Google and Mountain View Recast Company-Town Model

Abstract: It is no secret that Silicon Valley is one long string of company-dominated towns. Hewlett-Packard and Palo Alto. Intel and Santa Clara. Apple and Cupertino. But within this web, there is a more intense intersection where the template for a 21st-century company town is being laid down. The company is Google . The town is Mountain View. In a sense, the end result is the same mix of plans, dreams and frustration, of civic-corporate boosterism and local concern about the giant in their midst that Henry Ford might have found familiar in Dearborn, Mich., a century ago. Indeed, a hint of friction crept into the Google-Mountain View union this month as the company moved to safeguard its option to expand along the city’s northern edge near the shores of San Francisco Bay. But if the debate over the company’s physical footprint harks back to traditional company-town tensions, that should not obscure that this new version of the old model has a modern accent. For Google, Mountain View is part home, part developable land and part beta test for the company. For the city, Google is part economic engine, part benefactor and a soon-to-be real-estate developer with an opportunistic eye for underused assets — like, say the landing strip at Moffett Field, a former Navy air station, where jets of Google executives now come and go. Perhaps uniquely, Google is also casting itself as a partner with NASA , now the proprietor of Moffett Field. This partnership is making Mountain View a stop along the virtual route to Mars and the real route to the Moon. “It’s a cool anomaly because the company-town tradition had basically died in the U.S.,” said Jerry Davis, a professor at the University of Michigan, who has written about the ties between companies and cities. “It’s interesting to see Google put their touches on the idea.” Historically, company towns have grown up around organizations with large manufacturing operations that can support thousands of local workers. To attract top executives to often less-than-ideal locales, the companies donated large sums to cultural institutions. “The main reason Ford put money into the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is to make it plausible to recruit executives to Detroit,” Professor Davis said. “It was a human-resources move as much as it was philanthropic.” But the technology companies that grew amid the striking scenery and balmy weather of the Bay Area have not felt the same imperative. As they grew, they turned inward, putting their resources into employee perks like stock options and free lunches. “Generally speaking, the high-tech companies in Silicon Valley are not as engaged in contributing to their local communities,” said Larry Stone, the Santa Clara County tax assessor. But it has been somewhat different in Mountain View, largely because of Google’s rapid growth. The company now employs 20,000 people worldwide, about half in the Bay Area, and the city’s tax base has grown in tandem with the company. In 2005, Google ranked 21st on a list compiled by county officials that measured the taxable value of local businesses’ property. In 2009, Google rose to the third spot, trailing Cisco Systems, in San Jose, and Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale. Over that period, the assessed value of its property has surged 481 percent to $739 million. Last year, as the recession deepened, the assessed value of land in Mountain View grew 6.2 percent, the highest rate in the county. “This is almost exclusively because of Google,” Mr. Stone said. Countywide growth was two-tenths of 1 percent. Ronit Bryant, the mayor of Mountain View, said of Google, “They bring in a considerable amount of money that goes into the general fund.” Google also put Mountain View on the international map by building a citywide free wireless service. It recently announced a plan to create similar networks in other cities. But Mountain View and the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field have also been good to Google. There is the airstrip. In addition, Google has leased excess space at local public schools, like Theuerkauf Elementary School, for its subsidized day-care centers. The most controversial Google plan so far is its possible expansion into the North Bayshore area, including residential towers of up to five stories. These would increase population density, and possibly traffic, in an area that has little of either. The proposal’s viability, in turn, rests in part on the long-term planning decisions now before the City Council. After some members of the Council expressed concern last week, Google pushed back. In a Feb. 11 letter to the city manager, Google’s vice president for real estate wrote, “We would encourage you to provide opportunities for the North Bayshore area to continue to be the center of sustainable development for Google’s HQ campus.” Reaction from city residents in the comment section of the local newspaper, The Mountain View Voice, fell into two camps. A comment under the name “a nony mouse” said: “Google is funding Mtn View police and firemen and schools and free internet. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” But another commenter calling himself “Thom, a resident of the Shoreline West neighborhood,” wrote: “This isn’t Google View, this is Mountain View. I urge the members of the council to tell Google we are not going to bend to their threats.” The North Bayshore development is one of two Google is considering; the other, further along, is for a residential, office and retail mix on federal, NASA Ames, land nearby. Construction is set to begin by 2013. The complex is a sign of Google’s attitude to Mountain View. In an interview, David Radcliffe, the Google vice president for real estate, said, “This is our headquarters, and we are committed here for the long term.” Sean Safford, a professor who studies organizations and markets at the University of Chicago, noted that Google was replicating traditional company-town practices by placing housing for its employees near its headquarters. “It will be so interesting to see how much of their human resources strategy is about creating a community feeling that goes beyond the offices,” Mr. Safford said. “Sometimes when you’re competing for workers and prominence, there’s a need to stick your chest out and say, ‘We’re the big dogs in town.’ ” The NASA campus also highlights some of Google’s unconventional pursuits. Where old-line companies directed their investments toward the arts, Google has aimed its millions at space. Every year, it earmarks money to support collaborations with NASA. One result has been Google Mars, which provides people with access to photos and information about the planet. In addition, Google has put up $30 million for a contest to land a robot on the Moon by 2014. “These technology entrepreneurs grew up watching ‘ Star Trek ’ and ‘Star Wars,’ and they want to make this real,” said S. Pete Worden, the director of NASA Ames. NASA has bet that other like-minded companies will come to Ames. The central idea is synergy between technology companies and NASA researchers as both delve into areas like energy, biotechnology and aeronautics. For Mr. Worden, the work done with Google, as well as projects with Microsoft and Cisco, represents a new chapter in the way that governments and companies work together, particularly if economic opportunities around space exploration emerge. “Google was the pathfinder,” Mr. Worden said. “But there will be more companies on this land.”

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


GoDaddy Sets Price Range for I.P.O.

Abstract: GoDaddy, the Internet services provider known for its provocative television commercials, said on Thursday that it planned to sell shares in its initial public offering priced between $17 and $19 a share. At the midpoint of that range, the I.P.O would value the company at $2.72 billion. GoDaddy is planning to sell 22 million Class A shares in the offering. The stock would trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GDDY. The holders of the Class B shares will have voting control over the company. Founded in 1997 as Jomax Technologies, GoDaddy has taken a long road to the public markets. The company first sought to go public in 2006, but an I.P.O. never came off. In December 2011, the private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company and Silver Lake Partners and the venture capital firm Technology Crossover Ventures acquired GoDaddy in a $2.25 billion deal. The company filed again to go public last June. Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., GoDaddy helps people and businesses set up Internet domains. It also offers website building, hosting and security and other services. Last year, it lost $143.3 million on revenue of $1.4 billion. Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are leading the underwriting of the I.P.O.


Synagogue Mourns Rabbi and His Wife

Abstract: A large crowd overflowed a synagogue in Westchester County on Sunday afternoon to mourn the deaths of a beloved local leader, Rabbi Jacob S. Rubenstein, and his wife, Deborah, who were killed early Saturday in a fire that consumed their home. Rabbi Rubenstein, 58, led Young Israel of Scarsdale, a vibrant modern Orthodox congregation actually located in New Rochelle, that, according to its Web site, grew from a tiny community formed by five families in 1970 to more than 400 families today. The sharp grief that followed the couple’s sudden deaths extended past synagogue members into nearby communities and beyond, where Rabbi Rubenstein was widely cherished as a wise and a compassionate leader. “We’ve lost the bedrocks of our community,” Jonathan Morgenstern, the synagogue’s assistant rabbi, told the hundreds of mourners who filled the temple on Weaver Street in Scarsdale. “We are all grief-stricken. They were a great couple, a great team. It was a Sabbath of darkness, and now it’s a Sunday of pain.” Mr. Rubenstein was born in Rosenheim, Germany, and lived in Memphis, Chicago, Israel and Boston before moving to New Rochelle, where he became leader of the Young Israel synagogue 24 years ago. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a master’s degree from Harvard, and collected numerous leadership and religious awards. He also led several religious organizations, serving as president of the Rabbinical Council of America from 1997 to 1999, and as national rabbinic chairman of the UJA-Federation of New York. Fire officials believe the blaze at the couple’s home, at 43 Baraud Road in New Rochelle, was sparked by a lightning bolt that struck around 2:30 a.m. on Saturday. The street is quiet and the fire went unnoticed for nearly an hour, until it was too late to save the house or the couple inside, said New Rochelle’s fire commissioner and chief, Raymond Kiernan. The Rubensteins had four children and four grandchildren, none of whom were in the home at the time of the fire. The fire was reported at 3:30 a.m., Chief Kiernan said, and firefighters arrived moments later to find the couple’s ranch-style home nearly swallowed by leaping flames. The windows were blown out, the roof had collapsed into the first floor, and the eaves were starting to drop. Chief Kiernan said his heart sank when he saw that a car was in the driveway. “We throw around the term ‘fully engulfed’ a lot. This truly was,” Chief Kiernan said. Chief Kiernan said he believed that lightning ignited the roof and that the fire burned downward through the attic, collapsed the upper ceiling, raced through the living room and trapped Mrs. Rubenstein near the master bedroom, and Rabbi Rubenstein inside the bedroom. Soon after arriving, the firefighters found Mrs. Rubenstein in the hallway outside the bedroom and later found Rabbi Rubenstein between a bed and a wall. Both had died by the time they were found. Their home was where the synagogue had been founded nearly 40 years ago, before eventually moving to its current location. On Sunday, the synagogue was filled to its capacity of 2,600 for the funeral, according to a security official there, and another couple of hundred people gathered outside, many dressed in modest, dark clothes. In their eulogies, friends and family members described the Rubensteins as an adventurous, deeply committed couple who fell in love and married after meeting at college in Jerusalem nearly 40 years ago. They had recently taken a sabbatical, friends said, and embarked on road trips, swimming with dolphins in Florida and driving along the coast of California. “Jake and Debbie were the best of all of us. They made us laugh; they taught us how to live,” Bob Schulman, a rabbinical classmate and family friend, said in his eulogy. “They needed to go together because they couldn’t live life without each other.”

