Simcha Felder’s Change in Party Leanings Is No Surprise to Constituents

Abstract: Simcha Felder was elected to the State Senate just a few weeks ago as a Democrat, defeating a Republican incumbent for a newly drawn district in an Orthodox Jewish pocket of Brooklyn. But he promptly announced that when he got to Albany he would caucus with and mostly vote with the Republicans. Such a switch might startle or anger voters in many districts, but in the Hasidic and other Orthodox communities of Borough Park, Midwood and Kensington, his switch is being greeted with a collective shrug; party affiliation is less important there than more practical concerns, like obtaining government money for tuition and busing at yeshivas, a goal Senate Republicans have seemed more willing to accommodate. Mr. Felder, whose move could help Republicans retain control of a closely divided Senate, made clear all along to voters that he would decide which party to caucus with based on his community’s needs. He defeated David Storobin, a Republican who had been elected to the Senate in a hard-fought special election just eight months earlier; the district lines were then redrawn to reflect population shifts identified in the 2010 census, and Mr. Felder won the seat in a landslide. “It was understood that he was a Democrat by name, but not in his views so much,” said Rabbi Zvi Mermelstein, 29, of Borough Park. But his decision has upset leaders of the Democratic Party . The Brooklyn Democratic chairman, Frank Seddio, called it “both a disgrace and a complete betrayal of his constituents.” And even in the district, there are some misgivings. “I could live with him caucusing with the Republicans, but he did it when he didn’t even know who the Democratic leader was going to be,”’ said Moshe Friedman, a host of “ Let’s Talk Tachlis ,” a radio show. The district, with its large population of Orthodox Jews, was created in part after a request from Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella group representing both Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox organizations, to consolidate the Orthodox vote in one district, according to Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz, the chief lobbyist in Albany for Agudath Israel, who noted that other ethnic groups had made similar requests in other parts of the city. The concentration of Orthodox Jewish voters had a potential advantage for Republicans in heavily Democratic New York City: though most ultra-Orthodox Jews are Democrats, many have often voted for Republicans. In the November election Mitt Romney easily captured the district’s support in the presidential campaign, and the community’s leaders have forged an increasingly close relationship with Republican leaders in Albany. Their top legislative priority has been winning state assistance for religious education, because many Orthodox families have six or more children and educate them in yeshivas. “There’s no question that the Senate Republicans are more sensitive to the needs of nonpublic schools,” Rabbi Lefkowitz said. In recent years, Agudath Israel and other Orthodox groups have successfully pressed for legislation allowing the use of public money for school buses that run after 4:30 p.m. — as most yeshiva buses do — and for state tuition grants for rabbinical and other professional theology students. The change in college tuition grants alone will mean about $18 million a year in benefits. The State Legislature also passed a controversial measure that would have required public school officials to consider the “home life and family background” of special education students when placing them in schools. Critics said the measure would have required using public dollars to send more students to religious schools, and it was vetoed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo . Mr. Felder, an ordained rabbi though not a practicing one, would not agree to an interview. His senior adviser, Kalman Yeger, said he was “trying to stay out of the limelight” because he still worked as a deputy city comptroller. Mr. Felder, 53, is a certified public accountant with a bachelor’s degree from Touro College and a master’s degree from Baruch College’s business school. He has four children and is a grandfather. He worked as an auditor for the city’s Department of Finance and then for 10 years as chief of staff for the neighborhood’s longest-serving Orthodox politician, Dov Hikind. Mr. Felder was elected to the City Council in 2001, and as a councilman he was known not for grand policy initiatives but for tending to the nit-picking annoyances of daily life. He got a five-minute grace period for alternate side-of the street parking violations and made it illegal to drop advertising circulars on a homeowner’s lawn without permission. As a child, Mr. Felder attended a Hasidic yeshiva — Yeshiva Karlin Stolin — but he was ordained through Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, an ultra-Orthodox school congenial to the “black hat” or “yeshivish” movement: Jews who are as rigorous as the Hasidim but do not venerate particular grand rabbis. He has acknowledged regularly consulting rabbinical authorities for policy guidance, a selling point in Hasidic areas. In 2006, when Mr. Felder was a councilman, he took a break during the vote to elect a Council speaker, rather than cast a vote for Christine C. Quinn, who is openly gay. The ultra-Orthodox condemn homosexuality as contrary to biblical law. His father, Tzvi Mordechai Felder, was a beloved rabbi who led a room-size synagogue in his home in Borough Park. The other day, four elderly men studying Talmud there said Mr. Felder still set up chairs for worship and laid out a Sabbath afternoon meal. They were not critical of his decision to caucus with the Republicans. “The Democrats go out for gays, which is completely against Orthodox Judaism, so I don’t blame him for going along with the Republican Party ,” said Rabbi Jacob Neuberger, 85. “He’s a man of principle.”

Democratic Party
New York City
Republican Party
Elections State Legislature
Felder Simcha
Jews and Judaism
New York State


On Air Force One, No Lightening Up on Burgers and Cake

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A blue-cheese burger with lettuce, tomato and garlic aioli, accompanied by Parmesan-sprinkled fries. Chocolate fudge cake. Pasta shells stuffed with four cheeses, topped with meat sauce and shredded mozzarella, and served with a garlic breadstick. Cake infused with limoncello. Buffalo wings with celery, carrots and homemade ranch dip. Such was the fare served to passengers aboard Air Force One during a particularly grueling three-state day on the campaign trail just before the 2012 election. Not much has changed since. “It’s American fare, in that it’s not going all arugula on people,” said Arun Chaudhary, who was President Obama’s videographer from 2009 to 2011. “It’s not aggressively nutritious.” To say the least. The food on Air Force One is well known among White House staff members and reporters for being plentiful in quantity and broad in appeal, but not always the perfect mirror of the nutritional recommendations coming out of the office of the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has made healthy eating and living her mission. According to the Agriculture Department’s MyPlate guide , unveiled by Mrs. Obama in 2011, fruits and vegetables should make up half of a meal. (White potatoes alone will not do the trick, as the first lady wrote in a recent editorial .) Mrs. Obama has also emphasized the need to reduce the consumption of sugar, salt and fat in her fight to improve school lunches as part of her Let’s Move initiative against childhood obesity. It is unclear whether Mrs. Obama has urged extending those standards to the president’s plane, where the meals are prepared on board by enlisted Air Force personnel who have credentials from military and civilian culinary schools. The White House directed questions about the meals to Air Force One officials, who declined to comment on whether they had spoken with Mrs. Obama about the food they serve. But they wrote in an email that healthy food had always been on the menu, and that they strove to tailor the cuisine to the standards of Let’s Move. “I’ve got to imagine the only thing tougher than getting elementary school kids to eat healthy is getting a cabin full of reporters to do the same,” said Sam Youngman, who covered the White House for the newspaper The Hill during the early days of the Obama administration. Some reporters and staff members praise the cuisine on Air Force One, as well as the flight attendants who remember frequent fliers’ dietary restrictions and are happy to slip a sandwich to those unsatisfied with the menu. “They seem to be pretty well-rounded meals,” said Jared Favole, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal who particularly enjoyed the yogurt and granola sometimes served on morning flights when he was covering Mr. Obama. Many others dismiss questions about the food’s nutritional value by pointing out that grapes, apples and other fruit are always available in bowls in each cabin. Image Hershey’s Kisses, branded with the president’s seal and signature. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times And there is no fryer on board, although for safety, not health, reasons. “While everything is pretty much top-notch, the fries are always soggy,” Mr. Chaudhary said. The menu tends to reflect the preferences of the president, who generally eats the same thing as the rest of the travelers, said Mark Knoller, a CBS News correspondent who has reported on every president since Gerald R. Ford. Jim Watson, an Agence France-Presse photojournalist and “picky eater” who subsists on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on presidential trips, said George W. Bush’s plane featured more meat and potatoes. One day in 2002 when Mr. Bush was in Florida to promote fitness, the official Air Force One lunch, printed on gold-edged menu cards for every passenger, consisted of a corned beef sandwich, steak fries and strawberry cheesecake. (Mr. Bush ordered off the menu that day, choosing egg salad on toast.) Ronald Reagan was always popping jelly beans, a habit that spread to others on his plane, said Kenneth T. Walsh, a journalist for U.S. News & World Report who wrote a book about Air Force One. And before going vegan after leaving office, Bill Clinton had a well-known fondness for burgers and fries. But there is one person who can overrule the president, Mr. Knoller said. “You could tell by the food whether Mrs. Clinton was on the plane,” he said, meaning salad and other greens were on the menu. Mr. Chaudhary, who estimates that he flew on Air Force One about three times a week, said the Obamas’ taste for healthier fare had in fact shaped some of the current menus. He said the president enjoyed more nutritious food like salmon, almonds and broccoli (unlike the elder George Bush, who banned the mother-approved vegetable from his plane). Mr. Obama also has a soft spot for Honest Tea, a low-calorie, caffeine-free drink — Black Forest Berry flavor, to be specific. The Obamas indulge in burgers and pizza, and on occasions when the motorcade passes a restaurant that boasts the world’s best wings, for example, Mr. Obama may ruin his dinner along with his sauce-drenched staff members, Mr. Chaudhary said. “He’s like the rest of us,” he said. The grocery bills for a plane equipped to feed up to 100 people at a time can add up. According to documents obtained by CBS News through a Freedom of Information Act request, the administration spent more than $18,600 supplying the plane with food and cooking supplies for a nine-day presidential trip to Asia in 2010. The price for a three-day trip for the 2011 Group of 20 summit meeting was more than $4,700. The staff stocks up the way many Americans would for a major trip: at grocery stores like Safeway and Harris Teeter and at bulk distributors like Costco and Sam’s Club. Often overlooked is the fact that staff members and reporters are charged for their meals aboard Air Force One. (News organizations pay airfare for travel on Air Force One, as they would on a commercial airline.) Air Force One may not have a gift shop, but travelers are encouraged to take home a sweet souvenir: small boxes of M&Ms and, as of last year, Hershey’s Kisses, donated by the candy companies and branded with the president’s seal and signature. Considering the source, many seem more likely to admire the package than to indulge in the sugar. “I have never seen an open box of presidential M&Ms,” Mr. Favole said.

