Crew in Moscow to Simulate Part of a Flight to Mars

Abstract: MOSCOW — On Tuesday, six people will be voluntarily locked into a cloister of cramped, hermetically sealed tubes woven inside a Moscow research facility the size of a high school gymnasium. They will eat dehydrated food, breathe recycled air and be denied conversation with practically everyone else but one another. And they must stay inside for 105 days. In a small step in the direction of Mars , the international crew is embarking on a simulated flight to the planet to test the limits of human tolerance for the isolation and monotony of interplanetary travel. “It is really like a real space flight without the weightlessness and the danger to our lives,” said Sergei N. Ryazansky, a cosmonaut-in-training who will lead the mission. “On the inside, we will have a lack of incoming information, so it’s the science of sensory deprivation.” Called Mars-500, the Russian-led project based at the Institute for Biomedical Problems here will culminate in a 520-day simulation beginning early next year of a complete manned mission to the planet — a time frame that incorporates launching to Mars touchdown and back — that scientists hope will edge humanity a little closer to that next giant leap. An actual manned mission to Mars may be more than 20 years away, but Russian scientists, backed by the nation’s leaders, are keen to take a lead role in laying the foundation. The Mars-500 project is moving forward despite the dire economic situation in Russia; the prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, has pledged not to cut financing to the space industry. Russia’s research into manned space flights has taken on added importance as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States prepares to shut down the space shuttle program, leaving Russia with a monopoly on manned launchings until NASA’s new Ares rockets take flight. But for scientists and cosmonauts involved in the project, the cosmic competition that defined the cold war and the race to the Moon has given way to a new spirit of international cooperation. In addition to Russian space agencies, the Mars-500 project involves scientists from organizations like the European Space Agency and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute based in Houston. “We are proud that we have an experiment that has received wide international coverage and that has attracted the top scientists of other countries,” said Mark S. Belakovsky, the project’s deputy director. “We are working not only for ourselves but for the future of humanity.” Mr. Belakovsky and others working on the project say only an international effort will be able to overcome the daunting obstacles to any future manned mission to Mars. Crews must be protected from hazardous radiation and muscle and bone atrophy caused by long-term weightlessness, not to mention the myriad potential pitfalls that will follow that first step onto Mars. Protecting crews from themselves, however, poses special challenges. Interplanetary travel will markedly differ from long-term missions in orbit around Earth , where crews remain in contact with mission control, receiving assistance from specialists on the ground and well wishes from family and friends. On a mission to Mars, astronauts will have to contend with communication gaps of as long as 20 minutes. “Working in such conditions requires that a person be able to check himself, evaluate his condition in relation to the crew and in relation to mission control and be able to correct himself,” said Boris V. Marukov, the experiment’s director and a former crew member on the International Space Station. “He will be a psychotherapist for himself.” Despite the risks and expense, many scientists think the potential scientific gains from a manned Mars voyage will outweigh the advantages of interplanetary exploration by robots. “Unless there is a huge breakthrough in artificial intelligence, having the human being on site, being able to make scientific decisions on the fly, in real time — there is really little substitute for that,” said Jim Logan, a former chief of medical operations at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The longest a human has spent in space is 438 days, a record set by Valery V. Polyakov when he returned from the Russian space station, Mir, in 1995. His safe and healthy return, he said in an interview, showed that “it is possible to preserve your physical and psychological health throughout a mission similar in length to a flight to Mars and back.” Volunteers for the first leg of Mars-500 — four Russians, a German and a Frenchman — will oversee and participate in more than 70 experiments testing fluctuations in metabolism, sleep-wake cycles and the cardiovascular and immune systems under conditions of prolonged isolation. Another experiment will study cross-cultural compatibility in the expectation that any real Mars mission will involve an international crew. The mock spacecraft consists of four hermetically sealed modules built in the 1970s for isolation experiments ahead of missions aboard Soviet space stations and later the International Space Station. A section was recently added in which participants in the 520-day experiment will simulate a Mars landing. The facility’s wood-paneled interior maintains a particularly Soviet aesthetic, but it has been equipped with new life-support systems to be tested during the Mars-500 project. Volunteers will tend experimental greenhouses that scientists hope will provide fresh vegetables and sights and smells of home. Scientists in a control center at the Institute of Biomedical Problems will monitor the activities of the crew via video cameras mounted in most sections of the facility, watching for stress and tension among crewmembers. They will largely keep out of the crew’s affairs and will impose the 20-minute communication delay anticipated on a real Mars mission during the final 35 days of the experiment. Amid a stream of mock emergency situations and inevitable disagreements between crewmates, the volunteers will endeavor to keep emotional control. Past experiments in long-term isolation have shown how intergroup conflicts can endanger a mission. During a nine-month simulated Earth-orbit mission starting in 1999 and conducted at the same Moscow institute, a male Russian’s attempt to kiss a female Canadian colleague ended in accusations of sexual harassment and the Russians’ being barred from the woman’s module. Mr. Ryazansky, who took part in that experiment, is optimistic that advancements in space psychology have made these kinds of conflicts less likely. And while he does not think he will actually ever fly to Mars, he believes his work on Mars-500 will allow him at least to see a manned mission in his lifetime.

International Space Cooperation and Ventures


Attack on Yemen’s Defense Headquarters Is Linked to Al Qaeda

Abstract: SANA, Yemen — A two-pronged attack on Yemen’s heavily guarded Defense Ministry headquarters that killed 52 people was carried out by Al Qaeda militants, social media accounts and websites that often carry Qaeda statements said on Friday. The attack on Thursday killed soldiers, doctors, patients and a number of foreigners, and wounded more than 160 others. The militants blew open an entrance to the compound with a car full of explosives, then gunned down civilians at a hospital inside, witnesses have said. Some of the Qaeda-linked sites said the militants were seeking revenge for Yemen’s coordination with the United States on drone strikes that have killed members of Al Qaeda. One of the sites is a Twitter account said to belong to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Qaeda offshoot active in Yemen, but this could not be independently confirmed. The daylight assault on one of the government’s most important security facilities appeared to mark a new low in Yemen’s descent into chaos and instability since its longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was forced from power after a popular uprising in 2011. While the United Nations is trying to shepherd the country through a rocky political transition, many of the figures that have long dominated its political and economic life have much to lose if overhauls succeed in limiting their power. This has left members of the old guard, prominent military figures and tribal leaders struggling to maintain their influence. The weakening of state control has exacerbated Yemen’s perennial problems: rebel movements that want to divide the country, extreme poverty and militancy. Yemen is home to one of Al Qaeda’s most organized and threatening affiliates, whose operatives have been the targets of an American drone campaign to kill militants suspected of involvement in kidnapping for ransom and a string of deadly attacks on military targets. The Qaeda affiliate in Yemen has also tried to plant bombs on jetliners bound for the United States. Image Smoke billowed from Yemen's Defense Ministry after an assailant drove a car packed with explosives into the complex on Thursday. Credit Khaled Abdullah/Reuters Yemeni officials say that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the affiliate is known, has infiltrated the country’s security services, and witnesses said that attackers on Thursday wore military uniforms. The blast on Thursday was heard across Sana. Gunfire rang out after the car exploded, sending plumes of smoke into the air. The attack was apparently timed to coincide with the changing of the guard at the complex, when gates are opened to allow soldiers to enter and leave. Yemeni special forces in armored vehicles surrounded the building, fighting gun battles into the night against about a dozen assailants. The attack was Yemen’s deadliest since May of last year, when a suicide bomber disguised as a soldier detonated explosives during a military parade rehearsal near the presidential palace, leaving hundreds dead or wounded. In September, militants suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda killed at least 21 government soldiers in attacks on two military targets in the south of Yemen. In the last two years, more than 150 intelligence and security officials have been killed across the country, many of them gunned down in drive-by shootings. Al Qaeda is not the only source of unrest. The government is facing secessionists in the south and Shiite rebels in the north. Since Mr. Saleh left office in 2011, an interim government has run the country ahead of elections expected next year.


Belgium: Loser to Lead Interim Government

Abstract: After a meeting with King Albert II, Guy Verhofstadt, left, the liberal ousted by voters in June, accepted the job of forming and leading an interim government because of the ”gravity of the situation in which our country finds itself.” But he said he did not want to remain in power beyond March. Mr. Verhofstadt, who had been prime minister since 1999, conceded defeat after the June election but has stayed on because the conservatives who won proved unable to form a coalition. But he has lacked power to act on major issues, and on Saturday thousands of union members marched through Brussels to protest the half-year political impasse and rising fuel and food prices. At the heart of the deadlock are disputes among parties from Dutch-speaking Flanders and the French-speaking area, Wallonia. Those tensions engulfed even the country’s annual beauty pageant on Saturday, when the new Miss Belgium , Alizée Poulicek, a blond 20-year-old from the French-speaking part of the country, was booed when she disclosed that she could not speak Dutch. The contest was held in Antwerp, a stronghold of Flemish nationalism, before an audience of 3,500. Ms. Poulicek, who besides French speaks English and Czech, told the Flemish television broadcaster VRT that she would try to learn more Dutch.