Synagogues
Rabbis
Jews
Death and Dying
Westchester County (NY)


Annoyed With Flying? Don’t Get Mad, Get Advice

Abstract: THE list of things that annoy me when traveling is lengthy. It includes: People who crank back their coach seats into your precious space, ramming the service tray into your celiac plexus. Gate agents who use that fancy rope to mark off the boarding lane with the nice carpet for elite-status passengers, then ceremoniously close the lane to make hoi polloi walk on the adjacent dirty gray carpet. Those constant, grating security announcements threatening you with arrest at the grandly named George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Hang on a minute. We could be here all day if I detail all my complaints. And I’m sure you have plenty, too, which I invite you to share. We’re crammed into a shrunken air travel system that strains to handle the demand. Ahead lie delays, cancellations, frustrations. On occasion, some of us are steaming like Ralph Kramden at the circumstances, at our fellow humans, at the airlines. But rather than complaining, why don’t I seek out some ameliorating advice or practical tips? So I called Amy Alkon, the Advice Goddess, as she bills herself in her syndicated column. She is the author of two books: “I See Rude People: One Woman’s Battle to Beat Some Manners Into Impolite Society,” and the recently published “Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say ...” ( a word that this publication is too polite to use ). Ms. Alkon has gripes, of course. A few years ago, she had a well-publicized run-in with a Transportation Security Administration agent who, Ms. Alkon asserted, became too touchy-feely during a pat-down. And she is annoyed by gate attendants and flight attendants who do not enforce rules on carry-on sizes, and “turn their backs on any roll-aboard smaller than a sarcophagus.” Still, she is very supportive of flight attendants and gate agents who have to manage the endless circus, which most do with aplomb, though some do not. “When I was researching the book, someone suggested, ‘Bring candy for the people at the gates and the flight attendants’ — but I ended up not including that because I was worried that someone might think of trying to poison them,” Ms. Alkon said. “Still, since we’re thrown in with strangers, isn’t it nicer to have someone think, ‘Oh my God, someone cared about me!’ ” she said. “Being nice to each other is really not that hard. When you’re stuck in some unpleasantry in flying and you reach out and do something kind, you’ll feel better about that horrible situation. It helps to get outside of yourself.” Image Credit Chi Birmingham I especially like her suggestion that passengers simply say hello to the flight attendant when boarding. “If you walk down the street and you say hello to someone you pass, and if they don’t reply, that feels really bad,” she said. “It’s a dignity violation. Flight attendants, they have to say hello like 100 or 200 times each flight, and how many people ignore them as they say hello at the door? Just say hello back! Or as a flight attendant said, ‘Even just give me a man-nod.’ ” Getting outside yourself is also the gist of Jason Barger’s advice. I spoke with Mr. Barger some years ago as he was publishing his book on traveling, “Step Back From the Baggage Claim: Change the World, Start at the Airport,” which has become the foundation of a consulting and motivational-speaking business. No matter what is thrown at you in travel situations, he suggests, employ serenity, grace and cheer. They’re invaluable personally, but also contagious. In stressful travel situations, he said, “you just watch people’s blood boil, and it throws them off their routine. Part of our natural response as humans is, we try to control that situation, and in travel, so much is out of our control. “We’re running so quickly, so caught up in the moment, in that frustration. But we should remember to look instead at where we’re going, not just where we are. I tell a story about a surfing instructor who explains to people surfing for the first time: Where you look is where you go. If you look down at the wave crashing around you, at your doubts and fears, you are going to go into the water. But if you want to learn to surf, you’ve got to keep your eye on the shoreline, and that’s where you’ll go.” In tough situations, he said, “even if I’m frustrated and absolutely annoyed, even if this is unfair and shouldn’t be happening to me, I still have a choice: Where I look is where I go. The trick is to step back and remember, hey, I can’t control everything, but I can control what I ought to be contributing right now to this environment.” Good advice, and I’ll remember it. But I’m contemplating my next connection through Houston, where I am always braced against that cackling, incessant security announcement threatening arrest. I’ve handled a lot of stressful situations in travel, including a midair collision over the Amazon , but that Houston announcement turns me into, yes, Ralph Kramden on a slow burn. “I know exactly what you mean,” said Mr. Barger, a frequent flier. “When something annoys you like that, you might think: ‘What’s my strategy? Can I physically get away from this?’ Well, I guess in that case you can’t, because it does actually follow you everywhere.” His advice: “Try smiling. They say it releases endorphins.”

Amy Alkon
Jason Barger
Etiquette
Airlines,airplanes
Business travel


Chief of Dentsu, Japanese Ad Agency, to Resign Over Employee’s Suicide

Abstract: TOKYO — In the months before she jumped to her death from a company dormitory last Christmas, a young employee at a Japanese advertising agency told friends on Twitter of enduring harassment and grueling long hours on the job. “They’re making me work Saturdays and Sundays again,” the employee, Matsuri Takahashi, 24, wrote in one post. “I seriously want to end it all.” “It’s 4 a.m. My body’s trembling,” she said in another. “I’m going to die. I’m so tired.” On Wednesday, the president and chief executive of Ms. Takahashi’s agency, Dentsu, one of the world’s largest advertising firms, said he would resign to take responsibility for her death, as well as the larger problem of dangerously long work hours at the agency that has been laid bare in its wake. Before her suicide, Ms. Takahashi was putting in more than 100 hours of overtime a month, according to an investigation by labor authorities, much of it unreported and unpaid. Japan has struggled for decades to tame the issue of excessive working hours and its consequences, including karoshi, the Japanese word for death from overwork, which gained currency in the 1980s. Ms. Takahashi’s death in 2015 has led to a new bout of soul-searching. It has also damaged Dentsu’s reputation and brought scrutiny from labor authorities and prosecutors. “We are taking this seriously,” the Dentsu president, Tadashi Ishii, said at a news conference. “I offer my heartfelt apology.” He said he would tender his resignation to Dentsu’s board next month but would remain in his post until March to give the company time to choose a replacement. Working late has long been seen in Japan as a badge of corporate loyalty, repaid by employers in the form of ironclad job security. Both the security and the loyalty that many workers feel have eroded in recent years, as cultural norms have shifted and Japan’s economy has struggled. But the problem of health-threatening overwork has persisted. In a government report on karoshi published in October, nearly a quarter of companies surveyed said some employees were working more than 80 hours of overtime a month. The true percentage is probably higher, since the survey relied on self-reporting. Dentsu is known as a particularly demanding employer. A president in the 1950s urged its employees to work single-mindedly to complete tasks and satisfy clients, “even if it kills you.” The company continued to print the exhortation in training materials until after Ms. Takahashi’s death, when it had it removed, according to multiple Japanese news reports. In the aftermath of the suicide, Dentsu is trying to change its culture. The company has begun turning off the lights at its headquarters at 10 p.m., as a signal for employees to go home. It also now requires workers to take at least five days off every six months. Its employees are entitled to more vacation days than that but, fearing censure from bosses and colleagues, many never take them, a common phenomenon in Japan. After examining the circumstances of Ms. Takahashi’s death, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare ruled that its underlying cause was overwork, a finding that entitled her family to compensation. Ms. Takahashi was not alone in working punishing hours, the ministry said. Its investigators searched Dentsu’s offices in November and found what they said was evidence that Dentsu had underreported overtime hours worked by several dozen other employees. The ministry has referred the case to prosecutors as a potential violation of labor laws. A separate criminal investigation is not yet complete, and no charges have been filed. Ms. Takahashi told her Twitter followers and family members that she not only worked too much, but that she was bullied by her bosses. The harassment, she said, took the form of faultfinding about her work and sexist comments about her appearance. As her exhaustion deepened, she said on Twitter, her supervisors chided her for coming to work with “messy hair and bloodshot eyes” and told her she had “no femininity.” Shoichi Nakamoto, Dentsu’s deputy president, acknowledged at the news conference that “there was power harassment by supervisors.” “Work was sometimes assigned inappropriately,” he said, “with emails early in the morning and the middle of the night.”


