Tough Re-election for G.O.P. Moderate Is Getting Tougher

Abstract: MANCHESTER, N.H. — When Senator Kelly Ayotte is in Washington, she plows through the halls of the Capitol, her face pinched into an expression somewhere between suspicion and agitation, a human tuning fork of intensity. But from the moment the New Hampshire Republican rolls her carry-on bag to the airport gate for her flight back home, Ms. Ayotte’s face softens, her gaze broadens and she chats with half her fellow passengers, all of whom she seems to know — lobbyists, college students, someone who has noticed her daughter’s basketball game has improved. She may not always telegraph it, but Ms. Ayotte, a freshman senator, is locked in a herculean battle with the state’s popular Democratic governor, Maggie Hassan. As one of five Senate Republicans running for re-election in states that supported President Obama in both 2008 and 2012, Ms. Ayotte is seen as particularly vulnerable this November, and is a major reason national Democrats, now on the short end of a 54-46 Republican majority, are optimistic about taking back the Senate. Six years ago, Ms. Ayotte was part of a Republican wave that swept Democrats out of power in blue states like Illinois and Wisconsin , as well as swing states like New Hampshire . For Ms. Ayotte and other Republicans from that class, 2016 was always going to be a difficult year to run for re-election because more Democrats vote in presidential years. But with the possibility that Donald J. Trump, the most divisive Republican presidential candidate in a generation, will be at the top of the ticket, the party’s task may be all the more arduous. “They have to find a way to keep Trump voters excited, and appeal to those who are offended by him,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor of The Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report . “That is the tension they have to navigate.” Nowhere is that tension more apparent than in New Hampshire, a moderate state that also gave Mr. Trump one of his most critical victories in its presidential primary last month . “New Hampshire is one of the most competitive races in the Senate,” Mr. Gonzales said. “If the cycle turns into a catastrophe for Republicans, New Hampshire will be one of the first states to fall.” Image Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire has echoed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont at times on income inequality. Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times Ms. Ayotte, like most of her Republican colleagues, stands with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, in opposing a confirmation vote on a Supreme Court nominee , in refusing to reject Mr. Trump should he become the party’s nominee, and in opposing Mr. Obama. But on issues that appeal to moderate voters — drug programs for addicts, clean power plants and the so-called Gang of Eight immigration bill — Ms. Ayotte has often sided with Democrats. And that is likely to be a familiar strategy for some of her fellow Senate Republicans this year. “With the potential for a polarizing nominee like Trump or Cruz at the top of the ticket, it will be more important than ever for Republican Senate candidates to cement their own identity and distance themselves when necessary,” said Brian Walsh, a longtime Senate campaign aide and Republican consultant, referring also to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. “Senators in both parties have been successful in doing that in recent years, but you need to run hard and run your own race because the top of the ticket inevitably dominates the broader national political environment.” Other Republicans from the class of 2010 — Senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mark S. Kirk of Illinois — have also found issues that could distinguish them from more conservative members of their party (for Mr. Portman, programs for drug addicts; for Mr. Toomey, gun safety; for Mr. Kirk, agreeing to hearings for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Mr. Obama’s Supreme Court nominee). Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is an exception; he has not strayed far from his Tea Party roots in his campaign. Nationally, Ms. Ayotte had a similar image as a conservative, augmented by Sarah Palin’s anointment of her as a fellow “mama grizzly” during the 2010 campaign, her alliance with Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on interventionist foreign policy views, and her numerous votes to defund Planned Parenthood . But in her home state, Ms. Ayotte, 47, the image is different. “The perception outside of here that Kelly Ayotte is part of the Tea Party was actually false,” said Andrew E. Smith, a political scientist and pollster at the University of New Hampshire. “She is pretty much Judd Gregg in a skirt,” he said, referring to the moderate Republican senator and former New Hampshire governor who preceded Ms. Ayotte. Ms. Hassan, her opponent, is also a lawyer, and entered politics in 1999 when Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, now a Democratic senator, appointed her to a state education commission. One of her children has cerebral palsy, and she has said her quest to have him educated in a traditional school inspired her to seek elected office. Ms. Shaheen, her mentor, describes her as someone who “has shown she can work across the aisle.” And just as Ms. Ayotte has tried lately to play up her spirit of bipartisanship, Ms. Hassan broke with her party shortly after announcing her candidacy this winter when she said the federal government had to put in place a better screening process for Syrian refugees before she would allow any in New Hampshire. But more recently her message seems borrowed from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the winner over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary. Trump and Sanders voters share “a pervasive feeling that the system is truly rigged,” Ms. Hassan said in an interview in her office in Concord. “People are very frustrated and angry, and have this sense that no matter how hard you work, you can’t get ahead and stay ahead.” Drawing a contrast with Ms. Ayotte, she said, “We’ve tried to lower costs of higher education; I froze tuition” at the public universities. “While we were working so hard to do that, my opponent voted for deep cuts to Pell grants. She protected tax breaks for big oil. She voted to defund Planned Parenthood six times.” The state’s economy is doing well — the unemployment rate last month was 2.7 percent . A bigger issue is drugs. Almost 50 percent of state residents know someone who has been affected by opioid abuse, according to a WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll . Both Ms. Hassan, who managed to expand the state’s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act despite a Republican legislature, and Ms. Ayotte, who helped push through a bill this month to address the crisis nationwide, have tried to raise their profiles on the issue. Because New Hampshire is a small state, elected officials and political rivals like Ms. Ayotte and Ms. Hassan often find themselves at the same events. “Hi, everyone,” Ms. Ayotte said breezily, strolling from table to table at a St. Patrick’s Day charity dinner in Manchester. Just as she settled down at a table, the governor rose to make a mildly awkward joke about how Ms. Ayotte’s plane might have been late, but a pilot change could not be made because “it’s up to the American people to decide” how to replace him. The joke, a reference to Ms. Ayotte’s insistence on not voting on a Supreme Court replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, drew nervous laughter and some boos, but underscored what Democrats hope is a high card in a contentious battle. “People know both of us,” Ms. Ayotte said. “She has been the governor, and I have been the senator. And, of course, the presidential election is an important one, but people here are going to be able to distinguish and look at our race on its own.”

US
New Hampshire
Republicans
Democrats
Kelly A Ayotte
Margaret Hassan
Drug Abuse
Senate races
2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump


Jacob Birnbaum, Civil Rights Champion of Soviet Jews, Dies at 88

Abstract: Just as the civil rights movement began with students challenging segregation at lunch counters, the movement to free Soviet Jews began with students demonstrating at the Soviet Mission to the United Nations. That 1964 protest was the brainchild of Jacob Birnbaum, who devoted his life to campaigning for Jewish causes and who died at 88 on April 9 in Manhattan. His inspiration was to bring the tactics of the civil rights movement to improving the lives of Soviet Jews. “Jacob was the first to start the struggle,” said Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician, who announced the death. “This brought hundreds of thousands of Jews out to join him in the great struggle for Soviet Jewry, which made modern Exodus real.” The grass-roots movement Mr. Birnbaum started contributed to legislation that eventually helped liberalize Moscow’s emigration policies. President Ronald Reagan personally pressed the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on the issue. And ultimately, more than 1.5 million Soviet Jews were allowed to move to Israel and elsewhere. Major Jewish organizations, government leaders and politicians in the United States and Israel, and human rights campaigners — not to mention newly assertive Soviet Jews themselves — contributed to this success. But the organization Mr. Birnbaum founded, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, was in the forefront of the effort, taking a more radical posture, along the lines of aggressive civil rights organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In a letter to Jewish college students in New York in April 1964, Mr. Birnbaum wrote, “Just as we, as human beings, are conscious of the wrongs suffered by the Negro and we fight for his betterment, so we must come to feel in ourselves the silent, strangulated pain of our Russian brethren.” Mr. Birnbaum picked May Day 1964, for his first protest because it was a major Soviet holiday. The thousand young men and women, almost all Jewish, who answered his summons marched silently in two neat rows for four hours in the conservative clothes they wore to synagogue. Mr. Birnbaum wore a thick Vandyke beard and a Panama hat. Other demonstrations, some of which attracted as many as 3,000 protesters, were held on Jewish holidays, with the chanting of psalms in Hebrew, the blast of shofars and a giant menorah. Mr. Birnbaum insisted that every rally include posters declaring “Let my people go,” the line from Exodus 9:1 that became the clarion call of the movement. His demand was free emigration, not just an easing of restrictions. He publicized the cases of individual Jews in Russia, despite mainstream organizations’ worries that this might endanger them. He tried to expose Soviet anti-Semitism and hypocrisy, in the belief that Moscow was more sensitive to international opinion than many thought. He lobbied Washington, and personally conveyed his support to Soviet “refuseniks” who protested being denied permission to emigrate. When Mr. Birnbaum started his initiative, even his early followers knew little about the persecution of Soviet Jews. The oppression had continued after Stalin’s death in 1953, with synagogues shut, Jewish cultural institutions suppressed and a disproportionate number of Jews tried in death-penalty cases. Image Mr. Birnbaum led demonstrations at the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, like this one in April 1971. In organizing the first such protest, in 1964, he spoke of “the silent, strangulated pain of our Russian brethren.” Credit Zvi Lowenthal In October 1963, Moshe Decter, a writer who championed Soviet Jews, convened a group of luminaries that included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They issued a statement titled “Appeal of Conscience for the Jews of the Soviet Union.” That led to the formation of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, which became the National Conference on Soviet Jewry in 1971. Mr. Birnbaum was frustrated with the conference’s carefully diplomatic approach and limited financing in its early years, describing it as a “toothless, fumbling group,” and telling associates, “We don’t need a conference, but a struggle.” Richard Maas, the first chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, said in a speech in 1986 that Mr. Birnbaum was “the conscience for Soviet Jews” and that his organization was “frequently several steps ahead of the other agencies” of organized American Jewry. For years, Mr. Birnbaum said the movement must be taken up by major Jewish organizations to be truly effective. That goal was achieved on Dec. 6, 1987, when some 250,000 people massed in Washington on behalf of Soviet Jews. Leaders of human rights, Jewish and Christian groups spoke, as did presidential candidates. Morris B. Abram, chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, read a message from President Reagan. “Birnbaum was relegated to a seat at the back of the dais, forgotten amid the celebrities and politicians who lined up to speak,” Gal Beckerman wrote in The Jewish Daily Forward this month. “He was bitter and would remain so until the end of his life.” Yaakov Birnbaum was born in Hamburg, Germany, on Dec. 10, 1926. After Hitler came to power in 1933, his father, Solomon, a Yiddish scholar, took the family to London. The younger Mr. Birnbaum earned a degree in modern history from the University of London, and taught and directed community centers in London and Manchester. He worked with survivors of Nazi concentration camps and Soviet labor camps, and with North African Jews who had fled the civil war in Algeria. He moved to New York in 1964 and soon started his campaign to help Soviet Jews. Mr. Birnbaum used their plight to appeal to increasingly assimilated American Jewish youth to join the cause, at one point knocking on dormitory doors to reach out to Jewish college students in New York. On April 27, 1964, in the Philosophy Hall on the Columbia University campus, around 200 students from Yeshiva University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Queens College and Columbia gathered to plan the May Day protest. Mr. Birnbaum worried that the group could not be ready in four days, but many supporters crowded into the single room he was renting in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan to make posters, contact the press and make other preparations. The group subsequently tried to hold at least one event a month. Mr. Birnbaum, who is survived by his wife, the former Freda Beatrice Bluestone, went on to work with Soviet Jews in the United States. “You can’t do anything but plant seeds of ferment,” he once said, “and you hope that ferment spreads.”

