In Brazil, Eccentricity at the Ballot Box Is the Norm

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — Batman is running for office in the Brazilian city of Uberlândia. Not one but two James Bonds are seeking city council seats, in Ponta Grossa and Birigui. Elsewhere in Brazil, voters are being urged to cast ballots for candidates with names like Daniel the Cuckold and Elvis Didn’t Die . Brazil has nurtured one of the world’s most vibrant democracies since its military dictatorship ended in 1985. As campaigning for municipal elections in October intensifies, this vitality is evident on the ballots, which reflect Brazil’s remarkably loose restrictions on what candidates can call themselves. Ballots are filled with superhero names (five Batmans are running this year), mangled versions of American television characters (like the Macgaiver running in Espírito Santo State, inspired by the “ MacGyver “ secret-agent series), and an array of raunchy nicknames. “It’s a marketing strategy, a political program, because if I said Geraldo Custódio, no one was going to recognize me,” said Geraldo Custódio, 38, a teacher of driver’s education who is running for city council with the name Geraldo Wolverine in Piracicaba, an industrial city in São Paulo State. Mr. Custódio said he had gotten the nickname of Wolverine, after the Marvel comics character , when he tried out for the reality television show “Big Brother Brazil.” He did not make it on the show, but the sideburns he adopted, along with his big build, made the nickname stick. He now campaigns with long metal talons. One of his ads says, “Vote for the guy who has claws!” Creatively named candidates with talons might raise eyebrows elsewhere, but this is Brazil, a proudly relaxed country when it comes to the names of its politicians. Consider the president, Dilma Rousseff, almost universally referred to by her first name. Her immediate predecessor incorporated his childhood nickname, Lula (“squid”), into his full name, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Calling him Mr. da Silva here raises hackles. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the president from 1995 through 2002, is commonly referred to as Fernando Henrique or by his initials, F.H.C., but rarely by his last name. Some candidates in local elections jump on the bandwagon of a well-known politician, explaining, perhaps, why dozens of candidates across Brazil named Luiz or Luis have incorporated “Lula” into their own campaign names. Then there are the hat tips to overseas personages, reflected in the 16 Obamas running in Brazil this year. Popular culture and religion also inspire: Ladi Gaga (sic) is running in Santo André, in the São Paulo area, while Christ of Jerusalem (a k a Omedino Pantoja da Silva) lost a municipal election in Porto Velho, an Amazonian city, in 2008. “I think Barack Obama is more than a politician; he is an icon,” said Gerson Januário de Almeida, 44, an administrative assistant in the public health system who is running for city council with the name “Obama BH” in Belo Horizonte, one of Brazil’s largest cities. Mr. de Almeida said he had come by his nickname when American tourists riding the cable car to Sugar Loaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro remarked that he bore a striking resemblance to the American president. Since then, Mr. de Almeida said, he has earned additional income doing freelance gigs posing as Mr. Obama’s doppelgänger at promotional events. There are some limits to the names Brazilians can choose when running for office. The law stipulates that the names chosen should correspond to the candidates’ nicknames or how they are commonly referred to. Judges in some cities have had enough of some especially bizarre or vulgar-sounding election names, issuing injunctions to keep them off ballots. And electoral courts have tried to prevent candidates from using the names of state-controlled companies and other bureaucratic entities. This has not stopped some candidates from trying. Israel Soares, a candidate in São Paulo State, is running as National Institute of Social Security’s Defender of the People. Such names may attract attention in a complex political system with more than 20 parties of various ideological stripes, but seasoned electoral strategists say they seem to offer little more than a sideshow in many races. “I don’t know if I would advise my clients to do it,” said Justino Pereira, a political consultant in São Paulo who has advised numerous candidates in municipal elections, including one named Palhaço Zig Zag (Zig Zag Clown), who lost. Mr. Pereira said candidates were particularly inspired after another clown popular on television under the stage name Tiririca, which roughly translates as “Grumpy,” won a seat in Congress. (Relatively few people know his real name, Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva.) “Using nicknames is an easy way to draw attention,” Mr. Pereira said, “but doesn’t necessarily make a lasting effect.” Of course, some candidates in a country with such a whimsical approach to names have no need to resort to wild nicknames. These aspirants for office already have colorful names bestowed by their parents, reflecting the attention paid in the past in Brazil to some foreign political figures. Jimmi Carter Santarém Barroso is running in Amazonas State; John Kennedy Abreu Sousa is running in Maranhão, in Brazil’s northeast; and Chiang Kai Xeque Braga Barroso — whose first name evokes Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese rival in the mid-20th century to Mao Zedong — is seeking to be elected in Tocantins State.


Ruling Sets Back a Development in Yonkers

Abstract: WHITE PLAINS, May 2 — A state judge ruled on Tuesday that the City of Yonkers violated local and county laws when it reduced the number of votes required to approve a zoning change for a development of homes, offices and stores in the northwest part of the city. In a 13-page decision, Justice Nicholas Colabella of State Supreme Court in Westchester County said the City Council erred in November when it abolished a provision in the city code requiring the votes of five of its seven members to approve zoning changes for any project rejected by the Westchester County Planning Board. The Council lowered the required number of votes for such zoning changes to a bare majority of four — all that the project's supporters on the Council were able to muster. The judge also concluded that Yonkers should have held a public hearing on the proposed change and should have referred it to the county's Planning Board before the Council voted on it. Justice Colabella's decision means that the Council's 4-to-3 vote to approve a zoning change for the $660 million Ridge Hill Village was invalid. City officials said on Tuesday that they planned to appeal, but for now the developer will be allowed to continue to work on the site and prepare it for construction, according to the Council's president, Chuck Lesnick, who was among those who challenged the new voting procedure in court. Mr. Lesnick and others who went to court are not seeking to stop the project but to scale back its scope to reduce its potential impact on traffic. The ruling is the latest in a series of setbacks for the Ridge Hill project since it was proposed three years ago and was met with vociferous opposition by nearby residents concerned about its size and the increased traffic it might generate. "We are disappointed by this decision, but confident it will be overturned on appeal," said Bruce Bender, the executive vice president of Forest City Ratner, the project's developer. The planned development covers 81 acres along the New York State Thruway and would include 1,000 high-rise apartments and condominiums and 1.3 million square feet of retail space. Forest City Ratner has agreed to pay the city $23.7 million in annual taxes — proceeds that could help lift Yonkers out of its longstanding fiscal problems. "All that was accomplished was the senseless delay of a project that will bring thousands of jobs to Yonkers and infuse millions of dollars in new revenues into our school system and our economy," Mayor Philip A. Amicone of Yonkers said on Tuesday in a statement. "Each month that the lawsuit delays the Ridge Hill project costs the city and its school system almost $2 million in lost revenues and legal expenses." Mayor Amicone blamed the four City Council members who are among the plaintiffs — Mr. Lesnick and Councilors John Murtagh, Sandy Annabi and Dee Barbato — for delays in the project and urged them to "join in securing the financial future of the city of Yonkers, the city they were elected to represent." Mr. Lesnick played down the mayor's comments, saying, "I'm about a solution, not a fight." Mr. Murtagh said the goal of the lawsuit was not to block the Ridge Hill project, but to compel the developers to reconsider its scope and take into account concerns that it might lead to an unmanageable traffic nightmare. "Too much of this project was negotiated behind closed doors; it has never been handled properly from the start," Mr. Murtagh said. "Hopefully, the developers will sit down and actually come up with a plan that everybody can live with."

Zoning
Decisions and Verdicts
Yonkers (NY)


Racism Conference Adopts Resolution

Abstract: GENEVA — The United Nations anti-racism meeting in Geneva adopted a resolution that participants applauded as an improved basis for action against racism and xenophobia. The adoption of the resolution by the committee that coordinates the conference ended months of negotiation in which contentious clauses were removed referring to Israel and the Palestinians and attempting to make defamation of religion an offense against human rights. The conference will formally adopt the document on Friday but it is now no longer open to debate or amendment, diplomats said. “This is very good news indeed,” said Navi Pillay, the United Nations human rights commissioner. “It’s the culmination of months of deliberation.” The announcement sidelined the furor over the speech by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday attacking Israel as a racist state. The speech prompted the Czech Republic, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, to walk out of the conference and left United Nations officials and diplomats fearful the fallout from that speech might derail the proceedings. “What we have decided shows the outcome when you remain engaged in the process,” said Amos Wako of Kenya, the conference president. “It shows that boycotts do not assist.” The United States and more than a half-dozen other nations boycotted the conference out of concerns that it would become a platform for attacks on Israel. Mr. Ahmadinejad tried to do just that on Monday, but some Western delegates said they were satisfied that Iran had found no support for its attempt to eliminate references to the Holocaust from the resolution in pre-conference negotiations and had not turned conference proceedings to focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel faced further denunciations from Arab speakers, including the Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki, for “racist” policies toward Palestinians and the occupied territories. But those charges were “within acceptable boundaries,” a European diplomat said, contrasting them with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech, which the diplomat called “incitement.” The conference statement showed the process was “evolving in a positive direction,” said Peter Gooderham, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. Ms. Pillay, the human rights commissioner, said the program of action adopted by the first conference on racism in 2001 had suffered setbacks from challenges ranging from increased and complex migration to terrorism and some of the measures countries have used to counter it. She said the new document contains valuable additional elements that “reinvigorates the political commitment” to implementing the 2001 plan. It highlighted the increased suffering of many different groups from racism and related intolerance, she said. It also “unequivocally reaffirms the positive role of freedom of expression in the fight against racism,” she said.

