Sarkozy Boldly Attacks Financial Crisis, but Europe Wants Results

Abstract: PARIS — The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy , is running as fast as he can, but the European recession is gathering pace. After initially good reviews for his leadership and quick response to the crisis, even Mr. Sarkozy’s vaunted hyperactivity is starting to seem a little counterproductive, especially among his allies. He is seen as something of a magician, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find meaningful rabbits to pull out of a more tattered hat. He tried again on Tuesday, faced with major layoffs from French companies like Renault, a quarterly decline of more than 23 percent in building permit applications and a sharp drop in consumer confidence, as measured by the government, to one of the lowest levels in 20 years. The signs of economic caution are everywhere here, including even a sudden drop in the sale of bottled water. Trying to counteract fears of higher unemployment as the economy slows, Mr. Sarkozy announced a new program of subsidized work contracts, warned companies not to make unjustified layoffs and promised to loosen restrictions on short-term job contracts and Sunday work. The Socialist he beat for the presidency, Ségolène Royal, said Tuesday that “with a new plan practically every two days,” Mr. Sarkozy had “a credibility problem.” At the very least, she said, “we must pay attention that each plan announced should start before announcing the next.” But the problem runs deeper. Mr. Sarkozy is trying to promote a stronger economic role for the leaders of European Union states that use the euro, including a more powerful role for himself, in order to put pressure on the European Central Bank and the European Commission, which largely control the euro-zone economy. But other major states, especially Germany, are skeptical about his intentions. They believe that Mr. Sarkozy, who has often excoriated the Central Bank for its focus on limiting inflation, wants to sharply increase the size of France ’s budget deficit — despite European Union restrictions — to stimulate an economy considered to be in recession and to create jobs. At the beginning of the American subprime mortgage crisis, Mr. Sarkozy, with France as the current six-month president of the European Union, got good marks for taking action. He called summit meetings, rushed to Washington, made proposals and even pulled the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, whose country does not use the euro, into an extraordinary summit meeting of the leaders of the states using the euro — the so-called Eurogroup. In large part, the activity was intended to calm Europeans looking for leadership in a confusing time. But they are also going to look for results, said Katinka Barysch, an economist and the deputy director of the Center for European Reform in London. “For Sarkozy, it’s a tricky strategy,” she said. “In a situation where confidence is in such short supply, having a politician leave the impression he’s in charge and can do things can be good. But if like Sarkozy, you convene one summit after another and present one idea after another, you raise expectations you can’t fulfill.” Recent pronouncements by Mr. Sarkozy have rubbed the Germans and the British the wrong way, in part because he has reverted to an old habit of acting without consulting his allies. Quite unusually for Europe, Mr. Sarkozy has also called other leaders to summit meetings on extremely short notice, sometimes just a day, a senior European diplomat said, causing consternation and confusion. Mr. Sarkozy’s relations with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, have deteriorated again, diplomats and French officials say, over both his lack of consultation and his efforts to pressure the European Central Bank. In particular, Mr. Sarkozy has called for two European initiatives that have been widely criticized. The first is a European Union sovereign fund to protect the ownership of important business with suddenly low stock prices. The other is a “unified economic government” of the European Union that would bring the heads of state together on economic issues, and not just the finance ministers. Mr. Sarkozy argues that leaders must lead, and that with the Czech Republic and then Sweden, neither of which uses the euro, taking over the European Union presidency in 2009, Europe’s ability to deal with the global financial crisis will be reduced. He wants a new dialogue between country leaders and the European Parliament, suggests Daniel Cohen, a professor of economics at the École Normale Supérieure, as a way of undermining the European Commission. Mr. Sarkozy would also like to lead the Eurogroup for that period, instead of Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, Mr. Cohen said. “There is a need to think and talk at the level of Europe, because there will be hard times coming,” Mr. Cohen said. “The ability of France to fight recession will be contingent on the size of its fiscal deficit,” which is already at the European limit of 3 percent of gross domestic product. Mr. Sarkozy — and not him alone — wants the European Commission to relax the rules because of the recession, and that will produce “a debate in difficult circumstances” between France and Germany, which supports the limits and does not want to see European institutions undermined. Mr. Sarkozy has worked politically without any real ideology in this crisis, promising safety to the French, appealing to nationalist instincts and trying to play an important role in Europe, and he has helped himself in the polls, said Pierre Rousselin, the foreign editor of Le Figaro. “Sarkozy is a bit a magician without clothes, but the important thing is the perception, and he’s doing pretty well,” Mr. Rousselin said. “The time will come when people ask, ‘Where’s the beef?’ But I’m not sure we’ve reached that point yet. To energize Europe itself is a pretty good thing.”

France
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Economic Conditions and Trends
Sarkozy Nicolas
Recession and Depression


Libyan Government Presses Assault in East and West

Abstract: RAS LANUF, Libya — Government warplanes taunted rebels with flyovers and repeatedly bombed their positions near this coastal city’s oil refinery on Monday, seeking to drive the opposition forces back farther to the east, as Libya continued what appeared to be a slide into civil war. The air attacks, which wounded a family of five, added a note of urgency to a growing debate in Western capitals about imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. The bombing runs began in the morning, sending huge plumes of smoke into the air around 10 a.m. With every roar of a jet engine, the rebels opened fire with what sounded like every weapon available, from heavy artillery to pistols. In the evening, a warplane swooped low and on two separate occasions dropped bombs near a heavily defended rebel checkpoint, striking a car carrying the family and sending rebel fighters fleeing for cover in chaotic scenes. There were conflicting reports about the casualties after the airstrikes. Witnesses had said a man died when the car was hit, but doctors at a local hospital said the man, along with four relatives, survived. The steady attacks from the air helped further turn the momentum of the conflict in eastern Libya, where opposition fighters had made strong gains recently in their drive to the west, toward Surt, a stronghold of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi , and on to Tripoli. But on Sunday, troops loyal to Colonel Qaddafi stormed the town of Bin Jawwad, just to the west of Ras Lanuf, backed by fierce air power, and sent the fighters holding it into retreat. Those troops remained on the outskirts of Ras Lanuf on Monday evening, taking no immediate steps to try to recapture it or its strategic refinery from the rebels, who took control three days ago in their westward push. In addition, the elite Khamis Brigade continued on Monday to batter the opposition-held city of Zawiyah, west of Tripoli, with tanks, artillery and snipers, residents there said. With cellphone and Internet communications cut off, virtually the only source of information on events there was a lone reporter for Sky TV, a British television channel. She said the heavily armed government troops attacked in the morning and inexplicably withdrew after several hours, even though their tanks seemed to have taken control of the city’s central square. Government forces also attacked the rebel-held city of Misurata, Libya’s third largest, which lies about 100 miles east of Tripoli. The rebels have rejected any foreign invasion of the country but would welcome a no-fly zone, saying they can handle Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers, tanks and rockets, but not his warplanes and helicopter gunships. On Monday, Britain and France said they would seek United Nations authority for a no-fly zone, but Russia , which holds veto power, has already rejected any form of military intervention. The United States ambassador to NATO , Ivo Daalder , said the organization had established 24-hour surveillance of Libya with Awacs reconnaissance aircraft. In Tripoli, the Libyan foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, held an extraordinary news conference in which he accused the United States and Britain of “yearning for the colonial era” and seeking to divide the country. Continuing the government’s string of improbable claims, he maintained that a force of about 300 Qaeda fighters formerly held by the United States at Guantánamo Bay was backing rebel forces. “They are now fighting in eastern Libya. Their methods and approaches are clear,” Mr. Koussa said. “When they were released, they started moving again, and they have taken weapons.” Mr. Koussa also became the first government official to admit that the government was meeting resistance in Zawiyah. But whereas news reports and interviews with residents have described a grim, large-scale battle, he said the violence was caused by a group of 30 to 35 rebels who were “hiding in the streets.” The correspondent for Sky News — the only news organization present in Zawiyah for the height of the battle on Friday — reported Monday in a British newspaper on what appeared to be a massacre there. She said she saw soldiers fire on residents who were marching toward a funeral, and someone told her a column of 25 tanks shelled the town for three hours and a young rebel man learning how to fire a rocket-propelled grenade in defense. The correspondent, Alex Crawford, said government forces had shot at an ambulance she was riding in. In a second attack Saturday morning, Ms. Crawford reported that government soldiers were firing randomly into buildings. “There were horrific injuries,” she wrote. “A boy of 10 was hit by several bullets outside his house. One young man came in with an antitank grenade in his thigh, the fins sticking out. He was still conscious.” She added: “An hour later, we saw the military column racing away — another attack had been beaten off. It was the third in two days. When we left, there were eight tanks destroyed or captured, and the rebels still held the center.” The streets of Ras Lanuf were quiet on Monday, troubled only by cars and minivans filled with families leaving the city, including many foreign workers. On Sunday, troops loyal to Colonel Qaddafi attacked rebel troops in Bin Jawwad and pushed them east. Rebel fighters expected those troops to continue on toward Ras Lanuf. On a grassy hill overlooking the sea, teenagers — volunteers from Benghazi — placed branches around an antiaircraft gun as a young rebel soldier watched. Hamed Sardina, a retired harbormaster, drank tea with a friend next to the gun and said he was not planning to leave. “We’re here to defend the area,” he said, pointing to the white houses across the street. And in case the fighting became too fierce, he owns a few boats, he said. Nearby, opposition soldiers replaced the staff at the city’s main hotel on Monday morning. In a cafe with a view of the sea, a rebel fighter tried, in vain, to prepare a cappuccino. His comrades commandeered smart-looking rooms where they could shower and watch the news on television. Outside, a young rebel from the town of al-Marja, in eastern Libya, watched the scene inside. “We are the richest country, and we have the poorest people,” he said. At an intersection at the entrance to the town, rebel fighters with itchy fingers manned antiaircraft guns, firing them sporadically all day, then furiously when they heard the airplanes. Filipino workers wheeling suitcases walked past young men napping in cars and a man making tuna sandwiches for the fighters. On the road east, graffiti on a wall, not far from the site of an airstrike, said: “Army of the People.”

