Michigan State: Fifth in the Nation, Yet Still Second Fiddle to Michigan

Abstract: EAST LANSING, Mich. — After its come-from-behind win over Baylor in the Cotton Bowl in January, Michigan State ’s football team, as tradition dictates, was presented with commemorative rings. The walnut-size mementos celebrated the 42-41 victory as well as the team’s 11-2 record. But one small section of each ring’s limited real estate displayed something else: the score of a blowout over a team that wound up 5-7. In tiny raised letters, it read, “ MSU 35 UM 11 .” No matter what the Spartans do, it seems, there is no escaping what they do against Michigan. “Michigan’s like, ‘Oh, we’re classy, upscale,’ ” Michigan State left tackle Jack Conklin said as he sat in the Skandalaris Football Center on a scorching July day. Not far away, a clock counted down what was at the time the 89 days 3 hours 58 minutes 4 seconds left before the teams meet on Oct. 17 in Ann Arbor. “We’re always the underdog, no matter what,” Conklin said. “No matter what, they come out and act like they’re the best team in the nation.” Image Michigan State defeated Baylor in the Cotton Bowl in January, but the ring commemorating that victory also notes the final score (35-11) of the Spartans' win over Michigan last October. Nearly every sports team has at one time or another claimed to be overlooked, underappreciated, insulted. Right now, though, few teams can more legitimately claim that the world is withholding the respect they deserve than Michigan State. The fifth-ranked Spartans have amassed double-digit victory totals in four of the past five seasons, and they have ended the last two campaigns ranked in the top five. Last season, they won the Cotton Bowl. The year before, they beat Stanford in the Rose Bowl. Yet a casual disrespect seems to plague the program. Last December, the College Football Playoff selection committee quietly slipped Mississippi State from two spots behind Michigan State to one ahead in its final rankings even though neither team had played a game after the previous rankings. More recently, prognosticators have praised Michigan State and then mentioned, in the same tone with which one tells a dog he is a “good boy,” that the Spartans’ national title chances are faint because to make the four-team playoff, they must defeat No. 1 Ohio State, the defending champion, in Columbus. The Spartans’ inferiority complex is compounded — this year and always — by the Wolverines. The rivalry contains the typical resentment of the self-effacing land-grant school against the glamorous flagship state university, and it is aggravated by Michigan’s view of itself as eternal front-runner (its fight song is called “The Victors”) and confirmed by Michigan’s status as the winningest program in college football history. Even the official name of the Wolverines’ home field must be irritating to the Spartans — Michigan Stadium, as though it were the only one in the state. Making matters worse, this has been one of the most buzzed-about off-seasons in Michigan history. Jim Harbaugh , a former Wolverines quarterback, has returned to his alma mater as coach after a decade in which he rejuvenated both Stanford and the San Francisco 49ers. Since his hiring, he has been omnipresent, giving quotable interviews , barnstorming the South and even going shirtless in photographs like some Midwestern version of Vladimir Putin. Image Jeremy Langford (33) rushing for a touchdown in the first quarter of last year’s win over Michigan. The Spartans have won six of the past seven meetings between the rivals. Credit Leon Halip/Getty Images On Thursday night, unranked Michigan lost at Utah, 24-17, in one of the week’s most hyped games. Michigan State will open on Friday at Western Michigan. Through it all, Michigan State has quietly stewed, knowing that even its successes have been viewed through maize-and-blue-colored glasses. At Spartans Coach Mark Dantonio’s news conference on national signing day in February, he said: “We’re not selling hope here. We’re selling results.” It was an innocuous observation about his program, which, after years of failing to land the most sought-after prospects, was poised to announce one of the best recruiting classes in the nation. But the comment was widely interpreted as a sly insult toward Harbaugh and the team down the road. “You know,” Dantonio said months later, “it really wasn’t a statement directed at anybody.” ‘Little Brother’ Grows Up For Spartans players who grew up in Michigan, the rivalry can feel personal. For coaches, it can feel like a burden. When Nick Saban left Michigan State for Louisiana State in 1999, he complained about what he considered a perpetual second-class status. Image Jim Harbaugh, a former Michigan quarterback, has returned to his alma mater as coach. Credit Tony Ding/Associated Press “We were never No. 1,” he said. “That was always Michigan. It was always ‘U.M. this or that.’ ” Harlon Barnett, Michigan State’s co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach, played for the Spartans in the 1980s. He recalled the former coach George Perles passing along the lore (more or less historically accurate) that Michigan had once blocked Michigan State’s entry into the conference, and using it as motivation. “I heard, ‘They didn’t want you in the Big Ten,’ ” Barnett said, adding, “We still ride that thing, man.” In Michigan State’s first game against Michigan in the Dantonio era, in 2007, the Spartans blew a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter and lost, 28-24. After the game, Michigan running back Mike Hart said : “Sometimes you get your little brother excited when you’re playing basketball and let him get the lead. Then you just come back and take it back.” The phrase “little brother” has defined the rivalry since. Yet in recent years, perception has pushed up against a new reality. Last season, the Spartans’ only losses came against Oregon and Ohio State, the teams that played for the national title. The Spartans’ defense has ranked in the top 10 nationally the last four years, and it has been the toughest against the run in the Big Ten over the same span. This season, the Spartans expect to be just as good. Maybe even better. They return the senior quarterback Connor Cook, a likely first-round N.F.L. draft pick; a top-ranked offensive line led by Conklin and center Jack Allen; and a group of imposing defensive linemen. Video The former San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh spoke after he signed a deal to return to the University of Michigan to become the next football coach of the Wolverines. Credit Credit Carlos Osorio/Associated Press Perhaps the best way to understand how Michigan State has achieved success in eight seasons under Dantonio is to consider the career of one of the players, defensive end Shilique Calhoun. Coming out of Middletown North High School in New Jersey in 2011, Calhoun was still a project. “I didn’t know much about football,” he said. “My first year of football was my freshman year of high school.” The Spartans were the only Big Ten team that offered him a scholarship, but now most of them probably wish they had. Calhoun, a 6-foot-5, 250-pound senior, was fourth in the Big Ten in sacks the past two seasons. Most projections have him being selected in the first round of next year’s draft. Dantonio takes obvious pride in Calhoun, the latest in a line of what he and his coaches considered undervalued prospects. “Darqueze Dennard, from Georgia, had one scholarship offer,” Dantonio said, referring to the former Spartans cornerback who now plays for the Cincinnati Bengals. “Tulsa dropped him. He had none. We came in, and we took him. First-round pick.” Image Shilique Calhoun sacking quarterback Connor Cook during the Spartans’ spring game. Michigan State was the only Big Ten team that offered Calhoun a scholarship, and he is now widely projected to be a first-round N.F.L. draft pick. Credit Al Goldis/Associated Press He continued, “Le’Veon Bell, who I saw was just ranked the 16th-ranked player in the N.F.L. currently, had Bowling Green and us.” Bell now plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers and is an essential cog in their offense. Calhoun might have followed them to the N.F.L. after his junior season, especially after the coach who had recruited him to East Lansing, the defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi, left to become the University of Pittsburgh’s coach. But the new defensive co-coordinators, Barnett and Mike Tressel, had also been at Michigan State for Calhoun’s entire career. His decision to return for his final season demonstrated the pragmatic basis of Dantonio’s loyalty. According to Barnett, when Dantonio was hired away from Cincinnati after three seasons, he offered everyone on his staff a job at Michigan State. “I brought an environment here that had been worked on for three years at Cincinnati,” Dantonio said. “We had a plan; we had three years of background. If you were in kindergarten and are now in 12th grade and have the same teacher in your classroom teaching the same thing, you’re pretty proficient at it.” A String of Big Games Dantonio, 59, has a championship ring from his final season as Jim Tressel’s defensive coordinator at Ohio State but covets one of his own at Michigan State. This summer, he pointed to Michigan State’s history as a national champion — the Spartans claimed six titles from 1951 to 1966 — when he said, “Last year, we fell short of our goals.” Image Michigan State fans at Spartan Stadium before the game against Michigan last October. Credit Leon Halip/Getty Images Cook said he understood that his play at quarterback could be the difference between another top-10 season and something more. The mistakes he made in last year’s loss to Ohio State — a double post to Josiah Price that should have been a touchdown, a screen pass that was batted down — remain as fresh today as they were that night. A title shot will not come easily. Week 2 presents a rematch with No. 7 Oregon at home. Week 3 brings a potential trap against Air Force and its option offense. The Spartans’ games against Ohio State and Nebraska are on the road, and the skeptics are probably right: A loss in Columbus on Nov. 21 would most likely prevent Michigan State from playing for the Big Ten title, in turn probably locking it out of the national title playoff bracket. “Ohio State — I think that’ll be the game that defines how our season ends up,” Conklin said, adding, “Ohio State’s, too.” Before that, there is another game that no Spartan is looking past: the Oct. 17 visit to Ann Arbor. In the weight room, Michigan State’s shirts have chips on the shoulders. Before one game last season, poker chips were handed out. But there is a difference between feeling you have something to prove and wondering if you are up to proving it. To borrow Dantonio’s words, it is not unlike the difference between selling hope and selling results. When pressed on whether his team embraced the role of underdog — the word Conklin had used to describe the Spartans despite their No. 5 ranking — Dantonio’s face contorted. “‘Underdog?’” he said, almost snarling. “We’re not an underdog.”

