Seattle Teachers Go on First Systemwide Strike in 30 Years After Talks Collapse

Abstract: SEATTLE — Elias Lawrence’s first day of kindergarten did not turn out as planned. With teachers walking the picket lines and classes across the city canceled, Elias, 5, instead got a day at a city community center near his home and a brief lesson in labor relations from his father, Noah Lawrence. “We talked a lot about how the teachers are unhappy with how they’re being treated at work, and so they are deciding not to work to make the point — I don’t know if he totally gets it,” said Mr. Lawrence, 37, an engineer. The first systemwide teachers’ strike here in 30 years, which was set in motion Tuesday night after contract talks broke down over issues of pay and staffing, was a novelty on Wednesday, with teachers, parents, administrators and students improvising on unfamiliar terrain. At Ingraham High School in the city’s north end, the principal, Martin Floe, carried a pot of coffee out to serve the teachers who were walking in a picket line on the sidewalk under a blue sky, joined by several parents who supported them. Lief Herald, a teacher who works with at-risk students, strummed out Peter, Paul and Mary tunes and Joan Baez anthems. Drivers honked and waved their support. But bitter feelings — or pangs of anxiety about the future if the strike drags on — were just below the surface. With nearly 53,000 students displaced from classrooms, and about 5,000 teachers and other staff workers off the job, each side accused the other of playing hardball. “They broke it off,” said Stacy Howard, a spokeswoman for the Seattle Public Schools, referring to the teachers’ union, the Seattle Education Association. “The district’s bargain team has been ready and willing to meet anytime, day or night.” But Alan Goodin, 70, the head of the art department at Ingraham High — and a veteran of the Seattle Public Schools, around long enough to remember the last strike, in 1985 — said the district had not put any real compromise positions on the table. And he said he had been struck by the level of resolve he saw this time among his colleagues. “When they said, ‘All the folks opposed to going out on strike, please say nay,’ there wasn’t a sound in the room,” Mr. Goodin said, describing the union meeting before the strike. Much has changed in Seattle, and in the American labor movement, in 30 years. Seattle in 1985 was more of a blue-collar union city than it is now, with an economy still heavily tied to maritime work and manufacturing. And labor protest was in the air nationally: Teachers in seven states walked off the job that fall. Seattle’s strike lasted 25 days and was settled after the governor stepped in to bring the two sides together. In the years since, teacher strikes in big cities have become relatively rare, with the last major one in Chicago in 2012 . But teachers and school officials here said that the context of this strike in Washington was also very different — with a huge tangle of recent court orders about state funding of public education hanging over both sides. The Washington Supreme Court, the state’s highest appeals panel, has ordered the state held in contempt for what the court says are failures to meet constitutional obligations to adequately and equitably fund public education. Last month, the court began assessing $100,000 a day in fines to be put into an education fund until the Legislature passes an education spending plan that the justices will accept. Seattle teachers are also being careful about the message their strike sends to residents. Plans call for picket lines to be shut down on Friday, for example — the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — with strikers encouraged instead to volunteer across the city in soup kitchens, shelters or parks. Other time clocks related to the strike have begun ticking loudly as well — like how the days lost to the strike might have to be made up by shortened holidays or an extended school year. Seattle Parks and Recreation, which runs before- and after-school care at community centers during the school year, has committed, at least so far, to all-day camps only through Friday. Contract talks are set to resume Thursday. For Finn Johansen, 6, who was walking on a picket line with his father, Peter Johansen, a special-education teacher, spending the day with the strikers mostly came down to a lack of choices. “There was nothing else for me to do,” Finn said with a shrug. “My brother was going to preschool, and my mother was going to work.” “That’s the inside story,” Mr. Johansen said. Finn spoke up again: “I was excited for school,” he said.

Seattle
Teachers
K-12 Education
Strikes Labor
Labor Unions


Corzine Pays $362,500 to End a Dispute

Abstract: TRENTON (AP) — Gov. Jon S. Corzine has paid $362,500 to the brother-in-law of his former companion to settle a dispute over whether the governor reneged on a promise to find him a private-sector job. Mr. Corzine said he completed the confidential deal with Rocco Riccio, a former state employee, in late September after Mr. Riccio threatened to sue him. The governor said his lawyers recommended that he reach a settlement. The settlement was reported on the Web site of The Star-Ledger of Newark. Mr. Corzine said Mr. Riccio threatened suit “to force an accommodation.” Mr. Riccio is the brother-in-law of a state workers’ union leader, Carla Katz , who dated Mr. Corzine from 2002 to 2004.


Fresh Off Grand Slam Win, England Appears Energized by Its New Coach

Abstract: WELLINGTON, New Zealand — England has celebrated its first Six Nations Grand Slam in 13 years, but the challenge it faces in Australia in June will most likely be significantly sterner and should give its new coach, Eddie Jones, a clearer picture of where his team sits in rugby union’s global pecking order. Australia, a World Cup finalist last year, will surely pose a far greater threat to England in its three-test series than Scotland, Italy, Ireland, Wales or France did during the seven weeks of a largely mediocre Six Nations championship. England won all five of its matches to earn the Grand Slam. Much was written about the gulf in standards between Northern and Southern Hemisphere rugby when no teams from the north made the Rugby World Cup semifinals last October. The gulf will not have narrowed much after the Six Nations, but Australia knows it will face an England team much improved from the one it dismantled, 33-13, during the World Cup pool stages. England’s roster is not vastly different, but in every other regard it is poles apart from the World Cup team, which was weighed down by expectations, fear and preprogrammed attacking strategies. The England team that swept its European neighbors aside was firmly in the mold of Jones — a no-nonsense Australian not afraid to talk about winning and about making England the No. 1 team in the world. With so little time in the job, Jones has not made sweeping changes in the way England plays, although its backs are lining up closer to the advantage line — similar to the line of scrimmage in football — when on attack than they did at the World Cup. But Jones has had an immediate effect on the players’ mind-set and confidence, and he has given them a framework to meet their potential. Jones has emboldened his players to take charge and to play aggressive and attacking rugby. That was evident against France last weekend when, after a rough patch during the second half in which France pulled within a couple of points, England did not retreat into its shell and instead won, 31-21. “He’s the sort of guy where, if you’re going to go down, you’re going to go down swinging, so to speak,” said George Gregan, who was captain of Australia during Jones’s tenure as Wallabies coach from 2001 to 2005. “You go down playing the way you want to play.” Jones places high demands on his players, expecting hard work and total commitment to him and the team. But he also understands the value of down time and of players having a beer to celebrate their successes — something that rarely happened under the previous coach, Stuart Lancaster. Loose forward James Haskell, who has had four coaches during his international career with England, has described it as the “happiest time” he has had representing his country. Image James Haskell, center, fighting off French defenders during England’s 31-21 win, which gave England its first Six Nations Grand Slam since 2003. Credit Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Gregan, who was also coached by Jones at the Australian Super Rugby franchise the ACT Brumbies and, in the latter years of his career, at the Japanese club Suntory Sungoliath, said Jones was the master of creating a situation for players to thrive in but one that constantly challenged them. “His ability to create an environment to make players better and coaches and the whole group better, he’s the best I ever had in that regard,” Gregan said. “You can see all that happening with this English squad. He’ll look for them to improve themselves, not just through the coaching but individually taking responsibility to do it yourself. That’s very much his mantra as well.” That has never been more evident than with Chris Robshaw. Jones heavily criticized Robshaw at the World Cup and stripped him of the England captaincy, but Robshaw was one of England’s consistently best players during the Six Nations. Dylan Hartley, whose promotion to captain raised eyebrows because of his poor disciplinary record, has performed well in the role, while Billy Vunipola is another who has blossomed in his short time under Jones. But perhaps the find of the tournament has been the lock forward Maro Itoje, 21, who got his opportunity only because Joe Launchbury was injured. Itoje has been a standout, showing that Jones is not afraid to select talented young players who perform well at club level. Jones will continue his search for young talent before he names his squad to travel to Australia. “We need a few guys to come through to really push the envelope,” he told reporters after the victory in Paris. “We need them to come in, say, ‘This isn’t good enough’ and lift the level again. I’m looking for guys like a young Jonny Wilkinson.” Wilkinson kicked the winning drop goal during extra time in the Rugby World Cup final between Australia and England in 2003. Jones added: “The 2003 lot still talk about when Jonny came into training as a young kid and turned the Bunsen burner up. The whole level of training increased because he had no fear and wanted to be No. 1 in the world. I need to find a couple of those kids. We’ll work harder, work smarter and pick better players.” The English turnaround has Gregan expecting a tight series in June. “I’d like it to be 3-0 because I’m Australian, but I can see the matches going down to the wire just due to the improvement and the belief in that England team,” he said. “This has been a really important seven weeks for English rugby.” For all the bravado coming out of the Wales camp about claiming a first win against New Zealand since 1953, it did little in the Six Nations that will have New Zealand, the back-to-back world champions, too worried. The Welsh still have not developed a Plan B on attack when crashing the ball up the center of the field does not bring reward. Injury-ravaged Ireland had a difficult Six Nations, but it forced Coach Joe Schmidt to give new players test-match experience. Some of the injured players will be fit again in June for a tough trip to South Africa. Scotland showed that the improvement made at the World Cup was no fluke, but two tests in Japan will show whether the team remains on an upward curve. Italy and France, meanwhile, were awful in the Six Nations. Argentina is very likely to put both to the sword in June, while Canada and the United States will also like their chances against Italy.

