten, we are all polite people.”

Ukraine
Russia
Slovyansk
US Foreign Policy
International relations


Britain: Treaty With Jordan Signed to Ease Deportation of Cleric

Abstract: Britain has signed a new legal treaty with Jordan in the hope of deporting a radical cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden’s “right-hand man in Europe,” the interior minister said Wednesday. The British government has for years been unable to deport the cleric, known as Abu Qatada, back to his native Jordan, where he is wanted on terrorism charges, because judges have said evidence obtained through torture could be used against him.

Deportation
Clergy
Great Britain
Jordan
Abu Qatada
Osama bin Laden


U.S. Panel Suggests Ways to Reduce Voting Delays

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A bipartisan panel created by President Obama after many voters waited hours to cast ballots in 2012 on Wednesday recommended ways to keep delays to no more than a half-hour. But changes are up to the states and 8,000 local jurisdictions, where voting laws have been a partisan battleground since the 2000 presidential recount. After surveying local officials, the commission also warned of two potential crises: Voting machines bought a decade ago, when federal funds were made available as a post-recount remedy, are breaking down or obsolete. And local schools, long a favored polling place and accessible to the disabled, increasingly are unavailable as more of them restrict entry in response to shootings like the massacre in Newtown, Conn. Mr. Obama noted in his 2012 victory speech that some voters were still in line that night, even as he spoke, and then announced the 10-member commission a year ago in his State of the Union address. He received the report , six months in the making, at the White House from the panel’s co-chairmen — Robert F. Bauer, a Democrat, and Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a Republican, the top lawyers for his own and Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaigns. The panel also included executives, academics and state and local officials. “Unlike a lot of countries, we’ve got a pretty complex system,” Mr. Obama said on Wednesday as the report was released. “We vote a lot. We have local jurisdictions that run these elections, and it makes things a little bit more complicated.” Calling the recommendations “outstanding,” he said, “We intend to publicize this and to then reach out to stakeholders all across the country to make sure that we can implement this.” Long waits have frustrated and turned away voters in numerous states in recent presidential elections, especially in Democratic-leaning cities and small-town college campuses. The commission concluded that they “result from a combination of mismanagement, limited or misallocated resources, and long ballots.” Besides making recommendations, the panel created online tools for local administrators to better allocate resources like machines, staff and polling volunteers, and compiled best practices for managing lines, at the website supportthevoter.gov . Given the partisan nature of much of the debate over voting practices, commission members said they focused on problems that they could unanimously agree on, and were fixable. The panel did not, for example, address the matter of voter identification cards, a particularly contentious issue that Republicans in some state legislatures have pressed. Among the commission’s recommendations: ■ All citizens should be allowed to register to vote or update their registrations online, to reduce time-consuming confusion at polling places. ■ States should exchange data from their voter and motor-vehicle lists with other states to keep voters rolls current as many Americans move. ■ All states should expand alternatives to Election Day voting, like in-person early voting and mail-in ballots. The panel did not recommend a time period for early voting; in some states Republicans have sought to restrict it. ■ Schools should continue to be used as polling places, and local officials should make Election Day a day off for teachers and students where security is a concern. ■ To address the impending shortage of usable voting machines, and hold down costs, the process of setting standards and certifying machines should be overhauled to allow local officials to adopt widely available technologies, such as iPads. Voter rights groups generally applauded the recommendations, and called on states to act. “These will be the new benchmarks against which future elections will be judged,” said Wendy R. Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.


Services Held for Notre Dame Student

Abstract: Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly and several players were among the mourners in suburban Chicago at the funeral of a student killed when a tower from which he was taping practice toppled over. The student, Declan Sullivan, 20, died last week after a scissor lift that he was standing on fell when wind gusts reportedly reached around 50 miles per hour. Indiana regulators are investigating whether Notre Dame violated safety rules by allowing Sullivan onto the lift. Kelly did not speak to reporters Monday but has said it was his decision to hold practice outdoors on a windy day.

