Advertising Agency Crowdsources Its Own Morale

Abstract: AN advertising agency that has been crowdsourcing ideas from its employees is at it again, adopting additional suggestions from staff members on how to improve operations and, by extension, morale. The senior managers of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners , part of MDC Partners, have chosen two ideas from around 30 that were submitted in a crowdsourcing competition in July by more than 70 employees. One of the ideas involves turning over to employees about 4,500 square feet of space on the sixth floor of the agency’s New York headquarters, which they can use, individually and in groups, for personal, creative projects. The space will also be opened to artists and other people who are not on the Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal payroll for exhibits, discussions and potential collaborative work sessions with staff members. The idea, which won a $5,000 grand prize for two young employees, is called the Hyde Experiment, implying that the agency’s Mr. Hydes will work on their projects when not busy with their Dr. Jekyll regular jobs. The second idea, which won a $500 runner-up prize for seven employees, is called Gettin’ Up, after a slang term to denote success or recognition. It involves creating a gamelike rewards system in which staff members — and, later, the agency’s clients — will be able to acknowledge employees who go the extra mile. The rewards will come in the form of points that can be exchanged for small cash bonuses.  Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal held its first crowdsourcing competition in October 2009 as part of an effort to cultivate what executives like to call an “invention culture.” Three months later, a proposal from two employees to start an agency mutual fund led to an initiative called the K.B.S.& P. Client Stock Index, which tracks the performance of publicly traded shares of the agency’s clients. Such efforts to solicit ideas from employees beyond the standard suggestion boxes are indicative of attempts by Madison Avenue leaders to pay more attention to their work forces. The goal is to find ways to “inspire and refresh talent and, ultimately, fuel retention,” said Lori Senecal, chairwoman and chief executive of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal. “Keeping our talent excited is also important in terms of moving client work forward by encouraging new approaches and thinking outside norms.” The increasing focus on the care and feeding of employees may also be generational in that many employees in the agency business belong to “the millennial generation that is more interested in frequent feedback, and rewards, than its predecessors,” Ms. Senecal said. “They seem to really enjoy recognition and encouragement regularly.” The employees who came up with the Hyde Experiment are two digital artists: Mark Jensen, 22, and Nick Vidovich, 23. “We were kind of floored to see the kind of support we received, so many people getting behind it,” Mr. Vidovich said — not to mention, he added, the “very awesome prize.” Mr. Jensen said it was “refreshing to see the heads of our company pushing for creativity” and giving employees “an opportunity to keep growing as communicators, designers and artists.”  Two obstacles senior agency managers may run up against in trying to reach out to employees are the skeptical, even cynical, natures of people in the ad business and of younger urbanites. The result is that team-building exercises are often met with shrugs, eye rolls, ironic air quotes and a decided lack of participation. For instance, some eyebrows, and hackles, go up the moment the name of the agency’s competition, Hello Moments, is mentioned. “It can go that corny way,” said Evan Kantor, director for technical production at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal and one of the seven employees who came up with the Getting’ Up idea. “But I don’t think anyone here took it like that.” The competition was “a nice way to give the executive team some feedback,” he said, adding that employees were encouraged to take part after seeing the results of the previous competition. Sara Alloy, a senior interaction designer who was also in the Gettin’ Up group, said the proposal was meant “to boost morale” by emphasizing that when it comes to producing effective work for clients, “we’re all in this together.” The new rewards system will also give employees “more immediate gratification” than they could get from, say, annual performance reviews, she said. While Mr. Jensen and Mr. Vidovich each received $2,500 of the $5,000 prize, a $500 prize split seven ways is less than $71.43 apiece. “We’re going to go out for a nice, big dinner,” Mr. Kantor said.

Advertising and Marketing
Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners
Crowdsourcing (Internet)
Workplace Environment


Novak Djokovic Shines as Night Falls at the French Open

Abstract: PARIS — It is not often that a tennis player leads a cheer for a chair umpire, or insists that he come down from his perch and join a post-match interview. But after beating Aljaz Bedene — and the encroaching darkness — in the last match of the day at Roland Garros, Novak Djokovic was in a cheerful and appreciative mood. With the sky darkening over Philippe Chatrier Court in the third set, Djokovic jogged from one corner of the court to the other between points, rather than take the usual plodding steps, and sprinted to his chair during changeovers. At one point he even waved away a ball girl bringing a towel, so intent was he to expedite the match and prevent the chair umpire, Pascal Maria, from suspending play because of darkness. On the penultimate point, Djokovic put his hands together and begged Maria to stay in his chair rather than take time to check a ball mark. Maria dutifully stayed put. When it was finally over and the top-seeded Djokovic had defeated Bedene, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3, in 2 hours 2 minutes, Djokovic pointed to Maria and then led the fans in a cheer for the reluctant umpire. Finally, instead of signing his own name on the television camera, as is usually the custom, Djokovic wrote Maria’s name. This was the temperament of a man who knew that the most difficult opponent in his half of the draw was no longer there: Rafael Nadal, the most successful men’s player in the history of the French Open, had withdrawn with a wrist injury the day before. Nadal’s absence significantly changes the landscape for several players, perhaps most notably for Djokovic, who is seeking his first French Open title. Theoretically, he could have met Nadal in a semifinal. But Djokovic, who will next face No. 14-seeded Roberto Bautista, took no joy in hearing the news that Nadal, like Roger Federer before him, had withdrawn because of injury, or in watching Nadal’s announcement the day before. “It was sad seeing him in the press conference,” Djokovic said, his mood changing from gleeful to somber. “You could feel his pain, definitely.” No. 6-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France was also felled by injury, retiring from his match with Ernests Gulbis despite leading, 5-2, in the first set. But Tsonga, as popular as he is in Paris, is not Nadal. When word filtered across the grounds on Friday that Nadal’s wrist injury would sink his hopes for a 10th title, Dominic Thiem knew what it meant. But he tried to block it out of his mind. Thiem, the No. 13 seed with high expectations for a glittering future, could have faced Nadal in the round of 16. It would have been a daunting challenge, but beating Nadal, the ruler of clay, in his own kingdom would have been as memorable a victory as Thiem, 22, of Austria had ever known. Then again, he had tried before. “Well, I already made this experience,” said Thiem, who lost to Nadal in straight sets here in 2014. “It’s not such a nice one.” On Saturday, Thiem beat 19-year-old Alexander Zverev, 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, in their third-round match, and he now will face Marcel Granollers instead of Nadal. Granollers was the most immediate beneficiary of Nadal’s misfortune. He had been scheduled to play Nadal, a fellow Spaniard, on Saturday. Instead, Granollers advanced in a walkover and will play Thiem for a place in the quarterfinals, which neither has ever reached. After he beat Zverev, Thiem politely wished Nadal well, then pondered the fact that his odds of winning had significantly increased. “Of course, maybe I go different into the match against him than against Rafa,” he said, “because against Rafa I’m the underdog. Against Granollers, I’m probably the favorite.” Even if Granollers loses, he made roughly $78,920 in extra prize money the moment Nadal stepped down. And it is not the first time this spring that Granollers has been so fortunate. At the Masters 1000 event in Monte Carlo in April, Granollers lost in the qualifying rounds. But when David Ferrer was forced to withdraw because of injury, Granollers gained entry into the main draw — with a first-round bye, no less — as a so-called lucky loser. The same thing happened at Madrid, and Granollers’s luck did not change once he arrived in Paris. His second-round opponent, Nicolas Mahut, had a knee injury and lost the first two sets before retiring from the match. Injuries are, of course, a part of the sport, especially with Nadal. But not so much for Federer, who withdrew before the tournament with an undisclosed ailment, ending his streak of 65 consecutive major tournaments. But Federer will turn 35 in August, and with two of the so-called Big Four (Djokovic, Federer, Nadal and Andy Murray) already out of the tournament, it led Djokovic to speculate that perhaps this is more than just a fluke. Perhaps there is a changeover of the elite guard taking place. “There might be,” Djokovic said. “There’s going to be. How soon? We don’t know.” But before the sun sets on the current stars of men’s tennis, Djokovic hopes to secure a French Open title.

Tennis
Novak Djokovic
Rafael Nadal
Dominic Thiem
French Open


Oklahoma: Suit Seeks Reporting Access at Executions

Abstract: Reporters should have the right to witness executions in Oklahoma from start to end, a federal suit filed in Oklahoma City on Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union contends. The suit was prompted by the bungled execution of Clayton D. Lockett on April 29, where witnesses were not allowed to watch as officials spent 51 minutes struggling to insert catheters into Mr. Lockett’s veins and where witnesses had their view blocked again after Mr. Lockett began to writhe and moan. “At the moment when public oversight was most important,” the suit states, citing the First Amendment and Oklahoma law, “the state unlawfully shrouded its execution proceedings in secrecy.”

Oklahoma
Capital punishment
ACLU
Clayton Darrell Lockett
Freedom of the press
Freedom of speech
Lawsuits
Civil Rights
Witness


Lance Armstrong and Usada Exchange Arguments

Abstract: Lance Armstrong and the United States Anti-Doping Agency are exchanging written arguments in federal court about who has jurisdiction in the drug case against Armstrong. In papers submitted to United States District Judge Sam Sparks, lawyers for Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner, attached a letter from a lawyer for USA Cycling. That lawyer said that the governing body for American cycling must accept the jurisdiction of the sport’s international federation and side against Usada in the case. The Usada chief, Travis Tygart, countered that “the World Anti-Doping Agency has already announced Usada has jurisdiction” in the case. He said that was under rules adopted by the International Cycling Union and Usada.

