W.H.O. Advises Caution, but Not a Halt, in Blood Collection in Zika-Affected Areas

Abstract: The World Health Organization issued recommendations on Friday for safeguarding the blood supply from the Zika virus, but said blood collection might need to continue in some affected areas, despite concerns that the virus may be linked to birth defects and a form of temporary paralysis. The Food and Drug Administration recently advised that United States territories with active Zika transmission, including Puerto Rico, should halt blood donations and import blood from nonaffected regions. Since there are no homegrown cases of Zika virus transmission in the continental United States, shipping blood to Zika-affected areas like Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands is feasible. By contrast, Zika is rapidly spreading throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, with more than 25 countries and territories reporting local transmission. In its guidance, W.H.O. conceded that it may be “logistically impossible” to obtain blood from nonaffected areas. “You can’t import blood for all of Latin America,” said Dr. Peter J. Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “I have great sympathy for W.H.O. because they had to make a very difficult call.” Compounding matters, no commercial test to conveniently screen blood donations for the Zika virus is currently available. And even when a test is ready, some poorer countries may still not be able to conduct expensive testing. “People are still going to need blood transfusions, so what do you do?” Dr. Hotez said. Dr. Nakul Raykar, the chief fellow for the program in global surgery and social change at Harvard Medical School, said the W.H.O. recommendations were “making the best of a really bad situation.” Many low-income countries are plagued by the “very, very low blood donation rates,” said Dr. Raykar, who has written about the global blood supply . In many places, he said, “the donor pool is so severely limited that rejecting a healthy-looking person who tests negative for hepatitis C and hepatitis B and H.I.V. is challenging.” The reality is in that circumstance “you collect the blood,” he explained. In a Zika-prevalent area with a severe blood shortage, it is hard to turn down someone who is not showing signs of Zika. The harm of transfusing blood not formally tested for Zika must be weighed against the benefits, depending on local circumstances. For instance, in some of the world’s poorest regions, “we have mothers dying on the table from postpartum hemorrhage,” Dr. Raykar said. “Even if we have situation with high prevalence of Zika virus in the population, we need to weigh the potential risk of contracting Zika from a blood transfusion against the absolute risk of death or severe morbidity from not getting a transfusion when needed.” To reduce the risk of contaminating the blood supply with Zika, W.H.O. advised deferring donors for 28 days until their symptoms, like rash and red eyes, have resolved. Zika virus is usually transmitted via mosquitoes, but a few cases of sexual transmission have been documented. So W.H.O. also recommended the sexual partners of men who had a confirmed Zika virus infection or suspicious symptoms in the prior three months not give blood until a month after last contact. “The problem is if it’s true that most cases of Zika are without symptoms, that’s not really helpful,” Dr. Hotez said. During a 2013 outbreak of Zika in French Polynesia , roughly 3 percent of asymptomatic blood donors actually tested positive for Zika RNA, which researchers considered “unexpectedly high.” W.H.O. also advised countries to consider quarantining red blood cells for seven to 14 days, and releasing supplies for transfusion only after confirmation that the donor had not experienced any Zika-like symptoms, such as joint pain, rash, fever or red eyes. Yet, it remains unclear how blood banks with poor follow-up mechanisms will monitor donors after the fact, especially considering that some never answer their phone or return to the blood bank. Zika virus typically remains in the blood of an infected person for roughly a week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Zika Virus
Puerto Rico
Blood donation
Latin America
Caribbean
Blood transfusion
WHO
US


De Blasio Focuses on Inequality as He Courts Business Elite

Abstract: Bill de Blasio delivered on Friday his most detailed blueprint yet for how he would reimagine New York as a more equitable and populist metropolis, even as he works diligently behind the scenes to send a subtler message to the city’s corporate titans: He is not their enemy. In a speech before a prominent civic group, Mr. de Blasio, the Democratic nominee for mayor, denounced giveaways to the real estate industry, pledged to re-energize labor unions and declared that the city’s “affordability crisis” was as urgent and serious a problem as the turmoil faced after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “We cannot expect prosperity to trickle down from the top,” he said during the speech in Midtown Manhattan, adding, “We cannot resign ourselves to the mind-set that says rising inequality is a necessary byproduct of urban success.” He was met with a standing ovation from an overflow crowd of wealthy business leaders — the same group that a year ago had responded to a similar speech by Mr. de Blasio with chilly disregard. It was the surest sign yet of a thaw in the relationship between Mr. de Blasio, the fiery campaigner who took direct aim at the wealth of the Bloomberg years, and the business elite, who had viewed him warily until he secured the Democratic nomination just weeks ago. Now, détente is in the air. In a whirlwind tour this week, Mr. de Blasio sat down with leaders in finance, real estate and technology — including Lloyd C. Blankfein and Philippe P. Dauman, the chief executives of Goldman Sachs and Viacom — to tell them face to face that his brand of liberalism is unapologetic but pragmatic, and can accommodate the value of business in a global city. In meetings, Mr. de Blasio has not minced words, telling corporate leaders that he is a “Democrat with a capital ‘D’ ” and acknowledging that he subscribes to a deeply felt, left-leaning ideology. But the message, attendees say, has been clear: “We may not agree, but we want to work together.” It is a fine line to walk for Mr. de Blasio, a proud liberal firebrand who is nonetheless aware that he must woo audiences far from his base as he starts to ponder how to govern a complex city. Even as he outlined proposals on Friday for raising the wages of low-paid workers, Mr. de Blasio took pains to offer repeated, if qualified, praise for some of the economic development policies of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whom he had largely denounced during his primary campaign. At one point, Mr. de Blasio, currently the city’s public advocate, went as far as to describe himself as a “fiscal conservative,” saying he would be focused on keeping a balanced budget — which is required by law — as he tries to negotiate new contracts with municipal unions and to expand social services. Mr. de Blasio’s self-description rankled his Republican opponent, Joseph J. Lhota, a former city budget chief whose campaign immediately issued a statement calling the assertion “delusional.” “He’ll say anything to anyone to get elected,” said Mr. Lhota’s spokeswoman, Jessica Proud, who added that Mr. de Blasio’s commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy, and his record as a liberal councilman, contradicted any claims to conservatism. Fiscal hawk or not, Mr. de Blasio has a formidable lead over Mr. Lhota in recent polls, and many members of the business world are letting their previous skepticism give way to a pragmatic sense of “work with what you’ve got.” “There’s an old Irish expression: A new broom sweeps clean,” William T. Cunningham, a former communications director for Mr. Bloomberg, said as the attendees filed out after Mr. de Blasio’s speech. “This room was filled with old brooms,” Mr. Cunningham said, referring to the audience. “They know the corners, and they’re trying to figure out what corners they can play in the next administration.” Industry leaders are now lining up for time with Mr. de Blasio; weeks after dismissing the Democrat as a long shot, some are even boasting to friends about their ties to the man who could be New York’s next mayor. Mr. de Blasio spoke on Monday at the headquarters of Gilt Groupe, the digital retailing concern, with dozens of leaders in the city’s nascent technology industry. On Wednesday, he was at the Yale Club in Midtown, meeting with financiers who are prominent Democratic donors, including the investment banker Blair W. Effron and the hedge fund manager Orin S. Kramer. This week, Mr. de Blasio also spoke with Rupert Murdoch and Robert Thomson of News Corporation; Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the real estate mogul and publisher of The Daily News; Mr. Blankfein; and Mr. Dauman, who hosted a meeting at his office at Viacom. Next week is already looking busy. Mr. de Blasio is set to attend a wine-tasting in his honor on Tuesday at a real estate investment firm in Midtown. The suggested contribution is $4,950, the maximum allowed by the city. With access to Mr. de Blasio at a premium, his speech on Friday, sponsored by the Association for a Better New York, attracted about 800 people, including former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and former Mayor David N. Dinkins. In remarks that lasted 30 minutes, Mr. de Blasio denounced “giveaways that disproportionately favor luxury housing,” fired a warning shot at the powerful real estate industry and said he would end “overly generous tax incentives for big corporations.” He also paid tribute to labor, saying “unions have provided the most secure path for Americans in low-wage jobs to join the middle class, and it can and must be that way again.” He pledged to raise wages for city workers and require that businesses offer more sick days to their employees, two measures fiercely opposed by Mr. Bloomberg and elements of the business community. He promised to reinvest in the city’s colleges and local manufacturing companies. And he said he would entertain no tax cuts until after the municipal budget had been hammered out. Some of the changes envisioned by Mr. de Blasio can be done by a mayor; others would require approval of the City Council or State Legislature. Meanwhile, his fund-raising is continuing apace. On Tuesday, Mr. de Blasio spoke at Elmo, a lounge in Chelsea, during an event hosted by a lobbyist, Michael Woloz. In attendance were several prominent members of the yellow-taxi industry, which has given generously to Mr. de Blasio’s campaign, and representatives of real estate and energy companies, along with a group that wants to build a velodrome in the city. As he walked onstage, Mr. de Blasio pretended to receive a call on his mobile phone from former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is hosting a fund-raiser for him later in the month. “Hillary?” Mr. de Blasio said into the phone. “We’re setting the bar pretty high for you,” he added, alluding to the donors in the crowd.