Football
College Athletics
University of Notre Dame
Kelly Brian


Peacekeepers as Targets: Darfur Attack Imperils Talks

Abstract: DAKAR, Senegal, Oct. 1 — The deadly attack on an African Union peacekeeping base by rebels in Darfur over the weekend brought the credibility of the rebel forces to a low point. It also demonstrated the extent to which the force, struggling with minimal manpower and matériel to keep a nonexistent peace, has come to be seen by many non-Arabs in Darfur as at best ineffective and irrelevant, and at worst, a tool manipulated by the Sudanese government, in the view of some rebel groups. The assault by 30 truckloads of Darfur rebels late Saturday and early Sunday on a small base in Haskanita, killing 10 peacekeepers from three African countries, threatened to undermine fragile efforts by the United Nations and the African Union to forge a peace agreement at talks in Libya later this month to end the conflict in Darfur, the region of western Sudan where at least 200,000 people have died and more than two million have been chased from their homes. It will doubtless also make it more difficult to find enough troops for the 26,000-member United Nations-led peacekeeping force that is supposed to begin deploying at the same time. Crucial to both efforts are two things: a working cease-fire agreement and the unification of the fractured rebel groups who are fighting the Sudanese government and, increasingly, one another. Both objectives were left in tatters by the Haskanita attack, said Suleiman Jamous, perhaps the most respected elder statesman among the rebels fighting in Darfur. “As rebels, we are losing the sympathy of the international community because of lack of control and divisions within the movements,” said Mr. Jamous, a leading figure in the original Darfur rebel movement, the Sudan Liberation Army. “It is unthinkable that a man who is fighting for the well-being of his own people can attack these peacemakers and mediators who are here to help him.” Though the senior leaders of the main rebel movements were not believed to be involved in the planning or execution of the attack, Mr. Jamous said, their failure to stop it demonstrated a loss of control and a new lawlessness that could cost the rebels dearly in negotiating power. The attack, Mr. Jamous said, may have been based in part on the perception among some rebels that the peacekeeping force of 7,000 troops has become too weak to protect civilians and co-opted by the Sudanese government, hence a legitimate military target for rebel groups. “People are frustrated that the African Union is not able to protect them,” he said. “The Sudanese government has been able to control the A.U.’s movements, and that makes people think they are on the same side.” Noureddine Mezni, a spokesman for the African Union force, said that notion was outrageous. “We completely deny this kind of allegation,” he said. “We have been working in Darfur for three years. These African troops came here to help Darfurians.” Mr. Mezni said the attack might have been an attempt by a rebel faction to grab attention before the Libya talks. Similar violence, on a much smaller scale, broke out before talks in Nigeria that led to a peace agreement last year that ultimately failed. Jan Eliasson, the United Nations special envoy for Darfur, said rebel groups involved in this attack would not find a place at the negotiating table, and he called for leaders to condemn it, which at least one senior rebel commander had done. “We hope very much that it will not derail the talks in Libya,” he said. For the African Union, whose troops are to make up the vast bulk of a highly anticipated joint peacekeeping force with the United Nations, the attack was another devastating blow. After the death of a Senegalese soldier, the sixth this year in Darfur, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal said Monday that he would pull out his 538 troops if they were not adequately equipped and empowered to defend themselves. Senegal had pledged to increase its commitment to 1,600 troops under the United Nations banner, and its withdrawal would be a major loss to the nascent force. Military officials in Nigeria, which has the largest number of troops in Darfur, also indicated Monday that they were concerned about the risk to their soldiers and were reconsidering their participation in peacekeeping efforts in Africa. “It is disastrous because it puts the A.U. in a terrible bind,” said Alex de Waal, a Sudan scholar who has written extensively about Darfur. “And who would commit forces to the United Nations force under these circumstances?” After a United Nations Security Council emergency meeting on the attack, Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States ambassador, said there was “unanimity and outrage” on the Council and broad agreement on the need to find out who was responsible. He said further Council action like sanctions should be taken against the attackers once they are identified. The attack is believed by several international officials to have been carried out by relatively junior commanders of a rebel faction known as S.L.A. Unity and some dissident elements of the Justice and Equality Movement, an Islamist group with strong political connections in the region but few ground troops. According to Mr. de Waal and Mr. Jamous, rebels in the area around the base were angry about bombardment of the region by government planes and the failure of the African Union to stop it. Rebel commanders said they overheard radio chatter between the Sudanese planes and the African Union base, and took that as evidence of cooperation. African Union officials dismissed that as preposterous, saying the organization had complained to Sudanese officials about bombs dropped too close to its base. The rebel attack, Mr. de Waal said, seemed to be “an illustration of the political immaturity and recklessness of some of these rebel leaders.” Still, United Nations officials held out hope, pointing to the Sudanese government’s acceptance of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur and its willingness to reopen the failed Darfur peace agreement, signed last year by the government and one rebel faction. “This is going to be extremely difficult, we know that,” Mr. Eliasson said. “We now have these modest signs of progress. It is extremely important to nurture this plant and make sure we get to these talks.”

Darfur (Sudan)
African Union
United Nations
International Relations
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare


