On New York Ballot, Questions With No Good Choices

Abstract: For New York voters, the referendum that awaits on Tuesday is a splendid example of “Morton’s fork.” The phrase describes a choice between two alternatives that will produce equally unpalatable results. Bridge players know the term from a maneuver called a Morton’s fork coup. It is named for John Morton, an English lord chancellor in the 15th century who shaped a make-everyone-pay policy for tax collection under Henry VII, one king too soon for Herman’s Hermits. Two questions devised by the city’s Charter Revision Commission will appear on the ballot — if you can find them. They are relegated to the back side of the printed ballot, in type so small that you should probably get a permission slip from your eye doctor before voting. Question 1 deals with a golden oldie that refuses to go away: term limits. Voters are being asked if they wish to undo the cynical 2008 deal between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn. That arrangement, endorsed by a slender Council majority, subverted the expressed desire of voters in previous referendums to limit elected city officials to two consecutive terms. With the clock ticking on their remaining time in office, Mr. Bloomberg, Ms. Quinn and their minions awarded themselves a shot at third terms. If voters say yes to this question, the city would go back to a two-term limit. Also, the Council would be prohibited in the future from doing what it did, at the mayor’s bidding, in 2008. But there is a catch. With a logic that many New Yorkers find unpersuasive, the commission included an incumbent-protection provision; these changes would apply only to future elected officials, not to those now in office. This is where Morton’s fork comes in, especially for New Yorkers who voted for the old two-term limit and who were offended by what the mayor and the Council did. If they vote no, the limit will stay at three terms. If they vote yes, the two-term limit would be restored, but the incumbent-protection plan means some Council members who helped themselves in 2008 will in effect be rewarded with a chance to cling to office for yet one more four-year term. For many voters, neither choice is appealing. Question 2 has its own Morton’s fork component. This question is a hodgepodge of administrative and political wonkery — seven disparate proposals lumped together like oatmeal. Vote yes, and you accept them all, including some that you may not like. Vote no, and you toss out a few ideas that you think may make sense. Only really smart people, as the charter commission members are, could come up with a mess on this order. Unsurprisingly, cynicism is in blossom, starting with Mr. Bloomberg. He said he would vote yes on Question 1. The commission’s proposal is not entirely to his liking, he said, but “it’s better than what we have now.” THIS is a journey through the looking glass. The only reason we have what we have now is that Mr. Bloomberg engineered it. He got his one-time-only bonanza. It is all that matters for him. On his side is a fellow billionaire, Ronald S. Lauder, who bankrolled the original 1993 referendum that installed the two-term limit. Mr. Lauder agreed to stay silent in 2008 to help his buddy, the mayor, get his third term. Now, in time for Halloween, he has emerged from the political graveyard to plunk down some of his inherited money on commercials urging a return to two terms. As for newspapers, some seem to suffer from a severe case of short-term memory loss. All three major papers in the city supported the Bloomberg-Quinn deal. This newspaper’s editorial board did so somewhat tepidly. The Daily News and The New York Post, owned by two more billionaires, were rabidly enthusiastic. But you wouldn’t know it from recent editorials. In August, The News tut-tutted over how the Council had acted “self-servingly” in 2008. The Council — as if Mr. Bloomberg had no hand in the process. Last weekend, The Post urged voters to skip Question 1 entirely. “Why bother?” it said, adding with a straight face, “Politicians treat term limits with contempt.” No kidding. Ignoring the question will undoubtedly be the path taken by some voters. But others will be left to grapple with a difficult choice, one not made easier by advice offered here free of charge: When you come to a Morton’s fork in the road, take it.

Referendums
Politics and Government
Term Limits (Political Office)
New York City
Bloomberg Michael R


U.S. Sues ValueAct, Saying Hedge Fund Violated Antitrust Law

Abstract: Not long after Baker Hughes and Halliburton announced a merger agreement in November 2014, ValueAct, led by Jeffrey W. Ubben, started acquiring stakes in both energy giants. The prominent hedge fund came up with a plan if the $35 billion deal turned messy: to push the chief executives to do what it took to ensure the deal went through. That strategy (and when ValueAct came up with it) is at the heart of a $19 million antitrust lawsuit filed on Monday by the Justice Department. Regulators require active investors — or those who plan to influence business decisions of management teams — to alert the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department and wait for a period of time before acquiring securities above a certain threshold. Passive investments below 10 percent of a company are exempt from these filings. The line between passive and active can be murky, especially for a firm that calls itself an activist investor. Upon acquiring about $2.5 billion worth of stock in both Baker Hughes and Halliburton, ValueAct failed to notify regulators, violating the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, the government said in the complaint. The purpose of the act is to give regulators a chance to block any investment that might thwart competition. But ValueAct argues that it acted in compliance with the law. “ValueAct strongly believes in the most basic principles of shareholder rights,” the firm said in a statement Monday. “This includes having a relationship with company management, conducting due diligence on investments and engaging in ordinary course communications with other shareholders.” ValueAct added that it planned to “contest the Department of Justice’s action” and “vigorously defend our position.” Even though it has been 16 months since the deal between Halliburton and Baker Hughes was announced, regulators are still scrutinizing it. In an attempt to prove ValueAct’s intent to provoke the two companies, regulators dug up emails and calendars. From December 2014 to January 2016, ValueAct met with senior management at both companies more than 15 times, according to the complaint. In emails, executives at ValueAct wrote about owning both stocks to “drive new terms to get the deal done.”

Mergers and Acquisitions
Competition law
Stocks,Bonds
Regulation and Deregulation


Liability for Gulf Oil Spill Proves Tangled

Abstract: When President Obama visited Louisiana on Sunday, he told fishermen that BP would reimburse them for lost earnings. “BP is responsible for this leak — BP will be paying the bill,” he said. But liability for the oil spill in the gulf may not be so clear. In a sign of the complex legal battle to come, the Coast Guard has notified several parties, including BP and Transocean, the owner of the rig, that they are potentially “responsible parties” in the oil spill, and could face liability. BP was leasing the Deepwater Horizon oil rig from Transocean when it exploded on April 20; it sank two days later. Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, so-called responsible parties must pay all cleanup costs for a spill, and up to a certain amount in liability for damages. That liability changes depending on whether the discharged oil comes from an onshore or offshore facility, or from a tanker — and even on the size of the tanker. Terms of the leasing contract between BP and Transocean may also affect liability. A mobile offshore rig like the Deepwater Horizon presents a particularly thorny legal problem. The rig was carrying 750,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Transocean may be liable for any damages from that fuel. A spokesman from Transocean acknowledged as much in a statement. But BP would generally be responsible for leaks coming from underwater. The Coast Guard has notified all parties, including minority shareholders in the well, that they are potentially liable. “Nobody’s accepted liability, which is perfectly normal,” said Craig A. Bennett, the director of the National Pollution Funds Center, which is part of the Coast Guard and helps administer the Oil Pollution Act. “It’ll be sorted out later with all the lawyers,” Mr. Bennett said.

Louisiana
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
BP Plc
Accidents and Safety
Offshore Drilling and Exploration


Sam Chwat, 57, Dialect Tutor for Film Stars, Dies

Abstract: Tracy was transfixed by the tragic trademark. A long line of palms stood as if guarding the park. Mona showed us a gold bowl of scones and cones. If you were an actor or anchor or executive run aground on these sonic shoals, you might well have made your way to the Sam Chwat Speech Center on West 16th Street in Manhattan. Founded in the 1980s, the center has helped thousands of clients prepare for roles, succeed in business or assimilate into the rushing stream of American argot by losing — or gaining — regional accents. Presiding was Mr. Chwat himself, a speech therapist who until his death last week was “Henry Higgins to the stars,” as The Globe and Mail of Canada put it in 1999. Mr. Chwat helped Tony Danza, seeking broader roles, lose a New York accent, and Marcia Gay Harden, cast as Lee Krasner in “Pollock,” acquire one. (Ms. Harden won an Oscar for the role.) He taught Robert De Niro to sound Southern for “Cape Fear,” and Julia Roberts not to for nearly everything. He turned Willem Dafoe into a Transylvanian for “Shadow of the Vampire” and Olympia Dukakis into a Holocaust survivor for “Rose,” her one-woman Broadway show in 2000. His unusual line of work drew wide coverage in the news media, including a profile in The New York Times in November. Mr. Chwat died on Thursday in Manhasset, on Long Island. He was 57 and lived in Great Neck. The cause was lymphoma, his family said. Mr. Chwat’s very surname foreordained him for the phonetical life: It is pronounced “ schwa ,” like the vowel sound (“uh”) symbolized in dictionaries by an upside-down-and-backward “e.” Samuel Elliott Chwat was born on March 29, 1953, in Brooklyn and by all accounts retained faint but audible glimmers of the borough throughout his life. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 1974, and a master’s in speech pathology from Columbia University Teachers College in 1977. He embarked on a conventional practice and in 1982 founded New York Speech Improvement Services, which treated dysfunctions like lisping, stuttering and stroke-related pathologies. Then, one day in 1984, he was consulted by a Hispanic supermarket executive worried that his accent was hindering his ascent. Mr. Chwat had found his calling. “You can afford to find accents charming as long as you’re part of the power structure that has the accent of the ruling class,” he told The New York Post in 2006. “Speech is such an emotional issue, and yet all it is is a series of physical oral acts.” The Chwat center adopted its present name about a year ago and today has a staff of six therapists, who together see more than 100 people a week. An early client was a young, unknown actress named Julia Roberts, who sought to part company with her robust Georgia accent. Mr. Chwat did so fine a job that she had to relearn how to talk Southern before appearing in the 1989 film “Steel Magnolias.” In perhaps his most spectacular coup, as he told the publication India in New York in 2001, Mr. Chwat taught “a Texan accent to a Tibetan actor in a commercial for a German BMW shot in English” by the Taiwanese director Ang Lee . In other work, Mr. Chwat wrote a guide for lexically perplexed delegates to the 1992 Democratic National Convention, held in New York. Among other things, it demystified local patois like “Jeet?” ( sentential verb, past tense < “Did you eat?”) and furnished the only acceptable pronunciation of the crosstown street spelled H-o-u-s-t-o-n (always HOUSE-ton, never like the city in Texas). Mr. Chwat is survived by his wife, Susan Lazarus Chwat; three daughters, Alexandra, Joanna and Elena; and a sister, Libby Mandel. To his clients famous and un-, Mr. Chwat gave specific prescriptions for altering the contrapuntal dance of tongue, lung and larynx known as speech. There were exercises, of course, like the three above. (Example 1, for instance, helps with crisp enunciation of “t” for those prone to saying, Bogartlike, “Chracy was chransfixed by the chragic chrademark.”) Most important of all, he said, was ceaseless out-loud repetition as one went about one’s daily activities. “I always tell my students, ‘At least it’ll get you a seat on the subway,’ ” Mr. Chwat told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1994. “ ‘It might even get you the whole car to yourself.’ ”

Speech
Chwat Samuel Elliott
Actors and Actresses
Deaths (Obituaries)
Tutors and Tutoring
De Niro Robert
Roberts Julia


Indiana: Midwife Case Ends

Abstract: The prosecution of Jennifer Williams, 54, of Bloomington for practicing medicine and midwifery without a license ended in a plea bargain. Indiana and nine other states prohibit midwifery by people other than doctors and nurses. A baby Ms. Williams delivered died last year, but Ms. Williams was not charged in the death. She pleaded guilty to a felony count of unlicensed midwifery and will receive a year's probation.