Libya
Military
Arab Spring
Muammar Kaddafi


Rudolph Giuliani’s Worldview Still Shaped by 9/11 Attacks

Abstract: In October 1995, the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat settled into a seat at Lincoln Center in Manhattan for a gala performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But before the third movement started, Mr. Arafat was told to leave. The order had come from the top: Rudolph W. Giuliani, the mayor of New York at the time. And though the Clinton administration referred to the ejection as “an embarrassment to everyone associated with diplomacy,” Mayor Giuliani was unmoved. Calling Mr. Arafat a terrorist and a murderer, he said the next day: “I would not invite Yasir Arafat to anything, anytime, anyplace. I don’t forget.” New York City mayors do not typically conduct foreign policy, but Mr. Giuliani, who aides to Donald J. Trump said was the leading contender to become the president-elect’s secretary of state, has never let an issue like political jurisdiction stand in his way. In his eight years as mayor, Mr. Giuliani practiced his own local form of international relations, calling for tolerance after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, but also refusing to dine with Fidel Castro and threatening to kick the United Nations out of the city over unpaid parking summonses . Image A 1995 protest outside Gracie Mansion in Manhattan after Mr. Giuliani’s had Yasir Arafat evicted from a performance at Lincoln Center. Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times After leaving office, Mr. Giuliani learned more about foreign affairs, gaining experience as an international lawyer, a security consultant and a candidate for the presidency in 2008, while honing his positions as a kind of neoconservative. He has been a staunch supporter of Israel, deeply suspicious of Iran and a proponent of aggressive military posture. His experience as a former federal prosecutor and as mayor has helped shape some of his stances, but it was his experience dealing with the Sept. 11 attacks that has had the most profound effect on his worldview. Through it all, Mr. Giuliani’s basic approach has been much the same: Peace can be achieved by showing strength, and diplomacy is sometimes best conducted by being undiplomatic. “Sometimes in diplomacy you want to set parameters, not just go in saying that, no matter what you’re going to be diplomatic,” said Stuart Gottlieb, an international affairs professor at Columbia University, who worked with several of Mr. Giuliani’s campaigns. “With the Obama years, particularly under John Kerry,” he added, referring to the current secretary of state, “we’ve often seen compromise and bending as a first principle. I think Giuliani would replace that.” Mr. Giuliani’s forays into foreign affairs as mayor were often meant for a local audience. Many of the city’s Jewish leaders, for instance, embraced his snub of Mr. Arafat. As for Mr. Giuliani’s crusade against diplomatic parking scofflaws, New Yorkers, as a rule, are easily enraged by anything related to parking their cars. Given the city’s racial and ethnic diversity, Mr. Giuliani was a vigorous supporter of open immigration, a position that could complicate his potential service under Mr. Trump. In 1996, he gave a speech at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in which he spoke glowingly about his grandfather, Rodolfo Giuliani, who came to the United States from Italy, and condemned “fear-mongering” by the “anti-immigration movement in America,” calling it “one of our most serious public problems.” Image Mr. Giuliani speaking at a 2010 protest in Manhattan against the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Credit Yana Paskova for The New York Times After the Sept. 11 strikes, Mr. Giuliani’s view of the world became dominated by terrorism and, at least at first, by a vision of the future based on inclusiveness and unity. A month after the attacks, he spoke at the United Nations, waxing poetic about New York’s racial and religious multiplicity. “We’re a city of immigrants unlike any other city, within a nation of immigrants,” he said, adding that “diversity has been our greatest source of strength.” It was primarily on the strength of that bipartite vision — tolerance and toughness — that Mr. Giuliani left office and entered the private sector, pitching himself as an international fixer who could revamp police departments, as he was hired to do in Mexico City , or eradicate gangs, as he suggested in a speech in El Salvador needed to be done there . His speeches and private contracts earned him millions of dollars, and have now drawn criticism for their potential conflicts of interest, among them a deal by his security firm, Giuliani Partners, advise the state-run oil company in Qatar , a United States ally that supported some Islamist movements . When Mr. Giuliani ran for president in 2008, he was mocked by his opponents for referring, repeatedly, to the terrorist attacks on New York. As Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. famously said during his own 2008 presidential campaign, there were only three things that Mr. Giuliani ever seemed to mention in a sentence: “A noun, a verb, and 9/11.” But the specter of terrorism continued to inform Mr. Giuliani’s thinking, in his own unsuccessful White House run and this year, as he advocated for Mr. Trump. On a trip to London in 2007, while he was competing in the Republican primary, he said he supported President George W. Bush’s decisions to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, though he criticized how the wars had been waged. Mr. Giuliani, a vociferous critic of the nuclear deal the United States signed with Iran last year, has long harbored concerns about that country’s intentions. Even as the United States was at war in Iraq, he said that Iran could pose a greater danger. Image Mr. Giuliani with Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, in 2001. Credit Ruby Washington/The New York Times “Iran is maybe in many ways even, or is certainly more, dangerous than Iraq,” he said at a town-hall-style meeting in 2007 during his presidential campaign. “I think this is an area in which clarity is enormously important. We’ve had wars because of lack of clarity; we’ve had great misunderstandings that have led to violence because of lack of clarity. If if you elect me as president of the United States, this will be very, very clear to Iran: I will not allow them under any circumstances to become a nuclear power. They are too irresponsible.” Though Mr. Giuliani has no formal foreign policy bona fides, he has traveled the world meeting dignitaries and advising foreign governments — at least once, on a private jet he borrowed from Mr. Trump . “I’ve probably traveled to Europe, Asia and Africa more often in the last five, five and a half, years than any of the people who are running for president,” he said in 2007. “I’ve had the responsibilities of safety and security on my shoulders for much of the last 20 or 25 years. I’ve actually dealt with terrorism. I’ve actually dealt with it firsthand.” But part of what that experience has taught him is that, even for a diplomat, diplomacy has its limits. At the Republican National Convention this summer, he gave speech in support of Mr. Trump during which it became clear that the already muscular stance on foreign policy he held eight years ago had only hardened after eight years of the Obama administration. “We must not be afraid to define our enemy — it is Islamic extremist terrorism,” Mr. Giuliani said. “You know who you are,” he added to applause. “And we’re coming to get you.”

Giuliani Partners
Republicans
US Foreign Policy
Rudolph W Giuliani
NYC
9/11,Sept 11
US Politics
Donald Trump
State Department


Scarlets Aim to Overcome Home Strength of Clermont

Abstract: LONDON — Plenty of Europe’s top teams are looking at challenging away trips this weekend as the Heineken Cup reaches the crucial home-and-away doubleheader stage of the pool matches, but there is no doubt which has it toughest. Scarlets, the team from the Welsh rugby hotbed of Llanelli, will be in France on Saturday to play Clermont Auvergne, which is unbeaten in 67 matches at Stade Marcel Michelin. Scarlets know what they are getting into. They were one of those 67 earlier victims, going down 49-16 in the opening weekend of the Heineken last year. The result set a pattern for both teams. Scarlets lost all six pool matches. Clermont won all six and fell just short of recording the Heineken’s first perfect season when it lost in the final to its fellow French team Toulon. “That home run is an incredible record,” Simon Easterby, the Scarlets head coach, said in an interview. “I can’t imagine there’s anything to match it at a comparable level in any sport.” He added: “It shows the quality that they have, but it is also the sort of thing that excites everybody at this club. Records are there to be broken, and it is exciting to have the chance to try to do that.” The match last season, he argues, was not the unmitigated slaughter implied by the scoreline. “We were not going too badly at halftime, but then Morgan Stoddart got injured and they took full advantage of our weakness on his wing,” he said. “That’s the sort of thing that happens against opponents of that quality. You can be doing well, then something goes wrong and they’ll score two or three tries very quickly.” And Scarlets go to France this time in decent shape. They top the pool after a brilliant 33-26 away win at the English club Harlequins the first weekend, followed by a 26-26 draw with the Paris team Racing Metro at their home stadium in Llanelli, Parc y Scarlets. “We were disappointed not to beat Racing Metro,” Easterby said. “We got into a winning position, but couldn’t hang on to it.” “If you’d offered us a win and a draw before the tournament started, we’d probably have been pretty happy,” he said. The home-and-away doubleheader on weekends three and four of the six-match pool stage is a distinct Heineken feature that has inspired imitation in the PRO12 competition for Welsh, Irish, Scottish and Italian teams. Scarlets will play home-and-away local derbies against Ospreys, based 10 miles away in Swansea, over Christmas and the New Year. “It is something a bit different and is a real challenge,” Easterby said. “Your preparation for the first match is pretty normal, but you have to find a few ways to do things differently for the second match.” The challenges facing Clermont when it visits Llanelli for the return clash this coming week should include a fired-up crowd. While Clermont won resoundingly on both previous visits to Llanelli, keeping Scarlets scoreless each time, those matches were dead rubbers, with Scarlets already eliminated. This time Scarlets are in contention, and playing with some style. The destruction of the powerful Harlequins showcased the fluency and inventiveness of a young back division, including four players surnamed Williams — Liam at fullback, Jordan and Scott in the three-quarters, and Rhodri at scrum-half. Scott, at 23, is the veteran. All but Jordan played for Wales against Australia this month. “We try and play in a fluent and open style, without losing the ability to win matches,” Easterby said, pointing with justifiable pride to Scarlets’ record of “giving young players an opportunity early in their careers.” That style and capacity for nurturing talent builds on a history, which makes Llanelli British rugby’s answer to the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers, a small community team whose collective passion makes it a match for the big cities. Llanelli, formerly a steelmaking town, has a population of only 35,000 but can look back on 14 Welsh Cup wins — twice as many as any other team — and the last victory by a Welsh team over the New Zealand All Blacks, in 1973. It is also the most ardently, self-consciously Welsh of Wales’s major rugby centers. Bilingual announcements at Parc y Scarlets reflect the local strength of the Welsh language. But Scarlets and the other three Welsh regions lack the purchasing power to keep the talent they generate. Jonathan Davies, Scarlets’ brightest (but currently injured) star, will be joining Clermont at the end of this season. George North, the blockbusting winger who scored two tries for Wales against Australia this month, left Scarlets for Northampton at the end of last season. “You can’t blame players for taking the big money on offer in France or England. It’s a short career, after all,” Easterby said. “But it is frustrating to develop players and then lose them as they reach maturity, just at the point when we should be getting the full benefits of developing them.” There is no simple or easy solution to this conundrum. But finding one is Welsh rugby’s greatest current challenge.