England
Australia
Eddie Jones
2015 World Cup Rugby


Indian Couple Deny Charges of Abusing Teenage Maid

Abstract: NEW DELHI — The couple accused of abusing a 13-year-old maid and locking her in their apartment while they went on vacation, a story that has renewed attention on the exploitation of children in India , did no such thing, the couple’s lawyer said Thursday. The maid is not under age, has not been abused and was not locked in the apartment, said the lawyer, Shailendra Bhardwaj. Nor was she watched with security cameras, as her statement to a court asserted, he said. The couple, Dr. Sanjay Verma and Dr. Sumita Verma, were arrested Wednesday after their return from a trip to Thailand and were being held by the police on preliminary charges of violating laws related to child labor and bondage. The girl, who has not been publicly identified, was rescued from the house by a firefighter last Thursday and was being held in protective custody. Her accusations of abuse have been front-page news in India since the case came to light a week ago. Mr. Bhardwaj said that the Vermas treated the maid like part of the family. “She was treated like a child, and we will shortly be releasing videos of the girl playing Holi with the family and Dr. Verma’s daughter,” he said in a telephone interview. “We don’t know who prompted her to make the report.” Holi is the tradition of dousing others with colored water and pigment associated with the Hindu spring festival. Mr. Bhardwaj said the maid had told the couple that she was 18, not 13, as reported by child welfare officials. He said she was left in their home in the Dwarka suburb of New Delhi at her request. Before the couple left for their vacation in Bangkok, he said, they asked the girl to stay at the wife’s mother’s house, but she declined. “They decided to leave her in their house at Dwarka because she said she was more comfortable there,” he said. “She was given a key and 500 rupees,” a little more than $9, “to purchase daily groceries,” Mr. Bhardwaj said. “She was also asked to keep the door locked and not open it for anybody except the couple.” The girl said the couple had locked her in their apartment, according to child welfare officials. She said she was paid nothing, barely fed and was beaten if her work was not satisfactory. She said her uncle had sold her to a job placement agency, which sold her to the couple, officials said. Ravi Kant, the lawyer for Shakti Vahini, a nongovernmental organization that combats child trafficking, discounted the couple’s denials. The girl’s statement, made in front of a magistrate, carries a great deal of weight in court, he said. “Even if the child goes back on her word, under coercion or for money, her statement will still hold,” Mr. Kant said. A medical report corroborates the girl’s assertions of being pinched and hit, he added. He said that employers were responsible for verifying an employee’s age, regardless of what the employee may have claimed, and that only a birth or school certificate was considered legal proof. Indian law allows children as young as 14 to work a maximum of six hours a day in nonhazardous work, but younger children are legally prohibited from working as servants, a provision that is widely flouted. Mr. Bhardwaj, the couple’s lawyer, said he would request bail when the couple appears before a magistrate at the Dwarka district court, at a hearing expected on Monday. Mr. Kant said his organization would strongly oppose the request. “Such people need exemplary punishment,” he said.

India
Child Labor
Domestic Service
New Delhi (India)
Human Trafficking


As CBS Dawdles, Fans Are First to Be Upset in This Tournament

Abstract: They gave us a fattened N.C.A.A. tournament selection show, starting at 5:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday and ending at 7:30. Who asked for it? Are two-hour studio shows worth watching, especially if all you want to know is who’s playing whom and where? To read off each region’s bracket requires about six minutes — meaning all the relevant content should be covered in about 24 minutes. Throw in some analysis and interviews, and an hourlong format made much more sense. But you could, I suppose, argue in favor of two or even three hours for a selection show if you’re the type who likes to listen to insiders argue ad nauseam about which teams are left out, which are improperly seeded and which long shot has a chance to upset its way to the Final Four. For you, perhaps, the more of CBS’s Seth Davis and Doug Gottlieb, the better. Believing that expanding to two hours was a proper move, CBS did it all wrong. It did not reveal the first quarter of the bracket for 20 minutes. The full bracket was not fully shown for an estimated 77 minutes — although someone mercifully pre-empted it around 6 p.m. by posting it on Twitter . By then, it really did not matter what anyone was saying or if Charles Barkley would figure out how to operate a touch screen to show which teams he thought would advance from the first round. CBS’s slow-it-down pace had stretched some viewers past their breaking points. “Almost rooting for a Bernie protester to burst on the set and give this CBS selection show some life,” one viewer wrote on Twitter . Executives of CBS and Turner refused to comment on Monday, apparently uninterested in suppressing the uproar among college basketball fans. But last week, Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports, discussed the thinking behind the two-hour format with T he Los Angeles Daily News . In his telling, it sounded like a good idea. But it had not been executed yet. He said that the one-hour format let the network move through the brackets “in a relatively efficient way” but gave the show’s analysts too little time to offer their perspectives before viewers went elsewhere for more analysis. 2016 Men’s N.C.A.A. Tournament Bracket Kansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon are the top seeds in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. “My thought is that if we have the exclusive rights, why not give guys the extra time, an extra hour, to go through the brackets,” McManus told The Daily News. But the efficiency of the one-hour format turned into inefficiency over two hours. CBS would have avoided an outcry had it moved apace through each region during the first hour and reserved the second hour for extended commentary. But CBS decided to hold the news, milking the suspense by not unveiling one region soon after finishing another. That swift unveiling is what fans have traditionally come for. CBS had misunderstood what fans needed from the show. CBS changed the news paradigm, and fans reacted poorly to it. And they might have punished CBS for it. The 3.7 preliminary overnight rating for the selection show was the lowest in 20 years, probably affected by the 5:30 start, but at least as likely by the Twitter bracket leak. The negative response to CBS’s stretch-it-out show suggests that fans can tolerate only so many anti-consumer acts from networks, leagues or teams. They pay ever-higher prices to get into games — and to watch on television because of the continually rising fees of ESPN and regional sports networks. They sit through longer and longer commercial breaks. They deal with stadiums coated in advertising. And they must adapt to annoyances like the Yankees deciding recently against the use of print-at-home tickets in favor of mobile ticketing. CBS’s long reveal was seen as an intolerable act, slowing down fans’ ability to fill out their March Madness brackets. As partners in a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract, CBS and Turner Sports jointly make all the television decisions at the tournament. The games are shown on CBS and three Turner networks (TBS, TNT and truTV). With an average of $770 million in rights fees each year paid by Turner and CBS, it is no surprise that they would seek extra revenue wherever possible, like selling more commercials in a two-hour selection show. McManus insisted to The Daily News that the decision to double the length of the selection show was based more on content concerns than advertising sales. But, he noted, “there’s ad interest to sell it out with no problem.” Over the two hours, CBS carried 52 ads, nearly twice the number as last year, according to iSpot.tv , which tracks national television advertising. Capital One, AT&T, Allstate, Quicken Loans and the N.C.A.A. had three commercials in the show. Last year, in a 60-minute show, no company bought more than two ads. The two-hour format might have been lucrative for CBS and Turner, but it was not an innovation. If they stick to the two-hour length in the future, they must deliver the bracket information as quickly as possible. Then they can give us the sound of seven hosts and analysts chatting.

