Baseball Has Yet to Deliver Greatest Tribute to Jackie Robinson

Abstract: For me, Jackie Robinson day is a celebration of struggle and perseverance, a reminder that hope and progress in civil rights are often mistimed allies. There are steps forward, then back, with incremental advances to show for them. The process is frustrating and frequently demoralizing, and it shaves years off the lives of the pioneers and activists who have been compelled by conscience or circumstance to challenge the status quo. Created by Major League Baseball to recognize one of the most important individuals in United States history, Jackie Robinson day commemorates April 15, 1947, the day he broke the major league color barrier. It resonates more deeply this year, thanks to Ken Burns’s four-hour film on Robinson’s life, showing on PBS. The documentary tells a familiar story with great depth, though this time Robinson’s wife emerges as the heroic pillar of strength for the Robinsons and their three children. Rachel Robinson, now 94, has been the keeper of the flame and a paragon of strength from the time she met her husband at U.C.L.A. to the morning he collapsed in her arms from a fatal heart attack at their home in Connecticut on Oct. 24, 1972. I have spoken formally and informally with Rachel Robinson several times over the years, and still recall sitting down with her in her office not long after Barack Obama had become the Jackie Robinson of politics with his election as president of the United States. She talked about how her husband, by the end of his life, had become disillusioned by baseball’s intransigence, not just over the thinning ranks of black American players but the league’s blatant failure to promote diversity among its managerial and executive ranks. Image Jackie Robinson, center, appeared with demonstrators in a civil rights march on the capitol in Frankfort, Ky., in March 1964. Credit Associated Press “He was getting so discouraged at the end of his life that change would not take place, that it would not be permanent, that it would not be expansive,” she said. Statements from that period, included in his autobiography, reflect Robinson’s disillusionment. On one occasion, he said: “I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know I never had it made.” In each of our conversations, and convincingly in the new documentary, Rachel Robinson took pains to point out that her husband was not bitter and did not feel that the game of baseball owed him anything. There was a larger, more universal disappointment that Major League Baseball had gone only part of the way — and had done only the part that benefited baseball, namely the procurement of black players. “It hadn’t made the changes that would have allowed for change of attitude going all the way through to ownership,” she said when I spoke with her. “They were still in control, they were still dominating and they were still excluding.” The Jackie Robinson story makes everyone feel good. All but the most ardent racists can look at Burns’s documentary and agree that Robinson was mistreated, that he was courageous, and aren’t we glad we have overcome? We in the United States are prone to self-congratulation, and the annual commemoration has become the perfect vehicle for gushing. Players wear Robinson’s No. 42, and everyone from the commissioner on down speaks of Robinson’s impact on the nation. This year, the city of Philadelphia officially apologized for the racist taunts that members of the Phillies rained on Robinson when the Dodgers played them. Yet the game, with few black or Latino managers over the years, and only an executive of color here and there, remains an old-boys’ network and has resisted the changes Robinson hoped for in 1972, when, after throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a World Series game, he said: “I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon, but must admit I’m going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third-base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.” (Team managers then typically positioned themselves at third base.) Last week, Tony Clark, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, sent a proposal to the baseball commissioner, Rob Manfred. Clark is proposing a joint initiative, the Career Preparation Project. It is designed to bring more black Americans into the game and promote the growing number of Spanish-speaking players to the ranks of coaches, managers and baseball executives. “Despite incremental progress, there remains a lack of diversity in the ranks of the management of baseball,” Clark wrote in the proposal. He continued: “The fact that the business of baseball fails to reflect the diversity of those who play or even the social diversity of the United States is undermining the growth of the game and creating the impression that those in charge are increasingly isolated from players and the fan base.” The genesis of the initiative was a conversation Clark had about 12 years ago with the general manager of a team about Clark’s own ambitions to become a baseball executive. He was told he would need, for starters, a degree from a reputable institution of higher learning. When Clark asked him whether his 20 years in the game counted for anything, he was told yes, perhaps an entry-level position. Among other things, Clark said, the joint venture would provide players with access to education and degrees and remove “educational and workplace barriers that disproportionately impact minorities within baseball.” He added, “There is a career transition program, a job placement program and a program to help players leverage their careers into entrepreneurial opportunities.” Jackie Robinson day is, indeed, a great, well-intentioned celebration. But an industry that relies so much on relationships and networks must be compelled to go beyond the annual backslapping, ceremonial first pitch and jersey-wearing — the distinguishing features of the day. It is especially important in this period of racially charged debate across the country. “This is dealing with things that we’re talking about now,” Burns told me in a recent interview. “This is driving while black, this is stop-and-frisk , this is the Confederate flag, this is Black Lives Matter, this is burned churches.” Rachel Robinson expressed a similar sentiment when she wrote an essay commemorating yet another anniversary honoring her husband. “The fundamental questions that faced Jack in 1947 are abounding today,” she wrote. “We’ve got to go beyond celebrating the past and use our emotions, sentiments, ideas and analysis to move forward. This would be the greatest tribute to Jackie Robinson.”

Baseball
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Ken Burns
Rachel Robinson
Minorities
MLB
Black People,African-Americans
Race and Ethnicity


Ruling Expected On Key Charge In Leaks Case Against Soldier

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The military judge in the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning is expected to decide Thursday whether to drop a charge accusing Private Manning of “aiding the enemy” that could put him in prison for life. Civil liberties advocates said the judge’s decision could set a precedent for whistle-blowers who leak information that gets posted on the Internet. “The real danger is that it equates leaks to the press in the public interest with treason against the country, and that is an extremely dangerous precedent to set,” Ben Wizner, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union ’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said Wednesday. “There are dozens of bloggers for the military. This says every single one could be charged with aiding the enemy.” In February, Private Manning, a 25-year-old Army intelligence analyst, admitted to having leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks. He denied that he was guilty of 12 counts, including aiding the enemy, but pleaded guilty to 10 lesser offenses that could have put him in jail for up to 20 years. The government has said it will not pursue the death penalty against Private Manning, but if he is found guilty of the aiding the enemy charge, he faces a life sentence in military custody with no chance of parole. The decision of the judge, Col. Denise Lind, will center on the prosecution’s evidence that some of the classified documents Private Manning admitted giving to WikiLeaks were posted on the Internet and later reached Osama bin Laden. The judge heard a request from the defense on Monday to drop the charge. David E. Coombs, the lead defense lawyer, argued that Private Manning did not have “actual knowledge” that by leaking the documents to WikiLeaks he was aiding the enemy. In the past, the government had argued that through his extensive training, Private Manning should have known that the information could end up with groups that wanted to harm American military personnel. But the government acknowledged Monday that “should have known” was not enough to define “actual knowledge.” Mr. Wizner said that despite the arguments, he does not think “actual knowledge” is enough to charge Private Manning with aiding the enemy. “There has to be specific intent,” he said.

WikiLeaks
Denise R Lind
Classified Information
US Politics


In His Book, Fritz Peterson Discusses Pranks, Teammates and Swapping Wives

Abstract: On a cool late-season evening before a Yankees game earlier this week, across the street from the old and abandoned stadium, Fritz Peterson sat behind a table on a sidewalk filled with passing fans and flattened cigarette butts. He was beneath the shadow of the elevated tracks and under the rumble of the trains. When cars stopped for the red light in front of him, Peterson smiled and waved at drivers and passengers, who quizzically gazed back. Peterson, a former Yankees pitcher, was signing copies of his new book, “Mickey Mantle Is Going To Heaven” (Outskirts Press, $19.95). Eventually, Peterson says, he plans to meet Mantle there and talk about old times. At age 67, Peterson is fighting prostate cancer for a second time. He is intensely religious in his philosophy of life and death, and blunt about his predicament. His humor is macabre. For instance, he said he wanted to return to New York during next month’s playoffs to sign copies from a casket. “Wouldn’t that be fun?” Peterson said. “If I were to die now, I’d be a very happy camper.” He looks relatively happy, a stocky man in glasses with a little white beard and longish white hair peeking out from the back of his blue Yankees’ cap. Peterson, a left-hander, pitched from 1966 through 1976, most of it with the Yankees, and went 133-131. His presence in New York served as an unusual counterpoint to the fanfare that Derek Jeter created last week as he passed Lou Gehrig’s record for most base hits by a Yankee. Gehrig and Jeter are about Yankee tradition and championships. Peterson? He never got to the postseason with the Yankees and played before a lot of empty seats. “Mediocre at best,” Peterson said of those Yankee teams that followed the Mantle-Maris era. “Pathetic at worst.” In his best season, 1970, he won 20 games for the Yankees, and he was the starting pitcher for Cleveland in 1975 on 10 cent beer night, when that riotous promotion ended in a forfeit. But Peterson is best known for one of baseball’s strangest trades. In 1973, Peterson and Mike Kekich , also a left-handed Yankees pitcher at the time, revealed in spring training that they had exchanged families, like something out of a John Updike novel. Peterson moved in with Kekich’s wife; Kekich moved in with Peterson’s wife. Although Marilyn Peterson did not stay long with Kekich, Fritz married Susanne Kekich. The Yankees and Peterson stayed together for one more year after the swap was disclosed; Fritz and Susanne have remained together for 35. But one of many strange things about Peterson’s quirky book is that he does not mention his spouse by name, only as “my new wife.” She opposed his book, he said. “She’s pretty sensitive about that stuff,” Peterson said. “She read the first three chapters and then stopped.” In the book, Peterson treated the exchange of wives in a peripheral way and complained about how the story was handled in the news media. He said he still communicates occasionally with Kekich by e-mail. “If I saw him at an Old-Timers’ game, we’d have some great laughs,” Peterson said. Peterson said he rushed the book into publication before his wife could talk him out of it, and critical readers will notice misspellings and rambling repetitions. And Yankees fans might be taken aback by some of Peterson’s judgments of others. He is an evangelical Christian who used to work with the Baseball Chapel, a man not without sin who is casting a few stones. In some respects, the Peterson book echoes the “Ball Four” tell-all by Jim Bouton. Coincidentally, Peterson and Bouton roomed together, but Peterson said he had not read Bouton’s book and was offended that Bouton never told him he was keeping a diary. Peterson is also not a fan of Joe DiMaggio, describing him as arrogant and stubborn. Curiously, a photograph in the middle of the book shows a young Peterson standing next to DiMaggio. It was taken on Old-Timers’ Day in 1967. Both are smiling. Another picture shows Whitey Ford and an inscription, “Fritz, if you only would have listened to me.” Friendly enough, but in the book Peterson tells of how Ford doctored the ball to make trick pitches and how Ford warned Peterson not to send Christmas cards to his teammates until he was on the Yankees for at least five years. When asked whether he feared his book would burn bridges with the franchise’s former players, Peterson replied: “You know, I am. But if they get mad at me, that’s O.K. I hope they get serious with the Lord.” Much of the book is lighthearted, recounting pranks. An appendix shows a letter Peterson wrote to the former Yankee first baseman Moose Skowron on a fake letterhead from the Baseball Hall of Fame, asking Skowron to donate his pacemaker after he dies. Another page shows a letter Peterson faked on Yankee stationery requesting Clete Boyer’s participation for what he purports to be an official drinking contest against Don Larsen and Graig Nettles. In the book, Peterson tells of getting arrested for drunken driving in 1995 and how his wife took a picture of him emerging from jail to shame him. But Peterson said he still enjoyed drinking. He has homes in Colorado and New Jersey and often travels in a camper. He worked briefly as a hockey announcer and has held various sales jobs. “I stunk,” he said. “I hated sales.” His best post-baseball job, he said, was when he worked for years as a casino dealer. “I don’t condone gambling,” Peterson said. “But it was fun.” He seems comfortable revealing himself as an imperfect man of contradictions, a Yankee who created headlines but never sipped championship Champagne.

