Hurricane News, Mostly Uninterrupted by Ads

Abstract: THE effects of Irene — as hurricane, tropical storm or wet and wild troublemaker — had marketers, agencies, media companies and retailers scrambling all weekend and into the new workweek. By some estimates, Irene became the most disruptive news event for advertising plans since Sept. 11, 2001. Tens of millions of dollars of commercials and print advertisements were canceled or postponed to accommodate the decisions by television, radio and newspaper executives to devote sustained coverage to the storm. For instance, in New York City, television news programming was continuous on stations owned by the national networks. They pre-empted regular network and local programming for more than 36 hours. “We weren’t paying attention to the revenue stream during the height of the storm,” said Peter Dunn, president and general manager of WCBS-TV, Channel 2. “We did run a couple of breaks, but it was very, very little compared with what we normally run.” “When you’re in the heat of it, you want to make sure to get the best coverage to viewers,” said Mr. Dunn, who is also president of the CBS Television Stations division of the CBS Corporation. “Then you think about making advertisers whole.” His counterpart at another channel agreed. “This is the Super Bowl for a news operation,” said Michael Jack, president and general manager at WNBC-TV, Channel 4, part of the NBCUniversal unit of Comcast. “While nobody relishes it,” he said, “everybody inside 30 Rock understands that in a weather emergency we will roll with weather programming that’s important and appropriate.” The “vast majority” of Channel 4’s coverage ran without commercials, Mr. Jack said, except for breaks “during an anchor switch or if we didn’t have video cued up” to run. “Most advertisers are very cooperative and understanding,” he added. “They get that we need to get information to viewers.” Some marketers seek out special news programming like storm coverage as sponsorship opportunities. They ask Channel 4 or other news media to run their ads if and when pitches are being carried. Those advertisers recognize that “more people are watching television” at such times, Mr. Jack said — assuming the power remains on. Among them are insurers like Allstate, Farmers, Geico and Travelers along with retailers like Walgreens. For example, Walgreens ran commercials on New York radio stations urging consumers to shop there for storm supplies like batteries. On radio, Geico, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, has “a special rotation” of commercials for before and after major weather events, said Dean Jarrett, a spokesman for the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., a unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies that is the longtime creative agency for Geico. The first phase, before a storm, is composed of spots that advise, “Don’t forget to prepare,” Mr. Jarrett said, and “the second phase says, ‘We hope you’re safe and if you have any issue, give us a call’ ” to make a claim. Geico was also among the advertisers that sponsored the occasional commercial breaks during coverage of Irene on the Weather Channel. Others included Farmers and Bayer aspirin. There is an equivalent of those buys in the new media, in the form of ads supplied in real time to google.com and other Web sites on subjects that are suddenly relevant to computer users. On Monday, for instance, the Huffington Post Web site carried a display ad from Allstate with a photograph of a damaged home and the headline “When it happens you’re in good hands.” Those who clicked on the ad were led to a section of allstate.com devoted to “catastrophe preparation and claim information.” Online, newspapers had no problem exposing ads to readers — again, assuming they had power. Print versions were another matter, particularly the Sunday editions, typically the largest and most lucrative of the week. The Daily News in New York included in its prestorm Saturday edition all sections and inserts that were to have appeared in its Sunday edition, including the comics, two Valassis coupon supplements and circulars from retailers like Modell’s, Radio Shack and P. C. Richard & Son. The front page of the Saturday edition declared, “Extra: Special Hurricane Edition.” Readers able to find the Sunday edition on Sunday — when most newsstands were closed — saw an editor’s note on Page 2 informing them of the switch and asking those who wanted the sections mailed to them to call a toll-free number. For The New York Times, home deliveries of the Sunday edition “ran the gamut depending where people were,” said a spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy. About 24,000 copies came late, she added, and 253,000 were delivered on Monday. In many areas, the number of single copies printed for sale was “greatly reduced” in expectation of closed stores or limited distribution, Ms. Murphy said. Among other dislocations, thousands of retail stores — locally owned or outlets of national chains — were closed, losing a day or two of sales during an important time on the retail calendar, the back-to-school shopping season. Some stores in Manhattan, among them the Bloomingdale’s flagship on the Upper East Side and a Gymboree on the Upper West Side, were even boarded up. The storm created incongruous retail situations. The doorway of a store on Broadway and 73rd Street that sells apparel bore a sign that read, “This store will be closed Saturday and Sunday due to Hurricane Irene.” The store, as it turned out, is devoted to the North Face, billed on a section of the Web site of its parent, the VF Corporation , as “the ultimate, authentic outdoor brand.” Such concerns did not bother a nearby purveyor of less rugged clothing. The Town Shop , a lingerie store, had this sign in its windows on Sunday: “Despite the massive storm ... we are open today! We have no ‘D’ batteries ... but plenty of ‘D’ cup bras!”

Hurricane Irene (2011)
Advertising and Marketing
Television
News and News Media


6 Men Convicted of Terror Plot in Australia

Abstract: SYDNEY, Australia -- A jury in Australia’s largest terrorism trial has found six men guilty of plotting attacks on public facilities. The six were part of a group of 12 men who had been accused of planning to attack major sites around their home city of Melbourne. Prosecutors said their targets included the Melbourne Cricket Ground during the 2005 final of the Australian Football League, when over 90,000 people would have been in attendance, and the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. The men never carried out any of the attacks the prosecution said they had planned. Four men were acquitted and the jury is still considering their verdict on two others. Sentencing of the six men who were convicted will take place later. During the 115-day trial, prosecutors accused the group, led by an Algerian-born Muslim cleric, Abdul Nacer Benbrika, of plotting to use weapons and explosives to attack sites including the cricket ground and railway stations with the intention of causing large-scale casualties. Mr. Benbrika was found guilty of leading the terror cell. d of “possessing a thing, namely a compact disc, connected with preparation of a terrorist act, knowing of that connection.” Prosecutors had painted a picture of a group bent on waging violent jihad and played the court tapes of Mr. Benbrika telling another of the accused, Abdullah Merhi, that the group was planning “something big” that would involve deaths. The prosecution had said that Mr. Benbrika, 48, had told his followers it would take at least 1,000 deaths to persuade the Australian government to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. The defense had argued that the men were ill-organized, incompetent and prone to exaggeration. Mr. Benbrika’s lawyer said he was unsure if his client would appeal. The jury took four weeks to reach a verdict and will remain empanelled while it tries to reach agreement on the charges facing the remaining two men. Australia has not been the target of a modern terrorist attack, but 88 Australians were killed when Islamic extremists bombed a bar and a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali in October 2002. Extremists have been enraged by Australia’s participation in the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan. Although Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has withdrawn his country’s combat contingent in Iraq, there are still 1,080 Australian troops in Afghanistan.

Australia
Terrorism
Decisions and Verdicts


Pope Moves to Deflate Breathless Portrayals of Stardom

Abstract: ROME — Declaring his frustrations with being portrayed as a superman or a star, Pope Francis used an interview to depict himself as a normal person who laughs, cries and misses his ailing sister, while defending the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of the clerical sexual-abuse scandal and reiterating his belief that women should play a larger role in church decision making. Ahead of the first anniversary of his election to the papacy later this month, Francis spoke with two Italian and Argentine newspapers this week about his personal life, and also discussed issues like the family, civil unions, the Vatican’s relationship with China and the role of his retired predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. Francis’ latest statements did not break new ground or signal any new positions, but he did offer his most public defense of the church’s handling of the clerical pedophilia scandal, even as victims’ advocacy groups continue to criticize the Vatican’s response as inadequate. Last month, a United Nations panel sharply criticized the Vatican and called on church officials to rid the priesthood of all abusers and hold accountable any bishops who covered up crimes. Vatican officials strongly criticized the United Nations report as outdated and ideologically biased in how it went beyond the issue of pedophilia to challenge church doctrine on issues such as abortion. Francis has established a special Vatican commission to address the sexual-abuse crises, and in the interview, he acknowledged the horror of pedophilia, saying, “The cases of abuse are terrible because they leave very profound wounds.” But he credited Benedict for forcing the church to confront the problem while also noting that pedophilia was a broad social problem, with the “great majority” of cases occurring in “family and neighborhood settings.” “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility,” Francis said in the interview published Wednesday in the Corriere della Sera of Italy and La Nación of Argentina. “No one else has done more. Yet the Church is the only one to have been attacked.” Terence McKiernan, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a victim’s advocacy group, criticized Francis’ remarks as insensitive and “triumphalist.” He said the pope should have apologized to victims rather than praise the church’s response. “The chutzpah of this self-assessment is breathtaking,” Mr. McKiernan said in a statement. Francis has now granted a handful of interviews to Italian newspapers, and analysts say he has skillfully used them to invite discussion of delicate social issues such as same-sex marriage, atheism, divorce or contraception, even as he usually remains unspecific about what concrete changes he endorses. “Francis has undoubtedly opened the room for debate on issues that were strongly disciplined in the past,” said Sandro Magister, the author of political histories of the Catholic Church and a commentator for the Italian newsmagazine L’Espresso. “But his words are always calculated and a bit enigmatic.” Francis also said that women must have a greater presence in the church hierarchy, and affirmed as sacrosanct the church’s definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, though he spoke more elliptically about the church’s stance on civil unions.


