GlaxoSmithKline Pays $750 Million Over Tainted Drugs

Abstract: GlaxoSmithKline , the British drug giant, has agreed to pay $750 million to settle criminal and civil complaints that the company for years knowingly sold contaminated baby ointment and an ineffective antidepressant — the latest in a growing number of whistle-blower lawsuits that drug makers have settled with multimillion-dollar fines. Altogether, GlaxoSmithKline sold 20 drugs with questionable safety that were made at a huge plant in Puerto Rico that for years was rife with contamination. Cheryl D. Eckard, the company’s quality manager, asserted in her whistle-blower suit that she had warned Glaxo of the problems but the company fired her instead of addressing them. Among the drugs affected were Paxil , an antidepressant; Bactroban, an ointment; Avandia , a troubled diabetes drug; Coreg, a heart drug; and Tagamet , an acid reflux drug. No patients were known to have been sickened, although such cases would be difficult to trace. In a rising wave, recent lawsuits have asserted that drug makers misled patients and defrauded federal and state governments that, through Medicare and Medicaid , pay for much of health care. Using claims from industry insiders, federal prosecutors are not only demanding record fines but are hinting at more severe actions. Suffering a research drought, drug makers have laid off thousands of employees. Some of those dispatched have in turn filed whistle-blower lawsuits that can lead to criminal investigations. Justice Department officials announced the settlement in a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Boston, saying a $150 million payment to settle criminal charges was the largest such payment ever by a manufacturer of adulterated drugs. The outcome also provides $600 million in civil penalties. The share to the whistle-blower will be $96 million, one of the highest such awards in a health care fraud case. When asked whether any individual could be charged in addition to the corporation charges, Carmen M. Ortiz, the United States attorney for Massachusetts , would say only that the investigation was not yet complete. GlaxoSmithKline released a statement saying that it regretted operating the Puerto Rico plant in violation of good manufacturing practices. The company said the problem had involved only one plant that was closed in 2009. American shares in the company fell 0.35 percent on Tuesday. Tony West, the assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s civil division, said hundreds of such lawsuits were awaiting federal review. “We’ve opened more investigations, we’ve recovered more taxpayer dollars lost to fraud, we’ve had more convictions, higher penalties and fines in the last two years than we’ve had in any other two-year period,” Mr. West said in an interview. Whistle-blowers who win earn a cut of the eventual fine. Ms. Eckard will collect $96 million from the federal government, and she will collect additional millions from states. The suits, all filed under seal, have for years been rising in size and scope, but the collective threat to the industry has been largely unnoticed because the growing mountain is obscured by a wall of judicial secrecy. Each successful claim begets more suits, with more being filed almost every week. The suits are filed under a federal law originally intended to stop Civil War hucksters from selling rancid meat to the Union Army by paying bounties to tipsters. The pharmaceutical industry has become the law’s most successful target because the government now buys far more pills than bullets, and because fraud in health care is common. Health care cases accounted for some 80 percent of the $3.1 billion recovered by the Justice Department under the false claims act last year, the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund, a nonprofit whistle-blower advocacy group in Washington, reported on Monday. Most of the money is typically returned to the programs in which false claims were filed, like Medicaid and Medicare. The Food and Drug Administration and the inspector general of the Health and Human Services Department both announced recently that they would pursue charges against executives personally under a strict liability provision of the law, something that has not been done since 2007 when the three top executives of Purdue Pharma were convicted, sentenced to probation and personally fined $34 million while Purdue paid $600 million. The rule allows executives to be prosecuted and barred from government sales even if they were not aware of specific violations. Legislation could make such claims easier to win. Last month, the House of Representatives passed a bill that permits executives to be barred even if they have left the company where the fraud occurred and that permits the inspector general to prosecute parent companies for the sins of subsidiaries. Pfizer alone has settled four whistle-blower cases since 2002, and it paid a $2.3 billion fine last year, the largest in history. Whistle-blower cases have become so routine that Wall Street no longer takes much notice of individual suits, while the growing trend remains hidden. When GlaxoSmithKline announced in July that it was setting aside $2.4 billion for legal costs, including enough to pay for the investigation into its Puerto Rico problems, the announcement was greeted with a yawn. Still, the case may lead to a collective industry shiver because it opens a new frontier for whistle-blower suits. Nearly all previous cases against the industry involved illegal marketing. This is the first successful case ever to assert that a drug maker knowingly sold contaminated products. “This case will change the way drug makers run their factories,” Ms. Eckard’s lawyer, Neil Getnick, said. Some of the antidepressant Paxil CR produced at the plant was ineffective because a layer of active ingredient split from a layer of a barrier chemical during manufacturing, the government said, and some lots contained only the barrier chemical. “The harm is really in the public’s confidence in the health care industry,” Ms. Ortiz said. “When you go to a pharmacy and you buy a drug, you expect that drug is what it purports to be and you don’t expect it to have any micro-organisms or not be sterile or not have the power or have too much power.” Ms. Eckard’s role in the case began in August 2002 when GlaxoSmithKline sent her to Cidra, south of San Juan, to lead a team of 100 quality experts to fix problems cited by an F.D.A. warning letter a month earlier. This was GlaxoSmithKline’s premier manufacturing facility, producing $5.5 billion of product each year. But Ms. Eckard soon discovered that quality control was a mess: the water system was contaminated; the air system allowed for cross-contamination between products; the warehouse was so overcrowded that rented vans were used for storage; the plant could not ensure the sterility of intravenous drugs for cancer ; and pills of differing strengths were sometimes mixed in the same bottles. Although F.D.A. inspectors had spotted some problems, most were missed. And the company abandoned even the limited fixes it promised to conduct, the unsealed lawsuit says. Ms. Eckard complained repeatedly to senior managers; little was done. She recommended recalls of defective products; recalls were not authorized. In May 2003, she was terminated as a “redundancy.” She complained to top company executives, but she was ignored even after warning that she would call the F.D.A. So she called the F.D.A. and sued. The agency began a criminal investigation and used armed federal marshals in 2005 to seize nearly $2 billion worth of products, the largest such seizure in history. Unable to fix the plant, GlaxoSmithKline closed it in 2009.

Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
GlaxoSmithKline PLC
Suits and Litigation
Fines (Penalties)
Whistle-Blowers
Paxil (Drug)
Avandia (Drug)


Laura Robson, Kim Clijsters’s U.S. Open Conqueror, to Face Li Na

Abstract: In the weird world of tennis, what is so extraordinary about Laura Robson is just how normal she is. During the tense second set of a 7-6 (4), 7-6 (5) upset win that sent Kim Clijsters into retirement, Robson, an 18-year-old from Britain, could be seen singing along to the Taylor Swift song that was playing in Arthur Ashe Stadium during a changeover. Robson was allowed to request three songs of her own for the stadium’s disc jockey to play. She picked selections from Fleetwood Mac and One Direction, but could not recall Thursday afternoon if she ultimately selected Destiny’s Child or the Backstreet Boys for her third. “Either one would have been a great choice,” she said with the same sort of dejection as a caller who had a local radio station ignore her request. “I don’t know any 18-year-olds that don’t listen to cheesy music from time to time. I can’t help myself, I love it.” That sort of normality has translated into relatability on the world stage, where Robson’s popularity has outpaced her results and ranking. Her sensibilities about social media have made her a dominant online force, far surpassing her WTA ranking of No. 89. On Twitter, Robson has more followers (123,000) than the WTA’s top-ranked player, Victoria Azarenka (115,000). Robson also outranks the top American male players John Isner (110,000) and Mardy Fish (104,000). “I honestly don’t understand why,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “I guess people just love Twitter in England.” Robson’s introduction to the British public came at an early age, when she won the Wimbledon girls’ singles title in 2008 at 14. Since then, the attention — both positive and negative, depending on the mood of the excitable British news media — has been constant in the country’s success-starved sports culture, with the hunger especially ravenous in tennis. Her popularity has translated stateside. In her first round match against the American qualifier Samantha Crawford, Robson had a majority of the crowd support on small Court 4, including the sole support of those in costume: three fans dressed in full clown regalia who led singsong chants of “Laura Rob-son doo-doo-doo-doo” during changeovers. Two days later, as Robson played Clijsters, a fan favorite, the crowd was roughly evenly split. The clowns were not present. “They sent me a message on Twitter saying that they had to fly off to Miami,” Robson said. “But they did send a message afterward saying, ‘Well done,’ so I forgive them.” For Robson, even the career-changing victory over Clijsters was not enough to make a difference to her routine. “It’s been normal,” she said of her previous 24 hours. “You know, after the match yesterday I had a bit of physio, I stretched down, then I went back to the hotel and went to sleep, basically. “Actually, I made a little trip to Whole Foods,” she added, remembering a late-night errand for cereal and lactose-free milk. “But yeah, that’s it.” Robson is left to do her own shopping this time in New York, being without her sometime-traveling companion and mother, Kathy, who is home in London. “My brother sent me a message afterward saying that she was getting very animated watching on TV,” Robson said. “I can imagine.” Perhaps out of nerves or perhaps to be out of range of Robson’s trademark mismatch sarcasm, Kathy Robson often watches her daughter from the last row of the stands. In her absence in New York sits a new presence: Robson’s newly hired Croatian coach, Zeljko Krajan, who formerly worked with Dinara Safina, when she was top-ranked. Though Robson and Krajan have been together only a few weeks, she has already picked up on his key mantra. “‘Discipline’ — that’s a word that he’s very big into,” she said with a laugh. “And, you know, taking what you do tactically on the practice court into a match.” Next up for Robson will be No. 7 Li Na, whom she plays Friday at 11 a.m. at Louis Armstrong Stadium. She will be the underdog once again, but in her own words, “Why not?”

