Aspiring Lawyer Finds Debt Is Bigger Hurdle Than Bar Exam

Abstract: All his life, Robert Bowman wanted to be a lawyer. He overcame a troubled childhood, a tragic accident that nearly cost him a leg and a debilitating Jet Ski collision. He put himself through community college, worked and borrowed heavily to help pay for college, graduate school and even law school. He took the New York bar examination not once, not twice, not three times, but four, passing it last year. Finally, he seemed to be on his way. In January, the committee of New York lawyers that reviews applications for admission to the bar interviewed Mr. Bowman, studied his history and the debt he had amassed, and called his persistence remarkable. It recommended his approval. But a group of five state appellate judges decided this spring that his student loans were too big and his efforts to repay them too meager for him to be a lawyer. “Applicant has not made any substantial payments on the loans ,” the judges wrote in a terse decision and an unusual rejection of the committee’s recommendation. “Applicant has not presently established the character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law.” Mr. Bowman, 47, appears to have crossed some unspoken line with his $400,000 in student debt and penalties, accumulated over many years. New York’s courts have overlooked misconduct like lawyers’ solicitation of minors for sex , efforts to deceive judges and possession of cocaine . Those instances have led merely to temporary suspensions from practice. “It usually takes a pretty significant record of some underlying misconduct to keep you out permanently,” said Deborah L. Rhode, a law professor at Stanford who has studied bar admissions across the states. Excluding someone for having too much debt was odd, she said; the hard questions about loans usually involve applicants who have used bankruptcy to try to escape loans, she said, and Mr. Bowman has not. Mr. Bowman concedes that he has never made a payment on his loans, partly because of medical and other deferrals and problems with his lender. But he says he intends to make good, adding that his only hope is to begin practicing law — which means overturning the judges’ decision. While thousands of indebted students have complained about their treatment by lenders, Mr. Bowman has documented his personal debt crisis with remarkable, obsessive intensity. He claims Sallie Mae overcharged him, imposing hefty and unjustified fees; did not allow him to defer payments when he was entitled to do so and improperly accounted for periods when he did defer. According to his detailed records, a Sallie Mae representative even threatened him. “If you default, your license will be taken from you,” the representative said. “Do you understand that?” When Mr. Bowman said that he did not yet have a law license, the representative responded that the company would prevent him from getting one. Martha Holler, a Sallie Mae spokeswoman, said that such threats would violate the company’s rules. “The size of this account is extremely unusual, but not surprising given that the customer took out 32 loans to pursue undergraduate, law and masters of law studies and has not made a single monthly payment over his 26-year student loan history,” Ms. Holler said. “We are performing an extensive review of his extraordinary case, and if we identify any errors we will quickly rectify them.” Mr. Bowman has not had an easy time of it. He was shuffled through foster care and various legal proceedings as a child. He was impressed by the lawyers who represented his interests and saw a possible life’s work. Getting a college degree took 10 years because he had spent nearly six in rehabilitation, relearning how to walk after an all-terrain vehicle hit him while he was stopped on his motorcycle. The accident nearly cost him his left leg; he graduated from the State University of New York in Albany in 1995. He enrolled at the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco in 2000. After his third year, he began a masters of law program in London , where he lived with a girlfriend. He graduated in December 2004 with about $230,000 in student loan debt, and she helped support him while he studied, and studied again and again, for the bar exam. In 2007, Mr. Bowman asked for an accounting of his loans, the payment deferrals he had used and his repayment options. He said he did not receive that information for nearly two years — a point disputed by Sallie Mae, which said it tried to reach Mr. Bowman several times in 2007. Mr. Bowman passed the New York bar in February 2008. Soon after, while living with his once-estranged mother in Miramar, Fla., he was swimming at a beach when a Jet Ski lost control and slammed into him, breaking his good leg in four places. “My luck on these things,” Mr. Bowman said. “So I contacted Sallie Mae and I’m like, I need a medical deferment and advice. Their response is, none available.” Sallie Mae transferred Mr. Bowman’s private student loans, the ones not guaranteed by the federal government, to a collection agency, which tacked on a 25 percent fee. That agency transferred the loan again, and he said the next collection agency tacked on another 25 percent fee. Sallie Mae denied this, saying he was charged the fee only once. But suddenly, Mr. Bowman found that he owed more than $400,000. Knowing it would be difficult to explain his debt to New York’s Committee on Character and Fitness, which reviews applications for admission to the bar, Mr. Bowman gathered correspondence with Sallie Mae, loan statements, even the emergency room report on the Jet Ski incident. The three lawyers who interviewed him in Albany in January found Mr. Bowman’s “determination to pursue a postsecondary education remarkable,” according to the written evaluation . As for the loans, they continued, “it appears unconscionable that a student loan indebtedness could go from $270,000 to $435,000 in four years.” Two of the committee members did not return calls seeking comment; the third could not be reached. In April the judges rejected the committee’s recommendation and ruled Mr. Bowman could not be a lawyer. Michael J. Novack, the clerk of the court that handled Mr. Bowman’s application, declined to comment specifically on his case. “Generally speaking, if the committee on character and fitness recommends admission of an applicant, the court approves of it,” Mr. Novack said. “But not always.” Along with asking the court to reverse its decision, Mr. Bowman has consulted lawyers and is preparing a lawsuit against Sallie Mae. One way or another, he vows, he will make the switch from client to lawyer.

Lawyers
College
Law school
New York
Student loan
Sallie Mae
Collection agency
School Admissions


Dodgers’ Expensive Roster Produces an Early Losing Record

Abstract: There was no attendant at the door of the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers’ clubhouse at Citi Field at 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon, so the greatest pitcher in their history strolled right in. At 77, Sandy Koufax looks as fit as he was in his prime. He does not need a plastic badge to identify himself. If only Koufax had a locker in the dressing room, the Dodgers’ unexpected pitching worries might have disappeared. Alas, he did not. “He said he didn’t think he could do it,” Don Mattingly, the Dodgers’ manager, said before Los Angeles thumped the Mets, 7-2, on Tuesday night. “He said gravity’s knocking his pitches down.” The Dodgers do not have the majors’ highest payroll this season; the Yankees sneaked past them in spring training by grabbing several veteran hitters. But at $215 million or so, the Dodgers had reason to feel protected on the mound. A month ago, they had eight starters: Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Josh Beckett, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Chad Billingsley, Chris Capuano, Aaron Harang and Ted Lilly. By last weekend they had four, and they needed to call up a minor leaguer to start on Sunday. Harang was traded to Colorado on April 6, and later sent to Seattle. Lilly comes off the disabled list to start Wednesday against the Mets. Billingsley learned Tuesday that he needed reconstructive elbow surgery; he is out for the season. Greinke, of course, broke his collarbone in a fight with San Diego’s Carlos Quentin on April 11. Capuano aggravated a calf injury while running in from the bullpen during that brawl, then started in Greinke’s place, hurt the calf again and landed on the disabled list. He should be back soon, but Greinke is out several months. “Nobody really wants to hear our complaints,” Mattingly said. “And we can’t use it as an excuse. A lot of teams would like to have five accomplished major league starters, and that’s what we’re going to have.” Losing Greinke, though, sent the team reeling. The Dodgers arrived in New York having lost seven of nine games since then, including two of three in Arizona and Baltimore, and all three in a rematch against the Padres in between. “There was an immediate hangover following that,” catcher A. J. Ellis said. “The Arizona series, we weren’t really all there completely. I think a lot of our hearts and heads were still with Zack and what happened, wanting to see what happened with Carlos and his suspension, that justice was going to be done for that. We weren’t completely locked in like we should have been.” Image Los Angeles catcher A. J. Ellis tackled the Padres’ Carlos Quentin on April 11, but not before pitcher Zack Greinke was injured. Credit Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press Quentin served an eight-game suspension, a punishment Ellis said he agreed with. Ellis has had more trouble processing his own reaction in the moment. It was Ellis who brought down Quentin, slamming him to the Petco Park grass, but only after Quentin had already reached Greinke and damaged the $147 million ace. “You replay that scenario — I’ve done it dozens of times since then, especially right in the immediate aftermath, when it was constantly replayed on television,” Ellis said. “You second-guess yourself. You always want to know what you could have done different.” Ellis has caught more than 700 professional games, but said he had never been behind the plate when a batter charged the mound. He did not know that Quentin was still upset that Greinke had hit him with pitches when they played for other teams. Ellis, who set up for a fastball low and away, did not imagine that Quentin would react so strongly to being hit by a 3-2 pitch in the sixth inning of a one-run game. Neither, apparently, did the plate umpire, Sam Holbrook. Ellis said he was caught off-guard by Quentin’s fury. “He was hit and immediately started taking steps,” Ellis said. “By the time I kind of popped up — you see the reaction on myself and Sam Holbrook’s face, it was, ‘C’mon, let’s move on to the next hitter, the leadoff guy’s on base.’ And then it was on.” Greinke has resumed playing catch, Ellis said, adding that he would not be surprised to see Greinke return before most people expected. Next up, though, is Lilly, a former Yankee who has finished his rehabilitation from shoulder surgery. Even with the pitching trouble, the Dodgers’ biggest problem has been scoring runs; only the pitiful Miami Marlins have scored fewer in the majors. Shortstop Hanley Ramirez had thumb surgery for an injury sustained at the World Baseball Classic, and outfielder Matt Kemp has struggled. Third baseman Luis Cruz (4 for 46) has played his way out of a starting job, at least for now. “Without being harsh, this is a production business,” Mattingly said. “You’ve got to do something.” Mattingly, with his Yankees pedigree, knows that well. On Monday’s day off, he visited a former manager of his who once was fired for starting a season 6-10 — Yogi Berra. Mattingly said he knew that Berra, who turns 88 next month, had moved to an assisted-living community. He checked first with Joe Torre, who told him that Berra was doing well. Mattingly said he spent a couple of hours with Berra and some family members for lunch. “His mind’s good, and he’s walking around,” Mattingly said, adding: “He was on his feet for 30 minutes with that cane, so he’s doing good. It was good to see him.” Berra on Monday, Koufax on Tuesday afternoon — and then life among legends gave way to game time against the Mets, and the task of cajoling a sub-.500 team with the highest payroll in the National League. Mattingly said he was up for it. “It’s still about getting our guys to play the game right,” he said. “The only thing different is the expectations.”

