Jack Sock Picks Up Where He Left Off at Last Year’s U.S. Open

Abstract: When we last saw Jack Sock at the United States Open , a year ago September, he was holding a trophy over his head and — not yet 19 and a newly declared professional — being hailed a Grand Slam champion. Granted, as major titles go, mixed doubles (with Melanie Oudin) was akin to a serving of cheese and crackers, with the steak, or singles title, still lodged in the freezer. But as Sock had the previous year also won the junior boys title in Flushing Meadows and, with legend holding that he had never lost a high school match, it was natural — at least hopeful — to think he might have a healthy share of winning genes to go with his booming serve. And his name, for goodness sakes, is Jack Sock; of Lincoln, Neb., a proud Cornhusker. Does it get any more wholesome and hearty for a country in a continuous search for its next men’s star in this athletically enhanced smash-mouth era? So after Sock introduced himself to Florian Mayer, a German seeded 22nd, with a sizzling ace down the T and held serve to begin a first-round match Monday on the grandstand court, fans responded with a chant of “Let’s Go Sock!” Forgetting for the moment that New York is a Yankees town, it was better than one alternative — Sock it to him — and completely understandable as Sock was in the process of feeding America’s slam its first helping of nationalistic fervor by overpowering Mayer, who retired while trailing, 6-3, 6-2, 3-2. One or two more performances like this and we can expect a slew of word play headlines, beginning with Sock and Awe. It doesn’t take much to fire up the Next Great American news media machine, not that Sock is lacking in confidence or ambition. “I feel like my game is right on the verge of going to the next level,” he said after winning his fourth tour match of 2012 against six losses. To explain what he meant of taking his game to the “next level,” put it this way: from his current ranking, 243, there are many stops to make on the ride to the dizzying heights where Roger Federer and elite company reside — beginning with leaping into position near another young and hopeful Yank, Ryan Harrison, currently No. 61. On the scale of youthful and potential men’s tour heirs, the 21-year-old Milos Raonic of Canada is the closest to a major breakthrough, though it is also difficult to define what even that means when three players — Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic — have won 29 of the last 30 slam titles and show little inclination of easing their chokehold. Compared with what the more promising newbies face these days, the emergent superstars of yore practically took their Grand Slam treats by merely growing tall enough to reach into the cookie jar. Boris Becker won Wimbledon as a 17-year-old mop-haired redhead. John McEnroe and Pete Sampras broke through in New York at 20 and 19. Into the 21st century, Nadal began his domination of the French Open at 19, Djokovic won the Australian Open at 21 and Federer sank to his knees at Wimbledon weeks before turning 22. These days, it is unfathomable to think of a skinny and moon-balling Michael Chang winning the French Open at 17, as he did in 1989, or a teenager winning any of the slams. “I don’t think that’s going to be the case any time soon because this game is so physical now and people need to grow into their body,” said John Isner, who at 27 has reason to believe that his best results, whatever they may be, are still ahead of him. At 31, Federer, who absurdly has not missed a Grand Slam tournament in 13 years, may be the best-conditioned of all. Andy Murray, at 25, is thought to be on the verge of his prime. It is mind-boggling to think that Bjorn Borg, McEnroe, Becker and others were playing on fumes, their best matches behind them, by their mid-20s. A no-kidding adult’s tour that provides longevity and personal context is so much richer than the alternative. But given such dramatic career clock changes, patience may be a most valuable virtue for players like Raonic, Harrison and Bernard Tomic of Australia. “Those guys, it might take them a little while to see their very, very best results, but they’re certainly not doing so bad right now,” said Isner, who didn’t hesitate to include Sock, calling him “a very good player.” Sock is a strapping ’Husker, 6 feet 1 inch, 180 pounds, but he was set back physically in March by surgery to repair a torn abdominal muscle. In a brilliant stroke, he has been working in Las Vegas with the trainer Gil Reyes, who whipped the once-profligate Andre Agassi into shape. He has hired the former Swedish player, Joakim Nystrom, to help him play a more patient game. On today’s altered career time clock, there is no choice but to wait one’s turn and see what happens. In a microcosm of that strategy, Sock fell behind, 0-40, while serving at 4-2 in the first set, rallied to deuce, kept his cool as Mayer challenged two line calls and won both, and wound up winning the long game with the help of his own challenge of an out call. He was never threatened after that, cranking his first serve as high as 134 miles per hour, winning 17 of 25 second-service points and shrugging off the question of when the Next Great American will arrive as easily as he did Mayer. “Until the results are there, until the rankings and everything is there, not a different answer to give,” he said. Give him time, in other words. By today’s standards, he’s got a few years before we have to stop asking.

Tennis
United States Open (Tennis)
Sock Jack


Two Long-Established Marketers Loosen Up

Abstract: Two big advertisers known for the traditional ways they marketed products are expanding their efforts to become a little less conventional. Both, coincidentally, share the same creative and media agencies, which are also trying to demonstrate their eagerness to explore the brave world of new media. The advertisers are the General Electric Company and the Pepsi-Cola North America unit of PepsiCo. The agencies are both part of the Omnicom Group: BBDO Worldwide in New York for the creative parts of the campaigns and OMD for the media elements. G.E., which in May experimented with new media like digital video recorders in a campaign called G.E. One Second Theater, is introducing today an initiative called G.E.’s Imagination Theater. There are four short films, live-action and animated, which are intended to illustrate in humorous fashion the idea that imaginative approaches can solve challenging problems. Everyone on Madison Avenue “is looking to push the envelope, find what is going to be the next big thing,” said Jennifer Gordineer, group director for national investment on the PepsiCo account at OMD in New York. The shorts can be watched free on the video-on-demand service available to customers of Time Warner Cable systems in cities including Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Milwaukee and New York. After each short is released on cable, it will go up on a section of the G.E. Web site (ge.com/imaginationtheater) as well as on sites like myspace.com, video.google.com and youtube.com. And for the Mountain Dew MDX soft drink, Pepsi-Cola North America begins today to present offbeat commercials online (staysharp.tv) and on television. The spots feature video clips created by consumers, which have appeared on Web sites like YouTube, as well as excerpts from popular TV series that include “Futurama.” “You want to focus first on who you are trying to reach” with an ad, Ms. Gordineer said, rather than on the kind of media in which the ad will appear, and then strive to “capture their attention in a way that has not been done before.” At General Electric, said Judy L. Hu, global executive director for advertising and branding, “we’re always challenging our agencies to come up with new ways of reaching people in a world where they’re increasingly in control of what they watch and when.” The One Second Theater experiment “performed really well,” Ms. Hu said, citing data from TiVo showing that “viewers spent three and a half times longer with the commercials than other commercials” not part of the campaign. The experiment offered owners of TiVos and other DVRs the chance to pause the spots and watch additional material frame by frame that had been inserted specifically for played-back viewing. Viewers who watched the commercials live glimpsed only a blur that lasted for, yes, one second. The “Imagination Theater” shorts will be available on the Movie Trailers on Demand channels of the cable systems, alongside previews of theatrical films. After the first short, “The Crossing,” begins today, the others will start running next Monday (“Cubicle”), Dec. 4 (“Birth”) and Dec. 18 (“Samurai”). The shorts will follow a similarly staggered schedule as they go up on the G.E. Web site; BBDO and OMD are working with the online agency for G.E., Blitz. Promotions for Imagination Theater include teaser spots to run on the cable systems, ads in Entertainment Weekly magazine and signs resembling movie posters pasted up at construction sites. The four shorts were produced from 159 scripts submitted by “the 100 creative people of the entire agency, not just those who work on the G.E. account,” said David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer for the BBDO North American operations. “We were trained here to do things a certain kind of way,” Mr. Lubars said of the BBDO New York creative staff and its legendary devotion to expensive TV commercials replete with celebrities and special effects. Now, “we can get things done in guerrilla ways,” he added. A principal difference between then and now, said Bill Bruce, the chief creative officer at the BBDO New York office who oversaw the MDX campaign, is that “the lines between creative and media are blurred.” “You’ll be seeing more and more of this from BBDO,” Mr. Bruce said. The MDX campaign will appear on the staysharp.tv Web site as well as TV shows on MTV, Spike TV and Adult Swim, the late-night programming block on Cartoon Network. The commercials will present quizzes intended as brain teasers, to make the point that MDX helps its target consumers — males ages 12 to 34 — to “stay sharp.” “It’s becoming more and more apparent that you have to go beyond the traditional 30-second spot,” said Frank Cooper, vice president for marketing the flavored soft drinks sold by Pepsi-Cola North America, because “viewers have become extremely sophisticated at avoiding them.” Some MDX commercials will present the video clips created by consumers, selected from among the fare on youtube.com and other video-sharing Web sites that are popular with younger consumers. The clips include an acrobatic dance by clay figurines, a deliberately bad spoof song called “Elektronic Supersonik,” and daily snapshots of the life of Ben Popik, a young comedian. The commercials conclude with questions about the contents of the clips. To learn the answers, viewers are directed to staysharp.tv — where presumably they will linger to discover more about the product. Other MDX commercials, in a postmodern touch, will refer directly to the programs they are interrupting. For instance, a block of commercials during “Futurama” on Adult Swim will begin with a five-second spot for MDX, asking a question about a newspaper that a character was reading in the show. Then, viewers will see several commercials from other advertisers. MDX will return in the final 10 seconds of the commercial block with a spot answering the question and asking viewers to visit staysharp.tv. After that, the episode of “Futurama” resumes. “It requires a lot of manpower, collaboration and coordination” to create, produce and schedule the commercials that refer to the shows in which they appear, Ms. Gordineer of OMD says. But “we want to keep a viewer engaged during the commercial break in a way that says, ‘Wow, MDX is talking to me,’ ” she added. By coincidence, grouper.com, a video-sharing Web site, introduced last week a channel named Screen Bites where visitors can watch clips from movies and TV shows produced by Columbia Pictures, which like grouper.com is owned by Sony. Among the clips: the scene from the 1976 film “Taxi Driver” in which Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) asks, “You talkin’ to me?”

