After Years of Frostiness, a Selective Co-op Tries a Friendlier Facade

Abstract: Even two or three years ago, it would have been all but impossible to write this column. At River House, the mythic and monolithic co-op overlooking the East River, the only thing stouter than the limestone brick walls towering above East 52nd Street and Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive were the building’s standards. Those inside would call them traditions; everybody else might regard them as pretensions. Almost no one got in, and news barely escaped. Now, a new day, certainly a new attitude, perhaps a new appeal, is dawning at the august residence, one of New York City’s finest apartment buildings since it opened in 1931. After decades of turning away residents without the right pedigree and refusing to allow brokers to even scribble the building’s name in listings, the currents are changing at the home of Henry Kissinger and the fashion maven Deeda Blair and the former home of the author Holly Peterson. “I think there came a moment where we realized we were maybe a little behind the times and had to be more in tune with the New York of today,” said John Allison, a hedge fund manager and the board president, who has called River House home since 2000. (The very fact the board president would even talk to a reporter speaks to how much has changed.) Of course, residents of the 26-story enclave may not have had much choice, as they have watched both stature and prices tumble relative to the equally famous addresses at Park and Fifth Avenues or the shiny condo towers rising uptown and down. Even some apartments in Brooklyn now cost more. In an effort to turn things around, the board has brought in new blood and added a new look to the stodgy old place. “A classic apartment can overcome almost any problems,” said A. Laurance Kaiser, president of the Key Ventures brokerage. “Even when they were making them like this, nobody was making them like this.” The latest drama involved the saga of Arlene Farkas’s baronial 18-room duplex, a pawn in a quarter-century battle with her estranged husband, Bruce Farkas, son of the founder of the now-defunct Alexander’s department store chain. Despite the potentially twofold embarrassment of an impending foreclosure on the $8 million apartment and the failure of a deal to have the French ambassador to the United Nations buy it, salvation seems imminent. Image River House, on East 52nd Street in Manhattan, has been one of the city’s finest apartment buildings since it opened in 1931. Credit Ramsay de Give for The New York Times Last Thursday, a new buyer agreed to purchase the place for “a very good price,” said Nikki Field, the Sotheby’s broker who has been shepherding the sale since the home went on the market in 2008 for $15 million. The contract is expected to be signed this week. Even the idea of a foreclosure would have been scandalous in the early days of River House, when the likes of Harold S. Vanderbilt III and Marshall Field III docked their yachts at the River Club downstairs. Designed by William Lawrence Bottomley, the building features wide balconies, rococo ironwork and a private driveway, topped with a bronze crown. But more than what’s outside, it was the snobbishness within that was a big part of River House’s appeal — like Studio 54 for the ascot set. At least until the turn of the millennium, when a legion of ultraluxury condos began rising. And while the views remained nice, Turtle Bay was not exactly a happening spot. Among the notable New Yorkers snubbed by the board have been Diane Keaton; Gloria Vanderbilt, who sued over perceived discrimination against an African-American companion; and Joan Crawford, who was dating the president of Pepsi and is said to have had the company’s famous neon sign erected in Queens to mar the building’s river view. Last year, after news of the latest Farkas fracas became known, the board decided something had to be done. It was already undertaking a $50 million refurbishing, replacing boilers and lobbies with state-of-the-art systems, and cleaning and repointing the brick facade. But a friendlier public facade was also deemed necessary. A private memo was sent to top brokerages and agents who had been affiliated with the building, telling them that restrictions were being eased. “We really did a thorough search, and nobody could remember where a lot of these rules had even come from,” Mr. Allison said. The board, among other things, said it would take no longer than 45 days to review an application. Then, in October, a blockbuster: Uma Thurman bought the writer Barbara Taylor Bradford’s apartment for $10 million, a 47 percent discount, after the home spent almost four years on the market. Among other recent arrivals, according to city records, are Narayan Krishnamurthy, an Indian-born hedge fund manager, and Aaron I. Fleischman, a Miami art collector and lawyer. Image Applicants rejected by the board include Diane Keaton, Gloria Vanderbilt and Joan Crawford. Credit Ramsay de Give for The New York Times “You think, wow, River House, but it’s one of the best deals around,” said Donna Olshan, a broker who focuses on the luxury market. “These homes should be going for twice what they’re asking.” A bit more agitation arose in November, when the board decided to put the River Club on the market for $130 million. The next most expensive place in the building was about one-tenth the price, but it did not encompass six stories of marble and wood. Many saw it as a bargaining tactic, and indeed the club agreed to pay $45 million to remain in its home, money that is underwriting the co-op’s renovations. Things seemed to be on the upswing until Elizabeth Kabler, Ms. Farkas’s neighbor, sent a note objecting to the French ambassador’s moving in. She complained that armed guards would crowd the halls and diplomatic immunity could lead to unpaid maintenance bills. The board accepted the embassy’s $7.8 million offer for the apartment, lined with very 1970s velvet walls and onyx floors, but also placed numerous restrictions on the purchase, including the matter of immunity and the size and frequency of parties. The ambassador, feeling confined within the new home, ultimately declined. Many believed the arrival of the embassy would have been the ultimate coup for the building’s image, but a place like River House can change only so fast. In perhaps the ultimate sign of the building’s newfound stature, Mr. Allison, the board president, has even decided to sell his 10-room apartment on the 11th floor, in an in-house offering of $8.5 million. Mr. Allison declined to discuss it, citing legal reasons. Given his diligence, there should be no shortage of buyers. “River House remains one of the greatest apartment houses built during the greatest apartment house era in the greatest apartment house city in the world,” said Michael Gross, the author of best-selling books about storied residences at 740 Park and 15 Central Park West."And that will never go out of fashion.” River House will probably never reach the rarefied heights it once enjoyed. And it is probably just as well. It has finally caught up with the rest of the city, where blood lines don’t matter so much anymore — just bank accounts.

Real estate broker
Real Estate
Housing
River Club Manhattan NY
Kips Bay Manhattan


Knicks’ Anthony Has More to Prove Than Heat’s James

Abstract: It is hardly a strain to argue that the compelling first-round matchup between the Knicks and the Miami Heat is largely about the baggage strapped onto the backs of LeBron James and Company as they begin the 2012 postseason. There is much work ahead for Miami after it had the first of multiple titles promised by James during the summer of 2010 snatched away by Dallas last June. There is also much playoff history with the Knicks, most of it sounding like fingernails on the blackboard to the Heat’s president, Pat Riley. And there are similarities to the last lockout-shortened season, 1998-99, when Jeff Van Gundy’s eighth-seeded Knicks left the Riley-coached and top-seeded Heat to sullenly watch Allan Houston sprint the length of the floor in celebration of his series-winning basket. But there is another side to this high-profile showdown, another superstar whose reputation is on the line, or should be, in the best-of-seven series that will begin Saturday afternoon in Miami. The argument can be made that Carmelo Anthony has more to prove than James over the next 10 days to two weeks. He and the Knicks have to get out of the first round, or come darn close, if there is to be a positive spin put on the season for player and team alike. Yes, Anthony and the Knicks are poised to challenge the Heat like no other bottom-rung playoff team in the Eastern Conference. Yes, they have galvanized under the interim coach Mike Woodson, whose mere ascension into the position vacated by Mike D’Antoni brought life to Anthony’s defensive posture and a transcendent aura to his overall game. Yes, the presence of Tyson Chandler to defend the rim and Iman Shumpert to pressure the ball are two time-honored playoff necessities the Knicks sorely lacked when they were swept four straight by the Boston Celtics in the first round last spring. But after a four-month, 66-game grind that had enough rewrites to the Knicks’ narrative to cover a half decade, here is the position — or predicament — they find themselves in: Seventh place, or one slot lower than last season, when they finished with a similar winning percentage despite trading everyone but Walt Frazier for Anthony, leaving them with a bench that was thinner than Anthony’s willingness to perform for D’Antoni. Seventh place, putting them in the unenviable position of having to defeat James and Dwyane Wade four times to extend their season beyond the first round for the first time since 2000. A year ago, Indiana was the eighth-place finisher in the East, losing with valor to Chicago in a five-game series. But the Pacers built on that experience with a 42-24 record this time around, passing the Knicks in the process and earning the No. 3 seed and a first-round series against the Dwight Howard-less Magic. Few N.B.A. experts would rate the Pacers as a stronger championship contender than the Knicks, given their lack of a cold-eyed gunslinger in Anthony’s class. And while they might be right about that, this is a bottom-line business and results speak louder than analysis. Injuries and reinventions aside, the Knicks lost too many early season games they should have won. When Anthony returned from an injury in early March with the team at .500 and seemingly ready to push northward in the standings, he declared his cold war with D’Antoni, which happened to coincide with a six-game losing streak. Hindsight tells us D’Antoni should have been less doctrinaire about having his newly minted point guard, Jeremy Lin, play the role of the ball-dominating Steve Nash. But those games counted and ultimately set the Knicks too far back to get a higher playoff standing. If Anthony is their leader, he must be accountable from season’s start to finish. Unlike the Knicks, the Heat, as a proven playoff team, could afford to coast and fine-tune for the playoffs. Chris Bosh hasn’t played since April 16 and Miami’s Big Three has not been together in the same game since April 15. “Playoff time is what we’ve all been waiting for,” Wade told reporters after the Heat finished the preparatory exercise of the regular season Thursday night with the fourth-best record in the N.B.A. Wade has a championship ring, so he floats above the fury that is sure to again envelop his world-famous co-star. No one in the N.B.A. is a bigger lightning rod for all-or-nothing scrutiny than James, who entered the league with Anthony in 2003 but to a much louder drum roll as the self-acclaimed Chosen One. But James has already carried one otherwise marginal-at-best team (Cleveland in 2007) to the finals and he came within two victories of a title with Miami last season. Over his career he has been in 92 playoff games compared with Anthony’s 49. In eight years, Anthony has made it past the first round once. It’s a team game, that we know, but the steep price of superstardom is to be historically judged by the success of the collective. Now Anthony has Chandler, the adult in the room, backing him up. He has Amar’e Stoudemire to ease the scoring load. He has firepower off the bench in J. R. Smith and Steve Novak. He has a coach, Woodson, to make sure he gets the ball but who won’t be afraid to tell him to move his feet at the other end. Here, then, is an opportunity for one last, dramatic rewrite. Here is Anthony’s time to rise in the East as he never did in the West. Here is his chance to take his talents to South Beach and to make that No. 7 on his jersey count for much more than seventh place in the conference.

