Landry Fields Earns Big Role With Knicks

Abstract: BOSTON — When Landry Fields is talking basketball, his speech mirrors his game: steady, measured, basic, effective, rarely colorful or provocative. Fields shoots when he is open, passes when the situation calls for it and makes many more good plays than bad. He stands out by not standing out. Off the court, it is much the same. After making a modestly impressive N.B.A. debut as the Knicks ’ starting off guard, Fields was typically, stubbornly reticent. “It was good just to get out there and get in the flow,” Fields, a rookie from Stanford, said Thursday, a day after scoring 11 points in a 98-93 victory over the Toronto Raptors. “I didn’t want to make too much out of it, my first real game. But I was happy with it.” So were the Knicks. Coach Mike D’Antoni said he planned to stick with Fields as his starter, possibly “all year.” “I’d be surprised if he can’t do it,” D’Antoni said. Fields has been surprising the Knicks since the moment they took him with the 39th pick of the June draft. When training camp opened, he was no better than fourth on the depth chart at shooting guard, behind Wilson Chandler, Roger Mason and Bill Walker. When Fields started the Knicks’ final preseason game, it looked like a one-day experiment. In retrospect, it was a preview. In Wednesday’s victory over the Raptors, Fields was perfectly unspectacular. He made exactly half of his field-goal attempts (4 of 8) and half of his 3-pointers (3 of 6). He had four rebounds and one block and, most impressively, zero turnovers in 30 minutes. He was never embarrassed on defense, nor overmatched by his highly regarded counterpart, the hyper-athletic DeMar DeRozan, the Raptors’ 2009 lottery pick. He did nothing worthy of “SportsCenter” and nothing that warranted criticism in the film session. “I think that’s his best part of the game, is just all the little stuff,” D’Antoni said. “He’ll do what the game plan is.” Since the moment the Knicks selected him, Fields has been winning confidence with his steady, effective, error-free play. Occasionally, he unleashes a surprising burst of athleticism — a leaping putback, a quick baseline drive for a dunk. Mostly, he fits in and takes advantage of his opportunities. “His consistency on all the details of the game is what makes him unique,” D’Antoni said. “And usually for a rookie, you don’t have that. It takes them a while to learn. But it seems like his learning curve has been super. That’s what makes him valuable, is that he will do everything you ask him to do.” Fields is not the average rookie, having spent four years at Stanford, where he played everything from shooting guard to power forward. He is 23, polished and mature. He is actually just two months younger than Chandler (in his fourth season) and three months older than Walker (in his third). It is way too soon to call Fields a draft-day steal, but it is clear that he warranted a longer look than some N.B.A. scouts gave him. He was considered a low second-round selection, at best, and did not make every team’s draft board, despite averaging 22 points and 8.8 rebounds as a senior. At 6 feet 7 and 210 pounds, Fields did not appear to have a natural N.B.A. position — too short to play power forward, not skilled enough to play the wing positions. He was more of a slasher than a shooter. “His shot isn’t the most fluid thing in the world,” D’Antoni said. “And you’re thinking that he played on not a really good team. He came out late. So you look at all that, and he’s not a typical athletic guy. He doesn’t look as athletic as he is. I just think you get a label on a guy.” Since the summer, Fields has developed a steady jump shot, becoming one of the Knicks’ best 3-point shooters in the preseason. “That’s just something I had to work on,” Fields said. “I didn’t do it much my last year at Stanford.” Shooting guard is the N.B.A.’s glamour position, filled with surefire Hall of Famers (Kobe Bryant), ace shooters (Ray Allen), elite athletes (Dwyane Wade) and young stars (Brandon Roy). Fields is none of those, but he will have to guard them all. The Knicks face Allen and the Boston Celtics on Friday night, followed by Roy and the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday. On Tuesday, Fields will match up with Orlando’s Vince Carter . For just a moment, Fields betrayed a rookie’s wonderment. “Is that who we’ve got?” he said, eyes wide. “Geez.” Fields chuckled and gathered himself, his voice returning to its usual steady cadence. “There’s definitely going to be time to grow on defense,” he said. “It will be a learning process. Hopefully, I catch on quick.”

Knicks
Landry Fields
Basketball
Sports Drafts and Recruits
NBA
Mike D'Antoni
Wilson Chandler
Bill Walker
Vince Carter
Ray Allen


India Is Expected to Surpass China as World Most Populous Nation in 2025, U.S. Estimates

Abstract: India will become the world’s most populous country in 2025, surpassing China , where the population will peak one year later because of declining fertility, according to United States Census Bureau projections released Tuesday. The bureau suggests that the projected peak in China, 1.4 billion people, will be lower than previously estimated and that it will occur sooner. With the fertility rate declining to fewer than 1.6 births per woman in this decade from 2.2 in 1990, China’s overall population growth rate has slowed to 0.5 percent annually. In contrast, India’s 1.4 percent growth rate is being driven by a fertility rate of 2.7 births per woman. The bureau’s International Data Base projects that China’s labor force will peak at 831 million — 24 million more workers than today — in 2016. That is because the number of newcomers to the labor force in their early 20s is expected to start declining in 2011 after reaching 124 million. In India, the number of new entrants to the labor force is expected to reach 116 million in 2024 before decreasing. China and India alone account for 37 percent of the world’s population of about 6.8 billion. Every minute, the bureau’s estimates, 250 people are born worldwide and 107 die, for an increase of more than 75 million annually. By the time the 21st century is a quarter over, the bureau estimates, the population of the United States will be more than 350 million. The United States fertility rate, about 2.1 births per woman, is higher than in most developed countries, in part as a result of higher birthrates among immigrants. After China and India, the most populous countries are, in order, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Russia and Japan. The worldwide population estimates include more than 11 million people over the age of 90 and more than 326,000 centenarians. More boys are being born than girls, but women begin to outnumber men among people in their late 40s.

India
Population
Census
Census Bureau
China


The Yankees’ Robinson Cano Searches for Clues To His Batting Slump

Abstract: DETROIT — After Robinson Cano struck out on a high fastball from Justin Verlander in the seventh, he reflexively glanced toward center field for the radar gun reading usually showing atop the scoreboard at Yankee Stadium. This was not the Bronx. The scoreboard looms in left here, bright and blue, and Cano would have to be told in the dugout that the pitch was 98 miles per hour, at the shoulders, tantalizing and untouchable. For Cano, offensive success has never felt more fleeting. Until he stroked a ninth-inning line drive single to left against reliever Phil Coke, he was 0 for his last 29, a postseason record and a drought that defies logic. “I never was thinking about it,” Cano said. “Whatever it was that I was, 0 for 25, 0 for 30, whatever it was, every at-bat you try to just forget about what happened and you try to just get on base for the guys.” His hit Tuesday — a line drive to left on a 2-2 fastball — appeared like a flashback to a bygone era. It had seemed like ages since Cano had stroked a ball the opposite way with such force. In eight days between hits, Cano had flubbed and flailed against 13 pitchers. He had squandered 116 pitches before finally squaring one up.  During his skid, Cano grounded out to second base seven times. He flied out eight times. He grounded into one double play, struck out five times, and drew only one walk (intentional). Tuesday seemed like more of the same. Twice against Verlander, he fell behind in the count, something he has done eight times in 14 at-bats in the league championship series. Against Verlander, he grounded out on off-speed pitches in his first two at-bats; in the third, Verlander pumped in fastballs of 97 and 98 m.p.h., finally beating him with the high heat. Cano maintained that he felt comfortable at the plate and his that mind-set and approach had not changed during the slump. “I’m going to be honest,” he said. “I’m going to do the same thing I do every day. I’m going to be positive. I’m going to forget about today, because it doesn’t matter.” During the regular season, Cano was a far more productive hitter going up the middle or the opposite way (143 of his 196 hits were away from right field), but he had failed to hit a ball hard in that direction during his postseason slump, until his ninth-inning single Tuesday. “When you’re not getting hits, people always look for a lot of things that you’re not doing at the plate,” Cano said. “That you’re swinging too hard, or you’re not going the other way. There’s a lot of things people are going to see.” When asked if the hit could take some pressure off him going forward, Cano said he did not see it that way. “It doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “I’m going to do the same thing.” Early in the game, Cano sat in the Yankees ’ dugout in a computer chair with his feet propped on a sports drink cooler as he watched Verlander pitch. He appeared perplexed, if not a bit defeated. The back of his jersey was streaked with pine tar, his cheeks full of sunflower seeds — the telltale signs of Cano. But he seems a far different player at the plate.

Cano Robinson
New York Yankees
Baseball
Playoff Games


California: Father to Many, Condor Is Set Free

Abstract: A male California condor has flown back into the wild after a captive breeding program that helped save North America’s largest species of land bird. The condor, a 35-year-old bird named AC-4, soared out of his open pen this week at a canyon rim inside the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, in central California’s Kern County. He had been one of just 23 condors left in the world in the 1980s. It was the bird’s first free flight since 1985, when a United States Fish and Wildlife Service team captured him in a last-ditch attempt to stop the extinction of the California condor, which has a wingspan of more than nine feet. Lead poisoning is believed one of the main factors that drove California condors toward extinction. The birds ingest fragments of lead bullets when they feed on carcasses of animals shot by hunters. Biologists believe AC-4 was 5 to 7 years old when they captured him for the breeding program. He fathered the first chick born in the program and 30 over all that have been successfully released into the wild. This year, biologists recorded 19 wild condor nests in central and Southern California, more nests than at any time this century.

