The Joy of the Garbage Chute

Abstract: I have been trying to make my home a happier place the way the Japanese organizing guru Marie Kondo suggests, thanking possessions that no longer “spark joy” for their service and throwing them out, and it is making me a nervous wreck. The blowback from the socks has been particularly upsetting. “What do you mean you want joy from us?” a pair of stretched-out white gym socks said. “We’re comfortable, we’re thick, we cushion your feet a lot better than those stupid socks with the pink flamingos. So what if our tops are a little slack? You look at your upper arms lately?” Are you familiar with Ms. Kondo’s book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”? She argues that you should throw out anything in your home — books, gifts, yoga mats, clothing — that does not send a charge of delight through your body when you pick it up . It’s got a whole section on storing socks and stockings, instructing that you should never ball them up or tie them up because that puts them “in a state of tension” and that while they are in your drawer they are “essentially on holiday” and it is “their only chance to rest.” Over five million copies have been sold worldwide. That means that if just half the readers followed Ms. Kondo’s advice, two and a half million people around the world have been talking to their socks. “Thank you for your service. Loved your work on the Five Boro Bike Tour last year. But I’m going in a different direction now and — wait, how did you know I was in J. Crew yesterday, who told you, those damn Wacoal briefs? Listen, nothing happened. Yet.” Now, I am not one of those people who cannot throw things out. I’m an apartment-dwelling, limited-space New Yorker. I toss a pair of high heels down the garbage chute, I’ve gained 200 cubic inches of closet space. I love throwing things down the chute, especially after a breakup. I feel sorry for people who do not live in apartment buildings and cannot terminate relationships with the finality of the chute, who never get to experience the whole satisfying slam thunk of the metal door and the drop: Hot-air balloon instruction manual. SLAM, THUNK! Collapsible fishing rod. SLAM, THUNK! Silver tray from San Miguel de Allende. THUNK, CLANK, THUNK! all the glorious 14 floors down. I’ve been to garbage dumps upstate, and it’s not the same. There’s something public and melancholy about those plaid bathrobes and golf clubs; it’s the field of broken dreams spread out for the world to see. When something goes down a New York City garbage chute, it disappears from the planet. Some people think it ends up in a Staten Island landfill, but it actually goes to these Einsteinian little black holes in space. “Goodbye, balloonist, I mean balloon manual, and by the way, I hated having your crew with us every time we flew — it was like dating a man with six children.” Where was I? Oh, right, Marie Kondo. She also has a theory on gifts, which she says are important not as objects but as a way of conveying feelings. If you don’t like a gift, there is no need to feel guilty about getting rid of it, Ms. Kondo says. “Surely the person who gave it to you doesn’t want you to use it out of a sense of obligation.” I don’t know what kind of crowd Ms. Kondo runs with, but I can tell you that if I have given one of my friends a cookie crock I expect it to be on the kitchen counter when I visit 30 years later, and they feel the same. If you hate the cookie crock, you stick it in the closet and whip it out when your friend comes over. If you really, really hate the cookie crock, maybe you get to throw it out and say: “The cleaning lady broke it. I was so upset.” But you can only do that once in your lifetime, and only if you are really good at feigning sincerity, which, of course, after 40 years of being a reporter, I am. And putting every bit of your clothing on the floor, as Ms. Kondo suggests, and deciding if it sparks joy and then thanking it before throwing it out is not a great idea either. There are some things in my closets I do not want to dialogue with — things I didn’t even remember owning until reading her book. For instance this flea-market kimono with big red leaves that the vendor told me had been in a Woody Allen movie about an older man and the much younger woman who throws herself at him. I am going to have to be more specific. It’s the movie where a religious out-of-town mother comes to New York, becomes an artist and shacks up with two guys. “ Whatever Works .” Patricia Clarkson played the mother. This vendor convinced me she had worn it. Now, according to Marie Kondo, I have to drag out this kimono, which I haven’t touched for years, and have The Talk. “Thank you for your service, Kimono.” “What service? You never put me on.” “I think I once put you on my naked body after I showered but you kept flopping open.” “Whose fault is that? Did I pretend to have a fastener? Anyway, what I meant was you never wore me in public.” “That’s because you’re preposterous,” I’d say. “I wear Keds and sleep in T-shirts. I certainly admired your vivid and dramatic colors ——” “——Oh, please. You did what you always do, you outfitted your fantasy life, then you never wore us. Like those black and cream panties with the garters you put in the discard pile. You know the ones weeping over there, next to the seamed stockings?” Naturally, I’d be struck to the heart. “Oh, no!” I’d say. “I had no idea you would take it this way. When I picked up those garters they didn’t spark joy, they sparked sadness because they’d been in a drawer so long. But here, Kimono, let me pick you up very gently and hang you in a place of honor in the closet. Then I’ll put the garters and the stockings in their own little nest. I’m not going to ball up the stockings either. I’m going to lay them flat, so they can relax and rejuvenate. It’s spring. Maybe we’ll all get lucky. ”

Marie Kondo
Books
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
Orderliness
Waste management
NYC


A Chinese Almanac That Takes a Wary View of the New Year

Abstract: Joanna C. Lee waved her little red book for 2016 in the face of a man she had sent its predecessors, the little red books from 2015, 2014, 2013 and maybe even 2012. For a moment the man thought about 2015, a year bookended by the Charlie Hebdo attack in January and the San Bernardino assault in December, and said 2016 had to be a better year. Not according to Ms. Lee’s book. Or, as she put it, “The prognosis is not great.” Ms. Lee and her husband, Ken Smith, have published the Pocket Chinese Almanac each year since 2010, in English. They list themselves as translators and annotators because they consult a geomancer, a Hong Kong architect named Warwick Wong who learned to divine trends in climate and weather from his grandfather, who learned them from his ancestors. The publishers, who live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, met him through the publisher of the Chinese-language almanac that inspired their 128-page reduction. They do a lot of condensing. They have to. Each page in their version is only 4 1/8 inches by 2 1/2 inches, less than a quarter of the size of a page in the Chinese publisher’s original version. “You can tell what kind of a year it’s going to be from the cow,” Mr. Smith said, opening his well-thumbed copy of the Chinese original to an illustration. “It might be that the man behind the cow is not wearing shoes. If the man isn’t wearing sandals, it’s going to be a very wet year. Bad flooding. And if it’s a bad year in terms of atmospheric conditions, it’s a bad year in human relations.” The illustration was a “preliterate visual agrarian thing,” he said — a way of getting the message across to farmers who paid close attention to how the figures changed in relation to each other from year to year. For the Lunar New Year that begins on Feb. 8, the man and the cow are the same size and on the same plane — a hopeful sign, Ms. Lee said. The man is not leading the cow, which would be better. But neither is the cow leading him. Ms. Lee said she had checked with Mr. Wong for additional guidance about 2016 after this year’s almanacs arrived from the printer in Hong Kong. “The big thing, it is a year of climates that are very unpredictable,” she said, waving an email printout written in Chinese. “He said: ‘There would be cases of extremes. There would be floods. There would be places of extreme drought.’ If you ask me, I completely, 100 percent buy global warming. This is the sun and the moon and the stars aligning and telling us we’re not doing well.” There was more in the email. “He said there would be incidents that make people cry, incidents that make people laugh and incidents where you don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” she said. “Locusts? Donald Trump?” Ms. Lee said 2016 was considered an unlucky year because, on the Chinese calendar, it begins after the start of spring. Also, she said, Mr. Wong warned of “problems” in the United States and Canada, though he provided no details. She said that he had also mentioned illnesses in Korea, Japan and northern China. “He said be careful of illnesses, watch what you eat, watch your digestive system and your skin,” she said. Image The Pocket Chinese Almanac, an English-language book similar to a larger Chinese book of annual predictions. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times She said this would be a bad year for companies that depend on natural resources, meaning the energy industry — but with Brent crude, one of the oil industry ’s benchmarks, off more than 30 percent in 2015 , that had a more-of-the-same ring. She also said that the advertising, cosmetics and service industries would “become a little watery” — a rough year. To leaf through the Pocket Chinese Almanac is to read a quaint-sounding daily diary — in advance, of course, because like many almanacs , the Pocket Chinese Almanac is about predictions. The style comes from its faithfulness to the original Chinese and, in turn, the original’s faithfulness to the agrarian society to which much of China no longer belongs. For each day of the year, there is an entry with two headings: “good” and “bad.” Some days are good for rituals, weddings, breaking ground or other pursuits like “building stoves,” “raising pillars and beams,” “placing doors,” “digging ditches” or “the maiden voyage of a boat.” Some days are bad for those things. Monday, for example, will be good for “hairdressing,” “cleaning house” and “pest control,” among other things. Each entry is an excursion into metaphor, for the time-honored terms in the almanac are not to be taken literally. For “pest control,” Ms. Lee and Mr. Smith wrote in a section headed “Notes for the Modern Reader,” “pests today far exceed insects and rodents.” Or, as Mr. Smith explained over lunch on the Upper West Side, “‘Pest control’ is about firing people, and ‘buying livestock’ is ‘I got a new cat.’” “Breaking ground” applies to starting a project, even one that does not involve shovels and hard hats, and “going out” can be used as an excuse to go shopping. And then there is “beginning a long journey.” “With modern air travel,” Ms. Lee and Mr. Smith wrote, “what determines ‘a long journey’ is in the mind of the traveler.” Ms. Lee jumped ahead to Nov. 8, Election Day in the United States. The almanac says it will be a good day for rituals — voting — and for “breaking ground” and “raising beams,” signifying new beginnings. The almanac appears to warn against buying votes. Nov. 8 will be a bad day for “paying out money.” Ms. Lee, a pianist, has done translation work for film directors like Peter Greenaway and stars like Jackie Chan. Mr. Smith, who has written about music and culture for The Financial Times, is the author of “Fate! Luck! Chance!: Amy Tan, Stewart Wallace and the Making of ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’ Opera.” Together they worked on David Henry Hwang’s Broadway comedy “Chinglish” and on “Kung Fu,” a musical based on the life of Bruce Lee. Their almanac began as a project for a gala at the Museum of Chinese in America , at 215 Centre Street in Manhattan, and the publishers now print about 5,000 copies to sell in several locations, including the museum’s gift shop, as well as online . “We figured it would be a one-time thing,” Ms. Lee said. “They ended up selling the ones they did not give away at the gala in the gift shop and they said, ‘Do you have more books?’ All of a sudden, we got a job.” And a lecture date to talk about the coming year — Jan. 30, a good day for rituals and going out. Perhaps more important, they relied on the almanac to set their wedding date. Their wedding, in Hong Kong on Aug. 27, 2006, took place on what the large-size almanac said would be a “general all-purpose good-weather day,” Mr. Smith said. “Good for planting, meeting friends and going out, and hairdressing. A general great party day.”

