Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War

Abstract: BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore. Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair. “We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.” Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country. “The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.” The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was intended to end Congo’s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of epically bad government. But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened the Congolese government’s hand to deal with renegade forces, many of them from outside the country. The justice system and the military still barely function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are among the worst offenders when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood and survive by raiding villages and abducting women for ransom. According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way. United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty. Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said. “I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her. She is also pregnant. While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon. “It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.” Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized. At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all the internal damage. “I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway. In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited soil. The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops. Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3. “Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their eyes.” No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening. “That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.” Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very few of the culprits are punished. Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu. Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago. Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias. “These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been psychologically destroyed by it,” he said. Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon “reversed values” and said it could develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for many years, like eastern Congo. This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force. Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again. But his men may be no better. Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice — first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her. “When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and brokenhearted.” She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased. In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire between warring groups. In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as government troops were in the area. The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to protect women. Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the ground around them. But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it. Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space for the never-ending stream of new arrivals. Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its stunning lake views and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega. “There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,” he said. “But now they’ve been replaced by much more savage beasts.”

Women
Hospitals
Assaults
Congo (Formerly Zaire)
Sex Crimes
Civil War and Guerrilla Warfare


Hope in Sri Lanka Dwindles, Unlike Rain, Amid Landslide Rescue Efforts

Abstract: ARANAYAKE, Sri Lanka — Defying forecasts, sheets of rain were still falling Thursday on a rubble-strewn mountainside in the tea-and-cinnamon district of Sri Lanka, two days after a landslide buried three hamlets and dozens of residents who never heard it coming. As a team of elite army commandos rushed up the mountain in a seemingly hopeless search for survivors, Prema Adikari emitted a low wail as she and a small brown dog stared at the muddy remains of a collapsed house that once belonged to her brother and his family. “The neighbors shouted for them to leave, but I don’t think they heard over the gushing waters of the canal nearby,” she said, sobbing. Her niece was only 15, she said, “fair and so pretty, barely even a woman yet.” Minutes later, with the rains increasing, the commandos scurried back down the rugged moonscape, just ahead of a new burst of mud and debris. “At least I hope they will find their bodies,” Ms. Adikari said to a police officer nearby, “so we can have a proper funeral.” Officials said that at least 58 people were known to have died in the past few days amid landslides and flash flooding on this island nation at the foot of India, where monsoon season has just begun. But the death toll was expected to rise substantially. Nearly 300,000 people have also been displaced. In the mountainous region around the small town of Aranayake, more than 130 people were still missing and believed dead, said Maj. Gen. Sudantha Ranasinghe, who is in charge of the rescue operation. The Kegalle district, which includes Aranayake, was struck by two major landslides, said Pradeep Kodippili, a spokesman for the Disaster Management Center of Sri Lanka. Kegalle is about 75 miles east of the capital, Colombo. Thirty bodies have been recovered so far in Kegalle, General Ranasinghe said in an interview inside a makeshift operations center that his men and district officials had set up inside a school nearby. He had little hope for other villagers on the mountainside in Aranayake, where there were 66 houses. “I have my doubts that there are any survivors left on the collapsed mountain slopes,” General Ranasinghe said. Hundreds of military personnel swarmed the landslide area, shortly after dawn, climbing the mountainside in knee-deep mud. To find their footing, and any signs of life, they prodded the muddy water with tree branches and poles, as slippers, bags and other personal items swirled by in the small streams that ran through the rubble. General Ranasinghe said that the rescue operations were continuing “to recover the bodies at least, to give the families some peace.” The rains made the rescue operation treacherous, and by midday on Thursday, the effort had been halted at least once. A shopkeeper, D. P. Nimal Ratnasinghe, said the mountainside broke loose Tuesday night with a deafening roar that he likened to that of a helicopter landing. “Then I realized rocks were falling from the mountain,” Mr. Ratnasinghe, 46, said Thursday morning. Mr. Ratnasinghe’s shop was flooded with mud and water, but he was one of the few survivors in the immediate area. At the foot of the mountain above Aranayake stood the remains of a big house, its crushed roof revealing a battered washing machine and a shattered fish tank buried in mud. Only one thing appeared to have survived intact: a Buddhist shrine. Some survivors declared it a miracle. P. G. Sekara, 52, a resident of one of the hillside villages, said the house had belonged to his sister. She survived, he said, because she had heard the rumbling in time and had run to safety. Behind the house, rescuers were digging in the mud, searching for three people who had last been seen in that area before the landslide. A rice paddy and the canal, which ran through the valley, had disappeared under the mud, residents said. Mr. Sekara and other residents said they had lost hope that anyone else would be found alive. “There’s no point in them going back looking for survivors,” he said. “You’d have to look 40 feet under the mud to find people.” President Maithripala Sirisena toured the area on Wednesday, declaring on Twitter after the visit, “The loss is devastating.” More than 1,000 people, displaced by the slides or fearful of returning until the rains subside, were being housed at four temporary camps. At one of those, in the village of Hathgampola, where 113 families were sheltering, survivors told of narrow escapes as the mountain gave way. Dingiri Mahattaya, 63, said that she, her daughter and her son ran for their lives once they realized what was happening. “Big rocks started to roll down the hill with a fierce sound,” she said. “Some of the rocks hit the walls and windows of the house. We opened the front door and ran through the rice paddy to safety.” She said she did not know when they would be able to return. “They tell me that my house is now filled with water and mud,” she said, “and the walls have collapsed.” Meteorologists said that, although the tropical island frequently experiences intense monsoons and flooding, this year’s devastation was unusually fierce for so early in the rainy season. The Sri Lanka Department of Meteorology said that a deep low-pressure area in the Bay of Bengal that had become a tropical depression by Wednesday had caused the rains, but that it was moving away from the island. On Thursday morning, however, the bursts of rain showed no signs of abating. With the rainfall, several small landslides struck the Aranayake area on Wednesday and Thursday. While no lives were endangered, the rains made rescue operations increasingly perilous, General Ranasinghe said. Some residents complained that they were not warned of a landslide risk by local disaster management officials. But General Ranasinghe said many villagers were warned to evacuate hours before the landslide. “The trouble is, this is a very prosperous mountain,” he said, pointing to the exposed slopes. “Everything grows well here. People don’t want to leave.”

Sri Lanka
Rescue
Flood
Monsoon
Landslides,Mudslides
Fatalities,casualties


Lead Defendant in U.S. Libor Trial Challenged Over Inaction

Abstract: A federal prosecutor confronted the lead defendant in the first criminal trial in the United States in the Libor interest rate scandal over his failure to intervene in more than a dozen instances in which traders at his bank improperly sought to influence the critical rates. In a 105-minute cross-examination Wednesday morning, Carol L. Sipperly, a prosecutor trying the case in federal court in Lower Manhattan, presented the former Rabobank trader Anthony Allen with numerous emails, text messages and a few recorded phone calls in which traders asked that the bank’s Libor submissions be raised or lowered to help them make money. Mr. Allen, who was based in London as the bank’s former global head of liquidity and finance, restated his insistence that he never knowingly submitted or condoned false Libor reports by his subordinates. But Ms. Sipperly repeatedly asked whether he had intervened or made any effort to stop the evident widespread efforts by other traders to influence the submissions. Mr. Allen generally said he had not, in some cases because the traders did not work for him, in others because he was working in an environment where collegiality was required. “I couldn’t stop him talking” to traders who worked for him, Mr. Allen said of another Rabobank trader who pleaded guilty to manipulation charges and worked nearby. “We were in a trading room,” he explained, where “everyone discussed ideas” about what was moving markets and interest rates. Tracking the Libor Scandal Abuse of interest rates and the failure to address the problem is one of the most expensive scandals to hit Wall Street since the financial crisis. “You never told him not to make those sorts of statements?” Ms. Sipperly asked about another trader’s efforts to influence his own traders’ Libor submissions. Mr. Allen answered, “I didn’t tell him to or not to.” Mr. Allen and his former fellow trader Anthony Conti are accused of manipulating Libor, short for the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is the result of submissions by 16 banks reflecting rates at which they can obtain short-term loans. Traders who pressed them to nudge Rabobank’s Libor submissions either higher or lower were hoping to profit on trades in swaps and other instruments whose value was tied to Libor. Some of the traders’ positions topped $1 billion, the evidence indicated. Three former traders at Rabobank, which is based in the Netherlands, pleaded guilty to the Libor-rigging conspiracy and testified for the prosecution. Mr. Conti and Mr. Allen are among four others charged in the case. Another, Paul Thompson, was just arrested last week in Australia after a United States extradition request. In response to a question, Mr. Allen agreed that Rabobank’s American trading partners — which included Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — would not have done such trades with his bank if they had known Rabobank’s traders were trying to manipulate the rate. Confronted by Ms. Sipperly with an appeal that was made in March 2007 by another trader for a low submission for the three-month Libor and was sent to both him and Mr. Conti, Mr. Allen said he had ignored the trader’s appeal but had not told subordinates that such appeals were impermissible. He also said had never discussed with Mr. Conti how to set the bank’s Libor submissions. He said that Mr. Conti was an “experienced” trader and that he knew Mr. Conti “knew how to set Libor.” Earlier Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Conti indicated that he had reversed his prior intention to testify and would not take the stand in his defense, curtailing the expected length of the day’s proceedings. At noon, lawyers for both defendants said they had rested, concluding their presentation of evidence and testimony, and both sides shifted their attention to instructions to be issued to the jury after summations are made on Monday.


