Soviets Stole Bomb Idea From U.S., Book Says

Abstract: A defining moment of the cold war came in 1955 when Moscow detonated its first hydrogen bomb — a weapon roughly a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs and ideal for obliterating large cities. The bomb ended the American monopoly and posed a lethal danger. So Washington dealt far more gingerly with Moscow, beginning a tense era dominated by fear of mutual annihilation. Now, a new book says Moscow acquired the secret of the hydrogen bomb not from its own scientists but from an atomic spy at the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico. Historians call its case sketchy but worthy of investigation, saying the book, “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation,” by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman, adds to a growing number of riddles about who invented the Soviet H-bomb a half century ago. “It’s quite intriguing,” Robert S. Norris, a nuclear historian, said of the book. “We’ve learned a lot about atomic spies. Now, we find out that a spy may be at the center of the H-bomb story, too.” A surprising clue the authors cite is disagreement among Russian nuclear scientists over who deserves credit for the advance as well as some claims that espionage played a role. The book details this Russian clash and questions the popular idea that Andrei D. Sakharov, who later became known as a campaigner for human rights, independently devised the Soviet hydrogen bomb. The book does not name the suspected spy but says he was born in the United States, grew up in a foreign country, fell in with communist sympathizers during the depression, and worked at Los Alamos during World War II. Afterward, it says, he became “deeply involved” in the American effort to develop the H-bomb. The book says that Mr. Stillman, a physicist who worked at Los Alamos from 1965 to 2000 and served for more than a decade as the lab’s director of intelligence, took his suspicions in the 1990s to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the F.B.I. inquiry, the book says, was “botched beyond recognition” and went nowhere. The alleged spy, the book adds, is now dead. The F.B.I., often accused of disarray in cases of atomic spying, declined to comment. Historians and nuclear scientists call the book’s claim provocative if vague and seemingly circumstantial. They add that its suspect is unlikely to be the last put forward to account for the Soviet breakthrough. “It’s a fascinating puzzle,” said David Holloway, author of “Stalin and the Bomb” and a military historian at Stanford University. “Mystery is too strong a word. But exactly how the Soviet physicists hit on the idea remains unclear.” Harold M. Agnew, who worked on the world’s first H-bomb and eventually became director of Los Alamos, said the Soviets probably had had numerous spies divulging the secret. “We were always surprised,” he said, “at how quickly they moved ahead.” The new book is due out in January from Zenith Press. A main focus is how spies spread nuclear secrets around the globe. In recent years, the ranks of known Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb have swollen to a half dozen or so, and more are expected to be named. But so far, accounts of the ensuing project at Los Alamos to build the hydrogen bomb have documented no major episodes of atomic spying. Hydrogen bombs, unlike their atomic cousins, are unlimited in size. American scientists who sought to devise one in the 1940s and early 1950s thus called their dream weapon “the Super.” The successful architects were Edward Teller and Stanislaw M. Ulam. Their 1951 breakthrough, known as “radiation implosion,” called for putting an atom bomb at one end of a metal casing and hydrogen fuel at the other. The flash of the exploding atom bomb was to flood the case’s interior with enough radiation to compress and ignite the hydrogen fuel, releasing huge bursts of energy through nuclear fusion. In late 1952, the first test of their idea caused the Pacific island of Elugelab to vanish. The explosion was 700 times more powerful than the blast that leveled Hiroshima. Moscow had nothing comparable until 1955. It then made an arsenal of H-bombs that in time dwarfed Washington’s. It also detonated the world’s largest bomb — a behemoth more than 3,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima blast. Over the decades, scholars identified Klaus Fuchs as one possible source of H-bomb intelligence. The Soviet spy in the Manhattan project left Los Alamos in 1946, gave Moscow H-bomb ideas, and was arrested in 1950. But most scholars judge his tips as too early, too sketchy and too erroneous to have provided much assistance. The authors of “The Nuclear Express” said in interviews that their interest in the issue stirred after the cold war as former Soviet nuclear scientists told of their hidden labors. Mr. Reed, a former designer of H-bombs at the Livermore weapons laboratory in California and a former secretary of the Air Force — met a number of the Russians scientists at Livermore in March 1997. He said the meetings had proved eye opening. The Russian scientists described how Dr. Sakharov never took full credit for the hydrogen advance. And Lev P. Feoktistov, a member of the founding H-bomb team, suggested that espionage unrelated to Fuchs played a role. In his 1999 book, “Nukes Are Not Forever,” he reiterated that claim. “I cannot escape the feeling,” Dr. Feoktistov wrote, “that we were extended a helping hand once in a while, although quite inconspicuously.” For instance, he said the Soviet team had been given an unfamiliar bomb sketch that he subsequently identified as having been the work of Ulam, the American H-bomb pioneer. The sketch showed a design that antedated the breakthrough of radiation implosion. Amid the revelations after the cold war, Mr. Stillman, at Los Alamos, zeroed in on a candidate spy. In an interview, he said his suspicions had been aroused for a number of reasons, including the man’s great apparent wealth. Mr. Stillman said the F.B.I. inquiry fell apart in the 1990s as the bureau’s Santa Fe office became entangled in the case of a modern alleged spy at Los Alamos — Wen Ho Lee. In time, all but one of the charges against Dr. Lee were dropped after a judge found significant flaws in the government’s case. The episode is seen as having raised the federal bar on new claims of atomic spying. When Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman began to collaborate on their book, they judged that they had complementary pieces of the H-bomb puzzle. In the book, they say they declined to name the Los Alamos suspect because he is now dead and “can neither defend his family name nor refute our arguments.” The actual identity does not matter, the books adds. “His fingerprints are what count.” Reactions to the claim range from strong interest, to outrage, to curiosity about the identity of the alleged spy. For years, most Russian scientists and officials have insisted that the Soviet invention was completely independent of the United States, with the exception of preliminary intelligence from Klaus Fuchs. Gennady Gorelik, a Russian historian of science now at Boston University and a Sakharov biographer, dismissed the idea that the Soviets had received the secret from newly disclosed espionage. “NO, THEY DID NOT,” he wrote in an e-mail message. Priscilla McMillan, an atom historian at Harvard and author of “The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” said her weighing of old and new evidence had come down on Dr. Sakharov’s side as the main inventor. “It’s a tantalizing subject,” she said. “But I wouldn’t preclude that his version is pretty much correct.” John Earl Haynes, a Library of Congress historian and an authority on atomic spying, said the book’s authors might have found a new spy at Los Alamos but he doubted their identification of him as a K.G.B. asset. If the spy existed, he added, he might have been controlled by the G.R.U, a military intelligence agency. Richard L. Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the American H-bomb and has advised Washington for decades, echoed Dr. Agnew in saying he found quite reasonable the idea that Moscow had espionage tips from Los Alamos about radiation implosion. “It is difficult to believe that U.S. security was so good that the Russians could not have picked up the term,” he said in an interview. Dr. Norris, author of “Racing for the Bomb,” an account of the Manhattan Project, said solving the H-bomb riddle awaited more candor from Moscow. “The only way of clearing this up is for the intelligence services, the successors to the K.G.B. and the G.R.U., to claim their share of the credit,” he said. But he added that such openness could undermine Russian pride in its nuclear achievements during the cold war. “It cuts both ways,” he said. “It would really be a blow to the self image of the Russian scientists, who believe to this day that they invented it independently.”

Nuclear Express The: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation (Book)


Jury Convicts Wine Dealer in Fraud Case

Abstract: A renowned wine dealer was convicted on Wednesday of defrauding some of the country’s wealthiest by selling bottles of purportedly rare and sought-after vintages that were counterfeit products of his own kitchen alchemy: mixing old bottles of wine and creating bogus labels. The dealer, Rudy Kurniawan, 37, was a fixture on the rare wine scene for years, after developing a reputation as a wine lover with an impeccable palate and unmatched cellar. At his peak, in the mid-2000s, he spent millions of dollars a year on wine and sold bottles for many millions more; prosecutors said Mr. Kurniawan used his counterfeit scheme to make millions of dollars. In an eight-day trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan, in which prosecutors showed jurors fake wine labels, new corks and other items that they said were tools of Mr. Kurniawan’s trade, the jurors returned a guilty verdict after less than two hours of deliberation. Mr. Kurniawan was also convicted of a second count of fraud, for securing a $3 million loan using his wine and art collections as collateral when he had already pledged them as collateral for another loan. Mr. Kurniawan displayed no reaction to hearing the verdict. In a business where the product itself is shrouded in dark glass and doubts about authenticity are endemic, Mr. Kurniawan was able to convince the world’s leading wine enthusiasts, including the billionaire William I. Koch, that the bottles he peddled were genuine. He sold $35 million in wine in 2006 alone. But prosecutors said his buyers started asking questions about the bottles’ provenance. A 1947 Burgundy lacked the “unctuousness” one would expect from a great wine. And the 1961 Petrus seemed “a little young.” There was concern that the corks were a little too new and the sudden availability of such rare wines was a little too good to believe. Much of the evidence against Mr. Kurniawan came from a raid of his home outside of Los Angeles. Prosecutors said it was a winemaking factory, kept so cold that his mother, who lived with him, warmed her bedroom with a space heater. There were bottles on a treadmill, bottles soaking in the sink, bottles stacked against the wall. His computer contained files with scanned images of old wine labels. One prosecution witness, Aubert de Villaine, the head of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, a vineyard in Burgundy, France, that has been in his family for years, testified that he had never seen so many labels of old vintages from his vineyard. He said there were only 600 bottles ever produced of 1945 Romanée-Conti. Prosecutors found a stack of new-looking labels for the vintage in Mr. Kurniawan’s home. A lawyer for Mr. Kurniawan, Jerome H. Mooney, said Mr. Kurniawan was disappointed by the verdict and planned to appeal. Mr. Mooney said throughout the trial that the fine wine market was rife with counterfeits, and that Mr. Kurniawan, a citizen of Indonesia born to Chinese parents, was singled out. “It was almost a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ thing going on within the industry,” Mr. Mooney said. “I’m not sure that this sends a message to the contrary,” he added, referring to the verdict. Mr. Kurniawan, who faces up to 20 years in prison, is scheduled to be sentenced on April 24. Mr. Mooney said the calculation based on federal sentencing guidelines would depend largely on the valuation of the counterfeit wine Mr. Kurniawan sold. “If it’s $30 million, that makes it look like one thing,” he said. “If it’s a million, that’s another.”