Final Texas Redistricting Maps Approved

Abstract: A federal three-judge panel in San Antonio on Tuesday issued the last remaining sets of Texas political maps that had been at the center of a redistricting dispute, appearing to end uncertainty over the state’s long-delayed primary elections. The judges released new interim maps for Congressional and State House districts. It had issued a State Senate district map this month. The legal wrangling over the three sets of maps had thrown much of the state’s political machinery into limbo, as the judges twice pushed back the date of the primary and lawmakers and candidates struggled to campaign without viable electoral maps. Minority groups and Democratic lawmakers sued the state in federal court over the maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature, arguing that they discriminated against blacks and Hispanics. Lawyers for Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general, who is representing the state, have argued that the maps were drawn to help Republicans maintain power, not to discriminate. At a hearing earlier this month, one of the judges said the primary, which had been set for March 6 and then April 3, would most likely be on May 29. Jacquelyn F. Callanen, the elections administrator for Bexar County, told the judges that elections officials statewide would need the maps by March 3. With all of the maps having been issued before March 3, May 29 appears to be the primary date, though the judges have yet to make the date official. The court’s new Congressional map is based in large part on a compromise map that the state and lawyers for some of the minority groups had recently agreed to. The court’s map gives blacks and Hispanics three of the state’s four new Congressional seats, but it also appears to weaken the minority voting strength in three other seats that blacks and Hispanics had been competitive in, experts said. “It clearly is better than the state’s map, but arguably it doesn’t go as far for minorities,” said Michael Li, an election law attorney in Dallas who has followed the case’s developments on his Web site, Txredistricting.org . The attorney general said in a statement that the new maps reflect the intent of the Legislature, and he applauded the court for leaving numerous districts as they were drawn by the state and rejecting “the demands by some plaintiffs to draw drastic and overreaching interim maps.” The federal judges had previously drawn a set of maps that differed from the Legislature’s maps and benefited minorities, but the attorney general asked the Supreme Court to intervene. The Supreme Court ruled in January that the San Antonio judges had not paid enough deference to the Legislature’s maps and sent the case back to the lower court.

Texas
Elections
Redistricting and Reapportionment
Decisions and Verdicts
Abbott Greg
State Legislatures


Military Cutbacks Redirect Boeing to Commercial Side

Abstract: After a surge in military spending sustained Boeing through a downturn in civilian orders and manufacturing problems with a new jetliner over the last decade, the pendulum is swinging the other way. Just as the Pentagon is slowing its spending, orders for commercial aircraft are showing a surprising recovery. Boeing’s chief executive, W. James McNerney Jr. described the shift for analysts on Wednesday as he discussed the company’s second-quarter results. He said the company might increase production of its best-selling 737 passenger jets more than planned if its suppliers could keep up. But the belt-tightening at the Pentagon is creating so much pressure that Boeing’s military business is likely to cut jobs through layoffs and attrition. Boeing, based in Chicago, has raised its forecasts for a rebound in commercial air traffic. Boeing and its main rival, Airbus, both booked more plane orders than expected last week at the Farnborough International Air Show in Britain. As a result, Mr. McNerney said, Boeing will review whether there is an “opportunity beyond” plans to increase its monthly production of the single-aisle 737 to 35 planes in 2012 from 31.5 now. “I’d say there’s some upside just based on a market view,” he said. But before Boeing could raise that rate further, it needs to decide, probably by this fall, whether its suppliers could handle additional investments and training to pick up the pace, he added. Mr. McNerney also said for the first time that “on balance” Boeing’s customers were “sort of pushing us” toward building a new plane to replace the 737 rather than just buying more fuel-efficient engines to battle foreign competitors. He said the crucial question, which Boeing hopes to decide by year-end, was when the technology for a new plane, and the airlines’ willingness to pay for it, would come together. He said it “makes no sense” to replace the engines on the current 737s if Boeing was going to build a new plane before 2020. But if the replacement would not arrive until well after that, he said, “then the case for the new engine strengthens.” Mr. McNerney made the comments in a conference call on Boeing’s second-quarter results, which reflected a sharp drop in plane sales caused by the recent recession. Boeing said its profit fell 21 percent to $787 million, or $1.06 a share, from $998 million, or $1.41 a share, in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue declined 9 percent to $15.57 billion from $17.15 billion. The company’s shares fell $1.30, to $67.32 on Wednesday. Still, the share price has more than doubled from its low in March 2009, partly on optimism that carriers in Asia and the Middle East would lead a revival in orders, as they are doing now. The shares also rose as Boeing cleared manufacturing problems with its 787 Dreamliner , a midsize plane made largely of lightweight composites that has attracted record advance orders. Mr. McNerney said Wednesday that the 787 had completed more than half of its flight tests without any major problems. He said Boeing hoped to deliver the first one by year-end, though that could slip into early 2011. But as the growth in the Pentagon’s budget slows, Boeing’s military business, which accounts for half its revenues, is slipping. “There is no question that the overall cost structure of that business has to come down,” Mr. McNerney said. And its best hope for Congress to buy $1.2 billion more of its C-17 cargo planes dissolved Tuesday when a House panel rejected the idea. Mr. McNerney said Boeing was looking overseas for more military sales.

Boeing Co
Company Reports
Airlines and Airplanes


Jeffrey Greenstein, Ex-Chief of Quellos Group, Is Indicted

Abstract: Federal prosecutors indicted a former top executive of a prominent investment firm on Thursday on charges involving questionable tax shelters made and sold by the firm up until 2006. The executive, Jeffrey I. Greenstein, is a former chief executive and a co-founder of the Quellos Group, whose core business was bought by BlackRock for $1.7 billion in 2007. He faces 18 counts of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion. Quellos, which was based in Seattle and catered to wealthy investors, had star clients, including former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton; Robert Wood Johnson IV, the owner of the New York Jets football team; and the Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, the producer of the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” children’s show, according to public records. A lawyer for Mr. Greenstein, Andrew J. Levander, said that his client “adamantly denies the allegations in the indictment and looks forward to clearing his name at trial.” Prosecutors also indicted another Quellos employee, Charles H. Wilk, a lawyer who directed a Quellos unit’s tax-shelter business; and a lawyer for Mr. Saban, Matthew G. Krane. Robert Bernhoft, a lawyer for Mr. Krane, said, “We look forward to the truth coming out.” A lawyer for Mr. Wilk could not be reached. In 2006, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report detailing how Quellos had created and sold bogus tax shelters using $9.6 billion in fake securities transactions used to generate billions of dollars in bogus capital losses for Quellos clients. The Quellos shelters had names like Opis, Flip and CDS. Quellos earned up to $50 million in fees on two of the shelters. Another shelter sold by the firm, called Point, generated $86 million in fees and allowed six wealthy clients to evade $40 million in taxes. The indictment accused Mr. Greenstein of giving false testimony linked to the report. Quellos was a global player in hedge funds and ran a large fund of funds — the core business that BlackRock acquired and now operates as BlackRock Alternative Advisors. A smaller part of Quellos was discontinued after the sale. BlackRock has said it will not assume liabilities from Quellos’s tax-shelter business. As part of the sale, Mr. Greenstein was a consultant to BlackRock “until several months ago,” according to a BlackRock spokeswoman, Bobbie Collins. She said that Mr. Greenstein had worked on integrating the Quellos fund business into BlackRock. Ms. Collins added that neither BlackRock nor any of its employees “are targets of this investigation, nor are any products managed by the BlackRock Alternative Advisors team involved.” Ms. Collins said that the government told Quellos last year that it was dropping its investigation of the firm.