Almanacs
Joanna C. Lee
Books
Ken Smith
Pocket Chinese Almanac
Translation
Lunar New Year
Chinese American


New York Magazine’s Lessons for Harman and Newsweek

Abstract: Let me get this straight: A very rich guy buys a financially and editorially beleaguered weekly magazine, saying he wants to preserve an important journalistic asset. That will never work, right? I have three words for the haters: New York magazine. Last week, Newsweek was sold (for $1 plus great big liabilities) to Sidney Harman, the audio pioneer. Back in 2003, Bruce Wasserstein , the head of Lazard who had been doing deals that added up to hundreds of billions of dollars, swooped in out of nowhere and bought New York magazine for $55 million. “Obviously, the price of the magazine is not justified by the facts,” a media investment banker said at the time . But now, seven years later, the magazine is viewed as an editorial jewel with a nascent digital business attached and would most likely sell for many times that price. Newsweek , of course, is not New York magazine, and Sidney Harman is not Bruce Wasserstein. Their very different natures were apparent at the moment of purchase. Mr. Wasserstein: “We believe New York has significant long-term value and growth potential,” he said, adding later, “I am not a romantic.” Mr. Harman: “I’m not here to make money,” he told the staff of Newsweek. “I’m here to make joy.” Mr. Harman was guileless in his statements on buying Newsweek and although a smart businessman, has no media history to speak of. When he bought New York, Mr. Wasserstein had other media properties, including The American Lawyer; a keen and respected operator named Anup Bagaria overseeing his holdings; and a history of coming out on the winning side of transactions. Perhaps most important, Mr. Wasserstein was 55 when he bought New York, while Mr. Harman turned 92 last week. But even though, the darkest possibility played out at New York when Mr. Wasserstein died unexpectedly last year at the age of 61. Still, New York magazine’s future seems assured.  Last week being an off week for the magazine, Adam Moss, the editor in chief of New York, walked through a mostly empty office downtown. When we sat down in his office, there was a herd of elephants on a nearby shelf, the so-called Ellies that are totems of the National Magazine Awards. This year, New York won six in print and digital competitions, including general excellence for both the magazine and its Web site. (I worked for New York for a year back before Mr. Moss became its editor.) Mr. Moss, a former editor of The New York Times Magazine, said that in addition to dealing with the personal dimensions of Mr. Wasserstein’s death, he was worried about what it might mean for the magazine. New York is owned by New York Media Holdings, which is owned by the Wasserstein Family Trusts and is now controlled by Mr. Wasserstein’s children. “I had anxiety for this place, for my colleagues and for a very short period of time, where we were not sure what was going to happen because this was very unexpected,” he said. “But the family did not miss a beat,” he said. “They told us that the magazine was always meant to be owned by the family, and that it was not bought as a quick turnaround project or to flip.” Several billionaires called Mr. Moss after Mr. Wasserstein’s death, wondering if they might get their hands on the magazine, but “it was clear from the start that the family was not going to sell,” he said. It probably helped a bit that Ben Wasserstein, Mr. Wasserstein’s son, was a well-regarded editor at the magazine before moving on to The New Republic and then into television production. And Ben’s siblings, Pamela and Scoop Wasserstein, also seem to believe that their father would have wanted them to hang onto the magazine. (There is another set of much younger children from another marriage as well.) The family members meet with the management team monthly and weigh in on broader budgetary and strategic priorities. Via e-mail, Pamela Wasserstein, a former corporate lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton who now works on new-business initiatives at the Tribeca Film Institute, said the family was confident their publishing property was in good hands. “We reviewed our family’s investments after Dad passed away. We concluded, as our father had, that New York Media was an attractive long-term investment,” she wrote. “The strength of the company we’re building, both in business terms and in the quality of the editorial products, is the result of years of long-term planning by our father and the New York team.” As Mr. Harman is about to find out, a weekly magazine is an expensive proposition for a stand-alone owner who can’t spread the costs of distribution and the back office over other magazines. New York may be more nimble as a lone title, but scale matters on the Web as well and building digital infrastructure is expensive for a small media enterprise. And as a stand-alone publishing enterprise, there is no place to hide when the ad market sours: New York Media lost a couple of million dollars in 2009, laid off 10 percent of its staff, and now that advertising is crawling back, is on track to make a couple of million dollars next year. But the company is doing good business with its suite of Web brands — Vulture , Grub Street , Daily Intel and others, and profits from those enterprises could yield the kind of valuation that makes the $55 million purchase price seem cheap. In a way, New York magazine is fast becoming a digital enterprise with a magazine attached. Visitors to the magazine’s various Web sites have doubled since 2007, digital sales are up 70 percent over last year and now constitute 35 percent of the revenue at the company. Its MenuPages app has been downloaded to iPhones over 160,000 times and Vulture, the magazine’s pop culture site, is bulking up in hopes of becoming a national presence. The company said that already 75 percent of its visitors to its various sites come from beyond the New York market. “We’ve always been inherently limited by geography, and the Web has allowed us to build out something for ‘high-slash-middlebrow’ culture for a national audience that nobody is really occupying,” Mr. Moss said. One of the charms of the publishing business is that a single person can have an outsize effect, and many would suggest that Mr. Moss, with his deft hand for provocative covers and smart assignments, is one of the best editors working in a hybrid age. Still, if you were thinking of the truly necessary figure in the reclamation of New York magazine, it would be Mr. Wasserstein, whom Mr. Moss eulogized as someone with the “soul of a journalist and the wallet of a tycoon.” There would be no hotshot editor without committed ownership. Titans have been known to buy media properties to meddle or punish their enemies, but there’s no evidence he did either. And rich guys are also accused of buying media properties simply to burnish their obituaries. That worked out pretty well. In his obituary in The New York Times , Mr. Wasserstein was depicted as one of the original Barbarians at the Gate for his ferocious hostile takeovers. But the fourth paragraph noted, “he also became a member of New York’s social firmament, buying New York magazine, a prominent publication that chronicles the city and its major players.” You could do worse. Let’s hope Mr. Harman doesn’t.

Magazines
Newsweek
Wasserstein Bruce
New York (Magazine)
Harman Sidney


Orioles Top Red Sox and Move Closer to the Division Lead

Abstract: Chris Tillman took a two-hitter into the seventh inning, Chris Davis hit his major-league-leading 22nd home run, and the Baltimore Orioles shut out the visiting Boston Red Sox, 2-0, on Friday in a duel between the top two teams in the American League East. Manny Machado had three hits for the Orioles, who have won five of six — including the first two in this four-game series. Baltimore moved within one and a half games of the division-leading Red Sox. Tillman (7-2) allowed three hits and walked four in six-plus innings. The right-handed Tillman permitted only one runner to get past second base in winning his third straight start. ROYALS 7, RAYS 2 Luis Mendoza pitched six innings to win for the first time in six starts, and Elliot Johnson had another big hit against his former team, leading visiting Kansas City over Tampa Bay. Mendoza (2-3) gave up two runs and six hits. Johnson had a tying triple among his two hits, and Billy Butler drove in three runs for the Royals, who have won 9 of 10. ASTROS 2, WHITE SOX 1 Erik Bedard pitched six solid innings, and Jose Altuve hit a go-ahead single to give host Houston a victory. Bedard (2-3) yielded three hits and one run with six strikeouts. Alexei Ramirez committed two errors in the fifth inning to help the Astros take the lead. The miscues ruined a great outing by Chris Sale (5-5), who allowed five hits and no earned runs with a season-high 14 strikeouts in eight innings. Sale had retired 11 of 12 before Ronny Cedeno reached with no outs in the fifth on the first error by Ramirez. TIGERS 4, TWINS 0 Prince Fielder broke open a scoreless game with a two-run double in the sixth inning, spurring visiting Detroit. Image The Orioles’ Chris Tillman allowed only one Red Sox runner past second base as Baltimore won, 2-0. Credit Gail Burton/Associated Press Victor Martinez and Jhonny Peralta followed Fielder’s soaring drive with run-scoring doubles of their own, ending the night for Twins starter Scott Diamond (4-6). Rick Porcello (4-3) breezed through seven scoreless innings, allowing just two singles and one double without a walk. BLUE JAYS 8, RANGERS 0 Mark Buehrle threw seven shutout innings, Colby Rasmus and J. P. Arencibia homered, and Toronto handed host Texas its fourth straight loss. Buehrle (3-4) gave up four singles and equaled his season high with seven strikeouts. INDIANS 2, NATIONALS 1 Jason Kipnis’s run-scoring fielder’s choice in the ninth inning lifted host Cleveland over Washington. With runners on second and third and one out, Kipnis hit a hard ground ball to the right side. First baseman Adam LaRoche made a diving backhanded stop and fired a throw to catcher Kurt Suzuki, but Drew Stubbs slid in with the winning run. MARLINS 5, CARDINALS 4 The rookie Jose Fernandez outpitched a rusty Jake Westbrook, and host Miami, which has the worst record in the majors, beat St. Louis, which has the best record. Fernandez (4-3) had a career-high 10 strikeouts in seven innings. Westbrook (2-2), who had been out with an inflamed elbow, went five innings in his first game since May 8. REDS 4, BREWERS 3 Jay Bruce homered off Burke Badenhop with one out in the 10th inning, rallying host Cincinnati. The teams combined for five errors. PIRATES 3, DODGERS 0 Jeff Locke allowed two hits over seven innings, and Pittsburgh edged visiting Los Angeles. Locke (6-1) struck out five and walked one. The Dodgers played without Manager Don Mattingly, who served a one-game suspension for his role in a brawl with Arizona earlier in the week. GIANTS 6, BRAVES 0 Madison Bumgarner allowed two hits in seven innings and combined with Sandy Rosario for a three-hit shutout for visiting San Francisco. Bumgarner (6-4) was dominant in earning his second straight win. He matched his season high with 10 strikeouts while walking one. TULOWITZKI OUT WITH BROKEN RIB The Colorado Rockies placed the star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki on the disabled list, and he could miss up to six weeks because of a broken rib. Tulowitzki was injured Thursday while diving for a ball in the eighth inning of a 5-4 loss to the Washington Nationals. Tulowitzki ranks second in the National League with a .347 batting average, third in homers (16) and fourth in runs batted in (51).

