9/11 Health Fund to Get Overseer Soon

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is nearing the appointment of a special master to administer a multibillion-dollar fund created to provide financial compensation for rescue workers and others who became sick from toxic fumes, dust and smoke from ground zero after the 2001 attack, according to Congressional officials who are monitoring the deliberations. Among those being considered is R. Blake Chisam, a former staff director for the House Ethics Committee who served as the chief prosecutor in the House proceedings that found Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of Harlem, guilty of ethical violations. Mr. Chisam has the support of a cross section of emergency workers, relatives of 9/11 victims and lawmakers who pushed the legislation that reopened the fund, known as the Sept. 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Before his involvement in the Rangel case, Mr. Chisam, a Democrat, was a lawyer for a House committee that helped develop the compensation fund program. The special master will have far-reaching powers. The master will be the final judge of how to distribute at least $2.8 billion in compensation to people who say they have developed illnesses after being exposed to toxic dust and debris at ground zero. In addition, the special master will play a major role in writing the rules and procedures for the program, will supervise the fund’s staff and will personally approve the size of individual compensation packages. “Appointing a special master will be a key step toward implementing the 9/11 health bill,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat from New York and a main sponsor of the bill creating the program. “This is a vitally important position. We need someone who will run a compassionate and efficient program for those who were injured by the toxins at ground zero.” While many details of the program must still be worked out, the legislation that established the fund provides significant guidelines. Anyone who files a claim with the fund, for example, must waive the right to sue any entities that ran the rescue, recovery and cleanup efforts at ground zero, including private contractors and the City of New York. Moreover, claimants cannot appeal the fund’s decisions. Congress approved the compensation program in December after years of fierce lobbying and debate. Republicans had objected to the costs of the program, while supporters argued that the country had a moral obligation to act. The bill was named after James Zadroga, a New York detective who took part in the rescue efforts at ground zero and later developed breathing complications. He died in 2006. In addition to setting aside $2.8 billion to reopen for five years the compensation fund set up for 9/11 victims, the law provides $1.4 billion over the same period to monitor and treat injuries stemming from exposure to toxic dust and debris at ground zero. The monitoring program calls for periodic reviews that would allow for a broader definition of what qualifies as a 9/11-related illness. For example, there is relatively little evidence linking cancer to the dust and smoke that swirled around ground zero. But should medical data emerge demonstrating such a link, people with those cancers will be eligible for coverage. Several groups and agencies, including the State Department of Health, are conducting studies looking at cancer deaths among emergency workers at ground zero. Last month, the main sponsors of the legislation — including Ms. Maloney and two other New York Democrats, Representative Jerrold Nadler and Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand — met with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his staff, who indicated that the guidelines for people to apply to the compensation fund could be outlined as early as September, in time for the 10th anniversary of the attack, according to one senior Congressional official. The naming of a special master, who is appointed by the attorney general, is expected to be made in the next few weeks, according to Congressional officials closely monitoring the situation. In addition to Mr. Chisam, the Justice Department is looking at several other people for the job, according to those officials. They include Sheila L. Birnbaum, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, who specializes in tort law, and Jay Lefkowitz, a lawyer who was general counsel in the Office of Management and Budget, who helped set up the original fund.

James Zadroga 9-11 Health and Compensation Act


Lobbies Adopt Tone of Accord With President

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Top lobbyists for the banking industry were gathered in a war council. The Obama administration had proposed big changes in financial industry oversight, including a consumer protection commission and regulation of some executives’ paychecks. The lobbyists listened to presentations from big Washington public affairs firms ready to deploy arsenals including television commercials and direct-mail campaigns. But at the end of the meeting, the lobbyists publicly opted to emphasize, if with caveats, their industry’s backing of President Obama ’s broader call for reform. Steve Bartlett, president of the Financial Services Roundtable and a participant in the discussion, said in an interview, “This administration has reminded us of the lesson our mother taught us: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” And so it goes the length of K Street. Industry groups and lobbyists typically hostile to intrusive government programs have been professing solidarity with Mr. Obama and his agenda on matters like health care, energy and financial regulation . Industry has calculated that it stands a better chance of achieving its ends by negotiating with the White House than by fighting it — at least publicly, and at least until the various proposals get down to the final details. For partisans who are more ideological, the parade of industry lobbyists trooping to the White House is unnerving. Conservatives fret that to avoid a messy fight, their business allies are selling out too cheaply, while liberals voice the same worry about the White House and its Congressional supporters. Some lobbyists argue that all the “kumbaya,” as several called it, may be reaching its final chorus, for instance with banks’ efforts to redirect the regulatory overhaul. “We have sort of a dual goal,” Mr. Bartlett said. “One is to support comprehensive reform, and the other is to kill the consumer financial protection commission.” In any case, the administration’s emphasis on inviting in business lobbyists has arguably changed the way Washington does business as much as any of the White House’s new rules intended to shut them out. “The Obama people have very skillfully said, ‘Hey, we are working on this, and if you want a seat at the table you can’t be out there throwing rocks at us,’ ” said Doug Goodyear, chief executive of DCI Group , a corporate public affairs firm. “And that has restrained large corporations or trade associations from waging full-scale campaigns.” In the last two weeks, the American Medical Association has endorsed the House’s version of the health care overhaul, and lobbyists for pharmaceutical companies and for-profit hospitals have stood with the White House to pledge billions in cost cuts so long as the proposed public health insurance program does not threaten to undercut them. The drug companies are even underwriting television commercials supporting an overhaul. Lobbyists for coal-powered electric utilities say they are backing House emissions-cap legislation as it moves to the Senate, so long as they can perhaps loosen the caps a bit and retain subsidies that the House provided to win their support. Lockheed Martin publicly washed its hands of any lobbying to save its F-22 fighter jet contract from Pentagon cuts, then watched as its unions, subcontractors and Congressional allies persuaded House committees to restore the plane. (The White House is threatening a veto.) And Wall Street firms insist that they welcome more oversight, so long as it does not cramp their profits or involve checks on compensation. Conservatives complain that the support for “reform” deprives them of firepower. “Disgusting,” said Amy Menefee of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity . Ms. Menefee’s organization recently announced a $1.2 million advertising campaign against the health care overhaul, but she said none of that campaign’s cost was being paid by the industry. Similarly, Patrick Creighton, a spokesman for the oil-industry-backed American Energy Alliance , said that group had been unable to finance a full assault on the greenhouse-gas emissions limits. The alliance wound up spending only about $200,000, for radio commercials in 10 districts, before the bill passed the House, Mr. Creighton said. “Why didn’t the floodgates open?” he said. Because “a lot of industry was at the table looking for their cutouts and carve-outs” — that is, special treatment. Liberals, meanwhile, say they fear that the White House and Democratic Congressional leaders are conceding too much. The House emissions bill, for example, gave away as sweeteners about 85 percent of the emissions permits that Mr. Obama had proposed to sell at auction. Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona and co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the emissions bill a cautionary lesson for the health care fight. “Collaboration can turn into concessions,” said Mr. Grijalva, who recently sent the president a letter saying the caucus feared accepting conditions in exchange for the support of hospitals or drug makers. The conciliatory tone on K Street has combined with the recession to tamp down lobbying firms’ revenue. Total reported lobbying spending was about $789 million in the first quarter, roughly flat from the corresponding period last year. Health industry spending rose about 10 percent, to some $126 million, but financial industry spending fell about 7 percent, to $110 million. And even in the face of a major overhaul of the Pentagon’s budget, spending by the defense industry dropped a bit, to roughly $30 million. “The issues are more complicated,” said Charles M. Campion, a founder of the public affairs firm Dewey Square Group, “but the budgets are smaller.” Certain lobbyists with strong Democratic connections have bucked the revenue tide, though. The Podesta Group , whose chairman, Tony Podesta, is a top Democratic fund-raiser and the brother of the Obama administration’s transition chief, John D. Podesta, reported that first-quarter lobbying fees were up 60 percent, to $5.4 million, from $3.4 million a year ago. At the firm of Steve Elmendorf , a longtime aide to Richard A. Gephardt, a former House Democratic leader, fees jumped nearly 24 percent, to about $1.6 million. Mr. Elmendorf said he encouraged clients to work with the administration. “Look at the landscape,” he tells them, “and realize the Democrats will control the White House, House and Senate for at least four years.” Republican lobbyists say they are growing tired with the talk about shared goals. “How do you oppose such a popular president, especially when he has a style that seems so inviting and sensible?” said Ed Rogers, a Reagan administration official whose lobbying firm, BGR Group , reported a 13 percent decline in first-quarter fees, to about $4.1 million. “A lot of the typical industry players that would, on paper, be against these initiatives,” Mr. Rogers said, “have been in part co-opted and in part intimidated by the administration.”

