Aid Group Says Zimbabwe Misused $7.3 Million

Abstract: JOHANNESBURG — The government of Zimbabwe , led by President Robert Mugabe , spent $7.3 million donated by an international organization to fight killer diseases on other things and has failed to honor requests to return the money, according to the organization’s inspector general. The actions by Zimbabwe have deprived the organization, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, of resources it needs and damaged efforts to expand life-saving treatment, said the inspector general, John Parsons. Zimbabwe’s actions also jeopardize a more ambitious $188 million Global Fund grant to Zimbabwe, due for consideration by the fund’s board on Friday, Mr. Parsons said. The Global Fund has continued to demand that Zimbabwe return the money, and Global Fund officials say Zimbabwean financial officials have promised to do so by Thursday. But Mr. Parsons said Zimbabwean officials also said they had not repaid the money because they did not have enough foreign currency. The breakdown of trust between the Global Fund and Zimbabwe’s government comes at a time of widening humanitarian crisis and casts further doubt on the willingness of Western donors to invest heavily in rebuilding the economically broken nation as long as Mr. Mugabe is in charge, even if a deadlock over a power-sharing government is resolved. Mr. Parsons said in an interview on Sunday that last year the Global Fund deposited $12.3 million in foreign currency into Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank. He declined to speculate on how the $7.3 million it was seeking to be returned had been spent, except to say it was not on the intended purpose. Civic groups and opposition officials maintain that the Reserve Bank helps finance Mr. Mugabe’s patronage machine. Mr. Parsons did offer an example of the human consequences of the Reserve Bank’s failure to hand over the money for disease fighting. The Global Fund has brought in large quantities of medicines that can cure malaria but has been able to finance the training of only 495 people to distribute them safely instead of the planned 27,000. There were 2.7 million cases of malaria among Zimbabwe’s 12 million people in the World Health Organization’s most recent estimates. “The drugs expire by the middle of next year, and it would be criminal if we can’t use them because of these problems,” Mr. Parsons said. “They’ve got quite a short shelf life.” Zimbabwe’s information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, said Sunday in an interview that he was not aware of the particulars of the disagreement, but he defended what he described as the Reserve Bank’s good intentions and accused the Global Fund of politicizing aid. “They always want to put certain standards and concoct certain things to make us look bad and horrendous in international eyes,” he said. Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank, the custodian of the Global Fund’s money, has been spending large sums this year on a variety of things, according to reports in Zimbabwe’s state-owned media. Mr. Gono gave the country’s judges new vehicles, satellite dishes and televisions and allocated 79 vehicles for the Information Ministry. He announced the provision of 3,000 tractors, 105 combine harvesters and 100,000 plows for the country’s farm mechanization program. Mr. Ndlovu, the information minister, said the Reserve Bank had been getting foreign currency for imports of food and medicine. Mr. Ndlovu said the Global Fund had sided with Western nations that had restricted aid to Zimbabwe and imposed sanctions on it — sanctions that Mr. Mugabe and his party blame for the country’s economic ruin. “The money from the Global Fund is nowhere near what the Reserve Bank has spent on health care for the country,” the information minister said. Civic groups and opposition officials contend that Mr. Gono and the Reserve Bank have helped finance the governing party’s patronage operation, essential to Mr. Mugabe’s hold on power for the past 28 years. Eddie Cross, a senior official in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, accused the Reserve Bank of looting the Global Fund’s donation. International aid groups and United Nations agencies say the country’s annual inflation rate of more than 230 million percent and rules imposed by the Reserve Bank have severely complicated the logistics of helping the most impoverished people. The Reserve Bank suspended electronic banking a month ago, making it impossible for international organizations to pay for goods and services with bank transfers. The Reserve Bank has also severely limited cash withdrawals from commercial banks. And the inflation rate has rendered check payments nearly worthless by the time they clear days later. More than 20 aid groups, donor countries and United Nations agencies wrote Mr. Gono last week asking that electronic banking be restored for humanitarian aid purposes and that they be allowed to pay service providers in foreign currency. If agencies are increasingly unable to pay for their field operations, they wrote, that inability will “greatly increase the already substantial suffering of those Zimbabweans who are most in need of humanitarian response.” A third of Zimbabweans are now hungry and in need of food aid , the United Nations estimates. A million children have lost one or both parents. About 140,000 people died of AIDS there last year. Mr. Mugabe’s government banned the work of international aid groups for almost three months during the election season earlier this year, accusing them of backing the political opposition. The ban was lifted on Aug. 29, two months after Mr. Mugabe was declared the victor in a discredited presidential runoff election. His main rival, the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, dropped out of the race, citing state-sponsored violence against his supporters. It has taken time for the aid groups to resume work. One major humanitarian group, which declined to be identified by name for fear of retaliation against its staff by government officials, said it would be able to get food to only half as many people as originally planned this month because of the difficulties of paying for its logistical operations. The Zimbabwe office of the United Nations Children’s Fund, which coordinates one of the world’s largest programs for orphans, decided Friday that it could no longer pay the local groups it supported there by check, seriously hampering its ability to help the most vulnerable children and their mothers, said Roeland Monasch, Unicef’s acting representative in Zimbabwe. Mr. Monasch said the United Nations’ daily posting of the country’s exchange rate showed that the number of Zimbabwe dollars required to buy a single American dollar rose from 3 million on Oct. 23 to 1 billion the next day, and then to 40 billion on Wednesday and 1.1 trillion on Saturday. For Unicef to continue operating, he said, it must start using American dollars. Mr. Parsons, the Global Fund inspector general, who presented the preliminary findings of a Global Fund audit on Tuesday in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, to donor nations and United Nations agencies, said in the interview that he had met with Reserve Bank officials to tell them, “We need our money back.” But Reserve Bank officials have told the Global Fund they do not have the foreign currency required, Mr. Parsons said, so, “One has to assume they spent it on other things.” In Mr. Parsons’ presentation to donors, a slide on program management featured a Cameroonian saying: “Trust in Allah but tie your donkey.” The Global Fund’s management, known as the secretariat, has not released any new money to Zimbabwe since last December and will not disburse more until the problems in protecting the Global Fund’s donations are resolved, he said. “We cannot safely leave foreign exchange in Zimbabwe,” Mr. Parsons said. “The secretariat has to find some other means to safeguard our funds — to keep it offshore and drip-feed it into Zimbabwe. It can’t be under the Reserve Bank or anyone influenced by the Reserve Bank.”

Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria


Real Basketball Moms of Kentucky

Abstract: LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Michelle Green brings a billboard-size poster of her son’s head to his basketball games and has been known to cheer so aggressively that she has been thrown out of the gym. Susie Walker-Byrd has switched her son’s high school three times to accommodate his basketball dreams. Carmelita Clay is convinced that her son should be on national television because of his basketball skills. If being a basketball mom were a competitive sport, this group of mothers from Kentucky would be perennial all-stars. Overaggressive parents hollering from the stands have become a cliché of American childhood, but these moms have turned parental cheering into an art form — and, they hope, a business. Six Kentucky families have signed a deal with NorthSouth Productions, a television company, to make a reality show about their hoops-mad families. It is unclear if the project will appear on the screen any time soon, but the producer Blaine Hopkins called the mothers perfectly suited to reality TV, describing them as “hysterical, passionate, real and competitive.” The mothers say they want to draw attention to their sons in hopes of drawing a college scholarship. But their zeal has raised the eyebrows of the boys’ coaches, as well as the boys themselves. “Sometimes, I’ve wanted to know what being a regular kid was like,” said Jordan Green, an 18-year-old, 6-foot-6 senior forward, who is the son of Michelle Green. “From Day 1, all I’ve known is basketball.” Image Susie Walker-Byrd cheering for her son, Bryce, a point guard for Eastern High School. “The whole family sacrificed for Bryce,” said Walker-Byrd, who has moved her son to three high schools. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times His mother makes no apologies for her behavior. When Green, who works at a middle school, cheers from the stands, she said, “I turn into a complete different person.” “I am an animal,” she continued. “I heckle everybody — the parents, the players, the referees.” The six mothers hoping to star in the show know each other from the sidelines of their sons’ various basketball games. They are not close friends, but they all have centered their family’s lives on their sons’ jump shots in hopes of gaining the attention of college coaches. “He’s got to get a scholarship,” Green said of Jordan, who scored a team-high 16 points in a victory last week. “When in sixth grade, they start talking about scholarships, it became business for me.” Before his freshman year, Jordan told his mother he wanted to play with his friends at Henry Clay High in Lexington, a school with a rich basketball tradition. But they lived in the Bryan Station High School district, about five miles from Henry Clay. Green decided to put her house of 10 years on the market and move her family for Jordan’s game. A buyer fell through, so she said she filed for bankruptcy — and then moved closer to Henry Clay. A single mother, Green, 47, has held two jobs at times to help pay for Jordan’s basketball expenses. She said she spent about $10,000 on basketball last summer alone. When Jordan plays, it is easy to find Green, who is 6 feet tall and who played on a basketball scholarship at Paine College, a Division II university. She takes a Fathead-like image of her son’s face to games. Never mind the cheerleaders, she leads students in shouting singsong chants: “I’m blind! I’m deaf! I want to be a ref!” Green’s enthusiasm is not always welcomed. Two years ago at an Amateur Athletic Union tournament in Las Vegas, she was escorted out by security after arguing with a mother from the opposing team. Green said the woman threatened to kill her. Image Jordan Green grabbing a rebound for Henry Clay High School in a scrimmage. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times “I’m the most flamboyant and rambunctious parent ever,” Green said. Jordan’s high school coach, Daniel Brown, has said that he would not participate in a television show if one were to come to fruition. “It does individualize the kid when you’re talking about a team sport,” Brown said. Everything changed for Susie Walker-Byrd, 48, when her son, Bryce Walker-Byrd, entered the fifth grade. That is when basketball became more than just a diversion, and Bryce’s summers, like his winters, became dedicated to playing in as many games as possible. “The whole family sacrificed for Bryce,” said Walker-Byrd, a married social worker who has two younger daughters. She did not let her daughters be involved sports, clubs or after-school activities for several years because the family’s money was going to Bryce’s basketball expenses, she said. Family vacations were planned around Bryce’s basketball schedule. Bryce, a 17-year-old, 5-9 senior point guard at Eastern High School in Louisville, has jumped from one traveling A.A.U. team to the next — five total, with fees ranging from $600 to $1,000 — because Walker-Byrd felt he was not getting as much playing time as other players. Walker-Byrd has already moved her son to three high schools. “I know I’ve been talked about,” she said. “I don’t even care because I’m going to do what I’m going to do for mine.” Bryce, who had a team-high 14 points in an Eastern victory last week, has at times seemed embarrassed about all the attention. “I don’t want my children to go through what I’ve had to go through,” he said. For Craig Owens Jr., a bulky 18-year-old senior who is a 6-3 power forward, it is easy to explain his unbridled love of basketball. His father always attended his games. But for the past year, Craig has played while his father, who sold cocaine, has been in prison. Image Jordan with his mother, Michelle Green, afterwards. Credit Luke Sharrett for The New York Times Craig attends Trinity High School, a Catholic, all-boys private school in Louisville. His mother, Carmelita Clay, 38, is proud of her son, and shows visitors his shiny state championship ring. Clay, who is single and a nurse, has tried to navigate the difficulties of supporting Craig’s dreams. It has been a trying time for her family. Her younger son was recently found to have spinal stenosis after a football injury. The family sees basketball, and the college degree it could bring Craig, as a possible lifeline, even if Clay knows that her son is probably too small to play power forward at a competitive program. “He’s good,” she said, “but he’s behind on where he should be.” Craig, who scored 7 points in a Trinity win Saturday, understands he may never get a scholarship, but he is determined this season to prove he deserves a shot. “I’m not trying to let my mom spend more money on something I can control,” he said. “I want that scholarship bad, especially a D-1 scholarship.” The mothers realize their sons face tough odds in their scholarship bids. Rick Bolus, an independent scout, has watched high school players in Kentucky for four decades and dozens of college coaches consult his evaluations. Bolus said Jordan Green had the best chance to receive a Division I scholarship, but said the other boys would be long shots. For now, the mothers say more work is to be done, more sacrifices to be made. They all have envisioned their storybook ending: Their son, at the podium, announcing where he will play at college in front of his classmates and teachers, signing his letter of intent, in the school’s gym or auditorium. Those mothers, of course, will look on, beaming.

