U.S. Housing Starts Rose in March

Abstract: In a modest sign that the housing market is moving toward more normal conditions, the pace of home building is finally picking up from its near-death levels. The Census Bureau reported Friday that housing starts in March rose 1.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 626,000. It was the third consecutive monthly increase, and better than analysts had been predicting. The rate is now 31 percent above the record low set last April. Adding to the sense of momentum was a significant upward adjustment to the February numbers, which were originally reported as 575,000, a decline of 5.9 percent, but now revised to 616,000, an increase of 1.1 percent. However welcome these numbers are to builders, they are very small improvements when set against the context of construction’s steep fall over the last several years. At the height of the boom, more than two million homes were being built annually. The increase in construction this winter was most likely spurred by the government’s tax credit for homebuyers, which is speeding toward expiration with little likelihood of being renewed. Deals have to be signed by the end of this month to qualify, although they can take two more months to close. Joshua Shapiro, an economist with the consulting firm MFR, estimated that a considerable amount of the recent activity was a result of the tax credit, and that housing starts would soon suffer another setback. That in turn would act as a considerable damper on the economy, which would have to recover despite housing, not because of it. “Although signaling something better than the paralyzed conditions that prevailed a year and more ago, these data indicate that home builders are not seeing a dramatic recovery in demand,” he said. While more homes are finally being built, there are reports that the millions of homes in foreclosure limbo might finally be making their way back to the market. Builders have to compete for new buyers with rock-bottom repossessed homes. Another reason for caution is that most of the increase in March was in multi-unit construction, which tends to be volatile. Single-family home starts actually fell slightly. In addition, a consumer survey released Friday by the University of Michigan sounded a bleak note for the home building industry. Consumers said current conditions were not so bad, but their worries were increasing for the future. The survey’s overall index dropped to 69.5 in April from 73.6 in March. The new level was the lowest since November. The historical average is 86.5. “This turnaround, like all good things, takes time,” said Jennifer H. Lee, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets. Builders remain gloomy. Earlier this week, the National Association of Home Builders reported that sentiment among builders as measured by its monthly index had risen to 19 in April, from 15 in March. That rise is roughly equivalent to moods improving from miserable to merely dejected. An index level above 50, which has not been seen since the boom, indicates bullish sentiment. The record low was 8, set in January 2009.


Fleur Cowles, 101, Is Dead; Friend of the Elite and the Editor of a Magazine for Them

Abstract: Fleur Cowles, who rose from modest beginnings in New York to become a well-heeled friend of the powerful and famous and the creator of one of the most extravagant and innovative magazines ever published, died on Friday at a nursing home in Sussex, England. She was 101, and her death was confirmed by her husband, Tom Montague Meyer. Ms. Cowles (pronounced coals) was a painter, a writer and a renowned hostess. But she took greatest pride in two things. One was her short-lived magazine, Flair, published in the 1950s during her marriage to Gardner Cowles Jr. , known as Mike, the publisher of Look magazine. The other was her talent for friendship. Her anecdotal memoir, “She Made Friends and Kept Them” (HarperCollins, 1996), was practically a Rolodex of many of the world’s most recognizable names: American presidents, foreign heads of state, Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth the Queen Mother (described as her “best friend”), Princess Grace, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Lady Bird Johnson, Pope John XXIII, Howard Hughes, Judy Garland, Joan Miró (who designed her dresses) and Cary Grant, the best man at her wedding to her fourth husband, Mr. Meyer (pronounced to rhyme with “clear”). Although there were just 12 issues of Flair, published from February 1950 to January 1951, the magazine caused a sensation and is still admired for its coverage of fashion, décor, travel, art, literature and other enthusiasms of Ms. Cowles’s. It was part of the Cowles publishing empire, which included newspapers in the Midwest and, most notably, Look magazine, of which Ms. Cowles had been an influential editor. But Flair, incorporating cutouts, fold-outs, pop-ups, removable reproductions of artworks and a variety of paper stocks of different sizes and textures, was simply too expensive to produce, even though it sold for 50 cents a copy when Time and Life were selling for 20 cents. When Flair ceased publication, Mr. Cowles, who had financed it, estimated that it had lost $2.5 million. Circulation, less than 100,000 for the first issue, eventually doubled, but advertising did not follow, and losses were running about 75 cents a copy. The preview issue, in September 1949, reflected Ms. Cowles’s passion for the arts and boasted a two-layer cover. The outside was embossed with a basket-weave pattern and punctuated with a hole, through which could be seen a picture of a man and woman embracing. The inside cover showed the couple as part of a wall layered with a collage of shredded posters. A spring issue featured the rose, a flower Ms. Cowles painted and extolled until her death. The issue was suffused with a rose fragrance, some four decades before scent strips became ubiquitous. Housed within it, bound as a booklet, was a tribute to the rose by Katherine Anne Porter. The magazine itself had a rose named after it — Flair rose — and there is a Fleur Cowles rose as well. Flair published stories and articles by W. H. Auden, Jean Cocteau, Simone de Beauvoir, Angus Wilson, Tennessee Williams, Ogden Nash and Clare Boothe Luce, among others. Salvador Dalí, Saul Steinberg, Lucian Freud, Rufino Tamayo and even Winston Churchill were among the contributing artists. Mr. Cowles wrote in his own memoir, “Mike Looks Back,” that his wife had been determined to start a magazine that would appeal to an elite audience. He had created Look, one of America’s most popular magazines, but Ms. Cowles was ashamed of its “man’s barbershop” reputation. Even before their wedding, in 1946, he said, she insisted that he move the Cowles headquarters from Iowa to New York, and that he personally edit and change Look’s image. “The Best of Flair,” a compilation of art, photographs and essays from the magazine, was published in 1996 by HarperCollins in an edition of 3,000 copies at $250 each. Ms. Cowles variously gave her birthplace as Boston and Montclair, N.J., her parents as Matthew Fenton and Eleanor Pearl Fenton, and the year of her birth as anywhere from 1910 to 1917. Census records and reminiscences of friends and relatives indicate that she was born on Jan. 20, 1908, in New York City, the daughter of Morris and Lena Freidman, and that her name at birth was Florence. Her family moved to Bloomfield, N.J., when she was very young, and her sister, Millicent (who also later adopted the name Fenton), was born there. She attended high school in Bloomfield and later, according to her own biographical notes, the School of Fine and Applied Arts in New York, which no longer exists. Her father, who was in the novelty business, deserted the family while she was still in school. Her career began, she said, at age 15, when she became an advertising copywriter for Gimbels department store. Several years later, while working in advertising in Boston, she married Bertram Klapper of Haverhill, Mass., who manufactured wooden heels. She also wrote a fashion and lifestyle column for The New York World-Telegram until 1934. By this time she had divorced Mr. Klapper and married Atherton Pettingell, an advertising agency executive who was her boss. Some years later they formed their own advertising company, specializing in Seventh Avenue clients. They were divorced in the mid-1940s. Soon afterward she volunteered to write speeches for the War Production Board in Washington, and when World War II ended, President Harry S. Truman appointed her as a consultant to the Famine Emergency Committee. She met Mike Cowles while he was in Washington with the Office of War Information, and they were married in December 1946. It was around this time that she changed her first name to Fleur. The following year she joined Look as an associate editor. She added food and fashion to the magazine, which brought in increased advertising, and was instrumental in a redesign. The couple began traveling to Europe, South America and Asia, where they met and interviewed world leaders like Churchill, Eva Perón and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. After she worked on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s successful presidential campaign in 1952, the White House sent her on fact-finding missions abroad and named her a special envoy to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She and Mr. Cowles divorced in 1955, and within months she married Mr. Meyer, whom she had met on a plane. The couple took up residence in chambers in Albany, one of London’s most prestigious addresses, where Byron, Disraeli and Gladstone once lived. They also bought and restored Great Surries, an Elizabethan farmhouse on 650 acres in Sussex with rooms named for frequent guests like Cary Grant and Leslie Caron and a barn made acoustically perfect for performances by artists like Yehudi Menuhin. The Meyers also restored a 12th-century castle in Trujillo, Spain, which they used as a holiday residence until selling it several years ago. In 1994 the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, opened the Fleur Cowles Room, a replica of her study in London. In 2003 Pratt Institute devoted an exhibition in Manhattan to the lasting influence of Flair. Ms. Cowles gave up editing after marrying Mr. Meyer, but she continued to write books, adding to a bibliography that included the biographies “Bloody Precedent” (1951), about Juan and Eva Perón, and “The Case of Salvador Dalí” (1959). She also illustrated a number of her books, including “People as Animals,” “The Flower Game” and “The Life and Times of the Rose.” Her paintings of jungle beasts, huge flowers, birds and objects of nature, often in dreamlike sequences, were exhibited in cities around the world. In 1994 the National Museum of Women’s Art in Washington mounted a show of her paintings, prints and porcelain and crystal designs. “I have an idea a minute,” Ms. Cowles once said. “I’m a born idea myself.”