Baseball
Books and Literature
New York Yankees
Peterson Fritz
Mickey Mantle Is Going To Heaven (Book)
Ball Four (Book)


Seeing Jupiter’s Red in the Lab

Abstract: Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a result of chemicals being broken down by sunlight, researchers report. The scientists, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, blasted ammonia and acetylene gases, both found on Jupiter, with ultraviolet light. This produced a reddish material with light-scattering properties similar to those of the spot.

Jupiter
Chemicals
Light
NASA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Space


Near Cuba, Wary Kin Wait for Proof of a New Path

Abstract: MIAMI — Fashion boutiques, restaurants, a bank — Jorge Gomez plans to help his relatives in Havana open whatever business they want. But when? Like many Cubans on and off the island, Mr. Gomez has been scrutinizing the Cuban labor federation’s announcement last week that 500,000 public sector workers would soon be laid off and expected to find jobs in small private enterprises, possibly reshaping Cuba ’s state-dominated economy. That declaration, though, was not yet enough for Mr. Gomez; not enough to offset the memory of previous economic openings that Fidel and Raúl Castro later slammed shut. “You start something and they just tell you to stop,” said Mr. Gomez, 40, the owner of a money transfer business here, as he waited for his flight to Havana. “It’s a system designed not to function.” Cuba, it seems, is still being watched with wary eyes here — and the nation’s plan to step toward an unknown economic hybrid could hang in the balance. The expatriate community in South Florida, often so vehemently at odds with the Castro government, is a natural — and perhaps necessary — source of capital for the private sector Cuba says it must expand to resuscitate its economy. A growing number of Cuban-Americans are already reconnecting with the island, making use of the Obama administration’s decision last year to abandon restrictions on their ability to travel there and send money to relatives. What many people now ask is whether Cuba is being forced by economic hardship to respond with its own halting, vague form of welcome. Just over a month has passed since President Raúl Castro told the National Assembly that the state’s “inflated rosters” would be trimmed, opening the door to self-employment in jobs like carpentry or rabbit-raising, and for more workers to form cooperatives. Experts say that the changes proposed by Cuban officials are far greater in scope than previous ones; for instance, the government has said that for the first time in decades Cubans will be allowed to hire workers who are not relatives. But at this point, according to business owners and analysts, the government’s intentions do not appear to have led to any clear spike in money sent to the island by relatives, or of goods that might help entrepreneurs get started. The evolutionary plan, yet to be fully outlined, has instead raised as many questions as it answers. Where will businesses buy supplies? Will an influx of capital to some, but not others, foster new class and racial tensions, since Cuban-American wealth is largely concentrated among the white exiles here? What taxes will these new businesses pay, and how much profit will be allowed before the government steps in? “Things move very slowly in Cuba because they are very, very concerned about breaking the balance of power with economic reforms,” said Jorge Sanguinetty, president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, a research group. “This is the reality. They don’t want to emulate Gorbachev when he started making reforms in Russia and the whole thing came down.” Mr. Sanguinetty, who served as a senior economic official with the Cuban government until he resigned in June 1966, said that Cuba might be just beginning the long, painstaking process of rebuilding the most basic economic relationships. He noted that Cuba even eliminated accounting schools in the first decade after the 1959 revolution because officials thought money would be unnecessary, and that many Cubans had no experience with credit cards, banks or checks. Now, he said, the government must move forward — with import-export licenses, with clearer communication about rules — if it hopes to make entrepreneurs a vital element of the economy. Mr. Gomez said he wanted some legal reassurance that investments would not be lost to a government crackdown. Serafin Blanco, owner of Ñooo! ¡Que Barato!, a huge discount store where recent arrivals stock up on $1.99 flip-flops and other items for relatives to resell in Cuba, said the American ban on tourist travel to the island would need to end before businesses could take off. “That is when there will be enough money circulating to support these small stores,” he said. Other Cubans have told their relatives that they need to see neighbors succeed under the new system before they dive in. Many people in Cuba are surviving already with their own underground capitalism, with government employees often working outside their actual jobs, as they try to supplement their state paychecks of about $20 a month. Maria Garcia, a bank teller in Miami, said she bought her grandmother a blender in April to help her sell fruit shakes from her patio in Cuba. Ms. Garcia, who also sends her grandmother packets of artificial sweetener for the drinks, along with toys so they can be resold, said her family was in no hurry to leave the black market. “We have to wait and see,” she said. She added that a friend of her mother’s in Havana offered just one example of the challenge Cuba faced in experimenting with another limited dose of capitalism. The woman, named Olga, sews bras and underwear out of fabric sent to her from relatives in New Jersey. She got a government license several years ago after Cuba began to allow for more cuenta propistas, as self-employed business owners are called, but her sales to neighbors did not always cover the monthly cost of the license she needed to operate legally. So Olga stopped getting the license — but not making the bras. All over Cuba, such experiences are common. At the peak of the licensing process in January 1996, there were about 209,000 licensed cuenta propistas , according to the World Bank. Now there are around 144,000 in a work force of 5.1 million. Some experts and business owners with ties to Cuba — like John Cabanas, owner of C & T Charters in Miami — predict that this time private enterprise will grow without as much government interference. Mr. Sanguinetty said Cubans should expect “rigid flexibility,” suggesting that the island would evolve even as internal elements resisted. He said that the construction industry would be one test of the government’s commitment because it was primed for significant growth — if leaders, bureaucrats and older Cubans all allowed for it. Yet even as he imagined Cuba with a small finance industry again, providing loans to small businesses and the impetus for shiny new office towers in crumbling Havana, the minds of many Cubans are still stopping short of that. For now, those who travel back regularly are still seeing the future through the lens of past disappointment. “It’s just something to show the world that they’re getting better,” said Ernis Rodriguez, 36, just before heading back for a visit to the country he left seven years ago. “But it’s not true.”

Cuba
Florida
Cuban-Americans
Economic Conditions and Trends
Politics and Government


