As Iraq Stabilizes, China Eyes Its Oil Fields

Abstract: HONG KONG — As the world’s second-largest and fastest-growing consumer of oil, China is showing increasing interest in oil fields in a country that has until very recently seemed to be firmly in the American sphere of influence for natural resources: Iraq . Chinese oil companies are expected to bid for the rights to develop Iraq’s oil fields in auctions that are set to start Tuesday, although Sinopec, the China National Petroleum Corporation and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation all declined to comment Monday about their bidding strategies. In another sign of China’s interest in Iraqi oil fields, Sinopec, China’s refining giant, offered $7.22 billion on Wednesday to buy Addax Petroleum, a Swiss-Canadian company with operations in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and in West Africa. If Addax’s shareholders and Canadian regulators approve the deal, which Addax’s board is recommending, it would be China’s largest overseas energy acquisition. And Sinopec’s archrival, the China National Petroleum Corporation, or C.N.P.C., started drilling in spring in the Ahdab oil field in southeastern Iraq. After six years of war, few Americans or Iraqis may have expected China to emerge as one of the winners in Iraqi oil. But signs of stability in Iraq this year, and a planned American military pullout from Iraqi cities on Tuesday, just happen to coincide with an aggressive Chinese push to buy or develop overseas oil fields. The Chinese companies “have been interested in Iraq,” said David Zweig, a specialist in Chinese natural resource policies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “They were interested in Iraq before the war, and now that things have improved somewhat there, it’s on their agenda.” China’s leaders were surprised by the steep rise in commodity prices early last year, which exposed the vulnerability of their country’s huge manufacturing sector to high raw material prices. When oil prices plunged in autumn, China began buying, importing and storing oil in huge quantities, helping to drive a partial rebound in world oil prices in spring. And China stepped up its hunt to acquire foreign oil. Chinese officials, economists and advisers have been almost unanimous in recent weeks in saying that their country needed to invest more in natural resources, while also voicing concerns about the long-term creditworthiness of the United States and the buying power of the dollar . China has $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, mostly invested in dollar-denominated bonds, and has been looking for ways to diversify gradually into other assets like commodities, said a Chinese government adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of Chinese reserve policies. China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, called Friday for the development of an international currency other than the dollar that would be a safe repository of value, in the latest sign of China’s search for other ways to invest its international reserves. Philip Andrews-Speed, a specialist in China’s oil industry at the University of Dundee in Scotland, said Iraq was clearly attractive for China and its oil industry. “All, or nearly all, oil companies who have the courage want to be in Iraq because of the large size of the proven resource base and the potential for new discoveries,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “So, in this respect, the Chinese are part of the herd.” Chinese oil companies have been particularly interested in buying oil fields ever since crude oil prices plunged late last summer, because that dragged down the cost of oil fields as well, Mr. Andrews-Speed wrote. And with their experience in some of the most turbulent countries in Africa, Chinese oil companies may have the ability to cope with the unpredictability of Iraq. “They may be no more competent at managing these risks than other companies, but they do seem to be prepared to accept a higher level of risk,” he wrote, citing China’s willingness to do business in Sudan. Driving China’s interest is the country’s voracious thirst for oil. As recently as the early 1990s, China was a net exporter of oil because of production mainly from aging oil fields in the northeastern corner of the country. But China’s oil consumption has soared since then, thanks to an economic boom and climbing car sales that have produced traffic jams in big cities. China surpassed the United States this year as the world’s largest car market, partly because China has weathered the global economic downturn better than the United States; China’s oil consumption reached 8 million barrels per day last year, up from 4.9 million in 2001, according to a statistical review from BP, the British oil company. Oil production has grown much more slowly, as older oil fields have run dry. New fields, either offshore or in western China, have barely replaced them. China produced 3.8 million barrels per day of oil last year, up from 3.3 million barrels per day in 2001, which still left the country dependent on imports for more than half its oil. Iraq has the world’s third-largest proven reserves, after Saudi Arabia and Iran. Many geologists say that the true oil resources of Iraq are even greater than official statistics suggest, because Iraq’s oil industry has suffered from decades of disruption and underinvestment. Many oil fields have not been fully explored as a result. Addax has oil licenses in two oil fields in northern Iraq, the Taqtaq and Sangaw North fields, both near Kirkuk, and its drilling has already struck large quantities of oil repeatedly in the Taqtaq field.

Iraq
China
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
International Trade and World Market
Offshore Exploration and Installations


Protesters Defy Efforts to Muffle Anti-Putin Outcry

Abstract: MOSCOW — Tens of thousands of protesters thronged central Moscow in a drenching rain on Tuesday, voicing renewed fury at President Vladimir V. Putin and defying recent efforts by his government to clamp down on the political opposition movement. The large turnout, rivaling the big crowds that had gathered at the initial antigovernment rallies in December, suggested that the tough new posture adopted by the Kremlin against the protests was emboldening rather than deterring Mr. Putin’s critics. On Friday, Mr. Putin signed a new law that imposes steep financial penalties on participants in rallies that cause harm to people or property. On Sunday, officials arrested five more people on charges related to the last protest, which ended in a melee between demonstrators and riot police officers. And on Monday, the authorities searched the homes of several opposition leaders and issued summonses ordering seven of them to appear for questioning on Tuesday so they could not attend the rally. Despite these measures, organizers said, more than 50,000 people joined in Tuesday’s protest, braving the heavy rains that soaked many participants beforehand and the claps of thunder and lightning that dispersed the crowd about four hours later. The police, who typically offer a muted estimate of crowd size, put the official tally at 15,000. Even the physical absence of some of the opposition’s most prominent leaders seemed to strengthen rather than weaken the protesters’ resolve, and organizers said the attendance showed that people would not be intimidated. “It means that we were not afraid of the tough actions of the powers and the police,” said Dmitry G. Gudkov, a member of Parliament and a leader of the opposition, adding that the government could achieve more through negotiation. “We need dialogue with the authorities, and we need to pursue political reforms, constitutional reforms and the reform of the judicial system. It is the only way out of this political crisis in Russia — the only way out.” Mr. Gudkov said it was silly for the authorities to issue summonses to prevent some opposition leaders from attending. “Everyone is a leader here, and we can change speakers,” he said. “It’s the people’s protest, and I think Putin and the government need to realize it.” Among those forced to skip the rally and instead face questioning by the authorities was the blogger and anticorruption activist Aleksei Navalny. But far from being silenced, Mr. Navalny posted a series of messages on Twitter mocking his interrogators. “I am still in questioning,” Mr. Navalny wrote at one point. “They are asking about the Anti-Corruption Fund, who works for it, what they do — surely they want to be employed by us.” At another point, he wrote: “They just asked, ‘How have you been employed since Jan. 1 2005?’ It seems I have been planning unrest for a long time.” Some in the crowd also mocked the authorities. “Do you want a ticket to the paddy wagon?” cried one young man, carrying a roll of fake bus tickets. “Step up for a ticket to the paddy wagon!” The police tightly penned in the march and rally site, a roughly mile-and-a-half stretch using barricades, trucks and other heavy equipment. But the overall police presence, while still large, seemed lighter than at previous protests. Officers, some dressed in camouflage, for the most part did not engage with the crowd. Some demonstrators tried to spin this as a public relations victory. “The police are with the people!” they shouted. While that seemed wishful thinking, there was none of the violence that marred the last big protest , which occurred on May 6, the day before Mr. Putin’s inauguration to a third term as president. So far, the authorities have arrested more than a dozen people on various charges related to the May 6 unrest, and the criminal inquiry is still under way. It was that investigation that led to the searches of opposition leaders’ homes and their being summoned for questioning. Most complied. Mr. Navalny, the television star Kseniya Sobchak and the liberal organizer Ilya Yashin all reported to the Investigative Committee for questioning at 11 a.m., waving cheerfully to photographers on their way in. But the leftist Sergei Udaltsov defied the summons and went to the march. Instead, his lawyer delivered a statement explaining that as an official organizer of the demonstration, Mr. Udaltsov would have been irresponsible not to attend. Mr. Yashin, who went to the rally straight from being questioned, said he had thanked his interrogators for promoting the march. “I told them that no one had done so much for the success of our demonstration,” he said, to cheers from the crowd. “We have no better helpers than these criminal people who are carrying out senseless, idiotic repressions.” Once again, the huge crowd of antigovernment protesters represented a panoramic range of political views, and in some cases the demonstrators seemed barely united by their opposition to Mr. Putin. The crowd, for instance, included many Russian nationalists dressed in black and flying black, yellow and white flags, and one column unfurled a huge banner reading, “We’ll take back Russia for the Russians.” Groups of liberals passed by wearing their own symbol — the white ribbon — with some murmuring, “How awful.” Aleksei Kovalyov, one of the nationalists, expressed disdain for many of the liberal leaders of the demonstrations. “The only reason we’re here is because we are going to unite the Russian people against the government,” Mr. Kovalyov said. “They won’t be able to put us down like in Libya or Syria because every Russian knows something about total war in his soul.” Roman Habarov, a former police officer from Voronezh who spoke at the rally, got a warm reception from the crowd. “Police officers are ready to defend the law but not the crooks who are currently dictating how it should be carried out,” Mr. Habarov said. “All that remains for us is lawful but decisive protest.” The protest coincided with a holiday, Russia Day, which commemorates Russia’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, and as a result city streets were largely empty except for the demonstrators. Dark storm clouds gathered all morning, and shortly before the scheduled start, the skies opened with a tremendous downpour. Meanwhile, the Web site of the Dozhd television station, which has given comprehensive coverage to the opposition marches, was paralyzed by a hacker attack, its editor in chief told the Interfax news agency. In an interview with Dozhd, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, praised the work of the police who supervised Tuesday’s rally, calling it “civil, courteous, benevolent.” and the participants in the rally, saying they were “very disciplined.” Mr. Peskov added, “Political culture is strengthening.” Ivan A. Mefenko, 25, the director of an Internet cafe, said he had not been sure whether to attend the rally until the raids that took place on Monday, which were documented virtually minute by minute via Twitter and Internet news sites. “We’re hoping they will start to listen, at last, to the opinions of the people,” he said. Galina Petrenko, 49, who works in the cosmetics industry, said the government was miscalculating by taking punitive steps against the protesters. “They will simply speed up this wave coming toward them,” she said. “You should not take actions against your own people.” But in many ways the huge, peaceful rally left more questions than answers. Where will the arrests, searches and other government pressure lead? Will protesters at the next rally face arrest and the stiff penalties included in the new law? One demonstrator’s sign seemed to capture the moment. It asked, “And, what to do?”