United States Open (Tennis)
Tennis
Robson Laura
Twitter
Isner John
Fish Mardy
Azarenka Victoria
Li Na


FireEye Computer Security Firm Acquires Mandiant

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — In a deal that may have broad repercussions for companies and governments fending off sophisticated hackers and state-sponsored digital attacks, FireEye, a provider of security software, has acquired Mandiant, a company known for emergency responses to computer network breaches. The deal, in both cash and stock, is worth more than $1 billion, based on the current value of shares in FireEye. The acquisition, which closed on Monday but was not publicly announced until after the markets closed on Thursday, was one of the biggest security deals of 2013. It merges two darlings in the $67 billion global computer security market that together could form a formidable competitor to antivirus giants like Symantec and Intel’s McAfee. David G. DeWalt, FireEye’s chairman and chief executive, ran McAfee before it was sold to Intel in 2010. Mr. DeWalt was rumored to be a contender for the top job at Intel, but surprised company insiders when he left to join FireEye in 2012. Mandiant is best known for sending in emergency teams to root out attackers who have implanted software into corporate computer systems. Much of its work focused on attacks from China, and last year it made headlines with a detailed study of a hacking group known as “Comment Crew” that provided the strongest evidence yet that the hackers were closely linked to a unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army , outside Shanghai. The combination of the two companies — one that detects attacks in a novel way, another that responds to attacks — comes as corporate America has become wary of relying on the federal government to monitor the Internet and warn of incoming attacks. That wariness has increased since the revelations of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who removed thousands of documents before he took temporary refuge in Moscow. The documents have made it evident to companies that the United States monitors allies as well as adversaries, including friendly governments, international organizations and the networks of some Internet companies. Some could turn to companies like FireEye and Mandiant for protection, an interesting twist since many of Mandiant’s employees come from the American intelligence world. “After the Snowden events, in the current political climate, no one can say to the government, ‘Please, come on in and monitor our networks,’ ” said Kevin Mandia, the founder of Mandiant who will become chief operating officer of the combined company. Mandiant is privately held, and the big winners in the acquisition will be Mr. Mandia, the company’s founder, Mr. DeWalt, who joined Mandiant’s board as chairman in 2012, and the company’s venture backers. Mandiant has raised $70 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm, and One Equity Partners, an investment arm of JPMorgan Chase. FireEye’s success so far has depended on a technology for detecting attacks that works quite differently from most antivirus products. Most products monitor the web and identify malicious software that has already begun to hit victims around the world. But by the time the attack has been identified and blocked, the malicious software has already had a chance to do damage — siphoning a company’s trade secrets, erasing data or emptying a customer’s bank account. FireEye’s software isolates incoming traffic in virtual containers and looks for suspicious activity in a sort of virtual petri dish before deciding whether to let the traffic through. “Companies are spending tens of billions of dollars of their money on a model that doesn’t work,” Mr. DeWalt said. “It’s going to take people and products working together.” Mandiant was frequently called in after FireEye found malware. In those cases, it used its own threat detection technology to determine where the attack was coming from and to design countermeasures. In an interview, Mr. Mandia and Mr. DeWalt said the combined company would be able to notify its customers as soon as it detected abnormal behavior, execute a temporary fix and then dispatch a Mandiant team to take further steps. It will also give Mandiant more reach: FireEye works with more than a thousand customers, including 40 state military operations, around the globe. Mandiant had $100 million in revenue in 2012, up more than 76 percent from the previous year. Mandiant responded to attacks by Chinese hackers at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal last year. About 95 percent of its business is domestic and it was just beginning to develop an international presence. In April 2012, the companies began teaming up on various product initiatives. In February, they began integrating FireEye’s software with Mandiant’s threat detection products after seeing that many of their customers were already deploying their products and services together. Then, a few months ago, the two chief executives started discussing a deal. On Monday, the boards of both companies agreed to terms in which FireEye will pay Mandiant shareholders $106.5 million in cash and 21.5 million shares and options. Under the deal terms, Mandiant will become an operating subsidiary of FireEye, and Mr. Mandia will oversee FireEye’s services, cloud and endpoint security operations. Mr. Mandia said that before initiating acquisition talks, he had considered taking Mandiant public. He said he began to warm to the idea of an acquisition in the last few months, when he saw that FireEye’s detection products would be a “natural fit” for Mandiant’s expertise in responding to breaches. The market has already shown an enthusiasm for FireEye’s products. Since the company made its debut on the Nasdaq in September, its stock price has more than doubled. That has made it the most successful initial public offering of a security company in 2013 and a big gain for FireEye’s founder, Ashar Aziz, a former Sun Microsystems engineer who started the company in 2004, and FireEye’s venture capital backers like Norwest, Sequoia Capital and In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, and others. FireEye now has a $5 billion market capitalization, though it has yet to turn a profit. On Thursday, when the company announced the Mandiant acquisition, it also announced that it had exceeded its fourth-quarter revenue guidance. The company said it anticipated total revenue for 2013 to be $159 million to $161 million, compared with previous guidance of $156 million to $158 million. The guidance, and news of the merger, sent FireEye’s stock up 22.5 percent in after-hours trading.

Mergers and Acquisitions
Hacker (computer security)
Cyberwarfare
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Mandiant
FireEye
Computer security


Ad Campaign Seeks to Increase Chances of Cuomo’s Campaign Finance Plan

Abstract: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo delivered a pleasant surprise to skeptical liberal activists last month by tucking a long-discussed plan to provide public financing for state political campaigns into his state budget proposal. But whether the plan will survive budget negotiations is another question. On Monday, a national group that seeks to lessen the influence of big campaign donors plans to unveil a $1 million advertising campaign aimed at promoting the public financing plan . The group hopes that the effort will help persuade the governor and lawmakers to keep it in the spending proposal, which must be approved by April 1, as they negotiate in the coming weeks. The public financing measure is a top priority of government watchdog groups and liberal activists, who see it as a powerful way to diminish the sway of deep-pocketed donors over New York’s government. But Republicans have been firmly opposed to the idea of using public money to pay for state political campaigns, and it is viewed as one of the most vulnerable elements in the governor’s budget proposal. The advertising campaign is being financed by Public Campaign Action Fund , which plans to broadcast a television commercial in targeted areas around the state beginning Monday, and will also advertise online and on mobile devices. The commercial uses the restoration of the Statue of Liberty in the 1980s as a metaphor for how a public financing system could remove the corrosive effect of money on New York’s political process, according to supporters. It points out that although the restoration of the Statue of Liberty took several years, the overhaul of campaign fund-raising laws would require only a moment of action. “The goal of the advertising is to rally the public to support passing comprehensive reform,” said David Donnelly, the executive director of Public Campaign Action Fund. “It’s clear that Albany is broken. Everyone knows what the answers are, and they could just simply pass something in one day.” Advocates for a public financing system include government reformers, labor unions and the Working Families Party as well as a number of wealthy individuals, including Jonathan Soros, a son of the billionaire financier George Soros. Although they are ultimately seeking to reduce the impact of money on politics, they have spent considerable sums over the past two years promoting their proposal in New York. In this year’s push, volunteers plan to canvass in key Senate districts, including one in the Bronx and two on Long Island, and supporters are scheduled to gather at the Capitol to lobby for the measure next month. In his budget, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, proposed setting up a public financing system based on the one used in New York City, where individual contributions of up to $175 are matched at a rate of $6 to $1. The public financing measure is part of a package of ethics and campaign fund-raising measures Mr. Cuomo included in his budget in an effort to address a series of recent corruption scandals in Albany. The proposal pleased activists who had expressed frustration that Mr. Cuomo had not acted more forcefully to promote public financing. But some are now concerned that the governor included the measure as a symbolic gesture, and will not press for its inclusion in the final budget that he negotiates with lawmakers. Republicans have partial control of the State Senate, and the governor will need their support to pass the spending plan. Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate Republicans, said they continued to oppose spending taxpayer money on “the negative television commercials and robocalls people hate.” In an interview after he introduced his budget, Mr. Cuomo did not sound optimistic about the chances that the public financing plan would be part of the final spending plan. He predicted that it would be an issue in the re-election campaigns of state legislators later this year, but said he wanted to draw attention to the issue in the meantime.

Campaign finance
Andrew Cuomo
New York
Campaign advertising
Public Campaign Action Fund
Democrats
Republicans


Andy Murray Reaches Third Round of BNP Paribas Open

Abstract: Andy Murray defeated Vasek Pospisil, 6-1, 6-3, to reach the third round of the BNP Paribas Open, while the defending women’s champion Flavia Pennetta easily advanced with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Madison Brengle on a 91-degree day in Indian Wells, Calif. The two-time champion Maria Sharapova needed six match points to put away Yanina Wickmeyer, 6-1, 7-5, in her bid to become the first woman to win the tournament three times.

