Last-Second Tip-In Shines Spotlight on a Notre Dame Guard

Abstract: Entering Notre Dame’s matchup with Stephen F. Austin, Rex Pflueger was a sparingly used, little-known freshman guard for the Irish who had not scored a field goal since March 5. But Notre Dame Coach Mike Brey liked to have Pflueger on the floor for his athleticism, and on Sunday at Barclays Center, his decision was amply rewarded. With 1.5 seconds left, Pflueger, an occasional beach volleyball player growing up in Southern California, drew on that sport’s esoteric skills, extending his right arm as if reaching high to keep the ball from hitting the sand and tipping in a missed layup attempt by Zach Auguste. The basket gave the Irish a 76-75 victory over the Lumberjacks and secured a spot in the N.C.A.A. tournament’s round of 16, where they will play No. 7-seeded Wisconsin, which defeated No. 2 Xavier, 66-63, on Sunday on Bronson Koenig’s 3-pointer at the buzzer, just moments after he had tied the game with a 3. “Are you kidding me?” Brey said during his postgame news conference. “Are you freaking kidding me? That was unbelievable.” Image Rex Pflueger, center, was mobbed by teammates after the Irish became the fifth A.C.C. team to advance to the Round of 16. Credit Elsa/Getty Images Brey’s excitement was understandable. The Irish were on the brink of becoming the latest victim of No. 14-seeded Stephen F. Austin, which upset third-seeded West Virginia, 70-56, on Friday. In a back-and-forth game, a jumper by V. J. Beachem at 9 minutes 18 seconds of the second half gave Notre Dame a 62-55 lead, its largest of the game, but a run by the Lumberjacks, highlighted by consecutive Demetrious Floyd 3-pointers, evened the score at 64-64. With the game tied at 70-70, Floyd hit another 3-pointer, giving the Lumberjacks a 73-70 lead, and two free throws by Thomas Walkup, who scored a game-high 21 points, made it 75-70. But 4 straight points by Demetrius Jackson pulled Notre Dame to within 75-74. Walkup then missed an off-balance shot with 23 seconds left, and Ty Charles’s tip was off-target. Auguste collected the rebound for Notre Dame, and Jackson, who had kept the Irish on pace with the Lumberjacks with 12 points through a frenetic second half, was determined to take the final shot. His attempt off a baseline drive hit the side of the backboard. Jackson fell to the ground and later said he had no idea who had tipped the ball when he saw it fall through the net. For much of the game’s final stretch, it appeared as if Stephen F. Austin would continue its majestic run. But when Clide Geffrard’s last-second heave sailed wide right, the Lumberjacks’ season was over. 2016 Men’s N.C.A.A. Tournament Bracket Kansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon are the top seeds in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. Later, in Notre Dame’s locker room, team staff members had to move Pflueger’s nameplate out from a corner stall into an open area where television cameras anticipated his arrival. Among those waiting for Pflueger was New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, beaming in a gray pullover with a blue Notre Dame logo on the left side of his chest. Christie, a Delaware graduate, said he and Brey had been friends for 21 years. Near Pflueger’s empty space, teammates watched replays of the final seconds on their phones, resting from a ferocious game in which players regularly dived to the floor chasing loose balls. Forward Bonzie Colson seemingly did not recognize the five bloody marks on his left biceps. “I think I just blacked out,” Notre Dame guard Matt Farrell said, sitting in a jersey speckled with bloodstains. “It was crazy.” Since Friday night, the news media had been poking away at the Lumberjacks, trying to extract every intricacy of their formerly anonymous lives in Nacogdoches, a small city in eastern Texas. Walkup revealed that for Halloween, he had dressed as Green Man, a character from the television comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Tyler Underwood tore his anterior cruciate ligament as a high school senior, ending his recruitment by small Division I schools. In the stands that day was his father, Brad Underwood, who rarely attended his son’s high school games because he was busy coaching Stephen F. Austin. Brad Underwood brought Tyler on as a walk-on this season. But after Sunday’s loss, the Lumberjacks’ locker room was practically devoid of reporters. There were only players holding back tears, their hands cupped over their mouths with distant-looking eyes. The story had become about Pflueger, a new unknown.

College basketball
NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness
Stephen F Austin State University
University of Notre Dame


A Female World War II Pilot Is Finally an Equal at Arlington

Abstract: ARLINGTON, Va. — It took a year and a half after her death in 2015 for the Army to formally recognize what Elaine D. Harmon had known most of her life: That the service of female pilots in World War II equaled that of the men who fought. On Wednesday, in a quiet corner of Arlington National Cemetery, the Army made its recognition permanent, allowing Mrs. Harmon’s remains to be laid to rest at last with full military honors alongside her fellow veterans. Mrs. Harmon, who died in April 2015 at age 95, had been a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, a first-of-its-kind Army unit made up of women who flew planes and trained men to do the same during World War II. That experience was so central to Mrs. Harmon’s life that after she died, her family found a letter written on cream-colored WASP stationery and left inside a fireproof file box, with a final wish. “I would like to be buried in Arlington Cemetery,” she wrote, adding later, “Even if there are no ashes left, I would like an empty urn placed at Arlington.” The problem, her family soon learned, was that the Army had never considered the women — who carried weapons, wore uniforms and had access to classified intelligence — to be the same as active-duty male troops. And even after legislation granted them veterans benefits in the 1970s, the Army said that it could not legally allow the WASPs to be buried at Arlington. “They gave the ultimate sacrifice and then when the war was over, they were told, ‘Thank you for your service, the cockpits go back to the men now,’ ” Representative Martha McSally, Republican of Arizona, said during a brief memorial after the interment. Ms. McSally, who was the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat for the Air Force, learned of Mrs. Harmon’s story in the news earlier this year and immediately decided to champion the cause. With another female veteran, Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, she sponsored legislation clarifying the eligibility of the remains of Mrs. Harmon and others like her to be interred at the cemetery. “These women were getting a last slap in the face,” Ms. McSally said. “I said, ‘No way, man.’ ” The measure was passed by the House and the Senate with unanimous consent. President Obama signed it into law in May. Image Elaine D. Harmon On Wednesday, beneath a nearly cloudless sky, Mrs. Harmon’s remains, which had been sitting in a black box on a shelf in her daughter’s bedroom closet for a year and a half, finally came to rest in Arlington, in an understated columbarium. A handful of women who flew alongside Mrs. Harmon and many more who came after her traveled from across the country to bear witness and, in some cases, to give testimonies to a path she had helped clear. “Finally, we’re over the last fight. We had to fight all the way along. I didn’t think we’d have to fight to be buried,” said Florence Reynolds, a member of the unit and a friend of Mrs. Harmon known as Shutsy. “I wanted to be here to make sure they didn’t fuss it up.” In the end, they did not. Mrs. Harmon, her remains present in a carved wooden box, was honored with a three-volley salute, a color guard and the playing of taps. By the count of Katherine Landdeck , a historian at Texas Woman’s University who is writing a history of the WASPs, fewer than 100 members of the unit are still alive. Only a handful have expressed interest in funerals at Arlington and so, she added, Mrs. Harmon’s service was something of a stand-in for a whole unit that is largely unknown outside of family and the women who followed it into flight. It was a fitting role for Mrs. Harmon, who helped hold the group together even as they returned to civilian life in 1944. Mrs. Harmon herself moved to Oakland, Calif., and worked as an air traffic controller while she waited for her husband to return from the Pacific. At the war’s end, the young couple reunited in the growing Maryland suburbs of Washington to start a family. Widowed in 1965, she raised four children by herself and eventually became a real estate appraiser. Like other WASPs, she maintained a vocal sense of patriotism, but the details of her service often went unstated. “After the war, they all dispersed back home around the country and didn’t necessarily talk to each other,” Erin Miller, one of Mrs. Harmon’s granddaughters, who has studied the unit’s history, said recently. “They were told not to publicize what they had done, and they went home and raised families.” In the 1970s, when the women began to reconnect to fight for military retirement benefits and recognition of their service, Mrs. Harmon became their informal secretary. She tracked down other WASPs around the country and hosted them when they came to Washington to lobby. In a third act of sorts, Mrs. Harmon traveled the country promoting the unit’s history. She visited the White House, Ms. Miller said, and met five presidents. In 2009, President Obama signed a bill awarding the entire unit the Congressional Gold Medal. Mrs. Harmon was on hand. At the funeral, as planes flew overhead — first World War II-era warplanes flown by volunteers for the occasion, and then commercial flights taking off from nearby Reagan National Airport — Lt. Col. Christine Blice-Baum, a chaplain, read from Scripture and then from a poem, “Celestial Flight,” written by one WASP, Elizabeth MacKethan Magid, in remembrance of another: She is not dead. You should have known That she is only flying higher, Higher than she’s ever flown.

