From the 5 Rings, 25 Athletes to Watch

Abstract: LONDON — It has been 100 years since Baron Pierre de Coubertin designed the interlocking Olympic rings. Coubertin, the driving force behind the modern Games, chose five rings to represent the five areas of the world that were behind his strengthening movement. A century later, Coubertin’s handiwork is one of the most recognizable symbols in the world, and those five continental zones remain a handy way to divide up the talent that will be competing in 26 sports at the London Olympics. And so, in keeping with Coubertin’s theme, herewith five from each ring, some world famous, some not quite yet, but all worth following over the next 17 days and nights.  Europe CHRIS HOY (Britain) track cycling; age: 36 Claims to fame: In Beijing, the Real McHoy (that’s his nickname) became the first British athlete to win three gold medals in the same Olympics since 1908, when the swimmer Henry Taylor had his way with the distance freestyle events. Hoy, a Scot, was knighted for his efforts and will carry the flag for the British team in the Opening Ceremony. Talking points: Hoy’s interest in cycling started at age 6 when he watched Steven Spielberg’s film “E.T.,” in which a bicycle takes flight with some extraterrestrial help. Hoy has yet to duplicate that trick, but, with five Olympic medals, he is the most successful Scottish Olympian of all time. Best guess for London: Gold in keirin; silver in the team sprint after being bumped from the individual sprint. KATIE TAYLOR (Ireland) boxing; 26 Claims to fame: Taylor has won four consecutive world titles as a lightweight Talking points: In a different era, Taylor might not have been a boxer, but she would surely have been a great athlete. She has played on Ireland’s national women’s soccer team and has also played Gaelic football at the club level. But with women’s boxing making its Olympic debut in London, she is well placed to become Ireland’s first Olympic gold medalist in any sport since 1996. Best guess for London: Gold, and a record crowd at the Dublin airport when she returns home. YELENA ISINBAYEVA (Russia) pole vault; 30 Claims to fame: Isinbayeva has set 28 world records indoors and outdoors, and set world records when she won the Olympic gold medals in 2004 and 2008. Talking points: A former gymnast, Isinbayeva transformed herself into one of the world’s biggest female sports stars by taking the women’s pole vault to a new technical (and vertical) level. She spends plenty of her competitions wrapped in towels, blocking out distractions as others attempt heights that are usually beneath her. But since Beijing, when the towels have come off, she has usually faltered, unable to clear a height at the 2009 world championships and, after a sabbatical, finishing sixth at the 2011 world championships. Best guess for London: Silver, nerves getting to her. ROGER FEDERER (Switzerland) tennis; 30 Claims to fame: Graceful men’s singles player who is widely considered the greatest of the Open era, which began in 1968. Just won his 17th Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon. Talking points: Despite his record-breaking career, Federer surprisingly still lacks two of tennis’s major prizes: the Davis Cup, which is the game’s premier team event, and the Olympic singles title. Federer does, however, have an Olympic gold medal, which he won in doubles in 2008 with Stanislas Wawrinka. Best guess for London: Gold in singles, no medal in doubles. TEDDY RINER (France) judo; 23 Claims to fame: Riner, a force of nature, started early for a judoka. He won his first world title at 19 and has now won five in the open-weight or heavyweight divisions. Talking points: Born on the French island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, Riner is nicknamed Teddy Bear, which proves that the judo community has a sense of humor. He is more than 2 meters, or 6 feet, 7 inches, tall and weighs 135 kilograms, or 300 pounds, and possesses the agility of a smaller man. But Teddy Bear does not yet possess an Olympic gold medal. Best guess for London: De l’or (gold).  The Americas USAIN BOLT (Jamaica) track; 25 Claims to fame: Larger and faster than life, Bolt was true to his name at the 2008 Olympics. He smashed world records in the 100 and 200 meters and became a global brand with three gold medals and more runway poses than a catwalk model. Talking points: At 25, Bolt should be in his prime, but trouble has come from within his mind, his body and his camp, as training partner Yohan Blake has become a legitimate challenger. With Blake in the next lane, Bolt false-started at the world championships last year and was disqualified from the 100 that Blake eventually won. Blake beat him again in the 100 and 200 at the Jamaican trials this year. If Bolt’s hamstring really, truly is not right, there may be a dearth of poses in London. Best guess for London: Silvers in the 100 and 200 and then a relay gold. MISSY FRANKLIN (United States) swimming; 17 Claims to fame: Won five medals, three of them gold, in her first world long-course championships last year. She is planning a Spitzian schedule of seven events in London, more than any American female swimmer has attempted at an Olympics. Talking points: Although raised in Denver, Franklin could have represented Canada, where both her parents were born. But the tall, extroverted Franklin chose to represent the country with the deepest pool of talent in the world. She has turned down sponsorship contracts and prize money to retain the possibility of a U.S. university scholarship. Best guess for London: Three golds, two silvers. LARISSA FRANÇA/JULIANA FELISBERTA DA SILVA (Brazil) beach volleyball; 30 and 29 Claims to fame: After two silver medals and a bronze medal, França and Da Silva finally won the women’s world title in Rome last year. To make it sweeter, they defeated the Americans Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor, the most successful women’s team in the history of the sport. Talking points: Beach volleyball has a central location on Horse Guard’s Parade near Buckingham Palace and No. 10 Downing Street. Despite rules changes that permit more conservative dress, it still has a bikini-driven reputation. “I’m not going to cut down the trees at No. 10 so I can get a better view, though there is an enormous temptation,” joked British prime minister David Cameron. But França and Silva view their sport as combat. Silva likes to watch war movies for motivation and they both were inspired by tales of gladiators in Rome last year. Best guess for London: Gold. ASHTON EATON (United States) decathlon; 24 Claims to fame: Long considered the decathlon’s next big thing, he now is that big thing, after breaking the world record with 9,039 points at the U.S. Trials. Talking points: Eaton was raised by a single mother in the American track-and-field heartland of Oregon. He tried football, a sport his maternal grandfather played at Michigan State but chose track and field and the University of Oregon. Eaton is the best long jumper and fastest sprinter in decathlon history, and he has improved rapidly in the pole vault and throwing events. He trains with his fiancée, the Canadian heptathlete Brianne Theisen, under the veteran coach Harry Marra. Best guess for London: Gold but no world record. LUCIANA AYMAR (Argentina) field hockey; 34 Claims to fame: The creative, dynamic midfield force behind the success of Las Leonas, Argentina’s women’s field hockey team. The Lionesses have won five Champions Trophies, two World Cups and three Olympic medals. Talking points: Aymar, nicknamed “La Maga,” or the Magician, for her dribbling prowess, was named Argentina’s flag bearer for the Opening Ceremony ahead of more visible global stars like the tennis player Juan Martín del Potro. “It’s a beautiful recognition for my career and what I helped to make happen in our totally amateur sport that went from being almost totally ignored to what it is today,” she told the Argentine newspaper Clarín. What she still lacks is the Olympic gold medal. This, she insists, will be her last chance and the gold-medal game will be played on her 35th birthday. Best guess for London: Silver.  Oceania JAMES MAGNUSSEN (Australia) swimming; 21 Claims to fame: In a country where swimming remains deeply connected to the national identity, Magnussen became a breakout star last year by swimming a sensational leg for Australia in the 400-freestyle relay at the world championships. He was so little known then that people were congratulating his teammate James Roberts for the leg instead. Four days later, Magnussen became the first Australian man to win the 100 meters at the world championships. His time of 47.10 seconds this year is the fastest ever in a textile swim suit, the only type now allowed. Talking points: From Sydney, like the former Australian swimming star Ian Thorpe, Magnussen is nicknamed “The Missile” and takes a direct line in interviews, too. Confidence is not an issue, and he has made it clear that he is aiming at the world record of 46.91 in London. That was set by César Cielo of Brazil when polyurethane suits were legal. When they were banned, the consensus was that the suit-aided sprint records would stand for generations. Then along came Magnussen. Best guess for London: Gold in the 100 and 4-x-100 free, and bronze in the 50 and medley relay. ANNA MEARES (Australia) track cycling; 28 Claims to fame: Meares won gold in the 500-meter time trial at the 2004 Olympics, but her greater achievement was winning a silver medal in the sprint in 2008 after breaking her neck earlier that season in a crash during a race. Talking points: Meares is popular enough in Australia that she won a People’s Choice Award as cyclist of the year in 2011 in the same year her compatriot Cadel Evans won