4 Killed in Bus Bombings in Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At least four people were killed in the southern port city of Karachi on Tuesday in bombings that struck two buses carrying Pakistani naval employees, a senior naval official said. At least 56 people were wounded. The official, Commodore Irfan ul-Haq, identified the dead as a civilian doctor, a junior naval officer, and two low-ranking naval employees. No one claimed responsibility immediately, but Taliban insurgents and militant groups affiliated with the organization have repeatedly attacked civilians and military installations across the country. Karachi is the country’s largest city and considered the financial and commercial capital. Both bombs struck during the early morning rush. The first was planted on a motorcycle that was idling by a main road in an upscale neighborhood, the police said; it exploded as the naval bus passed. The blast destroyed the bus, killing the junior naval officer and the doctor and wounding 37 other passengers. The windows of nearby houses were shattered. Minutes later, in a relatively impoverished neighborhood, a remote-controlled bomb hidden in roadside rubble exploded, the police said. That blast killed the two other naval employees and injured 19 others. On Saturday, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief, claimed to in a speech before Afghan military cadets to have broken the back of militants in the country. The bombings were “a powerful message by the militants,” said Omar R. Quraishi, opinion pages editor of The Express Tribune, an English-language daily newspaper based in Karachi. “The message is that we may be on the run, but we can strike at will and choose targets of our choosing.”


Bruins Coach Eschews Negativity and Builds Winners

Abstract: BOSTON — On the first Monday of April 2007, the Devils had a 47-24-8 record. They were in first place in the Atlantic Division with the second-best record in the Eastern Conference. They had won four of their past five games and appeared well positioned for a deep playoff run. That’s what their coach thought. As Claude Julien prepared for a late-morning meeting with his boss, the Devils’ president, Lou Lamoriello, he had playoffs on his mind. How would the Devils deal with certain personnel issues? What kind of travel contingencies did they need to address? Julien knew the ever-meticulous Lamoriello liked to have all his bases covered. What Julien did not know, nor could he reasonably have been expected to know, was that April 2, 2007, would be his last day as the coach of the Devils. Lamoriello abruptly fired Julien, saying he thought the team, despite its record, was nowhere near being ready for the playoffs. There were three games remaining in the regular season. The stunned coach called his wife, Karen, from his car on the way home. She noted the time and said she thought he was coming home unusually early. He told her the news. Not far away, many of his former players gathered for lunch, just as stunned. Zach Parise sent Julien a text message offering his best wishes. Julien also heard from the backup goalie Scott Clemmensen, who appeared in just six games that season. Jay Pandolfo, who later played briefly for Julien in Boston, said: “The whole thing was definitely crazy. With three games left?” The encouraging words cheered Julien as he tried to digest what had just happened. Almost 15 months earlier, he had been fired as the coach of the Montreal Canadiens, his first N.H.L. coaching job, after three seasons. His second opportunity did not even last one full season. He was three weeks shy of his 47th birthday and asked himself, “How do I ever recover from this?” “I never saw either one of them coming,” Julien said of the dismissals. “Maybe I’m naïve, but I never did. And after the second firing, I was worried that it would take away any opportunity I might ever have to get back into the N.H.L.” He added: “That’s why this thing in Boston has been the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I feel like an established coach now in the N.H.L. It’s a good fit, and it has overshadowed the negative things from back then.” This “thing” in Boston is now ending its seventh year, as Julien, coaching the Bruins, leads them into the Stanley Cup playoffs with the league’s best record. He has a Stanley Cup ring from the Bruins’ championship in 2011 and an Olympic gold medal from Sochi as an assistant for Team Canada. He is now third in the N.H.L. in years of consecutive service with one team. The Devils have gone through four coaches since Julien was dismissed, not counting Lamoriello, who finished the 2006-7 season. The team he thought needed a playoff jolt with a new coach? It was eliminated in the second round. Less than three months later, in June 2007, Julien was announced as the coach of the Bruins. The man who hired him, General Manager Peter Chiarelli, had tried to give him the job the year before. Had he called Julien an hour sooner, Julien would have come to Boston a year earlier and the stint with the Devils would never have happened. Chiarelli and Julien had been friends for years, both growing up in the greater Ottawa area. In the spring of 2006, Chiarelli was still technically with Ottawa but had accepted the job as Boston’s general manager. He had to go through league channels to receive permission to speak to Julien, and by the time the two connected, Julien had just agreed to coach the Devils. One more year was not going to change Chiarelli’s mind, especially since there was a pervasive feeling that Lamoriello had been a micromanager, drawing on the success he had in 2000 when he fired Coach Robbie Ftorek with eight games left and the Devils went on to win the Cup. As the former Devils wing Jamie Langenbrunner put it when asked if the players had been surprised by Julien’s firing: “We were surprised. Some of us were shocked. But in New Jersey, you learn not to be surprised by anything to do with coaches.” Chiarelli said he received some criticism after the Julien hiring, adding, “That was fair, especially after he was let go twice in a short period of time.” “But I felt he learned a lot from the two jobs,” he said. “And I believed in him.” Julien was appreciative. “It was nice to see that, no matter what happened to me, there were still people who believed I could do the job,” he said, “and Peter was one of those guys.” Here is what else Julien, 53, could point to as a counterbalance to the firings: His teams win. His Montreal teams won 72 and lost 65, with 15 overtime losses and 10 ties. His first full season at Montreal resulted in 93 points and a first-round upset of the Bruins after trailing in the series, 3-1. His final Montreal team was in third place with a winning record when he was fired in January 2006. The Devils had 102 points when he was released. Only once, when he first joined the Canadiens in midseason, has Julien not had a winning record. This year’s Bruins team, with 117 points, might be his best. “That’s what his teams do, they win,” said Jim Dowd, who played for Julien in Montreal and with the Devils. Julien often harks back to his days as a roofer in the family business as a character-building experience. He started when he was 14. He kept doing it while he bounced around the minor leagues and during the summer in the brief time (14 games) he played in the N.H.L. for the Quebec Nordiques. He even kept at it when he got his first real coaching job with the Hull Olympiques in 1994. “I’d drive the truck to the arena, take a shower to get the tar smell off of me and hop on the bus,” he said. “Roofing is probably one of the main reasons that I am what I am today. It is a real tough job and built the character I needed to do this job.” Julien carries that attitude with him today just as surely as he carted shingles up ladders, raised pails of stones on a pulley and spread the pungent tar. The work was honest and humble, traits he instills in, and expects from, his players. “I want our guys’ actions to speak instead of their words, to make them see that they are one of the fortunate ones to make it to this level,” he said. Seven years after hitting the professional bottom, and wondering how he would ever manage to recover, Julien has found a comfort level in Boston he once thought might be unattainable. “I think I’ve found a niche here,” he said. “I like the whole picture, from upper management to who I work with.” Chiarelli said he and Julien had discussed many possible situations and contingencies for the playoffs. None involved replacing the successful coach. “He was at the top of my list when I got the Boston job,” Chiarelli said. And he is still there.

Bruins
Coaches
Devils
Claude Julien
Lou Lamoriello
Peter Chiarelli
Ice hockey


Insurer Charged With Theft From a Charity

Abstract: The owner of a Long Island insurance company has been charged with helping a longtime Jewish community leader loot more than $7 million from one of the city’s most influential social service organizations and pocketing at least $1 million himself, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case. The insurance company owner, Joseph Ross, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with first-degree grand larceny and money laundering and other crimes for what the complaint said was his admitted role in the scheme, which spanned two decades and targeted the social service organization, the Metropolitan New York Council on Jewish Poverty. The community leader, William E. Rapfogel, who served as the group’s executive director until the scheme was uncovered this summer and he was fired in August, was arrested on similar charges in September. The arrests are the result of an ongoing investigation by the offices of the state’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli. The insurance company, Century Coverage in Valley Stream, N.Y., has provided its services to the organization, known as Met Council, for more than two decades. Mr. Ross, 58, was arrested on Wednesday and arraigned before Acting State Supreme Court Justice Abraham Clott. He did not enter a plea and was released on his own recognizance. Mr. Ross’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, would not comment on the accusations. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss the substantive facts at this time, but Mr. Ross intends to address these issues in a very responsible fashion,” Mr. Brafman said. The charges contained in the Sept. 24 complaint against Mr. Rapfogel and the one charging Mr. Ross are similar, as are the outlines of the scheme detailed in the two documents. Century sent Met Council inflated invoices and the two men and another conspirator split the excess money, according to the complaints. It appears that investigators have concluded that the amount of money stolen between the early 1990s and August 2013 was greater than they had believed. In the complaint charging Mr. Rapfogel, the total amount of the theft was listed as in excess of $5 million. But the complaint against Mr. Ross says the total amount of money stolen was in excess of $7 million. The complaint against Mr. Ross, which was sworn out by Gerard Matheson, an investigator with the attorney general’s office, said that Mr. Rapfogel used some of the stolen money to provide political contributions to candidates for city, state and federal offices in the names of Century owners and employees. It said that Mr. Rapfogel instructed Mr. Ross to make contributions to various candidates and political organizations, and that Mr. Ross regularly delivered checks for the contributions to Mr. Rapfogel. The complaint said that more than $120,000 was provided to candidates for city offices, and tens of thousands of dollars more went to candidates for state and federal offices. Met Council, a nonprofit organization that receives tens of millions of dollars in city, state and federal financing, cannot legally make such contributions itself.