College football
Big Ten Conference
Jim Harbaugh
Mark Dantonio
Michigan State
University of Michigan


Online Chat, as Inspired by Real Chat

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Compared with other forms of human interaction, online social networking is really not all that social. People visit each other’s MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It’s like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator. Now a new wave of Silicon Valley companies is bringing live socializing back into a medium that has, in the parlance of the technologists, grown overly asynchronous. Vivaty, a start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif., is creating 3-D virtual chat rooms that people can add to the Web pages and social networking profiles on the sites where they spend most of their Internet time. The company has been quietly working on its technology for three years and will begin a private test period on Facebook this week in advance of a wider introduction this summer. It is backed by the blue-chip venture capital firms Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mohr Davidow Ventures. Vivaty turns a flat profile page into a three-dimensional live chat room. Users choose characters to represent themselves from a list of preternaturally handsome avatars — a requirement for any such service — and proceed to one of a dozen environments, like a gothic urban warehouse or seaside villa. With videogame-like precision, they can then navigate that virtual space, which may feature their Facebook photos hanging from the walls and a YouTube video playing on a widescreen TV. Up to 15 others can choose avatars and enter the same room at the same time for text-based live socializing. “We want to take all your content on the Web and move it to a more visually immersive, immediate experience,” said Keith McCurdy, chief executive at Vivaty and a former vice president at the big game maker Electronic Arts. Similar online services like Second Life and games like World of Warcraft have existed for years. But they are not accessible through a Web browser. Instead they require users to install large and cumbersome programs and have plenty of Internet bandwidth for a satisfyingly immediate experience. Vivaty chat rooms, on the other hand, will be scattered across the Web. A user can stick an existing Vivaty virtual environment, or create a unique one, wherever HTML code can be imbedded. The company plans to make money partly by allowing companies to start their own virtual rooms on their own Web sites, where they can control the décor and their marketing messages. Vivaty’s technology and business plan may be unique, but its overall goal is not. The entrepreneurs and investors behind other “live Web” companies say that the intermittent socializing on most Web sites ignores the primal human instinct that once drove people to the town square and now brings them into real-world social groups to watch the Super Bowl or the latest episode of “Battlestar Galactica.” “A lot of basic human communication needs have been lost in this age of siloed, one-to-one communications,” said Roelof Botha, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. “At the end of the day, we are a social species.” Mr. Botha, one of the original backers of YouTube, is behind live Web companies like TokBox, a year-old start-up that lets people conduct face-to-face video chats on the Web, and Meebo, a two-year-old Web messaging company that introduced a new generation of networked chat rooms to the Web last year. Chat rooms were an integral part of the online experience for users of early services like CompuServe and America Online. Characterized by names like “Single and Looking,” they often devolved into noisy chaos. The first wave of Web technology helped drive these unruly conversations close to extinction. The Web’s static pages made it poorly suited for rapid-fire, live communication. Live chat was relegated to separate software tools like instant messenger programs. Newer Web programming tools provide flexibility for updates inside Web pages. But now there is a new problem: Internet users are spread thinly across millions of Web sites and blogs and various social networks. Last year, Meebo’s chief executive, Seth Sternberg — who as a teenager was a chat-room moderator for America Online — introduced Meebo Rooms, a kind of 2-D version of Vivaty’s cartoonscape. Meebo Rooms can play host to the same crowd on more than one Web site. For instance, there are around 100 people at any given time talking in the Meebo Room for the Showtime program “Big Brother After Dark.” Half of those might enter on Showtime’s site, while the other half might join from fan’s pages on MySpace. But they all conduct one live conversation. Mr. Sternberg asserts that the dialogue is cleaner in his new live chats than on the old AOL chats he used to patrol. “Whenever chat rooms are embedded on a site with context, and everyone is there because they are interested in the topic, the conversation is good,” he said. Other new live services are popping up quickly. This month, Facebook said it would introduce a live chat feature. Live video streaming services, from Yahoo and start-ups like Kyte, Ustream.TV and Justin.TV, are also proliferating. Those companies include live chat features as well, so users can discuss what they are watching in real time. Mr. McCurdy from Vivaty said he did not expect these live services to travel far across the generational divide. The younger video-game generation “has more craving for contact,” he said. “They are using their computers for emotional experiences, and a video-game experience is more emotional than looking at a blue and white Facebook page.”

Computers and the Internet
Facebook.com
Vivaty
Social Networking


Ecuador: Police Officers Convicted

Abstract: A court in Ecuador has convicted six police officers of security crimes for taking part in a protest in which President Rafael Correa was briefly detained . The officers include the former chief of security for the nation’s Congress and five members of the detachment there. Hundreds of police officers protested on Sept. 30 over a legislative proposal to cut their promotion bonuses. Police officers roughed up Mr. Correa and trapped him for hours in a police hospital. He was rescued by army commandos firing assault rifles and concussion grenades. About a dozen people died.

Police
Decisions and Verdicts
Correa Rafael
Ecuador


Ousted Thai Leader Sends Message

Abstract: BANGKOK (Reuters) — Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra called for national reconciliation on Saturday and urged the military not to meddle in a parliamentary vote for a new leader next week. Mr. Thaksin, who was ousted by the military in a September 2006 coup and lives in exile, spoke in a 20-minute recorded speech shown on big screens to 40,000 supporters at a Bangkok stadium. “May all sides take one step back and respect the results,” he said. “Please don’t use any institution to intervene. Just let the country move forward. Don’t make people suffer more.” Parliament is voting for a new prime minister because Somchai Wongsawat , Mr. Thaksin’s brother-in-law, was forced to step down after a court found his People Power Party guilty of fraud in the December 2007 election that brought it to power. A day after the ruling, the anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy ended a blockade of Bangkok’s main airports that had caused chaos for thousands of travelers. Parliament is expected to vote on Monday, with the opposition Democrat Party favored to emerge at the head of a weak coalition government. Thaksin supporters have accused the military of attempting a soft coup by claiming to have royal backing and pushing small parties from the previous government to form a coalition with the Democrats, a charge the army has denied. The ousted leader urged his rivals to respect the 2007 election results, which his People Power Party won. The court ordered that party and two others in the coalition disbanded. All three have regrouped under new names. Mr. Thaksin was accused of corruption and abuse of power after being re-elected to a second term.

Thailand
Thaksin Shinawatra
Elections
Politics and Government
Somchai Wongsawat


Vettel Wins Italian Grand Prix, but Alonso Earns Cheers

Abstract: MONZA, Italy — As the Italian Grand Prix brought an end to the Formula One season in Europe on Sunday at this celebrated track, Sebastian Vettel of Germany had posted another start-to-finish victory, outpacing Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and taking a formidable step toward his fourth consecutive driver’s championship. But much of the attention before and after the race was on Alonso, Vettel’s main rival for the championship. Although he trailed Vettel’s Red Bull car throughout the 53-lap race to finish second, nearly six seconds back, Alonso was given a hero’s welcome at the finish by a mass of Italian fans chanting “Al-on-so!” as Vettel was met with prolonged booing. Vettel, 26, can afford to take the theatrical flourishes that are common at Monza in stride, having now won 6 of the season’s 12 races, and none more decisively than here. Accordingly, he took the crowd’s reproaches in good humor. “The more they boo me, the better I do,” he said, smiling. He noted that he had built a much larger lead before being advised by his team to bring his car home cautiously after signs of gearbox trouble. “I didn’t have to push that much,” he said “We beat the red guys, so we’re very proud of that,” he added, referring to Alonso and his teammate, Felipe Massa of Brazil. Mark Webber, Vettel’s Red Bull teammate from Australia, finished third. Ferrari has 18 victories at Monza since the Formula One World Championship began here in 1950, and the team came here hoping it could turn around a disappointing season by winning on a high-speed track. With superior speed on low downforce tracks like Monza, Ferrari had been expected to have an advantage here over the Red Bulls. Vettel’s British-based team has relied on its superior aerodynamics, which have performed best on slower, more sinuous tracks, allowing the Red Bull drivers to post faster lap times even with lower straight-line speed than Ferrari and some other teams. But one of the surprises at Monza was that Vettel, with a straight-line speed of 208.2 miles per hour, was only a fraction slower than Alonso, who recorded 209.4 m.p.h. Vettel, whose average speed for the race was 145.5 m.p.h., completed the 190.6 miles in 1 hour 18 minutes 33.35 seconds. His victory gave him a 53-point lead in the championship with 222 points to Alonso’s 169. Britain’s Lewis Hamilton of the Mercedes-Benz team is in third with 141 points. There are seven races left in the 19-race calendar, including the United States Grand Prix a on Nov. 17 in Austin, Tex., and each victory counts for 25 points. Alonso told reporters after the race that he would need a lot of luck to overtake Vettel and win his third world title. “First, Red Bull has to lose and Ferrari has to win,” he said. “There is a very big gap in the championship, and we will need to be lucky in all of the races that remain. And we’ll also need to have some did-not-finishes from the Red Bull team.” But Alonso has some work to do closer to home if he is to mend fences with the Ferrari team. Known for his ultracompetitive and often fractious nature, Alonso upset the Ferrari camp and the company’s chairman, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, when he said after a bad finish in the Hungarian Grand Prix in August that he would welcome for his 32nd birthday “somebody else’s car,” seemingly referring to Vettel’s Red Bull. He was sharply rebuked for that comment by di Montezemolo, who said in effect that he cared more for Ferrari, its reputation and its work force in the small town of Maranello, than he did for the team’s Grand Prix drivers, who, he said, “come and go.” The response by di Montezemolo was widely interpreted as a warning to Alonso that his contract, said to be worth tens of millions of dollars a year and set to run for another three years, could be abrogated unless he became less abrasive. At Monza, matters appeared to take a turn for the worse during qualifying Saturday, when bungled tactics by the Ferrari pit crew appeared to spoil an attempt to have Alonso follow in Massa’s slipstream and gain time in his bid for the pole position by gaining what is known in racing as a “tow.” A broadcast of Alonso’s car-to-pit radio message after he finished fifth in qualifying, two rows behind Vettel, appeared to have him saying to his crew chief, “You’re really idiots, Mamma Mia, guys.” Ferrari officials tried to mitigate the damage by saying that the word he used was “geniuses” not “idiots,” and suggested that the Italian words in each case were similar and prone to be misunderstood by non-Italian speakers. But a race official, who had heard another radio message by Alonso, said that there were two messages, one using the word “idiots” and the other “geniuses.” Alonso sought to mitigate the damage by telling reporters Sunday that they had attempted to stir a controversy out of nothing, and that his relationship with the team was fine. After accepting his second-place trophy on a podium atop the pits after the race, he appeared keen to demonstrate that he had the strong support of Italian Ferrari fans. Remaining on the podium after Vettel left, Alonso waved repeatedly to the crowd, encouraging the chants of his name.