Basketball
Kentucky
TV
School Sports
Reality television
Sports Drafts and Recruits


Coney Island Plan Is Scaled Back, but Critics Are Skeptical

Abstract: The developer who wants to remake Coney Island’s amusement district has a new plan and says that you’re going to love it. Joseph J. Sitt, who says his company has spent $120 million buying up land underneath and around the rides, said on Friday that he had “rolled over” in response to the criticism of his earlier plans for an entertainment and residential complex. So the looming 40-story tower planned for the Boardwalk at Stillwell Avenue is gone. So are the hundreds of rental apartments and luxury condominiums in the old plan. The new proposal is less dense, he said, but has more of “the new, the edgy, and the outlandish” rides and attractions that America’s first resort was once known for. “This is our way of showing the New York community that we’re responsive to what they want,” said Mr. Sitt, the founder and chief executive of Thor Equities, which buys and develops commercial, residential and retail properties nationwide. “Our design, in all its greatness, is a way of showing the world what Coney Island can be.” Who could complain? Well. Robert Lieber, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, described Mr. Sitt’s new plan as a “wolf dressed up as a sheep.” Mr. Lieber, along with neighborhood leaders and other city officials, had expressed fears that residents of new apartment buildings would not fit comfortably with the noisy, all-hours amusement district that would be preserved between West Eighth Street and the Aquarium and the minor league baseball stadium at West 16th Street. The new plan keeps the concept of a new glass-enclosed water park, but instead of apartments calls for three hotels, including more than 400 time-share units, along with restaurants, shops, movie theaters and high-tech arcades. The latest renderings depict a pulsating entertainment complex with an Elephant Colossus statue and architecture that evokes the old Luna Park and Dreamland amusement parks. Mr. Lieber and others say that the time-share units look an awful lot like apartments and that the complex looks more like a mall than Coney Island. “He came in last week and presented a plan that had essentially the same density, but dressed it up with hotels and time shares,” Mr. Lieber said on Friday. “The building heights still exceed the 271-foot Parachute Jump,” a Coney Island landmark. “And he’s looking for a huge subsidy from the city. North of $100 million.” The city has been working with local residents and property owners for nearly three years on a master plan for what everyone agrees is a dowdy area. The idea, they say, is to preserve the democratic, open-air quality of Coney Island’s culture and amusement district on the south side of Surf Avenue, while allowing for high-rise residential and retail development set apart from the rides, on the north side of Surf. The Economic Development Corporation, along with the City Planning Department and the Coney Island Development Corporation, have been devising a rezoning proposal for Coney Island that will go through a public review process later this year. “The community and the Coney Island Development Corporation have all indicated that residential and amusements don’t go together,” said Chuck Reichenthal, district manager of Community Board 13. But Mr. Sitt says he believes the changes being proposed are too restrictive and would undercut his ability to redevelop the area. Everyone agrees that the shrunken hulk of the amusement district is worth preserving, at the edge of a beach that still draws tens of thousands of people on the summer weekends. The question is how to turn it into a year-round attraction. “Coney Island has changed its faces many times,” Mr. Reichenthal said. “The last Luna Park was in the mid-1940s. Steeplechase came down in the ’60s. But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t remained a magnet. There’s a lot to do when people come down here. It’s still the place for people who don’t have a huge amount of money in their pocket to come and have a good time.” Mr. Sitt, who is equal parts real estate entrepreneur and supersalesman, has been engaged in a game of chicken with the city over the future of Coney Island. Earlier this year, his team claimed that his project “isn’t a financially feasible investment” without high-rise housing. Over the winter, he knocked down the batting cages and the go-kart park in a move that harked back to the bad old days of empty lots. Now he has taken the housing, at least all the units labeled apartments, out of his proposal, and he is betting that his new $1.5 billion plan will win the overwhelming support of local residents, if not all the officials at City Hall. The hotels, which range from 25 to 32 stories, have been moved to midblock, away from the Boardwalk. Mr. Sitt has already spent a large sum buying up 10 acres behind the Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand from 30 different families, including the descendants of George C. Tilyou, founder of Steeplechase Park, and the owners of Astroland, an amusement park that embraces the 270-foot Astro Tower. Astroland is scheduled to close in September. The Cyclone roller coaster, which is a city landmark, will remain open. Hear his pitch: The hotels, Mr. Sitt said, would offer black residents not only jobs, but careers. The Russian immigrants, who enjoy a “quality of life and activity by the water,” would flock to the hotels and nightclubs. Jewish and Italian-American residents would get the “quality retail, bookstores and entertainment venues” that they want. As for everyone else, “what’s better than having fabulous restaurants, catering halls, shows and concerts?” “Tell me, what issue any one of these constituencies would have with our plan,” he said. “We’re asking for motherhood, motherhood. Apple pie, Chevrolet and Coney Island.” Pause for breath. “Maybe I sound like a salesman,” Mr. Sitt said, “but I’m passionate about this.” Jeff Persily, who has worked in the amusement district since 1960 and owns a penny arcade and other property on Bowery Street, agrees with the notion that the amusement area must be turned into a year-round attraction to survive. The city needs to change the zoning to allow for larger buildings, hotels, apartments, parking and retail, he said. “They have a vision of open-air amusements,” Mr. Persily said. “We can’t afford to spend millions on new rides and only be open three months of the year.” Would he sell out to Mr. Sitt? “At the end of the day, combining all the properties and building amusements, hotels and residential would be a wonderful thing for New York,” he said. “We’re talking about creating not hundreds of jobs but many thousands of jobs. I love Coney Island. I’d love to see it become what it once was when I was a kid.” But not everyone trusts Mr. Sitt to deliver. They are concerned that he would convert his time-share units to apartments or flip the property to another developer who would change the plans. Charles Denson, who grew up in Coney Island and now heads the Coney Island History Project, is fond of saying that Mr. Sitt could be a hero by saving the amusement district. But he said residential towers would overwhelm the amusements and “a big shopping mall is not Coney Island.” The history project is running a show in the museum underneath the Cyclone roller coaster titled “Land Grab.” It depicts the development of Coney Island since the 1800s through aerial photographs. “It’s the last ungentrified place in New York,” Mr. Denson said. “It’s still a poor man’s paradise. There’s something magical about it, the name, the reputation and the history.”