Quellos Group
Tax Shelters
Taxation
Suits and Litigation


Pay at G.M. Investment Unit Draws Scrutiny

Abstract: They work for General Motors but pull down Wall Street-style bonuses — and that is raising some eyebrows in Washington. A group of employees in G.M.’s investment management division in New York, where top earners make $2 million to $3 million a year, are coming under sharp scrutiny by the Obama administration’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg . The division, Promark Global Advisors, includes some of G.M.’s most highly paid employees and will figure prominently in Mr. Feinberg’s review of compensation at the automaker. G.M. and six other companies that have received substantial federal aid are due to submit compensation plans to the Treasury Department on Friday. “The pay czar will look at these financial people inside G.M. very similar to the people at the banks,” said Alan M. Levine, a partner in the executive compensation and employment benefit practice at Morrison Cohen, a law firm in New York. “But he’s got to understand that the company needs to remain competitive and retain talent.” While pay at Promark pales next to that of top earners on Wall Street, as well at GMAC, the auto finance company, it has nonetheless become a focus of attention as Mr. Feinberg prepares to review G.M.’s pay plans. Promark oversees $102 billion of pension money for G.M. and its affiliates, but its traders and money managers also invest $18 billion on behalf of other institutions. This summer, Mr. Feinberg reviewed lists of the top earners at several bailed-out companies, including General Motors. The traders at Promark accounted for many of the top 25 earners at the company, according to two people familiar with the carmaker’s situation. In particular, the Promark traders made more money last year than other G.M. executives because the traders’ pay was not based heavily on G.M.’s stock price. Instead, Promark bonuses are based mostly on each worker’s own performance and that of the overall investment fund, according to three people familiar with their pay structure. The formula may present a problem because Mr. Feinberg could view the pension traders as similar to the proprietary traders at banks. The Treasury’s pay restrictions exempt company workers who earn their pay based on commissions, but to qualify, a worker must manage money for outside clients. In a sense, G.M.’s pension is similar to the bank capital proprietary traders use to make bets, and proprietary traders are being required to follow the rules. But some people might argue that keeping talent at G.M.’s pension fund calls for an exception. “It’s always been one of the top run pensions,” said Steve Niss, managing director of RWD Executive Search. “They have some really talented people.” The bonus scrutiny comes at a difficult moment for the pension unit, which changed its name from General Motors Asset Management to Promark this spring. The association with G.M. has made some of the unit’s clients and workers weary, according to two recruiters who said they have received inquiries from a number of Promark’s employees. “There’s no question if the compensation gets cut, they will leave,” said Gustavo G. Dolfino, president of the WhiteRock Group, a recruiting firm in New York. “A number of them have already approached me since we entered this new era of socialist America.” G.M. is generally considered to have a well-run pension, and Promark’s leaders are credited for moving out of some stocks into bonds before the market downturn last year. The pension fund was down 11 percent, according to a G.M. spokeswoman, and that return looks golden compared with the pain at many investment firms. Promark is led by Nancy C. Everett, who was previously the chief investment officer for the Virginia Retirement System. Other senior managers previously worked at places like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and the Bank of New York Mellon. “They’re investment people, so the appropriate comparison is not our auto people in Detroit,” said the spokeswoman, Julie Gibson. “It’s with investment people in New York.” Ms. Gibson declined to confirm details about G.M.’s compensation filing. It has never been clear how much money the unit makes, because Promark’s results are not broken out in the automaker’s financial filings. Last year as the company ran into trouble, some analysts suggested that Promark should be sold off, estimating its worth at a few billion dollars. Part of the unit’s value is its business managing money for outside pension funds. In recent years, G.M. set up separate legal structures so that the money managers could co-mingle G.M.’s pension money with outside funds. Xerox was among the companies that hired the unit, and the added scale was meant to defray G.M.’s pension costs. The pension unit also registered a multistrategy hedge fund.

General Motors
Executive Compensation
Feinberg Kenneth R


Panel Sees No Need for A-Bomb Upgrade

Abstract: In a new report , a secretive federal panel has concluded that programs to extend the life of the nation’s aging nuclear arms are sufficient to guarantee their destructiveness for decades to come, obviating a need for a costly new generation of more reliable warheads. The finding, by the Jason panel, an independent group of scientists that advises the federal government on issues of science and technology, bears on the growing debate over whether the United States should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or, instead, prepare for the design of new nuclear arms. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and other Republicans have argued that concerns are growing over the reliability of the United States’ aging nuclear stockpile and that the possible need for new designs means that the nation should retain the right to conduct underground tests of new nuclear weapons . The testing issue is expected to flare in the months ahead when the Obama administration submits the test ban treaty for ratification by the Senate, where it faces a tough fight. The White House is building a case that advanced technologies make any additions to the nuclear arsenal unnecessary and would also allow the United States to verify that other countries are refraining from underground testing. Backers of the test ban hailed the new report as supporting President Obama’s position. “It kills the hysteria and builds the case for what the president and the Democrats want to do,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, based in Washington. Jeffrey G. Lewis, a nuclear specialist at the New America Foundation, a Washington research group, said in a blog posting that the report “should drive a stake through the heart” of the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a Bush administration initiative to build a new generation of nuclear arms. The Jason report, mandated by Congress, centers on an Energy Department program that refurbishes the nation’s aging nuclear arms. As central players in the cold war, the warheads were designed for relatively short lifetimes and frequent replacement with better models. But such modernization ended after the United States quit testing nuclear arms in 1992, and all weapons that remain in the arsenal must now undergo the refurbishment process, known as life extension. The Jason panel said that it had found no evidence that the accumulated changes from aging and refurbishment posed any threat to weapon destructiveness, and that the “lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss of confidence.” The report warned, however, that federal indifference could undermine the refurbishment program. “The study team,” the report said, “is concerned that this expertise is threatened by lack of program stability, perceived lack of mission importance and degradation of the work environment.” Jason panels are organized by the Mitre Corporation, a nonprofit organization in McLean, Va., that does work for the Defense Department. Typical sponsors include the military, the intelligence community and the Department of Energy. Most Jason reports are classified secret, and only the executive summary of this one, “Lifetime Extension Program,” was made public on Thursday.

Nuclear Weapons
United States International Relations
Tests and Testing
Bombs and Explosives


Mayor de Blasio’s Counsel to Leave Next Month to Lead Police Review Board

Abstract: Mayor Bill de Blasio’s counsel and chief legal adviser, Maya Wiley , is resigning next month from her City Hall position to become the chairwoman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, New York City’s independent oversight agency for the Police Department. The move represents the latest shake-up for the de Blasio administration amid continuing state and federal investigations into the mayor’s fund-raising, and fills a two-month vacancy at the police review board created by the resignation of its chairman , Richard D. Emery, in April. A civil rights lawyer and advocate for racial and social justice, Ms. Wiley joined the de Blasio administration in early 2014 to focus on legal issues as well as on the mayor’s efforts to address issues of inequality. But over time, Ms. Wiley became discouraged over not being part of Mr. de Blasio’s inner circle and felt cut out of both legal questions and advocacy, according to a person familiar with her thinking. On the former, Mr. de Blasio often relied instead on the city’s corporation counsel and Henry Berger, the mayor’s special counsel; on the latter, he favored his top political aides. The person requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. More recently, Ms. Wiley was assigned to help craft the administration’s legal response to the state and federal inquiries as well as to requests for the public disclosure of documents, notably emails between Mr. de Blasio and trusted advisers outside the administration. It was in response to a question from reporters about the withholding of those emails with advisers that Ms. Wiley, defending the practice, described the advisers as “ agents of the city ” — a designation that appeared novel and resulted in days of unfavorable press coverage. In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. de Blasio thanked Ms. Wiley for her service and congratulated her on her new role. The review board investigates allegations of misconduct by officers and makes recommendations for discipline to the Police Department. Its data on the number of complaints, and its investigations of officers, provide an important barometer of police behavior and a politically important one for Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat who campaigned on improving police-community relations. Mr. Wiley will also take a position at the New School in Manhattan. Her moves were reported by The Wall Street Journal . The announcement of Ms. Wiley’s departure from City Hall followed that of a recently hired director of social media, Scott Kleinberg, who resigned on Saturday, just eight weeks after being hired to bring greater personality to the Twitter, Facebook and other online accounts associated with the mayor’s office. His resignation was reported by DNA Info . In a Facebook post that was later removed, Mr. Kleinberg complained of long hours and micromanagement and described his experience with the administration as working with “political hacks plus a boss who just couldn’t get it,” adding, “It was a bad combination for sure.” Mr. Kleinberg declined to comment. The departures came less than two months after Karen Hinton , the mayor’s top spokeswoman, announced her resignation from the administration. (She stayed in the position until mid-June.)

Bill de Blasio
Maya Wiley
Civilian Complaint Review Board
Appointments and Executive Changes
NYC