Iran Gives Nations in Nuclear Talks Two Pages and No Ground

Abstract: PARIS — The Iranians called their proposal a “None paper.” Indeed, for officials of the six countries sitting on the other side of the table, the paper addressed none of their ideas for resolving the crisis over Iran ’s nuclear program. Instead, the informal two-page document that Iran distributed at nuclear talks in Geneva on Saturday ignored the main six-power demand on curbing Iran’s enrichment of uranium and called for concessions from the other side. The title of the English-language text had two mistakes. “The Modality for Comrehensive Negotiations (None paper),” it read, according to a copy obtained by The New York Times. (Diplomatic jargon for an unofficial negotiating document is “nonpaper.”) For the six powers — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — the paper’s substance was just as disappointing as its style. Sergei Kisliak, the Russian deputy foreign minister, could not suppress a laugh when he read it, according to one participant. The talks on Saturday included the participation of a senior American official for the first time. The six powers were hoping that Iran would accept a compromise formula to pave the way to formal negotiations. For six weeks, Iran would not add “any new nuclear activity,” refraining from the new installation of centrifuges that enrich uranium, and the United States and other powers would not seek new United Nations sanctions. But both in their paper, and throughout the talks, the Iranians did not discuss the formula, called a “freeze for freeze.” As a result, they left the impression that they wanted to lure the parties into an open-ended, cost-free, high-level negotiating process. “The paper calls for a huge exercise in talking,” said one senior European official. “If you were to try to implement it, it would take a minimum of several years.” Officials spoke on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Iran on Monday that it could not continue to “stall” and she warned of more sanctions if it defied a two-week deadline to accept the proposal. The Iranian document, which has not been made public, offered a snapshot of Iran’s negotiating style. It put the burden on the other parties. Its imprecise language and misspellings were in sharp contrast to the rigorous approach by Iranian negotiators, many of them career diplomats, who were in charge in 2003 when France, Britain and Germany began the initiative of incentives in exchange for suspension of major nuclear activities. Those diplomats have since been replaced. The paper called for at least three more meetings with Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, who represents the six powers. Those would be followed by at least four meetings at the foreign ministers’ level, which would start with the halting of any sanctions against Iran, “both inside and outside” the United Nations Security Council. The Iranian document also seemed to suggest that there could be no discussion of the main issue of contention: some sort of limit on Iran’s production of enriched uranium, which can be used to make electricity or to fuel bombs. “The parties will abstain from referring to or discussing divergent issues that can potentially hinder the progress of negotiations,” the paper said. The six powers want to use their proposed freeze-for-freeze period as a prelude to formal negotiations on a package of economic, political, technological and security rewards. But Iran has to stop enriching uranium for the formal talks to begin. In its paper, Iran focused only on negotiating a “comprehensive agreement” for the rewards. The paper also said current international sanctions against Iran would be discontinued. The Iranian nuclear issue will no longer be dealt with by the Security Council or the 35-country governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency . Only the atomic energy agency itself can deal with the subject, the paper said.

Iran
Uranium
United Nations
International Atomic Energy Agency
Atomic Energy
Atomic Weapons
International Relations
Embargoes and Economic Sanctions
United States Politics and Government


South Koreans Rally in Largest Protest in Decades to Demand President’s Ouster

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — In one of the largest anti-government protests in recent decades, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans filled central Seoul on Saturday to demand the resignation of President Park Geun-hye, whose administration has been paralyzed by a scandal involving an unofficial presidential adviser . “You are surrounded! Park Geun-hye, come out and surrender!” protesters chanted, their voices reverberating through the center of the capital. The main boulevard that faces the presidential offices and residence, known as the Blue House, shimmered with light from candles held by the protesters. Police buses formed a barricade to block protesters from getting too close to the presidential compound. Outrage at Ms. Park has grown in recent weeks over allegations that she let a private adviser manipulate her and extort large sums from Korean companies. Protesters have rallied in downtown Seoul over the past three weekends, and their numbers have continued to grow. Ms. Park has delivered repeated apologies for the scandal and offered to share power with a prime minister to be appointed by the opposition-dominated Parliament , but her efforts to stem the crisis have failed. The police estimated the crowd on Saturday at 260,000, while organizers said as many as one million people had turned out. By either estimate, the rally rivaled the huge demonstrations in 1987 that forced the government, then controlled by the military, to hold a free presidential election. Those protests were pivotal in a long struggle to end the military dictatorship started by Ms. Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, in the 1960s. Ms. Park has become the least popular South Korean leader since the late 1980s, according to recent polls. Her secretive adviser, Choi Soon-sil, has been arrested on charges of leveraging her ties to the president to bully businesses into donating $69 million to two foundations she controlled. Ms. Choi is a daughter of a cult leader who became Ms. Park’s mentor in the 1970s, when Ms. Park’s father was still in power. Two former aides to Ms. Park have been charged with helping Ms. Choi meddle in state affairs from behind the scenes. Ms. Park has admitted only that she let Ms. Choi, who has no background in government or policy matters, edit her speeches. But she has apologized for the scandal, promised to sever ties with Ms. Choi and agreed to be questioned by prosecutors. On Saturday, train and bus stations in provincial cities reported that tickets to Seoul had been sold out, and people struggled to find transportation to the capital. Many protesters brought their children, and some mothers were pushing baby carriages. Some marched alongside a mock hearse meant to symbolize the death of Ms. Park’s government. Teenagers in school uniforms marched holding signs that said, “Park Geun-hye, step down!” Protesters also used Saturday’s rally to voice their anger at Ms. Park’s unpopular policies, including her decision to replace privately published history textbooks with uniform government-issued texts by next year. Many also criticized the agreement that Ms. Park’s government struck with Japan on the issue of the so-called comfort women , Korean sex slaves who were forced to work in brothels for Japanese soldiers during World War II. The main opposition party has yet to call for Ms. Park’s resignation, although its leaders joined the rally on Saturday. The party wants to reduce her role to that of a figurehead, demanding that she distance herself from key policy decisions. Ms. Park’s five-year term ends in early 2018. Since 1948, South Koreans have seen three governments ousted before the end of their terms. The country’s first president, Syngman Rhee, fled into exile in Hawaii amid a popular uprising in 1960. The succeeding government was overthrown by Mr. Park’s father, who seized power in a military coup in 1961. His rule ended when he was assassinated in 1979.

Seoul
Park Geun-hye
Choi Soon-sil
Civil Unrest


Rebound in India Leaves Some to Struggle

Abstract: NEW DELHI — When the Indian government met the largest economic crisis the world has faced in nearly 80 years with tax cuts, aid for rural workers and interest rate cuts, critics said it was not enough. Now, though, it looks as if the policy makers may have offered too much. India’s $1 trillion economy, largely insulated from the global crisis by low reliance on exports and a heavily regulated banking system, has exceeded expectations and is on target for more than 6 percent growth in gross domestic product this year. Inflation, not slowdown, may be the biggest danger India faces. Industrial output is above its pre-crisis peak, and inflation is already well into double-digits, said Maya Bhandari, an economist with Lombard Street Research, in London. Unless monetary policy is significantly tightened, “inflation is poised to shoot through the roof,” she said in a report this month. Between last October and April, the Reserve Bank of India cut its policy rates six times, trimming a total of four percentage points from both the repo rate, at which commercial banks borrow from the central bank, and the cash reserve ratio, the cash they must hold against customer’s deposits. The Reserve Bank undertook “the mother of all monetary easing to successfully counter the hit triggered by the Lehman crisis last year,” said Macquarie Securities in a note this month. Monetary loosening was joined in December by what officials called “Step One” of a three-part stimulus plan: a tax cut of 4 percentage points on nearly all goods except petroleum products; $1.5 billion in small business funding and cuts in gas prices. In January, the government more than doubled, to $15 billion, the limit on foreign investor buying of rupee-denominated financial investments, and increased lending to states. In February, it trimmed service and excise taxes by 2 percentage points. The 2009 budget, in July, raised government spending by 36 percent, to 10.2 trillion rupees, or $220 billion, with a focus on improving India’s shoddy infrastructure and providing jobs in rural areas. Spending to counter rural unemployment rose 144 percent to $8.1 billion; spending by the Ministry of Highways and Road Transport increased 17 percent to $4.4 billion and fertilizer subsidies for farmers were raised. Much of this money has yet to be spent, but some indicators show that G.D.P. growth is on target to meet or exceed economists’ estimates of 6 percent this year. After several months of layoffs and shrinking contracts, India’s flagship industry, information technology, has started hiring again; auto sales, helped by tax breaks worth several hundred dollars on even the cheapest cars, are booming; industrial production growth hit a near-two-year high in August, with output up 10.4 percent from a year earlier, and the Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex index this month hit the psychologically important 17,000 mark, up 115 percent from one-year lows in March. Still, critics of India’s response to the global crisis say it has been unfocused and has failed to fix structural flaws standing in the way of the country’s economic superpower ambitions. “They didn’t have a holistic picture” of what should be done, said Rajiv Luthra, managing partner of Luthra & Luthra, a New Delhi law firm that advises on foreign investment, infrastructure and energy projects. “Where there is a big meltdown in the economy, rulers should try to build it upward,” he said, arguing that more money could have gone to low-income housing, construction jobs for semiskilled workers, education and infrastructure. Big exporters, meanwhile, including textile, jewelry and crafts manufacturers — often small and midsize businesses but employing in total hundreds of millions of people — have missed out on government aid despite being hit by the one-two punch of a global recession and a dropping dollar, which makes their goods more expensive in many markets. “We are desperate,” said Rakesh Vaid, head of Usha Fabs clothing exporters in Gurgaon, India, and chairman of the Apparel Export Promotion Council, a garment exporters’ trade group. Whether policy makers will help them out is not yet clear: but it would be “a mistake to think that the world economy has recovered,” Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission, said this month.


