Ignighter, a Dating Site, Finds Love in India

Abstract: IN 2008, three young guys in Manhattan started Ignighter.com , a dating Web site focused on twentysomethings. They sought to set themselves apart by enabling members to set up group dates: One member, serving as a point person, could arrange a date — a movie, say, or a picnic in Central Park — with a group of other people and thereby take some of the awkward edge off of typical dates. During the company’s first year, the three founders — Kevin Owocki, now 26, Daniel Osit, 29, and Adam Sachs, 28 — hustled to get the word out, hosting parties, blitzing college campuses with fliers and doing a big push on Facebook. By the end of 2008, Ignighter.com had 50,000 registered users in the United States — a decent number, but not big enough to put it on the digital dating map, which is crowded with competitors. “People just didn’t get right away what the site was when we told them about it. They thought it was a site for orgies,” says Mr. Sachs, who is in charge of business development and media relations for the site. Then, in April 2009, while checking statistics about visitors to the site, Mr. Osit, who is in charge of marketing, noticed that there was a lot of traffic from Singapore, Malaysia, India and South Korea. Mr. Sachs recalls: “We didn’t pay any attention to it at first. “We thought, ‘That’s interesting — now let’s plan our next event in New York City.’ ” But by June, they couldn’t ignore the traffic from Asia — specifically India, which by then had more visitors than any other Asian country. Ignighter was gaining hundreds of users a day, mainly from New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. “In January 2010, we made the decision that we are an Indian dating site,” Mr. Sachs says. And now, with almost two million users — and 7,000 more signing up daily — Ignighter is considered India’s fastest-growing dating Web site. To put it another way, it gets as many users in a week in India as it did in a year in the United States. Next month, Ignighter will open an office in India and hire a dozen local employees. The company has stopped developing its American site, though it remains online. As funding heats up for Web start-ups in general, some investors have taken notice of Ignighter and its potential in India. This month, the company closed a $3 million round of financing. Forty percent of its investors are based in India, including Rajan Anandan, Google’s top executive in India. In the United States, Ignighter is backed by Point Judith Capital, Founder Collective and GSA Venture Partners, among others. “Here we are, a few Jewish guys sitting in Union Square, and we might have accidentally revolutionized the dating scene in India,” Mr. Sachs says of himself and Mr. Osit. They and Mr. Owocki, who is charge of Web development and programming for Ignighter, have never been to India — though they now plan to make frequent trips there. IT’S not all that unusual for start-ups to find that their market isn’t what they intended, said Sean Marsh, co-founder of Point Judith Capital in Providence, R.I., and an investor in Ignighter. But not all entrepreneurs choose to listen to what the market is telling them, he says. Even though an Indian dating site wasn’t their original concept, the Ignighter founders decided to pivot at a crucial moment, he says: “You have to be flexible as an entrepreneur and bend to the market and consumer feedback.” So how did this happy accident happen? Mr. Osit suspects that young people in India read about the service on technology blogs like Mashable and TechCrunch. From there, it grew in part because dating in India is still in a somewhat embryonic stage. It happens in big cities like Mumbai and Hyderabad, but in many less cosmopolitan parts of India it’s still considered taboo for unmarried men and women to be seen in public together. Many couples, as they have for centuries, meet through arranged marriages that their relatives orchestrate. But for some in this generation — those raised on a diet of MTV and social networks — there’s a desire to find new dating scripts, or just to hang out with a coed group. The group dynamic also makes going out an easier sell to parents, who are worried about safety and propriety. That’s what led Rohan Bhardwaj, 23, to set up a profile on Ignighter last month. He works in New Delhi at Exclusively.In, an online store that sells Indian luxury goods, and, like a majority of his peers, he lives with his parents. He heard about Ignighter from his boss in the United States — the chief executive of Exclusively.In, which shares office space with Ignighter in Manhattan — and from his cousin in Canada. Mr. Bhardwaj formed a group with two friends and, as the point person or “ambassador” of that group, asked out two twentysomething women from New Delhi. They arranged a date at a karaoke bar, and their second date was at the Hard Rock Cafe in the Saket District Center. Since then, he has gone on a couple of more dates with that group. Mr. Bhardwaj says he isn’t trying to find a wife through the site. For him, that’s a long way off. “There’s a particular age when people have to get married, which is around 26 or 27,” he says. And he is not yet sure if he will go the traditional route to find a wife, adding that his parents are open to the idea of a “love marriage” that is not arranged. For people like Mr. Bhardwaj, Ignighter is filling a social niche that allows them to combine social networking and offline “friending” without the pressure of the matrimonial sites that dominate India’s online dating landscape. “Group dating is a great opportunity that didn’t exist before,” Mr. Bhardwaj says. But in a culture where dating can still be a relatively new concept, Ignighter.com’s success may depend, in part, on which way the social winds blow. “I’m seeing the change happening. There are enough people in the new generation who want to have their own identity and meet people on their own terms,” says Sasha Mirchandani, 38, an investor in Ignighter.com and managing partner of Kae Capital, a venture capital firm in Mumbai. “If I were 27 or 28 and single, I would go online to date,” says Mr. Mirchandani, who is married. Ignighter, unlike the matrimonial sites, puts socializing and dating directly into the hands of young people. On most of the matrimonial sites, there’s a drop-down menu for “profile created for” — which includes son, daughter, brother, sister, relative or self. When it comes to Ignighter, “as far as we know, there are not a lot of parents on our site,” Mr. Sachs said. Matrimonial sites thrive in India. Shaadi.com and others like Jeevansathi.com and Bharat Matrimony all have millions of users. The online matrimonial industry in India is estimated to generate $63 million a year in revenue and has tens of millions of registrants, according to EmPower Research, a market research firm. “Dating sites have not succeeded in India,” says Gaurav Mishra of the MSL Group, a division of the marketing company Publicis Groupe. “It’s either been social networking sites or matrimonial sites.” Traditional dating sites, like Match.com, haven’t taken off in India. Mr. Mirchandani says he believes the situation is changing. “In a country of nearly a billion,” he says, “even if arranged marriages decline from 90 percent to 86 percent, that still means there are millions of people who could turn to a dating site.” After hearing about Ignighter from friends and colleagues, Navya Shreejogi, 26, an engineer in Chennai who lives in an apartment with two roommates, logged on, created a basic profile and went browsing. She was a little disappointed. “It’s more teenagers who are still in college and just want to have fun,” she says. “The guys didn’t seem serious.” Ms. Shreejogi, like many in her generation, isn’t that worried about meeting someone. She’ll leave that to her parents. “I don’t need to bother finding a mate,” she says. “My mom and dad have been searching for a husband for me for two years, and I have lots of friends and colleagues I can go out with on the weekend, so I don’t need this kind of site.” She also says she and her female friends are concerned about safety issues connected with meeting strangers through online dating. Still, she acknowledges that the site could draw young people who move to a big city, like Chennai, and don’t yet have a social circle and are seeking an alternative to an arranged marriage. Mr. Mishra is skeptical that a site like Ignighter.com can succeed. “Indian women don’t even post their own profiles on matrimonial sites; their fathers and brothers do,” he says. “So, I can’t imagine Indian women posting their profiles on a dating site, and to have a successful dating site, you need to have women.” Still, 40 percent of Ignighter’s members are women, according to the company. While the pace of cultural and social change may well dictate how Ignighter.com fares in India, other indicators are pointing in its favor. For one, India is a less-saturated Internet market — only a small percentage of the population goes online — making it a potentially lucrative opportunity for sites that get there early. “If you look at it from a macro perspective, we are on the right side of globalization,” Mr. Osit says. “India is growing much faster than the U.S.” — where about three-quarters of the population has regular Internet access . The next phase for Ignighter.com is to see whether it can be an Indian dating site based in India. All three founders agree that they can’t run the business by remote control from their office in Union Square. So each will spend a couple of months a year at the soon-to-be-opened Indian office. “All of our decisions so far have been very mathematical,” Mr. Sachs says. Mr. Osit adds that their biggest cultural blind spot is in understanding male-female interaction in India. “I’m sure there are a lot of subtleties there that we need to grasp,” he says. When Mr. Osit, Mr. Sachs and Mr. Owocki go to India for the first time next month, they will set up an office, arrange for the company to be incorporated, and hire employees. But they will also see how young people interact, becoming students of the Indian social scene so they can make some decisions about the site: Should they remove the “Seinfeld” references on the site that were meant for an American audience? Should they translate the site into Hindi? If so, how do you say “group dating” in Hindi? Should they ask users for their caste? What kinds of offline partnerships, if any, should they form? And what role should mobile devices play? They’ll also have to navigate serious logistical issues. A case in point is that 70 percent of payments that subscribers try to make can’t be processed because of problems with the credit card system. (Members are allowed to keep using the site free when this happens but can’t send messages.) Mr. Sachs says he hopes they can work out these glitches upon their arrival. In India, the site works the same way it did in the United States. Groups chat through messaging, and arrange to go out on dates to movies, restaurants and clubs. The median age of users is 23.5; the average group size is four people, Mr. Sachs says. The site is still trying to determine the best pricing; a yearly subscription fee now runs $10 to $45. On the Indian version of the site, a virtual-goods marketplace is prominent, selling virtual gifts like cricket balls and naan bread — to be sent to other users as a way to flirt. “It’s been a big hit,” Mr. Osit says. “We sell about 10,000 gifts a month.” AS for how many group dates Ignighter.com has helped to arrange in India so far, the founders don’t know. They’ll start doing user and market research later this year. At this point, it’s not clear whether many of the group outings lead to romance, but the site is clearly striking a chord. “Young people aren’t using Ignighter.com to get married,” Mr. Bhardwaj said. They’ll still go to the tried-and-true matrimonial sites for that.