Russia
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Navalny Aleksei N
Yashin Ilya
Udaltsov Sergei
Sobchak Kseniya
Putin Vladimir V


Report Says Fiscal Abuse at Medical College Is Worse Than Suspected

Abstract: TRENTON, July 20 — From the double-billing of Medicaid to the overbilling for supplies in the university cafeteria, financial abuse at New Jersey ’s state medical school involved tens of millions more taxpayer dollars than had been suspected, according to a report released Thursday by a court-appointed monitor. Investigators found that administrators at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey — who acknowledged last December that they had overcharged Medicaid by $4.9 million — had also overbilled the federal program an additional $35.5 million from 2001 to 2005. The inquiry also charged that the university had overbilled New Jersey’s state-financed charity care program by at least $11 million and may have been ineligible for $51 million it received in state aid for providing mental health care for the indigent. Since being appointed by a federal judge early this year to review the university, the monitor, Herbert J. Stern, has opened 27 separate investigations, and the report said that an assortment of financial abuses had already surfaced: a $400,000 continuing education fund used for “pork” projects like holiday parties; $22 million in unauthorized spending since 2001; and $3.8 million for political lobbyists, some of whom cannot document that they did any work. Beyond those expenditures, investigators said the university’s financial oversight was so shoddy that it was difficult to determine how much, if any, of the $104 million spent on recurring costs was squandered. The report also charged that a former university trustee, Dr. Frederic C. Sterritt, abused his position on the board by getting a relative a job. Given those problems, Mr. Stern, a former federal judge, chided the board for delaying its search for a compliance officer, general counsel and permanent president — recommendations made months ago. John Inglesino, a lawyer who works for Mr. Stern, said that oversight was needed because the university had exhibited such a cavalier attitude toward the billions of dollars in public financing it had received in the past two decades. “There’s a culture of entitlement there dating back 20 years,” Mr. Inglesino said. “Some of the people there seem to think that the money should go into their pockets or for perks for themselves and their friends. There’s a sense that people don’t have to do their jobs very well in order to remain gainfully employed and they can waste taxpayer dollars and not be held accountable.” During the past year, the college, the largest public health care university in the country, has been shaken by news reports about financial mismanagement, abuse and outright fraud. In December, university officials agreed to have a monitor installed rather than face federal prosecution for Medicaid fraud. Dr. Bruce C. Vladeck, who was appointed interim president in March, said through a spokeswoman that university officials were already moving to tighten their oversight procedures. In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Gov. Jon S. Corzine said that reports of rampant financial abuse at the university were “a disgrace” and that he would consider a proposal to merge the school with Rutgers. But similar plans have faced fierce opposition from medical educators and elected officials in the past, and Mr. Corzine acknowledged that the cost and complexity of such a merger might be prohibitive. Under its current configuration, the university has 4,500 students, 10,000 employees, 5 campuses and a $1.6 billion annual budget. In a letter to the United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, this week, Mr. Stern said the trustees’ delay in finding a permanent president had hurt the university’s recruitment efforts and financial stability. Dr. Vladeck, who recently extended his contract six months, has said that he would consider becoming a candidate for the post, but the board is expected to conduct a nationwide search for a president. In his statement Thursday, Dr. Vladeck praised the monitor’s report, but he also sought to reassure taxpayers that news accounts that the university had wasted $243 million mischaracterized the report. Mr. Inglesino said that the $243 million figure included tens of millions that had been wasted or given to politically connected vendors along with more than $100 million that may have been spent properly but was not adequately documented. One example involved $35 million for computer and telephone services from Johnston Communications, whose workers had “inappropriate” relationships with university employees, the report said. It said nearly $30 million of its contracts are difficult to evaluate because the university violated its own policy by failing to require purchase orders. And even some of the documented expenses were cited as exorbitantly priced, the report said. The company was paid $301,660.77 for one work order, but when investigators tracked down the documentation, the only work performed was the removal of a Trojan horse and spyware from a desktop computer, the report said. “That’s part of the frustration — the sheer amount of money that has been wasted due to gross mismanagement and lack of oversight,” Mr. Inglesino said. “We know there’s fraud, but we may never be able to definitively quantify how much is fraud and how much is gross mismanagement.”


Windows 10 Signifies Microsoft’s Shift in Strategy

Abstract: SEATTLE — Next week, when Microsoft releases Windows 10, the latest version of the company’s operating system, the software will offer a mix of the familiar and new to the people who run earlier versions of it on more than 1.5 billion computers and other devices. There will be a virtual assistant in the software that keeps track of users’ schedules, and Microsoft will regularly trickle out updates with new features to its users over the Internet. And the Start menu, a fixture of Windows for decades, will make a formal reappearance. But one of the biggest changes is the price. Microsoft will not charge customers to upgrade Windows on computers, a shift that shows how power dynamics in the tech industry have changed. The decision to make free a product that once cost $50 to $100 is a sign of how charging consumers for software is going the way of the flip phone. Companies like Google have crept into Microsoft’s business with free software and services subsidized by its huge advertising business, while Apple in recent years has made upgrades to its applications and operating systems free, earning its money instead from hardware sales. Microsoft, whose core business is software, sought to buck this trend for as long as it could. But the inroads made by companies like Apple and Google have put intense pressure on Microsoft to find new ways to profit from some of its big moneymakers. “It will confirm people’s expectations that you don’t pay for operating systems,” Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research, said of Windows 10. He added, referring to Microsoft’s devices: “They’re basically killing off their ability to monetize anything on the consumer side, aside from Xbox, Lumia phones and Surface.” Already, the company has been giving away mobile versions of Office apps like Word and Excel, an effort to give the software some life in a category of devices where the company is weak. And it has made Windows free to companies that make smaller devices, mainly smartphones and tablets, to get more of them to use the software. The thinking behind the Windows decision follows a similar logic. Microsoft decided to sacrifice some of its Windows revenue for the simple reason that the company needs people using Windows 10 — and fast. PCs have lost momentum in many ways to smartphones and tablets in recent years. The company’s last operating system, Windows 8, did not revive the market and might have made matters worse with a bold redesign of its interface that turned off some users. During the second quarter, global PC shipments declined 9.5 percent, according to Gartner, the technology research firm. Gartner estimates that there will be about 300 million PCs sold this year and 1.9 billion mobile phones. Windows ships on less than 3 percent of the smartphones sold globally, with Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS accounting for most of the rest. “Consumer Windows is fighting for relevance in a world where Apple and Android are the dominant OSes,” said Bill Whyman, an analyst at Evercore ISI. “That’s the challenge.” An operating system is only as good as the programs that can run on top of it. But in recent years, Windows has become an afterthought for many software developers, who have turned to the huge and engaged audience on smartphones. That shift has left Microsoft in a precarious position with consumers in recent years. To generate more interest from developers, Microsoft has designed Windows 10 to run on PCs, smartphones and other devices, which is meant to make it easier for developers to write apps that run across all of them. And the company has sworn there will be one billion devices running the software in the next two to three years, giving developers a huge potential market to reach with their creations. Image The Start menu, a fixture of Windows for decades, will make a formal reappearance in Windows 10. A previous version of the software, which had a redesigned interface, turned off some users. “I think we will see really huge adoption” of Windows 10, said Kevin Sather, director of product marketing for systems at Razer, a maker of high-end gaming computers and other devices. The benefits of fast and free adoption of Windows 10 could well outweigh the revenue Microsoft is giving up. The company does not disclose how much upgrade revenue it normally makes from a new operating system, but analysts estimate that it is small compared with the other ways the company makes money from the operating system. Amy Hood, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, recently told investors that the company expected to make about $15 billion in revenue from Windows during its last fiscal year, which ended June 30. Most of that revenue was related to the corporate market, where Microsoft’s position is stronger than it is among consumers. About a quarter of Windows revenue was from volume licensing deals with big business customers, who typically pay for rights for Windows upgrades over several years, along with the ability to manage a multitude of users over corporate networks. Most people pay for Windows, whether they realize it or not, when they buy a new PC with a copy already installed. Nearly half of Windows revenue came from PC makers who licensed the operating system to put on machines aimed at the professional market, while a little over a quarter, about $4 billion, was from consumer PC makers. “The piece they’re giving away is the piece nobody is buying anyway, which is the upgrade to Windows,” said Steve Kleynhans, an analyst at Gartner. Windows remains the dominant operating system on PCs, and unless that starts to change, Microsoft is unlikely to stop charging computer makers for the software. Still, competitors are biting Microsoft’s ankles in the consumer market, forcing the company to cut prices in some areas. Last year, Microsoft cut fees for the operating system for manufacturers in the low end of the laptop market, where Windows faces growing competition from inexpensive devices known as Chromebooks, which run a free Google operating system. The company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, also made Windows free on devices with screens smaller than nine inches, a category that consists mainly of smartphones and tablets, along with some laptop-like products. Microsoft executives have started talking up new ways to make money from Windows. Executives see advertising revenue from Bing, the company’s Internet search engine, which is enmeshed in various functions within Windows, as one avenue. In addition, if the company can get enough people to buy games and other software through the Windows app store, its cut from those transactions could become meaningful. The company is pursuing such trade-offs in other areas. With Office, for example, Microsoft gives away mobile versions to get people to pay for a subscription to the product, which gives them the ability to use the software on PCs in addition to online storage and other benefits. Microsoft is also seeking to participate in the hardware side of the technology business, with its Surface tablet computers and Lumia smartphones, though it recently announced plans to scale back the smartphone business after weak sales. The company also has a broad array of software products aimed at the corporate market, including databases, messaging and cloud computing services, that are doing well and could help offset a loss in revenue from the free upgrades. But John DiFucci, an analyst at Jefferies, said Microsoft’s grip on the business market may be less solid than generally assumed. He said he had noticed in meetings with investors that more and more bring iPads, Android tablets and Chromebooks to take notes. “There’s some risk there I think people are ignoring, or at least not appreciating,” he said.