Armstrong Lance
USA Cycling
United States Anti-Doping Agency
Doping (Sports)
Bicycles and Bicycling


Russia and Turkey Sign Pact for Nuclear Reactor

Abstract: ISTANBUL — Turkey and Russia signed 17 agreements on Wednesday to enhance cooperation in energy and other fields, including pacts to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant and furthering plans for an oil pipeline from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The pipeline would allow Russia to expand its oil exports from the Black Sea, bypassing the Bosporus, whose shipping lines are already at capacity. The deal follows several rounds of agreements between Russia and Turkey in recent years that have helped Russia maintain its dominance of Eurasian energy routes. On his first official visit to Turkey, the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev , met with his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul ; Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ; and other top officials. Mr. Erdogan saluted the progress on the pipeline, which is to run from the Black Sea port of Samsun to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, and said it would ease pressures on the Bosporus and reduce the threat of devastating spills. “Our shores are under severe danger during the passage of the oil tankers through the straits,” he said. “Once we realize the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline, we would have the opportunity to reach out to the world from Ceyhan.” For his part, Mr. Medvedev highlighted the expected increases in the $30 billion in trade between Turkey and Russia. “Our trading capacity will not only improve but will exceed past records,” Mr. Medvedev said. “We are aiming for more than $100 billion of trade in future, which is very inspiring.” His comments, in Russian, were translated by Turkish television. But most of that number comes from Turkish imports of Russian oil and gas, and some Turkish energy experts cautioned that the increase would do more good for Russia than for Turkey. The deal for the nuclear plant, scheduled to be built over seven years in the Mediterranean city of Mersin, raised further concerns among some Turks of relying too much on Russia. “If we add dependency on nuclear energy on top of the current energy trading from Russia, it’s inevitable that we get concerned,” Necdet Pamir, an energy expert, told the news channel NTV. He said Turkey had energy options it could explore without Russian aid. “Half of Turkey’s immense hydroelectric potential is on hold, so it’s misleading to present Turkey as a helpless country,” he said. Moreover, Mr. Pamir added, the reactor suggested for the project in Turkey, known as Model 1400, has not been given safety approvals by European institutions. A project by a Russian consortium to build a nuclear reactor in Akkuyu , another Mediterranean town, was canceled by a Turkish court last year after intense public complaints. Other agreements signed after the first session of high-level meetings led by Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Erdogan called for cooperation in combating drug trafficking and in transportation and education, as well as a lifting of visa requirements for visits shorter than a month. Russian tourism to Turkey grows every year, with nearly five and a half million tourists from the Commonwealth of Independent States in 2009, according to Tourism Ministry figures, while Russia is a popular destination for Turkish businessmen. In addition to the agreements, the leaders pledged greater diplomatic efforts toward a resolution of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program and called for stability in the Caucasus, acknowledging the delicate nature of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region , which both Turkey and Russia are closely monitoring. Turkey has been a supporter of Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy but strongly opposes nuclear weapons in the region and has been critical of Israel on the matter .

Russia
Turkey
Pipelines
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Weapons
Medvedev Dmitri A
Gul Abdullah
Erdogan Recep Tayyip


In Texas, a Test of Whether the Voting Rights Act Still Has Teeth

Abstract: PASADENA, Tex. — Within days of the Supreme Court striking down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, the mayor of this working-class industrial city set in motion a contentious change to the local election system that critics said was aimed at protecting white control of the City Council in the face of rapid growth in the city’s Hispanic population. It set off a furor, which was only inflamed when at a subsequent redistricting hearing, the mayor, Johnny Isbell, brought a gun. At another meeting, he ordered police officers to remove a council member for violating a three-minute speaking limit. Asked by SCOTUSblog why he was pursuing the change, Mr. Isbell replied, “Because the Justice Department can no longer tell us what to do.” But just after the new year, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to do precisely that — making Pasadena the first municipality in the country ordered by a court to submit, against its wishes, to federal approval of its electoral system since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision. The judge, Lee H. Rosenthal of the Federal District Court in Houston, ruled on Jan. 6 that the city’s change to the election system violated the Voting Rights Act and intentionally discriminated against Latino voters. Judge Rosenthal put the city under federal oversight, requiring Pasadena officials to seek advance approval from the Justice Department before changing the City Council election map and procedures, a practice known as preclearance. “This is a message to those jurisdictions that the fact that they no longer have to preclear their changes doesn’t mean that they can discriminate against minority voters,” said Nina Perales, the vice president for litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund , which represented eight Hispanic voters who sued the city. An appeal by Pasadena officials is likely, and a court could stay the ruling, blocking it from taking effect while an appeal moves forward. “We’re exploring it, and there’s a reasonable chance that we’ll appeal,” said C. Robert Heath, the city’s lead lawyer in the case. “While we have great respect for the court, we disagree with its conclusion that the city acted with an intent to dilute the vote of its Hispanic citizens.” Two smaller places, Charles Mix County in South Dakota and Evergreen, Ala., agreed to submit to federal oversight and are the only other jurisdictions required to get Justice Department approval before changing their election rules. Officials in Charles Mix County agreed in 2007, and those in Evergreen did so in 2014. The outcome of the case in Pasadena is a major test of whether the Voting Rights Act in its diminished form remains a vital tool for minority voters, particularly as the Justice Department inevitably swings to the right in the Trump administration. In this city that was once home to the Texas headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan, the judge’s ruling was hailed by Latino residents, election law experts and civil rights groups as a major victory and a reminder that the preclearance mechanism did not entirely vanish after the Supreme Court’s weakening of the Voting Rights Act. But some advocates said that however welcome, the piecemeal, costly and after-the-fact litigation in the Pasadena case and similar ones that were pending are a far cry from the blanket protections for minority voters alleging discrimination under the Voting Rights Act. “It just completely changes the calculus,” said Deuel Ross, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund . “These discriminatory changes can go into effect and stay in effect for years, while someone has to spend millions of dollars and hire an attorney in order to even potentially win it.” Image Hispanics account for 62 percent of Pasadena’s population. Credit Michael Stravato for The New York Times In fact, Judge Rosenthal’s ruling came more than three years after the change to Pasadena’s election system was first proposed. One election in 2015 was held under the new system. The changes at the center of the case redrew the Pasadena City Council map from eight neighborhood-based single-member districts to a mixed system with six single-member districts and two citywide at-large seats. The move to what became known as the 6-2 map eliminated one Hispanic-majority district and prevented Latino-backed candidates from winning a City Council majority. At-large election systems in a number of cities and school districts have been found to have diluted minority voting strength. In communities where whites make up the majority of voters and where people generally vote in racial blocs, white voters can defeat minority-preferred candidates and elect white-preferred candidates for at-large districts that encompass the entire electorate. Smaller single-member districts can help minority voters elect candidates of their choice, because they can be drawn so that minority voters make up a majority in some of the districts. Judge Rosenthal’s 113-page ruling describes a racially charged atmosphere in Pasadena politics to support its finding of intentional discrimination. Councilman Ornaldo Ybarra testified that when he was campaigning in 2009, white residents told him that they “weren’t going to vote for a wetback.” Richard Scott, the city’s director of community relations and an ally of the mayor, directed a vendor to “pull out Hispanic names” from the mailing list of voters who would receive campaign materials in favor of the 6-2 map. “At trial, Mr. Scott testified that when he wrote ‘pull out Hispanic names,’ he meant to direct the vendor to pull out the names of Democratic voters,” Judge Rosenthal wrote, one of several instances in which Pasadena officials “understood race and party as interchangeable proxies. By clearly and explicitly intending to diminish Latinos’ voting power for partisan ends, Pasadena officials intentionally discriminated on the basis of race.” Pasadena is a majority-minority city of 150,000, where Hispanics account for 62 percent of the population but have long complained about a lack of city services and attention in their neighborhoods, which have aging roads and infrastructure. The city’s white population and its Latino population remain largely physically divided , as the judge noted. North Pasadena is older, poorer and predominately Hispanic, while on the other side of the Spencer Highway, South Pasadena is newer, wealthier and predominately white. “They don’t listen to us,” said Patricia Gonzales, 49, a community activist who lives on the north side and who was one of the plaintiffs. “It’s like what we say doesn’t really matter.” Three of the eight council members are Hispanic, but one of them, Councilman Cody Ray Wheeler, is a Latino with an Anglo surname, and the judge wrote that politicians in Pasadena thought Mr. Wheeler’s election “was the result of his Anglo-sounding name and the Anglo votes that attracted.” In 2013, the council was split 4 to 4, with the mayor holding the tiebreaking vote: Four were aligned with the mayor and four were aligned with the Hispanic community. Many were convinced that in the next election cycle, the Latino-backed candidates would win four seats again, plus a fifth, meaning they would have a majority on the council for the first time in Pasadena’s history and weaken Mr. Isbell’s influence. “Latino success in Pasadena elections has been slow, slight and disproportionately lower than Pasadena’s Latino population,” Judge Rosenthal wrote. “But Latino success has increased in recent years. Indeed, the plaintiffs’ theory of this case, which the court finds credible and amply supported by reliable record evidence, is that Pasadena changed to the 6-2 map and plan precisely because Latinos were becoming more successful at winning City Council seats.” After the 2015 elections, the council remained divided 4 to 4 under the 6-to-2 map. Three seats were held by Hispanics and one of the new at-large seats was won by a white candidate who had the support of Hispanic voters, Councilwoman Pat Van Houte. The split was emphasized by the city’s lawyers in defending the new system. Mr. Heath said city officials did not think the 6-to-2 map discriminated “since Hispanics make up about 50 percent of the city’s citizen voting-age population and the 6-to-2 system resulted in the election of Hispanic-preferred candidates to half the seats on the City Council.” An aide to the mayor referred questions about the case to Mr. Heath, the city’s lawyer. Mr. Isbell appeared to accidentally drop the gun that he brought to the March 2014 hearing. At a trial held in 2016 on the voting-rights allegations, he testified that it was a broken pellet gun, a claim the judge discounted, saying in her ruling that the “credible evidence” was that it was a 9-millimeter Beretta. Judge Rosenthal, the city and the plaintiffs are still sorting out a lingering question: how long the city should be under federal oversight. The judge asked both sides to suggest a time period, writing that five years “might be appropriate.” Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert and law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the relevant section of the Voting Rights Act gave the judge wide discretion. “You can guess that the plaintiffs will argue for a longer period and the city for shorter,” he said. “Without a very close look at the facts, I’m not in a position to say what I think is the ideal number here. But I don’t think choosing 10 years would be too long.”

