European Officials Accuse Facebook of Misleading Them on WhatsApp Deal

Abstract: European competition officials filed charges on Tuesday against Facebook, accusing the social media giant of making misleading statements to receive regulatory approval for its $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp , the internet messaging service. The accusation, which could lead to a fine of up to 1 percent of Facebook’s yearly revenue, meaning a penalty of about $200 million, comes amid growing tension with Europe’s policy makers over how the company is able to dominate much of the region’s digital world. The social network is grappling with lengthy investigations into how it uses people’s digital data and fears that its perceived inability to clamp down on hate speech and fake news may have a harmful effect on how Europeans use popular internet services like Facebook Messenger and Instagram, which is also owned by the company. Facebook has faced similar questions in the aftermath of the United States presidential campaign, during which fake news reports were widely shared on the platform. The company denies all of the allegations, but says it is doing more to remove fake news articles and posts that promote hate speech. Image Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition chief, said Tuesday that when Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014, it should have told regulators of its plans to match people’s accounts on the two services. Credit Andrew Testa for The New York Times On Tuesday, Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition chief, said Facebook had misled regulators in 2014 when it bought WhatsApp. She said the company did not outline its plans to match people’s Facebook accounts with those on the popular messaging app, which now has more than a billion users worldwide. In August, Facebook announced that it would start sharing some people’s digital information between the two services, allowing the company to send tailored advertising or “friend” suggestions to users. The company said the revamped service would also help to fight spam text messages. Yet Ms. Vestager said the potential of such linking was not explained when the social network sought regulatory approval for the purchase, despite questioning from European officials. By subsequently adding the data sharing to its wider digital offerings, she said, Facebook misled officials, since the company already had the ability to match people’s accounts when the takeover was first announced. “Companies are obliged to give the commission accurate information during merger investigations,” Ms. Vestager said in a statement on Tuesday. Such information was required to review potential industry-changing acquisitions, she said, and companies “must take this obligation seriously.” How Europe Is Going After Apple, Google and Other U.S. Tech Giants The biggest American tech companies face intensifying scrutiny by European regulators, with — pressure that could potentially curb their sizable profits in the region and affect how they operate around the world. Facebook said that it had acted in good faith when seeking approval of the deal from European regulators, and that the company had contacted the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, at the start of this year about its new plans to match people’s accounts. “We respect the commission’s process,” a Facebook spokeswoman, Sally Aldous, said in a statement. “We will continue to cooperate and share information officials need to resolve their questions.” Facebook has until the end of next month to respond to the European competition charges and there is no fixed deadline for the authorities in Brussels to make a decision in the case. Any legal appeal against the potential ruling could take years to resolve. Twelve years ago, the commission raised the maximum allowable fine to the current level of 1 percent of annual revenue to dissuade companies from misleading regulators during mergers. Despite having brought similar cases against other companies, the commission has never imposed the potentially higher fines. The previous record in such a case dates to 1999, when the commission fined the German postal operator Deutsche Post 100,000 euros, or about $105,000 at current exchange rates, for two offenses. At the time, the maximum fine for each offense was €50,000. How Europe Protects Your Online Data Differently Than the U.S. All the talk about data privacy can get caught up in political wrangling. But the different approaches have practical consequences for people, too. Despite the new regulatory standoff, Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp is not in question. Any European decision against Facebook would not restrict the increasing dominance that the social network and WhatsApp have over how people in the Western world communicate. Facebook’s plans to link WhatsApp to its increasingly powerful online advertising business model have come under increasing scrutiny in Europe, which has some of the toughest privacy and competition rules. A month after Facebook made its August data-sharing announcement, a German privacy regulator ordered the company to stop sharing people’s details between WhatsApp and Facebook. The British data protection watchdog quickly followed suit, and by the end of October, Facebook had shut down the data-sharing program across all of the 28-member European Union. The company still shares people’s digital information in the United States and elsewhere, although privacy campaigners have filed legal challenges with the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook’s legal problems in Europe, in part, represent a rite of passage as the company has grown into a global technology behemoth. Google is fighting three separate charges that it broke the region’s antitrust rules, Apple is appealing a demand to repay $13.5 billion in back taxes and Uber has been accused of operating illegally across the bloc. The companies deny the charges. European policy makers say that they are protecting the region’s 500 million people from potential harmful acts by these dominant American companies, though industry executives have often accused the region’s lawmakers of unfairly targeting Silicon Valley giants to promote European rivals.

Europe
Facebook
WhatsApp
Social Media
Margrethe Vestager
European Commission
Privacy
Data Mining,Big Data
Instant messaging


Nigerian Amnesty Program Viewed With Caution

Abstract: ABUJA, Nigeria — The Nigerian government’s 60-day amnesty program for fighters in its restive oil-rich region ended Sunday night with no clear picture of whether it had succeeded. Although the amnesty was hailed as a huge success by Nigerian officials and local media, members of the most prominent militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, known by its initials, MEND, did not fully endorse it. The group said the amnesty’s effectiveness remained “shaky and uncertain.” Outside analysts said it was premature to say a new era of calm had come to the Niger Delta, one of Africa’s most strategic and troubled regions. President Umaru Yar’Adua began the 60-day amnesty offer in August for any fighter willing to come out of the region’s million-square-mile network of oil-laden creeks and swamps, turn in his weapon and accept a $13 daily stipend in exchange. Around 8,000 to 10,000 fighters were eligible, and it is unclear how many fighters actually accepted or how many weapons they surrendered. Television images of fighters turning in weapons at collection centers suggested that hundreds of them had responded, but the government has not provided any numbers. “With the surrender of some of the militant groups, the government now has the guns it was looking for, but whether or not this amnesty would work depends on what President Yar’Adua does after the expiration of his 60-day amnesty,” said Annkio Briggs , a spokeswoman for Ijaw Republican Assembly, one of the militant groups. In a statement released shortly after one of its key commanders, Farah Dagogo, publicly accepted the government’s amnesty, MEND said it had since replaced its repentant leaders and would soon be commencing “the next phase” of its campaign, which the group said “could mean aggressive lobbying to engage government in dialogue or the language they understand, which is violence.” In Port Harcourt, Nigeria ’s oil capital, ordinary people expressed worry that with the expiration of the 60-day amnesty period, the Nigerian government had given itself justification to send troops into the swamps to flush out recalcitrant fighters. They pointed to a military offensive last May that reportedly left hundreds dead in a half-dozen villages, and they said the government might be planning a similar action. Paul Agidi, 53, who said he lost his aged mother and sister in that military crackdown, said that with the end of the amnesty, “President Yar’Adua now has an excuse to come after us even more viciously.” His skepticism reflected a fairly common sentiment across the Niger Delta, a situation that highlights the local people’s lack of trust in the central government. In southeastern Bayelsa State, former fighters who have accepted the government’s amnesty and rehabilitation program are housed in school dormitories without any clear plans for re-integrating them into the society. “This, to me, shows that the government is either not sincere or they haven’t quite thought this thing through, and this is one of the reasons why I think it’d be premature to begin to hail the so-called amnesty as successful,” Ms. Briggs said. President Yar’Adua has been in an ecstatic mood since a few prominent militants surrendered last week, saying that his government was committed to addressing the issues behind their armed resistance. “We shall do everything in our power to ensure that the oil on the land and waters of the Niger Delta shall begin to be a source of blessing rather than a curse to the people of the area,” the president said after a meeting with the militant leaders at the presidential villa in Abuja.

Nigeria
Defense and Military Forces
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare


F.D.A. Approves Pill to Treat Hepatitis C

Abstract: The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a pill that is expected to make the treatment of hepatitis C less onerous, shorter in duration and more effective. The drug, Sovaldi, from Gilead Sciences, will allow at least some patients infected with the liver-destroying virus to be treated with pills only, doing away with weekly injections of a drug that can have debilitating side effects . “Today’s approval represents a significant shift in the treatment paradigm for some patients with chronic hepatitis C,” said Dr. Edward Cox, director of the office of antimicrobial products at the F.D.A. But the greater convenience and effectiveness comes at a price. Gilead said the wholesale cost of Sovaldi, which is known generically as sofosbuvir, would be $28,000 for four weeks — or $1,000 per daily pill. That translates to $84,000 for the 12 weeks of treatment recommended for most patients, and $168,000 for the 24 weeks needed for a hard-to-treat strain of the virus. “This is unbearable to the health care system and it is completely unjustified,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which runs treatment clinics in the United States and abroad and has previously clashed with Gilead on the price of its drugs for H.I.V. The Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge, a legal group based in New York, recently filed a motion to try to block patenting of the drug in India. If it succeeds, generic manufacturers in India will be able to manufacture cheap copies of the drug for distribution there and in some other developing countries. Gilead said the price was fair given the drug’s higher cure rate and that the total cost for the 12-week regimen was “consistent with, and in some cases lower than” the cost of some other regimens for hepatitis C. It said it would offer financial assistance to some patients. Some three million to four million Americans, many of them in middle age, are believed to have a chronic hepatitis C infection, though many do not know it. The virus slowly damages the liver, leading to cirrhosis and in some cases to liver cancer. But it often takes decades before any damage is noticeable, and many people never experience a problem. Globally, at least 150 million people have hepatitis C. Sovaldi was obtained by Gilead in an $11 billion acquisition of a smaller company, Pharmasset. The high purchase price raised eyebrows when the deal was announced in 2011, but it has vaulted Gilead to the lead in a heated race to develop all-oral treatments for hepatitis C. AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Johnson & Johnson and others are also developing all-oral regimens for hepatitis C that could reach the market in the next one to three years. Some analysts expect Sovaldi to become one of the best-selling drugs in the world. Matthew Roden, an analyst at UBS, said in a note on Friday that annual sales could surpass the record of around $13 billion achieved by Lipitor, from Pfizer, in its peak year. Sales are expected to be strong from the start, because many patients, on the advice of their doctors, have been putting off starting treatment until Sovaldi became available. One person waiting is Tom Espinosa, a building inspector in Oakland, Calif. He has tried the existing drugs and some experimental ones, without success, so this drug might be his last chance. His liver is already deteriorating badly, but he is hoping the new drug will stop the progression. Other companies are trying to get at least a little piece of Gilead’s bounty. Merck, Roche and Idenix Pharmaceuticals are separately claiming that Sovaldi infringes on patents they hold. Should any of those companies prevail, it is expected they will receive royalties, not keep the drug off the market. Until two years ago, the treatment for hepatitis C consisted of 24 to 48 weeks of weekly injections of interferon alfa combined with daily tablets of ribavirin. Neither drug was developed specifically to treat hepatitis C. The combination cured about half of patients, but the side effects, including flulike symptoms, anemia and depression, could be severe. Sovaldi and newer drugs work by inhibiting enzymes produced by the hepatitis C virus. This is the same approach that was used to make drugs for H.I.V. As in H.I.V., two or more of these drugs for hepatitis C must be used together, to prevent the virus from developing resistance. Cure rates with Sovaldi, a polymerase inhibitor, are over 80 percent, though success and treatment duration depend in part on which strain, or genotype, of the virus is involved. For genotypes 2 and 3, which together account for about 20 to 25 percent of cases in the United States, Sovaldi’s label recommends the drug be used with ribavirin. This will constitute the first all-oral, interferon-free treatment for hepatitis C. Genotype 2 will require 12 weeks of treatment and genotype 3 will need 24 weeks. For genotype 1, which accounts for more than 70 percent of American cases, Sovaldi is supposed to be used with injected interferon and ribavirin. But the treatment is for only 12 weeks instead of 24 or 48, and the cure rate is about 90 percent for newly treated patients. The label, however, says that genotype 1 patients who are ineligible for interferon can be treated for 24 weeks with Sovaldi and ribavirin. Wall Street analysts had not been expecting an all-oral regimen to be endorsed for genotype 1 patients. The side effects seem mild, though the clinical trials to date have not been able to distinguish the effects of Sovaldi from the drugs it was taken with. Ribavirin requires several pills taken more than once a day. Gilead hopes to combine Sovaldi with another drug it is developing into a single pill that can be taken once a day and cure most cases of genotype 1. Results of clinical trials testing how that combination pill works are expected in the coming weeks. If all goes well, that drug could get to market by the end of next year.

Hepatitis
Gilead Sciences
Liver
Pharmaceuticals
FDA


Texas: Man Is Spared After Evidence Turns Up

Abstract: A judge spared a man who was to be executed today in a double murder, after the Dallas County prosecutor’s office discovered evidence they believe had been withheld from the man’s lawyers. A second polygraph given to a co-defendant of the man, Joseph Lave, came to light in the last few days and reflects on the credibility of the co-defendant, said Mike Ware, of the district attorney’s conviction integrity unit. Mr. Lave was one of three robbers involved in the 1992 deaths of two teenagers in Richardson. Prosecutors say lawyers no longer with the office misled the court by saying the evidence did not exist.


As Europe Readies Bank Plan, Last-Minute Jitters and a Move to Pull Back

Abstract: BRUSSELS — Even as European Union officials put the final touches on a plan for a central bank supervisor, prominent Germans and some leaders in Central and Eastern Europe were trying on Tuesday to modify or delay the proposal. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Union’s administrative arm, the European Commission , planned to present the proposal on Wednesday. European leaders agreed in June to a closer integration of the region’s banks, imposing new scrutiny and discipline as a way to help ease the region’s three-year debt crisis . The main elements of the plan are expected to include transferring regulatory oversight of all banks in the 17 European Union countries that use the euro to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. The central bank would have the power to fine lenders that did not follow its rules and withdraw the licenses of substandard banks. The new system would begin in January, with all 6,000 euro zone banks required to join by the beginning of 2014. But several countries now fear the devils that some see in the details. Paradoxically, some of the strongest opposition has come from Germany, usually a cheerleader for any measure that promotes economic rigor. But some German officials, including the finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, say that the new system should apply only to the euro zone’s biggest banks, the ones that could pose a threat to the entire European financial system. Extending the system to all euro zone banks would lead to greater scrutiny of smaller regional and local institutions as well. There has also been concern in some of the nations that are in the European Union but outside the euro currency union that the new system might hurt their banks, which would not have access to the central bank’s lines of credit and European bailout funds. Hungary is among the nations most concerned. The plan needs the approval of all 27 countries in the European Union. Any delay could be painful for countries like Spain, which desperately needs to recapitalize its banking sector. European leaders have said that direct injections to such banks from the new bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, are contingent on the central bank having a lead role in banking supervision. “The political barriers are nontrivial,” said Roberto Henriques, a credit analyst at JPMorgan Chase in London. “We believe that the target the region has set itself — implementation to begin from January 2013 — is unrealistic.” On a separate front, the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund’s future could also depend on a decision expected Wednesday morning in Karlsruhe, Germany. There, the nation’s Constitutional Court was expected to rule on whether and under what conditions Germany could contribute money to the fund. The creation of the single bank supervisor for the euro zone is a first step in what voguish policy-makers call E.M.U. 2.0. The goal is to revise the Economic and Monetary Union — the euro union — by combining cross-border budget management with possibly jointly issued debt and more central economic policy-making, while trying to ensure democratic accountability. Those goals are strongly supported by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. How quickly all of this can happen has become a political balancing act for Mr. Barroso and for Michel Barnier, the European Union commissioner in charge of trade. In Central and Eastern Europe, there were even warnings on Tuesday about possible bank runs, should depositors flee to the perceived safety of banks under the new European Central Bank regulator. National authorities would in fact retain much influence over the new system, including day-to-day supervision of banks and responsibility for enforcing banking rules. In many cases, the European Central Bank would rely on existing regulatory institutions to flag serious difficulties, help assess applications for new banks and oversee adoption of new financial models. Even so, the plans could do much to remove barriers between national banking systems. And the European Central Bank would have the power not only to fine banks for breaching its orders, but also to carry out inspections and supervise any stress tests to gauge the vulnerability of institutions. The proposals would also modify the powers of another agency, the European Banking Authority, which is needed in part to assure countries outside the euro zone, namely Britain, that policies for them will not be set by central bankers in Frankfurt. Those plans are separate, though, and would need agreement of the European Parliament and a majority of European Union member states before becoming law. By beefing up supervision under the European Central Bank, one of the few European institutions to emerge from the euro crisis with its reputation intact, officials in Brussels are seeking to end the vicious cycle in which some nations have racked up enormous debts by bailing out their banks. France, for one, has been particularly wary of using public money to bail out banks at the expense of its other public objectives. That is why the French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, has sought to maintain momentum for the new European banking proposal. “When I say as soon as possible, I mean in 2012,” Mr. Moscovici said in a speech at Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels, last week, referring to the establishment of a single supervisor and urging adoption this year of rules to guarantee deposits and close failing banks. But the timetable proposed by the commission and Mr. Moscovici was “ambitious” and even “radical,” said a senior European Union official who would speak only on condition of anonymity.

European Union
European Commission
European Central Bank
Banking and Financial Institutions
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )


I.R.S. Plans to Regulate Paid Tax Preparers

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service plans to start regulating paid tax preparers, requiring them to register with the government, pass competency tests and adhere to ethical standards. The regulations, announced Monday, will not be in effect for the current filing season — individual tax returns are due April 15. But the I.R.S. commissioner, Douglas H. Shulman, said tax preparers would be held to higher standards as the agency stepped up its oversight to help reduce fraud and errors. The I.R.S. announced in June that it wanted to start regulating paid tax preparers. The agency then held a series of public hearings to gather information, leading up to Monday’s announcement. “As tax season begins, most Americans will turn to tax return preparers to help with one of their biggest financial transactions of the year,” Mr. Shulman said in a statement . The new regulations “will help ensure taxpayers receive competent, ethical service from qualified professionals and strengthen the integrity of the nation’s tax system.” Mr. Shulman said he hoped to have all paid tax preparers registered by the 2011 filing season. Existing preparers will be given three years to meet competency requirements. More than 80 percent of taxpayers use a paid tax preparer or tax software to complete their yearly returns. However, paid tax preparers are unregulated in many states, unless they are also lawyers, certified public accountants or enrolled agents who represent taxpayers before the I.R.S. Lawyers, certified public accountants and enrolled agents will not be affected by the new regulations. Mr. Shulman said those preparers already were regulated through their professions. He estimated that 900,000 to 1.4 million people accept money to prepare tax returns for others. He said the agency would have a better handle on the number once they had to register. “We think this is incredibly important to the entire tax system that when people pay good money for a tax return preparer, they don’t get bad advice,” Mr. Shulman said. Though the new regulations will not be in place this year, Mr. Shulman said the I.R.S. was stepping up enforcement of preparers this tax season. He said the agency would send notices to 10,000 preparers who had had frequent errors. He said agents would also visit thousands of tax preparers. Some of the visits will be announced ahead of time; others will not. In some visits, agents will pose as taxpayers to see if they get accurate advice from preparers, Mr. Shulman said. Mr. Shulman said taxpayers should avoid preparers who promise larger refunds, or those who charge fees based on the size of the refund.