Like Texting, but With Video

Abstract: SHORT video messages or greetings for phones could soon be as ubiquitous as texting, or at least that’s what greeting card companies and other firms are hoping as they try out a new mobile service that delivers a brief video, with sound and music, as quickly, easily and often as cheaply as sending a text. American Greetings has a new service that transmits a video card chosen from its Web site directly to handsets of nearly all major mobile carriers. It has used a partnership with Mogreet Inc., provider of a multimedia messaging platform, to deliver the full-motion video greeting. Mogreet, based in Venice, Calif., is also working with the National Football League Players Association and other organizations to deliver campaigns directly to cellphones. A major selling point for the mobile video is how easy it is to use, said Waltene Irving, 94, of Apple Valley, Calif., who used the service to find a Valentine’s Day sentiment for her granddaughter in Los Angeles last month. Ms. Irving went to AG Interactive, American Greetings’ e-card section, and browsed its 50 cupid messages, selecting one with kittens and other animals. “You put in the mobile number, point to the picture and click send,” she said. “It’s very easy.” Video messaging “is the intersection of two powerful trends — mobile and social networking,” said Michael Becker, managing director of the Mobile Marketing Association. “It’s immediate, convenient and engaging,” he said, “and it enables companies to monetize their markets.” Mr. Becker said that mobile video messaging, which is provided by several companies, “has a massive market because it can appeal to people without a data plan.” Some 80 percent of Americans, including Ms. Irving, do not have a data plan. Portio Research, a British firm that tracks mobile messaging globally, predicted that the market for such multimedia messaging, while still trailing text messaging , would reach $31.5 billion by the end of 2010, following a 48 percent increase in traffic last year worldwide and a 22 percent increase in revenues. • The greeting card industry, confounding predictions that its products were out of sync in the mobile age, has been early in embracing such messaging to reach its customers. Hallmark, the industry’s biggest player, last July started its mobile messaging business, with different delivery mechanism than the one introduced by American Greetings. Other companies offering such multimedia messaging include Nike, Reebok, Starwood Hotels and Warner Brothers. American Greetings is promoting its new service with targeted e-mail messages, information on its Web site and notices attached to its e-cards. The company, based in Cleveland, is relying, at least initially, on the four million registered customers already on its Web site to expand the service, said Frank Fink, the company’s vice president for business affairs. There are 500 e- cards formatted for mobile delivery, and thousands more being prepared, he said. Cards are free to registered, or premium, users who pay $15.99 annually. Hallmark’s Web-to-mobile cards cost 99 cents a card. American Greetings is getting ready to begin a second phase of advertising, using online display ads, social networking, banners on other Web sites and other Internet advertising. “We see this as a major growth area,” Mr. Fink said. He said American Greetings has an iPhone app, and three months ago introduced a Facebook application. • Another Mogreet customer, the Broadway musical “In the Heights,” in January placed a billboard of Corbin Bleu, the young actor of “High School Musical” fame, in Times Square. It invites people to text “Heights” to 21534 and receive a short video message from Mr. Bleu, and encourages buying tickets to the musical. “This is a big step out of the comfort zone in entertainment ads,” said Sara Fitzpatrick, director of SpotCo., a subsidiary of the British company First Artist, which created the campaign. “The medium is still being understood, but it was a good fit for clients looking for a different way to engage the brand.” Although Ms. Fitzpatrick did not provide figures, she said ticket sales had been increasing. She did not attribute that solely to the short-video campaign, but she said: “The potential is there. This service is really going to blow out in a couple of years.” The reach of such messaging is also being explored by the National Football League Players Association. It started a campaign, which began around the Super Bowl , to give fans a glimpse of players off the field. Fans were asked to text “NFLPA” to 21534 to receive an 18-second video featuring Mark Sanchez of the New York Jets and several other players. The campaign — meant to create a mobile database to market the more than 1,800 active and retired N.F.L. players — enters participating fans in a sweepstakes for a trip to the 2010 Players Rookie Premiere, an event attended by 36 top rookies in Los Angeles. The sweepstakes winner will be announced in April. So far, the players association and companies involved are not providing user figures from the video-messaging service. American Greetings declined to disclose how many mobile video cards were sent since the service was introduced in February. But as consumers move toward in-the-moment interaction, the video cards have a large potential market, Mr. Fink said. More than one billion text greetings were sent for Valentine’s Day last year, according to industry figures. There are no overall numbers yet for video messaging traffic for 2010 Valentine’s Day because the information has to be gathered from dozens of carriers. Most of this year’s video Valentine’s traffic at American Greetings occurred on Feb. 14, which fell on a Sunday. About 52 percent of users sent their message that day, and about one-third sent their loved ones a greeting the day before, according to Mogreet. So what video cards were people sending? The most popular was a blue-eyed cupid, rapping “lyrics silky-smoother than a thornless rose.”

Cellular Telephones
Recordings and Downloads (Video)
Advertising and Marketing
Greeting Cards
Wireless Communications
American Greetings Corp
Mogreet Inc.
Text Messaging


Who Will Become a Terrorist? Research Yields Few Clues

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The brothers who carried out suicide bombings in Brussels last week had long, violent criminal records and had been regarded internationally as potential terrorists. But in San Bernardino , Calif., last year, one of the attackers was a county health inspector who lived a life of apparent suburban normality. And then there are the dozens of other young American men and women who have been arrested over the past year for trying to help the Islamic State. Their backgrounds are so diverse that they defy a single profile. What turns people toward violence — and whether they can be steered away from it — are questions that have bedeviled governments around the world for generations. Those questions have taken on fresh urgency with the rise of the Islamic State and the string of attacks in Europe and the United States. Despite millions of dollars of government-sponsored research, and a much-publicized White House pledge to find answers, there is still nothing close to a consensus on why someone becomes a terrorist. “After all this funding and this flurry of publications, with each new terrorist incident we realize that we are no closer to answering our original question about what leads people to turn to political violence,” Marc Sageman, a psychologist and a longtime government consultant, wrote in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence in 2014. “The same worn-out questions are raised over and over again, and we still have no compelling answers.” When researchers do come up with possible answers, the government often disregards them. Not long after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for instance, Alan B. Krueger, the Princeton economist, tested the widespread assumption that poverty was a key factor in the making of a terrorist. Mr. Krueger’s analysis of economic figures, polls, and data on suicide bombers and hate groups found no link between economic distress and terrorism. The Outsize Role of Brothers in Terrorist Plots In terrorist attacks around the world, pairs of brothers keep turning up as suspects. More than a decade later, law enforcement officials and government-funded community groups still regard money problems as an indicator of radicalization. When President Obama announced plans in 2011 to prevent homegrown terrorism, the details were sketchy, but the promise was clear. The White House would provide warning signs to help parents and community leaders. “It’s going to be communities that recognize abnormal behavior,” Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser at the time, said. As an example, he cited truancy, which he said was an indicator of possible gang activity. “Truancy is also going to be an early warning sign for violent extremism,” he said. But the years that followed have done little to narrow the list of likely precursors. Rather, the murky science seems to imply that nearly anyone is a potential terrorist. Some studies suggest that terrorists are likely to be educated or extroverted; others say uneducated recluses are at risk. Many studies seem to warn of the adolescent condition, singling out young, impatient men with a sense of adventure who are “struggling to achieve a sense of selfhood.” Such generalizations are why civil libertarians see only danger in government efforts to identify people at risk of committing crimes. Researchers, too, say they have been frustrated by both the Bush and Obama administrations because of what they say is a preoccupation with research that can be distilled into simple checklists, even at the risk of casting unnecessary suspicion on innocent people. Image Alejandro Beutel, a researcher with a University of Maryland program on countering terrorism, spoke on Capitol Hill last year about community-led models to combat extremism. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times “They want to be able to do things right now,” said Clark R. McCauley Jr., a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College who has conducted government-funded terrorism research for years. “Anybody who offers them something right now, like to go around with a checklist — right now — is going to have their attention. “It’s demand driven,” he continued. “The people with guns and badges are so eager to have something. The fact that they could actually do harm? This doesn’t deter them.” Europe, too, is grappling with these questions, but there is no clear answer. Hans Bonte, the mayor of the Belgian town of Vilvoorde, attended a White House summit meeting on radicalization last year and described efforts to stem a steady tide of angry young men leaving to join the Islamic State. In Britain, the government encourages or requires people to alert the authorities about people who could become risks . That has spurred debate abroad, and has raised questions in the United States about whether the Constitution would allow the government to keep tabs on lawful political or religious speech. “I understand, from an American standpoint, that can be troubling,” said Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University. “But the European model, for most countries, is to intervene early, as soon as you see the first sign of extremism.” Researching terrorism is admittedly difficult. It involves tough questions about who qualifies as a terrorist, or as a rebel or a soldier. Nelson Mandela? Palestinian suicide bombers? The Taliban of today? The Afghan mujahedeen when the C.I.A. supported them? Uncovering the Links Between the Brussels and Paris Attackers At least two of the attackers are believed to have had roles in both plots. Researchers seldom have access to terrorists, and scientific methods, such as control groups, are rare. In 2005, Jeff Victoroff, a University of Southern California psychologist, concluded that the leading terrorism research was mostly just political theory and anecdotes. “A lack of systematic scholarly investigation has left policy makers to design counterterrorism strategies without the benefit of facts,” he wrote in The Journal of Conflict Resolution. When the government does give advice about what to look for, the origin of that information is often impossible to know. A 2012 National Counterterrorism Center report, for instance, declared that anxiety, unmet personal needs, frustration and trauma helped drive radicalization. “Not all individuals who become radicalized have unmet personal needs, but those who do are more vulnerable to radicalization,” the document said, citing no sources. Finding terrorism’s roots was supposed to help turn people away from violence. But even when someone comes to the government’s attention, there is no policy on what the response should be. The Obama administration envisions a network of counselors, religious figures and experts who can step in to help. With rare exceptions, such a network has not materialized. The White House recently put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of a task force to coordinate those efforts, an acknowledgment that the loose alliance of the past several years had suffered from a lack of goals and coordination. George Selim, the Homeland Security official leading the effort, said the administration had never intended to dictate policies. The government, Mr. Selim said, has successfully started conversations and fostered relationships between communities and law enforcement groups. In Minneapolis, one of the pilot cities for the administration’s counter-radicalization efforts, Andrew M. Luger, the United States attorney for Minnesota, has built relationships with the Somali community. He said that a prevention program was coming soon, and that interventions were farther off. Image President Obama with a nominee for the Council of Economic Advisers, Alan B. Krueger, during a Rose Garden announcement in 2011. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Krueger, a Princeton economist, tested the widespread assumption that poverty was a critical factor in the making of a terrorist and found no link. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “It’s taken a lot of time,” he said. “We’re at a point where a lot of it is beginning to come to fruition.” Though the government plays down its use of checklists, the Justice Department offers grants for the development of “a rapid assessment” tool to help the authorities “gauge the potential” for extremism. Last year, the Intercept news organization revealed a government checklist to score people in terrorism investigations based on factors, including whether they feel mistreated by the government, distrust law enforcement or suffer from discrimination. Mr. McCauley said many of his colleagues and peers conducted smart research and drew narrow conclusions. The problem, he said, is that studies get the most attention when they suggest warning signs. Research linking terrorism to American policies, meanwhile, is ignored. As a practical matter, scientists note, checklists are mathematically certain to fail. Even a test with 99 percent accuracy would be wrong far more often than right. It is a counterintuitive thought, but in a country with a huge population and a tiny number of terrorists, even a nearly perfect test would flag many more innocent people than actual terrorists. In social services, this problem all but disappears. There are few consequences for seeking help for someone who appears to be suicidal but is not. When the F.B.I. is the only option, the ramifications can be severe. How Many People Have Been Killed in ISIS Attacks Around the World More than 1,200 people outside of Iraq and Syria have been killed in attacks inspired or coordinated by the Islamic State. “We talk a very good game,” said John Horgan, a professor at Georgia State University who has conducted numerous government-funded studies. “But from the national security standpoint, we still have a scorecard mentality of early identifications and sting operations.” In Montgomery County, Md., a Washington suburb, a Muslim-led interfaith organization called Worde thinks it may have a solution. Organizers have provided families and faith leaders with lists of warning signs: depression, trauma, economic stress and political grievances. Anyone who spots these indicators signs can call Worde, which will arrange mental health or religious counseling. Police officers become involved only when there is a threat of imminent danger, said Hedieh Mirahmadi, the group’s president. Ideally, she said, people get help without being stigmatized or placed on government watch lists. The program is unproven; a nearly complete study on its effectiveness gives it high marks for building community relationships but does not assess whether the group reduces violent extremism. And while Ms. Mirahmadi said “nobody would disagree” with her warning signs, researchers are far less certain that they are indicators of potential radicalization. Still, the Obama administration believes Worde could be a model and has awarded it $500,000 in grants. Faiza Patel, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, remains skeptical. Worde has not released its intervention protocols or its method for assessing things like political grievances. Ms. Mirahmadi said such tools would be too easily misunderstood. But, she said, it is a start. She said her group had counseled about 20 people, providing help that otherwise did not exist. Whether any of these people would have become violent, she said, is impossible to know.