Dodgers
Don Mattingly
Zack Greinke
Baseball


Many Veterans Adapt to a Strange World, One With Walls

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — For 30 years after Vietnam, Art Harmon’s address was a dry wash under the 210 freeway, where he tried to forget his tour as a 19-year-old helicopter gunner. “I couldn’t be around human beings anymore,” he said. “I didn’t feel at home anywhere.” Today Mr. Harmon has a one-bedroom apartment in nearby Sun Valley, thanks to what is being described as the largest campaign in history to stamp out homelessness among military veterans, who have constituted as much as a quarter of the nation’s homeless population. Since 2010, the Obama administration has spent $4 billion hiring thousands of staff workers, expanding social services and medical programs, and renting thousands of apartments, seeking to fulfill a pledge by Eric Shinseki, the former secretary of Veterans Affairs, to end veterans’ homelessness by the end of next year. By most accounts, the effort has made significant strides, placing 51,000 veterans in housing and establishing what advocates for the homeless say is a promising model that gives veterans the stability of housing before tackling underlying problems with drugs or mental health. But with a little more than a year to go, few experts believe the department will come close to meeting Mr. Shinseki’s deadline. An estimated 50,000 veterans are still homeless; Mr. Shinseki, the driving force behind the initiative, is now gone, forced to resign amid the department’s health care scandal; and some Republicans in Congress question whether the department has spent its money wisely on the program. There are also concerns that Congress, despite bipartisan support in the past, will not continue to finance the program at its current level. “There has been an incredible outlay of resources, and other than V.A.’s own statistics, we really don’t have specifics as to the program’s effectiveness, outcomes and sustainability,” said Representative Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican who is chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee . He said the committee planned to hold a hearing this fall to examine the program. Advocates for the homeless have jumped to the department’s defense, saying a concrete goal has spurred not just immense federal spending, but also innovation. “There is a huge value to committing to an audacious goal, even if it is not met,” said Beth Sandor of Community Solutions , a homeless advocacy group. “Folks no one ever thought would get off the streets are getting help. It changes the vision of what’s possible.” Phoenix and Salt Lake City announced last winter that they had effectively ended veterans’ homelessness. Other cities say they are close. “There’s some warts out there,” said John Driscoll, president of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans , of inefficiencies in the program. “But we now have had the lowest count of homeless vets we have ever had, and the trends are moving in the right direction.” Still, housing the remaining homeless veterans will be difficult, experts say, as the program has already helped many of the easiest-to-reach cases. “A lot of these guys don’t want to come in,” said Tescia Uribe, director of veteran clinical services for PATH , a homeless outreach organization in Los Angeles that has helped the program put almost 1,000 veterans into housing in the last year. “They have their life out there. No responsibilities, no bills. They won’t accept help until they are ready.” The initiative relies largely on a program called H.U.D.-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing , which has dispatched thousands of caseworkers to get veterans into housing and connect them with medical care and services, while using 58,000 subsidized-housing vouchers from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to pay their rent. The Department of Veterans Affairs is also spending $300 million on Supportive Services for Veteran Families, a program that gives short-term grants for rent and other assistance to keep veterans from becoming homeless. A look at the federal initiative in Los Angeles shows how time consuming, personnel intensive and expensive sheltering the homeless can be. The department has moved more veterans into homes there than anywhere else, seen its staff mushroom to 430 from 45 in five years and contracted with 11 local groups to find homeless veterans across the city. But the Los Angeles area still has about 5,800 homeless veterans, the most in the country, and the 20 percent decline in that population since 2010 is well below the national average, according to department statistics. At the start of the initiative, the department believed that veterans would come to medical centers for help, but soon realized longtime street dwellers rarely showed up at its hospitals. So it created teams to scour parks, shelters and homeless camps. In December, one team spotted Mr. Harmon near the freeway and signed him up for a program that would get him an apartment. In his years living among the scrubby trees beneath the highway, he had shed his Social Security card, military discharge papers and driver’s license. In stepped Andrea Carter, one of 54 homeless veteran caseworkers for PATH. Ms. Carter ferried him to offices, filled out forms, waited in line with him at the Department of Motor Vehicles and even obtained an official letter for prospective landlords saying his pet pit bull was an “emotional support animal.” “Normal everyday stuff can be impossible for someone who doesn’t have a car or the right paperwork,” Ms. Carter said. Mr. Harmon had also developed diabetes, which had damaged his sight, caused him to limp and sent him to the hospital after a collapse caused by uncontrolled blood sugar. Now Ms. Carter takes him grocery shopping and to medical appointments, and carefully checks his medications. His trips to the hospital for diabetes have stopped. “I would have not been able to do it without her,” Mr. Harmon said as he greeted her with a hug at his door recently. “I truly believe God sent her to me.” As she sorted through his mail for bills and checked his medications, Mr. Harmon nursed a whiskey and Coke. In the past, heavy drinking would have made him ineligible for housing subsidies, but at the start of Mr. Shinseki’s campaign, the department embraced a “housing first” philosophy — that people are better able to deal with underlying mental health and substance abuse problems if they have a stable place to live. The department and many experts say the policy has worked and proved cost effective. A night in subsidized housing is cheaper than one in a shelter, hospital or jail, officials say, and a recent study by the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans , a V.A. research branch, found that homeless veterans’ health care costs fell 34 percent once they were off the streets. “Guys that were going by ambulance to the emergency room are now getting preventative care,” said Vincent Kane, director of the center. When her visit with Mr. Harmon was over, Ms. Carter tracked down a 58-year-old veteran, Paul Wilson, who had been sleeping in his 1974 Datsun pickup in a church parking lot. After six months of paperwork and appointments, she had good news: He would be able to move into an apartment. Then she pulled her car behind a strip mall a few miles away where a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran was sprawled on a filthy futon surrounded by soup cans and beer bottles. She gently touched him on the shoulder. He had been approved for housing. Bleary eyed, he looked up, recognizing her. “I have a very unusual blood type,” he mumbled. “You’d have to go to Uranus to get my blood type. Try anything else and I’d die and come back as a butterfly.” Maybe he was too drunk to look at apartments that afternoon, Ms. Carter thought. It was not the first time. “Some of these guys are really tough,” she said later. “That’s why this stuff takes so long. My goal is not to give up. One day he might cooperate. Tomorrow I’ll go see him, and hopefully he will be in a better mood.”

Veteran
Homelessness
Veteran Affairs
Public Housing


Barclays Wants to Keep Event in New York Area

Abstract: JERSEY CITY — It has been a rainy few days at the Barclays, but the weather has done nothing to darken the tournament’s forecast for the future. Robert E. Diamond Jr., the president of the title sponsor Barclays, said Saturday that the company remained bullish both about its sponsorship association with the PGA Tour and about keeping the tournament in the New York metropolitan area. The agreement between the PGA Tour and Barclays runs through 2012 and will not come up for renegotiation until 2011. But Diamond said his company was “very happy” with the way the event had progressed since it became part of the four-tournament PGA Tour Playoffs for the FedEx Cup. He said he anticipated that the relationship would continue. “We would have full expectation to continue after 2012, not that we are in negotiations yet; it’s too early,” Diamond said at a breakfast meeting with reporters at Liberty National golf club. “But we are very pleased.” The Barclays will be played at Plainfield Country Club in Edison, N.J., in 2010 and will return to Ridgewood Country Club, site of the 2008 event, in 2011. It is contractually obligated to return to Westchester Country Club in 2012, if the club exercises its right to host the tournament. Diamond said the Barclays would remain in the metropolitan area because of the “New York-ness” of its roots and because he expected the tournament to return to Liberty National at some point in the next five years. “I think the skyline, the Statue of Liberty, the location and many, many different ways, from a branding point of view, we are a New York-headquartered firm,” he said when asked about the advantages of this year’s site. “I think for the players and the fans, getting to stay in Manhattan. It’s five minutes from the boat; the boat leaves every half-hour on the half-hour, and you take a boat right past the Statue of Liberty, takes you seven and a half minutes, and you’re at the clubhouse.” He said the tournament’s economic impact on the area this week would be substantial, and said that was another reason for Barclays to keep the event in the area. “Jersey City this week will get $30 to $50 million in business spending over a two- or three-week period in Jersey City and the community,” Diamond said. “There will be over a million dollars that goes directly to charity. It helps us with First Tee, which we believe in giving opportunity to inner-city kids that they wouldn’t necessarily have. “Those are all the reasons, and we couldn’t be happier with it, to be honest.” MAKING PLAYERS FEEL AT HOME Some of the fans enjoying the products of a well-known distiller in a tent behind the second green were in full-throated voice from 11 a.m. on, serenading golfers approaching the green at the par-3 hole with songs that were aimed at their country of origin. Mike Weir of Canada got a semi-off-key rendition of “O Canada,” and smiled as he left the green. Padraig Harrington of Ireland smiled and waved at the chorus as it warbled “Danny Boy.” The hole marshall, Rudy Streemke of Hackensack, N.J., did not seem impressed by the singers, and at one point said he considered summoning security to have them tone down their act. He thought better of it. “It’s not the worst I’ve heard,” he said. “As long as they stop when they’re getting ready to putt, it’s not a problem.” NOT-SO-WARM WISHES Tiger Woods, who generally does not react to shouts from the gallery or allow anything to break his focus during a round, stepped out of character briefly as he walked from the 12th green to the 13th tee. A boy about 6 or 7 years old announced, “Today’s my birthday, Tiger,” as Woods came near. Without breaking stride, Woods shot a quick glance to his right and said to the beaming child, “Happy birthday, bud.” He was given a fairly large round of applause by the cluster of spectators hanging on the gallery ropes that stretched from the green to the tee.


