States and Cities Angle for Stimulus Cash

Abstract: Well before President Obama’s stimulus package completed its tortuous path through Congress last week, state and local officials facing multimillion-dollar budget deficits, crumbling infrastructure and the prospect of massive reductions in services were already jockeying for the upper hand in deciding how the money should be spent. In Missouri, the Department of Transportation says that within 180 days of Mr. Obama’s signing the legislation it is prepared to begin 34 transportation projects, costing $510 million and with the promise of 14,000 jobs. Echoing the thoughts of many political leaders across the country, Mayor Frank C. Ortis of Pembroke Pines, Fla., says simply, “We have a wish list.” And high on that list is money to repair aging sewer pipes in his city of 150,000. When Mr. Obama signs the stimulus bill in Denver on Tuesday, it will release the biggest influx of federal dollars since the days of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program. But it also is expected to set off a multitude of political battles across the map: between governors and legislatures, state capitols and city halls, and even between neighboring municipalities. Because the effectiveness of any stimulus plan depends on the money being quickly spent, whether state and local governments can work through the rules and resolve any disputes will have a large impact on the success Mr. Obama’s plan has in lifting the economy. Along with the money, there are complex rules to the sprawling, $787 billion federal plan that local politicians from governors to small-town mayors say they are only now beginning to grasp. And while states will have direct say on the use of much of the money — especially on infrastructure projects like roads and bridges — many spending decisions will still rest with officials hundreds of miles away in Washington. “Still, within the parameters given, there are a lot of policy choices and decisions states and localities have to make,” said Scott D. Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. Mr. Pattison said he has faced a barrage of questions in recent days from state budget officials on matters like how much discretion states will have, how the money will be transferred and how it must be tracked. “This is all rather daunting,” he said. “It’s a lot of money, and this is happening fast.” While it offers a patchwork of spending, the plan also provides battlegrounds for untold intrastate political fights. “There is a tension that’s happening between mayors and governors across the country now about who is going to receive what dollar amounts and for what purposes,” said Mayor Michael D. Bissonnette of Chicopee, Mass., population 54,000. Mr. Bissonnette said that even before the legislation made its way for an official vote in Congress last week, the political pressure was mounting in his region of Western Massachusetts. A council of mayors and other leaders there was outraged, he said, to learn that one state proposal would send millions to the Massachusetts Turnpike rather than what he considers a backlog of local road and bridge projects. Experts said the authorities in the states will probably have great discretion when it comes to billions of dollars for a broad range of state needs, including roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. And states also will have considerable say in how billions are spent on Medicaid and for education. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials says the states have already identified 5,000 so-called “ready to go” transportation projects that could begin within a couple of months. “We have far more in the way of projects that are ready to go than we have money to fund them,” Kevin A. Elsenheimer, a Republican state representative and the house minority leader in Michigan, said. “And it’s naïve to expect that politics will not be part of the process.” Officials expect that politics will not be limited to the lawmakers. Spending decisions on education could pit urban school districts against suburban or rural ones; how billions are dispensed for energy could come down to how advanced, or not, one state might be when it comes to wind energy development; and in many cases, it will come down to whether extra money will be spent to save the job of a firefighter or a teacher. Some state legislators said they feared that governors might try to dictate where the money goes, although in most states lawmakers would ultimately need to approve any spending. And clashes are already brewing over broad philosophical differences, particularly in state capitals with leadership divided along party lines. For example, some governors said they opposed the notion that stimulus money be used to plug budget deficits while others said that might be needed. Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, is among the most ardent opponents of the stimulus package, describing it as pork-barrel spending and bad policy and vowing — to the anger and chagrin of the Democratic members of the state’s Congressional delegation — not to take any of the money from Washington. “For every job the bill creates, American taxpayers will spend $223,000,” Mr. Sanford wrote in an opinion article in The State newspaper on Sunday. “If we add the cost of this bill to the previous efforts of the federal government to deal with the financial crisis, the American taxpayer is on the hook for $9.7 trillion.” He went on to write, “If the stimulus bill were a country, it would be the 15th-largest country in the world.” Governors and states hungering for the money will find themselves competing against other states. For example, states without enough eligible “shovel-ready” construction projects might have to pass up some money, which could then be granted to other states, said Michael Bird, a policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. There is also a flush of new money for Medicaid spending — $87 billion — but that, too, comes with strings attached. In Minnesota, for instance, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, is expected to revise his budget proposal, which had suggested reducing the number of residents eligible for state health care programs as a way to close a deficit. But such cuts now could jeopardize any extra financing for Medicaid under the stimulus plan, because the bill penalizes states that change their Medicaid eligibility to save money. Everywhere, state leaders are busily checking, searching through more than 1,000 pages in the federal bill, to see how their unique circumstances might be helped or harmed. In some cases, the package has put some proposed state budgets for next year on hold until lawmakers can see how things play out, and several states plan to rewrite parts of their budgets to secure more federal dollars. In Arkansas and North Carolina, state authorities said they were concerned, though uncertain, whether they would receive less education money than other states. Neither state has a shortfall in its education budget, the officials said, and thus might not be eligible for as much education financing under the federal plan. “We don’t want to be penalized for not having a deficit,” said Chrissy Pearson, a spokeswoman for Gov. Bev Perdue of North Carolina. In Rhode Island, Steven M. Costantino, a state representative, said he worried that the state might lose out when it came to alternative energy because it had fewer resources already dedicated to areas like wind power. “I hope that states that are just starting to get involved in renewable energy would still receive money to expand their programs,” Mr. Costantino said.

Obama Stimulus Plan
United States Economy
Infrastructure (Public Works)
United States Politics and Government
Governors (US)
Legislatures and Parliaments
Budgets and Budgeting
States (US)


Clemens Hires Top Washington Lawyer

Abstract: Roger Clemens has bolstered his legal team, hiring a powerhouse Washington lawyer, Lanny A. Breuer, who represented former President Bill Clinton during his impeachment hearings as well as numerous corporations that were the subject of Congressional investigations. Rusty Hardin, Clemens’s Houston lawyer, said late Thursday that he had recruited Breuer to be his client’s “local counsel” in Washington because of his expertise. “We’d talked to him, and we’d just been waiting a day or two to check out conflicts,” Hardin said. “He had no conflicts.” Clemens, who has won seven Cy Young awards but now finds his legacy in jeopardy, is facing a Congressional investigation as the result of his challenge to the Mitchell report released last Dec. 13. The report, produced by former Senator George J. Mitchell, examined the connections between baseball and performance-enhancing drugs, and linked about 90 current and former players, including Clemens, to such drugs. Breuer responded to an e-mail message Thursday night and confirmed he had been retained by Clemens. “This is correct,” he wrote. “This just happened.” Asked to comment on Clemens’s situation, Breuer wrote, “I’m honored to be joining Rusty Hardin in representing one of the greatest pitchers and athletes in history.” Breuer, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, is a partner in the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling and is a co-chairman of its white-collar defense and investigations practice group. As a special White House counsel, he helped represent Clinton from 1997 to 1999 during independent-counsel and Congressional investigations, and the impeachment hearings. Breuer specializes in Congressional investigations. He has represented the University of California in an investigation of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Moody’s Investor Service in the wake of Enron’s collapse, and Halliburton/KBR in a hearing conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. That committee now wants to hear what Clemens has to say under oath about the accusations in the Mitchell report made by his former trainer, Brian McNamee. Clemens contends the accusations are false. Richard D. Emery, a lawyer for McNamee, said of Breuer in a telephone interview, “We welcome a rational voice entering the case on behalf of Clemens, and I would expect a marked and clear change in strategy quickly in order to protect his client from the obvious pitfalls of lying under oath or to federal officials.” Emery added that the first thing Breuer should do “is find out all the facts and adopt a strategy consistent with them, which would mean Roger Clemens would not testify. But we shall see how he proceeds.” Lanny J. Davis, another prominent Washington lawyer, who worked with Breuer as White House counsel for Clinton, said bringing in Breuer was an excellent decision by Hardin and Clemens. “I can’t think of a better lawyer in Washington to represent Mr. Clemens or anybody that needs help in the Congress or in the public arena than Lanny Breuer,” Davis said in a telephone interview. Davis, who said he had been following news reports about Clemens, said: “I think Mr. Clemens has to be transparent and tell the truth, and I think that’s what Lanny Breuer is all about. I hope he told the truth to ‘60 Minutes,’ but if he didn’t, then he’s got to do it in front of Congress, and I think there’s no one better than Lanny Breuer to do that job.” Davis said he had found Clemens believable in his recent “60 Minutes” interview with Mike Wallace, in which Clemens acknowledged taking injections of vitamin B12 and the painkiller lidocaine from McNamee, but denied that McNamee injected him with steroids and human growth hormone, as McNamee told Mitchell’s investigators. “But he’s going to have a much tougher set of cross-examiners than Mike Wallace was that night, to say the least,” Davis added in reference to Clemens’s House committee hearing, scheduled for Feb. 13. “And as a former prosecutor and great litigator, Lanny will guide him on how to respond to tough cross-examination.” Also on Thursday, the F.B.I. opened a preliminary investigation into statements that shortstop Miguel Tejada made to staff members of the same House committee in August 2005 in which he denied using steroids or knowing of other players who had used or talked about them. The House committee had asked the Department of Justice to investigate Tejada after the Mitchell report contradicted denials that Tejada had made to its staff members. Tejada had been interviewed in connection with a perjury investigation of Rafael Palmeiro, who had testified to the committee in March 2005 that he never used steroids. Not long afterward, Palmeiro tested positive. Making false statements in a government matter is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Palmeiro was never charged with perjury because the panel could not prove he had taken steroids before his testimony. Now Tejada is under scrutiny. In an interview published Thursday in Listin Diario, a Dominican newspaper, Tejada said he was “clean.” “My mind is calm, I feel good, without worries, because I know that my years in the big leagues have been done in a clean way,” he said. The House committee is trying to set dates to interview Clemens; his former Yankees teammates Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch; McNamee; and Kirk Radomski, a confessed steroids dealer with baseball players as clients. All are being asked to testify at the Feb. 13 hearing.