Air Force One
Nutrition
Michelle Obama
Barack Obama
US Politics


U.C.L.A. Gunman May Have Targeted 2nd Professor and Killed Woman

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Before he fatally shot a U.C.L.A. professor he had studied under, a gunman apparently killed a woman near his home in Minnesota, then drove to California planning to gun down two professors, but found only one of them, law enforcement officials said Thursday. The gunman, identified as Mainak Sarkar, killed Prof. William S. Klug on Wednesday morning, then took his own life, leaving a note asking that someone check on his cat at his apartment in St. Paul, Minn., the Los Angeles police chief, Charlie Beck, said. In that apartment, police found what they described as “a kill list,” including the names of Dr. Klug, another U.C.L.A. professor and a woman who lived in nearby Brooklyn Park, Minn. Los Angeles officials alerted the police in Brooklyn Park shortly after midnight, and the officers who went to the address found “an adult female who was deceased of an apparent gunshot wound,” said Mark Bruley, deputy police chief of Brooklyn Park. Officials in both cities declined to give the woman’s name or describe her relationship with Mr. Sarkar. People who knew her identified her as Ashley Hasti, a medical student and former girlfriend of Mr. Sarkar’s; public records show that for a time, they had both lived at her address in Brooklyn Park, a modest split-level beige house on a quiet, tree-shaded street. Ms. Hasti studied Asian languages and literature at the University of Minnesota and later enrolled in medical school there. “She was just ever so interested in everything,” her grandmother Jean Johnson said. “That girl was so smart that you just couldn’t get ahead of her.” Hennepin County records show that Ms. Hasti and Mr. Sarkar were married in 2011. The current legal status of their marriage was unclear, though neighbors said they did not remember ever seeing Mr. Sarkar around her home in the suburbs north of Minneapolis. Video The police in Brooklyn Park, Minn., said a woman found dead in her apartment had appeared on a “hit list” left by the man who killed a U.C.L.A. professor and himself. Credit Credit Jerry Holt/Star Tribune, via Associated Press Ms. Hasti met Mr. Sarkar about five years ago, after she went to Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., to take pre-medicine courses, and her family later spent some time with him, Ms. Johnson recalled. She remembered some jarring moments, like Mr. Sarkar saying that his family had a history of violence, and falsely disparaging Ms. Hasti’s academic integrity. But they broke up more than a year ago, she said, and her granddaughter never indicated that she feared him. Early Thursday morning, Ms. Johnson said she got a call from Ms. Hasti’s other grandmother, who broke the news. “She just screamed at me, ‘Ashley’s dead,’ ” Ms. Johnson said. “I just about had a heart attack right there.” The murder-suicide at the University of California, Los Angeles, was the latest in a long string of campus shootings, but the fact that professors were specifically targeted heightened what some faculty members said was a growing fear of violence and prompted many to think about experiences they have had that might have angered students. New laws in Texas and other states allowing people to carry concealed weapons on college campuses have heightened concerns about gun violence, though concealed carry is still prohibited on most campuses around the country, including those in California. Two prominent faculty members have left the University of Texas at Austin, citing the change, and a third has said he will try to defy the law and bar guns in his classroom. “You never want to have to think about something like this, and now I’m not sure I can avoid thinking about it,” said Joshua Dienstag, a political science professor who spent two and a half hours on Wednesday barricaded in a room with four others while U.C.L.A. was on lockdown. Image Mainak Sarkar Credit Facebook, via Associated Press Mr. Sarkar, 38, who immigrated from India, earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from U.C.L.A. in 2013. On March 10, in a blog post that has since been deleted, Mr. Sarkar called Dr. Klug, 39, “a sick person.” “I was this guy’s Ph.D. student,” he wrote. “We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it another student. He made me really sick.” Chief Beck said at a news conference that investigators think the claim was unfounded and that Mr. Sarkar had “some mental issues.” On Wednesday, Mr. Sarkar walked into the Engineering IV building, entered the fourth-floor office of Dr. Klug , and opened fire. The professor, married and the father of two small children, was considered a star in computational biomechanics, a field that applies engineering principles to biology and medicine. Dr. Klug was a devoted youth baseball coach. His research dealt with topics as esoteric as the mechanical structures of the protein shells around viruses, and of layers of fatty molecules in cell membranes. The note Mr. Sarkar left in the office talked about a grievance against the other professor on his list, Chief Beck said, adding, “Detectives believe, and I support their belief, that he went there intending to kill two faculty members from U.C.L.A.” Image Security personnel frisked people at U.C.L.A. after the shootings. Credit Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The other professor was off-campus at the time, he said, and it was not clear if Mr. Sarkar tried to find him. Professors had known of Mr. Sarkar’s grudge against some faculty members, he added, but they did not think he posed a threat. Court records in Minnesota indicate that Mr. Sarkar’s only run-ins with the law were minor traffic and parking tickets. He took two semiautomatic pistols with him to U.C.L.A. — both legally purchased in Minnesota, officials said — along with multiple magazines, but fired just three shots from one weapon. “He could have caused many more fatalities,” Chief Beck said. As students and faculty here tried to resume classes and prepare for finals, some professors said that campus shootings have subtly transformed the educational experience and have made them more cautious. David Myers, a former chairman of the history department who has offered “active shooter” training, said that when he met with students who seem enraged or unstable, he found himself watching their hands, ever more cognizant of the possibility that they might be armed. “I sort of lived in fear of this day coming to my own campus,” Dr. Myers said. “And it did. It did.” Ideally, a university “is a place of free movement of ideas and people,” he said. “When that is constrained in the way it was yesterday, something is killed off.” Stephen Aron, who succeeded Mr. Myers as chairman of the history department, said he had become quicker to refer troubled students to counselors rather than trying to discuss their problems. Digital communication makes it harder to tell how students really are, he added, because “it’s harder to parse out tone in an email than face-to-face.” “People are feeling a bit discombobulated today,” he said. “I’m hearing that mostly from my staff. They’re the ones there every day, so in some sense they’re most vulnerable in those situations. It’s not surprising they feel particularly scared.”

Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Mainak Sarkar
William S. Klug
Brooklyn Park
Ashley Hasti
College
University of California
Murders and Homicides
School Shootings and Attacks


Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Said to Be Near Deal to Buy Precision Castparts

Abstract: Warren E. Buffett has long spoken about his “elephant gun,” the huge pile of cash at Berkshire Hathaway that is reserved for big deals, and his itchy trigger finger. Now, the billionaire appears to be ready to fire that gun and claim his largest-ever acquisition. Berkshire Hathaway, the sprawling industrial empire that includes Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad and Fruit of the Loom underwear, is near a deal to buy the metal parts manufacturer Precision Castparts , a person briefed on the matter said. An agreement is expected as soon as this week. Such a deal would probably be worth more than $30 billion, given Precision Castparts’ market value of about $27 billion. It would not only be the largest takeover in Mr. Buffett’s five-decade investing career at Berkshire, but also a standout in a banner year for mergers in general, with $2.7 trillion in acquisitions already announced. Yet it had been time — past time, by Mr. Buffett’s reckoning — for Berkshire to strike another of its big-game deals. The conglomerate was sitting on nearly $67 billion in cash as of June 30, drawn in large part from its vast insurance empire that generates an enormous and quickly refilling pile of capital that needs to be invested. “In effect, the world is Berkshire’s oyster — a world offering us a range of opportunities far beyond those realistically open to most companies,” Mr. Buffett wrote in his most recent annual letter to Berkshire shareholders. And increasingly, Berkshire, whose market value stands at $354 billion, needs to strike enormous deals to continue growing its profits and revenue. (The conglomerate reported a 37 percent decline in its second-quarter earnings on Friday.) Hence a deal for Precision Castparts, which is in many ways the type of business that would draw Mr. Buffett’s eye. Based in Portland, Ore., the 62-year-old company makes products that include turbine airfoils and valves and bolts and nuts for airplanes. The company reported $1.5 billion in profit for the year ended March 29, on top of $10 billion in sales. Precision Castparts may not have the name recognition of H.J. Heinz , which Berkshire bought along with the investment firm 3G Capital in 2013. But it fits in solidly with many of the conglomerate’s other acquisitions, including the chemical maker Lubrizol and the industrial manufacturer Marmon. The company has also grown by acquisitions, something that businesses under Mr. Buffett’s watch do as well. At the same time, Precision Castparts may also represent something that Mr. Buffett prizes highly: a good value. The company’s stock has fallen 17 percent this year, hurt by falling demand for products used by energy producers. Precision Castparts is familiar to Mr. Buffett and his team, since Berkshire already owns a roughly 3 percent stake in the company. News of the talks was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. Buffett’s Diverse Deals The businesses Warren Buffett likes to acquire are also leaders in their industry, have stable management, and reliably produce lots of cash. Here are Berkshire’s five biggest deals, which all fit the mold.