Struggling Mets Stand Up to an Ace

Abstract: As Zack Greinke took the mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday night, he did not look especially intimidating. He was not particularly tall. He was not overly muscular. His face looked boyish as he paced around the mound, kicked at the dirt, toed the rubber and stared down the first batter. But he was probably the last pitcher the Mets wanted to see. They had lost six of their last seven games, and Greinke had gone 21 consecutive starts allowing two earned runs or fewer, tying the modern record. The Mets could be excused if Greinke rolled over them, too. Instead, they stayed patient and got to Greinke for three runs, chasing him after five innings. Up and down the order, they showed moxie. Jon Niese pitched seven strong innings. David Wright and Curtis Granderson each had two hits. Juan Lagares drove in the decisive run. Eric Campbell made a diving catch. With the 5-3 victory at Citi Field, the Mets improved to 21-25 and salvaged some confidence. Mets Manager Terry Collins, hoping for a spark, had started three young players: Campbell, 27, in left field; Lagares, 25, in center; and Wilmer Flores, 22, at shortstop. Maybe Greinke would not intimidate them. Campbell, in particular, had seemed unfazed since he was called up about two weeks ago. In seven games, he had batted .438 and had driven in five runs, hitting his first career home run Wednesday. Before the game, Collins said he was riding the “hot horse” by giving Campbell his first major league start in left. “I’m just kind of taking a shot in the dark,” Collins said. Campbell helped. In the second inning, after Granderson doubled and went to third on an error by Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp, Campbell drove him in with a sacrifice fly. Two batters later, with one out and a runner on first base, Flores sent a high fly ball to right-center. It appeared to be an extra-base hit, one that would easily score Lucas Duda, who was on first. But the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig broke into a full-out sprint, flung his body like a torpedo toward the ball and caught it backhanded at the last moment. “That was about a good a catch as I’ve ever seen,” Collins said. Greinke smiled as he retook the mound. The Mets had figured him out, to some degree, but he had faced similar situations over his previous 21 games. “He’s just consistent,” Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly said before the game. “His preparation; who he is. His stuff is pretty consistent. There are days, though, that he’s not as good as others, and he still knows what he’s doing enough to get through it.” Undaunted, the Mets got to Greinke again in the fifth inning. Anthony Recker doubled, and Niese doubled him home. Then Niese scored, too, as third baseman Justin Turner, a former Met, failed to cleanly field a ground ball off the bat of Daniel Murphy. After the inning, as Greinke walked off, he chatted with his catcher, A. J. Ellis. The Mets had worked him for three runs but only one earned run, meaning his streak was still intact and, at 22 games, was the longest such run in the majors since at least 1914. Recker was again in the Mets’ lineup as their regular catcher, Travis d’Arnaud, sat out with a concussion. Before the game, nine days after he was hit by a backswing, d’Arnaud said he had been cleared for baseball activities. He revealed that this was his third concussion and that he wanted to switch his catcher’s helmet from a hockey-style mask to a more traditional skullcap-and-face-mask combination. This concussion, he said, felt like the others. His timetable to return, however, remained unclear. “It was just one of those things,” he said. “What can you do?” Recker did a fine job navigating Niese through the Dodgers’ order at the start. After allowing a run in the first inning, he gave up only one hit over the next five innings. Niese cruised until Turner hit a fastball to left for a game-tying, two-run homer in the seventh. Niese put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “He’s welcome for that one,” Niese said. Still undeterred, the three youngsters in the Mets’ lineup essentially won them the game. Flores singled to lead off the seventh, Lagares singled him in for a 4-3 lead, and Campbell made a diving catch in the eighth to start a double play that ended the inning. The fans’ cheers on that play sounded delayed, as if they wanted to make sure Campbell had actually made the catch. The whole game had been somewhat hard to believe.

Mets
Zack Greinke
Dodgers
Jon Niese
Baseball


After a Job Loss, Living Without Power or Prescriptions

Abstract: It came down to living by candlelight. When Ivonne Diaz went through her monthly bills last year to see which ones she could afford on her unemployment checks, she realized she would have to go without electricity. Having Con Edison turn off her lights is just one more obstacle she has faced since losing her job in December 2010. She has also juggled payments for rent and grocery bills while supporting her pregnant teenage daughter. “Well, we can deal with candles,” reasoned Ms. Diaz, 51, a single mother of two and a grandmother of three. So for about two weeks, she and her daughter Marisol Diaz, 18, spent their nights in flickering darkness in their one-bedroom apartment in south Yonkers. Ms. Diaz said the hardest part of having the power cut off was “not knowing when I was going to get it put back on.” Such uncertainty has overshadowed her life ever since she lost her job at the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation, where she had worked since 1986, eventually becoming a branch office manager. “I grew up in this company,” she said. “It was all I knew.” But that December, the roughly 1,000 employees in the city’s off-track betting parlors received grim news: The operation was shutting down . “What a feeling of being lost that was,” Ms. Diaz said. Having worked for 24 years and 4 months, Ms. Diaz fell just short of the 25-year minimum required to collect a pension, she said. The loss of her job meant an end to health insurance for her and Marisol, who has a learning disability and is six months pregnant. It also meant that Ms. Diaz went without her prescription drugs. “From April to September, I had no blood pressure medicine,” Ms. Diaz said. “I said, O.K., God, I won’t eat things with salt,” she recalled. “I’ll walk a little more; I’ll take off some weight. But I felt sick. “Let me tell you, that’s the worst: to be on medication and not know where you were going to get it.” Ms. Diaz had earned $77,000 a year as a branch office manager, but she ran through her savings and had to tap into money she had socked away, like cashing in her 457 deferred-compensation plan. But she was disappointed to learn that she had to pay taxes on that money, which left her with significantly less than she had hoped for. “You can avoid going to the dentist, but you can’t avoid taxes,” she said. With six months left until her $402-a-week unemployment benefits run out, Ms. Diaz worries about finding a job and fears she does not have the computer skills to compete with younger applicants because she had done her work entirely on paper at the betting parlor. “In the back office, everything was done by hand,” she said, “so we never had to use a computer or even type.” Ms. Diaz got her security officer’s license and attended computer classes at the Riverfront Library in Yonkers, and then a former co-worker told her about the Grace Institute . The institute was founded in 1897 as a tuition-free educational and vocational training program for disadvantaged women. It offers classes in areas like typing, writing and computer programs, and helps prepare students for a competitive job market. Ms. Diaz began the program in September and described her first days there as “very scary,” but she quickly formed a bond with her classmates. “It’s even like we’re another family there,” she said. She has come a long way. “I’m so impressed with myself that I can actually type,” she said, beaming. “And now I’m sitting next to girls in my class that can’t type as well as I can,” she added playfully. But one day, Ms. Diaz was commuting to the East Side of Manhattan for her classes when she realized she did not have the subway fare to take the No. 1 train to get home later. “It broke my heart to have to go ask someone to help me,” Ms. Diaz said. But she turned to Lauren Silberstein, a social worker at Grace Institute, an affiliate of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York . “When she entered my office, she just started crying,” Ms. Silberstein said. “We talked for a while about her situation and her finances.” Ms. Diaz’s rent is $1,200 a month, and she paid about $600 a month for utilities and other expenses, but had fallen behind on her electric bill. Ms. Silberstein gave her a MetroCard and a list of food pantries in the neighborhood. “Then I told her about The New York Times Neediest Cases project,” she said. Ms. Diaz contacted Catholic Charities, one of the seven agencies supported by the Neediest Cases Fund, and in November, she was given $310 from the fund to help pay her electric bill. Buoyed by the confidence the Grace Institute has given her, Ms. Diaz is eager for her first job interviews when she completes the program in March. Now, when her daughter worries, Ms. Diaz said, “I reassure her that we will all be O.K.” “There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” she says.


With Hospitals Under Stress, Tennessee’s Governor Pursues Medicaid Expansion

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Under mounting pressure from financially strapped hospitals, Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee proposed on Monday an alternative plan for expanding Medicaid that he said would bring health coverage to tens of thousands more poor residents of his state without following traditional Medicaid rules. Mr. Haslam, a Republican, made clear that he still opposed President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which encourages states to expand Medicaid to everyone earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or $16,105 for a single person. Nonetheless, he proposed using federal Medicaid funds available under the law to cover some 200,000 low-income residents through their employer’s health insurance plan or the state’s Medicaid program. Under the second option, some people would be charged co-payments that are not always required by Medicaid, along with premiums that are rarely required. But they could receive help paying those costs “by making healthy choices,” Mr. Haslam said in a news conference in Nashville, such as by getting preventive screenings. Mr. Haslam said the Obama administration had informally agreed to the plan last week after months of negotiations. But it still needs an official federal waiver and the approval of the Republican-controlled Legislature — a potentially steep hurdle in a state where many lawmakers are aligned with the Tea Party and where opposition to Medicaid expansion has been strong. Mr. Haslam said he would call a special session in January for lawmakers to consider the plan, adding, “I believe something this important to Tennesseans should have a full discussion and its own focus.” Katie Hill, a spokeswoman for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, said it had had “productive discussions with Governor Haslam, and we look forward to the state submitting its plan.” Ron Ramsey, a Republican who is the state’s lieutenant governor and Senate speaker, and who in the past has adamantly opposed Medicaid expansion, suggested in a statement that he was open to the plan. “Governor Haslam has negotiated a deal which returns tax dollars back to Tennessee while using conservative principles to bring health insurance to more Tennesseans,” Mr. Ramsey said. The state’s two United States senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, both Republicans, also issued supportive statements. If Mr. Haslam’s plan receives the approval it needs, Tennessee will join 27 states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, including nine with Republican leadership. Several other Republican governors have pushed for alternative forms of Medicaid expansion in their states since the November elections, partly a reflection of how badly hospitals and local communities want the federal funds that come with it. “We now have several hospitals that have closed, and all the hospitals in the state are hurting to some extent,” said Michele Johnson, the executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, an advocacy group. “It’s creating more and more pressure, especially in some of those really rural, far-right Tea Party districts, to understand this in a different way.” The tide may also be shifting in states like Utah and Wyoming, where Republican governors proposed their own versions of Medicaid expansion this fall, and in Idaho, where a group formed by Gov. C. L. (Butch) Otter is revising an expansion plan in hopes of winning legislative backing. The conservative governors of North Carolina and, most recently, Alabama, have expressed openness to expanding Medicaid programs if they can fashion their own approach. In perhaps the most unusual part of Mr. Haslam’s plan, the Tennessee Hospital Association has agreed to pay expansion costs beyond what the federal government covers. The Affordable Care Act calls for the federal government to cover all costs through 2016, with a gradually decreasing share thereafter, though never less than 90 percent. Mr. Haslam described his proposal as a two-year pilot program that would need reauthorization. Ms. Johnson said that some of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chains, including Hospital Corporation of America and Community Health Systems, have headquarters in Tennessee and have watched the amount they spend on uncompensated care drop this year in states that expanded Medicaid while it has risen in states like Tennessee. “When they run the numbers, it’s dramatic,” she said.