L.S.U. Has Unblemished Record on Uneven Ground

Abstract: Before the Louisiana State Tigers even finished out September, they had endured a hurricane and a bomb threat. They had dismissed the star player Tyrann Mathieu because of team rules violations. Other players had sustained injuries or had been suspended for academic problems. Amid such turbulence, all L.S.U. did was win its first five football games, with victories at home and on the road, by margins as wide as 49 and 38 and 27. The Tigers’ latest victory, over Towson, was Coach Les Miles’s 80th win at L.S.U. Yet his team again dropped a spot in the Associated Press poll this week, to fourth, behind Alabama, as expected, but also behind Oregon and Florida State. A season that started with national championship expectations, with the Tigers locked in behind the Crimson Tide, has eroded into something of a crisis with a daunting schedule ahead. L.S.U., then, presents an odd duality, at once shaky and undefeated. “If you listen to the world’s view, I’m supposed to be the happiest 2-2 coach in the country,” Towson’s Rob Ambrose said. “Les is supposed to be the unhappiest undefeated coach. I’d much rather trade records. I wouldn’t mind being 5-0 and hearing that the sky is falling.” L.S.U.’s perceived problems — turnovers, poor quarterback play, an inconsistent offensive line — are indeed a matter of perspective. Towson fell to the Tigers, 38-22, on Saturday, yet Ambrose received nearly 1,000 notes of congratulations. Someone suggested he run for president. Someone else, presumably an L.S.U. fan, suggested to Ambrose that the programs switch coaches. Towson hosted its first football playoff game in 35 years last season, albeit in the Football Championship Subdivision, and Ambrose said that “watershed moment pales in comparison to this.” The Baltimore Orioles posted Towson’s losing score on their scoreboard, and thousands stood and cheered. Miles stewed in Louisiana over 10 penalties and 5 fumbles (3 lost) on a rainy night that neatly summarized his mood. A somber locker room, he called it. “Am I alarmed?” Miles told reporters. “Yes, absolutely.” The victory over Auburn was supposed to be the one that raised the alarm, after the Tigers played sloppily but eked out a close win and returned to their expected championship collision course with the Crimson Tide. Towson supposedly provided the perfect foil before L.S.U. turned its attention to more formidable opposition: Florida on the road this Saturday and South Carolina at home in two weeks. Instead, quarterback Zach Mettenberger fumbled again. The offensive line, which had earlier lost the all-American tackle Chris Faulk to injury for the season, again failed to protect him. L.S.U.’s recent performances reminded Gary Danielson, a CBS Sports college football analyst, of the national title game last season, which the Tigers lost to Alabama. The difference in that game? Quarterback play. Alabama received it. L.S.U. did not. Mettenberger, a junior transfer in his first season as a starter, is strictly a pocket passer. Ambrose said Towson recognized that on film and designed its game plan to pressure Mettenberger, force him out of the pocket and put him on the move. Towson did so less with blitzes, Ambrose said, and more with a variety of defensive looks and little man-to-man coverage. The rain helped, Ambrose said. “And,” he added, as if he felt the need to clarify, “we’re not that bad.” Florida Coach Will Muschamp said Wednesday on a conference call that Mettenberger was undefeated at L.S.U. and that “that’s where he wants to be.” But to Danielson and Ed Cunningham, an ESPN analyst, Mettenberger’s struggles are representative of the Tigers’ weaknesses — namely, Cunningham said, an offense that lacks an identity and seems unsure of itself, “which has been a problem throughout Les Miles’s career there.” The best case for L.S.U. is that Mettenberger improves the way quarterback A J McCarron improved for Alabama last season, to the point where McCarron, not running back Trent Richardson, carried the Crimson Tide in the national title game. It is as if Mettenberger, Danielson said, recently switched from a five-speed bicycle to a 10-speed. In the Southeastern Conference, with dozens of future N.F.L. players on the defenses, average quarterback play can sink even the best teams. “They’re in a state of transition,” Danielson said. “They’re trying to bring Mettenberger along. At the same time, they don’t seem to have that belief in him. They’re not in sync. “They’re not comfortable with where they are. But they know he’s got to get there. He’s really their only path to a national title.” Mettenberger, meanwhile, must adapt to a roster constantly in flux. Fullback J. C. Copeland left the Towson game on crutches. He was the latest important player to join the list of the lost, which includes Mathieu, Faulk, tailback Alfred Blue (knee injury) and linebacker Tahj Jones (academic suspension). On the conference call for SEC coaches Wednesday, Miles sounded less concerned than he did after the Towson game. Last season, his team played better and was more dominant as the year wore on and still ultimately finished second. In 2007, L.S.U. lost two regular-season contests under Miles and still won a national title. His latest team still boasts a defense that is among the country’s most stout. The Tigers allow 3.59 yards per play, fourth in the nation, and they are, Cunningham said, physical, fast and especially dominant up front. The second half of the schedule, though, is more difficult than the first. It features Florida, South Carolina and Alabama. “The schedule gets real real fast,” Cunningham said. “But there is time for L.S.U. to put it all together. Plenty of time. Don’t be shocked if in the next four weeks they go 4-0 or 3-1. It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks because we’ll know by the end of the month. “That’s what makes Les Miles so fascinating. His teams are so confounding, eternally so, yet they often end up in the same place.” Namely: shaky and undefeated and in the mix for another national championship.

Louisiana State University
Miles Les
Football (College)
Mettenberger Zach
College Athletics
Football


Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

Abstract: He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building , a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons. But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states. In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months. On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system. Mr. Ng’s death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations and a lack of oversight in immigration detention, a rapidly growing network of publicly and privately run jails where the government held more than 300,000 people in the last year while deciding whether to deport them. In federal court affidavits, Mr. Ng’s lawyers contend that when he complained of severe pain that did not respond to analgesics, and grew too weak to walk or even stand to call his family from a detention pay phone, officials accused him of faking his condition. They denied him a wheelchair and refused pleas for an independent medical evaluation. Instead, the affidavits say, guards at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., dragged him from his bed on July 30, carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and legs, and drove him two hours to a federal lockup in Hartford, where an immigration officer pressured him to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation. “For this desperately sick, vulnerable person, this was torture,” said Theodore N. Cox, one of Mr. Ng’s lawyers, adding that they want to see a videotape of the transport made by guards. Immigration and detention officials would not discuss the case, saying the matter was under internal investigation. But in response to a relative of Mr. Ng’s who had begged that he be checked for a spinal injury or fractures, the Wyatt detention center’s director of nursing, Ben Candelaria, replied in a July 16 e-mail message that Mr. Ng was receiving appropriate care for “chronic back pain.” He added, “We treat each and every detainee in our custody with the same high level of quality, professional care possible.” Officials have given no explanation why they took Mr. Ng to Hartford and back on the same day. But the lawyers say the grueling July 30 trip appeared to be an effort to prove that Mr. Ng was faking illness, and possibly to thwart the habeas corpus petition they had filed in Rhode Island the day before, seeking his release for medical treatment. The federal judge who heard that petition on July 31 did not make a ruling, but in an unusual move insisted that Mr. Ng get the care he needed. On Aug. 1, Mr. Ng was taken to a hospital, where doctors found he had terminal cancer and a fractured spine. He died five days later. The accounts of Mr. Ng’s treatment echo other cases that have prompted legislation, now before the House Judiciary Committee, to set mandatory standards for care in immigration detention. In March, the federal government admitted medical negligence in the death of Francisco Castaneda, 36, a Salvadoran whose cancer went undiagnosed in a California detention center as he was repeatedly denied a biopsy on a painful penile lesion. In May, The New York Times chronicled the death of Boubacar Bah, 52, a Guinean tailor who suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhages in the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey; records show he was left in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours. When Mr. Ng died last week, he had spent half his life in the United States, his sister, Wendy Zhao, said in a tearful interview. Born in China, he entered the United States legally on a tourist visa. Mr. Ng stayed on after it expired and applied for political asylum. He was granted a work permit while his application was pending, and though asylum was eventually denied, immigration authorities did not seek his deportation for many years. Meanwhile, his sister said, Mr. Ng (pronounced Eng), who was known as Jason, graduated from high school in Long Island City, Queens, worked his way through community technical college, passed Microsoft training courses and won a contract to provide computer services to a company with offices in the Empire State Building. In 2001, a notice ordering him to appear in immigration court was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address, records show. When Mr. Ng did not show up at the hearing, the judge ordered him deported. By then, however, he was getting married, and on a separate track, his wife petitioned Citizenship and Immigration Services for a green card for him — a process that took more than five years. Heeding bad legal advice, the couple showed up for his green card interview on July 19, 2007, only to find enforcement agents waiting to arrest Mr. Ng on the old deportation order. Over the next year, while his family struggled to pay for new lawyers to wage a complicated and expensive legal battle, Mr. Ng was held in jails under contract to the federal immigration authorities: Wyatt; the House of Correction in Greenfield, Mass.; and the Franklin County Jail in St. Albans, Vt. Mr. Ng seemed healthy until April, his sister said, when he began to complain of severe back pain and skin so itchy he could not sleep. He was then in the Vermont jail, a 20-bed detention center with no medical staff run by the county sheriff’s office. Seeking care, he asked to be transferred back to Wyatt, a 700-bed center with its own medical staff, owned and operated by a municipal corporation. In a letter to his sister, Mr. Ng recounted arriving there on July 3, spending the first three days in pain in a dark isolation cell. Later he was assigned an upper bunk and required to climb up and down at least three times a day for head counts, causing terrible pain. His brother-in-law B. Zhao appealed for help in e-mail messages to the warden, Wayne Salisbury, on July 11 and 16. “I was really heartbroken when I first saw him,” Mr. Zhao wrote Mr. Salisbury after a visit. “After almost two weeks of suffering with unbearable back pain and unable to get any sleep, he was so weak and looked horrible.” The nursing director replied that Mr. Ng had been granted a bottom bunk and was receiving painkillers and muscle relaxants prescribed by a detention center doctor. But his condition continued to deteriorate. Once a robust man who stood nearly six feet and weighed 200 pounds, his relatives said, Mr. Ng looked like a shrunken and jaundiced 80-year-old. “He said, ‘I told the nursing department, I’m in pain, but they don’t believe me,’ ” his sister recalled. “ ‘They tell me, stop faking.’ ” Soon, according to court papers, he had to rely on other detainees to help him reach the toilet, bring him food and call his family; he no longer received painkillers, because he could not stand in line to collect them. On July 26, Andy Wong, a lawyer associated with Mr. Cox, came to see the detainee, but had to leave without talking to him, he said, because Mr. Ng was too weak to walk to the visiting area, and a wheelchair was denied. On July 30, according to an affidavit by Mr. Wong, he was contacted by Larry Smith, a deportation officer in Hartford, who told him on a speakerphone, with Mr. Ng present, that he wanted to resolve the case, either by deporting Mr. Ng, or “releasing him to the streets.” Officer Smith said that no exam by an outside doctor would be allowed, and that Mr. Ng would not be given a wheelchair. Mr. Ng told his lawyer he was ready to give up, the affidavit said, “because he could no longer withstand the suffering inside the facility,” but Officer Smith insisted that Mr. Ng would first have to withdraw all his appeals. The account of his treatment clearly disturbed the federal judge, William E. Smith of United States District Court in Providence, who instructed the government’s lawyer the next day to have the warden get Mr. Ng to the hospital for an M.R.I. The results were grim: cancer in his liver, lungs and bones, and a fractured spine. “ ‘I don’t have much time to live,’ ” his sister said he told her in a call from Rhode Island Hospital in Providence. She said the doctor warned that if the family came to visit, immigration authorities might transfer her brother. Three days passed before the warden approved a family visit, she said, after demanding their Social Security numbers. Late in the afternoon of Aug. 5, as Mr. Ng lay on a gurney, hours away from death and still under guard, she and his wife held up his sons, 3 and 1. “Brother, don’t worry, don’t be afraid,” Ms. Zhao said, repeating her last words to him. “They are not going to send you back to the facility again. Brother, you are free now.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (US)


