College Football Schedules Holding Up Wedding Plans

Abstract: There are any number of reasons to get nervous about planning a wedding, but the realignment of college football conferences is rarely among them. Yet some brides and grooms, hotels and event planners are feeling the unintended consequences of the ever-changing sports landscape as college teams leap from one league to the next, chasing stability and the almighty television dollar. Football schedules for next fall in two major conferences have not been released because of a legal battle prompted by West Virginia’s attempt to move from the Big East to the Big 12, resulting in widespread angst for anyone trying to plan an event in college towns from Morgantown, W.Va., to Manhattan, Kan. Brides hoping to wear white on a fall weekend are being told they must wait until the schedules are announced, because event facilities want to give preference to football weekends. “It’s amazing what happens when nobody can function because of college football,” said Dennicia Craft, executive assistant to the athletic director at Oklahoma State. “It does run our lives.” Several colleges said they were receiving frantic phone calls or e-mails from brides, meeting planners, campus groups and hotels wanting to know if the Mountaineers, Jayhawks and Cowboys would be home or away on a particular date. “I’m hearing a lot of brides are anxious,” said Cathy Martin, executive assistant to the athletic director at West Virginia. “They need to know our football schedule so they can coordinate dates for their wedding. Hopefully in the next two weeks we get this resolved and we’ll make a lot of brides very happy.” Brian Frederick, 37, is engaged to marry Carolyn Hoef, 31, in September or October in Lawrence, Kan. Both attended the University of Kansas there. His father was Kansas’ athletic director for 14 years. His mother is a retired event planner at the university. If anybody has connections, these two do. Still, their plans remain uncertain until the football schedule is made public. “I was hoping someone would release it WikiLeaks style,” Frederick said. The couple want to marry in the university chapel where Frederick’s parents were married and to have their reception at the campus alumni building. But neither facility will book the wedding, and local hotels won’t make rooms available, they said, until the Kansas football schedule is completed. “It’s very frustrating,” Hoef, an architect who lives in Washington, said with a laugh. “I never thought my wedding would be so influenced by a football schedule. I’m not even a football fan.” Frederick, her fiancé, also lives in Washington. He is executive director of the Sports Fans Coalition, an advocacy group that has lobbied against television blackouts of games and against the much-maligned Bowl Championship Series, preferring instead a playoff in college football. “This gives me even more opportunity to hate the B.C.S.,” Frederick said. Ashley Jones, 26, plans to marry on Oct. 13 in Manhattan, Kan., home to Kansas State, her alma mater. She had trouble finding a hotel to host her reception, she said, and the prices kept changing, depending on whether Kansas State would have a home football game that weekend. She finally found a ballroom that would accommodate her, but fears her wedding guests might have to book rooms a half-hour away if the Wildcats end up playing in town. “I wanted a fall wedding, so I’m sticking to my date,” said Jones, who works for a sportswear company. “I’m not stressing out too much. I hope to keep it that way. But it would be so much easier if we had the schedule.” Lisa Webb is a sales assistant at the National Center for Employee Development conference center and hotel, which has 964 guest rooms, in Norman, Okla., site of the football-mad University of Oklahoma. Those who inquire about weddings, family reunions, conventions, conferences, anniversaries and bar mitzvahs for next fall are told that the hotel must first honor its contracts with the university, Webb said. “We have to have the schedule before we can book other things those weekends,” Webb said. “It’s definitely causing an issue for all the hotels.” At Texas Tech in Lubbock, a private club in the football stadium features on its Web site a photograph of a wedding cake situated on a table overlooking the playing field. Weddings, receptions and rehearsal dinners can book the club, but for the fall, “I have my hands tied,” said Kristen Datko, the club’s private events director. “The university is our landlord.” Event planning had not been such a chancy issue at a previous job in the Atlantic Coast Conference, said Datko, a graduate of Florida State. “When I worked at a club there, we hardly had weddings during football season,” she said. “That time of year was devoted solely to football.” Baylor is located in Waco, Tex., and bills itself as the world’s largest Baptist university. There have been no fall wedding disruptions so far, given that the football stadium is not on campus and the university has five chapels and the library available for betrothals, said Jane Gunn, Baylor’s associate director of event services. “If you want to get married, we can help you out,” Gunn said. The university has even provided television coverage to a groom or two so they could watch Baylor play before the ceremony. “One game went into overtime a few years ago, and that delayed the start of the wedding a few minutes. I guess he was a die-hard Baylor fan.” Larry Keating handles the scheduling for Kansas’ football and basketball teams. He is getting at least one call a day now from wedding families or campus groups, especially since the Big 12 released a tentative football schedule to television networks last week. “Now they are saying, ‘I know you know,’ ” Keating said. Still, he cannot comment, and things could change. “I guess that’s why June became the traditional bride’s month,” Keating said. “No significant sporting events.”

Football
Weddings and Engagements
College Athletics
Colleges and Universities
Marriages
University of Kansas
Big 12 Conference
Big East Conference
University of West Virginia
Football (College)


Jobless Claims Decline Amid Weak Economic Growth

Abstract: Weak data on home sales and factory activity on Thursday showed the economy stuck in a slow-growth gear. But a drop in claims for unemployment benefits offered hope the labor market’s recovery was on track. The reports suggested growth was being hampered by a combination of bad weather at home and supply disruptions caused by the March earthquake in Japan, and analysts said the economy should regain momentum by the second half of the year. “What you are looking at is second-quarter growth which may be a little softer than what people are expecting, but that’s going to be temporary,” said Rudy Narvas, an economist at Société Générale in New York. First-time claims for state unemployment benefits fell 29,000 to 409,000 last week, the Labor Department said. While the initial claims decline was more than economists’ expectations for a fall to 420,000, for a sixth straight week they remained above the 400,000 level that is normally associated with stable job growth. The claims data covered the survey period for the government’s closely watched employment report for May, which will be released early next month. Claims rose by 5,000 in the April and May survey periods, indicating a loss of momentum in the pace of labor market improvement. “Based on this and other incoming data, we look for a gain of 190,000 in May nonfarm payrolls and a 210,000 increase in private payrolls,” said Michael Gapen, a senior United States economist at Barclays Capital in New York. The drop eased fears that a large increase the jobless rate last month reflected a fundamental deterioration in the jobs market, buttressing the view that the increase was because of auto plant shutdowns and other one-time factors. In a separate report, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said its business activity index — a gauge of factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region — slumped to a seven-month low. The flow of orders and shipments slowed significantly, while unfilled orders and inventories dropped. Employers, however, added workers. Economists said this suggested that much of the slowdown in factory activity in the region last month reflected supply chain disruptions at motor vehicle assembly plants, which should prove to be temporary. A Fed report on Tuesday showed that motor vehicle output dropped 8.9 percent in April, causing manufacturing activity to contract for the first time in 10 months. Estimates for second-quarter economic growth currently range from a 3 percent to 3.5 percent annual pace, but some analysts have started trimming forecasts as the impact of the supply chain disruptions becomes more evident. The economy grew at a 1.8 percent rate in the first three months of this year, after growing at a 3.1 percent clip in the fourth quarter. Although some of the factors hindering growth may prove temporary, housing will remain a headache. Sales of previously owned homes fell 0.8 percent last month to an annual rate of 5.05 million units, the National Association of Realtors said. Housing is buckling under the weight of foreclosed properties, which are depressing prices. “The economy is not going to grow at a 3 percent pace or more on a sustainable basis until we clear this backlog of foreclosed properties and housing begins to recover,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities. The data suggested the Federal Reserve will be in no hurry to shift from its easy monetary policy stance. Mortgage delinquencies 90 days past their due date in the first quarter were the lowest since the beginning of 2009, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

United States Economy
Economic Conditions and Trends
Labor and Jobs
Unemployment
Housing and Real Estate


Freed Detainee Arrives in Britain

Abstract: LONDON — A Guantánamo detainee at the center of a long standoff between the United States and Britain was freed and returned to Britain on Monday after almost seven years in American custody. The detainee, Binyam Mohamed , was flown in a Gulfstream jet to the Northolt Royal Air Force Base in Northwest London, and by the evening had been released from detention. Mr. Mohamed, 30, was captured in Pakistan in April 2002; American officials said that he was part of a conspiracy to detonate a dirty bomb on American soil. But all charges against him were eventually dismissed. He has said he was held for 18 months in Morocco, where he says he was tortured, then was moved to Afghanistan and then to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The C.I.A. has repeatedly declined to say if Mr. Mohamed was held in Morocco, and has steadfastly denied that he, or anyone else in its custody, was ever tortured. Britain, where Mr. Mohamed established residence 15 years ago, had been seeking his release since August 2007. The United States and Britain have wrangled in court over what documents related to his case can be released. The case has been viewed by some as a test for President Obama and his promise to break sharply from his predecessor regarding the treatment of detainees. Continued detention of a prisoner with no charges against him, whose release was sought by the United States’ closest ally in the war on terrorism, loomed as potential source of diplomatic tension for the new administration. David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, said that he was “pleased” Mr. Mohamed had been given his release, and that it had come after “intense negotiations.” Mr. Mohamed was greeted at the air base by his sister Zuhra, who flew in from Virginia, where she has lived for many years. “I’m so excited, I don’t know what to say, I can’t put it in words,” Ms. Mohamed said in an interview before her brother arrived. Mr. Mohamed made no statement when he landed. But in remarks issued by Reprieve, the nongovernmental organization that has worked for his release and the release of other detainees, Mr. Mohamed said: “I hope you will understand that after everything I have been through I am neither physically nor mentally capable of facing the media. “I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares,” the statement said. “Before this ordeal, torture was an abstract word.” Mr. Mohamed will eventually sit down for an interview with Britain’s intelligence agency, according to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, who added that his client would eventually speak to the media as well. The United States wanted to impose a gag order on Mr. Mohamed, but his lawyers rejected the idea, Mr. Stafford Smith said. While Mr. Mohamed’s detention has ended, his case seems sure to proceed on several legal fronts, including the effort by his lawyers to have the documents relating to his treatment made public. Two British judges are reviewing a court decision that prevented the release of intelligence documents provided to Britain by the United States. And Mr. Mohamed is part of a lawsuit in San Francisco against a subsidiary of Boeing that allegedly supplied planes for rendition to Morocco.