Condor
Endangered Species
Fish and Wildlife Service
California


Death Penalty Sought in Case of Killing of Texas Prosecutors

Abstract: HOUSTON — Prosecutors in Kaufman County announced Friday they would seek the death penalty against Eric L. Williams, the former justice of the peace accused of murdering two prosecutors as revenge for handling a case against him that led to his removal from office and the suspension of his law license. The brazen killings of the county’s district attorney, his wife and one of his top prosecutors shocked law enforcement officials across Texas and brought national attention to a rural county southeast of Dallas. At a court hearing in Kaufman on Friday morning, , the two special prosecutors handling the case, Toby Shook and Bill Wirskye, told the judge that the state was still determining whether to seek the death penalty against Mr. Williams’ wife, Kim L. Williams. Mrs. Williams confessed to investigators that her husband shot and killed the district attorney and his wife at their home and the other prosecutor as he walked to his office, according to court documents. She also told the authorities she was the getaway driver for each shooting. In January, the assistant district attorney, Mark E. Hasse, 57, was gunned down in an employee parking lot near the county courthouse in downtown Kaufman. In March, the county district attorney, Mike McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia, 65, were found shot to death at their home in a subdivision in nearby Forney. Mr. Williams and his wife, both of whom are 46, have been charged with capital murder in the three killings. The work of a local, state and federal task force that included the Texas Rangers and the F.B.I. led to their arrests in April. The authorities said the motive stemmed from Mr. McLelland’s and Mr. Hasse’s successful prosecution of Mr. Williams last year on charges of stealing computer equipment from a county building. He was convicted of burglary and theft charges, and removed from office by a state judicial commission. Both Mr. Hasse and Mr. McLelland had started regularly carrying handguns following Mr. Williams’ conviction because they believed he was a threat to their safety, according to court documents. Investigators said they found numerous firearms, firearm components and ammunition consistent with the kind used in the three shootings in Mr. Williams’ home and a storage unit he had a friend rent for him. In addition, security video taken in Mr. McLelland’s neighborhood showed a white Ford Crown Victoria entering the area before the McLelland murders and leaving shortly after they occurred. A 2004 white Ford Crown Victoria was found in Mr. Williams’ storage unit. The authorities also said that e-mails sent after the murders, in which the writer confessed to the three killings and threatened future violence against county officials, had been sent from an IP address used by Mr. Williams. At the hearing, Michael Snipes, a Dallas County judge appointed to the case, said he was scheduling the trial to start in October 2014 in Kaufman. Mr. Williams is being held at the county jail on $23 million bond, and Mrs. Williams is held there on $10 million bond.

Eric Lyle Williams
Murders
Capital punishment
Kaufman County TX
Cynthia McLelland
Kim Lene Williams
Mike McLelland
Mark E Hasse


A Carrot Rebellion Underscores Spain’s Precarious Politics

Abstract: MADRID — As Spanish domestic politics threaten to spin beyond the control of the central government, they are also making it harder for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to meet Spain’s financial obligations to the rest of the euro zone. Mr. Rajoy needs to replenish Spain’s coffers and convince investors and his European counterparts that his government can stick to its budget deficit targets. He will need the euro zone’s confidence if he decides to tap European bailout money for Spain’s banks or request help from the European Central Bank in controlling Madrid’s borrowing costs. But in Spain’s most economically powerful region, Catalonia, pushing through new central government taxes could prove difficult at this point, because the regional government has set elections for November that many voters may see as a referendum on Catalan independence. Already, collection of current taxes is no sure bet in some parts of Spain. Consider the Catalan carrot rebellion. To avoid an increase in the value-added tax that the Rajoy government put into force on Sept. 1, a municipal theater in Bescanó, a Catalan village, has found an innovative loophole: sell carrots in lieu of entrance tickets. Carrots are among the staple foods exempt from the tax increase, so the Bescanó theater is selling them for 13 to 15 euros each, or $17 to $19. Each carrot entitles the bearer to see a play in November. Quim Marcé, director of the Bescanó theater, said: “The theater world was already in very bad shape, but this tax increase will basically kill off small theaters like ours. We’re perhaps pioneers, but I really think that other theaters will have to follow our example and find ways around this unsustainable tax.” Investors have already shown renewed doubts, demanding sharply higher interest rates to hold Spanish government debt. On Wednesday, the interest rate on Spain’s 10-year bonds approached 6 percent for the first time in months, while European shares and the euro fell sharply as investors reacted to social turmoil in Spain and Greece. On Thursday, the Rajoy government plans to present a draft budget for 2013 that is aimed at reducing Spain’s deficit to 4.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2013, from a target of 6.3 percent this year. But hitting either target depends on higher tax revenue even as unemployment and recession are sending protesters into the streets and prompting a political revolt in some of the country’s largest regions. “Spain is the only country in the world that must contend with a banking, economic, sovereign debt, political and constitutional crisis all occurring simultaneously,” said Nicholas Spiro, founder of Spiro Sovereign Strategy, a London consultancy that helps assess sovereign debt risk. Javier Díaz-Giménez, an economics professor at the IESE business school campus in Madrid, said Mr. Rajoy’s tax drive risked prompting “plenty of imaginative ways to interpret the law.” He warned it could also swell the size of an underground economy already estimated as representing 20 percent of Spain’s overall economy. “Raising taxes is only truly effective,” Professor Díaz-Giménez said, “when it comes together with a proper plan to combat fiscal fraud.” Mr. Rajoy’s center-right Popular Party won a parliamentary majority last November, when voters punished the previous Socialist administration for economic mismanagement. But since Mr. Rajoy took office, Spain has sunk back into recession, unemployment has continued to rise, to 24.6 percent, and four rounds of austerity measures have been announced. The latest package, announced in July, added up to 65 billion euros and included the increase in the value-added tax to 21 percent from 18 percent despite previous pledges by the government not to raise it. The tax increase has especially angered people working in segments of the economy like the performing arts, which previously received preferential tax treatment. Some street protests against the tax have been led by celebrities like the film actor Javier Bardem. The higher tax has also played a part in the heightened tensions between Madrid and regional governments, which have been ordered by Mr. Rajoy to cut their own budget deficits to 1.5 percent of G.D.P. this year. The central government put down a tax revolt in Extremadura this month; despite being controlled by Mr. Rajoy’s party, the regional government tried to exempt culture from the tax increase decreed by Madrid. If anything, the domestic dissent is gaining momentum. On Wednesday, workers in the Basque Country and Navarra regions held a general strike to protest Mr. Rajoy’s austerity cuts. A day earlier, thousands of demonstrators clashed with the police outside Parliament in Madrid. The protests and the standoff with the regions — particularly the separatist push in Catalonia — have left Mr. Rajoy little maneuvering room with the rest of Europe. Euro zone finance ministers are still waiting to learn if and when Mr. Rajoy will request release of any of the 100 billion euros in banking bailout loans they agreed in June to make available. A banking audit that Mr. Rajoy commissioned is due out on Friday, which should help determine how much assistance Spanish banks may require, but Madrid has continued to wrangle with its euro zone partners over the exact conditions for the disbursement of the rescue money. Mr. Rajoy has also been reluctant to take on further European scrutiny of his government’s finances, which could result in more demands for spending cuts if he invokes the new bond-buying program that the European Central Bank announced on Sept. 6. But if Spain’s borrowing costs in the commercial markets continue to rise, he might soon have little choice. As the government readies its 2013 budget draft, Spain’s 17 regions are not only struggling to cut their budget deficits but are also crippled by mountains of debt accumulated during a decade-long boom led by construction. On Tuesday, Andalusia announced that it would tap into an emergency fund set up by the central government to help regions meet their debt repayment obligations. Andalusia’s 4.9 billion euro request means that four of Spain’s 17 regions have already requested three-quarters of the 18 billion euro emergency fund the Rajoy government has set aside. On Wednesday, Fitch, the credit ratings agency, warned that regions now faced an uphill struggle to meet Mr. Rajoy’s deficit target. “The substantial deterioration in tax revenues after the first quarter puts the chances of meeting the full-year target in doubt,” Fitch said. It noted that three regions — Extremadura, Murcia and Navarra — had already exceeded this year’s 1.5 percent target. While the regions are struggling to balance their books, so too is the government in Madrid. The central government’s running deficit reached 4.77 percent of G.D.P. through the end of August, according to figures released Tuesday. That makes it increasingly doubtful Mr. Rajoy can come in under the 6.3 percent full-year target. In Bescanó, the carrot-for-tickets program proceeds apace. Town Hall has allowed the theater to set up a food stall outside the entrance to sell carrots: 13 euros for advance sales, 15 euros for a carrot at the door. Carrots carry only a 4 percent value-added tax, so the theater pockets the 17-point differential, or roughly 2.40 euros per spectator. Mr. Marcé said the tax savings would enable his theater to maintain a full season, rather than cut back to two or three plays. Mayor Xavier Soy of Bescanó is fully behind the ploy. “I see it as a clever way to protest against a tax hike that could really hurt culture,” he said. Meri Yanes, an actress, compared the dark atmosphere of “Suicides,” the play she was rehearsing on Wednesday, to an Edgar Allan Poe short story. “Everybody is pretty depressed at the moment,” Ms. Yanes said, “so we’re trying to take to extremes what is already the general mood.”