Jacob Birnbaum
Civil Rights
Human Rights
Antisemitism
Obituary
Immigration
Judaism
Holocaust and Nazis


Troops Mass in Fought-Over City, Raising Fear of New Violence in Congo

Abstract: NAIROBI, Kenya — Hundreds of troops from opposing sides have been moving into new positions around Goma, a strategic, contested city in the Democratic Republic of Congo , aid organizations said Sunday, raising worries of yet another explosion of violence. Witnesses reported that truckloads of Rwandan soldiers recently crossed the border and were camped within 20 miles of Goma, which was captured last month and briefly occupied by a rebel force called the M23 movement. United Nations officials confirmed a sudden military buildup around Goma but said that they did not know the identities of the various groups of soldiers. “It feels a bit like a boiling kettle, about to blow up,” said Thierry Goffeau, the leader of the mission in Goma for the aid organization Doctors Without Borders. The M23 rebels are widely believed to be covertly armed by neighboring Rwanda, and in the past few months they have eviscerated the Congolese Army in just about every battle. Aid workers in Goma said the Congolese Army had been reinforcing its positions in the last few days with tanks, heavy artillery and allies from some very unscrupulous militias. Several Goma residents said that while businesses were open during the day, the city had become lawless at night, especially after hundreds of criminals, including militia leaders, escaped from a hole punched through the back wall of Goma’s central prison last month. Outside Goma, the camps sheltering tens of thousands of displaced people were becoming the site of midnight attacks, with swarms of armed men flooding in. Mr. Goffeau said the situation in Masisi, a highly fertile area north of Goma, where the M23 and other armed groups have been mobilizing, was becoming “very, very, tense.” Eastern Congo has been mired in violence for more than 15 years, and it seems the capture of Goma last month has stirred up all sorts of tensions and rivalries that threaten the stability of this area and possibly of the vast Congo as a whole. “You have hundreds of tiny armed groups plying the countryside, making havoc,” said Jay Drosin, the director for the International Medical Corps’s program in Congo. Mr. Drosin said the situation was “constantly fluid and extremely unpredictable” and “more uncontrollable than it’s ever been.” Eastern Congo is blessed with gold, coltan, cassiterite and other minerals. These easy-to-move riches, along with longstanding ethnic tensions and a dysfunctional central government, have become a toxic brew that has killed countless Congolese. Analysts say that the Congolese Army, in its desperation to fight off Rwandan-backed forces, has reactivated its alliance with the infamous Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known as the F.D.L.R., a militia blamed for burning down villages, massacring civilians and raping thousands of women. The F.D.L.R. is commanded by ethnic Hutus and includes remnants of the force that committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis were hacked to death. Humanitarian groups said that in the last week, militia fighters, including from the F.D.L.R., as well as from another militia group known as the Mai-Mai, have infiltrated some of the displaced persons camps ringing Goma with the cooperation of the government’s army. Aid groups are worried that the militants may try to use the camps as a springboard to wage attacks against Tutsi-led Rwanda. This is what happened in the mid-1990s, setting into motion a series of events that culminated in Rwanda invading Congo and helping to topple its government. “There are these young guys in the camps, very well dressed, that are definitely not displaced persons,” Mr. Goffeau said. “Something weird is going on.” Many aid workers said ethnic tensions in the Goma area were increasing and could set off bloodletting between Hutus and Tutsis and other ethnic groups that may align themselves with either side. Analysts said that Rwanda might sweep into Congo again if the Hutu militants around Goma actually mounted a serious incursion into Rwanda. But they also noted that Rwanda would be reluctant to go on the offensive while peace talks were under way in Uganda, which has been hosting representatives of the Congolese government and the M23 rebel group in the hopes of brokering some sort of truce. “We will be here if it takes a day, or a week, or a year,” Bertrand Bisimwa, a rebel spokesman, said Thursday from a hotel room in Kampala, Uganda. The M23 captured Goma on Nov. 20 and, after intense international condemnation, left the city less than two weeks later. But the mistrust runs very deep between the government and the M23, and both sides have publicly expressed pessimism that the peace talks will be able to bring peace.

Congo Democratic Republic of (Congo-Kinshasa)


Fierce Protests Paralyze Haiti in Dispute Over Vote

Abstract: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Violent protests, ignited by preliminary presidential election results that were widely considered suspect, shut down this troubled country on Wednesday and threatened the fragile stability that has held since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Businesses and schools were shuttered, streets emptied of traffic and the international airport closed. Angry protesters set fire to the party headquarters of President René Préval’s chosen successor, and many hundreds marched on the electoral council offices, where United Nations peacekeeping troops repelled them with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. Protesters barricaded streets with heaps of earthquake rubble and burned hundreds of tires, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. The marches and clashes flared episodically, interrupting an otherwise eerie stillness with chanting, drums, gunfire and sirens. Haitian radio reported that four protesters had been killed. The unrest was provoked by the national electoral council’s announcement late on Tuesday that Mr. Préval’s protégé — a former state construction company executive named Jude Célestin — had edged out a popular singer, Michel Martelly, for a spot in a January runoff against Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Préval, whose leadership since the earthquake has been disparaged as ineffective, appealed for calm as the crisis showed no sign of abating. Mr. Préval, who is finishing his second term and ineligible for a third, said the election should be challenged through legal means, not in the streets. “It is not through disorder that we will find the true results,” he said. The election results released Tuesday night showed Ms. Manigat, a university administrator admired for her intellect, with 31.4 percent of the vote, Mr. Célestin with 22.5 percent, and Mr. Martelly, seen as an anti-establishment candidate, with 21.8 percent. If the results withstood challenges, Ms. Manigat and Mr. Célestin would head into a runoff on Jan. 16. (A candidate needed 50 percent of the vote to win in the first round.) But even before the results were announced, Mr. Martelly had vowed to challenge them, and many who took to the streets on Wednesday waved pink campaign posters with his picture and nickname, Bald Head. Reached by telephone on Wednesday morning, Mr. Martelly declined to speak about how he would proceed. Later in the day, he publicly asked his supporters to demonstrate without violence. In a surprising twist, Mr. Célestin’s campaign manager said in an interview that Mr. Célestin would also contest the results. Sitting in his car behind a windshield freshly shattered by protesters’ rocks, the campaign manager, Senator Joseph Lambert, claimed that Mr. Célestin had actually won the vote outright with 52 percent. Senator Lambert asserted that “the international community” had pressured the electoral board to create “diplomatically engineered” results because they feared instability. He also said Mr. Célestin’s Unity Party was doing its best to keep his supporters in the rough slum called Cité Soleil from pouring into the streets. “If we cannot hold them back, prepare yourself for civil war,” Senator Lambert said. Even Ms. Manigat, the frontrunner, said she did not trust the election results. Calling for an independent evaluation of the polling, she said on Haitian radio that she believed that she had received more votes than the electoral council had acknowledged. The Nov. 28 elections were marred by disorganization, voter intimidation, the ransacking of polling stations and fraud. Mr. Préval said Wednesday that the election had been deemed valid by international observers. But an electoral observation mission from the Organization of American States and the Caribbean countries gave a less than resounding endorsement, saying it did not believe the “irregularities, serious as they were, necessarily invalidated the election.” Twelve of the 18 presidential candidates had called for the election’s cancellation even before the polls closed. And one candidate, Leslie Voltaire, an architect, said Wednesday that he and others believe now more strongly than ever that the elections should be voided. “The only possible other way we can get out of this mess is if Célestin retreats and lets Micky inside,” said Mr. Voltaire, referring to Mr. Martelly by his band name, Sweet Micky. “Micky is the real big surprise — the phenomenon — of this election.” Foreign countries and international organizations proceeded cautiously to question the election results while calling for an orderly resolution. On Wednesday, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, voiced serious concern about election irregularities in Haiti , his spokesman said. Shortly after the preliminary results were released, the United States Embassy had expressed its own skepticism about the election results’ “irregularities” and inconsistency with the findings of an independent Haitian group that had posted thousands of electoral observers throughout the country. The group found Ms. Manigat and Mr. Martelly to be the front-runners. Faith in Haiti’s electoral council, seen as controlled by President Préval, has been shaky from the start. After it declared Wylef Jean, the Haitian-American hip-hop star whose declared candidacy provoked considerable excitement here, ineligible to run for president, many of his supporters transferred their allegiance to Mr. Martelly, a political novice. But they often said the authorities would not permit him to win. Many Haitians did not dare venture outside their homes — or tent camps — on Wednesday. Many have lost faith that any candidate can deliver them from their misery, including Jean-Claude Gouboth, whose soft-drink shop was destroyed first by the earthquake and then, when rebuilt, by Hurricane Tomas. “I understand that people are so frustrated and that they have waited all year to find a vehicle to vent their frustration,” Mr. Gouboth said by telephone. “But politicians have always deceived us, and it’s not worth burning down the town for them.”