A More Nuanced de Blasio Emerges

Abstract: Bill de Blasio’s runaway success in the polls as a candidate for mayor of New York City was built on crystal-clear convictions, uncompromising stands and black-and-white promises unburdened by the messiness of governing. Now he is embracing a new approach: shades of gray. An immediate end to the Central Park carriage-horse trade? Mr. de Blasio now concedes such a plan will take time and require City Council approval. Wholesale change at the Police Department? Bloomberg-era policies ought to be reviewed, he said recently, not simply thrown out. And at a debate on Tuesday, the candidate endorsed by the city’s forward-looking transportation crowd surprised some supporters with a sudden skepticism about the picnic-table pedestrianization of Times Square. “I have profoundly mixed feelings on this issue,” Mr. de Blasio said, less than two months after lauding the pedestrian plazas as “ wildly successful .” It is a newfound preference for nuance from a candidate best known for a slogan — the ubiquitous “tale of two cities,” a campaign mantra that Mr. de Blasio conspicuously did not utter during the first 55 minutes of the hourlong debate. In the transition from his role as insurgent candidate to the posture of a likely mayor-to-be, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, is sounding more guarded, more careful and, at times, even a bit mushy. Post-primary shifts may come naturally in any election — and the modulations of Mr. de Blasio, a veteran political operator, are more akin to the sanding-down of edges than full-fledged flip-flops. Image With a 40-point lead in the polls, the mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio is now hedging on some formerly flat-out positions. Credit Ángel Franco/The New York Times But with a 40-plus point lead in the polls over his Republican opponent, Joseph J. Lhota, and enjoying broad support among centrists and independents, Mr. de Blasio appears to be wrestling with a more delicate problem than winning enough votes: figuring out how to govern. “Time and again, he slipped into this sense of, ‘Here’s what I have to deal with when I’m mayor,’ ” Fred Siegel, a scholar in residence at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, said of Mr. de Blasio’s performance at the debate this week. “It’s a sign that he’s thinking about what he’s got to do.” Like President Obama after his 2008 presidential victory, Mr. de Blasio is aware he has promised much to a whipped-up fan base that now expects grand changes and big doings from their chosen candidate — and fast. But the byzantine nature of the city’s politics all but dictate that such achievements will not come quickly. “There’s a little bit of expectation-lowering here,” said Doug Muzzio, a political-science professor at Baruch College. “He’s understanding that in order to govern, he needs more nuance. But at the same time, he can’t and he wouldn’t want to disavow the basic thrust of what got him to where he is.” In the debate, Mr. de Blasio at times struggled to articulate his views on transportation, education and real estate development without chaining himself to concrete promises, and he made sure to underscore the city’s looming budget difficulties, as if to warn viewers that lean times could render some plans infeasible. “It is a very hard needle to thread,” said Jeanne Zaino, a professor at Iona College, who, like several political analysts interviewed on Wednesday, said she was struck by the more cautious de Blasio she saw at the debate. “He risks alienating people who thought he was going to be one thing and had great expectations, and then turned out to be just a mayor, a politician.” That risk was on full display on Tuesday after Mr. de Blasio said “the jury’s out” on the future of the Times and Herald Square pedestrian plazas, cherished by many transportation champions. Video The second televised debate between Joseph J. Lhota and Bill de Blasio saw more acrimonious exchanges than in the first encounter. Mr. de Blasio was more defensive, but there were no killer blows. “Hugely disappointing response,” Doug Gordon, an alternative transportation advocate, wrote on Twitter, where Mr. de Blasio’s remarks were met with an outcry of frustration and speculation as to where his true beliefs lay. Mr. Gordon later issued a statement on behalf of the advocacy group StreetsPAC , which endorsed Mr. de Blasio in the primary, saying the group was hopeful that the candidate “misspoke in the heat of a debate in response to a loaded question.” Some advocates, who had heard Mr. de Blasio repeatedly speak in favor of the plazas, were left scratching their heads. “It’s a wake-up call for anyone concerned about street safety that we may be looking at an ongoing effort,” said Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives . It may be that Mr. de Blasio, as he shifts into executive mode, is trying to give himself a bit of breathing room. Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said Mr. de Blasio had been more careful recently to promote plans that required outside approval. His proposed tax surcharge on the wealthy, an early campaign pledge that would pay for prekindergarten classes, is dependent on support from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the State Legislature. “He hasn’t made any commitments that he can’t keep, and that he can’t walk away from,” Ms. Gelinas said of Mr. de Blasio. He may also be facing a more fired-up opponent. Mr. Lhota, who appeared far more aggressive in the debate on Tuesday than at any other point in the general election campaign, was visibly energized on Wednesday as he spoke with reporters. Mr. Lhota suggested that he would abandon a staid campaign persona that had packaged him as a cautious and corporate Republican, rather than the brash, ribald and leather jacket-clad iconoclast he had long been known as. “Did you miss me?” he said to reporters. “I’m back!”

Mayoral races
Bill de Blasio
Joseph J Lhota
NYC
Democrats
Republicans


Legislation Would Regulate Tracking of Cellphone Users

Abstract: WASHINGTON THERE are three things that matter in consumer data collection: location, location, location. E-ZPasses clock the routes we drive. Metro passes register the subway stations we enter. A.T.M.’s record where and when we get cash. Not to mention the credit and debit card transactions that map our trajectories in comprehensive detail — the stores, restaurants and gas stations we frequent; the hotels and health clubs we patronize. Each of these represents a kind of knowing trade, a conscious consumer submission to surveillance for the sake of convenience. But now legislators, regulators, advocacy groups and marketers are squaring off over newer technology: smartphones and mobile apps that can continuously record and share people’s precise movements. At issue is whether consumers are unwittingly acquiescing to pervasive tracking just for the sake of having mobile amenities like calendar, game or weather apps. For Senator Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, the potential hazard is that by compiling location patterns over time, companies could create an intimate portrait of a person’s familial and professional associations, political and religious beliefs, even health status. To give consumers some say in the surveillance, Mr. Franken has been working on a locational privacy protection bill that would require entities like app developers to obtain explicit one-time consent from users before recording the locations of their mobile devices. It would prohibit stalking apps — programs that allow one person to track another person’s whereabouts surreptitiously. The bill, approved last month by the Senate Judiciary Committee, would also require mobile services to disclose the names of the advertising networks or other third parties with which they share consumers’ locations. “Someone who has this information doesn’t just know where you live,” Mr. Franken said during the Judiciary Committee meeting . “They know the roads you take to work, where you drop your kids off at school, the church you attend and the doctors that you visit.” Yet many marketers say they need to know consumers’ precise locations so they can show relevant mobile ads or coupons at the very moment a person is in or near a store. Informing such users about each and every ad network or analytics company that tracks their locations could hinder that hyperlocal marketing, they say, because it could require a new consent notice to appear every time someone opened an app. “Consumers would revolt if this was the case, and applications could be rendered useless,” said Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican, who promulgated industry arguments during the committee meeting. “Worse yet, free applications that rely on advertising could be pushed by the consent requirement to become fee-based.” Mr. Franken’s bill may seem intended simply to protect consumer privacy. But the underlying issue is the future of consumer data property rights — the question of who actually owns the information generated by a person who uses a digital device and whether using that property without explicit authorization constitutes trespassing. Image Credit Adam McCauley In common law, a property intrusion is known as “trespass to chattels.” The Supreme Court invoked the legal concept last January in United States v. Jones , in which it ruled that the government had violated the Fourth Amendment — which protects people against unreasonable search and seizure — by placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car for 28 days without getting a warrant. Some advocacy groups view location tracking by mobile apps and ad networks as a parallel, warrantless commercial intrusion. To these groups, Mr. Franken’s bill suggests that consumers may eventually gain some rights over their own digital footprints. “People don’t think about how they broadcast their locations all the time when they carry their phones. The law is just starting to catch up and think about how to treat this,” says Marcia Hofmann, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation , a digital rights group based in San Francisco. “In an ideal world, users would be able to share the information they want and not share the information they don’t want and have more control over how it is used.” Even some marketers agree. One is Scout Advertising, a location-based mobile ad service that promises to help advertisers pinpoint the whereabouts of potential customers within 100 meters. The service, previously known as ThinkNear and recently acquired by Telenav, a personalized navigation service, works by determining a person’s location; figuring out whether that place is a home or a store, a health club or a sports stadium; analyzing weather and other local conditions; and then showing a mobile ad tailored to the situation. Eli Portnoy, general manager of Scout Advertising, calls the technique “situational targeting.” He says Crunch, the fitness center chain, used the service to show mobile ads to people within three miles of a Crunch gym on rainy mornings. The ad said: “Seven-day pass. Run on a treadmill, not in the rain.” When a person clicks on one of these ads, Mr. Portnoy says, a browser-based map pops up with turn-by-turn directions to the nearest location. Through GPS tracking, Scout Advertising can tell when someone starts driving and whether that person arrives at the site. Despite the tracking, Mr. Portnoy describes his company’s mobile ads as protective of privacy because the service works only with sites or apps that obtain consent to use people’s locations. Scout Advertising, he adds, does not compile data on individuals’ whereabouts over time. Still, he says, if Congress were to enact Mr. Franken’s location privacy bill as written, it “would be a little challenging” for the industry to carry out, because of the number and variety of companies involved in mobile marketing. “We are in favor of more privacy,” Mr. Portnoy says, “but it has to be done within the nuances of how mobile advertising works so it can scale.” A SPOKESMAN for Mr. Franken said the senator planned to reintroduce the bill in the new Congress. It is one of several continuing government efforts to develop some baseline consumer data rights. “New technology may provide increased convenience or security at the expense of privacy and many people may find the trade-off worthwhile,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote last year in his opinion in the Jones case. “On the other hand,” he added, “concern about new intrusions on privacy may spur the enactment of legislation to protect against these intrusions.”

