Changes Unlikely at Gathering of China’s Ruling Elite

Abstract: BEIJING — For China ’s small band of liberal intellectuals, this is the springtime of hope. Six days ago, one of their own, the writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo , was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On Monday, a score of Communist Party elders and scholars issued a scalding public attack on the government’s censorship regime . Since mid-August, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has endorsed political reform on at least seven occasions, including on CNN and at the United Nations . But as the party’s elite gather in Beijing for the opening of their annual plenum on Friday, there is little suggestion that the climate for political change is anything but wintry. Not that China is incapable of change: this is the nation that traded its founding ideology of socialism for state-driven capitalism without so much as a goodbye wave, and reaped immense success as a result. Surrendering beliefs, however, is duck soup compared with surrendering a monopoly on power. Mr. Liu’s award, which the Foreign Ministry called an “insult” to the Chinese people, is unlikely to persuade the Communist Party to give up its grip on power. But it does reflect pent-up frustration at home, even among the liberal-leaning members of the Communist Party elite, that China needs to renew a conversation about how its single-party rule can become more transparent and popular. So hazy are the party’s internal politics that the most seasoned outsiders can only speculate on what the leadership will discuss when the Central Committee’s approximately 370 members gather to talk strategy and pave the way for a leadership succession in 2012. Expectations of political change are a bit higher this year, largely because Mr. Wen has called publicly for undefined steps toward political openness in the weeks before the plenum. But the coalition of top rulers that includes him has, if anything, tightened controls in crucial areas like free speech. With the installation of a new leadership just two years away and the party’s conservative leaders in clear control of a robust economy and stable political system there is no pressing urgency to tinker with a machine that, for them, has worked well. Skeptics say even Mr. Wen’s talk of “restructuring” is ambiguous. Calls for more democracy are common in Chinese politics, but they almost always refer to improving the party’s decision-making bureaucracy and making its lower-ranking officials more accountable rather than promoting a broader conception of individual freedom or political competition. Perhaps the clearest signal of the ruling coalition’s dim view of serious change is this: Few of Mr. Wen’s remarks on reform, from an Aug. 21 speech in Shenzhen to an Oct. 3 interview on CNN, have been reported nationally by China’s state-controlled media. In contrast, a second speech in Shenzhen by President Hu Jintao stressed resolute dedication to “socialism with Chinese characteristics” — and received extensive publicity. Still, Mr. Liu’s award, and the climate of expectations around it, complicate China’s position in several ways. The most obvious involves its multibillion-dollar effort to burnish its image worldwide. From a vast expansion of its news service and broadcasting operations to splashy events like the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo, the government has methodically worked to cast China as a progressive, welcoming model for the rest of the world to admire and emulate. The expansion of China’s soft power — the nation’s “stunted leg,” officials have declared — was called a national goal by Mr. Hu in his 2007 work report to the party’s Congress. With Mr. Liu’s award, that goal “is essentially dead in the water,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch , in a telephone interview. It may well remain there as long as Mr. Liu serves his 11-year prison sentence for subversion, levied after he helped write a manifesto calling for democratic reform and an end to the party’s monopoly on power. “You cannot make your political system very appealing to global public opinion,” Mr. Bequelin said, “when you have a Nobel Peace Prize winner in prison and his wife under house arrest.” At home, the party’s ability to manage news of Mr. Liu’s new fame is considerably greater. Few Chinese know who Mr. Liu is, and fewer still have enough interest in politics to follow his story . Yet officials have less direct control over the elite — the educated, well-traveled group of political and business leaders, and future leaders, who know full well what the Nobel Prize means. It is a group that can easily sidestep censorship barriers and that can recognize manipulation of the news when it sees it. “In this sense, there are already enough people in China who know about this,” said Liu Junning, a political scientist and former scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who has written extensively about political reform. “Their number is not a very important issue, or a problem. For the people who are interested in politics and are in these kinds of places, it’s enough that they know.” And when the furor over the award dies down, the party will still have to grapple with Mr. Wen’s call for faster political evolution. In recent weeks, some newspapers have ignored censors and published long accounts of Mr. Wen’s views on political restructuring, some of them featuring the prime minister’s recent appearance on the cover of Time magazine’s Asia edition. This week’s public demand for a free press by 23 retired party officials and intellectuals is not the first political broadside by liberal elders. But its language, including a charge that the Propaganda Department is a “black hand” that violates China’s Constitution, is unusually bold. But the party has faced strong domestic and international pressure before. And it has proved that it does not like to make decisions under pressure, not on revaluing its currency, and certainly not on changing its political system. “There are a lot of people going around saying that a gap is opening,” said David Bandurski, an analyst at the China Media Project of Hong Kong University, in a telephone interview this week. “I won’t succumb to this temptation. That is a game that has been played constantly in China — stepping forward, stepping back.” And if a gap had opened, how would one tell? Yu Haocheng, an 85-year-old retired publishing executive who signed the press-freedom manifesto, also signed Charter 08, the pro-democracy petition written by Liu Xiaobo and others. Asked this week who among influential figures might sympathize with the idea of a free press, he named Mr. Wen and Gen. Liu Yazhou, a National Defense University official known for his reformist political bent. “It’s unclear if there’s anyone else,” Mr. Yu said. Nor did he expect the authorities to respond to the elders’ latest set of demands. “There is never a response,” he said.

China
Liu Xiaobo
Censorship
Wen Jiabao
United Nations
Hu Jintao
Human Rights Watch
Politics and Government
Reform and Reorganization
Freedom of the Press


Mastermind in Murder of Anna Politkovskaya Remains Unknown

Abstract: MOSCOW — Moscow’s highest criminal court on Monday sentenced five men to prison, including two to life sentences, for the 2006 murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya , but left unsolved the question of who ordered the killing, the highest-profile attack on a Russian journalist of the last decade. Ms. Politkovskaya, who was known for scathing criticism of Kremlin policies in the Russian republic of Chechnya and of the local strongman Ramzan A. Kadyrov, was 48 when she was shot to death in a contract killing in her Moscow apartment block. On Monday, Judge Pavel Melyokhin sentenced Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, the organizer of the team that murdered Ms. Politkovskaya, and his nephew Rustam Makhmudov, the gunman, to life sentences in prison. The sentences for the men, who were convicted last month, were the toughest punishment to date in the long-running investigation into Ms. Politkovskaya’s death. Image Anna Politkovskaya, who was known for criticism of Kremlin policies, was killed in 2006. Credit Peter Endig/European Pressphoto Agency Yet that investigation has yielded little publicly about who wanted Ms. Politkovskaya killed and why. “The case cannot be closed because it has not been solved,” Vera Politkovskaya, Ms. Politkovskaya’s daughter, said by telephone. Critics have claimed there is a lack of political will in Russia for finding who stood behind Ms. Politkovskaya’s killing. After her death, President Vladimir V. Putin at a news conference in Dresden sought to play down Ms. Politkovskaya’s influence, calling her reporting “extremely insignificant for political life in Russia.” Ms. Politkovskaya’s murder, Mr. Putin said, brought Russia “far greater injuries and damage than her publications.” Since then, the investigation has lumbered forward with arrests, releases and retrials. In 2012, Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, a retired police lieutenant colonel, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for organizing surveillance of Ms. Politkovskaya before her murder, but denied he had ordered the killing. On Monday, Vladimir Markin, the spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee, said that “exhaustive measures are currently being taken to establishing the person who ordered the murder of Anna Politkovskaya.”

Murders
Anna Politkovskaya
Moscow
Russia
Criminal Sentence
Writer


N.F.L. Agent Gary Wichard, 60,Dies

Abstract: Gary Wichard, the longtime N.F.L. player agent who was suspended last year for his role in a recruiting scandal at North Carolina, died at his home in Westlake Village, Calif. He was 60. The cause was diabetes and pancreatic cancer, the public relations firm Rogers & Cowan said. An agent since 1980, Wichard’s clients included Dwight Freeney, Jason Taylor and Antonio Cromartie. Wichard was suspended for nine months by the N.F.L. players union in December for having “impermissible communication” with a North Carolina player who was not eligible for the draft.

Wichard Gary
Football
Deaths (Obituaries)
College Athletics
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations


World Bank Report Puts Agriculture at Core of Antipoverty Effort

Abstract: For the first time in a quarter century, the World Bank ’s flagship annual report on development puts agriculture and the productivity of small farmers at the heart of a global agenda to reduce poverty. Three-quarters of the world’s poor still live in the countryside. The World Development Report , released yesterday, is the first on agriculture since 1982. Just a week ago, an internal evaluation unit chided the bank for its neglect of agriculture in Africa and its plummeting financial support for that sector over the past 15 years — support that did not begin to grow significantly until last year. More broadly, the report crystallizes an emerging consensus among wealthy countries, philanthropists and African governments: Increased public investment in scientific research, rural roads, irrigation, credit, fertilizer and seeds — the basics of an agricultural economy — is crucial to helping Africa’s poor farmers grow more sorghum, corn, millet, cassava and rice on their miniature plots. Foreign aid for agriculture has plunged as support for global health and primary education has surged. The fight against AIDS and other diseases is keeping millions of people alive, and rising elementary school attendance is lifting literacy rates. But most poor Africans make their living in agriculture and need to grow more to feed themselves and earn their way out of destitution, many analysts say. “We’re not saying health and education aren’t important,” said Alain de Janvry, one of two authors of the report, “Agriculture for Development,” who has taught agricultural economics at the University of California, Berkeley, for 40 years. “But if you look at Africa, there’s no alternative to agriculture as a source of growth.” The World Bank is not the first to reach this conclusion. African governments, at a 2003 African Union summit, promised to more than double their own very low public spending on agriculture. In 2005, the United Nations Millennium Project, led by the Columbia University economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, advocated major investments to increase the productivity of poor farmers in Africa. Last year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation joined the Rockefeller Foundation to help bring a green revolution to Africa. The Gates Foundation, known for its work on global health, was motivated in part by an awareness that extreme poverty and malnutrition were underlying causes of much of the sickness and premature death plaguing Africa. But the bank, the world’s leading development institution and financier of antipoverty programs, plays a unique role in advising poor countries, and its return to agriculture is likely to influence practical policies across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where hundreds of millions of farmers and landless laborers are still mired in poverty. The 365-page report was conceived before the arrival of the bank’s new president, Robert B. Zoellick, but he embraced its themes yesterday in Washington, while acknowledging the recent critical evaluation of the bank’s own performance. “To make this successful, we’re going to need to increase investment,” he said at a forum that was shown live on the Web. Robert S. McNamara, an earlier World Bank president, initiated the last period of ambitious investment in African agriculture, in the 1970s. Internal evaluations found that many of those projects and subsequent ones failed for a variety of reasons. Often, they were complex, devised and run by professionals from outside the countries being helped and not adopted wholeheartedly by poor countries that had little capacity to carry them out independently and, sometimes, little commitment to poor farmers. In the 1980s, in the era of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the World Bank increasingly withdrew its support from agriculture and expected private markets to spur growth through competition. Bank officials even thought profit-seeking companies would build toll roads in remote parts of Africa. But, as the recent internal evaluation found, private markets often failed to deliver a range of goods and services farmers needed, including improved seeds, fertilizer and credit. In India’s green revolution, which began in the 1960s with the introduction of new high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat, the World Bank, the United States and the Rockefeller Foundation encouraged the Indian government to play a pivotal role in the provision of seeds, fertilizer and credit, said Uma Lele, an agricultural economist who worked at the bank for 35 years and evaluated many of its agricultural programs before retiring. The Indian state also set floor prices for wheat and rice to ensure farmers a return on their investments. In the effort to bring an agrarian revolution to Africa, much of the debate from now on will focus on the role that African governments should play in spurring farm productivity. Economists who have read the World Development Report said there was clearly still a great deal of ferment and disagreement within the bank about many of the particulars. For example, should African governments give farmers subsidies to buy fertilizer, and under what conditions? The report notes that agricultural subsidies have a way of becoming deeply entrenched politically long after their original purpose has been served. The report found, for example, that if European countries, the United States and other wealthy nations removed all tariffs and subsidies for cotton, soybeans and other oilseeds — practices that reduce the world price of those commodities and make it harder for unsubsidized farmers in poor countries to compete — developing countries’ share of world trade in cotton and oilseeds would be more than 80 percent in 2015 instead of only about half. Derek Byerlee, an agricultural economist with the bank who wrote the report with Professor de Janvry, said at a panel discussion yesterday that the United States’ subsidies to cotton growers were “directly and negatively impacting African farmers.” Professor de Janvry said the report was not meant to settle the complicated and difficult policy questions, but “to change the conversation.”

World Bank
Agriculture
Farmers
Africa
Third World and Developing Countries
Economic Conditions and Trends
Crop Controls and Subsidies
International Trade and World Market


Mets Hitters and New Coach Start to Mesh, With Help From a Net

Abstract: PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — When batting practice ended on Tuesday morning, Ruben Tejada stuck around the field for extra work. Kevin Long, the Mets’ new hitting coach, wanted him to try a new drill that Long had developed. Long placed a tall net beside home plate, across from Tejada, a right-handed hitter, to form a wall parallel to him. He instructed Tejada to stand in the box and measure the distance to the net; he had to be exactly a bat’s length away. Long explained that he would toss Tejada a pitch, underhand, on the inner part of the plate. He wanted Tejada to focus on his stance and on keeping his swing tight to his body. If his hands drifted too far out, his bat would hit the net. Long usually reminds players that it is a pull drill; it is useless trying to hit the ball the other way. Tejada took his place in the box, and Long started tossing. Tejada roped one line drive after another down the left-field line. A few went over the fence. Long did not give Tejada much more instruction. He just kept tossing pitches. “Look at how true that ball flies!” Long shouted. “Perfect!” Long calls the exercise the net drill, and it is an essential part of his coaching. For one, it gives players confidence that they can hit the inside pitch. It also forces them to keep their hands in tight, and with tighter swings, they can produce more force and bat speed. Long says the drill gives players their most explosive swings. But it is not a drill he uses every day or with every player. He uses it as a corrective, when a player’s swing looks off or his hands start drifting. To Long, the beauty of the drill is that he does not have to say much. The player senses the net, takes a few swings and can correct his action himself, in just one session. Image Long pitching to Ruben Tejada during the net drill, an exercise Long developed that aims to help players tighten their swings. Credit Ryan Stone for The New York Times “The drill really takes care of itself,” Long said. “They’re like, ‘Wow, there it is.’ ” Before the net drill, players would stand next to fences and take swings in the air to correct their strokes. In the early 2000s, when Long was coaching the Class AA Wichita Wranglers, the manager, Keith Bodie, suggested that they put a net next to the plate, to act as the fence, and toss balls to the players to see real-time results. Players fell in love with the exercise. They started calling it the home run drill, for all the homers they hit doing it. Long swore by its effectiveness and used the drill for years in the minors and throughout his eight-year tenure as the Yankees’ hitting coach. Perhaps no player loved the drill more than Robinson Cano did . Long said that when he started coaching Cano, he had trouble hitting the inside pitch. The drill helped fix that, and it became something Cano sought out. After hitting a home run in a game, Cano would ask Long to do the drill the next day. Then he would hit another home run. “We’re doing it again,” Cano would tell Long, somewhat sternly. Once, Long said, they ran the drill four days in a row. The drill is not for everyone, though. Derek Jeter, for instance, hit to the opposite field so often and so well, Long said, that his drill would not have helped much. Only a few Mets players have tried the drill so far. Long is still getting to know the players and their swings, and he is introducing it slowly. He spent his off-season studying hours of footage on each Met, breaking down areas for improvement, taking notes. He watched some players’ footage two, three, four times. Image Granderson hitting a home run off the Nationals' A. J. Cole during a spring training game on Thursday. Credit Brad Barr/USA Today Sports, via Reuters It helps Long’s cause that he is a bit of a celebrity. He has helped a team win a World Series. He used his drills on star Yankees, including Cano and Mark Teixeira. Alex Rodriguez posed for the cover of his book. “He’s one of the best at his job in the league,” the Mets’ David Wright said of Long. “He commands respect from Day 1. He’s an attention grabber. As hitters, we tend to gravitate toward him because he’s worked with some of the best players in the game.” The Mets already have Long working on a few projects. The team wants Juan Lagares to increase his plate discipline and potentially be the leadoff hitter, so Long has him doing vision drills. In one drill, the numbers 1 to 7 are written on a set of baseballs, which are then pitched to Lagares. He is instructed to swing at only Nos. 5 and 6 as a way to learn how to track pitches. The Mets also want Lucas Duda to hit better against left-handed pitchers. Long, who is left-handed, can throw Duda batting practice and soft toss, challenging him with different arm angles. The more pitches Duda tracks from the left side and the more angles he sees, Long said, the more comfortable he will be. Those drills worked for another left-handed batter, Curtis Granderson. When the Yankees traded for Granderson before the 2010 season, he had a reputation for struggling against left-handed pitchers. Long threw Granderson batting practice, fixed his mechanics and pushed for him to play more against lefties to put their work to the test. Then, whenever Granderson’s swing looked off, Long had him complete the net drill. In 2011 and 2012, Granderson hit a combined 84 home runs, the most in the majors in that period. Thirty of those homers were against left-handed pitchers. The Mets signed Granderson and expected some of that power to carry over. But he started last season slowly. A few times during the year, when his swing felt off, he set up the drill without Long and asked whichever coach was available to toss baseballs to him. When the Mets hired Long in the off-season, they knew Granderson would benefit. After years of working together, Long and Granderson have become close friends. Granderson may be the best example of the impact Long can have. Whenever Granderson’s father, Curtis Sr., sees Long, he reminds him, “You know you’re still welcome for Thanksgiving.”