Haiti
Elections
Demonstrations Protests and Riots


For Iraqi Street Cleaners, Scraps Include Human Flesh

Abstract: BAGHDAD — It must be a candidate for the worst job in Iraq . It falls to Baghdad’s street sweepers to pick up the fingertips and scraps of flesh left behind after the emergency workers haul away the torsos and heads of bombing victims. They do the job without gloves, in all but the coldest weeks of winter. If the attack comes while they are off duty, they get roughly $8 extra for cleaning up. Despite the grisly work, and the sadness at the deaths, that is a welcome sum when they are each paid about $6 a day. There were many such bomb bonuses paid in 2007, though markedly fewer than in past years. But on Sunday, at year’s end, two municipal street cleaners, Imad al-Hashemi and Laith Mahdi Latif, said the bonuses would be something they could happily live without in 2008. They were outside the Faqma ice cream shop in early August, when at least 15 people were killed at one of central Baghdad’s most popular refreshment spots in the Karada district; outside the numerous attempts on the Sayyed Idris shrine nearby; and at the market where more than a dozen people were blown up on Dec. 5. Across town, their colleagues had to clear up Ghazil animal market last month, and Tayaraan Square last Friday, hurling bags of debris into a battered white Scania truck after a car bomber killed eight people. “Things have got better over the last few months, maybe 70 percent, and God willing, they will be better again next year,” Mr. Hashemi said. “Although we get a 10,000 dinar bonus” — about $8 — “for each bomb, we do not want to see explosions, we don’t want to see this. They are Iraqis, Sunni, Shia or Christian, they are all Iraqis.” Shrugging, the two cleaners, whose hands look like those of men twice their 40 years or so, concede that it is not much of a job. But it is at least employment in a country where that is scarce. Each has lost count of the number of bombs they have swept up. At least 10, Mr. Hashemi estimates. Maybe six in the past 18 months, Mr. Latif guesses, although he concedes that all but the worst details fade for the two, both veterans of Saddam Hussein’s military campaigns. “This is normal for me,” Mr. Hashemi said. “I was a soldier for eight years in Basra and Amara during the Iran war. Sometimes it does make you depressed; I was standing 50 meters away from one car when it blew up, and I saw heads cut off from bodies. It was disgusting.” As residents of Karada they are on night call when the other cleaners have gone home to Sadr City or elsewhere. As soon as he hears a bomb, Mr. Latif said, he stops everything and waits for the phone call, which inevitably comes. “The worst one was at Al Faqma,” he said. “There was this woman, she was dying and they couldn’t pull her out because the driver’s seat trapped her against the steering wheel.” Both reiterate that they hope, and expect, things to get better. But then, Mr. Hashemi concedes, he thought the same thing after the Iran-Iraq war. “I thought after we finished that, that there would be no more killing, no wars,” he said. “And after 1991.” Elsewhere in Iraq, on the first anniversary of Mr. Hussein’s execution, fears of violence proved largely unfounded, amid tight security. Hundreds of supporters, including schoolchildren who were given the day off, gathered at the mausoleum erected over the grave in his hometown, Awja. Many laid flowers while others recited poetry or chanted. Mr. Hussein was executed on Dec. 30 last year after being convicted of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shiites in Dujail after a failed assassination attempt against him there in 1982. His hanging caused outrage among Sunni Arabs, who took it as provocation that his sentence was carried out under a Shiite-led government on the day that Sunnis began their celebrations of Id al-Adha. They were further incensed by cellphone camera images that showed him being taunted on the scaffold. At the grave in Awja, Yasir Ahmad, a relative of Mr. Hussein’s, said: “Saddam didn’t die, he is in our hearts. The conspiracies that happened against him and his comrades and sons was nothing but an American-Iranian conspiracy.” A year later, the same issues of retribution and reconciliation surround the delayed sentences imposed on three of Mr. Hussein’s lieutenants, including his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and the former defense minister, Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Jabouri al-Tai. All have been sentenced to death for war crimes. Sunnis have urged mercy for Mr. Hashem, arguing that he was a professional soldier carrying out his orders. But Iraqi government officials have demanded that the Americans hand the men over for execution. Hassan al-Sneid, a Shiite lawmaker from the Dawa Party, defended Mr. Hussein’s execution, saying it was carried out according to the Constitution. “The passing of a year may convey the clear impression that there is no way for the political process to be reversed, and it also made it clear that the political process will continue,” he said. “I think that removing the former regime figures is important for the national reconciliation process.”

Iraq
Labor
Terrorism
Bombs and Explosives


Trade Panel Supports Request to Put Duties on Chinese Tires

Abstract: WASHINGTON , Aug. 20 (Bloomberg News) — Titan International, the biggest American maker of off-road tires, won an initial ruling from the federal government in its bid to have duties imposed on $340 million worth of similar tires from China. The United States International Trade Commission, in a 6-to-0 vote, said Titan and other American producers, as well as union workers, were being harmed by the low-cost Chinese imports. The decision is the first of four that must go in favor of domestic producers before duties, of as much as 210 percent, are levied. The companies say the Chinese producers of the tires, which are used on irrigation equipment and tractors and other vehicles, are dumping their product at cheap prices in the United States and are getting illegal subsidies from the Chinese government. The case shows how American manufacturers are using a change in policy to ask for higher duties on many imports. That change came in March, when the Commerce Department said it would allow the imposition of countervailing duties to balance subsidies for products in nonmarket economies like China. “Petitioners had been gun-shy, but now the path has been cleared for them,” said Daniel J. Ikenson, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington. Titan, based in Quincy, Ill., was supported in its petition by the American arm of Bridgestone, the world’s largest tire maker, and by the United Steelworkers union, which represents workers at tire factories. The commission’s ruling is preliminary, and the panel will have to vote again next year on whether to affirm that decision. The Commerce Department will also decide this year whether those Chinese companies are dumping their products and getting subsidies, and, if so, how steep the duties should be.

China
United States
International Trade and World Market
Washington (DC)


Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun

Abstract: NORFOLK, Va. — Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through. Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland. And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets. For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline. Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes. Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called “sunny-day flooding” — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too. These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water. In coastal regions, that compounds the damage from the increasingly heavy rains plaguing the country , like those that recently caused extensive flooding in Louisiana. Scientists say these rains are also a consequence of human greenhouse emissions. “Once impacts become noticeable, they’re going to be upon you quickly,” said William V. Sweet, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md., who is among the leaders in research on coastal inundation. “It’s not a hundred years off — it’s now.” Local governments, under pressure from annoyed citizens, are beginning to act. Elections are being won on promises to invest money to protect against flooding. Miami Beach is leading the way, increasing local fees to finance a $400 million plan that includes raising streets, installing pumps and elevating sea walls. A Sharp Increase In ‘Sunny Day’ Flooding Global warming and rising seas are increasing the amount of tidal flooding on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. In many of the worst-hit cities, mayors of both parties are sounding an alarm. “I’m a Republican, but I also realize, by any objective analysis, the sea level is rising,” said Jason Buelterman, the mayor of tiny Tybee Island, one of the first Georgia communities to adopt a detailed climate plan . But the local leaders say they cannot tackle this problem alone. They are pleading with state and federal governments for guidance and help, including billions to pay for flood walls, pumps and road improvements that would buy them time. Yet Congress has largely ignored these pleas, and has even tried to block plans by the military to head off future problems at the numerous bases imperiled by a rising sea. A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a “radical climate change agenda.” The gridlock in Washington means the United States lacks not only a broad national policy on sea-level rise, it has something close to the opposite: The federal government spends billions of taxpayer dollars in ways that add to the risks, by subsidizing local governments and homeowners who build in imperiled locations along the coast. As the problem worsens, experts are warning that national security is on the line. Naval bases, in particular, are threatened ; they can hardly be moved away from the ocean, yet much of their land is at risk of disappearing within this century. “It’s as if the country was being attacked along every border, simultaneously,” said Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Florida and one of the world’s leading experts on rising seas. “It’s a slow, gradual attack, but it threatens the safety and security of the United States.” ‘We’re Living It’ One night eight years ago, Karen Speights, a Norfolk resident, was sitting at the dinner table with her mother, eating crab legs dipped in butter and a tangy sauce. She felt a tingle. Image Karen Speights is wondering how to get her mother out of the neighborhood in Norfolk, Va., before the water comes again. Credit Eliot Dudik for The New York Times “Ma!” she cried. “My feet are wet!” Her mother laughed, but then she felt it, too: a house that had not flooded since the family moved there in 1964 was soon awash in saltwater. Ms. Speights initially hoped that flood was a fluke. Instead, it turned out to be the first of three to hit their home in less than a decade. Nowadays, Ms. Speights, an administrative worker at a utility company, is wondering how to get her and her mother out of the neighborhood before the water comes again, without taking too much of a financial hit. And she pays more attention to problems that once seemed remote, like warnings from scientists about the rising sea. “I believe it because we’re living it,” Ms. Speights said as she sat on her sofa, nodding toward the nearby tidal marsh that sent water into her living room. “The water has to be rising if we never flooded, and all of a sudden we’ve flooded three times in eight years.” Because the land is sinking as the ocean rises, Norfolk and the metropolitan region surrounding it, known as Hampton Roads, are among the worst-hit parts of the United States. That local factor means, in essence, that the region is a few decades ahead in feeling the effects of sea-level rise, and illustrates what people along the rest of the American coast can expect. Image A house in Norfolk, Va., that has been repeatedly hit by tidal floods sat on temporary supports as workers prepared to elevate it permanently in June. Credit Eliot Dudik for The New York Times The biggest problems involve frequent flooding of homes and roads. As the sea rises, hundreds of tidal creeks and marshes that thread through the region are bringing saltwater to people’s doorsteps. This summer, on a driving tour of Norfolk and nearby towns, William A. Stiles Jr. pointed to the telltale signs that the ocean is gradually invading the region. He spotted crusts of dried salt in the streets, and salt-loving marsh grasses that are taking over suburban yards. He pointed out trees killed by seawater. He stood next to one of the road signs that Norfolk has been forced to install in recent years, essentially huge vertical rulers so people know the depth of floodwaters at low-lying intersections. “There’s just more and more visible impacts: water on the street, water that won’t clear from the ditch, these intense rain events, higher tides,” Mr. Stiles said. “It’s beginning to catch the attention of citizens, restaurant owners, business people, politicians. There’s just much more of a conversation, and it’s not just in the politically safe places. It’s everywhere.” Mr. Stiles, known as Skip, heads a local environmental group, Wetlands Watch. At his suggestion, students at two local universities began looking at the neighborhood where Ms. Speights lives, Chesterfield Heights. It has had little history of flooding, but that is starting to change as the water rises. The plan the students developed has morphed into an ambitious program to safeguard the neighborhood, and another nearby, for decades. The Obama administration recently gave Virginia more than $100 million to carry the plan out. The administration has also enlisted one of the universities, Old Dominion in Norfolk, to spearhead a broad effort at better planning. But the size of that grant illustrates the scope of the problem confronting the region, and the country: protecting a single neighborhood from rising water can easily cost tens of millions of dollars. Sea walls and streets may have to be raised, or movable gates built along waterways so they can be closed at times of high water. While the Obama administration is trying to create a few showcase neighborhoods, there is no sign Congress is prepared to spend the money that cities and states say they need: tens of billions of dollars just to catch up to the current flooding problems, much less get ahead of them. Norfolk alone, a town of 250,000 people, has a wish list of $1.2 billion — or about $5,000 for every man, woman and child in the city. As the national response lags, experts warn that the flooding is putting the country’s defense at risk. Several studies have concluded that Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base, is profoundly threatened by rising seas, as are other coastal bases. The Pentagon has managed to build floodgates and other protective measures at some facilities. But attempts by the military to develop broader climate change plans have met fierce resistance in Congress. Image Andrea Dutton, a University of Florida climate scientist, beside an ancient coral reef in the Florida Keys, evidence that the sea level was once far higher than today. Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times That was the case this summer, when an effort by the Pentagon to appoint officers to take charge of climate resilience led to a House vote prohibiting taxpayer money from being spent on the plan. “When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies” like the Islamic State, said Mr. Buck of Colorado, the Republican congressman who sponsored the measure. His amendment passed the House 216 to 205, though the Senate has yet to agree to it. Many people in Congress, almost all of them Republicans, express doubt about climate science, with some of them promulgating conspiracy theories claiming that researchers have invented the issue to justify greater governmental control over people’s lives. So far, this ideological position has been immune to the rising evidence of harm from human-induced climate change. The Obama administration has been pushing federal agencies, including the Pentagon, to take more aggressive steps. But without action in Congress, experts say these efforts fall far short of what is required. “In the country, certainly in the Congress, it hasn’t really resonated — the billions and perhaps trillions of dollars that we would need to spend if we want to live on the coast like we’re living today,” said David W. Titley, a retired rear admiral who was the chief oceanographer of the Navy, and now heads a climate center at Pennsylvania State University. “I haven’t seen any evidence that there is serious thought about this: What does a world of three, four, five feet of sea-level rise look like?” Mounting Evidence Deep in a thicket of trees on an out-of-the-way island in the Florida Keys, a diesel engine roared to life. Soon a drill bit was chewing through ancient limestone, pulling up evidence from the geological past that might shed light on the future of the planet. On a sultry day in March, Dr. Dutton, the University of Florida scientist, stood watch over the drilling operation, inspecting her samples as they emerged from the ground. She spotted fossilized corals, proof that what is now the dry ground of Lignumvitae Key was once underwater. With taxpayer funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Dutton is chasing what might be the most urgent question in climate science: How fast is the ocean going to rise? “Is it going to happen in decades, or centuries, or a thousand years?” Dr. Dutton asked as she took a break to eat lunch on a tarpaulin spread under the trees. “This will give us an example to say, ‘Well, the last time this happened, here is how long it took.’” The opponents of climate science in Congress, and the tiny group of climate researchers allied with them, have argued that the concerns of thousands of mainstream scientists about the future are based on unproven computer forecasts. Image Water from a tidal stretch of the Potomac River flooded Old Town Alexandria in Virginia during high tides in early June. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times In reality, their concerns are based in large part on mounting evidence of what has happened in the past. Through decades of research, it has become clear that human civilization, roughly 6,000 years old, developed during an unusually stable period for global sea levels. But over longer spans, coastlines have been much more dynamic. During ice ages, caused by wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, sea levels dropped more than 400 feet as ice piled up on land. But during periods slightly warmer than today, the sea may have risen 70 or more feet above the current level. Dr. Dutton and other leading scientists are focused on the last sea-level high point, which occurred between the last two ice ages, about 125,000 years ago. After years of surveying ancient shorelines around the world, scientists determined that the sea level rose by something like 20 to 30 feet in that era, compared with today. But how long did it take to make that jump? That is the question Dr. Dutton, using improved research techniques, wants to answer. Large parts of the Florida Keys are simply ancient coral reefs that grew during the period of high seas, and were exposed when the levels fell. Trees, roads and houses now sit atop the old reefs. By recovering samples, Dr. Dutton hopes to date a sequence of corals as they grew along with the rising sea, potentially revealing the rate at which the water rose. The research, likely to take years, may supply a figure for how quickly the ocean was able to rise under past conditions, but not necessarily a maximum rate for the coming decades. The release of greenhouse gases from human activity is causing the planet to warm rapidly, perhaps faster than at any other time in the Earth’s history. The ice sheets in both Greenland and West Antarctica are beginning to melt into the sea at an accelerating pace. Scientists had long hoped that any disintegration of the ice sheets would take thousands of years, but recent research suggests the breakup of West Antarctica could occur much faster. In the worst-case scenario, this research suggests, the rate of sea-level rise could reach a foot per decade by the 22nd century, about 10 times faster than today. In 2013, scientists reached a consensus that three feet was the highest plausible rise by the year 2100. But now some of them are starting to say that six or seven feet may be possible. A rise that large over a span of decades would be an unparalleled national catastrophe, driving millions of people from their homes and most likely requiring the abandonment of entire cities. In essence, by revealing how sensitive the ice sheets have been to past warming, Dr. Dutton’s research may answer the question of whether such a rapid jump is possible. Along those parts of the United States coast that are sinking at a brisk clip, including southern Louisiana and the entire Chesapeake Bay region, including Norfolk, the situation will be worse than average. On the Pacific Coast, a climate pattern that had pushed billions of gallons of water toward Asia is now ending, so that in coming decades the sea is likely to rise quickly off states like Oregon and California. Image At the City Market in Charleston, S.C., one of the most popular spots in town, shoppers dodged seawater that bubbled up from storm drains during high tide in June. Credit Hunter McRae for The New York Times Along the East Coast, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that many communities have already, or will soon, pass a threshold where sunny-day flooding starts to happen much more often. “When you look at the historical record, there’s no trend saying the flooding is going down,” said Dr. Sweet, the NOAA expert. “The trends are all very clear. They’re going up, and they’re going up in many of these areas in an accelerating fashion.” Late last year, in Paris, nations reached a landmark global agreement to cut emissions. It is fragile, and might not survive if Donald J. Trump is elected president in November; he has pledged to scrap it. But the air is already so full of greenhouse gases that most land ice on the planet has started to melt. So even if the deal survives, it will, at best, slow the rise of the sea and perhaps limit the ultimate increase. Many climate scientists, including Dr. Dutton, believe a rise of at least 15 or 20 feet has already become inevitable, over an unknown period. Facing Hard Decisions As Brad Tuckman walked the piece of land in Fort Lauderdale where he is building a grand new house, he pointed toward the canal that wraps around three sides of the property. It is scenic, with yachts plying the water, yet as the sea has risen, street flooding in the area has become a recurring nuisance. So before starting construction, Mr. Tuckman said he spent nearly a half-million dollars to raise the sea wall and truck in dirt to elevate the land. “The predictions of what’s going to happen over the next 20, 30, 40 years — it’s real,” said Mr. Tuckman, the founder of a company offering creative services to the retail industry. In South Florida, among the worst-hit parts of the country for sunny-day flooding, people are not waiting for state or federal help. Those who can afford it are starting to act on their own. A company, Coastal Risk Consulting , has cropped up to advise them, and is offering its services nationally. Cities and counties in the region have formed an alliance and enlisted professors to help them figure out what to do. They are hiring “chief resilience officers,” an idea pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, which is paying some of the salary cost. In Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale, as well as in older Northern cities like Boston and New York, tidal marshes and creeks were filled in a century or more ago to make new land, and it is in these areas — “back bays,” as some of these spots are called — where the flooding is happening first. That is because they remain the lowest spots in the landscape, vulnerable to the rising water nearby. Old drain pipes empty into the tidal creeks, and at high tide the water can back up through these pipes, bubbling into the streets seemingly from nowhere. Image A University of Florida scientific team approaching Lignumvitae Key as part of a study to determine how fast sea levels rose in the ancient past. Credit Joshua Bright for The New York Times In Miami Beach, the city engineer, Bruce A. Mowry, has come up with a plan for combating the flooding. He rips up problematic streets, raises them with extra dirt and repaves them, installing new drains and giant pumps that can push water back into the bay. The approach has already been shown to work in several neighborhoods. A controversy has erupted about whether Miami Beach is polluting Biscayne Bay with the water, but the city is pushing ahead. Miami Beach plans to spend at least $400 million on its plan by 2018, raising the money through fees imposed on homes and businesses. The huge county government for the region, Miami-Dade County, is developing its own resilience strategy, one likely to cost billions. It has committed to rebuilding some of its decaying infrastructure, like a sewage plant, in a way that safeguards against sea-level rise and storm surges. “I don’t see doom and gloom here; I see opportunity,” said Harvey Ruvin, the clerk of courts for Miami-Dade County, who has been a leading voice on the environment in Florida for a half-century, and who recently led a county task force on sea-level rise. “We’re talking about the most robust possible jobs program you can think of, and one that can’t be outsourced.” Many of the Republican mayors in the region are on the same page as Democrats in requesting national and state action on climate change, as well as pushing local steps. James C. Cason, the Republican mayor of Coral Gables, has convened informational sessions that draw hundreds of residents, and he has received no complaints for his stance. “I hope in coming years when we have to spend a lot of money, the citizens will still support it,” Mr. Cason said in an interview. Still, his city, and others in South Florida, have some hard decisions to make. Some property owners cannot afford to raise their sea walls, putting their neighborhoods at increased risk of flooding. Will they be held legally responsible when floods do occur? A strict policy could force some people from their homes. Conversely, should public money be spent to do the work, even if it largely benefits private property? Just for streets, storm drains and the like, South Florida governments will need to raise billions, and they have yet to figure out how. Moreover, if the rise of the sea accelerates as much as some scientists fear, it is doubtful the cities will be able to keep up. The region has one mayor, Philip K. Stoddard of South Miami, who is a scientist himself — he studies animal communication at Florida International University — and has been a close reader of scientific papers about climate change since the 1990s. “I remember lying in bed at night thinking, ‘I hope this isn’t real,’” Dr. Stoddard, a Democrat, recalled. “I hope other data comes in that contradicts it. It took me several years to get my head around it and say, ‘Oh, God, it is real.’” Now he is focused on easing the pain for South Miami, with a $50 million system of sewer pipes to replace septic tanks threatened by the rising water table. “You can play it really badly and let unpleasant things happen earlier,” he said. “Or you can push them off by doing some infrastructure repairs and some thoughtful planning.” He is, though, under no illusions about the long-term fate of the region he calls home. “We’re putting enough heat in the ocean to send water over us, no question,” Dr. Stoddard said. “Ultimately, we give up and we leave. That’s how the story ends.”

