Ciudad Juárez, a Border City Known for Killing, Gets Back to Living

Abstract: CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — When David Lujana closed his restaurant here and moved to El Paso in 2010, his wife had just survived a kidnapping attempt and this city produced eight homicides a day. It was Mexico’s murder capital and a place of mass exodus, with roughly a third of the city’s population fleeing in just a few bloody years. But now, led by young people like Mr. Lujana, thousands are coming back. With violence down to a quarter of its peak, Ciudad Juárez, a perennial symbol of drug war devastation, is experiencing what many here describe as a boom. New restaurants pop up weekly, a few with a hipster groove. Schools and homes in some neighborhoods are gradually filling again, while new nightclubs throb on weekends with wall-to-wall teenagers and 20-somethings who insist on reclaiming the freedom to work and play without being consumed by worry. “It’s a different city,” said Mr. Lujana, 31, who moved back a few months ago. “The drug dealers have receded; it’s not cool anymore to be a narco.” Juárez has often been a bellwether in Mexico, from the immigrants heading north along the first Mexican railroads in the 1880s through the growth of factories and free trade a century later. Then came the killing, a three-year spree starting in 2008, and now a reprieve that other violent areas still long for, as this gritty city trades paralysis and grief for stubborn hope, unresolved trauma and rapid reinvention. Critics here fear that the changes are merely cosmetic, and there is still disagreement over what, exactly, has led to the drastic drop in violence. Some attribute it to an aggressive detention policy by the police; others say the worst killers have died or fled, or that the Sinaloa drug cartel has simply defeated its rivals, leaving a peace of sorts that could quickly be undone. Whatever lesson Juárez holds for Mexico remains elusive, as Mexico’s struggle with lawlessness continues to evolve. The federal authorities are struggling for control in two Pacific states that are divided between vigilantes and gangs while, nationwide, prison breaks, grisly murders and record-high kidnappings still grab headlines. Much of this city nonetheless looks and feels refreshed, a turnaround visible immediately upon arrival. Two years ago, Juárez billboards were sad affairs, old and fading as businesses closed or operated in the shadows to avoid extortion. “Everyone had to stay hidden, like rats,” said Cristina Cunningham, president of the restaurant association here. Now, bright new placards advertise dance studios, homes for sale and new restaurants on Boulevard Gomez Marin, where at least 15 eateries have recently opened. Posters promote events returning for the first time in years, like theater and the circus, and twice as many American tourists have come to Juárez this year compared with last year, according to the Chamber of Commerce . The nights here, surprisingly for anyone who has visited since 2008, no longer resemble a war zone with a sunset curfew. There is traffic after dark. Drivers make eye contact, and a half-hour wait for a restaurant table at dinner has become one of the many signs of revival. “You can walk in the street now,” said Jesus Rodriguez, 25, clearly amazed. “You have to be alert, but you can do it.” That simple improvement lies at the root of the city’s cautious re-emergence — and its evolution in tastes and attitudes. On one recent evening at Mr. Rodriguez’s restaurant, La Toscana , which opened in January featuring a wide variety of pizzas and small plates mixing Italian and Mexican flavors, every table was full, mostly with what had been an endangered species here just a couple of years ago: young couples out on dates. Mr. Rodriguez, slight and shy, wearing a black chef’s coat, said he returned to Juárez as soon as he could after moving to Guadalajara in 2006 for college and then staying away because of the violence. He found the money to open La Toscana through “family sacrifice,” he said, and took a chance with a new business because he and his friends were tired of putting off their aspirations. Image “We were in standby mode for so long,” he said. “We were just looking for a little light.” Mr. Lujana needed more convincing. He resisted when his friends pushed him to cross into Juárez from El Paso for drinks at a new club in early 2012. “I was still scared,” he said. “I kept thinking, no one’s going to steal my car? But then I saw my friends, and some of them had nicer cars than mine.” He was already unhappy in El Paso. At the restaurant he co-owned, taxes were high, customers scant, and waiters often just didn’t show up. Many Texans, he said, seemed hostile toward anyone from Juárez. “It was very depressing,” said Luis Rodriguez, 40, Mr. Lujana’s business partner. “We were creating jobs, paying taxes, but we weren’t treated very well.” About a year ago, they started looking for space back on the Mexican side of the border, where rents were around 60 percent cheaper. They found a spot near some other restaurants that recently added dinner service after closing early for years, and re-created the Brazilian grill they shuttered in El Paso. “I’m optimistic,” Mr. Lujana said during a typical lunch rush. “Before, my friends went to El Paso for fun. Now they come here.” Many young people here say that is because Juárez has become more interesting. “The clubs are doing new things,” said Aime Tenorio, 19. “They have really good D.J.s, or Victoria’s Secret models. It’s so easy to open a bar here, so people are really loving it.” Even many of those who have not returned full time slip back in. What had been considered crazy — an overnight trip to Juárez — is now, for many, a worthwhile adventure. Aura , one of the first clubs to open in the new boom, even offers a package deal every Thursday through Saturday, with bus service from El Paso, an open bar at the club, a hotel room, and a return trip across the border the following day for about $350. Another company, Alive, provides transportation to and from El Paso in a single evening. “Business is good,” said Arturo Velarde, 26, a partner in Aura, which has a capacity of about 1,200 people. “It’s not like it was before, but hopefully it will be.” A full recovery, though, may not be where Juárez is heading. Before the violence peaked, this was a wide-open city of endless work and new arrivals from all over Mexico. It was often called “the big sister that supports the rest of the family.” But experts say Juárez, where the population tripled from 1970 to 2000, reaching 1.2 million, may never match its prior growth. Tourism is half what it was in 2007. Business groups, school administrators and returning residents estimate that only about 10 percent of those who left have returned. Alberto Ochoa-Zezzatti, a sociologist at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez , recently published a report asserting that about 450,000 people fled the city from 2007 through 2011. The best Juárez could hope for, he said, based on migration patterns after natural disasters, was that a little more than 20 percent would come back. And the city’s sense of itself is still shaky. The newer housing developments attracting returnees feature new playgrounds behind high walls. “We’re starting from zero,” said Ms. Cunningham, 50, whose family recently opened a club called Kaos . “This city has seen a lot of trauma, and we’re forever changed.” Many say the ills of Juárez have only mutated, or receded from view. Criminal conviction rates are still abysmal. Extortion is still a problem, especially for businesses that have been paying for years, and many poor neighborhoods are still deadly. Some see a bust around the corner. Ms. Cunningham said government officials have been too busy congratulating themselves to notice that there are too many new businesses for too few customers. “If they don’t do something for this city,” she said, “all of this is going to collapse.” But for many here, hope is just beginning to surge. Mr. Lujana said most of his friends and relatives have recently come rushing back, many with new ideas and a determination to make Juárez more prosperous, responsible and fun. On Halloween this year, crowds of young people — half from El Paso, half from Juárez — danced, drank and laughed at clubs with high-energy music and fake blood on the walls, as if mocking the violent past, hoping to render it harmless. “Young people here, now, we want a different culture,” Mr. Lujana said. “We want a different life.”

Drug cartel
Ciudad Juarez Mexico
Drug Abuse
bars,nightclubs


Hurricane Sandy’s Red Tape Makes a Veteran Say, ‘I’d Rather Go Back to Falluja’