Mets
Ruben Tejada
Kevin Long
Robinson Cano
Baseball
Curtis Granderson


Obama, in Shift, Says He’ll Reject Public Financing

Abstract: Citing the specter of attacks from independent groups on the right, Senator Barack Obama announced Thursday that he would opt out of the public financing system for the general election. His decision to break an earlier pledge to take public money will quite likely transform the landscape of presidential campaigns, injecting hundreds of millions of additional dollars into the race and raising doubts about the future of public financing for national races. In becoming the first major party candidate to reject public financing and its attendant spending limits, Mr. Obama contended that the public financing apparatus was broken and that his Republican opponents were masters at “gaming” the system and would spend “millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations” smearing him. But it is not at all clear at this point in the evolving campaign season that Republicans will have the advantage when it comes to support from independent groups. In fact, the Democrats appear much better poised to benefit from such efforts. Republican activists have been fretting about the absence so far of any major independent effort, comparable to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which helped undermine Senator John Kerry’s campaign in 2004, to boost Senator John McCain , the presumed Republican nominee, who has badly trailed Mr. Obama in raising money. “As of today, he’s looking for ghosts that don’t exist,” Chris LaCivita, a Republican strategist who helped direct the Swift Boat effort, said of Mr. Obama’s rationale for rejecting the financing. Mr. Obama’s decision, which had long been expected given his record-breaking money-raising prowess during the Democratic primary season, was immediately criticized by Mr. McCain, who confirmed Thursday that he would accept public financing. “This is a big, big deal,” said Mr. McCain, of Arizona, who was touring flooded areas in Iowa. “He has completely reversed himself and gone back, not on his word to me, but the commitment he made to the American people.” Mr. Obama’s advisers said Thursday that they believed he could raise $200 million to $300 million for the general election, not counting money raised for the Democratic National Committee , if he were freed from the shackles of accepting public money. Signaling how his ability to raise record amounts was already affecting the race, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, on Thursday released his first advertisement of the general election, spending what Republicans estimated as $4 million in 18 states, including some that Democrats have not contested in recent elections. In making its decision to bypass public financing, the campaign declined an infusion of $84.1 million in money from federal taxpayers. The decision means that Mr. Obama will have to spend considerably more time raising money — he will head to California next week to open the effort — at the expense of spending time meeting voters. To make the exchange worthwhile, aides said, Mr. Obama would need to raise at least twice as much money than he would have received under public financing, with a goal of raising three times as much. But in 17 months of raising money for the primary campaign, the Obama campaign has amassed a record 1.5 million individual contributors. Those are the first people the campaign will approach for general election donations. The public financing system limits the amount of money that campaigns can spend in return for the public money. It was set up to reduce the influence of private donations in the political process. According to aides, Mr. Obama reached his decision knowing he might tarnish his desired reformist image — he pledged last year to accept public financing if his opponent did as well — but strategists for the campaign made the calculation that it was worth it, in part, because of the potential for the Republican National Committee to seriously out-raise its Democratic counterpart. The Republican committee finished May with nearly $54 million in the bank, compared with just $4 million for the Democratic National Committee. “It’s a gap, to say the least,” said Robert Gibbs, the campaign’s communications director, of the disparity in party fund-raising. There are limitations, however, to the use of party money that Mr. McCain is expected to rely on. Only about $19 million of it can be spent in a coordinated manner with the party’s presidential candidate, although the party can spend an unlimited amount without coordinating with the campaign. The party and the candidate’s campaign can also split the costs of “hybrid” advertisements that must be worded in such a way that refers to both the presidential campaign, as well as other party candidates down the ticket, which media strategists say can be cumbersome. Early last year, before he became a money-raising phenomenon, Mr. Obama floated in a filing with the Federal Election Commission the possibility of working out an agreement with the other party’s nominee to accept public financing if both sides agreed. Later, when asked in a questionnaire whether he would participate in the system if his opponent did the same, Mr. Obama wrote, “yes,” adding, “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.” Although Mr. Obama pledged more recently to discuss a deal with the McCain campaign, Mr. McCain’s aides said that there were never any real negotiations. The size and focus of Mr. Obama’s new advertising campaign left no doubt that he was prepared to spend his money in ways that Democrats could only dream about four years ago. Among the 18 states where his advertisements will begin running on Friday are Alaska, Georgia and Montana — states so reliably Republican that neither party has seen fit to advertise in them in any big way during the past few presidential contests. “I think the last guy to buy Georgia was General Sherman,” said Alex Castellanos, a longtime Republican advertising strategist. “It’s a very aggressive general election strategy. With his kind of resources, you’re not just buying swing states. He’s trying to put new states in play.” On paper, Mr. Obama is playing catch-up to Mr. McCain, who began his advertising campaign two weeks ago. But Mr. McCain’s campaign has been largely focused on roughly 10 states that have been traditional battlegrounds during presidential campaigns, including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Mr. Obama, who has sharply criticized the influence of money in politics and has barred contributions from federal lobbyists and political action committees to his campaign and the party, announced his decision Thursday in a videotaped message to supporters. He argued that the tens of thousands of small donors who had fueled his campaign over the Internet represented a “new kind of politics,” free from the influence of special interests. The Obama campaign highlighted Thursday the fact that 93 percent of the more than three million contributions it had received were for $200 or less. But Mr. Obama has also benefited from a formidable high-dollar network that has collected more money in contributions of $1,000 or more than even Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s once-vaunted team of bundlers of donations. Indeed, Mr. Obama stands to receive a significant boost from fund-raisers who formerly supported Mrs. Clinton, of New York. Michael Coles, a former Clinton fund-raiser from Atlanta, said in an interview that he was one of 20 to 30 Clinton supporters who joined Mr. Obama’s national finance committee at a meeting on Thursday in Chicago. Members of the committee have each pledged to raise $250,000 for Mr. Obama. People from both camps said they expected most of Mrs. Clinton’s top fund-raisers to align behind Mr. Obama, and that they could raise at least $50 million for him. Mr. Obama, however, cast his decision on Thursday as a necessary counter to unscrupulous supporters of Mr. McCain’s. “We’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies’ running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations,” Mr. Obama said. Mr. McCain has been highly critical in the past of 527s and other independent groups, but he seems to have softened his rhetoric lately, saying his campaign could not be expected to “referee” such groups. Nevertheless, Republican strategists said many affluent donors who might be in a position to finance 527 groups were wary this time because of the legal headaches that bedeviled many of these groups after the 2004 election, as well as the possibility they might incur the wrath of Mr. McCain. The Obama campaign has urged its major fund-raisers not to give to outside groups and cited the decision recently by the leaders of Progressive Media USA, which had been expected to be the major Democratic independent television advertising effort, to shut down, as proof that Mr. Obama’s instructions were having an effect. Activists on the left, however, said they sensed the campaign was mainly concerned about advertising by independent groups, wanting to be able to control Mr. Obama’s message, but was willing to accept help from outside groups doing other activities on his behalf, like voter registration and turning out voters. “It’s my understanding that they were primarily focused on the 527s dealing with radio and TV ads,” said Martin Frost, president of America Votes, a major 527 effort, which is actually an umbrella organization for more than 30 liberal groups, concentrating on coordinating their respective efforts to get out the vote.

Finances
Democratic National Committee
Republican National Committee
Obama Barack
Presidential Election of 2008
Presidential Elections (US)
Political Advertising
Republican Party
Democratic Party
McCain John


Marlins’ Johnson Masters Mets

Abstract: MIAMI GARDENS , Fla. (AP) — Even with less than his best, Josh Johnson showed he could still beat the Mets on Wednesday night. Johnson, the Florida Marlins ’ ace, gave up nine hits in six innings, but that was enough to keep him undefeated against the Mets with a 5-3 victory. Johnson improved to 7-0 with an earned run average of 2.30 in nine career starts against the Mets. The Mets lost their fifth game in a row. Johnson (13-3) allowed three runs. Three relievers combined for three scoreless innings, with Leo Nunez pitching the ninth for his 16th save in 20 chances. While the Mets seemingly cannot beat Johnson, Mike Pelfrey cannot beat the Marlins. Pelfrey (9-9) fell to 1-6 in 10 starts against Florida, with six losses in a row. He gave up 11 hits, 5 walks and 5 runs in five and two-thirds innings. He threw a season-high 118 pitches, including 71 in the first three innings. “Maybe they like fastballs,” he said. “I like to throw fastballs. Tonight they were patient at the plate. They made me throw it over the middle, and they hit me hard.” The Mets’ Fernando Tatis had three hits and drove in a run.


Wife Convicted of Killing Husband in Knoxville

Abstract: KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Knox County jury on Monday convicted a woman of first-degree murder in the shooting death of her second husband. The sequestered jury returned the verdict against the woman, Raynella Dossett Leath, 61, after about nine hours of deliberations over two days. Ms. Dossett Leath, a retired nurse, was tried for a second time after a jury deadlocked last year. She received an automatic life sentence and must serve 51 years before being eligible for parole. Prosecutors said Ms. Dossett Leath shot her second husband, David Leath, 57, a retired barber, in their bedroom in March 2003. Ms. Dossett Leath claimed her husband killed himself, and her lawyer maintained she was not home when Mr. Leath was shot. She is also charged with murder in the 1992 death of her first husband, Ed Dossett, a former Knox County prosecutor, and is awaiting trial in that case. Investigators determined that three shots were fired from the revolver found near Mr. Leath’s body. According to testimony during the trial, Mr. Leath was heavily impaired by drugs and died instantly when the fatal shot severed his brain stem. The state contended that Ms. Dossett Leath missed on the first shot, hit with a second one, then placed the gun in his hand for a third shot to get gunshot residue on the hand. No evidence directly linked her to the crime. In the other case, officials originally concluded Mr. Dossett had been knocked down by his cattle and ruled it an accidental death. But an investigation into Mr. Leath’s death prompted the authorities to reopen the Dossett case. A medical examiner testified that toxicology reports completed after Mr. Dossett’s autopsy and burial in 1992 indicated he might have died from an overdose of morphine.