Pasadena
Discrimination
Voting Rights Act
City Council races
Johnny Isbell
Hispanic Americans
Voter registration


In Ordinary Lives, U.S. Sees the Work of Russian Agents

Abstract: WASHINGTON — They had lived for more than a decade in American cities and suburbs from Seattle to New York, where they seemed to be ordinary couples working ordinary jobs, chatting to the neighbors about schools and apologizing for noisy teenagers. But on Monday, federal prosecutors accused 11 people of being part of a Russian espionage ring, living under false names and deep cover in a patient scheme to penetrate what one coded message called American “policy making circles.” An F.B.I. investigation that began at least seven years ago culminated with the arrest on Sunday of 10 people in Yonkers, Boston and northern Virginia. The documents detailed what the authorities called the “Illegals Program,” an ambitious, long-term effort by the S.V.R., the successor to the Soviet K.G.B., to plant Russian spies in the United States to gather information and recruit more agents. The alleged agents were directed to gather information on nuclear weapons , American policy toward Iran, C.I.A. leadership, Congressional politics and many other topics, prosecutors say. The Russian spies made contact with a former high-ranking American national security official and a nuclear weapons researcher, among others. But the charges did not include espionage, and it was unclear what secrets the suspected spy ring — which included five couples — actually managed to collect. After years of F.B.I. surveillance, investigators decided to make the arrests last weekend, just after an upbeat visit to President Obama by the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said one administration official. Mr. Obama was not happy about the timing, but investigators feared some of their targets might flee, the official said. Criminal complaints filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Monday read like an old-fashioned cold war thriller: Spies swapping identical orange bags as they brushed past one another in a train station stairway. An identity borrowed from a dead Canadian, forged passports, messages sent by shortwave burst transmission or in invisible ink. A money cache buried for years in a field in upstate New York. But the network of so-called illegals — spies operating under false names outside of diplomatic cover — also used cyber-age technology, according to the charges. They embedded coded texts in ordinary-looking images posted on the Internet, and they communicated by having two agents with laptops containing special software pass casually as messages flashed between them. Neighbors in Montclair, N.J., of the couple who called themselves Richard and Cynthia Murphy were flabbergasted when a team of F.B.I. agents turned up Sunday night and led the couple away in handcuffs. One person who lives nearby called them “suburbia personified,” saying that they had asked people for advice about the local schools. Others worried about the Murphys’ elementary-age daughters. Jessie Gugig, 15, said she could not believe the charges, especially against Mrs. Murphy. “They couldn’t have been spies,” she said jokingly. “Look what she did with the hydrangeas.” Experts on Russian intelligence expressed astonishment at the scale, longevity and dedication of the program. They noted that Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister and former president and spy chief, had worked to restore the prestige and funding of Russian espionage after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dark image of the K.G.B. “The magnitude, and the fact that so many illegals were involved, was a shock to me,” said Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who was a Soviet spy in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s under “legal” cover as a diplomat and Radio Moscow correspondent. “It’s a return to the old days, but even in the worst years of the cold war, I think there were no more than 10 illegals in the U.S., probably fewer.” Mr. Kalugin, now an American citizen living outside Washington, said he was impressed with the F.B.I.’s penetration of the spy ring. The criminal complaints are packed with vivid details gathered in years of covert surveillance — including monitoring phones and e-mail, placing secret microphones in the alleged Russian agents’ homes, and numerous surreptitious searches. The authorities also tracked one set of agents based in Yonkers on trips to an unidentified South American country, where they were videotaped receiving bags of cash and passing messages written in invisible ink to Russian handlers in a public park, according to the charges. Prosecutors said the “Illegals Program” extended to other countries around the world. Using fraudulent documents, the charges said, the spies would “assume identities as citizens or legal residents of the countries to which they are deployed, including the United States. Illegals will sometimes pursue degrees at target-country universities, obtain employment, and join relevant professional associations” to deepen false identities. One message from bosses in Moscow, in awkward English, gave the most revealing account of the agents’ assignment. “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” it said. “Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles and send intels [intelligence reports] to C[enter].” It was not clear what the intelligence reports were about, though one agent was described as meeting an American government employee working in a nuclear program. The defendants were charged with conspiracy, not to commit espionage, but to fail to register as agents of a foreign government, which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison; 9 were also charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years. They are not accused of obtaining classified materials. There were also hints that Russian spy bosses feared their agents, ordered to go native in prosperous America, might be losing track of their official purpose. Agents in Boston submitted an expense report with such vague items as “trip to meeting” for $1,125 and “education,” $3,600. In Montclair, when the Murphys wanted to buy a house under their names, “Moscow Center,” or “C.,” the S.V.R. headquarters, objected. “We are under an impression that C. views our ownership of the house as a deviation from the original purpose of our mission here,” the New Jersey couple wrote in a coded message. “From our perspective purchase of the house was solely a natural progression of our prolonged stay here. It was a convenient way to solving the housing issue, plus ‘to do as the Romans do’ in a society that values home ownership.” Much of the ring’s activity — and the F.B.I. investigators’ surveillance — took place in and around New York. The alleged agents were spotted in a bookstore in Lower Manhattan, a bench near the entrance to Central Park and a restaurant in Sunnyside, Queens. Secret exchanges were made at busy locations like the Long Island Rail Road’s station in Forest Hills, where F.B.I. watchers in 2004 spotted one defendant who is not in custody, Christopher R. Metsos, the charging papers say. The arrests made a splash in neighborhoods around the country, as F.B.I. teams spent all Sunday night hunting through houses and cars, shining flashlights and carting away evidence. In Cambridge, Mass., the couple known as Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, who appeared to be in their 40s and had two teenage sons, lived in an apartment building on a residential street where some Harvard professors and students live. “She was very courteous; she was very nice,” Montse Monne-Corbero, who lives next door, said of Ms. Foley. The sons shoveled snow for her in the winter, Ms. Monne-Corbero said, but they also had “very loud” parties. Lila Hexner, who lives in the building next door, said Ms. Foley told her she was in the real estate business. “She said they were from Canada,” Ms. Hexner said. Another of those charged, Mikhail Semenko, was a stylish man in his late 20s who drove a Mercedes S-500, said Tatyana Day, who lives across the street from him in Arlington, Va. He had a brunette girlfriend and the young couple spoke to one another in Russian and “kept to themselves,” Ms. Day said.

Espionage
Justice Department
Russia
Money Laundering
Russian Illegals Program (2010)


Size Doesn’t Keep Goldman Fund From Gyrating With Market

Abstract: During the heady days of the market boom, Goldman Sachs , with its billions in hedge funds and private equity investments, came to define that era’s euphoria. But now, as credit markets have seized up and investors have become more risk averse, the firm’s exposure to volatile fixed-income markets through its trading desk and hedge funds may well make Goldman the latest symbol of overreaching on Wall Street. Front and center is the continuing malaise in the performance of the firm’s $9 billion Global Alpha hedge fund, by far the largest internal hedge fund operated by a Wall Street firm and, until last year, a geyser of fees and profits for the bank’s asset management unit. Yesterday, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 2.8 percent as rumors spread that Global Alpha’s losses were mounting. Down 6 percent last year, the fund had slipped another 16 percent through July, and according to people who have been briefed on its performance, it lost a further 11 percent this month. Compounding this unease were reports that another Goldman fund, North American Equity Opportunities, with assets of $600 million, had lost 15 percent through July. Turmoil at Bear Stearns over the last month because of its two collapsed hedge funds has left investors on edge, and the latest problems at Goldman created another wave of selling panic yesterday. Goldman’s stock closed at $182.25, off 5.7 percent. One reason is scale. The Bear Stearns hedge funds were fairly small in size despite use of leverage by both. The two funds had combined assets of more than $1.5 billion and investors are not expected to recover much, if any, of that. For the much larger Global Alpha to have ended last year down 6 percent after being up 12 percent through the first six months of the year — and then to have added further large reversals this year — means that billions of dollars in clients’ money have vanished. A second reason is that unlike Bear, Goldman has a very aggressive proprietary trading desk. While the firm has always said that there is a Chinese wall separating the firm’s hedge funds from its traders, it has long been felt on Wall Street that good investment ideas, or bad ones for that matter, are to some degree shared at the firm. Just recently, for example, Raanan A. Agus, one of the firm’s top proprietary traders, was moved to the firm’s asset management unit, where he will start up an internal hedge fund that could rival Global Alpha in size. That has created another level of worry, stirred by concerns that Global Alpha’s investment miscues might show up on Goldman’s trading desk. Asked to comment on rumors that the fund might be liquidated, Peter Rose, a spokesman, said that was “categorically untrue.” He declined further comment on Global Alpha. “Firms like Goldman Sachs have gone out on the risk spectrum, which makes them doubly vulnerable,” said Richard X. Bove, a securities analyst at Punk Ziegel & Company. Mr. Bove added that it was unlikely that the firm’s traders and hedge fund managers operated in virtual seclusion. “If the investment is perceived as sound, then everybody participates,” he said. When Global Alpha, a quantitative fund that relies on computer models to drive its investment strategy, soared 40 percent in 2005, it became an apt metaphor for Goldman itself: large, mysterious and immensely profitable. Now, as the fund struggles to raise cash by selling securities that have suddenly become illiquid, it has become a symbol of the toll being taken on this style of investing. Other funds that employ quantitative strategies have also been hit this month, including a large fund run by James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who attracted notice last year for his reported $1.5 billion payday. The fund has lost 8 percent in August, according to Mark Silber, a vice president at Renaissance. For the year, the fund is down 7 percent, he said. AQR, a fund run by Clifford S. Asness, lost 13 percent this month, said a person briefed on its performance record, and Tykhe Capital, a $1.8 billion fund, has lost 19 percent, an investor said. Another computer-driven fund, at Highbridge Capital, is down 5.2 percent this year, according to a person briefed on its results. Goldman, with its $36 billion in equity, its diversified businesses and its access to cheap financing, is in a better position than many of its peers to weather the worst of market squalls. From its chief financial officer, David A. Viniar, to the chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman executives have made it clear that they do not believe the flush times of recent years can continue. Mr. Blankfein, in particular, a former commodities trader who gained the top slot at the bank by expanding the firm’s trading operations, has been doing his own version of Chicken Little. In last year’s annual report, he wrote that “in absolute terms we plan for the worst.” And his common refrain since he took over as chief executive has been, “the only thing we know is that everything will happen.”

Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated
Stocks and Bonds
Hedge Funds


Aleppo Evacuation Effort Restarts, and Assad Calls It History in the Making

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — After months of fierce bombardment and failed diplomacy, the Syrian government began removing residents from the last rebel-held districts in the city of Aleppo on Thursday, a process that solidifies President Bashar al-Assad’s control over the country’s largest city. Cold, hungry and carrying satchels and children, about 1,000 people, some of them wounded, boarded green buses and ambulances that carried the first batch of evacuees out of the rebel enclave. A second group of more than 1,000 people departed later, and a third left after nightfall. Mr. Assad hailed the evacuation in a video released by his office , saying the “liberation” of Aleppo would serve as a historical watershed, like the birth of Christ, the revelation of the Quran, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the two world wars. “I want to confirm that what is happening today is history that is being written by every Syrian citizen,” Mr. Assad said, smiling in a dark blue suit. “Its writing did not start today. It started about six years ago when the crisis and the war on Syria began.” Video Hundreds of people are leaving opposition-held parts of Aleppo, Syria, in a renewed effort to evacuate civilians. Credit Credit Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters It remained unclear how many people, both civilians and fighters, remained in eastern Aleppo, but aid workers guessed it would take several days to get them out. If successful, the evacuation will return the whole city to Mr. Assad’s control, signaling a major turning point in the nearly six-year conflict. Since early in the war, Aleppo, once the country’s industrial center, has been split, with the government holding the west and rebels holding neighborhoods in the east. But vast military aid for the Syrian government from Iran, Russia and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah turned the tide in the government’s favor, allowing it to surround the rebels. The evacuation deal was reached between Russia and Turkey, which backs the rebels, after months of heavy shelling and airstrikes that left entire neighborhoods in ruins and killed hundreds of people. Rebels in east Aleppo had also frequently shelled government-held areas, killing civilians there, too. Many people on that side of the city considered the rebels dangerous militants and were glad to see them ousted. Video Hundreds of people are leaving opposition-held parts of Aleppo, Syria, in a renewed effort to evacuate civilians. Credit Credit Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters The United States, which has supported the rebels along with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, has struggled and failed to reach an accord to end the war, and the United States did not help broker the evacuation agreement. “There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for the indiscriminate and savage brutality against civilians shown by the regime and by its Russian and Iranian allies over the past few weeks, or indeed over the past five years,” Secretary of State John Kerry said. “The Assad regime is actually carrying out nothing short of a massacre.” The loss of a foothold in Aleppo would be a major blow to the opposition, which would then hold sway in only one of Syria’s provincial capitals, Idlib, where the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda is a major force. The less territory the rebels hold, the harder it is for the United States and its allies to get the Syrian government to negotiate with them, the Obama administration’s goal. Residents reached in eastern Aleppo on Thursday said they felt the gravity of leaving places where they had lived and suffered for so long. Some bid farewell to places and things they would miss, while others pondered why the opposition had failed. Realizing he would be leaving soon, Hisham Skeif said he had visited his family’s home and sat by an old tree, where he thought about Native Americans and Palestinians — other peoples forced from their homes. “I never understood such feelings until today,” he said. “This is my great-grandfather’s land. It is not only my memories, but theirs as well.” While he had participated in the uprising against Mr. Assad that started the conflict, he felt that it had gone wrong by resorting to arms. “Today, hours before we leave, I say that our biggest mistake was carrying weapons,” he said. Others assumed that as declared enemies of the Assad government, they would never be allowed to return and left messages for those who would come later. Video Syrian government forces had reclaimed most of rebel-held eastern Aleppo by Tuesday, in a fierce battle. Activists and civilians in the last opposition-controlled areas posted videos describing their fear. Credit Credit George Ourfalian/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Salem Abualnaser, a dentist, left a handwritten note on a whiteboard near the door of a small community center for children. “Warning! Do not destroy! There are things here that your children may benefit from,” it read. Reached in a Facebook call on Thursday, Mr. Abualnaser said he had put the sign up because he had heard that government troops had looted other neighborhoods after seizing them from the rebels. “The situation here is better today and people are relaxed a little bit because all the shelling and airstrikes that we had yesterday have stopped,” he said. Others appeared to be covering their tracks as they left east Aleppo. Television images of the rebel enclave showed rising columns of smoke, which activists said were because fighters had set fire to their headquarters and ammunition stores. Image Buses during the evacuation operation in Aleppo on Thursday. Credit Karam Al-Masri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The evacuation’s start was delayed twice, once Wednesday morning when militia fighters unhappy with the deal fired on vehicles trying to bring people out, and on Thursday, when gunfire targeted rescue workers clearing rubble from a road, killing one and wounding three, according to Maan al-Shanan, an antigovernment activist. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights , which opposes the government and tracks the conflict from Britain, said that the presence of 250 foreign fighters among those to be evacuated also complicated the deal because the Syrian government wanted to detain them for interrogation. It remained unclear how that issue was resolved. But evacuation efforts restarted Thursday morning, with apparent modifications to the plan. Syrian state news media reported that buses and ambulances had begun evacuating residents from two Shiite villages in neighboring Idlib Province that have long been surrounded by Sunni rebels. One Man’s View Into the Last Days in Rebel-Held Aleppo Messages posted to a WhatsApp group by an English teacher in Aleppo describe what he saw in the shrinking rebel-held territory, as Syrian forces and their allies waged an assault to retake the city. The two villages, Fua and Kfraya, were not originally part of the evacuation deal. The moves to evacuate people from the villages suggested that they had been added to the deal to ensure that people in eastern Aleppo would be allowed to leave. Live images on Syrian state television showed the line of green buses and ambulances emerging from the rebel enclave into a government-held area, and antigovernment activists filmed their arrival in rebel-held territory further west, where many evacuees broke into tears and ate apples and cookies handed to them. Under the agreement, civilians evacuated from eastern Aleppo can stay in government-controlled sectors or continue to rebel-held areas. Rebels may only go to other rebel-held areas. Most were likely to end up in Idlib Province to the west of Aleppo, where a rebel alliance that includes the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda dominates. Some aid workers feared that moving the Aleppo residents there would merely lay the groundwork for a future siege. Image A bus carried families out of Aleppo on Thursday. The evacuation deal was reached between Russia, which backs the Syrian government, and Turkey, which supports the opposition. Credit Karam Al-Masri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “I don’t know what will happen in Idlib, but if there is no cease-fire or political accord then it will become the next Aleppo,” said Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria. When east Aleppo was besieged by government forces and their allies, the United Nations reported that more than 250,000 people were trapped there. But on Thursday, Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir of the Russian military’s general staff said that 900 militants had been killed in the recent offensive against the rebel-held neighborhoods and that more than 108,000 civilians had fled the area, including more than 3,000 rebels. Speaking to journalists in Geneva, Jan Egeland, the United Nations humanitarian adviser for Syria, said that an estimated 50,000 people had fled eastern Aleppo. The discrepancy in the numbers could not immediately be resolved. The United Nations has not been able to provide protection for those fleeing, he said, because its workers were not given access. “We have not been witnesses to atrocities that we know have been committed by all sides in this horrific war,” Mr. Egeland added. The plight of those trapped in eastern Aleppo as supplies have dwindled and destruction has spread has caused anguish among humanitarian workers. “It took 4,000 years to build Aleppo, hundreds of generations, yet one generation managed to tear it down in four years,” Mr. Egeland said.