Spain
Politics and Government
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Budgets and Budgeting


For Royals, Even a Swing and a Miss Is a Good Way to Start if Escobar Leads Off

Abstract: KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This one, Manager Ned Yost cannot explain. Neither can the people in the Kansas City Royals’ baseball operations who handle analytics. By even the most rudimentary statistics, shortstop Alcides Escobar has no business leading off for the Royals. His .293 on-base percentage in the regular season was one of the worst on the team. He drew 26 walks in 148 games. Yet when Escobar leads off, the Royals win. A lot. This season the Royals were 82-49 with Escobar at the top of the lineup, and 13-18 with others there. When Yost moved Alex Gordon into the leadoff spot early September, the Royals went 7-9. Yost restored Escobar to the top of the lineup on Sept. 30, and the Royals finished the season on a five-game winning streak that clinched home-field advantage in the playoffs. “Alcides? He’s pretty good,” Royals catcher Salvador Perez said. Equally unexplainable is the belief among Yost and his players that the Royals win whenever Escobar swings at the first pitch of the game, whether he puts it in play or not. A Royals spokesman said the club lacks statistical evidence to support their view. But that hasn’t stopped various Royals from stating it as a fact. All they do is point to the first two games of their American League division series against Houston. Game 1: Escobar took the first pitch. The Royals lost, 5-2. Game 2: Escobar fouled the first pitch into his own dugout, sending teammates scrambling for cover. The Royals won, 5-4. “Dale Sveum said, no matter what, swing at the first pitch,” said Escobar, referring to the Royals’ hitting coach. “I say O.K.” Going back to last year, and including playoffs, the Royals are 104-60 with Escobar leading off. In their unexpected wild-card run to Game 7 of the World Series last year, the Royals won 20 of their final 30 games with a leadoff hitter who averaged about one walk a week. Yost can’t quantify that and doesn’t care to. “We’re 44 games over .500 with Eskie in the leadoff spot,” Yost said. “Doesn’t matter if he’s struggling or not. It works. “And, I mean, there are times where he will get up there and swing at the first pitch of the game. Our guys go crazy when he does that, because our percentage in winning ball games when Eskie swings at the first pitch is huge. As soon as Eskie swings at the first pitch, you hear everybody in the dugout go: ‘We’re winning today. We’re winning today.’ ” Statistics do show that Escobar, a first-time All-Star this season, is an excellent first-ball hitter. This season he batted .364 with a .367 on-base percentage when he swung at the first pitch. The first-pitch-hitting numbers for his career are significantly higher (.327, .335) than his overall career figures (.262, .298). So when Escobar leads off for the Royals on Sunday in Game 3 at Minute Maid Park in Houston, don’t be surprised to see him swing if the Astros ace Dallas Keuchel throws his first pitch anywhere near the strike zone. “Most of the time he does it, it ends up in a positive for us,” Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer said. “I don’t know if that’s coincidence. I don’t know what that is. But when it works out for us and he gets a hit on the first pitch of the game, it kind of sets the tone for us offensively. At the same time, for the opposing pitcher, it kind of puts him in a little bit of a hole.” As the first batter of a game this season, Escobar posted a .336 on-base percentage while hitting .281 with two homers. Not fabulous, but certainly respectable. The Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson, widely considered the greatest leadoff hitter who ever played, batted .276 leading off games, with a .380 on-base percentage, according to baseballreference.com — much better figures than Escobar’s. As for the first-pitch-swinging talisman, consider this: The last five days of the season, with Toronto challenging the Royals for home-field advantage, Escobar swung at the first pitch in every game. The first four times, in Chicago and Minnesota, he fouled it off. On the last, he swung and missed. Escobar reached base only once, on a bunt single Oct. 1 against the White Sox. Yet the Royals won every game and scored 25 runs. “That’s crazy,” Escobar said. “But that’s good for us. When I swing at the first pitch, we win a lot of games. My hitting coach tells me: Continue to swing the bat. If they throw a strike, swing.”

Baseball
Alcides Escobar
Playoffs
Astros
Kansas City Royals


Los Angeles and New York Differ in Their Responses to a Terrorism Threat

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — The nation’s two largest school systems confronted threats of a terrorist attack on Tuesday and reacted in sharply different ways: New York City reviewed the warning and dismissed it as a hoax, but officials here abruptly shut down all public schools, upending the lives of parents, students and teachers. The emailed threats to school officials on both coasts — which spoke of teams of jihadists using guns, bombs and nerve gas to attack public schools — were largely identical in their wording, and both had been routed through a server in Frankfurt, apparently by the same person, officials said. The Los Angeles schools chancellor, Ramon C. Cortines, reviewed the threat, which came in to several school board members around 10 p.m. on Monday, with police officials here early Tuesday before deciding to send out an alert closing nearly 1,100 schools and asking parents to keep the district’s 640,000 children home. “I as superintendent am not going to take a chance with the life of a student,” he said at a 7 a.m. news conference. Image A school bus lot in Los Angeles was locked down Tuesday. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times In New York, the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, reviewed the New York version of the threat and decided it was “a hoax.” Later on Tuesday, officials said that they believed that the email in Los Angeles was also most likely a hoax and that schools will reopen Wednesday. “We can now announce the F.B.I. has concluded this is not a credible threat,” said Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles. “It will be safe for our children to return to schools tomorrow.” The contrasting responses, and the not-so-subtle cross-country backbiting that marked the day — Mr. Bratton said Los Angeles had overreacted, and officials here defiantly said they had not — was to some extent a reflection of the long and subtle competition between these two coastal cities, whose leaders have sometimes shuttled back and forth. Mr. Bratton once served as police chief in Los Angeles, and Mr. Cortines once ran the schools in New York. Both cities have grappled with major terror attacks and threats. “We’ve come to the conclusion that we must continue to keep our school system open,” said Bill de Blasio, New York’s mayor. “In fact, it’s important — very important not to overreact in situations like this.” Video Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines of the Los Angeles school system and Steven K. Zipperman, chief of its police department, discussed the details of an “electronic threat” that led to the closing of campuses. Credit Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times But the reaction in Los Angeles was as much an insight into the tense times that have gripped this region since Dec. 2, when an attack 50 miles from here left 14 people dead and 22 injured. Southern California has been on edge much the way the New York region was after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Officials here said that they were prepared for second-guessing but that given the fresh memory of the San Bernardino massacre — and that investigators were exploring whether the husband and wife attackers might have also been targeting schools — Mr. Cortines had made the prudent call. “It is very easy in hindsight to criticize a decision based on results that the deciders could have never known,” said Charlie Beck, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, who is close to Mr. Bratton. “All of us make tough choices. All of us have the same goal in mind: We want to keep our kids safe.” “These are tough times,” he said. “Southern California has been through a lot in recent weeks.” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said in a briefing that the administration would not “second-guess the decisions that are made by local law enforcement officials in any community across the country” in responding to terror threats. Image Outside Manchester Elementary School in Los Angeles. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times Officials in New York said they were not aware of the email that had been sent to Los Angeles when they made their decision. Similarly, Mr. Garcetti said officials in Los Angeles were not aware of the threat to New York when they made their choice. The decision here threw the lives of millions of people — students, parents, teachers — into disarray and sent a wave of concern across an already tense region. “If they sent an alert, I never received it,” said Christine Clarke, who showed up at Hollywood High School looking frantically for her son after hearing the news on the radio. Parents scrambled for last-minute day care or called in sick at work, while students suddenly found themselves with a day off — during final exams week, no less. “When are finals going to be now?” John Guanzon, 16, a junior, asked a school guard as he arrived, books in hand, at Hollywood High. Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat who represents parts of Los Angeles, said in an interview that the writer of the threat claimed “he has 32 jihadist friends” ready to attack the schools using bombs, nerve gas and rifles. The writer identified himself as an observant Muslim who had been bullied while attending a Los Angeles high school, according to Mr. Sherman, who said he had been given a copy of the email by a school board member who had received it. Image City officials defended their decision to close all public schools in the nation’s second-largest district after receiving an emailed threat of a terror attack. Credit Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters Mr. Sherman said elements of the message did not appear credible, including the number of potential attackers and the claim that they had access to nerve gas. (Mr. Bratton, in New York, suggested that the writer might have been inspired by recent episodes of “Homeland,” with its plotline of a sarin gas attack on Berlin.) The message was signed by a male Arabic-appearing name, Mr. Sherman said, but added: “The word ‘Allah’ appears several times in the email, but once it’s not capitalized. A devout Muslim or an extremist Muslim would probably be more careful about typing the word Allah.” The author appeared knowledgeable about the structure of the Los Angeles Unified School District, referring to the system by its full name, which added to the concern, Mr. Sherman said. “Just because parts of the email are false doesn’t mean it’s all false,” he said. The threat to New York schools was sent to an Education Department official around the same time as the one to Los Angeles but was not seen until around 5 a.m. Tuesday, said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss details of threat publicly. The official said the writer in this case said he had 138 jihadist friends who would abet him. Stephen Davis, the New York Police Department’s top spokesman, said the emails threatening the two cities “were the exact same wording with the exception of putting in the cities’ names and changing the number of people who were supposed to be participating in it.” Across the country, Mr. Cortines said he saw no choice but to close the schools. “It was not to one school, two schools or three schools — it was many schools, not specifically identified,” he said of the threat. Mr. Cortines initially said schools would remain closed until the police and school administrators had searched every building. The logistical task was immense: The Los Angeles district has more than 640,000 students enrolled in 900 schools and 187 public charter schools across more than 720 square miles. In the end, officials said, they cut the search short after 1,531 school sites had been inspected as of Tuesday evening. While some people around the country criticized Los Angeles for setting a precedent — showing that pranksters, or worse, could hobble a major city — many Angelenos said they sided with the city. “We’re part of the impact zone of San Bernardino, so the ripple effect can be felt,” said Rudy Perez, the first vice president of the Los Angeles School Police Association. “So it’s better to be cautious.”