Mohamed Binyam
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
Torture
Detainees
Afghanistan War (2001- )


Win in Wisconsin Casts Doubts on Union Power

Abstract: Labor unions led the failed effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and their defeat in Tuesday’s election was a significant setback to organized labor’s political clout in both symbolic and tangible ways. Unions in Wisconsin and across the country devoted vast resources in an attempt to remove Mr. Walker from office, saying the Republican governor’s moves to roll back collective bargaining rights for public employees were an assault on middle-class values and were being bankrolled by a handful of wealthy business owners and corporations. At a time when other states facing budget crises are considering ways to curb the ballooning compensation costs of public employees, union leaders had hoped that ousting Mr. Walker would stand as a warning to other elected officials that the political price for such actions could be dear. Mr. Walker’s seven-point margin of victory took at least some of the teeth out of that threat. And his campaign, fueled by an spending advantage of more than 7 to 1 over his Democratic opponent, provides a blueprint for elected officials considering a rollback of public employee bargaining rights elsewhere, like Iowa and Minnesota. Labor experts also suspect that the loss will hurt efforts to recruit new union members in the coming years. “What happened in Wisconsin was a huge loss, because it got them on all fronts,” said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “It will embolden politicians in other states, it’s emboldened private sector employers to demand greater concessions and will hurt organizing because it will tarnish the reputation of unions as an effective representative.” Beyond that, the results will have the practical effect of helping to preserve Mr. Walker’s initiatives in Wisconsin, which reduce the membership and funding of public employee unions and make it harder for labor to wage battles in the future. Labor leaders strained on Wednesday to find shards of encouragement in the election results from Wisconsin. A labor-backed candidate, John Lehman, appeared to be ahead of the Republican incumbent, Van Wanggaard, in an extremely close State Senate race that would give Democrats control of one house of the legislature, a development that would offer a check on Governor Walker’s power. Unions also pointed out that their loss in Wisconsin comes after a number of successes in other places where voters or courts struck down laws that weakened public employees’ unions. “Remember that collective bargaining rights were taken from workers in Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio and Puerto Rico — yet they all ultimately won them back,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in a statement. Yet unions also lost two critical votes in California on Tuesday, as voters in San Jose and San Diego passed ballot measures that will cut retirement benefits for city workers. Labor experts say that unions will have to regroup and rethink their political strategy, both at the state level and for the presidential campaign. Some union officials took comfort in the fact that several of the factors that contributed to Tuesday’s loss in Wisconsin were specific to the recall race. Voters tend to be wary of recalls, and had already elected Mr. Walker over his recall opponent, Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee, by a similar margin in 2010. Mr. Barrett had also been weakened by a primary fight against a labor-backed candidate. Yet many political analysts and labor leaders acknowledged that the financial advantage that helped Mr. Walker overcome the union’s traditional strength in get-out-the-vote efforts could well be a sign of things to come, especially since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision loosened restrictions on campaign contributions. And there was little agreement on how extensively labor leaders need to retool their message to appeal to working-class voters. Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, with 1.3 million members nationwide, said that labor had made huge progress in rallying public support since the “dark days” of early 2011. But with political support for public employee benefits in doubt and amid a weak economy, many labor experts say that union officials need to refocus their appeal or risk further erosion of their power. “They haven’t found a way to connect with the average voter and make clear how they’re proposing positive change rather than policies of the past,” said Harry Katz, dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “Until they do that, they are going to be on the defensive, and in trouble.”

Organized Labor
Collective Bargaining
Walker Scott K
Wisconsin
Government Employees


A Moroccan Rapper, Barry, Goes Home to Sharpen His Words

Abstract: CASABLANCA, Morocco HE is treated like a prince in Hay al-Mohammadi, the district of slums, markets, immigrants and working-class Moroccans out of which he began to scramble as a teenager, 15 years old, singing with one of the first rap groups in Morocco, CasaMuslim. Muhammad Bahri , now 29, is proud of the district, which was central to popular resistance to French colonial rule, and the people here are proud of him, a kid who made it out, an old urban story. People slap him on the back, buy him coffee, ask him about his parents and his recent marriage, and talk about their problems — poverty, the police, drugs in the neighborhood, their kids. But it has not been such an easy ride for Mr. Bahri, who goes by the stage name of Barry, printed on his yellow T-shirt. His political songs, criticizing a feared former interior minister and the police, have gotten him into trouble, and his performances at some music festivals have been disrupted. In one famous song, called “Driss,” he took on Driss Basri, who ran the Interior Ministry from 1979 to 1999, known here as “the years of lead.” Mr. Basri was considered King Hassan II’s tough right hand, his iron fist, keeping order through wide-scale detentions, repression and prison torture. “Driss was a farmer and became a policeman,” Mr. Bahri sings. “We told him to keep an eye on the stick and then he beat us with it. Enough, enough, enough from that stick.” Later, he sings: “They gave him the keys to the safe, and he locked it in front of us.” “People were quite shocked by this,” he said during a recent interview, laughing, pushing his Ray-Bans up onto his forehead. “But with each album I try to do a song that shocks the people.” Mr. Basri was dismissed by the current king, Muhammad VI, within months of his accession to the throne in 1999, after the death of his father. The former minister exiled himself to Paris, where he died in 2007, at 69. He was buried in Rabat, but the only member of the government to attend the funeral was the current interior minister, Chakib Benmoussa. Near Hay al-Mohammadi, in Derb Moulay Sherif, there is an infamous underground prison, originally built by the French, where conditions for political prisoners were said to be unspeakable under Mr. Basri. The new king earned much respect from ordinary Moroccans when he made a personal visit to the prison without warning; it was later closed. Mr. Bahri’s grandfather, a poet, spent time in the prison, arrested for opposition to French rule, Mr. Bahri said. A song like “Driss” would have been impossible under the reign of King Hassan, Mr. Bahri said. King Muhammad has loosened restrictions considerably on the news media and popular culture, but within limits that include criticism of the king and the monarchy. Under King Hassan, Mr. Bahri said, it was difficult to say anything, so musicians created a style, a kind of Moroccan popular music called “chaabi,” similar to Algerian “raï,” which plays with traditional folk melodies. But now there are more modern blends and stronger content. “Here it is possible now to bark, but gently,” Mr. Bahri said. In 2003, when Islamic radicals set off a series of bombs in Casablanca , killing 45, wounding hundreds and shocking Morocco, Mr. Bahri was playing at a club 200 yards from one of the bombings. “THE room was shaking, and we kept playing,” he said. “We thought it was an earthquake.” He soon understood differently and went into the street. “I saw everything destroyed,” he said, still astonished in the retelling. “There were a lot of arrests, and a lot of people put into jail who had nothing to do with anything, but we had a problem of Qaeda cells here.” His first response was to write a song aimed at Al Qaeda called “Who Are You?” “Who are you?” he asks. “Who are you today?” “You made terrorism, it was a present for Bush,” he sings, referring to former President George W. Bush. “Do you want peace, or do you want the politics of the C.I.A.?” The song continues: “You start to wear big trousers, and you grow your beard, and you wear tagia,” a knitted cap. “You speak of resistance but you are tamed monsters. If you understood the Koran, there wouldn’t be bombs.” But Mr. Bahri also wrote a song attacking the international politics of Mr. Bush, called “Johnny Walker Bush, li man habbouch,” or “the one we dislike.” “The blood of every Arab is not enough for me,” he sings. “How greedy! We sent him to hell.” Mr. Bahri left the neighborhood five years ago, but he tries to keep in touch with his parents and friends there, partly in search of material that will make his songs resonate. “I always get my ideas from these poor districts, I read the newspapers and follow the news,” he said. “I have the feeling I can influence things through my songs.” Many of Morocco’s poor are illiterate, and Mr. Bahri believes that his songs can educate and inspire. “I see myself as an ambassador or a journalist, and I try to reach people who don’t read newspapers,” he said. Mr. Bahri’s father was an excellent soccer player who made the national team. Later, he became an engineer on the national train network. He never made much money, but pushed Mr. Bahri to get an education. In Hay al-Mohammadi, where Mr. Bahri’s parents, brother and sister still live, there are signs of rebuilding and development. “Before M6,” as King Muhammad VI is known, “they forgot this district,” Mr. Bahri said. But beyond the market and the nearby hovels for the poor, there are some new and renovated schools, including a new sports center and playground. There are some programs to send children to seaside camps in the summer. BUT poverty and illiteracy remain high here. “These people were all in crisis before the crisis arrived,” Mr. Bahri said. “If you don’t work here, you don’t eat. If you stay at home, you die.” Muhammad Mardi, 66, a retired teacher, greeted Mr. Bahri and congratulated him on his marriage. Mr. Mardi was supervising three young men cementing broken tiles in front of a shop, to create a more decorative walkway. One of the men, Khaled al-Omari, 24, said he had little work and lived with his mother, who sells vegetables at the market, and four siblings. “When I can, I clean fish at the market,” he said. “I don’t even earn 50 dirhams a day,” about $6.25. There is anger, too. In the market, near the fly-strewn stalls for butchered meat, a bearded vendor said in Arabic to Mr. Bahri, referring to the American journalist: “You take care of him. If not, we’ll slaughter him.” It was not said in a lighthearted fashion. “Poverty is also in the head,” Mr. Bahri said, then began laughing. “We all need psychiatrists.”