United States Politics and Government
Lobbying and Lobbyists
Law and Legislation
Reform and Reorganization
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry
Obama Barack


Joshua Lederberg, 82, a Nobel Winner, Dies

Abstract: Joshua Lederberg, one of the 20th century’s leading scientists, whose work in bacterial genetics had vast medical implications and led to his receiving a Nobel Prize in 1958, died on Saturday. He was 82 and lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Rockefeller University, where Dr. Lederberg was university professor and president emeritus, announced his death on Monday, saying the cause was pneumonia. A prodigy as a youth, Dr. Lederberg was 33 when he won the Nobel for Physiology or Medicine for discovering that bacteria can mate and exchange genes. He was one of the youngest Nobelists, sharing the 1958 prize with Edward L. Tatum and George Beadle for their discovery at Stanford in the 1940s that genes act by regulating specific chemical processes. Dr. Lederberg’s discovery that bacteria engage in sex created new understandings of how bacteria evolve and acquire new traits, including resistance to antibiotic drugs. A founder of the field of molecular biology, he helped lay the foundations for many biological revolutions, including biotechnology. Dr. Lederberg moved in diverse worlds. A brilliant analyst and visionary, he led early inquiries into the possibility of computer intelligence, theorized about alien life in distant galaxies and advised American presidents for a half century. He also wrote a weekly newspaper column, “Science and Man.” His ideas were often decades ahead of the conventional wisdom. He was also a dedicated educator, working in administrative posts at the University of Wisconsin, as well as at Stanford and Rockefeller and taking an interest in helping and developing young scientists. “He was a very broad ranging, open-minded, curious scientist who loved to look into new territory and find scouts who would come with him to explore,” said David A. Hamburg, a president emeritus of the Carnegie Corporation and past president of the Institute of Medicine in Washington. “That was the pattern of his career. “He was one of the great scientists of the 20th century. I know that’s a strong statement, but it’s justified.” Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science magazine in Washington and a former colleague of Dr. Lederberg’s at Stanford, said that on Dr. Lederberg’s arrival at the school nearly a half century ago, “he was already a hero, the most important founder of bacterial genetics and microbiology.” Dr. Lederberg was born May 23, 1925, in Montclair, N.J., to Zvi Hirsch Lederberg, a rabbi, and the former Esther Goldenbaum, who had emigrated from what is now Israel two years earlier. His family moved to the Washington Heights section of Manhattan when he was 6 months old. After graduating from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan in 1941 at 15, he went to Columbia and studied zoology, receiving a bachelor’s with honors at 19. He then went to medical school at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia. In 1943, he enrolled in a special Navy medical training program, working at St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens, examining servicemen returning from war in the Pacific for parasites that cause malaria. After two years in medical school, in the summer of 1944, Dr. Lederberg transferred to Yale and helped pioneer the field of bacterial genetics. He received his doctorate at Yale in 1947. At the time, scientists believed that bacteria reproduced asexually by dividing into genetically identical halves. But Dr. Lederberg found that bacteria possessed a genetic mechanism, called recombination, similar to that of higher organisms, including humans. It began with the transmission of genes from one bacterium to another. Dr. Lederberg left Yale in 1947 for the University of Wisconsin, where he continued to study bacterial genetics. He broke administrative ground by founding the department of medical genetics, helping doctors modernize their often outdated approach to disease. At Wisconsin, he also helped prove that genetic mutations occurred spontaneously, confirming a long-held belief of evolutionary studies. Dr. Lederberg was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1957 and was made a charter member of its Institute of Medicine. In 1959, he joined the Stanford School of Medicine, where he was chairman of the department of genetics and was a professor of biology and computer science, working on research in artificial intelligence, biochemistry and medicine. In 1978, he moved to Rockefeller as its fifth president, serving until June 1990. Regularly shuttling to Washington throughout his life, Dr. Lederberg advised a total nine White House administrations, according to Rockefeller University. On Dec. 15, 2006, in a White House ceremony, President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Dr. Lederberg began his federal advisory career in 1957, when he joined President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Science Advisory Committee, a panel of several leading scientists. The panel worked on nuclear arms control and other security questions. From 1966 to 1971, Dr. Lederberg wrote a weekly column for The Washington Post, commenting on science education, scientists’ role in society and divisive topics like population control, intelligence testing and regulating recombinant DNA technology. In a 1968 column, he accused policy makers of “blindness to the pace of biological advance and its accessibility to the most perilous genocidal experimentation.” In 1972, at Washington’s urging, most nations renounced germ warfare as immoral and repugnant. Something of a wordsmith, Dr. Lederberg coined the term exobiology, or the study of the possibility of alien life. He collaborated with the astronomer Carl Sagan in establishing exobiology as a scientific discipline and in educating the public on the biological implications of space exploration. With the dawn of the space age, his warnings about interstellar contamination and his call for the scientific study of life beyond Earth’s atmosphere tapped into popular fascination and brought him international attention. One account holds that Dr. Lederberg argued that the first astronauts returning from the Moon should spend weeks in quarantine — earning their fury — because of his worry that they might inadvertently import alien microbes. Among Dr. Lederberg’s many positions was being a member of the Advisory Committee for Medical Research of the World Health Organization. He was also elected a foreign member of the Royal Society, London; an honorary life member of the New York Academy of Sciences; and an honorary fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. In 1989, he received the U.S. National Medal of Science. The National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Md., has a sampling of his thousands of papers, letters and articles on a Web site, the Joshua Lederberg Papers at http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB /. His first marriage, to Esther Lederberg, ended in divorce in 1966; a microbiologist, she was a member of her husband’s research team in the early 1950s, and was credited with discovering a virus that invades bacteria and hides within its DNA, often emerging later to destroy its host. Dr. Lederberg is survived by his wife, Dr. Marguerite S. Lederberg; two children, Anne of New York, , and David Kirsch of Chevy Chase, Md.; and two grandchildren. From the start of the space age, Dr. Lederberg was fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He long advised NASA on how to operate its probes to avoid contaminating foreign bodies with terrestrial microbes, as well as accidentally bringing alien ones back to Earth. “He wanted NASA to take every safeguard,” Dr. Hamburg recalled. “They took him very seriously.”

Nobel Prizes
Bacteria
Lederberg Joshua
Genetics and Heredity
Deaths (Obituaries)
Biology and Biochemistry
Science and Technology


For U.S. Troops at War, Liquor Is Spur to Crime

Abstract: In May 2004, Specialist Justin J. Lillis got drunk on what he called “hajji juice,” a clear Iraqi moonshine smuggled onto an Army base in Balad, Iraq , by civilian contractors, and began taking potshots with his M-16 service rifle. “He shot up some contractor’s rental car,” said Phil Cave, a lawyer for Specialist Lillis, 24. “He hopped in a Humvee, drove around and shot up some more things. He shot into a housing area” and at soldiers guarding the base entrance. Six months later, at an Army base near Baghdad, after a night of drinking an illegal stash of whiskey and gin, Specialist Chris Rolan of the Third Brigade, Third Infantry Division, pulled his 9mm service pistol on another soldier and shot him dead. And in March 2006, in perhaps the most gruesome crime committed by American troops in Iraq, a group of 101st Airborne Division soldiers stationed in Mahmudiya raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her and her family after drinking several cans of locally made whiskey supplied by Iraqi Army soldiers, military prosecutors said. Alcohol, strictly forbidden by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan , is involved in a growing number of crimes committed by troops deployed to those countries. Alcohol- and drug-related charges were involved in more than a third of all Army criminal prosecutions of soldiers in the two war zones — 240 of the 665 cases resulting in convictions, according to records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request. Seventy-three of those 240 cases involve some of the most serious crimes committed, including murder, rape, armed robbery and assault. Sex crimes accounted for 12 of the convictions. The 240 cases involved a roughly equal number of drug and alcohol offenses, although alcohol-related crimes have increased each year since 2004. Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems. “It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of significant alcohol problems that are pervasive across the military,” said Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. He traces their drinking and drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The treatment that they take for it is the same treatment that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs.” The use of alcohol and drugs in war zones appears to reflect a broader trend toward heavier and more frequent drinking among all military personnel, but especially in the Army and Marine Corps, the two services doing most of the fighting, Pentagon officials and military health experts said. A Pentagon health study released in January, for instance, found that the rate of binge drinking in the Army shot up by 30 percent from 2002 to 2005, and “may signal an increasing pattern of heavy alcohol use in the Army.” While average rates of alcohol consumption in the Navy and Air Force have steadily declined since 1980, the year the military’s health survey began, they have significantly increased in the Army and Marine Corps and exceed civilian rates, the Pentagon study showed. For the first time since 1985, more than a quarter of all Army members surveyed said they regularly drink heavily, defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting. The rate of illicit drug use also increased among military members in 2005, to an estimated 5 percent, nearly double the rate measured in 1998, a trend that the study called “cause for concern.” The study also found other health problems in the military, from the growing popularity of chewing tobacco to a 20 percent increase during the past decade in service members who are considered overweight. Lynn Pahland, a director in the Pentagon’s Health Affairs office, said the rising rates of heavy drinking and illegal drug use among active-duty military personnel are particularly troubling inside the Defense Department. “It is very serious,” Ms. Pahland said in an interview. “It is a huge concern.” In the military, seeking help for psychological problems, including alcohol and drug abuse, is considered a taboo, especially among officers competing for promotions. Several officers interviewed for this article said the Pentagon was not doing enough to reduce that stigma. Though the Pentagon has spent millions of dollars on several initiatives to reverse the trend, including a new Web site that deglamorizes drinking, financing to combat alcohol abuse has fallen over time, a Pentagon spokesman said. Spending on programs to reduce alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity dropped to $7.74 million in the current fiscal year from $12.6 million in fiscal year 2005 — a 39 percent decline. Some military doctors and other mental health experts said the Army’s greater use of so-called moral waivers, which allow recruits with criminal records to enlist, may also be a factor in the increased drug and alcohol use. Getting liquor or drugs in Iraq is not difficult. One of the most common ways to smuggle in brand name gin or clear rum is in bottles of mouthwash sent from friends back home, soldiers said. Blue or yellow food coloring makes the liquid look medicinal. Some Army medics have been known to fill intravenous fluid bags with vodka, Army officers said. In Iraq, liquor of a distinctly more dubious quality can be purchased from Iraqi Army soldiers or civilian contractors working on American bases, and Iraqi soldiers have sold locally produced prescription drugs to American troops for a tidy profit. Commanders have not always regarded drinking as a problem. The Army “was a culture in the 1970s that encouraged drinking,” said a retired Army colonel. “You’d go out drinking together and you’d find your buddy hugging the toilet at the officer’s club and think nothing of it.” Command tolerance for such behavior began changing in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, “if you had more than a couple drinks at the club, people started looking at you strange,” the retired colonel said. But at a time when the military is fighting two major ground wars, the often serious consequences of heavy drinking has emerged with increasing clarity as more troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health problems, military officials and mental health experts said. “I think the real story here is in the suicide and stress, and the drinking is just a symptom of it,” said Charles P. O’Brien, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who served as a Navy doctor during the Vietnam War. There is a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq veterans, he said, adding that “there’s been a lot of suicide in the active-duty servicemen.” More than 90 percent of sex crimes prosecuted by the military involve alcohol abuse, defense lawyers and military doctors said. Roughly half of the marines charged with crimes in Iraq exhibit clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, a Marine defense lawyer said. “They turn to alcohol and drugs for an escape,” he said. The health study released in January was produced for the Pentagon by RTI International, a nonprofit research organization. Robert M. Bray, the group’s project director, first agreed to be interviewed for this article but later declined after a Defense Department spokesman said he was not available to comment. In the past two years, though, top military officials have begun talking publicly about the danger that excessive drinking among the troops. In 2005, the Army’s deputy chief of staff at the time, Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, wrote in an editorial in a magazine for Army leaders that the rising rate of heavy drinking and drug use “seriously impacts mission readiness.” General Hagenbeck, now the superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, said more than half of soldiers discharged for misconduct had also been disciplined for drug or alcohol use within the previous year. “When one soldier has an alcohol or other drug incident, it impacts the whole unit,” General Hagenbeck wrote. That kind of ripple effect has played out repeatedly in Iraq, military defense lawyers said, as soldiers who drink or use drugs commit crimes and hinder their unit’s combat and support missions. Specialist Lillis, for example, was given a bad conduct discharge and sentenced to 10 years in prison as punishment for his drunken shooting spree; he is in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. A military judge sentenced Specialist Rolan, who testified that he drank to relieve depression in Iraq, to 33 years in prison for killing a fellow soldier. Two of the soldiers charged in the Mahmudiya case pleaded guilty to murder, and a former Army private described as the ringleader, Steven D. Green, is awaiting trial for rape and murder in a federal district court. Last year, the Pentagon spent $2 million to initiate its “That Guy” campaign, ( www.thatguy.com ), which recommends that service members “reject binge drinking because it detracts from the things they care about: family, friends, dating, sex, money and reputation.” The Pentagon is poised to launch another Web-based antidrinking campaign this summer. Capt. Robert DeMartino, a doctor with the United States Health Service who is coordinating the project, said the hope is that service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq will use the site to find help coping with post-deployment problems, including alcohol dependency.