Tennis
Andy Murray
Vasek Pospisil
Flavia Penetta
Madison Brengle
Indian Wells Masters,BNP Paribas Open


Special Session Starts in Texas

Abstract: Texas lawmakers are back for a special session that started the day after their 140-day regular session. That’s something like sprinting to the finish of a long race and having your coach yell, just as you break the tape, “One more lap.” They’re exhausted and ticked off, and they’re in Austin for another 30 days unless they can finish early. Nice chemistry. It’s not like they’ve got a bunch of easy issues to settle, either. What’s left are the things they couldn’t work out, along with a few things that got caught in the deadlines: A school finance plan. An insurance fight pitting tort reformers against trial lawyers. Congressional redistricting. A bog of health issues that includes Medicaid managed care, health insurance exchanges, outcome-based care. A ban on sanctuary cities. Gov. Rick Perry called the special session after Senator Wendy Davis, Democrat of Fort Worth, filibustered on Sunday night, running out the clock on a critical piece of budget legislation that included the school finance program. Ms. Davis is the hero or goat, depending on your choice of narrative. When Mr. Perry talks about the special session, he refers to it as the result of the “actions of one particular individual.” Democrats, short on things to cheer about since November, have rallied around Ms. Davis. Ask a Republican and the word is that the Democrats are boneheads for forcing an immediate special session, since the rules are different and make it even easier for the Republican supermajority in the Legislature to pin the blame on the donkeys. The Democrats aren’t going to win any ground on policy, the argument goes, and now have to swallow the sanctuary cities bill, which failed during the regular session and might have remained dead. The public will see the Democrats as obstructionists and whiners, and the legislative outcomes won’t be any different than if lawmakers had finished in regulation time. Ask a Democrat and the word is that Mr. Perry had already said there would be special sessions to deal with windstorm insurance reforms and Congressional redistricting. They say the extra time will give the public more opportunity to catch on to what’s going on in Austin (their theory, of course, being that an informed public will agree with the Democrats). It’s not like Ms. Davis caused it, they say — all she did was put the spotlight on the school cuts the Republicans want to enact instead of on the political issues the governor wanted to highlight. Curiously enough, some Democrats also say the return of the sanctuary cities issue could be good for them. The legislation under consideration is relatively weak — the Arizona version requires the police to check citizenship, while the Texas version would merely allow it. Their argument is that the bill won’t hurt people much, but will stampede Hispanic voters from the Republicans to the Democrats. The budget bill that died Sunday included $3.5 billion in “non-tax revenue” — most of it resulting from delayed payments and accelerated tax collections. It also changed the state’s school finance formulas, cutting $4 billion from what the state would otherwise be obligated to send to school districts. None of that was particularly new to members in the last week of the session. What was new were the “printouts,” the computer runs showing how the $4 billion would affect each of the state’s school districts. Lawmakers were voting on the budget bill the day after they saw those runs for the first time. In the Senate, because of Ms. Davis, there wasn’t a vote. In the House, the party lines broke down, with 84 legislators in favor and 63 against. All of the Democrats voted no, along with 16 Republicans. One question hanging over the special session is whether the numbers will hold. Will superintendents, who’ve had time to see the numbers and react, ask their local legislators to vote yes, or no, and how will that affect the outcome? Will teachers and parents, with school out, come to Austin to protest at the Capitol? Will lawmakers, given a little more time in special session, fiddle with the formulas and pop out a new set of numbers before the vote? All the while, they’ll be arguing over a straight-up political issue in Congressional maps, an issue that splits mostly Democratic political money (trial lawyers) from mostly Republican political money (tort reformers) in the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association fight, and ethnic politics, in sanctuary cities. One more lap.

Politics and Government
State Legislatures
Law and Legislation
Republican Party
Democratic Party
Texas


Carefully Cleaning Up the Garbage at Los Alamos

Abstract: LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — No one knows for sure what is buried in the Manhattan Project-era dump here. At the very least, there is probably a truck down there that was contaminated in 1945 at the Trinity test site, where the world’s first nuclear explosion seared the sky and melted the desert sand 200 miles south of here during World War II. But now a team of workers is using $212 million in federal stimulus money to clean up the 65-year-old, six-acre dump, which was used by the scientists who built the world’s first atomic bomb. They are approaching the job like an archeological dig — only with even greater care, since some of the things they unearth are likely to be radioactive, while others may be explosive. The dump has become part of the $6 billion stimulus program to clean up the toxic legacy of the arms race, which is one of the biggest sources of direct federal contracts in the $787 billion stimulus act. More than $1.9 billion is being spent at the Hanford site in Washington, the home of the nuclear reactor that made the plutonium for the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Another $1.6 billion is being spent cleaning up a Savannah River site, in South Carolina. After the stimulus bill passed, some Republicans questioned the wisdom of devoting so much money to nuclear cleanups, noting that the Department of Energy’s environmental management program had been bedeviled by cost overruns in the past. Democrats countered that the labor-intensive projects would create many jobs while advancing the stimulus act’s goal of improving the environment. They also noted that the money was only a down payment on what is still a staggering task: the Department of Energy is responsible for cleaning up 107 sites, with as much acreage as Delaware and Rhode Island combined, in work that could take decades and cost up to $260 billion to complete. Nearly 73,000 people have applied for stimulus jobs cleaning up nuclear sites since the program was announced, the Department of Energy says, and more than 10,800 positions have been saved or created with the money. Here at Los Alamos, some of the first work involves tearing down buildings and cleaning up land at what is called Technical Area 21. It was an isolated mesa in 1945 when the laboratory moved its plutonium processing operations there after a fire broke out uncomfortably close to its original plant near the center of town. But the town has grown since then, and now several businesses — including a hardware store, an auto repair shop and the local newspaper — are right across the street from the old dump. Since the dump, the laboratory’s first, was used only from 1944 through 1948, the cleanup team had to do a great deal of detective work to figure out what might be in it. “You look for every possible shred of evidence that you can to give you an idea of what kind of surprises you might encounter,” said Allan B. Chaloupka, who directs the decontamination and decommissioning program. The team members pored over wartime classified documents and interviewed old-timers to learn what materials might have found their way into the dump, and took soil samples to test their estimates of how much plutonium might be buried there. They debriefed a laboratory worker who, as a young man, once fell into it. They asked scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory to come up with worst-case scenarios of how explosive the chemicals dumped there might have grown over the years — and then they blew up the equivalent amounts of dynamite to test all the safety measures that they would be taking. While the laboratory has worked to assure the public that the work will be done safely, some of the site’s closest neighbors are eyeing the project warily. “You wonder what’s going on,” said Ken Romero, 40, a machinist at the Jona Manufacturing Company, across the street. “One day we looked across the street and there was a guy in a full-body white suit, and he was just 100 yards away from us.” On a recent visit, officials emphasized the extreme care they were taking. When they tore down an air-processing building early one morning, they did not use any explosives, for obvious reasons. Instead, an excavator tore a slice down the center of the building, and then surgically knocked the building’s walls inward, so the debris would not hit any of the neighboring buildings. Some of the workers did wear white body suits, but in this case they were for protection from asbestos, not radiation. The building was not contaminated, though some of its neighbors were. So far, about 156 people — many from small businesses in the area — have been given jobs on the project, which will ultimately employ roughly 300 people, officials said. “Many are basically common laborers that come out of commercial operations,” Mr. Chaloupka said, “and we’re teaching them to do something at a little higher level, and we’re creating a cadre of people that can do other jobs later.” The government is under a consent order with the State of New Mexico to clean up the area, so there will be more work after the stimulus program ends. George Rael, an assistant manager for environmental operations at the Department of Energy’s site office here, said that by clearing most of the mesa, the stimulus work would send a signal to the public. “This is going to be very visible skyline change that people will actually see and recognize,” Mr. Rael said. Several of the buildings they are tearing down date to the Manhattan Project days, when a secret laboratory hastily thrown up here on the Pajarito Plateau at the site of a ranch school for boys produced the bomb that changed the world. The complex was top secret: eminent physicists who visited were given pseudonyms, the whole town was behind a fence, and the laboratory’s inhabitants all had the same mailing address, “P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe,” which was also used on the birth certificates of babies born there. When the job here is done, and the waste is dug up and trucked elsewhere, officials said, the mesa will be clean enough for homes to be built on it.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009)


70 Are Indicted in Puerto Rico in Social Security Fraud

Abstract: More than 70 people have been indicted in Puerto Rico as part of a two-year investigation into widespread fraud in Social Security disability payments, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday. Among those charged were three doctors and a former Social Security Administration employee who prosecutors said had helped people receive disability benefits they did not qualify for. Seventy-one people who made fraudulent medical claims were also charged, the authorities said, and if convicted would be required to forfeit more than $2 million. The indictments were handed up last Friday, but the announcement was withheld until Wednesday, after law enforcement officers finished making arrests, officials said. The United States attorney’s office in Puerto Rico said in a statement that an analysis of disability claims conducted by the Social Security Administration “suggested that Puerto Rico is one of the top districts in the country for the commission of this type of fraud.” Only workers who have been certified as disabled — and in some cases, their family members — are entitled to benefits as part of the Social Security Disability Insurance Program . Those who qualify must have been employed and paid Social Security taxes in the past. The program is financed by Social Security taxes paid by workers and employers. Prosecutors said that Samuel Torres Crespo, a Social Security employee, was at the center of the scheme. Mr. Torres Crespo, according to the indictment, completed fraudulent insurance applications for claimants who did not have medical disabilities that prevented them from working. The people would then be passed on to one of three doctors working with Mr. Torres Crespo — Wildo Vargas, a psychiatrist; Rafael Miguez Balseiro, also a psychiatrist; or Erica Rivera Castro, a rehabilitation specialist — who would evaluate and make a diagnosis for the person making the claim. Many of the claims from the doctors said workers had “disabling psychiatric conditions,” including depression and suicidal thoughts. Others were said to have serious back or cervical pain. Once the Social Security Administration made a lump-sum payment to the claimant, Mr. Torres Crespo would collect 25 percent of that payment, and the doctors would receive $150 to $500 for each fraudulent medical report they had submitted, prosecutors said. The United States attorney, Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, said the defendants were “perpetrating a theft of public funds.” The investigation, which officials said included hundreds of surveillances and painstaking analysis of medical records, began after a 2011 article in The Wall Street Journal that documented the large number of people receiving disability benefits in Puerto Rico. Among its findings was that about one-third of those receiving benefits in Puerto Rico qualified because of “mood disorders” — a rate the newspaper said was at least 10 percentage points higher than any state’s.