Terrorism
Research
US
Justice Department
Homeland Security
Brussels Attacks
FBI
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Psychology
Barack Obama


Justice Still Elusive in Factory Disasters in Bangladesh

Abstract: DHAKA, Bangladesh — Inside Courtroom 21, the two judges peered down from high wooden chairs as lawyers in formal black robes presented their motions. Activists and victims watched from the back. And a few steps away, a portly man with a thick black beard remained silent. He was the suspect. He did not seem especially nervous. Perhaps that is because the man, Delowar Hossain, has not yet been charged with anything — and may never be. He has been a vilified figure since his garment factory, Tazreen Fashions, caught fire last November , killing 112 workers who were making clothes for retailers like Walmart and Sears. A high-level government investigation found fire safety violations and accused Mr. Hossain of “unpardonable negligence.” “How do you sleep at night?” a woman screamed as Mr. Hossain left the courtroom after the hearing on June 19. The more pertinent question might be this: In Bangladesh, where the garment industry powers the economy and wields enormous political clout, is it possible to hold factory owners like Mr. Hossain accountable? Now is undeniably the test. The Tazreen Fashions fire was followed by the April collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building, in which 1,129 people were killed in the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry. A global supply chain that delivers low-cost clothes from Bangladeshi factories to stores in the West was suddenly redefined by images of mutilated bodies pulled from the rubble. The Obama administration responded last week by rescinding a special trade privilege for Bangladesh over concerns about safety problems and labor rights violations in its garment industry. But Bangladeshi factories have always suffered fires and accidents, usually without attracting international attention. One study estimated that more than 1,000 workers died in hundreds of factory fires or accidents from 1990 to 2012. Not once was a factory owner charged with any crime, activists say. “We want to set a legal precedent that factory owners can’t get away with this,” said Saydia Gulrukh, an anthropologist and social activist. One way to interpret the hearing for Mr. Hossain was as an act of exasperation. It was not a criminal trial. Instead, Ms. Gulrukh and a handful of other activists and lawyers had become so frustrated that they petitioned the Bangladesh High Court to overstep the stalled police investigation and decide whether criminal charges should be filed. The proceeding is already bogged down and could take months, or longer. “They are just delaying the process,” said Jyotirmoy Barua, the lawyer handling the petition, speaking of Mr. Hossain’s defense team. “They think we will lose the spirit of fighting. But they have miscalculated.” Image Delowar Hossain Credit Andrew Biraj/Reuters Bangladesh’s legal system has rarely favored anyone confronting the power structure. Much of the legal code has remained intact since the British imperial era, when laws were devised to control the population and protect the colonialist power structure. Legal reformers continue to push to modernize the criminal code, but the pace of change has been slow. Moreover, the police and other security forces are deeply politicized, with a bloody legacy of carrying out extrajudicial killings. Many garment factory owners are now entrenched in the nation’s power elite, some as members of Parliament. Garments represent 80 percent of the country’s manufacturing exports, giving the industry vast economic power , while factory owners also finance campaigns during national elections, giving them broad political influence. The April 24 collapse of Rana Plaza, located in Savar, an industrial suburb of Dhaka, seemed to shock a system often inured to factory accidents. On the morning of the collapse, factory workers had been ordered into the building, even though cracks had appeared a day earlier and an engineer had warned that the structure was unsafe. The building’s owner, Sohel Rana , disappeared amid speculation that he would avoid prosecution because he was affiliated with the governing political coalition, the Awami League. But incensed High Court judges ordered the police to arrest Mr. Rana, as well as the owners of the garment factories inside the building. Mr. Rana was hauled into the courthouse, along with the factory bosses, surprising some legal activists who could not remember a single case in which judges had taken such action against members of the garment industry. “That was very unusual,” said Sara Hossain, a Supreme Court lawyer and legal activist, who is not related to Delowar Hossain. “I think it was only possible because of the level of national and international outrage.” Ms. Hossain has fought the garment industry for years over the 2005 collapse of the Spectrum sweater factory in Savar, in which at least 64 workers died. Soon after the collapse, she and other lawyers petitioned the court and pressed for affidavits from different agencies to determine who was to blame, in hopes of stirring a prosecution. But years passed without any action until, in 2009, government lawyers announced that the court file had been lost. Hearings kept getting postponed, she said, as court officials kept saying the file was lost. Then, after the Rana Plaza collapse, Ms. Hossain won another hearing. The judges suddenly seemed animated as she asked for a formal investigation into the missing file. “The next day, we went to court and the file reappeared,” she said. Inside the file were dusty affidavits, including one from the agency that regulated construction projects in Savar. It warned that Savar and other areas had many hazardous buildings and recommended forming a task force to investigate. It was dated 2006, the year construction began on Rana Plaza. “If that report had been acted upon and seen the light of day,” she said, “surely you could have avoided Rana Plaza.” Now, the lawyers trying to bring charges against Mr. Hossain, the owner of Tazreen Fashions, are facing their own obstacles. First, they sought a copy of the government investigation that had blamed Mr. Hossain for negligence. Though reporters were briefed on the main findings last December , the investigation report was never publicly released. But at one hearing, government lawyers said the Home Ministry had not yet provided them with a copy. Image Many garment factory owners, like Sohel Rana, are entrenched in Bangladesh’s power elite. Credit Reuters On June 19, the two-judge panel seemed annoyed when the government lawyers again failed to properly file the report with the court. (They did so later in the day.) When one of the judges, Quazi Reza-ul Hoque, expressed interest in broadening the case, the main defense lawyer stepped to the lectern, agreeing that the failings of the government should also be explored, but also adding a reminder about the garment industry. “This is a very important economic factor in our country,” said the lawyer, Fida M. Kamal. When he raised the same point a few moments later, one of the judges agreed. “We have to keep that always in mind,” Judge Hoque said. In the days after the Tazreen Fashions fire, evidence of negligence mounted: the factory did not have a current fire safety license; the blaze had started in an illegal ground floor storage area filled with flammable fabric; some managers had ordered workers to ignore a fire alarm while others had locked metal gates, blocking some of the staircases. The police arrested a few factory managers but took no action against Mr. Hossain, even as families of victims called for murder charges. Investigators initially questioned whether the fire was caused by sabotage, though the country’s home minister later discounted that claim, but he also said that arresting Mr. Hossain was not necessary. In court this month, Mr. Hossain and his lawyer refused to comment. A few men stood silently near the owner in the rear of the small room. One of them, Motiqul Islam Matin, had lost his sister in the Tazreen Fashions fire. She had called him from the fourth floor, shrieking, saying she was trapped because her managers had locked the metal gates. Last month, Mr. Matin filed a court petition, seeking murder charges against Mr. Hossain. Soon after, he said he began getting telephone calls. “They wanted to know where I lived,” he said. “I was scared. I did not tell them. I went into hiding.” Another man in the courtroom, Mohammad Abdul Jabbar, carried a photograph of his wife and infant son. His wife had died on the fourth floor. He had tried in vain to seek compensation or government help and now said he only wanted to see Mr. Hossain convicted. “I want justice,” he said after the hearing. “The whole system favors men like Delowar. He is a rich man. He is getting protection from the people who are supposed to listen to our voices.” He added, “Wherever I go, officials tell me to go somewhere else.”