Clemens Roger
Breuer Lanny A
Drug Abuse and Traffic


N.F.L. Playoffs: Here Are the Remaining Four Teams’ Flaws

Abstract: The N.F.L.’s final four seem like a formidable group. For the first time since 2004, the top four seeds have advanced to the conference championship games. Among them, they have only 12 losses, the lowest total since 2004, when the Steelers, the Falcons, the Eagles and the eventual champion Patriots had 11. Yet despite their stellar records, all four teams have a surprisingly stubborn group of detractors. Here’s a look at the matchups, and the possible Achilles’ heels of the N.F.L.’s elite: Patriots (13-4) at Broncos (13-4) TIME Sunday, 3:05 p.m. LINE Patriots by 3 OFFENSE/DEFENSE Patriots sixth/eighth; Broncos 18th/first (based on yards per play) WHY THESE TEAMS ARE GREAT The longest-running debate in the N.F.L. is whether Tom Brady or Peyton Manning is the quarterback of the century. (Aaron Rodgers has plenty of backers, too.) Both are tested and successful. Throw in the Broncos’ top-rated defense (Von Miller, DeMarcus Ware, Aqib Talib etc.) and the Patriots’ long record of success (it is their fifth straight conference championship game appearance), and you have a dream matchup. Image Receiver Larry Fitzgerald, center in red, is the main target in the Cardinals’ high-powered offense. The Panthers will counter with their top-notch defense, featuring linebacker Luke Kuechly, far left, and safety Colin Jones, right. Credit Grant Halverson/Getty Images WHY SOME THINK THE BRONCOS ARE NOT Manning is 39, and had an adjusted-yards-per-pass figure of 5.03 this season; that’s Jimmy Clausen and Ryan Mallett territory, and it was the worst of his career. He also missed six games because of a heel injury. His performances were bad enough that a significant number of fans and commentators advocated starting Brock Osweiler even after Manning returned. Yes, Brock Osweiler. Manning was not terrible against the Steelers on Sunday, but he was not great, either, throwing for 222 yards. There is also the lingering knock on Manning that he underachieves in the playoffs. In his long career, which includes 11 seasons in which he had 12 or more regular-season wins, he has just one Super Bowl victory and a 12-13 playoff record. These doubts have made the Broncos the underdogs at home, where they are 28-4 in their four seasons with Manning. And Denver’s point differential in the regular season was only plus-59, lower than the Jets’. WHY SOME THINK THE PATRIOTS ARE NOT While New England’s naysayers are less numerous than Denver’s detractors, they are present. Though this is the Patriots’ fourth straight 12-4 season, there are those who think they are not quite the team they were. The offensive line has been criticized. There is little running game; the Patriots ranked 30th in the league in rushing yards and yards per carry. The Patriots are still the Patriots, but many think the New England empire may be staggering to the finish line. Cardinals (14-3) at Panthers (16-1) TIME Sunday, 6:40 p.m. LINE Panthers by 3 OFFENSE/DEFENSE Cardinals first/ninth; Panthers 12th/second WHY THESE TEAMS ARE GREAT Carson Palmer of Arizona had an otherworldly season at age 36, leading the league in the major passing categories, with 32-year-old Larry Fitzgerald his main target. A result was the N.F.L.’s best offense. The Panthers were 15-1, the best record in the league in four years. Cam Newton put up the best passing numbers of his career, which, combined with his explosive rushing, makes him the front-runner for most valuable player. The Panthers’ first-rate defense, featuring linebackers Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis, was problematic for nearly every team it faced. WHY SOME THINK THE CARDINALS ARE NOT Palmer has been around a long time, but was only 0-2 in the playoffs until Saturday. Nick Foles had one great season, too; it didn’t mean he had secretly turned into Joe Montana. Arizona had two road games against playoff teams this season; it beat Seattle by 7 and lost to Pittsburgh, and Palmer had subpar games in both. WHY SOME THINK THE PANTHERS ARE NOT Carolina must be the most denigrated 15-1 team in history. Part of this is lingering doubt that they can be for real after a 7-8-1 record last season. The Panthers are also docked points for having an easy schedule, perhaps the easiest. Seven of their wins were by 10 points or fewer, and four by 4 or fewer; it is not hard to imagine that a few different bounces would have made their record 12-4. As a result, the Panthers were only 2 ½-point favorites at home against the highly regarded Seahawks on Sunday, the smallest spread of the divisional round. Carolina seemed to lay a lot of doubts to rest in taking a 31-0 halftime lead. But surrendering 24 consecutive points in the second half brought those doubts back. The worthiest teams have advanced to Sunday’s games. By next Monday, two sets of doubters will get a chance to crow. Two others will be silenced, at least until it all starts again before the Super Bowl.

Playoffs
Patriots
Broncos
Football
Arizona Cardinals
Carolina Panthers


New Yorkers Brace for Doorman Strike

Abstract: It has been nearly two decades since New Yorkers faced their last doorman strike, but as the deadline for a new contract for building workers approached, the questions being posed throughout the city remained largely unchanged on Sunday. Who will safeguard my apartment as I sleep? Greet my children when they come home from school? Accept deliveries? Clean the hallways? Sort the mail? Operate the elevator? And who, for goodness sake, will let the cleaning lady in? Residents, co-op boards and building management companies have been busy planning for the sudden complications that could come at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday with the possible departure of the building workers who, among many other things, hold open the city’s doors. The Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations has distributed a preparedness manual with recommendations for keeping buildings in operation in case of a strike. “A strike is not pleasant, nor should it be taken lightly,” according to the 45-page document. “During a period of work stoppage, pressures and problems develop which make building management very difficult.” Throughout the city, security guards have already been alerted to arrive at buildings an hour before the negotiating deadline so they can take over for the first overnight shift in the event of a walkout. Many buildings would then adopt a more restrictive policy, with residents being required to use building keys, display identification to the security guards and pick up visitors or deliveries themselves. Some buildings are planning to take service elevators, storage rooms and garages out of operation if there is a strike. “The whole operation of the building would basically be shut down and we’d rely on residents to pitch in just to get by,” said Dan Wurtzel, president of Cooper Square Realty, one of the largest residential management companies in the New York. “There’s a tremendous amount of preparation we have to undertake. Then, if it doesn’t happen, we can breathe a sign of relief. If it does happen, then we’re prepared to deal with it.” Many buildings have also posted sign-up sheets for residents to volunteer to watch the front doors, clean hallways and take out garbage, though the forms in the lobbies of a handful of Upper East Side buildings remained mostly blank on Sunday afternoon. Mary Ann Rothman, executive director of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, has signed up for volunteer work in her own co-op. “If there is a positive thing to be pulled out of this, it’s that it is an opportunity to get to know your neighbors,” she said, “and to come together to combat a little bit of adversity, because this is not the end of the world, though it may appear that way if the strike goes on.” Arriving on Park Avenue on Sunday, Robert Neis, a marketing executive, immediately asked his doorman for assistance with the luggage from a family getaway to Shelter Island , N.Y. “It would be a bummer if they strike,” Mr. Neis said. “It’s a lot nicer when they help with the work.” Harold Gerber, who runs a real estate business and has lived in his co-op on East 75th Street for more than two decades, said he was already worried about security, and grumbled at the prospect of hauling his own trash. “It will affect us tremendously,” he said. Some doormen were skeptical that contract workers or volunteers would be able to take up their duties. Salvador Gonzalez, a doorman at a building on the Upper East Side, said that as the deadline approached, he has even added a new responsibility to his usual assortment of tasks: giving inquiring residents tips on how to do his job. Though many residents on Sunday said they believed that a deal would be reached before the deadline, little progress was made during contract negotiations over the weekend, said Matt Nerzig, chief spokesman for Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union . The 30,000 residential doormen, porters, superintendents, elevator operators and handymen now earn an average of $40,500 a year, with benefits raising the total to nearly $70,000, according to the Realty Advisory Board, which represents building owners. The workers are seeking wage increases, while building owners are pushing to reduce benefit costs. “We’re working hard, we’re talking,” Ms. Rothman said. “There’s a lot of good will on both sides and very different feelings about the current economic situation.” “I don’t think anyone wants a strike,” she added.


