Telecoms Want 'Net Neutrality' Applied More Widely

Abstract: BERLIN — Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for digital policy, has urged lawmakers in Brussels to fast-track legislation to guarantee network neutrality — the equal treatment by telecommunications carriers for all types of content, whether voice, video or data — for the more than 500 million people in the European Union. Whether they can deliver such a far-reaching commitment before the current European legislative period ends next June is an open question, but the push to legally cement net neutrality raises other issues. Mobile operators, whose wireless grids are increasingly the go-to means for access to the Internet, are not the only companies that restrict people around the world from following their bliss on the Internet. Consider the makers of the three major mobile telephone operating systems: Apple with iOS, Google with Android and Microsoft with Windows. These software systems are mostly incompatible with each other. Apps for one typically won’t work on the other. Then there’s Skype, the world’s largest Internet-based voice and video service. Now owned by Microsoft, Skype is not like the calling system connected to your telephone. You can’t call a Skype user from a rival Web calling service. The closed-door approach is by design. In each case, companies want to ensure that they reap the commercial benefits of their technology. According to the European Commission, mobile operators in Europe continue to block services like Skype to about a third of consumers because it cannibalizes their own sales. Ms. Kroes, a Dutch economist, has said that she wants to ensure that a neutrality law would prevent just this sort of self-serving filtering by operators. But like beauty, net neutrality is in the eye of the beholder, say critics including Luigi Gambardella, chairman of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association in Brussels. Operators oppose the push for a tougher net neutrality law, he said, but if such a regulation must exist, it should also be enforced on Web businesses like Microsoft, Google and Apple whose smartphones and tablets increasingly let people avoid their operator’s calling, texting and data charges. Unlike phone service providers, which are prevented under E.U. law from filtering Internet data except for purposes of network management, the makers of mobile device operating systems are allowed to effectively steer Internet traffic by giving priority to their own Web sites, applications and online businesses. The bifurcated approach, Mr. Gambardella said, has created a double standard that is hurting operators while allowing Web-based competitors to grab revenue, be it text-messaging sales via the texting app What’s App, or revenue from calls with Skype or Viber, a Web-based mobile calling app created by a company in Cyprus. “All we are asking for is a level playing field,” Mr. Gambardella, who is also a vice president at Telecom Italia, said. “The same rules should apply to everyone.” When Ms. Kroes was Europe’s competition commissioner from 2004 to 2009, she took a similar approach, prosecuting Microsoft for building its Internet Explorer browser directly into its dominant Windows operating system to promote its own Web access tool over those of rivals. Roslyn Layton, an analyst at Strand Consult, a telecommunications research firm in Copenhagen, said the legislative debate in Europe over net neutrality had been focused on operators and had neglected what she described as the widespread bundling and discrete filtering done by Google, Apple and Microsoft through their mobile operating systems. Those companies keep to themselves key bits of information on a user’s behavior, like a history of the geographic location of a mobile phone, that ensures that outside application developers will not be able to produce a better version of Gmail, YouTube, iTunes or Windows Live Mail, Ms. Layton said. When people choose an operating system, a chain reaction of decisions is set in motion without their consent, she said, affecting how and where apps appear on a phone or other mobile device, and from which company they can buy more apps. Imagine a mobile operator or Internet service provider trying to exert a similar level of control. The operator could insist on preapproving Web sites and applications. If a consumer changed mobile carriers, the apps that had been bought would become worthless. The behavior of a mobile operator or Internet service provider is of little consequence when compared with the power of the device bundled with an operating system, Ms. Layton said. “If net neutrality supporters really cared about discrimination, they should look at the entire Internet value chain,” she added. Ryan Heath, a spokesman for Ms. Kroes, said that the commissioner agreed that Web-based rivals to European telecom operators sometimes received easier regulatory treatment, and that the issue was rising on the commission’s regulatory agenda. But it is not an issue that she was likely to tackle this year as part of her net neutrality recommendation. “It’s a bit far-fetched to say the existence of an app store is breaching net neutrality,” Mr. Heath said. “It can’t be assumed that every problem is a competition or net neutrality problem.” It is also unlikely, Mr. Gambardella said, that Ms. Kroes would choose to anger companies in Silicon Valley by challenging the discretionary powers of those who build the world’s biggest operating systems. But then again, a few months ago, no one expected her to take on European operators either.

Mobile Apps
Mobile phone
Telecommunication
Neelie Kroes
Microsoft
Skype
Apple


Sign Hill

Abstract: South San Francisco proudly advertises its history to every passing motorist northbound on Highway 101. Industry has changed, though, since the sign’s 1923 construction: biotechnology has replaced steel mills and slaughterhouses. HANK PELLISSIER Big Pride Members of the Chamber of Commerce etched and whitewashed the sign’s letters on the hillside. Five years later, a city bond issue provided $5,000 to construct the current upgrade: 60-foot-high letters made out of concrete four inches thick. Ships, Steak and Steel Big S.S.F. industries in the 1920s were W. P. Fuller Paint, Western Pipe and Steel, the Metal and Thermit Corporation, and the Western Meat Company. Forty-five ships for World War II were constructed in 48 months at the shipbuilding yard on Oyster Point. Chromosome Trend Today, Genentech is the city’s top employer. The company has paid for highway signs that proclaim South San Francisco as “the birthplace of biotechnology.” Eternal Emblem As S.S.F. became less defined by its industry, groups of residents tried to have the sign removed. Their efforts were thwarted by Edna Harks, who persuaded the United States Department of the Interior to recognize the sign in the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Urban Sledding Local thrill-seekers enjoy skidding down the steep letters on rectangular pieces of cardboard or wood. Best rides are down the “F” in “Francisco,” the “T” in “South” and the “T” in “Industrial” because their slopes end in a pile of soft brush. Good Labor Every weekend, 8 to 10 teenagers from San Mateo Juvenile Protection work on the hill with S.S.F.’s Department of Public Works, weeding around letters, repainting them, and creating and maintaining the trails. Holiday Spirit A tall pole crowning the summit of Sign Hill is used as the frame of an electric Christmas tree that shines from Thanksgiving to Jan. 6. The frame was modified in 2008 to illuminate “100” in celebration of S.S.F.’s centennial. Giant Color After the Giants won the World Series on Monday, local celebrants painted two letters of the sign bright orange: the “S” in “San” and the “F” in “Francisco.”

Advertising and Marketing
Infrastructure (Public Works)
Bay Citizen The
Genentech Inc


A New Palm Species Is Discovered Through Its Swan Song

Abstract: Even by the standards of species-rich Madagascar, the palm discovered along the northwestern coast of the island is unusual. It’s a massive tree, close to 60 feet tall with fronds up to 15 feet in diameter. But what attracted the attention of its discoverers is what sprouts from the top when it flowers: a huge pyramid of branches, like an asparagus plant gone to seed. What’s more, this stage, which produces hundreds of flowers ripe for pollination, marks the beginning of the end for the palm. A few months later it dies. In a paper in The Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, the palm has been described as a new genus and species by John Dransfield of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in England, and colleagues. It’s been named Tahina spectabilis. The scientists suggest that only about 100 of these palms exist and that the reason they’ve never been discovered before is that their life cycle is extremely long, making the end-stage flowering a rare event. They also have no idea how the species ended up in Madagascar: the closest relatives are in Asia and Arabia.


