It’s a Tough Job Market for the Young Without College Degrees

Abstract: For seniors graduating from the University of Michigan this month, employers have been lining up since the fall to offer interviews and boast of their companies’ benefits. Recruiters would ask when their competitors were coming, said Geni Harclerode, the university’s assistant director of employer development, and then they’d say: “Well, we want to come the week before.” “This has been one of our largest seasons of hiring,” she said. “The job market has been very good.” The outlook for many high school graduates is more challenging, as Vynny Brown can attest. Now 20, he graduated two years ago from Waller High School in Texas, and has been working for nearly a year at Pappasito’s Cantina in Houston, part of a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants. He earns $7.25 an hour filling takeout orders or $2.13 an hour plus tips as a server, which rarely adds up to more than the minimum, he said. He would like to apply to be a manager, but those jobs require some college experience. “That is something I don’t have,” said Mr. Brown, who says he cannot afford to go to college now. “It’s the biggest struggle I’ve had.” Most young workers have the same problem as Mr. Brown. Only 10 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds have a college or advanced degree, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute , although many more of them will eventually graduate. And for young high school graduates, the unemployment rate is disturbingly high: 17.8 percent. Add in those who are underemployed, either because they would like a full-time job but can only find part-time work, or they are so discouraged that they’ve given up actively searching, and the share jumps to more than 33 percent. Younger workers have always had a tougher time finding a job than their older, more experienced counterparts. Even so, the economic recovery has progressed more slowly for young high school graduates than for those coming out of college. “It’s improved since the recession, but it’s still pretty poor,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, who noted the average hourly wage for high school graduates had declined since 2000 despite increases in the minimum wage in some places. Ms. Gould is part of a growing chorus of economists, employers and educators who argue more effort needs to be put into improving job prospects for people without college degrees. “Without question we have failed to pay attention to and invest in opportunities for young people who are not on a path to go to four years of college,” said Chauncy Lennon, the head of work force initiatives at JPMorgan Chase, which has started a $75 million program to design and deliver career-focused education in high schools and community colleges. For high school students, a four-year college education is frequently held out as the only viable option, precisely because job opportunities and wages are so much better upon graduation. But many who sign up never finish. “The most common reason they fail to complete is that they need to start earning a living to support their families,” Mr. Lennon said. Vocational, career and technical high schools have often been stigmatized as a last resort for underachievers. At the same time, educators and administrators in some places have been criticized for steering minority students toward them in lieu of academic programs. The initiative sponsored by Chase is aimed at repairing that reputation. Although some traditional middle-skills opportunities for construction and clerical workers are shrinking, Mr. Lennon said, others are growing. In health care, for instance, radiology and phlebotomy technicians are needed; in advanced manufacturing and aviation, mechanical maintenance workers are in demand. He added that vocational schools should no longer be thought of as dead ends, since they can serve as steppingstones to associate degrees at community colleges or to enrollment at four-year institutions. Issac Cardoso, who is graduating from Medford Vocational Technical High School in Massachusetts in June, already has a job lined up as an electrical apprentice, earning $12 an hour. Image Issac Cardoso is studying electrical work at Medford Vocational Technical High School in Medford, Mass. Credit Scott Eisen for The New York Times “I went into vocational school with my heart set on the automotive program, but I fell in love with electrical and saw a bigger future for myself,” Mr. Cardoso, 17, said. He is also applying for a coveted spot as an apprentice with the local electrical union, where the starting pay is $18.25 an hour. As an apprentice, he could work while training to become a journeyman, a position with an hourly wage of $28. Most of Mr. Cardoso’s classmates also have jobs waiting for them, he said. Stefanie A. DeLuca, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, is the co-author of a study of low-income African-American millennials in Baltimore titled, “ Coming of Age in the Other America .” She agrees there is a pressing need for more targeted, streamlined vocational programs in high schools and at community colleges. “They’re looking for jobs,” Dr. DeLuca said of the youths she interviewed. “They want a quick launch.” Still, low wages combined with rising housing costs make it tough to get ahead. “They’re juggling a job at Potbelly and a security job and working 60 hours a week and it’s still not enough,” she said. Despite the improving job market, what particularly troubled Martha Ross, a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington, were the 3.2 million disadvantaged youths between 16 and 24 who were not in school and did not have a job. “The size of that population was bigger than I expected,” said Ms. Ross, who is the co-author of a paper on youth employment across the country. Although metropolitan areas can vary widely, the report found, in some communities, young blacks and Latinos are three to five times more likely than whites to fall into this group. If things are tough for high school graduates, for those without a high school diploma, the job hunt can be grim. Adam McKinley, 18, said he dropped out of his high school in Baltimore last year because he needed to work full time. He worked briefly at Dunkin’ Donuts and has searched for jobs at coffee bars and restaurants, hotels and warehouses. Because many of the applications were online, Mr. McKinley said he did not know why he never heard back. “It’s extremely frustrating,” he said. “You have no idea what’s going on.”

Jobs
College
Economic Policy Institute
Youth
Careers and Professions
K-12 Education
Wages and salaries
Vocational Training
Adult education


K. K. Birla, a Leader of Indian Business, Dies at 89

Abstract: K. K. Birla, the patriarch of a renowned Indian industrial empire, died on Aug. 30 at his home in Calcutta. He was 89. The cause was age-related ailments and pneumonia, his family said. His close associates said he was grief-stricken by the death on July 29 of his wife of 67 years, Manorama Devi. Mr. Birla built on the company started by his father to establish one of India’s biggest business conglomerates, with interests in industries like sugar, fertilizers, chemicals, heavy engineering, textile, shipping and media, among many others. He was the chairman of one of India’s biggest national daily newspapers, The Hindustan Times, which became a successful media company under his stewardship. As a leading figure in both the humanities and technology in India, he established the K. K. Birla Foundation, which gives awards in many fields and focuses not on the English-speaking middle class of urban India, but on the achievements of its rural population. The K. K. Birla Academy does scientific, historical and cultural research and has been planning a scientific museum. He was the chancellor of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, created by his father in the desert of Rajasthan, expanding it from Goa and Hyderabad to Dubai. He was also a prominent three-term member of the upper house of the Indian Parliament and was close to Indian political leaders like Indira Gandhi, Rajeev Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. Loyal to the Congress Party, which his father helped finance, he had friends across the political spectrum. Born at Pilani in the northwestern Indian state Rajasthan on Nov. 12, 1918, Krishna Kumar Birla was part of India’s leading industrial family, the eldest of the three sons of Maha Devi and Ghanshyam Das Birla, who was a staunch follower of Mohandas Gandhi and a financier of his Congress Party. The younger Mr. Birla earned a B.A. degree in 1939 from Lahore University and went to work the next year to build India’s sugar industry. He quickly expanded the business, acquiring interests in textiles, engineering, shipping and fertilizers. Like his father, he was a visionary and always maintained that it was the duty of industry to contribute to building the nation. His social views were far more progressive than those of most members of his class and generation. A strong believer in equality for women, he broke with family tradition and handed his companies over to his three daughters. With his trademark silver hair, black rimmed spectacles and Savile Row tailoring, he loved to travel with his wife and extended family. He routinely took over a wing of the Grosvenor House hotel when staying in London. He is survived by his daughters Nandini Nopany, Jyoti Poddar and Shobhana Bhartia, who is the vice chairwoman and editorial director of The Hindustan Times, and several grandchildren. He was president of the Bridge Federation of India for a number of years and also headed the Indian Lawn Tennis Association. Punctual and courteous in his business dealings at all levels, he would sometimes schedule meetings of exactly 8 minutes or 12 minutes. Although he was a deeply religious Hindu and a noted patron of temples in Calcutta and Delhi, he never deviated from the path of secularism for the Indian nation. Mr. Birla’s literary achievements included “Indira Gandhi: Reminiscences,” an empathetic and unprejudiced biography, and “Partners in Progress: Collection of Selected Speeches and Writings.” He also chronicled his foreign travels for The Hindustan Times. Mr. Birla’s widely read and critically acclaimed autobiography, “Brushes With History,” was published last December.