Westchester Jazz Orchestra Records New CD

Abstract: THE trumpeter Marvin Stamm and the saxophonist Jason Rigby might seem unlikely band mates. While both are members of the Westchester Jazz Orchestra , they are of different generations (Mr. Stamm is 71, Mr. Rigby, 36) and arguably of contrasting musical temperament, with Mr. Rigby’s small-group projects offering a decidedly freer brand of jazz than Mr. Stamm’s. But when the two musicians took successive solo turns last month at the Bennett Studios in Englewood, N.J., recording the jazz orchestra’s second CD — the tune was Herbie Hancock ’s “Eye of the Hurricane” — the consensus in the control room was that their improvisations reflected a shared sensibility, one of the traits that have come to define the orchestra under Mike Holober, its artistic director and conductor. Mr. Holober is credited with shaping an ensemble among seemingly disparate musicians that speaks with a single voice. “There’s now a cohesiveness to the band that I think utilizes all the talent that has been there since Day 1,” said Gary Walker, the music director at WBGO , the jazz radio station in Newark. Mr. Walker, who introduces the band at its concerts, has been observing it from its first shows in 2003. Within weeks of becoming artistic director in January 2007, Mr. Holober found himself pulling together the diverse strands of the organization: conducting a concert, leading a workshop and overseeing the band’s first recording, “All In.” The CD, a collection of new arrangements of jazz standards, spent 13 weeks on the Jazz Week charts, peaking at No. 4. That recording raised the profile of the 16-piece orchestra considerably. And even as the band reduced its season by one concert amid the recession, a string of notable performances, including the premiere of its first original work, heightened the buzz in Westchester and beyond. Most of the 400 seats at the Irvington Town Hall Theater were filled for all four concerts last season. The recording made last month at Bennett Studios, “Maiden Voyage Suite,” will consist of original arrangements of tunes from Mr. Hancock’s 1965 album “ Maiden Voyage .” The suite was enthusiastically received twice in concert, though it became a candidate for recording only when the orchestra won a $10,000 grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. The award was announced last June. The recording session, Mr. Holober said, was “definitely overdue.” The session, a two-day affair, started slowly. The chief engineer, James A. Farber, said he was not used to the studio, a converted railroad terminal. As he worked the controls on the first tune, “Little One,” he initially expressed concern about whether the wiring on all of the horns’ microphones was intact. And as the alto saxophonist Jay Brandford, who had arranged the tune, prepared to listen to the playback, he admitted to a few tense moments of his own. But the tension quickly drained away as music filled the control room. Lush one moment and highly articulated the next, the horns — especially Mr. Brandford’s alto, which rose in solo above the band — revealed no evidence of lost connections. Mr. Brandford, normally one of the band’s more reticent personalities, smiled broadly, saying “Little One” had never sounded better in the orchestra’s hands. “Eye of the Hurricane” and the title tune finished off the day in a flurry of mixed meters and complex reharmonizations. On the second day, “Dolphin Dance,” “Survival of the Fittest (Part 1)” and three short pieces of transitional writing were dispatched with relative ease. The need for specific musicians to redo passages was kept to a minimum. And all of the tunes were completed in two takes — save for “Survival of the Fittest (Part 2),” which needed three. The suite is the work of four writers — Tony Kadleck , Pete McGuinness , Mr. Holober and Mr. Brandford — all of whom are current or former members of the orchestra. Each has a distinctive style. Yet the musicians noted a consistency of voice, largely reflecting the efforts of Mr. Holober, who chose the writers, stayed in touch with them as their work progressed and produced transitions — a prelude, interlude and epilogue — that wove in motivic bits from their arrangements. “Somehow,” Mr. Stamm said, “the music came out seamless.” The record is not intended simply as a document of the suite; parallel versions of some tracks have been recorded for airplay. Endings have replaced segues, and the individual tracks have been kept to a length of less than 11 minutes, which Mr. Walker said would fit WBGO’s format. The album, he said, will take its place among the 100 or so new releases from which the station chooses at any one time, and cuts from it might be played three or four times a week. Given the radio exposure, the reputation of the band members — some of the most in-demand players on the scene — and the persistence of the orchestra’s executive director, Emily Tabin, ambitions are high for the album. Ms. Tabin said its release is likely before the end of September, a date that would allow time for mixing, editing — and placing it in circulation just as deadlines for the awards season roll around.

Music
Culture (Arts)
Westchester County (NY)
Hancock Herbie
Walker Gary
Copland Aaron


World Cup Brings Little Pleasure to German Brothels

Abstract: BERLIN, June 30 — On the night before Germany was to play Argentina in the quarterfinals of the World Cup, the prostitutes who work at the Artemis Sauna Club here were putting on their game faces. With tens of thousands of soccer fans piling into Berlin for the game on Friday, this was going to be one of the women's last big chances during the tournament. The mood in the club, however, was as subdued as the lighting. "The last time Germany played, not that many men came here," said Luna, 33, a Serbian woman who came here from Bavaria to work during the four weeks of the tournament. "Maybe they went out to a pub and drank instead." To the list of pernicious things that have not happened at this World Cup, add one more: a spike in the sex trade. While clubs like Artemis have been busier than usual after games, the tournament has generated nowhere near the surge in demand for prostitution — or the influx of temporary prostitutes from Eastern Europe and Asia — that many experts predicted. "Our business is O.K., but it's not great," said Egbert Krumeich, the public relations manager for Artemis. "We get 250 to 260 customers on a game day. We'd be happier getting 600 a day." Soccer and sex, it appears, do not mix very well — even in Germany, where prostitution is legal and the World Cup organizers have pushed the slogan "A Time to Make Friends." There are plenty of friendly fans here, most of them male and many pie-eyed by alcohol. The bad news for the sex trade is that they would rather guzzle another beer than go looking for a prostitute. Artemis, which claims to be the most luxurious sex club in Germany, opened last September in anticipation of a bordello bonanza during the World Cup. It is strategically situated next to one of the main highways into Berlin, and only 20 minutes by foot from the Olympic Stadium. While the club has had lots of publicity — Mr. Krumeich spends much of his time escorting poker-faced reporters past the nudist bar and Finnish sauna — the hype has not translated into hordes of paying customers. All the talk before the World Cup about mobile "sex garages," multistory brothels and rampant cross-border sex trafficking may have kept a lid on the high jinks, people in the sex business say. It may even have scared away some of the regular clientele. "The police carried out a lot of searches to look for forced prostitutes or women without legal papers," said Stephanie Klee, a prostitute who leads a group that lobbies for the rights of sex workers. "When clients see police at the brothels, they think that sex work is linked to crime." In fact, prostitution is well regulated in Germany, where about 400,000 people work in the sex trade. Since 2002, prostitutes have been guaranteed the same rights as those in other industries. They must register with the authorities and pay taxes, and they receive health insurance. Critics say this legal status emboldens traffickers to send prostitutes to Germany, often against their will. In its annual report on forced labor and trafficking in persons, issued just before the World Cup, the United States State Department described Germany as a "source, transit, and destination country" for prostitutes. While crediting Germany's efforts to prosecute trafficking, the report said, "Due to the sheer size of the event, the potential for increased human trafficking surrounding the games remains a concern." Human rights groups estimated that 40,000 women, most from Eastern Europe, would travel to Germany to work as prostitutes during the World Cup. The German government did not release its own estimate. Officials say privately they believe the number is a fraction of that, though they acknowledge that the shadowy nature of sex trafficking makes it hard to be precise. The German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation said it had "no knowledge or information" about any cases of forced prostitution during the tournament, a spokeswoman said. Christian Sachs, a spokesman for the German Interior Ministry, which oversees security issues, said, "It looks as if the fears that were mentioned — that the World Cup would lead to a rise in cases of forced prostitution and sex trafficking — have fortunately not been the case." In Hamburg and Cologne, which have well-known red-light districts, the authorities say there has been little evidence of increased prostitution. The only city in which the police reported a substantial increase in the number of women working in licensed sex clubs was Munich, increasing to 800 from 500. Some workers in the sex trade said the communal nature of the World Cup discourages visits to prostitutes, which is by nature a furtive, solitary activity. Many foreign visitors have come to Germany with their families or friends, and travel in buses and campers that do not afford much privacy. "For most people, it's just too complicated," Ms. Klee said. "It's difficult to say to your friends, 'I'm going to leave you now and go to a brothel for 20 minutes.' That's not normal behavior." Artemis, which has a Web site in six languages, tries to woo nervous customers by promoting itself as a by-the-book operation. Mr. Krumeich said its workers must be 21 years old and have valid residency documents — a condition challenged by some women between ages 18 and 21 who say the minimum age is unlawful. Most of the club's 50 or so regular workers are from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Tatiana, a cheerful 32-year-old Croatian who works at a sex club in Cologne, relocated to Berlin for the World Cup because Croatia played Brazil here. On that day, she said, she did a brisk business with her countrymen. There were far fewer Brazilian customers, however. Luna, her friend, described Artemis as a "neutral ground," where politics and national rivalries are left at the door. The customers remain passionate about soccer, however, as do the women. Whenever a game is on, Luna said, they stop what they are doing to watch it. The club shows the games live in a theater normally used for pornographic films. "I cried when Serbia lost 6-0 to Argentina," Luna said, stubbing out a cigarette and heading back to work.

Germany
Prostitution
World Cup (Soccer)
Medicine and Health
Berlin (Germany)
Freedom and Human Rights