Tennessee
Medicaid
Bill Haslam
Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Federal Aid


Police Officer Is Charged in Shooting of Texas Man

Abstract: HOUSTON — A Harris County grand jury indicted a police sergeant Monday in the shooting of a young man outside his home on New Year’s Eve . The case has attracted widespread attention because the victim’s family accused the police of racial profiling. Sgt. Jeffrey Cotton, a 39-year-old veteran in the Bellaire Police Department, was charged with aggravated assault by a public servant in the shooting of Robert Tolan, a 23-year-old waiter. The sergeant is white, and Mr. Tolan is black. Mr. Tolan, who was shot in his driveway while his parents looked on, survived, though a bullet pierced his right lung and lodged in his liver. Just before the shooting, Sergeant Cotton and another officer had forced Mr. Tolan and his cousin to lie face down on the ground at gunpoint after they had gotten out of their car. The officers believed the car had been stolen, but it turned out to belong to Mr. Tolan, who is the son of Bobby Tolan , a former major league baseball player, and aspires to be a baseball player. “The Tolans are the only African-American family on the block,” said a lawyer for the family, Geoffrey Berg. “Bellaire engages in racial profiling, and this is the logical result of that policy.” The Bellaire city manager, Bernie Satterwhite, rejected that assertion. “There is nothing about the indictment or any investigation which even suggests that race played any role in the stop or Sergeant Cotton’s actions when he arrived as a backup officer,” Mr. Satterwhite said, reading a prepared statement . David Donahue, a member of Sergeant Cotton’s legal team, said the officer had fired only after Mr. Tolan leaped up and attacked him. “He felt he was in immediate danger,” he said. As the Tolan family recounts the story, Mr. Tolan and his cousin obeyed an order from the first officer on the scene, John Edwards, to lay on the ground. As Sergeant Cotton arrived in a second patrol car, Bobby Tolan and his wife, Marion, came out of the house in their pajamas. Mrs. Tolan tried to tell Sergeant Cotton that the police had made a mistake — that it was her son’s car, Mr. Berg said. The sergeant grabbed her by the arm and threw her against a garage door, the family says. As Robbie Tolan tried to rise to defend his mother, Sergeant Cotton fired at least three times, hitting him once in the chest, Mr. Berg said.

Police
Texas
Assaults
Discrimination
Police Brutality and Misconduct


Dropbox Aims to Solidify Its Place With Businesses

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Perhaps it should not have surprised corporate information technology departments that employees would use Dropbox, a service for easily sharing files among different devices by storing them in “the cloud.” But that did not mean they loved the idea of confidential files on a service they could not control. Now Dropbox is trying to appease them by selling a service for businesses, Dropbox for Teams, introduced Thursday. Add Dropbox to the list of consumer technologies that have infiltrated the workplace , like iPhones, Gmail and Skype. “With the ability of people to get what they want to get done with stuff they pay for themselves, the whole role of I.T. changes,” said Ted Schadler, a workplace analyst at Forrester Research. Still, the service has a way to go before large companies adopt it, Mr. Schadler said, “because it doesn’t have as much security and administration as they want.” For Dropbox, one of the darlings of Silicon Valley with a reported $4 billion valuation from venture capitalists, its new service is a bid to buy paying customers and solidify its foothold in the growing file-sharing business .. It is competing with big companies like Google, Apple and Amazon.com, which offer increasingly sophisticated ways to store, share and sync files, and smaller ones like Box.net, YouSendIt and SugarSync. This month, Citrix Systems bought ShareFile and Research in Motion bought NewBay, both cloud storage services. Dropbox allows people to access files, like documents, photos and music, on any device wherever they are, without pesky zip files or hulking e-mail attachments. As people edit files, Dropbox updates them so a single file is available on all devices. Most people use it free and can pay for additional storage. Dropbox, which started in 2007, has 45 million users who save more than two billion files each week. But it has scared some people, too. In June, a security breach left Dropbox accounts accessible for several hours, and a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission says Dropbox misled users about privacy. Dropbox says it uses the same security measures as banks. Files are encrypted and Dropbox restricts its employees’ access to files. But security is only as good as a user’s password. Dropbox said it is working on two-step authentication, so people would enter a second password sent to their phone, for instance. “These are all things we take very, very seriously because our reputation and the confidence and trust people have in Dropbox is what we’ll succeed by,” said ChenLi Wang, team leader for business and sales. Millions already sign up with their work e-mail addresses and the company estimates that at least a million businesses use the service. Dropbox for Teams, which starts at $795 annually for five users, has 1,000 gigabytes of storage and phone customer support, and gives I.T. departments control over adding and removing users. SusieCakes, a California bakery chain, has been testing Dropbox for Teams to share petty cash reports in real time and to exchange documents with outside lawyers. The service is easier to use than options like Microsoft’s file-sharing service, called Windows Live SkyDrive, said Houston Striggow, SusieCakes’ co-founder. “It’s really proven for us to be a powerful business tool that’s made us a lot more efficient and productive,” he said. But Mr. Schadler, the analyst, said that before it would get widespread business adoption, Dropbox needed features like security controls to automatically stop people from sharing confidential documents. Dropbox says it is working on new features, including extra security measures and collaboration tools. Of Dropbox’s competitors, Box.net has made the most headway in businesses, Mr. Schadler said. Google is also going after businesses with tools like Google Docs, which lets employees collaborate on the same version of a document, and Chromebooks, laptops that store everything online so people can access it from any computer. Sujay Jaswa, Dropbox’s vice president of business development and sales, said its service had an advantage over big companies because it enabled iPads, Android phones and PCs to work together. “You need a company like us that doesn’t have a horse in the race to be there for consumers,” he said.

Dropbox Inc
Data Storage
Computers and the Internet
Computer Security
Cloud Computing


Bitly Helps the Red Cross Get to Hope.ly

Abstract: Following the phenomenal success this summer of the Ice Bucket Challenge for the A.L.S. Association, which seeks a cure for what is commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, other charities have been longing for their own viral sensations. Now the American Red Cross is introducing a fund-raising effort that, rather than creating videos or spurring supporters to upload theirs, benefits from others’ popular content. With Bitly, the six-year-old online tool that condenses long web addresses, the Red Cross is introducing Hope.ly , another URL shortener — with a twist. While the Web address for, say, AMC’s “Mad Men,” amctv.com/shows/mad-men, condenses to bit.ly/1vbqSOf, using the new tool shortens it to hope.ly/1yvAdjU. Clicking the Hope.ly link reveals what resembles a banner ad atop the page, proclaiming, “Someone wonderful shared this page — to help people in need through the American Red Cross,” and encouraging donating online. The new tool will be announced on Tuesday as part of Giving Tuesday , a worldwide effort to encourage supporting charities during the holiday season that was introduced in 2012 by New York’s 92nd Street Y in partnership with the United Nations Foundation. The promotion will run through December. Hope.ly is the brainchild of BBDO New York, part of the Omnicom Group, which is the agency of record for the Red Cross. “Charities generally are trying to get large-scale social reach in the same way that the A.L.S. Ice Bucket Challenge did,” said Tom Markham, the executive creative director of BBDO New York. “This idea is kind of in that space, but it’s tied into the act of sharing, as opposed to us trying to come up with the content that is super shareable.” Introduced in 2008, Bitly has grown rapidly because, along with shortening URLs for character-limited social media like Twitter, it helps users monitor how others subsequently share the links that they share. The company, based in New York, reports that it shortens 600 million links a month, and that those links are clicked on eight billion times. Laura Maiurano, senior director for digital marketing at Bitly, said the new project was unlike anything the service had done before. “When BBDO and the Red Cross approached us with this effort, we just thought it was a really great initiative and something new and different and we were totally on board to support it,” Ms. Maiurano said. A recent survey commissioned by the Red Cross found that among social media users, after seeing a friend’s post about making a donation to a charity, almost 20 percent would also make a donation; 25 percent would donate to a charity if someone in their social network asked them by name to do so. “The social-media community shows this propensity to give,” said Laura Howe, the vice president for public relations at the Red Cross, “so that tells us it’s a group of people that as an organization we definitely want to be in front of.” Brian Morrissey, editor in chief of Digiday, an online publication that covers digital marketing and media, noted that unlike brands and charities that often ask consumers to upload photos, complete forms or send e-cards, the Hope.ly effort made participation simple. “What I like about this is that they’re sort of integrating their marketing campaign into what people are already doing online,” Mr. Morrissey said. “The idea of converting URLs in a small way into messages of hope and charity during the holiday season is really smart and clever.” But he added that the donation message, which takes up nearly half of the screen for a smartphone held vertically, and nearly one-third of a tablet held horizontally (and even more if the pages have existing banner ads across the top), may strike some publishers as obtrusive, since it will push off much of what they intended for their landing pages. “Publishers spend a lot of time trying to get the user experience right because it takes a lot of testing and experimentation to get people to stick around on a website, and having someone else change all of that for the user is tough,” Mr. Morrissey said. He added that publishers were unlikely to complain about this being done for a popular charity like the Red Cross, but would raise a fuss if Bitly tried to execute a similar program on behalf of brands. Bitly wrote in a response that “while we can’t say whether or not we’ll do this with another partner” in the future, “we certainly would be selective.” In November, along with making a $25 million donation to fight Ebola, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg added a “Donate” button to the top of newsfeeds for users of the social network, and posted a video to Facebook about doing so. An online video introduces Hope.ly, and it will be promoted on the Bitly landing page and on the Red Cross’s social channels, but BBDO, the ad agency that came up with the idea is not, ironically, making any ads for it. Mr. Markham of BBDO said that while the execution is not the sort of thing clients request in assignments known as creative briefs, it does exemplify one way that agencies should advocate for charities and brands. “It’s very hard to brief for an idea like this,” said Mr. Markham of the Hope.ly effort. “The agency has to kind of love you as a client and spend time thinking of you outside of the normal briefs and come up with this sort of stuff.”