Lemieux Unhappy With Islanders’ Punishments

Abstract: Two Islanders were suspended for a total of 13 games and the team was fined $100,000, yet it was Mario Lemieux , a Pittsburgh Penguins co-owner, who was most upset by the punishments handed out by the N.H.L. in the wake of the teams’ brawl-filled game Friday night. Lemieux, a Hall of Fame player, said in a strongly worded statement Sunday that the league was not tough enough on the Islanders after Friday’s game, which included 10 ejections, 15 fighting majors, 20 misconducts and 346 penalty minutes — not far off the N.H.L. record of 419. Lemieux called the game a “travesty.” He added: “It was painful to watch the game I love turn into a sideshow like that. The N.H.L. had a chance to send a clear and strong message that those kinds of actions are unacceptable and embarrassing to the sport. It failed.” The league announced late Saturday that Islanders forward Trevor Gillies would be suspended for nine games, forward Matt Martin would be suspended for four games, and the team would be fined $100,000 for its players’ actions in a 9-3 victory at Nassau Coliseum. The N.H.L. also suspended Pittsburgh forward Eric Godard, a former Islanders enforcer, for 10 games for leaving the bench to assist Penguins goaltender Brent Johnson, who fought Islanders forward Micheal Haley. Islanders General Manager Garth Snow refused to criticize the N.H.L. and did not seem the slightest bit upset at his team’s tactics. He only wondered why the Penguins were not fined, too. “We came to play hockey,” Snow said in a news conference Sunday before the Islanders won at Buffalo in overtime, 7-6. “Obviously, there were a lot of things that happened in the course of the game. I’m proud of the way the team competed, and I’m going to support my guys.” In addition to a heavyweight in Godard, the Penguins also have Matt Cooke, a forward who has developed a reputation around the league as a dirty player and is serving a four-game suspension for a check from behind last week . In the statement, Lemieux said: “We must make it clear that those kinds of actions will not be tolerated and will be met with meaningful disciplinary action. If the events relating to Friday night reflect the state of the league, I need to rethink whether I want to be a part of it.” Lemieux spoke out several times against cynical tactics during his illustrious N.H.L. career. In 1992, he called the N.H.L. a “garage league” because of the obstruction tactics then allowed, and in 1997, he retired for three seasons in part over his frustrations. Pittsburgh Coach Dan Bylsma did not comment. Colin Campbell, the league’s senior executive vice president for hockey operations, said in a statement announcing the punishments that Gillies was suspended for delivering a blow to Penguins forward Eric Tangradi’s head, then punching him several times when he was down. “The Islanders also must bear some responsibility for their failure to control their players,” Campbell said. Martin was suspended because he punched Pittsburgh forward Max Talbot from behind in the second period. Talbot might have been a marked man; his unpenalized hit on Islanders forward Blake Comeau in a 3-0 Pittsburgh victory Feb. 2 resulted in a concussion for Comeau. In addition, Islanders goaltender Rick DiPietro was injured late in that game when he was dropped with one punch by Johnson . Haley fought Johnson on Friday immediately after fighting Talbot in the third period. Haley received a game misconduct but was not fined or suspended. Snow said Sunday: “It was nothing premeditated. It was a division game, and every game has its unique nuances.” Snow said he was surprised that the Penguins were not fined after Friday’s game, but he does not plan to appeal the decision. The Islanders (20-29-7) are to play the Penguins on April 8 in their final regular-season home game — a contest that has potential for more fireworks. Taking a poke at Godard and Pittsburgh, Snow said, “I’m very proud that our team showed restraint, that no one left the bench to create a bench-clearing brawl.”

Pittsburgh Penguins
Gillies Trevor
Martin Matt
New York Islanders
Fines (Penalties)
Hockey Ice
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Lemieux Mario


A Western Water War Slows Some Solar Projects

Abstract: AMARGOSA VALLEY, Nev. — In a rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a bit of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer, Solar Millennium, announced plans to build two large solar farms here that would harness the sun to generate electricity, creating hundreds of jobs. But then things got messy. The company revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 percent of this desert valley’s available water. Now Solar Millennium finds itself in the midst of a new-age version of a Western water war. The public is divided, pitting some people who hope to make money selling water rights to the company against others concerned about the project’s impact on the community and the environment. “I’m worried about my well and the wells of my neighbors,” George Tucker, a retired chemical engineer, said on a blazing afternoon. Here is an inconvenient truth about renewable energy: It can sometimes demand a huge amount of water. Many of the proposed solutions to the nation’s energy problems, from certain types of solar farms to biofuel refineries to cleaner coal plants, could consume billions of gallons of water every year. “When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael E. Webber, an assistant professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies the relationship between energy and water. Conflicts over water could shape the future of many energy technologies. The most water-efficient renewable technologies are not necessarily the most economical, but water shortages could give them a competitive edge. In California, solar developers have already been forced to switch to less water-intensive technologies when local officials have refused to turn on the tap. Other big solar projects are mired in disputes with state regulators over water consumption. To date, the flashpoint for such conflicts has been the Southwest, where dozens of multibillion-dollar solar power plants are planned for thousands of acres of desert. While most forms of energy production consume water, its availability is especially limited in the sunny areas that are otherwise well suited for solar farms. At public hearings from Albuquerque to San Luis Obispo, Calif., local residents have sounded alarms over the impact that this industrialization will have on wildlife, their desert solitude and, most of all, their water. Joni Eastley, chairwoman of the county commission in Nye County, Nev., which includes Amargosa Valley, said at one hearing that her area had been “inundated” with requests from renewable energy developers that “far exceed the amount of available water.” Many projects involve building solar thermal plants, which use cheaper technology than the solar panels often seen on roofs. In such plants, mirrors heat a liquid to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. As in a fossil fuel power plant, that steam must be condensed back to water and cooled for reuse. The conventional method is called wet cooling. Hot water flows through a cooling tower where the excess heat evaporates along with some of the water, which must be replenished constantly. An alternative, dry cooling, uses fans and heat exchangers, much like a car’s radiator. Far less water is consumed, but dry cooling adds costs and reduces efficiency — and profits. The efficiency problem is especially acute with the most tried-and-proven technique, using mirrors arrayed in long troughs. “Trough technology has been more financeable, but now trough presents a separate risk — water,” said Nathaniel Bullard, a solar analyst with New Energy Finance, a London research firm. That could provide opportunities for developers of photovoltaic power plants, which take the type of solar panels found on residential rooftops and mount them on the ground in huge arrays. They are typically more expensive and less efficient than solar thermal farms but require a relatively small amount of water, mainly to wash the panels. In California alone, plans are under way for 35 large-scale solar projects that, in bright sunshine, would generate 12,000 megawatts of electricity, equal to the output of about 10 nuclear power plants. Their water use would vary widely. BrightSource Energy’s dry-cooled Ivanpah project in Southern California would consume an estimated 25 million gallons a year, mainly to wash mirrors. But a wet-cooled solar trough power plant barely half Ivanpah’s size proposed by the Spanish developer Abengoa Solar would draw 705 million gallons of water in an area of the Mojave Desert that receives scant rainfall. One of the most contentious disputes is over a proposed wet-cooled trough plant that NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of the utility giant FPL Group, plans to build in a dry area east of Bakersfield, Calif. NextEra wants to tap freshwater wells to supply the 521 million gallons of cooling water the plant, the Beacon Solar Energy Project, would consume in a year, despite a state policy against the use of drinking-quality water for power plant cooling. Mike Edminston, a city council member from nearby California City, warned at a hearing that groundwater recharge was already “not keeping up with the utilization we have.” The fight over water has moved into the California Legislature, where a bill has been introduced to allow renewable energy power plants to use drinking water for cooling if certain conditions are met. “By allowing projects to use fresh water, the bill would remove any incentives that developers have to use technologies that minimize water use,” said Terry O’Brien, a California Energy Commission deputy director. NextEra has resisted using dry cooling but is considering the feasibility of piping in reclaimed water. “At some point if costs are just layered on, a project becomes uncompetitive,” said Michael O’Sullivan, a senior vice president at NextEra. Water disputes forced Solar Millennium to abandon wet cooling for a proposed solar trough power plant in Ridgecrest, Calif., after the water district refused to supply the 815 million gallons of water a year the project would need. The company subsequently proposed to dry cool two other massive Southern California solar trough farms it wants to build in the Mojave Desert. “We will not do any wet cooling in California,” said Rainer Aringhoff, president of Solar Millennium’s American operations. “There are simply no plants being permitted here with wet cooling.” One solar developer, BrightSource Energy, hopes to capitalize on the water problem with a technology that focuses mirrors on a tower, producing higher-temperature steam than trough systems. The system can use dry cooling without suffering a prohibitive decline in power output, said Tom Doyle, an executive vice president at BrightSource. The greater water efficiency was one factor that led VantagePoint Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, to invest in BrightSource. “Our approach is high sensitivity to water use,” said Alan E. Salzman, VantagePoint’s chief executive. “We thought that was going to be huge differentiator.” Even solar projects with low water consumption face hurdles, however. Tessera Solar is planning a large project in the California desert that would use only 12 million gallons annually, mostly to wash mirrors. But because it would draw upon a severely depleted aquifer, Tessera may have to buy rights to 10 times that amount of water and then retire the pumping rights to the water it does not use. For a second big solar farm, Tessera has agreed to fund improvements to a local irrigation district in exchange for access to reclaimed water. “We have a challenge in finding water even though we’re low water use,” said Sean Gallagher, a Tessera executive. “It forces you to do some creative deals.” In the Amargosa Valley, Solar Millennium may have to negotiate access to water with scores of individuals and companies who own the right to stick a straw in the aquifer, so to speak, and withdraw a prescribed amount of water each year. “There are a lot of people out here for whom their water rights are their life savings, their retirement,” said Ed Goedhart, a local farmer and state legislator, as he drove past pockets of sun-beaten mobile homes and luminescent patches of irrigated alfalfa. Farmers will be growing less of the crop, he said, if they decide to sell their water rights to Solar Millennium. “We’ll be growing megawatts instead of alfalfa,” Mr. Goedhart said. While water is particularly scarce in the West, it is becoming a problem all over the country as the population grows. Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, predicted that as intensive renewable energy development spreads, water issues will follow. “When we start getting 20 percent, 30 percent or 40 percent of our power from renewables,” Mr. Kammen said, “water will be a key issue.”

