For UConn, as Well as the Huskies, a Golden Opportunity to Impress

Abstract: ARLINGTON, Tex. — Halfway through a private brunch Saturday, as Connecticut’s biggest donors finished their all-you-can-eat French toast and sausages, the university’s president, Susan Herbst, put down her glass and made her way to the center of the room. She stood before a group of supporters who had given millions of dollars to the university, including Robert Skinner, one of the backers of a $40 million basketball practice complex project. At 11:30 a.m., some were wearing sport coats, and others were clad in blue UConn gear. The university had arranged for many of them and their families to fly in on chartered planes, to stay at the team hotel and to sit in some of the best seats in AT&T Stadium for the Final Four of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. They also got a private audience with Herbst, a 51-year-old political science professor who has been at the helm of the university for almost three years. With UConn’s national semifinal against Florida looming later in the day, Herbst took over the room. She briefly touched on the university’s need to build its endowment but spent much of the time praising Connecticut’s academic successes. “Connecticut is so hot,” she said, citing the soaring applications, a move up the rankings of public universities and the luring of top scholars from other institutions. The Final Four, among the biggest shows in sports, is now about far more than basketball. It is a priceless opportunity for a university to burnish its national reputation and introduce itself in millions of living rooms across the country. For university presidents like Herbst, it also offers a rare opportunity for an extended bonding session with key supporters who are basking in the glow of big-time sports success. Those moments of affection can be fruitful, helping universities attract major financial gifts, which allow them to build new facilities or to cultivate relationships with potential donors. But the Final Four also highlights how universities are putting an increasing emphasis on assuring the success of their revenue-producing sports teams, often placing sports atop the agenda of their presidents and requiring a significant amount of their time and energy. “All of this sports success turns people’s eyeballs toward the university,” Herbst said at the brunch before turning the stage over to Jim Calhoun, the university’s former men’s basketball coach. He told the crowd: “We need you. We need your support in a number of different ways.” When a team makes it to the Final Four, the university’s elite backers are usually offered a number of exclusive perks. Once they are in town, they are often invited to events like the brunch hosted by Herbst. Sometimes the president will host a dinner or speak at a pep rally. Often, the meetings are impromptu, maybe in the lobby of the team hotel. On Saturday morning, with UConn fans crowding the main floor of the Hyatt Regency in Dallas, Herbst held court at a table in a coffee shop. A number of people came by, including Calhoun; Dan Toscano, a member of the board of the directors of the university’s foundation; and Donny Marshall, a former UConn basketball player who is on the university’s board of trustees. While she mingled, Herbst took a call from Geno Auriemma, the women’s basketball coach at UConn, who was in Nashville preparing his team for its Final Four. “The waiting is hard,” Herbst told him. “It’s like a medical test. Let’s do it already and see what we are up against.” Herbst said Sunday afternoon that if the Huskies won that night, she would travel to Nashville for the championship game. Either way, the university is well represented there, too, taking advantage of the chance to tap donors. Herbst ended her call with Auriemma with a “love you.” Afterward, she said she felt the same way about the men’s coach, Kevin Ollie, calling him a “ray of sunshine.” It is tough not to love two winning, spirited coaches, she said. “I’m very friendly that way,” said Herbst, who was born in New York and who graduated from Duke. On Saturday afternoon, Herbst had a moment to offer encouragement to the UConn men’s players as they ate lunch in a private room in the basement of the Hyatt. Herbst walked across the room, first checking in with Ollie and his staff. When she eventually spotted Shabazz Napier, the team’s senior star, Herbst could not help doting. “Oh, my God, I’m so proud of you,” she said, mentioning that thousands of Huskies fans had come from all over to cheer them on. Between bites, Napier said: “We’ve got to get this championship for them. It’s only magical if you get to the end.” A few minutes later, Herbst was upstairs in the hotel’s ballroom alongside UConn’s pep band and cheer team, hosting hundreds of fans at an alumni rally. “It’s an amazing time to be at UConn,” she told the crowd, adding: “You believed in this team. I believed in this team. I’ve come to know these kids. They are great kids. They are determined. They are fierce. They are doing well in school. They are passionate about what they do. They represent this university so well.” For UConn, the chance for Herbst and her staff to spend productive time with supporters has come at an especially important moment. UConn, which last won a men’s basketball championship in 2011, was barred from participating in last year’s tournament because of past problems with its academic performance. The university unsuccessfully protested the penalty. The academic transgressions occurred before Herbst arrived, from Georgia’s university system, in June 2011, but resolving them was of such high importance that, for a time, she received weekly updates on the grades of the men’s basketball players. “I just didn’t want this to happen ever again,” Herbst said. Around the same time, some of UConn’s conference mates in the old Big East were jumping to other leagues in pursuit of more television money. UConn did not get such an invitation and now plays in the American Athletic Conference, a new league that is not among the five power conferences in college sports. The situation left university officials and fans worried about the financial health and competitiveness of their sports programs and wondering why none of the wealthy conferences called them. But on Saturday, those fears were put away for another day as UConn upset Florida , earning a spot in the national title game against Kentucky on Monday. During the Florida game, Herbst sat about 15 rows up, next to her husband, and she checked her phone occasionally during breaks to see how students were taking in the game back on campus. As the game wore on, she became less presidential and more of a fan. With time running out, she stood and shouted: “Oh, yeah! Bring it on! We want this!” After the game, a parade of UConn supporters came by for high-fives and hugs. She was thrilled her team had won, but she also knew she had two more days of face time with some of the university’s major donors. They would be in a good mood. The university’s new chief fund-raiser, Joshua Newton, taking in his first Final Four, came looking for Herbst. “We get to do this every year, right?” he said.

Susan Herbst
College
University of Connecticut
College basketball
NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness
NCAA Women's Basketball


U.S. Women’s Team Lifts Viewership of the World Cup

Abstract: Thanks to the United States national team, the Women’s World Cup is proving to be a strong performer for Fox and Fox Sports 1. The 8.4 million viewers who watched the Americans defeat Germany, 2-0, in Tuesday’s first semifinal brought the tournament average for all games to 1.3 million, up 45 percent from the 899,000 on ESPN and ESPN2 four years ago. Japan defeated England, 2-1, in the second semifinal Wednesday night, with the final scheduled for Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern on Fox. Mike Mulvihill, Fox’s senior vice president for programming and research, cited three factors for the increased viewership from 2011. One, a tournament played in Canada, with its North American time zones, is likely to be seen by more people than one played in Germany, as the 2011 Women’s World Cup was. “The time zones make a sizable impact,” he said, and enabled Fox to schedule all the U.S. team’s games in the evening, at least for some of the audience. The team’s six games on Fox and Fox Sports 1 have averaged 5.3 million viewers, more than double the figure through the 2011 semifinals. A second reason, Mulvihill said, was putting 16 of the 52 matches on a broadcast network — more than in all other Women’s World Cups combined — which has exposed more people to the tournament. Four years ago, ESPN and ESPN2 carried the entire tournament on cable. And third, grass-roots growth in women’s soccer has expanded the audience. Last year’s World Cup in Brazil averaged 4.6 million on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC and 3.5 million on Univision. For the Women’s World Cup, the 1.3 million watching on the Fox networks has been augmented by an average of 196,000 per game on Telemundo and NBC Universo. Will Sunday’s game break the tournament’s record of 17.9 million viewers for the final, set in 1999 in the Americans’ win against China? It will have the advantage of being in prime time (the 1999 game was on a Saturday afternoon a week later in the calendar). But it is the Fourth of July weekend, which might reduce the audience a bit. And despite the renown of players like Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe, the team lacks a media superstar. Mulvihill cited the audience for the 1999 women’s final and the 17.3 million who watched the men’s World Cup final last year on ABC and said: “There’s not much upside in making a guarantee. But that’s in the range of what we can do.”