Ruling Blocks Broadcasting of a Trial on Same-Sex Marriage

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday effectively eliminated the possibility that any part of the trial of a constitutional challenge to a ban on same-sex marriage now under way in San Francisco would be broadcast before it concludes. Saying lower-court judges in California had acted with unseemly and probably unlawful haste in pushing through new rules to allow broadcasting, the court extended a temporary stay issued Monday until it considers whether to hear an appeal of the issue based on papers yet to be filed. The court instructed the parties to act promptly, but the process will almost certainly take longer than the trial. The vote in the case was 5 to 4 and divided along ideological lines, with the court’s four more liberal justices in dissent. The 17-page majority opinion, which was unsigned, focused mainly on what it said were irregularities in how the trial judge, Vaughn R. Walker of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, and Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, changed the applicable rules to allow broadcast coverage. The main flaw, the opinion said, was that Judge Walker allowed only five business days for public comment on the proposed changes. “Courts enforce the requirement of procedural regularity on others,” the opinion said, “and must follow those requirements themselves.” Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for himself and Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, said Judge Walker had invited comments from the parties to the case in September and had received 138,574 public comments as well, with all but 32 favoring transmission of the proceedings. “How much more ‘opportunity for comment’ does the court believe necessary?” Justice Breyer asked his colleagues in the majority. Justice Breyer added that micromanaging trial court procedures was not a wise use of the Supreme Court’s docket and that “the public interest weighs in favor of providing access to the courts.” The majority opinion did not directly address the possibility of delayed broadcast of the trial by video posted on YouTube or the trial court’s own Web site, apparently because Chief Judge Kozinski never approved Judge Walker’s proposals concerning them. But it did block broadcasts to courthouses around the country, and its reasoning would apply to Internet broadcasts as well. The opinion said it expressed no views about the wisdom of cameras in the courtroom, but it contained hints of disapproval. The opinion also recited a number of ways in which opponents of same-sex marriage might be subject to harassment should their testimony be broadcast. Chief Judge Kozinski, in a letter to court administrators on Sunday, defended the new rules as the product of careful deliberations and as warranted by the public interest. “Like it or not,” he wrote, “we are now well into the 21st century, and it is up to those of us who lead the federal judiciary to adopt policies that are consistent with the spirit of the times and the advantages afforded us by new technology. If we do not, Congress will do it for us.”

Same-Sex Marriage Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships


Review: ‘Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole’

Abstract: An extraterrestrial dropping into a modern-day hospital might be forgiven for thinking it was run by machines. Against a techno soundtrack of whirs and beeps, sleep-deprived doctors file in and out of exam rooms. They ask patients a series of standard questions, and make a few clicks on a computer to order a blood test or chest X-ray or pain meds. Then they hustle out the door to repeat the protocol on the impossibly large number of other patients under their watch. When their shifts end, some 12 or 18 or even 28 hours later, these zombies in blue scrubs are replaced by others, while the unflappable computers ease the handoff. The tech-centric approach to medicine has its benefits, to be sure. Imaging machines and genetic screening give doctors biological clues otherwise hidden. Computers can make hospitals more efficient, and prevent dumb mistakes. But the practice of medicine cannot be reduced to algorithms, pixels and protocols, as the neurologist Dr. Allan H. Ropper subtly argues in his entertaining book, “Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole.” ( Read excerpt. ) To Dr. Ropper, medicine is a craft — an art — that depends on the human interaction between doctor and patient. Like an episode of the popular television series “ House ,” the book presents mysterious medical cases from the behemoth Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The 10th floor holds the neurology inpatient ward, a place where, as Dr. Ropper and his co-author, Brian David Burrell, put it, “the strangest and most challenging cases are sent to be sorted out.” Image Credit Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times Take Vincent, a middle-aged grump who is suddenly smiley, sweet and spewing gibberish after a company softball game. Based on his brain scans, several young residents suggest the culprit is a tumor, or maybe a stroke or seizures. But Dr. Ropper isn’t convinced. He talks to Vincent’s wife, and discovers that her husband’s problems began with a headache and fever. Aha, an infection! Herpes encephalitis would explain all his symptoms. And sure enough, after taking an antiviral medication, Vincent is soon back to his irritable self. Then there are the contrasting cases of Gordon and Walter, older men who are both in nebulous states of confusion. The only way to understand a damaged brain, Dr. Ropper contends, is to engage “the person inside.” After systematic questioning, he learns that Gordon’s mind is a jumble; when asked where he lives, Gordon responds with nonsensical phrases about talking dogs and best days. This type of confusion has no internal logic, which means a poor prognosis. Walter’s mind also wanders far from our reality — he believes, for example, that Dr. Ropper scored a winning touchdown for Boston University in 1962. But it has its own reality with its own consistent rules. This is psychosis, and good news because it can potentially be reversed. Dr. Ropper’s authoritative voice is often funny, but can also be cutting. The book includes a host of cases of hysteria (or conversion disorder , if unlike the narrator you prefer the euphemism), perhaps because it is one of the most common conditions a neurologist deals with. There is a teenager who pretends to be blind, and a woman intent on giving her young daughter pain medications even though she has no pain. There are also “baloney” cases, such as a couple convinced that electrical outlets make their bodies buzz. Dr. Ropper has little patience for these patients. He tells the couple they might be magnetized, and suggests they float in their swimming pool to see if they point north. Fans of Dr. House will notice more than a few similarities to Dr. Ropper, who’s at once insufferably arrogant and charmingly mischievous. When the ward is slow, Dr. Ropper encourages residents to go out to the sidewalk and round up interesting cases — “anyone who can’t walk straight.” He jokes of having doubts about one of his residents because of her “needlessly exotic” clogs and leggings; another trainee uses “L.A. street slang” and “would have looked more at home on ‘Melrose Place.’ ” Still, it is hard not to like a doctor whose first rule is to talk to patients. He follows them down the rabbit hole, and sometimes it is frighteningly dark. A woman with Parkinson’s has severe mood swings and hallucinates Queen Elizabeth’s corgis in her fireplace. Another woman, in the end stages of motor neuron disease, gazes at letters on a plexiglass board to spell out, “IVE HAD ENOUGH.” More than 20 years ago, Dr. Ropper also helped the actor Michael J. Fox time his Parkinson’s medications to quell tremors when the camera was on. For patients with dire conditions, Dr. Ropper isn’t so much a disease detective as a disease manager. And here his emotional distance comes in handy. “As long as my dread remains hidden,” he explains, “I can muster the degree of calmness and patience that allows me to stay at the bedside and be effective.” In the hands of a lesser writer, this book might have been nothing more than a collection of colorful tales about the many ways a human brain can break down. But Dr. Ropper and Mr. Burrell manage to tell a more profound story about the value of men over machines. Doctors are not always modest or empathetic or polite, and they’re certainly not infallible. But a doctor has something a machine never will: a mind.

Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole
Allan H. Ropper
Books
Brian David Burrell
Brain
Brigham and Women's Hospital