Television
Advertising and Marketing
General Electric Co
PepsiCo Inc
Computers and the Internet


Japan Goes From Dynamic to Disheartened

Abstract: OSAKA, Japan — Like many members of Japan ’s middle class, Masato Y. enjoyed a level of affluence two decades ago that was the envy of the world. Masato, a small-business owner, bought a $500,000 condominium, vacationed in Hawaii and drove a late-model Mercedes. But his living standards slowly crumbled along with Japan’s overall economy. First, he was forced to reduce trips abroad and then eliminate them. Then he traded the Mercedes for a cheaper domestic model. Last year, he sold his condo — for a third of what he paid for it, and for less than what he still owed on the mortgage he took out 17 years ago. “Japan used to be so flashy and upbeat, but now everyone must live in a dark and subdued way,” said Masato, 49, who asked that his full name not be used because he still cannot repay the $110,000 that he owes on the mortgage. Few nations in recent history have seen such a striking reversal of economic fortune as Japan. The original Asian success story, Japan rode one of the great speculative stock and property bubbles of all time in the 1980s to become the first Asian country to challenge the long dominance of the West. But the bubbles popped in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Japan fell into a slow but relentless decline that neither enormous budget deficits nor a flood of easy money has reversed. For nearly a generation now, the nation has been trapped in low growth and a corrosive downward spiral of prices, known as deflation , in the process shriveling from an economic Godzilla to little more than an afterthought in the global economy. Now, as the United States and other Western nations struggle to recover from a debt and property bubble of their own, a growing number of economists are pointing to Japan as a dark vision of the future. Even as the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, prepares a fresh round of unconventional measures to stimulate the economy, there are growing fears that the United States and many European economies could face a prolonged period of slow growth or even, in the worst case, deflation, something not seen on a sustained basis outside Japan since the Great Depression . Many economists remain confident that the United States will avoid the stagnation of Japan, largely because of the greater responsiveness of the American political system and Americans’ greater tolerance for capitalism’s creative destruction. Japanese leaders at first denied the severity of their nation’s problems and then spent heavily on job-creating public works projects that only postponed painful but necessary structural changes, economists say. “We’re not Japan,” said Robert E. Hall, a professor of economics at Stanford. “In America, the bet is still that we will somehow find ways to get people spending and investing again.” Still, as political pressure builds to reduce federal spending and budget deficits, other economists are now warning of “Japanification” — of falling into the same deflationary trap of collapsed demand that occurs when consumers refuse to consume, corporations hold back on investments and banks sit on cash. It becomes a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle: as prices fall further and jobs disappear, consumers tighten their purse strings even more and companies cut back on spending and delay expansion plans. “The U.S., the U.K., Spain, Ireland, they all are going through what Japan went through a decade or so ago,” said Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Securities who recently wrote a book about Japan’s lessons for the world. “Millions of individuals and companies see their balance sheets going underwater, so they are using their cash to pay down debt instead of borrowing and spending.” Just as inflation scarred a generation of Americans, deflation has left a deep imprint on the Japanese, breeding generational tensions and a culture of pessimism, fatalism and reduced expectations. While Japan remains in many ways a prosperous society, it faces an increasingly grim situation, particularly outside the relative economic vibrancy of Tokyo, and its situation provides a possible glimpse into the future for the United States and Europe, should the most dire forecasts come to pass. Scaled-Back Ambitions The downsizing of Japan’s ambitions can be seen on the streets of Tokyo, where concrete “microhouses” have become popular among younger Japanese who cannot afford even the famously cramped housing of their parents, or lack the job security to take out a traditional multidecade loan. These matchbox-size homes stand on plots of land barely large enough to park a sport utility vehicle, yet have three stories of closet-size bedrooms, suitcase-size closets and a tiny kitchen that properly belongs on a submarine. “This is how to own a house even when you are uneasy about the future,” said Kimiyo Kondo, general manager at Zaus, a Tokyo-based company that builds microhouses. For many people under 40, it is hard to grasp just how far this is from the 1980s, when a mighty — and threatening — “Japan Inc.” seemed ready to obliterate whole American industries, from automakers to supercomputers. With the Japanese stock market quadrupling and the yen rising to unimagined heights, Japan’s companies dominated global business, gobbling up trophy properties like Hollywood movie studios (Universal Studios and Columbia Pictures), famous golf courses (Pebble Beach) and iconic real estate (Rockefeller Center). In 1991, economists were predicting that Japan would overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2010. In fact, Japan’s economy remains the same size it was then: a gross domestic product of $5.7 trillion at current exchange rates. During the same period, the United States economy doubled in size to $14.7 trillion, and this year China overtook Japan to become the world’s No. 2 economy. China has so thoroughly eclipsed Japan that few American intellectuals seem to bother with Japan now, and once crowded Japanese-language classes at American universities have emptied. Even Clyde V. Prestowitz, a former Reagan administration trade negotiator whose writings in the 1980s about Japan’s threat to the United States once stirred alarm in Washington, said he was now studying Chinese. “I hardly go to Japan anymore,” Mr. Prestowitz said. The decline has been painful for the Japanese, with companies and individuals like Masato having lost the equivalent of trillions of dollars in the stock market, which is now just a quarter of its value in 1989, and in real estate, where the average price of a home is the same as it was in 1983. And the future looks even bleaker, as Japan faces the world’s largest government debt — around 200 percent of gross domestic product — a shrinking population and rising rates of poverty and suicide. But perhaps the most noticeable impact here has been Japan’s crisis of confidence. Just two decades ago, this was a vibrant nation filled with energy and ambition, proud to the point of arrogance and eager to create a new economic order in Asia based on the yen. Today, those high-flying ambitions have been shelved, replaced by weariness and fear of the future, and an almost stifling air of resignation. Japan seems to have pulled into a shell, content to accept its slow fade from the global stage. Its once voracious manufacturers now seem prepared to surrender industry after industry to hungry South Korean and Chinese rivals. Japanese consumers, who once flew by the planeload on flashy shopping trips to Manhattan and Paris, stay home more often now, saving their money for an uncertain future or setting new trends in frugality with discount brands like Uniqlo. As living standards in this still wealthy nation slowly erode, a new frugality is apparent among a generation of young Japanese, who have known nothing but economic stagnation and deflation. They refuse to buy big-ticket items like cars or televisions, and fewer choose to study abroad in America. Japan’s loss of gumption is most visible among its young men, who are widely derided as “herbivores” for lacking their elders’ willingness to toil for endless hours at the office, or even to succeed in romance, which many here blame, only half jokingly, for their country’s shrinking birthrate. “The Japanese used to be called economic animals,” said Mitsuo Ohashi, former chief executive officer of the chemicals giant Showa Denko. “But somewhere along the way, Japan lost its animal spirits.” When asked in dozens of interviews about their nation’s decline, Japanese, from policy makers and corporate chieftains to shoppers on the street, repeatedly mention this startling loss of vitality. While Japan suffers from many problems, most prominently the rapid graying of its society, it is this decline of a once wealthy and dynamic nation into a deep social and cultural rut that is perhaps Japan’s most ominous lesson for the world today. The classic explanation of the evils of deflation is that it makes individuals and businesses less willing to use money, because the rational way to act when prices are falling is to hold onto cash, which gains in value. But in Japan, nearly a generation of deflation has had a much deeper effect, subconsciously coloring how the Japanese view the world. It has bred a deep pessimism about the future and a fear of taking risks that make people instinctively reluctant to spend or invest, driving down demand — and prices — even further. “A new common sense appears, in which consumers see it as irrational or even foolish to buy or borrow,” said Kazuhisa Takemura, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo who has studied the psychology of deflation. A Deflated City While the effects are felt across Japan’s economy, they are more apparent in regions like Osaka, the third-largest city, than in relatively prosperous Tokyo. In this proudly commercial city, merchants have gone to extremes to coax shell-shocked shoppers into spending again. But this often takes the shape of price wars that end up only feeding Japan’s deflationary spiral. There are vending machines that sell canned drinks for 10 yen, or 12 cents; restaurants with 50-yen beer; apartments with the first month’s rent of just 100 yen, about $1.22. Even marriage ceremonies are on sale, with discount wedding halls offering weddings for $600 — less than a tenth of what ceremonies typically cost here just a decade ago. On Senbayashi, an Osaka shopping street, merchants recently held a 100-yen day, offering much of their merchandise for that price. Even then, they said, the results were disappointing. “It’s like Japanese have even lost the desire to look good,” said Akiko Oka, 63, who works part time in a small apparel shop, a job she has held since her own clothing store went bankrupt in 2002. This loss of vigor is sometimes felt in unusual places. Kitashinchi is Osaka’s premier entertainment district, a three-centuries-old playground where the night is filled with neon signs and hostesses in tight dresses, where just taking a seat at a top club can cost $500. But in the past 15 years, the number of fashionable clubs and lounges has shrunk to 480 from 1,200, replaced by discount bars and chain restaurants. Bartenders say the clientele these days is too cost-conscious to show the studied disregard for money that was long considered the height of refinement. “A special culture might be vanishing,” said Takao Oda, who mixes perfectly crafted cocktails behind the glittering gold countertop at his Bar Oda. After years of complacency, Japan appears to be waking up to its problems, as seen last year when disgruntled voters ended the virtual postwar monopoly on power of the Liberal Democratic Party. However, for many Japanese, it may be too late. Japan has already created an entire generation of young people who say they have given up on believing that they can ever enjoy the job stability or rising living standards that were once considered a birthright here. Yukari Higaki, 24, said the only economic conditions she had ever known were ones in which prices and salaries seemed to be in permanent decline. She saves as much money as she can by buying her clothes at discount stores, making her own lunches and forgoing travel abroad. She said that while her generation still lived comfortably, she and her peers were always in a defensive crouch, ready for the worst. “We are the survival generation,” said Ms. Higaki, who works part time at a furniture store. Hisakazu Matsuda, president of Japan Consumer Marketing Research Institute, who has written several books on Japanese consumers, has a different name for Japanese in their 20s; he calls them the consumption-haters. He estimates that by the time this generation hits their 60s, their habits of frugality will have cost the Japanese economy $420 billion in lost consumption. “There is no other generation like this in the world,” Mr. Matsuda said. “These guys think it’s stupid to spend.” Deflation has also affected businesspeople by forcing them to invent new ways to survive in an economy where prices and profits only go down, not up. Yoshinori Kaiami was a real estate agent in Osaka, where, like the rest of Japan, land prices have been falling for most of the past 19 years. Mr. Kaiami said business was tough. There were few buyers in a market that was virtually guaranteed to produce losses, and few sellers, because most homeowners were saddled with loans that were worth more than their homes. Some years ago, he came up with an idea to break the gridlock. He created a company that guides homeowners through an elaborate legal subterfuge in which they erase the original loan by declaring personal bankruptcy , but continue to live in their home by “selling” it to a relative, who takes out a smaller loan to pay its greatly reduced price. “If we only had inflation again, this sort of business would not be necessary,” said Mr. Kaiami, referring to the rising prices that are the opposite of deflation. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for 20 years for inflation to come back.” One of his customers was Masato, the small-business owner, who sold his four-bedroom condo to a relative for about $185,000, 15 years after buying it for a bit more than $500,000. He said he was still deliberating about whether to expunge the $110,000 he still owed his bank by declaring personal bankruptcy. Economists said one reason deflation became self-perpetuating was that it pushed companies and people like Masato to survive by cutting costs and selling what they already owned, instead of buying new goods or investing. “Deflation destroys the risk-taking that capitalist economies need in order to grow,” said Shumpei Takemori, an economist at Keio University in Tokyo. “Creative destruction is replaced with what is just destructive destruction.”