Accidents and Safety
Tazreen Fashions
Delowar Hossain
Bangladesh
Rana Plaza Building Collapse
Fashion
Fires
Manufacturing
Buildings


BMX Racers Roll With the Latest Scientific Training Methods

Abstract: CHULA VISTA, Calif. — When Mike King raced BMX bicycles, the sport’s elite knew nothing of dynamic warm-ups, or core cooling, or thermal regulation. They did not mix sports drinks for maximum hydration and electrolyte balance. They were BMX riders, and they resided at the intersection of counterculture and extreme sports, and the very idea of science as a means to improvement seemed downright uncool. This was before bicycle motocross became an Olympic discipline, before King became an Olympic coach, before his sport and its outdated training methods underwent a scientific revolution after its debut at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. At a recent practice, King looked less like an employee of USA Cycling and more like the BMX pioneer he was in what now seems like another life. He wore a mesh hat cocked sideways and low-hanging shorts, his face covered in stubble, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. King paused and considered how to answer a question about his team’s so-called magic pants and their powers of recovery. “Magic pants?” King said as he grimaced slightly. “I really can’t discuss them.” That Belichickian response showed how much BMX has evolved since the Beijing Games, transformed from rebellious adolescent into, King said, “something more grown-up.” As he spoke, the team’s video coordinator, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, recorded practice runs from a nearby roof, beaming the images and data to the iPads of coaches on the course. One of those coaches, James Herrera, started in BMX in 1977. As he gravitated toward coaching, he focused on less developed training methods, returned to school and obtained master’s degrees in psychology and exercise physiology. Such methods sounded, at first, like a foreign language to his charges. When King raced, advancements in strategy came mostly from watching competitors or reading textbooks. The basics: climb on small bike, pedal furiously, turn left, repeat. The riders traveled together, ate together and sometimes bunked together, a mix of French and British and Australian, with as much camaraderie as competition. Some of the more serious athletes transitioned into other cycling disciplines. The British track cyclist Chris Hoy, winner of three gold medals in Beijing, started in BMX. So did his teammate Jamie Staff, a gold medalist for Britain who became a track cycling coach for the United States. He used to watch Christophe Leveque, the Flying Frenchman, who dominated BMX throughout the 1990s with support from French sports federations. Staff and others were devoted, riding for six to eight hours daily. But that training, Staff said, was “misguided” and “uneducated.” When the sport made the Olympic stage, other nations followed the Leveque model. BMX training became more like track cycling training, which had become more like road cycling training, with a process similar to the one used by Tour de France teams. “It’s getting really scientific, which is not really BMX,” Staff said. “I know they’re trying to keep BMX cool and hip and trendy. At the same time, they’re changing the mentality. At this point, you buy into it. Or you don’t bother.” When the 2008 Olympics rolled around, King concentrated on keeping his athletes relaxed. He knew the pressure and the magnitude would be higher than ever. It felt, he said, like a culmination: BMX, at the highest level of sport, on prime-time international television; BMXers in the opening ceremony, clad in red, white and blue. This meant more money, more exposure, more legitimacy as a sport. One future Olympian watched the event on television. His name is Connor Fields. He is a favorite for this summer’s London Games. “The impact couldn’t have been bigger,” he said. “The Olympics justified and solidified everything we do.” The minute the races in Beijing ended, another race began, and the United States program was caught flat-footed. The American men and women had seized half the Olympic BMX medals because they possessed the deepest talent pool, because the sport was created and incubated in Southern California. That would no longer be enough, not after Australia, France and other countries put their considerable resources — more private financing and sports institutes — behind BMX in late 2008. The United States, Herrera said, fell “maybe a year behind.” At the same time, King and company shifted their junior development strategy. They went for youth, replacing veterans with prospects, save for Mike Day, the elder statesman and a silver medalist in Beijing. The United States retained the largest talent pool but needed to take a more scientific approach to training. Herrera was mindful of the pattern in another cycling discipline. Mountain biking, he said, was also created in the United States, yet an American last won an Olympic medal in that sport in 1996, its first year in the Games. The American BMX program underwent a training overhaul. Herrera came onboard. Simple dietary changes were instituted: no dessert or sugary energy drinks; more fruits and vegetables and nutritional supplements. Jerseys were designed to be tighter and more wind-resistant. Coaches studied different exercises in the gym and measured their effects on the bike. They added power meters, as had been done in the other cycling disciplines. Based on the data they accrued, they adjusted the volume of on-course training and its frequency, determined whether riders needed more practice on uphill or downhill sections, and selected gear. They hired a videographer who used the computer program Dartfish to show riders the best lines to take on a given turn. Videos of individual riders could be placed side by side on a screen, as if they were racing, to compare which one took the most direct route. In most elite BMX races, Herrera said, the winner finishes less than a second and a half ahead of the competitor who finishes 64th. Often, the gap is less than one second. “In my era, we’d probably roll our eyes,” King said. “But at this level, with the money we spend, 1 percent of improvement based on sports technology could be one thousandth of a second, which could be the difference between a gold and silver medal.” Before the 2008 Games, the United States built a replica of the Beijing course at the Olympic Training Center here. Each year, it hosted an official race. Day won the first one in 35.9 seconds. Fields won the most recent one in 33.6, a difference, he said, of 10 to 20 meters. Those gains, which Herrera described as massive and astronomical, came in large part because Fields, 19, emerged during BMX’s scientific revolution. His coach, Sean Dwight, said BMX, with athletes on tiny bikes traveling down steep ramps in three seconds at 40 miles an hour with seven other competitors to contend with, was more explosive than the 100 meters in track and as explosive as weight lifting. Dwight focuses most on Fields’s biomechanics, believing that an ideal position on the bike produces maximum power. He knows almost immediately whether Fields’s head is tilted two inches the wrong way, or his shoulders are too far back. While Fields helped push BMX into this new territory, the courses grew longer, the jumps higher, the turns more dangerous. If this made BMX more viewer-friendly, it also worried coaches. The replica London course sits near the replica Beijing course, and it appears at least twice the size and twice as difficult. The first jump, Herrera said, is the length of three to three and a half cars. King said BMX had “reached its threshold,” just as he said four years ago. Asked if the progression meant somebody could ultimately die, he said, “I hope not.” Regardless, the scientific revolution will continue. King said riders were once ridiculed for acknowledging that they took ice baths. He laughed and called the progress mind-boggling, adding, “You know, it’s still a bike race.” He won plenty of those without science, but the United States had no gold medals in Beijing. If to win a gold meant that BMX had to lose some of its counterculture cool, well, consider King a convert, magic pants and all.