Iraq
Afghanistan
Alcoholic Beverages
United States Armament and Defense


Car Bombs Explode Near Egyptian and U.A.E. Embassies in Libya

Abstract: BAGHDAD — Car bombs exploded outside the embassies of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates in Tripoli, Libya, early on Thursday, apparently in a backlash against the two countries for their role in a regional proxy war playing out in Libya. No one was wounded in the blasts, according to officials. The embassies were closed months ago, and the bombs exploded early in the morning. A day earlier, bombs in the eastern Libyan cities of Tobruk and Baida killed at least five people and wounded at least 20. All four blasts appeared to be part of the same civil conflict and regional tug of war. Three years after the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya has collapsed into a violent struggle for power between two rival coalitions of militias and tribes. The side that controls Tripoli includes hard-line and more moderate Islamists, as well as non-Islamist regional or tribal groups who all say they are fighting against a return to Qaddafi-style authoritarianism. The other side, based in Tobruk and Baida, includes former soldiers loyal to Colonel Qaddafi and tribal groups who say they are fighting Islamist extremists. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have backed the anti-Islamist faction. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and their ally, Saudi Arabia, all see Libya as a central front in a broader regional war against the forces of political Islam — a fight that began to intensify when the Egyptian military ousted President Mohamed Morsi last year. The United Arab Emirates launched a series of airstrikes from Egyptian bases against Islamist-allied militias fighting in Tripoli over the summer. And Egyptian forces have actively aided anti-Islamist military units fighting around Benghazi in eastern Libya. Western diplomats familiar with intelligence reports say that Egyptian special forces have participated in raids near the airport in Benghazi, Libya, as well as at a camp near the Libyan stronghold of Derna, with mixed results. The leaders of Libya’s Islamist allied coalition, however, now blame Egypt and the United Arab Emirates for much of their opposition. The anti-Islamist factions blame Qatar and Turkey for backing the Islamists. Each side in Libya’s conflict now claims its own government — one in Tripoli and the other in Tobruk. The anti-Islamist government in Tobruk includes the headquarters of a recently elected Parliament, although it operates with little visibility and the number of lawmakers attending its sessions has been difficult to assess. The Islamist-allied government in Tripoli contends that a recent Supreme Court decision invalidated the election of the Parliament in Tobruk. The government in Tobruk argues that the court was intimidated by the threat of militias in Tripoli.

Bombs
Egypt
Libya
United Arab Emirates
Tripoli
Diplomats Embassies and Consulates
Muammar Kaddafi


At Bellevue, a Desperate Fight to Ensure the Patients’ Safety

Abstract: From the moment the water lapped above street level in Lower Manhattan, the doctors and nurses of Bellevue Hospital Center began a desperate struggle to keep patients safe. By 9 p.m. Monday, the hospital was on backup power, and an hour later, the basement was flooded. Officials rushed to move the most critically ill patients closer to an emergency generator. After midnight, doctors heard shouts in the hallway. The basement fuel pumps had stopped working, and medical residents, nurses and administrators formed a bucket brigade to ferry fuel up 13 flights to the main backup generators. By Tuesday, the elevator shafts at Bellevue , the country’s oldest public hospital, had flooded, so all 32 elevators stopped working. There was limited compressed air to run ventilators, so oxygen tanks were placed next to the beds of patients who needed them. Water faucets went dry, food ran low, and buckets of water had to be carried up to flush toilets. Some doctors began urging evacuations, and on Tuesday, at least two dozen ambulances lined up around the block to pick up many of the 725 patients housed there. People carried babies down flights of stairs. The National Guard was called in to help. On Thursday afternoon, the last two patients were waiting to be taken out. The evacuation went quickly only because Bellevue had planned for such a possibility before Hurricane Irene hit last year, several doctors said. But the city, which had evacuated two nearby hospitals before that storm, decided not to clear out Bellevue. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy , the consequences of bad calls, bad luck and equipment failures cascaded through the region’s health care system, as sleep-deprived health care workers and patients were confronted by a new kind of disarray. A patient recovering from a triple bypass operation at Bellevue walked down 10 flights of stairs to a waiting ambulance, one of the dozens provided through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to speed patients across the metropolitan region. Mount Sinai Medical Center, already dealing with the 2 a.m. arrival of a dozen psychiatric patients who spoke only Chinese, was struggling to identify the relatives of brain-injured traffic victims from Bellevue who arrived three hours later with only rudimentary medical records. Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn was straining to meet a rising need for emergency dialysis for hundreds of people shut out of storm-crippled private dialysis centers. Patients who would normally get three hours of dialysis were getting only two, to ensure the maximum number of people received at least a minimal amount of care. “The catastrophe is growing by the minute,” said Eileen Tynion, a Maimonides spokeswoman. “Here we thought we’d reached a quiet point after the storm.” Every hospital maintains an elaborate disaster plan, but after Hurricane Sandy, the fact that many health care facilities are in low-lying areas proved to be something of an Achilles’ heel. Bellevue became the third hospital in the city to evacuate after the storm’s landfall, after NYU Langone Medical Center, just north of Bellevue, and Coney Island Hospital, another public hospital. New York Downtown Hospital, the only hospital south of 14th Street in Manhattan, and the Veterans Affairs Hospital, just below Bellevue, had evacuated before the storm. Hospital executives were reluctant to criticize their colleagues or city officials. But the sequence of events left them with many questions. “All hospitals are required to do disaster planning and disaster drills,” Pamela Brier, the chief executive of Maimonides, noted. “All hospitals are required as a condition of being accredited, to have generators, backup generators.” City health department and emergency officials have been particularly fervent about citywide disaster drills, she added, but “as prepared as we think we are we’ve never had a mock disaster drill where we carried patients downstairs. I’m shocked that we didn’t do that. Now we’re going to.” The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, defended the decision not to require evacuations of Bellevue, Coney Island and NYU Langone hospitals before the storm, which he said had been made in consultation with the state health commissioner, Dr. Nirav Shah. Dr. Farley said they based the decision on their experience with Hurricane Irene, when they ordered the evacuation of hundreds of patients from six hospitals, including NYU Langone, and a psychiatric center, as well as of thousands of residents of nursing and adult homes. “We saw there was definitely risks to patients from evacuations,” Dr. Farley said. He added that, “As the storm got worse on Sunday, we did recognize that there would be some risk to health care facilities, so we took some steps to make sure that they were aware of that.” But he said he considered the decision to wait a success overall: “There was no loss of life as a result of those evacuations.” He said the city was still assessing what to do differently next time. “We certainly are seeing many more severe weather events in this city than we’ve seen in the past, that does mean we have to rethink the vulnerability of our health care facilities,” Dr. Farley said. A major concern for hospitals is that traditionally, generators, fuel tanks and fuel pumps have been located in their basements. Both NYU Langone and Bellevue had actually shored up their defenses after Hurricane Irene, according to executives of both hospitals. Among other changes, both built flood-resistant housings for their fuel pumps. But some circuitry, as well as tanks and pumps, remain on low floors, making backup systems vulnerable. The equipment is enormously heavy, so putting them on higher floors would require a great deal of reconstruction and possibly changes in building codes, said Dr. Steven J. Corwin, the chief executive officer of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, which has been taking on extra patients and bringing in extra staff. Another serious issue is how long a hospital should expect to rely on a generator if the power fails. “Heretofore, it was felt that generator power would be for a self-limited time, not more than a day — two, three at the outside,” Dr. Corwin said. “Now we’re looking at events where it could be a week.” Alan Aviles, president of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city’s public hospitals, said that all signs pointed against a storm emergency. “Up until an hour before the storm made landfall, the National Hurricane Center was saying that there was only a 5 percent probability of a storm surge over 11 feet in the area that would impact Coney Island, and they weren’t even showing a 5 percent probability on the East River,” Mr. Aviles said. When the main power went off about 9 p.m. Monday, doctors and nurses were initially told not to worry, because the backup generators were working fine, people there at the time said. But by about 10 p.m., the basement was completely flooded, the pumps were flooded, and doctors were warned that they could lose backup power very shortly. Critical-care doctors and nurses immediately began moving their patients to the area served by a lower-floor generator. Everyone moved quickly to disconnect patients from respiratory machines and then reconnect them. A Bellevue doctor said midlevel administrators began begging their bosses to evacuate the hospital Monday night, when water could be heard pouring through the elevators, “like Niagara running through the hospital.” “The phones didn’t work,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired. “We lost all communication between floors. We were in the dark all night. No water to wash hands — I mean, we’re doctors!” When the evacuation began, patients were bundled into red and orange sleds and dragged down as many as 13 or 15 flights of stairs. “If they were ventilated, someone was dragging them with a bag” of hand-pumped oxygen, one doctor said. “It was a herculean effort.” Despite the power problems, Bellevue was able to print out some medical records or get summaries from doctors to send with patients. But landlines and cellphones were affected, and doctors and nurses said they wished some other form of communication, like walkie-talkies, had been available. It was not until Wednesday, Mr. Aviles said, that everyone realized the situation was beyond repair and the final decision to evacuate everyone was made. “It was at that point that it was clear that it was just not tenable to keep patients for a longer term in the hospital,” he said. “We know that all these patients were successfully transferred to safety and are doing well, and I think that’s what’s important.”