After Months of Anger in Hoosick Falls, Hearings on Tainted Water Begin

Abstract: HOOSICK FALLS, N.Y. — It did not take long for Michael Hickey to find a connection between his father’s cancer and a toxic chemical in this riverside village. “All I typed in was Teflon and cancer, because that’s what was in the factory that was in Hoosick Falls where my father worked,” said Mr. Hickey, an insurance underwriter and lifelong resident here. “It took about five minutes,” he said. It took far longer for government officials to take notice, let alone action, which came partially in response to Mr. Hickey’s efforts to bring attention to the village’s polluted water. On Tuesday, a State Senate committee held a daylong hearing here, after months in which residents have repeatedly expressed frustration with local, state and federal reaction to the contamination. Mr. Hickey, who was one of the first speakers on Tuesday, talked in halting and emotional terms about the death of his father from kidney cancer, which led him to investigate, in a Google search, a possible link between Teflon and the diseases that seemed to plague his town and his family. In recent months, Hoosick Falls, about 30 miles northeast of Albany, has become the epicenter of a sprawling public health crisis after researchers discovered that the public water supply was tainted with high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA. Since then, several nearby towns in New York and across the border in Vermont have also reported unsafe levels of PFOA, which was used in a variety of commercial and industrial products and in the production of Teflon . The chemical has been deemed hazardous by the state and has been linked in some studies to an increased risk for cancer, thyroid disease and other serious ailments. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency established a lifetime standard for PFOA exposure in drinking water at 70 parts per trillion, far below what was found in several samples in Hoosick Falls’ water. More than 2,000 residents of Hoosick Falls or areas nearby have had their blood tested , with a result that is nearly 15 times the national median for those 12 or older. Hundreds were reported to be above the new E.P.A. long-term level, including some children. Image At a news conference in Albany in June, residents of Hoosick Falls demanded that hearings be held on the contamination. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Chilling discoveries continue: On Monday, the State Department of Environmental Conservation announced that it had declared municipal landfills in three towns and villages — Hoosick Falls, Petersburgh and Berlin — to be potential state Superfund sites after high levels of the chemical were discovered. In the case of the Hoosick Falls site, the results were particularly alarming, with samples showing 21,000 parts per trillion. The state’s Health Department did not warn against drinking the water here until after a federal warning was made public in December. And on Tuesday, State Senator Kemp Hannon, a Nassau County Republican who is the chairman of the Health Committee, criticized a December fact sheet from the Health Department — which did not warn against drinking the water, but did note possible health problems associated with PFOA — as “the most inconsistent letter I’ve ever seen.” “This is an example of what has led to the folks in this community being so disturbed,” Mr. Hannon said. In response, New York’s health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, noted that such contamination was “an emerging issue, and a national issue.” Indeed, even as the hearing continued, the state stepped up its contention that the E.P.A. was confusing and inconsistent in its handling of PFOA contamination, while the E.P.A. suggested that the state was being disingenuous about its performance during the crisis, the worst environmental scare of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s tenure. In a letter sent on Tuesday from state officials to the E.P.A.’s top official, Administrator Gina McCarthy , the state accused the federal agency of bungling the response to PFOA, and demanding that it cover at least $75 million in expenses, accrued already and estimated in the future, that cannot be clawed back from polluters. “We believe the E.P.A.’s handling of this matter aggravated the situation, causing undue expense to our agencies,” read the letter, which was signed by Dr. Zucker and Basil Seggos, the state’s environmental commissioner. In particular, Dr. Zucker and Mr. Seggos suggested that the E.P.A. had taken “no less than three different positions regarding PFOA,” causing “great public concern, frustration and anxiety.” Judith A. Enck, the agency’s administrator with responsibility for New York, defended the E.P.A.’s performance, noting that it had acted first to warn residents of Hoosick Falls about high levels of PFOA, and advising residents to avoid cooking with or drinking the water. “There was no confusion between the E.P.A. and the Health Department” about warnings to residents, she said in an interview. “There was disagreement.” Image The Hoosic River runs through the village, which has become the epicenter of a public health crisis after researchers discovered that the public water supply was tainted with high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, which is used to make Teflon. Credit Mike Groll/Associated Press Moreover, Ms. Enck said, the agency’s adjustment of the acceptable level of PFOA in water from 400 parts per trillion to 100 parts to its current long-term level of 70 was not hard to understand. “The State Health Department are distinguished professionals,” she said. “They can follow the number of 400 to 70.” State officials have identified the source of the contamination as the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant, a bland structure on the edge of the Hoosic River, not far from the municipal wells that provide Hoosick Falls with its drinking water. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has been criticized for what some saw as a lax response to the crisis, visiting the village only months after the water was confirmed to be poisoned; lawmakers in Albany, meanwhile, were also initially noncommittal about hearings on the contamination, before eventually assenting . Dr. Marcus Martinez, a local physician and another lifelong resident who testified alongside Mr. Hickey, said that he had long noted what he believed to be unusually high rates of cancer in the village. He said that he and Mr. Hickey had brought their concerns, as well as test results, to the attention of village and state officials in 2014, but had been frustrated by a lack of action. “I do believe our citizens were advised incorrectly to consume water that was unsafe for at least for 12 months,” Dr. Martinez said. Representatives of Saint-Gobain did not attend the hearing, but Dina Silver Pokedoff, a spokeswoman for the company, said it had submitted statements, noting that it had paid for a new water filtration system as well as bottled water for the residents, even as the state has declared it to be a Superfund site. “Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics remains fully committed to working closely with local, state and federal officials, with a shared focus on ensuring that the people of Hoosick Falls have drinking water that meets or exceeds current advisories set by E.P.A. and New York,” the one-page statement said. “And in the investigation of the source and/or sources that is just getting underway.” That statement — and the sentiment that the job is unfinished — seemed evident on Tuesday as Mr. Hickey spoke about what he had hoped to accomplish in trying to discover why his father, who had driven a school bus as a second job, had died. “I think it goes back to kids on the bus,” Mr. Hickey said, pausing to compose himself. “Because for him, that was his family as well. And I think that what he would have wanted was to protect them.”

Hoosick Falls
Water
New York
Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics
Water pollution
HazMat
Health Department NYS
EPA


Dell Meeting Is Postponed

Abstract: Dell Inc., the computer maker, said yesterday that it would move its analyst meeting to September from April, causing concern that the company is struggling with plans to revive sales growth. "We want to be able to demonstrate more progress on our initiatives, and we feel we can certainly do that better in September," Jess Blackburn, a spokesman for Dell, said yesterday. The meeting will be moved to New York from Austin, Tex., he said. Dell's chief executive, Kevin B. Rollins, promised in a conference call last week to update investors at the April meeting. Shares of Dell, based in Round Rock, Tex., fell 57 cents, to $29.81.


In a Brooklyn Housing Project, One Bright Spot

Abstract: IN the late evening hours of Aug. 19, 1999, 11-year-old Kelvin McGinnis was talking with friends in a courtyard at Saratoga Village, a public housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. At 8:50 p.m., three young men rode by on bikes, carrying guns. They were gang members, police said later, and when they spotted a rival gang member in the courtyard, they opened fire. Two of the intended targets were hit, but another shot went astray and wounded a 17-year-old girl. Another bullet hit Kelvin McGinnis, an only child, in the head, killing him within minutes. A decade later, a plaque in his memory is still there, bearing the simple inscription “Always in Our Hearts, Rest in Peace.” The building where he lived, a 16-story box of faded tan brick built in 1966, remains. But the plaza where Kelvin McGinnis died has been reshaped and partly replaced by a bright new community center that opened last summer after years of halting construction. The center’s architect, George Ranalli, was in his office on West 28th Street when he got a call from a New York City Housing Authority official telling him the center was his to design. That call, he recalled last week, came the week Kelvin McGinnis was shot. Mr. Ranalli, the dean of the City College of New York’s school of architecture, recalled that moment a few days ago as he stood in what remains of the courtyard, facing the community center’s meticulously detailed walls and its high, mahogany-framed windows. The occasion was the publication of a book about the building , which holds an important place in his 31 years as an architect. In a career that has seen plenty of accolades, he said, the chance to build in a public housing project is a crowning achievement.  Mr. Ranalli, 62, is the child of Italian immigrants, and he grew up in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, a working-class neighborhood. Designing a community center is special for him, he said, because of all the libraries and public buildings he spent time in growing up. “I know what this means to a community,” Mr. Ranalli said. “Public architecture is symbolic of how society views itself,” he added later, pointing at the building. “That’s how people want to view themselves — in beauty and dignity and something that empowers them.” A contrasting example — the Saratoga Village residential tower — stood just yards away. Like so many housing authority towers, it was boxy and drab, bereft of ornamentation and worn a little around the edges. “You can’t tell people that they’re going to have a better life, in that,” Mr. Ranalli said, pointing. “Because it’s not better; it’s infinitely worse. You can’t put people in this and expect it to turn out well.” His project at Saratoga Village, which cost $3.25 million — about what a lesser structure would have cost — was commissioned and built during a brief golden age of community center architecture at the housing authority. That era yielded, among others, ambitious buildings like the Red Hook Center for the Arts in Brooklyn and the Melrose Community Center in the Bronx. That era may have come to a close. “Right now, funding is a major consideration, not just with us, but with a lot of people,” said Howard Marder, a housing authority spokesman. “As far as I’m aware, there are no community centers in the pipeline. I wish we had the money, but we don’t.” Mr. Ranalli remembers considerable give-and-take surrounding the authority’s guidelines: no low windows, lest they be broken, and bulletproof glass in the front door. Most important, there were budget considerations, which he is proud to have met. The building may look more expensive, he said, but it was not. The mahogany in the window frames, for example, cost no more than stainless steel and is more durable. Saratoga Village still has its problems. Mr. Ranalli found a bullet hole in one of the windows shortly after the center opened, and he was troubled by the housing authority’s decision to install a black metal security fence along its roof line.  But among some local residents, the center seems to have made its point. Tim Henderson, 48, who grew up nearby on Decatur Street and now works as an anti-gang coordinator in North Carolina, was back in Brooklyn last week visiting family when he approached Mr. Ranalli in the courtyard. He likes his job, he said, but seeing the new center made him want to come home. “I want to run this place, you know what I’m saying?” Mr. Henderson said. “We’re talking about the kids of America,” Mr. Henderson added. “Why is this not in every neighborhood?”

Public Housing
Gangs
New York City Housing Authority
Housing and Real Estate
Bedford-Stuyvesant (NYC)