Clash Between NATO and Pakistani Forces Defused

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — A cross-border incident involving NATO and Pakistani forces was quickly defused early on Wednesday with no loss of life, according to Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for the American-led international coalition here. Few details of the incident were immediately available but it apparently involved heavy artillery fire across the Afghanistan- Pakistan border in Afghanistan’s Paktika province. The firing broke out at a time of Pakistani anger over the killing of 24 of its soldiers in a United States air strike on Saturday. Pakistan closed its border to NATO supply convoys and pulled out of an international conference on Afghanistan next week in Bonn in protest at the killings. Separately, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed regret at Pakistan’s decision to stay away from the Bonn conference. “Frankly, it is regrettable that Pakistan has decided not to attend the conference in Bonn, because this conference has been long in the planning,” Mrs. Clinton said in Busan, South Korea before flying to Myanmar on Wednesday. “Pakistan, like the United States, has a profound interest in a secure, stable, increasingly democratic Afghanistan. Our gathering in Bonn this coming Monday is intended to further that goal.” In the latest border incident, General Jacobson said it was reassuring that normal channels of cooperation and communication had been opened to resolve the issue. “We haven’t got the details yet but the most important thing is the normal methods of cooperation worked and there were no casualties, no damage despite heavy firing,” he said.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Galatasaray Advances After Defeating Schalke

Abstract: Visiting Galatasaray beat Schalke 04, 3-2, to advance to the Champions League quarterfinals with a 4-3 victory on aggregate. Umut Bulut scored the winner in the fifth minute of stoppage time, though Galatasaray would have advanced anyway with a 2-2 draw. ¶ The American midfielder Carli Lloyd will be sidelined six to eight weeks after breaking a bone in her left shoulder in the Algarve Cup in Portugal.


Texas: Housing Ban Is Struck Down

Abstract: A federal judge in Dallas struck down an ordinance on Wednesday in the suburb of Farmers Branch that would have barred illegal immigrants from renting housing there. The judge, Jane J. Boyle of Federal District Court, issued a permanent injunction, finding that the ordinance violated the Constitution by regulating immigration , which she found to be “an exclusively federal power.”

Texas
Illegal Immigrants
Federal District Courts
Constitutions


Liu Fund-Raiser Pleads Not Guilty to Fraud Charges

Abstract: A lawyer for Xing Wu Pan, a top fund-raiser for John C. Liu , the New York City comptroller, told a federal judge on Friday that he intended to seek dismissal of the indictment against his client on grounds of “outrageous misconduct by the government.” But Mr. Pan’s lawyer, Irwin Rochman, did not elaborate on what that misconduct might be. Mr. Rochman made his comment to the judge in a brief appearance in Federal District Court in Manhattan at which Mr. Pan also pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and attempted wire fraud. A spokeswoman for Preet Bharara, the United States attorney, said the office had no comment on Mr. Rochman’s statements. Prosecutors have charged that Mr. Pan, a New Jersey real estate developer who is also known as Oliver, agreed to help an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, who was posing as a Chinese-American businessman, funnel thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to Mr. Liu. Mr. Liu, a Democrat from Flushing, Queens, has not been accused of wrongdoing, and he has indicated his office has been cooperating with the authorities. Asked by the judge, Richard J. Sullivan, how he pleaded to the charges, Mr. Pan said, “Not guilty, Your Honor.” Mr. Pan had no comment after the hearing. Mr. Rochman, asked by reporters to elaborate on his claim about government misconduct, said, “We’re going to make a motion to dismiss the case based on outrageous conduct by the government in the manner in which it conducted the undercover operation which resulted in this indictment.” He said later that he could not discuss the details of the motion until he had filed it. Mr. Rochman declined to comment on whether his client had been in talks with prosecutors. A government court filing in December said that prosecutors and a previous defense lawyer, who is no longer representing Mr. Pan, “have had discussions regarding a possible disposition of this case, but the negotiations have not been completed.” In court, Judge Sullivan said he wanted to keep the case moving, and scheduled a conference for early April. A prosecutor, Steve C. Lee, said the government would be providing the defense with discovery materials, including audio and video recordings of the defendant and wiretap recordings.

New York City
Frauds and Swindling
Office of the Comptroller (NYC)
Liu John C
Pan Xing Wu
Campaign Finance
Elections Comptrollers


For Africa, a Pivotal Plane Crash

Abstract: LONDON — It was a tragedy that resonated far from its time and its place. When Dag Hammarskjold, the secretary general of the United Nations, perished in an air crash in what was then Northern Rhodesia in September 1961, his death laid a first layer in a palimpsest of conflicting narratives that the United Nations this week pledged to revisit with a new review by a panel of experts. Mr. Hammarskjold’s plane went down eight miles from the airport at Ndola on the Copperbelt of what is now Zambia. He had planned a meeting there with Moise Tshombe, leader of a secession in the neighboring Congolese region of Katanga that was backed by many Western interests. His mission was to end the fighting. It was a story of Cold War rivalry and human idealism pitted against greed and realpolitik. As the Congo sought to emerge from Belgian rule, Mr. Hammarskjold, a 56-year-old Swede, was a messenger of peace flying into a war zone where United Nations forces fought secessionist troops backed by foreign mercenaries. Did the plane simply crash or was it brought down? Was it simply an accident, the result of human error — or the fruit of human design signaling a gigantic loss of innocence for a continent? For many Swedes, looking back from today’s vantage, Mr. Hammarskjold’s death was part of a catalog of loss among their elite, from the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg in 1945 to the death of Anna Lindh in 2003, from the assassination of Folke Bernadotte in 1948 to the murder of Olof Palme in 1986. For all of them, high office and idealism exacted the highest price. When Mr. Hammarskjold died, Africa stood at a crossroads. Only a year earlier, Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister, had declared that the “wind of change” was blowing through the continent. In 1964, Zambia itself declared its independence — part of a process that scored a trail through Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and elsewhere toward the biggest prize of all, South Africa. The fear of those geopolitical dominoes infused colonial thinking. Already, Belgians fleeing the Congo brought with them tales of mayhem that seemed only to confirm the worst nightmares of white minorities farther south. Katanga, said Roy Welensky, head of the colonial-era Central African Federation, which grouped together what are now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, was “an ideal buffer between ourselves and the wilder forms of pan-Africanism to the north of us.” Without that shield, he said, “the alternatives are too frightful to contemplate.” Such was the alarm that, as the conflict worsened in Katanga, Mr. Welensky deployed elite troops to the border area and a detachment of warplanes to the city of Ndola. Far to the north of Africa, electronic listening posts in the Mediterranean run by the United States National Security Agency monitored frequencies on the ground. But this was not just about geopolitics or even the toxic cocktail of race and ideology that drove regional rivalries. The fighting that Mr. Hammarskjold sought to end also posed a familiar question in Africa: Who should benefit from the continent’s riches? That was particularly apt across a swath of Africa where Western mining concerns controlled a trove of uranium, cobalt and other resources. For centuries, it had been axiomatic in the West that Africa’s resources belonged to outsiders, just as Africa’s markets belonged to those same foreigners who processed raw cotton into cloth or rough diamonds into jewelry. But the wave of independence, swollen by the Congo’s emancipation from Belgium, traded colonial exploitation for, at best, an ambiguous economic legacy. And today, where Westerners once strutted on an African stage, building roads and bridges to ease their access, China is the dominant player. All that seemed remote in 1961. But students of modern Africa exploring the dramas of the postcolonial era might start their quest for clues and pointers in the period surrounding that September night, when Transair DC-6B, registration SE-BDY, went down near Ndola. Where the quest leads, of course, is as laden with unknowables as the crash itself.