United States Women's National Soccer Team


South Sudan to Allow More U.N. Peacekeepers, but Force Will Be No ‘Panacea’

Abstract: UKUNDA, Kenya — Under intense pressure, South Sudan’s beleaguered government has relented and will allow more United Nations peacekeepers into the country. In the two and a half years since civil war erupted, South Sudan has been the scene of atrocities including civilian massacres, the forcing of children into militias, the burning of emergency food supplies and the widespread rape of women and girls, including Western aid workers . Tens of thousands of people have been killed. On Sunday night, during a visit by the United Nations Security Council to Juba, South Sudan’s capital, the government agreed to allow the addition of 4,000 peacekeeping troops to the existing force of 14,000 soldiers, police and military observers. Top American officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Samantha Power, ambassador to the United Nations, had been pushing hard for the increase and the Security Council authorized the expansion of the force last month. African nations had also supported the move, though South Sudan’s government had claimed that it would be an affront to its sovereignty. Shortly after the decision was made public, Ms. Power said that South Sudan’s government was weak in terms of the rule of law and warned that the peacekeeping force would not be a “panacea.” “There’s a huge amount of criminality going on,” she said. “I also wouldn’t minimize the underlying ethnic, tribal, political conflicts that are plaguing this country and that a peacekeeping mission alone cannot solve.” Video Hundreds have been killed in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, in recent days, after fighting broke out between opposing factions. Jeffrey Gettleman, The Times’s East Africa bureau chief, discusses what’s at stake. Credit Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times South Sudan, the world’s newest country, won its independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of guerrilla struggle. But in 2013, the country exploded into civil war after a disagreement between the top two political leaders, who belong to different ethnic groups. The conflict ripped across the country like a lit fuse. Many South Sudanese had said they were hoping that their government would allow more peacekeepers to supplement the United Nations force already in the country, which has a landmass slightly smaller than Texas. Ms. Power said that United Nations bases were directly protecting 200,000 civilians. Many analysts are skeptical about how much difference the extra troops will make. United Nations peacekeepers have a checkered record in Africa. In late 2011 and early 2012, troops in South Sudan did not intervene in ethnic clashes that erupted in front of them and claimed hundreds of victims, including many children. And in the Democratic Republic of Congo , numerous instances of civilians being raped and killed despite United Nations peacekeepers being stationed nearby led to severe criticism. United Nations officials are planning to deploy the additional peacekeepers in Juba, the site of vicious fighting in July, and to recruit the troops from other African nations. South Sudanese leaders did not explain their about-face on Sunday, except to say that they had given their consent to the additional troops “to improve the security situation.” It is not clear when the new peacekeepers will arrive; United Nations officials say they are hoping to deploy them as soon as possible.


Tens of Thousands Gather in Moscow to Protest

Abstract: MOSCOW — Tens of thousands of citizens converged in Moscow on Saturday for the second huge antigovernment demonstration in a month, an early victory for activists struggling to forge a burst of energy into a political force capable of challenging Vladimir V. Putin ’s power. The first such demonstration, two weeks ago, was unprecedented for Mr. Putin’s rule, and there were reasons Saturday’s turnout could have been lower — among them, winter holidays and the onset of bitter cold. Instead, people poured all afternoon into a canyon created by vast government buildings, and the police put the crowd at 30,000, more than they reported on Dec. 10. Organizers said it was closer to 120,000. Hours later, as the protesters dispersed, they chanted, slowly: “We will come again! We will come again!” If the movement sustains its intensity, it could alter the course of the presidential election in March, when Mr. Putin plans to extend his stretch as the country’s dominant figure to an eventual 18 years. Opposition voters were furious over the conduct of this month’s parliamentary election, and will be roused again by Mr. Putin’s campaigning. Still, maintaining momentum is a huge challenge, and the initial giddy mood has already hardened into something more serious. The crime novelist Boris Akunin, peering out through wire-rimmed glasses as he addressed the crowd from a stage, said demonstrators should prepare themselves for a long haul. “We will have a difficult year,” Mr. Akunin said. “But it will be an interesting year. It will be our year.” The protests have rattled the Kremlin, which has not encountered widespread political resistance for a decade. Mr. Putin initially sneered at the demonstrators, saying days after the first rally that the white ribbons they have adopted as a symbol resembled limp condoms , and that they participated only because they were paid by foreign agents seeking to undermine Russia . But it is clear that government elites are taking protesters’ complaints as a warning and scrambling to head off a more dangerous confrontation. On Saturday, for the first time, two high-level figures connected to the Kremlin were at the demonstration. Former Finance Minister Aleksei L. Kudrin, a member of Mr. Putin’s inner circle for more than two decades, took the stage to express his support for many of the protesters’ demands: the dismissal of the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Y. Churov; the dissolution of Parliament and new elections; and changes in the election code to allow for free competition. Mr. Kudrin published an article on Saturday in Kommersant, a respected daily newspaper, noting that many employees of state enterprises were participating in the demonstrations. “It seems to me they wanted to say the following: ‘Respected leaders! Many of us have come here for the first time, fully consciously and entirely independently. We have something to lose, and we are for stability,’ ” Mr. Kudrin wrote. “But the violation of your own rules — and this is the way we take the information about mass falsifications and violations of statistical patterns — this is too much.” The billionaire Mikhail D. Prokhorov , who has said he will run against Mr. Putin, was also in the crowd, though he did not deliver a speech. He arrived without a security detail, stooping occasionally to answer questions and pose for photographs with young women. Both Mr. Kudrin and Mr. Prokhorov are viewed skeptically by a portion of the protesters, who fear they represent attempts by the Kremlin to dilute or divide a powerful new protest electorate. “Sorry, what relationship does Kudrin have to democratic movements?” wrote Vladimir Varfolomeyev, an editor at the radio station Ekho Moskvy, via Twitter . “He’s a bureaucrat who has faithfully served the regime for 10 years.” When Mr. Kudrin took the stage, he was booed by some in the crowd and cheered by others. Though all demonstrators interviewed said they were hoping to avoid a violent uprising, some left the possibility hanging in the air like a warning. Aleksei Navalny, the blogger whose enormous popularity set these protests in motion, was greeted with a deafening roar from the crowd, which had been begging to see him for more than an hour. “I can see that there are enough people here to seize the Kremlin,” said Mr. Navalny, 35, who listened to the earlier protest on the radio while serving 15 days in jail. “We are a peaceful force and will not do it now. But if these crooks and thieves try to go on cheating us, if they continue telling lies and stealing from us, we will take what belongs to us with our own hands.” Mr. Navalny especially delighted the crowd with barbed insults of Mr. Putin; indeed, hatred for the prime minister has become a motif at these events. One popular sign read “Putin is our condom,” in a reference to his comments about the white ribbons. Another, painted in the style of Salvador Dalí, showed the prime minister melting in front of a giant clock with the words “Your time has passed.” “Where is this man?” Mr. Navalny asked. “Can you see him? Is he here?” He added: “These days, with the help of the zombie-box, they are trying to prove to us that they are big and scary beasts. But we know who they are. Little sneaky jackals! Is that right?” The crowd roared. “Is that true or not?” Another roar. Pavel Morozov, 23, said he realized that dislodging Mr. Putin might hurt the middle-class quality of life he enjoys. But he said it did not matter. “Putin is a reincarnation of Brezhnev,” he said. He added that while he did not know whether people like Mr. Navalny or the environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova were worthy alternatives, “at least they are an alternative. Anyone now but Putin.” Former President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told Ekho Moskvy that he thought Mr. Putin should withdraw his bid for the presidency. When asked whether he thought Mr. Putin would give up power voluntarily, Mr. Gorbachev, who was not at the rally, said, “What’s terrible about it?” and noted that he had done so 20 years ago. “Then all the positive that he has done would be safeguarded.” For organizers, the challenge is to keep the movement alive at all, since the protesters are working people who will leave the city for two soporific weeks in January. Their commitment to politics is unclear; some say that they are willing to demonstrate for years, others that they will lose interest if a leader does not emerge. “I don’t know what people here want or what they expect from today, but the fact that they are here is important and valuable in and of itself,” said Zinaida Burskaya, 22. “I do feel that it will affect things over the next two to three years. That people have torn themselves from off their couches and have come here and are not apathetic. This may allow for new leaders to emerge.” Toward evening, the humorist Viktor Shenderovich looked out at the protesters and said, “This toothpaste cannot be put back in the tube.” And they dispersed in a great surge through back streets and alleyways — anarchists and incrementalists, nationalists and bread-and-butter voters waving the hammer-and-sickle flag of the Soviet Union. Marina Shkudyuk, 58, an economist, said she was motivated by rising housing and utility costs, and planned to keep coming out until her demands were satisfied. She said she did not see a leader emerging from the movement, but “at least let there be something different.” “My family thinks that Grandma has gone crazy,” she said.