Bill de Blasio
Mayoral races
Assn for a Better New York
NYC


Shabab Militants Strike 2 Hotels in Somalia

Abstract: MOGADISHU, Somalia — Militants attacked two hotels in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, with grenades, bombs and heavy gunfire on Friday in what appeared to have been coordinated attacks, witnesses and officials said. At least 18 of the attackers were killed and at least six civilians were wounded, officials said. The Shabab, an Islamist militant group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for both attacks, saying that they were targeting government officials who were staying at the two sites, the Weheliye and Siyad hotels. The attacks shocked residents of Mogadishu, who were breaking the daily Ramadan fast on Friday evening around the time of the attacks. “I heard several loud explosions in several locations when I was prepared to break the fast,” said Ahmed Osman, a resident of the Howlwadaag neighborhood in the capital. “This is one of the terrifying moments in my life.” Witnesses said a car bomber attacked the front door of the Weheliye Hotel and that gunmen carried out an assault on the rear gate with grenades and heavy machine guns, but they were repelled by the hotel guards. Eight attackers were killed, according to the National Intelligence and Security Agency, and three civilians were wounded, including at least one lawmaker. Mohamed Yusuf, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Security, said in a speech broadcast by Somali National Television that the Somali security forces had killed all the gunmen who had attacked the Weheliye Hotel. “Hotel Weheliye is under full government control,” Mr. Yusuf said. He declined to give details about the number of civilian and government casualties. The fighting at the second hotel, however, was continuing, Mr. Yusuf said, adding that specially trained units had been deployed. But details of that attack remained unclear on Friday night. The National Intelligence and Security Agency later said that 10 attackers had been killed and three civilians wounded. A suicide bomber set off explosives at the gates of the Siyad Hotel, and militants breached the hotel’s security measures. The Shabab said that the targets of that attack were regional officials from the Southwest Federal State and other government officials, some of whom were still trapped inside the hotel, according to a message posted on Somali websites. The Shabab fighters have intensified their attacks during the holy month of Ramadan. Late last month the group raided an African Union base in the southern Somalia town of Lego, claiming to have killed as many as 50 soldiers from Burundi.

Somalia
Mogadishu
Al Qaeda
Al Shabab
Terrorism


Iran Seems to Signal Flexibility on Nuclear Issue

Abstract: CAIRO — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has settled on a strategy of trying to consolidate power by surrounding himself with loyalists at home while appearing to signal to the international community a readiness to address the nuclear issue, political commentators, diplomats and scientists said on Thursday. While much attention has been focused on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s decision to try to pack his cabinet with loyalists, his choice of a well-respected physicist, Ali Akbar Salehi, as a vice president and the head of Iran’s nuclear agency has been greeted in the diplomatic and scientific community as signaling a possibly less dogmatic, more pragmatic nuclear policy. Two other recent developments have added to that perception. The first, according to diplomats and scientists, is recent indications that Iran may be prepared to be more cooperative with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The second was Mr. Ahmadinejad’s decision to retain the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, and not to move a more conservative ally into that position. The United States and Western Europe have accused Iran of developing a nuclear weapons program and demanded that it stop uranium enrichment. Iran has refused, insisting that it is pursuing only peaceful nuclear energy . On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia, the United States, Britain, China, France and Germany would meet on Sept. 2 to discuss Iran’s nuclear program . The United States and France have given Iran until the end of September to respond to their most recent demands or face a new round of sanctions. Experts said that the Iranian president and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, might have calculated that resolving the nuclear standoff could satisfy two needs. It could help the troubled economy by heading off new sanctions — and possibly assist in lifting existing sanctions — while giving the two leaders much-needed credibility for having achieved a positive policy objective. Experts were quick to caution that this outline might well prove to be wishful thinking. Trying to discern events in Iran today is something like the Kremlin-watching that went on during the cold war. Repression, arrests and censorship have made independent reporting impossible in Iran. Indeed, there is a competing view that Iran will never make any concessions on its nuclear program, figuring that conflict with Washington may restore some degree of national unity. Moreover, some experts said that Iran’s severe political crisis had caused such unprecedented paralysis and infighting that Mr. Ahmadinejad might not have the power to carry out any cohesive policy in a bitterly divided government. Nevertheless, the appointment of Mr. Salehi to head the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran — even though it is the supreme leader who decides nuclear policy — was seen as significant enough to warrant at least a flicker of optimism. Mr. Salehi served as Iran’s representative to the I.A.E.A. when the reform leader Mohammad Khatami was president. It was during that time, in 2003, that the agency became aware of Iran’s 18 years of lying about its secret nuclear program. For Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Salehi’s appointment also serves a political purpose: he succeeds Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, the agency’s longtime director, who is seen as an ally of Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leader of the political opposition. One Western diplomat who spent years working in Iran and has grown increasingly pessimistic about its political future, said there was at least one hopeful sign. “One signal deserves to be explored,” he said. “It seems that in the past few days the Iranians have been surprisingly cooperative with the I.A.E.A.” Iran allowed the agency’s inspectors to visit the nearly finished Arak heavy water reactor last week after a yearlong ban, diplomats told The Associated Press. Last week, they added, Tehran acceded to the agency’s requests to expand its monitoring of the Natanz uranium enrichment site, which produces nuclear materials that could be further enriched to weapons grade. But the chances of making progress on the nuclear issue may hinge on developments in the Iranian government. While the turmoil that gripped the capital, Tehran, after the June presidential election has eased, many experts say, the fight now seems to have moved inside the institutions of power, possibly limiting Mr. Ahmadinejad’s room to maneuver. “Ahmadinejad will have great difficulty governing,” said Muhammad Sahimi, an Iranian expatriate and professor at chemical engineering at the University of Southern California who remains in close contact with a network of friends and relatives around Iran. “He is being opposed on all sides. Khamenei’s authority has been greatly damaged. Cracks in the conservative camp have become too glaring, and every day there are new revelations.” Still, most experts on Iran’s nuclear policy say they are heartened by what they have seen of late, though they are not expecting any breakthroughs. Iran’s representative to the I.A.E.A., Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said this week that Tehran would agree to “talks without preconditions.” He is close to Mr. Salehi, the new head of the Iranian atomic agency, and even though Mr. Soltanieh retracted the statement a day later, the incident was seen by some as another possible signal. “I think Iran plays a little cat and mouse now at the I.A.E.A. level,” said one commentator with expertise on the nuclear issue. “He did not make the original statement without Tehran’s authorization.”

Iran
Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear Energy
International Relations
Salehi Ali Akbar


Japanese High School Team Pursues Tournament Berth After Much Angst

Abstract: SENDAI, Japan — High school baseball players across Japan dream of playing for the national title in Koshien Stadium , yet few ever go. Teams from Tohoku High School — a sports powerhouse whose alumni include Yu Darvish , the best pitcher in Japan, and Kazuhiro Sasaki , the former closer of the Seattle Mariners — expect to go. They have made 40 trips to the tournament, but have never won. Tohoku’s quest for a 41st trip got off to a good start this week when it beat Shizugawa High School, 8-0, in the opening round of a regional tournament to decide which team will represent Miyagi prefecture at Koshien in August. Tohoku, which plays next on Saturday, must win four more games to win that right. The pressure is sure to build. The knockout competition at Koshien is like the World Cup. The country is transfixed for weeks on the tournament, held each spring as an invitational and each summer in a regional qualifying format. But this year’s pursuit has extra meaning because of the earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan four months ago. About 15 miles inland, Tohoku High escaped major physical damage. Several players lost relatives and had their homes swept away. The team’s planned trip to the spring tournament a week after the disasters was also in flux. The chaos in the wake of the disasters prompted the players, coaches and community to debate whether it was appropriate to play baseball during a national emergency. Having trained for years, the players questioned their unbending devotion to baseball and the almost mythic significance of the tournament. In the end, they went to Koshien, but only after much angst. “For the players, Koshien is very famous, and I’m sure they wanted to go,” said Mitsuru Takeuchi, one of the team’s coaches. “But it didn’t seem like the right environment to go when there wasn’t any water or electricity. It was their big dream, but they were really wavering, especially the seniors, since it was their last chance.” The players were at practice the afternoon of March 11. With the electricity knocked out after the earthquake, they did not see the first television reports that a tsunami had smashed into the coast. Without lights in the dormitories, many players decamped to a nearby school that became a refugee center despite lacking food and water. Few slept because of the strong aftershocks. Without phones, most players could not reach their parents. Eitaro Toba questioned if he would be able to go to the tournament, which is held near Osaka. It would be the first trip for the backup catcher and vice captain of the team. But after he learned of the damage caused by the tsunami, Toba figured Koshien would have to wait. “The next day, I saw the situation of the coastal towns on television and in the newspaper,” Toba said. “After that, the issue of playing baseball suddenly disappeared from my mind and I started worrying about the safety of others.” Toba and his teammates spent the next few days helping at the refugee center, hauling water, cooking and looking for food. The players ate only after everyone else at the center had finished. As phone service returned, students found out about their homes and families. The students agonized over what to do. No one would begrudge them for pulling out of the tournament. Many schools were destroyed and thousands were dead or missing. Amid so much grieving, baseball seemed trivial. The Japan High School Baseball Federation considered canceling the event, then went ahead. A team from Fukushima withdrew. But many players felt their team should play to show their neighbors and the wider world their resilience in the face of disaster. Win or lose, the sight of the players taking the field would be inspirational. Yukihiko Igarashi, the team’s manager, weighed both sides, too. Most of the parents, alumni and others who contacted him were in favor of sending the team. After all parents were notified that their children were safe, Igarashi decided they would go on March 18, the last day to notify the organizers of their plans. “It was the hardest decision I have had to make in five years as manager,” Igarashi said. “The students were shocked. Their moods typically don’t go up or down, but you could see from the expressions on their faces that they were nervous.” But, he added, “there are no words to describe how it feels to have people cheer for you” at Koshien. To give Tohoku extra time to prepare, the organizers moved Tohoku’s first game to the sixth day of the tournament. The team received an extra round of applause when it marched on the field at the opening ceremony, but ended up losing in the first round, 7-0. The event has no equivalent in the United States, but the closest parallel may be the N.C.A.A. tournament in college basketball. Still, that event is more commercial and held in many cities. The summer tournament in Japan started in 1915, two decades before a professional baseball league was formed. More than 4,000 teams will play for a chance to get to Koshien this year. Because of the nationwide shortage of electricity caused by the nuclear crisis in Fukushima, the organizers want to avoid using the lights at Koshien. Early-round games will begin at 8 a.m. and the title game will start at 9:30 a.m. instead of noon. Regardless, players will give it their all. The experience is so emotional for them that after they lose, they scoop dirt from the field into bags as tears roll down their faces. Legends are born there, too. In 1998, Daisuke Matsuzaka, now of the Red Sox, threw a 17-inning complete game in the quarterfinals. Two games later, he pitched a no-hitter to win the title for his team. The Japanese love the tournament because of the players, who train year-round with a singular purpose and, in most people’s minds, have an unsullied purity. Players are expected to act like model citizens. The high school baseball federation disqualifies teams if players are caught stealing, smoking or bullying. In some ways, high school baseball in Japan evokes a bygone era when teachers taught with an army-like discipline. Tohoku’s team is typical of this order. Players practice every day from 2:30 until 7 p.m. After dinner, they hold voluntary workouts. Their only time off is during the New Year’s holiday. Injured players sweep the grounds while their brethren run four-wide in formation. On the center-field scoreboard is the phrase, “Without principles, nothing can be done.” Players bow before taking the field and in front of a statue of the team’s first manager. Etched on the sides of the statue’s base are the words, “Marched in Koshien,” and the years that the team qualified for the tournaments. After the players returned from Koshien in March, they commuted several hours daily to Ishinomaki, a town hit by the tsunami, to cart away rubble, to clear roads and homes and to hand out food in the snow. The community service helped the players understand what others were going through. That included Yusuke Ito, 15, a teammate who rode out the tsunami on the second floor of his home in Ishinomaki. He lost everything except his cellphone and lived in a refugee center before he entered Tohoku High School in April. Ito said he was very anxious moving to Sendai. But the drills and rigid rules have provided stability, and just playing catch with his teammates has been a welcome distraction. The most important thing, he said, is that “my older teammates are cheering for me and supporting me with all their energy.”