CBS
Charles Barkley
College basketball
TV
NCAA
NCAA Men's Basketball,March Madness


Luis Baerga, the Longest-Serving Sewer Inspector

Abstract: New York City has 7,400 miles of sewer lines, more than any other city in the nation. Luis Baerga, 57, knows those miles better than most people: He is the longest-serving sewer inspector in the city. Mr. Baerga, a supervisor with the Department of Environmental Protection , has worked in the sewer system for 35 years. He was a 21-year-old former Marine when he started in April 1975. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children. What it’s like down there: It depends on how it was built. Some of it was built elliptical. Some of it looks like pipe. Some of it is square. I remember one time, Dick Gainer and Ed Coleman [his colleagues at the time in the agency’s Bureau of Water and Sewer Operations] and myself, we all went down to a system off the Grand Central, because a French film crew wanted to take some pictures, and it looked like a catacomb. It was just a chamber where pipes were dumping in to be fed out into a bigger line. The great bathtub mystery: I was walking through a trunk line on Cypress Avenue, which is the border of Ridgewood, Glendale, and I found a tub in there. I mean, I don’t know how it got there. We couldn’t get it out through a manhole, but it was right there in the middle. Why a sewer man doesn’t mind rodents: As the old-timers taught me, it was always good to see, when you opened a sewer cover, that there were rats and roaches and running water. If it was so decided that we would have to make entry, if they could live, so could us. But if they weren’t there, if they were all dead, then the likelihood would be that we shouldn’t go down there. We should test it or ventilate it. That part of the job I didn’t mind. I like to see living organisms. Water and what it can do: If there’s a problem, it won’t go away until it’s corrected. You may not see it for a while, but it won’t go away. It’s like a leak. The leak might be there for 10 years, but you don’t see it. It’s not bothering nobody, so nobody’s complaining. But one day, the street falls. You see it then. Reading old manhole covers: Not too many people are aware that in the ’40s and the ’50s, the Bureau of Sewers came under the Department of Sanitation . So a lot of manholes were marked “DS.” You only find them in Manhattan. Beginnings: I came to work for the city April 21, 1975. At that time, D.E.P. didn’t exist. I came on board with the Bureau of Sewers, which was located at 40 Worth Street. I wasn’t aware of the system as I am now. I took it for granted like most people in the city of New York take it for granted. I go to the kitchen, turn on the faucet, and water comes out. I had no knowledge of where it came from. I go to the bathroom and flush the toilet. I had no knowledge where it went, what happened to that water. The whole alligator thing: At 40 Worth Street, in the old Bureau of Sewers, Fred Pocci [former division chief of sewer construction and sewer maintenance] had a picture. There were some workers pulling an alligator out of the sewer system. I think a lot of people that came to visit the office on the ninth floor mistook that for the city of New York. Where was the photo taken? In Florida.

Sewers
New York City
Department of Environmental Protection
Manholes


Snedeker Borrows Clubs for Win

Abstract: Brandt Snedeker used a loaner set of clubs to begin his World Match Play Championship with a 5 and 4 victory over Thomas Bjorn in Casares, Spain. Snedeker, the lone American in the 24-man field, teed off with only 10 clubs in his replacement bag, including a putter bought from the pro shop. His clubs had been lost in transit. Ian Poulter started defense of his title with a 3 and 2 win against John Senden. ¶ The top two seeds, Yani Tseng and Na Yeon Choi, advanced, but the third-seeded defending champion, Suzann Pettersen, lost to Jodi Ewart, 3 and 1, in the first round of the Sybase Match Play Championship in Gladstone, N.J. (NYT)


At Colonial, Greens Are Soft and Scores Are Low

Abstract: FORT WORTH — The third leg of the Texas Swing got under way at the venerable Colonial Country Club on Thursday, and not even a fancy facelift to the Grand Dame aimed at bringing her defenses up to date could prevent some very familiar suitors from having their way in the first round of the Crowne Plaza Invitational. The South African Tim Clark, Woody Austin and Steve Stricker led an old-fashioned Texas hoedown on the enhanced, reshaped and lengthened 7,204 yards of Colonial. All shot seven-under-par rounds of 63 — Clark and Austin without a bogey and Stricker with just one — to tie for the lead, one stroke clear of the two-time Colonial champion Kenny Perry and Vijay Singh at 64. A strong field that includes 8 of the top 15 players in the world attacked the vulnerable Colonial course, which had been softened by a major thunderstorm late Tuesday night. On a hot, still day, players peppered the receptive greens with approach shots that stuck like spitballs on a blackboard. “The conditions are good,” said Stricker, who holed three 20-footers, three 15-footers, a 12-footer and a 30-footer for birdies. “The biggest thing is the greens are soft and they’re not very fast, so guys can be very aggressive.” At its firmest, Colonial does not take kindly to aggressive play, rewarding a combination of shaped tee shots on its many doglegs and well-struck irons into its relatively small greens. In the recent restoration project — which has been greeted favorably by most of the players — fairway bunkers were added and the 11th, 12th and 14th holes were lengthened to bring existing fairway bunkers back into play. Thursday, on the softened course, the field averaged one-half stroke under par, lower than the tournament officials envisioned, and the 61 under-par rounds were just two off the record of two years ago, when 63 golfers broke par in the first round. Ian Baker-Finch, the 1989 Colonial champion playing in his first Tour event since 2001, shot a two-under 68. Playing in his third tournament since retiring from the game in 1996, Baker-Finch said he never had second thoughts about returning. “But since I decided to come and do it, I did have thoughts of, ‘Boy, I hope I don’t make a fool of myself,’ ” said Baker-Finch, a CBS analyst. Even with the conditions as benign as they could possibly have been, there were no golfers willing to tempt fate by talking about just how easy it was. “There’s no way I’d say the golf course was easy,” said the Texan Chad Campbell, who shot a three-under 67. “But that rain made it a whole lot softer, and you could stop it on the greens.” That was evident when Justin Leonard went out in 30 strokes early and added a birdie at the 10th to get to six under par. Shouts and rumblings accompanied Leonard, talk of a course record in the air. The course record of 61 has been shot six times, most recently by Campbell in 2004, and Leonard and Perry in 2003. The thought of breaking it may have briefly occurred to Leonard, because he fired his approach shot at a back pin into the 635-yard, par-five 11th. It bounced through the green, and he failed to get up and down for par, making the first of three bogeys that would mar his round of four-under 66. Ben Hogan might have smiled at that. His image is stamped on the golf course here, from the statue of him behind the clubhouse to the difficult stretch that bends back toward the clubhouse like a horseshoe. It is easy to imagine Hogan standing on the tee at 13, a lit cigarette burning between the index finger and the thumb of his right hand as he peered into the wind. To this day, the sounds of singing steel from Union Pacific freight train wheels pierce the air from the Davidson Yard, across the west bank of the Trinity River, audible on the 12th, 13th and 14th holes. The high-pitched notes from the Davidson Yard are a reminder of the steely toughness that built Fort Worth, and that frames the course known as Hogan’s Alley. If the wind blows this weekend, the steel might be back in Colonial.


F.C.C. Chief Backs Satellite Radio Merger

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The long-running government review of the proposed merger of the nation’s two satellite radio companies took an important step forward on Monday when the head of the Federal Communications Commission announced he would circulate a plan this week to approve the deal. Commission officials and industry lawyers said they did not expect that the agency would complete its work on the deal before July, a year and a half after the two companies, Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio , announced it. After the Justice Department’s antitrust division approved the merger proposal last March, the widespread expectation was that the F.C.C. would also clear it, although with conditions. In a statement issued shortly before he left the country for a trip to Asia for the next two weeks, Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the commission, said that the transaction satisfied the requirement of being “in the public interest” with the conditions that the companies had accepted. Those conditions include a price freeze for subscribers for the next three years and a tiered pricing system that will give customers some flexibility in deciding which channels they want. In effect, subscribers can pay less for fewer channels. The companies have also agreed to set aside up to 8 percent of the channels for noncommercial and minority broadcasters. And they agreed to take steps that would make it possible for more radio manufacturers to sell compatible radios, including equipment that would also play HD radio. “I am recommending that with the voluntary commitments they’ve offered, on balance, this transaction would be in the public interest,” Mr. Martin said. Mr. Martin’s proposal needs the backing of at least two other commissioners for approval. Officials say they expect that Mr. Martin will get that support, although some details of the plan could change in the process. Michael Copps, one of the two Democrats on the commission, said he was skeptical that the merger was in the public interest, even with the conditions set by Mr. Martin. “As I’ve said from the beginning, this merger is a steep climb for me,” Mr. Copps said. “That hasn’t changed.”