Water
Nevada
BrightSource Energy
Solar Energy
Alternative and Renewable Energy
Energy and Power


Seventeen Transgender Killings Contrast With Growing Visibility

Abstract: The brutal death of a 36-year-old transgender woman in Kansas City, Mo., is the latest in what activists are calling an alarming rise in anti-transgender violence. Tamara Dominguez, who was reported to have migrated from Mexico to escape discrimination, was hit by a vehicle early Saturday and run over several times, making her the 17th transgender person reported killed this year, according to data compiled by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Most of the victims have been black or Hispanic. By comparison, 12 killings of transgender people were recorded by the coalition in 2014, said Sue Yacka, a spokeswoman. Transgender activists believe the killing in Kansas City was motivated by Ms. Dominguez’s gender identity. Randall Jenson, a representative for the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project who has been working with Ms. Dominguez’s family, characterized her death as an “intentional act” meant to send a message. And those are just the killings that are reported, said Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. Mr. Hayashi said that recent media coverage had brought increased visibility to each victim, but that the killings reflected an “ongoing” state of crisis for the community. Activists say transgender women of color, who are often poor, are most at risk of violence. Hoping to increase visibility for the killings, transgender activists and allies are sharing pictures of victims as their deaths are reported. Also alarming to advocates is that several of the 17 people killed have been slain just this summer. Other recent cases include India Clarke , a 25-year-old black transgender woman who was found dead in July from a gunshot in Tampa Bay, Fla.; Kenton Haggard, a 66-year-old who activists say was transgender , and who was killed in a stabbing in July in Fresno, Calif., that was caught on video; and Kandis Capri, a 35-year-old transgender woman, who was shot and killed in Phoenix on Aug. 11. Laverne Cox, the transgender actress, said in a statement on Thursday that a lack of national outrage over the killings “adds insult to injury.” She said transgender women of color exist at the “intersection of multiple forms of violence which are also about race, misogyny, poverty and a system that reinforces the fallacy that we shouldn’t exist and don’t exist.” A suspect was arrested and charged with Ms. Clarke’s killing after the police found DNA evidence and a condom that contained fluid in her car. There have been no arrests in Ms. Capri’s death, according to ABC 15 in Phoenix, but her family is seeking a hate crime investigation. And authorities say there is no update in Kenton Haggard’s case. Mr. Hayashi said that transgender people faced a system of discrimination — which includes lack of access to health care, education, housing and job resources — that can result in people who put themselves in “really vulnerable positions as far as the violence that we’re seeing.” The organization receives about 2,500 calls a year from transgender people and their families seeking assistance, Mr. Hayashi said. The demand often outweighs the resources. Mr. Jenson, of the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project, said that lengthy police investigations, sometimes carried out in a way that activists feel lack dignity and thoroughness, had sometimes led to tension between officers and the communities they serve. “We get told by agencies that we’re hindering the process or hurting our communities because they don’t understand hate crimes or how it could work,” Mr. Jenson said. “It’s not a community’s job to have to educate themselves on such a nuanced system and hate crime laws that do not actually work.” Tension has also occurred over how the gender of a person who either publicly or privately identifies as transgender is reflected in a police report: In Tampa, Kansas City and Fresno, the police referred to Ms. Clarke, Ms. Dominguez and Kenton Haggard by their legal — male — names, which offends activists. And questions have been raised, particularly in the case of Kenton Haggard, over whether the victim publicly identified as transgender at all , though activists include the killing in the summer’s count of fatalities. Lt. Joe Gomez, the public information officer for the Fresno police, said gender was not a factor in efforts to investigate the death. On Thursday, he said that criticism of the police had been “blown out of proportion.” “It’s just not an issue in this case,” he said. “We are hoping the community comes forward with more information on the suspect.”

Hate crime
Transgender,Gender Dysphoria
Murders and Homicides


A Police Roll-Call Reminder: Women May Go Topless

Abstract: In the cold of February, as New York City police officers gathered for their daily orders at roll call, they were given a rather unusual command, for both its timing and its substance: If they happened upon a topless woman, they were not to arrest her. The command was read at 10 consecutive roll calls. Each of the city’s 34,000 officers, in theory, got the message: For “simply exposing their breasts in public,” women are guilty of no crime. Whether any officer encountered such a brave-hearted, bare-chested soul is not clear, nor is the reason for the Police Department’s concern about such matters in the dead of winter. One possible explanation lies in the person of Holly Van Voast, a Bronx photographer and performance artist known for baring her breasts . The order was disclosed in an official memorandum contained in a federal lawsuit Ms. Van Voast filed on Wednesday against the city and the department. The memo makes clear that bare-breasted women should not be cited for public lewdness, indecent exposure or any other section of the penal law. Even if the topless display draws a lot of attention, officers are to “give a lawful order to disperse the entire crowd and take enforcement action” against those who do not comply, the memo says. “Whether the individuals are clothed is not a factor in making a determination about whether the above-mentioned crowd conditions exist.” The suit lists 10 episodes in 2011 and 2012 in which the police detained, arrested or issued summonses to Ms. Van Voast, 46, for baring her breasts at sites that included the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal, in front of a Manhattan elementary school, on the A train and outside a Hooters restaurant in Midtown. That last episode, the suit says, ended with her being taken by the police to a nearby hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Each complaint against her was dismissed or dropped, her lawyers said, for one simple reason: The state’s highest court ruled more than two decades ago that baring one’s chest in public — for noncommercial activity — is perfectly legal for a woman, as it is for a man. Image Holly Van Voast, a performance artist and photographer, was in character as a “topless paparazzo” in October at the Columbus Day parade. She has often exercised her legal right to go shirtless. Credit Mario Tama/Getty Images But when Ms. Van Voast’s top came off again this year, her lawyers said, what had seemed to be an annual rite of spring did not follow. “I was aware that they stopped telling her to put a shirt on, stopped arresting her, stopped carting her off to mental institutions,” Ronald L. Kuby, one of her lawyers, said. “But I was not aware why.” The memo does not allude to its origin, and a department spokeswoman declined to discuss what had precipitated it. The spokeswoman, Inspector Kim Y. Royster, said such memos were “periodically circulated to remind personnel of our policies.” She added that it “comports with the N.Y.S. Court of Appeals ruling on taking enforcement action against individuals for public nudity.” The memo’s language is as clear as it is legalistic. Officers “shall not enforce any section of law, including penal law sections 245.00 (public lewdness) and 245.01 (exposure of a person) against female individuals who are simply exposing their breasts in public.” Katherine Rosenfeld, a lawyer at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady who is also representing Ms. Van Voast, saw a direct connection between the memo and her client’s public performances, often done in the character of a mustachioed “topless paparazzo” called Harvey Van Toast . “It establishes that they’ve been in error in all the times that they’ve charged her,” she said. Ms. Van Voast, in her lawsuit, is seeking compensation from the city as well as punitive damages from several named and unnamed officers for her treatment, which the suit alleges constituted civil rights violations. The memo reminds the officers that there are still times when they can detain, arrest or give tickets to women or men for being indecent in public — “if the actions of any individual rise to the level of a lewd act (e.g. masturbation, simulated sexual act), regardless of whether the individual is clothed above their waist,” or if the person is naked below the waist “and is not entertaining or performing in a play, exhibition, show or entertainment.” Of a dozen patrol officers from precincts around the city interviewed on Wednesday, nearly all correctly cited the law on toplessness, though none would describe roll call discussions. Each declined to be quoted by name, citing departmental policy. “It was told to us,” one said. “But I don’t remember if it was at roll call or in a conversation like this.” Another said he remembered hearing last summer that “it’s legal to be topless if you’re a man or a woman.” “I thought you had to have body paint,” a female officer said. “No,” the first replied. “You don’t need that.”