Dodgers
Baseball
Fines
Diamondbacks
Assault
Ian Kennedy
Eric Hinske


De Blasio Unveils New Plans for Troubled Schools in New York

Abstract: In the packed auditorium of an East Harlem high school, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new approach to fixing New York City’s most troubled public schools on Monday, offering them more money and staffing, extending the length of their day, and arranging for social services to be delivered to students and families on site. He described the new strategies, in a speech to a standing-room crowd of advocates and educators, as a sharp departure from his predecessor’s approach, which centered on closing large, failing schools and replacing them with smaller ones. “The previous administration had a policy that a school like this was left to fend for itself, and that’s why we’re here today, because we reject the notion of giving up on any of our schools,” Mr. de Blasio said at the Coalition School for Social Change . “We’re not giving up on them — in fact giving them what they need to succeed.” The new program will designate 94 of the city’s most troubled schools , including the Coalition School, as Renewal Schools based on a list of criteria including low four-year graduation rates for high schools and poor test scores for middle and elementary schools. Students at those schools will receive an extra hour of instructional time each day, teachers will have extra professional training, and the schools will be encouraged to offer summer school. The schools will also be given additional resources, with $150 million spread over two years, about $39 million for this school year and $111 million in the next. But the centerpiece of the proposal involves turning these institutions into so-called Community Schools, which try to address the challenges students face outside the classroom, with offerings like mental health services for those who need them or food for students who do not get enough to eat at home. While these programs are often popular with advocates, and already in use around the country for many decades, including in New York City, their performance has often been viewed as uneven. An analysis by The New York Times found that some of the community schools in Cincinnati, which is viewed as a leader in the approach, still showed dismal academic performances even after years of work and millions of dollars of investments. A New York deputy mayor, Richard R. Buery Jr., said, however, that there were examples of successful Community Schools around the country, and that they were an important part of a larger package of reforms. “There is no magic bullet,” Mr. Buery said. “No one is saying Community Schools by itself are going to fundamentally change the work, but what I would say — and is critical — is that Community Schools are a necessary part of that work, as well as a deeper strategy to improve teaching in the building.” Schools in the Renewal program will work along a three-year timeline, which will require improved attendance in the next school year and enhanced academic performance the year after that. Staffing changes, however, can be made along the way, and Mr. de Blasio said that if schools did not show meaningful improvement, they might still be shut down. Joel R. Klein, who was schools chancellor for most of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s time in office, rejected the idea that the Bloomberg administration gave schools little help to improve. He also pointed to a series of studies that showed some substantial gains at New York City’s small schools, which operate on the premise that they can give more attention to struggling students than the large schools they replace. Last month, for example, a study by the nonprofit research group MDRC said that disadvantaged students who enrolled in small schools were more likely to go to college than their peers. “We went in and we supported schools, we had resources and we had plans,” Mr. Klein said. But in many instances, he continued, “regardless of supports, you have to shut them down, and we know now that that strategy worked.” But the process of closing schools was messy. Students were allowed to graduate but no new ones would be admitted, and as teachers fled for more stable positions, the remaining students often found themselves in a shell of a school, with fewer and fewer course offerings. During the Bloomberg years, the practice of shutting down schools and opening new ones in the same building was often the key to freeing space for charter schools , and for changing large portions of the staff without violating union contract provisions. But the teachers from the original school who were left over were still entitled to their salaries because they had not done anything wrong, and as the number of such teachers eventually grew to more than 1,000, they became an embarrassment for both the city and the teachers’ union. Clara Hemphill, the founding editor of Insideschools.org , a website based at the New School, called Mayor de Blasio’s announcement promising, though she cautioned that the details of implementation would be crucial. “I don’t think public shaming and giving them bad grades, or telling them they’re terrible, makes them work harder,” she said of educators. “In most schools I’ve seen, it’s not that they’re lazy, it’s that they don’t know how to do better.”


Italy: Prosecutors Request Indictments for Cruise Ship Captain

Abstract: Italian prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to issue an indictment on manslaughter charges for the captain of the luxury liner Costa Concordia that ran aground in January 2012 off the Tuscan coast, an accident that claimed the lives of 32 people. The prosecutors also want to try the captain, Francesco Schettino, on charges of causing a shipwreck and abandoning the vessel before its 4,229 passengers and crew members were safe. In addition, the prosecutors requested that five crew members be tried on manslaughter charges. The judge will rule in the coming months on whether to accept the indictment requests. Costa Cruises, accused of administrative offenses related to the charges against its employees, is trying to reach a plea-bargain agreement with prosecutors. A settlement could cost the company more than $1 million.

Italy
Cruises
Francesco Schettino
Boat Accidents


Napolitano Sworn In to Second Term in Italy

Abstract: ROME — As President Giorgio Napolitano of Italy was sworn in for a second term on Monday, he used his inaugural address to scold Italy’s bickering political parties for creating the impasse that led to his re-election. The country has been mired in political chaos for 56 days, since national elections produced a Parliament divided into three main camps with none able to assemble a governing coalition. Presidents of Italy are chosen by Parliament and customarily serve a single seven-year term; Mr. Napolitano agreed to run for re-election only after Parliament repeatedly failed to choose a successor. In his speech, Mr. Napolitano called on party leaders to look beyond partisan interests and find common ground, for the good of the nation and of Italians who are struggling in the face of a long economic crisis. No matter how bitter their differences, he said, they had to be overcome. “The fact that in Italy there is a widespread sort of horror toward any hypothesis of accord, alliance, mediation or convergence among different political forces is a sign of regression,” he said, adding that the crisis was the result “of a long series of omissions and flaws, closures and irresponsibility.” In an emotional speech that made frequent reference to his age — 87 — Mr. Napolitano said that Italian voters’ demands for sweeping changes in the country’s political system had fallen on deaf ears. Politicians have ignored demands for greater transparency, moral rectitude and a significant reduction in political spending, he said. In the elections on Feb. 24 and 25, the center-left bloc got the most votes by a narrow margin, but its leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, was unable to find enough support in Parliament afterward to form a governing majority or elect one of his candidates as president; he resigned last week. The third force in the Parliament is the antiestablishment Five Star Movement, headed by the comedian Beppe Grillo, which won 25 percent of the popular vote in its first foray in national elections but refused to ally with any traditional political party. Over the weekend, Mr. Grillo railed against the re-election of Mr. Napolitano, calling it a sign that the traditional parties were trying to preserve their power against growing calls for change. Mr. Napolitano appointed a group of advisers last month to determine the most urgent political and economic measures needed in Italy. He said on Monday that the advisers’ recommendations could serve as guidelines for a new government, and that he would meet with party leaders on Tuesday to discuss who could be prime minister. He said he agreed to seek re-election only on the condition that party leaders would act responsibly and “with realism.” Mr. Napolitano warned in his speech that if the parties failed again to form a government, he would dissolve the Parliament and call new elections, and may also resign.

Italy
Giorgio Napolitano
Election
Legislature


Stringer Concedes Error in Bio

Abstract: The story of how she became her high school’s first black cheerleader has become a popular narrative in C. Vivian Stringer ’s life story ever since she recounted the anecdote at a news conference last April that followed derogatory comments made by the radio host Don Imus about her Rutgers women’s basketball team. Since then, the story of how Stringer’s family fought with her Pennsylvania town’s school board over her inclusion on the squad has been repeated in several interviews and news articles — including twice in The New York Times — and is detailed in her autobiography, “Standing Tall,” released by Crown Publishing last month. Dolores Dantzler, who is black, called The Times early this week to say that she joined the squad of German Township High School in the 1950s — a decade before Stringer became a cheerleader in 1964. A check of the German Township yearbooks from the years 1954 to 1964 by Denise Stalnaker, the director of the German-Masontown Public Library in Pennsylvania, confirmed that Dantzler posed for the team cheerleading photos from 1955 through 1958. In a telephone interview Thursday, Stringer acknowledged she had been mistaken. “I feel so bad,” Stringer said. “I didn’t know. I was told that and to me it was real. I was misinformed, obviously.” Stringer said she called Dantzler on Wednesday to apologize. “If that’s so, I can imagine how she must hurt, and I can’t believe I didn’t know this all this time,” Stringer said. Dantzler said she was hesitant to accept the apology. “I don’t understand why she did this,” she said. “I don’t believe, to be honest, and I told her this, I don’t believe that she didn’t know that this was an error.” A spokeswoman for Crown Publishing said that future printings of the book would be corrected. “Her story about overcoming racial discrimination to become a high school cheerleader is not disputed and remains an important and influential part of her early experiences,” Katie Wainwright, executive director of publicity for Crown Publishing, said in a statement.