Solar Panels Rare Amid the Steeples

Abstract: AUSTIN, TEXAS — More than three decades ago, after an energy crisis that gripped the world, a Catholic priest in the Texas city of Lubbock took a stand for the environment. His congregation needed a new church. So the priest, the Rev. Joe James, anchored the building deep in the earth to optimize insulation. He also ordered five wind turbines for the church grounds. The largest was called Big Bird, because it stood 80 feet tall. “I don’t feel as though we are free to waste,” Father James told a videographer at the time. Staring earnestly into the camera, he argued that saving money was not the only reason for energy conservation. Father James, who still lives near Lubbock, was an outlier. In the intervening years, few churches have made energy saving a priority. Experts say that churches, like other houses of worship, face particular challenges in going green because of unusual architecture and an often slow decision-making culture. Even Father James’s wind turbines got dismantled in the 1990s, after he had moved on. Still, as the likely effects of climate change on people and nature become clearer, some religious leaders are increasing their engagement. Pope Benedict XVI, who stepped down last week, has been hailed as the “green pope.” He put solar panels on the roof of a Vatican auditorium, though they are out of sight of the general public. Last year, he also acquired an electric car to get around the grounds of his summer residence. Environmentalists will be eager to see whether the next pope makes green issues a priority. The Church of England has a goal of reducing its carbon footprint 42 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Peter Pavlovic, who works on the environmental agenda for the Conference of European Churches, said concerns about climate change were prompting more church groups to engage communities and politicians on the issue. “It’s human-induced climate change,” he said. “We are part of it. And we have to take responsibility for that.” Reducing the carbon footprint of the churches themselves may present a greater challenge than promoting environmentalism from the pulpit. Church buildings, which are often old and poorly insulated, offer plenty of scope for improvement. Bee Moorhead, executive director of Texas Impact, a multifaith advocacy group, said that the second largest expenditure for churches and other houses of worship was typically energy, after salaries for members of the clergy and staff. Church sanctuaries can be so large that the heat gets turned on two days before the Sunday services, according to Jochen Geraedts, a Netherlands-based expert on the preservation of religious buildings. Sometimes more of the building gets heated than is actually used. Cost savings tend to be a bigger real-world motivator for churches than reducing their carbon footprints, Mr. Geraedts said. But upfront costs can be daunting. Upgrades to heating and cooling systems can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to Ms. Moorhead, and historic features like stained-glass windows are often a lost cause in terms of energy efficiency. Government incentives for green improvements have been cut back in parts of Europe and the United States. But even where government help is available, nonprofit organizations cannot always take advantage of the same tax incentives as for-profit institutions, Ms. Moorhead said. Putting solar panels on the roof poses additional challenges in architecture and aesthetics. In theory, church roofs are an ideal place for solar panels. “There’s a lot of square meters of roof available for solar panels,” said Mr. Geraedts, noting that because most European churches were built east to west, they had south-facing roofs, which is optimal for generating energy in the Northern Hemisphere. But roofs must be sturdy enough, and historic buildings may run into preservation barriers. Solar remains on the to-do list at St. David’s Episcopal Church in the center of Austin, Texas. It offers recycling for cellphones, batteries and other unusual items. It recently improved its heating and air-conditioning system and even conducts occasional services outside. “On a beautiful spring morning when you’re doing a sermon on creation, what better place to have it?” said Rosera Tateosian, a parishioner who heads the church’s environmental guild. But because the 19th-century church is a historic building, solar panels raise the question, “Is that what people want to see on the roof?” she said. In 2011, Bradford Cathedral put 42 solar panels on its roof, becoming the first cathedral in Britain to take that step, officials of the Anglican cathedral said. The project cost about £50,000, or $75,000, according to Canon Andy Williams. The anticipated payback time is 14 to 15 years, he said. One concern was damage to the original roof if the wind hit the solar equipment in a certain way, Canon Williams said. But specially designed clamps solved the problem. One of the biggest barriers to going green may be the way churches are run. With many volunteers involved, meetings can be sporadic and budgeting processes slow, according to Ms. Moorhead. “Churches aren’t running on the same kind of cash-flow model as a business,” she said.

Environment
Climate Change
Global Warming
church,churches
Solar energy


No Species Is Safe From Burgeoning Wildlife Trade

Abstract: BANGKOK — A giant inflatable manta hovered over attendants at an event on the sidelines of a major international convention on wildlife trade in Bangkok last week. Bobbing slightly amid the bustle, it made for a startling change from the polar bears and pandas that have come to epitomize the plight of endangered wildlife in the public eye. While most attention tends to focus on animals like rhinos and elephants where endangered species are concerned, scientists and conservationists warn that, out of the public eye, many other plant and animal species are being severely depleted, in some cases to the point of near-extinction. Mantas are a prime example of the rapid shifts taking place in the global demand for wildlife, say scientists who have been calling for them to be added to a list of species whose international trade is regulated or banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites, whose adherents are meeting in Bangkok this month. Never particularly in demand for their meat, mantas have come under pressure in recent years because of a newfound demand for their gill rakers — filaments that filter their food from the water. “Twenty years ago, there was no market for mantas,” said Guy Stevens, director of the Manta Trust, a research and conservation group. Now perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 of the animals, which are found in tropical waters around the globe, are killed every year. The gill rakers find their way to the dried-seafood markets of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. There, they are hawked as an ingredient for a health tonic, selling for the equivalent of several hundred U.S. dollars per kilogram. Given that manta populations are thought to number just a few hundred thousand, and that they produce just 10 to 16 young per lifetime, said Mr. Stevens, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this will have a big impact on this population.” In some places, he added, manta populations appear to have already disappeared, wiping out potential dive-tourism revenues that far outstrip the cash generated by the gill trade. The plight of the mantas highlights a worrying increase in the global demand for wildlife — including for animals and plants that have historically faced little or no pressure. And the species is by no means unique. Under Cites, which was signed 40 years ago, the international trade in more than 30,000 animal and plant species is regulated or banned. The status of several dozen more is being discussed at the Cites meeting in Bangkok, among them mantas and several kinds of turtles, sharks and timber trees. At a vote on Monday, delegates approved tightening the trade in mantas, as well as in five shark species — the oceanic whitetip, the porbeagle and three types of hammerhead sharks. Conservationists welcomed the decisions, but they remain subject to final approval by a plenary meeting on Thursday, the last day of the conference. Whatever the final outcome of these and other votes at the meeting, conservationists warn that inclusion on the Cites list of threatened species — while important — is no cure-all. The trade in many species often continues even after it is banned and is increasingly driven by highly organized syndicates, experts say. Trading in illegal wildlife ranks among the five most lucrative illicit markets globally, after counterfeiting and the illegal trafficking in drugs, people and oil, according to Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organization based in Washington. The sheer volume of the wildlife trade — whether legal or illegal — has left regulators, conservationists and biologists scrambling to update the regulations needed to keep it sustainable, and to assemble data on newly pressured and less well-known species. For many species, even reliable information on population sizes — let alone the level of trade — does not exist and can take years to research. “We’re struggling to keep pace with the sheer scale of the problem,” said Colman O’Criodain, wildlife trade policy analyst at W.W.F. International. Complicating the picture is the fact that the nature of the demand has also changed. Within the past decade or two, it has shifted geographically from West to East and broadened across a wider range of species than ever before. In the 1970s, when the Cites treaty was first signed, the issue of wildlife trade was largely one of niche demand for wealthy customers in the West. Now, Mr. O’Criodain said, “it’s no longer about furs and skins for boots and coats to be sold in Europe or the United States,” but driven predominantly by a swelling middle class in Asia — notably in populous and fast-growing China. Just as the spending power of Asian consumers has led to soaring purchases of refrigerators, cars and cellphones, so, too, has it caused demand for ivory, shark fins, sea slugs and rosewood furniture to soar. Turtles, said Peter Paul van Dijk, a tortoise and freshwater turtle expert at Conservation International in Arlington, Virginia, were among the first wildlife to feel the effect of China’s move to open up to more trade in the 1990s. “Massive quantities began to be extracted from one neighboring country after the other in the early 1990s,” he said in an interview in Bangkok. “It went in concentric circles — Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, then, later, Malaysia and Indonesia.” A burgeoning turtle farming industry began to supply the Chinese food market with large quantities of turtles in the 1990s, Mr. van Dijk said, and about half of the world’s 315 turtle species are classified as endangered under Cites. (Several more have been accorded protection at the current Cites meeting.) But this has done little to reduce the pressure on populations in the wild, where they perform important roles in local ecosystems. Nonfarmed turtles, Mr. van Dijk said, are highly sought after and can command several hundred U.S. dollars each, largely because of a widespread perception in China, fanned by a string of high-profile food scandals in recent years, that wild-caught animals are of higher quality and safer to eat. In addition, the high price of wild and rare turtles means that, much like shark fin soup, they are considered a status symbol, ordered by people who are eager to display their wealth. For some species, supposed medicinal benefits have piled on the pressure. The golden coin turtle, which is native to northern Vietnam and southern China and is held to cure cancer — much like rhino horn — now exists only in very small numbers in the wild, Mr. van Dijk said. Likewise, demand for pangolins, scale-encrusted nocturnal creatures that feed on ants and termites, is in large part due to a belief — not substantiated by scientific research — that their ground-up scales can stimulate lactation (making it popular with breast-feeding mothers), or cure ailments like asthma or cancer, said Dan Challender, an expert in the species at the University of Kent in Britain. “In the ’80s and ’90s, pangolins were destined mainly for the United States and Mexico, where their skins were used in boots and shoes,” Mr. Challender said. Since about 2000, that trade has largely been replaced by demand from China and Vietnam, where the creatures are also seen as a delicacy to be consumed, and can fetch the equivalent of several hundred dollars per kilogram. Like mantas, pangolins are slow breeders, and are very hard to breed in captivity. The trade in them has been restricted under the Cites convention since 1975, but illegal trade has continued. At least three seizures weighing in at several tons — and accounting for thousands of animals — each have been reported in the past few years. “The magnitude of the trade,” Mr. Challender said, suggests “that it is ultimately unsustainable.”