Off the Couch and Back With the Jets for Garrard

Abstract: FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — It was not really the jogging, the weight training or the physical therapy that told David Garrard his chronic left knee troubles had healed enough for him to come out of retirement. It was playing wide receiver for his wife, a quarterback on a flag football team in Jacksonville, Fla. “You have to do the cutting and the stopping and running long sprints,” Garrard said. “If I could do that every day for the past month, I knew I could at least attempt to get back out here and give it a go.” On Sunday, watching N.F.L. games from his couch, Garrard called Jets General Manager John Idzik and said he was thinking about coming back. Garrard, who signed a $1.1 million contract in March but retired in May, had not felt knee pain in weeks. He wanted to give it another shot. So on Wednesday, a day after Mark Sanchez had season-ending shoulder surgery, the Jets brought back the 35-year-old Garrard. He passed a physical on Thursday and suited up for practice wearing No. 4. “I would’ve been more than happy just to say, ‘O.K., I tried, my time has moved on,’ ” Garrard said. “But I’m very thankful I did make the call and that Mr. Idzik gave me a chance to come back.” Garrard is on the exempt list for two games, so the team has until 4 p.m. on Oct. 21 to decide whether to make him a member of the 53-man roster. Garrard is not being paid for what is essentially a two-week tryout. “I feel like an intern,” he said. He was wearing a black T-shirt with “Some Things Just Won’t Retire” on the front. But Garrard quashed the suggestion that he was coming back to compete with Geno Smith as the starter. “Geno has the job,” Garrard said. “If my number is ever called, I need to be ready for that. My job is to help these guys out, him and Matt Simms, and be as much of a leader as I can in the locker room and a mentor in the quarterback room.” Simms is second on the depth chart. It has been an intriguing week of quarterback news, even for the Jets. On Monday, Smith gave a transcendent performance against the Falcons, finishing with the highest rating (147.7) by a Jets quarterback since Chad Pennington had a 158.3 rating against the Indianapolis Colts in 2003. Smith was named the A.F.C.’s offensive player of the week. On Tuesday, the Jets announced that Sanchez was finished for the season. On Wednesday, Coach Rex Ryan was noncommittal about Sanchez’s future with the team. And on Thursday, Garrard was at practice. Garrard’s return immediately jeopardized the tenure of Brady Quinn, another veteran quarterback the team had acquired. Quinn, a former first-round selection, has not been active the past four games. “This is a week-to-week business,” Quinn said. “All you can do is continue to focus on the opponent, things you’re doing to prepare for the game and be ready.” Garrard was signed in March as a contingency plan in case Sanchez was released or traded and Smith faltered. But Smith has shown flashes of excellence, and Garrard, a former five-year starter with the Jacksonville Jaguars who has 16,003 career passing yards and 89 touchdown passes, would appear to slide back in as a natural mentor — an easygoing and affable veteran who adds leadership and perspective. “This guy’s got an unbelievable wealth of knowledge and experience,” Ryan said. Only a few weeks ago, the 6-foot-1-inch, 239-pound Garrard thought his playing days were finished, and he was fine with that. He spent the summer embracing retirement. In August, he said, he stepped on a scale and recognized it might be time to begin working out again. So he started jogging a little, doing light activities in the Florida humidity, like running receiver routes for his wife, Mary, to help her practice throwing. Over the last month, Garrard said, the workouts intensified with no knee discomfort. He began seriously considering a comeback two weeks ago. “I was just thinking, man, I need to be somewhere,” Garrard said. “There’s no reason I should be sitting here not helping somebody out. It may not be on the field, but I know in practice, locker rooms, meeting rooms, I can help out. I didn’t want to turn 50 someday and wonder what if.” EXTRA POINTS Wide receiver Santonio Holmes, cornerback Dee Milliner and tight end Kellen Winslow did not practice. Rex Ryan considered Holmes to be a game-time decision for Sunday. Regarding his comments last week about not being able to throw the football to himself, Holmes declined to comment.


Spectator at Race Is Killed

Abstract: A Bolivian spectator was killed at the Dakar Rally when he was hit by a car driven by the Frenchman Lionel Baud during the seventh stage, from Bolivia to Argentina, the event organizers said. It was the 64th death in the history of the event, an annual endurance race dating to 1979, and the sixth since it was moved to South America, from Africa, in 2009 for security reasons. The death total includes 23 competitors.

Dakar Rally
Sports injury
Murders and Homicides
Car Crash


Air France Fires Its Chief Executive

Abstract: PARIS — Barely four months after appointing him to a new four-year term, the board of Air France-KLM voted Monday to dismiss its group chief executive, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, who had grown deeply unpopular with investors as he struggled to cope with high operating costs and increasing scrutiny of the carrier’s safety culture since a crash killed more than 200 people two years ago. Mr. Gourgeon, 65, held the chief executive posts of the combined group and of its Air France unit. Alexandre de Juniac, 48, an adviser to the French finance minister, François Baroin, is expected to take the helm of Air France sometime next month, the company said. The appointment of Mr. Juniac, a civil servant who also has worked in the aeronautics industry, is subject to approval by a government ethics committee. Air France-KLM said its chairman, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, would assume chief executive duties at the parent company until the creation of the new holding company structure. Mr. Spinetta ran Air France for a decade until 2009, with Mr. Gourgeon as his deputy. Leo Van Wijk, the chief executive of KLM, will become the group's deputy chief executive. Philippe Calavia will remain as chief financial officer, the company said. Analysts said the surprise could well signal a major reorganization and a shift in strategy by the airline, which is Europe’s largest by revenue. “This is a major shock — nothing like this has ever been seen at this company,” said Yan Derocles, an airline industry analyst at Oddo Securities in Paris. “I expect it will be accompanied by significant structural measures.” The move came after Mr. Gourgeon was re-appointed in July to a new four-year mandate as head of the group holding company, part of a management reorganization that would have seen him give up his dual role at Air France in January. Mr. Gourgeon had personally advocated for Mr. Juniac, who has no previous experience in the airline industry, to succeed him at the French unit. French media reports said Mr. Gourgeon was informed Friday of the decision to replace him, with some reports suggesting that the move was at the instigation of Mr. Spinetta, his one-time mentor, because of his frustration with the company’s financial performance. Neither Mr. Gourgeon nor Mr. Spinetta could be reached to comment on the accounts. Mr. Gourgeon, who trained as a fighter pilot, presided over a troubled two years that included the crash of an Airbus A330 over the mid-Atlantic in June 2009 that killed all 228 people on board. Both Air France and Airbus face accusations of involuntary manslaughter in the case, which is still under investigation. An interim report by French accident investigators indicated that the pilots of the plane had not received training that could have helped them avert disaster. The airline’s management, which last year ordered a top-down audit of its safety procedures, has rejected criticism of its pilot training program and has asserted instead that a “misleading” pattern of cockpit alarms on the Airbus jet contributed to the crew’s difficulties. The airline also has struggled more than many of its peers to recover from the economic crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008. For the three months through June it swung to a net loss of €197 million, or about $270 million, from a €736 million profit a year earlier — a result the airline attributed to rising fuel prices and a drop in traffic linked to unrest in the Middle East and the nuclear crisis in Japan. The group has forecast a modest operating profit for 2011, though that is much weaker than the roughly €1 billion that analysts predict for Lufthansa this year and the €600 million for International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia of Spain. Analysts said its weak performance made the group particularly vulnerable if the global economy should slip back into a recession. Nonetheless, during a briefing with journalists in September, Mr. Gourgeon said he believed Air France-KLM had emerged from the “violent” 2009 downturn in a healthier position. “The industry is in a better position today, after we took measures” to reduce costs, he said at the time. Yet Air France-KLM still has some of the highest operating costs in the industry, spending about a third on staff expenses alone. That compares with about a quarter of total operating costs at Lufthansa, British Airways and Iberia. Air France-KLM had already been preparing a major restructuring program aimed at cutting operating costs by up to €800 million. Mr. Gourgeon presented the outlines of that plan in September, which included a hiring freeze as a first step with an eye to reducing the group’s headcount of 87,000 employees by 2 percent a year through attrition. But with a slowdown in passenger and cargo traffic showing signs of worsening, analysts said new management would probably seek cuts of €1 billion or more, which would probably lead to a showdown with the airline’s prickly labor unions. The C.F.D.T., one of the largest French unions, hinted late Monday that the airline could face industrial action if it sought substantial new staff cuts. “We need a coherent economic, employment and corporate plan very quickly,” Gilles Nicoli, secretary general of the Air France section of the C.F.D.T., told Reuters. “We don’t want this reorganization to be an excuse for delay.” Mr. Derocles of Oddo said management could seek to eliminate as many as 10,000 additional jobs and would probably reduce or eliminate some routes. In September, Air France-KLM said it was cutting the frequency of its flights to Newark International and John F. Kennedy airports outside New York City for the winter season, which begins this month, and reducing capacity on several routes, particularly to North Africa. Analysts said the new management could also study the possible sale and outsourcing of activities such as maintenance or catering. The French government owns nearly 16 percent of Air France-KLM, a stake worth about €272 million at current prices, and controls 3 of the 15 seats on the company’s board. Despite its financial straits, Air France-KLM proceeded last month with a deal to buy as many as 110 Airbus and Boeing long-range jets as part of a plan to renew its fleet. Those deals contain a far greater number of purchase options versus outright orders than had been originally envisioned.

AIR France-KLM
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Appointments and Executive Changes
Gourgeon Pierre-Henri


Red Sox Lose in 15 Innings as Skid Hits 9

Abstract: Andrew Miller tried for a force at second base but threw the ball into center field, allowing pinch-runner Cole Figueroa to score in the bottom of the 15th inning, as the host Tampa Bay Rays handed the Boston Red Sox their ninth straight loss, 6-5, on Saturday. ROYALS 7, ANGELS 4 Eric Hosmer tied a season high with four hits, pinch-runner Jarrod Dyson scored the go-ahead run in the 13th inning on a throwing error by the rookie reliever Mike Morin, and visiting Kansas City beat Los Angeles. PIRATES 3, NATIONALS 2 Josh Harrison had a tiebreaking, two-out single in the seventh inning, and host Pittsburgh beat Washington for its fourth straight win. CARDINALS 6, REDS 3 The left-hander Jaime Garcia got his first victory in more than a year in another step in his comeback from shoulder surgery, leading visiting St. Louis past Cincinnati. BLUE JAYS 5, ATHLETICS 2 R. A. Dickey won for the third time in four starts, Brett Lawrie homered and host Toronto beat Oakland. ROCKIES 3, BRAVES 1 Michael Cuddyer and Troy Tulowitzki each homered, Juan Nicasio solved Atlanta, and visiting Colorado beat the Braves. MARLINS 2, BREWERS 1 Jacob Turner pitched six and a third scoreless innings to help host Miami defeat Milwaukee. PHILLIES 5, DODGERS 3 David Buchanan threw five effective innings in his major league debut, Chase Utley hit a two-run homer and host Philadelphia beat Los Angeles. RANGERS 12, TIGERS 2 Nick Martinez pitched six innings for his first major league win, and his fellow rookie Rougned Odor drove in five runs to lead visiting Texas in a rout of Detroit. INDIANS 9, ORIOLES 0 Corey Kluber struck out nine in seven innings, and visiting Cleveland beat the former Indian Ubaldo Jimenez and Baltimore.