Federal Communications Commission
Sirius Satellite Radio Inc
XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc
Martin Kevin J


Thompson Finds Job at Old Office

Abstract: William C. Thompson Jr., the former New York City comptroller who this year waged an unsuccessful bid for mayor, announced on Wednesday that he was returning to the municipal bond underwriting firm where he had previously worked. Mr. Thompson, who also ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2009, finished second in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary, with about 26 percent of the vote . The first-place finisher, Bill de Blasio, won just over 40 percent of the vote in the primary, and then won the general election on Nov. 5. None of the other major candidates for mayor have disclosed their future plans. Two of the other Democratic candidates, Christine C. Quinn, the speaker of the City Council, and John C. Liu, the current city comptroller, remain in office through the end of the year. Joseph J. Lhota, a Republican who was crushed by Mr. de Blasio in the general election, has not said what he plans to do next. Mr. Thompson is returning to his positions as chief administrative officer and senior managing director at Siebert Brandford Shank & Company L.L.C. , which has been the nation’s biggest minority- and women-owned municipal bond underwriter for more than a decade. He reported making $727,000 in income last year , when he was still employed by the bond firm.

William C Thompson Jr
Job Recruiting and Hiring
Mayoral races
NYC


Chapman Allows First Earned Run as Pirates Top Reds

Abstract: Michael McKenry drove in the first earned run allowed by Aroldis Chapman this season with a double in the 10th inning, and the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 5-4, on the road on Thursday night. A sacrifice fly by McKenry, Pittsburgh’s backup catcher, who is batting just .193, put the Pirates up, 4-3, in the seventh inning. But closer Joel Hanrahan blew a save for only the second time this season, giving up a leadoff homer to Ryan Ludwick in the ninth. Chapman had not allowed an earned run in a club-record 24 appearances, covering 29 innings. Clint Barmes opened the 10th with a double and came around on McKenry’s double to right field. “He’s a special guy with a special arm,” McKenry said of Chapman. “You’ve got to prepare for the 100-mile-per-hour fastball. You can’t think about anything else.” Chapman had allowed only seven hits all season heading into the game. Chris Resop got his second major league save, allowing the Pirates to take two of three in the series against the Reds , the leaders in the National League Central. Resop struck out Ludwick on a called third strike with two runners on base in the 10th. CARDINALS 14, ASTROS 2 David Freese hit a grand slam and a two-run homer, and the rookie Lance Lynn struck out a career-high 11 in earning his ninth win for visiting St. Louis. BRAVES 8, MARLINS 2 Jason Heyward hit two solo homers to center to help Atlanta complete a three-game sweep on the road. BREWERS 4, CUBS 3 Norichika Aoki hit two home runs, including a game-ending shot to lead off the 10th inning for host Milwaukee. DODGERS 8, PHILLIES 3 Aaron Harang earned his 100th career win, and Los Angeles completed its first four-game sweep at Philadelphia in 66 years. GIANTS 8, PADRES 3 Matt Cain struck out nine in seven innings to win his sixth straight start, and Buster Posey, Angel Pagan and Gregor Blanco homered for visiting San Francisco. WHITE SOX 4, BLUE JAYS 3 Orlando Hudson singled in the winning run with two outs in the ninth inning for host Chicago. RED SOX 7, ORIOLES 0 Clay Buchholz allowed four hits in his third career shutout — all of which have been against Baltimore — to lead host Boston. Baltimore went without a hit between Ryan Flaherty’s single leading off the third inning and Wilson Betemit’s single to start the eighth. TIGERS 7, INDIANS 5 Casey Crosby, making his second start for host Detroit, earned his first major league win. ATHLETICS 7, RANGERS 1 Coco Crisp hit a solo homer and a bases-loaded triple to match his season total for extra-base hits as host Oakland won its first series in more than a month. WIVES SPEAK AT CLEMENS TRIAL Eileen McNamee, the estranged wife of Brian McNamee, was on the stand for a second day at Roger Clemens’s perjury trial, and the government’s cross-examination highlighted discrepancies between her testimony at the trial and what she told the F.B.I. three years ago. The story given by Eileen McNamee, who was subpoenaed by the defense, also differs with her husband’s in several ways, but they dovetail in one respect: Brian McNamee’s motive in storing a box of drug waste. She testified that years ago he said he was keeping it for his protection. She also testified that she was furious when details of the medical condition of her oldest son with Brian McNamee were revealed at a Clemens news conference four years ago. She said she called Brian McNamee right away and told him “not to let him get away with it,” referring to Clemens. She made it clear, however, that she was not a fan of either side in the trial and pointed out that she was testifying because she “didn’t have a choice.” Debbie Clemens, Roger Clemens’s wife, took the stand late in the day to begin her much-anticipated testimony on behalf of her husband, but there was only time for her to answer mostly questions about her background before court adjourned for the day. NEW RULES ON DRUG TESTS Major League Baseball and the players’ union announced changes to their drug-testing agreement in the wake of the Feb. 23 decision to overturn the suspension that followed a positive test by Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun. Lawyers for Braun argued the collector from Comprehensive Drug Testing did not follow the section of the joint drug agreement that stated, “Unless instructed otherwise by CDT, the collector shall deliver the specimens to a FedEx office immediately following the completion of the collection.” The new agreement replaces that language with “Absent unusual circumstances, the specimens should be sent by FedEx to the laboratory on the same day they are collected.” It says unusual circumstances may include “inclement weather,” “a personal emergency,” a “traffic accident” or “completion of the collection at a time when the collector was unable to reach either of the two FedEx offices identified by CDT prior to their closing.” LASORDA OUT OF HOSPITAL Tommy Lasorda, a former Los Angeles Dodgers manager, was released from a New York hospital, three days after a mild heart attack.

Pittsburgh Pirates
Cincinnati Reds
Baseball
Milwaukee Brewers
Chicago Cubs


Having a Bat Mitzvah in Their 90s Because It’s a Hoot

Abstract: BEACHWOOD, Ohio — Ann Simon is worried she might forget all the Hebrew words she has memorized to become a bat mitzvah, a Jewish girl marking the transition into religious adulthood. Ms. Simon is no 12-year-old, though. At 94 she can be forgiven her fear that she might be seized by a senior moment or two as she stands on the bimah on Sunday to recite the section of the Torah that was read in synagogue on the Saturday closest to her 12th birthday. So can the other nine women who will take part in the bat mitzvah ceremony at the service in the synagogue of the Menorah Park senior residence in this Cleveland suburb. The youngest, Mintsy Agin, will turn 90 in July. The oldest, Molly Kravitz, will celebrate her 97th birthday in August. The women grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression , when bar mitzvah ceremonies for boys were weekly affairs but Jewish girls came of age without notice or fanfare. A bat mitzvah was rare in the United States until the 1950s and ’60s, said an associate rabbi at Menorah Park, Howard Kutner. Since then, many adult women have decided to make up for what they were denied as children, but most who do so are in their 50s and 60s, Rabbi Kutner said. A septuagenarian is rare and a nonagenarian nearly unheard of, he said, but only those in or near their 90s showed up when he offered bat mitzvah instruction to Menorah Park women of any age. “Most people in their 90s, they just eat their three meals a day and are happy to be alive,” Rabbi Kutner said. “I think this shows that at any age you can set a challenge and meet it.” A challenge, perhaps, but not all the women see it quite that way. “My first thought was boy, what a hoot!” said Millie Danziger Fromet, 90. A self-described “feminist all my life,” Evelyn Bonder, 90, said she “always thought girls should have the chance to participate” in something that Conservative, Orthodox and Reform congregations embraced in stages. Ms. Agin said: “My daughter had a bat mitzvah. But it was on a Friday instead of a Saturday. It wasn’t held inside the synagogue, and she wasn’t allowed to read from the Torah.” The women have met weekly with Rabbi Kutner to study Hebrew and the Torah in preparation for the service, which is scheduled for Sunday. The rabbi had planned to hold the ceremony in January, but he bumped it back to give the women more time to prepare. “The joke went around the room: Let’s not do it after March,” he said. “Who knows if we’ll still be here!” On a recent Monday, the women entered Menorah Park’s synagogue for a dress rehearsal. Three used walkers. Another carried a small oxygen tank. As they rose to speak, they left their medical gear by their seats. They approached the bimah unassisted, some limping, and steadied themselves at the lectern with both hands. Practice began with prayers in Hebrew. Some women stumbled and stuttered through the complicated scrum of consonants. Those who had taught Sunday school for decades spoke more fluidly. “One generation to another praises thy works,” said Eva Rosenberg, 91, reading from Psalm 145. “They speak of thy awe-inspiring might, and I tell of your greatness.” Next came the speeches, which traditionally respond to the Torah passage read in synagogue that week. Rabbi Kutner had consulted old calendars to determine the week in which each woman would have spoken at age 12. He asked them to prepare messages based on the passages they would have addressed eight decades ago. When Ms. Bonder was a child during the Depression, her parents lost their life savings in a bank failure. She later served as an aide to a United States senator. Her speech drew parallels to her Torah reading about Joseph, who rose from slavery to become a pharaoh’s chief adviser. Belva Singer, 91, meditated on the power of the Birkat Kohanim, the ancient Priestly Blessing. “This is one of the oldest and most beautiful prayers,” Ms. Singer said. “It is only 15 words, and it has been repeated by our people for thousands of years.” Class members argued intensely over whether to limit each woman’s speech to three minutes. The concern was not whether aging bladders could handle a ceremony that lasts an hour and a half, but whether relatives, some of whom are flying in from as far as Boston and California for the event, might be bored. “These women have spent their entire lives nurturing other people, and now the spotlight is finally on them,” Rabbi Kutner said. “They were afraid of burdening their audience.” They were not, however, afraid of telling the rabbi to pipe down. “You’re overpowering me!” Ms. Simon yelled during a period of singing. “Really?” the rabbi said with an embarrassed smile. “I’m sorry.” The singing resumed. Rabbi Kutner followed along, silently mouthing the words. “You’re doggone right we’re feisty,” Ms. Agin said at one point. After Sunday’s ceremony, each woman is to receive a certificate with words from Psalm 92: “They shall be fruitful even in old age; vigorous and fresh they shall be to proclaim that the Lord is Just. He is my strength.” The new “adults” of Menorah Park may beg to differ. “We’re not old people,” Ms. Bonder said. “We’re senior adults.” Ms. Fromet looked over and frowned. “No we’re not,” she said. “We’re adult seniors.”