Social Security
Fraud
Disability
Puerto Rico
Social Security Administration
Disability insurance


Heckscher Museum Showcases Talent From the North Shore

Abstract: In the late 1920s and early ’30s, the artist Lee Krasner lived on a quiet suburban street in Huntington. The current exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art , about a half-mile away, includes a self-portrait she painted in the garden of her home, probably in 1930. Borrowed from the Jewish Museum in New York, it shows the young artist standing in front of an easel, brushes in hand, staring intently at the viewer. The Krasner self-portrait is the centerpiece of the second room of “Long Island Moderns: Artists on the North Shore From Edward Steichen to Cindy Sherman ,” an exhibition celebrating the impressively rich, diverse yet relatively little-known role of Huntington and the North Shore of Long Island in American art. About 50 paintings, sculptures, photographs and drawings make up the show, organized by the museum’s chief curator, Kenneth Wayne. It is installed chronologically, beginning with a pair of photographs and a rare early painting by Edward Steichen, who summered in Huntington between 1902 and 1910. The following decade, the modernist painters Arthur Dove and Helen Torr also moved to the area, producing wonderful, memorable images of local landscapes. These days, Mr. Dove is better known than Ms. Torr, who, like a lot of other female American artists of the early and mid-20th century, has suffered neglect by art historians. But she was a tremendously talented and innovative painter, as evidenced by the three works on view. Among them is “Heckscher Park” (1932), a colorful, radically simplified, almost naïve painting of ducks in and around a pond beneath trees. It was painted on the museum grounds. Other painters who had a connection to the area include George Grosz — who lived in Huntington for a decade after World War II, producing paintings and collages — as well as John Marin and Jules Olitski. All three are represented here, though the quality of work on display is patchy. In the case of Mr. Grosz, his American years pale in comparison to the early, biting political work he produced in Germany before fleeing in 1932 during the rise of the Nazis. Long Island attracted other notable European expatriate artists, including Fernand Léger, who between 1941 and 1943 painted a mural on canvas at the Huntington home of Wallace K. Harrison, one of the architects of Rockefeller Center and the United Nations. The mural is now at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany; photographs of it in situ in the living room in this show and a discussion of the commission in the exhibition catalog convey the beauty and ambition of the project. The mural, which is black and white, depicts a tangle of bodies rendered in sketchy, free-flowing lines. It is among the most important works made on Long Island. Perhaps the area’s most famous resident was Louis Comfort Tiffany, who designed and built Laurelton Hall , an estate in Oyster Bay overlooking Cold Spring Harbor. Laurelton Hall burned in 1957. Representing Tiffany in this show are a glass vase and a lead-lined, daffodil-shaped table lamp, both donated to the Heckscher Museum. Ray Johnson, Seymour Lipton and Esphyr Slobodkina lived and worked in the area, as did lesser-known artists like the painter Fritz Glarner and the sculptor Mary Callery. From the show catalog we learn that Mr. Glarner was a protégé of Mondrian and did several important commissions, while Ms. Callery’s work is in the collections of the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ms. Callery’s “Tree,” a dynamic undated abstract sculpture made of brass, is among the pieces here, along with Mr. Glarner’s “Recollection” (1964-68), a print portfolio with 14 lithographs. Both artists deserve renewed attention. The show closes with a display of photographs by the fashion photographers Horst P. Horst and Irving Penn , both of whom lived in the Huntington area. The artist Cindy Sherman was raised in Huntington, though it is unclear how her works in this show, half a dozen images from her famous “Untitled Film Stills” series of 1977 to 1980, are connected to her Long Island upbringing. No matter, for her presence here reminds us that several important contemporary artists have connections to the area. How much of the artwork created in and around Huntington is of enduring importance is, I think, open to question; we need more scholarship on the careers of artists associated with the area. But in the meantime, this groundbreaking exhibition shines a klieg light on a largely forgotten corner of American art history.

Art
Long Island (NY)
Krasner Lee
Steichen Edward
Sherman Cindy
Dove Arthur
Penn Irving


State Budget Task Force Recommendations

Abstract: An independent task force on the long-term fiscal problems facing states warned Tuesday that “if these problems are not addressed soon, they are likely to worsen” and made a series of recommendations for policy makers at the state and national levels. Their recommendations included: ¶Coordination with the federal government. There is a disconnect between the federal government and the states, the report found, and it recommended creating a national body to assess the ways in which federal deficit reduction measures or changes in federal tax policies will affect states and localities. ¶Coordination with local governments. States should monitor the fiscal conditions of their local governments in a more timely manner, the report said, and take early action to help them before they face insolvency or bankruptcy. ¶More transparent state government finances. States should replace their current budgeting rules to make it easier to tell how revenues earned in a given year relate to obligations incurred in that year, the report said, which could reduce the reliance on budget gimmicks. It also called on the states to enact better multiyear forecasts, to issue their comprehensive annual financial reports more quickly, and to add easily accessible summaries of financial information to those reports. ¶Better rainy-day funds. The report said that it is in the national interest for states to have effective rainy-day funds, so that their efforts to balance their budgets in downturns will not require as many cuts or tax increases, which in the recent downturn counteracted national efforts to spur national economic recovery with spending and tax cuts. ¶Better pension disclosures. The report called on states to account clearly for the risks they assume and more fully disclose the shortfalls they face, and to develop rules to ensure that the required contributions to the pension funds are paid. ¶Overhaul tax systems. States should make their tax structures more broad-based to account for the changing economy, the report said, and the federal government should make it easier for states to collect existing sales taxes on goods and services sold over the Internet. ¶Controlling health care costs. The report calls for the federal and state governments to work together to control health care and Medicaid costs. ¶Timely infrastructure and maintenance spending. Warning that the underfunding of infrastructure threatens the nation’s competitiveness, the report called for states to fund realistic annual capital budgets based on multiyear capital plans.

States (US)
Finances
Budgets and Budgeting


On Motorcycle, European Pilgrims Race Toward God

Abstract: PORCARO, France — The inhabitants of Brittany, on Europe’s rain-soaked western edge, are said to love the church as much as they love a party. Which perhaps makes this tiny Breton village a less improbable locale for the wholly improbable happening it hosts each year. The festival of the Madonna of the Bikers , which organizers promote as the largest motorcycle “pilgrimage” in France — there are few aspirants to the title — attracted nearly 10,000 motorcyclists from across Europe last weekend to the soggy wheat fields of Porcaro, population 650. It was an unlikely mix of what Roman Catholic Bretons call the “sacred and profane”; many came to pray, many to carouse, a surprising number to do both. There were priests and incense and holy water and much solemnity and prayer, but also AC/DC and studded leather, body piercings and tattoos and, beginning well before noon and lasting well into the night, the consumption of prodigious quantities of alcohol. “No one should leave here without having gotten what he really wanted out of it,” intoned the Rev. Jean-François Audrain, presiding over an open-air Sunday Mass. Draped in white gilded vestments, he addressed a crowd of thousands of bikers and local faithful, gathered in a rolling field behind Porcaro’s 19th-century stone church. Later, he joined four fellow priests in sprinkling holy water on thousands of rumbling Harleys, Hondas, Ducatis and Kawasakis, filing past one by one. Held here annually on the occasion of the Assumption, the Catholic celebration of the Virgin Mary’s ascent to heaven, the Madonna of the Bikers is meant as a religious gathering open to all comers, organizers say, and an opportunity for the church to penetrate the biker flock. The program features two Masses, the blessing of the bikes, and a 45-mile “pilgrimage” ride through the fields and dark forests of central Brittany, in addition to several non-denominational rock concerts and ample supplies of beer and wine. Begun in 1979 by a local abbot as a pilgrimage ride for himself and 37 friends, the event has since grown into a sprawling festival — this year the concerts, held in a field outside town, lasted until 4 a.m. Sunday — and what is viewed by many as one of France’s premier motorcycle events, religious or otherwise. Unlike Lourdes and other better known French pilgrimage sites, Porcaro draws a sizable contingent of nonbelievers, a phenomenon perhaps all the more surprising given the widespread distrust of organized religion in France, where the separation of church and state is codified in an almost religious brand of secularism. Brittany, though, has long enjoyed a less standoffish relationship to Christianity than has much of the rest of France, and Catholicism is viewed by many here simply as part of the region’s social fabric. “I’m not so into the church,” said a biker who called himself Snake. (He brushed off a visitor’s request for his full name, explaining, “Everyone knows me, in any case.”) Still, he tried to have his bike blessed last year, he said, but the attending priest balked at the “666” etched on it, with its Satanist overtones. Others said they had come to Porcaro for a spiritual experience. Pascal Letartre, 60, had come from Chartres, he said, “to say a prayer for our fallen fellow bikers.” This was the second year he and his wife, Bernadette, had come to Porcaro, though last year, she chimed in with a laugh, “It was to drink!” Porcaro has come to define itself by the festival — the town calls itself the “French bikers’ capital” — and residents say they actually enjoy the characters it draws. The gathering is largely financed by souvenir sales overseen by a local association and staffed almost exclusively by volunteers from the village and the surrounding communities. Many homeowners allow bikers to pitch tents on their lawns during the festival. The two-day event injects about $500,000 into the local economy each year, said Porcaro’s mayor, Pierre Hamery. Last weekend, much of that sum appeared to be destined for Porcaro’s two bars, the village’s only commercial establishments. “The Madonna brings in all our profits for the year,” said Marine Perrichot, 18, whose mother owns and operates the bar Le Wheeling (“The Wheelie,” in French). This year, the bar stayed open all night Saturday and on into Sunday. “There are never too many problems,” Ms. Perrichot said, recalling with a laugh when a gentleman rode his motorcycle into the ground-level barroom several years ago. “We can’t complain,” she said. “They’re all adorable.” Despite all the imbibing, the gathering in Porcaro began as and remains a religious event, with the backing of the Catholic Church . “The essential thing for me, as a priest — as a biker-priest — is to show this community that God is close to them,” said Father Audrain, who rides a BMW F 800 ST and has helped coordinate the Madonna of the Bikers since 2007. “My work, in the first place, is about making God seem all right, and making the church seem all right.” “It’s tricky,” he noted. The brand of Catholicism embraced by the Bretons is well suited to the hard-living motorcycle world, said Father Audrain. Drawing on the traditions of the hedonistic Celts who once inhabited the region, Breton Catholicism holds that all human activity, with the exception of sin, is in the service of God, he said. “Partying doesn’t bother me,” said Father Audrain, a slim, athletic man with an endearing lisp, and no teetotaler himself. Still, he acknowledged, as much as the partying might draw nonbelieving bikers here, it also keeps a fair number from the Mass on the event’s second morning. “There aren’t so many of them that show up,” he said, “because they have to sober up from the night before.” As Father Audrain conducted his service Sunday morning, Lenaïck Flamant hurried toward a nearby coffee stand. “It was hard this morning,” admitted Ms. Flamant, 47, dressed in heavy black and white leather. She had gone to sleep at 4 or 5, she said, but awoke at 9, to be sure to have her Yamaha blessed. She had brushed her teeth, and was confident the priests would smell no liquor on her breath. “I took a breathalyzer before I got on my bike,” she said. “It was close, but I made it.”