Lundqvist Leads Rangers Back to Finals for First Time Since '94

Abstract: Henrik Lundqvist leapt into the air as the final horn sounded, almost levitating with joy. He had just won the most important hockey game at Madison Square Garden in 20 years. The Rangers were headed to the Stanley Cup finals. The Rangers beat the Montreal Canadiens, 1-0 , on Thursday, capturing the Eastern Conference finals in six games. Dominic Moore’s goal late in the second period proved golden. Lundqvist’s flawless goaltending, and the Rangers’ smothering defense, preserved the victory. “Tonight, I don’t think I’ve ever been more determined to win a game,” Lundqvist said. Defenseman Ryan McDonagh said: “We don’t want this to end. We want to continue the journey.” On Wednesday, the Rangers will open the Cup finals in Los Angeles or in Chicago. The last time they got this far was in 1994, when Mark Messier, Mike Richter and the Rangers went on to win an unforgettable seven-game series against Vancouver for the club’s first Stanley Cup in 54 years. Image The Rangers celebrating after the 1-0 victory that sent them to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 20 years. Credit Jason Szenes for The New York Times Then, the Rangers announcer Sam Rosen said it would be one to last a lifetime. Now the Rangers will try to make it two. As the clock struck zero, the Rangers poured over the boards and mobbed Lundqvist, who had just recorded his first shutout of these playoffs and the ninth of his postseason career. It was also his 42nd career postseason victory, breaking Richter’s Rangers record. “This is one of those moments you dream about,” Rangers defenseman Anton Stralman said. The crowd chanted, “We want the Cup,” just as it did in 1994. The teams lined up to shake hands. The Prince of Wales Trophy was presented to the happy Rangers co-captains Brad Richards, Marc Staal and Dan Girardi. But they declined to pick it up, observing an old hockey superstition that the Stanley Cup is the only chalice to lift. Image Dominic Moore, right, scored the game’s only goal in the second period for the Rangers, who outshot the Canadiens, 32-18. The Rangers will face the Kings or the Blackhawks in the finals. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times Instead, the whole team posed for a photograph behind the big silver trophy the Rangers won for beating Montreal, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and emerging as the best team in the Eastern Conference. Then they skated away to celebrate. Moore’s goal, at 18 minutes 7 seconds of the second period, transformed what had been a sloppy game. The Rangers were controlling play deep in the Montreal zone when McDonagh passed the puck behind the net to Brian Boyle. Boyle saw Moore speeding into the slot and hit him with a pass. In one motion, Moore shot past Canadiens goalie Dustin Tokarski, who never had a chance on what would be the game’s only goal. The Garden erupted. Only two minutes earlier, Lundqvist made a miraculous save that kept the scoreboard blank. Canadiens forward Thomas Vanek had just taken a close-range shot that was half-blocked by the stick of Girardi. Lundqvist, as if he were Dominik Hasek, cartwheeled to keep the fluttering puck out of the net. He dropped his stick and blocked the puck with his stick hand, also somehow keeping it away from Michael Bournival, who was standing at the lip of the crease. Image The Canadiens’ P. K. Subban and goalie Dustin Tokarski, who had 31 saves, leaving the ice. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times “Ridiculous!” Staal said of the save. “I owe him a beer.” It was a masterly performance from Lundqvist, nicknamed the King. He looked bad surrendering four goals in Tuesday’s 7-4 loss at Montreal and was pulled by Coach Alain Vigneault. That was only the fourth time he was replaced in 86 playoff starts. Before Thursday’s game, Lundqvist was asked if he could bounce back from that shaky performance. “All of you keep asking about the last game, but I don’t think about the last game,” he said. Tokarski — the gallant rookie pressed into service after the Game 1 injury to Carey Price, Montreal’s No. 1 goalie — played another unorthodox but effective game. Still, the Rangers outshot the Canadiens by 32-18, including 13-7 in the third period, as they smothered Montreal’s efforts to tie the score. “I thought the kid did a fabulous job,” Canadiens Coach Michel Therrien said. “He gave us a chance to win every night.” Image Henrik Lundqvist making a save on a shot by Thomas Vanek in the second period. Credit Jason Szenes for The New York Times Price’s injury, in a goal-mouth collision with Rangers forward Chris Kreider, made for the first controversy in a series filled with them. Montreal’s Brandon Prust was suspended for two games for breaking the jaw of Rangers forward Derek Stepan with a late hit; Stepan missed one game with the injury. Rangers defenseman John Moore was suspended for two games for injuring Montreal forward Dale Weise on a high hit; Weise missed Game 6. The Canadiens accused the Rangers of spying on a practice and of exaggerating the extent of Stepan’s injury . But all that was forgotten in the handshake line. Prust lingered, smiling, to place his hand gently on Stepan’s protective helmet. One by one, the Canadiens embraced Martin St. Louis, whose mother died May 8. “It’s been a tough year for me,” St. Louis said. “This makes it pretty cool.” St. Louis was last in the Cup finals in 2004, when he and Richards won a title with Tampa Bay. He asked for and received a trade from the Lightning to the Rangers in March. “To get a chance to play in the Stanley Cup finals with these teammates of mine, who have been nothing but great through my tough time in the past weeks, makes it even more special,” St. Louis said. Several members of the Rangers’ 1994 Cup-winning team were in attendance, including Stephane Matteau, Glenn Healy and Ed Olczyk. Alexei Kovalev, wearing a vintage 1994 Rangers Stanley Cup hat, was shown on the scoreboard. He cracked a huge smile and ripped open his windbreaker to show a 1994 Rangers Stanley Cup T-shirt. The fans at the Garden loved it, having not seen a Stanley Cup championship series in 20 years. Soon, they will see one again. Perhaps it, too, will last a lifetime.

Rangers
Henrik Lundqvist
Stanley Cup
Montreal Canadiens
Dominic Moore
Ice hockey


Killing Puts Spotlight on Bolivian Drugs and Crime

Abstract: SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia — The shocking video, taken from a security camera, showed the killer in a backward baseball cap and dark glasses, stalking his terrified prey in broad daylight on a city street. His victim seemed to plead for his life and tried to stumble away before the killer, gripping the pistol in two hands, shot the man dead beside a parked car. Played over and over on television here, the video has crystallized public outrage over a wave of killings in this city of 1.6 million, Bolivia’s most populous and a center of the country’s growing drug trade. It has become a stark example of increasing violent crime in a country that has long been safer than many of its neighbors. The government response was blunt. “Since they are so coldblooded when it comes to killing, I want them brought in immediately, dead or alive,” Carlos Romero, one of the top ministers in the cabinet of President Evo Morales, said in the days after the slaying, feeding a common perception that the man was killed by a hired assassin, perhaps because of a drug dispute. “We will not allow hired killers to become established in Bolivia.” Rubén Costas, the governor of Santa Cruz Department, which includes the city of the same name, even warned that the wave of killings risked turning Santa Cruz into another Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city infamous for a level of drug violence many times worse than what residents are facing here. Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America, yet it has a single-digit homicide rate that is closer to those of the continent’s more developed countries, like Chile and Argentina. But the rate appears to be rising . Bolivia had 8.9 homicides per 100,000 people in 2010, up from 6.5 in 2005, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime . Still, the country is far safer than neighbors like Brazil, with 21 murders per 100,000, or Venezuela, with 45, according to the United Nations figures. Image Brazil and Peru are factors in Bolivia's drug problems. Credit The New York Times But Bolivia has been grappling with a rising drug trade and increasing drug use at home. It is the world’s third-largest producer of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, and it has a long and largely uncontrolled border with Brazil, which is considered one of the world’s fastest-growing drug markets. Large quantities of drugs also move through from neighboring Peru. And because Santa Cruz sits on the border with Brazil, it finds itself at the center of the drug trade. “Today, what we are seeing is this: organized crime, mafias, drug trafficking, dirty money, weapons, and this undoubtedly is going to rapidly increase the levels of criminality,” said Vladimir Peña, secretary of the interior for Santa Cruz Department. “We are seeing an increase in the number of homicides on the one hand and, second, what we are seeing is the level of cruelty.” The crime wave also plays to longstanding complaints here that Santa Cruz, a stronghold of opposition to Mr. Morales, gets short shrift from the national government in La Paz, which controls the police. The two sides cannot even agree on how many officers are deployed here. Mr. Peña says that 4,500 police officers are assigned to the Santa Cruz Department, the country’s largest in terms of area, and that many of them hold desk jobs that keep them off the streets. Mr. Romero, by contrast, says that there are more than 6,000, and that an additional 340 were being assigned in response to the wave of killings. The day after the killing captured in the video, Mr. Romero said, the government formed an emergency plan to crack down on violent crime in Santa Cruz. That includes increased operations aimed at small-scale drug dealers and sweeps of bordellos aimed at finding foreigners who are in the country illegally and potentially connected to drug gangs. On one late-night sweep last week, officers checked a grimy club called La Rose while indifferent prostitutes watched an American police show on a small television. Wilted flowers decorated a makeshift altar to St. George, known here as a patron saint of those on the wrong side of the law. Eduardo Cabrera, a police lieutenant colonel who leads a small community policing effort, said that there were only about 1,000 officers regularly assigned to street patrols and investigations in the city of Santa Cruz. “It’s not enough,” Colonel Cabrera said. The Santa Cruz crime wave began as early as February, when a woman was killed and her ex-husband and their two sons were charged with paying $15,000 for the slaying. Then a messenger was shot dead during a midday robbery in the city’s main square. A Spotlight on Crime in Santa Cruz, Bolivia 10 Photos View Slide Show › Image Meridith Kohut for The New York Times But April was Santa Cruz’s cruelest month. At least eight people have been killed in often lurid crimes. A Peruvian man was shot 14 times by hired killers who the police said were working for a Colombian woman at the head of a drug gang. A cattle rancher was found in a rural area, shot dead, with his hands bound, and his wife was charged with paying $4,000 to have him killed. Two men and a woman were beaten to death on a farm near the border with Brazil. Back in the city of Santa Cruz, a merchant was shot dead apparently during a robbery. Then came the death of Honorio Rodríguez, 47, the man in the chilling video. Two days later, a taxi driver was shot to death while trying to rescue a woman from what appeared to be an assault, and a 21-year-old man was shot and killed outside a nightclub. In all, there were 16 killings in Santa Cruz in the first four months of this year, compared with 9 during the same period last year, according to police statistics. Mr. Romero, the government minister, said that surveys consistently showed that crime was among the top concerns of Bolivians. He defended his call for suspected assassins to be taken “dead or alive,” although he said that legal rights would be respected. “The message was for the criminals,” he said, “that we had decided to act with absolute severity.” The message was also for the police — that Mr. Romero wanted swift action. Within days of Mr. Rodríguez’s death, the police arrested a Brazilian ex-convict who fit Mr. Romero’s assertion that foreign assassins were behind the killings here. But the suspect scarcely resembled the killer in the video and was soon released. Then last week, the police arrested a 29-year-old Santa Cruz man who confessed to the killing. The man said that he shot Mr. Rodríguez in a dispute over $5,000 that Mr. Rodríguez owed him. Mr. Romero said that the police were continuing their investigation, which included looking into the possibility of a connection to drug trafficking. Roxana Bonilla, 50, Mr. Rodríguez’s widow, dressed in black and sometimes dissolving into tears, insisted that her husband, who was known as Yoyo, was not involved with drugs. She said he was a cautious homebody, a father of two who prayed daily and helped her run a small store in their modest house, with six computers where customers pay about 40 cents an hour for Internet access. Her husband, she said, had often fretted about rising crime: “He always said to us, ‘You never know when you go out if you’re going to come home again, with all the things that are happening.’ ”