Baseball
Blue Jays
Oakland Athletics
R A Dickey
Tampa Bay Rays
Red Sox


Putting a Skyscraper on a Pedestal

Abstract: In the city within a city rising west of Pennsylvania Station are many astonishing sights. The most astonishing — for the moment, anyway — is a mammoth steel structure, as long as a city block, that seems to float 51½ feet over the ground at Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street. With a volume of 1.2 million cubic feet, this structure alone would be more than enough of a building in most parts of New York City. But on the Far West Side of Manhattan, which is being redeveloped at a gargantuan scale, it is merely a pedestal for a skyscraper that will eventually soar 995 feet. The $1 billion skyscraper, called 1 Manhattan West , will not simply sit on this pedestal. It will balance on it. Image A worker at 1 Manhattan West, which will open in 2019. Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times The pedestal extends 42 feet beyond the building’s core to the north and south. The south overhang will suspend the tower over three parallel Long Island Rail Road tracks. The north overhang will act as a counterbalance. “Nothing that is going to happen on this site is going to be conventional,” said Gary Haney , a design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill , the architects and engineers of the Manhattan West project, which is being developed by Brookfield Properties . Brookfield has owned part of the Manhattan West site since 1985, through its corporate predecessor, Olympia & York. Image Studs on a steel girder of the tower. Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times For decades, developers and city planners looked longingly at the open-air, below-grade rail yards between Penn Station and the Hudson River. But they were daunted by the logistics of building above active yards through which thousands of commuters pass every day. Construction did not begin in earnest until 2014 over the tracks west of 10th Avenue, on a project called Hudson Yards , atop more than 300 caissons drilled into bedrock. A different approach was taken at Manhattan West, east of 10th Avenue. There, the rail yard has been covered with a deck made of precast, hollow concrete segments that will form a public plaza when the project opens in 2019. The deck could not possibly hold the weight of giant office towers. Instead, 1 Manhattan West will rise straight out of the bedrock cliff on the north side of the rail yard. It will overhang the deck and some of the tracks below. Image Workers install braces to connect the tower’s pedestal to the core. Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times What makes the overhang possible are 75-foot-long diagonal braces, called kickers, that transfer the weight of the tower and pedestal into the building core. As single pieces, the kickers would be too heavy for a crane to hoist. So they were broken down into three segments, each roughly 25 feet long. On Sept. 15, the last kicker segment — with “Lift Weight 75 863 Lbs” spray-painted on the steel — was installed on the south side of the building. Despite its great weight, it seemed to float through the air. A single ironworker on the ground, holding the kicker at the end of a long leash, wrangled it into position, in concert with the crane operator. Image Inside the deck over the nearby railroad tracks. Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times Slowly, the bottom plate of the new segment came into alignment with the top plate of the previously installed segment. Two ironworkers, known in the field as bolter-uppers, waited in a bucket at the end of a cherry-picker. When the space between the plates narrowed to inches, they began the manual work of joining the two pieces. Anyone who has ever been stumped assembling an Ikea sofa (or, in my case, Revell airplane models) would marvel at the sight of a 38-ton piece of steel being snapped into place by a crew of four in a little over an hour. The assembly of the steel pedestal alternated from north side to south and back, to keep the weight of the overall structure in a constant state of balance, said Joseph Ross, an executive vice president at Tishman Construction , a unit of Aecom , the conglomerate that is serving as construction manager of 1 Manhattan West. Above the pedestal, construction will proceed in a conventional manner, Mr. Ross said, with a concrete core rising first and the steel exoskeleton following. The tower will have 67 occupied floors. The principal tenant will be the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom . Rather than hide the unusual support system, Brookfield will highlight it with a cladding of travertine quarried about 15 miles east of Siena, Italy . Because the overhang eliminates the need for structural columns around the lobby, the exterior glass curtain wall will be almost diaphanous. “The idea is that you’re not reading the glass, you’re reading the core,” said Christian Heimple, the vice president for construction at Brookfield. It promises to be a sight that will continue to astonish.

Brookfield Office Properties
Construction
Hudson Yards,West Side Railyards
Midtown Area Manhattan


Jailed Crime Boss’s Tip to Students: Go to Law School

Abstract: BOSTON — James (Whitey) Bulger, the former Boston crime boss, has offered advice for three high school girls who wrote to him for a history project: Crime does not pay. Mr. Bulger sent the handwritten letter, dated Feb. 24, from the federal prison in Florida where he is serving two life sentences, The Boston Globe reported Sunday. “My life was wasted and spent foolishly, brought shame and suffering on my parents and siblings and will end soon,” he wrote. “Advice is a cheap commodity. Some seek it from me about crime. I know only one thing for sure: If you want to make crime pay go to law school.” Mr. Bulger, 85, was convicted in 2013 on racketeering charges that included playing a role in 11 murders. He spent 16 years as one of the nation’s most wanted fugitives before he was captured in California in 2011. His lawyers are appealing his conviction next month before the federal appeals court in Boston. The three 17-year-olds at Apponequet Regional High School in Lakeville, Mass., chose him for a National History Day competition entry on leadership and legacy. Their project took first place in the district but did not place in the state competition.

Whitey Bulger
Law school
Organized crime
Racketeering


Medical Review Firm, After Federal Sting, Goes Out of Business

Abstract: Companies typically die slow, lingering deaths, the victims of changing technologies or tectonic shifts in global trade. But it is possible to kill a company really fast. Consider the case of Coast Institutional Review Board. Until recently, Coast was doing a banner business, getting paid by makers of drugs and medical devices to oversee human studies involving their products. In the four-year period between 2004 and 2008, its revenue had more than doubled to $9.3 million. And earlier this month, the company was overseeing 300 active studies on behalf of major medical manufacturers. But Coast, based in Colorado Springs, Colo., was apparently the kind of company that just couldn’t say no. Its decline began not long ago, when it said yes to the wrong people — federal investigators who had set up a sting operation. The agents were trying to see how much due diligence companies like Coast perform before approving a medical study. In Coast’s case, the answer was not much. The firm green-lighted the trial proposed by the undercover investigators. Had Coast checked, it would have discovered that the trial involved a make-believe product and was to be run by doctors who did not exist. From that point, Coast’s days were numbered. Instead of striking a conciliatory tone, Coast’s chief executive, Dan Dueber, tried to strike back, accusing the government of conducting a fraud against his firm. His stance drew the ire of members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee last month when he testified about the episode. Mr. Dueber said at the time that he planned to re-invent Coast by overhauling its policies, hiring new staff and even changing its name. But it was not to be. As inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration circled Coast, its customers fled. In an e-mail Wednesday to reporters, a spokeswoman for the company wrote that “Coast owners have decided, through counsel, to cease future company operations.” The spokeswoman, Diane Morrow, said Coast was shifting oversight of its current clinical trials to other firms.