Ethics
Taxation
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Federal Taxes (US)


Suicides Eclipse War Deaths for U.S. Troops

Abstract: The suicide rate among the nation’s active-duty military personnel has spiked this year, eclipsing the number of troops dying in battle and on pace to set a record annual high since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, the Pentagon said Friday. Suicides have increased even as the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq and stepped up efforts to provide mental health, drug and alcohol, and financial counseling services. The military said Friday that there had been 154 suicides among active-duty troops through Thursday, a rate of nearly one each day this year. The figures were first reported this week by The Associated Press. That number represents an 18 percent increase over the 130 active-duty military suicides for the same period in 2011. There were 123 suicides from January to early June in 2010, and 133 during that period in 2009, the Pentagon said. By contrast, there were 124 American military fatalities in Afghanistan as of June 1 this year, according to the Pentagon. Suicide rates of military personnel and combat veterans have risen sharply since 2005, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan intensified. Recently, the Pentagon established a Defense Suicide Prevention Office. On Friday, Cynthia Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said the Pentagon had sought to remind commanders that those who seek counseling should not be stigmatized. “This is a troubling issue, and we are committed to getting our service members the help they need,” she said. “I want to emphasize that getting help is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength.” In a letter to military commanders last month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that “suicide prevention is a leadership responsibility,” and added, “Commanders and supervisors cannot tolerate any actions that belittle, haze, humiliate or ostracize any individual, especially those who require or are responsibly seeking professional services.” But veterans’ groups said Friday that the Pentagon had not done enough to moderate the tremendous stress under which combat troops live, including coping with multiple deployments. “It is clear that the military, at the level of the platoon, the company and the battalion, that these things are not being addressed on a compassionate and understanding basis,” said Bruce Parry, chairman of the Coalition of Veterans Organizations, a group based in Illinois. “They need to understand on a much deeper level the trauma the troops are facing.” Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called suicides among active-duty military personnel “the tip of the iceberg.” He cited a survey the group conducted this year among its 160,000 members that found that 37 percent knew someone who had committed suicide. Mr. Rieckhoff attributed the rise in military suicides to too few qualified mental health professionals, aggravated by the stigma of receiving counseling and further compounded by family stresses and financial problems. The unemployment rate among military families is a particular problem, he said. “They are thinking about combat, yeah, but they are also thinking about their wives and kids back home,” he said.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Witnesses Confirm Bernazard Bus Incident

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In baseball, the team bus is sort of a misnomer. Players rarely ride it from the hotel before road games, many taking cabs instead, and afterward the seats are only somewhat more full. But several players took the bus last Friday after the Mets were hammered, 11-0, by the Braves in Atlanta. And on that bus, Francisco Rodriguez and Tony Bernazard, the highest-ranking team executive on the trip, engaged in a verbal confrontation that adds to the team’s disarray. According to people on the bus, Rodriguez made a friendly gesture toward family members of his fellow reliever Pedro Feliciano that Bernazard might have misinterpreted. They argued in Spanish, and the dispute escalated to the point that there seemed to be a danger of a physical altercation, one witness said. But Bernazard backed off, no blows were exchanged and Rodriguez, though upset, walked toward the back of the bus and sat down. Rodriguez declined to comment after Wednesday’s 3-1 loss to the Nationals, the Mets’ 16th loss in 23 games, and did so again Thursday afternoon in Houston, where the Mets were spending a day off before opening a three-game series Friday. The Mets did not make any statements Thursday about their ongoing investigation into Bernazard’s conduct during a recent visit to their Class AA Binghamton affiliate, where he reportedly challenged members of the team to a fight in their clubhouse after a game. Bernazard is at home in New Jersey, where he will remain until the investigation is finished, General Manager Omar Minaya said Wednesday. It remains unclear, though, whether the Mets actually plan to investigate the Binghamton incident or whether they were already aware of what occurred and are simply taking time to decide his fate. As the team’s vice president for player development, Bernazard oversees the minor league system and regularly travels to check in on the Mets’ affiliates. But he also accompanies the Mets on the road, splitting those trips with Minaya and the assistant general manager John Ricco, who, as scheduled, will be with the team this weekend in Houston. If the Mets decide not to fire Bernazard, it is still possible that they could diminish his responsibilities or curb his interactions with Mets players, who may take it personally that he ended up in a dispute with one of them.

Baseball
New York Mets
Bernazard Tony
Rodriguez Francisco
Minaya Omar
Feliciano Pedro


Bust by John Ahearn Recalls Justin McWillis, Teenage Shooting Victim From the Bronx

Abstract: Biting his lip in concentration, George Diaz leaned over a life-size bust of his friend Justin McWillis. As he finished dabbing brown paint along Justin’s face, George let out a slight laugh. “He had a laugh nobody could duplicate,” George said. “God made it just for him, that laugh.” It was a bittersweet memory. The last time George had seen his friend was at Justin’s wake, where the 18-year-old’s body was laid out in the graduation robe he should have worn this month. Justin was fatally shot during an argument on Jan. 18, not far from the Bronx youth center where George now paid painstaking attention to his friend’s stoic likeness. Months earlier, Justin was the first of a dozen young people at the center who posed for life casts by John Ahearn, an artist who has cast enough residents of the South Bronx to fill several apartment buildings. Come to think of it, more than a few South Bronx apartments have his handiwork nestled amid Sears portraits and plaster Virgins, since Mr. Ahearn often gives a replica to his subjects. The cast, which George and several friends at the Next Generation Center had been painting over the last week, was also destined for a living room — probably on a wall where Justin’s high school diploma would have gone. It was for his mother, Rhonda McWillis. “I just don’t know how she’s going to take it,” George said quietly on Tuesday afternoon, his fingertips streaked in green from last-minute touch-ups. “Is it good enough? I got overwhelmed with feeling.” Those feelings are not uncommon at the center, run by the Children’s Aid Society as a place that welcomes young people trying to make their way in the world. Some have come up in foster homes and are preparing to venture out on their own. Others come from intact families but shaky neighborhoods. What they find at the center is each other, and adults who will work with them in the arts, music, writing and even cooking. “We don’t want anybody coming in here anonymous or invisible,” said Lynne Echenberg, the center’s director. “The target is the kid who is most vulnerable to being disconnected.” Justin, who was one semester shy of graduating from Bronx Expeditionary Learning High School , was one of those kids who everybody thought was on track. Other kids looked up to him. “He was all about school,” George said. “I didn’t have a chance to finish school, but he was always talking about school. He wanted to go to college. I guess he was going to do everything up there.” A big guy, Justin could be goofy, too. “He wasn’t good at basketball — the sport just wasn’t made for him,” George said. “Me and him would play without scoring. But it would be fun just to make it that way.” Mr. Ahearn met Justin last summer at the center, and the young man asked the artist for his help in rendering his name in a bold graffiti style. Later, Mr. Ahearn showed Justin some casts he had done of young people. Justin agreed to participate, lying down on a table, covered in casting material and breathing through straws in his nostrils. “He was relaxed, fearless,” Mr. Ahearn said. “The pose he wanted was with his arms crossed. I think his intent was to look formidable. To look tough. To look strong. To look serious.” After he finished, 11 other youths stepped up. Some of them helped to paint their casts, though Justin did not. He was off on other interests. Another young man painted Justin’s cast, which eventually was hung on the skylight walls in the center’s atrium. The project would have been a footnote to the center’s life had Justin not lost his. Mr. Ahearn quickly offered to make a replica. Months later, George volunteered to paint it. He had less than a week to finish, since it was going to be given as a surprise gift to Justin’s mother at a ceremony marking achievements big and small at the center. Among the year’s successes was the $250 award that Justin’s friends created soon after his death. They planned it, baked cakes and washed cars to come up with the award in his name, which will be given to a college-bound senior to help buy books. On Tuesday, the center’s sunny atrium was filled with parents and young people. Young drummers pounded out a deafening beat, and later, a singer played a soulful piano solo in memory of Justin and William Isreal, another teenager from the center who was shot dead this winter . Above them, a dozen casts — young people frozen in smiles, embraces and, yes, crossed-arm determination — ringed the atrium. “Justin is physically gone, but he is never gone from us,” said James Fisher, a youth worker, to Justin’s mother. “We have him here, looking over us. We wanted you to have him, not only in your heart. We are pleased to give this to you.” With that, the bust that George and his friends had painted was unveiled and slowly carried to Ms. McWillis, who put a hand to her eyes and stifled a sob. Justin’s sister Dina, 4, and brother Jordin, 6, watched wide-eyed. “It’s Justin,” Ms. McWillis finally said. “Look, Justin.” Dina squiggled from her mother’s embrace and reached out. With a giggle, she touched her brother’s face.