India
Deaths (Obituaries)
Birla K.K.
Diversified Conglomerates


On Paper, Prudential Gets a Lift

Abstract: Investors eagerly looking for the “green shoots” of a recovery lapped up the news when Prudential Financial announced this month that it was profitable again, after six months of big losses. The insurer’s stock jumped nearly 30 percent in the two days after its earnings report. What was largely overlooked: the first-quarter profit came solely from accounting. Prudential was an early adopter of a new accounting guideline that gives all companies greater flexibility in valuing their sagging investment portfolios. Without the change, Prudential would have reported a loss of at least $400 million for the quarter instead of a $14 million profit, according to Peter Larson, an analyst with Gradient Analytics, a firm that examines the quality of corporate financial reporting. Prudential did nothing wrong; it just acted very quickly — all companies that report their earnings on the calendar year are expected to adopt the new accounting method in the second quarter. But Prudential’s move shows how helpful the change may prove to be, especially for life insurers, which tend to buy and hold assets like commercial real estate, whose values have fallen. The new accounting method can not only help the bottom line, but also obscure an insurer’s true capital position, a crucial measure of its financial strength. Prudential’s bigger rival, MetLife, has not yet adopted the change and says it is still studying what the effect will be. “We do think this is going to benefit a lot of companies,” Mr. Larson said. “Prudential is one of the first.” Another accounting analyst, David Zion of Credit Suisse, said it was impossible to predict whether other insurers would have big swings like the one at Prudential. “It’s not like the disclosures are perfect,” Mr. Zion said. “I could have the same security accounted for three different ways” at three different companies. MetLife has not sought government aid, but a half-dozen other life insurers, including Prudential, have recently been approved for federal assistance and are wrestling with whether to accept the money. If Prudential’s stock price holds up, the company should be able to raise money elsewhere, thereby avoiding the limits on executive bonuses, heightened public scrutiny and other pitfalls of the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program , or TARP. The Hartford Financial Services Group and Lincoln National Corporation are among the insurers being offered government assistance. Allstate Corporation and Ameriprise Financial have qualified for aid but have said they will decline it. Shares of Prudential, which rose to $46 in the two days after its earnings report, have since fallen, closing at $39.59 on Tuesday. But they are still well above the company’s low this year of $16.41. Mr. Larson said Prudential was benefiting from both a rising stock price and the approval for asset relief money. He recently raised the letter grade he assigns the company to a D, from an F. But he added that he did not think the market really understood just how much of the wind in Prudential’s sails came from a one-time accounting change. “The market is not perfectly efficient,” Mr. Larson said. Robert DeFillippo, a spokesman for Prudential, confirmed Mr. Larson’s analysis but said the company had made no attempt to confuse investors. “We took advantage of the change in the guideline, and we fully disclosed that,” he said. Prudential’s capital levels have been a matter of some concern in the harsh economic environment of the last few months. Life insurers suffer in bear markets because they have huge investment portfolios, and investment losses have been eating away at their capital. The insurers market themselves on the basis of strength and stability — Prudential’s logo depicts the Rock of Gibraltar — and when an insurer’s capital is eroded, its credit rating can fall, making it hard to win new business. In a study issued Tuesday, A. M. Best showed how severe the consequences can be. It found seven providers of life insurance, health insurance and annuities whose capital became so depleted over the last year that they had to be taken over by regulators. The list included Fremont Life Insurance of California, the Republic American Life Insurance Company of Texas, Standard Life Insurance Company of Indiana and Shenandoah Life Insurance of Virginia. A major cause was investment losses; some companies had invested heavily in mortgage-related assets like the stocks of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Washington Mutual. The A. M. Best report said it expected more regulatory takeovers in the next two years. While the company’s analysts said they still considered most life insurers to have adequate capital, the levels were lower than usual and replenishing capital has become difficult and expensive, if available. Gradient Analytics warned in February that it considered Prudential’s capital position “precarious.” Other securities analysts have been peppering Prudential with questions, in recent conference calls, about whether it had enough capital to avoid credit downgrades, or to pay its obligations to investors, $3 billion of which will come due in June. At the company’s annual meeting held this month, the chief executive, John Strangfeld, said observers were painting “virtually all companies with the same negative brush.” In a world of “have” and “have-not” insurers, he said, Prudential belonged to the haves. “Our aspiration is to gain ground, while our competitors are distracted or compromised,” he said, calling first-quarter earnings “not great, but respectable, given the times.” Mr. Larson, the analyst, sees things differently. Without the accounting change, he said, Prudential would have reported a loss of up to half a billion. That is not as bad as Prudential’s fourth quarter, when it lost about $1.6 billion, but still worse than the third quarter of 2008, when the company lost $176 million on a consolidated basis. The new accounting method, approved by the Financial Accounting Standards Board on April 2, followed months of loud complaints from companies that fair-value accounting was much too strict. Opponents, who got a sympathetic hearing in Congress, said fair-value accounting was harmful in this market environment, because it was forcing financial companies to post losses on their investment portfolios, even if they did not plan to sell the sunken assets. The losses were scaring investors and driving down stock prices even more. Members of Congress signaled that if the accounting board did not do something they would. The new method gives companies a great deal more leeway to decide which assets to mark down, and how much of the reduction to apply to their bottom lines. In Prudential’s case, it allowed the company to cut its investment losses roughly in half before taking charges to its earnings. Some of the large commercial banks, including Wells Fargo and Citigroup, have been quick to adopt it. But Citigroup has said that the new guideline “will have no impact” on its financial statements.

Life Insurance
Prudential Financial Incorporated
Accounting and Accountants
Company Reports
Stocks and Bonds


Assessor Candidate Benefits From Property Tax Lawyers

Abstract: By day, Joseph Berrios is the longest-serving member of the three-man board that holds the power to cut the property tax bill for any parcel in Cook County. By night, Mr. Berrios is a master fund-raiser, bringing in about $3 million in political contributions over the last decade from the same lawyers who ask him and the board to give tax breaks to their clients. The amount of contributions from property tax lawyers to Mr. Berrios’s campaign committees was uncovered by the Chicago News Cooperative in a comprehensive review of campaign finance reports and Board of Review decisions. Donations from property tax appeal lawyers account for 64 percent of the money raised over the past decade by Mr. Berrios, who also is chairman of the county’s Democratic Party. The lawyer-fueled contributions are providing a big fund-raising edge for Mr. Berrios as he seeks the Democratic nomination for the higher office of county assessor in Tuesday’s primary. Roughly one-third of Mr. Berrios’s campaign money comes from 15 law firms that have gained the most for their clients from the property tax appeal panel. Together, those top firms have contributed almost $1 million to six political committees controlled by Mr. Berrios and to his daughter, State Representative Maria Antonia Berrios, Democrat of Chicago. Government watchdog groups say the close ties between the commissioner and the lawyers who argue cases before the board is alarming. “It’s very hard to have the appearance that there is no conflict of interest when your primary funders are always from a small industry that has the most at stake in your decisions,” said Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. In an interview this week, Mr. Berrios said the board did not show favoritism. “No one gets a reduction just because they contribute money,” he said. “No one has to contribute a dime.” One of Mr. Berrios’s two opponents in Tuesday’s primary, Raymond A. Figueroa, a former alderman and retired Cook County circuit judge, said he advocated prohibiting donations from property tax lawyers to the assessor or appeals board commissioners. Mr. Figueroa accused Mr. Berrios of taking part in a “pay-to-play” system. “No wonder these lawyers like him,” he said. “They love him, in fact. Their clients benefit from Mr. Berrios’s golden touch.” Thanks largely to property tax lawyers, Mr. Berrios has raised more in this campaign than two of the four Democratic candidates for county board president. In one day alone, on Jan. 8, the tax appeal bar chipped in a total of more than $33,000 for Mr. Berrios. Mr. Berrios said in the interview this week that he believed that the board’s decisions were fair and that he hoped to “make the assessor’s office work for the taxpayers.” Mr. Berrios is not the only local elected official who gets large sums of campaign money from people who stand to gain from his official decisions. Still, the analysis of records revealed that he relies on political financing from property tax lawyers to a far greater extent than James M. Houlihan, the sitting assessor, and the other two Board of Review commissioners. Mr. Houlihan, who is stepping down after 12 years in office, has raised about as much money over all as Mr. Berrios, but donations from lawyers who handle appeals to his office make up only about one-quarter of Mr. Houlihan’s campaign money. When he first ran for assessor, Mr. Houlihan sought money from former clients and others whom he had met as a lobbyist because he wanted to avoid relying heavily on property tax lawyers for his re-election campaigns, he said this week. “I didn’t want the office to have the tone that, unless you contribute to me, you don’t have access,” Mr. Houlihan said. While largesse from tax lawyers increased Mr. Berrios’s campaign accounts, his political profile also expanded three years ago when he became chairman of the local Democratic organization. After growing up in the Cabrini Green housing project, he graduated from Lane Tech High School and received an accounting degree. He entered politics working under his precinct captain, and was once an employee of the property tax appeal board before being elected commissioner in 1988. The assessor’s office, where Mr. Berrios wants to work next, sets the tax bill for every parcel in the county, and it is the first avenue of appeal for property owners who feel they are not being taxed fairly. Every year, however, more than 200,000 taxpayers seek further relief from the Board of Review, and many of them hire lawyers to argue on their behalf. Several of the firms that have saved their clients the most money through appeals to the board have strong political connections. The most successful include the firms of Michael J. Madigan, the Illinois House speaker, a Chicago Democrat and a close ally of Mr. Berrios; Patrick J. Cullerton, brother of John Cullerton, the president of the Illinois Senate; and Alderman Edward Burke (14th Ward). At the same time, Mr. Berrios has moonlighted as a Springfield lobbyist for such causes as legalizing video poker. While the politically connected firms have made relatively modest donations to Mr. Berrios’s campaign committees, many other top property tax lawyers have given tens of thousands of dollars over the years. Some firms doing substantial business with Mr. Berrios donate campaign money in ways that sidestep county ethics rules that prohibit anybody who does business with the county from giving more than $1,500 to a candidate in the primary campaign. Finkel, Martwick & Colson pitched in the maximum $1,500 in the firm’s name, but another $1,500 went to Mr. Berrios’s campaign from each of five lawyers who work for the firm. The Board of Review shaved $177.9 million from the assessed values of properties owned by the firm’s clients from 2006 to 2008, results that placed Finkel, Martwick & Colson seventh on the list of the most successful property tax firms during that period. In the past decade, the firm’s lawyers have been the top political donors to Mr. Berrios and his daughter, contributing $164,400 to their campaigns. Indeed, 40 percent of the money that has gone into Ms. Berrios’s campaign fund has come from property tax lawyers who are active at the Board of Review. Nearly all the top property tax appeal lawyers contacted did not return calls or declined comment. But Robert S. Vihon of Worsek & Vihon said he and his colleagues gave to Mr. Berrios because the commissioner and his chief deputy, Thomas Jaconetty, were highly experienced. “They are very bright guys who work very hard to try to work with taxpayers,” Mr. Vihon said. Besides the more than $3.2 million donated to Mr. Berrios and his daughter, the property tax bar has contributed more than $800,000 to another Board of Review commissioner, Larry R. Rogers Jr., representing 52 percent of Mr. Rogers’s fund-raising total. Brendan Houlihan, who is not related to the outgoing assessor, has been the third commissioner since 2006 and received $163,400 from the lawyers, for 27 percent of his total financing.