Warren Buffett
Berkshire Hathaway
Precision Castparts
Mergers and Acquisitions


Iraq Violence Shifts to Smaller Scale

Abstract: BAGHDAD — On a day when the prime minister of Turkey arrived to promote business ties between his country and Iraq , a spate of attacks, including roadside bombings, jewelry heists and the slaughter of six women and a man in Mosul that may have been related to prostitution, rippled across the country. More than a dozen people — casualty figures are imprecise in the immediate aftermath of attacks and often change in the ensuing days — were killed. The attacks, all unconnected, illustrate the changing complexion of violence in Iraq today: fewer large-scale, coordinated explosions that aim at innocent civilians, and an apparent increase in assassinations and robberies. In a neighborhood in northeast Baghdad on Monday, three bombs went off outside a market and then gunmen stormed two jewelry shops, killing four people and wounding nine, a Ministry of Interior official said. The gunmen made off with cash and jewelry, and the attack had the hallmark of previous ones that security officials believe were intended to raise money for insurgent groups. This year, a captured leader of an insurgent group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, said in an interview on state television that a series of attacks on jewelers and goldsmiths last year were conducted to generate money to carry out attacks. Even as the nature of violence changes, the threat of larger attacks by insurgent groups affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization that includes Al Qaeda in Iraq, and groups connected to the former government remains. On the outskirts of Hilla, south of Baghdad, one person was killed by a bomb attached to a car, and two improvised explosive devices struck a joint Iraqi Army and police patrol, killing two and wounding three. In the northern city of Mosul, six women and one man were killed after gunmen stormed a house. Neighbors suggested that the building had been used as a brothel, but police officials could not immediately confirm that. Nevertheless, overall violence in Iraq has dropped sharply, especially since the height of the sectarian civil war in 2006 and 2007, but also compared with last year. In February, for example, 184 people were killed in attacks around the country, with the exception of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, according to statistics from the Ministry of Interior. In February 2010, 435 were killed. So while the daily thrum of smaller attacks goes on, the drop in violence has allowed a version of everyday life to blossom. A new Ferris wheel just opened in one of Baghdad’s largest parks, rising above the blast walls, and on Sunday, the first day of the workweek here, it was packed with families. A fancy car dealership has sprung up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, as have countless new restaurants and coffee shops. And high-level diplomacy has returned, not just in the form of the visit Monday by the Turkish leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but also in preparations for an Arab League summit meeting, which is scheduled to be held here in May. Before the democratic uprisings across the Middle East, many worried that security in Iraq would force the meeting’s cancellation. Now, people worry about whether other Arab leaders will fear being overthrown if they leave their countries.

Iraq
Robberies and Thefts
Crime and Criminals


In Military City, Government Reassurances Are Little Comfort

Abstract: LAKEWOOD, Wash. — The Pentagon’s announcement that thousands of civilian Defense Department employees would soon return to work, even as the federal government shutdown continued, was welcome news to this city, which generations ago hitched its star to the military. But the anxiety remains, as do the wounds already inflicted on lives and businesses, in some cases by months of spending cuts even before the shutdown began. About 60,000 active-duty and civilian workers are stationed just across the interstate from Lakewood, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, about an hour south of Seattle. About 4,500 of those workers, many of them residents or customers, were furloughed. Thousands of others have been holding their breath, uncertain when they might be paid, even as they continue working. “It’s going to help, to some degree,” Gov. Jay Inslee said at a news conference in Seattle on Sunday, talking about the prospect of defense workers returning to the job. Such cautious, if not lukewarm, enthusiasm was shared by Casey Ingels, the chief executive of Tactical Tailor, a military supply contractor in Lakewood, who appeared at Mr. Inslee’s side. Image Kaiya Taylor, 32, a civilian worker at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Credit David Ryder for The New York Times “We have zero predictability,” said Mr. Ingels, whose company makes specialty clothing for soldiers and has laid off about two-thirds of its work force, about 100 people, over the last year. The disruption, he said, was a result of the earlier, automatic federal spending cuts known as sequestration, now compounded by the uncertainties and wrinkles of the shutdown. But the biggest continuing threat, Lakewood business owners and city and state officials said, is psychology. When things look uncertain — not just in Congress, but on the Lewis-McChord base, with conflicting signals and confusion about the rules of the shutdown — wallets tend to slam closed. “No more frills,” said Naani King, 37, a registered nurse who works on the base at Madigan Army Medical Center. She and her husband, Robert, 40, also a nurse, are considered essential personnel, and so continued to report for work last week. But they were so fearful that their economic lives could unravel if the stalemate dragged on — or that the deferred pay they had been promised might not materialize by the time bills were due — that Ms. King took $20,000 out of her retirement account late last month to create a cash cushion, then battened down the hatches. Image Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington said the callback of most civilian Defense Department workers was welcome, but not enough. Credit Rachel La Corte/Associated Press “It afforded us the wiggle room,” she said. “I don’t like to admit that we had to do this. But I’m not worried now that I’m not going to make our mortgage.” Christine Curren, co-owner of the Moon Rise Cafe near Lakewood’s big shopping complex, the Towne Center, said the uncertainty had her second-guessing herself about causes and consequences. Last Thursday, for example — normally a strong day for breakfast, coffee and smoothies at the restaurant she runs with her daughter — was strangely slow. Was it the weather? The shutdown? Something else? It certainly did not help that her customers were nervous about the shutdown. “When they get nervous, I get scared,” she said. Some economists have warned that the shutdown could set back the nation’s halting recovery from the recession. But much of Pierce County, here in the Lewis-McChord orbit, never had a robust recovery to begin with. The county had one of the highest housing foreclosure rates in the state during the recession, and it was slow to recover its previous job totals, according to state figures. It is second only to King County, home of Seattle, in the number of current and retired federal workers, according to a state report released last year. In the past, that created a base of stability. Video A look at the budget standoff’s effects on America’s economy, institutions and government workers. Credit Credit Win McNamee/Getty Images But the economic disruption caused by sequestration, residents and business owners said, also cut a wide and painful swath through pocket books and businesses, leaving people like Kaiya Taylor wounded even before the shutdown began. Along with thousands of other workers here, Ms. Taylor, a 32-year-old medical support assistant at Lewis-McChord, was hit on July 1 with a one-day-a-week unpaid furlough as a result of the sequestration cuts. That put her shaky household finances over the edge, she said, and she was unable to make the $370 monthly payments on her 2003 Ford Escape. Last month, just before the shutdown, the vehicle was repossessed. Mr. Inslee said at his news conference in Seattle on Sunday that, despite the Defense Department’s announcement on Saturday that it would call back almost all of its 350,000 civilian employees, the Washington National Guard would continue to struggle with personnel cuts as a result of the shutdown. A big National Guard training weekend that would have brought carloads of people from around the state through Lakewood last Friday was also canceled, so those citizen soldiers did not stop to buy gas or energy bars or anything else — another bit of lost economic life that will never be counted. A veterans’ employment specialist at the state Employment Security Department, Nick Towne, who also spoke at the news conference, said he expected to be furloughed this week. “I have veterans ready to work, I have employees ready to hire, and I can’t get to them,” he said. Ms. King, the nurse at Lewis-McChord, said in a telephone interview on Sunday that the $20,000 check from her savings had arrived in the mail the day before, but that the lock was still on her family’s spending. “I don’t really trust what they’re going to do or say,” she said, referring to the promise by Congress that federal workers will receive back pay. “Until I get that paycheck in my hot little hands, we’re going to play it safe. We’ve got too much to lose.”

Closings
Lakewood Washington
Joint Base Lewis-McChord Washington
US Military
Military Bases
Federal Budget


Vincenzo Nibaldi Ejected for Violation

Abstract: Vincenzo Nibali, a former Tour de France champion, was thrown out of the Vuelta a España for holding on to a support vehicle after being involved in a big crash on the second stage in Caminito Del Rey, which was won by Esteban Chaves of Colombia. Officials said Nibali broke the rules by letting the support vehicle from his Astana team pull him along after getting back up after a crash about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the finish. Nibaldi, who won the Tour in 2014, finished nearly a minute and a half behind the leaders before being expelled. Chaves beat Tom Dumoulin of the Netherlands to take the overall leader’s red jersey.


Case of a Check-Cashing Corpse Is Dismissed

Abstract: That Virgilio Cintron was dead that day is not in doubt. But no one can say precisely when he died, and that is why his friends have gone free. Was Mr. Cintron breathing when his buddies, James P. O’Hare and David Daloia, pushed him in a chair to the Pay-O-Matic check-cashing store in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan on Jan. 8? That’s what they said. Never mind that in a detective’s judgment, he was unresponsive, flopped around unsteadily in the chair, and appeared to show early signs of rigor mortis. The police said those clues indicated that Mr. Cintron, 66, had died earlier that day, and that Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia had wheeled their friend’s stiffening corpse to the office in a bold, if poorly thought-out, scheme to cash his $355 Social Security check. The medical examiner performed an autopsy on Jan. 9 and determined that he had been dead, of complications of Parkinson’s disease, for less than 24 hours, an assistant district attorney, Courtney Groves, said on Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court. But the medical examiner could not state the time of death with certainty, Ms. Groves conceded. Since prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Cintron had died before leaving the apartment en route to Pay-O-Matic, Judge Evelyn Laporte dismissed the forgery and larceny charges against Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia. They were free, ending a gritty and macabre Hell’s Kitchen tale of three longtime friends who relied on each other in many ways to get out of fixes and to survive the streets. Mr. Daloia and Mr. O’Hare returned to the apartment at 436 West 52nd Street where they had last cared for Mr. Cintron. They said again that they thought their friend had been alive. “If the medical examiner couldn’t tell his time of death, and they are the professionals, then how could we?” Mr. Daloia asked, standing on the stoop of his building. He said he picked up Mr. Cintron off the couch a few weeks before his death and carried him to the same check-cashing store, where he was able to wave at the attendant. But he hadn’t been taking his medication, and his condition was getting worse. “What did we do? We didn’t do anything, except what we normally do,” Mr. Daloia said. Mr. O’Hare, who had lived with Mr. Cintron for seven years and said he was his primary caregiver, said he felt particularly bad. He said the landlord of Mr. Cintron’s building was trying to have him evicted. “Maybe I feel like I should have done more,” he said. “I could have done more to help him with the medication. I loved the guy. I miss him.” Mr. O’Hare’s lawyer, Robert C. Gottlieb, said, “We have said from the beginning that James and David did not know that their very good friend was dead when they went to the check-cashing facility.” “All charges were dismissed, the record has been sealed and it is the end of a very sad story,” he said. On Jan. 8, Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia dressed Mr. Cintron in his apartment, carried him downstairs and propped him up in a computer chair on wheels. Then they pulled and dragged the chair east to the Pay-O-Matic at 763 Ninth Avenue near 52nd. The spectacle drew a crowd. A detective at a nearby restaurant looked up from lunch and noticed Mr. Cintron’s feet bouncing off the edge of the sidewalk. “Well, this is a dead guy,” the detective, Travis Rapp, recalled thinking to himself. He confronted them. “Oh my God, my friend is gone?” they said, Detective Rapp recalled later that day. Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia have said there was nothing unusual about what they did. For a long time before Mr. Cintron died, the three of them depended on one another, they and their lawyers have said. They pooled money, nursed one another through sickness and shared food and the shelter of the small apartment where Mr. Cintron had grown up and where he and Mr. O’Hare lived. The friends said Mr. Cintron had been ill for some time from Parkinson’s disease, weak, at times unresponsive and unable to care for himself. That Tuesday morning was no different, they said. “They have grown old together,” Mr. Daloia’s lawyer, Allan P. Haber, said of the three, adding, “The friendship doesn’t end if one of them is needy.” Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Daloia were arrested on charges of criminal possession of a forged instrument, second-degree forgery and attempted petty larceny. They were also accused of violating a section of public health law that requires that a body be buried or incinerated “within a reasonable time after death.”