Plan to Shift Military Spending Faces Skepticism

Abstract: CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited southern Afghanistan late last week not only to assess the American war effort, but also to showcase the kind of conflict he thinks the military must prepare to fight in the years ahead. Mr. Gates predicted more of these messy, unconventional wars, and he argued that this kind of conflict requires America to shift spending to items like mine-resistant vehicles, surveillance drones and medical-evacuation helicopters, at the expense of tanks, bombers and aircraft carriers. But as Mr. Gates returned to Washington on Saturday for what will mostly likely be a lengthy, detailed and often hostile series of Congressional budget hearings this week, opponents of his risk assessment are attacking the spending plan as rendering America unprepared for traditional war. They say the proposal goes too far in shifting money to unconventional warfare from the weapons needed to deter and defeat an enemy nation. And Mr. Gates’s focus on counterinsurgency training, they say, means that troops have not spent enough time honing their skills for conventional conflict. Mr. Gates has slashed money for the Army’s future combat vehicle because its flat-bottom design made it vulnerable to roadside bombs. Here in Afghanistan, he examined a fleet of angular, heavily armored mine-resistant vehicles sent as part of the multibillion-dollar crash program he ordered to counter the insurgents’ weapon of choice. Standing beside one armored troop carrier crippled by a huge homemade mine, Mr. Gates spoke with two soldiers who had emerged from the wreck unscathed. Others suffered a broken arm, a knee injury and a concussion. “These vehicles keep us alive,” said Lt. Col. Michael Jernigan, commander of the Marines’ Combat Logistics Battalion 3. Mr. Gates has proposed eliminating money for the new, high-tech presidential helicopter and capping purchases of a top-of-the-line jet-fighter — but here he also met with the crew operating 10 medical-evacuation helicopters ordered from the Nevada desert to be on standby in the deserts of southern Afghanistan. Mr. Gates had been angered by how long it took to move the wounded, so he increased the number of helicopters here, plus three more field hospitals. Lt. Col. Christopher Barnett is commander of the Air Force medical-evacuation helicopter unit moved to Afghanistan from war games in Nevada, where it played on the enemy team. “Now it’s about saving lives,” he told Mr. Gates. And to highlight the defense secretary’s initiative to get faster tactical intelligence to American troops in combat, Mr. Gates toured a secret intelligence fusion center, where a series of oversize screens showed real-time video broadcast from surveillance drones in the skies over insurgent havens of Afghanistan. “My job is to get you what you need to get the mission done successfully,” Mr. Gates told several hundred Marines who just landed here at Camp Leatherneck as the vanguard of more than 20,000 additional troops ordered to Afghanistan by President Obama. The defense industry, which makes what Mr. Gates wants as well as what he does not, has chosen to mute its complaints on the proposed spending plan. But on Capitol Hill, champions of programs in jeopardy are preparing to do battle this week. The proposed spending plan “is taking us down a path that leads to a weaker military that is poorly equipped,” said Senator James M. Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma. “Are the forces being provided to our commanders in the field postured to counter the full spectrum of threats both in the near and far term?” he asked during a speech on the Senate floor. “Are we providing our troops the best and most capable equipment available? We are not today.” Others, like Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, cite the threats posed by nations around the world that remain true adversaries — or at least are competitors to American interests. In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy center in Washington, Mr. Cornyn said that China was upgrading and expanding its navy to challenge American warships, that Russia was striving to intimidate its neighbors and re-establish a sphere of influence, and that North Korea and Iran continued to expand their missile arsenals while pursuing nuclear weapons. “Despite so many security threats emerging or growing,” Mr. Cornyn said, “the administration envisions a military that will have less strength to meet them.” Mr. Gates explained during troop visits in Afghanistan that half of his budget proposal remained committed to conventional warfare, while 40 percent paid for weapons that can be applied to both traditional and unconventional conflicts. His attempt to rebalance military spending, Mr. Gates said, shifts only 10 percent of the budget to buying in the specialized tools of unconventional and counterinsurgency warfare. Many of those most directly involved in today’s war say that the Gates budget proposal sets the priorities right, and that the complexities and rigors of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq have created the most capable American military in the nation’s history. “When you get into what does that mean, to do counterinsurgency, you’ll find that there will be companies on the battlefield that are fighting the combined arms fight using artillery, other weapons systems, maneuver, intelligence and all of that,” said Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander of allied forces across southern Afghanistan. “And they are synchronizing all of these systems and doing all of the things they would have to do in a conventional fight — but they are doing it at a lower level, with more junior officers in charge, than ever before,” he added. “Our squad leaders, platoon leaders, our company commanders are broadening their experience.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


At Brownie Points Bakery, ‘Duffins’ Are a Specialty

Abstract: Spring was rather elusive this year, but Peter Lloyd, one of the owners of Brownie Points Bakery in downtown Summit, was undeterred: he had the walls of the shop painted sky blue, and decked out the windows and shelves with bird houses, daisies and tufts of artificial green grass. “Peter makes the place look good,” said Bob Conway, 46, a co-owner and the chief baker. He is a former pastry cook at Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan. Mr. Lloyd repaints the walls and reinvents the space every few months in keeping with a theme, giving the place an air of near-theatrical refinement. Aesthetic considerations aside, Brownie Points owes its existence to its well-edited selection of fresh-baked products; among its best-selling items are “duffins,” doughnut-muffin hybrids that comes in a variety of flavors, including cinnamon sugar and raspberry ($2.75). The bakery opened in 2008 after its owners had a successful season of selling their duffins, cookies , brownies and cupcakes at the 2007 Summit Farmers’ Market . (At the time, Mr. Conway used the kitchen of a friend’s bakery.) “That was how we got introduced to the town and found the store,” said Mr. Conway, a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan who lives in Westfield. Brownie Points still bakes for the local farmers’ market, which starts June 5 at Maple Street and DeForest Avenue. These days, though, the bakery’s products, including a variety of five-inch pies ($7) and cupcakes of the week — popular flavors have included chocolate-covered pretzel and salted caramel ($2.75 except for vanilla and chocolate, which are $2.25) — come from a 250-square-foot kitchen behind the equally small storefront. Mr. Conway called his baking style casual. “I’m not like a big decorator,” he said. “We want everything to look old-fashioned and homemade.” TAMMY LA GORCE Brownie Points Bakery, 3 Beechwood Road, Summit; open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; (908) 464-2253 .

Cooking and Cookbooks
Restaurants
New Jersey
Bakeries and Baked Products


Arizona’s All-Points Bulletin: Who Can Take in a Chihuahua?

Abstract: PHOENIX — A pack of 26 stray Chihuahuas rode 2,400 miles in the back of an S.U.V. in late March, a cross-country trip from an animal shelter here to another just outside Philadelphia, where all but one were adopted in days. That same week, a retired orthopedic surgeon, Peter Rork, loaded 30 other Chihuahuas into his retrofitted Cessna 206 and flew them from Phoenix to Boise, Idaho, where small dogs are a hot commodity. Next month, he will fly about 36 Chihuahuas from Scottsdale, Ariz., to the same destination. “Supply and demand, that’s what it boils down to,” said Judy Zimet, a real estate lawyer here who serves as executive director of Dog Is My Copilot , Mr. Rork’s rescue group. “In Phoenix, Chihuahuas are a dime a dozen; in Idaho and Montana, there are so few of them you have to get on a waiting list to adopt them.” Arizona’s most popular exports have long included the “four C’s,” as they are known here: copper, cattle, citrus and cotton. And lately, Chihuahuas could almost join that list. Image Sgt. Jason True of Animal Care and Control in Maricopa County retrieved a stray Chihuahua. Credit Samantha Sais for The New York Times The breed, which traces its roots to Mexico, is so popular in Arizona that some neighborhoods of Phoenix have become overrun with them. Stray Chihuahuas roam the streets and crowd animal shelters, and they have exhausted the charitable network of foster families who take them in but say they can no longer take one more. To avoid euthanizing the dogs, animal welfare workers have started shipping them to faraway states and even repatriating them abroad: Arizona Chihuahuas have emigrated to Canada and Russia, said Joe Pyritz, a spokesman for Pinal County, whose animal shelter cares for Chihuahuas carried by migrants caught crossing the border illegally. Only pit bulls outnumber Chihuahuas in the Maricopa County shelter, and the number of Chihuahuas has risen steadily since 2011 while the number of pit bulls has declined. At the Arizona Humane Society , the state’s largest animal welfare agency, Chihuahuas overtook pit bulls this year in number. Since January, the Arizona Chihuahua Rescue , a volunteer organization that takes in Chihuahuas nobody wants, has posted a warning message on its home page: “We are unable to accept any new dogs.” The reason Chihuahuas and their many mixes are among the dogs most often found in animal shelters, animal-care workers say, lies somewhere in the intersection of geography, pop culture and immigrant tastes. Breeders play a role, too: Some do not realize that female Chihuahuas are so small that they often need a cesarean section, an expensive procedure that can wipe out potential profits and prompt people to abandon the dogs, said Lynnie Bunten, breed rescue chairwoman at the Chihuahua Club of America. Image A stray Chihuahua is placed in a truck kennel after wandering into an elementary school in Phoenix. Credit Samantha Sais for The New York Times On average, purebred puppies sell for $300 or $400, but Chihuahuas are a lot more common in states bordering Mexico, Ms. Bunten said. Shelters in San Antonio, where she lives, are “brimming with Chihuahuas,” and in California, several cities have passed ordinances requiring that Chihuahuas be spayed or neutered in an effort to legislate population control. The dogs are also status symbols of sorts: Chihuahuas have served as the Taco Bell mascot (“Drop the chalupa!”), Disney movie stars (think “Beverly Hills Chihuahua”) and fashion accessories for the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, not to mention Elle Woods in the movie “Legally Blonde.” When mixed with other breeds, they go by cutesy names like Chugs (Chihuahuas and pugs), Chiweenies (Chihuahuas and dachshunds) and Chi Pins (Chihuahuas and miniature pinschers). “Young women put them in their purses to make an impression, kind of like the big macho guys get pit bulls to look tough,” Ms. Bunten said. A study published by The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association in 2010 found that Hispanics were more likely to own pets that had not been spayed or neutered than were people of other races and ethnicities, a factor that seems to be contributing to the overabundance of Chihuahuas. Hollister, Calif., where roughly 66 percent of residents are Latino, has seen a “significant drop” in the number of Chihuahuas since passing an ordinance in 2010 mandating that the dogs be spayed or neutered, said Julie Carreiro, supervisor of the Hollister Police Animal Care and Services . Arizona’s Maricopa County, where the shelters take in more animals than any county besides Los Angeles County, is discussing a partnership with one of Phoenix’s most popular Spanish-language radio stations, La Campesina, to spread the message that sterilizing dogs “is part of the responsibility of owning a pet,” said Melissa Gable, spokeswoman for the county’s Animal Care and Control . Image A stray Chihuahua is scanned for an identity chip at a shelter in Maricopa County. Credit Samantha Sais for The New York Times The county is also in the middle of a three-year, $6 million campaign to curb pet homelessness, focusing on Chihuahuas, pit bulls and cats, which are the most commonly found (and euthanized) animals in its shelters. The effort involves trying to increase adoptions and free sterilizations, said Bretta Nelson, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Humane Society. Chihuahuas are jittery by nature, bark often and loudly, and, like most dogs, bite when they perceive aggression, even if the aggressor is a baby grabbing a tail or a paw. They are “little dogs with a big-dog attitude,” said Ms. Gable, and the failure to understand that sometimes prompts a family to turn them in to a shelter. The agency’s 11 officers cover an area of 9,224 square miles from an office in Mesa and another in West Phoenix, which has the city’s highest rate of stray dogs, dog-bite complaints and dogs on school grounds, Ms. Gable said. That is where Sgt. Jason True of Animal Care and Control found a wandering Chihuahua the other day. The dog — a mixed breed of clay-colored fur, lacking tags or an identification microchip — had followed a pack of children to Alta Vista School on North 31st Avenue that morning, but none of the children seemed to know where he had come from. The school’s facility engineer, Michael Scott, said finding “some type of Chihuahua” on the campus “is a common thing.” Sergeant True opened the door to the maintenance shed slowly, and the dog responded with an ear-piercing yelp before running to lick his hands. “Ready to go, monster?” Sergeant True asked him, placing the dog in one of the kennels on the back of his truck for a trip to the shelter, where the stray and dozens of other Chihuahuas would be kept in an air-conditioned room, listening to classical music as they awaited adoption.