2012 Summer Olympics
James Herrera
Connor Fields


Sugar Industry Highlights Conflicts Over Trade Pacts and Land

Abstract: OMLIANG COMMUNE, Cambodia — Yim Lon nurses bitter memories of how three years ago the local authorities forced her and her family to dismantle their small home and move it to make way for a sugar plantation. The Phnom Penh Sugar Company paid her a few hundred dollars, less than a tenth of what Ms. Yim, 53, says she believes the family’s small plot of farmland was worth. She dreams of being allowed to move their two-room house, made of wood planks and steel siding, back to the site near a stream where they used to grow rice. She is convinced that the other culprits are the Europeans, who buy sugar from Phnom Penh Sugar. “If Europe continues buying sugar from the company, then we will continue suffering,” she said. Phnom Penh Sugar says that it has behaved fairly and obeyed local laws. Newly created sugar plantations across Cambodia have created thousands of cash-paying jobs for destitute migrant workers and subsistence farmers, and hundreds of jobs for skilled factory workers. But the corporate practice in Cambodia of obtaining tens of thousands of acres from the government as economic development concessions for large sugar plantations, while paying modest compensation to farmers pushed off the land, places a harsh light on international trade pacts that are meant to help the world’s poorest countries. To many activists who have heard the tales of people like Ms. Yim, the trade pacts that foster exports can have the unintended effect of encouraging land grabs by wealthy, politically connected families. Nearly all of Cambodia’s sugar exports go to the European Union under the Everything But Arms program, which eliminates import duties for the sugar. The European Union also sets high minimum prices for imported sugar, well above world levels. Western activists have tried in recent months to organize consumer boycotts against companies that have bought Cambodian sugar, notably Tate & Lyle Sugars, which is owned by American Sugar Refining of West Palm Beach, Fla. The European Union has held high-level talks with Cambodian officials about the sugar issue. But it has refrained so far from opening a formal investigation into whether Cambodian sugar should lose duty-free access to the European Union. In a written response to questions, Ambassador Jean-François Cautain, the head of the European Union’s delegation to Cambodia, pointed to statistical measures. Rising exports helped Cambodia triple average annual income per person in the last decade, to $980, while reducing poverty to a fifth of the country’s population, he wrote. “We also need to consider the benefits the overall Cambodian economy gets from the ‘Everything But Arms’ scheme and the harm the country would suffer if we remove it,” he wrote. Western and Cambodian activists have called for the exclusion of Cambodian sugar from duty-free treatment in Europe, saying that it triggers corporate land grabs. “The land is deeply connected to the spiritual life of the people,” said Chum Narin, the land and natural resources program head at the Community Legal Education Center, a nonprofit group in Phnom Penh. American Sugar Refining said that its Tate & Lyle unit had bought only two “small shipments” over the years from Cambodia. The first was in May 2011 and the second in June 2012, the company said. It also said that it “has not received Cambodian sugar for over a year and has no plans for further purchases.” Both of American Sugar’s purchases were from the KSL Group, another company producing sugar in Cambodia. Phnom Penh Sugar said that it sold sugar to businesses in Spain and Italy, but it declined to identify the buyers. Sugar represented only $25.2 million of the $1.34 billion in Cambodian products that the European Union bought in the first six months of this year. Most of the European imports from Cambodia are garments. But the developing sugar industry has created jobs chopping sugar cane for previously destitute migrant workers from hill villages even poorer than Omliang Commune. Sugar refineries have also brought multimillion-dollar investments, roads and other amenities to remote areas where investors have long feared to venture in an oftentimes chaotic country like Cambodia. Phnom Penh Sugar says that it has spent $220 million on its refinery, brought power lines into the valley, constructed a water-treatment plant and a school, erected dormitories for skilled factory workers and built roads and bridges to replace muddy tracks. Local residents, including Ms. Yim, complain that the school is small. The displaced say they do not have access to the treated water, but must rely on newly dug wells at the edge of the valley where they moved their houses. Well water is often less clean than the stream that used to flow near their homes and leaves what they say is a mysterious white residue when boiled. The influx of new residents to cut the cane has infuriated longer-term residents like Ms. Yim, who regard the migrants as interlopers in their communities. “It’s not good for the village because the outsiders make money,” she said. The root of the problem, not surprisingly, goes back to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge years. The Khmer Rouge, the Maoist movement that ran Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, are most notorious for causing the death of as many as a quarter of Cambodia’s people, many of them murdered in the country’s “killing fields” and prisons. Others died from large-scale starvation. But a less-known aspect of their rule was the systematic destruction of nearly all land records in Cambodia. Land ownership is now ambiguous. The country has gradually regained stability since 1998, when government forces overran the last of the Khmer Rouge’s jungle redoubts in western Cambodia, including the land in and around Omliang Commune. (Rural administrative areas in Cambodia are still known as communes even though considerable free enterprise is now allowed.) Western nations then paid for the removal of the huge number of land mines planted by the Khmer Rouge. By 2001, people poured into the sparsely inhabited jungles to chop down trees to make small farms. Then a second land rush began in 2006 as Cambodians realized the profits to be earned chopping down every tree in the jungle with a trunk of more than a couple inches in diameter and burning it to make charcoal. The air here is smoky from fires burning up in the hills. Residents hike into ever more remote areas to hack down every tree of potential value. They use motorcycles to pull rickety trailers so heavily laden with charcoal that they sometimes must be pushed by hand up the steeper hills. Villagers here described tensions between those who came in 2001 and those who came in 2006 or later. Cambodian law authorizes a land title of sorts for people who have been certified by local authorities as having occupied the land for at least five years. But those who lived here more than five years before the plantation was set up and whose houses were removed in 2010 received no more compensation than later arrivals, residents said. They say that obtaining the necessary certification from local authorities had been nearly impossible before Phnom Penh Sugar, in which a powerful Cambodian politician, Ly Yong Phat, who owns a controlling stake, was granted land in the valley by the national government. Asked about the assertion of Ms. Yim and other local residents that they had been threatened with arrest if they did not move off land granted to Phnom Penh Sugar by the central government, Seng Nhak, managing director of Phnom Penh Sugar, did not give a direct reply. “They have the right to continue staying on their land, provided that they have proper documentations and proofs of the ownership to the related authorities and to the land dispute committee,” he said in an e-mail. He declined to comment on whether local residents had been unable to obtain documents showing land ownership. That was a matter for local authorities, he said.

Sugar
Land use
International trade
Cambodia
Third World
EU
Phnom Penh Sugar
ASR Group


State Senator Savino’s Sunday Routine Is Travel and Cleaning

Abstract: New York state senators are migratory creatures. When the Legislature is in session, they tend to spend half the week in Albany and half the week at home in their districts. For Senator Diane J. Savino , 46, a Democrat who represents parts of Staten Island and Brooklyn , Sunday is a day of transition. She wakes up in Staten Island and heads to Albany in time to have dinner with her boyfriend and fellow Democratic senator, Jeffrey D. Klein , and, often, a group of other legislators. ELIZABETH A. HARRIS EARLY RISER I generally get up every day at 6:30 a.m., even if I don’t want to. It’s force of habit. I just wake up. And I’m one of those people who are like the Energizer rabbit; once I’m up, I’m up! COFFEE AND NEWS The first thing I do every morning is flip through The Empire Page and all the papers across the state. Then I go back to The Empire Page. This is coffee time. And then after I read all the newspapers, and I get myself either aggravated or inspired — either one, depending on the day — the next thing I do is start calling people. STAY OUT OF THE OFFICE I don’t spend a lot of time in my office. Unless I’m meeting with people, there’s not a lot for me to do there. I just walk around and bother my staff. I say, “What are you doing?” I tell them why they’re doing it wrong, and why they should call someone else instead. And they say to me, “Don’t you have somewhere to go?” It drives them nuts. CHOMP AND TALK Usually around 10 a.m., I’ll eat breakfast. I kind of chomp while I’m on the phone. I’ve found I’m more of an Italian than anything else when it comes to breakfast. Italians don’t eat a lot for breakfast. LAUNDRY AND PACK Sunday is also the day I have to make sure I get my laundry done and pack up, because I have to head back to Albany. I head back Sunday night. You avoid rush hour, get to the office early. I don’t like to go up Monday morning. TIDYING UP I’m a neurotic cleaner. Most people will tell you my house looks like nobody lives there. And when I’m on the phone with people, I’m constantly cleaning and spraying. Right now, I’m actually sweeping the floor. LENDING A HAND Assemblyman [Matthew] Titone lives downstairs from me in Albany, and every now and then he invites me in because he knows what’s going to happen. I start cleaning. He totally manipulates me because he knows I’m going to do it. GOING TO ALBANY Five is generally the latest I leave, sometimes a little earlier. Generally I listen to the radio in the car — and then I’m on the phone. I spend a lot of time on the phone. MUSIC , NOT TALK I listen to music. I really have very little patience for talk radio, on either side of the spectrum. I find it nothing more than provocative and not particularly informative. I don’t need to hear people screaming their opinion at me, even if I agree with their opinion. DINNER WITH LEGISLATORS We usually meet up, a couple of us, on Sunday night. It’s hard to have dinner on Sunday because a lot of the restaurants in Albany are closed. There’s the Crowne Plaza, you can always get a meal there, and 74 State , and a couple of others, but it’s slim picking on a Sunday night. I don’t think I’ve ever used the stove in my apartment in Albany — it’s an electric stove anyway, which is terrible. Sometimes it’ll just be me and Senator Klein. OVER AND OUT I’m done by 10:30. And most people know that. “Oh, she’s winding down!” And when I’m done, I’m done. I get cranky and I’m like, “I have to go, all right. I don’t have time for this anymore. I have to go.”

State legislature
New York
Democrats
Diane J Savino


No Clear Majority Party Emerges in Bulgaria Vote

Abstract: SOFIA, Bulgaria — Bulgaria faced the prospect of another shaky governing coalition on Sunday as exit polls indicated that as many as eight political parties could have a voice in a new Parliament. The failure of any party to win a clear majority is likely to prolong the country’s political stalemate as it grapples with a sluggish economy and a banking crisis . The Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, a center-right party known by its Bulgarian acronym GERB, won about a third of the vote on Sunday but fell short of an outright majority, according to exit polls. The Socialist Party, the leaders of the previous cabinet, captured only about 16 percent of the vote. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which represents the country’s Turkish minority, gathered a little more than 15 percent, according to early exit poll results. Three smaller parties also won seats, while two others hovered around the 4 percent threshold to enter Parliament, which has 240 seats. By 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, 80 percent of the votes had been counted. About half of eligible Bulgarians voted. Official results are expected on Monday. Boiko Borisov, GERB’s leader, thanked supporters at a news conference here in the capital, but declined to mention potential coalition partners. “With this configuration, I don’t see how we’re going to form a cabinet,” he said. The Reformist Bloc, an alliance of five center-right parties that many saw as GERB’s best partner to form a stable coalition, captured just 9 percent of the vote, which dashed most hopes for a two-party partnership. But Radan Kanev, leader of the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, part of the Reformist Bloc, said Sunday that it was still a possibility because the final results had not yet been tallied. Other alternatives for GERB included a grand coalition with the Socialists or a more complex multiparty alliance with a host of less likely partners. The election, Bulgaria’s third in just two years, was called after the previous minority government, led by the Socialists, resigned in July. The cabinet was forced to step down after the party lost the support of its coalition partners following a poor performance in European Parliament elections in May. The administration of Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski was in power for only 14 months and was shaken by anticorruption protests, devastating floods and a run on the Corporate Commercial Bank, one of the country’s largest lenders. Bulgaria has been governed by a caretaker government since early August. Last year’s mass protests erupted just three weeks into the cabinet’s term, when the Socialists appointed the media tycoon Delyan Peevski as director of the national security agency without any hearings or debates. The appointment was later revoked but demonstrators continued to demand the cabinet’s resignation. Bulgaria, the European Union’s poorest member, has been politically unstable since early 2013, when nationwide protests over high energy bills forced the cabinet, led by GERB, to resign. In the snap election that followed, Mr. Borisov’s party failed to win a majority and was unable to attract a coalition partner, and was forced into the role of opposition. A Gallup poll conducted last month found that about a third of voters supported GERB but 59 percent thought Mr. Borisov should not be prime minister. The poll, which was based on in-person interviews of 1,010 eligible Bulgarian voters, was conducted Sept. 12-18 and had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, is struggling to catch up economically to the rest of Europe. The economy is growing at a rate of 1.6 percent annually but its per capita gross domestic product is only about 50 percent of the bloc’s average.