Magazines
Cowles Fleur
Deaths (Obituaries)
Flair Magazine


A Mayor in the Middle of Two San Franciscos

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Edwin M. Lee, the mayor of San Francisco, began his career as a lawyer fighting for public housing tenants in the city’s Chinatown and likes to think of himself as a champion for those who are struggling. But with his city flourishing and dotted with construction cranes and tech start-ups, he finds himself in an unexpected position: backed by the city’s new and powerful technology elite, and condemned by housing advocates who accuse him of aggravating a shortage of affordable units and making life difficult for middle-class residents increasingly anxious about rising prices. Perhaps nowhere in America is the debate over income inequality being carried out as fiercely as in San Francisco, where the technology industry’s success has led to a roaring economy, social disruption and widespread protests. “Probably 25 years ago I would have been in this cultural war on the advocacy side,” Mr. Lee, a Democrat, said in a recent interview, describing himself as “a little bit” surprised by the intensity of the anger. “When I represented tenants in Chinatown, it was a cultural war about low-income seniors and immigrant families trying to make the city respect them,” he said. “Fix the elevators in public housing, fix the lights. Some of the advocates remind me that we’ve got to keep paying attention to this, because there is poverty in the city. There are people struggling.” Mr. Lee, 61, who grew up the son of working-class Chinese immigrants in public housing in Seattle, continued: “Now that I’m mayor, I can do something about it in a big way. So if there is a cultural war, I’m in it, but I’m in it to solve as much as I can.” Image Tech employees in San Francisco waited for a private commuter bus to shuttle them to work as a city bus rounded the corner. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times So recently, in what many in the city see as a course correction, the mayor has emphasized what he calls the “affordability agenda.” He has spoken with urgency about a growing housing shortage, presenting a plan in his State of the City address to build 30,000 housing units for low- and moderate-income people by 2020 and to protect existing ones. Critics remain skeptical, saying that Mr. Lee was late in recognizing the problem and that his plan was cobbled together in response to political problems. Navigating all this will test the political skills of an accidental politician. Mr. Lee, who spent his career in the city administration until three years ago, when he became San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, often seems disposed to work out of the spotlight. Saying he is not “into the pomp and circumstances of this office,” he has chosen a Chevrolet Volt as his official car. “When I pull up, unless you know I’m coming, nobody knows I’m there,” he said. “They say, ‘Where’s the mayor?’ They’re looking for the S.U.V., and I’m already there. So I love that, it’s fun to do.” In his time in office, the city’s unemployment rate has been cut in half, to a record low of 4.8 percent. His policies have helped turn San Francisco into Silicon Valley’s newest, and perhaps most dynamic, extension. Construction cranes rise above even Mid-Market, a long-blighted downtown district that bedeviled his predecessors. President Obama even presented the mayor as an American success story, giving him a prime spot in the audience as Michelle Obama’s guest during the State of the Union address last month. “Everyone should be high-fiving him,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, 36, the chief executive of Yelp, the review website for businesses. “In the wake of that, it’s essentially a high-class problem, which is, ‘Oh, no, we have so many jobs in this city, and the economy is doing so well here. Now costs are going up, rents are rising.’ That’s sort of the natural product of success.” But the mayor’s critics disagree. “He’s privileging a certain group of people, tech, over the rest of the city,” said Rebecca Gourevitch, 27, a tenants’ rights advocate at Eviction Free San Francisco , who recently helped organize protests against private commuter buses that carry technology workers between the city and Silicon Valley’s suburban campuses. “There’s a two-tier San Francisco right now. The mayor is in conversation with one of the tiers and not the other.” Image Residents protested gentrification in the city’s historically Latino Mission district last year. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times Mr. Lee joined the city government in 1989 as San Francisco’s first investigator charged with rooting out corruption. He rose steadily, eventually being appointed city administrator in 2005 by Gavin Newsom, then the mayor. After Mr. Newsom was elected lieutenant governor, Mr. Lee was selected in 2011 to complete Mr. Newsom’s term as mayor by two local power brokers, former Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr. and Rose Pak, an outspoken advocate for the city’s Chinese population.Going back on an initial pledge that he would not seek a full term, Mr. Lee ran successfully in the 2011 election, strongly urged on by Mr. Brown, Ms. Pak and a new powerful ally, Ron Conway, a well-known technology investor. As mayor, Mr. Lee successfully pushed for changes to taxes on payroll and stock options that benefited certain tech start-ups and helped persuade them to stay in San Francisco. While critics described the policies as corporate welfare, Mr. Lee argued that the tech sector was creating most of the city’s new jobs. Every week, he has made it a point to visit one tech company as part of his Tech Tuesdays . Mr. Stoppelman of Yelp, which went public two years ago and recently expanded into larger headquarters here, said he viewed the mayor as being pragmatic and problem-solving, qualities that tended to appeal to people in the tech industry. “I think he really tries to be a neutral party and bring people together,” he said. “He hasn’t been a lifelong politician. He’s been somebody working in the city, and I think that shows. He doesn’t feel as political.” But Art Agnos, a former mayor who gave Mr. Lee his first job in city government, has become one of Mr. Lee’s most vehement critics, saying he has become captive of the tech elite. Mr. Lee, he said, lacked the political instincts to steer San Francisco through the current turmoil. Image “If there is a cultural war, I’m in it, but I’m in it to solve as much as I can,” Mayor Edwin M. Lee, a former housing lawyer, said. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times “His whole career was leading to the top of the bureaucracy — that’s his mind-set,” said Mr. Agnos, who led a successful fight against the development of waterfront luxury condominiums last fall. “Being at the top of public office is something totally different. You set the policy, you are the leader, you step up.” San Francisco had a housing shortage long before Mr. Lee took office. In the 1970s, the city began passing regulations that made it extremely difficult and costly to build new housing in the city, said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR, a public policy center devoted to planning and urban research. The situation has worsened considerably in the past year, according to tenants’ advocates. Not only has the influx of highly paid tech workers led to higher rents, but it has also increased evictions of longtime tenants by landlords seeking higher rents, said Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. San Francisco has the highest rents in the nation, with the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment at $3,250. In December, in a meeting organized by Mr. Conway, the mayor met with 30 technology chief executives to discuss the city’s housing and affordability problems. Sf.citi, the organization that Mr. Conway founded two years ago and now effectively serves as the tech industry’s business and political voice, will focus on helping the city government with housing, philanthropy and education, Mr. Conway said. “This a long-term issue that’s not going away fast,” he said of affordable housing. “So let’s buckle down and work together.” Mr. Lee said he believed that much of the current tension would be defused once the 30,000 housing units were built."I think people will feel less fear that they can’t live in the city, and hopefully, it shouldn’t be ‘us versus them, let’s blame tech,' ” he said. Was there a danger in his being too closely identified with the tech industry? “Well, if I was a politician, I suppose there might be,” Mr. Lee said with a smile. “I don’t think that way. But I do think that tech needs to help me with the affordability agenda.”

San Francisco
Housing
Income Inequality
Jobs
Affordable housing
Edwin M Lee
Real Estate


Shots Fired Into House of a Judge in Queens

Abstract: Four bullets were fired early Tuesday into the Queens home of an acting State Supreme Court justice who has in the past worked as a prosecutor on cases involving drug dealers and murderers, officials said. The judge, whom law enforcement officials identified as Fernando M. Camacho, was not home at the time of the attack, shortly after 4 a.m., and the police said no one was injured. Two bullets entered the house, officials said. One landed in the kitchen, under a refrigerator, and another lodged in a bedroom wall; fragments of two other bullets were found embedded in the siding of the house, which is in the Oakland Gardens area. Law enforcement officials said that Justice Camacho, whose nomination to the State Court of Claims by Gov. David A. Paterson was confirmed in May by the State Senate, was currently working as an acting Supreme Court justice hearing domestic violence cases in the Kew Gardens courthouse. In searching for a motive, investigators are looking at a variety of possibilities. Law enforcement officials said that the attack might have been aimed at a neighbor of the judge’s who was involved in a dispute with another person. But since the judge had been trying to resolve that dispute, something that might have angered the gunman, perhaps it was not a mistake, one official said. Officials are also examining all of the recent cases the judge presided over to look for potential suspects. No motive had been determined as of late Tuesday afternoon, officials said, and the attack had not been tied to a specific case. “They are looking, investigating, to see what the motive might be,” said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. The official who suggested that the judge had been the target, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is under way, said: “There are any number of theories out there. Any of them are plausible,” adding, “We’re pursuing several of them at the moment.” “He was a very active prosecutor when he was in Manhattan and a very active judge” in Queens, the official said. Justice Camacho worked with the Manhattan district attorney’s office from 1985 to 1995, at the height of the crack epidemic in New York and during one of the most crime-plagued eras on record. He worked in the office’s homicide investigation unit at a time when its prosecutors and detectives were engaged in an intense struggle with large, murderous drug gangs, a cat-and-mouse game that played out on the streets of Washington Heights and Harlem. He was part of the teams that brought down such notorious gangs as the Jheri Curls, from Washington Heights, and the Wild Cowboys. He “was a wonderful prosecutor who did difficult and dangerous work,” said Linda A. Fairstein, a former Manhattan prosecutor. According to the judge’s public biography, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani appointed him to the city’s Criminal Court in 1997. He has served as presiding judge of the Domestic Violence Court in Queens and as a deputy supervising judge of Queens Criminal Court. From 1995 to 1997, he was an associate at the law firm Balsam, Felber. He is a graduate of Columbia University and received his law degree from Fordham University. In Tuesday’s attack, a neighbor who heard the shots called 911. Officers found four shell casings outside the home, on 232nd Street, including one in the grass in front of the house, the police said. The judge and his wife, Andrea, were on vacation when the shots were fired. At his house on Tuesday evening, Justice Camacho declined to discuss the attack. The police said the bullets were fired from a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. The police declined to say whether special security precautions were being offered to the judge. The law enforcement official said of the attack, “It’s enough to make you angry and to make you frightened. “It’s one thing what you do on the bench or in the office; it’s another when it comes home.”