Vision Training Helps Rugby Teams

Abstract: WELLINGTON — From isolation to global recognition, Sherylle Calder’s path in sports has been a pioneering one to say the least. The isolation, or that of her native country, South Africa, from international competition during the apartheid era actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the former international player in field hockey. Had South African teams not been cut off from the rest of the sports world, Calder might never have realized that she had an ability to see things better and process them faster than others. It is a skill she has been able to develop in thousands of other athletes, across a myriad of sports, through her training programs, which in turn has made her one of the most sought-after people in sports today. Her pioneering efforts in the field of visual performance training gained huge recognition through her work with the World Cup-winning England (2003) and South Africa (2007) rugby teams. She is the only person to receive winner’s medals in back-to-back World Cups. She describes those moments as career highlights, although not unsurprisingly the Springboks victory in Paris, against England, tugged at her heartstrings a little more. “There’s nothing like winning it with your own country,” she admitted. “I’m a professional, and the team that I work with, I want them to win, but coming back and winning it with South Africa was an amazing experience.” The realization her own visual skills were superior to that of her fellow field hockey players began to dawn on her while playing club hockey in Europe during South Africa’s isolation in sports. While South Africa’s teams did not compete on the international stage during the apartheid years, individuals, like Calder, were able to explore opportunities beyond their country’s borders, and it proved to be something of an eye-opening experience. “Players and coaches always used to say, ‘How did you see that? How did you do that? Do you have eyes in the back of your head?”’ she said. “I thought everyone saw what I saw,” she added. “Physically, I was initially not as conditioned as other athletes that had been playing international hockey, but I could compete with them, and that made me realize I see quicker and I time better, and all that makes you be in the right place at the right time. And that made me think a little bit.” When she hung up her hockey stick in 1996 after playing 50 tests for South Africa, she turned her attentions to exploring her special talent and how it could be developed in other people. She used her research to complete a doctorate in visual performance training at the University of Cape Town before opening an office at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa in Cape Town. “I decided to take the way I trained and put it into a training program,” Calder said. “I proved in my research that if you train your eyes in a certain way and you train on the field in a certain way, if you combine the two, you can improve performance.” In the beginning, her work was very hands-on with the players, but in 2003, as demand for her expertise increased, she realized it was impossible to be in all places at the same time. “Then I started developing software programs to train players when I wasn’t there. That’s how I got to the EyeGym program,” she said, referring to her training regimen. “But I always say that probably if we weren’t isolated, I might not have explored it in the way that I did and maybe not be where I am today.” She met with a fair amount of skepticism early on but was unfazed by it. “Pioneering anything, and with any new science, people are always skeptical,” she said. Now Calder has legions of admirers — high among them the former England coach Clive Woodward and the former South Africa coach Jake White — and she is in big demand. She worked with the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australian cricket team in the early days but since has gone on to train some of the leading teams and personalities in cricket, golf, tennis, motor racing and field hockey, as well as an Australian-rules football team and the Vancouver Canucks of the N.H.L. Most recently, she spent time working with an Olympic sailing team off the coast of western Australia and an aerial ski team in Finland. “It’s quite amazing,” she said. “I can travel anywhere in the world and people know about the work that I do. It’s been accepted as an official science.” Calder describes herself as a visual fitness trainer, and just as athletes must work on core physical skills to improve performance, training the eye and the brain to see, judge and react better is equally important, she said. For rugby players like the South Africans Bryan Habana and Jean de Villiers, who are the masters of scoring intercept tries, all-around vision and reaction times are crucial. Habana, who is one of the quickest players in world rugby, thrived under Calder’s tuition and scored eight tries at the 2007 World Cup, including a crucial interception against Argentina in the semifinals. He credits Calder, 52, with “making my eyes as quick as my feet.” One of Habana’s training drills during the World Cup was to throw and catch a rugby ball at a variety of angles, heights and speeds. At one point, the Springboks winger caught and threw the ball again 118 times in one minute during that particular drill. Calder would also do warm-up routines with Habana and De Villiers on the field before each match. “I’d do drills specific to them to prepare their visual skills for what they needed to perform on the field,” she said. “That probably explains why they intercepted so many balls.” While skills such as hand-eye, foot and body coordination, better peripheral vision and spatial awareness cut across many sports, what Calder is really teaching is the ability to see “correctly and accurately and processing that information correctly as well.” It is why her work can transcend the sporting arena to other areas of life. She has now developed a program for schools after research in Britain and South Africa proved that better visual skills improved the reading, comprehension skills and performance of children. Her work with schools and other sports aside, Calder still has ambitions to work in rugby again. She was unwanted by current Springboks coach Peter de Villiers when he took over from White, but she has not given up hope of attending another Rugby World Cup and believes her expertise would give any team an edge over its rivals. “Of course I’d love to be involved in the Rugby World Cup,” she said. “If a team uses me, great. If they don’t, then I will do other stuff. I can still make a difference to a team. I still have enough time to do that.”


Inventories Up 0.3%

Abstract: WASHINGTON, May 8 (Reuters) — Inventories at United States wholesalers rose a smaller-than-expected 0.3 percent in March while sales rose to their highest in a year and a half, a government report showed on Tuesday. The rise in stocks on hand was accompanied by a 1.8 percent gain in wholesale sales, the highest monthly increase since a 2.3 percent rise in September 2005, the Commerce Department said. Economists had forecast that inventories would rise 0.4 percent after the 0.5 percent increase originally reported in February. The stocks-to-sales ratio, a gauge of how long it would take to draw down stocks at the current sales pace, fell to 1.14 months in March, from 1.15 in February.

Sales
Leading Economic Indicators
Economic Conditions and Trends
United States Economy


German Police Arrest Terror Suspects

Abstract: BERLIN — German police boarded a Dutch airliner Friday at Cologne-Bonn airport and seized two men suspected of terrorism who had been under surveillance for several months, the police said. A special unit of German officers arrested the two men at 6:55 a.m. local time and, in a related operation, found apparent suicide notes at their apartment, a police spokesman told German news organizations. The men were said to be a 23-year-old Somali and a 24-year-old German of Somali descent. Michaela Heyer, a police spokeswoman, said that, contrary to initial reports, the airplane was not stormed by police. “The arrest was entirely unspectacular,” she said. There was “no indication” that either man was carrying explosives or weapons. The police boarded the plane shortly before it was to take off and took the two men into custody. They were “suspected of wishing to participate in jihad and possible attacks,” she said. She declined to give further details because the investigation was continuing. The KLM plane left for Amsterdam about one hour late after a search of all the baggage on board and the removal of the suspects’ baggage, the airline said. A German newspaper in Berlin, the Tagesspiegel, quoted unidentified security sources as saying the two men had planned to fly via Amsterdam and Uganda to Pakistan. The newspaper identified them as a Somali-born German, Omar D. and a Somali citizen, Abdirazak B. A week ago, the German authorities announced that they had arrested two men, a German citizen of Afghan descent and a Turk accused of being linked to a bombing plot last year that shocked Germany because of the scale of explosive chemicals seized and the fact that German converts to Islam were involved. Federal prosecutors said in a statement at the time that the German, Omid Shirkhani, had visited a training camp near the Afghan-Pakistani border run by the terrorist group Islamic Jihad Union. Mr. Shirkhani is suspected of being a member of the group. The Turkish citizen, Huseyin Ozgun, was accused of providing support to the organization. He was said to have been detained by Pakistani authorities on his way to an Islamic Jihad Union camp. The men were arrested in the Frankfurt area last week after Mr. Shirkhani tried to leave the country, according to a senior German law enforcement official. Separately, German authorities said Thursday they are looking for two other terrorism suspects -- a 21-year-old German and a 23-year-old Lebanese _-- thought to be traveling to Europe from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The Tagesspiegel newspaper report on Friday said the men arrested at Cologne-Bonn airport had links to an Islamist in Bonn who, in turn, knew the German and Lebanese men sought by the police. The newspaper said the men arrested on Friday were suspected of heading for an Islamic Jihad Union camp.

Terrorism
Germany
Airlines and Airplanes
Air France-KLM
Cologne (Germany)
Bonn (Germany)


Holiday Chestnuts Now, Interlopers Only Recently

Abstract: Many holiday entertainment traditions hark back centuries — or at least decades. Handel’s “Messiah” at the San Francisco Symphony and “ The Nutcracker Suite” at the San Francisco Ballet clearly fall into that category. But among all the chestnuts, new seasonal fare continues to arrive. Some of it sticks and finds a regular place on the holiday calendar. Kung Pao Kosher Comedy is one of the better-known events of this new breed. This year it celebrates 18 years of Jewish comedians’ performing at a Chinese restaurant over Christmas. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus has offered “Home for the Holidays,” which features a mix of Christmas tunes with secular music, since 1990. And then there is “Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes,” a drag version of the television show featuring the original scripts, that is now in its fourth year. Heklina, a drag performer who started the Bay Area’s long-running Trannyshack series, said “Golden Girls” was her most family-friendly fare. “I look out in the audience,” she said, “and see actual golden girls, mothers and grandmothers. And kids. It’s really weird.” These nontraditional holiday traditions may not be universally popular, but what is striking is how much these events have in common with standards like “Nutcracker.” Most audiences that seek out holiday singalongs, even ones at the Castro Theater (where “Home for the Holidays” is performed), are not looking to be challenged with new material. The holidays are about family, community and nods to the familiar, even if the familiar is four drag queens acting out holiday episodes from a popular TV series. “We’ve created our own tradition,” said Kathleen McGuire, director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. “Certainly, the Gay Men’s Chorus, who is about to have its 33rd season, has been around long enough to build families. It’s sort of like, a lot of people miss the stuff they had growing up and this is a way to replace it.” The holiday concerts started as an afterthought, a nonessential addition to the chorus’ schedule, but were immediately popular — thanks in part to marquee billing at the Castro Theater, but also to the sense of community created by the event. “The Gay Men’s Chorus began offering these holiday concerts when the AIDS epidemic was at its worst,” Ms. McGuire said. “Some people were ostracized by their families or simply had nowhere to go for the holidays. The chorus provided an alternative to church for many members of the gay community.” Repetition is an important component of the holiday entertainment experience. “The Santaland Diaries,” a theatrical production of David Sedaris’s dark monologues from his time as a professional elf at Macy’s, has been going strong in San Francisco for nine years. But when producers added Mr. Sedaris’s companion piece, “Season’s Greetings,” to the mix in 2007, they got negative feedback for the first time. The black comedy includes a scene in which a baby is thrown into a dryer. “San Francisco likes irreverent humor, but we went too far,” said Matthew Quinn, the artistic director of Combined Artform , the play’s producer. This year’s “Santaland Diaries” will feature a more elaborate set, but no changes to the show’s material. “What makes people want to see an event with the same words?” Mr. Quinn said, repeating a reporter’s question. “I guess it’s the simple truth of the writing.” Lisa Geduldig, the founder of Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, said she knew from the beginning that her idea — Jewish comedy in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve — helped “fill a void” in the holiday season. What she did not anticipate was its almost two-decade run. She has extended the performances to eight from one, and has brought in nationally known comedians like Henny Youngman shortly before his death in 1998. This year features Wendy Liebman and Joe Nguyen. “We have people coming back every year,” Ms. Geduldig said. “I’ve met people who are like, ‘Oh, its our 10th time. I brought my family from Boston.’ People reserve an entire table of 10 more these days.” Paula Grace, of San Francisco, is one of those repeat visitors. She estimated that she had been going for 15 years. This year, she will take along five non-Jewish friends. As someone who does not celebrate the holidays, Ms. Grace said she found Kung Pao to be a relief from the onslaught of Christmas activities; it also fosters a sense of camaraderie among attendees. “I’ve found a friend there who I met 10 years ago,” she said. “We’re still friends.” Howard Siegel, a Pacifica resident, along with his wife, Laura, has been every year since Kung Pao started. As a native New Yorker, he said the show reminded him of his hometown. “It’s what the Jews do on Christmas,” Mr. Siegel said. “One year we took our family; one year we took out-of-town guests; now we go with another couple. Always on Christmas Eve.” Ms. Grace pointed to another thing that the Kung Pao event had going for it. “In San Francisco, on Christmas, the streets are empty,” she said. “It’s easy to park.”