Little Progress in N.B.A. Labor Talks

Abstract: Negotiators for the N.B.A. and its players union departed Manhattan under a cloud of frustration Tuesday, a labor deal still out of reach, and the season appearing increasingly in doubt. Despite perceptible movement on the economic issues, union leaders sounded the alarm after a five-hour bargaining session, saying that they were prepared for a long battle and the loss of regular-season games. “Right now, we can’t find a place with the league and our owners where we can reach a deal sooner rather than later,” the union president Derek Fisher said after the meeting. “It’s discouraging and unfortunate, but that’s the reality of where we stand right now.” Fisher was flanked by the union’s executive director, Billy Hunter , and eight players from the union’s executive board, all with dour expressions as they sat along one side of a long conference room table. Hunter said there had been “little or no progress” made, and said he was “a bit pessimistic and discouraged” about the ability to start the season on time. A short time later, speaking in another room, Commissioner David Stern conceded: “We did not have a great day. I think it’s fair to say that.” No additional meetings are scheduled, although there will probably be some informal dialogue this weekend, after separate meetings of the owners (in Dallas) and the players (in Las Vegas) on Thursday. Yet the gloomy commentary on Tuesday obscured the fact that the parties are inching toward each other on the financial component of a new labor deal. Each side put a new proposal on the board last week, when the top negotiators met in a smaller group, according to a league official. A significant gap remains in dollars, but it is gradually shrinking, the official said. Stern referred multiple times Tuesday to the prospect of an agreement on the financial parameters. “We have a sense that, within a certain tolerances, there’s a potential economic deal that may be within view,” Stern said. At Tuesday’s session — with full labor committees in attendance — the players outlined a proposal in which they would accept a significant salary reduction. But the offer was predicated on the N.B.A.’s retaining all aspects of the current “soft” salary-cap system, with all of its exceptions and loopholes. “We said we couldn’t agree to that,” said Adam Silver, the deputy commissioner. N.B.A. owners are pushing for a hard cap, similar to the N.F.L.’s, or an N.H.L.-style “flex” cap, which allows a broad payroll range but still has a hard ceiling. The union has fought against a hard cap for decades and remains strongly opposed to it. Hunter said, “It could be characterized maybe as a blood issue” — a remark that Silver seized on as evidence of the union’s rigidity. “That doesn’t seem a constructive way to negotiate,” Silver said. Stern belittled the union as having “an emotional attachment” to the soft cap. Yet he seemed heartened by the financial part of the players’ proposal, saying it contained “economic goals that we could probably mutually meet.” Hunter said the proposal — which he referred to as more conceptual than specific — “whetted their palates.” But Hunter disagreed with Stern on everything else, including Stern’s insistence that the league has made a number of new proposals this summer. Hunter said the owners’ position had not changed since June, before the lockout began. When asked if the league might begin postponing training camps after Thursday’s owners meeting, Stern said no. But if history is an accurate guide, that day could be arriving in the next 10 days. In 1998, the N.B.A. started postponing camps and canceling preseason games Sept. 24. If a deal is not reached by mid-October, the league would probably start canceling regular-season games. The union has been advising its players for two years that a lockout was likely and that a loss of part or all of the season was possible, if the owners were truly determined to impose a hard cap and a salary rollback. Hunter said his constituents were prepared for the worst. “There’s no question in my mind the players are unified, that if this deal and this is the best deal they can get, they’ve instructed us that they’re prepared to sit out,” he said. “They’re not prepared to accept this deal under any circumstance.”

Labor and Jobs
Basketball
National Basketball Assn
Hunter Billy
Stern David
Lockouts
Organized Labor


