N.Y.C. Nature: The Charming Pill Bug

Abstract: As cute as anything found under a log, pill bugs, or roly-polies, are often the first “bugs” a child invites to play. My brother and I spent many hours in Canarsie poking them into little balls and rolling them around at the bottom of bottles, impatiently waiting for them to unfurl. Pill bugs are gentle, completely harmless creatures, and are often a child’s first invitation to nature in the city. Terrestrial crustaceans, pill bugs (Armadillidium vulgare) are more closely related to crabs and crayfish than to any of their insect neighbors. They breathe through gills, which must be kept moist. Consequently, the clay pot on your porch — cool and damp with transpiration on the hottest summer days — is the perfect place to begin a search for one. An old wooden board rotting in an abandoned lot is another good starting point; there probably isn’t an abandoned lot in all of New York City that doesn’t have a few boards and bugs in residence. But if these targets don’t produce, leaving a fragrant fruit rind, like a cantaloupe’s, face down in a shady spot for a day or two usually turns the trick. With no enlarged eyespots, no claws and no mandibles, pill bugs don’t even pretend to look menacing. Their one defense — “conglobation,” or rolling into an armored little ball — is actually rather endearing. Countless children have learned to handle creepy crawlies through contact with roly-polies. These gentle creatures have some odd physical attributes, and some even stranger habits, that might particularly tickle the interest of a potty-minded child. For one, pill bugs do not urinate and have a unique tolerance for waste products such as ammonia in their system. Ammonia and other waste fluids are exuded as gas through tiny pores in their shells. Pill bugs also make interesting use of their own solid wastes, practicing “coprophagy” — that is, they eat their own fecal matter. It is thought that this habit evolved to allow retention of hard-to-find copper. Pill bugs do not have iron-based hemoglobin as mammals do; rather, their blood contains hemocyanin, which relies on copper for oxygen transport. The animals are literally blue-bloods — heralding from an ancient lineage, to be sure, but their blood is light blue when oxygenated. Another oddity for the child in all of us: Though pill bugs can drink water traditionally — that is, through their mouths — they can also absorb water through tubelike structures, called uropods, at their other ends. Pressing these against wet surfaces, the animals can absorb fluids directly into their anus through capillary action. Female pill bugs carry their fertilized eggs in a marsupium — a brood pouch located on their underside. Their young are entirely independent upon hatching and are relatively long-lived, as arthropods go; they have been known to survive upward of two to three years in captivity, happily feeding on decaying plant and animal matter. They are a very useful (and unpaid) part of New York City’s cleanup crew.


One Man’s Discarded Ticket Can Be Another Man’s Salary

Abstract: For the past 10 years, Jesus Leonardo has been cleaning up at an OTB parlor in Midtown Manhattan, cashing in, by his own count, nearly half a million dollars’ worth of winning tickets from wagers on thoroughbred races across the country. During his glorious run, Mr. Leonardo, 57, has not placed a single bet. “It is literally found money,” he said on a recent night from his private winner’s circle. He spends more than 10 hours a day there, feeding thousands of discarded betting slips through a ticket scanner in a never-ending search for someone else’s lost treasure. “This has become my job, my life,” he said. “This is how I feed my family.” Leonardo, who favors track suits and wears his graying hair and bushy beard in long ponytails, is what’s known in horse racing parlance as a stooper — a person who hangs around racetracks and betting parlors picking up tickets thrown away by others. Most tickets are losers, but enough are winners to make it worth his while. To his stable of OTB buddies, Mr. Leonardo is the Secretariat of stoopers. “He’s a legend,” said Paul Pepad, 57, an out-of-work musician who lives in Manhattan. “Everyone knows that this is his turf, that all the tickets thrown out belong to him, period. It’s just been that way as long as I can remember.” T.D. Thornton , a journalist who wrote about stoopers in his 2007 book, “ Not by a Long Shot: A Season at a Hard-Luck Horse Track ,” said: “Stoopers are the gleaners of the racetrack world. Stoopers have a relationship with horse tracks that goes back to the advent of parimutuel betting in the early 1930s. There is an unwritten code in racing that says stoopers are tolerated as long as they are not perceived as harassing or stalking customers.” “They are allowed to live on the fringes,” he added. Mr. Leonardo, who is married with two teenagers, is hardly living on the fringes. He said that stooping brings him $100 to $300 a day, and more than $45,000 a year. Last month, he cashed in a winning ticket from bets made on races at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., for $8,040. His largest purse came in 2006, when he received $9,500 from a Pick 4 wager (choosing the winners of four consecutive races) at Retama Park Race Track in Selma, Tex. It is all taxable income. “I file my winnings with the I.R.S. every year,” Mr. Leonardo said in his thick Dominican accent. Freddy Peguero, 53, a short-order cook from Manhattan, rooted for Mr. Leonardo to scan a winner one recent afternoon. “Everybody in here loves Jesus,” he said. “When Jesus wins, we all eat, and we all drink. Jesus is a very generous man.” Once upon a wager on a race run at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, Mr. Leonardo, who lives in Wanaque, N.J., became a stooper by accident. In 1999, he walked into that same OTB parlor in Midtown and placed a bet. He watched the race, was sure he had lost and threw away his Pick 3 ticket. “But just as I was leaving, I looked up at the screen and realized an inquiry had been made,” he said, referring to a review of the race to check for possible rules infractions. “All of a sudden, the results changed and I actually won $900.” He began a frantic search for his ticket, picking up hundreds off the floor, and from ashtrays and garbage cans. He could not find it, however, and began pleading with the manager on duty. “She said there was nothing she could do about it,” Mr. Leonardo said. “I was so upset, almost in tears. Finally, she said, ‘Look, if you want to take the garbage home with you and look for your ticket, go right ahead.’ ” He did. Although he did not locate his $900 jackpot, he found two other winners in the trash, worth a combined $2,000. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Mr. Leonardo, who had been supporting his family and his dream of writing songs by working odd jobs, including painting homes and cleaning windows. “I started thinking, there’s probably winning tickets thrown in the garbage every day.” He has since returned nearly every day, waiting patiently for the OTB garbage to be placed at the curb before claiming it and picking out hundreds of betting slips. He places them in a separate garbage bag, which he hauls onto the PATH train for the ride home. “At first, my wife thought I was crazy, but then she realized I was finding a lot of money in winning tickets, sometimes $200 a day,” he said. “After a while, she didn’t think I was so crazy.” Over time, Mr. Leonardo devised a plan to increase his winnings. He enlisted two friends to pick up the trash at four other OTB parlors around the city and take it to him for $25 per bag. By the time Mr. Leonardo boards his train, he is carrying 2,000 to 7,000 discarded tickets. At home, two other friends help him bundle the tickets in stacks of 300, which Mr. Leonardo places in a red satchel. He heads back to New York in the morning and spends hours in front of a ticket machine, scanning each ticket. If anyone else needs the machine, he moves aside. “It is such exhausting work that I give myself a lunch hour,” he said. Uncashed winnings at all off-track betting operations and all racetracks in New York totaled more than $8.5 million over the past two years, according to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board . That is why Mr. Leonardo said he would not stop stooping anytime soon, not by a long shot. “Look here,” he said to Mr. Peguero after pulling a credit voucher from the machine for $6. “Another winner.”

Horse Racing
Stooper
Off-Track Betting
Leonardo Jesus


Consultant Questions Beijing’s Claim of Cleaner Air

Abstract: BEIJING — A new study has cast doubts about whether air quality has truly improved in Beijing and has concluded that “irregularities” in the city’s system of measuring air pollution have enabled the city to meet environmental targets linked to the coming Olympic Games. The study, written by an American environmental consultant, found flaws in Beijing’s “Blue Sky” system of air quality monitoring stations and noted that the city changed its method for measuring pollution in 2006. In particular, officials stopped including readings from two stations in polluted areas and began using readings in three other stations in less polluted locales. Without this switch, Beijing would have fallen far short of its goals in 2006 and 2007 for the number of days that met national air quality standards, according to the study. The study also found that a disproportionate number of days were rated just below the statistical break point that separates a polluted day from one that passes standards. “Irregularities in the monitoring of air quality account for all reported improvements over the last nine years,” said Steven Q. Andrews, the author of the study, in a telephone interview. Mr. Andrews published an op-ed article about his study on Wednesday in the Asian edition of The Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday afternoon, Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing’s Environmental Protection Bureau, reviewed a faxed copy of the article but responded in broad terms rather than addressing any specific findings. He agreed that Beijing still needed to make progress in reducing air pollution but said the city’s air had undeniably improved. “Over the past 10 years, through our enormous hard work, Beijing’s air pollution has visibly improved,” Mr. Du said in a statement. “This is an indisputable fact.” He added, “We have patience for that small group of people who don’t understand, and we believe that, as time passes, and in the face of facts, they will eventually understand.” Mr. Andrews said he based his study, which has not undergone peer review, on official government statistics. He spent more than a year in Beijing as a Princeton in Asia fellow at the National Resources Defense Council, or N.R.D.C., a nonprofit environmental group. But he said his study was independent of his association with the council. With roughly seven months remaining before Beijing plays host to the Olympics, air quality has become a major concern. Chinese officials have pledged that pollution will not be a problem during the Olympics and are discussing contingency plans that include possible factory shutdowns or traffic restrictions, if necessary. But Beijing officials also have pointed to improved Blue Sky air quality ratings as proof that the city is fulfilling its commitment to clean itself up for the Olympics. The Blue Sky program, used in 84 major cities across China, measures sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and airborne particulate matter known as PM10. Pollutants are measured on a scale of 1 to 500, with 500 considered the worst score. Any rating below 101 meets national air quality standards and is considered a “Blue Sky day.” The city’s overall daily rating is determined by whichever of the three pollutants has the highest rating for a 24-hour period. In Beijing, PM10 is almost always the worst pollutant. In 1998, Beijing recorded only 100 Blue Sky days. In 2007, that number had risen to 246, a fact hailed last week in China’s state media. But Mr. Andrews said the recent improvement was largely the result of changing the formula in 2006. He said the city’s daily pollution rating was based on readings from a subset of the more than two dozen monitoring stations around the city. Mr. Andrews said readings from seven stations were used from 1998 to 2005. But in 2006, the city dropped two stations located near areas with high traffic and replaced them with three other stations in quieter areas. The impact on the Blue Sky ratings was drastic; Mr. Andrews found that using the original seven stations would have meant 38 fewer Blue Sky days in 2006, and 55 fewer last year. This would have meant that Beijing had fewer days meeting national air quality standards last year than in 2002, when there were 203. Mr. Andrews also found that ratings began to change after officials set targets for every monitoring station in the city. He said this political imperative coincided with a rising number of days that rated just below the break point of 101 to qualify as a Blue Sky day.