Campaign Finance
Conflicts of Interest
Elections
Taxation
Chicago (Ill)
Berrios Joseph


With Revamped Gold Cards, Bruised American Express Returns Focus to Affluent

Abstract: American Express , bruised by the recent loss of two major partnerships and an important court case, is seeking to reinvigorate its brand by sweetening the rewards on one of its most popular lines of cards. The company announced on Thursday new benefits for holders of its gold cards, including double points for all restaurant transactions in the United States for its premier rewards gold card and regular gold card. It will begin offering a personalized travel service for those cardholders as well as a $100 annual credit for airline incidentals, including meals and baggage surcharges. And it will eliminate foreign transaction fees. Other types of gold cards will get new benefits as well. The new gold card benefits, which will begin June 1, won’t come without some added cost to cardholders: The annual membership fee for the premier rewards gold card will rise $20, to $195 per year. For the regular gold card, it will rise even more, to $160 from $125. The move signals a reinvestment in the company’s core business — premium charge cards aimed at affluent consumers — after recent efforts to expand its base to more middle-income shoppers. “You’ve seen us enter new consumer spaces, but we’re also getting really invested in continuing to rebuild our premium cards,” said Lisa Durocher, the company’s senior vice president, charge and benefits. Little has gone right for Amex in recent months — falling gas prices and weak holiday season sales took a toll on its revenue targets. The company said in January that it would eliminate 4,000 jobs, or about 6 percent of its work force. It announced this month that it had failed to renew two key partnerships, with Costco and JetBlue. Then, last week a federal judge ruled that Amex had violated antitrust laws with its longstanding policy that bars merchants that accept its cards from steering customers to use lower-cost forms of payment. The transaction fees Amex charges merchants are routinely higher than those levied by other card companies, in part to finance the lucrative rewards programs of cards like the gold card. The judge, Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York, has yet to order a remedy, and Amex has said it will appeal the ruling, but the company could eventually be forced to alter its way of doing business. All of these setbacks have taken a toll on Amex stock, which traded at $94.27 a share on Dec. 29 and had fallen to $78.08 by Feb. 13. It has since crept up, and on Thursday closed at $83.25. The Costco deal had been particularly lucrative for Amex. Its cards were the only plastic other than debit cards that the big discount retailer accepted. The two companies also jointly issued a credit card for general use, and there is some question if those cardholders will stick with Amex. Image An American Express card belonging to Madonna was displayed in an exhibition in London. The company is adding new benefits for holders of its gold card. Credit Andrew Winning/Reuters “That will be a loss of business that they need to replace,” said John Hecht, an analyst at Jefferies. “What they’re doing now is working hard to replace it.” “That would be a perfect backdrop to why they are increasing their rewards,” Mr. Hecht added. It’s been a tough stretch for card issuers in general. Because of the fitful and uncertain recovery after the deep recession five years ago, many consumers are still curbing spending. At the same time, new electronic payment options have created an opportunity and a challenge for legacy card companies. Over the last decade or so, Amex had introduced a few no-fee cards aimed at broadening its reach. That included the new rewards credit card Amex EveryDay, introduced a year ago, that rewarded customers for small frequent purchases and targeted busy errand-running moms rather than big-spending business executives. Ms. Durocher said the EveryDay card had been a “big success,” one of the company’s strongest new introductions in the last decade, but she would not give the specific number of cardholders or revenue. Because restaurant transactions are a big part of gold card charges, the double points for such purchases should delight holders of the cards but could be expensive to the company. Ms. Durocher said the appeal to the customer was paramount. “We chose the most important spend categories,” she said, “to give the benefit to people on the things they love to do.” The company would not disclose any revenue numbers, but it said the gold cards were the prime engine of growth in its charge-card portfolio, which is at the core of the company’s business. The premier rewards gold card membership grew 10 percent year over year from 2013 to 2014, a company spokeswoman said. Still, executives are hoping the new benefits will help further reinvigorate a brand that is nearly 50 years old. The gold card was introduced in 1966 as the executive credit card. Over time its perks and benefits expanded, and by the mid-1990s it had become a full-blown rewards program. Today it continues to be a leader in a space that has become increasingly cutthroat with numerous entries. “It definitely has gotten more competitive,” Ms. Durocher said. “More cards have rewards; more cards talk about rewards. It’s become a lot more complicated space.” Over the last year or so, Amex has begun teaming up with various businesses to allow cardholders to pay with their Amex points at the point of sale, including Amazon, the car-sharing service Uber, New York City taxis and McDonald’s. Executives said they planned more such partnerships in the near future as well as other enticements.


Express Scripts-Medco Merger Raises Antitrust Concerns

Abstract: Express Scripts ’ proposed $29 billion acquisition of Medco Health Solutions is expected to face intensified scrutiny on Tuesday when a Senate panel examines potential antitrust concerns raised by the merger of two of the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers. Together, the two companies now manage prescription drug benefits for more than 115 million people and handle one of every three prescriptions filled in the United States. With combined revenue of more than $110 billion a year, the merged entity would also become the largest player in the domestic markets for supplying mail-order drugs to patients with chronic conditions and costly specialty drugs for conditions like H.I.V., hemophilia and rheumatoid arthritis. Senior executives at the two companies say the merger will significantly reduce the nation’s health care costs and deliver drugs in a safer, more efficient fashion. “A combined Express Scripts and Medco will be well positioned to protect American families from the rising cost of prescription medicines,” George Paz, the chief executive of Express Scripts, told legislators at a House subcommittee hearing in September. But some lawmakers are concerned that the merger will harm competition, and the Federal Trade Commission has requested additional information from the companies before it decides whether to approve the combination. Tuesday’s hearing is being held by the antitrust subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The same committee has taken a hard look at other mergers, like AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile, that have the potential to reduce competition and lead to higher prices. Regulators are expected to focus on whether the merger of Medco and Express Scripts, which would reduce the number of major competitors to two from three, would also leave customers, particularly large employers, with too few choices and limited bargaining power. While the two pharmacy benefit managers say they face aggressive competition from other managers for their business, a recent analysis by Morgan Stanley Research indicated that the 50 largest companies in the United States rely heavily on the services of Medco, Express Scripts and the third major benefit manager, CVS Caremark. The smaller players typically do not have the geographic reach, bargaining power or data-handling capabilities of their larger competitors, said Dan Gustafson, an antitrust lawyer who recently helped write a letter to the F.T.C. objecting to the merger on behalf of the American Antitrust Institute, a Washington organization. “These are customers who require a broad spectrum of services on a national level,” he said. Regulators are also likely to take a look at the merged company’s potential to dominate the mail-order pharmacy and specialty drug markets. When benefit managers steer health plans to their own pharmacy fulfillment services, employers may have little choice but to agree, said Edward A. Kaplan, a benefits consultant at Segal, which advises employers and others about health insurance. “They have very little leverage,” he said. In the area of specialty drugs, which are increasingly contributing to higher costs, benefit managers are able to profit from the difference between what employers and insurers pay for these expensive drugs and the cost. The combined company would control almost a third of the market, according to one analysis. Robert Seidman, a former pharmacy executive at WellPoint who is now a health care consultant in Los Angeles, said the merger could result in a conflict of interest in the way that the pharmacy benefit manager makes money. “We’re not talking pennies here,” he said. “We’re talking thousands” per drug. The companies assert that there is plenty of competition with 40 benefit managers in the market, including companies like UnitedHealth Group, the powerful insurance company, competing. Indeed, some advocacy groups support the merger. "Discouraging the collaboration of two companies that have been tremendously successful in lowering costs and increasing safety would indicate lawmakers are not serious about addressing long-term sustainability in the American health care system," Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, a group in Washington, wrote in a letter last week to the chairman of the antitrust subcommittee. Meanwhile, a number of consumer groups including Consumers Union, along with associations representing community pharmacists, chain drugstores and supermarkets, have sent letters to regulators and legislators arguing that the combined company would create a drug benefit giant with unrivaled power. In their various letters, the groups expressed concerns that the merged pharmacy benefit manager would be likely to steer patients to its own mail-order and specialty pharmacy businesses, muscling out smaller competitors. “Our concern is that a mega P.B.M. would have tremendous power and control over what prescription drugs Americans can get, where they get them, and how much the drugs cost,” said Don Bell, senior vice president and general counsel at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. DeAnn Friedholm, the director for health care reform at Consumers Union, said her group was particularly concerned that the merger could reduce consumer choice in ways such as limiting the pharmacies in their networks or requiring people to use mail order. “We like the idea of having good choices for consumers that meet their needs, not just the need of these huge P.B.M.’s,” Ms. Friedholm said. But, in his testimony during the House hearing, David B. Snow Jr., the chief executive of Medco, emphasized the company’s collaborative relationship with local pharmacies. “More than 85 percent of Medco customer prescriptions are filled through our network of over 60,000 retail pharmacies nationwide,” he said. Cecelia Prewett, a spokeswoman for the Federal Trade Commission, said the agency would not comment on its examination of the proposed Express Scripts-Medco deal. She also declined to comment on the agency’s investigation of another pharmacy benefit manager, CVS Caremark, over accusations of unfair practices against consumers. CVS Caremark also declined to comment. While the Congressional interest in the union of Express Scripts and Medco may have no direct influence on whether regulators decide to block the merger, antitrust lawyers say the hearings make it clear that lawmakers are paying attention. The Senate Judiciary Committee, in particular, has been at the forefront of examining antitrust issues, said David A. Balto, a former lawyer with the F.T.C. who is representing groups opposing the merger, including community pharmacies. He plans to testify at the hearing on Tuesday. “By putting a spotlight on anticompetitive conduct in various markets ,” he said, “they have effectively forced the Obama administration to be a tougher cop on the beat.”

Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Health Insurance and Managed Care
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Medco Health Solutions Inc
Express Scripts Inc
Antitrust Laws and Competition Issues


Door to Door, Foreclosure Knocks Here

Abstract: At times, this stretch of 118th Avenue in South Jamaica, Queens, feels not so much like a neighborhood but a memory of one. A red-brick house with overgrown weeds in the yard is boarded shut. A house with a dirty awning has a thick chain looping out from a hole in the door where a deadbolt once was. On the front window of a vacant property around the corner, someone has taped a sign warning that the water supply has been shut off and antifreeze added to the sinks and toilets. Newton and Ronda Whyte have gotten used to living next door to no one. “Every two or three houses it’s empty,” said Ms. Whyte, 36, a nurse assistant. “It’s not a good feeling. You see the weeds growing tall and the junk mail piling up.” This area at 118th Avenue and 153rd Street is at the center of New York’s foreclosure crisis. About 28 percent of the homes in this working-class neighborhood just north of Kennedy Airport have been in some phase of foreclosure since 2004, and its census tract leads the city in foreclosure filings. More than two years ago, most homes here were occupied and the neighborhood was making strides against the drugs, violence and abandonment that had plagued it in the past, residents and merchants said. But today they mostly talk about decreasing property values, increasing crime, struggling small businesses and fraying community bonds. They talk of leaving, and wonder whose house is next. “It’s not even worth getting to know anybody because nobody is going to stay around anyway,” said Fernando Espinal, 23, who grew up on 118th Avenue. The gates are down for good at the Mega Deli Grocery at one end of the avenue. Pansy Johnson, who owns Yaad Food, a nearby Caribbean restaurant, said she often has to ask for a rent extension because her sales have decreased by nearly a third. And there have been two burglaries of empty homes in foreclosure this year in the area of 118th Avenue and 153rd Street, the police said. The telltale signs that a house is empty come not from a bank or real estate agent, but pizzerias and Chinese takeout restaurants: The length of time a house has been abandoned can be measured by the number of old menus, fliers and junk mail that collects on doors and stoops. “It’s like a depression,” said Ms. Johnson, who is from the island of Jamaica, and whose restaurant is near 118th Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard. “I’ve never seen so much houses boarded up in all my life in this country. It’s so desolated. It hurts the heart.” This corner of South Jamaica is much like neighborhoods in other cities around the country where foreclosure has spread like an epidemic. In many of those places, a spate of subprime lending made it easy for people with modest incomes and poor credit histories to buy homes — even as they increased their risk of foreclosure with adjustable interest rates and other types of complicated and costly loans. This census tract — No. 288 in southeast Queens — had 226 foreclosure filings on one- to four-family homes in the past five years, the highest in the city, according to an analysis of housing data prepared for The New York Times by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University. In 2005, 69 percent of the homes purchased in the tract were bought with subprime mortgages. “What you see in that community is incredibly high rates of high-cost and subprime lending,” said Vicki Been, director of the Furman Center. Within Tract 288, four blocks — encompassing 118th Avenue between 155th Street and Sutphin Boulevard, and 153rd Street between 118th and 119th Avenues — are some of the hardest hit by foreclosures. Thirty-nine of the roughly 140 properties on those blocks have been in various stages of foreclosure since 2004, according to data on PropertyShark.com , a real estate site. Once a foreclosure petition is filed, the owner and lender can work out a settlement. But if they do not, the home can be repossessed and sold at auction. The disposition of the foreclosure filings and scheduled foreclosure auctions of the 39 homes is unclear. About a dozen are vacant, blending in with other empty properties on those blocks. Two homes have eviction notices posted on them and others are undergoing renovations. People here seem not to have moved out so much as vanished. The unlocked screen doors of unoccupied homes sway in the breeze. At a red-brick home at 152-09 118th Avenue, the front door and the living room window are boarded up, but the DirecTV satellite dish remains, as does the message that a former occupant traced into the top step’s wet concrete long ago: three hearts and the words “Dez-n-Duke.” A foreclosure auction on the property is scheduled for Friday. Despite the tightness that comes from living side by side in mostly narrow two-story homes, people largely keep to themselves. Few ever know for certain that neighbors are at risk of losing their homes. Departures happen quickly, mysteriously. Newton and Ronda Whyte remember the man who lived next to them for years in the yellow house at 152-37 118th Avenue. Mr. Whyte called him Trini, because he was from Trinidad, but he never learned the man’s full name. The house the man left behind a few months ago, like the other foreclosed houses on these four blocks, quickly developed the feel of an abandoned property. On the grass of their former neighbor’s small yard, next to the “For Sale” sign, someone stuck a placard advertising the “New York Foreclosure Showcase” at the Long Island Marriott Hotel in Uniondale. The sign is so big and so close to the Whytes’ house that some of Mr. Whyte’s visiting relatives thought that he was the one at risk of foreclosure. “It’s a reminder of what’s staring us in the face,” said Ms. Whyte, who has lived on 118th Avenue with her husband and two children for 12 years. Many of the homes on these four blocks are squeezed onto narrow lots no bigger than 1,350 square feet. At one end of 118th Avenue is Baisley Pond, a swath of lush greenery that gives the area a serene suburban feel. In 1999, the median household income in Tract 288 was $44,348. Residents, many of them African-American, or of Guyanese or Jamaican descent, take pride in sweeping their stretch of sidewalk. Their ranks include custodians, nurses and retirees. Adeline Marshall, 66, broom in hand one recent afternoon, said the neighborhood had come far since 1991, when she bought a two-bedroom house on 153rd Street for $75,000. Back then, there were no sidewalks, just dirt. One of the lots at the corner was trash-strewn and vacant. In July 1995, gunfire erupted during a basketball tournament at Baisley Pond Park , killing two spectators. Seven years earlier, also at the park, a high school basketball coach volunteering as a referee was beaten to death after drug gangs bet thousands of dollars on the game and the referee made a call someone did not like. Ms. Marshall, a retired practical nurse, said things had started to turn around in more recent years. The city installed sidewalks and pavement. A new residence went up on the once-empty corner lot. The population in Tract 288 grew to 4,300 in 2000 from 3,400 in 1990. But now, Ms. Marshall and other residents said, the foreclosures have stalled the neighborhood’s progress. William Knight’s 15-year-old son found a drug user’s syringe in the yard of the empty house next door on 118th Avenue in June. “In the one year being here, I’ve watched it just kind of spiral down,” said Mr. Knight, a civil engineer. “There’s definitely less people, and due to less people it brings the negative element.” On a recent Tuesday afternoon on 153rd Street, the smell of marijuana lingered in the air. Residents complain that the empty homes have encouraged people from other neighborhoods to loiter on the street, drinking beer and making noise at all hours. A few months ago, Ms. Marshall’s glass storm door was shattered by a gunshot. “Look at the sign,” Ms. Marshall said, pointing to the Foreclosure Showcase notice in the yard of the empty yellow house. “What am I going to do? You think I want to stay here? I want to sell, too.”

Foreclosures
Housing
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Queens (NYC)


Four Hot Minutes Give Rangers a Fifth Straight Win

Abstract: J. T. Miller, Jesper Fast and Pavel Buchnevich scored in a span of 4 minutes 4 seconds late in the second period at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night to lead the Rangers over the Winnipeg Jets, 5-2, for their fifth straight victory. Kevin Hayes and Mats Zuccarello also scored for the Rangers, who lead the N.H.L. with 55 goals and have scored at least five goals in each game of their winning streak. Kevin Klein and Brandon Pirri each had two assists, and Henrik Lundqvist stopped 24 shots as the Rangers won for the eighth time in nine games. Patrik Laine and Mark Scheifele scored for Winnipeg, which has lost four of its last five. For Laine, who was the No. 2 pick in this year’s draft, it was his second straight game with a goal after going without a point in his previous four. Connor Hellebuyck started in goal for the Jets and gave up four goals on 16 shots before he was replaced late in the second period by Michael Hutchinson, who finished with one save. After a scoreless first half of the second period in which Winnipeg had a 4-to-1 advantage on shots, the Rangers outscored the Jets by 4-1 over the final 10 minutes. Zuccarello took a pass from Chris Kreider and fired a wrist shot past Hellebuyck from the left face-off circle for his sixth goal and put the Rangers up by 2-1 just past the midpoint of the period. Scheifele tied the score two minutes later as he pounced on a puck sitting in front of an open net after a shot by Paul Postma was stopped by Lundqvist. It was Scheifele’s seventh goal of the season. Miller then skated up along the right side and fired a wrist shot over Hellebuyck’s right shoulder for his fifth goal of the season, putting the Rangers up by 3-2 with 6 minutes 59 seconds left in the period. Fast gave the Rangers a two-goal lead with 3:36 left as he tipped a shot by Klein from the right face-off circle for his second goal. That chased Hellebuyck and brought on Hutchinson. Buchnevich made the score 5-2 just 41 seconds later as he skated in from the right side, slid the puck from his backhand across to the left side as he crossed in front of the goal, and fired it over a sprawling Hutchinson. It was Buchnevich’s second goal of the season and second in two games. The Jets controlled play in the scoreless third period, outshooting the Rangers by 9-0, but could not get the puck past Lundqvist. Hayes got the Rangers off to a fast start with his sixth goal of the season 2:12 into the game. Skating with an extra attacker on a delayed penalty, Klein sent a pass across to Hayes at the right point, and Hayes fired a slap shot from inside the blue line, giving him a goal in four straight games. Laine tied the score seven minutes later.