International relations
Military
Bashar al-Assad
Syria
Aleppo Syria
Civilian casualties
Evacuation
Human Rights


Harold M. Agnew, Physicist Present at Birth of the Nuclear Age, Dies at 92

Abstract: Harold M. Agnew, the last surviving major figure to have been present at the birth of the nuclear age — a physicist who helped build the world’s first reactor and atomic bombs, flew on the first atomic strike against Japan, filmed the mushroom cloud, helped perfect the hydrogen bomb and led the Los Alamos National Laboratory at the height of the cold war — died on Sunday at his home in Solana Beach, Calif. He was 92. He had recently been given a diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, his family said. Dr. Agnew was no giant of discovery, but he was ingenious technically and wielded great influence for decades as a presidential adviser and a gregarious hawk, as restless and unpredictable as the tumultuous age he helped define. “We did pretty good,” he remarked during a 1992 flight between Moscow and Kiev, Ukraine. “We brought a quick end to a devastating war and maintained the peace, and eventually saw democracy prevail. That’s something you can hang your hat on.” In a statement, Charlie McMillan, the current director of Los Alamos, the birthplace of the bomb in the mountains of New Mexico, called Dr. Agnew “a national treasure,” saying the United States “will be forever in Harold’s debt.” Harold Melvin Agnew was born in Denver on March 28, 1921, the only child of a stonecutter of Scotch-Irish heritage. A natural athlete, he pitched his softball team to a Denver championship. He majored in chemistry at Denver University, graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1942 and won a scholarship to Yale. But the secret wartime effort to build an atomic bomb intruded on his studies. Early in 1942 he was assigned to Enrico Fermi, the Italian Nobel laureate who was helping to lead the project at the University of Chicago. Dr. Agnew did what he called “grunt work,” making scientific measurements and getting a hefty dose of radiation. Redirected because of the health danger, he helped stack tons of graphite bricks and uranium into a neat pile at a university squash court. On a blustery Chicago day, Dec. 2, 1942, Dr. Agnew and a few dozen other people gathered to see if the pile could sustain a chain reaction. Recording pens jumped as atoms split in two. The success meant that in theory the human race now had the means to illuminate cities or level them. He was 21. Dr. Agnew arrived at Los Alamos in March 1943 with his wife, Beverly. The couple shared a bunkhouse with another couple and a man who cooked nothing but Chinese food, even for breakfast. Amid the tall pines and deep canyons, Dr. Agnew helped build and run a particle accelerator whose data helped demonstrate the merits of various bomb designs. When the world’s first nuclear blast lit up the New Mexico desert before dawn on July 16, 1945, Dr. Agnew was already far away, preparing for the bombing of Hiroshima. He was “aching” for the run to Japan, he recalled, because so many friends had died in the war. He autographed the bomb. Image Harold M. Agnew Credit Ben Martin/Time Magazine On Aug. 6, he boarded a B-29 bomber that accompanied the Enola Gay, which was carrying the bomb code-named Little Boy. Dr. Agnew and two other scientists measured the size of the shock wave and thus the bomb’s power. Afterward, he and his colleagues took turns peering out a small window at the mushroom cloud and the ground damage. Dr. Agnew filmed the devastation with a 16-millimeter Bell & Howell movie camera he had taken along. He was the only person to witness the whole undertaking, from reactor to weapon to Hiroshima. After the war, he studied with Fermi at Chicago and received his Ph.D. in physics in 1949. Returning to Los Alamos, he joined the hunt for a technical edge over the Soviet Union, which had exploded its own atomic bomb in 1949, surprising the West. The first hydrogen bomb, tested successfully in 1952, weighed a staggering 65 tons. Dr. Agnew helped perfect lighter H-bombs that were deliverable over long distances. In the 1960s, as scientific adviser to the supreme allied commander in Europe, he led the development of protective devices for nuclear arms that kept them under tight presidential control. Returning to Los Alamos, Dr. Agnew was named head of the weapons division, which developed the warhead for the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile, among other arms. In 1970, he became director of the lab, with a staff of about 7,000. Meanwhile, political radicals at the University of California, which ran Los Alamos, labeled him a war criminal and tried him in absentia. In 1978, Dr. Agnew advised President Jimmy Carter against seeking a comprehensive ban on nuclear testing. He argued that such an East-West stoppage would have ended the development of new arms and, more important, reduced confidence in the potency of the existing arsenal. The White House eventually dropped the ban idea. Upon retiring from Los Alamos, Dr. Agnew sought to encourage the growth of civilian nuclear power. In March 1979, he became president of General Atomics, a San Diego-based maker and developer of innovative reactors. From 1982 until 1989, he was a science adviser to the White House under President Ronald Reagan. After the cold war, in 1991, he participated in the first meeting between American bomb makers and their Russian counterparts, seeking ways to reduce nuclear arsenals. In 1992, he urged the United States to buy bomb-grade uranium from scrapped Soviet nuclear arms to bolster the shaky Russian economy and reduce the risk of nuclear war, accident and theft. In August of that year, the White House announced a plan to buy at least 500 metric tons of the material in a deal worth several billion dollars. The Russian bomb uranium was diluted into fuel for nuclear reactors that make electricity, turning a major danger into a peaceful bonanza. Dr. Agnew is survived by a daughter, Nancy E. Chapman; a son, John; four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He also left a towering reputation at Los Alamos. Late in life, Dr. Agnew noted with pride that cars could occasionally be seen there bearing bright orange bumper stickers reading, “Harold, come back.”

Harold M Agnew
Nuclear weapon
General Atomics
Obituary
World War II
Physics


Lebanese Army Says It Will Use Force to Quell Fighting

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Lebanese Army announced on Monday evening that it would start using force to stop fighting between supporters of the governing coalition and the Hezbollah -led opposition, a step the army had not taken during almost a week of sectarian violence that recalled the country’s 15-year civil war. The announcement was made as violence eased across Lebanon, despite some renewed street battles in the north. Tensions were still high in the Chouf mountains overlooking Beirut, where armed fighters remained on the roads after a day and night of fierce clashes that appeared to have left dozens of people dead. The army continued to deploy forces in the mountains east of Beirut and in northern Lebanon, as part of a plan to take over militia positions and quell the fighting. But there were signs that some government-allied figures were increasingly mistrustful of the army — widely viewed as Lebanon’s one nonpartisan institution — because it did not interfere when Hezbollah supporters seized control of much of western Beirut on Friday. In northern Lebanon, a plan for local groups to hand their weapons to the army has encountered some resistance because pro-government groups, which are a majority in the north, fear being left at the mercy of Hezbollah, said Misbah Ahdab, a member of Parliament from Tripoli. Sporadic gun battles took place on Monday between pro-government Sunni fighters in the Bab al Tabbaneh area of Tripoli, in the north, and pro-Hezbollah Alawites in neighboring Jebel Mohsen, Mr. Ahdab said. Although both of Lebanon’s major political camps still look to the army as an arbiter, government supporters have become increasingly critical of its passive role in the recent clashes. “The army is no longer the army,” said a political adviser to the government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “It has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens.” In the Chouf mountains east of Beirut, one pro-government Druse fighter, asked if he and his fellow Druse would give up their weapons to the army starting Tuesday, said, “We will if Hezbollah will.” Hezbollah has long refused to discuss relinquishing its weapons; the current crisis began last week after the government challenged a private telephone network and airport camera system that Hezbollah views as part of its defenses. Tensions remained high on Monday in the Chouf, where at least 20 government-allied Druse fighters were killed in battles that stretched through Sunday night, said Walid Jumblatt, the Druse leader. Mr. Jumblatt’s followers were fighting Shiite Hezbollah supporters and their Druse allies. The number killed on that side was not clear, but Reuters reported that 36 people had been killed in all during the mountain battles. Mr. Jumblatt seemed uneasy about the prospect of further unrest in the mountains, especially in light of the raids by heavily armed Hezbollah fighters into the Druse mountain heartland over the weekend. “We will not accept to be humiliated,” Mr. Jumblatt said during an interview at his Beirut residence. On Monday, army units and militiamen loyal to the Hezbollah-led opposition were visible on the roads. In the town of Shuweifat, closer to Beirut, there were burned-out cars and shops, and houses riddled with fresh bullet holes. Human remains lay on the floor of one bullet-scarred garage, along with thick bloodstains where bodies had apparently been dragged along the floor. In Beirut, an uneasy calm prevailed as government figures awaited the arrival of an Arab delegation that aims to help resolve the crisis. The cabinet has still not met to discuss the two government decisions that led Hezbollah to seize western Beirut, and it is not yet clear whether rescinding those decisions will be enough for Hezbollah to stop its so-called civil disobedience campaign, which includes blocking the road to the Beirut airport.

Lebanon
Politics and Government
Hezbollah
Armament Defense and Military Forces
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare


After Earmarks Ban, Many Local Projects Are on Hold

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Gone for now are the likes of the taxpayer-financed teapot museum, or studies on the mating habits of crabs. But also shelved are a project to help consolidate information about warrants in Brazos County, Tex., and staffing for two new shelters for abused women and children in Salt Lake City. A rural Wisconsin county will not be able to upgrade its communication system, and a road in Kentucky will not be widened next year. Across the country, local governments, nonprofit groups and scores of farmers, to name but a few, are waking up to the fact that when Congress stamped out earmarks last week, it was talking about their projects, too. Tensions are particularly acute in districts where new conservative lawmakers, many of whom criticized throughout their campaigns the practice of quietly inserting earmarks into spending bills, are coming face to face with local governments and interest groups who were counting on federal dollars to help shore up their own collapsing budgets. The issue is hardly limited to Republican districts. Democrats, led by President Obama — who recently said earmarks were a bad thing — also agreed to give up the practice. Last week, Senator Daniel K. Inouye , Democrat of Hawaii, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee who has long cherished earmarks, announced that they would be banned from this year’s appropriations bills. But he was not happy about it. “The reality,” Mr. Inouye said, “is that critical needs in communities throughout the country will be neglected: roads and bridges in disrepair, job training programs shuttered, and vital resources for national defense and law enforcement cut off, to name just a few.” Many citizens, even those who sympathize with cuts in spending, insist that not all pork is cured with the same untoward salt. “I do agree we have to cut from somewhere,” said Steve Tribble, the county judge executive of Christian County in Kentucky, where a planned road project is now imperiled. “I am against some earmarks,” he said. “Not the good ones. I can promise you this is not a road to nowhere.” In Burnett County in Wisconsin, the loss of a $1 million federal earmark to help pay for modernizing its communication system could result in a property tax increase, said the county administrator, Candace Fitzgerald. “This is very, very expensive,” Ms. Fitzgerald said, explaining that the area’s rugged terrain made it hard to erect the equipment needed for the upgrades, which she were required by the federal government. “It’s going to kill that little tax base up there,” she said of her county’s most far-flung corner. Representative Sean Duffy, Republican of Wisconsin, who devoted part of his 2010 campaign to criticizing the penchant of his predecessor, David R. Obey — a Democrat who retired after four decades in Congress — for securing earmarks, said he traveled to his district last week to gently explain to local governments that times had changed. “I am being honest with people,” Mr. Duffy said in a telephone interview. “I draw them a pie chart.” But even Mr. Duffy said that he had come to see that not every earmark was of the much-maligned teapot museum quality, and that he would help his constituents “work through the grant process” to secure needed financing in other ways. But there’s the rub. With President Obama proposing a five-year freeze on domestic spending, and the Republican-controlled House vowing to cut spending in federal agencies by hundreds of millions of dollars, it almost certain that every agency will have far less money to spend on thousands of legitimate projects that were approved after extensive review. Simply put, without earmarks to turn to, far more applicants will be scrambling for a smaller pot of grant money. The result? Scores of lawmakers are going to find themselves explaining to the people back home why their bridges will not be finished, their rape-victim programs canceled before they started, their federal requirements ignored. As Ms. Fitzgerald said of Mr. Duffy, “He definitely is going to be hearing from us.” Spending for earmarks accounts for less than half of 1 percent of total federal spending, but it can be crucial chunks of change for localities. The practice has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, as some lawmakers have been prolific users of earmarks while others, supported by some government watchdog groups, have criticized them as too lightly scrutinized engines of corruption that add needlessly to government spending. There were about $8 billion in earmark requests in the 2011 omnibus spending bill that failed to get through the last Congress. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who has made earmarks one of his signature targets, sends Twitter messages about the ones he finds most offensive. “$1,000,000 for improvements to a pond in Maplewood, MN — those are some lucky frogs,” read one. The issue gained political potency with the Republicans’ ascent in the House, led by its earmarks-despising new speaker, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, and followed by President Obama’s comments and pressure from opponents in both parties that became too great to ignore. Many new lawmakers say localities, not federal taxpayers, should pay for new bike paths, local cultural organizations and other projects that benefit only their community. But some earmarks are for projects that have broader impact, like national parks, large research centers on university campuses or military installations. For instance, in South Dakota, roughly $12 million had been set aside to modernize a training center at Ellsworth Air Force Base. “Currently training requirements are fulfilled in a 58-year-old facility that has reached the end of its lifecycle and is costly to maintain,” said an Air Force spokeswoman, Elizabeth Gosselin. Others are projects that are potentially attractive to Republicans and Democrats alike. In the Texas district recently won by Representative Bill Flores, a Republican, a $300,000 program that would serve law enforcement agencies across Brazos County, and $2.3 million for a research center at Baylor University, among the county’s largest employers, are now left hanging. “We have hosted Congressman Flores on our campus so he could learn about our campus,” said Tommye Lou Davis, the university’s vice president for constituent engagement. “I suspect it will take Congressman Flores a while to get a lay of the land, but he is definitely concerned with representing us well.” In an e-mail, Mr. Flores said he was aware of the earmarks requested in the last Congress for Baylor and Brazos County. “In keeping with my promises,” he added, “I will fully support the earmark moratorium to ensure that we focus on balancing the budget and creating a more transparent and accountable process for necessary spending.” Outside of the earmark process, however, it is difficult for freshman lawmakers to exert any influence over federal agencies to direct money to particular projects. Under the new ban, some projects will no doubt still get federal money. Others will be shelved, or in the case of nonprofits, receive more private financing. Some officials have no idea what they are going to do. “It’s a good question,” said Anne Burkholder, chief executive of the Y.W.C.A. in Salt Lake City, which planned to use its $485,000 earmark to hire staff members for two new shelters for women and children until more private money came through; for now it is using volunteers. “We’re trying to determine right now how to close that gap,” Mrs. Burkholder said.

Earmarks (Finance)
United States Politics and Government
Law and Legislation
Federal Taxes (US)
House of Representatives
Republican Party
Senate


German President Will Seek Reelection

Abstract: BERLIN — President Horst Köhler announced Thursday that he would seek a second term, setting up a likely replay of the last election that would pit the government’s ruling coalition parties against each other. The race for the German presidency is normally a staid one. But the recent upheaval in the German political landscape, particularly the rise of the radical Left Party and the challenge it has presented to the left-leaning Social Democrats, has raised the stakes. A year and a day before the vote is scheduled to take place, Mr. Köhler announced that he would seek re-election. In a short statement, he said he wanted to continue “on the path of change and preservation.” He added that he was not afraid of “democratic competition,” but that he would not campaign for the office, which is meant to be apolitical. Speculation in the German media has been rampant that the Social Democrats will field a candidate even though they are partners in the German government with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, Mr. Köhler’s party. The result would be even more friction in an already tense coalition of traditional rivals. But analysts here say the Social Democrats’ only chance to win the presidency would be with the support of the Left Party, still a controversial decision for a mainstream party like the Social Democrats. That, in turn, could jeopardize their chances a few months later in the crucial national parliamentary vote. “To draw on votes from the far left or the far right in the presidential election would be harmful to our democratic culture,” Guido Westerwelle, chairman of the free market Free Democrats, who helped elect Mr. Köhler to his first term, said Thursday in a statement. The Social Democrats’ candidate is once again expected to be Gesine Schwan, the government’s coordinator for German-Polish relations and president of European University Viadrina. The party said it would announce its decision on Monday. Germany ’s president is not elected directly by the people but rather by a body called the Federal Assembly, made up of the lower house of Parliament and representatives from the state parliaments. The term of office is five years, and the president is limited to two terms. The position is largely ceremonial but carries a great deal of moral authority. When Mr. Köhler announced his candidacy for his first term a little more than four years ago, Germany’s conservative parties had a clear majority in the Federal Assembly. Ms. Schwan ran against him and ended up pulling some votes across party lines, resulting in a race that was closer than expected. Since then, the political calculus has changed. The conservative grip on the Federal Assembly has loosened, and the Left Party has grown into a significant political wild card. The Left Party, which contains elements of the former East German Communist Party, has made huge inroads this year, winning enough votes for representation in the state parliaments in two large Western states, Hesse and Lower Saxony, as well as in Hamburg. “The Social Democrats’ only realistic chance is with the votes from the Left Party,” said Oskar Niedermayer, professor of political science at the Free University in Berlin. That leaves the Social Democrats in a difficult position, with huge political risks on either side. If they support Mr. Köhler, they risk losing voters on the left. But electing Ms. Schwan with the support of the Left Party could spook their middle-class base in western Germany. “The Social Democrats have a dilemma, which is that they are a government party and an opposition party at the same time,” said Gerd Langguth, a political science professor at the University of Bonn. He said that their decision on a candidate was long overdue, a sign of the turmoil within the party. Before becoming president in 2004, Mr. Köhler was managing director of the International Monetary Fund and one of the chief negotiators of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, which created the euro.


Judge Who Gets Terror Case Is to Be Decided by the Spin of a Wheel

Abstract: At first glance, the wooden wheel looks as if it might have been used to call out bingo numbers in a church fund-raiser. But sometime soon, a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan could be spinning the wheel in open court, unlocking a small door on one of its sides, and pulling out a sealed envelope containing the name of a judge. That judge could well be charged with overseeing the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others accused in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. And that judge will have to consider questions as procedural as trial dates and as controversial and delicate as evidence gained through torture. The case could last years, and the judge who gets it will most likely be assigned security around the clock — for his or her lifetime. When Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced this month that the Obama administration would seek to have Mr. Mohammed and the others tried in civilian court in New York, he said that he was confident that “whatever judge is assigned to this case will maintain the dignity of the proceedings” and that the defendants would get a fair trial. For the moment, it is unclear whether the wheel will even be spun. Prosecutors could seek an indictment that would result in the case going to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is presiding in the case of another suspected terrorist that is raising issues similar to those that could arise in the Sept. 11 matter. The question of who will preside over the case has become the subject of speculation in the chambers of judges and in the corridors of federal court on Pearl Street. “This entire case coming to New York is to demonstrate to the world that the system works — and part of that system is the wheel,” said Donna R. Newman, a lawyer whose clients have included Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born convert to Islam who was once designated as an enemy combatant (and was later convicted of conspiracy in federal court). Ronald L. Kuby, another lawyer whose clients have included terrorism defendants over the years, said: “As corny as it was watching that wooden bingo drum be spun, it did create a sense of impartiality. It would be a good thing in this case.” There are actually three wheels — labeled A, B, and C — that are used to assign most criminal cases. They sit in a row by the magistrate judge on the fifth floor of the courthouse. Wheel A is used for short trials; B for trials that are expected to last 6 to 20 days, and C for trials estimated to exceed 20 days. A judge who receives the Sept. 11 case may recuse him- or herself for a variety of reasons. The case would then be reassigned. In a recent case in Brooklyn federal court, for example, which uses a computer to assign cases randomly, it took four tries to assign a case involving a man charged in a Qaeda plot to set off bombs in the United States. The court’s chief judge, Raymond J. Dearie, who finally got the case, said that one judge assigned to the case was on senior status and was not supposed to be on the list of judges taking cases. A second judge had an irreconcilable conflict of interest that prevented her from sitting. And a third judge recused herself without explanation. “Take my word for it,” Judge Dearie said, “every judge in the courthouse would have liked to have had this case, fully realizing it’s going to be a real burden.” In Manhattan federal court, there are more than 20 active judges, along with a few on senior status (a sort of semiretirement), who appear to be eligible to receive the Sept. 11 case. Some have raised the question of whether a judge could volunteer for the Sept. 11 case. Under the court’s rules, a judge could offer to take the case only after it was randomly assigned to another judge. Mr. Kuby believes that would be inadvisable, saying, “Any judge who wants it should not have it.” “The only judge who would want this case is a judge who wants to stamp his or her mark on history,” he said, adding, “And the desire to do that tends not to make for the best judging.” If the wheel is not used, the Sept. 11 case could end up going before Judge Kaplan. Lawyers who have been mulling over this possibility presented the following premise: the judge has been handling the case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspected terrorist charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of American Embassies in Africa. Like the Sept. 11 defendants, Mr. Ghailani spent time in the C.I.A.’s secret prisons and at Guantánamo. But it is less well known that Mr. Ghailani is also one of nearly two dozen defendants, including Osama bin Laden, who were charged in a broad indictment with conspiring to kill Americans “anywhere in the world, including in the United States.” That indictment is also before Judge Kaplan. Prosecutors could bring a superseding version of that indictment, in which they charge the Sept. 11 plot as part of Mr. bin Laden’s global conspiracy to kill Americans. “The government certainly has arguments that a superseding indictment and assignment to Judge Kaplan is appropriate,” said Michael G. McGovern, a former terrorism prosecutor in Manhattan. He added that prosecutors could validly say: “We indicted bin Laden. He’s the leader of this conspiracy. K. S. M. is the field general who carried it out.” Prosecutors had no comment. In yet another possibility, prosecutors would try Mr. Mohammed on a 1990s-era indictment in the so-called Bojinka plot to bomb American jetliners as they crossed the Pacific. Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy presided in a 1996 trial in which three others were convicted. But Mr. Holder’s recent comments make that seem unlikely. The attorney general said the Sept. 11 defendants would be “charged for what we believe they did, and that is to mastermind and carry out the 9/11 attacks.”