Lawmakers Can Raise ‘Soft Money’ for Redistricting Battles

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal election officials said Friday that members of Congress helping their parties finance redistricting fights could raise the unlimited corporate and union cash known as soft money that a 2002 law bans them from collecting for their campaigns. The Federal Election Commission made its unanimous decision in response to a query from the National Democratic Redistricting Trust, a group established last year to handle the legal battles that arise as Congressional district boundaries are redrawn after this year’s census. The commission agreed with the trust that lawmakers could raise soft money for redistricting because it is not done in connection with an election. Campaign finance watchdogs said the panel should reject the request. In its decision, the commission noted that the trust is run by private citizens, not members of Congress. “Though the trust may work in concert with like-minded individuals, organizations and political committees that will attempt to influence elections directly, the trust itself will not fund direct attempts to influence elections,” the commission wrote. The ruling comes as the Republican National Committee has filed an appeal in a case that the Supreme Court is likely to hear on its bid to raise soft money for state elections, legal costs and other expenses that it says have nothing to do with federal elections.

Federal Election Commission
Campaign Finance
Redistricting and Reapportionment


Where Sand Is Gold, the Reserves Are Running Dry

Abstract: FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — With inviting beaches that run for miles along South Florida’s shores, it is easy to put sand into the same category as turbo air-conditioning and a decent mojito — something ever present and easily taken for granted. As it turns out, though, sand is not forever. Constant erosion from storms and tides and a rising sea level continue to swallow up chunks of beach along Florida’s Atlantic coastline. Communities have spent the last few decades replenishing their beaches with dredged-up sand. But in South Florida — Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties — concerns over erosion and the quest for sand are particularly urgent for one reason: there is almost no sand left offshore to replenish the beaches. In these communities, sand is far from disposable; it is a precious commodity. So precious, in fact, that it has set off skirmishes among counties and has unleashed an intense hunt for more offshore sand by federal, state and local officials who are already fretting over the next big storm. No idea is too far-fetched in this quest, not even a proposal to grind down recycled glass and transform it into beach sand. The once-shelved idea is now being reconsidered by Broward County. The situation is so dire that two counties to the north — St. Lucie and Martin — are being asked to donate their own offshore sand in the spirit of neighborliness. “You have counties starting wars with each other over sand,” said Kristin Jacobs, the Broward County mayor, who has embraced the recycled glass idea as a possible stopgap. “Everybody feels like these other counties are going to steal their sand.” St. Lucie and Martin Counties are none too keen to sacrifice their sand for the pleasures of South Florida. The last time the idea was mentioned, in 2006, it engendered accusations of subterfuge and raised so much ire that it was dropped. If recent public meetings on the issue held by the Army Corps of Engineers are any measure, little has changed, despite a new study by the corps that says the two counties have enough offshore sand for at least 50 years. “What happens in 50 years when all that sand is gone?” asked Frannie Hutchinson, a St. Lucie County commissioner. “Where are we supposed to go then? I told them to take their sand shovels and sand buckets and go home and come up with a better plan.” Image Abdullah Kharafi, 3, climbing a wall of sand created by erosion at Miami Beach. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times In a state where the lure of pristine beaches is pivotal to a robust economy, hoarding sand is not unlike stocking the basement with toilet paper, water and peanut butter. One never knows when the next storm could sweep away a beach and wreak havoc on beach communities. “When we got hit with back-to-back hurricanes, we had no beach in front of our infrastructures: A1A was wiped out,” Ms. Hutchinson said, referring to storms that engulfed a busy beachfront road. The reason for all this agitation is straightforward: Miami-Dade County is officially out of offshore sand, which is environmentally sound and easily accessible. The last piles will be depleted in February, when sand replenishment is completed on the beach of the affluent village of Bal Harbour. Broward County is not much better off; its offshore sand is nearly depleted. And Palm Beach County’s stocks are dwindling rapidly. The reasons for the disappearing supply of sand are various. For one, these counties have been refurbishing their beaches for decades. The problem has also been worsened by sea-level rise and the number of jetties, or cuts to build seaports, that have proliferated, which causes sand to pile up on one side of the jetty but not the other. The scarcity of sand is also a function of geography. There are three reef tracks running alongside Miami-Dade and Broward, which make dredging difficult. And the continental shelf narrows greatly here, meaning the ocean gets too deep too quickly. So while erosion is a problem along all beaches on the Eastern Seaboard, other counties and states to the north have large areas of ocean they can use to dredge sand. In South Florida, the slice is relatively minuscule. “We are just limited in the actual amount of sand that’s available to us,” said Stephen Blair, who is in charge of beach restoration for Miami-Dade. “They have a much bigger area in which to look for sand.” In South Florida, offshore sand has been essential in bolstering constantly eroding beaches, and healthy beaches are vital to tourism. Guests who routinely pay $400 a night for a Miami Beach hotel room come with expectations. One of them is sand to frolic on. “They are not inclined to come if there are no beaches to lay on,” said Jason Harrah, the Army Corps project manager overseeing Miami-Dade beach restoration. Image Miami Beach visitors expect lots of sand, but the area is running out of replenishment supplies. Credit Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press Broward County faces the same problem. “There is pressure from everybody — governments, the chambers of commerce,” said Eric Myers, who is in charge of Broward County beach restoration. Beaches also safeguard the health of the high-priced cities and towns that abut them. Wide beaches, preferably with dunes and vegetation, protect buildings and roads by serving as buffers to waves churned up by large storms. “These beaches, people think they are recreational, but they are storm damage reduction,” Mr. Harrah said. “They are meant to sacrifice themselves for the loss of property or life. In the event we have that kind of storm, we wouldn’t have the means to replenish them.” Offshore sand has always been the first choice to counter beach erosion. It is inexpensive and does not disrupt reefs or marine life. This is why the Army Corps and the state are hoping that Martin and St. Lucie Counties will come around and free up some of their sand, which could then be dredged and shipped farther south. The only other option at the moment is buying sand from mines in Central Florida and trucking it in, which is what Broward County is doing for a stretch of its beaches. Doing so is more expensive, reserved for low-volume projects, logistically difficult and largely disliked. “There would be 20,000 trucks going through South Beach in tourist season, so you can imagine that,” Mr. Harrah said. A third option is buying sand from countries in the Caribbean, possibly the Bahamas. Under United States law, the Army Corps must show that domestic sand is not available for economic or environmental reasons before it can use foreign sand. Broward County is exploring the cost of recycling glass to fill small gaps in its beaches — it is more costly than offshore sand, but it is not yet clear by how much. Broward would also have to find a nearby facility to process the glass and complete the final phase of its environmental study. Other states have used recycled glass, but mostly for small projects like golf courses. For now, the idea remains on the table. It is creative, said Ms. Jacobs, the Broward County mayor. It could promote a market for glass, she added. Broward is looking to finance the last part of its environmental study, and will weigh the costs. The sand has so far proved an excellent mimic of regular sand, which is used to produce glass, after all. “If we could generate our own sand,” Ms. Jacobs said, “it would be fantastic.”

Beach
Florida
Sand and Gravel
Coastal erosion
Weather


Another Injury for Derrick Rose, More Waiting by the Bulls

Abstract: It is familiar and disheartening news for Bulls fans. Derrick Rose is hurt. Again. A stray elbow from a teammate caught Rose in the left eye and he sustained an orbital fracture at the team’s first practice Tuesday. He was to have surgery Wednesday. There was no official timetable for his return, though there was hope, based on similar injuries, that he would be ready around the start of the regular season on Oct. 27. Rose’s career started with dazzling promise. In his third season, 2010-11, the team was 62-20 and advanced to the conference finals. Rose won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award. Fans were thinking that a title, or even a dynasty, lay ahead. The next season, the Bulls tied for the best record in the league and seemed poised for the championship. But with a minute left in their first playoff game, Rose landed awkwardly and tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Without him, the Bulls were eliminated by the eighth-seeded 76ers. Rose missed all of 2012-13. Late that season, he returned to practice, but wound up not playing, even in the playoffs. Many fans and news media members were critical of the decision. It was the end of the honeymoon for Rose and Chicago. Rose returned for 2013-14, but after playing 10 games, he missed the rest of the season with a meniscus tear in his right knee. He missed 20 games last season with the same injury. He did return for the playoffs, where the Bulls lost, four games to two, in a creditable effort against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The N.B.A. is a superstar-driven league, and the Bulls have all their eggs in Rose’s basket. Though they made a coaching change in the off-season, hiring Fred Hoiberg to replace Tom Thibodeau, their playing personnel is largely unaltered. Jimmy Butler is still Rose’s backcourt mate, though the two have not always meshed. The big man Pau Gasol had an astonishing EuroBasket tournament this month, pulling Spain to victory nearly single-handedly. But he is 35. The leading scorers after those three, Aaron Brooks and Taj Gibson, are veterans unlikely to terrify opposition defenses, and Gibson is coming off ankle surgery. Bobby Portis, a forward from Arkansas, was drafted late in the first round, but is not expected to be a game-changer. Hoiberg may bring in a faster pace than Thibodeau’s deliberate style . Before Rose’s latest injury, the Bulls were generally considered along with Atlanta to be the main challengers for Cleveland’s Eastern Conference title. The optimistic view is that Rose is that rare commodity, a proven superstar. He will be 27 when the season starts, still in his prime. Even in losing to the Cavs last season, he led the team in scoring and assists, and had 25 and 30 in the Bulls’ two wins in that series. The rash of injuries he has suffered may be a run of extraordinary bad luck that is due to change. You can hardly fault Rose for catching an elbow in the wrong place. The pessimistic view is that Rose is simply injury prone and that his days as an M.V.P. or even a transcendent star are over. Rose also faces the worrying prospect of a lawsuit from a woman accusing him of sexual battery . He also rubbed some fans the wrong way Monday by openly speculating about becoming a free agent in two years. Perhaps Rose will be back in a mask for opening day, a rematch against the Cavaliers in Chicago. Perhaps he will show the form of his first few seasons and lead the team on a deep playoff run. In that case, the practice mishap will be a footnote. But if instead Rose falls into another pattern of injury, a random elbow will seem less like an accident and more like a portent of doom.