India
Ignighter.com
Online Dating
Dating and Courtship


Robo-Signing Fraud Case Is Settled

Abstract: The mortgage servicing company Lender Processing Services agreed to pay $35 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into foreclosure fraud, the Justice Department said on Friday. The settlement resolves allegations over the company’s involvement in what the government called a six-year scheme to prepare and file more than 1 million fraudulently signed and notarized mortgage documents in property recorders’ offices nationwide from 2003 to 2009. The practice became known as robo-signing. The accord also follows a guilty plea last November by Lorraine Brown, the former chief executive of the company’s now-closed DocX unit, to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud over the scheme. Prior to DocX’s closure in 2010, Lender Processing Services had handled more than half of the nation’s foreclosures. The company entered into a two-year non-prosecution agreement that requires it to meet many conditions, including cooperating in federal investigations, and alerting the government to any abuses in mortgage or foreclosure documentation services at the company. The company said on Friday that it has a $223 million reserve that covers the Justice Department accord and prior settlements. Foreclosure abuse became notorious in 2010 as borrowers, politicians and regulators accused lenders of pursuing cases that were based on defective or fraudulent documentation. Many documents were found to have been signed systematically without being read.

Lender Processing Services
Foreclosure
Justice Department
DocX
Mortgage loan
Missouri
Forgery


A Concierge Who Holds the Key to the City

Abstract: Gunter Kleemann is a professional New York know-it-all. As a concierge at the New York Palace Hotel, on Madison Avenue at 50th Street, and the president of the city’s Association of Hotel Concierges , 150 strong at 50 hotels, Mr. Kleemann, 58, has made a career of easing tourists through the urban labyrinth, booking tours, tables at prime restaurants and seats at sold-out Broadway hits. How he knows what he knows: At first you think you can do it with a Zagat’s and a computer. There’s nothing that beats personal experience. My wife and I are always going out. You’ll always find me someplace. Proudest of: My golden keys, the universal standard of service excellence. Most-asked question: Where to eat. How he answers: Are you looking to dine or just to eat? It’s a big difference. Weird requests: One guy asked, “Can you get me six brunettes, six blondes and six black-haireds?” Of course, we don’t do that. Some guy asked me, “Can you find me the gross income of this company for a year?” How bizarre is that? I had to tell the guy nicely, that’s not the kind of thing we pursue. I get people asking for a stock certificate from 1865, a cork from a 1980 Chianti, a 6-by-9-foot painting with a hunting dog, a shotgun and a pheasant. We try to track it down. The German accent: I was born in Kottweiler-Schwanden, near a big American Army base. I used to see the tanks come through. I’d find old Lugers in the field. My mother lived through the firebombing of Dresden. I came here with my parents when I was 10 years old. Résumé: I went to the New School for graduate work in film and got a job with a top fashion photographer as an assistant. After a few years, I worked with a commercial filmmaker. I got cast in acting roles. You ever hear of “I Spit on Your Grave”? It was one of the biggest cult films ever. It’s about revenge, in a nutshell. A female writer goes from the city to the country and is accosted. She gets her revenge. It’s a piece of dreck, but for some reason I got a fan club.” Fondest New York moment: In ’74 I was living in the Village, across from the Caffe Dante, where Bob Dylan used to go. I’d see Joni Mitchell and Ginsberg. They were all hanging out together. On becoming a concierge: I wanted to work for Gray Line as a tour guide. They weren’t hiring, but still they had a couple of desks in hotels. I started at the Roosevelt in ’99, manning a Gray Line desk for a few months. At the end of the year the desk was taken over by Continental Guest Services , which rents desks in hotels and operates on commissions. Then I was hired at the Lucerne Hotel on Amsterdam Avenue as a real concierge. The money thing: There isn’t any charge, but I tell people at the end of their stay if they feel I did something special for them, gratuities are allowed. On taking freebies: Once they know you’re a concierge, you get a lot of offers, but a lot of times I pay on my own. I want to go incognito. Best advice he ever got: If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working.

Gunter Kleemann
New York Palace Hotel
Hotels and Motels


Jean-Paul Coffy Arrives in Haiti, and Family’s Journey Begins

Abstract: Jean-Paul Coffy arrived in darkness at the three-story house he grew up in, in the Nerette neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, a concrete-and-tin home where his parents still lived and he visited each year. It was six days after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti ’s capital, and Mr. Coffy, a musician and teacher from Chicago, had not heard from his parents, siblings, uncles, cousins or friends. So Mr. Coffy’s wife, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, had persuaded him to go. “I came in with a candle in my hand,” Mr. Coffy said. “And I am screaming their names, and they are answering!” His mother thought he was a ghost. “Oh my God, oh my God, why is God punishing me? Making me think my son is here, and I know he can’t get here,” he recalled her crying out that night. “And I said, ‘It’s really me. I’m here, I’m here.’ ” Mr. Coffy found his parents near a back room — the only part of the house still standing — having survived on bonbon salé, a Haitian cracker similar to Saltines. In the three weeks since, they have traveled eight hours across Haiti’s dusty roads and slept in the hallways of hospitals in the neighboring Dominican Republic, and Mr. Coffy has spent thousands of dollars on securing government documents, as well as on fixers, housing, food and patchwork transportation, as he tries to secure permission for his parents to return with him to Chicago. Mr. Coffy shared his ordeal — not unlike that of countless other United States residents in Haiti trying to help family members — in a series of telephone interviews from the Dominican Republic. His father, Reserve Coffy, 68, was unharmed in the earthquake, but his mother, Zilania Joacin, 67, a diabetic who recently had a hip operation, broke the same leg, which was “so swollen you couldn’t touch it,” Mr. Coffy said. That first night together, the three of them slept in the open air, afraid to stay in the house’s surviving room. In the morning, Mr. Coffy realized why no one had heard his parents’ calls for help. Their block was filled with wreckage and the stench of the dead. After hours of walking and picking his way through the debris, he found a working pharmacy still stocked with the blood pressure medicine his mother needed, another with insulin and a third with painkillers. He paid three times the normal cost. A brother and a sister died in the earthquake, and another brother is still missing. Of his surviving siblings in Haiti, one has two children who broke legs in the quake, and the others are poor and scattered through the countryside. So Mr. Coffy decided to take his parents to Santo Domingo, where he thought it would be easier to get help. But Caribe Tours, the bus company he took to Haiti from the Dominican Republic when he flew in from Chicago, would not let his parents board without passports, which were lost in the earthquake; so he paid 2,000 Haitian dollars — about $250 — to wrangle a shaded pickup truck known as a tap tap to take them to the border town of Las Caobas, his mother stretched out on a mattress, wailing at each bump in the road. He managed to get papers granting his parents a one-month stay in the Dominican Republic, paying about $500 to a fixer. Another $58 bought the full back seat of an air-conditioned bus to Santo Domingo, the capital. It was there that Mr. Coffy and his parents visited four hospitals. At one, a private clinic, X-rays showed that Ms. Joacin would need a hip replacement, but because her leg was infected she would have to wait three months. Father and son held each other that night on a small bench beside her bed. “It was the first time that I actually slept,” Mr. Coffy remembered. “It had been three days.” The one-night hospital stay cost $359, depleting Mr. Coffy’s bankroll, so his wife has wired him $3,600 from Chicago. Mr. Coffy, the sixth of nine children, had been sending about $500 a month to his parents before the earthquake, he said. Ms. Joacin was given a cast for her leg and a cot in a hallway at Darío Contreras, a large public hospital teeming with earthquake survivors. The Dominican Republic’s health ministry estimated that the country’s hospitals had cared for about 7,000 Haitians as of Tuesday. Worried that the hospital food — oatmeal, white rice, spaghetti — would worsen his mother’s diabetes, Mr. Coffy sneaked meals in from the outside for her and hid them under a table. He also posted a little sign near her head: “Do not feed her in any way.” After more than two weeks in the hospital, spent mostly in the hallway, Mr. Coffy and his parents moved Monday night into a room with two beds at a church facility. On Tuesday, Mr. Coffy received new passports for his parents from the Haitian Embassy; he had an appointment scheduled for Thursday with the United States Consulate in Santo Domingo to apply for temporary visas to take them to Chicago. Another possibility would be humanitarian parole, a special temporary immigration category that is rarely granted. His case will be particularly difficult, immigration experts say, because Mr. Coffy, while a legal resident with a green card, is not a United States citizen. “You can imagine the number of injured Haitians who have loved ones in the states who want to get here,” said Cheryl Little, executive director of the nonprofit Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center . Mr. Coffy lives in Kenwood, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, with his wife, Yakini Ajanaku-Coffy, and their 10-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. The couple met in 1994 when she was Chicago’s cultural attaché for Haiti and he was the keyboardist in a Haitian band, the Boukman Eksperyans ; having returned to Chicago in 2002, after living for years in Haiti, the couple now run a music-themed preschool called La Grande Famille. After deciding that Mr. Coffy would travel to Haiti to look for his family, the couple pulled together supplies like cereal bars and water purification tablets, and $1,500 in cash, including $1,000 from the mother of his son’s best friend (others have donated more than $7,000 through a blog). The couple traded cellphones, since hers is a BlackBerry, so he could get e-mail messages. Hours later, they were at O’Hare International Airport with their son, Akin, who was crying. “He said, ‘Dad, you could die there,’ ” Mr. Coffy said. Mr. Coffy had promised Akin that he would return by Feb. 3, but now says it might be another month. When Akin asked his mother last week when his father would be back, she told him: “When the job is done, baby, when the job is done. He didn’t go this far to turn back.”