Chief of Staff Pick Would Offer a View on Obama’s Strategy

Abstract: By all knowledgeable accounts, Rahm Emanuel hasn’t yet decided whether he will leave his job as White House chief of staff to run for mayor of Chicago . But that hasn’t dampened the intense speculation in Washington on the question of who might replace him. This is largely because the selection of a chief of staff signals the direction of a presidency. Whether Democrats lose control of Congress this November or simply emerge weakened, President Obama will likely confront a changed political environment. And so Mr. Obama’s potential choice for a second chief of staff would say a lot about the kind of strategy he intends to pursue for the rest of his term — and whether he is ready, perhaps, to challenge the worldview that permeates his White House. Modern presidencies tend to unfold in chapters, after all. Don Baer, who served as communications director in the Clinton White House, points out that there were four distinct phases in Bill Clinton ’s presidency: the initial legislative phase, the post-Republican takeover phase, the impeachment phase and the post-impeachment phase. These phases corresponded roughly, though not exactly, with Mr. Clinton’s four chiefs of staff, all of whom came with attributes that seemed to fit the particular moment. Given his Chicago ties and his experience in both the legislative and executive branches, Mr. Emanuel was perhaps an ideal choice for Mr. Obama’s young presidency. Mr. Emanuel has presided over a string of significant legislative victories, and there is no sign that Mr. Obama is inclined to send his chief of staff packing, no matter what happens in November. And yet, should Mr. Emanuel leave soon, whether to run for mayor or simply from exhaustion, it would create an opportunity for Mr. Obama to signal that he is opening a new chapter in his administration. The departures of many of his top economic aides, including Lawrence H. Summers , who announced Tuesday that he would return to Harvard by the end of the year, has already set that process in motion. “I happen to be a big Rahm fan,” says David Gergen, a senior advisor to four previous presidents. “But going forward, I think the president can make a choice that can help revive and reposition his presidency.” Perhaps the pivotal choice that will face Mr. Obama, should he need to name a new chief of staff, is whether to select someone from inside or outside his circle of advisors. Most of the potential picks whose names keep popping up in Washington speculation are aides on whom the president already relies. These include personal loyalists like Valerie Jarrett , the president’s senior advisor and longtime friend, and David Plouffe , his former campaign manager, as well as such experienced Washington hands as Tom Donilon, a top national security aide, and Robert Bauer, Mr. Obama’s White House counsel. The argument here is that an administration insider would already have a rapport with the president and his senior staff, which might be important, since the last thing the president would need, as he settles in for a protracted struggle with congressional Republicans, is a lot of internal strife. And yet, advisors from previous administrations will tell you that one of the great perils for a White House, as for any powerful institution in trying times, is that its leaders tend to share the same insular perspective on how they got were they are. They become, in a sense, prisoners of their own narrative. Lyndon Johnson and his advisors, for instance, found themselves trapped inside their shared view of how to fight the Vietnam War. It was only after Johnson brought in advisors grounded in outside thinking — most notably Clark Clifford — that the White House began to bend to reality and seek new approaches to the conflict. In Mr. Obama’s case, the administration’s groupthink is more subtle. Talk to any senior White House aide, and you will hear the same essential narrative of the past 18 months — how President George W. Bush and his Wall Street friends bequeathed to Mr. Obama crises of unforeseen proportions, how Republicans tried to derail efforts to address them, how none of the president’s predicaments are of his own making. Even when they acknowledge missteps, Mr. Obama’s aides tend to see them, to borrow a legal term, as fruit of the poisonous tree — that is, missteps that would not have occurred were it not for the misery they inherited. The problem with this interpretation of events isn’t that people don’t believe it. In the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll, a clear majority of Americans, 58 percent, blamed either Mr. Bush or financial institutions for the current economic morass, compared with only 5 percent who blamed Mr. Obama. Rather, the danger in such a worldview is that it seems to have created a aggrieved mentality inside the White House that probably isn’t very helpful. Voters may not believe it was Mr. Obama who caused their current travails, but neither do they seem interested in the question of who did. They are judging the administration solely now on the effectiveness of its response to crises, rather than on its culpability. If he ends up choosing a new chief of staff, then, Mr. Obama could opt for someone who may be more attuned to recent shifts in the public’s attitude, perhaps a former governor who has executive mindset and doesn’t share the experience of his inner circle. Among the names I heard suggested in recent weeks are Virginia ’s Tim Kaine , who runs the Democratic National Committee , and Ed Rendell , the soon-to-be former governor of Pennsylvania . Of course, Mr. Obama could try to pursue both the inside and outside paths at once, by bringing in new advisors in senior positions while also replacing Mr. Emanuel — if and when he leaves — with a current aide. If Mr. Obama has established any management pattern to this point, it is that he generally seeks to broaden his options even while preserving continuity — to demonstrate that he is, in effect, less intractable than Mr. Bush but also less politically malleable than Mr. Clinton. Such a dual strategy would not exactly open a new chapter in Mr. Obama’s presidency. But it might at least signal a willingness to turn the page.


Ivory Coast: U.N. to Send More Peacekeepers

Abstract: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved sending an additional 2,000 peacekeepers to the Ivory Coast , citing the lack of security facing the more than 9,000 troops and police officers already there. So many soldiers are required to protect the Golf Hotel, home to Alassane Ouattara, the recognized president, as well as senior United Nations officials, that there are none to spare elsewhere in the country. The new troops are expected to deploy by June. Raila Odinga, Kenya’s prime minister, announced after two days of meetings that the latest African attempt to resolve the crisis had failed.

Ivory Coast
United Nations
Defense and Military Forces


New Haven Has Divided Loyalties in Super Bowl

Abstract: NEW HAVEN — Their trails crossed along the city’s main drag, like two passing ships, if ships could exchange menacing glares. Here was Andre Bright, 29, draped in the blue New York Giants hoodie he said he had removed only once, to wash, since the team’s last game. And there was the man approaching him, his face obscured by a hat with this Connecticut city’s other emblem of the gridiron: a New England Patriots logo. The two drew closer. Their eyes locked. They traded sober nods of the head. “He was looking at me,” Mr. Bright said. “I was looking at him.” And then off they went on Wednesday, four days before their teams were to meet in the Super Bowl, to trudge through a city (population 130,000) with a rooting interest more complicated than most others. There are many towns and cities along the Connecticut coast that have different proportions of divided loyalties between teams from New York and Massachusetts, with geographic proximity generally a barometer of where the line falls. But while this waterfront city might appear to ooze New England — more than a dozen businesses in New Haven include “New England” in their names, while New York’s presence seems limited to an insurance company — the city has its own peculiar dynamic: for two years, the Giants played their home games at the Yale Bowl on Central Avenue. In broad demographic strokes, residents say New Haven’s fandom can be condensed to a simple formula. Younger fans, especially those reared in the Tom Brady era, tend to root for the Patriots. Older generations gravitate toward the Giants, who predate the Patriots by decades; trained in nearby Fairfield for much of the 1960s; and called this city home in 1973 and 1974 while their new stadium in New Jersey was being built. “It added to the sense that we were part of New York Giants territory,” said Richard Hanley, 55, a New Haven resident and an associate professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University. Even the team’s dreadful home record, 1-11, during its two seasons at the Yale Bowl helped establish a camaraderie among local Giants fans, said Mr. Hanley, who worked as an usher for the games in 1974. “Losers do add to the affection,” he said. “It was a test of loyalty that you were a Giants fan when they were so terrible.” Still, subsequent generations do not seem to have objected to the Giants’ recent string of successes. Victor Casanova, 30, a former Bronx resident and the manager of a RadioShack in New Haven, recently posted two newspaper articles celebrating the Giants’ Super Bowl appearance in the store’s front windows, facing passers-by near New Haven Green. “They said to put a display up,” Mr. Casanova said of RadioShack’s corporate office. He would not be entertaining customer or employee requests for a more equitable Super Bowl display, he added. Eric Bailey, a student at Southern Connecticut State University, did not notice the display as he walked past with a group of friends on Wednesday. But he made clear that a repeat of the teams’ previous Super Bowl clash — a Giants victory that ruined the Patriots’ perfect record in 2008 — would not sit well. “I didn’t want it to be true,” he recalled, saying that the result had left him so depleted that the next morning his mother let him take a sick day and stay home from high school. “No tears,” Mr. Bailey added, nodding grimly in a backwards Red Sox cap. “Just depression.” Of course, the intensity of local interest in the game can vary. Atop the soft dirt plot of the Occupy New Haven encampment, where sporting goods like bats, a helmet and three-quarters of a golf club have been repurposed as security equipment, protesters said the camp’s seven-inch television was rarely tuned to sports. “You might want to talk to the kids at Yale,” said Justin Sabatino, 21, taking a smoke break from sorting through recyclables. “We have other things to worry about here.” The city’s Ivy Leaguers had, in fact, been following the sport in recent weeks, though team preferences in one case appeared, perhaps, to be rooted in a deeper historical or psychological truth. Sitting with classmates along the edge of a campus walkway at Yale, Kristin Zaichkin, 23, from Tacoma, Wash., said that for her, having two older siblings had forged a kinship with Eli Manning, the Giants’ quarterback, long overshadowed by older brother Peyton of the Indianapolis Colts. “I want him to have his moment,” Ms. Zaichkin said of the younger Manning, who with a victory on Sunday would surpass his brother in Super Bowl victories. For businesses here, the two teams’ successes have presented opportunities. Originally from Ireland, Patrick Hogan, the owner of Kelly’s Gastro Pub on Crown Street, said he had marketed his restaurant as a “Giants house” despite no particular affinity for the team — nor any semblance of its colors in the pub, save for three posters waiting to be unfurled on Sunday. Long before that was to happen, though, the city’s collective attire seemed to skew blue anyway: Giants shirts and sweaters; hats with the interlocking “NY” of the New York Yankees; even a pullover with the logo of the struggling Knicks. But around noon on Wednesday, a Patriots fashion rebuttal appeared in the works. Nelson Jordan, 57, approached New Haven Green in a heavy coat, with the minuteman’s face from the New England logo splashed, in profile, across the front. Mr. Jordan was asked to predict a winner on Sunday. “I don’t really like football,” he said with a smile. He patted the jacket as he fumbled for a cigarette. “It keeps me warm,” he said.