Drug Abuse and Traffic
Murders and Attempted Murders
Queens (NYC)


Myanmar Releases Dozens of Student Activists From Jail

Abstract: THARRAWADDY, Myanmar — A day after the Myanmar government’s de facto new leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, announced that freeing political prisoners and student activists was her top priority, a judge on Friday ordered the release of 69 student protesters who had been jailed for more than a year without trial. During a court hearing packed with students and family members, Judge Chit Myint said prosecutors had decided to drop charges against all of the protesters except for three of their leaders. “The court has decided to free you unconditionally,” he announced to cheers and singing. The students, who were arrested in March 2015 for protesting a law restricting academic freedom, were the first wave of prisoners released after Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s announcement that she wanted to free political prisoners, students and activists in the coming days. She heads Myanmar’s government as state counselor, a post created for her this week. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was herself a political prisoner and spent 15 years under house arrest at the hands of the country’s former military government. She has long led the National League for Democracy, which swept elections in November , but she is barred from becoming president under the military-drafted Constitution. The judge made no mention of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for the release of political prisoners. But her spokesman, U Zaw Htay, said the students’ freedom was the direct result of the initiative that she announced on Thursday. “Today’s releases are because of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s effort,” he said. “Other dissidents will be released sooner or later, too.” Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi issued a statement late Friday laying out the process for freeing activists and students who are awaiting trial. The defendants should be brought to court, she said, where prosecutors can drop charges with a judge’s approval. She noted that charges were dismissed for some defendants on Friday, but that many other prisoners would have to wait until after the Burmese New Year holiday, which runs from Monday to April 20. Late Friday, at least 10 prisoners were released from the notorious Insein Prison near Yangon, where many political prisoners were held over the years by the military government. Human rights groups estimate that there are more than 100 political prisoners behind bars in Myanmar and that, until Friday, there were more than 400 students and activists awaiting trial for participating in protests. All of them should be freed immediately and unconditionally, said Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director of Human Rights Watch. Mr. Robertson noted that, in addition to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, more than 100 of the National League for Democracy’s new members of Parliament were political prisoners at some point. “I expect that orchestrating this release is personal for her and her party,” he said. “Basically, the message to the military is there is a new government, with new priorities.” Mr. Robertson encouraged the government to repeal laws allowing the local authorities to arrest anyone who protests without police permission. Six activists were arrested this month for leading a protest in Yangon, the country’s major city, he said. They face six months in prison. “The only way to stop the merry-go-round of activists heading to prison is for the N.L.D. government to revoke the slew of rights-repressive laws that are regularly used by local officials and police to charge activists and protesters,” he said. Here in Tharrawaddy, north of Yangon, the 72 student activists and their families were called to the district courthouse with less than 24 hours’ notice. The prisoners were being held at the nearby Tharrawaddy Prison. After the judge’s ruling, some in the crowd shouted, “This is victory!” and “Our democracy cause will be successful!” But when the prisoners realized that three of their leaders would not be freed, some began to cry. “Although I am being freed, today’s release is not totally meaningful,” said Honey Oo, a student leader who was among those released. “I am disappointed and upset my friends will be still behind bars during the New Year festival.” Phyo Phyo Aung, one of the three students who was not initially released, was philosophical about her continued detention. “I want to thank Daw Aung San Suu Kyi very much for her efforts,” she said. “She promised the release of dissidents, and now many of my friends are set free.” But late in the evening, she and the other two student leaders were released after other courts where they faced charges also dismissed their cases.

Aung San Suu Kyi
Political prisoner
Myanmar,Burma
National League for Democracy Myanmar


Nestlé Removes 2 Products in Horse Meat Scandal

Abstract: LONDON — First centered on Britain and Ireland, the scandal over beef products adulterated with horse meat escalated across Continental Europe on Tuesday after Nestlé, one of the world’s best-known food companies, said it was removing pasta meals from store shelves in Italy and Spain. Nestlé, which is based in Switzerland, said it had increased testing after the discoveries of horse meat in British foods and “traces” of horse DNA in two products made with beef supplied by a German company, H. J. Schypke. The involvement of Nestlé is a significant act in a fast-moving situation that is forcing Europeans to question the contents of their meals. Before the announcement, the horse meat crisis had already spread, with perhaps a dozen countries caught up in product recalls. Nestlé said it was confident that products in the American market were unaffected. “Nestlé U.S.A. does not use meat sourced from Europe,” a company statement said. “Additionally, U.S.D.A. meat inspectors are in all processing plants and also have responsibility to oversee any imported meat. We have also requested and received confirmation from all our meat suppliers that they do not provide Nestlé U.S.A. with any meat from the affected countries and companies.” The United States does not import beef from any of the countries where the contaminated meat was found, according to the Agriculture Department. Nestlé U.S.A. uses beef from the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, the company said. Two refrigerated Nestlé pasta products, Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini, are being taken off supermarket shelves in Italy and Spain immediately. In addition, Lasagnes à la Bolognaise Gourmandes, a frozen meat product made for caterers in France, will also be withdrawn and replaced with product made from 100 percent beef. None of those products are imported from Europe into the United States, Nestlé said. The levels of horse DNA in the products were above the 1 percent threshold used by the British Food Standards Agency as an indicator of adulteration in testing being done by Britain’s food industry and therefore the products would be withdrawn, Nestlé said in a statement. “There is no food safety issue, but the mislabeling of products means they fail to meet the very high standards consumers expect from us,” Nestlé added. Image Preparing a sample of a product with meat for DNA testing in Berlin. There are growing calls for more oversight of processed food. Credit Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Nestlé knows well the importance of its brand image, having once been the object of a boycott after being involved in a controversy over the marketing of baby milk in developing countries. Although the current horse meat crisis has been considered mainly an issue of fraud and mislabeling, evidence emerged last week that a powerful equine painkiller, phenylbutazone — or bute — may have entered the food chain. Eight horses slaughtered for food in Britain tested positive for the drug. Six of those carcasses had already been exported to France for use in human food. In Britain, food manufacturers have embarked on a huge program of food tests to try to stem a crisis of confidence in products originating in a bewilderingly complex supply chain. Last Friday, the British Food Standards Agency released the results of 2,501 tests conducted on beef products by the British food industry, of which 29 contained more than 1 percent horse meat. But just as that information was released, it emerged separately that food intended for school meals had also contained horse meat. Finger-pointing has erupted between politicians and supermarkets over responsibility. The European Union has also announced an increase in food testing, although there are growing calls for more regulation at a European level. Though tough traceability rules for fresh beef products were introduced after the crisis over mad cow disease more than a decade ago, a similar regime is not in place for processed food. “What has been discovered in recent days is large-scale fraud,” said Richard Seeber, the coordinator for the center-right group in the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee of the European Parliament. “This is a clear breach of current European food labeling rules. This is why the first thing we need is more controls and better enforcement of the existing rules.” Glenis Willmott, the leader of the British Labour Party’s members of the European Parliament, said that the response of the European Union’s executive body, the European Commission, had been inadequate. “The horse meat scandal should result in a Europe-wide comprehensive legislation on ‘origin labeling’ for all meat in processed foods, and a better E.U. enforcement procedure,” Ms. Willmott said. There are no horse slaughterhouses operating in the United States, and no horse meat is imported for human consumption, making the chances that Americans are unintentionally eating horse meat fairly remote, a U.S.D.A. spokesman said.

Horse
Meat
Europe
Food
Food Safety
Label
Nestle
Recalls and Bans
Great Britain


Kentucky Stays Alive in Little League World Series

Abstract: Eli Burwash scored the go-ahead run in the bottom of the fifth inning, then earned the save as Kentucky avoided elimination at the Little League World Series in South Williamsport, Pa., beating South Carolina, 4-3. Kentucky will next face California, which defeated Rhode Island, 10-3.

Kentucky
Little League World Series
South Williamsport
South Carolina
California
Rhode Island
Little League Baseball and Softball
Baseball


The World Series of Baseball Trivia, Where There Is No Such Thing as a Casual Fan

Abstract: WASHINGTON — As he relaxed on a chair afterward, Michael Caragliano concluded that this was, in fact, his finest baseball moment. Even better than the afternoon in the schoolyard when he finally outlasted Mark Black flipping baseball cards in the fifth grade. Caragliano had won not just a baseball trivia contest, but the baseball trivia contest: the annual jamboree held by the Society for American Baseball Research , whose annual convention took place this weekend just blocks from the White House. More than 6,000 of baseball’s most avid historians populate SABR, and its internecine trivia skirmish is one of its most eagerly awaited events, crowning the sport’s official factoid aficionado — or egghead, depending on whether you can actually throw a curveball. “I sold my soul to baseball when I was 9 years old, when I watched Willie Mays Aikens hit a home run in the 1980 World Series,” said Caragliano, a 37-year-old radio engineer from Flushing, N.Y. “I loved reading the backs of baseball cards for the facts and the statistics. Baseball trivia is a dialect — you can start a conversation with anyone with it.” Indeed, to a sizable portion of the civilized world, baseball trivia is a contradiction in terms. Knowing that Pat Moran managed the 1919 Cincinnati Reds or knowing the name of the Washington Senators’ last pitcher — Joe Grzenda! — is something to be admired, if not in all settings shared. Nowhere is this skill more safe and celebrated than during SABR’s annual trivia contest. More than 100 competitors — mostly middle-aged men in various states of baseball garb — were whittled to four based on knowing that Vic Davalillo served as a designated hitter in the World Series and on knowing the nine rookies who started for the Astros one September day in 1963. (What, you forgot Sonny Jackson?) When the moderator announced that the career home run leader of the 19th-century National Association was one Lip Pike, with 15, a collective swoon wafted from the crowd. “There should be a wow factor with the answer,” said Scott Brandon, who concocted this year’s quiz when not running his marketing company near Seattle. “The answer should be unexpected or grab you. If it’s truly trivial, like who was the third-leading hitter on the 1947 Pirates, that’s not a good question. I can do tough all day — it has to be interesting, and deceptively difficult.” The semifinals featured these doozies: Which five pitchers have 3,000 strikeouts and fewer than 1,000 walks? (Greg Maddux, Ferguson Jenkins, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling and ... John Smoltz, now of the Red Sox, who was hanging at 997 free passes.) And another: which three players appeared in games when they were older than the sitting United States president? Dan Brouthers and Jim O’Rourke (older than Teddy Roosevelt in 1904) and Satchel Paige, whose oft-mysterious age was still definitely higher than Lyndon Johnson’s in 1965. SABR held a separate team competition, with four-person squads with names like the Placido Polancos, but the individual contest would name the single top baseball trivia expert in the room, and almost certainly the world. Most agreed that the field was wide open now that Al Blumkin, a 66-year-old former computer systems manager for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, had hung ’em up after dominating for years. Blumkin attended this year’s contest wobbling on a cane, as legendarily as Babe Ruth on his bat . “I won one year because I knew that Jimmie Foxx hit seven home runs in his last season — for the Philadelphia Phillies,” Blumkin said. “My best moment was 1991 in New York, when I won on the first St. Louis Browns batter to hit two homers in a game. I knew it wouldn’t be something simple like George Sisler. It was Branch Rickey. I got a standing ovation.” Formed in 1971, SABR is facing a bit of a crisis because its median member age has climbed to the late 50s. (This provided some levity on Saturday night when the trivia moderator yukked that several SABR folks roomed with Jim Creighton on the 1860 Brooklyn Excelsiors.) Yet there were a few youngsters in the crowd, enjoying a father-son moment playing trivia. “I like to know the great players and how they did in their careers,” said Danny Shpigler, a fifth grader from Montebello, N.Y., who traveled to the convention with his father, David. “Baseball has a great history.” Perhaps reassuringly, the trivia contestants did not know every piece of it. Questions that stumped them all included the batter with the most career triples not in the Hall of Fame (Ed Konetchy, a first baseman from the dead-ball era); the pitcher who gave up Reggie Jackson’s first postseason home run (Jon Matlack of the 1973 Mets); and all eight pitchers whom the current Phillies left-hander Jamie Moyer has passed on the career win list this season. “I got a kick out of that one,” one attendee in the back remarked. No surprise: He was Roland Hemond, who signed Moyer off the scrap heap in late 1992 when he was the general manager of the Baltimore Orioles. Hemond is the only baseball insider who is not just a SABR member but attends conventions regularly, mixing with the outsiders as if he were one of them. His World Series rings are real. They’re as real as the honor Caragliano pursued on Saturday, when he scrapped his way to the trivia finals against Cliff Blau, a retired accountant from White Plains. Caragliano mounted an early 17-1 lead on easier questions — like knowing that Bob Swift was the catcher during 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel’s at-bat in 1951 — and outlasted a late Blau rush, capped by naming Biz Mackey as a platoon catcher on the Negro leagues’ 1924 Hilldale Daisies. When Blau said that the Hall of Fame executive George Weiss once owned the Hartford franchise of the Eastern League, when it was in fact New Haven, Caragliano won. “How did I not know that Kiko Garcia was the first Oriole to hit a single, double and triple in a World Series game?” Blau joked afterward. “I have to brush up on my Kiko Garcia.” Blau’s grin echoed those of Danny Shpigler and his dad, who on an August night, deep in a hotel conference room, had shared baseball’s hidden World Series. “Other sports are trivial,” father told son. “Baseball is important.”