New York Knicks
Miami Heat
James LeBron
Anthony Carmelo
Playoff Games
Basketball


Japanese Central Bank Defends Yen Policies

Abstract: TOKYO — The recent monetary push by Japan does not amount to currency manipulation and is a legitimate and much-needed effort to lift its economy out of deflation, the country’s central banker said on Thursday after new figures showed an unexpected economic contraction in the fourth quarter. “Monetary policy seeks only to stabilize the economy,” Masaaki Shirakawa, the governor of the Bank of Japan, told reporters in Tokyo after the bank decided to stand pat on policy moves for now, maintaining its benchmark rate goal of zero to 0.1 percent and holding off on expansion of an asset-buying program. “It does not seek to influence currencies.” Earlier Thursday, gross domestic product numbers from the government showed the Japanese economy remained fragile, shrinking at an annualized rate of 0.4 percent in the October-to-December quarter, the third consecutive quarter of contraction. Still, economists expect a Japanese economic recovery to gain steam later this year as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan pursues fresh fiscal stimulus programs while maintaining pressure on the central bank to stick to near-zero interest rates and continue to flood the economy with money. Markets have jumped since Mr. Abe began pushing his agenda in mid-November as part of a successful campaign that put his Liberal Democratic Party back in power for the first time since 2009. Over the last three months, the Nikkei 225-share index has risen 30 percent, while the yen has weakened by 15 percent against the dollar. Image Masaaki Shirakawa, governor of the Bank of Japan. Credit Toru Yamanaka/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Last month, the government and central bank promised to work together on monetary policies until Japan achieved 2 percent inflation, a lofty goal for the country, which has been mired for more than a decade in deflation, a damaging decline in prices. Mr. Shirakawa is set to end his five-year term next month, and Mr. Abe has signaled that he will appoint a successor who will be more aggressive in fighting deflation. But increasing the Japanese monetary supply to end deflation would also weaken the yen, which Japanese policy makers have openly welcomed as a boon to the country’s exporters. That has led to grumbling from officials in the European Union and elsewhere that Japan was manipulating its currency to give its exports an unfair edge. On Tuesday, the Group of 7 advanced economies, which includes Japan, pledged to let markets determine the value of their currencies. The statement brought relief in Japan because it was not singled out for criticism and also signaled that the prospect of competitive currency devaluations would be up for debate at the meeting this week in Moscow of finance officials from the Group of 20 leading economies. The finance minister, Taro Aso, vowed to defend Japan against any claims of manipulation at the Group of 20, saying on Thursday on his Web site that “the world had been awed” by Japan’s recent economic policy moves, which were “the subject of global attention.” “Other countries want to know how we have done this. It is absolutely not a result of us intervening in foreign exchange markets,” he said.

Banking and Finance
Japan
Economy
Japanese yen
Bank of Japan


Thief Steals Gold Purses From Beijing Museum

Abstract: HONG KONG — A thief hid in the Palace Museum in Beijing’s Forbidden City after closing time on Sunday night and stole nine 20th-century gold purses encrusted with jewels from a temporary exhibition, embarrassed Chinese officials said Wednesday. The small Western-style gold purses had been lent by the Li Yiang Museum in Hong Kong, which in turn had been lent the purses by a Hong Kong art collector. A Palace Museum worker tried to stop a “suspicious man” inside the museum at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, but the man ran off, prompting the worker to sound an alarm, Palace Museum officials said at a news conference in Beijing. Two of the purses were found in “slightly damaged” condition, they said, but the other seven were taken from the museum. A spokesman for the Beijing police said by telephone on Thursday that the police had detained a suspect on Wednesday evening and had recovered some of the missing seven purses, although he declined to say how many. Neither the Palace Museum nor the Li Yiang Museum tried to assign a value to the missing purses. Feng Nai’en, the spokesman and curatorial assistant with the Palace Museum, said at the news conference that “the Palace Museum bears an unshirkable responsibility for this regretful incident.” The theft is likely to have a political dimension as well. China’s Nationalists took the cream of the Palace Museum’s collection with them to Taiwan in the last days of China’s civil war in the late 1940s. Beijing officials have demanded for decades that the collection be returned to the Forbidden City, the palace of generations of Chinese emperors. The collection in Taiwan goes on exhibition in other countries only if they pass legislation agreeing that they will not accept legal claims to it from China. Officials in Taiwan have consistently argued that the collection could have been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution if it had been left in Beijing.

Beijing (China)
Museums
Robberies and Thefts
Palace Museum (Beijing)
Art


Packers Try to Correct Kicking Miscues

Abstract: Jon Ryan paused midway through a detailed description of the mistakes he made during one of his punting misadventures for the Green Bay Packers last Sunday. He realized that it simply was not worth explaining everything that went wrong in the cold and windy conditions at Chicago’s Soldier Field. “It was brutal,” Ryan said. “I don’t know what else to say. Sunday was a brutal day, and it’s a day that I’ll probably have nightmares about for a little bit.” Ryan had two punts blocked, mishandled a snap and shanked another for 9 yards in the Packers’ 35-7 loss to the Bears. After watching game film and practicing last, Ryan said he actually felt better about his performance against the Bears. “I couldn’t feel any worse than I did on Sunday,” Ryan said. “There’s only one way to go from there. I do feel a little bit better about it today, just because it always makes you feel better when I can go out there and kick and remember that I still can punt the ball. It was just a bizarre day, and I’m going to learn from it.” Green Bay’s much-improved special teams have been a key piece of the team’s turnaround this season. But with the playoffs approaching, the punting and kicking games have not exactly been at their best for the Packers (12-3) lately. Ryan had a poor game in the wind and cold last Sunday. The winds sent the ball sailing on snaps, and the Packers’ punt-protection team blocked poorly. “The mistakes that we made, just on the right side, the elementary technique, my goodness,” Packers Coach Mike McCarthy said. McCarthy had the punt team run extra drills in pads last week, knowing they could face wintry conditions again in the Packers’ regular-season finale against Detroit at Lambeau Field on Sunday. “We have to handle the football,” McCarthy said. “Once again, we have to handle the wind. We had the ball on the ground and had all the problems with it, and Chicago did a great job with it. We just need to do a much better job.” Mike Stock, the Packers’ special-teams coordinator, was in no mood to talk about last Sunday’s fiasco and threatened to end an interview. Asked if the extra practice in pads would help, Stock answered simply, “It better.” The rookie Mason Crosby was not called on to kick a field goal against Chicago. But he has made only two of his last six field-goal attempts at Lambeau Field. “I’m not concerned about it,” McCarthy said. “And if it comes down to making a decision whether to kick or not to kick, we’ll probably kick it. I believe in Mason Crosby.” Crosby, a sixth-round draft pick from Colorado, beat out the incumbent kicker, Dave Rayner, in training camp and leads the N.F.L. in scoring with 131 points — tying Ryan Longwell’s franchise record for most points in a season by a kicker. “I think he’s talented, I think he’s tough-minded, I think he’s consistent, and that’s what you’re looking for,” McCarthy said. Ryan and Crosby have practiced outside in recent weeks, acclimating themselves to the tricky wind conditions at Lambeau Field. “You can never really figure out the wind,” Crosby said. “You don’t know what it’s going to do. So it’s one of those that you just kind of have to take it like it comes, and hopefully we won’t have another windy game like Chicago’s game. “That was probably the most wind that I’ve ever played in, but it’s something that definitely was good to learn from and be prepared for.” Crosby has kicked previously in bad weather, recalling a game against Iowa State that was delayed by tornadoes. “I had a good game, that game, too,” Crosby said. “I think I hit from 57 and hit from 42. You can kick in those conditions, you just have to go out there and be focused.” Ryan, a Canadian, set a Canadian Football League record for gross punting average in 2005. “I’ve played in windier conditions, I’ve played in colder conditions, but never together like that,” Ryan said. “So it was difficult.” Ryan said that Brett Favre and Rob Davis, the longtime Packers long snapper, told him those were the worst conditions they had ever played in. “It’s kind of one of those things where I felt like the weird things went wrong,” Ryan said. “I still feel like I’m hitting the ball well, so I still feel confident and I still am really looking forward to Sunday and getting out there and kind of redeeming myself a little bit.”