Endangered Species
Treaties
China
Poaching
World Wildlife Fund
Smuggling


More Consumers Choosing Reusable Glass Bottles

Abstract: Glass water bottles, so yesterday. Plastic, so convenient; metal, so hip. But now, in back to the future fashion, glass is making a bit of a comeback. And it is being helped in a small way by an entrepreneur who is developing a reusable glass bottle that is hard to break and will not shatter if broken. The shift to reusable glass water bottles from plastic and metal, which began taking off a couple of years ago, is becoming big business, retailers said. “I’d say glass bottles account for 20 percent, 30 percent of water bottle sales on our site now,” said Vincent Cobb, founder of reuseit.com , which sells a variety of reusable products. “More and more people are looking for glass.” The interest does not stop at water bottles. Consumer concerns that chemicals used in packaging can leach into the products they eat and drink are driving more and more beverage makers and food producers to use glass containers, said Lynn Bragg, president of the Glass Packaging Institute, an industry association. “They’re also looking for sustainable products to be ecologically responsible.” Coca-Cola is expanding the distribution of products — Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coke Zero and Sprite — that it sells in eight-ounce glass bottles, and S. C. Johnson now sells a line of reusable Ziploc containers called VersaGlass that can be used in a microwave, a freezer and, without their lids, even in an oven up to 400 degrees. “It’s part of our overall effort to increase packaging diversity so that people have more choices of packaging and portion size,” said Susan Stribling, a Coca-Cola spokeswoman. No one expects glass to replace plastic anytime soon. After all, billions of plastic bottles are used every year. But in a survey of more than 4,000 consumers this year by EcoFocus Worldwide, a research and consulting group, 37 percent said they were extremely or very concerned about the health and safety of plastics used in food and water packaging, compared to 33 percent in 2010. EcoFocus also found that 59 percent of the consumers it surveyed used reusable water bottles always or often, up from 56 percent in 2010. In a smaller survey of about 2,600 people, 42 percent said they had stopped drinking water from plastic bottles or were drinking it less often. Only 8 percent were using glass. The biggest consumer concern has been bisphenol A , or BPA, an estrogen-mimicking industrial chemical used in some plastics and in the protective coatings that line the inside of some metallic food and beverage containers. Concerns about the chemical have prompted some metal container companies to stop using it. BPA cannot be removed from plastic. Advocates point out that is not a problem with glass. “I’m surprised, quite frankly, but a lot of people these days are really doing their research and have great knowledge about the pros and cons of various types of containers,” said Gary Godbey, manager at Trohv, a home store in Baltimore that was the first to carry a new product — the Pure glass bottle — that addressed the primary drawback of glass, namely that it breaks. The danger of broken glass has prompted many gyms, yoga studios and other places to ban glass bottles. But Walt Himelstein, a scientist turned entrepreneur who developed the Pure bottle, is hoping to change those policies. Reusable glass water bottles typically use a plastic sleeve for protection. The sleeves on most models have holes that allow the contents of a bottle to be seen but through which broken glass can escape. Some beverage companies experimented with glass bottles shrink-wrapped with plastic, but most have given up because consumers were not always able to tell if a bottle was broken. Mr. Himelstein said his bottles were different. They are encased in a see-through coating that he developed. If the bottle cracks, the coating holds it in place. He worked with glass coatings as an environmental chemist at General Physics Corporation in Maryland, and wondered if he could find something similar that would protect consumers from being cut when a reusable glass bottle broke. “Hazardous materials were delivered in glass bottles with a material coated on the exterior,” said Mr. Himelstein, who lives in the Baltimore area. “If a coating could be developed for containers of hazardous materials, I thought why not for glass water bottles?” He thought he had the hard part done after he invented the coating — until he tried to find a company to make the bottles. “There are only about a dozen or so companies that make glass bottles, and I called all of them,” Mr. Himelstein said. “They were all very nice, but what they said was, ‘Well, we’re making 18 million beer bottles this month and 20 million ketchup bottles next month and for the two months after that, 40 million bottles for soda. You want us to shut that down to make 20,000 glass bottles for you?’ ” Although he had wanted to make the entire product in the United States, he ultimately went to China. Almost two years after he started, he had a product he could market. But if finding someone to make bottles was difficult, getting anyone to sell them was worse. He struck out with hotel chains, major retailers, stores on college campuses. “I had one or two types of bottles,” Mr. Himelstein said. “It was tough to get anyone’s attention.” He faced the same problem when he tried to find investors. His luck turned in March at a trade show in Chicago when he met Marc Heinke, president and chief executive of Precidio Design, a Canadian company whose primary business has long been making melamine tableware. Mr. Heinke was in the process of selling off that business to focus solely on containing and preserving liquid, and he was looking for the next new thing. “Walter has come up with the solution to the single biggest problem with glass, which is that it breaks,” he said. Mr. Himelstein and Mr. Heinke are working on plans to expand sales of the Pure bottle, relying on Mr. Heinke’s business contacts, which include retailers like Lulu Lemon, and his long experience in marketing. They already have plans for a Pure bottle for lunchboxes, for different types of lids and for new colors and labels. “Then there’s the promotional market,” Mr. Heinke said, hopefully, “corporate logos, sports teams, yoga studio logos.”

Glass
Plastic Bottles
PureGlassBottle.com
Bisphenol A (BPA)
Containers and Packaging
Hazardous and Toxic Substances
General Physics Corp
Consumer Behavior
Himelstein Walt


As Speaker, Paul Ryan May Need to Pare Lofty Goals

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Paul D. Ryan, a son and grandson of Midwestern lawyers, ascended rapidly in American politics as a man with big plans: to overhaul the tax code, slash federal spending and rewrite the social contracts for Medicare and Social Security . Mr. Ryan, 45, who was elected in a celebratory Capitol Hill pageant on Thursday as the 54th speaker of the House, the youngest to grip the gavel since the late 1860s, now confronts a fundamental question: Will his new post provide a platform to pursue his bold visions for a renewed America, or will those big ideas weigh him down in an era defined by confrontation and small-bore compromises? Recent experience, including the success of Democrats in blocking all of Mr. Ryan’s sweeping budget proposals, suggests that he will continue to harbor expansive aspirations but will have little choice but to set more modest goals. Mr. Ryan not only faces the realities of divided government, at least for the next 14 months, but also must try to repair the deep fractures among House Republicans — a point that he acknowledged in his opening remarks: “The House is broken. We are not solving problems. We are adding to them.” During Thursday’s ceremonies, there was grim recognition that Mr. Ryan’s ascent stemmed not from electoral victory, but rather from the chaos in the ranks of his party’s majority. Many eyes in the House chamber lingered on a cluster of hard-line rank-and-file conservatives who forced the departure of Mr. Ryan’s predecessor, John A. Boehner of Ohio. On Thursday, those hard-liners joined the standing ovation for Mr. Ryan. They have been demanding that he carry out an array of changes in House rules to empower individual lawmakers. The hard-line House Freedom Caucus, splintering under pressure from fellow Republicans, hardly had the votes to derail Mr. Ryan’s rise, and he appeared to outfox them, at least briefly, by demanding unity before he agreed to accept the gavel. Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, who helped found the caucus, flashed the new speaker a thumbs-up as Mr. Ryan made his way down the aisle to the rostrum and an emotional hug with a weepy Mr. Boehner. Several of the conservatives said they were prepared to give Mr. Ryan the benefit of the doubt, at least for now. “He’s just as frustrated as we have been with the process,” said Representative Raúl R. Labrador, of Idaho, one of the leaders of the Freedom Caucus. “He wants to change business as usual. So we’re cautiously optimistic that he’s going to change the way we’re doing things here, and we’re going to give him a chance.” Image Paul D. Ryan, center, in Washington on Thursday. “We have nothing to fear from honest differences, honestly stated,” he said after being elected House speaker. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times While Mr. Boehner, 65, came into the job as a seasoned leader who tried, unsuccessfully in the end, to appease the Tea Party members, Mr. Ryan, who was the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2012, represents a new generation. His youth was underscored by his three children — 13, 12 and 10 — tucked into the seats high above the chamber floor next to their mother, Janna. His experience on the national stage was recalled by the two guests who sat behind his family: a former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, who asked Mr. Ryan to be his running mate, and Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann. Democrats, while praising Mr. Ryan’s willingness to cooperate with them in the past, were also poised to typecast him as a big-thinking public servant with fine talking points, but who will ultimately fall back on the trickle-down economics of the Reagan era that they say will help neither the poor nor the middle class. “This presents this clearest distinction of anyone they could have named: the Ryan budget,” the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, said in an interview. “Eight-hundred-billion-dollar cuts in Medicare; big tax breaks to the wealthiest people; voucherizing Medicare, not giving a guarantee; block-granting Medicaid , which 65 to 70 percent goes to seniors for long-term health care.” “A budget is supposed to be a statement of values about our country,” Ms. Pelosi added. “So it will be interesting to see if now, in the position of speaker, if those will still be his priorities, and if so, we welcome the debate on the substance.” Yet it was Mr. Ryan who negotiated for Republicans in reaching a crucial budget accord after a damaging government shutdown in 2013, curtailing expectations but ultimately clinching a deal that he noted “was small in substance but big in symbolism.” “We spoke of having to scale back our ambitions,” Mr. Ryan wrote of his negotiations with Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, “from trying to score a touchdown, to getting a first down, to just getting positive yardage.” “When we tried to go big, we realized we were on different teams with different end zones,” Mr. Ryan, a lifelong Green Bay Packers fan, wrote, continuing the football metaphor in his 2014 book, “The Way Forward.” “But there was in fact common ground.” By his own account, Mr. Ryan, who was elected to the House in 1998 at age 28, is a somewhat accidental traveler in the corridors of power, one whose passion lies in the grinding details of policy prescriptions and budget scores. Ms. Pelosi said she hoped Mr. Ryan would be inspired by his own publicly declared desire to spend time with his children to pursue legislation that would grant paid leave to American workers for child care, and provide other benefits for middle-class families. How Congress Has Worked to Avoid the ‘Sequester’ Spending Caps Since passing the Budget Control Act, Congress has made adjustments each year to raise federal spending caps. “I hope that he would translate his personal value into public policy to enable people to have paid leave if their child is sick,” she said. For better or worse, colleagues say, Mr. Ryan, who spends weekends with his family in Janesville, Wis., believes in the policy proposals that he puts forward and, more important, in the social values they are rooted in. A Roman Catholic and former altar boy, Mr. Ryan has written and spoken extensively about his belief that private, voluntary charity can do a better job than government in helping the poor and other needy Americans. Mr. Ryan’s ideas are not just about the dollars and cents of taxes and spending. He has expressed a willingness to work with Democrats on immigration issues that some of his more conservative colleagues find troubling. In his book, he lays out a vision for overhauling antipoverty and other social welfare programs that at times seems to blend elements of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society with the conservative-libertarian philosophies and market-based approaches of Jack F. Kemp, the longtime New York congressman who was a hero and mentor or Mr. Ryan. “Today, there are at least 92 federal programs that claim to help the poor,” Mr. Ryan wrote. “We spent $799 billion on them in 2012 alone. And yet, the official poverty rate is the highest it has been in 21 years.” While Republicans praise Mr. Ryan as perhaps their party’s best “ideas man,” some colleagues said that when Mr. Ryan was afforded his best chance to potentially advance sweeping fiscal reforms — as a member in 2010 of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a bipartisan panel — he ultimately chose partisan politics and Republican unity over a potentially far-reaching compromise. “We had an opportunity,” former Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, who served with him on the panel, said in a recent interview. “We would have fixed Social Security. We would have fixed the long-term imbalances the country is facing. We would have improved Medicare. It would have put America in a position to have a resurgence. It would have put confidence in our institutions.” Mr. Conrad added, “Paul really, I think, failed that test.” To a large degree, the budget accord reached this week, which Mr. Ryan voted to support, will free him from any immediate need to pursue his most ambitious fiscal proposals, and it should clear some room for him to focus on some of the nuts-and-bolts complaints about how the House operates that have divided Republicans. Mr. Ryan, in his speech, called for a more conciliatory approach. “We have nothing to fear from honest differences, honestly stated,” he told his colleagues. “If you have ideas, let’s hear them. I believe a greater clarity between us can lead to a greater charity among us.” “I believe, with every fiber of my being, we can renew the ‘America Idea,’ ” he said later, adding: “Let’s seize the moment. Let’s rise to the occasion.”