San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Ballet
Kung Pao Kosher Comedy
Christmas
Television
Gay Men's Chorus
San Francisco Bay Area (Calif)


Gabon’s Long-Ruling Autocrat Is Gone, But His Shadow Looms on Election Day

Abstract: LIBREVILLE, Gabon — The face of the late ruler’s son, Ali Ben Bongo, is plastered everywhere here — on posters and banners every 20 yards outside the airport, on giant flickering television screens by the seaside road and hanging in enlarged photographs down the sides of dilapidated seven-story buildings. Sunday’s presidential election in this Central African nation notwithstanding, weary citizens say, the message of the posters seems clear: El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba, the crafty autocrat who ruled for 41 years, may be dead, but his reign is not necessarily over, thanks to his son. Not physically a candidate for the first time in decades, the elder Mr. Bongo, who died in June, still dominates a noisy campaign many here said they had hoped would be a turning point after years of autocracy. Anger over the dead leader’s continued shadowy presence is easily encountered in the disheveled streets behind Mr. Bongo’s hulking modernistic palaces, built with the immense oil wealth of Gabon, sub-Saharan Africa’s fourth largest producer and a tiny country that punches well beyond its weight as a result. Even though Ali Ben Bongo has tried to play down his father’s legacy, ludicrously keeping the family name off his campaign posters, the truth is clear. None of the other 17 candidates (five pulled out Friday) can hope to match the power he brings to bear: all-pervasive influence bought and maintained by decades of oil riches. While the Bongo clan has reveled in its possessions, including more than three dozen of the most sumptuous real estate holdings in Paris, the vast majority of people in Gabon have been left behind in the dust that chokes the sprawling hillside slums here. Some 60 percent live on less than $2 a day, and only 10 percent of the roads are paved. That legacy is at the heart of the election, even if it is not discussed by the principal candidates, many compromised by association with the elder Mr. Bongo’s long-followed strategy of buy-and-rule. Last week, Ali Ben Bongo, campaigning here in a squalid district of shacks and open-air bars named Rio, promised schools, development projects and extensive cleanups, and, taking his cue from the gyrating people at his feet, he set his stocky frame to uneasy dancing on a stage as the music blared. In interviews, he promises that the country’s riches will be distributed “equitably.” But at the campaign rally’s edge, discontent simmered among those who had not accepted the T-shirts of the leading candidate. “The road ends outside Libreville,” said Mathieu Ngoma, a biology instructor. “After that we eat dust. It’s impossible. We can’t continue like this. “We are rich in Gabon,” he added, referring to the country’s natural resources. (The country is also Africa’s second biggest exporter of wood.) “But it is the European Union that builds the roads. We must have a change.” Flore Moussada, a vendor outside a pastel cinder-block shack on the hilltop, said, “We are tired of living in misery.” “Is this normal, for a young woman?” she said, pointing to her basket of tired-looking peppers and tomatoes. “We want to elect a new president; he’ll do the same thing as his father,” she said, referring to the younger Mr. Bongo. There have been no public opinion polls here, but no one is predicting any result other than a victory for Mr. Bongo, 50. The Bongos’ long-entrenched party, the Parti Démocratique Gabonaise, has an extensive organization throughout this thinly populated country of dense tropical rainforest , savannah and mangrove swamps. Of the remaining four major candidates, only one, Pierre Mamboundou, who was exiled under the Bongo government, has never had ties to the P.D.G. The younger Mr. Bongo “has the money, and a government that can organize elections,” said Gregory Ngwa Mintsa, who helped file a French lawsuit over the Paris properties that embarrassed the elder Mr. Bongo in his final years. His efforts landed him in jail for a while last year. “All the elements favor him,” he added. The Bongos’ money has other uses here as well, some people suggest. “Have you received 500 francs to be here?” thundered the master of ceremonies at a boisterous rally for one of Mr. Bongo’s opponents, former Prime Minister Casimir Oyé-Mba, referring to widely voiced suspicions of naked vote-buying. Like others here, Mr. Mintsa expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the coming election. The list of voters contains some 813,000 names, an improbable number in a nation of about 1.3 million but one that helped the elder Bongo rack up big majorities in election after election. The United Nations says that it has received reports that Congolese refugees in Gabon have been pressed to obtain voting cards and threatened with expulsion if they do not use them, and that similar pressures have been put on some in the country’s large population of foreign workers. “The Gabonese think it can’t be a real list,” said Anaclé Bissielo, the minister of development, public performance, long-range thinking and statistics, who is also a sociology professor at Omar Bongo University. “I think so, too. It can’t be real. “It is objective and undeniable, the fact that the electoral college is too elevated. This element means that, for a number of years, there has been a suspicion about elections here. The Gabonese are telling themselves that the weaknesses have not been corrected.” On the streets, there is cynicism about the management of the election: outside the shabby Interior Ministry building here, citizens lining up to obtain their voting cards said, angrily, that government security agents had demanded bribes in return. Under the watchful eye of soldiers, most would give only their first names. Still, some are trying to hope that a long era of monochrome politics could be coming to an end. “We’ve spent 42 years under the reign of a single person; that’s not democracy,” said Gaspar Nguema, a civil servant sitting with friends for an afternoon drink after Mr. Bongo’s entourage had left the Rio district. De Ndenguila, an unemployed man sitting next to him, said: “Fifty years of power, it’s not normal. Is this a monarchy?” Troops have been deployed on trucks in the capital’s streets. Citizens were said to be stockpiling provisions. The government said that voters would have to leave polling places immediately after voting Sunday, “in order to avoid gatherings that could trouble public order,” as an official decree put it. “The tension is mounting,” said Mr. Bissielo, the development minister. “When you see people waiting hours to get their voting cards, it means there is tension. There is a risk of unrest.”

Gabon
Elections
European Union
United Nations
Voting and Voters
Politics and Government
Bongo Omar


