Food Makers and Critics Break Bread

Abstract: IF you want to get an earful about the sins of the food industry, spend a few hours with Kelly D. Brownell. Mr. Brownell, 54, is the chairman of the psychology department at Yale University. Early in his career, he conducted clinical trials aimed at treating obesity, and issues surrounding the obesity crisis -- nutrition, portion size, the prevalence of junk food, and so on -- have long been his primary focus. Not 10 minutes after I'd met him, Mr. Brownell was showing me the slide show he uses to accompany his standard speech about obesity. "Can You Identify This Food?" one slide asked, and listed 56 ingredients, most of them unpronounceable. The next slide showed the answer: a Kellogg's Pop-Tart. He has a slide picturing baby bottles with the logos of 7Up, Pepsi and Dr Pepper. "This is where it starts," he said with visible disgust. "This is exploitation of children. Joe Camel is off the billboards, but Ronald McDonald is fine." He has a series of United States maps that chart the startling increase in the percentage of overweight Americans, state by state, from 1985 to 2003. "There is plenty of nutrition education done in this country," Mr. Brownell said. "It is done by the food industry. It has convinced us that fruit roll-ups are healthy, and that a cereal that is half its weight in sugar is part of a nutritious diet." He added, "The increasing prevalence of obesity is like a hundred-car freight train going downhill with no brakes. And our country's response has been to stand outside the tracks and ask it to slow down." A year ago, in an effort to do something more than simply agitate, Mr. Brownell founded the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. Part of its mission is to fight "weight bias" -- that is, prejudice against overweight and obese people, which is the passion of Leslie Rudd, a California entrepreneur who gave Mr. Brownell $7.5 million to establish the center. But Mr. Brownell also wants to use the center to "change the world's diet." He hopes the center will be a place where people can dream up wholly original -- even radical -- ideas that go beyond the tried and true. Back in 1994, Mr. Brownell showed that he was willing to broach such ideas when he proposed, in The New York Times, that unhealthy food be taxed as a way of helping people change their diets. (The food industry and its allies quickly derided his proposal as the "Twinkie tax.") He wants the center to do persuasive, unbiased studies, and to come up with public policy ideas that can truly change the way we eat. And here's something else the Rudd Center is doing. Mr. Brownell has begun a program called safe space, where public health advocates and food industry critics can meet privately with industry representatives, and where they can do something they don't do very often: talk. Not fight, not argue, not debate, but really talk. Listen to what the other side has to say. Search for common ground. Devise approaches and strategies that people on both sides can agree on. Now there's an out-of-the-box idea. WHENEVER a company or an industry finds itself under attack, its instinct is to attack right back. Think about the tobacco industry for much of its history, or General Electric dealing with the Hudson River pollution problem, or timber companies and environmentalists, or Wal-Mart and its critics. Initially, executives tend to view the critics as misguided naifs -- they don't understand the good the company does, or the complexity of the problem. As the criticism increases, these positions not only harden, they darken. The critics become the enemy. Of course, the same thing happens on the other side. Corporations become demonized, and the activists come to see themselves as people at war with an evil industry. Not long ago, for instance, I asked a tobacco control advocate what his ultimate goal was. To my surprise, the first words out of his mouth were not "to get fewer people to smoke"; they were "to destroy the tobacco industry." Many rituals of American society only worsen the problem. Companies that concede they did something wrong will inevitably be buried in litigation. Just ask Merck, which thought it would be applauded for withdrawing Vioxx, but instead faces thousands of lawsuits. And then there's the media, which revels in conflict. "When I'm on 'Nightline' with the head of the grocery lobby, it is going to be about debate and conflict," Mr. Brownell said. Nobody, of course, is talking about destroying the food industry. "We need the food industry to feed us," said David S. Ludwig, the director for the obesity program at Children's Hospital in Boston. And the food industry is not as monolithic as other industries; there are many companies, starting with PepsiCo, that badly want to get out in front of the obesity problem. "As recently as five years ago, there was a temptation on the part of industry to frame the issue in terms of personal responsibility, physical activity and choice," said Sylvia Rowe, a consultant who formerly ran the International Food Information Council, an industry-financed group that specializes in food science and nutrition. "But now there is a genuine recognition that they have a role and a responsibility." And in those two basic facts -- that the activists don't want to drive the industry into the sea, and the industry realizes it has to engage with the problem -- Mr. Brownell saw opportunity. The point of his safe space idea was to give each side a place where it could put aside its talking points, speak with rare honesty, and not have to worry that anything it said might wind up haunting it in the courtroom or in the media. Mr. Brownell's first big safe space meeting was held last summer. "We wanted to take on the toughest issue: soft drinks in schools," Mr. Brownell said. There were representatives from Coca-Cola, Pepsi and the American Beverage Association, as well as scientists and public health advocates. The meeting was led by Mr. Brownell and a lawyer who represents the beverage industry. It was decided beforehand that neither side would talk to the media in detail about what happened, to help ensure that the space was, indeed, safe. "From our point of view, we wanted to see if there were places where profitability and health might intersect," Mr. Brownell said. "My goal is to have children drink healthier beverages. Their goal is to maximize profits. So one question I asked them was whether they were agnostic as to which beverages kids were drinking, so long as they were selling them. If they make as much on bottled water as on a soft drink, is that O.K.? We could ask that question and get an honest answer." The Pepsi representative at the meeting, Brock Leach, told Mr. Brownell that the answer to that question, from his company's point of view, was yes. In 2002, "we made a commitment that half of our new products would be better for you," he told me. Last year, he added, two-thirds of the company's growth in North America came from its healthier products. "There is clearly a business case for this," he said. On the other hand, Mr. Leach also said he felt that the food industry's critics spent too much time trying to restrict marketing, "and not enough on putting out better food." "That is going to be the solution. Our point is why don't you focus more on that end of the equation." He said that during the safe space meeting as well. Mr. Brownell, though a critic of much industry marketing, agrees with him. I should note that not every activist is as enthused about the safe space idea as Mr. Brownell is. "My experience is that if you try for 35 years to talk to them and don't see much progress, you try other approaches," said Michael F. Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. His preferred method to change the industry is to threaten to sue. Recently, as a result of a threatened lawsuit, "the makers of Aunt Jemima frozen blueberry waffles no longer pretend that their waffles are made with blueberries," he wrote in a recent issue of the center's newsletter. He is also now openly threatening to sue the beverage industry over soft drinks in schools. "We have good discussions with industry," he said. "They're called negotiations." Mr. Brownell concedes that what he is doing is an experiment that might not work. But I think it is worth the try. Litigation threats might force Aunt Jemima to come clean about its blueberry waffles, but the product itself hasn't become any healthier. And in any case, litigation is more a tool for punishing wrongdoing than changing public policy, where it usually fails. There is a chance that by bringing the parties together, and offering them a safe space, something bigger could be accomplished than changing a waffle label. Indeed, Mr. Brownell told me that by the end of the meeting with the beverage industry, they had come up with two projects they are now pursuing. But he wouldn't tell me what they were because that would violate the rules of engagement. When I put the question to Susan Neely, the president of the American Beverage Association, she declined as well. As a journalist, I would normally be miffed by this. But this one time, I'm not. It seems like progress.

FOOD
YALE UNIVERSITY
OBESITY
WEIGHT
RUDD CENTER FOR FOOD POLICY AND OBESITY
RUDD LESLIE
BROWNELL KELLY D
DIET AND NUTRITION