Cincinnati Bengals at Denver Broncos Preview

Abstract: Bengals (11-3) at Broncos (10-4) 8:30 p.m. Line: Broncos by 3 Two of the best teams in the A.F.C. playing in a prime-time game in the second-to-last-week of the season should be among the most anticipated games of the year, but Brock Osweiler and AJ McCarron filling in for Peyton Manning and Andy Dalton ratchets down the excitement. That unfortunately discredits each team’s defense. The Bengals have allowed just 17.4 points a game and the Broncos are just behind them at 18.5, numbers that will increase the pressure on the young backup quarterbacks. Osweiler has performed well while learning on the job, and he is certainly further along than McCarron, but Denver has been outscored by 36-0 in the second half of their last three games. So even if the Broncos build an early lead, the Bengals can’t be counted out. Pick: Broncos


E.C.B. Doubts Add to Uncertainties on Greek Debt Lifeline

Abstract: FRANKFURT — As Greece mounts an 11th-hour diplomatic offensive across Europe to secure financial aid that it desperately needs to avoid a default , patience with Athens is wearing thin at the European Central Bank. That could pose big problems for Greece, since the central bank is the country’s biggest creditor and a necessary source of financial support for struggling Greek commercial banks. A majority of the members of the European Central Bank’s influential Governing Council are increasingly uncomfortable with the central bank’s growing financial exposure to Greece, according to people with knowledge of the group’s discussions. Members worry that the council has already stretched rules to extend additional help to the banks, whose financial health has been in serious decline because of Greece’s deep economic downturn . The European Central Bank has already lent about 110 billion euros, or about $120 billion, to banks in Greece — more than to any other country’s financial institutions, relative to the size of the economy. The banks need the cash to continue providing credit to the Greek economy. And while the central bank does not want to provoke a mass failure of Greek banks, or force Greece out of the eurozone, it may soon be compelled to tighten its flow of credit to the banks if Greece does not produce a set of economic overhauls that its creditors are demanding . Any significant economic changes are proving difficult for the government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, which was voted into power in January on promises to relieve Greece of the austerity measures demanded by its foreign lenders. On Wednesday, the central bank’s Governing Council met in Frankfurt but did not impose any new restrictions on Greece. Instead, the council was planning to closely watch the outcome of a meeting in Brussels on Monday between Greece and the Eurogroup of finance ministers from eurozone countries. As it has been doing routinely for several months, the central bank again raised the limit on emergency cash for Greek banks. Policy makers there will decide whether Greece has come up with an adequate set of economic overhauls required before they will release more financial aid to the country, which is quickly running out of money. On Wednesday, Greece found funds to make a €200 million payment to another of its creditors, the International Monetary Fund. But on Tuesday, Greece must give the I.M.F. an additional payment of about €750 million — money that the Tsipras government says it will be hard-pressed to find. More than two months have passed since European leaders in late February negotiated a deal to extend Greece’s €240 billion bailout program and to unlock an additional €7.2 billion from that program. Even if Greece can meet next week’s I.M.F. repayment, the country desperately needs the additional funds to avoid defaulting on billions of euros in other debt payments that are due in coming weeks. The financial and political implications of a potential Greek default or the country’s forced or voluntary exit from the euro currency union are hard to predict. Since that February deal, the stalemate and rancor between Greece and its creditors have deepened, and creditors have repeatedly withheld additional aid until Greece provides a list of measures to increase tax revenue, contain spending and overhaul the economy that they find satisfactory. In addition to the central bank and the I.M.F., Greece’s other big creditor is the rest of the eurozone. Should that stalemate continue after Monday’s meeting of Eurogroup finance ministers, the European Central Bank, whose credit program with Greek banks also hinges on the assessment of Greece’s other creditors, might be compelled to pull back, the people with knowledge of the Governing Council’s discussions said. “Another negative eurogroup would probably force their hand,” said Lefteris Farmakis, an economist at Nomura in London. If the central bank curtailed its assistance, Greece’s banks could be forced to take drastic measures, like imposing restrictions on how much money depositors could withdraw. That would send ripples through the economy and fan further uncertainty about whether Greece could remain within the eurozone. On Tuesday, Greek government officials traveled to various European capitals to meet with leaders and policy makers, intensifying a diplomatic offensive that began this week to seek an accord ahead of Monday’s meeting in Brussels. The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, flew to Rome on Wednesday to meet with his Italian counterpart, and was scheduled to meet with Spain’s finance minister on Friday in Madrid. On Tuesday, Mr. Varoufakis, whose role in the negotiations has been downgraded after bitter personality clashes with other European officials, shuttled between Paris and Athens to meet with the French finance minister and Pierre Moscovici, the Brussels-based European commissioner for economic affairs. Mr. Tsipras has been busy working the phones, trying to build political support for a deal. On Tuesday night, he spoke to Christine Lagarde, the head of the I.M.F., and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. On Wednesday, he spoke to President François Hollande of France. Whether the efforts bear fruit remains to be seen. Mr. Moscovici said European policy makers could unblock funding to Greece within a week. But he ruled out Greek requests to write off a portion of the nation’s huge debt until Athens commits to economic overhauls. Mr. Varoufakis was not optimistic. This week, he said he did not expect a deal on May 11. On Tuesday, the Greek government blamed the I.M.F. and the European Union for the snarl, saying that the creditors themselves were failing to agree on a framework for a deal. But on Wednesday, the institutions hit back. In an unusual joint statement, the I.M.F., the European Central Bank and the European Commission — the European Union’s administrative arm — said they were not obstructing a deal and shared “the same objective of helping Greece achieve financial stability and growth.” But domestic politics continue to put pressure on the Greek government to spend more, not less, despite the demands of its creditors. Late Tuesday, the Parliament passed legislation that paved the way for rehiring more than 3,500 civil servants who had lost their jobs under the previous government, and that abolished a so-called mobility program that had put thousands more at risk of dismissal if they could not find jobs in other parts of the public sector. Less than a week earlier, Parliament voted to reopen the state broadcaster ERT and rehire more than 1,500 fired workers. Unless creditors are willing to overlook those moves and agree to more aid, Greece will have trouble making a series of looming debt payments. By mid-July, Greece must pay the I.M.F. nearly €3 billion, and roll over €11 billion worth of short-term debt. From July through August, Greece must also pay the European Central Bank about €6.7 billion on its Greek bond holdings. On Tuesday, the European Commission sharply cut its forecast for the Greek economy, saying the political chaos in Athens would prevent a recovery and cause the debt to surge further. Economists say Greece, which had only started to recover from a grinding five-year recession, risks a relapse because of the miasma of financial uncertainty. In turn, Greece has again cast a cloud over the eurozone economy, with the potential to derail a tentative recovery. Many economists say that eurozone growth has accelerated this year but remains vulnerable to shocks. In recent years, members of the E.C.B.’s Governing Council have often been divided on crucial issues, including how aggressively to stimulate the economy. But people with knowledge of the council’s sentiment say a clear majority is worried about the risk that the central bank has assumed to keep afloat Greek banks, and by extension, the government. In addition to having lent Greek banks about €110 billion, the central bank owns about €20 billion worth of Greek government bonds. The central bank does not want to be the institution that forces Greece out of the eurozone. “It is pretty certain the E.C.B. is not going to take it to the end immediately,” Mr. Farmakis of Nomura said. But the central bank could, for example, impose additional restrictions on the use of Greek bonds as collateral for emergency central bank loans. Such restrictions would shorten the time before Greek banks run out of bonds or other securities they can use to get low-interest cash from the central bank. Analysts at Nomura estimate that Greek banks as a group can borrow an additional €25 billion to €30 billion before they run out of collateral. Before they reached that limit, which could cause some banks to fail, the lenders would need to begin restricting the amounts that customers could withdraw or transfer out of the country. Credit, already scarce, would become even more difficult to come by, further choking business investment. A similar sequence of events played out in Cyprus in 2012. The country survived, aided by an international bailout, but sank into a recession, which continues.