U.S. Study Is Said to Warn of Crisis in Afghanistan

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral” and casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban ’s influence there, according to American officials familiar with the document. The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence by militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks from havens in Pakistan . The report, a nearly completed version of a National Intelligence Estimate , is set to be finished after the November elections and will be the most comprehensive American assessment in years on the situation in Afghanistan. Its conclusions represent a harsh verdict on decision-making in the Bush administration, which in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made Afghanistan the central focus of a global campaign against terrorism. Beyond the cross-border attacks launched by militants in neighboring Pakistan, the intelligence report asserts that many of Afghanistan’s most vexing problems are of the country’s own making, the officials said. The report cites gains in the building of Afghanistan’s national army, the officials said. But they said it also laid out in stark terms what it described as the destabilizing impact of the booming heroin trade, which by some estimates accounts for 50 percent of Afghanistan’s economy. The Bush administration has initiated a major review of its Afghanistan policy and has decided to send additional troops to the country. The downward slide in the security situation in Afghanistan has also become an issue in the presidential campaign, along with questions about whether the White House emphasis in recent years on the war in Iraq has been misplaced. Inside the government, reports issued by the Central Intelligence Agency for more than two years have chronicled the worsening violence and rampant corruption inside Afghanistan, and some in the agency say they believe that it has taken the White House too long to respond to the warnings. Henry A. Crumpton, a career C.I.A. officer who last year stepped down as the State Department’s top counterterrorism official, attributed some of Afghanistan’s problems to a “lack of leadership” both at the White House and in European capitals where commitments to rebuild Afghanistan after 2001 have never been met. Mr. Crumpton, who was in charge of the C.I.A. teams that entered Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks but who said he had not seen the draft report, said that Afghanistan was “bad and getting worse” and that officials in Washington were just beginning to wake up to the problem. “It’s taken them a long time to realize it, but now they know it’s pretty grim,” he said. A National Intelligence Estimate is a formal document that reflects the consensus judgments of all 16 American intelligence agencies. Although the Bush administration has made public the crucial findings from some recent N.I.E.’s on Iraq and terrorism, most remain classified. The assessment on Afghanistan is the first since the Taliban regained strength there beginning in 2006 and launched an offensive that has allowed them to seize large swaths of territory. The draft intelligence report was described by more than a half dozen current government officials who had read its conclusions. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report remains classified and has not been completed. Richard Willing, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which produces the national intelligence assessments, declined to comment for this article. A White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, also declined to comment on the report’s conclusions but said: “Everyone understands that the current situation in Afghanistan is a tough one. That’s why the president ordered additional troops there. That’s why we’re increasing the size of the Afghanistan Army.” Both major presidential candidates, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain , have called for American troop increases in Afghanistan even beyond those the White House has ordered. Mr. Obama has accused the White House of paying too little attention to Afghanistan as it poured the vast bulk of American military resources into the war in Iraq, while Mr. McCain has defended the administration’s decision, saying that Iraq remains the more important front in the battle against terrorism. In Tuesday’s presidential debate , Mr. Obama said he told Mr. Karzai during a visit to Afghanistan in July that the Afghan leader had “to do better by your people in order for us to gain the popular support that’s necessary.” “We have to have a government that is responsive to the Afghan people, and frankly it’s just not responsive right now,” Mr. Obama said. American officials said that intelligence agencies were also working to produce an assessment on Pakistan, and that both were to be completed after next month’s elections. They said the draft findings had already begun to influence the recommendations of the White House-led review of Afghanistan policy, which was scheduled to be completed this month but has now been postponed several weeks. The administration is considering whether the United States should devote more effort to working directly with tribal leaders in far-flung provinces, and possibly arming tribal militias, to fight the Taliban in places where Afghanistan’s army and police forces have been ineffective. The Bush administration had long resisted making tribal elders a centerpiece of American strategy in Afghanistan. American officials had hoped instead that strong national institutions like the Afghan Army could protect the Afghan population, but the escalating violence this year has forced a reassessment of the value of the tribal system for counterinsurgency operations. “In order to have an effective counterinsurgency strategy, you need to have strong local governance in the districts and the provinces,” said a senior State Department official who has been briefed on the report’s broad conclusions, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In a sign of the seriousness of the administration’s policy review, the White House’s top coordinator for Afghanistan policy, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute of the Army, will lead a team of specialists who will go there to assess the situation, a senior administration official said Wednesday. Administration officials say the review is examining how and where the nearly $6 billion in annual American assistance to Afghanistan is being spent; how to improve the effectiveness of small teams of American and European civilians and troops seeded throughout the Afghan provinces to spur economic growth; and how to strike the right balance between taking military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan and providing more development aid to that country. Senior American commanders have recently been blunt in their assessment of the security trends in the country. “In large parts of Afghanistan, we don’t see progress,” Gen. David D. McKiernan , the top American officer in Afghanistan, told reporters last week. “We’re into a very tough counterinsurgency fight and will be for some time.” It is not just American officials who offer a grim prognosis. A French diplomatic cable leaked to a French newspaper last week quoted the British ambassador to Afghanistan as forecasting that the NATO -led mission there would fail. “The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust,” the British envoy, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted as telling the French deputy ambassador to Kabul , who wrote the cable. British officials have said the comments attributed to Sir Sherard were distorted and do not reflect official British policy.

National Intelligence Estimate
Afghanistan War
Afghanistan
Hamid Karzai
Taliban


After a Loss, Nostalgic Talk of a Reunion

Abstract: MINNEAPOLIS, March 26 - Desperation comes in many forms, and between them, the Knicks and the Minnesota Timberwolves have most of the bases covered. The Timberwolves have one of the game's greatest talents in Kevin Garnett, yet will almost certainly not make the playoffs. The Knicks have the biggest payroll in league history, but will almost certainly not even win 30 games. If the desperation on both sides is great enough, they just may find a mutual solution this summer. The Knicks have visions -- albeit unrealistic ones -- of trading for Garnett and reuniting him with Stephon Marbury, his former teammate in Minnesota. The Timberwolves, unable to ride Garnett to the finals in his 11 years, may finally consider trading him. Chicago, Golden State, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Nets are expected to be among his many suitors. Or, if the desperation in Minneapolis becomes particularly acute, the Timberwolves could reach back a decade and go for a more sentimental solution: They could bring back Marbury. That possibility is not as far-fetched as it may seem. The Knicks plan to shop Marbury, who has clashed with Coach Larry Brown, this summer. The sense around the league is that the Timberwolves are ready to make a drastic move, and that if any team is willing to take a chance on Marbury, it may just be Minnesota. This much is clear: Marbury and Garnett are ready, even enthusiastic, about the prospect of a reunion. "That would be great; that would be a beautiful thing," Marbury said Sunday afternoon before the Knicks lost to the Timberwolves, 98-94, at the Target Center. Marbury had 12 points and 9 assists; Garnett scored 26 points and had 15 rebounds. To be clear, Marbury said he would like that reunion to be in New York, not in Minneapolis. Despite his feud with Brown, Marbury says he wants to stay with the Knicks. And Garnett, who has spent his career with the Timberwolves, also wants to stay put. They are unified, however, in their vision of what could have been, and of what might still be. Had Marbury not forced Minnesota to trade him seven years ago, Garnett said he believed they would have raised a championship banner or two at the Target Center. "Absolutely," Garnett said three times. "I've never thought anything different from that." Marbury's departure in 1999 might have been his greatest mistake as an N.B.A. player, setting him on a rocky path of playoff flameouts and hard feelings with the Nets, the Phoenix Suns and the Knicks. Garnett had a $126 million contract, while Marbury, under the N.B.A.'s just-adopted labor deal, was eligible for only a $71 million contract, and the disparity bothered him. Flip Saunders, their coach, said Marbury had told him, " 'Right now, whether it's right or wrong, I have a tough time playing with K. G. when he's making the amount of money he's making and I'll be making only $71 million.' " Fearful of losing Marbury as a free agent, Minnesota dealt him to the Nets in a three-team, nine-player deal. Marbury has never won a playoff series. A nine-time All-Star, Garnett has advanced past the first round only once, in 2004, when Minnesota made the Western Conference finals. Now Garnett is headed for his second consecutive spring without a playoff berth and says, "I don't want to go through another season like this." There were hard feelings when Marbury forced the trade, but he and Garnett have mended their relationship. "I have no beef with Steph," Garnett said. "I played with Steph. I've never had a problem with Steph on the court." The two spent just two and a half seasons as teammates, from 1996 to 1999, and were heralded as a next-generation John Stockton and Karl Malone. "I think that was a perfect match," Brown said. "Looking back on it, it's kind of sad." Of Garnett, Brown said, "He has no ego, he just loves to play and wants to win." Garnett said the breakup was not sad, merely disappointing, saying "when you have an opportunity like I felt we had, and you let it slip through your fingers because of youth, or ego can even be thrown in there," he said. Still, Garnett said he had shared an "untalked-about chemistry" with Marbury that he compared to his relationships with Sam Cassell, Sam Mitchell and Latrell Sprewell. "I don't think he's made that connection with anybody else," Garnett said. "I sacrificed, he sacrificed; we made it work." Marbury agreed that he and Garnett had something special but admitted no regrets. "I mean, the way how I see it, in life everything happens for a reason," he said. There are many obstacles to a reunion. One is that the Knicks could not offer as attractive a package for Garnett as most of the other presumed suitors. Marbury said he wanted to stay in his native New York, but added, "If I got traded here, then I can't do nothing about that." The main obstacle to Marbury being traded to the Timberwolves -- aside from his demeanor and track record -- is his contract. He is owed $60 million over the next three years, including $16.5 million next season. Under N.B.A. rules governing trades, Minnesota would probably have to package at least three players to equal Marbury's 2006-7 salary. "Playing back with Kevin, that would be something that would be talked about forever," said Marbury, who has been booed whenever he has faced the Timberwolves at the Target Center since being traded. Then there is the matter of geography. "I've never been opposed to a reunion," Garnett said, "but I've always let him know that I'm going to be in 'Sota; he's always let me know that he's going to be in New York. So I guess we got a problem."

NEW YORK KNICKS
NEW YORK KNICKERBOCKERS
MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES
GARNETT KEVIN
BASKETBALL