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan)


Secret Unit Helped Brazilian Company Bribe Government Officials

Abstract: At Latin America’s biggest construction company, bribing government officials around the world became so common that a division was created devoted to tracking and facilitating kickbacks. When wire transfers were inconvenient, workers in this division at Odebrecht of Brazil would organize deliveries of cash-stuffed suitcases to secret locations. The scheme lasted more than two decades and involved bribes to government officials in a dozen countries across three continents, but eventually it came undone. On Wednesday, Odebrecht and its affiliated petrochemical firm, Braskem, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Brooklyn to charges that they paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes . Together the companies will pay at least $3.5 billion in penalties in a case brought by authorities in the United States, Brazil and Switzerland. It is the biggest penalty for a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, surpassing a $800 million penalty paid by Siemens in 2008 to authorities in the United States. American officials said on Wednesday that their investigation was continuing and that individuals could also be prosecuted. The settlement followed a broad investigation in Brazil into corruption at Petrobras, the state-owned oil company, that plunged the country into political crisis and spurred protests that led to the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff. While not implicated — Ms. Rousseff was convicted by Brazil’s senate in a separate matter — the plunge in popular support paved the way for her impeachment in August. Odebrecht, which built the Miami International Airport and has operations in 27 countries including the United States, China and Venezuela, has been accused of colluding with Petrobras executives and other contractors as well as Braskem to take more than a billion dollars in kickbacks from the oil company. Under the terms of the agreement with prosecutors, Odebrecht has said it will pay $2.6 billion, while Braskem has agreed to pay $957 million. The Brazilian investigation into Petrobras, called “Operation Carwash,” a reference to a service station that laundered money, has shaken the political establishment to the core. The authorities there have secured 112 convictions of 83 people ensnared in the investigation, including executives of Odebrecht. The scandal has left Brazil’s oil industry bereft of investment during the country’s worst economic crisis in decades. ‘Odebrecht, Together With Its Co-Conspirators, Paid Approximately $788 Million in Bribes’ Odebrecht, the construction company that built Miami International Airport, settled bribery charges in a case stemming from a global investigation. Odebrecht built a secret internal group it called the Division of Structured Operations, where workers facilitated bribery payments through offshore entities as far-reaching as Antigua, prosecutors said. Sometimes, cash was delivered in packages or suitcases. The division included a separate communication system to hide its activities. Payments were made to members of Brazil’s congress, officials at Brazil’s two leading political parties and government officials in 12 countries including Angola, Argentina, Colombia, Panama and Mozambique. In all, the company benefited to the tune of $1.4 billion, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday. In Angola, for example, Odebrecht paid $50 million to local government officials to secure public work contracts. These projects resulted in profits of $261.7 million, prosecutors said. In Argentina, the company made $35 million in corrupt payments to intermediaries related to three infrastructure projects, knowing that some funds would be given to government officials. Its profits related to these payments were $278 million, prosecutors said. “Odebrecht and Braskem used a hidden but fully functioning Odebrecht business unit — a ‘Department of Bribery,’ so to speak — that systematically paid hundreds of millions of dollars to corrupt government officials in countries on three continents,” said Sung-Hee Suh, the deputy assistant attorney general of the criminal division of the Justice Department. “Such brazen wrongdoing calls for a strong response from law enforcement, and through a strong effort with our colleagues in Brazil and Switzerland, we have seen just that,” Ms. Suh said. Odebrecht published a statement on Dec. 1 apologizing for its “participation in illicit activities.” William Burck, a lawyer who represents Odebrecht at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, on Wednesday said: “Odebrecht has cooperated fully and will continue to do so. The company is glad to be turning the page and focusing on its future.” Odebrecht’s power has reached across political ideologies in Brazil and beyond the country as it made an aggressive push in Latin America and Africa. “Everyone is involved,” said Gil Castello Branco, founder of Contas Abertas, a transparency watchdog in Brazil. Mr. Branco added that even in the huge “Operating Carwash” scheme that has touched so many business executives and politicians, Odebrecht’s actions stand out. “Odebrecht’s behavior is without precedent” in Brazil, said Mr. Castello Branco. “I’ve never heard of anything even close.” Founded in 1944 by Norberto Odebrecht, the firm employs more than 250,000 people. Marcelo Odebrecht, its former chief executive, was convicted of corruption and money laundering in March and sentenced to 19 years in prison. While president, Mr. Odebrecht fostered close ties with Ms. Rousseff and her mentor and predecessor, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva . As an indication of the favor it has been able to curry with the government, from 2007 to early 2015, more than 70 percent of the financing that Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, provided to Brazilian companies for infrastructure projects overseas went to Odebrecht, according to Contas Abertas. That was about 8.2 billion reais (or $2.5 billion based on current exchange rates) over that period of taxpayer subsidized financing, the group estimated. Braskem, which is controlled by Odebrecht, also used Odebrecht’s bribery division to pay $250 million to politicians, government officials, and an official at Petrobras, according to a civil order filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. In exchange, officials intervened on behalf of the company on several occasions. In one instance, officials influenced Petrobras to ensure more favorable pricing on its supply of a crude oil byproduct that Braskem used for its petrochemical production. In exchange for this intervention, Braskem paid more than $20 million in bribes, the S.E.C. said. Government officials were also bribed to pass a law allowing a tax credit for the purchase of that crude byproduct and other raw materials. Braskem, in a filing on Wednesday with Brazil’s securities regulator, acknowledged it had completed an agreement with authorities and had “concluded the last stage of the global settlement negotiations.” It also said that under the terms of the agreement, the company “will continue to cooperate with the competent authorities and improve its governance and anti-corruption compliance practices.“ It noted that it will be subject to external monitoring for about three years. United States authorities said on Wednesday that Odebrecht had agreed to pay a $4.5 billion penalty but said it could only pay $2.6 billion. The final amount will be decided at a hearing on April 17. Authorities have focused on Odebrecht’s bribery scheme that took place over more than 20 years, but the company became most brazen as investigators in Brazil were drawing closer in 2014. Brazilian law enforcement had just announced their Operation Carwash investigation into Petrobras, and Odebrecht employees began to destroy documents, American prosecutors said. In 2015, an Odebrecht employee arranged a meeting in Miami with an Antiguan consular official. At the meeting, the employee requested that a high-level official in Antigua refrain from sending international authorities banking documents that would show illicit payments were made on behalf of Odebrecht. The employee offered to pay $4 million for the favor, prosecutors said. In the end, 3 million euros in payments were transferred to the official.