Motorcycles Motor Bikes and Motorscooters


Limiting Your Facebook Audience

Abstract: Q. When I check into a restaurant or add it as a location to a photo on Facebook, can the restaurant’s page see my post? A. Facebook allows you to set an “audience” for a post, which basically means you can decide which groups of people can see what you share on your timeline page. You can choose to make the post Public, where everyone on the web can see it — or you can limit your audience to just the people on your overall friends list, to subsets of people on specific lists among your friends or to yourself. To select the audience for a post, use the drop-down menu in the status update box. The menu should be set to whatever audience you used the last time, so if you shared a post only with friends, the menu will stay on Friends until you change it to something else. If you add a location to a post that is set to Friends or a smaller group, the people who manage the restaurant’s page will not see it . If the post is set to Public, the managers of the restaurant’s page can see it. However, if you decide to use the tagged image from the restaurant as a cover photo or profile picture, the restaurant’s page managers could see it. This is because Facebook makes each user’s cover photo and profile photo visible as public information — which means everyone on the site and even people who do not use Facebook can see it. If you do not want the restaurant’s Facebook-page managers to see the photo if you decide to use it as a cover shot or profile image, remove the location tag before you post it.


In England, Embracing M.L.S. for What It Is, Not What It Isn’t

Abstract: CANTERBURY, England — Along Palace Street, a stone’s throw from the cathedral here, the few residents out on Sunday night were wandering home from the pub. With the workweek ahead, the city was settling into bed. But in a small apartment above a tandoori shop on the quaint street, Louis East, Ben Ashton and Lewis Addley were ordering pizza and soda and preparing for a full night of soccer, starting with a match kicking off nearly 4,000 miles away, in Ohio. East, Ashton and Addley — three British journalism students in their early 20s — curate mlsgb.com , one of the few websites in England devoted to Major League Soccer . And Sunday was a big day, with playoff berths and seedings at stake on the final day of the M.L.S. regular season. East, Ashton and Addley chatted about the injuries and roster choices in the day’s featured match — D.C. United’s visit to Columbus — and also about the small bets they had made on the match (and others) with the local bookmaker. The question was why: Why stay up late to watch games many time zones away in a league that is barely two decades old, when many of the world’s best players are here at home and televised in prime time? Yet in a country consumed with Premier League soccer, following the American version has the same outsider appeal that once drew Americans to the European game. East, Ashton and Addley say they prefer M.L.S. precisely because it is not the Premier League. The games are more wide open and the outcomes less predictable, they said, and recent imports like Didier Drogba, Steven Gerrard and Sebastian Giovinco have elevated the level of play. “There was a gap there to link M.L.S. and England and the U.S. and the Premier League,” East said. “With soccer growing in the U.S., I don’t see why it couldn’t be popular here, too.” Image East, Ashton and Addley say they prefer M.L.S. precisely because it is not the Premier League. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times East and his friends also prefer M.L.S. for precisely the reasons its critics deride it: a playoff system that gives at least a dozen teams a chance at the title; the parity of a two-conference system; and the lack of relegation, which in other countries can banish a fan’s favorite team out of the top flight for good. In comparison to the staid leagues of Europe, which are often dominated by a handful of top teams, those features add to the excitement, they said. “One of the things that’s more enjoyable is there’s so much they can do to improve the league,” said Addley, who, like his friends, has never seen an M.L.S. match in person. It is unclear how many British fans follow Major League Soccer. The league does not keep track, and Sky Sports, which broadcasts a minimum of two games a week under a new rights agreement, declined to share viewership numbers. Still, there is clearly some appetite for American soccer, even if pub owners refuse to turn on the games when East and his friends ask them. East said that their website, which started in May 2014, has received 1.2 million unique visits so far this year. As editor, he directs five volunteers who produce a stream of commentary on M.L.S. and, in a nod to unavoidable passions, the Premier League. (East supports Tottenham Hotspur, while Ashton and Addley root for Arsenal and Chelsea.) The three soccer savants were active on Twitter during Sunday’s matches, the first of which was a 5-0 whitewash by Columbus. They exchange messages with fans in North America and, much to their delight, have communicated directly with the players, something unheard-of in Britain. While it is unclear who precisely follows M.L.S. in Britain, the presumption is that many of the fans are millennials, the same demographic that has a lot of followers of the Premier League in the United States. Both sets of young fans gravitate toward fresh content, and thanks to social media and ubiquitous connectivity they can find like-minded fans everywhere. “Years ago, there was a real intrigue with the N.F.L. in the U.K. and Japan because football personified what America stood for, and big guys, cheerleaders and pomp and mascots spoke to how a guy in London or Tokyo thought about America,” said the M.L.S. commissioner, Don Garber, who once worked at the N.F.L. “But we are a new league for a new America. It’s very young, very global, very digitally connected. Now there’s a perception in the U.K. that that is what they think of America today.” Unlike the N.F.L., M.L.S. does not sell an Internet streaming package in Britain. For a while, East and his friends watched unlicensed game feeds online. M.L.S. games on Sky Sports require a subscription fee that they cannot afford. So East borrowed a password from his girlfriend’s father, downloaded the Sky Sports app on his PlayStation and hooked the game console to a flat panel screen. The picture was grainy and the Wi-Fi signal occasionally hiccupped, but it was live soccer, from Ohio. The Sky Sports broadcasts are Spartan. There is no pre- or postgame show, and highlights of Premier League matches fill the five-minute gap before the games kick off at 9:05 p.m., one hour later when clocks are on summer time. Then two announcers — one British, one American — suddenly come on air, but are never seen. They call the game from a studio as the live feed rolls. Gary Hughes, who runs soccer programming for Sky Sports, said his company signed a four-year deal with M.L.S. so it could show live games in the summer, which is the off-season for European leagues. That well-known stars now play in North America only adds to the appeal, and M.L.S. has tried to be accommodating: In August, it agreed to move up the kickoff of a highly anticipated match by an hour so Sky could show it in prime time. “Obviously, the Premier League is king,” Hughes said. But, he added, “with the growing popularity of M.L.S. and the bigger names going over, it’s going to get bigger.” Hughes dismissed the critics in Britain who viewed M.L.S. as a “retirement league,” saying, “I think football fans are interested in football.” Indeed, this year, M.L.S. video clips have been viewed nearly 5.5 million times on skysports.com , more than those for tennis, rugby league and the N.F.L., but fewer than clips of domestic soccer, boxing, Formula One, cricket and golf. On Monday, with the regular season complete, mlsgb.com quickly filled with stories on Giovinco, the former Juventus star now with Toronto F.C.; the Red Bulls’ winning the Supporters’ Shield as regular-season champions; and playoff previews. With a dozen teams in the playoffs — 60 percent of the league — now fighting for the M.L.S. title starting Wednesday, East and his friends will have a lot to write about in the coming weeks. “In the Premier League, teams compete for one or two places at the top, but in the M.L.S., all the teams are fighting for 12 spots,” Ashton said. “There are so many potential outcomes.”


European Central Bank’s Bond-Buying Will Help U.S. Tourists and Investors

Abstract: For American investors and tourists especially, the long-awaited move by the European Central Bank on Thursday to help stimulate growth on the Continent is welcome news. For the rest of the American economy, it will not matter so much. Even if the E.C.B.’s effort is ultimately successful and the eurozone emerges from the business equivalent of hibernation — hardly a certainty — that added growth is unlikely to move the American economic needle. A pickup in economic activity in Europe might increase demand for American products. But the stronger dollar undercuts the competitiveness of American exporters, since their goods will become more expensive for European consumers as the euro drops against the dollar. The weaker euro, though, is good news for Americans with plans to visit Europe as the spring and summer travel season arrives, said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. Spending on hotels, meals and taxis will be cheaper since dollars have greater spending power in the 19 countries where the euro is the official currency. “This is great for tourists, as Europe is getting cheaper by the day,” Mr. Shepherdson said. “But don’t buy euros now — wait for the trip. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the euro was even with the dollar by April.” On Thursday, the euro dropped by more than 2 percent against the dollar, to just below $1.14. Many analysts say they expect the euro to continue falling, possibly reaching parity with the dollar in the coming months. As for stocks, added liquidity in global markets tends to benefit equity prices broadly, even if the stimulus is not coming from the Federal Reserve this time around. For example, Wall Street rallied in the fall after Japan’s central bank expanded its asset purchasing program in late October. And some of the euros pumped into the economy by the European Central Bank will find their way to Wall Street. On Thursday, traders cheered the announcement by policy makers in Frankfurt, with broad market averages in the United States rising by more than 1.5 percent. Image A euro symbol in Frankfurt, where the European Central Bank approved a stimulus program. Credit Hannelore Foerster/Getty Images “Equity markets like liquidity,” said Michael Hanson, senior economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In fact, he said, new rounds of quantitative easing by foreign central banks have come as the Fed has eased back on its stimulus efforts and is preparing to raise short-term interest rates later this year. “There has been a debate about whether other central banks can substitute for the U.S. in terms of liquidity, and the answer today seems to be yes,” he said. “The combination of the Bank of Japan and the E.C.B. should at least compensate for the Fed, and maybe add more.” As for the broader American economy, most economists said the overall impact of the European Central Bank’s move on these shores is likely to be muted. That’s because domestic consumer spending, business spending and investment, and federal, state and local government expenditures account for most of the economic output in the United States. Exports, while vital for jobs and corporate profits, account for only a comparatively small share of gross domestic product . For example, in 2013, total, global American exports of $3.2 trillion contributed 13.4 percent to G.D.P. Of that $3.2 trillion, less than a quarter went to the eurozone, according to Commerce Department data. Anything but a dramatic surge in European demand would be felt only slightly in the United States. “It’s modestly negative, but rounding-size-error negative in terms of growth, maybe one-tenth of 1 percent,” Mr. Hanson of Bank of America Merrill Lynch said. Some European imports, such as luxury goods, could conceivably fall in price, although discounts for high-end fashion and watches tend to be rarer than for mass-market goods. And some European automakers now produce many their cars in the United States, further reducing any currency benefit for car buyers. Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS, echoed Mr. Hanson’s view that the big picture for the American economy, which has been rosier as of late, is unlikely to be dimmed by any fallout from Europe. He estimates the American economy grew at an annual rate of just over 3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, with growth over the course of 2015 coming at just under 3 percent. A large portion of those gains will come from healthier spending by American consumers who are benefiting from the plunge in energy prices. “Nobody’s growth outlook for the U.S. will change after what happened today,” Mr. Berger said. “Whatever drove your forecast before is still there.”