Japan
Deflation (Economics)
Economic Conditions and Trends


EBay Urges New Passwords After Breach

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — In the latest prominent breach of a company’s computer network, hackers have infiltrated the online marketplace eBay, gaining access to the personal data of 145 million customers, the company said on Wednesday. The hackers broke into an eBay database containing names, email addresses, birth dates, encrypted passwords, physical addresses and phone numbers. There was no indication that the attackers obtained financial information such as credit and debit card numbers or gained access to customer accounts at PayPal, which is owned by eBay, said Amanda Miller, a company spokeswoman. The company has not seen evidence of fraudulent activity that could be linked to the breach, she said. Still, hackers could use the stolen data for identity theft. Personal information — such as email addresses, passwords and birth dates — is regularly sold to criminals who use it for phishing or identity theft. Security experts warned that the stolen information would make eBay customers easy targets for phishing attacks, in which criminals send emails that bait victims into clicking on malicious links or direct them to fake log-in screens where they are asked to enter more valuable information like a password or a Social Security number. “Expect an uptick in phishing. Do not click links in email or discuss anything over the phone,” warned Trey Ford, a strategist at Rapid7, a security firm in Boston. EBay discovered the breach this month when the company’s internal security team noticed that some of its employees were engaged in unusual activity on its corporate network, said Mark Carges, the company’s chief technology officer. EBay contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s San Francisco office as well as an outside computer forensics firm. Working together, they found that hackers had been inside eBay’s corporate network since late February. By studying computer logs, eBay discovered that hackers had stolen the credentials of several of its employees and gained unauthorized access to eBay’s corporate network. Once inside, they were able to copy a database containing information on all 145 million of the company’s customers, according to Alan Marks, eBay’s senior vice president of global communications. Mr. Marks said eBay stored its financial data separately. Still, the company advised users with the same password for eBay and PayPal to change their passwords immediately. Though notification laws differ, most states require that companies notify customers of a breach only if their names are compromised in combination with other information like a credit card or a Social Security number. But there are exceptions for encrypted information. In eBay’s case, the company stored users’ names, email and physical addresses and birth dates in plain text but encrypted their passwords. Most states would not have required eBay to disclose the breach. But one state, North Dakota, requires companies to disclose a breach in cases where a customer’s name is compromised in conjunction with a birth date. Mr. Carges said eBay camouflaged customers’ passwords with encryption, using a process known as hashing, in which passwords are mashed up with a mathematical algorithm and stored only in encoded or “hashed” form. To make cracking more difficult, Mr. Carges said, eBay also appended several random digits to customer passwords — a process known as salting — before encrypting the passwords. Salting makes cracking them more difficult, although not impossible. Mr. Marks said that on Wednesday the company would begin prompting users to change their passwords and alerting customers to the breach. Peter D. Lee, a spokesman for the F.B.I.’s San Francisco field office, said the F.B.I. was working closely with eBay to investigate the breach and that he believed that arrests would be made soon. The breach at eBay is one of several recent hacking episodes at prominent companies. One that struck Target in December has cost the retailer $87 million in breach-related expenses, according to securities filings.


Honduras: Police at U.S. Embassy Are Suspended Over Missing Money

Abstract: Twenty-one police officers assigned to the United States Embassy in Honduras have been suspended pending an investigation into whether they skimmed part of $12.5 million seized in a drug cartel raid, a government spokesman said Monday. After the raid in October, $1.3 million vanished. It was later found buried in a mountainous region in western Honduras during an operation that led to the capture of Miguel Valle Valle. The head of the powerful Valle Valle cartel, he was extradited to the United States in December. The police force in Honduras, which has the world’s highest murder rate, is widely seen as corrupt and has been accused of extrajudicial killings.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Coordinating Events and Parties for Children

Abstract: As a teenager, Kristy Shelberg, stoked by “Seinfeld” and “Friends” and subscriptions to Vogue and Elle, plotted her escape from Creve Coeur, Mo., for New York City and a job in fashion or photography. She graduated in 2010 with a B.A. in marketing from LIM College in Midtown Manhattan, became Kristy Whitwell when she married her hometown sweetheart in July, and was hired last August as the event and party coordinator at the Scholastic Store in SoHo. Ms. Whitwell, 24, lives on Roosevelt Island with her husband, David, a classical trombonist attending the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music . Young fashionista: My dream was to move to New York. From third grade, I remember how seriously I took my outfits. I loved all the fashion magazines. But Cosmo was out. My mom wouldn’t let me get it. Shutterbug: My dad had an old Canon 35-millimeter and he let me use it. After I came to New York for college, I did a lot of baby-sitting, and used my connections to start a small business doing children’s portraits. It’s called Petit Chat ; it’s on a lot of “mommy blogs.” College of choice: When I was 15 we had a college fair at my high school, and I found LIM, a college for the business of fashion, exactly what I was looking for. I went home and told my parents and they laughed at me and said no way was I going to New York. I worked on them for two years. I applied to other schools, like Saint Louis University , and got in, but we all knew that when the time came, I was going to LIM. The h otel life: My freshman year, I lived at the New Yorker Hotel ; my school has dorms there. I actually stayed there on a trip to New York City when I was 13, so I took this as a sign. Internships: In 2007 I interned at Oscar de la Renta for two months in marketing and accessories sales. In my senior year I did a six-month internship at Seventeen in the photo department. It confirmed my love for production work, but by the time I left, the department had been cut in half. Surfing for a job: Last summer I had this routine where the first thing I did when I woke up was check my school’s career service site, check the Time Inc. site and Hearst and Condé Nast : there were internships, but I felt like now that I had a degree, I wanted an adult job. One day I went to the Scholastic Web site and saw an opening for an event and party coordinator. It was a job I hadn’t thought of, but I figured, why not, I love children and organizing events. Party time: We do up to six birthday parties each weekend, and every Saturday there’s an event at the SoHo store; the scavenger hunt for 30 teams is the most elaborate event I’ve done so far. I just finished a birthday party for a 5-year-old boy. The theme was superheroes, and everybody designed their own mask and cape. Tantrum du jour: One time our 3-year-old birthday girl began crying during story time and nobody knew why. Then we realized she was having a tantrum because she wanted to turn the pages. Now we always let the birthday child turn the pages: a 3-year-old set policy! Down the road: I see myself getting into marketing and growing with the company. This is definitely a world I could get used to. I don’t miss fashion; all my friends are in fashion, and I’ve got my Bloomingdale’s one subway stop from home. Plus one in SoHo!