Holly Van Voast
Nudity
Civil Rights
NYPD
NYC


Rangel Tries Adam Clayton Powell’s Approach

Abstract: The veteran congressman appeared before a House ethics panel that held his political future in its hands, but refused to testify because he claimed his constitutional protections had been abridged. Taken aback, members on the committee rebuked him, hurriedly adjourned behind closed doors and emerged vowing to complete their hearing with or without him. The aggrieved congressman was Adam Clayton Powell Jr. , on Feb. 8, 1967. On Monday, in a striking replay, Representative Charles B. Rangel followed in the footsteps of Mr. Powell, the Harlem lawmaker he defeated in a Democratic primary 40 years ago. Mr. Rangel’s election in 1970 began a Congressional career capped by his ascendancy to dean of New York’s delegation — he was re-elected to his 21st term this month — and to his election as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Facing ethics charges for financial improprieties and having stepped down from his committee chairmanship this year, Mr. Rangel has repeatedly demanded a speedy public hearing. He defiantly rejected a plea bargain with the ethics committee that might have resulted in a mild letter of reprimand. On Monday, he finally got his day in court, but it was brief and devoid of any rebuttal. “I respectfully withdraw from these proceedings,” Mr. Rangel declared, telling the committee that after spending $2 million on legal fees during a two-year investigation, he could no longer afford a lawyer. After he left, the committee heard evidence that his fund-raising and personal finances had violated Congressional rules. Mr. Rangel has acknowledged inadvertent bookkeeping errors and oversights, but said his actions were never intended for his personal benefit. In 1967, a special House committee was considering whether to seat Mr. Powell after his re-election because he was facing four contempt of court citations in New York that began with a defamation suit against him and questions about his conduct as head of a House committee that he led until he was removed earlier that year. Unlike Mr. Rangel, Mr. Powell was amply represented before the committee: he was accompanied by seven lawyers who sought to tie the committee’s hands with five procedural motions, which were rejected. Refusing at first to be sworn in, Mr. Powell finally agreed to answer some perfunctory questions, but balked when he was asked about the contempt citations and his committee chairmanship. Asked whether Mr. Powell’s refusal to testify had helped or hurt his chances of being seated, the committee chairman, Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn, replied, “It certainly won’t help him.” The House later voted to “exclude” Mr. Powell from taking his seat in Congress. “If just once, Adam had come in and said, ‘I made a mistake,’ things might have turned out differently,” said Representative Sam Gibbons, a Florida Democrat who led the revolt against Mr. Powell. “Instead, he called us all hypocrites and went off to Bimini .” Mr. Powell won another term from his Harlem constituents in a special election that April anyway. Three years later, he was defeated by Mr. Rangel.

Ethics
Rangel Charles B
Powell Adam Clayton Jr
House of Representatives


Rwandan Musician Sentenced to 15 Years for Role in Genocide

Abstract: PARIS — A well-known Rwandan musician, Simon Bikindi, has been convicted of incitement to genocide and sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the hate campaign against Tutsi that led to the 1994 genocide. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Mr. Bikindi guilty of using a public-address system along roads in Rwanda in June 1994 to call on Hutu to rise up and exterminate the Tutsi. He was acquitted of five other related charges. The panel of judges said some of Mr. Bikindi’s songs had played a role in a propaganda campaign to promote contempt for the Tutsi population, and to incite Hutu to attack and kill Tutsi. But they said prosecutors had not proved that Mr. Bikindi’s music could be linked directly to any specific attacks or killings. Mr. Bikindi, 54, is the first entertainer to be found guilty of a genocide-related charge. Nearly 30 other people have been found guilty by the Tanzania-based United Nations tribunal of leading, organizing, inciting or financing the ethnic killing in Rwanda. The guilty include politicians, military officers, clergymen, businessmen and journalists. The atrocities in Rwanda began in April 1994, and in less than four months, the Hutu majority killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Many were hacked to death, often with government-issued machetes. In 1994, Mr. Bikindi was the country’s most famous musician. He sang, played several instruments, wrote intense lyrics and led a dance troupe. He also acted as a cheerleader at Hutu government rallies and was a strong presence at an influential government radio station. Mr. Bikindi has argued that neither he nor his songs ever killed anyone. Prosecutors had singled out three of Mr. Bikindi’s popular rap lyrics promoting ethnic hatred, which they said had been widely broadcast and were sung by mobs as they killed their victims.

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


Review - A Farewell to Alms - Industrial Revolution - Human Population

Abstract: For thousands of years, most people on earth lived in abject poverty, first as hunters and gatherers, then as peasants or laborers. But with the Industrial Revolution, some societies traded this ancient poverty for amazing affluence. Historians and economists have long struggled to understand how this transition occurred and why it took place only in some countries. A scholar who has spent the last 20 years scanning medieval English archives has now emerged with startling answers for both questions. Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, believes that the Industrial Revolution — the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 — occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues. Because they grew more common in the centuries before 1800, whether by cultural transmission or evolutionary adaptation, the English population at last became productive enough to escape from poverty, followed quickly by other countries with the same long agrarian past. Dr. Clark’s ideas have been circulating in articles and manuscripts for several years and are to be published as a book next month, “A Farewell to Alms” (Princeton University Press). Economic historians have high praise for his thesis, though many disagree with parts of it. “This is a great book and deserves attention,” said Philip Hoffman, a historian at the California Institute of Technology. He described it as “delightfully provocative” and a “real challenge” to the prevailing school of thought that it is institutions that shape economic history. Samuel Bowles, an economist who studies cultural evolution at the Santa Fe Institute, said Dr. Clark’s work was “great historical sociology and, unlike the sociology of the past, is informed by modern economic theory.” The basis of Dr. Clark’s work is his recovery of data from which he can reconstruct many features of the English economy from 1200 to 1800. From this data, he shows, far more clearly than has been possible before, that the economy was locked in a Malthusian trap — each time new technology increased the efficiency of production a little, the population grew, the extra mouths ate up the surplus, and average income fell back to its former level. This income was pitifully low in terms of the amount of wheat it could buy. By 1790, the average person’s consumption in England was still just 2,322 calories a day, with the poor eating a mere 1,508. Living hunter-gatherer societies enjoy diets of 2,300 calories or more. “Primitive man ate well compared with one of the richest societies in the world in 1800,” Dr. Clark observes. The tendency of population to grow faster than the food supply, keeping most people at the edge of starvation, was described by Thomas Malthus in a 1798 book, “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” This Malthusian trap, Dr. Clark’s data show, governed the English economy from 1200 until the Industrial Revolution and has in his view probably constrained humankind throughout its existence. The only respite was during disasters like the Black Death, when population plummeted, and for several generations the survivors had more to eat. Malthus’s book is well known because it gave Darwin the idea of natural selection. Reading of the struggle for existence that Malthus predicted, Darwin wrote in his autobiography, “It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. ... Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work.” Given that the English economy operated under Malthusian constraints, might it not have responded in some way to the forces of natural selection that Darwin had divined would flourish in such conditions? Dr. Clark started to wonder whether natural selection had indeed changed the nature of the population in some way and, if so, whether this might be the missing explanation for the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution, the first escape from the Malthusian trap, occurred when the efficiency of production at last accelerated, growing fast enough to outpace population growth and allow average incomes to rise. Many explanations have been offered for this spurt in efficiency, some economic and some political, but none is fully satisfactory, historians say. Dr. Clark’s first thought was that the population might have evolved greater resistance to disease. The idea came from Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” which argues that Europeans were able to conquer other nations in part because of their greater immunity to disease. In support of the disease-resistance idea, cities like London were so filthy and disease ridden that a third of their populations died off every generation, and the losses were restored by immigrants from the countryside. That suggested to Dr. Clark that the surviving population of England might be the descendants of peasants. A way to test the idea, he realized, was through analysis of ancient wills, which might reveal a connection between wealth and the number of progeny. The wills did that, but in quite the opposite direction to what he had expected. Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, his research showed. That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. “The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded. As the progeny of the rich pervaded all levels of society, Dr. Clark considered, the behaviors that made for wealth could have spread with them. He has documented that several aspects of what might now be called middle-class values changed significantly from the days of hunter gatherer societies to 1800. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped. Another significant change in behavior, Dr. Clark argues, was an increase in people’s preference for saving over instant consumption, which he sees reflected in the steady decline in interest rates from 1200 to 1800. “Thrift, prudence, negotiation and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent and leisure loving,” Dr. Clark writes. Around 1790, a steady upward trend in production efficiency first emerges in the English economy. It was this significant acceleration in the rate of productivity growth that at last made possible England’s escape from the Malthusian trap and the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. In the rest of Europe and East Asia, populations had also long been shaped by the Malthusian trap of their stable agrarian economies. Their workforces easily absorbed the new production technologies that appeared first in England. It is puzzling that the Industrial Revolution did not occur first in the much larger populations of China or Japan. Dr. Clark has found data showing that their richer classes, the Samurai in Japan and the Qing dynasty in China, were surprisingly unfertile and so would have failed to generate the downward social mobility that spread production-oriented values in England. After the Industrial Revolution, the gap in living standards between the richest and the poorest countries started to accelerate, from a wealth disparity of about 4 to 1 in 1800 to more than 50 to 1 today. Just as there is no agreed explanation for the Industrial Revolution, economists cannot account well for the divergence between rich and poor nations or they would have better remedies to offer. Many commentators point to a failure of political and social institutions as the reason that poor countries remain poor. But the proposed medicine of institutional reform “has failed repeatedly to cure the patient,” Dr. Clark writes. He likens the “cult centers” of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to prescientific physicians who prescribed bloodletting for ailments they did not understand. If the Industrial Revolution was caused by changes in people’s behavior, then populations that have not had time to adapt to the Malthusian constraints of agrarian economies will not be able to achieve the same production efficiencies, his thesis implies. Dr. Clark says the middle-class values needed for productivity could have been transmitted either culturally or genetically. But in some passages, he seems to lean toward evolution as the explanation. “Through the long agrarian passage leading up to the Industrial Revolution, man was becoming biologically more adapted to the modern economic world,” he writes. And, “The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality.” What was being inherited, in his view, was not greater intelligence — being a hunter in a foraging society requires considerably greater skill than the repetitive actions of an agricultural laborer. Rather, it was “a repertoire of skills and dispositions that were very different from those of the pre-agrarian world.” Reaction to Dr. Clark’s thesis from other economic historians seems largely favorable, although few agree with all of it, and many are skeptical of the most novel part, his suggestion that evolutionary change is a factor to be considered in history. Historians used to accept changes in people’s behavior as an explanation for economic events, like Max Weber’s thesis linking the rise of capitalism with Protestantism. But most have now swung to the economists’ view that all people are alike and will respond in the same way to the same incentives. Hence they seek to explain events like the Industrial Revolution in terms of changes in institutions, not people. Dr. Clark’s view is that institutions and incentives have been much the same all along and explain very little, which is why there is so little agreement on the causes of the Industrial Revolution. In saying the answer lies in people’s behavior, he is asking his fellow economic historians to revert to a type of explanation they had mostly abandoned and in addition is evoking an idea that historians seldom consider as an explanatory variable, that of evolution. Most historians have assumed that evolutionary change is too gradual to have affected human populations in the historical period. But geneticists, with information from the human genome now at their disposal, have begun to detect ever more recent instances of human evolutionary change like the spread of lactose tolerance in cattle-raising people of northern Europe just 5,000 years ago. A study in the current American Journal of Human Genetics finds evidence of natural selection at work in the population of Puerto Rico since 1513. So historians are likely to be more enthusiastic about the medieval economic data and elaborate time series that Dr. Clark has reconstructed than about his suggestion that people adapted to the Malthusian constraints of an agrarian society. “He deserves kudos for assembling all this data,” said Dr. Hoffman, the Caltech historian, “but I don’t agree with his underlying argument.” The decline in English interest rates, for example, could have been caused by the state’s providing better domestic security and enforcing property rights, Dr. Hoffman said, not by a change in people’s willingness to save, as Dr. Clark asserts. The natural-selection part of Dr. Clark’s argument “is significantly weaker, and maybe just not necessary, if you can trace the changes in the institutions,” said Kenneth L. Pomeranz, a historian at the University of California, Irvine. In a recent book, “The Great Divergence,” Dr. Pomeranz argues that tapping new sources of energy like coal and bringing new land into cultivation, as in the North American colonies, were the productivity advances that pushed the old agrarian economies out of their Malthusian constraints. Robert P. Brenner, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles, said although there was no satisfactory explanation at present for why economic growth took off in Europe around 1800, he believed that institutional explanations would provide the answer and that Dr. Clark’s idea of genes for capitalist behavior was “quite a speculative leap.” Dr. Bowles, the Santa Fe economist, said he was “not averse to the idea” that genetic transmission of capitalist values is important, but that the evidence for it was not yet there. “It’s just that we don’t have any idea what it is, and everything we look at ends up being awfully small,” he said. Tests of most social behaviors show they are very weakly heritable. He also took issue with Dr. Clark’s suggestion that the unwillingness to postpone consumption, called time preference by economists, had changed in people over the centuries. “If I were as poor as the people who take out payday loans, I might also have a high time preference,” he said. Dr. Clark said he set out to write his book 12 years ago on discovering that his undergraduates knew nothing about the history of Europe. His colleagues have been surprised by its conclusions but also interested in them, he said. “The actual data underlying this stuff is hard to dispute,” Dr. Clark said. “When people see the logic, they say ‘I don’t necessarily believe it, but it’s hard to dismiss.’ ”