the Tour de France . Meares is less a crowd darling in Britain, where her long-running rivalry with Victoria Pendleton has an edge. “There’s definitely no love lost there,” Pendleton said in a BBC documentary this month. Best guess for London: Gold in the individual sprint and keirin, silver in the team pursuit. VALERIE ADAMS (New Zealand) shot put; 27 Claims to fame: Adams, who stands an imposing 1.93 meters, is the defending Olympic champion and three-time defending world champion. Talking points: Daughter of a Tongan mother and an English father, Adams has had her share of private pain. Her mother died when Adams was in her teens. She watched the 2000 Sydney Games while at her mother’s bedside and decided the Olympics were in her future. Divorced in 2010, she has shifted her training base to Switzerland. Best guess for London: Gold. SALLY PEARSON (Australia) hurdles; 25 Claim to fame: A silver medalist in Beijing as Sally McLellan, she is now the undisputed leader in the 100-meter hurdles after recording a flashy time of 12.28 seconds in winning the world championships last year in South Korea. Talking points: Pearson has also been Australia’s fastest 100-meter sprinter, but her elegant hurdling technique is what makes her a world beater. Next target: Yordanka Donkova’s world record of 12.21 seconds, which has stood since 1988. Best guess for London: Gold. MAHÉ DRYSDALE (New Zealand) rowing; 33; Claims to fame: A five-time world champion in single sculls (one rower, two oars, countless drops of sweat). Talking points: Named for Mahé, an island in the Seychelles, Drysdale was inspired to make a push for the Olympics after watching the New Zealander Rob Waddell win gold in single sculls at the 2000 Games in Sydney. By 2008, Drysdale was the favorite, but a gastrointestinal illness weakened him and he was left vomiting in the water in China after finishing third. “I’d give back all five of my world titles for one Olympic gold,” he told the New Zealand web site stuff.co.nz this year. Best guess for London: Gold.  Asia SUN YANG (China) swimming; 20 Claims to fame: Already the best male Chinese swimmer in history, Sun won the 1,500 meters at last year’s world championships in Shanghai and finished second in the 400. In the 1,500, he broke the Australian star Grant Hackett’s world record, the oldest remaining in the men’s Olympic distances, with a time of 14 minutes, 34.14 seconds. Talking points: No Chinese man has won an Olympic gold medal in swimming. Sun, a towering presence with a high tolerance for brutal training sets, trains regularly with Chinese teammates in Gold Coast, Australia. The reason? Denis Cotterell, the Australian distance freestyle guru who once coached Hackett. They communicate in a mix of English and Mandarin and with the occasional help of a translator. Best guess for London: Two golds. LIU XIANG (China) hurdles; 29 Claims to fame: In Athens in 2004, Liu became the first Chinese man to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field. He then won the 110-meter hurdles at the 2007 world championships and has also held the world-record before Dayron Robles of Cuba lowered it to 12.87 seconds. Talking points: The face of the Beijing Games despite hailing from Shanghai, Liu lost face by withdrawing with an injury in the first round. But he has a chance for redemption in London after breaking 13 seconds again this year. China will be watching (again). Best guess for London: Gold SAORI YOSHIDA (Japan) wrestling; 29 Claims to fame: One of the most dominant athletes in any sport, Yoshida won Olympic gold when women’s wrestling became part of the Games in 2004 and defended that title in 2008. She has won nine consecutive world titles in the 55-kilogram class. Talking points: Yoshida’s father, Eikatsu Yoshida, was a national champion wrestler in Japan, but his daughter, who took up the sport at age 3, is now the most successful wrestler in her family. She has lost just twice since 2001 and never in a global championship. Her most recent defeat was troubling, however. It came in a World Cup meet in May to the Russian teenager Valeria Zholobova. She later explained that she had been diagnosed with anemia. Best guess for London: Gold. LEE CHONG WEI (Malaysia) badminton; 29 Claims to fame: Lee was No.1 in the men’s singles rankings for most of the past four years but remains in the shadow of Lin Dan, the Chinese badminton megastar. Lee took silver behind Lin at the 2008 Olympics, becoming the first Malaysian to win an Olympic medal since 1996. Talking points: Given the Malaysian honorific “Datuk” after his medal in Beijing, which should make him feel right at home in an Olympic host nation where knighthood still exists. This looks like Lee’s last chance to win a major title. The new round-robin format could allow him time to find his form after an ankle injury in May. Best guess for London: Silver. DEEPIKA KUMARI (India) archery; 18 Claim to fame: In a country where modest international sports success at an early age can bring big attention (see tennis player Sania Mirza), Kumari made her move at age 15 in 2009 by winning the youth archery title. She is now the No.1 ranked women’s archer in the recurve category in a sport long dominated by South Korea. Talking points: Kumari was born in Ratu Chatti, a small village in northeastern India. Her father is an auto rickshaw driver and her mother a nurse. Neither was an archer, but Kumrai’s cousin trained at the sport and her talent was eventually spotted by a local academy. “My parents were conservative and were against it,” Kumari told the Times of India. But they have apparently changed their view now. Best guess for London: A bronze medal in the individual event.  Africa CASTER SEMENYA (South Africa) track; 21 Claims to fame: She emerged from obscurity in Berlin in 2009 to win the world 800-meter title convincingly in 1 minute, 55.45 seconds. She was not allowed to compete again for nearly a year while the sport’s governing body, the IAAF, conducted testing in an attempt to determine whether she should be allowed to participate as a female. Details of the eventual agreement have not been made public, but she was cleared and took second at last year’s world championships, albeit in a slower time than in 2009. Talking points: To prepare for London, Semenya hired a new coach: Maria Mutola, long the world’s leading 800-meter runner. Mutola, from neighboring Mozambique, participated in six Olympics, winning gold in 2000. Semenya will carry the flag for South Africa in the opening ceremony. Best guess for London: Silver. OSCAR PISTORIUS (South Africa) track; 25 Claims to fame: A star Paralympian, Pistorius is now a star Olympian after being included in South Africa’s team in the 400 meters and 4-by-400 meter relay pool. Pistorius, a double amputee who runs on carbon-fiber blades, fought a long, draining legal battle with track and field’s governing body before receiving approval to compete against able-bodied athletes from the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He was eliminated in the semifinals of the 400 in last year’s world championships and ran a preliminary leg for the relay team that won a silver medal. Talking points: Plenty. Scientists and athletes continue to weigh in on whether Pistorius’s blades provide him an unfair advantage. Michael Johnson, the American who still holds the 400 world record, believes the uncertainty means he should not be allowed to compete. But Pistorius will be in a lane in the Olympic stadium on Aug. 4. Best guess for London: Bronze in the 4-x-400 relay. VIVIAN CHERUIYOT (Kenya) track; 28 Claims to fame: Took on a new dimension by sweeping the 5,000 and 10,000 at the 2011 world championships in South Korea. Talking points: Cheruiyot, just 1.55 meters tall and generally weighing under 40 kilograms in competition, is nicknamed “Pocket Rocket,” an allusion to her devastating kick. She will need it in full working order to become the first Kenyan woman to complete the Olympic distance double. Best guess for London: Gold in the 5-kilometer, silver in the 10-kilometer. GUOR MARIAL (South Sudan) marathon, 28 Claims to fame: Marial will be the only South Sudanese athlete competing at the Olympics, although he will not be able to compete under the new nation’s flag because it does not yet have a recognized National Olympic Committee. Talking points: After fleeing the civil war in Sudan, Marial lived in Egypt before being granted refugee status in the United States in 2001. He later competed in track and cross-country at Iowa State University, graduating last year. That was the same year he made the Olympic qualifying standard in the marathon. Though he was offered the chance to compete in the Olympics for Sudan, he rejected that compromise and chose to compete under the Olympic flag in London. He told the Chicago Tribune that eight of his 10 brothers and sisters died during the war that eventually led to secession from Sudan last year. Best guess for London: No medal but plenty of interviews. KIRSTY COVENTRY (Zimbabwe) swimming; 28 Claims to fame: A total of seven Olympic medals from 2004 and 2008, including consecutive gold medals in the 200-meter backstroke. Talking points: Coventry, a white swimmer who grew up in Harare, has steered carefully clear of public debate over her country’s racially charged politics. “One day I plan to return to live in Zimbabwe, and I can do much more for the people there in the long term if I keep my position neutral,” she told the Sunday Telegraph in April. Her Olympic season has been disrupted by a coaching change, a dislocated kneecap and pneumonia. Her dominance in the 200 backstroke is gone, but Coventry, who resumed training in the United States, intends to swim a daunting schedule again in London. Best guess for London: No medals.