Air Pollution
Beijing (China)
Olympic Games (2008)
Environment


Disney Stakes Claim to Ratings Record

Abstract: The Friday night premiere of the Disney Channel movie “High School Musical 2” has set ratings records, delivering the largest single audience in basic-cable television history, according to preliminary ratings reports provided by Disney. In early overnight estimates, the debut of “High School Musical 2,” a sequel to the popular 2006 television movie about a diverse group of teenagers who learn to channel their inner theater geeks, was watched by 17.2 million viewers nationwide. If the number holds up, it will make the movie the most-watched event ever broadcast on basic cable, surpassing a broadcast of “Monday Night Football” on ESPN, which attracted 16 million viewers on Oct. 23, 2006. It would also make it the most-watched movie to be shown on basic cable, toppling the previous record holder, the TNT western “Crossfire Trail,” which was seen by 12.5 million viewers when it was broadcast on Jan. 21, 2001.

Disney Channel
Ratings and Rating Systems


Shares Fall on Worries About Lehman

Abstract: Stocks tumbled Tuesday after fresh concerns about the stability of Lehman Brothers Holdings touched off renewed jitters about the overall financial sector. Each of the major indexes lost more than 2 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 280.01 points, or 2.43 percent, to 11,230.73. Broader indexes also fell. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index declined 43.28 points, or 3.41 percent, to 1,224.51. The Nasdaq composite index fell 59.95 points, or 2.64 percent, to 2,209.81. Wall Street’s pullback came as worries about Lehman punctured a sense of optimism about the financial sector. Investors had hoped the sector would recover after the Treasury Department announced Sunday it would seize control of the mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help stabilize the troubled housing market. But worries about Lehman regained investors’ attention. Its shares lost nearly half their value Tuesday as investors worried that the company was having trouble finding fresh sources of capital. Media reports said a possible investment from South Korea’s government-owned Korea Development Bank was in doubt. Many financial companies, including Lehman, have struggled with souring mortgage debt on their books and have looked to outside sources of financing to shore up their balance sheets. “We’re back to the fundamentals again,” said Denis Amato, chief investment officer at Ancora Advisors in Cleveland, referring to investors’ mentality a day after sending stocks higher. “These financial maneuverings don’t create prosperity,” he said of the government’s steps to aid Fannie and Freddie. “Just because you make some financial change doesn’t mean all the sudden the economy gets better.” The declines ate into gains logged Monday when the Dow jumped 2.6 percent and the S.& P. 500 rose 2.1 percent. Bond prices rose as investors sought the safety of government debt. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 29/32, to 103 19/32. The yield, which moves in the opposite direction from the price, fell to 3.57 percent, from 3.67 percent late Monday. Oil settled below $104 a barrel for the first time since early April after Hurricane Ike appeared to be headed away from energy installations on the Gulf Coast. Light, sweet crude oil fell $3.08 to settle at $103.26. The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices fell. A weaker-than-expected report on pending home sales most likely added to Wall Street’s downbeat mood. Among financial names, Citigroup fell $1.44, or 7.1 percent, to $18.88. Morgan Stanley fell $2.87, or 6.6 percent, to $40.40. Merrill Lynch & Company declined $2.83, or 10.3 percent, to $24.76. Energy companies also lost ground as oil fell. In corporate news, McDonald’s said sales at stores open at least a year rose 4.5 percent in the United States in August and 8.5 percent globally. The stock rose 77 cents, to $63.19. Following are the results of Tuesday’s auction of four-week Treasury bills:

Nasdaq Composite Index
Stocks and Bonds
Dow Jones Stock Average


Vikings to Stay in Minnesota

Abstract: The Minnesota Vikings , long considered one of the prime candidates for a possible move to Los Angeles, will remain in Minneapolis for at least the next three decades. The state’s House and Senate approved a bill Thursday that will provide $498 million in public money for the construction of a new stadium on the site of the Metrodome. The bill was expected to be signed by Gov. Mark Dayton, the bill’s most fervent champion. The stadium is expected to be ready for the 2016 season, and Minneapolis is almost certain to host a Super Bowl not long after, a pattern the N.F.L. has established to reward teams and communities with new stadiums. The Vikings agreed to increase their contribution for building costs by $50 million to $477 million. The $975 million price tag is for a fixed roof stadium. If the team decides to choose a more expensive retractable roof, it will pick up the additional cost. The state’s share of the stadium contribution — about $348 million — will come from expanded gambling options. An additional $150 million will come from a Minneapolis hospitality tax. The approval ends a long, sometimes contentious struggle for the Vikings, as they sought public funding. The Vikings’ lease at the Metrodome ended in January and only a few weeks ago, the stadium plan seemed in peril because of significant resistance to the public contribution at a time of shrinking state budgets. The Vikings are the second N.F.L. team this year to receive approval for a new stadium. The San Francisco 49ers broke ground in April on a stadium in Santa Clara that they expect to be ready for the 2014 season. With the Vikings staying put, the focus will shift to other teams that might move if Los Angeles settles on a stadium plan, although that does not seem imminent. The St. Louis Rams, the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders have problematic stadium issues and could be candidates. The Jaguars are also a possibility, but the new owner, Shad Khan, has said he is committed to Jacksonville.

Minnesota
Minnesota Vikings
Metrodome
Stadiums and Arenas
Football


Xi’s Visit to Britain Highlights Broader Shift in Concerns About China

Abstract: LONDON — The visit to Britain by President Xi Jinping of China is underscoring how European nations are de-emphasizing human rights and security concerns as they compete to benefit from China’s growing economic might. Prime Minister David Cameron and his chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, have muted public criticism of Chinese political, military and human rights behavior since 2012, and during Mr. Xi’s visit here over the past several days, they have highlighted how increased trade and investment can create more British jobs. But the shifting European calculations about the allure of doing business with China are hardly limited to Britain, and extend to Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, among other countries. Berlin, too, has been assiduous in its courtship of Beijing and has been hardly strident in its comments on China’s domestic abuses of human rights or its growing military might in Asia. Having built a dynamic economy on exports of advanced industrial goods, especially automobiles, Germany’s growth has been partly tied to that of China, which is now its second-largest market, after France. German exports to China reached 74.5 billion euros, or $84.6 billion, in 2014 — and represented nearly half of the European Union ’s total exports to China of €164.7 billion, according to the European Commission . (European Union imports from China were worth €302.5 billion.) Some large and politically influential German companies are particularly tied to China. Volkswagen, for instance, before its recent admission about cheating on diesel emission standards , got nearly 65 percent of its profit from China, and Daimler, which owns Mercedes, is also heavily invested there, its sales hurt lately by Mr. Xi’s crackdown on corruption and lavish gift-giving. In a real sense, Britain’s push now for a “golden era” with China, as Mr. Cameron put it, is in direct competition with Germany and, to a lesser degree, France, a country that has been generally more outspoken in its criticism of China. Why China Rattles the World China’s economy is faltering, prompting concerns that are now shaking global stock markets. Germany’s total of about 45 percent of European Union exports to China dwarfs Britain’s 10 percent and France’s 9 percent. And Germany is the only European Union country, besides Finland, to have a positive trade balance with Beijing. Britain, by contrast, has by far the largest trade deficit with China of the five largest bloc economies, about €11.4 billion. Mr. Osborne in particular sees Britain’s future as a trading nation tied up with a rising and wealthy China. He has made great efforts to praise Beijing and even “take a bit of a risk with the China relationship,” as he said, by visiting the restive Xinjiang region, where Uighur separatists have been repressed by the central government. Britain, Mr. Osborne said, wanted to be “China’s best partner in the West,” even as the Chinese economy is slowing, and he has tried to prove it, causing frustration and even anger in Washington, especially as Mr. Xi has cracked down on dissent and censored the Internet. China, like Russia, regards the European Union as an artificial political construct and emphasizes bilateral relations with different countries, sometimes setting one off against another. Germany, too, has not been above putting its economic interests before those of other Europeans. In one prominent example, the country undermined the position of the European Commission last year in a tariff dispute with China over the import or “dumping” of cheap solar panels. Germany was not alone in opposition, but it weakened the commission’s negotiating stance before a minimum price for the panels was set. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has also been accused of playing down human rights for economic interests, and she inevitably brings with her to China high-level German business representatives. But she has been more outspoken about noneconomic issues than the British have been. Being more important to China than Britain, and given its history, Germany does not keep entirely silent about Chinese abuses, but the criticism is rarely public. Mr. Xi made a major visit to Berlin in 2014 and praised Berlin and Beijing as “two pillars of growth in Asia and Europe.” Ms. Merkel briefs reporters on her conversations with the Chinese, which inevitably include at least nominal discussions about human rights and especially cybersecurity and the Chinese hacking of German companies. But she, too, has modulated her voice. In 2007, she met with the Dalai Lama, but China reacted angrily, and in the years after, according to Der Spiegel, she has largely kept her criticism private and has not made many public gestures toward dissidents, earning praise from the Chinese government’s English-language mouthpiece, Global Times. Video Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and President Xi Jinping of China on Thursday went for drinks after meetings at the prime minister’s country retreat. Credit Credit Pool photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth “Merkel once took the lead among European leaders in meeting the Dalai Lama,” the newspaper wrote in 2012. “Germany has the ability to lead a more independent diplomacy in global politics. It should not bury itself in old Europe.” On her visit to Beijing last year (her seventh since 2005), Ms. Merkel made a careful speech at a university referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the need for “free dialogue,” noting that Germany and China have a continuing forum on human rights. But that forum, like the similar one that the European Union has with China, has produced little of substance. Last year, in response to Ms. Merkel, the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, was quick to point out that China and Germany were “both victims of hacking attacks,” a clear reference to revelations by Edward J. Snowden about American cyberespionage against the two countries. Concerted efforts have helped in certain human rights cases, like a joint European call for the release of a Chinese dissident artist, Ai Weiwei. But then the British Embassy in China initially refused Mr. Ai a visa, on questionable grounds, to visit Britain in the period in which Mr. Xi would be here. After Mr. Ai protested and there was a public uproar, Britain relented and apologized . Mr. Ai told Sky News this week that “the British prime minister has had a record on putting human rights aside, which is very bad strategy and also is a very bad aesthetics, because this certainly doesn’t represent the British people.” In a paper last December for the European Council on Foreign Relations, François Godement, a noted French expert on China, called for more European Union unity on human rights. The weakness of European efforts, he said, stems from “China’s use of its economic leverage, Europe’s current crisis of confidence and the crowding out of Chinese human rights issues by pressing geopolitical concerns closer to Europe.” The failure of Europe’s human rights approach to China is documented, he noted, in a 2014 study by Katrin Kinzelbach, “The E.U.’s Human Rights Dialogue With China: Quiet Diplomacy and Its Limits.” The study describes quiet diplomacy but also the active opposition of China, including the last-minute cancellation of meetings and the execution of a man whose case was raised by Brussels the same morning a human rights dialogue was starting in Beijing. “Kinzelbach asks the difficult question — where did Europe’s quiet diplomacy have an impact?” Mr. Godement writes, noting the constant compromise between professed European values and economic expediency. She quotes a European participant who explained: “I am not aware that the E.U. has demanded results,” adding, “It is just a venue for us to express concern.”