Super Bowl
New York Giants
New England Patriots
Football
New Haven (Conn)


Barbara Sheehan Is Jailed After Weapons Conviction

Abstract: The Queens woman who shot her husband 11 times but was acquitted of murder was taken into custody Wednesday to await sentencing on a weapons possession charge. Court officers slapped handcuffs on the woman, Barbara Sheehan, 50, and led her away after a brief proceeding before the acting Supreme Court justice, Barry Kron, who presided at her trial. Ms. Sheehan, dressed in a dark jogging suit, appeared shaken, but did not otherwise show much emotion while in court. From the gallery of the courthouse, in Kew Gardens, Ms. Sheehan’s daughter, Jennifer Joyce, 25, sobbed quietly, mouthing, “We love you, Mom.” She was comforted by family members and Ms. Sheehan’s supporters, who wore purple to show solidarity with victims of domestic violence. Ms. Sheehan’s defense asserted that she had been abused for years. Ms. Sheehan’s lawyer, Michael G. Dowd, immediately applied for a continuation of her $1 million bail. He hopes to have her freed pending her sentencing, which is scheduled for Nov. 10, and an appeal of the gun possession conviction, which he said could take as long as a year to resolve. Appearing before the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, Ms. Sheehan’s defense team argued that she was not a flight risk, noting that she had surrendered her passport, made all of her court appearances and was now something of a public figure. Justice John M. Leventhal gave the prosecution until Monday to submit written arguments, saying he would rule on the defense’s request to extend bail by the end of next week. During a monthlong trial that drew international attention and was viewed as a test of the battered-woman defense, Ms. Sheehan, a school secretary, said she shot her husband, Raymond Sheehan, a former police sergeant, in self-defense after he pointed a gun at her after a vicious argument. She said she had faced years of relentless abuse, including having boiling pasta sauce thrown at her, being locked out of the house in the cold in her pajamas, and having a phone smashed in her face when she tried to call 911. But the prosecution argued that Ms. Sheehan was a manipulative fabulist who had killed her husband to escape a sexless and dysfunctional marriage and then claimed she was abused to escape prison. On the day of the killing in February 2008, Ms. Sheehan shot her husband five times with a pistol after he had been shaving in their Howard Beach home. Then, when he went to grab a second gun that had been sitting on the bathroom vanity, she said, she reached it first, and used it to shoot him six times. His body was found on the bathroom floor, the faucet still running. After nearly three days of deliberations, a jury of nine women and three men on Thursday found Ms. Sheehan not guilty of second-degree murder, but guilty of possessing the second weapon. The reasoning, the jurors said, was that Mr. Sheehan was already very badly wounded and no longer posed a threat when Ms. Sheehan shot him with the second gun. Ms. Sheehan could face a sentence of 3 1/2 to 15 years. Mr. Dowd informed the judge on Wednesday that Ms. Sheehan would require medical attention in prison for high blood pressure and angina, the result, he said, of an anxiety disorder after 17 years of brutal verbal and physical abuse. Outside the courtroom, Ms. Joyce, Ms. Sheehan’s daughter, broke down in tears. “My mom was defending herself,” she said. “She shouldn’t have to be in jail. We are doing a lot of praying.” But Vincent Sheehan, Mr. Sheehan’s twin brother, said the verdict had been unjust. “I believe she got away with murder,” he said in an interview. “I don’t understand how the jury came to the conclusion they came to, given that there was no evidence of her abuse. The weapons charge is better than nothing. But it is now up to the judge to hold her accountable for her crimes.” During the discussion on whether to extend bail, Justice Leventhal of the Appellate Division, who has extensive experience adjudicating domestic violence cases, appeared receptive to the defense’s argument that it had legal scope to appeal the gun possession verdict. The judge indicated that the fact that Ms. Sheehan did not appear to have harbored the second gun for a prolonged period could potentially be an issue on appeal. The judge also indicated that Ms. Sheehan’s sentence could be reduced if the defense successfully argued that she was a battered woman. But he allowed that the jury’s decision to acquit Ms. Sheehan of murder but find her guilty of possessing the second gun did raise questions.

Domestic Violence
Sheehan Barbara
Sheehan Raymond
Murders and Attempted Murders
Decisions and Verdicts
Jury System
Dowd Michael G


Jobless Claims Fall More Than Expected

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, indicating that the labor market was strengthening despite a run-up in initial applications in previous weeks. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined 26,000 to a seasonally adjusted 319,000 for the week ended May 3, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The decline reversed three weeks of increases in jobless claims. Economists had forecast first-time applications for jobless benefits falling to 325,000 last week. The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of underlying labor market conditions as it irons out week-to-week volatility, rose 4,500, to 324,750. It remained at levels consistent with an improving labor market. Employment growth averaged more than 200,000 jobs per month in the first four months of the year, with employers in April adding 288,000 jobs to their payrolls, the most since January 2012. “Claims, in conjunction with Friday’s employment number, show that we continue to see an incremental improvement in the labor market,” said Ron Sanchez, director of fixed-income strategies at Fiduciary Trust Company International, referring to the Labor Department’s May 2 report on April employment figures. The unemployment rate dropped to 6.3 percent last month, compared to 6.7 percent at the end of 2013. The decline has also been aided by people dropping out of the labor force. The Federal Reserve’s chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, said on Wednesday that conditions in the labor market had improved “appreciably,” but she added they still remained far from satisfactory. Economists said starting May with a downward trajectory in jobless claims raised the chances of another month of employment gains above the 200,000-job threshold. “In fact, we expect the level of filings to fall back to the 300,000 mark within the next few weeks, which will be broadly consistent with the economy creating jobs in the 200,000-to-225,000 range on a sustained basis,” said Millan Mulraine, deputy chief economist at TD Securities. The report showed the number of people still receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid fell 76,000, to 2.69 million, in the week ended April 26.

Jobs
Unemployment benefits
US Economy
US


French Olympian Retires From Swimming

Abstract: Camille Muffat of France, an Olympic champion in the 400-meter freestyle at the 2012 London Games, is retiring. Muffat, 24, had planned to compete in the 2016 Rio Games, but she told the French daily L’Équipe: “I knew becoming an Olympic champion in 2016 would be 100 times more complicated.”

Swimming
Camille Muffat
2012 Summer Olympics


After 5 Years, Google Removes ‘Beta’ Label From Gmail

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — What took Google so long? Like many software products, Google’s Gmail service was first released with a “beta” label on it — meaning that while it was polished enough for public use, it was still in a testing phase, so any glitches were to be excused. Beta versions, which are sandwiched between internal “alpha” versions and final “release” versions, typically have a lifespan of weeks or months. But Gmail was different. Released on April 1, 2004, it was still in beta five years and tens of millions of users later. That changed on Tuesday, when Gmail finally shed the beta label, signaling that Google considered the product to be fully baked. Google is also removing the beta label from Calendar, Docs and Talk, three other applications that are part of a package of online software called Google Apps . So why the wait? The official answer doesn’t entirely clarify things. “Obviously we haven’t had a consistent set of policies or definitions around beta,” Matthew Glotzbach, a director of product management at Google, said in an interview. Mr. Glotzbach said that different teams at Google had different criteria for what beta meant, and that Google felt a need to standardize those. “It was time to address the issue and bring the products out of beta,” he said. Practically speaking, the change will mean little to Gmail’s millions of users. But it could help the company’s efforts to get the paid version of Google Apps adopted inside big companies, where Google is trying to compete with rival offerings from Microsoft and others. Corporate technology managers tend to shy away from beta products, and Google wants to remove any barriers to adoption that it can. “For business customers, it is an important sign in terms of the maturity of our product offering and commitment to this business,” Mr. Glotzbach said. “I’ve had C.I.O.’s tell me that they would not consider a product labeled beta.” Google began marketing Apps to companies early in 2007, saying that its online software would be cheaper than competing systems like Microsoft Office and Exchange, which require customers to purchase costly software packages. Microsoft has since introduced its own online packages of business software, and Google’s forays into the market have proceeded in fits and starts. Mr. Glotzbach said Google Apps was being used by roughly 1.75 million businesses, though most have little more than a handful of users. In all, Google claims that about 15 million people are using the service and that several hundred thousand of those pay for it at a cost of $50 a year for each user. By comparison, Microsoft Office has more than 450 million paid customers. While Google says that a few dozen corporations, including Genentech and Fairchild Semiconductor, have adopted Google Apps, some analysts say the service has been largely confined to small businesses, universities and government agencies. “Once you get outside those areas, the successes have been few and far between, and the beta label has not helped,” said David M. Smith, an analyst with Gartner, a research firm. “Google needs to go beyond the beachhead they have. The fact that they made this change is an indication that they are getting a bit more serious about the enterprise business.” Mr. Smith said Google probably retained the beta label for so long because it had a coolness factor that appealed to the digerati. But he said that the company finally got rid of it because of pressure from its enterprise group, which is charged with selling Google Apps to businesses. Some businesses have shied away from online business software like Google Apps because of fears about security and reliability. Gmail and other online Google applications have recently suffered well-publicized outages. Of course traditional corporate e-mail systems are also susceptible to outages, which don’t rate a mention in the news media. Mr. Glotzbach readily admitted that Google Apps did not account for “an appreciable percentage” of the business software market. He took no issue with the description of Google’s market share as a “speck.” But he added: “We are a fast-growing speck.”

Software
Google Inc
Electronic Mail
Computers and the Internet


Conservative Party Lawmaker Defects to Anti-Europe Party in Britain

Abstract: LONDON — A British lawmaker with strongly anti-European views defected from the governing Conservative Party on Thursday to join the U.K. Independence Party, dealing an embarrassing blow to Prime Minister David Cameron. The legislator, Douglas Carswell, 43, said that he was resigning his seat in Clacton, in southern England, and would run in the by-election for the seat as a candidate of the fiercely anti-European UKIP, led by Nigel Farage . Clacton was already considered prime territory for UKIP to win its first parliamentary seat. Mr. Carswell said he believed that Mr. Cameron “has made up his mind, he wants to stay” in the European Union. A spokesman for the Conservative Party called the defection regrettable and said that the best way to ensure a nationwide referendum on continued British membership in the European Union was to ensure a Conservative victory in the general election of May 2015.