Cintron Virgilio
Decisions and Verdicts
Checks and Checking Accounts
Hell's Kitchen (NYC)


Newspapers Begin to Push Back on the Web

Abstract: How much is this sentence worth? This paragraph? This column? Would copying and replicating it elsewhere enhance its value — or diminish it? Questions about who owns content became a jump ball last week. The struggle results from a rethinking of business models that have existed almost since the birth of print. Faced with an ad market that no longer supplies enough revenue to meet costs, many newspapers are now considering putting up pay walls on their Web sites, long an anathema in Internet culture. Consumers used to roaming freely across the Web in search of news and opinion may soon find themselves being asked to register at news sites and, in some cases, to fork over a credit card number. Last Monday The Associated Press announced at its annual meeting that it would begin tracking how its content and that of its member newspapers was used and seek a share of the revenues generated by it. If an accommodation was not reached, The A.P. and its members would pursue legal remedies, the association said. Beyond the saber rattling (or empty threat, if you remember how poorly hunting down users went for the record industry), The A.P. said it would build its own search-friendly landing page, a place where links to licensed content from member newspapers (including The New York Times ) would be aggregated. There are sites big and small that scrape content and serve it up with their own ads, often supplied by Google , but the clearest target of The A.P.’s announcement was Google News, which was not mentioned in the announcement, but which features an enormous amount of content from The A.P. and its member newspapers. (The A.P. has its own licensing agreement with Google, but has decided to serve as a proxy for the industry at large; in an internal A.P. document used to brief the board, Google got, um, significant brand exposure.) “It truly was historic, the industry came together for the first time,” Thomas Curley, the chief executive of The A.P., said in a telephone interview last week. “I have never seen that degree of consensus in my career.” How desperate are newspapers? On Thursday, The Los Angeles Times front page included an “article” that was an advertisement for “Southland,” NBC ’s new cop drama, written and produced by NBC — in the eyes of many a new low for an industry that has seen plenty of them. The current recession combined with a structural shift in ad spending and consumer habits have left the newspaper industry in a box canyon. Many believe they have no choice but to shoot their way out, even if it means taking on Google and the hundreds of millions of eyeballs it represents. There is logic to that desire, although the timing may be off by a decade or so. Still, just last week, Google’s YouTube announced it would create a music video site with the Universal Music Group and share revenue. Sony is in talks to license feature films to the service and, a week before, Disney said it had a deal to license short-form content to YouTube. But those are all entertainment deals, and consumers, at least some consumers, are used to paying for entertainment. News content, past pratfalls aside, has generally always been free for the taking in an ad-supported Internet format. The book industry, though, received a cash payout from Google in exchange for the right to scan out-of-print books. With abundant precedent for the sharing of revenue for professionally produced content, an increasingly bereft newspaper industry is asking, “Where’s ours?” Put another way: The taking of one company’s content and selling ads against it for the benefit of another company is simply not fair, no matter what the lawyers stipulate. But even though this is not the world newspapers might have chosen, it is the one that they live in. Deprived of links — the oxygen of the Internet — many news providers would wither away. The desperation was reflected in the rhetoric. “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories,” said William Dean Singleton, chairman of The A.P., last Monday in a speech to the membership. “We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore.” The debate heated up from there. Jeff Jarvis, a newspaperman turned digital scold, responded to The A.P. as if to a wayward child. “You blew it,” he wrote in a post. And then repeated the sentence five more times. Robert Thomson , the editor of The Wall Street Journal , was equally blunt, though in service of the original argument. “There is no doubt that certain Web sites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet,” he told the newspaper The Australian last Monday. Danny Sullivan, another former newspaper guy now steeped in the Web, deconstructed Mr. Thompson’s remarks and asked him, in rather forceful terms, to close his piehole. “Shut up,” he wrote on Daggle, his personal blog. “Seriously, shut up.” Only Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, was still looking for a middle way, in an appearance before the Newspaper Association of America that highlighted his company’s brilliant combination of rhetorical appeasement and tactical aggression, suggesting his company may be the solution to a problem they helped create. “We think we can build a business — again, with you guys — with significant advertising resources, where the advertising is targeted to the content,” he said. Mr. Schmidt also reminded his audience that The A.P. already has an agreement with Google for its own articles, and added rather pointedly that every producer of content can opt out of their search with a single line of simple code. He suggested that might not go over well with end users, though. “These are ultimately consumer businesses,” he said, “and if you piss off enough of them, you ultimately won’t have any.” (Mr. Schmidt and others have acknowledged that the Web is in danger of becoming a wasteland as reporting attenuates. “Let me just say precisely: It’s a sewer out there,” he said last week.) The genesis of the decision approved by The A.P. board a little more than a week ago was a meeting in January in New York among several media executives. It was decided at that time that The A.P. would put a stake down on the issue of ownership of its content. “For more than a century, advertisers have subsidized readers and viewers, and that is changing,” said Mr. Curley. “We are in the beginning of that change. To say that the Internet is fixed and we missed that opportunity is nonsense. We are in the beginning of a transition of what will be a proliferation of models, many of which will include getting more compensation from readers and users.” Digital evangelists rightfully heap scorn on newspapers that leveraged monopolies into huge profits without investing for a day they knew would come, but newspapers have walked back the cat on the cost side as far as they can. Their gaze will inevitably turn toward consumers and the portals that serve them. The reckoning is at hand.

Newspaper
Google News
Price
Computers and the Internet
AP
Advertising Marketing
Online advertising


For French Ski Resorts, a Scramble to Offset Snow Deficit

Abstract: CHAMONIX, France — Bright sunshine and mostly brown slopes welcomed skiers to the Chamonix-Mont-Blanc Valley just before New Year’s Eve, a sight that hardly came as a shock. Across France, December 2015 was already on track to be the warmest since 1900, a fact since confirmed by Météo France , the national weather service. The toll of global warming on Alpine ski resorts has already been well documented. A 2006-7 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , which landed in the middle of another warm winter, had an immediate impact. In Germany, Der Spiegel warned of “ Snow Cannons Against the Apocalypse ,” and The Daily Telegraph in Britain declared, “ Global Warming Could Spell Ruin for Alps .” The facts were bad enough without the hyperbole: By 2005, temperatures had increased three times the global average. According to one forecast, 75 percent of Switzerland’s glaciers will disappear by 2050. Of the 666 Alpine ski resorts examined by O.E.C.D. researchers, only 404 will be able to rely on natural snow once temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, from 2006-7 levels, which could happen as soon as 2050. The losers will be resorts on low-lying slopes. The reaction to the report was described as “mindblowing” by its editor, Shardul Agrawala, head of the organization’s environment and economic integration division. “Since then, every time there is a warm winter, it bubbles up again and there is new interest,” he said. Many of the report’s findings have since been taken into account by governments of the Alpine countries as well as by the ski industry. “What is happening is largely related to more reactive measures,” Mr. Agrawala said. He noted an “exponential” increase in the reliance on snow-making machines, the development of upper reaches of ski areas, more grooming of slopes, and a turn toward shaded, north-facing slopes, where snow — when there is any — lingers for longer. “It is about how much you can squeeze with existing snow, or supplement with snow making, but there may be limits to both,” he said. Snow — “white gold,” they call it here — did fall over much of the French Alps after the New Year, just as the crucial holiday season was coming to an end. Here at Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, one of France’s highest ski resorts, 42 percent of the region’s 507 ski runs were closed during the holidays, according to Fabienne Martinez, communications director for the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc, which runs the resort. Up until the late snowfall, skiing was concentrated on the upper runs of the north-facing Grands Montets slope, making for crowded and icy skiing. But at least there was some snow. At some nearby low-lying resorts, helicopters were spotted dropping buckets of fresh snow to replace the fast melting slush on the baby slopes below. Even Chamonix had to come up with ways to keep its visitors busy — petting zoos for children, air rifle contests for adults, paragliding for the brave. It was saved by the unique gold mine on its doorstep — Mont Blanc, Western Europe’s highest mountain, which can be best viewed from a ride up to the nearby peak, the 12,600-foot-high Aiguille du Midi, and other scenic tours that don’t involve skiing, but are included in the region’s unlimited ski pass, together with the local swimming pool, ice skating rink and museum. These added attractions helped increase the sales of unlimited daily ski passes 15 percent and sent the number of rides up to the Aiguille du Midi soaring 65 percent compared with last year, Ms. Martinez said. France’s $2 billion ski industry is the largest of the five major Alpine nations. French mountains are also a major employer, reportedly the country’s biggest during the four winter months that traditionally make up the Alpine skiing season. Given the importance and the fragility of winter tourism, French ski resorts are scrambling not only to make up for the snow deficit, but also to keep visitors entertained in a world where they can always jump on a plane and go to a beach. The days of skiing in the Alps are not numbered, said Mr. Agrawala, who has skied the mountains himself. “It will just be more concentrated at higher altitudes,” he predicted. “There will be winners and losers.”