Football
Green Bay Packers
Chicago Bears
National Football League


Manufacturers Survey Points to New Downturn in Euro Zone

Abstract: LONDON — Hopes that the euro zone might emerge from recession soon were set back Thursday as data showed that a downturn in business activity in the region worsened unexpectedly this month, especially in France. The figures came a day before the European Commission was due to announce interim economic forecasts for the 27-nation bloc, including which countries did not meet European Union targets on budget deficits. European stock indexes fell, following sharp declines in Asian benchmarks, and the euro fell against the dollar. Analysts attributed the declines to nervousness about economic growth, especially following indications Wednesday that the U.S. Federal Reserve was divided on maintaining stimulus measures. Economists had expected that Markit’s purchasing managers’ index for service industries in the euro zone, a business survey and one of the earliest monthly indicators of economic activity, would add to tentative signs that a recovery was in the offing. But the indicator fell in February to 47.3 from 48.6, marking a year it has been below the 50 threshold for growth. Analysts had expected an increase to 49: none of the more than 30 analysts polled by Reuters had forecast such a poor reading. Markit said the schism between Germany and France — with the biggest economies in the euro zone — was at its widest since the survey started in 1998. While companies in Germany sustained a healthy rate of growth, French services companies were experiencing their worst slump since early 2009, when the financial crisis and subsequent recession were at their worst. “If it wasn’t for Germany, these would be really dire readings,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit. “At least the German economy is still helping to keep the euro zone afloat in some respects.” He said the latest survey pointed to the euro zone economy shrinking 0.2 percent to 0.3 percent in the first quarter, after an estimated 0.4 percent contraction at the end of last year. A Reuters poll of economists last week suggested the economy would merely stagnate this quarter. By far the most worrying aspect of the data released Thursday was the dismal performance of French companies. Mr. Williamson said the data for France were more befitting a struggling “peripheral” euro zone economy like Spain or Italy, rather than the “core” status that France traditionally shares with Germany. By contrast, Germany has had a good start to the year. German investor morale soared to its highest level in nearly three years this month, according to the ZEW research institute, while the federal statistics office said Tuesday that employment reached its highest level in the fourth quarter since reunification. Still, there are limits to what German prosperity can do for the rest of the region, blighted by harsh budget austerity and rising joblessness. The latest Markit survey suggests that the “positive contagion” noted in January by the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, may be more in hope than expectation. New orders at companies in the euro zone service sector — which include banks, information technology firms, hotels and restaurants — declined at a faster rate this month, with the index sinking sharply to 46 from 48.4 in January. The survey also dashed optimism that the slump in euro zone factories would ease further in February, as the manufacturing index barely moved, to 47.8 from 47.9 in January. Output fell at a faster rate, though new export orders brought at least a glimmer of hope, with the index rising to 51.7 in February from 49.5, its first reading above 50 since June 2006. The composite index, combining the services and manufacturing surveys, fell to 47.3 in February from 48.6 in January. Companies cut more jobs, though not as quickly as in January, when layoffs rose at the fastest pace in more than three years. The Euro Stoxx 50, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, closed 2.3 percent lower. National benchmarks also tumbled. In Milan, the MIB fell 3.1 percent and in Madrid the IBEX 35 declined 1.8 percent. In Paris, the CAC 40 fell 2.3 percent and in Frankfurt the DAX was down 1.9 percent. In London, the FTSE 100 slid 1.6 percent. In Asia, the Nikkei 225 closed down 1.4 percent, and the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong fell 1.7 percent. The euro was at $1.3207, down from $1.3340 late Wednesday in New York.

Euro Crisis
Germany
France
Interest rate
Manufacturing


Understudy Is Hitting His Marks for U.S. Team

Abstract: As midfielder Stuart Holden rehearsed corner kicks Wednesday, Bob Bradley, the coach of the United States national soccer team, stood at the edge of the six-yard box, midway between the goal posts, and said, “This is where we want ’em.” On Thursday night, as a scoreless first half extended into added time in the semifinals of the Gold Cup in Chicago, Holden placed an outswinger exactly where Bradley instructed, as if shooting at a bull’s-eye with an air rifle. Defender Clarence Goodson ran onto the pass and headed it into the net. Then in the 90th minute, Holden sent a cross to the substitute forward Kenny Cooper in the penalty area, and Cooper’s one-timer gave the Americans a 2-0 victory over Honduras . It was yet another encouraging audition for Holden, who has a boyish look but a fully mature sense of the dramatic. If anyone appears ready for his theatrical close-up, it is Holden, a peach-fuzzed midfielder from the Houston Dynamo of Major League Soccer. He has emerged with a reliable shot, savvy passing, a yearning for the spotlight and a fearless certainty that he can play at the highest international level as the 2010 World Cup approaches. “You want to play in these big games,” said Holden, who will turn 24 on Saturday. “These are the games when people are watching and you can really show what you can do.” On Sunday, the United States will face archrival Mexico in the Gold Cup final at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., attempting to defend its title as the champion of the North American, Central American and Caribbean region. The game will be engaging on several levels. First, it will be a prelude to the much-anticipated World Cup qualifying match between the countries Aug. 12 in Mexico City. Second, the United States wants to preserve an unbeaten streak at home against Mexico that has grown to eight wins and two ties since 2000 . “We don’t want to be the team that lets them get a victory on American soil,” said forward Brian Ching, a teammate of Holden’s in Houston. Third, with most American stars absent from this tournament, young players like Holden will have another chance to impress Bradley as they seek spots on the World Cup team, should the United States qualify as expected. No one seems to hunger for this moment quite so desirously as Holden, who is wearing the No. 10 jersey usually worn by Landon Donovan and has shown no timidity in displaying his own playmaking and scoring talents. Earlier in the Gold Cup, Holden rocketed a shot from 25 yards in added time to rally the United States to a 2-2 tie with Haiti with another display of flair, assuredness and impeccable timing. His calm and self-possession have been evident since he took a kick in a penalty shootout in the 2006 M.L.S. championship game, his first season with Houston. “I knew he had the potential from his first years in Houston,” Ching said of Holden. “He’s always had a clean touch, a good shot and a nose for the game.” Away from the field, Holden is a practical joker, doing a killer impersonation of Bradley and always hiding behind corners to jump out and scare his teammates, who teasingly call him Peanut for his perceived small head and Metro for his metrosexual , blond cockscomb haircut. “If you know him, he craves the spotlight, in a good way,” Ching said. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Holden moved at age 10 to Houston, where his father worked in human resources for Chevron. He became an American citizen about three years ago and has built a career infused with potential and frequently interrupted by injury. In March 2005, after two seasons at Clemson, Holden, then 19, moved to England. He was looking to begin a professional career with Sunderland, only to be sucker-punched in an incident outside a pub. He sustained a fractured orbital bone beneath his left eye and said he had double vision for several months. Later, a tryout with Leicester City ended with a broken ankle. Holden said he began to wonder if he ought to start another career “sitting behind a desk.” He added: “I was going to give it a full go until I couldn’t anymore, but I’d be lying if I said it never crossed my mind. When I couldn’t get my vision back, I was like, ‘How am I going to play soccer if I see two balls every time I look in the air?’ It was tough, especially being such a young age, but perseverance has kind of been the theme of my career.” Holden played encouragingly at the Beijing Olympics and was called into a training camp with the senior national team last January, only to sustain a strained thigh muscle. He finally had his chance during the Gold Cup, where he has remained healthy and uninhibited. Bradley speaks cautiously of Holden, saying his maturation must come with a dedication to defense and an understanding that old tricks will not work against better competition. Bradley uses words like process, as if soccer were photosynthesis. At the same time, he seems encouraged by a player who is clearly experiencing an awakening. “He has shown thus far that he’s picking up things,” Bradley said. “That’s the best thing that can happen. You see them start to see for themselves what these games are all about and how they can take their games to a higher level.” The national team could always use another creative player. The World Cup roster hardly seems set a year out. Midfield may have an opening for a reserve, especially because DaMarcus Beasley has been hobbled by injury and rust. “You focus on the task at hand: winning this tournament,” Holden said. “If we do win, that means people have done well. If I can be one of the guys who performed consistently throughout, helped us win the Gold Cup, I think that puts me kind of in the forefront and forces the coaches to have a look at you going forward in World Cup qualification.”


Court Won’t Intervene in Oklahoma High School Football Playoffs

Abstract: OKLAHOMA CITY — A judge on Thursday denied a request to have all or part of an Oklahoma high school football playoff game replayed after a critical mistake by the referees negated a late touchdown last month. There is no precedent allowing a court to order the replay of a high school football game, and no way to ensure that a replay would be fair to both teams, because the conditions of the disputed contest could not be replicated, District Judge Bernard M. Jones II said in a written opinion Thursday. The judge expressed concern that a “slippery slope of solving athletic contests in court instead of on campus will inevitably usher in a new era of robed referees and meritless litigation due to disagreement with or disdain for decisions of gaming officials.” The Oklahoma case involved a Class 3A quarterfinal played on Nov. 28. Frederick A. Douglass High School of Oklahoma City scored on a 58-yard touchdown pass with 1 minute 4 seconds remaining and appeared to take a 25-20 lead over rural Locust Grove High School. One of the Douglass coaches, however, seemed to accidentally impede a referee on the sideline, and a flag was thrown. The rules call for a 5-yard penalty to be assessed on the extra point attempt or the ensuing kickoff. Instead, the referees wrongly negated the touchdown. Locust Grove was declared the winner, 20-19. The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association apologized to Douglass, saying the referees’ error was “inexcusable.” But the association said its rules did not permit a protest of a referee’s call. Image Thursday’s ruling cleared the way for the resumption of the Class 3A playoffs. The Locust Grove defense received instruction this week in preparation for its semifinal against Heritage Hall on Friday. Credit Nick Oxford for The New York Times The association denied Douglass’s request to restore the negated touchdown and resume the game with 1:04 remaining or to have the game replayed in its entirety. The Oklahoma City public school district then sought relief in court, saying the Douglass players had endured irreparable harm as a result of the referees’ mistake. Judge Jones last week granted a temporary restraining order, preventing Locust Grove from playing a scheduled semifinal playoff game. In his ruling Thursday, Judge Jones wrote that the referees’ error “could be considered by many as a tragedy,” but said that the courts should not intervene because both teams agreed to be bound by the rules of the state high school activities association. Officials of the Oklahoma City public school district, which sued the state activities association on behalf of Douglass High School, said during a hearing Wednesday that they would not appeal Judge Jones’s decision if he declined to order a replay. “We’re done,” said Keith Sinor, the athletic director for the district’s public schools. He added during Wednesday’s hearing that Judge Jones had “done his due diligence and we trust his decision.” Thursday’s ruling cleared the way for the resumption of the Class 3A playoffs. Locust Grove is scheduled to face Heritage Hall in a semifinal Friday. At 35, Judge Jones is one of the youngest sitting judges in Oklahoma. He is a native of Oklahoma City and attended law school at Notre Dame. An ardent fan of the Fighting Irish, he keeps a small banner on the wall of his chambers that features a popular saying by the football team: “Play Like a Champion Today.”