Brooklyn: Action Filed Over School Admissions

Abstract: A public-interest law firm in Washington filed a class-action lawsuit against the New York City Education Department yesterday, charging that a program created to increase the number of black and Hispanic students in the city’s elite specialized high schools violates the Constitution by excluding whites and Asians. The law firm, the Center for Individual Rights, filed the suit in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on behalf of three Chinese-American parents whose children were denied admission to the Specialized High School Institute, which prepares students for the test determining admission to schools like Stuyvesant and the Bronx High School of Science. Andrew Jacob, a spokesman for the Education Department, said it was “reviewing the program’s eligibility criteria” in light of a June decision by the Supreme Court that struck down two race-based school integration programs. Since the institute’s creation more than a decade ago, the proportion of black and Hispanic students at the city’s most elite high schools has actually decreased; last year, 2.2 percent of Stuyvesant students were black.

Center for Individual Rights
Bronx High School of Science
Education and Schools
Brooklyn (NYC)


North Carolina Eliminates Louisiana State From the College World Series

Abstract: OMAHA (AP) — Tim Federowicz hit a grand slam in the top of the ninth inning on Friday night to send North Carolina to a 7-3 victory against Louisiana State in a College World Series elimination game disrupted twice in two days by rain. Louis Coleman intentionally walked Tim Fedroff to load the bases with two outs before Federowicz drove a 1-1 pitch to the middle of the left-field stands. It was the first grand slam in the series since 2001. Alex White (12-3), who pitched into the eighth inning in North Carolina’s 8-4 victory against L.S.U. (49-19-1) on Sunday, earned his second win of the series in his third relief appearance of the season. North Carolina (53-13) advanced to the Bracket 1 final against Fresno State on Saturday. The Tar Heels must beat the Bulldogs twice to return to the best-of-three championship series for the third straight year. Georgia (43-23-1) plays Stanford (41-23-2) in Saturday’s other game. The Cardinal must defeat the Bulldogs twice to advance.

College World Series
University of North Carolina
Louisiana State University


No. 3 Texas Slips by Texas A&M; Critics Are Tougher to Elude

Abstract: COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — The weakened Big 12 has been more of a coronation tour than a challenge for Texas this season. Since beating Oklahoma last month, the third-ranked Longhorns have hardly been tested in conference play in their seemingly inevitable march to the Bowl Championship Series title game on Jan. 7. And while Texas was expected to romp Thursday night against Texas A&M , questions about whether it deserves to play in the B.C.S. championship game may be as loud as they have been all season after the Longhorns escaped with a wild 49-39 win in front of 84,671 fans at Kyle Field. “You have to give them credit,” Texas quarterback Colt McCoy said of Texas A&M. “They hung in and fought and fought and fought, but that’s what you’re going to get in a rivalry game like that.” The sloppiness of the victory overshadowed a spectacular performance by McCoy in the highest-scoring contest in the 116-game history of this rivalry. The previous record was 85 points in 1977. The teams also combined for 1,129 yards of total offense. “It was a great game,” Texas Coach Mack Brown said. “It shows you how hard it is to win on the road in the Big 12.” But even in triumph, the Longhorns (12-0, 8-0 Big 12) provided more ammunition for critics who question whether they have beefed up on the downtrodden Big 12 this season. The Aggies entered Thursday having lost five of their last eight games, including embarrassing losses at Kansas State and at Oklahoma by a combined score of 127-24. “If they say that, so be it,” Texas’ offensive coordinator, Greg Davis, said of those who may question the Longhorns’ margin of victory against Texas A&M. Yet should Texas beat Nebraska (8-3, 5-2) next Saturday in the Big 12 championship game in Arlington, Tex., the Longhorns will play for the prize that was on display Thursday night, the Waterford crystal football awarded to the winner of the B.C.S. title game. That will most likely come against the winner of next Saturday’s Southeastern Conference championship game between top-ranked Florida (11-0) and No. 2 Alabama (11-0). It was McCoy who shined brightest on this night before a national television audience. Locked in a wide-open Heisman Trophy race with Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and Alabama tailback Mark Ingram, he completed 24 of 40 passes for 304 yards and 4 touchdowns and rushed for a career-high 175 yards on 18 carries. It included a 65-yard touchdown run in the second quarter that was the longest of his career. He faked a handoff, sprinted down the middle of the field and outraced several defenders to the end zone. “If anybody has a better Heisman moment than that, I’d like to see it,” Brown said. Brown said McCoy’s play made an “unbelievable” statement. “It’s just phenomenal,” Brown said. “I don’t remember many performances like that. Period. It was a great performance tonight. He was a great leader. He never even blinked.” Ahead by 28-21 at halftime, Texas recovered a Texas A&M fumble early in the third quarter and converted it into a 7-yard touchdown run by Tre’ Newton. The Aggies then drove to the Texas 13 before quarterback Jerrod Johnson was intercepted by safety Earl Thomas, who set a Longhorns record with his eighth interception this season. “It was huge,” Brown said of Thomas’s interception. “Earl’s just that way. That’s who he is. He’s going to make those plays.” After a Texas punt, Texas A&M again drove inside the Longhorns’ 10 but settled for a 31-yard field goal to pull to 35-24 with 1 minute 24 seconds left in the third quarter. The Aggies closed the gap to 35-32 on a 16-yard touchdown run by Christine Michael and a 2-point conversion. McCoy threw a 47-yard touchdown pass to James Kirkendoll, but Johnson, who passed for 342 yards and 4 touchdowns, completed a 20-yard touchdown pass to Jeff Fuller to pull to 42-39 with 7:10 left. On the ensuing kickoff, Texas’ Marquise Goodwin raced 95 yards for a touchdown. Texas A&M then drove to the Texas 6, but Randy Bullock missed a 23-yard field-goal attempt, allowing the Longhorns to run out the clock. “It pretty much finished the game,” Brown said of Goodwin’s kickoff return. Texas A&M (6-6, 3-5) finished with 532 yards against a Texas team that was third in the Football Bowl Subdivision in total defense (238.73 yards a game), first in rushing defense (50.09 yards a game) and seventh in scoring defense (13.27 points a game). “When they’re having a rough night, we’re going to step up and play,” McCoy said of his team’s defense. “Tonight, we bailed the D out.” From the outset, Texas A&M was formidable. Johnson threw a 70-yard touchdown pass to Fuller on the third play from scrimmage. McCoy then threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Shipley and reeled off his 65-yard run in the first minute of the second quarter to put Texas ahead, 14-7. But Texas A&M tied the score on Johnson’s second touchdown pass to Fuller, covering 14 yards, before McCoy found Shipley again for a 14-yard touchdown. Johnson later hit Howard Morrow for a 14-yard touchdown pass, his third of the half, to knot the score at 21. Yet McCoy answered five seconds before halftime on a 5-yard touchdown pass to Kirkendoll for a 28-21 lead. “We should have won,” Texas A&M free safety Jordan Pugh said. “We had the chances and didn’t take them. You have to give them credit because they did take advantage of the opportunities they had.” And while Texas again underwhelmed Thursday night, it hardly seemed bothered. The Longhorns were instead celebrating their first 12-0 regular season. “It doesn’t matter about the perception,” Kirkendoll said. “We control our own destiny.” And all the bellyaching in college football won’t change that.

Bowl Championship Series
Football
University of Texas at Austin
McCoy Colt
College Athletics
Texas A&M University


3 Top Officials Leaving Coney Island Hospital After Patient’s Death

Abstract: Gisele Soto was in agony. She had a splitting headache and terrible pain in her ears when she was rushed to Coney Island Hospital on the night of Jan. 31. One day later, Ms. Soto, 47, was dead — a result, according to her family and their lawyer, of a bad diagnosis and shockingly poor care. Instead of being treated as a severely ill patient, she was considered emotionally disturbed and was shackled to her bed. The hospital staff members, according to the family, thought she was suffering an adverse reaction to synthetic marijuana even as they repeatedly tried to convince them that she had never taken drugs. After going into cardiac arrest several times overnight, Ms. Soto was declared dead on Feb. 1. On Friday, with the family threatening legal action and calling for a state investigation, New York City Health and Hospitals , which runs the Brooklyn hospital, announced that three of the facility’s top officials would be leaving their posts. The agency, however, said the shake-up was not a reaction to Ms. Soto’s case but was instead part of a broader attempt to improve patient care. “After an extensive review of the hospital’s culture, it was decided that changes were necessary to improve the patient experience,” the agency said in a statement. “Our goal is to provide an exceptional experience to every patient and their family, and we are committed to the appropriate changes to deliver on that promise.” Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the agency, said he could not comment on Ms. Soto’s case. The city medical examiner’s office is still investigating the cause of death. Ms. Soto’s family suspects that she had meningitis, which went undiagnosed, according to the family’s lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein. Speaking to reporters at a news conference on Friday, a relative said that if Ms. Soto had received proper treatment, she would be alive. Mr. Rubenstein has filed a complaint with the State Health Department and is considering further legal action. He said the case was troubling not just for its details but also for what it revealed about the level of care provided in the city’s hospitals. He also cited news reports claiming that scores of people had been hired at Coney Island Hospital without proper authorization — a claim the city disputes. Mr. Rubenstein, however, believes that as investigators examine the case further, they are likely to find a pattern of alarming behavior. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. As part of the changes announced by the city on Friday, Robert Hughes, the hospital’s acting executive director, will return to his previous position as the director of a long-term care center. He will be replaced by Ernest Baptiste, who will serve on an interim basis while continuing in his current position as executive director of Kings County Hospital. Dr. John Maese, the medical director at Coney Island Hospital, will also be reassigned. Terry Mancher, the chief nursing officer, will be retiring, according to the city.