Bolivia
Evo Morales
Murders
Organized crime
Drug Abuse
Crime statistics
Santa Cruz de la Sierra


John C. Whitehead, Who Led Effort to Rebuild After 9/11, Dies at 92

Abstract: John C. Whitehead, for decades one of New York’s most prominent citizens, a veteran of D-Day who capped a lauded career on Wall Street and in the State Department by shepherding the first years of the city’s fractious effort to rebuild after the 2001 terrorist attacks, died on Saturday at his home in New York. He was 92. Haverford College, from which he had graduated and where he served on the board of managers, announced his death, saying the cause was cancer. The columnist Liz Smith once called Mr. Whitehead the “chairman of the establishment.” He helped pilot Goldman Sachs to the forefront of investment banking and led the boards of Harvard, the Asia Society and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, among other institutions. As deputy secretary of state in the Reagan administration, he helped wean the countries of Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union. His connections were so broad, he said, that in 10 minutes of conversation with “just about anyone,” he could find “a mutual friend we both know well.” Mr. Whitehead’s stiffest challenge came as he neared his 80th birthday, when Gov. George E. Pataki of New York asked him to be chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation . A state entity, it was given the mandate to rebuild the shattered site of the World Trade Center towers and revitalize downtown Manhattan. In his autobiography, “A Life in Leadership: From D-Day to Ground Zero” (2005), Mr. Whitehead recalled replying that he would be ancient by the end of the effort. “I don’t think you want me down there a decade from now in my wheelchair, pointing my cane at some building and saying, ‘I’ll put this building here, not there,’ ” he wrote. He decided to turn down what was then his city’s, if not his country’s, most momentous job. Then he changed his mind. As he had many times, he felt a call to duty. He concluded that he had no right to say no. “When the fireman hears the bell go off, he’s off to the fire,” Mr. Whitehead wrote. “And I guess I heard the bell.” The reality of the decision hit him after the news conference where Mr. Pataki announced his appointment. Mr. Whitehead had no staff, no money, not even an office. “That moment in the car was probably the loneliest moment of my entire life,” he wrote. For five years, Mr. Whitehead juggled the competing interests of local residents, business leaders, cultural groups, the city, two states, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and families of the victims of the attacks. His agency conducted 200 public hearings and produced a master plan that changed greatly but endured. When plans for a memorial to rescue workers and victims foundered, he decided to head the foundation guiding the project himself, and quickly raised $130 million. When Mr. Whitehead resigned in May 2006, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, “When New York City was experiencing some of the toughest times in its history, John Whitehead stepped up to the challenge and played an integral role in downtown’s resurgence and revitalization.” John Cunningham Whitehead was born on April 2, 1922, in Evanston, Ill. When he was 2, his family moved to Montclair, N.J., where he attended public schools. His father was laid off by the phone company during the Depression, and the family scrimped and ate macaroni and cheese for many dinners. The young Mr. Whitehead raised racing pigeons, sang in the church choir, rose to Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts and learned to play the violin. In his book, he suggested that he had been motivated to succeed by a secret his mother told him after he had gotten in trouble for stealing cookies from a bakery. She said she had had twins who died at birth a few years before Mr. Whitehead’s own birth. “Now, John, your father and I hope and pray every day that you will grow up to be a fine person and help us make up for the terrible loss,” she said. Mr. Whitehead wrote, “For the rest of my life, I did everything I could to make my mother proud of me.” He majored in economics at Haverford College, then an all-male institution. In 1943 it accelerated its graduation by a semester so that graduates could join the armed services to fight in World War II. (Haverford, in Pennsylvania, was a Quaker school, so many graduates served in noncombat roles.) Mr. Whitehead paid for college with jobs like guessing people’s weights at the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40, and as a pinsetter at local bowling alleys. He enlisted in the United States Navy, which assigned him to Harvard Business School to learn Navy accounting so that he could be a disbursing officer on a ship. Instead he became captain of a landing craft that ferried troops to Omaha Beach in the first wave of the Normandy campaign. He did the same thing in Southern France, at Iwo Jima and elsewhere. Image Mr. Whitehead in 2005. Credit Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times After the war, he returned to Harvard Business School to teach naval accounting and was also accepted as a student there. Mr. Whitehead was the only person Goldman Sachs hired in 1947, starting him at the above-average salary of $3,600 a year as a member of the bond-buying team. He wrote that Sidney Weinberg, a Wall Street legend and Goldman chairman, was awed by his dexterity with a slide rule. Mr. Whitehead became a Goldman partner in 1956. He persuaded Mr. Weinberg to set up a business department, as Goldman led the way in making managing mergers a regular service. In the early 1960s, he drafted 12 business principles , stressing effort and ethics, that the firm continues to use, with two additions. When Goldman’s chairmanship became vacant in 1975, he and John L. Weinberg , Sidney Weinberg’s son, assumed the job jointly. They soon turned Goldman into a global business and saw profits increase each of the eight years they headed the firm. Mr. Whitehead resigned in 1984, surprising the investment industry. He was “getting worn down,” he wrote. The Wall Street Journal at the time quoted industry executives as saying that he and Mr. Weinberg had “set the standard against which many other Wall Street firms measure themselves.” Several months later, Mr. Whitehead was at Goldman’s office working on a book tentatively titled “The Social Responsibilities of Business.” The phone rang, and because his secretary had already gone home, Mr. Whitehead answered it himself. George P. Shultz, the secretary of state, came right to the point: “Can you be in my office in Washington at 8 tomorrow morning?” Mr. Shultz said he could not discuss the subject over the phone, but Mr. Whitehead guessed that he wanted to speak to him about the economies of Brazil and Argentina, which were at perilous junctures. A young assistant librarian was working late and hastily assembled envelopes full of economic and political information about both countries. When Mr. Whitehead arrived in Mr. Shultz’s office, the secretary said, “We’re going over to see the president.” In the Oval Office, President Ronald Reagan asked Mr. Whitehead to be deputy secretary of state, the No. 2 job in the State Department. As a diplomat Mr. Whitehead worked with the Communist nations of Eastern Europe, offering trade and investment inducements in return for improvements in human rights. He developed a reputation for making nondiplomatic comments. When asked in 1986 if the United States was considering “non-peaceful” action against Libya, he replied, “Yes.” Bernard Gwertzman, the longtime diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, wrote that the correct State Department answers were “leaving open that option” or “not ruling it out.” In testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 1986, Mr. Whitehead began a sentence with the phrase, “I hate to disagree with my president, but ...” His eligibility to use the White House tennis court soon mysteriously ended. During his Goldman years, Mr. Whitehead devoted a third of his work time to nonprofit organizations he considered “noble.” After he left the State Department in 1989, he gave these groups most of his attention, heading the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the United Nations Association, the New York Boy Scouts, Haverford College, the Brookings Institution, the National Gallery of Art and the International Rescue Committee. In 1995, he donated $10 million to Harvard Business School to start the John C. Whitehead Fund for Not-for-Profit Management. In 1997, Seton Hall University in New Jersey, with Mr. Whitehead’s financing, opened the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Mr. Whitehead was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1995 to 2000. During his tenure, which was unpaid, the bank helped orchestrate the bailout of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund. Mr. Whiteheard lived in Manhattan. His marriage to the former Helene Shannon, known as Sandy, ended in divorce, as did his marriage to the former Jaan Chartener. His third wife, Nancy Dickerson, the television news reporter, died. He is survived by his wife, the former Cynthia Matthews; his daughters, Anne Whitehead and Sarah Whitehead; his son, J. Gregory Whitehead; two granddaughters; seven stepchildren; and 18 step-grandchildren, said Barry Zubrow, a close friend of more than 40 years. For nearly 20 years, Mr. Whitehead was part owner of the New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League. In his later years he collected art, particularly Impressionist paintings. After returning from Washington, he was also chairman of AEA Investors, founded by the Rockefellers and other wealthy investors to buy midsize companies, improve their sales and then sell them. Mr. Whitehead summed up his life in the last line of his memoir: “From first to last, I have been thrilled to be in on the action.”