China
Xi Jinping
Europe
Human Rights
Economy
European Commission
International trade
Great Britain
EU
Daimler AG


A Physician-Turned-Artist Offers a Diagnosis for Islam’s Holiest City

Abstract: JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — When a human crush killed more than 2,400 people during the hajj pilgrimage in 2015, the Saudi Arabian artist Ahmed Mater was nearby doing what he had spent much of the last five years doing: moving around Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, and taking pictures. Mr. Mater, a former physician, had abandoned his medical career to become a full-time artist, and he had made it his goal to document the drastic changes taking place in Mecca as a means of diagnosing its overall health. The news of the stampede struck him as an important crisis. So he rushed to the site, navigated past the crowds and guards, and snapped photos of the aftermath: lines of bodies on stretchers in the street, covered in white cloth. The memory has stuck with him. “The smell, and the sadness,” he said during an interview at his studio in this Red Sea port city. “You looked at the ground and knew that something huge had happened, a great disaster.” Mr. Mater is now publishing these photos, and more than 600 others, in a book that aims to showcase often-hidden aspects of the holy city. The book , “Desert of Pharan: Unofficial Histories Behind the Mass Expansion of Mecca,” provides an unvarnished photographic catalog of the city: labor camps for foreign workers; slums where undocumented residents live; aerial views of scores of construction cranes surrounding the Grand Mosque; and luxury hotel rooms where wealthy pilgrims can get a bird’s-eye view of the Kaaba, the cubic structure toward which Muslims pray. By documenting the changes in Mecca, Mr. Mater has taken on a subject of prime importance to both the Saudi government and the royal family. The legitimacy of the Saudi king is so tied to his stewardship of the holy sites that he bears the title “The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” meaning those in Mecca and Medina. In recent years, the Saudi government has invested billions of dollars on massive infrastructure projects to expand access to the holy sites for increasing numbers of pilgrims. All Muslims who are financially able are required to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lives. It is unclear how the government will respond to Mr. Mater’s unofficial view. In showing aspects of the city that are often unseen by the pilgrims, he has exposed Mecca’s scruffy edges and what he calls the “violence” of how the government has altered its landscape and urban fabric. Mr. Mater, who is Muslim, said he did not oppose the government’s goal of expanding access to the holy sites, but disagreed on how it should be done. He is uncomfortable with the extent that business interests, rather than human or spiritual concerns, have influenced the expansion. Many of his photos, for example, show the construction of the Makkah Royal Clock Tower, a skyscraper that houses a luxury hotel and looms over the Grand Mosque. “The hajj is based on the concepts of equality and simplicity, but what has happened now is direct investment,” Mr. Mater said. “There is big business in the middle of this expansion.” His former career as a physician also influenced how he viewed the city, and he spoke of Mecca as a living being that needs the least-intrusive treatment possible. “Imagine if you have a patient, and you do hundreds of operations on this patient at the same time,” he said. “You will kill your patient.” Mr. Mater spent more than five years exploring Mecca, patiently working to gain access to all aspects of the city. He befriended foreign laborers by taking their photographs and giving them copies. In return, he said, they would help him visit their work sites. Image In one of Mr. Mater’s photographs, construction cranes line the top of the Grand Mosque near the Kaaba in Mecca. The resulting photos show the scope of the construction projects — from groups of mechanical diggers flattening mountains to work crews knocking down apartment buildings. They reflect the lives of the laborers, who are mostly Muslims from South Asia, and their cramped lodgings, but also their pride at working near the holy sites. Mr. Mater’s photographs captured the often jarring juxtapositions of the sacred and the commercial, a House of Donuts near the city’s entrance, and a gleaming mall near the Grand Mosque. He also ventured away from the pilgrimage sites, with one chapter in his book dedicated to a large slum inhabited by undocumented Burmese immigrants, and another on the homes and celebrations of the city’s prominent families. “The story of Mecca is the story of a living settlement,” Mr. Mater said. He also photographed the city from above in multiple helicopter flights, taking in, among other things, the abundance of fluorescent green lighting, which he said gave the city “a Las Vegas feeling.” Mr. Mater also often relied on high-level contacts to make his work easier. He received help from the governors of Mecca and Medina, both of whom are princes in the royal family and have previously supported Saudi artists. “I don’t know if they will like the book or not,” Mr. Mater said, given its documentation of aspects of the city that many Saudis would rather outsiders not see. “But it is my opinion in the end.” The book was published in Europe in September, and was released in the United States last month, but it is unclear if it will be sold in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Mater has submitted a copy to the Ministry of Culture and Information, which must approve all books sold in the kingdom, but has yet to hear back. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The son of a Saudi military officer, Mr. Mater, 37, grew up in a village in southern Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen, surrounded by cows and sheep. He became interested in art during medical school, and then worked at a government hospital in the southern city of Abha. He quit after five years because his interest in art had grown, he said, while the space for it in Abha had shrunk because of rising religious conservatism. The area is known for being the home of some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers, one of whom, Ahmed al-Nami, Mr. Mater had known. “He used to play the oud,” Mr. Mater said, referring to the stringed musical instrument. “Then all of a sudden he disappeared.” Mr. Nami was aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pa. Throughout the 2000s, it became more difficult for Mr. Mater and his artist colleagues to operate. In 2011, he and his wife, the artist Arwa al-Naemi, moved to the less conservative city of Jidda. There, they opened Studio Pharan, named after an ancient term for eastern Arabia that appears in the Hebrew Bible. The studio is now a hub for the city’s young artists, writers and filmmakers. It features open work spaces, a library of art books and literature, and a foosball table where Mr. Mater and his friends play fierce matches late into the night. Although he lives in Jidda, he says that Mecca has tremendous importance for the world’s Muslims as “a symbolic city” whose healthy development could guide the growth of other Muslim communities. “It is the role model, so if the role model is good, it will reflect on the world in a better, more merciful way,” he said. As an example, he said he would like to see Mecca developed with satellite cities that respect the local environment and are connected by public transportation. But as a doctor, he has hopes for the city’s future. “There is a prognosis, and Mecca is O.K.,” he said. “Mecca is not in the shape it should be in, but nothing is too late. It is possible for Mecca to find solutions.”

Islam
Saudi Arabia
Pilgrimage
Ahmed Mater
Mecca
Books
Photography


De Blasio Names Chief of Agency Overseeing Sick Pay Law

Abstract: Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday the appointment of a former regulatory lawyer, well known for her efforts to revitalize Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks, to head the Department of Consumer Affairs — an agency enforcing compliance with New York City’s paid sick leave law. The new department head, Julie Menin, 46, a former chairwoman of Manhattan Community Board 1, has a diverse résumé. She is a former host of “Give and Take,” a current-events talk show that was broadcast on NBC; a former caterer and small-business owner; a founder of the nonprofit organization Wall Street Rising, formed to support the rebuilding of the financial district; and most recently, an unsuccessful candidate for Manhattan borough president. Ms. Menin’s experiences seemed to fit the stated aims of the de Blasio administration, one that tries to balance its liberal agenda with effective governance. As a community board chairwoman, Ms. Menin led her district through the unrest of Occupy Wall Street and the controversy surrounding a plan for an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero. “I watched with real admiration how Julie handled these extraordinarily complicated and difficult issues with grace, with focus, with clear, strong, progressive opinions, but with a real ability to work with everyone,” Mr. de Blasio said on Thursday. Mr. de Blasio, who has criticized tactics of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration that he saw as unfairly targeting small businesses, said Ms. Menin’s former careers as a regulatory lawyer and a small-business owner would make her empathetic to both consumers and business people. He invited small-business owners to City Hall for the announcement on Thursday. Ms. Menin said Wall Street Rising was focused on helping small businesses re-establish themselves after Sept. 11. “In that capacity,” she said, “I heard time and time again on countless occasions from small businesses who did not understand why they were receiving punitive fines and, quite honestly, did not know how to even fix the problem.” But one of the agency’s biggest and most immediate tasks will be to enforce compliance with the paid sick leave law, which requires certain employers, including companies with five or more employees hired to work more than 80 hours in a calendar year, to provide up to five paid days off to workers if they or their close relatives are ill. The law went into effect on April 1. Ms. Menin said qualified employees could begin using their days on July 30. Though the law requires that public service advertising be listed in six languages, she said the agency would do more. “We’re going to be translating into many, many languages to ensure that we’re reaching communities all across the city,” she said.