Their Season Lost, Mets Search for Silver Linings

Abstract: Here was their chance to interrogate a few of the men responsible for the Mets ’ latest collapse. The manager, Terry Collins, and general manager, Sandy Alderson, entertained questions from about 1,500 season-ticket holders for about an hour Sunday morning at Citi Field, as did Mike Baxter, Jon Niese and the third base coach Tim Teufel. There was much explaining to do, the Mets having won six games in three weeks, having plunged further into despair with poor showings this week against the Rockies and the Astros . Any remaining optimism could have been mistaken for delirium. Which superhero do you prefer, one woman asked: Batman, Superman or Spiderman? Another wanted the definition of a balk. One man inquired, in a less-than-demanding tone, about the futures of David Wright and R. A. Dickey, who both have team options for next season. “I fully expect that David Wright and R. A. Dickey will be here, not only next year but longer term,” Alderson said to applause that was hearty for midmorning. Later, the 25,071 fans here screamed and danced as Ike Davis rounded the bases for his game-winning home run, his second solo shot of the game, as the Mets won, 2-1 . The rookie starter Jeremy Hefner had shut out the Astros for eight innings. In the ninth, true to the Mets’ form of late, Lucas Duda appeared to misplay a fly ball in left and the tying run scored. Duda, who returned Sunday for the first time since he was demoted July 24, gunned down the potential winning run at home two batters later, and many fans gave him a standing ovation. But louder than that was the one for Davis’s home run. After the game, Collins said the Mets badly needed the victory. The win, merely a flickering candle in a dark, cavernous room, offered some light — not for the postseason, but for the next five weeks while the Mets audition to keep their fans coming and for Wright and Dickey to stay, too. So Alderson’s pronouncement came as no surprise; he has the unenviable task of balancing the meek present of these Mets and developing their future. “It is not our intention to simply rely on those options and go into next season and deal with their free agency after 2013,” Alderson told the gathering. “We’re going to deal with it upfront while we still have a little bit of room to maneuver.” His usual thoughtful self, Dickey indicated that he was open to signing a new deal with the Mets — “a part of me enjoys being loyal to an organization that’s given me a shot,” he said — but had a few stipulations. In particular, he would want any negotiations resolved entering 2013, as he found them to be a distraction when they trickled into May this season. “I do want to win, too, because I am at the place that I am in my career,” Dickey, 37, said. But he added: “I want to be part of that solution here, whatever that is going to be. I would like to know what direction they’re going, and I think that’s fair.” Wright echoed those sentiments, but less heartily. Although Wright declined to discuss his contract situation in detail, he said he was happy with his deal, which includes a $16 million team option for next season, indicating he could play out his contract, then evaluate. In either case, Alderson has little time to show progress. The Mets’ payroll is roughly $100 million this season. About next season, Alderson said, “I’m hopeful we’ll be in the same range, if not somewhat higher.” He added, “What I’m looking at is what our needs are and how we fill those needs, and there’s no question that being able to add payroll is an important part of being able to address those.” For another season, he will be handcuffed by Johan Santana’s and Jason Bay’s bloated contracts, creating curious timing. Santana and Bay are owed a combined $41.5 million in 2013, and buying out their team options would save the Mets $33.5 million in 2014, when Dickey and Wright could become free agents. Until then, Alderson has been asked to prepare for a range of payroll totals. He said he would know his limit in a few weeks. Dickey would stand to receive a raise, as his $5 million team option would significantly undercompensate a Cy Young Award candidate. With the time and money these Mets have devoted to pitching, they could reward Dickey or undervalue him, with young arms on the way. Collins mentioned Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Collin McHugh, Josh Edgin, and Davis and Duda as reasons for Wright and Dickey to sign on. “My hope is that you can see some payroll coming off the books in a couple of years,” Dickey said, “and you can see some things starting to take shape, some pieces starting to — the hope is that you’re going to be able to do a lot of good with that and be competitive. But that’s me speculating, almost as a fan.”

Baseball
New York Mets
Houston Astros
Hefner Jeremy
Davis Ike


China Passes New Safeguards for Criminal Suspects

Abstract: BEIJING — China ’s national legislature enacted new safeguards for criminal suspects and defendants on Wednesday, but upheld the right of the police to hold certain suspects in secret residential locations for up to six months, ignoring a last-minute online campaign by critics to curb police authority. Nearly 8 percent of the delegates abstained or voted against the legislation, an unusual display of disagreement within the handpicked National People’s Congress. The online effort to postpone the vote was blocked when censors erased messages from a microblogging site. Chen Guangzhong, an expert on criminal procedure and an adviser to the committee that drafted the amendments, said that the revised Criminal Procedure Law provides greater protection for suspects subjected to residential confinement, including requiring the police to notify a suspect’s relatives within 24 hours of his detention. But the police will still be allowed to hold suspects in their homes for up to six months. And those suspected of threatening national security, terrorism or serious corruption can be held outside their homes for the same length of time without telling relatives the location or reason. “There are still shortcomings that need to be addressed in the future,” Mr. Chen said. Human rights advocates, criminal defense lawyers and others argued that the police have used residential confinement to silence and punish a wide array of dissidents and government critics. They object to confinement in secret, isolated settings, arguing that suspects are more easily abused and tortured. Chen Youxi, a Beijing criminal lawyer, said that residential detention “should only and always be at the suspect’s own home.” Mr. Chen said that law enforcement authorities insisted that residential detention was a necessary option because the police needed more time to investigate certain cases. The law allows suspects to be held in formal detention centers for no more than 37 days without formal arrest. He said he had contended that the police should be required to notify suspects’ relatives of the location and reason for residential confinement because, otherwise, suspects would not be able to exercise their rights to defense lawyers. But law enforcement officials said the requirement was too burdensome. Legal experts said the revised law explicitly forbids the use of evidence extracted by torture, allows defense lawyers to attend police interrogations and requires videotaped interrogations if the penalty for the crime is at least 10 years in prison. Divisions in the National People’s Congress occur from time to time. Xiong Wei, a Beijing researcher who studies the legislative process, noted that in 1992, about a third of the delegates abstained or voted against the plan for the Three Gorges Dam. On Wednesday, of the 2,856 delegates, 160 voted against the Criminal Procedure Law revisions, and 57 abstained. Mr. Xiong began an online campaign to delay the vote, arguing that the delegates were presented with the final legislation after the legal deadline. His posting Monday on the microblogging service Sina Weibo was forwarded 18,000 times, he said, before a worker for the company called him, apologetically explaining that it had been deleted, being deemed “too sensitive.”

Human Rights and Human Rights Violations


Halliburton Posts Net Loss Amid Energy Sector Downturn

Abstract: Halliburton posted a net loss amid a steep fall in drilling in North America, the company’s biggest market. Halliburton lost $641 million as it took charges of $823 million in asset write-downs and other items. It posted a $616 million profit in the year-ago quarter. Revenue, which fell 4 percent to $7.05 billion, beat analysts’ expectation of $6.96 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, helped by strength in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. Adjusted income from continuing operations excluding the charges also beat analysts’ expectations, coming in at 49 cents a share, surpassing forecasts for 37 cents. Besides coping with the slide in oil prices, Halliburton has been divesting businesses to get regulatory clearance for its planned $35 billion takeover of Baker Hughes. Halliburton also forecast a fall in current-quarter revenue in North America. The company, which has cut over 10 percent of its global head count in the last two quarters, said it would cut capital spending about 15 percent, to $2.8 billion this year.

Halliburton
Baker Hughes
Earnings Reports


Bernanke Urges Flexibility in Mortgage Regulation

Abstract: Ben S. Bernanke , the chairman of the Federal Reserve , urged Congress on Monday to allow federal agencies more leeway in overseeing the ailing mortgage industry, emphasizing that the causes of the current foreclosure crisis were more difficult to address than those in the past. “Realistic public and private sector policies must take into account the fact that traditional foreclosure avoidance strategies may not always work well in the current environment,” Mr. Bernanke said at a Columbia Business School event at the Waldorf-Astoria in Midtown Manhattan. In a 10-page speech, Mr. Bernanke said that some regions of the country — including California, Florida, Colorado and parts of the Midwest — have experienced sharp increases in the number of homeowners who are delinquent on their mortgages, despite data that does not reveal the classic causes of foreclosures, like higher unemployment rates. Instead, much of the problem can be attributed to a decline in home prices, which, Mr. Bernanke said, can “reduce the ability and incentive of homeowners, particularly those under financial stress for other reasons, to retain their homes.” A high concentration of speculators and owners of second homes, who may have less incentive to hold onto their property, also contributes to more delinquencies, Mr. Bernanke said. The variety of factors leading to foreclosures makes it more difficult for mortgage lenders to help ailing homeowners, Mr. Bernanke said, noting that “lenders and services will have to develop new and flexible strategies to deal with this issue.” In response, Mr. Bernanke recommended that government agencies take a more innovative approach to ensure that only qualified buyers take out loans. He urged Congress to provide the Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgage loans, with “greater latitude” in setting appropriate standards for owners seeking to refinance their mortgages, and to adjust interest rates according to the level of risk of the applicants. It was this system that went awry in the subprime mortgage crisis, the root of the current economic turmoil. In many cases, mortgages were given to owners who could not afford to repay them, resulting in a wave of foreclosures. Mr. Bernanke also called for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the big mortgage financiers supervised by the government, to raise more money to help assist homeowners at risk of foreclosure. He warned that the rising foreclosure rate, if left unchecked, would harm the broader economy. “The costs of foreclosure may extend well beyond those borne directly by the borrower and the lender,” Mr. Bernanke said. He said that a rise in foreclosures adds to sagging inventories and can weigh down home prices, which hurts household worth and, ultimately, the health of Wall Street’s biggest banks.