Economic Development Corporation
City Planning Department
Housing
Zoning
Area Planning and Renewal
Coney Island (NYC)
Amusement and Theme Parks
Historic Buildings and Sites


Westwood Wins Playoff in Memphis

Abstract: Lee Westwood of England won the St. Jude Classic, his second career PGA Tour victory and first since 1998, by beating Robert Karlsson of Sweden on the fourth hole of a sudden-death playoff Sunday in Memphis. Westwood became the first European to win the Classic after Robert Garrigus blew a three-stroke lead with a triple bogey on the final hole of regulation. Garrigus then bogeyed the first playoff hole. ¶Anna Nordqvist was tied with Cristie Kerr for the lead halfway through the final round of the L.P.G.A. State Farm Classic in Springfield, Ill., which was suspended because of rain. Classic ¶Thomas Bjorn of Denmark shot a four-under 68 to win the Estoril Open in Portugal. Bjorn was five shots ahead of Richard Green of Australia (70). Bjorn (REUTERS) ¶The United States defeated Britain and Ireland, 12 ½-7 ½, in the 36th Curtis Cup, a biennial competition between teams of female amateur golfers, at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. Curtis


City's Day of Delays, Shoveling and School

Abstract: As commuters throughout the New York region returned to work yesterday, the routines of daily life had a hit-or-miss quality. Major city streets were cleared, but officials warned of possible floods from melting snow as meteorologists projected midweek temperatures in the low 50's. The city's public schools were open, though many Catholic schools were closed. On the economic front, companies reported delays in deliveries, but hotels and restaurants said stranded travelers seemed to make up for canceled reservations. The storm crippled the morning rush on the Long Island Rail Road, but the city's subways and buses largely ran on schedule. Many air travelers had to grapple with the lingering effects of the storm: at 6 a.m., LaGuardia Airport became the last of the region's three major airports to reopen, yet a shortage of planes on the ground there forced the cancellation of about 100 outbound flights and an equal number of arrivals. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called the northeaster, which began late Saturday and ended late Sunday, "the biggest snowstorm in the city's history." Parts of the region, however, received much less snow than Central Park, where the snowfall was the deepest ever recorded, 26.9 inches. Since the storm left the region and warmer weather was returning, the city shifted its efforts from clearing major traffic arteries to tackling the mounds of snow that have arisen like pyramids at street corners. Some side streets, like Park Place in Lower Manhattan, were all but given over to hills of snow taken there by the city's trucks. The city's sanitation commissioner, John J. Doherty, said he was particularly concerned about removing the snow piles at 300,000 street corners and making sure that the adjacent sewer drains were clear. "That's what I'm really concerned about, those catch basins," he said. "As it gets warm, you're already seeing flooding on the corners. I mean, you've got to wear your high boots out there or be a great broad jumper. You can't get through the intersections right now, and that's frustrating." Mr. Doherty said his department gave building and property owners four hours after the end of the snowfall to clear their sidewalks. Only "a very small number" of summonses, if any, were issued to violators, he said, in part because his enforcement agents were being used to oversee squads of temporary workers hired to shovel snow for $10 an hour, or $15 after 40 hours. By late yesterday, more than 500 had been hired. The police said that a sanitation employee, Anatoly Zaborsky, 60, crashed his plow yesterday into two vehicles at 85th Street and 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, and was charged with driving while intoxicated. Some hospitals reported taking in patients with storm-related injuries. St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan in Greenwich Village treated a man who was knocked unconscious when a snow-laden storefront awning collapsed on his head, said Dr. Yves M. Duroseau, director of urgent care. He said he also saw several slip-and-fall injuries. At Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, Dr. Joseph Feldman, chairman of the emergency department, said "we had some partial finger amputations" from snowblower accidents. The leftover snow snarled commutes for tens of thousands of riders. The Long Island Rail Road, which cut back service during the storm, did not resume carrying Manhattan-bound passengers into Pennsylvania Station until about 7:15 a.m., and full service was not restored on the Port Washington branch until 2:19 p.m. Two hours later, as the outbound rush began, signal problems in an East River tunnel caused the railroad to cancel three trains due to leave between 4:43 and 5:11. A fourth train, the 4:54 to Farmingdale, was taken out of service because of equipment problems at Jamaica, Queens. The snow also halted service between Ronkonkoma and Greenport, forcing the railroad to run shuttle buses until 5:17. For many, the storm's aftermath disrupted everyday routines. School attendance citywide yesterday was 62 percent, though it was 87 percent on the last three Mondays. Elementary school attendance yesterday was 66 percent, middle school 65 percent, and high school 52 percent. The city's decision to keep schools open angered some parents. "I have no idea why it's open after the worst snowstorm New York City ever had," said Louisa Ruby, 46, whose twin girls are third graders at Public School 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where some parents pulled their children to school on sleds. "What is the mayor trying to prove?" Her daughter Emily chimed in, "I would really rather be throwing snowballs and playing with my friends than going to school." At a news conference, Mayor Bloomberg said: "There was no reason to close public schools today. What we're trying to do is to get our kids an education that they're going to need for the rest of their lives." He added that while "the streets were certainly passable," it was "probably a little bit annoying for some people, a little bit tougher to get to school on a day like today." Catholic schools in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island were closed yesterday. Local superintendents for each borough made their decisions separately on Sunday night, said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, adding that he expected the schools to be open today. At Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens, the decision was left to individual principals. Car owners are in luck. Alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules will be suspended today, but parking meter rules are being enforced and city officials urged people to dig out their cars from the snow. By certain measures, business activity in the city was slower than usual yesterday, a drop-off that may have been partly due to the observation of Lincoln's Birthday, which, while not a legal holiday, is treated as a day off by some employers. A Midtown tourism information center logged far fewer visitors than normal, and theaters reported that cancellations by out-of-town ticket holders were up, although some of the tickets were grabbed by bargain seekers. Courier services reported that the number of requests for deliveries from corporate offices, retail stores and other customers was down as much as 50 percent. Food distributors in the Bronx saw their delivery operations brought to a crawl because of the snow, but most remained open or were closed for only a short time, said Bruce Reingold, general manager of Hunts Point Cooperative Market, a wholesale meat market that serves about 200 tractor-trailers a day. "Sunday is a heavy day for us, because everyone's inventory runs low at the end of the week and they need deliveries," he said yesterday. "Every small street around here was blocked. It was taking trucks 45 minutes just to get down the street. But today, things are getting back to normal."

WEATHER
NEW YORK CITY
PEREZ-PENA RICHARD
SNOW AND SNOWSTORMS
DELAYS (TRANSPORTATION)


Oracle’s $10 Million Mast Breaks During Testing

Abstract: SAN DIEGO (AP) — The 200-foot mast on BMW Oracle Racing’s 90-foot trimaran broke while the boat was undergoing testing in the Pacific Ocean. The carbon-fiber mast is estimated to have cost $10 million; the BMW Oracle syndicate has two other masts. Jane Eagleson, a spokeswoman for the syndicate, said no crew members were injured when the mast came down late Tuesday morning. She had no other details of the incident. Support crews were trying to salvage the rigging. The spar is big enough to support a 6,800-square-foot mainsail and a 6,700-square-foot genoa sail. BMW Oracle is scheduled to challenge the defending champion Alinghi in February in the America’s Cup, although the site is tied up in litigation.


Willis Carto, Far-Right Figure and Holocaust Denier, Dies at 89

Abstract: Willis Carto, a reclusive behind-the-scenes wizard of the far-right fringe of American politics who used lobbying and publishing to denigrate Jews and other minorities and galvanize the movement to deny the Holocaust, died last Monday at his home in Virginia. He was 89. His death was announced by The American Free Press, a newspaper he helped found. Mr. Carto raised funds to finance a right-wing military dictatorship in the United States, campaigned to persuade blacks to voluntarily return to Africa and, most influentially, started newsletters, a journal and conferences of academics and others to deny the scale, and even the existence, of the Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League called him “one of the most influential American anti-Semitic propagandists” and “the mastermind of the hate network.” His associates included neo-Nazis, Christian vigilantes, John Birch Society members and Ku Klux Klansmen, and his extreme views alienated mainstream conservatives. After William F. Buckley sued Mr. Carto for libel and won in 1985, Mr. Buckley said Mr. Carto epitomized “the fever swamps of the crazed right.’’ Mr. Carto did not speak in public, refused interviews, wrote under pseudonyms, did not include his name on his publications’ mastheads and conducted business from pay phones. But at his peak in the 1980s, he headed an organization, Liberty Lobby, with a mailing list of 400,000; and published a newspaper, The Spotlight, with a circulation said to exceed 300,000. His Liberty Lobby broadcast on 470 radio stations daily in 1981. His publishing house, Noontide Press, churned out works like Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and “For Fear of the Jews.” He started the Populist Party that ran the Klan leader David Duke for president in 1988. His dozens of corporations and publications shuffled money, staff and mailing lists. He called himself a Jeffersonian populist and said he was merely the low-paid treasurer of his empire, subservient to a board that had real influence. But court testimony in case after case proved that he steered his organizations. It was by midwifing the movement to portray the Holocaust as a hoax or greatly exaggerated that Mr. Carto made his biggest mark. In 1978, he started the Institute for Historical Review to spread what it termed a “revisionist” view of the Holocaust through its glossy, heavily footnoted Journal of Historical Review and conferences of historians from the United States and Europe. Although the journal sometimes offered revised views of other historical events like World War I from mainstream historians, it usually pondered questions like whether the concentration camps’ gas chambers had the capacity to execute six million Jews — if, in fact, the gas chambers existed. Calling evidence that the Holocaust actually happened “atrocity propaganda,” the institute in 1979 offered to give $50,000 to anyone who could prove that Jews had been gassed at Auschwitz. It explicitly dismissed statements by Rudolf Höss, one of the commanders at Auschwitz, that a cyanide gas, Zyklon B, had been used to commit mass murder. It said those confessions were made “under duress.” Most historians estimate that 1.1 million died at the camp. Mel Mermelstein, a businessman from Long Beach, Calif., who survived Auschwitz, provided documents, eyewitness testimonies, histories, photographs and even a can that had contained Zyklon B to the institute. He told of seeing his mother and sister driven into the gas chambers in 1944. Upon hearing nothing in response, he sued . In July 1985, Mr. Mermelstein and the institute agreed to settle the case. The settlement mandated that the institute pay the $50,000, plus an additional $40,000; apologize; and accept earlier court rulings that the Holocaust was an indisputable fact. Early on, Mr. Carto sometimes presented himself as a conventional conservative activist. In 1956, he operated what he called “a nerve center” at the Republican convention that distributed 100,000 pieces of literature. He said he was ready to offer an immediate right-wing alternative if President Dwight D. Eisenhower chose not to seek re-election. In the 1960s, he contributed money to congressmen to try to stymie civil rights legislation, and several times was invited to testify before congressional committees. He later helped bolster what became fairly conventional rightist causes: drastically slashing the income tax and blocking a constitutional amendment to guarantee women equal rights. His positions on immigration, globalization and multiculturalism — all of which he loathed — were influential. In the 2012 Republican presidential campaign, Representative Ron Paul accepted the support of Mr. Carto’s newspaper The American Free Press, but later stipulated he did not endorse its racial views. Some of Mr. Paul’s writing had appeared in the paper, possibly without his knowledge. “Willis has talked to me about playing the role of a respectable conservative when his true feelings are those of a racial nationalist,” Louis T. Byers, a right-wing activist and theoretician, told The Washington Post in 1971. “I was as close to being a friend as anyone Carto has known.” Willis Allison Carto was born in Fort Wayne, Ind., on July 17, 1926, and joined the Army after high school. He was wounded twice in fighting in the Philippines during World War II and earned the Purple Heart. After the war, he lived with his parents in Mansfield, Ohio, and, according to a court deposition, attended courses at the University of Cincinnati Law School. He worked for Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, then moved to San Francisco where he was a bill collector for the Household Finance Corporation. He became involved in right-wing causes, and started a monthly bulletin called Right. On June 10, 1960, Mr. Carto had a profound experience. He went to the San Francisco jail to interview Francis Parker Yockey, who was being held for passport fraud, for Right. Mr. Yockey was an embittered American lawyer who quit his job as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials because of dissatisfaction with the Allied prosecution. More significant, he was an avid disciple of Hitler who had, under the pseudonym Ulick Varange, written a 600-page philosophical tome titled “Imperium” that savaged Jews. He had been roaming the world promoting his racist philosophy. Mr. Carto was convinced that Mr. Yockey was a genius. A week after their meeting, Mr. Yockey was found dead in his cell. He had swallowed cyanide. Mr. Carto dedicated himself to preserving and propagating his hero’s thoughts. He published a new edition of “Imperium” and wrote a 35-page introduction in which he said Europeans living under monarchies were freer than present-day Americans, and derided the notion of racial equality. In those early days, he joined the far-right John Birch Society, but left because the society’s founder, Robert Welch, deemed his anti-Semitism a pointless diversion. Contributors to Right included the American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, who declared: “And dangerous we ARE. To Jew traitors we are deadly and we openly inform them we will stuff them into gas chambers in 1972 when we are elected to power.” In 1958, Mr. Carto formed Liberty Lobby as a “pressure group for patriotism.” His influence grew, as he added and subtracted organizations, publications and initiatives. In 1966, he acquired control of The American Mercury, a magazine H. L. Mencken helped found, and made it a mouthpiece for his ideas. He produced hundreds of thousands of pamphlets for George Wallace’s presidential campaign in 1968. Mr. Carto’s offices were firebombed and burned to the ground in 1984. Only his own office — with its four bronze busts of Hitler — escaped the destruction. Amid allegations of financial fraud, he was forced out of the Institute of Historical Review in the mid-1990s, but soon started another publication to deny the Holocaust, The Barnes Review. A bankruptcy in 2001 did not slow him down. He lost The Spotlight, but replaced it with The American Free Press. He kept up with current events, blaming the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on Israel. Mr. Carto is survived by his wife, the former Elisabeth Waltraud, who worked closely with him. They had no children.