Hopeful’s Connections Jolt Bitter Virginia Race

Abstract: McLEAN, Va. — Frustrated by government red tape slowing his electric car company, Terry McAuliffe repeatedly sought a meeting at the Department of Homeland Security. He and his lawyers sent a stream of e-mails to a senior official in charge of approving foreign investments that Mr. McAuliffe sought, and he went up the chain of command to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, documents show. When a meeting finally took place in 2011, the official seemed to burn with resentment that Mr. McAuliffe went over his head, recalled Charles Wang, the president of the car company. In his first interview since Mr. McAuliffe began his campaign for Virginia governor, Mr. Wang spoke about his former partner’s use of his political connections. He also discussed the role of a brother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Mr. McAuliffe, 56, a Democratic fund-raiser close to the Clintons, brought to the company. The venture, GreenTech Automotive , has become an explosive issue in the race for governor. Republicans have used it to question Mr. McAuliffe’s ability to create jobs, laying the groundwork for a possible line of attack in 2016 against Mrs. Clinton, who will hold a fund-raiser for Mr. McAuliffe next month. The official Mr. McAuliffe and Mr. Wang met with in 2011, Alejandro Mayorkas, is the focus of an internal Homeland Security Department investigation into whether he gave GreenTech special treatment, which he denies. As their meeting was wrapping up, Ms. Napolitano popped into the room to say hello, Mr. Wang said. Later, Mr. Mayorkas issued a favorable ruling that cleared the way for GreenTech to recruit more foreign investors. Mr. Wang, speaking in his office here, said he turned over records of business plans and fund-raising pitches after receiving a subpoena on July 11 from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has begun an investigation into promises the company made while soliciting overseas investors. Seeking to correct what he called myths about GreenTech, Mr. Wang said that the S.E.C., whose inquiry was revealed last week, would find nothing illegal. Still, there are days when Mr. Wang says he wishes he had never gone into business with a politically connected partner. “I learned a lot of things,” he said. “Politicians or people with political backgrounds are dangerous to business.” Mr. McAuliffe’s GreenTech career — he resigned as chairman last December to focus on his campaign — fits a pattern of tying into the Clinton network. His old friend Bill Clinton attended the ribbon cutting at GreenTech’s Mississippi plant in July 2012. Mr. McAuliffe hired Anthony Rodham, Mrs. Clinton’s younger brother, to oversee investor recruitment. But if GreenTech thought the Clinton connection would help with financing, Mr. Rodham, according to current and former GreenTech executives, did not play a key role. Company lawyers have been known to write his important e-mails. A former senior employee said Mr. Rodham was almost never in the office, a glass tower next to the Tysons Galleria mall here in Northern Virginia. When Mr. Wang took Mr. Rodham on a road trip to attract investors in China, the source of most GreenTech financing, the trip backfired. Image Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat running for Virginia governor, is neck-and-neck with Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a Republican, polls show. Credit T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times It turned out, Mr. Wang said, that the Chinese resent the Clintons for a series of perceived diplomatic offenses, including the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia . The former president’s brother-in-law was toxic, Mr. Wang said he was told. “They said, ‘Don’t bring Tony to China.’ ” GreenTech came into being in 2009 when Mr. Wang, a native of China with a Duke law degree, merged a company he founded with one Mr. McAuliffe had started. Mr. McAuliffe is now struggling in the governor’s race to keep the spotlight on the ethical lapses of his opponent, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II , who accepted $18,000 in gifts from a political donor. Polls show the candidates are neck-and-neck in the increasingly nasty race. Analysts predict the next occupant of the Executive Mansion in Richmond will be whichever candidate is getting less negative press on Election Day, Nov. 5. Questions about Mr. McAuliffe and GreenTech are also being raised by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, to try to derail the nomination of Mr. Mayorkas, the immigration official, to become the top deputy to Ms. Napolitano and in line to succeed her when she steps down in September. Employees of the Homeland Security Department whom Mr. Grassley calls whistle-blowers have leaked to him internal documents the senator suggests show Mr. Mayorkas bending to pressure on behalf of Mr. McAuliffe. In 2011, Mr. Mayorkas overruled two lower officers in his department, Citizenship and Immigration Services, which allowed GreenTech to recruit more Chinese investors. The investors received visas through a program known as EB-5, which issues permanent-resident green cards to foreigners who put up $500,000 for American companies that create jobs. Mr. Grassley, a critic of the program, which Congress created in 1990, has said he is concerned about fraud and national security. Efforts to carefully vet applicants have created backlogs that were the reason for Mr. McAuliffe’s frustration. He reached out to Ms. Napolitano and to a White House liaison to clean energy companies — a meeting that a GreenTech lawyer said was set up through Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “Terry knew somebody in Biden’s office and that’s how the meeting got coordinated,” said the lawyer, Stephen Yale-Loehr. A senior official in the Homeland Security Department said Ms. Napolitano had played no role in setting up the meeting with Mr. Mayorkas, and Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff, Ron Klain, said he did not recall a request for a meeting. Image Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II Credit T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times Mr. Mayorkas’s reversal of his subordinates in favor of GreenTech was issued on Sept. 1, 2011, records show. It cleared the way for more than 50 green cards worth $25 million in Chinese investments. In Congressional testimony last month, Mr. Mayorkas was adamant that he gave no special treatment to Mr. McAuliffe. But documents also show that he responded to nearly a dozen e-mails and calls from GreenTech from 2010 to this year. Mr. Rodham e-mailed him in January: “We really appreciate your assistance in looking into this matter for us to move our cases along.” Mr. Mayorkas forwarded the e-mail to a subordinate, adding, “Importance: High.” Mr. Wang, however, said Mr. Rodham did not actually write the e-mail and that a company lawyer had drafted it. Mr. Rodham, 58, has a history of personal and professional stumbles. A business venture in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia became a diplomatic embarrassment, and his lobbying of President Clinton in 2000 to grant a pardon was investigated by the House. A former executive who worked in the office shared by GreenTech and Gulf Coast, where Mr. Rodham held the title of president, spoke of rarely spotting him. “I don’t recall seeing him on e-mail chains, on conference calls; I don’t recall him having any material involvement whatsoever,” said the former executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships with other GreenTech figures. Attempts to reach Mr. Rodham through GreenTech were unsuccessful. The former executive said GreenTech’s timeline for building an electric car in less than five years, extremely ambitious by auto industry standards, was influenced by Mr. McAuliffe’s desire to add “job creator” to his résumé. “Did Terry want to wait 10 years?” said the executive. “No. Because he wanted to run for governor again.” Mr. McAuliffe, long known for exuberant pronouncements, has been criticized by Mr. Cuccinelli for promising hundreds of jobs and thousands of cars rolling off an assembly line in Tunica, Miss. Mr. Wang said the company employs 80 workers at a temporary plant and plans to build a larger factory. But he would not say how many cars will be built this year. Mr. McAuliffe once predicted “10,000 to 20,000 units in 2011.” A company executive, Marianne McInerney, said there would be “a few hundred sedans.” Mr. Wang said he would not hurry production because “one of our shareholders is going to run for governor.” He said the negative publicity had given investors cold feet and he blamed Mr. McAuliffe’s political enemies for stoking the investigation of Mr. Mayorkas. Mr. Wang said his dream of an environmentally friendly electric car began in 2006, when he taught in Beijing and was appalled by the air pollution. “I would go to law school to teach and come back and all my shirts were black,” he said. Mr. McAuliffe remains the largest individual GreenTech shareholder, with a 25 percent stake. But once he began his race, his name and biography were removed from the Web site. “We took out all the Clinton stuff,” Mr. Wang said. “We’re a small company. We don’t need that much attention.”

Virginia
Terry McAuliffe
Charles Wang
GreenTech Automotive
Anthony Rodham
Gubernatorial races
Kenneth T Cuccinelli II


Ryan Says He Will Stay in the House

Abstract: Representative Paul D. Ryan , a Wisconsin Republican and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, made it clear on Tuesday that he would not run for the Senate seat being vacated by Herb Kohl , a Democrat who was first elected in 1988. Instead, Mr. Ryan said he would remain in the House and lead the Republican fight over the budget and the national debt . “Our nation is quickly approaching a debt crisis that will do serious damage to Wisconsinites and all Americans if it is not properly addressed,” Mr. Ryan said in a statement on his Web site. “I believe continuing to serve as chairman of the House Budget Committee allows me to have a greater impact in averting this debt-fueled economic crisis than if I were to run for the United States Senate .”

Senate
Ryan Paul D Jr
National Debt (US)
United States Politics and Government
Kohl Herbert H


Conn. Rivals for House Aim for Center - Our Towns

Abstract: Bridgeport, Conn. Jim Himes and Dan Debicella look as if they could be sitting next to each other on the 7:52 from Darien. Mr. Himes, 44, a first-term Democratic congressman in a district that had elected Republicans for 40 years, is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and Rhodes scholar. Mr. Debicella, 36, a Republican state senator running against him, has a Harvard M.B.A. and is a former McKinsey and Company management consultant. (Mr. Himes’s Harvard degree is a B.A.) Don’t expect to find too much Tea Party railing against elitists here in the elites’ home turf in Connecticut’s Fourth Congressional District, which is dominated by the Fairfield County suburbs and the faded industrial city of Bridgeport. What you do find is a slice of political Americana that reached a tipping point in 2008 when Mr. Himes defeated the 21-year Republican incumbent, Christopher Shays . When he came to Congress, Mr. Shays was one of nine Republican representatives from the six New England states, once home to Yankee moderates who helped define a Republican species. When he lost, New England didn’t have a single Republican in the House for the first time in a century and a half. So this year presents at least two questions. First, can Republicans repopulate their historic roosting grounds in New England? And if they do, is there any role for a Shays-style moderate in a party moving ever rightward? Whatever the answers, there is still something appealing in a back-to-the-future contest that even now seems to be a frantic race to the middle. “You have to appeal to the rich, the middle class and the poor,” Mr. Debicella said. “Every district should be like this one.” Of course, even here, Democrats and Republicans can seem to occupy different planets. On Tuesday, you could have found Mr. Himes at an exuberant ceremony for 17 graduates of a stimulus-financed program called Green-Up Bridgeport, which teaches “green” construction and hazard-remediation skills to low-income people, including high school dropouts, ex-offenders and the unemployed. And you could have found Mr. Debicella that evening in Norwalk, on the radio show of Peter Schiff. a financial commentator, former Republican Senate candidate and Tea Party favorite. Mr. Debicella stopped just short of endorsing the more dicey political positions Mr. Schiff brought up — doing away with the Department of Education and other entire federal departments and making immediate cuts in Social Security. But he agreed on almost everything else, and walked away with a $2,400 campaign contribution. But rather than this year’s standard menu of red meat for the base, the Fourth is about turnout and finding the sweet spot in the middle, a balancing act perfected by Mr. Shays. For Mr. Himes that means arguing that Mr. Debicella talks about cutting spending but never says how to do it, and has a record on the environment and women’s issues far to the right of Mr. Shays’s. “He can’t wear the coat of Chris Shays, though he tries,” Mr. Himes said. And it means breaking with the party on key issues, as by favoring a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, probably wise politics in Fairfield County. For Mr. Debicella it means tacking to the social middle. He was known as a relatively conservative legislator endorsed for the State Senate by the Family Institute of Connecticut, which opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage. But he has embraced the moderate label in the Congressional race and, in an interview, said: “I’m actually very liberal socially.” And it means, as elsewhere, tying Mr. Himes to the unpopular aspects of President Obama and the Democrats. “Himes talks like a moderate, but then he goes down there and votes 94 percent of the time with Nancy Pelosi,” Mr. Debicella said. He called him “a rubber-stamp Democrat.” Polls show the race as virtually dead even, but Mr. Debicella raised far more money in the last reporting period, and there are plenty of reasons for Mr. Himes to be worried. He won in 2008 as Barack Obama swept the state, mostly because of a startling turnout in Bridgeport, in which Mr. Shays got only 19 percent of the vote. Mr. Obama is expected to campaign in Bridgeport on Saturday, followed by Bill Clinton on Sunday, signs of how hard the Democrats are trying to stimulate turnout in the city. Given the prevailing winds, it seems almost certain that some New England seats will flip back to the Republicans, a reminder of the half-life of seemingly seismic moments. Mr. Himes complains that Mr. Debicella welcomed stimulus funds in his district and now runs against them. “It is deeply deceptive, deeply hypocritical and relies on anger,” Mr. Himes said. But, he added: “I’m not saying it’s ineffective.”