Greece
European Central Bank
Alexis Tsipras
Euro Crisis


Afghan Government of Karzai Arrests Election Officials

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Sharply intensifying a conflict over the results of parliamentary elections, the government of President Hamid Karzai issued arrest warrants on Thursday for several top election officials and accused a United Nations worker of leading a bribery ring. The warrants, announced by Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullah Nazari, were part of a broader sweep that included the arrests on Thursday of three people identified as officials of the Independent Election Commission and two money-changers, all Afghans. Mr. Nazari said the United Nations official who is wanted by the authorities works at the organization’s “election monitoring office.” The reason he was not arrested is that he sought refuge in the United Nations compound, according to an Afghan official. The Karzai government’s actions greatly stepped up pressure on election officials a day after the Independent Election Commission announced final results from the country’s Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, which proved deeply controversial with nearly all political factions. Within hours of the announcement of the results on Wednesday, Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko denounced the election commission, saying it had prematurely released the results, and he sharply criticized the United Nations mission here for endorsing the returns. Mr. Aloko suggested that his office might annul the results, or bring criminal charges against candidates who he believed had won seats by fraud. United Nations and Afghan election officials say that under the Afghan Constitution, the final say on election decisions rests with the Independent Election Commission, which manages elections, and the Electoral Complaints Commission, which investigates reports of violations of election law. There is no provision for the government to annul elections, and once Parliament convenes, which it is not expected to do before next week, members of Parliament might have immunity from prosecution. A Western diplomat in Kabul expressed alarm at the attorney general’s actions. “This is looking increasingly dangerous,” he said, speaking anonymously because of diplomatic sensitivities. “Where is the presidential palace in all of this? They could say back off, or have they given the green light, or has it just gotten out of control?” A statement issued by President Karzai’s office on Thursday noted that final results had been issued, but did not express support for the election commission. Instead the president called on losing candidates to avoid violence, and urged them “to submit complaints to judicial authorities.” The statement added that the president would act in accordance with the Afghan Constitution. Mr. Karzai did not elaborate on the brief statement. Mr. Nazari, the deputy attorney general, declined to identify the three election officials who he said had been arrested and charged Thursday, and the two money-changers. He said the authorities would also arrest officials from both election commissions on charges that included corruption, abuse of power and unspecified “complaints by people.” Arrest warrants for all the officials were given to the Kabul police chief late Thursday, but because Friday is a holiday the arrests will probably not be carried out until Saturday, Mr. Nazari said. From the Electoral Complaints Commission, the officials to be arrested are Amanullah Tajali, head of the audit department, and Ahmad Zia Rafat , a commissioner and the official spokesman. From the Independent Election Commission, those sought are Shafiq Kohistani, head of the information technology department, and Noor Mohammed Noor, the spokesman. Mr. Noor said he had not been informed of any charges against himself, nor of the arrest of any official from the commission. “We have no information about anybody from the I.E.C. being detained, but 90,000 people worked for us on election day,” he said. “If the attorney general has solid proof against someone, we would welcome the news that they are detaining the criminal.” The United Nations employee being sought is a dual German and Afghan citizen, said an Afghan official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give this information. Dan McNorton, a United Nations spokesman in Kabul, said, “We are aware of statements in the media by the attorney general’s office, but the United Nations has not been approached by the office about any of its staff members.” After the 2009 presidential election was widely denounced as fraudulent, Mr. Karzai tried with limited success to change the election officials to ones of his liking. “What’s behind this is a power struggle between the presidential palace and the commission,” said Thomas Ruttig, a political analyst with the Afghanistan Analysts Network , a local policy research organization. “The commission has turned out to be much more independent than many people thought.” Mr. Karzai and Mr. Aloko reportedly put severe pressure on the Independent Election Commission not to disallow Pashtun votes from Ghazni Province, a largely Pashtun area where fraud and violence kept Pashtuns from winning any seats. Mr. Karzai, a Pashtun, counts on support from Pashtun areas for his plurality in Parliament. In addition, the attorney general’s office has been under great pressure from losing and disqualified candidates who, having exhausted any appeals available from the election commissions, have been taking to the streets to call for political intervention to overturn the results. Many of the losing candidates are prominent political figures. Fewer than half of the members of the last Parliament managed to win re-election; the Independent Election Commission threw out as fraudulent nearly a fourth of the votes cast nationwide. The commission has not yet announced what it intends to do in Ghazni. Options include reverting to the parliamentary members elected in 2005 or holding new elections in that province only.

Elections
Afghanistan
Bribery and Kickbacks


No Town Car or Crown Vic? N.Y. Streets Won’t Be the Same

Abstract: They are the muscular, leg-roomy fixtures of New York’s crowded streetscape, the automobiles that came to represent the city. The Ford Crown Victoria served as the mainstay of taxi and police fleets. Its close cousin, the Lincoln Town Car , could reliably be found idling outside Lincoln Center or waiting to whisk a Wall Street type home for the evening. But in a little more than a year, both models will go the way of the Checker cab. Ford Motor Company plans to shutter the Canadian plant that manufactures the cars and discontinue the recognizably bulky frame that gives them their shape. That means the end for vehicles that have come to symbolize the full spectrum of New York life, from private black sedans purring on Park Avenue to the ubiquitous sight of the yellow cab, great equalizer of the varied urban tribe. “These cars are a facet of people’s everyday experience,” said David Yassky , the city’s taxi commissioner. “Whatever takes their place will have a real and tangible influence on the city’s aesthetic.” Passengers should prepare for a bumpier, more cramped ride. Forget roomy trunks that fit a French-door refrigerator; the older models are yielding to smaller gas-and-electric hybrid vehicles with knee-bumping back seats and flimsier frames. The impending departures have left New York’s livery world scrambling. The Taxi and Limousine Commission is holding a contest to design a new taxicab to replace the city’s 8,200 Crown Victoria yellow taxis. The Police Department will lose a fast-accelerating sedan it has depended on since 1992. And the black-car industry must replace 75 percent of its fleet. Prophecies of the cars’ demise have come and gone: they survived one death notice in 2006 when Ford moved production from Michigan to Ontario. But widespread regulatory reform and industry financial troubles mean this is the true end of the road. The company says it believes that sales will drop off in coming years as more states require police and livery vehicles to meet stricter environmental standards — a high hurdle for gas-guzzlers like the Crown Vic and Town Car, which get about 16 miles a gallon in the city. Fickle consumer tastes have also played a role: the models sell well with commercial fleets but not individual drivers, who tend to prefer slimmer sedans. One exception is the retiree market in Florida, which has a fondness for Town Cars. (The Crown Vic is now sold only to commercial customers.) In other words, the lighter, greener hybrid has triumphed. “We need to move onto an improved, more sustainable product,” Rob Stevens, Ford’s chief engineer for commercial vehicles, said in an interview. But some drivers and fleet owners maintain that the Town Car and Crown Vic are uniquely well suited to their task of comfortably ferrying all manner of city dwellers, from expense-account Wall Street bankers to criminals handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser. “It is large, it is safe, it is easily repairable,” John Acierno, president of the Executive Transportation Group , said of the Town Car, which makes up more than 80 percent of his 1,800-car fleet. “When you think of a black car or a limousine, your mind’s eye sort of goes to it,” Mr. Acierno said. “If there’s one sitting in front of a building, you think the car is waiting for someone.” The cars also deliver a particularly smooth ride, die-hards say, thanks to a forgiving suspension and the sturdy steel frame that underlies both models. The Crown Vic’s plush leather back seat can resemble a sofa on wheels. Replacements have begun to crop up in the city’s fleets, but some yellow taxi owners say they are unimpressed. Ronald Sherman, the president of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents 28 large fleet owners, said he had seen would-be taxi passengers ignore Chevrolet Malibu or Ford Escape cabs, opting for a longer wait in order to grab the more spacious Crown Vic. “These minis are ridiculous; passengers do not get into them,” Mr. Sherman said, asserting that the smaller back seat and low headroom made the hybrids uncomfortable and potentially dangerous for riders. Kevin Healy, another fleet owner, agreed. Of the Volkswagen Jetta , another alternative taxi, he said: “Literally, I can’t get in. And I would need a doctor to get out.” Despite such objections, New York City’s government is intent on greening its car fleet. A mayoral mandate is in place to depose the big gas guzzlers of yore: commissioners now drive hybrids, and the Police Department has reduced its Crown Victoria count to 1,400 cars today from 1,800 cars in 2006. The city also wants to establish fuel emissions standards for taxicabs. Those regulations have been held up in court, but owners have pre-emptively started to adjust. Crown Victorias still account for 60 percent of yellow cabs, but their dominance has been threatened by growing numbers of Ford Escapes (2,637 cabs) and Toyota Sienna minivans (1,381). The Lincoln Town Car remains a common sight on Park Avenue and outside the city’s gilded corporate headquarters. But there are signs that its clients’ tastes are changing, too. Only half of the cars idling outside Lincoln Center on a recent weeknight were Lincolns. Instead, well-to-do clients stepped into Cadillacs, Mercedes-Benzes and a BMW. A similar scene unfolded on a Wednesday morning at the Loews Regency Hotel, at Park Avenue and 62nd Street, where power breakfasters opted for Ford Expeditions, Lexuses and a Toyota Camry hybrid. For most of the 35 years he has driven his private car in the city as a chauffeur, Ziggy Kingston used a Lincoln. But he recently made the switch to a Prius, saying that his clients, including the 30-minute meal maestro Rachael Ray and the actress Sarah Jessica Parker, often prefer the hybrid. “It’s a good image for them,” he said, waiting for a pick-up outside the Barclays building in Midtown. Gesturing toward a nearby Town Car, Mr. Kingston continued, “This was the car you wanted when no one cared about pollution and the mayor didn’t care.” Now, he said, “you got to go with what the environment is good for.” Fleet owners are unsure about what will replace the Town Car, although Lincoln has created several new models intended for livery use. But none have the same Yao Ming-size legroom or trunk space. Eager to retain the taxi market, Ford is marketing a custom version of its Transit Connect van, whose oblong shape and tall roof resemble a London cab’s. The van gets 22 miles a gallon in the city and comes equipped with big picture windows for a scenic ride. More radical designs have been submitted to the city’s taxi commission, which has solicited ideas for a new taxicab built from scratch, rather than retrofitted from an existing car. The winner, which will not be announced for months, will have the exclusive right to build the city’s cabs for a decade. Mr. Sherman, who owns a taxi fleet himself, said that his needs, like those of passengers, were simple: “What people are looking for in a taxicab,” he said, “is a safe ride from A to B.”

