Washington Officials Among Those Mourning Hadiya Pendleton of Chicago

Abstract: CHICAGO — By the hundreds, mourners filed into the pews of a packed church on this city’s South Side on Saturday, clutching one another, weeping and wearing buttons adorned with the smiling face of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl whose death has come to represent the miserable cost of gun and gang violence. “She is a representative not just of the people in Chicago, she is a representative of people across this nation who have lost their lives,” said Damon Stewart, Ms. Pendleton’s godfather, as he urged people not to politicize her death. An array of Washington officials — the first lady, Michelle Obama; Arne Duncan, the education secretary; and Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House adviser — were among dignitaries seated in the front row. Ms. Pendleton, a member of her high school’s majorette team, traveled to Washington to perform during President Obama’s inauguration festivities only a week before she was fatally shot here. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has met with the girl’s family and spoken emotionally of her dreams for her future, attended, too, as did Gov. Patrick J. Quinn, who had alluded to Ms. Pendleton in his State of the State address. As an emerging national debate about firearms has focused largely on mass shootings in places like Newtown, Conn., Ms. Pendleton’s death last month became a symbol for a different element of gun violence — urban and often overlooked or quickly forgotten. Ms. Pendleton, a student at King College Prep High School, was shot Jan. 29 as she sat after school in a park, about a mile from Mr. Obama’s Chicago home, with friends — a group that the police say was probably mistakenly swept up in the cross-fire of a gang fight. In Chicago, people said they viewed the sudden flood of attention on Ms. Pendleton as a needed shift in the consciousness of the nation’s third-largest city, which experienced more than 500 homicides in 2012, many of them from gun violence, and 46 more deaths since the start of 2013. If the city had grown inured at times to the stories of gang-related shootings, largely on the South and West Sides, Ms. Pendleton’s death appeared — at least for now — to have reawakened many people, even those in more upscale neighborhoods away from the worst of the violence and far beyond Chicago. Image Friends and family, along with members of the community, gathered for the funeral service. Credit Nathan Weber for The New York Times So many people, including some who said they had never met Ms. Pendleton personally, had felt drawn to her funeral that space in the sanctuary and in an overflow room ran out and scores had to be turned away. “It should be a tipping point,” Andre Smith, head of Chicago Against Violence, a local group aimed at preventing neighborhood violence, said Friday, as he and scores of others attended a visitation for Ms. Pendleton, whom he had not known. “I just hope that it’s not here today and gone tomorrow.” In the days since Ms. Pendleton’s killing, a debate had ensued here over what the White House response should be. Some, including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and local newspaper editorial boards, had urged Mr. Obama to appear at the girl’s funeral. Some said he needed to draw the same attention to violence in his hometown and to the complicated urban questions of poverty, joblessness and gangs that he had given earlier to the mass shootings in Connecticut and elsewhere. Others, though, said that a White House presence would only politicize the funeral of a young girl and create a needless media spectacle, even as scores of other Chicagoans had died in violence here with little notice at all. Asked why Mr. Obama, who is expected to address gun restrictions in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, had chosen not to attend Ms. Pendleton’s funeral, his spokesman pointed out late last week that Mrs. Obama and others from the administration would attend. “I think that represents the feeling that the president and the first lady both have about what happened to her and the tragedy that it represents both in real concrete terms to her family but also symbolically because of the tragedy of gun violence that our country has to deal with all too often,” the spokesman, Jay Carney, said. Displayed on the back of a glossy funeral program for Ms. Pendleton was a copy of a handwritten note from the president to Ms. Pendleton’s parents, which read, in part: “We know that no words from us can soothe the pain, but rest assured that we are praying for you, and that we will continue to work as hard as we can to end this senseless violence. God Bless, Barack Obama.” Family members of Ms. Pendleton said they were touched and honored that Mrs. Obama, who has lived on the South Side of Chicago, attended the service and met privately with family members and about 30 of her friends and classmates beforehand. Mrs. Obama made no public remarks during the three-and-a-half-hour funeral, nor did the elected officials here. Image Hadiya Pendleton in an undated family photo. Credit Courtesy of Damon Stewart, via Associated Press “She has daughters,” said Shatira Wilks, a cousin of Ms. Pendleton’s. “She understands She’s not being intrusive. It’s not about her being seen.” For Ms. Pendleton’s family, the gathering was not about politics, but about Hadiya. Friends and family described the girl, who had once appeared in a video aimed at discouraging children from joining gangs, as a sweet and cheerful young woman who twirled batons on the majorette team, was considering going to college to become a journalist or pharmacist, and favored Chinese food, cheeseburgers, ice cream and Fig Newtons. Images of Ms. Pendleton flashed on a screen and filled the program book — a tiny child wrapped in a baby blanket, a girl propped on the Easter Bunny’s lap, a teen, smiling widely, with Washington landmarks in the background. One by one, high school friends stepped shakily to a microphone to tell of a girl with a trademark, room-warming smile, the one who forgot her baton from time to time but always remembered her lip gloss, the one who whispered the right answers to them in chemistry class. Many pleaded for an end to violence. “It’s sad,” one girl said, reading a poem for her dead friend, “that you have to watch your front while watching your back.” Around 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 29, Ms. Pendleton walked with friends to Harsh Park in the North Kenwood neighborhood. As the group huddled under a canopy as it began to rain, a man suddenly approached, jumped a fence, ran toward the group, and began shooting. The police believe that the man mistook the group for members of a gang. Ms. Pendleton, who the police say was an unintended target with no ties to gangs, was shot in the back. By Saturday, no arrests had been made in the case. Ms. Pendleton’s mother, Cleopatra, rose to the microphone at one point, not far from her daughter’s coffin. She thanked family members and the crowded room for what she described as an amazing outpouring of support, then grew quieter. “You don’t know everything,” she said. “You don’t know how hard this really is. And those of you who do know how hard this is, I’m sorry. No mother, no father should ever have to experience this.”

Hadiya Pendleton
Gun Control
Funerals
Chicago
Murders
Michelle Obama
Gang
Guns


ThyssenKrupp Posts First Annual Profit in 3 Years

Abstract: ThyssenKrupp, the German steel maker and industrial conglomerate, reported its first annual net profit in three years on Thursday. And in an apparent sign of confidence, the company proposed paying a small dividend of 11 cents a share for the first time in three years. ThyssenKrupp, which is based in Essen, said that net income for the financial year ended Sept. 30 was 195 million euros, or about $244 million, compared with a €1.6 billion loss in the previous year. Sales were €41.4 billion. Earnings before interest and taxes, a metric that financial analysts watch closely, more than doubled to €1.3 billion. Heinrich Hiesinger, who became chief executive in 2011, has been trying to turn the company around after three years of large losses that were mostly because of huge steel investments in Brazil and the United States. Mr. Hiesinger has sold money-losing or marginal businesses, and tried to reduce the company’s dependence on the steel industry, which is subject to sharp fluctuations depending on the economic cycle. He is trying to focus the company on businesses including components like steering systems for automobiles, wind turbines, elevators and factory design, which he thinks have steadier growth prospects. These three units increased earnings before interest and taxes by 13 percent to €1.76 billion in the company’s financial year. “It is still a work in progress, but I think they are, bit by bit, turning this company around,” said Jeff Largey, an analyst at Macquarie in London. The company lost €47 million in the latest quarter. Excluding divestments, ThyssenKrupp also paid out about €250 million more than it took in during the year, largely because of pension obligations. Mr. Hiesinger, whose contract was extended on Wednesday until 2020, recognized that the turnaround was not yet complete, but said, “We have demonstrated that we are making progress with our transformation into an efficient and profitable diversified industrial group.” Some analysts questioned the wisdom of paying a dividend while the company continues to pay out more money than it is earning. The company said it aimed to break even on overall cash flow before divestments next year. The company also said that it expected earnings before interest and taxes to increase 15 percent next year, to at least €1.5 billion, despite the tough economic environment. In a note to clients on Thursday, analysts at Citigroup said this forecast was likely to disappoint investors, who had been expecting higher growth. ThyssenKrupp shares closed up more than 2 percent in Frankfurt. Mr. Hiesinger said that the proposal to resume paying a small dividend was “no more than a signal to our shareholders.” ThyssenKrupp last paid a dividend, of 45 cents, in the fiscal year that ended in 2011. Paying a dividend may be a gesture to one of the company’s important shareholders, the Krupp family foundation, which has a stake of about 23 percent and for years exerted much influence on decision-making at ThyssenKrupp. The loss of the dividend has reduced the foundation’s ability to fund its activities, company insiders say. The foundation declined to participate in an €880 million capital increase last year, leading to a dilution of its holding by about 2 percent of the company. In an indication of changes at the company, ThyssenKrupp on Wednesday published a list of candidates proposed for election to the supervisory board in January. The foundation’s number of seats will be reduced to two from three because of its smaller stake. Jens Tischendorf, a partner in Cevian Capital, an activist hedge fund that now holds about 15 percent of ThyssenKrupp, was proposed for a board seat. Cevian Capital buys stakes in companies that it believes are undervalued, and it has so far backed Mr. Hiesinger. ThyssenKrupp also said on Thursday that it would start issuing stock in the United States through American depositary receipts, instruments that make it easier for investors in the United States to buy into foreign markets. The company is listed on the Frankfurt and Düsseldorf stock exchanges, and Deutsche Bank will be the depositary bank for the stock in the United States. “This makes it easier to invest in ThyssenKrupp,” the company said.