Senate Vacancies Leave a String of Sordid Tales

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Amid accusations of widespread corruption, an empty seat in the United States Senate awaits a new occupant from Illinois , where the governor is not trusted to make the choice. That was the story in 1927, when the Senate ultimately denied a seat to Frank L. Smith because of questions surrounding his appointment by Gov. Len Small. But it all sounds familiar today as yet another sordid tale is added to a long and colorful history of the intense machinations that come when the prize is appointment to the most exclusive of political clubs. Given the prestige of a Senate seat and its magnetic allure to politicians, it is perhaps not surprising that when these vacancies come up, the process of awarding the office has become fraught with malfeasance and political peril. Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, caught on wiretaps that were unsealed in a criminal complaint this week, might have been crude but was certainly right when he said his unfettered power to install anyone he liked in President-elect Barack Obama ’s old Senate seat was golden. It confers a singular ability to provide admission to the lofty legislative body without the inconveniences of facing an election — or of having to raise millions of dollars to finance one. Inevitably, in this kind of situation, said Donald A. Ritchie, associate Senate historian, “the governor makes one friend and a lot of enemies.” In the early days of the Senate, when state legislators made the selection of every senator, stories of bribery and corruption were legion, particularly in the Gilded Age as the new leaders of the privileged class sought to buy their way in. But even after the direct election of senators began in 1913 with the passage of the 17th Amendment, the filling of vacancies has frequently consumed governors and political insiders. They have wrestled with whether to reward patrons, install relatives, put in placeholders, take the post themselves or give it to a politician capable of holding it. Members of the Senate, shocked at Mr. Blagojevich’s nakedness in apparently trying to turn the appointment to his personal advantage, according to prosecutors’ accounts, said the activities laid out in court documents went far beyond the typical wheeling and dealing over Senate vacancies. “There have been problems,” said Senator Jeff Sessions , Republican of Alabama , “but from what I have seen, this is pretty bad.” But many past cases have been rich in political overtones. As recently as 2002, the appointment of Lisa Murkowski by her father, Frank H. Murkowski , who had just left the Senate to become governor of Alaska , provoked cries of nepotism and led to a public revolt stripping the state’s governor of the power make the appointment should another such opening occur. Unlike the House, where the many vacancies that pop up are filled solely by special election, Senate vacancies, under the Constitution, remain the purview of state law. States have different approaches to filling the openings, but most, like Illinois, leave it up to the governor. And sometimes they make extraordinary use of that power. Gov. Edwin W. Edwards , Democrat of Louisiana , appointed his wife, Elaine, to fill a vacancy for a few months in 1972. Mr. Edwards cited their shared political views, though they later split both ideologically and matrimonially. Even before the unfolding turmoil over the search for Mr. Obama’s successor, the pending replacement for Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware attracted notice — though at a much lower decibel level. Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, a Democrat, has announced that she intends to name a longtime Biden aide to the seat in what many consider an unmistakable effort to keep the seat warm until Mr. Biden’s son, Beau, who is serving in Iraq , can run in two years. And in New York, where Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would give up her seat if she is confirmed as secretary of state, politicians have been maneuvering to get a place on a list of potential candidates that includes Caroline Kennedy , the daughter of the former president. Some Democrats believe the focus on the Illinois appointment could spill over into New York, putting officials there on notice to make the process more transparent and without a whiff of untoward politics or undue influence. Thomas E. Mann, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution , said the intense attention on the Illinois case could have even broader implications. “These temporary appointments have often been subject to abuse or tacky behavior,” said Mr. Mann, adding, “I suspect this will lead a number of states to dispense with the temporary appointments and go directly to a special election.” It is questionable whether appointment rather than election to the Senate carries reliable political dividends. Mr. Ritchie said that only half of those appointed to fill Senate vacancies are elected to the posts on their own: a feat Ms. Murkowski accomplished in 2004. Mr. Ritchie points to Pierre Salinger , the former spokesman for President John F. Kennedy who was named to fill a California Senate vacancy in 1964. Mr. Salinger became bogged down in Senate business while his Republican opponent, George Murphy, was campaigning, ultimately defeating the short-term senator. And while the documents in the Illinois case show that Mr. Blagojevich was thinking about naming himself to replace Mr. Obama, such a strategy has not shown to be particularly successful. Of nine governors who had themselves appointed to the Senate since the 1930s, only one was subsequently elected on his own: Albert B. Chandler of Kentucky . Mr. Chandler then left the Senate to fill what he evidently considered an even more attractive vacancy, commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Senate
History
Rod R Blagojevich
Appointments and Executive Changes