Sony Film Executives Apologize for Racially Tinged Emails About Obama

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Embarrassing, racially tinged emails about President Obama’s imagined movie tastes, posted online by hackers and reported by news sites, prompted public apologies on Thursday from Sony Pictures Entertainment’s movie chief and one of its top producers. “To anybody I’ve offended, I’m profoundly and deeply sorry, and I regret and apologize for any injury they might have caused,” the film producer Scott Rudin said in a statement after the disclosure of his private email banter with Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman, about Mr. Obama and black-themed films. “I made a series of remarks that were meant only to be funny, but in the cold light of day, they are in fact thoughtless and insensitive — and not funny at all.” Ms. Pascal said in her own statement: “The content of my emails to Scott were insensitive and inappropriate but are not an accurate reflection of who I am. Although this was a private communication that was stolen, I accept full responsibility for what I wrote and apologize to everyone who was offended.” The email exchange in question, reported by BuzzFeed, took place before Ms. Pascal attended a breakfast for Mr. Obama that was organized by Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation. “What should I ask the president at this stupid Jeffrey breakfast?” Ms. Pascal asked Mr. Rudin in an opening query. She then speculated that she might ask if Mr. Obama liked “Django Unchained,” about a former slave. Mr. Rudin countered with a suggestion about “12 Years a Slave,” while Ms. Pascal suggested other films involving African-Americans. Image Amy Pascal, Sony’s co-chairwoman, said she was “deeply sorry” for remarks she and the producer Scott Rudin exchanged. Credit Kevin Winter/Getty Images Finally, Mr. Rudin wrote: “Ride-along. I bet he likes Kevin Hart.” The email referred to a broad comedy, from Universal Pictures, that starred Mr. Hart and Ice Cube. Mr. Rudin, who has been a producer of films like “Captain Phillips” and “The Social Network” for Sony, added in his apology, first posted on Deadline.com, that “private emails between friends and colleagues written in haste and without much thought or sensitivity, even when the content of them is meant to be in jest, can result in offense where none was intended.” The emails were disclosed as part of a continuing dump of documents by hackers who attacked Sony’s computer systems, beginning in late November. In a separate email exchange , also disclosed online, another Sony executive, Clint Culpepper, used harsh language in suggesting that the studio rebuff a salary demand from Mr. Hart, who has starred in several films for the company’s Screen Gems unit, including a coming movie, “The Wedding Ringer.” “I’m not saying he’s a whore, but he’s a whore,” Mr. Culpepper wrote. Representatives of the studio did not comment on Mr. Culpepper’s remarks. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hart directed a reporter seeking comment to an assertive post on his Instagram account. “I will never allow myself to be taken advantage of,” Mr. Hart wrote. “I refuse to be broken.” Also on Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton, in a statement, condemned the exchange between Ms. Pascal and Mr. Rudin as “offensive, insulting” and took further aim at Ms. Pascal, saying her comments reflected a “troubling” lack of diversity at her studio and others. People familiar with Sony’s response to the attack, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, have said they expect to face further unauthorized disclosures in the days ahead.

Movies
Sony Pictures
Scott Rudin
Amy Pascal
Barack Obama
Hacker (computer security)


New York’s BigApps Contest Has Mixed Results

Abstract: New York’s BigApps contest, now in Version 3.0, has won no small amount of praise. Using data supplied by public agencies, Web developers compete for $50,000 in prizes, awarded based on voting by the public and a panel of judges. Voting on this year’s entries ends on Thursday. Carole Post, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, said the contest had exceeded expectations in terms of “size, scale, stature and outcomes.” Other cities have copied the idea, and many good-government groups and techies — there are a lot of those these days — seem to take the idea of an apps contest as sacrosanct. But for all the enthusiasm, how good are the apps, and what has the city gotten from them? I sorted this year’s entries by how many votes they had received, and found that of the top 10 vote-getters, two were iPhone apps that had not been built — though each had received well over 1,000 votes — and that some other projects were either still in the conceptual stage or completely nonfunctional. Many of the BigApps developers have created services that rate local places or plan itineraries and then let you tell your friends about them. Among this year’s variations on that theme is the awkwardly named navyorKonnect , a top vote-getter. But the app world is already overflowing with this kind of project, and I did not see anything that would serve me better than some combination of Yelp, Google Maps and Facebook. Many other ideas were carbon copies of entries from previous years. (I mean you, ParkAlly and ParkIt.) That is not to say there are not some good ideas out there, even if many of them are in the early stages. One of them, 596 Acres , is a Web site that maps vacant, city-owned land in Brooklyn. For each plot it gives information about how to contact whomever controls it. The entry for each lot can also become a message board, so that people can team up to make plans for the spaces. Sage is a simple but effective mobile site allowing people to search for information about pre-K and elementary schools near their homes. On # BKME , people post photographs of cars parked in bike lanes; the results are then plotted on a map that also shows where tickets for bike lane violations are being issued. Safe Eats is an iPhone app showing restaurants nearby, marking each with an icon showing its health department rating and giving details about its violations. (The New York Times recently posted a similar project on its Web site.) Safe Eats crashes periodically. There is also some lag time for new ratings to show up. But if I were the type of person who wanted to read whether vermin were in the kitchen of my favorite restaurant, I’d keep it on my phone. The people who run BigApps say that these kinds of ideas show the value of the contest. Developers who prove that they have a good idea will be rewarded with the resources and publicity needed to perfect it. But winning the contest has not necessarily led to success. The grand-prize winner last year was Roadify , an app that let people swap information about how trains were running. It was a clever idea that would succeed only if many people used it. A year later, it seems to have attracted almost no users. Sportaneous , a pickup-sports app that won second place and the Popular Choice Award, is no longer available in Apple’s App Store. It is back in testing. Inevitably, most of these projects will fail. Start-ups usually do. And considering the modest price of the program — BigApps costs the city about $100,000 a year, according to the city’s Economic Development Corporation — the bar for success should be set low. But it seems that a better investment might be to spend more time working with a few developers on specific ideas, rather than continually soliciting new ones. A more important measure of success is whether BigApps has led to greater transparency by giving the city an incentive to share data. When it was conceived, the contest seemed to take the steam out of other so-called open-data initiatives, said Amanda Hickman, who teaches journalism at Columbia University and is organizing a panel about government transparency there on Tuesday. Considering the non-civic nature of many of the BigApps entries, Ms. Hickman said, cynicism has grown. “People willing to look at the BigApps competition as a tip of a really interesting iceberg have started to get really antsy,” she said. Open-data advocates say that without legal prompting, agencies have been reluctant to release many of the data sets they are interested in. But last week, the City Council suddenly took up and passed a long-pending bill to require agencies to release more information to developers. That was received as positive news by many advocates of government transparency, although city agencies have until 2018 to comply. Moreover, since the law has no enforcement mechanism, interest from the public is essentially the only thing that will force reluctant agencies to comply. But if BigApps’ backers and its skeptics agree on one thing, it is that the contest has proved that people are interested in getting more data from the city. Have a favorite New York City app? Send tips via e-mail to appcity@nytimes.com or via Twitter to @joshuabrustein .

New York City
Mobile Applications
Contests and Prizes


Gebrselassie, Forced to Drop Out, Says He Is Retiring

Abstract: Word spread Saturday that the great Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia had a knee problem. Then came a message from his Twitter account Sunday morning that seemed casual and ominous. “I have some inflammation in my right knee because of the long travel to NY City,” Gebrselassie or his agent wrote. “No big problem, just some fluids. Hopefully the knee holds.” It did not. At 1 hour 19 minutes 40 seconds of the New York City Marathon on Sunday, as the men’s lead pack descended the Queensboro Bridge near the Mile 16 marker, Gebrselassie grimaced, slowed and drifted to his right, finally stopping as the leaders ran on. The man widely considered the greatest distance runner ever reached a premature finish in the New York City Marathon and, if he is to be believed, a stunning finish to an unparalleled career at 37. Tears in his eyes, a clearly devastated Gebrselassie limped to the podium at a postrace news conference and announced that he was retiring immediately. “I never think about retiring,” he said. “For the first time, this is the day. Let me stop and do other work after this. Let me do other jobs. Let me give a chance for the youngsters.” Perhaps his body had finally betrayed him once too often after nearly two decades as a top runner. If so, Gebrselassie was in no mood for explanation. “I don’t want to complain anymore after this,” he said. “Which means it’s better to stop here.” Of course, it is possible that his decision was made more from emotion than reason and that Gebrselassie will reconsider. He had planned at the least to run a marathon in Tokyo in February and in the 2012 London Olympics. “He has to change his plans,” said his countryman Gebre Gebremariam, 26, who learned about Gebrselassie in school as a boy and won Sunday’s race in 2:08:14. “He is just special for us.” Gebrselassie’s right knee began hurting about two weeks ago, as he trained so insistently that he turned off his mobile phone to avoid distractions, said Mary Wittenberg, the race director. He felt more irritation after a workout Monday, and the knee apparently did not improve during the 4,500-mile flight from Ethiopia to New York on Thursday. “He knew he had a serious knee problem,” Wittenberg said. “He wanted to try to see if it would settle down.” It would not. On Saturday, Gebrselassie had a magnetic resonance imaging test that revealed tendinitis. He also had fluid drained from the knee. He seemed incredulous. “I thought this was not that serious,” he said. “Why this happen?” In truth, the injury probably could have been rehabilitated for Sunday’s race with proper medical care, Wittenberg said, but “it’s a different mind-set in Ethiopia.” She added: “In the U.S., professional athletes are treated like serious athletes. In Ethiopia, they just run.” The possibility that Gebrselassie would not be able to start Sunday became “quite high,” Wittenberg said. On the bus to the start, he confided to Gebremariam, “If I finish, I’m special.” If Gebrselassie retires now, his elevated place in distance running remains secure as the setter of 27 world records, including the current mark in the marathon at 2 hours 3 minutes 59 seconds. No one has equaled Gebrselassie’s breadth of accomplishment — world championships or world records from the metric mile to 26.2 miles, along with two Olympic gold medals at 10,000 meters. “From 5K to the marathon, he has nothing to prove,” said Meb Keflezighi , the 2009 New York champion and the 2004 Olympic silver medalist from San Diego. “He’s the greatest, probably, distance runner ever.” If an asterisk accompanies his career, it is because Gebrselassie’s best marathon times came in a kind of laboratory setting, virtual time trials instead of conventional races, carried along by pacesetters on flat courses in Berlin and in Dubai. That was the big question about New York. Could Gebrselassie win a marathon on an undulating course in a race that involved a deep field and a pace that surged and slowed like turnpike traffic? His history now says that no, he cannot. “This is an important race for Haile,” George Hirsch, the chairman of the New York Road Runners, which operates the marathon, had said Friday. “If he wins, the word ‘arguably’ would be removed from his title as the greatest distance runner.” The only challenger to that mythical title, in Hirsch’s view, is Emil Zatopek, the Czech star who won the 5,000 and 10,000 meters and the marathon at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, in the days before the explosion of East African runners. But Gebrselassie did not finish Sunday, and “arguably” sticks to his reputation like gum on the bottom of a shoe. If he reconsiders, he could find inspiration in the knowledge that Carlos Lopes of Portugal won the 1984 Olympic marathon at 37. But, whether he continues or retires, time is closing in. For the second time this year, Gebrselassie could not finish a race in New York. In March, he dropped out of a half-marathon here, complaining of breathing difficulties. That problem was said to have been resolved with spray to sooth his irritated nasal passages. Just before Sunday’s race, in a television interview, Gebrselassie kept a brave front about a “small problem” in his knee. “I don’t think it will interrupt me,” he added. But he did not seem totally convinced. He said he would not push the pace. “I want to watch” the others, he said. “I want to stay behind.” Gebrselassie is a gregarious man who transcended the sport of distance running at a time when Kenyans and Ethiopians are so successful that they have become anonymous in their dominance. His life has broadened far beyond running. In recent years, Gebrselassie essentially split his time between sport and business, having built two schools, a gym and a hotel and opened an automobile dealership. He employed at least 600 people directly and perhaps 400 indirectly in one of the world’s poorest countries. He spoke Friday of his dual responsibilities, about running, but also about insurance and health care for his employees and how “if the businesses fail, it’s the failure of the life of the people.” Laughing, he recounted how his father, a subsistence farmer, did not want him to become an athlete. And how he changed his mind when Gebrselassie was awarded a Mercedes-Benz for winning the 10,000 at the 1993 world track and field championships — the first of many international titles. “His sheer endurance in an endurance sport is unbelievable,” Hirsch said. Wearing gloves to shield the 40-degree chill and a 13-mile-per-hour north wind, Gebrselassie ran Sunday with his left arm familiarly wide, a result of carrying his books back and forth to school as a boy. But instead of running fully upright, Gebrselassie frequently kept his head down against the wind and perhaps against the pain in his knee. Finally, at Mile 16, on the downhill portion of the Queensboro Bridge, he just stopped. “He said downhills were his problem,” Keflezighi said. “Uphills were fine.” Later, Gebrselassie said he would not run again. “Will I miss the race?” he said. “It’s hard to me, hard because. ...” He did not finish the thought. He thanked the reporters in attendance. And then limped away. “It’s better not to complain anymore,” he said. His retirement would not be accepted, Wittenberg said later. She advised Gebrselassie to reconsider. But she knew the decision would be up to him. “This is the kind of athlete that when you’ve performed to the highest of highs, he may very well decide that it’s enough,” Wittenberg said. “A knee injury with two weeks to go happens to mere mortals, you know.”