Population
History
Sociology
Economic Conditions and Trends
Genetics and Heredity
Farewell to Alms A (Book)


Janet Elder - On Polling - Election 2008 - Politics

Abstract: Political campaigns are marketing campaigns. And ever since Richard Nixon campaigned for the votes of what he called “the silent majority,” political operatives have targeted specific demographic groups. Even establishing the name of the group in the political lexicon can be part of the campaign, with voters seeing themselves in the catchy name. Angry white men, soccer moms, waitress moms, office park dads, Nascar dads, security moms — gender is almost always the noun. But the voter as marketing niche is getting harder to find. In the polling world, President Bush has had a “leveling effect among subgroups,” as Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, put it. The tension between groups like married women and unmarried women is disappearing. That’s what happens when a president has a 30 percent job approval rating; there’s not much room for dramatic contrast. Women are a good example. Married or not, behind the wheel in the suburbs or not, women as a group made up more than half of all voters in the last presidential election, 54 percent. Overall, women voted 51 percent Democratic to 48 percent Republican in the 2004 presidential election, but those figures obscured differences when it came to subgroups of women. Marriage then was the great divide. In 2004, married women, who made up 32 of the electorate, voted for Mr. Bush by a 55 percent to 44 percent margin. But unmarried women voted the opposite way. They voted for Senator John Kerry by a margin of 62 percent to 37 percent. But shortly after that, married women started to see things differently. Some say it was the war. Others say it was the Terri Schiavo case or Hurricane Katrina or changing views of the threat from terrorism. Married women, including the ones who live in the suburbs, now appear more likely than in 2004 to vote for a Democrat this time around. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in July, a plurality, 46 percent, of married women who live in the suburbs said that if the presidential election were held today, they would vote for a Democrat, while 29 percent said they would vote for a Republican. Gender is always part of the marketing device for good reason. Men and women have voted differently since 1980, when men voted Republican by a 19 point margin and women voted Republican by a two point margin. Fifty-five percent of men voted for Ronald Reagan, the Republican and, 36 percent voted for Jimmy Carter, the Democrat. Forty-seven percent of women voted Republican and 45 percent voted Democratic. In subsequent campaigns, Democratic candidates assiduously courted women voters. But the last time a Democrat was elected president, when Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992 and 1996, it was in part because he had won over many men, narrowing the gap between the way women voted and the way men voted. If the Democrats want to win the White House in 2008, they willl have to do the same thing. But Republicans should not take men for granted either; many say this time they are thinking of voting Democratic. In a New York Times/CBS News poll taken in early September, women, by a margin of nearly two to one, said they were likely to vote Democratic in the 2008 presidential election, 53 percent to 27 percent. Men are closely divided, with 41 percent saying are going to vote for the Democratic candidate for president and 37 percent saying they will vote for the Republican candidate. Greg Ross, 47 years old, a computer consultant from Fayetteville, Ga., is typical of Republican men who are thinking of voting Democratic in 2008. He is upset about the war and the handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He recalls the Clinton years fondly, even though he did not vote for Bill Clinton. “The major reason I would vote Democrat is that the current administration in the White House is not listening to others and not really governing according to the will of the people,” Mr. Ross said. “Unless something major changes, which I don’t perceive happening, I’m voting Democrat.” Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster whose firm, Public Opinion Strategies, is working for Senator John McCain, said, “Right now all groups are a significant challenge for Republicans.” He has identified groups Republicans could win over. They too have catchy names. First on his list are “rehab Republicans.” He said: “These are voters who are having a really difficult time dealing with the party, they’re not happy with the war and they disapprove of President Bush.” Most of the names on Mr. Newhouse’s list have little to do with gender, with the exception of “Walmart women,” voters who he says, “generally have lower incomes, are less educated, tend to be conservative and have been impacted by economic difficulties.” Mr. Newhouse said this group is a potential audience for Republican candidates and, “they have doubts about Hillary.”