K-12 Education
Threat
Terrorism
Hoaxes and Pranks
LAPD
NYPD
NYC
Los Angeles


In Congo, Self-Defense Can Offer Its Own Risk

Abstract: CHULWE, Democratic Republic of Congo — When his brother was kidnapped and cut to pieces in the forest in 2008, neither the Congolese Army nor the United Nations peacekeepers stationed here did anything to protect him, said Guillaume Sadiki Bantu. When his nephew was killed in another attack just last month, he added, it was the same. “We are like orphans, without a father or a mother — we are an abandoned people,” said Mr. Sadiki Bantu, in the hills of eastern Congo. “So we decided to fight.” Around him were young men armed with knives and machetes, even a lance. They call themselves Raia Mutomboki, or Angry Villagers. In a region where few trust the Congolese Army, these self-defense militias have long been formed as a source of protection. But for many, including relief workers, the Angry Villagers have become yet another menace — the latest element fueling Congo’s seemingly endless cycle of violence. At the very least, the militias have worsened an already grave humanitarian crisis in one of the world’s poorest countries, relief officials say. In recent months, fighting between the militias and armed groups has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. As many as 1.2 million people are believed to be displaced in just two provinces, North and South Kivu, according to the United Nations. Since December, 128,000 people have been dislocated in South Kivu alone. “By any standards, this is a big crisis,” said Kristalina Georgieva, European commissioner for humanitarian aid, who visited Congo this month. In a nation that covers as much territory as Western Europe, but whose mineral riches have long been siphoned off by armed gangs and corrupt officials, violence is a constant curse. A five-year conflict, which drew in several neighboring countries, officially ended in 2003 after claiming an estimated three to four million lives. Last December, the incumbent, Joseph Kabila, was declared the winner of the presidential election, which was criticized by international monitors. But his government’s writ in much of the country remains thin, or nonexistent. In the north, the Lord’s Resistance Army , the guerrilla force led by Joseph Kony, has continued to carry out attacks, terrorizing the population. Here in the east, people live in fear of any number of marauding guerrilla groups, despite the presence of a large United Nations peacekeeping operation. Some of these armed groups began as local defense forces, which then morphed into militias that plague the civilians they are supposedly protecting. The Angry Villagers took up arms last year when the Congolese Army withdrew from important locations in this area and others to reorganize and absorb thousands of former militia fighters in an effort to end lawlessness. Since then, bloodshed has increased. Mr. Sadiki Bantu, who describes himself as a commander, says he and his men formed ranks to combat the vicious guerrilla groups that have for years preyed on people in Congo’s dense rainforest , killing, looting and raping at will. He says his men have killed 50 enemy combatants — guerrillas of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by their French initials, F.D.L.R., which include remnants of the Hutu fighters who carried out the genocide in neighboring Rwanda in 1994 and who have since made a haven in Congo. Those who have fled violence by the F.D.L.R. guerrillas are not hard to find. A few minutes walk from Chulwe’s health center, Bulonza Mazuku, her husband and eight children arrived on foot on March 6. They had nothing but the clothes they wore, so quickly did they flee as the guerrillas looted their home and prepared to burn it. Down the road, the village of Nzibira is teeming with people like them. Nearly 1,200 families have sought shelter there, according to Malteser International, which provides health care. In all, more than 4,000 families have arrived in five nearby villages. The numbers have swelled as the guerrillas stepped up attacks in revenge for the actions of the Angry Villagers, who have also killed F.D.L.R. family members, according to Congolese military officials and relief workers. “There is a difficulty when there is a situation where Raia Mutomboki starts to target the F.D.L.R. and sometimes their families,” said Paulin Bishakabalya Kokere, an official with Malteser International. “It provokes vengeance and a vicious cycle of violence.” Faida Ombeni, 20, said she felt sure she was going to die last year in February when armed men — whom she believed to be F.D.L.R. guerrillas — found her hiding in a shack and beat her. Six attackers raped her, jamming a piece of clothing into her mouth to muffle her screaming, she said. After the attack, she became pregnant. Her husband abandoned her, presuming the baby was not his, she said. Then another round of F.D.L.R. attacks forced her to flee again, this time to Nzibira, where she sleeps on the floor of a home shared with about 30 others. Of 676 people who arrived in October and November at centers supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross, 506 said they had been raped, mostly in conflict-related cases. Though the Angry Villagers have just about 25 firearms and little ammunition, it has become among the most problematic of the 20 or so armed groups operating in the region, said Col. Delphin Kahimbi, commandant of the Congolese Army’s operations in South Kivu. Not only has it attacked F.D.L.R. guerrillas, but also those Congolese Army soldiers who speak Kinyarwanda, the official language of neighboring Rwanda. The group has killed fewer F.D.L.R. guerrillas than it claims — just two or three, Colonel Kahimbi says — but it has killed about 40 of their family members, attacks that generated a new cycle of retribution. “There is a tendency to reject the presence of all Rwandaphones,” Colonel Kahimbi said. “They are a problem, they are hostile to our army because of the presence of some Rwandaphones. We cannot give one, small community the chance to judge our army and impose their will.” He did not need any help from the self-defense militias to secure his area, he said, arguing that the Congolese Army, with logistical support from United Nations peacekeepers, was on course to eradicate the F.D.L.R. guerrillas within six months. Of 3,600 F.D.L.R. combatants in South Kivu, only around 600 remain active, he said, a claim the F.D.L.R. rejected as “propaganda.” Many local people are less confident in Colonel Kahimbi’s forces than he is. For Joseph Bupande Mumembwe, chief of the village of Luyuyu, where 30 people were killed in January, including one pregnant women whose stomach, he said, was cut open, the self-defense militias remain the only faint hope. “Raia Mutomboki is a good organization,” he said. “They want just to save people’s lives.”

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

Congo Democratic Republic of (Congo-Kinshasa)


Three States Are Added to List of Those With High Obesity Rates

Abstract: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released figures on Monday showing that the number of states with very high obesity rates has grown to 12 from 9. Over all, more than a third of American adults are obese. The latest figures are based on a telephone survey last year that asked adults their height and weight. For the first time, households with only cellphones were included. At least 30 percent of adults are obese in 12 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. Mississippi had the highest rate at nearly 36 percent.


Wolf Population Draws Hunters in Siberia

Abstract: MOSCOW — Wolf packs are prowling at the edges of villages in the remote Sakha-Yakutia region of Siberia, eating livestock that includes horses and domesticated reindeer. They are slinking near towns like Verkhoyansk, far above the Arctic Circle, where the mayor told a regional newspaper that he had organized a hunting party to kill as many as possible. “Our hunters killed more than half the pack,” said the mayor, Mikhail Osipov, but that only bought time. “Those that survived are again threatening the horses,” he said, adding that the remaining wolves would also be shot at the first opportunity. In fact, the wolves have grown so thick in Yakutia that the governor, Yegor Borisov, recently declared a state of emergency, which wildlife experts said was largely symbolic and intended to draw attention to the problem. Far from worrying about wolf conservation — as is the case, though controversially, in parts of the western United States — the thinly populated region of Yakutia, like much of the rest of rural Russia, grapples with a perennial problem of excessive predation by wolves. In announcing the state of emergency, the regional government said wolves killed about 16,000 domesticated reindeer last year and 313 horses. The wolf population was about 3,500, the government said, while ideally it should not exceed 500. Experts say the wolf problem is not so much a matter of overpopulation as a cyclical collapse in the wolves’ primary prey, rabbits. In the remotest areas, the rabbit cycle is typically trailed by a decline in the numbers of wolves as they starve and freeze to death. But in populated areas, packs switch to livestock. In Russia, a country with many enthusiastic hunters and lots of open space, only the most charismatic of predators — Amur snow tigers, for example — are accorded much protection. Because the wolves are not endangered and would most likely die anyway if not for the meals of livestock, conservationists generally do not object to the hunting. Hunters cull wolves and bears by the hundreds. Sarah Palin would feel right at home with Russian wolf hunters, who generally hunt on snowmobiles, which can outpace the animals in thick winter snow. (As governor of Alaska, Ms. Palin encouraged aerial hunts , which were also preferred by the Soviet government.) Traps are sometimes used, though poisoning was outlawed in 2005. Hunting is typically done for a pelt bounty, which in Yakutia this winter is $660 per adult wolf pelt and $50 for the skin of a cub. Some municipalities provide additional incentives. The city of Verkhoyansk, for example, kicks in an extra $300 for a wolf pelt, and one town has promised a snowmobile to the hunter who stacks up the most pelts, Rossiskaya Gazeta, the Russian state newspaper, reported. The system of bounties that remained after the end of Soviet-era aerial hunts has proved cheaper on a per head basis, though less effective in reducing overall wolf numbers, according to a summary of a debate in the Yakutia regional legislature published on its Web site. So, every year, more money is set aside for bounties: $560,000 in 2012, compared with $270,000 in 2003. To encourage hunting, the regional government has also designated a holiday for hunters, on the second Saturday in April. Despite these efforts, wolves will maintain their primacy in the frosty northern realms, experts say, and are expected to continue to stalk small towns in Siberia. And the hunters are expected to continue to get a pass from the country’s conservationists. “There are too many wolves in Russia,” said Vladimir G. Krever, the director of the program in biodiversity in Russia with the World Wildlife Fund.