In Rail Link, Angelenos See a Door to Prosperity

Abstract: LOS ANGELES, Sept. 3 — While Carlos Sanchez, a guitarist, waits in front of Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights to be picked up for his next job, he likes to look at a mural behind the plaza’s kiosk on First Street. The mural, with colorful squares and spheres and scenes of local flavor, is reminiscent of the work of Mexican muralists like David Alfaro Siqueiros, but it is functional, too. It hides construction of a light-rail link that supporters in Boyle Heights and neighboring East Los Angeles say will change the face of their communities. Boyle Heights, part of the City of Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles, an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, have long been home to thousands of Latinos. Both communities are cut off geographically from the city’s beach districts and central business areas. The light-rail train, set to begin running in 2009, will allow passengers to get to areas throughout the county. For many low-income residents, like Mr. Sanchez, 38, who do not own cars, the train will replace bicycles, unreliable buses and costly taxis. “I’ll be using the train because it’s going to be more convenient and a faster way to get to where you want to go,” said Mr. Sanchez, who often car-pools to jobs with fellow musicians. The train, named after Edward R. Roybal, who in 1949 became the first Mexican-American elected to the Los Angeles City Council, will travel six miles from the Little Tokyo/Arts District in downtown through Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. It will link to the Los Angeles subway system on the Gold Line, which runs south from Pasadena. A one-way trip now costs $1.25. Diana Tarango, who is on an advisory committee for the project, said the light-rail link had been in the works for 12 years. “The Gold Line is a method of transportation that is very much needed in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights because we’re so transit dependent,” she said. “So many of our people do go out to work in houses in West L.A.,” she said. “In order to get there, why shouldn’t they have the luxury of something comfortable, fast and running on schedule?” Community advocates see the train as a possible gateway to improving East Los Angeles and bringing economic vitality to the area, the oldest Mexican-American community in the county. Standing before Mariachi Plaza, so named because Mexican musicians gather there to wait for work, José Huizar, a Los Angeles city councilman, spoke of plans to transform the intersection at First and Boyle Streets, which is a jumble of construction sites and small businesses. “The potential here is tremendous,” said Mr. Huizar, who grew up in Boyle Heights. “My vision for this area is to have restaurants and a commercial center here. We’re going to have a lot of people from downtown coming up here during lunchtime. They’ll be on the subway in five minutes and get here and listen to mariachi music during the day and evening.” The area’s county supervisor, Gloria Molina, said the light rail was part of what she called the renaissance of East Los Angeles. “The first thing you do is upgrade the area,” Ms. Molina said, “and that will attract private investment.” She said a Starbucks opened in East Los Angeles in March, and a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and a Quiznos sandwich shop opened three years ago. But there are no major stores like Target in the area. The storefronts that line major streets are small businesses like clothing stores and restaurants trying to keep a foothold as local shoppers head to stores and malls in nearby cities. The makeup of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles has changed little since the late 1960s. Both areas are known for their large Latino populations and for Mexican-themed murals on convenience stores, schools and public buildings. But that has not always been the case, said George Sanchez, a history professor at the University of Southern California. At one time, Boyle Heights had significant Jewish and Japanese communities. Other ethnic groups, including Russians and Italians, also called the area home. “Boyle Heights from the 1920s to the 1950s was the most diverse suburb in both the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County,” said Mr. Sanchez. Evidence of the region’s past cultural diversity also extends to East Los Angeles, where Jewish, Serbian and Chinese cemeteries can be found. Proof that Chinese residents worked on the railroads in the 1800s was unearthed in the form of grave markers and bones during the construction of the light-rail project. “The one thing you can say about East L.A. is that it’s never had an identity crisis,” said Oscar Gonzales, president of the East Los Angeles Residents Association. “It’s always known of its history and, more important, its future.” That future, with the rail line, may be gentrification, Ms. Molina and others say. “It should change for the better,” she said. “You’re going to see more businesses along the transit lines.”

Railroads
Los Angeles (Calif)
Transit Systems
Hispanic-Americans


How the Media Adapt at the Republican National Convention

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — Strange things are happening inside the media workspaces at the Republican National Convention. The Washington Post has built a miniature television set in its offices, complete with a comfy sofa and coffee table reminiscent of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” The Huffington Post , that emblem of new media’s speed and vigor, is putting out a magazine with the slogan “Embrace the Slow News Movement.” And Diane Sawyer is pulling double duty: anchoring “ABC World News” and taping videos for Yahoo . Media organizations have turned the political parties’ quadrennial gatherings this year into laboratories of innovation and experimentation, straying from their traditional areas of expertise as they search for new ways to engage readers and audiences. So far, it seems, the new media has decided that it wants to be the old media, and the old media has decided that it wants to be the new media. “Everybody is trying to be in everybody else’s space,” said Marcus W. Brauchli, executive editor of The Washington Post. “There are so many people covering politics now, and everybody competes on every platform. So in order to demonstrate your commitment and authority, it’s important to be present in every medium. And we are.” Convention coverage has come a long way from the days when the “boys on the bus” — the pack of A-list print reporters like R. W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times, David S. Broder of The Washington Post and Walter R. Mears of The Associated Press — set the pace for political reporting more than a generation ago armed with little more than a pen, a pad and a wicked hangover. Back then, conventions were less scripted and generated more surprises, while today’s media labor to enliven coverage of what typically are endless hours of preordained events. Now, Mr. Mears’s Associated Press occupies a skybox at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, the site of the convention, where it shoots and broadcasts high-definition video. This year, the one accessory most newspapers cannot seem to do without is a set with cameras and television lights. The New York Times has its own skybox as well, and for the first time is providing live-streamed coverage of a convention. The Washington Post records several hours a day of webcasts from its pop-up set inside the convention center here. It has also partnered with a start-up company called Socialcam that allows it to post video vignettes of conventiongoers that are recorded on iPhones by a team of interns. ABC News has partnered with Yahoo and is streaming 30 hours of coverage with an anchor online. NBC News and CBS News will both stream the convention live from gavel to gavel on their Web sites. CNN and Fox News, evidently not content with their round-the-clock platforms on cable, are also offering extensive streaming coverage. Even “PBS NewsHour” is offering 24-hour Web streaming. As more traditional media like newspapers and television explore new media possibilities, new media outlets are going in the opposite direction. The Huffington Post has started producing a magazine for the iPad that focuses on the kind of long-form journalism that it is best known for aggregating from other publications. Arianna Huffington, for whom The Post is named, said in an interview that she came to realize that people like a break from the rapid-fire news cycle, which can overload readers. “We are all recognizing that we are paying a heavy price for hyper-connectivity,” she said. Politico, which upended the conventional political news cycle as a start-up five years ago, has partnered with no less a hallmark of eat-your-vegetables journalism than C-Span to simulcast its live Web coverage. And its print articles during the Republican convention are appearing in The Tampa Bay Times. John F. Harris, Politico’s editor in chief, explained these rather incongruous partnerships as a way of remaining relevant in a media environment that is rapidly evolving. “You can never be complacent about where you find your audience and how you connect with your audience,” he said. No one seems quite sure where these experiments will end up. Privately, they concede that their streaming Web videos draw extremely low traffic compared with their articles — for smaller organizations, sometimes only a few hundred viewers at a time. News Web sites see tremendous potential in digital video advertising, which commands far higher rates than traditional Web display ads. But so far, the video investments have yet to reap significant rewards. Mr. Harris described Politico’s Web video as “kind of groping cheerfully with a sense of fun and experimentation — and we’re not sure what it becomes.” If the conventions fail to produce much in the way of news these days, the one thing they do generate for news outlets is an unparalleled opportunity to raise their profiles. Bloomberg, which is going beyond its digital roots and publishing a daily print magazine during the convention, has spent more than $1 million to construct an airy, sleek office space here. Caterers serve Nicoise salad with seared tuna, and visitors lounge on white leather couches as New Age music pulses through overhead speakers. “The convention around the convention is the story,” said Kevin Sheekey, chairman of Bloomberg Government, a news service sold to lobbyists and Capitol Hill offices for thousands of dollars a year.

Republican National Convention
Washington Post
Huffington Post
ABC News
News and News Media
Presidential Election of 2012
Yahoo! Inc