Abstract: BALDWIN, N.Y. — The recent letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency about his flood insurance claim should have come as good news to William T. Lynch, who is now on his third apartment rental since his 1920s cottage here was gutted by Hurricane Sandy nearly three years ago. “If you believe we underpaid your claim,” it read, “you may be eligible for an additional payment.” To FEMA, the message amounted to a rare acknowledgment to some 142,000 homeowners who filed claims with the agency after the storm that its procedures, which have been plagued by allegations of improprieties relating to engineering reports insurance companies relied upon, may have been seriously flawed. But to Mr. Lynch, who has been driven to the point of desperation by his dealings with one government entity after another, the message seemed like another mirage in his so-far futile quest to rebuild his home in Nassau County. “This is the most painful thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Mr. Lynch, a 52-year-old Iraq war veteran, said. “I’d rather go back to Falluja.” Mr. Lynch remains uncertain about whether he should reopen his claim, and he is hardly alone. With a Sept. 15 deadline less than a month away, only about 11,000 eligible homeowners have asked FEMA to look again at their cases, a number that one advocate described as “scary low.” The anemic numbers are the latest testament to the bureaucratic morass that has gripped so many of Hurricane Sandy’s victims. Some have been suspicious of FEMA’s letter, which seemed to suggest that a new review of their claims could function like an audit, and potentially force them to repay the government. But most say, with an air of resignation and frustration, that they no longer have the energy to fill out more papers and to deal with more layers of officialdom, even though they could be forsaking tens of thousands of dollars. They are simply spent. All over the region, homeowners, their advocates and elected officials have bitterly complained about the government programs meant to help people rebuild their homes and bolster them financially, declaring that the programs instead have been characterized by inexplicable delays and confusing directives. Even now, only a small fraction of homes destroyed by the 2012 hurricane have been rebuilt, and thousands of homeowners are occupying only partly rebuilt homes. Image Mr. Lynch’s mailbox sits in a shrub near his home, where it was deposited by Hurricane Sandy almost three years ago. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times In New York City, the Build It Back initiative stumbled because of a cumbersome application process. In New Jersey, the Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Elevation and Mitigation Program became bogged down when consultants lost months’ worth of documents and officials haggled over environmental and other reviews. And on Long Island, the New York Rising program alienated some storm victims who took out federal loans to rebuild before Congress had authorized relief funds, and later got smaller grants than their slower neighbors. But the questions surrounding the flood insurance have been the most ominous because of the possibility of fraud. The maximum coverage, as set by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, is $250,000 in property damage and $100,000 for the contents of homes. But many homeowners affected by the hurricane received little of what they believed they were entitled to. Some appealed their decisions, usually to no avail. About 2,200 people went further and sued the agency; many have since settled those cases. This year, revelations that engineers assessing flood damage for insurance companies altered some of their reports, leading to lower insurance payouts, were documented by The New York Times and “ 60 Minutes ,” among other news organizations. At least one criminal investigation , started by Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York, a Democrat, is now underway. “When it was confirmed that these practices were happening — to the extent of outright fraud — it really showed people that they were right, it wasn’t just them,” said Victor Tello, a staff lawyer at South Brooklyn Legal Services, who is coordinating his office’s response to legal issues related to Hurricane Sandy. Insurance companies have argued that any cases of fraud on the part of engineers or adjusters were isolated, and that underpayments were an anomaly. A recent Senate report largely backed those assertions, but it has been criticized for relying on FEMA data and for not interviewing insurance industry critics. With outrage mounting, FEMA in May invited all flood insurance policyholders who had not already sued the agency to ask for a fresh review . Image W. Craig Fugate, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, at its headquarters in Washington in 2012. Credit Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times Elected officials are now concerned that relatively few homeowners will take the agency up on its offer. In a letter on Thursday from Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, to FEMA’s administrator, W. Craig Fugate, the senator asked that the deadline be extended three months, to Dec. 15, saying that people were hesitating because of “confusion and the amorphous interpretation of rules.” Mr. Menendez also criticized FEMA for what he described as its halfhearted outreach efforts, saying the agency was “still behind the curve due to a slow start in the initial days and weeks following the announcement.” In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, announced on Thursday that he had asked the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to waive a regulation that would require New Yorkers who received additional FEMA money to pay back funds granted to them previously by the state. In an interview, Roy E. Wright, FEMA’s deputy associate administrator for insurance and mitigation, was apologetic. “I’m sorry we’re at a point at which folks have had to come back,” Mr. Wright said. “I absolutely empathize with the people on the ground who are trying to maneuver through a process like this. Perfection is not within my grasp, but I absolutely can and will change this customer experience.” Mr. Wright did not sugarcoat the numbers, acknowledging that the applications had “hit a plateau” in recent weeks. Image Homeowners attending a meeting on storm insurance claims in Freeport, N.Y., this month. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times And while he did not rule out extending the deadline, he was optimistic that the final numbers would rise. He estimated that homeowners could get tens of thousands of dollars more. He also used a baseball analogy to assure homeowners that FEMA would try to give them the benefit of the doubt. “My instruction is, the tie goes to the runner,” he said. Nonprofit groups, like the Touro Law Center’s Disaster Relief Clinic in New York and the Ocean County Long Term Recovery Group in New Jersey, have been holding free clinics to help homeowners apply. Lawyers with expertise in disasters have also been courting storm victims, promising to help them maximize their claims — in exchange for a contingency fee, typically 28 percent. One firm from Washington, Weisbrod Matteis & Copley, which represented whistle-blowers who noticed fraudulent engineering reports after Hurricane Katrina , has been especially aggressive , so far signing up 800 clients and sponsoring frequent meetings. At a recent meeting in a synagogue in Freeport, N.Y., about two dozen people listened as two lawyers from Weisbrod presented a video and answered questions. “Either people don’t know, or they’re so damn tired of Hurricane Sandy, of insurance, of politicians, of all that crap, and I understand it,” one of the lawyers, James A. Fussell III, said. “But FEMA admitted, ‘Yes, we messed up, and you may have left some money on the table.’ So stick it out, and fight the fight.” Image Mr. Lynch on the first floor of his home, which was extensively damaged by the storm. He has been unable to rebuild because of setbacks in receiving insurance money. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times Joyce Andersen, 70, a retired data systems manager from Toms River, N.J., is one of the homeowners who decided to turn over her claim to the firm. Floodwaters soaked the insulation in her house, ruined the floors and weakened the foundation piers. She received only $23,000. But she cringed at the thought of once again hauling out a stack of papers that has expanded to fill a sturdy beach bag. “I don’t want to do it anymore; I’m done,” Ms. Andersen said. “Whatever I get, they are entitled to a percentage because they would get more than if I did it on my own.” But one person who listened to the lawyers’ presentation and remained undecided was Mr. Lynch, the Iraq war veteran. On a tour of the skeletal remains of his house on Friday, Mr. Lynch said that FEMA offered him $77,000 based on damage assessments from his insurance company’s engineers. Various independent engineers he later hired estimated the damage at about $375,000. Mr. Lynch, a former director at the Swiss bank UBS, said his experience with New York Rising and the Small Business Administration had been even more surreal. One case manager lost his application, delaying his case by several months. He says the state is willing to pay $122,000 to elevate his house, as mandated by FEMA rules, and another $63,000 in repairs. That means he is still well short of what he needs to complete basic structural repairs. “You’re on this constantly moving ground with them where you never know,” he said of his dealings with government agencies. By contrast, Mr. Lynch pointed to his neighbor across the street. That neighbor had a different engineer, and a different insurance company, and got the maximum $250,000 in flood coverage. He rebuilt his house and returned a year ago to a street that remains half empty.

Hurricane Sandy
FEMA
Housing
New York
New Jersey
Real Estate
Federal Aid


Surprise Increase in Pending Home Sales

Abstract: Pending home sales unexpectedly rose in April to the highest reading since October, an industry group said Monday, but experts said the large proportion of distressed property sales would continue to weigh down prices. The National Association of Realtors ’ seasonally adjusted index of pending sales for existing homes rose to 88.2, from a March reading of 83.0, the lowest since the index was started in 2001. It was still 13 percent below April 2007’s reading of 101.5. Wall Street economists polled by Thomson/IFR had predicted the index would remain steady at 83. A reading of 100 is equal to the average level of sales activity in 2001. A Global Insight economist, Patrick Newport, tempered his enthusiasm for the surprising increase in April’s pending sales. “It’s good news, but I’m not jumping for joy because I’m not convinced that it’s telling us things are picking up,” he said “It’s telling me that banks are dumping properties at fire sale prices, spurring home sales.” Mr. Newport said that inventory remained at record highs and was growing, especially in the West where foreclosures and so-called short sales made up the bulk of deals. In a short sale, the house is sold for less than the amount owed on the mortgage. Pending sales there climbed 8.3 percent from March and were 4 percent higher than a year ago. Bank-owned properties and short sales in San Diego are also pulling first-time home buyers from the sidelines, said Gregg Neuman, a Prudential real estate agent. Once shut out of the market, buyers now stand to receive a 20 percent discount on these distressed homes, he said. “Bargain hunters have entered the market en masse,” said the agent association’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, remarking on the increase in pending sales, especially in the most troubled markets. In the Midwest, the index jumped 13 percent, while the South index posted a 4.6 percent gain. Only the Northeast index registered a decline, of 1.9 percent. The association expects existing home sales to total 5.40 million this year and increase to 5.74 million in 2009. The median price is expected to drop 8.4 percent in the first half of the year before stabilizing. Next year, prices will rise 4.4 percent, to $213,900, it estimates. Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com , said he believed that April marked the bottom for home sales, but that prices would not bottom out for a year. “It’s the beginning of the end of the housing downturn, but it will be a long painful ending,” he said.

Sales
Foreclosures
Housing
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
National Assn of Realtors
Economic Conditions and Trends
Short Selling


New Violence Belies Talk of Peace in Ukraine

Abstract: DONETSK, Ukraine — The main Russian-backed rebel organization in eastern Ukraine said it would begin moving heavy weaponry away from the front lines on Sunday, but the government said the group mounted a tank assault on a village near the Sea of Azov. Violence also spread beyond the separatist regions to other Ukrainian cities on Sunday. In Kharkiv, a major industrial center, a bomb went off during a pro-government march. Three people were killed, including a police officer, and 15 more were wounded, a deputy mayor, Svetlana G. Ruban, said in a telephone interview. Another bomb was found in a shopping bag on a street in Odessa, the Black Sea port. It was defused by the police. Both bombs appeared to target ceremonies and parades commemorating the anniversary of the fall of the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine, which was driven out by months of protests on Independence Square in Kiev, the capital. Image Ukrainian forces continued to face attack despite a cease-fire deal, and bombs appeared to target pro-government ceremonies and parades. Credit Gleb Garanich/Reuters President Petro O. Poroshenko called the two episodes on Sunday terrorist acts. He spoke at a ceremony in Kiev where thousands of people paraded for the anniversary, including the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Germany and Georgia. The Ukrainian authorities say they are struggling to rein in a pro-Moscow underground movement that is growing more active in Kharkiv, Odessa and other cities, mainly in the east, where the population is predominantly Russian speaking. Bombings and assassinations have been frequent. In Kharkiv, bombs have gone off in a bar frequented by pro-Kiev activists and in a crowd outside a courthouse. Elsewhere, assailants have fired shots at volunteers collecting aid for the Ukrainian Army. Markian Lubkivskyi, an aide to the director of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, the S.B.U., said on Sunday that four suspects were detained in connection with the bombing at the march in Kharkiv. He said they had received weapons and training in Belgorod, a town in Russia near the Ukrainian border. The marchers in Kharkiv had gathered to walk from the Palace of Sport to Constitution Square, where a ceremony was planned to honor soldiers killed in the fighting with the rebels. The bomb, a fragmentation-type device, was thrown from a passing car. Photographs posted online of the aftermath of the attack showed wounded people lying on the wet pavement while medical personnel scrambled to help, and a dead body covered with a Ukrainian flag — a sad echo of the former government’s violent crackdown on street protests a year ago. Image Investigators in Kharkiv, Ukraine, after a bombing killed three people during a pro-government march on Sunday. Credit Sergei Kozlov/European Pressphoto Agency In Donetsk, the base of the main rebel organization, the Donetsk People’s Republic, a rebel spokesman said the separatists had begun pulling back their artillery and rocket-launching trucks in accordance with the cease-fire agreement signed in Minsk, Belarus, on Feb. 12. Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the rebel group, said the withdrawal would be completed by March 7. Under the agreement, both sides are to withdraw heavy weapons to positions out of range of the front lines, a distance of 15 to 43 miles depending on the particular weapon. Loud explosions rang through Donetsk early Sunday. Rebel officials said it was a government artillery strike on the city’s outskirts, but the Ukrainian military said it was a rebel barrage into the village of Pisky, just northwest of the city. Farther south, the Ukrainian military said, rebel tanks assaulted Shyrokyne, a village east of Mariupol near the Azov coast. Mariupol has been on edge for weeks; the port city is widely seen as the rebels’ next major military objective after Debaltseve, the transportation hub between Donetsk and Luhansk that they captured last week. A Ukrainian military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said government forces in Shyrokyne repulsed the rebel attack early Sunday. In total, he said, Ukrainian military positions across the conflict zone had come under fire 44 times over the past 24 hours, despite the cease-fire.