Bulgaria
Election
EU
Boiko M Borisov
Sofia
Plamen Oresharski
Polls


Kentucky Rolls Past St. John’s, 81-59

Abstract: LEXINGTON, Ky. — The St. John’s players gathered for strength through the flashing lights and pounding bass rhythms of the Kentucky Wildcats’ intimidating introductions. They faced the biggest challenge of the season in their first game on the road Thursday night, coming off a Nov. 26 loss to Northeastern to take on the No. 1-ranked Wildcats. The players were grouped in the locker room at the end of the night as well — to console one another after the Wildcats routed them, 81-59, at Rupp Arena. “Kentucky played very good defense tonight,” the Red Storm’s Nurideen Lindsey said. “They did a good job of containing some of the things we tried to do. It was tough to play against them.” St. John’s Moe Harkless, who had a double-double with 16 pounds and 10 rebounds, scored the first 2 points of the game — but that brief momentum did not last long for the Red Storm (4-4). The Wildcats ran their record to 7-0, led by powerful performances from the freshman Anthony Davis (who scored 15 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and had 8 of a team-record 18 blocks) and the sophomore Terrence Jones (26 points and 9 rebounds). “It’s like shooting over a tower,” Lindsey said of the 6-foot-10 Davis. “I didn’t know he was as long as he is and as athletic as he is. It was tough.” Kentucky came out sluggish, missing shots and turning the ball over. Coach John Calipari did not go lightly on his team after the game. “There were things we’ve worked on the past two or three days that they just didn’t do,” he said. “It’s December first, we are what we are — a good defensive team, offensively just not in sync yet — but around the country, there are top-ranked teams that are way ahead of us. We’ve got to play better than we played.” Kentucky fans were nevertheless entertained by a Davis sequence of a rebound, a put-back and a block at the other end that fueled a 12-0 run by the Wildcats early on. Jones punctuated his 13-point first half with a rim-shaking put-back dunk that sent the Wildcats into halftime with a 31-20 lead, with 10 blocked shots and 11 forced turnovers. Kentucky shot 23 free throws in the second half, and although fouls began to pile up for both teams, the Wildcats were also able to get out and run with five alley-oop dunks. “We did our job on defense,” Jones said. “We rattled their head.” God’sgift Achiuwa led St. John’s with 18 points, but the team had 19 turnovers by the end of the game. “When you go on the road you have to take better care of the ball,” said the St. John’s assistant Mike Dunlap, who was standing in for Coach Steve Lavin. Lavin continues to recover from Oct. 6 prostate surgery and did not travel to Kentucky. Guard D’Angelo Harrison said: “We’ve got to be more crafty around the rim and not get our shots blocked. Everybody just feels like we could have just done so much better, but we have to pull together. We have to bounce right back.” With the St. John’s game behind them, the Wildcats could look ahead to Saturday’s showdown with No. 5 North Carolina. The Red Storm will try to end their two-game skid when they travel to Detroit on Monday. GEORGETOWN 57, ALABAMA 55 Hollis Thompson hit a long 3-pointer with 1.8 seconds left to lift the Hoyas past No. 12 Alabama, ending the Crimson Tide’s 24-game home winning streak. Alabama (7-1) had taken its first lead of the second half on Trevor Releford’s two free throws with 13 seconds remaining. Jason Clark scored 22 points for Georgetown (6-1). Tony Mitchell scored 16 of his 20 points in the second half for Alabama . (AP) PROVIDENCE 76, S. CAROLINA 67 LaDontae Henton scored a career-high 18 points, leading Providence (6-2) past the host Gamecocks in the Big East-SEC Challenge. South Carolina (2-5) made just 26 of 72 shots and was only 6 of 30 on 3-pointers. (AP) HARVARD 55, VERMONT 48 The Crimson improved to 7-0 as Keith Wright scored 13 points and Laurent Rivard added 12 in a victory at Vermont. Harvard has won six straight road games during the streak. Four McGlynn led Vermont (4-3) with 15 points. (AP) LEHIGH 78, FORDHAM 60 Gabe Knutson had 21 points to lead four double-figure scorers for Lehigh as the visiting Mountain Hawks (6-2) earned their sixth straight win. Devon McMillan led the Rams (2-3) with 16 points, and Chris Gaston added 14 points and 12 rebounds. (AP) MISSISSIPPI 70, DEPAUL 68 Murphy Holloway scored off a steal with 3.7 seconds remaining to lead the Rebels past host DePaul in the Big East-SEC Challenge. Holloway had 16 points and 12 rebounds for Mississippi (6-1). Brandon Young had 18 points for DePaul (4-2). (AP)

Basketball
University of Kentucky
Davis Anthony
St John's University
Jones Terrence
College Athletics
Calipari John
Basketball (College)


John Bachar, Rock Climber, Dies at 51

Abstract: John Bachar, a rock climber who inspired awe as a daredevil, condescension as an anachronism and eventually respect as a legend, fell to his death Sunday from a rock formation near his home in California. He was 51. After years of climbing without protection, sustaining his only major injuries in a car wreck, Bachar was confirmed dead by the sheriff of Mono County, Calif., where he lived in the town of Mammoth Lakes. “He was an artist,” said Dean Fidelman, a contemporary who has climbed with him for decades. “He transcended the sport.” Bachar left his mark across the Yosemite Valley, the worldwide focal point of elite climbing in the 1970s, by making terrifying ascents of spectacular rock formations like El Capitan. To critics, Bachar cut a stubborn, self-righteous figure, uncompromising on matters of daring style and minimal gear. To admirers, he represented the vanishing purity of a simpler age, a time when rocks and mountains were to be ascended only from the ground up, without advance rigging. For about half a decade at his prime, Bachar enjoyed a reputation comparable only to that of Royal Robbins in the 1950s. “Since Bachar, I don’t think there was anybody you could say was the greatest, most influential climber in the world in his time, ” said Pete Mortimer, a well-known climber based in Boulder, Colo. In the early 1970s, Bachar arrived in the Yosemite Valley with a pair of boots, an alto saxophone and a stunning physique, joining a group of brash young climbers known as the Stonemasters. The big-wall climbing styles of the 1960s were making way for a style known as free climbing, whose practitioners sought to minimize their gear, using ropes only for protection. Bachar took that kind of self-reliance to levels that could appear dangerous. “If ever a Stonemaster carried the name on his sleeve (and he scribbled it on his boots as well), it was John Bachar, Grand Templar of the entire movement,” wrote John Long, a founder of the group, in an online history . Bachar once spent an entire season climbing without using a rope. He offered $10,000 to anyone who could keep up with him for a day. He found no takers. His exploits soon gained notice in the American Alpine Journal , where one diarist wrote that “his extraordinary free-climbing talent, coupled with an awesome physique, polished by the mental discipline of years of experience, place him at a level few attain.” As the sport splintered into ever narrower specializations in the 1980s, Bachar fell from grace among some climbers. Some adapted his unharnessed physical techniques to the safe confines of boulder climbing, while others sought to scale more difficult pitches with bolts and other gear that could sometimes permanently mark the rock formations. “John never really pushed his ethos on anyone, but because he was so good and made no bones about it, he was often attacked — simply because he represented something so different than the changing mainstream,” said John Middendorf, a climber based in Australia. “He was really quite Zen in this regard.” Bachar’s vision of purity found renewed interest in the 1990s, as a new generation of climbers took issue with bolting and other practices they perceived as unnatural, irresponsible or even cheating. He found work designing climbing shoes, establishing himself as a mentor. In 2006, while driving through Nevada at night, Bachar flipped his car; his business partner, Steve Karafa, died in the wreck. “He definitely felt, after that, that Steve’s death was on him,” said Nathan Smith, a friend and climbing photographer. “He was the one driving. I think he felt responsible for it.” Bachar returned to climbing while still recovering from his own injuries in a neck brace. Around noon Sunday, he fell from a formation called Dike Wall, not far from his home. He is survived by a son, Tyrus. He also leaves climbing routes bearing his name across the Yosemite Valley.

Rock Climbing
Accidents and Safety
Deaths (Obituaries)
Bachar John
Yosemite National Park


Hagel Celebrates U.S. Soldier’s Release With a Surprise Afghan Visit

Abstract: BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had departed for Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany eight hours before, but that did not stop Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel from taking a figurative victory lap around this base to celebrate the release of the lone remaining American prisoner of war in the Afghan conflict. For Mr. Hagel, who made an unannounced stop in Afghanistan on Sunday, the release of Sergeant Bergdahl after nearly five years in captivity was the high point of his tenure so far as defense secretary, made doubly so by the fact that he is the first enlisted soldier to serve in the Pentagon’s top job. Like Sergeant Bergdahl, Mr. Hagel was a sergeant, when he served in Vietnam. He has friends who were prisoners of war during that time, he said, including Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “When you can bring one of your own people home, when you think of what he has endured the last five years — my own experiences in Vietnam as we had P.O.W.s taken,” Mr. Hagel told reporters aboard his flight to Afghanistan, appearing to struggle for words. “I am intensely happy and gratified.” Video Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl recounted his capture and desire to rejoin to his girlfriend and family in the United States in a video released by the Taliban a month after he was taken prisoner. Credit Credit Uncredited/US Army, via Associated Press He said that he was particularly struck by the fact that unlike Mr. McCain and other prisoners of war who knew there were other American prisoners nearby even when they were in solitary confinement, Sergeant Bergdahl was alone, bereft of any solace that could come from knowing there were fellow soldiers in the same situation. “In this case, Bergdahl was by himself,” Mr. Hagel said. “As far as we know, there were no other Americans.” Even as new details were emerging about the operation to swap Sergeant Bergdahl for five detainees at Guantánamo Bay — the leader of the Special Forces team that whisked Sergeant Bergdahl by helicopter from the Pakistani border region had been in constant communication with the Taliban in the minutes leading up to the swap — Defense Department officials were also weighing the overall messiness of the case of Sergeant Bergdahl, who went missing from his unit five years ago, amid reports that he walked off his base voluntarily, in violation of Army regulations. A senior Defense Department official indicated on Sunday that the Army would probably not be punishing the sergeant for any violations of rules. “Whatever he may have done, I think he’s more than paid for it,” the official said. “Five years is a long time.” By the time Mr. Hagel arrived at Bagram on Sunday afternoon, the sergeant had been transported to Germany, as military officials and doctors determined that the sooner they got him out of Afghanistan, the better. Mr. Hagel said he planned to talk to Sergeant Bergdahl soon, but would not interfere with the sergeant’s recovery. Responding to criticism that President Obama had bypassed Congress in releasing the Afghans from Guantánamo in exchange for Sergeant Bergdahl, Mr. Hagel said that the sergeant’s health was in serious jeopardy. “It was our judgment that if we could find an opening, we needed to get him out of there, essentially to save his life,” Mr. Hagel said. Video President Obama announced that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by the Taliban in 2009, had been recovered in exchange for five prisoners. The sergeant’s parents also spoke. Credit Credit Jonathan Ernst/Reuters But there was some ambivalence among the troops waiting in a hangar at Bagram to hear from Mr. Hagel on Sunday. “Releasing five Taliban for one — I don’t know about that,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Second Class Matthew McGlynn, 23, of Williamstown, N.J. “This isn’t a conventional war that we’re fighting. I’m not sure it’s an even exchange.” Sitting next to him, Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class Kurt Tomcavage, 28, disagreed. “I’m just happy he can get back to his family,” he said. Asked about reports that Sergeant Bergdahl had walked away from his base five years ago, Petty Officer Tomcavage just shook his head. “He’s still an American citizen,” he said. A few minutes later, Mr. Hagel walked into the hangar to address the troops. He had just spent five minutes meeting with more than a dozen members of Special Operations units who were involved in the operation to retrieve Sergeant Bergdahl. A senior Defense official said that Mr. Hagel had thanked the forces, telling them that he was proud of what they do every day. But his talk before the 200 or so troops in the hangar was subdued. The men and women sat quietly as Mr. Hagel spoke. “This is a happy day,” he said. “We got one of our own back.”