Murders and Attempted Murders
Dossett Leath Raynella
Knoxville (Tenn)
Decisions and Verdicts
Leath David
Dossett Ed


All-Italian Open Final Is an Unlikely First

Abstract: Flavia Pennetta sat in the main interview room at the United States Open an hour after her stunning semifinal romp over No. 2-seeded Simona Halep, as Serena Williams smoothly won the first set of her semifinal match against 43rd-ranked Roberta Vinci. Pennetta, 33, who cruised to a 6-1, 6-3 victory to reach her first Grand Slam final, was asked to assess Williams, her presumed opponent in the final. “Against Serena?” the 26th-seeded Pennetta asked. “I mean, you never know. They are still fighting, and they are still playing.” Image Flavia Pennetta eliminated second-seeded Simona Halep. In 2009, Pennetta was the first Italian woman to reach the top 10. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Pennetta’s perfunctory pause proved prudent. The unseeded Vinci, 32, would turn the match around, stunning Williams, 2-6, 6-4, 6-4, and stopping her Grand Slam bid three sets short of glory. Williams’s scheduled coronation on Saturday had caused the women’s final to sell out before the men’s final for the first time in Open history. On Wednesday, tickets fetched a median price on the secondary market of $1,529, according to SeatGeek. But when Williams fell, prices swiftly followed, with the median plummeting to $370 by Friday evening. Now it is an all-Italian final, a Grand Slam first, and a highly unlikely one at that. Pennetta defeated Vinci in the 2013 Open quarterfinals, 6-4, 6-1, and holds a 5-4 career advantage. Pennetta and Vinci were partners when they won the 1999 French Open girls’ doubles title as teenagers and competed together in the Fed Cup. Ubaldo Scanagatta, a veteran Italian tennis reporter, was incredulous, calling it “the most unexpected day in 40 years of Grand Slams.” “I don’t know if I woke up; I’m probably still dreaming,” he said. “I like the two players. Well, I’ve seen 48 slams of Pennetta, 44 of Vinci. I never expected in my life that I would see them playing a Grand Slam final, firstly; and one against the other, secondly. That’s honestly unbelievable.” Five years ago, Francesca Schiavone won the 2010 French Open in similarly stunning fashion, but hopes for another title soon were slim. Scanagatta said that Pennetta and Vinci had not carried his country’s highest hopes; those belonged to Camila Giorgi, 23, an explosive but erratic player who is ranked 36th. “In Italy, we’re convinced that Camila Giorgi has the biggest potential, because when she plays well, she seems to be able to beat everybody,” he said. “About Pennetta, we always say that she has one weakness — she makes everybody else play well because she’s playing flat; she gives rhythm. And so for many years, we thought that she was a great player but not capable to win a big, big major event.” Pennetta was the first Italian woman to reach the top 10, peaking at No. 10 in 2009. But she sustained a wrist injury in 2012, and she dropped from the top 100 in 2013, nearly causing her to retire. Her reputation as a talented also-ran changed somewhat last year, however, when she surprised many by winning in Indian Wells, Calif., a tournament often called the “Fifth Slam” (though Williams was absent from the draw). Pennetta has played well in the Open, falling in the quarterfinals in four of her last six appearances, and reaching the semifinals in 2013. Still, in a season during which her ranking slipped back outside the top 20, few could have anticipated Pennetta’s run, beating two top-five players, Halep and fifth-seeded Petra Kvitova, as well as the 2011 Open champion, Samantha Stosur. On Friday, she reeled off 15 straight points to pull away from Halep in the second set. “It’s amazing, because also 20 days ago my physio asked me if I ever think that I can win a Grand Slam or be in final of Grand Slam, and I say, ‘No,’ ” Pennetta said, smiling. “I mean, for a lot of reasons I think my answer was no, but, like always, say you never know. I mean, you just have to play and try your best, and the good things are coming when you never expect, most of the time.” “When you want too much something and you really, like, say, ‘This is the moment I have to do this and that,’ always it’s going to be a big mess.” Vinci, who is one of only two women in the top 50 with a one-handed backhand (Carla Suárez Navarro is the other), had even fewer reasons to expect greatness. Crestfallen by narrowly missing out on her dream of a spot in the top 10 — she peaked at No. 11 in June 2013 — Vinci slumped last year, ending the season ranked 47th. Her doubles partnership and friendship with Sara Errani, with whom she had won five Grand Slam doubles titles and reached the No. 1 ranking, ended amicably last spring. Though her results stabilized during the summer hardcourt season, Vinci had still not defeated a top-10 opponent in nearly a year before taking the court against Williams. In the afterglow of the stunning win, Vinci’s brother, Francesco, gave his sister’s longtime coach, Francesco Cina, an honorific to celebrate the win: “Cinatoglou,” after Williams’s coach Patrick Mouratoglou. Asked if the achievement felt real, Vinci said it did and then smiled broadly, “And tomorrow,” she said, “one Italian wins for sure.”

Simona Halep
Serena Williams
Roberta Vinci
Tennis
Francesca Schiavone
Flavia Penetta
US Open Tennis


Six Games In, and Spotlight Is on Mets’ Manuel

Abstract: DENVER — It was in this city nestled, appropriately enough, in the Rocky Mountains, that Bobby Valentine , then the manager of the Mets , had an epic, emotional outburst in his office at the end of a 12-game losing streak in a deteriorating 2002 season. Reacting to widespread speculation that he was trying to get himself fired, Valentine gave an unsolicited, impassioned defense of his actions during a postgame news conference and nearly broke down doing so. The outburst came on the night of Aug. 23, and the Mets had a 58-69 record at the time. Valentine kept his job, but only for six more weeks. When the season ended, with the Mets in last place, Valentine was gone, just two years after he took the team to the World Series. Eight years later, Mets Manager Jerry Manuel will be back in that same office Tuesday, perhaps facing questions about his own future, particularly after providing an unsolicited, and revealing, mea culpa on Sunday afternoon after his team was shut down and embarrassed by the aging and unimposing Livan Hernandez of the Washington Nationals. Critical baseball games do not usually exist in early April, but Sunday’s 5-2 loss seems to have taken on an afterlife that speaks to Manuel’s lack of job security as he tries to turn around a Mets team that had a miserable 2009 season filled with injuries and poor play. After Sunday’s game, Manuel took aim at the final pitching line against the soft-tossing Hernandez, who, after all, pitched for the Mets in 2009 and was not good enough to stick with the team the whole season. On Sunday, Hernandez’s line read seven innings, five hits, three walks, no runs. “We appeared unprepared,” Manuel said. “I take responsibility.” Manuel may have been trying to protect his players, who did little to help his cause over the first six games. Or perhaps he was being cagey, letting it be known that the players had not followed the game plan the coaching staff had laid out against Hernandez. Still, a manager rarely, if ever, uses the word “unprepared,” even someone like Manuel, who is generally uninhibited in his remarks to reporters. In this instance, he was either being startlingly honest or perhaps revealing some of the pressure he feels as a manager operating on a one-year contract and a lukewarm endorsement from the team’s chief operating officer, Jeff Wilpon. It was Wilpon, in remarks at the end of last season, who said that Manuel and General Manager Omar Minaya were under orders to show improvement in 2010, or face dismissal. One week, and six games, into the 2010 season, that improvement has yet to show itself. John Maine and Oliver Perez have each pitched once, and each looked no more effective than they did in spring training or last season. They make up two-fifths of the starting rotation. The team has no left-handed power except for Mike Jacobs, who batted cleanup for part of the first week, even though he is a backup player who was fortunate to make the roster. After six games, he is batting all of .133 and is already being booed. He will be presumably be pushed aside when Daniel Murphy returns from rehabilitating his twisted knee and reclaims the first-base job, but Murphy, although also left-handed, does not hit with much power. Carlos Beltran does, but he is still rehabilitating his surgically repaired knee, and no one on the Mets, including Manuel, knows when he is coming back. All Manuel does know is that his team had Jose Reyes back leading off on Sunday and that Washington was playing without its best player, third baseman Ryan Zimmerman, and that the Nationals won easily, anyway. And that his right fielder, Jeff Francouer, spoke of the team going through the motions against Hernandez. Manuel is usually poised in defeat and unlikely to ever have an outburst the way the more emotional Valentine did. Still, if the losses mount, he may quickly become a former Mets manager, the way Valentine did eight years ago.

Baseball
New York Mets
Coaches and Managers
Manuel Jerry
Valentine Bobby
Minaya Omar
Wilpon Jeff


Kurdish Rebels Free Turkish Soldiers

Abstract: DAHOK, Iraq , Nov. 4 — Kurdish guerrillas on Sunday released eight Turkish soldiers who were captured two weeks ago in a bloody ambush that enraged Turkey and helped stir its government to the verge of invading northern Iraq. The top commander for the rebels, Murat Karayilan, described the move as an effort to soften relations with Turkish officials, who are mulling whether to carry out a wide assault on sanctuaries for the Kurdish rebels from Turkey hidden in the rugged mountains inside Iraq. Fighters from the rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, handed the Turkish soldiers over to officials in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. They were given to American military officials, turned over to Turkish authorities, and flown home. The move was unlikely to assuage the deep anger of Turkish officials, who describe the guerrillas as irredeemable terrorists. But the release may strengthen the hand of Bush administration officials preparing to make a last-ditch effort to talk Turkey out of an invasion when the country’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meets with President Bush in Washington this week. The Turkish Foreign Ministry issued no statement about the soldiers and a spokesman did not answer calls for comment on Sunday. The release puts “some cards in the hands of President Bush to play,” said Cengiz Candar, a political analyst and columnist for the Turkish newspaper Referans. Even if the meeting in Washington achieves nothing, “it would be very difficult for Turkish authorities to come back here and without any international backing come back and enter Iraq.” The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, which has been stung by criticism from its patron and close ally, the United States, that it has done little to curb guerrilla activities, sought to capitalize on its role in urging the prisoners’ release. “We are sending a message to Turkey, and now we want Turkey to answer this message,” one senior Kurdish official said. But Turkey has derided past calls to the rebels by the Iraqi Kurds for peace and criticized as “theater” the limited steps Iraqi and Kurdish officials have taken. The soldiers were captured Oct. 21 during a surprise attack three miles inside Turkey that left 12 Turkish soldiers dead. Speaking on a satellite television channel, the rebel commander Mr. Karayilan said he hoped the move would show Turkey that the group wanted peace. He also said he hoped Turkey would now improve its treatment of Abdullah Ocalan, the rebel group’s leader, who is imprisoned in Turkey. “Turkey is slowly pinching Abdullah Ocalan in the prison,” Mr. Karayilan said, describing Mr. Ocalan as being in poor health. Sunni Adviser Is Killed BAGHDAD, Nov. 4 — Gunmen killed an adviser to Iraq’s Finance Ministry and his driver as they drove through an area of Baghdad on Sunday morning, the police said, on a day when at least 25 Iraqis were killed or found dead across the country. Qutaiba Badr al-Deen, a Sunni adviser to the ministry, was traveling through a mostly Sunni area of western Baghdad when the attack occurred. Elsewhere in the capital, a car bomb killed at least one person, wounding four more, and the authorities found four bodies in various places throughout the city. Much of the day’s violence, however, occurred north of the capital. In Diyala Province, a restive mixed area just north of the capital, at least seven people were killed by roadside bombs, by clashes between gunmen and Iraqi security forces or by mortars, which killed an 8-year-old child in Khalis. The authorities also found two bodies and a severed head among the farms and villages outside Baquba. Farther north, in Tikrit, a suicide car bomber killed three people and wounded 16 more, the police said, while three bodies showing signs of torture were also found south of the mostly Sunni city.