US
Republicans
Congress
Paul D Ryan Jr
US Politics
House of Representatives


James, Even at His Best, Can’t Carry the Heat to the Finish

Abstract: SAN ANTONIO — Miami’s LeBron James sat on a trainer’s table an hour before tipoff, his eyes closed, his headphones on as he sang to himself, his back rested squarely against a wall. As James’s relaxed state of repose might have suggested, he was no longer uncomfortable in the face of a must-win game as big as Sunday’s Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals against the San Antonio Spurs. The Heat had won back-to-back championships because in moments when his team needed him most, James was at his best. He no longer sagged under the weight of expectations. He now often exceeded them. So it was no surprise when James said beforehand that he would seize Sunday’s game. And he did. James dunked, defended, rebounded, knocked down 3-pointers, swatted away shots and carried the Heat to an early 16-point lead. The heavy lifting done, James waited for help. But it never arrived, and the Spurs soon turned the game into a rout on their way to a 104-87 victory and their fifth championship in 16 seasons. Dwyane Wade continued to look old and creaky. Chris Bosh, who earlier in the day promised a victory, came up empty on all accounts. And Ray Allen, thrust into the starting lineup in place of the slumping Mario Chalmers, made only one field goal. James had a game-high 31 points to go with 10 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 blocks, and he helped limit Tony Parker to one basket through three quarters. But it was not nearly enough for him to stop the Spurs on his own. “They were the much better team,” James said. “That’s how team basketball should be played. You know, it’s selfless. Guys move, cut, pass; you’ve got a shot, you take it. But it’s all for the team, and it’s never about the individual. That’s the brand of basketball, and that’s how team basketball should be played.” The compliment by James is likely to be parsed, dissected and interpreted in the coming weeks as he decides whether to remain with Miami or opt out of his contract and test the free-agent market this off-season. Wade and Bosh are in the same position, and there has been speculation that the three would take pay cuts so the Heat could add the Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony, who also has an opt-out clause in his contract. Houston forward Chandler Parsons offered another opinion when he said Friday that he thought James would leave Miami — perhaps to head back to Cleveland. “I will deal with my summer when I get to that point,” James said. “Me and my team will sit down and deal with it. I love Miami. My family loves it. But obviously right now that’s not even what I’m thinking about. You guys are trying to find answers. I’m not going to give you one.” Bosh and Wade did not provide any answers, either. Bosh, who made the go-ahead 3-pointer in Game 2, missed his last nine shots from behind the arc in the series. Wade, who missed 28 games in the regular season to rest his chronically sore knees, shot 7 of 25 from the field over the last two games. Their ineffectiveness was apparent in a handful of plays, the type that might best express a will to win. After Manu Ginobili dunked over Bosh to bring a stunned arena to life, Wade tried to return the favor. But Tiago Splitter interfered with the plan and blocked Wade’s dunk attempt. A last gasp by the Heat ended fittingly enough when Wade and Bosh bungled an alley-oop that would have closed the gap to 16 points with 5 minutes 45 seconds left. The Spurs grabbed the rebound, and Tony Parker raced to the other end for a layup. “They dominated us,” Bosh said. “They took two games on our home court by 20 points apiece. They beat us by 20 tonight. It hasn’t been much of a series, not even close. They played the best basketball I’ve ever seen.” Wade sounded almost wistful as he sat next to James at the postgame news conference, reflecting on the four seasons they had spent as teammates, which included an awkward beginning, two championships and a continual turn in the spotlight. “We didn’t know what to expect when we decided to become teammates years ago,” Wade said. “We just knew that we felt as individuals that we could do it, that we could put our egos to the side and not care about the individual part of the game.” If the Heat’s Big 3 decide to stay together, if Wade is not on a severe downward slope at age 32, and if the Heat’s defense has not been exposed with Bosh at center, then they will at least need more help. Shane Battier is retiring, and perhaps Allen will as well. The Spurs, among other things, displayed the importance of developing a deep bench with complementary parts. There was no such relief for James. The series began with him suffering cramps when the air-conditioning system failed at AT&T Center. It ended with James finding himself unable to carry the weight of the entire team.