Karzai Proposes Corruption Reforms

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan president released a sweeping set of proposed reforms late Thursday, including a number aimed at stemming the government’s endemic corruption; the proposals touched every ministry, the attorney general’s office and the Supreme Court. The document, which the president’s spokesman Aimal Faizi described in a Twitter message as a “decree on administrative reforms,” is similar to an executive order and in theory must be complied with by all organs of government. However, Parliament can review it, and many of the provisions are vague, leaving unclear the timetable for compliance and how some of the measures would be financed. One backdrop for the decree was the discontent of donor countries over the government’s failure to stem widespread corruption, nepotism and contract profiteering. At an international conference in Tokyo this month about funding for Afghanistan in the years to come, many countries said their continued financial support was contingent on progress on corruption. “The first intent is to satisfy donors’ demands, which are multiple and not fully reflected in the Tokyo Conference document,” said Candace Rondeaux, the head of the Kabul office of the International Crisis Group , an independent nongovernmental organization aimed at preventing and resolving conflicts. Different countries have long had varying levels of tolerance for corruption, and they have different laws governing foreign aid. Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, judiciary and attorney general’s office have been areas of concern for many donors here. The 23-page list of provisions included a grab bag of policies. Some appeared to be serious gestures aimed at reducing nepotism and corruption, like ones ordering senior government officials to “avoid intervening in the recruitment for the civil service, judiciary and universities,” while others were more symbolic exhortations, including a call for the Women’s Ministry to undertake a public relations campaign about violence against women. One of the more pointed corruption-related provisions called on the Supreme Court to complete all open investigations related to corruption, land grabs and serial assassinations within the next six months. Given the breadth of the document, it seems that it has many purposes, depending on the provision. But one possible motivation is for the president, Hamid Karzai , to have a forum for presenting himself as taking a strong stand against corruption. He has long been in a difficult position because a number of his close allies in the government feel entitled to pressure ministries into giving jobs to their relatives and take kickbacks on contracts. Further, Mr. Karzai’s own relatives have been tarnished by corruption fiascos, including the huge Kabul Bank fraud scandal. In the past, his approach has been to create commissions and offices with investigative power. This time his tone suggests he is issuing an order for action, but as in the past, the enforcement mechanism is vague. Some of the provisions raise serious questions about their intent, like one directed toward the Supreme Court ordering it to “simplify the legal procedures for suspects and convicts within the given timetable.” It is unclear if Mr. Karzai is trying to clear the way for more detainees to be released — many people are held in Afghan jails for long periods without trial — or whether some other end was intended.

Afghanistan
Corruption (Institutional)
Karzai Hamid


Israel Won’t Prosecute for Use of Cluster Bombs in Lebanon

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Israeli military prosecutors announced Monday that they would not press charges over the army’s use of cluster bombs during the war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon , actions that had been widely criticized by human rights organizations. The announcement came as Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams met here Monday evening for the second time since the American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md. Cluster bombs are not prohibited in warfare, but their use is criticized because they contain “bomblets” that explode over a wide area and may strike unintended targets. In addition, bomblets that fail to explode become, in effect, land mines that can be detonated by civilians long after fighting has stopped. More than 30 Lebanese are said to have been killed by munitions left behind after the monthlong war in 2006. Soon after the fighting stopped, a top United Nations aid official, Jan Egeland, described Israel ’s use of cluster bombs as “shocking” and “completely immoral,” not least, he said, because most had been fired in the last 72 hours of the war, when it was clear that the conflict was moving toward a resolution. In November 2006, the Israeli Army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, ordered an investigation into whether the bombs had been fired according to his orders. He resigned in January amid widespread domestic criticism over the way the war had been fought. In a statement on Monday, the army said its chief investigator, Maj. Gen. Gershon Hacohen, had determined that the use of the cluster bombs did not violate international law, and that “the majority of the cluster munitions were fired at open and uninhabited areas, areas from which Hezbollah forces operated and in which no civilians were present.” Hezbollah has also been accused of using cluster munitions among the 4,000 rockets it fired into Israel during the fighting. In the meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams, no progress was registered on substantial issues. But the two sides agreed that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would meet later this week and that the teams would also meet in early January, Israeli officials said, before President Bush arrives in the region on Jan. 8. Both sides have pledged to fulfill their obligations under a 2003 peace plan known as the road map, which calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity, including natural growth, and on the Palestinians to act to halt all violence against Israelis. The Palestinians said before Monday’s meeting that they intended to focus on Israel’s plans to continue building in Jewish settlements, in areas that the Palestinians claim for their future state. After the meeting, Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, condemned the settlement building and said that the Palestinians demanded a construction freeze before talks toward a peace deal could start. Aryeh Mekel, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said that the Palestinians had indeed raised the settlement issue and that Israeli negotiators had raised the security issue. Also Monday, a committee of Israeli ministers led by Vice Premier Haim Ramon began examining the government’s criteria for early release of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli officials said. Loosening those rules could facilitate the return of captured Israeli soldiers who are believed to be held by the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah; it could also open up the possibility of larger prisoner releases to bolster Mr. Abbas, the officials said, speaking anonymously because the issue is still being debated. The current government policy, set in July 2003, bars the release of prisoners with “blood on their hands,” defined as those who participated in attacks in which Israeli or foreign nationals were killed or wounded; their dispatchers; and would-be suicide bombers who were captured before carrying out an attack. Rafi Eitan, a cabinet minister, told Israel Radio on Monday that the current restrictions made it nearly impossible to negotiate for the release of captured soldiers. Hamas is demanding that 450 Palestinian prisoners be let go in exchange for an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was seized in a cross-border raid by Hamas and two other militant groups and taken to Gaza in June 2006. There have been contradictory reports from Hamas in recent days about whether indirect contacts over Corporal Shalit, which had stopped after Hamas gained control of Gaza over the summer, have restarted. The Israeli government maintains a strict official silence on the subject. Since July, Israel has released about 770 Palestinian prisoners in three batches to shore up Mr. Abbas and his government in the West Bank. About 9,000 Palestinian security prisoners remain in Israeli jails. In Gaza, two Palestinians were killed early Monday in an Israeli airstrike. Medical officials and witnesses said the two were Hamas guards patrolling the border. An Israeli Army spokeswoman said there had been an airstrike against Palestinians spotted near the border fence.

Israel
Lebanon
Hezbollah
Bombs and Explosives


Finance Official’s Husband Was New York City’s Highest-Paid Parking Judge

Abstract: The highest-paid parking judge in New York City in 2006 and 2007 is the husband of the first deputy commissioner for the Finance Department, the agency that hires the judges. According to city records, the judge, Allan J. Patricof, earned $110,472 in 2006, the same year that city investigators found that he had submitted time sheets for some hours when he was not at work. Mr. Patricof is married to Rochelle Patricof, the deputy finance commissioner. Mr. Patricof’s earnings were $20,000 more than any of the other 145 administrative law judges who hear ticket cases for the agency. In 2007, Mr. Patricof earned $84,687.24, also more than any other parking judge. The department said it had yet to calculate how much the judges earned in 2008. It has said the deputy commissioner does not have a role in overseeing the hours assigned to parking judges. In 2006, the city’s Department of Investigation compared the sign-in book at the Queens Business Center, where Mr. Patricof worked, with his E-ZPass records and other material. The investigators found more than 100 discrepancies and recommended that the city ask Mr. Patricof to return $8,645. Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark defended Mr. Patricof at the time, saying he had worked the extra hours from his home or his car. But in March, as questions resurfaced about the matter, she announced the agency would no longer use him as a judge. It was the first in a series of events that raised questions about Ms. Stark’s stewardship of the Finance Department and ultimately resulted in her resignation on Tuesday. In response to a Freedom of Information Law request in March, the Department of Investigation released documents showing that it had received several complaints over the years from parking judges about the potential conflict of interest in having Mr. Patricof provide services to an agency largely supervised by his wife. Parking judges are technically not employees of the agency but are paid an hourly wage to preside at hearings. Agency officials have said that the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board did not object to Mr. Patricof’s work as a judge as long as his wife had no role in any matters involving him. The Queens district attorney’s office recently asked city investigators for their records on the Patricof case so as to conduct its own review, according to people briefed on the inquiry who said they could not speak publicly because of the nature of the investigation. Mr. Patricof declined comment for this article. However, a spokesman for the Department of Finance said that Mr. Patricof had not earned any more than the salaried agency employees who typically do the job that he did, as the managing judge at a hearing center. Managing judges in 2006 earned between $88,000 and $113,000, according to the agency. For reasons that remain unclear, Mr. Patricof was allowed to serve as a managing judge in Queens, a supervisory position. Administrative law judges are independent contractors, rather than full-time city employees, so as to preserve their independence. In earning $110,000 in 2006, Mr. Patricof put in for 2,315 hours of work, an average of 8.9 hours a day every weekday of the year, including holidays. The second-highest-paid judge billed for 381 fewer hours. The average judge billed for 847 hours and collected roughly $33,000 for the year. The city’s records indicate that investigators first began reviewing Mr. Patricof’s service for the Finance Department in 2003, when, in response to a complaint, the investigators determined that Rochelle Patricof should have recused herself from a matter that related to her husband’s employment. Though the conflicts board had approved Mr. Patricof’s work for the agency, the investigators said Mrs. Patricof had participated in a meeting in which she and her subordinates discussed the criteria for promoting judges. Mrs. Patricof told investigators she played no role in selecting the judges who were promoted. The investigators, in a memo, did not dispute that, but noted that Mr. Patricof had been one of 11 judges promoted after the meeting. The conflicts board found that Mrs. Patricof’s actions did not warrant discipline . But in 2007, the Department of Investigation reiterated that having Mr. Patricof as a managing judge while his wife served as a deputy finance commissioner “continues to be a lightning rod for criticism and allegations.” Department of Investigation officials said they chose not to pursue their findings about Mr. Patricof’s billings because Ms. Stark found that the judge had not acted inappropriately. Ms. Stark said that while the judge’s time sheets did not accurately reflect the time he was physically present at the Queens hearing office, they accurately reflected the amount of time he had worked. This year, though, when questions about the matter resurfaced, Ms. Stark said she would seek to reassign Mr. Patricof. Within weeks, Ms. Stark began to draw fire for her outside work on the board of a private real estate company; her romantic relationship with a former subordinate; and the employment of relatives in her department. When it became clear last week that she no longer had the support of the mayor, Ms. Stark turned in her resignation .