New York City Marathon
Running
Marathon Running
New York Road Runners Club
Gebrselassie Haile
Gebremariam Gebre
Wittenberg Mary
Keflezighi Mebrahtom


Philadelphia Eagles vs. Atlanta Falcons Matchup

Abstract: 7:10 p.m. Eastern, ESPN Line: Eagles by 2 ½ In a statement that had to make St. Louis Rams fans chuckle, DeMeco Ryans expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the new Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Sam Bradford. “Sam is the man,” Ryans, an Eagles linebacker, told reporters. “He’s an outstanding quarterback, and we just have to protect him and keep him healthy.” The oft-injured Bradford frequently inspired the Rams faithful in a similar way before a new injury would sideline him. In five seasons with the Rams, Bradford missed 31 of 80 games. But in a new city and a new system, Bradford’s luck may change. A win would involve beating Matt Ryan at home, but a revamped Philadelphia team should do just that. Pick: Eagles

Philadelphia Eagles
Atlanta Falcons
Sam Bradford
Football


Carmelo Anthony Misses, and a Bad Week Continues for Knicks

Abstract: BOSTON — Carmelo Anthony was already having a difficult week before he showed up Friday at TD Garden with the rest of the Knicks. Where to begin? On Tuesday, toward the end of a blowout loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, Anthony told a heckler at Madison Square Garden to ask James L. Dolan, the team’s owner, for a refund. On Wednesday, the team issued an apology on Anthony’s behalf. On Thursday, Anthony expressed zero regret over his actions, and clarified that Dolan had commissioned the apology. So there he was for the 63rd game of a season that has soured, plying his usual trade — scoring, rebounding and even defending a bit — against the Celtics, a divisional rival on the rise. It was not a favorable situation for the Knicks, who found a sliver of sunshine before storm clouds gathered once again. Anthony misfired on a 27-footer at the buzzer as the Celtics escaped with a 105-104 victory to hand the Knicks their 16th loss in their last 19 games. It was the final sequence in a series of late-game miscues committed by the Knicks (25-38), who blew an 8-point lead with less than four minutes to play. It was only a moral victory in the sense that they avoided getting blown out. Anthony finished with 30 points and 7 rebounds as the Knicks continued to free-fall. “I thought we did everything but win the basketball game,” Anthony said after sitting in silence for 15 minutes on a trainer’s table in the locker room. Arron Afflalo added 17 points for the Knicks, and Kristaps Porzingis finished with 15 but watched most of the second half from the bench. Isaiah Thomas scored 32 points to lead the Celtics (38-25), and Jae Crowder added 20 — many of them late to help spur his team’s comeback. On most days, the Celtics are everything the Knicks aspire to be, all their energetic parts forming a unified whole. More important, they have shaped themselves into a contender under Coach Brad Stevens, who said before the game that he was still amused by his team. The Celtics are unpredictable. He never knows, he said, what they will do next. They were not at their best against the Knicks. The Celtics went into the second half trailing by 58-53, and they were nearly undone by shooting 4 of 20 from 3-point range for the game. When Langston Galloway scored on a layup late in the fourth quarter, the Knicks went ahead by 8. But it was only a matter of time before their fragile chemistry crumpled like an accordion. The Celtics mounted a rally that included back-to-back buckets by Crowder in transition. Anthony later managed to put the Knicks back on top, 104-103, by hitting a turnaround jumper with 21.4 seconds left. But Avery Bradley cut right to the hoop for a layup with 17.7 seconds remaining, giving the Celtics a 1-point lead. And while the Celtics had a foul to give, Anthony did not attack the basket until time was winding down. Crowder deliberately fouled him with 3.3 seconds left, forcing the Knicks to reset their offense by inbounding the ball. Making matters worse, the Knicks were out of timeouts — and Kurt Rambis, the interim coach, said he had trouble shouting instructions over the din of the crowd. Anthony had no choice but to launch a contested shot from 27 feet, and the ball caromed wildly off the backboard. “That’s on me for not having enough timeouts at the end of a close ballgame,” Rambis said, “and not being able to get them organized to get a high-quality look. I feel bad for the guys because they did so many good things out there.” At the team’s morning shootaround, Anthony told reporters, for the umpteenth time, that the season had morphed into a psychological and physical test — his frustration officially a theme at this stage. In some ways, he said, the team’s recent stretch of futility has been even more trying for him than last season. Once upon a time, Anthony was a perennial presence in the playoffs, making 10 straight postseason appearances — with the Denver Nuggets, and then in his first three seasons in New York. But barring a miracle of biblical proportions, the Knicks are poised to miss out on the playoffs for the third straight season. Anthony said it was tough to accept. “I do look at my peers and say, ‘Damn, what am I doing wrong?’ ” he told reporters before the game, referring to friends like LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers. “There was one point in time where they were looking at me like that.” He added, “It’s a rough patch for me, so I’m trying to figure out a way to get out of it.” Despite an enthusiastic and determined effort here, the search continues.