State Department
Obituary
John C Whitehead
Lower Manhattan Development Corp
US Foreign Policy
Banking and Finance
Goldman Sachs Group
NYC


Lives and a Georgia Community’s Anchor Are Lost

Abstract: PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. — A day after an explosive fireball cratered the sprawling Dixie Crystal sugar refinery, the anchor of this small community for decades, families of missing workers waited in a Catholic church across the street on Friday as rescue workers tried to determine the human toll. By late afternoon, four bodies had been found and four more workers were missing, officials said. More than three dozen workers were injured, some with severe burns. Rescuers were facing ever-more-difficult conditions as they searched. Flooding in parts of the ruined, century-old plant was eight feet deep, the fire still burned and the building was no longer structurally sound. Search efforts had to stop until heavy equipment could be brought in to dismantle the wreckage, said Sgt. Michael Wilson of the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department. At least 118 workers were inside the plant on Thursday night when the explosion, possibly caused by combustible sugar dust, shook the ground and shattered windows blocks away. Some workers dived beneath desks and tables as ceilings collapsed around them; others fled as walls vaporized. Gene Bryan, a supervisor, was crushed by a metal table, said his wife, Irene. He is now at the Joseph H. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, Ga., where 18 of the most severely burned patients were airlifted. At least 37 people were treated at hospitals. “I saw people come running out burnt, screaming, hollering, their skin hanging off them,” said Jason Perry, who hurried to the plant after the blast to search for an uncle who was working that night. “One lady hit the ground, and then the medical was on her so fast you couldn’t see what was going on.” “It was raining debris, iron, sheet metal,” he said. “Everything from the boiler to the river is gone.” Mr. Perry’s wife, Breanne Thompson, first notified the uncle’s wife of the explosion. “I said, ‘Is Ricky working?’ She said ‘Why?’ ” Ms. Thompson said, shaking her head and trailing off. The uncle turned out to be alive and helping with the rescue efforts, Mr. Perry said. “He had two or three extremely good friends that are missing in the silo,” Mr. Perry, 34, said. “He’s just really devastated. You know, your job, your life — like he said, them people are like his family.” An elderly couple nearby believed that they were under attack, as did Ashlie Myers, 21. “I thought somebody blew up the port,” Ms. Myers said. “Like a crash dummy, I was standing outside thinking I was going to die.” By Friday afternoon, the neighborhood’s usual caramel aroma had curdled into the burned smell of an unstirred saucepan. The chief executive of Imperial Sugar, which owns the plant, told employees at an afternoon meeting that the company would continue to pay employees and had not yet assessed the damage or decided the factory’s future, attendees at the meeting said. The chief executive, John C. Sheptor, said the probable cause of the explosion was sugar dust building up in storage areas, which could have been ignited by static electricity or a spark. But local fire officials said it was too early to make an official determination of the cause. Combustible dust was responsible for at least 281 explosions from 1980 to 2005 that killed a total of 119 people and injured 718 others, according to study conducted by the United States Chemical Safety Board after a rash of deadly dust incidents in 2003. According to the National Fire Protection Association, as little as 1/32 of an inch of dust over 5 percent of a room’s surface is enough to cause an explosion under the right conditions. The safety board also found that no comprehensive, federal standard exists to control the risk of dust explosions in general industry, only in grain-handling facilities. The explosion occurred in perhaps the most inaccessible part of the plant, the midsection, where silos, warehouses and sugar bagging rooms were clustered in a maze of conveyor belts and elevators. “We’re talking narrow corridors with six- to eight-story buildings on each side,” said Greg Long, who as the Port Wentworth fire chief has 5 paid employees and 20 volunteers. Ms. Bryan, the wife of the injured supervisor, said the factory’s mechanical equipment was older than her husband’s tenure there — 28 years. Company officials did not respond to requests for comment about conditions at the plant. Firefighters from three counties aided efforts to contain the blaze, and on Friday refinery employees helped the recovery effort because they were more familiar with the plant layout than were the rescue workers. The refinery opened in 1917, and the construction materials of that era — wood tongue-and-groove ceilings and hot-burning creosote known as “fat lighter” — contributed to the ferocity of the blaze, Chief Long said. The property, which extends from the Coastal Highway to the Savannah River, resembles a Southern plantation, with a low white fence and the warehouses barely visible behind oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. The factory was aging, workers said, but was sustained by its advantageous location, with access to trains and ships. Though it is owned by Imperial Sugar, of Sugar Land, Tex., it is still referred to by its earlier name, Dixie Crystal, and Imperial still markets sugar under the Dixie Crystal brand. Virtually everyone in Port Wentworth and nearby Garden City, it seems, had friends and relatives who worked there, many for 20 years or more. “My mom and dad worked there in the ’50s,” said Herman Bryant, a neighbor of one of the victims. The victim’s name has not been released by the authorities and the family gathered at his home declined to speak with a reporter. “He knew me when I didn’t know myself,” Mr. Bryant said, holding his hand at toddler-height. “To make a long story short, he was a good, hard-working man.”

Georgia
Explosions
Sugar
Imperial Sugar Company


The C.E.O. of Houzz on Attracting Investors

Abstract: This interview with Adi Tatarko , chief executive of Houzz , an architecture and interior design Web site, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Did you have the entrepreneurship bug early on? A. Both my grandmother and my mother were entrepreneurs. They kept saying: “It’s all about you. If you want something, you can do it. Just be passionate about something and go all the way.” So it was just something that I was part of early on. I saw both of them working very, very hard, but they thrived. Q. Other influences from your family? A. Even at school I was frustrated sometimes because it was just so traditional and people couldn’t think out of the box. I questioned things. Instead of my mother telling me, “No, you have to do it exactly the way they say it,” she actually encouraged me to think out of the box. It’s O.K. to question things. She was so supportive on that front. Q. How did that manifest itself as you started building your company? A. We wanted to find the right investors who supported our vision, and I didn’t want to go to V.C.'s on Sand Hill Road and start pitching people. I just didn’t want to do it. It’s not me. I love what I’m doing, and if somebody wants to join us as investors, they need to understand it without me making a standard pitch. So we would just have coffee with people in an informal environment and talk about what we are doing. We figured they’ll get it, and if they don’t, then they shouldn’t be our investors. This was the way we did it. It was very informal. Q. But even if it’s over coffee, you’re still pitching. A. That’s true, but it wasn’t in the forum that people are used to. It was important for me to say: “Look, I’m not going to try to package it in the way that you are used to. I’m not going to make up numbers for a PowerPoint and show you that the company is going to be worth X and make Y. I don’t have a crystal ball.” Even today, I keep saying to investors that I don’t have a crystal ball and I have no idea what’s going to happen in five years. I know who I am, I know what the company is, I know where we’re going. I have the power to control the day-to-day and what we are doing, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. It goes back to what my mother said when I was in school: “If you have another way to say it, just tell them you have an innovative way to demonstrate it.” And the investors have been fine with it. I told investors when I met them in the restaurant: “If you think that you’re going to be feeling that this is not right, and we’re not doing it the way you are used to, then just don’t join. It’s going to be very, very different.” And they actually liked it. It is different. Image Adi Tatarko, C.E.O. of Houzz, an architecture and interior design Web site, says she learned early in her company’s life not to tell potential investors “that the company is going to be worth X and make Y,” but to be clear about its vision. Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times Q. You have 110 employees now. How did you build the culture? A. My husband, Alon, and I are running this company together, and we said early on that we wanted to be a pretty flat organization. It started from the idea that people can be way more creative when they don’t have middle management. How many times do engineers feel frustrated because they are very talented and they have to report to a middle manager who isn’t necessarily talented? At some point, the engineer just says, “I don’t want to do it.” Or they feel that if they don’t get promoted to be that manager, then they’re not good enough. And it’s not true. You can be an amazing individual contributor, but not necessarily even like being a manager. So many times those middle-management positions can just block people from growing individually. So we actually built the company in a way that we don’t have middle managers at all. This also requires hiring people who are very mature and experienced, and who can take everything from coming up with a concept all the way to executing it by themselves, and be very creative, innovative and entrepreneurial. Q. But people need priorities, too. A. We set the goals for the entire company. It’s very important that everybody in the company understand where we are going, why we are doing what we are doing, and what other people in the company are doing. We all sit in one big open space together. We have company meetings every few weeks just to make sure everybody’s on the same page. So we talk about these goals, and they own their goals. It’s all about numbers and how do we get there and how do we achieve everything. They own this, and it works. It’s just amazing. You let people own something, and be entrepreneurs, and they thrive. You see people are moving between tables consulting with each other. And they are getting an immediate response from their work because things move really fast in a small company. Q. How do you hire? If you were interviewing me, how would that conversation go? A. I will first walk through your résumé and try to understand why you’ve made certain choices. I’m trying to understand what type of person you are, and the choices you made and the way you made them will tell me a lot about you. So it’s less about the type of jobs you did; it’s more about why. Why this company and not the other company? Why did you move from this one to the other one? So I’ll try to learn about you and who you are. I just in general want to understand what is it that will make you happy. So I will ask you, “What will make you thrive?” But I will also ask, “What will make you unhappy?” Q. In terms of the culture? A. Yes. And this is always very interesting, and you learn a lot about people. Sometimes they’re very surprised, because they don’t expect a negative question like, “What makes you unhappy at work?” But you hear great answers. Q. What’s a great answer for you? A. I like hearing that people don’t like to be micromanaged. They like to be responsible for something. People don’t like repetition. They don’t like boring things. When someone says, “I want to own something. I want you to trust me,” I love that.