Arizona
Dog
Animal Abuse
Hispanic Americans
Medical Sterilization


Chimps Are Particular About Where They Rest

Abstract: Chimpanzees select firm, resilient wood to make their daily beds in trees, according to a new study in PLOS One. The researchers found that wild chimps at the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve in Uganda used Cynometra alexandri, or Ugandan ironwood, in 73.6 percent of their nests, even though it constituted only 9.6 percent of trees in the study area. Weaving a bed from high-quality wood allows the chimps to safely rest in a prone position. Above, an adult chimp in a C. alexandri tree.


Video of Man Believed to Be Bike-Riding Thief Is Released

Abstract: For the past few months, he has been making his way through the streets of Manhattan, approaching women and snatching their phones, or in some cases, their pocketbooks out of their hands. Then he leaves quickly, on a bicycle. Now, the police have released surveillance video of the man who they believe has struck 11 times, primarily in the Flatiron and Gramercy Park neighborhoods. The video footage, taken the night of an episode in late April and released on Wednesday, shows the man riding on a Citi Bike. The police said the episodes began earlier this year, on the night of Feb. 2, when a 32-year-old woman walking on Avenue of the Americas had an iPhone pulled from her hand. The next night, he stole another iPhone, this time from a 34-year-old woman on West 19th Street. Nine more episodes followed, all happening late at night or early in the morning. The victims were women mostly in their 20s and 30s, the police said, and none of them were injured. The police said detectives believed there was just one culprit, based on the pattern of the crimes and the descriptions provided by the victims. The police described the suspect as a black man with a beard, riding either a bicycle with a basket or a Citi Bike. A spokeswoman for Citi Bike declined to comment on Thursday, saying the investigation was a “police matter.” The most recent theft took place on April 29, around 10:30 p.m. outside an apartment building on East 17th Street. The police said the man took a 42-year-old woman’s pocketbook and rode away. After that episode, the police were able to find the surveillance footage, which shows the man leisurely pedaling along in a gray sweatshirt and dark pants. It also captured him in the middle of yet another offense: He was biking on a sidewalk.


A New Role for Lagares as the Mets Keep Rolling

Abstract: The other day in the Mets’ clubhouse, Juan Lagares and Ruben Tejada were joking and chatting with Yoenis Cespedes. They listened to him with reverence, the way some of the team’s young pitchers gather and listen to Bartolo Colon’s stories, the way a son might listen to his father. Lagares, at 26, is only three years younger than Cespedes, but he has admired him for years. He respected Cespedes’s power and how hard he played, sprinting out ground balls. Lagares wore big chains and flashy clothes and expressed his style the same way Cespedes did. But Cespedes possessed a skill set that Lagares did not. That was what made him a star, and that was why the Mets acquired him at the trading deadline . Now Cespedes is set to essentially replace Lagares for the last two months of the season. He is playing center field, Lagares’s old position, and anchoring the lineup while Lagares has been relegated to a platoon player. Lagares started in center and batted leadoff Wednesday as the Mets beat the Colorado Rockies, 3-0 , at Citi Field, but Jacob deGrom and Cespedes overshadowed him. DeGrom pitched seven scoreless innings, lowering his E.R.A. to 2.03, and Cespedes clubbed his first home run as a Met, a solo shot to center field one pitch after he had been brushed back. “That explains the kind of guy he is,” Manager Terry Collins said. Lagares, meanwhile, looked just as enigmatic as he had all season. He singled in the fourth inning and scored a run, but he also struck out swinging on a splitter out of the zone in the fifth. He looked frustrated clutching his bat after the strikeout. Lagares has been playing with an injured right elbow. His defense, his best attribute, has suffered, and his plate discipline, his biggest weakness, has regressed. The Mets even floated his name during trade discussions. How he responds over the next two months may determine his long-term fate with the team. “Actually, this has been a blessing in disguise,” Kevin Long, the Mets’ hitting coach, said before the game of Lagares’s new role. Lagares started the season with much expected of him . Having won a Gold Glove Award last year, he signed a four-year, $23 million contract extension in spring training. The Mets talked of making him their leadoff hitter and the centerpiece of their defense. He was pushed out front, alongside the team’s young pitchers, as part of the next generation of Mets. But Lagares reverted to his old bad habits. He has actually chased more pitches outside the strike zone this season than he did in his first two years in the majors, according to FanGraphs. His statistics against right-handed pitchers make him look like a fringe major leaguer. His strikeout rate is still alarming. Now that Lagares is not playing as much, he can at least build the correct muscle memory in the batting cage, away from the scrutiny and pressure that come with a game. He is working with Long on getting his front foot down sooner so he is in a better position to attack the ball. “Sometimes you just cross your fingers and hope that he’s able to take it out there,” Long said. But, he added, “his mechanics are starting to settle in and be more consistent.” It has not helped Lagares’s confidence that his defense has slipped, in part because of his balky elbow. He first injured the elbow in September, and the Mets later revealed that Lagares had damaged a ligament. Lagares rested the elbow over the off-season and strengthened it. The Mets ordered him to resist making big throws, the kind that had made him a star the year before. He produced fewer spectacular plays. In June, Collins indicated that, other than rest, the only solution would be for Lagares to have Tommy John surgery, after which he would be out for at least six months. The Mets have since played down that idea, but the possibility lingers. “I’ve been playing with it all year,” Lagares said before Wednesday’s game. “In the beginning, it bothered me a little bit. But with time, it got better and better. Right now I feel great.” At the plate, at least, Lagares has played with more urgency. He has started only three times in the Mets’ last 11 games, dating to Aug. 1, and all three have come against left-handed starters. In the first, he tripled, drove in two runs and scored another. In the second game, on Tuesday, he collected three hits, including a key double in the eighth that drove in two runs. It was only the fourth time all season that he had had at least three hits in a game. Then he went 1 for 4 in Wednesday’s win, leaving his average at .257. When Collins is asked about Cespedes and Lagares, he chooses his words carefully. He makes sure to mention Lagares’s Gold Glove Award. He describes Lagares as a luxury of a deep team, a weapon he can deploy off the bench. The Mets have five outfielders vying for regular playing time. If Lagares does need elbow surgery, now would seem to be as good a time as any, while Cespedes is manning center field. “We never seriously considered surgery at any time,” General Manager Sandy Alderson said. “It’s something that, if it gets worse, we may reconsider. But at this point, it’s not something we’re contemplating.” He added with a grin: “It’s about this season. Not next season.” INSIDE PITCH LUCAS DUDA sat for a second straight game with back tightness.

Mets
Juan Lagares
Yoenis Cespedes
Rockies
Baseball
Sports injury


Board Fines Maura Keaney, Ex-Aide to Council Speaker Quinn

Abstract: A former deputy chief of staff to Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn who recently served as a top aide to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ’s re-election effort has been fined for violating city law by soliciting campaign contributions for Ms. Quinn while working for her. In announcing the sanction on Monday, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board said in a statement that around April 2007, the former aide, Maura Keaney, made between six and a dozen phone calls to union representatives to ask them to be on the host committee for a fund-raising event for Ms. Quinn’s re-election bid. The ethics board, which fined Ms. Keaney $2,500, noted that serving on the host committee required a campaign contribution. The board noted that it is generally illegal for high-ranking appointed city officials to make these solicitations and that Ms. Keaney “acknowledged that she violated the city’s conflicts of interest law, which prohibits an individual with substantial policy discretion, such as she was at the time,” from seeking donations for a city elected official or candidate for office. At the time that Ms. Keaney was helping to arrange the May 14 fund-raiser at the large union called Unite Here — where she had once been a political director — she was also working on a key piece of legislation with serious advantages for the city’s labor unions. She played a major role in drafting a law to overhaul the city’s campaign finance system that excluded New York’s powerful unions from new strictures on the amount of money that companies and individuals doing business with the city can provide to candidates. Early last year, Ms. Keaney, with her access to organized labor, quit her post with the speaker to take a job with Mr. Bloomberg to run field operations for his re-election bid. After the mayor’s victory, she got a $150,000 bonus from him for overseeing his get-out-the-vote operation, one that helped to produce a smaller than expected margin of victory for an incumbent who spent in excess of $100 million to win a third term. And on Monday, several hours after the Conflicts of Interest Board announced its settlement with Ms. Keaney, the chancellor of New York City schools, Joel I. Klein, announced that Ms. Keaney had been appointed executive director of external affairs for the city’s Department of Education. Ms. Keaney’s responsibilities will include overseeing the department’s legislative and government affairs and media and community relations. Ms. Keaney had been in talks to take the senior-level job for several weeks. She will be paid $143,000 annually. “Maura has been a committed and energetic public servant and was a valued employee of the City Council,” Ms. Quinn said. “I am confident she will continue to find ways to serve New Yorkers in the future.” At the time of the fund-raiser in question, Ms. Quinn was said to be considering a run for mayor, but eventually sought and won re-election to the Council in 2009. Ms. Keaney’s role in the fund-raiser was disclosed in a New York Times article in October in which she would then say only, via an e-mail message, “This event was two and a half years ago, and I just don’t remember that much about it.” But in statements given to the Conflicts of Interest Board that it released on Monday, she was able to provide significant details about her role in planning the event, for which tickets cost $250 and $500 a person. “During a discussion of fund-raising ideas for the re-election campaign of Council Speaker Quinn, I volunteered to assist with a fund-raising event planned for labor unions,” she said in the stipulation and disposition. “Shortly thereafter, I made between approximately 6 and 12 calls to union representatives to ask that they serve on the host committee for the event, which role would have required a contribution.” She added in the documents that she also contacted Unite Here to ask the union to donate space for the event. On Monday, Ms. Keaney did not return a call or respond to an e-mail message seeking comment. But her lawyer, Arnold N. Kriss, said in an e-mail message, “Maura had no intention to violate the City Charter when she made a small number of volunteer fund-raising calls on her own time, not on city property” and “using her personal telephone.” Ms. Keaney told the Conflicts of Interest Board, according to its documents, that she stopped making the calls to the unions after Ms. Quinn’s chief of staff told her that they were “inappropriate.” She added, “I stopped immediately and had no further involvement in campaign fund-raising for Council Speaker Quinn while I served as her deputy chief of staff.” Asked why the Council’s chief of staff, Charles E. Meara, did not notify the Conflicts of Interest Board about Ms. Keaney’s union calls, a Quinn spokesman, Jamie McShane, said, “Managers clearly have discretion when there is a one-time, self-corrected error.” Asked whether Ms. Quinn would return the labor money raised as a result of the calls, Josh Isay, a political consultant to Ms. Quinn, said she would not. “These are all longtime supporters of her campaigns,” he said. Mr. Kriss said that about a week after Ms. Keaney read The Times’s account of her solicitations to union officials, he contacted the Conflicts of Interest Board on her behalf to discuss the matter.