Willis Carto
Obituary
Holocaust and Nazis
Judaism


Bargain Hunters With Deep Pockets

Abstract: From September 2006 to last April, club stores like Sam’s Club and Costco experienced a big increase in shoppers, particularly more affluent ones. The number of people visiting such stores grew three times as fast the adult population of the United States, according to figures recently released by Mediamark Research, a market research company, which asked about 26,000 adults whether they had visited a club store within the preceding six months. Much of the growth came from high-income households, whose members may be finding bargain prices more attractive amid the lingering economic downturn. Club stores had an 11.9 percent jump in shoppers with household incomes above $75,000, who now make up just under half of their visitors, according to the Mediamark figures. “My guess is that lower-income people were already shopping at club stores, and the economy has made people who are more affluent shop there, too,” said Kathi Love, the president of Mediamark.

Costco
Retail Stores and Trade
Discount Selling
United States Economy
Recession and Depression
Sam's Club


Egypt: Film on Egyptian Jews Is Blocked

Abstract: Egyptian security agencies have stopped the screening of a documentary on Jews in Egypt a day before it was to debut in local cinemas, the film’s producer said Tuesday in a statement. He said no reasons were given. “Jews of Egypt,” a film that follows the Egyptian Jewish community in the first half of the 20th century until Jews left under duress in large numbers in the late 1950s, was screened in Egypt last year in a private film festival and had been approved by censors, a regular procedure in Egypt. The producer, Haytham el-Khamissy, said he heard from the chief of the censorship authority that a security agency asked to view the movie before granting it a license to be shown in theaters. “There is no excuse for this except delay and obstruction,” he said in a statement posted on the film’s Facebook page. The documentary has been shown in the United States and was to open in three theaters in Egypt on Wednesday.


U.N. Inquiry Criticizes Qatar’s Justice System

Abstract: A United Nations investigator permitted by Qatar to examine its justice system delivered a blunt critique on Sunday, saying that prosecutors and judges need more autonomy and training, defense lawyers should have access to the evidence against their clients, and foreign suspects may be vulnerable to discrimination. The investigator, Gabriela Knaul , the special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, also said that Qatar, the affluent and rapidly growing Persian Gulf emirate, needs more lawyers. She also criticized the judicial gender imbalance, noting that only two of the country’s 198 judges are women. Ms. Knaul’s appraisal was presented at a news conference in Doha, the capital, after an eight-day fact-finding visit, granted by the Qatari government at her request. It came against the backdrop of heightened publicity over perceived flaws in a number of prominent cases involving foreigners, most notably an American couple accused of starving their adopted African daughter to death in order to sell her organs. Lawyers for the couple, Matthew and Grace Huang, from Los Angeles, denied the charges, calling them an egregious mix of police mishandling, flawed medical evidence and racism that reflected inherent bias in the Qatari system. The couple spent nearly a year in prison awaiting the court to hear their side. Although the Huangs were released from prison a few months ago, they have been ordered to remain in Qatar pending the outcome of their trial, which could be weeks away. Ms. Knaul did not single out any prosecutions in her news conference but said she had received reports of “discriminatory attitudes” exhibited by the police and judiciary toward non-Qataris. She also met on Saturday with the Huangs, whose case has attracted international attention, and said in response to a question on Sunday that the travel ban on them should be rescinded. “Our case highlights Qatar’s deficiencies,” the Huangs said in a statement after meeting with Ms. Knaul. “We were able to share our concerns about a fair trial and due process,” they said. “We are innocent and living through a nightmare.” Ms. Knaul enumerated more than a dozen recommendations for the Qatari system, including basic transparency that allows lawyers access to information, including prosecutor evidence; establishing an ethical code of conduct for judges; modernizing the current system of handwritten minutes of trials, to avoid manipulation; and providing proper translations of documents and court proceedings for non-Arabic speakers. She said her opinions had been “very well received” by Qatari officials but it was unclear which, if any, they would accept.

Qatar
Discrimination
Gabriela Knaul
Grace Huang
Judiciary
UN
Matthew Huang


Land Mine Kills Spokesman to Mayor of Somalia’s Capital

Abstract: MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A land mine killed the spokesman for Mogadishu’s mayor on Saturday, the latest casualty in a vicious Islamic insurgency in Somalia’s capital, officials said. The spokesman, Mohamed Muhuyidin Ali, was headed to his car when the mine exploded, said Abdirashid Ahmed, a regional officer. “He left his house and was heading to a nearby garage when a land mine went off,” Mr. Ahmed said, adding that police officials had said they believed that the spokesman had been a target because he was a government official. Thousands of Somalis have been killed this year in fighting between Islamic insurgents and Ethiopian troops supporting shaky Somali government forces. The Islamists vowed to fight an Iraq-style insurgency after the Ethiopians dislodged them from power one year ago. They had taken control of the capital and much of southern Somalia. Some 900 miles north of here, kidnappers were apparently demanding a $250,000 ransom for the release of two foreign aid workers. The workers, women from Spain and Argentina who work for Doctors Without Borders, the international aid group, were kidnapped Wednesday. The demand was in a letter sent to local radio stations in Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northeastern Somalia, but the region’s top official said he could not verify its authenticity. Spain’s foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, spoke Saturday with the president of Puntland, Mahmud Musa, who pledged to travel personally to Bossaso, the port city where the women were seized, to work to free them , the news agency Europa Press reported. Mr. Musa also agreed to meet with the Spanish ambassador to Kenya, Nicolas Martin Cinto, who went to Somalia on Thursday to try to secure a release, the agency said.

Somalia
Mines Explosive
Politics and Government


Vernon Romney, Utah Politician and Candidate’s Cousin, Dies at 89

Abstract: SALT LAKE CITY — Vernon B. Romney, a former Utah attorney general and an unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor in 1976, died on Saturday at his home here. He was 89. His death was announced by his family. Mr. Romney was a cousin of Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate. Image Vernon B. Romney Born on April 27, 1924, Mr. Romney served in the infantry during World War II and earned a law degree from George Washington University. He worked in Washington as an aide to Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah and as a lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission. As attorney general from 1969 to 1977, Mr. Romney led a successful effort before the United States Supreme Court to secure mineral rights in the Great Salt Lake for the State of Utah. He also worked to expand Salt Lake City air service and worked for increased consumer protection in the state. He is survived by his wife, the former Patricia Pingree, whom he married in 1952. They had 6 children, 21 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Utah
Attorney general
Vernon B Romney
Obituary