N.F.L.’s Replacement Referees Wake Up From a Dream

Abstract: To many, they will be remembered as impostors, a band of striped, whistle-blowing charlatans who crept onto the biggest stage in sports for a few weeks of singular and unabated outrage. For the replacement officials themselves, though, the experience of working at the heart of the N.F.L. ’s most recent controversy was more nuanced: refereeing football’s highest level of games will never be forgotten, of course, but neither will the frustration that came with becoming a punching bag for bloggers and broadcasters, players and coaches, television animators and late-night talk show hosts. “My daughter found the ‘Call Me Maybe’ video they did of us and showed it to me, and I had to laugh,” said Jeff Sadorus, a former college official who worked as a field judge during the recent lockout of the N.F.L.’s regular officials. “Honestly, sometimes during this whole thing it felt like the national pastime in this country had changed from football to bashing replacement officials.” He added: “Everyone wanted perfection, but come on: the last guy who was perfect they nailed to a cross. And he wasn’t even an official.” While employed by the league, the replacements were bound by its standard media policy, meaning they could not do interviews even as consternation over their performance grew. With the regular officials returning to work Thursday night, however, Sadorus — who also returned to his job, at a food services company near Seattle — described the up-and-down nature of his N.F.L. tenure in an interview with The New York Times. Ultimately, he said, it was a dream — “something I had wanted to do forever and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” — but that does not mean it was without difficulty. Sadorus detailed a drama that played out over about four months and included clinics, camps, exhibitions and games, as well as nearly 25,000 miles of travel and the constant awareness that every decision he and his colleagues made was under “unprecedented scrutiny,” according to Commissioner Roger Goodell. For his work, Sadorus received a generous stipend — $3,000 per game — but had to take with it an unending barrage of criticism, as replacement-official ripping dominated the news media. The replacements were even satirized on the popular animated show “South Park.” “It was the only thing on TV; it was everywhere,” Sadorus said, adding that now that the lockout is over, he and his colleagues might not even get to keep their league-issued officials shirts. “I think in the contract we signed, it said we had to return the equipment,” he said. “It’s O.K. — I have a lot of stripes.” As he watched the controversial conclusion to Monday night’s game between Seattle and Green Bay — a disastrous sequence that many believe pushed the labor dispute toward its ultimate resolution — Sadorus felt for the officials involved because he had been in their situation. The night before, he was the official who ruled that a Ravens field goal that went over the top of an upright was good, giving Baltimore a victory over the New England Patriots. While that call was ultimately shown to be correct, it nonetheless prompted a visceral reaction from the Patriots, including Coach Bill Belichick, who grabbed one of Sadorus’s crew mates as the official ran off the field. Belichick was fined $50,000 by the league. “Working these games was something I’d wanted to do forever,” Sadorus said, “and there were some incredible moments. But there were also parts of this that I don’t think anyone could have expected.” The process began, Sadorus said, near the end of May, when he was sent an e-mail from an area scout who was gauging interest from potential replacements. Sadorus — who worked in the Pacific-10 Conference until 2010, occasionally officiated at Seattle Seahawks practices (which drew some attention when he became a replacement ), and still officiates high school games — immediately responded positively. Not long after, he attended a rules clinic and fitness test in Dallas where replacement hopefuls were put through a rigorous running exam — in searing heat — in an attempt to identify the best candidates. Sadorus, who was one of the more experienced officials, made it through the exams and was notified in a mid-July e-mail that he had been placed on a replacement crew. He also received a letter from Goodell, thanking him for his service. For a lifelong fan of officials, getting the assignment was heavenly. Sadorus’s father was a college official, and even as a young boy, Sadorus said, he could flip on the TV and immediately identify whether an American Football League or N.F.L. game was on by the types of shirts the officials were wearing. Sadorus acknowledged that becoming a replacement was a complex professional choice — doing so probably hurt some officials’ chances at working top college games in the future because many N.F.L. referees are also college supervisors — as well as a difficult ethical decision. Those replacements who were friendly with the regular N.F.L. officials beforehand may now have strained relationships. “We weren’t there to take anyone’s job; we were there to provide a service,” Sadorus said. “The games were going to get done by someone. It’s the old saying: without officials, it’s just recess.” After being notified of their selection, most of the replacements then spent time officiating at a team’s preseason training camp (Sadorus was with San Francisco). But despite a crash course of instruction, the disparagement of the replacements began early on. Many of the fill-ins had far less experience than Sadorus — some had never worked higher than Division III college games — and it was clear that they were often overmatched by the speed of the N.F.L. Still, the league defended the replacements vigorously, and Sadorus said they were treated like the regular officials. They spent hours on weekly video review. They had conference calls with supervisors. They did refresher rules quizzes. In the end, though, they were still skewered, somewhat souring an experience that should have been something closer to a referee’s pinnacle. “We worked very, very hard,” Sadorus said. “As demonized as we were, I hope people remember that we are people, too.”

Football
Sadorus Jeff
Officiating (Sports)
National Football League


Japanese Drug Maker to Pay $1.1 Billion for U.S. Rival

Abstract: TOKYO — Shionogi & Company, the Japanese drug maker, plans to buy an American rival, Sciele Pharma for $1.1 billion, the fourth big overseas deals in nine months by a Japanese company eager to expand overseas. The bid, which follows acquisitions by Takeda Pharmaceutical, Daiichi Sankyo and the Eisai Company is aimed at building Shionogi’s sales network in the United States. “As we have moved ahead on improving our product pipeline, we have been faced with increasingly imminent challenge of getting a hold of a sales network in the world’s largest market,” the president of Shionogi, Isao Teshirogi, said Monday. Sciele should also help Shionogi in gaining approvals for new drugs from American regulators. For Sciele Pharma, which specializes in branded prescription products focused on cardiovascular, diabetes, women’s health and pediatrics, the deal comes as it faces a possible plunge in revenue because of generic competition for its No. 1 drug. Shionogi said it would offer $31 a share, a 61 percent premium to Sciele’s close of $19.27 on Friday, costing $1.1 billion. Shionogi’s total bill comes to $1.42 billion including $325 million to redeem senior convertible notes. The bidder said it would probably finance the purchase with 47 billion yen in cash and 110 billion yen in bridge loans. Shares of Shionogi, whose mainstay business is antibiotics, closed down 0.6 percent, at 2,460 yen ahead of the announcement. Eager to expand globally, Japanese pharmaceutical makers have been putting money made on top-selling drugs into acquisitions. Takeda, Japan’s largest drug maker, bought the American biotechnology firm Millennium Pharmaceuticals in April for more than $8 billion. In June, Daiichi Sankyo bid up to $4.6 billion for control of India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories, while Eisai snapped up cancer specialist MGI Pharma in December for $3.9 billion. The deal is also the latest in a string of overseas acquisitions by financially sound Japanese companies hunting for opportunities outside their home market. Already this year, announced outbound acquisitions from Japan total $42 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data, nearly double the figure for all of 2007. Sciele is rushing to promote newly approved forms of its blood-pressure drug, Sular, after ending sales of the older version earlier this month. The move could counter potential competition from low-cost generic versions of older Sular.

Sciele Pharma Incorporated
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)


After Winning Title, West Indies Calls Out Its Cricket Board

Abstract: West Indies stands atop the cricket world after its double triumph in the World Twenty20, when it became the first country to win the men’s and women’s titles in the same championship. But even as its players celebrated Sunday, there were reminders of the tensions that made their triumph a surprise. There was genuine joy as both the men’s and women’s teams danced on the field in Kolkata, India, after the presentation of the men’s trophy. But there was also open anger from the West Indies men’s captain, Darren Sammy, who used the platform of a live television interview to express his grievances with the West Indies Cricket Board. “I really want to thank the heads of Caricom — throughout the tournament they have been supporting the team,” he said, referring to a flow of messages from the nations and states in the West Indies region. “And I’m yet to hear from our own cricket board. That is very disappointing.” Sammy reminded his audience that the participation of his team had been in doubt until a few weeks before the tournament started because of the latest in a long series of contractual disputes between the board and the players. At the same time, he said, the dispute had helped pull his team together. “We had a lot of issues. We felt disrespected by our board,” he said, adding a reference by the former England player and television commentator, Mark Nicholas, who called West Indies a “team without brains.” He continued: “All these things before the tournament just brought this team together.” His comments came less than an hour after West Indies became the first men’s team to win the World Twenty20 twice. Its victory over England had echoes of baseball’s fabled “Shot Heard Round the World,” the walk-off home run by Bobby Thomson that won the National League pennant for the New York Giants in 1951 over the Brooklyn Dodgers. This was four shots rather than one to win, but they were no less remarkable. West Indies needed 19 runs, usually considered an impossible target, from the final over to beat England, and batsman Carlos Brathwaite struck English bowler Ben Stokes over the boundaries for four consecutive sixes. Stokes was visibly devastated but was cleared of blame by his captain, Eoin Morgan, who said England’s total of 155 had been well short of what was needed and that his bowlers had done brilliantly to put England in a position where it could win. Each team’s innings followed a similar pattern, with the loss of three early wickets followed by determined comebacks. As the game went on, England looked as if it had an increasing stranglehold on West Indies, despite the resistance of Marlon Samuels, whose 85 not out is the highest ever individual score in a World Twenty20 final. But then came Brathwaite’s barrage to win it for West Indies. Samuels was named Man of the Match, while the Indian star Virat Kohli was named the tournament’s best player. The victory by the West Indies women was perhaps even more joyful for the players, as they won the title for the first time, beating the three-time defending champion Australia. “I don’t think it has sunk in yet,” West Indies captain Stafanie Taylor, the tournament’s top player, told reporters. “When we wake up in the morning, it’s going to be like, ‘Is this the real trophy?’ I will ask myself, ‘Is this real?’ When we touch down in the Caribbean, that’s when it is going to hit you.” Taylor also had a message for the West Indian cricket authorities. “We have to move on from there, not just enjoy, look at it as a steppingstone. We don’t want to be stuck here. We definitely need some infrastructure, like in England and Australia.” Australia had looked set for an unbeatable total when its captain, Meg Lanning, and Elyse Villani played hard-hitting innings of 52, but it lost the momentum when Deandra Dottin held Australia to a single run in its final over and its total to just below 150. Taylor and Hayley Matthews — at 18 the youngest woman to play in a World Twenty20 final — started slowly but soon caught up. They scored 120 before Matthews was dismissed for 66. Taylor fell for 59 just before the final runs were scored on a wild throw by an Australian fielder. It was a slightly anticlimactic end, but none of the West Indian players and coaches who surged onto the field — or the men’s squad, who joined the celebrations before heading to the locker room before their own match — complained about the result. There is plenty, as Sammy’s comments show, to put right in West Indian cricket, but its happiest day in 20 years was not a bad place to start.