bat mitzvah
Ohio
Women
Jews and Judaism
Elderly


Japanese Smartphone Manufacturer Sees an Export Market in Older Users

Abstract: TOKYO — The Japanese electronics industry largely missed out on the smartphone revolution. Yet this summer, even as one Japanese company, NEC, exited the business, another one, Fujitsu , announced plans for a new export push. Rather than competing with dominant brands like Samsung and Apple in the mainstream smartphone market, Fujitsu is aiming at a niche — older consumers, who, the company says, are not always served adequately by products like Apple’s iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy series. In partnership with Orange , formerly France Télécom, Fujitsu has started selling a smartphone in France that uses a technology called Raku-Raku, or “easy easy.” The Raku-Raku handset has a touch screen and provides on-the-go Internet access, but it has larger buttons and other features aimed at older people who sometimes struggle with the complexity of conventional smartphones. “We believe the smartphone provides benefits to these customers,” said Toru Mizumoto, the director of the mobile product division at Fujitsu. In partnership with NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile network operator in Japan, Fujitsu has sold 20 million Raku-Raku phones in Japan since it introduced them in 2001. Ten million of them remain in active use more than a decade later. While most of these phones are old-fashioned feature phones, Fujitsu and DoCoMo introduced the first Raku-Raku smartphone in Japan last year. Image Masami Yamamoto is president of Fujitsu. Credit Rie Ishii/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Japanese manufacturers tend to focus on the domestic market, introducing features that are considered innovative here but considered quirky and less appealing elsewhere. While aging consumers may be a niche market, they present a growing opportunity in most industrialized countries. In Japan, 39 percent of the population will be 65 or older in 2050, up from 23 percent in 2010, according to the Statistics Bureau of Japan. In France, the 65-and-older cohort will grow to 25 percent in 2050 from 17 percent in 2010, data from the United Nations show. “If you’re a smaller vendor and maybe haven’t had much of a presence in Europe, it makes sense to look at these kinds of niches,” said André Malm, an analyst at Berg Insight, a research firm in Gothenberg, Sweden. “It’s an underserved market.” The 65-and-up population may be growing, but 65-year-olds are becoming younger, too — at least in terms of their affinity for technology. Those who will retire in 2020 or 2030 are active on Facebook or Twitter now. “We see that there is a big, big part of the senior population that is willing to go for a smartphone,” said Augustin Becquet, the head of Orange’s device portfolio. While the elders of tomorrow may be increasingly comfortable with technology, their physical dexterity may deteriorate with age, as it has with past generations. That is where the Raku-Raku smartphone, called the Fujitsu Stylistic S01, comes in. At first glance, the S01 looks like a fairly ordinary smartphone. The features aimed at pleasing old people could just as easily be annoying. The touch-screen “buttons” on the phone’s calling function, for example, require a firmer push than those on ordinary smartphones. Only after a slight vibration do they register the chosen digit. That way, the phone avoids misdialing. Another Fujitsu technology appears to slow down the speech of the person on the receiving end of a Raku-Raku call by removing the gaps between words and allotting more time to the actual sounds. The screen is brighter than those on ordinary smartphones, making it easier to read under direct sunlight. Image The Japanese actress Shinobu Otake, with a smartphone Fujitsu introduced last year that used its Raku-Raku technology, with features meant to appeal to older people. Credit Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images There are also safety features, like a button on the phone that sends a text message to a friend or family member with the GPS coordinates of the phone’s owner in case of emergency. In its shops, Orange is providing special training on how to use the phones. “The younger generation likes the stuff with the latest technology, but every smartphone vendor is going to have to adapt to an aging population,” Mr. Becquet said. While Fujitsu and DoCoMo were pioneers in the development of phones for older people, they are not the only players in the field. Two European companies, Emporia Telecom in Austria and Doro in Sweden, have also been actively pursuing older users. Doro introduced its first phone aimed at that market in 2008 and has sold four million of them since then. In the Nordic countries, 15 percent of the 65-and-older population uses Doro phones, said Jérôme Arnaud, the chief executive of the company. While most of the Doro phones in use are old-fashioned handsets, the company introduced a basic smartphone last December and plans to roll out a more sophisticated model this autumn, Mr. Arnaud said. The phone will use a simplified version of the Android mobile operating system, and several dozen applications have been customized for it, he added. These include a video e-mail function that lets older people skip the typing. As for Orange and Fujitsu, the companies say they view the partnership in France as a pilot project; if the Stylistic phone catches on, they say, it will also be offered in other European markets in which Orange operates, like Britain. “For Japanese vendors, it has been challenging to go abroad,” said Michito Kimura, an analyst at the research firm IDC, “but this technology does meet a demand.”

Japan
Smartphone
FUJITSU
Old age,elderly,senior citizens


Belgium Says It Prevented a Terror Attack on Soccer Fans

Abstract: PARIS — The police raided dozens of sites across Belgium and brought in 40 people for questioning in an operation to interrupt a terrorist plot to attack fans gathering to watch a televised soccer match between the Belgian and Irish national teams, government officials said on Saturday. Three Belgians were charged with an attempt to commit terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group, the Belgian federal prosecutors’ office said. The others brought in for questioning were released by Saturday evening. Prime Minister Charles Michel did not provide specifics in his comments after an emergency national security meeting. But Justice Minister Koen Geens and Deputy Prime Minister Kris Peeters, questioned by the Flemish broadcaster VRT, confirmed that the police had learned of a plot to attack fans gathering to watch the game Saturday on large screens in Brussels’s squares or at bars. The police did not turn up guns or explosives, a statement said, and spectators watched the game without incident. Belgium won the game, 3-0, in Bordeaux, France. The scale of the raids and arrests, three months after the attacks in Brussels that killed 32 people, suggested in part that the Belgian authorities were working to dispel doubts about their dedication to rooting out potential terrorists. It also suggested that they believed they were in a race to prevent attacks. An earlier statement from the prosecutors’ office on Saturday said the situation required “immediate intervention.” Investigations are continuing into the Brussels attacks on March 22 and those in and around Paris in November, which killed 130 people and wounded hundreds. The plot to attack soccer fans, however, did not appear to be related directly to the Paris and Brussels attacks. Video The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, said on Saturday that the threat of terrorism was real but that the authorities were working diligently to prevent it. Credit Credit Francois Lenoir/Reuters The prosecutors’ office identified each of the three arrested suspects by his given name and an initial for his surname: Samir C., 27; Moustapha B., 40; and Jawad B., 29. Before the raids Friday night, the most recent terror-related detention in Belgium had come earlier in the week, when federal prosecutors announced the detention and investigation of a man identified as Youssef E. A., 30, in connection with the March attacks in Brussels. He was charged on Friday with “participation in a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted terrorist murders as a perpetrator, co-perpetrator or accomplice.” This month, another man, Ali E. H. A., 31, was similarly charged. The broadness of the charges in both cases suggests that the authorities have yet to determine what role the two men may have played. After the Paris attacks, the Belgian authorities were accused of being insufficiently vigilant when it emerged that the attacks had been planned in Belgium and that the explosives had been manufactured there. Most of the attackers were Belgian or French citizens. Adding to the pressure on the Belgian authorities was information disseminated this month by the Belgian Coordinating Body for Threat Analysis. That government body, which evaluates intelligence and other terrorism-related information, sent an alert to the police saying extremists who had fought in Syria were headed for Belgium and France . While the warning was based on “raw intelligence,” according to the Belgian authorities, its wide distribution to police services and its leak to a Belgian French-language newspaper suggested that it was being taken very seriously. In the course of questioning detainees thought to be connected to the Paris and Brussels attacks, investigators in Belgium have picked up several references to the possibility of attacks during the Euro 2016 soccer tournament in France, which lasts through July 10. Both France and Belgium are on high alert. Meanwhile, in the case of a police officer and his female companion who were stabbed to death in France on Monday night, the prosecutors’ office announced that it had opened an investigation and placed two people in preventive detention: Charaf-Din Aberouz and Saad Rajraji. Both men had been sentenced along with the presumed killer of the couple — Larossi Abballa, who was fatally shot — in a 2013 terrorism case but were released from prison. They are facing preliminary charges of participation in a terrorist group that intended to commit one or many crimes.