The Search for El Faro: What We Know

Abstract: MIAMI — The National Transportation Safety Board released an update Tuesday about its investigation of El Faro, a cargo vessel that vanished on its way from Jacksonville, Fla., to San Juan, P.R., on Oct. 1 with 33 people aboard. Federal investigators revealed that the ship left Florida at 8:15 p.m. on Sept. 29 — three hours and 15 minutes after the National Hurricane Center predicted that the storm brewing ahead would become a hurricane named Joaquin. Q. What do we know about the captain’s route? A. On Sept. 30, the captain emailed a company safety official to say that he planned to take a route south of the hurricane’s predicted path, passing about 65 miles from its center, the safety board said. But by 7 a.m. on Oct. 1, he made a recorded satellite call saying there was a maritime emergency: A hull had been breached, a hatch had blown open, the ship had lost propulsion and there was water in hold No. 3, the investigative update said. An electronic alert system signal sent by the vessel at 7:17 a.m. that day said that the ship’s last reported position was about 20 miles from the edge of the eye of the hurricane. Q. What have we learned about the ship’s condition? A. About two weeks before the shipwreck, the company that owned the ship, Tote Maritime Puerto Rico, received permission from the Coast Guard to shut down one of the ship’s two boilers so it could be inspected by an independent boiler service, the safety board said. The inspectors recommended service to both boilers, which was scheduled for Nov. 6, the safety board’s update said. A spokesman for the board said that as far as investigators know now, the ship left Jacksonville with both boilers working. Investigators did not say whether boiler problems caused the engine failure. Q. Is that why five Polish contractors were on board working in the engine room? A. El Faro was to be redeployed to an Alaska-Washington route. Tote Maritime told the investigators that to prepare for the change, the company had started making modifications to the vessel under the supervision of an additional chief engineer. Welders and machinists were working while at sea, including during the vessel’s final voyage. Polish news media reported that the Polish workers had been hired by the Intec Maritime Offshore Service Corporation, a company whose website says it specializes in “repairing and renewing pipes under demanding conditions.” Company representatives in Gdansk, Poland, and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., declined to comment on Tuesday. Q. Have investigators found the “black box?” A. The safety board hired the United States Navy Salvage and Diving division of the Naval Sea System command to search for the voyage data recorder, more commonly referred to as the “black box,” which should have recorded audio from the bridge and basic information such as speed and course. Investigators from both agencies left Virginia on Monday aboard the Apache , a 226-foot Navy rescue and salvage vessel. Image Underwater search and salvage equipment loaded aboard the Apache, a Navy rescue and salvage vessel, which departed Norfolk, Va., on Monday. Credit U.S. Navy “This weekend they will start sweeping the area in a systematic way to locate the wreckage,” said Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the safety board. “It should ping for a minimum of 30 days once activated by water. Right now we don’t know if it’s pinging, because no one had been listening for it. You have to have a clear idea of where it is.” Q. What gear will they use to try to find the black box? A. A towed hydrophone , an underwater listening device that looks a bit like a manta ray, is lowered by a cable to listen for pulses from the data recorder, which has a limited range of a couple of miles. To triangulate the location, the ship zigzags at two knots in the designated search area waiting for responses. “It’s slow and frustrating,” said Chris G. Johnson, a spokesman for the Navy. “But sound travels well under water, so it’s easy to hear if we are in the right area and it’s working.” Q. What about the ship itself? A. A side scan sonar , a 3,600-pound machine about the size of a large office desk, is lowered into the water by fiber optic cable to map the ocean floor and look for signs of wreckage. Once a wreck is spotted, an eight-foot remote-operated vehicle known as a Curv-21 is lowered into the water. That machine, almost twice as heavy as the sonar, has still and video cameras and the kind of gear needed to move objects and cut cables. It could retrieve the black box. The machine is capable of reaching depths of 20,000 feet. El Faro is believed to be in 15,000 feet of water, almost three miles from the surface. Q. Has this ever been tried before? A. “The Navy does similar operations relatively frequently for military aircraft,” Mr. Johnson said. “It is infrequent that we attempt it for merchant vessels, but the principles are the same, so we are relatively confident that we will be able to find that ship pretty shortly after we begin our search.” Q: If bodies are spotted, what will be done with them? A. The Navy will try to recover any human remains that are found during its attempt to retrieve the voyage data recorder, but no efforts will be made to retrieve the ship itself, Mr. Knudson said.

Hurricanes
Tote Maritime Puerto Rico
Ships and Shipping
NTSB


Boy Who Was Rescued From Brooklyn Fire Dies From Burns

Abstract: A 14-year-old boy who was rescued with seven members of his family from an apartment fire in Brooklyn early Tuesday died in the hospital on Wednesday, according to the medical examiner’s office. The boy, Misael Fuentes, was pronounced dead at 3:35 p.m. at Staten Island University Hospital, officials said. Misael, described as “a chubby little guy” who liked to “joke around with everybody,” suffered burns over 85 percent of his body, relatives said. The fire, at the corner of Newkirk and Ocean Avenues in Flatbush, broke out about 2 a.m. Tuesday.Firefighters crawled through flames and thick black smoke to rescue those still inside. Pablo Fuentes, 55, who is the building’s superintendent and shared the three-bedroom, second-story apartment with his wife, Rufina, 54, and a number of their children and grandchildren, dropped two of his grandchildren from an apartment window into the arms of neighbors before firefighters arrived. Eight members of the family were sent to the hospital. Six of them remained overnight, including Misael, officials said. A Fire Department spokesman said that the fire started in a closet and that investigators were still trying to determine a cause.


Ex-Military Officer in Pakistan Is Linked to 2 Chicago Terrorism Suspects

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The arrests last month of two Chicago men accused of planning an attack on a Danish newspaper have widened into a global terrorism inquiry that has led to arrests in Pakistan and implicated a former Pakistani military officer as a co-conspirator, government officials said Wednesday. In India, where the pair from Chicago are said to have wanted to attack the country’s national defense college, investigators are trying to determine whether the two men played a role in attacks a year ago in Mumbai in which more than 160 people were killed. Officials said they had not clearly established a connection. The case is one of the first criminal cases in which the federal authorities seem to have directly linked terrorism suspects in the United States to a former Pakistani military officer, though they have long suspected connections between extremists and many members of the Pakistani military. Intelligence officials believe that some Pakistani military and intelligence officials even encourage terrorists to attack what they see as Pakistan ’s enemies, including targets in India. The two men, David Coleman Headley, 49, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, were accused in complaints unsealed on Oct. 27 of plotting against the employees of a newspaper in Copenhagen that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 that offended many Muslims. The complaints suggested that Mr. Headley — who was accused of the most serious charges, attempting to murder and maim in a foreign country — had cooperated with the authorities after his arrest on Oct. 3 as he boarded a plane on the first leg of a trip to Pakistan. The officials, who asked not to be identified because they were discussing a continuing inquiry, now say that the investigation has widened further in part because of the wealth of information supplied by Mr. Headley. John Theis, a lawyer for Mr. Headley, and Patrick W. Blegen, a lawyer for Mr. Rana, would not comment on who was suspected of being the co-conspirator or other matters in the case. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, also declined to comment. Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana are in custody pending further proceedings. Each is scheduled to appear at a detention hearing in early December. A spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy here also declined to comment, citing the continuing inquiry. Mr. Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006, is a United States citizen who lived in Pakistan but recently was mainly a resident of Chicago. Mr. Rana is a Canadian citizen who has lived legally in Chicago, where he operated a travel agency and other businesses. Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana are graduates of a military academy in the town of Hasan Abdal in Pakistan, and they maintained e-mail contact with other former students, including officers in Pakistan’s military. They belonged to a group of the school’s graduates who referred to themselves as the “abdalians” in Internet postings, according to government affidavits. Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana were accused in the complaints of reporting to Ilyas Kashmiri, a former Pakistani military officer who has become an Islamic militant commander associated with both Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba . The latter is a Pakistan-based militant group suspected in the deadly attacks in Mumbai. The officials declined to name the other former military officer in the case, who is suspected as a co-conspirator. He is said to have recently left the Pakistani Army and held the rank of colonel or brigadier general, higher ranks than Mr. Kashmiri held. Prosecution documents in the case said that the officer was arrested earlier this past summer in Pakistan on unspecified charges and later released. However, another official said that the officer was discharged only after his associates pressured the Pakistani authorities to free him. In the complaints against Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana, the officer is identified as an uncharged conspirator by the letters “A” and “B.” The complaints describe him as “associated with Kashmiri, as well as with Lashkar-e-Taiba.” One official who has been briefed on the investigation said that Pakistani authorities had arrested as many as five other people in connection with the plot in recent weeks, including some former or current Pakistani military officials. Those people remain in custody, but it was unclear what role they played in the expanding plot. American military and intelligence officials said the case involving Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana reflected a new and evolving pattern of individual militants with different backgrounds and experience, rather than terrorist groups, teaming up to plot and carry out attacks. “In a lot of ways, it’s moving beyond the mainline activities of individual groups to elements of various militant groups or terrorist organizations that have spent time together, have fought together, maybe trained together, that now have associations with certain facilitators that now come together to plan and execute attacks,” said a Defense Department official who is following the case closely. “The present and future is less about individual groups conducting attacks, and more about combinations of individuals, and groups and facilitators that come together,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the criminal investigation. “Together they have the resources, the means, the insights to execute those attacks.” The official said that Mr. Kashmiri was a prime example of this new kind of operator. Mr. Kashmiri, a former Pakistani special operations commando, has extensive contacts with Kashmiri militant groups as well as with Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Officials in Mumbai said that Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana visited the city and several others in India in the months before the assault on Mumbai last November, and may have visited some of the sites that were attacked. “It seems like there is some connection” between the attacks and the two men’s repeated visits to India, Ashok Chavan, chief minister of Maharashtra State, said in an interview. “But the link has to be established.” A senior police official said that in 2007 Mr. Headley stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, one of the main targets of the Mumbai attack. Indian news reports citing anonymous officials have said that Mr. Headley also visited other sites that were attacked — including a cafe popular with tourists and a Jewish community center, but the official said the reports had not been confirmed. India’s home minister, P. Chidambaram, told reporters last week that the links were being explored but declined to elaborate. “He visited India many times before 26/11,” Mr. Chidambaram told reporters, referring to the date of the attacks on Nov. 26, 2008. “We are investigating a probable link between 26/11 and Headley.” Investigators in India have long suspected the attackers in Mumbai had outside help in planning and carrying out the assaults beyond the Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders based in Pakistan. Some of their targets, like the Jewish center, were not well known and were hard to find.