Mortgages
Foreclosures
Housing
Interest Rates
Federal Reserve System
Bernanke Ben S
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Banks and Banking
Home Equity Loans


Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s Former Campaign Manager, Leaves CNN

Abstract: Donald J. Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, resigned on Friday from his role as a CNN political commentator, ending a television deal that had attracted scrutiny and harsh criticism about the cable channel’s journalistic ethics. Mr. Lewandowski, who joined CNN as a paid contributor days after being fired by Mr. Trump in June, has expressed interest in a senior adviser role in the White House, according to a person briefed on discussions within the Trump transition team. His name has also been mentioned as a potential chairman of the Republican National Committee, this person said. Mr. Lewandowski has been frequently spotted this week at Trump Tower in Manhattan, chatting with senior aides and attending meetings. Even as he defended Mr. Trump in front of millions of viewers on CNN talk shows, Mr. Lewandowski stayed in regular contact with the candidate and flew on the Trump campaign jet. He also received tens of thousands of dollars in severance from the Trump campaign, payments that were set to continue through the end of the year. The arrangement raised concerns about whether CNN was effectively paying a Trump campaign strategist to spin its viewers. Other networks, including MSNBC, regularly invite campaign representatives onto shows, but do not pay them. CNN and its president, Jeffrey A. Zucker, steadfastly defended Mr. Lewandowski’s hiring, saying that the network wanted to regularly provide viewers with on-air voices representing both candidates. But CNN’s critics saw in Mr. Lewandowski another sign of television news accommodating a candidate who was a ratings magnet. Because of a nondisclosure agreement, Mr. Lewandowski was limited in what he could discuss about Mr. Trump on the air. As recently as two weeks ago, Mr. Lewandowski traveled aboard the Trump campaign plane to his home state of New Hampshire. Onboard, Mr. Lewandowski discussed strategy with Mr. Trump and his top advisers, including Stephen K. Bannon, his campaign chief executive. After the flight was reported in The New York Times , a spokeswoman for CNN, Allison Gollust, said Mr. Lewandowski’s status at the network remained unchanged. “We were aware of his trip and granted our permission,” Ms. Gollust wrote in an email this week. Mr. Lewandowski, who last appeared on CNN on Wednesday morning, did not respond to a request for comment. On Friday, he was seen arriving at Trump Tower around 9:30 a.m.

Corey Lewandowski
Donald Trump
CNN
2016 Presidential Election
News media,journalism


Hispanic Jobless Rate Dips

Abstract: Unemployment among Hispanics reached a record low of 5.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, while the difference in unemployment rates between Hispanic and non-Hispanic workers, at 0.6 percent, was also a record low, according to a survey released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Center. The study found that Hispanic workers — mainly legal and illegal immigrants — accounted for about 40 percent of all the workers who joined the United States labor force in the last year, more than any other group. Much of the job growth for Hispanics came in the construction industry in the South and the Western states. While wages rose faster for Hispanics over the last year than for other workers, they continued to have the lowest median wage of any group. The findings are based on an annual analysis by the Pew center, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, of data from the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which first began collecting data on Hispanics in 1973.

Unemployment
Labor
Hispanic-Americans
Building (Construction)


Senators Push to Preserve N.S.A. Phone Surveillance

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee appears to be moving toward swift passage of a bill that would “change but preserve” the once-secret National Security Agency program that is keeping logs of every American’s phone calls, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the panel, said Thursday. Ms. Feinstein, speaking at a rare public hearing of the committee, said she and the top Republican on the panel, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, are drafting a bill that would be marked up — meaning that lawmakers could propose amendments to it before voting it out of committee — as early as next week. After the existence of the program became public by leaks from the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, critics called for it to be dismantled. Ms. Feinstein said her bill would be aimed at increasing public confidence in the program, which she said she believed was lawful. The measure would require public reports of how often the N.S.A. had used the calling log database, she said. It would also reduce the number of years — currently five — that the domestic calling log data is kept before it is deleted. It would also require the N.S.A. to send lists of the phone numbers it searches, and its rationale for doing so, to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for review. By contrast, a rival bill drafted by skeptics of government surveillance, including two members of the committee, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, would ban the mass call log collection program. That more extensive step is unlikely to pass the committee. Ms. Feinstein contended that “a majority of the committee” believed that the call log program was “necessary for our nation’s security.” Ms. Feinstein said her bill with Mr. Chambliss would also require Senate confirmation of the N.S.A.’s director. At the same time, it would expand the N.S.A.’s powers to wiretap without warrants in the United States in one respect: when it is eavesdropping on a foreigner’s cellphone, and that person travels to the United States, the N.S.A. would be allowed to keep wiretapping for up to a week while it seeks court permission. That step would remove the largest number of incidents in which the N.S.A. has deemed itself to have broken rules about surveillance in the United States. Those incidents were identified in a May 2012 audit leaked by Mr. Snowden . The rival proposals pushed by Mr. Wyden and Mr. Udall would also ban the N.S.A. from warrantless searches of Americans’ information in the vast databases of communications it collects by targeting noncitizens abroad. And it would prohibit, when terrorism is not suspected, systematic searches of the contents of Americans’ international e-mails and text messages that are “about” a target rather than to or from that person. Still, most of the senators on the Intelligence Committee, which had received briefings about the call log program and other surveillance even before Mr. Snowden’s leaks, used the hearing on Thursday to largely defend the programs and criticize the disclosures. Mr. Chambliss suggested that people could die because of Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, and he pressed Gen. Keith Alexander, the N.S.A. director, to describe the program’s value. “In my opinion,” General Alexander said, “if we had had that prior to 9/11, we would have known about the plot.” Officials have struggled to identify terrorist attacks that would have been prevented by the call log program, which has existed in its current form since 2006. The clearest breakthrough attributed to the program was a case involving several San Diego men who were prosecuted for donating several thousand dollars to a terrorist group in Somalia. Mr. Wyden pressed General Alexander about whether the N.S.A. had ever collected, or made plans to collect, bulk records about Americans’ locations based on cellphone tower data. General Alexander replied that the N.S.A. is not doing so as part of the call log program, but that information pertinent to Mr. Wyden’s question was classified.

Senate Intelligence Committee
Dianne Feinstein
Saxby Chambliss
Government Surveillance
Ron Wyden
Mark Udall
NSA
US Politics
Legislation
Edward Snowden


Austria Says Man Jailed Daughter for 24 Years

Abstract: FRANKFURT — Austrian police arrested a 73-year-old man who they say kept his daughter locked in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, three of whom never emerged into daylight from their prison until now. The woman, identified by the police as Elisabeth F., was released by her father, Josef F., after her eldest daughter, 19, became ill and was taken to a hospital. Doctors had appealed for her mother to come forward to share details of her medical history. The authorities said she was still in serious condition. The police referred to the family name by initial only as is standard procedure in criminal cases in Austria. In its macabre details, the case carries echoes of the kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch, an Austrian schoolgirl who was held in a windowless basement cell for eight years before escaping in August 2006. This latest case, which unfolded in a nondescript, three-story apartment house in Amstetten, a town 80 miles west of Vienna, is, if possible, even harder to comprehend. Elisabeth, 42, told the police that in 1984, her father drugged, handcuffed and dragged her into a basement, accessible only through a hidden door with an electronic code. She said she spent close to the next quarter-century imprisoned there, a constant victim of sexual abuse and incest by her father. “This is not a mother abandoning her child, which then had to be admitted to the hospital,” Franz Polzer, chief of the criminal investigations unit for the province of Lower Austria, said at a news conference on Sunday, according to Reuters. “We know that she herself has been kept imprisoned by her own father for 24 years in the basement,” he said, “and furthermore, she obviously was also subjected to sexual abuse.” Elisabeth gave birth to seven children during that time, one of whom died shortly after birth, the police said. Her father ordered her to give up three of the children, who were then adopted or cared for as foster children by Josef and his wife, Rosemarie, the mother of Elisabeth. The police said Rosemarie apparently did not know of her daughter’s ordeal, believing that she had left the children on her parents’ doorstep because she was unable to care for them herself. When Elisabeth disappeared in 1984, her father claimed that she had written a letter asking her parents not to search for her. Three of the children born in the basement — now 19, 18 and 5 — never left it, the police said.. When Josef brought Elisabeth and the others out of confinement, he told his wife that their “missing” daughter had returned. He is in police custody, charged with abduction and incest. Elisabeth told the police that she had been sexually abused by her father from the age of 11. The authorities said they would perform DNA tests to determine whether Josef is the father of the children. Also a mystery is how Josef, an electrical engineer, was able to conceal his daughter and her children for so long. Behind the door, for which only Josef had the access code, he built a dwelling capable of sustaining a family. “There is not only one, but a number of rooms: one room to sleep in, one to cook, and there are also sanitation facilities,” Mr. Polzer said in interview with the Austrian broadcaster ORF. Neighbors were flabbergasted. “It is so horrible,” Corina Schmid said to ORF. “I can see the house from my balcony and from my window, and when I think now of who was in there, I can simply not imagine that.”