Coney Island Hospital
Hospital
Gisele Soto
NYC
Malpractice
Lawsuits


76ers’ Doug Collins Resigns and Pistons’ Lawrence Frank and Cavaliers’ Byron Scott Are Out

Abstract: Doug Collins resigned Thursday after three seasons as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers and will remain with the franchise as an adviser. Josh Harris, the team owner, said Collins was not being pushed out. The Sixers’ season of promise soured quickly, starting with a knee injury to center Andrew Bynum. The Sixers were 34-48 and missed the playoffs for the first time in Collins’s three seasons. A year ago, the Sixers eliminated the top-seeded Chicago Bulls in the first round of the playoffs and fell just short of reaching the Eastern Conference finals. ¶ The Detroit Pistons fired Lawrence Frank as coach after two seasons of unsuccessfully trying to revive the franchise. The Pistons finished the season 29-53. Frank was 54-94 over two seasons. ¶ Byron Scott was fired after a third straight losing season with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was 64-166 in his three years.

76ers
Doug Collins
Pistons
Lawrence Frank
Cavaliers
Byron Scott
Coaches
Basketball


In Giants’ Openers Against Dallas, Results Are Sour (for a Week, Anyway)

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — As one of the N.F.L.’s oldest and most renowned franchises, the Giants usually open the season against a notable opponent. On Sunday, that tradition will continue in Dallas, where for the sixth time the Giants will start the season against the Cowboys. The previous meetings in openers were usually memorable and dramatic. Each one also ended in a Dallas victory. Beginning in 1965, when the Giants lost, 31-2, to a nascent Dallas team, the Giants have stumbled out of the gate whenever the Cowboys have been on the opposite sideline — with some losses nightmarish or embarrassing, or both. On the other hand, an opening loss to the Cowboys has not always portended doom. In the 1986 and 2007 seasons, the Giants recovered to win the Super Bowl. That led Bill Ard, a guard on that 1986 team, to suggest that it might be beneficial for the Giants to lose on Sunday. “If 40 percent of the time a season-opening loss to Dallas leads to a Giants Super Bowl victory, then I’m all for it,” Ard said. “I like those odds.” The current Giants were a little more strait-laced. “The Cowboys have been a longtime, traditional rival,” Eli Manning said. “And the games always seem close and spirited, which is the way it should be.” Still, given the historical record, Manning was asked if he would rather start the season against a team less celebrated than Dallas, perhaps a foe with a lower profile who could provide an opening-day warm-up. Manning laughed and said: “No, I think it’s good that the first game is against a big rival. And there aren’t any easy games in the N.F.L. anyway.” Coach Tom Coughlin concurred while acknowledging that the Giants rarely started the season with an easy matchup. “You’re right: we do play an exceptional opponent, and many times it is a divisional foe,” Coughlin said. “It’s a tremendous challenge, and it’s an exciting challenge.” Image In 1995, Emmitt Smith (22) led the Cowboys to a 35-0 rout of the Giants in their season opener. Credit Henny Ray Abrams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images But it has not always been pleasant for the Giants. In 1965, the defeat was the Giants’ worst of the season. In 1986, the team was considered a preseason Super Bowl contender, but the defense squandered three touchdown passes from Phil Simms and lost the lead when the Cowboys’ Herschel Walker scored on a 10-yard run with 76 seconds remaining. “Believe me, that was a bad, ugly loss,” Ard said. “It was a total wake-up call.” The Giants’ coach at the time, Bill Parcells, furious and frustrated, made changes to his lineup, and the Giants won 17 of their next 18 games, including Super Bowl XXI. By 1995, the Cowboys were the dominant team in the N.F.C. East, but the Giants had won their last six games of the 1994 season, including one against Dallas. They thought they were ready to take over from Dallas — and said so on the eve of the game. The game was on a Monday night at Giants Stadium, and on the first possession, Emmitt Smith burst through a gaping hole in the middle of the line and ran 60 yards untouched into the end zone. “We thought we could match up with them,” said Jessie Armstead, a young linebacker on that Giants team who went on to play in five Pro Bowls. “We found out the truth real quick. I was one of those people trying to catch Emmitt.” The Cowboys won in a 35-0 rout, finished the regular season 12-4 and won the Super Bowl. The Giants ended up 5-11. In 2007, the Giants hardly appeared to be Super Bowl contenders, but a playoff push seemed possible — until they lost to the Cowboys in their opener, 45-35. Dallas gained 478 yards against a defense devised by the Giants’ new defensive coordinator, Steve Spagnuolo. It did not bode well, but Spagnuolo’s bend-but-don’t-break defense was celebrated by the season’s end. The Giants’ most recent opening-day loss to Dallas was just a year ago, in what was supposed to be a coronation. As the defending Super Bowl champions, the Giants were featured in the N.F.L.’s nationally televised season opener on a weekday. In that setting, the defending champions had been 8-0. But the Cowboys outplayed the Giants early, and the Giants became the first defending champion to lose its opener in 13 years. “It takes a bite out of humble pie,” Coughlin said at the time. On Sunday, though, the Giants’ stretch of season-opening losses to Dallas will be opposed by another streak. Since the Cowboys moved into their new stadium — once called Cowboys Stadium, now called AT&T Stadium — they are winless against the Giants, in four games. Ard, the guard on the 1986 team, had another perspective. “Three times out of five, the Super Bowl winner has come out of this opening-season Giants-Cowboys game,” he said. “I guess we all better watch it on Sunday.” EXTRA POINTS Victor Cruz and Jason Pierre-Paul practiced Wednesday, and Tom Coughlin characterized their preparation as “full speed ahead.” But neither player has been cleared to play Sunday. Cruz sounded extremely optimistic about his chances of playing. Pierre-Paul said he would know on Friday. ... Running back Andre Brown was placed on injured reserve with a designation that would allow him to return to the lineup Nov. 10 against Oakland, but not before.


Venture Capitalists Are Losing Confidence

Abstract: VENTURE capitalists are optimists by nature. They bet on start-ups that are little more than ideas and hope they have found the next Google . But these days, even some of the sunniest venture investors are having dark moments of the soul. Mark V. Cannice, director of the entrepreneurship program at the University of San Francisco, who polls Silicon Valley investors, said venture capitalist confidence had plummeted to its lowest point since 2004, when he began the surveys. “Right now, everybody is really worried,” he said. Venture firms are not at the epicenter of the latest financial turmoil, yet they are increasingly concerned that Wall Street’s virus will continue to spread through Silicon Valley, pushing the industry into a crisis. Fewer start-ups have gone public in 2008 than in any year since 1977, and companies looking to buy them have grown skittish. So venture firms have to keep putting money into companies they thought they would have cashed out of by now. Meanwhile, the credit crunch is taking a toll on banks and insurance companies, which make up one-fifth of investors in venture funds. Some wealthy investors and big companies that previously committed money to venture funds are now unable to supply it — leaving these investors with the option of defaulting and losing what they already had invested, finding a replacement or selling their stake at a discount to what is known as a secondary firm. David H. de Weese, who leads the global secondary business at Paul Capital Partners in New York, said he had been getting many calls from beleaguered investors. “We’re drinking from a fire hose at the moment,” he said. Consider FTVentures, a San Francisco firm that invests in technology companies that build services for the financial industry. Its lineup included some unlucky blue-chip investors: Lehman Brothers , Washington Mutual, American International Group, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, all of which have failed or have been bailed out recently. FTVentures, which closed a $512 million fund in April, said it does not expect any of its investors to default on their commitments. A few venture capital firms still continue to raise billion-dollar funds and, in turn, invest hundreds of millions in start-up companies. In September, AustinVentures closed a $900 million fund, Sequoia Capital closed two funds worth a total of $1.7 billion, and Battery Ventures raised $250 million to tack on to its eighth fund, for a total of $1 billion. Compared with buyouts and real estate, the other staples of what are known as alternative assets, venture capital seems relatively safe, said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association. But some clearly expect that to change. “I think we’ll see some painful and steep markdowns in what people once perceived as a safe haven,” said Chris Douvos, an investor in Palo Alto, Calif., who works for the Investment Fund for Foundations. Investors are already shunning new, untested venture firms in favor of those with track records and higher returns. “Other funds have had problems,” said Deborah A. Farrington, co-founder of a New York venture firm, StarVest Partners. Echoing the sentiments of many in the venture capital field, she said there had been a flight to what are perceived as higher-quality funds. Some venture capitalists worry that if conditions continue to worsen, limited partners will lose hope and give up on venture investing. “It’s starting to look like fund-raising in the V.C. world could become very problematic,” said Tom Crotty, a partner at Battery Ventures. One problem, said Phil Siegel, a partner at AustinVentures in Austin, Tex., is the allocation squeeze. Investors such as pension funds and endowments set aside a certain percentage of their money for alternative investments, which include venture capital. Now, with their wealth evaporating, they either no longer have money to invest or they suddenly find that venture capital is a much larger percentage of their assets than they had planned, so they cut back. AustinVentures met its $900 million fund-raising goal, but it was a difficult, 10-month effort. “I certainly won’t tell you that the process was easy,” Mr. Siegel said.