F.B.I. Admits Hacker Group’s Eavesdropping

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The international hackers group known as Anonymous turned the tables on the F.B.I. by listening in on a conference call last month between the bureau, Scotland Yard and other foreign police agencies about their joint investigation of the group and its allies. Anonymous posted a 16-minute recording of the call on the Web on Friday and crowed about the episode in via Twitter : “The FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.” Hours later, the group took responsibility for hacking the Web site of a law firm that had represented Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who was accused of leading a group of Marines responsible for killing 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq , in 2005. The group said it would soon make public “mails, faxes, transcriptions” and other material related to the case, taken from the site of Puckett & Faraj, a Washington-area law firm. A voluminous 2.55 gigabyte file labeled as those files was later posted on a site often used by hackers, Pirate Bay . Regarding the conference call, an F.B.I. official said Anonymous had not in fact hacked into it or any other bureau facilities. Instead, the official said, the group had simply obtained an e-mail giving the time, telephone number and access code for the call. The e-mail had been sent on Jan. 13 to more than three dozen people at the bureau, Scotland Yard, and agencies in France , Germany , Ireland , the Netherlands and Sweden . One recipient, a foreign police official, evidently forwarded the notification to a private account, he said, and it was then intercepted by Anonymous. “It’s not really that sophisticated,” said the official, who would discuss the episode only on condition of anonymity. He said no Federal Bureau of Investigation system was compromised but noted that communications security was more challenging when agencies in multiple countries were involved. “We’re always looking at ways to make our communications more secure, and obviously we’ll be taking a look at what happened here,” he said. The bureau issued a brief statement confirming the intrusion, which was first reported by The Associated Press: “The information was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained. A criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible.” The breach, clearly an embarrassment for investigators, is the latest chapter in a continuing war of words and contest of technology between hacking groups and their perceived opponents in law enforcement and the corporate world. The F.B.I. e-mail titled “Anon-Lulz International Coordination Call” — a reference to Anonymous and to an allied group of hackers, Lulz Security — announced a conference call for investigators “to discuss the on-going investigations related to Anonymous, Lulzsec, Antisec, and other associated splinter groups.” The recording posted on YouTube and elsewhere included American and British voices discussing suspects in the case. The call begins with banter between an American named Bruce and British officials named Stewart or Stuart and Matt, who are joined by another official from F.B.I. headquarters, Timothy F. Lauster Jr., who sent the e-mail announcing the conference call. The conference call illustrates both the scale of the international police effort to identify and prosecute the hackers, and the striking contrast in age and status of the investigators and their targets: what seem to be middle-aged law enforcement officials on two continents are overheard dissecting the illicit activities of teenagers. A British official refers to Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis, two British teenagers who have been arrested and are wanted in the United States on suspicion of having ties to Anonymous. The British official describes a 325-page report analyzing Ryan Cleary’s hard drive, and an F.B.I. agent in Los Angeles discusses various suspects and their nicknames. The investigators also refer to several suspects who had not yet been arrested, including one who calls himself Tehwongz, described by the British official as “a 15-year-old kid who’s basically just doing this all for attention and is a bit of an idiot.” The conversation was part of an international criminal investigation that began in 2010 after Anonymous championed WikiLeaks by mounting electronic attacks on MasterCard and PayPal and other sites that had stopped collecting donations for the antisecrecy organization. Last month, Anonymous attacked the Web sites of the Justice Department and major entertainment companies in retaliation for criminal charges against the founders of Megaupload , a popular Internet service used to transfer music and movies anonymously. The hackers could have penetrated the law-enforcement official’s personal e-mail account by guessing a weak password, sneaking into an unencrypted wireless network, or, most likely, with a common and relatively easy tactic known as a phishing attack, said Keith Ross, a computer science professor at Polytechnic Institute of New York University and a security expert. A phishing attack involves sending an e-mail that looks like it is from a friend or relative and persuading the recipient to click on a link that allows every keystroke entered on that particular computer to be recorded. Recording keystrokes is an efficient way to steal someone’s e-mail username and password. “The real issue for law-enforcement officials is they need to be better educated about how they handle sensitive data on their e-mails,” Mr. Ross said. “It’s an easy vulnerability to crack. If you’re not careful it’s a very dangerous attack.” The same methods may have been used to hack the Web site of the lawyers who represented Sergeant Wuterich, Neal Puckett and Haytham Faraj. Their Web site was defaced by the hackers to display a message from Anonymous saying it was exposing “the corruption of the court systems and the brutality of U.S. imperialism,” Gawker.com reported. Later, the site was taken down. In an interview late Friday, Mr. Faraj said he thought that little of the material stolen from their site related to the Haditha case, though some documents might relate to a polygraph that he said Sergeant Wuterich had passed. He said he feared the documents might include a confidential statement from a rape victim in an unrelated case. “I think in their haste to put stuff out there, they’re going to hurt some people,” he said. Mr. Faraj said he had represented Guantanamo detainees and had supported and offered to represent Pfc. Bradley Manning , the soldier accused of providing documents to WikiLeaks, suggesting that the hackers of Anonymous may be inadvertently attacking someone who shares some of their presumed political views. “They got the wrong guy,” he said. He said the F.B.I. had contacted the law firm and opened an investigation. Sergeant Wuterich, 31, pleaded guilty last month in a military court in California to dereliction of duty, telling the judge that he regretted ordering his men to “shoot first, ask questions later.” As part of a plea agreement , however, he received no prison time, though his rank was reduced to private. The sentence sparked anger in Iraq and among some human rights advocates, and the Anonymous message complained that Sergeant Wuterich had gotten “only a pay cut” as a penalty.

Scotland Yard Metropolitan Police Service


Mattel Recalls 19 Million Toys Sent From China

Abstract: Mattel, the world’s largest toy company, yesterday announced the biggest recall in its history. In a double-barreled announcement, the company said it was recalling 436,000 Chinese-made die-cast toy cars depicting the character Sarge from the animated film “Cars” because they are covered with lead paint. At the same time, the toy maker said it was recalling 18.2 million other toys because their small, powerful magnets could harm children if swallowed. The magnetized toys were also made in China, but they followed a Mattel design specification. About half of the toys in each recall were distributed in the United States. Amid a wave of increasing safety concerns about products made in China, the recall threatened to set the toy industry on its heels — just as companies are beginning to ship toys to stores for the holiday shopping season, when half of all toy purchases are made. Separately, laboratory tests have found that some Chinese-made vinyl baby bibs sold at Toys “R” Us stores appear to be contaminated with lead. Industry analysts said Mattel’s woes are part of a much larger problem. “If I went down the shelves of Wal-Mart and tested everything, I’m going to find serious problems,” said Sean McGowan, managing director and the toy analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. “The idea that Mattel — with its high standards — has a bigger problem than everybody else is laughable. If we don’t see an increase of recalls in this industry, then it’s a case of denial.” Even Mattel executives said repeatedly yesterday that the company may have more recalls. “No system is perfect,” Robert A. Eckert, Mattel’s chairman and chief executive, said in a conference call. “There’s no guarantee that we will not be here again.” Shares in Mattel dropped 57 cents, to $23, during regular trading, but rose the same amount after hours. The mounting wave of safety concerns is forcing Mattel and other toy companies to reconsider long-held assumptions about the safety of their products. Mattel executives said yesterday that in the long run they are trying to shift more of their toy production into factories they own and operate — and away from Chinese contractors and sub-contractors. “We do realize the need for increased vigilance, increased surveillance,” said Jim Walter, senior vice president of worldwide quality assurance at Mattel, in an interview. Still, the latest recall led to intensified calls from consumer advocates and politicians for stricter safety standards, as well as tougher penalties for companies. “This summer alone has seen well over 13 million toy recalls, popular toys removed from our homes and our stores because they have been found to be extremely dangerous, in some cases lethal, to our children,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, a member of the Senate commerce committee. Senator Klobuchar said it was “increasingly clear” that the Consumer Product Safety Commission needed more financing and greater authority. The commerce committee held a hearing last month on the safety of goods made in China. The lead-paint recall was Mattel’s second in less than a month of lead-tainted toys made in China. Together, the recalls have thrust the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars into the heart of rising concern over products made in low-cost factories in China. Last month’s recall of toys with lead paint included some based on characters from “Sesame Street” and “Dora the Explorer.” The magnetic toys involved in the new recall included 63 products that, though produced in China, were recalled because of a design flaw on Mattel’s part, not a problem with its Chinese contractors. The magnetic toys had been produced since 2002 and sold before January 2007. They include 44 different Polly Pocket toys, 11 Doggie Day Care toys, 4 Batman toys, a One Piece toy, and 2 Barbie toys. Many toy makers have recalled magnetic toys since early 2006 as the consumer safety commission, concerned that children could ingest the magnets, focused on magnets on toys as a rising safety hazard. Mattel said it was working with the safety commission and other regulatory agencies worldwide, as well as with retailers to remove the affected products from stores. Before the recall was announced, Mattel began an advertising campaign yesterday aimed at reassuring consumers of its commitment to product safety. Mattel said the lead-tainted products, made from May to July, were discovered in routine safety checks. But Mattel has also been running an investigation of all its toy manufacturing since early July. The latest recall involves toys from a different Chinese contractor from the one that produced toys recalled earlier this month, Mattel said. The recall is the latest in a series of such actions this year involving Chinese-made goods, including contaminated pet food ingredients, children’s jewelry, defective tires and tainted toothpaste. In July, one of Mattel’s European retail partners noticed lead paint on some of its toys, and Mattel began an extensive investigation of the toys in its distribution chain and of the contract manufacturers that make half of its toys. Mattel has not stepped up checks on the nearly 3,000 companies that license its brands to put on products other than toys, Mr. Walter said. Yesterday’s lead paint recall was caused by a subcontractor, Hong Li Da, hired by Mattel’s contractor in China, Early Light Industrial. Mattel executives said Early Light, which has worked with Mattel for 20 years, was not at fault in the paint substitution. A number of Mattel’s 30 to 50 contractors in China subcontract parts of their production to other companies, Mr. Walter said. At least two other major toy manufacturers have begun investigations of their toys from China this summer in reaction to the recalls, said Carter Keithley, the president of the Toy Industry Association. Mr. Keithley declined to name those companies. Hasbro has increased the level of its safety checks this summer in light of the recalls, said Wayne Charness, a senior vice president. Hasbro does not own any factories in China and instead entirely uses contractors for its production there. There are already many lawsuits against companies involved in the pet food recall as well as the Thomas & Friends toy train recall. Manufacturing experts say that companies have cut costs so much in China that more toy testing is not affordable for many manufacturers. “If Mattel, with all of its emphasis on quality and testing, found such a widespread problem, what do you think is happening in the rest of the toy industry, in the apparel industry and even in the low-end electronics industry?” said S. Prakash Sethi, a professor at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York, who has acted as an independent monitor of working conditions in Mattel’s factories for the last 10 years. “Everyone is going to be found with lots of dirty laundry.” But, he said, “there is something to be said about the pressure that American and European and multinational companies put on Chinese companies to supply cheap products. The operating margins are razor thin, so you really should not be surprised that there is pressure to cut corners.” The Consumer Product Safety Commission is negotiating with the toy industry to conduct broader testing of toys that are being imported, said Nancy A. Nord, the commission’s acting chairwoman. Ms. Nord also urged consumers not to overreact to the news. “In today’s environment, it is easy to take recalls out of proportion,” she said. “By no means is it the largest recall this agency has done, and it represents only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of toys that are sold in the United States every year.” About 65 percent of Mattel’s toys are made in China, some in five factories the company owns and operates there. Mr. Walter visited China and Hong Kong last week to meet with all of Mattel’s contract manufacturers to reiterate Mattel’s quality rules. “The message was very clear,” he said. “If you cannot do these things, please let us know. No problem, but you won’t be doing business with us.” Mattel announced a $30 million charge soon after that recall, and executives yesterday said that amount would cover the cost of this week’s recall. Lee Der Industrial, a contract manufacturer based in southern China, was responsible for producing the toys that contained excessive levels of lead paint in the first recall. Mattel stopped accepting goods from the contractor, and last week the Chinese government revoked Lee Der’s export license. The owner of Lee Der, Zhang Shuhong, committed suicide by hanging himself in a factory warehouse last Saturday, Chinese officials have confirmed. Mr. Eckert said in an interview that Mattel had been able to recover the costs of its recall of the products made by Lee Der Industrial. “My understanding is that Lee Der is out of business,” he added.