United Nations
Ahmadinejad Mahmoud
Discrimination
International Relations


Lawmakers Chastise Union for Not Moving Forward on H.G.H. Testing

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers vented its frustration on Wednesday at the N.F.L. players union for not yet agreeing to put into effect a test for human growth hormone nearly two seasons after promising to do so. Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Elijah Cummings, the panel’s ranking Democrat, said the players union’s longstanding efforts to question the science behind the H.G.H. test were simply a way to “run out the clock” and avoid honoring its agreement with the league. They said that the union had reneged on a deal it had made with lawmakers last year to allow blood to be drawn from its players. That blood would have been retroactively tested once screening for H.G.H. was in place. “There comes a point in time where the players need to agree to something,” Cummings said after a hearing about the science behind growth hormone testing. “It seems like excuse after excuse is being presented and the major excuse has been the science.” He said he hoped players realized “how incredibly ridiculous” it looked that they were not being tested for H.G.H. Issa said the players were not the ones resisting. “We’re seeing a few lawyers stand up on an unfounded technicality,” he said. Issa and Cummings, the leaders of the committee, which also investigated steroid use in baseball, said they would hold more hearings on the issue and would call the N.F.L. and the players union to testify if the league did not begin testing soon. If there is still an impasse, individual players could be called to testify. The league and the union had a conditional agreement to put H.G.H. testing in place when they signed a collective bargaining agreement before the 2011 season. Since then, the union has balked, refusing to move ahead before it is satisfied that the test will not produce false positives. George Atallah, the union’s spokesman who was at the hearing but did not testify, said the organization was trying to protect its constituents’ due process rights. He insisted the union never agreed to subject its players to any blood draws, as the committee leaders said, and that “there were two different recollections on what took place in that meeting” with those lawmakers last fall. The growth hormone test, used by the World Anti-Doping Agency since 2004, measures a ratio of the form of H.G.H found in the synthetic version of the drug to other forms of H.G.H. that naturally occur in the body. The union has said the threshold used to determine a positive test might be higher for N.F.L. players than it is for other athletes, and called for a population study to ensure a proper threshold. Nearly a year ago, the league agreed to perform one. “We are waiting for the N.F.L. to produce us a doctor that they believe would help us oversee the study,” Atallah said. “We’re waiting to hear back from them so we can move forward.” Adolpho Birch, who runs the N.F.L.’s drug-testing program, said that the league had given the union five proposals for the study since last February, but that the union did not accept them. He claimed that the union’s reluctance was “more a political issue than it is science.” “It’s frustrating,” Birch said of the union’s giving no credence to scientific experts who said the test was valid. One of those experts, Larry Bowers, the chief science officer at the United States Anti-Doping Agency, testified Wednesday that the test has been given nearly 13,000 times, with 11 athletes testing positive. Eight of them later admitted to using the drug, he said, while three still have open cases. “The chances of an athlete who has not used synthetic growth hormone testing positive are comparable to the chance of that same athlete being struck by lightning during his or her lifetime,” he said, adding that the only people questioning the test “are lawyers, not scientists.” Dick Butkus, the Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker, who educates children about the dangers of performance-enhancing drug use, told the committee that a majority of the players want to be tested for the drug, which is said to increase lean body mass, aid in recovery and improve stamina. “Nobody wants to be playing and have the shadow over him, well did he or didn’t he take the juice?” Butkus said. “So why it’s held up, I don’t know.”


Saad Hariri Forced to Hand Over Lebanon to Hezbollah

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — There is a hint of Shakespeare in it all, if Lebanese politics did not feel like the pulp fiction of Raymond Chandler, where the loftiest principles soon get mired in the muck of corruption, prevarication and opportunism cast in the sincerest of words. But on Tuesday, the day that was his last as prime minister here, Saad Hariri faced one of the bitterest realities of his brief but tumultuous political career. By virtue of what he calls his principles as a man — and what his foes and a few friends call his failures as a politician — his country was delivered, at least symbolically, to the very movement that stands accused of killing his father on the Beirut seafront in 2005. Betrayed, he called himself after the choice of Hezbollah , Najib Miqati, was named as the prime minister designate on Tuesday. A victim of his own lies, say his foes, who engineered his ouster by bringing down his government this month. Perhaps it was both, in a place one politician called “a chemical equation, not a country.” “Whoever killed Rafik Hariri in 2005 doesn’t want Saad Hariri to be in power,” he said at his palatial home, a short way from the government’s headquarters. “What’s happening today is that they are trying to achieve what they wanted to achieve in 2005.” Tuesday was a climax of sorts in a crisis that began with the collapse of Mr. Hariri’s 14-month-old national unity government but really has its origins in his father’s assassination, which cemented the country’s division along questions of ideology, sect and class. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, preached reconciliation on Tuesday, while accusing his foes in Lebanon of stabbing the party in the back. As thuggish as they were angry, Mr. Hariri’s supporters took to the streets, where they burned a van belonging to journalists, pulled up the curb to throw rocks at cars and set barricades on fire to block streets. The center of the crisis, though, remains Mr. Hariri, just 40, who despite his defeat may still prove to be the intangible that brings a more lasting end to a crisis over an international tribunal expected to name members of Hezbollah in his father’s murder. “In political terms, certainly they need Saad,” said Tariq Mitri, a former minister in Mr. Hariri’s cabinet. “Any compromise solution on the tribunal needs Saad Hariri.” Like his father, a shrewd politician hailed as generous and criticized as corrupt, Mr. Hariri prompts strong emotions. To the rank and file among Sunni Muslims, one of the country’s largest sects, he is the zaim, a leader of near feudal authority they address as Sheik Saad. As heir to his father, he manages to incarnate the ambitions and, more important, insecurities of the community, which have seen its power diminish as that of Shiites, represented by Hezbollah, grows. “They have the power, and we don’t have anything,” said Rida Qabbani, 24, who joined scores of marauding youths trying to close a thoroughfare in the capital with trash bins. “We’re fighting with bottles, tires and garbage.” To Mr. Hariri’s foes, he suffers when compared with the men around him. Some hold him up against President Bashar al-Assad, the son of another Arab leader who has emerged forcefully as his own strongman in Syria. More often, he is measured by the standards of his father, whom Mr. Hariri mentioned 11 times in the speech last week when declaring his intention to run again for prime minister. His father’s picture hangs everywhere, showcasing the skeptical leer of someone looking for leverage in a deal he knows he can close. Mr. Hariri is somnolent, famous in political circles for saying few words. It was almost a refrain that his father would have never let events unfold as they did in this confrontation. A friend turned adversary, Walid Jumblatt, the Druse politician whose votes proved crucial in electing Mr. Miqati, said Mr. Hariri had failed “to see the realities on the ground.” Asked if his father would have made the same choices in this crisis, Mr. Hariri replied: “It’s a very difficult question to answer. I went very far with what I wanted to achieve for this country, in this deal, and unfortunately I wasn’t met halfway.” That deal is at the crux of his demise. He and Hezbollah, along with their allies, were negotiating a compromise on the tribunal, whose indictments are expected to be issued within two months. Hezbollah has denounced the tribunal as a tool of the United States and Israel and demanded that the Lebanese government end its cooperation. Mr. Jumblatt said Mr. Hariri had agreed to do so, days before the indictments were handed to a judge in The Hague. “I told him, ‘What should I say to the president, to Bashar?’ He said, ‘Yes, I do accept.’ ” In the end, though, he said, Mr. Hariri did not. “They will never trust Saad again,” said Sarkis Naoum, a columnist here. Mr. Hariri said that he thought he had agreed to their demands as long as four months ago, but that they had expected him to act first. His colleagues say that would have amounted to political suicide — ending cooperation with a tribunal investigating his father’s death, with nothing in return. He suggested that Hezbollah negotiated in bad faith. Asked if he was in a no-win situation, Mr. Hariri answered, “You tell me.” Only a week ago, Mr. Hariri’s supporters believed they had enough votes in Parliament to bring him back to power. Then his support began to crumble. Mr. Jumblatt, who said he chose “stability at the expense of justice,” delivered enough of his bloc’s votes to Hezbollah and its allies. Then two crucial lawmakers flipped, including Mr. Miqati. Mr. Hariri was forced to apologize to men he considered friends for mentioning them in off-color testimony to the tribunal that somehow managed to find its way on to a Lebanese television station. (He did not apologize to some others, whom he called prostitutes, tools and stooges.) He fought a war of words with politicians described by one of their own “as men who were political animals when their mothers were still nursing them.” “Feeling this kind of backstabbing is quite harsh,” Mr. Hariri admitted. “But,” he added, “that’s politics.” Those very politics may spell his return. “I have popular support,” he said in the interview and, by all accounts, he is right. His standing as the leader of Sunni Muslims means he remains a player in politics rigidly divided among the country’s sects. As his father’s son, he and the position he takes will remain deeply resonant in whatever deal is worked out over the tribunal. And even in defeat, he suggested there might still be negotiations ahead on some quintessentially Levantine deal that would bring him into Mr. Miqati’s government. “I have to sit with allies and decide what is the final decision,” he said. Or, in the verdict delivered by Hassan Khalil, the publisher of Al Akhbar, a leftist newspaper that aligns itself with Mr. Hariri’s foes: “In Lebanon, it’s never over for anyone. You cannot write off anyone or anything in this country.”