Ukraine
Russia
Military
People's Militia
Kharkiv Ukraine
Odessa Ukraine


White Sox Pitcher Jake Peavy Honors a Longtime Friend and Mentor

Abstract: Jake Peavy faced the Yankees on a sunny afternoon in June, with fans packed to the sky. He gave up a run in the first inning and his team never scored for him, but generally he pitched very well. All of that was true on Saturday, when Peavy and the Chicago White Sox lost to the Yankees, 4-0, at Yankee Stadium. It was also true 10 years ago, when Peavy made his major league debut in San Diego. The difference is that Darrel Akerfelds cannot share it with him anymore. Akerfelds died last Sunday from pancreatic cancer at 50. He was the longtime bullpen coach for the Padres, and before that, he coached Peavy in the minor leagues. Peavy was a nervous kid from Alabama, just a few weeks past his 21st birthday when he made his debut, and he looked to Akerfelds for guidance. “I didn’t know anybody on that team,” Peavy said. “He was a familiar face. He said, ‘It’s no different than the things that you’ve done, that we did together, and you’re going to be fine.’ “I remember him just being that guy I could talk to, and I wasn’t scared to say something stupid. It was a little different back then. When you were a rookie and you got to the big leagues, you weren’t as comfortable as, say, guys are today. You were on the more hesitant side.” Peavy is an elder now, one of four players on the White Sox with a decade of major league service. He came to Chicago hesitantly, in a midseason trade in 2009, less than two years after unanimously winning the National League Cy Young Award. Peavy eventually waived his no-trade rights, but his first instinct was to stay in San Diego with Akerfelds, who knew his mechanics better than anybody and could recall pitch sequences from years ago. Peavy has called Akerfelds his father, his brother and his mentor, all in one. The trade has worked well for Peavy; the White Sox are in first place, the Padres are in last, and he is happy in Chicago. But the bond with his coach never left. This season, Peavy has worn a glove with “AK” stitched on the side. Even when Akerfelds could not get out of bed, Peavy said, he would send text messages before every start. On April 23, after shutting out the Athletics in Oakland, Peavy left the team to fly to San Diego and see Akerfelds one final time. “That meant a lot, getting to spend a few days when we were on the West Coast, just to see him and talk,” Peavy said. “It was nice to be able to, if it is the last time you see him, make sure there’s nothing left unsaid. The way we loved each other was a good thing, but death is never easy, no matter how it is, especially when somebody’s 50 years old. It’s just too young.” Peavy organized a raffle that raised $52,000 for pancreatic cancer research, announcing the winner on June 12, Akerfelds’s birthday. Peavy matched that donation, and planned to give another $100 for every strikeout in the major leagues on Saturday. Peavy included all strikeouts, he said, because he did not want to presume he could strike out lots of Yankees himself. Yet he fanned 11, the highest strikeout total in his last 60 starts. “It’s been a rough, rough week,” Peavy said. “Rough year, just thinking about my buddy and all he’s went through. I don’t want to overhype anything; I don’t want any of this on me. It’s just about ways to honor him.” Peavy gave up eight hits in his start, including home runs to right field by Curtis Granderson, Dewayne Wise and Robinson Cano. Three left-handed hitters, three balls into the second deck, and that was more than enough for the Yankees. This is how it has gone lately for Peavy, who has been backed by two runs total in his last four games. He has lost every one, despite an earned run average of 2.70 in those games, and his 6-5 record belies how well he has pitched. His complete game Saturday tied him for the American League lead with Justin Verlander, the only pitcher in the league who has logged more innings. Peavy’s E.R.A. is 2.96, and before Saturday, he had held opponents to a .211 average. Those credentials could give Peavy a spot on the All-Star team, but he would be a late arrival to Kansas City. On July 9, the day before the game, Peavy will attend the memorial service for Akerfelds in Colorado. “Of course,” Peavy said. “There’s nothing in the world that would make me miss that.”

Chicago White Sox
Peavy Jake
Akerfelds Darrel
Baseball


Critic of Maliki Is Chosen to Lead Iraq’s Parliament

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Iraq ’s Parliament chose a new speaker on Sunday after months of political infighting that stalled several major pieces of legislation. The election of the speaker, Ayad al-Sammaraie, a Sunni Arab lawmaker who has until now headed Parliament’s Finance Committee, is expected to break a legislative gridlock, but could also lead to new confrontations with the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki . The new speaker has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Maliki, whose party members cast blank ballots rather than vote for Mr. Sammaraie or a challenger. After the vote, however, Mr. Sammaraie pledged to cooperate with Mr. Maliki’s government. “Parliament should be complementary to the executive system, not hold it up,” he said. “I will work with everyone, even the members who didn’t vote for me.” The position of speaker, which under Iraq’s system of government is reserved for a Sunni Arab, has been vacant since the resignation of Mahmoud al-Mashhadani in late December. Mr. Mashhadani had become a polarizing figure after frequent clashes with other legislators. After he resigned, he said he had been forced to do so as part of a plot by rival political groups, including the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is Mr. Sammaraie’s party. Mr. Sammaraie, 63, was among the leading candidates for speaker for months, but in February he fell two votes short of the 138 required in the 275-member body, reflecting the sharp political and sectarian divisions that still consume Iraq. On Sunday, he received 153 votes, compared with 36 for the runner-up, Mustafa al-Hiti. Eighty-six members, among them some from Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party, either did not vote or cast blank ballots. Even as Parliament was voting, Mr. Maliki appeared before hundreds of uniformed commanders at the Interior Ministry and warned that factions within Iraq threatened national unity. As he has in recent days, he suggested that opponents — whom he did not identify — were seeking to undermine his government. “Today we face a new war of subversion, sedition and suspicion,” he said. “We have to warn ourselves, myself and all you, of the sedition that was defeated in the battle and is being provoked in a certain problem here and another problem there.” A spokesman for Mr. Maliki did not respond to a call seeking his reaction to Mr. Sammaraie’s election as speaker, but a lawmaker who is a member of Dawa pledged to cooperate with him. “We will respect the choice of the members of Parliament and we will work and cooperate with the new speaker,” said the lawmaker, Kamal al-Sa’adi. “Even if members vote for someone we didn’t select, it won’t change our strategy in Parliament.” During the four-month impasse over the speaker’s position, Parliament failed to reach agreements on important legislation, including proposals to regulate Iraq’s oil industry, the source of 90 percent of its revenue, and to offer compensation for widows and orphans. Mr. Sammaraie, an engineer by training, fled Iraq in the 1980s during Saddam Hussein’s rule, but returned after the American invasion in 2003. Violence continued sporadically across Iraq on Sunday, but the most brazen killings came in a series of robberies in the Tobchi neighborhood of Baghdad; they appeared to be the work of one group of gunmen. The men, using pistols with silencers, broke into several jewelry stores in the neighborhood, killing seven people and ransacking the shops.

Iraq
Sammaraie Ayad al-
Politics and Government
Sunni Muslims
Maliki Nuri Kamal al-


A Hole in Brooklyn, and Scandal at City Hall

Abstract: For the best part of two years, Dr. Budd Heyman and others politely hectored people in city government about the hole in the ground down the block from his house in Brooklyn. It was, he argued, a construction project that did not meet the law, an apartment building being wedged into a neighborhood of single-family homes. A physician at Bellevue, Dr. Heyman is smart and had his facts straight. That did not help much. Every level of Michael R. Bloomberg ’s administration blew him off. But he was right. They were wrong. This is not the saga of a hole in the ground, but of holes in how this city makes sure that buildings are safely constructed — and in how public officials treat citizens who seek honest answers. “With others from our civic association, I went all over the city government,” Dr. Heyman said. “We asked for meetings. We didn’t get them. We got insulting answers to questions. You have to be extremely, extremely persistent just to have a shot at getting a fair shake from city government.” The short version goes like this: In the Homecrest section of Sheepshead Bay, a developer bought a building site at the corner of Avenue S and East 16th Street. He wanted to put up a five-story building of condominiums. But right around that time, the city changed the zoning to protect the neighborhood from large-scale construction. For the developer to have the benefit of the old zoning, he had to finish the foundation by Feb. 15, 2006. It was a race. “We were there until late the night before; the next day, the inspector came and saw it was finished in time to vest under the old zoning,” said Pericles A. Christodoulou, an engineer who worked for the developer, Samuel Kahan. The building inspector declared the foundation was complete. The five-story project could go ahead. In fact, the foundation was nowhere near finished. It was missing three 90-foot concrete slabs, one of them 20 feet wide. Yet no city inspector noticed that these enormous slabs were not there, even though 18 visits were made to the site, many in response to complaints from neighborhood residents. (Of these 18 visits, only the first inspection was specifically to look at the foundation, according to a spokeswoman for the city.) Dr. Heyman said that with his City Council representative, Tony Avella, he asked to meet with the Brooklyn borough commissioner for the Department of Buildings, Magdi A. Mossad. Dr. Heyman heard from Mr. Mossad in a letter that said his office and the legal department had reviewed the job and determined that “the foundation was complete on 2/15/2006.” After questions from The New York Times, the city abruptly withdrew the building permit for the site this month. Not only were the slabs missing, but so were other concrete footings. The Buildings Department announced it was starting an investigation into what went wrong. How could a borough building commissioner say the foundation was complete if it was missing three 90-foot-long slabs? Mr. Mossad declined to answer questions yesterday. Why did the city shut the door on the complaints by Dr. Heyman and others? “We feel like it’s too early to tell,” said Kate Lindquist, a spokeswoman for the Buildings Department. “We don’t know what the outcome of the internal investigation will be. “The bigger thing for New Yorkers to know is that this is an agency that has made a lot of progress — to infuse integrity back into the agency, to open the doors.” It had better. In the coming years, New York somehow expects to safely fit one million more people onto its streets and inside its buildings. For decades, the city has depended heavily on engineers and architects hired by the builders to assure that construction meets the codes. The theory is that professionals would not put their licenses at risk to certify a project that did not deserve it. This turns out to be a system that cannot be trusted. In an audit of 155 projects that had been certified by private engineers or architects as having met the city codes, 80 percent of the jobs turned out to have problems, the Buildings Department found. What New York has, then, is a faith-based inspection system. In July, Patricia Lancaster, the city’s buildings commissioner, announced stiffer penalties for professionals who wrongly certify that a project has been finished, and a system of checking on them. In retrospect, the city and the public got off easy with the Brooklyn project. It is a small scandal, rooted in an error that has yet to be explained. Luckily, no one had to die to expose it.