Kurds
Iraq
Turkey
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare
Kurdistan Workers Party


France’s Worley Wins Again

Abstract: Tessa Worley of France won a third straight women’s World Cup giant slalom, and Maria Riesch of Germany finished second and overtook Lindsey Vonn at the top of the overall standings. Worley finished her two runs on the Panorama course in Semmering, Austria, in a combined time of 2 minutes 9.66 seconds to beat Riesch by 0.62 seconds. Kathrin Hölzl, the world champion from Germany, was third.

World Cup (Skiing)
Worley Tessa
Riesch Maria
Vonn Lindsey
Mancuso Julia
Sullivan Marco


Emergency Declared in Ferguson After Shooting

Abstract: FERGUSON, Mo. — The St. Louis County executive declared a state of emergency here on Monday as officials and activists sought to regain control of the volatile streets after plainclothes police officers shot and critically wounded an 18-year-old black man who they said was firing on them late the night before. The police said the man, Tyrone Harris Jr., was among two groups of young people who exchanged gunfire near peaceful protests late Sunday on the first anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager who was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson. Prosecutors on Monday charged Mr. Harris, of the St. Louis suburb Northwoods, with 10 counts, including four of felony assault on a law enforcement officer. The declaration of a state of emergency by the county executive, Steve Stenger, empowered the county police force and its top commander, Chief Jon Belmar, to oversee police operations in and around Ferguson, where police units from surrounding towns arrived on Monday to bolster efforts to maintain calm. Gunfire on the fringes of demonstrations commemorating Mr. Brown’s death — which set off looting, arson and confrontations with the police last year — unnerved residents and demonstrators over the weekend. Image Protesters on West Florissant Avenue on Monday night. Credit Whitney Curtis for The New York Times “The recent acts of violence will not be tolerated in a community that has worked so tirelessly over the last year to rebuild and become stronger,” Mr. Stenger said in a statement. “Chief Belmar shall exercise all powers and duties necessary to preserve order, prevent crimes, and protect the life and property of our citizens.” On Monday, protesters who had commemorated Mr. Brown throughout the weekend staged acts of civil disobedience across the region. They protested incarceration rates and prison contractors in Clayton, the county seat, and held a rally outside the federal courthouse in St. Louis, where nearly five dozen people were arrested. Another 60 or so were arrested after blocking traffic for about 30 minutes during the evening rush on Interstate 70 in the St. Louis suburbs. Around 10 p.m., police officers and state troopers began to make arrests after some demonstrators did not clear West Florissant Avenue, which was scarred by vandalism and looting a year ago. There were isolated scuffles, and some frozen water bottles were hurled toward officers. Some protesters were not so quick to embrace the police version of the shooting of Mr. Harris, whose family has questioned whether he fired on the police or was even carrying a weapon. The authorities said they had recovered a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer next to Mr. Harris that was reported stolen last year. Still, there seemed to be agreement among some protest leaders — many of whom were from the region, but others who had come into town to commemorate Mr. Brown — that much of the trouble has been caused by young people with no connection to the demonstrations and who were hanging out along the street. “We continually talk and engage folks and try to help them understand what it is to actually be in confrontation, what resistance looks like, what organized resistance looks like versus like some of what happened last night,” Montague Simmons, the executive director of the Organization for Black Struggle, said Monday. “Some of those folks were not there to protest, obviously. They were just there for their own reasons. I guess the point for us is making sure we’ve got enough people on hand that when that happens, we’re able to help keep folks safe.” Image Protesters and the police faced off on West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Mo., on Monday night. Credit Whitney Curtis for The New York Times Still, Mr. Simmons faulted the county’s decision to declare a state of emergency, warning that an overly aggressive police stance might provoke new unrest. Protest leaders had also criticized the police for showing up in riot gear late Sunday. “The state of emergency is the result of county government’s unwillingness to control the police and authorities, who used excessive force on a crowd that was retreating as instructed,” he said in a statement. The executive order will allow for certain staffing changes to bolster the police presence, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stenger said. It also could allow for a curfew to be put in place, though that step has not been taken. What Happened in Ferguson? Here’s what you need to know about events in Ferguson, Mo. Thousands of peaceful demonstrators commemorated Mr. Brown’s death with rallies, concerts, demonstrations and church services through the weekend. Though both a local grand jury and federal prosecutors cleared the white police officer who killed him, Darren Wilson, of criminal wrongdoing, Mr. Brown’s death led to protests against police violence across the country and helped start a national debate on law enforcement policies in minority communities. On Sunday, the mood of the demonstrations started to become tense after a couple of people broke into a beauty supply store along West Florissant Avenue and several police cars responded, with officers lining up along the storefront. Dozens of protesters blocked traffic and started moving off the roadway to yell at the police officers. But when several squad cars raced to an intersection nearby and dozens of officers in riot gear formed a skirmish line, the demonstrators surged back into the street. After an hourlong standoff, gunfire broke out about 300 yards away in a strip mall where dozens of people who were not part of the protest were milling about. Image Protesters marched in St. Louis on Monday after a weekend of commemorations of the killing a year ago of Michael Brown. Credit Jeff Roberson/Associated Press Shots were being exchanged between two groups, according to the police. Mr. Harris fired a handgun as he ran across West Florissant, the police said in court documents. Four plainclothes officers in an unmarked sport-utility vehicle drove toward Mr. Harris with the S.U.V.’s red and blue lights flashing, the police said, and he fired upon them. They got out and chased him, and after an exchange of gunfire, Mr. Harris was hit, the police said. But Mr. Harris’s grandmother said that his girlfriend, who was with him, told her that Mr. Harris was running across West Florissant to her car to escape gunfire. The grandmother, Gwen Drisdel, said she did not know whether Mr. Harris was armed. It would not be unreasonable that he might carry a firearm because of how violent the streets are, she said, but added, “I don’t believe that he would disrespect police like that.” Image The police come upon a man lying in a parking lot with what appear to be gunshot wounds along West Florissant Avenue. Credit Scott Olson/Getty Images Mr. Harris was a friend of Mr. Brown’s, Ms. Drisdel said, and he graduated from the same high school, Normandy, this year. Mr. Harris was searching for a job, she said, and was interested in truck driving. No family members have been allowed to visit Mr. Harris in the hospital, she said. But she did learn that doctors were concerned about a bullet near his spine that they might not be able to remove, she said. Mr. Harris was being held on a $250,000 cash bond. Hours after Mr. Harris was wounded, two other teenagers were shot and wounded by an unknown assailant on Canfield Drive, where Mr. Brown was killed, according to the police. The authorities were still investigating whether there was a connection between the shootings. The Police Department also said it deployed smoke canisters to disperse crowds on Canfield, though demonstrators said the substance was tear gas. Video Gunfire was heard Sunday night in Ferguson, Mo., during a protest commemorating the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old who was shot by a white police officer last year. Credit Credit Whitney Curtis for The New York Times Some political leaders who have denounced the police in the past were not so critical in the wake of the recent violence. “I didn’t see anything related to the shooting that I personally saw police handle improperly,” said Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman who was in the strip mall near where the gunfire originated Sunday night. “Based upon being out there and what I saw and heard and even felt go whizzing by my head, it was not initiated by police. It was a violent encounter that then apparently spread across the street.” State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Democrat whose district includes Ferguson, said Monday that she was working to understand what led to the officer-involved shooting. The shootings reinforced the need for protesters to police themselves and ensure that demonstrations remain peaceful, she said. “I want people who are interested in protesting to continue doing that in a very peaceful way,” she said. “We also have to learn a lot of lessons and teach.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