Hybrid Vehicles
Taxi and Limousine Commission
Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade
New York City
Ford Motor Co
Taxicabs and Taxicab Drivers
Police Department (NYC)
Yassky David


Giving Buzzards a Hint They’ll Heed

Abstract: WESTON JUST after Thanksgiving, as residents in the waterfront community known as Crystal Lake were untangling strands of outdoor Christmas lights and hanging fragrant wreaths, Tom Logan was ascending to the roof of a stately home to hang a unique seasonal decoration: a dead turkey vulture. Message to other buzzards who have taken to roosting here over the winter: Hit the road. Mr. Logan, proprietor of a Stratford-based wildlife management service called Wild Things, shot and hung the bird — in a spot not visible from public roads — with permits and depredation guidelines from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The department confirmed, through its spokesperson Cyndy Chanaca, that the vulture roosting problem was the first in Connecticut severe enough to warrant the permit to take a bird. The term for this method of deterrence is, in fact, “hanging an effigy,” and it has been shown to be effective in moving problem populations from residential areas. Apparently, birds that thrive on plunging their bald heads deep into the rotting viscera of many species are repulsed by the death of one of their own. Turkey vultures are migratory, and for the last few years, they have been spending their winters in ever increasing numbers in this upscale neighborhood. Look down, and you can see their strafing patterns splattered on roads, barbecue grills and BMW’s. Look up — if you dare — and they can be seen perched like boulders, 10 to 20 to a tree. Some roost on chimneys and roofs; one home with a flat roof favored by warmth-seeking buzzards sustained $10,000 in damage last winter as the basking birds pecked and clawed off roofing. Last Christmas, more than a hundred vultures roosted at one corner of the lake; the scene was more Hitchcock than Currier and Ives as some residents awoke to beady eyes staring in their bedroom windows from balcony railings and nearby trees. One resident, Ginger More, is especially worried about health issues. “I have four grandchildren,” she said. “And I have to go out and scrub the play equipment we installed for them before I dare let them near it.” Vultures aren’t exactly uninvited guests. Humans and their sprawl have set a bounteous table for winged carrion eaters: more and more warm asphalt, serving up plenty of easily spotted morsels. Feeding on the road kill provided by robust deer populations, and aided, some scientists say, by warm, man-made “thermal corridors” above car-clogged routes like Interstate 95, black and turkey vultures — both protected by the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act — are on the increase in states on the Eastern Seaboard. “It’s generally agreed that we have a growing problem in this area as well,” said Monte Chandler, state director for Wildlife Services at the United States Department of Agriculture. “Complaints are on the rise. They do peck roofs, and the corrosive factor of their acidic droppings can lead to defoliation since they roost communally in large numbers.” The big birds, with wingspans of up to five feet, are a marvel of nature in their unique biology. Turkey vultures are the only carrion eaters that find their food by smell: they fly low so they can sense the gases of decay. In the air, they are as graceful as eagles riding the thermals off the lake. On the ground, they are ravenous bio-engines of disease control, checking botulism and other infectious wildlife illnesses with their evolved ability to metabolize the toxins in a carcass. “They are nature’s garbage men,” said Mr. Logan. “I wouldn’t want to think what the roads would look like without them.” The earliest complaints here came to the Weston animal control officer, Mark Harper, who said that human action first dislocated the birds. “They used to roost in a wooded area off Old Weston Road. But a new subdivision went in there, and with it, the trees. So they just moved on down the line.” The callers have sounded desperate, said Mr. Harper. He has to tell them that he cannot offer any local assistance, because of the birds’ federally protected status: killing one without a permit can result in fines up to $15,000 and jail terms of up to six months. He referred callers to the Department of Environmental Protection. Navigating a regulatory no-man’s-land between the 1918 protective statute and a 2008 nuisance issue, some Crystal Lake residents said they found themselves increasingly frustrated. According to Ms. More, DEP officials have repeatedly suggested other nonlethal methods of dispersal, from pyrotechnics to rooftop wiring systems that can cost up to $10,000 per home. “In my experience,” Mr. Logan said, “the effigies work most consistently.” At about $250 per bird, the costs are not prohibitive. But wildlife officials say they need more information. “Though the vultures have been a problem down south for a while, this is all new to us,” said Dale May, director of the Connecticut DEP’s Wildlife Division. “Since we expect this to be a growing problem as the birds move further north, we’d like to see an integrated approach that would include nonlethal hazing methods as well. We’re trying to learn what works best, and for how long.” Mr. Chandler of the Wildlife Service said that experiments at a USDA wildlife research center in Gainesville, Fla., had shown effigy-hanging to be effective, but that the greatest weapon was human cooperation, whatever method is used. “Vultures can be moved if the dispersal is done collaboratively between neighbors. It takes vigilance, personnel and a lot of labor. Everybody has to be on the same page.” Ms. More has applied to the DEP on behalf of the neighborhood homeowners’ association for a permit to kill and hang a few more birds. She said she believed that the entire perimeter of the lake could be liberated from the scourge if the DEP would allow Mr. Logan to place effigies at the four corners of Crystal Lake, a 22-home enclave. The permit application is still under review. Since the first effigy was hung, the vultures have all but disappeared from the end of the lake where they were having a severe effect. It won’t be known just where they went to roost, Mr. Harper said, “until a new set of complaints starts coming in.” Meanwhile, the effigy will twist in the wind. “We’ll leave it up until about April,” said Mr. Logan, “until the birds migrate elsewhere to nest.” And hatch a bumper crop of baby buzzards? Could be, Mr. Logan said. “These are very robust birds.”


With Third Victory in Row, Mets Climb Out of Fourth

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — The Mets have been asked for weeks to assign meaning to their games. How should these Mets measure progress? In recent years, when September has begun, they have been out of playoff contention, and their attention has turned toward younger players who are trying to prove themselves. The games themselves have come to mean very little. Manager Terry Collins said Friday that he measured progress by the team’s effort, which he said he was pleased with. On Sunday, the Mets took a step toward something more tangible. Mets starter Carlos Torres matched the Phillies’ Cliff Lee for six innings; Wilfredo Tovar, a 22-year-old shortstop prospect, had a crucial hit in his major league debut; and the Mets won, 4-3, to sweep the series and tie Philadelphia for third place in the National League East. The game started poorly for the Mets. David Wright was sitting, Lee was on the mound for the Phillies’ final home game this season, and Citizens Bank Park had a capacity crowd for only the sixth time this year, with an announced 44,398 in attendance. Lee breezed through the first, striking out the first three batters he faced, and he did not allow a hit through three innings, on 30 pitches. The Mets’ Eric Young singled to lead off the fourth, and Wilmer Flores doubled to right. Lee retired the next three Mets, but Young did score, on a groundout by Andrew Brown to tie the score, 1-1. Lee did not run into trouble again until the seventh, when Tovar came up to bat with one out and Anthony Recker and Juan Lagares on second and third. Tovar calmly ripped a fastball into left field, scoring Lagares, and when Domonic Brown mishandled the ball, Recker scrambled home to give the Mets a 3-2 lead. Recker, Tovar and Young had two hits apiece, and Lagares, who had three hits, drove in an insurance run in the eighth. Torres struck out six and allowed two runs over six innings. LaTroy Hawkins closed out the ninth, earning his 100th career save. The Mets have won 7 of their last 10 games and now, perhaps, have a realistic goal: to finish in third. Their last seven games this season are against Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Wright, who returned this weekend from a hamstring injury, homered in each of the Mets’ first two games against the Phillies, but he was given Sunday off to recover and rest. Asked last week about the Mets’ chase of the Phillies in the N.L. East race, Wright said: “In my eyes, third place, fourth place, you’re still going home. So to me, it’s not all that important.” Wright added that he valued trying to win each game, and he said this was an ideal time for the younger players to make an impression. Perhaps Matt den Dekker, Josh Satin, Lagares or Flores could earn key roles on the team next season. Then there is the Mets’ young rotation, which has become a sight to behold. Matt Harvey, Jon Niese, Dillon Gee and Zack Wheeler have each had their moments, even though Harvey was injured and Wheeler, who had experienced stiffness in his pitching shoulder after his start Tuesday, was shut down Saturday for the rest of the season. Collins told reporters, “With what’s happened with Matt, it’s not the time to take chances right now.” After Sunday’s win, as part of the team’s annual hazing, bridesmaids dresses hung in the rookies’ lockers, and a wedding dress, with a light blue garter pinned to it, was left for Wheeler. A game ball sat in Hawkins’s locker. Tovar tried to explain, through an interpreter, how he got the best of Lee. The mood in the clubhouse was light and fun. The Mets had perhaps not felt this good in some time.