Flood
Coast
Global Warming
Climate Change
Oceans and Seas
East Coast US


Tactics Used in U.S. Raids Draw Claims of Brutality

Abstract: MIAMI — Advocates for immigrants here demanded an investigation Tuesday into a series of federal raids last month that they said left at least six Guatemalan men bloodied and bruised in a roundup of nearly 100 people. Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied all accusations of misconduct by agents in the raids on Nov. 19 in three South Florida counties, noting that the operation focused on sex trafficking and led to charges against seven people and the release of several women. But lawyers working with other detainees said they were concerned that the agency was using human trafficking laws as a front for broader operations, and a cover for harsh tactics. “There is a way that these operations should be conducted,” said Jose Rodriguez, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Miami-Dade County. “And this is not it.” At a news conference, Mr. Rodriguez and others said agents had relied on vaguely worded warrants to invade people’s homes and arrest nearly anyone who looked Hispanic. In all, according to the federal agency, 77 illegal immigrants were detained in the operation, and only a handful appear to have been charged with a crime. In the case involving the accusations of beatings, none of the men have been charged with sex trafficking. Lawyers working with the men said the agents used excessive force: bursting into their home in Homestead about 8:30 p.m., pulling their guns in front of a 4-year-old girl, then forcing all 10 or 11 men inside onto the floor in handcuffs. No guns or drugs were found. All the men were Guatemalan immigrants, and the advocates said at least six of them arrived at a nearby detention center with bruises and cuts. The wife of one detainee, the mother of the 4-year-old girl, said she saw agents kick her husband and others while they were on the floor. She declined to give her name because she feared retribution. Agency officials, in a statement denying the accusations of abuse and the display of a weapon near a child, said they were required to arrest anyone found to be violating immigration law, regardless of the circumstances. The statement also said the accusations would be forwarded to the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility for review. But the advocates said that was not enough. Witnesses have already been deported, they said, and without a robust investigation by the agency’s inspector general or the United States attorney’s office in Miami, agents who might have violated the law might never be punished.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (US)


Rush Testing Is Under Way for Microsoft’s New System

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 1 — Microsoft rushed what may be the final test version of its Windows Vista operating system to more than a million testers on Friday, trying to meet deadlines for its long-delayed commercial release. With pressure mounting to squeeze out final bugs, Microsoft asked testers to give Vista an urgent shakedown — even as they headed into a long holiday weekend. Microsoft has said publicly that it is hoping to offer the program to corporate customers before the end of November and to the broader consumer market in January. It will be the first new version of Windows in more than five years, an unusually long time between releases. But Microsoft executives have also repeatedly cautioned that until Vista meets performance and stability standards, the company will refrain from offering it commercially. On Friday, several analysts said that the Microsoft program might end up slipping further from the November goal. Microsoft has recently been talking about an “end of the year” shipping goal for the corporate version of Vista, according to one analyst who was briefed on Thursday. A company spokesman disputed the reports of further slippage, saying that the company was still aiming to meet the November and January goals. Because most large corporations may wait as long as 18 months before deploying the program widely to employees, a relatively short further delay is unlikely to have a significant revenue impact on Microsoft. “Corporate adoption will be relatively slow,” said Roger L. Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a computer industry consulting firm. “It could be 2008 before many companies actually deploy in volume.” Over the summer, Vista has been tested by several million developers and ordinary users and has received less than stellar marks. Complaints have ranged from repeated crashes to an irritating user interface that constantly force users to click on warning boxes. A recent version being used by a smaller group of technical experts has been given much higher marks for stability and for using less computer memory. Friday’s version, called Release Candidate 1, or RC1, is a crucial last trial needed to tell the company whether it is on track. “This is supercritical for us,” said Sven Hallauer, director of release management for Windows Vista, during an internal interview that was posted Friday on a company Web site. “We have our own criteria for quality to ship, but we really need the validation from the community.” Time is particularly tight, he said, because the company has only two or three weeks after Friday’s release to make significant changes, after which the project will grow increasingly constrained. “Teams are working superhard right now,” he said in the interview. “Teams are working 50, 60, 70 hours a week to go ship this RC1 milestone.” In an e-mail message sent to testers Friday, Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft’s platform and services division, wrote: “The operating system is in great shape with RC1, but there’s still a lot of testing to do. You’ve come through for us so far, and I’m asking you to once again put the pedal to the metal and send us feedback.” Analysts said that while the company has made progress, there could still be land mines that could throw the effort into disarray. “They are never out of the woods until the product is delivered,” said Al Gillen, research director for system software at the International Data Corporation, a market research firm based in Framingham, Mass. This week, Microsoft declined to comment after pricing information appeared on Amazon.com . The prices, which ranged from $199 for a basic home version to $399 for the all-in-one Windows Vista Ultimate, will potentially increase Microsoft’s earnings next year, according to Rick Sherlund, a Goldman Sachs financial analyst. In a research note, he also cautioned that the significant hardware requirements for the new operating system might limit the rate of adoption for the software. Vista will have an array of new features and changes in appearance from Microsoft’s current operating system, Windows XP. Superfetch, for example, lets Vista monitor the applications most frequently used and places them in memory so that they will appear to load more quickly. In the interview posted by Microsoft, Mr. Hallauer said Vista would have fewer dreaded “blue screens of death,” in which the operating system freezes and leaves the user with a blue display screen. Instead, Vista will automatically recover from such freezes and start over, without forcing the user to restart the system manually.