Clippers’ Big Collapse Against Rockets Forces a Game 7

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — The confetti was ready to fall from the rafters, like a curtain to the past. The Los Angeles Clippers , finally, were minutes away from overcoming their own history. There was a double-digit lead and a celebratory air in Staples Center that felt like the final minutes of New Year’s Eve. The Clippers — the Clippers! — were on their way to closing out a second-round series with the Houston Rockets to reach a conference final for the first time in their 45 seasons as a franchise. “Sometimes you want stuff so bad that you can’t get it because you’re in your own way,” Coach Doc Rivers said later. The lead was 19 points late in the third quarter. It was 12 with 8 minutes 17 seconds left. A few shaky moments were erased by guard Chris Paul’s layup with 6:47 left, the lead at 8. Houston’s best player, James Harden, did not play a minute of the fourth quarter. The scoreboard at the end felt like a lie. It showed that the Rockets had won, 119-107. But scores do not illustrate mood and historical significance. This one did nothing to explain how decades of bad karma and rotten luck played out like a highlight reel during the biggest few minutes in Clippers history. Image The Los Angeles Clippers watch from the bench during the final minute of their Game 6 loss to the Rockets. Credit Jae C. Hong/Associated Press “What could have went wrong, went wrong,” Rivers said. The Clippers started in 1970 as the Buffalo Braves, then moved to San Diego in 1978 and were rechristened the Clippers. Under the stewardship of Donald Sterling, who bought the franchise in 1981 and moved it to Los Angeles in 1984, the Clippers were a persistent punch line — a mess of ineptitude on the court, a smudge of irrelevance off it, overseen by a man considered by many the worst owner in sports. But Sterling is gone now, barred for life from the N.B.A. for racist remarks he made to a mistress. That drama unfolded a year ago. Rivers, as much as anyone, guided the rudderless Clippers through the scandal during last year’s playoffs, when the team, suddenly noticed beyond the deep shadow of the Lakers, mustered enough composure to reach the second round. This season brought fresh air and bigger hopes. Sterling’s estranged wife, Rochelle, won a court battle to sell the team, and it landed in the hands of Steven A. Ballmer, the former Microsoft chief executive. Rivers steered the Clippers to the playoffs again — the fourth postseason in a row for a franchise that made the playoffs only four times in the previous 33 years. They beat the defending champion San Antonio Spurs in the first round, winning a tight Game 7. They arrived Thursday with a three-games-to-two lead on the Rockets in their Western Conference series. Their moment had arrived. At one point, Paul punctuated a play by high-fiving Ballmer on the sideline. Rochelle Sterling, now considered “owner emeritus,” cheered from her seat. T-shirts and foam balls carrying the Clippers’ rejuvenated name were fired from cannons, and everyone reached for a prize. What happened next could happen to only one team. “I thought the pressure mounted, honestly,” Rivers said. He did not use the word “choke” but came as close to doing so as anyone else associated with the team. “It happens,” Rivers said. “But it’s hard to happen when you have a lead like that.” With their lead at 102-94 with 6:47 left, the Clippers missed their next 11 field-goal attempts — open jump shots, layups, even a dunk. The Rockets scored the game’s next 18 points and 25 of the next 27. During the fourth quarter, in what should have been a 12-minute send-off to the next round, the Clippers were outscored by 40-15. It was stunning, even by the Clippers’ standards. Ballmer, no longer high-fiving, held his hands pressed together in front of his mouth, the way a child might pray at bedside. And even as the players said all the right things — the series is not over, we have won Game 7s before — it was hard to imagine, in the immediate aftermath of Game 6, that there would be any more celebrating for the Clippers. In N.B.A. postseason history, road teams are 24-95 in Game 7s. Maybe one surprise ending can trump another. “It’s awful for our team, and we have to figure out in the next 48 hours how to get them back,” Rivers said. Houston did it without Harden, who scored 23 points in the first three quarters, took a breather and never returned in the fourth. Coach Kevin McHale did not need him. Instead, the Rockets got 15 fourth-quarter points from the reserve Corey Brewer and 14 from Josh Smith. The Rockets spun it as a comeback on their part, not a collapse by the Clippers. History in Los Angeles will not remember it that way. The end felt nothing like the arrival of a new year, and everything like midnight had struck on a fairy tale too good to be true. Fans in their giveaway Clippers T-shirts (“Relentless,” the shirts read) shuffled out before the final buzzer sounded. The confetti never dropped from the rafters, where there is not a single banner celebrating the Clippers because there is still so little to celebrate, at least for a couple of days more.

Clippers
Houston Rockets
Doc Rivers
Basketball


Antarctic Odyssey, Through the Lens of Robert Falcon Scott

Abstract: David M. Wilson, a polar historian, was having drinks in a London art salesroom several years ago when an unknown collector approached him. “He said, ‘You’ll never guess what I have in my collection,’ ” Mr. Wilson recalled. The collector, Richard Kossow, told him that in 2001 he had purchased a portfolio of Antarctic photographs from the early 20th century. But these weren’t just any Antarctic photographs: They were from Robert Falcon Scott ’s expedition of 1910-13, in which Scott and several other men, including Mr. Wilson’s great-uncle, Edward Wilson, died while returning from the pole. And these weren’t just any photographs from that expedition, Mr. Kossow told him: They were taken by Scott himself. “I just about choked on my gin and tonic,” Mr. Wilson said. The whereabouts of most of the Scott photographs, taken around the expedition’s winter quarters on Ross Island and while on the journey toward the pole, had long been a mystery. Only a dozen or two had ever been published, and many of those had been incorrectly attributed to others. The unpublished photos had apparently languished in a commercial archive for decades. Now as the centenary of Scott’s death, in March 1912, approaches, Mr. Wilson has published all the images in “The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott,” along with detailed descriptions of where and when they were taken, as best Mr. Wilson could determine. Scott hired a well-known professional travel photographer, Herbert Ponting, for the expedition, and his photographs are some of the most celebrated in the history of polar exploration. But Ponting was never expected to make the arduous journey with sledges, ponies and dogs from Ross Island to the pole. Instead he gave Scott and others a crash course in photography, teaching them how to use the bulky cameras, lenses and filters and make proper exposures in the extreme conditions. It was a steep learning curve, but Scott turned out to be one of Ponting’s better students. Many of his photographs are from those training sessions. Sophie Gordon, who as senior curator of photographs at the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle is mounting an exhibition of the work of Ponting and a later Antarctic photographer, Frank Hurley, said Scott had learned well from his teacher. “He really had quite an artistic eye,” she said. “His best photographs look like Pontings.”

Lost Photographs of Captain Scott The (Book)


The Guessing Game Has Begun on the Next iPhone

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Can Steven P. Jobs top the iPhone ... with another iPhone? Last June, Mr. Jobs began selling what has become one of the most talked-about consumer products in history. Now he faces a new challenge as Apple prepares to introduce an updated version of the phone next month. After almost a year of strong sales that have made it one of the dominant smartphones in the United States, the iPhone has settled down to a less-than-spectacular pace: roughly 600,000 units a month, according to the company. Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., had shipped about 5.5 million phones by the end of March, the most recent figures it has released. It sold just 1.7 million phones in the first three months of this year, meaning it must sell more than 8 million phones to reach Mr. Jobs’s publicly stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008. “They’re going to have a difficult time” hitting that number, said Edward Snyder, an analyst at Charter Equity Research. He said that Nokia, the world’s largest maker of cellphones, sells more phones every week than Apple has sold since the iPhone’s introduction. So what could Apple’s impresario have up his sleeve to pick up the pace — and to keep the second-generation iPhone from being a letdown? Although the company will not publicly confirm the arrival of a second iPhone, Apple watchers have concluded that a new version will be introduced June 9, the opening day of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Apparently in preparation for the event, stocks of the existing iPhone have been dwindling in the last month. Although AT&T stores still have phones in stock, according to a company spokesman, the supply has largely dried up in Apple’s retail outlets, and the phones are no longer available through the company’s online store. Apple may be trying to avoid the anger it faced last September when it cut the iPhone’s price by $200 just two months after it went on sale, making early buyers feel cheated. Mr. Jobs offered those customers a $100 store credit. Cutting down on supply means fewer angry buyers when their new phone is suddenly obsolete. “You can say what you want about Steve Jobs, but he’s learning from his mistakes,” said Roger Entner, a senior vice president at IAG Nielsen, a market research firm. “They are cleaning out the supply channel.” Even as supplies shrink, Apple has been signing a series of deals with cellphone network providers around the world. On Tuesday the cellular operator TeliaSonera said it would offer the iPhone in seven countries, including Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The only major countries without an iPhone distribution agreement are Japan, Russia and China. Meanwhile the Apple rumor mill has wound up to a fever pitch in recent weeks with speculation about the new phone’s features. One Web site that tracks imports even decided that shipping manifests indicated that the company had already brought millions of iPhones into the country in dozens of seaborne shipping containers. Industry executives, however, said this would be an odd move for Apple, which in the past has introduced products by air — shipping the first batch at the last moment. Both Mr. Jobs and Randall L. Stephenson, the chief executive of Apple’s partner AT&T, have promised a new iPhone model this year that would run on a high-speed wireless data network. AT&T is building such a network, which uses technology known as 3G and is intended to support a range of new applications, including mobile digital video. The company said last week that the network would be largely finished by the end of June. But analysts say faster downloads may not be enough to touch off a new wave of consumer interest in the iPhone. “Subscribers don’t care what the radio interface of their cellular phone is,” Mr. Snyder said. If he is to rekindle the excitement that greeted the iPhone’s introduction, Mr. Jobs is likely to need something else. So far, he has been successful in hiding any surprise features from the dozens of Web sites and bloggers that track the company’s new products. There has been speculation about a higher-resolution camera, possible support for digital video recording, a slightly bulkier and more curved case, and the addition of a global positioning system receiver that would allow new Web services tied to a person’s location. Mr. Jobs is certain to make much of the availability of many new iPhone programs that Apple will begin selling through its iTunes store in the coming months. He could also accelerate sales by cutting the phone’s price or letting operators offer subsidies, as they do with many other phones. In the United States the phone now costs $399 or $499 depending on the amount of memory. Bells and whistles aside, the new phone may have a few new shortcomings as well. Company executives have acknowledged that the new 3G networks will be a challenge for its engineers, because using them burns up more battery power compared with the slower Edge networks used by current iPhones. IPhone users have turned out to be prodigious consumers of wireless data. For example, the iPhone customers of T-Mobile, the German cellular operator, consume 30 times more data than its other wireless customers, according to Chetan Sharma, an independent wireless industry analyst. Mr. Sharma estimates that iPhone users in the United States consume two and a half to three times more data than users of other cellphones. Faster networks could widen that gap and further extend the iPhone’s influence in the telecommunications world. “IPhone is not only having an impact on data revenues,” he said, “but also on device design, mobile advertising road maps, and applications and services that are being contemplated for the future.”

iPhone
Apple Inc
Cellular Telephones
Wireless Communications
Computers and the Internet


Close Finish at Welsh Race

Abstract: Emperor’s Choice, trained by Venetia Williams, won the Coral Welsh Grand National at Chepstow. A 9-1 shot, Emperor’s Choice won by less than a head over Benvolio (11-1). A 33-1 long shot, Glenquest, was third, two and a half lengths back. Williams also trained Mon Mome, the winner of the Grand National in 2009. The only other woman to achieve that feat was Jenny Pitman, who twice won the race, with Corbiere in 1983 and Royal Athlete in 1995.