Russia Seeks Pledge From NATO on Missile Defense

Abstract: KALININGRAD, Russia — Russia is seeking assurances from NATO that any missile defense system the military alliance deploys in Europe will not be directed against the country. “We do not want any missiles aimed at Russia,” the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said after talks in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad with his counterparts from Germany, Guido Westerwelle, and Poland, Radek Sikorski. The meeting in Kaliningrad was part of an effort by the three countries to work together over political, security, energy and visa issues. “This is about cooperation, not confrontation, about discussing concrete projects,” Mr. Westerwelle told hundreds of students at Kant University who had gathered to question the three officials. Mr. Lavrov said Russia wanted “some kind of written guarantees from NATO that the missiles will not threaten Russia.” Russia has in the past threatened to place missiles in Kaliningrad — a small area with a population of nearly one million that is sandwiched between two European Union countries, Poland and Lithuania — in response to NATO’s plans to deploy part of its missile shield in Eastern Europe. President Obama, who is to visit Poland next week, intends to deploy Patriot missiles there, but not the original missile shield system that the administration of President George W. Bush had promised to do. The Bush administration’s plans to place parts of the missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, which were once part of the Soviet military alliance, led to a sharp deterioration of relations between Washington and Moscow. The Russian prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, has said that the deployments would undermine Russia’s security. Mr. Obama’s decision to shift strategy was not only because of the costs and the need to modify the scope of any missile defense system that would provide a much broader security umbrella over Europe. The administration said it also wanted to “reset” its relations with Russia. During Saturday’s discussions, the ministers agreed that their meeting could evolve into something more permanent — like the Weimar Triangle, which the French, German and Polish foreign ministers set up 20 years ago after the reunification of Germany. The Weimar Triangle helped to lead to reconciliation between Poland and Germany, ending decades of enmity and distrust. Mr. Lavrov acknowledged that Russia could not ignore Poland’s new role on the Continent, now that it is a member of the European Union and it is scheduled to take over the rotating presidency on July 1. The three officials also discussed Belarus on Saturday. Poland and Germany, with support from France, want European foreign ministers to impose more sanctions against Belarus. The sanctions, already imposed on the top leadership, could be extended to some enterprise managers. At the same time, Poland and Germany intend to strengthen their ties to civil society and the democratic opposition. Russia, however, said it opposed more sanctions. “This will only lead to further isolation,” Mr. Lavrov said. “That will do nothing to help the way towards direction.”

Russia
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Missiles and Missile Defense Systems
Defense and Military Forces


Arizona Group to Sue Paterson Over Order on Gay Marriages

Abstract: ALBANY — An Arizona-based conservative Christian group said on Friday that it planned to sue Gov. David A. Paterson to block his directive to state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside New York. Brian Raum, the senior legal counsel for the group, the Alliance Defense Fund, said that it would file a lawsuit next week claiming that Mr. Paterson’s order sidestepped the Legislature. The Alliance, which was founded by James C. Dobson and others, has been active in efforts in other states to limit marriage to heterosexuals. “This is directly the province of the Legislature,” Mr. Raum said. “The Court of Appeals said marriage in New York is one man, one woman. And if that’s going to change, it has to come from the Legislature. What Paterson is doing is circumventing that process.” Through his chief spokeswoman, Mr. Paterson declined comment. The governor said this week that his directive was intended to bring state agencies into compliance with an appellate court ruling in February that said New York must recognize same-sex marriages that have been performed outside the state. Also on Friday, Senate Republicans in Albany were trying to decide how to respond to the governor’s directive. The majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican, said in a radio interview on Friday that he hoped to have an answer from his counsel by next week about whether they could take the governor to court. At the same time, Mr. Bruno conceded that any legislative action the Republican-led Senate might take would be largely symbolic because such a measure was almost certain to fail in the Assembly, which has supported same-sex marriage. Mr. Bruno ruled out moving a bill to make a political statement. “We’re not committing because we’re waiting to see how the rest of this plays out,” he said. “The bottom line is, whatever we do, the Assembly won’t join us. The Democrats control the Assembly.” The Assembly overwhelmingly passed a bill last summer to allow same-sex marriages, but Senate Republicans have refused to bring the bill to a vote. Mr. Bruno said the basis for any legal battle would be an argument that the governor’s directive violated the doctrine on the separation of powers. The directive, written by the governor’s legal counsel, David M. Nocenti, asked all state agencies to revise their policies to conform to the appeals court ruling and to report back to Mr. Nocenti by June 30. “It’s the executive taking legislative powers away,” Mr. Bruno said on WGDJ-AM (Talk 1300), a radio station in Albany. “If there’s going to be a court battle, that’s what it’ll be over, not the issue itself.” He said the Senate Republicans are not opposed to gay rights. “I don’t care whether they’re gay, black, white, Oriental, whatever. Equal justice. That’s what it’s all about,” Mr. Bruno said.

Marriages
Paterson David A
Decisions and Verdicts
Homosexuality
Albany (NY)


Road Through Roman History Creates Colossal Headache

Abstract: ROME — Via dei Fori Imperiali, a multilane artery running through the heart of Rome, is typically a frenzy of swerving Vespas, zipping Smart cars and honking Fiat taxis. But Mayor Ignazio Marino is seeking to transform the avenue to something calmer, where Gucci loafers and sensible sneakers would rule. Mr. Marino’s plan to ban private traffic on the roadway, which bisects a vast archaeological site, from the central Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum, has prompted grousing and histrionic debate over a project that conservators say would solidify the world’s largest urban archaeological area. This being Rome, the first high-impact initiative of his seven-week-old administration, which goes into effect on Saturday, has provoked its share of unfavorable comparisons with the overweening ambitions of emperors past. “The mayor’s job is not to pass into history, but to work for his citizens,” said Luciano Canfora, a professor of classics at the University of Bari. “We already had Nero, that’s more than enough.” He predicted the plan would “torture” other Romans with “catastrophic” traffic jams. To the mayor, though, the project is the cornerstone of a bigger vision that plays on Rome’s strengths and uniqueness to develop a strategy for the city based on environmental and cultural sustainability. “I want to change what was a highly trafficked street into a walk into history,” Mr. Marino, 58, said in an interview at his offices on the Capitoline Hill, which overlooks the Roman Forum. “It’s part of a dream of giving back to Romans, Italians and people from around the world this incredible place where the history of the Western world developed.” Image Mayor Ignazio Marino of Rome wants to ban private vehicles on the road. Credit Alessandro Penso for The International Herald Tribune Of course, modern Romans, and especially the neighborhood’s residents, have more practical concerns. Most have to do with the anticipated spillover effect of closing a broad avenue used by as many as 1,600 motorists an hour during peak times of day, according to city statistics. Residents’ associations and local shopkeepers fret about aggravating the traffic congestion that is already as quintessentially Roman as the city’s famed cupolas, making their lives even more “invivibile,” a common Italian expression used by those complaining about life in the capital. “We will block the streets, set up barricades,” pledged Luciana Gasparini, the president of Via Merulana per L’Esquilino, a neighborhood group that is organizing a protest against the project. (But, in Roman fashion, it will take place in September, once people have returned from their August holidays.) Franco Aldini, a tailor with a shop on Via Labicana, complained that his business had already dropped since street work began in preparation for the closing. Mr. Aldini said he was considering suing the city for damages if the situation dragged on. “The mayor can’t decide from one day to the next to lock down a neighborhood,” he said. But it seems that the mayor can, and did, forging ahead with a project that was a centerpiece of his campaign. In this first phase, the tract of Via dei Fori Imperiali closest to the Colosseum will be off limits to private vehicles, but not to buses and taxis. A rather optimistic simulation is visible on the city’s transportation Web site. The final goal is to make the Via dei Fori Imperiali a pedestrian area from one end to the other, and to finance the project with subsidies from the European Union. “I think Rome needed a kind of shock,” said the mayor, a former transplant surgeon, using the analogy of a person receiving emergency treatment. “The city had been sleeping and needed to wake up. After the shock, you go on to live a long, productive life.” Image Luciana Gasparini is planning a protest against the project. “We will block the streets,” she said. Credit Alessandro Penso for The International Herald Tribune Mr. Marino spent nearly 20 years of his career as a doctor in the United States before returning to Rome in 2006, when he plunged into politics and was elected to the Senate with the center-left Democratic Party. This year, he decided not to run again at a national level but instead turned his sights on Rome, the city he “loves most in the world,” he said. Mr. Marino easily beat Gianni Alemanno, the incumbent, center-right mayor, in June. Mr. Marino cheerfully acknowledged that he would be “crucified” by citizens in the short term, but said it was worth fighting for his “vision of what I want this city to be in 30 years.” He added, “No one will remember who the mayor was in 2013, but everyone will appreciate the pedestrian area.” Via dei Fori Imperiali was built during the 1920s by Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator, as a marching avenue for triumphant troops, linking his palace in Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum, the most recognizable symbol of ancient Roman power. It was an ambitious project that destroyed a densely populated area of central Rome, and also separated the Roman Forum from the imperial forums of Trajan, Augustus, Caesar and Nerva. Conservators and municipal and state archaeology officials have long nurtured the wish to reconnect the forums. They have also been keen to limit the effect of traffic on the monuments, including vibrations and smog, “which is eating away at the surface of the monuments, like those terrible photos showing how cigarettes eat away at one’s lungs,” said Rossella Rea, the culture ministry official responsible for the Colosseum. But in a city where history is as stratified as lasagna, some argue that the Via dei Fori Imperiali has its own notable, equally valid past and so should be preserved. “It is the result of an operation undertaken under Fascism that changed the face of the city, like the 19th-century boulevards that changed Paris,” said Professor Canfora. “No one would dare to ask to turn back French history,” he added, so why “think that you can return Rome to an archaeological site.” Actually, the mayor said he hoped that the road closing would help modify Romans’ driving habits, by encouraging more people to leave their vehicles at home. He said about 60 percent of Romans travel less than five kilometers a day — roughly three miles — to get to work. “As a scientist, I find that numbers give a more clear and precise picture,” he said, and gave a few facts: 970 of 1,000 adult Romans have cars, compared with 340 in London, and the average speed of public transportation in Rome is less than 9 miles per hour. “One of the slowest in the Western world,” he said. “You could run faster.”