Conservative Party
Douglas Carswell
Election
Great Britain
United Kingdom Independence Party
EU


Extremist Militant Group in Syria Retakes Ground Lost to Rival Rebels

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Making good on threats to contest attacks by former allies on its power and claimed turf, the extremist militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has retaken significant parts of the territory in northern Syria that rival insurgent groups had wrested away last week, rebel representatives said on Monday. There were signs, too, that government forces were beginning to exploit the rebel infighting, by pushing toward insurgent-held eastern Aleppo and threatening to cut rebel supply routes from Turkey to the divided city, which is Syria’s largest. The developments dampened hopes of the insurgents opposed to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS, that they could quickly subdue or co-opt the group, which has tried to establish itself as a government in many rebel-held areas. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has aroused widespread resentment from other insurgents for imposing strict Islamic rules, killing rival rebels and distracting from the fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad — the underlying reason behind the nearly three-year-old civil war in Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Monday met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, in Paris, said that the Syrian government was considering carrying out localized cease-fires and unblocking humanitarian aid routes ahead of international peace talks, known as Geneva II, planned for Switzerland on Jan. 22. It was unclear how a localized cease-fire would be achieved in Aleppo, where rebel groups are fighting among themselves. Mr. Assad’s opponents are skeptical of any promises of access to aid from the government, which has blockaded parts of the Damascus suburbs for months and has drawn accusations of using starvation as a weapon of war amid dozens of reported deaths from malnutrition. The government says it cannot reach those areas because of security concerns. The death toll from the insurgent infighting, which began more than a week ago, now exceeds 700, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain that tracks the conflict through sources in Syria. The northeastern city of Raqqa, the only provincial capital to fall completely to rebels, was mostly back in the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Monday, said Abu Raed, an antigovernment activist there, in a Skype interview. He said that the Tawhid Brigade and the Army of Islam, two of the Syrian Islamist groups that expelled the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria from Raqqa last week, had handed over their weapons to the group in a deal to stop the bloodshed there. A spokesman for a group that is against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Ahrar al-Sham, said it had also reached a truce in Raqqa with the group, but added that 100 of its fighters had been killed by the group in an ambush and buried in a mass grave. “This is a major betrayal,” he said. Activists in Aleppo reported tense anticipation after the group retook parts of the city where its ejection had been celebrated days earlier and where civilian activists and citizen journalists — who had faced arrests and killings from the group — had come back out into the open. In the Aleppo neighborhood of Al Bab, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters established checkpoints, demanded identification cards and examined cellphones in a search for “suspects who are operating or collaborating with the rebels,” said Mohammed Wissam, an activist with the antigovernment Aleppo Media Center. Such activities have contributed to a belief by many opponents of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that the group is serving the government. “ISIS took over the area earlier today after rebels pulled out,” Mr. Wissam said. “ISIS told the residents that they came to fight the corrupt insurgents and apply God’s law, calling on everyone to cooperate.” While the group’s fighters warned that any attack on them would bring “brutal retaliation,” he said, there had been no documented arrests or killings. “A lot of people are fleeing the area,” he said. During the infighting, government forces retook part of an important Aleppo industrial neighborhood, the Aleppo Media Center said, and if they are successful in reclaiming the remainder, “the whole liberated area of Aleppo would be isolated and besieged.” Separately, the Foreign Ministry in Italy said that the Italian port chosen for the transfer of Syrian chemical weapons to an American naval vessel equipped to neutralize them at sea would be announced on Thursday. In a statement , the ministry said the announcement would be made by Ahmet Uzumcu, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based group that is collaborating with the United Nations to oversee the destruction of Syria’s chemical munitions. That collaboration, which began in early October after Syria’s government agreed to renounce chemical weapons and join the treaty that bans them, has resulted in a high level of assistance from other governments, regardless of their views on the Syrian conflict. China and Russia, for example, are providing security for the export of the most dangerous chemicals, and a Danish vessel will be transporting them to Italy from Syria. Germany agreed last week to help destroy waste from the chemicals to be neutralized by the American vessel, the Cape Ray. Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, announced on Monday that his country would provide additional equipment to the Cape Ray to help speed the process for rendering the chemicals harmless.

Syria
Bashar al-Assad
Fatalities,casualties
Military
Arab Spring


U.S. Demands China Crack Down on Cyberattacks

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The White House demanded Monday that the Chinese government stop the widespread theft of data from American computer networks and agree to “acceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace.” The demand, made in a speech by President Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, was the first public confrontation with China over cyberespionage and came two days after its foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, rejected a growing body of evidence that his country’s military was involved in cyberattacks on American corporations and some government agencies. The White House, Mr. Donilon said, is seeking three things from Beijing: public recognition of the urgency of the problem; a commitment to crack down on hackers in China; and an agreement to take part in a dialogue to establish global standards. “Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyberintrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale,” Mr. Donilon said in a wide-ranging address to the Asia Society in New York. “The international community,” he added, “cannot tolerate such activity from any country.” In Beijing, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, did not directly say whether the government is willing to negotiate over the proposals spelled out by Mr. Donilon. But at a daily news briefing Tuesday she repeated the government’s position that it opposes Internet attacks and wants “constructive dialogue” with the United States and other countries about cybersecurity issues. Until now, the White House has steered clear of mentioning China by name when discussing cybercrime, though Mr. Obama and other officials have raised it privately with Chinese counterparts. In his State of the Union address, he said, “We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets.” But as evidence has emerged suggesting the People’s Liberation Army is linked to hacking, the China connection has become harder for the administration not to confront head-on. The New York Times three weeks ago published evidence tying one of the most active of the Chinese groups to a neighborhood in Shanghai that is headquarters to a major cyberunit of the People’s Liberation Army. That account, based in large part on unclassified work done by Mandiant, a security firm, echoed the findings of intelligence agencies that have been tracking the Chinese attackers. American officials say raising the issue with the Chinese is a delicate balancing act at a time when the United States is seeking China’s cooperation in containing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and joining in sanctions on Iran. Yet they have been expressing their concerns about cyberattacks with Chinese officials for years. Starting in 2010, they invited P.L.A. officials to discuss the issue — a process that has only just started — and last November, Mr. Obama broached the subject at a summit meeting with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, a senior administration official said. Since then, the official said, there has been a “perfect storm” of media coverage and protests from the corporate world. Still, he said, Mr. Donilon chose not to mention the P.L.A. in his speech because he did not want to engage in finger-pointing. “What we are hoping to do,” another senior official said, “is force the Chinese civilian leadership to realize that the P.L.A. is interfering with their foreign policy.” The Chinese have insisted that they are the victims of cyberattacks, not the perpetrators. On Saturday, the Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jiechi , issued his own call for “rules and cooperation” on cybersecurity and said reports of Chinese military involvement in cyberattacks were “built on shaky ground.” “Anyone who tries to fabricate or piece together a sensational story to serve a political motive will not be able to blacken the name of others nor whitewash themselves,” Mr. Yang told reporters at the National People’s Congress, which was preparing to ratify the ascension of Xi Jinpingto the Chinese presidency. Mr. Donilon said the threats to cybersecurity had moved to the forefront of American concerns with China, noting that he was not “talking about ordinary cybercrime or hacking.” That distinction, a senior administration official said, was meant to separate the theft of intellectual property by Chinese state entities from small-scale hacking by individuals, or the use of cyberweapons by a state to protect its national security. But the distinction between cyberattacks aimed at intellectual property theft and those aimed at disabling a military threat is largely made by Western officials devising legal arguments, not one the Chinese have embraced. Even as he emphasized the need for international rules to guide cyberactivity, Mr. Donilon made no reference to the billions of dollars the American military and intelligence agencies are spending to develop an arsenal of offensive cyberweapons — to be used against military targets, officials insist, not economic ones. The most famous of these operations was the covert cyberattack mounted by the United States and Israel to disable the centrifuges that Iran uses to enrich uranium at its site in Natanz. Mr. Donilon sketched out a vigorous agenda in Asia, insisting the United States would keep pursuing its “strategic pivot” toward the region, despite cuts in military spending. He announced that the Treasury Department would impose sanctions on a North Korean bank specializing in foreign-exchange transactions — ratcheting up the pressure on the North Korean government on the day that Pyongyang announced it would no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War. With fears about North Korea’s increased nuclear and missile capabilities causing considerable anxiety in Seoul and Tokyo, Mr. Donilon restated a “declaratory policy” that was first formulated by President George W. Bush after the North’s first nuclear test, in 2006. He warned that the United States would reserve the option to retaliate against the North, not just if it used nuclear weapons but if it allowed the “transfer of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials to other states or nonstate entities.” That formulation did not appear to cover, however, the transfer of technology to build nuclear facilities, as North Korea did in Syria. That reactor was destroyed by Israel in 2007. “It’s understandable that the people of South Korea would be concerned about the threat they face from the North,” Mr. Donilon said, apparently alluding to talk in the South of building the country’s own nuclear arsenal, a move the United States halted decades ago. Mr. Donilon added that the United States had assets in place “to insure that South Korea’s defense is provided for.”

China
North Korea
Sanctions
US Foreign Policy
Hacker (computer security)
Cyberwarfare
Chinese People's Liberation Army
Thomas E Donilon
Barack Obama