New York City and State Reach Agreement on M.T.A. Capital Plan

Abstract: After months of tense debate over financing for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, state and city officials on Saturday announced a deal to pay for the authority’s ambitious plans to repair and expand the nation’s largest transit system, with New York City agreeing to sharply increase its contribution to the authority, a move state officials had demanded. The agreement resolves a long and publicly contentious standoff between Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio over whether the city should pay significantly more toward the five-year $29 billion capital plan — the authority’s largest ever — which will cover the cost of maintenance and improvements to the sprawling network of subways, buses and commuter rail lines. Transportation officials and transit advocates had warned that the spending plan was vital to ensuring that the region’s public transit system could meet a growing list of challenges, including an aging subway system struggling to handle booming ridership amid rising delays and overcrowding . Under the agreement, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, pledged $8.3 billion in state funds to the authority, while the city would contribute $2.5 billion. The city had initially agreed to provide $657 million, but the de Blasio administration had recently held negotiations with representatives of the authority and the governor’s office over increasing the city’s contribution. The deal included several conditions proposed by Mr. de Blasio, such as a promise by the state not to use money intended for the capital plan for any other purpose and giving the city say over projects in the five boroughs. The agreement reflects an acknowledgment by the city that it should shoulder a greater share of the costs for a transportation system that its residents rely on every day. The capital plan also provides financing for the next phase of the Second Avenue subway, an expansion project eagerly awaited by many who live and work in Manhattan. The final deal follows the broad outlines of a proposal offered in July by Thomas F. Prendergast, the chairman of the authority, who suggested a framework in which the state would contribute $8.3 billion and the city would contribute $3.2 billion. Mr. Prendergast, who was reappointed by Mr. Cuomo this year, had grown increasingly combative toward Mr. de Blasio in recent weeks, repeatedly calling on the city to pay more toward the capital plan. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, had said that as part of any agreement, he wanted assurances that the city’s contribution to the state-run authority would not be siphoned off and redirected to the state budget. City officials had urged Mr. Cuomo to provide more details about how the state would pay its share and argued that the city should have more say over which projects were addressed in the capital plan. For Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio, the agreement represented a rare compromise between two politicians who spent the summer locked in a feud. Their clash spilled over into negotiations over the authority’s financing, as Mr. de Blasio warned that the city could be shortchanged under the governor’s preferred plan, while Mr. Cuomo suggested that the city was trying to skirt its fiscal responsibilities. The discussion over the capital plan had grown increasingly bitter in recent weeks. Mr. Prendergast threatened to slash financing for New York City projects if the city failed to take on a larger share of the costs, a move that the city’s transportation commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, who is also an authority board member, called “punitive and pretty divisive.” The Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents subway and bus workers, ran advertisements showing Mr. de Blasio aboard a graffiti-filled subway train, prompting the mayor to call the campaign “pitiful” and misleading. Praising the deal on Saturday, the union stood by its advocacy campaign, and criticized Mr. de Blasio for having been “on the wrong side of this issue.” “We owe a great debt of gratitude to Gov. Cuomo for pressing this issue so hard and bringing it to a conclusion so that the M.T.A. would not be forced to scale back the capital plan,” said John Samuelsen, president of T.W.U. Local 100. In announcing the agreement, the mayor and the governor backed away from the cutting rhetoric they have used lately. Mr. de Blasio said in a statement that the city’s contribution represented an “historic investment — the city’s largest ever general capital contribution — while ensuring that New York City dollars stay in New York transit.” For his part, Mr. Cuomo said in a statement that the deal “would not have been possible without everyone stepping up to pay their fair share.” If Mr. Cuomo and the authority gave the city assurances about the allocation of money, the financial details were far closer to the governor’s preferences than to Mr. de Blasio’s initial offer. And the city is paying dramatically more despite Mr. de Blasio’s insistence that New York City residents already contribute more than their fair share through taxes, tolls and fares. Still, a report by the city’s Independent Budget Office found that the city’s payments to the capital plan over the years had not kept pace with inflation. The capital plan will pay for a series of projects across the system: new train cars and buses; updated signal systems that would allow more trains to run; and countdown clocks for the lettered subway lines. The authority has faced months of uncertainty over the capital plan, which officials said had been subject to an unusual delay. After a subway derailment in Brooklyn last month , Mr. Prendergast forcefully urged the city to pay more for the plan, noting that it would allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to repair and rebuild subway structures, including tunnel walls like the one involved in the derailment. Officials had been working to reach an agreement before the authority’s monthly board meeting on Oct. 28, when Mr. Prendergast said he wanted the board to vote on a proposal to scale back the size of the capital plan if additional financing was not secured. Without an agreement, Mr. Prendergast said the authority might have to delay projects, including creating a fare payment system to replace the MetroCard, or East Side Access, a project to bring the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal. With the city’s final contribution falling short of Mr. Prendergast’s $3.2 billion request, an authority spokesman said that the authority would engage in a “serious effort” to wring $700 million in additional savings from the transit system. The spokesman, Adam Lisberg, said the authority was “confident we can reach that without any major cuts.” Still, questions remain over how the state and city will pay for their part of the plan. Mr. Cuomo has said the state’s share would come from its general fund, and the details would be worked out with legislators when they return for the next session in January. On Saturday, the State Senate majority leader, John J. Flanagan, said in a statement that as state leaders negotiate the capital funding next year, any agreement in Albany must also include fair funding for roads and bridges across the state. For the city’s share, $1.9 billion of its funding will come from the city budget and $600 million will come from alternative revenue sources that were still being negotiated with the authority. City officials said one option being considered was a method called value capture, which pays for upgrades by collecting taxes and fees from new development spurred by transit access. An alliance of transit groups released a joint statement on Saturday praising the funding agreement after “a year in limbo” since the capital proposal was introduced in September 2014. Gene Russianoff, the staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group, said as officials debate who won the political tussle over the plan, there was one clear winner. “The riders,” he said, “are the big victor here.”

New York
Bill de Blasio
Subway
Public Transit
Budget
MTA
Andrew Cuomo
NYC


Court Is Asked to Reconsider N.C.A.A. Case

Abstract: Lawyers for a group of former college athletes have asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to review its decision that upheld N.C.A.A. rules prohibiting payments to college athletes. In documents filed Wednesday, the lawyers asked the court for an en banc hearing — essentially an appeal that would be heard by a larger group of judges from the Ninth Circuit than the three who issued last month’s ruling. The appellate court’s recent decision affirmed part of a federal judge’s ruling in the so-called O’Bannon case — that the N.C.A.A. broke antitrust laws by not allowing athletes to profit from the use of their images on TV and in video games. But it also ruled that the enhanced scholarships the N.C.A.A. approved this year and are worth an extra few thousand dollars were sufficient to remedy the antitrust harm. In a 2-to-1 decision, the appellate court threw out the deferred payments suggested by the district court that would have allowed colleges to pay athletes up to $5,000 per year. The N.C.A.A. appealed the lower court’s decision to the Ninth Circuit, but now the athletes’ lawyers are arguing that the appellate court acted improperly. Donald Remy, the N.C.A.A.’s chief legal officer, said in a statement, “While the plaintiffs initially claimed victory, their appeal today signals a different point of view. We look forward to presenting our views in the event the Ninth Circuit asks us to respond to the plaintiffs’ appeal.” The Ninth Circuit has about six weeks to consider whether to accept the petition. If it does, an 11-judge panel will be convened to reconsider the N.C.A.A.’s appeal of the district court’s ruling.