Investors Look to Taiwan in Hopes of Cashing In on China Boom

Abstract: TAIPEI, Taiwan, Oct. 19 — Investors from professional money managers to small holders of emerging market mutual funds face a volatile ride in the coming months as Taiwan prepares for legislative elections in January and presidential elections in March. With stock markets in China and Hong Kong seeing breathtaking runs over the past two years, Taiwan is attracting interest as perhaps the last place to find affordable shares in companies with extensive Chinese operations. Taiwan’s stock market is up 49 percent from the end of 2005 through Friday’s close, whereas Hong Kong’s stock market has risen 98 percent in that period and China’s stock exchanges have soared an astonishing 508 percent. Taiwan’s combination of high volatility, murky accounting and high political risk has prompted many money managers to try to beat the emerging market indexes by underweighting the country’s shares. That has been a successful strategy this year, as many markets have risen faster than Taiwan’s; China’s stock markets overtook it in capitalization on May 14 and have continued to rise, while Brazil surpassed Taiwan on Sept. 18. But betting against Taiwan could prove risky if the coming elections suggest to investors that the island will finally shift its attention from a long struggle over national identity — including the extent of political independence from the mainland — toward a greater focus on economic integration with the mainland. Some of Taiwan’s most entrepreneurial executives, as well as many of its young people, are voting with their feet, leaving to work on the mainland. On Thursday, President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan ruled out full transportation links with the mainland, including regularly scheduled flights between Taiwan and mainland cities. “Looking at the matter from the perspective of national security, if we throw all our doors wide open, it would be like giving China the chance to penetrate to any locale without meeting with resistance,” he said in an interview at the presidential palace. “Could we then maintain the semblance of a nation?” But Mr. Chen is prevented by the Constitution from running for a third four-year term when voters go to the polls on March 22 to choose the next president. And both candidates want closer economic relations with the mainland, including the front-runner, Ma Ying-Jeou of the opposition Nationalist Party, as well as Frank Hsieh, from President Chen’s own Democratic Progressive Party. Many Taiwan companies are believed to already earn hefty profits on their mainland operations. But they keep their successes a secret to avoid Taiwan’s stringent capital controls and other restrictions on doing business with the mainland. “How much of that profit can really be repatriated to Taiwan and reported?” said Tung Tai-chin, the managing director of Fidelity International who oversees the mutual fund company’s 120-person Taiwan operations. “You don’t know.” Taiwan companies were among the first to make large investments on the mainland as China began opening up in the 1980s, and have made fortunes on everything from computer manufacturing to the real estate under their factories. Estimates of total Taiwan holdings on the mainland run as high as $280 billion. But with Taiwan’s government trying unsuccessfully to discourage further cross-straits investment, companies have resorted to a wide range of stratagems to conceal the scale of their mainland holdings. Taiwan companies are increasingly trying to list shares in Hong Kong, for example, as a way to circumvent some of the capital controls that apply to the mainland. The use of subsidiaries based in Hong Kong, Bermuda and elsewhere, with results that are seldom consolidated with the corporate parent’s results, makes it impossible to calculate just how much of the sales and profits of Taiwan companies already come from mainland activities. Luxury retailers are doing a booming business in Taiwan, a sign that some wealth is being brought home. But retail sales of almost anything else, from food to cars, has stagnated as at least 1.2 million of Taiwan’s 23 million people have moved to the mainland, providing a wealth of management expertise. Prominent executives from Taiwan now on the mainland include Timothy Chen, who just left his position as chief executive of Microsoft China to run the National Basketball Association’s fast-growing China operations, and Cheng Mei-wei, the chairman and chief executive of Ford Motor (China) Ltd. But here in Taipei, the exodus shows up in frequently light road traffic. A mixture of youths and the old share the sidewalks, with few left in the age brackets in between. “It’s 5 percent of the population, but much larger than 5 percent of the key people aged 25 to 45,” said Richard R. Vuylsteke, the executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce here, which has lost many from its ranks of young professional . Taiwan is the sleeping giant of emerging stock markets. Until this year, its weighting in the widely used MSCI Emerging Markets index was second only to South Korea’s. But the Taiwan market slumbers fitfully and sometimes has a surprisingly volatile influence on emerging market indexes far out of proportion to its population. When Mr. Chen won re-election in the last presidential elections in 2004, after being slightly wounded on the eve of balloting, the Taiwan market tumbled 6.7 percent on the next day of trading. That exerted a downward pull on the MSCI index of nearly a full percentage point —the kind of unpredictable loss that ever since has helped keep Taiwan’s market weaker than Hong Kong’s, Shanghai’s or Shenzhen’s.


Auburn and Oregon Took Tortuous Road to the Title Game

Abstract: GLENDALE, Ariz. For Auburn and Oregon, the winding road to a national championship football game has been littered with booby traps, insults and self-inflicted penalties. Their challenges have been different, though the reality of being on the outside looking in, until this season, was the same for Auburn and Oregon. Now, however, Auburn is finally on the inside after winning the Bowl Championship Series title, 22-19, on a 19-yard field goal by Wes Byrum on the final play of the game. Breakout moments rarely follow a script. The star of the game for Auburn was not Cam Newton, the Tigers’ charismatic, Heisman-Trophy-winning quarterback. Newton, by his standards, was above average but not spectacular. In fact, his fourth-quarter fumble opened the door for Oregon’s tying score. This was a night when Newton’s teammates lifted their star player. Auburn’s defense smothered and slowed Oregon’s fast-moving offense; Byrum accounted for all of Auburn’s second-half points with a pair of field goals. Running back Michael Dyer turned in the play of the game when he turned what appeared to be a short gain into a critical 37-yard run when he rolled over his would-be tackler, bounced up and realized that the play had not been whistled dead. For his efforts on the night, Dyer was named the offensive player of the game. But it took one tremendous team effort for Auburn to overcome decades of mismanaged ambition and bad luck. Auburn was undefeated in 1993 but was on probation and out of the national championship conversation. The Tigers were clean and undefeated in the 2004 season, but they were unfairly bumped from the Bowl Championship Series title game by the B.C.S. system, which ranked them third. Two years ago, Auburn hired a coach, Gene Chizik, whom nobody wanted, then recruited a Newton, a big, fast, strong-armed quarterback who became a household name. He became more of one Monday night despite one critical fumble, passing for 265 yards and 2 touchdowns and running for 65 yards as Auburn won its first national championship since 1957. Chizik said beforehand that the game was dedicated to the Auburn family and that he frequently told his team it was playing for more than itself. “I’m talking about the people that decided to travel and come out here that don’t have a ticket,” Chizik said. “I’m talking about the people that have followed Auburn football and they come up to you and say, ‘I haven’t missed a game in 55 years.’ ” Auburn put it all together this season, winning 14 games while riding the Newton wave. Still, there was drama. Auburn endured an investigation this season into allegations that Newton’s father was involved in a pay-for-play scheme during Newton’s recruitment by Mississippi State. (Auburn was not implicated.) The N.C.A.A. cleared Newton to play before the SEC title game, but there continues to be a cloud over a marvelous unbeaten season. For Oregon, Monday’s loss, while disappointing, ended a wildly triumphant season in which the Ducks surged into public view. For Oregon, the major challenge to reaching the football pinnacle was largely geographical. “When you’re this far west, I suppose there are some people who still think we get our mail by Pony Express,” David B. Frohnmayer, the president emeritus of Oregon, said Monday in a telephone interview. Frohnmayer, the president from 1994 to 2009, recalled that during his undergraduate days at Harvard, many had a hazy concept of Oregon. “An enormous number of my classmates didn’t seem to know where the state was,” he said. In part because of a speedy team with flashy uniforms by Nike, Oregon’s football program, at the least, is now known. “We’re 1 percent of the nation’s population, but we’re in this beautiful, beautiful Pacific Northwest corner and a place of a lot of innovation,” Frohnmayer said. “I think finally that message has gotten across: this is an interesting, beautiful, exciting place where new and unexpected things happen.” Oregon was innovative. The problem that it once had — visibility — has all but been eliminated, first by creative branding and lately by winning. In 2001, Oregon spent $250,000 to buy ad space on a building across the street from Madison Square Garden, an unprecedented campaign to promote quarterback Joey Harrington for the Heisman Trophy. Harrington finished fourth in the voting. A year later, Oregon spent $300,000 on a Times Square billboard that it called Phase 2 of an effort to put the university and its football program on the national map. The billboards are a thing of the past, but with the confluence of better athletes, more television appearances and a creative coach, Chip Kelly, Oregon has arrived as a national football force. And don’t forget the program’s well-heeled booster Phil Knight, a founder of Nike. “This all goes back to Oregon’s pioneering spirit, one of innovation,” said Rob Mullens, who became its athletic director five months ago . “The billboards, all the great Nike ideas, were really part of a process of building a national and international brand.” But those elements of innovation are meaningless without results and the opportunity to play for the championship. In the 2001 season, Oregon was robbed of a chance to play for the title. Despite Oregon’s being ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press and the coaches polls, the B.C.S. chose fourth-ranked Nebraska to play No. 1 Miami for the championship. Nebraska lost in a rout and Oregon beat Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl. Two weeks after Oregon was snubbed for the championship game in January 2002, I spoke with Frohnmayer at an N.C.A.A. convention. Despite his disappointment, he rejected the idea of a national playoff and predicted that the Ducks would eventually have their day. He said something then that still resonates about college football and the peculiar brand of hope that drives fans. “Football is a great ‘what if’ game,” he said. “You have to be willing to go into collegiate sports with the understanding that on any given Saturday, almost anything can happen. “That’s one of the feelings we celebrate in this country. It’s not an irrational feeling but a nonrational emotion.” After seasons of waiting, Auburn fans can finally experience that delicious, nonrational emotion.