For Its New Shows, Amazon Adds Art to Its Data

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Joe Lewis, a television executive at Amazon, lies on his stomach on a rumpled bed. Jill Soloway, the Emmy-nominated writer and director, sits next to him, stroking the back of his head. The two stare at a pair of monitors, watching the filming of a scene in the next room from their new dark comedy about a family in which the father comes out as transgender. “What Amazon has been able to do is create something almost like an indie studio from the 1970s,” Ms. Soloway said. That vibe is a far cry from Amazon’s initial foray into television production, a tech-oriented approach driven by data analysis. Ms. Soloway’s new show, “Transparent,” is one of four new series that Amazon will unveil in the coming months as the company tries to find the right balance between art and algorithms. After an underwhelming start, it has increased its gamble on creating its own shows to draw new customers to its Prime subscription service. Amazon’s push comes during a glut of new programming and fierce competition for viewers. The traditional broadcast and cable networks continue to ramp up their investment in programing, while other insurgents like Netflix and Hulu are trying to distinguish their services by pouring more money into creating new shows. Known for its retailing prowess, Amazon turned heads when it entered the cozy, relationship-driven world of Hollywood four years ago. Rather than hiring established talent, it started a studios group to develop feature films and television series based on online submissions. It later started a unique program, posting TV pilots to the web and analyzing viewer data and feedback to determine which shows to give the green light. Last year, the first slate of those much-hyped original productions appeared on its Prime Instant Video streaming service, and failed to make much of a splash. The shows’ debuts garnered little attention or critical acclaim, especially compared with the notice and strong reviews for Netflix’s “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.” So far, only one — the Washington-meets-frat-house comedy “Alpha House” — has been renewed for a second season. Rather than retreat, Amazon is pressing its video bet and conscientiously adding more artistic nuance to its science of programming. The company recently named Judith McGrath, the former chief executive of MTV Networks, to its board and announced plans to invest $100 million into original content in the third quarter of 2014. (Hollywood executives said that Amazon previously seemed less willing to pay up for programming than other media groups, especially compared with its rival Netflix, which reportedly spent about $100 million for two seasons of “House of Cards.”) Usually secretive about its business strategy, Amazon is parading studio executives and talent before the press to build buzz. “It’s not like you can come in on Tuesday and the computer says: ‘Doot, doot, doot. Here are the shows you are going to do,’ ” Roy Price, head of Amazon Studios, recently told a room full of television critics. “It’s not ‘The Barefoot Executive,’ ” he added, referencing the 1971 film about a pet chimpanzee named Raffles who predicts the popularity of television programs. “You have to use some judgment as well.” The company is still learning the ropes, though. Last month, it rankled some critics when it failed to provide release dates for its new shows and viewer numbers for past ones. Many critics and viewers complained about not knowing how to find the programs on Amazon’s site. Image The actors Jeffrey Tambor, second from right, and Alexandra Billings, right, filming a scene for "Transparent." Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times Like Netflix, Amazon does not release audience figures for its programs or subscriber counts for its Prime service. A recent report from the research firm Park Associates revealed that Amazon made steady gains in the United States streaming video market in the last two years. About 20 percent of all homes with broadband connections now have a subscription to Amazon’s Prime service, an average annual growth rate of about 55 percent since 2012. (In comparison, Netflix service subscriptions grew an average of 16 percent per year during the same period.) Amazon has said that an increasing number of Prime members are streaming more free content, and that those customers ultimately buy more products across the site. In addition to free two-day shipping, the $99 Prime annual membership includes streaming access to a library of movies and television shows from networks including Time Warner’s HBO, as well as more than a million songs. In an interview, Mr. Price said that Amazon was happy with its initial foray into original programming. The self-described Hollywood émigré turned tech executive — he holds seven United States patents — predicted that in 10 years people were likely to watch a stream of personalized videos rather than one-size-fits-all traditional broadcasts. “Often things change more than people expect them to change,” he said. To that end, Mr. Price said Amazon did not need its original series to become blockbuster hits, but rather to inspire passion and prove meaningful to groups of people. He listed “Transparent” as an example of the type of programming that Amazon was pursuing, with a distinct tone, novelistic storytelling approach and cinematic quality. Ms. Soloway, the show’s creator, is known for her work on the HBO series “Six Feet Under,” the Showtime series “United States of Tara” and the film “Afternoon Delight.” All told, the company has released two shows for adults and three for children, and has announced that it is producing full series from six other pilots. Projects to be released in the coming months include the science fiction drama “The After” from the “X-Files” creator Chris Carter; “Bosch,” based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling book series; and “Mozart in the Jungle,” about behind-the-scenes drama at a New York symphony. While Amazon has taken the tactic of producing its own series, it has not ruled out the strategy of picking up exclusive rights to series produced by traditional studios, a model deployed by Netflix and others. Most of the projects currently in the pipeline are the works of established Hollywood talent. Notably absent from the lineup of originals are online submissions from amateurs. (Amazon said that a coming children’s pilot was discovered through an online submission.) Many of these established creators said that they had not considered Amazon as an outlet until an agent made the suggestion. “I am a Luddite,” said Eric Overmyer, the co-writer and executive producer for “Bosch,” who has worked on series including “The Wire” and “Law & Order.” “I don’t know how to get my computer on my TV.” Ultimately, several writers and directors said they were lured by the opportunity to explore a new frontier of digital and video storytelling that broke free of television standards. It also helped that Amazon paid competitive rates, they said. The creators also said that despite their employer’s algorithm-driven image, they were going with their creative gut. Producers said that they did not look at the comments posted next to the episodes by viewers or the audience data on with the pilots. “Nobody has ever come to me with any kind of data gleaned from an algorithm as a direction for this show,” Mr. Carter said. “I am sure they are mining all kinds of data, but my job is to be a good storyteller.”

Amazon
Netflix
TV
Web television
Hulu.com
Transparent TV Show


U.S. Appeals Ruling That A.I.G. Bailout Terms Were Too Harsh

Abstract: In a move that starts a new chapter in the battle over the bailout of the American International Group during the financial crisis, the Justice Department formally appealed a court ruling on Wednesday that said the government’s terms for saving the company had been too harsh. The ruling in June involved a lawsuit by the former chief executive of A.I.G., Maurice R. Greenberg , who charged that the government overstepped its bounds during the bailout in 2008, imposing unduly harsh terms on the insurance giant compared with lifelines extended to some Wall Street banks during the crisis. The federal lawsuit, brought on behalf of A.I.G. shareholders, sought damages in excess of $40 billion. In June, Judge Thomas C. Wheeler of the United States Court of Federal Claims delivered a split decision: The Federal Reserve had indeed crossed the line by demanding a 79.9 percent equity stake in A.I.G., he ruled, and the central bank “did not have the legal right to become the owner of A.I.G.” Judge Wheeler awarded no damages, however, saying A.I.G. shareholders had not suffered financially. “The inescapable conclusion is that A.I.G. would have filed for bankruptcy” without the bailout, he wrote, and “the value of the shareholders’ common stock would have been zero.” Image Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of A.I.G., claimed that the government overstepped its bounds during the bailout in 2008. Credit Mark Lennihan/Associated Press Starr International, the company through which Mr. Greenberg sued, almost immediately indicated that it planned to appeal on the issue of damages. The company, which had been A.I.G.’s largest shareholder and where Mr. Greenberg is now chief executive, issued a statement in June that it “will appeal the ruling that there is no remedy for the government’s illegal conduct, and ask the court of appeals to confirm that the government is not entitled to keep billions of dollars of citizens’ money in its pocket.” The federal government, for its own part, was also dissatisfied with the ruling, which it worried could set a dangerous precedent by declaring the Fed’s actions illegal. “We disagree with the court’s conclusion regarding the Federal Reserve’s legal authority and continue to believe that the government acted well within legal bounds,” the administration said on Wednesday in a statement. The case now moves to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit — which happens to meet in the same Washington courtroom where closing arguments were delivered this year before Judge Wheeler. The case could drag on for several more years. Lawyers for Mr. Greenberg are expected to file their own formal challenge on damages this month. During the trial, which began last fall, architects of the government’s response to the financial crisis — including Timothy F. Geithner, Ben S. Bernanke and Henry M. Paulson Jr. — took the witness stand and sparred with Mr. Greenberg’s lead lawyer, David Boies, over whether A.I.G.’s treatment was appropriate. A.I.G. has repaid the bailout, which ultimately grew to $185 billion, and the government even came out ahead — earning about $20 billion from the deal.

TARP,2008 Bailout,Emergency Economic Stabilization Act


Ratcliffe-on-Soar Protesters Freed in Britain

Abstract: LONDON — The unmasking of an undercover police officer who spent seven years infiltrating environmental protest groups in Britain and more than 20 other countries caused the collapse on Monday of a trial involving activists accused of planning to occupy and immobilize Britain’s largest coal -fired power station. The incident put a halt to a controversial case that began with the largest number of pre-emptive arrests of political activists ever made in Britain. It cast a harsh spotlight on an elite undercover unit at Scotland Yard, just as Britain prepares for an expected wave of protests against a harsh government austerity drive, with critics pressing police commanders to improve their intelligence on groups that have turned some of the early student protests violent . The trial, scheduled to start on Monday in the Midlands city of Nottingham, ended precipitately when prosecutors said they had decided to submit no evidence against 6 defendants charged with being part of a group of 114 arrested in April 2009 on suspicion of planning to occupy the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, immobilize coal conveyor belts and scale the station’s chimney. The prosecutors gave no reasons for their action, but it came 12 hours after The Guardian revealed the role of the undercover officer . The protesters were accused of planning to halt power production at the plant for a week, stopping operations that would have pumped 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Twenty of them admitted to the charge and were convicted after failing to persuade a jury that their actions were justified under the principle of “lawful excuse.” They said they had been acting to prevent the greater crimes of death and serious injury brought about by power station emissions, which many scientists believe have contributed to long-term climate change . But six of the activists refused to admit to planning the break-in and were prepared to argue that the undercover officer, Mark Kennedy, had acted as an agent provocateur and had “actively encouraged participation in the action,” according to papers drawn up by their lawyers and cited by The Guardian. Mr. Kennedy was said by The Guardian to have renounced his role last month and to have told lawyers for the defendants that he was prepared to testify on their behalf. The newspaper said Mr. Kennedy had quit the police force and moved abroad, fearing retaliation against himself and his family. Officials at Scotland Yard and at the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, the agency responsible for undercover police operations, declined to comment on the case. The Guardian’s account, published on the newspaper’s Web site and in its Monday editions, said that Mr. Kennedy had been assigned to infiltrate various protest groups, including environmentalist ones, beginning in 2003, when he was said to have been 33. It said he was given a new name, Mark Stone, and equipped with a false passport and driver’s license. He also grew his hair long and sported earrings and tattoos. The paper said he traveled widely at home and abroad, chaining himself to the gates of a British nuclear power station, halting a coal train, scaling a dam in Iceland and volunteering to be one of two climbers who would chain himself to the coal conveyor belt at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. The paper said he had become a popular figure at almost every environmental protest in Britain, renowned for two things that were uncommon in those circles — providing transport for protesters, including a heavy truck for the coal station protest, and having generous amounts of money, which the paper said earned him the nickname “Flash Stone.” The Scotland Yard unit to which Mr. Kennedy belonged grew out of events in 1968, when a protest against the Vietnam war in London’s Grosvenor Square, site of the United States Embassy, turned violent, and outstripped police efforts to control it. Mr. Kennedy, according to The Guardian, had been a policeman for nine years when he was recruited to the unit. The case had already taken an unusual turn, when the 20 already convicted were given minimal sentences last week by a judge who took a strong stand in their support. The judge, Jonathan Teare, handing out sentences that ranged from conditional discharges to periods of unpaid community work, called the defendants “decent men and women with a genuine concern for others,” and said, “I have no doubt that each of you acted with the highest possible motives.” Mr. Kennedy’s role in the affair was uncovered in October, according to The Guardian, when some of those involved in the environmental movement discovered a passport in his real name, and uncovered evidence that he had been a policeman since 1994. In a secretly made video released by the protesters, Mr. Kennedy expressed his remorse. “I hate myself so much, I have betrayed so many people,” he said.