NCAA
College Sports
Decisions and Verdicts
Competition law


Riders in the Swarm

Abstract: LE GRAND-BORNAND, France — In America, you could imagine them at a football game in, say, Buffalo, wearing nothing but shorts and sneakers in the dead of winter, ample bellies painted red and blue, beer cans in hand. They are excited, very excited. But this is France, in the heat of summer, and that same breed of fan is not safely ensconced in the bleachers. These fans are on the playing field — that is, the road — running alongside, screaming at, touching and sometimes knocking down the very athletes they have come to encourage. This is the Tour de France, and each year millions of spectators — no one knows the exact number — line the hundreds of miles of roadway to cheer, in a teeming sea of ridiculous costumes, waving flags and boozy enthusiasm that is nearly as big a part of the race as the racers themselves. “It’s the one race of the year where you get this feeling of being a true professional athlete,” said Andrew Talansky, an American rider on Garmin-Sharp in his first Tour. “Soccer players, basketball players, they get it every game they go to. They have a stadium full of fans. But for us, for three weeks in France, this is our stadium.” The stadium was packed again Friday as tens of thousands lined the rain-soaked roads near this Alpine resort town and watched Rui Costa, a Portuguese rider with Movistar, win his second stage of the Tour after a long breakaway. Image The race leader, Chris Froome, in the yellow jersey, and others rode through a throng of fans Thursday. Credit Jean-Paul Pelissier/Reuters A battle among the top contenders for the overall title never emerged on the mountainous, 127-mile stage as the strongest teams seemed intent on saving their energy for the penultimate stage Saturday, with its mountaintop finish in Annecy-Semnoz. Chris Froome of Sky Procycling maintained a commanding lead of 5 minute 11 seconds over Alberto Contador of Saxo-Tinkoff, with Nairo Quintana of Movistar in third, 5:32 back. Froome’s lead seems nearly insurmountable, and Saturday’s battle is likely to be for the remaining two spots on the podium in Paris on Sunday. Even the cautious Froome allowed himself the luxury of measured optimism after Friday’s stage. “It’s going to be very hard for someone to take more than five minutes from me in a 125-kilometer stage,” he told reporters. “I never dreamed of being in this strong of a position coming into the penultimate day.” As riders exited the course at the end of the race, they were mobbed by fans asking for autographs or trying to take photographs. A weary Contador had to weave his way through the throngs to reach his team bus. A boy ran up to a Spanish rider, Rubén Plaza Molina, and asked for his water bottle. Molina handed it over. That sort of intimacy is what draws many fans to the Tour and makes them willing to sit for hours in lawn chairs along dusty roads or camp for days on mountainsides for the chance to watch riders speed by in all of 20 seconds. (On a steep uphill slope, it might take a minute or two.) Image Fans have come in many guises, including Didi Senft, known as El Diablo. Credit Eric Gaillard/Reuters “You can walk right up to the riders and talk to them with genuine intimacy,” said Michael Barratt, 58, a plumber from near Yorkshire, England, while awaiting riders near the base of Mont Ventoux on Stage 15. “In the States, you have the World Series where you can watch from the stands. But with cycling you feel like you are on the field.” Last year, Barratt and his brother, Les, decided spontaneously to go to Paris on the final day of the Tour to watch Bradley Wiggins become the first Briton to win the Tour . They caught a midnight ferry across the Channel, found a spot along the route at 6 a.m., then waited eight hours for Wiggins to ride by with Mark Cavendish, another British cycling star, on his wheel. “It was my best moment in cycling,” said Barratt, who as a young man rode competitively on the amateur circuit. Barratt pointed out another attraction of the Tour: it is inexpensive; every 50-yard-line seat here is free. This year he planned a two-week vacation in Europe around the tour, spending $2,000 for a rental car, camp sites, hotels and food. “We threw in just a bit of drinking,” Les Barratt added. Dressed in a yellow Tour de France shirt, Michael Barratt leapt onto a barrier and yelled “Allez! Allez!” as the peloton flew by. And like that, his race day was done. Image Two friends on a homemade tandem bicycle Friday. Credit Peter Dejong/Associated Press Ardent cyclists are evident everywhere at the Tour. The mountain roads are packed with amateur riders testing their muscles in the hours before the racers arrive. But plenty of fans who are not riders come because they love the sport, with its arcane team tactics and daily drama of attacks, crashes and escapes. It helps to have an opera buff’s appreciation for suffering. “These guys will perform at an amazing level today, then get up and do it tomorrow and so on, for 21 days,” Roger Aldred, 67, from Kingussie, Scotland, said near the summit of Col de Manse, a 5.9-mile climb in Stage 16. “The mental fortitude is staggering.” Like other fans, Aldred, who confessed to hating bicycles ever since he was required to ride one to school every day as a child, said the specter of doping had not spoiled his appreciation for the athletic abilities of the best riders. “Even if you were taking, you would still have to have mega, mega-commitment to finish this race,” he said. There are virtually no rules governing spectator behavior at the Tour. There are barriers at a few important spots, including the start, the finish, midcourse sprints and some urban areas. But almost everywhere else, fans are free to roam. An unwritten code of ethics might look like this: keep small children in hand and animals on a leash. Touching riders is frowned upon but allowed. Causing them to crash is bad. Image Nairo Quintana riding past a fan Thursday. Credit Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images To a remarkable degree, the rules are followed. But there have been some notable exceptions. In 1975, a fan punched the Belgian star Eddy Merckx in the kidney, slowing but not stopping him. In 2003, Lance Armstrong crashed on a climb after hooking his handlebar on a fan’s bag strap. (He still won the stage.) And this year a fan threw urine on Cavendish , angry that he had knocked down a Dutch rider in an earlier stage. Little-noticed near disasters are too frequent to count. On L’Alpe d’Huez on Thursday, Tejay van Garderen, an American riding for BMC, was caught on television swatting at a fan who had gotten too close, as if he were a pesky gnat. On Mont Ventoux earlier in the race, Peter Sagan hit a woman who had leaned into his path. He did not fall and rode on. “They look in the camera and not at the road,” Sagan said later. “It’s very dangerous for us, and maybe for the people.” Yet riders say they draw energy from the antics of the spectators, particularly on long, demoralizing climbs. “There are times when you can’t see in front of you,” Talansky said of the crowds. “But as nerve-racking as it is, that’s what makes the sport different. They can stand on the side of Ventoux and touch us if they want to. They can look into our eyes and see the pain and suffering.” To Tour novices, particularly Americans, the behavior of fans is mind-boggling. “This just could not happen in the States,” said Kate Phillips, 45, whose husband, an Army officer, was recently transferred to Europe. “Americans are so cautious. They would have barriers everywhere.” But for Geert Van de Laar and his wife, there was nothing strange about it at all. They had brought their two young daughters to the top of Col de Manse to cheer for the riders from their country, Belgium, on Stage 16. Van de Laar, a 37-year-old primary school principal from near Antwerp, said he planned to run alongside Jan Bakelants if he spotted him in the pack. The couple were wearing Boston Red Sox caps, having gone to a baseball game while visiting the city a few years ago. Talk about strange, he recalled. The fans seemed to spend the entire game talking, eating or walking around. “They weren’t paying attention,” he said. “I guess we just don’t understand baseball.”

Tour de France
Biking
Christopher Froome


I.O.C. Redistributes Marion Jones’s Medals and Retires One

Abstract: The International Olympic Committee redistributed the medals won by the disgraced sprinter Marion Jones at the 2000 Olympics on Wednesday, but it refused to award her gold medal in the 100 meters to Katerina Thanou of Greece, who was barred from the 2004 Games because of a missed drug test. Jones surrendered the medals when she admitted in 2007 to lying to federal investigators about performance-enhancing drug use. Normally, the other competitors are moved up in order when medals are surrendered, but Thanou’s later drug-testing problems prompted the committee to leave the top spot in the 100 meters vacant. In record books, Thanou and Tanya Lawrence of Jamaica will be listed as silver medalists and Merlene Ottey of Jamaica, who finished fourth in the race, will retain the bronze. Thanou did not fail a drug test, but she and her teammate Kostas Kenteris missed drug tests before the 2004 Games in Athens and were kept from competing by Greek Olympic officials after it was determined they had staged a motorcycle crash to cover up their absence. Track and field’s international federation, the I.A.A.F., barred them for two years. Jones’s gold medal in the 200 meters was awarded to Pauline Davis-Thompson of the Bahamas, with the silver going to Susanthika Jayasinghe of Sri Lanka and the bronze to Beverly McDonald of Jamaica. Jones’s bronze medal in the long jump was given to Tatyana Kotova of Russia. The fate of the two medals won by United States relay teams that included Jones in the 2000 Games is still being decided by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. When those medals were stripped from the American teams by the I.O.C., the other members of the relay appealed to the Court of Arbitration , which is expected to issue its ruling by Dec. 18. Jones admitted using performance-enhancing drugs during the Sydney Games when she pleaded guilty to perjury in federal court in December 2007. She retired from track and field upon her perjury conviction, and served six months in jail. She recently announced she was attempting an athletic comeback , but in basketball, her college sport.

Jones Marion
Doping (Sports)
Olympic Games


Jet’s Snags Don’t Deter Boeing’s Fans

Abstract: BOEING has been blessed with a nearly perfect environment in which to do business, at least until recently. Persistently low interest rates and a sizzling global economy, apart from the odd credit squeeze, are ideal conditions for selling commercial jets. As for competition, Boeing is in the extremely advantageous position of having just a single significant rival, one that has appeared somewhat hapless in recent years. Airbus , a consortium of businesses owned by European Aeronautic Defense and Space, suffered chronic difficulties in delivering its A380 superjumbo jet — it can hold more than 800 passengers — to customers. Those problems were smoothed out, but Airbus has been held back by other factors, including high costs. That works to Boeing’s advantage, as do the continual new lows that the dollar has set against the euro. The woes of Airbus are apparent in the stock of EADS. It is down roughly 20 percent over the last two years, although foreign exchange movements mean that the euro-denominated shares would be worth roughly the same number of dollars today. Boeing is up about 35 percent in the same period, but it had been somewhat higher until recently. The stock has fallen more than 10 percent since the company reported logistical problems of its own in October. Some foreign suppliers of components for the 787, the next-generation jet which Boeing is counting on for much of its growth, have not been able to meet deadlines, threatening the company’s timetable for delivering the finished article. Boeing’s plan is to condense production time once the flow of parts from suppliers picks up. That would mean delivering far fewer planes than promised next year and far more in 2009. THE inability of the stock to recover from its dive last month — it closed at $89.54 on Friday after peaking around $107 at the start of October— suggests investors are skeptical about the revamped schedule. The chief concern is that it calls for producing many more planes than expected before the 787 is certified for flight. That raises the risk of more delays and greater expense if problems are discovered that require the 787 to be reworked substantially, said Joseph B. Nadol III, an analyst at JPMorgan. He rates the stock as neutral, a step up from the underweight rating he had for much of the last two years. The revised 787 production plan can stir doubts even among Boeing bulls. Joseph P. Campbell, an analyst at Lehman Brothers, has an overweight rating and a $112 price target on the stock, even as he foresees $1 billion in added costs from the 787 glitches and wonders how the new timetable can be met. He remains a fan of the stock because he regards the production trouble as only a temporary setback. “We expect Boeing will have a very hard time staying both on schedule and on budget for the 787, but both may still be possible,” he wrote in a research report. “Even so, we do not expect Boeing’s 787 program will miss in ways that are so important relative to the expected financial results that the share price performance will be negatively affected for extended periods.” Richard Tortoriello, an analyst for Standard & Poor’s Equity Research, agrees. It may take a while getting into the air, but the 787 is a terrific plane, he said. “It’s more fuel-efficient and cheaper for airlines, and it seems to be the right size, too,” he said. “That’s one reason Boeing is selling so many of them. It’s a midsize plane that has a good range and can get into and out of a lot of airports.” In other words, it is all that the next (extremely) big thing from Airbus is not. That 800-seater will be able to fly only to certain airports and on high-demand long-haul routes. By focusing on the 787 and not the delays, Mr. Tortoriello arrives at a $118 target for Boeing’s stock. “I don’t see it as a huge problem,” he said of the production trouble. “If they overcome it successfully, they should have a great, profitable program going forward. I think the stock price reflects a good dose of worry right now over the 787, and that’s where I see opportunity.”