Bankruptcies
Company Reports
Coast Institutional Review Board


Owed Back Pay, Guest Workers Comb the Past

Abstract: FRESNO, Calif. — Here comes Abraham Franco now, 86 years old, skin leathery and bronzed from decades of work in the fields, slowly bending his small but sturdy frame into a metal chair at a faux wood office table at the Mexican Consulate here. He still could not quite believe the news: Decades after working as a bracero, as thousands of Mexican guest farm workers were called in a program from 1942 to 1964, the Mexican government had recently agreed to a one-time payment, $3,500, of long overdue withheld wages. The braceros are fading fast, some pushing or over 90, and are ever reliant on family and friends to get by. With two sons in tow, Mr. Franco unraveled a yellowing, fraying document patched together with tape, one of the few he still has from that long-ago era. Mexican immigration papers. Would this be good enough? “No, these are stamped in Mexico , but we need something showing you were in the United States then,” a consulate worker informed him and his sons. “Papi, you don’t have the check stubs they gave you?” his son Carlos asked. “I don’t know; we have to look,” Mr. Franco replied, and back out they go, like so many others, on a fervent hunt through closets, shoe boxes, dusty cases and disintegrating envelopes for fragments from the past that could finally pay dividends in the present. Scholars believe that more than 2.5 million people were braceros, which is Spanish for “strong arms,” at a time when “guest worker program” did not set off as fierce a debate as today. Most worked three to six months a year in agriculture, the bulk of them in California, with a smaller number in railroads. The program began because of farm labor shortages brought on by the war, and it continued afterward at the urging of growers until 1964. The Mexican government took 10 percent of the wages paid to braceros, supposedly holding it until their eventual return to Mexico. In 2001, a group of braceros from the World War II era filed a federal lawsuit against Mexico to recoup their money. Four years later, facing pressure from former braceros in Mexico and their advocates, the government announced a reparation program, but required braceros in the United States to travel to Mexico to register, a difficult journey for the elderly and infirm. The settlement, which a federal judge will consider granting final approval in February, prodded Mexico to apply its program to braceros in both countries, eliminating the travel requirement. They are spotted here and there, this aging community of unknown numbers, leaning on canes and pushed along in wheelchairs, still sporting the field attire of checkered and denim shirts and broad-brim hats. Many braceros like Jose M. Ortiz, 85, after life of squalor and deprivation in the fields, struggle to make ends meet. “I will pay off my debts,” he said, of the prospect of collecting the settlement, which may not happen for another year as Mexico sorts through claims. “I have a lot of bills, like the gas, to pay.” Mr. Franco would like to share the sum with his 12 children, as retribution for his long periods away from them working in the fields. “It is for my family,” he said, adding, with a smile, “but I would like to take a trip somewhere.” Lazaro Gonzalez’s plans speak to the realities of his generation. “All of us braceros are dead,” he said, clutching a cane and staring out the big picture window of a house near here that he shares with his children. “It would be for my funeral.” All of them dream, perhaps few will collect. Leonel Flores, an advocate for farm workers here, said he doubted that very many former braceros still had the documents to meet the standards of proof. In addition, he said, their documents are rife with erroneous dates and spellings of names, the handiwork of braceros who hardly went to school, if it all, and government bureaucrats on both sides of the border. “This says you were born in 1922, and this says you were born in 1921,” Mr. Flores told Mr. Ortiz, holding aloft his Mexican birth certificate and bracero identification card at a recent meeting of braceros. “That’s an error that can get you rejected.” Later, in an interview, Mr. Ortiz offered still another document, his United States naturalization certificate, with a birth date indicating 1923. “I feel bad because these are mistakes I did not make,” he said. So when was he born? “1923, I am pretty sure,” he replied. Mr. Gonzalez had kept his papers, but they were lost in a home burglary several years ago, a fate many braceros have suffered because criminals know they are easy prey. Still, he said, “Yes, I still have some, but I have to keep looking.” Mr. Flores said local lawyers were documenting the problems in an effort to persuade Mexican authorities to be more flexible. But the government, representatives said, must balance an effort to guard against fraudulent claims with “recognizing their civil rights,” said Saleme Barceló, the consul general here. She said the government was carefully scrutinizing required documents proving they were Mexican citizens and had participated in the program. “We are reviewing them case by case and telling them why they do not comply or what they have to do,” she said. “They may still have time to get their documents in order.” The payout bonanza has rekindled memories of hard days. On his kitchen table, Francisco Flores, 83, lays out a 1948 contract, the proof he hopes will get him the money he always knew was there, somewhere. It spells out not only his wages, 50 cents an hour, but also, for good measure, it answers, what price a limb? For the loss of both hands, $1,000; $500 for an eye, $25 for the loss of a digit, and so on. No, this was not easy work, picking, shoveling, slicing, loading and hauling fruit and vegetables under a broiling sun for 12 hours a day, more if the bosses demanded it. Sweltering nights made rest, often just a few hours, impossible. Bunk beds were stacked three high or more in cramped sheds. Food shortages were common. Pesticides were sprayed on crops and workers with abandon. “It was a miserable life,” Mr. Flores said. The melons, Mr. Franco said, they were the worse, because they were the heaviest fruit and the workers had to race to fill up transport trucks. “We would run after the gondola carrying bags of melons,” he recalled. “We were drenched in sweat.” Many knew the Mexican government was taking 10 percent of their wages. But few then asked for details, gratified at getting any job, especially ones that paid much higher than anything in their home country. Mr. Flores, though, kept almost everything, putting him in a good position to collect now. “I saw guys ripping up their pay stubs and I said, Wait, save all those papers, some day it is going to be useful,” he recalled, showing off a small black case stuffed with papers from a bygone era. But for many others, it is all but hopeless. Cirilo Perez-Torres, 86, lost all his papers years ago in a flood in his home state of Guanajuato. A consulate worker the other day handed him a slip of paper with the phone number for the hot line, (877) 436-9359, established by the law firm in the settlement for inquires. “I remember everything, the fields, the places, the crops,” he said afterward. “But they are not accepting my memories.”

Mexico
braceros
Migrant and Foreign Workers
Farmers
World War II (1939-45)
Labor
Elderly


Yankees Get Off to a Good Start, Day In and Day Out

Abstract: The Yankees have given their fans few worries this season. The team has a seven-game lead in the American League East and a 30-17 record at home. And often enough, by the time fans have settled into their seats, the Yanks have taken the lead. Going into Tuesday’s play, the Yankees have scored the second most runs in baseball, behind the Blue Jays. But they have scored the most first-inning runs by far, with 86. No other team has more than 69. The top of the order is stocked with productive players. The leadoff hitters have been center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury, who has a .362 on base average, and left fielder Brett Gardner (. 371). Chase Headley and Gardner have primarily occupied the No. 2 slot. Then come the big bats of Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira, each with 24 home runs. That lineup has proved tough for starters to get through without surrendering runs. Image Chase Headley has been productive for the Yankees batting primarily in the No. 2 slot. Credit Kathy Willens/Associated Press In the first inning, the Yankees are batting .315 and slugging .528. They have 18 home runs in 400 at-bats. Meanwhile, Yankees starters have been solid in the first inning, giving up 53 runs. If the Yankees were able to keep their 86-53 first-inning advantage through all nine innings it would translate to a gaudy 115-47 season record. The Yankees are on pace to score 142 first-inning runs this season, which would be a Yankee record, at least since 1955. The current team record, according to Baseball-Reference, is 139, set in 2002 by a team that won 103 games with a lineup typically starting with Alfonso Soriano, Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams. Next at 135 runs is the underachieving 1988 team, which led off with Rickey Henderson (93 stolen bases), Willie Randolph, Don Mattingly and Jack Clark but finished fifth at 85-76. The team may have been able to score in the first inning, but little else went right for it. Billy Martin began his fifth tenure as Yankees manager, only to be fired after starting the season 40-28. Readers of The New York Times encountered headlines like “ Martin Hurt in Bar Fight ,” “ Yanks May Hire a Guard for Martin ” and “ Psychologists View Behavior by Martin .” The 2015 Yankees will have to pick up the pace to break the major league first-inning record. That is held by the 2000 Cardinals, remembered for losing to the Mets in the National League Championship Series. That team, led off by Fernando Vina, Edgar Renteria, Jim Edmonds (42 homers) and Mark McGwire (32 home runs in 89 games) scored 147 runs in the first inning. The 1948 Indians are just a run behind at 146, but got that total in a 156-game season. The team, led off most commonly by Dale Mitchell, Larry Doby, Lou Boudreau and Eddie Robinson, scored 840 runs overall while allowing 568 and gave long-suffering Cleveland fans their most recent World Series title. A good start is important, but all nine innings count, of course. Before you crown the Yankees, be aware that in the second inning, they have scored just 39 runs, tied for 18th in the majors .


Home Buyer Tax Credit Called Successful, but Costly

Abstract: Realtors, home buyers and sellers are rushing to complete sales agreements before the tax credit for home purchases expires this week. Home buyers must have a deal by April 30 and close by June 30 to qualify for the federal tax break, up to $8,000 for first-timers and $6,500 for those merely moving to a different residence. Though the Treasury Department and the real estate industry have termed the program a success, helping 1.8 million people buy homes, many tax policy experts say it has been singularly cost-ineffective: most of the $12.6 billion in credits through end of February was collected by people who would have bought homes anyway or who in some cases were not even eligible. The credit has caused a surge in sales and has been widely lauded for helping to stabilize prices. In places like Lafayette, Ind., where the number of homes sold in March was up 48 percent over last year, real estate agents say they have been inundated with buyers like James and Aubrey Green, students at Purdue University, who said the credit had persuaded them to jump into the market. “We were happy in our apartment, but $8,000 was just too much to pass up,” said Mr. Green, 29, who shopped furiously with his wife for two months before signing a contract in March to buy a three-bedroom ranch. “We bid on a couple places that didn’t work out,” he said, “but we always made sure we had a backup plan because we didn’t want to miss the deadline for the credit. And when we finally agreed to a contract, it was this huge relief.” For every home buyer like the Greens, real estate agents say there are at least three others who collected the credit even though they would have bought without it. That means for each new buyer who was truly lured into the market by the credit, the federal government paid more than $30,000. In addition to legitimate buyers, tens of thousands of people who collected the credit were not qualified. An audit by the Treasury Department’s inspector general released last year found that hundreds of millions of dollars in credits went to people who had not yet bought homes or who were not first-time home buyers, as the program initially required. Hundreds of others who received the credit were not old enough to sign a binding contract, the audit found, with some as young as 4 years old. “There’s a political appeal to offering government aid to homeowners because it affects a lot of people,” said George K. Yin, former chief of staff of the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, who now teaches at the University of Virginia. “But if you weigh the cost and the results, you have to wonder whether it’s a failure of imagination.” The home buyers’ credit was actually an amalgam of three separate programs. It began in spring of 2008 as a $7,500 tax credit that taxpayers were required to repay on their tax returns over a 15-year period. After the financial crisis that fall and taxpayer anger over the hundreds of billions in bailout money being directed to banks and Wall Street firms, a broad subsidy for middle-class homeowners had wide political appeal. So Congress sweetened the plan — dropping the repayment requirement and increasing the credit to $8,000 — and included it in the economic stimulus bills. Last November, with the residential market beginning to rebound, Congress extended the period for five months and added a $6,500 credit for existing homeowners looking to relocate. After the number of homes sold in January and February dropped to record lows, sales rose 6.8 percent in March from a year earlier, as buyers raced to cash in before the credit expired. Nearly half of all March home sales involved first-time buyers, according to the National Association of Realtors. “It’s true that a lot of people who got the credit might have bought without it, but they might have bought in 2012 or 2013,” said Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican from Georgia, who worked for 30 years as an agent. “This got them to buy in 2009 and 2010, when we needed to shore things up.” But the program was open to widespread misuse. The first two phases of the credit did not require taxpayers to prove that they had actually bought a house. The Treasury’s inspector general found in October 2009 that the I.R.S. had allowed $139 million in credits to people who had not yet bought homes, and $479 million to taxpayers who were not first-time buyers. The I.R.S. resisted proposals to require proof that a home had been bought, with officials saying that the additional paperwork would be too onerous because it would prevent returns from being filed electronically. Tighter restrictions were nonetheless enacted: as of last fall, those claiming the credit were required to file a paper return and provide documentation that they had bought a house. I.R.S. officials say that examiners found more than 70,000 taxpayers who had improperly claimed the credit, but were unable to say how much money had been recovered. Frank Keith, an I.R.S. spokesman, said that given the complexities of the program, “we did an effective job” administering it. Some tax policy experts suggest that the federal government might have used the money more effectively by creating a program to help unemployed homeowners stave off foreclosure. “If you tried to address the supply side of the housing market rather than the demand side, you could target your resources more effectively,” said Roberton Williams, an analyst at the Tax Policy Center. “And you’d also have the benefit of helping to keep people from losing their homes instead of subsidizing people who were going to buy anyway.” But other economists say that, whatever its inefficiencies, the home buyers’ credit had a valuable effect on the psychology of millions of Americans who were alarmed to watch their largest investment lose value. “The tax credit helped to stanch the price declines, which had substantial benefit for the entire economy,” said Mark Zandi at Moody’s Economy.com . “The home is still the largest asset on most people’s balance sheet, so when prices are falling, nothing works for most families. But now people can take a deep breath and think clearly again.”