John Ahearn
Bronx
Art
Children's Aid Society


Despite Well-Known Risks, Ticket-Fixing Is Decades Old

Abstract: In 1951, police officers in Manhattan’s 20th Precinct were investigated for sabotaging paperwork to kill traffic citations, as favors for politicians. In the middle of the inquiry, the ledger recording all the precinct’s summonses mysteriously disappeared. Three years later, an inquiry uncovered 100 officers who had sidestepped the summons altogether: they sold $10 courtesy cards that motorists could flash and go free, according to the police and the Brooklyn district attorney. Between those two scandals, reformers hatched what was thought to be an incorruptible solution: Gov. Thomas E. Dewey proposed redesigning the summons books that officers carry, with ticket slips consecutively numbered, each in quadruple form. A newspaper report called it “a system of non-fixable tickets.” It didn’t quite work out that way. In 1987, a veteran police officer, Robert Hanes, was dismissed from the force after a departmental trial found he had persuaded another officer to give false testimony that let a motorist evade a fine for speeding. In 1996, a federal judge sentenced William Caldwell, a former police captain and president of the Housing Police Superior Officers Association, to a year in jail for fixing thousands of parking tickets . His scheme often involved false paperwork claiming the cars had been stolen or were disabled at the time the ticket was issued. In pleading guilty, Mr. Caldwell said, “Some of these things I did were for friends of mine, some were for profit.” Over the years, the headlines, court cases and wrecked careers put generations of officers on notice about the professional risks involved in fixing a ticket. Yet the practice persisted. Now it has become the focus of a major multiprecinct investigation , the largest focused on ticket-fixing since the 1950s. Some are wondering what took so long. Hundreds of officers could be disciplined by the time a grand jury in the Bronx finishes its work, including roughly two dozen officers who could face criminal charges, officials and others briefed on the case have said. The inquiry began when the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, in an unrelated investigation, taped an officer in mid-2009 trying to have a ticket fixed. The scheme centers on union delegates and trustees. Officers wanting to make a ticket disappear — or following orders to do so — would seek out union officials who seemed plugged into a network for doing it safely. On Friday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the ticket-fixing should have been stopped sooner. “There seems to be a lot of evidence that there was a practice that should not have taken place,” he said during his weekly radio program on WOR. The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, citing the grand jury’s work, said through a spokesman that he had no comment. “Whenever an allegation of ticket-fixing came to the commissioner’s attention, it was pursued by I.A.B.,” said the spokesman, Paul J. Browne, referring to the Internal Affairs Bureau. “And no, he never fixed a ticket or was party to fixing one.” Over the years, discipline meted out in ticket cases has been focused mostly on officers characterized by superiors as rogues, including some who had been caught accepting a bribe. When officers have been found to have fixed tickets, the department has come down hard, handling it as a career-ending offense and holding internal trials, but leaving it there. Many active and retired officers said they could not recall any departmentwide measures to curb the practice. Several current and former prosecutors said it was extremely rare for Internal Affairs to bring ticket-fixing cases to a district attorney’s office. One former assistant district attorney who supervised and prosecuted police corruption cases said he could recall only one such instance; several others could recall none. “This stuff has been happening since the beginning of time,” the former prosecutor said, “and it’d be like picking off ducks in a barrel. Anytime anyone wanted to, they could make a big case, so they just haven’t wanted to.” While ticket-fixing was a regular practice, many rank-and-file officers dreaded receiving such requests. “Most guys spend their whole career hoping this does not blow their way,” said one officer who insisted on anonymity, referring to ticket requests. A law enforcement official, in defending the Police Department, noted that it was the department that brought the case to the office of the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson. Rae Downes Koshetz, a former Police Department deputy commissioner of trials who presided over administrative hearings of officers, said a handful of such cases came her way. “Anytime one of those cases came before me, it was a firing offense to fix a ticket,” she said. “It’s corruption. Sometimes it involves bribery, lying, and the department is supposed to have a zero-tolerance policy for lying.” She added: “I was there for 14 years. We weren’t clogged with ticket-fixing cases.” In one case, upheld by an appellate court, Officer Jeffrey Cohen was found to have tried to harass and intimidate a fellow officer into making false statements about the issuing of a ticket. Taped conversations showed how the motorist’s testimony was coached. Officer Cohen was fired from the department. In another case, from 1997, an officer was fired for taking $200 to rip up a speeding ticket for a friend, Ms. Koshetz said. Union officials, fighting back against an inquiry that has yet to be officially acknowledged by the Bronx district attorney’s office, which is running it, are defending themselves by hinting that high-ranking officials were involved in the process. After the ticket inquiry began, Mr. Kelly moved last August to implement a nonfixable system for tickets — some 60 years after Governor Dewey first tried it. Mr. Kelly ushered in a new computerized system to provide for an electronic record of every ticket, in the hope that such a system would prove less corruptible. Ms. Koshetz said the department deserved credit for implementing the system, known as the Electronic Summons Tracking System and described in a departmental memo as a way to “increase administrative efficiency and ensure accountability” over summonses. “It seems that the department has dealt with it by trying to make it difficult, by having a computer system and giving them ticket books where the summonses are consecutively numbered,” Ms. Koshetz said. Some officers say it was once a cinch to fix tickets: An officer could rip up all the copies headed for traffic court, or to commanders. Sometimes the paperwork was retrieved from a box behind the precinct desk that is emptied once each shift. But the officer could also go to court and feign memory loss or call in sick on consecutive court dates. The officer who spoke anonymously said some in the department became cynical about traffic court because of its unpredictable, freewheeling atmosphere. Harold Dee, a lawyer, said he had heard some troubling requests when he was a traffic court judge in the Bronx and Harlem before retiring from the bench nearly two decades ago. “Occasionally a cop would come to me and say, ‘Oh, Judge Dee, I wrote this but I found out the person is family. I’m sorry I wrote it, so I’m going to say that my radar was not properly checked out,’ ” he said. “I’d listen and I’d never know if it was some sort of shoofly or somebody trying to get me indicted. I’d say, ‘Officer, just present your case, and if it’s not sufficient, I’ll dismiss the charges.’ ” Any given ticket fix might involve three or four officers, each with varying motives and moral and legal distinctions, according to those who have done it. One officer might have called in a request to help a friend; a second might have relayed that request to a third in the precinct where the ticket was issued. And a fourth might fix it for no other reason except that, as Ms. Koshetz put it, “there are very powerful incentives within the Police Department to get along and go along.”

Police Department (NYC)
Traffic Violations
Police Brutality and Misconduct
New York City


Explosion Kills Six British Soldiers in Afghanistan

Abstract: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — British forces suffered their deadliest attack in six years when an armored vehicle struck an explosive device in southern Afghanistan, killing six soldiers, the British government announced on Wednesday. The blast occurred late Tuesday in the Gereshk district of Helmand Province, said Lt. Col. Gordon Mackenzie, the spokesman for NATO forces in the area. The province had been repeatedly called one of the success stories of the past two years of the war. “I have the tragic duty to report that six soldiers are missing, believed killed, during a security patrol,” Colonel Mackenzie said in a statement. “The six soldiers, five from Third Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment, and one from First Battalion, the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, were on patrol in a Warrior armored fighting vehicle when it was caught in an explosion in the Task Force Helmand area of operations.” The casualties occurred after the vehicle struck a homemade bomb, said Dawood Ahmadi, the spokesman for the provincial governor. While no one claimed the province was completely peaceful, security had improved so much in Helmand after the surge of American troops who came to Afghanistan in early 2010 that it was considered a qualified success. Places like Marja that had been no-go areas dominated by the Taliban became places where residents and even outsiders could drive with some safety. “The word I use to describe what has happened in Helmand is a transformation,” said Michael O’Neill, the departing head of the provincial reconstruction team in Helmand, in a recent interview. “I don’t think the situation is perfect. Nevertheless, I think you can credibly talk about a transformation.” Bombs like the one that killed the British soldiers late on Tuesday test those claims of progress and raise doubts about whether any progress can be sustained if it remains impossible to stop insurgents from laying large bombs even when many NATO troops are patrolling the province. According to local security officials who asked not to be named because they are not supposed to speak to reporters, the area is relatively free of Taliban fighters, but they do cross Gereshk periodically and lay bombs meant to hit NATO forces and the Afghan National Army. The British have had a major presence in Helmand for much of the war; most of the 9,500 British troops in Afghanistan are posted in the province. “I utterly condemn those responsible for this incident, who will ultimately fail to derail a mission that is protecting our national security at home,” said the British defense minister, Philip Hammond. The bombing brought the death toll for British forces in Afghanistan to 404 since the war started more than a decade ago. The six soldiers who were killed had been in Afghanistan for just three weeks, British officials said in London. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said it was “a desperately sad day for our country, and desperately sad, of course, for the families concerned.” Mr. Cameron called the attack “a reminder of the huge price that we are paying for the work we are doing in Afghanistan.” On Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, a remotely detonated bomb affixed to a motorcycle exploded in a crowded border bazaar, killing a man, a woman and two children. The target of the attack was apparently the border security commander for the area, Mohammed Omar, but the bomb wounded him only slightly, said Hajji Abdul Ghani, the district governor for Spinbaldak. The bazaar is the haunt of smugglers as well as legitimate merchants, and civilians throng there from both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to buy goods. “If the target was just the commander, they should find another way to do it, not killing women and children,” said Hajji Faida Mohammed, an elder who lives near the blast site. “God knows what will happen next to our poor people,” he added.