Brazil
Odebrecht
Braskem
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Petrobras
Bribery and Kickbacks


In Fed Documents, a Bank Run We Knew So Little About

Abstract: IN August 2007, as world financial markets were seizing up, domestic and foreign banks began lining up for cash from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York . That Aug. 20, Commerzbank of Germany borrowed $350 million at the Fed’s discount window. Two days later, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and the Wachovia Corporation each received $500 million. As collateral for all these loans, the banks put up a total of $213 billion in asset-backed securities, commercial loans and residential mortgages, including second liens. Thus began the bank run that set off the financial crisis of 2008. But unlike other bank runs, this one was invisible to most Americans. Until last week, that is, when the Fed pulled back the curtain . Responding to a court ruling, it made public thousands of pages of confidential lending documents from the crisis. The data dump arose from a lawsuit initiated by Mark Pittman, a reporter at Bloomberg News, who died in November 2009. Upon receiving his request for details on the central bank’s lending, the Fed argued that the public had no right to know. The courts disagreed. The Fed documents, like much of the information about the crisis that has been pried out of reluctant government agencies, reveal what was going on behind the scenes as the financial storm gathered. For instance, they show how dire the banking crisis was becoming during the summer of 2007. Washington policy makers, meanwhile, were saying that the subprime crisis would subside with little impact on the broad economy and that world markets were highly liquid. For example, on July 23, 2007, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary at the time, said the housing slump appeared to be “at or near the bottom.” Two days later, Timothy F. Geithner , then the president of the New York Fed, declared in a speech before the Forum on Global Leadership in Washington: “Financial markets outside the United States are now deeper and more liquid than they used to be, making it easier for companies to raise capital domestically at reasonable cost.” Within about a month’s time, however, foreign banks began thronging to the Fed’s discount window — its mechanism for short-term lending to banks. Over four days in late August and early September, foreign institutions, through their New York branches, received a total of almost $1.7 billion in Fed loans. As the global run progressed, banks increased their borrowings, the documents show. For example, on Sept. 12, 2007, Citibank drove up to the New York Fed’s window. It extracted $3.375 billion of cash in exchange for $23 billion worth of assets, including commercial mortgage-backed securities, residential mortgages and commercial loans.  THAT transaction seemed to get the Fed’s attention. At 1:30 that afternoon, Mr. Geithner spent half an hour on the phone with Gary L. Crittenden, Citi’s chief financial officer at the time, Mr. Geithner’s calendar shows. A few weeks later, Citigroup announced that it was writing off $5.9 billion in the third quarter, causing its profit to drop 60 percent from a year earlier — and that was only the beginning. Perhaps the biggest revelation in the Fed documents is the extent to which the central bank was willing to lend to foreign institutions. On Nov. 8, 2007, Deutsche Bank took out a $2.4 billion overnight loan secured by $4 billion in collateral. And on Dec. 5, 2007, Calyon of France borrowed $2 billion, providing $16 billion in collateral. When the crisis was full-on in 2008, foreign institutions became even bigger beneficiaries of the Fed’s credit programs. On Nov. 4 of that year, the Fed extended $133 billion through various facilities. Two foreign institutions — the German-Irish bank Depfa and Dexia Credit of Belgium — received 39 percent of the money that day. “The striking thing was the large amount of borrowing that the New York Fed accepted during the crisis from European banks that had only a minimal presence in the U.S. and arguably posed no threat to the U.S. payment system,” said Walker F. Todd, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and a former assistant general counsel and research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Such a thing would never have occurred 20 years ago, he added. All of the discount-window borrowings extended to institutions during the debacle have been repaid. But the precedent was set: The Fed was the financial backstop to the world. Since 2000 or so, the mind-set at the Fed in New York and Washington has been that the central bank must step in when there is a global crisis, Mr. Todd said, even if it appears to exceed its mandate. Ben S. Bernanke , the Fed chairman, seemed to foreshadow this view early in the crisis. Addressing the Fed’s annual symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Aug. 17, 2007, Mr. Bernanke said: “It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve — nor would it be appropriate — to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions. But developments in financial markets can have broad economic effects felt by many outside the markets, and the Federal Reserve must take those effects into account when determining policy.” Protecting global lenders and investors from the effects of their financial decisions was exactly what the Fed decided it had to do. Bankers and investors on the receiving end of this largess have long known the extent to which the Fed rescued them in their time of need. Now, thanks to these Fed documents, the rest of us can see it, too.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Banking and Financial Institutions
United States Economy
Credit and Debt
Federal Reserve System
Bernanke Ben S
Geithner Timothy F


Belmont Stakes Fans Hope for Overdue Triple Crown

Abstract: Thirty-seven years ago, Richard Migliore first felt the magic of a Triple Crown. He was a 13-year-old exercise rider fibbing about his age to work out a filly at Belmont Park. He saw the newspapermen, as they were called then, clamoring around Seattle Slew’s barn. Migliore felt the charge of great expectations coursing through the stables on the backside. Seattle Slew had won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and was at the doorstep of history. When Slew ran off with the Belmont Stakes later that afternoon, Migliore claimed his small part of history, as boys will do. “I rode on the same racetrack, on the same day that a champion was crowned,” he remembered the other day. “It was like I had something to do with it.” The young Migliore was back at Belmont the next year atop a horse in the morning the day Affirmed took on his rival Alydar with another Triple Crown on the line. When Affirmed got a nose in front of Alydar at the wire, he was even more enchanted. “I was sure this was going to happen every year,” he said. Now the Mig, as he’s known, is 50. He has had four children, won 4,450 times as a jockey and spent hundreds of hours on the air as a broadcast personality. He is still waiting to feel that Triple Crown magic a third time. Twelve horses have pulled in to Belmont with a shot at history since Affirmed, but none of them have passed the Test of the Champion, as the Belmont is known, and run himself into immortality. Some were unlucky: In 1979, Spectacular Bid stepped on a safety pin the morning of the race. Some were beaten by gallant rivals: Easy Goer denied Sunday Silence in 1989. Others just were not good enough on Belmont day, like Funny Cide in 2003. But horse racing is a game for confirmed optimists, and the expectation is higher than ever that California Chrome will run off with the 146th Belmont Stakes and into the history books as only the 12th Triple Crown winner. The colt looks the part: he is a chiseled chestnut with a white blaze on a head that he holds still and high in the mornings no matter what is going on around him. California Chrome has drawn a crowd since he arrived here. The newspapermen have been replaced by blogging, microphone-wielding, camera-and-iPhone-toting news media members of both sexes. They followed the colt to the paddock and the racetrack Friday, as they have every morning, with the air of expectancy that has been misplaced on 12 previous bids. But California Chrome is different, right? I don’t know exactly how to answer that: Like the racetrack announcer Tom Durkin, I am 0 for 7 with a scratch when it comes to Triple Crown bids. It is hard to be a neutral observer when you have a horse in the race, and anyone who is invested in the sport in any way cannot watch that many failed bids and not somehow fear that your opinion jinxed the horse. It is the reverse of the Mig’s boyhood feelings that he helped history along with Seattle Slew and Affirmed. I wonder how many Triple Crown bids I doomed by believing in Real Quiet, Silver Charm and all the rest. Image Richard Migliore in 2002. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times What is different this time, however, is that some longtime racetrackers who should — and usually do — know better have fallen hard enough for California Chrome to like his chances. The Mig feels good about him. “He’s so balanced and such a good mover,” he said. Ralph Theroux Jr., a son of a jockey’s agent, a former jockey agent himself and now a placing judge for the New York Racing Association, ticked off the colt’s virtues as if he was bragging about one of his children. He likes Chrome’s demeanor. “He’s a laid-back horse and just stands there and watches everything go by,” he said. “A bomb can go off and he doesn’t flinch, so you know he’s not going to leave his race in the paddock or get spooked by the crowds. He’s seen 100,000 people before.” He likes Chrome’s work ethic, how he goes about his daily two-mile gallops and how effortless he looked in his only timed workout here last Saturday, when he went a half-mile in 47.69 seconds and five furlongs in 59.93 before galloping out in 1:12.95. “That’s a video-game workout, it was so perfect,” Theroux said. “He did it easily and he came out of it without even breathing hard.” Image Willie Delgado aboard California Chrome, a horse that many longtime racetrackers have fallen for. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Even those trying to beat California Chrome hope they don’t. No one has ever claimed that logic rules the racetrack. Terry Finley is the managing partner of West Point Thoroughbred, which is running Commanding Curve, the Derby runner-up, in the Belmont. His colt has trained well, and Finley believes Commanding Curve can get past California Chrome this time. Does he really want it to happen? He hesitated. “I wouldn’t be disappointed to see a Triple Crown,” he said. Ron Anderson is a jockey’s agent, one of the best in the nation. His rider, Joel Rosario, finished second on Ride On Curlin in the Preakness, and won the Peter Pan on Tonalist. Anderson chose Tonalist to ride on Saturday because he believes that colt has the best chance to upset California Chrome. It would be a big payday — $80,000 for Rosario, and 20 percent of that for Anderson. “If we win and California Chrome runs second, I’m going to die,” Anderson said. “I’ll feel awful.” So will the Mig and everyone else who has waited 36 years get a taste of the magic. Or will Finley and Anderson or some other set of owner-trainer-jockey share a bittersweet winners’ circle? Let’s hope for the best, and brace for the worst.