Mobile Apps
Al Franken
Privacy
Regulation and Deregulation
Consumer protection
Legislation
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Online advertising
advertising,marketing
Smartphone


Sweden Suicide Bomb Doesn’t Soil Image of Tolerance

Abstract: STOCKHOLM — As they consider the suicide bombing that recently rocked their country, many Swedes have taken comfort from the attack’s most enduring image, as captured by a security camera: a man in a red jacket kneeling by the dying bomber, asking if there was anything he could do for the man while other bystanders, spying unexploded pipe bombs still strapped to the man’s waist, backed away, shouting, “Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!” As Swedes sigh in relief at the failure of the attack on Saturday that seemed intended to cause mass casualties among Christmas shoppers, they have taken comfort from that aspect of an otherwise shocking scene. Many have described it as exemplifying the compassion and tolerance Sweden prizes as part of its national character — qualities, they say, that must not be surrendered in a new era of terrorist threats. On Wednesday, the Swedish security police released a study of Islamic extremism that was commissioned months ago, but released now to allay public disquiet. A summary said the study had concluded that “the terrorist threat in Sweden” involves fewer “than 200 radicalized individuals,” that “they pose no serious threat to the society and government” and that Sweden’s response should be confined to “preventive measures” — and, by implication, not broader social or political changes. Under questioning, officials said that Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly , the Iraqi-born Swede who the police say was the perpetrator and the only person to die in the attack, was not among the 200 people under surveillance before the bombing. That disclosure was likely to raise fresh questions about the grasp the Swedes have achieved as they monitor extremism among the country’s 400,000 to 500,000 Muslims. One view among diplomats is that the Swedes’ tolerant attitude may have left the security establishment unprepared for the bombing, the first by Islamic extremists in Scandinavia. A resolve not to let the bombing wrench the country from its moorings has been evident in Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. “This is not the path we want to go down,” he said in his initial response to the bombing. “Sweden is an open society which has demonstrated a will that people must be able to come from different backgrounds, believe in different gods, or not believe in any god at all — and be able to live side-by-side, together.” But even as investigators seek the accomplices they believe Mr. Abdaly may have had in Sweden, Britain and the Muslim world, a national debate has begun over the whys, as well as the hows, of the attack. Among the questions are these: Why has the culture of suicide bombing come to Sweden, when it has been one of the most generous countries in Europe in opening its doors to Muslims fleeing war and repression? And why now, when the country has looked on for years as other European capitals, notably London and Madrid, have been the targets of deadly bombings? And why, too, did such a sharp turn come in the life of Mr. Abdaly, who came here as a 10-year-old, his family fleeing the oppression of Saddam Hussein, and gained a reputation in Tranas, the small town where his family settled, as a quiet, well-mannered and amiable boy? One elected official who thinks the time has come for Sweden to get tough, whatever the cost to its tolerant reputation, is Jimmie Akesson, the leader of a right-wing party, the Sweden Democrats. In a September general election the party campaigned on a program calling for a 90 percent cut in immigration . Sweden’s migrant population has soared in recent decades, changing one of the most ethnically homogeneous populations in Europe. Mr. Akesson, whose party won 20 seats in the 349-seat Parliament, said in an interview that the bombing was predictable, considering the unassimilated lives of most Swedish Muslims. “Up to now, other parties have just laughed at us and said there is no serious threat from extremist forms of Islam in Sweden, but now we know there is,” he said. Mr. Akesson argues that Sweden’s approach to multiculturalism has left many Muslims unable to speak Swedish, unreconciled to Swedish laws and mores that conflict with Islamic beliefs and clustered in what amount to ghettos in big cities like Stockholm, Malmo and Gothenburg. “They must adapt to Swedish society, instead of Sweden adapting to them,” he said. On Drottninggatan, the crowded pedestrian mall where Mr. Abdaly attacked, many shoppers walked briskly past when asked to discuss the issue, shaking their heads as if the bombing were too distasteful to consider. But one man who paused said Sweden would have to adapt and become more “realistic” in its policies by assimilating newcomers better. “Should we now shut the door?” said the man, a 55-year-old businessman who gave only his first name, John. “Absolutely not. We have benefited far too much from the foreigners who have come here to do anything like that.” Some Muslims condemned Mr. Abdaly. Abdul Rauf, a 30-year-old from Pakistan with a spiky black beard poking from a hooded parka, said of Mr. Abdaly, “You have to be mad to do something like that.” Had Mr. Rauf, with his Islamic-style beard, been hassled over the bombing? “Not at all,” he said. “Swedish people are very polite, very kind.” But his was not a universal view. Masoud Kamali, a professor of social work who wrote a multivolume report on discrimination in the country, said Sweden lived an illusion in seeing itself as the world’s fairest, least discriminatory society. “When I travel to the United States, people are always saying, ‘Oh, Sweden is very tolerant, very open,’ ” said Mr. Kamali, who arrived from Iran in the 1970s. “It’s an established myth. But it’s not.” Mr. Kamali said Sweden would have to take radical steps to decrease the segregation and marginalization of Muslims, or face what he described as “many burning areas” across the country. He said Swedish governments had followed a social democratic model of equality for decades, emphasizing barriers of class and gender, but ignoring or underestimating the force of ethnic and religious bias. “It’s a question of belonging,” he said. “Are you accepted as you are, living as a true Muslim in a modern European country? “The answer is no, so you have to find something else, and he found the bombing.” He added, “And I can promise you this, it’s going to happen again.”