Chuck Hagel
Prisoner of war
Bowe Bergdahl
Taliban
Afghanistan War
Afghanistan
US Military
Barack Obama


‘Gone With the Wind’ Prequel Coming in October

Abstract: Mammy, the faithful slave in “Gone With the Wind,” may finally get her due — and a proper name. More than 75 years after the publication of the epic novel by Margaret Mitchell, a prequel with Mammy at its center is set for release in October, the publisher said on Wednesday. The completed book, “Ruth’s Journey,” is the fictional telling of the life of one of the novel’s central characters, a house servant called Mammy who otherwise remains nameless. The story begins in 1804, when Ruth is brought from her birthplace, the French colony of Saint-Domingue that is now known as Haiti, to Savannah, Ga. The Mitchell estate has authorized the prequel, which was written by Donald McCaig, the author of one of two authorized “Gone With the Wind” sequels, “Rhett Butler’s People,” from 2007. (The other was “Scarlett” by Alexandra Ripley, released in 1991.) “Gone With the Wind” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1937 and has sold hundreds of millions of copies. Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, acquired the rights to the new book. The Mitchell estate also blessed the choice of Mr. McCaig, who is perhaps best known for “Jacob’s Ladder,” his award-winning Civil War novel published in 1998. Mr. McCaig suggested a prequel that focused on the character he called Ruth, one of the most beloved figures in “Gone With the Wind”: sharp-tongued, loving, sensitive and deeply moral. “It was Donald’s idea, instead of doing another sequel, to go backwards,” Peter Borland, the editorial director of Atria, said. “He felt that Mammy was such a fascinating and crucial character to the book. He wanted to flesh out a story of her own.” Mitchell was criticized for the one-dimensional nature of many African-American characters in the book, particularly Mammy, who cared for the fiery Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara. An unauthorized parody of the classic novel, “The Wind Done Gone,” published in 2001 over the objections of the Mitchell estate, was told from the perspective of a slave whose mother was Mammy. Image Donald McCaig, author of “Ruth’s Journey,” an authorized prequel. Credit Kristen Schmid Schurter for The New York Times Mr. Borland said the new book addresses those criticisms head on. “What’s really remarkable about what Donald has done is that it’s a book that respects and honors its source material, but it also provides a necessary correction to what is one of the more troubling aspects of the book, which is how the black characters are portrayed,” Mr. Borland said. In an email, Mr. McCaig, 73, who lives on a farm in Virginia, said that he was drawn to write about Ruth because there are “three major characters in ‘Gone With the Wind,’ but we only think about two of them.” “Scarlett and Rhett are familiars, but when it comes to the third, we don’t know where she was born, if she was ever married, if she ever had children,” he said. “Indeed, we don’t even know her name,” he said. “Ruth’s Journey” also fleshes out the story of one of the more compelling figures in “Gone With the Wind,” Ellen Robillard O’Hara, the matriarch of the clan, who dies at the Tara plantation during the Civil War. Among the other new plot twists Mr. McCaig dreamed up: Ruth, has an early marriage that was not broached in “Gone With the Wind”; and she has a connection to Rhett Butler’s family that explains her hostile behavior toward Rhett later in the classic novel. The first two-thirds of the 416-page “Ruth’s Journey” are in the third person, and the last portion is told in Ruth’s own dialect. Booksellers said the book’s selling power was far from certain. Sarah Brown, a buyer with Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., said that, “Rhett Butler’s People” was not a strong seller, but that “maybe people who love ‘Gone With the Wind’ will want to get more of it.” She added, “I think it will get a lot of press but I don’t think it will be a huge blockbuster.” The book could, however, fit in with popular historical novels told by women, like “The Paris Wife” by Paula McLain or “Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald” by Therese Anne Fowler, she said. Atria acquired the rights in 2010, after reading about 25 pages and labored to keep it secret while Mr. McCaig worked. The publisher said it would print an ambitious 250,000 copies in hardcover.

Donald McCaig
Books
Gone With the Wind Book
Margaret Mitchell


Parker Helps Spurs Edge Mavericks in Opener

Abstract: Tony Parker scored 23 points, Manu Ginobili had 20 and the San Antonio Spurs opened their title defense with a 101-100 victory over the visiting Dallas Mavericks. Tim Duncan added 14 points and 13 rebounds for his 14th double-double in a season opener, the most by any player in N.B.A. history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. ■ Anthony Davis had 26 points, 17 rebounds and 9 blocks, and the host New Orleans Pelicans opened the regular season with a 101-84 victory over the Orlando Magic on Tuesday night.