Belmont Stakes
Richard Migliore
Kentucky Derby
Horse racing
California Chrome
Triple Crown Horse Racing
Preakness Stakes


With Thunderous Fans and Bats, Blue Jays Start a Bid for a Comeback

Abstract: TORONTO — Many people offered Ryan Goins their support after his critical fielding mistake on Saturday, including his teammates on the flight home, the fans at Rogers Centre and a dear relative. “My grandma told me she loved me,” Goins said. “So that was good.” For a downcast player, there are few things quite so fortifying as the unwavering love of a grandparent, and Goins repaid it in a fitting way. A lightly regarded hitter, Goins ignited an offensive outburst by the Toronto Blue Jays, who beat the Kansas City Royals, 11-8, in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series on Monday. Toronto trails in the series, two games to one. Goins hit a go-ahead two-run single with two strikes and two outs in the second inning and later added a home run — his first in the postseason — to help make up for his gaffe in Game 2. In Kansas City on Saturday, Goins pulled away from an easy pop-up by Ben Zobrist, allowing the ball to fall in for a hit that led to a five-run rally by the Royals. It was a devastating moment for Goins, who took full responsibility for the mistake as the Royals won their second game of the series. But he said he was able to clear his head and compartmentalize the pain before he took the field Monday, when many fans in the announced crowd of 49,751 showered him with some love of their own during introductions. “I put the game in Kansas City behind me,” Goins said. “Had the day off yesterday, came in and worked out, and today it was probably the last thing in the back of my head. Didn’t think about it. Came in with a mind-set to do what was needed to win.” The victory, which came on the day of Canada’s federal elections , was vital for the Blue Jays, who could not afford to fall behind by 3-0 in the series. They were searching for a breakout game, and the fans were looking for a moment to unleash their thunderous support. The moment came in the second as Goins, the lineup’s No. 9 batter, who had an .087 postseason batting average entering the game, stood at the plate. There were two outs and runners at second and third, and the Blue Jays trailed by 1-0. Goins fell behind, 0-2, in the count, but he eventually ripped a single to left field against Royals starter Johnny Cueto. Both runners scored, and Rogers Centre, known for earsplitting decibel levels in big games, thundered in approval, with the cheers echoing off the roof and reverberating down to the field. Image The Blue Jays' Kevin Pillar diving for home plate in the second inning beyond the tag attempt of the Royals' Salvador Perez. Royals starter Johnny Cueto (47) backed up the play. Credit Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press The Blue Jays broke open the game with six runs in the third inning, five of them coming on two home runs. Troy Tulowitzki, who was later ejected by the home-plate umpire, John Hirschbeck, for arguing balls and strikes, drilled a three-run shot to center against Cueto. Five batters later, Josh Donaldson, facing reliever Kris Medlen, sent a two-run blast into the second deck in left field. It was Donaldson’s third home run of the playoffs, but after the game, he seemed more pleased when discussing the instant revival of Goins, who also made several key plays at second base and later at shortstop after Tulowitzki was ejected. “He was huge,” Donaldson said. “That shows you a lot about who Ryan Goins is and the amount of character he has.” A fourth-round draft pick by the Blue Jays in 2009, Goins said that the people who offered support Saturday included Jose Bautista, the right fielder whom Goins called off before Goins pulled back, allowing the ball to drop. Some wondered if Bautista’s reaction to the play indicated that he was displeased with Goins. “He came up to me on the plane and told me he had my back,” Goins said, “and we moved past it, and that’s what we did today.” Most of the Blue Jays’ damage was done against Cueto, the pitcher the Royals acquired from the Cincinnati Reds on July 26. He was charged with eight runs, six hits and four walks and recorded only six outs, and he walked off the mound smiling to the accompaniment of the fans’ hoots and taunts in the third inning. “His next start, he’s going to be able to work on things on the side,” Royals Manager Ned Yost said, “and I guarantee you, if he makes another start in this series, he’ll be good.” Cueto actually gave up fewer hits than Marcus Stroman, the winning pitcher, who surrendered 11 hits and four runs in six and a third innings. But it was good enough on a day when the Blue Jays came to hit. As it turned out, the Blue Jays needed almost all the offense they produced. The Royals scored two runs in the fifth inning and added four in the ninth, including a two-run homer by Kendrys Morales against closer Roberto Osuna, who eventually got the final outs. “We desperately needed that breakout,” Blue Jays Manager John Gibbons said. “You look at how the game finished up, those runs really came in handy.” Gibbons also noted that it was the perfect game for Goins to have after what happened on Saturday. It was Gibbons’s way of showing some love, too.

Blue Jays
Kansas City Royals
Playoffs
John Gibbons
Baseball


At Grange Hall, Preservation vs. Development

Abstract: Meyersville THE last grange left in Morris County, Meyersville Grange No. 188, lost its farmers decades ago but has persisted as a social organization and, perhaps more important, as an ideal about what residents believe life should look like in these rolling hills beside the Great Swamp. The grange hall is about the size and shape of a country schoolhouse, with knotty pine walls and a pressed-tin ceiling, and it backs up onto the national wildlife refuge, almost 8,000 acres where the main residents are otters and egrets, foxes and herons. One recent evening the hall’s long tables were already laid with bowls and ladles for a scheduled soup and pasta competition, but the 100 people who filled the rows of folding chairs had something more pressing on their minds. “How many people are really concerned about the future of Meyersville?” asked Tom Behr, chairman of the local zoning board, and every hand went up. Meyersville is a hamlet within Long Hill Township that radiates out from a tiny, incongruous traffic circle: a church and graveyard, a pair of restaurants, a convenience store that closes at 5:30, an antiques shop, a few houses from the 18th century and many more from the late 20th. All the open space in the neighboring refuge makes it easy for residents here to forget they are living in the nation’s most densely populated state, just 20 miles down the Gladstone Line from Newark. “This has always been more rural in feeling, even if not in reality,” said Cecilia Cilli, a 37-year resident who recently organized a citizens’ group called Meyersville411 in response to a retail and residential development proposal she fears may change that. “It’s a very special place, and we know how vulnerable it is.” With the Great Swamp on one side and a wooded ridge on the other that separates it from the rest of Long Hill, Meyersville has always felt like an island, better fortified against the developers who brought town houses and shopping strips to Valley Road on the other side of town. “But the pressure from all the surrounding communities is squeezing this one, and it’s going to burst,” said Bill Kaufman, who has an architectural firm in Millington, another section of Long Hill. His purchase last year of a pair of properties in the middle of Meyersville, totaling around two acres, set the hamlet buzzing more loudly than it had since a failed attempt to build town houses in the same spot almost 20 years ago. Mr. Kaufman, 40, has submitted no plans yet, but enough people were worried about what might happen that the planning board arranged the meeting to discuss what protections the township’s land-use ordinances did, and did not, offer against any future development. Mr. Kaufman sat quietly in the back of the grange hall, listening as the residents discussed the holes in the township’s master plan — a self-described environmentalist uncomfortably cast as an agent of the sprawl he says he opposes, an object lesson in how difficult it is to imagine new ways of using land in a state with so little of it left. To him, Meyersville would make a perfect spot for what he called a pedestrian-friendly residential “ecovillage” of an undetermined size, with environmentally friendly building materials and an artificial marsh to treat the wastewater. “It’s a hamlet that would provide an opportunity to reduce the effects of sprawl,” said Mr. Kaufman, who likes to quote Thomas Jefferson and is particularly fond of the word “sustainable.” To the residents, though, a couple of nice stores or restaurants may be fine, but more housing sounds too much like Valley Road, on the other side of the ridge. “I don’t want to see any changes, really — I want to go back,” said Gus Schmidt, 77, who lives in a house his father built, and whose mother, Mary, 95, will soon be presented with an 85-year membership pin from Grange No. 188. “ ‘Changes’ to me means more of everything — more traffic, more people.” Current zoning, though, would not prevent a chain drugstore, say, from leveling the early-closing convenience store or an auto-repair garage from replacing the antiques shop, as Len Hamilton, a member of the planning board, explained to the crowd. “I think we wouldn’t at all like what could happen to Meyersville under the master plan ordinance we have,” Mr. Hamilton said. Mr. Kaufman finally stood and addressed the crowd, though he hadn’t planned to. “We’ve been on your side since Day 1, fighting against the desecration of our environment,” he said, and the way he spoke seemed to soothe some fears. But the questions raised by his ideas for Meyersville, like the questions raised in communities all over New Jersey struggling to balance preservation against development, seemed more complex than ever. Everybody agreed to meet again in two weeks, to talk about it some more. And the grange hall — with its fading photos of past masters and its blue and gold “1950 Grangerettes Champions” banner and its framed charter dating to 1909 — seemed as good a place as any to try to figure out how the future should look.