Auburn University
University of Oregon
Fiesta Bowl
Newton Cameron J
College Athletics
Bowl Championship Series
Football
Bowl Games


Unlikely Alderman Is Helped by an Unlikely Ally

Abstract: James Warren is a columnist for the Chicago News Cooperative. I couldn’t exit my North Side polling place Tuesday without considering former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s entertaining wisdom about life presenting us known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. As Mr. Rumsfeld was making the circuit hawking his memoir, “Known and Unknown,” on TV, a female poll watcher backing a long-shot independent Democrat for 47th Ward alderman was ambling outside the German-language elementary school where I was about to vote. It was just me, two campaign aides for the retiring alderman’s handpicked successor and a Realtor friend also arriving to vote. The poll watcher was a leafleting supporter of Ameya Pawar, a 30-year-old who works in the emergency management office of Northwestern University. “Jim, you know Marcy Rumsfeld?” asked the Realtor, by way of introduction. Alas, I did not know Ms. Rumsfeld, one of a famous Republican’s three children. And I certainly didn’t know how she personified Tuesday’s biggest election upset, Mr. Pawar’s victory, and the fragility of an older ward organization once deemed impregnable. For 36 years, Alderman Eugene Schulter has represented what was known as “the Fighting 47th.” He started as a precinct captain for Ed Kelly, for decades the ward’s powerful Democratic committeeman. In a late surprise, barely a month before Tuesday’s election, Mr. Schulter announced he wasn’t running and would support a longtime aide, Tom O’Donnell. The timing, and what was deemed a bit of subterfuge in the selection, rankled some in what has become a young, wealthy and politically progressive ward. The demographic change has brought greater suspicion about old ways of doing business — like a single-minded focus on delivery of administrative services — and not on any higher-minded civic issues and goals. As a savvy political operative, who was not involved in the contest, put it, “The new residents in some wards revolt against old organizations and see a guy like Tommy, a loyal lieutenant, as reeking of old school to them.” Among the original Schulter rivals was Mr. Pawar, who is bright and energetic, with degrees from the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology. He’s single, rents and has lived in the ward for all of four years. He ran with scant resources, knocked on lots of doors and talked about delivering services (“quality control guardian,” he puts it), and also about how to do so more equitably citywide. He also talked about larger issues, like the budget deficit, and he spoke about reforming tax increment financing districts (TIFs) and accepting only $60,000 of the $110,658 aldermanic salary. One door he knocked on belonged to Ms. Rumsfeld, 50, who is active in the Waldorf School of Chicago and is married to an Ecuador-bred academic. She didn’t know Mr. Pawar, and he didn’t recognize her name. “He just showed up at our doorstep six weeks ago, not knowing the Rumsfeld thing,” she said, joking with me in a kitchen where a copy of her dad’s book was proudly quite visible. Mr. Pawar impressed her with what she said were “young, fresh ideas about the job, especially in thinking about the city as a whole and not thinking of these wards as fiefdoms.” As the campaign evolved, Mr. O’Donnell made some missteps, including a poor performance at one candidates’ forum and not showing at two others. And accusations spread of Pawar signs being yanked by Streets and Sanitation Department workers, which the O’Donnell camp denied. Still, there seemed no way Mr. O’Donnell could lose. The Pawar effort was so austere that he stored signs and literature at Timber Lanes, an eight-lane bowling alley that seems like an Eisenhower-era relic. But people like Ms. Rumsfeld worked hard, in her case canvassing at an L stop, at night and in the rain. Mr. O’Donnell was perhaps hurt, not helped, by late endorsements from prominent pols who seemed too “establishment” to some. When Mr. Pawar learned on election night that he might pull an upset, he improvised a party at — where else? — Timber Lanes. After talking with a gratified Ms. Rumsfeld on Wednesday, I was reminded of my own frustrations with how tax dollars are spent: parts of my block were essentially repaved three times in a year, due to a seeming lack of coordination among agencies, yet new handicapped-accessible corners are already coming loose. So we can congratulate the intrepid Mr. Pawar even as his new constituents wait to see if he’s a quick study on what it takes to be a modern alderman: repaving the streets and sorting out TIF financing, all at the same time. For now, let’s call that a known unknown.


AMC Networks Takes Minority Stake in Funny or Die

Abstract: AMC Networks, the owner of the IFC cable channel, which broadcasts comedies like “Documentary Now!” and “Portlandia,” has invested in Funny or Die, the companies announced Tuesday. AMC’s minority stake will, in theory, allow IFC to closely collaborate with Funny or Die, the digital comedy hub founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Though few specifics were announced, AMC and IFC said that the investment could mean there would be an allocated Funny or Die programming block on the cable network. Jennifer Caserta, the president of IFC, professed a “deep admiration and respect for what they do there.” Funny or Die has previously taken investments from media companies like HBO in 2008 and Turner Broadcasting in 2012 . Terms of the AMC deal were not disclosed, but Mike Farah, Funny or Die’s chief executive, did emphasize that the company would remain independent. Mr. Farah also said that the agreement with AMC was more expansive than the Turner investment, which was more focused on ad sales. That ad sales relationship has ended, but Turner still owns part of Funny or Die. “This is a much more strategic and kind of comprehensive relationship that we’re doing with IFC,” he said. Funny or Die is already in the business of producing television shows including truTV’s “Billy on the Street,” Comedy Central’s “@midnight,” the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog election specials on Hulu and the coming IFC show “Brockmire,” starring Hank Azaria and Amanda Peet. Funny or Die is also the creator of the popular online series “Between Two Ferns,” with Zach Galifianakis. Both companies said that the experience of working on “Brockmire” made them confident they would be good partners. “We’re looking at this as a very long-term relationship,” Mr. Farah said. Mr. Ferrell and Mr. McKay said in a statement, “We met on Tinder, things moved fast and now we’re getting married.”

TV
Web television
AMC TV Network
Comedy Central
FunnyOrDie.com
Will Ferrell
Adam McKay


Iraq Accuses 12 Policemen in a String of Killings

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Twelve Iraqi police officers have been arrested in connection with a string of kidnappings and killings, including the killing of the sister of one of Iraq ’s vice presidents, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said Monday. The announcement came as sporadic violence continued across Iraq, including the deaths of three American soldiers and their interpreter who, the military said in a statement, died in combat operations in Diyala Province in the east. The military did not release further details. In the arrests of the police officers, the suspects, who all were low-level officers, admitted involvement in the killing of Maysoon al-Hashemi, the sister of Tariq al-Hashemi, one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, said Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman. Ms. Hashemi, who was director of women’s affairs for her brother’s party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, was shot to death in 2006. Another ministry official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, described the 12 suspects as members of a “gang” and said in a telephone interview that they were arrested two weeks ago. The official gave this account: A police investigation into a string of kidnappings around Baghdad led to a house in Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite district in northeastern Baghdad, where several of the police officers were holding a man for ransom. The officers were taken into custody and later informed on others. In addition to the 12 officers arrested, others remain at large. The Interior Ministry oversees Iraq’s internal security forces, including the police. The ministry has a history of being heavily infiltrated by Shiite militias, though its reputation has improved considerably in the past two years. Eight officials in the ministry’s passport directorate were arrested recently on corruption charges, according to a state-owned newspaper, Al Sabah. The announcement of the police officers’ arrests came a day after the government charged a sitting member of Parliament with having ordered murders , kidnappings and bombings, including an attack on Parliament in 2007. The lawmaker, Mohammad al-Daini, denied the charges in a news conference on Monday, saying he was being persecuted because of his party’s disclosure of government abuses of human rights. Though Baghdad is far quieter now, at least five people were killed in the city on Monday, according to Interior Ministry officials. A group of gunmen opened fire at an Iraqi Army checkpoint in Ghazaliya, a mixed neighborhood of Shiites and Sunnis, killing three people, including two soldiers. Eight others were injured. In the center of Baghdad, two people were killed and six were wounded when a bomb went off near a police convoy.

Iraq
Police
Kidnapping
Police Brutality and Misconduct


The Chatter for Sunday, August 25

Abstract: “There will be less opinion, less yelling and fewer celebrity sightings.” Ehab Al Shihabi, acting chief executive of Al Jazeera America, a new cable channel created specifically for consumers in the United States that promises 14 hours of straight news every day, along with documentaries and fewer commercials than other news channels. “Everyone is trying to position themselves for the new style of information technology. The fittest will survive.” Meg Whitman, chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, which announced several significant personnel changes, along with sharply lower revenue and narrower operating profit margins.

Earnings Reports
Hewlett-Packard
Meg Whitman
Al Jazeera


Schwarzenegger to Declare an Emergency Over Budget

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — With several costly policy problems awaiting a legislative repair, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that the state’s budget deficit had grown to between $10 billion and $14 billion and that he would call for a state of fiscal emergency next month. “The system itself needs to be fixed,” he said at a news conference in Sacramento, “and I think this is a good year, this coming year, to fix it.” The deficit stems from a variety of factors, including the state’s heavy debt, the governor’s decision to cut a fee on cars and trucks when he came into office — which removed billions of dollars annually from state coffers — and the mortgage crisis and weakness in the housing market that have caused budget problems in other states. California constantly faces deficits, in large part because the budget is walled in by voter initiatives. Over time, there has been less wiggle room in the budget. “We may have a smaller problem in percentage terms” compared with previous years, said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan budget research group. “But we also have fewer tools to address it.” The impact of declaring a state of emergency is limited. It would prompt a special session after the regular session begins in January and would require lawmakers to present Mr. Schwarzenegger with a bill to address the shortfall within 45 days of the declaration. But he is not required to sign it. Mr. Schwarzenegger will meet legislators next week to discuss the budget. The shortfall occurs as Mr. Schwarzenegger pursues an agenda that includes a comprehensive water management program and a health care plan to cover all Californians, at a price tag of about $14 billion. The governor said Friday that a budget gap would not hurt negotiations with the legislature over health care because the program would be paid for through federal Medicaid matching funds, a requirement that employers spend on health care up to 6 percent of the amount they spend on payroll and a $1.50-a-pack tobacco tax used to help subsidize the working poor. “We don’t have to raise anything,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said. “We don’t have to do anything.” Ms. Ross was less sure. “A budget shortfall of this magnitude,” she said, “makes it difficult to move forward on policy agenda.”