Tax Credits
Housing and Real Estate
Sales
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
United States Economy
Taxation
United States Politics and Government


South Korea Lifts Ban on U.S. Beef

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea lifted an import ban on American beef on Thursday, despite an overnight protest in which thousands of people rallied in central Seoul to protest the government move and the police fired water cannons and detained at least 120 protesters. More than 3,000 protesters rallied well past midnight, chanting, “Out with Lee Myung-bak !” They accused Mr. Lee, the South Korean president, of opening the door for meat that they believe is not safe from mad cow disease . When the police blocked the protesters from marching on Mr. Lee’s office, some attacked police buses with rocks, sand and wooden sticks. The police repelled them with water cannons. By the time the police cleared central Seoul for traffic on Thursday morning, at least one police bus stood with its fenders torn off, its windows smashed and its sides spray-painted with antigovernment slogans. Hours after the protest ended, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security published quarantine and inspection guidelines based on a beef import deal that was struck with the United States in April but was revised last week to allay South Koreans’ concerns about mad cow disease. The notice removed the last legal barrier blocking American beef imports from reaching South Korean store shelves. But other barriers remained: labor activists blocking American beef shipments from warehouses, women’s organizations threatening a boycott and consumers unsure about the safety of meat from the United States. With the legal notice in place, importers can ask the government to inspect American beef imports; the government must immediately release the meat that passes the inspections. Some 5,300 tons of American beef, shipped earlier to South Korea but held in customs and quarantine storage facilities, can now be inspected as early as this week, said officials at the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The legal notice also allows South Korean importers to place orders in the United States. But with a lingering public furor, it remained unclear when the American meat would reach shops. On Thursday, the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions, a militant umbrella group, said its members working as truckers were blocking the transportation of American beef from warehouses around the country. The group also threatened to organize a boycott of United States beef. McDonald’s restaurants and Outback steak houses in South Korea have placed newspaper advertisements in recent days declaring that they were not using American beef. South Korea was the third-largest overseas market for United States beef exporters, buying $800 million worth of American meat a year, until an import ban was imposed in 2003 after a case of mad cow disease was found in the United States. The 5,300 tons of meat held in warehouses is part of limited imports that were briefly allowed last year before again being suspended. After months of negotiations, South Korea agreed in April to resume imports, placing few restrictions on meat shipments. But the deal set off huge protests, which snowballed into antigovernment demonstrations against a broad range of policies pursued by the Lee administration. At the South Korean government’s request, the United States revised terms of the April agreement last week, restricting American beef exports to cattle younger than 30 months. Younger cattle are believed to be at less risk of mad cow disease. Announcement of the additional safeguards did little to quiet the furor, though, and opponents have vowed to keep protesting until the government agrees to a complete renegotiation of the pact.

Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)


Bangladeshi Police Arrest 2 Suspected of Terror Attack on Bakery

Abstract: DHAKA, Bangladesh — When the Bangladeshi police freed hostages after a harrowing July 1 terrorist attack on a Dhaka bakery that left 22 people dead, two men remained mysteriously unaccounted for . Their families and other hostages said that the two — Tahmid Khan, 22, a student at the University of Toronto, and Hasnat Karim, 47, a Briton working in Bangladesh — had been hostages during the attack and had been taken into custody after the siege ended. They asked the authorities to reveal their whereabouts, but were kept in the dark. On Thursday, Shahidur Rahman, deputy inspector general of the Dhaka police, confirmed that both were in custody and had been arrested the previous night under a law that allows such action without a warrant. The police previously said the two were suspected of involvement in the attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery. Image Tahmid Khan, in a photograph provided by his family. Mr. Khan had been visiting Dhaka on vacation when the attack took place, and Mr. Karim was working for a family-owned civil engineering company. Mr. Khan was beaten and both men were taken into police custody after the 11-hour siege, other hostages said. More than a week after the attack, their families said they had no knowledge of the men’s whereabouts since the police stormed the cafe, killing five people identified as attackers. Mr. Khan and his friends at the bakery were spared by the militants because they were Bangladeshi Muslims, said two people held hostage with him, who spoke anonymously for fear of upsetting the police. They said that Mr. Khan and Mr. Karim had been placed at a table of eight patrons, including Mr. Karim’s two children, all of whom survived. They were instructed to keep their heads down on the table for much of the night. But several times during the siege, the attackers ordered Mr. Khan and Mr. Karim to perform specific tasks for them, including carrying weapons, the two hostages said. Mr. Khan’s family and friends have said that his detention is a case of mistaken identity and that they are concerned about his health, which includes epilepsy triggered by stress. Although the Dhaka police said on July 10 that they no longer had Mr. Khan or Mr. Karim in custody, their families said they believed that the men were being held by a government agency. Mr. Karim’s wife and two children, who were also held hostage, were released from custody on July 3. On Thursday, it was not clear what had happened to the men between the end of the hostage crisis and their arrest on Wednesday night. Rodney Dixon, a London-based lawyer working with the Karim family, said that they had not had access to Mr. Karim since the attack, except for briefly on July 13 at the detective headquarters in Dhaka, and “therefore he must have been in detention.” The treatment of the two men by the Bangladeshi authorities has raised concern from human rights experts, who have expressed fear that pressure to solve the case could lead to torture. On July 12, Amnesty International called on the government to clarify Mr. Karim’s whereabouts. The group said Mr. Karim had a heart ailment and highlighted conflicting statements from the authorities about whether he was in custody.

Terrorism
Bangladesh
Holey Artisan Bakery
Hasnat Karim
Tahmid Hasib Khan
Dhaka


Rafael Nadal Crashes Out in Cincinnati

Abstract: Rafael Nadal showed the rust from his long layoff with a wrist injury, losing in straight sets to Borna Coric at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati. Roger Federer, the defending champion, and the top-ranked Novak Djokovic are missing the tournament because of injuries. Andy Murray is playing, but he is coming off a grueling week in Rio de Janeiro, where he won the Olympic gold medal. Along with Nadal, those four have combined to win 54 of the last 58 Masters events. GOLF Spaniard Seeks Ryder Cup Spot After a fifth-place finish at the Rio Olympics, Rafa Cabrera Bello shot a seven-under-par 63 in the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., for a share of the first-round lead with Kevin Na. Cabrera Bello, a four-time European Tour winner from Spain, finished his round with no bogeys and is trying to stay in position for a Ryder Cup spot, with more ranking points available in North Carolina than at the European event in the Czech Republic.


The Flyers’ Icebreaker: A Boisterous Game of Soccer

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — About 75 minutes before every home game, up to 15 Philadelphia Flyers leave their locker room and walk to the loading dock at the back of the Wachovia Center. The big garage door has been pulled shut, and a wide spot on the smooth concrete floor has been cleared of cardboard boxes and delivery vehicles. The players form a circle and begin kicking a soccer ball that could use a little air. The Flyers are getting ready to play hockey. Kicking a soccer ball back and forth is a time-tested way to loosen up for a game, common in loading docks around the N.H.L. and nearly universal before games in Europe. The Flyers joined the trend two years ago, and their games are energetic, intense, boisterous, hilarious and good-naturedly profane. The walls and ceiling are inbounds, and some players bang into them to keep the ball in play, although they seem to be able to limit their reckless abandon. “Oh, it’s not that serious,” said Flyers defenseman Lasse Kukkonen, who said pregame soccer was ubiquitous in his native Finland. “You save some of that for the game.” Much to the relief of Philadelphia Coach John Stevens, no one has been hurt. Last season, Carolina’s Erik Cole injured a foot playing pregame soccer, and it became a cautionary tale. “I don’t mind them doing it,” Stevens said. “A lot of teams do it, and the guys love it. It adds a little bit of spirit, I think. Now, there’s always a fear of injury, but guys can get hurt doing a lot of different things.” In the two-touch game, the Flyers form a circle and kick the ball back and forth to one another in no particular order. They can touch the ball with their feet or body before passing it, but they cannot let the ball hit the ground. Violators are eliminated. A player who kicks the ball wildly so a teammate cannot play it is also eliminated. The winner is the last one standing. A 20-minute session includes seven or eight elimination matches. “Every team I’ve been on has done this, but maybe not to the same level they do it here,” said Joffrey Lupul, a right wing from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. “We’re here at the rink for a long time, and this is more fun than hopping on a bike. It’s good for morale and it gets you moving a little bit. It stretches you out, too.” The Flyers keep track of the victories. Kimmo Timonen, a defenseman from Finland, has won the most matches, with Kukkonen second and Lupul third. Two Manitobans are usually out of the game quickly: Riley Cote, a left wing who is the Flyers’ enforcer; and Arron Asham, a pugnacious right wing. Cote often shadow-boxes as he stands to the side, and Asham runs in place to stay limber. “On disputed calls, everybody gets fired up a little bit,” said Mike Richards, a center from Kenora, Ontario, who is the Flyers’ captain. “People get angry with each other at different times, but it’s really more for fun.” In one spirited match, the ball was kicked so high that it stuck between two air ducts, defying left wing Scott Hartnell’s best effort to dislodge it by throwing a soda bottle at it. So a Wachovia Center worker was dispatched with a forklift, and Asham was hoisted up to punch the ball free. Cheers and laughter erupted, and the game continued. Another worker mopped up Hartnell’s spilled drink. “Knock on wood, no one’s been hurt,” Hartnell said. “Some people have their routines, and have them for some time. Well, this is our routine. We have fun, we have some laughs, we loosen up, we break a sweat before the game.” Hartnell, from Regina, Saskatchewan, acknowledged that he felt as if he had two left feet when he joined the group. But he is one of the loudest and most spirited players, sometimes thumping into cardboard boxes to keep the ball in play. There is a devoted intensity to the matches. Delivery trams inch past the scene, as do officials and executives. The Flyers say they help morale. “They’ve gotten a little closer than they were before,” Stevens said. As the match ended, fans began to trickle through the doors next to the loading dock. Some paused to snap photographs. Timonen called out, “Last game,” and the players jogged back to the locker room as they were eliminated. Lupul was the winner. He dribbled the ball, basketball style, back to the dressing room. An hour remained before the Flyers played Boston and the serious game would begin.