Baseball
Society for American Baseball Research
Statistics
Awards Decorations and Honors
Contests and Prizes
Caragliano Michael
Brandon Scott
Blumkin Al


Warner Music's Digital Sales Up, but It Still Fails to Meet Forecasts

Abstract: The Warner Music Group reported yesterday that its quarterly profit almost doubled, in part because of strong sales of digital songs and lower costs, but revenue missed market expectations and its shares fell. The company also said it had received another subpoena in February from the New York State attorney general's office in connection with an antitrust investigation into the pricing of digital music. Warner Music said in a regulatory filing that it intended to comply with the inquiry. Spokesmen for both Warner Music and for the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, declined to comment. First-quarter revenue for the company, whose artists include Madonna, Green Day and Sean Paul, fell 4 percent, to $1.04 billion. Analysts surveyed by Reuters Estimates had forecast revenue of $1.09 billion. Shares were down 37 cents, or 1.8 percent, at $20.43. "If you're bullish on Warner Music, you'll be pleased about the profits and digital sales. But the bears are winning out after the company missed analyst revenue expectations," an analyst with Lehman Brothers, Eric Handler, said.

MUSIC
WARNER MUSIC GROUP
COMPANY REPORTS


Crisis Awaits World’s Banks as Trillions Come Due

Abstract: FRANKFURT — The sovereign debt crisis would seem to create worry enough for European banks, but there is another gathering threat that has not garnered as much notice: the trillions of dollars in short-term borrowing that institutions around the world must repay or roll over in the next two years. The European Central Bank , the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have all recently warned of a looming crunch, especially in Europe, where banks have enough trouble raising money as it is. Their concern is that banks hungry for refinancing will compete with governments — which also must roll over huge sums — for the bond market’s favor. As a result, credit for business and consumers could become more costly and scarce, with unpleasant consequences for economic growth. “There is a cliff we are racing toward — it’s huge,” said Richard Barwell, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland and formerly a senior economist at the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank. “No one seems to be talking about it that much.” But, he added, “it’s of first-order importance for lending and output.” Banks worldwide owe nearly $5 trillion to bondholders and other creditors that will come due through 2012, according to estimates by the Bank for International Settlements. About $2.6 trillion of the liabilities are in Europe. U.S. banks must refinance about $1.3 trillion through 2012. While that sum is nothing to scoff at, analysts seem most concerned about Europe because the banking system there is already weighed down by the sovereign debt crisis. How banks will come up with the money is an open question. With investors worried about government over-indebtedness in Greece, Spain, Ireland and other parts of Europe, many banks have been reluctant or unable to sell bonds, which they typically use to raise money that they lend on to businesses and households. The financing crunch has its origins in a worldwide trend for banks to borrow money for shorter periods. The practice of short-term borrowing and long-term lending contributed to the near-collapse of the world financial system in late 2008 when short-term financing dried up. Banks suddenly found themselves starved for cash, and some would have collapsed without central bank support. Government bank guarantees extended in response to the crisis also inadvertently encouraged short-term lending. The guarantees were typically only for several years, and banks issued bonds to match. Other banks took advantage of the gap between short-term and long-term rates, borrowing cheaply from money markets or central banks and lending to their customers at higher, long-term rates. A study in November by Moody’s Investors Service found that new bond issues by banks during the past five years matured in an average of 4.7 years — the shortest average in 30 years. Since then, worries about Greek and Spanish debt and whether Europe is headed for another recession have caused new problems. Investors are unsure which institutions are in good shape and which are sitting on piles of bad loans and potentially tainted government bonds. Bond issuance by financial institutions in Europe plunged to $10.7 billion in May, compared with $106 billion in January and $95 billion in May 2009, according to Dealogic, a data provider. New issues have recovered somewhat since, to $42 billion in June and $19 billion so far in July. Bank stress tests being conducted by European regulators could help if they succeed in convincing markets that most banks are healthy. Bank regulators plan to release results of the tests, covering 91 large banks, on July 23. Sandeep Agarwal, head of financial institutions debt capital markets in Europe at Credit Suisse, predicted that the market could be separated into haves and have-nots, with the healthy banks raising money fairly easily but weaker banks required to pay a premium. “There is cash at the right price for many institutions, not all institutions,” Mr. Agarwal said. That could add pressure on the weakest banks to merge, seek government help, or scale back their activities. Some might even fold. The Landesbanks in Germany, savings banks in Spain or other institutions that have struggled may be forced to confront difficult choices. A shortage of bank finance also could create quandaries for the European Central Bank, which appears anxious to wean banks from the cheap cash that it began providing in the heat of the global financial crisis . If institutions are unable to raise the money that they need on the open market, the European Central Bank would have to decide whether to continue to prop them up. “Banks that have trouble tapping new funding sources will have to shrink,” the Bank for International Settlements said in its annual report in late June. The institution, based in Basel, Switzerland, brings together the world’s main central banks. Stephen G. Cecchetti, head of the monetary and economic department at the institution, called the refinancing issue “a vulnerability and something to be watched.” But, he added, in a telephone interview, “I am confident that national authorities will take the necessary actions so that it isn’t a problem.” Banks insist that they enjoy the trust of the markets and will be able to raise the cash they need. “We’re in a comfortable position,” said Horst Bertram, head of investor relations at Bayerische Landesbank, Germany’s largest Landesbank, which is owned by the state of Bavaria and local savings banks. He said that as a result of government backing and a radical restructuring last year, the bank had ample cash and limited need for new financing. Commerzbank, partly owned by the German government after a bailout, said its liquidity was well within regulatory limits. Commerzbank “can refinance at any time at market conditions,” the bank said. Even if there is no market meltdown, banks still face a transition to a period of higher interest rates that will weigh on profits. The cost of borrowing is likely to rise faster than banks can pass it on to customers, analysts say. Jean-François Tremblay, a Moody’s vice president who has studied the refinancing issue, said that so far banks had managed to roll over debt better than expected. They have increased customer deposits, drawn on cash from central banks, or simply reduced their lending and their need for new financing — which is exactly what some economists feared. The Bank of England estimates that British banks will need to issue £25 billion in bonds every month to meet their refinancing needs, which the central bank puts at £800 billion, or $1.2 trillion. That means banks will have to sell new bonds at double the rate they have been issuing so far this year. “There is a risk that banks alleviate their own funding pressures by further constraining credit conditions for customers,” the Bank of England said last month in its Financial Stability Report. “That would dent economic recovery and so raise credit risk for all banks.”

European Central Bank
Bank of England
Banks and Banking
Credit and Debt
Royal Bank of Scotland Plc
Commerzbank AG
Moody''s Investors Service Inc


In Supreme Court Case, a Couple Not Recognized in Life or Death

Abstract: When the Supreme Court makes its decision, expected in the coming days, on whether to establish a national right to same-sex marriage, the love story of Jim Obergefell and John Arthur will be front and center. As the lead plaintiff in the case against Ohio’s ban on gay marriage, Mr. Obergefell, 48, has become a very public face of the national movement. Mr. Obergefell, who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, is from a city whose views on gay marriage have changed dramatically. In 2013, he married his longtime partner, John Arthur, in Maryland. When Mr. Arthur died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., that October, Ohio refused to list Mr. Obergefell as his spouse on the death certificate and that led to the beginnings of the lawsuit.