Fatal Crash in the Bronx Unites Two Families in Grief

Abstract: Two groups of children trick-or-treating with their older relatives on Saturday briefly crossed paths on a Bronx sidewalk. They were strangers to one another when an out-of-control car veered off the avenue and over the curb. Three were fatally struck: Nyanna Aquil, 10; her grandfather, Louis Perez, 65; and Kristian Leka, 24, who was holding his younger sister’s hand to keep her safe. Three others were hurt, including Mr. Leka’s sister and fiancée, and a 3-year-old granddaughter of Mr. Perez. In an instant, the two families were united in mourning. On Sunday, a senior police official said the 52-year-old man whose car slammed into the trick-or-treaters on Halloween appeared to have had a medical episode before losing control of a black Dodge Charger sedan. The man, Howard Unger of the Bronx, had been driving west on Morris Park Avenue when he rammed into the rear of a Toyota traveling in front of him at least twice before continuing into oncoming traffic and jumping the curb just before 5 p.m. Image The mother of Kristian Leka, 24, who was killed in a crash on Saturday, at a candlelight vigil on Sunday at the site of the accident along Morris Park Avenue in the Bronx. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times “He hit a car, the car pulled over and he kept going,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the crash remains under investigation. Detectives believe, based on interviews with off-duty emergency medical workers who were close by when the crash happened and rushed to the scene, that Mr. Unger may have had a seizure, the official said. Mr. Unger remained hospitalized on Sunday at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx and was cooperating with the investigation, the official said, adding that no alcohol or drugs had been detected in his system. Efforts to reach Mr. Unger in the hospital were unsuccessful. The preliminary investigation appeared to show that speed was not a factor in the crash, said the official, who cautioned that detectives were still gathering information. The car came to a stop in the front yard of 936 Morris Park Avenue after smashing over a low brick wall and through a fence. A stroller could be seen mangled on the sidewalk. Just before the crash, Mr. Perez had been walking along Morris Park Avenue near Bogart Avenue with his granddaughters, Nyanna and her two younger sisters, 3 and 8, each dressed in Halloween costumes. Nyanna went as a cat. Mr. Leka had just returned from work and, along with his fiancée, was beginning trick-or-treating with his 9-year-old sister, Fiona, who was dressed in a red-and-blue costume, when the car came at them. “He was holding his sister’s hand and was trying to save his sister,” said a friend, who would give his name only as Florian. The fiancée, 21, was also hospitalized but expected to be released soon. Image The black Dodge Charger sedan, driven by Howard Unger, 52, that was involved in the crash that killed three people. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times “Last night’s crash tore apart two families,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has vowed to reduce traffic deaths in the city to zero, said in a statement on Sunday. “We do not accept tragedies like this as inevitable.” Mr. Leka came to the Bronx from Albania, worked as a truck driver and went to Mass on holidays at Our Lady of Shkodra, an Albanian Roman Catholic Church in Hartsdale, N.Y. “He was one of the best guys I knew,” Florian said. “He worked so hard. Of all my friends, he was the closest to his family. He was a very loving person. I just feel so bad.” A vigil for the victims was held Sunday night at the site of the accident. Mr. Leka’s mother, whose head was covered in a blue-and-white dotted scarf, threw her head back and wailed as a man helped support her through the crowd. Martin Leka, Kristian Leka’s father, covered his eyes, swaying in grief. Nyanna Aquil’s father thanked emergency medical workers for tending to his children, and her mother, Natalia Perez, said that her 3-year old was released from the hospital on Sundaymorning. Ms. Perez said her father helped her take care of the children while she worked. “Everyone in this community knew my dad with his girls,” she said. Ms. Perez had taken her daughters on an earlier round of trick-or-treating. “And we had a great time,” she said. Image Mr. Leka with his younger sister Fiona in an undated family photo. “I never thought I’d lose two of my loved ones on the same date,” she said. Halloween is a dangerous time for young pedestrians, with more children likely to be killed on the evening of Oct. 31 than during any other period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It stands to reason, you’ve got so many people out there,” said Paul Steely White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives , a pedestrian advocacy group that has pressed for stricter enforcement of traffic laws in New York. An analysis by the group found that 13 pedestrians had been killed so far this year when cars jumped curbs, an increase from five in all of 2014. That rise stands in contrast to a broader decline in pedestrian deaths in the city. “This is not a freak occurrence,” he said of the crash on Saturday. “Even if it proves true that the driver had some sort of medical episode, we have a right to know what happened before.” Drivers have faced serious criminal charges in the past when prosecutors have shown that they failed to take prescribed medication to prevent a seizure or other medical episode, leading to an accident. After months of investigating, a Bronx taxi driver who had an epileptic seizure and fatally struck two pedestrians in March was indicted in September on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors in the Bronx argued that the driver, Emilio Garcia, was aware he had epilepsy, had a head-on accident three months before the fatal crash, and was not taking his prescribed doses of anti-seizure medication. Terry Raskyn, the spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office, said it was too early to say whether any charges would be brought against Mr. Unger.

Car Crash
Howard Unger
Nyanna Aquil
Louis Perez
Kristian Leka
Halloween
Bronx
Seizures


All Summer on the Stoop

Abstract: Dear Diary: Dreams were born on Brooklyn stoops, Comic books read, and friendships forged. Secrets shared, and hopes revealed. “Hey, Jerry, here’s six cents, go and get the Nooz and Mira.” Crazy Ralphie told us jokes, and babes in arms were sleepy. Someone shouts, “Hey, Babe Ruth died!” The boys could not believe it. A girl named Mary Pellegrino met a boy strolling by on Graham Avenue. His name was Maxie Witkin. Their union produced children whose Art is now shown in museums and galleries. They live in fancy houses that have no stoops. They would trade it all for only one more night With Mom and Grandma On a Brooklyn stoop.


Afghan Villagers Fear Taliban and NATO

Abstract: TOWDABAY KALAY, Afghanistan — The American soldiers knew little about this farming village in the rugged foothills of Paktika Province in eastern Afghanistan , but they were told the Taliban moved through regularly. When the soldiers, part of the First Battalion, 506th Infantry, arrived on foot one morning, hiking along terraced fields carved into the steep hillsides, they found the villagers fearful. Not just of the Taliban, but of NATO forces as well. “We are scared of both sides,” a village elder, Mutayeb Khan, told the soldiers, expressing a litany of concerns shared by many villagers in remote parts of the country. They worry that NATO and Afghan forces will confuse them for insurgents while they’re tending their fields or collecting wood in the hills; that the Taliban will attack them if they help, or even talk to coalition forces; that government forces will detain their young men, perhaps for years.. “We can’t go to the Taliban and complain,” Mr. Khan said. “We can’t go to the government because the Taliban will find out and call us spies and kill us.” Founded or not, their fears underscore the daunting task that NATO forces face in persuading Afghans that coalition forces and the Afghan government can protect them, especially in areas with little government or NATO military presence. Building that trust is a crucial goal as coalition forces lay the groundwork for turning over security to Afghan national forces by the end of 2014. And as coalition forces shift their focus to protecting population centers as part of Gen. David H. Petraeus’s counterinsurgency plan, rural hamlets like Towdabay Kalay remain ripe for insurgents looking for recruits, sanctuary and supplies. Military officials consider the province along the Pakistan border to be home to a robust insurgency, as well as a strategic crossing ground for militants entering the country from safe havens in North and South Waziristan in Pakistan. Across the province’s western border lies Highway 1, providing easy access to Kabul, the capital. Of the country’s 34 provinces, Paktika has been the fourth-deadliest for coalition soldiers in the nearly decade-long conflict. The tribal system remains strong here, as does support for the militants. In an Army survey in February, more than two-thirds of Paktika residents said they sympathized with the Taliban. Many others, like Mr. Khan, a leather-skinned farmer with a henna-dyed orange beard, simply feel helpless to resist them. “They come down from everywhere, and what are we supposed to fight them with, this?” he said, pointing to his cane. “It would be good for everyone if you could put some A.N.S.F. in here,” he added, referring to Afghan national security forces. “We would be happy.” Frontline commanders feel the villagers’ frustration. “What I’m careful about is coming in here and making a bunch of promises we can’t keep,” said Lt. Col. David B. Womack, the battalion commander. “The most important thing we can do is connect them to Giroa, but there’s no Giroa presence here, and there may not be for years,” he added, using the acronym for the Afghan government’s formal name, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Mr. Khan said Taliban had recently been arriving in the village wearing Afghan military and police uniforms, in line with recent attacks on government compounds across the country by insurgents disguised as members of the Afghan security forces. Often, he said, they simply send a messenger down from the mountains demanding food and supplies. Emphasizing the fear many villagers share, Mr. Khan said militants had kidnapped eight people from his village over the past four years, accusing them of being government spies. The militants killed one early on; five others were released. The last two were found dead on the side of the road last year with notes pinned to them warning villagers not to work for the government. Two years ago, the Taliban burned down the school, the charred remnants of which still lie in a pile in a corner of the village. Closer to the border in the Naka District, a collection of villages tucked in a mountain bowl, the Taliban blew up the district center two years ago. The government has had no presence there since. When soldiers with the Second Battalion, 506th Infantry, arrived there recently, villagers timidly made one point clear: They want government, but do not want the trouble. “I have never seen the coalition shoot anyone,” said Hajji Abdul Kabir, a wood merchant. “But if we have contact with coalition or government forces, the Taliban will shoot us.” Their concern is legitimate, said Capt. Henry Hansen, commander of the battalion’s Company E. “They think we’re going to come in here and leave.” In this case, though, the battalion was setting up an observation post overlooking the Naka villages, and planned to increase patrols through it. The distrust goes both ways. Villagers often provide dubious information, identifying rival tribes as Taliban collaborators while denying there are any militants in their village. One group of villagers recently reported to Colonel Womack that the Taliban had built a road near their village. It turned out another tribe had built the road to harvest timber. “The other villagers blamed the Taliban to get the coalition to target those guys,” Colonel Womack said. Efforts to build up the capacity of the Afghan government and trust in it here have increased steadily since August, when the last of the American surge brigades got here. The arrival of the unit, the 101st Airborne Division’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team, greatly increased the troop presence in the province, which had been patrolled by a single battalion the previous year. The reinforcements have improved security, allowing coalition and civilian aide workers to expand agricultural programs and road projects, using cash-for-work incentives to give unemployed men, desperate to support their families, an alternative to joining the insurgency for pay. In the district center of Yahya Khel, which last fall was one of the most troubled areas in the province, dozens of farmers trekked from neighboring villages this spring to attend government-sponsored agricultural training. “Clearly if I’m a local farmer there is some risk involved in going to the district center to receive this kind of training,” said Maj. Steve Battle, the brigade’s civil affairs officer. “And yet they went, voluntarily. To me, that is a big measure of effectiveness.” Even as security has improved here, civilian casualties are on the rise — the vast majority caused by the Taliban. In January, 13 civilians died when their bus hit a mine in the Khoshamand District as they headed to a health clinic. Since January, militants have been responsible for at least 48 civilian deaths from attacks and roadside bombs, officials say. But if anything, the rising casualty toll has bolstered the belief of many people that the government and coalition forces cannot protect them. “If there’s one thing I’m confident about, it’s that we are above-board when it comes to civilian casualties, and it’s painful when it happens,” Colonel Womack said. “But we’ve had over 60 civilian casualties caused by the Taliban since I’ve been here, and where’s the uproar?”