City Hall
Housing
Brooklyn (NYC)
Building (Construction)
Land Use Policies
Bloomberg Michael R


F.D.A. Approves New Version of Cervical Cancer Vaccine

Abstract: The drug maker Merck received approval on Wednesday for an updated version of its Gardasil vaccine, which protects against the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer. The Food and Drug Administration approved Gardasil 9, which protects against nine strains of the virus called HPV, or human papillomavirus, up from four strains covered by the original vaccine approved in 2006. The F.D.A. said the updated Gardasil had the potential to prevent roughly 90 percent of cervical, vulvar, vaginal and anal cancers. It is approved for use in males and females — ages 9 to 26 for females, and 9 to 15 in males. Vaccination requires three injections over six months. Regulators approved Gardasil 9 based on Merck studies of 13,000 patients. The most common side effects linked to the vaccine were related to the injection, including pain, swelling and redness.


Benaki Museum Director Struggles With Budget Cuts

Abstract: ATHENS HIS office, in the basement, feels like a storage room with stacks of bubble-wrapped picture frames leaning against the walls. There are piles of books, and catalogs and scholarly papers, too. On this day, a small, graceful statue — a headless female figure — sits on a table near his cluttered desk. Angelos Delivorrias cannot help but study her with a critical eye. She could be Roman or just a 19th-century replica. “Figuring that out is a little project of mine,” he says. But it is hardly his only challenge these days. Mr. Delivorrias has been the director of the Benaki Museum here for 40 years. When he took it over, the display space filled just half the Benaki family’s neo-Classical mansion. Objects were crammed in oak and glass cabinets — about 37,000 Islamic and Byzantine items, mostly grouped by function. Since then, he has overseen a steady modernizing and expansion, building the Benaki — and now its six annexes — into one of Greece’s foremost cultural institutions. Under his tutelage, the Benaki has acquired an additional 60,000 objects, books and documents through purchases and donations. Buildings have been renovated, exhibits reorganized. The Benaki’s permanent collection now includes a huge range of Greek art that traces the development of Hellenism from antiquity through the Byzantine age, the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman occupation and the formation of the modern Greek state. But there is also an antique toy collection, a stunning collection of Greek regional costumes, an annex devoted to Islamic art and a new building for temporary exhibits, cultural events and workshops. At the age of 76, Mr. Delivorrias might be expected to be slowing down, taking time to savor his accomplishments. Instead, with Greece’s financial crisis, he is in a battle to save them, wondering whether he was too ambitious over the years. He has started smoking again, which his wife of 50 years is not at all happy about. “She is threatening to divorce me,” he says with a sigh, before lighting up. “She says it affects my memory, too.” When Mr. Delivorrias takes a list of employees from the top drawer of his desk, his hands are trembling just a bit. There are red question marks beside some of the names — the ones who might be getting laid off next. Already the museum has reduced its staff to 191 from 267 in 2010, he says. Even those who still have jobs have had their salaries cut 20 percent and then, to save more money, their hours reduced by 20 percent. “It is all so awful,” Mr. Delivorrias says, putting the list aside and resting his head in his hands for a moment. “The Department of Conservation has suffered a lot. When I got here there was no Department of Conservation. But we have so much paper and metal and treasures that need to be tended to.” MOST of the Benaki’s problems are straightforward enough. In the fat years, the museum, which is run by a board of directors that includes three descendants of the Benaki family, could rely on the Greek government to pay for most of its operating costs. But with the crisis, the cutbacks have been abrupt and steep. The government contributed about $2.6 million in 2009; this year, just a bit more than $900,000. “I have asked for an appointment with the prime minister,” Mr. Delivorrias says. But that strategy, he admits, is not working. “I have been waiting since — I don’t know — November, no, maybe October.” But Mr. Delivorrias soon catches himself and insists on optimism. “This must not be too sad a story,” he says. Certainly, he has not given up. Even now, he is adapting to the times. He keeps a box of index cards on his desk — reminders of how to operate his laptop computer, which he starting using only three years ago. He is still a man of energy. He admits to a temper, too. That is one of the secrets to his success, he says. It helps to blow up, to throw things and then to “move on.” The Benaki has made an appeal for funds, trimmed its hours and taken measures to earn more revenue with new exhibits and more guided tours. The money is not exactly rolling in. But there has been a tidbit of good news in recent days, Mr. Delivorrias says: he has a donor who will pay for the glossy yearly publication that the Benaki produces. “That is something,” he says, his hand running over last year’s edition. “It is guaranteed. We have this money.” Most of the men in Mr. Delivorrias’s family were engineers. But that life never had much appeal to him. He was drawn to the humanities and classical archaeology. Early on he worked for the Greek Archaeological Service and was the curator at Patras and Sparta. But in 1969, he left the country to study in Germany. He had won a scholarship, but he was also leaving behind trying political times. Greece had been taken over by a military junta two years earlier. He finished his Ph.D. and then moved on to postdoctoral studies in Paris. The phone call to take over the Benaki came in 1973. The early years, Mr. Delivorrias says, were the toughest. The museum had been deeded to the state in 1931, by Antonis Benakis, a wealthy Alexandrian cotton merchant, who spent a life time accumulating its contents. But the space was cramped and objects were crowded together. Changes needed to be made, Mr. Delivorrias says. He found himself in a battle with insiders who wanted to preserve things as they were. “When I took over it was a closed organization,” he says. “But I am stubborn. I am still afraid of entropy. An organization that does not evolve is condemned to die.” It is easy to see the giddy excitement that must have guided him over the years. At one point he wanted to put together an exhibit on the period between World War I and World War II, a difficult time for Greece, but also a period of great artistic output. “Greece should be proud of that generation, so I called the successors of some of these great artists and I said, ‘Please Mr. So-and-So, I would like some of your father’s manuscripts.’ ” Mr. Delivorrias smiles. “And the next day they were here.” MR. DELIVORRIAS has begun writing his memoirs, which he says should be out later this year. They are to be titled “An Account and an Apology.” The apology is to those who are losing their jobs, he says. But he is not really sorry that he thought ambitiously, only, perhaps, that he did not worry more about sound financial footing. He runs through his decisions to separate the various collections into annexes, to organize chronologically, to appreciate not just the contributions of the ancient Greeks but even the country’s more modern artists. Asked to choose his proudest moment, he cannot. His biggest disappointment? The museum was once outbid on a 13th century icon. “Oh, I really wanted it.” he said. “It was made during the crusades. But there was only so much money. Afterwards, I really wanted to know — who got that?” Eventually, Mr. Delivorrias did find out: a very rich man named after the saint the icon depicted. Even now, Mr. Delivorrias shakes his head, incredulous that such a treasure should be acquired for such a reason.

Museum
Athens
Greece
Art
Antique
Layoffs
Euro Crisis


Pitching to Impress, Matsuzaka Lifts Red Sox Past Blue Jays

Abstract: Daisuke Matsuzaka held the Blue Jays to one hit for seven innings Monday in the traditional Patriots Day game, helping the Red Sox defeat Toronto, 9-1, in Boston to win their third in a row. “He threw a very good game,” said Blue Jays Manager John Farrell, who was the Red Sox’ pitching coach the previous four seasons. Through an interpreter, Matsuzaka said, “Farrell is on the other side, so I wanted to show solid pitching in front of him.” More important, Matsuzaka (1-2) showed something to his own manager, Terry Francona. Matsuzaka, who entered the game with a 12.86 earned run average after two starts, permitted only two base runners — matching the fewest he has allowed in his 101 major league starts. “If I did pitch badly, I thought there wouldn’t be the next chance,” Matsuzaka said. Matsuzaka probably did not have to worry. His job was made easy for him by the Boston offense, which had three homers. The joyful day — Francona said he was “thrilled, everybody was” — marked another special occasion: a hit by Carl Crawford, who hit a run-scoring double in the sixth that raised his batting average to .136 (8 for 59). TWINS 5, ORIOLES 3 Visiting Minnesota extended Baltimore’s losing streak to eight. Drew Butera had a career-high three runs batted in for the last-place Twins (6-10), who have won two in a row for the first time. Francisco Liriano (1-3) gave up two runs, five hits and five walks in seven and a third innings. RAYS 5, WHITE SOX 0 David Price limited slumping Chicago to four hits in eight innings for host Tampa Bay. Price (2-2) struck out nine to record his first win against the White Sox, who have lost five in a row. After the game, Chicago learned that starter Jake Peavy, who is coming back from a shoulder injury, left a rehab start with discomfort after two-thirds of an inning. INDIANS 7, ROYALS 3 Pinch-hitter Shelley Duncan hit a run-scoring double to start a four-run 10th for visiting Cleveland. Grady Sizemore, in his second game back after knee surgery, was 3 for 5, including a single in the 10th. RANGERS 7, ANGELS 1 C. J. Wilson struck out nine in seven innings for host Texas. Adrian Beltre homered for a second straight night and Mitch Moreland drove in three runs. The Rangers, back from a nine-game trip, had lost four of five as Los Angeles won five in a row. BREWERS 6, PHILLIES 3 Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun drove in the go-ahead run with a sacrifice fly in the 12th after host Philadelphia rallied against closer John Axford in the ninth on a run-scoring single with one out by pinch-hitter Pete Orr. The Brewers became the fifth straight team to beat the Phillies in a series opener. Philadelphia, however, has yet to lose a series. GIANTS 8, ROCKIES 1 Tim Lincecum took a no-hitter into the seventh for visiting San Francisco. Lincecum took the mound with a five-run lead and did not waver until Carlos Gonzalez singled in the seventh. Colorado said Ubaldo Jimenez would come off the disabled list to start Tuesday. CUBS 1, PADRES 0 Pinch-hitter Tyler Colvin doubled home Geovany Soto with two outs in the 10th for host Chicago. Carlos Marmol (1-1) struck out two in an inning and a third to pick up the win for the Cubs. PIRATES 9, REDS 3 Andrew McCutchen doubled home two runs as part of visiting Pittsburgh’s biggest offensive display of the season. The Pirates, who took three of four in Cincinnati, have won their first three road series for the first time since 2002. RANGERS ACTIVATE LEWIS The Rangers optioned the right-hander Mark Lowe to Class AAA Round Rock to make room for the right-hander Colby Lewis, who returned from baseball’s first official paternity leave.