Haiti
Earthquakes
Immigration and Emigration
Families and Family Life


Few Seeking Repayment for Gear, Military Says

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 - Fewer than 70 service members have sought reimbursement for the cost of combat equipment they bought for use in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a program that the Pentagon originally opposed. Pentagon officials had said the reimbursement program would be a strain on its budget and could undermine the accountability and effectiveness of equipment. So far, however, the official who oversees the processing of such claims for the Army said, only 30 soldiers have requested reimbursement for equipment, primarily for tactical body armor, at a cost of about $22,000. "We were gamed for a high volume of claims," said the Army claims official, Maj. Paul J. Cucuzzella. "And to date, it has not been what we planned for." A Navy spokesman said that 34 service members had asked to be paid for gear, mostly protective eyewear, hydration products and other equipment. The Navy has paid claims of about $5,000. The Marines have received four reimbursement requests, and the Air Force has not received any, officials said. In October, more than seven months after Congress required finalization of a program, the Pentagon issued regulations for providing reimbursement for some combat equipment bought privately for use in combat. The rules allow military personnel deployed in combat zones to make claims of up to $1,100 for health, safety and protective gear bought from September 2001 to April 2006. Eligible items include global positioning devices, advanced combat helmets and body armor, and other accessories. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, sponsored the legislation calling for the program, and the measure was included in a military appropriations bill that passed in October 2004. Congress passed more legislation last year, extending the time period of the initiative. Mr. Dodd says the Pentagon has not done enough to inform soldiers of the program. "Our troops' welfare should be a top priority," Mr. Dodd said on Friday. "The Pentagon fought this initiative, and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to implement its important provisions." Mr. Dodd added, "Clearly the foot-dragging appears to continue, and that is unacceptable." Brig. Gen. Stephen M. Koper, president of the National Guard Association, said the program had been managed by the Pentagon like "a low-profile thing." "It seems that the program has not been as properly marketed as it could have been," General Koper, who is retired from the military, said. Publicity for the program has been coordinated by military public affairs officials and has included postings at military bases and installations (and in the newspapers in those places) and to the various commands around the world. "It is not as easy as you might think to reach every soldier and former soldier who has served," Major Cucuzzella said. But, he added, the volume of inquiries has increased recently, twice as many in January than in December. Army surveys have shown that infantry members spend hundreds of dollars of their own money each year on gloves, boots, flashlights and other gear. Last week, the Army awarded an emergency contract for ceramic plates to protect the sides of soldiers' torsos from bullets and shrapnel. The vests now worn by most military personnel hold plates that shield only the front and back of the upper body. A Pentagon study of marines in Iraq from March 2003 through June 2005 found that extra armor could have saved as many as 80 percent of those who had died there from wounds to the upper body. The Marine Corps has said it began buying side plates last September and expected to have its forces in Iraq equipped in April. The Army began shipping a small number of plates in November 2003 but has not supplied them to all its soldiers. Some Army and Marine officials have said they are concerned that the additional armor may endanger troops by limiting their mobility. Mr. Dodd said he intended to introduce legislation this week to require the Pentagon to provide "the most complete personal body armor" available to military personnel serving in combat situations. The legislation would allow for an exception when field commanders determine that such gear could impede their troops' missions or further endanger them. Mr. Dodd's measure also calls for an equipment allowance with which troops may buy their own gear, if necessary, from certified military suppliers.

ARMOR
PROTECTIVE CLOTHING
UNITED STATES ARMAMENT AND DEFENSE


Tax-Help Software: Two Test Drives

Abstract: IN its television ads, H&R Block, maker of the tax software program TaxCut, reminds do-it-yourself preparers that if they run into problems using the program, they’ve “got people” who can help. In other words, TaxCut users should feel confident that Block’s nationwide network of 90,000 tax preparers stands ready to assist with tax advice or even audit support should the Internal Revenue Service flag their returns. I was briefly reminded of this ad campaign when I sat down to do my taxes using a rival program, TurboTax from Intuit . I ran into a minor technical problem while loading updates to the program. When I tried looking up the number for customer support, the program informed me that the support desk was temporarily closed “due to high contact volumes.” This seemed strange, since I tried calling at around 5 p.m. Pacific time last Sunday — in the middle of the Super Bowl. And I can’t imagine that that many Americans do their taxes on Super Bowl Sunday. Having more “people” at the ready would seem like a good thing. Of course, at the end of the day, it’s the quality of the help that these people provide that’s important. It should be noted that the New York attorney general’s office recently refiled a suit against H&R Block contending that some of its people steered tax clients into individual retirement accounts that charged higher fees than they paid out in interest. Company officials said that hundreds of thousands of clients benefited from the accounts, especially when the tax advantages were also considered. It also dawned on me, shortly after my computer problem resolved itself on its own: While it’s great to have the assurance of live support, that is not the primary reason to buy programs like TaxCut or TurboTax. If it were, software users would bypass these off-the-shelf programs altogether and go directly to the humans. The fact is that many do-it-yourselfers prefer software precisely because they don’t want to interact with people. That is why I did not seek any tax advice from a Block representative. I wanted to test drive the software, not the slogan. So I asked myself this question: Which of the major software programs does the best job of answering questions and maximizing deductions on its own? This year I’d have to say the answer is TurboTax. In the previous two years, I reviewed both TaxCut and TurboTax and much preferred TaxCut. Back then, I found TaxCut to be much easier to navigate and thought that it offered more intuitive guidance for help with home-office deductions and filling out a Schedule C. But this year, Intuit overhauled TurboTax and improved it significantly. BOTH TurboTax and TaxCut come in various versions, depending on whether you use the online or desktop software. I recently test-drove the Premier desktop edition of TurboTax and the Premium desktop edition of TaxCut. In the past, one of the most appealing aspects of tax software was that it interviewed you, in much the way a human tax preparer would. The questions — with yes-or-no answers in many cases — were meant to ensure that you did not forget miscellaneous sources of income or miss out on any deductions. But TurboTax now acknowledges that many do-it-yourselfers have general knowledge of their taxes and want a quicker way to complete them. This year, TurboTax gives users a choice of two paths. The first is the interview process, which you can start by asking TurboTax to “guide me.” Experienced hands can avoid this journey by clicking on the “select specific topics” tab. This shows all the different types of income, deductions and credits you will need to address, in list form. You can click on only those sections that apply to you, in any order you choose. As I gathered my tax documents this year, I knew I had only a few forms of income to report. So I chose the specific-topics tabs in the income section of the program and filled out just the applicable boxes. It saved a considerable amount of time. But I did not want to leave deductions on the table. So when it came to the deductions-and-credits section of TurboTax, I chose to go through the formal interview. By doing so, I was reminded of small credits that I had forgotten I was eligible for, like the telephone tax refund for excise taxes paid on long-distance calls from March 1, 2003 to July 31, 2006. Investors will also like another addition from TurboTax this year: free access to BasisPro, a service from the GainsKeeper division of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services that helps determine the cost basis of securities bought many years ago. If you bought shares of a stock in 1998 but forgot how much you paid, on a split-adjusted basis, the service will determine the average price paid for the stock on that day nine years ago. This is extremely helpful when trying to determine the original cost basis for stocks bought before a series of mergers and acquisitions. This is not to say that TaxCut is deficient. The program is still quite intuitive when it comes to answering complicated questions about home office deductions and Schedule C, for small-business owners. But Intuit has gone to great lengths to improve navigation in TurboTax, allowing users to search easily for tax forms and topics, see constantly where they are in the tax return and to get an overview of those portions they have already completed and those they still need to tackle. For its part, TaxCut can claim a couple of big advantages. The first is access to the “people” mentioned in Block’s ad campaign. If you buy TaxCut’s Premium+State+E-File edition, for example, you get one free session with a tax professional by phone or e-mail. In addition, should you be audited, Block says it will provide free support, ranging from assistance in collecting the proper documents to having a Block-enrolled agent represent you before the I.R.S. This free service is good only for those who file their returns electronically and for audits pertaining to the tax year for which TaxCut software was used. The second big advantage is price. In retail stores like Staples or Best Buy, the Premium+State+E-File version of TaxCut can be bought for $59.99. (Some retailers have been offering a $5 rebate, bringing the price down to $54.99.) This includes a free advice session and one free federal and state e-file. By comparison, TurboTax Premier’s desktop version sells in stores for $74.99, and includes federal and state returns. And if you want to e-file, that will cost an additional $14.95 (times two, if filing both a federal and state return). What’s more, if you want to ask a tax professional for help by phone or e-mail, that will cost an additional $39.95 through TurboTax. If you go with TaxCut’s online version, rather than the desktop software, you’ll save even more. TaxCut’s online Premium+State+E-File version costs just $39.95, but it allows only one return. (The desktop versions of both TaxCut and TurboTax allow you to fill out multiple returns.) TurboTax also offers a Premier online version for $49,95 but charges an additional $25.95 to complete a state return; e-filing is free. IF you are truly cost-conscious — and do not require the hand-holding that TurboTax or TaxCut provide — you might consider a cheaper, yet solid alternative: TaxAct Deluxe+State. This basic program, offered by 2nd Story Software , charges just $15.95 for federal and state returns, including e-filing if the program is used online ($19.95 if the program is downloaded to a desktop). TaxAct even offers a basic version of its program that lets you prepare, print or e-file federal taxes at no charge. Though many people may not be aware of it, most American households are eligible for the I.R.S.’s Free File program. This four-year-old partnership with around 20 different tax preparation companies generally allows taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $52,000 or less — that’s 70 percent of taxpayers — to prepare and e-file their taxes free. Free versions of TurboTax, TaxCut and TaxAct are all part of the Free File service. But be aware that you will not learn about this free service on these private Web sites. The only way to find out about the program is to visit www.irs.gov .

Intuit Incorporated
Taxation
Computers and the Internet
H&R Block Incorporated
Computer Software
Federal Taxes (US)


College Players Joining Lawsuit Against N.C.A.A. Over Use of Likenesses

Abstract: Six college football players have been added as plaintiffs to a high-profile lawsuit that says the N.C.A.A. owes billions of dollars to former players for allowing their likenesses to be used without compensation. The players are Vanderbilt linebacker Chase Garnham; Clemson cornerback Darius Robinson; linebacker Jake Fischer and kicker Jake Smith from Arizona; and tight end Moses Alipate and wide receiver Victor Keise of Minnesota. Ed O’Bannon, a former U.C.L.A. basketball star, is the lead plaintiff in a case that could alter how the N.C.A.A. operates. ■ Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Josh Brent, who is preparing to defend himself against a charge in the Dec. 8 drunken-driving crash that killed a teammate, has retired. Brent, charged with intoxication manslaughter, faces up to 20 years in prison. ■ Indianapolis Colts tight end Weslye Saunders was suspended for eight games without pay after violating the N.F.L.’s policy on performance-enhancing substances.