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey


New Chief of Spy Unit Is Appointed in Pakistan

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani military chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, on Monday appointed a close ally as head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, consolidating his power at a time of sharp tension with the country’s civilian leaders and fluctuating policy toward the Taliban. The new ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar, had previously led the paramilitary Sindh Rangers based in Karachi. He will replace Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul-Islam, who has led the ISI since 2012 and is scheduled to step down on Nov. 7. The army spokesman announced the promotion of General Akhtar, who was also promoted from the rank of major general, among a reshuffle of five major military posts. But it was the appointment of the ISI chief, considered the second most powerful position in the military, that attracted the most attention. Always shrouded in controversy, the ISI has in recent months come under particularly sharp scrutiny amid accusations of political interference and brutal tactics to control the media. Under General Islam’s leadership, the spy agency was accused of trying to assassinate a senior journalist , Hamid Mir. And the military has been widely accused of supporting an opposition movement led by a former cricketer, Imran Khan, and a cleric, Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri, that aimed to oust Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The military has publicly rejected both accusations. Analysts said they expected that General Akhtar, who recently led a campaign against the Taliban in Karachi, was likely to shy away from such a prominent political role — at least initially. But there is little doubt that he inherits a strained relationship with the country’s civilian leadership, which was evident from the manner of his appointment. Though the ISI chief theoretically answers to the prime minister, the fact that General Akhtar’s promotion was announced by the military was taken as a sign of the true line of authority. Image Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar Credit Pakistan Rangers, via Associated Press Mutual paranoia is a central factor in poor relations among the military and civilian leaders, said Talat Masood, a retired general and commentator. “The relationship has gone through a really bad patch, with all this speculation that elements in intelligence are supportive of Imran Khan and Qadri,” he added. “I think that will subside now.” General Sharif and Mr. Sharif — they are not related — have been at odds over the fate of Geo, the television channel where Mr. Mir was the leading anchor before being attacked in April, and over street demonstrations. Mr. Sharif’s supporters privately accuse the ISI of covertly playing a role in both dramas — possibly with a view to ousting Mr. Sharif, much as his last stint in power ended in 1999. The ISI has a long history of undermining civilian governments in Pakistan. Although the previous army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, pledged to end the spy agency’s political role in 2008, it has continued to operate behind-the-scenes. The ISI has also suffered several major embarrassments, including the American commando raid in May 2011 that killed Osama bin Laden near a major army training center in Abbottabad. For American officials, though, General Akhtar may offer hope of an improved relationship. In a paper written during a period of study at the Army War College in Pennsylvania in 2008, he stressed the need to establish a stable democracy in Pakistan and to curb anti-Americanism in the country. Later, he led anti-Taliban operations in the South Waziristan tribal agency, near the border with Afghanistan. In 2011, he became head of the Sindh Rangers, drawing praise from civilian leaders for his role in an operation against the Taliban and armed gangs linked to Karachi’s political parties. “His role in maintaining peace in the city was remarkable,” said Sharfuddin Memon, an adviser to the home minister of Sindh Province. But human rights activists say the same period was marked by a rise in abuses by security forces, including abduction, torture and extrajudicial execution.

Pakistan
Raheel Sharif
ISI
Rizwan Akhtar
Spying and Intelligence Agencies
Appointments and Executive Changes


Attempt to Kill Danish Cartoonist Fails

Abstract: COPENHAGEN (AP) — The police foiled an attempt to kill an artist who drew a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Muslim world, the head of Denmark’s intelligence service said Saturday. Jakob Scharf, who heads PET, the Danish intelligence service, said a 28-year-old Somalia man was armed with an ax and a knife when he tried to enter the home of the artist, Kurt Westergaard, in Aarhus on Friday evening. The attack on Mr. Westergaard, whose rendering was among 12 that led to the burning of Danish diplomatic offices in predominantly Muslim countries in 2006, was “terror related,” Mr. Scharf said in a statement. “The arrested man has according to PET’s information close relations to the Somali terrorist group, Al Shabab, and Al Qaeda leaders in eastern Africa,” he said. The man was suspected of having been involved in terror-related activities during a stay in East Africa and had been under PET’s surveillance, but not in connection with Mr. Westergaard, Mr. Scharf said. The police shot the Somali man in a knee and a hand, authorities said. The police in Aarhus said that the suspect was seriously wounded, but that his life was not in danger. The man, who had a permit to live in Denmark, was to be charged Saturday with attempted murder for trying to kill Mr. Westergaard and a police officer, Mr. Scharf said. His name was not released. Mr. Westergaard, 75, who had his 5-year-old granddaughter on a sleepover, called the police and sought shelter in a specially made safe room in the house, the police said. Officers arrived two minutes later and tried to arrest the suspect, who wielded an ax at a police officer. The officer then shot the man. Mr. Westergaard could not be reached for comment. According to his employer, the newspaper Jyllands-Posten , Mr. Westergaard said the assailant had shouted “revenge” and “blood” when trying to enter the room where he and his grandchild had sought shelter. Mr. Westergaard remains a potential target for extremists nearly five years after he drew a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. The drawing was printed along with 11 others in Jyllands-Posten in 2005. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry. Law enforcement officials have said twice before that they had learned of plots against Mr. Westergaard. Mr. Scharf said the new case “again confirms the terror threat that is directed at Denmark and against the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in particular.”

Islam
Copenhagen (Denmark)
Westergaard Kurt
Cartoons and Cartoonists


Eva-Maria Brem Takes Giant Slalom Title

Abstract: Eva-Maria Brem of Austria clinched the women’s giant slalom title by a mere 2 points on the last day of the World Cup finals in St. Moritz, Switzerland, for her first-ever crystal globe.


Thunderous Noises on East Coast Were Sonic Booms, Navy Says

Abstract: A series of earthshaking noises that left some residents on the East Coast wondering if they had lived through an earthquake on Thursday afternoon were sonic booms caused by the testing of a fighter jet, officials said. The Navy said it was conducting supersonic testing of an F-35C stealth fighter from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, in Maryland, in what it called “a cleared military flight area” over the waters off the East Coast. A second aircraft, an F-18 jet, accompanied the F-35C for the test, the Navy said. The aircraft caused nine sonic booms over the course of an hour and a half, starting shortly before 1:30 p.m., the United States Geological Survey said on its website . It said that the booms were heard in southern New Jersey, on Long Island and elsewhere on the Eastern Seaboard, and that one occurred at a spot over the Atlantic Ocean seven miles southeast of Atlantic City and nine miles east-southeast of Ventnor City, N.J. A sonic boom is a thunderous noise produced by the shock waves created by an aircraft when it flies faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms can be heard in different locations at different times, the Geological Survey said on Twitter , because the shock wave travels through the air with the plane as it moves at supersonic speed.

New Jersey
Long Island
Military aircraft
East Coast US
US Military
US Geological Survey


Man Stabs 7 Hospital Workers to Death in China, Police Say

Abstract: TAIPEI, Taiwan — A man fatally stabbed six nurses and a manager on Thursday at a Chinese military hospital in a seaside area famous for gatherings of Communist Party leaders, police officials in China said. One other nurse was injured in the attack. The suspect, a 27-year-old hospital employee who had no known motive, was arrested after the attacks, the Qinhuangdao City Public Security Bureau said in a statement online. The stabbings took place Thursday morning in Beidaihe, a resort area in the Hebei Province city of Qinhuangdao, about 180 miles east of Beijing. There have been several assaults on doctors and hospital employees in recent years, often committed by people angry about what they consider substandard treatment of their relatives. But the fact that the suspect in the Beidaihe case is an employee indicates that the attack was probably not the result of a dispute over a patient’s treatment. The victims were killed in a women’s dormitory at the hospital for elderly military personnel, also known as People’s Liberation Army Hospital 281, the statement said. Beidaihe was a favored summertime destination for Mao Zedong and other leaders, but after taking office as president a decade ago, Hu Jintao tried to lower the profile of the gatherings there. That effort was short-lived, and the spot appeared to gain renewed importance during negotiations in 2012 over China’s new leadership.


Family’s Continued Defense of Joe Paterno Is a Painful One

Abstract: Joe Paterno ’s family can’t rest. How can they, when his legacy continues to unravel almost five years after he was fired by Penn State in the wake of a child sexual abuse scandal involving one of his assistant coaches? How can they relax when Paterno’s reputation, once pristine, grows more threadbare with every development in the case? They can’t. Not now, probably not ever. I get it. After all, that’s what family is for. But that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable when people defend Paterno again and again. This week, a judge’s ruling in a civil case filed in Philadelphia revealed a claim that in 1976, a boy claimed to have told Paterno that Jerry Sandusky , then one of Penn State’s assistant coaches, had sexually abused him. If the claim is true, that would be a quarter-century earlier than Paterno had said he first learned of Sandusky’s abuses — from another staff member in 2001 . In that instance, Paterno said that he had reported the accusation against Sandusky to his superior, as required by law. But he did not say that he had ever followed up, or moved to cut Penn State’s ties with Sandusky, who is now serving what amounts to a life sentence in prison. The latest development was a reminder that we will probably never know what Paterno, who died in 2012 , knew of the abuse, or when he first learned of it. Image Joe and Sue Paterno in 2011, outside their home in State College, Pa. Credit Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press On Twitter, Scott Paterno, one of Paterno’s sons, tore into the latest accusation against his father, writing: “It would be great if everyone waited to see the substance of the allegation before they assume it’s true. Because it’s not.” In another Twitter message, he claimed the new story made no sense. Joe Paterno, the son said, would never have protected Sandusky, whom he labeled “an obscure assistant coach no one had yet heard of” in 1976, nor would he have left his own young children alone with him . “It’s bunk,” Scott Paterno wrote. But is he right? Who can know for sure? Joe Paterno can’t tell us. What we do know is that Sandusky did terrible things to children, and even after hearing that Sandusky was discovered in the shower with a boy of about 10, Paterno didn’t call the police. He didn’t seek to have Sandusky barred from Penn State’s athletic facilities, or apparently even question his assistant about what he had been told, even though the two men had been colleagues for decades. All that makes the Paterno family’s continuing efforts to defend the coach hard to watch. It’s sad to see a family grapple so publicly with the death of their beloved patriarch, and to focus so many of their statements on his legacy and on what the history books will say about him. The harsh truth is that there will be a long chapter in those books about the Sandusky scandal, and about Paterno’s role — or lack of one — in preventing it. One of Paterno’s sons — the former Penn State assistant coach Jay Paterno — wrote a book titled, “ Paterno Legacy : Enduring Lessons From the Life and Death of My Father.” In it, he writes, “I resented the people who’d done this to my father, to our university and to me.” Paterno’s wife, Sue, wrote an email to the Penn State lettermen last fall, just before the fourth anniversary of her husband’s forced departure from his storied program. In it, she blamed the university’s board of trustees, the N.C.A.A. and what she called the “flawed” report compiled by the former F.B.I. director Louis Freeh for taking “a terrible tragedy” and making it worse. “I write to you now to let you know that we have not given up on setting the record straight — and we never will,” Sue Paterno wrote. “Four years of secrecy are enough. The victims, their families, each of you and everyone who cares about Penn State deserve the truth.” That sentiment is what makes the whole of the Paterno family’s efforts, while understandable from their point of view, seem tone deaf. How can it be appropriate for any of the Paternos, or anyone from Penn State, to speak for the victims or their families, given all that we know? It’s one thing to rage about the loss of a father, or about a respected coach’s reputation blackened by someone else’s actions. It’s another to forget that sensitivity for the victims and their families should be the key here. Unfortunately, it often seems the Paternos and their supporters are interested only in writing and talking and tweeting about Paterno’s mistreatment; about the N.C.A.A.’s overreach in its investigation; about how Paterno’s statue should return to its former home outside Beaver Stadium. It’s yet another tragedy that the victims have to keep hearing all this. For them, this case already will live on and on, in their minds and memories, for the remainder of their lives. So, no, they can’t rest either.

