Council Bill Could Make Campaign Fraud Easier in New York, Critics Say

Abstract: The Manhattan district attorney, government watchdog groups and campaign finance officials are criticizing legislation before the City Council for its potential to weaken New York City’s landmark campaign finance system. Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney, sent a letter this week to Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Council speaker, and other council members warning that one bill being considered could make it easier for those seeking money under the city’s matching funds program to commit fraud. The program provides a six-to-one match for up to $175 in contributions from an individual city resident, meaning a $175 contribution would open the door to an additional $1,050 in matching funds. The bill being considered would let candidates complete or make changes to contribution cards required of donors that give identifying information, including, among other things, the date and amount of contributions. “This bill would eliminate an important safeguard against violations of campaign finance law and the defrauding of taxpayers,” Mr. Vance wrote in the letter, which The Daily News reported about on Friday. Mr. Vance said the contribution-card bill would make it hard to prosecute some fraud cases. In one such case, his office secured an indictment this year against Celia D. Dosamantes, a Democrat accused of altering contribution cards to make it appear as if some donors had given more than they had and to increase the amount of matching funds she received. City Council officials said the bills being considered were still going through the legislative process and that concerns like those voiced by Mr. Vance would be weighed. A vote on the bills is expected before year’s end. Rose Gill Hearn, chairwoman of the city’s Campaign Finance Board, also criticized the contribution-card bill in a memo last month, saying it would complicate the task of detecting instances of fraud involving the matching funds program. Ms. Gill Hearn criticized several other proposals being considered by the Council, saying they could hamper the board’s ability to do its job. She said the bills had advanced without sufficient deliberation, unlike other proposed reforms backed by the board that have languished for months but now are expected to win the Council’s approval by year’s end. “These unwelcome proposals should not be the cost of implementing those reforms,” she wrote. One proposal drawing Ms. Gill Hearn’s criticism would strictly limit who could attend the board’s executive sessions, which are closed to the public. Ms. Gill Hearn said that could keep the board from consulting with its own staff members or others when considering penalties for campaign-finance violations. She also took issue with a proposal that would place new requirements on the board when a candidate contests its findings that a violation has occurred. In addition, she objected to a bill that would compel the board to report to the Council and mayor on efforts to make its software compatible with state Board of Elections’ software. The bills are expected to be voted on along with other legislation long sought by advocates. That legislation includes a proposal to keep contributions bundled by lobbyists and others doing business with the city out of the matching-funds system. There are now strict limits on how much money lobbyists and those with business with the city can give to candidates directly, but those same people can raise unlimited sums from others that they can package together and give to candidates in a process known as bundling. Because bundled funds can qualify for the matching-funds program, the process greatly magnifies bundlers’ influence. While the proposal on bundling would not ban it, it would remove the match for those funds — a significant improvement in the view of government watchdogs. The finance board proposed the change in 2014, and it has awaited a Council vote for months. Also under consideration is a bill that would strictly limit how much lobbyists or those doing business with the city can give to nonprofit groups controlled or created by elected officials. The bill is aimed at a practice used by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was heavily criticized for the activities of the Campaign for One New York, a nonprofit created to support his agenda. The group received millions of dollars in donations from builders, lobbyists, unions and others. The mayor, a Democrat, shut the group down this year, but its actions and fund-raising practices have been the subject of multiple investigations. Ms. Mark-Viverito, a Democrat, said at a news conference this week that she believed the bills under consideration “will actually improve the system and make it more efficient.”

Fraud
Manhattan
Campaign finance
Election
NYC
Cyrus R Vance Jr
New York City Council


