The Odd Olympics: Japan’s Prime Minister Dresses Up as Mario

Abstract: Gold medals are great , but for many viewers of the Rio Olympics, the real high points were the odd, hilarious or unexpected moments beyond the competition, which were shared and amplified by social media. Even before the Games began, some of the Olympic housing was called unfit for occupancy , and then the diving pool mysteriously turned from azure blue to bright green . The Brazilian police said four American athletes lied about being robbed at gunpoint , and some critics cried foul after a Bahamian sprinter dived across the finish line to win gold in the 400 meters. At least the track seemed to be the right color: blue. Here’s a roundup of some Olympic moments that had social media users talking. The Internet Lusts After a Tongan . @hodakotb living the dream this morning with #Tonga flag bearer Pita Taufatofua! #RioTODAY pic.twitter.com/UDZYlnE1Vo — TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 8, 2016 The bar for viral Olympic moments was set high (low?) during the opening ceremony, when television commentators breathlessly gawked at Pita Taufatofua, a shirtless and oil-slicked Tongan taekwondo athlete and an aspiring model. “Wow, look at Tonga.” “Slow that down.” That was commentary by the NBC announcers Meredith Vieira and Hoda Kotb, who were clearly happy to see Mr. Taufatofua as he grinned and strolled into the stadium, carrying his country’s flag. Soon, he was being rubbed by the “Today” show hosts Matt Lauer and Ms. Kotb on a Rio beach. It set a theme, as news outlets including The New York Times and Cosmopolitan magazine were soon commenting on male Olympians’ physiques. One Hookup Scandal and Three Marriage Proposals A straight, married reporter from The Daily Beast set off a furor when he used the dating app Grindr to meet gay athletes in Rio for an article on sex at the Olympics. The I.O.C. called it “unacceptable.” Others called the piece a “stunt” and “dangerous” because it included enough details to identify athletes from countries where homosexuality is illegal. The Daily Beast pulled the reporter from Rio and yanked the online article . But there was true romance in Rio, too. At least three competitors were engaged during the Games in proposals seen around the world. • The Chinese diver He Zi got a ring from her boyfriend , Qin Kai, shortly after she won a silver medal. • Marjorie Enya, a volunteer worker at the Games, walked onto the rugby field after a match and proposed to her girlfriend , Isadora Cerullo, a member of the Brazilian women’s rugby team. “As soon as I knew she was in the squad, I thought I have to make this special,” Ms. Enya told BBC Sport . • The American athlete Will Claye , who won silver in the men’s triple jump, leapt into the stands afterward to propose to his girlfriend, Queen Harrison, a hurdler who competed in the 2008 Summer Games. Bullets and Bandits Brazil welcomed the world with a dazzling opening ceremony at the heavily guarded Maracanã stadium. Thousands of security personnel were dispersed throughout Rio , because crime had been a longstanding concern for organizers. We all know the Ryan Lochte robbery story by now ( he apologized ), but here’s what else happened: • The Olympic security chief was mugged at knife point; • The athletes’ village was burglarized; • Two coaches for Australia were attacked and robbed; • A bus carrying reporters had its windows smashed; • And bullets landed in the equestrian venue. Should We Go Into the Water? Organizers struggled to explain why the water in two competition pools kept getting greener and murkier , irritating athletes’ eyes. After numerous explanations, eventually they said someone might have accidentally dumped hydrogen peroxide into the water, neutralizing its chlorine and allowing “organic compounds” like algae to bloom. Weight Lifter Boogies for a Cause David Katoatau , a weight lifter from the Pacific island nation Kiribati, charmed viewers by busting a move after dropping his weights. But he had a serious reason: climate change. He told reporters the dance moves were meant to raise awareness about the threat that rising sea levels posed to his country , which is composed of 33 coral atolls. “I want people to know more about us, so I use weight lifting, and my dancing, to show the world,” he told Reuters . A ‘Smooth’ Horse There was also a dancing horse, named Lorenzo , which is the kind of thing that makes the internet swoon. He was ridden by Severo Jesus Jurado Lopez of Spain in the dressage competition and danced to a version of “Smooth,” the Grammy Award-winning hit from 1999 by Santana and Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty. The pair did not win a medal, but the internet did not seem to mind. Online Bullies Target Gabby Douglas While her teammates, especially Simone Biles, basked in the glow of fan love, the gymnast Gabby Douglas, a breakout star of the 2012 Olympics in London, became the focus of an all-too-common menace: poisonous social media . Douglas, 20, was subjected to racially charged attacks on her hair, her patriotism and her facial expressions, a phenomenon that spawned a flood of think pieces and one teary-eyed interview from the gymnast. The attacks had her mother, Natalie Hawkins, lamenting to Reuters: “You name it, and she got trampled. What did she ever do to anyone?” How a Protest Cost Team USA $300 When the gymnast Laurie Hernandez, a.k.a. “the human emoji,” protested the score on her beam routine , the inquiry cost the American team about $300 , reports said. Coaches, gymnasts or other officials can challenge scores verbally and in writing within a certain time frame and pay a fee — $100 to $1,000 , depending on the event and how many inquiries are made. The fee is intended to help cut down on excessive or meritless protests. If the initial score is overturned, the fee is returned to the team. In Hernandez’s case, the protest was rejected, but she still won the silver. Is That a Smartphone in Your Pocket? The French fencer Enzo Lefort inexplicably kept his smartphone in his pocket while facing off with Peter Joppich of Germany. Predictably, it fell out and tumbled across the floor as the two men lunged and parried. Lefort did not win the bout, but he was a good sport about the whole thing. Irish Rowing Champs Charm the Internet Paul and Gary O’Donovan, two brothers who won a silver medal for Ireland in rowing, also had a bit of fun on social media. They became an online hit after they gave a series of laid-back interviews. They celebrated winning out over a British competitor (“’Tis great to beat the Brits, as well”), chatted about the “podium pants” they wore at the awards ceremony, said they’d rather be celebrating at the pub in their home village, and attributed their success to their nana’s home cooking. Not all Irish athletes were so happy-go-lucky. The Irish bantamweight boxer Michael Conlan, who lost his quarterfinal match to Vladimir Nikitin of Russia, unleashed claims of corruption during an expletive-filled rant on TV . “AIBA cheats,” Conlan said of the International Boxing Association. He said the sport’s officials were “known for being cheats, and they’ll always be cheats.” (He was not the only fighter crying foul. Gary Russell Sr., the father of the American boxer Gary Antuanne Russell, claimed, “He got robbed,” after the younger man lost his fight to Fazliddin Gaibnazarov of Uzbekistan.) The AIBA, for its part, acknowledged there were problems with the officiating and judging at some bouts at the Games. It then announced the removal of several unnamed referees and judges from the Olympic boxing competition after a review of several of their decisions. Also not so charming: The head of the Irish and European Olympic committees, Patrick Hickey, was arrested in Rio on Wednesday and accused of plotting to scalp Olympic tickets . Mr. Hickey, 71, a former Irish judo athlete, is suspected of being involved in a scheme to illegally resell about 1,000 tickets at steep prices. During his arrest at an oceanfront hotel, he fell ill and was taken to the hospital by ambulance, an Olympic spokesman said. He was charged with ticket touting, forming a cartel and illicit marketing, and a statement Wednesday from the Olympic Council of Ireland said he would “step aside temporarily” until the matter was resolved. German Twins Infuriate the Homeland As they crossed the finish line in the women’s marathon, Anna and Lisa Hahner joined hands . Depending on your point of view, it was either a touching sign of sisterly bonding or a publicity stunt. German track and field officials declared it to be the latter. Image Lisa, left, and Anna Hahner in the women’s marathon Sunday. The twins finished 81st and 82nd, in times well off their personal bests. Credit Sergio Moraes/Reuters The runners were accused of treating the event “like a fun run.” Why Did the Olympian Flip the Bird? The swimmer Santo Condorelli, 21, representing Canada, has a strange ritual to build his confidence before each race: He flips his father his middle finger . His father told The Daily News the routine started when he began doing it to Condorelli when he was a child as a motivational tool. Now, the Canadian Olympic team website elaborated, Condorelli “always signals to his parents from the pool deck with his middle finger and splashes himself twice with pool water.” A Striptease Act Two Mongolian wrestling coaches began stripping in protest over the result of a 65 kg freestyle wrestling match between Ikhtiyor Navruzov of Uzbekistan and Ganzorigiin Mandakhnaran of Mongolia. Ganzorigiin received a penalty for celebrating his victory early, costing him the bronze medal. When the coaches began stripping on the mat in protest — one got to his underwear — officials tossed in another penalty. A Selfie Bridges a Divide Image The gymnasts Lee Eun-ju, right, of South Korea and Hong Un-jong of North Korea at the Rio Olympic Arena last week. Relations between the countries have been at a low over the North’s nuclear and missile tests. Credit Dylan Martinez/Reuters Lee Eun-ju, 17, was a last-minute replacement on South Korea ’s gymnastics team and did not advance to the finals. But she was hailed as an example of the Olympic spirit even before the Games started after she approached a North Korean gymnast, Hong Un-jong, 27, during a training session and snapped a selfie . A South Korean news report called Lee an “ an Olympic icon .” Mario Is … Abe? At the closing ceremony on Sunday, Prime Shinzo Abe of Japan , which will host the 2020 Summer Olympics, popped up as Super Mario , the star of the popular Nintendo video game series. “Abe Mario” was soon a top trending topic on Twitter. Image Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, whose capital, Tokyo, will host the 2020 Summer Games, appeared as Super Mario during the Olympic closing ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. Credit Stoyan Nenov/Reuters The ‘Victory Tax’ Finally, winning can be costly. The United States Olympic Committee gives bonuses to athletes who win gold ($25,000), silver ($15,000) or bronze ($10,000) medals. That money is, of course, taxed , with those in the top tier being hit with a 39.6 percent tax bracket ($9,900 for a gold medal bonus, $5,940 for silver and $3,960 for bronze, according to Americans for Tax Reform). So Michael Phelps, who won five gold and one silver medal in Rio, could owe the I.R.S. up to $55,000 of his winnings.