Elections
Connecticut
Debicella Dan
Himes Jim
Shays Christopher H
House of Representatives


China’s Exports Surge While Germany’s Slips

Abstract: HONG KONG — China announced late Wednesday morning that its exports climbed 21 percent in January from a year earlier, while imports surged 85.5 percent. It was the latest sign that world trade is starting to recover from the financial crisis. Imports rose impressively, and in line with economists’ expectations, because imports a year ago were so weak. Many Chinese export factories practically stopped buying raw materials then as their orders dried up, but have been restocking since late spring. China’s exports showed a somewhat smaller increase than expected; the consensus of economists had been that exports increased 28 percent. But the healthy jump in exports last month could still fuel further calls from the United States and the European Union for China to break the peg of its currency, the renminbi , to the dollar and allow the renminbi to appreciate. China’s exports have recovered more rapidly than most countries’ exports in recent months, partly because the low value of the renminbi has kept Chinese goods relatively inexpensive in foreign markets. The rebound in Chinese exports has been so rapid that some factory executives in the Pearl River delta region near Hong Kong have begun complaining of shortages of empty steel containers in which to ship their goods. China’s trade surplus was $14.17 billion last month, compared with $18.43 billion in December and $39.1 billion in January 2009. The statistics are the latest sign of China’s robust economic health even as most of the rest of the world still struggles to recover from the financial crisis. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers announced on Tuesday that auto sales in China surged 143 percent from a year earlier and production leaped 124 percent. Car ownership remains extremely popular in China, personal incomes are rising and consumer confidence is strong. Car dealerships in China have weeks-long waiting lists for many models, and months-long waiting lists for some of the most popular models. China’s snapshot of its January trade data on Wednesday came the morning after Germany released official data confirming that it hads lost its status as the world’s leading exporter. Chinese exports amounted to $1.2 trillion in 2009, while German exports totaled $1.1 trillion, the German Federal Statistical Office said . Germany became the top world exporter in 2003, surpassing the United States. The value of goods exported from United States for the first 11 months of 2009 was $947.5 billion. Last year Germany also sustained the worst annual decline in its trade balance since figures were first gathered in the 1950s. Although German exports still outpaced imports by 136.1 billion euros, or $187.6 billion, in 2009, the surplus in 2008 was 178.3 billion euros. The decline in German exports was most acute inside the European Union, Germany’s largest market. Exports to the bloc fell 19.1 percent in 2009, to 503.5 billion euros. Exports to countries not in the European Union fell 17.1 percent, to 299.7 billion euros. German exports to the United States have been particularly hard hit by the global downturn, with sectors including engineering, forest products, furniture and automobiles reporting sharp declines in exports.

China
Germany
International Trade and World Market
Economic Conditions and Trends


Chile’s New President Enters a Changed Political Landscape

Abstract: SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile ’s powerful earthquake buried people and homes in a broad section of the coastal south, but it may also have given the country’s new right-wing coalition government a chance to entomb the ghosts of the former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The Feb. 27 quake struck during a pivotal transition, just as Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire businessman and former senator, prepared to assume the presidency as the first elected right-wing leader in Chile in 50 years. When he takes office on Thursday, he will be the first president from the right of any kind since General Pinochet stepped down in 1990, returning Chile to democracy after a bloody dictatorship. Mr. Piñera, who campaigned on a platform of job creation and law and order, may now have a freer hand to crack down on delinquency and drug trafficking. He is already billing himself as the “reconstruction president,” embarking on an open-ended endeavor that could give him a lasting edge over the rival center-left Concertación coalition, which was viewed as responding slowly in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Benjamín Leal, 38, a psychology professor, survived the tsunami that barreled through the port city of Talcahuano, leaving close to half of its 250,000 residents homeless. Then he endured the riotous aftermath, as looters and vandals stole what they could while the government of the departing president, Michelle Bachelet, hesitated for 36 hours to call in the military. “We were just shown a shameful example that delinquency was not being attacked well by this previous government,” Mr. Leal said. He stood nervously last week outside his apartment building, where truck-size shipping containers that had been blown onto the street by the tsunami were threatening to topple onto his building. “Here there is extreme poverty, and sometimes it’s a jungle, where the law of the strongest rules,” he said. “We expect Mr. Piñera to change that.” The political climate has changed since Mr. Piñera was elected in January . Then there were pressing questions about his vast business holdings and ties to former military and cabinet officials from the Pinochet era. Now, Mr. Piñera appears to have a fresh opportunity to be seen as the tough, modernizing force that voters were clamoring for when they elected him over former President Eduardo Frei, the candidate for the Concertación coalition, which had held power for two decades. Mr. Piñera’s 22-member cabinet is composed almost exclusively of technocrats from the corporate right. Most are economists from the conservative Catholic University in Santiago who hold master’s degrees and doctorates from prestigious American universities. Mr. Piñera himself has a doctorate in economics from Harvard. “He has the business management experience that we need now,” Claudio Torres, an oil refinery subcontractor, said last week in Talcahuano, while pushing a grocery cart up a hill after filling a cooking pot with potable water from a municipal truck. Marta Lagos, who runs a polling agency here, said that after decades during which the right was not in power, Mr. Piñera “has the chance to modernize the country, to make it something better than it was before.” “If the right is smart and does at least a decent job, it will be around for a while,” she said. For the first time since the Pinochet government, the military was patrolling Chilean streets last week, swiftly restoring order and winning praise from residents for its benevolence and professionalism. Mr. Piñera has said he would like to see the army stay in the earthquake zone beyond the 30-day limit imposed by law. Despite the military’s best efforts to avoid clashes, news broke late Wednesday of a possible deadly episode. Five members of a navy infantry patrol were detained by the navy on suspicion of participation in the death of a civilian in Hualpén early Wednesday morning, during the military curfew, Rear Adm. Roberto Macchiavello told Radio Cooperativa. Most Chileans under 35 years old are too young to remember the brutally repressive role the military played under General Pinochet. Many soldiers on the streets of Concepción last week were toddlers when the dictatorship was coming to an end. But its conduct during the quake’s aftermath underscored that the military is no longer a political actor in Chile. Generals no longer make political statements, offer opinions on public issues or try to intervene in public affairs as they did in the past. “What is important right now is that the army is on the side of our compatriots,” Gen. Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba said Tuesday during a ceremony in which he took over as commander in chief of the army. The quake has been less beneficial to the left, at least for now. Ms. Bachelet originally surged onto the national political scene in 2002 after a famous incident when, as the minister of defense, she jumped atop a tank in the rain during an operation to help flood victims. But after last month’s quake Ms. Bachelet, who herself was imprisoned and tortured during the military dictatorship, hesitated to send in troops to keep peace on the streets. “Her term began with criticism that she didn’t know how to lead and ended with that same criticism,” Ms. Lagos said. “At the end she showed weakness. For her the earthquake will be like Chappaquiddick was for Ted Kennedy.” Mr. Piñera was one of the founders of the right-wing parties created in the latter half of the 1980s that supported the military government but also played an intermediary role between the dictatorship and the opposition — later to become the Concertación — in negotiating the terms of the transition to democracy. One of those terms was that the new civilian government would not abolish the 1978 amnesty law for military officers that covered human rights abuses from 1973 to 1978. Right-wing political leaders and the corporate right — of which Mr. Piñera was a part — were protégés of the Pinochet government and benefited generously from its economic model and the privatization of state industries. While campaigning in November, Mr. Piñera met with about 500 retired military and police officers, at their request. He said he would make sure human rights trials were accelerated and laws would be “correctly applied” — a clear reference to the amnesty law and the statute of limitations on investigations, both of which judges have failed to apply over the past decade. Some analysts said Mr. Piñera’s honeymoon could be short-lived if he appeared to favor private business interests in the reconstruction effort, estimated to cost at least $12 billion. His choices for governors in Santiago and Maule, in the quake zone, were chief executives of engineering and construction companies. His refusal to leave the management of his business affairs to others had already drawn comparisons to the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Since the earthquake, Mr. Piñera, the fourth-richest man in Chile, has said he will delay his promised divestment of his remaining 11 percent stake in Lan Airlines until April 30 because of the “serious consequences of the earthquake and tsunami,” according to a press release from Bancard, one of his investment groups. “All of this has put the issue of Piñera’s business interests and possible conflict of interest on the back burner, but not for long,” said Robert Funk, academic vice director at the Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Chile. “If reconstruction efforts start leaning toward the private sector, many people will start to question what ties members of government have with companies involved in reconstruction projects,” he said. “People will be on alert.”