Merkel Feels Political Pressure in Germany as Europe Is in Flux

Abstract: BERLIN — A year after Chancellor Angela Merkel threw open the doors to hundreds of thousands of migrants, that fateful move is haunting her politically, opening her to a strong electoral challenge from the far right this weekend and complicating efforts to forge a united response to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union . Ms. Merkel, chancellor since fall 2005 and Europe’s longest serving leader, has found herself on the defensive in a round of interviews on both the anniversary of the refugee influx and the effective start of campaigning for next year’s national elections. “Germany will remain Germany, with all that is dear to us,” she insisted in an interview this week with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a leading newspaper. With everything in flux in Europe after the stunning British vote to exit the European Union, and elections also in France and the Netherlands next year, Ms. Merkel has come under increasing fire at home. Her approval rating in a widely regarded monthly poll for the public broadcaster ARD slipped to 47 percent in August, compared with 75 percent in April 2015, before the refugee challenge. If national elections were held now, her conservative bloc would get 33 percent of the vote, according to a Forsa Institute poll of 2,503 selected respondents published on Wednesday. That compares with just over 41 percent in the last national vote in 2013. An early indication of the political troubles ahead could arrive on Sunday, when the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has risen largely on popular fears of the mostly Muslim newcomers, threatens to overtake Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in elections in her political home state. Such an outcome would be a stinging rebuke of her migrant policies. Opinion polls show the two parties neck and neck, hovering just over 20 percent in a statistical dead heat in the state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, one of Germany’s poorest regions in the former East. “The failed policy of the chancellor is a stroke of luck for our party,” said Alexander Gauland, a leader of Alternative for Germany. “It drives voters towards us.” Image Protesters in Berlin called for Ms. Merkel’s ouster in July. Credit Axel Schmidt/Reuters By opening Germany’s borders to all last year without consulting even one member of Parliament, he added, Ms. Merkel behaved like a dictator. “It is regarded by just about every European leader as an act of madness,” he said. In tacit acknowledgment of critics who say she consulted nobody on the refugee move, Ms. Merkel has embarked on a listening tour of Europe to try to repair relations. In Tallinn, the Estonian prime minister effusively thanked her for her leadership. But it was plain in Warsaw, where she met the four Central European leaders who have flatly refused to take in refugees, that she was not among friends. A host of other demands — from Italy and France for looser purse strings, from Scandinavian and Dutch leaders to beware of fading support for Europe in their countries — are tugging at Ms. Merkel as she and President François Hollande of France consult the Continent’s leaders. They will succeed, at least on paper, in sketching some grand goals for Europe to be announced at a meeting of 27 nations — all of the bloc’s members save Britain — in mid-September. But no one has so far explained how Europe is likely this time, for example, to reduce youth unemployment, a goal voiced for years and reiterated since Britain voted on June 23 to leave the union. Missing goals again is not likely to enhance Europeans’ faith in the bloc. “The chief concern should be for the attractiveness of the union,” said Guntram B. Wolff, director of the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. Security, both internal and external, may be one area of action after terrorist attacks in Belgium , France and Germany this year. The French and German interior ministers have announced enhanced security measures that are likely to be adopted across the Continent. With Britain, one of Europe’s two nuclear powers, looking for the exit, it is no longer in a position to hamper moves toward what France, Germany and Poland defined this week as “a European civil and military planning and command capacity.” That will also require “development of a strong and competitive defense economy in Europe,” the foreign ministers of the three countries declared. Even Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary and Ms. Merkel’s most implacable opponent on refugees, seems to agree. In Warsaw, he bluntly said that Europe had failed to master economic challenges and that “we have no answers to the migrant crisis.” But, he added, “security takes first place.” “We want to build up a shared European army, common European forces,” he continued. How far any such plans progress is as uncertain as Ms. Merkel’s political future. Analysts and politicians across the board see no serious challenger to Ms. Merkel, who has coyly said only that she will announce “at the given time” whether she will seek a fourth term next year. Jacqueline Boysen wrote a 2001 biography of Ms. Merkel, whom she got to know in the 1990s in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the chancellor has her parliamentary constituency. She doubted that Ms. Merkel would leave her giant refugee task half-finished, or her party in the lurch, by declining to run. “It would be unlike her to leave the party in a mess,” said Ms. Boysen, now a journalist in Berlin. “She is very much aware of duty.” She also emphasized that Ms. Merkel, a trained physicist who entered politics only as Germany unified in 1990, had constantly been underestimated. “She was not taken seriously,” Ms. Boysen recalled in an interview. “The subtext was always, ‘She can’t do it.’ ” In defense of her decision last year, Ms. Merkel trumpets her success in forging a European Union pact with Turkey to stanch the flow of refugees into the Balkans. But Turkey has proved a difficult partner, purging thousands of judges, teachers, journalists and human rights campaigners after a failed coup in July . Still, in an interview with ARD this week, Ms. Merkel could not resist a little smile as she noted that NATO began a mission to save refugees in the Aegean in just five days in the spring, and that the pact with Turkey was negotiated within months. “Many people said, ‘We can’t do this,’ and then it got done,” she said.

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


U.S. Reaches Final of Women’s Volleyball World Championship

Abstract: The United States shut out top-ranked Brazil, 3-0, to make the final of the women’s volleyball world championship in Milan. The Americans rallied in the second set on their way to a 25-18, 29-27, 25-20 win. In Sunday’s final, the Americans will face either host Italy or China. Brazil, the Olympic champion, went undefeated in group play, including a victory over the United States, but it was never in control in Saturday’s match. Brazil committed 19 unforced errors. The Americans enter the final with a 10-2 record.


BP to Pay $5.4. Million on Gender Bias Complaints

Abstract: The oil company BP and its contractors have agreed to pay up to $5.4 million to resolve complaints that some women weren’t considered for temporary jobs responding to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill because of their gender. The agreement announced late Thursday ends an investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission without filing a lawsuit. The commission says it has not determined that BP violated any antidiscrimination laws. BP denies it engaged in any wrongdoing. An undetermined number of women from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida who applied for BP spill response jobs will be eligible for shares of the money.

BP Plc
Suits and Litigation
Discrimination
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)
Women and Girls


Longstanding Obama Adviser Gets Senior Role at the White House

Abstract: Nearly two decades ago, Valerie Jarrett hired a young lawyer named Michelle Obama for a job at City Hall in Chicago. Now President-elect Barack Obama is hiring Ms. Jarrett for a senior role in the White House. Ms. Jarrett’s role and title are threefold: White House senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison. A longstanding member of his tiny core of top advisers, Ms. Jarrett will continue providing him with counsel on a wide-ranging set of issues, she said Friday evening. She will help Mr. Obama manage his relationship with the rest of government, serving as the White House’s point person for state and local officials. Finally, she will supervise the Office of Public Liaison, which she hopes to turn into an active channel for government-citizen collaboration. “The level of the engagement in the campaign was tremendous, and we want people to understand this will be their White House,” she said in an interview. Mr. Obama “was so committed to a grass-roots campaign and wanted to keep that energy galvanized in a positive direction,” she continued, explaining his thinking for the Public Liaison role. Ms. Jarrett is a lawyer who rose to the top of Chicago city government under the tutelage of Mayor Richard M. Daley, serving as his planning commissioner, and then as chairman of the Chicago Transit Authority. In 1995, Ms. Jarrett joined the Habitat Company, a Chicago real estate company that develops and runs real estate projects from luxury high rises to public housing units; she is now the company’s chief executive. When Mr. Obama began his political career, he was a relative newcomer to Chicago, and Ms. Jarrett, whose roots there run deep, served as tutor and emissary, introducing him to many of the wealthy businesspeople whose donations seeded his rise. In his presidential campaign, Ms. Jarrett gave personal counsel to both Obamas, consulting on major decisions, and acting as diplomat to the outside world. Her White House role reflects her specialty in managing relationships. In particular, Ms. Jarrett soothed the fears of the African-American community, nervous about the first black presidential nominee of a major party, and helped broker peace with supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Shortly after his victory, Mr. Obama named Ms. Jarrett as one of three co-leaders of his transition team . Ms. Jarrett will be a historically rare sight in the White House: a high-ranking official who is African-American and female. But friends and Obama advisers say she is far more than an old chum of Mr. Obama’s or an ambassador to the black community: she is an expert in housing, transportation and health care, and a specialist in negotiation and conflict resolution. A petite, soft-spoken woman, she shares Mr. Obama’s calm, deliberative style, and is widely described as one of the few people who can speak for the president-elect with accuracy and authority. Ms. Jarrett turned 52 years old on Friday. “My birthday present from the president-elect,” she joked that evening.