Public Opinion
Presidential Election of 2008
Advertising and Marketing


Afghan Women, Eager to Play, Are Relegated to the Sidelines

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Women’s sports programs in Afghanistan, long a favorite of Western donors, have all but collapsed. Some consist of little more than a young woman with a business card and a desk, as one insider described the women’s version of cricket, Afghanistan’s most popular game. Others, like women’s soccer, have managed to field a few teams for practices and training sessions but have not played an international match in years. Even the relatively few encouraging stories, like women’s taekwondo, one of the sports that may see an Afghan woman sent to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, are at best qualified successes. Afghanistan’s strongest hope for a female taekwondo medalist, Somaya Ghulami, 23, actually lives in Iran and commutes to practice sessions here. She said she would never be able to compete if she had to live in her own country. Image From left, Diana Barakzai, the former captain of the Afghan women’s cricket team, and former team members, Rumina Barakzai, 17, and Zarpana Hashimi, 22, in Kabul last month. Credit Adam Ferguson for The New York Times It is a conspicuous failure for Western efforts to improve the lives of Afghan women. With few exceptions, the sports programs have become riddled with corruption and been undermined by conservative Afghans who have never liked the idea of young women on sports fields. One of the main supporters of women’s sports in Afghanistan is the American government, which spends $1.5 million a year on coeducational sports programs — not counting a $450,000 cricket grant that officials took back when they realized no women’s cricket was being played. American officials, however, declined to discuss women’s sports on the record. While all women’s sports here are suffering, none have failed quite as spectacularly as the women’s national cycling team. Celebrated in documentaries, and the subject of a 2014 book and a blizzard of news articles , the team was recently nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize — thanks to the tireless promotion of its benefactor, Shannon Galpin, who financed the team through her Colorado-based charity, Mountain to Mountain. However, Ms. Galpin announced on her web page last month that she would no longer support the Afghan Cycling Federation because of what she described as “out of control” corruption by the team’s longtime coach and the head of the federation, Haji Abdul Sediq Seddiqi. Image Somaya Ghulami, left, a member of Afghanistan’s women’s taekwondo team, stretching before a training session. She lives in Iran and commutes to practices in Kabul. Credit Adam Ferguson for The New York Times Ms. Galpin was upset that sponsors’ gifts, including more than 40 bicycles and other racing gear, valued at more than $100,000, were stolen after being handed over by her organization to the team and Mr. Seddiqi. Mr. Seddiqi was recently dismissed from his post as both coach and head of the federation by the president of the Afghanistan National Olympic Committee, Mohammad Zaher Aghbar, who cited something besides corruption. He claimed that Mr. Seddiqi had successively married and divorced three of the young women on his team. “He has married three of them — three times — and the girls were all complaining about him,” Mr. Aghbar said. In an interview, Mr. Seddiqi denied the corruption charges, claimed Ms. Galpin’s organization was still financing the cycling federation and called the accusations against him “a lot of made-up crap.” Mr. Seddiqi, 62, acknowledged that he had three prior divorces and was now married to a 25-year-old woman, but denied that his current or past wives were ever team members. One national cycling champion (Mr. Seddiqi also controlled the men’s team), Hashmat Barakzai, who recently fled to Germany to claim asylum, said that “Seddiqi used the women’s team as his personal piggy bank and love playground.” Image Ms. Ghulami taking a break from training at a gym in Kabul. She is Afghanistan’s strongest hope for a female medalist in taekwondo at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Credit Adam Ferguson for The New York Times Mr. Seddiqi’s critics said training was almost nonexistent. “He would take them out to a roundabout on the highway and ride around in circles,” Ms. Galpin said. “Under coach,” Ms. Galpin said, referring to Mr. Seddiqi, “it’s zero female empowerment.” Corruption in other women’s sports might not be quite as brazen, but it remains a huge problem. Diana Barakzai, who played for Afghanistan’s women’s cricket team when it was actually functioning, in 2009, said she was approached recently by the Afghanistan Cricket Board about heading up a women’s team. “They told me they already made a deal with someone to pay them $180,000 for the job, but if you’re willing to pay $200,000 you can have it,” she said, adding that she turned the offer down. Ms. Barakzai, who is not related to Mr. Barakzai, said she was surprised by the demand, since she assumed there was no money to be made in women’s cricket. Besides, the national team had not competed — or even practiced — in at least three years. But it turned out that the United States Embassy had awarded a grant of $450,000 last summer to promote women’s cricket and had sent it to Lapis Communications, a private organization, to administer. Those funds have now been returned to the American Embassy, said a Lapis official, Sarah-Jean Cunningham. “This program did not get the traction it needed to justify pushing forward,” she said. Shafiq Stanikzai, the chief executive officer of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, denied Ms. Barakzai’s accusations. “That’s totally a false claim that she made and a very stupid one,” he said. Mr. Stanikzai said that there was a national women’s cricket program but that it was operating in secret. “We are not publicizing that due to certain limitations,” he said. “The national team is functioning but at a very basic level, as they are not good enough to compete at an international level.” But Peter Anderson, an Australian cricket coach who was brought to Afghanistan several years ago to train its women’s cricket team, said the cricket board was so against women participating that it had dismantled what women’s team there was. He said he quit after being shunted to coaching the disabled team. Image Members of the adult and under 17 women’s soccer teams training in Kabul on March 13. The women’s soccer team, often held up as as an example of success, has not played internationally since 2014. Credit Adam Ferguson for The New York Times Tuba Sangar is the current head of women’s cricket — the person Mr. Anderson described as “a girl in an office with a business card.” When contacted, she said she was not allowed to comment. Robina Jalali was on the first women’s team to compete in 2004 in the Olympics for Afghanistan after the Taliban were toppled. A runner, she was one of two at the 2004 Games. Now the head of women’s sports at the National Olympic Committee, she says that even the foreign embassies are no longer paying much attention. “The main problem is the growing insecurity we have; secondly, violence against women, which is growing. Women are not feeling safe to train,” she said. “Now we see the youth are just running away from the country, which has changed the mentality of the embassies,” she continued. “They feel they can’t give a girl a visa to compete because she’s not going to come back.” But the women’s soccer team, often held up as an example of success, has not played internationally since 2014. There are plans to do so sometime this year, yet neither the date nor the country where it will take place has been set, said Khatool Shahzad, an official with the soccer federation. Shamila Kohestani is a women’s soccer success story , going from captain of the women’s team in 2007 to a scholarship at Drew University in New Jersey. Her dream had been to return here as a coach, but after a recent visit to Kabul she decided not to. Ms. Kohestani thinks that Afghan officials never really supported the idea of women in sports, saying they only feigned interest because women’s sports were such grant magnets. “They would say, ‘I would never let my daughter do that,’” she said. “They treated us like sluts or something because we’re running around showing ourselves to men.” The women’s soccer team still exists, mainly because the players are encouraged to participate by what for Afghanistan are generous cash payments: $100 a month for national team members and $50 for junior team members. Despite that incentive, only 10 national team members out of 22 (the women play 11-a-side soccer) came out for a recent two-hour practice; their coach, a man, did not show up at all. The team captain, Forozan Tajali, 22, took over the training session. She said security concerns, family pressure and public harassment were not the only difficulties the soccer players faced. The national team has lost more members to marriage than anything else, she said, because Afghan women are considered too old to wed after their early 20s, and their husbands typically refuse to allow them to play. Taekwondo has been similarly hurt, Ms. Ghulami said during a recent training session here, adding, “Fortunately, I have a liberal family that does support me — and we live in Iran.”

Kabul
Afghanistan
Sports
Cricket
Soccer
Taekwondo
Corruption
Women and Girls
Road Cycling
2016 Summer Olympics


Turkey: 2 Are Held in Palace Blast

Abstract: The police arrested two people on Wednesday after a hand grenade was hurled and shots were fired at officers guarding the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, a tourist attraction, the Istanbul governor’s office said. One police officer was slightly wounded, Anadolu, the state-run news agency, said. The police apprehended two people in an area close to the palace and seized weapons and ammunition, the governor’s office said. It did not identify the two suspects or state a motive for the attack. Anadolu said the two suspects were members of an outlawed leftist group, but the agency did not cite a source for its report. Later on Wednesday, at least eight Turkish soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb set off by Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey, the military said.

Dolmabahce Palace
Istanbul
Bombs
Kurdish
Attacks on Police


Ricin Detected in Letter Sent to Senator Roger Wicker

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A letter sent to a Mississippi senator tested positive for the poison ricin, federal authorities revealed Tuesday, adding to security concerns in the Capitol after the Boston Marathon bombing. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, confirmed that an envelope addressed to Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, a Republican, had been tested twice for ricin in a mail facility away from the Capitol with positive results both times. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was briefing senators on the Boston attack when she told them about the ricin. The letter was postmarked in Memphis and had no suspicious markings or return address, the office of the Senate sergeant-at-arms reported. A federal official said the letter had been sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s laboratories in Quantico, Va., for further examination because field tests for ricin can be unreliable. Ricin can be fatal if ingested or inhaled. In 2004, Senate offices were closed for days after the poison was found in the mailroom of Senator Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, who was the majority leader then. And detection of ricin carried echoes of the anthrax attack on the Senate just days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, told reporters after the Napolitano briefing that the letter had come from someone who frequently writes lawmakers. She said the person had been identified, but she declined to divulge the name. Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said: “Obviously, I’m concerned. It’s not just members concerned. It rarely gets to a member before it goes through a lot of staff, and that’s a big concern, obviously, for all of us. We’re very anxious to get more details.” As a precaution, Senate post offices on Capitol Hill were shut down and will most likely remain closed for the rest of the week. Senators were told that there was no evidence of contamination inside the Capitol or on the grounds, but investigators were still looking into whether any similar envelopes had been sent to anyone in the House. As Senator Angus King left Ms. Napolitano’s briefing, he said, “It’s now been confirmed that ricin was found in an envelope at the screening facility, which is off-site, not here at the Capitol.” “I don’t have any information that it’s in any way connected with what happened in Boston,” Mr. King, an independent from Maine, said. “It may just be an unfortunate coincidence.” News of the discovery was reverberating outside Washington on Tuesday evening. Senators’ offices in their states, which do not have the same kind of mail screening that the Capitol does, were told to look out for suspicious packages. The anthrax-tainted letters addressed to members of Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks were the first modern instance of bioterrorism to rattle Capitol Hill. The discovery of anthrax in a letter addressed to Senator Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota and the majority leader at the time, led postal inspectors and the F.B.I. to seize all mail on Capitol Hill, seal it in 55-gallon barrels and move it to a warehouse outside Washington.