Belgium
Terrorism
Brussels
Brussels Attacks


Renovating With Profit in Mind? It Just Might Not Pay

Abstract: When Mike McDonald and Jill Martenson bought their little Craftsman house on Locksley Street in Oakland, Calif., in 1999 for $325,000, the couple knew it needed a lot of work. "It was the worst house on the block," Mr. McDonald said. He and his wife pulled off the vinyl siding, threw away the plastic shutters and stripped layers of paint off the interior Douglas fir woodwork. Then they rebuilt the front porch, reshingled the house, rewired it, added copper plumbing, a bedroom and two bathrooms. Their kitchen remodeling included trendy concrete countertops and cherry cabinets. Mr. McDonald said he was not quite sure of the exact cost of the six-year project but that it was probably around $300,000. This month they sold the house for $1.15 million, $155,000 over the asking price. "Whether it is the hot real estate market or my brilliance, I don't know," he said. The funny thing is, no one else really does either. In the last 12 months, American homeowners spent about $155 billion on remodeling, an increase of more than 4 percent over the previous 12-month period, despite rising interest rates, said Kermit Baker, senior research fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Yet Mr. Baker and other experts say there is little research into the returns that American homeowners get on that investment. The most widely quoted figures come from a construction trade magazine, Remodeling, with a circulation of 80,480. Every year, it publishes the Cost vs. Value Report, an estimate of the cost of various projects in 58 cities balanced against estimates of how much those projects increased the value of a house. Last November's report, which also appeared in the December issue of Realtor magazine, said a minor kitchen remodeling would cost $14,913 and return 98.5 percent of that investment when the house was sold. Adding a midrange master bedroom suite, with a walk-in closet and dressing area as well as a bathroom, would cost $73,370, with only 82.4 percent of that being recouped. A modest bathroom redo, costing $10,499, could earn back 102.2 percent of the investment, Remodeling said. The magazine acknowledged that the projections of return on investment were reliable only on the broadest regional or national level. The estimates for its return-on-investment data come from a survey of about 1,600 real estate agents and appraisers. That is a reliable sample size, but it is often too small to provide reliable estimates on a city level, said Grant Farnsworth, president of Specpan, the Indianapolis company that manages the survey. Mr. Baker said researchers at the Harvard center "threw up their hands" after trying to determine the return on investment of remodeling projects. "How a bathroom renovation affects value depends on a lot of things that are hard to quantify," he said. "To do it well, you need neighborhood level estimates, but that would be very difficult." Consider, for instance, the question of adding a bathroom. The Remodeling magazine report estimates that it would cost $22,977, with a 86.4 percent return, at best. But agents may say that a house with one bathroom in a neighborhood where two bathrooms is the norm is at a disadvantage when the house goes on the market. Mr. Baker said that the homeowner might then see a good return on the investment by making the house competitive. But, he said, someone adding a third bathroom to a house in that neighborhood might get little return. You could call that keeping up with the Joneses, but it is an essential rule of remodeling, architects and remodeling contractors said. "I encourage people to think about what the mainstream is doing," said Mark G. Richardson, president of Case Design/Remodeling, one of the largest firms in the country. "Your tastes may be a liability." What the Remodeling magazine data shows is just how few projects yield a positive rate of return. Of the 22 projects it analyzed, only two -- an upper-range siding replacement and the modest bathroom remodeling -- would make money. That suggests that remodeling projects ought to be regarded not as a creator of value, but as a consumer product, like a car or purse, that appeals to taste and style. Consumers usually don't think about a financial return when they make those purchases. "Do the renovations you want and don't worry too much about resale," advised Mr. McDonald, who now does remodeling for others. "Someone will appreciate your fantastic kitchen, and you get to enjoy it in the meantime." How quirky a redesign should be depends on how long the homeowner plans to live in the house. Speculators, or those who intend to stay in a house a short time, will tend to do remodeling jobs that maximize their returns -- installing granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, for example. People who intend to live in a house for decades can feel safer designing a more personalized project because they will derive nonmonetary value from it. Those who want to satisfy their eccentricities might consider hiring a designer. The trend among remodeling contractors for the last decade has been to join forces with an architect or designer. The homeowner may have to pay at least 10 percent of the cost of the project upfront on planning, but design and building firms lay out a convincing case for why it pays off. Selecting as many of the finishes, appliances and fixtures early with the designer may cut down on costly change orders. Designers, working with the contractor, can often see possibilities that homeowners cannot, like a wall that may be removed. Expanding a kitchen out into other rooms can be cheaper and take less time than adding onto the house because there are fewer permits and objections from neighbors. Working with a designer, the contractor has less room to argue that a sloping floor or the need for additional lighting was not foreseen. Another advantage of spending on design upfront is that the renovation can be planned for construction in phases. That way, a contractor can do the hard work and leave the rest for the determined do-it-yourselfer or the time when more money becomes available. Getting the money is not as easy as it was even a year ago. As interest rates fell and home prices appreciated, homeowners could borrow money against the increased value of their homes or just take out cash in a refinancing. But the rates on home equity loans and home equity lines of credit, usually tied to the prime rate, have gone up faster than mortgage rates. Bankrate reports that the rate on a home equity line of credit is about 7.5 percent, while a 30-year fixed mortgage is bumping up against 6.1 percent. Refinancing is probably not an option, because a new mortgage would most likely come with a higher interest rate. And many remodeling companies dislike projects with construction loans because it injects one more meddler, the bank, into the process. So they may charge more for the annoyance. That does not leave a lot of good alternatives other than fixed-rate home equity loans. But lenders are hungry for this business and it is possible to find a good deal. Low interest rates, and the opportunities they gave Americans to refinance homes and extract cash, fueled the remodeling boom. Mr. Richardson of Case, based in Bethesda, Md., said the rising rates might not lower the demand enough to reduce the costs of a renovation. "People who would have moved into a new home stick with their old house and invest in it," he said. But once homeowners decide to renovate, delaying the project will only cost more money, he warned. Costs have been going up 7 percent to 10 percent a year in many regions of the country. "I don't see that changing," Mr. Richardson said.

HOUSING
REMODELING
RESTORATION AND REHABILITATION


Most Global Exchanges Close for Good Friday

Abstract: The few Asian stock markets that traded Friday mostly advanced, with shares in Tokyo and Shanghai up and Seoul stocks slightly lower. Markets in Europe, the United States and most of Asia were closed in observance of Good Friday. There also were no settlements for crude oil futures. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.7 percent to 17,002.75, and China’s Shanghai Composite Index traded 0.6 percent higher at 2,979.43. South Korea’s Kospi edged down 0.1 percent at 1,983.81.