ThyssenKrupp
Steel Iron
Earnings Reports
Germany


Israelis Brief Top U.S. Official on Iran

Abstract: JERUSALEM, Dec. 10 — Adm. Mike Mullen , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made an unusual visit to Israel and got a polite earful on Monday about Israel’s gloomy assessment of Iran ’s nuclear ambitions. Israel thinks that an American intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, published in an unclassified version last week, is unduly optimistic and focuses too narrowly on the last stage of weapons development — fashioning a bomb from highly enriched uranium. The National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus of 16 American spy agencies, says with “high confidence” that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and with “moderate confidence” that the program had not resumed. Israeli intelligence estimates say Iran stopped all its nuclear weapons activities for a time in 2003, nervous after the American invasion of Iraq, but then resumed those activities in 2005, accelerating enrichment and ballistic missile development and constructing a 40-megawatt heavy-water reactor in Arak that could produce plutonium. Israel believes Iran continues to work, however limited by international pressure and economic and technical difficulties, on all phases of building a nuclear weapon. Iran denies ever having had a nuclear weapons program and says its nuclear program is focused on generating electricity. In meetings on Monday with the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, and Israeli intelligence officials, Admiral Mullen and his staff listened to concerns that Iran could produce a nuclear bomb, unless deterred, by the end of 2009 at the earliest or, more likely, sometime in 2010-11. The Pentagon, focused on Iraq, is eager for a diplomatic solution with Iran. But the Pentagon has also emphasized that the intelligence estimate “made it clear that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program and that they are still enriching uranium,” said Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman for the admiral. Captain Kirby called Monday’s discussions “productive and candid,” and said they centered on regional challenges “and the shared recognition that there remains a potential for Iran to develop nuclear weapons and threaten its neighbors.” Admiral Mullen, who has been chairman of the Joint Chiefs for only a few months, was making a 24-hour visit to Israel, rare despite close defense ties between the United States and Israel. He was returning from a regional security conference in Bahrain, where the American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, emphasized that Washington continued to see Iran as a grave threat to regional security. Mr. Gates said Iran had accelerated its efforts to enrich uranium despite United Nations Security Council sanctions and could restart a weapons program at any time. Admiral Mullen was a guest of the Israeli chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who held a dinner for him Sunday night.

Israel
Iran
Mullen Michael G
Atomic Weapons


British Forces Leave Deadly Afghan District

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Britain withdrew the last of its Royal Marines from the deadly Sangin District in Helmand Province on Monday, handing control over to American troops. More than 100 British soldiers died in Sangin, nearly a third of that country’s casualties since 2001. British, Afghan and American military officials said the shift represented a routine battlefield rotation. In an interview on Monday with the BBC, however, the Afghan defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, said American troops were better equipped and better trained than British troops. Mr. Wardak also criticized the NATO-led international coalition as not having provided enough troops to Afghanistan and not having trained Afghan forces quickly enough. “They came with all these I.E.D. threats and their soft Land Rovers; I think a lot of people were amazed,” Mr. Wardak said of the British troops in Sangin, a Taliban stronghold . They came to “a really difficult province in Afghanistan with just Land Rovers, which are not much different than the ones driven in the streets of London.” “We have never had enough forces that were required by the principles of counterinsurgency warfare,” he said, “and we still are not at a level to claim we have enough forces. But we are much better than before.” There are 9,500 British troops remaining in Afghanistan, the second largest component of the 150,000 coalition troops here. The United States recently completed an increase in its own forces to 100,000, the largest American force of the war. President Obama has promised to begin reducing American troops in Afghanistan beginning next July. ¶ Nine troops from the NATO-led force fighting in Afghanistan were killed when a helicopter crashed in the south of the country, Reuters reported the International Security Assistance Force saying in a statement Tuesday. Security Assistance Force officials said there was no enemy fire in the area when the aircraft crashed, according to Reuters. ¶ NATO officials said there had been 485 violent incidents during the parliamentary election on Saturday, mostly by insurgents, compared with 479 recorded during last year’s presidential election. In all, according to reports from the Afghan police and election and provincial officials, 23 people died in election-related violence and 29 workers for the International Election Commission were wounded. Among those killed, the election commission said at a news conference on Monday, were three of its workers. It was initially reported that the workers had been abducted from a polling center, but their bodies were later found.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Gangs Said to Contact Politicians

Abstract: MEXICO CITY (AP) — A political candidate has told supporters that drug traffickers have contacted all of the country’s leading political contenders seeking their loyalty before elections next month. The discussion by the candidate, Mauricio Fernández, with a group of supporters in a suburb of Monterrey — a recording of which was broadcast throughout Mexico on Friday — is a remarkably frank description of how the brutal drug gangs try to control political leaders. This has been a key concern of President Felipe Calderón in his fight against the drug gangs. Mr. Fernández, who is running for mayor in the city of San Pedro Garza, also acknowledged that the Beltrán Leyva gang controlled drug smuggling in his city. He said that as mayor he would avoid confronting the gang to maintain peace, comments that undermined Mr. Calderón’s drive to show that the government and his National Action Party, or PAN, are tough on organized crime. Mr. Fernández is a member of the president’s political party. Mr. Fernández’s campaign was thrown into turmoil by the recording, but he stood by his comments, saying that he was simply telling the truth.

Mexico
Drug Abuse and Traffic
Politics and Government
Gangs


Oregon Loss Gives U.S.C. the Upper Hand in the Pac-10

Abstract: Down to two redshirt freshmen at quarterback, the once-mighty Oregon Ducks had absolutely no chance against U.C.L.A. And with that, their hopes of returning to Pasadena, Calif., to play in the Rose Bowl came to an end. The freshman Kai Forbath kicked three field goals, including a career-long 54-yarder, and the Bruins beat No. 9 Oregon, 16-0, yesterday — the visiting Ducks’ first shutout loss in more than 22 years. Oregon (8-3, 5-3 Pacific-10) had been bounced out of the national championship picture Nov. 15, when the Heisman Trophy candidate Dennis Dixon left in the first quarter of a 34-24 loss at Arizona with a torn knee ligament. The Ducks lost their backup quarterback, Brady Leaf, late in the first quarter against U.C.L.A, and the inexperienced Cody Kempt and Justin Roper were unable to generate any offense as Oregon was shut out for the first time since losing by 63-0 to Nebraska on Sept. 28, 1985. The result left No. 11 Southern California (9-2, 6-2) in position to win its sixth consecutive Pac-10 championship and play in the Rose Bowl with a victory over the Bruins at the Los Angeles Coliseum next week. Should U.C.L.A. upset U.S.C. and Arizona top No. 7 Arizona State, the Bruins (6-5, 5-3) would get the Rose Bowl bid — a shocking development considering their recent slump and the possibility that the fifth-year coach Karl Dorrell is in jeopardy of being fired. Oregon entered averaging 40.9 points and 505.8 yards of total offense in its first 10 games, mainly with Dixon at the controls. The Ducks gained only 148 yards against the Bruins, who snapped a three-game losing streak despite getting only 10 first downs and gaining 220 yards. Kempt, making his college debut, went 6 for 23 for 52 yards with two interceptions — both of which led to field goals. Oregon’s Jonathan Stewart, the Pac-10’s leading rusher with a 127.3-yard-a-game average, was held to 33 yards on 13 carries. Hokies Get A.C.C. Title Shot ¶Sean Glennon threw for 260 yards and the other half of Virginia Tech’s quarterback rotation, Tyrod Taylor, ran for two touchdowns, as the eighth-ranked Hokies beat host Virginia, 33-21, to earn a spot in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game. The Hokies (10-2, 7-1) also got a season-high 147 yards rushing from Branden Ore and six catches for 147 yards and a touchdown from Eddie Royal. They won their fourth in a row in the series and earned a rematch with No. 15 Boston College in next Saturday’s conference title game in Jacksonville, Fla. Jameel Sewell ran for two touchdowns for Virginia (9-3, 6-2), which would have gone to the title game with a victory. ¶No. 15 Boston College ended a 15-game losing streak against Miami and did not even need Doug Flutie to do it. Matt Ryan threw for 369 yards and 3 touchdowns to send the Eagles (10-2, 6-2) into the A.C.C. championship game with a 28-14 victory over the Hurricanes, their first victory over Miami since the 1984 Hail Flutie pass. The Hurricanes (5-7, 2-6) failed to qualify for a bowl game for the first time in 10 years. ¶Mark Buchholz kicked a 35-yard field goal as time expired to give No. 21 Clemson a 23-21 victory over host South Carolina. It was the Gamecocks’ fifth loss in a row, the longest losing streak of Steve Spurrier’s college coaching career. ¶Brandon Cox scored on a 1-yard sneak with 3 minutes 50 seconds left and No. 25 Auburn beat visiting Alabama, 17-10, the Tigers’ team-record sixth consecutive victory in the bitter rivalry game. Alabama, under the first-year coach Nick Saban, ended the regular season with four straight losses. Sooners Win State Title ¶Allen Patrick ran for a career-best 202 yards and 2 touchdowns as No. 10 Oklahoma beat visiting Oklahoma State, 49-17, to wrap up a spot in the Big 12 championship game. Sam Bradford returned after sustaining a concussion in Oklahoma’s 34-27 loss at Texas Tech last week to break the N.C.A.A. freshman record for touchdown passes in a season. He had four scoring passes, including two to tight end Joe Jon Finley, to give him 32. Nevada’s David Neill (1998) and Texas’s Colt McCoy (2006) held the old record with 29. Georgia Extends Streak ¶Matthew Stafford ran for one touchdown and threw for another, Thomas Brown rushed for 139 yards, and No. 6 Georgia beat host Georgia Tech, 31-17, to stretch its winning streak in the series to seven in a row. Late in the third quarter, the Bulldogs (10-2) learned that their hopes of winning the SEC East ended when Tennessee defeated Kentucky. Georgia and the Volunteers have 6-2 records in the conference, but Tennessee won the tie breaker with its 35-14 victory over the Bulldogs in early October. Georgia Tech (7-5) has not beaten Georgia since 2000, and there is speculation that this latest loss could cost Coach Chan Gailey his job. He dropped to 0-6 against the Bulldogs. ¶Tim Tebow threw three touchdown passes, ran for two scores and No. 12 Florida beat visiting Florida State, 45-12, the fourth consecutive victory by the Gators (9-3) over the Seminoles. Around the Country ¶Harvey Unga ran 11 yards for a touchdown with 38 seconds left as No. 23 Brigham Young rallied to beat visiting Utah, 17-10, and clinch a second consecutive Mountain West title. ¶Ben Mauk threw for a career-high 431 yards and 4 touchdowns, 3 to Marcus Barnett, and No. 24 Cincinnati beat host Syracuse by 52-31. The victory gave the Bearcats (9-3, 4-3 Big East) their first nine-win season since 1953. The loss gave Syracuse (2-10, 1-6) its second 10-loss season in Greg Robinson’s three years as the coach. ¶Robert Hughes ran for 136 yards and the go-ahead 6-yard touchdown with 6:06 remaining and Notre Dame beat host Stanford, 21-14. The season-ending victories over Duke and Stanford are little consolation for Notre Dame (3-9), which set a team record for losses in Charlie Weis’s third season. ¶Darren Coates ran for a touchdown and caught a touchdown pass as Southern defeated Grambling, 22-13, in the 34th Bayou Classic in the Superdome in New Orleans.