Lawsuits
College football
Josh Brent
NCAA


12 New Jersey Works Among International Films in Festival at Rutgers

Abstract: THE 15-minute short “Shoebox Redhead,” one of 39 films to earn a spot in this year’s New Jersey International Film Festival , is about two 20-something guys who buy a magic Polaroid at a yard sale and aim it around the Jersey Shore, fumbling to interpret the strange images it captures. The movie traffics in a goofy sort of mysticism, but when it was shot last year, proprietors of restaurants and shops that were used as locations had no trouble with the concept, according to the filmmaker, Matthew Lawrence, 25, of Toms River. “People understood the image we had in our heads and wanted to support us.” Mr. Lawrence’s film will be screened on the second day of the 14th annual festival, which runs from June 5 to 21 at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Of the more than 320 globe- and genre-spanning works that landed from January to April on the desk of Albert Gabriel Nigrin , the festival’s founder, 40 to 50 were from New Jersey. Of those, a dozen were selected for screening — more than in any other year, he said. Two grand prizes worth $3,000 apiece will be awarded at the end of the festival, which is one of several presented each year by the Rutgers Film Co-op, the university’s film society, and the New Jersey Media Arts Center, the society’s educational arm. “When I first started this, we were lucky if we got a handful of submissions by New Jersey filmmakers,” said Mr. Nigrin, the executive director of the festival and the society. “Now we’re getting so many, and from so many different kinds of filmmakers.” One film, “The New Girl in Town,” a three-minute vampire movie, was made by an 8-year-old, Emma Kenney of Fanwood, who has since turned 9. “That’s the youngest we’ve ever seen,” Mr. Nigrin said. The goal of the festival is to present “antimultiplex fare — films with a lot of heart and soul,” said Mr. Nigrin, who also teaches cinema studies at Rutgers. Among the New Jersey picks this year, some — like “Shoebox Redhead,” made for less than $10,000 — represent the state mostly through scenery. But a few delve deeper. One is “Split Ends,” by Dorothy Lyman , a Manhattan filmmaker and actress, which tackles the issue of eminent domain. Shot in Clifton, Maplewood and Bloomfield last July with a budget of $200,000, the film is a romantic comedy, but it explores the plight of a small-town beauty-parlor owner trying to save her shop from a condo developer. The film, which is being shown June 19, is modeled on the real-life struggles of a former hairdresser in Maplewood. The documentary “Heart of Stone,” by Beth Toni Kruvant of Montclair, about Ronald G. Stone , a former principal at Weequahic High School in Newark, traces the trajectory of Weequahic from a top-flight school in the 1960s to a school plagued by gangs, drugs and violence. It takes the measure of two generations of Newark residents that have struggled with marginalization. The older generation works mightily to come to the rescue of the younger. Ms. Kruvant, 54, a former lawyer, has already won four prizes at other festivals with “Heart of Stone,” filmed from 2006 to 2008 on a budget of $89,000. But she has especially high hopes for the June 7 screening at Rutgers, where she will appear to discuss the movie. In a telephone interview, Ms. Kruvant said audience members at other festivals had told her that the film “inspires people to give back.” “In New Jersey,” she said, “it could have an enormous effect.”

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey


Oxford Starts Building New China Center

Abstract: Oxford begins construction on China Center building Construction has begun at St. Hugh’s College at Oxford University on the new Dickson Poon China Center Building, which is named after the Hong Kong luxury magnate and philanthropist who donated £10 million to the project. Currently, the Oxford China Center’s 40 academics are spread throughout the university, without a dedicated physical space. The new building, whose construction began on Oct. 8 and is expected to be completed in 2014 with the help of Mr. Poon’s $16 million donation, will be home to a 60,000-volume library, a language laboratory, lecture hall, student accommodation and conference areas. Outdoor spaces will include a Chinese-style courtyard and garden and a rooftop terrace with views of Oxford’s famous spires. Also this year, Mr. Poon, who owns the Harvey Nichols department store chain, gave £20 million to King’s College London law school, which was subsequently renamed after him. — JOYCE LAU  Medical schools join effort in Rwanda Eric Goosby, the ambassador in charge of the U.S. global AIDS strategy, was expected to announce a new initiative between the U.S. government, the Rwandan Ministry of Health and 14 American medical schools at a press conference Monday in Kigali, Rwanda. The Human Resources for Health program will send 100 faculty members from eight medical colleges, five nursing and midwifery schools, and one health management school to Kigali where they will train health professionals and medical students, according to a statement from the Clinton Global Initiative. In the future, the U.S. faculty will also help introduce specialized care, like cardiology and oncology. “For the first time in history, the U.S. government has allowed for the direct government transfer of funds to a health sector program where the recipient country sets the terms of the program and contracts and manages the program,” a representative for the Rwandan Ministry of Health said by email. The two governments, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the universities have committed $152 million to the seven-year program. By allowing the Rwandan government primary control over how the funds are used, the set-up allows the program to operate without relying on a third-party nonprofit organization. — STEPHANIE NOVAK  Erasmus exchange program seeks emergency funding Erasmus, a popular student exchange program that celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, could face a cash crisis within weeks if an emergency amendment to the E.U. budget does not come through, according to Alain Lamassoure, chairman of the European Parliament’s budget committee. “We have not foreseen in the 2012 budget enough credit payments,” Mr. Lamassoure said this month, adding that “the European Social Fund and the Erasmus and lifelong learning programs, and even the research and innovation programs” were at risk. An emergency amendment is expected to be made to the budget to ensure that programs like Erasmus will have the necessary funds to continue, according to a statement by Janusz Lewandowski, the E.U. commissioner for financial programming and budget. By the next academic year, Erasmus is expected to have sent three million European university students on exchanges. — CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE

China
Oxford University
Hong Kong
Education
Great Britain
Oxford (England)
Colleges and Universities


Mixed Signals From West About Trusting Russia

Abstract: PARIS — How much trust do — or should — the Western allies accord Russia in attempting to get its cooperation to stop Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons? And while good faith is the issue, what practical Western steps or accommodations are understood in NATO Brussels’ home-office line that the allies owe Moscow recognition of its “security interests”? The slithers of answers that are emerging look contradictory. On one hand, a report published last week rated the U.S., British and French belief in Russia’s reliability low enough so that, for fear of Moscow informing Tehran, they refused for months to tell the Russians of their strategy relating to a secret Iranian nuclear site in Qum before its public disclosure in September. Going in the other direction, Adm. Igor Burtsev of the Russian Navy indicated to Russian media over the weekend that France was now ready to sell it a helicopter-carrying assault ship and a license to produce four similar advanced vessels. They are the warships that the Russian Navy’s commander in chief, Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky, said, glowingly, would have allowed his forces to complete its tasks in the 2008 invasion of Georgia in 26 minutes instead of 40 hours. Although the French have confirmed negotiations but not a sale, the purchase would be the first ever of such technological magnitude — and strategic comfort — involving a NATO member and Russia. The moment is as remarkable as the possible precedent: Over the past few weeks, Russia, in a new burst of military assertiveness, said through the secretary of its national security council, Nikolai Patrushev, that it was lowering the threshold for the preventive use of its nuclear weapons to include, beyond big wars, “aggressors” using conventional weapons in regional or local conflicts. At the same time, the State Duma, or Kremlin-controlled lower house of Parliament, approved a bill expanding the possibilities for using troops abroad. Here was a combination of moves increasing pressure on the neighboring countries Russia regards as belonging in its sphere of influence that brought no allied reaction. The two sides of the trust issue run contradictorily together at this point. If they had insufficient confidence to talk to Russia about the implications of the uranium enrichment facility at Qum, why would the allies — reflecting the line of the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, on Russia’s “security interests” — disregard a developing Russian military doctrine (due for complete publication by the end of the year) that effectively rationalizes nuclear threats from Moscow to whomever it mistrusts along its European borders? The obvious, 25-cent answer is that this approach may momentarily serve wavering hopes of getting Russian help on Iran or on eventual sanctions against the mullahs (though the Russians have never varied from their refusal to discern any military intent in Iran’s nuclear program, or desire to play out American and allied wishfulness as long as possible in the expectation of getting ever more tolerance in return). Still, in the midst of these contractions, try out this more optimistic interpretation of the allied swerve around Russia concerning the Qum site: It signals realism among the allies about where reliance on Russia stops. And it prefigures thinking about how the West can act together if the Russians fall out of the equation, and if action in dissuading Iran becomes an immediate matter. In writing last week about cutting Russia out, the newspaper Le Monde said: “Barack Obama was informed about Qum before taking office. The Western capitals waited for the most advantageous moment to play this card — exposing the site — as a major asset in the struggle with Iran running up to the U.N. General Assembly session in late September. The Russians were not consulted out of fear they would inform the Iranians.” According to Le Monde, the Western scenario remained unknown to Moscow during the months the United States negotiated with Russia about the plan (seemingly rejected now by the mullahs) to slow the Iranian drive towards nukes by exporting its uranium for enrichment. In all this, there would have to be an exceptional reversal in behavior if Moscow did not try to exploit the contradiction that weighs on the West’s position — justifiable mistrust of Russia as Iran’s primary supplier of nuclear wherewithal, accompanied by a notion that demonstrations of trust (Mr. Rasmussen calls them NATO’s “open door” policy) are the way to turn Russia into a helping hand and strategic partner. Indeed, in an interview with a French reporter last week, Mr. Rasmussen acknowledged the difficulty of reconciling this approach with some of Russia’s actions, but said, “I’ll try to convince them that our policy is in their interest.” Admirable. But when this Russia sounds supple or responsive, it can be flexibility measured out for its own ends. In suggesting Saturday that the French warship purchase was a done deal, Admiral Burtsev sought to deflect the supposition that its helicopter carriers would be meant for the Black, Crimean and Baltic seas — the local and regional areas reflected in Russia’s announced lowering of its nuclear thresholds. The admiral insisted they would go to the navy’s Arctic and Pacific fleets. That is hard to imagine. Just as it would be difficult to suppose, while U.S.-Russia talks continue on limiting strategic nuclear arsenals, the West being ready call out the contradiction of Russia’s probable unwillingness to scale back its tactical nuclear warheads. All the more now that Mr. Patrushev — who received his opposite number in the White House, James Jones, in Moscow last week — has announced broadening the possibilities for their “preventive” use. I asked a NATO headquarters official last week if the alliance found this troubling, discouraging or, at the least, confusing. His authorized answer: Let’s wait until we have the full text of Russia’s new military doctrine in hand — or, Call back next year.