Chile
Earthquakes
Pinera Sebastian
Politics and Government


Musical Show of Unity Upsets Many in Israel

Abstract: TEL AVIV — Achinoam Nini, a singer and peace activist, has long stirred controversy here. Known abroad by her stage name, Noa, she has recorded with Arab artists, refused to perform in the occupied West Bank, condemned Israeli settlements there and had concerts canceled because of bomb threats from the extreme right. But lately it is the left that has been angry with Ms. Nini. Chosen by Israel to represent the country at the Eurovision Song Contest — this year being held in Moscow in May with an expected television audience of 100 million — Ms. Nini asked if she could bring along her current artistic collaborator, an Israeli Arab singer, Mira Awad. The selection committee liked the idea of having both Arab and Jewish citizens in the contest for the first time. But coinciding as it did with Israel’s Gaza war and the rise of Avigdor Lieberman, the ultranationalist politician who threatens Israeli Arabs with a loyalty oath, the committee’s choice was labeled by many on the left and in the Arab community as an effort to prettify an ugly situation. A petition went around demanding that the duo withdraw, saying they were giving the false impression of coexistence in Israel and trying to shield the nation from the criticism it deserved. It added, “Every brick in the wall of this phony image allows the Israeli Army to throw 10 more tons of explosives and more phosphorus bombs.” Neither Ms. Nini, 39, nor Ms. Awad, 33, has been deterred. But since they consider themselves peace advocates, they are a bit surprised. The antiwar movement, they say, seems to have turned into a Hamas apology force. That, together with the political turn rightward in Israel, means that while the two are being sent to represent this mixed and complex society, they also feel a bit orphaned by it. “I am so worried by the drift to the extremes on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides,” Ms. Awad said as she and Ms. Nini, and their artistic collaborator, the guitarist Gil Dor, took a break from rehearsal to discuss the controversy. “That is not my vision of a Palestinian state, an extreme religious state where people they don’t like are shot in the legs. And then the Israeli election went to the right.” The three are preparing four songs, from which one will be selected by a panel and an audience voting at a television performance in early March. All four songs are written in equal parts Hebrew, Arabic and English, and all seek to recognize the difficulty inherent in coexistence, rather than celebrate some mythic Kumbaya. “And when I cry, I cry for both of us, my pain has no name,” go the lyrics of one of their offerings. “Where can we go from here? Sister, it’s been one long night,” goes a second one. Ms. Awad is one of one and a half million Arab citizens of Israel’s more than seven million inhabitants. There are four million more Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza who have no state of their own. The two women have been collaborating for nearly eight years. At the height of the second intifada six years ago, they did a version of the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out” that became an international hit. Ms. Awad, the daughter of an Arab physician from the Galilee and a Bulgarian mother, lives in Tel Aviv. She is best known in Israel as an actress who appears in a popular television comedy, and has been starring lately in a searing play at the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it is Ms. Nini who has a true international reputation. She has sold well over a million albums and has a strong following in Europe, especially in Spain, Italy and France, where she gives frequent concerts. She has a crystalline voice joined to a Yemenite Jewish background that give her music a rich ethnic quality. Having spent her childhood in New York City, she speaks flawless English and combines a number of instruments and rhythms to produce music across a broad range of styles. “I carry a cross-cultural flag, breaking barriers between religions,” she said. “And I am also involved in other things — I am a U.N. good-will ambassador. So I feel like a kind of fusion, like Barack Obama.” Ms. Nini, while admired in Israel, is more popular abroad. Her music, unlike that of most pop stars, is less a reflection of her own country’s sensibility than an effort to express the universal — one reason the panel may have thought she could bring home Israel’s fourth Eurovision victory in three decades. Israel’s two leading television satire shows have portrayed her as more interested in Italy than Israel, and as exploiting Ms. Awad for her own needs. Ms. Awad, with her mixed parentage, is also something of a stranger in her own land, an Arab Christian singer and actress in a country dominated by Jews and Muslims. That partly explains their bond, the two women say, and it may also explain the ambivalence with which their selection has been met. But recent politics have also clearly taken their toll. During the war, Ms. Nini posted a letter on her blog condemning the Islamists of Hamas and calling on her “Palestinian brothers” to join together to eliminate what she called the ugly monster of Hamas. It was widely interpreted as an endorsement of Israel’s war in Gaza, although she said it was not. “What I wrote was based on what my Palestinian friends in Gaza told me, that they are threatened by Hamas,” she said. Both singers and their collaborator, Mr. Dor, say that they spend many hours arguing over the meaning of a Jewish democratic nation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how to do their part to make things better. “Everyone is responsible to put in his or her two cents for peace and coexistence,” Ms. Nini said. “Our two cents is music. We have a real friendship. Of course we argue. But the beauty is that we offer an example of what coexistence could look like.”

Israel
Eurovision Song Contest
Jews
Palestinians
Awad Mira
Nini Achinoam


Ukraine Rebels Conscript ‘Punishment Brigades’ for Support Work

Abstract: DONETSK, Ukraine — With Ukraine’s military tightening a cordon around this city controlled by separatist rebels, Oleg Grishin found himself enlisted on Monday in one of their schemes for its defense: the forced labor of drunks, drug addicts and curfew violators to dig trenches and build barriers. Sweat streaked his face. Yet with a militant commander standing nearby, he had no complaints about the stooped toiling in the sun. “What can I say, I was drunk, I was guilty, they are right,” he mumbled. Donetsk, the rebel capital, is now isolated by the siege, which the Ukrainian Army managed to achieve over the weekend. Government troops appear to have closed a gap in the encirclement with fighting over the past week near the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 , which was shot down last month, despite appeals by international monitors to refrain from combat near the wreckage and still uncollected remains of some victims. Encircled, Donetsk is now the main redoubt of the pro-Russian insurgency. It is an apprehensive place. Glum-looking detainees, seized by the rebel authorities for minor infractions, dig ditches, fill sandbags, clear brush and peel potatoes. More serious violations have been met with summary executions, according to some rebel leaders. Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer and now the separatist defense minister who uses the name Igor Strelkov , or Igor the Shooter, has declared a state of siege in the city and said he is now the “military commandant” of Donetsk. He promulgated an order allowing militants to commandeer private vehicles, medical supplies and whatever else is needed for the war effort, further putting residents on edge. The separatists and Russia accuse the Ukrainian government of attacking civilian areas. The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday questioned why President Petro O. Poroshenko had stated publicly that he was committed to a peaceful solution, yet seemed intent on a military offensive. The current military operations contradict his statements, said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, calling that unacceptable. “This is frustrating, we don’t know which Poroshenko we can trust — the first one or the second,” she said. Ms. Zakharova said military exercises announced by Russia near the Ukrainian border were within Russia’s rights. “On our territory, we can do what we want,” Ms. Zakharova said. “Our troops are not crossing the border.” Russian news agencies said Monday that more than 100 aircraft would participate in military maneuvers in the western and southern areas of the country, which includes the regions near Ukraine. In Donetsk, the detainee crews are called “punishment brigades.” Along with the artillery craters in outlying districts, these detainees form part of the new cityscape. Often, the men are forced to work stripped to their underwear. Mr. Grishin, 25, who was detained for drunkenness, worked at the Zemlyankin checkpoint in Donetsk. “God forbid the Ukrainians attack now,” he said while clearing brush from a roadside. The rebel commander, known by his nickname, Lukich, said he treated the detainees humanely. The practice achieves two objectives, he said, imposing the social rules infused with Russian Orthodox Christian values of the new state, while helping the city’s defenses. Drug addicts are summarily sentenced to trench digging. “If they cause some harm to society, we keep them here for 15 days,” he said. “They live with us, they work, and they realize their mistakes.” Image Two detainees, who were accused by looting and drug usage, were guarded in a bunker in Makeevka by a rebel. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times Maksim Bondar, 22, was forced to dig after his estranged girlfriend complained to militants that he had threatened her in a custody dispute over their daughter. “She complained to the militia, and I ended up here,” he said. “The commander said, ‘You need to marry her if you want rights to your child,’ and so I dug trenches.” Bogdan Forsenko, 25, said he was riding his bicycle after curfew carrying a jerrycan of gasoline for his car, and was picked up for appearing suspicious. He sweated in the same fetid clothes he wore that night last week, and said he did not know if his relatives knew his whereabouts. “There’s a war, and I had gasoline,” he said, also interviewed with a militant gunman nearby. “What can I say, they didn’t like it.” A deputy prime minister in the insurgency, Vladimir Antyufeyev, conceded in an interview that the summary justice of the militants risked alienating the population and that he intended to separate their police and military functions, and set up courts and prosecutors. For now, no court is needed, the commander known as Lukich said, because many detainees confess. More serious offenders go to a secret-police building in Donetsk that is a headquarters for Mr. Strelkov. Outside that building is a scene of despair. Dozens of women seeking sons or husbands mill about behind a sandbag barrier for a grim nightly ritual. The warden of the makeshift prison emerges to read out family names of the detained, usually numbering about 50. “Everybody says we should have gotten out,” said Olya Leonova, who was waiting for news of her brother, Pyotr Dyomin, who is 51, has two children and has not been answering his phone. He could be in a punishment brigade, she said. “I’m hoping that’s where he is now — in his underwear, digging. At least then I would know where he is.” Svetlana Rozova, a psychologist who works with refugees in Ukrainian territory for an aid group, Dnepr Help, described in a telephone interview treating former detainees. Some are held in basements for weeks. Some patients had fingernails pulled out or were beaten severely enough to break ribs. “They all arrive in a state of shock,” she said. “They don’t understand what has happened to them, they don’t accept it. They are crying. They are fearful, aggressive. This is not a small matter. People’s psychological health is broken by these experiences.”