New York City
Finance Department
Conflicts of Interest
Patricof Allan J
Patricof Rochelle
Wages and Salaries
Stark Martha E


Merck Plans to Lay Off Another 8,500 Workers

Abstract: The pharmaceutical company Merck announced on Tuesday that it would lay off 8,500 employees, cut $2.5 billion in costs over the next two years and undertake a restructuring of its troubled research and development unit, which has suffered several major setbacks in recent years. The company also announced that it was abandoning plans to move from Whitehouse Station, N.J., to a new headquarters and would instead consolidate its operations at an existing facility in Kenilworth, N.J. In a statement, Merck’s chief executive, Kenneth C. Frazier, said the actions were aimed at making the company more competitive and “better positioned to drive innovation and to more effectively commercialize medicines and vaccines for the people who need them.” The actions will significantly reshape one of the world’s largest drug companies: together with previously announced layoffs of 7,500 employees, the new dismissals will reduce the company’s global work force of 81,000 employees by about 20 percent, Merck said. The cost cuts are expected to be completed by the end of 2015, with $1 billion in reductions accomplished by the end of 2014, the company said. Investors responded positively to the news: shares of Merck rose 2.4 percent in Tuesday’s trading. The announcement follows a series of major research setbacks in the company’s late-stage clinical pipeline that had analysts questioning Merck’s direction. A week ago, the Food and Drug Administration rejected its application for an anticipated anesthesia drug, sugammadex, citing concerns about a hypersensitivity study in patients, and earlier this year the agency rejected an application for a new sleep drug, suvorexant. In that case, the F.D.A. indicated it would eventually approve the drug in a different dosage. Merck also disappointed investors earlier this year when it announced it would delay its application for another promising drug, the osteoporosis treatment odanacatib. In March, Merck hired a new research and development director , Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter, the former research head of Amgen. The company also had trouble holding on to sales of existing products: Merck’s profit fell by half in the second quarter of this year, mainly because of competition from generic alternatives to older medicines. “I think this is consistent with what everybody else has done in the industry,” said Les Funtleyder, a strategist at Poliwogg, a New York investment firm. “When you’ve had some clinical trial failures and you’ve had a number of products go generic, you either have to find new revenue through acquisitions or you cut costs through head count reductions — they’re going the head count route.” Merck said on Tuesday that it would refocus its research and development unit on the most promising treatment areas, like its anti-PD-1 immunotherapy program for cancer, a drug designed to disable the molecular shields that protect tumors and unleash the body’s own immune system to fight them. Several other drug makers, including Bristol-Myers Squibb and Roche’s Genentech unit, are developing similar treatments. The company said it would also increase its focus on diabetes, acute hospital care and vaccines, which it said represented opportunities to fulfill unmet medical needs as well as promising business prospects.


Van Spirits Away Protester in Egypt, Signaling Crackdown on Criticism Over Gaza

Abstract: CAIRO — State security came for Philip Rizk on Friday night. He had just finished a six-mile protest walk with about 15 friends to raise support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip when he was detained for hours and then hustled into an unmarked van and driven off. He has not been seen or heard from since. For two days the authorities denied that he was being held. Then on Sunday, at 10 p.m., a security official at the American University in Cairo, where Mr. Rizk studies, was able to confirm his arrest to his family. His mother and father tried to get some sleep, but at 1 a.m., security agents showed up at their door, five plainclothesmen and two guards carrying automatic weapons. After searching their apartment, the security agents tried to take his father, Magid, away, too. He refused to go, and the authorities backed off when representatives of the German Embassy and Amnesty International arrived in the middle of the night. Philip Rizk’s mother, Judith, is German, and he has dual Egyptian-German citizenship. “It’s like a bad movie,” Mrs. Rizk said. The war in Gaza has left its mark in Egypt . The authorities here have been increasingly frustrated with criticism at home and abroad for refusing to fully open the border between Rafah and Gaza. Now, according to the accounts of five witnesses to Mr. Rizk’s arrest, and interviews with his parents, his sisters, human rights lawyers and some of his professors, it appears that the Egyptian authorities have turned to the country’s emergency law to silence criticism of its Gaza policy. The law, adopted to combat terrorism after President Anwar el-Sadat was gunned down in 1981, allows the government to detain people without charge and effectively eliminates any right to due process. The government acknowledges holding about 1,800 prisoners without charge under the emergency law, but human rights groups say the number could be closer to 10,000. The law is routinely used against members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated social and political movement. Dozens of Brotherhood followers have been arrested since the start of the Gaza conflict. “Officially, nobody knows where Philip is,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director in the Middle East and North Africa for Amnesty International. “Philip has disappeared.” A spokesman for Egypt’s Interior Ministry, which handles all matters of internal security, was furious at being asked about the case. The spokesman is a general, but talked only on the condition that he not be identified by name because of the security nature of his work. He declined to answer questions, and said: “This happened within the framework of the Egyptian law. You can go to the office of the general prosecutor. I have no information about Philip. Who said they don’t know where he is? What is the secret behind the interest of The New York Times in Philip? Are you working for human rights organizations?” The general was angry; the Rizk family was terrified. Judith and Magid Rizk live in a small, neat apartment, in a rare quiet section of Cairo. Mr. Rizk is a small book publisher, a man who wears starched white shirts and sweater vests. He is not a political man. But he said he supported his son’s interests in social causes. “This is his niche, his passion,” Mr. Rizk said. He does not want to antagonize the authorities. He said he just wanted his son back in time for his birthday. Philip Rizk turns 27 on Thursday. “We don’t know where he is; we have not talked to him. We don’t know if he is eating, if he is sleeping; we don’t know what they are doing to him,” Mrs. Rizk said. She was tired, scared and, after having lived her adult life in Egypt, stunned that men with machine guns and riot gear had come to her door. The family started a Facebook page to gather and publicize pleas for his release. Mr. Rizk appears tall and thin as he walks through the scenes of a 28-minute movie he made, “The Palestinian Life, Village Stories.” After he graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois with a degree in philosophy, he moved to Gaza to work with an Anglican charity. He lived there for two years, and during that time made his rather somber documentary of average Palestinians trying to survive. “I found that because violence makes news, the stories of ordinary people never get out,” he said in the introduction. His film, he said, celebrated samud, or the steadfastness, of the Palestinians. When he returned to Cairo, he enrolled in a master’s program in Middle East studies at the university. He also joined a group in Cairo called the Popular Committee in Solidarity With the Palestinian People. It was a left-leaning group of mostly young activists. About a month ago, the group decided to stage a symbolic march to Gaza. About half of the participants were Egyptian and half foreign. The group met Friday morning and took a bus north from Cairo to the Qalyubiya governate, an hour away. The demonstrators walked for about two hours, waving Palestinian flags and talking with local residents. Mr. Rizk carried a handwritten sign in Arabic reading: “We are fed up. Open the Rafah border.” When the walk was over, the marchers climbed into small buses or their own cars for the ride back to Cairo and were quickly detained. Witnesses described being surrounded by large numbers of police officers for about four hours and being promised that everything was routine and that they would be released soon. A human rights lawyer arrived. The marchers were taken to a local police department and told that their passports would be copied and that they would then be released. At that point, the police asked to speak to Mr. Rizk. After some negotiating he agreed to enter the police station with the lawyer, but the police distracted the lawyer and hustled Mr. Rizk out a back door. He managed to phone his friends, who said they threw themselves in front of the van he was in, but were pulled off by the police. Three members of the group chased the van in their car for more than half an hour, until they were stopped at a roadblock. Security police officers started visiting the homes and offices of other young people involved in the trip. Sarah Carr, a dual British-Egyptian citizen and reporter for the English-language Daily News, who covered the event, was too afraid to go home, or to work after hearing that the police had inquired about her. Katharine Hall, 20, of Britain, was sitting in a cafe in downtown Cairo when her roommate phoned to tell her that the police had come to their door. “I don’t know where I’ll be, and I am not telling you,” Ms. Hall said as her cheeks flushed red. “They are trying to scare me. So I don’t want them to find me.” She left the cafe. On Sunday, about 50 students and faculty members at the American University in Cairo’s campus held a small demonstration calling on the authorities to release Mr. Rizk. The signs they held up said, “Where is Philip?”