Detroit’s Chief Instigator

Abstract: In the middle of March, Mary T. Barra, the chief executive of General Motors, received a lengthy and unusual email from one of her direct competitors, Sergio Marchionne. Ms. Barra had never met Mr. Marchionne, the C.E.O. of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. And she was in no way expecting their first contact to be an offer to discuss a potential blockbuster of a merger. The email, according to two people with knowledge of it and reported for the first time here, laid out in detail how global carmakers needed to consolidate to save money and suggested that a combination of G.M. and Fiat Chrysler could cut billions of dollars in costs and create an automotive superpower. This analysis did not interest Ms. Barra or other G.M. executives and board members. Instead, Mr. Marchionne’s request for a meeting on the subject was flatly turned down, according to people with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity. It was a rare rejection for Mr. Marchionne, the mastermind behind the merger between the Italian automaker Fiat and Chrysler, the American car company that required a government bailout to survive the last recession. Mr. Marchionne, however, is not one to be put off by rejection. So a month later, on April 29, in a routine analyst conference call, he doubled down. Instead of following the usual script, in which chief executives discuss the current state of their operations, Mr. Marchionne stunned the Wall Street analysts by devoting the entire call to his sudden and intense appeal to automakers to merge. “I think it is absolutely clear that the amount of capital waste that’s going on in this industry is something that certainly requires remedy,” he said. “A remedy in our view is through consolidation.” It’s not often that a chief executive announces to the world that his company is eager to find a merger partner. Some might even consider it a sign of weakness and, in fact, F.C.A.’s stock dropped about 10 percent over the next two days. Rather than rally support, Mr. Marchionne’s passionate appeal only highlighted the difficulties that lie ahead for Fiat Chrysler. Mr. Marchionne has had remarkable success in blending two struggling car companies into the world’s seventh-largest automaker. F.C.A.’s sales in the United States have doubled since 2009. But it still sold only 4.6 million cars and trucks worldwide in 2014, about half as many as competitors like G.M. and Volkswagen. Its valuable brands, like Jeep sport utility vehicles and Ram pickups, don’t compensate for the fact that it makes less money than its rivals, lags in China — the world’s biggest car market — and barely invests in alternative-fuel vehicles that are critical to meeting the coming tougher federal rules on fuel economy. Mr. Marchionne says he has a detailed plan to improve F.C.A.’s performance, but his current obsession seems to be playing the automotive Cassandra, warning of disastrous consequences if companies continue spending unabated. He has no patience for subtlety or delicate phrasing. Chrysler’s Turbulent History Chrysler, founded in 1925, has had a tumultuous history as the third-largest of Detroit’s auto companies. The bigger the issue, in fact, the louder he becomes. He irritated the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration by defiantly defending F.C.A.’s response to safety issues with older Jeep models. N.H.T.S.A. just last week scheduled a hearing to examine the company’s follow-through on recalls, something it rarely does. Mr. Marchionne also appears headed for a confrontation with union leaders in this summer’s contract negotiations because of F.C.A.’s rampant hiring of lower-paid workers. Alone among auto chiefs, he wants to end the current two-tier wage system by phasing out the top wage rate as veteran employees retire. Detroit hasn’t seen a C.E.O. as provocative and unpredictable since Lee A. Iacocca, Chrysler’s previous savior, in the 1980s. And as with Mr. Iacocca, confidence is never a problem for Mr. Marchionne. Not From the Ranks When in the United States, Mr. Marchionne, 62, works out of a tiny office in a wing of the sprawling Chrysler Technical Center in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills. He prefers to spend time among engineers and product planners rather than in the lavish suite of executive offices in the nearby headquarters tower. In March, as he settled in for an interview at a small table, a window giving a view over a service drive, he downed the first of several espressos and silenced his four cellphones. Though smoking is forbidden elsewhere in the building, in this sanctuary he lit up one Marlboro after another. Mr. Marchionne doesn’t look like a typical car executive. His uniform is a black sweater over a button-down shirt with black pants, and you get the sense he can’t be bothered to find a hairbrush. Unlike Ms. Barra or Mark Fields of Ford Motor, both of whom rose through the corporate ranks, Mr. Marchionne never even worked for a car company before taking the top job at Fiat in 2004. Born in Chieti, Italy, a small city on the Adriatic Sea, he moved to Canada with his family as a teenager. He earned degrees in philosophy, law and business administration before joining an accounting firm at 30. From there, he spent most of his career bouncing through executive posts at unglamorous Canadian and European chemical and industrial companies. He was an obscure board member at Fiat when the Agnelli family, which controlled the Italian automaker, picked him to reverse its long decline. He moved fast, firing executives, flattening the company’s bureaucracy, eliminating slow-selling models and paring production to match market demand. In a warm-up for Chrysler, he also fostered an entrepreneurial culture in which executives were given wide latitude to meet internal targets. Since he cut the deal with the Obama administration six years ago to take control of Chrysler, his moves have confounded an industry that tends to adhere to tried-and-true formulas. When other companies streamlined their brand lineups, Mr. Marchionne created new ones, such as splitting off Ram trucks from the larger Dodge division. Rather than glossing over Chrysler’s battered image, he embraced it with soulful advertising campaigns that extolled the tenacious spirit behind vehicles that were “imported from Detroit.” “I’ve always had this incredible sense of urgency,” he said. “I’ve always had this desire not to let things fester and to really seize the moment, because it’s serendipity.” He paused. “You create the conditions for it, and it just keeps producing outcomes or opportunities for you to pick,” he said. “And if you don’t pick them, then it’s your own damn fault.” He saw that kind of opportunity four years ago when he took advantage of Chrysler’s precarious financial condition to negotiate a favorable contract with the United Automobile Workers union. That deal allowed him unlimited use of workers paid on a lower scale — about $19 an hour compared with $28 for veteran employees. Image Mr. Marchionne at a Fiat powertrain plant in Italy. Credit FCA Fiat Chrysler Automobiles The arrangement opened the door for Fiat Chrysler to go on a hiring spree of cheaper labor in the United States. Today, more than 40 percent of the company’s 36,000 American factory workers earn entry-level wages, compared with about 20 percent at G.M. and 27 percent at Ford. Before he could benefit from his lower-wage work force, Mr. Marchionne had to strip down Chrysler’s production after its 2009 bankruptcy. He also retooled Chrysler’s organization by replacing veteran executives with a cadre of younger, unproven managers. While he set ambitious sales and financial targets, he gave his new team free rein to achieve them. “He creates an environment that I call the pressure cooker approach,” said Bernardo Bertoldi, a business professor at the University of Torino in Italy, who helped write a recent Harvard Business School case study on Mr. Marchionne. “He provides the goals and gives them their freedom, but the pressure is on getting results.” And after years of dysfunction under the ownership of the German automaker Daimler and then the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, Chrysler took off. Once Chrysler joined with Fiat, the combined company began posting double-digit annual increases in revenue, reaching $109 billion last year. And after absorbing losses as it paid back more than $5 billion in loans from American taxpayers, F.C.A. has become solidly profitable, reporting $717 million in net income in 2014. The bulk of its income comes from the Chrysler side of the business. Chrysler’s revival hinged on streamlining its manufacturing base and pouring resources into its strongest brands, in particular Jeep, which has a cultlike status in this country as the most rugged and stylish of American S.U.V.s and a worldwide appeal dating back to World War II. “He saw the future with Jeep,” said Mike Manley, the brand’s chief. “I remember talking to him early when we were targeting sales of a half-million, and he said we can do a lot more.” Fiat Chrysler has opened new plants in Italy and Brazil to accelerate Jeep sales in international markets, and a Chinese factory is coming next. Last year, F.C.A. sold about one million Jeeps globally. Mr. Marchionne is shooting for 1.9 million in 2018, and the success of the brand will be critical to the company’s overall results. “You can’t help but be impressed with what Sergio has done so far,” said David Cole, former chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “But the question is whether he can achieve the kind of scale necessary to keep up with automakers twice his size.” If all his growth targets are achieved, Mr. Marchionne expects Fiat Chrysler to hit seven million in sales in three years. “That plan is predicated on a whole pile of things I want to execute flawlessly,” he said. But in the next breath, he admitted that external events such as fluctuating oil prices and economic downturns could scuttle those ambitions quickly. “If I look at the history of this thing over the last 10 to 20 years,” he said, “we’ve always had something that came out of left field and made us very, very uncomfortable.” Image Mary T. Barra, the C.E.O. of General Motors, which rejected Mr. Marchionne's merger overture. Credit Steve Fecht for General Motors A Union Showdown Mr. Marchionne might be feeling pretty uncomfortable this summer when Detroit automakers enter contract talks with the U.A.W. When Chrysler last negotiated a contract in 2011, the carmakers were able to win concessions because Detroit’s auto industry was just beginning to recover from its financial collapse during the last recession. Now, however, F.C.A. and the other car companies boast of their robust finances, and the unions are determined to share in the bounty. That could mean an end to Mr. Marchionne’s unfettered use of lower-tier workers. One of the union’s priorities is to raise wages for new workers and possibly place a cap on the number of lower-paid employees hired. Ford, for example, is required under the current contract to bump entry-level hires to full-wage status when their overall percentage at the company hits certain thresholds. Fiat Chrysler, however, has no such restrictions. Union workers in its plants say the two-tier system has created rifts on the factory floor. “You can feel the separation in the plant and the animosity,” said Scott McGinnis, who is part of a team that trains workers for the assembly line at a plant in Sterling Heights, Mich. He says lower-tier hires like him resent that they have no way to reach the top of the wage scale, as workers do at Ford. “I’m very fortunate to have a job,” he said. “But with a wage progression system, I would at least know I’m working up toward something.” Many veteran workers earning top wages are just as supportive of scaling back or eliminating the two-tier system. “It has created an ‘us and them’ mind-set where there’s some mutual resentment,” said Martha Grevatt, a skilled-trades worker at a plant in Warren, Mich., who was hired in the 1980s. “It’s all very detrimental to union solidarity.” Mr. Marchionne, who last year earned more than $30 million, is unapologetic about his voracious hiring of lower-paid workers. “I’ve just responded to business needs,” he said. “I needed to make cars, and we hired people.” He defends taking advantage of the two-tier system, but Mr. Marchionne admits that the pay gap among workers creates “seeds of instability.” He advocates a standard wage throughout the plants. The $28-an-hour wage that veteran workers now make should be reset at a lower level when they retire, he proposes. Union workers, however, hate this idea and are instead arguing for wage increases across the board in the coming contract. Mr. Marchionne’s aggressive use of the two-tier system is characteristic of his forceful style, which has been known to backfire. Two years ago, he challenged federal regulators on their intention to seek a broad recall of older-model Jeeps. Those Jeeps had rear-mounted gas tanks that could catch fire in high-speed rear-end collisions. In a stunning departure from the protocol for resolving car safety issues, Mr. Marchionne requested a private, face-to-face meeting with Ray LaHood, then the transportation secretary, and managed to limit the number of vehicles recalled. Now, however, N.H.T.S.A.’s new administrator, Mark R. Rosekind, has signaled that the agency will be much stricter in how it handles recalls. Last week, N.H.T.S.A. said it would hold a public hearing in July on whether Fiat Chrysler was doing enough to fix the 10 million vehicles it had recalled in a variety of safety actions, including the 1.5 million Jeeps with vulnerable gas tanks. The Jeep fire issue is clearly a sore point with Mr. Marchionne. He contends that the S.U.V.s met all federal crash standards when they were built more than a decade ago and that F.C.A.’s agreement to install trailer hitches to mitigate the effect of an accident is a fine remedy. While safety advocates have criticized the trailer-hitch remedy as insufficient, N.H.T.S.A. said this week that it would not reopen the Jeep investigation to explore other possible remedies. Still, F.C.A. could be facing enormous legal liabilities for gas tank fires. A jury in Georgia awarded $150 million in damages in April to the family of a 4-year-old boy who was killed in a Jeep fire in 2012. Fiat Chrysler has asked for a new trial in the case. Image Display cars at the Chrysler Technical Center in Auburn Hills, Mich., where Mr. Marchionne has his office. Credit Laura McDermott for The New York Times Courting Apple and Google A few weeks ago, an aide to Mr. Marchionne called and said the C.E.O. wanted a follow-up discussion for this article. He had already sat for an extensive interview, but was steaming over the reaction to his consolidation manifesto in April. And he wanted to vent about it. He consistently declined to comment publicly about his overture to G.M. or Ms. Barra’s unwillingness to meet with him about it. But during the follow-up interview he became visibly irritated by the suggestion that he had made Fiat Chrysler available for sale by broaching the topic. “Look, if I wanted to sell I would have called a banker,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done an analysis on return on invested capital and margins that talk about the fact that we’re all in the same hole.” As he did in an earlier interview, he seethed about how the escalating costs for new technology and products were “driving me nuts.” He contends that automakers waste billions duplicating efforts in developing new engines, safety technology and alternative-fuel vehicles. The conference call outcry was for the good of the entire auto industry and not because Fiat Chrysler was more vulnerable to rising costs than its bigger competitors. Mr. Marchionne calculates that a combination with a larger automaker, such as G.M., can save several billion dollars a year by sharing costs for new vehicle platforms and parts. “It’s fundamentally immoral to allow for that waste to continue unchecked,” he said. No other auto executive has seen fit to agree with him, publicly at least. Skeptical Wall Street analysts are hard-pressed to envision interested suitors. Ford has stated that it is not looking at mergers. Ms. Barra, in her only public comments on the topic, said that doing a big deal would be a “distraction” for G.M. Volkswagen is said to have had interest in the past in F.C.A., but its management has not addressed the subject outright. Adam Jonas, a Morgan Stanley analyst, wrote in a research note to investors that auto companies “rarely seek merger partners willingly unless times are desperate.” Yet he did not discount the possibility that Mr. Marchionne’s position might encourage activist investors to push another auto company to consider a merger with F.C.A. “We have no knowledge of how all this will play out,” Mr. Jonas said. Since opening the door for a possible merger with another car company, Mr. Marchionne has broadened his discussion about the industry’s future to include tech giants like Apple and Google. Mr. Machionne recently made a three-day visit to California to meet with executives there, including Apple’s C.E.O., Timothy D. Cook. (An Apple spokesman declined to comment.) The trip underscored the evolving relationships between technology giants and traditional automakers. Fiat Chrysler and other car companies are potentially large customers for advanced communications and navigation equipment. But Google and Apple are also developing their own cars, and may one day need to team up with big automakers for manufacturing or marketing. If and when that happens, Mr. Marchionne will be eager to participate. For now, he praises the companies as “disrupters” who will help redefine how cars are developed and operated, and that includes autonomous vehicles. “These things are real,” he told reporters after a recent speech in Toronto. “It’s not science fiction. They’re coming.” That Mr. Marchionne expresses enthusiasm for disruption of his industry should come as no surprise. Few believed that he could marry a bankrupt Chrysler with broken-down Fiat and create a viable car company. But he did. Like it or not, the big gesture is the only kind Mr. Marchionne is willing to make.