Ukraine
Military
Russia
Donetsk Ukraine
Igor Strelkov,Igor Girkin


Ingredients of Nerve Agent Still in Syria, Official Says

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — The last of the chemicals to be shipped out of Syria contain the ingredients needed to make sarin, the lethal nerve agent used in the attack on a Damascus suburb last August, the United Nations official who is coordinating the arsenal’s destruction said on Thursday. The material is stored in an airfield controlled by President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces not far from Damascus, and was transferred there from another site about 19 miles away that has since been overrun by insurgents in the civil war, the United Nations official, Sigrid Kaag, said in an interview. “It is safe and secure,” she said, adding that the approximately 100 tons of chemical substances at the site go into making the nerve agent. “You’ve got the main ingredients, the precursors to produce sarin.” Ms. Kaag said the last batch of the arsenal, which represents about 8 percent of the total declared by the Syrians, cannot be safely extracted yet because the roads to the location have not been secured by government forces. “There is a lot of fighting taking place,” she said. “It’s not a situation where you would want a chemical weapons convoy passing through.” The details offered by Ms. Kaag are the most specific yet disclosed about what remains of Mr. Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal, which his government is obliged to eradicate by June 30 under a Security Council resolution. It has become increasingly unclear whether that deadline can be met, and some of Mr. Assad’s most vocal critics, led by the United States, have accused him of procrastinating. When she addressed the Security Council earlier in the day, her eighth private briefing about the destruction of chemical weapons since the operation began in October, she said council diplomats echoed that the security concerns were legitimate, based on their own assessments. Ms. Kaag said she did not know which armed group or groups controlled areas near the remaining site. The Syrian authorities have told her that military action is underway, she said, and if the route can be secured quickly enough, the government will be able to extricate the chemicals and come close to meeting the June 30 deadline. Once the route is safe, “Syrians can very quickly deal with the removal,” she said. “At least there’s a legitimate expectation that the approximate destruction will have taken place around the deadline, which was always ambitious.” In remarks to reporters after her briefing to the Security Council, Ms. Kaag said that experts would need “less than a working week” to remove the material once they gained access to the site. In all, she said, there are 16 containers. “We do need that final push to achieve that 100 percent,” Ms. Kaag told reporters. Under the plan for eradicating the weapons, the chemical materials amassed by Mr. Assad’s government are to be destroyed abroad, loaded onto ships volunteered by Norway and Denmark at the port of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. “The ships are waiting,” Ms. Kaag said. She said that she had made a strong plea to Security Council members with influence over Syria — apparently a reference to Russia — to put pressure the Syrian government so that the removal of the material “can be completed in a timely manner.” The most dangerous chemicals are to be rendered harmless by a specially outfitted American naval vessel, the Cape Ray , which has been waiting for weeks to start. The rest will be incinerated in the United States and Europe, under the plan devised by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the group based at The Hague that monitors compliance with the global treaty banning chemical arms. Mr. Assad agreed to destroy the weapons and join the chemical weapons treaty that bans them after an international outcry over the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in the Damascus area. A United Nations inquiry concluded that sarin had been deployed in that attack, for which Mr. Assad’s government and insurgent groups each blamed the other. The agreement, negotiated by Russia and the United States, averted a threatened missile strike on Syrian military targets by the United States, which asserted that Mr. Assad’s forces had been responsible for the sarin use.


Tiny Outsider Seems to Help Mosses Reproduce

Abstract: Flowering plants often get outside help in reproducing — pollination by bees, for example. But a new study suggests that they may not have been the first to recruit animals to fertilize them. It turns out that mosses, which evolved hundreds of millions of years earlier, appear to emit smelly compounds to attract tiny arthropods that carry sperm from plant to plant. Until recently, it was thought that moss sperm swam overland through thin films of water to reach female moss, rarely making it farther than about four inches. A study in the current issue of the journal Nature , however, shows that springtails — blind arthropods that crawl and jump across the terrestrial landscape — improve fertilization rates in moss colonies and favor hanging out near female moss scents. An earlier study had established that arthropods could carry sperm between mosses, but it was unclear how important they were and why they were attracted to fertile moss. “I think it puts out a whole new hypothesis,” said the study’s lead author, Sarah Eppley, a biologist at Portland State University. If it turns out that using arthropods for fertilization is widespread among moss, it may indicate that plant-and-pollinator-like relationships evolved before flowering plants. Dr. Eppley is struck by the fact that, distracted by the interactions between flowers and insects, scientists overlooked this parallel relationship between mosses and arthropods. “We as humans just walked over it for years,” she said. KATE YANDELL

Insects
Science and Technology
Flowers and Plants
Reproduction (Biological)
Nature (Journal)


Gas Resumes Flowing From Eni’s Libya Plant

Abstract: LONDON — The Italian energy giant Eni began Monday to restart operations of the trans-Mediterranean natural gas pipeline it closed Saturday after fighting between two Libyan militias threatened its gas complex west of Tripoli. Eni said it might take several more days to reopen the pipeline, which is the single transmission conduit for Libyan natural gas to Italy and, from there, elsewhere in Europe. While company executives said the supply impact would be minimal, given Eni’s stored reserves in Italy and other sources of gas, analysts said the turmoil had amplified concerns about the stability of energy production and distribution in North Africa. Energy markets and investors are still nervous after the murderous assault in January by militants on an Algerian gas field run by BP and Statoil of Norway. “The episode is yet another example of energy firms’ operations in North Africa being disrupted by security problems,” IHS, an energy research firm in London, said Monday in a report. “The collective impact of these disturbances is to further discourage foreign direct investment into the energy sector.” On Saturday, as fighting between rival Libyan militias became too close for comfort, Eni, the biggest foreign oil and gas player in Libya, shut down its giant Mellitah gas complex on the coast west of Tripoli and evacuated most of its personnel. The Mellitah complex, which Eni built for an estimated €9 billion, or $12 billion, and opened in 2004, gathers and processes gas from fields in western Libya and then sends it through the Greenstream pipeline, which runs under the Mediterranean and comes ashore in Gela, Sicily. The gas business is a joint venture with the Libyan national oil company. Although Greenstream provides about 12 percent of Italy’s gas, Italian consumers are unlikely to notice the temporary shutdown, said Kash Burchett, an analyst at IHS. The stagnant Italian economy has sharply reduced demand for gas; Italy has about one month’s worth of gas in storage; and several other pipelines deliver the fuel from other sources, including Algeria and elsewhere in Europe. But the shutdown could further set back the troubled economies of Libya and its North Africa neighbors, while dimming prospects for new investment in the region by international oil and gas companies. Since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, Libya has been in a state of chaos as rival militias vie for turf and treasure. But until now the armed groups have left Libya’s oil and gas fields alone — or in Eni’s case, have even carefully protected the operations, which keep the country’s lights on and the money flowing in. “The energy installations have been left out of the instability because there is wide recognition about as to how important they are to the economy,” said Richard Cochrane, a security analyst at IHS. Why the militias crossed a line this past weekend is not entirely clear. One theory, not denied by Eni, is that the two militias were fighting for the privilege of guarding Libya’s most important oil and gas installation, as well as the economic and political benefits that accrue to whoever has that status. “Libya is different from Algeria; there is not yet a capacity on the part of the central government to provide security,” said David L. Goldwyn, a former senior energy envoy for the U.S. State Department. As a result, he said, “companies are obliged to secure local security.” The inability of the Tripoli government to provide security means “the investment climate in Libya has been challenged for some time,” said Mr. Goldwyn, who now heads Global Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington. “You are seeing companies protect existing investments in Libya, but being much more cautious in respect to large-scale” new commitments, he said. Foreign energy companies with existing operations in North Africa might be hard to uproot. But countries including Libya, Algeria and even Egypt, whose economies depend on the oil and gas industry, are going to have trouble attracting new investments. In a research note published Monday, Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer, argues that Houston-based Apache, which has built a big, highly profitable oil business in Egypt, would be better off decamping from the land along the Nile where it now obtains 28 percent of its petroleum. “We are more pessimistic about Egypt's future than in any time in the last two years,” Mr. Gheit wrote. We think Apache “would be better off exiting Egypt by selling its operations and using the proceeds to buy back shares, reduce debt and boost investments elsewhere.” Apache declined to comment.