Elaine D. Harmon
Arlington National Cemetery
Women Airforce Service Pilots
Women and Girls
World War II
US Military


Czech Election Reflects Dissatisfaction of Voters

Abstract: PARIS — The center-left Social Democrats won the most votes in Czech parliamentary elections on Saturday, but fell short of winning a majority in a vote that underlined voters’ deep dissatisfaction with endemic corruption and the political status quo. The country will now enter what is likely to be a lengthy period of deal making as parties scramble to form a government. The Czech Republic, whose first president, Vaclav Havel, helped fashion the country as a global symbol of liberty after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has been undergoing a potent backlash against the political establishment after a scandal over alleged bribery and illegal spying. There is a growing feeling that the revolution of 1989 did not deliver on its aspirations. With nearly all the votes counted, the Social Democrats won 20.5 percent of the vote, a far slimmer victory than expected. Instead, voters turned to protest parties vowing to eliminate corruption, handing 18.7 percent of the vote to the party of Andrej Babis, a Slovak billionaire with a Czech passport. The Communist Party, the last such party in the former satellite countries of the old Soviet bloc, finished third with about 15 percent. The center-right party at the heart of the scandal was trounced, receiving only 7.7 percent of the vote. Mr. Babis indicated Saturday that he did not want to join any coalition government, leading analysts to predict a difficult period of political haggling ahead. If Mr. Babis changes his mind, his party, ANO, or Yes, and the Social Democrats could join forces with a third party to form a majority. Alternatively, Mr. Babis could agree to support a minority coalition government. Image The Social Democrats of Bohuslav Sobotka got the most votes but fell short of a majority. Credit Filip Singer/European Pressphoto Agency Either way, Mr. Babis, a plain-talking entrepreneur who runs an agricultural, food processing and chemical empire, had emerged as a surprise kingmaker, analysts said. His one-year-old party is personality-driven, and lacks a clear ideology and economic agenda. “Protest parties are the clear winners in these elections, which have shown the extent to which Czechs are fed up with politics in this country, fed up with corruption, and fed up with a bad economy,” said Jaroslav Plesl, the deputy editor of Tyden, a leading Czech political magazine. Mr. Plesl said that with the country suffering through economic hard times, a backlash against austerity had also favored the Social Democrats, who have pledged to increase spending. “We have had weak or no economic growth since 2009 and people feel worse off than they did before,” Mr. Plesl said. “They feel the politicians have been stealing like crazy.” The vote comes amid growing restiveness across the region as people have demonstrated simmering disappointment with the post-1989 political order. In Bulgaria, thousands have protested against endemic corruption and economic hardship. In Hungary, the perceived authoritarianism of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has drawn protesters to the streets. Days before the election this weekend, the Czech sculptor David Cerny conveyed the visceral anger of many Czechs when he installed a 30-foot-high purple sculpture of a hand with a raised middle finger on a float in the Vltava River in Prague, the Czech capital. It was, he said, aimed at the Prague Castle, the seat of the Czech president, as a potent rebuke to the political class. Then, on a hill overlooking Prague’s historic center, a civic group called Dekomunizace put up a huge poster of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia dressed like Stalin — a reminder, the group said, of the country’s dark past under the communists. But it is a sign of Czechs’ rebellious mood that even the communists, long reviled by many Czechs, performed relatively well. “This election shows a spectacular rise of anti-politics and a huge amount of cynicism, with Czechs saying, ‘How can things be any worse than what we have had now or in the recent past?’ ” said Jiri Pehe, the director of New York University in Prague and a former adviser to Mr. Havel. Image The party of Andrej Babis took second place. Credit European Pressphoto Agency One party that will enter Parliament for the first time, the Dawn of Direct Democracy, was founded by Tomio Okamura, a Czech senator who has preached people power and called for referendums as a way to empower voters. The strong showing of protest parties followed a corruption scandal over the summer that forced out Petr Necas, the former center-right prime minister. Mr. Necas resigned after his chief of staff, Jana Nagyova, who was also his girlfriend, was accused of using the country’s security services to spy on his wife. Ms. Nagyova was also accused of bribing three members of Parliament, who had opposed the government, to leave office in return for lucrative posts in state companies. She has denied the charges. Mr. Necas, who has never been charged in the scandal, has since divorced his wife and married Ms. Nagyova. The scandal helped fuel a strong backlash against the center-right Civic Democrat Party, which has had a strong presence in Czech politics in the decades following the revolution of 1989. Alzbeta Sabova, a 23-year-old from Prague who works in public relations, said she had lost faith in the people running the country, and had little optimism that the elections would change anything. “Politics are terrible here,” she said before the vote, “a total farce.” Ondrej Rous, 27, a restaurant manager, said that he was disgusted by the political status quo and that the country was in dire need of a new generation of politicians to shake things up. “We should throw the current lot out of the window,” he said.

Election
Legislature
Czech Republic
Andrej Babis


Holding On at Building Stripped to Timbers

Abstract: Without a word, Ana Reynoso, age 87, swings open the door to Apartment 32. Strangers shuffle in to look at the state of her home, which consists of three fine bedrooms and zero baths. Nearly all the bathrooms above and below in the same line of apartments were ripped out in January by the landlord to shore up damaged walls. Ms. Reynoso uses the bathroom in an empty apartment down the hall. Two stories up, on the fifth floor, Aida Wenzell shows visitors her bathroom, now stripped to the building’s timber bones. “Almost a year, that is how this room has been,” she said. It is hard to walk through the building at 452 Fort Washington Avenue, a handsome old apartment house in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, and not catch a whiff of madness. And it’s not simply the missing bathrooms or the 415 violations cited by the city. Of the 54 apartments in the building, 25 are vacant — some of them for years, the tenants say. And in 15 of the 29 occupied apartments, the residents have been on a rent strike for two years, putting their payments into escrow. That means that through one of the greatest real estate booms in the history of New York, the owner of the building, Dorothea Levine, has been collecting rent on 14 apartments, less than one-third of the building. Not just the housing code is being violated: the laws of economic self-interest are broken every month. “She’s forgoing roughly $50,000 a month in income just from the empty apartments,” said Bruno Bianchi, a lawyer for the tenants. “I don’t quite understand why she would do it.” The customary explanation would be that the absent bathrooms are a form of tactical neglect, intended to drive out longtime tenants who pay below-market rents, and that in the meantime Ms. Levine is warehousing apartments as they become vacant. But the city is teeming with people, and demand for rental apartments in Washington Heights is strong — especially in buildings like 452 Fort Washington, which is one block from the 181st Street stop for the A train. In effect, this is a broken A.T.M. “The rooms are huge,” Mr. Bianchi said. “With this owner, I don’t get the logic of it.” Ms. Levine grew up in the building, which was owned by her parents. She now lives elsewhere, according to Greg Healy, the property manager for 452 Fort Washington. “The building is very personal to her,” Mr. Healy said in an interview last month. “There has never been a plan to condo or co-op the building. There’s never been a plan to do anything else. She has received almost nil from the tenants for two years. At this point, she is carrying the building almost entirely by herself.” Ms. Levine intends to renovate the vacant apartments and rent them, Mr. Healy said, but a family illness has taken all her attention for several years. As for the missing bathrooms, the story is lodged in six different pending court cases. Last year, a leak inside a wall was not discovered until water had damaged the building. Contractors hired by the landlord began to remove the bathrooms in the 2 line of apartments to get at the damage. The tenants — with backup from the Department of Buildings — said the contractors did not have proper permits. “The tenants refused to let the landlord’s contractors in,” said Seth Donlin, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. “Then we tried to send contractors, and the landlord refused to let us in.” One of the tenant leaders, Gladys Salva, is on the 2 line, and she said she barred the landlord’s contractors because even though her bathroom floor was pitched sharply to one side, it was still usable. Her adult daughter is severely disabled, and Ms. Salva, 75, said she could not get her to a bathroom in another apartment. She insisted that the landlord restore an old half-bathroom that had been removed from her apartment before she moved in. Once she had a toilet and sink in her home, she said, she would permit the contractors to come in and remove the full-size bathroom. That stalemate was finally broken this week, when the landlord restored the half-bathroom in Ms. Salva’s apartment. Work is expected to resume on the shoring of the beams damaged in last year’s leak, Mr. Bianchi said. After that, the bathrooms will be restored. Andrew Massa, 76, moved into the building 68 years ago. “We had stained-glass windows in the halls, and a man to operate the elevator,” Mr. Massa said. “I remember the landlord’s family. I never thought we’d come to this.”


Controversy Dogs Inquiry on Bridge Collapse

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board ’s working theory about last summer’s bridge collapse in Minneapolis — that it was caused by a design error four decades ago — has run into a peculiar problem: it contradicts much public belief. The conventional wisdom is that the Interstate 35W bridge, aged and due for major maintenance, collapsed because of neglect. Surely inspectors had missed something, or their higher-ups had delayed needed repairs until the 40-year-old span plunged into the Mississippi, the popular belief goes. State officials and engineering executives all over the country have joined in the chorus, arguing that the collapse, in which 13 people died and more than 100 were injured, demonstrates a need for expanded maintenance budgets. On Tuesday, the treasurer of Massachusetts said his state should spend $600 million on bridges to “avoid a future Minnesota incident.” But the safety board, in issuing interim recommendations related to the collapse, said on Jan. 15 that the problem had not been age or money. The design of the bridge that failed was no good from the day the span opened, the board said: an engineer in the mid-1960s had specified gusset plates, the big sheets of steel that tie girders together, of half-inch thickness when they should have been an inch thick. When the board’s chairman said this was a problem that field inspectors could not have been expected to find, a senior Minnesota congressman, James L. Oberstar, the Democrat who heads the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, accused him of jumping to conclusions. Mr. Oberstar, whose committee oversees the safety board, said dismissing the idea that rust had played a role was “inappropriate” at this stage, months before the board’s final report on the collapse. In fact, the board’s chairman, Mark V. Rosenker, noted in announcing the recommendations that it had not yet reached a definitive finding as to all factors in the collapse. But Mr. Rosenker also said, when a reporter asked about corrosion or cracking, “We have no reason to believe at this time that that played a role in the failure of the gusset plates or the rest of the bridge.” He said the fact that the gusset plates were too thin to begin with was “the critical part of this issue.” The collapse, and its cause, had kicked off a political fight in Minnesota even before the board’s announcement. In December, the Minnesota Legislature, controlled by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, hired a law firm to duplicate part of the safety board’s task and investigate whether the state’s Transportation Department, under a Republican governor, had played a role in the collapse. Less than three months before the accident, the governor, Tim Pawlenty, had vetoed a 7.5-cent-a-gallon increase in the state’s gasoline tax, favored by Democrats, to pay for highway and bridge work. The Legislature voted to spend up to $500,000 on the inquiry, which Katherine Kersten, a columnist for The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, complained recently had become a witch hunt by a “villain-hungry crowd.” Then, after the safety board’s announcement this month, some Democrats accused Mr. Rosenker, a Republican, of trying to ride to the rescue of a Republican governor. Robert Meek, a Democratic public relations consultant in the Twin Cities, pointed out in an e-mail message to reporters that the safety board’s intention to issue interim recommendations had been made public right after former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas took a swipe at Minnesota in a televised debate among Republican presidential candidates, saying his own state had no problem of collapsing bridges. Mr. Meek also said that the safety board might be playing down what he described as Minnesota’s failure to learn from the damaging of a bridge in Ohio that had thin gusset plates and corrosion alike, and that the board was going out of its way to make its point eight months to a year before it planned a final report. (Actually, the safety board sometimes issues recommendations long before its final reports are ready, when it believes it has information that could be used immediately to prevent a similar accident.) The board, the government’s premier organization in engineering forensics, was created as an independent agency in 1967 to insulate it from government bureaus whose work it critiques, and has only occasionally faced criticism of its findings. After T.W.A. 800, on its way from New York to Paris, exploded off Long Island in 1996, a dedicated cadre of accident buffs and conspiracy theorists maintained that the cause was a bomb or a missile and not, contrary to the board’s finding, a mechanical failure. In the case of Representative Oberstar’s criticism, Mr. Rosenker sent him a letter thanking him for his interest in the progress of the investigation and saying that despite the board’s judgment about the plates, “it was not our intent to imply that we were eliminating other contributing factors from our continued analysis.” Then he went to see Mr. Oberstar. “They had a polite, a cordial and a productive meeting,” said Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the board. “That’s all we’re going to say.”