United States Defense and Military Forces


Botanists Fear Long Island Drought’s Toll on Sandplain Gerardia Flower

Abstract: MONTAUK, N.Y. — At the eastern end of Long Island, on the South Fork, tucked among the wobbly clam shacks and the steroidal homes, there are a few small grassy plots sectioned off by short chicken-wire fences. The wire is rusty, and the wooden posts that hold it upright are weathered to a milky gray. One plot is not far from a cliff that drops straight to the sea. Another is within eyeshot of a condominium association’s swimming pool. There are no signs or other indications of purpose or origin, but each quietly safeguards a botanical gem: the delicate wildflower known as sandplain gerardia, New York’s only federally listed endangered plant species. There are only 12 known populations of sandplain gerardia (Agalinis acuta) in the country, and six of them grow on Long Island — but nowhere else in the state. This year, with punishing drought conditions leaving great swaths of the country, including the South Fork, pleading for a drink, botanists are fearing the worst for the plant. (Spring rainfall on Long Island was 8 to 12 inches below normal.) Even if you know where the plots are, sandplain gerardia is harder than ever to find. Everything about the plant speaks of fragility. Its bubble-gum pink flowers are no wider than a penny, and when they arrive — the plant blooms in late summer — they stay for just a day. The plant is only about 10 inches tall, with branches as thin as floss. Sandplain gerardia quickly gets lost among Long Island’s heartier coastal grasses — all that Indian grass and big blue stem waving from along Montauk Highway. The Montauk plots are owned by various state and local agencies, but the Long Island branch of the Nature Conservancy has agreed to monitor them. Once a year, Paul D’Andrea, a former chef and self-taught botanist who joined the environmental group eight years ago, visits the sites and counts the plants. He sends the data to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service , where officials decide whether the plots should be expanded or somehow fortified (though officials rarely choose to plant new seeds for fear of contaminating the native species). “We’ve had years in the past with fields full of pink, years when you just say, ‘Wow,’ ” Mr. D’Andrea said on a recent weekday, as he prepared to begin his count. “But because of the summer’s drought, I can almost guarantee that this will not be a wow year.” The historical arc of sandplain gerardia is a common one: hundreds of millions covered Long Island before the usual suspects — roads, beach houses, strip malls — took over. One cluster, along the Long Island Rail Road tracks, was wiped out when a worker sprayed it with weed killer. In the early 1980s, Rolf Martin, a graduate student in chemistry at Brooklyn College, fearing the plant extinct, offered $100 to anyone who spotted a wild specimen. No one did. But by 1988, when the plant was placed on the endangered species list, the highest protection an American botanical specimen can receive, 814 plants had been discovered. Today, there are stable sandplain gerardia populations on the Sayville Grasslands and the Hempstead Plains. The four populations on Montauk, fenced off but otherwise unpublicized for fear of sabotage, are the smallest and the most precarious. Mr. D’Andrea wore a cotton jumpsuit that buttoned down the middle, like a house painter or a ghostbuster. He had tucked the bottoms into his rubber mud boots, and, using duct tape, sealed the gap between. “Ticks,” he said. “Tiny nymphs. They’ll gather on you like smudges of coffee grinds.” Carrying a clipboard, he swung his legs over the first fence. The plot was 30 feet by 10 feet. No pink was apparent. He scoured the ground, using a pencil to push larger plants aside. “I think that’s one of our friends,” Mr. D’Andrea said, but he was talking about a tick. He brushed off the black speck. Pacing the plot twice more, he finally announced: “I got four plants. One, two, three, four. Not so good.” At the next plot, Mr. D’Andrea’s tally was higher, at 67. “But last year I think we had 400,” he said. “In the conservation world, large mammals get all the press. But why is this any less important than a polar bear or a monarch butterfly? We don’t know what other species depend on this little flower. We’ve got to protect it.” After surveying the remaining plots, the number of check marks on Mr. D’Andrea’s clipboard totaled 115. Last year, the count was 1,341. He had spent the afternoon uttering phrases like “Oh, bummer” and “I’m not feeling the love here.” “That’s the biggest swing I’ve seen since I’ve been doing this,” said Mr. D’Andrea, yanking the duct tape off his jumpsuit. “To think that millions of sandplain gerardia were once on Long Island. I’ll pass this data on, but there’s not a whole lot to do. “We’ll just have to hope that the seeds are down there, hanging on until next year. If it’s a wetter year, maybe we’ll get lucky.” Just then, a monarch butterfly flew by, and was spotted without effort.

Flowers and Plants
Endangered and Extinct Species
Sandplain Gerardia
Montauk (NY)
Long Island (NY)
Martin Rolf
Drought


Next Cast of Yankees? To Be Continued

Abstract: Derek Jeter recently began working out in Tampa, Fla., in his effort to return to the Yankees as their everyday shortstop, and that is the team’s plan. But Manager Joe Girardi acknowledged Thursday that the Yankees could not be certain that Jeter, their 39-year-old captain, who is coming off the worst injury of his career, would be able to do so until they saw him in games. For now, it is merely a hope. “We’re hoping that he’ll be back to where he was in 2012 before the injury took place,” Girardi said. “We’ll go through the off-season and allow him to do the things that he needs to do and then keep our fingers crossed in spring training that it’s all good.” Girardi said Jeter, who broke his left ankle in the 2012 playoffs after a remarkable season, was not expected to begin baseball activities until January. That means the Yankees will not know until spring training, or perhaps later, whether Jeter is capable of resuming his role as the regular shortstop and leadoff hitter. Girardi said the Yankees expected that Jeter would play shortstop and would sometimes be the designated hitter. “That’s our plan, for him to play shortstop,” said Girardi, who was speaking at a U.S.O. event held by the Yankees to provide care packages for American troops. Girardi also noted the uncertainty surrounding Alex Rodriguez, who is in the arbitration process, fighting a 211-game suspension by Major League Baseball, which believes he used performance-enhancing drugs. Rodriguez is due $25 million next season, but if the suspension is upheld by the arbitrator, the Yankees will not owe him that money and can spend it elsewhere. Image The Yankees are not sure if Derek Jeter is capable of resuming his role as the regular shortstop and leadoff hitter. Credit Kathy Willens/Associated Press The decision by the arbitrator, Fredric Horowitz, might not come until late December, and Girardi expressed some urgency about having an answer for planning purposes. Can the Yankees anticipate spending all of that money, or part of it? And will they need a third baseman to replace Rodriguez? “Whether you have him or not, in a sense, it’s important that we know,” Girardi said. “Because if we’re not going to have him, we need to fill that void. It does cause us to think a lot about, ‘Do we need a third baseman, or do we not need a third baseman?’ Hopefully, we’ll know sooner rather than later.” Jeter and Rodriguez, who is 38, are the subjects of only two of the many questions the Yankees will not have answered for some time. Second baseman Robinson Cano, their best all-around player, could leave in free agency, and the Yankees do not know if starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda is coming back next year, either. They do not even know what they can expect from Mark Teixeira, who missed most of 2013 with a wrist injury, or from C. C. Sabathia, who struggled much of the season. Girardi also made clear that David Robertson had not yet been named as Mariano Rivera’s successor as closer. The Yankees plan to reach out to all available closers on the free-agent market, including Joe Nathan and Grant Balfour, although it is not clear whether an established closer would come in to assume that role, or whether he would be asked to set up the way Rafael Soriano initially did when he signed with the Yankees. But Soriano came to the Yankees when they had Rivera, not an unproven former setup man. A closer is not necessarily a priority compared with some of the Yankees’ other needs, but the goal is to get as many quality pitchers in the bullpen as possible. If that means sending Robertson back to the setup role, then the Yankees feel that makes them a stronger team. “I think we’ll look at whatever makes our club the best,” Girardi said. “I know we haven’t anointed anyone as a closer, and we’ve got to see what happens. David Robertson has had a number of very good years here, but we’ve got to see what we can put together as a team as a whole before we do anything.” One of the uncertainties the Yankees have resolved this off-season is Girardi himself, who signed a four-year extension shortly after the season. “To have an opportunity to stay in one city for 10 years as a baseball guy, whether you’re a player, coach, whatever you are, is not real common,” he said. “So for me, it’s been a blessing. We look forward to the challenge next year, look forward to the off-season to see what our club is going to be, and we’ll go from there.”

Baseball
Yankees
Derek Jeter
Alex Rodriguez
David Robertson
Robinson Cano
Joe Girardi
Hiroki Kuroda


Harvard Wins Opener

Abstract: Andrew Casten ran for 153 yards and three touchdowns to help Harvard beat Holy Cross, 41-18, in the Crimson’s opener in Cambridge, Mass. Harvard scored twice in a 24-second span in the third quarter to take a 27-18 lead.