Hockey Ice
Philadelphia Flyers
Soccer
National Hockey League


Torino Wins to Advance in Europa League

Abstract: Torino came back to beat nine-man Copenhagen, 5-1, and complete a sweep as all four Italian Serie A clubs advanced from the group phase of the Europa League. Inter Milan, Fiorentina and Napoli had already reached the last 32. Dynamo Moscow become the sixth team in competition history to win all six group matches as Aleksei Ionov scored in the 90th minute for a 1-0 victory at P.S.V. Eindhoven, which also advanced. Also clinching advancement were Borussia Monchengladbach, Villarreal and Dnipro. ■ The Red Bulls loaned goalkeeper Ryan Meara to New York City F.C. for the 2015 season in exchange for midfielder Sal Zizzo.

Soccer
Inter Milan Soccer Team
Borussia Monchengladbach Soccer Team
New York Red Bulls Soccer Team


As Armstrong Stumbles, His Tour de France Hopes Take a Big Hit

Abstract: MORZINE-AVORIAZ, France — Nearly 12 minutes after the top riders in the Tour de France finished the eighth stage Sunday, Lance Armstrong pedaled across the finish line, looking like a man defeated. The back of his RadioShack jersey was ripped in several places. Blood was running down his left knee. His face looked blank, devoid of the intensity that helped him win the Tour a record seven times. It was a vivid snapshot of how Armstrong, in his final Tour, ended his last effort to win this race again. “The Tour is finished for me, but I could stay in the race, win stages and help the team and really try to appreciate my time here and appreciate that I’m not going back here,” Armstrong, who is 38, said. “No tears for me. I’ve a lot of good years here, where it’s been pretty different. I’m not going to dwell on today.” The day was one that he would want to forget. Armstrong was the 61st competitor to cross the line Sunday, 11 minutes 45 seconds behind the stage winner, Andy Schleck of Luxembourg. He fell to 39th place from 14th in the overall standings and is 13:26 behind the new race leader, Cadel Evans of Australia. Along the 117.4-mile route that started on the French-Swiss border and ended on a mountaintop, Armstrong was caught up in not one, not two, but — almost unbelievably — three crashes. Twice, he was held up by riders crashing in front of him. Once, he fell hard onto the pavement while going about 37-40 miles per hour, injuring his left hip just before the stage’s crucial climb, La Ramaz pass. “I clipped a pedal and the front tire rolled off, and the next thing you know, I was rolling on the ground,” Armstrong said. “Just bad luck, at a bad time. Not much I could do.” Other race favorites had a much better day. Schleck, last year’s runner-up, found enough zing in his lungs and legs to sprint past Samuel Sánchez of Spain at the finish. He celebrated by punching the air above with his fists. “I am very happy to win the stage,” Schleck, of the Saxo Bank team, said. “For me I have to go step by step and not go too fast. If I do that, the other jersey will come.” Schleck is just 20 seconds away from that other jersey — the leader’s yellow jersey. He is second in the standings, behind Evans, who took the lead from the French rider Sylvain Chavanel. Alberto Contador, the defending Tour champion, who rides for the Astana team, finished fifth in the stage. He is in third over all, 1:01 back. Despite feeling good about the stage victory, Schleck, 25, said he could not help but feel bad for Armstrong. “To be really honest, I’m a little bit sorry for him because he really wanted this; he really wanted to be good at this Tour,” Schleck said. “I think he must be really down. Possibly he will win a stage.” Armstrong’s goal, though, was to win the entire race. After a three-and-a-half-year break from cycling, he finished third at the Tour last season, the year his luck began to change. In his peak years, he hardly sustained any injuries. But last March, he broke his collarbone during a race in Spain. At the Tour of California in May, he crashed out of the race with a cut under his left eye and an injured elbow. At this Tour, he could not avoid trouble, either. “It’s sad to see, but it’s the race, it’s sport,” Johan Bruyneel, Armstrong’s team manager, said. “He was beaten by bad luck. We knew winning the Tour was possible, we had ambitions. But once he saw that he could not make it back to the front, he just gave up.” It is an example of how Armstrong’s year has been going. Not only has his Tour turned sour, but he also is under federal investigation for fraud and doping. That investigation began this year, after Armstrong’s former teammate Floyd Landis accused Armstrong and other former teammates of doping during their days with the United States Postal Service team. Bruyneel said that those allegations had not distracted Armstrong from his goal of winning the Tour, and that the RadioShack team would now focus on helping his teammate Levi Leipheimer win. Leipheimer is in eighth over all, 2:14 back. Contador, though, said he would not count out Armstrong. “There are still more than enough stages to attack,” he said, evidently still on guard after battling for leadership at last year’s Tour with Armstrong, who was then his teammate. Evans, however, has other things to worry about — like keeping the jersey. Already, he has finished second twice in the Tour. On Sunday, though, he overcame a crash to claim the spot of No. 1 rider here. He tumbled to the road about four miles in, but rebounded quickly. Armstrong was caught behind that crash, forced to stop on the grassy roadside to avoid the melee of bikes and riders on the road. That was the first complication in his day. The second was his crash before La Ramaz, a climb where the top riders took off in a blur. Then, as if he had not had enough punishment, a Euskaltel-Euskadi rider crashed in front of him with about 10 miles to go, causing Armstrong to come to a full stop. His bike toppled over. His leg became tangled in a wheel. For a second, he stood there with his arms on his hips, gazing at his bike with a look that would melt steel. The reality of the day — and of his final Tour — was sinking in. He soaked in the moment as he rode to the finish. “I tried to appreciate my time, look around, appreciate the fans,” Armstrong said. “I know that it’s not going to be my year.”

Tour de France (Bicycle Race)
Bicycles and Bicycling
Armstrong Lance


Imbalance Grows at Chinese Hospitals

Abstract: BEIJING — On an unseasonably cold afternoon in April, Da Yong, from Harbin, in the far north of China, stood for six hours in a biting wind outside the Peking University Medical College hospital, waiting with 15 other patients to get a number. He had been in Beijing for two weeks, he said, standing in lines to seek treatment for his wife’s facial boils. “Sure, there are hospitals in Harbin,” he said, “but I wanted the best for my wife, so we came here. It’s like this at all the big hospitals. There’s no other way.” Mr. Da’s stoic wait is both a cause and a side effect of China’s pyramidal health care system, which has many small hospitals at the bottom, fewer midsize hospitals in the middle and a small number of very large hospitals at the top. One of the biggest problems for health care in China is that patients always go straight to the top, even for colds or headaches, said He Yuxiang, a fourth-year medical student at the Peking University Medical College, one of the country’s top medical schools. This creates a bottleneck at city hospitals, while smaller hospitals remain underutilized. “The way that Chinese people view going to the hospital is what’s causing the problems we have,” Mr. He said. “It’s why the middle and lower tiers of hospitals have not had a chance to develop.” Every morning at the Xuanwu Hospital in Beijing, patients, many from far away and sometimes on intravenous drips, spill out from over-full waiting rooms into the hospital corridors, said Dai Weijia, a doctor at the hospital. Meanwhile, she said, neighborhood family practices and clinics sit nearly empty. But patient preference explains only half the problem. The other half is that medical students do not want to work at smaller hospitals. Mr. He, for one, said he hoped to find work in a top-tier hospital in Guangdong, in southern China. “Most of my classmates would not want to go work in a small-town hospital,” he said. “The education that we have received is among the best in the country. Sure, it’s possible that we could go work in a clinic in the countryside, but that would be a bit da cai xiao yong.” His reference was to a proverb meaning “to make little use of large talents.” Even in a top hospital, he said, pay levels are barely adequate. “The investment it takes to become a doctor and what you get out of it are greatly out of proportion,” he said. “A doctor has to spend 10 years on education. Then, if he only gets the government-given level of income, well, that’s really not enough. “Even with conference fees, speaking fees and other income added in, the total income is still low. Even if we are doctors, we still have to make sure that we have food to eat and clothes to wear.” It’s a vicious circle, said Cao Zemin, director of social services at Xiangya Hospital in Changsha, the chief city of Hunan Province. Patients shy away from small hospitals because “many members of the staff have only a bachelor’s degree, if that,” Dr. Cao said, adding, “Some have never received any formal training, like the barefoot doctors from before who have not had a single day of standardized, regulated medical education.” With fewer patients, the doctors have fewer chances to learn and improve their technique, not to mention lower salaries. So students with the most potential head for the bigger hospitals, and the patients follow. Thousands of medical students bemoan the lack of job opportunities after graduation, yet the problem of skill shortages in second- and third-tier hospitals remains intractable. “The Chinese medical industry very much needs talented people,” Dr. Cao said. “It’s true that some students cannot find jobs after graduation. The key problem is that they all want to stay in the big cities. They don’t want to go to the countryside or to the lower-status hospitals.” Out of about four million medical graduates a year, fewer than half find jobs in big hospitals. The rest continue in postgraduate training to improve their job prospects or look for jobs elsewhere in the health care industry — in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology or medical supplies. Some choose to undertake further studies abroad. Mr. He said that about one in five of his classmates planned to take that route but that the number was dwindling year by year. “First of all, it’s very difficult to get one of those places,” he said. “Secondly, it’s a very expensive thing, and there’s not even 100 percent guarantee of success.” Moreover, said Sheldon Liu, chief executive of InnoCare (Beijing) Investment & Development, a company in the health care field, many of those who go abroad, especially to the United States and Canada, end up working in research laboratories rather than as clinicians, since the right to practice medicine often does not cross national borders. Two government-backed efforts could help to make better use of the pool of trained medical talent: an expansion of higher-fee hospitals and regulated residency programs. The growth of a comfortably wealthy middle class has created rising demand for high-quality care in hospitals. “People’s quality of life is improving,” said Xie Yibo, who as general manager in Suzhou of a company that makes firefighting trucks is a member of the emerging middle class. “More and more people have money, so of course they will want to take care of their health. Now they have the luxury of being able to do so.” Official policy is slowly making it easier for hospitals and investors to serve this new market. In 1997, the government approved the establishment of the Beijing United Family Hospital, a groundbreaking joint venture between the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Chindex International, a medical supply company based in Bethesda, Maryland. The hospital primarily serves foreign and wealthy Chinese clients. “Before, the government did not allow this kind of joint venture, but now the policies are opening up,” said Dr. Cao, of Xiangya Hospital. Among its changes, the government will allow foreign-financed hospitals more freedom to set their own fees — sometimes as much as eight times above normal levels, he said. Hospitals like the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital and the Peking University Medical College now have special wings for wealthy and non-Chinese-speaking patients, employing doctors who have trained abroad or have foreign language skills. At the same time, residency programs have been established in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin offering graduates three years of specialist training at leading research and teaching hospitals Wang Jianxiang, a professor of medical science at the Institute of Hematology and Blood Diseases Hospital in Tianjin, said the government was working to expand the programs to allow rural hospitals to send doctors for residential training. Still, Dr. Cao said, the programs are not ideal. In contrast with the American system, in which graduate students complete a residency before taking a job, their Chinese counterparts look for a job immediately after graduating, sign a contract with a hospital and then are assigned by the hospital to complete a residency before starting work. Dr. Wang said, “After three years in a big city, you might want a different job in a different place, but you have to go back to the hospital where you signed your contract. Or for the hospital, they hire people three years ahead of time. “On the books, they have all these doctors, but in reality, these doctors aren’t working or earning the hospital any income. What’s more, for these three years, the hospital has to pay those doctors, so it really becomes an economic burden.”