Afghanistan
Afghanistan War (2001- )
Great Britain
Defense and Military Forces
Deaths (Fatalities)
Bombs and Explosives


Oil Spill in South Atlantic Threatens Endangered Penguins

Abstract: A major spill of heavy crude oil from a wrecked freighter has coated an estimated 20,000 endangered penguins on a remote South Atlantic island chain, the local authorities and environmental groups said Tuesday. More than 800 tons of fuel oil has leaked from the Maltese-registered ship, which ran aground on Nightingale Island, part of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago , a British territory, early in the morning of March 16, local officials said. All 22 crew members of the M.S. Oliva were rescued. “The scene at Nightingale is dreadful, as there is an oil slick encircling the island,” Trevor Glass, a local conservation officer, said in a statement. The ship has broken in half and an additional 800 tons of fuel oil is believed to be leaking from the front section of the hull, said a spokeswoman with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds , a British-based conservation group monitoring the situation. So far, only one salvage vessel has arrived from South Africa, and its spill response and bird rescue capabilities were described as limited. A second, better-equipped response ship is expected to depart for the area from South Africa on Thursday. Conservation groups said the wreck could pose a different ecological threat to the chain as rats could have come ashore from the vessel, which was carrying 66,000 tons of soybeans from Brazil to Singapore. Several islands in the archipelago are rodent-free, and a rat infestation could potentially do more harm to bird life than any oiling, experts said. The Tristan Da Cunha archipelago lies about 1,700 miles from the nearest land, in South Africa, making it the most remote inhabited island group in the world. The islands are rich in life and are home to about 200,000 penguins, including nearly half of the world’s population of northern rockhopper penguins , an endangered species whose population has plunged in recent decades for unknown reasons. Jay Holcomb, the director emeritus of the International Bird Rescue Research Center , a bird conservation group that responds to oil spills , said in a posting on the group’s Web site that about 20,000 rockhopper penguins had been “confirmed oiled.” Images from the island showed large groups of penguins, which have distinctive spiky crests, coated in oil. “Many of the birds have been oiled for over a week, which limits their chances of survival,” Mr. Holcomb wrote. The estimate of 20,000 was based on an early visual survey of the archipelago’s penguin habitat and may be adjusted, the center said. The extreme remoteness of the island chain poses a serious challenge for responders as there is no airport and oiled birds cannot be removed because of concern about transmission of diseases to which the birds have no resistance, Mr. Holcomb said. The owner of the wrecked vessel could not be immediately identified. The authorities in Malta, where the ship is registered, did not respond to a request for information on Tuesday.

Penguins
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Environment


Conference Offers Tryout for Hopefuls

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — A gathering of religious conservatives here on Friday and Saturday drew nearly all the Republican presidential hopefuls. The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s two-day conference showed that the religious right still plays a major role in the nominating process, even if it is less organized than during the Christian Coalition’s heyday. The gathering was a tryout for candidates hoping to fill a void left by former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, an ordained Baptist minister who won the 2008 Iowa caucus but is not running for the 2012 Republican nomination. Most candidates spent more time on money issues than on spiritual matters on the opening day. But they generally portrayed the federal debt and health care policies as moral concerns. They also paid tribute to religious conservatives who often place social issues ahead of concerns about taxes and spending. “I do not believe the Republican Party should focus solely on our economic life to the neglect of our human life,” Jon M. Huntsman Jr. told the audience of several hundred after citing antiabortion laws he signed when governor of Utah. The Republican contenders who seem to be making the most direct appeals to evangelical voters are Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota; Tim Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota; Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania; and Newt Gingrich of Georgia, a former House speaker, who declined an invitation to speak. Mr. Pawlenty opened and closed his remarks with biblical quotes. He said his top four “common-sense principles” for the nation were to turn toward God, protect the unborn, support traditional marriage and keep Americans secure. Ms. Bachmann, inching toward a presidential bid, reminded the audience that she home-schooled her five children and ended with a prayer that asked a blessing for President Obama, whom she had sharply criticized moments earlier. Mitt Romney may have the toughest task in wooing religious conservatives. As governor of Massachusetts, he supported legalized abortion, gay rights and gun control, but he has reversed his stands. He cited “our belief in the sanctity of human life” and said marriage should apply to “one man and one woman.” Representative Ron Paul of Texas mixed quotes from the Bible with his familiar libertarian proposals, like returning to the gold standard. All these lines got applause. Still, a sense of unease sometimes hung over the event. Organizers acknowledged that some religious conservatives were not happy with the current emphasis on economic matters. The audience members sat silently when Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi urged them to embrace the eventual nominee. “Purity is the enemy of victory,” said Mr. Barbour, who has decided against his own presidential bid.

Faith and Freedom Coalition
Republican Party
Presidential Election of 2012
Conventions and Conferences


Jim Fassel Still Waiting for Second Chance as an N.F.L. Coach

Abstract: HENDERSON, Nev. — Over the past 25 years, 14 men have led New York-area professional teams to a championship game or series. Twelve are still with their team or were hired to comparable head coach or manager positions with other franchises. Only two were not. One of the two, Pat Burns, led the Devils to the 2003 Stanley Cup title, but he stepped down in 2005 because of cancer and died last year. The other, Jim Fassel , is here, living in a well-appointed Spanish-style house about 20 miles from the Las Vegas Strip and many more from the city where he nearly reached the pinnacle of N.F.L. success. “Does it bother me that I’m not on the sideline of the N.F.L.?” Fassel said during a recent interview at his home. “Yeah. Sure it does. But it’s not going to control my life. Otherwise, I’m a miserable person.” Fassel has a career record of 58-53-1 as an N.F.L. head coach. He has been described, at times, as an “offensive genius” and a “coach who gets results.” In the 2000 season, he took the Giants to the Super Bowl , a run that will be forever remembered for Fassel’s November declaration that he was “shoving my chips to the center of the table” and guaranteeing his 7-4 team would make the playoffs. Three seasons later, when Fassel and the Giants parted ways, there seemed to be little doubt he would resurface quickly. Fassel had thrived in the league’s biggest market. He was media friendly, charismatic and, most important, a proven winner. The Giants’ president, John Mara, said at the time: “I think without question he’ll be a head coach again. Probably next year.” But eight years later, that remains Fassel’s last N.F.L. head coaching job. Coaches like Norv Turner and Marty Schottenheimer have received second and third — and, in the case of Schottenheimer, even fourth — chances despite never reaching the Super Bowl, while more successful Fassel contemporaries like Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden are out of the league but constantly linked to openings. It has been a long time since Fassel has been a serious candidate. Instead he has bounced around, working as an N.F.L. assistant, on the radio and, currently, as the president, general manager and head coach of the Las Vegas Locomotives, one of four teams in the struggling United Football League. Fassel has coached the Locomotives to two championships in three years. And he said he still believed he would succeed in the N.F.L. He is motivated, he said. He is prepared. But he may no longer be wanted. Successes and Struggles When the Giants hired Fassel in 1997, they did so because he was, Mara said recently, “a guy we thought could jump-start us — and he did.” Fassel was best known for his handling of quarterbacks and offenses, including a two-year stint as the Giants’ quarterbacks coach under Ray Handley. “He was a huge part of my career,” said Kent Graham, who was with the Giants when Fassel was both an assistant and the head coach. “He was incredibly organized and clear with his players. He didn’t make things more complicated than they had to be.” The Giants went 10-5-1 in Fassel’s first season and he was named the N.F.L.’s coach of the year. In 1998, the Giants struggled but still pulled off a notable upset when they beat John Elway and the 13-0 Denver Broncos in December. Two seasons later, the Giants were in the Super Bowl, where they lost to Baltimore, 34-7. By 2003, however, Fassel was on his way out after a pair of losing seasons and one playoff meltdown — squandering a 24-point third-quarter lead against San Francisco in 2002. With his team 4-10, he announced on Dec. 17 that he would resign after the season, knowing he almost surely would have been fired anyway. To most observers, it was a classy move by Fassel and one that would usher in a new beginning, not an end. Fassel, for his part, acknowledges that he is partly responsible for his seeming exile. He interviewed for three head coaching jobs immediately after leaving the Giants — with the Washington Redskins, the Arizona Cardinals and the Buffalo Bills. With the Redskins, Fassel was seen as the favorite until Joe Gibbs, the renowned Washington coach, opted to come out of retirement. With the Cardinals and the Bills, however, Fassel said he was “terrible” in the interviews. He offered an explanation — he had the flu and had been across the country because his son was playing in a college bowl game — but conceded his research for each meeting was careless. “I just wasn’t prepared,” he said. “I was just shot. It taught me a lesson. I had three interviews within a week after the season ended. I did a bad job in Arizona, I know that, and Buffalo is kind of a blur because I was just fried.” There were also intimations that some Giants executives did not provide speak highly of Fassel when asked by other teams. When asked, Fassel would not directly address that issue, though he had words of praise for the Mara family and other team executives. In discussing Ernie Accorsi, the general manager from 1998 to 2007, however, Fassel turned curt. “We worked fine together — that’s it,” Fassel said. Accorsi, in an interview, dismissed the notion that he lobbied against Fassel. “I never received one phone call regarding Jim’s candidacy anywhere,” he said. He also said that “in all fairness, I never initiated one either.” Accorsi said that was because he was sensitive to his credibility with other executives around the league. He did not hire Fassel; the previous general manager, George Young, did. And Accorsi, who worked under Young before replacing him, had recommended that Young hire Nick Saban, then the coach at Michigan State. “George was impressed with Saban; we went and interviewed him,” Accorsi said. “I didn’t know Jim. I never had a problem with him. Was he my choice? No. Would he have been my choice? Probably not. But I thought we cooperated.” Accorsi added, “I wouldn’t want him to be deprived of a job.” In interviews, some former players wondered if concerns about Fassel’s personal life had been an issue. Particularly in 2003, players said, there was talk in the locker room about problems in Fassel’s marriage. Some players said they saw a change in Fassel’s focus. The Fassels had reconnected earlier that year with a son they gave up for adoption, but they went through marriage counseling “for several years,” according to Fassel’s ex-wife, Kitty. The couple divorced in 2006. “He was a consummate winner,” said Lomas Brown, an offensive lineman who played for Fassel in Arizona, where Fassel was an assistant, and with the Giants. “But maybe the baggage is too much.” Most executives quickly dismissed that notion — divorced coaches are hardly rare — and Fassel said: “I was going through a tough time. We grew apart. I got a divorce. Everyone wants to make something out of something else, but it’s not the case.” Time With the Ravens A more football-related explanation for Fassel’s predicament relates to his stint in Baltimore from 2004 to 2006. After losing out on the jobs in Arizona and Buffalo, Fassel took a position under Ravens Coach Brian Billick, a longtime friend. Initially, Fassel was what Billick termed a “senior consultant,” splitting time between his home in New Jersey and the Ravens’ facility, and tutoring the young quarterback Kyle Boller. By January 2005, however — after another year passed without Fassel getting a head coaching job — he became the Ravens’ offensive coordinator. Baltimore’s defensive prowess was well known, but its offense had stagnated; if Fassel could revive it, the thinking went, he would again become a prominent head coaching candidate. “He would have been able to write his own ticket,” Mara said. Instead, the Ravens fizzled. In 2005, Baltimore ranked 25th in the league in points scored and Boller, after missing seven games with turf toe, finished the season with 12 interceptions and a quarterback rating of 71.8. When things did not improve early in the 2006 season, Fassel had a messy parting with the Ravens. He said he stepped away because “the situation was different than what had been described,” while Billick announced that Fassel had been fired. “That, to me, was as big a factor as anything” in what has happened to Fassel, Mara said. Billick admitted that the parting put a strain on his relationship with Fassel — Fassel said the two have not spoken since — but he still calls Fassel “a friend.” Billick added that he did not believe Fassel’s time in Baltimore should be seen as a cause for his not being a head coach; rather, Billick said, the landscape for hiring coaches has changed. “It’s a general manager’s league now,” he said, pointing to the two recently fired coaches, Tony Sparano in Miami and Todd Haley in Kansas City. “There are a lot of G.M.’s saying, ‘Just give me a brilliant coordinator on one side of the ball,’ ” Billick said. “You saw when Bill Parcells went into Miami. It’s not Tony’s fault — I don’t know that Tony was on many people’s head coaching radar list. But Bill put a guy in place. Same with Scott Pioli in Kansas City.” Billick, who beat Fassel in Super Bowl XXXV and is currently an analyst for Fox and the NFL Network, said he may be in a similar situation. “Bringing in a coach who has won a championship, or has that pedigree, and has a big personality?” he said. “There seems to be a lot more hesitation nowadays.” A Lot of What Ifs One day last month, Fassel leaned back on the plush sectional couch in his living room and sipped a glass of red wine. “Monday Night Football” was on the flat-screen television and Fassel, who was born in Anaheim, looked California comfortable in a golf shirt, khakis and slip-ons with no socks. At one point, Fassel listened to a call on his cellphone and began nodding excitedly before hanging up. “My kicker on the Locos may get a tryout with the Bills,” he said. “They had an injury. We’ll see what happens.” Fassel’s happiness was genuine; he just enjoys coaching, regardless of the place, he said more than once. With the Locos, he is involved in virtually every aspect of the operation. “This isn’t a retirement job,” he said. And yet, he still wonders. What if it had worked out with the Redskins in 2004? Or in 2008, when it looked again as if Fassel might get the Washington job, only to lose out to Jim Zorn? What if those first interviews had gone better? And what if he had won that Super Bowl against the Ravens instead of being blown out? There are no answers, just as there is no obvious answer for why Fassel never got the second chance that once seemed a certainty. He shrugged, gesturing toward the N.F.L game on the screen in front of him. “I can’t ask those questions like, ‘Should I out be out there?’ all the time,” he said. “If I did, I would die.”