Microsoft Corp
Tests and Testing
Computer Software


For Hedge Funds, Life Just Got a Bit More Complicated

Abstract: THE hedge fund industry has its fair share of complaints about news coverage, but one issue that particularly irks managers and that can be easily remedied is a frequently employed two-word description: lightly regulated. Many reports and news articles, including mine, have described hedge funds along the lines of "lightly regulated private pools of capital open to institutions and really rich people." Sometimes we add the fact that these funds charge unusually high fees. Smart people I know read this description and still don't understand what hedge funds are, so here's a broader definition: a hedge fund is similar to a mutual fund in that a money manager, also known as a portfolio manager, invests money for other people, charging a fee for the service. Mutual funds can invest money for people like me, who do not have a lot of money. Hedge funds are limited to investing for people who are rich -- $1.5 million in net worth -- or for institutions like pension funds and endowments. While mutual funds charge investors a percentage of the assets they manage, generally about 1.4 percent, hedge fund managers charge in the range of 1 to 2 percent of assets under management, as well as 20 percent of the profits. If they have good returns, they make a killing. As of February, the Securities and Exchange Commission changed the way it treated hedge funds. Previously, hedge fund advisers were granted a loophole that allowed them to operate in relative obscurity. Now, the S.E.C. requires advisers to hedge funds, essentially the brain power behind the investing, to register with the commission. Being unregistered was not carte blanche to pillage clients' money. Unregistered hedge funds were and are subject to antifraud provisions of securities laws -- you can't tell your client you are investing in stocks and then buy yourself a Porsche with the money. If the hedge funds trade through broker dealers, those broker dealers are subject to regulatory scrutiny and they cannot lie, cheat or steal for their clients. They must observe "blue sky laws," under which most states police securities and mutual fund sales within their borders, and they are subject to insider trading rules and securities law requirements related to owning more than 5 percent of a stock. Unregistered is not a code word for "take the money and run." Nonetheless, the S.E.C. determined that there were a lot of hedge funds with a lot of money and a lot of potential for fraud, so it passed a rule requiring that advisers register if they had more than $25 million under management and money that was not locked up for more than two years. Registration, while hardly boot camp, is no insignificant matter: it subjects advisers to random audits, strict requirements about books and records, the designation of a chief compliance officer and a form that asks questions like: Where do you live? How much money do you manage? And are you a criminal? Hedge fund advisers are now subject to the same rules as mutual fund advisers, except that they do not face the limitations that mutual fund advisers face on performance fees. Nothing lightly regulated about that. But compared with mutual funds or broker dealers, hedge funds still have it easy. According to one S.E.C. lawyer, here's a short list of things mutual funds have to do that hedge funds do not: file quarterly reports to the S.E.C. listing all the securities they own, file semiannual reports to shareholders about their operations, disclose how they vote all proxies, have a capital structure that allows only one class of stock to be issued and restricts the fund adviser's ability to leverage the fund, and a board with an independent chairman and a majority of independent directors. Unlike mutual funds, which must meet diversification requirements, hedge funds can bet the house on a trade they believe in, they can ratchet that bet up with leverage (borrowing money to double or triple the bet), and they can do business with just about anyone they want. When I joked to the lawyer that my Uncle George faced less scrutiny trading clam bellies, the lawyer responded -- in complete seriousness -- that if he were trading clam bellies, he would be a commodity pool operator regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Hedge funds, because they are not registered as public securities, face limitations on how they can advertise themselves. And as one leading hedge fund manager pointed out to me: "You are regulated by the fact that if you make a mistake, you can be put out of business." Hedge funds are lightly regulated next to mutual funds, broker dealers, commercial banks and all sorts of entities. But hedge fund managers are currently more regulated than their colleagues at private equity funds. For hedge fund managers, the world has grown more complicated since February. For instance, they can still bet $25 million on clam bellies, as long as there is a compliance officer to approve it, a record of it and copies of all the letters from investors wondering why there was a sign on the door saying "Gone Fishin.' "

HEDGE FUNDS
MUTUAL FUNDS
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
ETHICS
STOCKS AND BONDS
REGULATION AND DEREGULATION OF INDUSTRY


MagicJack USB Device for Making Phone Calls

Abstract: Computer-based phone services like Skype allow you to call friends and family free — as long as they have a PC with a sound card and a microphone. A little device called MagicJack will let you make calls from your phone to other phones in the United States for fractions of a penny a minute. The device costs $39.95, a price that includes a year of unlimited domestic calls; additional years cost $20. MagicJack, which looks like a U.S.B. memory stick, plugs right into your Windows PC, which immediately displays a telephone keypad. (A Mac version is planned.) Each MagicJack is assigned its own phone number, and the price includes voice mail and call waiting. You can also use the MagicJack overseas to reach numbers in the United States and receive calls from there. These sorts of Internet calling devices aren’t new. The MagicJack, however, has a real telephone jack on the side, letting you quickly bring almost any corded or cordless phone into the 21st century. JOHN BIGGS

Computers and the Internet
Telephones and Telecommunications


Berkshire Hathaway Still Has Cash to Invest, Buffett Says

Abstract: The billionaire Warren E. Buffett told CNBC that his $32 billion acquisition of Precision Castparts, the biggest of his career, would not leave him short of cash for other investments. Mr. Buffett said his company, Berkshire Hathaway, had $66.6 billion cash on hand at the end of the second quarter, though he said Berkshire was spending about $500 million a week acquiring stock during the recent market downturn. Mr. Buffett also said he had periodically added to Berkshire’s investment in IBM ever since he first disclosed it in late 2011, even though the stock has disappointed. At the end of June, Berkshire held 79.57 million shares of IBM stock. Shares have fallen 11 percent over the last three months and 23 percent over the past year.

Berkshire Hathaway
Precision Castparts
Warren Buffett
Stocks,Bonds
Mergers and Acquisitions


Red Bulls Send Cooper to Dallas

Abstract: The Red Bulls traded the leading scorer Kenny Cooper to F.C. Dallas for allocation money. The Red Bulls sporting director Andy Roxburgh said the money and the salary cap relief would allow the team to make necessary moves.

Kenny Cooper
Soccer
New York Red Bulls Soccer Team
Sports Trades
Dallas Soccer Team


New Jersey School Budgets Fare Well Despite Voter Fears

Abstract: EAST BRUNSWICK IN this economy, says Donald Macioci, it is hard not to worry about your job. “I’m hanging on,” he said. But with his two young sons in tow, the 53-year-old software engineer stood outside his polling place in this Middlesex County suburb on Tuesday and said he did not hesitate much in voting for his local school budget. He had heard all the worries about the school vote from parents at Little League practice that afternoon, he said. “Every school budget that comes up, we’re worried,” Mr. Macioci said. “Property taxes are so high, especially here. But even now, I’d rather pay than see the services go.” It was a common — and somewhat unexpected — sentiment of support across the state last Tuesday, as voters passed three in every four school budgets in the 549 districts with elections, according to a preliminary tally by the State Department of Education. Voters also approved 15 of 19 school construction referendums. Turnout was typically light, with 13.5 percent of registered voters casting ballots. But the 73 percent approval rate was only slightly below that of last year, when big increases in state aid helped ease local property taxes. For the coming year, Gov. Jon S. Corzine has proposed no increase in aid for most districts, and he was able to avoid cuts only with the help of $1 billion in federal stimulus money. In response, many districts came back with local budgets that were equally austere. In East Brunswick, the district’s Board of Education proposed a $133 million spending plan with a slight drop in the tax levy. Included in the cost-saving measures was a freeze in salaries for administrators and nonunion employees. “It was a tough year,” said Jo Ann Magistro, East Brunswick’s superintendent of schools. “The commitment of the board and the administration was to go out there and not add to the pain of the community.” The day after the budget vote, Mr. Corzine gave credit to voters for recognizing that not just their own pocketbooks were lean this year. “When times are tough, people focus on the most important elements that they want to be committed to,” he said in an interview after making a speech in Montclair. “Education is at the top of the heap.” Not all budgets fared so well, however, including those in some of the state’s wealthiest communities. In Mountain Lakes, the budget was rejected by 30 votes, ending a long streak of approvals. Hunterdon County as a whole saw 15 of 29 budgets go down. After a budget is defeated, the local municipal council is charged with reviewing and making cuts, if it chooses to. Those cuts may be appealed to the state. Burlington Township’s $56 million spending plan, rejected by voters on Tuesday, will go next to the local council. The Burlington County district, nestled between Trenton and Philadelphia, is in line for a 5 percent boost in state aid next year, helping to keep the proposed tax increase to less than 1 percent. Still, that was not enough for Bob and Gail Rosenberg, who said they had voted no on the budget. As she and her husband left the polling place at the district’s middle school, Ms. Rosenberg, a teaching assistant in another school district, said her own job could be in jeopardy, so she could empathize with the districts’ plights. “But a lot of people will be voting out of their own wallets this year, out of necessity,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “I have to vote with my own wallet.”