Abdaly Taimour Abdulwahab al-
Sweden
Stockholm (Sweden)
Terrorism
Islam


Man vs. Marathon

Abstract: BESIDE THE DEAD SEA, Israel — At sunrise, the sky and the water seemed metallic, silver-blue, the color of speed. A sign along Highway 90 said, “Lowest Place on Earth.” Yannis Pitsiladis, scientist and provocateur, had come here for the same reason that pilgrims wheezing with bronchitis and emphysema have headed to this low-altitude divide between Israel and Jordan. He had come for the oxygen. A quarter-mile below sea level at the Dead Sea, where the barometric pressure is high, there is about 5 percent more oxygen to breathe. The naturally enriched air had been shown to increase exercise capacity in those with chronic lung disease. Would it do the same, Pitsiladis wondered, for the world’s fastest distance runners? Carrying a hand-held barometer and mapping elevation shifts in the terrain with his smartphone, he had arrived on a scouting mission for a quixotic project. He wanted to redefine the limits of human endurance by training a man to run a marathon in less than two hours without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The Sub2 Project, as it is called, is an attempt at the extraordinary — to reduce by nearly three minutes the world record of 2 hours 2 minutes 57 seconds, set at the 2014 Berlin Marathon by Dennis Kimetto of Kenya. A marathoner breaking the two-hour barrier would finish more than six-tenths of a mile ahead of Kimetto, a veritable eternity in distance running. Some consider the goal impossible. Many are suspicious because of widespread doping in track and field, and almost no one considers the feat achievable anytime soon. In some ways, a goal of two hours is as arbitrary as the distance of the marathon itself: 26 miles 385 yards, established at the 1908 London Olympics, in part to accommodate viewing by the British royal family. But round numbers lend clarity to accomplishment. To run under two hours without the use of banned drugs would be to set a record that would stand with the four-minute mile as an ultimate test of human stamina. A 1:59:59 marathon would require a searing pace of 4 minutes 34 seconds per mile, seven seconds faster than the pace of the current world record. It would require 85 to 90 percent of a runner’s maximum aerobic capacity — twice the capacity of an average man — and a sustained heart rate of about 160 to 170 beats per minute. (The typical resting rate is 60 to 100 beats per minute.) Image “What excites me is understanding the limits of human performance,” said Pitsiladis, whose Sub2 Project aims to reduce the marathon world record by nearly three minutes. “What can man do?” Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times “What excites me is understanding the limits of human performance,” said Pitsiladis, 48, a leading antidoping expert with the International Olympic Committee and a professor of sport and exercise science at the University of Brighton in England. “What can man do?” Pitsiladis had flown overnight to Israel from Ethiopia, taking his usual window seat and feeling somewhat less panicked with a place near the wing and a view of the jet’s engine. He was terrified of flying even though he had often traveled more than 200 days a year. His sleep mask remained perched on his forehead after takeoff, his breathing growing heavy and nervous. “The only way I can get on a plane is a bottle of wine,” Pitsiladis said half-jokingly after another flight. “I think I’m going to die throughout.” On this early morning in February, he was safely on the ground again, riding in a rental car, fueled with coffee and certainty in the face of skepticism and indifference. Corporate sponsors had so far been reluctant to commit anything near the $30 million that Pitsiladis figured the Sub2 Project would cost. “Sponsors are telling me it’s too good to be true,” he said. “Like man going to Mars.” The disbelief did not make him waver. Unlike many sports scientists, Pitsiladis sees value, not risk, in throwing out provocative ideas, even if they turn out to be incorrect. “Science is a process of doubting and experimentation,” said Peter Weyand of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who is the biomechanics expert for the Sub2 Project. “It’s a process of disproving,” Weyand said. “Yannis is a good example of someone willing to take a leap of faith and put out hypotheses that challenge conventional wisdom and doing it in a way that, ‘I’m not going to be shy about the potential backlash; I’m not going to feel like a failure as a scientist.’ That’s important. It’s partly how science moves forward.” Image In Ethiopia, Pitsiladis boarded a plane bound for Israel. There, a quarter-mile below sea level at the Dead Sea, there is about 5 percent more oxygen to breathe. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times Challenging Convention With times becoming faster and faster, most sports scientists believe a two-hour marathon is a matter of when, not if. Since 1998, the world record in the marathon has dropped by a precipitous 3 minutes 8 seconds. Michael Joyner, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic, predicted in 1991 that it was possible to finish in 1:57:58. But numerous experts predicted that two hours would not be breached until 2028 or 2035 or even 2041. Pitsiladis considered these forecasts to be overly conservative. He started his Sub2 Project in late 2014 with a website , fund-raising and the recruitment of scientists. He believed his goal could be achieved by the end of 2019 — years earlier than commonly thought possible. His consortium of scientists would use the latest knowledge — and develop cutting-edge approaches — in nutrition, biomechanics, genetics, running efficiency, training, race strategy and sports medicine to deliver a sub-two-hour marathon. Incremental gains here and there, the scientists believed, could add up to a startling accomplishment. And perhaps new technology and knowledge would emerge for broader benefits, as when man raced toward the moon. The Sub2 experts would use data to confront habit, tradition, consensus. They would tailor training programs to individuals, employing science to help runners from Ethiopia and Kenya and elsewhere who had had fantastic performances using little science. They would challenge everything people thought they knew about distance running — how to train and even whether to wear shoes. “We know nothing about the science of training,” Pitsiladis said. “I really mean nothing. When I say that, people get really upset.” “Lots of energy” was the way fellow scientists invariably described Pitsiladis. He is youthful, handsome, outspoken, viewed as charming by supporters and arrogant by some detractors. He dresses casually, in jeans and running tights, and is sometimes scattered as he juggles academic projects. He has about him a sense of the dramatic, the frenetic. His words sprint forth with a fast-twitch urgency. Ideas foam as if from a chemistry-class volcano. Image Blood samples kept at minus-112 degrees at Pitsiladis’s laboratory at the University of Brighton in England, where he is a professor of sport and exercise science. He is also an antidoping expert with the International Olympic Committee. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times At a TEDx talk in Cyprus in November about the future, Pitsiladis cornered a London designer, Ryan Genz, who specializes in wearable technology. Genz had made a dress that accepted SIM cards and allowed users to make and receive calls, as well as a dress that could display Twitter messages. Pitsiladis said he wanted to develop intelligent clothing for running that would provide information in real time: sweat composition, heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature. This data could be flashed on television screens as if the runners were Formula One racecars. Perhaps nanotechnology embedded in the clothing could also cool or warm the body as necessary. “We want to bring the race into the living room and have the garments contribute to the outcomes we get,” Pitsiladis said. Over all, Pitsiladis’s research is meant to explore and possibly buck the received wisdom of the running world. Many elite marathoners, for instance, run about 120 miles a week in training. But there was little science to support that regimen, Pitsiladis said. Perhaps 75 miles a week would work just as well for many runners — or maybe any reasonable training program would. A popular training method is known as “live high, train low.” By living at a higher altitude, athletes stimulate the production of red blood cells to compensate for the lower level of oxygen in the air. By training at or near sea level, they are able to maintain the intensity of their workouts because more oxygen is available. Live high, train low is supported by some evidence. But Pitsiladis is not fully convinced of its efficacy, saying, “I would bet you it’s wrong and that what’s better is live high and train higher,” as perhaps the two greatest distance runners in history — Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia — often did. “It may not work, but let’s try it and see what happens,” Pitsiladis added. Pitsiladis wanted to explore training at various altitudes, from the oxygen-enriched Dead Sea to 5,500 feet to 11,500 feet or even 13,000 feet. He could provide supplemental oxygen during training if needed. Perhaps the body would be stimulated to produce even more red blood cells at the higher altitudes. And the brain might adapt to those enervating and hypoxic workouts, producing faster race results at sea level. Image “We know nothing about the science of training,” said Pitsiladis, working at a hotel in Ethiopia where he travels to study runners. “I really mean nothing. When I say that, people get really upset.” Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times “It’s almost the equivalent of running with weights on your feet and then you take the weights off and you can fly,” Pitsiladis said. As a doctoral student, Pitsiladis experimented with giving runners a pint of heavy cream as a prerace meal. The idea was to use fat and help delay the depletion of carbohydrates, the body’s main fuel source during high-intensity exercise. But Pitsiladis had come to believe that a two-hour marathon might be best achieved by bombarding the system with glucose. For instance, Owen Anderson, a consultant to the Sub2 Project who coached elite Kenyan road runners in Michigan, gave his athletes eight to 10 ounces of a sports drink about 10 minutes before a race to get accustomed to a bloated feeling. (They drank more during competition.) To further get accustomed to an uncomfortable feeling in the stomach, the runners sometimes practiced by eating ugali, a Kenyan porridge, or cabbage before training. “My runners can eat a Sichuan Chinese dinner before they run,” Anderson said jokingly. Against convention, Pitsiladis theorized that the second half of a two-hour marathon would be run faster, not slower, than the first half. As runners burn fuel and become lighter during a race, he said, they should become more economical, needing less oxygen to maintain a certain speed. When runners drank, Pitsiladis believed, they could shave precious seconds by squeezing fluid from a bag instead of opening a bottle, as elite runners do on the course. And perhaps, he said, they needed to drink little or nothing in the second half of a two-hour marathon. Instead, they might rinse their mouths with a carbohydrate solution and spit it out. Research showed the brain could be tricked into believing that more carbs were on the way, thus inducing the muscles to work harder. Pitsiladis and his Sub2 colleagues also wanted to explore basic questions. What is the optimal running form? Much was known about the biomechanics of sprinting, but little about distance running. Video Many of the best marathoners use 10 to 20 percent less energy than other trained runners. How they run so economically is being examined in the pursuit of the sub-two-hour marathon. Marathoners run with more variable strides than sprinters, said Weyand, the biomechanist, but there is probably an ideal pattern for minimizing energy costs and reducing or delaying fatigue. “I don’t think the prospect of coming down a minute for an elite male is unreasonable with a form intervention, based on what we know now,” Weyand said. “And it might be more.” Meeting Skepticism Even some of the greatest runners, however, doubted that a two-hour marathon was possible. Could the body have enough carbohydrate fuel to run that far, that fast? Would the brain slow the legs for self-preservation? “I can’t say it’s possible,” said Bekele, the Ethiopian star, a three-time Olympic champion on the track whom Pitsiladis enlisted for the Sub2 Project with the hope, in the face of fits and starts from the runner, that he could one day test some of his theories on him. “For me it’s impossible, maybe,” Bekele said. “You never know. Maybe in 10 years’ time there is a different thing. Maybe somebody creates a new technology.” Doping scandals have also left the running world a far more cynical place than it was in 1954 when Roger Bannister of England broke the four-minute barrier in the mile. Forty Kenyans have tested positive for banned substances in recent years. Ethiopia has also been rattled by doping, and Russia has been barred from international track and field competition, which might extend to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Lamine Diack of Senegal, a former president of track’s world governing body, is accused of having taken more than $1 million in bribes to cover up positive drug tests by Russian athletes. He remains under investigation by the French authorities. Image Pitsiladis at his laboratory at the University of Brighton. The Sub2 Project’s research is meant to explore and possibly buck the received wisdom of the running world. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times “I no longer believe we should be pushing the pace” to reach a two-hour marathon, said Mary Wittenberg, a former race director of the New York City Marathon and an influential voice in international distance running. “I think, at a period in this sport’s history where doping has become a real concern, that we should do everything we can to go back to racing and competition and not superhuman feats,” Wittenberg said. “You put a lot of incentive on time with money and glory, I think it can heighten the risk that somebody might cheat.” Ross Tucker, an exercise physiologist from South Africa who has studied elite runners, wrote perhaps the most stinging rebuttal to the aims of the Sub2 Project. Tucker said Pitsiladis and his team had overpromised what science could achieve in trying to produce a 2.4 percent drop in the fastest marathon time by 2019. East Africans already receive top coaching and scientific advice and have decades of experience and huge economic incentives to inspire their performances, Tucker wrote on SportsScientists.com when the Sub2 Project began. These runners, he wrote, “laugh at Westerners for their heart rate monitors and gadgets because they understand their bodies so well already.” Unless an entirely new population of runners is discovered, Tucker wrote, only unrestricted technology, like doping or springs in shoes, is likely to produce a two-hour marathon in Pitsiladis’s time frame. “This is a P.R., marketing issue, dealing with the translation of science and its ‘sale’ to the sports world,” Tucker wrote. “I just don’t think it’s helpful.” Others have wondered whether great scientific advances are even necessary for a groundbreaking marathon. Andy Jones, a member of the Sub2 consortium, said two hours might be within reach today by gathering a group of the world’s top marathoners, paying them hefty appearance fees and time bonuses, and improving drafting to reduce aerodynamic drag. “I think probably the talent is there,” said Jones, a physiologist at the University of Exeter in England. “I don’t think we necessarily change anybody’s training. I think the best shot is to get them all together in the best possible conditions, working together, and have the right investment package to make it happen.” Image Pitsiladis, far right, and locals in Kalite, Ethiopia, watched in September as the champion runner Kenenisa Bekele trained on a highway under construction. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times Pitsiladis called Tucker an “armchair professor” and felt he could help allay suspicions about drug use. The number of athletes using banned substances at the higher levels of marathon running is probably “very high,” Pitsiladis conceded. But if anyone can help curb doping, he said, he can. Pitsiladis is a member of the International Olympic Committee’s medical and scientific commission. And he is at the forefront of creating the next generation of drug tests for the blood booster known as EPO by detecting its lingering fingerprint on genes. All runners who participate in the Sub2 Project must submit to an expanded regimen of blood and urine testing, conducted independently. “I want to beat those on drugs,” Pitsiladis said, adding: “I want to say, in a sense, yes, drugs have been taken, but not by my athletes, and I’ve just smashed the two-hour barrier without them. It breaks the argument ‘I’m going to use drugs because it works more than science.’” Starting an Adventure The Sub2 Project is not Pitsiladis’s first voyage into doubt and the unknown. He is an adventurer in a family of adventurers. After World War II, his father, Tony, left Greece as an 11-year-old, sailing with strangers to a new life in Australia. The elder Pitsiladis later regaled his son with exotic stories: serving as an extra in the apocalyptic 1959 movie “On the Beach,” starring Gregory Peck; talking his way into the V.I.P. stand at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Yannis Pitsiladis’s own life has been peripatetic, evident in his Greek ancestry, his South African accent, his advanced degrees obtained in Scotland and England. He broke his chin as a teenager while diving for a ball in an attempt to become an Olympic-caliber volleyball player for Greece. If he did not have the genes for volleyball, he joked, he did have the DNA for perseverance. “I tell him all the time, ‘Slow down; one day you are going to fall over,’” said Jos Hermens, a Dutch Olympian in 1976 and a manager for a number of the world’s top marathon runners, who is helping to fund the Sub2 Project. Image Children running home from school in Bekoji, Ethiopia. Pitsiladis said life itself could be a kind of sport for Ethiopians and Kenyans, who walk and run long distances in a pastoral lifestyle. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times Over the past 16 years, Pitsiladis has traveled from Jamaica to East Africa to collect DNA samples from about 1,000 Olympic and world champions and other stars in various sports. He believes in the primacy of genes in influencing athletic ability. “Choose your parents well,” he likes to say in speeches. But he also considers the dominance of Kenyan and Ethiopian distance running to be largely due to cultural and socioeconomic factors. In other words, he said, genes need the proper environment to thrive. At his TEDx talk in Cyprus, Pitsiladis described a study of his that found Kenyan children engaged in 170 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a day, compared with 20 to 40 minutes for Europeans. “Life was a kind of sport” for Ethiopians and Kenyans, Pitsiladis said, as they walked and ran long distances in a pastoral lifestyle. With a grant of $500,000 from the Japanese government, the Sub2 consortium plans to begin sequencing the genomes of all the champions whose DNA Pitsiladis has collected. “The ideal scenario is that most of them, or all of them, would have a number of gene variants that are very rare in the population,” Pitsiladis said, adding: “We know genes are important. We just don’t know which ones they are.” He wants to begin developing individualized training regimens, based not simply on how a runner felt on a particular day but on the response of his biomarkers. What genes switched on and off when he reached the level of exercise intensity known as lactate threshold? What genes signaled the production of red blood cells or flashed like a red light at a railroad crossing, signaling dehydration or muscle damage? Image Pitsiladis’s work has had a toll. He and Mariny Kapsali, right, divorced, but she recently moved back in with him and has been supportive of the Sub2 Project. Their children, Asimina and Antony, joined them for dinner. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times “We could say, ‘When training is going well, the biomarkers are in this zone, so let’s let him loose,’” Pitsiladis said. “Or when they deviate from that, damage could occur, so let’s hold him back or not take him to a race. No one is doing that.” There is relatively meager funding for sports science, especially compared with biomedical research. Pitsiladis has sometimes spent his own money on his projects. At one point, his genetics research was sponsored by an Indian restaurant in Glasgow. The personal cost was high, too. He was consumed by his work. His marriage crumbled. He divorced. He blamed himself. “Imagine your wife if you’re remortgaging the house to pay for your work,” Pitsiladis said. “I think she’ll throw you out.” But his former wife, Mariny Kapsali, and his two teenage children recently moved back in with him and are supportive of his Sub2 Project. “I worry that Yannis set the bar too high,” said Kapsali, 48, a pharmacological researcher. “But no doesn’t mean no to him. If there is a problem, he won’t stop until he solves it.” Scouting a Location The Dead Sea held intriguing potential as a place to train and race. Highway 90 on the Israeli side is mostly flat. So are earthen dikes that cross the sea. The coolest times of day in January and February are near what Pitsiladis figured would be an ideal racing temperature — about 46 to 48 degrees — so runners would not be wasting energy to cool their bodies. “It’s a bit warmer than we want,” Pitsiladis said, “but the added oxygen benefit from being below sea level might give us an advantage.” Image Pitsiladis floated in the Dead Sea. The coolest times of day in January and February there are near what he figured would be an ideal racing temperature — about 46 to 48 degrees. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times Average healthy men, along with well-trained runners and cyclists, had improved their performances when given oxygen-enriched air in a laboratory. But no one had done field studies on the world’s fastest marathon runners, Pitsiladis said. He speculated that the top Kenyans and Ethiopians, who dominate marathon running, might benefit doubly at the Dead Sea. They have greater oxygen-carrying capacity from living and training at altitude, and they would have more oxygen to breathe below sea level. They could stress muscles in a way that would not be possible at higher altitudes and would presumably be able to run faster while perceiving less exertion. The runners also might be able to correct a condition observed in some highly trained athletes known as exercise-induced arterial hypoxemia. Top marathoners have such vast cardiac output — they are able to circulate their blood seven or eight times a minute through the lungs, Pitsiladis said — that while running at top speeds at or near sea level, some have experienced a decrease in oxygen saturation in their red blood cells. “Not all elite athletes get that,” Pitsiladis said, “but some do. Typically it’s the better ones.” He compared the hypoxemia to a bus traveling so fast that passengers did not have time to climb aboard and fill all the seats. “This place may really help correct that,” he said, “because there is more oxygen coming in.” Above the sea in this biblical landscape, cliffs at the edge of the Judean Desert flared red and then became as tawny as lions. Pitsiladis spoke excitedly. He would have to bring top athletes here and conduct the proper experiments, of course. But he was encouraged by possibility. “We can come and do training and racing in an environment like this, and this is probably the best place on the planet to do it,” Pitsiladis said. The temperature in winter could be accommodating, “and there’s more oxygen than anywhere else, and it’s flat,” he added. “What else do you want?” At dusk at the Dead Sea, the sky turned the blue and orange of a gas flame. Marathoners are accustomed to racing in the morning. But some research suggested that athletes might perform slightly better in the late afternoon, when body temperature and hormone levels peak, muscles become more flexible and lung function is enhanced. Pitsiladis had one final mission on his scouting trip: a run of five or six miles along dikes that jutted into the sea, bordering vast ponds where minerals were extracted. The wind could be strong in this area, crossing Highway 90 from the desert. An attempt to set a course record with elite runners at the 2007 Dead Sea Half Marathon was blown off course. Perhaps it would be calmer on the water. Perhaps that would be the place to run a race. The wind persisted on this February day, and tiny ridges of salt on the berms made finding one’s footing a bit tricky. But the ridges could be covered up, Pitsiladis said. Perhaps screens could shield the wind. If the best runners gathered here to try to break two hours, they would not be bound by a strict starting time, as they were at marathons in big cities. The race could be postponed for a day or two until the conditions approached ideal. The Dead Sea might also be a place to experiment further with satellite technology, which Pitsiladis had tested at the Dubai Marathon in the United Arab Emirates, measuring the ground temperature of each section of the course in real time. He recently obtained 30 small thermometers that runners could swallow to record their temperatures throughout a race. “I want to be able to link the land temperature to the body temperature,” Pitsiladis said. “What effect does it have?” Information could be relayed to a runner, he said, perhaps by someone following on a motorcycle who could advise, “Around the corner, it’s cool, so push it more,” or, “It’s hotter; slow down.” All of these ideas are speculative. But they speak to Pitsiladis’s pursuit of innovation and his refusal to surrender to orthodoxy. “Yannis is very good at questioning the common wisdom,” said Barry Fudge, a former doctoral student of his who is the head of endurance for the British track and field federation. “At this juncture, most people would be like, ‘No, no, no, you’ve got to be crazy.’ Well, Yannis is crazy enough to do it.” Part 2: A partnership full of operatic uncertainty produces valuable insights.