Avocados Imperil Monarch Butterflies’ Winter Home in Mexico

Abstract: APÚTZIO DE JUÁREZ, Mexico — The green volcanic hills that tower above Apútzio de Juárez have begun to fill with swarms of monarch butterflies, which return each year for the winter stretch of their celebrated — and imperiled — migration. But downhill from the monarchs’ mountain roost, in the oak and pine forests that border this small farming town, there lurks a new threat to their winter habitat: a lust to grow the lucrative avocados that are being consumed at record rates in the United States. Spurred by soaring demand for the creamy fruit, farmers here in the western state of Michoacán are clearing land to make room for avocado orchards, cutting oak and pine trees that form a vital buffer around the mountain forests where the monarchs nest. “It’s scandalous what people are doing now to grow avocado,” said Arturo Espinosa Maceda, who has for years grown avocados, peaches and strelizia flowers at a farm some 12 miles north of Apútzio. “But it’s mega-business.” Apútzio sits on the western edge of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a 135,000-acre protected area where the butterflies rest on oyamel, or native fir, trees. The butterflies’ numbers have dwindled sharply in recent years, as milkweed declined in the United States and deforestation affected their Mexican habitat. Each year environmentalists hold their breath to see how many butterflies will arrive in Mexico. Image Avocado trees in Zitácuaro, in the state of Michoacan. The state doubled its avocado exports over the past seven years to 770,000 tons — worth roughly $1.5 billion. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times Omar Vidal, director general of the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico, said that conserving the winter sanctuary was “fundamental to the survival of the migration.” Deforestation “has to be reduced to zero,” he said. But the avocado boom could complicate that goal. Americans ate a record seven pounds of avocado per capita in 2015, twice as much as in 2008, according to the Department of Agriculture. Nearly 80 percent of those avocados came from Michoacán, the only Mexican state authorized to export the fruit to the United States by the department, which bans avocados from other Mexican regions over fear of pests. Michoacán doubled its avocado exports over the last seven years to 770,000 tons — worth roughly $1.5 billion. The bonanza has been brutal for Michoacán’s oak and pine forests, which grow at 5,000 to 7,000 feet — the same altitude as avocados. Between 1974 and 2011, about 110,000 acres of forest across Michoacán’s central highlands were turned into avocado orchards, according to a study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico. And deforestation is accelerating, experts said. Jaime Navía, president of GIRA, a nonprofit organization based in Michoacán that promotes sustainable rural development, estimated that 65,000 acres — most of it forest — had been converted to avocado growing since that study. “The damage is irreversible,” he said. Officials have blamed producers looking for a pretext to turn land over to avocado orchards for a spike in the number of forest fires in Michoacán this year. But forestry experts and farmers said that Mexico’s environmental watchdog, the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection, often turned a blind eye to abuses. Officials are fearful of powerful interests, they said, especially given that organized crime has links to the industry, or bribes make the officials pliant. Image Cutting leaves from avocado trees in an orchard in Zitácuaro. Workers make about $7.50 per day to tend the orchards, and twice that during harvests. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times “The authorities need to control this,” said Armando López Orduña, general director of the Mexican Avocado Producers and Packer-Exporters Association. To offset deforestation, the association has planted a half-million trees since 2009 and hopes to plant another half-million by 2018, he said. Around Apútzio de Juarez, a town of 1,100 people surrounded by fields of guava and corn, scars on the hillsides and patches of young avocado trees signal the crop’s advance. Some here have farmed avocado for decades. But now, growers from other areas are buying land. Davíd Romero Hernández, a stocky farmer who was trimming grass in his new avocado orchard on the edge of Apútzio one morning in October, said that the land had been covered with oak and pine. But the owner felled the trees a year ago and sold it to him. Mr. Romero, 51, pointed to a shorn hill above his plot. That, too, was also covered in forest until a few months ago, he said. Then a farmer from another village bought it. Image Land cleared for avocado growth in Apútzio. Deforestation is accelerating in the state, experts say. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times “It’s the ambition of avocado,” he said. That ambition could soon increase. Zitácuaro, the municipality surrounding Apútzio, is in the process of seeking certification to export avocados to the United States — a fact that is on the lips of every farmer. Certification is awarded municipality by municipality, and not all of Michoacán can export avocados. As it stands, some of Apútzio’s avocados are sold to buyers from Uruapan — a town 100 miles west that is the heart of the industry — who pass them off as having been grown there. Deforestation in Apútzio is a recent problem and far less extensive than in other areas of Michoacán, experts said. But “it is becoming a significant problem,” given the area’s proximity to the monarchs’ habitat, said Edgar González Godoy, director in Mexico of the New York-based Rainforest Alliance. Efforts to fight deforestation in the reserve focus on about 34,000 acres around where the butterflies roost. Programs run by the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations have helped cut logging from hundreds of acres each year to just 28 so far this year, said the fund’s Mr. Vidal. But the trees in the reserve’s outer ring play an important role, said Manuel Sarmiento, a biologist and member of the Alliance for the Conservation of Forests, Land and Water, a group of local farmers, environmental activists and residents. Image Apútzio de Juárez, a town of 1,100, gets its water from springs fed by the hills east of town. Pine and oak help water filter through the earth and into the spring; avocado, on the other hand, has shallow roots and consumes a lot of that water. Credit Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times For example, the trees cool the air from Michoacán’s warm western plains as it rises toward the oyamel forests in the center. If the temperature at the heart of the reserve, about seven miles from Apútzio, were to rise, the oyamel could suffer, and thus the butterflies would suffer, too, he said. Mr. González worries that the lure of avocado will only grow if Mexico succeeds in opening new markets. He noted that deforestation is growing in Jalisco State, another area that hopes it will soon be able to export its crop to the United States. “Just imagine what would happen if the Chinese started eating avocado,” he said. In town, residents said avocado had put money into empty pockets. Workers make about $7.50 per day to tend the orchards, and twice that during harvests. A resident can sell an acre to an avocado farmer for about $4,300 — more than that seller would typically make in a year. “People have more to spend and that lifts us all,” said Fernando Bernal, a butcher, as he hacked slabs of pork from a loin. But like others in Apútzio, Mr. Bernal worries about water. Apútzio’s supply comes from springs fed by the hills east of town. Pine and oak help water filter through the earth and into the spring; avocado, on the other hand, has shallow roots and consumes a lot of that water. If people keep cutting down the forest, “we’ll run out,” Mr. Bernal said. And Apútzio isn’t the only community with much at stake. The hills that stretch north east of here collect water for the massive Cutzamala water system that supplies the thirsty Mexican capital, Mexico City, 100 miles away. Even Mr. Romero, happily tending his avocado bushes on land once filled with mighty trees, is saddened by the loss of forest. He said that his village, Zicata de Morelos, depends on water that comes from the hills near Apútzio. “So we’re all affected,” Mr. Romero said. “But people don’t think about the future.”

Avocado
Mexico
Forests
Agriculture
Aputzio de Juarez
Butterflies and Moths
Conservation of Resources
International trade


Pirro, a Former District Attorney, and Her Husband Have Separated

Abstract: After standing by her man as he served a federal prison sentence, admitted fathering a child with another woman and embarrassed her political campaign by telling the press she was not giving him enough attention, Jeanine F. Pirro is separating from her husband, a family spokesman said yesterday. The split comes a year after Ms. Pirro lost her bid to become state attorney general, in a campaign that was hounded by personal concerns as the couple’s marriage troubles made headlines and Ms. Pirro acknowledged that she was under federal investigation for plotting to record her husband, Albert J. Pirro , to catch him in a suspected affair. “We have agreed to amicably separate,” the couple, who have been married for more than three decades, said in a statement released by the spokesman, Michael McKeon. “As always, our priority remains our two wonderful children. We ask that people respect our privacy,” said the couple, who declined to comment further. Ms. Pirro, a Republican, ran for the United States Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, but abandoned the bid after failing to attract much attention or money in four months. On the first day of that campaign, she was left stumbling for words for 32 seconds when a page of her announcement speech was missing. As Ms. Pirro, a former Westchester County district attorney, turned her attention to the attorney general seat, she repeatedly fielded questions about her husband, a lawyer, lobbyist and Republican fund-raiser. He served a federal prison sentence for tax fraud and admitted that while he was married to Ms. Pirro, he fathered a child with another woman. In a New York magazine article last year, Mr. Pirro denied having a new affair, but said he sought the company of other women because he felt he was not getting enough attention from his wife, who once made People magazine’s Most Beautiful People list. “You need to have someone tell you that you’re smart or you’re good-looking or you made a good business decision,” he told the magazine. “Do I think that I would like to have more attention at home? Yeah, and, you know, if you’re not going to get attention at home, I think you really need to make some decisions about your future.” He said he believed his wife’s political career had hurt him financially and legally. Jeanine Pirro told the magazine she had no plans to seek a divorce, insisting she had loved her husband from the day they met. Albert Pirro, however, did not rule out a split. Mr. Pirro was reinstated as a lawyer in January, more than six years after he was disbarred for a tax fraud conviction. By February, the pair had put their homes in Harrison, N.Y., and Florida up for sale for a total of more than $5 million, according to Internet property listings at the time.

Pirro Jeanine
Pirro Albert J
New York State


With ‘High Maintenance,’ Vimeo Invests in Original Content

Abstract: “ High Maintenance ,” a web series on Vimeo about the many customers of a Brooklyn marijuana dealer, has won a devoted following and plenty of critical acclaim. Each of its first 13 episodes has been watched hundreds of thousands of times. The New Yorker raved that the show, “freed of the constraints” of formulas imposed by television schedules, radiates “new ideas about storytelling.” But will viewers pay to watch it? Vimeo, the video-sharing web service owned by IAC, will release three new episodes of “High Maintenance” on Tuesday. The new episodes — each less than 20 minutes long — are $2 apiece, or $8 for a set that includes three more that will be released in January. This is the first time that Vimeo has funded the series directly, and represents the company’s first push into original content, following a recent trend among larger digital companies such as Yahoo, Netflix and Amazon. While Vimeo’s chief executive, Kerry Trainor, is betting that viewers will pay up, he says his ambitions go beyond generating a new source of revenue. He sees “High Maintenance” as the perfect show to be a foundation for a prestige television brand, and compares his site’s developing identity to that of premium cable in the 1970s, an analogy in which YouTube plays advertising-powered network television to Vimeo’s HBO. “We really feel like Vimeo is in the world to find a higher-quality creator, delivering a different experience than what you’d typically find on YouTube,” Mr. Trainor said. “Not to say that YouTube is bad, but Vimeo on the whole has much more of a premium cable and even a film sensibility. That’s what tends to do well on the platform.” Vimeo’s website is built to appeal to fans who favor the work of auteurs. The language of its on-demand platform promotes the people behind the films almost as vociferously as the projects themselves. One prominent button, indicated by a smiley face, exhorts users to “support creativity,” explaining that “most of the cash goes to the maker.” The push into original programming is one of several developments intended to reshape Vimeo’s revenue model. The service, which had 33 percent growth in both unique users and subscribers this quarter, recently announced that it would introduce a viewer subscription service next year. (Current subscribers pay for the right to use the production tools offered on Vimeo Plus and Vimeo Pro .) The site’s on-demand platform, introduced in March 2013, has almost 14,000 titles available for purchase, and its gross revenue has nearly doubled since last quarter. Jessica Casano-Antonellis, Vimeo’s director of communications, compared the on-demand portion of the site to iTunes “in that Vimeo is an open platform” where “anyone can upload and sell content directly.” Image Ben Sinclair, left, and Avery Monsen in the web series "High Maintenance." Credit Janky Clown Productions For the creators of “High Maintenance,” the biggest fear may be that the show’s audience will not be willing to pay for what they used to get free. “The psychology behind it is what’s become interesting to us,” said Katja Blichfeld, who writes and directs the show with her husband, Ben Sinclair. “We haven’t experienced pushback yet, but there have been murmurings of people complaining about having to pay now.” For Ms. Blichfeld and Mr. Sinclair, the partnership with Vimeo is an experiment that could help pioneer a way for short-form independent filmmakers to make money from their work. “You don’t have to have some goliath managing your content and distributing it for you,” Mr. Sinclair said. “You can get rid of all those middlemen and just get a direct conversation between the artist and the audience.” Apart from helping write, direct and edit the show, Mr. Sinclair plays the marijuana dealer. For the most part, his presence is the only element that links individual episodes; otherwise, each focuses on a separate set of characters and tells a stand-alone story. Episodes can vary sharply in tone. The short, comedic “Olivia” tells the story of two thieving gossips who come across as some of the very worst people in New York; a more meditative episode called “Brad Pitts” is a window into the life of a woman with stomach cancer. On the show, drugs are rarely glamorized or used as a form of cheap titillation; Cheech and Chong this is not. Ms. Blichfeld and Mr. Sinclair have each used marijuana for “10 years plus,” and their comfort with the drug is reflected in their characters. Mr. Sinclair’s character, known simply as “the guy,” is not, for most viewers, a scuzzy criminal, but rather a humane, if somewhat dopey, evolution of the bartender — a 21st-century version of Sam Malone from “Cheers.” Though its creators insist that nothing about their approach has changed with the Vimeo partnership (other than their ability to finally pay collaborators what they deserve), faithful viewers will note an increased sophistication in the new episodes. At its core though, the show remains the same. At a screening last week, a fan asked Mr. Sinclair what he and Ms. Blichfeld had been doing with “all that Vimeo money.” “It’s what we’ve been doing, plus,” Mr. Sinclair replied. “It’s not a new thing. And it’s been very comforting to be at Vimeo for that.”