Russia
Iran
Nuclear Weapons
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Qum (Iran)


Surveillance Court Renews Order for Phone Call Data

Abstract: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved a new order for collection of bulk data on phone calls in the United States, allowing the National Security Agency to continue a practice that has been criticized by some members of Congress and the public. In a statement Friday, the office of the director of national intelligence announced that the court, which operates largely in secret, had permitted the N.S.A. to continue to collect phone logs, which do not include the actual contents of the calls. The original order disclosed last month by Edward J. Snowden, an N.S.A. contractor, expired Friday.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
Government Surveillance
NSA


Bragging of Safety While Many Live in Fear

Abstract: The twin holes resemble diamond studs, and a crack in the glass curls, as graceful as an eyelash along the lobby window. A few weeks back a young gangbanger took aim at teenagers wending their way home from school to the Howard Houses in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He blasted twice and missed, and ran. He left behind his gunman’s artwork. You enter this public housing tower at 40 Glenmore Avenue and walk a few flights to enter a handsome apartment with graduation photographs of children on the walls. A spry grandmother who is a tenant leader talks of life here. Two weeks ago, Aaron Utsey, 21, was gunned down in the courtyard. She’d known Mr. Utsey since he was a toddler, and she rode the bus with his family to the morgue. The attendant unzipped the green bag. “They opened that sack and Aaron had two big holes in his chest,” she said. “Then the shooters put a video of the shooting on Facebook.” She asked to remain anonymous out of fear for her own safety. She shakes her head, mournful. “I feel bad for my grandchildren, but I won’t let them out. That” — she points out her window at a playground with slides surrounded by sycamores — “is play at your own risk.” New York City’s safety narrative is a long-established boast. This city is strikingly safe. Crime fell dramatically during the tenure of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and has plummeted in the first four months of the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Yet sad and bloody corners remain. Walk the Brooklyn canyons of the Howard, Linden, the Tilden and Van Dykes Houses, or the Webster Houses in the Bronx, and watch young men watch you. The Daily News recently reported that crime had edged up stubbornly in the public houses in the past five years. Tough police tactics have beaten a hasty retreat. Stop and frisk metastasized under the former commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, as a legal police tactic became blunt and discriminatory. Two years ago, I traveled to York College and spoke to 20 matriculating black male students. All reported being stopped multiple times. The de Blasio administration has settled two civil rights lawsuits aimed at curtailing such policies. A third lawsuit is not settled. It takes issue with vertical patrols, which is the police practice of walking the stairwells of public housing. Civil rights groups charge that African-Americans and Latinos “bear the brunt” of these “intentionally discriminatory and race based” tactics. Image Edythe Jenkins has lived in the Linden Houses for 31 years. Credit Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times I don’t doubt there are abuses. Yet the separate and unequal rhetoric of an earlier age grates. What is truly separate and unequal is that so many public tenants live with a menace unknown to most New Yorkers. Talk to tenants and, yes, they want the police to respect their sons, most definitely. They also want officers to walk their stairwells and to peer into elevators. In this fashion, they hope their sons remain alive. I call Michael Gecan, a cool-eyed organizer for the Industrial Areas Foundation, which organizes for tenants and homeowners throughout the city. “Here’s something I’ve never heard from tenants in public housing: ‘There are too many police here,’ ” he says. “More often is the opposite.” Edythe Jenkins has lived in the Linden House for 31 years. She sent her son off to boarding school, and now he has two college degrees and a beautiful house near Atlanta. Her daughter is a 911 operator. When her grandson visited, Ms. Jenkins stood by the living room window and watched as he walked to buy a quart of milk at the Pawn Rite store. She saw young men eying his sneakers. She trotted over and challenged them. “They started to get in my face, then one of them recognized me and they backed off,” Ms. Jenkins said. That night, her grandson slept restlessly. “There was so much reefer smoking in the hall it woke him up.” That beloved grandson — now a high school senior and visiting Harvard and Yale — told her: “Grandma, you have to leave.” She can’t. This is home. Last summer she had a barbecue, which was lovely until some fool across the courtyard shot a gun. “Stop and frisk?” she says. “I have no problem with that. Please, I want vertical patrols, too.” I asked Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union about this. She knows that many upper-income New Yorkers live in buildings with doormen, where nonresidents must be invited in. She acknowledges that much policing resides in a realm of gray. “Cops need to know their turf and the residents,” she said. “We have to move away from hyperaggressive policing.” That is undoubtedly important. No less important are those two bullet holes in the door of 40 Glenmore Avenue.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Showing Concern for the President, Even While Criticizing Him

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama must be touched by all the concern Republicans are showing him these days. As Congress examines security breaches at the White House, even opposition lawmakers who have spent the last six years fighting his every initiative have expressed deep worry for his security. “The American people want to know: Is the president safe?” Representative Darrell Issa of California, the Republican committee chairman who has made it his mission to investigate all sorts of Obama administration missteps, solemnly intoned as he opened a hearing into the lapses on Tuesday. Yet it would not be all that surprising if Mr. Obama were a little wary of all the professed sympathy. Although the target of the legislative scrutiny is the Secret Service, not the president, the furor over security has left the White House on the defensive. At Tuesday’s Capitol Hill hearing and at the daily White House news briefing, the questions fueled an air of scandal: Who knew what when, and was there a cover-up? Democrats joined in the grilling, and some were as tough as or tougher than any Republican on the Secret Service director, Julia Pierson. But privately, some Democratic officeholders and strategists have complained that the episode contributes to a broader impression that the Obama administration’s competence has come under fire on a variety of fronts, including last year’s botched rollout of Mr. Obama’s health care program, the breakdown of services at the Veterans Affairs Department and the handling of a series of international crises. Coming just weeks before midterm elections, they said, the intense focus on the matter might further undercut confidence in the government Mr. Obama runs even though it was hardly his fault an intruder with a knife made it into the White House. “This is an opportunity to make it seem like nobody’s in charge in the Obama administration, even though it’s almost certainly not the case that political appointees could have done anything to change the facts in this situation,” said Matt Bennett, a White House aide under President Bill Clinton and now vice president of Third Way, a political group. “I’m not surprised that they’re doing this.” Like other Democrats, Mr. Bennett said Congress had a duty to exercise oversight over the Secret Service and investigate what went wrong, and he said serious questions had been raised in recent days. At the same time, Democrats said, if it happened to damage the perception of the president in the process, Republicans would not object. “I do think for a lot of Republican congressmen, this is a twofer,” said Erik Smith, a former House Democratic aide and a campaign adviser to Mr. Obama. “The Secret Service may be in the line of fire, but they’re not the only target.” Not every Democrat sees it that way. Paul Begala, no stranger to partisan warfare as a longtime adviser to Mr. Clinton, said Republican lawmakers were asking the right questions out of genuine concern. “This is totally on the level,” he said. “They’re acting like real human beings and patriotic Americans.” Other Democrats said Republicans had good reason to preserve that impression. “So far there is bipartisan outrage and concern,” said Margie Omero, a strategist for Democratic candidates for nearly 20 years who has studied midterm voters in swing Senate races this year. “But at this time of year, candidates will try just about anything to find an opening. It could definitely backfire if Republicans look like they’re making political hay out of a threat to the president’s life.” Republicans rejected the notion that their inquiry had any political implications. “This is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, chairman of a subcommittee looking into the episode. “This is an American issue. I don’t want it to be the political football, but we in the United States of America are self-critical. It’s one of the beauties of our nation is we do hold ourselves accountable.” And they were aided by the tough statements voiced at Tuesday’s hearing by several of the committee’s Democrats, who told Ms. Pierson that they did not have faith in her leadership and accused her of caring more about protecting her reputation than the president’s life. While the director of the Secret Service is appointed by the president, the White House under either party typically defers to the agency on how to handle the president’s security. Even when a president is angry at missteps — as reports suggest Mr. Obama was after a 2011 shooting at the White House when one of his daughters was home — he rarely expresses that publicly. For one, it might come across as impolitic. For another, it might offend the very people a president depends on most. So even though Mr. Obama had nothing to do with the various problems involving his security beyond appointing Ms. Pierson last year, his White House now finds itself in the position of defending the Secret Service to a degree. At his daily briefing on Tuesday, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, was buffeted with sharp questions about when the president found out about the intruder and whether the Secret Service had been candid in describing that incident and others. While acknowledging concerns over the incident, Mr. Earnest gave Ms. Pierson an endorsement at a time when some critics are calling for her resignation. “What we saw was a willingness that she demonstrated in testifying before Congress under oath on live television today, a commitment to leading an agency with a very difficult mission,” he told reporters. “She is somebody who took responsibility for the incident that occurred about 10 days ago. She also took responsibility for ensuring that the necessary reforms were implemented to ensure it never happens again. That is a sign of leadership.” And that is a conclusion that Republicans can disagree with, all with Mr. Obama’s interests at heart.