Consumer Affairs Department of New York City


Romney Pulled in 2 Directions Over Economy

Abstract: WASHINGTON — When Mitt Romney declared during his unsuccessful campaign for the Senate in 1994 that the federal minimum wage should rise with inflation, a break with Republican doctrine, both Democrats and Republicans accused him of pandering to Massachusetts voters. Mr. Romney has now maintained that position for almost two decades, qualifying his stand as he sought the Republican presidential nomination but never relinquishing the view that inflation adjustments would be good for workers, good for employers and good for the broader economy. As he prepares to accept his party’s nomination this week, his steady support for an idea vigorously opposed by conservatives and business groups underscores the complexity of predicting how he might manage the national economy. During the current campaign, Mr. Romney has embraced the conservative view that government can best help the economy by getting smaller, and he has selected as his running mate Representative Paul D. Ryan , a Wisconsin Republican who is a standard-bearer for fiscal conservatism. But a review of the positions that Mr. Romney has taken on economic issues during his two decades in politics reveals a recurring tension between his political commitments and his private sector experience at Bain Capital , which he often cited earlier in his political career in advocating a larger government role in the economy. Mr. Romney has propounded the benefits of expanding and enforcing regulations, including the minimum wage and environmental laws. He has argued that government spending, including public investments in private companies, can stimulate the economy and create jobs. And he has advocated tax penalties to shape public behavior, as in his successful campaign to penalize Massachusetts residents who do not obtain health insurance . In recent years he has modified or abandoned some of these positions as he courted Republican support. But the minimum wage is an example of an issue on which he has held constant. And some people who have known him in both of his careers say that he still sees government through the pragmatic eyes of a businessman. “I think his basic philosophy is, whether you’re running a for-profit business, a nonprofit or a government agency, at the end of the day one should evaluate how one is doing, and continually evaluate success, and the right criteria is the level of customer satisfaction,” said Thomas G. Stemberg, the founder of Staples and a friend and adviser to Mr. Romney since the mid-1980s. The looming showdown over the federal budget would provide one of the first tests of how Mr. Romney would balance these influences as president. He has said during the campaign that the deficit should be reduced solely through spending cuts, and that less spending would stimulate growth. Mr. Ryan is a leading proponent of both views. But in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney worked with the Democratic-controlled legislature to close budget deficits through a combination of spending cuts and increased revenues from higher fees for public services and the elimination of some corporate tax deductions. A Lost Investment In 1985, Mr. Romney and his colleagues at Bain Capital made one of their first investments in Sanborn Industries, a Massachusetts company that made recycling systems for industrial coolants. The Environmental Protection Agency had just proposed a rule encouraging such recycling. But the agency delayed enactment, potential customers waited and Bain lost its money. The lesson that Mr. Romney took, which he described 25 years later in his book “No Apology” was that the regulation was a good idea but that the government should have moved more quickly. “The regulations ultimately led to better machining industry practices,” he wrote, “but because they weren’t enforced for almost a decade, we lost our investment.” His support for minimum wage increases reflected the same principle, that government enforcement of minimum standards is economically valuable — “I wish more Republicans and Democrats alike understood that important truth,” he wrote — and that businesses benefit when that enforcement is predictable. When he endorsed inflation indexing during his 2002 campaign for governor, he said it would let businesses plan better than they could with intermittent minimum wage increases at the whim of politicians. “I do not believe that indexing the minimum wage will cost us jobs,” he said. “I believe it will help us to retain jobs.” He said that again in 2008, during his first presidential campaign, and in January while campaigning in New Hampshire . But under fire from conservatives, he modified his position, saying that automatic increases in the minimum wage should be suspended in some circumstances, like periods of high unemployment. Mr. Romney has also stopped talking about the benefits of regulation, focusing instead on its costs. His campaign platform includes proposals to curtail rule making, like capping the total cost of regulation at the current level, without adjusting for inflation. “For every regulation, there are unintended consequences, underestimated costs and unwanted influence from special interests,” Mr. Romney said in a speech in March at the University of Chicago . “When the heavy hand of government replaces the invisible hand of the market, economic freedom is the inevitable victim.” A few weeks after taking office in 2003, Mr. Romney visited a solar panel factory in Lowell, a run-down mill town north of Boston , to announce that a state trust fund would invest $9 million in five companies developing clean energy technology and place an additional $15 million in a privately managed fund to make further investments. During the current campaign, he has said that the government should not invest in individual companies, criticizing the Obama administration for doing so in cases like that of Solyndra , a bankrupt solar panel maker. But in 2003, he extolled the potential economic benefits. The fund, he said, “can become a major economic springboard for the commonwealth by focusing on job creation in the renewable energy sector.” Mr. Romney’s predecessor, Jane M. Swift, had proposed that the state should take $81.6 million from the Renewable Energy Trust, about half of its financing, to pare the state’s budget deficit. Rob Pratt, who ran the fund, said that Mr. Romney’s staff called shortly after the inauguration to ask about investments that were ready to be announced. “It was very encouraging that he wanted to put his imprint on it,” Mr. Pratt said in an interview. “After that, I never felt that they were going to take a run at gutting the trust.” A month later, in February, when the State Senate proposed draining $35 million from the fund, Mr. Romney argued for spending cuts instead. He ultimately agreed to take $17 million from the trust, but he immediately announced legislation requiring the state to buy a comparable amount of renewable energy, maintaining support for the industry by other means. Mr. Romney’s current opposition to such investments has placed him at odds with many business interests. “I know that not everyone is happy with my discourse on this,” he told the Business Roundtable, an association of executives, in June. “But I don’t think the government should be investing in individual companies to try and promote individual companies.” It has also disappointed some of those he worked with in Massachusetts. William Osborn, a private manager selected to help the state invest $15 million through the spinoff Green Energy Fund, said Mr. Romney had liked the idea of combining the strengths of government, including a longer investment horizon, with private sector discipline. “He’s altogether a different person now,” Mr. Osborn said, “but back then there was no complaint that he wasn’t supportive of this stuff.” Shunning a Tax Pledge Barbara Anderson spent more than half an hour in March 2002 fruitlessly trying to persuade Mr. Romney, then seeking the Republican nomination for governor, to sign the pledge for no new taxes that the last three governors, all Republicans, had signed. Ms. Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, an influential group in the small world of Massachusetts conservatives, met with Mr. Romney in a hotel conference room north of Boston with a copy of the pledge printed on parchment-style paper “that looked a little businesslike,” she said. “What I remember is that he never stopped smiling,” Ms. Anderson said in an interview. “He listened and gave us all the time we needed to make our case, and then he said what he was going to say: ‘I’m just not going to sign it. It’s not necessary. I’m not going to raise taxes.’ ” But Mr. Romney would soon anger conservatives with a tax proposal that was not intended to raise any new money. In October 2002, he called for Massachusetts to shift from a flat-rate annual tax on automobiles to a tax based on emissions. Mr. Romney was careful to describe the plan as “revenue neutral.” It was meant to change behavior. Owners of low-emission vehicles would pay less; owners of high-emission vehicles would pay more. Ms. Anderson told The Boston Globe that it was an example of “big mama government telling us how to lead our lives.” The idea found little support in the legislature, but it was representative of Mr. Romney’s broader view that government could improve the economy not just through tax cuts but also through penalties — as in his landmark plan to penalize people who do not carry health insurance. “Experience proves again and again that incentives are more effective than controls,” he wrote in his book. As Mr. Romney sought to close the state’s budget deficit, he also sought to raise revenues by invoking what he described as the conservative principle of personal responsibility, cutting corporate tax deductions and raising fees for things like ice rink rentals and business licenses. He invoked the same idea in a deal with the legislature to replenish the state’s unemployment fund through a combination of benefit cuts and higher fees on businesses, with most of the burden falling on companies that had most frequently dropped workers onto the dole. All states use a version of this “experience rating” to set unemployment taxes; Massachusetts under Mr. Romney moved from a modest adjustment to one of the steepest slopes. “It was kind of hard to argue against those changes,” said Bill Vernon, Massachusetts state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business trade group. Mr. Romney has indicated, however, that he would not replicate the Massachusetts approach nationally. He has said that the federal government’s revenues are sufficient, and that he would focus on spending cuts. He has also backed away from the use of tax penalties. In early 2006, he proposed what he later described as a “similar but more palatable” plan to offer a tax break for buyers of fuel-efficient vehicles, with no attempt to recover the lost revenues from owners of other vehicles. And in December 2006, while preparing for his first presidential bid, Mr. Romney signed his name to a national version of the pledge for no new taxes.