Baseball
Boston Red Sox
Matsuzaka Daisuke
Toronto Blue Jays


Herman Cain Accuser Got a Year’s Salary in Severance Pay

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The National Restaurant Association gave $35,000 — a year’s salary — in severance pay to a female staff member in the late 1990s after an encounter with Herman Cain , its chief executive at the time, made her uncomfortable working there, three people with direct knowledge of the payment said on Tuesday. The woman was one of two whose accusations of sexual harassment by Mr. Cain, now a Republican candidate for president, led to paid severance agreements during his 1996-99 tenure at the association. Disclosure of the scale of the severance further challenged his initial description of the matter as a “witch hunt,” as did new descriptions from the woman’s friends and colleagues of her level of discomfort at work. Adding to the pressure on Mr. Cain, a lawyer for the second woman called on the restaurant association to release her from a confidentiality agreement signed as part of her settlement, raising the prospect that she could publicly dispute Mr. Cain’s account of what happened. The lawyer said the confidentiality agreement had left her unable to respond to Mr. Cain’s denials of any inappropriate behavior toward the women. “He’s basically saying: ‘I never harassed anyone. These claims have no merit,’ ” said the lawyer, Joel P. Bennett of Washington, who represented the woman in her initial agreement. “And I’m sure my client would have a comeback to that.” The precise nature of the encounters between Mr. Cain and the two women remained murky. He has said over the past two days that he joked with one of the women about her height. But he has not addressed what happened with the other woman — the one said to have received the $35,000 payment. Her friends and colleagues said she had told them at the time that she was deeply uncomfortable about the situation. Mr. Cain’s accounts evolved over a second day on Tuesday and did nothing to help him put the situation behind him. And his shifting answers continued to raise questions about the capabilities of a campaign that seasoned party hands still view with skepticism. Asked Tuesday night on the Fox News Channel whether he would ask the association to comply with Mr. Bennett’s request, Mr. Cain said, “I can’t give you a definitive answer on that until we consult with our attorneys.” He added that there could be “legal implications” if the women were released from confidentiality agreements, though he did not say what those implications might be. A spokeswoman for the restaurant association, Sue Hensley, said that Mr. Bennett “has not been in contact with the association,” and that “if we are contacted by Mr. Bennett, we will respond as appropriate.” She did not address questions about the details of the $35,000 severance arrangement with the other woman. A spokesman for Mr. Cain, J. D. Gordon, also declined to discuss the details of the arrangement. Asked about the encounter that, according to friends and former colleagues, had made the woman uncomfortable at the restaurant association, Mr. Gordon said, “Mr. Cain has already explained the situation in some detail in numerous public appearances.” Four people with contemporaneous knowledge of the encounter said it had taken place in the context of a work outing during which there had been heavy drinking — a hallmark, they said, of outings with an organization that represents the hospitality industry. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid being publicly drawn into the dispute, and declined to provide details of the encounter, saying they did not want to violate the privacy of the woman. Two of them said that other factors had been involved in her severance, and that other workplace issues had been making her unhappy at the association as well. But they said the encounter with Mr. Cain had added an emotional charge and contributed to the size of her payment. One former colleague familiar with the details said such a severance was not common, especially for an employee with the woman’s relatively short tenure and her pay grade. The situation with the other woman appeared to be more in keeping with a standard settlement related to harassment allegations, though she never filed a lawsuit in a case that, one person familiar with her accusations said, included “more than one” claim of an incident that made her feel uncomfortable. Mr. Cain has at times seemed to conflate the situations with the two women. Appearing to speak about the terms of the formal settlement with Mr. Bennett’s client on Monday, he said she had received perhaps three months of severance — this after at first saying he knew of no severance. On Tuesday, he said in an interview with HLN that it was “in the vicinity of three to six months.” Asked Tuesday on the Fox News Channel why his account kept changing after the report appeared Sunday on Politico.com, Mr. Cain said, “When I first heard the word ‘settlement,’ I thought ‘legal settlement.’ ”He added, “My recollection later is that there was an agreement.” That led one of his interviewers, the conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer, to ask whether he was being “Clintonian” in his answer, a nod to former President Bill Clinton ’s initial statements that he did not have sexual relations with the intern Monica Lewinsky . “Well, it wasn’t intended to be Clintonian,” Mr. Cain said. “It was simply using the word agreement.” Mr. Bennett made a point of referring to the arrangement with his client as a confidential “settlement agreement.” His call for the restaurant association to drop the confidentiality clause was first reported by The Washington Post . A relative of Mr. Bennett’s client said Tuesday evening: “This is not something we asked for. This is not something we brought on.” As Mr. Cain took question after question on Fox, his campaign sought to project a business-as-usual aura on Tuesday and released a list of 15 co-chairmen of his campaign effort in Florida . He did not join five of his Republican rivals at a candidate forum in Iowa , where Gov. Terry E. Branstad said voters would wait for facts to be revealed before reaching a conclusion. “Iowans are pretty fair-minded people,” Mr. Branstad said. It remained an open question how Mr. Cain would weather the political fallout from the allegations. His rivals for the Republican presidential nomination neither rallied to his defense nor offered a comment on the matter. But several prominent conservatives stepped forward with supportive words for Mr. Cain, whose campaign said he had experienced a boost in fund-raising. “As I watch this witch hunt of Herman Cain,” Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program Tuesday, “I’m reminded once again that whether they can do it or no, the media clearly believe that they can make or destroy any political candidate they choose.” Mr. Cain’s rising appeal is rooted, in part, in his unconventional style and the fact that he is not seen as a typical politician. The sexual harassment allegations are providing the biggest test yet to his preparedness for office and his ability to react to a crisis. Mr. Cain also kept a dinner appointment with a small group of Republican senators at a Washington steakhouse near the White House. He arrived through a parking garage and entered a private room in the basement of Bobby Van’s, which allowed him to bypass a cluster of reporters who gathered outside.

Herman Cain
Sexual harassment
2012 Presidential Election
US Politics
National Restaurant Assn


Businesses Struggle With the Burden of Unemployment Claims.