LeBron James
Spurs
Chris Bosh
Basketball
Miami Heat


Hey, Kristaps Porzingis: Welcome to the Knicks’ Dysfunction

Abstract: Two and a half hours before game time, Kristaps Porzingis was testing the Madison Square Garden rims, finding them rather welcoming and friendly. “My shot is good,” he said Wednesday evening after launching numerous long-range jumpers for the first time at the self-proclaimed world’s most famous arena. He later sat at his dressing stall — the one vacated last season by Amar’e Stoudemire — and said he was ready for the expectations and issues that came with the projections, or prayers, that he might be the new savior of the Knicks . He is only 20, a boyish Latvian giant at 7 feet 3 inches, but Porzingis is as engaging as any native attendee of an American institution of higher dribbling, surprisingly adept with colloquial and cultural customs. “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” he chirped when asked why he had hoped to land in New York before the N.B.A. draft last June. “If you’re great here, they will love you.” He knew enough to add that if you stink — though he used a more strident word — “they’ll let you know.” He added, “It’s a tough place.” He may already understand that the home team has developed a habit of making it even tougher, especially on itself. Case in point: Wednesday night at the Garden was supposed to be primarily about the joy of six, or No. 6, the debuting rookie Porzingis. The pregame intrigue instead focused off the court, on Derek Fisher, the coach of the Knicks, who began the 2015 preseason by starring in a tabloid tale on Page Six. On that famous or infamous (depending on who’s reading) New York Post repository of back-room chatter is where no intended leader of young men should wish to be, unless he is hosting the Oscars or about to pilot the hostile takeover of a billion-dollar company. Fisher landed there after a reported confrontation with Matt Barnes, who plays for the Memphis Grizzlies. According to The Post and other reports, Fisher, who filed for divorce from his wife in March, has had a personal relationship with Gloria Govan, the estranged wife of Barnes, who has appeared on the reality television show “Basketball Wives L.A.” Fisher did not deny the reports or correct them, and he acknowledged that he addressed his players about them “to make sure before they were asked about it that they heard it from me.” The police in Redondo Beach, Calif., made no mention of Fisher in their detailing of the incident, which occurred Saturday night, and said no charges were filed. Image Coach Derek Fisher, who is in his second Knicks season, said he addressed his players about reports of a confrontation between him and the Grizzlies' Matt Barnes. Credit Elsa/Getty Images Barnes told reporters Thursday that he had concerns for his son (of being taught the triangle?). But based on what appeared to have happened — and Barnes’s reputation as a hothead with a long list of behavioral transgressions, including accusations of domestic abuse — Fisher was first and foremost a victim, deserving of the “full support” offered by the Knicks and the right to deal privately with a personal situation. But there is a bigger picture, even if it is one of perception. The head coach of an N.B.A. team is largely responsible for establishing and enforcing standards for player accountability, and now there are questions about what Fisher may have been up to when he left the team over the weekend to see his children, who live in Los Angeles, only to have the incident with Barnes occur at Govan’s home. Fisher is free to date whomever he chooses, but rest assured there was widespread cringing inside N.B.A. headquarters when it was learned that he has been seeing the estranged wife of a current player, a former Los Angeles Lakers teammate. Shifting though it may be, there is a social line that authority figures should think about at least twice before crossing. A coach’s sloppy lifestyle is seldom part of a constructive game plan, as the Knicks have learned to varying degrees with Isiah Thomas, the Jets with Rex Ryan and, way back when, the Yankees with Billy Martin. Fisher, 41, came to New York with the reputation as a soft-spoken, introspective man (and family man). But he also arrived only months removed from being an active player, the life of professional entitlement. It is tempting to cynically wonder if coaching a 17-victory team in the crucible of New York last season and being harshly perceived as the team president Phil Jackson’s marionette would be enough to drive any man to a premature midlife crisis. On Thursday, Fisher cited plane problems for missing Monday’s practice. He felt that he needed to assure his players, “I’m here, I’m focused, it’s not something that’s going to take me away from who we are and what we’re trying to do.” But he said: “I guess I can’t control how individually other players and people handle distraction. I think that’s an individual process for each guy.” The story naturally reinforced the notion that with the Knicks, it’s always something. But with a roster loaded with new players — including Porzingis and Jerian Grant, the team’s other first-round pick — is this what they needed to hear from the coach on their first night’s work at the Garden? Last season, Porzingis played for a club team in Spain that was as dysfunctional as any team in recent Knicks history. But now he is in the N.B.A., carrying the weight of being the No. 4 pick. What he and Grant most need is a stable organization. Both had good moments in Wednesday night’s 100-81 victory over a Brazilian league team, Bauru Basket . At 6-4, Grant is a finely tuned athlete who moves well, even on defense, and plays with an encouraging sense of the game. Porzingis obviously needs to be stronger, but, beyond his 3-point range, he is impressively coordinated and, given his height, should eventually be able to get a good shot off with relative ease. If the night accomplished anything, it was getting a feel for the big stage and all that goes with it. “The game here at Madison Square Garden with the lights bright is a different experience,” Fisher said. Something for a young coach to keep in mind with that light shining on him, too.

Kristaps Porzingis
Knicks
Derek Fisher
Matt Barnes
Memphis Grizzlies
Gloria Govan
Basketball


Perseverance Is Paying Off for a Test of Relativity in Space

Abstract: STANFORD, Calif. — For 46 years, Francis Everitt, a Stanford University physicist, has promoted the often perilous fortunes of Gravity Probe B, perhaps the most exotic, “Star Trek”-ish experiment ever undertaken in space. Finally, with emergency financial help from a pair of unusual sources, success is at hand. Conceived in the late 1950s, financed by $750 million from NASA and launched into orbit in 2004, the Gravity Probe B spacecraft has sought to prove two tenets of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The first, called the geodetic effect, holds that a large celestial body like Earth will warp time the way a rubber sheet stretches when a bowling ball is placed on it. The second, known as frame-dragging, occurs when the rotation of a large body “twists” nearby space and time; turn the resting bowling ball, and the rubber sheet twists. To measure these phenomena, Dr. Everitt and his Stanford team equipped Gravity Probe B with a special telescope attached to several gyroscopes. They pointed the telescope at a “guide star,” IM Pegasi, and then spun up the gyros with their axes also fixed on the guide star. If Einstein was right, the gyros would drift slightly over time to follow the space-time distortion. The Stanford team collected 11 ½ months’ worth of transmissions from Gravity Probe B, but tiny unforeseen drift in the gyros fouled the results. Dr. Everitt had to ask NASA for extra time and money so his 11-member team could figure out how to scrub the data. Four painstaking years later, the team has confirmed the geodetic effect and put a credible frame-dragging result within reach. Nevertheless, NASA was forced to stop financing the project last May. This 11th-hour catastrophe might have been terminal, but Dr. Everitt, long known for his tenacity as well as his charm, had nursed Gravity Probe B through several near-death experiences over the years. To persevere into 2008, he had already won a $500,000 contribution from Richard Fairbank, the founder and chief executive of Capital One Financial and the youngest son of his old mentor, the Stanford physicist William Fairbank. Richard Fairbank stipulated that Stanford and NASA each match his contribution, and they did. But by mid-2008, that $1.5 million was running out. That is when Dr. Everitt turned to Turki al-Saud, vice president for research institutes at the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and a member of the Saudi royal family. Dr. Saud, who has a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford, arranged a $2.7 million grant. The work goes on. “I didn’t imagine I would ever visit Riyadh,” Dr. Everitt said. “We will need more money, but $2.7 million by itself is really helpful. We now have a clear end in sight.” The Gravity Probe B experiment was conceived at the dawn of the Space Age by the Stanford physicist Leonard Schiff and George E. Pugh of the Defense Department. Dr. Schiff brought William Fairbank into the project in 1959, and in 1962 Dr. Fairbank induced the British-born Dr. Everitt to come for a visit. Now 74, Dr. Everitt has directed Gravity Probe B ever since. While the experiment itself was relatively straightforward, the engineering demands were unprecedented. The theoretical distortion in space-time for the geodetic effect was 6,614.4 milliarcseconds per year; for frame-dragging it was only 14 milliarcseconds per year. A milliarcsecond is about one four-millionth of a degree of arc. To make measurements that fine using an object as large as Earth, the spacecraft’s gyros had to be virtually friction-free and unaffected by heat, magnetic fields or unpredictable movements. The pristine environment of space made the attempt possible. But success was not guaranteed. Arcane, often unprecedented technologies were needed. The four fused-quartz, Ping-Pong-ball-size gyroscopes, coated with the metal niobium, were the most perfectly spherical objects ever created by humans. A coffin-size lead “bag” shielded the gyros from Earth’s magnetic field. A large thermos-like container called a dewar contained 645 gallons of liquid helium to be cooled to within two degrees of absolute zero. The helium held the niobium coating at superconducting temperatures, so the metal could track the deviations in the gyros’ spin axis. By the time the 21-foot-long, 3-ton spacecraft was launched on April 20, 2004, Gravity Probe B had become a very expensive tool designed to prove something that many scientists over the years had come to accept as already proved by theoretical physics and some previous experiments. That argument has no heft with Dr. Everitt. “We are doing a measurement with a massive object, and this is valid,” Dr. Everitt said. “This is what the general theory of relativity says, and this is the experiment.” The mission, however, did not go according to plan. The niobium coating on the gyros and their housings was slightly uneven, causing tiny unpredictable electrical torques that made the gyros drift. The mission ended in 2005, but since then the Stanford team has been mapping niobium anomalies on each gyro, finding the patterns of distortion and subtracting the noise from the data. NASA had budgeted money for a year’s worth of post-flight data analysis, but Dr. Everitt needed a lot more time, and NASA financed the project through 2007. That, it seemed, would be the end. Richard Fairbank, whom Dr. Everitt had known since he was a child, thought differently. “Nearly 50 years ago, my father had talked with me about the integrity of a bold quest and never giving up,” Mr. Fairbank said. “I just felt that the project was on the 1-yard line.” The financing brought about by his contribution took the project into 2008, but in May, Gravity Probe B went before NASA’s senior review, where an independent committee of scientists rates continuing agency projects to determine financing priorities. “We ended up dead last,” Dr. Everitt said. That month, however, Dr. Saud visited Stanford and spoke briefly with Dr. Everitt. Saudi Arabia, which has built 12 small satellites, “was interested in forming partnerships” for future space missions, Dr. Saud said in a telephone interview, and has since done so with Stanford and NASA. Dr. Everitt met with Dr. Saud in London in July, and Gravity Probe B received $2.7 million. The team has forged ahead. In August, graduate students made a breakthrough in data analysis to bring the frame-dragging deviation within 15 percent of the predicted result. Dr. Everitt hopes to get it within 3 percent by mid-2010. The geodetic effect is currently within 1 percent of the predicted result and is expected to go even lower. “They fly the mission and have what seems like an insurmountable problem,” said Michael Salamon, program scientist for the Physics of the Cosmos Program at NASA and a staunch supporter of the project despite the senior review decision. “Then they do this. It’s spectacular, frankly, and when it’s done we are going to have a press announcement.”

Space
Earth
Science and Technology
Stars and Galaxies
Gravitation and Gravity


Maine: Shrimp Season Is Called Off

Abstract: Regulators on Tuesday voted to cancel the 2014 shrimp season in the Gulf of Maine, the first such shutdown since 1978. Before the vote, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section cited research that shows stocks of shrimp are at historic lows, because of factors such as overfishing and warming waters. The fishery for northern shrimp, also called pink shrimp, was worth an estimated $1.2 million in its limited 2013 season; in 2011, according to regulators, it was worth more than $10 million.