Scotland Yard (Metropolitan Police Service)


Belgian Emerges as Favorite for New Top E.U. Post

Abstract: BRUSSELS — A day after the Lisbon Treaty won final approval, Belgium’s prime minister emerged as the favorite on Wednesday to take the European Union’s first presidential post, with Britain in the running for the top foreign policy job. Diplomats said that momentum was with the prime minister, Herman Van Rompuy, and that David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, was well placed to become the E.U. foreign policy chief if his government pushed for him. Although the Lisbon Treaty, which creates the two jobs, is now certain to come into force, fresh potential complications arose on Wednesday after criticism in a speech in London from the leader of the British Conservatives, whom many expect to win elections next year. The leader, David Cameron, pulled back from a potential confrontation with the E.U. by abandoning his pledge to hold a referendum on the accord. But Mr. Cameron promised a new law stating that any new transfer of powers would require a public referendum. He also called for the restoration of powers on social, employment and criminal justice from the E.U. to national governments and promised, if elected, to create a sovereignty law giving “an assurance that the final word on our laws is here in Britain.” From his speech, it was unclear how far this would be pushed and whether it would breach the principle of the supremacy of E.U. law on which policies like the bloc’s single market are based. Mr. Cameron’s readjustment of policy was a recognition that if he won power next year, the Lisbon Treaty, and the leadership jobs it creates, would already be in place. In fact, the bloc’s 27 leaders are expected to discuss names for the new posts informally when they meet in Berlin next Monday to observe the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A decision will then be made at a special summit meeting within the next two weeks. The chances that Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, will win the presidential post have faded. But reaction to reports that Mr. Van Rompuy was a potential candidate have been positive. Other potential contenders include the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, and Wolfgang Schüssel, former chancellor of Austria. “The leaders want someone who doesn’t overshadow them, can make compromises and speaks many of their languages,” said a diplomat speaking on the condition of anonymity, “Van Rompuy is all three.” France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has said that although Mr. Blair would be a good presidential candidate, Britain’s self-exclusion from the euro zone is a problem for such an appointment. Yet this situation that does not apply to the foreign policy job because Britain is an influential force on E.U. external policy. Other contenders include Massimo D’Alema, former prime minister of Italy. Though Mr. Van Rompuy has impressed Mr. Sarkozy and Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, there is still some reservations about appointing a low-key, technocratic, operator. “The idea was to appoint someone who can stop the traffic in Beijing,” an E.U. diplomat said. Moreover, it remains unclear whether Mr. Brown wants Mr. Miliband to get the foreign policy job and leave his government because this would also mean that Britain would not get an economic portfolio in the next European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union. Meanwhile, Mr. Cameron, the British opposition leader, sought to tread a difficult line between positioning himself as a pragmatic potential prime minister and losing his credentials as a critic of European integration. In his speech, Mr. Cameron made clear that if he won the British elections in 2010, he would not allow his first months in power to be overshadowed by a bitter battle with the E.U. Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, said Mr. Cameron had avoided the “trap” of calling a referendum that would only encourage those in Britain who want to quit the E.U. “Given the pressure he is under,” Mr. Grant said, “this is a fairly professional, clever package which is probably not going to cause dramatic disruption in the E.U. There is a risk of him losing over social policy though a fudge may be available.” Though the Conservative Party took Britain into the bloc in the 1970s, it has steadily shifted toward Euroskepticism. Mr. Cameron also upset the French and German governments this year by pulling out of their center-right party in the European Parliament. On Wednesday he denied that his party was in turmoil over European policy. “Not at all,” Mr. Cameron told GMTV. “The party actually wants us to have a fresh approach in Europe. But above all, the vote that we need is a vote to get rid of a government that has completely let people down.”

European Union
Europe
European Commission
Treaty of Lisbon (2007)


Beckham Still Feels Most at Home on the Field

Abstract: On Wednesday night in Los Angeles, David and Victoria Beckham attended the ESPY Awards. “First time I’ve been on the red carpet in a long time,” he noted. “I like it once in a while.” During the show, he was teased by Justin Timberlake for playing a sport that dares to call itself football. Around these parts, Timberlake said, Americans have their own brand of football. “He’s my friend and he was joking about every person there,” Beckham said. Beckham will not be given a red carpet when he takes the field at Giants Stadium on Saturday night, when the Los Angeles Galaxy plays the Red Bulls. Even though large crowds follow him all over the league, Beckham knows the place of his sport here in the United States: respectful and patient and somewhat subversive, what with the inroads of cable and the Internet, as proved by the recent buzz for the European championships. At the ESPY party, some of Beckham’s acquired Laker loyalty suffered a bit as other celebrities fussed over a few Boston Celtics in attendance. He understands the pull of American football, baseball and basketball, but is one of the more high-paid missionaries, making at least $32.5 million over five years, with millions more in incentives. For better or worse, every time he goes out in public, he is selling soccer in the United States. One night recently, the Beckhams left a restaurant and found approximately 70 strangers waiting with cameras, some of them paparazzi, others just stargazers. One random photograph of the couple was analyzed by the facial-language experts at The Daily Star, a British tabloid; the analysis was that their life was going down the drain in Los Angeles, and that’ll learn them. “You laugh about it or you’ll go crazy,” Beckham said Friday during a private interview in Manhattan, after an earlier news conference in New Jersey.  The Beckhams are here to sell Major League Soccer (and themselves), but he retained the right to be a jock who still derives his root identity from being one of the boys. “The safest place, the best place, is when I’m on the field,” Beckham said, echoing the sentiment of many singers, who insist that the most control they have in their hectic lives is deciding which song to do next and whether to converse with the audience. “The banter never gets old,” Beckham said about the team bus ride from New Jersey. The teasing, the nicknames, the laughter are all part of the game he learned as a child in north London. “The kids today want to be famous and make a lot of money,” he said. “Back then, you just wanted to play the game. I didn’t even think about all that stuff.” It would seem that he and his wife, otherwise known as Posh of the Spice Girls, do think about “all that stuff” in what is obviously a very material existence. But he still plays his sport quite well, at 33. Last August, hampered by a bad ankle, Beckham drew 66,237 paying fans to the Meadowlands — the largest crowd for a league game at Giants Stadium since 1980, when the Cosmos were the attraction. In the stadium that Pelé and Beckenbauer once graced, Beckham set up two early goals as his free kicks sought his teammates like twin smart missiles. This season he has five goals and seven assists, and he does not seem to be suffering from what might be called the Donadoni Syndrome. In 1996, the first year of M.L.S., Roberto Donadoni, a mainstay of Italian soccer, was induced to join the new team in the swamplands, then called the MetroStars. As unselfish as he was, Donadoni sometimes could not make up his mind whether to distribute the ball to the left or to the right because neither option seemed very good to him. He had once played for A.C. Milan with Ruud Gullit, the magician now coaching the Galaxy, and other brilliant scorers. But in M.L.S., he was not comfortable releasing the ball to the revolving cast of vagabonds. Beckham, who once unleashed his swerving passes to forwards like Ruud Van Nistelrooy at Manchester United and Zinédine Zidane at Real Madrid, has the benefit of setting up Landon Donovan, the fleet American World Cup veteran. Beckham says he never has to hold back because the lads up front cannot handle the pace.  Coaching Beckham has been a challenge for Gullit, from the Dutch school of Total Football. (“He was the best player in the world twice, and I only came in second twice,” Beckham noted.) In a recent match, Gullit tried Beckham in central midfield, but switched him back to the right, where the Red Bulls’ coach, Juan Carlos Osorio, thinks he is more dangerous. Osorio has told his players to seek “controlled aggression” and avoid unnecessary fouls. He expects them to rise to the occasion of the big house. “If any of them are not motivated in front of 45,000 people, then they are in the wrong profession,” Osorio said. Beckham does not expect a red carpet against the Red Bulls Saturday night. Once in a while is fine.