Mitt Romney
Republicans
Federal Budget
US Economy
2012 Presidential Election


Critic of Chechen President Is Killed in Exile in Vienna

Abstract: A Chechen who had formally accused the president of Chechnya of participating in kidnappings and torture sessions was fatally shot Tuesday as he walked out of a grocery store in Vienna, according to his lawyer and family friends. The shooting appeared to be another politically motivated killing of a Russian citizen who had criticized government conduct. The slain man, Umar S. Israilov, 27, had been detained as a separatist rebel, then was given amnesty, and briefly became a bodyguard to President Ramzan A. Kadyrov of Chechnya. He ultimately fled Chechnya for Europe. In late 2006, Mr. Israilov filed a complaint against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights that detailed his claims of the systematic use of abductions and torture by Mr. Kadyrov, and indigenous security forces under Mr. Kadyrov’s command, to punish suspected insurgents and their families. The complaint covered events from 2003 through 2005, when Mr. Kadyrov led a state-sponsored militia and became the republic’s deputy prime minister. It included Mr. Israilov’s experiences as one of Mr. Kadyrov’s victims and later as a witness to what he said were Mr. Kadyrov’s crimes against others. In an interview with The New York Times last fall, Mr. Israilov described several of the allegations, including the beating and kicking of detainees by Mr. Kadyrov and his fighters, the rape of a detainee by one of Mr. Kadyrov’s subordinates, and Mr. Kadyrov’s use of a device that delivered electric shocks to prisoners. Mr. Israilov said Mr. Kadyrov had used the electrical device on him, turning a hand-crank to deliver an excruciating charge. “It feels as if all of your muscles are going to explode,” he said. “It was as if you were being torn apart.” After Mr. Israilov fled Russia, his father was abducted, tortured by Mr. Kadyrov and held illegally for more than 10 months, in an effort to force the son to return home, according to both victims and a human rights worker who investigated the case. Mr. Israilov’s father, who has received asylum in another European country, planned to travel to Vienna this week to arrange his son’s funeral, a friend of the family’s said by telephone. The news of Mr. Israilov’s killing became public late Tuesday night in Russia. Mr. Kadyrov’s spokesmen could not be reached. Mr. Kadyrov has long been accused of human rights abuses and of ruling Chechnya through patterns of organized sadism and fear. He has always vehemently denied the accusations. As the allegations have mounted over the years, his rise to power has been nurtured by the Kremlin. He has remained closely associated with Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who in 2004, as president, awarded him the Hero of Russia medal, the nation’s highest honor. Mr. Israilov’s complaint presented one of the first formal challenges in Europe to Mr. Kadyrov’s official stature in Russia and raised implicit questions about his privileged place in Mr. Putin’s circle. Mr. Israilov had been granted asylum by Austria, but his life there had been filled with worries about his safety. In the interview last fall, he said he limited his movements and contacts with strangers after an emissary from Mr. Kadyrov visited Austria and tried to dupe him into returning home. “Ramzan is a very powerful man,” Mr. Israilov said, “and he can have anyone killed.” Nadja Lorenz, his lawyer in Vienna, said by telephone that she had recently sought protection for Mr. Israilov from the Austrian authorities, but that the request had been denied. A family friend of Mr. Israilov’s gave this account of his killing: He was ambushed at lunchtime on Tuesday near his apartment as he left a grocery store where he had stopped to buy yogurt. At least four men in two cars were waiting for him. Mr. Israilov tried to run away but was quickly overtaken and shot. The family friend, out of fear for his own safety, asked that his name be withheld.

Torture
Russia
Chechnya (Russia)
Kadyrov Ramzan
Murders and Attempted Murders


The New Optimism of Al Gore

Abstract: NASHVILLE — Al Gore wants to make a point about cellphones, and he has a helpful set of slides on his laptop. “Do you want to see that?” he asks, and starts to turn the MacBook around. “It’s not two hours — don’t worry.” Mr. Gore knows he is The Guy With the Slides, the man who will talk about the environment until you can no longer remember the color of the sky. He long ago mastered the self-deprecating gestures that let you know that he knows what you are thinking. And then he shows you the slides anyway. Slides have been very good to the former vice president of the United States, almost president, environmental activist and now successful green investor. His slide show on the threat of climate change, presented in the movie “ An Inconvenient Truth ,” won an Academy Award. His efforts to spread the word about global warming earned him, along with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , a Nobel Peace Prize . His was a dire call to strenuous and difficult action. Over the last year, however, the prophet of doom has become much more a prophet of possibility — even, perhaps, an optimist. Still an object of derision for the political right, Mr. Gore has seen support for his views rising within the business community: Investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar is skyrocketing as their costs plummet. He has slides for that, too. Experts predicted in 2000 that wind generated power worldwide would reach 30 gigawatts; by 2010, it was 200 gigawatts, and by last year it reached nearly 370, or more than 12 times higher. Installations of solar power would add one new gigawatt per year by 2010, predictions in 2002 stated. It turned out to be 17 times that by 2010 and 48 times that amount last year. Image Al Gore led a meeting with his team at his Nashville office in late January. Credit Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times “I think most people have been surprised, even shocked, by how quickly the cost has come down,” Mr. Gore says in his office in an environmentally friendly building in the prosperous Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville. He sports a style that might be called Southern business casual: a blazer and dress shirt, bluejeans and cowboy boots. At age 66, he is also trimmer than he was during his bearish, bearded period after the 2000 election, thanks in part to a vegan diet he has maintained for two years. In this city? Home of heavenly meat-and-three platters? He smiles and says proudly, “There are 10 vegan restaurants in Nashville now.” Over an hour and a half, he delivers an endless stream of facts and trends from around the globe. Every minute in Bangladesh, two more homes get new rooftop solar panels. Dubai’s state utility accepted a bid for a solar power plant with a cost per kilowatt-hour of less than six cents. “Wow,” he says, his eyes wide. “That just set everybody on their ear.” Such changes, he says, represent a sharp break with the past, not a slow evolution. That is the point of those slides on his laptop. In 1980, one shows, consultants for AT&T projected that 900,000 cellphones might be sold by 2000. In fact, there were 109 million by then. Today there are some seven billion. “So the question is: Why were they not only wrong, but way wrong?” he says. He presses a button, and up pops an old photo of a young Al Gore with a helmet of hair and an early mobile phone roughly the size of one of Michael Jordan’s sneakers. The same kind of transformation that turned those expensive, clunkers into powerful computers in every pocket is happening now in energy, he says, with new technology leapfrogging old infrastructure. “It’s coming so fast,” he says. “It’s very, very exciting.” Image Al Gore and his then-wife, Tipper, arriving at the Academy Awards in Hollywood, Calif., in 2007. "An Inconvenient Truth," featuring Mr. Gore, won an Oscar for best documentary. Credit Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images All of this means, he adds, that the worst effects of climate change can be blunted. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he says. “We’re going to win this.” He pauses and repeats for effect, part preacher and part TED talk. “We’re going to win this. “The only question is how long it takes.” He is pleased to see the Obama administration becoming more active on climate issues. President Obama’s advocacy of climate change action was overshadowed by the push for health care legislation, a disappointment for Mr. Gore and other environmentalists. “He did not use the bully pulpit in quite the way many of us would have wanted in his first term,” Mr. Gore says. But since Mr. Obama’s re-election, his stronger voice on global warming, tougher carbon emission regulations and major climate agreement with China have the former vice president smiling. “He’s doing a terrific job on it now,” he says. Mr. Gore is continuing to spread the word. Last month, at the end of an optimistic talk about climate change at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he and the singer Pharrell Williams announced a Live Earth concert to be held on all seven continents on June 18. The concert will include a moment, Mr. Williams told those at the forum, when “we are literally going to have humanity harmonize all at once.” In the meantime, Mr. Gore will keep his frenetic schedule of training programs around the world. He has met with large groups in Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, India and elsewhere to present local versions of his climate change slide show. Those who attend, in turn, make the presentation to their own countrymen, spreading the word far more broadly than the documentary ever did. “The work of the trainees is not the sort of thing you see on the front page of the newspaper, but they are reaching networks of colleagues and friends in a most powerful way,” said Don Henry, a professor at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and former head of the Australian Conservation Foundation . “Those people are out there changing the world.” Those presentations are exhaustive — and exhausting, says Orin Kramer, a New York hedge fund manager and friend of Mr. Gore. He attended a training program with some 600 people that was scheduled to run from 8:30 in the morning until 5 p.m. “I assumed there’s going to be a 40-minute warm-up” by Mr. Gore, he says, and then the rest of the day’s activities would be led by assistants. Instead, “he stands up there in front of this group of people for eight and a half hours and 164 climate slides,” Mr. Kramer says. Many members of the audience were scientists who asked pointed questions, citing specific studies; Mr. Gore answered study with study, point for point. “He knew more about the academic literature than any of the academics in the audience,” Mr. Kramer says. “He basically out-nerded all the other nerds in the room.” At the same time, Mr. Gore is a less visible leader of the environmental movement in the United States. While he participated in the enormous march before the climate summit in New York City in September, he was not a focus of coverage. But his voice is still being heard, said Reed E. Hundt, a close friend of Mr. Gore who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton administration. “Give me the top three global leaders in opinion shaping climate change,” he says. “If you don’t put Gore in that group, I’d be surprised.” But being the lone voice, he adds, means “being a prophet without honor.” “Nobody wants that job,” Mr. Hundt says. “When you go from being the one guy that says this and that and the other to being the first among equals, to being part of a group of like-minded people, that’s called success.” Image Mr. Gore, left, and the singer Pharrell Williams spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. They announced a Live Earth concert on seven continents later this year. Credit Laurent Gillieron/European Pressphoto Agency Mr. Gore has also become very rich. He co-founded Generation Investment Management , a firm that takes positions in companies that manage themselves along principles of sustainability, including the effects of climate change. He also sits on the board of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers , which invests heavily in green start-ups. He sold his cable channel, Current TV , to Al Jazeera America in 2013 in a deal that earned him a reported $100 million. (He and his fellow shareholders sued Al Jazeera last year over the deal, alleging fraud and breach of contract.) His success in the business world has surprised many people, Mr. Kramer says. “I didn’t think of him as a business guy — I’m sure nobody did,” he says, adding that “he is a phenomenally deep student of critical forces that ultimately change society.” This success has also been the subject of howls from those who find much to dislike about Mr. Gore. His old foes eagerly take aim when his name comes up. Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has called climate change “ the greatest hoax, ” now heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee . When asked his view of Mr. Gore, he issued a lengthy diatribe against the former vice president’s “alarmism campaign.” Through a spokeswoman, he said in part, “Al Gore’s immense wealth is largely due to his shameless and incessant promotion of the liberal global warming agenda.” He added that the federal climate policies Mr. Gore endorses “would infuse his business ventures with large sums of taxpayer dollars and set him up to become the first climate billionaire.” Mr. Inhofe also referred to a challenge he issued to Mr. Gore in 2007 to reduce the carbon footprint of his Nashville mansion and extensive travel. When Mr. Gore is asked whether he will respond to Senator Inhofe’s comments, Mr. Gore calls him a “nice man.” As the first words are read to him, he chuckles, but his smile grows tense. As the statement ends, he sighs and says, “Where to start?” Image Mr. Gore with the anthropologist Jane Goodall and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York at the People's Climate March on Sept. 21, 2014. Credit Don Emmert/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images He lets out a breath. “The most powerful advocate for solving the climate crisis is not me, but Mother Nature,” he says. “The reality of the climate crisis is overwhelming, and more and more people see it and feel it every day.” As for the senator’s challenge, Mr. Gore says he does not remember the exchange, but describes the ways he has reduced the environmental impact of his home. He buys electricity from a utility that generates its power from wind and solar sources and has 32 solar panels on his home, as well as insulating windows and LED light bulbs. There are 10 geothermal wells under the driveway. “I do walk the walk, and don’t just talk the talk,” he says. Is participating in the green economy a conflict of interest? “I think that having a consistent outlook in my advocacy and in the way I invest is a healthy way to live,” he says. Much of what he makes, including all salary from his early stage investing work as a partner at Kleiner Perkins and his Nobel Prize money, goes to his advocacy group, the Climate Reality Project . “I never imagined when I was younger that this would become the principal focus of my life,” he says. “But once you pick up this challenge, you can’t put it down. I can’t. Don’t want to.” Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication , says Mr. Gore has become a symbol of climate change, which is both good and bad. He energized Democrats on climate issues, but alienated many conservatives, with the eager help of groups like the Heartland Institute and its allies like Mr. Inhofe, who demonize Mr. Gore as part of their campaign to undercut the scientific consensus on the human role in global warming. “Al Gore cannot ever reinvent himself from the fact that he became one of the country’s most polarizing political leaders,” Dr. Leiserowitz says. “Even as he is trying to explain climate change, he is reminding people, amplifying the conservative response around him.” Mr. Gore has learned to live with the scorn. “Anyone who carries this banner is going to get shot at,” he says. “And I could say it’s an honor to be the object of such ire from those who are so on the wrong side of history,” he adds, laughing. “It doesn’t feel like a great honor,” he says. He spreads his arms. “I’m certainly no longer surprised by it.” Another pause. “Let them have at it.”