Football
College Athletics
University of California Los Angeles


Doctor Fights Doctor, Putting Workers’ Injuries in Dispute

Abstract: Dr. Hershel Samuels, an orthopedic surgeon, put his hand on the worker’s back. “Mild spasm bilaterally,” he said softly. He pressed his fingers gingerly against the side of the man’s neck. “The left cervical is tender,” he said, “even to light palpation.” The worker, a driver for a plumbing company, told the doctor he had fallen, banging up his back, shoulder and ribs. He was seeking expanded workers’ compensation benefits because he no longer felt he could do his job. Dr. Samuels, an independent medical examiner in the state workers’ compensation system, seemed to agree. As he moved about a scuffed Brooklyn office last April, he called out test results indicative of an injured man. His words were captured on videotape. Yet the report Dr. Samuels later submitted to the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board cleared the driver for work and told a far different story: no back spasms, no tender neck. In fact, no recent injury at all. “If you did a truly pure report,” he said later in an interview, “you’d be out on your ears and the insurers wouldn’t pay for it. You have to give them what they want, or you’re in Florida . That’s the game, baby.” Independent medical exams are among the most disputed components of New York’s troubled workers’ compensation system. Under that system, workers with bona fide injuries are entitled to medical care and replacement wages, usually paid for by their employer’s insurer. The independent exams are designed to flush out workers who exaggerate injuries or get unnecessary care, and there is no question that some of that goes on. As a check on what a worker’s doctor determines, insurers are allowed to order an ostensibly neutral exam by a doctor they select and pay for. They do so regularly, with more than 100,000 exams conducted each year. But a New York Times review of case files and medical records and interviews with participants indicate that the exam reports are routinely tilted to benefit insurers by minimizing or dismissing injuries. “You go in and sit there for a few minutes — and out comes a six-page detailed exam that he never did,” said Dr. Stephen M. Levin, co-director of the occupational and environmental medicine unit at Mount Sinai Medical Center , who has been picked as the interim medical director at the compensation board. “There are some noble things you can do in medicine without treating. This ain’t one of them.” New York uses independent medical examiners far more extensively than many states do, and critics say the practice adds to the mistrust in the system. The examiners’ opinions can empower an insurer to slash benefits, withhold medical treatment or stall a case. Workers say that psychologically, there is something particularly damaging about being dishonestly evaluated by a medical professional. “I was in so much pain and felt so hopeless for so long,” said Carol Houlder, a substance abuse counselor who waited a year for surgery on her injured ankle to be approved. “Doctors see you’re in pain and say you’re not. How do they call themselves doctors?” Many independent examiners are older, semiretired physicians who no longer treat patients, and claimants and lawyers have asserted that the memories and judgments of some of the doctors have at times been impaired by their age and frailties. The examiners do not need special training, only to have a state license and to be authorized in a specialty. “Basically if you haven’t murdered anyone and you have a medical license, you get certified,” said Dr. Alan Zimmerman, 75, a Queens orthopedic surgeon who does the exams. “It’s clearly a nice way to semiretire.” Some examiners see dozens of injured workers a day. Often the appointments are booked by brokers who help insurance companies find doctors. Some brokers are not registered with the state, as required, but there has been little enforcement of the rules. Insurers, examiners and brokers, however, defend the exams as necessary and largely untarnished by bias. Dr. Brian L. Grant, chairman of Medical Consultants Network, a company based in Seattle that arranges independent exams across the country, said, “We never get pressure from an insurer.” Many workers contest independent medical examiner opinions and often prevail. Judges can, and do, dismiss the exam findings. In fact, some lawyers and judges laugh when certain examiners’ names come up at hearings. Dr. Kenneth E. Seslowe, an orthopedic surgeon who mainly does independent medical exams, is mocked at hearing offices by attorneys as Dr. Says-No, because they feel he consistently finds no disability. Asked about this, Dr. Seslowe said, “I really don’t have time for this.” But even when the opinions are discounted, resolution can take months, years, even decades, and many workers, tired of the ordeal of five, six, seven exams, eventually give up. Some examiners, of course, do furnish honest, well-reasoned opinions. And sorting out the yawning breach between what a worker’s doctors and an independent medical examiner conclude is complicated by the fact that some injuries and their impact on a person’s ability to work — especially soft-tissue injuries like those to the back and neck — are hard to document with indisputable tests. Zachary S. Weiss, the chairman of the workers’ compensation board, said that he found the disparities in medical opinions shocking and that use of independent examiners was “off the charts.” But Mr. Weiss, who was appointed in late 2007, said he was unsure what would rectify the problems. After nearly a dozen years without a medical director, the board has finally filled that job temporarily. It has introduced new, more detailed forms, which many doctors find maddening. It is also working on fresh guidelines that it hopes will better calibrate an injured worker’s care and work limits. Dr. Robert E. Bonner, the medical director of the Hartford , an insurance company, said it was clear that the landscape had polarized. “Physicians regrettably have moved away from being neutral observers,” he said. “They’ve moved toward one camp or the other.” Doctor vs. Doctor When New York companies complain about the high cost of doing business in the state, they often cite fraudulent workers’ compensation claims as a key factor. Though experts say talk of worker fraud is frequently overstated, it is widely acknowledged that some doctors collaborate with workers or their lawyers to magnify injuries or provide treatment for years without making someone better. Law firms representing workers often have cozy relationships with doctors to whom they refer patients, and vice versa. A few years ago, Dr. Rafeak Muhammad, a Queens ophthalmologist, was barred from taking workers’ compensation patients after acknowledging that he had treated several long after it was necessary. He declared them unable to work when in fact they could. David Donaldson, senior vice president at the domestic claims subsidiary of A.I.G. , one of the state’s largest workers’ compensation insurers, said, “Our position on I.M.E.’s is we’re looking for someone who is going to give us a coldly objective view of the injury.” Critics, however, contend that independent medical examiners who reliably dispute workers’ doctors are hired more often by insurers. Some workers cynically refer to them as “insurers’ medical examiners.” Shu-Ying Xu, 66, a home health aide, said she met with an independent examiner in October 2006 so he could review the back, neck and leg injuries she suffered when she tried to prevent a patient from falling. She said the exam took two minutes and was so quick that the doctor, Wayne Kerness, an orthopedic surgeon, did not ask her anything. As a result, she said, when the doctor filed his report he said she spoke English. She does not. He said she took no medications. She said she took nine. He said her disability was mild and she could resume work. She said that she was in debilitating pain and that the Social Security Administration had already concluded that by its standards, she was totally disabled. “She can’t even hold a gallon of milk,” said Peter Chang, her son. He had come along to the exam to translate. Since no questions were asked, he said he had nothing to do. After checking his notes, Dr. Kerness said it was an error to have said that Ms. Xu spoke English. Otherwise, he stood by the report. “What can I say?” he said. “People can say whatever they want.” He added: “I have my share of people I’ve found totally disabled and even recommended treatment that has been overlooked. I think I’m pretty heterogeneous.” A judge ultimately ruled that Ms. Xu’s benefits should continue. For decades, independent medical examiners were essentially unregulated. Reports were sometimes altered by brokers and exams often were done at airports, hotels or in the garages of doctors’ homes. In 2000, a doctor examined five patients in a Long Island bar. In 2001, the state introduced rules. Among them: doctors had to register with the board, work in a medical office and let workers record or videotape their exams. Claimants are permitted to bring along anyone they choose to witness or film the sessions. While the law has helped, the process remains riddled with flaws. Lawyers and injured workers say many of the examiners still do brief, perfunctory, one-sided exams. A small study conducted a few years ago at the Central New York Occupational Health Clinical Center in Syracuse found that the clinic’s doctors and independent medical examiners virtually never agreed on whether a worker was disabled. When it can be proven that medical examiners have acted inappropriately, the compensation board revokes their certification — which has happened more often in recent years. But investigations are time consuming and only a dozen or so result in revocations each year. William Gurin, the board’s fraud inspector general, says his unit’s limited resources are best focused on more fertile areas of fraud, such as employers who underreport their work force to save on insurance premiums. Similarly, the board struggles to regulate businesses, from storefront exam factories to multistate networks, that help produce independent exams. Decades ago, insurers hired doctors directly. Now the job is increasingly done by third-party brokers called entities. Entities are paid by insurers — around $500 or $600, say, for an orthopedic exam — and they in turn pay the doctor. Often, doctors submit dictated notes or checklists to clerical staff at the firms, who then draft the reports. Other times the notes go to transcription companies. The people preparing the reports may have no medical training. Since 2001, the state has required entities to be registered. About 170 have signed up. But a fair amount of independent exam work is performed by companies that have never registered. It was an unregistered company, Wine Medical Management, that arranged an independent medical exam of Santos Padilla, an injured worker, in 2006. The exam was to be done by Dr. Kerness, but it was canceled, and Mr. Padilla was seen by another doctor. But somehow the compensation board received a report signed by Dr. Kerness recounting an exam that had never happened. Dr. Kerness blamed the bogus submission on a clerical error by Wine. He said the company, using a signature stamp, had affixed his name to a report he had not seen. Wine went out of business last year. A former manager at Wine, Laura Urban, blamed the discrepancy on a transcription company that prepared the reports. Ms. Urban moved to Commander Management, another entity that was doing unregistered work until the board ordered it to cease. The board is looking into the Padilla episode, and has pledged to crack down on unregistered I.M.E. entities. Only a handful have ever had their certifications revoked, usually not for creating shoddy reports but for failing to pay their doctors. Robert Grey, a claimant lawyer, said the board should track the opinions of independent medical examiners and compare them to ultimate verdicts, and then exclude doctors who were constantly found not credible. Currently, the best protection for a worker is to tape an exam. But few do. The board does virtually nothing to promote the practice, and some doctors do not like it. When a woman brought a camera to an appointment upstate, the doctor called the police to toss her out. Ms. Houlder, 63, who hurt her ankle, videotaped her exam by Dr. M. Pierre Rafiy, a 77-year-old Long Island orthopedic surgeon. In the videotape, Dr. Rafiy grasps Ms. Houlder’s right ankle and says it is swollen. In the written report, he stated that there was no swelling and no disability and that she could return to work. When subsequently deposed, he backtracked, saying it had been a secretary’s mistake to say no disability. He did not correct anything else. Asked about the exam in an interview, Dr. Rafiy said: “I have no way to know if she had real pain. You have to remember, a lot of people don’t want to work. They lie a lot.” Examiners, or Advocates Dr. Samuels, 79, with a radiant smile and a burst of snowy hair, stopped doing surgery years ago. Until recently he commonly filled his days performing insurance exams on workers, sometimes as many as 50 in an afternoon, he said in his small office in Borough Park, Brooklyn. “You obviously can’t spend a lot of time with that volume pushing up your back,” he said. “You have to assume there are going to be errors. Look, there are a lot of holes in this thing.” At times, evidence shows, Dr. Samuels’s official reports were quite different from what he appeared to find during an exam. Consider his 2007 examination of Johanne Aumoithe, a pastry chef who said she had hurt her arm and neck. On a videotape that Ms. Aumoithe recorded on her cellphone, Dr. Samuels comments that she had limited range of motion . His written report concluded the opposite. Asked about the discrepancy in an interview, Dr. Samuels chuckled and said he could not even recall the people he saw yesterday. The way he worked, he said, was to submit a checklist to a Queens company called All Borough Medical, which transformed it into a narrative. “I never write a sentence,” he said. “It’s really crazy, but that’s how it’s done.” He often inserted numbers in the checklist — say, a measure of hand strength — after the person left, rather than as he performed the tests. Was he sure they were correct? “I’m not sure of anything,” he said. “They’re just a guess in the first place.” The law requires a doctor to attest to the accuracy of a finished report before signing it, but Dr. Samuels said he rarely read them. He doubted he had read the Aumoithe report. “I just sign them,” he said. If he seldom read them, how did he know they were correct? “I don’t,” he said. “That’s the problem. If I read them all, I’d have them coming out of my ears and I’d never have time to talk to my wife. They want speed and volume. That’s the name of the game.” Dr. Samuels said he generally received about $100 for one of these exams. The state does not regulate how much a doctor can make for an independent medical exam, though it does limit what a treating physician may charge an injured worker, and generally that is much lower for roughly equivalent work. Some examiners said insurers pay them by the session, say $1,500 to be available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and handle whatever workers are sent to them. An occupational medicine doctor deposed by Scott Clippinger, a claimant lawyer, said he charged $550 an hour for an independent medical exam. In 2006, Mr. Clippinger complained to the state board that the imbalance in fees “allows the carriers to purchase opinions.” He asked the state why it was not following a clause in state law that says that independent medical exams “shall be paid according to the fee schedule.” The board’s response was that while the law “does provide that I.M.E. fees shall be paid according to the fee schedule, the fee schedule does not specify a particular fee for an I.M.E.” Dr. Edward Toriello, a Queens orthopedic surgeon who cares mainly for his own patients, said he is paid nearly twice as much for an independent medical exam than he is for seeing a workers’ compensation patient he treats ($250 versus $140). Like many who perform the exams, he views the compensation system as bloated with charlatans. Dr. Toriello, who does about 30 such exams a week, estimates that 80 to 85 percent of the time he finds no disability or need for medical treatment in workers whose doctors have found otherwise. He says the disparity is explained by the “comp mentality.” “I think it’s human nature to help your patient,” he said. “I think a lot of doctors say: ‘I don’t need the aggravation. It doesn’t hurt to keep him out of work.’ ” Dr. Zimmerman, of Queens, said he believed that 75 percent of people getting workers’ compensation did not deserve it, but also said he was not surprised to hear that insurance lawyers in Queens said his opinions were overwhelmingly disregarded by judges. “Judges come up with wrong decisions a huge amount of time,” he said. “The lawyers work it so that anyone who scratches their toenail deserves equal treatment as someone who fell out of a 40-story building.” Sometimes, a review of cases shows, there are stark discrepancies between the testimony independent medical examiners give at trial and their reports. Twice in 2005, for example, Dr. Francis O’Malley, a Long Island orthopedic surgeon, testified that a disability was more serious than indicated by his reports. In one case, Dr. O’Malley testified that a man who had hurt his back lifting packages had a “marked” partial disability. The report described the injury as a less severe “moderate” disability. When confronted with the discrepancy, Dr. O’Malley testified, “I don’t know what’s going on.” The reports were filed on Dr. O’Malley’s behalf by Hooper Holmes , a national medical services company that operated an I.M.E. entity. The company said that it always submitted exactly what doctors gave it and that it believed Dr. O’Malley, who is 78, was confused. Dr. O’Malley did not return calls for comment. In the case of William Cassone, the plumbing company driver whose father taped his examination, the exam by Dr. Samuels was arranged by All Borough Medical, an unregistered I.M.E. entity, which got the assignment from another registered entity. Mr. Cassone had been injured years earlier but was being examined because, as he says on the videotape, he had suffered a second, recent injury. But Dr. Samuels’s report made no mention of the second injury and deemed Mr. Cassone able to work. When Mr. Cassone got the report, he said, “I was screaming so much I left the house and slept in the car.” Dr. Samuels later swore in a deposition that the report was accurate. A few weeks later, though, the board received an addendum signed by Dr. Samuels saying he had viewed the videotape and, yes, he had been told of the second injury. Still, he found no evidence of disability. All Borough declined to comment on the case and its business. Dr. Samuels said in a recent interview that he had never seen the addendum or the videotape and doubted he had read the original report. He said All Borough must have prepared the addendum without his knowledge. “This is the first I’ve heard of this,” he said. “Listen, there’s a lot of hanky-panky that goes on.” Mr. Cassone’s lawyer, Michael Pyrros, told a judge at a hearing that he was concerned there might have been fraud involved in the conduct of Dr. Samuels, the I.M.E. entity and the insurer. When the Cassone case next came before a judge, late last summer, a deal was reached between lawyers to grant Mr. Cassone benefits. Fraud allegations were dropped against the insurer. Dr. Samuels, who was told to appear at the hearing, did not show up. According to a letter from his lawyer, he was unwell. His behavior was never addressed. Soon after, he retired, his official record unblemished.