Minneapolis (Minn)
Bridges and Tunnels
National Transportation Safety Board
Accidents and Safety


India’s Young and Poor Rally to Another Gandhi

Abstract: AHRAURA, India — Rahul Gandhi ’s helicopter descends out of the boiling afternoon sky and a restless, sweat-soaked crowd of 100,000 people suddenly surges to life. Men rush forward in the staggering heat. Teenage boys wave a white bedsheet bearing a faintly cheeky request: We Want to Meet the Prince of India . Mr. Gandhi climbs onto a special viewing stand in this isolated corner of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, and offers a boyish wave. Not yet 40, Mr. Gandhi is the great-grandson of India’s first prime minister, the grandson of India’s fourth prime minister and the son of India’s seventh prime minister. His audience includes some of the poorest people in India. “I’m standing here with you,” he declared to loud cheers, speaking for about 15 minutes before he left, waving through the window of his helicopter. “I can come with you anywhere and everywhere to fight with you.” India is Mr. Gandhi’s family inheritance. Seemingly the only uncertainty is when he will collect it. He holds no major post in government, yet rumors persist that the governing Indian National Congress Party — whose president is his mother, Sonia Gandhi — might install him as prime minister before the current government expires in 2014. The job’s current occupant, Manmohan Singh, recently had to bat away retirement questions. Yet despite his aura of inevitability, Mr. Gandhi largely remains an enigma. India is an emerging power, facing myriad domestic and international issues, but he remains deliberately aloof from daily politics. His thoughts on many major issues — as well as the temperature of the fire in his belly — remain mostly unknown. For the Congress Party, that may be an advantage. The party has been the top vote getter in the last two national elections by appealing to the poor through welfare schemes while also pursuing pro-growth policies. But it holds power only with the support of fickle coalition partners. Mr. Gandhi is using his enormous popularity to broaden the party’s political base, steering clear of more contentious policy making. That could help position Congress to win an outright national majority — though it does little to illuminate what he would do with a mandate if he won it. “What most people still have a hard time figuring out is, ‘What is Rahul Gandhi’s vision?’ ” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, who has met privately with Mr. Gandhi and speaks highly of him. “It is still not apparent to a lot of people what his own deep political convictions are.” Mr. Gandhi traverses the country, often on secret trips, to recruit as many as 10 million new youth members. His job is also to try to take back crucial strongholds like Uttar Pradesh, in the north, which his family claims as its home base but which the Congress Party does not control. Most Indian political parties are internally undemocratic and often dominated by political dynasties, none more famous the Gandhi clan. But Mr. Gandhi has also insisted that the party’s youth organizations hold internal elections for posts and operate as meritocracies. He also has succeeded far more than other Indian politicians in tapping into the hunger for generational change in India, analysts say, and has positioned himself as a change agent for the future, despite his obvious debts to India’s political past. He is trying to bypass the identity politics of caste and appeal to young people of all backgrounds. “We youth are with Rahul!” said Manonit Garharabari, 23, at the rally. “The whole youth is with Rahul. We seen an internal strength in him.” Mr. Gandhi is omnipresent in the media, and his face is plastered on untold numbers of billboards and political posters. His public image is as a humble, serious man, if somewhat shy, even as his name invariably tops polls ranking the country’s “hottest” or “most eligible” bachelors. Yet he almost never grants interviews, including for this article, and only occasionally conducts news conferences. Reporters are often tipped to his appearances at one village or another but often all they get is a photograph — which inevitably appears in newspapers around India. His daily life is cloaked in secrecy, which makes it an irresistible if elusive topic for the Indian media. One news station ran a lengthy report after obtaining a short video clip of Mr. Gandhi riding his bicycle in New Delhi. Mr. Gandhi confirmed in 2004 that he had a Spanish girlfriend, but whether they remained a couple was unclear. His advisers say his low profile reflects his desire not to overstep the authority of his organizational position while the secrecy is rooted in security concerns. His grandmother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated, as was his father, Rajiv Gandhi. (The family is not related to Mohandas Gandhi, considered the father of modern India. Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather was Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister and another founding father.) His official residence in New Delhi is heavily fortified and he traveled to the rally in Ahraura with a special black-clad security detail. Yet analysts say his inaccessibility is also a deliberate effort to protect him from taking unpopular public stands and also to burnish his image. Last spring, he turned down an offer to join Mr. Singh’s cabinet. “They want to keep a certain mystique to him,” said Mahesh Rangarajan, a political analyst in New Delhi. Before he entered politics in 2004, winning a parliamentary seat in his father’s old district in Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Gandhi had appeared ambivalent about the family profession. He attended Harvard for three years before transferring to Rollins College in Florida because of security concerns after his father’s death. He earned a master’s degree in development studies at Cambridge and worked in London as a management consultant before returning to India after his mother took over the Congress Party. Some veteran politicians initially dismissed him as a pappu, the Hindi word for a nice boy, if one who is not too smart. Inside the Congress Party, some leaders had considered his younger sister, Priyanka, a more dynamic politician, but her focus has been on raising her children rather than running for office. Mr. Gandhi’s breakthrough came during the 2009 elections, when he campaigned across the country and was later credited for the unexpectedly strong showing by Congress. Some analysts interpreted the 2009 voting results as evidence that the clout of regional, caste-based parties was waning. Over two decades, these parties splintered national politics and gave rise to leaders like Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and India’s most powerful Dalit politician, who uses only one name. Analysts say Congress must regain seats in Uttar Pradesh and neighboring Bihar if it wants to achieve a national majority. “The real test is Uttar Pradesh,” Mr. Rangarajan said. “Everything rests on it. It is the most populous state. It is the demographic center.” Uttar Pradesh will hold state elections in 2012, and Mr. Gandhi is pushing to unseat Ms. Mayawati. For months, Mr. Gandhi has periodically turned up at villages to share a meal or even spend the night with Dalit families. He told reporters that he did not see people’s castes, only that they were poor. “When Rahul Gandhi goes to the home of a Dalit to share a meal, Mayawati’s stomach starts itching!” shouted one speaker at the rally. His youth drives are conducted state by state, and he has hired a nonprofit group of former election commissioners to oversee the internal elections for posts in the party youth organizations — as opposed to the usual practice of party bosses picking their choices. Mr. Gandhi’s campaign could eventually threaten entrenched interests within the party, analysts say, which is why, for now, the internal voting is limited to the youth organizations. And his efforts to unseat Ms. Mayawati got off to an inconsistent start. Analysts say the public response to his recruitment efforts in Uttar Pradesh had been tepid before his latest trip. Ultimately, analysts say, Mr. Gandhi will have to reveal more about himself than his just organizational vision. He has traveled widely and met with business or political leaders. When Bill Gates recently visited India, he joined Mr. Gandhi in a village. In Egypt, Mr. Gandhi has befriended Gamal Mubarak, son and heir apparent of President Hosni Mubarak. In China, he has met Xi Jinping, the man tapped to replace the country’s president and Communist Party leader, Hu Jintao. It seems he is preparing for the future.