Birth Control Rule Altered to Allay Religious Objections

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday proposed yet another compromise to address strenuous objections from religious organizations about a policy requiring health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, but the change did not end the political furor or legal fight over the issue. The proposal could expand the number of groups that do not need to pay directly for birth control coverage, encompassing not only churches and other religious organizations, but also some religiously affiliated hospitals, universities and social service agencies. Health insurance companies would pay for the coverage. The latest proposed change is the third in the last 15 months, all announced on Fridays, as President Obama has struggled to balance women’s rights, health care and religious liberty. Legal experts said the fight could end up in the Supreme Court. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the proposal would guarantee free coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns.” But Kyle Duncan, the general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, which is representing employers in eight lawsuits, said the litigation would continue. “Today’s proposed rule does nothing to protect the religious freedom of millions of Americans,” Mr. Duncan said. Religious groups dissatisfied with the new proposal want a broader, more explicit exemption for religious organizations and protection for secular businesses owned by people with religious objections to contraceptive coverage. The tortured history of the rule has played out in several chapters. The Obama administration first issued standards requiring insurers to cover contraceptives for women in August 2011, less than a month after receiving recommendations to that effect from the National Academy of Sciences. In January 2012, the administration rejected a broad exemption sought by the Roman Catholic Church for insurance provided by Catholic hospitals, colleges and charities. After a firestorm of criticism from Catholic bishops and Republican lawmakers, the administration offered a possible compromise that February. But it left many questions unanswered and did not say how coverage would be provided for self-insured religious organizations. Under the new proposal, churches and nonprofit religious organizations that object to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds would not have to pay for it. Female employees could get free contraceptive coverage through a separate plan that would be provided by a health insurer. Institutions objecting to the coverage would not pay for the contraceptives. Insurance companies would bear the cost of providing the separate coverage, with the possibility of recouping the costs through lower health care expenses resulting in part from fewer births. Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, who helped develop the proposal as deputy director of the federal office that regulates health insurance, said: “Under the proposed rule, insurance companies — not churches or other religious organizations — will cover contraceptive services. No nonprofit religious institution will be forced to pay for or provide contraceptive coverage, and churches and houses of worship are specifically exempt.” Moreover, she said, “Nonprofit religious organizations like universities, hospitals or charities with religious objections won’t have to arrange, contract or pay for coverage of these services for their employees or students.” But some of the lawsuits objecting to the plan have been filed by businesses owned by people who say they have religious reasons for not wanting to provide contraceptive coverage. Under the proposed rule, “for-profit secular employers” would have to provide birth control coverage to employees, even if the business owners had a religious objection to the idea. Insurers said they were studying the proposal, but had questions about how it would work. Many insurers asked where they would get the money to pay for birth control pills if — as the proposed rule says — they cannot “impose any premium, fee or other charge” for the coverage. The 2010 health care law generally requires employers to provide women with coverage at no cost for “preventive care and screenings,” which the administration says must include contraceptives for women under most health plans. The administration says employers must cover sterilization and the full range of contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including emergency contraceptive pills, like those known as ella and Plan B One-Step. Employers that do not provide such coverage will be subject to financial penalties. On Friday, the administration proposed a complicated arrangement to finance contraceptive coverage for employees of religious organizations that serve as their own insurers. The federal government would require health insurance companies to help defray the cost. In return, the insurers would get a credit against the fees they pay for the privilege of selling health insurance to millions of Americans in new online markets run by the federal government. The government was already planning to charge user fees to the insurers to pay for the operation of those marketplaces, known as insurance exchanges. Ms. Brooks-LaSure said the user fees were “not a cost to the federal government or to taxpayers.” Rather, she said, the fees are “private dollars paid by private insurers that choose to operate in the exchanges.” Insurers said, however, that the cost of user fees, like other expenses, would often be passed on to consumers. The proposal also said insurers could not impose any annual or lifetime limits on the dollar value of contraceptive benefits. But the administration added that “the cost of the contraceptive coverage could include a reasonable margin,” or profit, for insurers. Administration officials tried to address some objections on Friday by proposing a new definition of “religious employers” that could be exempted from the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage. The administration affirmed that the exemption would apply to churches and other houses of worship and that it would also be available to certain affiliated nonprofit groups that certify, in writing, that they have religious objections to such coverage. Now, under the proposal, the administration said, “a house of worship would not be excluded from the exemption because, for example, it provides charitable social services to persons of different religious faiths or employs persons of different religious faiths.” The administration had previously agreed to allow exemptions for some religious employers. But church groups said the exemption was so narrow that it was almost meaningless. Previously, a religious employer could not have qualified for the exemption if it employed or served large numbers of people of a different faith, as many Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies do. Stephen F. Schneck, the director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, said, “The revised definition is an important win for religious institutions because it clarifies conscience protections for entities like Catholic hospitals, charities and universities.” Mr. Schneck was a leader of Catholics for Obama last year. The administration said that the new definition, though simpler, “would not expand the universe of employer plans that would qualify for the exemption beyond that which was intended” in final rules issued last year. Reaction was wide ranging. Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the policy affirmed that “your boss does not get to decide whether you can have birth control.” But Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey and co-chairman of the Pro-Life Caucus in Congress, said the proposal represented “neither an accommodation nor a compromise” and provided “no relief for small businesses run by people of faith.”

Birth control
Health Insurance
Catholic Church
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Barack Obama
Freedom of religion


Dillard’s Profit Rises, and Its Shares Surge

Abstract: Dillard’s , the department store operator, said Friday that its profit rose 57 percent in the first quarter, helped by fewer markdowns and reduced expenses. The company said it earned $76.7 million, or $1.31 a share, compared with $48.8 million, or 68 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Revenue increased 1 percent, to $1.5 billion from $1.48 billion. Dillard’s said it was able to manage inventory better in the quarter, resulting in fewer markdowns. Shares of Dillard’s, which is based in Little Rock, Ark., rose $7.41, or 15.25 percent, to $56.


Congo Rebels in Goma Vow to Take Kinshasha

Abstract: GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — No visa is necessary to cross this border anymore. Nor do red-eyed soldiers hang around reeking of home-brew. Gone, too, are many of the quasi-government officials who used to buzz around this border post harassing travelers and squeezing out bribes, including one little man who claimed to be a health officer and had “Doc” scribbled in Magic Marker on his coat. Instead, the doorway to Goma, one of Congo’s largest and most strategic cities, is now manned by lean, young rebels in crisp fatigues. They captured this town on Tuesday, ridding it of an often sloppy and menacing Congolese Army presence, and on Wednesday the rebels announced at a triumphant rally that Goma was just the beginning. “We’re going to Kinshasa!” vowed Col. Vianney Kazarama, a spokesman for the M23 rebel group. Kinshasa, the capital, is nearly 1,000 miles away, but the rebels are beginning to eat away at that distance, day by day. On Wednesday, rebel forces met virtually no resistance as they swept into the strategic town of Sake, down the road from Goma. Local militiamen have also pushed the army out of other areas as more of this vast and complicated country spins out of government control. Until this week, many naysayers had dismissed the M23 as a parochial, small-time militia, with discipline but neither the resources nor the manpower to upend Congo. But now it seems the rebels are rapidly gaining momentum — and making allies along the way. Antigovernment fury is spreading across the country, with people enraged at President Joseph Kabila for allowing Goma to fall. “Our president is a thief, a thief!” exclaimed Jean-Claude Dumbo, an unemployed man in Goma. “He doesn’t pay the army. He steals it all for himself.” Protesters in several cities continued to raze buildings and set cars afire on Wednesday, directing some of their venom toward the United Nations, whose peacekeepers stayed riveted in the seats of their armored personnel carriers, not firing a shot, as the rebels marched into downtown Goma. United Nations officials have said that they did not have the numbers to beat back the rebels and that they were worried about collateral damage, but many Congolese have rendered their own verdict. On Wednesday, rioters in Bunia, north of Goma, ransacked the houses of United Nations personnel. Whether the M23, whose ranks are thought to number no more than 3,000, has the capacity to shape all this discontent into a national uprising and overthrow Mr. Kabila remains to be seen. A big factor will be neighboring Rwanda , which is widely suspected of arming the M23 and sending Rwandan soldiers to fight covertly alongside the rebels. Twice before, in 1996 and 1998, Rwanda clandestinely fomented rebellions in eastern Congo that eventually reached all the way to Kinshasa. At the time, the Rwandan government lied about its involvement, denying that it had thousands of troops inside this country. One top commander back then, James Kabarebe, who is now Rwanda’s defense minister, even hijacked planes in Goma and flew across Congo with hundreds of soldiers to open a new front. Mr. Kabarebe was recently accused by United Nations investigators of being the secret puppeteer behind the M23, pulling the strings as a way for Rwanda to control Congo’s lucrative mineral trade and dominate this area. Rwanda has vehemently denied such involvement. Some human rights groups say that Susan E. Rice , the American ambassador to the United Nations and a leading contender to be President Obama’s next secretary of state, has been far too soft on Rwanda, which is a close American ally and whose president, Paul Kagame , has known Ms. Rice for years. The activists have accused her of watering down language in a Security Council resolution that would have mentioned Rwanda’s links to the rebels and say she also tried to block the publication of part of a report that detailed Rwanda’s covert support for the M23. Erin Pelton, her spokeswoman, said the United States was helping to “reinforce the diplomatic effort” and declared it “patently untrue” that the United States had blocked the investigative report. Mr. Kabila is learning that he cannot rely on his army to quell this rebellion, which is no surprise, given that Congo’s military has been notoriously corrupt, dysfunctional and predatory for years. Instead, Mr. Kabila now seems to be hoping that diplomacy can save him. Over the past few days he has been meeting with Mr. Kagame, and some indications emerged Wednesday night that Mr. Kabila had been persuaded to negotiate with the M23, despite earlier refusals. But that may be problematic, too. Human Rights Watch said that the M23’s commanders were responsible for “ethnic massacres, recruitment of children, mass rape, killings, abductions and torture.” So far in Goma, the rebels have been quiet. A beat of life had returned to the streets by Wednesday afternoon, with some shops opening their doors and people casually strolling down the road. “Of course we were scared when these guys came in with guns and we didn’t know who they were,” said John Kamata, a former government worker now looking for a job. “But they’ve been O.K. There hasn’t been any killing yet.”