New York University Langone Medical Center


Ahead of the World Cup Semifinals, Close Quarters for the Players

Abstract: AHEAD OF SEMIS, CLOSE QUARTERS Germany’s coach, Silvia Neid is getting a little tired of running into her opponents off the field. In Montreal, just as they did in the quarterfinals and in the group stage, Germany is sharing a hotel with the team it is about to play. In this case, the opponent is the United States. “You meet in the lobby, the elevator,” Neid said, as reported by the Berlin newspaper B.Z . “Even if you know and like each other, it’s not easy always having to make small talk.” Image German Coach Silvia Neid. Credit Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images Neid said those chance meetings were especially uncomfortable after Germany eliminated France on penalty kicks in the quarterfinals. “Constantly encountering the sad French players,” she said, “that makes one somehow sad, too.” LOOKING AHEAD After Germany and the United States set up one half of the final with their game Tuesday, Japan and England will meet Wednesday in Edmonton to determine the other half. The Japanese, who have won each game they’ve played in this tournament by a single goal, are built around movement and quick passing, making them the kind of team that would give a bigger English side trouble. If Japan gets another early goal, something it has specialized in so far, its speed and mastery of possession could leave England chasing shadows.

Germany
Soccer
US
FIFA Women's World Cup


Despite Struggles, Don’t Rule Out France’s Rugby Team

Abstract: WELLINGTON — France coach Marc Lièvremont has not made many friends during the Six Nations tournament this year. But then that is not surprising when you consider the performances France has put together in the past few weeks, Lièvremont’s Charlie Sheen-esque outburst after Les Bleus’ loss to Italy and his opinion that Six Nations rugby is “second-rate” compared to that produced in the Southern Hemisphere. While winning matches, not friends, is the primary aim of any sports coach, Lièvremont has struggled to do either for months. It is hard to imagine how it could have gotten worse than the embarrassing 59-16 thrashing the French received at the hands of Australia last November, but it did in Rome just over two weeks ago when Italy caused the upset of the Six Nations this year by defeating the 2010 champion, 22-21. It prompted Lièvremont to turn on his players, accusing them of cowardice and of betraying their country. He warned that some had played their last game in a French jersey. It may have resulted in an improvement in the short term — France went on to defeat Wales in the final round of matches — but it is hardly the foundation on which to build a successful World Cup campaign, and that is what matters in 2011. Yet Lièvremont is bullish about his team’s chances. As he was declaring that Southern Hemisphere rugby was of a higher standard than that produced in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy, he was also insisting that France would be the Northern Hemisphere side to beat at the World Cup, which starts Sept. 9 in New Zealand. It might seem a truly outlandish statement, but given his country’s history in previous World Cups, it is an assertion that should not be dismissed out of hand — even if ever-improving England is the new Six Nations champion and France seems to be lurching from one mediocre performance to the next. In 1999, Lièvremont was a member of the France team that lost to Australia in the World Cup final after it had finished at the bottom of the then Five Nations. It had reached the final courtesy of a stunning second-half revival in the semifinal that saw it come from 24-10 down to beat New Zealand, 43-31, in one of the all-time greatest World Cup matches. In 2003, France finished third in the Six Nations behind Grand Slam winner England and runner-up Ireland, and in the World Cup, it bowed out to eventual winner, England, in the semifinals. Four years later, France was playing host to the World Cup. It knocked New Zealand out of the Cup again, this time in the quarterfinals, just a few months after it had been soundly beaten on home soil by Graham Henry’s All Blacks. It is why Henry remains wary of world rugby’s most unpredictable squad, particularly as the two teams face each other in one the most eagerly anticipated pool matches at this year’s World Cup. “France struggled when we beat them by 47-3 in a game prior to the World Cup in 2007. But the 2007 World Cup result may be some sort of indication about the French,” he said. “They will bounce back and they will play well at the World Cup.” Despite England’s missing out on the Grand Slam this year after a limp loss to Ireland ended hopes of the Six Nations sweep, Henry, whose New Zealand team enters the World Cup as favorites to lift the Webb Ellis Trophy, expects Martin Johnson’s men to pose a very real threat. “England are developing into a pretty powerful sort of a unit. I think they will be very competitive come World Cup time,” the New Zealander said. “They are the best there at the moment. But they all have the potential to play well.” Ireland definitely showed that in Dublin, where it saved its best performance of the Six Nations for last as it ruined England’s party. Until that point, England had started to show the composure, physical presence, intensity and willingness to attack that typifies Southern Hemisphere rugby. In Dublin, all that disappeared in the face of the Irish onslaught. From going backward at its first scrum until the final whistle, England was second-best in every facet of the game. Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll, on the other hand, has produced some of his best play in years during the Six Nations and proved all his doubters wrong. The inspirational captain, 32, was all class in getting his back line firing against England, tackled his heart out and crossed the try-line to become the championship’s leading all-time try-scorer with 25, surpassing the 78-year-old record of Scottish wing Ian Smith. But O’Driscoll and his teammates know performances like that need to be the norm when it comes to the World Cup, particularly if they want to make the semifinals. Australia will pose the biggest threat in the pool stages, and Ireland will need to win that game to top pool C and avoid a likely quarterfinal matchup with another Southern Hemisphere heavyweight, South Africa. The South Africans would not have had too many sleepless nights watching one of their World Cup pool opponents, Wales, progress in the Six Nations. While the Welsh have shown flashes of attacking creativity, they have not been able to mount a sustained effort. It has been their defensive qualities that earned them victories over Scotland, Italy and Ireland — although in the match against the latter they also had an assistant referee’s mistake to thank for the crucial match-winning try. While the forwards appear to thrive on the physical confrontation up front, the backs have struggled to penetrate defenses, relying on individual brilliance rather than a cohesive effort. Against the big, powerful, hard-tackling South Africans, who loom as the main threat to Wales in pool D, that will not be good enough. Italy provided the feel-good story of the championship with its victory over France and can count itself unlucky not to have added Ireland as a victim as well. Sergio Parisse is a truly world-class No. 8, and the forward pack, which has traditionally been its strength, continues to provoke fear. Utility back Andrea Masi won the Six Nations player of the year award after his man-of-the match display against the French. But while this was perhaps the best year Italy has had since joining the tournament in 2000, it did not keep it from finishing last, and coach Nick Mallett will be realistic about his side’s chances at the World Cup, especially with Australia and Ireland in its pool. If Italy provided the fairy tale, then Scotland got the biggest reality check. After winning a test series against Argentina midway through 2010 and defeating South Africa in November, talk was high of a Scottish revival. But it never materialized as Scotland managed just one victory — against Italy — and its limitations were highlighted as it struggled to score tries. Given England and Argentina, which always performs well at the World Cup, are in the same pool as the Scots, it is hard to see them progressing to the quarterfinals.