Workers' compensation
New York
Medicine and Health


F.B.I. and Police Task Force Arrests 3 for Armored-Car Robberies

Abstract: Three men, including a state prison guard, were arrested on Thursday for participating in three brazen daytime robberies of armored cars in the Bronx over the past several months, the authorities said. One of the men, Michael Santiago, 29, is a corrections officer assigned to work at Downstate Correctional Facility, in Fishkill, N.Y., they said. He was arrested along with two others, Kenneth Smith, 34, and Bruce Collazo, 20, in raids carried out in the Bronx. All three were charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. Officials said the case was the most significant robbery pattern to be investigated and solved by a joint team of New York City police detectives and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents since their partnership was reinvigorated over the past year. That collaboration, known as C-19, largely disintegrated after the Police Department pulled all seven of its officers from the team five years ago. But since the team — the oldest joint venture between the two agencies — was revived on Dec. 17, 2014, its members have closed several cases, officials said. The investigation of the armored-car robberies is continuing, the police said, and additional arrests are possible. The first robbery occurred on Aug. 24, when, according to the complaint, Mr. Santiago and Mr. Collazo stole $42,000 in cash from an armored-car operator transporting money from a gas station at 1237 Jerome Avenue. On Dec. 4, the court papers said, Mr. Santiago and Mr. Smith struck at 1536 Westchester Avenue, this time robbing an armored-car operator of a bag containing $265 in coins — a small sum because the worker had already delivered his cash to a Chase Bank branch. The next robbery occurred on Dec. 15, when Mr. Santiago and Mr. Smith stole $78,000 in cash from an armored car outside 1471 Westchester Avenue, the court papers said. In that case, gunfire was exchanged, the police said, but no one was wounded. Twice, cars from Rapid Armored Corporation, where Mr. Santiago had once worked, were singled out, the court papers said. Each robbery occurred before noon on a weekday. In a statement, Anthony J. Annucci, the acting commissioner of the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said Mr. Santiago, an officer since 2014, had been suspended without pay. “Whether on or off duty,” he said, the department “has absolutely zero tolerance for any criminal or unethical conduct by staff — period.” Use of task forces in law enforcement can rise or fall, due in no small part to personnel issues or budgetary constraints. In 2011, New York Police Department officials pulled the force’s six detectives and one supervisor out of F.B.I. headquarters, in Lower Manhattan, and deployed them to police units across the city to focus on broader crime issues, not just bank jobs. The department’s head count had shrunk by several thousand at the time, and the number of bank robberies had dipped to lower levels than when the team was formed, officials said. But the breakup was particularly bitter, according to several current team members who noted that besides bank robberies, members also work on fugitive and murder-for-hire cases, kidnappings, crimes on the high seas and offenses in more than a dozen other categories. The task force was started in September 1979, when New York was combating “what was then historic highs in bank robberies, both armed and note jobs,” said Barbara A. Daly, a supervisory special agent of the F.B.I. She said there were 848 cases in that calendar year alone. Working separately “was not a very effective way to address these crimes,” she said. “Once we created a formal agreement,” she continued, “you can see a steady decline in the bank robbery figures when we’re working together.” By 2010, bank robbery cases had fallen to around 30; last year there were 12 armed bank robberies in the city and four armored-truck robberies. Over time, many task force members formed bonds across agencies renowned for a spirit of competition and tension in several arenas, from counterterrorism to crime fighting. The Joint Bank Robbery Task Force, in fact, was the inspiration for the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a linchpin in the government’s counterterrorism efforts in New York and across the country and a model that has been replicated in scores of cities. Reforming the team — which has a new name, the F.B.I.-N.Y.P.D. Joint Violent Crimes Task Force — made sense, several agents and officers have said. It is not ideal for them to arrive at crime scenes and have to introduce themselves, they said. Rather, they need trust and relationships built on the understanding each entity brings to tackling and quickly solving some of the most violent crimes, many said. The team now has 11 agents and one supervisor on the federal side and six detectives and one lieutenant on the police side. They sit shoulder to shoulder again in the federal offices in Lower Manhattan. In a statement on Thursday, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said that the cooperation among agencies had paid off. “Tonight,” he said, “our city, because of the hard work of agents, detectives and prosecutors, is a little bit safer.”