With Hit No. 2,722, Jeter Passes Gehrig as Yankees Hits Leader

Abstract: Derek Jeter grew up on Yankees history, by birth and by providence. He was nurtured as a fan by his grandmother, who lived in New Jersey , and drafted into the tradition as a first-round pick in 1992. Only recently, though, did Jeter learn that nobody had gathered 3,000 hits for his team. Teammates stumbled on the fact while paging through a record book, and Jeter said they wondered who had the most. The record was clearly in Jeter’s sights, but he never resolved to target Lou Gehrig , never made it a goal. “I never imagined, I never dreamt of this,” Jeter said after midnight Saturday morning. “Your dream was always to play for the team. Once you get here, you just want to stay and try to be consistent. So this really wasn’t a part of it. The whole experience has been overwhelming.” On a drizzly Friday night at Yankee Stadium , Jeter’s graceful grind through 15 seasons vaulted him past Gehrig, his storied predecessor as team captain. Gehrig held the record for more than 70 years, until Jeter’s 2,722nd hit skipped past Gehrig’s old position, first base, for a single. Jeter connected in the third inning of a 10-4 loss to the Baltimore Orioles that was delayed at the start and again in the seventh inning. Jeter lashed a 2-0 fastball from Chris Tillman on a hop past the diving first baseman, Luke Scott. The hard-hit ball to opposite field is Jeter’s signature hit, and he spread his arms wide and clapped after rounding first base. The players on the Yankees’ bench poured from the dugout to greet him, taking turns giving hugs. Alex Rodriguez was the first to arrive, before Robinson Cano, Mark Teixeira , Joba Chamberlain and the rest. “I think you saw the closeness of the group,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “Even the guys that have only been here for a year, they understood.” The fans chanted Jeter’s first and last names, and Jeter waved his helmet to all corners of the new Yankee Stadium. As he did on Wednesday, when he tied the record, Jeter pointed to the box with his parents, sister and friends on the suite level above the Yankees’ on-deck circle. Jeter’s girlfriend, the actress Minka Kelly, stood beside his mother, Dorothy, and both smiled widely. The crowd continued to chant for Jeter, and Nick Swisher, the next batter, stepped out of the box to make the moment last. As the cheers cascaded over Jeter, he waved his helmet again and then clapped a few times in Swisher’s direction: back to work. “The fans,” Jeter said, when asked what he would remember most, years from now. “It wasn’t ideal conditions tonight, and for the fans to stick around, it really means a lot. Since day one, they’ve always been very supportive. They’re just as much a part of this as I am.” The hit arrived in Jeter’s second at-bat against Tillman, a heralded Orioles rookie who challenged him with a 94 mile-an-hour pitch. Tillman had won their duel in the first inning, striking Jeter out with a curveball after getting ahead with fastballs. It was raining then, a persistent, heavy mist swirling around the stadium, with standing pools of water on the warning track. The grounds crew hustled to rake the mound after the top of the first, and a double splashed in a mud puddle down the right field line in the second. In the third inning, though, the rain tapered for a bit. In any case, the crowd of 46,771 did not seem to care. The fans stood for Jeter then, snapping photos of each pitch, and an inning later, commemorative T-shirts and pennants were on sale at stadium gift shops. Principal owner George Steinbrenner was not there — his health has declined, and he has not been to a home game since opening day. But his publicist quickly issued a statement on his behalf. “For those who say today’s game can’t produce legendary players, I have two words: Derek Jeter,” Steinbrenner’s statement said. “As historic and significant as becoming the Yankees’ all-time hit leader is, the accomplishment is all the more impressive because Derek is one of the finest young men playing the game today.” Jeter said Steinbrenner called him during the second rain delay, and that Steinbrenner had nice things to say. Jeter is a link to the owner’s more visible, vigorous days, and he seemed touched that Steinbrenner reached out. “You miss seeing him around here as much as you used to,” Jeter said. “But it was great to hear his voice.” Steinbrenner’s statement went on to praise the character and ability of Jeter, comparing him favorably to Gehrig, who died of ALS in 1941, a little more than two years after his final hit. Gehrig was far more prolific as a run producer, but Jeter matched his hit total Wednesday in just 64 fewer plate appearances. He broke the record with the Yankees comfortably ahead in the division, with a clear path to the playoffs and few pressing team issues. The last few days, then, have played out as a sort of Derek Jeter Appreciation Week for fans and teammates. During the second delay, of 67 minutes, Girardi sent the regulars home before the game concluded. They appeared in the interview room before leaving, Andy Pettitte , Rodriguez and Jorge Posada sitting at a podium, swapping stories about their teammate and friend. Pettitte and Posada were second-year professionals in 1992, when Jeter joined their Class A team in Greensboro, N.C., late in the season. Jeter made nine errors in 11 games and hit .243. He was skinny then, and raw as a fielder. But something stood out. “We were so young and started this run off at such a young age, and you knew that he was special,” Pettitte said. “You knew that he carried himself a little bit different than a lot of other guys, a lot of class, a lot of charisma, a lot of confidence for as young as he was.” Rodriguez and Jeter have had a complicated relationship, like Gehrig and Babe Ruth in their day. But Rodriguez was gracious, calling Jeter the ultimate winner who continues to improve. Jeter is hitting .331. “I don’t think he’s ever played any better than he’s playing right now, which is awesome,” Rodriguez said. “He’s running really well, he’s playing great defense, he’s hitting, he’s hitting for power. Where he takes it from now, we’re all having fun watching him.” The possibilities were underscored by this oddity: Jeter reached his milestone exactly 24 years after Pete Rose passed Ty Cobb as baseball’s career hits leader. Jeter, 35, has more hits than Rose did at the same age. Rose played until age 45 and finished with 4,256 hits. That chase, if Jeter pursues it, is far off. For now, Jeter said, passing Gehrig is his finest individual accomplishment. “I can’t think of anything else that stands out more so, and I say that because of the person that I was able to pass,” Jeter said. “Lou Gehrig, being a former captain and what he stood for, you mention his name to any baseball fan around the country, it means a lot.” Jeter’s name holds a similar meaning in the modern game, which he is in no hurry to leave. Jeter is signed through next season and said this week he would keep playing as long as he has fun. The game is exhilarating now for Jeter, with the Yankees 40 games over .500 and possessing, perhaps, their best chance for a title in years. He has helped carry them with a storm of hits, 188 this season, part of an annual barrage that has set a new standard for the most famous team in sports.


Jimmy Dickens, an Outsize Country Singer, Dies at 94

Abstract: NASHVILLE — Little Jimmy Dickens, the diminutive but big-voiced country singer best known for his novelty recordings and his self-deprecating sense of humor, died on Friday at a hospital here. He was 94. Michael Manning, a staff member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, confirmed the death. For decades a fan favorite at the Grand Ole Opry — and still active there into his 90s — Mr. Dickens stood 4-foot-11 and liked to joke about his stature, often referring to himself as “Mighty Mouse in Pajamas.” The label that stuck with him, though, was Tater, a nod to his 1949 hit “Take an Old Cold ‘Tater (and Wait).” Hank Williams, his fellow Opry star at the time, supplied him with the nickname. As good a ballad singer as he was a belter, Mr. Dickens had seven singles in the country Top 10 — and a total of 13 in the Top 40 — during his more than two decades on the country charts. Bearing titles like “Hillbilly Fever,” “Out Behind the Barn” and “A-Sleeping at the Foot of the Bed,” many of his records were unabashed paeans to rural life that evoked his years growing up in Appalachia. In his 1949 hit “Country Boy,” he sang: I’m a plain ol’ country boy A cornbread-lovin’ country boy I’ll be lookin’ over that ol’ gray mule When the sun comes up on Monday. Most of the numbers in Mr. Dickens’s repertoire were madcap and amusing, perhaps most notably “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose,” which spent two weeks at No. 1 on the country charts in 1965 and crossed over to the pop Top 20, securing Mr. Dickens guest spots on “The Tonight Show” and Dick Clark’s “Where the Action Is.” But one of his final hits, an over-the-top recitation released in 1970 called “(You’ve Been Quite a Doll) Raggedy Ann,” was more maudlin than funny. Image “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose” spent two weeks at No. 1 on the country charts. Credit J.P. Roth Collection James Cecil Dickens was born on Dec. 19, 1920, into a large coal-mining family in Bolt, W.Va. He began singing on the radio near Bolt in the late 1930s, initially billing himself as either Jimmy the Kid or the Singing Midget. Before long he was hosting shows in larger markets like Indianapolis and Cincinnati, where his talents came to the attention of the country star Roy Acuff in 1947. Mr. Acuff introduced Mr. Dickens to the management of the Grand Ole Opry, which Mr. Dickens joined in 1948. He also brought him to the attention of the talent scout Art Satherley, who signed him to the country division of Columbia Records. After moving to Nashville, Mr. Dickens hired members of the Western swing artist Paul Howard’s band and named them the Country Boys. Led by the twin lead guitars of Grady Martin and Jabbo Arrington, Mr. Dickens’s group pioneered a raucous, knee-slapping style that was a precursor to rockabilly. He is survived by his wife, Mona, whom he married in 1971; two daughters, Pam and Lisa; and a number of grandchildren. Mr. Dickens was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1983. Radio stations were no longer playing his records by then, but he remained a popular performer on the Opry, sporting rhinestone-studded outfits rivaling those of the flamboyant old-timer Porter Wagoner while rubbing shoulders with 21st-century stars like Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley. Mr. Dickens also continued to perform his early hits on the show, including his statement of purpose, “I’m Little but I’m Loud,” with its larger-than-life chorus: “I’m puny, short and little — but I’m loud!”

Jimmy Dickens
Country music
Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Obituary
Grand Ole Opry House