Republicans
White House
Secret Service
Democrats
US Politics
Barack Obama
Julia A Pierson
Omar J. Gonzalez


River Plate’s Relegation Sparks Riots in Argentina

Abstract: River Plate was relegated to the Argentine second division for the first time in its 110-year history, sparking street battles in Buenos Aires between the police and fans. The relegation came after a 1-1 tie with Belgrano in the second leg of a demotion playoff; Belgrano won the first leg, 2-0. Violence broke out in the stands a minute before the match ended and quickly spread outside the stadium. Medical officials said at least 55 people were hurt. ¶ Marco Pappa’s goal from 30 yards in the 58th minute lifted the Chicago Fire to a 1-1 tie with the visiting Red Bulls. Chicago extended its unbeaten string to seven matches (1-0-6). The Red Bulls’ winless streak reached three (0-1-2), but the point for the tie pulled them 2 behind Philadelphia for first in the Eastern Conference. The Red Bulls’ Joel Lindpere scored from deep on the right side in the 40th minute before Pappa tied the score on a one-hopper that bounced over goalkeeper Bouna Coundoul. (AP)

Argentina
Soccer
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Buenos Aires (Argentina)


The Best and the Worst: The Rangers and the Knicks Are a Study in Contrast

Abstract: The Rangers and the Knicks share two buildings, an owner and not much else. That has been especially true this season, with the Rangers claiming the Presidents’ Trophy after assembling the N.H.L.’s best regular-season record, and the Knicks setting new marks for futility on an almost nightly basis. At Madison Square Garden, opposites attract: the best team in hockey and one of the worst teams in basketball, living side by side. On Wednesday, the juxtaposition was more glaring than usual. As the Rangers went through their final preparations before opening the playoffs Thursday night against the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins, the Knicks took the court at the Garden to close out their 82-game slog by facing the Detroit Pistons. “We still have one more day on the job,” Coach Derek Fisher said before the game, “and that’s all we’re focused on.” The finale was fitting for the Knicks, who punctuated their worst season in franchise history with a 112-90 loss — a result largely indistinguishable from their other 64 losses this season. Sated with free food and drink on fan appreciation night, the crowd cheered and groaned, bearing witness to the bitter end. Image Mats Zuccarello of the Rangers, who set a franchise record for victories and points this season. Credit Adam Hunger/USA Today Sports, via Reuters If the Knicks (17-65) are searching for a model in their pursuit of respectability, they could do worse than the Rangers, who occupy the same training facility in Greenburgh, N.Y. Glen Sather, the Rangers’ president and general manager since 2000, has helped to provide the sort of stability that the Knicks have lacked atop their organization. While James L. Dolan, who owns both teams, has been meddlesome with the Knicks, in constant search of the quick fix, he has left Sather to do his work with something that at least approaches autonomy. The Rangers are aiming for a second straight trip to the N.H.L. finals. The Knicks, who have cycled through general managers and coaches as if they were ratty socks, have made three playoff appearances in the last 11 seasons. Phil Jackson, the Knicks’ president, has been charged with changing all that. On Wednesday morning, the Rangers practiced for about an hour: short and to the point. Afterward, Coach Alain Vigneault touched on some of the usual topics ahead of the playoffs: injuries, lineups and tactics, albeit in the vaguest terms possible. The postseason was going to be “very challenging,” he said, but his team was going to be “focused on the game at hand.” Vigneault also paid his respects to the Penguins, who are led by Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. “We’re going to have to do a real solid job against them,” Vigneault said. The Rangers and the Knicks cross paths occasionally, around the cafeteria for breakfast or lunch. Last season, some of the Rangers participated in the Knicks’ N.C.A.A. tournament pool, the Rangers’ Derek Stepan said. But for whatever reason, the pool fell through this season. Perhaps the Knicks had undergone too much turnover. Image Carmelo Anthony of the Knicks, who concluded the most abysmal season in franchise history on Wednesday. Credit Frank Franklin Ii/Associated Press “I’ve never had a season like that,” the left wing Tanner Glass said. “I can’t say I know what they’re going through, but it’s got to be tough.” In any case, there are subtle reminders that the two teams share the facility, albeit on opposite sides of the building. “You see all their big shoes around,” said James Sheppard, a center who began the season with the San Jose Sharks. Keith Yandle, a defenseman who was traded from the Arizona Coyotes on March 1, was probably the one player on the Rangers who could best relate to the Knicks’ struggles. At the time of his trade, the Coyotes had a 20-36-7 record. When he joined the Rangers, Yandle essentially went from basement to penthouse overnight. “It makes for a long season,” Yandle said of the Knicks. “But they’re professionals and know how to handle it.” Image The Knicks’ bench during their 112-90 loss to the Pistons on Wednesday night. Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times About six hours later, at the Garden, the Knicks quietly went about their business of getting ready for their final game of the season. Players stretched. Fans trickled in. Fisher participated in his 82nd pregame session with members of the news media, gatherings that began to feel more and more like contractual obligations over the final weeks of the season. The Knicks showed up having won two straight, a landmark achievement for a group that barely resembled the collection of players who had congregated at training camp. Gone: Iman Shumpert and J. R. Smith, now employed by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Gone: Amar’e Stoudemire, who signed with the Dallas Mavericks after being released. Gone, at least until next season: Carmelo Anthony, who underwent knee surgery in February. So Fisher was not exaggerating when he said the team had undergone a “major transformation.” The Knicks are expected to embark on another one this summer, given their imminent pursuit of free agents and their pick in the draft lottery. “I’d say we’ve changed a lot and been through a lot,” Fisher said before the game. “But I’m very proud of the guys that are in the locker room because of what they’ve continued to do. We’ve had a lot of really tough nights, but I don’t think they’ve ever quit on themselves.” Many fans seemed to treat the giveaways on the season’s final night as if nuclear winter were nigh. Merchandise at the team store was 40 percent off. The mood was almost celebratory: school was getting out for summer, an extended stretch in which the Knicks are assured of going undefeated. Image The Rangers practiced Wednesday while preparing to open their first-round series against the Penguins on Thursday. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Minutes before tip-off, Jackson found his seat in the lower bowl. He was joined by Jeanie Buss, his fiancée and the president of the Los Angeles Lakers. Dolan has pledged to give Jackson the freedom to run the team as he sees fit — a concept that sounds familiar to those who follow the Rangers. The Garden went dark for player introductions, and the crowd cheered for the likes of Langston Galloway, Lance Thomas and Cole Aldrich — players who have provided effort, but not many victories. The Knicks were down by 12 points in the second quarter when a fan wearing an Allan Houston jersey sank a half-court shot for $10,000 as part of a promotion. They were down by 8 in the third when Anthony appeared in uniform on the large video boards to deliver a recorded message. “I’m really looking forward to next season,” Anthony said, “and seeing you back on the Garden.” The Pistons slowly built their lead from there. Each timeout taken by Fisher was more ineffective than the last. He could only slow the pace of the game as fans filtered out, and then the final buzzer: a 22-point loss to a 50-loss team as the Knicks finished with the second-worst record in the league, ahead of only the Minnesota Timberwolves (16-66). “It was obviously a difficult season for us, as a team,” Fisher said. “And we were forced to deal with some realities.” The Garden was empty by the time workers began to remove the court, revealing the ice beneath. Because for one team, the season lives on.

Rangers
Knicks
Madison Square Garden
Basketball
Ice hockey
James L Dolan


Fair-Housing Case Is Settled Before It Reaches Supreme Court

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A housing discrimination case scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court next month has been settled, the parties announced Wednesday night. Civil rights groups, wary of a Supreme Court ruling that they feared could weaken protections for victims of housing discrimination, welcomed the development. The settlement, which concerned a housing development plan in Mount Holly, N.J., will leave open a question some of the justices seem eager to decide: whether claims under the Fair Housing Act require proof of intentional discrimination. The court has agreed twice in the past two years to resolve whether proof of “disparate impact,” shown through statistics, is sufficient. But both cases were withdrawn before the justices could rule. The more recent one concerned a plan to demolish homes in Mount Holly Gardens, a mostly black and Hispanic section of the township, to make way for more expensive ones that housing advocates said were less affordable. Residents and a community group in Mount Holly, which is about 25 miles northeast of Philadelphia, sued, arguing that the plan violated the Fair Housing Act. Image Mayor Richard Dow at the meeting, which settled a case over a development plan that some said violated the Fair Housing Act. Credit David M. Warren/The Philadelphia Inquirer, via Associated Press The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit , in Philadelphia, allowed the case to go to trial under the disparate-impact theory. The settlement, which resolved a decade-long litigation, was approved at an evening meeting of the Mount Holly Township Council. It will increase the number of homes to be built and set some of them aside for current residents. Others will receive relocation allowances. The balance of the development project will proceed. “Our goal was to ensure that Mount Holly Gardens would remain a viable community, not just a redevelopment parcel,” the township’s lawyer, George Saponaro, said in a statement. A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Olga Pomar, said in a statement that the settlement “offers our clients the opportunity they have always wanted — to be able to remain in Mount Holly and participate in the revitalization of their community if they so choose, rather than being uprooted from the homes they have lived in for many years, separated from their neighbors, friends and families.” The parties said they would ask the Supreme Court to dismiss the case, Mount Holly v. Mount Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, No. 11-1507 . It had been scheduled to be argued on Dec. 4. Last year, officials in St. Paul, under pressure from the Obama administration, withdrew a Supreme Court case presenting the same issue.