Hariri Saad
Lebanon
Politics and Government
Hezbollah
Mikati Najib
Hariri Rafik


French Minister Convicted Over Racist Comments

Abstract: PARIS — A cabinet minister and close friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy faced fresh calls for his resignation Friday after a Paris court found him guilty of making racist comments and ordered him to pay compensation. Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux was given a €750, or $900, fine and asked to pay an anti-racism group €2,000 in damages for what the judge called “private insults of a racial nature.” Mr. Hortefeux will appeal “immediately,” according to his lawyer, Nicolas Benoît. The verdict comes nine months after Mr. Hortefeux was recorded on camera at an event in southwestern France on Sept. 5 making what to many sounded like anti-Arab remarks. The video, which was first posted on the Web site of Le Monde, shows the minister posing for a photo with a young party member of Arab origin when a woman in the crowd can be heard saying: “Amine is a Catholic. He eats pork and drinks beer.” “Ah, but that doesn’t work at all, then he does not fit the prototype at all,” Mr. Hortefeux is heard replying to general laughter. Another female voice shouts: “He’s our little Arab.” Mr. Hortefeux answers: “All the better. There always has to be one. When there’s one, it’s O.K. It’s when there are a lot of them that there are problems.” At the time of the comment, opposition parties were quick to call for Mr. Hortefeux’s resignation, and on Friday the Socialist Party was quick repeat the demand. “The exemplariness claimed by the president of the republic has to apply to all,” said Benoît Hamon, a spokesman for the Socialists. “If Nicolas Sarkozy keeps him, it would mean behaving more like a clan leader than a president.” Mouloud Aounit, secretary general of the anti-racism group Mrap, which had brought the case against the minister, also demanded that he step down. Mr. Sarkozy’s office declined to comment, but an official close to the president said Mr. Hortefeux had his “full confidence.” The verdict was a blow for an administration that has tried hard to portray itself as friendly to minorities with a number of cabinet ministers of North African origin but that has struggled to cast off the hard-line image Mr. Sarkozy retains in many immigrant suburbs. Violent clashes between the police and youths of immigrant background are a sporadic reminder of three weeks of rioting in these neighborhoods five years ago. Mr. Hortefeux, who was minister of immigration before he was promoted to the powerful Interior Ministry last year, has been a vocal advocate of clamping down on illegal immigration and deporting those without papers already in the country. He has called the uproar over his comments last September “a vain and ridiculous attempt to create a polemic,” saying he had not been referring to Arabs but to people from the Auvergne, in central France. Amine Benalia-Brouch, the youngster in question, said he had not been offended by the comments. But according to the court ruling, Mr. Hortefeux’s comment “is incontestably offensive, if not contemptuous, for the people concerned” and the minister’s body language shows he “did not want to be heard by others beyond this circle of friends.”

France
Discrimination
Islam
Sarkozy Nicolas
Immigration and Emigration


Writer in China Takes Blame for Disappearance

Abstract: BEIJING — An Australian spy novelist and pro-democracy blogger who went missing in southern China on Sunday publicly resurfaced on Thursday night, speaking to a reporter for The Associated Press and posting messages on Twitter. The writer, Yang Hengjun, was most likely detained in secret by Chinese security officers, his supporters say. In a brief telephone conversation with The A. P., Mr. Yang, 46, said he was fine and would leave for Hong Kong on Saturday and then fly back to Australia. Mr. Yang is a former employee of the Chinese Foreign Ministry who moved to Australia years ago and began writing spy novels that have been published in Chinese on the Internet. His blogs are popular with Chinese readers. Mr. Yang did not say where he was on Thursday, The A.P. reported, although he was last known to be in the airport at Guangzhou, the southern provincial capital. “I’m O.K. right now,” he said, The A.P. reported. “Everything is O.K. I’m just recovering. This trouble is caused by me.” Mr. Yang also posted a message on Twitter. “Due to personal reasons, on the night of March 27, I temporarily lost contact with family and friends for more than 50 hours, creating a great disturbance,” he wrote in Chinese. “I deeply apologize.” In another message, Mr. Yang said the involvement of Australia, the United States and many friends had helped him recover from an “illness,” which appeared to be a code word for detention.

Politics and Government
China
Hengjun Yang


Dealing With Those Alpha Types (and Winning)

Abstract: DO you compulsively change lanes when driving? Do you clock yourself when you jog? Do you always have to be right? When colleagues, friends or even your children say someone else’s mistake made them miss a goal, do you accuse them of whining — even if you are the “someone else”? If you are nodding in self-recognition, chances are that you suffer from alpha male syndrome — or, more accurately, that everyone around you suffers from your alpha male syndrome. If you are reminded of your boss or spouse or child, you are probably suffering from someone else’s intensely competitive streak. And don’t let the narrow label fool you — women can be as “alpha” as men. Just ask Kate Ludeman, an executive coach and self-described alpha whose book, “Alpha Male Syndrome,’’ written with Eddie Erlandson, her alpha male husband, and published by Harvard Business School Press, will arrive in bookstores next month. “Female alphas may be disarming and use charm as a tool to get ahead,” she said, “but they have that same need to be in charge.’’ They are also particularly likely to bare their teeth when protecting others. When Ms. Ludeman, 60, was 9 years old, she bit the neighborhood bully so hard that she drew blood — then warned him to leave her friends alone. When she was a bit older, she tried to persuade officials in her Texas town to let poor people attend community events free — and when she failed, she pilfered money from her mom’s purse to buy tickets for the poor herself. All of which leads into the subsets of alpha behavior. Ms. Ludeman, it seems, is an alpha visionary, someone who brooks little disagreement with his or her goals. Then there are alpha commanders, charismatic types who insist on unflinching loyalty and obedience; alpha strategists, intellectuals who can pull together disparate concepts into a game plan that all around them must follow; and alpha executors, tactical martinets who shine at putting in place the ideas of the strategist or visionary. As Ms. Ludeman sees it, Donald Trump and Carleton S. Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard’s former chief executive, are classic alpha commanders, while Larry Lucchino, president of the Boston Red Sox, is a typical alpha strategist. Ms. Ludeman regards Michael S. Dell, the computer company’s chairman, as an exemplar of an alpha visionary, and Kevin B. Rollins, Dell’s chief executive, as the consummate alpha executor. All different types of alphas, with their competitive charge and generally brilliant minds, can do wonders for companies’ bottom lines. But while “working or living with an alpha can be exhilarating,” Ms. Ludeman said, it “is certainly a challenge.” As a young girl, Helen Kay Ludeman — she adopted the name Kate much later — seemed more likely to channel her alpha energy into solving equations than working with people. She grew up in Cotulla, Tex., the oldest of three children. Her father sold Western clothing; her mother stayed home. Helen Kay always loved math and science and remembers turning potato starch into doll clothes and burning broken toys to compare the colors of the flames from the different plastics. Still, she never gave much thought to a career. “When you were a girl in rural Texas, your goal was to marry a guy with a career,’’ she said. “To me, being smart felt like a handicap.” Her parents had college degrees, though, and encouraged her to get one. So she studied engineering at what is now Texas Tech University. She took a basic psychology course in her senior year and fell in love with the field. In 1967, she got her bachelor’s degree in engineering; in 1969, she married Albert Hall, a fellow Texas Tech student who had joined the Navy. Not long after, he was sent to Vietnam, and Ms. Ludeman went along. (She persuaded the Control Data Corporation, the supercomputer pioneer, to hire her to do some research in Asia.) When they returned 18 months later, Ms. Ludeman went back to school. By 1971, she had a master’s degree in psychology, as well as her only child, Catherine, who is now 34 (“and definitely an alpha,’’ Ms. Ludeman said). Ms. Ludeman chafed at being a stay-at-home mom. So she persuaded a television station in Dallas to let her do a how-to segment on anything from playing with clay to cooking. The show was a success; the marriage fell apart. Ms. Ludeman went to San Francisco, Catherine in tow, and earned a doctorate in psychology at what is now Saybrook Graduate School. She embarked on a series of human resources jobs. Each time, she found that her favorite task was helping executives tame impatience and anger — or, as she put it, “humanizing the jerks.” In 1988, she founded Worth Ethic, an executive coaching firm. Eleven years later, at a psychology conference, she met Eddie Erlandson, a vascular surgeon. They married on Feb. 2, 2002. “That’s 02/02/02,’’ Ms. Ludeman said. “I never did lose my fascination with numbers.” She never lost her fascination with taming alphas, either. And over lunch at HeartBeat, a restaurant in the W Hotel at Lexington Avenue and 50th Street in Manhattan, she offered some advice on how to stay sane if you are stuck in alpha territory. • Decide which type of alpha you are dealing with. Then tailor your proposals to his or her predilections. Say you want to hold an event in an expensive hotel. If you need an O.K. from a visionary, describe how the event would look and the results it would bring. Woo a strategist with data about costs and the easy logistics of getting people there. An executor needs to know everything about setting up the event. A commander will respond best to a passionate plea. “But if he digs in his heels, you’ll probably have to go over his head or give up,’’ Ms. Ludeman said. • Never ask alphas to defend their positions. Instead, ask them to explain them. “Show curiosity,’’ Ms. Ludeman said. “Ask how he arrived at a certain solution or idea.’’ While explaining, he may spot flaws in his logic himself. Even if he doesn’t, “the explanation will give you insight into how he thinks,” she said. A corollary: Stress whatever meager things you do agree with in your alpha boss’s orders. “When alphas think you understand their goals, they may entertain alternate ways of reaching them,’’ she said. • Sprinkle superfluous, even erroneous, nuggets into your own presentations, and thank the alpha when he or she spots the mistakes. That way, the alpha won’t have to scuttle your project in order to feel in control. • Err on the side of too much detail. Non-alpha bosses might like employees who say, “Trust me, I’ll take care of it.” Alpha bosses, particularly alpha executors, want to know how. “They want details,’’ Ms. Ludeman said. “Otherwise, they’ll watch you and worry.” • Don’t confuse an alpha’s arrogance with total self-confidence . Alphas may think they are smarter than everyone else, but they have an inner critic that keeps telling them that they can do still better. They are too smart to be gulled by flagrant flattery, but they respond well to specific praise. “Whenever you can, point out when they did something smart, or kept you from doing something stupid,’’ Ms. Ludeman said. • Don’t ever complain to alphas. They see it as weakness. Instead, ask for help. “Tell them you need advice on how to deal with a difficult colleague, or on how to meet an impossible deadline,’’ she said. • Go over an alpha’s head if you must, but be prepared to grovel soon after. If you are sure you are right about something but cannot get your alpha boss to budge, take it up to the next level. Then apologize profusely to your boss for having challenged his or her authority. “Your alpha boss will never see you as an equal, and that can work in your favor,’’ Ms. Ludeman said. “A nonalpha boss would never forgive you, but the alpha will just be pleased you’ve seen the error of your ways.” • Don’t assume that your battles with alphas are confined to work. If you are living with an alpha, be prepared to fight a lot — particularly if you are an alpha, too. “Best to take frequent time-outs for anger to subside,’’ Ms. Ludeman said. If you are raising alpha children, orders won’t work as well as letting them learn from their mistakes. If they refuse to clean up their rooms, let them live in squalor until they cannot stand it any longer.