Gandhi Rahul
India
Politics and Government
Indian National Congress


Tickets Are a Tough Sell for the New Giants Stadium

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Saturday night’s preseason game between the Giants and the Jets drew a crowd announced as 74,255 to Giants Stadium, which seats 80,242 . The game, a 27-25 Jets victory, was the last between the teams in their current stadium in the Meadowlands. Next year, they will move next door to a new stadium costing $1.6 billion . It will seat about 82,500. But in selling seats for both stadiums during a severe recession, Jets and Giants officials are facing economic forces that have been daunting even big-ticket sports franchises in major markets. The Giants, who still have seats to sell for some games this season, have not found buyers for about 3,000 club season tickets for 2010, some in the best locations at the highest prices. And the Jets lag behind the Giants. They said they still had “a few thousand” season tickets remaining for 2009 and were advertising half-season packages . As for 2010 in the new stadium, the Jets are not providing specific sales figures for suites, club seats with personal seat licenses or nonclub seats because, they said, it was too early to know. “Right now, we are sort of in the middle of the process,” said Thad Sheely, the Jets’ executive vice president for stadium development. “We still have some selling to do.” Jim Lites, a senior consultant contracted by the Giants to sell seats in the new stadium, acknowledged that the recession and the higher ticket costs for 2010 were having a chilling effect. “There is a point at some price that people won’t purchase a product,” Lites said. “It’s still a bit of sticker shock . There has been some pushback on the price.” The gentrification of stadium seating in sports reached a new threshold this year with the opening of the new Yankee Stadium. Some seats in rows closest to the plate were initially priced at $2,500 a game. Some went unsold. And although unsold grandstand seats at N.F.L. games could lead to local television blackouts , the league said that empty club seats or suites would not remove games from local broadcasts. Lites said the Coaches Club behind the Giants’ bench has 2,093 seats that require a $20,000 personal seat license and $700 per ticket for 10 games, including two exhibitions. About 400 are still available, Lites said, as well as about 2,600 other club seats in less-expensive locations. The rest of the main stadium is sold, he said, and demand for those lower-priced seats exceeded the supply. But the luxury suites are still available. The Giants said they had leased slightly more than 60 percent of the approximately 200 suites, totaling about 4,000 seats. That sales figure has moved only marginally from the Giants’ report from almost a year ago of more than 50 percent. Mike Stevens , the chief marketing officer for the Giants, said the most expensive suites, costing $500,000 a season, were taken, as were the lowest-priced suites, which cost about $150,000. But the suites in between have not generated as much demand. “At the depths of the recession, it was not an opportune time to talk to people about a product like suites,” Stevens said. “But in the last couple of weeks to a few months, receptivity levels have changed. We have a lot of agreements in the pipeline.” Suites for Giants games will have from 12 to 26 seats, he said. The Jets’ suites, Sheely said, will have 12 to 30 seats, totaling about 5,000. The best suites, Sheely said, feature “outdoor terraces and a private, all-inclusive club modeled after New York clubs like the University Club or the Racquet Club , with fireplaces and dark wood paneling.” But when asked how many suites had been sold, Sheely said, “We are not publicly discussing numbers.” As for this season’s unsold tickets, Matt Higgins, the Jets’ executive vice president for business operations, said: “That’s another number we’re not disclosing. We have a few thousand left and we’ll be sold out by opening day.” Although the top personal seat license for the Giants is $20,000, the Jets sold some through an auction for as much as $85,000, Sheely said. The Jets’ Web site lists the most expensive remaining P.S.L.’s at $30,000. After Giants fans expressed reluctance to buy some corner mezzanine seats for $400 a game, the Giants reduced the price of 1,596 of them to $250, although the license fees for those seats remained $7,500. The P.S.L.’s, a new concept in the New York market, help pay the construction cost of the new stadium. Lites said they could be sold on the secondary market and transferred to new owners. P.S.L.’s allow fans the right to buy tickets perpetually. Lites said some customers with $10,000 P.S.L.’s for the Giants were already trying to sell their rights online for $20,000. “I don’t know if they’re successful,” Lites said. “We won’t recognize the transfer — unless it’s to an immediate family member — prior to 2011.” The sticker shock, as Lites called it, was felt throughout the waiting list for season tickets. Some fans waited for decades but refused to buy seats for 2010 when given the chance. One was Gina Alfonso of Nanuet, N.Y., who waited 24 years. “I got an e-mail saying there were tickets available and to grab them,” she said. “It said, ‘Dear Giants Wait List Member.’ ” But when she read the terms, she said, she was “surprised and disappointed” at the prices. “I didn’t call them,” she said. “It’s hard for a normal fan to go.” Albert Cruz of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., had a similar reaction when he was asked to renew his Jets season tickets for next year. He has sat in the fourth row for 25 years, he said. His tickets cost $90. For next year, he said, he was offered midlevel seats with P.S.L.’s from $8,000 to $9,000 and per-game prices of $400 to $500. “They’re just too darn expensive,” Cruz said. “As a loyal fan, I feel shafted.” The Jets said many customers were financing their licenses through the Jets at 6.5 percent interest over five years, or 8 percent over 15 years. The Giants said they had allowed some extended payment plans, but that few customers had requested them. “We decided very early on we did not want to play the role of being a financier,” Stevens said. The Jets’ top price for a P.S.L., outside of an auction, is $30,000 and the lowest is $4,000, according to their Web site. The Giants’ lowest P.S.L.’s sell for $1,000. The Jets will sell 27,000 seats in the upper bowl with no P.S.L.’s. But that will not matter to Ed Ranieri of Staten Island, who has had Jets season tickets since 1986. He is giving them up. “It got too expensive,” he said, adding: “They came out with a new stadium we don’t need. It’s all about the money. They ruined a nice thing. I still love the Jets, but I’ll watch on TV.”

Stadiums and Arenas
New York Giants
Football
New York Jets


In Voting Booth, Race May Play a Bigger Role

Abstract: WASHINGTON — With less than three weeks until Election Day, a big question is looming over the campaign for the White House, and it has nothing to do with the economic crisis or the caustic exchanges between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain over character and credentials. It is race. Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain almost never talk directly about it. In some cases, like the condemnation of the Republican ticket issued last weekend by Representative John Lewis , the Georgia Democrat who is a civil rights leader, the topic has come up openly: Mr. Lewis invoked George Wallace, the noted segregationist, in rebuking Mr. McCain as tolerating political rallies marked by crowds yelling insults and threats at Mr. Obama. But more often, it is found only in sentiments that are whispered, internalized or masked by discussions of culture or religion, and therefore hard to capture fully in polling or even to hear clearly in everyday conversation. Political strategists once assumed that polls might well overstate support for black candidates, since white voters might be reluctant to admit racially tinged sentiments to a pollster. Newer research has cast doubt on that assumption. Either way, the situation is confounding aides on both sides, who like everyone else are waiting to see what role race will play in the privacy of the voting booth. Harold Ickes, a Democrat who was the Rev. Jesse Jackson ’s senior adviser when he ran for president — and who worked in the civil rights movement in the 1960s and for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in her race against Mr. Obama this year — said that when he looked at polls now, he routinely shaved off a point or two from Mr. Obama’s number to account for hidden racial prejudices. That is no small factor, considering that Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are separated by very thin margins in many polls in battleground states. “If he were white, this would be a blowout,” Mr. Ickes said. “I think the country has come a long, long, long way since the 1960s. I think everybody would agree with that. But if you talk to people in certain states, they will say there are impulses that do not benefit Barack Obama because of the color of his skin.” Saul Anuzis, the Republican chairman in Michigan , said he had become accustomed to whispered asides from voters suggesting they would not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black. “We honestly don’t know how big an issue it is,” Mr. Anuzis said. But Representative Artur Davis, an African-American Democrat of Alabama , said race was no longer the automatic barrier to the White House that it once was. “There is a group of voters who will not vote for people who are opposite their race,” Mr. Davis said. “But I think that number is lower today than it has been at any point in our history. I don’t believe this campaign will be decided by race; there are too many other important issues. Jesse Jackson would not have been elected in 1988. But we’ve changed.” But it is hard to tell, as Mr. Ickes and Mr. Anuzis said, to what extent voters who are opposing Mr. Obama might seize other issues — his age and level of experience, his positions on the issues, his cultural and ideological background — as a shield. And if Mr. Obama is losing support simply because he is black, that is not a one-sided equation. A crucial part of Mr. Obama’s theory for winning the election is turning out blacks in places like Florida and North Carolina , a state that Mr. Obama’s advisers view as in play largely because of the significant African-American population. Voters on Race: Volunteers for Obama Face a Complex Issue In Generation Seen as Colorblind, Race Matters In South, Uncertainty Starts at Racial Identity Hot Topic Is Secondary in a Part of Colorado