Marathon
Yannis Pitsiladis
Doping
Records and Achievements


Abandoned Brooke Astor Bank Accounts Surface in Ad

Abstract: Tucked into a long newspaper listing of everyday people who had forgotten a few dollars left in an old bank account, one name still had enough of its old boldface pop to jump out from the squint-inducing type. There she was, Brooke Astor , who was the grande dame of the city’s society and philanthropy circuits. Mrs. Astor, whose waning years opened a morass of family conflict to public view, was identified as the holder of two abandoned accounts at Citibank , alongside thousands of less-famous people listed in an 84-page special legal-advertising section in The Daily News on Aug. 31. The Astor accounts were addressed to the attention of her son, Anthony D. Marshall, who was convicted three years ago of stealing from his mother in the final years of her life. How much the abandoned accounts are worth will remain a secret, as required by law, until someone proves to be entitled to the money. It must be at least $50, or Citibank would not have been required to advertise them. And with a name like Astor, who knows? “You kind of wonder,” Mrs. Astor’s grandson, Philip C. Marshall, said when told of the abandoned accounts by a reporter. “It’s not going to be $50.” If the money is not claimed, it will be turned over to the state comptroller’s office, which will make further efforts to connect the money with its rightful owner. Most payouts by the comptroller’s Office of Unclaimed Funds are for around $100, but a few are for more: one account worth $1.7 million is sitting in the comptroller’s coffers. The office currently has about $12 billion in unclaimed money. Mrs. Astor died in 2007 , at the age of 105, leaving behind an estate valued at more than $100 million. Before her death, Philip Marshall accused his father, Anthony, of misspending her money, and questions arose about whether she was mentally competent when she signed changes to her will in 2003 and 2004. Those changes gave her son more control over her estate and reduced the amount of money she had bequeathed to various New York universities, libraries, parks and museums. In 2009, her son and Francis X. Morrissey Jr., a lawyer who did estate planning for Mrs. Astor, were convicted of tricking Mrs. Astor into signing away control and of stealing from her. They were sentenced to one to three years in prison, but they remain free pending the outcome of an appeal. In March, a settlement in the dispute over the estate that ignored the 2003 and 2004 changes was negotiated by the office of Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman. It called for Anthony Marshall, 88, to receive $14.5 million, effectively cutting his inheritance by more than half. An additional $30 million will go toward the creation of a Brooke Astor Fund for New York City Education, and millions more to Prospect Park, Central Park, city playgrounds and various cultural institutions. Later this month, Sotheby’s will auction some of Mrs. Astor’s furnishings, fine art and jewelry for the benefit of charities, including the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Historic Hudson Valley and the Animal Medical Center. Whatever money turns up in the abandoned accounts will be divided among the charities and education fund according to the terms of the settlement, Mr. Schneiderman’s office said. In addition to the two accounts advertised by Citibank last week, the state comptroller’s Web site lists five other unclaimed accounts belonging to Mrs. Astor that were abandoned as long ago as 2005. Those five accounts, which had been held with various institutions and are now in the custody of the comptroller’s office, are valued at less than $2,500 total, said Kate Gurnett, a spokeswoman for Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. JPMorgan Chase, which has been in charge of finding and inventorying Mrs. Astor’s assets for more than five years, filed a claim for the five other accounts on June 12, Ms. Gurnett said. A spokesman for JPMorgan said the bank was in the process of applying for the money at Citibank. Philip Marshall said that given the scrutiny the estate had undergone, he was surprised to learn that JPMorgan had not yet found all of his grandmother’s money. “This is amazing,” he said. “They’ve had years.”

Astor Brooke
Citigroup Inc
Wills and Estates
Philanthropy


16 Shot in France at Military Drill

Abstract: PARIS (AP) — A military demonstration drill in southern France on Sunday left 16 people wounded, including children, when real bullets were used instead of blanks, officials said. Four of the wounded were in serious condition, including a 3-year-old child, said Chief Bernard Lemaire, of the regional administration in Aude, on France-3 television. Fifteen of the wounded were civilians. A Defense Ministry official said the shooting occurred during a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques at a military barracks located in the city of Carcassonne. The official said investigators would look into why real bullets were used. The soldier who fired the shots was detained, Chief Lemaire said. He said that the shooting was most likely an accident but that it could have been a “criminal act.” No information was immediately available about what kind of gun was used. In a statement, President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed “horror” at the shooting at the base, which houses the parachute regiment of the Third Marine Infantry. The wounded were taken to local hospitals, with the most serious cases taken to Toulouse.

France
Accidents and Safety
Armament Defense and Military Forces
Shootings


Bill Takes Aim at S.E.C. Waivers for Firms That Broke Law

Abstract: The Securities and Exchange Commission faces new pressure from Congress to make it harder for lawbreaking companies to hold on to important privileges that help them raise money in the markets. Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, is set to announce on Tuesday legislation that takes aim at how the commission grants the privileges. The announcement will coincide with the appearance that day of Mary Jo White, the S.E.C.’s chairwoman, before the House’s powerful Financial Services Committee, where Ms. Waters is the leading Democratic member. When a company is found to have broken securities laws, the S.E.C. can disqualify it from issuing certain types of securities, which can affect how the firm raises money and impinge on client activities. The firms, however, typically request waivers from these disqualifications — and the agency has often granted them. The S.E.C. has given waivers, for instance, to several large Wall Street firms that were found to have broken securities laws. And this year, the commission granted a waiver to Oppenheimer & Company even though it had been hit with at least 30 regulatory actions over the last decade. “I have been disappointed with the seemingly reflexive granting of waivers to bad actors, which can enshrine a policy of ‘too big to bar,’ ” Ms. Waters said in a statement. “For large financial institutions, fines are often a mere cost of doing business, and waiving disqualification provisions allows bad actors to continue to operate in the marketplace undeterred.” Critics of the waivers also include Kara M. Stein and Luis A. Aguilar, two of the S.E.C.’s Democratic commissioners. In recent months, the waivers have become a lightning rod for consumer advocates who contend that more should be done to punish and deter corporate wrongdoing. Ms. White, however, devoted almost all of a recent speech to defending the agency’s handling of the waivers. She said that the S.E.C. did not routinely grant waivers but was instead rigorous when deciding whether to grant one. Ms. White also questioned the appropriateness of barring a company from issuing certain types of securities, asserting that such a ban might affect an activity that has little to do with the company’s actual misconduct. “A strong and effective enforcement program is at the heart of the S.E.C.’s efforts to protect investors and instill confidence in the integrity of the markets,” a draft of Ms. White’s statement for delivery to the House committee on Tuesday said. She has at times voted for waivers, putting her at odds with the Democrats. The waivers affect only certain types of money-raising. The disqualifications that firms seek to avoid do not, for instance, place an outright ban on a company issuing securities in public markets. Instead, they may bar a company from issuing securities in public markets on an accelerated, continuing basis, forcing it to file a fresh request with the S.E.C. to sell the securities. The S.E.C. can also disqualify a company from issuing into private markets, which can be a big source of financing and revenue for certain firms. Ms. Waters’s bill seeks to shed more light on the waiver process. It would require the S.E.C. to maintain public records of all waiver requests and denials, something that it does not currently provide. The bill also requires the agency to make waiver requests public, and gives the public the opportunity to comment and ask for a hearing on whether a company should be granted a waiver. The S.E.C.’s staff lawyers can, in theory, handle and vote on waivers, but the agency’s five commissioners have taken up recent waiver requests. Ms. Waters’s bill intends to formally and permanently shift the responsibility for waivers to the commissioners. The prospects for the bill look unpromising in the Republican-dominated House. Still, the legislation will most likely add fuel to the debate over corporate wrongdoing and perhaps reverberate through Wall Street. “I hope this proposal sends a message to every financial institution that they can no longer expect to receive a waiver in the same manner as they were issued in the past,” Representative Waters said in her statement.

SEC
Securities fraud
Regulation and Deregulation
Legislation
Mary Jo White
Maxine Waters


New Status in Africa Empowers an Ever-Eccentric Qaddafi

Abstract: TRIPOLI, Libya — Forty years after he seized power in a bloodless coup d’état, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi , the Libyan leader once called the mad dog of the Middle East by President Ronald Reagan, has achieved the international status he always craved, as chairman of the African Union . Colonel Qaddafi’s selection last month to lead the 53-nation African Union coincided with his emergence as a welcomed figure in Western capitals, where heads of state are eager to tap Libya’s vast oil and gas reserves and to gain access to virgin Libyan markets. Once vilified for promoting state terrorism, Colonel Qaddafi is now courted. But Colonel Qaddafi remains the same eccentric, unpredictable revolutionary as always. He has used his new status to promote his call for a United States of Africa, with one passport, one military and one currency. He has blamed Israel for the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan, defended Somali pirates for fighting “greedy Western nations” and declared that multiparty democracy was not right for the people of Africa. “This is a role that Qaddafi has been looking for for 40 years,” said Wahid Abdel Meguid, deputy director of Egypt’s largest research institute, the government-financed Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies . “He kept shifting and changing directions in search of this role.” Each step of Colonel Qaddafi’s calculated transformation from terrorist sponsor to would-be statesman has bolstered the next. The thaw in relations with the West, which began in 2003 when he gave up Libya’s nuclear weapons program, gave him more credibility in Africa; and his rising status in Africa has made him more acceptable to the West. All of which has been aimed at one primary objective: bolstering his image. At one time, Colonel Qaddafi, who was born in 1942, tried to position himself as the next pan-Arab leader. But he was rejected, at times mocked, for his eccentric style and pronouncements. His country was isolated for decades because he sent his agents to kill civilians, including in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. But now in Africa, he has found traction. African heads of state view him suspiciously, and his one-Africa agenda is generally dismissed as unworkable. But he is embraced for his growing status in the West, the lack of credible alternatives across the continent and his money. Many stories are told in Tripoli of African leaders visiting Colonel Qaddafi and leaving with suitcases full of cash, stories that cannot be confirmed but that have become conventional wisdom. “They don’t want to lose him because he is a gold mine for solving crises, usually financial crises,” said Attia Essawy, an Egyptian writer with expertise in African affairs. “He is searching for a role; he wants to have a role regardless of where.” While Libya’s strongman is enjoying his burnished image, it has come at a cost to his nation of 5.5 million people and to the approximately two million Africans who have flocked to Libya believing that they would find warm receptions, good jobs and, perhaps, an easy path to Europe. Instead, they found a hostile environment and a struggle just to eat. “It is a burden,” Ali Abd Alaziz Isawi, who served for two years as the minister of economy, trade and investment, said of the army of illegal immigrants living in Libya. “They are a burden on health care, they spread disease, crime. They are illegal.” All over this capital city, illegal African immigrants line up along roadways, across bridges and at traffic circles hoping to be selected for menial day jobs that pay about $8. They call the areas where they congregate “the hustling grounds,” which are always crowded with desperate faces from early morning until well past sundown. Many people in Tripoli said they resented the presence of so many illegal workers. “We don’t like them,” said Moustafa Saleh, 28, who is unemployed, echoing a popular sentiment. “They smuggle themselves through the desert, and the way they deal with us is not good.” For the African migrants themselves, life in Libya is often a dead end. “They call us animals and slaves,” said Paul Oknonghou, 28, a Nigerian who lives with about a dozen other Nigerians in a house under construction that lacks glass in the window frames, running water, a bathroom or a kitchen. He said he and his friends considered themselves lucky that they did not have to sleep on the streets. Thomas Thtakore, 26, who is from Ghana, entered Libya illegally a year ago after a three-month journey across mountains and desert. “I have no help; I sleep under a bridge near the river,” He said. He said his younger brother died on the way. “If I stay here, I will die.” Mr. Thtakore was about to be flown back to Ghana by the International Organization for Migration , a nongovernmental group that helps migrants return home. Since 2006, the group has helped about 3,000 travel home. “If they find a job it can be good, but if they don’t, it can be a nightmare,” said Michele Bombassei, an official with the migration group, adding that most do not find jobs. That hostile reality contrasts sharply with the image that Colonel Qaddafi likes to portray. His capital city is filled with billboards showing Libya as the one bright spot on the continent. In one billboard, Colonel Qaddafi appears as a savior as sun rays break over his shoulder and a crowd of black men and women reach toward him with outstretched arms. His Africa agenda helps empower him in other ways, too. Diplomats here said it gave him leverage in keeping African and European leaders listening and their doors open. If Libya sent all the migrants home, they would become a burden to poorer African nations, which would have to absorb them while losing out on the remittances they send home. At the same time, diplomats here said, Libya has made it plain to European countries, especially Italy, that if Libya chose to look the other way, most of those migrants would head for European shores. “It’s a kind of soft power they use,” said one Western diplomat who works on Libyan affairs but requested anonymity for fear of antagonizing Libyan authorities. Colonel Qaddafi will serve only a one-year term as chairman of the African Union, but his quest to use Africa as a stepping stone to greater world influence and credibility is likely to continue well past that. Last August, 200 kings and traditional African leaders traveled to Libya and anointed him with a more permanent moniker; they crowned him king of kings.