College football
Ivy League
Harvard
College of the Holy Cross


David Barrett, Dogged Graft Investigator in Washington, Dies at 76

Abstract: David M. Barrett, a Washington lawyer with Republican ties, was one of six so-called independent counsels sworn in during the Clinton administration to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by government officials. His inquiry concerned Henry G. Cisneros, the secretary of housing and urban development, who was accused of lying in 1993 during an F.B.I. background check about payments he had made to a former mistress while he was mayor of San Antonio. The inquiry by Mr. Barrett, who died on Jan. 22 at 76, was not as closely watched as some of the others by independent counsels, particularly the one headed by Kenneth Starr, which led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. But it was historic in other ways. At 10 years and eight months, the Barrett investigation was the longest in the history of the office of the independent counsel, which was created by Congress in 1978 to prevent executive branch interference in criminal investigations of White House officials. Judges appointed the chief investigators. As it turned out, Mr. Barrett’s inquiry was also the last. Mr. Cisneros, a married father of three and a one-time rising star in the Democratic Party, had been open about his affair during pre-confirmation interviews with the F.B.I., disclosing that he had paid the woman a monthly stipend for some years after it had ended. The question to be answered was whether he had lied about the amount he paid and why he had paid it. He said it was about $10,000 a year, freely given to help a friend. The allegation was that he had paid her about $60,000 a year in exchange for her silence. The inquiry was initially expected to last six months. But Mr. Barrett came to view the case as the tip of an iceberg of tax fraud, conspiracy and, later on, a cover-up by highly placed White House officials, and he kept a staff of more than a dozen lawyers and F.B.I. officers working on it from 1995, when he was appointed, until early 2006. By then, the impeachment drama was history. The independent counsel investigations involving Mr. Clinton’s secretaries of labor, commerce, interior and agriculture had concluded without significant convictions. Alarmed by the number and length of the inquests, Congress let the clock run out on the independent counsel law in 1999, when it was up for a five-year reauthorization vote. Mr. Barrett continued his work under a provision in the law permitting the completion of continuing investigations. Over the 10 years of his inquiry, Mr. Barrett won a single misdemeanor conviction against Mr. Cisneros, in 1997. He also developed information that led to a prison term for the former mistress, Linda Medlar Jones, on an unrelated bank fraud charge. Mr. Barrett admitted to being frustrated. Introducing a 750-page report in 2006 detailing what he said was “a substantial and coordinated cover-up” by Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service officials, Mr. Barrett said, “In the end, enough high-ranking officials with enough power were able to blunt any effort to bring about a full and independent examination” of all the allegations. “The question is why,” he added. “And the question will regrettably go unanswered. Unlike some cover-ups, this one succeeded.” Mr. Clinton pardoned Mr. Cisneros and Ms. Jones in 2001, on his last day in office. Mr. Barrett’s death, which was announced but not widely reported at the time, was confirmed by his son, Peter, who said the cause was heart failure. David Martin Barrett was born on April 21, 1937, in Buffalo to Edward and Kathryn Barrett and grew up in South Bend, Ind., where his father was a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Notre Dame in 1959, served in the Navy for two years and graduated with honors from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. Mr. Barrett was an assistant United States attorney in Washington before returning to South Bend to teach law at Notre Dame and serve as the county attorney of St. Joseph County, of which South Bend is the seat. In 1975, he established a private practice in Washington and became involved in Republican politics. He was special counsel to the House Ethics Committee in 1979-80 when it investigated Representative Daniel J. Flood , a Pennsylvania Democrat, on corruption charges. He was also chairman of Lawyers for Reagan in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the presidency. In the dozen years before he was appointed an independent counsel, Mr. Barrett became known as a lawyer with access to top-level appointees in the Reagan administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, including some involved in a widespread influence-peddling scandal during the 1980s. Mr. Barrett was never accused of involvement in the scandal. Still, Representative Tom Lantos, a Democrat and the chairman of the House Government Operations Committee, which had investigated the HUD scandal, called Mr. Barrett’s appointment as independent counsel in the Cisneros case “mind-boggling.” Mr. Barrett countered that he had disclosed his dealings with HUD to the three-judge panel that appointed him. “All of those matters were fully disclosed,” he said. Mr. Cisneros, who had reconciled with his wife before the investigation began, resigned from his cabinet post in 1997 and later became the president and chief operating officer of Univision, the Spanish-language television corporation. Besides his son, Mr. Barrett is survived by his wife, Kathleen O’Hara Barrett; three daughters, Kristin Patterson, Julie Barrett Hanlon and Laura Plunkett; and nine grandchildren. Another daughter, Megan Barrett, died in 2008.

David M Barrett
Special prosecutor
Obituary
Corruption
US Politics
Henry G Cisneros


Don’t Take Problems Personally, Lisa Price Says

Abstract: This interview with Lisa Price, founder and president of Carol’s Daughter, a beauty products company , was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant .  Q. Talk about some of your early leadership lessons. A. In the beginning, I did everything. And then, as I started to add people to help me, a lot of them were family members or friends who were like family. So there wasn’t really a need to have a specific management style, per se. But when the business changed and started to grow, we had to bring in people with more experience. For the past four or five years, I’ve been watching people who have that experience come in and bring their knowledge to us. In the beginning, you feel like they know everything. And then you find out they really don’t, and common sense makes more sense than what they’re saying sometimes. So I sit at the table, but not necessarily at the head of the table. I feel like I’m the person in the room who’s maintaining everything. The players change, but the story stays the same. The way the company was founded stays the same. What I believe in stays the same. So I need to be at the table to make sure that integrity stays, but I don’t need to sit at the head of the table and drive the conversation, because I may not necessarily drive it to the place that makes it profitable and makes it relevant. So I’m going to listen, but I know that I can interject if they go off track. Q. You brought in a C.E.O., Richard Dantas, in January. What was behind that decision? A. The C.E.O. role was kind of a responsibility that I shared with Steve Stoute, my business partner. We learned our skills are really best suited elsewhere. The day-to-day operations, supply chain, finance — they really weren’t the most effective use of our brain power and our energy. Q. Was that a hard decision? A. No, it wasn’t. About 20 years ago, I read a book called “Your Money or Your Life,” and it helped you equate your time into dollars and the dollars that you spend. If you’re juggling a lot of things, and you’re trying to decide whether or not you should pay someone to help you do something, then you figure out what you’re actually worth per hour and what you’d pay someone. That lesson always stayed with me. I did something as long as it made sense for me to do it. And then, once it made sense to turn it over to someone else — either because it could get done better, or because I could spend my time making more money elsewhere — I did it. So when I have to make those transitions now, it’s not a difficult choice. Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss? A. I was a head writer’s assistant in television production, so the other writer’s assistants reported to me. And it’s not something that I was very good at, because I like to be people’s friend. It’s not that I need everybody to like me, but I’m a very autonomous person when I work. So when someone says, “This is what I need you to do,” I focus on it, and I do it, and I don’t have to be micromanaged. I don’t get distracted. So I tend to think everybody else is like that. And when I would come back to someone, figuring that they were done and they were only a third of the way through some work, I’d say: “What’s going on? What happened? Why aren’t you finished?” I had to learn that everybody wasn’t like me. It was good training for what I do now. Q. So what adjustments did you make? A. I just had to accept that I was the one who was the most uncomfortable. It took a little while for me to realize that. I was thinking that the other person is more like me, and I’m going to come and tell them that they’re not working efficiently, and they’re going to be offended. I did it a few times, and I saw that the person appreciated the feedback, or they would say to me, “Well, I was having a hard time because I didn’t understand what this meant over here.” And then it becomes more collaborative, and you’re listening to their perspective, and we figured out a way to make it work. And the person who’s most uncomfortable is really me. So if I can deal with being uncomfortable, then I can get past this. I had built it up in my head to be much bigger than it actually was. Q. A lot of people don’t like uncomfortable conversations. A. I remember one of the first people that I fired. I was so uncomfortable about doing it. And the person actually said to me, “I can’t believe it took you this long to get rid of me.” That was a really big wake-up call — to not let things go on for a long time. My aunt taught me a really good lesson. She managed a dinner theater in Frankfurt for a number of years. And she said that some people will say, “Three strikes and you’re out.” And she said, “No one should ever get three strikes, because if they did it once, they’re going to do it again.” And sometimes a second chance is all you get. But you never get three strikes — because it’s repetitive at that point. It’s going to keep happening. Q. What’s your philosophy of leadership? A. I want people to feel passionate, the way that I do, and feel like they are coming to a family and coming to a place that builds them up, and not a place that tears them down. So that’s my leadership style — keeping people passionate, keeping them inspired. I love to give people feedback. I’ve learned to give negative feedback. I didn’t always like it. But I’ve learned that when you give it, instead of avoiding it, it can help the person. Q. How do you hire? A. I do listen for what they say about the brand. I want to know that they’re comfortable voicing their opinion, because it’s a very entrepreneurial setting, and you cannot be a corporate person who likes all the layers. You have to be able to assert yourself and make your voice heard and lead and push something. I want to know that people are comfortable multitasking. Our head of H.R. cleans out the copy room and takes the coffee filters out of the coffee and makes sure that there’s toilet paper in the bathroom. That’s just how the company is, and those are the things that she needs to do. So you have to be confident in order to do that. That’s just the entrepreneurial environment. Q. But how do you figure out if the person is like that from an interview? A. When you talk to them about things that they’ve done, you drill down on what their responsibilities were. When they describe it to you, they really break it down — what they had to do, how they had to push it through. You can tell that kind of person just doesn’t go, “I can’t figure it out.” Q. How else has your leadership style evolved? A. I have learned to be distant without really being distant. I’m very friendly with everybody, but I would get so invested before, and if there was a transition for whatever reason, it would hurt for me to lose that person. And that discomfort is very hard to deal with, and it doesn’t really have a place in business. So I’ve found this interesting space within myself, where I can have these really great relationships and work closely with people, but still have that distance. I feel like I’m in a place now where I can be close to you and collaborative with you, but I don’t get as emotionally attached. Q. You’ve touched on this theme a couple of times, that you take things less personally. A. It comes from taking things super-personally and being upset, and then getting over it and realizing that I did it to myself. People have asked me, if I’m speaking somewhere: “What’s the biggest obstacle you’ve ever overcome? And how did you do it?” My biggest obstacle is myself — being afraid, being nervous. So it’s hard sometimes to get past yourself, to just get over yourself. And what I’ve learned, as the company has changed and different management people come and go, is that the thing that’s constant is me. I can’t control how many people come and go, necessarily. I can’t control the economy. I can’t control what beauty buyers are going to want tomorrow versus what they want today. But what I can control is me, and how I react to it and how I respond to it. So I try not to get so caught up in what people think of me, or what someone is going to say. It still rears its ugly head every now and then. But I am my biggest obstacle, and I’m learning to get around myself and over myself and through myself. And it’s a great learning process. One of the things that this business has taught me is that it’s made me a person I never thought I’d be. I was very much a perfectionist. And I did not like the idea of being a jack of all trades. I had to be a master of one. And I’ve learned how to do a lot of things and be O.K. with not doing all of them very well. Some things I do very well, and some things I’m not so good at. And I’ve learned that from being an entrepreneur, because I was not like that before, at all. Q. What’s your best career advice? A. Be open. Your way is not necessarily the only way or the right way. But while you’re open, be assertive. Because I feel like I wasn’t as assertive as I could have been in my earlier years, and I did what other people told me to do. It’s only now that I’m learning to be more assertive. So I think it’s important to find that balance between being open and listening, but also not letting someone bulldoze you into doing what they want to do. It’s an interesting line that you have to follow. It takes a certain amount of assertiveness, but it also takes a willingness to see how the process works, and not assert your opinion into it, in order to observe and become a part of what’s going on. So it’s just finding that balance. I think you can learn a lot more that way.