2008 Presidential Election
Race
Barack Obama
Blacks,African-Americans


Oozing Through Texas Soil, a Team of Amoebas Billions Strong

Abstract: After producing superlatives like the world’s biggest statue of a jackrabbit and the nation’s most unpopular modern-day president, Texas can now boast what may be its most bizarre and undoubtedly its slimiest topper yet: the world’s largest known colony of clonal amoebas. Scientists found the vast and sticky empire stretching 40 feet across, consisting of billions of genetically identical single-celled individuals, oozing along in the muck of a cow pasture outside Houston. “It was very unexpected,” said Owen M. Gilbert, a graduate student at Rice University and lead author of the report in the March issue of Molecular Ecology. “It was like nothing we’d ever seen before.” Scientists say the discovery is much more than a mere curiosity, because the colony consists of what are known as social amoebas. Only an apparent oxymoron, social amoebas are able to gather in organized groups and behave cooperatively, some even committing suicide to help fellow amoebas reproduce. The discovery of such a huge colony of genetically identical amoebas provides insight into how such cooperation and sociality might have evolved and may help to explain why microbes are being found to show social behaviors more often than was expected. “It is of significant scientific interest,” said Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University who was not involved with the study. Though amoebas would seem unlikely to coordinate interactions with one another over much more than microscopic distances, the discovery of such a massive clonal colony, he said, “raises the possibility that cells might evolve to organize on much larger spatial scales.” Thoughts of a giant organized amoeba colony can conjure up visions of the 1958 horror classic “The Blob,” but these social amoebas, a species known as Dictyostelium discoideum, a kind of slime mold, are infinitely more subtle. Microscopic and tucked away in the dirt, the billions of amoebas would have gone unnoticed by anyone driving past the pasture. Joan Strassmann, an author on the paper along with another evolutionary biologist at Rice University, David Queller, said she and a team of undergraduates searched for the species by sticking drinking straws into dirt and cow dung to retrieve materials where the amoebas might be living. In the laboratory, they spread the samples on Petri dishes and waited to see what would grow. DNA analyses later showed that the huge numbers of amoebas collected from the pasture were genetically identical. Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, said the study was the first to clearly demonstrate “the extreme of relatedness” in social microbes, a population of genetically identical individuals. Such a colony provides the ideal conditions to foster the evolution of behaviors like cooperation, because the more genetically similar two organisms are, the more natural selection will favor their assisting each other. Dictyostelium, for example, can carry out stunning feats of cooperation, engaging in what’s known as suicidal altruism, a behavior in which individual amoebas come together to form a single body, with some amoebas sacrificing themselves to allow for more effective reproduction of amoebas in other parts of the body. Scientists said that if other species were also found to have such clonal colonies, that could help explain the surprisingly widespread finding of social behaviors among microbes. But just what conditions prompt the flourishing of clones remains unclear. Scientists said it was odd to find the slime molds thriving in an open field, as they prefer enclosed forest soils. It is possible that the lumbering cows fostered the growth of the giant clone colony by spreading the amoebas through the muck, said John Bonner, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. Meanwhile, as impressive (or even threatening) as a colony of a couple billion amoebas might sound, it has turned out to be surprisingly fragile. “Just one week later, it had rained a lot and then it basically was gone,” Mr. Gilbert said. Apparently, such is the fleeting nature of grand amoebic phenomena, for the Texas clone is not the first to dwindle inexplicably into nothingness. Scientists say that the last traces of what at one point may have been the world’s largest individual amoeba — and the star of a highly productive research program — shriveled in their laboratory last summer until it disappeared. Manfred Schliwa, a cell biologist at the University of Munich, first came across the organism, known as Reticulomyxa, quite by accident as it spread as a white slime across the fish tank in his office at the University of California at Berkeley where he was then a professor. The amoeba, a blob with no defined shape, bits of which could break off to take up a life of their own, fed so heartily off stray morsels of fish food that it eventually attained the status of giant among microbes, its body reaching more than an inch across. A single enormous cell, the amoeba was studied by Dr. Schliwa and colleagues to understand movement from one part of a cell to another, a process that was both easily visualized and carried out extremely rapidly in the big Reticulomyxa, which at its largest could house a billion or more nuclei as it constantly shuttled cell parts and whatnot across its titanic form. Dr. Schliwa, still mystified by the demise of the big-amoeba-that-couldn’t, said he hoped at some point to obtain a new wild Reticulomyxa, though under natural conditions the organism is much smaller and lives in the soil, making it difficult to spot. In fact, like the colony of social amoebas, the giant amoebas could be everywhere underfoot without anyone’s noticing. “I used to joke,” Dr. Schliwa said, “that there might be a giant organism in the soil spanning the entire continent and whenever you dig up a shovelful you get a piece of it.” So where will the next giant amoeba be found hiding? Dr. Schliwa points out that the original discovery of the amoeba-to-end-all-amoebas was made in the 1940s by a researcher named Ruth N. Nauss. She discovered the species in a New York City park.

Science and Technology
amoebas
Microbiology
Evolution
Texas


Don Raleigh, All-Star Center for Rangers, Dies at 86

Abstract: Don Raleigh , a Rangers All-Star center in the 1950s who became the first N.H.L. player to score sudden-death overtime goals in two consecutive games of a Stanley Cup final series, died on Tuesday in Kingston, Ontario. He was 86. The cause was complications of a fall in early August, his son, Jack, said. Playing 10 seasons in the N.H.L., all with the Rangers, Raleigh was a fine scorer and playmaker, but he weighed only 150 pounds or so, with a 5-foot-11-inch frame, bringing him the nickname Bones. Raleigh became the youngest player in Rangers history when he made his N.H.L. debut in 1943 at age 17, when many players were in the military in World War II . After serving in the Canadian Army, Raleigh returned to the Rangers in 1947 and had a few spectacular games that season, getting three assists in a span of 81 seconds against the Montreal Canadiens and four goals in a game against the Chicago Blackhawks. But Raleigh’s signature moments came in April 1950, when the Rangers met the Detroit Red Wings for the Stanley Cup championship. The Rangers had to play all their games on the road — five in Detroit and two on neutral ice in Toronto — with the circus at Madison Square Garden. Raleigh scored the winning goals in the first overtime period at Detroit’s Olympia arena in Games 4 and 5. “I’ve always said the best shot in hockey is a one-timer — shooting the puck right off the pass,” he told John Halligan and John Kreiser in the oral history “Game of My Life: New York Rangers” (2006). Raleigh recalled that both his overtime goals came on just that kind of shot. The Rangers led the series by three games to two after Raleigh’s winning goals, but the Red Wings evened the series in Game 6. Game 7 was tied at 3-3 in the second overtime period when Raleigh missed two scoring chances. “I think one of them went over my stick, and I believe I hit the post or the crossbar with the other,” he said. The Red Wings’ Pete Babando scored later in that second overtime to give Detroit the championship. Raleigh’s feat in the finals was unmatched until 1993, when John LeClair of the Montreal Canadiens scored in two consecutive games against the Los Angeles Kings. James Donald Raleigh was born on June 27, 1926, in Kenora, Ontario, and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His best regular season came in 1951-52, when he had 19 goals and 42 assists. Raleigh was an All-Star in 1951 and 1954 and had 101 career goals and 219 assists. He owned an insurance agency in Winnipeg after leaving hockey but moved to Kingston in his later years to be near his son, a physician. He is also survived by a brother, Jack, and five grandchildren. His wife, Janice, died in 2006. When the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, they ended a 54-year championship drought. It might have been a mere 44 years if Raleigh had caught a break in that second overtime of Game 7 in 1950. As he put it in 2006: “It was heartbreaking. To have the Stanley Cup that close and not get it was terrible.”

Raleigh Don
Hockey Ice
Deaths (Obituaries)
New York Rangers


Suspect in Mumbai Attacks, Ajmal Kasab, Recants Confession

Abstract: MUMBAI, India — A Pakistani man who confessed in court to being one of the gunmen in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai last year recanted on Friday, saying the Indian police had framed him. It was the latest flip-flop from the suspect, Ajmal Kasab , who made a dramatic and detailed confession in July , explaining his role as one of 10 Pakistanis who attacked two luxury hotels, a busy train station and a Jewish center, killing more than 160 people over three days in November 2008. Photographs and security tape show him and a partner firing at commuters at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, and dozens of witnesses have identified him. Nine of the attackers were killed in battles with the police. Mr. Kasab, 21, confessed when he was arrested at the time of the attacks, but pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial and said the police had tortured him. His trial, on charges that include murder and waging war on India, began in April. In his confession in July, however, he appeared to confirm his guilt and said he wanted to be hanged. He described how he and an accomplice, Abu Ismail, had prowled the train station with automatic weapons and hand grenades. They killed more than 50 people, he said. In court two days later, Mr. Kasab insisted that his admission was not an attempt to avoid the death penalty. “If anybody is worried that I am trying to escape death by hanging, I’m not,” he declared in court. “If that’s the punishment I am given, so be it.” At the time, the judge accepted his confession into the record but said the trial would go on. On Friday, he told the court he had arrived in Mumbai 20 days before the attacks started. He said the police picked him up a few days before Nov. 26, the first night of the assault. He said the police later shot him to make it look as if he had been involved in the attack. Mr. Kasab said it was only after his arrest that he encountered David C. Headley, the American who was charged with helping identify targets in Mumbai for the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Mr. Kasab said several F.B.I. agents were with Mr. Headley when the two men were brought together. Mr. Headley has pleaded not guilty. Mr. Kasab’s previous lawyer, who was recently dismissed by the judge overseeing the case, has expressed concerns about Mr. Kasab’s mental stability. Mr. Kasab is in solitary confinement in a fortified cell built for him in one of the city’s oldest jails. It appeared unlikely that Mr. Kasab’s latest statements would have a big impact on the trial. The prosecution finished presenting its case earlier this week.