Wolves
Hunting
Emergency Response and Preparedness
Siberia
World Wildlife Fund


With Scandal as Backdrop, New Jersey Race Heats Up

Abstract: PARAMUS, N.J. — The corruption scandal that led to the arrests of mayors, state lawmakers and other public officials erupted into a major issue in the New Jersey governor’s race on Wednesday. Christopher J. Christie , the Republican nominee and former prosecutor who made his name locking up politicians, accused Gov. Jon S. Corzine of lacking the character and courage to reform what he called “the broken state we are all living in.” Mr. Corzine, a Democrat, hit back hard on two fronts. He released a new television advertisement accusing Mr. Christie of buying his job as United States attorney for New Jersey with $350,000 in donations to former President George W. Bush. The governor also unleashed surrogates to highlight Mr. Christie’s record of deploring no-bid contracts but then doling them out to supporters when he was in office. The exchange came two weeks after 44 people, many of them Democratic officials and operatives in Jersey City, Hoboken and several other communities, were charged in a bribery sting that reignited stereotypes about New Jersey and its crooked politicians. But whether voters will care when the November election arrives is up in the air. At first, the scandal seemed likely to help Mr. Christie, who started out his campaign as an anticorruption crusader only to see that lose relevance as economic worries took hold. But a Monmouth University poll released Monday found just 13 percent of voters considered corruption among the one or two most important issues candidates should be talking about — well behind property taxes and the economy. While Mr. Christie has taken sporadic shots at Mr. Corzine on the subject, and Mr. Corzine has been running ads accusing Mr. Christie of cronyism and nepotism, Wednesday’s skirmish was the first time that the two candidates engaged squarely on a subject that has dominated the state’s political conversation. In Paramus, Mr. Christie said Mr. Corzine had harmed the cause of combating corruption by calibrating his response depending on who was in trouble and their political importance. He said Mr. Corzine was “desperately grandstanding” when he demanded resignations by the Hoboken mayor, Peter J. Cammarano III, and the Ridgefield mayor, Anthony R. Suarez, who were both charged last month. But he said the governor’s “silence was deafening” when powerful Democrats like Wayne R. Bryant, who was a state senator, and Sharpe James, the former Newark mayor, were indicted in earlier cases. “It’s politics, pure and simple,” Mr. Christie said. “He needed them. He didn’t need Peter Cammarano or Anthony Suarez. And Jon Corzine wonders why New Jersey citizens are so cynical.” He also mocked Mr. Corzine for threatening a takeover and ordering a state review of the business dealings by Mr. Suarez’s government in Ridgefield, population 11,000. “Where is his concern for the 241,000 residents of Jersey City?” Mr. Christie said. “Where the deputy mayor, the city council president, and an army of city employees were charged with corruption, why the lack of action by Jon Corzine? I wonder — could it be that he fears angering a large portion of his political base, 90 days prior to the election?” Mr. Christie said Mr. Corzine had not threatened a takeover in Passaic and East Orange when the Democratic mayors of those cities were charged by Mr. Christie’s office two years ago. “Could it be again because 2007 was not a re-election year for Jon Corzine?” he said. “When you engage in grandstanding for political gain, when you apply ethics rules selectively, when you send mixed signals on matters that you claim involve principle, you hurt the fight against corruption,” Mr. Christie said. “You give cover to those who believe that maybe next time, the law and the ethical standards may not be applied equally to them, because they belong to the party of the guy in power, or because the city or district they represent is too large to challenge.” Mr. Corzine, meanwhile, dispatched a Democratic ally, Brian Hughes, the Mercer County executive, to attack Mr. Christie for telling a newspaper that broken campaign promises were “the first path towards corruption.” In a statement, Mr. Hughes said Mr. Christie was guilty of breaking his own promise to eliminate no-bid contracts after he ran successfully to become a freeholder in Morris County. And though Mr. Christie spoke out against no-bid contracts as a prosecutor, he wound up naming friends to several lucrative posts monitoring companies that entered into special agreements with his office. “It seems as though the rules Christie has laid out do not apply to him,” Mr. Hughes said.

Christie Christopher J
Corzine Jon S
New Jersey
Politics and Government
Bribery
Elections
Governors (US)


Israeli Plan to Conscript Ultra-Orthodox Advances

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Under popular pressure to fulfill campaign promises to make the burdens of citizenship more equitably shared, an Israeli government committee on Wednesday approved a proposal to phase out wholesale exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men. In a country where most Jewish men and women are conscripted at 18, many mainstream Israelis have come to view enlistment among the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox minority as a litmus test for the future character of Israel. The issue became a recurring theme of social justice protests that swept Israel in the summer of 2011, amid rising public anger over what many here saw as the disproportionate political influence of the ultra-Orthodox and the benefits they had managed to secure for themselves. The proposal has yet to gain the approval of the cabinet and Parliament, and may be amended before it becomes law. But it represents a significant step toward regulating one of the most hotly debated issues on the national agenda and filling a vacuum that has existed for more than a year since the Israeli Supreme Court invalidated a law formalizing the exemptions. That law, known as the Tal Law, had been in effect since 2002 and had granted exemptions to tens of thousands of male students engaged in full-time Torah study. The Supreme Court ruled that it contradicted the principle of equality. The new proposal calls for all ultra-Orthodox boys to register at an Israeli military recruitment office when they are 17, though those engaged in religious studies may put off army service until the age of 21. Through a combination of incentives and sanctions, it aims to increase the number of ultra-Orthodox recruits to 3,200 by 2016, up from about 1,300 today. Others may choose civilian national service. Each year, a maximum of 1,800 exemptions will be granted to boys who are considered Torah prodigies out of the roughly 8,000 eligible annually for service. Ultra-Orthodox girls will not be conscripted. They follow strict rules of modesty, and many marry in their late teens. Efforts are also being made to encourage Arab citizens of Israel, who are exempted from military service, to volunteer for civilian national service. “The fact that there are sectors that do not serve is an open and bleeding wound in Israeli society,” Moshe Yaalon, the defense minister, said in a statement on Wednesday, calling the new effort “an event of historic significance.” He appealed for a gradual process to be carried out with patience and sensitivity to minimize resistance among the ultra-Orthodox. Many ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredim, view the enlistment drive as a divisive attack on their lifestyle and belief system, and vehemently oppose any forced draft. “From our perspective, the Orthodox only afford the state of Israel de facto recognition. Haredim do not go to the army on religious grounds,” said Pini Rozenberg, a spokesman for the strict Haredi community in Jerusalem. “There is no room here for compromise in any form,” he added. Mr. Rozenberg said that the government’s real goal was “to break the Orthodox community spiritually,” and that the Haredim would “fill the prisons” en masse rather than be drafted. “We have survived for 2000 years, and we will also survive this spiritual destruction,” Mr. Rozenberg said. But “sharing the burden” became a central rallying call for several parties running in the January elections, including Yesh Atid, the party led by Finance Minister Yair Lapid, which tapped into middle-class frustrations and came in second. Yaakov Peri, a former chief of the Shin Bet internal security service and now a minister from Yesh Atid, led the committee that formulated the proposal. At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Lapid addressed the ultra-Orthodox as “my Haredi brothers,” and called them to arms. “If Syria crumbles and thousands of Al Qaeda terrorists are on our northern border, this is also happening to you,” Mr. Lapid said. “We need you too, weapon in hand, protecting our life and yours.” Ultra-Orthodox political parties have served in most Israeli government coalitions over the past 30 years but were excluded from the new government on the insistence of Yesh Atid and another coalition partner. Yohanan Plesner, a member of the last Parliament who led a committee on the ultra-Orthodox draft that was disbanded by the prime minister because of disagreements, told an audience of diplomats and journalists here on Tuesday that the new proposal was very similar to the one his committee had wanted to put forward. “Major social changes take time,” Mr. Plesner said, adding that there was sometimes a “need for Take 1 and Take 2.” But he warned that legislation on its own meant nothing. “It depends on the implementation,” he said. “The major test is what happens over the next four to five years.”

Israel
Politics
Military Recruiting and Draft
Judaism


Giants Trade Up for Syracuse Quarterback Ryan Nassib

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Maneuvering to move up six spots early on the third day of the N.F.L. draft, the typically staid Giants chose Syracuse quarterback Ryan Nassib with a fourth-round pick Saturday, the highest the team has taken a quarterback since it chose Philip Rivers at No. 4 in 2004 and then traded him for the top pick, Eli Manning. If the selection of Nassib was a mild shock, it came with a distinctive paradox. Within minutes, Giants General Manager Jerry Reese said of Nassib, “I hope he never gets to play here.” Such is the conundrum surrounding the Giants’ only truly surprising pick this year. The Giants concede they need to develop a young quarterback behind Manning. At the same time, if that quarterback makes it on the field for any meaningful plays, it means something unfortunate has happened to Manning, the face of the franchise. Nassib, 23, who was considered a possible first-round pick before the draft, is left in an awkward position. He could spend the next five years holding a sideline clipboard, then end up starting for another team. Or he could become Manning’s heir apparent. Or he could play if Manning is injured. From the Giants’ perspective, the first two options would probably be judged a success. The last is most feared, but also the principal reason the team selected Nassib. Nassib, who is 6 feet 2 inches and 223 pounds, acknowledged the awkward nature of his situation in a conference call. Asked if he thought he was the future quarterback of the Giants or if his future was elsewhere in the N.F.L., he responded, “To be honest, I think either one.” When Giants Coach Tom Coughlin was asked if he ever wanted to see Nassib play, he said: “Maybe 10 years from now. I like the guy we’ve got playing.” Image Syracuse’s Ryan Nassib should create an intriguing competition for the Giants' backup quarterback role now held by the longtime reserve David Carr. Credit Kathy Willens/Associated Press In the meantime, Nassib should create an intriguing competition for the backup quarterback role now held by the longtime reserve David Carr. The Giants also have the former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Curtis Painter on their roster. It was an unexpected turn of events Saturday when the Giants traded their fourth-round selection, the 116th over all, and their sixth-round pick to the Arizona Cardinals to move up to the 110th pick to get Nassib. Reese said that he believed Nassib could have been taken in the first round, and that the Giants had him rated higher than Southern California’s Matt Barkley, who was taken 12 spots earlier by Philadelphia. Nassib threw for 9,190 yards and 70 touchdowns with only 28 interceptions at Syracuse. “Again, you always think about how we have Eli in the prime of his career,” Reese said. “Again, what if something happens? We want to have a guy ready to go.” After choosing Nassib, the Giants selected safety Cooper Taylor of Richmond in the fifth round. Taylor, who attended Georgia Tech out of high school, had his collegiate career interrupted in 2009 when he was found to have Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, a heart condition that the Giants said had been corrected surgically . In the seventh round, the Giants had two picks. The first was Eric Herman, a 6-4, 320-pound guard from Ohio University. With their last pick, the Giants selected Michael Cox, a running back from Massachusetts who is 6 feet and 214 pounds. Cox’s fastest 40-yard dash time at the scouting combine was a respectable 4.58 seconds. If there was a theme throughout the three days of the Giants’ draft, it was their accumulation of large men. That might seem an obvious goal in the N.F.L., but the Giants selected three linemen who weigh more than 300 pounds. Two of those players hope to play on the offensive side of the ball, including the first-round pick Justin Pugh , a 305-pound tackle from Syracuse. The Giants took three defensive players, including the 320-pound defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins of Ohio State in the second round and Texas A&M defensive end Damontre Moore in the third round. Few teams address every need in one draft, but the Giants did nothing to add a young player at linebacker, which was an established deficiency on the roster. Given the injury problems they have had at cornerback lately, they also failed to add depth at that position. Instead it was the Giants’ choice of Nassib that produced the most wonder and surprise. It even seemed to catch the subject of the transaction off guard. Asked what Coughlin had told him in his introductory phone call, Nassib answered, “To be honest, I blacked out a little bit.”