Houzz
Adi Tatarko
Interior Design
Entrepreneurship
Management


Nationals Prepare to Hire Davey Johnson as Manager

Abstract: Davey Johnson is poised to take over as manager of the Washington Nationals , replacing Jim Riggleman, who abruptly resigned Thursday. Mike Rizzo, the Nationals’ general manager, said Saturday that Johnson had agreed to a deal but that there were a few technical items to figure out before the team could make an announcement Sunday. “There is no signed document yet,” Rizzo said. “So we want to make sure we have all our ducks in a row.” Johnson, who last managed in the majors in 2000, will take over on Monday when the Nationals begin an interleague series against the Los Angeles Angels. The interim manager John McLaren will run the team for Sunday’s series finale against the White Sox in Chicago and will be reassigned, Rizzo said. McLaren will assist Rizzo in scouting and other duties. “Kind of a mutual decision,” Rizzo said. “I think he had allegiances to Jim Riggleman and had some thoughts about really wanting to get out of uniform.” McLaren declined to discuss his future. Johnson, who has been a senior adviser with the Nationals since 2009, is expected to manage the team for the rest of the season and then be part of a search committee to select a manager for 2012. He could be a candidate. Johnson, 68, managed the Mets, the Dodgers, the Cincinnati Reds and the Baltimore Orioles over 14 seasons, compiling a 1,148-888 record. His 1986 Mets won the World Series, and his clubs finished first or second 11 times. He also led Team USA in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Riggleman resigned Thursday after the Nationals beat Seattle, unhappy that Rizzo declined to have a conversation about picking up his option for 2012. Riggleman’s departure was remarkable for its timing. The Nationals have been baseball’s hottest team, winning 12 of 13 games before a 3-0 loss Saturday to the White Sox in Chicago. The White Sox’ Jake Peavy (4-1) threw four dominant innings in his first career relief appearance after starter John Danks left in the second inning with a strained right oblique muscle. Peavy has 238 career starts. TIGERS 6, DIAMONDBACKS 0 Justin Verlander (10-3) of host Detroit struck out a career-high 14 batters and joined the Yankees’ C. C. Sabathia and the Atlanta Braves’ Jair Jurrjens as baseball’s 10-game winners. The Tigers pulled into a virtual tie with Cleveland atop the American League Central. PIRATES 6, RED SOX 4 Lyle Overbay hit a three-run homer as host Pittsburgh (39-37) won its fourth straight and spoiled the homecoming of Boston starter Tim Wakefield, who as a rookie helped the 1992 Pirates finish a game shy of the World Series. The crowd was 39,483, the largest in PNC Park history. BREWERS 11, TWINS 1 Host Milwaukee hit four homers, including Prince Fielder’s 21st, giving him 67 runs batted in, the most in the National League. Minnesota left fielder Delmon Young sprained his right ankle when he ran into the outfield wall in the fifth inning and was placed on the 15-day disabled list. ANGELS 6, DODGERS 1 Tyler Chatwood (5-4) pitched seven strong innings and his fellow rookie Mark Trumbo homered as the visiting Angels won their second straight in the Freeway Series. The Angels are 10-3 in their last 13 games at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers have lost 3 straight games and 8 of their last 11. GIANTS 1, INDIANS 0 Tony Sipp balked home the game’s only run with the bases loaded in the seventh, sending host San Francisco to its fourth straight victory. Sipp slightly flinched his left arm as he prepared to pitch to Emmanuel Burriss, allowing Miguel Tejada to score. Second baseman Cord Phelps made two errors in the inning. ATHLETICS 4, PHILLIES 1 Trevor Cahill (4-1) tossed three-hit ball into the eighth inning, and Adam Rosales homered as visiting Oakland kept Philadelphia’s Cole Hamels from his 10th victory. Cahill has allowed one or no runs in 10 starts. BRAVES 10, PADRES 1 Jair Jurrjens (10-3) pitched six strong innings at San Diego, lowering his National League-leading earned run average to 2.07. Atlanta had eight extra-base hits, including Dan Uggla’s three-run homer. RAYS 7, ASTROS 2 B. J. Upton homered and drove in two runs to back up Wade Davis (7-5) as Tampa Bay beat host Houston for its third straight win. IN OTHER GAMES Carlos Villanueva worked six solid innings and Juan Rivera hit a three-run homer as the Toronto Blue Jays beat the host Cardinals, 6-3, handing St. Louis its 12th loss in 16 games. ... The Cincinnati Reds’ Joey Votto hit his 100th and 101st career home runs to lead a 10-5 victory over the host Baltimore Orioles in a game that had nine homers. ... Chris Getz’s infield hit broke a 2-2 tie in the eighth inning as the host Kansas City Royals ended a six-game losing streak by beating the Chicago Cubs, 3-2. THUMB SURGERY LIKELY FOR INDIANS’ CHOO Cleveland right fielder Shin-Soo Choo broke his left thumb when he was hit by a pitch Friday and will probably have surgery, sidelining him for at least six weeks. He was placed on the disabled list, and Travis Buck was called up from Class AAA Columbus. AROUND THE MAJORS The Giants placed starter Jonathan Sanchez on the 15-day disabled list with tendinitis in his left biceps and activated starter Barry Zito, who has been out since he sprained his right foot April 16. ... Phillies starter Roy Oswalt has a mild bulging disk in his back and will probably not return until August.

Washington Nationals
Baseball
Hiring and Promotion
Johnson Davey
Riggleman Jim
Coaches and Managers