Mumbai (India)
Kasab Mohammed Ajmal
Confessions
Suits and Litigation
Terrorism


To Court or Shun the Wealth of Nations

Abstract: A PROMINENT American financier, weary from weeks on the money trail that leads through Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha and Dubai, called in recently with these impressions from the road: “They are scratching their heads, they don’t want to be underappreciated or made a fool of,” he said of the executives managing more than $1 trillion in sovereign and central bank funds. “They invest in these financial institutions, lose their shirts and then they are criticized in Congress.” They are really upset, he said. And get this, he added: “If you are a Saudi, you have to get your visa signed off by Homeland Security. I mean, why would you want to bail out a bank — you couldn’t even come to the closing dinner.” The relationship between client and banker is perhaps the most delicate of Wall Street’s minuets, so this executive asked to remain anonymous. But his concerns are shared by more and more Wall Street executives who criticize the increased scrutiny imposed on sovereign funds, which invest the wealth of their governments. The scrutiny ranges from calls for increased transparency to Congressional inquiries into their tax status, and runs the risk of driving away the world’s largest pool of capital just when the United States economy needs it most. “Why are we attacking sovereign funds when the core problem is hedge fund transparency,” said Laurence D. Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, which manages $1 trillion in assets, and who has sovereign funds among his largest clients. “No one questioned them when they bought the billions of dollars of our bonds. I mean, they are financing our deficit. What this scrutiny will do is force them to invest elsewhere.” As always with Wall Street, there is much self-interest going on here. For decades, sovereign funds, which now top $2 trillion in assets and are expected to surpass $12 trillion by 2015, have been major clients of financial firms. According to a recent survey, half of that $2 trillion is externally managed. Besides paying fees, funds have become something of a lender of last resort for banks traumatized by the credit crunch. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, managing an estimated $600 billion to $800 billion, has paid $7.6 billion for a 4.9 percent stake in Citigroup. The Kuwait Investment Authority, the oldest of all the sovereign funds, which manages about $250 billion, has invested $5 billion in Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, while Morgan Stanley and Blackstone have received cash infusions from the China Investment Corporation. All told, according to Dealogic, a financial services research firm, sovereign funds invested $48 billion in deals in 2007 and $16 billion so far this year. Still, there may be something to Wall Street’s lament. With the balance sheets of many investment banks exposed to toxic, illiquid mortgage-linked securities, and with the collapse of Bear Stearns so fresh, no one is discounting the possibility of more visits by chief executives to distant capitals. The disclosure on Tuesday that UBS will seek new funds of about $15 billion underscores this view. The question is whether the funds, especially those in the Middle East, where capital is accumulating the fastest and where sensitivities surrounding disclosure have been most acute, will be as eager to invest the second time around. Citic Securities, an investment bank with ties to the Chinese government, provided a vivid reminder of the perils of buying stakes in Wall Street banks before the depths of their problems are known. Citic committed to invest $1 billion in Bear Stearns, but luckily never closed the deal. What sovereign funds will do is a question that looms all the larger, given that the United States economy is weak and growth remains relatively vibrant in economies like those of China, India, Brazil and Turkey. “There is a concern in the financial community that there have been signals of hostility to sovereign wealth investors,” said Todd M. Malan, the president of the Organization for International Investment, a lobbying group representing corporations investing in the United States. “That has the potential to be negative for the U.S. economy at a moment that we need foreign investment.” There have been recent signs of an accommodation addressing concerns in Washington that the funds need to disclose more. For their part, the funds want to preserve their tradition of not showing too much of their investment hand. Abu Dhabi and Singapore reached an agreement with the Treasury in which their funds would invest using commercial, not political, criteria and the United States would not impose restrictions on such investments. While the accord stated the obvious — the two funds are recognized as the most professional of the sovereign funds — it was hailed by lawmakers. Still, rumblings persist that Congressional inquiry may continue. Earlier this month, the two ranking members of the Senate Finance Committee sent a letter to the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan group in Congress that monitors tax policy, asking that it examine how these entities are taxed so as to help “understand the role of tax policy in the sovereign wealth fund puzzle.” Currently, there is no tax imposed on passive income accruing to foreign governments from investments in the United States. But any hint that sovereign funds may have their tax status questioned would be one more reason for them to take their business elsewhere. “These inquiries are broadly healthy,” said Douglas Rediker, a former investment banker who studies sovereign funds for the New America Foundation. “But we should be doing our fair share to see that we get investment rather than pushing it away.” The suspicion surrounding these funds has mainly focused on the Middle East — a holdover, perhaps, from the failure of the proposed sale of six United States seaports to DP World of Dubai. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are by nature cautious, sensitive to maintaining the broad contours of their long strategic relationship with the United States. Even so, some comments by the executives of the funds betray frustration. “Sovereign wealth funds have been found guilty before being proven innocent,” said Muhammad al-Jasser, the vice governor of the Saudi Monetary Agency, earlier this year. The agency oversees $300 billion in government funds and has yet to make a publicly disclosed investment in a troubled American financial institution. “There is a lot of worry about sovereign wealth funds, but all of them are assumptions,” said Bader al-Saad, who heads the Kuwait Investment Authority, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in February. So far, there is no sign of a buyers’ strike. And the region’s continued support of a policy that links Middle East currencies to the sinking dollar suggests a willingness to help United States financial policy. But, as in all complicated relationships, there are limits. “Since 9/11, Middle Eastern investors feel very frustrated in how they have been treated in the U.S.,” said Shibley Telhami, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Maryland. “The question is if the lingering bitterness from the port deal is going to outweigh the stretched hand of needy institutions. So far, it has not.”

Sovereign Wealth Funds
United States Economy
Banks and Banking


Vuitton Is Embracing Medium of the Masses

Abstract: IN an unusual marketing move for a fashion and luxury goods brand, Louis Vuitton said Tuesday that it planned to advertise on television for the first time, with a travel-themed 90-second spot that was shot in France, Spain, India and Japan. The campaign, which will start Feb. 15, will run on cable and satellite television channels and in movie theaters around the world, the company said. It shows ordinary people, rather than celebrities like Catherine Deneuve, Andre Agassi and Mikhail Gorbachev, who are featured in a current print campaign for the label. Louis Vuitton, a unit of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, described the advertisement as “the first ever on-screen corporate campaign by a luxury house.” High-end fashion brands and luxury goods companies have generally avoided television advertising, sticking mostly to magazines and, in some cases, newspapers. Television advertising can be expensive, and many luxury goods companies, particularly European family-owned concerns, have operated on relatively small advertising budgets. (The holding company LVMH, based in Paris, is not family owned.) Also, image-conscious fashion brands have been wary about undermining their aura of exclusivity with appeals to mass-market television audiences. An exception is Chanel, which made a splash about three years ago with a two-minute TV ad for Chanel No. 5 perfume. Starring Nicole Kidman, it reportedly cost more than $30 million to make. The Louis Vuitton ad aims to promote the brand itself, rather than a specific product. A Louis Vuitton bag makes only a fleeting appearance in the ad, which asks, “Where will life take you?” “It is supposed to touch our clientele and viewers in ways that perhaps other media will not touch,” said Pietro Beccari, Louis Vuitton’s head of marketing. “This is a way to say Louis Vuitton is different. It is something éphémère, but also something that stays.”  Mr. Beccari said the ad would be particularly useful in reaching new audiences in fast-growing markets like China, where the image of Louis Vuitton may be less established than in Western countries. The company said it would run the ad in “rigorously selected cinemas” and on cable and satellite channels that were likely to attract well-traveled audiences. These will include news channels like CNN and BBC World, which many business travelers watch in their hotel rooms, as well as outlets like the Golf Channel, Mr. Beccari said. “We will not use television in the way Nutella is using it,” he said, referring to the chocolate-hazelnut spread. Mr. Beccari declined to say how much Louis Vuitton would spend on the campaign. Referring to the television channel with the biggest audience in France, he added: “We will not be on TF1.” Even without television advertising, sales of Louis Vuitton products have been rising. The brand, including clothing, recorded a double-digit sales increase in the first nine months of last year, the company said, with particularly rapid growth in China.  Like impulse buyers in a Louis Vuitton boutique, Mr. Beccari and Yves Carcelle, the chief executive of Louis Vuitton, did not hesitate in deciding to use television ads. A proposal put together by the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, part of the WPP Group, showed a collage of moody still images from a variety of films, Mr. Beccari said, and it struck the right tone for the brand, which has been trying to focus on its travel heritage after several years of glitzier marketing for the fashion line. “We both got goose bumps and said, ‘This is the direction we want to go,’ ” Mr. Beccari said.

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA
Advertising and Marketing
Television
Vuitton Louis


N.F.C. Wild-Card Matchup: Detroit Lions at Dallas Cowboys

Abstract: Lions (11-5) at Cowboys (12-4) 4:40 p.m. Sunday, Line: Cowboys by 7 Tony Romo has been mentioned in the most valuable player discussion along with Aaron Rodgers and J. J. Watt, but one could argue he has not even been the most valuable player of the Dallas offense. The Cowboys seemed to thrive on a combination of dominant play by the offensive line and game-changing running by DeMarco Murray. In his fourth year, Murray finally put together a season promised by his occasional breakout games in the past. He rushed for 100 yards or more 12 times and broke Emmitt Smith’s franchise record for rushing yards, leading the N.F.L. with 1,845 on 392 carries. Once written off as too fragile, Murray was a workhorse who kept pushing forward every time doubters thought he might be running out of gas. Now Murray and the stellar Dallas offensive line will get a true test by going against Detroit’s brick wall of a front seven led by Ndamukong Suh. After being suspended for appearing to intentionally step on the leg of Rodgers in Week 17, Suh was cleared to play and fined $70,000 instead. Suh’s presence changes the dynamic of the game. If he can shut down Murray, all bets are off. Pick : Lions

Football
DeMarco Murray
Tony Romo
Dallas Cowboys
Detroit Lions


Pedro Espada Jr. and Son Arraigned on U.S. Charges

Abstract: There was no swagger, and no theatrical denunciation of his political rivals. The Pedro Espada Jr. who entered a federal courtroom in Brooklyn on Wednesday afternoon appeared as a besieged figure, his face drawn and his manner subdued as a judge arraigned him and a son on embezzlement and conspiracy charges. Mr. Espada, a Democrat who has served as the State Senate majority leader, and the son, Pedro Gautier Espada, each pleaded not guilty to five charges of siphoning more than half a million dollars in federal money from the network of Bronx health care clinics Mr. Espada founded and spending it on meals, theater tickets and a lavish birthday party, among other expenses. Prosecutors in the case, which is being handled by Assistant United States Attorneys Colleen Kavanagh, Ilene Jaroslaw and Todd Kaminsky, along with Special Assistant United States Attorney Mitra Hormozi, and lawyers for the defense agreed on $750,000 in bail, secured by the men’s spouses. Mr. Espada and his son, a former state assemblyman, both agreed to surrender their passports and restrict their travel to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. They each face five charges of embezzlement and one count of conspiracy. If convicted on all counts, Mr. Espada and his son would each face a maximum sentence of 55 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine. During Mr. Espada’s quarter-century-long political career, he rose to become the state’s highest-ranking Latino elected official. He was soundly defeated in September in a primary bid to retain his Senate seat. Emerging from the courthouse after the 30-minute hearing, Mr. Espada spoke briefly about his life’s work and his history with the clinics, known as the Soundview HealthCare Network, which he founded in his 20s and turned into a major health care provider in the South Bronx. The clinics, Mr. Espada told a crowd of reporters, had “provided millions of visits over those years to people who would otherwise go without care.” “I do have abiding faith in the justice system, in the people who decide these matters,” he added, “and I look forward to a full and complete vindication in court.” The criminal trial will be presided over by Judge Frederic Block of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District. The judge originally assigned to the case, Eric N. Vitaliano, recused himself on Tuesday because he served in the Assembly with the younger Mr. Espada, in the 1990s. Mr. Espada also faces a civil lawsuit filed last April by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo , accusing him of stealing millions of dollars from the clinics, stacking the network’s board with friends and political allies and guaranteeing himself a $9 million severance package that would bankrupt the nonprofit organization if it was granted. That case is effectively delayed until the federal prosecution is concluded. Mr. Cuomo, who is the governor-elect, has sought to avoid shutting down Soundview so as not to interrupt medical care for the clinics’ thousands of patients. Though Mr. Espada remains president of Soundview, Mr. Cuomo would probably seek an injunction if Mr. Espada sought to collect the severance package.