Joe Paterno
Penn State
Coaches
Jerry Sandusky
College football
Child Abuse
Rape


Medal of Honor for Army Sergeant

Abstract: WASHINGTON — In an emotional ceremony, President Obama on Tuesday awarded the Medal of Honor to an Army staff sergeant who placed himself in the line of fire in Afghanistan to try to save his squad mates and to protect and comfort a dying American soldier. The young staff sergeant, Salvatore A. Giunta, now 25, of Hiawatha, Iowa, was an Army specialist when he took part in the firefight in eastern Afghanistan three years ago. He is the first living service member to receive the Medal of Honor, the military’s most prestigious award, for action in any war since Vietnam. Sergeant Giunta and the other soldiers of Company B, Second Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment, were part of a campaign to provide food, winter clothing and medical care to Afghans in remote villages. They were ambushed in the Korengal Valley in a coordinated attack from three sides. In a packed ceremony in the East Room before Sergeant Giunta’s family, squad mates and the parents of two soldiers who were killed in the ambush, Mr. Obama recounted the events on the night of Oct. 25, 2007 . “The moon was full; the light it cast was enough to travel by without using their night-vision goggles,” Mr. Obama said, with Sergeant Giunta standing at his side, looking straight ahead. “They hadn’t traveled a quarter-mile before the silence was shattered. It was an ambush so close that the cracks of the guns and the whizzes of the bullets were simultaneous.” The two lead squad men went down. So did a third who was struck in the helmet. Sergeant Giunta charged into the wall of bullets to pull him to safety, Mr. Obama said. Sergeant Giunta was hit twice, but was protected by his body armor. The sergeant could see the other two wounded Americans, Mr. Obama recounted. By now, the East Room was so silent you could hear a rustle from across the room. One Army officer took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. Sergeant Giunta looked down as the president described how he and his squad mates threw grenades, which they used as cover to run toward the wounded soldiers. All this, they did under constant fire, Mr. Obama said. Finally, they reached one of the men. As other soldiers tended to him, Sergeant Giunta sprinted ahead. “He crested a hill alone with no cover but the dust kicked up by the storm of bullets still biting into the ground,” Mr. Obama said. And there Sergeant Giunta saw “a chilling sight” — the silhouettes of two insurgents carrying away the other wounded American — his friend, Sgt. Joshua C. Brennan. Sergeant Giunta leaped forward, and fatally shot one insurgent while wounding the other. Then he rushed to his friend. He dragged him to cover, and stayed with him, trying to stop the bleeding, for 30 minutes, until help arrived. Sergeant Brennan died later of his wounds. So did Specialist Hugo V. Mendoza, the platoon medic. Five others were wounded. Speaking to reporters after receiving the award, Sergeant Giunta said the honor was “bittersweet.” “I lost two dear friends of mine,” he said. “I would give this back in a second to have my friends with me right now.” The outposts in the Korengal Valley were disbanded this spring after months of patrols that cost the American military dearly. Forces were moved to provide security to larger population centers.

Giunta Salvatore A
Medal of Honor (US)
Afghanistan War (2001- )
Obama Barack
United States Army


Pete Rose Awaits His Return, 25 Years Into Exile

Abstract: Pete Rose has a vision. Someday his career hits record will be tied, and he will respond with one final turn at bat. He will roll a single up the middle and crawl to first base for No. 4,257, reclaiming his title as Hit King. Rose related this fanciful dream on the phone the other day, at the end of a lively conversation. The problem with the story, obviously, is that he is 73 years old and has been barred from baseball since 1989. But there has to be a better ending out there, somehow. Life is good for Rose. He has been in the news lately, managing the independent Bridgeport Bluefish, in Connecticut, for a game last month — “They took some extra bases, made some headfirst slides, and we won, 2-0,” he said — and announcing his role as a spokesman for SportsBeep, a fantasy sports app. It is legal, he pointed out. “Which is important to me — I will no longer do anything illegal in my life,” Rose said. “It’s a great way for fans to be attracted. If they’re attracted to sports through this app, they’re going to watch more sports and maybe go to more games. It creates fun for sports fans.” If this new association bothers anybody or hinders his chances of being reinstated, Rose said, he cannot worry about it. He has to make a living, and he has found a way. His website sells autographed merchandise — $500 buys a signed copy of the document that barred him for gambling on his team — and he signs for fans at a mall in Las Vegas about 20 days a month. He takes photos and talks constantly about the game. “I’m probably in the salary bracket of a .240 or .250 hitter today,” Rose said, laughing. “It’s enough to put food on the table and have fun and enjoy life and help my kids and grandkids out.” Rose hit .303 across 24 sharp-edged seasons, through 1986, when he was the player-manager of the Cincinnati Reds. His gambling transgressions, he says, began the next season, and his lies culminated in an investigation that dominated the game 25 summers ago. The easiest parts of those days, Rose said, were the games he was managing. Before and after, he said, the cameras never let up. It strained his relationship with his former teammate Johnny Bench, whose induction to the Hall of Fame in the summer of 1989 was overshadowed by the investigation. “I was dead wrong in everything I did,” Rose said, adding later: “I should have fessed up when I was called into the office. But with my age at the time and two young kids, and all of a sudden I was going to lose my job, and I’ve been playing baseball since I was 9 years old — how are my kids going to survive?” The particulars of the case have been rehashed endlessly: how Rose expected to appeal in a year, but the commissioner, A. Bartlett Giamatti, died of a heart attack eight days after barring him; how it took Rose more than a decade to acknowledge that he had bet on the Reds to win; how Bud Selig, the commissioner since 1992, has essentially ignored his case. Rose made his public admission in a book published in 2004 but stressed that he confessed to Selig more than a year before that. In any case, Selig is in no hurry to act before he retires in January. A spokesman said the case was under review. Rose said he was not looking ahead to Selig’s successor, who, in theory, could give him more consideration. He said he had not given up on Selig and would be overjoyed if he lifted the ban. But by declining to act for all these years, Selig has essentially delivered his verdict. The status quo holds. The rules have always been clear, of course: Betting on one’s own team results in a lifetime ban, and Rose agreed to it. If a commissioner bent on that rule, even a bit, it would open new territory that perhaps is best left unexplored. But it is hard to imagine that grave harm would result if Rose were allowed to help out for a few weeks in spring training. “All I would do is try to get closer to the players, the young players, and help them to develop,” Rose said. “I like young players because I like their enthusiasm.” Living in Las Vegas, Rose watches several hours of baseball every day, he said: one game in the late afternoon and another at night. He loves watching Andrew McCutchen, Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout, and he said he sometimes exchanged text messages with players seeking advice. One player he used to hear from was Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees slugger serving a one-year ban for his latest performance-enhancing drug scandal. Rose remembers how Rodriguez craved stories about the history of the game, and he said he could relate to Rodriguez now in one way. “For anybody in a situation like I was in or he was in: Come forward as quickly as possible,” Rose said. “Because once you get it off your chest, the healing starts. If you have to live with it, it drives you crazy.” Rose has found a kind of peace, even without a plaque in Cooperstown, N.Y., or another job in baseball. His records for games, at-bats and hits — and his favorite category, games won — secure an indelible legacy, no matter how it all ends. “I’m a firm believer that baseball is a better sport if I’m in it,” Rose said, and you wonder if we will ever find out.