France Italy Wales England Ireland Scotland


Catholics Gather Courtside to Put Their Faith on Display

Abstract: There was no neutral zone for mere spectators. On one side were thousands decked in green, representing the Fighting Irish of Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory. Across the basketball court were an equal number in red and blue for the Wildcats of St. Ignatius College Preparatory. On Tuesday night, a sellout crowd of 4,500 packed War Memorial Gymnasium at the University of San Francisco for what bills itself as the oldest sports rivalry in the West, started in 1893. The announcer noted they were gathered for “a great tradition in the City of St. Francis.” It is rare these days to hear the city referred to by its namesake patron saint. These parochial high schools’ sports rivalry is a treasured relic of sorts: one of the few large public displays of Catholicism remaining in San Francisco. What was once the region’s most influential religion is now comparatively invisible in America’s most secular city. In the 1950s, half of the city’s population was Roman Catholic, according to the Archdiocese of San Francisco . The figure now is 20 percent. A decade-old survey by Harvard University showed that only 17 percent of San Franciscans said they attended church regularly, the lowest rate among urban regions in the nation. “Of course we want to witness to the whole world,” Archbishop George H. Niederauer said, “but it isn’t ultimately a question of numbers and percentages. It is, you know, the quality of the faith life and of the spirituality.” The University of San Francisco’s president, the Rev. Stephen A. Privett, spoke of the waning political influence of the archdiocese, saying, “There is no solid Catholic block anymore.” The smaller number of Catholics only partly explains the church’s loss of visibility. In a city where intolerance is otherwise vilified, it has become socially awkward to profess devotion to any mainstream faith. While mentions of spirituality, meditation and yoga pass without comment, those who follow organized religions face, at minimum, a Berkeley eye roll. It is hard to avoid this feeling. When a friend said she attended Mass every Saturday night, it was the only time in 13 years living in the Bay Area that I had heard that. Later, she admitted she rarely shared that part of her life because she was concerned about the reaction. Mass? How odd. That is not how my friends in New England think. Critics say the church’s diminished stature is a result, in part, of fallout from molestation scandals involving priests. Positions against same-sex marriage and abortion in one of the nation’s most liberal strongholds are also unlikely to endear outsiders. Despite all this, “the influence of the church is felt,” said Maurice Healy, spokesman for the Archdiocese. He noted that the church was one of the largest providers of social services, especially to help the homeless. With white parishioners now in the minority — the archdiocese comprises mostly Latinos and Filipinos — immigration issues also receive attention. It is work rarely in the spotlight. “If I had to have a choice between having the church be visible publicly in the newspapers and in commentary or be visible and meaningful in people’s lives,” Archbishop Niederauer said, “I think I would choose the latter.” Education is where the church also steadfastly tends its flock. St. Ignatius and Sacred Heart Cathedral are among the city’s highest-ranked schools academically, and visits to both campuses revealed legions of smiling, engaging teenagers — no signs of angst. Attending the game was also like taking a step back to a more wholesome time. If not for a Lady Gaga-inspired dance-off at half time, it could well have been 1960 again, though recast to reflect the city’s diversity. No swearing from the fans, despite spikes of passion and a game that was a true nail-biter. At stake was the coveted, and enormous, Bruce-Mahoney Trophy, named in honor of alumni from each school, who served and died in World War II. The school that wins two out of three matchups in football, basketball and baseball takes it home. St. Ignatius had already won the football game, which meant it could clinch the prize with a victory. For a moment, it looked as if that would happen. But Sacred Heart Cathedral prevailed, 47-44. Now the rivalry moves to baseball, on April 16, and another huge gathering of the faithful, this time at AT&T Park. Even as the church changes, some believe there will always be these games. “A hundred years from now,” said Paul Totah, director of public relations for St. Ignatius, “we’ll be playing the Bruce-Mahoney.”

Private and Sectarian Schools
Roman Catholic Church
Christians and Christianity
Religion and Belief
San Francisco (Calif)


Ex-Canadien Welcomes Chance to Play

Abstract: Rangers defenseman Raphael Diaz was all smiles hours before Game 6 on Thursday at Madison Square Garden, thanks to a chance to re-enter the playoff fray and deny his former team, the Montreal Canadiens, a trip to the Stanley Cup finals. Diaz, who was born in Switzerland, played parts of three seasons in Montreal before he was traded to Vancouver for forward Dale Weise in February. He was then acquired by the Rangers at the March 5 trade deadline for a fifth-round draft pick next year. A 28-year-old blue-liner, Diaz was skating for the first time in the conference finals because his teammate John Moore was suspended for two games for a high hit on Weise late in Game 5 in Montreal. Weise did not play Thursday night. The Rangers entered the game leading the series, three games to two, as they sought to clinch their first trip to the N.H.L. finals since 1994. “I’m really excited,” said Diaz, who played 128 games for the Canadiens with 4 goals and 37 assists. “I know their team; I know the players. It’s a big challenge. It’s going to be exciting playing in front of our home crowd.” Diaz, who was paired with Kevin Klein, played two games earlier in the playoffs when Moore was a healthy scratch and the Rangers’ power play was struggling and desperately needing a boost. A mobile defenseman with a hard slap shot, Diaz plays a smart offensive game, Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault said. “He’s a good defenseman in the sense that he’s not overly physical, but he’s got good instincts; he moves the puck well; he can help us on the power play,” Vigneault said. “Every time we’ve used him this year, he’s been good for us.” Diaz played 11 games for the Rangers in the regular season with a goal and an assist. A veteran of nine seasons with EV Zug in Switzerland, he was acquired to provide insurance on the blue line. Diaz has had a career path similar to that of Flyers defenseman Mark Streit, who also began his N.H.L. career in Montreal after many seasons in the Swiss league. Diaz has stayed ready during the postseason along with his fellow extra defenseman Justin Falk. The first two Rangers defense pairs — Dan Girardi-Ryan McDonagh and Anton Stralman-Marc Staal — play the majority of minutes most nights. But Klein, who joined the Rangers in a January trade with Nashville, has proved invaluable playing steadily and intelligently around the crease of goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. Klein has also been unafraid to join the offensive flow when the opportunity arises. “Our defense has been solid throughout the playoffs because we keep it simple,” said Klein, who acknowledged there would be extra communication between him and Diaz because both are right-handed shooters. “The main thing will be talking to Rafa, giving him support all over the ice.” Klein, 29, who spent his entire N.H.L. career in Nashville before the trade to the Rangers for Michael Del Zotto, said the Rangers’ stingy defense had been a team effort since the day he arrived. “The forwards have really helped us, going back and playing defense themselves when we’ve joined the rush,” Klein said. As far as playing the left side on the blue line as a right-hander, Diaz expressed no trepidation. “A couple of things I found out are easier on the left side,” said Diaz, whose father is from Spain. “As a right defenseman, you can move the puck really quick right away.” Klein said he would also stay cognizant of angles while pairing with Diaz. “I have to make sure I put the puck for him,” Klein said. “I don’t want to put him in any awkward positions where he’s forced to his backhand. He has good instincts and has been working hard. We’ll be good out there.”

Rangers
Raphael Diaz
Montreal Canadiens
Alain Vigneault
Ice hockey


Google+ Gets a Leg Up on Facebook

Abstract: Google , the most popular Web site on earth, is worried about the second-most popular site. That, of course, would be Facebook . Why else would Google keep trying, over and over again, to create a social network of the same type? Orkut, Jaiku, Wave, Buzz — Google has lobbed forth one fizzled flop after another. And now there’s Google+ . It’s the latest Google “we wanna be Facebook” project. The difference is, this one’s got a real shot. Instead of throwing open its doors with a big splash, as it did with the hopelessly confusing Wave and the privacy-challenged Buzz, Google is letting Google+ seep into the world virally. You can’t yet just go sign up; you have to be invited by someone who’s already a member. Even so, Google+ already has millions of members. That’s not quite 750 million (Facebook’s current tally), but watch out for the network effect. At first, Google+ looks like a shameless Facebook duplicate. There’s a place for you to make Posts (your thoughts and news, like Facebook’s Wall); there’s a Stream (an endless scrolling page of your friends’ posts, like Facebook’s News Feed); and even a little +1 button (a clone of Facebook’s Like button), which may be where Google+ gets its peculiar name. But there’s one towering, brilliant difference: Circles. On Google+, you put the people of your life’s different social circles into — well, into Circles. That is, groups. Categories. Google starts you off with empty circles called Friends, Acquaintances, Family and Following (people you don’t know, but want to follow, as you would on Twitter ). It’s a piece of cake to add new ones. They can be tiny circles (“Granny and Gramps”) or big ones ( “Family Tree” ), organization-based (“Fantasy League Buddies”) or arbitrary (“Annoying People”). Creating them is a blast: an array of tiles represents your online acquaintances, which it assembles from your Gmail and other accounts. You drag each one into an actual on-screen circle, where they tumble into place. You can drag a person into more than one circle, of course. The lucky encircled friend will know that you’ve added him or her to a circle, but not which one, thank heaven. From now on, every time you share something — a news item, a thought, a photo, a chat invitation — you can specify exactly which Circles receive it. In one fell swoop, Google has solved the layers-of-privacy problem that has dogged Facebook for years. Senators embarrassed by their children’s drunken party photos. Potential employers reading about your crazy nightlife. Girlfriends learning accidentally about their beaus’ proposal plans. All of it goes away with Circles. You share each item with only the people who deserve to know. And simultaneously, you spare the masses from seeing news of no interest to them; why should the whole world be in on your discussion of this Friday’s bowling outing? You’re spared, too. You can click a Circle’s name to filter the scrolling blurbs. You can view only the work-related posts, only your college buddies’ posts, or only your grandparents’ posts, with one click apiece. Facebook has something similar, called Lists. But compared with Circles, it’s buried and a lot more effort to use. In Google+, you have to specify who gets each post or each photo (although it remembers your last selections). That’s actually a little annoying — you can’t just type an update and hit Enter — but over all, the benefits outweigh the hassle. Google+ has a few more attractions, though, besides this clever privacy control feature. There’s Sparks, which is like a personal press-clipping service (and akin to Google Alerts). You browse for, or type in, a topic you’re interested in, like “Electric Cars,” “ Cleveland Cavaliers ” or “Bundt Cakes.” Google+ fills the screen with matching articles, news and videos from all over the Web. It may be the easiest, least threatening news reader in history. The most mind-blowing “Facebook can’t do this” feature, though, is Hangouts. Technically, it’s videoconferencing. It lets up to 10 people join a chat simultaneously, using their Web cams or laptop cameras. A row of one-inch tiles, each displaying one participant’s video feed, appears below the big screen. Google+ does its best to switch cameras for the big screen automatically, based on whoever’s talking at the moment. (You can also click someone’s tile manually.) A skinny chat window appears on one side for typed remarks, and a YouTube button lets everyone watch YouTube videos simultaneously on the big screen. Slick. It may sound like Skype or iChat (or Facebook’s comparatively lame, just-announced one-person-at-a-time video chat feature). But its integration with the rest of Google+ makes it much better. You can see when one of your buddies is in a video hangout, so you can “drop by.” Similarly, when you’re feeling social, you can click Start a Hangout, announce its availability to a particular Circle of friends, and let them drop in to visit you. A video chat doesn’t have to be a scheduled, formal deal. It’s always on the Web, so you don’t have to install a program. It’s available to your Circles, so you can whip together a quick chat to organize a party or a tennis match. And it could do just fine for many business meetings (or even business trips). You can share Photos easily by dragging them from your computer right into the box where you’d type your latest news. And you view other people’s photos in a beautiful, black-background gallery, with comments off to the right. If you have an Android phone, even more fun awaits. There are Huddles (instant phone-to-phone group chats with your Circles). And when you take a picture with your phone, it’s auto-uploaded to a private holding area on your Google+ page. Later, you can share them with the appropriate social circles. Now, there are, of course, a few minuses to Google+. Perhaps because of its newness, Google+ feels uncluttered and calm, especially compared to the frenetic, commercial Times Square of Facebook. But Google+ still is, in its way, just as confusing. You keep wondering: What if people in that circle share my private post with their circles? And what happens if I remove a couple of people from a circle? Can they still see things I’ve shared in the past? You’ll spend a good deal of time fumbling around. No other services (like Twitter or, of course, Facebook) are tied in yet. No games or applications yet. The members so far are mostly geeks. There are bugs and glitches, although it would be unfair to mention them; the service isn’t even public yet. And we can probably look past Google’s bizarre promotional/tutorial videos, whose narrators seem to have been hired from the American Society for the Advancement of the Inarticulate. (Actual transcript: “And, the friends you have are, kind of the ones you have that, allow you to, like, geek out about the things that you were absolutely passionate about. And that’s the reason you stay friends with them, is not because you’re talking about things with them to talk about things that interest them, it’s because it interests you and you’re absolutely passionate about it and they have enough of a commonality to let you explore it.”) But Google calls Google+ a project, and that’s just what it is, an unapologetic beginning. It’s online, so Google can and will constantly fine-tune it, add features and beef up the help mechanisms. Until now, Facebook and Twitter have been the Dominant Duo of social networking. But Google’s less sprawling, more video-centric, better-controlled new service is already too good to ignore. Now it’s the Dominant Duo ...+1.