Mets
Carlos Torres
Phillies
Cliff Lee
Juan Lagares
Baseball


Nocturnalist - Black Eyed Peas and Beetles, Together on Stage

Abstract: Along with will.i.am , Fergie and the rest of the Black Eyed Peas, images of Volkswagens flashed across the stage on Monday night at a concert to promote the 21st-century update on the Beetle. But despite the vehicular backdrop and the two new Beetles that stood sentry at Terminal 5, the site of the concert, asking the Peas their thoughts on Beetles — the subject of the event — was apparently not allowed. “We’re not doing any questions about the car,” said a woman who asked to see our written questions but did not identify herself. So we thought up new questions while standing spitting distance from the band for about an hour and a half as the group stood around, or, in will.i.am’s case, sang to himself and did a little jig, during the pauses amid a number of interviews. We didn’t get to ask anything. Organizers, who had kindly slotted us into the event at the last minute, said they had run out of time. After the concert, we headed to the Pealess after party on West 37th Street in a non-Volkswagen bus emblazoned with the Volkswagen insignia. There, another Beetle — an appropriately after-partyish little red number — twirled on a dais. Guests clambering in for photo ops fought to stay upright on three fronts: the rotating car, their sky-high heels and the flowing sparkling wine. The car was a celebrity. We waited our turn and struggled into the twirling Beetle and felt a little dizzy. But we could ask it anything we liked. A Seder in Style The Empire Hotel, as any good student of juicy television will tell you, is owned by Chuck Bass, the fictional hotshot in the show “ Gossip Girl .” On Tuesday night, a dining room there was taken over by other dark-suited men, and much more modestly clothed women: several dozen Jews, mostly Orthodox, were there under the crystal chandeliers to celebrate the second night of Passover . The Seder was hosted by CCF New York , a Chabad-Lubavitch organization that serves primarily New York’s French expatriate Jewish community; the Midtown Young Leadership Committee; and the West Side Jewish Center. It was open to all denominations and cost $75 to attend. Before a single parsley frond was dipped in salt water, David Abergel, an organizer, insisted we speak to the rabbi, with some explicit instructions about respecting his orthodoxy: “You can ask the rabbi questions, but you’re not allowed to write or take pictures on a holiday,” Mr. Abergel said. Surreptitiously recording the rabbi, however, he said upon inquiry, was fine by him. We declined. Stacks of matzo were arranged on the tables while a hip-hop remix of Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” thumped in the lounge downstairs. Since we could not take notes, the rabbi, who is friendly with the hotel’s real owners, told us to e-mail him. “Rabbi is so cool!” Mr. Abergel said. “He is very Internet-savvy. We are on Facebook . We can be ‘friends’ now.” He turned toward Nocturnalist’s correspondent: “Rabbi will find you a nice Jewish husband.” A Fete for a Disaster There were outsize strawberries bigger than a baby’s fist at the Ukrainian Institute on the Upper East Side on Tuesday night — “Chernobyl strawberries,” Kathy Nalywajko, vice president of the institute’s board, joked to us. As we were at an event commemorating the 25th anniversary of that nuclear disaster, suddenly the strawberries didn’t seem so succulent. A show of photography of “Chornobyl” (the Ukrainian spelling, naturally) by Michael Forster Rothbart was followed by a concert by the Gryphon Trio in the French-style neo-Gothic mansion on 79th Street. The mansion, which when it’s not commemorating disaster has moonlighted as a set for the TV show “Ugly Betty,” has a moat. The moat is spanned by stairs — good news for neighbors like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, should he ever want to stop by. Guests on Tuesday night, like Serhii Pohoreltsev, the consul general of Ukraine, had lively conversations in Ukrainian and English. Valerii P. Kuchynskyi, a Ukrainian ambassador, discussed matters of state with us, for example, his thoughts on diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks. “Not such a big problem,” he said. “We did not have so many secrets.”

Black Eyed Peas
New York City
Volkswagen AG


3M Posts Higher-Than-Expected Profit and Raises Forecast for 2010

Abstract: The 3M Company , the diversified manufacturer, posted higher-than-expected quarterly earnings on Thursday and raised its forecast for 2010, citing strong demand for all its products. But its shares fell, caught up in a stock market sell-off that was especially hard on industrial companies. 3M, probably best known for its trademark brands like Post-it notes and Scotch tape, reported fourth-quarter net income of $935 million, or $1.30 a share, up from $676 million, or 97 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts had expected earnings of $1.21 a share, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue increased 11 percent, to $6.1 billion, above Wall Street forecasts for $5.77 billion. The company, which makes a variety of products including adhesives, abrasives, stethoscopes and insect repellent, said the results were driven by a 15.7 percent jump in sales of display and graphics products, like the coatings found on high-definition TVs and computer monitors. Strong sales of health care products, including masks used to prevent infections from the H1N1 flu virus and other pathogens, contributed to the results. 3M raised its forecast for 2010 earnings to a range of $4.90 to $5.10 a share, up from $4.85 to $5 a share. Analysts were expecting $4.57, according to Thomson Reuters. Despite the better-than-expected results and the raised forecast, 3M shares fell as weaker-than-expected economic data on durable goods and jobless claims raised fears that the recovery might be faltering. The economic news pulled down the broader market, including shares of other industrials like Caterpillar and Deere. 3M shares, which rose ahead of the results to a two-year high, edged lower as the market fell. The stock fell $1.55, or 1.9 percent, to close at $80.75 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company