Armored cars
Robbery
Bronx
Michael Santiago
Bruce Collazo
Kenneth Smith


Product Information on H.P.’s Blackbird 002 Gaming Computer

Abstract: Sweaty computer-gaming fetishists may catch a breeze from the Blackbird 002, the first of a new line of ultrafast PCs from Hewlett-Packard ’s Voodoo division that go on sale this week for $2,500 to $6,500. Aimed at “modders” and other people who treat their PCs like hot rods, these machines are markedly customizable, set up for fast gut-switching upgrades without tools. Gamers in this crowd snap up the newest parts, sometimes just to improve one game’s performance. Inside a heavy aluminum case with fins for heat dissipation, two big fans ventilate overclocked bleeding-edge quad-core processors, graphics and video cards. The revved-up guts require pipes with circulating coolant. An external hanger for user-invented add-ons might hold a fan to cool the PC’s owner. Five hard-drive bays are built in, with space for a sixth, and the drives can be linked in a RAID setup for opponent-crushing speed or for fail-safe backups of as much as 6 terabytes of data. The Blackbird 002’s shape, a black wedge, was inspired by the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. This tower perches ominously on one foot (the unit is raised for air intake) with colored lights glowing toward the floor to make it go even faster. MARTY KATZ

Computers and the Internet
Hewlett-Packard Co


Lexi Thompson and Ai Miyazato Tied at LPGA Event

Abstract: Lexi Thompson birdied the final hole for a four-under-par 68 and a share of the ANA Inspiration lead with Ai Miyazato on Friday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Thompson holed a 30-foot putt on the par-5 18th to reach seven-under par in the L.P.G.A. Tour’s first major championship of the year. Top-ranked Lydia Ko was a stroke back with five other players. ■ Charley Hoffman had a two-under-par 70 for a one-shot lead over Jamie Lovemark at the Houston Open. Lovemark was one of four players to shoot the day’s low score, 68, under conditions that worsened as the afternoon progressed. A 93-minute weather delay brought on by rain and lightning ensured that 27 players would have to complete the second round Saturday morning. ■ Tiger Woods has made official what most observers figured all along. Woods, recovering from two back operations last year, will not play at the Masters. Woods did say on his website that he has been training daily.

Golf
Lexi Thompson
LPGA
Charley Hoffman
Tiger Woods


C.F.L. Quarterback Calls It Quits

Abstract: Montreal quarterback Anthony Calvillo is retiring after 20 seasons in the C.F.L. Calvillo, 41, who played at Utah State, played his last 16 seasons with the Alouettes and leaves as the league’s career leader in yards passing and touchdown passes. He won three Grey Cups and played in eight title games.

Football
Anthony Calvillo
Montreal Alouettes


New Form of Fire, Inspired by Bourbon, Might Help With Oil Spills

Abstract: A small blue flame, circulating in a vortex called a fire whirl, could become an important tool in oil spill cleanup, according to the scientists who created it. And they give bourbon credit for inspiring the research. Fire whirls, colloquially called firenadoes, look like tornadoes or wind devils, and they burn hotter than many other fires. The results can be devastating in a city or a forest. So researchers have studied fire whirls with an eye to stopping or preventing them. Three scientists from the University of Maryland had a different idea. Huahua Xiao, an assistant research scientist, who conducted experiments on fire whirls along with Michael J. Gollner and Elaine S. Oran, said, “We wanted to harness the power of fire whirls for good.” As for the bourbon, the research was prompted not by consumption of this particular kind of high-test, but by a video of flaming bourbon . A spill from the Jim Beam factory on a pond in Kentucky caught fire in 2003, and a fire whirl formed spontaneously. Because fire whirls are relatively efficient in terms of how complete the combustion is, Dr. Xiao said, it seemed they might be useful in dealing with other kinds of spills, creating less soot than other kinds of fires. The researchers didn’t use bourbon in their experiment. Instead, they picked a more common experimental substance, n-heptane. It’s an ingredient in some fuels used to test engine performance. They poured it on water in a pan about 16 inches in diameter, and then ignited the fuel. They channeled air to produce a vortex. As they expected, a fire whirl about two feet high formed with a typical yellow and orange flame. That little firenado soon changed, however, to a smaller, differently shaped, swirling blue flame, what Dr. Xiao calls a blue whirl. When the fuel was all burned, the blue whirl died out. In later experiments, the researchers placed a small tube underwater to feed more fuel to keep the blue whirl going. Even though fire whirls are relatively efficient in burning fuel, they produce soot particles, which cause the flame to appear yellow. The blue flame, Dr. Xiao said, was even more efficient and soot-free. The researchers had similar results with crude oil. The authors reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that as far as they know, nobody else has reported observing this form of flame. Blue flames are common and appear in other situations and forms, but this kind of swirling blue vortex had not been seen. The researchers don’t know exactly what caused the blue whirl to form, and they plan to analyze how the fuel evaporates and mixes with the air, and other factors. Once they have a better handle on the dynamics of this kind of flame, they will try to recreate the blue whirl on a larger scale, of the size that might be useful against an oil spill.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America


Father Finds Answers to What Ails Family

Abstract: For families that become homeless in New York City, it is a hard road from shelter back to home. Even after an apartment is found, it must still be turned into a stable home. The Times profiled three families (in the article below, and two others: Mourning Many Losses, Rebuilding a Sense of Home and Nurturing a Goal With Abundant Hope ) that are feeling the aftereffects of homelessness. Parents worry about the toll that it took on their children, the loss of their possessions, and making enough money to safeguard their families in the future. The reasons they found themselves in shelters vary. What is constant is the wide array of agencies and services that are needed to get them back on their feet. The seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund have been integral in helping these families recover from a housing crisis. Neediest Cases money played a part in each case. On April 11, 2006, Eduardo Garcia returned to New York City with his three young children, Jillian, Emily and Sailor. He was desperately seeking medical care for Emily, then 3 ½. “Emily was always thin. I had no idea why she wouldn’t gain weight,” he said. Doctors in the Dominican Republic had been unable to diagnose the problem, he said. One suggested that special glasses might stop her fainting spells. “Something about that didn’t seem right,” Mr. Garcia said. His wife stayed behind. She was recovering from postpartum depression so severe that she had to be hospitalized three months after Sailor, now 3, was born. Mr. Garcia, 42, was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York. He and his children are American citizens. But he and his wife had planned to raise the children in the Dominican Republic before Emily’s health brought him back to the United States. “I knew that the answers to the welfare of my family, and my family unit, were here,” he said. Mr. Garcia has family in both countries, but no one in New York had room for his family in the long term, so he and his children entered the shelter system. On June 6 last year, Mr. Garcia and the children went to the Pelham Fritz Apartments in Harlem, a shelter run by the Children’s Aid Society, one of seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund . “It must have been God. I don’t really believe in much, but do you know how good it was finally when I landed over here in the Children’s Aid Society?” Mr. Garcia said. Within a week, he learned Emily had tuberculosis, although she and her siblings had been inoculated. “They did an X-ray on her chest and she was like rotting away,” Mr. Garcia said. “She had a whole bunch of scar tissue.” The clinic at the Dunlevy Milbank Center, across the street from the shelter and also part of Children’s Aid, was crucial to Emily’s recovery. “We take care of all the children in the shelter,” said Dr. Amish Nishawala, who works at the clinic. Emily had tuberculosis that required her to take four drugs daily for nine months. The department of health required that the drugs be taken under medical supervision, so Dr. Nishawala arranged for Emily’s medications to be taken and logged at the clinic. Emily finished her treatment early this year. Now thriving and gaining weight, she returned to the Dominican Republic in August to live with her mother until she starts first grade next fall in the United States. In July, the family left the shelter for a three-bedroom apartment near the clinic. Until Mr. Garcia’s application for federally subsidized housing is approved, the rent is being covered through the city’s Department of Homeless Services. Mr. Garcia began receiving disability benefits after surgery to treat a brain aneurysm in 1995 left him with optic nerve damage and short-term memory loss that limits his ability to read. The family lives on about $1,600 a month in disability and Supplemental Security Income benefits, plus $330 in food stamps. A few weeks after they moved into the new apartment, $1,488 from the Neediest Cases was used to buy furniture. “My kids haven’t gone without food; they haven’t gone without clothing or medicine,” Mr. Garcia said. He has applied for his wife, who is not an American citizen, to come to New York so the family can be reunited. Jillian, 7, is one of the top students in her second-grade class. Dr. Nishawala credits Mr. Garcia for the improvement in his family’s well-being. “Not many of our clients have his persistence,” Dr. Nishawala said. “To survive the shelter, you have to have smarts.”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Families and Family Life
Medicine and Health
Philanthropy