Housing
New Jersey
Area Planning and Renewal
Land Use Policies


Ex-Brown Walter Beach Recalls Black Athletes’ Support of Ali

Abstract: In June 1967, Walter Beach III received a call from his former Browns teammate and close friend Jim Brown. Brown, maybe the greatest running back in N.F.L. history, had stunned pro football a year earlier by retiring at 29 after an All-Pro season. Now he wanted Beach, who was working for Mayor Carl B. Stokes of Cleveland, to be part of a group of black athletes who would meet privately with Muhammad Ali to consider publicly backing Ali’s refusal to be inducted into the United States Army, as a conscientious objector. The men (no black women were part of the group) emerged from that meeting unified in their support of Ali. Photos from their news conference became iconic images; the moment itself would be remembered as the first — and last — time that so many African-American athletes at that level came together to support a controversial cause. On Saturday, Brown was in Louisville, Ky., to receive the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award. Beach, home in Pennsylvania to be with his wife, who recently had surgery, did not attend the ceremony. But Beach said the 1967 meeting, and what it signified, was ingrained in his consciousness. “It was an unforgettable moment,” he said by phone Saturday. “It was one of the most significant moments in my life. Ali was one of the most principled and moral human beings on the planet at the time, with the sensitivity and courage to stand.” Beach added, “We met as black men around a moral and ethical issue, not as celebrity football or basketball players.” Beach, 81, chronicled the Ali meeting and other events in a new self-published book, “Consider This,” that contains the insights of his journey through life. A significant part of that journey was a stretch from 1960 to ’66 when Beach, a native of Pontiac, Mich., played professional football. Brown and Beach became friends in 1963 when Beach joined the Browns as a free agent. He had been released by the Boston Patriots of the American Football League the previous year, after he organized a protest by the black players on the team against segregated accommodations in New Orleans, where Boston was scheduled to play a preseason game. While the white Patriots were set to stay in a luxury hotel, the black players were to stay with black families. “I told them we signed up to play football, not to be segregated against,” Beach said. He told Mike Holovak , the Patriots’ coach at the time, that he would fly down the day of the game and then fly back to Boston after the game was over. Identified as a troublemaker, Beach was cut the next day. But Beach’s relationship with Brown illustrates what can happen when a superstar lends muscle to a cause. Just before the start of the 1964 season, Beach was called into a meeting with Browns coaches and the team’s owner, Art Modell, who told Beach he was being released. Brown came by the dormitory later to get Beach for practice, only to be told that Beach had been cut. Brown asked Beach to wait and returned 30 minutes later, saying, “Let’s go to practice.” Beach was miraculously back on the team. The Browns’ management never gave him an explanation, or an apology, for the “mix-up.” Beach was named the Browns’ starting left cornerback and helped the team win the N.F.L. title that season — Cleveland’s most recent championship in any major professional sport. Years later, Brown said he told Modell that Beach was one of the best cornerbacks on the team and that Beach gave the Browns their best chance to win a title. If the organization would not do all it could to win a championship, Brown said, he might not be able to do all he could, either. When Brown retired before the 1966 season, Beach said, he knew his days were numbered. And Beach was right. Modell fired him. Nearly fifty years later, Brown and Beach remain close, with Beach the chief executive of Brown’s nonprofit Amer-I-Can program. Three years ago, Beach brought Brown to my barbershop in Harlem for a conversation. Brown was touched when several young customers brought up the ’67 meeting. Asked if he thought a similar meeting could happen in 2014, Brown said yes. “It’s a slow process,” he said, “but you have to educate, not alienate. I think within the next three or four years, there’ll be a major coming together of some black athletes and entertainers to really have a platform that can bring about a whole different awareness.” During our conversation on Saturday, Beach said he was not so certain. “There is not a high degree of consciousness by the black athletes — social or racial consciousness,” he said. “There’s a vacuum of leadership.” Beach pointed to the dancing, prancing and preening that have become part of the N.F.L.’s culture as symbolizing a lack of direction, if not leadership. “I didn’t do any dancing,” he said, adding, “I was a football player, and I played football.” Beach referred to the N.F.L. as a circus. I suggested that the league had always been a circus, even when Beach played. He protested that he played with dignity. “I was part of the circus,” Beach said, “but I wasn’t a clown.”

Browns
Jim Brown
Football
Segregation
Race and Ethnicity
US Military
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015


Juan Martín del Potro Savors an Open Embrace

Abstract: Despite having already won a United States Open title, Juan Martín del Potro still had not accomplished a particular feat at the tournament: winning a night match at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Del Potro, the 2009 champion, remedied that on Thursday night, beating 19th-seeded Steve Johnson, 7-6 (5), 6-3, 6-2, after winning seven straight games to come back in the second set and blow open the third. The victory made del Potro the only wild-card entrant, out of 16, to reach the third round in either of the singles draws and continued his recent resurgence. The 142nd-ranked del Potro had beaten Stan Wawrinka — currently the No. 3 men’s player in the world — at Wimbledon and had won a silver medal at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Del Potro, of Argentina, was one of only four international players to receive a wild-card spot. Johnson and another American, Sam Querrey, had suggested before the wild cards were announced that it might benefit Americans — both players and fans — to exclude de Potro because he was one of the players most likely to wreak havoc in the draw. And that is what he did, knocking out Johnson, the highest-seeded American man. The United States Open crowd, however, fully embraced del Potro. As he prepared to serve out the victory, a version of a singsong soccer chant rang out, with his nickname added: “Olé, olé, olé, olé! Delpo, Delpo!” Crowds at the U.S. Open have often been among the least jingoistic in tennis, and del Potro acknowledged that strong support for an Argentine might seem odd. “That could be strange for you guys,” he said. “But I like when I heard these songs to me. It’s like a soccer stadium when they make something like that. I really enjoy it with the fans around the world when that happens. It’s amazing for me having this love from there. “I just want to show my tennis as I did in the past. And hopefully I can go far to keep winning matches.” Johnson, who lashed out at an Argentine reporter who asked about his previous comments about del Potro, expressed admiration for his opponent and vouched for del Potro’s ability to again contend for Grand Slam titles. “The guy’s a tennis player, and a damn good one at that,” Johnson said. “I think it’s only a matter of time if he can stay healthy, and hopefully he does because he’s good to have around on the tour.” During his on-court interview after the win, del Potro expressed his gratitude to the tournament for giving him the wild card he needed. “Thank you for inviting me,” he said.

Steve Johnson
Tennis
US Open Tennis
Juan Martin del Potro


Once Broke, GameStop Moves Up to S.&P. 500

Abstract: Just over a decade ago, the company now known as GameStop was bankrupt, and analysts in the video game industry predicted that people would buy games online rather than in its mall stores. But instead the franchise grew, pulled from its financial woes by a group of investors led by Leonard Riggio, the founder and chairman of Barnes & Noble. Spun off from Barnes & Noble in 2004, GameStop calls itself the world’s largest video game retailer. Now the company can add a new distinction: member of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. On Thursday, after Dow Jones & Company was acquired by the News Corporation and lost its berth in that index, GameStop took its place, moving up from a midsize index. For GameStop, the ascension puts a cap on a remarkable journey. The company has gone through a number of names and ownership configurations, but it is still essentially a chain that hires serious game enthusiasts to sell new and used software from relatively bare-bones stores. GameStop executives declined to talk for this article, but did answer questions by e-mail. “The broadening landscape of consumers eager to visit our stores and interact with our knowledgeable sales associates has been very advantageous for GameStop,” wrote David W. Carlson, the company’s chief financial officer. “While our Internet operations are strong, our stores remain the cornerstone of our business.” A move into the S.& P. 500 usually brings a stamp of legitimacy to a company as well as a boost in its stock price, according to Ben Schachter of UBS Securities, an Internet and video game analyst. Large mutual funds based on the index now need to buy shares of Game- Stop’s stock, he said. GameStop’s stock price rose 66 cents on Friday, closing at $58.21 a share. The company’s market capitalization was $9.37 billion. “If you look back five years, the stock was about a tenth of where it is now,” Mr. Schachter said. “It was a relatively small video-game retailer. Back then, everyone argued that games would be distributed online, and the business would go away. But these guys stuck to their game plan and exceeded everyone’s expectations.” The company has its roots in NeoStar Retail, which was formed in the 1990s in the merger of Babbage’s and Software Etc. After NeoStar went into bankruptcy in 1996, Mr. Riggio, who remains one of GameStop’s largest investors, took it over. He brought in a new management team, and some of those executives remain with the company today. Barnes & Noble sold shares of GameStop to the public in 2002 and spun off the company entirely in 2004. The next year, GameStop bought a major competitor, Electronics Boutique, for $1.4 billion, in a deal that put the combined company ahead of Wal-Mart Stores in terms of video game sales. “Almost every employee at every GameStop is pretty much a hard-core gamer,” Mr. Schachter said. The know- ledge of the sales staff, the broad selection of game titles, and GameStop’s role as a clearinghouse for used games helps give the company a leg up over big-box competitors like Wal-Mart, he said. Standard & Poor’s picks companies for the index with market capitalizations of at least $5 billion and focuses on “leading companies in leading industries,” according to David Guarino, a spokesman. He would not say why Standard & Poor’s picked GameStop over other contenders. Mr. Carlson of GameStop offered this comment: “The move to the S.& P. 500 is a reflection of GameStop’s real momentum in the video game business and a validation of our success as a specialty retailer.”