High Maintenance
Vimeo
Web television
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming
Price


Lugar Loses Primary Challenge in Indiana

Abstract: INDIANAPOLIS — Richard G. Lugar , one of the Senate’s longest-serving members, a collegial moderate who personified a gentler political era, was turned out of office on Tuesday, ending a career that had spanned the terms of half a dozen presidents. Mr. Lugar, a six-term senator from Indiana who had won most of his recent elections with more than 60 percent of the vote, only received 39.4 percent of the vote on Tuesday, losing a hard-fought Republican primary to Richard E. Mourdock, the state treasurer. Mr. Mourdock’s campaign was fueled by Tea Party groups and national conservative organizations that deemed Mr. Lugar too willing to compromise and poured millions of dollars into the campaign to defeat him. Mr. Lugar, 80, had not faced a challenge from within his own party since his first election to the Senate in 1976, and his defeat seemed to serve as a caution to moderates on both sides of the aisle. In February, Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, a moderate Republican, decided not to run for re-election, citing polarization in Washington. Senators Kent Conrad of North Dakota, a Democratic fiscal centrist, and Jim Webb of Virginia, a moderate Democrat, are retiring. Two other moderate Democrats, Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana, face tough re-election races. Tea Party organizers and conservative leaders held the Indiana outcome as evidence of a broader national demand for Republicans with unshakable stances on fiscal reform and conservative values, as well as proof of the continuing power of the Tea Party movement. “Richard Mourdock’s victory truly sends a message to the liberals in the Republican Party ,“ said Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth. “Voters are rejecting the policies that led to record debt and diminished economic freedom.” For a number of Mr. Lugar’s supporters, the results were a sorry arc — not just for a man who has served for 35 years in Washington and as mayor of Indianapolis before that, but for a larger notion of trying to work across party lines in Washington. Prominent Democrats, including President Obama, issued statements of appreciation on Tuesday night for Mr. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and for his work, particularly on the nation’s foreign affairs. “While Dick and I didn’t always agree on everything,” Mr. Obama said, “I found during my time in the Senate that he was often willing to reach across the aisle and get things done.” Still, some Democrats, eager to hold onto the Senate, also seemed buoyed by the results here. With Mr. Lugar’s defeat, they see the glimmer of an opportunity to claim a Senate seat that the party had considered out of reach as long as he was in the running. The Democratic candidate, Representative Joe Donnelly, is thought to have a better chance with independents and moderate Republicans in November against Mr. Mourdock. Almost immediately, Democrats began emphasizing Mr. Mourdock’s conservative views. “Hoosiers deserve real leadership that will reach across the aisle in Richard Lugar’s successor, not Richard Mourdock’s Tea Party extremism,” said Dan Parker, the chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party. For months, the campaign here had been intense, expensive and, by Indiana standards, mean. National groups including the Club for Growth, the National Rifle Association and FreedomWorks, which helped build the Tea Party movement, had viewed Mr. Lugar as a ripe and overdue target, and they poured millions of dollars into the state. Mr. Lugar — who may be best known for his 1990s effort, along with Sam Nunn, a Democratic senator from Georgia, for a disarmament program in the former Soviet Union — was criticized throughout the campaign for what critics described as his tendency to cooperate with Democrats. He shifted to the right in 2011, after the threat to his re-election became clear. Mr. Mourdock, meanwhile, has said that bipartisanship has led the nation to the brink of bankruptcy, and that the nation’s current circumstances call for a time of confrontation, not collegiality. After his victory, he acknowledged his opponent. “I know what it’s like to lose — it’s not fun,” Mr. Mourdock told The Associated Press. “And especially after he’s given that 36 years in the Senate. I know he has to feel terrible tonight, and I truly feel badly for him.” Some of Mr. Lugar’s critics accused him of being Mr. Obama’s closest Republican friend — a claim Mr. Lugar scoffed at, but also took questions about right up until Tuesday afternoon. They also railed against positions he took at various times in favor of Mr. Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, the Dream Act, the bank bailout, the nuclear arms control treaty and more. Mr. Lugar’s supporters countered that he had maintained a conservative agenda over the years, for less government spending, a balanced-budget amendment and fewer regulations that harmed businesses. For his part, Mr. Lugar sounded unbowed on Tuesday afternoon, arguing that most Americans were fed up with partisan battling and saying his race had evolved into a “playground” for outside interest groups. If it felt peculiar to be entering an election day as an underdog — Democrats did not even field an opponent six years ago — Mr. Lugar did not show it. “This morning, I woke up after a good night’s sleep, just as before, ready with vim and vigor to make certain that we do the Lord’s fight today, and we’re going to do the best we can,” he said. But for some here, Mr. Lugar’s troubles reached beyond questions of partisan loyalty. He was required this year to change his voter registration to the farm his family has owned for years rather than the Indianapolis house he sold in 1977 — an episode that underscored how long he had been in Washington and, in the view of some, how tenuous his ties to Indiana now felt. “Everybody’s time comes,” said Ed Budd, who described himself as a Tea Party supporter and handed out Mourdock leaflets outside a polling place in Fairland on Tuesday when Mr. Lugar walked up looking, in Mr. Budd’s words, “diminished some” from the familiar image he had seen on television for so many years. Throughout the day, voters for and against Mr. Lugar confided quietly that they felt sadness and discomfort as they witnessed the unfolding scene. “This is all really painful to watch,” said Larry MacIntyre, a supporter of Mr. Lugar’s. Many in a ballroom here on Tuesday night were crying as Mr. Lugar stepped onto a stage smiling and said he hoped Mr. Mourdock would prevail in the fall. “We are experiencing deep political divisions in our society right now,” Mr. Lugar said as tears welled in the eyes of the family members lined up behind him. “These divisions have stalemated progress in critical areas. But these divisions are not insurmountable, and I believe that people of good will regardless of party can work together for the benefit of our country.”

Indiana
Senate
Tea Party Movement
Republican Party
Primaries and Caucuses
Center for Responsive Politics
Lugar Richard G
Mourdock Richard E