Scott Pruett Finds Success in Endurance Racing

Abstract: Scott Pruett’s success as a racecar driver comes down to adaptability. He spent a decade in Indy cars and a few more years in Nascar stock cars. But Pruett, 54, has become North America’s leading sports car racer, with 59 major victories, showing himself to be versatile enough to handle the ever-changing capabilities of cars. He can add to his legacy this weekend with a record sixth victory in the Rolex 24, a daylong race at Daytona International Speedway. “I think Scott’s success and longevity as an endurance racer comes down to the type of person he is,” said the team owner Chip Ganassi, who has worked with Pruett for the past 12 years. “He’s not a Hollywood type — a Richard Sherman type — like a lot of some sports figures these days. I would say he is more of a Peyton Manning type — with a lot of off-track preparation. “He’s a grinder — very methodical. Very steady. A thinking man’s driver.” He added that Pruett “came up at a time when you could get in a lot of different kinds of cars.” Pruett has driven modified Mustangs and Mazdas and prototypes from Jaguar and Ford that go 200 miles per hour. He has won one- and two-hour races and six- and 12-hour ones. At the Rolex 24, which begins Saturday afternoon, Pruett and three teammates will split driving shifts in a Ford prototype over 24 hours on a 3.56-mile road course. The winners typically travel more than 2,500 miles, with the average speed of laps around 130 m.p.h. Among the competitors in the race are the IndyCar stars Scott Dixon, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Tony Kanaan, as well as Jamie McMurray and Kyle Larson of Nascar. Success in endurance racing used to come from finding the delicate balance between the amount of speed a racing machine could handle without mechanical failure, and the patience and repetitive consistency of its drivers. Attrition rates decided most races. “What’s interesting in endurance racing, like this event at Daytona, is it has now turned into a 24-hour sprint race,” said Pruett, who has been competing at Daytona for more than 30 years. “Lately, the team that won did so without any problems. It used to be that you had to be careful with the car, and pace yourself.” After mastering that fine balancing act early in his career, Pruett has honed a different skill set in recent years. “Engineers used to tell you how fast you could go: ‘You must run this pace’ or parts will start failing or falling off,” he said. “The car was the weak link. The driving part of it was a lot easier then than now. Now, you have to run flat out from the green flag to the checkered.” Manufacturers competing today say that their engines can routinely finish endurance contests without failure; Audi says its engines will last a full season. “I remember the year I was racing here for Jaguar, and we were at one point 30 laps ahead — 30 laps!” Pruett said of a distance that measures out at close to 100 miles. “Now, it’s not uncommon to have six, seven, eight cars all on the same lap to the end of the race. You just have to continually push the pace.” With 53 cars in a variety of speed classes entered in this weekend’s race, Pruett noted, “The biggest challenge now is not to be caught up in someone else’s mistake.” Last year, Memo Gidley pulled out to make a routine pass of a slower car and ran square into the rear of an obscured car that had stopped on the track. Gidley, gravely injured, is still recovering. Pruett knows firsthand the dangers of racing. In 1990, as an up-and-coming star in IndyCar racing, he sustained severe leg injuries in a crash. It was a time when cars were unstable, speeds were extreme, and safety considerations were minimal. “I still limp around from that,” Pruett said. “That was a bad time. A lot of drivers were hurt very badly. Many were not able to race again. Indy cars were very dangerous then; still are. My last IndyCar race, in 1999, the average lap speed was 236.” Ganassi, once an IndyCar racer, had his career cut short by injuries. While Ganassi reinvented himself as a car owner, Pruett refused to give up driving. “There’s something about these California guys,” Ganassi said of Pruett, who is from Roseville, Calif., outside Sacramento. “Scott and I used to be the same age. But as I’ve gotten older, he’s gotten younger.” Pruett was asked if retirement might be on the horizon. “It’s been great, but in a way it has gone by way too fast,” he said. “I still feel young. Age is just a number. I’m still fast; I’m still winning, so it’s difficult to walk away. But I will say that more of my career is in my rearview mirror now than out my windshield.”


Haversham Holdings Says It’s in ‘Advanced’ Takeover Talks

Abstract: LONDON — Trading of shares of Haversham Holdings was suspended on Monday morning as the acquisition vehicle said it was in “very advanced discussions” regarding a takeover. Haversham is in talks to buy the British used-car auctioneer and reseller BCA Marketplace, which is backed by the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, The Sunday Times of London reported. Haversham was putting together an offer worth 1.2 billion pounds, or about $1.77 billion, the newspaper said. Haversham, an investment vehicle, was formed by Avril Palmer-Baunack, the former chairwoman of the British logistics and support services company Stobart Group, and Marwyn, an investment management company. It was listed publicly in London in November. “Trading in Haversham’s ordinary shares has been suspended pending conclusion of these discussions,” Haversham said in a news release on Monday, without naming the target. “There can be no certainty at this time that a transaction will proceed, and we will update shareholders in due course.” Haversham said the transaction would most likely take the form of a reverse takeover, which would allow the acquired company to list its shares publicly. BCA, known as British Car Auctions in Britain, had sought to go public last year. It called off those plans as economic uncertainty weighed on stock markets in the fall and several initial public offerings performed poorly. The company is one of the largest resellers of used cars through auctions in Europe. BCA operates more than 200 locations in 13 European countries, and it sold more than 900,000 vehicles in 2013. It also operates the brand We Buy Any Car, which purchases automobiles for resale.

Mergers and Acquisitions
Cars
Stocks,Bonds
Great Britain
Haversham Holdings
BCA Marketplace


Carmelo Anthony in Limbo

Abstract: Carmelo Anthony said he was caught by surprise Monday morning when he learned that Phil Jackson, the president of the Knicks, had fired Derek Fisher as the team’s coach. “It’s an unfortunate situation that I’ve been a part of multiple times through my career,” Anthony said. “You become kind of immune to it at this point and understand that this is part of the business. This is the bad part of the business.” Anthony spoke Tuesday night before the Knicks lost, 111-108, to the Washington Wizards at Madison Square Garden. With Kurt Rambis making his debut as interim coach, an even brighter spotlight found Anthony, the longtime face of the franchise. He addressed his relationship with Jackson. Image Carmelo Anthony in a game against Denver this week. “This is the bad part of the business,” he said of his coach’s being fired. Credit Noah K. Murray/USA Today Sports, via Reuters “You have to continue to put your trust into Phil,” said Anthony, who finished with 33 points and 13 rebounds. “I mean, at this point, what could you do? You can’t shy away from it. You can’t go against it. So for me, I have to trust him. I decided to stay here. I made that decision to trust in the Knicks and trust in Phil.” Anthony said he spoke with Fisher on Monday morning. “I’m pretty sure — me knowing him — that he’ll learn from this experience and he’ll be on somebody else’s sideline pretty soon, if that’s what he wants,” Anthony said. Anthony entered Tuesday’s game averaging 21.1 points, 7.8 rebounds and a career-best 4.2 assists. His willingness to pass the ball and defer more to younger teammates like Kristaps Porzingis has been a bright spot even as he continues to labor with his shooting (42.2 percent from the field) and with soreness in his left knee. Image Phil Jackson in 2014. On Monday, he offered a less-than-emphatic endorsement of Carmelo Anthony’s continued role on the team by noting that “Carmelo has a no-trade clause.” Credit Seth Wenig/Associated Press When he met with members of the news media on Monday, Jackson praised Anthony. “Carmelo’s a leader,” Jackson said. “We understand that. He’s on board. He’s going to move forward with this basketball club. He’s been struggling with an injury. We need to balance all that out with his playing time, getting therapy, staying off, practicing, not practicing.” At the same time, Jackson made a couple of curious comments, veering far from the boilerplate script. After Jackson said that a couple of players would be “off the table for discussion” ahead of the Feb. 18 trade deadline, he was asked whether Anthony was one of those players. Jackson prefaced his response with an uncomfortable pause. “I think it’s a known fact,” he finally said, “that Carmelo has a no-trade clause.” It was not exactly the same as saying that Anthony was untouchable, that he was an irreplaceable member of the team. Also, Anthony could waive the no-trade clause in his contract, which runs through the 2018-19 season. On Tuesday, Anthony said that he remained committed to the Knicks. Image Anthony with Derek Fisher, the Knicks’ recently fired coach, during a game in December. Credit Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency “I done been through worse, man,” said Anthony, who added that he still had the now-outsize goal of guiding the Knicks to the playoffs. “I don’t think that’s even a question for me, as far as the playoffs. My goal every season is try to get to the playoffs and try to win a championship.” Anthony has missed seven games with injuries, and that topic kept surfacing during Jackson’s news conference. He noted how impressed he had been with the team’s performance in Anthony’s absence — forget the fact that the Knicks had lost all seven of those games. “We played very well without Carmelo in a number of games this year,” Jackson said, “which made it obvious that the team’s pretty well-balanced.” Jackson did say that the Knicks clearly missed having Anthony on the court in critical, late-game situations. The All-Star Game has become another thorny issue for Anthony. Last season, even though it had become obvious that his balky left knee was causing him all sorts of problems, he insisted on playing in the All-Star Game, which was held at the Garden. Four days later, he had season-ending surgery. In recent weeks, he has dealt with persistent soreness in the knee — a residual and expected side effect of surgery, Anthony said. Fisher, in one of his final public appearances as coach, said last week that tests had revealed no structural damage. Still, Anthony has been hindered by injury. On Monday, Jackson acknowledged that Anthony probably needed some rest. The problem: Anthony wants to play in the All-Star Game, scheduled for Sunday night in Toronto. Last week, Jackson said, he advised Anthony to limit his activity over the course of the week — and in the game itself. For now, Anthony said he wanted to help shepherd his teammates through this latest bout of organizational dysfunction. “Nobody wants to lose their coach,” he said. “Especially for some of the young guys, this is an experience they have to go through. So for me, it’s about keeping those guys intact, in line, and let them know it happens. It’s unfortunate.”