Social Media
Pita Taufatofua
Gabby Douglas
Gymnastics
Laurie Hernandez
Patrick Hickey
Rio de Janeiro
2016 Summer Olympics
Federal Taxes
Gay and Lesbian LGBT


Renewed Fighting and Drone Strikes in Yemen Kill About 75

Abstract: SANA, Yemen — Renewed fighting in the Yemen conflict killed about 75 people on Saturday and Sunday, some of them in the first drone strikes launched during the new administration of President Trump, according to Yemeni news reports. Two drone strikes in the central Yemeni province of Bayda on Saturday killed 10 militants with Al Qaeda, three of them hit while riding on a motorcycle and the other seven killed in a vehicle in a separate drone attack in the same area, the reports said. The United States did not take responsibility for the strikes, as is its standard policy . No other forces are known to be conducting drone strikes in the area. While Mr. Trump has pledged to toughen American policy toward terrorist factions, his administration has not yet announced any concrete antiterrorism initiatives. The greatest loss of life in Yemen over the weekend was from an offensive begun two weeks ago on the Red Sea coast by the Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Yemen conflict began when Mr. Hadi was ousted by rebel Houthi forces, which now control the capital, Sana, and much of the Red Sea coastal areas of the country. The government offensive was aimed at retaking from the Houthis the port city of Mokha, close to Bab el Mandeb, a strategic strait that connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition killed at least 52 Houthi fighters in Mokha on Saturday and Sunday, according to Yemeni news reports, while the Houthis killed 14 of the Hadi government attackers, said hospital officials in Aden, the informal capital of the ousted government. Both sides issued widely varying accounts of the casualties. The true number of victims was impossible to verify, but it was clear that large numbers had been killed on both sides in the current offensive. The government offensive reached within five or six miles of Mokha, a sleepy seaport once famous for its exports of the mocha variety of Arabica coffee beans, prized worldwide since the 19th century. The government has long accused the rebels of smuggling Iranian arms through ports on the Red Sea, including Mokha. “The government forces have stormed an air defense camp southeast of Mokha town in Taiz Province,” said Abdo Abdullah Majili, a spokesman for coalition forces. “The town is within the range of our forces’ fire. We have killed a big number of Al Houthis and a lesser number of our soldiers were killed in the fighting.” The Saudi-led coalition includes around nine regional countries, which intervened in Yemen after the Houthis ousted the Hadi government in March 2015. The coalition includes Egypt, which on Sunday extended its military’s participation in the coalition, according to state news media reports in Cairo. “We are just renewing support, but we are not expanding efforts there,” Tamer el-Rafaei, a spokesman for the Egyptian military, said on Sunday. “We will announce how long this extension will be soon.” Saudi and Yemeni government officials have long been frustrated by Egypt’s limited participation in the campaign.

Drones
Yemen
Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi
Houthis
Targeted Killings
Fatalities,casualties
Saudi Arabia


The Rising Cost of Insurance

Abstract: To the Editor: Re: “ When Your Life Insurance Gets Sick ” (Aug. 14): As a financial adviser of 49 years, I feel that you shortchanged your readers with your “Woe is me, can’t do anything about my situation” attitude toward universal life policies and long-term care policies. Yes, premiums are being raised and nobody likes that. But with universal life you can normally decrease the face amount of a policy to have some coverage last longer. You may be able to get a quote from a different company, using the cash value of your old policy. On the long-term care side, you can increase your waiting period, reduce your daily room rate or reduce or remove the inflation feature of your policy to keep your premium tolerable. Talk with a good agent. “Woe is me” won’t get you anywhere, and you’ll end up without the coverage you need. Bruce Woodruff Winter Park, Fla., Aug. 17

Energy industry
Long-term care insurance


Salvagers in Italy Say Costa Concordia Wreck May Be Gone by Summer’s End

Abstract: GIGLIO, Italy — One year after the luxury liner Costa Concordia ran aground off the Tuscan coast , taking 32 lives, its wreck still lies there, a lumbering hulk of metal enclosed by floating salvage platforms, creating an incongruous industrial landscape amid the pristine waters of a marine sanctuary. On Saturday, salvage companies announced at a news conference that the ship could be removed by the end of the summer, a few months behind schedule. But they made it clear that setting an exact date would be “both misleading and unrealistic.” “We are worried, of course, for the overlapping of the removal phases with what is our main economic activity,” said Sergio Ortelli, the mayor of the tourism-dependent island of Giglio, which attracts thousands of visitors annually to its uncontaminated beaches. “We are thinking how to mitigate the effects of a working site this year, which has had an even larger impact than the wreckage itself.” The island is preparing to commemorate the disaster on Sunday, the anniversary of the wreck, with a Mass for families of victims and survivors. Officials planned to place a plaque on the rock struck by the ship and release 32 lanterns into the sky. The ship was carrying 4,229 passengers and crew members on a weeklong Mediterranean cruise when it went aground, just as passengers were just sitting down to a late dinner. Life on the island, with a population of 1,500, has been defined by the wreck off its coastline, and not just because of the 30 to 35 percent drop in tourism last summer, which many blame both on the Costa Concordia and on Italy’s economic crisis. “I used to wake up in the morning and guess the winds from the way trees moved on those rocks,” said Giuseppina Ferraro, 66, whose apartment windows overlook the ship. “Now, at any time of day and night, all you see are drilling chimneys, barracks and that haunting wreck. We wake up with the noise of the energy generators and can even switch off the lights at night because you can see clearly, thanks to the lighting system of the platforms.” The efforts of 430 professionals working round the clock to right the Costa Concordia have come up against the complex reality of what has been called the most challenging salvage operation ever performed , with the granite rocks underneath the ship and rough seas. Rescue teams have managed to stabilize the ship, which is anchored to underwater granite with four submarine anchor blocks and wires, each able to withstand a thousand-ton force. Twenty-five welders are working to reinforce the hull of the Concordia on the sea side, where the wires and hull projections used for stability and to pull up the vessel will be attached. Salvage workers are drilling holes into the granite that will support six undersea platforms that should arrive in February. On the sea side, between the platforms and the rocks, salvagers will also place an artificial bottom made of 18,000- to 20,000-ton cement bags — about the size of three-quarters of a football field — to create an even surface on the slanting sea bottom. “In all honesty, when I saw the project, I didn’t have doubts about the fact that it could be delayed; I was sure about it,” said Emilio Campana, the director of the research institute for naval and maritime engineering at Italy’s National Research Council. “An operation of such a scale has never been done before, and they are trying to solve a never-tackled issue.” Image The wreck remains off the island. Credit Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The plan, designed by Titan Salvage, which is based in Florida, and Micoperi, an Italian underwater construction and offshore contractor, originally scheduled the installation of undersea platforms by November, with the wreck ready to be floated by this month. The floating was later postponed until May. But many worry that the longer the plan is delayed, the riskier it is for the environment. Italy’s environment minister, Corrado Clini, wrote in a recent letter to the liner’s operator, Costa Cruises, that the delays were a serious concern. “Our main worry relates to the hull’s condition and the safety measures needed to guarantee that the ship removal and the sheltering take place under safe conditions without generating further risks and emergencies,” Mr. Clini wrote. Once it is sea-ready, the ship will be pulled to a large and deep harbor located a convenient distance from the shipwreck site, although few harbors in Italy fit that description. Some environmentalists doubt that such a complicated project will actually work, and argue that there is no contingency plan should the ship slip into deeper waters. And, as time elapses, concerns are growing about the possibility of fluid spills. “They avoided the worst — the oil spill — but we are not safe at all yet,” said Sebastiano Venneri, who works on sea protection for the Italian environmental association Legambiente. Over all, the quality of the water around the half-submerged ship has not been significantly polluted, according to Tuscany’s Regional Agency for Environmental Protection, which is in charge of monitoring the site. A fluid spill from the ship’s engine room last month, and other small spills, are not of great concern, the agency said. Investigators are expected to seek indictments of the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, eight other crew members and Costa Cruises officials in February. Charges could include manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, abandoning ship before passengers were evacuated and causing environmental damage. Mr. Schettino is ready to take responsibility for the accident, his lawyer said, but he argues that his quick thinking after the impact saved many lives. He also blames other crew members for causing the accident and suggests that his company should have hired more competent personnel, in particular who spoke better English. Kevin Rebello, 39, whose 33-year-old brother is one of the two victims whose bodies have not been found, came back to Giglio for the commemoration. “I came because my brother is still here,” he said. “I look at the project Web site every day to see how it progresses. I know he is under the ship. When they remove it, I will finally have some closure with this.”