Goldman Settles Subprime Complaint in Massachusetts

Abstract: In the first major settlement involving Wall Street’s role in the subprime mortgage business, the Goldman Sachs Group agreed on Monday to pay up to $60 million to end an investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office into whether the firm helped promote unfair home loans in the state. The money will be used for a loan modification program that would allow Massachusetts homeowners with mortgages from Goldman entities to write down their principal balances by as much as 50 percent. The settlement resulted from a continuing investigation by Attorney General Martha Coakley into subprime lending practices and the role of investment banks that acted as middlemen in loans that have resulted in foreclosure or contained terms so onerous that they were destined to fail. At a news conference, she said that the problem was industrywide and that the Goldman settlement would provide “much needed relief for many in Massachusetts.” Even so, she also criticized what she called predatory lending that was encouraged by Wall Street firms that bought individual subprime mortgages and repackaged them into securitized loans for investors. “Our office has sought accountability at all levels of the subprime lending crisis,” Ms. Coakley said in a statement. “We will continue to investigate the deceptive marketing of unfair loans and the companies that facilitated the sale of those loans to consumers in the Commonwealth.” Michael DuVally, a spokesman for Goldman said it was “pleased to have resolved this matter,” and declined to comment further. In the heyday of subprime mortgage lending, Goldman Sachs both issued mortgage-backed securities and underwrote them, too. From 2005 through 2007, Goldman issued more than $33 billion in mortgage-backed securities, creating tradable securities from packages of individual subprime mortgages. In 2005 and 2006, it also underwrote $53 billion of securitized loans made by others. While not the largest financier of subprime mortgages, Goldman consistently ranked in the top 20, sometimes in the top 10. It also added to the housing bubble by providing financing to other leading subprime lenders, including New Century Financial Corporation and Option One mortgage. Goldman agreed to work with Ms. Coakley’s office to find the 714 Massachusetts residents holding mortgages directly with Goldman and the thousands of others whose loans are serviced by Goldman’s affiliated mortgage servicing company, Litton Loan Servicing LP. Most of the homeowners are in the Boston area. Others are in Worcester, Lawrence and the North Shore. The program requires Goldman to reduce the principal on first mortgages by up to 30 percent and on second mortgages by up to 50 percent. It would be one of several such programs throughout the country. But the complications involved in changing the terms of securitized mortgage packages, resistance by some lenders and controversy in Washington have slowed the start of many of these programs. Of the $60 million settlement, $50 million will go to reworking loans in Massachusetts, with the rest going to the state.

Mortgages
Goldman Sachs Group
Banks and Banking
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Agency Cites Weaknesses in Gas Pipeline Regulation

Abstract: Three powerful accidents in recent years show systemic weaknesses in the way natural gas providers maintain the largest pipelines in their networks, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday as it issued more than two dozen safety recommendations. The agency said that since 2003, when tighter rules were issued, the number of pipeline accidents that involve injuries or damage to property had leveled off. Since then, the regulators said, state-regulated pipelines have had a 27 percent higher incident rate than federally regulated pipelines. Three accidents since 2010, in California, Florida and West Virginia, illustrate the problems, namely that gas companies failed to conduct inspections or tests that might have revealed weaknesses. Nearly 300,000 miles of gas transmission pipelines crisscross the United States.

Pipelines
Accidents and Safety
NTSB
Regulation and Deregulation


Mike Pence: A Conservative Proudly Out of Sync With His Times

Abstract: Long after government regulators had confirmed the lethal consequences of cigarette smoking, Mike Pence mocked their warnings as “hysteria” in 1998. “Time for a quick reality check,” he wrote. “Smoking doesn’t kill.” Long after most members of Congress had abandoned the quaint practice of delivering one-minute morning speeches, Mr. Pence eagerly held court in an empty chamber, musing about sports and Scripture. And long after Republicans’ war on big government was fading, Mr. Pence defiantly opposed his own party over the creation of signature programs like No Child Left Behind and a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Throughout his career as a congressman, radio host and governor, Gov. Michael Richard Pence of Indiana, Donald J. Trump’s running mate, has been deeply and proudly out of sync with his times. With his formal bearing, shiny helmet of white hair and carefully chosen, slowly delivered words, he is a throwback in his demeanor. With his deep social conservatism, public religiosity and aversion to negative campaigning, he is a throwback in his political style. Donald Trump and Mike Pence: Highlights Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence appeared for the first time in public together since Mr. Pence was named as Mr. Trump’s running mate. Here’s how we analyzed it. He is so abstemious that he once declared that to avoid temptation, he would never appear anywhere alcohol was served unless his wife was with him. This has earned Mr. Pence, 57, both the admiration of Republican voters who identify with his homespun manner and the frustration of outsiders who see him as a dangerous anachronism. Leslie Lenkowsky, a former professor at Indiana University who has known Mr. Pence for 20 years, said that in an age of business-minded governors who deliberately avoid touchy social issues, “Mike sees himself as a champion of a very culturally conservative set of values that represent small-town Middle America.” “He sees his role,” Mr. Lenkowsky said, “as protecting them.” In interviews, Mr. Pence describes himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.” Those animating forces were at the center of the most consequential – and controversial – decision Mr. Pence made as governor: signing a 2015 law that could have made it easier for religious conservatives to refuse service to gay couples just as same-sex marriage was spreading across the country. Video Donald J. Trump, then the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, announcing Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana as his vice-presidential running mate. Credit Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times The national firestorm generated by the law was so fierce that sports leagues, trade groups and technology companies threatened to boycott Mr. Pence’s state, forcing him to revise the law in a compromise that infuriated both sides of the debate. For many Americans, it was a searing introduction to Mr. Pence. But for those who have closely tracked his career, it fit a longstanding pattern: the winds of change might blow, but Mr. Pence is slow to bend. By the time he was elected to Congress in 2000, after two failed tries, Mr. Pence had missed the Republican revolution led by Newt Gingrich and his scrappy, fiscally conservative acolytes who stormed Washington in 1994. Nobody, it seemed, had told Mr. Pence that the rebellion was over. He arrived in the House determined to slash federal spending and shrink the role of government. It was not to be: House Republicans, led by President George W. Bush, created giant new programs like Medicare Part D and spent trillions bailing out Wall Street after the financial crisis. “I was like the frozen man,” Mr. Pence said of his poor timing in a 2004 speech. “Frozen before the revolution; thawed after it was over. A minuteman who showed up 10 years too late.” Image Protesters against Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act gathered in Indianapolis in March 2015. Credit Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images He left little mark on the institution: During his 12-year congressional career, he introduced 90 bills and resolutions. None became law. Showing up late, by many accounts, was his fate as governor, too. By the time he was elected, his popular predecessor, Gov. Mitch Daniels, along with a Republican legislature, had checked off almost every box on the conservative wish list: shrunken budgets, privately managed health care for state workers, and a voucher program that allowed public students to attend private schools. “Mitch Daniels dominated Indiana politics for the better part of 10 years,” said Michael D. McDaniel, who was the Indiana Republican chairman from 1995 until 2002. “Mike Pence would be the first person to tell you that he knew that was going to be a tough act to follow.” So far, he has struggled to carve out a national reputation beyond his polarizing pursuit of socially conservative causes. In an echo of his actions on gay rights, he signed a strict new law in March that bans abortions based solely on the fetus having a disability such as Down syndrome. The measure inflamed many women and abortion-rights activists across the country and now faces a court challenge. “A society,” Mr. Pence said at the time, “can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable — the aged, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn.” Pence Ranks Low in Approval, but Not as Low as Trump and Clinton Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, who Donald J. Trump announced as his running mate on Friday,<strong> </strong>has a relatively low approval rating among governors. His conservatism, friends said, is firmly rooted in his Indiana childhood, a postcard from a tranquil Midwest of the 1960s. The son of a gas station manager, he was a quiet altar boy whose favorite childhood memory was playing in a neighborhood creek. In college, he gravitated from his family’s Catholicism to evangelical Christianity after a fraternity brother at Hanover College “challenged me to take seriously the claims of Christ,” Mr. Pence later recalled on the House floor . His small-town, plain-spoken personality was the centerpiece of his early campaigns. In 1988, during his first run for Congress, he rode a single-speed bicycle across 261 miles of his district to meet voters. He lost. But his feel for the local mood and mores allowed him to master a form of communication that proved pivotal to his political rise: talk radio. After he lost the 1988 campaign, and another in 1990, “The Mike Pence Show” became his tether to voters across Indiana and a springboard into the world of national conservatives. The show’s origins reveal much about its host. The head of a local station had sold Mr. Pence (and his mother, who attended the meeting) on the idea by reminding him that radio was Ronald Reagan’s ticket to stardom in the 1930s. “Our idea was just to keep his name out there,” said Sharon Disinger, who is a co-owner of the station with her husband. Image Mr. Pence, then a representative from Indiana, held a meeting with constituents in Pendleton in 2011. His small-town, plain-spoken personality was the centerpiece of his early campaigns. Credit Michael Conroy/Associated Press The broadcast, an amiable three-hour discussion of politics, weather and local life that ran from 1993 to 1999, was a hit. It eventually aired on 18 local stations. “It was pleasant radio, like a fireside type chat,” Ms. Disinger said. Mr. Pence described it this way: “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” And it paved the way for his eventual victory in a 2000 race for Congress. By then, Mr. Pence had made a declaration that could complicate his new political partnership with Mr. Trump, whose style leaves no rival unscathed. He swore off personal attacks on campaign opponents, saying he regretted his tactics against his two-time Democratic rival, Representative Phil Sharp. In one 1990 campaign commercial, Mr. Pence hired an actor to play an Arab, dressed in stereotypical garb, who theatrically thanked Mr. Sharp for American dependency on foreign oil. “Negative campaigning, I now know, is wrong,” Mr. Pence wrote in a contrite essay after he lost to Mr. Sharp. In it, he quoted from the Bible about Jesus and sin. “A campaign,” Mr. Pence posited, “ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate.” Mr. Sharp, in an interview, seemed unmoved. “To me, neither he nor Trump are of presidential timber,” Mr. Sharp said. But friends said it was a sincere conversion. Curt Smith, the president of the Indiana Family Institute, a conservative group, said Mr. Pence still talked about his regret over that poisonous campaign years later. “Mike talks about his mistakes,” Mr. Smith said. “He is coming from a place of conviction.” Admission of error did not come as easily in the case of the religious exceptions law that Mr. Pence signed in 2015. After offending gays across the country, enduring a backlash from the state’s business community and undergoing a painfully awkward nationally televised interview in which he struggled to explain the law’s on-the-ground impact, Mr. Pence acknowledged only that he could have better handled the TV encounter. Soon after, he accepted a revision to the law that he said would prevent businesses from denying services to gay couples, or anyone else. “It was badly mishandled,” said Mr. Lenkowsky, the former Indiana University professor. On that, even Mr. Pence’s conservative allies agree. The compromise Mr. Pence struck, said Mr. Smith, “turned out to be a dramatic unraveling, and I was very disappointed.” Mr. Pence, however, seems unperturbed by the politically costly decision and the resulting cultural clash that has come to define his time in office. “I don’t think it’s something he regrets,” said Mr. Lenkowsky. “If that’s his identity, that’s his identity. He can live with it.”