Jim Obergefell
John Arthur
Ohio
Lawsuits
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage


Yankees Endure a Day of Turbulence, and Only Half of It on the Field

Abstract: BOSTON — When the Yankees won the opener of a three-game series against the Boston Red Sox on Friday night, their optimism soared. With one win against their rivals, the division leaders, already in the ledger, the Yankees were turning to Hiroki Kuroda, their best pitcher, for the middle game of the series. Another solid performance by one of baseball’s best pitchers could have ensured a series victory, with the possibility of a sweep intact. But the Yankees’ hopes of catching the Red Sox in the American League East took a blow Saturday. Kuroda had his most disappointing outing since May 22, when he was pummeled by the Orioles, and the Yankees lost at Fenway Park, 6-1. The Yankees’ rough day was not limited to the field. An article earlier in the day included accusations by Alex Rodriguez’s lawyer that the Yankees had hid damaging medical information from Rodriguez at the end of last season. Rodriguez, who went 0 for 3, deflected questions about the article, which was posted on The New York Times Web site before the game. A day earlier, he had spent time denying accusations that members of his inner circle had leaked names of players involved in the Biogenesis case. Biogenesis, a now-closed South Florida anti-aging clinic, was at the center of a baseball investigation into performance-enhancing drugs. “It’s business as usual for me,” Rodriguez said Saturday. “I have a job to do, and that’s to go out and play third base and do the best I can, and I’m doing that right now.” It would appear that daily Rodriguez stories are now the norm, but on Saturday none of his teammates seemed aware of the latest chapter, certainly not Kuroda. On an afternoon when they needed him at his sharpest, Kuroda faltered. He allowed a career-high 11 hits and surrendered five runs, three of them earned. He lasted five and two-thirds innings, his shortest outing since he was knocked out after five innings on July 12 against Minnesota, and his record dipped to 11-8. Red Sox starter John Lackey had success against a Yankee lineup that had been irrepressible — at times including Rodriguez — over the previous week. Lackey (8-10) even managed to cool off Alfonso Soriano, somewhat. Soriano had two singles in four at-bats, but no runs batted in. In his previous four games, Soriano had driven in 18 runs, making him one of only six players to accomplish that. He has 15 hits in his last 22 at-bats (.682) with a double and five home runs, and is hitting .329 with 8 homers and 26 R.B.I. since joining the Yankees on July 26, leading a resurgent offense. But after pounding baseballs into submission for a week, the Yankees managed only two extra-base hits Saturday and had their lowest run total since Aug. 5 against the White Sox in Chicago. That was the day Rodriguez played in his first game of the season, the same day Major League Baseball handed down his 211-game suspension, one he is aggressively appealing. The bulk of the power on Saturday came not from Soriano or Rodriguez, but from the Red Sox’ David Ortiz, who doubled, scored two runs and hit his 24th homer of the season, a blast to straightaway center off relief pitcher Adam Warren in the seventh inning. Daniel Nava doubled twice, and Jacoby Ellsbury had three hits, including a double, and two R.B.I. The Red Sox scored three times in the fourth inning, with a fielding error playing a key role. With one out and runners at first and third, Stephen Drew hit a chopper to first baseman Lyle Overbay, whose throw to Eduardo Nunez at second base was wide. It could have been an inning-ending double play; instead, the Red Sox took the lead when Ortiz, who led off the inning with a ground-rule double that bounced over the low wall in right field, scored from third base. All the runners were safe, and the Red Sox scored twice more in the inning. “The fourth inning, I wish I could take that back,” Kuroda said through his interpreter. “I feel bad about it.” In the sixth, Ellsbury hit a run-scoring double on the last pitch Kuroda threw. His earned run average, the second lowest in the A.L. at 2.33 coming into the game, rose slightly to 2.41. Lackey, once considered villainous in Boston for the perception that he was an integral part of the team’s collapse in 2011, walked off the mound in the seventh to a standing ovation. He was one of a handful of vocal players who said Rodriguez’s ability to play through his appeals process was unfair, so each time he got Rodriguez out he received loud applause from Red Sox fans. After the game, the thrust of questions aimed at Rodriguez during his locker-side interview was not about the game or about how the Yankees had fallen eight and a half games behind the Red Sox, but the inflammatory comments by his lawyer, Joseph Tacopina. It was business as usual.

Yankees
Red Sox
Hiroki Kuroda
Baseball
John Lackey


A Reformed ‘Sneaker Pimp’ Takes On the N.C.A.A.

Abstract: “I always believed the kids got the shaft,” Sonny Vaccaro said. “The N.C.A.A. would never allow the kids to have anything.” It was a sunny afternoon in 2013, just about a year before the O’Bannon trial was set to begin, which of course would result in the N.C.A.A. being found in violation of the United States’ antitrust laws. Vaccaro, who’d had the original idea for the O’Bannon lawsuit, was sitting in the dining room of his small home in Pebble Beach, Calif. It was cluttered with boxes, the detritus of his long career as a sports marketer and more recently as the country’s most outspoken critic of the N.C.A.A. Vaccaro, 76, is an excitable man; from time to time, he would grab a document from a box and begin waving it in the air, the words practically tumbling out of his mouth. Sitting next to him was his wife, Pam, an oasis of cheery calm. A former actress 18 years his junior, she had long since become Vaccaro’s aide-de-camp, senior adviser, sounding board and constant companion. By Vaccaro’s estimation, since 1992, he had taken only two flights without her. Vaccaro was once the most notorious man in college basketball — the “sneaker pimp,” people called him. A Nike consultant in the late 1970s, he devised one of the greatest marketing ploys ever: paying coaches to put their players in Nike sneakers. He persuaded the company to sign Michael Jordan and make him the company’s signature athlete before he had played a single game for the Chicago Bulls. (Phil Knight, Nike’s founder, now plays down Vaccaro’s role: “Sonny helped, but he wasn’t the M.V.P. in that process,” he told USA Today last year.) With Adidas in the mid-1990s, Vaccaro signed Kobe Bryant to a major shoe contract straight out of high school. He was a key figure in the Nike-Adidas sneaker wars of the 1990s, in which the shoe companies did unsavory things to steer the best high school players to one of “their” basketball programs. And all the while, Vaccaro ran a basketball camp and an all-star game for the best high school players, which routinely aroused the suspicion of the N.C.A.A. “We created the commercialization” of college sports, Vaccaro says of his former employer Nike. “We were the first corporate entity to be involved with a coach or a university.” Image Vaccaro and his wife, Pam, sat in an Oakland, Calif., courtroom for nearly every moment of the O’Bannon trial in 2014. It may seem hard to believe the same person would spark the most important case against the N.C.A.A. in a quarter-century. But if the O’Bannon case winds up going before the Supreme Court, and if O’Bannon wins — two big ifs, to be sure — the former sneaker pimp will rank with the greatest reformers in sports history. Endless Investigations For most of his career, Vaccaro had the N.C.A.A. nipping at his heels. He recalls being interviewed by an association investigator in the mid-1970s when the N.C.A.A. was going after Jerry Tarkanian, the coach of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Runnin’ Rebels. “They wanted me to turn on Jerry, who was one of my best friends,” he said. Years later, the N.C.A.A. began an investigation of an African athlete who was playing for the University of North Carolina and living with the Vaccaros in the summers. (It ended when Vaccaro produced the letter from the player’s mother naming him the athlete’s guardian.) And the association was forever opening investigations into one or another of the high school players at his summer camp. Vaccaro’s legion of critics would accuse him of hypocrisy. After all, he made his living for years off the unpaid players. But Vaccaro bristles at the characterization. “The hypocrisy wasn’t me coming up with the idea,” he says of the scheme to pay coaches to have their players wear Nikes. “It was the N.C.A.A. letting us do it. At least I was putting shoes on the kids.” In 2001, while working for Adidas, Vaccaro was invited to testify before the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a group that sought to keep commercialism out of college sports. “Why should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?” Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, said. “They shouldn’t, sir,” Vaccaro replied, according to the historian Taylor Branch. “You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir, but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.” Still, what ultimately compelled Vaccaro to take on the N.C.A.A. was knowing so many high school athletes over the years and being appalled at the way they were treated by the organization. This was especially acute for disadvantaged black athletes, who he felt were singled out by the N.C.A.A. Image Vaccaro persuaded Nike to sign Michael Jordan and make him its signature athlete before he had even played for the Chicago Bulls. Credit John Swart/Associated Press There were other things that affected him. In 1997, he was on an ESPN panel about race and sports with Chris Webber, with whom Vaccaro had once been close. Webber talked about how he and the other members of Michigan’s Fab Five had introduced the baggy shorts style — a style that made millions for clothing companies — yet he could not even give a jersey to his parents without violating N.C.A.A. rules. “That hit me hard,” Vaccaro said. That same year, ESPN paid $175 million for the two-year-old Classic Sports Network, which replayed old games, including many college games, for which it bought the rights. “I watched all those kids I had known intimately: Why can’t Pearl Washington get some of that money?” he said, referring to the great Syracuse point guard of the mid-1980s. It did not seem right to him that these players, long out of college, received nothing for the use of their images. By 2007, he decided he had to take a stand. After long discussions with his wife, and with two years remaining on his $500,000-a-year contract with his employer, Reebok, he quit, concluding that so long as he was working for a shoe company, “people won’t take me seriously.” Vaccaro added, “I woke up and said, ‘I need to do this other thing.’ ” He needed to take on the N.C.A.A. full time. But how? He began by making a series of speeches on college campuses — Duke’s law school, and then Harvard, Yale and Maryland. He spoke with no notes, and his rambling digressions, of which there were many, were hard to follow for anyone who was not well versed in the Sonny Vaccaro story. It didn’t matter. He was funny, angry and passionate as he condemned the N.C.A.A. for being, as he put it, somewhat over the top in one speech, “the most fraudulent organization that ever lived.” “They receive all these benefits off the backs of kids,” he said. “I don’t understand why their only interest is in making things hard for athletes.” Image Michael Hausfeld representing N.F.L. players in 2011. Introduced to Vaccaro through another lawyer, Hausfeld’s firm filed a lawsuit against the N.C.A.A. in 2009. Credit Hannah Foslien/Getty Images After Vaccaro’s Maryland speech, Jason Zengerle wrote an article about him for The New Republic . “Vaccaro used his undeniable talents to help build college sports into the corrupt behemoth it is today,” he wrote. “The question now is whether he can use those same talents to tear the whole thing down.” One of the people who attended Vaccaro’s Maryland talk was a Washington lawyer named Rob Ades, a college basketball aficionado who knew everyone in the sport. He told Vaccaro that the next time he was in Washington, they should get together. A year later, Vaccaro returned to Washington, and the two had lunch. Vaccaro pitched Ades on the idea of suing the N.C.A.A. He had a half-dozen thoughts about what might serve as the basis for a class-action suit, including the fact that ESPN Classic — as it was now known — was licensing college games without paying the former athletes. Ades, who died in 2013, had no interest in bringing such a suit. But through Ades, Vaccaro met Michael Hausfeld, a prominent lawyer who had recently been forced out of his longtime firm and had started a new one. Hausfeld, a thin, precise, soft-spoken man, is one of those lawyers who think of themselves as crusaders for social justice. He has sued Texaco for discriminating against minority employees; Exxon for the Exxon Valdez oil spill ; and German industry for its use of slave labor during World War II. Hausfeld, though, knew nothing about sports or the N.C.A.A.; tales would later circulate that he had to be told what a touchdown was. Not surprisingly, he did not know what to make of Vaccaro, who not only was immersed in the world of sports, but also could not have had a more different personality. But another of the firm’s lawyers, Jon King, knew exactly what to make of him. “After I explained his importance, I was deputized to meet with him,” King recalled. (King left the firm in the middle of the O’Bannon case, leading to a bitter dispute with Hausfeld.) A Light Bulb Goes On For his meeting with King, Vaccaro came prepared: He brought several large boxes of clippings and documents, contracts and files. He laid out all the things he felt were wrong with the N.C.A.A., from the lack of due process it afforded athletes and coaches it investigated, to absurd amateurism rules that regulated how many times an athlete could eat at someone’s house. Image Through Vaccaro, Ed O’Bannon, pictured, a former U.C.L.A. basketball star, became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the N.C.A.A. Credit Isaac Brekken for The New York Times When Vaccaro mentioned image rights, the light bulb went on for King — and it stayed on as Hausfeld and King began researching the N.C.A.A. and its history of litigation. “It dawned on us how unique this would be,” King said. The N.C.A.A. had often been sued by current athletes — suits the association won or ones that simply went away. “But the N.C.A.A. had never been sued by former athletes,” King continued. “Our guys would have real staying power. And the issue — that these guys were being deprived of the right to their own image — is a very easy-to-understand symbol of all the ways the N.C.A.A. deprives athletes of their rights.” “It was a cartel right out in the open,” King said. “It got Hausfeld’s intellectual juices going. It was like taking on OPEC.” As Hausfeld and King worked to get up to speed on the N.C.A.A., Vaccaro gave them leads and connected them to sources. “He was like an educator, teaching us about the N.C.A.A.,” King said. And he did the most important thing of all: He found Ed O’Bannon. A lawyer cannot bring a case without a client — and from the start, Hausfeld was counting on Vaccaro to find him a former player who could serve as the lead plaintiff. He tried Pearl Washington. He tried Jimmy King, who also played on those Fab Five teams. Then, one day out of the blue, he got a call from O’Bannon, the former U.C.L.A. basketball great who was working for a Las Vegas car dealer. Upset upon realizing that his image was being used in an EA Sports video game, O’Bannon turned to Vaccaro for advice. The two had been close when O’Bannon was in high school; O’Bannon did not really know anyone else to call. Hausfeld and King quickly realized that O’Bannon — a poised, mature man with no skeletons in his closet — was the perfect plaintiff, and he agreed to take on the role. Vaccaro became a consultant on the case, helping round up other plaintiffs, including Oscar Robertson and Bill Russell. He refused, however, to accept any money, which amazed King. “For the work he did, he could easily have commanded $800,000 to $1 million,” King said. But Vaccaro felt that accepting a fee might allow the N.C.A.A. to cast aspersions on his motives. The case was filed in July 2009. The Trial Begins Nearly five years later — on the morning of June 9, 2014 — Vaccaro and his wife arrived at the federal courthouse in Oakland, Calif., shortly after dawn. It was the first day of the O’Bannon trial, and Vaccaro was positively buoyant. “I’ve waited my whole life for this,” he said, standing at the front of the line to get into the courthouse. As part of his preparation, he had read “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law.” The preceding five years had not been easy for Vaccaro. As his finances dwindled, he had to downsize. The N.C.A.A. had made him part of the case, deposing him for hours. (The first question the N.C.A.A.’s lawyer asked him was, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”) The trial itself lasted three weeks. Sonny and Pam Vaccaro sat in the courtroom for nearly every moment of it, listening to arcane antitrust arguments as well as sharp, pointed cross-examinations of the N.C.A.A. president, Mark Emmert, and others. He could barely express how happy it made him that the lawyers — on both sides — were treating the case with such seriousness. “The world is paying attention to us in Oakland,” he said. On Aug. 8, 2014, Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the N.C.A.A. was in violation of the nation’s antitrust laws and that the players should receive extra money to cover the full cost of attending college. She also said players could receive an additional $5,000 in a trust fund after leaving school. Vaccaro and the rest of the O’Bannon team were euphoric about the antitrust ruling, but disappointed that she was still allowing the N.C.A.A. to place limits on compensation to athletes. An appeals court upheld her antitrust ruling — which is helping to drive a new round of litigation against the N.C.A.A. — but dismissed her $5,000 trust fund. Vaccaro took that hard. He is now searching for new ways, beyond litigation, to take on the N.C.A.A. In an email, Jon King wrote that years ago, while gathering documents from Vaccaro after he had been subpoenaed by the N.C.A.A., “he showed me folders he had compiled about the process by which now famous civil and human rights leaders had worked to change people’s perception of what is acceptable conduct. “It was kind of a mindblower to see this physical documentation of just how serious and committed he was. And to me, there was a broader message in it about the thinking that is needed to try to effect major change. To be clear, he was never in the slightest way comparing himself to those figures. But I can see now looking back that there were times as lawyers when we might have been tempted to take the ‘low road’ on issues (as lawyers can tend to do), and Sonny would steer us to ‘the high road.’ ... When I saw his files, I felt like it really explained a lot about where he was coming from.”