Giants
Football
Ryan Nassib
Sports Drafts and Recruits
Syracuse University


After Orlando, Pushing Apart Instead of Pulling Together

Abstract: The United States, a nation that once prided itself on pulling together when faced with tragedy and crisis, seems increasingly prone to factionalism even in the most somber of moments. Over the last week, as the country processed the horror of the massacre in Orlando, Fla. , it became clear that the dead there would receive no period of mourning before being appropriated by the proponents of identity politics, who all but picked over the bodies to advance their own agendas and viewpoints. Barely had the shooting stopped when a furious battle to claim the victims began. It was wrong to frame the attack as being on gays. It was wrong to “straightwash” an attack on gays. The “Latinx” identities of the victims were being “diluted.” Trans people were being left out of the picture. To observe this was to witness what the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called the temptation of “the single story”: to “show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” Some Americans seemed to have their favored one thing of what they wanted the victims to be, and for them the depth of the mourning seemed to depend on the elevation of that one thing above the rest. It recalled the medieval criminal codes in which the penalty for murder depended on who was killed and who killed them. To some, it was a situation in which everyone always already knows what they think about everything, and any calamity instantaneously becomes a canvas for those thoughts. Those who already knew that America had a Muslim problem knew at once that this was a Muslim problem. Those who already knew that America had a gun problem knew at once that this was a gun problem. Those who already knew that America had a toxic-masculinity problem knew at once that this was a toxic-masculinity problem. Those who already knew that America had an immigrant problem knew at once that this was an immigrant problem. Those who already knew that America had a mental-health problem knew at once that this was a mental-health problem. Donald J. Trump, who tried to appropriate the moment to advance his argument that national security requires banning Muslims from entering the country and increasing surveillance of those, including citizens, who are already in the United States, has never been shy about promoting factional grievance. “We don’t have a country anymore,” he once said. With Mr. Trump, the “we” is arguably not American society as a whole but the subset of voters who share his view that the United States has become weak and a captive of identity-obsessed political correctness. But perhaps not having a country anymore should instead be taken to mean civic bonds so frayed that a death will be fought over for gain. If having a country means having some kind of deliberation about what the problem is, absorbing new facts, being moved by them on occasion, becoming alive to problems that might have blossomed in blind spots — if this is having a country, it is hard work having a country. Perhaps not having a country means not possessing a basic common vocabulary, words that mean the same thing to everybody who uses them, to ease the process of making national decisions. When the president refuses to use a term, “ radical Islam ,” that many of his rivals insist is the only term they could fathom using, then in that sense having a country gets a little complicated — just as it would be complicated to raise a family if no one could agree on the usage of terms like “school,” “dinner,” “homework” and “bed.” The Orlando tragedy brought together some of the most compelling, complex and divisive issues in American society: guns, immigration, national security and gay rights. It is hardly surprising that politics would break out around it, or that strong views would be expressed. But the ensuing discourse was also a reminder of what’s lost when Americans obscure what binds them together and elevates what sets them apart.

Orlando Shooting
2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump


Advocates Seek to Delay Deportations for Millions

Abstract: Eleven people living in the United States illegally, including a high-profile activist, plan to apply for deportation deferrals on Wednesday as part of an effort to pressure President Obama to include many millions of immigrants in any executive action to reduce deportations. The coordinated effort was organized by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Filipino who is a well-known leader of the immigrant rights movement, after he was briefly detained in South Texas in July. Mr. Vargas and other advocates want the White House to halt deportations for most of the estimated 11 million immigrants here illegally by vastly expanding a 2012 program of deferrals for young people who came when they were children. Image Jose Antonio Vargas Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images “We are asking the administration, How inclusive are you going to be?” Mr. Vargas said. “Should any of these cases be left behind? I think they should not.” Mr. Vargas will ask Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to grant him a four-year deferral, while the other immigrants, selected to represent a range of foreigners without legal status, will each do the same. They include a German businesswoman in Los Angeles who has been living in the United States since 1986, a 34-year-old South Korean man in Brooklyn who came when he was a toddler, and a Mexican woman in rural Alabama who is caring for three young grandchildren after their parents were deported. With the applications will be a legal memorandum arguing that the president has “broad legal authority to provide temporary status” to those immigrants and by extension to millions of others like them. After Republican leaders in the House of Representatives said they would not take up an immigration overhaul this year, Mr. Obama said last month that he would use executive authority to expand deportation protections and make other fixes to the ailing immigration system. While White House officials and Mr. Johnson have been working to stem a surge of illegal border crossings in Texas, they have also been considering what changes the president can make on his own and how many illegal immigrants to include. Image Jong Min You, 34, was too old for President Obama’s 2012 program of deportation deferrals. Credit Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Since legislation failed on Capitol Hill, immigrant advocacy groups have turned their focus to the president, demanding that he halt most deportations. While officials say they are looking at a broad menu of options, some legal advisers doubt that the president has the authority to grant sweeping protections and work permits to all immigrants here illegally. Although Mr. Vargas, now 33, has been living in the United States illegally since he was 12, he had never been detained by the immigration authorities until he traveled to the Texas border in July and could not leave the region without passing a Border Patrol checkpoint. Agents held him for eight hours, then released him with an immigration warrant. Mr. Vargas was too old by several months to qualify for the 2012 youth program. Another immigrant who is seeking a deferral, Michaela Graham, 52, said she first came here from Germany when she was 12. “I fell in love; this was my country,” she said. Ms. Graham moved here in 1986 with legal work visas. Some years later her marriage to an American citizen collapsed suddenly, she said, leaving her with no resident green card. Video With comprehensive immigration reform on hold in Congress, Nancy Paredo’s family is waiting on a promise from President Obama to take executive action. Here’s a look at some steps he might take. “I don’t fit into any of the visa categories,” said Ms. Graham, who has no other family here. But over the years she has founded businesses in several states, most recently a club in Los Angeles to promote the culinary efforts of aspiring restaurateurs. “Because I’m German and I am blond and blue-eyed, people don’t target me,” Ms. Graham said. Another applicant, Maria del Rosario Duarte, 54, a Mexican living in Albertville, Ala., said she cared for three grandchildren, all three here legally, including one boy, now 6, who was born with severe medical conditions. He breathes and eats through tubes and walks with braces. “I am scared to take them back to Mexico,” said Ms. Duarte, who said the doctors familiar with her grandson’s ailments were nearby. She is hoping to obtain papers so she can work legally, which would also help her in an effort to adopt the children. In Brooklyn, Jong Min You, 34, said he was disappointed and “even a little angry” when he learned that he was too old for Mr. Obama’s 2012 deferred action program, even though he had been brought by his South Korean parents when he was 1. Although he graduated from college in 2003, without immigration papers he has not been able to pursue his plans to attend law school and become a federal judge, and he has been working in his family’s grocery store. “I’m hoping the president will think of people like me and grant deferred action to the rest of the 11 million,” he said.

Illegal Immigration
Deportation
Jose Antonio Vargas
DACA
Barack Obama
US Politics
Homeland Security
Jeh C Johnson
US