Abstract: When Mary White opened her unemployment insurance statement in August and saw that her account had been docked for a claim from an employee who had quit more than a year before, she was baffled. Ms. White, 51, the founder of BnBFinder.com , a bed-and-breakfast search engine and booking site, hired the employee after the employee’s previous company, a Web site that matched aspiring authors with ghostwriters, went out of business. But then the ghostwriting site’s owner resurrected his business and hired the employee back. “And then, lo and behold, he went out of business again,” Ms. White said. That left the employee unemployed and made Ms. White’s company responsible for $1,956 in unemployment claims. That put Ms. White’s account in deficit and threatened to drive up her unemployment insurance tax rate — even though the former employee had left her company voluntarily. “You sit here afraid to hire anyone else,” Ms. White said. “It gives me pause and goes into my decisions. As a small business, I’m paying attention to what brand of coffee I buy for the office.” With the economy stalled and the official unemployment rate hovering stubbornly around 9 percent, many small businesses are struggling to understand how unemployment insurance premiums are determined. The system is anything but simple and it varies by state, but it can be mastered and managed. Above all, owners should know that the more unemployment claims a company generates, the more it has to pay into the system. The federal government charges employers a base rate of 0.6 percent of the first $7,000 of each employee’s wages each year. That federal money is used to cover the administrative costs for state unemployment programs; a loan program for states that do not have enough in their unemployment trust funds to pay claims; and extended unemployment benefits during economic downturns. When a state does not repay its loans — states now owe the federal government about $39 billion — the federal government raises the employer tax rate in annual increments of 0.3 percentage points. Right now, Michigan employers are facing a 0.9 percent surcharge. While employers have no control over federal unemployment insurance rates, they can mitigate their state costs. In general, the states charge an unemployment insurance tax on part of each employee’s income based on the company’s unemployment history. Most states calculate a business’s tax rate each year based on a formula that considers payroll size, the amount the company has paid into the system and the amount of unemployment benefits former employees have collected. That means a worker who collects unemployment can push his former employer (or multiple former employers, when there are several over the state’s base period) into a higher unemployment insurance tax bracket, often for several years. A typical unemployment claim against a business increases the amount that business pays in state premiums in a range of $4,000 to $7,000 over a three-year period, said David Prosnitz, owner of Personnel Planners , a company based in Chicago that fights 15,000 unemployment claims a year for its 1,000 business clients. But it can be much worse. Here is how the math works: Say you have a 10-employee business in Illinois. If you had not had any unemployment charges during the previous three years, the state unemployment insurance rate would be 0.7 percent — the Illinois minimum — of the first $12,740 of each employee’s wages, costing your business about $900 per year. If a laid-off employee then collected $10,000 against your account, your rate would go up to almost 5 percent, increasing what you pay to more than $6,000 a year for three years and costing your business more than $16,000 in increased unemployment insurance payments over that period — more than the employee would collect. How can an owner manage the process? “Hiring the right people is the first step in managing unemployment costs,” said David Blaine, a Bakersfield, Calif., employment lawyer with Klein, DeNatale, Goldner, Cooper, Rosenlieb & Kimball . But if you make a mistake, act quickly. In Illinois and Virginia, for example, an employer becomes liable for unemployment benefits after 30 working days. It is important to know the period in your state and to be aware of the target date for each employee you hire. “If you recognize you’ve made a bad hire,” said Ronald Adler, chief executive of Laurdan Associates , a human resources company in Potomac, Md., “the sooner you fire them, the better.” After an employee starts, he or she must be treated according to the employee manual. Any problems should be handled within a system of well-documented progressive discipline: warnings, suspensions, termination (theft and violence should lead to immediate termination). “Unemployment boards want to see that people had a chance to change,” Mr. Blaine said. Each warning should be written to show that the employee broke a rule he knew about, not that he performed poorly. An employee fired for misconduct can be denied unemployment benefits; one fired for incompetence can collect. Also, workers who quit voluntarily should be asked to give written notice of the reason for their departure to avoid a later claim. Lisa Faast, owner of Faast Pharmacy in Bakersfield, Calif., and a client of Mr. Blaine, learned the importance of documentation the hard way. In 2009, she discharged an employee who had been on the job three weeks, after repeated verbal warnings for walking off the premises and for being rude to customers and colleagues. “In the hearing, I had my manager with me and we corroborated everything the other said, but they ruled in the employee’s favor,” said Dr. Faast, 32, whose five-year-old pharmacy had revenue of $5.7 million in 2010. “Now, every discussion we have with an employee is written down, and we and the employee sign. It can get kind of ridiculous. But since we’ve started that, we’ve won every case.” The many levels of appeals can eat up time, and small businesses often lose claims because they do not have the manpower or endurance to keep up with the paperwork and hearings. Some businesses hire specialists to monitor their claims and help fight those they want contested. “When I first came into this business 35 years ago, I thought I was smart enough and could do it all myself,” said Norman Dinkel, owner of Dinkel’s Bakery in Chicago and a client of Mr. Prosnitz’s company, Personnel Planners. “I went to a few unemployment claims hearings, and I realized quite quickly it was a game, and you have to play it on a regular basis to have a chance to win every once in a while.” Mr. Prosnitz charges a business with 100 employees about $1,000 a year, plus $125 for each hearing he handles. For those who go it alone, the most important thing is to return all required forms on time and to attend every hearing, bringing written documentation. Failure to do so will lead to an automatic win for the former employee. Finally, small-business owners should monitor their insurance statements to catch errors and to verify that they are not being charged for ex-employees who have lost claims. “A lot of errors are made by state departments of labor, so it’s important to audit,” said Martin Taylor, vice president for human resource services at Human Capital Initiative , an Atlanta management consulting firm. Government numbers show that in 2010, 11.2 percent of unemployment insurance outlays were done improperly.


Earnings at Bank of America Decline on Bad Loans

Abstract: Bank of America, the country's largest consumer bank, said yesterday that fourth-quarter earnings fell 2 percent, its first quarterly decline in more than four years, after a surge in personal bankruptcies and poor trading results damped its performance. "It's first in a long time when we failed to meet our own expectations," said Alvaro G. de Molina, chief financial officer of Bank of America, in a conference call. Bank of America is the latest big bank to announce softer-than-expected earnings after J. P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup reported their results last week. With the country's largest retail branch presence and the biggest credit card portfolio since merging with MBNA, Bank of America's earnings not only reflect its recent performance, but also may be an indicator on the health of consumer spending. Credit card profits have been hurt by an unexpectedly large rise in bad debt write-offs taken after a tougher new bankruptcy law caused consumer bankruptcy filings to spike this fall. Retail banking has been challenged by steep competition and a flattening yield curve, as the narrowing gap between short-term and long-term interest rates puts pressure on margins. Trading profits have swung each quarter; higher interest rates have cooled the home refinancing boom. For the quarter, Bank of America earned $3.77 billion, or 93 cents a share, down from $3.85 billion, or 94 cents a share from the similar quarter a year earlier. Wall Street analysts had expected the bank to earn $1.02 a share, according to a survey by Thomson Financial. Shares of Bank of America fell 23 cents, to $43.96. Profits for its consumer banking and credit card groups, the engine of its business, fell to $1.8 billion in the fourth quarter, down 6 percent from the previous quarter. They were up 10 percent for the same period last year. The new bankruptcy bill substantially hurt profits. Bank of America wrote off more than $524 million during the fourth quarter and released more than $143 million it had previously set aside. Good pricing decisions, executives said, led net interest margins to rise 2 percent even as interest rates crept upward. Even so, the company's mortgage origination business fell to $20.7 billion in loans during the fourth quarter, 25 percent lower than the quarter before. "There is a slowdown in housing appreciation, making people have less of a desire to spend against their house or improve against their house," Mr. de Molina said in an interview. That slowdown in investment and borrowing, he added, could trickle down to a "general slowdown in growth." Bank of America faces other headwinds similar to its peers. New minimum payment rules could lead to the write-off of millions more in bad debts early this year. Rising credit costs and a flat yield curve could also crimp profits in 2006. "If it inverts, it could be more painful," Mr. de Molina said. During the conference call, Mr. de Molina said that he expected earnings growth in the midsingle digits this year for Bank of America's consumer banking business, excluding cards. That is somewhat less than the 10 percent, long-term growth rate for the business the company hopes to achieve. Investors have been particularly hard on Bank of America's stock, given the high premiums that Kenneth D. Lewis, its chief executive, has been willing to pay for acquisitions. In 2003, he bought FleetBoston for $48 billion. Last June, he paid $35 billion for the affinity credit card giant, MBNA. During the conference call, Mr. Lewis said that the management of Bank of America was focused on integrating the operations of the two companies by next October. "There is nothing in our mind about acquisitions at this point," Mr. Lewis said, questioning China for regulatory reasons and most of Europe and Asia for economic ones. Fourth-quarter corporate and investment banking profit fell to $123 million, down 79 percent from the fourth quarter last year, on poor trading results.


Bloomberg Pays Costly Tribute to an Aide, Patricia Harris

Abstract: Many bosses reward hard-working employees with a pat on the back. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg can build monuments to them. The mayor, a billionaire, has quietly given at least $1 million to stamp the name of his most trusted deputy at City Hall on a new academic center at her alma mater, Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., according to two people familiar with the arrangement. The unusual gift, in honor of Patricia E. Harris , the first deputy mayor, highlights what many say is a hidden glue that helps keep Mr. Bloomberg’s extraordinarily loyal, long-serving administration together: the mayor’s money, or at least the promise of it. Mr. Bloomberg is famous for doling out eye-popping bonuses to staff members on his campaigns, referring sick workers to top doctors, even paying for the large funeral of a City Hall aide. In return, he expects absolute fealty. But he has never before used his fortune to pay tribute to a current city employee — a gesture that historians said had no precedent in the city government. Ms. Harris, who has worked for Mr. Bloomberg for more than a decade, starting at his company, has counseled him on decisions as weighty as who to appoint as finance commissioner and as mundane as which paintings to hang at Gracie Mansion. She has earned the nickname “Velvet Hammer” for her quiet manner and far-reaching power. In several weeks, she will take on another role that is likely to bring her a financial boost from her boss. She will take a leave of absence to work on the mayor’s re-election, becoming the highest-ranking official at City Hall to do so, according to people briefed on the matter. The decision underscores her loyalty: Ms. Harris, 55, advised the mayor not to push for a revision of the city’s term limits law and seek re-election, warning him that the move could sully his image as a reformer. Now she will work full time to help him secure another four years in office. The last time Ms. Harris worked on a campaign for the mayor, he gave her a $350,000 bonus, on top of a $46,476 salary, for less than three months of work. Like many of Mr. Bloomberg’s top aides, Ms. Harris has also received large raises in her government job; her salary is now $245,760, up from $168,000 when she began in 2002. Mr. Bloomberg asked Franklin & Marshall to keep the donation anonymous, and a spokeswoman for the college would not discuss the source of the money. A spokesman for the mayor, Jason Post, confirmed that Mr. Bloomberg made the donation. Through Mr. Post, Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Harris declined to be interviewed. Mr. Bloomberg’s philanthropy has often had a personal dimension. He had an emergency medical center in Jerusalem dedicated to his father, William, and a health center there to his mother, Charlotte. He had a residence hall at Princeton University named for his daughter Emma, and had the Arms and Armor Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art named for Emma and his younger daughter, Georgina. Ms. Harris, a former aide to Mayor Edward I. Koch, has an extraordinarily close relationship with the mayor. Known as Mr. Bloomberg’s consigliere and sounding board, she helped introduce him to the worlds of the arts and philanthropy when he was a businessman, and then paved the way for his entry into politics, handpicking the staff for his 2001 campaign. “Having worked with the mayor for a long time,” she told The New York Times in 2005, “I know what he expects from people, and I try to anticipate what questions he’ll want answers to or what concerns he’ll raise.” In interviews, several historians and experts on good government said the gift violated no government ethics rules, but they raised the possibility, that Ms. Harris’s loyalties would be to Mr. Bloomberg rather than to taxpayers. Most simply marveled at the anomaly of a sitting mayor’s bestowing such a large gift on an aide — the kind of anomaly that under Mr. Bloomberg, the city’s richest man and its biggest philanthropist, has become commonplace. “His ability as a billionaire to provide benefits to employees and nonprofits and to create loyalty is just unprecedented,” said Chris McNickle, the author of “To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City.” It was Mr. Bloomberg who encouraged Ms. Harris, a 1977 graduate of Franklin & Marshall, a liberal arts college, to join its board of trustees in 2006. (His involvement with his own alma mater, Johns Hopkins, is on vivid display around the Baltimore campus, where the Bloomberg name adorns several buildings.) Soon, Ms. Harris became involved in the plans for a new center for government and policy. When Mr. Bloomberg learned of the $16 million project during his first term as mayor, he offered to make a large enough donation to name the building, which will be the Patricia E. Harris Center for Business, Government and Public Policy. The precise size of his donation is unknown, but it was given in two parts, in 2005 and this year. In addition to his two contributions, Mr. Bloomberg will match up to $1 million in donations for the center, college officials said. The building will be dedicated on Oct. 10.