European Aeronautic Defense and Space
Airlines and Airplanes
Boeing Co
Stocks and Bonds
Airbus Industrie


New Commitment to Charity by Mexican Phone Tycoon

Abstract: MEXICO CITY, June 27 — Carlos Slim Helú may be the richest man in the world. And in Mexico , where tens of millions of people live in seemingly intractable poverty, that distinction has been drawing some heat. Mr. Slim’s companies dominate Mexico’s telecommunications industry, and they have sold cellphones to 130 million people throughout the Americas. His businesses have a hand in just about everything: one company built Mexico’s largest offshore oil platform, another sells CDs. He has interests in retailing, banking, insurance, mining, road building and cigarettes. Because Mexico’s income distribution is severely skewed, Mr. Slim has come to personify the small elite who control vast sections of the economy. So he has been feeling the pressure to give much of his enormous fortune away. Three months ago, he pledged to increase the endowments of his companies’ foundations to $10 billion from $4 billion in the next four years. He promises to spend money on education and health. And he has begun to frequent the international philanthropy circuit, speaking at conferences, and hobnobbing with Bill Clinton and some of the Kennedys. In a recent two-hour interview in his office here, Mr. Slim promised that there would be no ceiling on his donations. “We want to get to the root of problems, no limits,” he said. He has granted several interviews in his office, which is tucked above a branch of his bank and down the hall from a gallery showing works from his collection of European and Mexican art. The interviews, and a four-hour news conference in March, seem to be part of an effort to soften his robber baron reputation. Fortified by Cuban cigars and Diet Coke, Mr. Slim mapped out a vision of what he planned to do with his fortune. “It is a life project, it is a challenge,” he said. “Poverty is resolved with education and jobs,” he continued. “You don’t need to teach a man how to fish, as the Chinese used to say. Instead of giving him the fish, instead of teaching him how to fish, you have to teach him how to sell the fish so that he eats something else besides a fish.” For that, he said, even before education, you need good health care, beginning with nutrition for pregnant women. Skeptics argue that the value of Mr. Slim’s philanthropy has to be measured against the damage his telephone monopoly did to the economy. “At some level I can applaud his philanthropy,” said Denise Dresser, a political analyst and professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, “but it would be better for Mexico if he stopped blocking competition first.” Mr. Slim is now 67, a widower with six adult children. He has passed the day-to-day operations of his companies to his sons and sons-in-law. “He has a lot of money, and he can think about larger issues,” said Rossana Fuentes-Berain, editorial page editor of the newspaper El Universal, who has followed Mr. Slim’s career for the last 15 years. “He wants to be part of that world where making money is not an end in itself.” The son of a Lebanese immigrant, Mr. Slim became rich by buying companies cheap and turning them around. His ascent through billionaire ranks began after the government sold the phone monopoly Teléfonos de Mexico in 1990 to a group he led with France Télécom and what was then Southwestern Bell. Last year, Forbes magazine put him at No. 3 on its list of the world’s richest. This year, it bumped him up to second place, estimating his net worth at $53.1 billion. A Mexican online publication, Sentido Común, which tracks his fortune closely, reports that his companies’ value has grown so fast this year that he has now swept into first place with a fortune of $57 billion, just above Bill Gates of Microsoft. Along the way he has fought off new competitors, and the efforts of Mexico’s antitrust regulator in the courts, and lobbied against legislation that may rein him in. Competitors say that his phone company, widely known as Telmex, stalls when it is required to link them to its national network and overcharges them to transport their signals. The governor of Mexico’s central bank has criticized Telmex’s control, arguing that it has held back the country’s competitiveness. Mr. Slim concedes that Telmex has 90 percent of Mexico’s phone lines, but says that his competitors have poached half the most profitable ones. “We have never opposed the entry of a competitor,” he said. “Let them come on in.” Still, Mexico — with just 16 phone lines for every 100 people — lags well behind countries including Poland and Turkey in the reach of basic phone service. With cash generated in Mexico, Mr. Slim has built the largest cellphone company in Latin America, América Móvil, successfully competing in big markets like Brazil. He is expanding south with new construction and infrastructure companies, bidding to build roads and dams. Mr. Slim combines an omnivorous attention to detail with a penchant for simplicity. Everything you need to make a decision, he says, should fit on one sheet of paper. That includes a preoccupation of his, baseball. He has pared down reams of baseball statistics to a handwritten page, where he ranks the top sluggers. But his precision with numbers seems to vanish when it comes to his philanthropy. He gives no accounting of what he has spent and is still vague about where much of the new money will go. What he does say is that he plans to set up two institutes for health and education. Each will be financed by an initial endowment of $500 million, said Arturo Elias, a son-in-law and his point man for philanthropy. A smaller sports institute that will promote amateur and student sports is to follow. Mr. Slim tapped Dr. Julio Frenk, a former Mexican health minister who was on the short list to head the World Health Organization last year, to set up the health institute. “The broad philosophy was already there,” said Dr. Frenk, now a senior fellow at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The institute will take on public health problems by sponsoring research, backing successful programs and disseminating health information. “We don’t see the beneficiaries of these institutions as somebody in a subordinate position,” Dr. Frenk said. “We see them as citizens with a right, because health and education are a right. But their access to that right has been limited.” Dr. Frenk’s involvement has given pause to Mr. Slim’s critics. “If you are going to do this seriously, you need to have people who are professionals,” Ms. Dresser said. “He’s moving in the right direction in that sense.” He appears to be open to collaboration. Shortly after four top United States foundations wrote him in November inquiring about his philanthropy, he called to set up a meeting, said C. R. Hibbs, director of the Mexican office of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In fact, Mr. Slim’s philanthropy may be better known in the United States, where his image is more benign. In September, he spoke at the Clinton Foundation’s annual meeting, where he was introduced as the most powerful man in Central and South America and the “greatest philanthropist” in Mexico. Last week, Mr. Slim pledged at least $100 million to Mr. Clinton’s foundation to fight Latin American poverty. Fifteen years ago, Mr. Slim met Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, who has been raising money to give $100 laptops to children in the developing world. Mr. Slim is one of Mr. Negroponte’s biggest backers, promising to spend $50 million to buy 250,000 laptops for children in Mexico and Central America. (The price is closer to $175 right now.) Their Internet connections will be free, Mr. Elias said. In an e-mail message, Mr. Negroponte said Mr. Slim “is very generous when it comes children, education and Latin America,” adding, “I do not have to ‘sell him’ on the idea.” A Kennedy family member, Anthony K. Shriver, said he approached Mr. Slim about five years ago to support the Mexican operation of Best Buddies, which pairs students with intellectually disabled people. “I know that they give us millions of dollars,” Mr. Shriver said. Among Mexico’s philanthropic movement, there is hope that others will follow Mr. Slim’s public commitment. Mexico’s nonprofit sector is tiny and opaque, said Michael Layton, who heads the philanthropy and civil society project at the autonomous technological institute. “In the United States, people understand that the rich man is blessed by God to administer the community’s resources,” said Jorge Villalobos, director of the Mexican Center for Philanthropy. “In Mexico, this vision doesn’t exist.” Mr. Slim makes no apologies for his fortune. Wealth is “like an orchard, a fruit tree,” he said. “You have to distribute the fruit, not the branch. You have to plant more seeds to create more wealth.”

Mexico
Philanthropy
Finances
Slim Helu Carlos
Economic Conditions and Trends
Telephones and Telecommunications


Washington Avoids Series Sweep With a Win Over Philadelphia

Abstract: Adam LaRoche homered twice, and host Washington beat Philadelphia, 3-2, to avoid a series sweep. Scott Hairston hit a go-ahead sacrifice fly off the Philadelphia ace Cole Hamels in the sixth inning. ORIOLES 7, RAYS 5 Nelson Cruz hit his second homer of the game in the 11th inning and drove in seven runs, and American League East-leading Baltimore avoided a three-game sweep by beating host Tampa Bay. After Nick Hundley drew a one-walk in the 11th, Cruz drove a pitch from Cesar Ramos (2-6) over the wall in center field for his 39th homer. CARDINALS 9, BREWERS 1 Adam Wainwright pitched a seven-hitter, Peter Boujos hit a two-run triple, and visiting St. Louis defeated Milwaukee. The Cardinals took three of four in the series at Miller Park. INDIANS 2, WHITE SOX 0 Carlos Carrasco fell one out short of his first complete game, and host Cleveland finished a three-game sweep with a win over Chicago. Carrasco (7-4) allowed four hits, struck out eight and did not walk a batter in eight and two-thirds innings. MARLINS 4, BRAVES 0 Brad Hand pitched six innings, Jarrod Saltalamacchia drove in two runs, and host Miami topped Atlanta. Hand (3-6) gave up five hits and struck out three. BLUE JAYS 3, RED SOX 1 Jose Bautista hit a three-run homer and R. A. Dickey pitched seven solid innings, carrying visiting Toronto to a win over Boston. Adam Lind added three hits for the Blue Jays, who dropped the first two games of the series after five consecutive wins. PIRATES 10, CUBS 4 Andrew McCutchen hit one of Pittsburgh’s four homers, and the visiting Pirates beat Chicago to complete a series sweep of the Cubs. Neil Walker hit a two-run shot in the first, and Jordy Mercer and McCutchen connected in consecutive at-bats in the second. Pitcher Gerrit Cole belted a two-run drive in the seventh for his first major league homer. ANGELS 14, TWINS 4 Mike Trout hit his 32nd homer, C. J. Wilson recovered from a slow start for his 11th win, and visiting Los Angeles completed a season sweep of Minnesota. Howie Kendrick, who had three hits and four runs batted in, and C. J. Cron also homered for the Angels, the A.L. West leaders, who had a season-high 19 hits. ASTROS 4, ATHLETICS 3 Visiting Houston scored two runs in the ninth without a hit, including Dexter Fowler’s bases-loaded walk for the tiebreaking run, and beat Oakland. Jose Veras (4-0) pitched one and two-thirds scoreless innings. The victory means Houston’s streak of 100-loss seasons will end at three. DODGERS 7, DIAMONDBACKS 2 Adrian Gonzalez hit a pair of three-run homers to reach 100 R.B.I. for the seventh time, and host Los Angeles beat Arizona after Trevor Cahill held the Diamondbacks hitless for more than five innings. Zack Greinke (14-8) gave up two runs and six hits before he was lifted for a pinch-hitter during the Dodgers’ three-run sixth. RANGERS 1, MARINERS 0 Derek Holland pitched seven innings in his second start off the disabled list, and host Texas beat Seattle to end an eight-game losing streak. Texas gave the interim manager Tim Bogar his first victory in his third game. ROCKIES 6, PADRES 0 Nolan Arenado homered, Franklin Morales pitched six innings for his first win in two months, and host Colorado defeated San Diego. Jackson Williams also went deep for his first major league home run for the Rockies.