Salvage
Italy
Cruises
Boat Accidents
Costa Crociere


Officers Acquitted in Mineo Police Abuse Trial in Brooklyn

Abstract: A Brooklyn jury found three police officers not guilty on Monday of abusing a suspect in the Prospect Park subway station during a 2008 arrest, in a case that recalled some of the city’s most notorious police brutality episodes but never generated as much public outcry or departmental change. Acquitting all three men on all counts, the jurors rejected Michael Mineo ’s claims that Officer Richard Kern had attacked him and repeatedly rammed a baton between his buttocks, thereby making the charges against the two other officers — that they had helped cover up the abuse — irrelevant. “I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep,” Officer Kern said after the verdict was read. “I’m glad the system works. It’s been a long road and it’s finally over, thank God.” The verdict, by a jury of six men and six women, came after just one full day of deliberations in a trial that lasted four weeks. One juror, Stevan L. Miller, said in an interview that the prosecution’s case had “so many holes” that he and other jurors were shocked when they finished. “The defense didn’t have to do anything,” Mr. Miller said. Mr. Mineo’s lawyers promised to push forward with a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against the city and to ask federal prosecutors to consider charges that his civil rights had been violated. “It’s not over,” Mr. Mineo said. “I kind of had a feeling it would turn out this way. If you want to commit a murder, join the N.Y.P.D. and you get cleaned off.” On Oct. 15, 2008, Officer Kern, assigned to a unit working from Brooklyn’s 71st Precinct, saw Mr. Mineo, a body-piercer, smoking marijuana on Flatbush Avenue and then chased him into the subway station. After a struggle, Mr. Mineo was handcuffed outside the station manager’s booth, then released with a summons despite a computer check that should have shown that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Officer Kern, 26, a married father of three, has been on the force five years. The other officers on trial were Officer Kern’s partner, Andrew Morales, 28, the son and brother of New York detectives; and Alex Cruz, 28, who looked toward the floor and cried as the verdict was read. “It was very hard sitting there and listening to all the lies,” Officer Morales said afterward. Officer Kern, whose confident, matter-of-fact testimony was a key part of the defense case, showed no expression before the verdict was read, then smiled, hugging his lawyer and his parents, who sobbed at news of the outcome. Afterward, he said he hoped to “get back on the street and do what I love to do: protect the people of Brooklyn.” Mr. Miller, the juror, said prosecutors never answered critical questions, like why there was no blood on the jeans Mr. Mineo was wearing during the confrontation. The jury asked the judge to play surveillance video from the day of the arrest in court. Though Mr. Mineo and another witness had testified that he had blood on his hand, jurors saw him place his hands in his pockets in the video and they asked to examine the jeans on their own. They found no blood in the pockets or the seat, Mr. Miller said. The jurors, Mr. Miller said, were also troubled by a hole in Mr. Mineo’s boxers: He said it was caused by the baton, but expert witnesses presented by the defense said that was impossible. The prosecutors, Mr. Miller said, “were never able to answer how the hole was made.” As soon as Mr. Mineo’s allegations emerged in 2008, they drew comparisons with the 1997 torture of Abner Louima , a Haitian immigrant who was sodomized with a broomstick by a police officer in Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct station house. The Louima attack became a national symbol of police brutality and racism, and the main officer involved was sentenced to 30 years in prison. But while Mr. Louima’s injuries, including punctured internal organs and missing teeth, strongly suggested an attack, Mr. Mineo’s medical condition was more murky: His lawyers said he had developed an abscess, but they initially refused to release his medical records. And while the attack on Mr. Louima by a white officer stirred longstanding complaints about the treatment of black men by the police, there was no racial component to Mr. Mineo’s case, since both he and the officers involved were white and Hispanic. It spawned neither major civil rights protests nor sweeping change to training or operations within the ranks. As the trial got under way in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn last month, there were neither protests outside the courthouse to support Mr. Mineo nor a sea of blue uniforms inside to support the officers. Throughout, the defense made diminishing Mr. Mineo’s credibility a priority, telling jurors about his drug use, previous arrests and the federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the city, seeking about $350 million in damages. (Mr. Louima won about $8 million in settlements). With conflicting expert testimony on the physical evidence and medical records, jurors were left to sort through the recollections of witnesses, including two of the officers on trial and Kevin Maloney, a transit officer who happened to be at the Prospect Park station when Mr. Mineo burst inside. During two hours on the witness stand, Officer Maloney said he had come forward to quiet false allegations that Officer Cruz had sodomized Mr. Mineo. He said he saw Officer Kern press his baton into Mr. Mineo’s buttocks, but also that he did not think it amounted to abuse. Mr. Mineo’s own testimony provided the trial’s other highlight and its most colorful moments. On the witness stand, his straightforward, anguished account of abuse gave way to defiance as defense lawyers asked him about his lifestyle, his gang affiliation and even whether he paid taxes. The jury’s forewoman, Jamie Dove, said: “He was animated. I didn’t judge him based on that or his past. It was just the evidence.” During occasionally tense deliberations, one juror, a young woman, told the group that Officer Kern had been convicted of police brutality twice before, and was met with “shocked silence,” Mr. Miller said. She was replaced by an alternate juror on Friday. (Officer Kern was cleared in two cases of excessive force by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, but one of those cases, in 2007, led to two lawsuits the city settled for $50,000.) Mr. Mineo was not in court for the verdict, but joined his lawyer to talk to reporters afterward in the hallway. As they spoke, the officers and their families exited the courtroom. Everyone exchanged glares, and then Mr. Mineo uttered a homophobic slur. Prosecutors in the case left the courthouse without commenting. Later, when asked about it at an unrelated news conference, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, said, “I never look beyond the jury’s verdict, and I never speculate.”

Mineo Michael
Police Brutality and Misconduct
Police Department (NYC)
Decisions and Verdicts
Kern Richard
Morales Andrew
Cruz Alex


Bid for a Million Trees Starts With One in Bronx

Abstract: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg kicked off the city’s plan to plant a million trees throughout the streets, parks and private open spaces over the next 10 years with a rousing event yesterday in the Bronx that included Bette Midler, cast members from “Wicked” and an appearance by Big Bird. The program, similar to those in cities across the country, is part of a plan to guide growth in an environmentally sustainable way over the next few decades. But while Mr. Bloomberg said that he hoped to plant at least 250,000 trees before term limits force him from office at the end of 2009, he acknowledged that he could not ensure the city would reach the goal of 1 million. After planting a Carolina Silverbell with Ms. Midler along a tree-poor stretch of Teller Avenue in Morrisania, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters that it was “incumbent on our administration to explain to the public and to our successors as to why this is an important thing, and hopefully they will do it.” He added: “You can’t do anything after you leave office, but you can certainly set an example, and hopefully this is an example that will be followed.” Mr. Bloomberg’s focus on increasing the city’s canopy cover, a measure of the physical space shaded by trees, comes as other cities try to count and increase their trees, which help reduce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and lower energy use by cooling the city. New York’s 5.2 million trees, nearly 600,000 of them on the streets, cover about 24 percent of the city’s land mass. Officials aim to increase that beyond the national average of 27 percent. Officials announced this next phase of the plan with unusual fanfare. Cast members from “Wicked” read tree poetry written by third-graders, Big Bird led a procession down the block to deliver the tree to its new home, and the mayor planted the first of a million puns by calling past efforts “tree-licious,” thanking “the grove” of groups helping the city and introducing Ms. Midler as “the Divine Miss Elm.” Under the plan, Mr. Bloomberg proposes the parks department spend $400 million to plant 600,000 trees over the next decade, about 220,000 along streets and 380,000 in other city-controlled property like parks and traffic medians. Of course, a new mayor will be elected in two years so it is not clear if the effort would be maintained. In addition, new zoning regulations proposed by the Department of City Planning would require street trees for most new development, including major expansions or some changes of use of existing properties. The city is hoping nonprofit groups, community organizations, businesses, developers and ordinary New Yorkers will plant another 400,000 trees, in backyards and other open spaces at a cost of about $200 million. Ms. Midler’s group, the New York Restoration Project, and the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City are working to raise the money for that effort. “We are going to transform New York City from a town that’s mostly asphalt, mostly steaming in the summer to a place that’s cool, green and refreshing to be in all season,” Ms. Midler said. “Yes, it’s going to be expensive, but I figure that if the 92 Fortune 500 companies based in New York City each contributed $2.2 million, or if the wealthiest 1,000 New York City-based corporations each contributed $200,000, or if the 3.7 million working New Yorkers each contributed $5 a month or if just one hedge-fund guy contributed his bonus, we’d meet our goal.”

Zoning
Bloomberg Michael R
Trees and Shrubs
Area Planning and Renewal


The Trail Takes Palin Away From Some Fund-Raising

Abstract: When finance officials for Senator John McCain and the Republican National Committee drew up their fund-raising schedule for the fall, they had planned for his running mate to bear much of the load. But that was before Mr. McCain’s pick of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska emerged as an enormous draw on the campaign trail — often more of a draw than Mr. McCain himself. So McCain-Palin campaign officials have elected to put the two together much of the time on the stump, instead of having them campaign separately, as is often the case for presidential tickets. McCain fund-raisers said initially last month that Ms. Palin would be deployed to more than 30 events in September and October benefiting the joint fund-raising committee for the national committee, several state parties and the campaign’s legal and accounting compliance fund, compared with just four for Mr. McCain. That was essentially halved after consultations between finance and political officials. And it has been cut back even more recently, to the point that she has done only one fund-raiser in Ohio to date, fund-raising officials said. Finance officials said they decided not to hold three or four events they had been planning because of the demands for her on the trail. Fund-raising officials said Ms. Palin was still scheduled to do 10 fund-raisers in October, including events in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. She is also supposed to appear with Mr. McCain at a fund-raiser in New York. Meanwhile, they said, they are still on track to exceed their goal of raising $100 million in September and October. MICHAEL LUO

Republican National Committee
Presidential Election of 2008
Palin Sarah
Campaign Finance
McCain John


Spanish Supreme Court Orders Bankia to Repay 2 Investors in Its I.P.O.