In Japan, Small Investors Take a Chance

Abstract: TOKYO — A global stock rout and fears of worldwide recession have sent millions of professional investors into panicked flight. But here a growing breed of contrarian investors sees opportunity after the Tokyo stock market reached a 26-year low recently. Since last month, Japan’s legions of household savers have poured into the market by the tens of thousands — many of them first-time investors — seizing the world financial crisis as the greatest buying opportunity in a generation. Sitting atop $15 trillion in personal savings, they are snapping up equities, currencies and even riskier investments like index futures, to some extent replacing foreign investors and even helping drive a limited rally in Tokyo’s beleaguered exchanges, say stock analysts. “The stock market rout has popularized stock trading like nothing before,” said Yuji Kusunoki, president of Rakuten Securities. “It’s a paradox, but all the grim news has actually ended up making the market seem more attractive.” Individuals have emerged as the most active buyers on the exchange. Japanese individual investors were net buyers of $10 billion worth of stocks on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last month, according to Tokyo-based Daiwa Securities, compared with $2.1 billion in September. Foreign institutional investors were net sellers of some $7 billion in stocks the same month, the brokerage firm said. And domestic stocks are also replacing foreign bonds and currencies as the investment of choice for Japanese individuals. Reiko Fujiwara, a 37-year-old suburban homemaker, spent $20,000 of her family’s savings last month to buy shares of a half-dozen big Japanese companies like Nissan. Though long reluctant to play the market, her uncertainty was overwhelmed by her belief that stocks had been drastically oversold. “I’m usually quite conservative,” Ms. Fujiwara said. “But prices were just so cheap, it looked better than leaving my money in the bank.” She says she has broken even since she started investing in early October. Since the failure of Lehman Brothers, brokerage firms have reported an unprecedented surge in the numbers of new accounts being opened. At Rakuten Securities, one of Japan’s biggest online brokerage firms, requests for applications to open accounts have nearly quadrupled in two months, to some 33,000 in October. About half of those applicants are first-time investors, ranging from university students to retirees, but most new investors are white-collar workers in their 30s and 40s. The firm said it has also seen rising applications for currency and index future accounts. This is not the first time Japan’s amateur investors have emerged as a financial force. A couple of years ago, Japanese homemakers trading currencies online became a powerful investing bloc, named Mrs. Watanabes, who drove down the Japanese yen. Now, small-time Japanese are piling into their home market, going against the global trend. In doing so, they are overcoming traditional inhibitions here against stock trading. A nation of craftsmen and manufacturers, Japan long looked down on finance because its wealth was not fueled by the sweat of the brow. The change has helped end a large outflow of yen overseas known as the yen -carry trade. For years, Japanese households poured money into overseas assets, where they could earn better returns than in Japan with its near-zero interest rates. But in October, net investment in domestic stock mutual funds surpassed investment in foreign bond funds for the first time in 27 months, according to Nomura Research Institute, a Tokyo-based consulting company. Many stock strategists say this influx has at least helped Tokyo’s markets rebound some 26 percent from last month’s lows, though they remain down 41 percent for the year. Interest has been particularly keen in blue chips like Sony, Nissan and Toyota, whose prices have fallen so far that they are often trading at below book value. That means that these companies’ buildings, equipment and other physical assets are worth more than the total of all their shares on the stock market. Stock analysts said the risks of buying in the teeth of a global recession were huge, and trying to call the bottom as stocks appear likely to face further declines is potentially costly. But they said the long time frame of most small investors, who tend to buy and hold shares for years, meant they may come out ahead eventually. “They are wading into a treacherous market,” said Katsuyasu Murata, deputy general manager of sales planning at Daiwa Securities, “but prices have fallen to the point that they make no sense.” The stock rush points to an unusual quirk of Japan’s stock markets: a growing tendency by individuals to pile in during stock market routs, no matter how dark the outlook may be. Japan had similar, though smaller, buying sprees after the 2000 bursting of the tech bubble and during the global sell-off after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Stock analysts say this habit comes from Japan’s long-stagnant stock markets, where major indexes have been stuck in a horizontal zigzag since the collapse of the nation’s stock market bubble in the late 1980s. Indeed, individual investors help keep the market stuck in its doldrums by selling when markets rise. “Japanese individuals are natural contrarians,” said Tsuyoshi Ogata, a spokesman for SBI Securities, a Tokyo-based online brokerage firm. “They only come in on the big dips” that come every half decade or so, he said. Mr. Ogata said applications for new accounts more than tripled in October from the previous by 2,741 a day. About 70 percent of those were beginners, he said. Interest is so intense that Daiwa even opened a new mutual fund last month, the Reevaluating Japanese Companies Fund, to cater to these investors, Mr. Murata of Daiwa said. He said the increase began early last month, when the benchmark Nikkei 225 index crossed the psychologically significant 10,000 yen line. Mrs. Fujiwara, the homemaker, said she had bought a small number of stocks once before — when the Japanese market took a dive seven years ago. She said she sold those shares three years later and quadrupled her investment. This time, she said, she decided to make a bigger investment after seeing bleak reports of the stock market sell-off on television. “I’ll hold these share for five or 10 years, if necessary,” she said. Her husband supports her, and is also trading online. Other individuals are seeing the current downturn as a chance to become day traders, seeking shorter-term profits. Hiroaki Mukai, a 35-year-old unemployed designer, followed a friend’s advice and last week began trading in Nikkei 225 index futures, a potentially lucrative but risky way to make bets on stock market moves. Mr. Mukai said he had never traded derivatives before. He said the index’s volatile moves, swinging as much as 10 percent in a day recently, gave him the opportunity to earn as much as $500 a day on his initial investment of $3,000. (He could lose too, of course.) “Regular office workers have no chance to get rich, and it’s hard to imagine Japan become much wealthier, either,” Mr. Mukai said. “I’m doing this to take care of myself, by myself.”

Japan
Stocks and Bonds
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Scientists Say the Clock of Aging May Be Reversible

Abstract: At the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., scientists are trying to get time to run backward. Biological time, that is. In the first attempt to reverse aging by reprogramming the genome, they have rejuvenated the organs of mice and lengthened their life spans by 30 percent. The technique, which requires genetic engineering, cannot be applied directly to people, but the achievement points toward better understanding of human aging and the possibility of rejuvenating human tissues by other means. The Salk team’s discovery, reported in the Thursday issue of the journal Cell, is “novel and exciting,” said Jan Vijg, an expert on aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Leonard Guarente, who studies the biology of aging at M.I.T., said, “This is huge,” citing the novelty of the finding and the opportunity it creates to slow down, if not reverse, aging. “It’s a pretty remarkable finding, and if it holds up it could be quite important in the history of aging research,” Dr. Guarente said. The finding is based on the heterodox idea that aging is not irreversible and that an animal’s biological clock can in principle be wound back to a more youthful state. The aging process is clocklike in the sense that a steady accumulation of changes eventually degrades the efficiency of the body’s cells. In one of the deepest mysteries of biology, the clock’s hands are always set back to zero at conception: However old the parents and their reproductive cells, a fertilized egg is free of all marks of age. Ten years ago, the Japanese biologist Shinya Yamanaka amazed researchers by identifying four critical genes that reset the clock of the fertilized egg. The four genes are so powerful that they will reprogram even the genome of skin or intestinal cells back to the embryonic state. Dr. Yamanaka’s method is now routinely used to change adult tissue cells into cells very similar to the embryonic stem cells produced in the first few divisions of a fertilized egg. Scientists next began to wonder if the four Yamanaka genes could be applied not just to cells in glassware but to a whole animal. The results were disastrous. As two groups of researchers reported in 2013 and 2014, the animals all died, some because their adult tissue cells had lost their identity and others from cancer. Embryonic cells are primed for rapid growth, which easily becomes uncontrolled. But at the Salk Institute, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte had been contemplating a different approach. He has long been interested in regeneration, the phenomenon in which certain animals, like lizards and fish, can regenerate lost tails or limbs. The cells near the lost appendage revert to a stage midway between an embryonic cell, which is open to all fates, and an adult cell, which is committed to being a particular type of cell, before rebuilding the missing limb. This partial reprogramming suggested to him that reprogramming is a stepwise process, and that a small dose of the Yamanaka factors might rejuvenate cells without the total reprogramming that converts cells to the embryonic state. With Alejandro Ocampo and other Salk researchers, Dr. Izpisua Belmonte has spent five years devising ways to deliver a nonlethal dose of Yamanaka factors to mice. The solution his team developed was to genetically engineer mice with extra copies of the four Yamanaka genes, and to have the genes activated only when the mice received a certain drug in their drinking water, applied just two days a week. The Salk team worked first with mice that age prematurely, so as to get quick results. “What we saw is that the animal has fewer signs of aging, healthier organs, and at the end of the experiment we could see they had lived 30 percent longer than control mice,” Dr. Izpisua Belmonte said. Image Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., has long been interested in regeneration, the phenomenon in which certain animals, like lizards and fish, can regenerate lost tails or limbs. Credit Concepcion Rodriguez Esteban/The Salk Institute for Biological Studies The team also saw improved organ health in normal mice but, because the mice are still living, could not yet say if longevity was extended. Dr. Izpisua Belmonte believes these beneficial effects have been obtained by resetting the clock of the aging process. The clock is created by the epigenome , the system of proteins that clads the cell’s DNA and controls which genes are active and which are suppressed. When an egg develops into a whole animal, the epigenome plays a critical role by letting a heart cell, say, activate just the genes specific to its role but switching off all the genes used by other types of cells. This process lets the embryo’s cells differentiate into all the various types of cells required by the adult body. The epigenome is also involved throughout life in maintaining each cell and letting it switch genes on and off as required for its housekeeping duties. The epigenome itself is controlled by agents that add or subtract chemical groups, known as marks, to its proteins. Only in the last few years have biologists come to realize that the state of the epigenome may be a major cause of aging. If the epigenome is damaged, perhaps by accumulating too many marks, the cell’s efficiency is degraded. Dr. Izpisua Belmonte sees the epigenome as being like a manuscript that is continually edited. “At the end of life there are many marks and it is difficult for the cell to read them,” he said. What the Yamanaka genes are doing in his mice, he believes, is eliminating the extra marks, thus reverting the cell to a more youthful state. The Salk biologists “do indeed provide what I believe to be the first evidence that partial reprogramming of the genome ameliorated symptoms of tissue degeneration and improved regenerative capacity,” Dr. Vijg said. But he cautioned the fast-aging mice used in the study might not be fully representative of ordinary aging. Dr. Guarente said it was more likely that the Yamanaka genes were not erasing the epigenomic marks directly, but rather were activating the genes which are responsible for the immense health and vitality of embryonic cells. This gene activation is a natural function of the Yamanaka factors. It is these embryonic pro-health genes that are rejuvenating the tissues in the mice, Dr. Guarente suggested, and causing changes in the epigenome through their activity. Thomas A. Rando, an expert on stem cells and aging at Stanford, said that it should be possible in theory to uncouple the differentiation program and the aging process, and that “if that’s what’s happening, this is the first demonstration of that.” Dr. Izpisua Belmonte said he was testing drugs to see if he could achieve the same rejuvenation as with the Yamanaka factors. The use of chemicals “will be more translatable to human therapies and clinical applications,” he said.