Las Vegas Locomotives
United Football League
Football
Fassel Jim
New York Giants
Coaches and Managers
National Football League


Georgetown Defeats Syracuse in Last Big East Matchup at Carrier Dome

Abstract: SYRACUSE — There was history on the court, on the sidelines, even in the deepest reaches of the Carrier Dome, where fans stretched out farther to watch basketball than ever before. They came, 35,000-strong, to see No. 8 Syracuse face No. 11 Georgetown in the final Big East matchup here between not-so-friendly rivals that seemed to carry the burden of four decades of emotion behind every basket and block. The dome glowed like the inside of a jack-o’-lantern. It sounded like the inside of a jet engine. And when the game was over, Georgetown celebrated on center court as the spoiler of a Syracuse showcase. The two foes battled the way they did in the old days, and the Hoyas pulled away late in the second half to win, 57-46. The contest was unmistakably reminiscent of their 1980 showdown, the last men’s basketball game at Manley Field House, which Georgetown won, 52-50. That result ended a 57-game home winning streak for the Orange, and on Saturday, the Hoyas brought a 38-game home winning streak to an end. Georgetown Coach John Thompson III was 13 in 1980, listening in his family’s kitchen in Washington to the radio broadcast. He cheered as his father, John Thompson, then the Hoyas’ coach, made the declaration that set the tone for the rivalry: “Manley Field House is officially closed.” Those words echoed through the years of memorable games, notable players and timeless moments. Syracuse and Georgetown grew up like siblings waged in perpetual one upmanship, under the umbrella of the Big East conference, a league celebrated as the epitome of toughness in college basketball. Saturday’s game, a slug-it-out affair in which neither team shot better than 36 percent, fit the mold beautifully. “It’s a good win, in a very difficult place to me, against a very, very good team,” Thompson III said. “Anytime you can come up here and win, it means a lot. This game, this rivalry means a lot.” With Syracuse heading to the Atlantic Coast Conference in July, this was the last time these teams faced each other at the Carrier Dome as conference opponents. They will play one final regular-season conference game March 9 in Washington, and they could always meet in the conference tournament at Madison Square Garden. Perhaps mindful of that, on Saturday Thompson refrained from stamping his own mark on the rivalry. “I’m sure you guys are waiting for a Manley Field House-type of statement — you’re not going to get it,” he said. “But it feels good to win here.” The stands were full — at 35,012, it was the largest on-campus crowd in N.C.A.A. regular-season history — pushing the dome to the brink of its basketball capacity, with every dim corner crammed, partially obstructed views notwithstanding. At halftime, Carmelo Anthony’s No. 15 jersey was retired to the rafters, hanging alongside the banner for Syracuse’s national championship in 2003 — the year Anthony led the Orange to the title. At that point, Syracuse had a 23-21 lead thanks to an 8-0 run to end the half. Things looked good for the Orange, until suddenly they did not. Georgetown (21-4, 11-3), which has won nine in a row, began the second half on an 18-8 run. Otto Porter, the Hoyas’ rangy sophomore forward, put on a second-half show, scoring 8 points in the first eight minutes, giving him 24 of Georgetown’s first 39 points. He hit 9 of his team’s first 14 field goals. “We just stayed poised,” Porter said about how his team handled the hostile crowd. “We didn’t lose focus and just went out there and played.” Porter found all the soft spots in Syracuse’s 2-3 zone, and the Orange (22-5, 10-4) had no transcendent offensive performance to match. James Southerland provided occasional bursts but nothing sustained. The point guard, Michael Carter-Williams, who is second in the nation in assists, finished with 7 points, 5 assists and 3 turnovers. “Porter was the difference in the game,” Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said. “The other players were really struggling, he had to make plays and he made them well.” With five minutes left, Porter hit a 3-pointer and was fouled by Brandon Triche, extending Georgetown’s lead to 45-37. He added another layup and free throw with 1 minute 21 seconds remaining to give Georgetown a 10-point lead. He flexed his arms forward and huffed as the basket went through. He finished with 33 points and 8 rebounds. After the game, Boeheim said the weight of the moment may have adversely affected some of his players. “There’s a lot of emotions,” he said. “Sometimes you try too hard, maybe.”

Georgetown
Basketball
Big East Conference
College basketball
Atlantic Coast Conference
College Sports
Syracuse University


Intel Said to End Talks to Buy Chip Designer Altera

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Intel has ended discussions to buy Altera , a designer of specialized computer chips, people briefed on the matter said on Thursday, putting to rest what would have been the company’s biggest-ever takeover. The collapse of the talks halts what would have been the latest in a series of mergers of chip makers and designers as companies turn to consolidation to gain negotiating leverage with customers. And yet investors still appear hopeful that Altera will ultimately be sold. Though shares of Altera initially fell after CNBC reported the end of negotiations, they closed up 3 percent on Thursday, at $43.33. Shares in Intel ended down slightly, at $31.24. Intel first made a takeover offer several weeks ago of more than $50 a share, a premium of more than 40 percent to Altera’s stock price at the time, one of the people said. Ultimately, however, Altera rejected the approach, and talks between the two companies had gone quiet in recent days. It was unclear whether the talks would be revived. Intel and Altera declined to comment. In seeking to buy Altera, Intel was looking to diversify its offerings beyond chips for personal computers, a business that has declined as mobile devices like smartphones have grown in popularity. Though known as one of the world’s technology giants, Intel has scrambled to adapt to a changing technology landscape in which personal computers are losing importance. The company has already had to grapple with a lower-than-expected sales forecast tied to weaker demand for new personal computers. It has begun branching out into the manufacture of other kinds of chips, as well as technologies like smartwatches and security products that rely on the human body. Altera, which has a market value of roughly $13 billion, focuses on a semiconductor whose functions can be reprogrammed even after the product has shipped. That kind of chip, known as a field programmable gate array, is different from the standard processor that Intel makes in that it is much more adjustable and flexible. Though they have less power, the so-called F.P.G.A.s have become popular for a variety of uses in diverse products like cars, consumer devices and airplanes. Even Intel has moved into the space, introducing a chip that is a hybrid of standard semiconductors and an F.P.G.A., promising greater speed and flexibility for certain tasks. Still, the design of F.P.G.A.s is largely led by companies like Altera and Xilinx. Altera, founded 22 years ago and based in San Jose, Calif., earned $472 million in profit and $1.9 billion in revenue last year. A takeover would have been, by far, the biggest deal by Intel in its 46-year history. To date, its largest takeover was the $7.5 billion acquisition of McAfee, a security software maker. Just six of the company’s deals have been worth more than $1 billion. Several analysts have said that they still think Intel will be on the hunt for acquisitions. Over all, the semiconductor industry is being swept up in a growing wave of mergers as companies seek to gain greater scale and negotiating leverage with customers looking to shrink their lists of suppliers. In the last two years alone, companies like Qualcomm and Infineon Technologies have struck acquisitions. In the fall of 2013, Applied Materials bought a Japanese rival, Tokyo Electron, for $9 billion. And last month, NXP Semiconductors acquired a smaller rival, Freescale Semiconductor, for $11.8 billion to become a more formidable manufacturer of chips for autos and mobile payments.