Abstract: MADRID — The Spanish Supreme Court ordered Bankia on Wednesday to reimburse two small investors for misleading them during its 2011 initial public offering. Under the ruling Bankia must pay one investor nearly 10,000 euros, or about $10,850, and the other nearly €21,000 euros, to cover their purchases of shares that eventually were nearly worthless. The ruling could be a boon to thousands of other investors who are suing the bank, accusing it of failing to fully disclose the loan problems that nearly caused the bank’s collapse in 2012. The bank said on Wednesday that it was aware of lawsuit claims totaling €819 million euros. Bankia said it had adequate provisions for legal liabilities, having set aside €1.84 billion. The Supreme Court, saying that Bankia’s prospectus for its public stock offering in 2011 had contained “serious inaccuracies, ’’ affirmed decisions by two regional courts that backed individual buyers of Bankia stock. The Supreme Court also turned down Bankia’s request to delay the lawsuits until after the outcome of a separate criminal case against Rodrigo Rato, the former head of Bankia, and other executives accused of misleading investors in order to ease Bankia’s 2011 listing. In May 2012, the Spanish government seized control of the bank and ousted Mr. Rato after Bankia disclosed that it needed about €22 billion in fresh capital to stay afloat. The near-collapse of the giant mortgage lender then forced Spain’s government to negotiate a European banking bailout of its savings banks. In the end, almost half of the 41 billion euros, or about $45 billion, of European rescue funding was required to shore up Bankia. Bankia, slimmed down and under new management, returned to profit in 2013 after reporting a loss of €19.2 billion for 2012, a record for the Spanish banking industry. Bankia raised over €3 billion in its initial public offering. The stock offering came after the merger of the seven savings banks, or cajas, that formed Bankia, under the leadership of Mr. Rato, a former finance minister and managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Bankia’s merger was part of a broader consolidation of the caja sector, after the bursting of Spain’s real estate construction bubble in 2008. The government encouraged the consolidation to get stronger cajas to absorb the mortgage losses of weaker ones. In addition to the stock-offering cases, Mr. Rato and other former directors also face a separate lawsuit over whether they misused their corporate credit cards to make personal purchases that totaled €15.25 million. Mr. Rato is among the executives who agreed to return money spent using his credit card while denying wrongdoing.

Bankia
Lawsuits
Spain
Banking and Finance
IPO


Police Killings Rise Slightly, Though Increased Focus May Suggest Otherwise

Abstract: Their names have become both a litany and rallying cry: Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Walter L. Scott . And now Freddie Gray. Since Mr. Brown was fatally shot in an encounter with a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in August, so many unarmed black males have died in police confrontations that even President Obama noted this week that “it comes up, it seems like, once a week now, or once every couple of weeks.” Calling such encounters “a slow-rolling crisis, he added, “This is not new and we should not pretend it is.” But determining the prevalence of such killings is no easy matter. The use of force by the police — against minorities and whites alike — is so poorly monitored that there is no precise accounting of how many citizens are killed, much less their ethnicity or other crucial details. What official data exists suggests that the number of killings by police officers has crept upward only slowly, if at all, in recent years. Since 2009, one regular if incomplete measure, the F.B.I.’s account of justifiable homicides by police officers , ranged from 397 to 426 deaths annually before jumping to 461 in 2013, the latest reporting year. Image Baltimore police officers and state troopers on Tuesday blocked off an area after riots in the morning. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times Federal experts have long acknowledged that that estimate is too low, and a handful of more recent, unofficial reports — online databases compiled and fact-checked by volunteers — place the toll much higher, at about 1,100 deaths a year, or three a day. Yet they do not suggest that the pace of police killings or the racial composition of victims as a group has changed significantly in the last two years or so. A number of criminologists believe police homicides are near their nadir. In New York City, for example, 91 people were fatally shot by police officers in 1971 — and a record-low eight in 2013, the last year for which figures are available. In Los Angeles, officers used “categorical” force — gunfire, chokings and other violence that could lead to death — in 84 of nearly 149,000 arrests in 2012, down 17 percent in seven years. That data suggests that any perception that higher numbers of unarmed African-Americans are being killed by the police in recent months is driven by citizens’ postings of unsettling cellphone videos and pictures, like that of police officers dragging Freddie Gray , his legs apparently not working, into a van. “People are shocked by all these shootings,” said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who is an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York. “But they’ve always been there.” But it also means that lethal force by the police is a steady problem that is causing police departments across the country to debate whether they need to change procedures and training. Police Board Clears Driver in Freddie Gray Case; No Officers Have Been Convicted Prosecutors dropped all charges against three officers awaiting trial. Three other officers had already been acquitted. At the riot-scarred intersection of Pennsylvania and West North Avenues in Baltimore on Tuesday, Robert Wilson, a Baltimore high school graduate, said the frustrations that sparked civil disorder there spread well beyond those who took to the streets this week. “What the media doesn’t understand is that growing up in this society is poverty, it’s police brutality, it’s rat-infested houses, it’s your friends dying,” Mr. Wilson said. For most officers, firing a gun is among the rarest events in their careers. But training and the law-enforcement culture condition officers to regard themselves as perpetually threatened. And while many officers on high-crime patrols learn to sense and respond to danger, experts say, less experienced officers may see their training as a license to use force — not a restriction. Some criminologists say the very nature of police work and training can inure officers to the violence they see, and make deadly force seem more reasonable in risky situations. Last October, Milwaukee’s police chief fired a 38-year-old officer who had shot and killed a mentally ill man during a fight — not because the shooting was deemed unjustified, but because he had not followed training in handling citizens with mental illness that might have avoided the fight altogether. “So much police training, from beginning to end, deals with police facing the fact that even the most innocuous circumstance can result in an officer’s death,” said Michael Jenkins, a University of Scranton assistant professor of criminal justice. “I understand that stress in their day-to-day lives. But as a profession, they need to place that potential for harm within its proper context.” Video Residents of Baltimore’s downtown areas largely view the influx of State Police and National Guard members positively. But blocks from where Freddie Gray was arrested, residents are much more wary. For years, the F.B.I. report on justifiable police homicides and other federal estimates of police homicides have understated the problem. Only recently have online databases compiled by volunteers begun to produce a more accurate picture. Two of the more prominent ones, Fatal Encounters and Killed by Police , each logged about 1,100 police-related homicides in 2014. Their totals are higher when police-related deaths, such as fatalities in high-speed car chases or suicides in standoffs, are included. Because the records of killings are drawn mostly from news media reports, some crucial details, including the race of officers and suspects, often are missing. Yet even those spotty numbers shed new light on the nature of police killings. Fatal Encounters, maintained by D. Brian Burghart, the publisher of The Reno News and Review, may be the most meticulous aggregator of reports of killings by the police. The data, covering killings from 2013 to the present, reinforces federal statistics in one broad respect: In police homicides in which the victim’s race is identified, African-Americans account for about three in 10 deaths, and whites roughly half. “Blacks are three times as likely to be killed by cops as are whites, on a per-capita basis,” said Dr. Moskos of John Jay. But part of that is because of crime in predominantly black neighborhoods. “Blacks are four or five times as likely to be victims of homicides, and they are five times as likely to feloniously kill a cop,” he said. Video Residents of Baltimore describe their experience with “rough” rides in police vans. Crowdsourced data goes well beyond federal statistics — and offers intriguing results. Relying on data gathered by Fatal Encounters, The New York Times ranked states by their rates of police-involved homicides per 100,000 residents. The result: Among the lowest were populous states like Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York whose big cities — rightly or wrongly — are often seen as crime-prone. And some of the states with the highest rates — up to six times greater, in fact — were less populous and generally western states like Montana, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Why? Medical care could be one reason; shooting victims in rural areas may be far from a trauma center and unable to get care, Dr. Jenkins said. But sociological factors also could be at work. “We know the South and Southwest are generally the most violent areas, per capita, compared to the rest of the country,” he said. Even within individual states, some police departments have a record of killing suspects at rates far higher than others. On both government and crowdsourced databases, some big cities like Phoenix and smaller ones like Albuquerque and Oklahoma City stand out for the unusual number of police killings reported relative to their size. And homicide victims are not cut from one cloth. In the 18 months ending last December, at least 18 percent of police killings documented in the Fatal Encounters data involved victims who were mentally ill, and an additional 7 percent involved drugs or alcohol. Mr. Burghart and some experts said the true share probably was higher. That fact is important, they said, because it suggests that police homicides could be reduced if officers were better trained to recognize and deal with mental instability — or, for that matter, any of the circumstances that end in needless deaths. “Too much of police investigations into killings revolves around the immediate circumstances,” Dr. Jenkins said. “We need to step back and ask what got us to that place. What got the person who is now deceased into the position where he acted the way he did? And those questions are not being asked.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Andy Pettitte and Yankees Are Close on One-Year Deal

Abstract: By Monday, when the Yankees arrive at the winter meetings in Nashville, they want to know how much they will pay Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera for the 2013 season. By determining those salaries, they will have a clearer picture for how much to spend in other transactions. In Pettitte’s case, the Yankees had to first know that he wanted to keep pitching. Now they have the answer. Pettitte has informed the Yankees that he wants to keep playing, which is what the organization expected all along, and the sides are closing in on a one-year contract that would pay him at least $10 million. They also expect to have a deal soon with Rivera, who got $15 million last season, when he pitched nine games before tearing his right anterior cruciate ligament. Pettitte’s return is encouraging for the Yankees, who last week signed Hiroki Kuroda to a one-year, $15 million deal. With C. C. Sabathia, Kuroda, Pettitte, Phil Hughes and Ivan Nova, the Yankees have a five-man rotation under team control, with David Phelps and Michael Pineda, who is recovering from shoulder surgery, as insurance. Pettitte, who turns 41 in June, missed much of last season after a line drive broke his left fibula in late June. He made 12 starts in the regular season, going 5-4 with a 2.87 earned run average, and pitched well in two postseason starts. In other words, Pettitte was as reliable as ever when he pitched, though it is worth noting that he has not made more than 21 starts in a season since 2009. He missed time with a groin injury in 2010 and took a one-year retirement in 2011. The Yankees are determined to bring their payroll under $189 million for 2014 to avoid severe tax penalties in future seasons, so one-year deals for Kuroda, Pettitte and Rivera make sense. They also have interest in keeping Raul Ibanez and Ichiro Suzuki, veteran hitters who would also be open to one-year contracts. Resolving the status of catcher Russell Martin, who almost certainly will command a multiyear deal, is expected to be a priority before the end of the winter meetings.