Bonuses
Bloomberg Michael R
Harris Patricia E


Reuters Ends Plans for Ambitious Direct-to-Reader Service

Abstract: Two years after Thomson Reuters announced an ambitious effort to reach out to news consumers directly through a program called Next, the company has decided to change direction and work through its Web site, Reuters.com. Reuters, a venerable news organization with a network of 2,000 journalists across the globe, has worked largely as a news wire service, with its reports and photos appearing in other publications. Next was to be a platform to reach readers directly, but it has been plagued by missed deadlines and cost overruns. In an e-mail to employees that went out this morning and appeared soon after on The New York Observer’s Web site, the chief executive of Reuters, Andrew Rashbass, said the causes of the decision were cost overruns and the failure to reach international consumers. “The project as a whole has struggled to meet delivery deadlines and stay within its budget,” he wrote. “Also, it does not capitalize on our strengths.” Mr. Rashbass, who was hired in May from the Economist Group, added: “Next is a long way from achieving either commercial viability or strategic success. In fact, I believe the existing suite of Reuters.com sites is a better starting point for where we need to go. Therefore I have decided to cancel the Next project and put our efforts into enhancing and improving the existing Reuters.com sites. We will repurpose as much of the Next development work as we can for that.” The e-mail said that several executives at the company had decided to leave as a result of the decision, including Jim Roberts, executive editor of Reuters Digital, who was hired at the beginning of the year after taking a buyout from The New York Times. Mr. Roberts was not immediately reachable for comment, though he posted to Twitter: “Yes, I’ll be leaving @ Reuters , though not right away. & I’m not leaving news. Stay tuned.” In looking toward the future, Mr. Rashbass said: “We need to make our core strength of international news relevant to local audiences — which means, among other things, having local-language sites.” Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, said he was surprised by Reuters’s decision because the preview version of Next had been generating such interest. “There were a lot of really exciting ideas in Reuters’s Next,” he said. “What we saw in the preview was very forward-looking in terms of both content and technology. It generated a fair amount of excitement as a news organization doing something that looked digitally savvy.”

Reuters
Thomson Reuters
News media,journalism


Full Recovery Still Years Away for Many in Euro Zone

Abstract: PARIS — Despite recent optimism that Europe’s economy is finally turning a corner, a stark reality remains: The situation is still fragile. By many accounts, the euro zone has been rebounding from a wrenching double-dip recession that began in 2008 after the fall of Lehman Brothers. Financial markets have been in a celebratory mood, driving down borrowing costs for even the most troubled economies in recent months, while politicians have declared the worst of the crisis is over. But the uneven nature of the recovery — between a group of strong countries in the north and a larger swath of weak nations in the southern rim — has made it difficult for the overall economy to gain momentum. Growth in the currency union rose 0.2 percent in the first quarter, which translates to an annual growth rate of 0.8 percent, according to data released on Thursday by Eurostat, Europe’s statistics agency. While it was the fourth straight quarter of expansion, it was half what economists expected. The growth is so feeble that it could be years before Europe truly recovers. The overall euro zone economy is still more than 2 percent smaller than it was before the crisis hit. And the pace of recovery, economists say, is even slower than it was after the Great Depression of the 1930s. The differences at the country level are stark. While Germany’s economy is chugging along at a decent clip, expanding by 0.8 percent in the first quarter, France slipped back into stagnation in the quarter. And Italy, Portugal and Greece shrank yet again. Of the 18 European Union member countries that use the euro, only Germany and, to a lesser extent, France have returned to precrisis levels of growth. The United States, despite a spotty recovery, hit that marker in 2011. “Unless growth in the euro zone really picks up, then the prospect of a lost decade is very real,” Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said ahead of the report. “It matters because it permanently shifts the political power center of the euro toward the stronger countries of Northern Europe, and in the southern countries, it means a decline of living standards that may well last beyond a decade.” The dynamics are putting increased pressure on the European Central Bank to follow through on a pledge to stimulate the economy next month. With the economic picture continuing to look weak, analysts now expect the E.C.B. to cut interest rates close to zero and charge interest to banks that store funds at the central bank. Divergent Paths As economies in Northern Europe show signs of improvement, the southern rim nations continue to struggle. The uneven nature of the recovery has weighed on the overall European economy, which will probably take years to truly recover. Any economic stimulus could not come fast enough for Mina Giannandrea, 68, the owner of clothing stores in the center of Rome that sell expensive Max Mara dresses — luxuries that fewer people can afford. As the crisis and government-imposed austerity measures have sapped the Italian economy, Ms. Giannandrea has closed two of her four shops and laid off eight employees since 2012. Many had worked with her for decades but have now joined the growing number of people she knows who are without jobs. Unemployment in Italy, the euro zone’s third-largest economy, has risen to 13 percent, higher than the euro zone’s overall level of about 12 percent. “People here need hope,” Ms. Giannandrea said. “How can my business pick up, if half of the families I know are unemployed?” Reasons for optimism in the euro zone do exist. Investment and industrial activity have been rebounding since last autumn. Consumer confidence has ticked up of late. Spain, the fourth-largest euro zone economy, has gone from a painful recession to three straight quarters of growth. But other dark clouds are on the horizon. The fallout from the crisis in Ukraine, for example, threatens to spill over into the broader European economy. Already, it is wreaking havoc on Russian growth, which slowed to an annual rate of less than 1 percent in the first quarter. The growth potential of many European economies has also been stifled by the effects of austerity measures imposed in response to high government debt. Greece, for example, has struggled to make up for a near 25 percent economic contraction since 2008, as it pushes spending cuts and tax increases. France, which has battled two shallow recessions in two years, slipped back to zero growth in the first quarter from a 0.2 percent increase in the fourth quarter. The Netherlands, also under the grips of an austerity plan, had a drastic contraction in the first quarter, as the economy shrank 1.4 percent from the preceding quarter. In many cases, countries that pledged major policy overhauls for labor markets, spending and taxes during the crisis that were meant to stoke recoveries have yet to see those initiatives bear fruit. The worry now, economists say, is the likelihood that governments will not press ahead with reforms, which could further impede the rebound. Output in most euro zone countries would have to take big leaps now and in coming years to make up for growth lost during the downturn, economists say. “The question is, What’s Europe’s future for the 21st century?” said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard. “Will they still be able to grow and compete with Asia and more dynamic regions?” Nearly six years since the onset of the crisis, Germany is still one of the few euro zone countries to have fully bounced back. Its economy is now around 4 percent bigger than it was in 2008, said Richard Boxshall, an economist at PwC, the consulting firm, in London. Image An employee of the Freudenberg Group works on one of the company’s sophisticated machines. Credit Ben Kilb for The New York Times Industrial powerhouses like Freudenberg Group have driven the nation’s growth. Its 11,000 employees in Germany make fabrics, metal and chemical technologies, machinery seals and a range of other sophisticated products. On a recent day, workers in one factory hovered near complex machines that rolled out narrow strips of metal, which were separated by a laser and then welded to form metal seals. In 2008, Freudenberg “anticipated an imminent crisis and began to initiate capacity adjustments,” said Mohsen Sohi, a member of the management board. The company, whose sales rose 4.8 percent last year to 6.6 billion euros, or about $9 billion, invested €246 million last year in research and development on new products. “We saw the crisis as an opportunity for change, and we were able to use it to lay the foundations for our success today,” Mr. Sohi said. In other countries, though, big challenges remain. Italy’s gross domestic product has shrunk more than 8 percent in six years. The economy would need to grow at least 3.7 percent for each of the next two years — much faster than its current 0.6 percent annual pace — to return to where it was in 2008, according to calculations by PwC. Ms. Giannandrea, the dress shop owner, doubts that will happen any time soon. When the crisis hit, politicians everywhere, including in Italy, promised structural economic changes to fuel a recovery and help businesses like hers rebound. Matteo Renzi, the new Italian prime minister, has vowed a fresh approach to reinvigorating the economy and cutting joblessness, including revising the tax system and simplifying corporate regulations. But after six years of similar promises from earlier governments, few changes have materialized. Revisions to many rigid Italian labor laws that make it expensive to hire and keep employees remain “a pipe dream,” Ms. Giannandrea said, adding to her costs. Higher taxes were levied to pay for the Italian government’s huge debts. And consumers have all but stopped spending on the pricey coats and dresses she stocks. Ms. Giannandrea tried to remain positive when she shut her stores. But she struggled to get past feelings of pain, not only for a business that had been part of her life for 40 years but for her country as a whole. “Will Italy make it?” she asked. “I can’t answer that question.”

Economy
European Central Bank
European Monetary Union
Euro Crisis
EU


Boston Bombings Suspect’s Friend Convicted of Lying to F.B.I.