Basketball
Carmelo Anthony
Phil Jackson
Knicks
Derek Fisher
Sports injury


Juvenile Killers and Life Terms: a Case in Point

Abstract: LA BELLE, Pa. — To this day, Maurice Bailey goes to sleep trying to understand what happened on Nov. 6, 1993, when as a 15-year-old high school student he killed his 15-year-old girlfriend, Kristina Grill, a classmate who was pregnant with his child. “I go over it pretty much every night,” said Mr. Bailey, now 34, sitting in his brown jumpsuit here at the Fayette State Correctional Institution in western Pennsylvania, where he is serving a sentence of life without parole for first-degree murder. “I don’t want to make excuses. It’s a horrible act I committed. But as you get older, your conscience and insight develop. I’m not the same person.” Every night, Bobbi Jamriska tries to avoid going over that same event. Ms. Jamriska, Kristina’s sister, was a 22-year-old out for a drink with friends when she got the news. Ten months later, their inconsolable mother died of complications from pneumonia. Weeks later, their grandmother died. “During that year, I buried four generations of my family,” Ms. Jamriska said at the dining room table of her Pittsburgh house, taking note of her sister’s unborn child. “This wrecked my whole life. It completely changed the person I was.” When the Supreme Court in June banned mandatory life sentences without parole for those under age 18 convicted of murder, it offered rare hope to more than 2,000 juvenile offenders like Mr. Bailey. But it threw Ms. Jamriska and thousands like her into anguished turmoil at the prospect that the killers of their loved ones might walk the streets again. The ruling did not specify whether it applied retroactively to those in prison or to future juvenile felons. As state legislatures and courts struggle for answers, the clash of the two perspectives represented by Mr. Bailey and Ms. Jamriska is shaping the debate. Resentencing hearings have begun in a few places, but very slowly. The governor of Iowa commuted the mandatory life sentences of his state’s juvenile offenders but said they had to stay in jail for 60 years before seeking parole, which critics said amounted to life in prison. Some Iowa resentencing is starting in courts despite that proclamation. In Florida, a few hearings are in early stages even though an intermediate court ruled that juveniles serving mandatory life terms did not have the right to be resentenced. In North Carolina, life without parole has been changed from a requirement to an option, with a 25-year minimum sentence for those seeking parole. Here in Pennsylvania, which has the most juvenile offenders serving life terms — about 480 — the State Supreme Court is examining retroactivity while the legislature works on a bill that would put felons like Mr. Bailey behind bars for a minimum of 35 years. The United States Supreme Court decision said that sentences of life without parole for juveniles failed to take account of the role of the offender in the crime (killer or accomplice), the family background (stable or abusive) and the incomplete brain development of the young. Recent research has found that youths are prone to miscalculate risks and consequences, and that their moral compasses are not fully developed. They can change as they get older. Mr. Bailey was a good student with no criminal record. He is black and Ms. Grill was white, and many classmates thought of them as a chic couple. “Reese was someone everyone wanted to be friends with, and so was Krissy,” said Shavera Maxwell, a former classmate, using the couple’s nicknames. “They were deeply in love, and she wanted to keep the baby. He didn’t.” Kristina’s father, who did not live at home, was known for a bigoted attitude, so Kristina kept her relationship with Maurice secret from him. Maurice’s father, an electrical engineer who had tensions with white co-workers, also disapproved of the interracial romance. One day when he came home early, he caught the couple in bed. He threw her out and beat Maurice, knocking his head into a wall. Maurice’s mother, Debra Bailey, felt differently. She welcomed Kristina into her home. “Krissy’s 15th birthday was celebrated with a barbecue in our backyard,” said Ms. Bailey, a database coordinator at Carnegie Mellon University, who is now divorced from Maurice’s father. “Her family didn’t come. Those two were too young to be doing what they were doing, but I told her that if she got pregnant, we would deal with it.” Kristina told a friend, Pamela Cheeks, the night before she was killed that she was about to tell her family about her pregnancy and that she was meeting Maurice the next day to discuss their future, Ms. Cheeks said in an interview. In her diary, Kristina wrote that Maurice “better show up” at their agreed time and place. Maurice did meet Kristina that Saturday afternoon at an elementary school playground. He came with a knife, stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and upper body and left her on the ground. Before leaving, he told the police at the time, he zipped up her jacket in a vain effort to stem the bleeding. He hid the knife in the woods and went home. In the prison interview, he said he remembered very little of the event except that right after stabbing Kristina, her mother, whom he had never met, suddenly came into his mind. When he returned home, the first person he saw was his father. He said he felt an odd sense of relief that the source of tension between them was gone. Neighborhood youngsters came upon Kristina’s body. Police officers went to her home, where they found her diary with detailed entries of her relationship with Maurice. When the police went to the Bailey home in the middle of that night and woke up Maurice, his mother recalls that he said to them, “I figured you’d come.” Maurice’s legal defense was built around the pressures he had faced. His father testified in court that he had told Maurice that if Kristina got pregnant, he would kill him. Maurice’s grades were declining as he spent more time with Kristina; he was trying unsuccessfully to break up with her, losing control, growing afraid. His petition for a new hearing will argue that the pressures he felt as a 15-year-old — a violent father, a pregnant girlfriend — are unique to youth and therefore covered by the Supreme Court ruling. An adult, his lawyers will argue, would have reacted differently. But Kristina’s sister, Ms. Jamriska, said there was no escaping the brutality of the crime and its premeditation. As she put it: “There are many ways of dealing with pressure. You can run away. I don’t care if you’re 5 or 50, you know that killing is wrong. If you murder your girlfriend and unborn baby, I don’t know if you can come back from that.” She added that she felt that much discussion of juvenile crime shied away from the horrors of the acts. “They often show pictures of the killers looking like kids who could be trick-or-treating,” she said. Ms. Jamriska, 41, who works in marketing for medical equipment, is active in a group of families of victims, the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers . She said that such offenders received almost no rehabilitation in prison and that letting them out was not only unfair to victims’ families but also posed a risk. In the two-hour conversation in prison, Mr. Bailey did not entirely dispute that. Like others serving life sentences, he has not been allowed to take classes or vocational training because it is viewed as a waste of resources. He has taken an interest in cooking and prepares inmates’ meals from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. each day. He has a good record of behavior in prison. Since the Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Bailey and other juvenile offenders have begun talking about the decision and themselves. “We discuss it while working out in the yard,” Mr. Bailey said, his bulked-up arms evidence of his two-hour daily exercise routine. “We are having the same debates on it as you are outside. Years ago, I’d have said, ‘Just let us out.’ But if the wrong juvenile lifer is let out and he goes off and kills again, it could ruin it for the rest of us. I know that I would never commit such an act again.” Ms. Jamriska said there was no way to predict that. “There are thousands of family members who can’t deal with it at all,” she said. “They thought this was behind them and now discover that they may have to relive the horrors again, return to the court again. Whatever sense of closure they had is gone. We were stripped of finality by five people in Washington.”

Juvenile Delinquency
Murders and Attempted Murders
Sentences (Criminal)
Supreme Court
Prisons and Prisoners
Probation and Parole
United States


Obstacle for Iraq’s Olympic Team

Abstract: BAGHDAD, May 21 (Reuters) — A dispute erupted between Iraq’s government and its Olympic committee on Wednesday that could jeopardize the country’s participation in the Beijing Olympics. Less than three months before the start of the Beijing Games, an Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, announced that the cabinet had decided to disband the Iraqi Olympic committee. He said the committee was illegitimate because it lacked a quorum and had failed to hold new elections. A temporary committee would be formed, headed by the Ministry for Youth and Sports, which would hold elections for a new Olympic committee within three months, he said. The head of Iraq’s Olympic committee, Bashar Mustafa accused the ministry of “blatant interference to control and undermine the work of the Iraqi Olympic committee.” “We received a notification from the international committee,” he said. “They will suspend the membership of Iraq if this decision is implemented, so we cannot participate in Beijing.” The International Olympic Committee, sensitive to outside interference with national Olympic committees, backed the Iraqi committee and asked the government to respect the committee’s autonomy. The Beijing Games open Aug. 8, and Iraq planned to send a small team despite violence that has killed more than 100 athletes in the country since the 2003 United States-led invasion.


Red Sox Hand Weaver His First Loss

Abstract: Dustin Pedroia fouled off nine pitches in a 13-pitch at-bat against Jered Weaver before lining a go-ahead two-run single that helped Boston beat the Los Angeles Angels , 9-5, at Fenway Park on Monday. “He has a way of doing that,” Red Sox Manager Terry Francona said of Pedroia. “He fights. He doesn’t give in.” Two innings later, David Ortiz hit a two-run homer during a six-run burst that broke the game open. The loss was Weaver’s first of the season. Scratched Sunday because of a stomach virus, Weaver (6-1) gave up three runs and six hits, struck out six and walked one in six innings. He was trying to become the first pitcher since 1891 to go 7-0 by May 2. Sadie McMahon of the Baltimore Orioles from the American Association was the last to open 7-0 by the second day of May. It was Boston’s second straight win after four losses in five games, and improved its record to 5-0 against the Angels this season. The Red Sox, who swept four games in Anaheim from April 21 through 24, have beaten Los Angeles 14 of the past 15 games. ETHIER EXTENDS STREAK TO 28 Andre Ethier of the Los Angeles Dodgers hit safely for the 28th straight game, putting him halfway to the record 56-game streak by Joe DiMaggio in 1941. Ethier hit a run-scoring single in the hole that Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro could not control with two outs in the fifth inning. Ethier’s streak is the longest by a Dodgers player since Willie Davis set the franchise record with a 31-game streak in 1969. ATHLETICS 5, RANGERS 4 Hideki Matsui hit the first pitch of the bottom of the 10th inning from Darren Oliver into the right-field seats for a game-winning home run, lifting Oakland over the Texas Rangers. The rare Monday matinee game drew an announced attendance of only 9,193. “Hopefully after today’s game, there will be 100 more people,” Matsui joked. WHITE SOX 6, ORIOLES 2 Paul Konerko homered twice for Chicago and Mark Buehrle pitched six and two-thirds scoreless innings to win for the first time since opening day. Konerko hit a two-run home run and a solo shot for the White Sox, who ended a five-game losing streak and avoided a four-game sweep by Baltimore. It was Chicago’s first win at home since April 12. NATIONALS 2, GIANTS 0 Tom Gorzelanny allowed three hits in eight sharp innings against a struggling San Francisco lineup, and Michael Morse and Jerry Hairston Jr. drove in runs for host Washington. Gorzelanny (1-2) had not lasted eight innings in a game since Aug. 12, 2007, when he threw a shutout for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Giants. Madison Bumgarner (0-5) retired Washington’s first 12 batters and didn’t allow an earned run but wound up with the loss because of two unearned runs in the seventh, his last inning. MARLINS 6, CARDINALS 5 Mike Stanton hit a tying home run in the fifth inning and tripled and scored the go-ahead run in the eighth to lift Florida at St. Louis. The Marlins improved to 18-9 — the franchise’s best start — and are tied with the Phillies for the National League East lead. BRAVES 6, BREWERS 2 Alex Gonzalez hit a three-run double to give host Atlanta the lead, and the Braves finally solved Brewers starter Yovani Gallardo. Gallardo (2-2) began the day 3-0 with a 0.96 earned run average in five career starts against Atlanta, including a two-hit shutout in a 1-0 win on April 5 in Milwaukee. The four runs he allowed in the sixth matched his total allowed over 371/3 innings in his first five starts against the Braves. FREESE OUT 9-12 WEEKS St. Louis Cardinals third baseman David Freese will have surgery on his broken left hand and is expected to miss 9 to 12 weeks. Freese was hit in the hand by a pitch from Atlanta reliever Scott Linebrink on Sunday.