Salk Institute
Mice
Genetic engineering
Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte
Longevity
Genetics and Heredity
Cell Journal


Fiat Changes to Put Scion at Helm

Abstract: The Fiat Group on Tuesday announced a shake-up of its board that would elevate the young scion of the founding Agnelli dynasty to the head of the Italian automotive giant. Fiat is also expected to announce Wednesday a reorganization that will probably include a spinoff of its profitable automotive unit, which includes the flagship Fiat brand but not the luxury automakers Ferrari and Maserati. The chairman of the Fiat Group, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, will be replaced by John Elkann, 34, vice chairman and main representative of the Agnelli family, at a board meeting Wednesday. Mr. Elkann is chairman of the Agnelli family’s holding company, Exor, which owns 30.5 percent of Fiat. He is the grandson of the former chairman and patriarch Giovanni Agnelli, who died in 2003. And for some time, Mr. Elkann has been expected to succeed his grandfather at the helm of the family businesses. Mr. di Montezemolo will remain on the group’s board and as chairman of Ferrari, Fiat said. During a news conference Tuesday, Mr. di Montezemolo said his decision to step down was in no way related to the possibility of Fiat spinning off its automobile division, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. Mr. Elkann said he was sorry that his grandfather could not be there to see him take over the family business, ANSA reported. His relative youth aside, Mr. Elkann has charisma and strong family support, said Peter Cooke, professor of automotive management at the University of Buckingham in England. Mr. Elkann also has a close working relationship with Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of Fiat, having given him full support in implementing a turnaround plan. On Wednesday, Mr. Marchionne is expected to announce a five-year business plan that is likely to include a spinoff of Fiat Auto, which posted an operating profit last year and generated just over half of the group’s revenue. The announcement Wednesday will also include first-quarter earnings for Fiat Group, as well as details on perceived benefits from the tie-up with the automaker Chrysler , in which Fiat acquired a 20 percent stake and operational control in June 2009. The Fiat group employs 190,000 people globally. The Italian automaker intends to increase the Chrysler stake to 35 percent over the next 24 months. That could rise to 51 percent if Fiat exercises call options once Chrysler has paid down loans from the American government. The savings are expected to come via shared platforms, engines, distribution and sales as the United States economy recovers. Aside from its main auto arm, Fiat has units manufacturing trucks, power trains, components and agricultural machinery. Its Maserati and Ferrari units are run separately from the rest of the auto unit, which includes the Fiat brand, Lancia and Alfa Romeo. A spinoff of the automobile unit could transform the group into an industrial holding company if, as some analysts expect, it eventually pursues stock market listings of more of its core units. A sale of the auto unit would also give Fiat cash for international expansion and might lead to further alliances with others, analysts said.


A Happy Warrior in a Faltering Battle for Indonesian Gay Rights

Abstract: SURABAYA, Indonesia — After the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage last year, a leading Indonesian television station held a prime-time debate about whether this Muslim-majority democracy should do the same. On one side of the stage stood a conservative Muslim theologian and a member of Parliament, both of whom strongly rejected the idea that gay marriage was compatible with Islam and Indonesian culture. On the other side stood Dede Oetomo, the founder of Gaya Nusantara, the country’s longest-standing gay rights organization, and widely considered the godfather of Indonesia’s gay rights movement. Along with Yuli Rustinawati, a fellow activist, Mr. Oetomo, plump, unimposing and dressed in a bright orange batik shirt, cheerfully made the case that gay Indonesians deserved the same rights and protections as other Indonesian citizens. Mr. Oetomo said he agreed with his opponents that socially conservative Indonesia was not yet ready for same-sex marriage, but that was no reason to dismiss the prospect: “The law can change,” he said. “The culture certainly can change.” One year on, the debate that day already feels like something out of a different era. Since January, when Indonesia’s minister of higher education called for banning openly gay university students, Indonesia’s already chilly climate surrounding gays has turned outright hostile . Television content deemed by the government to promote homosexuality — which activists say would almost certainly include last year’s debate on gay marriage — has been banned. The defense minister called the gay rights movement a “proxy war” waged by the West to weaken Indonesia and more dangerous than a nuclear bomb . Conservative politicians are campaigning to amend the criminal code, which is up for its five-year review, to criminalize same-sex relations. “Putin is clapping his hands right now, saying, ‘The Muslims are imitating me,’” Mr. Oetomo, 62, said of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, a proponent of a conservative agenda . Mr. Oetomo has been something of an outsider all his life. He was born into a Chinese-Indonesian family in Pasuruan, a cosmopolitan sugar-refining town in East Java, in 1953, just four years after Indonesia won its independence from the Dutch. “My grandmother always said, ‘You’re Chinese and you should learn to speak Chinese,’” Mr. Oetomo said, laughing. “But she told me that in Dutch.” It was an era of great tumult in Indonesian history. His parents, whose schooling had been interrupted by the Japanese occupation of Java during World War II, stressed the importance of education to their son, whom they called their “little professor.” His father, a left-leaning nationalist and strong supporter of Indonesia’s founding president, Sukarno, bought him his first English-language book when he was 10, as well as Chinese and Soviet comic books exalting the proletariat. But Mr. Oetomo’s youth took a dark turn in 1965, when Suharto, the virulently anti-Communist general , began to seize power and started purging suspected Communists and Sukarno supporters. Though Mr. Oetomo’s father avoided arrest, life remained difficult for the family. The Suharto government associated Chinese with Communism, and for three decades banned the teaching of Chinese languages as well as Chinese festivals and religious practice. Mr. Oetomo grew up being taunted for his Chinese heritage. As a young man, Mr. Oetomo slowly realized he was a member of another minority, and embarked on a reading binge to understand his homosexuality. “The more I read, the more I realized nothing was wrong,” he said. His multicultural background and facility with languages led him in 1978 to Cornell University for graduate studies in linguistics. It was a liberating transition from Java in a number of ways. For the first time, he could honor his grandmother’s wishes and study Chinese. And it was liberating in another way, too: He could finally pursue his romantic life and take part in gay rights activism. “When I got to Cornell, it was like, ‘Oh my God!’” Mr. Oetomo said of the opportunities on offer. While there, he struck up a friendship with Benedict Anderson, an eminent scholar of Indonesia and nationalism, who encouraged Mr. Oetomo’s academic interest in the diverse sexual customs of the Indonesian archipelago, and would later write the introduction to Mr. Oetomo’s first book on Indonesian sexuality, “Giving Voice to the Voiceless.” At Cornell, Mr. Oetomo began publishing anonymous personal essays in Indonesian magazines where he expressed pride in his sexuality. He went on to found Lambda, Indonesia’s first gay rights organization, and after returning to Indonesia in 1984 began devoting much of his time to gay rights activism. “I got the idea from the U.S. that we should organize,” he said. In 1987, Mr. Oetomo transformed Lambda into a new organization, Gaya Nusantara, which published a magazine that documented Indonesian ethnicities’ rich sexual diversity, such as the Bugis of Sulawesi, whose culture recognized five genders. Mr. Oetomo speaks excitedly of discovering annals showing that one of the most important kings of Majapahit, a major Javanese kingdom, sometimes wore women’s clothing to court. “I discovered that one myself,” he said. “We have a rich tradition!” Through the years, the Indonesian government, uncomfortable with the subject and unwilling to grant rights to gay couples, grudgingly tolerated Mr. Oetomo’s activism. Every Sunday the house he shared with his partner in Surabaya, a large city in East Java, would turn into a community space, with workshops focused on H.I.V. prevention and other issues of concern. In 1999, after Indonesia’s transition to democracy, Mr. Oetomo began the first of several runs for Parliament and other public office on the ticket of a small left-wing party. Not surprisingly, he lost each time. As Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch and a longtime friend, said, “In Indonesia three things are considered political suicide: being Communist, being Chinese and being gay. Dede is at least two and a half of them.” Still, the campaigns, as well as a later unsuccessful one to join Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights, established him as the country’s best-known advocate for gay rights. “He has this stubborn mentality,” Mr. Harsono said. “He’s always lost but never gives up.” But now, with Islamist political parties pushing forward with a plan to criminalize same-sex relations, it often seems as though Mr. Oetomo’s life’s work in gay rights is about to be undone. This month Human Rights Watch released a report saying the rights of Indonesia’s sexual and gender minorities are under “ unprecedented attack .” Lini Zurlia, a 27-year-old gay rights activist in Jakarta, affectionately refers to Mr. Oetomo as “Oma,” the Dutch word for grandmother, as does the rest of the youngest generation of activists. She said her generation’s challenge was simply to pick up where he left off. “What Dede accomplished, what Dede struggled for, that’s what we have to carry on,” Ms. Zurlia said. And far from despairing, Mr. Oetomo sees this latest stage as part of the give and take of a young democracy struggling to balance progressive democratic values with conservative religious ones. “I already have all the tools I need,” he said, citing the amicus brief he is submitting to the Supreme Court on behalf of gay rights. For him this remains a time full of possibility, in which the controversy over gay rights may lead to broader exposure and acceptance. “I still go about my life as an openly gay man. I still have a rainbow flag on my car,” he said. “I still believe most Indonesians are actually nice to other people.”

Indonesia
Islam
Human Rights
Human Rights Watch
Gay and Lesbian LGBT
Surabaya Indonesia
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Java Indonesia