Pete Rose
Baseball
Gambling
Reds
Doping
Baseball Hall of Fame
MLB


Twitter Troubles Lie in Marketers’ Reluctance to Buy New Kind of Ad

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — As a company, Twitter is an adolescent — gangly, starry-eyed, growing like a weed and unpredictable. No wonder advertisers and investors are having trouble figuring it out. The social networking company shocked Wall Street on Tuesday by reporting slower-than-expected growth in advertising sales, which account for nearly all of its revenue. Shares of Twitter, which fell 18 percent on Tuesday after the first-quarter results were disclosed, dropped an additional 9 percent on Wednesday. Although revenue rose a brisk 74 percent in the quarter compared with the same quarter a year ago, it was less growth than in Twitter’s five previous quarters and well below the high bar that the company had set. Twitter attributed the disappointment to advertisers’ reluctance to spend heavily on ads that prompt the viewer to take an action, like download a smartphone app or apply for a credit card. This type of ad, known as direct response, is a newer area for Twitter, which originally focused on general brand image ads. Marketers say they are indeed more cautious about Twitter’s direct-response ads because the microblogging service has not yet shown that it can target or track those ads with the level of precision that advertisers want. Compared with mature rivals like Google and Facebook, Twitter doesn’t know as much about its users, and it is more difficult to measure results. Facebook has so much data on its users, “you could actually target a premium credit card to a businessman you know is traveling all the time,” said Bryan Wiener, chairman of 360i, a digital marketing agency that works with brands like Capital One, NBCUniversal, Spotify, Oreo and Oscar Mayer. “That’s the kind of information that’s missing from Twitter,” he said. “There’s not this rich history of your holistic life.” As a result, he said, many brands are unwilling to commit big money to Twitter ad campaigns. Richard Alfonsi, Twitter’s vice president for global online sales, defended the company’s targeting and said that plenty of advertisers understood the company’s value to them. He cited as examples King, which makes mobile games like Candy Crush Saga, and the Lyft ride-hailing service. “We have a long list of advertisers who are having success,” he said. Still, he acknowledged that Twitter needed to do more to prove to advertisers that it delivered results. A new partnership with Google’s DoubleClick platform, which many brands and agencies use to buy and measure an ad’s effectiveness across platforms, will probably help with that when it is introduced in the next few months. Even if they have doubts, advertisers are intrigued by Twitter’s position as the world’s agora. Many consider it the most important hub for live conversation, especially around major events, and they want to be part of it. Macy’s, the department store chain, is increasing its investment in Twitter ads more than in other social platforms because of that real-time appeal. During the N.C.A.A. college basketball tournament, for example, Macy’s ran a campaign using a direct-response polling product from Twitter that asked fans which team they wanted to win. The act of voting created another tweet that the fan could send out to tell other Twitter users how they voted. Travis Freeman, head of social at the Dentsu Aegis Network, the advertising agency that handled the campaign, said the goal was to make Macy’s part of a relevant conversation, not necessarily to drive sales. Image Advertisers say Twitter has not shown that it can target or track some ads as well as they want. Credit Dado Ruvic/Reuters He said the campaign was effective, although he declined to disclose details. “It took relevant content with relevant timing with relevant conversation and tied it all together to ask people to do something that they were really interested in,” he said. Mr. Freeman said that, in general, Twitter is best for building brand awareness and recall. Its weakness is the ability to measure direct-response effectiveness. “A lot of times, brands don’t really know what to do with it,” he said. “And that was Twitter’s fault because I don’t think they had a very clear direction.” Ivan Pollard, a top marketing executive at Coca-Cola North America, said that Coke had successfully used Twitter for large-scale ad campaigns, like #shareacoke, and was devoting more money to the platform. “They’re very good at understanding an advertiser’s needs and very willing to work with advertisers to achieve their ambition,” he said. But he also noted that Coke experimented with every new platform because that was where its customers were. Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research, said the stock market’s negative reaction to Twitter’s stumbles was really a matter of unrealistic expectations for the still-young company. “It’s hard to grow that fast that consistently,” he said. Mr. Wiener, the 360i chairman, said that Twitter’s growing pains were not unusual for newer ad platforms. “Eighteen months ago, we might have been having a similar conversation about Facebook,” he said. “That’s the awkward teenage phase that Twitter is in now.”

Online advertising
advertising,marketing
Social Media


World Cup Gave Twitter a Big Burst in Traffic

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — The World Cup had a second winner: Twitter. The social networking company reported strong growth in the second quarter , driven in part by heavy use of the service by soccer fans around the world during the monthlong tournament, which spanned June and July. Twitter’s results far exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, and the company’s shares rose about 29 percent in after-hours trading. “During the World Cup, we delivered the kind of events experience that I’ve wanted to see from us for some time,” Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, said in a conference call with analysts. The service was tailored to each game and each country’s fans, giving a more personalized experience than new users have typically encountered in the past. Revenue soared 124 percent during the quarter and the average number of people using the microblogging service in its June quarter was up 6 percent from its March quarter. However, Twitter reported a continued decline in how much people were using the service, as measured by timeline views, a measure the company invented. Video Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief, discussed in an interview on CNBC what drove revenue and user growth during the second quarter. Americans on average refreshed their Twitter feeds 792 times a month during the quarter, a drop from the first quarter and last year’s second quarter. Globally, timeline views were down 7 percent from a year ago, but up 4 percent from the first quarter as the company made a huge push to recruit new international users during the World Cup. Despite the flat usage of the service, Twitter has demonstrated a striking ability to extract more advertising revenue from each user. For the quarter that ended June 30, the company reported revenue of $312 million, up from $139 million a year ago. Analysts had expected the company to post revenue of $283 million. Mark Mahaney, an Internet analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that, like Facebook, Twitter was just beginning to climb a steep revenue curve as advertisers discovered its ability to reach mobile users. “This can be a highly profitable business,” he said. “They’ll be able to dramatically increase their monetization just like Facebook did.” Twitter reported a net loss of $145 million, or 24 cents a share, compared with a loss of $42 million, or 32 cents a share, a year ago. Excluding certain stock-based compensation and acquisition costs, the company had a profit of $15 million, or 2 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $16 million, or 12 cents a share, a year ago. On that adjusted basis, analysts had expected the company to report a loss of 1 cent a share. The World Cup illustrated Twitter’s greatest strength and its biggest weakness: As with the cable news networks, its traffic is dependent on surges of public interest around real-time events. Twitter said its users sent more than 672 million tweets during the entire tournament — more than during any other event in its history. But the company’s chief financial officer, Anthony Noto, attributed the drop in usage by Americans during the quarter to the lack of galvanizing events like the Super Bowl that occurred in the first quarter. “What you’re seeing now is a World Cup bump,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a principal analyst with the research firm eMarketer. “The proof will be what their numbers look like next quarter, and the quarter after.” Ever since it first sold stock to the public last November, Twitter has been struggling to find ways to make its service more engaging, especially to newcomers. The average number of users in a given month, a crucial figure used by Wall Street to measure social networks, has grown by single-digit percentages from quarter to quarter since its stock offering. As of June 30, Twitter said, it had 271 million monthly average users, up from 255 million as of March 31. Video Twitter’s chief, Dick Costolo, explained on CNBC how the company plans to accelerate user growth. Twitter executives have argued that such figures understate the service’s true reach, since many of its messages are embedded on other websites and apps and appear in mass media outlets like television. In the conference call with investors, Mr. Costolo said that the size of Twitter’s audience was two or three times its active user base, and that the company was actively working on ways to more deeply engage those casual visitors. A concern for the company’s long-term prospects is that existing users seem to be spending less time on the service. In June, Americans spent an average of 7.2 minutes a day on Twitter’s mobile apps, down from 9.2 minutes a year ago, according to comScore data analyzed by the brokerage firm Cowen & Company. That 22 percent drop was the worst showing of any major social app. Mr. Costolo has publicly signaled his dissatisfaction with Twitter’s progress by pushing out several executives this year, including Ali Rowghani , the chief operating officer; Christoper Fry , the senior vice president for engineering; and Michael Sippey , the head of product. Before the results were released, Twitter’s stock closed at $38.59, half of the all-time high. Whatever Twitter’s challenges in drawing in users, its advertising platform is attracting a lot of interest from advertisers, according to James Borow, chief executive of Shift, a company that helps advertisers conduct social marketing campaigns. “They are defining a tweet as a self-contained bit of media and they are distributing that all over the Internet,” Mr. Borow said.

Dick Costolo
Earnings Reports
2014 World Cup
Online advertising
Social Media


New Haven Priest Who Taped Police Is Cleared of Charges

Abstract: EAST HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Prosecutors dropped charges on Thursday against a Roman Catholic priest who was arrested while he was videotaping police officers here in an attempt to document what he called harassment of Hispanics. The dismissal came as parishioners of the priest’s church announced that they had filed a complaint with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division seeking an investigation of the East Haven town police on claims of brutality and racial profiling of Hispanics. The priest, the Rev. James Manship, who is the pastor at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in New Haven, was charged on Feb. 19 with disorderly conduct and interfering with the police. He was videotaping two officers who were removing what they called illegal license plates from a wall of a grocery store owned by an Ecuadorean couple, who said the plates were being used for decoration. The officers said in their reports that Father Manship was holding an “unknown shiny silver object” and struggled with an officer who tried to take it from him. But a 15-second video released by Father Manship’s lawyers this month showed one of the officers, before the arrest, asking him, “Is there a reason you have a camera on me?” The video goes blank as one officer approaches the priest. Prosecutors did not return calls on Thursday seeking an explanation of why the charges were dropped. Father Manship said that he was glad the case against him had ended, but that much work remained to be done to address the fears of the Latino community in East Haven, a working-class town of about 28,000 that borders New Haven. The complaint filed with the Justice Department contends that the East Haven police have subjected Latino residents and visitors to “excessive force,” including the beating of people in custody. Police Chief Leonard Gallo did not return a call seeking comment. Hugh Keefe, a lawyer for the East Haven Police Department, declined to comment on the complaint, saying that he wanted to see it first.