Abstract: A friend of the man accused of detonating two pressure-cooker bombs at last year’s Boston Marathon was convicted on Tuesday by a federal jury in Boston of lying to F.B.I. agents during their investigation of the attack. On the sixth day of deliberations, the jury found Robel Phillipos, 21, guilty of two counts of lying to F.B.I. agents when they asked whether he had been in the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth dormitory room of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is charged in the bombings, as two other friends removed potential evidence. The material removed included a computer and a backpack containing fireworks tubes, some of which had been emptied of their powder, the authorities said. “He lied to agents when he could have helped. He concealed when he could have assisted,” Carmen M. Ortiz, United States attorney for the district of Massachusetts, said Tuesday in a statement. The two other friends who were in Mr. Tsarnaev’s dorm room — Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov — are awaiting sentencing on obstruction of justice charges. Mr. Phillipos’s defense was that he had not intentionally lied to F.B.I. agents — rather that he had smoked so much marijuana on the day the items were removed that he was unable to accurately answer their questions. Michael Dukakis, a former Massachusetts governor and the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, testified on Mr. Phillipos’s behalf, saying he had been a longtime friend of the family. Mr. Phillipos, who was not accused of removing the items from the room, faces up to eight years in prison for each of the two counts. Lying to an F.B.I. agent usually carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each count, but the jury determined that he had lied during the course of a federal terrorism investigation. Sentencing has been scheduled for late January. Federal prosecutors say Mr. Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two bombs on Boylston Street near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured. Mr. Tsarnaev was arrested three days later while his brother, Tamerlan, was killed in a shootout with the police. Mr. Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to more than two dozen federal charges.

Robel Phillipos
Boston Marathon Bombings
Dzhokhar A Tsarnaev
Decisions and Verdicts


Pitcher Chris Young and Mets Take Care of Dodgers

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Before the start of the 2011 season, Sandy Alderson, who was then just beginning his run as the Mets ’ general manager, signed a pair of veteran pitchers to bargain-price, one-year deals. Chris Young and Chris Capuano had histories of arm troubles, and both were considered low-risk gambles. Only Capuano panned out that year. In a nice twist of fate, their narratives briefly became intertwined again Thursday night in Los Angeles. This time, Young, who signed a new deal with the Mets this season after overcoming another arm injury, got the best of Capuano, who signed as a free agent with the Dodgers on the strength of his restorative 2011 campaign. The Mets, powered by David Wright, got to their former teammate and won, 3-2. “You tip your hat to both of the guys, with what they’ve gone through, the adversity they’ve had to face,” Manager Terry Collins said. He added of Capuano, “When we’re not playing him, you root hard for a guy like that. This season, Young, 33, who had surgery last year to repair a torn capsule in his shoulder, has stabilized the back end of the Mets’ rotation, which lost Mike Pelfrey to injury earlier this year. He entered this most recent start with four solid starts under his belt and a 3.42 earned run average. Capuano, 33, arrived in Los Angeles on a two-year deal with the Dodgers after going 11-12 with a 4.55 E.R.A. last season for the Mets. He, too, has thrived, compiling a 9-2 record and a 2.60 E.R.A. coming into the game. “It was fun when I saw the matchups and knew I was going up against him,” Young said. “I’m happy for him.” But, he added, “I wanted to beat him.” The Mets, who scored 17 runs in the last game of their series against the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday afternoon, had the fortune of coming to Los Angeles while the Dodgers were without the stars Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier because of injuries. In addition, the Dodgers’ offense had looked comatose in its previous series against the San Francisco Giants, failing to score a single run during the three-game set. The Mets took a one-run lead against Capuano in the first inning. Ruben Tejada lined a one-out single to left, and he scored easily when Wright sent a double down the left-field line. Wright doubled the Mets’ lead in the fourth inning when he blasted a low slider from Capuano deep into the left-center-field stands. The home run was the 192nd of Wright’s career, which brought him even with Howard Johnson for third on the Mets’ career list. “That’s what I’m supposed to do in the middle of the lineup,” said Wright, who has 9 home runs and 49 runs batted in this year. Young whizzed through the first three innings of the game, going once through the Dodgers’ order without allowing a base runner. But he ran into trouble in the fourth, which Dee Gordon opened with a double to center field. Elian Herrera came up next and blasted a ball over the head of Andres Torres, who was stationed in shallow center field. Gordon cruised home while Herrera headed to third. The Dodgers tied the score at 2-2 when Juan Rivera punched a single straight back up the middle of the infield. Young finished the game with six and a third innings pitched, six hits, no walks and six strikeouts. “The last couple of years, I never felt completely healthy,” Young said. “I feel healthy at this point and I expect to pitch the full season the rest of the way.” Before he departed, the Mets regained the lead in the fifth, spurred by the bottom of their order. Mike Nickeas, the No. 8 hitter, laced a single to center and moved to second on Young’s well-executed bunt. Nickeas scored when Torres smacked a line-drive double to right, putting the Mets up, 3-2. The bottom of the Dodgers’ order pieced together a scoring threat in the seventh. Adam Kennedy reached second after a single and a passed ball. Two outs later, Jerry Hairston Jr. was brought in to hit for Capuano — who allowed five hits and no walks while striking out five — and was intentionally walked. Byrdak then got Gordon staring at a fastball on the outside edge of the plate to end the inning. Bobby Parnell, who was named the Mets’ full-time closer while Frank Francisco is on the disabled list, pitched a clean ninth to earn his first save of the year. INSIDE PITCH The Mets arrived in Los Angeles about four hours behind schedule after their plane experienced mechanical problems on the ground in Chicago on Wednesday night. They were also delayed at the airport last Sunday night after their game against the Yankees.

New York Mets
Young Chris
Los Angeles Dodgers
Capuano Chris
Baseball


Tatsuzo Shimaoka, 88, Master of Pottery, Is Dead

Abstract: Tatsuzo Shimaoka, a potter who was designated a “living national treasure” in Japan for his mastery of his craft, died on Dec. 11 in Mashiko, Japan, where he had maintained a studio since 1953. He was 88. The cause was a stroke, according to Ken Matsuzaki, a former apprentice. Mr. Shimaoka’s pottery, primarily tablewares, expressed the philosophy that beauty was to be found in utility, and art in humility. The work was characterized as “mingei,” a term created from “minshuteki kogei,” or “craft of the people.” The term reflects an appreciation of the Japanese folk traditions that artisans like Mr. Shimaoka’s teacher, the potter Shoji Hamada, began to look to early in the 20th century in the face of rising industrialization. Mingei philosophy stressed the connection between the quality of a craft object and the spirit with which it was made. “You can’t make beautiful things unless your character is also that,” said Martha W. Longenecker, founding president and director emerita of the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, speaking of Mr. Shimaoka. Ms. Longenecker studied pottery making with him in 1962 in Mashiko. The museum exhibited a retrospective of his work in 2000. “Shimaoka was a very humble man,” Ms. Longenecker said. “He was a healthy, real person, in body, mind and spirit.” She said Mr. Shimaoka’s achievement was to distill more than 5,000 years of pottery making in Japan into something unique, often amounting to great art. His work is included in the ceramic collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He was designated a “living national treasure” by the Japanese government in 1996. Tatsuzo Shimaoka (pronounced TAT-soo-zo Shi-MAH-oh-kah) was born in Tokyo in 1919, to a family of ornamental braid makers. Rather than have him enter the family business, his mother insisted that he be educated. He studied industrial ceramics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, inspired by a visit to the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in 1938, where he encountered mingei philosophy, and its objects, for the first time. In interviews Mr. Shimaoka compared its impact on his future to rain on soil. He graduated in 1941, served in World War II in Burma and returned to Japan, moving in 1946 to Mashiko, a town with a tradition of pottery making, an hour north of Tokyo. He became an apprentice of Shoji Hamada, one of mingei’s founding proponents. In an interview with Clay Times, a ceramics journal, Mr. Shimaoka said he learned from Hamada that craft “is not to be learned by intellect, but with the body.” “Technique is not to be taught, but to ambitiously acquire,” he said. Hamada encouraged him to develop his own style of work, beyond the basic tenets of mingei. Mr. Shimaoka turned to his own father’s craft, braid making. He began using elaborate braid to decorate vessels by pressing it into the clay when it was still wet. It was an original technique that made a deft reference to a tradition: the rope decoration of prehistoric Japanese Jomon pottery. Mr. Shimaoka washed the vessels with a white liquid clay, wiping away the excess and leaving a painted tracery in the braided impressions, a Korean decorative device introduced to Japan in the 16th century and popularized by tea masters on tea bowls. He called his style Jomon Zogan. Louise Cort, curator of ceramics at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington, said that Hamada and others had a special interest in Korean craft tradition. “It represented a kind of purity and antiquity that had disappeared from the Japanese craft movement by the 20th century — a pure world before industrialization,” Ms. Cort said. “Shimaoka took Korean craft tradition, plus the particular patterning of the cords that his father had made, to make a contemporary version of old techniques.” Mr. Shimaoka’s reputation grew quickly as his work was exhibited in department stores in Japan and then abroad. In 1964 he went on a three-month teaching tour of North America and began accepting apprentices. One was Randy J. Johnston, now a potter and professor at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. He studied with Mr. Shimaoka in 1975. Mr. Shimaoka, he said, told him that in taking students he felt he was repaying a debt to his master, Hamada. Mr. Shimaoka himself would go on to serve as master to several generations of apprentices. “Shimaoka was a very driven person,” Mr. Johnston recalled. “We worked seven days a week. He pushed himself hard, with the large number of exhibitions. But he was not dictatorial or oppressive. He always seemed to find time, graciously taking in students, or welcoming visitors to the pottery.” Mr. Shimaoka is survived by his children, three of whom live in Mashiko: a son, Kei Shimaoka, who will take over the studio; a daughter, Yoshiko Fudeya, a glass artist; and Ryuta Shimaoka, another son. His other survivors include his daughters Kyoko Sekita Nomura and Chizuko Kuroda, both of Tokyo, and eight grandchildren. Mr. Shimaoka’s wife, Fumiko, died four years ago. Ms. Longenecker observed that, true to itself and to the spirit of mingei, Mr. Shimaoka’s work evolved over the years, as he himself might have in life. “It becomes more spontaneous, without thought, a fuller expression, more natural,” she said. “Continually with more ease. Skillful, but with a flow.”

Far East South and Southeast Asia and Pacific Areas