New Jersey
Voter Registration and Requirements
Budgets and Budgeting
Education and Schools


Helmsley, Through Will, Is Still Calling the Shots

Abstract: Leona Helmsley , the hotelier with the bossy streak, was famed in life for riding roughshod over everyone, from her offspring to her maid. Her demise last week at age 87, it seems, did nothing to alter her autocratic manner. Mrs. Helmsley, it appears, is a posthumous control freak. In a truly remarkable will released on Tuesday, she stipulated, for example, that she be buried wearing her gold wedding ring, and that it never be removed. She also ordered that her tomb be “acid-washed or steam-cleaned” once a year, and made two of her grandchildren’s $10 million inheritance contingent on their visiting their father’s grave, demanding that a registration book be placed in the mausoleum to prove that they had shown up. To the uninitiated, such funereal micromanagement is bound to sound strange, but in fact Mrs. Helmsley stands in a long line of those who sought to govern from the grave. Napoleon, it is said, cataloged his property down to the toiletries and doled it out scrupulously to his descendants and valet de chambre. If the People’s Almanac is to be believed, there was a 19th century hatter from New England, a certain S. Sanborn, who demanded that a pair of drums be made from his skin and given to a friend, provided that the friend drum “Yankee Doodle Dandy” each June 17 while standing on Bunker Hill. “It’s all about the ego,” said Herbert E. Nass, a Manhattan trust lawyer and the author of “Wills of the Rich and Famous.” “Leona was an unusual person, to put it charitably,” he said, “but she was also mega-wealthy, so everything in her will is sort of exaggerated.” Without doubt, Mrs. Helmsley’s generous provision of $12 million for her 8-year-old Maltese falls into the exaggerated category. The dog, named Trouble, received more in the will than any of Mrs. Helmsley’s four grandchildren. Craig and Meegan Panzirer were cut out entirely, the document states, for “reasons which are known to them.” Yet even here the Helmsley will stands squarely in testate tradition. In 1991, a German countess, Carlotta Liebenstein, bequeathed her $80-million estate to her dog, Gunther. Nine years later, one could read in the Danish tabloid, Ekstra Bladet, of an 83-year-old widow who left $60,000 to six chimpanzees — Jimmy, Trunte, Fifi, Trine, Grinni and Gigi — who lived at the Copenhagen Zoo. (She reportedly sent a lawyer to the cage to read the will aloud.) Robert H. Sitkoff, a Harvard law professor who specializes in trusts and estates, said there has been a sharp increase in the last few years in what are known as incentive trusts: wills contingent on beneficiaries’ reaching some milestone, or otherwise doing the bidding of the dead. For example, an inheritance could hinge on whether a grandson graduated from college, or a bequest could be paid out based on how much a son earned, dollar for dollar. As Professor Sitkoff put it, “These are efforts by people to avoid profligate, wasteful, slothful existences among the children.” (The professor then noted, just for fun, the probably apocryphal tale of the dying Romanian whose wife nagged him throughout his life to quit smoking. When the will was read, he said, the wife discovered that her husband’s money would be bequeathed to her only if she started smoking herself.) One thing about dead people is that they can’t go to court, and Professor Sitkoff said that a few aspects of the Helmsley will, most notably the $12 million for the dog, were vulnerable to challenge. New York law acknowledges bequests to pets, he said, but gives a judge the power to reduce them if they go beyond an amount that will keep the animal comfortably alive. People try to control their estates in a variety of ways. Rudi Hoffman is a cryonics estate planner, which is to say, a man who keeps track of money for those who believe they will return to enjoy it after death. He said his most popular product was the Hoffman Prototype Cryonics Trust, a financial instrument often based offshore and built on the notion that if you can come back after being frozen in liquid nitrogen, it certainly would be nice to keep the tax man away from your assets. Money, of course, was never Mrs. Helmsley’s problem — she was said to be worth billions when she died — the problem was her temper. Mr. Nass, for one, suggested that the domineering will might have been her way of controlling her legacy and sculpting from beyond how she would be remembered. But it didn’t help, he said, that she gave more to her dog than to her grandchildren. “I’m sorry to say, I don’t think the will will help her look more menschy than she really was.”


Woods to Fall From Top 10 for First Time Since 1997

Abstract: Tiger Woods is about to fall out of the world’s top 10 for the first time in 14 years. Woods, whose last win came 18 months ago, will drop to at least No. 11 in the next world ranking, which will be published Monday. He has not been out of the top 10 since he was No. 13 on April 6, 1997, the week before he won the Masters for the first of his 14 majors. Forbes magazine estimated Woods’s earnings last year at $75 million, making him the highest-paid athlete. ¶ The former N.F.L. kicker Al Del Greco and his son Trey failed to advance at the United States Open local qualifier in Birmingham, Ala. Trey Del Greco, 21, who will be a senior at Vanderbilt, tied for 16th with a one-over-par 73; his father shot a 77. (NYT)


Nepal: Arrest by Britain Protested

Abstract: The British police on Friday charged a colonel in Nepal’s army with two counts of torture for actions during Nepal’s decade-long civil war, which ended in 2006. Nepal’s government demanded the release of the officer, Col. Kumar Lama, who was arrested while visiting Britain, and summoned Britain’s ambassador to protest. Human rights groups say both the security forces and former Maoist rebels committed abuses during the conflict. Britain claims “universal jurisdiction” over offenses like torture and war crimes, allowing it to prosecute such violations that occurred elsewhere.

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


General Electric Quarterly Profit Falls 18%

Abstract: General Electric has come a long way back since the financial crisis sent it reeling. The company has pared back its troubled finance arm, focused on its mainstay industrial business, cut costs and revived profits. But G.E.’s credibility on Wall Street remains shaky, with any sign of weakness punished by waves of selling. The company on Friday reported stronger-than-expected profits, led by a big improvement in its finance unit, GE Capital. And orders for its industrial goods and services — an early sign of future revenue — grew for the first time in two years. But revenue slipped as current sales of industrial equipment were soft, and investors sent G.E.’s shares down 5 percent. “There is very little room for error for G.E.,” said Steven Winoker, an analyst at Bernstein Research. The quarterly results also included an unsettling reminder that liabilities in the finance business can linger and grow. G.E.’s third-quarter net profit fell 18 percent, weighed down by a $1.1 billion charge for obligations it may still have to pay on the Japanese consumer finance business it sold in 2008. Consequently, G.E. reported net income of $2.06 billion, or 18 cents a share, compared with $2.49 billion, or 23 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Profit from continuing operations rose 29 percent, to $3.16 billion. And earnings per share on that basis increased 32 percent, to 29 cents a share, which was above analysts’ forecast of 27 cents, as compiled by Thomson Reuters. In a conference call, Jeffrey R. Immelt, the company’s chief executive, called the performance “a good quarter in an improving environment” and evidence that the company’s back-to-basics strategy was progressing as hoped. Yet analysts expressed concern that most of the profit improvement came from a recovery in the finance business — not a robust performance from its high-technology industrial lines, including jet engines, medical imaging equipment and wind turbines . GE Capital, which contributes less than 20 percent of total corporate earnings, reported a sixfold jump in profit, to $871 million, from $141 million a year ago. The commercial real estate business is a continuing headache, losing $405 million, though the losses are declining. But analysts say the company’s consumer division, like retail credit cards, and lending to small businesses are solid performers. Wall Street analysts have long had concerns about the quality of earnings across the conglomerate’s mixed portfolio. The surest test of G.E.’s financial performance, some analysts say, will be its ability to increase its dividend. Those payments, they say, will be real cash commitments for the long term. “Dividends will be the key for G.E., raising the yield,” said Nicholas Heymann, an analyst at Sterne, Agee & Leach. “G.E. is a special situation, a stock that is really more like a bond.” In July, G.E. announced a 20 percent increase in its quarterly dividend, to 12 cents a share from 10 cents. But that remains well below the 31 cents a share the company was paying until February 2009, when the board cut the payout to conserve cash. That was the first time since the Depression that G.E. had cut its dividend. One way to free up cash for further dividend increases, analysts say, would be to retire the $3 billion in G.E. preferred stock that the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett bought in October 2008. That deal, arranged soon after the financial crisis erupted, was done to secure cash and restore confidence in G.E., the nation’s largest nonbank financial institution. That stock pays a 10 percent dividend, or $300 million a year. Under the terms of the deal, G.E. cannot buy the shares back until next October. But G.E. executives have said that negotiating an earlier sale would be a step they might pursue — if it completes the spinoff of its media company, NBC Universal, into a joint venture 51 percent owned by Comcast, by the end of this year. G.E.’s big-ticket industrial products are often the last investments made by corporate customers during uncertain economic times. But analysts note that G.E. has been slower to return to a growth path than other industrial equipment makers, including Honeywell, Emerson Electric and Tyco. Revenue fell 5 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30, to $35.9 billion. That was below Wall Street’s estimate of $37.6 billion, and down from $37.8 billion in the third quarter of 2009. One particular source of weakness was the once-booming market for wind turbines, which were down 32 percent, or $600 million, from a year ago. Keith Sherin, chief financial officer, attributed the steep fall in the American market for wind turbines mainly to the falloff in overall electricity demand and low prices for natural-gas power generation. Yet in a sign of improving fortunes, G.E. is investing again. Earlier this month, the company announced that it had agreed to purchase Dresser, a maker of equipment for natural gas distribution, for $3 billion. In the conference call, Mr. Immelt declared that G.E. was looking for similar purchases, typically of $1 billion to $3 billion. “All the deals,” he said, “will be bolt-ons to the core of what we’re doing.”