Mohammed Khalid Shaikh
Courts
September 11 (2001)
Crime and Criminals


California: Minimum Wage Will Rise

Abstract: Calling it a “matter of justice,” Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill on Wednesday that will raise California’s minimum wage to $10 an hour within three years. The minimum of $8 an hour will go to $9 next July 1, then to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016. In opposing the raise, Republican lawmakers said increased wages would encourage businesses to cut jobs and automate. Federal law sets a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, but California is among 19 states and the District of Columbia that sets higher minimums. Some cities have higher rates, including San Francisco, which has the nation’s highest minimum wage, $10.50 an hour.

California
Minimum wage
Legislation
Jerry Brown


Solar Bursts Spray Earth, With More to Come

Abstract: Solar storms like the one that buffeted the Earth ’s magnetic field on Thursday will soon become a common occurrence. Magnetic eruptions on the Sun on Tuesday and Wednesday released two huge bursts of lights — two of the largest solar flares over the last five years — and accelerated a blob of high-speed particles headed toward us. As the charged particles slam the Earth’s magnetic field at more than a million miles per hour and are funneled toward the north and south poles, they generate the nighttime light now known as auroras or northern and southern lights. Giant solar storms can wreak havoc on satellites and power grids. One storm knocked out power in a large area in Quebec in 1989. The current storm, which started Thursday morning, is not nearly large enough to cause that much trouble. “At this point it’s a minor storm,” said C. Alex Young, a senior solar physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It’s not going to be that big even if the levels increase a bit. This is really not something to be concerned about.” Nevertheless, concern did ensue after NASA issued a statement on Wednesday saying that two large solar flares could send “a severe geomagnetic storm” toward Earth that could cause “possible disruption to high frequency radio communication, global positioning systems and power grids.” That announcement caused a storm of its own, sparking numerous hyperbolic news reports about possible dangers to air travel and communications systems from large clouds of charged particles rushing at the Earth. The storm particles started shaking the Earth’s magnetic field Thursday morning, the disturbance was rated only “minor,” a 1 on the 1-to-5 scale used to describe the intensity of such storms. The intensity did not crescendo to the “strong” threshold as had been predicted. A similar-size storm also hit Earth in late January. Elsewhere, closer to the Sun, the storm was felt more acutely. The splash of intense radiation temporarily blinded the European Space Agency’s Venus Express spacecraft. There has been a five-year lull in strong solar storms because the ferocity and pace of the Sun’s flares and magnetic eruptions rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, and the Sun has only recently emerged from its slumber and started generating new solar flares. “We’re getting the first few snowfalls of the year, so to speak,” said Robert Rutledge, lead of the forecast office at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. During the course of a typical cycle, some 200 solar storms as strong as Thursday’s will hit Earth. Even though the current cycle appears quieter than usual, such storms could strike Earth a few times a week when the cycle peaks in the next year or so. If the cycle matches the usual pattern, about a tenth as many of the solar storms — 10 to 20 — would reach the stronger, “severe” level and one or two would be described as “extreme.” It is the most powerful storms that generate real worry. In addition to knocking out power grids, the larger solar storms can also damage satellites or pose a health hazard to astronauts on the International Space Station. “I don’t think people should really be concerned” unless an extreme solar storm is headed toward Earth, Dr. Young said. “We want the general public to be aware of it and know what’s going on, but at the same time not lose sleep over it.”

Space
Solar Storms
Magnets and Magnetism
Sun
Satellites


Murray and Li Advance

Abstract: The Wimbledon champion Andy Murray rallied for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over the unseeded Czech Lukas Rosol to reach the third round of the PNB Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. In the women’s draw, the Australian Open champion Li Na overcame Zheng Jie, 6-1, 7-5.


Who’ll Start at First in October? Defense Makes a Good Case

Abstract: The more Doug Mientkiewicz plays, the more likely it seems that he will start at first base for the Yankees in the playoffs. With his play in Boston last weekend, Mientkiewicz reinforced how much better he is in the field than Jason Giambi , and the value of defense in October is well known. “But I also know Giambi is Giambi,” said Baltimore’s Kevin Millar, who started at first for Boston in the 2004 postseason, with Mientkiewicz backing him up. “There’s no chance I’d sit Giambi.” Joe Torre, the Yankees’ manager, could solve that issue by making Giambi the designated hitter with Mientkiewicz at first. But that would shove Hideki Matsui or Johnny Damon to the bench. In any case, Torre would seem to be sacrificing offense for defense to get Mientkiewicz’s glove in the field. Yet after a three-month layoff following surgery on his right wrist in early June, Mientkiewicz has shown he can hit. He slapped two opposite-field singles against Curt Schilling on Sunday and had two walks and a two-run single on Monday. He is also a good bunter and contact hitter. “The two base hits off Schilling the other way — if he can do that, it’s a tremendous uplift for him and the ball club,” the hitting coach Kevin Long said before Mientkiewicz went 2 for 4 with four runs batted in, including a three-run homer, in a 12-0 victory against the Orioles last night. “He can spray the ball around and hit the ball wherever it presents itself.” Since the injury, Mientkiewicz’s body has been like an extra hitting coach. When he swings under the ball or is jammed, he said, it bothers his wrist. But when he takes a flat, level swing, his wrist feels fine. The result is that Mientkiewicz, a left-handed batter, can let the ball get deeper on him and take it to left field. Even at his best, Mientkiewicz would probably be the least-feared hitter in the order. Yet with the team hitting as expected now, the lineup could include Mientkiewicz and still thrive, which was the Yankees’ plan heading into the season. “I feel like what I do best really shows up in October,” he said. “If Joe wants Jason to play, who can argue with that? The guy’s got an M.V.P. on his mantel, and the guy’s got World Series experience, too. I think both Jason and I want to give Joe an option. It can’t hurt to have guys that are playing well. It’s a good decision to have. “But I want to play. This is the time of year that I signed here for. I watched last year. I watched a guy that doesn’t play first base play there in a crucial situation, and it cost them.” Mientkiewicz was referring to the Yankees’ experiment last fall to make Gary Sheffield a first baseman to get his bat in the lineup. Sheffield was ragged in the field and invisible at the plate in the Yankees’ swift division series elimination. Mientkiewicz would be an obvious upgrade this October, even if it means benching a more potent bat. “There’s no question that certainly can’t be dismissed,” Torre said. “You go through phases of the season where you say, ‘O.K., let’s score,’ or, ‘Let’s think about defense.’ Right now, it just seems to be more comfortable this way, knowing you have Jason who can D.H.” Mientkiewicz started at first base last night for the third game in a row, but Torre said Giambi would probably play first base tonight because he did not want him to go too long without playing in the field.