European Central Bank
Europe
Euro
Travel,Tourism
US Economy
US Dollar
Quantitative easing


For New England Patriots, Dominance on Defense Is New

Abstract: Jets Coach Rex Ryan presumably would love to be the coach of the New England Patriots. And it would have little to do with Tom Brady or Rob Gronkowski or the fact that the Patriots are 11-3 and the Jets are 3-11. It would have everything to do with the Patriots’ having Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner as their starting cornerbacks. While Brady and Gronkowski continue to draw attention in the race for most valuable player, it has been the ascension of the New England defense over the past several weeks — with the secondary playing much more than a secondary role — that has the Patriots poised for a deep playoff run. The overall conference statistics do not show a stifling, suffocating shutdown defense; New England is ninth in the A.F.C. in yards per game and fifth in points allowed, according to NFL.com . But after the Patriots’ latest defensive tour de force, a 41-13 smothering of the Miami Dolphins, Brady said the defense “is playing as well as I can ever remember.” That covers a lot of years and a lot of good defenses, dating to Ty Law, Willie McGinest, Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Richard Seymour and Rodney Harrison. The Jets on Sunday will be trying to crack a defense that, since coming out of its bye week, has held opponents to 67 points over five games. In the last four games, the Patriots have not allowed a touchdown in the second half, while outscoring opponents by a 54-6 margin, including by 27-0 against the Dolphins last week. N.F.L. Playoff Simulator There are millions of ways the season could end. Find your team’s path to the playoffs with this interactive simulator. Much of the credit for New England’s improved defense has gone to Revis and Browner, newcomers who have delivered and then some. Widely viewed as one of the best cornerbacks in football, Revis signed with New England as a free agent after being released by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “He’s a phenomenal player, and I’ve loved playing with him,” Brady said. “I’ve hated playing against him, and I’ve had my fair share of those opportunities.” Brady added: “The thing that I’m so impressed with is his coverage skills without getting penalties. That’s a rare thing. To be able to cover those guys like he does is pretty amazing.” Revis, 5-foot-11 and 198 pounds, turned out to be the ideal candidate to shore up the beleaguered New England secondary. As late as 2011, the last time the Patriots went to the Super Bowl, New England’s pass defense was ranked 31st in the N.F.L. The Patriots’ total defense that season was also ranked next to last, a position that must have been difficult to absorb for the Patriots’ defensively obsessed coach, Bill Belichick. The physical Browner, who is 6-4 and 221 pounds, has proved to be the ideal bookend to Revis. Browner played last season for the Seahawks, a team known for its aggressive defense, especially in the secondary. He has brought that style of play to New England, amassing 15 penalties in only eight games. (He missed the first four games because of a league suspension for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy, and did not play in the next two before making his debut against the Jets on Oct. 16.) Belichick has given Browner a long leash, a concession he would be loath to make to a running back who fumbled. Asked about Browner’s penchant for drawing flags, Belichick said: “It’s everybody’s responsibility to play penalty free. That always has been an emphasis going forward and will continue to be for everybody.” N.F.L. Playoffs: What Teams Must Do to Advance With two weeks to go, here’s the N.F.L. playoff picture for every team still in the hunt. Belichick and the defensive coordinator Matt Patricia generally assign Revis and Browner to shut down the opponent’s best wide receivers. The cornerbacks invariably comply. In a recent four-game stretch against the Chicago Bears, the Denver Broncos, the Indianapolis Colts and the Detroit Lions, the opponents’ top two receivers scored one touchdown. In the Patriots’ last game, Belichick moved Revis onto the Dolphins’ Mike Wallace, who had three catches for 89 yards and a touchdown in the first half. In the second half, Wallace had two catches for 15 yards. Either Revis or Browner will most likely tail Eric Decker, the Jets’ leading receiver, on Sunday. The other could well be shadowing Percy Harvin. Ryan will be coaching against Revis for the third time; he had one meeting last year when Revis was with Tampa Bay. In a conference call this week with New England reporters, Ryan fielded 15 questions, four of which centered on Revis. “He’s a great player and everybody knows it,” Ryan said. “I’m sure everybody realized it the day he showed up there. I find it hard to believe that people are just now recognizing the talents of him.” The Patriots knew what Revis could accomplish. So did Ryan, who coached Revis for four of Revis’s six years in New York. Asked this week if he had considered going back to New York, Revis said: “That ship has sailed. I missed that boat. I caught the New England Patriots’ boat.”

Football
Darrelle Revis
Brandon Browner
Bill Belichick
Tom Brady
Rob Gronkowski
Jets
Patriots


N.B.A. Game of the Week: Kings vs. Mavericks

Abstract: Every week, The New York Times will choose one essential game to watch, highlighting hot teams, winning and losing streaks and statistical intrigue in the N.B.A. Sacramento at Dallas, Tuesday, 8:30 p.m. Eastern With the Western Conference superpowers of recent years struggling in the early goings of this season — the Spurs were 2-3 entering Sunday, the depleted Thunder 1-5 — opportunities abound for teams formerly stuck in the middle tier. The Warriors and the Grizzlies, the sixth and seventh seeds in the playoffs last season, were in first and second in the conference entering Sunday, and even teams that missed the playoffs by a wide margin, including the Pelicans, are fighting for a spot in the top eight. Sacramento, in particular, has been a surprise to many, going 28-54 last season but winning five of its first six games this season. The Kings did not make blockbuster moves in the off-season, so credit their improvement to the maturation of their scorers and an increased focus on defense. DeMarcus Cousins has been a strong player at center for a few seasons now, but attitude problems have kept him from being considered one of the N.B.A.’s true stars. There are signs now that he has grown up — witness, for instance, Friday’s game, in which he restrained his coach after fouling out on a questionable call in the fourth quarter against the Suns. (The Kings ended up winning in overtime, with Cousins watching from the sideline.) Cousins seems to have benefited from his time on the United States team at the FIBA World Cup: He is scoring more ably than he did last season while remaining a force on the boards. The Kings were criticized for letting the young point guard Isaiah Thomas head to Phoenix in a July sign-and-trade deal. But Thomas’s replacement, Darren Collison, has exceeded expectations, averaging 15.2 points and 6.2 assists entering Sunday and giving a boost to a defense that was allowing fewer than 100 points per 100 possessions — at 98.7, the eighth-best mark in the league through Saturday. Sacramento’s biggest problem remains its passing. Despite an increased focus from the second-year coach Michael Malone on sharing the ball, the Kings had the worst assists-per-game mark in the league through Saturday, at 17.7. And if they cannot move the ball, they will have a tough time against teams with the ability to stop Cousins and forward Rudy Gay. The Dallas Mavericks have been on fans’ radars since pushing the Spurs to seven games in the first round of the playoffs in the spring. But it is easy to forget that Dallas nearly missed the playoffs, clinching the eighth seed in its penultimate game. In order to avoid that kind of close call this season, the Mavericks will have to improve their defense. To that end, they reacquired center Tyson Chandler from the Knicks and gave the strong defender Devin Harris a bigger role at point guard. But the Mavericks still look shaky; their 105-82 victory over the Jazz on Friday was the first time this season they had held an opponent to fewer than 100 points. It has been difficult to get a read on how good the Mavericks are. Although they lost their opener, 101-100, at San Antonio, they played a great game against the Spurs, the reigning N.B.A. champions. Then again, their only impressive win has come against New Orleans, and they were beaten badly by the Trail Blazers on Thursday. Dallas has never had to worry much about scoring. The Mavericks were averaging 106.5 points per game, the second-highest output in the league, behind only Golden State’s 107.2, through Saturday. Chandler Parsons looks to be fitting in well in his first season with Dallas, averaging 15.2 points a game entering Sunday, and Dirk Nowitzki and Monta Ellis have picked up where they left off last season as the team’s first and second scoring options. Before missing out on the postseason in 2012-13 and barely making it in last season, the Mavericks made the playoffs for 12 straight seasons, often with a comfortable margin. Displaying that sort of dominance, however, has grown increasingly difficult as the Western Conference has become almost comically competitive. Teams like the Kings that few expected to be good this year still have the kind of talent to challenge borderline playoff teams like Dallas in the fight to make it to May. It is still early in the season, but Tuesday’s game should help fans begin to understand how the Kings and the Mavericks stack up.