Sonny Vaccaro
Lawsuits
College basketball
College Sports
Books
NCAA
Ed O'Bannon
Competition law


Pakistan Factory Fires Kill More Than 300

Abstract: KARACHI, Pakistan — Fire ravaged a textile factory complex in the commercial hub of Karachi early Wednesday, killing almost 300 workers trapped behind locked doors and raising questions about the woeful lack of regulation in a vital sector of Pakistan’s faltering economy. It was Pakistan’s worst industrial accident, officials said, and it came just hours after another fire, at a shoe factory in the eastern city of Lahore, had killed at least 25. Flames and smoke swept the cramped textile factory in Baldia Town, a northwestern industrial suburb, creating panic among the hundreds of poorly paid workers who had been making undergarments and plastic tools. They had few options of escape — every exit but one had been locked, officials said, and the windows were mostly barred. In desperation, some flung themselves from the top floors of the four-story building, sustaining serious injuries or worse, witnesses said. But many others failed to make it that far, trapped by an inferno that advanced mercilessly through a building that officials later described as a death trap. Rescue workers said most of the victims died of smoke inhalation, and many of the survivors sustained third-degree burns. As firefighters advanced into the wreckage during the day, battling back flames, they found dozens of bodies clumped together on the lower floors. One survivor, Muhammad Aslam, said he heard two loud blasts before the factory filled first with smoke, then with the desperate screams of his fellow workers. “Only one entrance was open. All the others were closed,” he said at a hospital, describing scenes of panic and chaos. Mr. Aslam, who was being treated for a broken leg, said he saved himself by leaping from a third-floor window. Hundreds of anguished relatives gathered at the site, many of them sobbing as they sought news. Some impeded the rescue operation, and baton-wielding police officers tried to disperse the crowd but failed. “If my son does not return, I will commit suicide in front of the factory,” one woman shouted before news cameras as relatives tried to console her. The death toll rose quickly. By evening, the Karachi commissioner, Roshan Ali Sheikh, said that 289 people had died, most of them men. The provincial health minister, Sagheer Ahmed, put the toll at 248, which he said was the number of bodies accounted for at major hospitals. The number was expected to rise further. In the shoe factory fire in Lahore, 25 people were reported killed and dozens wounded. Officials said that blaze had been set off by a generator that caught fire and ignited chemicals stored nearby in the factory, illegally located in a residential neighborhood. Most of the victims were men under 25. The fires immediately revived long-running questions about the regulation of Pakistan’s manufacturing sector, centered in Karachi, and of the vital textiles industry in particular. Textiles are a major source of foreign currency for Pakistan, accounting for 7.4 percent of its gross domestic product in 2011 and employing 38 percent of the manufacturing work force. Pakistani cotton products are highly sought in neighboring India and form the backbone of a burgeoning fashion industry that caters to the elite. President Asif Ali Zardari’s government has often called on the United States to drop tariff barriers to Pakistani textile imports, which it says would be preferable to traditional aid. But the industry suffers from weak regulation, characterized by lax oversight and corruption. Business owners often put profits over safety, workers’ rights advocates say. On Wednesday evening the police raided the home of the owner of the Karachi factory, Abdul Aziz, who appeared to have gone into hiding. According to an online business information service, his company, Ali Enterprises, manufactured denim, knitted garments and hosiery and had capital of between $10 million and $50 million. His nephew, Shahid Bhaila, the chief executive officer of the company, was also being sought for questioning. The police said both men had been placed on the exit control list, barring them from leaving the country. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the most powerful political party in Karachi, announced three days of mourning. The city electricity company said it would cancel all outstanding bills for the families of those affected as a good will gesture. The cause of the fire remained unclear. Geo News, the largest news channel, speculated that it had been started by extortionists, reporting that Mr. Aziz had previously faced a demand for a shakedown payment of more than $100,000, which he refused. But others said an electrical fire was more likely. Wali Muhammad, a former electrical inspector, said that most accidental fires are caused by short circuits in equipment. But since 2003, he said, inspectors had been forbidden by law from visiting factories in Karachi and Punjab; it was not immediately clear why. “This is criminal negligence,” he told Geo News, referring to the ban. Another mystery surrounded the locked factory doors. Some survivors said the exits had been shuttered to prevent workers from slipping out early; others said it was the consequence of a recent break-in. A majority of the garment workers came from Orangi Town, a poor working-class neighborhood in Karachi. Seventeen of the victims came from the same street, local news media reported. The factory building suffered severe structural damage in the blaze, and officials feared it would collapse on rescue workers during the day. While many distraught family members set up camp near the factory, others moved between city hospitals, seeking news of loved ones. One man said he was looking for his cousin, who earned $70 a month as a cashier. “He’s still missing. I’m afraid he may have been working in the basement,” the man said. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called on the government to mount an immediate investigation. “The head of the firefighting operations in Karachi has noted that the factory was dangerous, flimsily built and had no emergency exits,” said Zohra Yusuf, chairwoman of the rights group. “Why did all of that escape official attention earlier?” Workplace safety is guaranteed under Pakistan’s Constitution, but labor leaders say that government oversight has crumbled rapidly in recent years, along with a general decline in governance. Sharafat Ali of the Pakistan Institute of Labor Education and Research, a labor rights group, said that 151 workers died in accidents in 2011. The state was partly responsible for the deaths, he said, because its civil servants “silently and criminally allow violation of laws and regulations established to ensure health and safety provisions at work.”