Budgets and Budgeting
Schwarzenegger Arnold
California


Book Challenges Obama on Mother’s Health Care Fight

Abstract: The White House on Wednesday declined to challenge an account in a new book that suggests that President Obama , in his campaign to overhaul American health care, mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company. During his presidential campaign and subsequent battle over a health care law, Mr. Obama quieted crowds with the story of his mother’s fight with her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition that disqualified her from coverage. In offering the story as an argument for ending pre-existing condition exclusions by health insurers, the president left the clear impression that his mother’s fight was over health benefits for medical expenses. But in “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama ’s Mother,” author Janny Scott quotes from correspondence from the president’s mother to assert that the 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument. Ms. Scott took a leave from her job as a reporter for The New York Times to write the book and has not returned to the staff. On Wednesday, in response to repeated requests for comment that The Times first made in mid-June, shortly after the book’s release, a White House spokesman chose not to dispute either Ms. Scott’s account or Mr. Obama’s memory, while arguing that Mr. Obama’s broader point remained salient. “We have not reviewed the letters or other material on which the author bases her account,” said Nicholas Papas, the spokesman. “The president has told this story based on his recollection of events that took place more than 15 years ago.” In her book, published in May by Riverhead Books, Ms. Scott writes that Mr. Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, had an employer-provided health insurance policy that paid her hospital bills directly, leaving her “to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.” Mr. Papas suggested that even if Ms. Scott was correct, Mr. Obama had not mischaracterized the facts because his mother needed her disability insurance payments to cover unreimbursed medical costs. “As Ms. Scott’s account makes clear, the president’s mother incurred several hundred dollars in monthly uncovered medical expenses that she was relying on insurance to pay,” Mr. Papas said. “She first could not get a response from the insurance company, then was refused coverage. This personal history of the president’s speaks powerfully to the impact of pre-existing condition limits on insurance protection from health care costs.” Disability insurance, which primarily replaces wages lost to illness, was never at issue in the legislative debate over the Affordable Care Act. Ms. Scott said in an interview that her reporting relied on copies of letters from Ms. Dunham to Cigna that were made available by friends. The book concludes that although Mr. Obama often suggested that Ms. Dunham “was denied health coverage because of a pre-existing condition, it appears from her correspondence that she was only denied disability coverage.” Ms. Dunham, an anthropologist who worked on development projects in Indonesia , died in 1995, less than a year after her diagnosis. During the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama used several rhetorical formulations to relate the anecdote, stressing, in his words, that “this issue is personal for me.” In his second debate with Senator John McCain of Arizona , in October 2008, he said: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.” He put it similarly as president in a town-hall-style meeting in Portsmouth , N.H., in August 2009. “I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment,” Mr. Obama said. The health care act, which Mr. Obama signed in March 2010, outlawed pre-existing condition exclusions for children under 19 starting last September. The ban extends to adults in 2014. Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard, said that if an alternate narrative about Ms. Dunham’s dispute had been discovered during the 2008 campaign “people would have considered it a significant error.” He added: “I just took for granted that it was a pre-existing condition health insurance issue.” According to Ms. Scott’s book, Ms. Dunham’s problem with Cigna started after she left Jakarta, Indonesia, where she had recently taken a consulting job with an American firm, and returned to Honolulu for treatment of abdominal pain that had been diagnosed as appendicitis . After being told she had uterine and ovarian cancer , she underwent a hysterectomy in February 1995 and then six months of chemotherapy , according to the book. The Cigna disability policy, according to Ms. Scott, allowed the company to deny a claim if a patient had seen a doctor about the condition that caused the disability in the three months before employment. During that period, Ms. Dunham visited a New York gynecologist. When Cigna obtained the doctor’s notes, it learned that she had formed a working hypothesis that Ms. Dunham might have uterine cancer , Ms. Scott wrote. The doctor ordered up a series of tests, and Ms. Dunham submitted to most of them. “None of these tests indicated that I had cancer,” Ms. Dunham wrote to Cigna, according to the book. After several months, Cigna denied the claim. Ms. Dunham then requested a review, writing to Cigna that she had turned the case over to “my son and attorney, Barack Obama,” Ms. Scott wrote. Ms. Scott said in the interview that she did not turn up documents to suggest that Ms. Dunham had a similar dispute with her health insurer, which she did not name. She said she could not determine from the documents she viewed whether Mr. Obama, then a lawyer in Chicago , had in fact petitioned Cigna on his mother’s behalf.

Barack Obama
Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Janny Scott
Stanley Ann Dunham
Books


Steve Nash Showdown Back in Manhattan

Abstract: There is no telling who will drop by for the Steve Nash Foundation’s sixth annual Showdown match in Manhattan. The eight-on-eight soccer match usually attracts some European soccer stars in their off-seasons who happen to be hanging around. What is certain, however, is that there will be hundreds hanging from the fences surrounding Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side on June 26. “The fun thing about the event, a hard thing, is that we don’t really know who’s going to play other than a few guys,” Nash said in a telephone interview from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia. Nash, the point guard for the N.B.A. Los Angeles Lakers and an avowed Tottenham fan, continues his injury rehabiltation but plans to play in the soccer game. “What makes it fun almost every year is that four or five terrific players come into town that week,” he said. “You find a lot of European players on vacation. They’re not really recognizable in the States. I also have a network of friends and buddies who are doormen around the city. They tell me who’s around. That’s how it falls into place. It makes for a fun and exciting event. We try to keep that informal aspect through necessity. “This time there’s the Confederations Cup, the Gold Cup, World Cup qualifying ... so it depends. A lot of guys can’t commit. We’ll see who turns up.” In past years, soccer players like Claudio Reyna, Thierry Henry, Salomon Kalou, Patrick Vieira, Giuseppe Rossi and Javier Zanetti have played. With his N.B.A. contacts, Nash has brought along players like Jason Kidd, Chris Bosh, Grant Hill and Tony Parker (a friend of Henry’s who is now in the N.B.A. finals with the San Antonio Spurs). Rossi, now at Fiorentina in Italy, is expected to return for this year’s game. The list also included the United States international player Sacha Kljestan and Massimo Ambrosini, a longtime central midfielder for A.C. Milan. The match, in a public park, has grown gradually and built a dedicated following for what is essentially a pickup game. It has evolved into a match for Nash’s foundation, with 100 percent of the proceeds from the game, through ticket sales and V.I.P. packages , going to children’s education . “This is the essence of the game,” Nash said. “This is how we all grew up playing. It is changing a bit, it’s not quite the same. I grew up playing in parks like Sara Roosevelt. But I don’t think this younger generation is doing too much of that around the country. Playing pickup is a wonderful way to learn the games of soccer and basketball. Go out and join a game. It’s the way professional athletes are born. You’re put in a position to become a professional in the streets.” The match is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 p.m., with a postmatch party and auction.


Obama and Insurance Executives Discuss Health Care Exchanges

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama met with insurance industry executives at the White House on Friday to coordinate the introduction this fall of the insurance marketplaces at the heart of the national health care law, and to discuss so-called rate shock if the industry sharply raises premiums. “We’re all in this together,” Mr. Obama told the executives, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified discussing it. Government and industry, which battled while forging the law, are now “joined at the hip,” the president said at one point. “We’re going to make it work.” For weeks, news reports have conveyed industry warnings that the new law could lead to higher premiums for many people, because the policies to be sold under the law’s requirements will be more comprehensive than those many Americans have now. Republicans in Congress, who remain united in opposition three years after the law’s enactment, have held hearings to underscore such warnings. But the administration says such talk is overblown. Consumers can move from expensive health plans to more efficient, lower-cost policies, officials say, and critics who focus on premiums do not take account of other provisions of the law that limit how much consumers will spend out of pocket for health care. The administration predicts that those who get coverage after being uninsured are generally going to be younger and healthier than those who have insurance. That will hold down total costs of coverage for insurers and the government, officials say, and tend to hold down premiums in turn. If premiums do increase, they argue, lower-income people can get federal help. Either way, both sides face a colossal challenge in planning for one of the most complicated and far-reaching social undertakings ever. On Oct. 1, enrollment starts nationwide for the emerging marketplaces where many millions of Americans can shop for coverage. Mr. Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act of 2010 requires most Americans to have health insurance, and provides subsidies for the needy, to expand coverage to an estimated 27 million uninsured Americans — including seven million through the exchanges in the first year. Mr. Obama had not been scheduled to attend the meeting, but he presided over the entire hourlong session, which included his chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, and his health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius. One official called it “productive,” adding that “the president discussed our shared goal of educating Americans about the value of health insurance and the new health insurance marketplaces.” Among attendees from the industry, which stands to get millions more customers, were Karen M. Ignagni, the head of a trade association for the insurance industry; Chet Burrell of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield; David M. Cordani of the Cigna Corporation; Scott P. Serota of the BlueCross BlueShield Association, a federation of local Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies; and Joseph R. Swedish of WellPoint. Officials said that each side shared information about how it was planning to spread the word about the insurance exchanges and enrollment centers, especially among young people. Before the meeting, Ms. Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee, “There are costs going up and down, but what we know is that they are rising at a much slower rate right now than they did three years ago, before this law was passed. We have insurance departments, many for the first time, with aggressive rate review strategies in place.” The marketplaces would intensify competition, she said, adding, “When plans have to compete side by side and it’s very transparent, that in and of itself drives prices down.”

Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Legislation
Reform
US Politics
Barack Obama


An Assured Voice Joins the Cattle Call

Abstract: After meat was rationed during World War II, a big juicy steak dinner became the American ideal. Later in the 20th century, there was a slight dip in enthusiasm when cholesterol levels became the health topic du jour. Still, by the 1990s, steakhouses were again riding high. They still are: The section of Route 25A from Great Neck to East Norwich is known as Steakhouse Row. In February, one of the Steakhouse Row spots, Burton & Doyle, closed and another entry, Union Prime Steak & Sushi took its place. Its owners, Joseph Zangri and Bert Brodsky, who also operate City Cellar in Westbury, had taken over the space in June. They spent six months redecorating. Image The bone-in rib steak at Union Prime Steak & Sushi. Credit Kathy Kmonicek for The New York Times The result is the antithesis of the dark, masculine décor usually associated with steakhouses. The restaurant sparkles with metallic wallpaper, shiny silver leather booths and banquettes and sharp white woodwork. Dark red columns and the occasional potted palm add dots of color. But the food is the real standout. The steaks are prime 35-day dry-aged beef. The bone-in rib steak, a regular special and one of the most expensive entrees at $59, was everything a steak should be: well-marbled, flavorful, juicy and tender with a memorable crust. As I’ve said before , I reserve my sushi eating for Japanese restaurants, but steak is a different story. I’d rather splurge on a single steak like this than eat a couple of mediocre ones. Another hit was the braised lollipop short rib, a single bone ending in a grapefruit-size ball of tender beef. Its wild mushroom and truffle risotto, though, was dull and had a gummy texture. Two entrees, however, were made tastier by their accompaniments: an oven-roasted whole branzino and a special of crisply fried soft shell crabs. The fish, served boned, arrived with caramelized cipollini onions, slices of zucchini and a boat of lemon-butter sauce with capers and onions. The soft-shell crabs were rolled in panko crumbs, fried till crisp and placed over a terrific mix of corn, sliced fingerling potatoes and julienned green and red peppers. A delicious caper berry tartar sauce was served on the side. Image Banana cream pie. Credit Kathy Kmonicek for The New York Times For those not indulging in a big beef entree, a taste of the good stuff is offered in the Kobe hot rock appetizer. This is a treat for those who like to play with their food. Once the dish arrives, the diner uses a hot rock to sear about eight thin slices of the tender beef. Another impressive opener is the crab meat cocktail: a plate holding big chunks of lump crab, a Champagne mustard sauce, traditional cocktail sauce and a clump of shredded kani (imitation crab) in a spicy mayonnaise. The cocktail is much better than the mushy crab cakes made from shredded (not lump) crab. Most steakhouses offer a variation of a house salad which typically includes crunchy green beans, nubbins of shrimp and crumbled bacon plus red peppers, red onions and plum tomatoes. Here, this salad is called the Union, and it is recommended. The chef, Christopher Hamaty, who was previously at Blackstone Steakhouse in Melville and served as the executive chef at Oheka Castle in Huntington, knows his steakhouse staples, and it shows. Desserts are all made in-house. The signature dessert is a warm cinnamon bun served in a black iron skillet. It is meltingly delicious and arrives with a warm vanilla cream cheese frosting, served in a sauce boat, to drizzle over the top. My favorite was the banana cream pie, a circular, individual tart with a graham cracker crust and an abundance of banana pudding and whipped cream that was studded with more slices of banana. Union is not cheap, but its stunning décor, excellent service and memorable food make it the perfect spot for a special-occasion dinner.

Restaurant
Great Neck NY
Union Prime Steak & Sushi


For the iPad, 10 Favorite Apps - App Smart

Abstract: When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad and referred to it as a magical device, lots of people snickered. Silly people. Most iPad owners will tell you that it can indeed inspire the kind of astonishment you might have felt while watching your first magic show — that is, if the device is properly loaded. Here are my 10 favorite apps, plus a few extras to make the iPad magic happen: IWORK ($30, or $10 each for Pages, Keynote or Numbers): Since you can’t type easily on an iPad, it may never replace your laptop. But with this software, which is made by Apple, you won’t need to rush to your other computers to edit Microsoft Office files. The Pages app is great for revising and exporting text files; the Numbers app is good (and getting better) with spreadsheets; and Keynote is a serviceable complement to PowerPoint. AIR DISPLAY ($10): Turn your iPad screen into an extra PC monitor with Air Display, and never again miss a new Twitter post, Facebook post or stock market move. FLIPBOARD (free): Twitter and Facebook rely on “new stuff on top” layouts, with links that send you elsewhere to see what people are fussing about. Flipboard rationalizes this editorial insanity. The app plops your Facebook feed into a magazine format, showing all the stories your friends recommended, with photos and updates. You can create other personalized magazines from Twitter feeds, on topics of your choice. STAR WALK ($5): A jaw-dropping astronomy app. Hold the iPad toward the night sky and it labels everything. You can also preview the movement of tonight’s sky, or witness a particular night sky from centuries ago. Star Walk is billed as an educational app, but it’s as entertaining as anything on the market. SKETCHBOOK PRO ($8): Experienced artists can create masterpieces with this program. Hobbyists and children can happily lose themselves for hours. The app is powerful, yet fairly intuitive. NETFLIX (free, but requires a paid Netflix subscription): The iPad renders video beautifully, and Netflix streams a nearly limitless catalog of movies and TV shows to the device. Fast, easy, addicting. FRUIT NINJA HD ($5): On the iPad’s big screen, this game will give you more of a jolt than Angry Birds. (But do yourself a favor and download that one too.) The task: swipe your finger to slice flying fruit. Hit a bomb and your ninja days are numbered. A recent update added online multi-player functionality. INSTAPAPER ($5): Great articles typically appear when you have no time to read them. Instapaper quickly stores links, so you can read the full articles later, from within the app. Instapaper also remembers articles you’ve saved with the free online version. Some will find setting up the service on an iPad frustrating, but it is worth it. PANDORA RADIO (free): Fans of the personalized radio service will appreciate the big-screen format, which is great for reading liner notes and browsing artists and songs. The music selections and ads (if you don’t pay for upgraded service) are the same as on the iPhone or online version. EVERNOTE (free): Another bigger-is-better entry. Evernote stores notes, photos and voice memos, so you can retrieve them later on any Web-connected device. The service offers a fair amount of free storage, but you can skip the limit for $45 a year. Honorable Mention Reuters News Pro (free): Among the best news apps, it will cache articles for offline reading; Photoshop Express (free): Import your photos and crop, filter, rotate and change them to suit your tastes. Great for youngsters, too; Wikipanion (free): An iPad-centric approach to surfing Wikipedia pages; AirCoaster ($1): Design and ride 3-D roller coasters, with amazing graphics; Magic Piano ($2): Make music with whimsically elegant keyboards; Scrabble ($10): The wordsmith’s standby, nicely rendered for the iPad. (Use your iPhone or iPod Touch as tile racks). Orbital HD ($3): A game that will engage your brain, test your reflexes and kill many hours of your time; Weather HD ($1): No matter the forecast, it’s a treat to read; Twitter for iPad (free): Twitter’s official app delivers an efficient, simple experience; Skype (free): Make free (or cheap) calls with your iPad; Epicurious (free): Professionally tested recipes, in big-screen glory; Real Racing HD ($10): Take the wheel and steer the iPad to victory; NPR (free): Catch up on the news and your favorite NPR programs, or read top articles; TextPlus (free): Free texting; The Elements ($14): Could make you want to take high school chemistry again; Dragon Dictation (free): Speak your mind, and the app delivers a text message or e-mail, ready for sending.