Price Lisa M
Carol's Daughter
Executives and Management
Hiring and Promotion


Writer Retreats to a Kabul That Lives Only in His Memories and Books

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — FOUR large clocks tick out of sync, puncturing the silence of his Soviet-built apartment. A half-burned candle sits next to a stack of books. A small television is covered in soot. This is where Rahnaward Zaryab, Afghanistan ’s most celebrated novelist, locks himself up for weeks at a time, lost in bottles of smuggled vodka and old memories of Kabul, a capital city long transformed by war and money. “We live in a vacuum, lacking heroes and ideals,” Mr. Zaryab reads from his latest manuscript, handwritten on the back of used paper. The smoke from his Pine cigarette, a harsh South Korean brand, clings to yellowed walls. “The heroes lie in dust, the ideals are ridiculed.” The product of a rare period of peace and tolerance in Afghan history, Mr. Zaryab’s work first flourished in the 1970s, before the country was unraveled by invasion and civil war. Afghanistan still had a vibrant music and theater scene, and writers had a broad readership that stretched beyond just the political elite. “I would receive letters from girls that would smell of perfume when you opened them,” Mr. Zaryab, who is 70, remembered fondly. Mr. Zaryab’s stories are informed by his readings of Western philosophy and literature, the writer Homaira Qaderi said. He was educated on scholarships in New Zealand and Britain. But his heroes are indigenous and modest, delicately questioning the dogma and superstitions of a conservative society. “He is the first writer to focus on the structure of stories, with the eye of someone well read,” Ms. Qaderi said. “We call him the father of new storytelling in Afghanistan.” But after he became the standard-bearer for Afghan literature, Mr. Zaryab was forced to watch as Kabul, the muse he idealized as a city of music and chivalry in most of his 17 books, fell into rubble and chaos. Some of the chaos has eased over the past decade, but that has caused him even more pain. He loathes how Kabul has been rebuilt: on a foundation of American cash and foreign values, paving over Afghan culture. “Money, money, money,” he said, cringing. “Everyone is urged to make money, in any way they can. Art, culture and literature have been forgotten completely.” FOR some Afghans, though, there is tragedy in the fact that one of their most renowned and enduring writers has largely withdrawn into his own memories, unable or unwilling to visualize a new identity amid a confusing and traumatic time for his country. “Zaryab is enchanted by the past that to him is a symbol of the ideal life,” the critic and poet Mujib Mehrdad said. “He can’t disconnect from that past, he lives in the past.” For his part, Mr. Zaryab insists that he is still looking at the problems of the day, though at times his allegories go unrecognized. In one of his latest novels, a pompous gallant from Kabul’s old city in the early 1900s gives up his mundane routine after a chance meeting with a wise bird who introduces him to the philosophy of Socrates. He is thrown into meditation and soul-searching. Mr. Zaryab says the bird is a symbol of the enlightenment push here in the early 20th century, and in the book, it is ceaselessly hounded by the city’s rulers and clergy — a clear and continuing theme in modern Afghanistan as well. Image Mr. Zaryab at his home in Kabul, where he shuts himself in for weeks at a time. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times “Unfortunately, no one understood that part,” he said. “They thought it was an imaginative fantasy.” For someone who reveled in his early fame, and whose international peers became global voices, translated across languages, the disconnect from an audience has not been easy. Mr. Zaryab still enjoys minor celebrity status in public, and it once inspired him to try to reconnect to fans through a Facebook page . But he soon considered it a waste of time: Their interest was superficial, he felt; they were not after a deeper understanding of his work. “In reality, I write for myself,” he said. “There is something inside that needs to come out, otherwise it bothers me. Not important whom I write it for.” Born in the Rika Khana neighborhood of old Kabul in August 1944, Mr. Zaryab was one of three children. Neither his mother nor his father, a china trader, could read. A large age gap between him and his siblings meant that he grew up mostly a lone child. After graduating from Kabul University with a degree in journalism, he went to Wales for postgraduate studies. His first job after his return was as a crime reporter for Zhwandoon Magazine, one of the prominent publications at the time. He sought the job because the details of the crime scene gave him inspirations for his stories, Mr. Zaryab said. He continued to work as a reporter and editor for newspapers and magazines, as well as taking senior positions in the Culture Ministry, even after his fiction found acclaim. When the civil war intensified in Kabul in the 1990s, Mr. Zaryab was briefly exiled to France; his wife and three daughters remain in Europe, not wanting to return to the violence and uncertainty of Afghanistan. After the Taliban were toppled, he returned to his old apartment in Kabul with more than 650 pounds of books and about $22 in his pocket, he said. The city of his youth, of his stories, however, no longer existed. “I have this attachment to this place, I don’t know why,” he said. “I know there is poverty here, lies, hypocrisy, but still my heart is here.” LITTLE of a readership culture remains these days, even in Kabul. Bookshops are saturated with bootleg copies of Iranian books. Local authors make no money from publishing their work. In return for a manuscript, Mr. Zaryab gets a number of copies from the publisher to distribute to friends. Consider his latest work, “Qalandar Nama,” a collection of minimalist vignettes that he submitted in return for 150 free copies. The book has sold only 100 copies in the three months since its publishing, said the publisher, Wasim Amiri. In contrast, Mr. Amiri picks off the shelf a slim collection of poems by Fazel Nazari, a young poet from neighboring Iran. In its 32nd reprint over five years, the book has sold more than 80,000 copies. Since Mr. Zaryab’s return, his daily routine has been simple, much of it spent reading and writing in his sixth-floor apartment. In the mornings, he goes for a walk around the block. If the air is too polluted already, he does yoga at home. In the afternoons, a driver picks him up for his part-time job: For two hours a day, he edits news for Tolo TV , the country’s largest private channel. When he disconnects from the world during his weeks of solitude, his employer understands. Mr. Zaryab’s desire for solitude has roots in his childhood. He fondly remembers walking alone along the Kabul River. “It had beautiful, clear water at the time,” he said. “Fishermen would fish with nets, not hooks. I would spend all my day along this river.” Not only has the river changed, he lamented, but also the city’s people. In a shrine on the same river, a mob recently accused a young woman of blasphemy and beat her to death in daylight. They dragged her body to the riverbed, now filled with trash, and set her on fire. “In old Kabul’s Rika Khana, one shopkeeper had said something rude to a little girl once. Without a collective decision, the residents stopped buying from that shop and he was forced to move,” he said. “Do we have such people anymore? Today, they kill a girl and then burn her. “How could I not be attached to the past?”

Afghanistan
Rahnaward Zaryab
Kabul
Writer
Books
Taliban


Bangladesh: Bombings Extend Political Violence

Abstract: Assailants threw fire bombs at a packed bus and a truck in two separate attacks in Bangladesh, killing at least nine people and wounding 30 others, the police said Saturday. The attacks, on Friday night and early Saturday, were the latest spasm of violence in a nationwide transportation blockade called by the opposition to press Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and call new elections. The attacks raised the death toll to 63 since the blockade started Jan. 6. The opposition has called for a 72-hour nationwide general strike on Sunday.