Pakistan
Terrorism
Lashkar-e-Taiba
Mumbai (India)
Chicago (Ill)
Rana Tahawwur Hussain
Headley David Coleman


I’ll Have Another to Start Belmont Stakes From Post No. 11

Abstract: The post position draw for Saturday’s Belmont Stakes featured some good-natured posturing at Belmont Park on Wednesday, when I’ll Have Another was installed as the 4-5 morning-line favorite in his bid for the Triple Crown . Many believe that I’ll Have Another, this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, could be beaten in the Belmont, a one-and-a-half-mile test, by Dullahan. Dullahan finished third in the Derby on May 5 and skipped the Preakness, held on May 19, with a calculated plan to take the Belmont. Dullahan’s owner, Jerry Crawford, had some parallels to draw between the name of his starter’s sire and Dullahan’s position coming off the Derby loss. “He’s by Even the Score, Paul,” Crawford said to I’ll Have Another’s owner, J. Paul Reddam. “That’s kind of catchy. Don’t you think?” “Not as catchy as I’ll Have Another,” Reddam said in return. Dullahan, trained by Dale Romans, drew post No. 5 in the 12-horse field and was made the 5-1 second choice by Eric Donovan, oddsmaker for the New York Racing Association. I’ll Have Another will start from post No. 11 under Mario Gutierrez, the 25-year-old who piloted him to victory at Churchill Downs in Louisville and at Pimlico in Baltimore two weeks later. While confident in Dullahan, Crawford was quick to credit I’ll Have Another’s talent. A chestnut colt, he is unbeaten in all four starts in graded stakes races this year. “I don’t think I’ll Have Another, as much attention as he’s gotten, has really gotten his full due yet,” Crawford said. “We’re going to do everything we can to keep him from being the Triple Crown winner, but after everything he’s already done, if he gets it done here Saturday, he’ll not only be a worthy Triple Crown winner, but he will have exceeded all possible expectations.” I’ll Have Another’s trainer, Doug O’Neill, said the post position was perfect for his versatile runner. “Being in the 11 hole, we’ll be able to see how the pace sets up,” O’Neill said. “If they’re crawling, we’ll be hopefully leading the crawl, and if they’re flying, we’ll be sitting in behind horses. Mario’s just a confident rider and very confident in I’ll Have Another. We couldn’t ask to be coming into this any better.” The owner Ahmed Zayat is also gunning for I’ll Have Another after losing to the colt in the first two legs of the Triple Crown, but with a different contender. Bodemeister, the brilliant front-runner who showed the way in the Derby and the Preakness only to be run down in the final strides, is back in California resting after second-place finishes in both events. His stablemate Paynter, a lightly raced horse who has two wins in four career starts, will instead make the challenge for Zayat and the trainer Bob Baffert. “He’s a serious colt,” Zayat said. “He’s very talented and developing at the right time. He’s more versatile than people think.” Paynter will break from post No. 9 at odds of 8-1. Also in the field is the Michael Matz trainee Union Rags, who finished seventh in the Derby and will leave post No. 3 at odds of 6-1. And the 20-1 shot My Adonis has connections — the owners George and Lori Hall and the trainer Kelly Breen — who won the Belmont last year with Ruler on Ice at odds of 24-1.

Belmont Stakes
I'll Have Another (Race Horse)
O'Neill Douglas F
Horse Racing
Reddam Paul
Gutierrez Mario


Deal for Greek Aid Leaves Questions Unanswered

Abstract: BRUSSELS WHILE finance ministers from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund bridged their main differences over a bailout for Greece early Tuesday, bringing closer the release of long-delayed emergency aid, what they left undecided means this long-running drama — and the cohesion of the euro union — is far from settled. The deal allows Greece to avoid an imminent default on its debts and diminishes the prospect of a Greek exit from the euro union. But analysts said Greece could still be forced to drop the euro, largely because the agreement does little to revive the country’s stricken economy or wean its government from the need for outside financial aid. Markets reacted positively to the deal on Tuesday. But analysts said the outcome of three stormy late-night meetings in the last three weeks was a weak compromise. Even Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the I.M.F., appeared hesitant about the deal during a news conference early Tuesday. “How solid is it?” Ms. Lagarde said. She questioned whether the ambitious debt-reduction goals set for Greece in the next eight years could be enforced. But she insisted that she was satisfied with the outcome and that those goals could be met. She warned Greece’s creditors that they needed to ease repayment terms immediately and offer more relief once the country hit budget targets that can put it on a path to manageable debt by the end of the decade. But she did not explain what that additional relief would entail. And she said the I.M.F. would not approve the next disbursement of aid to Greece until a major plank of the agreement was satisfied: more loans for Greece to enable it to buy back its debt at a discount. The measures decided early Tuesday include longer maturities and lower interest rates for Greece’s bailout loans. And central banks in countries that use the euro agreed to return to Greece any profits made on Greek bonds purchased by the European Central Bank . The program still needs approval by some national parliaments in the euro area, including Germany’s, where the prospect of sending new bailout money to Greece is seen as politically untenable, at least until after German elections next year. Lawmakers in Berlin have begun debating the agreement on Greece. The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, indicated that he hoped approval could be obtained by the end of the week. At best, the deal bought time for Germany and other chief creditors before they might need to accept outright write-downs, or haircuts, on Greece’s debts, according to analysts. Using guarded language, Mr. Schäuble said early Tuesday that once Greece had “fulfilled all of its conditions, we will, if need be, consider further measures for the reduction of the total debt.” Fabio Fois, an economist at Barclays, wrote in a briefing note on Tuesday that “an outright haircut on E.U. loans of at least 20 percent” would still be needed. He also suggested that “the positive response of the market might prove short-lived.” There will almost certainly be sparring over Greece for years to come, particularly because the Germans, backed by the Dutch and the Finns, remain wary of forgiving Greece’s debt. Among main concerns on Tuesday was the lack of clarity about the buyback plan. Analysts said they expected euro area states to lend Greece money to buy back its own bonds from private investors at discounted prices. But there were questions about the plan, including when it would take place and whether bondholders would accept the terms. To complete the buyback, the Greek government would have to borrow about 10 billion euros, or $13 billion. Until those details are resolved, Greece is not supposed to receive the next installment of bailout money — about 34.4 billion euros — that has already been long delayed. In Athens, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Tuesday hailed the agreement as the start of “a new day for all Greeks,” but his coalition partner, Evangelos Venizelos, the Socialist leader, hinted at concerns. The accord was “undoubtedly positive,” but there were “things to note in the details,” Mr. Venizelos said. Despite the unresolved issues, analysts expected the emergency aid to be paid to Greece in mid-December, with further payments in the first quarter of next year as long as Greece continues to fulfill its pledges under the bailout plan. The aid has been called vital for preventing Greece from defaulting on its loans. The delay means that the Greek government’s unpaid bills, which stood at 8.3 billion euros at the end of September for goods like medicines and services like construction, “will continue to grow for at least a couple of weeks,” said Janet Henry, the chief European economist at HSBC. Some analysts predicted problems arising from the I.M.F.’s continued insistence on ambitious debt-reduction goals. The new target is a reduction of debt to 124 percent of gross domestic product by 2020, from 175 percent now. Zsolt Darvas, a fellow at Bruegel, a research organization, said reaching that goal would require “perfect implementation.” “A lot of luck will be needed, including a rebound in growth,” he added. Otherwise, he said, Greece’s financial problems would continue and “the social pressure on the government and the parliament could increase.” The coalition government could eventually collapse, “leading to a euro exit with disastrous consequences inside and outside Greece,” Mr. Darvas said. Greece’s economy was contracting at a 6.4 percent annual pace and was expected to continue to stagnate next year. Promises to cut an additional 9 billion euros out of the economy could further aggravate an increasingly agitated society weary of austerity and undermine the fragile coalition government.

International Monetary Fund
Greece
European Central Bank
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
European Commission
Economic Conditions and Trends
Credit and Debt
European Union