Scott Walker’s Dismal Finish Is a Fitting Result, Old Foes Say

Abstract: MILWAUKEE — For the last 25 years, Representative Gwen Moore has sought to relinquish her claim to being the only politician ever to defeat Scott Walker. On Monday she learned that her wait would continue, as Mr. Walker, the Wisconsin governor, ended his presidential campaign, bowing to plummeting poll numbers and a Republican electorate that seems to vastly prefer explosive outsiders to a lifelong political operative. Ms. Moore, a Democrat from Milwaukee, was fine with that. “I’m great,” she said. Old political adversaries of Mr. Walker greeted his dour denouement as a fitting result for a politician who they say began and furthered his career here with a divisive style, a penchant for turning out conservative supporters rather than working with opponents, and tacit racial appeals in one of the nation’s most segregated cities. But the irony is that Mr. Walker was eclipsed by candidates who have ignited the Republican base with more overtly nativist and, their critics argue, racist appeals. Mr. Walker first registered on the radar of African-American voters here in September 1990, when The Milwaukee Star, a black newspaper, reported that Ms. Moore, the first African-American woman to hold the Seventh District Assembly seat, was “expected to face formidable opposition in the general election” from Mr. Walker, “who is said to have well-financed and organized support.” That was an overstatement. Mr. Walker was 23, a Marquette University dropout. He had limited funds and enjoyed the help of only a couple of fellow college Republicans. But as he ran for Wisconsin office for the first time by mostly appealing to white college students at Marquette and wealthier white residents near the suburbs, he also advertised in papers catering to the district’s heavily black population. Image Representative Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin, defeated Mr. Walker for a State Assembly seat in 1990. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times “Tired of the violence?” read an ad in the Nov. 3 Milwaukee Courier. “Scott Walker has a plan.” Mr. Walker had left Marquette as a student that spring, only to return to the campus dorm room of John Hiller, a friend who became his campaign treasurer. They and Mike Anani, another student who was running for the State Senate, developed a tough-on-crime platform. The issue was a no-brainer: The college paper, The Marquette Tribune, read like a crime blotter. “MU Student Killed in Random Shooting,” ran an August headline; “Sexual Assault, Robberies During Weekend” ran one that September. A series debated whether the school’s public safety officers should carry weapons. Racial tensions, meanwhile, surfaced on its editorial pages: “Black Power Threatens Society” read one essay, alongside “African American Students Outraged by Racist Opinions.” Steve Loucks, a former Republican Assemblyman in a neighboring district, who as a Marquette alumnus had kept track of the college Republicans, recalled Mr. Walker as unusually ambitious for his age. As it happened, Mr. Loucks and Ms. Moore, who had no car, drove to Madison, the state capital, together each week. Ms. Moore recalled that she learned on those drives that Mr. Walker was someone to keep an eye on, that he polished his speeches in front of a mirror, and that he intended to “persuade white Democrats to just vote color.” Mr. Loucks said he did not recall the substance of those conversations, but said Mr. Walker’s candidacy was seen by state Republicans as a way for him to “build his chops.” Mr. Hiller, meanwhile, described Mr. Walker’s campaign as a ploy to distract Ms. Moore from working on behalf of other Democrats. They acquired lists of likely voters and knocked on doors. Some people did not appreciate the fliers they handed out. Image An ad placed by Mr. Walker's 1990 campaign in The Milwaukee Courier. “I vividly remember the picture of a revolver pointed right at the reader,” said Dale Dulberger, who lived in the district and later ran for and lost a state legislative seat to Mr. Walker. “It was shocking.” Ms. Moore said she believed that Mr. Walker was making a tacit racial appeal to her constituents, and it had worried her. “I was scared that the white people would listen to him,” she said. Mr. Walker’s presidential campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the 1990 election, about which accusations of race baiting have been raised in the past. But Mr. Hiller said there was no racial overtone to the flier, and suggested that Ms. Moore was exaggerating. “If there was a gun, there was a gun,” said Mr. Hiller, but he said there was no racial undertone to the flyer. Ms. Moore, he said, was “making it sound like some racial thing — her memory of it now is just over the top.” Mr. Walker returned to the Marquette campus the day before Halloween for a sparsely attended candidate forum about campus safety. In The Marquette Tribune, which incorrectly identified him as a graduate, he called for more affordable housing, saying “the problems of abandoned and run-down housing leads to drug trafficking and crime in neighborhoods.” But the district’s voters, a majority of them white liberals, roundly rejected Mr. Walker’s ideas. On election night, Mr. Hiller picked him up and drove to Gov. Tommy Thompson’s re-election party in Madison. On the road, a radio announcer mistakenly said Mr. Walker had won, prompting the two to pull over in a state of shock. Then the announcer said he had transposed the results and that Mr. Walker had lost badly. At Mr. Thompson’s party, Mr. Hiller recalled, people kept coming up to Mr. Walker and congratulating him on a tough race, saying he had “helped the cause.” “It gave him some credibility and inroads into the party apparatus,” Mr. Hiller said. “It opened doors with various people and power players.” Those connections paid off as Mr. Walker moved to the suburbs of Milwaukee. From his overwhelmingly white and Republican politician base in Wauwatosa, he sought and won seats in the Assembly and as county executive. In 2006, he ran for governor before bowing out with little support. But he ran again and won in 2010, and then beat Milwaukee’s mayor, Tom Barrett, in a recall election in which Mr. Walker’s old adversaries found his tactics familiar: running against Milwaukee as a murderous, crime-ridden place that should not infect the rest of the state. In his office last week, Mr. Barrett, a Democrat who has been mayor since 2004, grew upbeat at the mention of Mr. Walker’s in the polls. “I’ve really enjoyed my summer reading,” he said.

Scott Walker
Milwaukee
2016 Presidential Election
Race and Ethnicity


Jury Is Set for Clemens’s Perjury Trial in Washington

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Without even a twinge of the intensity he once showed on the mound, Roger Clemens sat in a federal courtroom Tuesday, calmly watching the jurors assigned to his perjury trial slowly and silently take their seats in the jury box. Clemens showed no emotion from the defense table as he looked at the panel — 10 women and 2 men, and 4 alternates — which was chosen from a whittled-down pool of 36 after four long days of questioning. Among the jurors is a woman whose cousin is Al Bumbry, a former Baltimore Orioles outfielder who coached Clemens with the Boston Red Sox; a vegetarian lawyer who considers drug laws in the United States to be “a bit heavy-handed”; and a Philadelphia Eagles fan who thought Michael Vick “was done wrong” when he was convicted for his involvement in a dogfighting ring. The jury also overwhelmingly consists of people who know little about baseball — and even less about Clemens. One of the jurors said during jury selection that she would not recognize Clemens if he was sitting right in front of her. Opening arguments are expected to begin Wednesday, and the estimated length of the trial is four to six weeks. Judge Reggie Walton of United States District Court warned the jurors about the high-profile nature of the case. He told the jurors he would not sequester them, but he is having them meet at an undisclosed site away from the courthouse, so they can be shuttled to the trial in private. They would also be provided daily meals, so they do not have to eat in the courthouse cafeteria — where members of news media and Clemens often eat — or in the surrounding neighborhood where he said people could be nosy. Already, the trial is much different from that of the former Giants slugger Barry Bonds, whose federal perjury trial in San Francisco ended in April with his conviction for obstruction of justice. It took less than one day for a jury to be seated in that trial. For the entire trial, those jurors then arrived at the courthouse on their own through public entrances and often ate in the building’s cafeteria. Philip K. Anthony, the chief executive of DecisionQuest, a nationwide jury-consulting firm, said that Clemens, in many ways, would have it easier than Bonds, at least when it comes to the jury deciding his fate. He said it was to Clemens’s advantage that he had never lived in Washington nor played for a team there. “A jury in someone’s hometown feels a duty to punish that person for bad behavior,” said Anthony, who added, “I think his jury will be more open in evaluating the evidence because they don’t have an ax to grind one way or the other.” The jurors will begin hearing the details of the case Wednesday about a half-mile from the House of Representatives office building in which Clemens testified in 2008 during hearings about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. He is charged with perjury, making false statements and obstruction of Congress in connection with his testimony, when he said he never used steroids or human growth hormone. On Tuesday, Clemens’s defense team revealed one of its tactics that it hopes will crush the heart of the prosecution’s case. Michael Attanasio, one of Clemens’s lawyers, questioned the basis of the charges against Clemens, saying Congress had no right to investigate performance-enhancing drugs in baseball in the first place. He said the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform should not have held hearings because they had no legislative purpose. The hearings instead focused on a “he-said, he-said debate” between Clemens and his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, Attanasio said. McNamee, who will be a star witness in the case, told Congress that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. He also said that he saw Clemens and Jose Canseco, Clemens’s former teammate, talking at a pool party at Canseco’s Miami home in 1998 and that shortly afterward, Clemens asked McNamee to inject him with drugs for the first time. Clemens testified he never used performance-enhancing drugs and was not at Canseco’s house because he was golfing. “We’re going to have a minitrial on whether Roger Clemens went swimming,” Attanasio said. “We’re going to have a trial in U.S. District Court? Congress is going to have a hearing on these things?” The prosecution argued that the House had the right to investigate the issue of steroids in baseball, particularly because legislation regulating steroid use had precipitated the Mitchell report . That report, by former Senator George J. Mitchell, was a result of an investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Clemens questioned that report, in which his name is prominently mentioned. The judge has initially taken the prosecution’s side, saying that if Clemens, “one of the icons of baseball,” was criticizing the report, then, “it seems to me that Congress has the authority to hold hearings to determine which view is correct.”

Perjury
Baseball
Steroids
Human Growth Hormone
Clemens Roger
Doping (Sports)
Jury System