Baseball
Texas Rangers
Oakland Athletics
Matsui Hideki
Boston Red Sox
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim


Speaking Out for Health Care Act, Obama Says Millions Will Get Rebates

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama, slipping back into his episodic role as a vigorous campaigner for his new health care act, said Thursday that thanks to the law, more than 8.5 million Americans are getting rebates this summer from their insurance providers. Mr. Obama was joined by families who have benefited from a provision in the law, which requires health insurers to spend at least 80 percent of the revenue from premiums on medical care rather than on administrative costs. Insurers who fail to meet that benchmark must reimburse customers, a process that began in 2012. “Last year, millions of Americans opened letters from their insurance companies, but instead of the usual dread that comes with getting a bill, they were pleasantly surprised with a check,” Mr. Obama said in a midday ceremony at the White House. The checks typically amount to no more than a few hundred dollars. But the president, recounting the stories of middle-class families arrayed on the stage behind him, celebrated these modest windfalls as an early sign of the tangible benefits of the law. For Mr. Obama, it was a high-profile return to a debate in which his voice has sometimes seemed absent. For example, he has said nothing publicly about the administration’s decision to delay for a year a part of the law dealing with employer-provided insurance. With the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voting yet again this week to repeal the Affordable Care Act, however, he seized on new statistics that demonstrate the law is driving down premiums in New York , California and several other states. The Department of Health and Human Services released a report Thursday asserting that in 11 states and the District of Columbia, proposed health insurance premiums for 2014 were nearly 20 percent lower than the administration had projected. “Today’s report shows that the Affordable Care Act is working to increase transparency and competition among health insurance plans and drive premiums down,” Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said in a statement. In New York, state insurance regulators said they had approved rates for 2014 that were an average of at least 50 percent lower than those now available. Administration officials attribute much of that decline to online purchasing exchanges, set up by the law, which they say encourage more competition among insurance providers. Thursday’s choreographed event in the East Room was intended to put the White House back on the offensive on health care, after a messy period following its decision to delay requiring employers with more than 50 employees to offer health insurance, or pay a penalty. The delay came after heavy pressure from businesses, which said the law was too complex and cumbersome to implement on time, and it provided critics with fresh ammunition for their claim that the law is putting unfair burdens on individuals and employers. Republicans did not let up on Thursday, claiming that the benefits extolled by Mr. Obama would be more than offset by higher costs. In some cases, they did not even wait for him to speak. “Even though we expect the president today to tout about $500 million of these types of refunds, what he won’t say is that next year, Obamacare will impose a new sales tax on the purchase of health insurance that will cost Americans about $8 billion,” said the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “That’s a 16 to 1 ratio!” In a statement after Mr. Obama spoke, Speaker John A. Boehner said: “The picture the president paints of his health care law looks nothing like the reality facing struggling American families. They know that the law is turning out to be a train wreck.” Mr. Obama dismissed these arguments as political gamesmanship in Washington, belied by the statistics from the states. As for the House’s latest vote to repeal the act, he said Republicans were “refighting old battles” rather than confronting the nation’s problems. “I recognize that there are still a lot of folks — in this town at least — who are rooting for this law to fail,” he said. “Some of them seem to think that this law is about me. It’s not. I already have really good health care.”

Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Health Insurance
Rebates Refunds
Barack Obama
US Politics


Musharraf Defends Actions After Taking Oath

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan , Nov. 29 — President Pervez Musharraf was sworn in to a second five-year presidential term today, a day after stepping down as military chief. He warned foreign diplomats assembled for the ceremony not to force democracy and human rights on developing countries, but to let them evolve in their own time. Dressed in a traditional black tunic favored by civilian leaders, a somber Mr. Musharraf took an oath before a gathering of Pakistani dignitaries and diplomats. He resigned his post as military chief Wednesday, after eight years of military rule, under heavy pressure at home and abroad. He repeated his regrets to be leaving the army after 46 years. In a speech after taking the oath, he defended his record in power, saying that he had always intended to lead the country toward democracy and to remove his uniform, but had to act in the interests of Pakistan’s stability. He said he had to impose emergency rule on Nov. 3 and delay removing his uniform because of a clash between state institutions, namely the judiciary and the government, and the growing threat of terrorism. “There is an unrealistic or even impractical obsession with your form of democracy, human rights and civil liberties, which you have taken centuries to acquire and which you expect us to adopt in a few years, in a few months,” he said, addressing the diplomats. “We want democracy; I am for democracy. We want human rights, we want civil liberties, but we will do it our way, as we understand our society, our environment, better than anyone in the West,” he said. Mr. Musharraf’s election to another presidential term, and his swearing in, remain controversial. In his oath he vowed “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” of Pakistan, even though he suspended the Constitution three weeks ago when he imposed emergency rule and introduced a provisional constitutional order as military chief. The emergency remains in place, and before resigning from his military post he transferred the powers to rescind the emergency to the presidency. The presidential oath was administered by the current Supreme Court Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, who was appointed after Mr. Musharraf imposed the emergency and suspended the previous Supreme Court. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and a number of other Supreme Court judges remain under house arrest, as do four senior advocates who work at the Supreme Court. The advocates were challenging Mr. Musharraf’s eligibility to run for another presidential term and the Supreme Court was about to rule on his eligibility when Mr. Musharraf imposed the emergency. In his speech today, Mr. Musharraf welcomed the return from exile of the opposition leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, saying their return was "good" for political reconciliation in the country, The Associated Press reported. The two leaders, both former prime ministers, returned from exile abroad in recent weeks to lead their parties in parliamentary elections scheduled for January, and both have called for Mr. Musharraf to give up his military role and lift the state of emergency. But Mr. Musharraf said he only hoped they would “move forward toward a conciliatory, civilized, democratic and political environment in the future." Neither Ms. Bhutto nor Mr. Sharif were present at today’s ceremony in the state palace in Islamabad, The A.P reported. In the eastern city of Lahore, at least 250 lawyers led protests against Mr. Musharraf’s swearing-in, clashing with police in violence that left several of the police and lawyers injured, Reuters reported. Chanting "Go, Musharraf, Go!", the lawyers, in black suits and white shirts, attempted to push their way past riot police who fought them back with batons outside the Lahore law courts, Reuters reported. "We are not scared,” said one lawyer, Malik Mohammad Arshad, whose eye was swollen and head was bleeding after a brick hit him on the head, Reuters reported. “We don’t accept Musharraf even without his uniform. He has to go." Eleven lawyers and three policemen were injured in the clashes, and three lawyers were arrested, officials said, according to the news agency.

Musharraf Pervez
Pakistan
Politics and Government
Appointments and Executive Changes


Faulty Switch on Freight Elevator Is Suspected in Building Worker’s Fatal Fall

Abstract: The inquiry into the death of a Manhattan building superintendent who fell five stories in an elevator shaft on Friday is focused on devices meant to keep the elevator in place when an operator is not inside, officials said on Saturday. The superintendent, identified as Kieran Casey, 46, of Point Lookout, N.Y., had taken the manually operated car to the fifth floor and got off. Later, as he tried to step back in, the car was not there, and he fell to his death. Charles Ratzer, a spokesman for the city’s Buildings Department, said it appeared that a switch that should have prevented the car from moving when the cab gate was open was blocked, and the manual run lever failed to stay in neutral, allowing the car to move without an operator. City records indicated that the building, at 29 West 36th Street, had a history of elevator violations. According to inspection records on the Buildings Department’s Web site, the building has four elevators and at least 14 active violations dating to June 2000, including at least four for the freight elevator. The elevator was last inspected on Feb. 20 by a private elevator inspection firm. The firm noted a defect, which was not specified in the records, and the Buildings Department issued a violation. The department has ordered the elevator shut down until further notice, Mr. Ratzer said. The prewar building, between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, was bought this year by Broadway 36th Realty, according to city records. Company officials could not be reached for comment on Saturday. The accident mystified some of the commercial tenants of the building, who knew Mr. Casey as hard-working and friendly. “It was a freak accident, because that elevator is manual,” said Larry Santos, a sales manager for TNB Fashion on the ground floor. “There is no way that elevator moves unless you have somebody inside the elevator pull the lever.” At Mr. Casey’s home in Point Lookout, on Long Island, neighbors and relatives filed in and out of the house on Saturday. Mr. Casey was married and had two children, a boy, 14, and a girl, 10. “He loved his kids,” said his son, Kieran Jr., as he sat on the front stoop with an uncle. “He was always great. He loved the Giants, he loved the Yankees, the Rangers. He loved sports.” Katherine Gleeson, Mr. Casey’s sister-in-law, said he often took his children fishing. “I just think of how much he loved his family,” Mrs. Gleeson said, “He was a really fun-loving and dynamic person.” At his building, Mr. Casey was known to stand at the freight entrance and help with deliveries, wheeling carts of fabric and other goods from trucks into the freight elevator. Mr. Santos said he made everyone feel welcome. “He would joke around with you like a little kid, you know,” Mr. Santos said. Mr. Santos said Mr. Casey had told him he had worked as an elevator operator for 17 years before recently becoming superintendent. Mr. Casey’s death came at a time of increased scrutiny of the more than 50,000 elevators across the city, prompted by a string of accidents. Last month, a 5-year-old boy, Jacob Neuman, was killed in the Taylor-Wythe public housing complex in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when he tried to escape from an elevator that was stuck between floors, lost his footing, and fell 10 stories.

Elevators and Escalators
Accidents and Safety
Building Service Employees
Buildings Department