Derrick Rose
Basketball
Chicago Bulls
Sports injury


Monsanto Reports a Wider Loss and Lowers Its Outlook

Abstract: The agricultural company Monsanto posted a wider quarterly loss yesterday and forecast fiscal 2008 earnings below Wall Street estimates, partly because of weakness in its selective herbicide business and a higher interest expense and tax rate. But the growth rate for Monsanto’s core business of genetically modified corn, soy and cotton seeds, and its history of exceeding its earnings guidance, encouraged investors, and its shares recouped most of an earlier sell-off. “At Monsanto they view their projections as a commitment, not an aspiration,” said Frank Mitsch, a BB&T Capital Markets analyst, adding that the company had significantly beaten its earnings growth target for the last three years. Monsanto shares closed down 74 cents, or 0.8 percent, at $88.78 on the New York Stock Exchange, after declining 4.4 percent just after the market’s open. Monsanto said its net loss widened to $210 million, or 39 cents a share, in the fourth quarter, which ended Aug. 31, from $144 million, or 27 cents a share, a year earlier. The results included a $186 million in-process research and development charge at its Delta and Pine Land cotton business. On an ongoing basis, the company, based in St. Louis, said its loss was 18 cents a share, missing analysts’ average estimate by a penny, excluding items, according to Reuters Estimates. Net sales rose to $1.57 billion, from $1.39 billion, helped by a strong end to the corn season in the United States and higher corn seed revenue from Argentina and Brazil. One area of business that is not doing well is the company’s selective herbicide business, which is declining as farmers switch to Monsanto’s Roundup, in combination with crop plants that tolerate the broad-spectrum weedkiller. Monsanto said it expected fiscal 2008 earnings of $2.20 to $2.40 a share. Analysts on average had forecast $2.50, according to Reuters Estimates.

Agriculture
Monsanto Co
Defoliants and Herbicides


Rugged, Speedy, Aquatic, Cold-Tolerant. And Not a Seal.

Abstract: Olympus unwrapped its Stylus Tough-3000 camera at the Consumer Electronics Show last week. The Tough-3000 is the first of the company’s rugged line to offer HD video capture (720p) and is also the most affordable Tough model at $230. The Stylus Tough-3000 can withstand a five-foot drop, is submersible to 10 feet and works in temperatures as low as 14 degrees. These are basically the same specs as the existing $280 Stylus Tough-6000. The Stylus Tough-3000 and all cameras announced at C.E.S. include Olympus’s familiar Art Filter in-camera effects, now renamed Magic Filter. The effects included in these cameras include Pop Art, Pin Hole, Fish-Eye and Drawing, which turns images into sketches. The new cameras also offer AF auto-tracking for locking in on fast-moving subjects, as well as a new Pet Mode for tracking your greyhounds and other speedy animals. Olympus says it has improved the user interface for more intuitive operation and added software for faster downloading and support for features like geotagging. The Stylus Tough-3000 will be available in February in red, pink, blue and green (so you can’t lose it in the snow). RIK FAIRLIE

Cameras
International Consumer Electronics Show
Olympus Corp


Funds Are Frozen in Malaysia as Premier Faces Allegations

Abstract: HONG KONG — Officials in Malaysia said on Tuesday that they had frozen bank accounts as part of an investigation into the country’s troubled development investment fund and accusations that hundreds of millions of dollars from the fund had been transferred to Prime Minister Najib Razak. Government investigators have been looking into the finances of the heavily indebted 1Malaysia Development Berhad, also known as 1MDB. News reports have said some of its funds have been routed to accounts controlled by Mr. Najib. Citing documents from the inquiry, The Wall Street Journal reported last week that investigators had found documentation of nearly $700 million in deposits to accounts they believe are controlled by Mr. Najib. The newspaper said the documents did not describe the original source of the funds or what happened to them after they were transferred to what are suspected of being the Najib-controlled accounts. Image Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia. News reports have said that some of 1Malaysia Development Berhad's funds have been routed to accounts controlled by Mr. Najib. Credit Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In a statement on Tuesday, the Malaysian authorities said they had frozen six accounts and had taken documents related to 17 accounts at two banks on Monday. The statement did not name the banks or the account holders, but it did say the actions were connected to allegations against the prime minister. The statement was issued by Malaysia’s attorney general, the governor of Malaysia’s central bank, the inspector general of Malaysia’s police and the head of the country’s anticorruption commission. 1MDB has denied that any of its funds have gone to the prime minister. Mr. Najib has denied any wrongdoing, but he has not addressed the specifics of the allegations. The claims of corruption have stirred opposition to Mr. Najib and led to calls for further inquiries. Mahathir Mohamad, a former prime minister and onetime ally of Mr. Najib’s, told The New York Times last month that “the apparent disappearance of huge sums of money” was “not good.” Malaysia’s state-run Bernama news agency quoted Mr. Najib as saying on Monday: “I did not betray the people. I will find ways to uphold the truth. Be calm, the truth will prevail.”

Malaysia
Najib Razak
1MDB
Banking and Finance
Frozen Assets


Edwin Shneidman, Authority on Suicide, Dies at 91

Abstract: Edwin S. Shneidman, a psychologist who gave new direction to the study of suicide and was a founder of the nation’s first comprehensive suicide prevention center, died Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91. His death was confirmed by his son David. Until Dr. Shneidman took up the study of suicide shortly after World War II, the subject had received little sustained attention from researchers or clinicians. But as a researcher, theoretician, lecturer and author, he helped establish the study of suicide as an interdisciplinary field and devised many concepts now widely accepted. With Norman L. Farberow, Dr. Shneidman founded the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center in the 1950s. The center, where he was co-director, offered research, training and suicide prevention services and became the prototype for such centers in the United States and abroad. In a career that spanned more than four decades, Dr. Shneidman was also the chief of the first national suicide prevention program, at the National Institute of Mental Health; founded the American Association of Suicidology ; and was the first professor of thanatology (the study of death) at the University of California, Los Angeles. In his early work, he and Dr. Farberow carried out a large suicide study that contradicted some widely held beliefs. For example, although it had long been thought that people had to be insane to take their own lives, they found that only 15 percent of suicides were psychotic. They also developed the idea that most people who became acutely suicidal were in that state for a relatively brief period, and emphasized a need for active intervention. They set up a telephone service to invite suicidal people to come in for an assessment and a referral for treatment. But, overwhelmed by the response, they had difficulty making referrals, and so they began offering treatment themselves. Dr. Robert E. Litman, who was chief psychiatrist at the center, said Dr. Shneidman and Dr. Farberow had pioneered an approach in which trained nonprofessionals took calls from troubled people. In an account in “The Enigma of Suicide,” by George Howe Colt, the author quotes Dr. Litman as recalling: “People were calling us and literally saying, ‘I’m just about to make a suicide attempt. Do I have to take these pills or jump off a building before I can talk to you? Or could I shortcut it and come in directly?’ ” Staff members made house calls, escorted suicidal people to the hospital, tracked down estranged spouses and even traced telephone calls. One day, Mr. Colt wrote, a client ran out of the offices onto the roof, with staff members in hot pursuit; they grabbed her before she could jump. Three decades after the center was founded, the suicide rate in Los Angeles had been cut in half, Dr. Litman said in an interview. Dr. Shneidman and his colleagues devised the “psychological autopsy,” a method used to help a coroner determine whether a death had been caused by suicide or accident when the circumstances were ambiguous. Staff members would interview friends and relatives of the deceased, study diaries and other documents, and try to reconstruct the person’s state of mind. Their best-known case was that of Marilyn Monroe , who died of an overdose of barbiturates in 1962. After learning that she had twice previously tried to commit suicide and had been deeply depressed before she finally succeeded, they called the death a “probable suicide.” The coroner’s report agreed. Dr. Shneidman left the Los Angeles center in 1966 to become the first chief of the Center for the Study of Suicide Prevention at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., where he encouraged suicide prevention efforts in 40 states. By March 1969, the number of suicide prevention centers in the United States had risen to 119 from 44 in July 1967, according to the American Association of Suicidology. There are now about 140 suicide prevention and crisis centers accredited by the association, and many more unaccredited ones. Dr. Shneidman joined the U.C.L.A. faculty as professor of medical psychology in 1970 and became professor of thanatology in 1975. In addition to research and teaching, he counseled dying patients and their survivors. He retired in 1988 but continued to write and mentor researchers in his field. Edwin Shneidman was born on May 13, 1918, in York, Pa. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees at U.C.L.A. and earned a Ph.D. in psychology in 1948 at the University of Southern California. In addition to his son David, of Seattle, he is survived by three other sons — Jon, of Fort Bragg, N.C.; Paul, of Gibbsboro, N.J.; and Robert, of Portland, Ore. — and six grandchildren. His wife of 56 years, Jeanne, died in 2001. Among other books, Dr. Shneidman was the author of “Deaths of Man” (1973); “Voices of Death” (1980); “Definition of Suicide” (1985), which was considered a major theoretical treatment; “Suicide as Psychache” (1993); and “The Suicidal Mind” (1996). His most recent book was “A Commonsense Book of Death: Reflections at Ninety of a Lifelong Thanatologist” (2008). “Dying is the one thing — perhaps the only thing — in life that you don’t have to do,” he once wrote. “Stick around long enough and it will be done for you.”