Executives and Management
Hiring and Promotion
Psychology and Psychologists


Lee Allows 3 Hits as Phillies Shut Out the Nationals

Abstract: Randy Wolf had 10 strikeouts and allowed only three hits in six and two-third shutout innings to lead the visiting Milwaukee Brewers past the Pittsburgh Pirates , 4-1. The Brewers have won four straight and seven of eight. They narrowly missed out on a majors-leading fourth shutout. Pittsburgh managed only four hits and fell to 1-5 on its opening homestand. The Pirates snapped a streak of 22 scoreless innings when Andrew McCutchen scored in the ninth. PHILLIES 4, NATIONALS 0 Back at his best after an unusually brief outing, Cliff Lee struck out 12 and allowed three hits as visiting Philadelphia shut out Washington. Jordan Zimmerman gave up five hits in seven innings for the Nationals, giving up four runs, only one of which was earned. MARLINS 6, BRAVES 5 John Buck drove in the go-ahead run with a seventh-inning single and visiting Florida held off Atlanta. Brian McCann hit a three-run home run and Dan Uggla also homered for Atlanta. ASTROS 1, PADRES 0 Four Houston pitchers combined on a three-hit shutout of visiting San Diego, and Houston’s Michael Bourn hit a single in the sixth inning to drive in the game’s only run. RAYS 4, TWINS 3 Johnny Damon hit a two-run homer with one out in the bottom of the 10th inning, giving host Tampa Bay a victory over Minnesota. Carl Pavano pitched eight shutout innings for the Twins. ROYALS 5, MARINERS 1 Bruce Chen pitched eight strong innings, Wilson Betemit and Alex Gordon drove in two runs each and host Kansas City beat Seattle in a rain-shortened game. The game was called in the eighth inning after a delay of 47 minutes. Chen has won his last six decisions to even his career record at 50-50.

Lee Cliff
Philadelphia Phillies
Washington Nationals
Baseball
Milwaukee Brewers
Pittsburgh Pirates


The Nonstop Hairstylist of Astor Place

Abstract: ASTOR PLACE HAIRSTYLISTS has gone through many changes since it became, in the early 1980s, the renowned East Village hip haircut factory, but one constant has been Valentino Gogu, 65, who has been cutting hair at the shop for nearly three decades. Mr. Gogu puts in 12-hour days, seven days a week, with no vacations, except for the half-dozen holidays a year that the shop is closed. “What else am I going to do with myself?” asked Mr. Gogu, a Romanian immigrant. After arriving by subway from Ridgewood, Queens, where he lives alone in a railroad apartment, he settles into his longtime corner stall, surrounded by hip-hop haircutters, punk-rock stylists and Latina blow-dry specialists. Amid all this is Mr. Gogu, with his old-world charm and accent, his devoted clientele of men and women, and his equally indefatigable scissors and mouth. No one in the shop can remember the last time he willingly took a day off. Well, he once came in a little late. “We were all waiting here wondering, ‘What’s wrong? You think he’s O.K.?’ ” recalled Mike Saviello, the shop’s burly floor manager, who is known as “Big Mike.” Another time, Mr. Gogu had heart palpitations and agreed to see a doctor. “He was back two hours later, cutting hair,” said John Vezza, who helps run the shop, which his grandfather opened in the 1940s. Mr. Gogu said he had no family in America and nearly no social life. He spent a miserable week off recently, when the shop closed during the recent blackout in Lower Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy, he said. “I couldn’t sleep. I stayed home watching TV all day and night,” he said. His customers are his life, and because of his constant presence, he may have the most regulars of any barber in the shop. Of his hundreds of steady clients, dozens have been coming for nearly 30 years, including a 105-year-old woman and a billionaire real estate developer, he said. “Customers don’t have to call for an appointment — they know I’m always here,” he said on Thursday, pausing to rub ointment into the narrow fingers of his scissor hand. “I never see daylight, but I enjoy always seeing new faces in this place — it’s never boring,” he said. Posted above his mirror are dozens of pictures of customers and their children. Next to one shot of a mop-topped teenager is a picture of a well-coiffed Sheldon Silver, the longtime speaker of the New York State Assembly, who has been coming every month for years. Even Mr. Gogu, who often vetoes customers’ coiffure decisions, cannot persuade one of the most powerful elected officials in the state to change his hairstyle. “Very powerful man, but a straight-ahead guy — no left, no right,” he said of Mr. Silver. If prodded, Mr. Gogu will reveal a few celebrity stories. He claims to have given a young Anthony Michael Hall a geeky cut for one of his teen films in the 1980s, and to have cropped Hilary Swank ’s hair for her Oscar-winning role as Brandon Teena in “Boys Don’t Cry.” “When she came in here, she was this skinny,” he said, sticking up his pinkie. Now a female customer came in for a reshaping of her short haircut, and Mr. Gogu asked her: “You want Jamie Lee Curtis, or Mia Farrow?” Mr. Gogu said that he split his fees — haircuts start at $16 — with the shop’s owners, and that he sent part of his income to his family in Romania. Even a workaday life in New York City is better than living under Communism in Romania, where he grew up in a labor camp watching his parents work long hours on a farm, he said. In high school, he began cutting hair as an alternative to factory work, and after 15 years as a barber, he drove to Germany, entered a refugee residence and was eventually sent to the United States as a political asylum seeker. Speaking no English, he settled in Ridgewood, where he could speak German, Russian and Romanian with locals. He began learning English from customers at several hair shops and finally at Astor Place. “He flirts with every woman who sits in this chair,” said Judy Rosenblatt, an actress from Greenwich Village who was now in Mr. Gogu’s chair. She told Mr. Gogu, “I’m doing a film next week so don’t cut too much.” He called her “a pain in the neck,” and soon they were squabbling like a married couple. “He doesn’t obey you,” she said. “He says, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and then he does what he wants.” “Come on,” he responded. “I know your hair for 25 years.” “You see?” she said. “This is why people come from all over the world for Valentino.”