Basketball
Mavericks
Sacramento Kings
DeMarcus Cousins


In Countrywide Case, Watchdogs Without Any Bark

Abstract: FOR the last two weeks, a justice in New York State Supreme Court has heard testimony in one of the most pivotal cases of the financial crisis. The hearings will tell whether Bank of America can extinguish legal liability for more than a million Countrywide Financial loans by paying $8.5 billion in cash and agreeing to loan servicing improvements in a settlement struck with 22 investors in 2011. But the case, being heard by Justice Barbara R. Kapnick, extends far beyond the impact of the settlement on Bank of America’s balance sheet. It is also laying bare an industry practice that has put investors in mortgage securities at a disadvantage and reduced their financial recoveries in the aftermath of the home loan mania. The practice at issue involves trustee banks overseeing the vast and complex mortgage pools bought by pension funds, mutual funds and others. Trustees like Bank of New York Mellon were paid by investors to make sure that the servicers administering these mortgage deals, known as trusts, treated them properly. Trustees receive nominal fees — less than a penny on each dollar of assets — for the work. But when mortgages soured, trustees declined to pursue available remedies for investors, such as pushing a servicer to buy back loans that did not meet quality standards promised when the securities were sold. In other words, this case highlights a problem with trustees: they are a dog that could have barked but didn’t. Before mortgage securities were undone by troubled loans, trustee inaction was not an issue. Trustees collected their fees at minimal effort and investors were satisfied. But because trustees are hired by the big banks that package and sell the securities, their allegiances are divided. Sure, investors are paying the fees, but if a trustee wants to be hired by sellers of securities in the future, being combative on problematic loan pools may be unwise. Trustee practices are under the microscope in Justice Kapnick’s courtroom because Bank of New York Mellon is the trustee overseeing all 530 Countrywide mortgage deals covered by the proposed $8.5 billion settlement. The trustee is supporting the deal between Bank of America and the 22 investors that include BlackRock, Pimco and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Losses by all investors in the securities are projected at $100 billion. While lawyers for BlackRock and Pimco were negotiating this deal, other investors in the securities were not at the bargaining table. Nevertheless, they must abide by the settlement’s terms. Some outside investors, including the American International Group, have objected, saying $8.5 billion is inadequate given the mountain of problem loans it covers. Lawyers for A.I.G. contend that Bank of New York put its interests ahead of other investors outside the settlement process. Had the trustee been more aggressive with Bank of America, the servicer administering the troubled securities, investors would have received more money in a settlement, A.I.G.’s lawyers say. Bank of New York Mellon argues that the settlement is reasonable and that it has always acted in the best interests of all investors. But over the last two weeks, arguments and testimony have shed light on behind-the-scenes dealings during the settlement negotiations with Bank of America. Some of these details raise questions about the trustee’s assertiveness on behalf of all investors. A crucial issue: the trustee didn’t request individual loan files from Bank of America to help determine how many mortgages had problems and, therefore, whether $8.5 billion was a reasonable recovery. A trustee has the right to request those files for investors who cannot get them on their own. When loan files have been examined, recoveries have been far greater. Last year, for example, Deutsche Bank agreed to reimburse Assured Guaranty, a bond insurer, for 80 percent of losses on eight residential mortgage securities it had insured. Asked about the basis for the $8.5 billion settlement, Kent Smith, a Pimco executive with experience in loan servicing, testified on June 7 that it came in part from an estimated percentage of problematic loans that was provided to the investors by Bank of America. But on cross-examination, he said the estimate was far lower than it would have been if Bank of New York Mellon had examined specific loan files. The estimate, 36 percent, meant that just over one-third of the loans had violated underwriting representations and warranties made to investors. But a review of the loan files would have pushed the figure as high as 65 percent, he testified. Additional testimony raised questions about fairness during the settlement talks. The 22 investors who struck the deal held at least 25 percent — a required threshold for taking action — in only 215 trusts, less than half the 530 covered by the settlement. No other investors had an advocate at the bargaining table. Asked who was representing investors outside the negotiating group, an in-house lawyer for Bank of New York Mellon said he did not know. Then there’s an e-mail from Jason H. P. Kravitt, Bank of New York Mellon’s outside counsel, recounting how he told Bank of America that on one important point its and the trustee’s “self-interest” were aligned — neither wanted the Countrywide securities to go into default. If they did default, the trustee would have been forced to increase its oversight of Bank of America, adding to its costs. If the trustee did not sue the bank, investors could. Referring to a default, Mr. Kravitt said he told a Bank of America lawyer, “We don’t want it either, Chris.” Asked about these matters, Kevin Heine, a Bank of New York Mellon spokesman, said, “We believe an $8.5 billion bird-in-the-hand settlement with significant servicing improvements is a far better result for all investors than the likely outcome following years of costly litigation.” Trustees argue that they do not make enough money overseeing these loan pools to act on investors’ behalf. But this could be resolved if the Securities and Exchange Commission allowed or encouraged trustees to use trust assets to pay for loan reviews or litigation. Justice Kapnick’s decision is not expected for months, and will affect only this settlement. But the revelations in her courtroom send a message to investors who might have expected trustees to protect their interests with more vigor.

Bank of America
Bank of New York Mellon
Bank of America Home Loans
Mortgage Backed Securities
Mortgage loan
Barbara R Kapnick
Banking and Finance


With Cease-Fire Joy in Gaza, Palestinian Factions Revive Unity Pledges

Abstract: GAZA — Palestinians erupted in triumphant celebrations here on Thursday, vowing new unity among rival factions and a renewed commitment to the tactic of resistance, while Israel ’s leaders sought to soberly sell the achievements of their latest military operation to a domestic audience long skeptical of cease-fire deals like the one announced the night before. After eight days of intense Israeli shelling from air and sea that killed 162 Gazans, including at least 30 militant commanders, and flattened many government buildings and private homes, people poured onto the bomb-blasted streets, beaming as they shopped and strolled under the shield of the cease-fire agreement reached Wednesday in Cairo. The place was awash in flags, not only the signature green of the ruling Hamas party but also the yellow, black and red of rivals Fatah, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a rainbow not visible here in years. Despite the death and destruction, Hamas emerged emboldened, analysts said, not only because its rockets had landed near Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but also from the visits and support by Arab and Muslim leaders, potentially resetting the balance of power and tone in Palestinian politics, as leaders from various factions declared the peace process dead. “The blood of Jabari united the people of the nation on the choice of jihad and resistance,” Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, declared in a televised speech, referring to the commander Ahmed al-Jabari , killed in an Israeli airstrike at the beginning of the operation last week. “Resistance is the shortest way to liberate Palestine.” There were neither celebrations nor significant protests across the border in Israel, where people in southern cities passed the first day in more than a week without constant sirens signaling incoming rockets sending them to safe rooms. Instead, an uneasy, even grim calm set in. The military announced that an officer, Lt. Boris Yarmulnik , 28, had died from wounds sustained in a rocket attack the day before, bringing the death toll on the Israeli side to six, four of them civilians. The Israeli authorities announced several arrests, including of an Arab Israeli citizen, in a bus bombing in Tel Aviv on Wednesday that revived memories of the violence from the last Palestinian uprising. But there was collective relief in Israel as thousands of army reservists, sent to the Gaza border ahead of a possible ground invasion, gradually began returning home. With national elections eight weeks away, Israeli politicians tried to showcase accomplishments without raising expectations. “It could last nine months or it could last nine weeks,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said of the cease-fire. “When it does not last, we will know what to do. We see clearheadedly the possibility that we will have to do this again.” And so it went on the day after the latest round in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What was widely heralded as a game changer by Palestinian politicians and independent analysts alike was viewed by Israeli officials and commentators as a maintenance mission that had succeeded in its stated goals: restoring quiet after months of intensifying rocket fire, and culling the weapons cache of Gaza’s armed groups. Details of the cease-fire agreement announced Wednesday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Egyptian foreign minister remained unclear. Both sides pledged to stop the violence, and Palestinians say Israel will loosen its restrictions on fishing off Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline and farming along its northern and eastern borders. But the critical question of whether the border crossings would be open wide for people and commerce was not fully addressed, with only a vague promise that discussions would ensue after 24 hours. The exact agenda, time, location and even participants in these discussions have not been announced. At the same time, Mustafa Barghouti, a West Bank leader who has spent the past several days in Gaza, said the Palestinian factions had agreed to meet in Cairo for another round of unity talks in the next few days, as President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority prepares to take his case for observer-state status to the United Nations next week. Though Hamas and Fatah, the party Mr. Abbas leads, have signed four reconciliation agreements in the five years since Hamas took control of Gaza after winning elections here, Mr. Barghouti said this time was different. “Hamas is stronger, of course, and Abbas is having to change his line because negotiations failed,” he said after appearing with Mr. Haniya at a rally. “This time Israel felt the heat of the Arab Spring, and Gaza was not isolated; the whole Arab world was here. The road is open for unity.” First, though, Hamas faces an enormous rebuilding effort, with at least 10 of its government buildings — including the ministries of culture, education and interior; the prime minister’s headquarters; and police stations — now reduced to rubble littered with payroll sheets and property tax rolls. A spokesman said that the government kept most records on laptops, but the Abu Khadra, a huge complex of constituent services, is gone. Dr. Hassan Khalaf, director of Al Shifa Hospital, which was not attacked, dismissed the worry. “We can gather under the sky under a tent,” he said. “They can come to my house.” In Jerusalem, Dan Meridor, a senior minister of intelligence and atomic energy, told reporters that Israel had “used force in a very moderate and measured way.” He said the military had struck 10 times the number of targets compared with the previous government’s invasion of Gaza four years ago but killed far fewer people than during that invasion: slightly over 10 percent. One of the main military achievements, he said, was the destruction of most of the long-range Iranian Fajr-5 missiles in Gaza. Responding to criticism from the far right and many residents of the south that Israel did not go far enough by failing to cripple Hamas, Mr. Meridor said: “Could we win Gaza from Hamas? Obviously, if we decide to do it. Then we have to ask ourselves what we will do once we are there.” Analysts said that by stopping short of a ground invasion, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged from the crisis looking like a moderate, responsible leader, not a trigger-happy adventurer. Currently facing no credible rival for the premiership, he also can campaign on an improved relationship with President Obama, who, according to Israeli officials, displayed no vindictiveness as he helped mediate the dispute, despite the widely held perception that Mr. Netanyahu had supported Mitt Romney. He can claim credit for the start of a mechanism for better communication with Egypt’s new leadership. “Everybody wanted a situation where they could not have a ground operation and they could have Hamas sing ‘Hatikva,’ ” said Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of political communications at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, referring to the Israeli national anthem. “Frankly, I have to say kudos to Netanyahu, and I don’t usually pay him compliments. I think he got the best out of a bad situation.” Of course there were mixed feelings. On Mr. Netanyahu’s Facebook page, Gila Glickerman, the mother of a combat soldier, thanked the prime minister for bringing her son home, while Shai Solomon wrote, “You’ve just lost a vote at the ballot box.” Orly Peretz, a mother of five who lives in Ashkelon — one of the southern cities hardest hit by the approximately 1,500 rockets fired from Gaza in the latest conflict — said she felt relaxed Thursday for the first time in a long time, and was unconcerned about what Israel might have relinquished in the cease-fire. “It doesn’t matter how it comes about; people want their quiet,” she said. But Linda Kabuli, who owns a salon in the even harder-hit town of Sderot, said she would have preferred a ground invasion “to eliminate every terrorist.” “This is Hamas’s victory, the terrorists,” Ms. Kabuli said. “And the proof is that they got up and danced and sang. Today is a holiday for them; it’s not a day of mourning.” There were, actually, still funerals going on in Gaza City, but Hamas declared Nov. 22 a national holiday not just this year but going forward. Women, not seen much in public in the past week, ventured to the hairdresser. Men waited at an A.T.M. to withdraw money. Teenage boys spooned ice cream from waffle cones on a street corner. Shopkeepers swept debris, and people snapped pictures of the devastation on smartphones. Everything was different, not just from the previous day, but from earlier this month, when Hamas had prevented Fatah from holding a rally commemorating the anniversary of Yasir Arafat’s death, and from March, when Islamic Jihad accused Hamas of giving up on resistance after it had struggled to contain Israel-bound rocket fire from more militant groups. Thursday morning, minutes after five masked men from Islamic Jihad declared victory before a bank of news cameras, hundreds of Fatah members paraded past the same point with pictures of Mr. Arafat, as Hamas security officials kept order. “It’s the first time in 70 years I feel proud and my head is high,” said Mohamed Rajah, 71, a refugee from Haifa who had kissed the militants when they arrived. “It’s a great victory for the people of Palestine. Nobody says it’s Hamas, nobody says it’s Islamic Jihad or Fatah — Palestine only.”