GameStop Corporation
Retail Stores and Trade
Computer and Video Games
Standard & Poor's Corp
Stocks and Bonds


White House Is Pressed to Help Widen Access to Hepatitis C Drugs via Medicaid

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Federal and state Medicaid officials should widen access to prescription drugs that could cure tens of thousands of people with hepatitis C , including medications that can cost up to $1,000 a pill, health care experts have told the White House. The experts, from the Public Health Service and President Obama’s Advisory Council on H.I.V./AIDS , said restrictions on the drugs imposed by many states were inconsistent with sound medical practice, as reflected in treatment guidelines issued by health care professionals and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The drugs, including Sovaldi and Harvoni, cost $84,000 for the recommended treatment lasting 12 weeks, or 84 days. States can obtain discounts, but prices still generally exceed $600 a pill. Hepatitis C , which federal officials refer to as a silent epidemic, kills more people than AIDS in the United States — nearly 20,000 people a year. The advisory council did not say how to pay for increased use of the new hepatitis drugs, but it did say Medicaid and other public programs should disclose the prices they paid. And, it said, manufacturers should be required to disclose the costs of developing and producing such drugs. Current restrictions on access to hepatitis treatments are “unreasonable and discriminatory” and are “not supported by medical evidence,” the advisory council said in a letter to Mr. Obama. The federal government should require states to relax or eliminate the restrictions, which delay or deny treatment to low-income people on Medicaid, the panel said. The council criticized three types of restrictions. Some states cover the new drugs only for patients who have advanced liver disease . Many states require patients to abstain from the use of alcohol or illicit drugs for up to a year before treatment. And some states will not cover the drugs unless they are prescribed by specialists like gastroenterologists or experts on infectious diseases . In a survey of state laws, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expressed concern about “limited access to new hepatitis C virus treatments.” “Many state Medicaid programs limit treatment to patients at the most immediate risk for death from liver disease,” said Lauren A. Canary, an epidemiologist at the disease control agency. Medicaid programs in most states “ration this lifesaving treatment” in ways that conflict with guidelines published by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, she said. The guidelines recommend treatment “for all patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection,” except those who have a life expectancy of less than a year because of some other disease. Dr. David L. Thomas , a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-chairman of the panel that wrote the guidelines, said the new drugs worked far better, and were much less toxic, than older treatments. “It’s astonishing,” said Dr. Thomas, one of the world’s leading experts on hepatitis. “We can cure most patients with as few as 84 pills. “The treatments are eventually cost-effective,” he said. “It’s cheaper to treat patients than to wait for them to develop cirrhosis and complications and then get a liver transplant .” If left untreated, infections can lead to liver cancer and liver failure. The new drugs block the replication of the hepatitis C virus. About one-fourth of people with H.I.V. are also infected with the hepatitis C virus. Sovaldi and Harvoni are made by Gilead Sciences . Other new hepatitis drugs include Viekira Pak, made by AbbVie , and Daklinza, which is made by Bristol-Myers Squibb and was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on July 24. In meetings over the last nine months, advocates for hepatitis patients have urged the Obama administration to issue guidance to state Medicaid directors on appropriate coverage of the new drugs, but federal officials have been noncommittal. “States have flexibility to determine the best way to manage their Medicaid benefits, including drug benefits,” said J. Timothy Gronniger, a senior official at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who worked at the White House until recently. Other administration officials said they wanted to ensure access to the new hepatitis drugs, but also had to consider the financial effect on the federal government, which pays at least half of the cost for Medicaid patients in every state. Moreover, federal officials said they were being cautious because any directives for Medicaid coverage of hepatitis drugs could set a precedent affecting new drugs for other conditions, and many expensive drugs are in the pipeline. The administration of President Bill Clinton took a more aggressive stance in 1996, when states were limiting access to a new generation of potent but costly drugs for H.I.V. and AIDS. The Clinton administration told state Medicaid directors that they had to cover the new AIDS drugs, known as protease inhibitors. States could impose certain limits on use of the drugs, but the limits must not “excessively or unreasonably restrict coverage of effective treatments” for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, the Clinton administration said. Cindy Mann, the top federal Medicaid official from 2009 to January of this year, said there was “an increasing consensus among health care professionals” about the circumstances in which the new hepatitis drugs should be provided. But this consensus is not reflected in state policies, she said, so the federal government “needs to provide some guidance and clarification” to states. Ryan D. Clary, the executive director of the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable , a coalition of 250 organizations working to end the epidemic, said: “The promise of the Affordable Care Act was to provide access to quality, affordable care regardless of a person’s pre-existing conditions. People are now mandated to have insurance. But many people with hepatitis C are finding themselves unable to obtain curative treatment for the condition that kept them from getting insurance before the health care law .” One reason, Mr. Clary said, is the stigma attached to hepatitis C. Many people are infected through blood on needles or other equipment used to inject unlawful drugs. “If there were a cure for Alzheimer’s or breast cancer that cost $40,000 or $50,000, we would not be having this conversation,” Mr. Clary said. Price negotiations are secret. But Matt D. Salo, the executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors , which represents state officials, said he understood that the new hepatitis drugs could sometimes be obtained for $50,000 a person, down from $84,000 last year. “Prices have come down,” Mr. Salo said. “Competition is working, but not enough to make a significant difference. Prices are nowhere near where they need to be to make hepatitis C treatment available to all who need it.” The “criteria for prior approval” of the new hepatitis drugs in Illinois illustrate the policies that have been adopted, in some form, by many state Medicaid programs. In Illinois, a patient must have advanced liver disease, as indicated by a biopsy or other test showing extensive damage to the liver. In addition, the rules say that a patient must not have received a diagnosis or treatment for alcohol or drug abuse in the last 12 months, and that the patient must have a urine test to check for recent drug use. John K. Hoffman, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services , said the criteria were “based on commonly accepted medical practices.” But Robert L. Greenwald , an expert on health law and policy at Harvard Law School, said: “These criteria defy clinical guidelines and best practices. Rather than recommending the exclusion of people who inject drugs, we should encourage earlier treatment as a way to prevent transmission of the virus.”

Hepatitis
Medicaid
Pharmaceuticals
Health Insurance
US states


Listing Top Jobs but Charging Candidates to Seek Them

Abstract: RECRUITERS with six-figure jobs to fill know better than to post them online and start a stampede of marginally qualified job seekers. But they also know that the Web is the easiest way to find applicants. The Web’s surprising answer to the problem? Charge them to look. A growing number of niche sites devoted to high-end jobs are finding that applicants are willing to shell out a few dollars — or a few hundred, in some cases — for the chance to get access to job ads. The strategy will not help the big online job boards find more applicants for entry-level positions, but analysts say it is ideal for sites like TheLadders.com , ExecuNet and others seeking the senior executive crowd. “It turns out that having the job candidates pay is a great screener, and employers love it,” said Charlene Li, an Internet analyst with Forrester Research. Ms. Li said that the online employment category, which is dominated by Monster, CareerBuilder and Yahoo’s HotJobs, is expected to generate about $1.9 billion in revenue this year, up from about $1.6 billion last year. But she said that the category in recent years has undergone an explosion in the number of job boards that serve specific niches. (Industry executives say that there are roughly 40,000 job boards online.) The upper-level jobs niche has been slower to develop, though, because companies typically hand off such jobs to corporate recruiting firms. Those firms, like DHR International and Korn/Ferry International, set up their own Web sites, but those sites are used mainly to market the firms’ offline services instead of connecting applicants with companies online. To fill that void, several former HotJobs executives introduced TheLadders.com in 2003, with the mission of posting only those jobs with annual salaries of $100,000 or more. At the time, the company made an odd bet — that it could attract more applicants if it charged them a monthly entry fee of $30. That is precisely the opposite of the approach used by mass-market employment sites, which charge applicants nothing but charge companies varying fees to post job openings. In its early years, TheLadders.com was slow to grow, partly because it did not attract enough job postings to justify the site’s cost. But as employers and corporate recruiters learned that they could find qualified applicants for nothing, the number of job postings jumped. Now, according to Marc Cenedella, the chief executive of TheLadders.com, the site listed 70,000 jobs last week and is on pace to exceed $30 million in sales this year from about 1.4 million subscribers. And the site now counts Microsoft and the EMC Corporation as clients. “We’re doing the same thing that’s done in national parks: put a price on it so you get the right number of people,” Mr. Cenedella said. Mr. Cenedella said that the company is not yet profitable, but is “cash flow positive.” The number of subscribers who hear about the site from word of mouth, he said, has nearly doubled, to 34 percent, in the last three years. Mr. Cenedella, who was a senior vice president at HotJobs when the company was acquired by Yahoo, said TheLadders would expand in the coming months to include jobs with annual salaries of $75,000 or more. (Only about 10 percent of the roughly 150 million workers in the country earn $100,000 or more, he said, while 20 million earn from $75,000 to $100,000.) Even that lower salary threshold, however, is high enough to attract job candidates who will pay to see the listings. Ms. Li, of Forrester, said that TheLadders and other fee-based online job boards could face difficult times as baby boomers retire and the job market opens up. “Companies say they’re going to lose 30 percent of their forces over the next five years, and those will all be upper-echelon jobs,” she said. “So if you’re paying to look for jobs, in some ways it’s signaling that you’re not a very good candidate.” Heather Hamilton, a staffing manager at Microsoft who uses the site to fill marketing positions, disagreed. “If you’re not serious, you’re not going to pay the money,” she said. “That’s a big part of why we’ve found TheLadders to be more fruitful than other job boards.” Some of the big online job boards have also tried to aim at the highest-paying jobs. In 2000, Monster started ChiefMonster.com , which screened prospective job seekers to ensure that they were worthy of the best jobs, but the service failed to attract a following and Monster shut it down. Other sites devoted to six-figure salaries and senior executives say that they, too, are thriving. ExecuNet, a service based in Norwalk, Conn., charges about $400 annually, or $39 monthly, for its online networking, industry data and job listings, among other things. According to David B. Opton, the company’s chief executive, the business has about 25,000 subscribers, but their average income is $221,000 and the average age is 48. Job postings have increased about 30 percent over the last year, he said, and, perhaps as a result, ExecuNet’s membership has risen 15 percent. Networking sites have become an increasingly important tool for companies looking to fill senior positions. LinkedIn, in particular, has emerged as a favorite trolling ground for corporate recruiters across the spectrum of job levels. The online market for high-priced talent extends beyond full-time workers. Take HotGigs, for example. The company, which is based in Minneapolis, provides job listings for contract workers. In the three years since its debut, its customer base has grown to nearly 70,000 consultants who pay $100 yearly for the right to answer job listings from about 19,000 companies and recruiters. Doug Berg, the company’s chief executive, says the idea of paying to apply for a job is foreign to some people. “We get a lot of people who e-mail us and say they shouldn’t have to pay for a job,” he said. “Our thing is, if you’re a professional consultant, you have to learn how to market yourself. Besides, if I didn’t charge, every wannabe in the world would come in.”