Housing
Discrimination
Real Estate
Lawsuits
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Mount Holly NJ


Faulty Gauge Cited in Turkish Airlines Crash Near Amsterdam

Abstract: PARIS — A faulty altimeter contributed to the fatal crash last week of a Turkish Airlines jet, sending a signal that caused it to slow down too abruptly, Dutch investigators said Wednesday. The plane crashed about 3,300 feet short of the runway, just outside Amsterdam’s international airport, killing 9 of the more than 130 people aboard. The Dutch Safety Board, which is investigating the Feb. 25 accident at Schiphol Airport, told reporters that one of the jetliner’s two radio altimeters, instruments that gauge an aircraft’s altitude, had incorrectly indicated that the plane, a Boeing 737-800, was approximately at ground level, prompting the automatic pilot to throttle back the engines in preparation for touchdown. The plane was actually at almost 2,000 feet. The Dutch investigators’ preliminary report said that flight recordings indicated that the pilots had been notified that the left altimeter was not working correctly, but that “provisional data indicates that this signal was not regarded to be a problem.” It also said that “initially the crew did not react to the issues at hand.” Later, when an alarm indicated that the plane’s speed was too slow, it appears that the pilots gave the plane more fuel, but by then it was too late, according to Pieter van Vollenhoven, an investigator who spoke at a news conference in Amsterdam, according to The Associated Press. Fred Sanders, a spokesman for the Dutch Safety Board, said previous flight recordings indicated that the plane had problems twice before with its left radio altimeter during landings. The report said that “the board is of the opinion that extra attention is needed for the role of the radio altimeter when using the automatic pilot and the automatic throttle system.” “The board has issued a warning for Boeing today requesting extra attention to a part of a manual for the Boeing 737, in which is stated that in case of malfunction of the radio altimeter(s), the automatic pilot and throttle system that are connected to this may not be used for approach and landing,” the report continued. Boeing, which has sent a team to assist the investigation, issued a statement on Wednesday reminding its Boeing 737 operators to “carefully monitor primary flight instruments during critical phases of flight.” Jim Proulx, a spokesman for Boeing in Seattle, declined to provide any further information about the accident. A Boeing spokeswoman, Sandy Angers, said that when one of the two radio altimeters fails, a message is supposed to appear on the captain’s flight display. The plane that crashed hit the ground traveling about 110 miles per hour, landing on its tail, then skidded on its belly and broke into three parts. The jet was at 1,950 feet when the altimeter malfunctioned, indicating the plane was at minus eight feet, according to the Dutch report. It said that there was mist and that the runway would not yet have been visible. Gideon Ewers, a spokesman for the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations in London, said there was nothing unusual in the fact that the pilots of the flight, en route from Istanbul, were landing by autopilot. More than 1,500 Boeing 737-800s have been delivered to 89 customers, with 1,490 more on order for airlines around the world.

Turkish Airlines
Airports
Airlines and Airplanes
Accidents and Safety
Amsterdam (Netherlands)


Democrats and Allies Wage Fight to Derail Labor Secretary Pick

Abstract: Democrats on Capitol Hill, together with labor groups and other allies, are waging an unusually aggressive campaign to derail the nomination of Andrew Puzder as labor secretary. Mr. Puzder, chief executive of the company that franchises Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. fast-food restaurants, has been a lightning rod as an outspoken foe of the Obama administration’s overtime regulation and the Affordable Care Act. It is not clear how the Democrats intend to flip any Republican votes in the committee or in the full Senate, as they will need to do to defeat the nomination. But if nothing else, the nomination battle has become a proxy for a larger struggle between labor and industry groups to shape public opinion on issues crucial to both. In a forum that Senators Patty Murray and Elizabeth Warren organized earlier this week, one current and two former workers at one of the chains offered accounts of being denied proper overtime pay, and of being pressured to work off the clock and through breaks they were legally entitled to take. On Thursday, fast-food workers and a variety of others protested Mr. Puzder’s nomination in more than a dozen cities across the country, in some cases at Hardee’s or Carl’s Jr. locations and in front of Department of Labor offices in others. A spokesman for one of the organizers of the protest, the union-backed Fight for $15 minimum-wage campaign, said that thousands of workers had turned out. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, made it clear that Mr. Puzder was one of the Democrats’ biggest targets in the confirmation hearings. “Mr. Puzder has spent his career rigging the system against American workers by opposing the overtime rule, opposing the minimum wage, and underpaying his own workers,” he said in a statement. “His nomination as labor secretary is proof positive that the incoming administration won’t keep its promises to working people.” Democrats and labor groups were heartened this week that the Senate panel overseeing his confirmation process, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, delayed the hearing for the second time, to an indeterminate date. The session had been tentatively scheduled for Thursday and then tentatively rescheduled for next Tuesday. But Senate Republicans and the Trump transition team said the delay in the confirmation hearing did not dim Mr. Puzder’s prospects. Taylor Haulsee, a spokesman for Senator Lamar Alexander, the committee chairman, attributed the delay to “the complicated Senate calendar in January.” A Trump transition official not authorized to speak on the record said that Mr. Puzder had submitted his paperwork to the Office of Government Ethics, which vets candidates for potential conflicts of interest, and that he had held meetings with senators this week and had more scheduled for next week. The ethics office did not return multiple calls seeking elaboration on the status of the paperwork. Industry lobbyists close to Mr. Puzder, the head of CKE Restaurants, complain that Democrats are spreading reports that the nomination is in trouble to build momentum against him. “I think it’s complete spin; I think they are grasping at straws,” said Matthew Haller, senior vice president for public affairs and communications at the International Franchise Association, where Mr. Puzder was a board member until this month. Mr. Haller said that the sophistication and intensity of the efforts against Mr. Puzder — which also include a slick website, antilaborsecretary.org — was predictable because labor groups had poured enormous resources into a campaign against the fast-food industry in recent years. “From our perspective, the opposition groups are doing exactly what we expected them to,” he said. “They’ve been spending tens of millions of dollars attacking franchising, fast food, McDonald’s. That they can turn that playbook into this attack is not surprising.” Tuesday’s Senate forum featured discussion of a survey of workers at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s by the progressive group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United in which many said they had been required to work uncompensated hours and most said they had come to work sick, either because their boss had not allowed them to stay home or because they could not afford to. A group called the Employment Policies Institute, which receives funding from the restaurant industry, circulated a rival survey of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s employees in which a vast majority indicated that they felt “safe and respected” at work, and that “Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s is a great place to work.” Each side disputed the survey methodology of the other. Many industry lobbyists argued that Mr. Puzder was being mischaracterized as a conservative ideologue when in fact he is a pragmatic business leader. “Andy has repeatedly said he’s not against a higher minimum wage,” said Cicely Simpson, executive vice president for government affairs and policy at the National Restaurant Association. “It just needs to be one that works for employees and employers alike.” Mr. Puzder has opposed a $15 per hour minimum wage but said he favored “rationally” increasing the minimum wage. Mr. Haller, of the International Franchise Association, said the group filled Mr. Puzder’s spot on its board on Thursday — an indication of its confidence in his confirmation prospects. Still, Democrats and progressive activists suggested that there were issues beyond labor policy that could make Mr. Puzder’s hearings and confirmation vote contentious, even among certain Republican senators. Not least, they said, were the company’s ads featuring skimpily attired models, which Mr. Puzder has enthused about publicly, and his record as an anti-abortion activist in the 1980s, when his writing was the basis for part of a Missouri law banning the procedure at public facilities and extending legal rights to fetuses. “There’s a broad base of concern — most low-wage workers in this country are women,” said Minor Sinclair, the head of the Decent Work program in the United States at the antipoverty group Oxfam, which is opposing Mr. Puzder’s nomination. “He portrays demeaning ads toward women, the objectification of women, to sell his burgers.”

Senate
CKE Restaurants
Appointments and Executive Changes
US Politics
Jobs
Andrew F Puzder
Congress


Nintendo Wins the Graying Gamers

Abstract: Among video game manufacturers, Nintendo has arguably done the most to recruit older gamers. Its Wii system is a minor hit in retirement homes, and Brain Age, a program for the company’s DS system, is marketed in part to graying users worried about losing their mental sharpness. A recent report from Packaged Facts, a market research firm, suggests that this strategy has paid off: almost twice as many older gamers use Nintendo systems as use PlayStation, the runner-up. “Over the last few years, the driving force behind the increasing diversity and the mass appeal of gaming had been Nintendo,” said Bob Brown, the report’s author. “My wife’s mother lives in a retirement community, and the last time we were there, everyone was excited because they were getting a Wii in there.” The report also found that women were more prevalent than men among older video gamers. They make up 46 percent of 18-to-24-year-old gamers, but 55 percent of those 65 and older.

Nintendo Co Ltd
Elderly
Computer and Video Games
Wii (Video Game System)