Publisher Struggles in Chase for Growth

Abstract: Timing matters when it comes to news. I had been reading about Aaron Kushner’s audacious strategy to invest in journalism ever since he bought The Orange County Register in 2012 for about $50 million and the assumption of $110 million in pension obligations. After years of covering layoffs, I wanted to write a different kind of tale about newspapers. Last week, I was in Los Angeles and drove down to Santa Ana to talk to Mr. Kushner, 40, about his willingness to swim against an industrial tide. Mr. Kushner, The Register’s publisher, had no experience in publishing and looked every inch the young technocrat — he has an advanced degree from Stanford — but he is a bit of a romantic about print. After a failed attempt to buy The Boston Globe in 2011, he has been on a mission that seems to defy logic and gravity, hiring a mob of reporters, playing hardball against distressed competitors and lustily grabbing for a bigger footprint. The ambition is admirable, but some of the execution has been head-scratching. “Many people think we are a little crazy,” he said, sitting in his office with a view of Saddleback Ridge over his shoulder. After experiencing some success buying and operating a greeting card company — another legacy business others had left for dead — he says that newspapers have some life remaining. “We start from a very straightforward premise, which is that we believe newspapers exist to build a community, and I think that’s a very different mission than many newspapers have, and that educates our business model.” He and Eric Spitz, the company’s president, clearly believe newspapers went off a cliff by cutting costs while chasing clicks and cheap digital advertising. Mr. Kushner funded 200 journalists to carry out a relentlessly local print strategy in Orange County, created two dozen new sections, upgraded the weeklies he owned, and in August began publishing a new daily, The Long Beach Register. In November, he bought The Press-Enterprise of Riverside for about $27 million, and last month he announced that he would create a daily to compete with The Los Angeles Times. Given all those counterintuitive moves, I wanted to know what the secret sauce was. I was too late. On Thursday, Freedom Communications, which owns The Orange County Register and a number of other print publications, laid off 32 people at The Register, including Ken Brusic, the longtime editor, and his senior editors. Rob Curley, an editor who has a reputation for digital innovation, will take over with a new team, although Mr. Curley said the emphasis would still be on print. The day before, 40 people were laid off at The Press-Enterprise as part of consolidating operations after the sale. When I visited Mr. Kushner on Tuesday, it was obvious some of the air had leaked out of the balloon, and over the course of the conversation, he let me know that cuts were in the offing. Like it or not, I was back to covering layoffs. What happened? Even as Mr. Kushner continued to expand, cracks began to show. He was sued in October by Angelo, Gordon & Company, one of The Register’s previous owners, for failing to make a final payment of about $17 million. He responded by saying that fundamental aspects of the property had been fraudulently misrepresented. Deadlines came and went in the purchase of The Press-Enterprise as he scrambled for financing. He eventually completed the deal at the last minute using what was reported as high-interest debt. At the end of the year, he put the newspaper’s headquarters up for possible sale. Mr. Kushner is a big believer in free markets — his newspaper remains consistent with the editorial agenda of Freedom’s libertarian founder, R. C. Hoiles — but as the chief executive of a private company, he is less free with information. He declined to tell me whether The Register was currently profitable, saying only that his investments were part of a long-term strategy. But the string of events at the end of the year suggests that Mr. Kushner is having trouble operating what he already has his hands on. But he continues to push. The table in his office was covered with a map of Los Angeles County. For all I know, an organization chart marking out layoffs was underneath, but he remains convinced that there is an appetite for a daily in Los Angeles other than The Times and The Daily News. He told me he had bought The Register because he believed that it had “good bones” and that a great print publication could knit together the sprawling county to profitable ends. It was a popular message in the newsroom. Image But the newsroom had layoffs last week. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times “He stood up in front of the newsroom and said that digital was a very small part of the business and that he was going to invest in making a high-quality print product, and I was like, ‘Hallelujah,’ ” said Gary Warner, who was nearing 20 years as travel editor until he was laid off on Thursday. He bears no animus, but he said he thought the expansive agenda had collided with some brutal economic realities. “When all of the hires were made so quickly, our eyes all started darting, wondering where all the money was coming from,” he said by phone on Thursday. “And by the beginning of this year, it was obvious that things had changed. Pages started going down, and budgets were being crunched. We knew things were not going as planned.” Mr. Kushner built a better, or at least bigger, Orange County Register, but readers have not responded as he hoped, with circulation still flat at the daily. A hard paywall on digital access, intended to push readers toward print, reduced digital revenue and print advertising has not rebounded. Even after the layoffs, Mr. Kushner expects to produce the new Los Angeles Register with existing staff using satellite offices, which seems like a reach, given his commitment to hyperlocal coverage; it will take a lot of boots on the ground to cover over 80 towns in Los Angeles County. He suggested that the libertarian editorial stance of The Register would attract readers by providing a conservative alternative to readers in Los Angeles. “We obviously have a very different political perspective than The L.A. Times,” he said, adding that “in terms of focusing on really local community and local journalism and local community building, we deliver a very different kind of product.” But people do not generally buy a newspaper based solely on ideology, so the three pages of editorial writing he plans for the new enterprise will not do the job alone. Where, I wondered, would all that local coverage come from? “We are evaluating our cost structure for the next leg of our journey in terms of covering Orange County and L.A. County,” he said. The bit of corporate speak obscures some harsh realities and his actual objective. He wouldn’t say so, but he is seeking scale. The greater Los Angeles market includes three operators — Freedom; the MediaNews Group, which owns The Daily News and several other newspapers in the area; and the Tribune Company, which owns The Times — that have all gone through bankruptcy, and their backers may be looking for an exit. With consolidation in the air, Mr. Kushner wants to be in a position to make a play. By amortizing the costs of all the journalists he hired over a bigger market, he can achieve savings in terms of production while adding marginal readers and advertising. He clearly sees himself as a smart entrepreneur making bold bets. I see a man on a wire, with millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs at stake. “Is it a long-term strategy with short-term financing?” asks Ken Doctor, a newspaper analyst who has closely followed The Register. “It would be a tragedy if that were the case, because he has been the boldest operator out there and people want it to work.” No one wants it to work more than the people in the newsroom. “What he is doing is audacious,” Teri Sforza, a longtime Register reporter and columnist, told me. “Despite the bloodshed, I believe that the experiment is continuing and the jury is out. We had two really good years of expansion, and we are all grateful for that. But now the leadership of the paper has been replaced, and we are laying off even as we are expanding in terms of what we hope to do. “The aspiration is still there,” she said. “It’s just going to be hard to figure out how to make it all happen.”

Orange County Register
Aaron Kushner
Freedom Communications
Layoffs
Newspaper
News media,journalism


Goldman Sachs’s Profit and Revenue Fell in Quarter

Abstract: Goldman Sachs made a strong commitment to its Wall Street business model on Wednesday after announcing lower revenue and profit for the fourth quarter. Earnings were dragged down, in part, by a recent government settlement over mortgage securities the bank produced before the financial crisis. But the firm’s revenue also fell 5 percent in the fourth quarter from the same quarter a year ago, bringing revenue down 2 percent for all of 2015. New regulations and volatility in the global markets have diminished business opportunities for the bank, considered by many to be the most elite firm in the industry. “Clearly, it has been a challenging environment for the entire industry,” the firm’s chief financial officer, Harvey M. Schwartz, said in a call with analysts on Wednesday. Wall Street’s 4th Quarter Earnings Investors are eagerly awaiting guidance from management about when higher short-term interest rates will impact the banks’ bottom lines. But Mr. Schwartz said that the recent difficulties had not led the company’s executives to question their mix of businesses. “We run the firm for multiple years,” he said. “We see opportunities.” Many other firms on Wall Street have recently announced big cuts to businesses on which Goldman is heavily reliant — most of all the fixed-income trading businesses that has been hit hard by new regulations. On Tuesday, one of Goldman’s closest competitors, Morgan Stanley, detailed significant cutbacks in fixed income and elsewhere. The firm’s chief executive, James P. Gorman, argued that regulation had changed the firm’s long-term business outlook in ways that it had not anticipated a year ago. Goldman Sachs has also been struggling in fixed income, a business that comes with much higher regulatory costs than it has in the past. In the fourth quarter, the business reported 8 percent lower revenue than it did a year ago. For the year, fixed-income revenue was down 13 percent. But Mr. Schwartz reiterated the bank’s belief that with so many competitors leaving the field, Goldman will benefit when there is any sort of turnaround in the global markets. That did not quiet all the questions from analysts, some of whom asked when the continuing slide in revenue would convince Goldman that it, like other banks, needed to take more drastic action. Image The Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan. New regulations and the shaky global markets have hurt its business. Credit Mark Lennihan/Associated Press Mr. Schwartz defended Goldman’s more cautious approach and said that it had been making cuts slowly over time, often ahead of competitors, but did not want to overreact to recent events. “We’re certainly not sitting still here,” he said. The lower revenue helped push the bank’s fourth-quarter profit down to $765 million, or $1.27 a share, compared with $2.17 billion, or $4.38 a share, in the final quarter of 2014. Goldman said that $1.8 billion in provisions for the mortgage settlement reduced fourth-quarter earnings by $3.41 a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a profit of $3.53 a share. Shares of Goldman fell about 2 percent on a day when financial stocks and the overall market were sharply lower. The firm’s profit for the year as a whole declined 31 percent, to $5.6 billion. Goldman Sachs, led by Lloyd C. Blankfein as chief executive, has kept investors satisfied largely because it has kept profits high, particularly relative to competitors like Morgan Stanley. Goldman’s business of advising companies continued to perform well, growing 27 percent from a year earlier. But nearly every other major business line produced smaller revenue, including the stock trading division that has been doing so well in recent quarters.

Goldman Sachs Group
Earnings Reports
Banking and Finance
Lloyd C Blankfein


Shedding ‘Too Big to Fail’ Label Was Worth $50 Billion to G.E.

Abstract: What is the cost of being labeled a systemically important financial institution? In the case of General Electric, the magic number looks to be about $50 billion. The American industrial conglomerate, led by Jeffrey R. Immelt, officially shook off the designation on Wednesday that had been applied by the Financial Stability Oversight Council to its GE Capital finance unit. The market capitalization benefits of reduced financial significance have been accruing for some time. The council, America’s top financial watchdog, made the designation three years ago, and the company decided to break the shackles in April last year. In what will go down as a swift exercise in dismantling a lending business, G.E. has jettisoned $200 billion of assets. It seems to have achieved the fire-sale pace while avoiding singeing shareholders with low prices. Since G.E. announced its plans to offload almost all of GE Capital’s assets – it is keeping a few operations involved in financing big-ticket items like energy turbines – the company’s stock has added about $5.25 a share, or roughly $50 billion in overall market capitalization. G.E.’s stock is up more than 20 percent, but the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has gone nowhere. Shares of United Technologies, with which G.E. competes in aerospace, are around 15 percent less valuable. There are other factors involved in G.E.’s performance, but escaping the “too big to fail” label is the biggest. As G.E. has rebounded, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have all lost more than 20 percent of their former value. Shedding the label would be harder for these institutions without breaking themselves up. But G.E.’s example offers 50 billion reasons their shareholders should do the arithmetic.

Financial Stability Oversight Council
General Electric
Regulation and Deregulation
GE Capital


In California, a Lesson for Donald Trump and the G.O.P.