PBS to Stream Live Coverage of Miami Book Fair

Abstract: PBS is venturing into territory that C-Span’s Book TV has previously had largely to itself, with plans to stream live coverage of three days of Miami Dade College’s Miami Book Fair International in November. C-Span has been a partner since the fair’s inception in 1984, but its focus is on nonfiction. PBS envisions something broader, what producers describe as Olympic-style coverage of the extensive event. It runs Nov. 16 to 23 and will feature more than 500 authors, with attendance expected to top 200,000. Jeffrey Brown, culture correspondent of “PBS NewsHour,” and the author Kelly Corrigan will host, jumping from any one of the dozen-plus simultaneous live events to taped interviews and conversations in the studio. Authors as diverse as the novelists Richard Ford and Emma Straub, the young adult author Judy Blume, the musician Questlove and the poet Mark Strand will be included. The book industry has not “always been as aggressive about creating a media opportunity around their business,” said Rich Fahle, the executive producer of the PBS coverage, who previously worked on Book TV’s introduction and at Borders, the book retailer. “We were looking for something a little bit different, with more energy,” he said, adding that the fair was “an amazing collection of people and stories in one place.” Surveys show a high correlation between book buyers and public media consumers, said Rich Homberg, chief executive of Detroit Public Television, which developed the idea and is producing the coverage, supported in large part with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. “Our audience loves ideas, they love books,” he said. Mitchell Kaplan, a co-founder of the book fair, said the fair “jumped on it” when Detroit Public Television broached the idea. He said organizers hoped to work with the American Booksellers Association to make some of the coverage available for independent booksellers’ websites. PBS.org, local station websites and BookViewNow.org, among others, will stream the live webcast, from 4 to 9 p.m. Nov. 21 and noon to 6 p.m. Nov. 22 and 23. World Channel will broadcast half-hour daily highlight programs on three evenings. All coverage will be archived and made available afterward on demand through PBS’s video apps, as well as on the websites. Ira Rubenstein, senior vice president for PBS Digital, said he expected audiences in the thousands, not hundreds of thousands, for the live streams, but once “you cut it up and archive it on demand, that’s where you’ll see continued growth and use of it.”

PBS
Miami
Books
TV
Miami Dade College
Miami Book Fair International
Publishing
Writer


Bolivian President Concedes Defeat in Term-Limit Referendum

Abstract: ORURO, Bolivia — President Evo Morales, facing mounting pressure to concede defeat in a referendum that would have allowed him to run for a fourth term, accepted the loss Wednesday but said he would use the remaining years of his presidency to advance his Socialist-inspired agenda. “We will respect the results,” the president said in a televised statement Wednesday. “The important thing is to salute the Bolivian people for their democratic will.” Yet Mr. Morales, whose term does not end until 2020, reminded supporters and opponents alike that he remained their president — and would vigorously promote his left-wing movement that since 2006 has transformed the country by redistributing its natural gas wealth and seeking greater inclusion for its indigenous majority. “We still had half of voters supporting us,” he said. Still, the results mark a shift in the political fortunes of Mr. Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, who won three previous elections by large margins . On Sunday, voters were asked to approve changes to the Constitution that would allow him to stay in office until 2025 if he kept winning elections. With 99 percent of ballots counted by Tuesday, Bolivia’s election officials said the measure had failed by 51 percent to 49 percent. Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue , a policy institute in Washington, said that while Mr. Morales came into office as a popular outsider, “now Evo is the establishment, the elite.” Video President Evo Morales of Bolivia accepted his defeat on Wednesday in a referendum that would have let him run for a fourth term. Credit Credit Aizar Raldes/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Leading up to the vote, Mr. Morales found himself on the defense over multiple issues, including a scandal involving a child born out of wedlock and accusations of corruption at a fund for development of native communities. And some of the indigenous groups that had secured his rise turned against him. Mr. Morales had been known for traveling on foot and playing soccer with voters, but more recently that Everyman image seemed to be fading. On a visit on Tuesday to Sica Sica, a small town in western Bolivia, to dedicate a sports arena, the president arrived by helicopter guarded by scores of soldiers. Afterward, guards rushed him to a waiting S.U.V., knocking over two indigenous women who were trying greet him. In the vote, Mr. Morales lost support among young people like Braulio Laura García, a 20-year-old industrial engineering student who remembers no president before Mr. Morales. “I don’t like that he’s created a monopoly on power; he controls everything,” said Mr. García, who lives in El Alto, a large city that city that sits above the administrative capital, La Paz. Mr. García said many of his friends who were looking for work in the government, a large employer in Bolivia, had been pressured to join Mr. Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism, or been asked if they carried identification cards the group issued. Though the referendum represents a rejection of Mr. Morales, no one else on Bolivia’s political stage has anything approaching his high profile. “There is no alternative leader who has the force of Evo Morales,” said Ludwig Valverde, a political scientist in La Paz. “But this result provides the chance for new leaders to emerge and, eventually, new ideas.” In the days after the vote, aides to Mr. Morales refused to concede. But Wednesday, after some protests in the capital and pressure from Organization of American States election observers, the president took a different tone. “This is a small battle that we’ve lost,” he said. “An insignificant battle after a tremendous campaign against us.”

Bolivia
Referendum
Evo Morales
Socialism
Term limit


Marbury Accepts Role. Big Deal, Coach Says.

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y. — Even when he is falling into line, Stephon Marbury cannot help but draw attention to himself. Marbury’s relationship with the Knicks has been troubled over the past few years, to say the least. Amid the headline-grabbing outbursts and extended bouts of sulking that became an emblem of the Isiah Thomas era, he made his feelings about spending time on the bench quite clear. He would rather be in a different city than on New York’s sideline. But in the last two days, he changed his tune, saying that he had no problem coming off the bench if it helped the team. “I just think that going forward, to limit the distractions and just concentrate on basketball, that’s the most important thing,” Marbury said Tuesday after practice, repeating comments that appeared in Tuesday’s New York Post. Every time he speaks publicly, however, Marbury seems to create fresh distractions. Mike D’Antoni, running his first preseason as the Knicks’ coach, said he could not understand why Marbury’s change of attitude warranted attention. In a thinly veiled jab at Marbury, D’Antoni told reporters: “For you all, that’s big news. For me, that’s how everybody should act.” “I’m really proud that he did that,” he added, referring to Marbury. “But it shouldn’t be newsworthy. To do the right thing should never make the news.” If doing the right thing means accepting a place on the bench, then it seems as if Marbury will have plenty of opportunities to do it this season. Although Marbury, 31, is a more talented option at guard, D’Antoni appears set to hand the starting role to Chris Duhon for the Knicks’ first preseason game Wednesday night in Toronto. “It takes a lot for a guy who’s been starting his whole career to say something like that,” said Duhon, who joined the Knicks as a free agent in July. “I don’t know what the whole situation is with who is starting and all that, but knowing that he’s on the same page with us makes everything feel great.” During practice, Marbury wore one of the white jerseys usually reserved for the starters, but worked with the first team only in three-guard sets alongside Duhon and Jamal Crawford. How Marbury will fit into D’Antoni’s new up-tempo system may be the immediate concern. But how Marbury fits into the organization — and whether he will even have a place in it as the season unfolds — has been the overarching concern for some time. The Knicks owe Marbury $22 million for the final year of his contract, and Donnie Walsh, the new Knicks president, has appeared reluctant to waive him. Marbury’s new show of team spirit could make that decision harder. “Whatever role they want me to play,” Marbury said, “that’s what I’m going to play.” REBOUNDS Jerome James’s teammates jokingly congratulated him over the weekend for making it through the first week of camp unscathed. But with James having a strained left quadriceps, they will not be doing the same this weekend. James signed a five-year, $29 million contract in 2005, but has made only 20 starts in the last three seasons. None of those came last season, when he had just two appearances.