Barber
East Village Manhattan
Astor Place Hairstylists


Peter Thiel Defends His Most Contrarian Move Yet: Supporting Trump

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Peter Thiel likes to take the path not taken. He has paid students to drop out of college, thinks Silicon Valley is overrated, backed a plan to build cities on the high seas and helped propel an electronic form of money into general use. His contrarian approach to investing and to life has made him rich and celebrated. It took something truly conventional — donating money to a presidential candidate — to incite demands for his banishment. Two weeks ago, Mr. Thiel revealed that he was donating $1.25 million to support the election of Donald J. Trump. As these things go, it was a small gift. Dustin Moskovitz, a founder of Facebook, is giving tens of millions to support Hillary Clinton. But the news made Mr. Thiel a pariah in much of the tech community. He was accused of promoting racism and intolerance . There were demands that Facebook drop him from its board of directors and that Silicon Valley’s leading start-up incubator, Y Combinator, sever ties with him. Emotions and accusations raged on Twitter. “I was surprised by the intensity,” Mr. Thiel said. “This is one of the few times I was involved in something that was not a fringe effort but was mainstream. Millions of people are backing Trump. I did not appreciate quite how polarizing the election would be in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.” On Monday, Mr. Thiel plans to defend his position in a speech and then a question-and-answer session with reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. For the entrepreneur, who secretly funded the lawsuit that brought down the gossip website Gawker , it is a particularly surprising venue. In an interview on Friday, he outlined his thinking. “Ideally, this will have the give-and-take of debate,” he said. “Obviously, I’ll get some very tough questions about Trump. But I thought the best way to advance the discussion was not to have some completely contrived format. The future of this country depends on us engaging with the tough questions.” One of the things he will try to do is underline his support for Trump the candidate while distancing himself from the behavior of Trump the man. He believes it is possible to separate the two. “The millions of people who vote for Trump are not doing it because of the worst things he said or did,” Mr. Thiel said. “That’s ridiculous. The Americans who are voting for Trump are doing it because they judge the situation of the country to be urgent. We’re at such a crucial point that you have to overlook personal characteristics.” Mr. Thiel has been an important player in Silicon Valley since the first dot-com boom, but he has recently taken on a much more public role. He was born in Germany and came to the United States as an infant when his father, a chemical engineer, found work here. He was raised in Silicon Valley and went to Stanford, where he developed the views in his first book, “The Diversity Myth,” about the multiculturalism debate on campuses, written with the entrepreneur David O. Sacks. In 1998, Mr. Thiel helped found the online payments company PayPal, an immediate success. He was the first outside investor in Facebook. Forbes estimates his net worth at $2.7 billion. Last year, he became a part-time partner at Y Combinator, a loosely defined advisory position. A handful of others in Silicon Valley have similar investing track records. Where Mr. Thiel really separates himself from his peers is his skepticism that Silicon Valley is building a better world for all. His investment firm, Founders Fund, used to begin its online manifesto with the complaint, “We wanted flying cars; instead we got 140 characters,” a reference to Twitter. Now it says simply, “What happened to the future?” San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington, D.C., are doing well, but the presidential campaign has laid bare the angst of many other places. Feelings of decline are rampant. “Most of the millennials have lower expectations than their baby boomer parents,” Mr. Thiel said. “Where I differ from others in Silicon Valley is in thinking that you can’t fence yourself off. If it continues, it will ultimately be bad for everybody.” The polls have been saying Mrs. Clinton is likely to win. If that happens, “there will be a very big need to push back on the sort of happy but misleading consensus about things,” Mr. Thiel said. “There will be an important role for me and others to somehow play in speaking truth to power.” To an extent, that is. “It would be a mistake and inappropriate to instantly demonize Hillary and to try and sabotage her presidency,” he said. That would be repeating what happened in 2008, when the Republican Party did exactly that to President Obama. That is the larger discussion Mr. Thiel intends to be involved in. Another, more local discussion is already underway about his role in Silicon Valley . “By lending his image, his voice, his influence and substantial capital to Trump, Thiel isn’t simply exercising his legal right to vote: He is fueling and enabling racism, sexism, sexual assault, violence and tyranny,” Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital, a Los Angeles venture firm, wrote in a blog post . She said she turned down an investment of $500,000 — a huge sum for a small firm like Backstage — because of the investor’s ties to Mr. Thiel. Ms. Hamilton did not identify the investor or respond to an email. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, defended the company’s association with Mr. Thiel, emphasizing that it did not endorse his views — and much less Mr. Trump’s — but was striving to be inclusive toward those whose values differed from its own. Critics noted that if diversity was such a cherished value in Silicon Valley, why wasn’t there more of it? Mr. Thiel said he agreed that there was a point where views became unacceptable, but argued that he was on the right side of the line. “The line cannot or should not be at a point where you’re excommunicating half the country,” he said. “Some fringe views I hope we can tolerate. Some fringe views are beyond the pale.” He said no one at Facebook or Y Combinator had asked him to censor himself, and he did not consider stepping down from either post. The donation to the Trump campaign proved much more contentious in Silicon Valley than the revelation in May that Mr. Thiel had secretly funded a lawsuit to kill Gawker, which revealed in 2007 that he was gay. Many in Silicon Valley were sympathetic to Mr. Thiel’s actions. When Gawker.com was shut down in August, Mr. Thiel said he had one final thought: “Good riddance.”

Peter A Thiel
Donald Trump
Silicon Valley
2016 Presidential Election
Campaign finance
Republicans
Facebook
Y Combinator
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry


Ex-Ernst Partner Guilty of Insider Trading

Abstract: A former partner at the accounting firm Ernst & Young was found guilty on Friday of securities fraud for an insider trading scheme but not guilty of conspiracy charges. A jury in United States District Court in Manhattan found that the ex-partner, James E. Gansman, who worked at the firm until October 2007, was guilty on six counts of securities fraud and not guilty on four counts of conspiracy, according to a court document. Mr. Gansman, who has been released on bail, faces up to 20 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum scheduled his sentencing for Oct. 1. Mr. Gansman was indicted on charges of tipping off a friend about pending deals in 2006 and 2007 involving several publicly traded companies that were the firm’s clients. The friend, and former co-defendant, Donna Murdoch of Malvern, Pa., pleaded guilty in December to securities fraud. Ms. Murdoch is free on bond until her sentencing, scheduled for June 4. A spokesman for the accounting firm declined comment on the verdict.

Ernst & Young
Accounting and Accountants
Insider Trading
Frauds and Swindling
Securities and Commodities Violations
Cedarbaum Miriam Goldman
Decisions and Verdicts


Issues of Riches Trip Up Steven Mnuchin and Other Nominees

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Steven T. Mnuchin, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to head the Treasury Department, came under withering fire on Thursday for foreclosing on homes in California, managing an offshore investment account and initially failing to disclose almost $100 million in assets . During five hours of contentious questioning, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee pressed Mr. Mnuchin to explain how he could fail to disclose $95 million of real estate assets, including property in New York, Los Angeles and Mexico, on his initial committee ethics questionnaire. The former Goldman Sachs banker also did not initially disclose that he is the director of Dune Capital International, an investment fund incorporated on the Cayman Islands, an offshore tax haven. And he belatedly disclosed that his children own nearly $1 million in artwork. Such problems of fabulous wealth seem almost part and parcel to the confirmation struggles of a Trump government that would be filled with billionaires and multimillionaires. Mr. Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, admitted this week that he had fired an undocumented immigrant — one of the “dozen or so” housekeepers the billionaire investor employs. Mr. Trump’s pick to be White House budget director, Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, admitted paying back taxes of more than $15,000 for a household employee whose payroll taxes he had not paid, and his choice for health secretary, Representative Tom Price of Georgia, spent much of his confirmation hearing defending stock trades that might have been impacted by his legislating. But in a Washington where the tone is set by an incoming president who has refused to disclose his tax returns, it is not clear that any ethics question could actually derail a nominee, even ones that have caused problems in the past. During his prickly hearing, Mr. Mnuchin played down his omissions as innocent errors that were the products of cumbersome government bureaucracy. “I think as you all can appreciate, filling out these government forms is quite complicated,” Mr. Mnuchin said when asked about the omissions, noting that he had handed over 5,000 pages of disclosures. “Let me first say, any oversight, it was unintentional.” Democrats were unsatisfied with the response, assailing Mr. Mnuchin for the lapse and wondering what he was hiding. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the words, ‘list all positions,’” said Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey. Past nominees have stepped aside after such revelations. In 2009, Tom Daschle, President Obama’s pick for health secretary, withdrew after it emerged that he owed more than $100,000 in back taxes on the use of a limousine and chauffeur. Only weeks before, the nomination of Timothy F. Geithner, Mr. Obama’s first Treasury secretary, nearly came undone for his failure to pay some payroll taxes while at the International Monetary Fund. At the dawn of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the employment of undocumented immigrant nannies deprived both Kimba Wood and Zoë Baird of the chance to become the first female attorneys general. But such missteps might not matter these days. Just as Mr. Trump shrugged off the long-established practices of releasing tax returns, divesting assets that could create conflicts of interest and disclosing medical records, his cabinet picks might choose to muscle through. “If Trump’s nominees can’t get their ethics disclosures right now, how can we trust them when they are in office?” asked Norman Eisen, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who advised the Obama administration on government ethics. It appears that ethics concerns will continue to swirl around the Trump administration. Three Democratic senators on Thursday sent a letter to Mr. Mnuchin about reports that Anthony Scaramucci, a wealthy financier whom Mr. Trump appointed to be White House director of engagement and intergovernmental affairs, was holding talks with the head of the sanctioned Russian investment fund at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. The Russian fund has been under Treasury Department sanctions since 2015. “This raises questions about whether Mr. Scaramucci engaged in discussions to facilitate prohibited transactions with the sanctioned entity in violation of federal law, and about whether other Trump administration transition officials were aware of or approved his activities,” they wrote, calling on Mr. Mnuchin to investigate the matter if he is confirmed. Mr. Mnuchin did not shy away from controversies surrounding his business record, forcefully defending his use of offshore tax havens as a hedge fund manager and rejecting accusations that he was churning out foreclosures when he was chief executive of One West Bank during the financial crisis. Image Democrats have called for an investigation into Representative Tom Price, the nominee for secretary of health and human services, for inappropriately purchasing health care stocks. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times This week progressive groups launched television advertisements painting him as a cruel predatory lender, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, hosted a “shadow hearing” featuring people who felt victimized by the bank. But Mr. Mnuchin went on the offensive, dismissing such accusations in his opening statement. “Since I was first nominated to serve as Treasury secretary, I have been maligned as taking advantage of others’ hardships in order to earn a buck,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Mr. Mnuchin spent a good part of the five-hour hearing fending off charges that One West had been overly aggressive in foreclosing on tens of thousands of borrowers, many of them elderly. Mr. Mnuchin said the remnants of IndyMac, which he and a group of wealthy investors bought from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, was sitting on a mountain of troubled mortgages. He said the bank did its best to try to modify loans and keep borrowers in their homes but conceded that OneWest had made mistakes, such as foreclosing on some military families. Mr. Mnuchin expressed remorse for not being able to help more homeowners who struggled during the collapse of the housing market, especially one, a minor celebrity. “The most troubling loan we had was actually to the Octomom,” Mr. Mnuchin said, referring to a woman who gave birth to octuplets and became a reality television star. “That was a terrible situation, and we worked very, very hard to move her to another home that they could afford.” To many Democrats, the actions of One West during the housing and financial crisis were too much. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, announced his opposition to Mr. Mnuchin hours after the hearing ended. “Mr. Mnuchin’s cozy ties to Wall Street raise serious red flags that demand serious answers,” Mr. Brown said in a statement. When Mr. Mnuchin was pressed on whether he was helping rich clients avoid paying taxes by setting up shop in the Cayman Islands, he insisted that he had paid all the taxes that he owed and that he was following the law. “I did not use a Cayman Islands entity in any way to avoid paying taxes for myself,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “I would love to work with the I.R.S. to close these tax issues that make no sense.” That did not go over well with Democrats. “One does not go and create offshore entities at the end of the day other than to avoid, in some form or fashion, the tax laws of the United States. That’s pretty simple,” Mr. Menendez said. Although Republicans have been sticklers about ethics when out of power, they showed little concern about Mr. Mnuchin’s failure to make disclosures. The Finance Committee in particular has prided itself on its bipartisanship when it comes to the rigorous vetting of nominees, but on Thursday, that was hardly in evidence. Republican senators praised Mr. Mnuchin’s credentials, showed appreciation for his willingness to sacrifice his business career and apologized for the length and tone of the hearing. “Objectively speaking, I don’t believe anyone can reasonably argue that Mr. Mnuchin is unqualified for the position,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah. “You’ve been assaulted by innuendo,” Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, told Mr. Mnuchin. The only time Mr. Mnuchin appeared to be at a loss for words was when he was peppered with questions about the ethics of Mr. Trump. Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, grilled Mr. Mnuchin about how Americans could be sure that debt the Trump Organization owed to foreign interests would not influence Mr. Trump’s policies. She also mocked the idea that the president-elect was appointing an independent ethics officer to ensure he would have nothing to do with his business empire, asking Mr. Mnuchin what authority a person that Mr. Trump could hire and fire would have to keep him honest. “It’s a good question,” Mr. Mnuchin said.