90 Years After a Bloody Race Riot, Tulsa Confronts Its Past

Abstract: TULSA, Okla. — With their guns firing, a mob of white men charged across the train tracks that cut a racial border through this city. A 4-year-old boy named Wess Young fled into the darkness with his mother and sister in search of safety, returning the next day to discover that their once-thriving black community had burned to the ground. Ninety years later, Mr. Young lives not far from where he lost his home that day. He is part of the dwindling ranks of the living who can recollect what may be the deadliest occurrence of racial violence in United States history — an episode so brutal that this city, in a bout of collective amnesia that extended more than a half-century, simply chose to forget it ever happened. The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place. Ever since the story was unearthed by historians and revealed in uncompromising detail in a state government report a decade ago — it estimated that up to 300 people were killed and more than 8,000 left homeless — the black men and women who lived through the events have watched with renewed hope as others worked for some type of justice on their behalf. But even as the city observed the 90th anniversary this month, the efforts to secure recognition and compensation have produced a mixed record of success. The riot will be taught for the first time in Tulsa public schools next year but remains absent in many history textbooks across the United States. Civic leaders built monuments to acknowledge the riot, including a new Reconciliation Park, but in the wake of failed legislative and legal attempts, no payments were ever delivered for what was lost. Before becoming president, Barack Obama once met with some who lived through the riot “to thank the survivors for surviving.” But fewer are surviving each year; today the number is about 40. And before they die, some of their most dedicated advocates continue to fight for greater awareness and compensation, even as they lament that they no longer believe the effort has sufficient momentum. “These people are still alive,” said Reggie Turner, who has toured the country with the survivors, showing his film about the riot and the failed federal lawsuit to win reparations from the city and state governments. “And despite their dwindling numbers — in fact, because of their dwindling numbers — it should be easy for us to take care of them.” “They are just looking for a better life as they approach death,” he added. Some, like Otis Clark, the oldest survivor of the riot at 108 and one of those who joined a federal lawsuit seeking compensation, are at peace. “God has a whole lot of good things lined up for us when we’re by his side,” Mr. Clark said. “It ain’t going to be very long before that is going to happen.” Others, like Mr. Young and his wife, Cathryn, worry that their passing will simply make the riot easier to forget. “I think they are trying to keep this hidden,” Ms. Young said, referring to the white residents of Tulsa. “Don’t talk about it, don’t do nothing about it until all these people are dead. Then they think it’ll be over with. But it won’t.” All that remains of that black community of 90 years ago, Greenwood, is a block of red-brick storefronts in a neighborhood transformed by a new minor league ball field, a university campus and an elevated highway. Metal plaques set in the sidewalk describe the hundreds of businesses that were there when the area was a bustling enclave in a statutorily segregated oil town. Within the black community, it was known as the Negro Wall Street. Long before black neighborhoods erupted in rioting in cities across the country during the 1960s and 1970s, a string of violent riots were started by whites in the years after World War I. As with some of the others, the Tulsa riot seemed to have started with the explosive accusation that a black man had sexually assaulted a white woman. (The charges were dropped after the riot.) On May 31, 1921, hundreds of armed white men gathered outside the courthouse where the man was being held, and a group of armed black men arrived to prevent a lynching. A shot was fired. The black men fled to Greenwood, and the white men gave chase. The battle that ensued, enabled by the Tulsa police chief, who deputized hundreds of white men and commandeered gun shops to arm them, lasted through the night and well into the next day. About 40 blocks were destroyed, including 1,256 homes, many of which had been looted before they were set alight. The death toll, most likely never to be fully determined, was estimated in the state report at 100 to 300. Survivors were rounded up and interned by the National Guard. Many of the homeless spent the following year living in tents pitched in the ruins of the neighborhood. A grand jury at the time blamed the black community for the riot. No one was convicted of participating in the riot; no one was compensated for lost property. Soon after, the story essentially disappeared — buried so deeply that people who lived their entire lives here, including prominent leaders like mayors and district attorneys, said they had never heard of the riot until recent decades. Don Ross is credited with helping to break that silence. A magazine he started published the first article in decades about the riot, written by a local historian around the time of the 50th anniversary. But it was not until 25 years later when Mr. Ross was a state representative that the riot garnered nationwide attention. He pushed for the formation of the riot state commission that produced the report and became an unrelenting advocate for payments to the survivors because, he explained, there is “no money in apologies.” Since retiring, Mr. Ross has extracted himself from those efforts, believing that neither blacks nor whites were committed to the task. He no longer even speaks to the survivors. “I cut that connection,” he said. “It was too heartbreaking.” The issue of payments to survivors, like those paid to the survivors of a similar riot two years later in Rosewood, Fla., was always difficult. The Oklahoma Legislature refused, saying it was constitutionally prohibited. The federal courts dismissed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims, saying the statute of limitations had expired. And efforts in Congress to remove that legal obstacle have repeatedly failed, partly because of concerns that it might open the door to reparations for slavery, though there are plans to reintroduce the bill. Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who represented the survivors in the effort, called the case his “most disappointing and heartbreaking.” Still, awareness has been growing. Three quarters of Tulsa residents in a recent survey described themselves as very or somewhat knowledgeable about the riot. On a national level there is greater awareness, too. Of the three largest school textbook publishers, one of them, Pearson, now mentions the riot in its books; two others, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, do not, though Houghton Mifflin says it is planning to include the riot in future editions. At the Greenwood Cultural Center , home to an extensive exhibit on the race riot, Mechelle Brown, the program coordinator, walks along the wall of photos of survivors and gestures despondently — almost every month another one dies. “It seems at times that this is how it’s going to end,” she said, “with the survivors passing.” This year, the center lost all of its state financing, which accounted for nearly half of its annual budget. Ms. Brown said it could be forced to close in a matter of months. Just blocks away is John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park, which opened last year with state backing and has several memorials to the riot. (A center for racial reconciliation is planned for the grounds.) But in a city still divided by those same railroad tracks, the theme of togetherness bothers Ms. Brown, who called it premature. “You can’t forgive until someone asks for forgiveness,” she said. Sitting inside the park, Julius Pegues, head of the park’s board, defended the focus on reconciliation. He worried that in continuing to dwell on the riot — and the compensation that has not come — the black community risked settling into bitterness. “If people have their heart in the right place, I think they could work out some fair compensation for the victims of the race riots,” Mr. Pegues said. “But that does not seem to be the case, so I’m not going to spend my life worrying about it.” He added: “We intend to take the high road and move this city forward for both black and white.”

Blacks
Tulsa (Okla)
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Reparations and Restitution
Discrimination
Suits and Litigation