Suicides and Suicide Attempts
Psychology and Psychologists
Deaths (Obituaries)
Shneidman Edwin S.
Monroe Marilyn


Hard-Luck Horse Wins Breeders’ Cup Classic by a Nostril

Abstract: ARCADIA, Calif. — This is how championship races should be run — with fury and beauty and with the horses carrying not only jockeys on their backs, but hopes and dreams and stories. As Mucho Macho Man, Declaration of War and Will Take Charge pounded down the stretch of North America’s richest race, the people who had taken them here gritted teeth, pounded their programs and willed their horses to the finish line. They were also satisfied and at peace that they had done everything absolutely right to get their horses here. The trainer of Mucho Macho Man, Kathy Ritvo, 44, has a small barn that is plenty big enough for a woman who five years ago lived in a hospital, anxiously awaiting a heart transplant. Nearby was Aidan O’Brien, among the finest horsemen on the planet, who was on tiptoes urging Declaration of War home so he could take the Breeders’ Cup Classic trophy he had sought year after year home to Ireland. Closer still was D. Wayne Lukas, 78, America’s most accomplished trainer, who has boomed and busted so often that he makes oil wildcatters look like pictures of stability. By his own admission, he was ready to be harrowed under the racetrack of the Oklahoma training track in Saratoga Springs until a 3-year-old named Oxbow won the Preakness Stakes in the spring, and then Will Take Charge ran off with the Travers Stakes in the summer. What those three have in common is that they never give up. And as an exuberant crowd announced at 58,795 rose, neither did their horses. It had already been a ding-dong race of rushes and retreats. First, the betting favorite Game On Dude rushed into the far turn looking every bit like the winner of six in a row and the presumptive horse of the year. Then, poof, he disappeared like a popped balloon. He was hardly alone — Palace Malice, the Belmont Stakes winner, bounced around the track like a pinball beneath his first-time rider Rafael Bejarano, a last-minute replacement for John Velazquez, who was in a hospital having his spleen removed after taking a spill earlier in the day in the Juvenile Fillies. The fall resulted in the euthanizing of Secret Compass, who sustained a lateral condylar fracture. Last year’s Classic champion, Fort Larned, running the last race of his career, looked like the winner for a moment turning for home, but he was helpless when first Mucho Macho Man and then Declaration of War rolled by as if they had rocket boosters beneath their saddles. Image Mucho Macho Man stormed past Will Take Charge to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita Park in California. Credit Richard Mackson/USA Today “He got into a lovely rhythm,” said Declaration of War’s jockey, Joseph O’Brien, who is Aidan’s son as well as stable rider. But Gary Stevens, 50 years young, was laying down a symphony with Mucho Macho Man, a hard-luck horse who had too often found himself just short of the winner’s circle. Last year here, he wobbled in the final strides and finished a diminishing neck to Fort Larned. As the sun and the San Gabriel Mountains shadowed Santa Anita Park at twilight, Stevens and Mucho Macho Man were maestro and orchestra in a crescendo fit for Mozart. Declaration of War launched the first attack, pulling almost even with Mucho Macho Man. The elder O’Brien thought Declaration of War was going by him. “He was going so well,” O’Brien said. However, Luis Saez had Will Take Charge bounding down the stretch as if he had a trampoline beneath him. Saez and his colt were hip to hip with Declaration of War. One stride, Will Take Charge was past. Two strides, he was at Mucho Macho Man’s throat latch. Three strides? The wire. Lukas watched the replay. “I thought he won it,” he said. He watched it again. He saw Will Take Charge was a nostril short. “It’s a heartbreak to lose one like that,” Lukas said. As Stevens guided Mucho Macho Man back to the winner’s circle, Ritvo could not contain herself. She ran onto the track and reached out to Stevens with her hand. This was the biggest victory of her career, one that earned Reeves Thoroughbred Racing, the horse’s owner, a $2.75 million first-place check. Mucho Macho Man finished the mile-and-a-quarter route in 2 minutes 0.72 seconds and awarded his backers $10 for a $2 bet. But none of that was important to Ritvo. She needed a heart transplant, and still takes 32 pills a day. She fought hard, not to win horse races, but for her two young children. Stevens grabbed her by the hand. “You just made an old man happy,” he told her with a lighthouse grin. She squeezed him back. “Honestly, I’m very, very blessed to be here,” she said. No one could argue that Mucho Macho Man’s victory was not about hopes and dreams and stories.

Kathy Ritvo
Gary Stevens
Horse racing
Breeders Cup


Nebraska: Veto of Gas-Tax Increase Is Overridden

Abstract: Lawmakers on Thursday overrode Gov. Pete Ricketts’ veto of a 6-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase to pay for road and bridge repairs. The proposal would raise Nebraska’s total gas tax over four years to 31.6 cents per gallon. The tax would generate an additional $25 million annually for the state and $51 million for cities and counties once fully implemented. Mr. Ricketts, a Republican, has said his new state roads director is planning to look at funding alternatives.

Nebraska
Tax
Pete Ricketts
Gas Tax
Oil and Gasoline


No Charges in Providence Case

Abstract: PROVIDENCE, R.I. — An investigation into an alleged sexual assault by two Providence College basketball players has concluded with no charges, the Rhode Island attorney general’s office said Wednesday. The office said it presented the investigation to a statewide grand jury, which determined there was insufficient evidence to charge Rodney Bullock. The office said it then determined there was insufficient evidence to ask the grand jury to consider charges against Brandon Austin. The freshmen were accused of sexually assaulting another student on Nov. 3. Three days later, coach Ed Cooley suspended them from playing in games shortly before the season began for “not upholding their responsibilities as student-athletes.” After a review, the school decided to keep them out for the rest of the season. The woman complained to the Providence Police Department about the alleged assault in March. Authorities have not released her name. Austin later left Providence College and enrolled at Oregon, where he was also accused of rape. Authorities there declined to prosecute, saying there wasn’t enough evidence. In June, he was suspended as a student from the school for a minimum of four years, and up to 10 years. Austin’s lawyer, Laura Fine Moro, called it an exoneration and said her client would start at a community college in Kansas, where he will play basketball. “The presumption of innocence gets thrown aside in these kinds of cases,” she said. “He’s a brilliant, gifted athlete, and it’s nice to get this behind him so he can concentrate on going to school and playing ball.” Bullock’s lawyer, Bill Lynch, said the incident has now been investigated exhaustively by the college, police and a grand jury, “all of whom have agreed.” “We’re glad that this in now over once and for all, and he can put it behind him and just concentrate on being a student and an athlete at Providence College,” Lynch said. “He looks forward to continuing to be a good member of the PC community, both the school and the basketball team. He never, ever wavered from that.” College spokesman Steven Maurano said the school would not comment.

Providence College
Rodney Bullock
Brandon Austin
College Sports


China Executes Billionaire Who Ran ‘Mafia-Style’ Criminal Gang

Abstract: HONG KONG — A Chinese billionaire who was building a mining empire in Australia was executed Monday after a court last year sentenced him to die for running a “mafia-style” gang that engaged in murder and extortion. Liu Han, 49, his brother Liu Wei, and three associates were executed on Monday, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Xianning Intermediate People’s Court in the central Chinese province of Hubei. The men had been sentenced last May for running a criminal syndicate that killed at least eight people, ran extortion schemes, trafficked weapons and operated gambling dens. Their crimes were “deeply evil and particularly cruel,” Xinhua cited the court as saying. China leads the world in executions, but Liu Han’s case was particularly noteworthy because of his great wealth — with one official report pinning his family’s assets at more than $6 billion — his international business network that invested in Australian mines, as well as his reported connections to a disgraced former Chinese police czar who is awaiting trial. Liu Han’s arrest in March 2013 came as he was in talks to buy the Australian mining company Sundance Resources . The deal collapsed the following month. In 2009, his flagship company, Sichuan Hanlong Group, bought a controlling stake in another Australian mining company, Moly Mines . His brother, Liu Wei, was a torchbearer for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Liu Wei was convicted of ordering the killings of three people in 2009 at an open-air tea house in his hometown in Sichuan Province. When they rounded up the gang in 2013, the police said they confiscated grenades, guns, bullets and knives. The brothers and their associates had fleets of cars including Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Ferraris, Xinhua reported last year. Liu Han was arrested only months after President Xi Jinping of China came to power. It was the early days of an anticorruption campaign, when Sichuan-based associates of Zhou Yongkang, the former head of China’s police and security forces, were being detained. The respected Chinese business magazine Caixin reported last year that Liu Han and Mr. Zhou’s son Zhou Bin had a business relationship.

China
Liu Han
Liu Wei
Sundance Resources
Moly Mines
Murders and Homicides
Organized crime
Capital punishment
Criminal Sentence


After a Fire, a Fishery Is Restocked

Abstract: When the Keyport Fishery, a local landmark since its opening in 1936, suffered a devastating fire last August that destroyed the building, customers feared the market, with its tin ceiling, was gone forever. But Michael and Barbara Nosti, the owners, quickly rebuilt the site to its former roadside glory, reopening in October. The Fishery, which sells the catch of the day at market prices and offers takeout meals, makes a dozen different fish sandwiches, with choices including calamari, flounder, oysters and soft-shell crabs ($5.99 to $6.54). All the fish is lightly coated in cracker meal and fried to a golden crust. The soft white bread that the sandwiches are served on is satisfying, as are the sides of crispy fries and sweet coleslaw. For a heartier takeout meal, order a fish platter ($5.99 to $13.45). Shrimp cocktail ($5.99) with six shrimp and homemade cocktail sauce, is a classic starter; party trays are also available. Soups include chunky New England clam chowder ($1.95 a cup). If you like heat, the tomato-based New Orleans shrimp and scallop soup, with lots of garlic and peppers, is a spicy choice ($1.95 a cup). The crab cakes ($5.50 for a single, $13.45 for a platter with French fries and coleslaw) are good, as are fish cakes with haddock, potatoes and a hint of horseradish ($1.50 each, $5.99 a platter). John Clancy, the manager, who has worked at the market for five years and has been eating there since 1962, says that the market remains popular with regulars. Ms. Nosti used to come as a child; she and her husband bought the market five years ago from the family of the original owners. Keyport Fishery, 150 West Front Street, Keyport; (732) 264-9723. Prepared food is served 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and to 7 p.m. Sunday. (The market sells fresh fish starting at 9 a.m.) Closed Monday. Open year round; closes an hour earlier in winter except Sundays .