Echo of the Past, Norman Storms the British Open

Abstract: SOUTHPORT, England — As curtain calls go, the scene unfolding amid the ancient dunes at Royal Birkdale on Friday surely would rank among the most compelling golf has seen in a long time. With a misty sheet of rain wrapped like a shroud around the northwest coast of Merseyside, a golfer given up for dead walked up the 18th fairway to a standing ovation, waving and smiling, his hat doffed to reveal the still ample and familiar shock of blond hair with a touch of gray. Greg Norman , newly wed and on his honeymoon with the tennis great Chris Evert, was in the lead in the 137th British Open. With two rounds of par 70, he had withstood the vicious combination of wind and rain that had buffeted the coast for two days and — until K. J. Choi passed him by one stroke just before nightfall — was the only golfer to win the battle against the tough, old links course. Norman will be in the final pairing with Choi on Saturday, one stroke ahead of 26-year-old Camilo Villegas, the promising Colombian player who had eight birdies, including five straight to close out his round of 65. At two-over-par 142 is a group of seven that includes the three co-leaders from the first round — Rocco Mediate , Graeme McDowell and Robert Allenby, each of whom shot 73 Friday — and the also-resurrected David Duval, the former world No. 1 who had slipped into a tie for No. 1,087. Duval shot 69. With all these subplots battling for attention, Norman, a 53-year-old who spends more time playing tennis with his wife than competitive golf, stole the spotlight. He has not won an official professional event in 10 years, but as he moved toward the 18th green with his impossibly white teeth glistening, looking slowly left and right to acknowledge the deafening cheers, there was no doubt what was happening. Here was the reappearance of the Great White Shark, swimming in ever-tightening circles around the Open, as if he and the old caddie Linn Strickler had gone through a time portal to the 1980s. “H. G. Wells,” said Strickler, his craggy face brightening into a smile. “Yeah, of course you feel like you’re stepping back in time,” said Norman, who was No. 1 for a total of 331 weeks between September 1986 and January 1998. “My expectations were almost nil coming in, to tell you the truth. I hadn’t played a lot of golf. Expectations are still realistically low, and I have to be that way, too, because I can’t sit here and say, ‘O.K., it’s great, I’m playing well and I’m doing it.’ “Well, I am playing well, I am doing it, but I still haven’t been there for a long time.” A very long time. His last real shot at a major championship was in 1996, when he went into the final round of the Masters with a six-stroke lead, shot 78, and lost by five strokes to Nick Faldo, who shot 67. There are those who remember him almost exclusively for that. He is also the only golfer to have lost a playoff in each of the four majors — the 1984 United States Open, the 1987 Masters, the 1990 British Open and the 1993 P.G.A. Championship. Others remember him for that. Larger than life, win or lose, Norman has always known how to command golf’s stage. It is not just his formidable physical presence — which Evert describes by outlining a V with her hands in the air, starting with the broad shoulders down the narrow hips. His aura also comes from movement, a walk that consumes distance with unhurried strides, a golf swing that flashes with power, even still. Whether windblown and victorious at Turnberry in ’86, or bent and broken at Augusta National in ’96, he overwhelms the occasion and owns the moment. He could do the same at Royal Birkdale, where inexplicably, and simultaneously, he has found his game and peace of mind. “My life is great,” he said. “I’ve got a wonderful wife, and my whole being that’s going on around here is just beautiful, to tell you the truth. So obviously it makes you feel more relaxed, makes you feel more comfortable about what you’re doing and where you are.” He added: “There is obviously less pressure on me than most because obviously there will be more pressure tomorrow and Sunday. But honestly, there’s probably less pressure on me than anybody out here because even though I’m in the position I am in, I’m going to go out there and just say, ‘Hey, just go have fun with it.’ ” That is a change from the full-bore, all-out-attack approach Norman once brought to his golf. But it is working so far. Norman played steadily and systematically, putted well and immediately offset a double bogey at the brutally tough sixth hole with birdies at Nos. 7 and 8, making putts of 25 and 15 feet to make the turn in one under par. He demonstrated his fitness and flexibility at the 16th hole when, unable to get a stance inside the bunker, he straddled the edge, taking a spread-legged, deep crouch position. Maintaining it throughout his swing, he popped the ball on to the putting surface 12 feet from the hole, then made the putt. Moves like that impress the youngsters. “He’s got the body of a 25-year-old and the head of a 53-year-old,” said Justin Rose, 27. “It’s not a bad combination. But it’s superb, I guess, just to find the determination to go out there and really believe he can do it, I suppose.” But is it feasible to think a 53-year-old could win a major on the regular circuit? Or is it like asking John McEnroe to get off the couch and make it into the fourth round at Wimbledon? Jack Nicklaus, on the grounds at Birkdale on Friday in a corporate role for the Royal Bank of Scotland, thought about it for a just a second. “Greg has played very little golf,” he said. “The only thing I can relate it to is when I won the Masters back in ’86. I hadn’t played any golf, I’d been playing a little bit, played a few tournaments. But I remembered how to play when I needed to down the stretch. “Maybe that’s the position he’ll find himself in come the weekend. I mean, I’m sure he’ll remember how to play and remember how to win a golf tournament, when he gets himself in position to do so — when and if. We’ve got a long way to go. Even if he doesn’t, I think that will inspire him to go and play a little bit more.”

Golf
Norman Greg
Villegas Camilo
Mediate Rocco


Putin in Ukraine to Celebrate a Christian Anniversary

Abstract: MOSCOW — In an apparent attempt to use shared history to make a case for closer ties, President Vladimir V. Putin attended religious ceremonies in the Ukrainian capital on Saturday to commemorate the 1,025th anniversary of events that brought Christianity to Ukraine and Russia. At a reception in Kiev, the capital, Mr. Putin spoke of the primacy of the two countries’ spiritual and historical bonds, regardless of political decisions that often divide them. Relations have been rocky in part because of attempts by Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, to formalize its political and economic ties with the European Union. “We are all spiritual heirs of what happened here 1,025 years ago,” Mr. Putin told church hierarchs at the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, one of the holiest sites of Orthodoxy, according to the RIA Novosti news agency. “And in this sense we are, without a doubt, one people.” Mr. Putin’s trip was also the latest sign of the deepening ties and common agenda of the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church. The events last week commemorated Prince Vladimir of Kiev’s decision to convert to Christianity and baptize his subjects in 988, an event known as the Baptism of Rus, the founding of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose adherents include those beyond Russia’s modern borders. The anniversary has been the subject of lavish political and news media attention in Russia, where Saturday’s events were broadcast, reflecting the Kremlin’s embrace of the church and its spiritual leader, Patriarch Kirill I. The attention has also lent apparent endorsement to church criticism of Western democracy and secular culture, particularly homosexuality. The patriarch presided over prayers on Saturday after arriving in Kiev on Friday accompanied by representatives of all of the world’s Orthodox churches and bearing fragments of a cross on which the Apostle Andrew is believed to have been crucified. On Thursday, Patriarch Kirill and the other church leaders met with Mr. Putin in the Kremlin, where they discussed the fate of Christians in the Middle East. The cross, on loan from Patras, Greece, has already been venerated by hundreds of thousands on a tour across Russia sponsored by Vladimir Yakunin, the powerful head of the Russian Railways, who is close to Mr. Putin and the church. Patriarch Kirill invoked the concept of the Holy Rus, referring to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as a unified spiritual expanse united under the faith. Ukraine’s religious landscape has been divided for centuries, not least after the collapse of the Soviet Union, by tensions over allegiance to Moscow. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is one of the largest parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, but other groups in Ukraine planned their own commemorations. Image President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Patriarch Kirill I of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kiev, Ukraine, on Saturday. Credit Sergei Chuzavkov/Associated Press The patriarch has sought to unify the faithful with warnings of the encroachment of secular values. He recently warned that legislative efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Europe posed a grave threat to Russia. “This is a very dangerous apocalyptic symptom, and we must do everything so that sin is never validated by the laws of the state in the lands of Holy Rus, because this would mean that the people are starting on the path of self-destruction,” he said at a Moscow cathedral, according to the Web site of the Moscow Patriarchate. He previously said that such “blasphemous laws” could prove as dangerous to believers as the executioners of the Great Terror during the government of Stalin. The church’s views have increasing resonance in the political debate in Russia, where Parliament adopted laws in June banning “gay propaganda” and the adoption of children by foreign same-sex couples. In a film called “The Second Baptism of Rus,” shown recently on Russian state television, Mr. Putin credited Prince Vladimir’s choice of religion with “building a centralized Russian state,” something he sees as a cornerstone of his leadership. Mr. Putin recalled the story of his mother having him baptized in secret after his birth in 1952 because of Soviet repression of the church. He described Communism as “just a simplified version of the religious principles shared by practically all the world’s traditional religions” and said that today’s turn to religion was “a spontaneous movement from the people themselves to turn back to their roots” in response to the ideological vacuum after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Ukraine’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovich, appeared beside Mr. Putin during the service on Saturday, though relations between Moscow and Kiev have continued to be marred by battles over gas pipelines and other disputes despite a widely held view in Russia that Mr. Yanukovich would be more solidly aligned with Russia. Ukraine is scheduled to sign an association agreement with the European Union in November. While insisting that choices of international relations were Ukraine’s to make, Mr. Putin argued Saturday that Ukraine would fare better by deepening its political and economic ties with Russia. On Saturday, Femen , the Ukrainian feminist group known for its bare-breasted protests, said three of its activists and a photojournalist were beaten and taken away by an “organized group of people” on the way to a protest of the celebrations. On its Web site, Femen accused the spy agencies of Ukraine and Russia of being behind the attack, though it did not provide evidence. The Kiev police said they had detained three women for “petty hooliganism” after they refused to cover up when they were spotted naked on the street. The police Web site said a photographer who was accompanying them was detained for disobeying police orders. It did not talk about beatings. Femen later reported that its leader, Anna Hutsol, was beaten up while in a cafe on Saturday night and her laptop was taken.

Ukraine
Russia
Russian Orthodox Church
International relations
Vladimir Putin


Pushing for Livability Amid Downtown’s Chaos

Abstract: Sure, urban lobbyists are made, not born. But if the force field emanating from Elizabeth H. Berger, the excitable, fancifully attired (she swears by quirky designer finds from her neighbor, the Century 21 store) new president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, is a reliable signifier, once a lobbyist, always a lobbyist. “Lobbying is about giving voice to the people,” she says. “You can do it with integrity, or you can do it without integrity, but I’m proud of my list.” At the top of the list is the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award she got in 2004 for her contribution to government arts advocacy: “I think I’m the first lobbyist to win a Bessie.” Now as the new head of the alliance, a government-regulated nonprofit agency that manages the largest business improvement district in the nation and promotes the financial district as a world-class destination, she foresees a unique convergence of business, commerce, and culture despite the continuing construction chaos. “Our philosophy,” she says, “is that the best way to support business is through building a 24/7 community.” She should know: she lives there. Ms. Berger, 47, has lobbied for a livelier, round-the-clock vibe — grocery stores headed her wish list — in the financial district since arriving in 1982. In high school she moved with her family to Providence, R.I., where she won a Congressional internship and met her first political hero, the flamboyant revisionist mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., who later went to prison for corruption. After graduating from Yale, where she fashioned her own urban studies major, Ms. Berger joined the cadre of urban residential pioneers here. “I can remember having to take an R train to Bay Ridge if you wanted to buy underwear on a weekend, because back then Century 21 wasn’t open on weekends,” she says. “I remember when we got our first all-night greengrocer; it was 1986!” Why would a woman who grew up on Gramercy Park want to live so far downtown? She needed to be able to walk to City Hall, where she started out as a New York City Urban Fellow and mayoral aide to Edward I. Koch. She ultimately served as assistant mayoral representative (his lobbyist) before the City Council. She still walks to work. And she can still twist arms, ostensibly in the direction of checkbooks, simply by moving her lips. Just ask the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which recently forked over the $1.5 million grant that is bankrolling the first phase of “Re:Construction,” a counterintuitive collaboration between the alliance and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council that recasts downtown construction sites as public canvases for innovative art and architecture. “This is a program that makes a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” Ms. Berger asserts, tongue in cheek, in regard to the three projects — “Best Pedestrian Route” on John Street, “Fulton Fence,” and “Concrete Jungle” on Broadway between Ann and John Streets — that have successfully applied a dose of colorful camouflage to concrete barricades and other eyesores. She anticipates that 60 public sites and 20 privately owned sites will participate. “I don’t see it as decorating the mess that is downtown during rebuilding; it’s more that we’re naming it and owning it in the interim,” she says, speaking like the daughter of a psychotherapist (her mother has a practice in Rhode Island) and an artist (her father also ran nonprofit community agencies). Think of it as an intervention in the midst of an urban renewal. “So much of what we’ve done downtown since 9/11 has been aimed at making a bad thing less bad, but this is an effort to put some whimsy and cheer back into the daily lives of the 350,000 people who live and work here,” says Ms. Berger, who lives near ground zero with her husband, Frederick Kaufman, a writer and CUNY journalism professor, and their two young children. HER family was displaced for four months after 9/11, but not returning to their apartment was never an option. “It’s almost like when people renew their marriage vows,” she says of her devotion to downtown. “Make daily life better now, that’s my first goal at the alliance. Goal two, figure out how to continue to attract and retain businesses. Goal three is the vision thing: when there are no more potential canvases for reconstruction, what do we want Lower Manhattan to look like and be like? I’m here for the duration.” Ms. Berger left city government for law school at the University of Southern California, but lasted just 11 weeks. She returned to New York City, acquired a mentor in Gordon Davis, a lawyer who served as parks commissioner during the Koch administration, and created a niche for herself as a government relations adviser for several law firms. And she performed her civic duty: She served on Community Boards 1 and 5, was a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s residents’ advisory council, and joined the board of the alliance in 1998. Persuasion is an art she mastered early on. And then there’s that politically indispensable quality she so admired in Mr. Cianci and Mr. Koch and admires in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg: the vision thing. She’s got it, too. By age 7, she had decided that rather than pursuing her original ambition of becoming the first woman to be president of the United States, it made sense to set her sights on becoming the president of United States Steel. This did not, Ms. Berger notes with the benefit of 40 years of hindsight, make her an eccentric child: “I’d just call it a 7-year-old’s exploration of where the power was.”