Egypt
Palestinians
Gaza Strip
Amnesty International
Freedom and Human Rights
Demonstrations and Riots
Rizk Philip
Colleges and Universities


Freddie Freeman’s Vision Problem Subsides, but Hitting Problem Lingers

Abstract: ATLANTA — A hitter is nothing without his eyes, which is why anxiety gripped Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman last month when his vision started blurring. What if his career was being sideswiped? A hitter might as well have a Wiffle ball bat in his hands if he goes to the plate and his vision is not right. Freeman, 22 and in his second season as the Braves ’ regular first baseman, was scared, and rightfully so. The problem began May 5 when a wind storm kicked up at Coors Field in Denver, where the Braves were playing the Colorado Rockies. The night before, Freeman had gone 4 for 6, raising his batting average to .302, or 20 points higher than he hit in 2011, his impressive rookie season. With the ability to hit for average and power, Freeman seemed destined to replace Chipper Jones as the No. 3 hitter in the Braves’ lineup once Jones retires at the end of the season. But now as the wind blew hard enough to cover the first-row table in the press box with dust and dirt, Freeman felt his eyes go dry. He changed his contact lenses six times in the game. In the seventh inning, he played first base while wearing sunglasses to keep the wind out of his eyes. But in the process of repeatedly changing his contact lenses, Freeman scratched the cornea of his right eye. That created his blurred vision and in the days and weeks that followed he proceeded to sit out games, play with goggles, change contact lenses over and over and use prescription eye drops. Meanwhile, his average has plummeted 50 points. “The worry? On a scale of 1-10, a 10,” Freeman said Monday as he prepared to play the Yankees while batting fifth in the lineup. “I have never had an eye problem. I make my living using my eyes. You kind of have a little panic attack because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Is it going to come back? Do I have to wear goggles, can I wear contacts?” For the moment at least, Freeman is wearing regular glasses in batting practice to minimize exposure to any wind. The scratched cornea is healed and he is back to wearing contact lenses in games, but while he is confident he has his vision back, he still does not have his swing where he wants. In 106 at-bats since the wind began kicking up that day in Denver, Freeman has just 21 hits. His line in box scores over the last month are littered with 0-for-3s, 0-for-4s and even 0-for-5s. In two games against the Yankees this week, he is 0 for 7. Still, at least he can see what he is swinging at now, which was not always the case right after the incident. “I was helpless out there, I couldn’t see, and I was hurting the team,” Freeman said. “I didn’t know what was going on. I was getting frustrated. I didn’t know what to do. It’s taken me a month to have confidence in my eyes again.” Jones said: “Freddie went through a period where he had no depth perception. There was some real concern. I can’t imagine trying to hit major league pitching with perception problems. “You can do your homework,” Jones added, “but if you are not picking up pitches out of the pitcher’s hand it really doesn’t do you much good.” At one point in the ordeal, Freeman thought he was cured. He arrived at the ballpark and found that the sports goggles that had been made for him after his trouble in Colorado had just arrived in the mail. Freeman was still in his street clothes, but grabbed his bat and dashed to the batting cage outside the clubhouse. After ripping a few pitches, Freeman burst out of the cage and ran to Manager Freddie Gonzalez’s office. Frank Wren, the general manager; Bruce Manno, the assistant general manager; and Gonzalez were having their regular early afternoon meeting and Freeman went around the room with a high-five for everyone present. “I can see!” he exclaimed. The euphoria did not last. Freeman got back in the cage against a 90 mile-an-hour fastball and discovered a blind spot. The nose piece on the goggles had created a black spot in his vision. The goggles were not a solution, just more of the puzzle to solve. For the Braves, there was a twist to all this that was hard to ignore. The 40-year-old Jones, the player Freeman is envisioned as replacing in the No. 3 spot in the lineup, has been continually hampered by physical ailments in recent seasons but his vision is 20-15, better than perfect. Asked if he could have continued playing the last few years without the acute eyesight that can spot the spinning of the stitches on a baseball after it leaves the pitcher’s hand, Jones had a simple answer. “No,” he said. Freeman, when he is on the ball and seeing it all the way to the plate, has the swing and the work ethic a successful ballplayer needs. He comes early to the park and stays late. He can be coached. He plays hurt, within limits, and is liked by his teammates. Jason Heyward, the Braves’ 22-year-old right fielder, used to be considered the future cornerstone of the Braves. Selected in the first round of the 2007 draft, he burst into the big leagues in 2010 with a home run on opening day, a three-run blast in his first at-bat in the big leagues. But plagued by shoulder and thumb injuries, Heyward slipped to a .227 batting average last season, with just 42 runs batted in. Freeman, who was picked in the second round of the 2007 draft, was Heyward’s minor league roommate. But he ranks higher than Heyward these days, provided he gets everything back in sync. When Freeman is going well, with his front shoulder tucked in at the plate so that he does not fly open as the pitch approaches, he hits line drives into left-center field or back up the middle. Recently, though, he has been out in front of pitches, a carry-over from the way he was hitting when his vision was shaky and he was starting his swing too early. “It’s been a trying month, a lot of downs,” Freeman said. “I have never had a problem before. It’s humbling — you think you are on top of the world and then something like this happens and it brings you right back down to the ground.”


Victor Blanco, Stargazer, Dies at 92

Abstract: Victor Blanco, a Puerto Rican astronomer who helped build a major outpost for American science, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and shepherded it through 14 years of revolution, counterrevolution and economic turmoil, died on March 8. He was 92 and lived in Vero Beach, Fla. His death, near Vero Beach, was confirmed by his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Vitell. Astronomers said Dr. Blanco would be remembered for his scientific, political and managerial skills as the observatory’s director in opening up the Southern sky as a new frontier of cosmic research. When American astronomers worried that the election of a Marxist government under Salvador Allende in 1970 might threaten plans to build what would be the largest telescope in the Southern Hemisphere at the time — 158 inches in diameter — it was Dr. Blanco who was dispatched to explain to President Allende what the Americans were doing on his mountaintop. And when President Allende was overthrown by a military junta and replaced by General Augusto Pinochet three years later amid death squads and disappearances, strikes and food shortages, Dr. Blanco was dispatched to General Pinochet, who decided that he wanted to visit the observatory and asked for a list of Chilean staff members and their political affiliations. Dr. Blanco demurred, saying that that would be an inappropriate intrusion into Chilean politics. “General Pinochet visited Cerro Tololo anyway,” Dr. Blanco wrote in a summary of his life in The Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2001, “and we kept those Chilean staff members we knew to have been pro-Allende away.” Through all the tumult, the observatory stayed open. The Southern sky offers many of the most exciting sights in the universe, like the center of our own Milky Way galaxy and its attendant star clouds and clusters. But historically most astronomers lived in the North and had little access to those Southern wonders. By the late 1950s and early ’60s, astronomers had their eyes on the dark dry mountains of Chile. Cerro Tololo, founded in 1961 in northern Chile, was a collaboration of the National Science Foundation, a consortium of colleges called Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy and the University of Chile. No small part of Dr. Blanco’s job was to keep these disparate elements working together while getting roads and buildings built. “Victor had a very delicate sense of diplomacy and customs,” said Robert Kirshner, an astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who said that Dr. Blanco and his wife Betty, also an astronomer, kept a list of all the marriages they had helped arrange. Dr. Blanco’s other major accomplishment was building the 158-inch (4-meter) telescope, a twin of one already built and installed at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, also run by the National Science Foundation. It was completed in 1975, with Dr. Blanco helping to align and test the telescope. South American astronomy took off. The Cerro Tololo investment paid off in 1987 when a star erupted in a bright supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, practically right overhead. Astronomers flocked to Chile, obtaining a trove of data that is still being mined for clues to the violent death of at least one star. A decade later, the observatory played a key role in the discovery that the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating under the influence of a mysterious dark energy , a discovery that has shaken physics and astronomy. Victor Manuel Blanco was born March 10, 1918, in Guayama, P.R., one of nine children of a policeman, Felipe Blanco, and a housewife, Adelfa Pagan de Blanco. As a boy in San Juan with astronomical dreams, he raised pigs that he named after asteroids and built a backyard telescope. He nevertheless entered a local college intending to study medicine, until an acquaintance of a University of Chicago graduate student reawakened his love of the stars. He transferred to the University of Chicago, but before he could finish he was drafted into the Army in World War II and spent six years repairing and tuning radar detectors and studying atmospheric effects on radar waves. Granted college credit for his wartime work, he returned briefly to Chicago and then entered the University of California, Berkeley. He received a Ph.D. in 1949. After six years at what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Dr. Blanco joined the Naval Observatory as the director of a program to measure star positions. He left after two years, in 1967, to become the second director of Cerro Tololo. Dr. Blanco stepped down in 1981 after 14 years, but remained at Cerro Tololo to continue research. His marriage, to Cicely Woods during the war, ended in divorce. He is survived by a his son from that marriage, Daniel; his second wife, Betty; two stepchildren, David Mintz and Ms. Vitell, from his second marriage; and three grandchildren. Although the 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo is no longer the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, it is still at the forefront of research. Equipped with a special digital “dark energy camera” built at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, the telescope will embark this year on a survey of some 300 million galaxies in an effort to discern the effect of dark energy on the evolution of the universe. In a mountaintop ceremony in 1995, the telescope was named the Victor M. Blanco telescope.