Gaza Strip
Palestinians
Israel
Hamas
Defense and Military Forces


U.S. and China Hold Military Talks, With Cybersecurity a Focus

Abstract: BEIJING — The United States and China held their highest-level military talks in nearly two years on Monday, with a senior Chinese general pledging to work with the United States on cybersecurity because the consequences of a major cyberattack “may be as serious as a nuclear bomb.” Cybersecurity has become a sudden source of tension between the two countries. China has bristled over the growing body of evidence that its military has been involved in cyberattacks on American corporations and some government agencies. Last month, the Obama administration demanded that the Chinese government stop the theft of data from American computer networks and help create global standards for cybersecurity. At a news conference on Monday after talks with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the Chinese general, Fang Fenghui, said he would be willing to set up a cybersecurity “mechanism,” but warned that progress might not be swift. “I know how difficult it is,” General Fang said. “Anyone can launch the attacks — from the place where he lives, from his own country or from another country.” General Dempsey arrived in Beijing on Sunday for his first visit to China. His predecessor, Adm. Mike Mullen, held talks in Beijing in July 2011. General Dempsey’s three-day visit comes as mistrust has mounted between Beijing and Washington over a host of issues, including differences over North Korea, Washington’s strengthened military posture in the Asia Pacific region, China’s assertiveness in the South and East China Seas and basic problems of how the two militaries should communicate in a crisis. China invited General Dempsey for the talks after the lengthy transition process to a new Chinese government was completed in March. His arrival followed the first visit by Secretary of State John Kerry more than a week ago, and Obama administration officials say they hope the almost back-to-back talks will yield a starting point for better relations after a rocky period of drift. At the news conference, General Fang, who is the chief of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff and a member of the powerful Central Military Commission, also talked of wanting a “new kind of military relationship that is consistent with the state-to-state relationship.” He spoke with a confidence that reflected the growing strength of China’s military, including expanding its naval presence. “The Pacific Ocean is wide enough to accommodate us both,” General Fang said, a suggestion that it was time for the United States to understand the American military would not be able to dominate forever. President Xi Jinping used the same phrase on the eve of his visit to Washington as vice president in February 2012. General Dempsey did not allow the remark to go unnoticed. The United States, he said, is looking for a “better, deeper and more enduring relationship” with the Chinese military — but in the context of “other historic and enduring alliances.” “We do have treaty obligations,” he said, a reference to the American alliances with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia. “We will build and recognize the historic alliances, and there will be points when that creates friction.” Defending the Obama administration’s decision to “pivot” toward Asia — a policy widely interpreted as a response to China’s expanding influence — General Dempsey said it was not as though “we’ve disappeared and are about to reappear.” He said he had told General Fang in their private conversation before the news conference that the United States sought to be a “stabilizing” factor and that the absence of the United States in the Asia Pacific region would be “destabilizing.” After a decade of concentrating on Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States will now carry out an Asia Pacific policy of “three mores,” General Dempsey said, bringing more interest, more engagement and more quality assets to the region. General Fang raised the issue of North Korea’s latest nuclear test, a detonation in February just 100 miles from China’s northeast border. “North Korea has already concluded a third nuclear test, and it could conduct a fourth nuclear test,” he said. China is North Korea’s main ally and economic patron, and the United States has urged the Chinese to use their influence to halt the North’s bombast and threats of nuclear attacks on American targets. General Fang reiterated that China was opposed to North Korea’s developing nuclear weapons, and asked for a reopening of the so-called six-party talks that aimed to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program. The talks collapsed several years ago.

US
China
Cyberwarfare
Martin E Dempsey
Fang Fenghui
Military
US Foreign Policy
North Korea
Nuclear weapon


Tom Tresh, Two-Time Yankees All-Star, Dies at 70

Abstract: Tom Tresh, the Yankees shortstop and left fielder who was the American League’s rookie of the year in 1962 and played on three World Series teams, died Wednesday in Venice, Fla. He was 70. The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Sandra, said. When the Yankees went to spring training in 1962, they needed a replacement at shortstop for Tony Kubek, whose Wisconsin National Guard division had been called into federal service. Tresh, who made his Yankees debut at the end of the ’61 season, won the job. He played at shortstop until August, when Kubek returned from military service, then shifted to left field, playing alongside Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Tresh hit .286 with 20 homers and 93 runs batted in, winning rookie of the year honors, and then starred in the World Series against the San Francisco Giants. His three-run homer against Jack Sanford at Yankee Stadium broke a 2-2 tie in the eighth inning of Game 5, and the Yankees went on to win, 5-3. In Game 7, he made a spectacular one-handed running catch in the left-field corner off a drive by Willie Mays in the Yankees’ 1-0 victory. Tresh played on the Yankees’ pennant-winners of 1963 and ’64 and was a mainstay in their lineup through the remainder of the decade, when the team fell into a decline. He was an All-Star in 1962 and ’63 and won a Gold Glove award playing the outfield in 1965. He was traded to the Detroit Tigers during the 1969 season, his last year in the major leagues. He had a career batting average of .245 and 153 home runs. Thomas Michael Tresh, a native of Detroit, was the son of Mike Tresh, a major league catcher for 12 seasons, mostly with the Chicago White Sox. He learned to play baseball as a youngster during batting practice at Comiskey Park. “My dad and I would go out to the center-field fence and he’d pitch to me,” Tresh once recalled. “We used the fence as a backstop. He made me a switch-hitter.” Tresh was signed by the Yankees in 1958 out of Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant. He later obtained a degree from Central Michigan, worked as an administrator in its business school and was the assistant baseball coach. In addition to his wife, Tresh is survived by his son Michael, of Grand Rapids, Mich.; his daughters, Michelle Nestor of Rochester, Mich., Heidi Liddle of Kalamazoo, Mich., and Kami Tresh, of Royal Oak, Mich.; his stepsons, Greg Searles of Venice and Luke Sandel of Okemos, Mich.; a sister, Barbara McConnell of Venice; and 14 grandchildren. Joe Pepitone, the flamboyant former Yankees first baseman and Tresh’s roommate for six years, recalled Thursday how “he let me be me, but he was also the guy who kept me in at night.” “Tommy was a constant in my life and a calming influence,” Pepitone said on MLB.com , Major League Baseball’s Web site. “When I had personal issues, he was always the person on the team I would turn to.” When Tresh came to the plate in the eighth inning of Game 5 in the ’62 World Series, his father was seated in the stands behind home plate. Mike Tresh, who hit only two home runs in his 12 major league seasons, moved to the standing-room section, hoping that that might bring his son luck. Then came Tom Tresh’s drive into the right-field seats. “The instant he hit it, I cried,” his father said after the game. “I didn’t care who saw me.”

New York Yankees
Deaths (Obituaries)
Baseball