Mets Hit Batter in 11th, Sending Angels to Victory

Abstract: ANAHEIM, Calif. — By some quirk in the baseball schedule, the Mets had played a night game in Atlanta on Thursday. They had left as soon as they could and had arrived here, bleary-eyed, around 3 a.m. local time. Now, late Friday night, they were locked in an intense game with the Los Angeles Angels, and it was dragging on, into the 9th, the 10th and beyond. In the 11th, with the Mets’ Jeurys Familia back for a third inning of work, Raul Ibanez led off with a single. The Mets seemed tired, both mentally and physically. Familia threw a wild pitch, sending Ibanez to second. Then a groundout sent him to third. The crowd seemed weary, too, but those still left at Angel Stadium stood as Familia intentionally walked Howie Kendrick and J. B. Shuck to give the Mets a possible forceout at every base. But with his 51st pitch, Familia hit Hank Conger, forcing in a run and handing the Mets a 5-4 loss. “They were tired,” Mets Manager Terry Collins said. “So we’ll go home, get some sleep and come back tomorrow.” The starters, Dillon Gee for the Mets and Tyler Skaggs for the Angels, effectively negated each other. The Angels dealt away Mark Trumbo to acquire Skaggs, as well as starter Hector Santiago, in an off-season, three-team trade. Trumbo was young, only 27 at the time of the deal, and had hit at least 29 home runs in three straight seasons. But the Angels were desperate for pitching, and Skaggs had been their first-round draft pick, in 2009, later joining Arizona through a trade. In his first start back with the organization, against the Houston Astros last week, he pitched eight innings without allowing an earned run. But the Mets tagged him for four runs in seven innings, showing that on the right night, when they are clicking, they are capable of scoring in a variety of ways. Eric Young Jr. started the game with a single and then used his speed to get to third on a Daniel Murphy base hit. Young scored when David Wright grounded into a double play to give the Mets a 1-0 lead. Travis d’Arnaud followed with a solo home run in the third, and in the fourth, the Mets strung together a rally. Andrew Brown hit a one-out single, Curtis Granderson poked a double to left field, and Josh Satin doubled to the gap, scoring both runners. Collins had been curious to see Angels outfielder Mike Trout play in person, and Trout made a lasting first impression. In his first at-bat against Gee, Trout hit a fastball well over the wall in left-center. In his next at-bat, Gee struck him out looking with a 3-2 curveball. Trout came up again in the fifth, with two on, one out and the Angels trailing, 4-2. But again Gee prevailed, getting Trout to loft a changeup for a harmless out. Gee was uncharacteristically sloppy otherwise. He threw 41 percent of his pitches for balls and issued four walks. In the fifth alone, he walked three batters to load the bases, but he was able to escape the inning unscathed. He did not last through the sixth, though. After Gee walked Howie Kendrick, Shuck pulled a fastball around the right-field foul pole to tie the score, 4-4. His teammates mobbed him in the dugout. The Angels had a good chance to take the lead in the eighth as Albert Pujols came up with two outs and the bases loaded. But Kyle Farnsworth induced a groundout. INSIDE PITCH Before the game, the Angels announced that Josh Hamilton, who tore a ligament in his thumb sliding into first base this week and is expected to be out for six to eight weeks, had had successful thumb surgery. The Angels called up J. B. Shuck to take his place.

Mets
Baseball
Los Angeles Angels
Jeurys Familia


A Shrinking Government? Not Just Yet

Abstract: It’s fascinating to peruse the Treasury Department’s monthly tally of exactly what goes in and what goes out — to, if you’ll pardon the expression, follow the money. Let’s see — there’s the Defense Department, clearly a big spender these days. For the fiscal year through August, its gross outlays were $456.1 billion, up from $428.7 billion for the period a year earlier — and nearly one-fifth of the federal government’s spending. Social Security barely tops that, with the agency’s gross outlays at $535.7 billion, up from $514.5 billion. Then there’s a lot of pocket change, like $30 million for the federal student loan reserve fund, down from $152 million. But surely, with a shrink-the-government Congress in control (except, perhaps, of its own members’ occasionally intriguing behavior), Congress would tighten its own purse strings, wouldn’t it? Well, no. Outlays for the Senate rose to $704 million from $672 million; for the House of Representatives, to $1.126 billion from $1.067 billion — in both cases, outpacing inflation.

United States Politics and Government
Budgets and Budgeting


China Moves to Reinforce Rule of Law, With Caveats

Abstract: BEIJING — Communist Party leaders, seeking to address widespread dissatisfaction with China ’s politicized and corrupt judiciary, endorsed a raft of legal changes on Thursday to foster a more predictable legal system while keeping the courts under the firm control of the party. The proposals, promoted by the state news media as a landmark in “governing the country according to law,” emerged from a secretive, four-day party Central Committee meeting that ended Thursday. “Fairness is the lifeline of rule of law,” the committee said, according to a summary of the proceedings published by the official Xinhua news agency. “Judicial injustice is fatally destructive of social fairness.” Although the communiqué was short on specifics, the party’s embrace of a more impartial, rules-based approach to settling legal disputes and prosecuting criminals could have potentially sweeping consequences, which supporters said would bring more order to China’s legal system and which critics said were unlikely to address the worst abuses. Experts said that, at their best, the proposed changes could temper some of the injustices that have prompted dispossessed farmers, unpaid factory workers and shortchanged investors to take to the streets. But they warned that the changes would do little to curtail the power of the party, which is increasingly intolerant of challenges to its authority, and were unlikely to strip courts of political influence and meddling by local officials. In particular, phrases in the communiqué like “people’s rights” and “rule of law” could be misconstrued, analysts say, because the party’s definitions differ vastly from Western ideals of an independent judiciary and inviolable rights. Indeed, the statement left little doubt that the Communist Party would retain ultimate control over the legal system. “Socialist rule of law must uphold the party’s leadership, and party leadership must rely on socialist rule of law,” it said. “Only with government according to the law, and implementation of rule of law under the party’s leadership can the people truly be masters of their own home.” But in seeking to reshape the nation’s court system — by improving training and pay for judges and taking court budgets and appointments out of the hands of local officials — President Xi Jinping is trying to prevent the kind of interference in court cases that has angered ordinary Chinese and intensified mistrust in the Communist Party. The proposals that have been discussed would also transfer the purse strings for judicial operations to provincial governments, depriving the local authorities of their influence when it comes to, say, courtroom repairs or staff salaries, and they would give judges the ability to rule on cases without approval from a higher-ranking judge. The power to make judicial appointments may also be removed from the local authorities. “This is something that has to be done if the party wants to maintain legitimacy, because legitimacy is not just made by abstract concepts and buzzwords,” said Flora Sapio, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies China’s legal system. “You have to deliver something to the people.” But she and other legal experts noted that Mr. Xi had no interest in creating a judiciary that could rule against the party’s policies and interests, particularly in cases that are politically delicate or that could lead to social unrest. Hence the government’s talk of “rule of law” is “like a rooster dreaming that he can lay eggs,” Teng Biao, a prominent rights lawyer, wrote this week in Oriental Daily News, a Hong Kong website. “The basic political system is incompatible with rule of law,” he said in an interview from Cambridge, Mass., where he is a visiting scholar at Harvard University. “They mainly want to use the law to control society and control the public.” Image Resting near Tiananmen. Political interference in the courts has angered ordinary Chinese and increased mistrust of the party. Credit Andy Wong/Associated Press Much like his highly popular campaign against official corruption, Mr. Xi’s effort to overhaul the legal system seeks to tame an unwieldy and sometimes rapacious bureaucracy that has turned China’s judiciary into a trough for bribery and influence peddling. The proposals outlined on Thursday are aimed at preventing the kind of Kafkaesque nightmare that befell Zhai Zhiping, a businessman in the northeast Chinese province of Heilongjiang, and his wife, Wang Bin, who spent more than three years in jail on fraud charges before the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. The couple were involved in a relatively small coal deal that went sour. When they went to court to sue a well-connected business partner for the $163,000 they said he owed them, they were ambushed by plainclothes police officers, dragged to another county and put on trial there on fraud charges. They were tried and found guilty four times, and each time the verdict was reversed on appeal. After one trial, when they were sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, the judge apologized, saying his hands were tied by a powerful official whose relative had been involved in the deal. “They have no respect for the law,” said Mr. Zhai, who, with his wife, was finally released in May. “Their only goal is money, and they use power entrusted by the state to get money.” Since Mr. Xi became party leader in 2012, the Chinese government has taken steps to address some of the system’s more glaring deficiencies. The judicial authorities have overturned a string of wrongful convictions of people sentenced to death or long prison terms. And while China still executes more people than all other countries combined, the use of capital punishment declined 20 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group based in San Francisco. Last year, the government abolished re-education through labor, a decades-old system of imprisonment without trial, although it has preserved other channels for extrajudicial detention. In June, party leaders also endorsed a set of experimental initiatives intended to make China’s roughly 3,500 courts and 20,000 judges more professional and consistent in applying the law. Chinese judges often have no practical legal experience before joining the courts in their 20s, although lawyers say the system has greatly improved since the days when many cases were adjudicated by former police officers or decommissioned military officers without legal training. Still, China’s judges have been struggling with expanding workloads and annual salaries that start at $8,000. In 2013, Chinese courts accepted 14.2 million cases, including appeals, retrials and enforcement hearings, an increase of 7.4 percent over the previous year, according to the Supreme People’s Court. Some judges handle 700 or 800 cases a year while juggling mounds of paperwork, He Fan, a judicial official, wrote last year in the court’s newspaper. With salaries and appointments controlled by the local authorities, judges often find themselves doing the bidding of influential officials or the Communist Party legal committees that are installed in every courthouse. He Haibo, a law professor at Tsinghua University, said many Chinese judges were demoralized by their inability to rule on cases without interference. “They are deeply frustrated, and it can be very humiliating when a judge doesn’t agree with a verdict but, under various pressures, has to sign his or her name to it,” he said. “Chinese judges can’t afford to claim authority, sometimes not even dignity.” Although more details about the legal changes are not expected until next week, in their broad strokes, they seek to address some of those indignities. Along with shifting court budgets to provincial authorities, a proposal to extend judicial jurisdictions beyond a single locality could dilute the influence of local officials. Even so, judges are still likely to bend rulings toward “local leaders and powerful local interests,” said Keith J. Hand, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. Another big question mark is how Mr. Xi’s plans will play in the provinces, which have a history of resisting edicts from the central government. With much of China’s bureaucracy reeling amid an anticorruption drive that has curtailed opportunities for extracurricular income, some local officials may not be in a mood to cooperate. Mr. Zhai, the businessman from northeast China who was wrongly convicted, said he doubted that the central government’s newfound zeal for the rule of law would trickle down to faraway jurisdictions like Heilongjiang. “This place is too far away from Beijing, too remote and too far behind,” he said. “They treat people here like we’re nothing.”

China
Corruption
Judiciary
Xi Jinping
Communist Party of China
Supreme People's Court China
False arrest