Fears Rise in Europe Over Potential for Deflation

Abstract: FRANKFURT — If the European Central Bank has one monetary dragon it considers essential to slay, it is inflation. Keeping inflation under control is the central bank’s primary legal responsibility, and as Europe struggles to overcome economic problems caused by the sovereign debt crisis, inflation has remained the bank’s primary focus. But some economists say it has become a driving obsession that has blinded the bank to a potentially bigger threat to Europe: deflation . The central bank’s doubters grew louder after it made a big show of taking measures to cancel out the supposed inflationary impact of the government bond purchases it began on May 10 to help keep Greece and several other euro zone countries from defaulting on their debts. “It’s nuts: how can they be concerned about the inflationary impact of this?” said Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y. “If I were the head of the E.C.B., I would be printing money to avert the decline in the money supply.” Many economists regard deflation as more dangerous than inflation, because it prompts consumers to delay purchases as they wait for lower prices, creating a downward spiral of lower demand and production. Deflation is also bad for debtors like Greece, because they may have to pay back money that would be worth more than it was when they borrowed it. Economists like Mr. Weinberg — and a few policy makers as well — are beginning to worry that a danger of deflation in Europe, similar to the one that strangled Japanese growth for most of the 1990s, is a bigger threat than inflation. Prices fell in Ireland in April, while inflation was below 1 percent in five other euro zone countries. The problem also extends outside the euro zone. “We all share some risks and problems in common with Japan circa 1995,” Adam S. Posen, a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, told an audience at the London School of Economics on May 2. The United States is also at risk, Mr. Posen said, though he rated the chances of deflation there as low. But just as Japan did in the 1990s, the European Central Bank and the United States Federal Reserve have cut interest rates close to zero while pumping huge amounts of credit into their economies. That means the two central banks would have limited policy tools left with which to combat a collapse in prices and demand. The downward pressure on prices has its roots in the economic decline that followed the 2008 financial crisis , but Europe’s sovereign debt problems are likely to add extra impetus. Governments, including those of Spain and Germany, are sharply reducing spending to lower their deficits, which will inevitably curb consumer demand and employment, hindering growth. Inflation in the euro zone — the 16 countries that use the euro — rose slightly in April, to an annual rate of 1.5 percent, from 1.4 percent in March. Declines in categories like recreation and culture, communications and vacation tour packages blunted the impact of higher transportation costs. And so-called core inflation — which excludes energy prices and which most economists consider a better measure for policy-making purposes — declined to 0.7 percent in April from 0.8 percent in March. By either measure, the overall rate was still well below the central bank’s target of about 2 percent. The real challenge for policy makers will occur in the coming months and years as Spain, Greece and Portugal struggle to regain their competitiveness on international markets. Without their own currencies to devalue, they have little choice but to cut wages and keep them well below those in countries like Germany and France. Pay cuts and lower government spending will put downward pressure on prices. Spanish core inflation already turned negative in April. A mild decline in prices in a few euro zone countries can be managed, economists say, but it will add to the risks of deflation. And the central bank will face more difficulty than usual in devising a monetary policy that fits both the ailing countries and the faster-growing economies like Germany and France. “The E.C.B. has a careful balancing act to do,” said Dennis Snower, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany. The central bank has remained firm in its focus on containing inflation. Jean-Claude Trichet, the bank’s president, has said he considers inflation a tax on the poor. And the bank’s charter obliges it to serve foremost as guardian of price stability. As recently as Friday, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a member of the bank’s executive board, defended the wisdom of the mandate. In a speech in Rabat, Morocco, he said permitting inflation to rise to make it easier for European nations to repay their debts, as some have urged, would backfire. The resulting decline in the value of government bonds would inflict “major losses on the banks and financial institutions which have been heavily investing in these markets, potentially undermining the recovery,” he said. Nevertheless, Mr. Trichet has been under fire, especially from critics in Germany, ever since the central bank began the unprecedented bond purchases to halt a sell-off of Greek, Portuguese and Spanish government debt. By buying government bonds on the open market, and being coy about how much it was spending, the bank was able to reduce the high premiums investors were demanding for debt from the weakest countries. A continuation of the market rout would have raised the interest rates that Spain and other countries had to pay to sell new bonds, aggravating their already grave fiscal problems. The problem was that, to buy the bonds, the bank had to expand the assets it held on its books. So to prove that it had not stooped to printing money, the bank promised to offset the bond purchases, which totaled 26.5 billion euros ($32.6 billion as of May 24, the most recent data available), by taking in a like amount in short-term deposits from banks. In effect, it siphoned off as much liquidity as it had added. The bond purchases were only the latest of a series of extraordinary moves that Mr. Trichet has pursued to stabilize the European banking system. Since the beginning of the financial crisis, the central bank has been essentially keeping banks afloat by providing almost unlimited loans at 1 percent interest. Mr. Trichet is eager to squash any doubts that such moves represent a shift in the bank’s focus on inflation, said Mr. Snower of the Kiel Institute. “The E.C.B. is showing very clearly that its objectives have not changed.” Other economists say that scale of the bond purchases would not increase the money supply enough to pose an inflation risk. And the money supply is falling because of a decline in bank lending. In addition, factories are operating below capacity and euro zone unemployment is at 10 percent. Extra money in the system would not create scarcities of goods or labor that could drive up prices, Mr. Weinberg of High Frequency Economics said. “You don’t have to pay any more to get those workers to come out of unemployment,” Mr. Weinberg said. The recent decline of the euro against the dollar could create some inflation. Oil and other commodities are priced in dollars and could become more expensive in euros. Still, few economists see prices rising. “There is no reason to fear high inflation for the time being,” Simon Junker, a Commerzbank analyst, said in a note. Much of Mr. Trichet’s anti-inflation stance seems aimed at mollifying Germany’s anxiety over the bank’s bond purchases. After the purchases, Mr. Trichet gave interviews to three leading German publications, an unusually high number in such a short period. In each case, he tried to reassure Germans on inflation and convince them that the euro is as solid as the German mark that they reluctantly gave up 11 years ago.

Europe
European Central Bank
Greece
Spain
Deflation (Economics)
Economic Conditions and Trends
Inflation (Economics)


As End of Conscription Nears, German Advocates Will Be Unemployed

Abstract: BERLIN — In what marks the end of an era, Germany ’s office for conscientious objectors says it will agree later this week to cease functioning as an organization representing those who refused to be conscripted into the German armed forces. The decision to dismantle the 53-year-old organization, an umbrella group for 26 lobbies established to protect the legal and human rights of conscientious objectors, was made after it became clear this year that the defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, was going to end conscription. “Now that conscription is going to end, there really is no longer a need for us,” Peter Tobiassen, director of the Central Office for Conscientious Objection, said Tuesday. Mr. Guttenberg announced this week that the draft would be suspended starting next July as part of a program aimed at modernizing Germany’s armed forces and the command structures. The ending of conscription also includes the alternative civilian service in which those who refused to join the army could instead spend several months working in hospitals, nursing homes or orphanages, or in other social services. Last year, 65,000 young people were conscripted into the army, while 90,000 opted for alternative service. The civilian service was established in 1961, but according to Mr. Tobiassen, during the early years of its existence those who refused to serve in the army were considered traitors. “That was one of the reasons why the center for conscientious objectors was established,” Mr. Tobiassen said. “It was to protect the rights of these objectors. It was their human right to refuse to join the army. So there was a need to ensure they had legal protection in terms of work and other issues.” Despite initial strong opposition from his own Christian Social Union party and from the Christian Democratic Union party led by Chancellor Angela Merkel , Mr. Guttenberg eventually persuaded his critics of the need to create a professional army and end the alternative service. As part of his plan to create more flexibility in the armed forces, and pay them more in order to attract better-qualified recruits, Mr. Guttenberg said this week that he would reduce the number of troops from 250,000 to 180,000. In addition, several barracks will be closed and the military intends to sell off some of its property. The leadership structures of the land, air and naval forces will also be slimmed and the Defense Ministry will reassess what kinds of military equipment and hardware it will need in the coming years.

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


CBS Appeals Punishment for Super Bowl Incident

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 11 — At the end of the halftime show of the 2004 Super Bowl game broadcast by CBS , nearly 100 million viewers watched in disbelief as Justin Timberlake ended a duet with Janet Jackson by yanking off her bustier and exposing her right breast as he sang “gonna have you naked by the end of this song.” The uproar over that incident landed in a hushed federal courtroom Tuesday, where a CBS lawyer, Robert Corn-Revere, asked a three-judge panel to reverse the finding by the Federal Communications Commission that CBS was liable for broadcast indecency and to refund to CBS a $550,000 fine. The panel — Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica, Judge Marjorie O. Rendell and Judge Julio M. Fuentes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit — peppered the lawyers with questions, such as whether there was a legal precedent for the decision and how common sense applied in this case. Mr. Corn-Revere said that in a year of planning for the 2004 show, CBS took precautions like installing an audio delay to allow for blocking explicit words. Judge Scirica noted, however, that available video-delay technology was not installed until a week after the show. Mr. Corn-Revere accused the F.C.C. of violating due process by abandoning its 30-year policy of cautious enforcement of decency rules and substituting instead a zero-tolerance policy, which he said the F.C.C. had applied retroactively to the incident. Ms. Jackson said at the time that MTV, CBS and the National Football League had known nothing about the ending of the performance. Eric D. Miller, an assistant to the United States solicitor who is representing the F.C.C., said it was irrelevant whether CBS knew in advance. Its responsibility as a licensee was to not “transmit indecent material during the times of the day when the children are likely” to be watching and to make certain the performers knew the law, he said. A 1995 court ruling bans the broadcast of indecent programs during the “safe harbor” hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. According to industry guidelines, indecent material depicts or describes “sexual or excretory organs or activities” in a way that is offensive according to “contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium.” The halftime show met the tests for indecency, Mr. Miller said, because it was explicit and graphic, was used for shock value, and, though the half-second exposure was “fleeting,” was sexually suggestive throughout. Thousands of viewers complained after the show, including Michael K. Powell, then F.C.C. chairman, who said he and his family were outraged by a “classless, crass and deplorable stunt.” According to many supporting briefs filed by people in the entertainment industry, Mr. Powell’s investigation and decision to levy the maximum fine against CBS has had a chilling effect on artists. But Jerome Liebling, a filmmaker, said artists were more concerned about having a platform for their work than about censorship. Mr. Liebling has been a collaborator of Ken Burns, whose coming 14-hour documentary on World War II, “The War,” contains graphic language. “It seems so trivial,” he said in a telephone interview.

Football
Decisions and Verdicts
CBS Corp
Television
Suits and Litigation
Timberlake Justin
Jackson Janet


My Life in a Video Game (Batteries Not Included)