Pakistan
Ali Enterprises
Fires and Firefighters
Lahore (Pakistan)
Karachi (Pakistan)
Factories and Manufacturing


Push to Give Marcos a Philippine Hero’s Burial Finds an Ally in Duterte

Abstract: MANILA — The torture was more than 40 years ago, but Loretta Rosales remembers it vividly. Twice during the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos she was arrested by his henchmen for leading street protests. During her detention, she said, she was sexually molested, choked with a belt, given electric shocks and subjected to Russian roulette. So the news that President Rodrigo Duterte wants to transfer Mr. Marcos’s remains to a heroes’ cemetery in Manila hit her in the gut. “Now they want to make him a hero,” Ms. Rosales, a leftist politician who is now 77, said in a recent interview. Doing so would betray Mr. Marcos’s victims, she said, and whitewash the past. “We have a right to the truth,” she said, “and so, too, do the generations after us.” The debate over the reburial of Mr. Marcos, 30 years after he was ousted in the People Power uprising, has forced a national reckoning over a wrenching period of Philippine history. Protesters on both sides have taken to the streets, and several groups opposed to the reburial have petitioned the Supreme Court to block it. The court is expected to rule on the petition on Tuesday. Mr. Marcos, whose two-decade rule was notorious for its brutality and extravagance, fled the country in 1986 and died in the United States three years later . His government is believed to have killed more than 3,000 political opponents, tortured tens of thousands more and plundered up to $10 billion in government funds. But his reputation has softened over time, and his burial in the Cemetery of Heroes would mark the latest step in a posthumous political rehabilitation . His widow, Imelda, best known for the more than 1,000 pairs of shoes she left behind at the presidential palace in 1986, is now a member of Congress. His daughter Imee is the governor of Ilocos Norte Province, and his son, Ferdinand Jr., is a senator who came within a hair of winning the vice presidency in elections in May. Supporters portray the Marcos era as a time of economic growth and low crime, despite increasing poverty. The family has found a staunch ally in Mr. Duterte, who has expressed admiration for Mr. Marcos and first promised to allow his reburial in May, before Mr. Duterte even took office. “I will allow the burial of Marcos in the Heroes’ Cemetery, not because he was a hero but because he was a Filipino soldier,” he said then. In a trip to the family’s stronghold of Ilocos Norte last month, Mr. Duterte again argued that Mr. Marcos’s military service made him eligible. “That is the law,” he said. “It is very clear to me that my decision is right.” The government’s lawyer in the case, Solicitor General Jose Calida, said the reburial would provide the country much-needed closure. “As the father of this nation, President Duterte desires to begin the long overdue healing of our nation and to exorcise the ghost of enmity and bitterness that prevent us from moving forward,” Mr. Calida told the Supreme Court. Since his family was allowed to repatriate Mr. Marcos’s remains in 1993, they have been kept on public view in a glass coffin in a refrigerated crypt at the Ferdinand E. Marcos Presidential Center in his hometown, Batac, in Ilocos Norte. Fidel Ramos, the president at the time, denied Ms. Marcos’s request for a hero’s burial, and all presidents until now sought to avoid touching a highly charged issue. Image Mr. Marcos’s remains have been kept in a refrigerated crypt at the Ferdinand E. Marcos Presidential Center in his hometown, Batac, in Ilocos Norte. Credit Aaron Favila/Associated Press But Mr. Duterte has close ties with the Marcos family, possibly including financial dealings that have raised questions of motives beyond national healing. Mr. Duterte has acknowledged receiving a campaign contribution from Imee Marcos. He has not said how much the contribution was, nor reported it publicly. She has denied giving him money, saying Mr. Duterte “likes to make jokes.” Another murky transaction has also raised eyebrows. In August, Mr. Duterte attacked a billionaire casino magnate, Roberto Ongpin, as an oligarch and publicly promised to destroy him. Mr. Ongpin quietly resigned from his own company and ended up selling his shares to Gregorio Araneta III, the husband of another Marcos daughter, Irene. Mr. Ongpin has not publicly commented on the sale, but critics see the deal as a favor by Mr. Duterte to the Marcos family. The Coalition Against the Marcos Burial at the Cemetery of Heroes, one of seven groups that sought to block the burial, said the former dictator’s family had “bought and paid” for the privilege of his transfer to the Philippine equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. “It’s all about a private transaction. It’s all about the money,” said Hilda Narciso, 70, a coalition member. “Heroism is not bought. It is earned.” Ms. Narciso, then an unemployed teacher, was arrested in 1983 and was raped and tortured for six months inside a military camp in Davao City. She was kept in a small, dark room, she said, and fed a soup of worms and rotten fish. Image Mr. Marcos’s daughter Imee, the governor of Ilocos Norte Province, with supporters in Manila, the Philippine capital, in October. Credit Mark R. Cristino/European Pressphoto Agency The person who did this to her is no hero, she said. “We will not allow this travesty to pass unchallenged,” she said. Mr. Duterte has not further explained the campaign contribution. And the Marcos family and the government have not spoken publicly about the sale of the casino business. There is potentially far greater money at stake, however. Of the estimated $10 billion the government says the Marcos family stole, the presidential commission charged with recovering it has recouped only $650 million. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has filed a protest at the Presidential Electoral Tribunal contesting his narrow loss, alleging vote-rigging. If he succeeds and becomes vice president, he could work to eliminate the commission , potentially leaving his family with more than $9 billion in ill-gotten gains. Mr. Duterte has backed Senator Marcos’s election appeal. In a state visit to China last month, Imee Marcos and her brother were part of Mr. Duterte’s entourage, and the president introduced Mr. Marcos as his potential vice president. At a pro-Marcos demonstration outside the Supreme Court last month, Mr. Marcos said he expected a favorable ruling, even though the family’s patience was wearing thin. “We have been patient for 23 years,” he said. “We can be patient for a few days more.”

Philippines
Rodrigo Duterte
Cemetery
Ferdinand E Marcos
Ferdinand Marcos Jr
Civil Unrest


Ex-Congress Aide Accused in Spy Case Is Free on Bail

Abstract: A former journalist and Congressional aide accused of working with Iraqi intelligence before the war was released from prison yesterday after a federal judge ruled that she could not be forced to take antipsychotic medication in an effort to make her competent to stand trial. The judge, Michael Mukasey of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said he was not convinced that even if she took the medication, the defendant, Susan P. Lindauer, 43, would improve enough to be capable of standing trial. Judge Mukasey also criticized the strength of the government’s case, saying that the legal standard for forcibly administering medication requires a strong government interest in prosecution, and that the government has not been able to establish that standard in this case. The ruling was a setback for the government’s case against Ms. Lindauer, who was arrested in March 2004 at her home in Takoma Park, Md. An indictment charged that Ms. Lindauer, also known as Symbol Susan, conspired to act as an unregistered agent of the government of Iraq from October 1999 until February 2004, and engaged in illegal financial transactions. Although he was reluctant to analyze the government’s case before trial, the judge said, “There is no indication that Lindauer ever came close to influencing anyone, or could have.” The indictment, he said, describes an attempt to influence an unnamed government official as unsuccessful. Investigators said she had tried to influence American policy by presenting herself as an agent of Saddam Hussein’s government in early 2003 to Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff, who was described as a distant relative. Judge Mukasey said that for Ms. Lindauer to succeed as an agent of the Iraqi government, she would have had to influence other people. But her mental condition makes that highly unlikely, he said. “The record shows that even lay people recognize that she is seriously disturbed,” Judge Mukasey said in a 35-page ruling issued on Wednesday. He said that a neighbor had suspected her of being mildly schizophrenic. Prosecutors said she met with Iraqi intelligence officers at places in Baghdad, including Al Rashid Hotel, in 2002, where she accepted $5,000 in cash. Ms. Lindauer told a television reporter after her arrest that she was innocent, and that she was an antiwar activist. Ms. Lindauer worked as a journalist in Washington and in the press offices of several liberal Democrats in the House and Senate, although her last such job was in 2002. At least a half dozen doctors for both the defense and the prosecution have found that Ms. Lindauer suffers from delusions of grandeur and paranoia, which makes her incompetent to stand trial, the judge said. But she refuses to accept the diagnosis or to take medication, he said. One doctor found that Ms. Lindauer had a history of psychotic episodes going back to her childhood, possibly at the age of 7, the judge said. These include her contention that she had gifts of prophecy that allowed her to report 11 bombings before they happened, that she spoke with divine inspiration and that she was an angel. Among her paranoid delusions, doctors said, were the notion that she was being watched by hidden cameras in her apartment, that the Egyptian government had tried to assassinate her and that men next door had videotaped her under instructions from President Bill Clinton. At a hearing before Judge Mukasey yesterday, prosecutors offered a backup plan, asking the judge to order Ms. Lindauer to either voluntarily take antipsychotic drugs for 30 days or be held in contempt. Contempt charges could be punished with jail time. Judge Mukasey declined to rule on the prosecutor’s suggestion, saying that the case was being assigned to another judge and that he would leave that decision to her. Meanwhile, he ordered Ms. Lindauer to be released under previously determined terms, including on bail of $500,000, on the condition that she receive psychological counseling and that her travel be restricted. Her lawyer, Sanford Talkin, said she was released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, where she has been held for the last few weeks. Before that, she was in a federal prison hospital in Carswell, Tex. He said she would now return to her home in Maryland. “She can’t go to trial until she’s competent,” Mr. Talkin said. “I think it was a difficult decision, but I think it was the right decision, and I think it was a just decision.” Ms. Lindauer is a 1985 graduate of Smith College, where she majored in economics, and she received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. Her father, John Lindauer, was the Republican nominee for governor of Alaska in 1998. Judge Mukasey also expressed humanitarian concerns about forcing Ms. Lindauer to take medication, which, he said, “necessarily involves physically restraining defendant so that she can be injected with mind-altering drugs.”