Venture Capital
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Troubled Asset Relief Program (2008)
Silicon Valley (Calif)
Wall Street (NYC)
Google Inc
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc
National Venture Capital Assn


U.S. Case Offers Glimpse Into China’s Hacker Army

Abstract: BEIJING — One man accused of being a hacker for the Chinese military, Wang Dong, better known as UglyGorilla, wrote in a social media profile that he did not “have much ambition” but wanted “to wander the world with a sword, an idiot.” Another, Sun Kailiang, also known as Jack Sun, grew up in wealthy Pei County in eastern China, the home of a peasant who founded the ancient Han dynasty and was idolized by Mao . They and three others were indicted by the United States Justice Department this week, charged with being part of a Chinese military unit that has hacked the computers of prominent American companies to steal commercial secrets, presumably for the benefit of Chinese companies. Much about them remains murky. But Chinese websites, as well as interviews with cybersecurity experts and former hackers inside and outside China, reveal some common traits among those and other hackers, and show that China’s hacking culture is a complex mosaic of shifting motivations, employers and allegiances. Many hackers working directly for the Chinese government are men in their 20s and 30s who have been trained at universities run by the People’s Liberation Army and are employed by the state in myriad ways. Those working directly for the military usually follow a 9-to-5 weekday schedule and are not well paid, experts and former hackers said. Some military and government employees moonlight as mercenaries and do more hacking on their own time, selling their skills to state-owned and private companies. Some belong to the same online social networking groups. “There are many types of relationships,” said Adam Segal , a China and cybersecurity scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “Some P.L.A. hackers offer their services under contract to state-owned enterprises. For some critical technologies, it is possible that P.L.A. hackers are tasked with attacks on specific foreign companies.” The Obama administration makes a distinction between hacking to protect national security, which it calls fair play, and hacking to obtain trade secrets that would give an edge to corporations, which it says is illegal. China and other nations accuse the United States of being the biggest perpetrator of both kinds of espionage. In what may be Chinese retaliation for the indictments, a state agency announced plans on Thursday for tighter checks on Internet companies that do business in China. The State Internet Information Office said the government would establish new procedures to assess potential security problems with Internet technology and with services used by sectors “related to national security and the public interest,” reported Xinhua, the state-run news agency. In the indictments, unsealed on Monday, the United States accused Mr. Wang, Mr. Sun and three others of working in the Chinese Army’s Unit 61398 , which a report last year by Mandiant, a cybersecurity company in Alexandria, Va., said operated out of a 12-story white tower on the outskirts of Shanghai. That unit is now the most infamous of China’s suspected hacking groups, and the Western cybersecurity industry variously calls it the Comment Crew, the Shanghai Group and APT1. Some members are active on Chinese social media. Mr. Wang, Mr. Sun and another of the men indicted, Wen Xinyu, are part of a group on QQ, a social networking and messaging tool, that calls itself “Poor Folks Fed by Public Funds,” according to an Internet search. The group, which has 24 members, also includes Mei Qiang, a hacking suspect named in the Mandiant report whose alias is SuperHard. Another member, Xu Yaoling, has the same name as someone from the P.L.A. University of Science and Technology, a military institution in Nanjing, who has written papers on hacking and cybersecurity. Mr. Wang posted messages on an official Chinese military forum in 2004 under the alias Green Field. He called himself a “military enthusiast” and asked in one thread, “Does our military have the capabilities to fight against American troops?” His forum profile listed an English name, Jack Wang, and an email address; messages sent this week to that address went unanswered. He has been known to leave a signature, “ug,” on malware he has created. “I think they’re soldiers with some training in computer technology, not technology people drafted into the military,” said a former hacker who has done what he calls defensive work for the Chinese Army and security agencies. The Comment Crew is not the only big player in China, where hacking is as common in the corporate and criminal worlds as in the government. It is even promoted at trade shows, in classrooms and on Internet forums. Western cybersecurity experts usually focus on hackers with state ties. FireEye , a cybersecurity company in Milpitas, Calif., that bought Mandiant in January, is tracking at least 25 “active Chinese-based threat groups,” of which 22 support the state in some way, said Darien Kindlund , the company’s manager of threat intelligence. At least five appear to be tied directly to one or more military groups, Mr. Kindlund said, adding that this was a conservative estimate. Joe Stewart, a cybersecurity expert at Dell SecureWorks , said that as of last year, the Comment Crew and a unit he called the Beijing Group were using “the lion’s share” of 25,000 suspicious online domains he had been tracking. The Beijing Group, he said, used a dedicated block of I.P. addresses that could be traced to the Chinese capital and to the network of China Unicom, one of the three biggest state-owned Internet telecommunications companies. “There’s espionage activity coming out of that,” Mr. Stewart said, though he added that he had seen no evidence of the Beijing Group’s working with China Unicom or any other state entity. A man who answered a China Unicom spokesman’s cellphone declined to comment. The targets pursued by the Comment Crew and the Beijing Group overlap — both go after foreign corporations and government agencies, for example — but the Beijing unit also takes aim at “activist types,” Mr. Stewart said, including ethnic Tibetan and Uighur exile groups. The two units are responsible for creating most of the world’s 300 known families of malware, he added. Western cybersecurity experts saw a surge of online espionage attacks on corporations starting in late 2006. Before that, attacks had been aimed mostly at government agencies or contractors. The experts said much of the initial wave of corporate espionage was traced to China, and specifically to the Comment Crew. About a year later, the Beijing Group appeared on the scene. A smaller unit, the Kunming Group, whose attacks have been traced to I.P. addresses in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, seemed focused on targets in Vietnam, Mr. Stewart said. It deployed malware and so-called spear phishing attacks that tried to entice victims to click on messages and links in Vietnamese. It is unclear exactly what the Kunming Group sought to achieve, but tensions between China and Vietnam have been rising in recent years over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. China moved an oil rig near Vietnam this month, an action Vietnam has protested. Vietnam is also working with foreign oil companies to drill and explore in that sea. Though the Obama administration has focused on exposing corporate espionage, hackers suspected of working for the Chinese government have breached a wide range of foreign government agencies, cybersecurity experts say. For example, FireEye said it had observed spying attacks on Taiwanese government agencies and on a professor in India who held pro-Tibet views. The company called the attackers the Shiqiang Gang. A mainland Chinese group also carried out attacks on Japanese government agencies and companies last September by putting commands on Japanese news media websites that would infect users. Mr. Kindlund, the FireEye executive, said people in his industry looked at a variety of factors to determine whether a hacker was a state employee or private contractor. One is the hacker’s security methods: Military hackers are less sloppy. Another is the victims: A hacker who jumps among wildly divergent victims, he said, is likely to be a contractor. In recent months, FireEye observed a hacker who took aim at foreign defense and aerospace companies, then hacked an online entertainment company. It appeared the hacker was a private contractor, Mr. Kindlund said. There is no proven method of getting a Chinese hacking unit to back down. In early 2013, American officials hoped that the release of the Mandiant report and loud criticism of Chinese cyberespionage by the Obama administration would silence the Comment Crew. The unit went dormant but resurfaced within five months, Mr. Kindlund said. Now, its attacks have returned to pre-2013 levels. “They’re using similar tactics but launching attacks from different infrastructure,” Mr. Kindlund said. “The tools are only slightly modified. Over all, most of the changes are very minor.”