First Mediator, Then Decision Maker

Abstract: IRVING, Tex. — Stephen Jones chuckles at the memory of being a mediator between his father, Jerry Jones, the Cowboys’ owner, and Bill Parcells, the headstrong former coach. “It was tough, tough, tough,” said Stephen Jones, the No. 2 executive in the Dallas front office. “But it was worth it.” Jones said it helped shape him into what he is today, the person perceived by some to be calling the shots for the Cowboys as the team’s chief operating officer, executive vice president and director of player personnel. The Cowboys have picked foundation over flash in recent drafts and decided not to stress the salary cap with a big contract for DeMarco Murray after he led the N.F.L. in rushing. Stephen Jones was a key part of in those decisions. Jones, 50, said he believed little had changed in the 26 years that Jerry Jones had been the owner, general manager and ultimate arbiter of the Cowboys, for better or worse. But he did not completely dismiss the notion of an evolving philosophy. “I think probably the biggest way things have changed is that he probably has more confidence in me,” he said, referring to his father. “Although he might not want to say that he didn’t have confidence in me 20 years ago, because I think he did. I think he listened to me a lot. But did he listen as much? Maybe not.” The younger Jones was a 24-year-old chemical engineering graduate of the University of Arkansas, where both he and his father had played football, when Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys in 1989, fired Coach Tom Landry and brought attention to a family that had quietly made its fortune in oil and gas. Admittedly “green behind the ears” as he found himself making decisions alongside Jimmy Johnson, who became the coach in 1989, Stephen Jones was confident in his football background. Looking back, Jones said he figured a healthy part of his growth came in the four years Parcells was with the Cowboys, from 2003 to 2006. Jones’s flamboyant father and Parcells, a Super Bowl-winning coach who had clashed with front offices on personnel issues elsewhere, did not want any “confrontational disagreement,” as the younger Jones put it. So he got to play middleman. “It helped me in a lot of ways,” Jones said. “Because I had to have some real heated, heated visits with both Jerry and Bill.” And he was not afraid of them, said Jeff Ireland, who was then the Cowboys’ director of scouting. Ireland said he remembered that the Cowboys had decided to do something different in the draft room and needed to tell Parcells, who Stephen Jones said was the architect of several changes that made Dallas better. “Stephen didn’t wait for his dad,” Ireland said. “He said, ‘Hey, look, Jeff, we’re going to go and do this, and it’s not going to be a real happy time for us.’ He knows how to handle people. And he knows how to do it without disrespecting them, either.” Jones said his father still had the final decision. That was the case last year when Jerry Jones resisted his headline-grabbing urge during the draft and passed on Johnny Manziel for Zack Martin, a quiet workhorse offensive lineman who became the club’s first rookie All-Pro since Calvin Hill in 1969. The more relevant draft-room drama, Stephen Jones said, is the buildup to each pick. Jones has tried to make his voice heard when his father grows anxious about moving up. “It’s a little fun dynamic in there when he and I are visiting,” Stephen Jones said, smiling. “But he’s a good listener. And I mean he listens more.” Jerry Jones said as much before this year’s draft, when the Cowboys pushed aside their needs at running back and chose Connecticut cornerback Byron Jones in the first round. “Bottom line, without getting into it a lot, Stephen has absolute, tremendous influence on these decisions that are ultimately made in this organization and everything we do,” Jerry Jones said, also noting the input of Coach Jason Garrett. After winning three Super Bowls in the 1990s, the Cowboys worked to maintain the core of those teams, which had players like Emmitt Smith, and had plenty of draft busts. But Morris Claiborne (2012) is the only first-round pick from 2010 to 2014 who has not made a Pro Bowl. And the Cowboys left this year’s draft feeling as if they had three first-rounders in Byron Jones, defensive end Randy Gregory and lineman La’el Collins. Stephen Jones believes the Cowboys are benefiting from the continuity of five-plus years with Garrett as coach. They have not had that since Johnson left in a messy split with Jerry Jones after winning a second straight championship in 1993. Through all the coaching changes, Jerry Jones, 72, had one constant at the top: his son. “I know he looks and treats the franchise as a legacy,” Stephen Jones said. “The big joy comes in working with him and working as a family.”

Stephen Jones
Football
Sports Drafts and Recruits
Dallas Cowboys


Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Abstract: Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com . Q. Recently, dear readers, I asked whether anyone had compiled a list of brand epithets based on brand names. The catalyst was a comment on an article I wrote about a new campaign for the high-priced Tumi brand, which puckishly suggested that Tumi stood for “Tell u my income.” I soon received several examples of such brand epithets, which I share below: A. The service man who came to repair my G.E. refrigerator – and G.E. stove and G.E. dishwasher – told me that to him, G.E. stood for “Guaranteed Employment.” Image My favorite is for El Al, “Every Landing Always Late.” I heard it 25 years ago and have never forgotten it. Ford inspired a bunch for me. “Found on road dead” and “Found on Russian dump.” Here’s one for Dial soap: “Deficient in any lather.” I’m not sure this qualifies, but I’m reminded of when I bought my first car, in Toronto, half a century ago. One of my father’s friends said my well-worn English Ford Zephyr reminded him of another British import, the Rolls-Canardly. He said it rolls down one hill and can hardly make it up the next. Thanks, dear readers, and please send other examples you may have.


Commissioner Criticized Over N.F.L.’s Handling of Players’ Brain Injuries

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The commissioner of the N.F.L. faced heated criticism Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, with lawmakers, former players and even a former team executive accusing the league of neglect in its handling of active and retired players with brain injuries. With evidence mounting of a link between playing professional football and cognitive impairment in later life, and news reports of poor medical treatment for some former players with dementia and other signs of mental decline, the committee repeatedly challenged the commissioner, Roger Goodell , to defend the league’s policies and research. “The N.F.L. sort of has this blanket denial or minimizing of the fact that there may be this link,” Representative Linda T. Sánchez, Democrat of California, said to Mr. Goodell during the daylong hearing. “And it sort of reminds me of the tobacco companies pre-’90s when they kept saying, ‘Oh, there’s no link between smoking and damage to your health.’ ” When pressed, Mr. Goodell would not say whether he thought there was a link between football and cognitive decline among N.F.L. players. He did say, “I can think of no issue to which I’ve devoted more time and attention than the health and well-being of our players, and particularly retired players.” “We are changing the culture of our game for the better,” he later added. In his opening statement, the committee chairman, Representative John Conyers Jr. said the issue of brain injuries in football warranted federal scrutiny because “the N.F.L. is a monopoly whose existence was legislatively sanctioned,” referring to the antitrust exemption for broadcasting that has helped the league grow into a multibillion-dollar operation. The league is also arguing a case before the Supreme Court hoping to expand its antitrust privileges. “I say this not simply because of the impact of these injuries on the 2,000 current players and more than 10,000 retirees associated with the N.F.L. and their families,” said Mr. Conyers, Democrat of Michigan. “I say it because of the effect on the millions of players at the college, high school and youth levels.” Several Republican members of the committee said that Congress should have no role in regulating football on either the professional or youth levels. “We cannot legislate the elimination of injuries from the games without eliminating the games themselves,” said Representative Lamar S. Smith, Republican of Texas. The hearing included testimony from Mr. Goodell and the players union’s executive director, DeMaurice Smith; doctors from the league’s committee on concussions; and researchers who have found brain damage commonly associated with boxers in 10 deceased N.F.L. players, most of them younger than 55. Tiki Barber, Merrill Hoge and George Martin, all former players, and Gay Culverhouse, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers team president, gave inside views of league medical trends. Family members of injured players also testified: Eleanor Perfetto, whose husband, Ralph Wenzel, is now is institutionalized with dementia at age 66; and Dick Benson, whose teenage son died of a brain hemorrhage in 2002 after repeated concussions playing high school football. Missing from the two panels of witnesses was Dr. Ira Casson, the co-chairman of the N.F.L.’s committee, who has been criticized for discrediting outside research and for his role in the league’s study of brain injuries in retired players. Independent experts have said the study is flawed by conflicts of interest, statistical and sampling problems. None of the three primary authors of the committee’s research — Dr. Casson and the co-chairman David Viano of Wayne State University, and Dr. Elliot Pellman, the Jets’ team physician — were present. When asked why Dr. Casson was not present to testify, Mr. Goodell said the committee did not request him. Mr. Conyers disputed that, and an aide for Mr. Goodell handed him a note that led Mr. Goodell to say he would get back to the committee to clarify his answer. Ms. Sánchez and Representative Anthony D. Weiner, Democrat of New York, criticized the N.F.L. committee’s continuing brain study of retired players. Independent experts have warned that the study could have negative effects on youth sports if conclusions of few risks are improperly derived. Mr. Weiner said, “Wouldn’t it be perhaps most wise to put the brakes” on the study, and “start from scratch to try to get this right?” “This is a worker safety thing — no different than if someone was coming off the assembly line at a production plant and 20 years later, they all had arthritis in their right knee,” he added. “We’d look at it the exact same way.” Mr. Goodell responded: “We want you to have confidence in the study. That’s one of the reasons for 15 years we’ve been involved in this issue. We have published every piece of data in the N.F.L. We have published it publicly, we have given it to medical journals, it has been part of peer review. We don’t control those doctors. They are medical professionals. They’re scientists. They do this for a living.” Mr. Smith, of the players union, was also criticized for its sluggishness in addressing the issue of concussion risks years ago and for not better educating its players. “We will do better,” Mr. Smith said. He and Mr. Goodell were warned not to allow players’ health care to become embroiled in contract negotiations. Mr. Conyers repeatedly pressed Mr. Smith and Mr. Goodell to turn over all medical records to Congress for independent review, and they agreed to do so. However, in an interview after his testimony, Mr. Goodell said he had agreed to turn over league studies and research that had already been released, not player medical records. Turning over such records, he said, could cause confidentiality conflicts, and “there’s going to be a lot of issues.” “Whatever the committee asks — that we can do — we will,” he said. Ms. Sánchez, in a subsequent interview, said: “Unfortunately, I didn’t find him to be a very helpful witness. He was really vague on certain things and didn’t know the answers to certain things. The committee had requested that Dr. Casson be there to be able to answer questions like that, and obviously he was a no-show.” Although the hearing’s most contentious portions involved the N.F.L., a consensus emerged that how the N.F.L. and its players handle the issue of brain-injury management will, however indirectly, influence behavior on the youth and high school level. Representative Dan Lungren, Republican of California, said the N.F.L. and its media partners had to discourage the celebration of overly violent play. Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, said that although Congress focused mostly on N.F.L. policies on Wednesday, “the norms of the N.F.L., for better or worse, become the norms of high school football players.”