Israel Names Palestinian as Bomber in Jerusalem Bus Attack

Abstract: BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Israeli officials named on Thursday the Palestinian who they say carried out a bus bombing in Jerusalem on Monday that rattled a country on edge after months of violence. Even as the Israeli domestic intelligence agency identified Abdul-Hamid Abu Srour, 19, his family praised him for the act, and relatives distributed posters of the clean-shaven young man, praising him as a “hero.” The bombing, in which nuts and bolts were packed into an explosive device, wounded more than a dozen people, including Mr. Abu Srour, who died of his injuries in an Israeli hospital on Wednesday, said his parents. One girl, 15, was badly burned. The shattered, charred frame of the bus, the wailing sirens and the television interviews with survivors revived for many Israelis the memory of the second Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000. Then, suicide bombers blew up buses in Jerusalem and other Israeli cities, killing scores. Attacks on buses have been rare in recent years. It also reminded many Palestinians of the same era. Some lauded Mr. Abu Srour as a young man who had taken a current, waning uprising dominated by stabbings to a new level of violence. “I’m proud that Aboud did this,” said his mother, Azhar Abu Srour, referring to her son by his nickname. “Aboud used to say, ‘Either do something that’s worth it, or nothing at all,’” she said at her son’s wake, where women sat on plastic chairs in a leafy courtyard. “We are a people who have been abandoned and nobody is defending us,” she said, defending her son’s act, and ticking off a list of attacks against Palestinians, including a July arson attack by Jewish extremists that killed a baby , and later his parents, in Duma, a West Bank village. “They have left us no other way.” Videos uploaded to YouTube showed loud demonstrations of Palestinian youths in Bethlehem, cheering Mr. Abu Srour . The bombings came as a six-month wave of stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks by Palestinians appeared to have abated, but not before it had killed about 30 Israelis. Israeli forces killed more than 200 Palestinians during that period, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most of the Palestinians were killed while carrying out, or attempting, attacks. While individuals undertook most of the attacks, senior Israeli military officials have said in recent weeks that small cells of Palestinians are trying to undertake more organized, deadly assaults, including by making homemade bombs and guns. Mr. Abu Srour apparently idolized a notorious Hamas bomb maker, Yahya Ayyash , who was assassinated by Israel in 1996. The teenager frequently posted images of Mr. Ayyash on Facebook, alongside other assassinated Hamas leaders, said his uncle, Humam Abu Srour. Suggesting that Mr. Abu Srour was not acting alone, the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, known as the Shin Bet, said in a statement that other Hamas activists had been arrested a day after the attack. “They are suspected of involvement and participation in the planning and execution of the attack,” said the statement Hamas issued a terse news release on Wednesday, after Mr. Abu Srour was confirmed dead, acknowledging he had been a member of the militant Islamic group. At the men’s section of the wake, the family sought to connect Mr. Abu Srour to his extended clan, famed for its militant activities against Israel. One of the banners showed Mr. Abu Srour’s grandfather. He was also killed, in 1981 in Lebanon, during an Israeli bombing, the family said. The banner showed their photographs side by side, one in black and white and the other in color.

Israel
Palestinians
Bombs
Jerusalem
Bus
Abdul-Hamid Abu Srour
Terrorism


In Debate on Charter Schools, Hybrids Offer an Answer

Abstract: In recent days, as the debate over education has produced so many glowering expressions on so many faces all over the city, I have heard people say, in a spirit of both bafflement and confession, that they “don’t know what to think about charters.” In one sense, the befuddlement itself is a part of the problem, a suggestion that charter schools, like graphic wallpaper or adventurous restaurants in Brooklyn, constitute a matter about which one should have an opinion. When he was campaigning for mayor, Bill de Blasio had an enlightened formulation — that charter schools, though they educate only 6 percent of the city’s children, had usurped nearly all the conversation, and that this was an unhealthy proportion. And yet since he was elected he has been too lost in the morass to reframe and reorient the discussion. The mayor has allowed charter school advocates, whose public-relations machine would seem to rival the operations of Paramount in the 1940s, to continue to leave too many people believing that if you are against charter schools you are against “change,” and thus by default a friend of laziness and mediocrity. To even question the motives or practices of charter schools is to be a supplicant in the cult of the teachers’ union, which is its own absurdity, just as it is a disgrace that the term “education reform” has come to refer almost exclusively to the charter movement, belying the innovation that can happen within regular public schools. If the mayor’s messaging were more robust, determined and aggressive, he might draw attention to hybrid schools , which strive to offer poor children something like the experience of a private education within the context of the traditional public system, using union teachers. The Eagle Academy schools, for example, are a consortium of five schools, four of them in New York and one in Newark (a sixth is scheduled to open on Staten Island in the fall), that educate boys, most of them black and poor, from sixth grade through 12th. The schools operate in conjunction with their own foundation, which raises about $1 million annually to help pay for the staff required to hold longer school days, offer intensive college counseling, provide mentoring programs and so on. Foreign travel and the broadening of worldview are promoted; this spring’s class trip at the Eagle Academy in the Bronx is to Greece and Turkey. Students raise money for the trips, and parents are encouraged to save to help pay for them. “Most of our kids have expensive sneakers and iPhones,” Jonathan Foy, the school’s principal, said. “Choices can be made.” Last year, 17 students went to China. When teachers haven’t done well for him, he has gotten rid of them, he said, explaining that in his school environment it is crucial for teachers to make emotional connections with students, whose home lives are often chaotic. “They want to know who you are, and then they will buy into the curriculum,” he said. Black boys make up a particularly challenging cohort for educators. Last year, on standardized math and English tests for students in the sixth to eighth grades, only about 13 percent of them scored as proficient, as opposed to just under 30 percent for students citywide. In very poor neighborhoods, like Brownsville and Ocean Hill in Brooklyn, the rates are even lower, including at Eagle’s school in the area. But across its network, Eagle sent 82 percent of last year’s graduating class to college, a rate significantly higher than college enrollment for black male students across the country. This year, the Eagle school in the Tremont section of the Bronx has one of its first Ivy League candidates, a student who is waiting to hear about admission to Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Another student, in 11th grade, who has grown up in a shelter, recently learned that he had made the first cut for admission to Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America, known as LEDA, a program that prepares high-achieving low-income students for entry to elite colleges. Donald Ruff, who works on college admissions and college retention for the Eagle schools, recognizes that the greatest challenge is keeping his population of students in college. This is the kind of grand goal that charter and traditional schools ought to be working on in concert. Three years ago, the well-regarded KIPP charter-school network conducted its own study , which revealed that only a third of the students who had completed a KIPP middle school within the previous decade had graduated from a four-year college. Although this was a rate much higher than the rate for comparable students from low-income schools across the country, KIPP acknowledged that it was far short of its goal. KIPP of course has been in receipt of tens of millions of dollars over the years. The Eagle Academy Foundation has a much harder time raising money. “A lot of the Wall Street, hedge fund guys are not pro-union guys,” David C. Banks, the Eagle Academy Foundation’s president and chief executive told me. “It’s not the world they come from. They see charters as places of innovation, and that’s the narrative the business community wants to support. I’ve had people say to me, straight up, ‘We’re not just funding a school, we’re funding a philosophy, and that philosophy is anti-union.’ ” If the system needs anything, it’s for everyone’s philosophies to be a lot more elastic.

Charter school
Bill de Blasio
Eagle Academy Schools
K-12 Education
NYC


The Artwork Runs Hot, With Infusions of Cool

Abstract: When word got out that the celebrated painter and East End resident Eric Fischl was organizing an exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, the Long Island art community was gripped with expectation. Almost 25 years had passed since Mr. Fischl arrived on the New York art scene with provocative pastiche paintings combining popular cultural imagery and sexually charged nudes. Mr. Fischl approaches curating as he approaches composition. He strives for images that are free, poetic, full of imaginative ambiguities and, at the same time, characterized by intimacy. And the subject matter? Suffice it to say that Mr. Fischl has not lost his appreciation of the nude female form. Yet the show, titled “All the More Real: Portrayals of Intimacy and Empathy” and organized in collaboration with Merrill Falkenberg, the museum’s adjunct curator, combines two distinct if not entirely cohesive groups of artwork. One is devoted to Mr. Fischl’s explicit and painterly preoccupations, the other to Ms. Falkenberg’s preferences for more modest, cooler imagery. Since the show is heavy on images of female nudity, it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Fischl had the upper hand. It is also reasonable to assume that Mr. Fischl had a strong hand in the hanging, which aside from being elegant and spare is arranged to suggest the gradual transformation of the body from birth to death. It begins with a group of paintings that includes Alice Neel’s loosely brushed portrait of a pregnant woman sitting on a bed, followed by Ron Mueck’s photorealist sculpture of a naked woman and a newborn baby. From this opening the curators go on to present an engaging if highly idiosyncratic history of the body in art. The novelty of the exhibition is the mix of contemporary and historical artwork. These days it is rare to see multigenerational art exhibitions, let alone one encompassing the work of artists as distant in time (if not temperament) as Lucien Freud, Egon Schiele, Chuck Close, Tom Friedman, Emily Eveleth, Vito Acconci, Cindy Sherman, Joan Semmel and Catherine Opie, to name a few of the more than 30 artists whose work is included. The curators have done a marvelous job of assembling high-caliber artists and works. Several more paintings, photographs and sculptures of babies (Diane Arbus, Jeff Hesser, James Croak) are followed by imagery of early childhood and adolescence. It seemed to me that the show’s sensibility began to fluctuate at this point, with the introduction of more ironic, even detached imagery of the body alongside the visceral stuff like graphic nudity. No doubt Ms. Falkenberg had a hand in this selection, especially the inclusion of Loretta Lux’s austere, almost robotic photographs of children innocently gazing at the camera as if posing for a family portrait. They are prim and proper. The next section is filled with compositions that juxtapose painterly images of voluptuous naked female figures (by Jenny Saville, Cynthia Westwood and Mr. Freud) with images of food and fruit evoking the female anatomy; for example, Joan Goldin’s photograph of two large melons poised against a sensual ochre background. There is no male nudity in this part of the show, unless you want to count a Robert Gober sculpture, an unlighted candle placed on a square base embedded with black hair. The final room is a grab bag but perhaps the most interesting area, full of thoughtful images and objects whose aesthetic origins can be traced mostly to realism. Some of the works are concerned with the technique of realism (including those by Evan Penny, Alexandra Moore and Tim Gardner), while others have more to do with expressing intimacy and empathy (Karel Funk, Do-Ho Suh, Y. Z. Kami, Mr. Close, Ms. Sherman), capturing a gesture, look, mood or moment that otherwise might have gone unseen. In art, that’s what it means to be all the more real.