Dean Skelos, New York Senate Leader, Stands Firm Despite Calls to Resign

Abstract: ALBANY — If State Senator Dean G. Skelos was trying to keep his mind off his legal troubles, Tuesday was probably the wrong day to do it here. Tuesday, after all, was Law Day in the state capital. It also was the day of an annual police memorial event , with hundreds of law enforcement officers spilling into Albany. And when the New York Senate started its session in the afternoon, the traditional presentation of flags was done by the color guard from Sing Sing Correctional Facility . Mr. Skelos, the Senate majority leader who was arrested on Monday on federal corruption charges along with his son, Adam B. Skelos, appeared at just one of those events (the police memorial). But Mr. Skelos, a Republican from Long Island, did offer a defiant take on the criminal complaint — “Nothing more than a press release,” he said — and a simple defense of his decision to stay on as majority leader, despite new calls from both Democrats and some Republicans for his resignation from that role. “I’m innocent,” Mr. Skelos said, during a brief and bristling question-and-answer session with reporters outside the State Capitol. “And if you’re innocent, there’s nothing you have to run away from or hide from.” Late on Monday, Mr. Skelos received a show of confidence from the 32-member Republican conference in the Senate, whose members emerged after a lengthy meeting to say there was a “strong consensus” about sticking with their embattled leader. Still, some cracks emerged. On Tuesday, Senator Robert G. Ortt, a Republican from the Buffalo area, said in a statement that Mr. Skelos should step aside. In doing so, he joined two other Republican colleagues, Senators John J. Bonacic and Rich Funke, who expressed similar sentiments the day before. The Republicans’ most recent candidate for governor, Rob Astorino, the Westchester County executive, called for Mr. Skelos’s resignation on Monday. And on Tuesday, he criticized the Republican conference’s decision to stand behind him. “If Albany’s politicians showed the same sense of urgency and commitment to protect taxpayers and rescue the economy as they do to protect and rescue indicted colleagues,” Mr. Astorino said in a statement, “New York would lead the nation in growth and prosperity instead of corruption, taxes and population loss.” Image Hundreds of law enforcement officers were drawn to the New York police officers' remembrance ceremony in Albany. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Mr. Skelos, however, scoffed at such criticism. “Sometimes some Republicans have nothing to do but complain,” he said, “because they can’t do anything else.” The criticism of Mr. Skelos was echoed and amplified in editorials in several major newspapers, including Newsday on Long Island, where Mr. Skelos represents the Ninth Senate District. But, again, he brushed off any suggestion that his constituents were unhappy. “I’ve never received more positive comments from people in my district as I have today,” he said. “They know me. They know I’m honest. They know I’ve served them well.” Democrats in the Senate — who have seen their own former leaders stumble in scandals — were also quick to denounce Mr. Skelos’s decision, which came just three months after Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat who was the longtime Assembly speaker, resigned from that post after being arrested on his own federal corruption charges. “It’s a mistake, I can tell you that,” said Senator Michael N. Gianaris, a Democrat from Queens, adding that the “entire state” was “calling for a change in leadership.” Mr. Gianaris added that while Mr. Skelos was entitled to a presumption of innocence, that did not mean he should pretend that the charges were not a distraction. “Innocent till proven guilty is a standard in a court of law that we use before we deny someone their liberty,” Mr. Gianaris said. “It’s not a standard before we decide if someone can be leader of the State Legislature.” For his part, Mr. Skelos said he could continue to lead the Republican conference and the Senate, in which Republicans hold a narrow majority, something he felt would not be imperiled by his troubles in the elections next year. “Next year is a long ways away,” he said. After attending the police memorial, Mr. Skelos met the news media, parrying pointed questions and defending his son, who prosecutors said profited from his father’s political power while being employed by a little-known environmental company. “He worked hard, did a good job, and that’s what kids are supposed to do,” the senator said. “And they shouldn’t be penalized because of the title their father has.” Then, he added, speaking to the press corps, “And you should all think about that as parents.”