Congo Democratic Republic of (Congo-Kinshasa)


China, Pursuing Strategic Interests, Builds Presence in Antarctica

Abstract: HOBART, Tasmania — Few places seem out of reach for China ’s leader, Xi Jinping , who has traveled from European capitals to obscure Pacific and Caribbean islands in pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests. So perhaps it was not surprising when he turned up last fall in this city on the edge of the Southern Ocean to put down a long-distance marker in another faraway region, Antarctica , 2,000 miles south of this Australian port. Standing on the deck of an icebreaker that ferries Chinese scientists from this last stop before the frozen continent, Mr. Xi pledged that China would continue to expand in one of the few places on earth that remain unexploited by humans. He signed a five-year accord with the Australian government that allows Chinese vessels and, in the future, aircraft to resupply for fuel and food before heading south. That will help secure easier access to a region that is believed to have vast oil and mineral resources; huge quantities of high-protein sea life; and for times of possible future dire need, fresh water contained in icebergs. It was not until 1985, about seven decades after Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced to the South Pole , that a team representing Beijing hoisted the Chinese flag over the nation’s first Antarctic research base, the Great Wall Station on King George Island. But now China seems determined to catch up. As it has bolstered spending on Antarctic research, and as the early explorers, especially the United States and Australia , confront stagnant budgets, there is growing concern about its intentions. China’s operations on the continent — it opened its fourth research station last year, chose a site for a fifth, and is investing in a second icebreaker and new ice-capable planes and helicopters — are already the fastest growing of the 52 signatories to the Antarctic Treaty . That gentlemen’s agreement reached in 1959 bans military activity on the continent and aims to preserve it as one of the world’s last wildernesses; a related pact prohibits mining. But Mr. Xi’s visit was another sign that China is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent’s resource potential when the treaty is expected to come up for review in 2048 — or in the event that it is ripped up before, Chinese and Australian experts say. “So far, our research is natural-science based, but we know there is more and more concern about resource security,” said Yang Huigen, director general of the Polar Research Institute of China, who accompanied Mr. Xi last November on his visit to Hobart and stood with him on the icebreaker, Xue Long, or Snow Dragon. With that in mind, the polar institute recently opened a new division devoted to the study of resources, law, geopolitics and governance in Antarctica and the Arctic, Mr. Yang said. Australia , a strategic ally of the United States that has strong economic relations with China, is watching China’s buildup in the Antarctic with a mix of gratitude — China’s presence offers support for Australia’s Antarctic science program, which is short of cash — and wariness. “We should have no illusions about the deeper agenda — one that has not even been agreed to by Chinese scientists but is driven by Xi, and most likely his successors,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former senior official in the Australian Department of Defense. “This is part of a broader pattern of a mercantilist approach all around the world,” Mr. Jennings added. “A big driver of Chinese policy is to secure long-term energy supply and food supply.” That approach was evident last month when a large Chinese agriculture enterprise announced an expansion of its fishing operations around Antarctica to catch more krill — small, protein-rich crustaceans that are abundant in Antarctic waters. “The Antarctic is a treasure house for all human beings, and China should go there and share,” Liu Shenli, the chairman of the China National Agricultural Development Group, told China Daily , a state-owned newspaper. China would aim to fish up to two million tons of krill a year, he said, a substantial increase from what it currently harvests. Because sovereignty over Antarctica is unclear, nations have sought to strengthen their claims over the ice-covered land by building research bases and naming geographic features. China’s fifth station will put it within reach of the six American facilities, and ahead of Australia’s three. Chinese mappers have also given Chinese names to more than 300 sites, compared with the thousands of locations on the continent with English names. In the unspoken competition for Antarctica’s future, scientific achievement can also translate into influence. Chinese scientists are driving to be the first to drill and recover an ice core containing tiny air bubbles that provide a record of climate change stretching as far back as 1.5 million years. It is an expensive and delicate effort at which others, including the European Union and Australia, have failed. In a breakthrough a decade ago, European scientists extracted an ice core nearly two miles long that revealed 800,000 years of climate history. But finding an ice core going back further would allow scientists to examine a change in the earth’s climate cycles believed to have occurred 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago. China is betting it has found the best location to drill, at an area called Dome A, or Dome Argus, the highest point on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Though it is considered one of the coldest places on the planet, with temperatures of 130 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, a Chinese expedition explored the area in 2005 and established a research station in 2009. “The international community has drilled in lots of places, but no luck so far,” said Xiao Cunde, a member of the first party to reach the site and the deputy director of the Institute for Climate Change at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences. “We think at Dome A we will have a straight shot at the one-million-year ice core.” Mr. Xiao said China had already begun drilling and hoped to find what scientists are looking for in four to five years. To support its Antarctic aspirations, China is building a sophisticated $300 million icebreaker that is expected to be ready in a few years, said Xia Limin, deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration in Beijing. It has also bought a high-tech fixed-wing aircraft , outfitted in the United States, for taking sensitive scientific soundings from the ice. China has chosen the site for its fifth research station at Inexpressible Island, named by a group of British explorers who were stranded at the desolate site in 1912 and survived the winter by excavating a small ice cave. Mr. Xia said the inhospitable spot was ideal because China did not have a presence in that part of Antarctica, and because the rocky site did not have much snow, making it relatively cheap to build there. Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the author of a soon-to-be-released book, “China as a Polar Great Power,” said Chinese scientists also believed they had a good chance of finding mineral and energy resources near the site. “China is playing a long game in Antarctica and keeping other states guessing about its true intentions and interests are part of its poker hand,” she said. But she noted that China’s interest in finding minerals was presented “loud and clear to domestic audiences” as the main reason it was investing in Antarctica. Because commercial drilling is banned, estimates of energy and mineral resources in Antarctica rely on remote sensing data and comparisons with similar geological environments elsewhere, said Millard F. Coffin, executive director of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart. But the difficulty of extraction in such severe conditions and uncertainty about future commodity prices make it unlikely that China or any country would defy the ban on mining anytime soon. Tourism, however, is already booming. Travelers from China are still a relatively small contingent in the Antarctic compared with the more than 13,000 Americans who visited in 2013, and as yet there are no licensed Chinese tour operators. But that is about to change, said Anthony Bergin, deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “I understand very soon there will be Chinese tourists on Chinese vessels with all-Chinese crew in the Antarctic,” he said.

China
Antarctica
Xi Jinping
Australia
Research
Krill
Climate Change
Global Warming
US