Toys
China
Lead
Mattel Incorporated
Recalls and Bans of Products


Work Force Fueled by Highly Skilled Immigrants

Abstract: ST. LOUIS — After a career as a corporate executive with her name in brass on the office door, Amparo Kollman-Moore, an immigrant from Colombia, likes to drive a Jaguar and shop at Saks. “It was a good life,” she said, “a really good ride.” As a member of this city’s economic elite, Ms. Kollman-Moore is not unusual among immigrants who live in St. Louis. According to a new analysis of census data , more than half of the working immigrants in this metropolitan area hold higher-paying white-collar jobs — as professionals, technicians or administrators — rather than lower-paying blue-collar and service jobs. Among American cities, St. Louis is not an exception, the data show. In 14 of the 25 largest metropolitan areas, including Boston, New York and San Francisco, more immigrants are employed in white-collar occupations than in lower-wage work like construction, manufacturing or cleaning. The data belie a common perception in the nation’s hard-fought debate over immigration — articulated by lawmakers, pundits and advocates on all sides of the issue — that the surge in immigration in the last two decades has overwhelmed the United States with low-wage foreign laborers. Over all, the analysis showed, the 25 million immigrants who live in the country’s largest metropolitan areas (about two-thirds of all immigrants in the country) are nearly evenly distributed across the job and income spectrum. “The United States is getting a more varied and economically important flow of immigrants than the public seems to realize,” said David Dyssegaard Kallick, director for immigration research at the Fiscal Policy Institute , a nonpartisan group in New York that conducted the data analysis for The New York Times. The findings are significant because Americans’ views of immigration are based largely on the work immigrants do, new research shows. “Americans, whether they are rich or poor, are much more in favor of high-skilled immigrants,” said Jens Hainmueller , a political scientist at M.I.T. and co-author of a survey of attitudes toward immigration with Michael J. Hiscox , professor of government at Harvard. The survey of 1,600 adults, which examined the reasons for anti-immigration sentiment in the United States, was published in February in American Political Science Review, a peer-reviewed journal. Americans are inclined to welcome upper-tier immigrants — like Ms. Kollman-Moore — believing they contribute to economic growth without burdening public services, the study found. More than 60 percent of Americans are opposed to allowing more low-skilled foreign laborers, regarding them as more likely to be a drag on the economy. Those kinds of views, in turn, have informed recent efforts by Congress to remake the immigration system. A measure unveiled last month by Senator Lindsey Graham , Republican of South Carolina, and Senator Charles E. Schumer , Democrat of New York, aims to reshape the legal system to give priority to high-skilled, high-earning immigrants, offering narrower channels for low-wage workers. (A bill in 2007 by the Bush administration tilted even more sharply toward upper-tier immigrants; it failed in Congress.) Yet while visa bottlenecks persist for high-skilled immigrants, on the whole, the census data show, the current system has brought a range of foreign workers across skill and income levels. The analysis suggests, moreover, that the immigrants played a central role in the cycle of the economic growth of cities over the last two decades. Cities with thriving immigrant populations — with high-earning and lower-wage workers — tended to be those that prospered the most. “Economic growth in urban areas has been clearly connected with an increase in immigrants’ share of the local labor force,” Mr. Kallick said. Surprisingly, the analysis showed, the growing cities were not the ones, like St. Louis, that drew primarily high-earning foreigners. In fact, the St. Louis area had one of the slowest growing economies. Rather, the fastest economic growth between 1990 and 2008 was in cities like Atlanta, Denver and Phoenix that received large influxes of immigrants with a mix of occupations — including many in lower-paid service and blue-collar jobs. In metropolitan Denver, where the economy doubled between 1990 and 2008, 63 percent of immigrants worked in jobs on the lower end of the pay scale. Denver “did a great job of attracting people from other places in the world,” said Rich Jones, director of policy and research at the Bell Policy Center , a nonpartisan group in that city that focuses on the impact of economic and fiscal policies in Colorado. “They are coming with a variety of skills,” Mr. Jones said. “They created demand for goods, services and housing that began a dynamic.” The figures on jobs and earnings of immigrants in American cities are based on an analysis by the Fiscal Policy Institute of census data for the 25 largest metropolitan areas from 1990 to 2008. The data from 2008 are the most current in-depth census statistics on immigrants’ places of residence and earnings; they also include the first year of the severe recession . The analysis includes legal and illegal immigrants and naturalized citizens. St. Louis is a good vantage point to observe the census analysis play out on the ground — both in the past and, possibly, the future. Here, a pattern of stalled growth and low immigration prevailed for decades. But more recently a new pattern is emerging: even in the recession, some corners of the metropolitan area are sputtering to life, and new immigrants with a mix of skills are playing a conspicuous part. “If you look at what feeds the core of many American cities, it’s the arrival of the immigrant groups,” said Anna Crosslin, president of the International Institute of St. Louis , a refugee resettlement and immigrant aid agency here. “Then one generation moves out, and they’re replaced by another generation. We didn’t have that here in St. Louis.” In its heyday as a commerce hub in the 1950s, St. Louis was one of the nation’s premier cities. Since then, business has stagnated, the population of the city proper declined by more than half, and immigration to the area has been slow. Today, in the St. Louis metropolitan area, only 111,000 residents are foreign-born, out of 2.3 million total, according to the census data. Many immigrants who were drawn here were doctors, researchers and business executives, attracted by the city’s corporate headquarters, universities and medical centers. Ms. Kollman-Moore, 60, came to St. Louis in the 1970s and rose through the ranks at Mallinckrodt, a medical supply company, to become president of the Latin American division, a $100 million business. She retired when the company was sold in 2000 and is now a consultant and business school professor. She planted a grove of tropical shade trees in the center of the living room in her home on a posh suburban cul-de-sac, a literal reminder of her roots. “I made a wonderful career out of understanding the cultures of Latin America and the culture of the United States and how to do business in both,” said Ms. Kollman-Moore, a naturalized American. During the 1990s, a wider variety of foreigners began to settle in the metropolitan area. Bosnians fleeing the Balkan wars have now made this city their largest community in the United States. Sukrija Dzidzovic, 52, publisher of the Bosnian weekly newspaper SabaH , moved the paper here from New York in 2006 to be closer to the core of his readers. Bosnians run the gamut, from truckers and bakery workers to lawyers and engineers. Many Bosnians hit the ground running here because they came from Europe with savings they had stashed away, Mr. Dzidzovic said. At one time, Bosnians opened so many businesses on blighted streets that hostile rumors spread that they were receiving secret subsidies from the federal government. Now, appreciative city officials make a point of attending Bosnian celebrations, Mr. Dzidzovic said. Immigrants from China have also prospered here as entrepreneurs, creating jobs for other immigrants. Sandy Tsai, 59, said she and her husband chose St. Louis to start a business because they noticed it was in the middle of the country. Now their company, Baily, makes egg rolls, noodles and fortune cookies in three local factories that distribute to thousands of Chinese restaurants nationwide. Ms. Tsai said her employees ranged from egg-roll makers earning $8 an hour to laboratory researchers with advanced degrees in food science. “It’s a good group, a good combination,” Ms. Tsai said. But despite the long hard times in St. Louis, low-wage workers have not always been easy to find, she said, and her business expansion was slowed because of it. Now, those workers have started to arrive in larger numbers. Raúl Rico, 31, said he came here 14 years ago from the Mexican state of Querétaro, the first in his family to settle in St. Louis. Today, between parents, siblings, cousins and their offspring, his local clan numbers 56. “Every year our community is growing with all kinds of people, more workers are coming, more people are coming to invest in businesses and open stores,” said Mr. Rico, a carpenter. Ms. Crosslin, of the International Institute of St. Louis, said the emerging pattern was changing the face, and possibly the fortunes, of the city. “We have turned the corner slightly,” she said. “And one of the factors is the newcomers who are starting to arrive again.”

Population
Urban Areas
Immigration and Emigration
Labor and Jobs
United States Economy
St Louis (Mo)


Aldermore Is Valued at $982 Million in London I.P.O.