Los Angeles Galaxy
Soccer
Beckham David
Beckham Victoria


New Tool Shows New York Neighborhoods at Risk of Rent Hikes

Abstract: A building sells for twice as much as the average price in the neighborhood. For another building, multiple work permits are being sought from the city for renovations. To the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a group that campaigns for affordable housing, these changes could signal the potential displacement of low-income renters and sharp increases in rent. On Wednesday, the group released a building-by-building interactive map that can steer officials and tenant organizers to neighborhoods of New York City where affordable apartments may be threatened. The Displacement Alert Project Map mined several public databases to include more than 96,400 residential properties with more than three apartments that met at least one of three conditions: The building was sold in 2015, had obtained a work permit from the city’s Department of Buildings since 2013 or contained at least one rent-regulated unit since 2007. Officials of the association said the volume of building permits could indicate renovations leading to rent increases and a high rate of tenant turnover. Building sales prices, they said, may signal speculative purchases in up-and-coming real estate markets. The map gives a high-risk score to buildings that have lost rent-regulated units since 2007, have sought renovation permits and were recently sold — about 500 buildings. But 24,766 properties had the highest risk score, shown in red, in at least one category, increasing the likelihood of a rent bump, Barika X. Williams, deputy director for the association, said. Housing activists said the information was meant to help tenant organizers identify buildings where tenants may be most vulnerable to landlord harassment and to help prevent illegal evictions. The data may also help city officials identify patterns and guide public policy to preserve the existing affordable housing stock, the activists said. “This sort of tool helps us get beyond the rhetoric,” said Xavier de Souza Briggs, the vice president for economic opportunity and markets at the Ford Foundation, which helped finance the map project. “Because the picture is constantly changing, tools like this one help to focus precious time and resources.” The city’s stock of affordable housing is shrinking even as Mayor Bill de Blasio has been working to add tens of thousands of new homes with below-market rents in his 10-year plan and keep many more from leaving rent regulation. Research by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board shows a net loss of more than 8,000 rent-stabilized apartments in 2015. These occurred mostly when tenants moved out of the unit and the landlord was able to rent the apartments for $2,700 or more a month, the threshold at which an apartment can leave regulation under the state rent law, because of upgrades and market rates in the surrounding area. But Jack Freund, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a landlord group, said that the majority of the city’s rental housing stock was now more than 80 years old and “in desperate need of improvement,” so work permits were hardly a reliable barometer of buildings where tenants might be more vulnerable to displacement. The costs for improving buildings are usually paid by new tenants who pay higher rents, Mr. Freund said. “The effort to link apartment renovations with harassment and illegal evictions is simply wrong,” he said. “Existing tenants, their neighborhoods and the city’s economy all benefit when landlords improve their buildings.”

Assn for Neighborhood and Housing Development


Ex-Senator Wants to Pay Lawyers With Election Funds

Abstract: Former State Senator Wayne R. Bryant of New Jersey , who is facing criminal corruption charges, is hoping to tap a new source to help pay mounting legal bills: his campaign account. Lawyers for Mr. Bryant have filed a request with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission to use money left in the account to pay for defending him against charges that he used his influence to arrange a no-show job for himself at the state medical school. Mr. Bryant, 60, a veteran New Jersey lawmaker from Camden who decided not to run for another term after he was indicted in March, earned $37,000 a year from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey — on top of his $49,000 salary as a state senator — in exchange for steering millions of dollars in grants to the school, federal prosecutors have said. As a senior member of the State Senate’s Democratic leadership and the onetime chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, Mr. Bryant was paid by the university to lobby himself, prosecutors have said. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. On Wednesday, a lawyer for Mr. Bryant, Carl D. Poplar, declined to comment on the request to the election commission. Mr. Bryant’s lawyers have argued that there is legal precedent for his request. New Jersey election regulations state that candidates may use campaign contributions “for reasonable fees and expenses of legal representation,” but only if those expenses are directly related to a campaign or the duties of holding public office. For instance, election commission regulations allow lawmakers to use their campaign funds to pay for legal fees that result from internal ethics complaints. But the regulations do not specifically mention legal fees associated with criminal charges. The election commission’s executive director, Frederick M. Herrmann, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he believed this was first time anyone had asked the commission for permission to use campaign money to fight criminal charges. Nationally, there is precedent for lawmakers using their campaign coffers to pay lawyers to help them during troublesome situations. Recently, Senator Larry E. Craig, the Idaho Republican accused by police of soliciting sex in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, used money in his campaign account to pay lawyers’ fees related to his case. And Mark Foley, a former Republican congressman from Florida accused of making inappropriate sexual comments to young Congressional pages, has used his campaign cash to pay lawyers since his resignation. But in both those cases, the legal fees stemmed from Congressional ethics issues. And while New Jersey election regulations would allow Mr. Bryant to use his campaign money to defend himself against ethics complaints that arose in the Legislature, it was not clear whether he could use the money for defense in criminal court.

New Jersey
Ethics
Bryant Wayne R
Finances


Papers Offer a Peek at ISIS’ Drones, Lethal and Largely Off-the-Shelf

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The standardized four-page checklist describes each Islamic State drone mission in chillingly impassive detail: Mission type (spy, bombing, training). Location (city, province). Drone components (motor, bomb ignition). Operation (successful or not). The form, apparently filled out by Islamic State drone operators in Iraq after every mission, was part of a batch of documents discovered in January by a Harvard researcher embedded with Iraqi troops in the battle of Mosul and then turned over to American military analysts for review. The documents — in Arabic and English — offer a rare window into how the Islamic State has cobbled together a rapidly advancing armed drone program that increasingly threatens allied troops fighting the militant group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. They show how the group has institutionalized a program using off-the-shelf technology to bedevil the militarily superior American armed forces. The Islamic State has used surveillance drones on the battlefield for about two years. But an increase in attacks since October — mostly targeting Iraqi troops — has highlighted its success in adapting readily accessible technology into a potentially effective new weapon. In the past two months, the Islamic State has used more than 80 remotely piloted drones against Iraqi forces and their allies. About one-third of the aircraft, some as small as model airplanes, dropped bombs or were rigged with explosives to detonate on the ground, said Col. John L. Dorrian, the spokesman for the American-led operation against the Islamic State in Baghdad. Iraqi officials said bombs dropped by the drones, which were primarily quadcopters, had killed about a dozen government soldiers and injured more than 50. “It poses a threat to troops on the ground, and it has value as a propaganda technique,” Colonel Dorrian said of the Islamic State drone program in an email. “However, it’s certainly not a game-changer when it comes to the outcome of the battle to liberate Mosul.” A new video message from the Islamic State, “Knights of the Departments,” appeared to depict these new drone missions. The documents were discovered by Vera Mironova, an international security fellow at the Belfer Center at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Ms. Mironova obtained the documents while she was conducting research in Iraq on the individual behavior of Islamic State fighters. She said in an interview via Skype that she had come across the materials in a drone workshop formerly under the control of the Islamic State in the Muhandeseen neighborhood of Mosul, near Mosul University. Iraqi soldiers were not interested in the documents, Ms. Mironova said. But recognizing their potential value to the American military, she contacted the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which has previously published her work. Two researchers at the center, Don Rassler and Muhammad al-Ubaydi, reviewed the roughly 30 pages she sent . Confirming the authenticity of documents from a war zone is always tricky. But in a nine-page assessment, an advance copy of which was provided to The New York Times along with the documents themselves, the authors concluded the materials were genuine based on where and how Ms. Mironova obtained them and the center’s experience working with an array of captured battlefield material. All of the documents appear to be from around 2015 — the early phases of the drone program — and the collection includes a mix of official Islamic State forms and handwritten notes, according to the researchers’ analysis. The materials reveal that the Islamic State, much like its forerunner, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, is detail-oriented and bureaucratic when it comes to its operations. According to the assessment of the documents, the Islamic State’s drone unit falls under the Al Bara’ bin Malik Brigade, a part of the aviation sector of the Islamic State’s Committee for Military Manufacturing and Development. The standardized four-page checklist for drone operations provided another example. On the first page, drone operators were asked to provide details about their mission — specifically, the type of mission (there are six options, including “Bombing” and “Explosive Plane”), the militants who were involved, the location and the way point coordinates for the flight. The second page of the form consisted of a checklist that seems to have been designed to help the drone operators conduct pre- or post-mission checks of their systems and equipment (including “Bomb Ignition sys” and “Bomb igniter RC”), the assessment said. The third page was a checklist of gear in the operator’s “tool case,” including “screwdriver,” “pliers” and “knife.” The last page of the form asked the operators to note whether their mission had succeeded or failed. It also provided space for the operators to write notes, perhaps to document lessons learned from failed missions or interesting events that occurred during successful ones, the assessment said. The documents also contained detailed acquisition records, essentially shopping lists for the off-the-shelf commercial technology that the Islamic State is buying. The lists showed the group’s efforts to buy items like a GoPro camera, memory cards, GPS units, digital video recorders and extra propeller blades, the assessment said. The purchasing lists also highlighted the group’s efforts to enhance the range and performance of its drones, whether bought commercially or not. For example, to protect the transmission of their drone video feeds, members of the group wanted to acquire encrypted video transmitters and receivers, the assessment said. “There seems to be a list of material necessary to the construction of those drones,” said Damien Spleeters, head of operations in Iraq for Conflict Armament Research, a private arms consultancy that has been investigating weapons recovered from the Islamic State since 2014. Mr. Spleeters has also reviewed the documents for the West Point center. “So it shows consistency and standardization, certainly with some sort of chain of supply in place,” he said. American military officials said that the Pentagon had dedicated significant resources to stopping Islamic State drones but that few Iraqi and Kurdish units had been provided with the sophisticated devices that the American troops had to disarm them. The officials said they had ordered the Pentagon agency in charge of dealing with explosive devices — known as the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization — to study ways to thwart hostile drones. Last summer, the Pentagon requested an additional $20 million from Congress to help address the problem. The recovered documents offer few clues about how the militants view the future of their drones. “In the short term, we should expect the Islamic State to refine its drone bomb-drop capability,” the assessment concluded. “It is likely that the Islamic State’s use of this tactic will not only become more frequent, but more lethal as well.”

Drones
Bombs
Iraq
Mosul
Terrorism
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
US Military