Whee! Also, There’s a Net

Abstract: Don’t do Jane Fonda, don’t do Jane Fonda,” shouted Evan Armbrister as I swung on a trapeze 23 feet above ground. Clearly I had been pegged as a “flier” of considerable age, one capable of flashbacks to the Jazzercise era of leotards and leg warmers and “hot cross buns.” I had flubbed his instructions once again, raising my legs high (so stylishly, I thought) rather than hooking my knees over the bar and hanging upside down. I hooked at the wrong time, swung at the wrong time. “You’re not listening,” said Mr. Armbrister, an actor and former kung fu instructor, who held tight to the ropes that clamped on to my safety harness. I dropped to the net, my hands coated in chalk powder, and stole a glance at Coco Sacks. She has no trouble listening. “Can we do a couple of back flips?” she asked. Coco is 9. She lives in Seattle and has made outdoor trapezing in New York a yearly pilgrimage. Who can blame her? Flying through the air on a trapeze alongside the Hudson River, even badly, as the sun lingers high and the downtown skyline stares you straight in the face, offers up a kind of New York nirvana. For a brief moment, you float above the din and chaos without forgoing the rush of adrenaline and accomplishment. You feel the city slipping serenely away. Every summer, the Trapeze School New York pitches a rig and stretches a net across part of the roof along Pier 40, luring a curious blend of people seeking to swing al fresco: Thrill-seekers eager for the next jolt (many of them regulars). Stilettoed work friends looking to trade one kind of happy hour bar for another (at least today). Tourists trying to squeeze one more novelty into a week’s vacation. Children who aspire to take jungle-gym swinging to the next level. Gypsies at heart who once romanticized the life of a circus artist (that last category would be me). Then there are those people — a surprisingly large number, really — who arrive in their yoga pants to grapple with a fear of heights. They come ready to vanquish their phobia as Carrie Bradshaw did in an episode of “Sex and the City.” They come for catharsis. “There is nothing better for anxiety than exposure, and taking smart risks,” said Hilary Levine, speaking like the Upper West Side psychologist she is, and one with absolutely no fear of heights to boot. “It’s a wonderful exercise in personal growth.” Pass the chalk. Dr. Levine was there with a friend and fellow psychiatrist (detect a pattern?), Alexa Albert, Coco’s mother, who squinted up into the sun as her daughter effortlessly sailed skyward. Dr. Albert is an acrophobe. Yet last year she climbed the seemingly endless metal ladder to the narrow platform high above the ground, where the trapeze taunted her coyly. “I was terrified,” she said. “Literally. I felt terror. But I did it, and it was exhilarating. The feeling, the sensation, catches your breath. There is nothing else like it. It numbs any fear you have.” Exhilaration, though, was not quite in the cards for Talia Silverstein, an 11-year-old from Port Washington, on Long Island, who arrived with her mother, Mara Silverstein. “None of my friends would do it with me,” Talia’s mother confided. “It’s the whole height thing.” Two years ago, Talia trapezed and loved it. This year, not so much. After she climbed up four rungs of the ladder, a look of unmistakable anguish clouded her face. She climbed down, hesitated, then climbed back up. Bravely, she reached the top. The view from there — the Woolworth Building, the Statue of Liberty’s torch at night — is riveting. But, really, fliers are so hyper-focused on the task at hand, the view could be of a shopping mall in Sioux City and it wouldn’t matter. Fortunately, Jamielee Smith, a trapeze teacher, was on the platform. Ms. Smith is a high school drug and alcohol counselor during the school year, a job that has trained her to listen, to coax, to provide moral support. “You’re safe,” Ms. Smith assured. “I got you.” But the hard part lay ahead. After the vertigo-inducing climb, Ms. Smith secures a safety line to a flier’s thick leather belt. Then she holds the back of your belt with her hand and sweetly asks you to lean forward, way forward, beyond your center of gravity, so you can grab the trapeze bar with both hands. All of us had practiced this effortlessly on the ground, which is akin to racing a Formula 1 car on a Wii console. It is at that moment, when you are leaning forward, placing full trust in the tiny Ms. Smith to keep you from plummeting, that some people feel the churn of panic and refuse to follow the next command: “Hep,” she says, circus-speak for hop off the edge of the board, a word that can trigger either transcendence or nausea. “Close your eyes if you want,” Mr. Armbrister instructed Talia helpfully from below. Talia shook her head no several times. Then, taking his advice, she closed her eyes tight and hepped. “That’s one of our prerequisites: Being able to make people comfortable in a very unnatural situation,” said Matt Russo, 22, who has a degree in neuropsychology (again) and now manages the rig. “Jumping off a 23-foot platform to an uncertain end is not natural for most people.” It’s all about perspective. Having spent a lifetime in turbulent Jerusalem, Benjamin and Almog Hassidim, two brothers, seemed quite at home on the trapeze bar. Only their baggy mid-calf shorts gave them up as novices. They hooked their legs and swung upside down just as Mr. Armbrister instructed. “I loved it,” Benjamin said. “Extremely.” “It was too short,” Almog complained. A 10-person class, which costs $50 to $70 depending on the day and hour, gives each flier three or four turns at the trapeze. For those who manage to hook, hang upside down and swing successfully, it all leads up to the grand finale: the moment when Randy Winner, a former dancer with a formidable grip, hangs upside down opposite you on his own trapeze to catch you in the air as you, also upside down, arch and swing toward him. “I’m learning a thing or two up here,” Mr. Winner said, laughing, after he managed to catch yet another flier who had failed to get the timing right. “I’m learning to adjust.” Then — plop! — you drop on to the net one final time, ready to do it all over again.

Trapeze School of New York
New York City
Manhattan (NYC)


‘Friendly Fire’ Strike Kills 5 Special Operations Soldiers in Afghanistan

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Five American Special Operations service members and at least one Afghan soldier were killed when a United States Air Force B-1 bomber unleashed an airstrike on their position in southern Afghanistan, in one of the deadliest instances of friendly fire in more than a decade of war, Afghan and American officials said Tuesday. Investigators were looking into possible causes, including faulty coordinates, an errant bomb or other human errors. The Pentagon press secretary, Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, said in a statement that five American soldiers had been killed “during a security operation in southern Afghanistan.” He added: “Investigators are looking into the likelihood that friendly fire was the cause. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of these fallen.” While the military had not identified the dead, relatives identified one as Aaron Toppen, 19, of Mokena, Ill., telling The Chicago Sun-Times he was deployed early this year, a month after his father died. The deaths happened Monday night in the restive Arghandab district of Zabul Province, where troops were conducting security operations connected to the presidential runoff election on Saturday, said Ghulam Sakhi Roghliwanai, the province’s police chief. As the mission drew to a close, Taliban militants ambushed the troops, Mr. Roghliwanai said. The troops called for air support, but were killed when the airstrike hit them. Hajji Qudratullah Khan, a resident of the village of Giza, near where the airstrike hit, said the area is a Taliban stronghold, in a valley surrounded by mountains covered in bushes. He said the military had not been based in the area for some time, allowing the Taliban there to operate with impunity. “Security is not good in the district,” he said. “We have only one school in the district center, it is for boys, and the rest of the area is controlled by Taliban.” “I don’t think people will come out for election, because only the district center is secure,” he added. Airstrikes have long been a point of contention between the Afghan government and the coalition forces, most often when they have caused civilian casualties. Video The Pentagon press secretary, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said five American troops were killed during a security operation in southern Afghanistan. Airstrikes that kill coalition soldiers have been less common. Since the war began, there have been more than a dozen cases in which airstrikes mistakenly killed allies, or gunfights erupted among coalition troops unaware they were firing on one another. Among the most highly publicized was the fatal shooting of the former National Football League player Pat Tillman, who was serving in an Army Ranger unit when he was killed by coalition fire in April 2004. More recently, Afghan security forces have been the victims in such cases, including an airstrike in March that killed five Afghan soldiers in eastern Logar Province. That is in large part because there are fewer coalition soldiers fighting on the ground in Afghanistan other than Special Operations forces. The Taliban also released a statement about the airstrike, confirming their role in the ambush and claiming that their troops also ambushed a joint patrol in the Mizan district of Zabul. As in the first round of the presidential election in April, Afghan forces have stepped up security operations ahead of the runoff vote on Saturday. Zabul Province is an especially challenging place to hold an election, with an unforgiving landscape and a heavy insurgent presence. In Arghandab district, just 183 ballots were cast in the first round of voting, the second-smallest number of ballots of any district in the province, according to the National Democratic Institute, an American-financed pro-democracy organization. With the exception of a recent attack in Kabul on the convoy of the presidential front-runner, Abdullah Abdullah, the insurgents seem to be focusing their efforts to disrupt elections on more rural areas, where security is lighter or absent. “They know that our security forces are now very capable of controlling the security situation in the cities, so they are targeting areas where it is difficult for the security forces to reach and defeat them right away,” said Hajji Abdullah Barakzai, a member of the Afghan Parliament for Zabul Province. Perhaps the most devastating example took place last month in a mountainous area of northern Badakhshan Province, where the Taliban overran the district center, capturing 27 police officers and holding the government compound for nearly three days. In the Charchino District of Oruzgan Province, Afghan officials said the Taliban marshaled hundreds of fighters to mount a coordinated assault on as many as 20 police checkpoints two days ago. After a long firefight, the Afghan forces were reported to have lost five men, while the Taliban lost nearly two dozen, said Dust Mohammad Nayaab, a spokesman for the provincial governor. In another audacious militant attack in southern Afghanistan, gunmen on Tuesday abducted a busload of 35 teachers and students from Kandahar University who were traveling to visit their families during a school holiday week. The bus was stopped in Ghazni Province, where officials are scrambling to secure the release of the captives. “We have not yet been contacted by any group who claims the arrests or kidnapping of the teachers,” said Hazrat Mir Totakhail, the chancellor of Kandahar University. “However, whoever is involved, we are asking them to free them, because the teachers are not involved in politics and are not supporting any political group.” The Taliban also appeared confused about the abduction, with the group’s spokesman saying he did not know about the detentions. “If our mujahedeen did it, we will investigate who they are and what they are doing,” said the Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid. “If they prove to be university students and teachers, then we have no problem with them.” He added: “Afghanistan is full of teachers and students. It is not a crime.”

US
Afghanistan War
Fatalities,casualties
US Military
US Special Operations Command
US Air Force


Albany: New Environmental Standards

Abstract: Dozens of state construction projects will have to meet new environmental standards beginning next year, officials announced yesterday. The Dormitory Authority, a state agency that provides financing and construction services to universities and nonprofit health care facilities, will require new projects to meet environmental standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council. The agency has more than 72 projects that total more than $3.5 billion already under way, but those projects will not be forced to meet the new standards. The new standards are expected to reduce energy use by 32 percent per building.