Abstract: FOR his doctoral thesis, Rafael Ballagas worked with other students to build a magic wand that gave tours of Regensburg, Germany. Tourists could wander around the city, wave the wand to “cast a spell” and hear a voice tell them the history of where they were standing. It sounds like magic, but the truth is a bit more mundane. The wand is just a cellphone, said Mr. Ballagas. “It’s packaged in a shell. It’s got a skin,” he explained. The cellphone keeps track of tourists’ locations and notifies them when they get near a noteworthy part of Regensburg. When the tourists finish touring, the cellphone recalls their trip with information about every stop along their path. No one needs to take notes because the wand does it for them. Computer designers are working feverishly to develop more of this kind of magic by embedding the latest generation of chips in new places and giving them new powers to animate the world. The goal is computers that are practically invisible to people and more fully integrated into their lives. Mr. Ballagas’s project is a step along the way; perhaps that is why Nokia hired him to work in its Palo Alto, Calif., research lab. But in the future, computer chips will be finding homes in even odder places than magic wands. Imagine an umbrella with a cellphone embedded in the handle. It could dial up the weather forecast for the day and the handle could glow green if the outlook was fair. But if a storm was coming it could start to flash red at a pace based on the probability of rain. A platform like this opens up new business models and opportunities for advertising. The umbrella might be free — if you’re willing to listen to it whisper advertising offers in your ear: “Psst. You know that raspberry-pimento-vanilla coffee you like? The store you’re about to pass just took a fresh batch out of the roaster 12 minutes and 34 seconds ago. Oops. 35 seconds.” Leah Buechley is a postdoctoral researcher in the Craft Technology Group at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which studies software applications in traditional handicrafts. She is selling the LilyPad Arduino, a small flower-shaped disk with a computer chip at the center, which can be sewn into clothes. Sensors like accelerometers, for measuring acceleration or detecting and measuring vibrations, and light detectors are attached with wires to the “petals,” so the chip can track the wearer’s motion. The main board costs $19.95 and add-ons cost from $7.95 for a tricolor L.E.D. to $24.95 for an accelerometer ( sparkfun.com ). Dr. Buechley says the boards can be worn as soft computers “in a noninvasive, non-weight-bearing way.” One dancer used a leotard covered with sensors to control a player piano with her movements. There was no need to pay a pianist to stay in sync. While there are many opportunities for fun, Dr. Buechley said the real market could be devices to help the elderly. She is exploring how to knit clothes that monitor a person’s heart rate, breathing and joint movement. At the Intel Corporation’s Digital Health Group, Eric Dishman, director of product research and innovation, said he saw many opportunities for making embedded computers that could help people. His group is focusing on preventing falls, social health and cognitive assistance. “People with Alzheimer’s stop answering the front door or answering the phone,” he said. “It’s really embarrassing not to know the difference between a stranger or a spouse at the front door.” So Intel built a phone with “caller ID on steroids.” When someone rings, the phone flashes “a picture of the person and a little sentence about the last thing you talked about.” This is often enough to start a conversation and keep people connected to their families and friends. His group is also using embedded sensors like those marketed by Dr. Buechley to track the movement of patients to prevent falls. They have put the sensors in both the clothes of the user and the carpet where the person walks. “Think Dance Dance Revolution for elders,” he said, referring to the video game in which players move to music on a dance pad. The hidden computer would watch the length of the stride and the pace of the walk for any aberrations that would indicate a problem. It would then warn the person and perhaps even call for help. His group is not limiting itself to older people. Sunny Consolvo, also at Intel, has been working to create a system using similar sensors that gives feedback to users about their degree of physical activity with subtle and often coded metaphors. What she calls a “glanceable” display converts distances of walking and climbing stairs into a picture of a garden. “As you work through the week, the garden blooms. And if you meet your goal, a butterfly flies,” she said. Using metaphor instead of a number or dial offers privacy and fun. No one needs to explain a garden scene on the laptop screen to anyone who might glimpse it accidentally. And the illustration can be changed. She said that one test user was taken with the idea of tracking his workouts by blowing up an onslaught of robot destroyers. Other examples of sensors and displays being integrated into unexpected areas include the PhyTalk system from Phytech, an Israeli company. It uses sensors placed on fruit trees or other crops to provide information to farmers. One sensor monitors tiny changes in stem diameter, while another tracks size and growth of fruit. Avi Lulu, the company’s chief executive, said the system could reduce irrigation costs while increasing yields. “We are not irrigating what we think the plants need; we’re irrigating what the plants really need,” he said. Some plant lovers might be interested in Botanicalls, a simpler project developed by the New York University program in interactive telecommunications. It will measure soil moisture and send a message to the owner when the soil is too dry. When the plant gets the water, it also sends a thank-you note. That might be useful, but it’s easy to see how computer chips, if they become too common, could be trivialized. Tom Igoe, who leads physical computing for the N.Y.U. program, said his students were beginning to think critically about whether embedded computing was always worthwhile. “It’s like being a kid in a candy shop,” he said. “You start to be critical. When you can have all of it, you start to get sick and you eat it only when you want it.” Cost is one issue, he said. Potential loss of privacy is another. And so much computing power can result in a relentless accumulation of data. When they consider all those issues, Dr. Igoe said, many of his students leave “more Luddite than when they come in.” With embedded computing, he added, “the end goal is not the communication but the quality of life that the communication affords.” He offered an example: the Toyota Prius, an electric hybrid, and many other new cars report fuel consumption instantaneously to the driver. Whenever you can help people “measure how they do something, they change how they do it,” he said. It becomes a live-in video game, but a live-in video game with a purpose.

Computer Chips
Computers and the Internet


Push-Ups, and Some Zen, at the Baggage Carousel

Abstract: I WENT to New York about 15 years ago with plans on becoming a dot-com zillionaire. I moved right before the first dot-com bubble burst, so that didn’t work out. Then I figured I needed an actual skill and I enrolled in N.Y.U.’s Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. I started playing in a band to help pay for graduate school, and I was also editing and doing music for TV shows for an internship with Heavy.com . The only travel I ever did was with the band. We took tours across the country and I was delusional about our chances of making it big. I swear, every band we opened for did make it big. We didn’t. I realized I wasn’t going to be a rock star, but at the same time, I started getting royalty checks for some music I worked on for a TV show. It was an ‘aha!’ moment. Now I’m C.E.O. and founder of a six-year-old start-up called Jingle Punks , which creates digital music for clients. This is the most travel I’ve ever done. I’m not a great flier, and I do get a little nervous. I’m also a little shy, so at first, I found it somewhat difficult to talk to seatmates. Now, I really enjoy it. I’ve had many seatmates tell me about their children who may be tinkering in the garage with their computers and are mixing music. I love hearing about it, and through these conversations, we’ve actually found some people who are really great musicians. We’re proud that we could give someone a chance. In the early years of my business, I would freak out if I was late to a meeting or if any staff members were late. Now, I’m a lot more sympathetic, I realize how travel can just go wrong. I was flying from New York to Tampa and I had checked some luggage. When I went to the carousel, my bags weren’t there. I was complaining a lot and then I heard this gentleman tell me to stop being a “meanie weanie” and do 10 push-ups. I realized it was the fitness legend Richard Simmons calling me out. I turned five different shades of red, but I did the 10 push-ups, and people started laughing. Mr. Simmons gave me some travel tips and we even took a picture together. That incident made me realize that I have to be a lot more Zen about business travel, and so far, so good. I do work a lot on the plane. I just stick my headphones on and do my thing. Like a lot of musicians, I also hum a lot of the music I may be working on, forgetting that I’m on a plane with people who may not appreciate my humming. We got a project from an ad agency whose client is Meow Mix. Everybody knows the Meow Mix jingle . It gets in your head and never leaves. It does exactly what music is supposed to do for a brand. Our job was to produce some remixes of the jingle in different genres for a viral campaign. So we did a cat rave, a country version and an electronic dance music track. It was a lot of fun for us, but it probably wasn’t a lot of fun for my airplane seatmates because when I was working on the project on the plane, I couldn’t stop humming the Meow Mix jingle. I mean who really wants to sit next to someone humming, “meow, meow, meow, meow,” repeatedly? I had more than a few people look at me like I was nuts, but I’m sure they started humming it, too.