Football
Dementia
Concussions
Goodell Roger
House Committee on the Judiciary
National Football League
Conyers John Jr


Worried Auto Industry Braces for Change Under Trump

Abstract: DETROIT — First the Obama administration bailed out much of the American auto industry, pulling it out of a tailspin. Then it reshaped the business, with regulations and policies intended to increase fuel economy, improve safety and add jobs. Now, under President-elect Donald J. Trump, the industry is bracing for another wholesale makeover. Perhaps no industry could be affected in more ways by the new administration than the auto business. That became all the more apparent this week, with Mr. Trump’s selection of Scott Pruitt — the Oklahoma attorney general who is a climate-change skeptic and close ally of the oil and gas industry — to run the Environmental Protection Agency . The changes under the Trump administration could include possible tariffs that will raise prices on imported vehicles and parts, fewer subsidies for electric cars and policies that discourage automakers from moving products from American factories to Mexico. And any scaling back of fuel-economy goals by the Trump administration, if Mr. Pruitt’s climate change skepticism and embrace of fossil fuels translates to policy, could also influence the types of vehicles the industry plans to build in coming years — and where it builds them. Bigger models like sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks are less fuel-efficient than cars but more profitable for automakers. And their steeper price tags can help pay for the higher labor costs of making them in the United States. In a move that underscored the new psychology since Mr. Trump’s election, Ford Motor — which had been a target of his criticism — in mid-November decided to keep building a Lincoln S.U.V. in Kentucky rather than Mexico. And yet, for a capital-intensive industry that routinely makes billion dollar bets on new factories and products, the uncertainty is unnerving. “Our membership is just perplexed right now,” said Gloria Bergquist, vice president for public affairs for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents a dozen carmakers, including General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota, on safety and environmental issues. “This is all uncharted territory.” Mr. Trump’s campaign was studded with promises that could upend the status quo, including some to relax policies intended to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. He has yet to detail any coming changes. But pursuing policies similar to those he promoted in his campaign could change the entire manufacturing industry by penalizing companies for investing overseas or by stifling free-flowing global trade. Mr. Trump has yet to specify changes he might make to Nafta or other industrial policies. But his cabinet appointments, particularly the selection for commerce secretary of the billionaire investor Wilbur L. Ross Jr. , who has suggested that he is receptive to some of the antitrade views favored by Mr. Trump, indicate that the incoming president may take an aggressive approach to modifying trade deals and other tenets of the outgoing Obama administration. One industry analyst, Ron Harbour of the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, said many voters in Rust Belt states like Michigan and Ohio backed Mr. Trump primarily because of his promises to restore manufacturing jobs in the United States. “So there probably will be pressure to do something,” Mr. Harbour said. “And if he doesn’t do anything, they probably are not going to be too thrilled.” Mr. Trump will inherit an auto industry that is far healthier than when President Obama took office and industry officials could push back strongly on disruptive changes. But auto executives generally support Mr. Trump’s choice of a former labor secretary in the George W. Bush administration, Elaine Chao — who is also the wife of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell — to head the Transportation Department. The department oversees fuel-economy and safety rules that affect the types of vehicles that automakers produce. “We all have a common interest, and that is to maximize the rate of innovation in the technologies that save lives, avoid crashes and improve fuel economy,” the auto alliance said in response to Ms. Chao’s appointment. No change would be more consequential to the auto industry than applying steep tariffs on imports from Mexico and elsewhere. Companies could be forced to radically change how and where they get commodity parts, the production of which has been migrating to low-wage nations for decades. Consumers could see a change in the types of cars available. Despite Mr. Trump’s campaign rhetoric, the American automotive industry and auto jobs have been buoyant since the Obama administration’s bailout. Since 2010, vehicle production has doubled in the United States, and hundreds of thousands of workers have been hired. Last year, a record 17.4 million cars and trucks were sold in the United States, and analysts forecast strong demand for several years. “You have record levels of production and record levels of demand,” said Mike Jackson of the research firm IHS Markit. “There is every reason for the industry to emphasize that it’s in a very strong position.” Still, the industry is anticipating changes from Mr. Trump. Ford, the nation’s second-largest automaker after General Motors, uncharacteristically made public a decision to keep production of the Lincoln S.U.V. in Kentucky, after Mr. Trump had singled out the company for its growing investments in Mexico. Ford, like G.M., Fiat Chrysler and nearly every foreign automaker, has a huge stake in protecting the interlocking network of factories and parts suppliers made possible by Nafta. Plants in Mexico are crucial to meeting surging demand for new vehicles in the United States. Beyond that, automakers have already committed big investments to new plants in Mexico to take advantage of its cheaper labor and export-friendly trade agreements. While Mr. Trump has yet to specify how he would renegotiate Nafta, his emphasis has been on increasing American jobs and discouraging automakers from using foreign plants to supply the American market. His proposal to put tariffs of as much as 35 percent on vehicles imported from Mexico has stunned auto executives who have built their business models on open borders for cars, trucks and the thousands of parts in them. “A tariff like that would be imposed on the entire auto sector, and that could have a huge impact on the U.S. economy,” said Mark Fields, chief executive of Ford. Imported vehicles are an integral part of the American market and account for more than 40 percent of its annual volume. Last year, about eight million cars, trucks and sport utilities sold in the United States were built elsewhere, primarily in Mexico, Canada, Japan and Korea. Nearly all of them enter the market free of tariffs that would increase sticker prices significantly. Increasing the price of an imported vehicle with tariffs could reduce overall vehicle sales and exert economic pressure on manufacturers as well as on freight haulers, dealerships and independent service centers. And if Mr. Trump chooses to impose tariffs on auto parts produced abroad and shipped to plants in the United States, the impact will spread further. Last year, auto parts worth $143 billion were imported into the United States, about 35 percent of them from Mexico, compared with $81 billion in parts that were exported, according to the Commerce Department. Many big suppliers, however, are global and make parts in every region of the world. The parts industry’s largest American trade group, the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, said its member companies employed more than 734,000 workers in the United States, and generated another 2.9 million jobs in related businesses. The industry is acutely sensitive to changes in trade policies that could have a ripple effect on its ability to ship parts in and out of the country. And like automakers, parts manufacturers are anxious to know what Mr. Trump has in store for them. “Now that the election is over, we can begin to explore what to expect in the months to come,” the trade group’s president, Steve Handschuh, wrote in a letter to its members, adding that he was eager “to express our priorities” to the Trump transition team. In addition to Mr. Trump’s focus on trade issues, the industry is expecting policies that diverge from the Obama administration’s enthusiastic support of electric cars, including the $7,500 tax credits that encouraged consumers to buy them, and for the testing and development of self-driving vehicles. In a Nov. 10 letter to the Trump transition team, the auto alliance asked for clarity on policy changes as soon as possible. “Auto manufacturing is a highly capital-intensive business, and because of that we rely on long-term certainty,” Ms. Bergquist wrote. Yet the industry has proved to be adaptable to shifts in government, whether by building more fuel-efficient vehicles to meet new regulations, or increasing investments in Mexico because of Nafta. It is also more focused on self-interest than politics. In its eight-page letter, the auto alliance laid out several goals — including repeating its position that the government re-evaluate its timetable for automakers to achieve fleetwide fuel economy of 54.5 miles a gallon. But while the letter was perceived as tailored to Mr. Trump’s agenda, Ms. Bergquist said it was composed before the election and would have been sent to an incoming Clinton administration had the outcome been different. “Our position was the same, no matter who won,” she said.

Tariff
Cars
Manufacturing
International trade
Donald Trump
US Politics


Mali Coup Leaders Struggle to Assert Control

Abstract: DAKAR, Senegal — Residents of Bamako, the capital of Mali , waited in tension and uncertainty on Saturday for the outcome of a military coup d’état that overthrew the country’s elected government last week, ending more than 20 years of democracy in the nation. Regional analysts and residents said little appeared to be resolved as junta leaders struggled to maintain control amid increasing international isolation and persistent rumors of an imminent countercoup. State television, seized early on by the coup leaders, went off the air for an hour on Friday night as soldiers set up barricades around the downtown building housing it. Later, Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo, the coup leader who had received military training in the United States, appeared briefly to assure viewers of his “good health,” followed by repeated declarations of support for the junta from young people and other backers, many using the same language. Speaking of the countercoup rumors, a military spokesman, Col. Idrissa Traore, said Saturday that there was “nothing serious in all that.” Yet the announcement that the junta remained in control was hardly seen as definitive by observers. “The situation is very fluid,” said Dr. Abdel Fatau Musah, a senior official with the regional grouping of West African states, Ecowas , who left Bamako on Saturday morning. “Nobody knows what is going to happen.” Ecowas, which has condemned the coup, scheduled an emergency meeting of regional leaders for Tuesday in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The whereabouts of Mali’s elected president, Amadou Toumani Touré, remained unknown. “There is a lot of insecurity,” Dr. Musah said. “It’s going to be very difficult to see how this junta is going to survive. “The country has run out of resources.” Mali’s air and land borders have been sealed since late Wednesday; food, fuel and cash are all running low; banks are closed, as are many stores.” Dr. Musah added: “The junta is made up of very young officers, very inexperienced. Ecowas wants them to quickly surrender.” Opposition politicians in Mali continued to criticize the coup. “With just weeks before an election in which the Malian people were getting ready to freely and democratically decide their future, nobody has the right to substitute themselves by force to popular will,” Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a former prime minister, said in a statement. Mali, heavily dependent on aid, risks a near-total cutoff of foreign assistance. “Any U.S. assistance to the government of Mali beyond what we give for humanitarian purposes is at risk,” Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said Friday. That point was relayed directly to Captain Sanogo by an official at the American Embassy in Bamako, the State Department said.

Mali
Coups D'Etat and Attempted Coups D'Etat
Politics and Government
Toure Amadou Toumani
Defense and Military Forces


North Korea Is Ready to Discuss Aid From Seoul

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Monday that it was ready to discuss humanitarian aid from the South to alleviate damage caused by flooding and typhoons. The South Korean Red Cross Society first offered aid a week ago. On Monday, its North Korean counterpart said it wanted to know what the South planned to offer and how much, the South’s Unification Ministry said in a statement. South Korea’s offer and the North’s response raised the possibility of the two governments resuming dialogue after years of tension. The North has repeatedly refused contact with President Lee Myung-bak’s government in the South. The relations between the two Koreas have been chilly since Mr. Lee came to power in 2008 and cut off large shipments of aid unless North Korea took concrete steps toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program. Ties were further strained after North Korea shelled a South Korean island in 2010. In the same year, the North was also accused of sinking a South Korean Navy ship, killing 46 sailors. When South Korea offered aid for North Korean children worth 5 billion won ($4.4 million) last year, the North called the proposal too small. It demanded a large shipment of cement, grain and construction equipment, and the talks broke down. The South Korean government said on Monday that it would continue to exchange letters with the North to see if it was willing to negotiate a formal aid agreement. More than 200 North Koreans have been killed and large tracts of farmland have been destroyed by flooding and typhoons since June, according to North Korean media. Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes. In June, the United Nations appealed for $198 million in humanitarian aid for North Korea, saying that two-thirds of the country’s 22 million people continued to suffer from chronic food shortages. The North’s nuclear and missile programs and its military provocations have helped scuttle aid shipments from potential donor countries, including South Korea.