Police Brutality and Misconduct
Recordings and Downloads (Video)
Connecticut
Hispanic-Americans


To Cuba on Business

Abstract: Since President Obama moved to normalize relations with Cuba in December, you might think the nation has put out a big “Open for Business” sign. Trade delegations seem to land in Havana every day. But traveling there for business is not as easy as it might appear, despite significant changes. “The president has made travel to Cuba for commercial purposes easier,” said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a business organization in New York that focuses on Cuba without taking political positions. “But he hasn’t said, ‘Do what you want, and there will be no monitoring.’ What he has done is encourage you to do more in Cuba but to remember that there remain regulations that need to be followed.” Mr. Kavulich said there are two ways to travel to Cuba for Americans interested in exploring business possibilities on their own (that is, outside of an official delegation, like the one led by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York last month). The first covers businesses that are already exempt from the longstanding United States embargo. These include sales of food, medicine and, as of this year, credit card services, building supplies and air travel. Executives in such fields should obtain a business visa from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. Mr. Kavulich said companies already exporting to Cuba usually contact their Cuban counterparts to lobby the Interests Section for the visa. The second way to check out business opportunities is simply to fly down on a tourist visa. But do not expect to get into any government ministry without a business visa. The United States government requires all travelers to Cuba to fill out a form specifying that the trip is being conducted under one of 12 permitted categories (the list is available at http://1.usa.gov/1sCOBaX). Searching for unauthorized business opportunities is not one of them, so some creativity might be required. Charter airlines will require this form before issuing tickets, and the United States government holds the forms for five years. Of course, another alternative is to fly to another country, typically Canada or Jamaica, and head to Cuba from there on a commercial flight. Some tips for doing business in Cuba: ■ Authorized travel agencies have the contacts to make hotel reservations and other arrangements. They charge for this, but it’s considered worth it. ■ Although American credit card companies are now allowed to process transactions made in Cuba, none have yet started to do so. Bring cash. Plenty of it (Although you will have to declare $10,000 or more to United States Customs). ■ Besides offering an exchange rate for American dollars that is lopsided in its favor, Cuba charges a 10 percent penalty for buying them. Consider changing to Canadian dollars or euros first, then buy Cuban convertible pesos at the airport or hotel. ■ Most American cellphones will not work in Cuba. You can rent a cellphone from the Cuban phone company, Etecsa, at some hotels. ■ Rental cars are available, but are expensive. Better to hire a taxi. Consider negotiating a deal with the driver to wait for you and return you to your hotel. ■ It is now legal to bring back Cuban cigars and Cuban rum, but you can’t spend more than $100. Get a receipt for whatever you buy, and don’t try to convince United States Customs that a guy on the street sold you a $400 box of Cohibas for $100. Your cigars could end up in the airport trash.

Cuba
Business travel
Embargoes Sanctions


Best Is Still to Come in Pearson Breakup

Abstract: The best chapter of Pearson’s breakup is yet to be written. Selling a 47 percent stake in the book publisher Penguin Random House to the co-owner Bertelsmann might generate twice as much as The Financial Times, which the British company sold to Japan’s Nikkei for 844 million pounds ($1.3 billion) last month. Pearson’s chief executive, John Fallon, can unshackle himself from the publisher of “Fifty Shades of Grey” as early as October, when a lockup ends. Yet it makes sense to wait. Pearson and Bertelsmann pooled their English-language book businesses in an all-share deal in mid-2013. The Germans have a 53 percent stake and managerial control. For Pearson, now focusing entirely on education, the stake is a financial investment, recorded in its accounts as having a value of $1.7 billion. Comparable valuations suggest it is worth more. A rival, Bloomsbury Publishing, trades at 7.6 times last year’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, Thomson Reuters data shows. Penguin Random House has better pricing power and a wider stable of authors, raising its chances of generating best sellers. Applying a multiple of 10 to the venture’s 2014 Ebitda of around $460 million, Pearson’s stake in the virtually debt-free division could be worth $2.2 billion. One reason to wait is that the joint venture isn’t yet fully grown. The publisher should be able to squeeze costs by, say, 4 percent of revenue as a result of the original 2013 merger, and those benefits aren’t yet reflected in its accounts. Take that roughly $142 million in savings, tax and capitalize it, and Pearson’s share of the cost savings could be worth up to $547 million. That’s not including the revenue benefits from negotiating from a better position with retailers like Amazon. This lifts the price tag of Pearson’s stake to about about $2.7 billion. Bertelsmann, which is family owned, could easily afford this — its net debt of 1.7 billion euros, or roughly $1.9 billion, is less than one year’s worth of the company’s Ebitda. But there’s no need to move now. Selling The Financial Times gives Pearson cash to play with while the book joint venture gets up to speed, and maybe expands through acquisitions, as in last year’s purchase of the Spanish publisher Santillana Ediciones Generales. Compelling stories shouldn’t be rushed.

Pearson
Publishing
Penguin Random House
Bertelsmann
John Fallon
Mergers and Acquisitions


Ex-Met Beltran Says He Isn’t Haunted by Playoff Strikeout

Abstract: The talent gap is obvious. We know we cannot throw 95 miles an hour, or make the pivot on a double play with a runner bearing down, or square up a jackknifing curveball with a season on the line. We imagine what it feels like to be an elite athlete, but we cannot know. We think we might share the emotions, the joy of winning and despair of losing. But every now and then, often without meaning to, an athlete will remind us that no, we really do not. So it is with Carlos Beltran. Beltran returned to Flushing on Friday with the St. Louis Cardinals , the team that won the National League pennant here in 2006 when Adam Wainwright froze him on a curveball to end Game 7 of the championship series. The Mets have not returned to the playoffs, and that moment haunts their fan base. It does not haunt Beltran. He wanted desperately to get a hit, to drill that imaginary three-run double that would have put the Mets in the World Series. But he said Friday that he still viewed that season as the best of his career and that, by the next season, the sting was gone. “For me, I saw it as one at-bat,” Beltran said. “I mean, I know it was a strikeout. If I would have hit the ball in the air, it could have been a fly ball and an out, or a ground ball could have been an out. I just couldn’t swing the bat.” He swung the bat Friday night, and came the closest of any Cardinal to getting a hit. In the sixth inning, Beltran hit a ground ball over third base, and television replays showed it hitting the foul line — clearly a fair ball, but not to the umpire, who called it foul. Johan Santana went on to throw the first no-hitter in Mets history. Before the game, the Mets did not show Beltran’s Game 7 strikeout in the brief tribute video that played on the scoreboard before Friday’s game. The montage of highlights ended with Beltran in the dugout, smiling for the scoreboard camera, waving and giving a thumbs-up. Some fans cheered then. More cheered before Beltran’s first at-bat, with a few lusty boos mixed in. Beltran struck out against Johan Santana — swinging — but he is having a strong season, hitting .294 and leading the league in home runs, with 15, at the start of Friday’s game. This is what Beltran does. When he can manage the pain in his knees, he is a terrific player. He was like that for Kansas City and Houston, the Mets and San Francisco, and now for St. Louis. Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny called him one of the most efficient players he has ever seen, meaning that Beltran maximizes his talents, with no wasted movements. Beltran sees himself the same way. He demurred Friday when asked if he considered himself one of the greatest players in Mets history — a legitimate claim, but not for him to say. “I leave that to the numbers that I put here,” Beltran said. “The years that I was healthy, I did a pretty good job and I feel proud of what I did. At the end of the day, it’s not about what you do and numbers, it’s about winning championships, and we didn’t win anything. So I guess it doesn’t mean anything.” He did not sound as forlorn as that comment probably sounds, nor should he be. Beltran made five All-Star teams as a Met, and his .869 on-base plus slugging percentage ranks fifth in team history, behind John Olerud, Mike Piazza, David Wright and Darryl Strawberry. But the most telling insight, the one that highlights an essential difference between the performer and the audience, came from a direct question: if you could have one do-over from your Mets career, what would it be? Every Mets fans, it is safe to say, would wish for another shot at Wainwright with the bases loaded and two outs, down by two runs in the ninth inning of Game 7. Not Beltran. He can live with the strikeout. He has no other choice, of course. But he also seems to understand that he has no reason to be ashamed. Wainwright threw the perfect pitch at the perfect time, an unhittable bender he used to launch his own standout career. Watching it drop into Yadier Molina’s glove is not something Beltran regrets. “I wish I could have been healthy all seven years,” he said, and then repeated the line. “I personally feel that when I’m healthy, I can go out there and do the job the right way.” Because he lost the biggest duel, Beltran never seemed to be fully embraced by the fans. He did not show much emotion, during games or after, but he never pandered. He was true to himself here, always. “I just can’t be fake,” Beltran said. “This is who I am.”

Beltran Carlos
St Louis Cardinals
Baseball
New York Mets


Single-Family Home Starts Rise for 2nd Straight Month

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Starts for single-family homes in the United States rose for a second straight month in October, and overall building permits approached a level last seen in 2008, suggesting the housing market was still on a recovery path. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that groundbreaking for single-family homes, which account for more than two-thirds of the housing market, increased 4.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual 696,000-unit pace, the highest since last November. Single-family starts in the South, where more than half of that segment’s construction occurs, increased to their highest level since April 2008. But a 15.4 percent plunge in the volatile multifamily homes part of the market caused overall groundbreaking to fall 2.8 percent to a pace of 1.009 million units. September’s starts also were revised to a rate of 1.038 million units from the previously reported pace of 1.017 million units. Although the housing recovery will probably remain subdued given sluggish wage growth and still stringent lending practices by financial institutions, the strong gains in single-family starts suggest home building will contribute to gross domestic product in the fourth quarter. The segment added nothing to G.D.P. in the July-September period. “The theme in housing market activity remains one of gradual improvement as underlying fundamentals continue to pick up,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, an economist at TD Securities in New York. A separate report from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed that applications for loans to buy homes surged last week as low mortgage rates lured potential buyers. Last month, building permits jumped 4.8 percent to a pace of 1.080 million units, the highest since June 2008. It was the second straight month of gains in permits, which lead starts. Permits for single-family homes rose 1.4 percent to a 640,000-unit pace. Permits for multifamily housing surged 10 percent to a 440,000-unit pace.