China
Justice Department
Mandiant
FireEye
Corporate espionage
Cyberwarfare
People's Liberation Army


Cam Newton Tries to Move On After Comments on Race

Abstract: Cam Newton surprised many people last week when he said that race played a factor in how he was perceived as a quarterback. In an interview session with members of the news media on Tuesday, he declared the subject closed, at least as far as he was concerned. “I don’t even want to touch on the subject of black quarterbacks because I believe this game is bigger than black, white or even green,” Newton said in San Jose, Calif. “We limit ourselves when we label ourselves.” When Newton was challenged by some reporters to support his earlier assertion, he became somewhat defiant. “I wanted to bring awareness of that, but I don’t think I should be labeled as just as a black quarterback because there are bigger things in this sport that need to be accomplished,” he said. While the questioning was more confrontational than a typical pre-Super Bowl news conference, Newton stayed in good spirits and addressed criticism directed at him and his teammates for their on-field celebrations, pointing out that an average N.F.L. play lasts four to six seconds, and that people should pay more attention to those stretches of time than to celebrations. “We have a lot of character and charisma and personality in the locker room, but the big picture everyone should be talking about is those four to six seconds,” Newton said. LADY GAGA’S ANTHEM Lady Gaga, a six-time Grammy award winner who recently won a Golden Globe for her role in “American Horror Story: Hotel,” will sing the national anthem at Super Bowl 50, the N.F.L. and CBS announced. Coldplay and several guests will perform during the halftime show. “This particular Super Bowl, because it’s 50, is so different than any one that I’ve been associated with and probably will be different than any one in the future,” said Mark Quenzel, a senior vice president of NFL Network, which produces the pregame and halftime shows. MELISSA HOPPERT MESSAGE TO PANTHERS Before the Carolina Panthers went to California for the Super Bowl, the team broadcaster Eugene Robinson had a message for the players: Don’t mess up the way I did. Robinson was a Falcons safety in January 1999 when he was arrested the night before the Super Bowl for solicitation of a prostitute, while his wife and children were in a nearby hotel. Robinson played in the Super Bowl the next day, but gave up an 80-yard touchdown pass and missed a tackle on a long run as Atlanta lost, 34-19, to the Denver Broncos. “It was just to tell these guys, don’t mess this up,” Robinson said. He added, “I can be a living example.” Panthers Coach Ron Rivera said the speech seemed to resonate with players, who gave Robinson a standing ovation. “I think it is one of the bravest things I have ever seen a guy do,” Rivera said. Robinson remains married to his wife of 30 years. She has forgiven him for what occurred, but Robinson said it is something he will have to live with the rest of his life. “It’s easy to lose your way when you’re selfish and you’re only thinking about yourself,” Robinson said. “That’s what I did.” (AP)

Lady Gaga
Super Bowl
Carolina Panthers
Football
Cameron J Newton
Black People,African-Americans


Gaza Families Near Israeli Border Struggle to Build a Life in the Heart of a Conflict

Abstract: GAZA CITY — In 2008, Umm Samer Marouf fled the northern Gaza Strip under Israeli bombardments that destroyed her family’s house and strawberry fields and left her deep in debt. Now, she and her seven children have fled again, from their half-built replacement home, and wonder if it, too, will be demolished. “They should kill us all at once or resolve this for good, not shoot at us every two years,” Ms. Marouf, 42, said Monday at a shelter in Gaza City, a United Nations elementary school where it seemed as if her whole neighborhood had moved, kite-flying children, drying laundry, family squabbles and all. More than 17,000 Palestinian civilians have fled from areas in northern Gaza near the boundary with Israel, after the Israeli military warned of impending attacks there, part of its campaign to curb militant rocket fire from Gaza. Many of the displaced have been forced from their homes several times over six years during periodic fighting that has left families financially and psychologically depleted. The violence only punctuates a deeper, continuing struggle, as Gazans trying to go about their lives face a set of interlocking and relentless economic and political pressures from Israel, from their own leaders’ infighting, and, recently, from new tensions between Gaza’s Hamas leadership and Egypt that have deepened Gaza’s isolation. Now, international aid workers are warning of a new humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of Gazans without water as workers refuse to repair pumping systems because several workers died in airstrikes. At least 180 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since last week by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The attacks followed the largest and most far-reaching campaign of rocket fire into Israel yet carried out by Hamas and other Gaza militants. No Israelis have been killed by the rockets, as most have landed in open areas or were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, although several people have been injured and millions have sought refuge in bomb shelters. The Gaza violence erupted after a series of escalations elsewhere: Palestinian kidnappers killed three Israeli teenagers; Israeli troops swept through the West Bank, arresting hundreds; and a Palestinian boy was beaten and burned to death in Jerusalem in an apparent revenge attack. Ms. Marouf’s son-in-law, a father of four, lost part of a leg and suffered internal injuries in a strike on Saturday as he headed to his work at a chicken shop. That was only the latest blow to a family whose experience traces every stage of Gaza’s disappointments since 2005, when Israel unilaterally pulled out its settlements and troops, and residents briefly hoped for a new order of increased autonomy and opportunity. Ms. Marouf grew up in the shadow of an Israeli settlement, subject, she said, to frequent security clampdowns. Her husband waited hours each day to get through security to work on Israeli farms. Then, Israel billed the pullout as the end of its occupation of the Gaza Strip, a narrow, 25-mile-long coastal territory that it seized in the 1967 war. “We built good hopes,” Ms. Marouf said. “We want Gaza to be like any other nation, with a state, a seaport, a future for our children.” But things only got worse. Israel never relinquished control of its shared border with Gaza and Gaza's airspace and waters; Palestinians consider it still occupied. Israel imposed even harsher restrictions on the movement of people and goods as militants periodically fired rockets and Hamas, which had killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings, won Palestinian elections in 2006. Ms. Marouf’s husband could no longer reach Israel for work, so they invested their savings in renting land to grow strawberries. Gaza kept sinking. Facing a boycott from Israel and the West, Hamas failed to form a government; it captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2006, prompting more Israeli bombardment as Palestinian rocket attacks continued. In 2007, Hamas took over Gaza from its rival party, Fatah, by force, dividing the Palestinian Authority. An agreement with Israel to ease its near blockade grew even more remote, making it hard for farmers like the Maroufs to export their harvests. Then, in late 2008, came what Israel called Operation Cast Lead, involving airstrikes and an incursion into northern Gaza to destroy rocket launchers. The Maroufs fled to a United Nations school, where an Israeli airstrike killed several people; Israeli officials called it a mistake. Ms. Marouf gave birth to her seventh child, Saja, days later. Her daughter Hadeel, then 11, and a teenage brother went home to get baby clothes, and found their house a smoking ruin, the fields burned. As they walked away, Hadeel said Monday, several neighborhood children tagged along. An Israeli tank shell killed six of them. “One person’s insides were spilling out,” Hadeel said, reaching for her mother’s hand. Also destroyed was the house of Ms. Marouf’s married daughter, Sabeen. “We all have childhood memories there,” Sabeen said of her mother’s house. “But the occupation killed our memories as well.” The family lived in tents for a year, shivering at night as the wind blew under the flaps. Their only income was about $6 a month Ms. Marouf earned making cheese at a women’s factory run under a European Union aid project; even that has disappeared, the project discontinued. They received United Nations compensation for their house, enough to build a home only half its size, Ms. Marouf said. Construction was slow because of Israeli restrictions on importing building materials. Money ran out before the house was done, but the family moved in, without furniture, which they could not afford. The children went to school in tattered uniforms. In an Israeli assault in Gaza in 2012, the family stayed put, but last week, they cowered under the most intense bombardments they had ever heard, knowing that if wounded, they would be too frightened to go to a hospital. Ms. Marouf said that each morning, “We thank God that the day has come and we are all right.” In the shelter, where the family sleeps on bare floors, her daughter Saja, now 5, stared gravely from her mother’s arms and played with a shekel coin. “She won’t eat,” Ms. Marouf said. Around the corner, a building was flattened by an airstrike on Sunday, and the family is not sure whether they are safe. Ms. Marouf blamed Israel, Hamas and Fatah for failing to achieve peace. “We don’t hate the mujahedeen; they defend our people, ourselves, our land,” she said, using the Arabic word for holy warriors to refer to militants. “But we are the victims,” she added, “caught between the three sides.”

Gaza Strip
Palestinians
Israel
Military
Hamas
Refugees,Internally Displaced People