Detroit
Sergio Marchionne
Cars
UAW
Labor Unions
Wages and salaries


Iran’s Parliament Grills, but Mostly Confirms, New President’s Cabinet

Abstract: The proposed cabinet of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, survived its confirmation hearings largely intact on Thursday after four days of grilling by the conservative-dominated Parliament, which accused some nominees of corruption or sympathies with the outlawed opposition. At the end of the process, which amounted to Mr. Rouhani’s first domestic test, the Parliament rejected three nominees — for the ministries of education, science and sports. Several members of Parliament had accused them of having been close to the 2009 Green Movement that held months of protests against Iran’s leaders. But all of Mr. Rouhani’s key nominees were approved, most notably the foreign minister, an American-educated diplomat known for his understanding of the West, which suggested that Mr. Rouhani was moving forward in his campaign pledge to seek a more constructive engagement with the United States than his predecessor did. The new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, was a longtime ambassador to the United Nations and spent half his life living and working in the United States. Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, a former oil minister, was confirmed to that position again. Other nominees for important positions, like the minister of intelligence, Mahmoud Alavi, and the influential and wealthy minister of industry and mines, Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, were approved by large majorities. During the confirmation debates, broadcast live on state television, hard-line members of Parliament — whose preferred presidential candidate, the former nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, was humiliated by Mr. Rouhani’s surprise June election victory — took aim at several cabinet nominees. Top candidates, like Mr. Zarif and Mr. Zangeneh, faced intensive scrutiny. Mr. Zarif was accused by one lawmaker, Ataollah Hakimi, of being “100 percent Western.” Mr. Zangeneh was accused of improper connections to Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of a former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is widely regarded as the spiritual father of the incoming cabinet. “If Mr. Zangeneh is nominated we will again witness the coming of that gentleman, Mehdi Hashemi, the petty thief,” said Mohammad Ali Borzorghvari, a lawmaker, who was apparently referring to corruption charges faced by Mr. Rafsanjani’s son. In his confirmation remarks, Mr. Zangeneh said that his position would become almost as important as that of the foreign minister, because of the international sanctions that have sharply curtailed Iran’s sales of oil, its most important export. He acknowledged that “sanctions have surely created problems for our presence in the global oil market.” Image President Hassan Rouhani of Iran spoke before Parliament in Tehran on Thursday during the debate on his proposed cabinet. Credit Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press Mr. Rouhani was considered the most moderate of the contestants who had qualified for the presidential election under Iran’s system, in which an oversight panel of senior ayatollahs vets all aspiring candidates. He faces potential struggles with influential hard-liners in the legislature and other branches of government who could make life difficult for him and his ministers. “This cabinet will lead your government to a confrontation with Parliament,” Mr. Rouhani was warned by one legislator, Mohammad Javad Qodousi. Mr. Rouhani argued that he had recruited nominees best suited “to face the current situation” after eight years of nonstop economic problems, which even some conservatives have blamed on poor economic management by the previous conservative administration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Vocal hard-line members of Parliament, supported by the conservative state newspaper Keyhan, said they were worried that some of Mr. Rouhani’s cabinet choices had supported the Green Movement, which sprung up in 2009 after Mr. Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election to a second term. The concern focused mostly on the nominees for education minister, Jafar Mili-Monfared, and science minister, Mohammad Ali Najafi. Both were questioned over whether they had attended student sit-ins or had visited grieving families of protesters killed during riots protesting Mr. Ahmadinejad’s suspiciously lopsided 2009 victory. The criticisms aimed at both nominees showed how polarized Iran’s political establishment remains four years later, with hard-liners eager to exclude from power those who did not support the harsh suppression of those riots, in which more than 100 people were killed. Both nominees lost confirmation by large majorities. Mr. Rouhani’s nominee for sports minister, Masoud Soltanifar, a former newspaper editor, was also rejected, although the reasons were not so clear. Analysts noted, however, that all three rejected candidates were for ministries that address youth issues. Hard-liners have long sought control over the science, education and sports ministries, which they say are critical in their aims to socially engineer Iran’s youth toward Islam and their political viewpoints. Iran’s conservative-dominated Parliament views itself as the guardian of the country’s revolutionary values, and several members of Parliament openly say they do nothing else than follow the orders of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The televised nomination sessions led to much debate among ordinary Iranians, who said they had expected the lawmakers to be more respectful, particularly because Mr. Rouhani had won by an emphatic majority. “It is shameful they continue to complain of the protests that took place four years ago,” said Mehdi, a teacher who asked that his family name not be mentioned for reasons of security. “What matters now is that qualified people take control of the country, not the Parliament’s ideological obsession with protests.” Analysts also said that Parliament’s objections did not go down well with most people. “They show themselves as the extremists they are,” said Nader Karimi Joni, the editor in chief of Janat-e Sanat, a reformist magazine.

Iran
Hassan Rouhani
Mohammad Javad Zarif
Bijan Namdar Zangeneh
Mahmoud Alavi
Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh
Legislature


Pilgrims to Bethlehem Are Heartened by Even Relative Calm

Abstract: BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — Encouraged by renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians , Christian pilgrims on Monday converged on this city, the birthplace of Jesus, to celebrate Christmas — a palpable contrast to the sparse crowds of recent years. The diverse mix of people included festive American tourists, monks in brown flowing robes and Palestinian scouts wearing kilts and playing bagpipes. “I’m Catholic,” said Kristin Obeck, a 37-year-old schoolteacher from Richmond, Va. “I always wanted to see the beginning of Christianity, the whole history. It’s something you grow up with.” Despite the celebratory atmosphere, there were reminders of the tensions in the region, including a heavy police deployment, the presence of Israel’s massive separation barrier and unease among Bethlehem’s ever-shrinking Christian population. In the years following the 1993 Oslo peace accord, Bethlehem attracted tens of thousands of tourists for Christmas. But the number of visitors plummeted after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000. Tourism has begun to recover in recent years as the fighting has slowed. This year, it got a boost from the renewal of peace talks at a summit meeting in Annapolis, Md., last month. Israeli tourism officials said they expected about 20,000 visitors to cross from Jerusalem into neighboring Bethlehem, an increase of 50 percent over last year. Bethlehem’s governor, Saleh Tamari, said the town’s 5,000 hotel rooms were booked. Israel gave special permission for about 500 members of Gaza’s small Christian community to travel to Israel and the West Bank to celebrate Christmas and the New Year, said Col. Nir Press, the chief of Israel’s Coordination and Liaison Administration, which operates the Gaza crossings. Israel has severely restricted the passage of people and goods in and out of Gaza since Hamas took power there. Priests and monks, tourists, Palestinian families and police officers mingled in Manger Square outside the Church of the Nativity, the site where tradition holds that Jesus was born. “This year is much better than the last seven years for tourism,” said a shopkeeper, Jacques Aman, whose wooden handicrafts shop offered crosses, rosaries and Nativity scenes. “The atmosphere is better in general.” Speaking to reporters as he came out of prayers at a Bethlehem mosque, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, spoke of the emergence of a Palestinian state in the coming year. “We hope that this year will be the year of independence for the Palestinian people,” he said. The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, the Rev. Michel Sabbah, the top Roman Catholic official in the Holy Land, began Christmas celebrations with the procession from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. He could only enter Bethlehem after passing through the steel gate in Israel’s separation barrier. Inside Bethlehem, the patriarch, the first Palestinian to hold the position, appealed for independence for the Palestinian people. The Holy Land “is a land of war and conflict, and a land of humiliation of one people at the hand of another,” he said.