Elections
Ethics
Campaign Finance
Keaney Maura
Quinn Christine C
Conflicts of Interest Board (NYC)
Bloomberg Michael R
Fines (Penalties)


Merkel’s Christian Democrats Defeated in Hamburg Vote

Abstract: BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel ’s Christian Democratic Union party suffered a major defeat on Sunday in an election in Hamburg, with preliminary results showing that the opposition Social Democrats had made big gains and would form the next government there. According to preliminary results as reported by public television channels ARD and ZDF , Mrs. Merkel’s candidate, Christoph Ahlhaus, the incumbent, was decimated in the race for mayor of the city-state, the equivalent of the premier in other German states. Her party’s share of the vote was cut to 21 percent, from 42 percent in the 2008 elections. The Social Democrats, led by Olaf Scholz , made a big comeback, winning slightly less than 50 percent of the vote, up from the 34 percent in 2008. If the preliminary results stand, the Social Democrats would be able to govern without having to depend on coalition partners. It was the first of seven regional elections this year, and the conservative Christian Democrats tried to play down the results. “It has no consequences for the federal level,” said Ekhard von Klaeden, a leading Christian Democrat and adviser to Mrs. Merkel. “The people of Hamburg were completely preoccupied with local issues.” But Hermann Gröhe , the general secretary of the Christian Democrats, told supporters in Berlin that the results “were a big and painful defeat.” The Free Democrats, Mrs. Merkel’s pro-business junior coalition partners, won 6.5 percent of the vote, compared with 4.8 percent last time. That would mean they could re-enter the regional legislature; the minimum required for a party to join any legislature is 5 percent. Analysts said it could signal the slow reversal of negative opinion polls for the Free Democratic Party leader, Guido Westerwelle . The Free Democrats, who won nearly 15 percent of the vote in the 2009 federal election, had plunged to under 5 percent in the polls over the past six months. The big winners were the Social Democrats and their leader, Sigmar Gabriel . In all the opinion polls on the federal level, the Social Democrats have been lagging behind Mrs. Merkel’s conservative bloc by as much as 12 percentage points. Although voters in Hamburg, one of the world’s largest shipping ports, were focused on local issues like education and unemployment, the vote on Sunday could set the temperature for the six forthcoming regional elections, and Mr. Gabriel was in jubilant mood. “It is an historic result,” he said in Berlin. Referring to the next round of regional elections, he said, “Our time is coming.” But analysts were careful not to put too much emphasis on the Hamburg elections. “They are very regional,” said Nils Diederich , a professor of political science at Free University in Berlin. “It’s very early days yet. One thing you must never do is write off Mrs. Merkel.” The Green Party won 11 percent of the vote, which its leaders said was a disappointment. In what is billed as a “super election year,” leaders of the main political parties said Hamburg would test the credibility and popularity of Mrs. Merkel’s center-right coalition. Analysts said the Hamburg result, and more importantly, the outcome of next month’s election in the prosperous conservative state of Baden-Württemburg , would give some indication to Mrs. Merkel of the direction in which voters were moving. At a time when Germany enjoys strong economic growth, low unemployment and a big surge in exports, Mrs. Merkel’s coalition is positioning itself as the government that can sustain such prosperity and growth but also defend Germany’s interests in the European Union. Mrs. Merkel, with support from President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, has proposed a “competitiveness pact” in an effort to get all 17 euro-zone countries to coordinate policy on a wide range of issues.

Elections
Germany
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
Social Democratic Party (Germany)
Merkel Angela


Israel Kills Three Militants in Gaza

Abstract: GAZA — Three Palestinian militants were killed late Monday in an Israeli bombing in Gaza , witnesses, medical and security personnel said, a continuation of sporadic violence in the territory that is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas. Witnesses said that an explosion was heard outside the Al-Burij refugee camp in central Gaza an hour before midnight. The Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement posted on its Web site that an aircraft had “targeted and identified hitting a number of militants preparing to fire rockets from the central Gaza Strip into Israel .” Ambulance workers said the bodies of three men were removed from the site. Security personnel said the three were members of Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, but a spokesman for the brigades, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the fighters “were not in an official mission.” Adham Abu Selmia, of the Hamas government’s medical services, said the dead were between the ages of 18 and 24. An hour and half before the Israeli shelling, a blast ripped through near Al-Nussirat, also in central Gaza, witnesses said. The Israeli Defense Forces did not comment on that explosion, but some security personnel said it was caused by a stray rocket fired by Palestinian militants.

Israel
Palestinians
Gaza Strip
Defense and Military Forces


What Apple Has That Google Doesn’t: An Auteur

Abstract: AT Apple , one is the magic number. One person is the Decider for final design choices. Not focus groups. Not data crunchers. Not committee consensus-builders. The decisions reflect the sensibility of just one person: Steven P. Jobs , the C.E.O. By contrast, Google has followed the conventional approach, with lots of people playing a role. That group prefers to rely on experimental data, not designers, to guide its decisions. The contest is not even close. The company that has a single arbiter of taste has been producing superior products, showing that you don’t need multiple teams and dozens or hundreds or thousands of voices. Two years ago, the technology blogger John Gruber presented a talk , “The Auteur Theory of Design,” at the Macworld Expo. Mr. Gruber suggested how filmmaking could be a helpful model in guiding creative collaboration in other realms, like software. The auteur, a film director who both has a distinctive vision for a work and exercises creative control, works with many other creative people. “What the director is doing, nonstop, from the beginning of signing on until the movie is done, is making decisions,” Mr. Gruber said. “And just simply making decisions, one after another, can be a form of art.” “The quality of any collaborative creative endeavor tends to approach the level of taste of whoever is in charge,” Mr. Gruber pointed out. Two years after he outlined his theory, it is still a touchstone in design circles for discussing Apple and its rivals. Garry Tan, designer in residence and a venture partner at Y Combinator, an investor in start-ups, says: “Steve Jobs is not always right— MobileMe would be an example. But we do know that all major design decisions have to pass his muster. That is what an auteur does.” Mr. Jobs has acquired a reputation as a great designer, Mr. Tan says, not because he personally makes the designs but because “he’s got the eye.” He has also hired classically trained designers like Jonathan Ive. “Design excellence also attracts design talent,” Mr. Tan explains. Google has what it calls a “creative lab,” a group that had originally worked on advertising to promote its brand. More recently, the lab has been asked to supply a design vision to the engineering and user-experience groups that work on all of Google’s products. Chris L. Wiggins, the lab’s creative director, whose own background is in advertising, describes design as a collaborative process among groups “with really fruitful back-and-forth.” “There’s only one Steve Jobs, and he’s a genius,” says Mr. Wiggins. “But it’s important to distinguish that we’re discussing the design of Web applications, not hardware or desktop software. And for that we take a different approach to design than Apple,” he says. Google, he says, utilizes the Web to pull feedback from users and make constant improvements. Mr. Wiggins’s argument that Apple’s apples should not be compared to Google’s oranges does not explain, however, why Apple’s smartphone software gets much higher marks than Google’s. GOOGLE’S ability to attract and retain design talent has not been helped by the departure of designers who felt their expertise was not fully appreciated. “Google is an engineering company, and as a researcher or designer, it’s very difficult to have your voice heard at a strategic level,” writes Paul Adams on his blog , “Think Outside In.” Mr. Adams was a senior user-experience researcher at Google until last year; he is now at Facebook. Douglas Bowman is another example. He was hired as Google’s first visual designer in 2006, when the company was already seven years old. “Seven years is a long time to run a company without a classically trained designer,” he wrote in his blog Stopdesign in 2009. He complained that there was no one at or near the helm of Google who “thoroughly understands the principles and elements of design” “I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide,” Mr. Bowman wrote, adding, “I can’t operate in an environment like that.” His post was titled, “Goodbye, Google.” Mr. Bowman’s departure spurred other designers with experience at either Google or Apple to comment on differences between the two companies. Mr. Gruber, at his Daring Fireball blog, concisely summarized one account under the headline “Apple Is a Design Company With Engineers; Google Is an Engineering Company With Designers.” In May, Google, ever the engineering company, showed an unwillingness to notice design expertise when it tried to recruit Pablo Villalba Villar, the chief executive of Teambox, an online project management company. Mr. Villalba later wrote that he had no intention of leaving Teambox and cooperated to experience Google’s hiring process for himself. He tried to call attention to his main expertise in user interaction and product design. But he said that what the recruiter wanted to know was his mastery of 14 programming languages. Mr. Villalba was dismayed that Google did not appear to have changed since Mr. Bowman left. “Design can’t be done by committee,” he said. Recently, as Larry Page, the company co-founder, began his tenure as C.E.O., , Google rolled out Google+ and a new look for the Google home page, Gmail and its calendar. More redesigns have been promised. But they will be produced, as before, within a very crowded and noisy editing booth. Google does not have a true auteur who unilaterally decides on the final cut.