German Lawmakers Grill Draghi Over Bond Program

Abstract: BERLIN — The head of the European Central Bank , aiming to build trust with German lawmakers critical of the bank’s recently announced bond-buying program, spent two hours Wednesday reassuring members of Parliament that the plan dovetailed with wider reform efforts within the euro zone. Lawmakers from across Germany’s political spectrum welcomed the gesture by the E.C.B. president, Mario Draghi , to consider their concerns that the program could trigger inflation and undermine efforts to push through reforms in the weaker euro zone countries. “I had the impression that this discussion achieved a lot to better understand the intent and concerns from both sides,” said Norbert Lammert, president of the Parliament, the Bundestag. Many other members apparently welcomed Mr. Draghi’s visit and the chance to pose questions directly to him, although some opposition lawmakers maintained criticism that the E.C.B. plan amounted to a first step on a path toward common sharing of debt among the 17 states using the euro. Mr. Draghi met with about 150 lawmakers, mostly members of the finance, budgetary and European affairs committees, rather than the full assembly. It would have been considered inappropriate for him to address the full Bundestag, an honor reserved for heads of state or dignitaries like the pope. In his opening remarks, Mr. Draghi addressed the criticisms point by point, telling lawmakers that the bond-buying program would not lead to disguised financing of governments, compromise the bank’s independence, nor create excessive risks for taxpayers nor lead to inflation. Mr. Draghi already had the backing of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, but many lawmakers who had remained unsure about the program expressed approval of the thoroughness and detail that Mr. Draghi drew from to explain the bank’s decisions. “His answers were very convincing, and we can therefore give the message to German citizens that fears of inflation that have been expressed here and there are unfounded,” said Norbert Barthle, a senior member of the chancellor’s party. Even though the plan, known as Outright Monetary Transactions, or O.M.T., has not yet been implemented, its existence has already contributed to an easing of the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone by pushing down the borrowing costs of fragile countries like Spain. The lawmakers had sought reassurances about the conditions under which it would be run, and Mr. Draghi explained that by linking it to receiving nations implementing reforms, its goal remained in step with overall efforts to restructure the economies of weaker euro zone members. Emerging from the closed-door session, Mr. Draghi said he had welcomed the tough questioning. “These opportunities make you think, but also express your views in a way that can be understood by nonspecialists,” he said, “by people who don’t do this 24 hours a day, every day of their lives.” An appearance by the E.C.B. president before members of the Bundestag is not unique. Mr. Draghi’s predecessor, Jean-Claude Trichet, briefed German lawmakers in April 2010 on the details of the first financial bailout for Greece, along with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund. But such meetings are rare, and Wednesday’s reflected how important Mr. Draghi, a former head of the Bank of Italy, views keeping German lawmakers on his side. Among the fiercest critics of his plan has been Jens Weidmann, the president of Germany’s central bank. He was the only one of 23 members of the E.C.B.’s Governing Council to oppose the plan, arguing that it would violate a ban on using the central bank to finance governments. Michael Meister, a member of the chancellor’s conservative Christian Democratic party, echoed those concerns in telling Rheinische Post on Wednesday that he expected Mr. Draghi to voice “clear support for monetary stability and clear rejection of E.C.B. intervention in financing governments.” Mr. Draghi has defended the bond-buying program by saying that taking no action would have posed a greater danger. He has insisted that the plan is fully within the bank’s mandate to ensure price stability in the euro zone. Since announcement of the plan on Sept. 6, talk of the euro zone’s breaking apart has quieted and investors have brought down interest rates on loans to Spain and Italy. Experts acknowledge the benefits brought about by the program, but warn that without the necessary structural changes to the economies of the weaker euro zone members, there can be no lasting recovery and that inflation remains a threat. German worries about the economy are not unfounded. Germany’s business community’s confidence fell in October for the sixth straight month, a survey by the Ifo institute in Munich showed Wednesday. The survey of 7,000 executives dropped to 100.0 from 101.4, despite forecasts that it would rise, reflecting that uncertainties stemming from the sovereign debt crisis, now in its third year.

European Central Bank
Germany
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Euro (Currency)
Draghi Mario


Lufthansa Faces Mounting Challenges as More Details of Germanwings Crash Emerge

Abstract: FRANKFURT — Lufthansa was supposed to be celebrating the 60th anniversary of its postwar rebirth this month. Instead, on Wednesday, the day of that anniversary, the German airline faced perhaps the worst crisis in its history after acknowledging that it had been aware that the co-pilot who deliberately crashed one of its planes in the French Alps last week, killing himself and the other 149 people on board, had a history of severe depression. In Germany, the home country of nearly half of the victims, anger was increasingly directed toward the airline and its 48-year-old chief executive, Carsten Spohr, who only a week ago was boasting that Lufthansa had the best pilots in the world. Mr. Spohr and Thomas Winkelmann, the chief executive of Germanwings, the low-cost subsidiary of Lufthansa that operated the plane that crashed, visited the French village of Seyne-les-Alpes, near the crash site, on Wednesday. “We are learning more every day about the cause of the accident,” Mr. Spohr told reporters in France. “But I think it will take a long, long time for all of us to understand how this could happen.” Mr. Spohr did not respond to questions shouted by the reporters. In the German town of Haltern am See, residents gathered to remember the 16 students and two teachers killed on Flight 9525 as they returned from an exchange trip with a Spanish school near Barcelona, the flight’s departure point. Lufthansa said late on Tuesday that in 2009, Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot, had told the flight school operated by the airline about a “previous episode of severe depression.” Mr. Lubitz provided the information about his depression after he had taken a break of several months from the flight school, as he was trying to resume his training, Lufthansa said. The airline is facing a long list of serious challenges, including heightened competition on both short- and long-haul routes and tense relations with the pilots’ union that have led to a series of costly strikes . “At a time when Lufthansa was already facing significant competitive and industrial relations challenges, this tragedy only places more pressure on the company’s management,” said John Strickland, an independent aviation industry consultant in London. On Tuesday, the German tabloid Bild and Paris Match, a popular French magazine, claimed to have obtained video from a mobile phone recovered from the crash site that depicted chaos aboard the plane in the final seconds before it crashed. But French officials have expressed doubts about the veracity of those reports. On Wednesday, Brice Robin, the Marseille prosecutor in charge of the French criminal investigation, said no videos were currently among the evidence held by investigators. “In the event that someone is in possession of such a video, they should promptly give it to investigators,” Mr. Robin said. Statements made by Mr. Spohr last week, in which he insisted that Mr. Lubitz had been fit to fly , are now coming back to haunt him. The Westdeutsche Zeitung, a newspaper covering the region that includes Düsseldorf, the German city to which the plane was flying, said Lufthansa’s admission that it had known of Mr. Lubitz’s mental health problems was “a helpless attempt to prevent company chief Carsten Spohr, with his fatal words ‘100 percent flightworthy,’ ” from appearing “as a liar ripe for resignation.” Image French rescue workers at the scene of the Germanwings Airbus A320 crash on Tuesday. Credit Yves Malenfer/French Interior Ministry The possibility that a pilot was able to hide problems well enough to keep flying could also blemish one of Lufthansa’s main selling points, its reputation for technical excellence and safety. Until last week, Lufthansa and its subsidiaries had not had a fatal flying accident in 22 years. Since taking over as chief executive of Lufthansa in May, Mr. Spohr has responded to competition from no-frills airlines like Ryanair by putting more emphasis on Germanwings. But questions are being raised about whether European procedures allow inexperienced pilots to have too much responsibility. Mr. Lubitz had 630 hours of flight time when, according to investigators, he slammed the Airbus A320 into a mountainside. Mr. Lubitz had apparently locked the more experienced pilot out of the cockpit. “How was it that this guy could have had only 630 hours and already be flying an A320?” asked Amy Fraher, a former United States Navy commander and United Airlines pilot. “It is a big, sophisticated aircraft with a lot of power and, in this case, 150 people on board.” “It troubles me,” said Ms. Fraher, who also lectures at the University of Birmingham in Britain. “I see evidence that in the interests of cost-cutting, pilot training has become condensed” to just a few years, rather than the seven or eight years that was once the industry norm worldwide, she said. “Such an accelerated career path doesn’t give young pilots time to become more professional and properly seasoned.” Others, however, doubt that Lufthansa’s training practices played a role in the Germanwings crash. “We have no evidence there has been cost-cutting on safety,” said Christoph Drescher, general secretary of the European Cabin Crew Association, which represents flight attendants. What Happened on the Germanwings Flight Maps and timeline of what is known about the crash. “The colleagues from Germanwings are very well trained,” Mr. Drescher said. “The regulatory standards are upheld and exceeded.” Mr. Spohr, who has held numerous management roles in his 20 years at the Lufthansa group, including stints running its global airline partnerships and cargo businesses, is also a licensed Airbus A320 pilot. He was the head of the main Lufthansa passenger business before assuming the role of chief executive. Analysts with knowledge of the company describe him as generally well liked and respected among the group’s 118,000 employees, and in particular among its 5,400 pilots. Speaking to a small group of reporter s in Frankfurt in December, Mr. Spohr said his background as a company insider was an asset at a time of rapid change. “I have my roots probably in the perfect soil,” Mr. Spohr said then. “I know our weaknesses; I didn’t start from scratch.” At the time, however, some analysts worried privately that Mr. Spohr’s reputation as a nice guy was a handicap when Lufthansa was under intense pressure to move quickly to reduce costs, particularly those associated with labor and retirement benefits, which represent around one-fifth of the airline’s annual revenue. Victims of Germanwings Flight 9525 Passengers from at least 15 countries were aboard the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany, including 72 Germans and 35 Spaniards. Here are profiles of some of the 123 victims whose families have been notified. Efforts to scale back an early-retirement deal for pilots, alongside changes to pay and working conditions, have been at the heart of the series of strikes by Lufthansa’s pilots over the past year, including a three-day walkout in early December that forced the cancellation of thousands of flights. Germanwings pilots, who work under a separate contract, have largely refrained from joining the strikes, although they did stage a two-day walkout in February that resulted in the cancellation of more than 300 flights. Those strikes, and others by security staff members, cost Lufthansa a total of 232 million euros, or about $250 million, in 2014, contributing to an 11 percent drop in profit at its core German airlines division, made up of Lufthansa and Germanwings. But the unions have rallied around Lufthansa and Germanwings since last week’s crash, and they have declined to criticize airline management. Lufthansa reported a net loss of $460 million in the last quarter of 2014, which it attributed largely to one-time factors like an increase in pension contributions. The company had already postponed indefinitely an anniversary celebration that had been planned for April 15. Instead, Lufthansa will take part in a memorial celebration for the victims planned for April 17 in the main cathedral in Cologne, Germany.

Germanwings
Andreas Lubitz
Mental Health
Plane Crash
Deutsche Lufthansa