Al Gore
Nashville
Climate Change
Global Warming
Renewable energy
Pharrell Williams
Solar energy
Wind power
James M Inhofe


Helping Cancer Patients With Wheels and a Generous Spirit

Abstract: JERSEY CITY EARLIER this month, Earl Hart spent about five hours driving a friend, Mita Shah, from her New Jersey home to several medical appointments in Queens. Ms. Shah was successfully treated for breast cancer last year but needed to follow up with her doctor about pain in her side. She can’t drive, and her family is scattered across the country, unable to help her. A year ago, Mr. Hart and Ms. Shah were strangers. The two were brought together through the American Cancer Society of New Jersey’s program Road to Recovery, which pairs drivers with cancer patients who need to get to treatments or doctor’s visits. When Ms. Shah needed radiation treatments in New York City last April, it was Mr. Hart who took her, five days a week for six weeks. It’s easy to form a bond when you spend that much time together traversing the congested roadways of New Jersey and New York — and one of you is battling a life-threatening illness. “You can’t help but become friends and family after a while,” said Mr. Hart, 55. Ms. Shah was the first patient he helped. Now, two or three days a week, he drives people from Hudson, Union and Essex Counties to their appointments as far away as Long Island. “I’ll take them wherever they need to go,” he said. “I love it,” he said. “It’s a service that people really need, and they really appreciate what you’re doing.” About 175 people volunteer statewide, and last year they drove 461 patients, said Patti Allen, division director of patient and family services for the cancer group. With more than 46,000 people in New Jersey expected to receive a cancer diagnosis in 2009, the need is great. “For many people, getting to the treatment is really giving them the chance for survival,” Mrs. Allen said. Often patients need someone else to drive because they are too sick, she said. Many can’t rely on family members who work during the day. Some patients have to see far-off doctors because of insurance restrictions. Mrs. Allen said she had heard of patients delaying treatment or failing to seek second opinions because of transportation problems. Many volunteers drive only locally, but Mr. Hart will take patients almost anywhere they need to go. Mr. Hart said one of the keys to his work was an optimistic attitude. “I try to stay positive because the most important thing is to keep them upbeat,” he said. On the morning of her doctor visit, Ms. Shah said she had always appreciated Mr. Hart’s sunny outlook. “He’s very positive and gives me a lot of moral support,” she said. “My whole family feels good because he can take care of me.” Not long ago, Mr. Hart took a woman from New Jersey to her Manhattan doctor in the morning, returned to his home in Jersey City and picked her up in the afternoon. Sometimes he stays in the waiting room, reading. Some patients prefer to chat on the drive, others enjoy silence or soft music. “I don’t ask a lot of questions,” he said. “If they feel like talking, I’m there for them.” Mr. Hart was forced to retire from Delta Airlines in 2005 because of knee problems. During his three decades there he worked a variety of jobs, including ticket agent, baggage handler and painter. Mr. Hart and his wife, Brendolyn, raised their five children in Jersey City. For several years, Mr. Hart helped his wife with her volunteer work for the cancer society’s fund-raising walk. When he heard about the need for drivers, he was hooked. It was only after he had been driving cancer patients for a few months that it occurred to him there might be a thread between his volunteering and his mother’s death from breast cancer 30 years ago. “I wasn’t really doing it for any other reason other than it is the right thing to do, but then I made the connection one day,” he said. He recalled his mother as the kind of woman who sent leftover dinners to neighbors in the housing projects in Newark, where they grew up. One of her sayings was: “Always think about what you can bring to the table, not what you can take away.” “She always taught me to give back, and I kind of broke down and cried about it,” he said. “She’d be proud of me. This is what she’d expect me to do.”

Cancer
American Cancer Society
Volunteers
Jersey City (NJ)


For Wal-Mart, a Christmas That’s Made to Order

Abstract: The nation has two kinds of retailers these days: those bracing for a grim holiday season, and Wal-Mart . Sales at department stores and specialty retailers are in free fall. They are cutting staff, discounting merchandise and closing stores to survive. But even as the financial turmoil strangled discretionary spending at many stores, it sent struggling consumers into the arms of Wal-Mart — and left it, the world’s largest retailer, poised for a blockbuster Christmas. “In my mind, there is no doubt that this is Wal-Mart time,” H. Lee Scott Jr., the company’s president and chief executive, said recently at a meeting of analysts and investors in Wal-Mart’s hometown, Bentonville, Ark. Referring to the discount chain’s founder, he added, “This is the kind of environment that Sam Walton built this company for.” During the nation’s last severe recession, in the early 1980s, Wal-Mart was mainly a regional chain in the Southeast with fewer than 300 stores. Old-line national discount chains like Woolworth’s were fading into irrelevance, but nothing had risen to take their place. In the subsequent quarter-century, Wal-Mart spread across the nation, opening some 4,000 stores. The company managed to burn its brand into the consciousness of virtually every American as the place to save money. Now, as Americans cope with the worst economy in a generation, heading to Wal-Mart is an automatic reflex for many of them, and it is showing up in the company’s numbers. Stephen Quinn, Wal-Mart’s chief marketing officer, said the brand had resonated with consumers this year. “We know that Mom’s not going to cancel Christmas,” he said. “We’re committed to cutting the cost of Christmas. It’s what we do.” Wal-Mart is expected on Thursday to report a sales increase for October. Gains are likely to be modest by the company’s standards — but in an economy slowing fast, with many other retailers reporting double-digit sales declines, any gain is an achievement. In September, sales at Wal-Mart and the company’s Sam’s Club stores open at least a year, known as same-store sales and a measure of retail health, increased 2.4 percent, not including fuel sales, compared with 1.4 percent for the same period last year. The majority of other retailers had abysmal sales. Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics, a research firm, predicted that Wal-Mart would have a nearly 2 percent increase in same-store sales for October. And the holiday will be, Deutsche Bank analyst Bill Dreher declared, “a Wal-Mart Christmas.” Mr. Perkins said, “It’s going to be a primary destination for a lot of people who may not have gone there in recent years, but who will elect to go there for the price and the value.” He added that Wal-Mart would gain “at the expense of a Toys ‘R’ Us and other more traditional toy retailers.” Wal-Mart’s intention to outperform every other retailer this holiday season led it to open its Christmas shop, an area in its stores, in early October. The retailer also promised to have the lowest prices in the marketplace: Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels sets for $10, and packs of Christmas tree ornaments for $5. Wal-Mart executives said more than once at the Bentonville meeting that they did not want to sound arrogant. But they acknowledged feeling positive about their company right now. “I sleep very well at night,” said Eduardo Castro-Wright, president and chief executive of Wal-Mart’s United States operations. Few retailers are sleeping as soundly. Many have withdrawn their earnings guidance and privately uttered the word “bloodbath” to describe their expectations for the holiday season. “No doubt the October sales numbers will be disappointing,” said Kimberly Greenberger, an analyst with Citigroup. That is probably putting it kindly. In the last week, analysts cut their already conservative October same-store sales forecasts. Mr. Perkins expects a drop of at least 9 percent in October same-store sales for department stores, which are deeply reliant on discretionary spending. Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom will most likely have double-digit declines, he said. All of the factors that analysts have identified as hurting October sales at most retailers — unemployment, declining stock prices, the credit crisis , dreary headlines — helped drive shoppers to discounters. In fact, while Wal-Mart is far and away the biggest retailer likely to benefit, some others could have gains for October, including BJ’s Wholesale Club, Costco and Big Lots. Wal-Mart executives point out that the company’s success is not entirely a consequence of hard times. Wal-Mart spent the last three years decluttering aisles, shortening checkout lines and cleaning up stores, efforts it celebrated at its annual shareholder meeting in June. Mr. Quinn said Wal-Mart recognized that families were hurting, and it saw an opportunity to connect with consumers who might previously have passed Wal-Mart by. “Nobody has to shop at Wal-Mart,” he said. “We have to earn their trust, and we’re very aware of that.”