Intel
Altera
Computer Chip
Mergers and Acquisitions


The Great Joe Rollino, Bender of Steel, Is Dead at 104

Abstract: Joe Rollino once lifted 475 pounds. He used neither his arms nor his legs but, reportedly, his teeth. With just one finger he raised up 635 pounds; with his back he moved 3,200. He bit down on quarters to bend them with his thumb. People called him the Great Joe Rollino, the Mighty Joe Rollino and even the World’s Strongest Man, and what did it matter if at least one of those people was Mr. Rollino himself. On Monday morning, Mr. Rollino went for a walk in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a daily routine. It was part of the Great Joe Rollino’s greatest feat, a display of physical dexterity and stamina so subtle that it revealed itself only if you happened to ask him his date of birth: March 19, 1905. He was 104 years old and counting. A few minutes before 7 a.m., as Mr. Rollino was crossing Bay Ridge Parkway at 13th Avenue, a 1999 Ford Windstar minivan struck him. The police said he suffered fractures to his pelvis, chest, ribs and face, as well as head trauma. Unconscious, he was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he later died. New York is a city of extraordinary lives and events, and here, indisputably, was one of them — one of the city’s strongest and oldest, struck down on a Monday morning by a minivan in Brooklyn. “Pound for pound, in the feats that he practiced, he was one of the greatest performing strongmen we’ve ever had, if the lifts he’s credited with are accurate,” said Terry Todd, a co-director of the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the University of Texas, who knew Mr. Rollino for more than four decades. “He certainly wasn’t one of the strongest all-time strongmen, because of his size. To ask a well-trained 130-pound man if he can lift what a well-trained 400-pound man can lift is asking an unreasonable question. But for his size, Joe was apparently one of the strongest men who ever lived.” Mr. Rollino stayed away from meat. And cigarettes. And alcohol. He said he walked five miles every morning, rain or shine. At the height of his career, he weighed between 125 and 150 pounds and stood about 5-foot-5. He was a teenager when he watched Jack Dempsey knock out Jess Willard in 1919. He later boxed under the name Kid Dundee, became a Coney Island performer, worked as a longshoreman, fought in World War II and had a bit part in “On the Waterfront” that never made the film, not necessarily in that order. Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Rollino was proudest of one in particular. “My finger strength,” he told an interviewer for ESPN The Magazine. “Six hundred thirty-five pounds. See the size of it. At 150 pounds, nobody ever beat me in this world.” He was a legend within that small Coney Island society in which few New Yorkers would want to become known as legends: the men and women who swim in the Atlantic when it is at its harshest and coldest. On a 6-degree day in January 1974, Mr. Rollino and six other members of the Iceberg Athletic Club swam into the waters off Coney Island. The freezing Atlantic was like steel: It didn’t intimidate him. “People told me he holds the record for swimming every day for eight years,” said Louis Scarcella, 59, a former homicide detective and a member of the city’s oldest winter swimming club, the Coney Island Polar Bear Club . “He was known as the Great Joe Rollino, and he was great. You knew he was great just by standing next to him. He just had that humble confidence and strength. It shined.” Mr. Scarcella, like many of those who knew Mr. Rollino, has a Joe Rollino story, or several Joe Rollino stories. And though some of them can be neither confirmed nor refuted, they get told and retold and told again, because they are too good not to. Mr. Scarcella heard that one winter in the 1950s, Mr. Rollino recovered the bodies of two people who drowned in Prospect Park, because the police did not have the necessary protective equipment and it was too cold for anyone else to jump in and bring them to the surface. Mr. Rollino was a longtime member of the Association of Oldetime Barbell and Strongmen . Dennis Rogers, a fellow member and a professional strongman, remembered seeing him at the association’s annual dinner in June, at a hotel near the Newark airport. “He just came in to say hi to everybody and coached some of the guys that were performing,” said Mr. Rogers, who in 1995 prevented four motorcycles from moving at full throttle for 12 seconds, according to his Web site . “He would regularly work out in the gym. He was in pretty good shape. He walked a little slow but looked fine.” Mr. Rollino had lately been living in Brooklyn with a niece, in a house on 14th Avenue, about a block from where the accident occurred. The driver of the minivan that struck Mr. Rollino, a 54-year-old woman who lives in the neighborhood and who remained at the scene, was not charged. She received a summons for having a defective horn, and the police said that neither speed nor alcohol was a factor. Mr. Rollino had been walking about 40 feet from the nearest crosswalk when the minivan hit him, according to the authorities. Old photographs of Mr. Rollino are displayed in several neighborhood shops. People called him Puggy. “If he shook your hand, he’d break it,” said James Romeo, owner of Romeo Brothers Meats and Foods on 15th Avenue. “He wasn’t feeble.” Charles Denson , a historian and the author of “Coney Island: Lost and Found,” first met Mr. Rollino at his 103rd birthday party at a neighborhood restaurant. “He was one of the last links to the old strongman days of Coney Island,” he said. “Coney Island was the training ground for strongmen. He was one of the best.” Mr. Rollino wowed the crowd at the party, Mr. Denson recalled. He told stories about the old days, of course, but he was more than just talk, even at 103. Mr. Rollino put a quarter in his teeth. Then he bent it.

Rollino Joe
Coney Island (NYC)
Brooklyn (NYC)
Accidents and Safety
Deaths (Obituaries)


Officer Convicted of Assault for Stomping on Suspect’s Head

Abstract: A New York City police officer was convicted on Friday of misdemeanor assault for stomping on the head of a suspect as he lay prone on a Brooklyn street while being arrested. The officer, Joel Edouard, was one of several who arrested the suspect, Jahmi-El Cuffee, on marijuana charges in July 2014 outside of a restaurant in Bedford-Stuyvesant. A cellphone video of the arrest, introduced at Mr. Edouard’s trial this week, showed him walking away from his partners as they tried to subdue Mr. Cuffee, then returning and, with no apparent provocation, bringing his foot down hard on Mr. Cuffee’s head. Officer Edouard opted to have a judge, not a jury, decide the case, and Justice Alan D. Marrus of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said on Friday that Officer Edouard had “let down” his fellow officers in a difficult situation. During the trial, Marc Fliedner, an assistant district attorney, argued that Officer Edouard, 38, had lost his cool during the episode. The scene unfolded only days after Eric Garner died during an arrest by the police on Staten Island. Officer Edouard, who at one point, before the stomping began, pointed his gun at Mr. Cuffee’s head as he lay on the ground, had acted out “in vengeance and in anger, and sadly, in that moment, he was acting like a criminal,” Mr. Fliedner said. Officer Edouard’s lawyer, Anthony Ricco, contended at the trial that Mr. Cuffee, 33, had reached behind his back while he was still on his feet, as if going for a weapon. Though Mr. Cuffee was in fact unarmed, the movement made Officer Edouard fear for his life, Mr. Ricco said. The video of the encounter was captured by Gary Dormer, an employee of the restaurant, who testified at the trial that “an aggressive officer” — Officer Edouard — had at one point grabbed Mr. Cuffee and tried to take him into custody. But Mr. Dormer also said on the stand that Mr. Cuffee had appeared to be resisting the arrest. Officer Edouard was charged in February 2015 with official misconduct as well as with assault, but four months later a judge dropped the misconduct charges. The Police Department declined to comment on the conviction, but a spokesman said Officer Edouard was suspended as soon as the verdict was rendered. He faces up to a year in jail at his sentencing, now scheduled for June 10.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