Creamer Wins U.S. Women’s Open for First Major Title

Abstract: OAKMONT, Pa. — As she waited for her turn to putt on the last hole of the United States Women’s Open, Paula Creamer stood off to the side of the green and made a few practice strokes. Her caddie, Colin Cann, stuck out his arm, almost as if he were palming a basketball, to remind her to keep her head still. Creamer’s ball was 4 feet from the pin Sunday, and she could take four putts and still win her first — and favorite — major. And yet she did not release any of the giddiness that was bubbling just below the surface, behaving as if it were just another par to grind out. “No matter how-many-stroke lead you have, you just want to finish it in style,” Cann said afterward. Only after Creamer rammed the par putt home for a round of two-under 69 and a four-stroke victory at Oakmont Country Club, the toughest Open course the women have tackled, did she let loose. She dropped her putter and buried her face in her hands, and her eyes filled with tears. This was Creamer’s eighth Open, and even though she is only 23, she was beginning to feel weighed down by her history in the tournament. From 2005 to 2008, she won eight L.P.G.A. Tour events but always found a way to lose in the majors, especially the United States Open , which she coveted most. In 2008, Creamer was in the final group on the last day and shot a 78 to tie for sixth. Last year, a third-round 79 took her out of the title hunt, and she again finished tied for sixth. She was not even certain she would be able to compete this year. At the end of March, Creamer had surgery on her left thumb to repair two torn ligaments. The damage was so extensive, Creamer’s father, Paul, said the doctor who performed the procedure later asked him, “How in the world did she play golf with that thumb?” Strangely, the lack of perfect preparation for this tournament helped Creamer. She had to learn patience when her left hand was in a cast and then a splint, and that patience served her well on a course at which impetuousness is not served. Asked how she managed to win with a thumb that is, by her estimation, at 60 percent strength, Creamer smiled. “It just shows, you know, how much the mental side of golf can really take over,” Creamer said, adding: “I believed I could do this when I had a cast on my hand. That’s what I just kept thinking about was Oakmont, Oakmont, Oakmont.” Eight of the tees were moved forward for the final round, and with the course playing shorter, Song-Hee Kim of South Korea produced the lowest round of the tournament, a 65. There were nine sub-70 rounds on Sunday, after one in the first three days. Another South Korean, Na Yeon Choi, toured the front nine in a five-under 31. When she hit a 4-iron to 3 feet at the par-5 ninth and made the putt, the winds of fate seemed to be shifting. Creamer was facing a treacherous 12-foot par putt at the par-3 sixth after hitting her tee shot into a greenside bunker. In the group ahead of her, Suzann Pettersen of Norway, who had been lurking near the lead all weekend, had two-putted from half that distance. There would be no such hiccup for Creamer, who stepped up and sank the putt. Pettersen, who finished second twice and third once in her first nine starts this year, was the favorite of many to reign at Oakmont, a course that would seem to favor her length, high ball flight and putting prowess. But Pettersen missed three putts inside 5 feet on the first six holes and finished with a 69, tied for second with Choi (66). “Probably with my eyes closed I could putt better,” Pettersen said. Creamer, meantime, made clutch putts as if they were no big deal. On the final hole of her rain-delayed third round, which she completed Sunday morning, she made a 5-footer for a birdie and her second consecutive 70, which was huge because she had three-putted the previous two greens. Cristie Kerr, the No. 1 player in the world and the first American to hold the top spot since the rankings were established in 2006, tied for 17th after a closing 75. “It’s great to see another American win,” said Kerr, who last month won the second major of the year, the L.P.G.A. Championship. “I think we can all finally stop answering, when are the Americans going to come up for the challenge, because winning the last two majors is pretty impressive.”

Golf
United States Women's Open (Golf)
Creamer Paula


For Yankees’ Cano, Rising Status and Pressure

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — Life is different for Robinson Cano these days. With Derek Jeter on the mend and Alex Rodriguez relegated to baseball purgatory for the foreseeable future, Cano has edged his way into one of the harshest spotlights in all of professional sports. Cano, the Yankees’ All-Star second baseman, is the team’s “focal point,” to borrow Manager Joe Girardi’s description, and it was a subtle sign of Cano’s stature that he had his own news conference here Monday, shortly after the Yankees concluded their first full-squad workout of spring training. In recent seasons, the podium has been reserved for eminences like Jeter, Rodriguez, Girardi and Mariano Rivera. Things are different now. A Yankees spokesman joked that Cano, 30, had completed his undergraduate studies. Turning nostalgic, Cano recalled coming up through the Yankees’ minor league system and being the youngest player at camp, where he was surrounded by the game’s giants. Yet joining their ranks comes with its own set of challenges, as Cano is quickly discovering. With his contract set to expire at season’s end, Cano has enlisted the services of the agent Scott Boras to negotiate with the Yankees. Cano’s impending free agency could shadow the team for months. On Monday, Cano avoided getting into any specifics. Would he prefer to get a deal done by the end of spring training? Would he rather test the open market? Cano refused to say. “I just let my agent, Scott, handle it,” he said, though he did want to make one thing clear: “It’s not about the money.” For the Yankees, at least, it is partly about the money. Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ managing general partner, told reporters last week that he would prefer to keep the team’s payroll below the $189 million threshold for the 2014 season to reduce its luxury-tax rate. A megadeal with Cano would make that difficult. As for Cano, he simply reiterated how much he was looking forward to the season. Six times, he used the same exact phrase, saying he wanted to “help the team win another championship.” The Yankees being the Yankees, for whom anything less than a World Series trophy is a symbol of failure, Cano also arrived at camp shadowed by his hapless effort in last season’s playoffs. En route to hitting .075 in the postseason, Cano endured a record-setting 0-for-29 drought, a weeklong, 116-pitch stretch of futility that would have been an even bigger deal had Rodriguez not been dealing with his own problems. Image Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano at camp Monday. Credit Michael Weimar for The New York Times For Cano, it was a total anomaly — all those strikeouts, flyouts and weak grounders to second base after an M.V.P.-caliber season in a career full of them, a season in which he hit .313 with 33 home runs and 94 runs batted in. At the time, Cano was at a loss to explain it. In the months since, not much has changed. “I was at home thinking about the same thing,” he said. “I would say the whole team was struggling, and honestly I don’t know what happened. Maybe I was chasing too many pitches or just not swinging at strikes. But we’ve got to put that in the past, go out there and play a new season.” Cano said he did not feel any additional pressure heading into this season, even as uncertainty swirls over his contract situation and even as Rodriguez rehabilitates his surgically repaired hip in Miami. Cano has spent eight seasons playing in New York, and perhaps that has immunized him from feeling that he has to do more, hit more, win more. “With the Yankees, you always feel like you have to produce if you want to stay here,” he said, “because this team is all about championships.” Girardi said he would keep an eye on Cano. In the past, Girardi said, he has worried about players who are embarking on a contract year. There is always the chance, he said, that a bad week at the plate will turn into a bad month because players are thinking about their next deal. “Don’t let it snowball,” Girardi said. “But Robbie’s a pretty even-keeled guy, and he brings a smile every day. And I think you’ll still see that.” That certainly appeared to be the case Monday. During the team’s morning workout, he was in good spirits, joking around with Jeter and the utility infielder Jayson Nix. Later, in dismissing any contract talk, Cano twice referred to his goal of having fun this season. He also said he was excited about playing for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, for which he will receive an excused absence from spring training. “I love the Dominican,” he said. “So why not go now? I’ve got a chance to represent my country and do my best.” Inside Pitch On Monday morning, Joe Girardi gave the full team his State of the Yankees address. He said it varied little from the speech he gave last week, when the team’s pitchers and catchers reported to camp. “It’s unfortunate that pitchers and catchers have to hear it twice,” he said. “I added about three lines, that was about it.” His assessment of how it went? “Good.”

Yankees
Robinson Cano
Baseball
Joe Girardi


Crosswords DS Nintendo Game

Abstract: When should Grandma get a Nintendo DS? When it lets her work an endless supply of crossword puzzles, that’s when. Crosswords DS ($20 at nintendo.com/ds ) puts about 1,000 crossword puzzles, as well as anagrams and word search puzzles, at the tip of your stylus. You start by turning the DS game machine on its side, like a book, and selecting left- or right-handed display. (Lefties then flip the device upside down.) When a puzzle appears on the touch screen, you enter a letter with the stylus right on the screen, in a process that feels just like writing. In fact, because the text entry box is magnified and hints are available, this software is an example of how technology can improve upon the traditional puzzles — as long as you remember to keep the DS’s battery charged. You can erase mistakes by tapping on the screen or writing your new answer over the old one. The more you play, the more puzzles you can unlock; puzzles can be saved for up to four players. You’ll never miss the pencil sharpener. WARREN BUCKLEITNER

Computer and Video Games
Nintendo Co Ltd


New Leader in Paris-Nice

Abstract: The American Andrew Talansky held off six riders in a sprint finish to win the third stage of the Paris-Nice race and take the race leader’s yellow jersey.