In ‘Freedom’s Forge,’ U.S. Industry as War Hero — Review

Abstract: ARTHUR HERMAN has set out to right an injustice: the loss, down history’s memory hole, of the epic achievements of American business in helping the United States and its allies win World War II . Dr. Herman, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a writer of popular histories, says he believes that American business has never gotten its due. He contends that it won the war but lost “the narrative.” Business was denigrated by envious New Dealers, he says, and upstaged by the Keynesian focus on the war years’ $300 billion in deficit spending that finally ended the Great Depression . The author is avowedly pro-business, but you don’t have to share that perspective to enjoy “ Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II” (Random House, $28). It is indeed a rarely told industrial saga, rich with particulars of the growing pains and eventual triumphs of American industry as it exploded from negligible arms output to an arsenal of weaponry then unmatched in human history. Strange to our eye, big business in that day was still dominated by willful, roll-up-the-sleeves men who built companies from the ground up. Dr. Herman centers on two of the most remarkable of these self-made men: William S. Knudsen and Henry J. Kaiser . Mr. Knudsen was a raw young Danish immigrant, handy with his fists, who worked his way from the shop floor to become Henry Ford’s production ace. Wearying of Mr. Ford’s crankiness, he quit and proceeded to build General Motors into an even greater Goliath than Ford. In May 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked him to spearhead industrial mobilization, Mr. Knudsen was at the pinnacle of American industry. He agreed without quibble, saying he wished only to repay the nation for his success. He had mastered Detroit’s discovery: the enormous power of using precisely tooled, interchangeable parts to break down complex manufacturing into far simpler steps. He also knew everyone who was anyone in industry. When he urgently needed a thousand tanks a month, his way was to call up K. T. Keller, Chrysler’s president. “Can you do it?” The answer was, “Sure.” For the engines, he phoned Jack Reese at Continental Motors, who welcomed the business. For welding heavy steel plates, never before done with tanks, it was Bill Smith at A. O. Smith. In that way, and well before Pearl Harbor, Mr. Knudsen enlisted the entire auto industry, even persuading it to free capacity by giving up its annual model changeover. He believed that only big business had the expertise and sheer size to get the job done — and that business needed to make money. As Dr. Herman notes, Adam Smith would have been pleased. But Mr. Knudsen was politically indifferent, if not naïve. Roosevelt gave him little authority beyond the power to exhort and orchestrate. In a year and a half, he did yeoman’s work to begin mobilization, but was ground down by Washington politics. After Pearl Harbor, when Roosevelt was free to reorganize for outright war, Mr. Knudsen, with his volunteer philosophy, was out, his office replaced by a War Production Board with greater authority. He was faulted in the press as having done too little, but, in fact, the armaments makers were on their way. Dr. Herman seems to believe that zealous New Dealers and fractious labor unions were the enemy here. He writes that after Mr. Knudsen was gone as mobilization chief: “The New Dealers thought they had won. They were too late. America was indeed in production now, with 25,000 prime contractors and 120,000 subcontractors making products they had never dreamed of making, and thousands more to come. And nothing the people in Washington or the Axis could do now would stem the tide.” Unlike Mr. Knudsen, Mr. Kaiser, a politically astute Democrat, enjoyed Roosevelt’s favor. A self-made construction magnate, he understood the brute force of thousands of men pouring millions of yards of concrete, creating huge structures like Hoover Dam. Where Mr. Knudsen was best of the manager’s breed, Mr. Kaiser was an insatiable empire builder. As such, he was ideal to lead the effort that became one of World War II’s most unlikely successes: the ugly, ungainly Liberty ship. Liberty ships were desperately needed to keep Britain resupplied. They were brilliantly designed to be just good enough, indeed expendable, and simple enough for novice shipbuilders. They were bare-bones, with no electricity or running water for their crews. A consortium led by Mr. Kaiser jumped at the job, first building the shipyards and then the ships. On mud flats on the east side of San Francisco Bay, his crews had a yard running within weeks; it was later renowned as his Richmond No. 1 yard. By mid-1941, Dr. Herman writes, some 4,000 employees were at work there; by the end of 1942, the number had grown to 80,000. Some 2,700 Liberty ships were built; they kept not only Britain but also Russia in the war. The first ships took seven or eight months, but with novel and relentless reliance on piecing together prefabricated sections, Mr. Kaiser hammered down the shipyard time to 10 days. Once, going all-out, he built and launched a ship in less than five. The pace of change all across America was staggering. By the end of 1942, the author says, three million women were working in a war industry, up from barely 80,000 six months after Pearl Harbor. In due course, America’s arsenal turned out two-thirds of the Allies’ total war needs, an astonishing outpouring of aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, submarines, bombers, tanks, artillery pieces, trucks, jeeps, machine guns and 41 billion rounds of ammunition. Yet America had done all this while remaining the least mobilized of all the belligerents. In percentage terms, fewer men had gone off to fight, and fewer women had taken factory jobs. The output of civilian goods was larger for every war year than it had been in 1939. Like the war itself, “Freedom’s Forge” is a sprawling affair. As it faithfully recounts the travails of the M3 tank and other weapons long forgotten, it also numbs with repeated recitations of so many ships, airplanes, tanks, cannons and machine guns produced. It is much better when it zeros in on specific cases, like that headlong scramble to produce the Liberty ships or the staggering efforts to build, revise and deploy the endlessly complex B-29 bomber. Taken together, these often-chaotic industrial efforts were indeed monumental — and it is still hard today to grasp such a breathtaking national achievement.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Treasury Bill Auction Is Delayed

Abstract: The Treasury Department has delayed the weekly auction of three-month and six-month Treasury bills because of an error that occurred during a test of its auction system. The Treasury said that the auction scheduled for Monday would take place on Tuesday. Officials said the delay was caused by an error during a systems test that impaired its ability to take bids. Joyce Harris, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Public Debt, said it was rare for the government to postpone a regularly scheduled auction of Treasury debt. Separately, the Federal Reserve said on Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable-rate mortgages, was 0.13 percent last week, unchanged from the previous week.

Auction
Treasury Department
Government bond


Step 1 Before Red Bulls’ Opener: Remove Foot of Snow

Abstract: Soccer players can be among the most fickle of professional athletes. Things have to be just so, from the cut of their uniforms to the look and feel of their cleats. But what really gets their attention, their extreme, undivided attention, is the condition of the playing surface. Dan Shemesh, the director of grounds for the Red Bulls at their stadium in Harrison, N.J., and their training center in Hanover, N.J., has also worked with the Phillies and the Eagles in Philadelphia and the Patriots and the Revolution in New England. Through cold and warm weather, rain and snow, grass and artificial turf, he said, many of the athletes he encounters do not care much about the condition of the material underfoot. That category, however, does not include soccer players. “It’s not even close how much they are obsessed with the grass,” Shemesh said Sunday in a telephone interview as his grounds crew was in the process of removing more than a foot of snow from the field at Red Bull Arena. “The only complaint I ever heard from a football player was from David Akers in Philadelphia. He was the most critical. The kickers like the synthetic stuff. Soccer players just hate it.” But now Shemesh, 33, faces a challenge he has seldom encountered in his career, which he began by studying turf science and management at Penn State. (“Most guys went to work at golf courses,” he said. “I don’t care much for golf.”) The challenge: preparing a grass field for the Red Bulls’ first home game of the Major League Soccer season, on March 15, after the field has been buried in ice and snow for more than a month. Over the weekend, Shemesh and his crew began to remove more than a foot of compacted snow. (At the training center in Hanover, one of its three fields is playable because of an underground heating system.) “In the middle of the field last week we had about 18 inches of solid walk-on-the-top-of-it snow and ice,” Shemesh said. “We’re just so concerned about damaging the field that we first did a demonstration just taking the snow from the edges and putting it on the track around the field and in the corners. Once it’s on the track, we can scoop it up later.” Shemesh and his crew are in a race against time. Unlike the Yankees and the Mets, the Red Bulls do not have the luxury of time to prepare their field for the new season, which for the baseball teams begins in late March or early April. While time is critical, the Red Bulls’ grounds crew also knows that the slightest damage to the field will be noted by the players. Image An industrial-strength snowblower was used to painstakingly remove snow from the field. “Thierry Henry is very into the condition of the field,” Shemesh said. “After all, he played at Arsenal and Barcelona, two of the best fields in the world. He usually won’t say anything, but we know what his expectations are. He doesn’t have to say anything because I can see, when he comes out to training at the stadium or in Hanover, he looks at it and then talks with the other guys. They’re always evaluating.” The cold and snowy winter has set back Shemesh and his crew as they rush to get the 2.5-acre field of prime Kentucky bluegrass ready. After working around the edges of the field to test the process, Shemesh said a contractor went to work from penalty area to penalty area using a double-wide (60-inch) snowblower that deposits the snow into a trailer. Not just any trailer, but one with special flat tires that leave no imprint on the ground. “Real gentle,” Shemesh said. “The average person might not see the indents, but I notice. The players notice.” Letting the snow melt naturally was not an option because of its depth and the stadium’s layout, which does not give the field direct sun for many hours of the day. And the grass cannot be covered in the off-season, Shemesh said, because even in a dormant state, it still needs air. Plowing each time it snowed would ruin the surface, which has been replaced numerous times (with sod from Hammonton, N.J.) since the club moved to Red Bull Arena in March 2010. “The biggest challenge on a grass field is snow removal,” Shemesh said. “There simply is no good way to do it. It’s a nightmare and I do lose sleep over it. I feel the pressure of the schedule. I hate games in March.” With the forecast this week calling for the possibility of snow Tuesday night into Wednesday, with more cold temperatures, Shemesh said he was watching the weather forecast. “We’ll have it cleared by Monday,” he said. “Then we’ll debate whether to cover it with a special tarp. We’ll wait until the last minute Tuesday night, but we really can’t figure it out until the day before. What worries me before the first game is a big storm.” He added: “The thing is, the field needs to be in good shape no matter what time of year it is. It doesn’t matter. In this area, there’s no holiday, no weekend for the grass. It’s a battle against the climate.”

Soccer
Snow Snowstorms
Harrison NJ
New York Red Bulls Soccer Team