As the Baseballs Fly Farther in Japan, the Game’s Commissioner Is Criticized

Abstract: TOKYO — If the cover-up is often worse than the crime, the Japanese version of that axiom may apply to Ryozo Kato, the commissioner of Nippon Professional Baseball. Kato, the amiable former ambassador to the United States, came under fire two weeks ago when he revealed that the league secretly made its official ball livelier during the off-season, essentially because the previous version, introduced in 2011, led to an alarming drop in home runs. The new ball worked, only too well. Check-swing hits have flown out of parks, and formerly light-hitting batters are having career seasons. Through mid-June, home runs had jumped more than 40 percent. The increase did not go unnoticed. The players union argued that pitchers could be hurt financially because they sign contracts based on their previous year’s statistics. Managers said that they would have made different decisions during games if they had known the ball was juiced. Polls showed that fans’ trust of professional baseball had plummeted. Image Ryozo Kato, center, the commissioner of Nippon Professional Baseball. Credit Kyodo News, via Associated Press Yet earlier this season, the commissioner denied that the ball was juiced. At a hastily convened news conference last week, Kato said he did not lie to the public at the time because his underlings had not told him that the ball had been changed until recently. His defense has angered players, fans and editorial writers who have accused Kato of either lying about his knowledge of the ball change or being unaware of what was going on in his own office. Kato’s proclaimed innocence is even more startling, his critics said, because he pushed for the league to adopt a single ball in 2011. Until then, teams used any ball they wanted . Nippon Professional Baseball has received hundreds of phone calls and thousands of e-mails since the league’s disclosure, many of them expressing contempt for Kato. A growing chorus is calling for him to step down. “He should resign because his responsibility is so serious,” said Takuya Yamazaki, a lawyer who represents the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association. “Now is the time for us to have a new commissioner who can revolutionize Japanese baseball.” The revelation has angered a nation tired of leaders who try to sweep bad news under the rug to, according to a popular euphemism, “avoid confusion.” In recent years, executives at Olympus, the camera and medical equipment maker that hid massive losses from shareholders, and Tokyo Electric Power Company, whose shattered nuclear reactors have endangered millions of people, have been pilloried after their transgressions were unearthed, to name two prominent examples. No one equates Japan’s ball controversy with those examples of corporate malfeasance. But it is fresh evidence that the country’s hidebound baseball world is still the province of owners who treat their teams primarily as marketing vehicles for their parent companies. The commissioner has tried to empower his office, yet he remains a figurehead who essentially owes his power to the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, the league’s most powerful team. Image Mr. Kato came under fire after revealing that the organization had secretly made its official ball livelier. Credit Jiji Press/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images To bring Nippon Professional Baseball more in line with Major League Baseball and other international sports organizations, Yamazaki said, management standards must be improved to include more transparency, more democratic decision-making and an impartial dispute resolution process. Kato, who declined requests for comment, has said he plans to stay at his post so he can institute those reforms. The 12 owners may have other plans. On July 10, they will hear from a newly appointed panel of experts about how the controversy unfolded. Kato could take the fall for neglecting to tell the players and fans about the new ball. The boardroom intrigue has an extra dimension. After years of kowtowing to the Giants and their titular head, Tsuneo Watanabe, the owners of the other teams may want to challenge his authority by tossing out Kato. “This is a proxy war over the Giants,” said a baseball executive who requested anonymity because negotiations were continuing. “Kato is viewed as Watanabe’s choice. This could have been avoided.” Alarmed by the decline in home runs, the teams discussed how to change the composition of the ball late last season, a Japanese team executive said. When they failed to reach a consensus, they asked the league to settle the issue. “We left it up to officials at the N.P.B.,” he said. But “they should have told everyone.” Most fans would have accepted the new ball because high-scoring games are often popular. The players union, too, would have gone along with the change if it were part of a goal that both pitchers and batters could get behind, like introducing a new ball to help the national team. That, after all, was one of the justifications for introducing a unified ball three years ago.

Baseball
Japan
Nippon Professional Baseball


Former Israeli Leader Is a Suspect in New Corruption Case, Media Says

Abstract: JERUSALEM — The former prime minister of Israel , Ehud Olmert , who resigned after being accused in several corruption cases, is now a chief suspect in a major bribery investigation involving a West Jerusalem building project that was advanced during his years as mayor of the city, Israel’s state radio and other Israeli news media reported on Thursday. There was still no official announcement from the police naming Mr. Olmert as a suspect. But Mr. Olmert responded to the widely publicized allegations against him, vehemently denying any wrongdoing in a recorded statement broadcast on television at prime time on Thursday. “I was never offered a bribe and have never received a bribe from anybody in any way, either directly or indirectly,” Mr. Olmert said. Trying to link him to the property scandal, he said, was “an attempt at character assassination unprecedented in scope and force.” Mr. Olmert is already on trial for fraud, breach of trust and failing to report income in the years before he became prime minister in 2006. The charges did not include bribery, a more serious offense, and Mr. Olmert has denied any wrongdoing. He resigned in 2008 under intense public and political pressure resulting from the multiple investigations. The new probe focuses on what a judge described in a court hearing as “one of the worse corruption affairs in Israeli history.” A former close associate of Mr. Olmert, Uri Messer, was arrested last week along with five other suspects, including a former Jerusalem city engineer. On Wednesday, Uri Lupolianski, another former mayor of Jerusalem, was arrested in connection with the investigation. Mr. Lupolianski served as deputy mayor under Mr. Olmert, before being elected as his successor. Mr. Lupolianski was the first ultra-Orthodox mayor of Jerusalem, serving from 2003 until 2008. The police have said the building project in question was advanced during Mr. Olmert’s term as mayor, from 1993 to 2003. In a television interview before his arrest, Mr. Lupolianski said it was the mayor, not the deputy, who made the decisions. At the heart of the latest inquiry is a residential project known as Holyland, regarded by many of the city’s residents as an eyesore. Located on a ridge in the predominantly Jewish southwest of Jerusalem, it consists of several multistory apartment buildings and a central tower. Millions of dollars allegedly changed hands in bribes as a sprawling group of developers, middlemen and officials worked to promote the project, which grew to about 12 times the size allowed by original planning permits. Mr. Olmert said that he had supported the Holyland project at its inception, but that the plans totally changed after he finished his term as mayor. He said he had no hand in the changes.

Israel
Bribery
Olmert Ehud
Suits and Litigation
Frauds and Swindling
Ethics
Housing and Real Estate


Now Playing in India: A Rare View of Pakistan

Abstract: NEW DELHI — Of all the flattering headlines that greeted the release this month of the first Pakistani film shown in India in four decades, one stuck in the mind of its director, Shoaib Mansoor. “We didn’t know that Pakistan had such good houses,” the headline said, Mr. Mansoor recalled in an interview here. It was a striking reminder of how little people in India know about their neighbors across the border. For 43 years no Pakistan-made film had been distributed commercially to movie theaters in India until the opening here of Mr. Mansoor’s movie, “Khuda Kay Liye” (“In the Name of God”). That absence has contributed to widespread ignorance in India about contemporary Pakistan, a country set apart by such entrenched political hostility that few Indians have visited it. The release of the film, which broke all box office records in Pakistan last year, was hailed here as a significant moment in the slowly progressing India-Pakistan peace talks. The Pakistani government imposed a ban on the distribution and broadcast of Indian movies after the war between the countries in 1965, one of three wars they have fought since the region was split by partition in 1947. No formal reciprocal order was issued by India, but initial political hostility to the idea of showing Pakistani films was superseded in later years by commercial considerations. In the second half of the 20th century, the Pakistani film industry, known as Lollywood, slipped into severe decline and produced little meriting distribution in India, which is well served by its own film industry, Bollywood. Despite the ban, pirated copies of Bollywood hits have always been hugely popular in Pakistan. And in 2006, with improving political ties, the Pakistani government gradually began to relax its approach, allowing a limited number of Indian films to be screened legally in theaters. The effect has been a cultural two-way mirror dividing the countries, with Pakistan able to observe India (or a gaudier Bollywood version of India), but with Indians unable to see beyond their own frontiers. “Indian films never stopped coming to Pakistan, on DVDs,” Mr. Mansoor said. “So every Pakistani is absolutely clear about the way of life in India, about how everything works in India. But there is nothing coming in the other direction, with the result that India has very clear misconceptions about Pakistan.” His film was edited in Delhi, where he was “shocked by the ignorance” of Indian colleagues in the cutting room, he said. “They had very surprising ideas about Pakistan,” Mr. Mansoor recalled. “They asked: ‘Do you have taxis there?’ ‘Can women drive?’ ‘Are women allowed to go to university?’ They thought Pakistan consisted entirely of fanatics and mullahs.” Aside from their incidental wonderment at the unexpected beauty of Pakistani houses, filmgoers and reviewers have been struck by the insights the film offers into the difficulties of being a liberal Muslim in Pakistan after 9/11. The film shows two brothers, both talented musicians in Lahore, growing apart as they embrace different readings of Islam. One falls under the influence of the local mullah, abandons his Sufi rock group and his rich, liberal parents in their interior-decorated home and heads off to join the Taliban. The other leaves Pakistan to study music in Chicago, where he falls in love with the United States and marries an American. But he is then arrested and subjected to Abu Ghraib-style abuse by officials who are suspicious of his Muslim background, erroneously convinced that he played a role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks. “That is the tragedy that a Muslim faces in these days,” Mr. Mansoor said. “We are beaten up by fundamentalists, with the label that we are too Western, and when we go out of the country, we are labeled as fundamentalists just because we have Pakistani names.” The acting is patchy, but beneath the numerous plotlines Mr. Mansoor drives home his point that “all Muslims are not terrorists.” “People need to understand that Pakistanis are not all rabid fundamentalists,” he said. He has been pleased by the response in India. “People clapped here at the same places people clapped in Pakistan,” he said. “That’s a good sign.” An Indian critic, Subhash K. Jha, said everyone in India should see the movie “to understand the isolation, to understand what it feels like to be deemed a terrorist, to be frisked extra hard, the pain and the humiliation.” “I don’t think that is easy to understand as a Hindu,” he said. But he said the film would not have obvious appeal to most Indian viewers. “Sadly, not too many people will be interested to see a film that reveals life as a Muslim, so its impact will be rather restrained,” he said. “It is not a pot-boiler; it doesn’t have the audience-pulling big stars.” A Bollywood script writer, Javed Akhtar, described “Khuda Kay Liye” as a “very bold and honest film.” “Ignorance breeds suspicion and suspicion breeds hate; it creates huge villains,” he said. “There is a lot to be heard and seen by Indian and by U.S. audiences here too.” The Indian certification board recommended two cuts before approving the film’s release, removing a reference to Muslims being killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The other cut was from a speech near the film’s end and reflected concerns about offending Muslims in India. But Shailendra Singh, managing director of the Percept Picture Company, which is distributing the film, said the process of bringing it to India had been surprisingly easy, and the initial box office response encouraging. He predicted that the film, which cost $1.5 million to make, would earn $2.5 million over the next three months in India. “We felt like we were being part of history,” he said.

India
Pakistan
Islam
Motion Pictures
Hinduism