G.M. Is Said to Seek a Stake in Fiat

Abstract: Four years after paying $2 billion to extricate itself from a partnership with Fiat , General Motors is seeking a stake in the Italian automaker in exchange for its Latin American and European operations. General Motors is eager to cede control of its money-losing Opel unit in Germany. But Fiat has also expressed interest in G.M. ’s other European operations as well as its historically profitable Latin American business, though the possible terms of such a deal have not been discussed publicly. G.M., despite its precarious financial position, now feels it has a bargaining chip with its Latin American unit, and is negotiating with Fiat over what it might get in return. According to two people close to the negotiations, the companies are far apart. Sergio Marchionne, Fiat’s chief executive, has indicated a willingness to give up less than 10 percent of Fiat to General Motors. But G.M. executives are holding out for at least 30 percent of the Fiat Auto Group, according to these people, who said they were not authorized to comment publicly because the discussions are fluid. A Fiat representative declined to comment on whether G.M. was seeking a stake, as did a spokesman for G.M. The discussions are the latest development in Fiat’s multipronged bid to grow, almost overnight, into a dominant global auto company, by acquiring Opel and a 20 percent stake in Chrysler. On Wednesday, Fiat confirmed that Mr. Marchionne would be chief executive of Chrysler when it emerged from bankruptcy, while remaining chief executive of Fiat. Even analysts who admire Mr. Marchionne’s stamina say they question whether combining the three companies is feasible. “You can’t get a meeting room big enough to fit all these companies together,” said Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst with Credit Suisse in London. “A person has to sleep, and unless he’s got a strong management team, there is a significant execution risk.” The White House has set a June 1 deadline for creditors, unions and General Motors executives to come up with a plan to avoid bankruptcy. Besides negotiating with G.M., however, Mr. Marchionne is seeking financial aid for Opel from the German government. He was able to persuade Washington to provide billions of dollars in support for Chrysler. The Latin American operations of G.M. could prove profitable for Fiat well before the Chrysler deal begins yielding dividends. That is why it makes sense for General Motors to negotiate a stake in Fiat, despite their tangled history, according to Philippe Houchois, an analyst with UBS. “It lets Fiat do the hard work of scaling up Opel, while giving something valuable to G.M. in the long run,” said Mr. Houchois. Because G.M. in Latin America is dependent on Opel for its product line, divorcing the two operations would be difficult, a fact that strengthens G.M.’s hand leading up to the June 1 deadline. Fiat and G.M. frequently clashed during their five-year partnership, which began in 2000. Fiat engineers said G.M. was too cautious and unwilling to embrace new technology that would have created cleaner, more fuel-efficient engines. In Germany, meanwhile, Opel engineers became convinced that Fiat didn’t share its focus on detail or quality standards. The Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings continued Wednesday with the disclosure of the names of creditors who opposed an administration-backed plan to sell nearly all Chrysler’s assets to a new company held by the United Automobile Workers union, Fiat and the United States and Canadian governments. The list named nine investment funds, several apparently managed by the same firms, down from 20 that had criticized the sale plan while protected by a veil of anonymity. On Tuesday, the dissident creditors, who have been criticized by President Obama as “speculators,” asked the bankruptcy judge overseeing the case, Arthur J. Gonzalez, to allow them to remain anonymous. The judge declined, observing that the comments by the president and others did not sound like serious threats. “It’s just their opinion,” Judge Gonzalez told lawyers. “How much more is it than that?”

Automobiles
General Motors Corp
Fiat SpA
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Players See Sincerity in Woods’s Apology, but Many Just Prepare to Play

Abstract: MARANA, Ariz. — Members of the news media far outnumbered players at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club here when Tiger Woods issued his televised public apology Friday. Tim Clark, who watched the telecast in the clubhouse dining room before the third round of the W.G.C.-Accenture Match Play Championship, declined to comment immediately afterward and went toward the hotel. When he returned, and saw the eight minicams and many digital recorders, he jokingly covered his head with his sweater vest and tried to walk past reporters to the locker room, finally pulling it off and saying he never talks before he plays. Not long after, Sergio García swung his white Lexus into the circular drive in front of the Southwestern-style clubhouse 70 minutes before his tee time and walked wordlessly into the locker room to prepare for his match. Lucas Glover, who lost his match on Wednesday, put an open-field move on the news media and speed-walked to the locker room saying, “I’m not stopping.” After joking with reporters — “you’re all here for me?” — Luke Donald agreed to a brief interview. “I think it was a sincere apology,” he said of Woods, who admitted to having “affairs” and said, “For all that I have done, I am so sorry.” “He made it very clear that he wants the media to leave his family alone, which I agree with,” Donald said. “It seems like he’s getting the help and care he needs and hopefully he’ll be back on tour soon.” Thongchai Jaidee waved by reporters and sped toward the locker room, as did Oliver Wilson. Stewart Cink stopped momentarily. He said he did not see all of the broadcast, but what he saw made him believe Woods was sincere. “Tiger is a tough guy and I’m sure he’s doing everything he can to overcome this,” Cink said. “From what I did hear, it’s part of the recovery or the healing process that he has to go through.”