4 of 7 Named in Megaupload Indictment Denied Bail in New Zealand

Abstract: In what authorities have called one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have seized the Web site Megaupload and charged seven people connected with it with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy. Megaupload, one of the most popular so-called locker services on the Internet, allowed users to transfer large files like movies and music anonymously. Media companies have long accused it of abetting copyright infringement on a vast scale. In a grand jury indictment, Megaupload is accused of causing $500 million in damages to copyright owners and of making $175 million by selling ads and premium subscriptions. The arrests were greeted almost immediately with digital Molotov cocktails. The hacker collective that calls itself Anonymous attacked the Web sites of the United States Justice Department and several major entertainment companies and trade groups in retaliation for the seizure of Megaupload. The case against Megaupload comes at a charged time, a day after broad online protests against a pair of antipiracy bills in Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, in the House of Representatives, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA, in the Senate. The bills would give United States authorities expanded powers to crack down on foreign sites suspected of piracy. But technology companies and civil liberties groups say that the powers are too broadly defined and could effectively result in censorship. Four of the seven people, including the site’s founder, Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz), were arrested Friday in New Zealand ; the three others remain at large. Each of the seven people — who the indictment said were members of a criminal group it called Mega Conspiracy — is charged with five counts of copyright infringement and conspiracy. The charges could result in more than 20 years in prison. As part of the crackdown, about 20 search warrants were executed in the United States and in eight other countries, including New Zealand. About $50 million in assets were also seized, as well as a number of servers and 18 domain names that formed Megaupload’s network of file-sharing sites. The police arrived at Dotcom Mansion in Auckland on Friday morning in two helicopters. Mr. Dotcom, a 37-year-old with dual Finnish and German citizenship, retreated into a safe room, and the police had to cut their way in. He was eventually arrested with a firearm close by that the police said appeared to be a shortened shotgun. “It was definitely not as simple as knocking at the front door,” said Grant Wormald, a detective inspector. The police said they seized 6 million New Zealand dollars, or $4.8 million, in luxury vehicles, including a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe and a pink 1959 Cadillac. They also seized art and electronic equipment and froze 11 million dollars in cash in various accounts. Mr. Dotcom and three others arrested in New Zealand appeared in court Friday afternoon and were denied bail. Extradition proceedings will continue Monday. The police said the other three arrested in New Zealand were Finn Batato, 38, a German citizen and resident; Mathias Ortmann, 40, a German citizen who is a resident of Hong Kong ; and Bram van der Kolk, 29, a Dutch citizen who is a resident of New Zealand. The police said they were still searching Dotcom Mansion on Friday evening. Ira P. Rothken, a lawyer for Megaupload, said by telephone Thursday that “Megaupload believes the government is wrong on the facts, wrong on the law.” On Wednesday, Google and Wikipedia joined dozens of sites in political protests by blacking out some content and explaining their arguments against the antipiracy laws. The group Anonymous, which has previously set its sights on PayPal, Sony and major media executives, was more blunt in its response. The group disabled the Justice Department’s site for a time, and it also claimed credit for shutting down sites for the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America , two of the most powerful media lobbies in Washington, as well as those of Universal Music Group, the largest music label, and BMI, which represents music publishers. “Let’s just say, for #SOPA supporters their #SOPAblackout is today,” Anonymous wrote in a Twitter post . In an e-mail, a spokesman for the group said it was responsible for the Web attacks. The Megaupload case touches on many of the most controversial aspects of the anti-piracy debate. Megaupload and similar sites, like RapidShare and MediaFire, are often promoted as convenient ways to transfer large files legitimately; a recent promotional video had major stars like Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas singing Megaupload’s praises. But media companies say the legitimate uses are a veil concealing extensive theft. Mr. Dotcom has made himself a visible target. He splits his time between Hong Kong and New Zealand and casts himself in flamboyant YouTube videos. His role as one of the most prominent Web locker operators has earned him a half-joking nickname in Hollywood: Dr. Evil. According to the indictment, he took in $42 million from Megaupload’s operations in 2010. The indictment against Megaupload , which stems from a federal inquiry that began two years ago, was handed down by a grand jury in Virginia two weeks ago but was not unsealed until Thursday. It quotes extensively from correspondence among the defendants, who work for Megaupload and its related sites. The correspondence, the indictment says, shows that the operators knew the site contained unauthorized content. The indictment cites an e-mail from last February, for example, in which three members of the group discussed an article about how to stop the government from seizing domain names. The Megaupload case is unusual, said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University , in that federal prosecutors obtained the private e-mails of Megaupload’s operators in an effort to show they were operating in bad faith. “The government hopes to use their private words against them,” Mr. Kerr said. “This should scare the owners and operators of similar sites.”

Megaupload
Copyrights
Kim Dotcom
Finn Batato
Mathias Ortmann
Bram van der Kolk
Computers and the Internet
FBI


Chinese Scholar Who Helped in an Escape Is Detained for ‘Picking Quarrels’

Abstract: BEIJING — Guo Yushan, a Chinese scholar and social reform advocate, suspected his days as a free man might be numbered. Having played a key role in helping Chen Guangcheng , the blind legal activist, escape house arrest in 2012 — an international imbroglio that ended with Mr. Chen and his family gaining asylum in the United States — Mr. Guo said it was only a matter of time before he received his comeuppance for having embarrassed the Chinese government. “My friends joke that the Communist Party owes me a jail sentence,” he said in an interview last fall, shortly after emerging from an 81-day stretch of “soft detention” confined to his home on the outskirts of the capital. At 2 a.m. on Thursday, friends say, Mr. Guo was led away from his apartment by more than a dozen security agents, who also confiscated his computer, hard drives and documents. Mr. Guo’s apparent crime, according to friends, was “picking quarrels and provoking troubles,” the catchall charge that the Chinese authorities have been using with growing frequency in an effort to silence perceived enemies. It is not clear what prompted his detention, but Mr. Guo could simply be the latest victim of a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent that has picked up steam since pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong began a campaign of civil disobedience two weeks ago. More than 50 people have been detained across China this month, including 10 people in Beijing who last week attended a private poetry reading, disrupted by the police, that was billed as an expression of solidarity with the protesters in Hong Kong. “If this is related to Occupy Central, there’s a big possibility he will lose his freedom,” said Li Fangping, a rights lawyer, referring to the protests in Hong Kong, which Chinese leaders fear could spread beyond the former British colony. Image A handout photo of Guo Yushan, a Beijing-based researcher and rights activist, in September, 2011. Credit Reuters But on Sunday, Mr. Guo’s friends said they were puzzled by his detention because he had deliberately kept a low profile in the year since the authorities shut down the independent research institute he had helped run. As far as they knew, Mr. Guo had refrained from making any public gestures in support of the demonstrations in Hong Kong. “He is very courageous yet extremely rational, gentle, and has a very strong awareness of the law,” said Chen Min , a friend and journalist who is better known by the pen name Xiao Shu. “His remarks and his activities are completely within the law.” In addition to helping Mr. Chen make his way into the United States Embassy in Beijing two years ago, Mr. Guo is best known for his association with the Transition Institute . Largely financed through grants from foreign foundations, the institute produced well-regarded studies on China’s taxi industry, the environmental repercussions of the mammoth Three Gorges Dam, and the household registration system that is deeply unpopular among rural migrants who settle in Chinese cities but are denied a variety of social welfare and education benefits. But since President Xi Jinping came to power more than two years ago, the red line of what is considered permissible has been shifting. In recent months, scores of journalists, rights defenders and moderate advocates of political reform have been swept up in a widening dragnet. Many of those detained have been charged with the same crime of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” that Mr. Guo is now facing, although it is possible he could be released after days or weeks in police custody. Jerome A. Cohen , an expert on Chinese law at New York University, said the crackdown appeared to be at odds with Mr. Xi’s stated vow to promote legal reforms, the focus of a key party meeting to be held later this month. “It’s rather ironic that the repression is intensifying at the very moment the party is talking about the need for rule of law,” Mr. Cohen said. The authorities shut Mr. Guo’s institute last year, not long after the arrest of Xu Zhiyong , a legal advocate and longtime friend, who was later sentenced to four years for his role in a grass-roots anti-corruption campaign. At the time, Mr. Guo said he was unsure why the authorities had moved against his institute and confiscated its publications, but thought it was likely related to his association with Mr. Xu and his New Citizens Movement. Officials told him the institute could reopen at a later date, as long as he was no longer involved. Speaking at a cafe last October, Mr. Guo said he supported Mr. Xu’s goal of promoting greater government transparency but disagreed with his tactics, which included small rallies during which participants held up banners calling on public officials to disclose their financial assets. “He crossed a red line and took his cause to the streets,” he said. Still, Mr. Guo directed much of his anger at China’s leader, Mr. Xi, who he believed was intent on silencing not just advocates of political reform but also those seeking to address China’s most intractable social problems through nongovernmental organizations. That strategy, he predicted, would likely backfire. “Xi’s not addressing the needs and frustrations of the people, and crushing people like us who are trying to improve society,” he said. “We will be left with chaos.” Having just emerged from almost three months of house arrest, Mr. Guo was skittish about talking to a foreign journalist but determined to continue his work as a social reformer. Still, he expressed concern that the police would make good on a threat, delivered during an earlier interrogation, that he would at some point be punished for helping Mr. Chen escape house arrest and sneak into the United States Embassy. “We are in the midst of a very dark time,” he said, “and it’s only going to get worse.”

Guo Yushan
Chen Guangcheng
Hong Kong
China
Occupy Central,Umbrella Movement
Civil Unrest
New Citizens Movement China
Immigration
Communist Party of China