West Bank
Palestinians
Christmas
Travel and Vacations
Christians and Christianity


Exhausted and Bereft, Iraqi Soldiers Quit Fight

Abstract: BAGHDAD — The infantryman and his colleagues were already worn down after six months of fighting militants in western Iraq, men flush with weapons and zeal. Army commanders had no answer for the daily deadly ambushes and no broader strategy for prevailing in the longer war. The final straw was the death of a friend, killed two weeks ago by a sniper’s bullet. The infantryman, Bashar al-Halbousi, deserted, making the same choice as hundreds of other soldiers in his battalion, he said. “The state is weak,” Mr. Halbousi said. “This will be an endless battle.” After months of grinding conflict against a resurgent militant movement, the Iraqi Army is having its power blunted by a rise in desertions, turning the tide of the war and fragmenting an institution, trained and funded by the United States, that some hoped would provide Iraqis a common sense of citizenship. In a nation tearing apart along sectarian lines, Sunnis and Shiites have served together in the military. But the defections of Sunni soldiers threatened to deepen the growing perception among Iraq’s Sunnis that the military serves as an instrument of Shiite power, even while Shiites soldiers have also fled. The toll of the desertions came into sharp relief on Tuesday, as soldiers and their commanders abandoned bases in Mosul , all but ceding Iraq’s second-largest city to extremist fighters belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The fleeing troops left weapons, vehicles and even their uniforms behind, as militants took over at least five army installations and the city’s airport. In a desperate bid to stem the losses, the military was reduced to bombing its own bases to avoid surrendering more weapons to the enemy. American officials who had asserted that the $25 billion that the United States had spent on the Iraqi security forces would prepare them to safeguard the country after American troops left were forced to ponder images from Mosul of militants parading around captured Humvees. Where ISIS Is Gaining Control in Iraq and Syria The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — an organization once part of Al Qaeda — has effectively gained control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria over the past year. The crisis has been picking up momentum as Sunni extremists have gained power and territory across the north and west of the country — and as soldiers have been leaving their posts. In interviews over several days, soldiers and army commanders said the desertions had become widespread, with thousands of men laying down their arms, gutting front-line units across the country. Before the troops dissolved in Mosul, the army was losing as many as 300 soldiers a day, between desertions, deaths and injuries, according to a security analyst who works with the Iraqi government and requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the military. One former soldier who would give only his first name, Mohamed, because deserting is illegal, said that he had served in Ramadi and that his colleagues started deserting months ago as the deaths started mounting. “I felt like I was fighting armies, not an army,” said Mohamed, 24. The militants came in waves, sending suicide bombers when their ammunition grew scarce. Mohamed said that eight of his friends had died and that he almost did, too, when a mortar shell struck his Humvee. When militants singled him out as a target for assassination, forcing him to flee, it was almost a relief. “I’m tired,” he said. “Everyone is tired.” The government has played down the scale of the crisis, in part by registering soldiers as “missing” rather than as deserters. Officials also blamed the problem on unrelated issues — saying, for instance, that soldiers were not returning from home leave, but only because roads leading to the battlefields had become unsafe. Lt. Gen. Rashid Fleih, the commander of operations in Anbar Province, said last week that recent successes by the army in clearing several highways would resolve that issue. “Now the soldier who is on leave can go back to his unit without any problems,” he said. After the defeat in Mosul, though, the crisis could not be so easily brushed away. For the first time on Tuesday, the government publicly invoked the law forbidding desertions, threatening harsh punishments, including the death penalty, according to a media adviser for the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The government, though, seemed to have limited leverage. In interviews, several deserters cited the ferocity of the battle as their primary reason for leaving. They spoke of nerve-racking patrols in remote areas or in contested cities, surrounded, at times, by hostile residents. They searched booby-trapped houses and traveled roads full of bombs. Most terrifying, though, they said, were the snipers. Their stories added detail to the brutal shadowy war between the militants and the army — the latest trauma for a country still reeling from the American invasion and occupation and the sectarian civil war that followed. Some soldiers said their families begged them to leave the service. One 25-year-old deserter said his mother was so terrified of the fighting that she burned his uniform every time he returned home on leave. Two months ago, he said she raised the stakes, threatening to kill herself if he returned to his unit. “We lost so many troops — I lost three or four of my friends,” said the former soldier, who was sent straight to the front line in Falluja after basic training. “The fighting was so fierce.” The desertions threaten to transform Iraq’s vicious conflict into something even more dangerous, by starving the government of fighters as it struggles to recapture lost territory: in Falluja, which was taken over by the militants six months ago , and now in Mosul. With fewer men to face the militants, the army is relying on artillery and airstrikes — including, human rights workers say, the use of indiscriminate barrel bombs — increasing the risks to civilians. As the army falters, Shiite militias are also playing a growing role in the conflict, nudged toward the fight by the government of Mr. Maliki. As the militiamen face radical Sunni jihadists, the threat of a wider sectarian conflagration grows. The desertions of men like Mr. Halbousi — a Sunni in an army dominated by Shiites, the majority sect in Iraq — is another dangerous development. “It reinforces the sectarian polarization,” said Hayder al-Khoei, an Iraqi researcher and associate fellow with Chatham House, a policy research group in London. So did the government’s statements, with its “not so subtle references to a religious war"— an echo of the jihadists’ sectarian speech, Mr. Khoei said. But above all, the soldiers — young men from southern Iraq, or the outskirts of Baghdad, who joined the service for its relatively good salary — felt “abandoned,” Mr. Khoei said. “They are thrown into this fire,” he said. “It’s a nightmare.”

Iraq
Desertion
Iraqi Army
Mosul
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki
Terrorism
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State


New, Reading-Heavy SAT Has Students Worried

Abstract: BOSTON — For thousands of college hopefuls, the stressful college admissions season is about to become even more fraught. The College Board , which makes the SAT, is rolling out a new test — its biggest redesign in a decade, and one of the most substantial ever. Chief among the changes, experts say: longer and harder reading passages and more words in math problems. The shift is leading some educators and college admissions officers to fear that the revised test will penalize students who have not been exposed to a lot of reading, or who speak a different language at home — like immigrants and the poor. It has also led to a general sense that the new test is uncharted territory, leaving many students wondering whether they should take the SAT or its rival, the ACT. College admissions officers say they are waiting to see how the scores turn out before deciding how to weight the new test. “It’s going to change who does well,” said Lee Weiss, the vice president of precollege programs at Kaplan Test Prep, one of the nation’s biggest test-preparation programs. “Before, if you were a student from a family where English was not the first language, you could really excel on the math side. It may be harder in the administration of this new test to decipher that, because there is so much text on both sides of the exam.” The College Board said that the number of words in the reading section had remained the same — about 3,250 on the new test, and 3,300 on the old one — and that the percentage of word problems in the math sections of the old and the new test was roughly the same, about 30 percent. “We are very mindful of the verbal load on this test,” Cyndie Schmeiser, the chief of assessment at the College Board, said. “We are keeping it down. I think kids are going to find it comfortable and familiar. Everything about the test is publicly available. There are no mysteries.” How Would You Do on the New SAT? The redesigned SAT contains longer and harder reading passages and more words in math problems, experts say. How well would you do? Try these questions, taken from a College Board practice test. But outside analysts say the way the words are presented makes a difference. For instance, short sentence-completion questions, which tested logic and vocabulary, have been eliminated in favor of longer reading passages, from literary sources like “Ethan Frome” and “Moby-Dick,” or political ones, like John Locke’s ideas about consent of the governed. These contain sophisticated words and thoughts in sometimes ornate diction. The math problems are more wrapped in narrative, as Serena Walker, a college-bound junior at the Match charter school here, found when she fired up her laptop for a practice quiz on the new test. “An anthropologist studies a woman’s femur that was uncovered in Madagascar,” one question began. She knew a femur was a leg bone, but was not sure about “anthropologist.” She was contemplating “Madagascar” just as she remembered her teacher’s advice to concentrate on the essential, which, she decided, was the algebraic equation that came next, h = 60 + 2.5 f , where h stood for height and f stood for the length of the femur. “I feel like they put in a lot of unnecessary words,” she said. Jed Applerouth, who runs a national tutoring service, estimated that the new math test was 50 percent reading comprehension, adding, in a blog post , that “students will need to learn how to wade through all the language to isolate the math.” The new SAT is probably less correlated with I.Q. testing than the old one, Dr. Applerouth said in an interview. But given the more difficult reading level of some passages and more demanding curriculum, “it may be the rich get richer,” he said. Jay Bacrania, the chief executive of Signet Education, a test-prep company based in Cambridge, said he found blocks of text from the new test to average at least a grade level higher than text from the old one. When students open the exam, “I think to some degree the sticker shock — that first impression — is almost even worse,” he said. College admissions officers say they are just as confused. “We’re going to need to see how they did, which test is going to be better, how can we weigh it,” said Eric J. Furda, the dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania. The SAT is rooted in aptitude testing and is known for its “trickiness,” as educators say, like partly correct or plausible but wrong choices on answers. It long dominated college admissions on the East and West Coasts, while the ACT dominated in the Midwest. Image Students in a math class at Match. The school is doing heavy test preparation in anticipation of the new SAT. Credit Shiho Fukada for The New York Times The ACT, created by the company of the same name, is based on surveys of curriculum across the country and is over all considered more straightforward. But it gives less time for more questions, and has a science section. Competition for market share has been growing, and in 2012, the ACT surpassed the SAT. College Board officials said the new test was devised to satisfy the demands of college admissions officers and high school guidance counselors for an exam that more clearly showed a connection to what students were learning in school. The College Board has also been grappling with complaints that the old SAT, with its arcane vocabulary questions, correlated with advantages like parental income and education, and that whites and Asians performed better on average than blacks and Hispanics. Dr. Schmeiser said that despite educators’ fears, a preliminary study did not show the new test giving any disadvantage to Asians — who excel in math but do slightly less well than whites in reading. “We did look at how students of color and various races and ethnicities looked,” Dr. Schmeiser said. “It suggested the gap may be narrowing.” As the March rollout date for the new SAT approaches, many test-prep companies are suggesting that students take one of each practice exam to see which they do better on. At HighTech Los Angeles, a charter school in Van Nuys with many Hispanic students, more students have enrolled in ACT than SAT prep this spring. Karyn Koven, the director of college counseling, said she had heard other counselors advising students that they might not want to be the “guinea pigs,” in the first administration of a new test. At Match in Boston, where many students’ first language was Spanish, Mr. Bacrania, who has consulted with the school, advised that it switch from the SAT to the ACT this year. But the school decided to stick with what it knows. “We say do your best,” the principal, Hannah Larkin, said. “We don’t say good luck to them, because ultimately, we don’t think the test is about luck.” And, yes, Serena got the wordy math question right.