U.S. Rejects Call for Enforceable Immigration Detention Rules

Abstract: The Obama administration has refused to make legally enforceable rules for immigration detention, rejecting a federal court petition by former detainees and their advocates and embracing a Bush-era inspection system that relies in part on private contractors. The decision, contained in a six-page letter received by the plaintiffs this week, disappointed and angered immigration advocacy organizations around the country. They pointed to a stream of newly available documents that underscore the government’s failure to enforce minimum standards it set in 2000, including those concerning detainees’ access to basic health care, telephones and lawyers, even as the number of people detained has soared to more than 400,000 a year. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration detention system, a conglomeration of county jails, federal centers and privately run prisons, concluded “that rule-making would be laborious, time-consuming and less flexible” than the review process now in place, Jane Holl Lute, the agency’s deputy secretary, said in the letter. The department maintained that current inspections by the government, and a shift in 2008 to “performance-based standards” monitored by private contractors, “provide adequately for both quality control and accountability.” The administration’s letter met a 30-day deadline set by Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in Manhattan. Judge Chin ruled last month that the agency’s failure to respond to the plaintiffs’ petition for two and a half years was unreasonable. The government’s decision “disregards the plight of the hundreds of thousands of immigration detainees,” said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild , one of the plaintiffs, which contends that the lack of enforceable rules is at the heart of persistent problems of mistreatment and medical neglect. “The department has demonstrated a disturbing commitment to policies that have cost dozens of lives.” The plaintiffs had expected better from the Obama administration, said Dan Kesselbrenner, the project’s director. But Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Homeland Security who served in the Obama campaign, put a different face on the rejection of rule-making. “The rule-making process can take months, if not years,” he said in an e-mailed statement, “and the administration believes that reforming our immigration detention system needs to happen much faster than that.” A special adviser on detention to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, “is engaged in a top-to-bottom review” of the detention system, he said, and will release her recommendations soon. In a telephone interview, the adviser, Dora Schriro, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement had made changes in recent years “in an effort toward continuous improvement.” “What’s appreciably different about this administration is the recognition that detention and alternatives to detention are disciplines, and can and will be carried out under the most professional of standards,” Dr. Schriro said. But standards without teeth are doomed to fail, said lawyers for two other national immigration law organizations, one in Los Angeles and another in Chicago, echoing the plaintiffs’ disappointment with the rejection of enforceable rules. Both groups recently won the release of thousands of pages of detention inspection documents that had been kept secret. They said the documents showed that the government had routinely violated its own minimum monitoring standards and ignored findings of deficiencies for years. The “performance-based” standards the Obama administration has now embraced have no penalties and are not significantly different from what failed in the past, said Karen Tumlin, a lawyer with the National Immigration Law Center in California. On Tuesday, the center issued what it called “the first nationwide comprehensive report” on violations of detention standards, based on records from 2004 and 2005 obtained through Freedom of Information litigation. Dozens of more recent inspection documents, some from this year, show a similar pattern, said Chuck Roth, the director of litigation for the Chicago group, Heartland Alliance’s National Immigration Justice Center . Many were posted by the government itself on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Web site after the center won a three-year federal court battle to force their release. “The groups that ICE commonly contracts with are staffed by former ICE employees and former corrections officers who have a vested interest in pleasing ICE,” Mr. Roth said, “so we haven’t seen them take the useful watchdog role.” The documents include eight years of monitoring reports by the American Bar Association, which has been granted access to detention centers and detainees only on condition that its findings, shared with the government, are not made public. Reports from two bar association visits to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, N.J., in January 2006 and July 2007, illustrate the weaknesses. In 2006, the team noted detainee complaints about medical neglect and threats of physical violence that were reported to guards but ignored. A year and a half later, a return visit was cut by the center to two hours from six hours, and “inexplicably, many of the areas that the delegation had requested to visit in advance and needed to see in order to fulfill its mission were locked” and off limits. The delegation was unaware that only two months earlier a 52-year-old tailor named Boubacar Bah had died after suffering a skull fracture in the jail and being locked in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours. “This whole detention system that has been created is a human rights nightmare,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center. “The past administration created this, and now we need to dismantle it.”


Asian Collectors Give Christie’s a High-Yield Night

Abstract: In a nearly three-hour auction of postwar and contemporary art on Tuesday night, Christie’s managed to sell nearly $745 million worth of blue-chip paintings and sculptures, thanks in large part to the enormous wealth of Asian collectors. “I think they’re Hoover vacuum cleaners — they’re buying everything,” said Bill Bell, a Los Angeles collector who, earlier in the evening, tried to buy one of Andy Warhol’s fabled images of Marilyn Monroe. But like scores of other collectors, he was beaten by Xin Li, deputy chairman of Christie’s Asia, who could be seen bidding on behalf of telephone buyers; Ms. Li ended up buying half of the evening’s top 10 works. Christie’s had already scored one victory on Monday night with its experimental sale of contemporary art put together by Loic Gouzer, a 33-year-old expert there. That sale — just 35 works — brought $134.6 million, roughly $10 million over the high estimate of $124 million. It left collectors feeling confident about the market. Tuesday night’s sale, however, was the highest total for a single auction, not accounting for inflation, in Christie’s history, officials at the auction house said, adding that about 30 percent of the buyers were new to Christie’s. Of the 72 works on offer, only four failed to sell. The Rockefeller Center salesroom was overflowing with some of the country’s more serious collectors, including Mark Fisch, a real estate developer; J. Tomlison Hill, vice chairman of the Blackstone Group; and Andrew Saul, a New York financier — all trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Also present were Laurence Graff, the London jeweler; Marc Jacobs, the fashion designer; and Eli Broad, the Los Angeles financier. More than half the works had already been spoken for, or guaranteed, meaning either Christie’s or a third party had promised the sellers an undisclosed sum in advance. But few predicted that the top seller would be an abstract canvas by Barnett Newman. Four bidders fought over “Black Fire I,” from 1961, which pairs the artist’s black palette with his signature device: the zip, a feathery band of a contrasting color that defines the composition. The work, which had been on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for decades, was being sold by the Daniel W. Dietrich II trust. It ended up selling to a telephone bidder for $84.1 million. (Final prices include the buyer’s premium: 25 percent of the first $100,000; 20 percent of the next $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.) In November, the auction house scored a coup when Elaine Wynn, a co-founder of the casino empire, spent $142.4 million for Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucian Freud,” a triptych from 1969. Christie’s sold another triptych, “Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards,” but this one was later, from 1984. Ms. Li took the winning bid for that painting, which fetched $80.8 million, around what the auction house had predicted. The painting was sold by Pierre Chen, a Taiwanese billionaire, who is reported to have purchased the triptych privately about 10 years ago, for $15 million. But some works went to American collectors. Larry Gagosian, beat out four other contenders for Warhol’s “Race Riot,” from 1964, based on news photos from Life magazine. That painting, which is said to have been sold by a family trust set up by William Acquavella, the Manhattan dealer, brought $62.8 million, over its $45 million estimate. Laura Paulson, a deputy chairman of Christie’s and an expert in its postwar and contemporary art department, took the winning bid for another Warhol, “White Marilyn,” from 1962. The piece was estimated at $12 million to $18 million, and the buyer, an American, paid $41 million. It was being sold by Barbara Lee, the Boston collector who wanted to invest the money in the work of living female artists. After the hammer fell, Ms. Lee, who was sitting in second row, watching the action, said, “It’s a win-win for everyone.” Jeff Koons, who is gearing up for a retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art this summer, had his work on the covers of Christie’s and Sotheby’s contemporary art catalogs this week. Stefan Edlis, the Chicago collector, parted with his “Jim Beam J. B. Turner Train,” a 1986 stainless-steel train, more than nine feet long, filled with bourbon. The train was part of “Luxury and Degradation,” an exhibition at International With Monument Gallery in SoHo that examined shallowness, excess and the dangers of luxury. That excess, some might say, was witnessed on Tuesday when Ms. Li snapped that work up, too, paying $33.7 million, over the $30 million estimate. There’s nothing like a fish — the Chinese symbol of good luck and fortune — to turn a salesroom into a sea of superstitious bidders. And that’s exactly what happened when Calder’s “Poisson Volant (Flying Fish),” a 1958 mobile of a giant black fish that was expected to sell for $9 million to $12 million; Ms. Li took the winning bid of nearly $26 million.