Col. Donald Blakeslee, Decorated World War II Flying Ace, Dies at 90

Abstract: Col. Donald Blakeslee, one of the most decorated fighter pilots of World War II and the commander of the first American fighter squadrons to reach Berlin as the Allies ground down the German Luftwaffe, died Sept. 3 at his home in Miami. He was 90. The cause was heart failure, said his daughter and only immediate survivor, Dawn Blakeslee. Ms. Blakeslee said she did not announce her father’s death last month because of his reluctance to talk about his achievements. As commander of the Fourth Fighter Group of the Eighth Fighter Command, Colonel Blakeslee led three squadrons of 16 single-seat, single-engine P-51 Mustangs, each equipped with six machine guns mounted in the wings and sighted so that the bullet streams could converge on the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulf fighters that were trying to down Allied bombers. By war’s end, the Fourth Fighter Group was credited with destroying 1,020 German aircraft, 550 shot out of the air and 470 hit while on the ground. That total surpassed the 992 German planes taken out by the 56th Fighter Group, led by another fighter ace, Col. Hubert Zemke. Walter J. Boyne, a former director of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, said on Tuesday that Colonel Blakeslee was one of the cadre of commanders who “blunted the edge of the Luftwaffe” and “went on to lead the progressive destruction of the German air force.” In his four years in the European theater, Colonel Blakeslee flew nearly 500 missions and had about 1,000 combat hours to his credit, believed to be more missions and hours “than any other American fighter pilot of World War II,” said Barrett Tillman, a former executive secretary of the American Fighter Aces Association. On March 6, 1944, Colonel Blakeslee’s fighter group became the first to fly above the fleet of Boeing B-17s and Consolidated B-24s as they each dropped up to 4,000 pounds of bombs on Berlin. As German fighters tried to intercept the bombers, Colonel Blakeslee’s planes swooped down. Of the aerial combat, the colonel later told reporters: “There’s nothing unusual in the missions. They all follow the same pattern. Either you get on Jerry’s tail or he gets on yours. That’s all.” “We got low enough to see Berlin only once,” he said. “We were down to around 10,000 feet and we could see that blocks and blocks of Berlin had been bombed absolutely flat.” On April 8, 1944, the Fourth Fighter Group set a record for the European theater, shooting down 31 planes in one day. Then, in late June, Colonel Blakeslee led his fighters on one of their most arduous missions, escorting shuttle-bombers to Russia. “When the war had progressed to a certain point where American bombers had the range to over-fly German-held territory,” Mr. Boyne said, “the idea was to land them in the Soviet Union, then return and bomb on the way back. You double the utilization of your bombers.” “This required, particularly on the part of the fighters,” Mr. Boyne continued, “great endurance and navigation abilities. It strained the plane and strained the pilot.” In a ceremony in England on April 11, 1944, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe, awarded the Distinguished Service Cross to Colonel Blakeslee. Beside the colonel was Capt. Don Gentile, a member of his flight group, who was receiving the same decoration, for destroying 30 German planes. In all, according to Mr. Tillman of the fighter aces association, Colonel Blakeslee received two Distinguished Service Crosses, seven Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Silver Stars, six Air Medals and the British Distinguished Flying Cross. A decade later, for his Korean War service, he received the Legion of Merit, another Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals. Donald James Mathew Blakeslee was born on Sept. 11, 1917, in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. As a child, he became fascinated with planes while watching the Cleveland National Air Races. In the mid-1930s, he and a friend bought a Piper Cub. In 1940, after his friend crashed the plane, Mr. Blakeslee went to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. After pilot training, he was sent to Britain, where he flew combat missions for the Royal Air Force, mostly with American Eagle squadrons composed of American volunteers. In September 1942, he was transferred to the United States Army Air Forces and assigned to the Fourth Fighter Group. He became group commander in January 1944. That year, the colonel married Leola Fryer; she died in 2003. He retired from the Air Force in 1965. Colonel Blakeslee was a taciturn man with a no-nonsense presence that commanded respect from his fighters. A New York Times article described how, on Sept. 11, 1944, he was “ill at ease” in front of photographers and reporters while being interviewed about his exploits. “It’s more fun facing a squadron of Jerries,” he said.

Pilots
World War II (1939-45)
Blakeslee Donald
Deaths (Obituaries)


Report of an Inquiry Into a Former President Rattles Brazil

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s political establishment was shaken on Friday by the news that federal prosecutors had opened an influence-peddling inquiry into the business activities of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president who presided over Brazil’s emergence this century as a leading power in the developing world. The report comes at a difficult time for the governing Workers Party, with Mr. da Silva’s protégé and successor, Dilma Rousseff, struggling with calls for her impeachment over a bribery scandal at the national oil company. Mr. da Silva, 69, was among the founders of the party in 1980. The inquiry by a special anticorruption unit of the Public Ministry, a body of independent prosecutors, is reportedly delving into Mr. da Silva’s ties to Odebrecht, one of Brazil’s largest construction companies. That the inquiry, a preliminary step before deciding whether to open a broader investigation, had opened in recent days was first reported by the Brazilian magazine Época. The prosecutors are examining whether Mr. da Silva improperly used his influence as a former president and one of Brazil’s most powerful political figures to obtain loans from Brazil’s national development bank, a state-controlled financial institution with a lending portfolio larger than that of the World Bank, for Odebrecht’s dealings in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. After eight years as president, from 2003 to 2010, when Brazil enjoyed robust economic growth and expanded its antipoverty projects, Mr. da Silva leveraged his prominence to attract lucrative speaking engagements outside Brazil. He often traveled abroad on one of Odebrecht’s private jets, Época reported, and he is also facing scrutiny over the company’s activities in Angola, Ghana and Venezuela. In a statement, a spokeswoman for Odebrecht denied any wrongdoing in connection to the questions raised in the inquiry. Paulo Okamotto, the president of Mr. da Silva’s institute, said there was nothing improper about Mr. da Silva’s speeches. Speaking before supporters in São Paulo on Friday during a commemoration of International Workers’ Day, Mr. da Silva did not specifically address news of the inquiry. But in a speech , he lashed out at some in the news media, referring specifically to Época and Veja, another magazine that has reported critically on him. “I see in these Brazilian magazines, which are trash, the insinuations,” Mr. da Silva said. “They’re out to get Lula, but that’s what I like if they want a fight.”

Brazil
Embezzlement
Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva


Woman’s Body Found in Vacant Lot in Brooklyn

Abstract: A woman’s body was found Wednesday afternoon stuffed in a black laundry bag that had been left in a vacant lot in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the police said. The woman, whose identity and cause of death were not immediately known, looked to be in her 40s, the authorities said. The body had been left among weeds, tires and trash at the corner of Lott Avenue and Bristol Street, just steps from the sidewalk. It appeared that the body had not been there long before it was found about 12:30 p.m., the police said. Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city’s medical examiner, said she could provide no further information until an autopsy was performed on Thursday. Neighbors said the area, which is near a barber shop and a convenience store and one block away from Public School 165, was normally busy at that time of day, raising questions about how someone had left the body there without being seen. Still, some residents seemed nonchalant about the prospect of a killer in their midst. “Nowhere is safe,” said Edward Allwood, 83, a retired hotel worker who lives across the street from the lot. “Everywhere they’re doing the same kind of dirt.” Ranelsa E. Kirton, 33, who also lives nearby, said she had lived in the area for about two years and did not worry much about her safety because police cars often patrolled the area. “It doesn’t give me an unsafe feeling per se,” she said, but “it will make me more aware of the surroundings now.”

Brownsville (NYC)
Deaths (Fatalities)
Murders and Attempted Murders
New York City


Looks Deceive: This Destination Drew Too Well

Abstract: HOLLIS, N.H., Nov. 10 — The town dump here is a kind of unofficial social club, the place to buy Girl Scout cookies, meet political candidates and catch up with friends while unloading a week’s worth of trash. Or as one resident, Ted Crane, puts it, “There’s no joy greater than coming to the dump on Saturday morning.” Now that joy has been dimmed by new town regulations that limit each user’s visit to 30 minutes a day. The cutoff has annoyed both those who say they won’t have enough time to get together with neighbors and others who claim a half-hour just isn’t long enough to get rid of all their garbage. “It’s tyranny,” said Peter Band, a former selectman who maintains that “the townspeople should be able to continue their time-honored tradition of socializing here.” If there is to be any limit at all, Mr. Band would favor one of no less than 90 minutes. “It takes me at least an hour and a half to empty my truck,” he said. Officials of Hollis, a community of 7,000 about 50 miles northwest of Boston, say the 30-minute limit was needed to cut down on loitering and traffic congestion at the dump. And while the Board of Selectmen was at it, unanimously adopting the rule on Nov. 5, it also barred people from digging in the dump’s scrap metal pile. Not only is that metal a source of town revenue, with Hollis grossing $15,000 to $20,000 a year by recycling it, but people had taken to climbing on the pile in flip-flops and letting their children play near it. “It’s a safety issue,” said Selectman Mark E. Johnson. “This policy is about a handful of individuals.” But the backlash has been to the 30-minute rule. A big reason for its adoption is the popularity of the dump’s “still good” table, where residents disposing of their trash put items that they no longer want but that are still usable. On Saturday a coffee maker, two pairs of cross-country skis, a dresser and a Disney Princess Castle were among the things up for grabs. Some people browse at the table for hours and have their cars parked adjoining it, for easy transfer should they find something they want. That blocks traffic. “They’re here all day long,” Peter Carroll said of a number of fellow townspeople, “like seagulls waiting for someone to drop a piece of food.” Candidates and charitable groups seeking to raise money will still be allowed to remain at the dump all day, provided that they receive permission from the dump’s manager, Joanie D’Esopo. But otherwise Ms. D’Esopo plans to enforce the time limit, nicely asking people to leave. If they don’t, she’ll call the police. Ms. D’Esopo said she understood why people wanted to hang out at her dump, which she has lovingly decorated with a Pollockesque painting and various stuffed animals she found in the trash, all of which now hang from the structure where residents put their recyclables. Artificial flowers protrude from parking cones, and a small garden lies nearby. Not a whiff of trash is in the air. “It’s a beautiful dump,” Ms. D’Esopo said. Still, “it’s very hard to run a smooth and efficient operation when people are jamming up traffic so they can hover over a table,” she said. “You have rules in your own home, so there should be rules here, too. It’s a place of business.” Many residents disagree, saying the town is undercutting the tradition of treating the dump as a gathering place where neighbors chat over coffee and doughnuts and buy a couple of chocolate bars for a high school fund drive. Lois Elkind has mixed feelings. She understands why the selectmen want to move traffic along and get browsers away from the still-good table, but worries that people won’t stick around long enough to buy the Girl Scout cookies she helps sell each March. “This is where you see people,” said Ms. Elkind, who was tossing her recyclables. “I view it as a social event. I don’t feel it’s necessary to block people from staying and standing around. It’s not a big deal.” She has an ally in Jerry DiGrezio. “This is the common place,” said Mr. DiGrezio, who was leaving some workout equipment next to the still-good table. “Just like they say everyone will pass through Times Square once in their life, everyone who lives in Hollis will be here at some point.” Of those who make the rules, he had a thought. “They have a stopwatch on me right now,” he said. “The Hollis dump liberation front might come out to get me.”

Waste Materials and Disposal
New Hampshire