Iraq
Decisions and Verdicts
Mental Health and Disorders


Amid Job Worries, Confidence in Economy Wanes

Abstract: Americans’ confidence in the economy eroded further in July, reflecting worries about the stubbornly stagnant job market. The consumer confidence report, released Tuesday, raised concerns about the overall economy and the back-to-school shopping season. A second report released Tuesday showed an increase in home prices in May, but said much of it resulted from the expiration of tax credits for home buyers. The Conference Board, a private research group, said that its Consumer Confidence Index slipped to 50.4 points in July, down from the revised 54.3 in June. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected 51.0. The decline followed a drop of nearly 10 points in June, from 62.7 in May, which was the biggest since February, when the index fell 10 points. The second month of declining confidence followed three months of increases. With unemployment stuck near 10 percent and the stock market having wiped out gains made early this year, Americans are reluctant to spend. A continuing stream of sobering economic data — including disappointing job figures in May and June, and weak housing numbers — is increasing worries that the economic recovery is stalling just as government stimulus programs are ending. One component of the Consumer Confidence Index, which measures how people feel about the economy now, declined to 26.1, from 26.8. The other barometer, which measures respondents’ outlook for the next six months, declined to 66.6, from 72.7 last month. The overall index — which measures how shoppers feel about business conditions, the job market and the next six months — had been recovering fitfully since hitting a record low of 25.3 in February 2009. Economists watch the number closely because consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of American economic activity and is crucial to a strong recovery. A reading above 90 indicates the economy is on solid footing. The Conference Board index, based on a survey mailed at random to 5,000 households from July 1 to July 21, showed that consumers’ assessment of the job market was more negative than in the previous month. Those saying that jobs are “hard to get” increased to 45.8 from 43.5 percent, while those saying jobs are “plentiful” remained unchanged at 4.3 percent. Consumers were also more downbeat about future job prospects. Those expecting more jobs in the months ahead declined to 14.3 percent from 16.2 percent, while those expecting fewer jobs rose to 21.1 percent from 20.1 percent. Consumers looking to an increase in their income declined to 10 percent from 10.6 percent. The report on housing, the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 cities, which was released Tuesday, posted a 1.3 percent increase in May from April. Nationally, prices have risen 5.1 percent from their April 2009 low. But they remain 29 percent below their July 2006 peak. In the latest report, 19 of 20 cities showed price gains month over month. Only Las Vegas recorded a price decline, for a record low in May. Home prices there have lost 56.4 percent of their value since peaking in August 2006. While Detroit recorded a 0.7 percent increase from April, prices there are at levels not reached since 1994. Over all, the gains underscored the impact of the home buying tax credits. Consumers rushed to buy before the credits expired at the end of April. The index is an average of home sales in March, April and May. Sales of previously occupied homes fell 5.1 percent in June. Sales of new homes jumped in June, but it was the second-weakest month on record and followed a decline in May.

Tax Credits
Sales
United States Economy
Housing and Real Estate


‘Sully’ Is Latest Historical Film to Prompt Off-Screen Drama

Abstract: Even before this weekend’s release of the Hollywood movie “Sully,” about the pilot who safely landed a disabled US Airways airliner on the Hudson River on a frigid January day in 2009, a rebuttal campaign is already underway by some of the participants in the real-life story. The federal investigators who conducted the inquiry into the flight contend that “Sully” tarnishes their reputation. “That’s not how it happened” has become a routine response in recent years to movies based on real events, but in this case the protest is by officials of a federal agency — the National Transportation Safety Board — who have a public record to buttress their side of the debate. The investigators, including Robert Benzon, the now-retired leader of the inquiry, studied the events of that January day, held hearings and ended up praising the actions of the pilot, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III , known as Sully. Their conclusion, in a May 2010 report, lent support to the public consensus that Captain Sullenberger was a hero for landing the disabled plane and enabling all 155 aboard to escape with their lives. So familiar was the story, in fact, that the scriptwriters heightened the drama by adding a level of testiness to the N.T.S.B. investigation that Mr. Benzon and others involved say is unfair and inaccurate. But that may not matter when the raw material of real life is redone as mass entertainment. There is no question that the film’s version of the inquiry veers from the official record in both tone and substance, and depicts the investigators as departing from standard protocol in airline accident inquiries. The N.T.S.B. released a statement saying the agency regretted that the filmmakers had not asked them to review the movie for accuracy. Moviegoers are led to the conclusion that the N.T.S.B. team was prosecutorial and closed-minded and that, without guidance from Captain Sullenberger, played by Tom Hanks, the facts of what happened that afternoon might never have been known. “We weren’t out to hose the crew,” Mr. Benzon said. “There were no rubber hoses being brought out, no bright lights,” he said after being told of the confrontational nature of the scenes between the pilots and the investigators. “Sully is worried about his reputation, but this movie isn’t helping mine.” Because the film does not use the real names of the investigators, including Mr. Benzon, his interviews this week with the news media might be drawing more attention to him and his reputation than “Sully” would otherwise have done. There is also the complicating fact that, as of Thursday night, Mr. Benzon had not seen the movie — only the trailers — and was relying on descriptions from people who had seen early screenings of the film. Allyn Stewart, a producer of the film, said it was not a case of taking creative license to ratchet up the drama. “The story is told through the experiences of Jeff and Sully, and so they felt under extreme scrutiny and they were,” Ms. Stewart said. Jeff is the co-pilot, Jeff Skiles, played in the film by Aaron Eckhart. Captain Sullenberger, who retired from US Airways in 2010, said in an email that the tension in the film accurately reflected his state of mind at the time. “For those who are the focus of the investigation, the intensity of it is immense,” he said, adding that the process was “inherently adversarial, with professional reputations absolutely in the balance.” Image Captain Sullenberger, front left, and his co-pilot, Jeff Skiles, were applauded at a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Aviation Subcommittee hearing in February 2009. Credit Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency Captain Sullenberger has become a popular and well-paid personality on the lecture circuit, with two best-selling books to his credit — including “Highest Duty,” on which the film is nominally based and which has been rereleased as “Sully,” with a cover photo of Mr. Hanks. The film industry has a long history of taking liberties with true stories, but Hollywood has relied much more heavily on the practice in recent years. Phrases like “based on a true story” give studio marketers a hook to grab ticket buyers — an increasingly difficult task given the number of alternative entertainment options, particularly online. The trade-off is often blowback. Last year, more than a dozen dramas and comedies faced factual questions, including “Spotlight,” which examined predatory priests in Boston and the Catholic Church’s cover-up attempts; “Concussion,” centered on a forensic pathologist who helped expose traumatic brain injury among professional football players; “The Big Short,” billed as a true story about the subprime mortgage crisis; and “Straight Outta Compton,” a biopic about the rap group N.W.A. Hollywood mostly responds with a shrug. In a promotional video on the Warner Bros. website, the director, Clint Eastwood, says that the N.T.S.B. was trying to frame the accident as Captain Sullenberger’s fault. “The investigative board was trying to paint the picture that he had done the wrong thing,” Mr. Eastwood said. In his book, Captain Sullenberger acknowledges he was worried that, after 40 years of flying, his professional reputation would come down to his performance on US Airways Flight 1549 on Jan. 15, 2009. The Airbus A320 jetliner lost both engines after hitting a flock of geese shortly after taking off from La Guardia Airport. But few details of the investigation or Captain Sullenberger’s reaction to it are in the book. The film suggests that the N.T.S.B. thought the pilots probably could have safely returned to the airport. The investigators in the movie base this assumption on a series of flights in an A320 simulator at the company headquarters in Toulouse, France. Presented with this information, Mr. Hanks’s Captain Sullenberger tells the investigators they have failed to account for the time it would take the pilots in an actual situation to react to the event. Subsequent simulations are then conducted and, when the additional reaction time is factored in, the plane crashes before reaching the airport. Only then are the movie investigators forced to re-evaluate their position. In reality, there were no subsequent simulations conducted at Captain Sullenberger’s suggestion. There was no need. Before the safety board presented its findings to the real Captain Sullenberger at a public hearing, it had already conducted its simulations both ways and found that the plane did indeed crash when the “human factor” — the added reaction time — was accounted for. As described by Mr. Eastwood in the promotional video, the purpose of the accident inquiry was to assign blame. But the N.T.S.B. maintains that its investigations are primarily meant to learn how humans and machines fail, to prevent the same sort of accidents from happening again. Mr. Benzon, pointing out that Captain Sullenberger was a safety representative for his union at the time, and trained to participate in N.T.S.B. investigations, said the pilot should not have allowed the process and its purpose to be portrayed inaccurately for the sake of cinematic drama. “He knew of our procedures,” Mr. Benzon said. “The union had taught him our procedures and to have them so bastardized shocks me.” But Ms. Stewart, the producer, indicated that the pilot’s and co-pilot’s perceptions of the inquiry were just as valid as the version presented by the investigators. “It’s not a documentary,” Ms. Stewart said. “But at the same time it needs to be an authentic view of what Sully and Jeff experienced, and this was what they faced. This was what they went through.”

Sully
Movies
Robert Benzon
Clint Eastwood
Chesley B Sullenberger III
NTSB