Fatalities,casualties
Sheikh Hasina
Bangladesh
Bombs


Los Angeles Police Release Video of Fatal Shooting; Say Man Had Gun

Abstract: After two days of protests and speculation surrounding a police shooting that killed an 18-year-old black man this weekend, the Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday released video surveillance footage Tuesday it said proved that the man, Carnell Snell Jr., had been carrying a handgun. Investigators had recovered a handgun at the site of the shooting in South Los Angeles on Saturday, the authorities said, but the lack of publicly released footage from police body and dashboard cameras had prompted the protests, with activists demanding to see video footage, which often shed light on the shootings of black men across the country. Protesters confront the LA County Sheriif blocking the street at 108th & Western after a vigil was held for Carnell Snell Jr., 18. @latimes pic.twitter.com/87pyMKKEGL — Gary Coronado (@gary_coronado) October 3, 2016 In a statement on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Police Department said that releasing the surveillance video while criminal and administrative investigations were pending went against its practice, but that the move was a matter of public safety. In the 45-second video, Mr. Snell can be seen running into the parking lot of a small strip mall, darting in front of businesses and hiding behind a car. He tucks what appears to be a black handgun into the waistband of his pants before running the length of the strip mall and turning a corner. A police officer can be seen chasing him. The video, which has no sound, does not appear to show the shooting. Information on the races or ethnicities of the officers involved was not immediately available. In a news conference on Monday, Police Chief Charlie Beck said that officers had tried to stop the vehicle in which Mr. Snell was traveling because its license plates were covered by paper. He said this was often a calling card of people who have committed drive-by shootings and have attempted to conceal the ownership of a vehicle. After officers pursued the vehicle, Mr. Snell was one of two black men who ran. He was the only one caught. In the confrontation that followed, Chief Beck said, six shots were fired and Mr. Snell was hit twice, once in the torso and once in the knee. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A loaded semiautomatic handgun was recovered about five feet from where Mr. Snell fell. Mr. Snell was the first of two men to be fatally shot by police officers over the weekend. On Sunday, a Hispanic man was shot after he pointed what appeared to be a handgun at police officers, officials said. Chief Beck appeared to try and divorce the police shootings in Los Angeles from the shootings of unarmed black men, often caught on video, that have roiled the nation. He said that the encounter with Mr. Snell took place in a neighborhood where there had been about 450 shootings so far this year, and that his officers often found themselves in situations in which they had to defend themselves. Black Lives Upended by Policing: The Raw Videos Sparking Outrage This is a collection of the viral footage that has prompted a national conversation about race and policing. “We are doing our absolute best to take guns out of the hands of those that would use them against others,” Chief Beck told reporters. “And certainly in both of these instances these officers feared for their lives because of the actions of the individuals that they were pursuing.” He also addressed the demand for video footage: “Video is part of the truth, but is not the totality of the truth. It has to be tempered with all of the evidence.” The explanation was of little comfort to those who still see the case as an example of police brutality, and that the violent outcome could have been avoided. Tiffany Hobbs, who said she was a former teacher of Mr. Snell’s, wrote on Facebook that she was afraid that his life would be “reduced to a hashtag.” Ms. Hobbs added: “Witnesses say that his hands were up when he was shot in the back. He will always be more than what the L.A.P.D. considers as disposable.” In the case of the second shooting this weekend, Chief Beck said on Monday that the gun held by the man had, in fact, been a replica but that the orange band that is used to differentiate it from real guns had removed or concealed. He said there was police body-camera footage of that shooting. Officer Norma Eisenman, a spokeswoman for the department, said on Tuesday that the dead man had not yet been identified.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Omar Minaya’s Fate Could Affect Mets’ Ties to Latin Culture

Abstract: Almost immediately after being named general manager of the Mets in late 2004, Omar Minaya initiated and came to symbolize a team movement that celebrated baseball’s Caribbean and Hispanic cultures and tied them to the identity of the club. One term came to encapsulate a strategy that included the acquisition of high-profile, Spanish-speaking players, a marketing campaign aimed at Latinos and the buzz surrounding a new era: Los Mets . On Friday, perhaps for the last time under Minaya’s stewardship, his team took the field with uniforms bearing those two words and lost, 6-4, to the Atlanta Braves on Hispanic Heritage Night at Citi Field. Minaya’s tenure as general manager could end after the season as the team has once again failed to meet expectations, although the Mets have not made a final decision on his status. If Minaya is reassigned, replaced or dismissed, it could also signal the end of the Los Mets era he started six years ago. “We don’t know what will happen, but if he leaves, it could be a big change,” said Pedro Feliciano, a relief pitcher from Puerto Rico who was with the Mets before Minaya took over as general manager. “Ever since he took over, this has been Los Mets. He got a lot of Latin guys through free agency and trades, and people were really into it.” In December 2004, Pedro Martinez , the charismatic Dominican pitcher, first gave credence to the idea that Minaya (along with millions of dollars) could make good on his promise to take the Los Mets brand international. Carlos Beltran joined the team shortly afterward. In the ensuing years the Mets added players like Carlos Delgado, Julio Franco and Johan Santana to a cultural mix that consistently placed the Mets among the top teams in Major League Baseball in the number of Hispanic players — and perhaps Hispanic fans, as well. “We are very proud of what Omar and the Mets have done,” said Julissa Ferreras , a Queens City Council member and a Mets fan who grew up in Corona and attended the same school, P.S. 19, that Minaya did. “I think the Mets have done a great job of promoting Latin players and the diversity of their fan base, including the many Hispanics that live in the area and root for the team. It definitely started with Omar, but I have confidence that it will continue whatever happens.” On opening day in 2004, the season before Minaya took over, the Mets had four Latin players on their active roster — Jose Reyes, Ricky Gutierrez, Karim Garcia and Orber Moreno. By 2005 there were 10, and in 2006, the year they went to the National League Championship Series, they had 13, a majority of the 25-man roster. Since then the number of players born in places like the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico, Panama and Puerto Rico has hovered from 11 to 13. The Mets vigorously adopted the Los Mets theme. In the days leading up to the 2005 season there were sponsorship deals from Banco Popular and an ad campaign with the actor John Leguizamo, who was born in Colombia and grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, in which he left a voice mail message for Minaya begging for tickets. Ads began appearing regularly in Spanish-language newspapers and on Spanish-language radio stations. “They accomplished a lot in those days,” said Julio Pabon, the publisher of LatinoSports.com . “Omar had a lot to do with it because he helped bring in players that everyone got excited about. Now the Mets are a team that a lot of Latino fans in the city identify with. I still hear people refer to them as Los Mets.” There was a small backlash after the Mets began pushing the Los Mets brand in 2005 and 2006. Some fans, egged on by several radio talk-show hosts, accused Minaya of favoring Latin players at the expense of American players, and there was some minor friction over whether some native English speakers, like catcher Paul Lo Duca and closer Billy Wagner, who joined the team in 2005, were left talking to reporters who did not go to the Spanish speakers after games. “There were maybe a couple of times that happened,” said Wagner, now with the Braves, “but I never felt there were any problems between us as players. We were teammates and it didn’t matter what language you spoke if you could play. You look at me and Delgado, you couldn’t find two guys with more different interests. But I loved playing with him. I learned a lot from him and really admired him. I think Omar did a great job of bringing in guys and making everyone feel welcome.” Many believe that no matter who is in charge of the Mets, the seeds that Minaya planted have grown into a sturdy tree that will not be cut back even if a new general manager takes over. The Mets declined to comment, but internally they estimate that a third of their market is of Hispanic descent and they have no plans to stop promoting diversity among their fan base. They also recognize that many of the best players in the world come from Spanish-speaking countries. “People look at the number of Latin players that we have compared to other teams, and it is probably right at the top,” said David Wright, a native of Virginia. “But that’s the way baseball is. It’s not just the New York Mets and this market. There are just so many good players. It’s the culture, it’s life for a lot of these countries, the Dominican, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and I think it’s trending more that way in general for all teams.” Other teams have shown an interest in promoting the Latin nature of the game, but no team has done so more than the Mets. It started with Minaya in 2004, but Friday night may have been the send-off for Los Mets de Minaya. “Omar had a big hand in adopting that moniker, Los Mets, with a big-time Latin influence, which is great,” said Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey, a native of Tennessee. “But at the same time if there is new leadership, and this applies to any team, there’s probably going to be new vision, and with new vision comes a different identity. But who’s to say Omar’s not going to be back? We don’t know. I certainly don’t.” INSIDE PITCH The Mets’ four-game winning streak came to an end Friday. Atlanta’s six runs came in the fourth inning and were unearned because of David Wright’s throwing error. Braves Manager Bobby Cox, who will retire after the season, was ejected in the second inning for arguing balls and strikes. It was the 158th time he has been ejected.