Basketball
Mavericks
Spurs
Tim Duncan
Anthony Davis


U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels

Abstract: WASHINGTON — When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria ’s embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia . Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training mission, which the Americans have code-named Timber Sycamore. Under the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of money, and the C.I.A takes the lead in training the rebels on AK-47 assault rifles and tank-destroying missiles. The support for the Syrian rebels is only the latest chapter in the decadeslong relationship between the spy services of Saudi Arabia and the United States, an alliance that has endured through the Iran-contra scandal, support for the mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan and proxy fights in Africa. Sometimes, as in Syria, the two countries have worked in concert. In others, Saudi Arabia has simply written checks underwriting American covert activities. The joint arming and training program, which other Middle East nations contribute money to, continues as America’s relations with Saudi Arabia — and the kingdom’s place in the region — are in flux. The old ties of cheap oil and geopolitics that have long bound the countries together have loosened as America’s dependence on foreign oil declines and the Obama administration tiptoes toward a diplomatic rapprochement with Iran. And yet the alliance persists, kept afloat on a sea of Saudi money and a recognition of mutual self-interest. In addition to Saudi Arabia’s vast oil reserves and role as the spiritual anchor of the Sunni Muslim world, the long intelligence relationship helps explain why the United States has been reluctant to openly criticize Saudi Arabia for its human rights abuses, its treatment of women and its support for the extreme strain of Islam, Wahhabism , that has inspired many of the very terrorist groups the United States is fighting. The Obama administration did not publicly condemn Saudi Arabia’s beheading this month of a dissident Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who had challenged the royal family. Although the Saudis have been public about their help arming rebel groups in Syria, the extent of their partnership with the C.I.A.’s covert action campaign and their direct financial support had not been disclosed. Details were pieced together in interviews with a half-dozen current and former American officials and sources from several Persian Gulf countries. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program. From the moment the C.I.A. operation was started, Saudi money supported it. “They understand that they have to have us, and we understand that we have to have them,” said Mike Rogers, the former Republican congressman from Michigan who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when the C.I.A. operation began. Mr. Rogers declined to discuss details of the classified program. American officials have not disclosed the amount of the Saudi contribution, which is by far the largest from another nation to the program to arm the rebels against President Bashar al-Assad’s military. But estimates have put the total cost of the arming and training effort at several billion dollars. The White House has embraced the covert financing from Saudi Arabia — and from Qatar, Jordan and Turkey — at a time when Mr. Obama has pushed gulf nations to take a greater security role in the region. Spokesmen for both the C.I.A. and the Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment. When Mr. Obama signed off on arming the rebels in the spring of 2013, it was partly to try to gain control of the apparent free-for-all in the region. The Qataris and the Saudis had been funneling weapons into Syria for more than a year. The Qataris had even smuggled in shipments of Chinese-made FN-6 shoulder-fired missiles over the border from Turkey. Image King Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Barack Obama in September at the White House. Credit Gary Cameron/Reuters The Saudi efforts were led by the flamboyant Prince Bandar bin Sultan, at the time the intelligence chief, who directed Saudi spies to buy thousands of AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition in Eastern Europe for the Syrian rebels. The C.I.A. helped arrange some of the arms purchases for the Saudis, including a large deal in Croatia in 2012. By the summer of 2012, a freewheeling feel had taken hold along Turkey’s border with Syria as the gulf nations funneled cash and weapons to rebel groups — even some that American officials were concerned had ties to radical groups like Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. was mostly on the sidelines during this period, authorized by the White House under the Timber Sycamore training program to deliver nonlethal aid to the rebels but not weapons. In late 2012, according to two former senior American officials, David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director, delivered a stern lecture to intelligence officials of several gulf nations at a meeting near the Dead Sea in Jordan. He chastised them for sending arms into Syria without coordinating with one another or with C.I.A. officers in Jordan and Turkey. Months later, Mr. Obama gave his approval for the C.I.A. to begin directly arming and training the rebels from a base in Jordan, amending the Timber Sycamore program to allow lethal assistance. Under the new arrangement, the C.I.A. took the lead in training, while Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Directorate, provided money and weapons, including TOW anti-tank missiles. The Qataris have also helped finance the training and allowed a Qatari base to be used as an additional training location. But American officials said Saudi Arabia was by far the largest contributor to the operation. While the Obama administration saw this coalition as a selling point in Congress, some, including Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, raised questions about why the C.I.A. needed Saudi money for the operation, according to one former American official. Mr. Wyden declined to be interviewed, but his office released a statement calling for more transparency. “Senior officials have said publicly that the U.S. is trying to build up the battlefield capabilities of the anti-Assad opposition, but they haven’t provided the public with details about how this is being done, which U.S. agencies are involved, or which foreign partners those agencies are working with,” the statement said. When relations among the countries involved in the training program are strained, it often falls to the United States to broker solutions. As the host, Jordan expects regular payments from the Saudis and the Americans. When the Saudis pay late, according to a former senior intelligence official, the Jordanians complain to C.I.A. officials. While the Saudis have financed previous C.I.A. missions with no strings attached, the money for Syria comes with expectations, current and former officials said. “They want a seat at the table, and a say in what the agenda of the table is going to be,” said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution . The C.I.A. training program is separate from another program to arm Syrian rebels, one the Pentagon ran that has since ended. That program was designed to train rebels to combat Islamic State fighters in Syria, unlike the C.I.A.’s program, which focuses on rebel groups fighting the Syrian military. While the intelligence alliance is central to the Syria fight and has been important in the war against Al Qaeda, a constant irritant in American-Saudi relations is just how much Saudi citizens continue to support terrorist groups, analysts said. Image Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a 2007 photo, directed Saudi spies to buy thousands of AK-47 assault rifles for Syrian rebels. Credit Hassan Ammar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “The more that the argument becomes, ‘We need them as a counterterrorism partner,’ the less persuasive it is,” said William McCants, a former State Department counterterrorism adviser and the author of a book on the Islamic State . “If this is purely a conversation about counterterrorism cooperation, and if the Saudis are a big part of the problem in creating terrorism in the first place, then how persuasive of an argument is it?” In the near term, the alliance remains solid, strengthened by a bond between spy masters. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi interior minister who took over the effort to arm the Syrian rebels from Prince Bandar, has known the C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, from the time Mr. Brennan was the agency’s Riyadh station chief in the 1990s. Former colleagues say the two men remain close, and Prince Mohammed has won friends in Washington with his aggressive moves to dismantle terrorist groups like Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The job Mr. Brennan once held in Riyadh is, more than the ambassador’s, the true locus of American power in the kingdom. Former diplomats recall that the most important discussions always flowed through the C.I.A. station chief. Current and former intelligence officials say there is a benefit to this communication channel: The Saudis are far more responsive to American criticism when it is done in private, and this secret channel has done more to steer Saudi behavior toward America’s interests than any public chastising could have. The roots of the relationship run deep. In the late 1970s, the Saudis organized what was known as the “Safari Club” — a coalition of nations including Morocco, Egypt and France — that ran covert operations around Africa at a time when Congress had clipped the C.I.A.’s wings over years of abuses. The Big Four in Saudi Arabia’s Government Brief background information on the most powerful figures in the kingdom, and how they stand in the sometimes complicated order of succession. “And so the kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe at a time when the United States was not able to do that,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence, recalled in a speech at Georgetown University in 2002. In the 1980s, the Saudis helped finance C.I.A. operations in Angola, where the United States backed rebels against the Soviet-allied government. While the Saudis were staunchly anticommunist, Riyadh’s primary incentive seemed to be to solidify its C.I.A. ties. “They were buying good will,” recalled one former senior intelligence officer who was involved in the operation. In perhaps the most consequential episode, the Saudis helped arm the mujahedeen rebels to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The United States committed hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the mission, and the Saudis matched it, dollar for dollar. The money flowed through a C.I.A.-run Swiss bank account. In the book “ Charlie Wilson’s War ,” the journalist George Crile III describes how the C.I.A. arranged for the account to earn no interest, in keeping with the Islamic ban on usury. In 1984, when the Reagan administration sought help with its secret plan to sell arms to Iran to finance the contra rebels in Nicaragua, Robert C. McFarlane, the national security adviser, met with Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington at the time. The White House made it clear that the Saudis would “gain a considerable amount of favor” by cooperating, Mr. McFarlane later recalled. Prince Bandar pledged $1 million per month to help fund the contras, in recognition of the administration’s past support to the Saudis. The contributions continued after Congress cut off funding to the contras. By the end, the Saudis had contributed $32 million, paid through a Cayman Islands bank account. When the Iran-contra scandal broke, and questions arose about the Saudi role, the kingdom kept its secrets. Prince Bandar refused to cooperate with the investigation led by Lawrence E. Walsh , the independent counsel. In a letter, the prince declined to testify, explaining that his country’s “confidences and commitments, like our friendship, are given not just for the moment but the long run.”

Syria
Saudi Arabia
CIA
US Foreign Policy
Arms Trade
Military


Prince Fielder Helps Rangers Overcome Yankees and Michael Pineda

Abstract: Minutes before taking the mound, Michael Pineda walked in from the bullpen with a wide smile. He had reason to feel jovial. The last time Pineda pitched at Yankee Stadium, he struck out 16 batters, the second-highest tally in a game in franchise history. But by the third, after giving up his seventh run of the inning, Pineda’s face no longer radiated joy. As sweat trickled down the side of his right cheek, he tucked in his lips, sighed and shook his head in disbelief. Looking for Pineda to carry them out of a recent slump, the Yankees instead fell to the Texas Rangers, 10-9, for their eighth loss in nine games. Pineda followed up his worst outing of the season on May 15 at Kansas City with an equally poor performance, giving up seven runs, four earned, on eight hits. “I’m better than that,” Pineda said. “I’m better than tonight.” Against the Royals, on the heels of being named the pitcher of the week for the American League for his 16-strikeout dominance of the Baltimore Orioles, Pineda gave up five runs on 10 hits in a 12-1 loss. Infield errors, including a self-inflicted mishap, ignited Pineda’s downward spiral on Friday. With two runners on base in the third, Thomas Field bunted a ball back to the mound. Pineda fielded the play cleanly but briefly turned his head toward Leonys Martin, who was headed to third base, before launching a throw wide of first base. Pineda said he heard someone in the infield call out “three” multiple times, meaning to throw to third. “It made me a little confused,” he said. “When I threw the ball to first it was a little late.” The next batter, Delino DeShields, reached on a fielder’s choice, and two runs were scored on an error charged to shortstop Didi Gregorius. Shin-Soo Choo singled to score Field, and Prince Fielder added a three-run homer to give the Rangers a 6-0 lead. Image Michael Pineda after Fielder’s third-inning homer. He pitched six innings Friday in the Yankees’ eighth loss in nine games. Credit Al Bello/Getty Images “The walks, the errors that we made, we gave them too many outs and too many base runners and it cost us the game,” Manager Joe Girardi said. Pineda had mystified the Orioles in his last start at home with a biting slider. But after Fielder homered on a slider that hung over the plate, Pineda began going away from his breaking ball, and Mitch Moreland added a solo home run on a 93-mile-per-hour fastball left high in the zone to cap the seven-run inning. “His location was off tonight for the first time in a while,” catcher Brian McCann said. Girardi let Pineda throw six innings, as he eventually settled down and limited the Rangers to three hits after the third. The Yankees kept the game within reach with four runs in the fourth, led by a three-run homer by Gregorius, his first as a Yankee. Then Fielder clubbed his second homer of the night in the seventh, a solo shot, and the Rangers added two runs in the eighth to keep the Yankees at bay. Garrett Jones brought the Yankees close with a three-run homer in the eighth, cutting the deficit to 10-8. Mark Teixeira hit a one-out solo home run in the ninth, but Ross Ohlendorf got two more outs for the save. After Pineda’s disastrous seven-run inning, the home crowd finally had a reason to cheer in the bottom of the third, when Slade Heathcott collected a hit in his first big league at-bat. Facing Colby Lewis, Heathcott lined a 2-2 pitch into left-center field. Martin was slow in throwing the ball in, and Heathcott sped to second base for a double. Heathcott, who is expected to see a share of playing time in center field while Jacoby Ellsbury is on the disabled list with a sprained right knee, finished 2 for 3, with a run scored. Heathcott was driven in by Alex Rodriguez, who collected his 1,992nd career R.B.I., according to the Elias Sports Bureau, tying him with Babe Ruth for fourth since runs batted in became an official statistic in 1920. However, counting Ruth’s pre-1920 R.B.I., the record-keeping website Baseball-Reference.com lists Ruth as having 2,214, while Baseball-Almanac.com has him at 2,213. What is not in dispute is the Yankees’ place in the standings. They arrived home after a 2-7 trip out of first place in the American League East for the first time since April 22. Friday’s loss dropped them to a game and a half behind the Tampa Bay Rays. INSIDE PITCH Joe Girardi announced that MASAHIRO TANAKA was scheduled to throw 65 pitches in a rehab start for Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Wednesday in Pawtucket, R.I. Tanaka, who has been on the disabled list since April 29 with right wrist tendinitis and a right forearm strain, threw 41 pitches over three scoreless innings on Thursday for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Baseball
Michael Pineda
Prince Fielder
Texas Rangers
Yankees