Hiring and Promotion
Computers and the Internet
Employment Agencies
Wages and Salaries


New Details of Cold War Nuclear Threat

Abstract: In the early 1980s, according to newly released documents, Fidel Castro was suggesting a Soviet nuclear strike against the United States, until Moscow dissuaded him by patiently explaining how the radioactive cloud resulting from such a strike would also devastate Cuba. The cold war was then in one of its chilliest phases. President Ronald Reagan had begun a trillion-dollar arms buildup, called the Soviet Union “an evil empire” and ordered scores of atomic detonations under the Nevada desert as a means of developing new arms. Some Reagan aides talked of fighting and winning a nuclear war. Dozens of books warned that Reagan’s policies threatened to end most life on earth. In June 1982, a million protesters gathered in Central Park. Barack Obama, then an undergraduate at Columbia University, worried about the nuclear threat and later wrote as a student and a journalist about ways to avoid global annihilation. The future president didn’t know half the danger. The National Security Archive, a private research group at George Washington University, recently made public documents that reveal the nuclear threat in new detail. The two-volume study, “Soviet Intentions 1965-1985,” was prepared in 1995 by a Pentagon contractor and based on extensive interviewing of former top Soviet military officials. It took the security archive two years to get the Pentagon to release the study. Censors excised a few sections on nuclear tests and weapon effects, and the archive recently posted the redacted study on its Web site. The Pentagon study attributes the Cuba revelation to Andrian A. Danilevich, a Soviet general staff officer from 1964 to ’90 and director of the staff officers who wrote the Soviet Union’s final reference guide on strategic and nuclear planning. In the early 1980s, the study quotes him as saying that Mr. Castro “pressed hard for a tougher Soviet line against the U.S. up to and including possible nuclear strikes.” The general staff, General Danilevich continued, “had to actively disabuse him of this view by spelling out the ecological consequences for Cuba of a Soviet strike against the U.S.” That information, the general concluded, “changed Castro’s positions considerably.” Moscow’s effort to enlighten Mr. Castro to the innate messiness of nuclear warfare is among a number of disclosures in the Pentagon study. Other findings in the study include how the Soviets strove for nuclear superiority but “understood the devastating consequences of nuclear war” and believed that the use of nuclear weapons had to be avoided “at all costs.” The study includes a sharp critique of American analyses of Soviet intentions, saying the Pentagon tended to err “on the side of overestimating Soviet aggressiveness.”

Cuba
Nuclear Weapons
Cold War Era
USSR (Former Soviet Union)
Science and Technology


They Kind of Knew It Wouldn’t Work

Abstract: It was the morning after the Florida presidential primary, and in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the Barrioses were disagreeing. Sitting at the front counter in the Barrios Auto Driving School on Fifth Avenue, Joseph Barrios called Rudolph W. Giuliani ’s loss in the Republican contest “a shock.” He said he was surprised to open the paper and read that Mr. Giuliani would soon drop out of the race. “I thought he would keep on going,” said Mr. Barrios, 47. In the cubicle behind him, his sister Jackie Barrios, 43, piped up. “He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell,” she said, adding, “Go Hillary.” Mr. Barrios didn’t think Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had a chance. But what seemed to puzzle him was the idea that Mr. Giuliani would walk away from the campaign after so many months of speech-making, hand-shaking, baby-kissing and fund-raising. “Why give up now?” he asked. Some New Yorkers asked that question on Wednesday as they pored over the totals from Florida, where Mr. Giuliani ran a distant third behind Senator John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. Some expressed relief — others, delight — that Mr. Giuliani’s campaign had imploded so rapidly. Some questioned his strategic calculations. Why, they wondered, did he concentrate on Florida’s winner-take-all primary and skip states where early contests had given Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney momentum, a potentially more important prize at this early stage? Some talked about the difficulty of transferring his hard-edged urban personality to a wider stage. Some talked about his personal life. Some echoed Dorothy Kaliades, a retired jewelry designer who was having her nails done in Howard Beach, Queens. She said she had never believed that Mr. Giuliani had a real chance nationally. “He was too New York, too Italian, and he had too many wives,” she said. But what about the buzz he generated at campaign stops around the country, at least in the beginning? “No,” Ms. Kaliades said, “this is where the buzz is. I love Giuliani, but he’s not presidential.” Not presidential? “This is a man who wants to represent America,” she said, “and his kids won’t talk to him. That’s not a good thing.” Richard Martin, 58, a former cabdriver who lives in Harlem, called Mr. Giuliani’s defeat in Florida “a blessing.” “I have been asking myself, how could Giuliani ever have the audacity to run for president,” said Mr. Martin, who is black. “His governing style would be considered mean, indifferent and, I would have to say, racist or prejudiced.” Jessica Matos, 25, a single mother from the South Bronx, sounded almost giddy as she talked about the results from Florida and the possibility that Mr. Giuliani would abandon his campaign. “I was waiting for this moment — he stinks,” declared Ms. Matos as she finished off the last of her French fries at the Crown Donuts Diner on East 161st Street, not far from Yankee Stadium. “Giuliani was always for himself, never for the people. Where I live, a lot of people need help, and he made everything hard for people who needed help. Everything was always for the middle class or the high class. He just forgot about everyone else.” Across the table, her friend Ivonne Rivera, 38, nodded enthusiastically. “He’s a hypocrite,” she said. The diner’s owner, Peter Katsihtis, took a more analytical approach. A Republican who plans to vote for a Democrat in November because he wants the United States out of Iraq, Mr. Katsihtis said Mr. Giuliani had not managed to get his message and positions across. “When people decide to vote,” he said, “they want to know what a candidate stands for. He wasn’t effective in getting that across.” Louis Duran, an elevator mechanic’s assistant seated at a booth by the window, spoke up for Mr. Giuliani. “I used to be a criminal — I’ve spent time upstate — and I don’t hate Giuliani,” he said. “I thought he did a great job as mayor. I want my parents and family to be safe, and I would have voted for him.” John Quirk, a bartender at the Yankee Tavern across the street, looked at the row of men from a road construction crew having beers with their lunches and said he was disappointed by Mr. Giuliani’s defeat. “The guy did a lot for the city,” Mr. Quirk said. “Probably there was just too much stuff going on in his personal life. And nationally, people just didn’t like him. If you don’t like New Yorkers, you’re not going to like Giuliani. You don’t get much more New York than him.” Damon Brown, 31, an assistant in a restaurant kitchen who was standing outside the State Office Building in Harlem, said Mr. Giuliani had not run a full-fledged campaign. “I don’t think Giuliani really wanted to be president,” said Mr. Brown, who was not enrolled in either party and said he had not decided who will get his vote in November. “I think he’s tired. I think he wants to retire.” Eduardo Sanchez, 34, a project manager at an insurance company who is a Democrat, said he had expected Mr. Giuliani’s defeat, adding he had created logistical problems for himself. “He wasn’t doing much in terms of preparing in Iowa or New Hampshire,” said Mr. Sanchez, who was walking on the Upper East Side. “He didn’t do a lot of the groundwork, so I think now he can do the support work for McCain.” Robert Cantor, a former prosecutor in the Bronx who is now in private practice, focused on Mr. Giuliani’s record and the way he had handled himself in the jobs he had held. “He was draconian as a prosecutor and as a mayor,” Mr. Cantor said as he smoked a cigarette on the steps of the Bronx County Courthouse. “It’s a good thing Floridians did what they did.”

Presidential Election of 2008
Giuliani Rudolph W
New York City


‘Active Cleanup’ of Oil Spill Is Ended on Louisiana Coast

Abstract: The cleanup efforts on the Gulf Coast in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill have entered a new phase, with the oil company BP announcing that it is ending its “active cleanup” of Louisiana’s coast almost four years after the disaster. In a statement, BP said that the Coast Guard ended patrols on Tuesday of the final three miles of affected shoreline in Louisiana. Still, the Coast Guard stressed that a more narrow cleanup response would continue and that crews would remain on the Gulf Coast to respond to new reports of oil. Teams will be positioned to provide a rapid response when they are needed, the Coast Guard said in a statement on Tuesday night. “Let me be absolutely clear: This response is not over — not by a long shot,” said Capt. Thomas Sparks, the federal on-scene coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon Response. The transition to the new phase of the response, he said, “does not end cleanup operations, and we continue to hold the responsible party accountable for Deepwater Horizon cleanup costs.” Similar operations ended last summer in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. The coastlines in those states and most of Louisiana have already been monitored under the more targeted tactics. BP has spent more than $14 billion responding to the spill and cleaning the coastline after the blowout of the Macondo well, the company said in a statement . “Even though active cleanup has ended, we will keep resources in place to respond quickly at the Coast Guard’s direction if potential Macondo oil is identified and requires removal,” Laura Folse, the company’s executive vice president for response and environmental restoration, said in the statement. The rig explosion on April 20, 2010, killed 11 workers, spilled millions of gallons of oil and contaminated hundreds of miles of beaches. BP was banned from seeking new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico in 2012, but that ban was recently lifted .

Louisiana
BP
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
US Coast Guard