Auction
Art
Andy Warhol
Marilyn Monroe
Collecting
Christie's


Immigrants on Trains Near Northern Border Detained

Abstract: ROCHESTER — The Lake Shore Limited runs between Chicago and New York City without crossing the Canadian border. But when it stops at Amtrak stations in western New York State, armed Border Patrol agents routinely board the train, question passengers about their citizenship and take away noncitizens who cannot produce satisfactory immigration papers. “Are you a U.S. citizen?” agents asked one recent morning, moving through a Rochester-bound train full of dozing passengers at a station outside Buffalo. “What country were you born in?” When the answer came back, “the U.S.,” they moved on. But Ruth Fernandez, 60, a naturalized citizen born in Ecuador, was asked for identification. And though she was only traveling home to New York City from her sister’s in Ohio, she had made sure to carry her American passport. On earlier trips, she said, agents had photographed her, and taken away a nervous Hispanic man. He was one of hundreds of passengers taken to detention each year from domestic trains and buses along the nation’s northern border. The little-publicized transportation checks are the result of the Border Patrol’s growth since 9/11, fueled by Congressional antiterrorism spending and an expanding definition of border jurisdiction. In the Rochester area, where the border is miles away in the middle of Lake Ontario, the patrol arrested 2,788 passengers from October 2005 through last September. The checks are “a vital component to our overall border security efforts” to prevent terrorism and illegal entry, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for United States Customs and Border Protection . He said that the patrol had jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws within 100 miles of the border, and that one mission was preventing smugglers and human traffickers from exploiting inland transit hubs. The patrol says that answering agents’ questions is voluntary, part of a “consensual and nonintrusive conversation” Some passengers agree, though they are not told that they can keep silent. But others, from immigration lawyers and university officials to American-born travelers startled by an agent’s flashlight in their eyes, say the practice is coercive, unconstitutional and tainted by racial profiling. The Lake Shore Limited route is a journey across the spectrum of public attitudes toward illegal immigrants — from cities where they have been accepted and often treated as future citizens, to places where they are seen as lawbreakers the federal government is doing too little to expel. The journey also highlights conflicting enforcement policies. Immigration authorities, vowing to concentrate resources on deporting immigrants with serious criminal convictions, have recently been halting the deportation of students who were brought to the country as children without papers — a group the Obama administration favors for legalization. But some of the same kinds of students are being jailed by the patrol, like a Taiwan-born Ph.D. candidate who had excelled in New York City public schools since age 11. Two days after he gave a paper on Chaucer at a conference in Chicago last year, he was taken from his train seat and strip-searched at a detention center in Batavia, N.Y., facing deportation for an expired visa. For some, the patrol’s practices evoke the same fears as a new immigration law in Arizona — that anyone, anytime, can be interrogated without cause. The federal government is authorized to do just that at places where people enter and leave the country, and at a “reasonable distance” from the border. But as the patrol expands and tries to raise falling arrest numbers, critics say, the concept of the border is becoming more fluid, eroding Constitutional limits on search and seizure. And unlike Arizona’s law, the change is happening without public debate. “It’s turned into a police state on the northern border,” said Cary M. Jensen , director of international services for the University of Rochester, whose foreign students, scholars and parents have been questioned and jailed, often because the patrol did not recognize their legal status. “It’s essentially become an internal document check.” Domestic transportation checks are not mentioned in a report on the northern border strategy that Customs and Border Protection delivered last year to Congress, which has more than doubled the patrol since 2006, to 2,212 agents, with plans to double it again soon. The data available suggests that such stops account for as many as half the reported 6,000 arrests a year. In Rochester, the Border Patrol station opened in 2004, with four agents to screen passengers of a new ferry from Toronto. The ferry went bankrupt, but the unit has since grown tenfold; its agents have one of the highest arrest rates on the northern border — 1,040 people in the 2008 fiscal year, 95 percent of them from buses and trains — though officials say numbers have fallen as word of the patrols reached immigrant communities. “Our mission is to defend the homeland, primarily against terrorists and terrorist weapons,” said Thomas Pocorobba Jr., the agent in charge of the Rochester station, one of 55 between Washington State and Maine. “We still do our traditional mission, which is to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.” Legal scholars say the government’s border authority, which extends to fixed checkpoints intercepting cross-border traffic, cannot be broadly applied to roving patrols in a swath of territory. But such authority is not needed to ask questions if people can refuse to answer. The patrol does not track how many people decline, Mr. Pocorobba said. Asked if agents could question people in Times Square, which like most of the nation’s population centers is within 100 miles of international waters, Mr. Pocorobba replied, “Technically, we can, but we don’t.” He added, “Our job is strictly cross-border.” Lawyers challenging the stops in several deportation cases questioned the rationale that they were aimed at border traffic. Government data obtained in litigation shows that at least three-quarters of those arrested since 2006 had been in the country more than a year. Though many Americans may welcome such arrests, the patrol’s costly expansion was based on a bipartisan consensus about border security, not interior enforcement to sweep up farmworkers and students, said Nancy Morawetz, who directs the immigration rights clinic at New York University. One case she is challenging involves a Nassau County high school graduate taken from the Lake Shore Limited in Rochester in 2007. The government says the graduate, then 21, voluntarily produced a Guatemalan passport and could not prove she was in the country legally. A database later showed she had an expired visitor’s visa. Unlike a criminal arrest, such detentions come with few due process protections. The woman was held at a county jail, then transferred across the country while her mother, a house cleaner, and a high school teacher tried to reach her. The woman first saw an immigration judge more than three weeks after her arrest. He halved the $10,000 bail set by the patrol, and she was eventually released at night at a rural Texas gas station. “I was shocked,” said the teacher, Susanne Marcus, who said her former student had been awarded a $2,000 college scholarship. Another challenge is pending in the 2009 train arrest of the Taiwan-born doctoral student, who had to answer the agent after being singled out for intense questioning because of his “Asian appearance,” he said. His account was corroborated in an affidavit filed this month by another passenger. Similar complaints have been made by others, including a Chicago couple who encountered the patrol on a train to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for the woman’s graduation from Vassar College. “At least in Arizona, you have to be doing something wrong to be stopped,” said the woman, a citizen of Chinese-American descent who said her Mexican boyfriend was sleeping when an agent started questioning him. “Here, you’re sitting on the train asleep and if you don’t look like a U.S. citizen, it’s ‘Wake up!’ ” Mr. Pocorobba denied that agents used racial profiling; the proof, he said, was that those arrested had come from 96 countries . Agents say they often act on suspicion, prompted by a passenger’s demeanor. Of those detained, most were in the country illegally — including the Mexican, 24, who admitted that he had sneaked across the southern border at 16 to find his father. Others were supposed to be carrying their papers, like a Pakistani college student detained for two weeks before authorities confirmed that he was a legal resident. Some American-born passengers welcome the patrol. “It makes me feel safe,” volunteered Katie Miller, 34, who was riding Amtrak to New York from Ohio. “I don’t mind being monitored.” To others, it evokes travel through the old Communist bloc. “I was actually woken up with a flashlight in my face,” recalled Mike Santomauro, 27, a law student who encountered the patrol in April, at 2 a.m. on a train in Rochester. Across the aisle, he said, six agents grilled a student with a computer who had only an electronic version of his immigration documents. Through the window, Mr. Santomauro said, he could see three black passengers, standing with arms raised beside a Border Patrol van. “As a citizen I’m offended,” he said. But he added, “To say I didn’t want to answer didn’t seem a viable option.”