New York City
Berger Elizabeth H
Lobbying and Lobbyists


I.B.M. Plans to Buy Another $10 Billion of Its Shares

Abstract: ARMONK, N.Y. (AP) — I.B.M. said on Tuesday that its board had approved an additional $10 billion in stock buybacks, representing nearly 6 percent of its outstanding shares. International Business Machines said the new buyback authorization added to $2.3 billion remaining from a previous $8 billion authorization, issued in April. The company said it also planned to request permission to buy even more shares at its next April board meeting. I.B.M. shares rose 0.52 percent.

International Business Machines Corporation


Pipeline Accident Kills Worker

Abstract: A construction worker building an underground natural gas pipeline in Harriman State Park was killed yesterday after the pipe-laying machine he was operating rolled down a steep hill, then ejected and crushed him, the authorities said. The accident occurred about 9:30 a.m. in a wooded area of the park, which spans Rockland and Orange Counties and is about 30 miles north of New York City. Work on the 182-mile, $650 million pipeline began in June. A lieutenant with the New York State Park Police said an investigation was continuing. The worker, identified as Pat McCaffrey, 67, of Lebanon, N.J., was operating a crane-like machine called a side boom. “This is a terrible tragedy,” said Michael Armiak, a spokesman for Millennium Pipeline Company, which is overseeing the building of the pipeline. He said Mr. McCaffrey worked for a contractor, Precision Pipeline, based in Wisconsin. The pipeline, scheduled to be completed by November 2008, is to stretch across the Southern Tier and Lower Hudson Valley.

Pipelines
New York City
Millennium Pipeline
Accidents and Safety
Parks and Other Recreation Areas


With Cameras Rolling, Knicks Keep the Ball Moving

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y. — The Knicks let cameras into their training center Tuesday, and for fans and members of the news media, it was an opportunity to see Coach Mike Woodson direct his team through a full practice (most N.B.A. teams allow the news media to see the last 30 minutes of practice). MSG televised the event live, which it has done the past three years. Woodson’s focus was on ball movement. He pointed to different areas on the floor while his players watched and listened. He instructed them on how to come off screens at the top of the paint and how to feed the ball into the post from a number of different spots on the court. Then the Knicks went in motion, passing the ball several times before putting up a shot. “That’s going to be the key to our success,” Woodson said. “We have to be able to move the basketball. I’m anxious to see if they pick it up and carry it into a game. Good teams are not going to allow you to play on one side of the floor.” The Knicks were criticized last season for allowing the ball to stop in the halfcourt. Woodson, who ran a number of isolation sets for Carmelo Anthony and others, plans to have the team run more pick-and-rolls and get the ball inside. Anthony seemed more interested in passing rather than shooting Tuesday. While he took some shots in transition, he made sure to get the ball into Amar’e Stoudemire’s hands in the post. Stoudemire worked to improve his scoring in the low post this summer by training with the Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon. “He’s getting better at that each day,” Anthony said of Stoudemire. “We’re trying our best right now to get the ball to him down there so he can get comfortable. That’s the most important thing, because if you’re not comfortable down there, it’s not going to work.” Stoudemire showed patience and strength in the post. He used spin moves to his left and his right to score over Chris Copeland and Henry Sims. He also scored with hook shots from the middle of the paint. “Amar’e is a player that should be able to post the ball some,” Woodson said. “I’m just trying to mix it up a little for him so that he’s not just picking and popping out for a shot all the time.” Woodson said he had not decided who would start at shooting guard. Iman Shumpert and Ronnie Brewer, who both are rehabilitating from knee surgery, were doing individual workouts Tuesday. James White, who had been practicing with the starting unit, was on the sideline with a sore right hamstring that could keep him out of Thursday’s preseason opener at Washington. Woodson kept J. R. Smith in his usual role of playing with the second team. Last week, Smith said he wanted to be a starter and that he entered camp hoping to accomplish that goal. “Everybody can’t start,” Woodson said. “I have to have some offense coming off the bench, and I told J. R. he could be the best player coming off the bench in this league.” REBOUNDS Chris Smith missed his third straight practice with a sore left knee. ... Marcus Camby did not practice because of a strained left calf. ... Rasheed Wallace participated in the Knicks’ early walk-through, but continued to work on his conditioning when the team scrimmaged. Wallace said he felt good about his cross-training workouts and that he did not know when he would join the team for a full practice. “It’s not up to me; it’s up to Coach Woodson,” Wallace said. “I’m not one to complain. If it’s not until mid-November, it’s mid-November. I can’t control that, I just have to be ready either way.”


Israel, Facing Criticism, to Investigate Possible Military Misconduct in Gaza

Abstract: TEL AVIV — Israel on Wednesday announced it had begun criminal investigations into five instances of possible military misconduct in the 50-day Gaza war, an implicit acknowledgment of sensitivity to the widespread criticism, even among allies like the United States, that Israeli forces had used excessive firepower in a number of highly publicized assaults in the Palestinian territory. The announcement, conveyed at a briefing by the Israeli military, came only two weeks after a cease-fire in the conflict, an unusually speedy response. But critics, including human rights advocates in Israel, said it remained to be seen whether the investigations would yield significant criminal indictments and punishments. Some said the timing of the inquiries appeared to be an attempt by the Israeli government to pre-empt the impact of international investigations into allegations of possible Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza. They also pointed out that the cases, opened by Israel’s Military Advocate General Corps, included obvious episodes that had already drawn condemnation. One prominent Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, refused to participate in the investigations and said history showed that the Israeli military could not possibly conduct a credible prosecution of itself. “Based on past experience, we can only regretfully say that Israeli law enforcement authorities are unable and unwilling to investigate allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law committed during fighting in Gaza,” the organization said in a statement. “Should the existing whitewashing mechanism be replaced with an independent investigative body, we would gladly cooperate with it.” On the Ground in Israel and Gaza Two photographers captured scenes from the most recent outbreak of war. Even so, Israel’s inquiries into possible criminal misconduct by its own soldiers stood in sharp contrast to what has happened in Gaza, where Hamas, the dominant militant force, has no such judicial process and has been widely criticized for summarily executing suspected Palestinian collaborators with Israel. The most prominent of the five military cases have already been the subject of international censure: an Israeli strike that resulted in the death of 16 civilians sheltering at a United Nations school in Beit Hanoun and the killing of four boys on a Gaza beach . The three other cases, as conveyed by an Israeli military official giving the briefing, involve a Palestinian teenager, Ahmed Abu Raida, who said he was mistreated while in detention and forced to guide Israeli soldiers, with the decision to investigate largely based on the youth’s allegations as reported in The New York Times; a Palestinian woman who was shot to death after she had informed Israeli forces of her movements and received their consent; and a soldier who is alleged to have stolen money from a private home. Of 44 cases initially referred to army fact-finding teams for preliminary examination, seven have been closed, including one involving the death of eight members of a family when their home was struck on July 8, the first day of the Israeli air campaign, and others are pending. A further 55 episodes are to be referred to the fact-finding teams next week, according to a senior Israeli official, who briefed reporters at military headquarters here and spoke on the condition of anonymity under the Israeli military protocol. The swiftness of the self-investigation by the military and the publicity about it appeared partly intended to get ahead of an investigation commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council into allegations of possible war crimes. The Israeli government has said it will not cooperate with the United Nations mission, asserting that its mandate is biased against Israel. Image Relatives of a boy killed on July 24 in an airstrike that hit a United Nations school in Beit Hanoun grieved over his body at a hospital. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times The investigation process may also be intended to counter threats by the Palestinian leadership to join the International Criminal Court for the purpose of holding Israel accountable for its actions as an occupying power. The court generally only investigates cases where the country involved is unwilling or unable to investigate itself. More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli air and ground operation, up to three-quarters of them civilians, according to the United Nations and other monitoring groups. The Israeli authorities assert that up to half the casualties were probably combatants. On the Israeli side, 67 soldiers and six civilians were killed. Israel said its campaign was aimed at halting rocket fire from the Palestinian coastal territory, which is dominated by Hamas, and at destroying a network of tunnels, more than a dozen of them leading into Israeli territory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has rejected criticism of its military’s self-accountability and asserted that justice and due process are built into Israel’s democratic system. He has repeatedly accused Hamas of committing a “double war crime” for indiscriminately firing thousands of rockets against Israeli towns and cities, and for operating from within heavily populated areas of Gaza, using its own civilians, in Mr. Netanyahu’s words, as a “human shield.” Still, the Israeli Army’s legal counselors have acknowledged the international scrutiny on Israel’s military behavior. They say they have become more involved in recent years in operational activity before and during military attacks on Gaza, as well as in the aftermath. The counselors have trained commanders, reviewed planned targets and deployed to the Gaza border to work with commanders at the division level during the recent conflict. Assessing the Damage and Destruction in Gaza The damage to Gaza’s infrastructure from the current conflict is already more severe than the destruction caused by either of the last two Gaza wars. The recently established military committee of fact-finding teams, independent of the military’s chain of command and made up largely of reservists, began investigating certain “exceptional” cases. Previous experience appears to have shown, in Israel’s view, the importance of speedy investigations. A Human Rights Council inquiry into the 2008-9 war in Gaza led to the Goldstone Report. Named for Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who led that inquiry, the report found evidence of potential war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas. It accused Israel of intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza as a matter of policy. Mr. Goldstone later sought to retract that accusation, writing in The Washington Post, after Israeli investigators presented contradictory evidence, “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” Other members of the Goldstone panel stood by the report. An Israeli public commission that examined the mechanisms for dealing with claims of violations of the laws of armed conflict, led by a retired Supreme Court judge, concluded last year that the Israeli military’s system generally complied with international law. But it recommended expediting the process of deciding when to open criminal investigations. Some circumstances, like the mistreatment of detainees, “requires immediate examination,” the military official told reporters on Wednesday. Critics have called into question the military’s ability to investigate itself. B’Tselem and another Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, described the military law enforcement system as “a complete failure” in a statement this week. After the 2008-9 war in Gaza, in which up to 1,400 Palestinians were killed, more than 50 cases out of 400 that were examined were referred to the military police for criminal investigation. Three investigations ended with indictments, according to the military. B’Tselem noted that the harshest sentence was given to a soldier who had stolen a credit card.