A Small Upstart to Oversee Ad Agencies

Abstract: A WELL-KNOWN senior Madison Avenue executive, Antony Young, is leaving the biggest agency holding group for one that, if not the smallest, is certainly the newest. Mr. Young is becoming president of the Water Cooler Group , which is being formed to be the parent of four agencies — Bolt, Hip Genius , Maude and Media Storm — that specialize in tasks like media planning and buying, social media, creative and content development and interactive television. Clients of the agencies in the new holding group include Connecticut Tourism, Food Network, Fox Sports 1, FX, Major League Soccer, MLB Network, MTV, Open Road Films, TV One, Viggle and WE tv. Mr. Young’s hiring is to be formally announced on Monday by the principals of the Water Cooler Group, who say the new agency holding company has been in the planning stages for more than a year. The Water Cooler Group will have offices in New York, where Mr. Young will be based, and Los Angeles. Before joining the Water Cooler Group, Mr. Young held top posts at Mindshare, a media agency owned by the GroupM division of WPP, which is the world’s largest family of agencies — at least until the completion of the merger , announced last month, of the Omnicom Group and the Publicis Groupe to form the Publicis Omnicom Group. Before his work at Mindshare, Mr. Young held a top post at Optimedia, part of the ZenithOptimedia Group division of Publicis. “I’ve spent a lot of my career in giant holding companies,” Mr. Young, 48, said in a phone interview last week. “Joining the Water Cooler Group is a zag,” he added, as in zagging when everybody zigs. “What Mindshare and GroupM are doing is some of the best work in the marketplace,” Mr. Young said. “But there are clients — and, frankly, agency people — who are looking for something different, an alternative,” he added, particularly on a smaller scale than the giant media agencies that keep “getting bigger.” Mr. Young and his new colleagues hope that one of those alternatives will be the Water Cooler Group. The name was chosen, said Craig Woerz, a managing partner at both the Water Cooler Group and Media Storm, to invoke a holy grail among marketers: stimulating conversation, word of mouth, buzz and social sharing among consumers, a k a the water-cooler effect . Image Craig Woerz, left, a managing partner of the Water Cooler Group, and Antony Young, who will become its president. Credit Water Cooler Group “We’re trying to be a challenge to the big-agency model,” Mr. Woerz said. “Antony came through and really blew us away. I felt I was talking to myself a little bit. He shared our entrepreneurial mind-set and had a big-agency background but is not set in the big-agency way.” Mr. Woerz, 42, founded Media Storm in 2001 with Tim Williams, who is also a managing partner at Media Storm and the Water Cooler Group. With Mr. Young’s arrival, Mr. Williams, 56, will move into a nonexecutive role, Mr. Woerz said. Another executive, in addition to Mr. Young, is joining the Water Cooler Group from the outside: Chassar Howell, 35, as managing director for strategy and ideation; he previously was managing partner at the New York office of Naked Communications. Other senior managers at the Water Cooler Group include Benson Hausman, 44, as executive director for marketing and development; he has worked for agencies that include KraftWorks, Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, Leroy & Clarkson and Lipman. Mr. Hausman was “our first Water Cooler Group employee,” Mr. Woerz said, as he was hired while the company was being planned. Mr. Young’s arrival at the Water Cooler Group is the most recent job switch for a senior agency executive in a spate of such changes . Most of those moves have involved executives who specialize in creative work, but there have also been some top managers of media agencies in the mix — including a previous change for Mr. Young, who was named last month to a worldwide business development role at Mindshare after serving since September 2011 as chief executive for the Mindshare operations in North America. The Water Cooler Group joins the ranks of smaller agency holding groups that also include MDC Partners and Project WorldWide . They are dwarfed by the likes of WPP, Omnicom, Publicis, the Interpublic Group of Companies, Dentsu and Havas. And the big keep getting bigger: according to the trade publication Advertising Age, the Publicis Omnicom Group would own three of the world’s five largest media agencies, including the four largest media agencies in this country.

Water Cooler Group
Social Media
advertising,marketing
Startup
Appointments and Executive Changes


Tensions Rise Between Iran and U.S. in Persian Gulf

Abstract: Iranian naval boats made dangerous maneuvers around United States warships in the Persian Gulf area on at least four occasions this week, Pentagon officials said Thursday, including one episode in which the Americans fired warning shots from a 50-caliber deck gun to prevent a collision. It was unclear whether the confrontations — one near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday and three in the northern Persian Gulf on Wednesday — were deliberate efforts to send a hostile message about American naval activity. Still, they underscored the risk of an armed clash between Iran and the United States in an area that has been a perennial source of tension for the two countries. There was no immediate comment from Iran about Wednesday’s encounters. But its defense minister denied that Iranian vessels had done anything wrong in the Tuesday episode and accused the Americans of trespassing to provoke a response. Cmdr. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, called the Iranian behavior on Wednesday a violation of international law and accused the Iranians of ignoring repeated warnings from the American vessels, creating a “dangerous, harassing situation that could have led to further escalation.” In a statement, Commander Urban said Wednesday’s episodes included two in which the Squall and the Tempest, American coastal patrol ships operating in international waters, were harassed by three boats from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, which crisscrossed the Tempest’s bow and created “a possible collision hazard.” Later, he said, an Iranian patrol vessel approached the Tempest head-on despite repeated radio, flare and loudspeaker warnings. “Ultimately, Squall resorted to firing three warning shots from their 50-caliber gun, which caused the Iranian vessel to turn away,” Commander Urban said. In the third episode on Wednesday, he said, the Stout, a guided missile destroyer, was harassed by the same vessel that had menaced the Tempest and the Squall. It crossed the Stout’s bow three times in an “unsafe intercept,” Commander Urban said, and the Stout maneuvered away and “employed devices,” which he did not identify, to dissuade the Iranian vessel from further harassment. Earlier, describing the Tuesday encounter, Cmdr. Kyle Raines, a spokesman for United States Central Command, said Revolutionary Guard patrol boats had repeatedly ignored warnings from two guided missile destroyers, the Nitze and the Mason, operating in international waters near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit route to the Persian Gulf. The Iranians came within about 300 yards of the Nitze before veering off, Commander Raines said. Unsure of their intentions, the Nitze changed course several times to try to keep a safe distance from offshore oil rigs in the area. “We assessed the interaction as unsafe and unprofessional due to the Iranian vessels’ not abiding by international law and internationally recognized maritime rules of the road, as well as their high rate of closure of Nitze and disregard of multiple warnings by the ship’s whistle and flares,” he said. Responding to his complaint, Iran rejected the American version of events. The defense minister, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, said in remarks quoted by the state news media that the Iranian boats patrolled only Iran’s territorial waters and had a mission to “counter any unintentional or aggressive intrusion.” The American naval presence in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz has prompted anger and resentment in Iran since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the United States-backed monarchy. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, often questions why the United States thinks it has the right to deploy warships near Iran. The Revolutionary Guards have also warned that they might close the Strait of Hormuz, although many outside analysts see that as an empty threat. Eugene Gholz, a public affairs professor at the University of Texas and a former Pentagon adviser, said of the naval confrontations, “I suspect that the dangers here are tied up in the overall relationship between the U.S. and Iran.” Even so, he said, “you do have to wonder why any country would want to send out small boats to approach another country’s warship in international waters at high speed, ignoring the target ship’s efforts to communicate.” In January, Iran briefly detained 10 American sailors whose patrol boats had strayed into Iranian waters, just before the international agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear activities took effect.

Iran
Persian Gulf
Strait of Hormuz
Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Ali Khamenei
US Military
US Navy


The Custodian of the Song in His Heart

Abstract: As a toddler in Rockville Centre, on Long Island, Ted Karadenes monitored the pulse of the grown-up parties his parents often hosted at home. When things got too quiet he looked for something tall, like a chair, clambered up and broke into song. “I liked to entertain people, to wake up the party,” Mr. Karadenes, 67, said in September. As a child his repertoire consisted of Johnnie Ray and, later, as rock ’n’ roll stole the hearts of youths across America, Elvis Presley. But his songs turned somber after being drafted in 1968 and serving as a communications expert in Vietnam, where, he said, he witnessed a firefight that killed 60 Vietnamese and wounded two Americans. “I came home and had this undying sense of alienation,” Mr. Karadenes said, reflecting on the day he returned and stood at the train station dressed in full Army regalia. “I was still in Vietnam in my mind, and yet I was here,” he said. “I didn’t know where I belonged.” The Voice of Karadenes Listen to Ted Karadenes sing a short clip of one of his favorite songs, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley. In search of that particular place, he and a ragtag group of musicians packed into an off-white Volkswagen bus resembling “a loaf of Wonder Bread” and set off across the country in 1973. He recalls the trip and the bus, nicknamed the Wondermobile, fondly. But it dropped him alone in Jackson Hole, Wyo., with $10 to his name. After stumbling along on cooking jobs, and in and out of motels, Mr. Karadenes, who had gotten his broadcast license in 1971, decided to take his booming voice to the radio. But the only station in town played crooners like Tony Bennett, not the Rolling Stones. “I had long hair,” Mr. Karadenes said. “The station manager took one look at me and said no.” Eventually he and an entrepreneur looking to start a new station opened the town’s first FM station, Mr. Karadenes said. He recalls hauling a transmitter up Snow King Mountain to get reception. On his first night on the air, in the fall of 1975, he broadcast out of a motel room. His broadcast name was Ted Karradine, derived from the Carradine acting brothers. Initially he loved the small station and the lack of a director and playlist. But he yearned for a bigger market and left for a station where he was given a playlist and the overnight shift “broadcasting to taxi drivers and 7-Eleven employees.” It was short lived. Mr. Karadenes’s love of music led him to a Tucson nightclub, where he worked for eight years as a singing waiter and developed his persona as an entertainer. “I got the patter down,” he said. “I acknowledged the regulars and always went around and sang to the women.” The Neediest Cases The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund provides direct assistance to struggling New Yorkers. Tap for information about how to donate. In 1985, the club owner opened a place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and invited Mr. Karadenes to serve as the main entertainment. But the venture was unsuccessful and, after a brief return to Tucson, Mr. Karadenes moved back to Long Island in 1991 to care for his ailing mother. She died in 1996. During that stretch, he waited on tables and worked catering jobs. He continues to do so, but he says he has arthritis in his spine and cannot move like he used to. He lives in Forest Hills, Queens, with two roommates in a one-bedroom apartment and is supported by occasional catering work, $316 in monthly unemployment benefits and $189 from SNAP , the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. His share of the rent is $321. Mr. Karadenes’s room, tucked in the back of the apartment, is small and bare, with three windows facing Queens Boulevard. In the summer, the room is sweltering and the sun “stays out there what seems like all day,” he said. This year Mr. Karadenes turned to Selfhelp Community Services, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York and one of the seven charitable organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, for help buying an air-conditioner. In May he was awarded $309 from the fund. Mr. Karadenes has weathered the dips and turns, but the performing bug never left him. It is, in fact, his retirement plan. When he finally works his last catering job, he hopes to put together an audition tape for Music Under New York , a program offered by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that allows artists to perform in subway stations throughout the city. “I’m going to get myself a nice little portable karaoke machine,” Mr. Karadenes said, a glint in his eye. “I’ll hit Grand Central Station, Union Square — the big spots,” he said. “I’ll put my tin can or my hat out and maybe people will leave me some gratuities, maybe not. Either way I’ll be just fine.”