Chile
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Blanco Victor
Deaths (Obituaries)
Space


Giraffes, Towering and Otherworldly, Are ‘Vulnerable’ to Extinction

Abstract: The majestic giraffe, the world’s tallest land mammal and a prime attraction at zoos worldwide, is threatened with extinction because of illegal hunting and a loss of its habitat, according to a report published on Thursday by an international monitoring group. The giraffe population has declined by 40 percent over the past three decades and now stands at about 97,600, according to the findings by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which designates endangered species. While the largest giraffe populations reside in national parks and reserves, those protected areas have proved to be inadequate, one of several alarming conclusions about the animals’ future in the group’s latest Red List of Threatened Species report. “While global attention has been on threats to elephants and rhinos, giraffes have been off the radar, and we’ve been losing them in significant numbers,” said Liz Bennett, the vice president for species conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which was not involved in the report. “People and governments need to start acting to save giraffes, fast.” With their soaring heights of up to 20 feet and their stunning necks, which are typically about six feet long, giraffes have long been the stuff of dreams — for children who love to draw them and for adults who retain an awe for the otherworldly creatures. Their tongues can extend a foot or more, making feeding times an especially popular sight at zoos and on safari. Yet the animals’ rare size and regal visage have made them a prime target of poachers in Africa, who drop steel-wire snares from tree canopies or stalk and shoot giraffes with rifles, wildlife experts say. The threat to giraffes is so great that the Red List upgraded the species from the “least concern” category to “vulnerable,” skipping over the intermediary “near-threatened” designation. Graver categories include “critically endangered,” “extinct in the wild” and, ultimately, “extinct.” The animals are divided into nine subspecies; according to the Red List report, five have decreasing populations, three are on the increase, and one is stable. One bright spot: The numbers of West African giraffes are on the rise, numbering about 400 now, up from 50 in the 1990s. This remains the smallest of the subspecies. Asked if it was possible for giraffes to become extinct in the wild in the next 20 years if nothing is done, Derek Lee, an ecologist who contributed to the Red List report, paused for several moments during a phone interview on Thursday from Tanzania. He then said, “I think we’d see drastic declines at the very least.” Giraffes are found mostly in southern and eastern Africa, with smaller populations in West and Central Africa. Some of those populations are particularly vulnerable because of war and other civil unrest in countries on the Continent, like Sudan. Poaching and the loss of habitat are “equally dangerous threats that vary in degree from place to place,” said Dr. Lee, who is a founder of the Wild Nature Institute. While governments and organizations could take stronger actions against poaching by enforcing laws and animal protection rules, habitat loss can be harder to stop because it involves curbing economic activity, such as land development, mining and scavenging. “These are problems everywhere for giraffes,” Dr. Lee said. “You need to stop both threats.” The threat to giraffes is not expected to affect their numbers at zoos in New York and other cities around the world, wildlife specialists said, because zookeepers have a good record helping the animals with reproduction. Still, zoo leaders are likely to consider changing signs at their exhibits to stress the animals’ vulnerability to extinction as a way to raise public awareness. “That would be the best way to get the word out to people that we need to do more to protect these animals,” said Dr. Bennett, of the conservation society, which runs the Bronx Zoo, the New York Aquarium and other zoos in the city.


Sara Lee Posts $153 Million Profit

Abstract: The Sara Lee Corporation posted a quarterly profit on Thursday, reversing a loss a year ago, but cut its full-year outlook because of rising commodity costs and said it might sell two units. The company, which has sold several business lines and is splitting in two, says it is considering selling its international bakery and North American refrigerated dough businesses. Sara Lee reported net income of $153 million, or 25 cents a share, for the quarter ended April 2, the third quarter of its fiscal year. That compared with a loss of $336 million, or 49 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 24 cents a share, up from 22 cents a share a year ago but short of the 25 cents expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet. Revenue in the period rose 7 percent, to $2.22 billion from $2.07 billion, helped by higher prices among other factors. But investors were receptive to Sara Lee’s commitment to narrowing its business and shedding lower-performing operations, and its stock rose 14 cents to close at $19.28 a share on Thursday. Sara Lee, which is based in Downers Grove, Ill., has raised prices and cut costs to offset higher costs for meat, coffee and other commodities. But Sara Lee leaders said prices might now be high enough to make less expensive store brands more attractive to consumers, further hurting profits. The company now expects to earn 79 to 83 cents a share on an adjusted basis, down from its previous forecast of 85 to 89 cents a share and below the 86 cents analysts expected.

Company Reports
Sara Lee Corp
Stocks and Bonds


Testing on the Water in America’s Cup

Abstract: When the AC 45 foiling catamarans hit the Hudson River on Thursday morning, it was the culmination of almost a week’s work by skeleton shore crews. Riggers have been splicing lines of aramid fibers and rebuilding winches under headlamps in Jersey City while the sailors rest each night. This is the America’s Cup World Series, where points count for earning the right to challenge Oracle Team U.S.A. in the fall of 2017 in the America’s Cup in Bermuda. But the races that spectators will be watching off Battery Park this weekend are only part of the effort required to win the Cup. This weekend’s races feature AC 45s, built to be identical, while larger, more customized AC 50s are used in the finals. But the first of the new AC 50 boats have yet to be built, and teams have been testing innovative wing and foil systems on modified AC 45s referred to as “sport boats” at their bases in Bermuda and around the world. After the World Series event in New York, the crews head to Chicago, where they will race on Lake Michigan in June. The small gap between the races provides little time for rest. “The whole show here will be packed up on Monday and we’ll be sailing the sport boats on Tuesday,” said Andrew Henderson, known as Hendo, who is the Australian shore operations manager for Oracle Team U.S.A. His voice was starting to crack from shouting across the yard all week. He oversees the safety of the sailing team on and off the water, including when the towering wing sails are precariously swinging in the breeze from a crane before they are attached to the boats. For the teams with bases in Bermuda, the testing of the sport boats is just as important as the World Series races on the Hudson. Although the AC 50 is designed to specifications, there is latitude to develop wing and hydrofoil control systems that are being tested on the trial boats weekly. The first to master control of the new class will be able to outmaneuver the others and keep the pedal down longer. Teams are allowed to start sailing AC 50s in late January. This year’s World Series ends in November, and through the end of the year, the 45s will be inventing and fine-tuning the systems that the 50s will use.

Hudson River
Sailing
America's Cup
Oracle Racing


Steelers’ Legursky Is Thrust Into Super Bowl’s Glare

Abstract: ARLINGTON, Tex. Two weeks ago, few outside of Steelers Nation knew about Doug Legursky. Now, mere days before the biggest football game of the season, the 24-year-old Legursky finds himself at the center of suspense surrounding Pittsburgh’s matchup with the Green Bay Packers. On media day, one coach pointed to Legursky and called him the most important player on the field in Super Bowl XLV on Sunday. Others have predicted that Legursky’s performance against the Packers would go a long way in determining whether Pittsburgh wins or loses. Remarkable stuff for a second-year player whose N.F.L. career hung by a slender thread. But this is one of the things that gives the Super Bowl its luster. After you get beyond the obvious stars — high-profile quarterbacks, hard-running backs and hard-charging defenders — the game invariably turns on a heroic performance by someone at the margins. Except that the 6-foot-1, 315-pound Legursky is no longer at the margins. He is literally front and center. Legursky was thrust into the spotlight two weeks ago in the first quarter of the A.F.C. championship game against the Jets when the Steelers ’ sensational rookie center, Maurkice Pouncey, severely injured his ankle. Except for two poor exchanges, Legursky was solid in relief. The problem was that one of the bad exchanges with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger occurred as the Steelers were pinned just outside their goal line, and the subsequent fumble resulted in a safety. Pittsburgh won the game, but a major theme of this Super Bowl is whether Pouncey will play — and if he does not, whether Legursky can help stop the hottest defense in the N.F.L. Green Bay has the hottest nose tackle, B. J. Raji, and the hottest linebacker, Clay Matthews III. “This is the guy who kind of embodies the more-you-can-do attitude that our football team has,” Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin said. “He competes, he’s mentally and physically tough, and we expect him to meet the standard.” Legursky was signed by the Steelers as an undrafted free agent out of Marshall in 2008. He was released after the organized team activities, or O.T.A.’s, then was invited to camp and was cut before the regular season began. He was trying out for the Arena League team in Michigan in October 2009 when he got a call from the Steelers. “They said, ‘Don’t take another snap; come now,’ ” Legursky said. He joined the Steelers without a change of clothes. The rest has been sort of anonymous history. He played eight games last season and all 16 this season, with four starts at right guard, impressing the Steelers with his versatility and, more than anything else, with his tenacity. Pouncey, who began playing center only as a college sophomore, credits Legursky with helping him adjust to the dizzying array of N.F.L. defenses. They have become each other’s biggest fan. “I’m happy for Doug, to tell you the truth,” Pouncey said. “If I’m not playing, I’ve got all the faith in Doug. We learn from each other. He teaches me stuff, I teach him stuff.” Pouncey compared Legursky to Steelers linebacker James Harrison, who also had a steep climb to make it in the N.F.L. “He got cut and had to do a lot of other stuff, but got an opportunity to play and he’s taking full advantage,” Pouncey said of Harrison. “Hopefully Doug has the same experience.” Pouncey missed practice again Wednesday and estimated his health at 75 percent. Legursky has been asked about his readiness, and about his feelings about the Packers’ defense, but what he finds most compelling is that for the first time in recent Super Bowl history, some of the pregame hype focuses on a center. “If you would have said that an offensive lineman would be the hot topic of debate, it would have been crazy,” he said. Someone asked Legursky if he was unsettled by the uncertainty surrounding his playing status. “My mind-set wouldn’t be any different if they told me I’m playing or if they told me I wasn’t playing or if we don’t know,” he said. “I’m going into the game preparing as if I’m playing every snap. That’s the way I’ve gone into every game this year.” If he plays Sunday Legursky will have to call out signals, identify defensive alignments, make calls for the offensive line — and he will have to block B. J. Raji. Can he do this ? Raji heaped praise on Pouncey on Wednesday and referred to Legursky as “the other guy.” Harold Goodwin, who is the Steelers’ offensive quality-control coach and helps with the offensive line, had a warning for anyone who would take Legursky lightly. “I’m sure B. J. Raji would much rather see Doug Legursky than Maurkice Pouncey,” Goodwin said. “But he doesn’t know what he’s getting into because Doug is going to scrap, he’s going to claw his way till he gets him on the ground and puts him on his back.” “He has a passion for the game,” Goodwin said. “He’s tired of being told he’s too short, he’s tired of being told he’s too small. There’s no answer for toughness. If you got it, you got it. If you don’t, you don’t.” Everyone hopes for at least one shot at glory. Legursky may get his shot Sunday.

Super Bowl
Football
Green Bay Packers
Pittsburgh Steelers
Legursky Doug
Pouncey Maurkice
National Football League
Sports Injuries