Rome
Ignazio Marino
Archaeology
Colosseum
Roads and Traffic


Stephens and Williams to Face Off as Their Nascent Rivalry Heats Up

Abstract: Serena Williams may have to settle for revenge being served eight months later. Williams, the top seed, takes on 15th-seeded Sloane Stephens in the fourth round of the United States Open on Sunday. That will be the third installment of what has become one of the most tantalizing rivalries in tennis, a pairing of the top two American women that has produced not only compelling tennis, but also copious drama off the court. Last year, before they had ever played each other, Williams, 31, and Stephens, 20, frequently discussed the closeness of their friendship, which grew tighter when they played together on the United States Fed Cup team early in 2012. “Oh, my God, I love her to death; she’s amazing,” Stephens said of Williams at the time. “Now she’s like an actual person, and I’m like: ‘Oh, hi. How is it going?’ She’s not like a hero anymore. She’s just a friend.” But the tenor of their relationship changed after they faced off for the first time, in January. In a fiercely competitive match, Williams defeated Stephens, 6-4, 6-3, in Brisbane, Australia. As Williams closed out the victory, Stephens was taken aback by the volume of Williams’s self-exhortations, telling her coach, Troy Hahn, that they were “disrespectful.” Stephens retaliated on a bigger stage three weeks later, upsetting Williams, 3-6, 7-5, 6-4, in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, keeping her composure as Williams visibly struggled with pain in her ankle and her back. It was the first time Williams had lost to a younger American. In her on-court interview after the victory, a stunned Stephens was reminded that she’d had on her bedroom wall a poster of the woman she had just beaten. “I think I’ll put a poster of myself now,” she said, smiling. Image Sloane Stephens, above, upset Serena Williams, 3-6, 7-5, 6-4, in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open. Credit Ben Solomon for The New York Times Months later, in an interview with ESPN The Magazine, published in May, Stephens said that she had hung the poster even though Williams had snubbed her for an autograph when she was a child, but that she had since taken it down. There had been more apparent slights by Williams since the Australian Open: she unfollowed Stephens on Twitter, for instance, and deleted her as a contact on BlackBerry Messenger. Stephens’s remarks in that article completed a 180-degree turnaround from her previous comments on their closeness. Before their first match in January, Stephens told ESPN, “Everyone thinks she’s so mean, but she’s like the greatest person ever.” In the article in May, though, Stephens said: “People should know. They think she’s so friendly, and she’s so this and she’s so that — no, that’s not reality!” Stephens later apologized to Williams, and she has insisted that the two have moved on. Still, on Friday, her characterization of her relationship with Williams had a sterile ring. “We’re co-workers,” Stephens said. “We’re Fed Cup teammates. But other than that, everything else is private. It’s fine.” Williams has taken a different tack since the rift between the two became clear, showering Stephens with praise. After Williams lost in the fourth round at Wimbledon, she picked Stephens to win the title. (Stephens lost the next day in the quarterfinals.) Asked to name favorites for the United States Open title, Williams mentioned herself and then named Victoria Azarenka, the No. 2 seed, and Stephens. Image In January, in a fiercely competitive match, Serena Williams, above, defeated Sloane Stephens, 6-4, 6-3, in Brisbane, Australia. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times “I think Sloane has had such a good year this year,” Williams said in a news conference before the tournament. “She’s done really well in the Grand Slams — two of the Grand Slams better than I have. She’s such a good player, and she’s so smooth. I always say she’s just such a smooth player to watch. She just has this game and this confidence that, you know, that’s not easy to get. It’s so good to see her doing so well.” Williams took it a step further when she was asked about Stephens in her next news conference, two days later. “It was so good to see so many Americans doing good — mainly Sloane,” she said. “She’s such an inspiration, I think, to a lot of people.” Whether she has “inspired” is debatable, but after needing a third-set tiebreaker to survive the first round, Stephens has played some of her best tennis in her last two matches, dropping a combined six games against Urszula Radwanska and Jamie Hampton. Williams has hardly struggled herself, dropping just eight games total in her three matches. But after Williams had won in the early hours of Saturday, confirming that she would play Stephens in the fourth round, she played down her own chances. “I definitely don’t feel like I’m going in there as a favorite because she’s playing great, even though I’m playing good, too,” Williams said. “She really has nothing to lose, and she excels in situations like that.” Stephens, who had seemed uncomfortable with Williams’s declaration that she was the favorite at Wimbledon, acknowledged that Williams’s continued praise was both a blessing and a curse. “Coming from one of the greatest players to ever play the game, that feels really good. I think it’s awesome,” Stephens said. “But other than that, if you don’t really live up to it, it’s a wash.”

Serena Williams
Sloane Stephens
Tennis
US Open Tennis


A Photographer Scales the City to Capture the View

Abstract: Around 4 a.m., Luis D. Rosado began making his descent from the huge History Channel billboard in the South Bronx, 10 good shots of the city at night digitally stored on his camera. He climbed down from his perch about 100 feet in the air, made his way through the vacant building below and, before stepping out, peered through a hole in scaffolding he had climbed a few hours earlier. Bad timing. A police officer in a patrol car cruising past the building, on Bruckner Boulevard, shined his flashlight at the scaffolding. Mr. Rosado said he dived onto the scaffolding’s wooden planks, but it was too late. The officer spotted movement and called for backup. Fifteen minutes later, three other police officers arrived to join in the search. “My skills were tested, and my reputation was on the line,” said Mr. Rosado, recalling his nighttime adventure. “I could not fail.” He did not. After playing hide-and-seek with the police for more than an hour and a half, he said, he managed to make a dash to his apartment half a block away. What makes a man break the law, risk his life, climb great heights and hang out above the city in the middle of the night? The drive to capture a portrait of New York City from an unusual perspective. Mr. Rosado, 29, whose hobby is photography, has climbed 50 buildings, billboards and bridges in the Bronx, he said, some multiple times. He is not alone in his passion. Shane Perez, 27, who said he had been climbing and taking photos for four years, said he knew of about 10 night-climbing photographers in the city. Mr. Rosado said that in the last few years he has focused on his own neighborhood, finding beauty in its ruggedness, and both access and interesting subjects in its abandoned buildings and industrial blocks. “This is my playground,” Mr. Rosado said one recent morning, pointing at the buildings in the South Bronx visible from the rooftop of his own, on Alexander Avenue. Mr. Rosado has a routine: after choosing a spot, he rides his gray mountain bike to it from his apartment to measure the distance. There he checks for barbed wire, security guards or dogs. He does this two or three times. Finally, dressed in black — shirt, pants, hoodie, gloves and climbing boots — Mr. Rosado makes his climb. From his vantage point above the city he aims his camera at various targets — billboards, buildings, roads. He claims a larger mission: to capture the urban landscape as it is now, before gentrification sets in and new buildings — “much bigger, much worse-designed” ones — take their place. “People are not aware of what’s going on in the neighborhood,” he said. “And from high up you see things in a way you wouldn’t from lower points.” These urban forages are thrilling, but not without risk. Mr. Rosado could be arrested or could fall. There are also security guards and dogs to dodge. So far he has escaped without harm. The Police Department said it did not keep records on people arrested for climbing buildings and bridges, partly because the instances were so few and far between. But capture can result in charges of criminal trespass and reckless endangerment. Mr. Rosado willingly takes the risk, likening himself to an urban ninja proficient in the art of climbing. He said he had always loved heights. While his missionary parents tried to convert indigenous people of Peru, Chile and Ecuador to Pentecostalism, a 3-year-old Luis climbed trees in the surrounding jungles. His family moved back to their native Puerto Rico when he turned 5, and there he found a stunning vantage point from the rooftop of the church. “My father owned the church, so I couldn’t get in trouble,” Mr. Rosado said. As his father, Angel L. Rosado, traveled, founding churches in New York and Colchester, Vt., Luis Rosado found new structures to climb. But in Vermont a new passion was born. At 18, he started taking photography classes at his high school. “For the first time I could express myself,” Mr. Rosado said. “There was no limit to possibilities.” Four years later he returned to New York, this time with an associate’s degree in photography and graphic design. His two interests merged. “New York was free for the taking,” Mr. Rosado said. “I wanted to take my camera everywhere.” His photography was on display this summer at the LDR Studio Gallery — his apartment, which he converted into living space three years ago, mainly to curate and display work by other artists. Called “Changes in the Bronx,” the show was a collaboration of photos and videos with Benton-C Bainbridge , 44, a video artist who has had exhibitions at the Whitney and the Museum of Modern Art. “Luis and I are kindred spirits,” Mr. Bainbridge said. “We’re capturing and looking to expose things that people don’t see.” To support his photography and gallery, Mr. Rosado works as a doorman on the Upper East Side. That job leaves him with enough time to hatch new plans. On a recent Sunday, Mr. Rosado enthusiastically spoke of the next spot he wanted to climb and shoot from. His brown eyes wide in amazement, he pointed up 65 feet to the top of the new Willis Avenue Bridge. Mr. Rosado said he did not fear another close encounter with the police. If it happened, there was always a good route for escape. “I’m a good swimmer,” he said, smiling.