Farhad and Mike’s Week in Tech: Cars With, and Without, Drivers

Abstract: Each Saturday, Farhad Manjoo and Mike Isaac, technology reporters at The New York Times, review the week’s news , offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Mike: Buenos dias, Señor Manjoo! I’m back from vacationing in Puerto Rico, where it was 85 degrees and beautiful all week. I also ate enough mofongo to kill a horse. No regrets. Farhad: Speaking of regrets, I’m at International CES, the overcrowded consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas. There haven’t been many major announcements yet, but I’m expecting a huge one soon: the announcement that my flight home is ready for boarding. Mike: So, back to what we do best: Our mildly insightful banter about tech news! And despite being the first week back after the holidays, it has been pretty busy. Yahoo continued its weird death spiral, shuttering its YouTube competitor, Yahoo Screen . Investors are less than thrilled . Oculus VR, the Facebook-owned virtual reality company, began accepting pre-orders this week for the Rift headset, which costs a whopping $600. Hard-core virtual reality nerds are less than thrilled . And Twitter is considering making tweets longer than their 140-character limit, a move that has practically the entire Internet — say it with me — less than thrilled . Farhad: Mike, you’re forgetting other news from CES! Netflix announced that it had expanded its streaming service to cover nearly every country in the world . Also, did you see Fitbit’s new smartwatch , the Blaze? It’s — let me put this as nicely as I can — ferociously ugly. The company’s stock plunged to a new low this week . You might say investors were less than thrilled. Mike: My favorite part was when United States marshals raided the hoverboard booth . So let’s get into the meat of this week’s happenings. It’s all about cars, a topic that brings me a sense of wistfulness ever since I moved to New York and gave up my ugly, busted old beater. We saw General Motors agree to invest $500 million in Lyft , the ride-hailing start-up, and the two companies will work on developing a network of self-driving cars. Ford aims to have fully autonomous cars by the end of the decade. And, of course, the Googles and Teslas of the world are plugging away at their own versions of self-driving cars, the timetables of which are still unknown. Please tell me what is going on. If the state ever allows me to be a father, will my children grow up learning how to drive? Or are smart cars going to be the new norm? Image Mercedes-Benz is among the automakers working on self-driving cars. Credit Jae C. Hong/Associated Press Farhad: It seems clear to me that self-driving cars are coming — someday. That might be because I live in Mountain View, Calif., Google’s hometown, and I see robot cars on the road as often as I see Toyota Camrys. The big question isn’t whether self-driving cars will one day become the norm but when, where and, most important, under what business model. The G.M. investment gets at that last question. People have been saying for a couple of years that ride-hailing apps are going to reduce car ownership, because in some urban places it’s already much cheaper and easier to use Uber or Lyft than to own . Self-driving cars would eliminate the ride-hailing companies’ biggest cost: the human driver. The price of an Uber or Lyft ride would plummet, and at that point it might be silly for anyone to own a private vehicle. Mike: Outside of being awesome, and drag racing in an old muscle car, obviously. Farhad: Uh, right. But as I was saying, that explains G.M.’s bet on Lyft. I suspect we’ll see other efforts by auto companies to team with tech companies on shaping the future of transportation. The car companies want to get a stake in the robot future of driving before the robots kill their business model. Mike: I guess this is the point where I come in and say, “This is totally not going to happen anytime soon.” Headlines quoting the chief executives of these automakers and tech companies have pronounced the end of having to drive yourself within the next three to five years. Meanwhile, it was only last month that California introduced its first set of guidelines for autonomous vehicles in the state, which is subject to revision and complaints from the aggrieved (namely, Google). Lord knows how long it will take to get past regulatory hurdles on a state-by-state basis, much less on a federal — and even international — level. Then you’ve got lobbyists with their own interests, labor unions that represent human drivers, and so on. Basically what I’m saying is, don’t get too on board with the idea of ditching your car just yet. All of that said, Uber’s role here is interesting. The company has opted to research all of its tech in-house rather than, say, pairing up with an automaker as Lyft did. Perhaps that’s to keep the research proprietary instead of sharing it with companies like G.M., which could become far more adversarial with Uber down the line. (For now, Uber has struck uneasy partnerships with automakers, helping drivers finance car purchases with certain discounts.) Here’s my guess as to what we might see within the next three to five years: more advancements like automatic steering, self-parking and lane-changing technology, much of which is in line with what companies like Tesla are doing . Those advancements still require a driver behind the wheel — and California, at least, will also require drivers in so-called autonomous vehicles — but the driver’s role is becoming less crucial every day. The advent of this type of technology could also affect the cost and implementation of auto insurance — something that ride-sharing companies like Uber could certainly benefit from. Farhad: Maybe my mind’s gone soft from all the noise of CES, but for once I agree with you. I think this is all going to take some time to shake out and it will probably be messy. Anyway, here comes my taxi — I’m leaving Las Vegas! Mike: Vaya con dios, Señor Manjoo.

Tech Industry
International CES
Oculus
Netflix
Lyft
Uber
Computers and the Internet
Driverless Cars,Self-Driving Cars


In a First, Gay Rights Are Pressed at the U.N.

Abstract: UNITED NATIONS — An unprecedented declaration seeking to decriminalize homosexuality won the support of 66 countries in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, but opponents criticized it as an attempt to legitimize pedophilia and other “deplorable acts.” The United States refused to support the nonbinding measure, as did Russia, China, the Roman Catholic Church and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The Holy See’s observer mission issued a statement saying that the declaration “challenges existing human rights norms.” The declaration, sponsored by France with broad support in Europe and Latin America, condemned human rights violations based on homophobia, saying such measures run counter to the universal declaration of human rights. “How can we tolerate the fact that people are stoned, hanged, decapitated and tortured only because of their sexual orientation?” said Rama Yade, the French state secretary for human rights, noting that homosexuality is banned in nearly 80 countries and subject to the death penalty in at least six. France decided to use the format of a declaration because it did not have the support for an official resolution. Read out by Ambassador Jorge Argüello of Argentina, the declaration was the first on gay rights read in the 192-member General Assembly itself. Although laws against homosexuality are concentrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, more than one speaker addressing a separate conference on the declaration noted that the laws stemmed as much from the British colonial past as from religion or tradition. Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, speaking by video telephone, said that just like apartheid laws that criminalized sexual relations between different races, laws against homosexuality “are increasingly becoming recognized as anachronistic and as inconsistent both with international law and with traditional values of dignity, inclusion and respect for all.” The opposing statement read in the General Assembly, supported by nearly 60 nations, rejected the idea that sexual orientation was a matter of genetic coding. The statement, led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, said the effort threatened to undermine the international framework of human rights by trying to normalize pedophilia, among other acts. The Organization of the Islamic Conference also failed in a last-minute attempt to alter a formal resolution that Sweden sponsored condemning summary executions. It sought to have the words “sexual orientation” deleted as one of the central reasons for such killings. Ms. Yade and the Dutch foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen, said at a news conference that they were “disappointed” that the United States failed to support the declaration. Human rights activists went further. “The Bush administration is trying to come up with Christmas presents for the religious right so it will be remembered,” said Scott Long, a director at Human Rights Watch. The official American position was based on highly technical legal grounds. The text, by using terminology like “without distinction of any kind,” was too broad because it might be interpreted as an attempt by the federal government to override states’ rights on issues like gay marriage, American diplomats and legal experts said. “We are opposed to any discrimination, legally or politically, but the nature of our federal system prevents us from undertaking commitments and engagements where federal authorities don’t have jurisdiction,” said Alejandro D. Wolff, the deputy permanent representative. Gay-rights advocates brought to the conference from around the world by France said just having the taboo broken on discussing the topic at the United Nations would aid their battles at home. “People in Africa can have hope that someone is speaking for them,” said the Rev. Jide Macaulay of Nigeria.

United Nations
Homosexuality
Freedom and Human Rights
International Relations
General Assembly (UN)


Australia’s Richest Woman to Battle Children in Open Court

Abstract: SYDNEY — Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, lost an appeal Friday for a confidential court hearing over the handling of a multibillion-dollar family trust, pitting her in open court against three of her children over a mining empire started by her father. Ms. Rinehart had argued that under an agreement reached by the family in 2006 and 2007, the dispute should be settled through private arbitration or mediation. The New South Wales Court of Appeal ruled that the dispute was not covered by that agreement and ordered Ms. Rinehart to pay court costs. Ms. Rinehart lost a bid in March to keep the case out of the public eye. An only child with a fortune estimated by Forbes at 17.4 billion Australian dollars, or $18 billion, Ms. Rinehart is battling her three eldest children, who want her removed as trustee of a family trust. It is the latest episode of a family soap opera that has played out in the Australian news media since before she was born. The children — John Hancock, Hope Welker and Bianca Rinehart — initiated a claim last September alleging serious misconduct with the trust, including charges that the vesting date had been changed without their approval, that they had been pressured to accept changes in operations and that they had not been provided with information they had sought. In court documents, Gina Rinehart said that she had been acting within her rights as trustee and that her decision to change the vesting date of the trust had prevented beneficiaries from being bankrupted by tax obligations. The three children did not have the “requisite capacity or skill, nor the knowledge, experience, judgment or responsible work ethic” to run the trust, she added. Ms. Rinehart did not return calls for comment on the court decision Friday. Ms. Rinehart’s youngest daughter, Ginia Rinehart, is siding with her mother, saying the case is motivated by the greed of her siblings. The trust owns almost a quarter of Hancock Prospecting, one of the world’s largest privately owned iron ore mining companies. The company, majority-owned by Gina Rinehart, is a partner with Rio Tinto in the Hope Downs iron ore project in the Pilbara and owns a number of other mining assets. Another Hancock iron ore project, Roy Hill, was valued at $3.6 billion when the Japanese-South Korean consortium of Marubeni, Posco and STX agreed to buy a 30 percent stake last month. In February, Ms. Rinehart increased her stake in Fairfax Media, an Australian newspaper publisher. After the death of her mother from cancer, Ms. Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock, who was then in his mid-70s, married Rose Lacson (now Rose Porteous), a former maid from the Philippines who was 39 years his junior. Ms. Rinehart did not approve of the relationship and was ousted as a director from the family company for five years. Mr. Hancock’s death in 1992 led to an escalation in the battle between Ms. Rinehart and Ms. Porteous over the family fortune that took 14 years to resolve.