Abstract: This is the nightmare that has Republicans bolting upright: Donald J. Trump damages their party’s reputation so severely that its national competitiveness is crippled — not just in 2016, but for years. Anti-Trump sentiment among Latino, Asian and African-American voters flashes clear warning signs. Because nonwhite voters keep growing as a share of the electorate, lingering impressions could haunt a generation of Republican candidates. The Sacramento-based strategist Rob Stutzman warns Republicans elsewhere about what he calls the “soft racism” of Mr. Trump’s campaign: “Stand up against it now, or pay the price for decades.” In fact, that’s precisely what has happened to the party in California for the past 22 years, after a landmark race for governor in 1994. The Republican incumbent, Pete Wilson, seeking a second term, faced Kathleen Brown, the daughter and sister of former Democratic governors. Amid rising anxiety and anger about Latino immigrants, Mr. Wilson embraced a ballot measure denying some taxpayer-financed services to those who crossed the border illegally. A television ad dramatized his stance with grainy footage of immigrants dashing into the United States as a narrator intoned, “They keep coming.” It worked in the short run. Mr. Wilson won re-election handily . Yet California Republicans have struggled ever since. The signal Mr. Wilson and his party sent in 1994 alienated Latino and other nonwhite voters as their political clout was swelling. Before 1994, Republican nominees had carried California in six of seven presidential contests. Since then, they’ve lost all five, averaging 40 percent of the vote. Before 1994, Republicans had won three consecutive elections for governor. Since then, they’ve lost four of five regularly scheduled contests. In the meantime, Republicans have lost all six Senate elections. In four of those races, Republican candidates failed to muster 40 percent of the vote. The surge by Democrats in the nation’s largest state is not difficult to explain. Mr. Wilson won in 1994 by dominating among white voters, who exit polls conducted by the Voter News Service showed represented 78 percent of the electorate. Latinos were 9 percent, blacks 7 percent and Asians and other minorities 6 percent. By the 2014 election, whites had declined to 59 percent of the vote, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research . Latinos swelled to 18 percent, Asians and other minorities to 14 percent, and blacks edged up to 8 percent. Those nonwhite constituencies disproportionately backed the incumbent governor, the Democrat Jerry Brown, Ms. Brown’s brother. “Republican leaders and candidates were just too slow to understand what their demographic destiny was,” said Mr. Stutzman. Lately, California Republicans have worked to lure back Asian-American voters, who at one time were attracted to the Republicans’ economic and national security policies. And they have seen an increasing number of younger Latinos register with no party preference, rather than as Democrats. Enter Mr. Trump, with his call for a temporary ban on entry of Muslims into the United States, his description of some Mexican immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists,” and his remarks about the “Mexican heritage” of a federal judge who was born in Indiana. Now Mr. Stutzman fears Mr. Trump may set Republicans back just as the Wilson campaign did in 1994, in California and elsewhere. The demographic shifts that have undercut California Republicans are reshaping the nation, too. Nationally, presidential exit polls showed the share of white voters in 2012 fell to 72 percent, from 87 percent 20 years earlier. The Census Bureau projects that whites will become a minority of America’s population by 2044. The Republican National Committee itself, following its 2012 presidential defeat, called expanding Hispanic support “imperative.” Mr. Trump, who flourished in Republican primaries by appealing to working-class whites, has not changed course since securing the party’s nomination. He insists he can compete even in Democratic strongholds such as California, where Mitt Romney in 2012 drew just 37 percent of the vote. “It’s an absurdity,” Mr. Stutzman said. “Republicans will do better in California if he stays out.”

2016 Presidential Election
Republicans
California
Donald Trump
Pete Wilson
Hispanic Americans


U.S. Border Agency Allows Others to Use Its Drones

Abstract: As Congress considers a new immigration law that would expand the fleet of unmanned drones along the border, the agency in charge of border protection is increasingly offering the military-grade drones it already owns to domestic law enforcement agencies and has considered equipping them with “nonlethal weapons,” according to documents recently made public. The documents , which include flight logs over the last three years, were unearthed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information lawsuit. Agencies that have used the 10 Predator drones owned by the Customs and Border Protection Agency have deployed them to investigate fishing violations, search for missing persons and inspect levees along the Mississippi River, among other things. Three years ago, the drones were used by other agencies 30 times; in 2012, that jumped to 250 times. How the agency stores and shares that data with other government agencies remains unclear. Additionally, the agency, in a 2010 report to Congress included in the documents, raised the possibility of eventually equipping its drones with “nonlethal weapons” to “immobilize” people and vehicles trying to cross the border illegally. In a statement on Wednesday, the agency said it had “no plans to arm its unmanned aircraft systems with nonlethal weapons or weapons of any kind.” It said the drones supported the agency’s border security mission and provided “an important surveillance and reconnaissance capability for interdiction agents on the ground and on the waterways.” The drones, the agency said, “were designed with the ability to add new surveillance capabilities, accommodate technological developments, and ensure that our systems are equipped with the most advanced resources available.” The specter of drones in American skies has been contentious, far more so than other common surveillance tools. Proponents of drones, including the military contractors who build many of them, say they can be useful for a variety of purposes, like monitoring crops and finding missing children, and a handful of police agencies have already bought small, lightweight unmanned vehicles that can fly for short bursts of time. Skeptics say the use of drones raises the prospect of ubiquitous monitoring, especially by law enforcement, and several states have already proposed measures to restrict their use by police. “What concerns me is the lack of clear, transparent rules for domestic drone use,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from Northern California, who recently introduced legislation to limit their use in domestic airspace. She said she was concerned about “the government’s increased interest in using drones for domestic surveillance and security, including the potential use of force. But the law today has weak requirements for individual privacy protection, transparency of drone use, and limitations on arming drones with weapons.” Image Pete McNall of the United States border patrol checked the camera on the Predator drone in Arizona in 2007. Credit Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press Ms. Lofgren was co-sponsor of a bill in the House earlier this year that would among other things prohibit the use of firearms on drones in domestic airspace, though, not necessarily other weapons like tear gas or pellets. The agency has used Predator drones, the same vehicles used overseas by the United States military, since 2005. Built by General Atomics, the drones weigh about 10,500 pounds and can fly for 20 hours nonstop. They are based in Arizona, Florida, North Dakota and Texas. “C.B.P. needs to assure the public that it will not equip its Predators with any weapons — lethal or otherwise,” Jennifer Lynch wrote for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco, in a blog post on Wednesday about the documents. “Without first addressing these issues, the agency — and Congress — should halt the expansion of C.B.P.’s Predator drone program.” The flight logs provided by the agency show that it has become increasingly generous with its unmanned aerial vehicles. They have been used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the North Dakota Army National Guard, Texas Department of Public Safety and the United States Forest Service, among others. The use of drones by the F.B.I. came to light only two weeks ago, when its director, Robert S. Mueller III, in response to a question, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that unmanned aerial vehicles were “very seldom used” by his agents. He went on to say the agency was developing guidelines on their appropriate use. An earlier information request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggested that the F.B.I. had at least three drones in its possession as of 2011, when that request was filed. The border agency said that when conducting joint operations with state, local and other federal agencies, its own privacy policies governed the use of data collected by the drones and “the live feed from any aircraft is encrypted and only accessible to those with specific clearance.” An audit by the Department of Homeland Security last year criticized the border agency for failing to put in place enough resources to maintain its drones and coordinate their deployment. At the time, the agency recommended holding off on any further acquisitions. Nonetheless, the border agency now stands to increase its fleet. The Senate immigration bill, passed last week, authorizes the agency to buy four additional drones, along with new radar equipment. Other documents obtained earlier this year by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington, had found that cameras attached to the Predators could distinguish between a human figure and a beast, but did not use facial recognition technology. Privacy advocates worry about the prospect of law enforcement officials using drones to patrol particular areas for long stretches of time or to follow particular individuals without a warrant. “The danger comes from dragnet surveillance,” is how Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, described it. He called himself mostly a champion of drone technology, but with safeguards to protect privacy. “By dragnet I mean indiscriminate,” he said, “not in a particular situation, but just to buzz around looking for suspicious activity, which is exactly what they do on border.”

Drones
Illegal Immigration
Customs and Border Protection US
Electronic Frontier Foundation


Warner Music Executive Is Leaving to Lead Helicopter Start-Up Blade

Abstract: Robert Wiesenthal, the chief operating officer of the Warner Music Group and a longtime entertainment industry executive, is planning to resign to lead a start-up company that promises to be the Uber of helicopters. Mr. Wiesenthal, who had been the chief financial officer of the Sony Corporation of America, will become the chairman and chief executive of Blade, a company he co-founded as a side project while at Sony. Blade is an on-demand service that shuttles customers by helicopter and small plane to the Hamptons and Nantucket using an app. The service has become popular, with more than 22,000 customers chartering and crowdsourcing flights. Blade is expected to begin offering services in other parts of the United States as well as abroad by the end of the year. It seeks to disrupt the small but growing helicopter and small-aviation industry by lowering the cost of flights through technology similar to what Uber and Lyft have done to the taxi and limousine industry. The company has attracted the attention of prominent investors including David Zaslav, chief of Discovery Communications; Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google; Barry Diller’s Ranger Investments; Bob Pittman, chairman and chief of iHeartMedia; and Raine Ventures, which has stakes in media companies like Vice. In a memo to Warner’s staff Tuesday afternoon, Stephen Cooper, the music company’s chief executive, said, “I respect Rob’s desire to concentrate his energies in the entrepreneurial world and Blade will clearly benefit from his digital and commercial expertise.” He added, “Ever since he joined WMG in January 2013, Rob has led the effort to broaden our deal-making universe, helping us to forge new models with established players as well as to build what he calls a ‘digital nursery’ of partnerships with innovative start-ups.” Mr. Wiesenthal, who declined to comment, started his career as an investment banker. He was hired to work at Warner Music in 2013 by the company’s controlling shareholder, the Russian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, to help with strategy and deals. He helped push Warner to enter a series of alliances and deals with Clear Channel and Shazam as well as technology companies like Snapchat, Interlude, Vessel and SoundCloud. Perhaps Mr. Wiesenthal’s most successful deal was one he made while at Sony with Michael Jackson in a Dubai hotel room in 2005. The deal he struck prevented Mr. Jackson from filing for bankruptcy. As part of the deal, however, Sony took operational control of Sony/ATV, the joint venture owned by Sony and the Jackson estate. That music publishing business is now worth billions. Now with Mr. Wiesenthal at the helm of Blade, there is speculation about whether he will seek to forge deals with companies like Uber, which has run several partnership promotions with Blade. “Rob has built Blade into a contemporary culture brand from scratch. He is clever and savvy in driving the Blade brand, customers and sales through new media,” Mr. Zaslav said. “Blade is scalable and can be a big business.”

Blade
Helicopter
Startup
Robert S Wiesenthal
Warner Music Group