Sales
Retail Stores and Trade
Economic Conditions and Trends
Wal-Mart Stores Inc


With Idols in Ranks, South Korean Army Steps to a K-Pop Beat

Abstract: GYERYONG, South Korea — The audience applauded politely as the honor guard twirled its rifles, and oohed and aahed at the acrobatic taekwondo demonstration. But the real excitement began when the army band appeared. The big draw: Jung Yun-ho, a soldier otherwise known as U-Know Yunho, one of South Korea’s most famous K-pop stars. He burst onto the stage of a military runway here in the mountains south of Seoul, wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with “Korea Army” on the back. “This is the band I organized in the army,” Mr. Jung shouted, gesturing to the other soldier-musicians behind him as 2,500 civilian fans quivered and shrieked in delight. The audience waved red balloons and paper fans with pictures of Mr. Jung’s face as the group launched into “Mirotic,” one of many hits by TVXQ, the pop act in which U-Know performed before he began serving his mandatory term in the army. While armies around the world have marching bands and musical troupes, South Korea may have the trendiest ones of all. In South Korea, where every able-bodied man 18 to 35 years old must complete a 21-month stint in the armed forces, the rules make no exceptions for pop idols, no matter how much their fans may miss them and how much income they stand to lose while enlisted. And in a nation where powerful talent agencies routinely recruit new singers and dancers to create pop groups, there is a constant stream of celebrities eligible for military duty. Currently, about 630,000 soldiers are serving active duty, a vestige of the Korean War and a continuing reminder of the country’s vigilance against the hostile nation to the north. The corps includes a handful of K-pop celebrities whose prime performing years fall within the conscription window. The stars used to be routinely assigned to a separate celebrity unit, but the army disbanded it three years ago, after a string of public scandals involving K-pop soldiers. Today, most of the stars serve in military bands that perform periodically for their fellow soldiers. But once a year, the army hosts a six-day propaganda bonanza where civilian fans can see their favorite pop idols free of charge. The fans are also treated to hand-to-hand combat drills, parachute landings and displays of tanks, rocket launchers and Chinook helicopters. Many citizens resent military service as an unwanted interruption to the education and careers of the country’s young men. With some politicians also debating whether the military should convert to a voluntary service, the K-pop bands serve as syrupy agitprop and a potential recruiting tool. “The military can come across as a scary organization,” said Col. Lee Jong-eung, the director of the annual festival, which drew more than a million visitors this month. “But when these celebrities come to the army, everybody knows them, and we are asking them to unleash their talent to soften the image of the army.” K-pop has also been used in the campaign of psychological warfare that South Korea has waged against North Korea. Last year, South Korea blasted pop songs by acts like Apink and BigBang over loudspeakers in the Demilitarized Zone, leading the North to threaten “all-out war” if the broadcasts did not cease. At the same time, K-pop music has been one of South Korea’s most successful exports, helping to link fans across Asia and beyond. Fans traveled from Japan, China, Germany, Hungary and Morocco to see the K-pop performers at the military festival this year. “It’s easy sociocultural currency for Koreans to transmit outside of their borders,” said Katharine H. S. Moon , a professor of political science at Wellesley College. “In the north, it’s used as a weapon to stick it to the enemy, and within its own nation and among friends and fans, it’s a very positive bonding tool.” Yet K-pop stars have had a checkered record in the army, with some trying to evade conscription and others taking advantage of their celebrity status to flout army rules. Although military service may be unpopular in South Korea, the public expects all men to fulfill their civic duty and harshly judges those who do not. (Women are not required to serve.) Image Fans of SuperJunior, whose band members are in the army. A festival drew fans from across Asia as well as European nations. Credit Jean Chung for The New York Times In 2002, Yoo Seung-jun, one of South Korea’s biggest-selling pop artists, obtained American citizenship just a few months before he was scheduled to enlist in the army. He was barred from South Korea and just last month lost a lawsuit in which he demanded the right to re-enter the country. Two K-pop performers were jailed for 10 days two years ago after they were arrested during their military service for visiting massage parlors that also sold sexual services. Another star soldier was disciplined after he sneaked out to visit his girlfriend, a famous actress, while on duty. Many in the public suspect the stars are still afforded privileges denied the typical soldier. At the festival this month, the five celebrity performers retreated to an air-conditioned tent for bottles of green plum juice after the show, while the backup band members sat backstage on the asphalt eating snacks. An army spokesman denied repeated requests to interview any of the celebrities, saying their images were still protected by the talent agencies that represent them as civilians. A spokeswoman for SM Entertainment — the agency that represents U-Know Yunho and three members of the K-pop band SuperJunior who are currently in the army and performed at the festival — said that because of their army service the pop artists would not be available for interviews. Cho Gae-hyuk, a soldier who composed a short musical about the Korean War for the festival and shared a barracks room with five of the K-pop stars for four months, said he was surprised by their work ethic. “We were with them every day,” he said. “They are very disciplined and are more like soldiers than the younger soldiers.” Observers of the K-pop scene say some of the stars shrewdly use army service to their advantage. Although South Koreans may not like the military draft in reality, they romanticize the army culturally, gobbling up pictures of their idols in uniform. “Descendants of the Sun,” a TV melodrama about a special forces captain and his doctor girlfriend, was a huge hit when it aired this year. Oh Ingyu, a professor at Korea University in Seoul and the secretary general of the World Association for Hallyu Studies , a group of academics who study Korean popular culture, noted that even some K-pop stars who held passports for the United States or other nations were enlisting anyway. “It is a way of ensuring fan loyalty, by going to the military and creating this great sensation and feeling of nostalgia so that people will really want to wait for them,” Professor Oh said. Even if the military converted to voluntary service, supporters of such a shift say, enlisting could add luster to celebrity careers. “Don’t you think that voluntary servicemen who are celebrities would be even more popular?” asked Nam Kyung-pil, the governor of Gyeonggi Province and a likely presidential candidate next year. Mr. Nam advocates a “small, strong army” made up of volunteers. Lee Seung-gi, a solo pop artist who served as master of ceremonies at the festival, went further than most of his peers and is serving in a special forces unit. He told fans that he had overcome his fear of heights during a parachute jump in army training. “Outside the military, I would not have challenged myself to do these things,” Mr. Lee said. Some fans who had come primarily to see their idols — without the typical $100-plus cost for concert tickets — came away impressed by the more overtly military demonstrations. “Normally we don’t know what the soldiers do, and we always thought the image of the soldiers were so dry and scary,” said Park Eun-kyung, 36, a fan of U-know Yunho. “But they seem to be so hard-driving. I felt like my impression of them had softened.” But Woo Su-hyun, 15, a high school student who had traveled from Gwangju in the southwest for the festival, was unmoved by anyone other than her favorite star. “I am here to see U-Know,” she said, sitting in the stands wearing a red U-Know Yunho scarf. “I don’t really care about the military.”