US Politics
Appointments and Executive Changes
Treasury Department
Steven T Mnuchin
Donald Trump
Conflict of interest


Giants’ Passing vs. Nnamdi Asomugha

Abstract: The Giants average 255.5 yards per game in the air, a surprising eighth in the league. But Nnamdi Asomugha is considered one of the best and could challenge Steve Smith and his co-workers. When asked about the foot injury to Giants quarterback Eli Manning, Asomugha said: “We don’t wish anyone injuries. But if he’s not playing, that’s a big weapon you don’t have to think about.” Number To Watch: 82 The streak of starts for Giants quarterback Eli Manning, who is listed as questionable with an injury to his right foot.

Football
New York Giants
Oakland Raiders


In Alaska, a Battle to Keep Trees, or an Industry, Standing

Abstract: THORNE BAY, Alaska — The Tongass National Forest , a panoply of snow-dusted peaks and braided rivers, slender fjords and more than 5,000 islands draped over a stretch of Pacific coastline, is widely viewed as one of America’s great natural treasures. Under pressure from environmentalists, the Obama administration pledged four years ago to phase out logging of virgin woodlands here. Yet the Forest Service is now preparing its largest auction of it in a decade: 9.7 square miles of hemlock, spruce and cedar near this island hamlet. An additional four square miles are planned for sale later, and seven more after that. And conservationists, crying betrayal, are in court again, trying to force a reappraisal of the auctions in the world’s largest temperate rain forest. Environmental groups filed three lawsuits against the Forest Service last month. Perhaps the most significant of them contends that further logging threatens an already struggling Alaskan wolf, defying a federal law requiring the service to protect wildlife on its lands. Indeed, the wolf has emerged as a key player in the dispute, a symbol for environmentalists of logging’s degradation and — potentially — a wrench in the entire auction works. “The agency is certainly saying one thing and doing another,” said Niel Lawrence, the forestry project director at the Natural Resources Defense Council , which is a party to the suit. “They’ve picked a path of continued conflict and controversy and damage to the resources that made this place so special.” But the Forest Service argues that it must keep southeast Alaska’s loggers and sawmills in business until a replacement source of timber is ready: second-growth forests, now maturing on lands where virgin forests were clear-cut. “The industry here is quite small today, and it is kind of on the edge of existing or not,” said Forrest Cole, the Tongass Forest supervisor. “And if we lose it, this whole idea of a transition to a new young-growth industry will probably fail immediately.” Image Most logging jobs in Alaska today are concentrated on Prince of Wales Island, in the background of the photo. The 2,500-square-mile island also is home to the region’s only major sawmill. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times By his reckoning, young-growth trees will not be ready to log for 15 to 20 years. Conservationists say they could be ready in five, and note that a Native Alaskan timber company already is logging them, albeit with the help of cost advantages other loggers lack. This is perhaps the nation’s longest-running environmental dispute. In nearly six decades, loggers have cleared more than 700 square miles of the Tongass — twice the size of New York City — over environmentalists’ repeated lawsuits. It is as much about shifting cultures as facts, a battle between preservationists focused on saving ancient forests and wildlife and an agency bound by politics and tradition to Alaska’s loggers, mills and economic development. Alaska looms large in Forest Service considerations, not only because the Tongass is the agency’s biggest jurisdiction. The state’s congressional delegation strongly supports further logging, and should Republicans take over the Senate after the November elections, Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, would preside over panels overseeing the agency’s budget and operations. But this fight has the air of an endgame, a little like the fight to preserve the dwindling coal industry in the Appalachians. Tongass timber once sustained thousands of jobs, but supports only a few hundred today. And although the industry punches above its weight politically, it could struggle without the centuries-old trees that are valuable because of their fine grain, sturdiness and resistance to rot. Conservationists want to protect those trees, moving loggers quickly to second-growth forests they liken to tree farms: uniform in age, lacking the clearings and lush undergrowth that wildlife requires. Once logged, they say, virgin forests need lifetimes to recover. But moving to younger timber is hardly a sure thing. Those trees would compete with cheap lumber from elsewhere; Alaska’s remoteness and ruggedness make logging and shipping more costly. Sawmills would require new machinery probably affordable only with federal help. Image Though the Tongass is bigger than West Virginia — and one-third protected wilderness — preservationists say many of its best trees are gone. Two-thirds of the Tongass is tundra, rock or scrub forest. Only 4 percent holds the sprawling, high-quality stands of giant trees prized by the timber industry, typically at lower elevations or in valleys and river basins that are also prime wildlife habitat. Much of that has been logged — and the Forest Service has bulldozed more than 4,500 miles of roads through the forest to take the logs out. The Tongass once was the region’s economic backbone, sustaining a booming, if heavily subsidized, timber industry. The government all but gave away virgin forest in the 1940s to lure pulp mills. Congress actually ordered the Forest Service in 1980 to auction 4.5 billion board feet of lumber every decade — enough for a stack of inch-thick, eight-foot planks nearly 9,000 miles high. But the pulp mills closed after the sweetheart timber deal was scrapped in 1990, and by 2000 demand was so slack that some timber sales drew no bidders. Across southeast Alaska, only one sawmill now cuts logs in volume. Much Tongass timber is exported unmilled, often to Asia, where milling is cheaper. The Forest Service gets at most a few million dollars a year from timber sales, but spends multiples of that to support logging. In 2013, the National Audubon Society pegged timber employment at 200 jobs in southeast Alaska — down from 4,500 at its peak — and the federal subsidy at $130,000 per worker. Conservationists say southeast Alaska’s future lies in its thriving fisheries and tourism industry; tourism alone employed 10,900 workers last year, up 700 jobs just from 2012, and its payroll is 33 times that of the timber business. But preserving timber jobs is important, said Mr. Cole, the Tongass supervisor, for in remote Alaska towns they can be critical. State-supported schools require at least 10 children; one lost job can close a schoolhouse. And new jobs close by can be scarce. “The grim reality is that we’re not tied to the Interstate,” he said. “You don’t just lose your job, drive 20 miles and find another one. You leave.” Image A tree being felled on federal land that has been leased near Thorne Bay, Alaska. A new auction of virgin woodlands is being prepared by the Forest Service. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times Today most logging jobs are concentrated on Prince of Wales Island, at 2,500 square miles the epicenter of Tongass logging. This is where the only major sawmill operates, where the logging dispute is hottest and where the next auction, called Big Thorne, will take place. In the island’s northern half, nearly 94 percent of the biggest stands of virgin forest have been cut down. Big Thorne will clean up some of what remains; the 9.7 square miles of woodlands marked for cutting are sprinkled over 360 square miles, much of it clear-cut in decades past. The conservationists’ lawsuit argues that the Forest Service ignored the law and its own rules in choosing tracts of forest for logging in Big Thorne and five other sites. Example 1, they say, is the Alexander Archipelago wolf . The wolf, a smaller, many-colored cousin of the timber wolf, relies on the Sitka black-tailed deer for food. The deer winter in the island’s old-growth forests, where big trees and underbrush provide forage, shelter from snows and cover from the island’s hunters. Federal rules require the Forest Service “to maintain viable populations” of the wildlife on its lands. For the wolf, that means having enough deer for itself and deer hunters, too — 18 per square mile, the Forest Service said in 2008. But at the same time, the lawsuit argues, the agency downgraded that 18-deer requirement to a guideline, one the suit claims it disregarded in Big Thorne and elsewhere by proposing to auction off prime deer habitat. The lawsuit seeks only to enforce the deer habitat requirement on Forest Service lands. But it could tie up at least some auctions in court — and, should conservationists win, even send Big Thorne back to the drawing board. Nor is that the most serious threat to the auctions. In March, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service said it would consider listing the wolf as a protected species, saying Prince of Wales’s deer habitat is already below requirements in many areas, with more logging planned. A ruling that the wolf is in danger could severely limit timber sales at a time when the supply of logs for milling is dwindling. “Without the mills, there’s no timber industry, and without the Forest Service’s second-growth sales, there are no mills,” said Rachelle Huddleston-Lorton, the Forest Service ranger in Thorne Bay. “We’ve got to keep the mills alive.”