Amtrak
New York State
Illegal Immigrants
Border Patrol (US)
Customs and Border Protection (US)
Railroads
Transit Systems


Details Given of Dog Fights on Vick’s Property

Abstract: Federal authorities have filed court documents outlining a suspected dogfighting operation on property owned by Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick in Surry, Va. Vick is not named in the documents. Also, federal agents searched the property yesterday. They finished their work about 4:30 p.m. and declined to answer reporters’ questions as they left. The documents filed Monday in United States District Court in Richmond, Va., and obtained yesterday by The Associated Press contain the address of the home that has been the center of the investigation. According to the documents, dog fights have been sponsored by Bad Newz Kennels at the property since at least 2002. For the events, participants and dogs traveled from South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, New York, Texas and other states. Members of the venture also knowingly transported, delivered and received dogs for animal fighting, the documents said. Bad News is a local nickname for Newport News, Va., Vick’s hometown. Fifty-four animals were recovered from the property during searches in April, along with a “rape stand,” used to hold dogs in place for mating; an electric treadmill modified for dogs; and a bloodied piece of carpeting, the documents said. The property was used as the “main staging area for housing and training the pit bulls involved in the dog fighting venture,” according to the filings. During a June search of the property, investigators uncovered the graves of seven pit bulls that were suspected to have been killed by members of Bad Newz Kennels after sessions to test whether dogs would be good fighters, the documents said. Members of Bad Newz Kennels also sponsored and exhibited fights in other parts of the country, the filings said. Vick has said he rarely visited the property. No charges have been filed. Vick has said he had no idea the property might have been used in a criminal enterprise and blamed family members for taking advantage of his generosity. He also put the house up for sale and reportedly sold it quickly, although there is no record that the sale has closed. BRONCO SUSPENDED FOR STEROIDS Denver Broncos defensive end Kenny Peterson will miss the first four games of the season and be suspended without pay for violating the N.F.L.’s steroid policy. The Broncos released a statement yesterday saying that Peterson would be suspended without pay starting Aug. 31. The statement said Peterson had violated the policy on anabolic steroids and related substances but did not give specifics. Peterson can join the Broncos for training camp but will not return to the active roster until Oct. 1. Peterson was cut by the Green Bay Packers last September and signed with the Broncos to replace Courtney Brown, who had knee surgery five weeks into the season.

Dogs
Atlanta Falcons
Steroids
Denver Broncos
Vick Michael
Cruelty to Animals
Pets
National Football League
Football


A Review of La Parrilla, in Port Jefferson

Abstract: La Parrilla has a Spanish accent that encompasses both the Old World and the New. This Port Jefferson newcomer, which opened in late March, took over the building that housed the Spanish restaurant Costa de España for many years. The owner of La Parrilla, Vin Grillo, a first-time restaurateur, said his menu was a combination of Spanish and Latin American food. La Parrilla (which means “the grill” in Spanish) has the romantic-sounding address of 9 Traders Cove. In actuality, diners will find it facing a large municipal parking lot. Still, the restaurant looks impressive, sitting atop a small hill. Patrons walk up a sidewalk edged in flowers, to a front terrace and the entrance. The door opens into a spacious bar with a stone fireplace. Down a few steps is the sunny, porchlike front dining room, with six large windows; a second smaller dining room is behind it. The décor is minimal. The most interesting thing on the walls is a vintage photograph of Port Jefferson from the late 1800s; our friendly waiter pointed out the building now occupied by La Parrilla. Another vintage photograph in the bar shows the village’s active port. Image Shrimp bisque topped with whole shrimp. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times The cooking at La Parrilla is full of peaks and valleys, averaging out to a middle ground. The tasty shrimp bisque, crowned with six big shrimp, was the highest of the peaks. What was billed as a small bowl at $4.95 was in reality a very large flat soup bowl. I could only imagine what the large serving looked like. Also listed with the soups was an excellent beef stew with meltingly tender pieces of meat and cubes of potato and cassava. Four grilled artichoke hearts, surrounding a small cup of lemon aioli, also hit the spot. A garnish of fried sweet plantain logs gave the dish a Latin spin. A similar Latin touch was found in the fried calamari, which was a bit chewy, with a dipping sauce of slightly spicy salsa. The stuffed-pepper appetizer was a flat roasted pepper rather than the tall, sturdy one we expected; filled with the usual rice and ground beef, it was topped with manchego cheese and chopped hard-cooked egg. It tasted better than it looked but was still a bit off-putting. The strikeout among the appetizers was a special of a grilled portobello mushroom topped with a mushy crab stuffing and surrounded by a few assorted shellfish, all awash in a bland lobster sauce. At entree time, stuffed shrimp were weighed down by a similar heavy stuffing and tasteless lobster sauce. Poached grouper in a tasty green sauce was another disappointment; the fish was overcooked and mushy. Image A pork osso buco special served with saffron rice. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times Three entrees made my “don’t miss” list: grilled skirt steak smothered in onions (falda bistec); sautéed chicken cutlets in a brown sauce sparked by chorizo, mushrooms, green beans, peppers and onions (pollo Español); and a special of pork osso buco. The last was a mountain of tender meat rising from a valley of saffron rice. The grilled skirt steak, as tender as skirt steak gets, is Mr. Grillo’s favorite dish, he said, and it was the first dish his chef, Juan Alvarado, ever cooked for him. Mr. Grillo added that paella is the most popular entree at La Parrilla. It is not the authentic version made in the oven in a paella pan, but it nevertheless got thumbs up for its moist saffron rice and abundant, tasty ingredients: clams, mussels, shrimp, calamari, fish, chicken and chorizo. Desserts are all made in house. The best was the sturdy yet silky flan. Two cheesecakes, Grand Marnier and raspberry, were also creamy-good, but tiramisù needed more mascarpone and fewer ladyfingers. La Parrilla has a warm, attentive staff, peppy Latin background music and food that, while uneven, offers enough good options for a satisfying meal.


In a City Mired in Losing, James’s Return Offers a Glimmer of Hope

Abstract: CLEVELAND — He’s back. And suddenly, we are talking about time and home. We load soda from dusk till dawn in a beverage warehouse west of Cleveland. Our workplace is a max lockup’s rented room: cement floors, barbed-wire fences and, this night, through the open dock doors, an unobstructed view of an approaching thunderstorm. Our entertainment is all-night sports talk on the shop radio and whatever conversation crackles in between. On any given shift, I consider the Patriot Act with James, trade sports trivia with Ralph, weigh draft picks with Diago and craft beers with Joe. Not long discussions, just a few quick words tossed over a shoulder as we pass in the aisles. They’re smart guys, my co-workers, curious about the world beyond our gate, eager to weigh in on the deeper questions. Tonight’s topic: How old was André the Giant when he died? Mortality must wait. He’s back, my buddy James reminds me. He’s back, Diago grins. Four years after abandoning Cleveland, LeBron James is returning to the Cavaliers, and the media has lost its collective mind. People who could not find Cleveland on a map with both hands are planning our victory parades. Twitter, they tell me, is blowing up. There is joy in Mudville. The news rolls like a storm front, eventually winding its way to a warehouse graveyard shift. That’s Cleveland for you. In most places, people follow sports. Here, sports follow you. Terry the Motor Driver asks me what I think. I tell him I think there is hope. I do not tell him that hope feels strange. My Cleveland is a city of losers — and I mean that as a compliment. No royals retire here for the skiing. The people I grew up with were the descendants of stiff-necked troublemakers from County Mayo or the Abruzzi, men who never bowed to royalty — peasants to everyone but themselves. They were the children of proud women who realized they’d never get a fair shake in Hattiesburg, Miss., or Selma, Ala., and besides, how brutal could a summer in an east Cleveland tenement be? They came from a long way off and collected here, pushed by hard times and pulled by a desire for home. They toiled in the steel mills and, over time, put down roots. The newcomers sat shoulder to shoulder at Cleveland Arena or Municipal Stadium, eating hot dogs, tasting brown mustard and defeat, learning to say “wait till next year” in many languages. The wheel surely does spin. Four years after being tossed under the bus, we’re back on board, all doubts and suspicions stored in the luggage compartment. Our hopes are pinned on a rookie quarterback from Texas, Johnny Manziel; a casino owner from Michigan, the Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert; and now a homegrown baller returning from South Beach. They have arrived from a long way off to work hard, not in the tire plants or on assembly lines, but on our fields of dreams. I don’t know how they feel about brown mustard, but I hope they have no taste for defeat. The prudent say if championships happen at all, they will take time. I say, time grows precious fast. I’d always thought I’d age gracefully — a leading man sliding into character roles. But in the morning mirror, I’m less Gary Cooper than Gary, Ind. Time waits for no one, not even a gifted baller from Akron. Finding home will be even trickier. The city has changed in four years, let alone over the five decades since the last championship. I go back, sometimes, to my old neighborhood to look for places I remember, but it is like trying to find a relative in a potter’s field. The old mills have been scrubbed from memory, the bricks crushed and thrown down a hill, the vacant lots roped off like crime scenes. Others wait for redevelopment; temples built to gods no one worships anymore. The people who live in those shadows now wonder about the people who built them. Were there blood sacrifices conducted inside? Yes, there were. No matter. The King is back. Long live the King. Forgiveness? Maybe. But you can’t unbend a nail. Any hammer swinger will tell you that. Redemption? Short term, the bar owners around the Cavs’ arena will be able to pay their bills. The waitstaff, too. Long term, this warehouse won’t change. My life, not at all. Hope does not thrive in this flinty soil. But it would be nice if just one time in this world, something you loved would love you back. Opinions are like Johnny Football jerseys: Everyone here’s got one. Here’s mine. You make a home for the people you love in the time you have. It’s the same if you load soda or win Most Valuable Player awards. Everything else is a Twitter feed. Back on the shift, the shop radio has been commandeered by a new talking head, a professed thinker looking for deeper meanings for Cleveland in James’s return. It’s a more cosmic connection than anything six men laboring in a beverage warehouse muster. No one is listening anyway. After much debate, a consensus has been reached. How old was André the Giant when he died? Answer: Not old enough. Ralph pulls our dock doors down. Lightning flashes. The weather turns nasty, the work rises up and we spend the rest of the night saving one another from drowning. Because no one man succeeds alone.

Cleveland
LeBron James
Cavaliers
Basketball