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


Pointing to a New Era, U.S. Pulls Back as Iraqis Vote

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Iraqis across the country voted Saturday in provincial elections that will help shape their future, but regardless of the outcome it is clear that the Americans are already drifting offstage — and that most Iraqis are ready to see them go. The signs of mutual disengagement are everywhere. In the days leading up to the elections, it was possible to drive safely from near the Turkish border in the north to Baghdad and on south to Basra, just a few miles from the Persian Gulf — without seeing an American convoy. In the Green Zone — once host to the American occupation government, and now the seat of the Iraqi government — the primary PX is set to close, and the Americans have retreated to their vast, garrisoned new embassy compound. Iraqi soldiers now handle all Green Zone checkpoints. American helicopters and drones may be in the sky, but Iraqi boots are on the ground. The Americans are already worried about securing the road to Kuwait because soon they will have to start hauling out much of the infrastructure they have built on bases across Iraq . The end of an era comes not in a single moment, but looking back it has become evident that the mood has changed, power has shifted, the world is not the same. In the United States, many Americans view the war as already over, even though more than 140,000 American soldiers remain on Iraqi soil. President Obama has made it plain that Iraq is not his war; he wants to focus on Afghanistan. In an economic crisis, there is simply not enough money for the country to keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars a day in Iraq. Any arguments that remain in Washington about the shape and timing of the troop withdrawal this year seem almost moot here, given how much Iraqis want to show they can govern on their own and how much Americans want to hand over responsibility to the Iraqis so they can meet withdrawal deadlines. This is not to suggest that the war is over. In two provinces, Nineveh and Diyala, counterinsurgency operations are still under way, and the military is tracking signs of activity by Sunni extremist groups in the troubled areas surrounding Baghdad. For now, the rest of the country is mostly calm. The provincial elections will test political stability: whether Iraqis can begin to resolve still festering sectarian and ethnic tensions through the ballot box. The formal process of disengagement started in earnest in November, when the Iraqi Parliament approved a new security agreement with the Americans that sealed the date of departure, by the end of 2011, and almost immediately changed the balance of power. The outlook of Iraqi citizens has changed as well. They are more confident that their problems are their own, and that the Americans cannot fix them and often have only made matters worse. “The American military presence brought nothing to our streets but destruction and chaos,” said Omar al-Dulaimi, 57, a government employee who lives near the Um al-Khoura mosque, one of the largest Sunni places of worship in the capital. “We had nothing from them but tension and confusion. It’s much better for us and for them if they stay in their bases now.” That resentment of the American presence boiled over in 2007 after Blackwater Security guards opened fire on Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, killing 17 of them and wounding more than 30. That episode, which was widely publicized in Iraq and abroad, crystallized Iraqi loathing and resentment of what they saw as Americans’ casual disregard for Iraqi lives — and their own powerlessness to hold the Americans to account. Such anger helped embolden Iraqis to drive a tough bargain on the security agreement, which cemented their sense that they were, at last, seizing control of their own destiny. The Iraqi resolve surprised the Americans, who in the end were forced to accept a hard deadline for departure, give up immunity for contractors like Blackwater and give Iraqis explicit authority over all military operations in the country. Now, for both sides there is the feeling that something has changed and that whatever happens next, Iraq will not return to the way it was. “We’re going through transition in Iraq at the same time we’re going through transition in our forces here,” said Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general for Iraq. “They will elect new provincial governments. I believe 75 percent to 80 percent of the provincial governments will change, and oh, by the way, we’ll begin to reduce our troops’ size.” The shifts are subtle, often unspoken. The American military role now has less to do with protecting Iraqis and more with giving them the psychological reassurance that they can handle what comes their way. The Americans no longer tell the Iraqis what to do, and the Iraqis, especially Iraqi Army officers, no longer look to the Americans for approval. At least that is the case in areas where the fighting has stopped; less so in areas like Mosul where American military might is still required to keep violence at bay. When General Odierno stopped to inspect a polling center in rural Medaen, south of Baghdad, on Wednesday, his conversation with the Iraqi Army general who oversees the area was respectful, a little formal: two military men exchanging information. It was not exactly a conversation between equals; each knew that the other was from a different world, each knew the Americans have superior arms and training, and each offered the other his observations. “I see less Sunni-Shia issues than I do a lot of other issues here,” General Odierno said. Gen. Qassim al-Maliki nodded. “We have a lot of Shia voting this time,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot in the last election,” he said. As the American military slowly steps back, the diplomats and the civilians are emerging from the wings. Certainly, this is far from a normal diplomatic relationship. Iraqis entering any area close to the Americans are still subject to multiple humiliating searches and interminable waits. American diplomats cannot yet leave the embassy; they live like virtual prisoners, every movement beyond its gates an armed undertaking. But it is possible for Americans and Iraqis to talk about issues other than sheer survival. Iraqis, too, are beginning to explore a different kind of relationship, one that no longer looks to the Americans only for protection. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has agreed to finance a substantial scholarship program to send Iraqis to the United States and British Commonwealth countries for study, in an effort to create a better educated professional class. Still, the American era in Iraq is nowhere near a final act. If this were an opera, it would be just past midway in the libretto. While both sides are disconnecting, neither can let go entirely. The Iraqis need the Americans not just to dampen terrorist activities within the country but to protect them from predatory neighbors. Syria and Iran have interfered here since the invasion, and while the Iraqis are often uncomfortable with how the Americans have reined in these powers, they are reluctant to stop them because they fear their neighbors more. When American forces pursued insurgents over the Iraqi border into Syria in late October, it was an international incident. Iraq was embarrassed in front of the Arab world. Such incidents are likely to recur and could become much more fraught. For the United States, Iraq remains a strategic prize close to the Middle East flash points of Israel, Lebanon and Syria as well as Iran and the oil-rich Persian Gulf countries. It is not by chance that the Central Intelligence Agency has its largest station in the world in Baghdad. It is inescapable that the United States exerts more influence here than in any other oil-producing country — and will be intent on continuing to do so. Iraq will be eager to demonstrate its independence; the United States will have to rely on levers other than a huge and continuing military presence. This promises considerable tension as each side redefines its relationship. The elections on Saturday were a step toward a peaceful approach to settling disagreements among factions about the shape of the country. If new governments are seated from north to south and east to west, the United States and Iraq can begin the next act in earnest. If all goes well, “The United States will not need big troops here,” said Jawad al-Bolani, the interior minister, a secular Shiite. “The Americans need to look at something besides security. Iraq needs America to start a new chapter.”

Iraq
Elections
Iraq War (2003- )
United States Armament and Defense


Illinois: Lawyer for Hastert Will Seek to Have Charges Dismissed

Abstract: A lawyer for J. Dennis Hastert, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, told a federal judge in Chicago on Tuesday that he would seek to have the charges against Mr. Hastert dismissed. Mr. Hastert, Republican of Illinois, is accused of lying to the F.B.I. and structuring bank withdrawals to cover up payments for past misconduct. Though the indictment did not specify the misconduct, it has been widely reported that it involved sexual acts with a male student while Mr. Hastert was a high school teacher and coach in Yorkville. Thomas C. Green, a lawyer for Mr. Hastert, blamed the federal government for apparent leaks about the misconduct that he called an “800-pound gorilla” in the case. The case is due back in federal court in October.

House of Representatives
Chicago
J Dennis Hastert
US Politics
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance
Congress