Australia
Gina Rinehart
Arbitration Conciliation and Mediation
Decisions and Verdicts


Royal Dutch Shell Earnings Fell 56% in First Quarter

Abstract: ABERDEEN, Scotland — Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday that its earnings for the first quarter fell by 56 percent compared with a year earlier, as improved performance in marketing and refining failed to offset the effects of the plunge in oil prices. The Anglo-Dutch company’s profit, adjusted for inventory changes and one-time items, was $3.2 billion, compared with $7.3 billion in the same period a year earlier. Still, the results beat analysts’ consensus forecasts. But analysts said that there was cause for concern in Shell’s results. In an indication of how quickly a drop in oil prices can erode margins, the company said that its earnings from finding and producing oil and gas were $675 million for the quarter, compared with $5.7 billion a year earlier. Shell said that the price it received for oil in the first quarter was 52 percent lower than the same period in 2014, while the price of natural gas fell by 27 percent. The fall in prices directly cut $4.7 billion from earnings. Video As the price of crude oil fluctuates, why some countries are faring much better than others. Credit Credit Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters “Cracks starting to show” was the language that Biraj Borkhataria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London, used in a note to clients on Thursday. He pointed out that profits in what Shell calls “integrated gas,” which mostly refers to liquefied natural gas, fell sharply to about $1.2 billion, compared with about $3.3 billion a year earlier. Liquefied natural gas has been an important earner for Shell and a big part of the calculus in its recent $70 billion bid for BG Group, which was once part of British Gas and is a major player in liquefied natural gas . Shell continues to struggle in the Americas, where it lost $1.1 billion in the quarter, in part because of low prices for shale gas in the United States as well as costly preparations for drilling in Alaska this summer. It is preparing “a small armada” of ships including two drilling rigs for this effort, Shell’s chief financial officer, Simon Henry, told reporters on Thursday. Refining and marketing, as well as chemical sales, on the other hand, showed strong improvement, together earning $2.6 billion, compared with about $1.6 billion in the same period a year earlier. Shell said that refining profit margins were better in all regions. In recent months, refining, which has been a struggling business at most major oil companies because of oversupply, has improved because of lower prices for the crude oil used in the process and relatively strong demand. Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said in a statement that “in what is clearly a difficult industry environment, we continue to take steps to further improve competitive performance.” Mr. van Beurden said that Shell had sold about $2 billion worth of assets this year that the company considered nonstrategic. These sales included onshore oil properties in Nigeria that are vulnerable to sabotage and oil theft. Shell also sold 185 gas stations in the United States. Mr. van Beurden, who became chief executive at the beginning of last year, is trying to offload marginal assets like the Nigerian onshore fields and some refining and marketing networks. He is focusing on Shell’s more profitable businesses like liquefied natural gas as well as exploration and production in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. Its most important move was its offer in April to buy BG, which would be Shell’s biggest deal ever, by far. BG should help Shell bolster its exploration and production unit by adding BG’s portfolio of discoveries and properties under development in Brazil, East Africa and elsewhere. Shell, in turn, would apply its much larger capital resources and development expertise to the combined company. BG also bolsters Shell’s leading position in the production and distribution of liquefied natural gas, although that business may struggle in the coming quarters because liquefied natural gas prices are linked to oil with a time lag of three to six months.

Royal Dutch Shell
Price
BG Group
Oil and Gasoline
Earnings Reports


Immigration Arrests Lead to Online Outcry, and Release

Abstract: PHOENIX — Immigration agents arrested the mother and brother of a prominent activist during a raid at her home here late Thursday, unleashing a vigorous response on social media and focusing new attention on one of the most controversial aspects of the Obama administration’s policies on deportation. The agents knocked on Erika Andiola’s door shortly after 9 p.m., asking for her mother, Maria Arreola. Ms. Arreola had been stopped by the police in nearby Mesa last year and detained for driving without a license. Her fingerprints were sent to federal immigration officials as part of a controversial program called Secure Communities, which the Obama administration has been trying to expand nationwide. That routine check revealed that Ms. Arreola had been returned to Mexico in 1998 after she was caught trying to illegally cross the border into Arizona with Erika and two of her siblings in tow. As a result, she was placed on a priority list for deportation. After being seized on Thursday, she could have been sent back to Mexico in a matter of hours, but Obama administration officials moved quickly to undo the arrests. Officials had been pressured by the robust response from advocates — through phone calls, e-mails and online petitions, but primarily on Twitter, where they mobilized support for Ms. Andiola, a well-known advocate for young illegal immigrants, under the hashtag #WeAreAndiola . The reaction offered the Obama administration a taste of what it might expect when it gets into the thick of the debate over an immigration overhaul, which Congress is expected to tackle this year. President Obama has already been under harsh criticism for the number of foreigners deported since he took office — roughly 400,000 each year, a record unmatched since the 1950s. Ms. Andiola, 25, posted a tearful video on YouTube shortly after her mother and brother were handcuffed and driven away. “I need everybody to stop pretending that nothing is wrong,” she said in the video, “stop pretending that we’re all just living normal lives, because we’re not. This could happen to any of us anytime.” Image The arrest on Thursday of of the mother and brother of Erika Andiola, an immigration activist, led to a blizzard of complaints on social media. Credit Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press She is the co-founder of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition , one of the groups pushing for a reprieve for immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, as she was. She has been arrested while camped in front of Senator John McCain’s office here, protested outside the United States Capitol, and appeared on the cover of Time magazine in June under the headline, “We are Americans — just not legally.” In November, Ms. Andiola got a work permit under a program begun by the Obama administration last year that gives certain young illegal immigrants temporary reprieve from deportation. She graduated from Arizona State University in 2009. On Friday afternoon, her mother returned home from a detention center in Florence, 70 miles southeast of Phoenix and usually the last stop for certain illegal immigrants before they are deported. Her brother, Heriberto Andiola Arreola, 36, who had been kept in Phoenix, was let go earlier, at 6 a.m. Their swift releases underline the power of the youth-immigrant movement and their social media activism, which was critical in spreading Ms. Andiola’s story overnight. In a statement, Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said a preliminary review of the case revealed that it contains some of the elements outlined in the agency’s “prosecutorial discretion policy” and would “merit an exercise of discretion.” Advocates have long argued that the policy has done little to keep families from being broken apart by deportations. Ms. Andiola said in an interview that she told her mother to go to her room before opening the door Thursday night; she suspected the men standing outside worked for immigration. By the time the men came in, her brother, who was outside talking to a neighbor, was already in handcuffs, she said. “Where’s Maria?” the men asked her, she recalled. Ms. Arreola walked out of the room and, in Spanish, the men asked her to accompany them outside, where they placed her under arrest. Though she and her son are free, their future is uncertain, as they could be arrested again while their cases are under review or deported should the eventual ruling go against them, said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center , one of the groups helping the family. Stories like this, Ms. Hincapié went on, “happen every day, in every state,” outside of the media spotlight. What made it different this time is that Ms. Andiola had connections and wasted no time mobilizing them. There are others, she said, whom “you never hear about.”

Immigration
Deportation
Erika Andiola
Arizona
Illegal immigration


American Apparel Reports Second-Quarter Loss

Abstract: The struggling apparel retailer American Apparel posted a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss as sales stagnated during a corporate shake-up that started with the suspension of its founder, Dov Charney, as chief executive. The company said in a preliminary filing its net loss for the second quarter ended June 30 was $15 million, or 9 cents a share. Sales, which fell in the last two quarters, were flat at $162 million.


Prominent Israelis to Propose Peace Plan

Abstract: JERUSALEM — A group of prominent Israelis, including former heads of Mossad, Shin Bet and the military, are this week putting forth an initiative for peace with the Arab world that they hope will generate popular support and influence their government as it faces international pressure to move peace talks forward. Called the Israeli Peace Initiative, the two-page document is partly inspired by the changes under way regionally and is billed as a direct response to the Arab Peace Initiative issued by the Arab League in 2002 and again in 2007. It calls for a Palestinian state on nearly all the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in much of East Jerusalem, an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, and a set of regional security mechanisms and economic cooperation projects. “We looked around at what was happening in neighboring countries and we said to ourselves, ‘It is about time that the Israeli public raised its voice as well,’ ” said Danny Yatom, a signer of the document and former head of Mossad, Israel ’s intelligence service. “We feel this initiative can bring along many members of the public.” Another member of the group, Yaakov Perry, a former head of Shin Bet, the internal security agency, said he sent a copy of the document on Sunday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , who replied that he looked forward to reading it. The official unveiling is set for Wednesday in Tel Aviv, but a copy was made available to The New York Times. “We are isolated internationally and seen to be against peace,” Mr. Perry said in a telephone interview. “I hope this will make a small contribution to pushing our prime minister forward. It is about time that Israel initiates something on peace.” Mr. Yatom has been a member of Parliament from the Labor Party, and Mr. Perry, now a banker, has recently joined Kadima, the main opposition party. Like all 40 people who signed the initiative, they are politically to the left of Mr. Netanyahu and most of his rightist government. But the group was selected to seem as mainstream as possible. It includes scholars, businesspeople, and the son and daughter of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. While polls show that the Israeli public has moved right in recent years, many political analysts argue that the public worries about the country’s diplomatic isolation and is open to a peace deal. The initiative’s goal is resolution of all claims and an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict. It acknowledges “the suffering of the Palestinian refugees since the 1948 war as well as of the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.” It says it shares the statement of the Arab Peace Initiative “that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties.” The two-state solution envisioned for Israel and Palestine resembles the Clinton parameters of 2000. Palestine would be a nation-state for the Palestinians, and Israel “a nation-state for the Jews (in which the Arab minority will have equal and full civil rights as articulated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence ).” The document calls for the 1967 lines to be a basis for borders, with agreed modifications based on swaps that would not exceed 7 percent of the West Bank. Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods would go to Israel, and Arab neighborhoods to Palestine; the Temple Mount, known as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, would be under no sovereignty, although the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter of the Old City would be under Israel. On Palestinian refugees, the plan suggests financial compensation and return to the state of Palestine, not Israel, with “mutually agreed-upon symbolic exceptions” allowed into Israel. Regarding Syria, the proposal calls for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, with agreed minor modifications and land swaps in stages taking no longer than five years. Mr. Yatom said one goal was to be heard in neighboring states. “We want to signal to moderate Palestinians and Syrians that there is a new horizon and light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

Arab League
Palestinians
Israel
Yatom Danny
Netanyahu Benjamin
Labour Party (Israel)
Kadima Party
Politics and Government
Defense and Military Forces