Abstract: LONDON — The Aldermore Group, a so-called challenger bank to Britain’s traditional financial powers, said on Tuesday that it had priced its initial public offering, valuing the company at 651 million pounds, or about $982 million. Aldermore, which operates online and does not have branches, priced its offering at £1.92 a share, near the top of its expected range. It sold about 35 percent of its capital in the offering of 117.9 million shares. Shares in Aldermore rose 10 percent, to £2.12, in conditional trading on the London Stock Exchange early on Tuesday. The stock will begin unconditional trading on Friday. “This is an exciting moment for Aldermore,” Phillip Monks, the Aldermore chief executive, said in a news release . “The success of our I.P.O. is testament to the strength of our story as a legacy-free bank focused on providing banking services” to homeowners as well as small- and medium-size businesses. The lender raised gross proceeds of £75 million in the offering, which Aldermore will use to support the growth of its business in the medium term. The private equity firm AnaCap Financial Partners, which invested in Aldermore in 2009, also sold shares in the offering. Founded in 2009, Aldermore is considered a challenger to the larger, more traditional lenders that dominate the banking landscape in Britain. It is the latest of several challenger banks to go public after delaying its I.P.O. last year. OneSavings Bank, which was backed by the private equity firm J. C. Flowers & Company, listed its shares in London in June, and Virgin Money, the British financial services company partly owned by the billionaire Richard Branson, priced its I.P.O. in November . Aldermore focuses on lending to homeowners and small- and medium-size businesses in areas that it believes have been underserved by larger banks in Britain. It has about 850 employees and around 160,000 customers. At the end of 2014, the bank had £4.5 billion in deposits and total loans of £4.8 billion. For the year ended Dec. 31, the bank posted a pretax profit of £56.3 million, excluding I.P.O. costs of £6 million. That compared with a pretax profit of £25.7 million in 2013.

Aldermore
London Stock Exchange
Private equity
Virgin Money
Richard Branson
IPO
Stocks,Bonds


Man Indicted in Arizona’s Freeway Case

Abstract: PHOENIX — A grand jury on Friday indicted a man suspected in four of the freeway shootings that have rattled the Phoenix area since late last month. The indictment of Leslie Allen Merritt Jr., 21, replaces a 16-count criminal complaint announced earlier in the week. Mr. Merritt, of suburban Glendale, was indicted on 15 felony counts, including aggravated assault, unlawful discharge of a firearm, disorderly conduct, endangerment and carrying out a drive-by shooting. Image Leslie Allen Merritt Jr. Credit Reuters Prosecutors did not file terrorism charges, which the authorities originally sought against Mr. Merritt, a landscaper and a father of two who was arrested Sept. 18 at a Walmart. Using ballistics tests , Arizona Department of Public Safety detectives tied him to four of the 11 shootings that occurred on Phoenix-area freeways between Aug. 27 and Sept. 10. State police said copycats might be shooting guns or other weapons on freeways, so the investigation remains open. Eight cars were hit by bullets, and three were struck by projectiles like BBs or pellets, most while driving along Interstate 10 in Phoenix, the Department of Public Safety has said. Only one person was injured in the shootings: On Aug. 29, a bullet pierced the windshield of an S.U.V. on Interstate 10, and the broken glass slightly cut the ear of a 13-year-old girl who was a passenger. Mr. Merritt has been charged in that shooting and three others after the state police recovered bullet fragments from vehicles.

Phoenix
Leslie Allen Merritt Jr.
Assault
Guns
Roads and Traffic
Murders and Homicides


As Arizona Struggles to Fix Foster System, Children Suffer the Consequences

Abstract: PHOENIX — She was just 5 months old the first time she and her siblings were taken from a mother struggling with addiction and placed in the care of the state. At times, she was separated from her brothers and sisters. She received neither the glasses she needed, nor the orthopedic shoes, leaving her with a limp. Now 10, she has spent more than half her life in foster care, having been returned to her mother only to be removed again, a routine that has been repeated multiple times. The girl, identified only by the initials B. K., is one of several child plaintiffs named in a lawsuit filed last month by two advocacy groups, which assert that Arizona pulls children from tumultuous family lives only to place them in more turbulent circumstances in the care of the state’s child welfare system. Although that system was overhauled last year, after the disclosure by a whistle-blower that more than 6,500 complaints about child neglect and mistreatment were reported but completely ignored, the lawsuit asserts that only negligible progress has been made. “You have nearly 17,000 children in the system who need services. They need foster homes, they need health care, they need mental health care,” said William Kapell, senior attorney for Children’s Rights , one of the groups that filed the suit. “Children in foster care who don’t receive the services they need wind up having dire results, and Arizona is clearly on that track.” A week after the lawsuit was filed, Arizona’s new governor, Doug Ducey, acknowledged that the state had come up “woefully short” and ousted the director of the Department of Child Safety, Charles Flanagan, who had been in the job only about a year. In his place, Mr. Ducey appointed Gregory McKay, the whistle-blowing police detective who discovered the cases of potential abuse that had been called in to an agency hotline but never investigated. Mr. McKay, who most recently was the agency’s director of child welfare investigations, has started a top-to-bottom review, looking at all of the agency’s programs and contracts for ways to redirect resources to welfare investigations and case management. Already, he said, he has shuffled the staff, including some departures, and disbanded a special investigations unit. “I’m not about looking good,” Mr. McKay said in a recent interview. “I’m about being good.” The agency Mr. McKay now leads, the Department of Child Safety, was set up last year to replace Arizona’s Child Protective Services, which had been housed within a larger state agency that oversees a spectrum of social services. With the revelation that four years’ worth of hotline calls had been brushed aside, the governor at the time, Jan Brewer, removed child welfare from the Department of Economic Security, establishing it as its own arm of the state government and elevating its leader to a cabinet-level post, reporting directly to the governor. She named Mr. Flanagan, who had been the director of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, to lead the new agency. Arizona’s foster care population continues to increase rapidly, with thousands of children being added in recent years, even as most states have seen declines. As of September, 16,990 children were in the state’s care, up from 10,700 in 2011. The recent lawsuit, filed in federal court in Phoenix, paints a picture of continuing dysfunction. The groups that filed the lawsuit say that the recent reforms were aimed at improving the investigation process, but that little had been done to address conditions for children already in the foster care system. Advocates said their concerns intensified because of the state’s budget situation, which has led to cuts across many agencies. “The system is so, so broken,” said Lin Leclair-Turner, a foster mother who has taken in 40 children over the past decade and whose home in Tucson is used for emergency placements. “There’s so much more that’s still rotten that still needs to be fixed.” Ms. Leclair-Turner and other foster parents describe backlogs in courts that leave children in legal limbo, and monthslong waits for critical doctor visits. Privacy rules prevent foster parents from speaking about specific children’s cases, but several parents told stories of desperate social workers placing children with severe, even violent, behavioral issues in their homes without warning them. Foster parents say they can see the toll the system is taking on the children: The girl who had been homeless and clung to her backpack for months, wearing it as she ate and even to bed. The children who reflexively flinch when an adult tries to touch them. And there are the rages and nightmares . “They’re hurt, they’re lost, they don’t know what’s going on,” Ms. Leclair-Turner said. “I’m tired of hearing, ‘Children are so resilient.’ A child shouldn’t have to be resilient.” Mackenzie Teo, 17, said she had lived through many of the system’s problems, moving more than 20 times in her eight years in foster care, changing schools with each move. Because of the disruptions, she said, she will graduate from high school at least a year late. “You move so much, you don’t want to form bonds with people,” she said, sitting at her kitchen table with her adoptive mother, Dawn Teo, who encouraged her to share her experience. Mackenzie described placements that included a home with quarters so tight she had to sleep on a couch, and group homes where the children cooked the meals. Eventually she was placed with the Teo family, which lives in a sprawling house in Queen Creek, near Phoenix. The family adopted her in November, even though she was just a year from aging out of the system. She has adjusted to life as a permanent part of a family. She uses the cooking skills she learned in the group home to help her mother make dinner, has friends over to hang out and has settled into a spacious suite of a bedroom of her own. Dawn Teo said that the experience with Mackenzie had been a bright spot, but that in five years of foster parenting, she had seen how the system could fail. Ms. Teo helped start a group called the Foster Children’s Rights Coalition and has vowed to be a “squeaky wheel,” pushing for more accountability. “We know it’s going to be very difficult. We know we’re going to have to fight and advocate for these kids to get their needs met,” she said. “But we know, eventually, we’ll get there. And when you have one of these kids in your home, you know they’re worth it.” Mr. McKay, the new state agency director, said that separating child welfare from the immense Department of Economic Security had been an important step toward fixing the system, but that other improvements had stalled. Some lawmakers said they had seen progress in the months before Mr. McKay took over: Investigators now pursue more tips reported to a hotline, and more case managers have been hired and trained, alleviating the burdensome caseloads that have driven social workers to quit. “But even so, I think it was a well-reasoned move on the governor’s part,” State Senator Nancy Barto, one of two chairwomen on a legislative committee that oversees child welfare, said of the leadership change. “We continue to see this huge increase of kids in the system. Clearly, we’re on the wrong track somewhere, and this is unsustainable.” State Representative Kate Brophy McGee, the other committee chairwoman, agreed. “It’s going to take years of attention,” she said. “It was so deeply buried in this gargantuan agency, no one knew what was going on.” The lawsuit, filed by Children’s Rights and the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest , argues that foster children have been failed by a bureaucracy that forced them to move frequently and disrupted their educations. Several of the children named in the lawsuit, including B. K., have received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder . Among the lawsuit’s demands are that children in foster care have access to medical and psychological services, and that children have “minimally adequate” visitation with their biological parents and siblings. “It is hard to be optimistic because the problems seem so overwhelming, but I know if you don’t start somewhere, nothing will ever change,” said Cherie Klavitter, 43, a foster mother in Glendale who was in foster care as a child. “It’s a struggle for me to have some kind of hope that it can get significantly better — it would take time, and it’s time these kids don’t have.”