Mike Pence
Republicans
Indiana
Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election
Vice President US


Banned From U.S.: ‘You Need to Go Back to Your Country’

Abstract: Social media shook with emotion. Headlines shouted the news. Legal scholars debated the order’s scope. But the most immediate effect of President Trump’s executive order barring refugees from entering the United States and halting entry from seven predominantly Muslim countries could be quantified on a human scale: refugees and other immigrants from those seven countries, some on their way to the United States on Friday when Mr. Trump signed the order , who were no longer able to enter the United States. Here are some of their stories. Fuad Shareef’s family, Iraq Hearing of Mr. Trump’s plan to slam the door on Muslim immigrants this week, Mr. Shareef hurried his wife and three children onto a plane in the Iraqi city of Erbil in the early hours of Saturday. They had been cleared to resettle in Nashville — a new life that Mr. Shareef considered a great opportunity. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr. Shareef worked as a translator with American officials, and he received death threats. But after the Shareefs arrived in Cairo on Saturday, a check-in official spoke to Mr. Shareef. “He said they had just received an email from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad,” Mr. Shareef said. “It said we could not get on the flight.” Speaking by phone from an airport lounge, Mr. Shareef said he had sold the family home and car. His wife had given up her job. His two daughters, 10 and 17, had quit school. He had spent $5,000 on flights. “I thought in America there are institutions, democracy,” he said. “This looks like a decision from a dictator. I don’t understand.” “Donald Trump ruined my life,” he said. Nisrin Omer, Sudan Ms. Omer, 39, is a green card holder, has lived in the United States since 1993, and graduated from Harvard University. On Friday night Ms. Omer was detained at Kennedy International Airport as she returned from Sudan, where she is a citizen, after a research trip for her anthropology Ph.D. at Stanford University. Ms. Omer said customs officials were apologetic and appeared confused about what they were supposed to do with the detained travelers. “I have to do this,” one told her. For five hours they asked about her travels, her academic research and her views on Sudanese politics, which they admitted to knowing little about. At one point, she said, they aggressively patted her down and handcuffed her. They removed the restraints when she began to cry, but the detainees brought in for questioning after her arrived in handcuffs, she said. “For the brief moment I was handcuffed, I couldn’t control myself and I just started crying,” Ms. Omer said. “It was humiliating. I thought I was going to be returned to Sudan.” After Ms. Omer was released she said she felt like one of the lucky ones. “There are a lot of people being treated much worse or are being sent back,” she said. “If they get sent back to Iraq or Syria it is a life-or-death situation.” Hazhir Rahmandad’s parents Hazhir Rahmandad , a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, said his parents who hold green cards and split their time between the United States and Iran, were due back in Massachusetts on Tuesday to celebrate the birthday of Mr. Rahmandad’s twin children. Now they will not travel. Professor Rahmandad set up a Google form for people from countries affected by the immigration order to report and share their experiences attempting to travel to the U.S. “I was so concerned,” he said. By Saturday evening, his spreadsheet had over 200 entries, most of them concerning people from Iran. Ali Abdi, Iran Mr. Abdi, 30, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Yale with permanent residency in the United States, said he left the United States on Jan. 22 for Afghanistan, where he planned to do field research for much of the next year. He had participated in the women’s march in Washington the day before. Now, he said he was in legal limbo as he awaited a visa from the consulate of Afghanistan, unable to return to the United States even with a green card and fearful of returning to Iran because of his activism about human rights issues there. Speaking by phone from Dubai, Mr. Abdi said his current visa limits his stay in the United Arab Emirates to about a month. The possibility that green card holders and refugees could be barred from the United States did not occur to him when he left, he said. “We didn’t believe it really, that it was going to be implemented,” he said. “Maybe we were taking the Trump administration less seriously than it is.” Nada, Iraq Nada, a Yazidi woman from Iraq, was on her way to be reunited with her husband, Khalas, who lives in Washington. The two of them, their last names not released, were granted special immigrant visas to the United States as part of a program created to help thousands of Iraqis with ties to the United States, according to The New Yorker . Khalas, a former interpreter for the United States Army, was granted his visa in April. Nada’s visa was approved about a week ago, and her passport on Thursday. She was turned away, however, when she arrived at the gate for her flight in Dubai, wrote Kirk W. Johnson, the founder and executive director of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. “The flight crew sent her back,” Khalas texted Mr. Johnson, “saying they got orders that no Iraqis with American visas should be boarded.” Sarah Assali’s family, Syria Ms. Assali, 25, a third-year medical student from Allentown, Pa., said six of her Syrian relatives had arrived in Philadelphia on a flight from Doha, Qatar, on Saturday morning, only to be detained and put on a flight back less than three hours later. The group had obtained family-based immigrant visas. Ms. Assali said in a telephone interview that her six relatives — two uncles, two aunts and two teenage cousins, whom she did not name out of fear of endangering them or their case — are Christians who live in Damascus. Her father was on his way to pick up the relatives from the airport when he got a call from a customs official, she said, who said his family would not be leaving the airport. “They told him they’re not coming out, and to just go back.” Ms. Assali said. “And that it’s confidential and he can’t tell them why. They said it was an issue with their paperwork.” Hameed Khalid Darweesh, Iraq Mr. Darweesh, a husband and father of three who worked for the United States military in Iraq for about a decade, was detained after arriving at Kennedy Airport on Friday night. He was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20. When he filed for it, he said he had been directly targeted because of his work for the United States as an interpreter, engineer and contractor. Mr. Darweesh was released on Saturday after lawyers filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal court seeking freedom for him, as well as for another Iraqi detained at the airport. Speaking to reporters and some protesters who gathered outside Kennedy Airport, Mr. Darweesh called the United States the greatest nation in the world. He said he was thankful for the people who had worked on his behalf. “This is the humanity, this is the soul of America,” he said. “This is what pushed me to move, leave my country and come here.” Hamaseh Tayari, United Kingdom Ms. Tayari, a resident of the United Kingdom who holds an Iranian passport, was unable to get back to Glasgow, where she works as a veterinarian, from Costa Rica, where she was vacationing, because her flight traveled through New York, according to The Guardian . Ms. Tayari grew up in Italy and told the newspaper that she had never experienced anything like it. She said it might cost her a month’s salary to book a new flight home. “I am destroyed,” she said. “I did not know that I could cry for so long. It feels like the beginning of the end. How this is possible? I am really afraid about what is going on.” Unnamed family of six, Syria The family members have been living in a refugee camp in Turkey, and were scheduled to fly to the United States on Monday, according to US Together, a refugee resettlement agency quoted in The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. The agency had found an apartment for them to rent with another family of Syrian refugees in Cleveland. Those plans have been canceled after Mr. Trump’s order. “It was going to be really perfect,” Danielle Drake, a community relations manager for US Together, told the newspaper. “I can’t even imagine how the family feels right now.” Seyed Soheil Saeedi Saravi, Iran Mr. Saravi, a young scientist in Iran, had been scheduled to travel to Boston, where he had been awarded a fellowship at Harvard to study cardiovascular medicine, according to Thomas Michel, the professor who was to supervise his research. Then the visas for Mr. Saravi and his wife were suspended, Professor Michel said. “This outstanding young scientist has enormous potential to make contributions that will improve our understanding of heart disease, and he has already been thoroughly vetted,” Professor Michel wrote to The New York Times. “This country and this city have a long history of providing research training to the best young scientists in the world, many of whom have stayed in the U.S.A. and made tremendous contributions in biomedicine and other disciplines.” Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, Iraq Mr. Alshawi, who worked for a United States contractor in Iraq, was detained after he landed at Kennedy Airport on Friday. He had flown from Stockholm to New York, en route to Texas to see his wife and son. “He gave his package and his passport to an airport officer, and they didn’t talk to him, they just put him in a room,” his wife, who asked to be referred to only by her first initial, D, told The New York Times. “He told me that they forced him to get back to Iraq. He asked for his lawyer and to apply for an asylum case. And they told him: ‘You can’t do that. You need to go back to your country.’”

Immigration
Donald Trump
Visas
Refugees,Internally Displaced People