Forests
Tongass National Forest
Logging
Alaska
Environment
Forest Service
NRDC
Audubon Society
National


Books on New York City Celebrate Its Sports and Its Jewish Delis

Abstract: How much will Bill de Blasio benefit from rubbing shoulders with Pope Francis? In 1969, his predecessor John V. Lindsay basked in the glow of Joe Namath, Willis Reed, the New York Mets (not to mention Golda Meir) sufficiently to get re-elected as mayor. Sean Deveney, a writer and editor at Sporting News, recaptures the era’s lunatic euphoria and unpredictable political impact in “ Fun City: John Lindsay, Joe Namath and How Sports Saved New York in the 1960s ” (Sports Publishing). Lindsay, who was first elected 50 years ago next month, immediately inherited a crippling transit strike, Mr. Deveney writes, but gamely proclaimed, “I still think it’s a fun city.” Dick Schaap, the New York Herald Tribune columnist, immortalized the phrase and larded it with irony, writing, “Lindsay cheerfully walked four miles from his hotel room to City Hall, a gesture which proved that the fun city had a fun mayor.” “The Jets, Mets and Knicks didn’t fix New York,” Mr. Deveney writes, “but for a stretch, at least, their successes saved John Lindsay and the city from their own failures, and brought together a divided city in which residents seemed increasingly unable or unwilling to understand each other.” After the intoxicating flush of his first victory in 1965, Lindsay’s perspective upon re-election was more sober. “This is the last day of the decade and we have, all of us, been through much hope and much sorrow,” he said at his inauguration. “And if we have learned anything from these 10 turbulent, unsettling years, we have learned not to assume too much, because assumptions have a way of falling before the merciless assault of facts. So it is best not to plan on promises and dreams.” Image Pastrami sandwiches at Liebman’s Kosher Delicatessen & Catering. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times ◡ Woody Allen once recalled the famous rabbi who, cold and starving, came home “where he was revived with steaming soup and flanken.” “Following that,” Mr. Allen wrote, “he was given something to eat.” The very mention of “flanken” (Yiddish for a boiled or stewed short rib) triggers a giggle. Pastrami, on the other hand, stimulates the salivary glands. In “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli” (New York University Press), Ted Merwin, who teaches religion at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, delivers a scholarly paean — like an ample but lean corned beef sandwich — to a vanishing New York ethnic icon. Professor Merwin traces cured meat from 2,000-year-old rabbinical rules governing a temple offering on the eve of a fast day to Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s kasha varnishkes with veal meatballs at ABC Kitchen (redefining “new veau”) in an era when “the consumption of Jewish food is, for many Jews, one of the sole ways in which they relate to their heritage.” The delis that were celebrated in “Broadway Danny Rose” (the Carnegie ) and “When Harry Met Sally” ( Katz’s ) still survive, as do a few authentic New York oases of homemade savories. But in a more ecumenical market, says Noah Bernamoff of Mile End Deli (a recent local entry that honors its forebears with its painstakingly smoked and cured meats), generic supermarket brands abound. “You can never have a bad sandwich,” he argues, “but you can also never have a great sandwich.”

Books
Delicatessen
John V Lindsay
NYC
Pastrami on Rye


Small Businesses’ Premiums Soar After Illness

Abstract: To understand the challenges of insuring the health of the nation’s work force, consider Varney’s Book Store. After a long bout with emphysema an employee at Varney’s, a family-owned business in Manhattan, Kan., died several years ago. But for Varney’s health insurer, her legacy lived on. The next year, 2002, the insurer raised Varney’s premiums by 28 percent — even though most of the other three dozen employees were significantly younger and healthier than their departed colleague, who had been in her mid-70’s. And Varney’s premiums continued to climb. “It was as if her medical history stayed on the books for an additional three years,” said Jeff Levin, 46, who runs Varney’s with his younger brother. “How can you justify projecting those costs forward?” Such are the challenges for smaller businesses in Kansas and the many other states where laws permit insurers to raise health premiums substantially for small employers when one worker incurs significant medical bills. And it is why, as state legislatures, Congress and presidential candidates of all stripes debate the growing problem of Americans without health insurance, the struggles of small businesses — which employ about 40 percent of the nation’s work force — are likely to become a central issue. Small-business employees are one of the fastest-growing segments of the nation’s 44 million uninsured; they now represent at least 20 percent of the total, according to federal census data. And even modest-size employers like Varney’s that say they remain committed to providing benefits find themselves wondering how long they can continue. The challenges make small business a particularly tricky piece of the nation’s health care puzzle, a problem compounded by the state-by-state jigsaw nature of insurance regulation. “There are 50 sets of state rules,” said David Fear, an insurance agent in Sacramento, who is president of the National Association of Health Underwriters, an agents’ trade group. With the rising cost of insurance, even the nation’s biggest employers are struggling to cover their workers. But large companies at least wield some influence with insurance underwriters and providers of care, and are usually solvent enough to insure themselves as an alternative to the insurance market. Either way, they can spread their health costs over a pool of employees large enough that any one worker’s medical bills do not make big financial waves. But small employers cannot exercise those economies of scale. And because they typically are not rich enough to insure themselves, they are almost wholly dependent on insurance companies to provide health benefits. In the many states that do not closely regulate health coverage, small businesses have little bargaining power with the insurers. In a small workplace, as a result, if an employee or a covered dependent becomes seriously ill, or if someone has even a routine medical need like maternity care, the entire group may pay the price through steeply higher insurance rates. “Almost any kind of situation where one employee has a serious health condition almost makes the group uninsurable, because of cost,” said the governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius, a member of a group studying health care issues for the National Governors Association. “Affordable coverage for small-business owners and self-employed individuals is probably the biggest challenge that we have in Kansas and most states.” Ms. Sebelius, a Democrat, is currently at work on a bipartisan proposal with the state’s Republican insurance commissioner that would insulate small groups by having the state provide backup insurance for the most expensive medical cases. “If the insurer was guaranteed never to have to pay out over $100,000, for example, it could be a much more stable situation,” she said. But that only applies a patch to a bigger wound. In Massachusetts, which has embarked on a widely watched effort to make health insurance mandatory, the state plans to address the small-business issue by combining 800,000 small employers and 50,000 individuals into a single pool as a way to even out costs and increase their bargaining power. Over the years, small employers around the country, often led by chambers of commerce, have occasionally sought to band into regional groupings. But the efforts often led nowhere — especially because insurers tend to assume that many young, healthy workers will opt out, leaving them saddled with older, sicker enrollees. That is a big reason Massachusetts will require the young and healthy to join the pool, or pay into a state insurance fund if they choose not to buy coverage for themselves. The insurance rules already in place in some states do provide various buffers for small businesses. Nine states, for example, prohibit insurers from considering the health status of workers when setting rates for small groups. Those include Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. A number of states also limit the size of yearly rate increases. Rates in California, for example, typically can rise no more than 10 percent. But in many other states it is essentially every mom-and-pop for itself. Kansas allows rate increases of up to 25 percent a year. Ohio permits 40 percent. In Arizona the annual jump can be 60 percent or more. And for Pennsylvania, Virginia, Hawaii and the District of Columbia, there are no ceilings at all. When the rates can leap with each new employee illness, the only recourse may be shopping for another insurer. That is what Varney’s did in 2005. The bookstore, popular with students at Kansas State University, switched its coverage to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas after the previous insurer said it would raise Varney’s premium by 17 percent. The reason was that another employee, a 59-year-old woman who was a longtime Varney’s bookkeeper, died of stomach cancer the previous year. Varney’s former carrier, Trustmark Insurance, based in Lake Forest, Ill., declined to discuss the case’s specifics. A Trustmark spokesman would say only that the bookstore had fared no worse over the years than the typical small employer. “Over time, it appears that their aggregate rate increase was less than the national trend,” said the spokesman, Patton Hollow. Blue Cross currently charges Varney’s about $16,500 a month. The Levins pay 80 percent of that, asking their employees to pick up the rest. A typical share, for an employee and spouse, requires a monthly paycheck deduction of about $115. Even in states that impose government caps on rate increases, those protections may not cover all contingencies. Despite the 40 percent ceiling in Ohio, for instance, United Healthcare early this year levied an increase of more than 100 percent on the premiums of CBG Biotech, a 26-employee hospital supplies maker in Macedonia, near Akron. The insurer argued that the high increase was justified because CBG had violated its contract. Ohio permits insurers to solicit advance medical information from employees. One CBG worker had failed to disclose his wife’s multiple illnesses — including cirrhosis, gout and an ulcer — when he signed up for coverage, according to a letter from United that became part of a court record. When United learned of the omission after the woman was admitted to a hospital, where she died, “they decided to punish the entire company,” said CBG’s chairman, Gerald W. Camiener. United raised CBG’s total premium for the duration of the contract to $18,000 a month, from $8,800, he said, and demanded $118,000 in back payments. CBG sought a federal injunction against the increase. In February, Judge Ann Aldrich of the United States District Court in Cleveland denied the CBG request, saying that United Healthcare’s actions were permissible under its contract and “very likely legal, but also very far from laudable.” Mr. Camiener, in an e-mail message, lamented that ruling. “In the past, the policy of health insurers was to disqualify the employee when wrong information was furnished to them,” he wrote. “Now,” he continued, “the insurers will be coming to the employer and demanding exorbitant sums of money with the threat that the entire group will be cut off forthwith, even in the middle of a policy year.” Mr. Camiener changed his company’s health coverage to Aetna, paying about $15,400 a month in premiums, and he complained to senior executives at United. Kenneth A. Burdick, United Healthcare’s president, said in an interview that his company had now decided to drop its demand for back payments from CBG and would no longer seek retroactive rate increases in such cases. He also said that because misrepresentation by employees was rare, with only a dozen or so cases a year among thousands of business groups, senior United Healthcare officials would now review the facts in each case. Back in Kansas, meanwhile, Varney’s owners say they are doing what they can to keep their health premiums in check. Mr. Levin, 46, says he has been a fitness enthusiast since he had a heart attack in 2002. He says he has stopped smoking (“except for one cigar a year”) and has improved his diet , supplementing it with fish oil pills. And Varney’s has made gym memberships a free perk for all employees. “Our managers can even use a trainer two to three times a week at our expense,” he said. All that may help the Varney’s work force stay healthy. But so far, he said, Blue Cross has declined to reward the effort with any additional break on insurance premiums. Graham Bailey, a Blue Cross spokesman, said that if the fitness efforts actually resulted in lower medical expenses, that could eventually reduce Varney’s premiums. For now, though, there is little the company can do. “Since we’re family-owned, we have the latitude and commitment to make sure our employees and their families are provided access to health coverage,” Mr. Levin said. “My brother and I worry, though, that over time it will keep getting more and more expensive and be out of reach.”