Qaddafi Muammar el-
African Union
Libya
International Relations
Immigration and Emigration
Africa


Military Budget Reflects a Shift in U.S. Strategy

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced a major reshaping of the Pentagon budget on Monday, with deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems but new billions of dollars for others, along with more troops and new technology to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan . The decisions are expected to set off a vigorous round of lobbying over the priorities embroidered into the Defense Department’s half-trillion dollars of annual spending. They represent the first broad rethinking of American military strategy under the Obama administration, which plans to shift more money to counterterrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan while spending less on preparations for conventional warfare against large nations like China and Russia . Mr. Gates announced cuts in missile defense programs, the Army’s expensive Future Combat Systems and Navy shipbuilding operations. He would kill controversial programs to build a new presidential helicopter and a new communications satellite system, delay the development of a new bomber and order only four more of the advanced F-22 fighter jets . But he also said plans to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, while halting reductions in Air Force and Navy personnel, would cost an additional $11 billion. He also announced an extra $2 billion for intelligence and surveillance equipment, including new Predator and Reaper drones , the remote-controlled vehicles currently used in Pakistan , Afghanistan and Iraq for strikes against militants, and more spending on special forces and training foreign military units. More broadly, Mr. Gates signaled that he hoped to impose a new culture on the Pentagon — making the system more flexible and responsive to the needs of the troops in the way it chooses and buys weapons. Even so, he acknowledged that it would be hard, with the economic crisis and concerns in Congress over jobs, to “make tough choices about specific systems and defense priorities based solely on the national interest and then stick to those decisions over time.” Military experts said Mr. Gates seemed to be mounting a determined effort to rein in some of the most troubled programs after years of record military spending and start dealing with the huge cost overruns and delays that have plagued so many programs. But some noted that other presidents and defense secretaries had been stymied in making similar efforts in the past, and they said that leaders of military-related committees in Congress would undoubtedly try to save the F-22, C-17 cargo planes and other systems that Mr. Gates would like to cut. Representative Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Monday in a statement that while Mr. Gates’s proposed budget was a “good faith” effort, “the buck stops with Congress, which has the critical constitutional responsibility to decide whether to support these proposals.” And some military analysts reacted to Mr. Gates’s promise of budget revolution with skepticism. Andrew H. Krepinevich Jr., a military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said that it was hard to tell how much Mr. Gates was reducing spending over all because he was increasing spending in unspecified amounts in some areas and had not put a net dollar amount on his entire proposal. Mr. Krepinevich said he anticipated that Mr. Gates’s reductions would not close the $25 billion to $50 billion Bush-era gap between military programs and the spending for them, and that future cuts would most likely be needed. He noted that some of Mr. Gates’s cuts were less than draconian. While the secretary chose to emphasize smaller, speedy ships for close-in waters, the slower shipbuilding he proposed for the deep-water Navy would not reduce the number of aircraft-carrier battle groups at sea to 10 from 11 until after 2040. While he capped the number of the $150 million combat plane, the Air Force’s F-22, at 187, he promised to speed the testing of another fighter, the F-35, and maintain plans to eventually buy 2,443 of the planes. While he canceled the purchases of eight Army vehicles to allow for more study and a rebidding, he said he would also speed the development of costly electronic sensors for troops. And while he promised to fix the flawed procurement processes that allow weapons prices to soar, he said he wanted to hire tens of thousands of civil servants to do the work, since contracting that out to the private sector has not proven efficient. “The perennial procurement and contracting cycle, going back many decades, of adding layer and layer of cost and complexity onto fewer and fewer platforms that take longer and longer to build, must come to an end,” he said. “There is broad agreement on the need for acquisition and contracting reform in the Department of Defense. There have been enough studies, enough hand-wringing, enough rhetoric. Now is the time for action.” The changes will mean fewer big ships, and a reduction in the number of Army brigades, but with the same number of troops so that the combat forces are not hollowed out, and bolstering the Army’s helicopter forces, Mr. Gates said. He added that he wanted to add 2,800 to the ranks of special forces troops and more cybersecurity experts. Spending on missile defense programs will be scaled back by $1.4 billion over all. Mr. Gates proposed increasing spending to defend against relatively limited attacks by smaller powers with shorter-range missiles, adding interceptors aboard ships but not on land in Alaska . But he would cancel or delay some of the more exotic programs to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles. Mr. Gates also said that while he planned to halt a Navy program to build a new class of stealth destroyers, he would finish constructing the first three ships if the contractors agreed to allow all of them to be built at one shipyard instead of the dividing the work between two yards. Otherwise, he would only build one of the $3 billion ships. This year Mr. Gates made the unusual decision to publicly announce his proposed reductions in the Pentagon budget before the recommendations are sent to the White House. Senator Carl Levin , the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters last week that Mr. Gates, a Republican who has worked for eight presidents of both parties, may have been trying to provide some political cover for Mr. Obama over the cuts. Representative Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, reacted strongly against Mr. Gates’s proposal to end spending for the F-22, which employs 25,000 workers in Georgia and across the country. “It’s outrageous that President Obama is willing to bury the country under a mountain of debt with his reckless domestic agenda but refuses to fund programs critical to our national defense,” Mr. Price said in a statement. In addition, a bipartisan group of six senators urged Mr. Gates not to make large cuts in missile defense programs. In a letter to Mr. Obama, they said the reductions “could undermine our emerging missile defense capabilities to protect the United States against a growing threat.” The group included the Republicans Jon Kyl of Arizona , Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jeff Sessions of Alabama , James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma as well as Mark Begich , Democrat of Alaska, and Joseph I. Lieberman , independent of Connecticut .

Pentagon
Budget
Robert Gates
US Military
F-22


2 Guantánamo Bay Prisoners Are Transferred to Serbia

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Monday that it had transferred two longtime detainees from the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Serbia. The announcement came one day after officials disclosed the transfer of a prisoner to Italy, suggesting that all three former detainees left on the same plane. The transfers of the prisoners underscored that even though Congress has most likely thwarted President Obama in his effort to close the prison before he leaves office, he is still pursuing a lesser goal: getting out every detainee on a list of those recommended for transfer if security and humane-treatment conditions can be met in the receiving country. The three departures reduced the remaining population at the wartime prison in Cuba to 76 men, of whom 27 are on the transfer list. Neither of the two men resettled in Serbia is from that country, a part of the former Yugoslavia that had not taken in a detainee before, unlike Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the 1990s, political upheavals in the countries that emerged from Yugoslavia led to armed conflict and ethnic cleansing campaigns targeting Muslims in the Balkans. How Will Obama’s Plan to Close Guantánamo Work? President Obama sent his plan to Congress to shutter the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and he has 5 months left to close it. What are some options for the endgame? Both of the men transferred to Serbia were captured in late 2001 as part of the war in Afghanistan and were turned over to the United States military, which held them in indefinite wartime detention without trial for more than 14 years. One was Abdul Rahman Ahmed , a Yemeni who is either 36 or 37. In 2009, a six-agency detainee review task force recommended Mr. Ahmed for continued indefinite wartime detention, but a parole-like review board that periodically re-examines such detainees decided in October 2015 that his imprisonment was no longer necessary. In a public report, the review board said that while Mr. Ahmed was once “probably a low-level fighter who was aligned with Al Qaeda,” he had changed his mind-set in prison, become fluent in English, completed courses required for a high school equivalency degree and largely complied with prison rules since 2012. “The board found the detainee credible in his desire to pursue non-extremist goals and higher education as well as his embrace of Western culture,” it said. The other was Omar Hamzayavich Abdulayev , 37. A citizen of Tajikistan, he had been awaiting transfer since 2009, when the detainee review task force decided that he posed a low enough threat that he should be released to a secure country. He remained stranded because the administration decided he could not safely be repatriated. Reports by the task force explaining its assessments of detainees are secret. Some Republican lawmakers want to block any more transfers of lower-level detainees. The dispute has recently come under heightened scrutiny because the authorities in Uruguay lost track last month of a former detainee resettled there; the detainee had told friends that he was going on a religious retreat and would not be available by phone or email until sometime this week.

Guantanamo Bay
Detainees
Serbia
US Military
Omar Hamzayavich Abdulayev
Abdul Rahman Ahmed
Barack Obama