Dean G Skelos
New York
Corruption
Adam Skelos
State legislature


Lobbyists Line Up to Sway Debt-Reducing Special Committee

Abstract: WASHINGTON — With television cameras rolling last week, aerospace executives warned of dire consequences if Congress cuts hundreds of billions of dollars in Pentagon spending, and they promised a full-throttled campaign to stop it. As if to prove the point, one panelist, Dick McNeel, who runs a North Carolina supplier of military parts, abruptly left the dais before the briefing was even over and dashed to a meeting with Senator Patrick J. Toomey to fight the kind of cuts that Mr. McNeel says could cost jobs. It is all part of an effort, Mr. McNeel said, “to make sure Washington knows how we feel.” Mr. Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and the other 11 lawmakers on a special Congressional committee are weighing $1.2 trillion in debt reductions. They are suddenly among the most popular people in town, with lobbyists and executives from powerful interest groups angling to schedule meetings, distribute checks at fund-raisers and deliver petitions to influence their work. “If you’re not at the table,” Manuel Rouvelas, a prominent Washington lawyer, said of the lobbying blitz, “you’re on the menu.” The committee is the focus of intense lobbying not only because of its broad mandate, but also because it faces an unusually fast timetable; its recommendations are due by Thanksgiving. And the failure to approve a plan would set off a series of automatic cuts. The committee’s mandate is considered so important that the recommendations of a majority of its members — six Democrats and six Republicans — must go straight to the House and Senate floors on an up-or-down vote, with no amendments or filibusters. With bitter partisanship surrounding the debate, some officials inside and out of Congress are already predicting that the committee will fail. Without a plan, the across-the-board cuts would begin in 2013. Pentagon financing would be particularly hard hit — with cuts expected of $55 billion per year for 10 years — but some social and entitlement programs, including Social Security , Medicare and food stamps, would be spared. As lobbyists and executives in education, agriculture, social services and other areas game out the possibilities, some say their sectors could conceivably be better off, and the sting of cutbacks less painful, if the automatic cuts take effect. But with many unknowns, few interest groups are willing to take that risk. As Joe Schultz, a senior economist with the Senate agriculture committee, told a Texas cotton growers’ group, the risks of even deeper hits should the automatic cuts take effect makes him “very, very worried.” For now, hundreds of lobbyists, including many former Congressional officials and frequent campaign contributors, are making their cases to the committee members. Ethanol fuel producers, oil companies, corporate jet owners and many other businesses want the committee to guard their own special tax breaks. Private equity firms and hedge funds want to defeat an Obama administration proposal to raise $18 billion by increasing taxes on certain investments. Real estate insiders want to preserve mortgage interest deductions for higher-priced residences and second homes. Pharmacies oppose cuts in medical reimbursements. And advocates for the elderly want to protect Social Security and Medicare. “Everybody’s at risk,” said Howard Marlowe, president of the American League of Lobbyists , “and so everyone’s going to be out there lobbying.” With the lobbying, of course, come valuable campaign contributions. Despite calls from watchdog groups to suspend their fund-raising, most committee members are continuing to raise money from many of the same industries affected by their work. Indeed, lobbyists say word is already out in Washington that opening their wallets at fund-raisers could help get access to lawmakers to make their pitches. Committee members scheduled two dozen fund-raisers from August to November, including a golf tournament getaway and lunch at Charlie Palmer’s Steakhouse, a Washington hot spot, according to the Sunlight Foundation , which tracks fund-raisers. While a few committee members have canceled individual fund-raising events or chosen to attend only previously scheduled ones, no one has opted out of fund-raising altogether. Representative James E. Clyburn, a leading Democrat from South Carolina who sits on the committee, has nine fund-raisers scheduled during the panel’s work, more than any other member, according to the Sunlight Foundation. He had four fund-raisers scheduled last week alone. As the panel began its work, and just days before being named to the committee in August, Mr. Clyburn led a charity golf tournament that included Microsoft, Dell, Fluor, Altria and AT&T among more than 80 corporate sponsors. That worries people like David Donnelly, an official with Public Campaign , a nonprofit group that favors publicly financing candidates. “People want the committee members to make these cuts in a fair and balanced way and be able to say, ‘We listened to all sides, not just our donors,’ ” he said. “But it’s hard to make that argument when they’re racing around the country raising money like they’re on a giant Monopoly board.” One roadmap for cutting the debt comes in a 67-point plan sent to the committee last Friday by Third Way , an influential Democratic group. The plan offers a glimpse into which sectors may be most vulnerable. In identifying $1.66 trillion in new revenues and spending cuts, the plan touches on everything from tax write-offs for Nascar racetracks to the future of the military’s troubled V-22 Osprey aircraft program. From Wall Street, private equity firms are offering data to lawmakers on the many people employed in their districts as a result of their industry’s capital investments. The industry hopes to sit down soon with all 12 committee members in an effort to kill the proposal raising taxes on their sector, said Ken Spain, spokesman for the Private Equity Growth Capital Council . The panel’s top Democrat, Senator Patty Murray of Washington, has drawn particular scrutiny because of her dual role as a committee member and chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democrats’ fund-raising arm. While conservatives accuse her of a conflict, she has no plans to alter her role. “She’s not going to stop fund-raising,” said Matt McAlvanah, a spokesman for Ms. Murray. “She’s always made her decisions based on the needs of her constituents, not on fund-raising or lobbying. It would be misguided to think that she’s suddenly going to compromise her ideals now.”

Lobbying and Lobbyists
House of Representatives
United States Politics and Government
United States Economy


U.S. Aids Yemeni Raids on Al Qaeda, Officials Say

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The United States provided firepower, intelligence and other support to the government of Yemen as it carried out raids this week to strike at suspected hide-outs of Al Qaeda within its borders, according to officials familiar with the operations. The officials said that the American support was approved by President Obama and came at the request of the Yemeni government. The American contributions were intended to help Yemen to prevent Al Qaeda from mounting attacks against American and other foreign targets inside its borders. Officials declined to say whether those targets were embassies, businesses, schools or other sites. Yemeni officials said their security forces had killed at least 34 militants in the broadest attack on the terrorist group in years. A range of Pentagon, military and intelligence officials declined to provide details of the reported attacks, which, according to ABC News, included American missiles. But officials in Washington offered words of support for the government of Yemen in tackling international terrorism. “Yemen should be commended for actions against Al Qaeda,” said Bryan G. Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. “Al Qaeda poses a serious threat to Yemeni, U.S. and regional interests.” Reluctance among administration officials to comment on whether American forces had launched missiles into Yemen appeared to reflect a desire to make clear that the Yemeni government was in the lead in counterterrorism operations within its borders. There is a great reluctance among leaders of many Muslim nations to have any cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations made known. American officials said some of the strikes against suspected terrorist camps in Yemen earlier in the week were carried out solely by local forces. American officials said this past summer that they were seeing the first evidence that dozens of fighters with Al Qaeda, and a small handful of the terrorist group’s leaders, were moving to Somalia and Yemen from Pakistan. In communications that were being monitored at the Pentagon, the White House and the C.I.A., the terrorist groups in all three locations had begun communicating more frequently, and apparently trying to coordinate their actions, the officials said. Yemen has long been a haven for jihadists. Al Qaeda has mounted frequent attacks against foreign embassies and Yemeni officials. Last month, it claimed credit for an attack on a government convoy in Yemen’s remote eastern desert in which three top provincial officials and three of their guards were killed.

United States Defense and Military Forces