Equestrians’ Latest Safety Option Is the Air Bag

Abstract: Spectators gasped and expected the worst when the horse ridden by Karim Florent Laghouag somersaulted over a fence and fell on top of him at a prestigious equestrian competition last September in France. Laghouag had taken a so-called rotational fall, a dreaded spill in the Olympic sport of eventing. At least 13 riders in the past four years were killed and several others were seriously injured in such tumbles. But soon after his horse jumped to its feet, Laghouag stood up too. He had a dislocated elbow but no broken bones. He attributed his good fortune to an air bag vest, a simple safety innovation that was virtually unheard of in the equestrian world until last year and now is standard issue for the world’s top riders. “Today, I wear it all the time — even when I’m training,” Laghouag, 35, said in French during a recent telephone interview. Leaders in eventing — a three-phase competition involving dressage, show jumping and a cross-country obstacle course — have long expressed frustration over attempts to make the cross-country portion safer. They have tried imposing stricter rules on riders and building fences designed to break apart more easily on impact. But the arrival of the air bag vests has generated the most excitement, even though some caution that the technology is too new to be wholly embraced. “It’s certainly the biggest step forward in the safety of our sport, ever,” said Oliver Townend, a British rider who was wearing a vest in April when his horse tumbled on top of him at the Kentucky Three-Day Event in Lexington. Townend broke his sternum, four ribs, his collarbone and the tips of his shoulder bones — but he says he still believes in the vest. “I walked out of hospital the next day, where otherwise I would be in a box or in America for a month,” Townend said in a recent phone interview. Inflatable vests have been sold to motorcyclists for about a decade, but few equestrians used them until a British company, Point Two Air Jackets , adapted them for use on horses and began distributing them at top European competitions last year. Hit Air , a Japanese company that says it has been selling motorcycle vests since 1999, also sells an equestrian version. They each rely on similar technology. The two-pound vest is attached by a cord to a rider’s saddle and is worn over a traditional protective vest made of high-density foam. When a rider is thrown from a horse, the cord is yanked, puncturing a cartridge of carbon dioxide and inflating the vest. The vest can be reused after the cartridge is replaced. Point Two said its vest inflates in one-tenth of a second; Hit Air said its average rate is one-quarter of a second. Despite their relatively high cost — from about $390 to $700 — the vests have sold well. About 6,000 eventing riders now wear the Point Two vests, according to the company, and Hit Air said it had sold about 10,000 vests for equestrian use worldwide. Lee Middleton, director of Point Two, said his product was worn by the top 40 American riders, and that several national teams, including the United States, would provide air bag vests to their riders at next month’s World Equestrian Games in Kentucky. He provides some vests free to riders like Townend and Laghouag, who are not paid to be spokesmen. “Anything like that, that can minimize the effects of an injury during a fall, is going to be great,” said David O’Connor, the president of the United States Equestrian Federation and an Olympic gold medalist. Until recently, he also headed the international federation’s eventing safety subcommittee. “I think they’ve proven themselves already — and certainly with the people that have had falls with them — they swear by them.” The eventing rider Doug Payne , who is sponsored by Hit Air, said he had fallen four times while wearing the vest. “It’s an interesting thing,” he said. “As you’re falling, everything sort of slows down. You do notice a pop sound, and that’s the canister. The next thing you realize, it’s a significantly softer landing than you would ever expect.” The vests have become so common on the competition circuit that it has become a common courtesy to warn other riders to unhook their cords before dismounting. “When you arrive, everyone says: ‘Your vest! Your vest!’ ” Laghouag said. Inevitably, someone forgets. “It’s always a source of amusement,” O’Connor said. “You hear a pop, and somebody’s looking like a marshmallow.” Giuseppe Della Chiesa, the chairman of the eventing committee for the international governing body for equestrian sports, known as F.E.I., said the group recommended using the vests but did not require them because so little safety data exists. “It is a step forward as it introduces a different proven technology from other industrial areas,” Della Chiesa wrote in an e-mail. He added that the technology was passive — meant to limit the damage of accidents, rather than prevent them, which he said is at the core of the sport’s safety mission. The Point Two jackets were independently tested by the Transport Research Laboratory, a nonprofit group in Britain, which found that the air bag improved protection of the spine by 69 percent when worn over a protective vest. The air bag vest also reduced the risk of rib fractures and underlying organ damage by as much as 20 percent, the laboratory found. Kenji Takeuchi, the president of Mugen Denko, which manufactures the Hit Air vest, said by e-mail that he had conducted testing at the nonprofit Japan Automobile Research Institute. In motorcycle racing, air bag technology is still met with caution. The racer Valentino Rossi has been testing an inflatable jacket, as have other top competitors. “I would describe it as an emerging technology,” said Peter terHorst, a spokesman for the American Motorcyclist Association. He noted motorcycle accidents occurred at far higher speeds — and under different conditions — than the typical equestrian fall. “I think the best thing I could tell you is that it’s something we’re watching closely,” he said. Point Two’s Middleton said he had also spoken about the vests with representatives from the mountain bike and all-terrain-vehicle industry. Aside from being concerned about cost, some equestrian riders have expressed concern that the loud pop created when the vest is activated can spook horses. Others report feeling restricted after a fall, and worry about being able to roll to safety in an inflated vest. Some have raised questions about the effectiveness of the vests during rotational falls similar to those of Laghouag and Townend, in which the rider somersaults with the horse and frequently does not become separated from the horse until the last moment. According to statistics kept by the F.E.I. , about 25 percent of riders involved in rotational falls in international competitions from 2004 to 2009 were killed or seriously injured. Reed Ayers, an amateur eventing competitor who holds a doctorate in engineering, said he was skeptical about the benefit of the vests. He said he had heard of several riders whose vests failed to inflate in falls. “These vests can absorb some of the impact,” said Ayers, who recently conducted a safety study examining horse speeds for the United States Eventing Association. But, he added: “When you rely on a mechanical design, there’s always a possibility that it won’t work. That’s why you can’t rely on those vests as the sole protective component.” But Laghouag and Townend consider the vests lifesavers, and Middleton said that even if they failed to inflate, they would cause no harm. “You’ve got to remember they’ve got what they’ve got underneath, anyway,” he said, referring to the stiff protective vest. “This is an added bonus.”

Horsemanship and Equestrian Events
Accidents and Safety
Sports Injuries


Who’s Going to Take the Financial Weight?

Abstract: The transfer of risk was supposed to be the great advance brought to the world by financial engineers. They developed exotic derivative products that enabled risks to be sliced and diced in all manner of ways. Central banks and bank regulators cheered on the process. The transfers of risk meant that those who were comfortable with a given risk would wind up with it. The apparent triumph of that process came after the technology stock bubble burst and the American economy went into recession in 2001. A lot of money was lost because of huge overinvestment in things like fiber optic cable, but the losses were dispersed. No significant banks failed or even got into trouble. The system worked, the regulators told themselves as they praised the financial advances brought on by the derivative revolution. Sometimes those regulators did wonder just where the risk was. If it was no longer the banks that would suffer when a financial crisis came around, who would? Could it be the insurance companies? Perhaps pension plans? Would hedge funds that gambled and lost be unable to meet their obligations and bring on a systemic failure? In this financial crisis, the one that started with subprime loans, we are learning the answer to that question. The risks that banks would have taken on under the old system — when banks made loans and profited only as they were paid back — had been transferred through a bewildering wilderness of options, swaps, swaptions, specialized investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations, variable interest entities and who knows how many other instruments. And when the whole daisy chain was through, a lot of the risk seems to have ended just where it used to end. With the banks. There were differences, of course. For one, the banks are ending up taking losses from loans that others made. A suit filed this week in Federal Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan sheds light on one way this happened. American Home Mortgage Holdings, a subprime lender that went broke in August, sued Bank of America, saying it reneged on a deal to bear losses if mortgages were sold for less than face value. The bank asserts that some of the loans shouldn’t have been made at all, but American Home says that is irrelevant. Here’s how it worked, in a simplified explanation that does not come close to capturing all the complexities that the financial engineers inserted: American made subprime loans and sold them to special purpose entities it set up. Those entities, in turn, financed themselves by borrowing, mostly through the short-term commercial paper market. To reassure investors, the special purpose entities entered into swap agreements with Bank of America and other big banks, in which the banks promised to make up the difference if the entities could not retain financing and therefore had to sell loans for less than par value. The chances of such a sale presumably seemed slight when the deal was made in 2004, but lots of unexpected things are cropping up these days. In late September, American auctioned off the loans. Note that these appear to be loans made in 2004 or earlier, before lending standards are supposed to have crumbled. We now have a market value for such loans. Packages of mortgages that were classified as performing — meaning the homeowner is mailing in a check every month — sold for as little as 80 percent of face value, and none went for more than 92 percent. The nonperforming loans sold in a range of 54 to 59 percent. American Home says it sent out bills to its swap partners, and all but Bank of America agreed to pay. The amount in dispute is just $25 million, an insignificant amount for the bank. But its refusal to pay may indicate an effort to find ways to shed what now seem to be foolish risks. The man in charge of that area of the bank was pushed out this week in a reorganization. The bank would not comment on the lawsuit. There are other ways that banks may come to lose a lot of money. Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg News points out that Citigroup has no legal obligation to make up losses in the specialized investment vehicles — SIVs — it set up, but some analysts think it will do so to avoid a hit to its reputation. If it does put up cash, that will call into question the accuracy of Citi’s financial statements. If not, some of Citi’s customers will be very upset. Not all the losses will end up with banks. Some will go to mutual funds and hedge funds and pension funds. Some will go to those who insured the value of securities, like Ambac Financial, which surprised Wall Street by posting its first quarterly loss this week. Still, it is remarkable that the financial engineers generated large commissions and fees by selling risk-transfer products that, in the end, moved a lot of the risk back to where it started.