Design
Apple Incorporated
Google Inc
Jobs Steven P
Computers and the Internet


The View From Syria as a Cease-Fire Takes Effect

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — The timing of the cease-fire in Syria, which took effect on Monday at sundown and was largely holding on Tuesday, is fraught with symbolism. It coincides with Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, which commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God. The tale is central to the Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths — and a recurring literary metaphor for society’s sacrifice of the young in the wars of their elders. United Nations agencies and other aid groups have scrambled to prepare long-awaited aid deliveries to the divided city of Aleppo. But on Tuesday they were still awaiting official word that the route was secure. We are tracking the experiences and observations of people in many parts of Syria as the truce changes, or fails to change, their lives. Read more about the terms of the deal here. No Joy for Children This Eid Samsam , 26, is an aid worker in the government-held western part of Aleppo, which was once Syria’s largest city. She asked to be identified by only a nickname — it means “sesame” in Arabic — because she was not authorized by the government to speak to foreign reporters. She said in a telephone interview from Aleppo, which is divided between the government in the west and the rebels in the east, that residents found cease-fires frightening. When the truces inevitably break down, she said, violence escalates, and the halt in fighting also interrupts war’s predictable routine. There was a big shelling the previous Eid, which hit an open area and it killed lots of children. We hear shelling, bombing and this kind of stuff, and we got used to it, but when we hear there is a cease-fire, we say, “God protect us.” People didn’t forget. They manage their life without thinking what will happen next. They take each day individually. They get used to not thinking about the future: We see this day, we are going to work, we are going to the cafe, to meet some friends or some relatives. Just for today. I think it’s a powerful message. The streets are crowded by people and children. But still it’s early to judge if the cease-fire will last or not. Dr. Omar Abu Mariam , 30, a neurosurgeon, asked to be identified by only his first name and a nickname, for the safety of his family. He is the only neurosurgeon working in the rebel-held part of eastern Aleppo, where many patients with brain injuries die because doctors lack equipment and the evacuation route to Turkey has lately been cut off by shelling. Image Even the less severe cases Dr. Omar Abu Mariam treats can be heart-rending, like Khaled, 8 months old, whose skull was fractured in a missile strike. Hours after the cease-fire was announced on Friday, doctors did not know where his mother was or “if she made it.” He often operates around the clock and does not expect the cease-fire deal to change that, he said in a text message. For Eid, he went to a friend’s house for dinner. His friend had managed to find a sheep to slaughter, though it was more difficult and expensive to come by than usual, and they ate sheep’s liver and honey-soaked baklava, traditional Eid sweets. On the way back, the city was almost pitch black. “The streets were empty. Dark,” he said. “No fuel for cars. Few generators.” The first evening of the truce passed without a call to the emergency room. But when he got home, he could hear explosions in the distance. Surface-to-surface missiles, he speculated. The doctor wondered if he would make it through another day without heading back to the operating room. “The cease-fire is a big lie,” he said. Video Ibrahim Abo Allith, a volunteer rescue worker, recounted continued violence and fear in Aleppo as a planned cease-fire took effect on Monday. Ibrahim Abo Allith , one of the volunteer rescue workers with the White Helmets, also known as the Syria Civil Defense, recounted a tense prelude to the planned cease-fire in Aleppo. According to unconfirmed reports from Mr. Allith and other activists on the ground, there were barrel bomb attacks on Monday in the neighborhood of al-Shokaief in rebel-held eastern Aleppo. We in Aleppo support the cease-fire and stopping the killing in Syria. Children didn’t go and play on the swings; they didn’t go to the playgrounds. They didn’t celebrate or experience joy this Eid because of the violent bombardment that neighborhoods were subjected to before the cease-fire. We hope that the killing stops so that everybody can live in security. We hope that the war in Syria will end, that the killing will end, so that a new Syria can be built. ‘We May Get Killed’ Dani Qappani, 28, graduated from Damascus University with a degree in English literature in 2011, the first year of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Mr. Qappani became an antigovernment media activist in Moadhamiyeh, a suburb less than two miles from downtown Damascus, the Syrian capital. He uses a pseudonym for his safety to post videos. Mr. Qappani writes poems and notes about politics on Facebook . He is worried about divisions in the Moahdhamiyeh, between those who want to accept reconciliation with the government and others, like him, who do not. Here’s how he described the situation in an online chat: They threaten us every now and then that they would attack the city if we don’t agree on anything they want from us. All the people of Moadhamiyeh are busy-minded and talking about the evacuation these days, not to mention the regime’s agents, the troubles they make. In short, it’s not safe anymore for me and people who reject the reconciliation. We may get killed. “It’s a bit better today,” he said on Tuesday in a text message. “I can hear music being played in the Eid square.” Skeptical, but Waiting for Peace Image The author Khaled Khalifa. Credit Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images Khaled Khalifa , 52, is an author well known for his novel “In Praise of Hatred,” about the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in 1982 and the government’s crackdown. In the dark hours of Monday morning, he posted on his public Facebook page about his plans for Eid in Damascus. He chatted online about his plans for Eid with the Beirut bureau of The New York Times a short while later: No Eid here. And my family is so far. My family is in Aleppo, it is so sad. They are on both sides. But they don’t want to leave. Here, people can’t believe anything. But they are always waiting for peace. Elham , 32, has two children and is married to a government employee. She woke up to quiet on Tuesday in Damascus, instead of outgoing blasts from a nearby army position.She spoke to a Times reporter, who is identifying her by her first name only for her safety. I am happy to have spent last night without loud sounds of bombing on Qasioun Mountain. It was a nightmare for us to hear the artillery and rocket launchers from the mountain. Our building was shaking and sometimes my little children were waking up from their sleep crying. Today, we have a plan to go the park to spend our day outdoors. We will take falafel sandwiches for lunch. There is a nice park next to the Ibn al-Ameed bakeries, we will go there. ‘They Are All a Bunch of Criminals’ Video Idlib Province in Syria was hit by deadly airstrikes ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday, which began on Monday, the same day as a cease-fire. An area resident, Muhammed Najdat Kaddour, filmed the scene. Muhammed Najdat Kaddour , 31, went to Binnish, in rebel-held territory in Idlib Province, to film the aftermath of an airstrike over the weekend and to interview survivors. In a phone interview on Monday, he described a local Eid celebration (he sent photos, below) and his own pessimism about the cease-fire and his distrust of President Assad and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: Do you believe there’s something called a truce? Do you think they are serious? ... They are all a bunch of criminals. We organized a celebration especially for the children of martyrs. We did the whole celebration in the basement. We were worried about the random shelling. … Imagine, you could hear sounds of prayers in Binnish and Fouaa for the Eid, followed by the sounds of shelling. The sounds were very clear. Image Children celebrating Eid al-Adha in Idlib Province, Syria. Credit Muhammed Najdat Kaddour Tired of the War Bashar al-Suleiman, 29, taught in a government elementary school in a village north of Raqqa until the Islamic State took over and made the city the de facto capital of its self-declared caliphate. Now he stays home except to shop for groceries. He spoke in a call over the internet. Before the Syrian revolution, my family would visit relatives on Eid, but now most of my relatives have left Raqqa to other Syrian cities, Turkey and Europe. I have nothing to do but visit a few friends who still live here. I don’t feel any change will happen in the city of Raqqa because the cease-fire will not implemented here since we are occupied by Daesh. We are tired of the war and hope to have a real cease-fire that covers the whole of Syria.

Damascus
Levant Conquest Front
War and Revolution


Venezuela: Military Says It Downed Plane Near Aruba

Abstract: Venezuela’s defense minister said Friday that Venezuelan military aircraft had shot down a small plane that crashed a day earlier in the waters near the island of Aruba. Officials in Aruba said Thursday that the plane had gone down after being pursued by Venezuelan jets, but it was not immediately known if they had fired on it. The Venezuelan defense minister, Vladimir Padrino, said that the plane had taken off from the southern state of Apure, which is a regular loading point for drug flights. “Our aircraft intercepted and it did not follow orders and, well, it was disabled,” he said, adding that the encounter took place over Venezuela’s territorial waters. The Aruban authorities said that the craft crashed in waters belonging to the island, which lies just off Venezuela’s coast. Officials in Aruba said that body parts and about 400 packages that appeared to contain drugs were found in the wreckage. A Justice Ministry official in Aruba said Friday that the plane was registered in the United States.

Venezuela
Aruba
Plane Crash
Drug Abuse
Airlines,airplanes


Romania: Spotlight Shines on Spies

Abstract: The director of Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Agency, Teodor Melescanu, resigned Monday to run for president in the Nov. 2 election, fueling debate about the presence of spies in the country’s political life. The news broke a day after a talk-show host, Robert Turcescu, revealed that he was an undercover officer for the Defense Ministry, which has declined to comment on the matter. The two developments add to popular suspicions that Romania’s political life is being manipulated by the intelligence services. Romania has two main intelligence agencies and five smaller agencies not under parliamentary control. Mr. Melescanu, 73, will run as a candidate for the Social Justice Party, election officials said, facing Prime Minister Victor Ponta and other candidates.

Romania
Teodor Melescanu
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


Armenia: Violence Erupts at Border

Abstract: The Armenian police said Thursday that three civilians in villages near the border with Azerbaijan had been killed by Azerbaijani forces. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said that Azerbaijani villages in the area had come under fire and that the armed forces had responded. The two former Soviet republics are locked in a long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely Armenian region of Azerbaijan.

Armenia
Armenians
Azerbaijan
Nagorno-Karabakh
Civilian casualties
Military