Ricin
Senate
Roger Wicker
Boston Marathon Bombings
Congress


American Couple in Qatar, Cleared in Child’s Death, Petition to Lift Travel Ban

Abstract: The American couple in Qatar acquitted on Sunday in the death of their adopted African daughter after a nearly two-year legal ordeal petitioned the attorney general’s office on Monday to rescind a travel ban, a bureaucratic obstacle that had prevented them from flying home immediately after they won their case. Lawyers for the couple, Matthew and Grace Huang of Los Angeles, submitted an application at midday to lift the ban, a day after they were denied permission to board a flight out of the country despite a court ruling that they were free to go. The unforeseen impediment caused a scene on Sunday at the international airport in Doha, the capital. The Huangs, who had been personally escorted toward the departure area by the American ambassador, Dana Shell Smith, were stopped at the immigration desk and told they could not leave. Even Secretary of State John Kerry got involved, telephoning his Qatari counterpart. Mr. Kerry issued a statement on Sunday night commending the acquittal and exhorting the judicial authorities in Doha to expedite the Huangs’ wish to return home so they could reunite with their other two children. The delay was interpreted by advocates for the couple as a possible new effort by prosecutors to cause further legal problems for the Huangs — or at least cause them new angst. Prosecutors do not often lose such high profile cases on appeal in Qatar, the tiny affluent Gulf emirate. “Given the appellate court’s ruling, it’s starting to feel a little like a private vendetta,” said Eric Volz, an adviser to the Huangs, who is the managing director of the David House Agency, a Los Angeles organization that assists Americans caught in legal entanglements in other countries. Reached by telephone in Doha, Mr. Volz said that removing the obstacle was as simple as “someone pushing a keyboard button.” Others said, however, that rescinding the travel ban required a separate process that might take a few days in the best of circumstances for Qatar, known for cumbersome bureaucratic complications concerning foreigners. The appellate judge dismissed the case, vindicating the couple’s assertions of innocence in the January 2013 death of their adopted 8-year-old daughter from Ghana, Gloria, who had an eating disorder. Prosecutors had accused the Huangs of killing Gloria by withholding food, an assertion that was contradicted during the trial. Their arguments were riddled with racial innuendo suggesting the parents, of Asian descent, were child traffickers who would not have adopted a black African child as their own. The Huangs were convicted in March on the lesser charge of child endangerment, which they appealed. The case became a public relations problem for the Qatari authorities as well as an irritant in relations with the United States. Mr. Volz, who accompanied the Huangs to the airport in Doha on Sunday, said they were prepared at a moment’s notice to return there for the next flight out once they were assured the travel ban had been lifted. “Our bags are packed,” he said. In a statement issued later, Mr. Volz urged the Obama administration to exert more pressure and “call the emir of Qatar to free these two innocent American citizens.” The Huangs moved to Qatar in July 2012 because Mr. Huang, an engineer, had been assigned there by his employer at the time, MWH Global, a leading public-works engineering company based in Broomfield, Colo., which was working on a project in Doha. The Huangs have accused MWH of abandoning them in the months following their arrest in connection with Gloria’s death in January 2013. MWH has disputed the accusation. Mr. Huang is no longer with the company. Breaking its silence for the first time since the Huangs were acquitted, the company issued a terse news release on Monday saying it was pleased and that “our thoughts are with Matthew, Grace and their families as they work toward securing a safe and prompt return to the U.S.”

Qatar
Grace Huang
Matthew Huang
Human trafficking
US Foreign Policy


Fox Off Cablevision for 2nd Day

Abstract: What started as a routine contract dispute between Cablevision Systems and the News Corporation has become one of the longest and most talked about blackouts of television programming in years. About three million households in the New York metropolitan area were left without Fox programming on Saturday and Sunday, preventing sports fans from watching a Phillies game on Saturday night and a Giants game on Sunday afternoon. After months of negotiations, the two companies cannot agree on a price for retransmission of the Fox network. Cablevision and the News Corporation talked for only a few hours on Sunday, and Fox said they were still far apart. By Sunday evening, television analysts who had predicted a resolution by the kick-off of the Giants game wondered aloud whether the two media giants could drag out the fight until the start of the World Series, which Fox is to start broadcasting on Oct. 27. Broadcasters view retransmission as an important new source of revenue and that is one reason the dispute is being closely watched by lawmakers; some have already proposed reforms to the station retransmission process. The stakes are especially high for Fox because another potential blackout is looming. Some of Fox’s local station contracts with a bigger distributor — Dish Network — expire at the end of the month. The network is already running advertisements warning customers that the World Series could be interrupted. More than three million of Dish’s 14 million subscribers could be affected, depending on where they live. Blackouts of local stations rarely last longer than a day, as stations risk losing ratings and advertisers and distributors risk losing customers altogether. But for the News Corporation, at least, the long-term health of the broadcasting business is on the line. In recent years it, like the owners of other local stations, has ratcheted up its demands for retransmission fees to try to create a second source of revenue to reduce reliance on advertising. Envious of the fees that cable channels receive from distributors, stations want to be compensated for providing the most popular programming on television: hit prime-time shows and big sports events. Of course, the stations are still available free over the public airwaves. Distributors say they want to hold the line on further price increases, which are added to the monthly bills of customers. “These disputes are happening more often and they’re lasting for longer periods of time,” said Derek Baine, an analyst at SNL Kagan. Cablevision’s last fight over fees happened in March. That time it was with the Walt Disney Company over fees for the ABC network, and it culminated in a 20-hour cutoff that briefly interrupted the Academy Awards. During that standoff, analysts said it was only an early skirmish in what was likely to be a long and bitter war over retransmission fees. Future battles, they predicted, were likely to involve the most popular programming the networks had to offer, specifically big sporting events. In this case, Cablevision says it is pushing back against the News Corporation’s demand for an increase in fees to $150 million a year from $70 million. Cablevision claims that it already pays for rights to retransmit programming from its Fox network by paying fees for the cable channels that the News Corporation owns. But News Corporation executives cite the value of their programming and point to how much Cablevision pays itself for small cable channels like MSG, which Cablevision owns. For weeks, both companies have been working publicly to make the other seem like the holdout. After about three hours of talks on Sunday, Fox said, “No material progress was made and we continue to remain far apart,” the same language it used after negotiations a day earlier. In a separate statement on Sunday afternoon, Cablevision said: “The longer this shameful News Corp. blackout of the N.F.L. and Major League Baseball continues, the more obvious it becomes to everyone, including political leaders of both parties, that binding arbitration is the fastest and fairest way to return Fox programming to Cablevision customers.” Cablevision has been pushing for days for arbitration, an idea that Fox has rejected. Customers and politicians spared no scorn for both Cablevision, which is controlled by the Dolan family, and the News Corporation, which is led by Rupert Murdoch. José R. Peralta, a Democratic state senator from New York, said on Sunday in a statement: “On behalf of the millions of hard-working men and women and their families who simply want to relax and enjoy a ballgame, or have a few laughs watching television during their free time — a luxury they’ve paid for — I urge that programming be restored immediately while negotiations continue.” Fox has refused to do so. The network says payments for providing local stations are a matter of fairness. “We need that dual revenue stream,” said Chase Carey, the chief operating officer of the News Corporation, in an on-stage interview at a Hollywood event last month. “The broadcast networks for too long have accepted being second-class citizens.”

Television
Fox Broadcasting Co
Cablevision Systems Corp
Cable Television
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)


President Jacob Zuma of South Africa Faces Leadership Challenge

Abstract: JOHANNESBURG — Weakened by scandals and electoral losses in August, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa faced a challenge to his leadership for the first time at a meeting on Monday of top officials of the governing African National Congress. Officials of the A.N.C.’s national executive committee, including three members of Mr. Zuma’s cabinet, introduced a motion over the weekend that urged Mr. Zuma to step down, according to South Africa’s news media. They said that Mr. Zuma’s tainted leadership would harm the party in future voting, especially in national elections scheduled for 2019. Committee members met Monday evening, but there were no announcements of any action taken. Analysts had said it was unlikely that the president’s critics would succeed in pushing for a vote of no confidence. Mr. Zuma is believed to still have strong support within the 104-member committee, which includes many loyalists appointed by him over his seven years in office. Still, even what might amount to a minor rebellion in the A.N.C.’s top leadership appeared to have caught the party by surprise over the weekend. It also deepened divisions with the cabinet and the party as Mr. Zuma’s government grapples with a poor economy, an unemployment rate of 27 percent and a possible downgrade of South Africa’s national debt by credit agencies worried about poor governance. “This is leaving Zuma more weakened and more exposed because now you have it on record that the members of the A.N.C.’s N.E.C. were discussing a topic that was the elephant in the room,” Ralph Mathekga, a political analyst, said, referring to the executive committee. Mr. Zuma had been facing intensifying criticism of his leadership from within his own party. But until now, the criticism had come mostly from the lower ranks and from retired A.N.C. luminaries. Some active party leaders have distanced themselves from Mr. Zuma since the A.N.C. lost major cities, including Johannesburg and Pretoria, in local elections in August. The electoral results were the worst for the party since it took power after the end of apartheid in 1994. Mr. Zuma has been embroiled in one scandal after another since taking office in 2009. Last month, the public protector’s office, a group charged with investigating official corruption and misconduct, recommended that Mr. Zuma’s administration be officially investigated for corruption. If Mr. Zuma serves out his second and final term, set to end in 2019, the next three years will most likely be filled with legal battles over Mr. Zuma’s possible misconduct, leaving the A.N.C. in a poor position heading into national elections. The party is expected to choose its next leader toward the end of next year. One of the top two contenders, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former government minister and the chairwoman of the African Union Commission, is strongly supported by the A.N.C.’s rural branches, as well as its women’s and youth leagues, which are also among Mr. Zuma’s fiercest backers. Ms. Dlamini-Zuma was married for 16 years to Mr. Zuma, with whom she has four children. Her rival, Cyril Ramaphosa, the current deputy president and a prominent businessman, is backed by the party’s urban branches and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the nation’s biggest trade union federation.

South Africa
African National Congress
Jacob G Zuma
Apartheid in South Africa