South Korea
Military
Music
Pop Rock Music
BigBang South Korean Music Group


A Salute to Coach K for Restoring U.S. as Basketball’s Best

Abstract: Michael Jordan was in the house. So were Jerry West and Larry Bird and Olympic coaches dating to 1960, with the exception of Pete Newell, since deceased, and Bob Knight. Jerry Colangelo had requested their attendance to begin the process of selecting a team and a coach for a three-year odyssey he was commissioned to make sure would conclude with the restoration of the United States as the world’s pre-eminent basketball power. He wrote many names on a board, candidates to coach and play, and gave everyone a few minutes to speak. When it was Dean Smith’s turn, he told basketball’s elite, gathered by Colangelo in June 2005 at the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in Chicago, “There’s only one college coach up there who can get the job done — and that’s Coach K.” How do you not take note when Carolina Guy wholeheartedly endorses the man from Duke ? As the newly minted managing director of USA Basketball, Colangelo eventually chose Mike Krzyzewski over the San Antonio Spurs’ Gregg Popovich, the collegiate legend over the coach who is now a four-time N.B.A. champ. This was no easy decision, Colangelo admitted, but nor was it one he lived to regret. “I wouldn’t do anything different,” he said in a telephone interview. “It would have been him all the way.” Conviction is so much less complicated after a 36-1 run — the lone blemish being a 2006 world championships loss to Greece — to the gold medal stand last summer in Beijing. Not only did K Company complete the mission, it played to rave reviews, stylistically and behaviorally. Beyond the scoreboard, it won back the world. But this isn’t to say that Krzyzewski, who proved to be the right man for the job, was the only man for it. Anyone Colangelo might have chosen was going to benefit from the addition of Kobe Bryant, the maturation of LeBron James, the stewardship of Colangelo and the quadrupling of the operating budget. Finally, after too many cycles of running an all-star convention for endorsement gain and rounds of golf, USA Basketball was demanding a lengthy commitment from all. With Krzyzewski bringing Duke into Madison Square Garden on Thursday night to play St. John’s, this seemed like an opportune moment to simply salute the coach for making it, for finding time in his life of year-round Division I madness on the road to March.  It’s not as if the guy was some retiree, looking for a summer job that pays the grand sum of zero, and for which there is no medal for trying, or winning. “The amount of time we had to put into this was substantial,” Colangelo said. “For more than three years, we were in constant touch, constant planning, meetings, dealing with players, training camps, travel, the world championships, the Olympic qualifying and then the whole Olympic experience. And Mike was amazing, in terms of preparation, everything you ever heard about him.” Whether you’re a fan of Coach K or not, there can be little debate about what his pledge of allegiance means. An Army man, a disciple of the taskmaster Knight with the bonus dimension of self-control, Krzyzewski has been at Duke since 1980. Where would he have gotten a better deal? Well, for starters, in Hollywood. He turned down the Lakers job in 2004, and Bryant, of all people, made a recruiting call. Colangelo saw currency in the brand of Coach K, the Coca-Cola of the college game. “I thought Mike was very unique, not a prototypical college guy,” he said. “I knew the players respected him big time.” To the handful of journalists who have covered the N.B.A.’s globalization movement from the first McDonald’s Open in 1987, let me say there was an added poignancy in the dignity the players brought to Beijing, to their responsiveness to the climate Colangelo and Krzyzewski created. A good-size forest has been lost to the printed words detailing every American misstep, from the original Dream Team to the need for a Redeem Team last summer. Playing selflessly under Coach K, they blew out all challengers until the final, when Spain pushed them deep into the second half before losing, 118-107. I mentioned to Colangelo it was better that way; another rout would have fueled American conceit, creating the impression that the losses from 2002 to 2006 were more aberrational than attitudinal. He agreed, and talked about the pride he felt when the gold was won, how Krzyzewski found him during the celebration on the court and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek.  Now they speak every other week, mostly about how Duke is doing and about the Olympians grinding their way toward spring. Colangelo has expanded his USA Basketball role as chairman of the board of directors, but the subject of Krzyzewski’s continuing through the next Olympic cycle, unlikely as it seems, has not yet come up. “It’s not the right time for that,” he said, without dismissing the notion. “I just appreciate what he did.” So should every fan of the American game.

Basketball
USA Basketball
Krzyzewski Mike
Duke University


Hong Kong Court Bars 2 Pro-Independence Politicians From Office

Abstract: HONG KONG — A court in Hong Kong ruled on Tuesday that two pro-independence politicians who inserted an anti-China snub into their oaths of office could not take their seats in the city’s legislature, effectively ending a case in which Beijing had taken extraordinary steps to influence politics in Hong Kong. A judge in the High Court said that Yau Wai-ching , 25, and Sixtus Leung , 30, had “contravened” the territory’s charter and a local law, declaring vacant their seats on the semiautonomous city’s Legislative Council, to which they were elected in September. China’s central government handed down an edict last week that effectively barred them from the council. Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung, who advocate the city’s independence from China, altered the words of the oath during their swearing-in last month, pledging allegiance to the “Hong Kong nation.” They also displayed a flag in the council’s chambers that bore the words “Hong Kong is not China” and used a term for China that many consider a slur. Their oaths were rejected, prompting the case. The young politicians’ act of rebellion enraged Beijing. China has ruled Hong Kong, a former British colony, since 1997, under the condition that the city be given a high degree of autonomy for 50 years, including having an independent court system and the right to elect its own legislature. But the words chosen by Mr. Leung and Ms. Yau — who also used another vulgar term in her oath — alarmed Beijing’s top leaders, for whom any suggestion of secession anywhere in China is anathema and who are tamping down separatist movements in the country’s western regions. On Nov. 7, China’s Communist Party-controlled legislature took the rare step of weighing in on the court case, with a ruling that officeholders in Hong Kong have to take their oaths “ sincerely and solemnly ,” with no second chance. Thousands of people took to the streets in protest on the eve of the ruling, which the local news media had reported was in the works, clashing with the police in scenes reminiscent of the huge pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014. Many Hong Kong lawyers, concerned that the city’s judicial independence was under threat, staged a silent march on Nov. 8. China’s ruling, an interpretation of Hong Kong’s charter, called the Basic Law, that was issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, left the Hong Kong court with clear guidance. The city’s pro-Beijing government had asked the court last month to rule that Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung had violated a local ordinance on oath-taking and should vacate their posts. The interpretation “changed the rules of the game,” said Eric Leung, a law lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. Image Sixtus Leung at a protest on Nov. 6. He and Ms. Yau altered the words of their oaths of office during their swearing-in to the Legislative Council last month. Credit Isaac Lawrence/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Yet Justice Thomas Au, who made the ruling, said that he would have made the same decision even without Beijing’s extraordinary intervention, and that the two had violated an existing Hong Kong law on oaths and declarations and a provision of the Basic Law, according to a 10-page summary of the decision handed out to reporters. The judge also ruled that the president of the Legislative Council could not let the two retake their oaths. Mr. Au declared that their seats had been vacant since Oct. 12, the day they delivered their controversial oaths, the contents of which, including the coarse language, were included in the summary. Their names have now disappeared from a directory at the council’s office building. Lawyers for Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung had argued that a court ruling on their tenure as lawmakers violated the separation of powers and that their speech in the legislative chamber was protected and immune from legal action. The court rejected both arguments. After the decision, Mr. Leung said he planned to appeal to a higher court in Hong Kong. Ms. Yau told reporters that the court’s decision was influenced by Beijing and that it undercut their democratic election. “If the court could strip us of our qualification, we all know what kind of society we live in now,” she said. Now the focus turns to other elected members of the 70-member council who gave unorthodox readings of their oaths as a form of protest. Unlike Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung, the others either had their original oaths accepted or were given the chance to retake them, raising the legal bar on any attempt to have them removed. Some pro-Beijing citizens in Hong Kong have asked the courts to use the new interpretation to have other lawmakers removed from office , including Nathan Law, one of the leaders of the 2014 protest movement, and Eddie Chu, who received more votes than any other candidate during the elections. Mr. Law gave a preamble to his oath, saying he could not be loyal to a government that “murders its own people.” Mr. Chu added a statement after he quickly read through his oath: “Democracy and self-determination. Autocracy will die.” Also unclear is whether Ms. Yau and Mr. Leung will be able to run in a special election to fill their now-vacant seats. The wording of the Beijing interpretation specifies that candidates for office must also take a loyalty pledge, but determining whether that pledge is sincere gives election officials a great deal of discretionary power and is the subject of another legal case being argued in the city’s courts.

Hong Kong
China
Legislature
Yau Wai-ching
Sixtus Leung
Civil Unrest
National People's Congress China


Texas Blanks Vanderbilt

Abstract: Nathan Thornhill and John Curtiss pitched a shutout at the College World Series, and Texas beat Vanderbilt, 4-0. The teams will meet again Saturday, with the winner advancing to the finals.

College World Series
Baseball
University of Texas at Austin
Vanderbilt University


Flyers’ Mason Back on Ice, if Only to Gauge Readiness

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — Steve Mason, the Flyers’ No. 1 goalie, spent the first 52 minutes Tuesday night on a stool at the end of the bench, in front of the door that leads onto the ice, before being summoned to play the rest of Philadelphia’s 4-1 Game 3 loss to the Rangers. Inserting Mason seemed less a response to the starter Ray Emery’s struggles — he allowed four goals on 20 shots — than an audition for Mason for Friday night, when the series resumes, with the Rangers leading by two games to one. It gave Mason a chance to track some pucks, regain his bearings in the crease and experience the adrenaline rush of meaningful hockey for the first time in 10 days. It also allowed the Flyers’ coaching staff to begin evaluating Mason’s readiness for Game 4. The coach, Craig Berube, said he was not prepared to reveal a decision; he wanted to spend the next two days assessing the situation, gauging Mason’s recovery from an undisclosed upper-body injury, before announcing a starter. It is a sensible move, much as the initial choice was to stick with Emery despite Mason’s somewhat surprising availability on Tuesday night. Emery had buoyed the Flyers in a Game 2 victory. But it would not be a hockey postseason in Philadelphia without intrigue at the goaltender position, a source of angst for decades. The Flyers thought they had it figured out, with Mason emerging as their top goalie and the veteran Emery serving as a suitable backup. And then Mason was bulldozed in a game against Pittsburgh on April 12, sustaining an injury that is thought to have been a concussion. He ruled himself out of Game 3 on Monday, but after the morning skate on Tuesday, he spoke with Berube and the Flyers’ goaltending coach, Jeff Reese. He said he felt fit enough to play, and the Flyers revealed a few hours before Tuesday’s game that he would back up Emery. “You can practice as much as you want,” Mason said, “but once the game rolls around, things happen quickly and you can’t control everything out there.” Emery had called himself a “Band-Aid,” recognizing that he was playing out of necessity, until Mason was deemed healthy enough to return. He was given this start after stopping 31 of 33 shots in a Game 2 victory. Despite making several tough saves, he looked far more unsteady on Tuesday. He showed a suspect glove hand, flubbing the puck on a Rick Nash shot from the half-boards that led to the Rangers’ first goal, a poke-in by Derek Stepan 3 minutes 54 seconds into the game. He received little help from his defensive corps, which looked slow and out of sync, but Emery also did not seem to be tracking the puck well. On several occasions he reacted after it had flown by him, such as the rocket from the point by Dan Girardi that extended the Rangers’ lead to 3-1 with 14:43 remaining in the second period. A third-period goal by Dan Carcillo, off a nifty saucer pass from Brian Boyle, buried the Flyers. Berube said he suspected that Emery “wants a couple back.” Emery said he did not know whether he expected to start Friday. “I prepare like I’m going to play,” Emery said. “Coaches make those decisions.” They do, and they will, though barring a setback for Mason, it is difficult to envision Emery starting a fourth consecutive game. Every so often, Mason left his post on the bench. He would disappear into the tunnel to stretch, a precursor to his appearance in the third period. And, perhaps, a start in Game 4.