China
Medicine and Health
Hospitals
Colleges and Universities
Education and Schools


Obama Ignores Romney’s Demands for Apology

Abstract: CLIFTON, Va. — President Obama barnstormed through this swing state on Saturday as his campaign relentlessly hammered at Mitt Romney ’s business record, releasing a mocking new ad that shows Mr. Romney singing “America the Beautiful” as it accuses his former firm of shipping American jobs overseas. Mr. Obama, speaking first to a drenched crowd during a downpour in the Richmond suburb of Glen Allen, and then at Centreville High School in Fairfax County, accused Mr. Romney of investing in “companies that have been called pioneers in outsourcing.” He ignored Mr. Romney’s demands for an apology about the campaign’s tone, which the Republican candidate had called for in interviews on Friday. “My opponent and his allies in Congress, they believe in top-down economics,” Mr. Obama said. “If you cut through all the stuff, what they are really saying is tax cuts for the wealthy, roll back regulations. That is essentially their plan.” The president’s campaign has spent more than a week harping on Mr. Romney’s personal wealth and calling on him to disclose information about his personal finances by releasing more years of his tax returns. It has also raised questions about Mr. Romney’s offshore investments and accounts. The new ad reminds viewers of those issues as it shows a clip of Mr. Romney singing at a campaign event in Florida this year. It says Mr. Romney shipped jobs to Mexico, China and India — accusations that Mr. Romney’s campaign vehemently denies. And it says Mr. Romney had “millions” in a Swiss bank account and “tax havens” in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. “Mitt Romney’s not the solution,” the ad states. “He’s the problem.” On Saturday, the Republican campaign repeated Mr. Romney’s angry comments about what it said are untrue allegations surrounding Mr. Romney’s personal finances. “As the failures of his presidency become more evident, Barack Obama has resorted to the tactics of a typical politician: dishonest and totally unsubstantiated attacks meant to distract from his own record by smearing the reputation of his opponent,” said Amanda Hennenberg, a Romney campaign spokeswoman. Mr. Romney’s campaign has repeatedly defended the offshore accounts, saying that he paid all the taxes legally required. On Friday, Mr. Romney again refused to release multiple years of his tax returns. He has released a return for 2010, and an estimate for 2011. He characterized the Obama campaign’s allegations as “reckless” and “absurd.” But if Mr. Romney’s campaign hoped that his rival’s campaign would back off its aggressive tone, they were disappointed. Traveling with the president on Air Force One , Mr. Obama’s top aides went out of their way Saturday morning to highlight their continued attacks. In addition to the television ad, Mr. Obama’s campaign released a Web video compilation of attacks that Mr. Romney has made in the past. The point, aides said, is that Mr. Romney is equally responsible for the campaign’s tone. “Mitt Romney, I just want to remind you, is the same candidate who questioned whether the president understood America, questioned whether he understood freedom,” said Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign. “He spends a lot of time attacking.” The video, titled “Asking for Apologies While Launching Attacks,” shows Mr. Romney raising the issue of Mr. Obama’s ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and shows him accusing the president of “appeasement” in his foreign policy. “This president spends a lot of time apologizing for America,” the video shows Mr. Romney saying. “He should be apologizing to America.” The video concludes by saying: “Mitt Romney. He sure asks for a lot of apologies. When he’s not busy launching attacks.” . Throughout most of his speech on Saturday, his second day in Virginia, Mr. Obama avoided the down-and-dirty political combat that has consumed much of the campaign coverage. “Even though the crisis put us through some very tough times, the American people are tougher,” Mr. Obama said. “Folks may have gotten knocked down some, but they got back up.” But the second half of Mr. Obama’s stump speech is tougher. He accused Republicans of giving tax breaks to companies that send work overseas. And he quoted Mr. Romney as “saying let Detroit go bankrupt,” the headline on an article he wrote in The New York Times arguing for a managed bankruptcy for the auto industry. He concluded with a fiery defense of his health care bill. “The Supreme Court has spoken. It is the law of the land. We are going to implement it,” he said. “It was the right thing to do. We’re not going backwards, we are going forward.”

Presidential Election of 2012
Obama Barack
Romney Mitt
Political Advertising


Pact Ends California Budget Impasse

Abstract: SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers agreed to a compromise to close a $19.1 billion deficit and give California a budget, ending the state’s record three-month impasse with a vote expected next week on the spending plan, according to legislative leaders. The accord does not raise taxes, as sought by Democrats, nor does it dismantle the state’s welfare system, proposed by Republicans, the leaders said. Mr. Schwarzenegger and the Democratic and Republican heads of the Senate and the Assembly came to the agreement after five hours of negotiations in the governor’s Sacramento office. ”We have a comprehensive agreement,” said the Senate president pro tem, Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento. Lawmakers said more information about the substance of the agreement would be released Wednesday at a hearing. Mr. Schwarzenegger and the lawmakers announced Sept. 24 that they had breached a stalemate that had persisted since the state’s fiscal year began July 1. Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican nearing the end of his term, and Democrats, who hold a majority in both chambers, disagreed on how much spending to cut and whether to raise taxes. A two-thirds vote in the Assembly and the Senate is required to pass budgets; neither party holds enough seats to meet that threshold. That forced lawmakers to agree on a compromise plan to bring it to a vote.

Budgets and Budgeting
State Legislatures
Schwarzenegger Arnold
California


Officer Shot in Queens in Struggle With a Suspect

Abstract: A city police officer was shot during a struggle with a suspect on a Queens street early Sunday when the suspect’s gun fell to the ground and went off, the police said. A bullet hit the officer, Rodney Lewis, 40, on the left side of the chest just above his bulletproof vest, said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. He was taken by police car to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn and later transferred to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital in Manhattan. He was in stable condition on Sunday afternoon, the police said. Officer Lewis, who has been on the force for four years, and his partner, Officer Mark Bublin, had gone 1818 Menahan Street in Ridgewood about 5 a.m. after the police received 911 calls regarding a domestic dispute. When the officers arrived, the two people involved in the dispute appeared to have left, but the officers saw a bald man who fit the description from the 911 calls and tried to stop him in front of 1812 Menahan Street, the police said. “The individual continued to walk away,” Mr. Kelly said at a news conference with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg outside Wyckoff Heights hospital. “They pursued him. They grabbed him. They saw a bulge in his waistband. A struggle took place.” The officers took a .32 caliber revolver from the man, identified as Edwin Santana but it fell to the ground and discharged. The bullet lodged under the skin but did not penetrate the chest, the police said. They added that the revolver was between 60 and 70 years old. According to people who gathered on the street after the shooting, the domestic dispute apparently started when a resident of 1818 Menahan Street who was known as Hazel called friends for help when a companion named Carlos became violent during a long argument over money. They said Hazel also called 911. Mr. Santana was one of the friends who arrived to help. When the police showed up, they apparently mistook Mr. Santana for Carlos, who is also bald, according to a man and a woman who said they were friends of Hazel and refused to give their names because, they said, they were afraid of Carlos. After the gun went off and Mr. Santana was put in a police car, Hazel repeatedly yelled “you’ve got the wrong guy,” according to Stephanie Ortiz, 14, a sister of Hazel. “It wasn’t on purpose,” Stephanie said of the officer’s shooting. “To his family, I hope he gets better.” She said Carlos had recently been released from prison and that she feared him as well. “I’m scared for him to pop up,” she said. “I know him.” Mr. Santana faces possible charges including weapons possession. The police said he was wanted on a parole violation.