New York Times Neediest Cases Fund
Selfhelp Community Services
Philanthropy


Colombian Rebels Call Unilateral Truce

Abstract: CARACAS, Venezuela — Colombia’s largest guerrilla group declared on Wednesday that it was about to begin an indefinite, unilateral cease-fire, in a challenge to the government to halt hostilities while the two sides continued negotiations toward an end to 50 years of war. But the group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said that it would call off the cease-fire if government forces attacked — a condition that appeared to give the gesture little chance of success, since the government has repeatedly rejected previous calls by the rebels to suspend hostilities while the two sides try to forge a permanent agreement. The cease-fire was to go into effect on Saturday, the FARC said in a statement posted online. It added that it hoped to subsequently agree to a truce with the government. The FARC has declared unilateral cease-fires at Christmastime for the past two years, as well as during presidential elections earlier this year. But it has not previously said that it would refrain from hostilities for an unlimited period. There was no immediate response from President Juan Manuel Santos or others in the government. Mr. Santos was re-elected this year on promises to conclude the peace negotiations that he started with a surprise announcement more than two years ago. Camilo González, the director of the Institute for Development and Peace Studies in Bogotá, said the FARC’s move was positive, but added that it would be difficult for the government to agree to a truce because that would open it up to fierce criticism from right-wing opponents of the peace process. “The government has been very insistent lately with its language of a military offensive,” Mr. González said. Senator Fernando Nicolás Araujo, a member of the right-wing party of former President Álvaro Uribe, a fierce adversary of Mr. Santos’s peace efforts, said the FARC was trying to trick the government into accepting a bilateral cease-fire. “Like always, the FARC wants to fool the country,” Mr. Araujo said. “We cannot accept a bilateral cease-fire. It is the capitulation of the rule of law in the face of terrorism.” The FARC announcement came shortly after the peace talks had overcome their greatest obstacle so far, when the guerrillas last month captured an army general , Rubén Darío Alzate. That led Mr. Santos to suspend the peace talks. Two weeks later, the FARC released General Alzate and two others seized with him, clearing the way for the talks to resume. It also came two days after the government announced that it had killed nine FARC members in a military operation in the southeastern part of the country. “In a negotiation, there are no gifts from either side,” said Carlos Eduardo Jaramillo, an adviser to government negotiators in a round of peace talks involving the FARC and another guerrilla group in the 1990s. “Every offer is poisoned. No one makes an offer out of pure altruism.” He said that the “poison” in this case was the caveat that the cease-fire would end if the FARC came under assault. “The chance of success depends on how the government interprets it and the actions it takes,” he said. “Maybe the government will say, ‘We will keep fighting, but we will decelerate the conflict.’ ”


Cable Show Gave Suspect in Fraud Case High Profile

Abstract: For two and a half years, Jacob Milton used the airwaves and the promise of the American dream to endear himself to his fellow Bangladeshi immigrants in Jackson Heights, Queens. He was the host of a talk show on a local Bangladeshi cable television station, often praising the virtues of assimilating into the American way of life. He was also a mortgage broker, helping several of his fellow countrymen buy homes. Clients recalled the smile he used in order to earn their trust. He “treated us like family,” said one former client, Mohammed Golam. The rosy feelings would slowly erode, however. Several people who went to Mr. Milton for mortgages, including Mr. Golam, began complaining that they had been cheated. One man sued Mr. Milton, claiming that he had failed to repay a loan. And the owner of the television station said Mr. Milton abruptly left and sued him, claiming breach of contract. An investigation that began in June, the authorities said, after several Queens residents reported that their identities had been stolen, led to the discovery that they had all applied for loans at Mr. Milton’s mortgage office in Jackson Heights. The police have said six people were victimized by Mr. Milton but expect that number to rise to at least 12. Mr. Milton, 41, and Nira Niru, 38, whom the police have identified as his sister, were arrested on Monday, and were awaiting arraignment in Queens Criminal Court last night on charges of identity theft, grand larceny and scheming to defraud. Yesterday, a conflicting portrait of Mr. Milton emerged. Ehteshamul Haque, who works in the building that houses the branch of the Griffin Mortgage Corporation that Mr. Milton managed, accused Mr. Milton of dishonesty. Mr. Haque, whose work includes debt counseling, said he had helped people who came to him after encountering financial troubles in their dealings with Mr. Milton. The president of Griffin, John A. Messer, could not be reached for comment yesterday. But Sally Butler, a lawyer for Mr. Milton, said, “He’s not a man that’s likely to have committed the crimes he’s accused of.” Mr. Milton’s past in Bangladesh remains unclear. Ms. Butler said that she did not know when or why he moved to the United States, but said that “it was a time in his country where he needed to get out.” The police have said that Mr. Milton, who lives in Port Washington, in Nassau County, told them he was in the country under political asylum. Citizenship and Immigration Services was unable to confirm Mr. Milton’s status, citing privacy laws. Mr. Milton started working in the mortgage business about two and a half years ago, Mr. Haque said. A short time later, he bought airtime on a Bangladeshi cable station, TBC, to serve as host of a talk show titled “NYC Public Affairs,” said Rajeev Khan, the station’s founder. Mr. Khan said he was surprised when Mr. Milton suddenly took his show to another station, STV, without explanation last year, and then notified him that he was filing a $2 million lawsuit against TBC for breach of contract. Hector Roman, a lawyer who is representing Mr. Milton in that case, said his client planned to proceed with the lawsuit despite his current legal trouble. In an advertisement in this week’s issue of The Weekly Bangla Patrika, a Bangladeshi newspaper that circulates throughout the city, Mr. Milton and Ms. Niru said the mortgage company was closing because of the nationwide mortgage crisis. Mr. Milton is facing a suit brought by a fellow Bangladeshi immigrant, Khurshid Anwar, who claimed that Mr. Milton never repaid a $65,000 loan made in 2004. Mr. Golam, an information technology consultant from Bangladesh who lives in Queens, said Mr. Milton cheated him in a mortgage deal in 2005. He said his wife used to work with Mr. Milton, who gained their trust with his friendliness. “I didn’t realize what he was doing,” Mr. Golam said. “I was trusting him so much.”

Identity Fraud
Queens (NYC)
Frauds and Swindling


Stocks Higher After Spate of Hopeful Economic Reports

Abstract: Investors welcomed an unexpected spate of good news about the economy on Friday, as reports showed a rise in consumer confidence, stronger-than-expected business spending and slightly less bleeding in the market for new homes. The developments helped nudge stocks to a higher close at the end of a bumpy week. A welter of negative news on Thursday, including a record quarterly loss by Ford Motor and a gloomy report on existing-home sales, sent the Dow industrials down 283 points. On Friday, a report by the University of Michigan and Reuters said that Americans felt better about the economy in July than they have since April, but the numbers remained far below those at the beginning of the year. The confidence index rose to 61.2, from 56.4 in June, though Americans still have low expectations for the economy’s performance in the months ahead. Some economists speculated that the unexpected boost stemmed from a decline in gasoline prices in the last two weeks. That may have temporarily overshadowed concerns about falling home prices and a weak job market, said Brian Bethune, an economist at the research firm Global Insight. Another government report showed that orders for big-ticket items rose last month, beating economists’ expectations. A surge in export orders and investment in military-related products sent durable goods orders up 0.8 percent in June from a revised 0.1 percent in May, the Commerce Department said. Excluding orders for military-related goods, orders were up only 0.1 percent. And sales of newly built homes showed some improvement last month, declining 0.6 percent, less than economists had expected, according to a separate report from the Commerce Department. Inventories dipped as well, as sales fell to a 530,000 seasonally adjusted annual rate. Sales were up in the Northeast and Midwest, but down in the South and West. The median price for a new home ticked up slightly, to $230,900, up from $227,700 in May. The median new-home prices is still 2 percent below its level from a year ago. At the current sales rate, it would take 10 months to work off the current inventory. “New sales are now very close to their population-adjusted low in 1982, after the last big bust, and we doubt they can fall a great deal further,” Ian Shepherdson, an economist at High Frequency Economics in London, wrote. The durable goods report, which refers to items intended to last several years, suggested that the manufacturing sector might be able to muddle through the economic downturn, although it has recorded deep job losses in the last few months. A widely watched gauge of spending by businesses rose 1.4 percent after falling slightly in May, an encouraging sign for manufacturing companies that were otherwise struggling through one of the worst downturns since the Depression. The gauge measures orders of capital goods that exclude aircraft and military-related products. Demand for transportation products declined 2.6 percent, as high oil prices caused problems for that segment of the economy. Demand for electronic equipment was one of June’s biggest drivers, rising 5 percent. Heavy machinery orders were up 2.3 percent after falling 3.7 percent in May. Orders for metals also surged by more than 5 percent. Demand also fell for computers and telecommunications equipment. Civilian aircraft orders declined 25 percent, although that figure swings from month to month. “We expect to see further weakness ahead in orders as access to credit remains under pressure and the consumer sector weakens more rapidly,” James Knightley, an economist at ING Bank in London, wrote in a note to clients.

Economic Conditions and Trends
United States Economy
Durable Goods (Economic Indicator)
Stocks and Bonds
Dow Jones Stock Average