Overtime Rule Is but the Latest Obama Initiative to End in Texas Court

Abstract: President-elect Donald J. Trump promised to undo many of the Obama administration’s most ambitious regulations. But even before he takes office, federal courts in Texas are doing some of the work for him. A federal judge’s injunction this week halted a Labor Department rule that would have made millions more Americans eligible for overtime pay. Over the last two years, Federal District Court judges in the state have chipped away at Mr. Obama’s legacy by striking down or suspending no fewer than five regulations, executive orders or actions, and guidelines, including an action that would have allowed illegal immigrants who are parents of United States citizens to remain in the country, and guidance that would have expanded restroom access for transgender students. The injunction in the overtime case, issued on Tuesday by a judge nominated by Mr. Obama, has many advocates and legal experts concerned. “It’s a troubling trend because it’s essentially delegating policy oversight to a set of handpicked judges in the South, who can pick and choose which regulations move forward and which do not,” said Matthew Wessler, a principal at the firm Gupta Wessler who has argued multiple cases involving workers before the Supreme Court. The case over the overtime rule, which would have made an estimated 4.2 million people newly eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay, provides some insight into why opponents of regulation conclude that descending on Texas increases their odds of success. In an interview, the Nevada attorney general, Adam Paul Laxalt, whose state was the lead plaintiff in the case against the overtime rule, said that the coalition of states it led had elected to file in the Eastern District of Texas because the district had a reputation for handing down rulings quickly. “That was what is known as a fast docket,” Mr. Laxalt said. “The decision was made based on a bunch of variables, but we thought we may be able to get the quickest answer.” Citing the Dec. 1 effective date for the new regulation, he said, “We were really fighting the clock.” Mr. Laxalt added that Nevada had been part of multistate litigation that was filed in other states, including a case over a rule regulating waterways, which was filed in North Dakota. Texas has a rich culture of antigovernment litigation. In 2013, Greg Abbott, now the state’s governor and then its attorney general, jokingly described a typical workday as, “I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.” He bragged that he had sued the Obama administration 25 times in the previous four years. While federal judges in Texas are officially appointed by the president, not state officials, Senate custom gives the state’s two United States senators considerable influence over the nominations . “The judges that do manage to get nominated have to somehow pass through the gauntlet of Ted Cruz and John Cornyn,” said Richard Levy, the secretary-treasurer of the state A.F.L.-C.I.O. who served as its legal director for more than 20 years. “It has skewed the bench here in a way I don’t think is probably likely in other places.” Even though the federal judge who ruled on the overtime regulation, Amos L. Mazzant III, was formally nominated by Mr. Obama in 2014, the influence of Mr. Cruz and Mr. Cornyn made it unlikely that he would be overly sympathetic to federal regulations, Mr. Levy said. Still, the sweep of Judge Mazzant’s decision appears to have surprised even skeptics of the regulation. The Obama regulation raised the annual salary limit below which workers are automatically eligible for overtime pay — something that previous administrations, including George W. Bush’s, had done several times since 1938 — to $47,476, from $23,660. In his ruling, however, Judge Mazzant suggested not simply that the administration lacked the authority to raise the salary limit so high, but that no administration had the authority to establish and raise a salary limit of any kind. Nothing in the law, he wrote, “indicates that Congress intended the department to define and delimit with respect to a minimum salary level.” (Judge Mazzant retreated from the implications of this statement in a footnote asserting that he was determining the legality only of the Obama regulation.) Asked if he agreed with the judge that the Labor Department lacked the authority to create a salary limit of any kind, not just the new level developed by the administration, Mr. Laxalt, the Nevada attorney general, said, “We do think the judge got it right when he said it’s unclear whether or not they can do an arbitrary salary test,” but confessed that he wouldn’t necessarily follow the ruling to its logical conclusion. “I’m not prepared to say categorically we’re opposed to the 23,000,” the limit established by George W. Bush, he said. For his part, Thomas E. Perez, the labor secretary, argued in an interview that it simply was not possible to single out the Obama salary limit as extreme or arbitrary while accepting the previous increases, since the new limit was in line with some of them. “If we had simply indexed the 1975 threshold to inflation, that number would be well in excess of what our current threshold is,” he said — about $57,000 annually. The administration is widely expected to appeal the ruling, given the extensive history of such increases, and many management-side lawyers believed that Judge Mazzant was out on a limb. “The Labor Department has been setting these minimums since 1940,” said Allan Bloom of the law firm Proskauer Rose. “This is the first time that a district court judge is essentially saying you don’t have the authority to do that.” Considered alongside the recent pattern of decisions by Texas judges, however, the ruling might have been foreseen. Last month, Judge Marcia A. Crone of the Eastern District of Texas ruled against most of an Obama administration directive that required companies to disclose labor violations before they could receive a federal contract worth more than $500,000, a policy that had inflamed the business community. Last week, Judge Sam R. Cummings of the Northern District of Texas, permanently blocked an administration rule that would have required employers to disclose relationships with consultants they hire to dissuade workers from unionizing. In perhaps the biggest judicial setback to the president’s executive actions and regulations before the overtime decision, a split Supreme Court decision in June left in place a 2015 ruling by Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the Southern District of Texas that shut down the administration program intended to grant leniency to immigrants in the country illegally with children who are citizens or lawful permanent residents. President Obama had pointed to the program, which was meant to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, as one of his major achievements. Mr. Wessler, the Supreme Court lawyer, marveled at how unprecedented the recent developments have been. “Using nationwide injunctions coupled with the kind of blatant forum shopping here is not something that we’ve really seen before in the modern age,” he said.

Federal Courts
Texas
Regulation and Deregulation
Decisions and Verdicts
Barack Obama
Overtime
Jobs
Labor Department


China Further Tightens Grip on the Internet

Abstract: BEIJING — Jing Yuechen, the founder of an Internet start-up here in the Chinese capital, has no interest in overthrowing the Communist Party. But these days she finds herself cursing the nation’s smothering cyberpolice as she tries — and fails — to browse photo-sharing websites like Flickr and struggles to stay in touch with the Facebook friends she has made during trips to France, India and Singapore. Gmail has become almost impossible to use here, and in recent weeks the authorities have gummed up Astrill, the software Ms. Jing and countless others depended on to circumvent the Internet restrictions that Western security analysts refer to as the Great Firewall. By interfering with Astrill and several other popular virtual private networks, or V.P.N.s, the government has complicated the lives of Chinese astronomers seeking the latest scientific data from abroad, graphic designers shopping for clip art on Shutterstock and students submitting online applications to American universities. “If it was legal to protest and throw rotten eggs on the street, I’d definitely be up for that,” Ms. Jing, 25, said. China has long had some of the world’s most onerous Internet restrictions. But until now, the authorities had effectively tolerated the proliferation of V.P.N.s as a lifeline for millions of people, from archaeologists to foreign investors, who rely heavily on less-fettered access to the Internet. But earlier this week, after a number of V.P.N. companies, including StrongVPN and Golden Frog, complained that the Chinese government had disrupted their services with unprecedented sophistication, a senior official for the first time acknowledged its hand in the attacks and implicitly promised more of the same. The move to disable some of the most widely used V.P.N.s has provoked a torrent of outrage among video artists, entrepreneurs and professors who complain that in its quest for so-called cybersovereignty — Beijing’s euphemism for online filtering — the Communist Party is stifling the innovation and productivity needed to revive the Chinese economy at a time of slowing growth. “I need to stay tuned into the rest of the world,” said Henry Yang, 25, the international news editor of a state-owned media company who uses Facebook to follow American broadcasters. “I feel like we’re like frogs being slowly boiled in a pot.” Multinational companies are also alarmed by the growing online constraints. Especially worrisome, they say, are new regulations that would force foreign technology and telecom companies to give the government “back doors” to their hardware and software and require them to store data within China. Image An Internet cafe in Beijing. China has blocked virtual private networks, or V.P.N.s, that once let users skirt online censorship. Credit Ng Han Guan/Associated Press Like their Chinese counterparts, Western business owners have been complaining about their inability to gain access to many Google services since the summer. A few weeks ago, China cut off the ability to receive Gmail on smartphones through third-party email services like Apple Mail or Microsoft Outlook. The recent disabling of several widely used V.P.N.s has made it difficult for company employees to use collaborative programs like Google Docs, although some people have found workarounds — for the time being. “One unfortunate result of excessive control over email and Internet traffic is the slowing down of legitimate commerce, and that is not something in China’s best interest,” said James Zimmerman, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China . “In order to attract and promote world-class commercial enterprises, the government needs to encourage the use of the Internet as a crucial medium for the sharing of information and ideas to promote economic growth and development.” Chinese authorities have long had the ability to interfere with V.P.N.s, but their interest in disrupting such programs has mounted alongside the government’s drive for cybersovereignty, especially since President Xi Jinping came to power two years ago. Lu Wei, the propaganda official Mr. Xi appointed as Internet czar, has been unapologetic in promoting the notion that China has the right to block a wide array of online content. A co-founder of Greatfire.org , which tracks online censorship in China, suggested the government had decided that soaring V.P.N. use among ordinary Chinese warranted a more aggressive attack on such software. “This is just a further, logical step,” said the co-founder, who requested anonymity to avoid government scrutiny. “The authorities are hellbent on establishing cybersovereignty in China. If you look at what has taken place since last summer it is quite astounding.” Government officials have denied any role in blocking Google and they have dismissed accusations that Chinese authorities were behind a “man-in-the-middle” attack on Outlook two weeks ago as well as other hacking incidents involving Yahoo and Apple. But such claims have by and large fallen on deaf ears, especially given Beijing’s strident campaign against the “hostile foreign forces” it says are seeking to undermine the country through the Internet. On Tuesday, however, a senior official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology acknowledged that the government was targeting V.P.N.s to foster the “healthy development” of the nation’s Internet and he announced that such software was essentially illegal in China. “The country needs new methods to tackle new problems,” Wen Ku, a director at the ministry, said at a news conference, according to People’s Daily . In recent weeks, a number of Chinese academics have gone online to express their frustrations, particularly over their inability to reach Google Scholar, a search engine that provides links to millions of scholarly papers from around the world. Image James Zimmerman, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times “It’s like we’re living in the Middle Ages,” Zhang Qian, a naval historian, complained on the microblog service Sina Weibo. In an essay that has been circulating on social media, one biologist described how the unending scramble to find ways around website blockages was sapping colleagues’ energy. “It’s completely ridiculous,” he wrote of the wasted hours spent researching and downloading V.P.N. software that works. “For a nation that professes to respect science and wants to promote scientific learning, such barriers suggest little respect for the people actually engaged in science.” It is not just scientists who have come to depend on an unabridged Internet for their work. Cheng Qingsong, a prominent film critic, complained that it was more and more difficult to stream foreign movies. Andrew Wang, a professor of translation at Beijing Language and Culture University , worried that his students would be unable carry out assignments that require them to watch English-language videos on YouTube, which has long been blocked here. The vast majority of Chinese Internet users, especially those not fluent in English and other foreign languages, have little interest in vaulting the digital firewall. But those who require access to an unfiltered Internet are the very people Beijing has been counting on to transform the nation’s low-end manufacturing economy into one fueled by entrepreneurial innovation. Illustrating such contradictions, the central government this week announced a series of programs that seek to lure more international business talent by easing visa requirements and through other incentives. “We have to focus on the nation’s strategic goals and attract high-level talent to start innovative businesses in China,” said Zhang Jianguo , director of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, who bemoaned the nation’s shortage of scientists and technology entrepreneurs. Those goals, however, will not be helped by the assaults on Internet access, critics say. Avery Goldstein, a professor of contemporary Chinese studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said the growing online constraints would not only dissuade expatriates from relocating here, but could also compel ambitious young Chinese studying abroad to look elsewhere for jobs. “If they aren’t able to get the information to do their jobs, the best of the best might simply decide not to go home,” he said. For those who have already returned to China and who crave membership in an increasingly globalized world, the prospect of making do with a circumscribed Internet is dispiriting. Coupled with the unrelenting air pollution and the crackdown on political dissent, a number of Chinese said the blocking of V.P.N.s could push them over the edge. “It’s as if we’re shutting down half our brains,” said Chin-Chin Wu, an artist who spent almost a decade in Paris and who promotes her work online. “I think that the day that information from the outside world becomes completely inaccessible in China, a lot of people will choose to leave.”

China
Censorship
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Communist Party of China