Rutgers Updates Its Anthem to Include Women

Abstract: No one song could ever capture all the motivations that bring students to a college campus, all the experiences they have there or all the ways those experiences changed their lives. But “ On the Banks of the Old Raritan ,” the alma mater of Rutgers University, is particularly inadequate. “My father sent me to old Rutgers,” the song proudly began, “And resolved that I should be a man.” Stirring as it may have been, that lyrical formulation from 1873 left a few members of the modern Rutgers community unsung. Those whose mothers sent them to Rutgers, for example. Those whose fathers forbade them from going to Rutgers, but who went anyway. And the women who currently make up half of the Rutgers student body. Women were first allowed to enroll at the college in 1972. For some years, people tried singing, “My father sent me to old Rutgers and resolved that I should be a man — or a woman,” but though the line was more inclusive, it made less sense. So this past Saturday, the Rutgers football team was accompanied for the first time by a new version of those lyrics, retooled by Patrick Gardner, the university’s director of choral studies. “From far and near we came to Rutgers,” the song now begins, “and resolved to learn all that we can.” Rutgers is the latest formerly all-male college to bring its alma mater in line with its new demographics. “Men of Dartmouth” made sense in the 19th century when men were the only students, but not in 1988, when the words were changed to “Dear old Dartmouth.” A year before that, Princeton’s president changed the lyrics of “Old Nassau” over the objections of students, who voted to keep it in its all-male form. At Davidson College in North Carolina, “Our fathers loved thee” and “their loyal sons undaunted” morphed nicely into “Thy founders loved thee” and “thy loyal sons and daughters.” West Point updated its alma mater in 2008, more than three decades after it began admitting women. As for Penn State, it had been educating women for decades when it adopted an official song that told of standing “at boyhood’s gate,” waiting to be “molded into men.” The words were not changed until 1975. Rutgers’s new lyrics were first performed at the university’s convocation, in August, but this past Saturday marked a debut in a much tougher venue. Professor Gardner said the football fans responded “very well.” “There are some alumni who will be concerned and alarmed and upset, and we encourage them to sing whatever words are near and dear to them,” he said. “I’m glad that people are passionate about Rutgers and want to put that in a song.” (Rutgers beat Arkansas, 28-24.) Someone started a “Change Back the Rutgers Alma Mater” petition online. As of Tuesday night, it had one signature.

Rutgers
College
Patrick Gardner
Music
Women and Girls


Peter E. Fleming Jr., 79, Dies; Defense Lawyer Who Relished the Limelight

Abstract: Peter E. Fleming Jr., a prominent criminal-defense lawyer whose client list over more than three decades included high-ranking politicians, flamboyant celebrities and a cast of characters from outbreaks of corporate crime, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 79 and lived in Greenwich, Conn. The cause was complications of lung surgery, his son Peter said. Among Mr. Fleming’s clients were John N. Mitchell, the former United States attorney general; Don King, the boisterous boxing promoter; John J. Rigas, the founder of what was once the nation’s sixth-largest cable company; and companies operated by Marc Rich, the commodities trader, who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton. High-profile names also brought Mr. Fleming out of the courts into public service. In 1991, the United States Senate named him as a special counsel to investigate the disclosure of sexual-harassment allegations made by Anita F. Hill against Clarence Thomas during proceedings leading up to Judge Thomas’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice. The investigation raised anew the volatile question of whether reporters have a constitutional right to conceal confidential sources. The Senate eventually chose not to seek contempt citations against the reporters who had refused to cooperate. Mr. Fleming also received national attention in 1974 when he successfully defended Mr. Mitchell, President Nixon’s attorney general. Mr. Mitchell, along with Nixon’s commerce secretary, Maurice H. Stans, was accused of obstruction of justice and perjury in connection with an investigation of Robert L. Vesco, the fugitive financier. Both Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Stans were acquitted. (Mr. Mitchell went to prison in a different case for his role in the Watergate scandals, serving 19 months for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and lying under oath.) “We pitched a no-hitter,” Mr. Fleming told The New York Times in a 2002 interview in which he recalled the thrill of being barraged by reporters as he descended the steps of the federal courthouse in Manhattan 28 years earlier after the acquittal. He did not mind the limelight. A rangy 6-foot-6, typically attired in custom-made suits and French-cuffed shirts, Mr. Fleming could capture a courtroom with a booming voice, an occasional tear or a quip. A People magazine profile of him during the Mitchell trial described how, “while interrogating former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman G. Bradford Cook, a pivotal prosecution witness, Fleming was asked by Judge Lee Gagliardi how much longer he planned to continue. ‘Till he cracks,’ snapped Fleming.” In 2004, Mr. Fleming represented Mr. Rigas, the chief executive of the cable company Adelphia Communications. Mr. Rigas had started Adelphia in 1952 with a $300 purchase of a single franchise in the small Pennsylvania town of Coudersport. Mr. Rigas and his son Timothy were eventually convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud and securities fraud involving $2.3 billion. But Mr. Fleming succeeded in his defense of Mr. King, the boxing promoter. In 1998, Mr. King was acquitted of charges of defrauding Lloyd’s of London, the insurer, by submitting fake expenses and a fake contract from a canceled title fight. “The guy saved my life,” Mr. King said of Mr. Fleming on Wednesday. “If everything went against me, I was facing 63 years in prison. I think that Clarence Darrow will be standing there welcoming Peter to lawyer’s heaven.” Peter Emmet Fleming Jr. was born in Atlantic Highlands, N.J., on Aug. 18, 1929, one of six children of Peter and Anna Sullivan Fleming. Besides his son Peter, he is survived by three other sons, William, James and David; a daughter, Jane Fleming; a sister, Joan Fleming Sexton; and 11 grandchildren. Mr. Fleming’s wife of 34 years, the former Jane Breed, died in 1990. Mr. Fleming graduated from Princeton in 1951. After serving in the Navy during the Korean War, he graduated from Yale Law School in 1958. For three years, he was an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell. In 1961, Robert M. Morgenthau, then the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, hired Mr. Fleming as one of 15 new assistant attorneys. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Morgenthau, who has been Manhattan district attorney for 34 years, called Mr. Fleming “one of the best lawyers around,” and recalled his independent streak: “Bobby Kennedy comes up, goes around the room asking, ‘Why did you want to be an assistant U.S. attorney?’ Others say, ‘To do public service.’ Peter says, ‘I did it for the money, general.’ Peter’s making a third of what he was making in private practice, but he’s no sycophant.” Mr. Fleming won 49 out of 50 cases in his nine years as a prosecutor. In 1970, he joined the firm of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, where he remained for the rest of his career. “I never had a client I thought was guilty,” Mr. Fleming said in 2002. “Everyone may deserve a defense, but they don’t deserve my defense.”

Celebrities
Fleming Peter E Jr
Suits and Litigation
Deaths (Obituaries)


In German Party Dispute, East-West Split Is Renewed

Abstract: BERLIN — In today’s Germany there are hardly any traces of the wall that divided the city of Berlin or the barbed wire fences that straddled the length of the divided country. Twenty years after the wall fell, cities and towns across Eastern Germany have been renovated. And in a bid to seal the unity of the country, the government continues to spend billions on social welfare programs. For all the outward signs of reunification, different historical experiences continue to divide the older generation of Eastern and Western Germans. The Easterners, while valuing their new freedom, resent that a way of life based on order and safe jobs was replaced by unemployment and uncertainty. The Westerners blame the Easterners for an increase in rightist extremism and the continuing drain on public finances. But it is in politics, in the Die Linke, or the Left Party, that the divide runs deepest. The Easterners resent not only attempts by Westerners to take over the party’s leadership, they resent the way the Westerners are radicalizing the party. The Left Party was established two years ago when Eastern Germany’s Party of Democratic Socialists, or P.D.S., and Western Germany’s Labor and Social Justice Party, or W.A.S.G., merged out of expediency: They need each other to survive. But it has been a marriage made in hell. Politicians from both sides are quarreling over strategy and personalities, weeks before crucial state and federal elections. “This is a real East-West cleavage,” said Everhard Holtmann, a political science professor at Halle University. “The big ideological differences are about strategy.” Neither time nor geography favors the P.D.S., the successor to East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party — the former ruling Communist party. The P.D.S. has the oldest membership among German political parties, and little more than 76,000 remain, mostly in the five eastern states, down from 2.3 million before reunification. Still, ever since reunification, the P.D.S. has been consistently successful in regional elections. It governs Berlin with the Social Democrats, with no qualms in slashing the public sector to reduce the budget deficit. It has had stints in government in other Eastern states as well. The success of the P.D.S. rests partly with its wide political network, inherited from the Communist era, its discipline, and the fact that it is a genuinely Eastern German party. It also plays an important social function, providing, for example, advice to the elderly about pension or tenant rights. And unlike the smaller opposition Green and pro-business Free Democrats, the P.D.S. has become a “Volkspartei,” a broad-based people’s party, in Eastern Germany. “We have become more pragmatic about our goals. We want people to vote for us,” said Bodo Ramelow, leader of the Left Party in the Eastern state of Thuringia. “But we want to gain a foothold in Western Germany. That is why the W.A.S.G./P.D.S. merger was so important for both sides.” The W.A.S.G., founded by Oskar Lafontaine, appeared on the political stage in 2005 after Gerhard Schröder, the former Social Democrat chancellor, introduced unpopular economic reforms aimed at modernizing the country’s social welfare system. Disgruntled trade unionists and traditional leftist voters left the Social Democratic Party in droves to establish the W.A.S.G., claiming it was the only genuine leftist party. Mr. Lafontaine was once leader of the Social Democrats, premier in the small Western state of Saarland, and then finance minister in Mr. Schröder’s cabinet in 1998. As a protest against Mr. Schröder’s reformist course, Mr. Lafontaine quit after just six months, eventually going on to build the W.A.S.G. Ironically, when Mr. Lafontaine ran as chancellor for the Social Democrats in 1990, he had opposed quick reunification with the East. Now he is turning to the East to bolster his party’s chances. The W.A.S.G. has rallied a motley array of left wingers, including former Maoists, Trotskyists and orthodox Communists, with a strong nostalgia for the old West Germany, which did not have to deal with globalization or the necessity of labor market reforms. Mr. Lafontaine has called for the overthrow of the capitalist system. He wants high minimum wages, extremely generous social benefits and an enlarged public sector — hardly surprising since many of his supporters are trade unionists whose jobs and pensions are guaranteed. On the surface, the East-West merger has been successful. The Left Party has managed to substantially weaken the Social Democrats, who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives. According to opinion polls, the Social Democrats would win only 22 percent of the vote compared to over 34 percent in 2005, despite the fact that politically they have moved to the left by abandoning Mr. Schröder’s reforms. As for the Left Party, it could win 10 per cent of the vote in next month’s federal elections. Eastern Germans know that they cannot achieve such a result alone. But their suspicion of Mr. Lafontaine and his radicalism runs deep, revealing a fear that one of the last genuinely Eastern German institutions has been taken over. “We know that Lafontaine is clever but he is also a polarizing figure,” said Mr. Ramelow from Thuringia. Mr. Lafontaine wants the Left Party to have one leader — himself — instead of continuing a power-sharing arrangement, with an Easterner and a Westerner at the helm. But Eastern Germans are determined to preserve their influence over the party’s strategy. “This is a big issue. We have to have a dual leadership,” said Axel Troost, a member of the German Parliament. Mr. Troost has an interesting twist on this East-West divide. He had represented the W.A.S.G. in the northwestern port city of Bremen. But he became so disillusioned with its sectarianism that he moved to the Left Party in the Eastern state of Saxony. With such infighting, the otherwise irrelevant regional election in Saarland in 10 days’ time in the very west of Germany has become important for the future direction of the Left Party. In Saarland, Mr. Lafontaine is standing as premier and hoping to win at least 20 percent, which, if he succeeded, would silence his critics inside the party. Should he fail, a leadership fight between East and West seems certain, dimming the party’s chances at future success on the federal level. Now wouldn’t that please the Social Democrats, who have never forgiven Mr. Lafontaine’s desertion and the damage he has wrought on their party?