SAT
College
College Board
Tests
Reading and Writing Skills
Mathematics
ACT test
School Admissions


Fair Game: Mortgage Registry Muddles Foreclosures

Abstract: MORE good news from the housing front last week. Pending home sales rose 2.4 percent in July, to their highest level since April 2010. Mortgage delinquency rates are down: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported a decline of 6.3 percent at the end of June from the March quarter. Granted, new foreclosures continued to be filed — 256,000 people had a foreclosure added to their credit reports in the June quarter — but that figure was the lowest since mid-2007, the Fed said . In stark contrast to this improving backdrop are the legal battles still being waged over wrongful foreclosure practices. The glacial progress in these cases is not surprising, given the crowded courts and combatants’ usual stalling tactics. What is surprising is the fresh evidence these cases are turning up of cockeyed mortgage practices, during both the boom and the bust. As these matters are adjudicated, perhaps we will finally learn whether these practices were intended or accidental. Take the problem of questionable legal fees levied on troubled borrowers. Although these costs may seem small in the scheme of things, they certainly add to the burdens of many hard-pressed Americans. A foreclosure from Ohio highlights this problem. The facts from this matter are central to a prospective class action filed by a borrower, who contends he was charged improper court costs and legal-related fees in his foreclosure. The case involved legal moves taken against a bank in 2007 that did not even have an interest in either of the two mortgage liens associated with the foreclosed property. Even though the bank should never have been dragged into the matter, it was — generating $775 in court costs and legal fees paid by the borrower, documents show. Only two years later, during the discovery process, did it emerge that the bank had no ownership in the underlying property. That $775 may not sound like much. But Paul Grobman, a lawyer in New York who represents the borrower, said he believed the collection of what he called improper legal charges is rampant in foreclosures. The case involving the $775 began in 2007 when Eugene D. Kline fell behind on the first and second mortgages on his home in Centerville, Ohio. Wells Fargo , noting that as trustee of a securitization it held the note backing the $160,000 first mortgage, sued Mr. Kline and his wife, Patricia, in state court. Because Mr. Kline had also taken out a second mortgage, Wells Fargo sued the institution that it said owned the additional obligation. Here is where Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems comes in, the company that runs the database set up by banks in the mid-1990s to speed the transfer of mortgages nationwide and track their ownership. To save the costs of recording a mortgage’s transfer from one institution to another, MERS acts as mortgagee in county land records. But it does not own the note underlying a property. Amid the foreclosure crisis, however, critics have contended that the registry actually served to hide the true owner of a mortgage, making it difficult for borrowers to get help in working out their loans. The facts in Mr. Kline’s case seem to indicate another flaw with the MERS registry — that it may not even track mortgages effectively. MERS was the nominee for WMC Mortgage, an entity that held the second lien on the Kline property, according to Wells Fargo’s court filings. Oddly, lawyers for WMC confirmed that it had an interest in the loan, whose value was around $30,000. In 2008, Mr. Kline advised the lawyers for the banks that he would sell the house and pay off the loans, which totaled approximately $200,000. He did so, paying the legal costs associated with the suit involving the second lien. But in 2009, documents produced in the Ohio action showed that WMC Mortgage had not, in fact, held the second mortgage when the foreclosure began. WMC had sold Mr. Kline’s loan three years earlier into a securitization trust put together by Merrill Lynch. That trust also held Mr. Kline’s first mortgage and was overseen by — you guessed it — Wells Fargo. So, to recap: At the time of the foreclosure, Wells Fargo held both loans taken on by Mr. Kline. Nevertheless, its lawyers sued WMC, contending WMC held the smaller loan. Even though WMC did not own the loan, its lawyers represented to the court that it did. All the while court costs and other charges were billed to Mr. Kline. Many questions arise in this case. For starters, if the MERS registry is the accurate record it claims to be, why didn’t Wells Fargo or its lawyers see that it, not WMC, held the second lien when the Kline foreclosure began? A MERS spokeswoman declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. Elise Wilkinson, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, said that as trustee of the securitization, the bank “would not be in possession of any information regarding a foreclosure action.” “All such information would be in the possession of the mortgage loan servicer,” she said, “which is the party responsible for initiating and managing all aspects of the mortgage loan foreclosure process.” That was the HomEq Servicing Corporation, which is no longer in the business, the Wells spokeswoman said. Ditto for WMC. Why didn’t it recognize early on that it had sold the Kline loan years before, saving Mr. Kline legal fees? Rick DeBlasis, a lawyer handling the matter at Lerner Sampson & Rothfuss of Cincinnati, declined to comment, saying it was part of the class action. It will be interesting to watch that case unfold. But in a unanimous ruling against MERS last month in Washington State Supreme Court, the judges described their problems with the registry. “Under the MERS system,” they wrote, “questions of authority and accountability arise, and determining who has authority to negotiate loan modifications and who is accountable for misrepresentation and fraud becomes extraordinarily difficult.” Mr. Grobman agrees, arguing that the involvement of MERS in the Kline case allowed the law firms to charge improper fees. “Both Wells Fargo, MERS and their attorneys in this action could falsely represent that the first and second mortgage were owned by different entities,” he said, “and could pass on the legal fees and expenses purportedly incurred in the suit.” And what about the Klines? They now rent a home. “It’s a rental that we were blessed enough to be able to rent from a friend,” said Ms. Kline.


2 Injured in Steam Blast at French Nuclear Plant

Abstract: PARIS — A steam release from a chemical reaction on Wednesday at the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, France ’s oldest, gave two workers slight burns on their hands but did not cause a fire or radiation problem, government and fire officials said. Like nearly all incidents at nuclear power plants here, the one on Wednesday prompted demands that France reduce its dependence on nuclear power. France gets about 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy , and President François Hollande during his campaign promised to work toward reducing the use of nuclear plants and to close the two Fessenheim reactors by 2017, when they will be 40. The power company Électricité de France, which operates the plant, has argued that the life of the reactors, drawing water from the Rhine River, can be extended safely. Some consider Fessenheim overly vulnerable to seismic activity and to flooding, but the plants provide much of the employment in the area, 30 miles north of Basel, Switzerland, and next to Germany. The power company said Wednesday that “steam escaped during a maintenance operation,” setting off a fire alarm, and that the incident had been quickly brought under control. The prefecture of Haut-Rhin said that there was a release of “oxygenated steam” when hydrogen peroxide reacted with water in a reservoir. Workers were preparing a cleaning fluid in an annex separate from the reactor buildings when the incident occurred. Nuclear safety authorities said there was no threat of radioactive leaks, and the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy said in a statement that there was no safety risk. François de Rugy, co-president of the environmental group in the National Assembly, said that the accident at Fessenheim served “to remind everyone that there is a danger with nuclear power.” The Socialist government is allied with the environmentalist Green party, and there has been a debate inside the government over how quickly to move away from nuclear power, given the recession and the cost of alternative energy sources.

France
Nuclear Energy
Accidents and Safety
Electricite de France


Palestinians Hurry to Finish Their Shopping in Egypt

Abstract: RAFAH, Egypt — There was less joy than frenzy on Thursday at this border crossing, as Gazans and Gaza businessmen hurried to stock up while they still could. The Egyptians would not allow cars or trucks in from Gaza, only carts drawn by animals, so the area between the Gaza fence and the Egyptian border, known as the Philadelphi route — which had been so carefully patrolled by the Israeli Army before it withdrew — became an informal parking lot. There were traffic jams under the broken, bent metal and concrete barriers, and food stalls dotted the area, selling hard candy, sugared doughnuts, beans and nuts. Boys carried on their shoulders large boxes of cartons of cigarettes to be resold by the businessmen who sent them to Egypt. Carts were loaded with bags of cement, Chinese-made generators, foam mattresses and Nautica-brand televisions. Women in black niqabs, long cloaks and scarves showing only their eyes, carried large, colorful bags of potato chips and Egyptian-made snack cakes. And many Gazans simply wanted to buy fresh milk and feta cheese and fill canisters with diesel fuel, gasoline, motor oil and cooking oil. Some bought the cement needed to make concrete for sealing the graves of their loved ones, which they have had to try to protect with paving stones, metal and boards. Egyptian businessmen sharply raised prices on Thursday, with a generator selling in Cairo for $300 being sold here for $600, said Tawfiq Nofal, a businessman who complained that transport companies were also raising their prices to bring goods to Rafah. “People are buying, but not as we expected,” he said. “Our largest aim now is the Palestinian businessmen.” A little over four gallons of diesel fuel costs almost $19, compared with just under $15 a long walk away in El Arish, complained one man, Hamid Kahlout. “Of course they’re exploiting us,” he said. “Everyone is playing with us.” Some Egyptians complained that the local market was nearly empty. The call to prayer was ignored as the shopping and gawking continued. Azza Kamel and her cousins were thrilled, going to the wedding of a relative who was engaged a year ago to a man from Egyptian Rafah. The wedding had to wait for the crossing to open; now it was suddenly on. Ms. Kamel said she and her family support Fatah, which Hamas routed from Gaza last year. But they are grateful to Hamas for this chance. “Fatah still exists,” she said. “But Hamas has eaten everything.” Muhammad Gaber, director of patient services at the European Gaza Hospital in Rafah, said he thought the border might stay open another five days or so, to provide “temporary relief” to Gazans. “After that, the Egyptians will have to work with Hamas or maybe the European Union to reorganize the crossing,” he said. But politically, “Mubarak can’t put Gazans back into the same prison,” he added, referring to the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. “The situation has changed,” he said. “The pressure on Gaza from Israel has to be lifted.”

Egypt
Gaza Strip
Retail Stores and Trade
Roads and Traffic