Espada Pedro Jr
Espada Pedro Gautier
Soundview HealthCare Network
Embezzlement
New York State
Block Frederic
Cuomo Andrew M
Medicine and Health
State Legislatures


Canadian Conservatives Accused of Campaign Violations

Abstract: Two Conservative members of the Senate, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper ’s former campaign manager, and two former Conservative party officials were charged with several violations of campaign finance laws, Elections Canada announced Friday. The agency said the Conservatives exceeded campaign spending limits by $1.3 million in the 2006 election. According to the agency, the party improperly channeled spending for national campaign advertising through the budgets of local candidates. Fred DeLorey, a spokesman for the party, said it followed all financing rules. “We did nothing wrong,” he said.

Canada
Elections
Politics and Government
Law and Legislation
Harper Stephen J


ISIS Tightens Its Grip With Seizure of Air Base in Syria

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Extremist fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria seized a military base in northern Syria on Sunday from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, further solidifying control inside their self-declared Islamic state spanning the Syria-Iraq border. The fall of the Tabqa air base followed the group’s seizing of two other Syrian military bases and gave it effective control of Raqqa Province, which abuts the Turkish border and whose capital city, Raqqa, has long served as the group’s de facto headquarters. Recent military advances by ISIS in northern and eastern Syria have highlighted the lack of local military forces that can effectively battle the group, which President Obama last week called a “cancer” that must be eradicated from the Middle East. Syrian rebel groups that formed to fight Mr. Assad’s government never managed to take the air base, and while Mr. Assad’s forces have been bombing ISIS from the air and killing its fighters, they lack the ground troops necessary to challenge the group’s hold on terrain. The United States began airstrikes on ISIS positions in Iraq this month, leading to some advances by Iraqi and Kurdish forces. But Mr. Obama has declined to intervene in Syria’s civil war. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights , which tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts inside Syria, said ISIS’ attack on Sunday was its fourth in the past week. The Syrian government had launched airstrikes on ISIS positions, but the group’s fighters managed to enter the grounds of the air base on Sunday and took it over after many of the troops inside withdrew. More than 340 ISIS fighters have been killed since the start of the offensive on Tuesday, the Observatory said, in addition to about 170 government soldiers. If confirmed, those numbers would make the battle the deadliest yet between the jihadist movement and the Syrian government. Photographs posted Sunday on Twitter accounts sympathetic to ISIS showed bearded fighters in the air base, standing next to a destroyed fighter jet and appearing to cut the head off a dead soldier. The Observatory and an antigovernment activist reached through Skype nearby said that all the working aircraft had been flown out of the base before ISIS stormed in. The Syrian state news service, SANA, acknowledged that government troops had withdrawn from the air base but said they had successfully “regrouped” and were still fighting nearby.

Syria
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Iraq
Military Bases
Terrorism
Bashar al-Assad
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
Tabqa air base


New Leak Found at Fukushima Nuclear Plant

Abstract: TOKYO — Efforts to remove highly contaminated water from a leaking underground storage pool at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant were delayed on Sunday when the plant’s operator said it had found yet another leak, this time in the pipes that would be used to move the water to above-ground storage containers. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, said it has found that almost six gallons of water leaked from a junction in the pipes that are currently used to move water between other storage pools. The company is struggling to find space to store the huge amounts of toxic water that are created by makeshift efforts to cool reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was damaged two years ago by a large earthquake and tsunami. Since then, the operator has been essentially pouring water onto the melted reactors and nearby fuel storage pools to keep them from overheating again. While small, the newest leak will force Tepco to postpone removal of water from the No. 2 storage pool for several days while the company repairs the faulty pipe junction. The pool has spilled some 32,000 gallons of radioactive water, and appears to still be leaking. Some of that water may have been trapped in the multiple layers of lining in the pool, but an undetermined amount reached the soil below, Tepco said. The newest leak adds to a series of mishaps that have raised questions about Tepco’s ability to safely manage the stricken plant. That included the temporary loss last month of power for the vital cooling systems after a rat apparently short-circuited part of the electrical system.

Tokyo
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Water
HazMat
Tokyo Electric Power
Japan Earthquake Tsunami


China Is Taking Its First Census Since 2000

Abstract: BEIJING — China began tallying its population on Monday for the first time since 2000, an arduous task likely to be made even tougher by the need to count scores of millions of migrant workers in the nation’s big cities. The government said it had sent out more than six million census takers to survey 400 million households, including the shantytowns and dormitories that often are home to rural men who have flooded into the cities to work in factories and on construction projects. In the five censuses since the Communist government took power in 1949, migrants were listed as living where their homes were registered, instead of where they actually lived. By disregarding the hukou, as the household registration system that ties government benefits to a person’s hometown is called, the government hopes to get its first accurate count of city dwellers. The last major census a decade ago counted 1.265 billion mainland Chinese citizens, of which 807 million were recorded as living in rural areas. The latest United Nations estimate two years ago projected that the population would reach 1.396 billion this year, and the organization’s 2003 estimate projected that by this year the population would be split about equally between cities and rural areas. But analyses vary widely, and the sheer volume of migrants — 160 million is the middle ground of estimates — are a demographic wild card that could reshape perceptions of China’s population. The 2010 census is expected not only to better document the rural-to-urban migration but also to shed new light on a number of impending demographic shifts, including a rapid fall in the number of young people, a sharp growth in the number of elderly people and a decline in the size of the work force. Those and other trends may lessen some of the social and economic pressures on Chinese society, like the furious scramble to create enough jobs for new workers. But they are also likely to create others, including rising costs for social services like pensions and changes in the structure of the economy. Census officials said in a briefing last week that they were taking extra steps to encourage cooperation from some classes of citizens who might hide from census takers, including undocumented migrant laborers and families that have quietly violated a 30-year-old policy limiting many households to one child. As an inducement to stand up and be counted, census officials are promising that the survey results will be confidential. They also say that families with more than one child who choose to register excess children with the government will get a break on the stiff fine normally levied on violators — and be allowed to pay on the installment plan if need be. Hukou violators will also be offered a similar deal. Other inducements are more subtle: To avoid scaring away the vast number of families presumed to have hidden money from tax officials, the 18-question census form does not ask about income. Nor does it ask about religious preferences, a touchy topic in a nation that is officially atheist , but has a burgeoning number of worshipers in underground churches. Most questions cover mundane topics like age, gender, literacy, education and the size of families and homes. One in 10 people will be asked to fill out a more detailed 45-question survey. “It is harder to gather accurate information this time than the previous five national censuses,” Xing Zhihong, the deputy head of the Beijing census effort, told China Daily, a state-run English-language newspaper. “Not all residents are willing to reveal personal information.” In true Chinese fashion, banners urging cooperation with census takers — in green rather than the traditional red — have been strung across streets for weeks. Whether the efforts will produce a more accurate count, however, is unclear. In a recent online poll conducted by the Internet portal sina.com, roughly a third of respondents said they were wary of cooperating with census takers. This census brings another landmark change in the head count. For the first time, the government is counting the rising number of foreigners in the nation, albeit via a smaller eight-question survey. The results of the census are expected to be released in April.


Petitions Challenge South Dakota Abortion Ban

Abstract: Advocates for abortion rights filed petitions with more than 38,000 signatures with the secretary of state's office to challenge the state's ban on almost all abortions. The campaign needs at least 16,728 signatures to put the ban, which became law in March, to a statewide vote in November. The state election supervisor, Kea Warne, said the signatures would be verified within the next month. The ban was to go into effect on July 1, but it could be delayed until after the referendum if enough signatures are verified.


In Saudi Arabia, Thousands at Funeral of Protester

Abstract: CAIRO — Thousands of people attended a funeral in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a man killed during protests in a restive region of the country’s Eastern Province, a show of popular anger that came amid fears of a renewed crackdown on dissent. Videos posted on social networking sites on Tuesday night showed an avenue filled with rows of chanting mourners. Other videos showed youths throwing incendiary devices at what appeared to be a police car, and rocks at a government building. Activists said the man, Muhammed el-Filfil, had been protesting the shooting and arrest on Sunday by government security forces of a prominent Shiite cleric in the Qatif region. Mr. Filfil was one of at least two people killed when security forces fired live ammunition at the protesters in the village of Awamiya, the activists said. A government official denied that any such clash had occurred. The oil-rich Eastern Province, the stronghold of Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority, has long been a focal point of anger at the rigidly conservative Sunni monarchy, and for Shiite complaints about a policy of entrenched, official discrimination. Over the last year and a half, fearing the spread of the Arab uprisings, the government, using a mix of money and arms, moved forcefully to quell the discontent in places like Qatif. Jafer al-Shayeb, a member of Qatif’s municipal council, said despite offers of development from the government, “There have been no solutions to the major issues that people are complaining about.” The unrest has persisted, fueled by detentions of dissidents and growing calls for political freedoms and civil rights. At least nine people have been killed since February 2011 in bouts of violence that seem to occur every few months, according to human-rights activists. The latest clashes came after the arrest of the cleric, Sheik Nimr al-Nimr, who was known as a protest leader and a fierce critic of the royal family. There were conflicting accounts about how he was injured, with the government asserting that he was shot during an exchange of gunfire as he resisted arrest. Mr. Nimr’s brother told Reuters the cleric was detained while driving from a farm to his house. In a short video said to show Mr. Nimr immediately after his arrest, he is lying in the back seat of a car, with blood on his white robe and a uniformed man holding his head. The government said Mr. Nimr had been charged with “sedition.” During the large protests in Awamiya after the arrest, Mr. Filfil and another man, Akbar el-Shakhoury, were fatally shot during clashes with security officers, according to Waleed Sulais, a human-rights activist in Qatif. Mr. Sulais said that the government was often quick to resort to live ammunition and said that in addition to the deaths over the last year and a half, at least 35 protesters had been injured by gunfire in the same period. In a statement to Reuters on Monday, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the number of protesters on Sunday was “limited” and “there was no security confrontation whatsoever.” Mr. Shayeb, the Qatif council member, said that the unrest had come after months of relative calm in the region.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


China Stand on Imports Upsets U.S.