Lots of Time Left at the Stadium for Nostalgia

Abstract: Brace yourself for a season of nostalgia — lush, treacly nostalgia. Everything that happens at Yankee Stadium, or Shea Stadium, for that matter, will be the last of this or the last of that. Monday’s rainout at Yankee Stadium, for example, figures to be the last rainout of the actual opening day at the intermediate Yankee Stadium (1976-2008), not to be confused with the original Yankee Stadium (1923-1973). However, the rainout will probably not be the last postponement at the current big ball yard in the Bronx. It’s a long season. All this looming nostalgia is tied in to the projected moves of the Yankees and the Mets to expensive — and smaller; why smaller? — ballparks essentially a loud foul from the existing ones. “It’s 100 yards away — not too far,” Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ captain and resident realist, said before the Yankees’ opener was postponed until Tuesday evening, turning what would have been an event into just another miserable night game in early April. The real question is how much people should buy into the remembrance of things past. I can see the public getting wrought up about the disappearance of parkland in the Bronx under the watch of Mayor Bloomberg, for the greater good of the Steinbrenners. I can see lamenting the possible disappearance of automobile chop shops in Flushing. But the teams are not actually going anywhere. On television it’s pretty much going to look the same.  In his role as captain, Jeter tried to talk about the historic move slightly northward. Jeter showed even better verbal change of direction than he does at shortstop, saying: “Everybody’s looking forward to the new Yankee Stadium. It’s going to be a special one.” Then he said, “I don’t think it’s hit me yet.” And he added about the current Yankee Stadium, “This is definitely a special place.” Well, there are lots of special places, and even they come and go. England has built a new national soccer stadium, still called Wembley, featuring creature comforts unknown to soccer fans who for generations stood cheek to jowl in the dense terraces close enough to crush each other to death and sang a cappella. Those were the good old days. Now they probably serve sushi rather than bangers and mash in the luxury boxes in Wembley. Talk about uprooting a tradition: Ry Cooder’s lovely theme CD from 2005, “Chavez Ravine,” deals with the transformation of a Los Angeles hillside from a quirky neighborhood into a ballpark, circa 1962, to accommodate a baseball team that violently abandoned the borough of Brooklyn. Cooder’s CD has everything from sadness for vanished nights to political anger, yet it ends with Cooder declaring that “2nd base, right over there/ I see grandma in her rocking chair,” and adding, more or less kindly, “Baseball been very good to me.” I listened to Cooder’s songs last Saturday when the constant Red Sox were playing the transplanted Dodgers in the Coliseum, where the Dodgers had played from 1958 through 1961 while the last of Cooder’s subjects were being evicted from the ravine. As a baseball man, I admit to feeling conflicted about the new stadium that opened in Washington on Sunday night. The schools and the hospitals are a nightmare for the disenfranchised and poor of the District of Columbia, most of whom probably cannot afford major league tickets, but somehow I found myself checking out the angles and fence heights and views of the new place, glad Washington has a team. The game ended with Ryan Zimmerman’s shot clearing the fence in the bottom of the ninth. Maybe Zimmerman will become the Derek Jeter of D.C. He’s only 23. Twelve years from now, I bet he’ll remember that shot.  Derek being Derek, he professed not to remember what he did on his first opening game in 1996, except that it snowed a bit. Courtesy of that invaluable Web site retrosheet.org , I discovered that Jeter batted ninth that day, behind his pal Gerald Williams, going 1 for 3, scoring a run, with a walk and a strikeout in a 7-3 victory over the Royals. The Yankees got a home run that day from their No. 2 hitter, a catcher named Girardi, and the starting pitcher was Andy Pettitte, currently on the disabled list but due to pitch Saturday. Batting sixth for the Royals that day was none other than Johnny Damon, now the Yankees’ left fielder. Unless he hydroplanes in a puddle or something, Jeter will make his 12th opening day start, passing Phil Rizzuto among Yankees shortstops. He missed opening day in 2001 because of injuries. Jeter added that he has visited the new Stadium, saying the builders are doing “a great job” and that the new place “has the look of the old Stadium.” But maintaining the historically high level of the Yankees is “up to us as players,” Jeter added. “It still seems like it’s far off,” he concluded. Quite right. How about a moratorium on nostalgia until late September?

Stadiums and Arenas
New York Yankees
Yankee Stadium (NYC)
New York Mets
Shea Stadium (NYC)


A Closer Look at Some Disputed Claims

Abstract: At the second presidential debate , everyone played fact-checker. President Obama said, “Not true, Governor Romney” to dismiss his rival’s charge that oil and gas production permits and licenses on federal lands and waters had been cut in half over the past four years. (They have declined, but not by half). Mitt Romney said at one point, “Let me go back and speak to the points that the president made, and let’s get them correct” after Mr. Obama falsely charged that he had called the strict Arizona immigration law “a model for the nation.” (Mr. Romney has spoken favorably of the state’s immigration law, but the “model” Arizona law he talked about was the mandatory use of a federal electronic verification system to check the immigration status of new hires.) And the moderator, Candy Crowley of CNN, got into the act, too, when Mr. Romney challenged Mr. Obama’s assertion that he had gone into the Rose Garden the day after the attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and called it an act of terror. “You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror?” Mr. Romney said disbelievingly. He later added: “I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.” “Get the transcript,” Mr. Obama replied. Ms. Crowley interjected: “He did in fact, sir.” To which the president added, “Can you say that a little louder, Candy?” The Obama administration has been criticized for shifting assessments of what really happened in Benghazi, which continued to change over the course of two weeks. But the day after the attacks, Mr. Obama did say , “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.” There were plenty of questionable assertions at the second presidential debate. Here is a look at some of them: Energy Policies Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney carried out an extended dispute over energy policy that wandered into a thicket of half-truths, started by a question about gasoline prices that was never fully addressed. Mr. Romney, describing Mr. Obama as hostile to traditional energy sources, repeated his assertion that all of the increase in domestic oil and gas production in the past three years had come on private, not public, lands and that the Obama administration had cut the number of oil and gas drilling permits on public lands in half. Neither assertion is quite true. Oil and gas production on public lands has fluctuated during the Obama administration, but it has increased modestly (about 13 percent for oil and about 6 percent for gas) in the first three years of the Obama presidency, compared with the last three years of the administration of President George W. Bush, according to an analysis from the Energy Information Administration. The Interior Department produced a report this year showing that drilling permits received and issued by the agency had indeed declined from the last years of the Bush administration to the first years of the Obama administration — but not by half. (In the 2007 fiscal year, the government issued 8,964 permits to drill on public lands; in 2008 the figure was 7,846. The numbers for 2009 and 2010 were 5,306 and 5,237.) Mr. Obama said that 7,000 drilling permits had been granted but were not being used by oil companies, an accurate figure, according to the Interior Department. Mr. Obama stated that renewable energy production had doubled during his presidency, which is true, and that oil imports were at their lowest level in 16 years, also accurate. He also said that the boom in natural gas production could produce 600,000 new jobs, a highly optimistic estimate, but he qualified it with the word “potentially.” But Mr. Obama mischaracterized Mr. Romney’s energy plan, saying it was written by oil companies and favored only traditional sources of energy: oil, gas and coal. But Mr. Romney’s energy plan does include a place for renewables, although he would sharply cut back on federal subsidies for wind, solar and other alternative energy sources. JOHN M. BRODER Tariff on Chinese Tires Mr. Obama said, “We had to make sure that China was not flooding our market with cheap tires,” and therefore took action to save 1,000 jobs. It is true that in 2009, the Obama administration imposed a duty on Chinese tires, but last month the administration let the tariff expire. The United Steelworkers Union, an Obama political supporter, sought the action, and many economists criticized it as politically motivated. A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the tariff protected at most 1,200 American jobs. But last year alone, the institute found, it cost American consumers $1.1 billion in higher-priced tires. Moreover, China responded by imposing tariffs on imports of American chicken parts that cost American poultry producers an estimated $1 billion. Last month, the Obama administration quietly let the tire tariff expire. Critics say it recognized that the economic costs of the sanction were too great. SHARON LaFRANIERE Relations With Israel Mr. Romney said that “the president said that he was going to put daylight between us and Israel.” Is he correct? Mr. Romney’s campaign cites a newspaper account of a meeting with Jewish leaders at the White House in 2009 as evidence for Mr. Romney’s statement. In that account, published in The Washington Post, people at the meeting said Mr. Obama had said that “there was no space between us and Israel” during the Bush administration, which he said had hurt the ability of the United States to influence Israeli actions or cajole Arab nations. “When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states,” the newspaper quoted Mr. Obama as saying. An Obama administration official said they did not know whether Mr. Obama made that statement during a private meeting. The newspaper account did not quote Mr. Obama as explicitly stating that his “goal” was to put distance between the United States and Israel, as Mr. Romney characterized Mr. Obama’s intentions during a recent speech. Instead, the account indicates that Mr. Obama was complaining that what he suggested was the Bush administration’s unwillingness to challenge the Israelis had reduced the American government’s leverage over Israel and hurt its reputation with Muslim countries. At the same time, a plain reading of the account would also suggest that Mr. Obama wanted for his administration to be seen as less of a rubber stamp for Israel than the Bush administration was. Obama administration officials have said that there is no daylight whatsoever between the United States and Israel on the issue of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. Pell Grants for College Mr. Romney said he wanted to keep the Pell Grant program growing. This is a new position for him. The governor and his campaign have repeatedly criticized Mr. Obama’s expansion of the Pell Grant program, which they have said is unsustainable. Mr. Romney’s position paper on education says he would “refocus Pell Grants dollars on the students who need them most.” For months, this was widely interpreted as meaning that fewer people would qualify for Pell Grants — an issue the Romney campaign declined to clarify. Mr. Romney would also restore banks to their role in making student loans. Mr. Obama eliminated that role and used some of the savings to pay for the Pell Grant expansion. RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA Illegal Immigration Mr. Obama said Mr. Romney’s “main strategy” to curb illegal immigration would be to “encourage self-deportation.” Mr. Romney has never clarified precisely what he would do about the more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. During the Republican primaries he called for tough enforcement to pressure them to leave the country. Since June he has moderated that position, saying he could support some measures that would allow a limited group to remain here legally. Mr. Romney says he opposes any amnesty. During a primary debate in January, he said he would seek a mandatory nationwide program to verify the legal status of all new hires, expanding an existing federal program known as E-Verify, which is now voluntary. With that program in place, he said, illegal immigrants would soon discover that they could not get jobs and that “they’re going to self-deport.” Mr. Romney was pressed for more details on the self-deportation strategy during a town hall-style meeting last month with Univision, the Spanish language network. But he did not provide them. “I believe people make their own choices as to whether they want to go home,” he said. But he said he would not favor “a mass deportation effort, rounding people up, 12 million people.” Mr. Romney said, “Our system is not to deport people.” He has said he would support giving permanent resident green cards to illegal immigrants who serve in the military, a group probably numbering in the tens of thousands. Mr. Romney has said he will “put in place a permanent solution” for illegal immigration, but he has not described what it would look like or how he would get around the roadblocks in Congress that stalled Mr. Obama’s efforts to pass legislation. Most Republican lawmakers in Washington have rejected any legal status for illegal immigrants, calling it amnesty. JULIA PRESTON

Presidential Election of 2012
Debates (Political)
Obama Barack
Romney Mitt