Reds
Baseball
Washington Nationals
Phillies
Mets


Somalia: Suicide Bomber Strikes Cafe in Central Town

Abstract: A suicide bombing in central Somalia killed at least nine people and wounded 10 others, a police official said Thursday. The bomber blew himself up among a group of people at a cafe near a hotel in the town of Galkayo on Thursday, said the official, Ali Aden. The Shabab militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Somalia
Bombs
Al Shabab
Fatalities,casualties
Terrorism


After Orlando, Questions Over Effectiveness of Terrorism Watch Lists

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The shooting rampage at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., has focused new attention on the vast but murky terror watch lists that the government has used with mixed results to identify potential security threats. At the time of the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, there were just 16 names on the government’s so-called no-fly list. Today, that number stands at about 81,000, officials said, and the largest of the watch lists has 1.5 million names on it, all but a small fraction of them foreigners. One of the names on the F.B.I.’s terrorism watch list as of early 2014 was Omar Mateen, the shooter in the Orlando attack. But when the F.B.I. dropped its investigation into his suspected terrorist sympathies, his name came off the list, and he was legally allowed to go into a Florida gun store this month and buy a semiautomatic assault rifle used in the killings. That sequence of events has set off a round of debate in Congress over the law allowing someone on the list to buy a gun. But four bills aimed at plugging the “terror gap” and blocking people on terrorism watch lists from buying guns failed to gain passage this week. Another proposal, led by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, appeared likely to meet the same fate as early as Thursday. From 2005 to 2015, nearly 2,500 people who appeared on the F.B.I.’s terrorism watch list attempted to buy a firearm, and 91 percent of the sales were approved, a study by the Government Accountability Office found. The recent proposals to stop people on the watch lists from being able to buy guns have faced resistance from an unlikely group of opponents, including the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re as appalled as anyone else about the attack in Orlando,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the A.C.L.U.’s National Security Project. “But it’s our position that there is no bar on Congress in the reasonable regulation of guns. They could do something without an overly broad, unreliable watch list solution.” The A.C.L.U., representing Muslim-Americans and others who said they had wrongly been put on the no-fly list, won a ruling in federal court in Oregon two years ago that found the list was unconstitutional because of the high risk of errors and the difficulty of being taken off it. That lawsuit is continuing. “There certainly has been some improvement in the process since these watch lists were first put into place, but we still don’t think the safeguards are adequate,” Ms. Shamsi said. Under guidelines for the biggest of the terror lists, known as TIDE, or Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, those placed on the list are “known or appropriately suspected” of being involved in terrorist activity. Of the 1.5 million names on the TIDE list, residents of the United States account for only about 15,000. In one of the most recent internal reviews of the watch list system, the Justice Department inspector general found in a 2014 report that improvements in the F.B.I.’s watch list system had made it “more complete, accurate and current” after problems in getting people on and off the list. Earlier reviews found that as many as 15 percent of suspects in active terrorism investigations were not on the F.B.I. watch list, and that other people were improperly kept on it even after investigations into their suspected terrorism ties were closed. Both these problems appeared to have been significantly reduced or eliminated by the time of the 2014 review. Counterterrorism officials have described the watch lists as a cornerstone of their efforts to detect possible terrorists before they can strike. But the watch lists’ effectiveness has been spotty. Just as Mr. Mateen was put on a watch list before the Orlando shooting, Tamerlan Tsarnaev — one of the brothers in the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 — had also been placed on several versions of the list a few years earlier. The “underwear bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate a bomb on a Detroit-bound plane in 2009, was also on one version of the terrorism watch list but was allowed to board the plane in Amsterdam. That near-disaster led to wide changes in the system and an expansion of the lists. But the very next year, Faisal Shahzad , who tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in Manhattan, was allowed to board a plane for Dubai a day after the attempted bombing even though he had been put on a no-fly list. He was apprehended while the plane was at the gate. In the wake of the Orlando shootings, Justice Department officials said they were considering a new policy to alert F.B.I. investigators if someone who was once on a terrorism watch list, like Mr. Mateen, attempts to buy a gun. By itself, the placement on a watch list would not be grounds to stop a firearms purchase. But F.B.I. investigators could then search the buyer’s file to look for other legal prohibitions — like a criminal conviction, drug use or mental health issue — that could allow them to stop the sale.

Terrorism
Omar Mateen
Orlando Shooting
Gun Control
FBI
Orlando shooter
ACLU
Airlines,airplanes


Retirees Are Finding Second Careers at Historical Sites

Abstract: FOR 62-year-old Kent Brinkley, one day at work is pretty much like the next. At 10 a.m., he storms the Palace, joining in the daily re-enactment of an April 1775 riot protesting the Virginia royal governor’s attempted seizure of arms. At noon, he offers a hearty “huzzah” and then fires a salute with his musket, as the Declaration of Independence is read aloud in the town square. At 4 p.m., he dons a British red coat and patrols the streets, “trying to look menacing.” Finally at 5, he marches on parade with a few dozen of his co-workers, firing off well-synchronized and loud volleys of muskets and cannon before heading home, where he can change out of his 18th-century breeches and into a pair of jeans. Mr. Brinkley is an “interpreter” at Colonial Williamsburg , one of about 500 who present life as it was in the 1770s, at the 301-acre living history museum in Virginia. About 15 percent are 60 and older. Most are either retired or arrived here after working in other professions. Mr. Brinkley was a landscape architect. He is one of many older adults who have found a home, and in some cases a second career, in the past, as historical interpreters at living history museums or as docents at historic houses. Some are paid, like Mr. Brinkley, but most are volunteers. “They play a huge role on many different levels,” says Deb Friedman, senior vice president for public programs at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Mass. Without them, “some of these places, particularly some of the smaller living history museums, wouldn’t exist.” At Sturbridge, which portrays a farm community of the early 19th century, people 60 and older make up about 40 of the 442 staff members and volunteers. While their jobs can involve general tasks, like working in the museum store or greeting visitors, older adults often have skills that can help bring the past alive to visitors. “They gravitate to whatever they did in their professional lives,” Ms. Friedman says. She cites Dr. Jack Richman, a semiretired optometrist from Hingham, Mass. He portrays Amos Alexander Evans, a Navy surgeon who served on the U.S.S. Constitution in the War of 1812. Image Brinkley at Colonial Williamsburg, where history means a fun job. Credit Jay Paul for The New York Times Dr. Richman, a volunteer, visits Sturbridge in costume about eight to 10 times a year and also appears at other re-enactments. Although he prepared by reading period medical texts and Evans’s journals, he has no training as an actor. But, says Dr. Richman, professor emeritus at the New England College of Optometry, “I’ve been a doctor and a lecturer for 40 years. You learn how to adjust appropriately to an audience.” In his presentations, he tries to emphasize that a shipboard surgeon’s life in the Age of Sail was not one of gory amputations or “Master and Commander”-type heroics. “The daily things he had to deal with would be people being ill with bad food, so I’ll talk about nutrition on the ship,” says Dr. Richman, 71. “I’ll talk about how they dealt with common injuries, like cuts, falls, infections. How they dealt with a cold.” Dr. Richman says he also likes to challenge visitors to put themselves into Evans’s world — one where, for example, religion and medicine would have commingled. “You need to look at it from the point of view of someone living at the time,” he says. “I’ve tried to do that. It’s fascinating.” Unlike Dr. Richman, who was a Revolutionary War re-enactor before beginning his portrayal of the naval surgeon, George Ward took an unexpected detour into the past after retiring from a 29-year career as an illustrator for Polaroid (for workshop manuals and the like). Mr. Ward, who lives in South Weymouth, Mass., had planned to work part time selling Jeeps at a dealership on Cape Cod, but the job fell through. His wife spotted a help-wanted ad in the local paper for Plimoth Plantation , the living history museum in nearby Plymouth that interprets the Pilgrim settlement. Soon he was swabbing the deck of the Mayflower II, a 1957 replica of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to the New World in 1620. Nineteen years later, Mr. Ward, now 74, is still there; he is among the estimated 60 percent of Plimoth Plantation’s approximately 200 staff members and volunteers over the age of 55. Working three days a week, he helps maintain the ship and also interacts with visitors, although not in costume. “If you have any interest in history, this kind of work is great,” Mr. Ward says. While not as well known as Plimoth Plantation, Sagtikos Manor in Bay Shore, N.Y., has a colorful history. George Washington slept there in April 1790. Later, the Gardiner family — of East End, Gardiners Island fame — owned the house, and the estate became a popular spot for the city’s social elite in the Gatsby era. Today about 25 volunteer docents, mostly older women, lead tours at the manor, sometimes wearing period costumes. Christine Gottsch, 61, is one of the senior docents and says the manor will continue to play a role in her life after she retires from her job as a conductor on the Long Island Rail Road. Part of the attraction is that unlike many historic houses, the manor — now a museum — still contains most of its original effects. “We keep finding things,” Ms. Gottsch says (including a trunk containing the works of a prominent 18th-century silversmith). “It’s a big puzzle and we’re constantly trying to put it together.” Ms. Gottsch, who has been a volunteer at the manor since the mid-1990s, says she likes telling the story about her little corner of the past, especially to young people. “I think history is being lost in the schools,” she says. That is also why Mr. Brinkley says he enjoys his routine of storming, firing, patrolling and huzzah-ing. “I was 12 when my parents brought me here for a week one summer,” recalls Mr. Brinkley, who grew up in nearby Norfolk. “That’s when I fell in love with this place. So I kind of trace my life back to that week. If I can help a kid today get as excited about history as I did back then, what a wonderful thing.”