Health Insurance and Managed Care
Small Business
Politics and Government
Law and Legislation


A Dilemma in Fight Over Coal Plant in Linden, N.J.

Abstract: Linden, N.J. A scheduled local council vote this week will be the first step in a review process that will likely take years, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early to get out the rhetorical artillery here in the heart of the Petro Belt off the New Jersey Turnpike. “This plant is a $5 billion environmental Ponzi scheme that not only won’t work but will lead to environmental disaster,” Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club , said last week. “This is a recipe for another Exxon Valdez toxic catastrophe,” said Robert Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association . “The worst polluters continue to put Linden in their cross hairs, but this time the stakes are even higher,” said David Pringle of the New Jersey Environmental Federation . The occasion was the announced formation of the Arthur Kill Watershed Alliance, whose goal is to fight a proposed 750-megawatt coal power plant in Linden. And the alliance’s target was a technology intended to capture tons of carbon and keep it out of the atmosphere, a technology viewed by other environmentalists as not just promising but essential for combating climate change . It’s way too early to know whether the PurGen carbon capture and sequestration plant, which is proposed for a former DuPont site, will perform as advertised. As proposed, the plant would capture 90 percent of its carbon emissions, liquefy the carbon dioxide and push it 70 miles through an offshore pipeline under Raritan Bay to ocean rock structures off Atlantic City. Critics say the plant would use unproven and untested technology and could lead to degraded air quality and perhaps a catastrophic underwater pipeline rupture. Still, the missiles lobbed in its direction are a reminder that some of the biggest hurdles to dealing with global warming could be the tactics environmentalists have perfected over the years to stop projects — toxic and sometimes not so toxic — they didn’t like. “One of the difficult challenges that climate change presents is that environmental groups are very good at opposing projects, and not very good at making compromises in supporting projects,” said Bradley M. Campbell, a former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection who is representing the proposal by a Massachusetts firm, SCS Energy , to build the plant. “We need to get beyond the mind-set that there’s a perfect alternative if we ever hope to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.” Carbon capture technology isn’t new. For 13 years, a Norwegian oil company has been injecting one million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year into a sandstone reservoir beneath the North Sea between Scotland and Norway. An ambitious goal for the technology could be 10 billion metric tons a year. The secretary of energy, Steven Chu, issued an urgent letter last week calling for a major effort to develop and implement carbon capture technology. “Finding safe, affordable, broadly deployable methods to capture and store carbon dioxide is clearly among the most important issues scientists have ever been asked to solve,” he wrote. “We can, and should, and must strive to do so within the next 8 to 10 years.” BUT forgive the folks in Linden for being skeptical. An industrial town in the maze of refineries and transmission lines off the turnpike, it is accustomed to proposals for every waste site or industrial project that wealthier towns would never consider. And they know how much money and clout coal interests have in supporting this technology. So the young environmental volunteers on the streets Saturday with anti-plant leaflets (“A Dangerous Experiment Coming to Linden ... Let’s Tell SCS We Won’t Be Their Guinea Pigs”) were a mix of the utopian (Let’s just rely on solar, wind and conservation) and the practical (“They want to put the health risks here and let the profits go to people who don’t live here.”) In one sense, the core issue boils down to coal — whether environmentalists should strive to support technology that minimizes coal’s environmental impact or fight everything coal-related that comes down the pike. But very few environmental scientists believe there’s a way out of the climate change dilemma that just involves harmless, painless uses of wind, solar and energy savings. And whether you’re a Massachusetts liberal fighting the proposed wind farm off Cape Cod or a working-class activist in Linden, there’s always an argument against any proposal in your own backyard: Untried. Too risky. What about earthquakes? Put it somewhere else. Maybe on closer review, PurGen will look like a dangerous dead end or a promising way out. Maybe T. Boone Pickens will find a way to put a million wind turbines all over the Texas Panhandle and provide all the energy we want. Maybe combating climate change feels like being on a 40-ton truck barreling downhill with no brakes.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions
New Jersey
Carbon Dioxide
New Jersey Environmental Federation
Department of Environmental Protection
Global Warming
Air Pollution
Energy Efficiency


After Conviction in ’75 Murder Is Thrown Out, a Victim’s Family Relives Its Pain

Abstract: The last time Walter J. Smith saw his little sister Karen alive, on a warm spring day, March 28, 1975, she was on her way to the corner store to buy a 100 Grand candy bar. Hours later, at 1:50 a.m., her body was found in a darkened 16th-floor stairwell of the South Bronx housing project where she lived. The 8-year-old girl had been raped, stabbed and left to die — the candy bar wrapper by her side. The killing galvanized the neighborhood, and protesters filled the streets demanding justice for Karen, and better police protection. The authorities acted swiftly and seven hours after the body was found they apprehended an 18-year-old man, David Bryant, who lived nearby. He was convicted in the murder and, as the years passed, the girl’s death faded from memory. Today the only reminder is a gray brick in the playground in front of her old home at 1285 Washington Avenue with her name inscribed on it. But on Thursday a Bronx judge ordered Mr. Bryant’s conviction thrown out, finding that his lawyer had performed poorly, and he was freed from jail. Suddenly, those long-ago events and everything that followed were resurrected. For Mr. Smith, who joins other family members in an annual pilgrimage to the playground every July to mark Karen’s birthday, the decision has forced him to question a bedrock belief that has helped shape his life. While nothing could bring his sister back, at least justice had been done. Or so he thought. “This is devastating,” said Mr. Smith, 55, who now lives in New Jersey and works in finance. “We are reliving everything about this crime and this case.” According to the ruling, by Justice Seth L. Marvin of State Supreme Court, Mr. Bryant’s lawyer at the time failed him by not consulting with an expert on blood work and by not having his client’s blood type tested. Mr. Bryant has type-B blood and no type-B blood was found at the crime scene, according to court transcripts and an autopsy report. The murder took place before the use of DNA evidence and experts said it was one of the oldest murder convictions in the country ever to be overturned. Mr. Bryant’s lawyer said that though the decision did not rule on Mr. Bryant’s innocence or guilt, it went a long way toward exonerating him. As Mr. Bryant was adjusting to his newfound freedom, Karen’s family was just starting to process what had happened. His family met Friday afternoon with prosecutors, who will determine if they will appeal the decision, retry the case or dismiss the charges. Mr. Smith said he did not learn of the court’s decision until Friday morning, when his brother called and told him to read the newspapers. In a long discussion, he recalled with clarity the events of that day 38 years ago. Mr. Smith lived with his six brothers and two sisters in a 12th-floor, four-bedroom apartment. His father was a veteran of the Korean War who worked for the Postal Service. His mother worked at a clothing store. They are both buried in plots next to their daughter. At the time, children growing up in the projects were familiar with violence, but it was a close community and the older children looked out for the younger ones, Mr. Smith recalled. “If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time when something went down, you could have a very tough time there,” he said. Older boys who did not go to school “tended to do stuff that was on the wrong side of the law.” Mr. Bryant, he recalled, was one of those boys. “He was not known as a nice guy,” he said. Still, they often played sports together and Mr. Bryant had even visited his home, he said. But shortly before his sister was killed, Mr. Smith said, Mr. Bryant threw a bottle at Karen and he and Mr. Smith almost came to blows. Mr. Smith testified about the episode and Mr. Bryant acknowledged that it had happened, according to court records. Why he threw the bottle still mystifies Mr. Smith. Karen was a good student, he said, with a group of friends who liked roller skating, jumping rope and enjoying candy together on the stoop. She disappeared on Good Friday. Children were out of school and the South Bronx was humming with life. Mr. Smith, then 18, spent the day on the basketball court, while children dangled from monkey bars and music echoed across the courtyard. But as night fell, his sister was nowhere to be found. Hours of searching turned up nothing so he waited outside the building. Shortly before 2 a.m., police officers poured into the building. Soon Mr. Smith was in a squad car on his way to a police precinct. A detective took him into a room for questioning. At first, Mr. Smith recalled, the detective asked him vague questions he did not understand — probing to see if he knew anything about what had happened to Karen. Finally, he was told she had been killed. “My head just kind of like exploded,” he said. “I think I was quiet for a few minutes. Then I said, ‘Do you know who did it?’ “ The detective told him they were investigating. In the morning, detectives showed up at his apartment again. This time they had photos. “They said, ‘You know him?’ ” he recalled. “I said ‘yes, that’s David Bryant. I know him. He played ball with us.’ Then they said he was under arrest.” Since that morning, through the months of trial and the years of appeal, Mr. Smith has been convinced of Mr. Bryant’s guilt. Even when Mr. Bryant sent the family letters from prison after his conviction, pleading his innocence, Mr. Smith held firm. “Not a shred of doubt,” he said. Asked how he would feel if the wrong man was convicted, he said, “That means the murderer may still be out there.” On Friday, the playground brick with his sister’s name was slick with rain and obscured by trash.

Murders
Rape
Decisions and Verdicts
False arrest
David Bryant
Karen Smith
Walter J Smith