Basketball
Marbury Stephon
New York Knicks


A Frozen, Fertile Ground for Developing Tennis Players

Abstract: COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Following tennis usually means chasing summer, with players training on sunbaked courts in Florida and California and traveling the globe in search of sunshine. But some of the most fertile soil for cultivating tennis talent is not known for palm trees. Junior Tennis Champions Center in suburban Washington, tucked just inside the Beltway, has proved itself a national leader in year-round training in the sport despite patches of snow that stubbornly cling to the edges of the facility’s driveway. “It’s kind of lazy thinking, that it’s in a cold-weather location, so it cannot work,” said Vesa Ponkka, a native of Finland and the center’s director of tennis. “We choose to look at it as, if the training is good, training is good. It doesn’t matter if the sun is shining outside or if we just have good lighting systems inside.” With 15 indoor courts at the center complementing 17 outdoor ones, Ponkka has led a group of coaches in harvesting local tennis talent, rather than trying to cull the best from around the country and the world. “We are not looking at bringing in someone from Europe and then taking credit for him,” Ponkka said. “We are trying to find kids when they are really young, and then we really invest our time and resources.” The center was founded in 1999 by the investment banker Ken Brody. His investments allowed the center to operate as a nonprofit, which has helped attract athletes who otherwise would not be able to have elite training. Ray Benton, the center’s chief executive since 2008, said that his ultimate goal was “filling every empty tennis court” in America and that he immediately supported Brody’s vision. “I like people who have ambitious, audacious ideas,” Benton said. “And I thought it would be really good for the sport.” Benton added that Brody’s finances gave the operation a flexibility and an autonomy that were enabling and exacting. “Do we have more freedom of choice here?” Benton said. “Absolutely, which is a big plus — if you’re making the right choices.” The player who best embodies the center’s inclusiveness and emphasis on the area has also proved to be one of its most successful. Francis Tiafoe, who turns 16 this month, spent much of his childhood residing in a room at the center while his father worked there as a maintenance man. Watching practice sessions when he was younger, Tiafoe became mesmerized by players like Denis Kudla of Arlington, Va., who is now on the ATP Tour and who cracked the top 100 for the first time in 2013, and Mitchell Frank of Vienna, Va., who won the decisive match for Virginia in the N.C.A.A. team final last spring. Tiafoe, who participated in on-court programs as well, has risen through the junior ranks. In December, he became the youngest boys’ singles champion in the 67-year history of the prestigious Orange Bowl junior tournament in Plantation, Fla. “Without this place, I probably could just be a regular kid, going to a regular school, doing what a regular 15-year-old would do,” Tiafoe said. “But with all the stuff they’ve helped me with, I’m doing not the ordinary. This place means a lot to me.” Ponkka, the center’s director of tennis, said, “There are so many people in the organization who have helped him over the years that, if he ever goes and wins a big tournament and he has to make a thank-you speech, you know, it’s going to be like a phone book.” Misha Kouznetsov, a former collegiate player in Baltimore, has coached Tiafoe since he was 8. Kouznetsov stressed that the continuity he had working with Tiafoe was a major advantage of the center’s setup. In the United States Tennis Association model, Kouznetsov said, “The coaches work at one age group for maybe one year or two, and then the next coach takes it for one year or two, and then another coach.” “So you could be there for six years with six different guys, and there’s not as much passion and involvement and there’s not as much consistency,” he said. “Here, we work together maybe 80 percent of the time, and then he’s in the clinics doing live ball, playing matches, the rest, and then doing fitness or schoolwork.” Tiafoe said he also enjoyed the relative seclusion of training in Maryland, north of the fray of Florida academies. “You’re not worried about what someone is doing on the next court,” he said. “No one is near you; you’re just worried about yourself.” Older players have also honed their skills at the center. Alison Riske, 23, a Pittsburgh native ranked 57th in the world, spent much of her off-season training there. “I’m so impressed by Francis,” said Riske, who has practiced with Tiafoe on occasion. “That is one kid who loves the game more than anyone I’ve ever met. I think it’s so cool.” Riske said she was especially impressed by Tiafoe’s return to training after his triumph at the Orange Bowl. “He got back Sunday night, and he was out here Monday morning,” she said. “And I said, ‘Wow, that’s a champion.’ ” Tiafoe said of the Orange Bowl: “If you really look down at the champions, there are some champions that have won that tournament that I’ve never heard of. And I don’t want to be that guy, especially now that I’m the youngest to win it.” Tiafoe is also determined to finish high school and does his schoolwork in a classroom tucked into the garret of the clubhouse. “I never try to get ahead of myself because there’s nothing that bothers me more than cockiness,” he said. “I don’t think that’s necessary at all. If anything, you just let your racket talk — there’s no reason for you to talk if your racket can.”


Italy: 31 Charged in Illegal Immigration Ring

Abstract: Three months after violent race riots shook the Southern Italian city of Rosarno, Italian authorities on Monday broke up an illegal immigration ring in the area, arresting 31 people from Italy and North Africa and seizing 20 businesses and farmland valued at $13.3 million. Prosecutors in Calabria said that middlemen, most from North Africa, had procured immigrants for Italian landowners, who paid them wages as low as $33 a day to work in the fields. The arrests were not directly tied to the riots, in which about 50 people were wounded, but authorities said the illegal immigration ring contributed to the tensions in the area. In January, the police arrested eight people for inciting the riots, but human rights groups have criticized Italian authorities for not making more arrests.

Italy
Illegal Immigrants
Immigration and Emigration


Rocker of the Rockaways

Abstract: “Just let me put on my Rockaway tuxedo,” said Simon Chardiet, musician, surfer and defender of old-school Rock, Rock, Rockaway Beach , as he grabbed a wet suit draped over the fence of his bungalow. Soon he was covered from neck to toe in black rubber, and carrying his 10-foot-long surfboard on his shoulder across the Rockaway Freeway, headed toward the beach to catch some waves on Tuesday morning. Few welcome the approach of summer more than Mr. Chardiet, 55, who suffered through another cruel coastal winter in the Rockaways with only the good, uncrowded winter waves as comfort. But now he is back out on the boardwalk on a section that was rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy, near Beach 87th Street. He can be seen, especially when the surf is lame, playing his upright bass on the boardwalk, strumming his guitar on the beach or rocking out with one of his several bands at the boardwalk food stands. A few blocks from the ocean, next to the elevated A train, Mr. Chardiet lives in a studio apartment in the rear of a long bungalow, with his vintage guitars, amplifiers and bass fiddles, and a clothes rack of wet suits and leather and denim jackets. He keeps busy teaching and performing, often with his longest-running band, Simon and the Bar Sinisters , a stalwart of New York bars since 1991. Mr. Chardiet’s style runs from surf guitar to blues to rockabilly, not to mention punk and bebop. Mr. Chardiet said he began playing in bars at age 14 and fell in with the Lower East Side punk and rock scene, often working as a bike messenger to scrape by. “I did everything on the street level,” he said in his apartment as his cat — a stray that Mr. Chardiet adopted and named Dee Dee, after the Ramones’ bassist, Dee Dee Ramone — strolled through. Mr. Chardiet recalled jamming with Mr. Ramone, as well as with many other prominent rockers. Mr. Chardiet has lived all over this town, from the Lower East Side to Williamsburg to Bushwick, always trying to keep a step ahead of the gentrification, he said. He began surfing as a youngster after finding a board in the trash on Long Island. He would often surf in the Rockaways before settling there in 2002. He instantly felt at home in the area, where civil servant homeowners mix with residents of housing projects, where there is a surf culture but also the occasional gunshot, where the territorial locals gradually adopted him as their resident beatnik. “Parts of Rockaway are still like old New York, at least when the hipsters aren’t around,” said Mr. Chardiet, touching upon one of his refrains: mocking the summer influx of the artisanal-food-loving set, who show up with their beards and new tattoos from trendy-artsy sections of Brooklyn. Actually, he clarified, he hates no one, but he simply cannot abide posers and trust-funders — “People who think, just because they have money, they’re better than you.” By now, he has come to make peace with the hipsters on his boardwalk, especially because they now make up much of the audience for his beachside gigs. His real fear is that gentrification might sanitize tough old Rockaway, he said, pulling out a hand-painted leather vest that commanded yuppies and hipsters to bug off, only in less gentle language. After all, where were the hipsters when Hurricane Sandy approached, and he was defying police orders and paddling out to ride the storm surf? “Once I paddled out, it was all cops and firemen surfing out there anyway, so I said, ‘I guess I’m O.K.,’ ” said Mr. Chardiet, who later safely stowed most of his instruments and escaped rising floodwaters in his bungalow by squeezing out of his bathroom window. He paused only to grab two essentials: his classical guitar and a book of Bach partitas. “I ain’t going nowhere without a guitar — are you crazy?” he said, adding that he holed up in a taller building next door and soothed himself by playing Bach as the storm raged. After his Tuesday morning surf session, he stripped off the wet suit, grabbed his upright bass and walked it barefoot in the street, back to the beach. Neighbors honked hello, and on the boardwalk, people stopped him to chat. He reminded everyone of his gig on Memorial Day at the Rippers concession stand on the Boardwalk and Beach 86th Street, with his surf-rock band the Supertones. And he is playing there with the Bar Sinisters on June 7. As he played his bass on the boardwalk, a man collecting bottles and cans stopped and pulled out a harmonica, and jammed a few numbers. “Rockaway is my heart and soul,” Mr. Chardiet said. “I have to be by the ocean or I can’t live.”

Simon Chardiet
Surfing
Rockaway Peninsula Queens
Music