Jingle Punks
Business travel
Airlines,airplanes
Jared Gutstadt


Palin’s Long March to a Short-Notice Resignation

Abstract: This article was reported by Jim Rutenberg from New York and Serge F. Kovaleski from Wasilla and Anchorage , Alaska . Jo Becker reported from New York and Kim Severson and William Yardley from Wasilla and Anchorage. ANCHORAGE — In late March, a senior official from the Republican Governors Association headed for Alaska on a secret mission. Sarah Palin was beset by such political and personal turmoil that some powerful supporters determined an intervention was needed to pull her governorship, and her national future, back from the brink. The official, the association’s executive director, Nick Ayers, arrived with a memorandum containing firm counsel, according to several people who know its details: Make a long-term schedule and stick to it, have staff members set aside ample and inviolable family time to replenish your spirits, and build a coherent home-state agenda that creates jobs and ensures re-election. Like so much of the advice sent Ms. Palin’s way by influential supporters, it appeared to be happily received and then largely discarded, barely slowing what was, in retrospect, an inexorable march toward the resignation she announced 10 days ago. Ms. Palin had returned to her home state from the presidential campaign as one of the hopeful prospects in her struggling party, even if she had much to prove to her detractors. Standing before the Legislature in January, she vowed to retake her office with “optimism and collaboration and hard work to get the job done.” But interviews in Alaska and in Washington show that a seemingly relentless string of professional and personal troubles quickly put that goal out of reach. Almost as soon as she returned home, the once-popular governor was isolated from an increasingly critical Legislature. Lawmakers who had supported her signature effort to develop a natural gas pipeline turned into uncooperative critics. Ethics complaints mounted, and legal bills followed. At home Ms. Palin was dealing with a teenage daughter who had given birth to a son and broken up with the infant’s father, a baby of her own with special needs and a national news media that was eager to cover it all. Friends worried that she appeared anxious and underweight. Her hair had thinned to the point where she needed emergency help from her hairdresser and close friend, Jessica Steele. “Honestly, I think all of it just broke her heart,” Ms. Steele said in an interview at her beauty parlor in Wasilla, the Beehive. Yet to the dismay of some advisers, Ms. Palin dived into the fray, seeming to relish the tabloid-ready fights that consumed her as the work of the state at times went undone. Her public feud with David Letterman over a tasteless sexual joke he made about one of her daughters spun into a broader fight at home with a fellow Republican over state efforts to combat sexual abuse. She had a political aide issue a news release condemning Levi Johnston, the teenage father of her daughter Bristol’s newborn, for his assertion that Ms. Palin had known the unwed high-schoolers were having sex all along. It was the sort of intermingling between her personal and public agendas that had drawn ethics complaints against her even before Senator John McCain tapped her as his running mate in August. But now, Ms. Palin had fewer defenders to lend support. Her husband, Todd, her most trusted adviser, was spending less time at her side both because they needed money from his oil industry job, friends say, and because questions had been raised about whether he had been too involved at the Capitol. Her growing list of detractors quickly signaled that they were not impressed with her celebrity status. “We had business to do,” said State Representative Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican who had worked on Ms. Palin’s 2006 race for governor. “It’s not all about adoration.” Late last week, as her sport utility vehicle made its way through the town of McGrath, Ms. Palin said in an interview that the seeds of her resignation had been planted the morning Mr. McCain named her as his vice-presidential choice. “It began when we started really looking at the conditions that had so drastically changed on Aug. 29,” she said. “The hordes of opposition researchers came up here digging for dirt for political reasons, making crap up.” Troubles Await Back Home When Ms. Palin made it back to Alaska in November, the state that had once given her an 83 percent approval rating was no longer so enchanted. Democrats who had been crucial to her governing coalition now saw her as a foe. Republican leaders who had previously lost fights with her smelled weakness. An abortion bill she supported requiring parental consent stalled, the Legislature rejected her choice for attorney general and lawmakers became skeptical of the natural gas pipeline effort. “It’s like, ‘Ooh,’ ” Ms. Palin said in the interview, “ ‘not so good anymore, because it’s got Sarah’s name on it.’ ” Martin Buser, a champion dog musher who is close to the Palins, said: “When she came back it was pretty clear it was not a trip with any light at the end of the tunnel. It was a spelunking trip that had no light and no end.” She was met at the Capitol by a growing pile of ethics complaints filed by opponents that, under Alaska state law, had to be investigated. During the campaign, an investigation by the Republican-dominated Legislature found that Ms. Palin had abused her office by leaning on subordinates to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. She was forced to pay back taxes after it was disclosed that she had billed the state for thousands of dollars in per diem expenses meant to cover travel costs while staying in Wasilla. Still, of the 19 ethics complaints filed against her, most have been dismissed. “We spend most of our day, my staff, a lot of the members of the Department of Law and myself, dealing with things that have nothing to do with policy or governance,” Ms. Palin said in the interview. “It has to do with setting the record straight in this game that’s being played right now.” By all accounts, Ms. Palin became consumed with the complaints, no matter how small-bore — which many were — or where they came from. When a local Democratic blogger accused her of becoming a “walking billboard” by wearing a jacket emblazoned with the logo of Arctic Cat , her husband’s team sponsor at the Iron Dog snowmobile race, she issued a news release titled “Governor Comments on Latest Bogus Ethics Complaint.” “Yes, I wore Arctic Cat snow gear at an outdoor event, because it was cold outside,” her statement read. A follow-up release was triumphantly titled “Ethics Complaint on Governor’s Apparel Dismissed.” Feuds begat feuds. Ms. Palin alleged in June that Mr. Letterman’s joke that one of her daughters had been “knocked up” by the Yankees star Alex Rodriguez during a recent trip to New York encouraged “sexual exploitation” of younger women. Her comments then prompted a Republican lawmaker, State Representative Mike Hawker, to accuse Ms. Palin of underfinancing sexual abuse programs. Ms. Palin, in turn, directed public safety officials to give her fodder for a retort, requesting that they put out a statement saying her policies would reduce sexual assaults on minors. Even Ms. Palin’s supporters came to believe that she was losing focus amid all the fighting. “It was very relentless,” said State Representative John Coghill, a Republican. “My only criticism of her was she probably paid too much attention to it.” In mid-spring, as the country grew alarmed over the swine flu , Ms. Palin skipped a briefing for administration officials on the outbreak by her chief medical officer, Dr. Jay C. Butler. A spokeswoman, Sharon Leighow, noted that the teleconference took place about a month before the first case of the flu was reported in Alaska and that at the time the governor was meeting with top staff on the issue of federal stimulus funds. Since then, the state has had 122 confirmed cases of the H1N1 flu . Dr. Butler said he resigned his post in June in part because the administration asked one of his highly regarded division heads, the state public health director, Beverly Wooley, to resign. “I felt that it was not a good time to be downsizing,” said Dr. Butler, who is now working on a swine flu vaccination at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . Dr. Butler said the governor’s office apparently deemed Ms. Wooley insufficiently supportive of the parental consent bill backed by Ms. Palin. Ms. Leighow would only say, inexplicably, that Ms. Wooley had been terminated by the health department, not the governor. Amid all the turmoil, Ms. Palin’s enthusiasm for the job itself seemed to be waning, her office appointment books from January 2007 through this May indicate. Since her return from the national campaign her days have typically started later and ended earlier, and the number of meetings with local legislators and mayors has declined. The calendars were provided to The New York Times by Andree McLeod, who obtained them through a public records request and has filed ethics complaints against Ms. Palin. Things on the home front were equally strained. Paparazzi regularly stalked the family, once ambushing Bristol Palin when she arrived with her newborn and her father at the Beehive beauty salon. Mr. Palin was forced to wait for her in the car with Bristol’s baby, Tripp, whose image was fetching a particularly high tabloid bounty. If Bristol Palin was avoiding the limelight, her estranged boyfriend was seeking it. Mr. Johnston appeared bare-chested in GQ magazine holding Tripp. He told the talk show host Tyra Banks that he was certain Ms. Palin knew his relationship with her teenage daughter had been sexual. Ms. Palin’s top political aide cranked out another news release: “We’re disappointed that Levi and his family, in a quest for fame, attention and fortune, are engaging in flat-out lies, gross exaggeration and even distortion of their relationship.” Appeal Outside Alaska Despite Ms. Palin’s travails in Alaska, she continued to have national cachet. Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey ’s producer called with interview requests. She fielded lucrative book deals, ultimately accepting one estimated to be in the millions of dollars. A veteran television producer proposed a “West Wing” meets “Northern Exposure” reality show about her. Out-of-state political trips were flashbacks to the presidential campaign. Crowds chanted, “Run, Sarah, Run!” In January, Fred V. Malek, a longtime Republican kingmaker, held a dinner to introduce Ms. Palin to some of the party’s biggest names, prompted partly by what he saw as shabby treatment by the McCain campaign. Mr. Malek said she charmed former Vice President Dick Cheney at the dinner and bonded with Mr. Cheney’s daughter Liz over both raising five children. The night was a high point. But already, Ms. Palin was having trouble reconciling the gravitational pull of her national support with the stresses of Alaska. John Coale, a Washington trial lawyer and a Democrat who befriended the governor, said that during a political trip to Atlanta in December she expressed concern about her personal finances and complained that whenever she left Alaska “there was tremendous criticism up there.” To Mr. Coale, the Palins seemed unprepared for the national stage. “I don’t think they got it, that they were in the arena,” he added. Mr. Coale helped Ms. Palin set up a legal defense fund and a political action committee to pay for her political activities. But both caused additional problems. While the defense fund has raised more than $250,000, according to its trustee, the money cannot be spent pending resolution of an ethics complaint that contends that the contributions could amount to improper gifts. The political action committee, named SarahPAC, was intended to help Ms. Palin steer clear of state ethics laws prohibiting the mixing of official duties and political activities. But according to people who dealt with it, a disconnect emerged between Ms. Palin’s political and official operations, resulting in embarrassing blunders. After the Conservative Political Action Conference , a meeting of the Republican Party ’s evangelical base, announced that the governor would have a coveted speaking role at its annual gathering in February, she canceled, citing scheduling conflicts. Then, organizers of one of the most important Republican Congressional fund-raisers of the year said they had been assured by a political aide to Ms. Palin that she would be their headliner, only to have her Anchorage office announce that she knew nothing about it. Allies like Mr. Malek chalked up the confusion to Ms. Palin’s reliance on one aide to juggle the PAC’s demands. Mr. Malek said he urged Mr. Ayers, the governors’ association official, to write his memorandum and head to Alaska to get Ms. Palin’s operation in order. Mr. Malek said he told Ms. Palin that “you have got to set up a mechanism so you can return calls.” “You are getting a bad rap,” he recalled saying. “Important people are trying to talk to you. And she said, ‘What number are they calling?’ She did not know what had been happening.” Tugs, Pulls and Pressures Hope for the intervention’s success soon faded. Despite advice to stick close to home and focus on an Alaska agenda, the governor accepted an invitation to attend an anti-abortion dinner in Indiana in April, even though the state budget was hanging in the balance in the Legislature. When Tom Wright, chief of staff for the speaker of the Alaska House, suggested that the governor would catch heat for leaving, Ms. Palin stormed into his office and, according to a person familiar with the conversation, “proceeded to ream him out.” In early June, when Ms. Palin visited Mr. Malek in Washington, “My sense was she was very unhappy with the multiple tugs, pulls and pressures in her life, that her family life was not even close to what she regarded as acceptable,” he said, adding, “she just had a dissatisfaction with the way the job had developed.” When she announced on July 3 that she was leaving the job, the national political establishment speculated that it was part of a scheme to position herself for a White House run. Ms. Palin scoffed at the notion. “There’s no ulterior motive,” she said in the interview. She said the lieutenant governor who will succeed her on July 26, Sean R. Parnell, will pursue “the same agenda as mine — minus the distractions.” In her hometown area at least, people take her at her word, but they doubt she is out of the game for good. “She’s very young and she has a long time to be a potential candidate and to mature and develop a thicker skin,” said Janet Kincaid, a supporter in Palmer. “In politics, you’ve got to just let it roll or it will eat you alive.” At the governor’s Anchorage office, staff members are struggling to roll with Ms. Palin’s surprise announcement. Last week, a clock on the wall continued its countdown. Under a “Time to Make a Difference” placard, the clock ticks away the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the scheduled end to Ms. Palin’s term. As of Friday, it had 513 days left. “I don’t know how to reset the darn thing,” David Murrow, a spokesman for the governor, said earlier in the week.