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 — Few American industries have had more success in selling goods to China than makers of medical devices like X-rays, pacemakers and patient monitors. Which is why a recent Chinese decree was so troubling. The directive, issued in June, called for burdensome new safety inspections for foreign-made medical devices — but not for those made in China. The Bush administration is crying foul. Even more worrisome to the administration is that the directive seems part of a recent pattern in which Chinese officials issue new regulations aimed at favoring Chinese industries over foreign competitors, despite efforts by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to ease economic tensions. “There is clearly a growing economic nationalism in China that is leading to discrimination against foreign investors in pillar sectors of the economy,” said Myron Brilliant, vice president for Asia at the United States Chamber of Commerce. “It’s not only a threat to foreign investors but it also undermines China’s transition to a market-based economy.” The Chinese actions and the administration’s concerns threaten to roil the atmosphere when Mr. Paulson goes to China in early December with other cabinet members in another round of the “strategic economic dialogue” that he began in September 2006. After seeking to defuse lingering trade disputes with China for the last 15 months, Mr. Paulson instead may have to tamp down fresh outbreaks. “I can’t tell you how many companies have come up to me — software, chemicals, autos — who say they’re concerned about the trend,” said a senior administration official, speaking anonymously to avoid antagonizing the Chinese. “We’re very troubled about the long-term direction on some of these policies.” The American concerns are shared in Europe, which like the United States, is growing more upset about the trade deficit with China. “What we’re seeing are growing industrial interests lobbying state authorities in China and giving them preferential treatment,” Peter Mandelson, the top trade envoy of the European Union, said in an interview. “The result is clear discrimination against foreign companies.” There has been little progress on Mr. Paulson’s top priority of getting China to let the value of its currency rise, a step that would make imports from China more expensive and exports to China cheaper, and there are worries that the dialogue will increasingly be seen as useless. “I wouldn’t say it has hurt, but it has not helped very much,” said Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Clearly the Chinese see the dialogue as a stalling mechanism to prevent Congress from putting up barriers to Chinese goods.” Mr. Paulson and his top aides say the dialogue has been beneficial by providing a framework in which to resolve disputes, even if it has yielded few short-term results. Even though exports to China are advancing at a rapid pace, they have done little to ease the alarms in Congress over the trade deficit with China, which this year is running well ahead of the $232 billion level of last year. “The U.S.-China economic relationship has an enormous and growing amount of complexity,” said David H. McCormick, under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs. “In some areas we are making progress. In other areas, we’re not making enough progress. But the agenda remains in the interest of both countries.” Mr. McCormick said he did not think the actions by China in the last year were new but instead reflected many years of Chinese industrial policy favoring domestic industries in aerospace and shipbuilding. But the medical device industry is one of several that seems to have been the target recently, administration officials say. The fear in Washington is that the growth of sales by big manufacturers like Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, and Boston Scientific, which have doubled since 2002, could be set back. “If this decision is not reversed,” said Nancy S. Travis, a vice president of AdvaMed, the industry trade association, “it will result in boxes and boxes of medical devices piling up in Chinese ports, while potentially similar domestically produced medical devices are freely sold in the market.” Beyond the medical device sector were many other examples cited in a report in September by the Chamber of Commerce, drawing on the experience of businesses operating in China. China, said the report, had become “increasingly sophisticated at developing and wielding industrial policies” in procurement, standards and antimonopoly laws to the disadvantage of foreign investors and importers. Among the examples cited are standards for wireless technology, mobile phones and mobile phone batteries that favor Chinese companies, as well as antimonopoly laws that exempt Chinese government enterprises. In the last year, the Commerce Department and the Office of the United States Trade Representative have adopted tougher tactics, authorizing the expansion of duties on Chinese imports and taking China to court at the World Trade Organization. In response, China has denounced the American tactics and countersued at the W.T.O. For a time, administration officials say, China shut down its talks with the trade office over Chinese piracy and counterfeiting of software, drugs and videos. Administration officials also say that the recent furor over the safety of Chinese food, toys, toothpaste and other products has taken its toll in the economic relationship, and they hope that Mr. Paulson’s visit in December coincides with some new agreements to improve safety standards in both countries. The American medical device industry, according to some China experts, may be a victim of retaliation by some Chinese authorities because of complaints by the United States over unsafe and dangerous exports of Chinese products. These experts say that China’s consumer product safety authority has been discredited by the recent disclosures of tainted products. That appears to have opened the door for a separate customs bureaucracy, which issued the new regulation that worries the Bush administration, to grab power from a rival agency. Of particular concern to Mr. Paulson have been efforts to open up China to access by American banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. A former top executive at Goldman Sachs who had done many deals with China over the years, Mr. Paulson started the dialogue in part to accomplish this goal. The Chinese lifted some limits on access by financial firms during the last round six months ago. But the United States continues to complain about caps on foreign investment of financial service companies and limits on foreign ownership of Chinese banks. But even those skeptical of the results of Mr. Paulson’s initiative say it has helped defuse some of the tension between the nations. “If you look at the problems of the last few months, like the product safety issue, the strategic dialogue has served as a mechanism for dealing with them,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, director of the China program at the Brookings Institution. “If the Chinese didn’t have confidence in Paulson, we probably would have seen some uglier retaliations.”

China
International Trade and World Market
Paulson Henry M Jr
United States Economy


Treasury Auctions Set for This Week

Abstract: The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week includes Monday’s regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday. At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.01 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.04 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.00 percent. The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week: TUESDAY New York Development Corporation, $551.9 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. New York Urban Development Corporation, $157.4 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. University of Illinois, $52.2 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. WEDNESDAY District of Columbia, $210.5 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. ONE DAY DURING THE WEEK Bexar County, Tex., $50 million of a combination of tax and revenue certificates of obligation. Loop Capital Markets. California Statewide Communities Development Authority, $96.2 million of student housing revenue bonds. Barclays Capital. Detroit, $493.4 million of water supply system revenue bonds. Siebert Brandford Shank. Georgia Municipal Electric Authority, $263.6 million of electric system bonds. Goldman Sachs. Massachusetts State College Building Authority, $155 million of revenue refinancing bonds. Barclays Capital. Maryland Stadium Authority, $102 million of sports facilities lease revenue refinancing bonds. Barclays Capital. New Orleans Parish School Board, $79.1 million of revenue bonds. Morgan Keegan. New York City Housing Development Corporation, $154 million of affordable housing revenue bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. New York State Housing Finance Agency, $133.9 million of affordable housing revenue bonds. Ramirez. North Carolina, $156 million of debt securities. Bank of America. Ohio Water Development Authority, $65.6 million of water pollution control loan fund refinancing revenue bonds. Morgan Stanley. Ohio Water Development Authority, $77 million of water pollution control loan fund refinancing revenue bonds. Bank of America. Oklahoma City, $80.2 million of general obligation bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. Pennsylvania Economic Development Finance Authority, $112 million of revenue bonds. Citigroup Global Markets. Puerto Rico Infrastructure Financing Authority, $568.2 million of revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securities. Virginia Housing Development Authority, $156.1 million of taxable rental housing bonds. Morgan Keegan. District of Columbia, $200 million of tax secured revenue bonds. Wells Fargo Securities.


Ferns Have a Two-Pace Catapult System for Spores

Abstract: Unlike most other plants, ferns reproduce without seeds or flowers. Instead, they use spores, which are flung out into the world by a structure called an annulus, which sits on the underside of the leaves. A new study in the journal Science explains how this catapultlike mechanism works. “The mechanism has been known for at least a century,” said the first author, Xavier Noblin , a researcher at the University of Nice and the National Center for Scientific Research in France. “The new thing is to use a high-speed camera to see it.” In a manmade catapult, a crossbar stops the arm of the catapult midway, ensuring that the ammunition is launched into the air instead of into the ground. With the high-speed camera, Dr. Noblin and his colleagues were able to see that the spongelike annulus unfurls, and then closes on two different time scales as it launches spores. The first snap occurs as it would in any elastic material that is pulled back and then released. This happens within a few tens of microseconds. The second snap is also fast, but slower than the first, occurring in tens of milliseconds. (A millisecond, one-thousandth of a second, equals 1,000 microseconds.) This happens as water flows through the walls of the annulus. This slower time scale ensures that the catapult’s motion is abruptly arrested, just as a crossbar halts movement in a manmade catapult. Because of this, the spores are ejected outward and away. “I think we can really learn from this,” Dr. Noblin said. “I am sure it will be used in technology. Our first motivation was to just understand why.”

Flowers and Plants
Science and Technology
Reproduction (Biological)
Science (Journal)