Mientkiewicz Doug
New York Yankees
Giambi Jason
Baseball
Athletics and Sports


Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Abstract: Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com . Q. I was fascinated to see magazine ad inserts for the second season of “The Borgias” on Showtime styled like fragrance ads, down to photos of a beautiful woman and a perfume bottle and scent strips that when you open them emit real scent. It’s kind of a “meta” concept, a tune-in ad for a TV show that you can smell. Can you tell me more? A. The goal of the ad inserts, to promote the return of “The Borgias” on April 8 to women ages 25 to 49, was “to elevate ‘The Borgias’ beyond the expected consume drama, giving it modern relevance in a sexy and relatable way,” Nicole Elice, a spokeswoman at Showtime in New York, part of the CBS Corporation, writes in an e-mail. At the same time, the teaser ads were intended to “connect back to the show,” she says, through the use of “key art” from the series, which appears on the backs of the inserts. That art depicts the woman from the photos — Lucrezia Borgia, played by Holliday Grainger — holding the perfume bottle, posed along with other members of the cast like Jeremy Irons. The inserts were designed to mimic fragrance ads down to the use of “Lucrezia” as if it were the name of a perfume instead of a character. And in place of the words “Open here to experience (fragrance name)” that typically appear on the scent strips, the ads read “Experience at your own risk,” echoing the murderous reputation of Lucrezia Borgia. The scent was developed for the ads, Ms. Elice says, by the Visionaire Group, and selected by an internal team at Showtime to perfume the inserts. The scent was chosen because it “evokes femininity,” she adds, and “female empowerment.” The ad inserts appeared in magazines like Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times Magazine, People and Vanity Fair. And in another “meta” moment, there were display ads “showcasing the Lucrezia scent strip creative” running on Web sites that included The Huffington Post, imdb.com, The Los Angeles Times, and nymag.com . The program marketing and advertising department at Showtime worked on the ads with the Visionaire Group; the internal creative agency at the channel, the Red Group; and the Showtime media agency, OMD, part of the Omnicom Group. The concept of a fragrance that helps pitch a television series seems to be part of a trend of meta promotions these days. Others include a taste test for new Pepsi Next on Facebook , an online test drive for the new Mini Roadster and a series of commercials for Geico that purport to show what happens when consumers are asked to take part in taste tests for car insurance . Q. I, too, wanted to weigh in on the reader question about the implausibility of the Amazon commercial in which the package with the Kindle is left on a doorstep and also on some of the follow-up replies from other readers . Is the skepticism because you guys live in New York? I have allowed Amazon, FedEx and U.P.S. to leave things at my door. I live in the heart of Houston and nothing has ever been stolen. I also own an apartment in Manhattan and people would steal my trash if I left it out — and they do. Want to get rid of something, regardless of how small or large? Put it on the curb... tick tock... gone. A. Thanks, dear reader, for weighing in. You remind me of the joke about dysfunctional New York in the 1960s when, supposedly, a man decided the best way to get rid of his garbage was to gift-wrap it and leave it on the subway. Nowadays, on the other hand, news media often report about residents and tourists who, after searching for many hours, find missing wallets or purses with the contents intact or recount how their missing valuables, again with the contents intact, were returned to them by strangers.

Advertising and Marketing
Magazines
Perfumes and Fragrances
Amazon Kindle
The Borgias (TV Program)


Preseason Tries to Promote Global N.B.A.

Abstract: Tim Hardaway Jr. experienced the less glamorous side of the N.B.A. this month when the Knicks went on a barnstorming tour of New England and beyond. The team played three games in four nights, starting in Providence, R.I., where the visitors’ locker room seemed to be the size of a cubicle. It continued to Toronto, where a video of a Hardaway dunk went viral. It wrapped up in Manchester, N.H., where the road took its toll and the team looked sluggish. “It was a learning experience,” said Hardaway, a first-year shooting guard. With renovations continuing at Madison Square Garden, the Knicks have become vagabonds once again this preseason. On Monday, the team will make its second trip to Toronto for an exhibition against the Raptors before heading to Green Bay, Wis., for a game on Wednesday against the Milwaukee Bucks. The Knicks’ lone preseason appearance at the Garden will not come until Friday, when they host the Charlotte Bobcats. It might not be an ideal situation — “It’s O.K.,” Coach Mike Woodson said — but at least the Knicks have company. In fact, N.B.A. teams are collectively logging more than 200,000 miles of preseason travel to destinations as diverse as Biloxi, Miss., and Istanbul. All that traveling can create challenges for coaching staffs that would prefer to focus on evaluating personnel and devising offenses. But the league increasingly sees the preseason as vital for spreading the N.B.A. gospel at home and abroad. Consider that 28 percent of the N.B.A.’s games this preseason are being played at nonleague locations. For example, the Knicks’ appearances in New Hampshire and in Rhode Island were home games for the Boston Celtics. Just two of the Celtics’ eight preseason games are being staged at TD Garden. At the same time, the Knicks’ peripatetic schedule, covering about 3,070 miles, has been a breeze compared with the globe-trotting of other teams. The Oklahoma City Thunder played two games in Europe this month. The Houston Rockets and the Indiana Pacers faced each other in the Philippines and in Taiwan. Most recently, the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Lakers had a two-game swing through China. Those exhibitions were all part of what the league has branded the N.B.A. Global Games: eight preseason and two regular-season games featuring 12 teams in seven countries. Commissioner David Stern said the league’s overseas adventures required an extraordinary amount of planning. “But they’re our attempt to grow the game,” said Stern, who added that the league was “serious about bringing this sport to the greatest number of people.” League officials seem well aware that the travel can be a drain. Upon arriving in China last week, Adam Silver, the league’s deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, reflected on his 24-hour trip from Rio de Janeiro, where the Washington Wizards played the Chicago Bulls on Oct. 12. “I look forward to the next generation of airplanes,” he said. Wizards Coach Randy Wittman said his team enjoyed its trip to Brazil. Many of the players took their families along. “We were basically together 24/7,” Wittman said. “It was a good time to sit down and get to know families, which we don’t have an opportunity to do that often.” No team will wind up traveling more during the preseason than the Pacers: roughly 19,770 miles, based on an analysis of their schedule. The Celtics (2,060) and the Nets (2,310) have the lightest schedules. It is all relative, of course. As for the Knicks, they dealt with the same issue last year, playing all six of their preseason games on the road, though it did not seem to have an adverse effect on their preparation for the regular season. They won 54 games and advanced past the opening round of the playoffs for the first time since 2000. Their preseason excursions have also been a boon for arenas — and secondary markets — that seldom have the opportunity to host N.B.A. games. The Knicks’ game on Thursday against the Wizards had an announced attendance of 12,376, a sellout, at Baltimore Arena, a 51-year-old building that has seen brighter days. The game required substantial preparations by the arena’s staff. Frank Remesch, the arena’s general manager, said his crew had refurbished the court, installed new backboards and replaced both 45-second clocks. On game day, Remesch approached Woodson after the Knicks’ morning shootaround and asked if the accommodations were suitable. “He said it was perfect, so that meant a lot,” Remesch said. Many of the improvements were necessary because the arena had not staged an N.B.A. game since the Washington Bullets played several home games there in the 1990s. Remesch also recalled an exhibition appearance by the Chicago Bulls when Michael Jordan was in his prime. At the time, Remesch was concerned because the court sat on a sheet of hockey ice. Sure enough, there was condensation on the court the morning of the game. “I was thinking, Oh, my God. I don’t want to be part of the facility that rips Michael Jordan’s A.C.L. out,” Remesch said. By afternoon, the weather had cooled and the game was uneventful. Jordan’s knees remained intact. The Knicks’ visit was similarly drama-free. Carmelo Anthony, who grew up in Baltimore, was treated like royalty, and the Knicks won. And it was another win for the N.B.A. in its October push to markets big and small. “Everybody and his brother came out for the game,” Remesch said. “It was more than just basketball. It was an event.”

Basketball
Knicks
Tim Hardaway Jr
Celtics


For Wisconsin’s Scorekeeper, Most Impressive Number Is His Age: 83

Abstract: ST. LOUIS — Tom Landry coached the Dallas Cowboys for 29 seasons. Jim Boeheim is in his 40th year leading Syracuse. Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics for a half-century. Not to be outdone is Otto Puls. Puls, 83, is in his 53rd year as the scorekeeper for the Wisconsin men’s basketball team. He is seated at the middle scorer’s table of every Badgers game, where he plans to be again Sunday night, when seventh-seeded Wisconsin takes on second-seeded Xavier in the N.C.A.A. tournament round of 32. He is also an equipment manager, practice referee and jack-of-all-trades for the Badgers. “He’s probably a damn astronaut,” the Wisconsin junior Nigel Hayes said. Puls, his white hair trimmed in a 1950s-style cut that he calls the Marine, is an emblem of Wisconsin’s recent consistency. Before Dick Bennett took over as coach in 1995, the Badgers had made the N.C.A.A. tournament only twice since winning their sole national championship in 1941. Since Bennett’s arrival, they have missed the tournament only twice and are currently playing in their 18th straight — the fifth-longest streak in N.C.A.A. tournament history — under Bennett, Bo Ryan and now Greg Gard. Did Puls ever believe Wisconsin would become such a tournament fixture? “Never, never. No,” he said, adding, “And then when we went to the Final Four in 2000, I thought, ‘That was a dream. Oh my God, we’ll never get back again.’ ” The Badgers, he noted, have made the past two Final Fours. Puls was born in east Madison, an industrial area where many denizens worked in an Oscar Mayer processing plant. His father died when he was 12; his mother raised him and his younger sister. “We struggled,” he said. His main sport was baseball, and during his teenage years the batboy on one of his teams was a standout athlete nine years his junior named Pat Richter, who as the university’s athletic director from 1989 to 2004, would help turn around Wisconsin’s football and men’s basketball programs. Puls graduated from Wisconsin, married his wife, Barb — now of 62 years — and worked for 52 years as a pharmacist at the Central Wisconsin Center, a home for the developmentally disabled. He also worked as a basketball and football referee at the high school level before officiating games at Wisconsin, then for the Big Ten Conference, including two Rose Bowls. These days, his officiating is limited to Wisconsin practices. “I can’t run,” Puls said. “I can’t get in place to see the plays — I guess from a distance.” Jordan Smith, a fifth-year senior, had a slightly different evaluation. “It depends if you’re on the scout team or the first team,” Smith said. “If you’re on the first team, you get every call from Otto. If you’re not, you might have to beg a little bit.” Smith caromed into Puls during practice a few weeks ago, knocking him to the ground. Puls departed with his right arm in a sling, and later showed Smith a sizable bruise. The injury did not diminish Puls’s enthusiasm, something that has not been lost on the players. “Every day you show up and he’s ready to go,” the junior Zak Showalter said. “You might not be feeling up to practice every single day, but you look at Otto and you’re like, Man, he’s really pumped up.” Being around the players has helped Puls as well. “I love the idea of working with the kids,” Puls said, adding that errant foul calls aside, “they like me.”

NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Xavier University
College basketball