Housing
Commerce Department
Real Estate
Housing starts


Spurs Extend Home Streak, Winning 41st

Abstract: Kawhi Leonard scored 26 points, and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, 93-85, on Saturday night for their 41st straight home win, the third-longest streak in N.B.A. history. The Spurs avenged a season-opening loss to the Thunder and made it 32 straight wins at home to open this season. They have not lost at home in the regular season since last March. Only Golden State, which had won 47 in a row entering Saturday, and the Chicago teams that won 44 straight in 1995-96 had longer streaks. San Antonio extended its lead over Oklahoma City (44-22) to 12 games for the second seed in the Western Conference. HORNETS 125, ROCKETS 109 Kemba Walker scored 17 of his 26 points in the second half as host Charlotte opened the fourth quarter with a 27-8 run and beat Houston for a seventh straight victory. The Hornets have won 13 of their last 15 games during their recent playoff push. RAPTORS 112, HEAT 104 DeMar DeRozan matched his season high with 38 points and added 10 rebounds, and host Toronto outlasted Miami in overtime. The Raptors secured the season series against the Heat for the second straight season, as well as a potential playoff tiebreaker should they finish with the same record. PISTONS 125, 76ERS 111 Kentavious Caldwell-Pope scored 23 points, Tobias Harris added 21, and visiting Detroit used a big second half to beat Philadelphia. Trailing by 57-52 at halftime, the Pistons shot 15 for 20 in a 38-point third quarter and finished with 73 points over the final two periods while erasing two 10-point deficits. HAWKS 95, GRIZZLIES 83 Paul Millsap scored 21 points as host Atlanta beat depleted Memphis. Al Horford had 19 points and Jeff Teague 18 for Atlanta, which grabbed the lead by closing the first half with a 30-10 run. Before the game, the Grizzlies said Mike Conley would miss at least three to four weeks with Achilles’ tendinitis in his left foot. BUCKS 103, PELICANS 92 Khris Middleton scored 19 points, Giannis Antetokounmpo added 18, and host Milwaukee beat New Orleans. Anthony Davis had 29 points and 11 rebounds for the Pelicans. PACERS 112, MAVERICKS 105 Monta Ellis scored 17 points in his return to Dallas, Paul George had 18 of his 20 in the second half, and Indiana extended the Mavericks’ longest losing streak of the season to five games. Dirk Nowitzki scored 30 points to lead the Mavericks.

Spurs
Oklahoma City Thunder
Basketball
Charlotte Hornets
Houston Rockets


Anger Growing Among Allies on U.S. Spying

Abstract: BERLIN — The diplomatic fallout from the documents harvested by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden intensified on Wednesday, with one of the United States’ closest allies, Germany, announcing that its leader had angrily called President Obama seeking reassurance that her cellphone was not the target of an American intelligence tap. Washington hastily pledged that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, leader of Europe’s most powerful economy, was not the target of current surveillance and would not be in the future, while conspicuously saying nothing about the past. After a similar furor with France, the call was the second time in 48 hours that the president found himself on the phone with a close European ally to argue that the unceasing revelations of invasive American intelligence gathering should not undermine decades of hard-won trans-Atlantic trust. Both episodes illustrated the diplomatic challenge to the United States posed by the cache of documents that Mr. Snowden handed to the journalist Glenn Greenwald. Last week, Mr. Greenwald concluded a deal with the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to build a new media platform that aims in part to publicize other revelations from the data Mr. Greenwald now possesses. The damage to core American relationships continues to mount. Last month, President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil postponed a state visit to the United States after Brazilian news media reports — fed by material from Mr. Greenwald — that the N.S.A. had intercepted messages from Ms. Rousseff, her aides and the state oil company, Petrobras. Recently, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which has said it has a stack of Snowden documents, suggested that United States intelligence had gained access to communications to and from President Felipe Calderón of Mexico when he was still in office. Secretary of State John Kerry had barely landed in France on Monday when the newspaper Le Monde disclosed what it said was the mass surveillance of French citizens , as well as spying on French diplomats. Furious, the French summoned the United States ambassador, Charles H. Rivkin, and President François Hollande expressed “extreme reprobation” for the reported collection of 70 million digital communications from Dec. 10, 2012, to Jan. 8, 2013. In a statement published online, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, disputed some aspects of Le Monde’s reporting, calling it misleading and inaccurate in unspecified ways. He did not address another report by Le Monde that monitoring by the United States had extended to “French diplomatic interests” at the United Nations and in Washington. Information garnered by the N.S.A. played a significant part in a United Nations vote on June 9, 2010, in favor of sanctions against Iran, Le Monde said. Two senior administration officials — from the State Department and the National Security Council — had arrived in Berlin only hours before the German government disclosed on Wednesday that it had received unspecified information that Ms. Merkel’s cellphone was under surveillance. If confirmed, that is “completely unacceptable,” said her spokesman, Steffen Seibert. The accusations followed Der Spiegel’s disclosures in June of widespread American surveillance of German communications, which struck an especially unsettling chord in a country scarred by the surveillance undertaken by Nazi and Communist governments in its past. Mr. Seibert quoted the chancellor, who was raised in Communist East Germany, as telling Mr. Obama that “between close friends and partners, which the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America have been for decades, there should be no such surveillance of the communications of a head of government.” “That would be a grave breach of trust,” Mr. Seibert quoted her as saying. “Such practices must cease immediately.” The government statement did not disclose the source or nature of its suspicions. But Der Spiegel said on its Web site that Ms. Merkel acted after it submitted a reporting inquiry to the government. “Apparently, after an examination by the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office for Security in Information Technology, the government found sufficient plausible grounds to confront the U.S. government,” Der Spiegel wrote. ARD, Germany’s premier state television channel, said without naming its sources that the supposed monitoring had targeted Ms. Merkel’s official cellphone, not her private one. About an hour after the news broke in Berlin, Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, appeared before news media in Washington, reporting the Obama-Merkel phone call and saying that “the president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring, and will not monitor, the communications of the chancellor.” Mr. Obama pledged, as he had to Mr. Hollande, and to Mexico and Brazil, that intelligence operations were under scrutiny and that he was aware of the need to balance security against privacy. The first disclosures from Der Spiegel in June almost soured the long-planned meeting between Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel in her capital, which the president visited as a candidate in 2008, delivering a speech before an estimated 200,000 people. In June, there were far fewer, carefully screened and invited Germans and Americans on hand to hear Mr. Obama at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Berlin’s unity and freedom since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Shortly beforehand, Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel stood side by side in her chancellery , fielding questions about American surveillance of foreigners’ phone and e-mail traffic. Pressed personally by Ms. Merkel, the president said that terrorist threats in Germany were among those foiled by intelligence operations around the world, and Ms. Merkel concurred. Senior intelligence officials have since made plain that cooperation between the United States and Germany in the field is essential to tracking what they view as potential terrorist threats. But if indeed American intelligence was listening to Ms. Merkel’s phone, or registering calls made and received, the trust between Berlin and Washington could be severely damaged. Since June, even senior officials in the German government have voiced more caution about cooperating with the United States, and wondered in private about the extent to which any information gleaned was shared with, for example, business rivals of German companies. The German government said it had been assured that German laws were not broken, but the issue remains politically fragile. In July, Ms. Merkel joked with television interviewers asking about the situation, “I know of no case where I was listened to.” At a separate news conference that month, she signaled on a more serious note that she understood the importance, for all Western allies, of collecting intelligence. But she also emphasized that German or European laws should not be violated. The alarm of Americans — and, indeed, their allies — after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was understandable, Ms. Merkel said then, but “the aim does not justify the means. Not everything which is technically doable should be done. The question of relative means must always be answered: What relation is there between the danger and the means we choose, also and especially with regard to preserving the basic rights contained in our Basic Law?”

Germany
Angela Merkel
NSA
Edward Snowden
Wiretapping Eavesdropping
Government Surveillance
Der Spiegel,Spiegel Online
US Foreign Policy


Man Strikes Car and Dies

Abstract: A 19-year-old Long Island man was killed early yesterday after he hit his head against a passing vehicle as he was running across a street, police said. The motorist was arrested at his home for driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident, Richard Dormer, commissioner of the Suffolk County Police Department, said in a press release. The accident occurred about 2:10 a.m. when the victim, Michael Wiemann of Farmingville, pulled his Chevrolet Suburban into a gas station in Miller Place, near the intersection of Route 25A and Miller Place Road after experiencing engine problems. He crossed Route 25A, the police said, but then started running back across the street to his S.U.V. when he realized that it was on fire. As he was crossing, he ran into a Ford Escort driven by William Haberstroh, 29, of Medford, the police said. They said that Mr. Haberstroh did not stop after the accident. Mr. Wiemann died at Stony Brook University Hospital.


Activist Investor Jana Urges Split at Qualcomm

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Shares in Qualcomm surged briefly on Monday after Jana Partners, the activist hedge fund, urged the company to consider moves like spinning off or selling its chipset business. In a letter to investors, Jana argued that the company, whose main operation is a patent-licensing business, has suffered from poor stock performance because investors haven’t recognized its long-term potential. Highlighting the true worth of the company, Jana argued, required potentially drastic steps. “Over the past several months we have been engaged in a constructive dialogue regarding the steps it can take to restore investor confidence and unlock shareholder value,” Barry Rosenstein, the head of Jana, wrote in the letter. Jana, one of the most prominent activist investors, disclosed that it had bought more than $2 billion worth of stock, making it one of the company’s larger shareholders. Perhaps the most prominent recommendation is splitting off Qualcomm’s chipset business, which makes chips for cellphones. Mr. Rosenstein contended in the letter that investors and analysts essentially valued the unit at zero. The company could fix that perception by either making a better argument for closer integration of the chipset and patent-licensing businesses or parting with the chipset division. It’s a move that the company itself had proposed more than a decade ago. Other steps that Mr. Rosenstein suggested include speeding up an already planned $15 billion stock buyback; cutting costs; shrinking the company’s 15-member board and replacing some of its directors; and pursuing potential mergers and acquisitions. In response, Qualcomm issued a statement that said: “Our board of directors and management periodically review our corporate structure. Prior reviews have concluded that the synergies provided by our business model create more value for stockholders than could be created through alternative corporate structures. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to enhance stockholder value and are committed to pursuing the right course of action for all of our stockholders.” Shares in Qualcomm initially rose more than 3 percent on Monday, though by midday they had reversed course and were down slightly.

Qualcomm
Jana Partners
Mergers and Acquisitions
Shareholder Rights
Computer Chip