Arizona
Foster care
Lawsuits
Child Abuse
Children's Rights


Eli Manning Quietly Takes Control of the Giants

Abstract: Eli Manning brings the running backs together each Thursday for a meeting. Sometimes with a remote control in his hand, Manning stands before them and reviews game footage that he cut up and packaged, with members of the coaching staff looking on. Every Friday, Manning does the same with the receivers. “It’s something he’s established,” Mike Sullivan, the quarterbacks coach, said recently. “He plans, prepares and executes it all.” Though Manning has never been outwardly assertive on the field, he has become a player-coach off it. His unprompted weekly meetings with the skill-position players in recent seasons have provided an example of his assuming of that role. The result has shown each of the past two seasons, and Manning’s performance in the 41-7 drubbing of the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday provided the latest snapshot of his cool command. Manning did not have a career day — he threw for 290 yards, completing 21 of 32 passes — but his confidence was evident in his on-the-money throws, his smart decisions and his touchdown passes to three receivers. After watching Manning dismember his team, Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll said that Manning was “almost flawless.” It helps, of course, that Manning has weapons, particularly an emerging receiving corps that has provided him talented targets. With Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs running well behind a veteran offensive line, the Giants (6-2) have developed a multifaceted offense that has moved efficiently in four of the last five games, all of them victories. “It’s exciting to be out there, and whatever the defense can stop, we can beat them other ways,” guard Rich Seubert said Monday in a conference call. “It’s fun where a team just can’t put eight or nine guys in the box and stop the run knowing that we can spread it out and get the ball to our guys and they’re going to make plays for us. When we’re clicking on all cylinders, we’re a tough offense to stop.” And Manning has marshaled that attack with an authority he might seem to lack to those outside the locker room because of his laid-back demeanor. “He says an awful lot with his eyes and his expressions,” Sullivan said. “It’s nonverbal, but once you know him, it says more than 1,000 words could.” On Sunday, Manning threw his first touchdown pass, to Hakeem Nicks, in the first quarter. On the play, the Giants were in a three-tight end set, and the rookie safety Earl Thomas appeared to try to take away Kevin Boss’s crossing route underneath, leaving Nicks open over the top for a 46-yard score on a post pattern. On Manning’s third touchdown, he found Boss in the back corner of the end zone for a 5-yard score in the second quarter, fitting the pass between Thomas and Lawyer Milloy. Making the throw on the run as he left the pocket, Manning’s pass was the type that indicated his level of confidence; he showed little doubt as he placed the ball perfectly amid traffic. “Eli made an awful lot of big plays,” Coach Tom Coughlin said Monday. “The sustaining of all these drives and finishing them with touchdowns was a real positive.” The lone pockmark on Manning’s season has been his 11 interceptions (seven have come on tipped passes). After a career year in 2009, in which he threw for 27 touchdowns, Manning has thrown 17 touchdown passes this season. It all started in the film room for Manning and his offensive teammates, but it has carried over onto the field. “His incredible amount of detail and a focus and a work ethic is beyond even what I’d imagine,” Sullivan said. “And I envisioned him being a great pro.” EXTRA POINTS The backup center Adam Koets will miss the rest of the season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee. The Giants will activate offensive lineman Kevin Boothe off the physically-unable-to-perform list. Koets had been filling in for three games for Shaun O’Hara. The team did not say which knee was injured. ... Offensive lineman David Diehl is being examined after injuring his hip Sunday.

Seattle Seahawks
Football
New York Giants
Manning Eli
Coughlin Tom


Showing How Art Critical of Malaysian Premier Thrived During His Rule

Abstract: KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Mahathir Mohamad, who transformed this country of paddy fields and rubber plantations into a modern economy of factories, highways and skyscrapers, is known as much for his bold economic vision as for his intolerance of anybody who got in his way. While he was prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, Dr. Mahathir detained opponents, fired top judges, controlled the news media, clipped the power of Malay royalty, fired one deputy and pushed another to resign. Yet the visual arts mostly escaped his attention. “Era Mahathir,” a show of 48 works by 28 artists that is on view at Ilham Gallery here until Nov. 20, is evidence of that inattention. Despite their critical nature, many of the pieces in the show appeared in state-funded institutions like the National Art Gallery; some won national awards. Art was seen as a concern of the urban elite, with no influence on the masses. “It was not really on his radar,” said Valentine Willie, the curator of “Era Mahathir” and the creative director of Ilham Gallery. “In a way, it was a saving grace for us. He didn’t take us seriously.” Dr. Mahathir’s policies created a growing wealthy class whose members were looking for ways to spend their money. “If you have a million-dollar apartment, what are you going to put on the wall? Not your grandmother’s portrait,” Mr. Willie said. Around Asia, artists who have criticized the government through their works have struggled for funding and, in some cases, for their freedom. In the 1960s in Indonesia, Hendra Gunawan, one of the archipelago’s most celebrated painters, was imprisoned for years under Presidents Sukarno and Suharto for his alleged association with Communists. More recently, the Chinese government detained Ai Weiwei, an artist and a government critic, and prevented him from traveling abroad . In Malaysia this year, another artist, Fahmi Reza, was charged — twice — under cybercrime laws for posting a caricature of Prime Minister Najib Razak with a clown face on Instagram and Facebook. But in Dr. Mahathir’s Malaysia in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, even as art took a decidedly sociopolitical turn, galleries flourished, as did theater. “Era Mahathir,” which features works on loan from the national art gallery, private collections and the artists, opens with a panel by Mohd Nor Khalid, better known as Lat, whose cartoons ran in the pro-government New Straits Times. In the panel, Lee Kuan Yew, a former Singapore prime minister who died last year, is drawn clutching a newspaper and asking Dr. Mahathir why he allows cartoonists to get away with such unflattering depictions of him. “Look what they do to your nose!” Mr. Lee says. “Hmmm,” Dr. Mahathir, depicted with a giant nose, agrees, “too much freedom.” It’s funny, and makes a point: Even among autocrats, there are degrees of autocracy. The show also includes a politically charged work by Ahmad Fuad Osman. In 1998, the artist joined thousands in the streets protesting Dr. Mahathir’s firing of his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, who was later charged with corruption and sodomy — a crime in this country. Then Mr. Ahmad Fuad went home and picked up his brush. Until then, he had been known for his studied, symbolic pieces. He ended up producing four vigorous self-portraits, in oil, each over six feet tall. Three were based on the old proverb “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” to which he added a fourth portrait, of him holding his nose. Image "#DrMLovesU,” by Kenneth Chan. Credit Kenneth Chan “There are times we have to scream,” Mr. Ahmad Fuad said in a phone interview from his current base in Bali. “We can’t whisper anymore. We have to let our voices out.” Mr. Ahmad Fuad’s self-portraits were shown at Galeri Petronas, owned by the national oil company. One of these four pieces — titled “Shhh!” and showing the artist with finger to lips — is included in “Era Mahathir.” Another work, “NEP,” by Roslisham Ismail, is a wall-size collage forming the acronym for the New Economic Policy, an affirmative-action plan for the country’s majority Malays that Dr. Mahathir wielded to a greater degree than any leader before him. The three giant letters are made up of posters and calling cards for loan sharks, a comment on the abuses of the policy and the growing chasm between rich and poor Malays. Liew Kung Yu’s “Proposals for My Country” features a photo montage of the Greek and Roman columns that mushroomed during the building boom, adorning everything from mansions to office buildings to wooden stilt houses — a sign of new money gone mad. Mr. Liew, in an interview, denounced Dr. Mahathir’s obsession with showy construction; the Petronas Twin Towers, briefly the world’s tallest buildings, were erected during his time. Kathy Rowland, a Malaysian arts researcher who wrote an essay for the show’s catalog, noted that during Dr. Mahathir’s time the state built a national theater, a national art gallery — both planned under earlier administrations — and a home for the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra at the base of the Petronas Twin Towers. “I suppose a rising tide lifts all boats,” she said. The show is running as Dr. Mahathir, 91, is starting a new political party and forging a once-unthinkable alliance with the opposition to try to oust Mr. Najib, the current prime minister, who is mired in a billion-dollar scandal involving a state fund named 1MDB. That the gallery is owned by Daim Zainuddin, a former finance minister and one of Dr. Mahathir’s closest allies, adds to the intrigue. Mr. Willie, the curator, said that he had had the idea for the show for a while and that the timing was coincidental. Mr. Daim, a longtime art collector, provides the space for Ilham — 12,000 square feet over two floors in a skyscraper he owns on the edge of the central business district. He pays Mr. Willie, who used to own five galleries across Southeast Asia, a fee to run it, but does not interfere in curatorial decisions, Mr. Willie said. Entry is free, and none of the works are for sale. Ilham’s ownership has perturbed some in the arts community, who fear that artists are being co-opted in some larger political tussle. Ray Langenbach, an American who worked in Malaysia for years and is now a theater professor at the University of the Arts Helsinki, said he had rejected a request from the gallery to include his 1994 video documenting a performance piece by another artist. The piece was based on one of Dr. Mahathir’s most severe crackdowns, 1987’s Operation Lalang — lalang is a hardy local weed — when 106 activists, politicians, intellectuals, students and others were detained without trial, accused of stoking racial tension. “Allowing criticism of his past acts makes Mahathir stronger now,” Mr. Langenbach said in an email. (The gallery used news clippings about the performance piece instead.) Still, the gallery has attracted the participation of many independent voices. “It’s a relevant art show, and you see a lot of anger from the time he was in power,” said Jahabar Sadiq, a Malaysian journalist who wrote an essay on Dr. Mahathir’s legacy for the show’s catalog. In it, he described the ex- leader’s biggest fault as bringing an overconcentration of power to the prime minister’s office. “Of course there’s an agenda,” Mr. Sadiq said. “The agenda is: I want you to talk about it! This is therapy for the country. The country needs this therapy.”

Art
Malaysia
Mahathir Mohamad
Ilham Gallery