Germany
Elections
East Germany
Politics and Government


A Water Dilemma in Michigan: Cloudy or Costly?

Abstract: FLINT, Mich. — Depending on the day, Melissa Mays says, the water flowing out of her home’s faucets might have a blue tint. Or it might smell like mothballs. Or it might fill her home with the scent of an overchlorinated swimming pool. Lately, Ms. Mays, who is 36 and works in marketing, has not been turning on her tap much at all. After Flint changed the source of its drinking water last spring, Ms. Mays said, she noticed a change in the water’s color and odor. Then she started having rashes, and clumps of her hair fell out. When the city issued a boil order, she stopped using the water for drinking and cooking. Now her family spends roughly $400 a month on bottled water. “My cat gets bottled water, our plants get bottled water, our fish gets bottled water,” said Ms. Mays, who has helped organize marches to protest the water conditions and is on a city commission seeking input on how to move forward. “It takes four to five bottles of water to fill up a pot for spaghetti.” Flint officials insist that the city’s water is safe. They say that the issues of odor and color are separate from the question of whether the water meets federal standards, and that no link to health problems has been proved. Image Tony Palladeno Jr., escorted from a water advisory committee meeting for outbursts, says that the water in this bottle came out of his tap in January. Credit Joshua Lott for The New York Times “We understand the concerns about discoloration and odors,” said Gerald Ambrose, Flint’s state-appointed emergency manager. “We tell everyone who complains that we would be more than happy to come out to their house and test their water.” Mr. Ambrose’s position hints at deeper issues in Flint. Though the city has not declared bankruptcy, it has been in state receivership since 2011 and has deep-seated financial problems, which Mr. Ambrose was appointed to help untangle. Add to that a plummeting population and violent crime rates that rank among the nation’s worst, and the water question becomes one headache among many. The problems, almost everyone agrees, started shortly after the city, in an effort to save money, switched from the supply of treated Lake Huron water it had long purchased from Detroit and started drawing water from the Flint River, treating it locally. On Monday, Flint’s City Council voted to “do all things necessary” to reconnect to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Mr. Ambrose’s response was swift. Flint water today is safe by all federal and state standards, he said in a statement Tuesday. “Water from Detroit is no safer than water from Flint,” he said. “Users also pay some of the highest rates in the state because of the decreased numbers of users and the age of the system.” A sign downtown still refers to Flint as Vehicle City. Older residents recall growing up in a place that 200,000 people called home, where good-paying jobs in the General Motors factories were plentiful. Today, many of the auto plants are gone, the population is below 100,000, and once-prosperous neighborhoods are dotted with abandoned homes and vacant lots. Image Tim Bednarski checking water at the treatment plant. Flint has increased chemical monitoring and hired a consulting firm to suggest improvements. Credit Joshua Lott for The New York Times As Flint has shrunk, its network of water pipes built for a much larger metropolis has deteriorated. With fewer customers, water sometimes languishes in the system, becoming discolored. Moreover, water bills in Flint are far higher than those in neighboring communities. Officials say the switch away from Detroit water saves the city $12 million a year. “It’s a very sore point, particularly when you have a population with a high degree of low-income folks,” Mr. Ambrose said. “To me, the conversation we need to be having is, how do we lower those rates?” Some residents say they would rather not debate the cost until they are confident that the water is safe. When fecal coliform bacteria showed up in parts of the city last summer, residents were told to boil their water before using it. Officials addressed the issue by pumping extra chlorine into the system, but in solving one problem, they created another. The high chlorine levels led to elevated levels of total trihalomethanes or T.T.H.M., which required another public notice in January. Residents will again receive a notice of elevated T.T.H.M. levels in the mail later this month, Mayor Dayne Walling has said. Long-term consumption of water with high T.T.H.M. levels can lead to liver or kidney troubles and an increased risk of cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Some here say Flint had been on the verge of a rebound when the water problems started. The walkable downtown area, just steps from the University of Michigan’s campus here, is now home to the Flint Crepe Company and other new restaurants. And perhaps most significant, the emergency manager was expected to leave office in the coming weeks, handing power back to the elected mayor and City Council. Image Melissa Mays said that after Flint changed its water source last spring, she developed rashes and clumps of her hair fell out. Credit Joshua Lott for The New York Times “We continue to deal with a number of longstanding challenges with concentrated poverty and high crime and expensive, old infrastructure,” said Mr. Walling, a Flint native who returned to his hometown after studying at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. “But we’re now 30 years past the major General Motors plant closings in the 1980s, and people are ready to move forward, so the new problems with water have been a huge setback.” Mr. Walling said he and his family drank city water. Mr. Walling and Mr. Ambrose conceded that communication should have been better when water problems emerged. But they say the city is reaching out to residents and answering questions. Officials installed a T.T.H.M. monitor at the treatment plant and hired a consulting firm to suggest improvements there, and they have asked state and federal officials for help. They also note that the switch to the Flint River is not permanent. A new pipeline connecting Flint to Lake Huron is expected to be completed next year. Many in Flint, though, seem unconvinced. Saterra Hill, 17, a health sciences major at the University of Michigan-Flint, said she and her father purchased several gallon jugs of water each month instead of drinking tap water. Vernon White, 57, said he often bought soda to avoid the water. For many, the water issue stirs emotions. On a recent weekday afternoon, dozens of people filled the basement of the city’s transportation center for a meeting of a water advisory committee. Tony Palladeno Jr., who arrived at the meeting in a red Flint baseball cap, was escorted out by a police officer for repeated outbursts. Mr. Palladeno, 53, keeps a bottle of yellowish water with a layer of sediment that he said came out of his tap in January. He said local officials had not acted quickly enough to fix the problems. “I don’t feel hopeful,” Mr. Palladeno said. “At one time, I loved this town. I still love it. There’s good people here. But the governing is killing us. I think we need a federal intervention.”

Water
Lake Huron
City council
Flint Michigan
Infrastructure,public works
EPA


Melania and Barron Trump Won’t Immediately Move to White House

Abstract: President-elect Donald J. Trump’s wife, Melania, and their 10-year-old son, Barron, will not immediately move to the White House after Mr. Trump takes office in January, out of concern for uprooting Barron in the middle of the school year, transition officials said on Sunday. Ms. Trump and Barron will remain in New York for at least another six months, the officials said. Speaking to reporters on Sunday at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump said they would join him “very soon — after he’s finished with school.” Mr. Trump said he would move to the White House. Still, with his family remaining at Trump Tower, the likelihood may increase that Mr. Trump will spend part of the week in New York. Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said, “No official statement has been released by the Trump family regarding transition timing, but like any parents, they are concerned about pulling their 10-year-old son out of school in the middle of the year.” Mr. Miller urged that “the same privacy and security considerations given to previous first families with regard to minor children be extended to the Trumps as well.” The New York Times previously reported that Ms. Trump was planning to move to the White House eventually but was concerned about disrupting her son’s routine. The New York Post reported on Sunday that she and Barron would not join her husband immediately after the inauguration. For all of the enthusiasm that the president-elect displayed on the campaign trail, Ms. Trump, a former model, never shared in it. She did not join her husband other than for major events like the Republican National Convention, and she granted few interviews. She is the main caregiver for their son, who attends a private school in Manhattan and is taken there most days by his mother. She is said to be concerned not just about the potential disruption to her son’s life, but also about bringing him closer to the news media spotlight. People who know her have said she plans to revisit the issue at the end of the school year. The situation is similar in ways to the one Michelle Obama faced in 2008 after her husband was elected. Mrs. Obama also did not care for the attention that came with the campaign, and she was said to be considering remaining in Chicago with their two daughters. But she ultimately made the move with their children. Mr. Trump and his aides have not said whether he plans to move to the White House full time. But he has told aides he would like to be in New York when he can. Keeping Trump Tower as a residence for the incoming president’s family will create security and logistical hurdles for the Secret Service and the Police Department. The tower is on Fifth Avenue, a major thoroughfare.

Barron Trump
White House
Trump Tower
Melania Trump
Donald Trump
US Politics