North Korea
South Korea
Humanitarian Aid
International Relations


Justine Henin and Marat Safin Elected to Hall of Fame

Abstract: Justine Henin, who won seven Grand Slam singles titles and an Olympic gold medal, and Marat Safin, a two-time major winner, were elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Safin was the first Russian to be elected.

Justine Henin
Marat Safin
International Tennis Hall of Fame
Tennis


Google Faces New Round of Antitrust Charges in Europe

Abstract: When it comes to Europe’s lengthy investigations into Google, Margrethe Vestager, the region’s competition chief, is hoping that the third time’s a charm. Ms. Vestager announced on Thursday a new round of antitrust charges against the company — the third set since early 2015 — claiming that some of the company’s advertising products had restricted consumer choice. The efforts are part of her continuing push to rein in Google’s activities in the European Union, where the Silicon Valley company has captured roughly 90 percent of the region’s online search market. “Google’s conduct, based on our evidence, is harmful to consumers,” Ms. Vestager told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. “Google’s magnificent innovations don’t give it the right to deny competitors the chance to innovate.” The announcement represents a setback for Google, which vigorously denied any wrongdoing in two previous European antitrust charges linked to Android , its popular mobile operating system, and some of its dominant online search services . It also comes at a difficult time for Europe’s competition authorities, which have been unable to land a knockout punch against Google’s perceived abusive activities in the region, despite investigations that date back to 2010. The stakes are high. Google could face fines of up to 10 percent, or about $7 billion, of its global annual revenue if it is found to have broken Europe’s tough competition rules. For months, both sides have been jockeying for position, with Google already filing lengthy legal arguments about why it believes its European activities are lawful. Ms. Vestager’s antitrust charges are just one of a number of regulatory challenges to Google’s activities in Europe, ranging from tax investigations in France and Spain to concerns that Google does not fully protect people’s online privacy rights. The company denies any wrongdoing. Other Silicon Valley technology companies, including Amazon, Apple and Facebook, have also faced regulatory investigations in Europe, raising questions over whether the region’s lawmakers are specifically focusing on these American giants , which have come to dominate much of the digital world. European officials deny any such bias. Google said in a statement on Thursday that it would provide a detailed response to Europe’s latest charges, but it added, “We believe our innovations and product improvements have increased choice for E.U. consumers and promote competition.” The company has until the fall to respond. How Europe Is Going After Apple, Google and Other U.S. Tech Giants The biggest American tech companies face intensifying scrutiny by European regulators, with — pressure that could potentially curb their sizable profits in the region and affect how they operate around the world. American competition officials have also reviewed claims that Google abused its market position to favor its services over those of rivals, though the Federal Trade Commission has yet to find any violations. Europe’s new antitrust charges represent a further ratcheting up of the region’s often frosty relationship with Google. In particular, European antitrust officials are taking aim at some of the company’s online advertising tools — the main engine for Google’s $75 billion in annual revenue. They say that the company may have abused its dominant market position when offering some of its search products on third-party companies’ websites. These businesses — including publishers and online retailers — can use Google’s search engine on their sites so that people can find information like newspaper articles or promotions. Such agreements with third-party companies, which date to 2006, also include showing paid-for advertising next to search results, often provided by Google. Ms. Vestager said on Thursday that the technology company may have abused its dominance — it holds roughly an 80 percent market share in this type of niche on-site search — by forcing companies to sign onerous contracts that limited competition and reduced consumer choice. Since 2009, Google has made it easier for advertising rivals to show their offerings alongside its services. But Europe’s competition chief said that Google still required third-party companies to show a minimum number of Google-provided ads on their site. The Silicon Valley company also requires businesses using the service to ask for approval on where some rivals’ ads may be shown on their websites. “All these restrictions allowed Google to protect its market share and stifle competition,” Ms. Vestager said. Europe’s antitrust authorities have also doubled down on a previous competition charge, announced last year, which claimed that Google had diverted traffic from competitors in favor of its own comparison-shopping site. On Thursday, Ms. Vestager said her team had found new evidence to buttress their claims, adding that because of Google’s actions, European consumers may not have access to the most relevant search results when looking online for goods and services. Yet when asked about the failure of European antitrust authorities to order fines or changes to the way Google does business, despite several years of investigations, Ms. Vestager said she aimed to ensure the charges against the company stood up in European courts. “Speed is of the essence,” but “the other side of that coin is quality,” Ms. Vestager said on Thursday. “Sometimes that kind of quality comes at the cost of speed.”

Google
Margrethe Vestager
Online advertising
Search Engines
EU
Competition law


Gas Deal in Europe Is Undone and Redone

Abstract: MOSCOW — A European Union-brokered deal between Russia and Ukraine to restore the flow of heating fuel to the Continent seemed to be falling apart Sunday evening, less than a day after it had been signed, with Moscow objecting to conditions that Ukraine attached to the agreement after Russia had already signed it. In what appeared to be a first step toward resolving a dispute that has cut off about one-fifth of the natural gas used in Europe, at the peak of the winter heating season, the governments of Russia and Ukraine and the European Union agreed to establish independent monitors of pipelines that carry Russian gas to the west. The protocol was a precondition set by Russian energy officials to turn on the gas flow again. Russia shut off the valves on Tuesday after an extended dispute with Ukraine over pricing and accusations of stealing gas from the export pipelines. In a flurry of shuttle diplomacy over the weekend, the Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, secured the signature of Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, in Moscow and then flew to Kiev, where Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, also signed the agreement. Yet by late Sunday, the off-again-on-again deal appeared to be off again. Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying he would not honor the pact. At issue was a handwritten phrase that Ms. Tymoshenko wrote beside her signature early Sunday morning, after the document had already been signed by Mr. Putin. In English, she wrote, “with declaration attached.” Ms. Tymoshenko’s declaration, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, said that Ukraine had not been guilty of stealing gas from the export pipelines, a statement essentially asking Moscow to backpedal on the allegation that had underpinned its justification for halting shipments to Europe. Heading into Monday, the prospects for a deal were marked by confusion and uncertainty. Bloomberg News reported that a European Union official had said that Ukraine had agreed to sign a new version of the accord to authorize the monitoring of the pipelines, paving the way to resume gas shipments. The report said that the new deal came after a phone call between Mr. Putin and the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, and would be separate from Ms. Tymoshenko’s declaration. “Barroso has spoken to Tymoshenko, and they have agreed to separate the two documents,” Ferran Tarradellas Espuny, a commission spokesman, said in Brussels, according to the report. “On one side the declaration, and on the other side the terms of reference.” The declaration from Ms. Tymoshenko also demanded that Russia, if it wanted to export gas to Europe across Ukraine, provide fuel to operate pumping stations along the pipeline route. Russia has refused to do that, saying it is Ukraine’s obligation as the country responsible for transit. The Russian authorities quickly said this rendered the agreement void. Mr. Medvedev blamed Ukraine for collapsing the deal and sharply criticized the Ukrainian addendum. “I instruct the government not to use the document that was signed yesterday,” he said. “These clauses and annexes are a mockery of common sense and an offense against the agreements that were reached earlier,” Mr. Medvedev said in comments published by the Interfax news agency. “These actions are seeking to destroy the existing agreements on the control over the gas transit; they have an expressed provocative and destructive nature.” Mr. Putin, in a phone call on Sunday to Mr. Barroso, said Russia would not accept conditions added after he had signed the protocol, Interfax reported. Seeking to sooth Russian concerns, Mr. Topolanek called Mr. Putin to say that Ms. Tymoshenko’s declaration was not binding. Later Sunday, Mr. Barroso said Ms. Tymoshenko had agreed to address Russian concerns over her statement with the goal of restoring gas flows to Europe, Reuters reported. A spokesman for Gazprom , the Russian gas monopoly, said the company’s chief executive, Aleksei B. Miller, would fly to Brussels on Monday to continue negotiations. Even once an agreement is in place, it may be days before relief comes to European countries down the line from Ukraine, especially Poland and Bulgaria, which have suffered greatly without heating fuel in the bitter winter weather. If Russia immediately turned on the flow, it would take about three days to repressurize the European natural gas pipeline system and restore full service, experts said. And the underlying price dispute has still not been resolved. The Russian authorities maintain that Ukraine began siphoning from pipelines some of the Russian natural gas intended for export to Europe and has been using it to meet internal demand since Russia halted supplies to Ukraine on Jan. 1 because of a dispute over pricing.

Russia
Ukraine
Heating
Natural Gas
Gazprom


Kentucky Oaks Purse Doubles to $ 1 Million

Abstract: Churchill Downs said the purse for the 2011 Kentucky Oaks will be $1 million, double last year’s. The race for fillies has forged an identity of its own in recent years behind the superstar performances of the 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra and the 2007 Belmont Stakes winner Rags to Riches.

Kentucky Oaks
Horse Racing
Churchill Downs Incorporated