Baseball
Hispanic-Americans
New York Mets
Minaya Omar
Atlanta Braves


Elizabeth M. Fowler, Financial Reporter for The Times, Dies at 95

Abstract: Elizabeth M. Fowler, an author and financial reporter for The New York Times who was one of the first women to cover the Wall Street beat for a daily newspaper, died on Aug. 11 at her home in Chatham, N.J. She was 95. Her death was confirmed by her daughter Katrina Azoy. Ms. Fowler had been a copy editor at The Wall Street Journal, had earned an M.B.A. when few women did, and had been a reporter for an investors’ newsletter when she joined The Times’s male-dominated business staff in 1956, beginning a 36-year career with the paper. She quickly established a trademark style, writing articles that demystified the clubby world of money. She explained, for example, how the average American’s passbook savings account helped finance housing construction and oil exploration around the country; what the routing number on a check told you about its origins; and how New York bankers helped make the United States the leading economic power in the world. Ms. Fowler also chronicled the emerging role of women in the workplace. She profiled women in back-office jobs at financial institutions, including secretaries, typists and switchboard operators; explained how the income tax system penalized working wives (“Often Must Earn $2 to Clear $1,” went the headline on a 1957 article); and spotlighted the rare cases in the postwar years when women had risen to executive positions. “The mother of two children and the owner of 150 hats, Margaret E. Kennedy ranks as a leading lady of New York’s financial district and a longtime exponent of mutual fund investing,” Ms. Fowler wrote in 1956 about one of the first women to hold an active partnership in a Wall Street brokerage firm, Seligman, Lubetkin & Company. “ ‘Being a woman is an advantage,’ ” she quoted Mrs. Kennedy as saying, “because men take pride of authorship in you.” Image Elizabeth M. Fowler Ms. Fowler’s books reflected a sustained interest in the levers of the financial world and how women could learn to operate them. She wrote “Ninety Days to Fortune” in 1965 about how one trader made money in a bear market; “How to Manage Your Money: A Woman’s Guide to Investment,” in 1973; and “Your Estate, Retirement and Will,” also in 1973, which gave particular attention to the protections needed by women who survived a spouse. Elizabeth Millspaugh Fowler, who was known as Libby, was born in Newburgh, N.Y., on May 24, 1919, to Anson and Hazel Osterhoudt Fowler, the youngest of three siblings. Her father, a lawyer, died when she was 4, and her mother soon moved the family to Manhattan, where she had relatives. The elder Ms. Fowler worked part-time jobs to help pay for her children’s schooling. Elizabeth graduated from the St. Agatha’s School for Girls in Manhattan and received her bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1942. Ms. Fowler was a cub reporter at The Buffalo Evening News before joining The Wall Street Journal. She had worked for nine years as a reporter for Investor’s Reader, a biweekly journal published by Merrill Lynch, when The Times hired her. When she received her M.B.A. in economics and finance from New York University in 1953, she was one of 16 women in a class of 500. Ms. Fowler added a book column to her Times portfolio in the 1960s and ’70s, and from 1976 until her retirement in 1992 she wrote the paper’s weekly “Careers” column. Ms. Fowler kept her surname after marrying Philip L. Azoy in 1950. He died in 2004. Besides her daughter Katrina, she is survived by another daughter, Cynthia Rooke; and a grandson.

Elizabeth M Fowler
The New York Times
Newspaper
Obituary
Wall Street Journal
Banking and Finance


Killing of Shaimaa el-Sabbagh in Cairo Angers Egyptians

Abstract: CAIRO — Her friends wanted to lay a wreath in Tahrir Square as a memorial, but Shaimaa el-Sabbagh urged them to reconsider. She feared that the police might attack, mistaking them for supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said a cousin, Sami Mohamed Ibrahim. But how, her friends asked, could the police attack civilians who were armed only with flowers? So she kissed her 5-year-old son, Bilal, goodbye; left him in the care of a friend near her home in Alexandria; and, a day before the anniversary of the start of the Arab Spring revolt here, boarded a train for Cairo. By midafternoon on Jan. 24, Ms. Sabbagh, 31, lay dead on a crowded street downtown, a potent symbol of the lethal force the Egyptian authorities have deployed to silence the cacophony of protest and dissent unleashed here four years ago. Human rights advocates say the cold brutality of her killing shows how far the military-backed government is willing to go to enforce a return to the old authoritarian order. Stark images of her killing resonated so widely here that in a televised appearance Sunday, even President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi offered condolences, declaring that he saw Ms. Sabbagh as “my own daughter.” At the same time, police attempts to deflect blame for her killing have been undercut by Ms. Sabbagh’s personal profile: as a mother, an accomplished poet and a left-leaning activist who supported the military ouster of the Islamist president. Photographers and videographers captured her death moment by moment. As soon as the procession began and without any warning, masked riot police officers blasted the crowd with tear gas and birdshot from across a narrow street. A shotgun cracked. A kneeling friend held Ms. Sabbagh by the waist to keep her upright, blood streaking down her cheeks and his head against her abdomen. Then another friend carried her limp frame, cradled in his arms, through the tear gas in a vain attempt to save her. Seldom has a needless death by police gunfire been so thoroughly and so movingly documented, rights advocates say , citing both the photographic evidence and multiple witnesses. “A woman who went out to lay a wreath of flowers on Tahrir Square — we see her taking her last breath,” said Ghada Shahbandar, an Egyptian rights advocate. “How much more explicit can an image be?” “It is a disgrace,” she said, lamenting the surreal attempts of the government’s supporters to pin the blame on a shadowy conspiracy as elaborate as a Hollywood thriller. “We have lost the appreciation of human life. We have lost the value of human blood, and we call for more and more killing as though we have not had enough!” Ms. Sabbagh is just one name on a roster of thousands killed by police gunfire since the Arab Spring began in 2011. More than 800 were killed during the original 18-day uprising against President Hosni Mubarak. About 1,000 more, according to the most credible counts, were killed on one day, Aug. 14, 2013, when soldiers and police officers broke up a sit-in by supporters of the ousted President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hundreds more died in other mass shootings that summer. Since then, the killing of protesters — mostly Islamists, but also leftists or liberals, and mostly unarmed — has become an almost weekly occurrence. Sondos Reda, a 17-year-old girl attending an Islamist rally, was killed in clashes with the police in Alexandria on the same day that Ms. Sabbagh died in Cairo. At least 20 others were killed the next day, Jan. 25, on the anniversary of the uprising. A student was killed five days later in clashes with the police at a demonstration in the province of Sharqiya, north of Cairo, and others have reportedly been killed since then in Giza. But in “a moment of collapsing freedoms,” Ms. Sabbagh has become “a symbol of the revolution,” said Sayed Abu Elela, 31, the friend who held her by the waist in the moments after she was shot. Ms. Sabbagh grew up in a conservative Muslim household but rebelled against its traditions, her friends said, and her father, a Muslim preacher who died a few years ago, grew resigned to her independence. He used to tell her, “For the likes of you, wearing pants is a ‘covering,’ ” or modesty, Mr. Abu Elela recalled. Video Videos captured the final moments of the Egyptian activist Shaimaa al-Sabbagh’s life before and after she was shot by the police during a peaceful protest in Cairo on Jan. 24. Credit Credit Emad El-Gebaly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images As a teenager in the late 1990s, she drifted into a circle of poets who used to meet at cafes around Alexandria, said Khaled Hegazzi, who first met her there. Her activism, he said, seemed to grow out of their cafe debates. “That is where it came from,” he said. She became one of a small group of published Egyptian poets working in the avant-garde style of free verse but using popular, colloquial Arabic. Rejecting the grand and overtly political themes favored by the previous generations, she focused instead on the details of everyday life. Her generation “stopped doing noisy politics,” said Maged Zaher, an Egyptian-American poet who has translated some of Ms. Sabbagh’s work. “There is politics, but it is not sloganeering.” Her poem “ A Letter in My Purse ” was about a lost handbag. “Anyway, she has the house keys,” Ms. Sabbagh wrote, “and I am waiting for her.” In another poem , Ms. Sabbagh wrote as a Muslim girl who witnessed the crucifixion on a Cairo clock tower, hearing the voices of “the people who love God as they damn this moment where the creatures of God approved/Of crucifying Jesus naked in the crowded square on the clock arms as it declared one in the afternoon.” She married a painter, Osama el-Sehely , earned a master’s degree in folklore at the Academy of Arts in Cairo and developed a passion for documenting the fading traditions of daily life in Egypt. She once spent months visiting towns across the Nile Delta to record the variations in the ways residents baked and served flatbread, said Delphine Blondet, who runs a dance school in Alexandria and recruited Ms. Sabbagh to research traditional birth celebrations for an educational project. Ms. Sabbagh refused payment. “She just loved Egyptian people,” Ms. Blondet said. “Not the country as it is now, for sure, but really the people.” After the uprising in 2011, Ms. Sabbagh joined the Socialist Popular Alliance Party. She became a regular at almost every demonstration, and her friends in Alexandria called her “the voice of the revolution” because of her talent for leading chants. When a television interviewer in late 2012 asked her to look back at the period “after the revolution,” she rejected the question: “We are still ‘after the revolution,’ ” she said. The Egyptian authorities quickly pledged a full investigation into her death. But several witnesses who reported the killing to the police said they had been immediately detained for questioning as suspects — including Mr. Abu Elela, who had held her in her final moments and was detained overnight. And by the next day , an Interior Ministry spokesman made clear that the ministry had essentially ruled out police responsibility. Gen. Gamal Mokhtar of the ministry said at a gathering of international correspondents last week that it was implausible that the police would resort to such force for such a small crowd. “What is the need for the police to shoot bullets?” he asked. The photographs and videos were “no proof at all,” he said. “There is a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood whose entire job and concern is to fabricate photos and videos that tell people that the police are assaulting protesters — that this one is bleeding, that one is injured,” he said. Last weekend, the police detained one of Ms. Sabbagh’s fellow demonstrators, Zohdy al-Shamy, deputy chairman of her party, holding him overnight for questioning about whether he might have used a concealed weapon fired through his jacket pocket to kill his colleague. “Madness,” said Medhat el-Za’ed, a party spokesman. Ms. Sabbagh’s history, though, has also made it unusually difficult for the authorities to explain away the killing by accusing her of treason or violence. Last week, even the flagship state newspaper, Al Ahram, published a front-page editorial expressing rare, officially sanctioned criticism of the Egyptian police. “Peaceful Shaimaa only dreamed of a free country,” wrote Ahmed el-Sayed al-Naggar, the chairman of the state-run news organization, but “she was killed in cold blood by the same person who killed the martyrs she was going to honor.” In the television appearance Sunday, Mr. Sisi urged the interior minister to track down the killer, offering reassurances that even if a police officer had shot Ms. Sabbagh, the ministry itself would not bear the blame.“I don’t know, in all sincerity and truth, who is behind the killing of Shaimaa el-Sabbagh,” he insisted, a hand on his heart. In Alexandria, a friend and her cousin said, no one has yet told Ms. Sabbagh’s son that his mother is not coming home.

Egypt
Shaimaa al-Sabbagh
Civil Unrest
Cairo
Tahrir Square
Giza Egypt