Nuclear Energy Loses Cost Advantage

Abstract: PARIS — Solar photovoltaic systems have long been painted as a clean way to generate electricity, but expensive compared with other alternatives to oil, like nuclear power. No longer. In a “historic crossover,” the costs of solar photovoltaic systems have declined to the point where they are lower than the rising projected costs of new nuclear plants, according to a paper published this month. “Solar photovoltaics have joined the ranks of lower-cost alternatives to new nuclear plants,” John O. Blackburn, a professor of economics at Duke University, in North Carolina, and Sam Cunningham, a graduate student, wrote in the paper, “Solar and Nuclear Costs — The Historic Crossover.” This crossover occurred at 16 cents per kilowatt hour, they said. While solar power costs have been declining, the costs of nuclear power have been rising inexorably over the past eight years, said Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and Environment. Estimates of construction costs — about $3 billion per reactor in 2002 — have been regularly revised upward to an average of about $10 billion per reactor, and the estimates are likely to keep rising, said Mr. Cooper, an analyst specializing in tracking nuclear power costs. Identifying the real costs of competing energy technologies is complicated by the wide range of subsidies and tax breaks involved. As a result, U.S. taxpayers and utility users could end up spending hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars more than necessary to achieve an ample low-carbon energy supply, if legislative proposals before the U.S. Congress lead to adoption of an ambitious nuclear development program, Mr. Cooper said in a report last November. The report, “All Risk, No Reward for Taxpayers and Ratepayers,” was a response to a legislative wish list developed by the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. The institute has called for a mix of U.S. subsidies, tax credits, loan guarantees, procedural simplifications and institutional support on a large scale. At the state level, the industry has also pressed the case for “construction work in progress,” a financing system that requires electricity users to pay for the cost of new reactors during their construction and sometimes before construction starts. With long construction periods and frequent delays, this can mean that electricity users start to pay higher prices as much as 12 years before the plants produce electricity. The institute’s Web site says the financing system “reduces the cost ratepayers will pay for power from the plant when it goes into commercial operation,” by lowering interest payments on capital costs and spreading the costs over time. “The utilities insist that the construction work in progress charged to ratepayers also include the return on equity that the utilities normally earn by taking the risk of building the plant — even though they have shifted the risk to the ratepayers,” Mr. Cooper said. “If the plant is not built or suffers cost overruns, the ratepayers will bear the burden.” History suggests that the risk of this is not negligible. In 1985, Forbes magazine dubbed the construction of the first generation of U.S. nuclear plants “the largest managerial disaster in business history.” The first round of plants resulted in write-offs through bankruptcies and “stranded costs” — investments in existing power plants made uncompetitive by deregulation — which essentially transferred nearly $100 billion in liabilities to electricity users, said Doug Koplow, an economist and founder of Earth Track, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which campaigns against subsidies it considers environmentally harmful. “Although the industry frequently points to its low operating costs as evidence of its market competitiveness, this economic structure is an artifact of large subsidies to capital, historical write-offs of capital, and ongoing subsidies to operating costs,” Mr. Koplow said. From 1943 to 1999 the U.S. government paid nearly $151 billion, in 1999 dollars, in subsidies for wind, solar and nuclear power, Marshall Goldberg of the Renewable Energy Policy Project, a research organization in Washington, wrote in a July 2000 report. Of this total, 96.3 percent went to nuclear power, the report said. Still, these costs pale in comparison with the financial risks and subsidies that are likely to accompany the next wave of nuclear plant construction, Mr. Cooper said. A November 2009 research report by Citigroup Global Markets termed the construction risks, power price risks, and operational risks “so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility to its knees.” Those risks were mentioned in a 2009 report by the credit rating agency Moody’s. “Moody’s is considering taking a more negative view for those issuers seeking to build new nuclear power plants,” the report said. “Historically, most nuclear-building utilities suffered ratings downgrades — and sometimes several — while building these facilities. Political and policy conditions are spurring applications for new nuclear power generation for the first time in years. Nevertheless, most utilities now seeking to build nuclear generation do not appear to be adjusting their financial policies, a credit negative.” Adding to the risks facing any reactor construction program, only one of five proposed designs under consideration by U.S. utilities has ever been built, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. “No one has ever built a contemporary reactor to contemporary standards, so no one has the experience to state with confidence what it will cost,” said Stephen Maloney, a utilities management consultant. “We see cost escalations as companies come up the learning curve.” Market risk has been heightened by the recent recession . “The current crisis has decreased energy demand even more than the 1970s oil price shocks,” Mr. Cooper said. The recession “appears to have caused a fundamental shift in consumption patterns that will lower the long-term growth rate of electricity demand.” Meanwhile, most of the projects that have created the increase of license applications to the regulatory commission have already experienced difficulties. “About half of the projects that have been put forward at the start of the next generation of reactors have been delayed or canceled,” Mr. Cooper said. “Those that have moved forward have suffered substantial cost escalation and several have received negative financial reviews. “Of the 19 applications at the N.R.C., 90 percent have had some type of delay or cancellation, run into a design problem, suffered cost increases and/or had the utility bond rating downgraded by Wall Street.” Despite the economic challenges, the nuclear power industry remains unfazed. “This is not a hospitable environment in which to commission any large base-load power plant,” said Marvin Fertel, president and chief executive of the Nuclear Energy Institute, in a briefing to the financial community. Still, he said: “Fortunately new nuclear plants won’t be in service until 2016 or later, so today’s market conditions are not entirely relevant.” Mr. Cooper said the industry’s equanimity was based, at least partially, on the supportive cushion provided by loan guarantees and work-in-progress financing. “With such financing the utility is making a one-way bet, allowing it to make a profit even when the project fails,” he said. “The people bear the risks and costs; the nuclear utilities take the profits. Without loan guarantees and guaranteed construction work in progress, these reactors will simply not be built, because the capital markets will not finance them.” Without public guarantees, nuclear projects often cannot get financing. AmerenUE, the Missouri utility, suspended in April 2009 plans to build a $6 billion, 1,600-megawatt reactor at its Callaway County nuclear site, after trying unsuccessfully to get the State Legislature to repeal a longstanding ban on work-in-progress financing. The continued existence of the ban “makes financing a new plant in the current economic environment impossible,” the utility said. Similarly, Florida Power and Light said in January that it would not proceed beyond licensing with plans to build two new reactors at its Turkey Point site, after the Florida Public Service Commission rejected its request to pass on a $1.27 billion cost increase to its users. Yet, despite episodic resistance at the local level, financial support for the industry at the U.S. government level has been increasingly evident in successive versions of climate and energy bills before the U.S. Congress, including the most recent, the American Power Act, which is delayed in the Senate until after the summer recess. Nuclear subsidies in the Senate proposal include five-year accelerated depreciation; tax credits for investments and production and eligibility for the advanced energy tax credit; an increase in government insurance against regulatory delays; access to private activity bonds; and a $36 billion increase in loan guarantees, bringing the total to $56 billion. That remains less than the Nuclear Energy Institute’s goal of $100 billion, an amount it describes as “a minimal acceptable loan volume.” Still, Mr. Fertel said in his financial briefing that “‘strong political support’ understates our position.” Federal loan guarantees cut nuclear construction financing costs by allowing the utilities to sell bonds at a lower interest rate. But at the same time the guarantee means that “the U.S. Treasury, and therefore the taxpayers, are on the hook for the value of the loans should they go bad,” Mr. Cooper said. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the average risk of default for such Department of Energy loan guarantees is about 50 percent, which is the historic rate for the nuclear industry. Mr. Koplow of Earth Track said two of the other subsidies in the Senate bill, the investment tax credit and five-year accelerated depreciation, would together “be worth between $1.3 billion and nearly $3 billion on a net present value basis per new reactor. “This is equivalent to between 15 and 20 percent of the total all-in cost of the reactors, as projected by industry.” Over all, Mr. Koplow said, the proposed subsidy package would undermine the equity requirements of the nuclear loan guarantee program, designed to ensure that investors have a strong interest in the long-term success of the venture. “Although investors will get all the profit if the reactor project is successful, they will bear virtually none of the financial risk if the project fails,” he said. “This is a disastrous incentive structure.” By distorting energy markets, these subsidies would “effectively make the government the chooser of which energy technologies will be winners and which will lose,” he said. The American Power Act “does not build a neutral policy platform on which all energy technologies must compete.” The tax breaks for nuclear would “greatly impede market access for competing energy sources,” Mr. Koplow said. He said handing out huge subsidies would also cloud the transparency of decision-making. “This approach,” he said, “which replaces price signals with decisions by a handful of often unnamed individuals within the U.S. Department of Energy, plays to none of the inherent strengths of the U.S. market system to spur innovation and effectively allocate risks and rewards. Further, the basis, and sometimes scale, of these subsidy decisions is largely hidden from the public view.” For Mr. Cooper, the core issue at stake is one of opportunity cost. “While the cost estimates of nuclear power continue to rise, the potential for energy efficiency measures to reduce the need for energy are far cheaper,” he said. Lower-cost, low-carbon technologies are already available, and cost trends for several others indicate that a combination of efficiency and renewable technologies could meet projected power needs while also achieving aggressive carbon-reduction targets, Mr. Cooper said. In a June 2009 report drawing on several earlier studies, Mr. Cooper said that energy efficiency, cogeneration and renewable sources could meet power needs at an average cost of 6 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with a cost of 12 cents to 20 cents per kilowatt hour for nuclear power. Choosing the nuclear route, and constructing 100 new reactors, would translate into an extra cost to taxpayers and electricity users of $1.9 trillion to $4.4 trillion over the 40-year life of the reactors, compared with the costs of developing energy efficiency and renewable sources, the report said. Mr. Cooper said it would make sense for policy makers, standing in the place of the market, to choose the least costly alternatives first. “In an attempt to circumvent the sound judgment of the capital markets, nuclear advocates erroneously claim that subsidies lower the financing costs for nuclear reactors and so are good for consumers,” he said. “But shifting risk does not eliminate it. Furthermore, subsidies induce utilities and regulators to take greater risks that will cost the taxpayers and the ratepayers dearly. “The risks that have dismayed Wall Street should be taken seriously by policy makers because they would cost not just hundreds of billions of dollars in losses on reactors that are canceled, but also trillions in excess costs for ratepayers when reactors are brought to completion by utilities that fail to pursue the lower-cost, less risky options that are available. “The frantic effort of the nuclear industry to increase federal loan guarantees and secure ratepayer funding of construction work in progress from state legislatures is an admission that the technology is so totally uneconomic that the industry will forever be a ward of state, resulting in a uniquely American form of nuclear socialism.”

Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Energy and Power
Solar Energy


Debt Collectors Adopt Mob Tactics as Russians Struggle to Pay Bills

Abstract: MOSCOW — They have stripped and sexually abused a woman, severely burned a toddler by firebombing a house and broken a woman’s pinkie as a warning. Gang members, bandits, mobsters? Not exactly. These are debt collectors, a peculiarly Russian variety that is flourishing amid the country’s economic turmoil. As a punishing recession stretches into a second year, people struggling to make ends meet are resorting in growing numbers to borrowing at astronomical interest rates that many cannot possibly afford. With unpaid debts mushrooming, collection has turned into something of a blood sport reminiscent of the shocking gang violence of the 1990s, with threats and violence by debt collectors spreading across the sprawling Russian hinterland largely unrestrained by public authorities. “As a rule, small sums are involved in these cases, and it is easier to recover them by physical force,” said Danila S. Mikhalishchev, a debt collector turned consumer advocate. “It is easier to frighten people than to sue them.” In 2015, the amount of unpaid debt surged by almost 50 percent to $15 billion, or about 13 percent of all personal debt, according to Alexander A. Akhlomov of the United Credit Bureau, a private organization that tracks credit ratings. A borrower making no payments for three months is considered to be in default. Just since March of last year, the number of Russians in that category has leapt to 7.5 million from six million, he said. It is not hard to see why. In 2015, real wages declined 10 percent in the face of a steep drop in the global price of oil, a weak ruble and Western economic sanctions imposed over Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. This March, for the first time since 2008, Russians spent more than half their income on food, beverages and cigarettes, according to government statistics. To make matters worse, banks have tightened credit, so the growing ranks of Russians living paycheck to paycheck have fewer options. “What changed with the crisis is that banks became much stricter about issuing new loans,” Mr. Akhlomov said. “Before, if people did not have the money to pay off a loan, they could go to another bank. That does not work anymore.” Generally, banks seeking loan payments are not in the business of thrashing their customers physically. The worst abuses are rooted in the so-called microfinance industry, which extends small loans to tide borrowers over until their next paycheck. Those loans average $125, according to United Credit Bureau statistics. The interest rate is usually 2 percent a day, or 730 percent a year. That adds up fast. Why the Russian Economy Is Tumbling Russia has been operating at a deficit since 2012, and its Reserve Fund is slated to run out by 2017. Take Natalya Gorbunova, 38, a house painter in Iskitim, a small city of 60,000 about 2,100 miles east of Moscow. She usually earns some $400 a month but hit a rough patch in September 2014 while her husband, a security guard, was hospitalized with an ulcer. She borrowed $75 from the small blue and green kiosk of a microfinance company called Instant Money near a bus stop in Iskitim, figuring she could repay it within a month. She could not, however, and that was when the abusive telephone calls started. Collectors threatened to kill her if she did not pay. Angry, Ms. Gorbunova decided not to repay a kopeck, she said in newspaper and television interviews. She did not go to the police, she said, because “everyone told us that no one would deal with it.” By the time four debt collectors wearing black balaclavas smashed into her small wooden shack on March 30, that debt had bloated to more than $3,600. The men put bags over her head and those of her husband and 17-year-old son, beating and kicking them while demanding repayment. They pushed Ms. Gorbunova facedown on a couch, stripped off her pajamas and began “poking” her with some kind of wooden object, she said. “I was shocked, but the only thing I thought about was that I did not want them to hurt my son,” she said on a television talk show. The police called it sexual assault, and an appalled public called it rape. Representatives of the collection industry either accused her of lying or suggested that a few “black collectors” were soiling the entire industry. No one has been arrested, and the credit company denied any involvement. The grass-roots level of the collection industry is unregulated, thinly separated from organized crime and peopled mainly by cashiered police officers, former secret police agents and prison or security guards. About 40 percent of all unpaid debt ends up in the hands of collection agencies, said Mr. Akhlomov of the United Credit Bureau. Short of violence, collectors use all manner of psychological pressure. They telephone constantly, sometimes as many as 150 times a day. They hound not just the debtors but their families, friends and business associates, demanding that they help pay. The police in the southern city of Stavropol opened a case against one collection agency that blocked phone service to the local children’s hospital by robocalling every hospital number in pursuit of a debtor. Collectors spray-paint apartment doors with the word “DOLG,” or “DEBT.” They ruin locks with super glue and break windows. They distribute fliers using the pictures and phone numbers of debtors and advertising for sexual services. They threaten death or the loss of a limb. Some debtors have been driven to suicide. When they call or send text messages, the collectors often use names from Chechnya or the southern Caucasus, whose residents have a reputation for fearsome violence. “When they call, they use some invented name like Ahmed Islamovich, which immediately exerts psychological pressure on any Russian,” said Anton Babin, 29, a psychologist who accuses the collectors of provoking a fatal heart attack in his 55-year-old mother by hounding her. Children are frequent targets of coercion. Several kindergartens have been evacuated because collectors threatened to blow them up. Victims are generally poor and uneducated, have little faith in the government and do not know that most courts will wipe out the ballooning interest. The level of violence horrifies Russians, who believed that the most vicious Al Capone-like excesses of the chaotic 1990s had been left behind given the stern guidance and prosperity of past years under President Vladimir V. Putin. The outcry finally prompted the government to act, albeit haltingly. Yuri Y. Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general, publicly urged law enforcement agencies to be less lethargic. Out of 21,000 complaints in recent years, only a handful of cases were pursued, he said, calling the legal response a failure given the magnitude of the problem. This month Parliament began debating a law to ban collection agencies. “They should be handcuffed, so they won’t beat anyone, won’t rape anyone or won’t burn anyone,” said Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a populist politician, waving handcuffs as he delivered a Parliament speech that was broadcast nationally. Critics say that an outright ban would just drive the process underground, and that a regulatory framework is what is really needed. In the meantime, people are trying to figure out how to defend themselves. Evgeny O. Sharov, 26, a singing teacher in the southern city of Tolyatti, joined a forum called Stop Collector after he and his relatives were harassed. “I’m now aware that when a call comes from those collectors, I shouldn’t show them that I’m afraid,” he said in a telephone interview. “The faster you show them that you’re afraid of something, the more dogged they become.”

Debt
Russia
Economy
Assault
Organized crime
Debt Collection


Accusing Obama of Untruths Over Outsourcing

Abstract: Mitt Romney ’s campaign released a blistering television advertisement on Thursday accusing President Obama of dishonesty in recent attacks on Mr. Romney. It also has a somewhat off-topic cameo by Hillary Rodham Clinton in which she scolds Mr. Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary race. The ad is the latest to reach the depths of nastiness that have characterized the presidential contest. THE SCRIPT “When a president doesn’t tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead? The Obama outsourcing attacks: ‘misleading, unfair and untrue.’ There was ‘no evidence’ that Mitt Romney shipped jobs overseas. Candidate Obama lied about Hillary Clinton. ‘So shame on you, Barack Obama.’ But America expects more from a president. Obama’s dishonest campaign: another reason America has lost confidence in Barack Obama.” ON SCREEN The first lines appear over grainy video of Mr. Obama speaking. Images of The Washington Post and of the Web site FactCheck.org appear behind quoted text. There is a video clip of Mrs. Clinton berating Mr. Obama in the heat of their 2008 primary race. The ad ends with Mr. Obama in rolled-up shirt sleeves mouthing words with no sound. ACCURACY The ad, titled “No Evidence,” is the latest in an increasingly personal dispute between the campaigns over Mr. Romney’s record at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded. The president has attacked Mr. Romney as an “outsourcing pioneer” because of investments he made at Bain, and an Obama campaign ad last month asked if Americans wanted an “outsourcer in chief.” The Romney ad quotes, correctly, a fact-checking column in The Post that was highly skeptical of the Obama ad. But the column appeared before a news article in The Post on June 21 that took a deeper look at Bain and identified companies that the firm had invested in that helped other companies move call centers and manufacturing overseas. The Romney ad cites a second fact-checking column, by FactCheck.org, that found “no evidence” that Mr. Romney sent American jobs overseas while he was running Bain. That conclusion was based in part on the fact that Mr. Romney left Bain in 1999 to run the Salt Lake City Olympics, before two companies that Bain invested in moved work from the United States to Mexico, in 2000 and 2001. On Thursday, that timeline was thrown into question by a report in The Boston Globe that securities filings named Mr. Romney as the owner, president and chief executive of Bain during the period. It is unclear whether he made hands-on decisions during that time. SCORECARD The two campaigns are entrenched in hand-to-hand combat over details and the significance of Mr. Romney’s years at Bain, which is the source of his personal wealth and his top credential in billing himself as a leader capable of improving the economy. The Obama campaign has barraged Mr. Romney on his Bain record, to the point of distorting some facts. But it is unlikely to call off the assault, which some polls show has persuaded a slice of voters in swing states to doubt Mr. Romney.

Presidential Election of 2012
Political Advertising
Romney Mitt