Muslim Brotherhood Blocks Protest in Egypt

Abstract: CAIRO — The Muslim Brotherhood flexed its muscles here on Tuesday as hundreds of its young members linked arms to block a protest march from reaching Parliament while its lawmakers inside dominated the selection of leaders for legislative committees. More than 70 people were injured as thousands of protesters jammed against the Brotherhood’s human wall, the Health Ministry said. Thirty people were hospitalized, the ministry said, 10 of them members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The protesters had set out to demand that Egypt ’s military rulers surrender power now, before a new constitution is drafted and without any guarantees of immunity from prosecution. But when they confronted the Brotherhood barrier, they quickly shifted their ire to the new target. “The people want the fall of the Brotherhood,” they chanted. “No Brotherhood, no officers. Down, down with military rule!” Some threw plastic bottles or rocks at the Brotherhood’s members, and there were reports of some scuffles. But for the most part, the Brotherhood members remained impassive and silent. The confrontation was a vivid illustration of the inversion in the Brotherhood’s status. Once outlawed and persecuted, the Islamist group is now the party in power, with half the seats in the newly elected Parliament. Civilian members of the Brotherhood are even playing the role of informal police officers in keeping the peace, as they did during demonstrations in Tahrir Square last week . On Tuesday, members of the central security police stood idly behind the Brotherhood’s lines, some officers leaning casually on riot shields. The demonstrators are angry at the Brotherhood in part because it has stood resolutely by the agreement it struck with the ruling military council in November. The deal calls for the generals to hand over power by the end of June, after the ratification of a constitution and the election of a president. The demonstrators worry that the military rulers, as they have before, may try to use their authority to carve out privileges or immunities for themselves. Ziad el-Elaimy, who has a seat in Parliament and was a left-leaning organizer of the revolt that led to President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, said that he and more than 30 other deputies left the chamber to join the protesters. The speaker of Parliament would not give them a chance “to tell the people out here that we are with them,” Mr. Elaimy said on the street outside as admirers swarmed around him. “The Brotherhood has started to play the role of security, and that is not their job,” he said. “Parliament was elected for the people,” Mr. Elaimy added, “but the Brothers are there for themselves.” Inside the building, Parliament’s first working session continued. In all, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party claimed 11 committee chairmanships, and the ultraconservative Islamist party Al Nour took four; non-Islamists received four committees as well, covering culture and the media, human rights, legislation and the constitution, and Arab affairs.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Injured Yankees Relievers See Their Fortunes Turn, for Better and Worse

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — When Andrew Miller and Bryan Mitchell arrived on Thursday morning at their lockers, located next to each other, the pitchers were a dichotomy of the fickle nature of sports injuries. Miller sat in his chair, his right wrist wrapped to protect a chipped bone. Mitchell stood on crutches picking through his belongings. A day earlier, Miller had left the field in anguish and annoyance after taking a line drive off his nonthrowing arm — an injury that looked as if it might be a formidable blow to the Yankees. Mitchell, meanwhile, merely limped off in discomfort after running to cover first base. Their prospects had flipped the next day. Miller believes his injury will not prevent him from pitching in Monday’s season opener. Mitchell, however, received the grim news that he had fractured a sesamoid bone in his left foot and had a Grade 3 turf toe. He figures to miss months. Manager Joe Girardi wants to see Miller pitch before opening day to make sure he is in good form. But Miller was in good spirits, explained that he had looked up information about the pisiform bone on Wikipedia, and said that if a hand specialist told him not to play, “I’ll probably find another doctor.” Mitchell, though, was struggling to process his latest turn of bad luck, which came less than 24 hours after learning he had made the team following an outstanding spring. “I mean, honestly, I don’t think it’s even sunk in yet,” said Mitchell, whose foot was in a protective boot. “It’s tough right now. It’s nothing I want to hear, especially at this point in the game.” Mitchell was injured on an innocent-looking play, pushing off the mound to cover first base on a ground ball to the right side of the infield. Last season, Mitchell was a candidate to be recalled from Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in late July when he sustained a concussion in a freak accident. He was working out with an elastic band, which was tied to a doorknob, when someone opened the door on the other side. Mitchell fell back and hit his head. The next month, after he was recalled, he was sent to the disabled list with a broken nose and another concussion after he was hit in the face by a line drive. “I can’t get too down on myself,” Mitchell said. “Luckily, it’s not my arm.” The Yankees’ bullpen depth will be tested quickly with the loss of Mitchell and the newly acquired closer Aroldis Chapman, who has been suspended for 30 games for his role in a domestic violence episode. Joining Miller, Dellin Betances and Chasen Shreve will be either C. C. Sabathia or Ivan Nova — whoever does not get the final spot in the rotation — and Johnny Barbato and Luis Cessa, who won their spots Thursday. Kirby Yates appears to be the front-runner for the final spot, although the Yankees will be scouring the waiver wire. The loss of Miller could have been crippling, but being without Mitchell may also be a problem. He appeared to have harnessed his mid-90 mile-per-hour fastball and sharp slider this spring, allowing one run in 152/3 innings. He was being groomed to replace Adam Warren as a versatile long reliever. Mitchell said he would be examined Monday in Charlotte, N.C., by Dr. Robert Anderson, a foot and ankle specialist who treated Derek Jeter for an injury in 2012. A course of action will then be determined. Dr. Steven Weinfeld, the chief of foot and ankle surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, said the injury to Mitchell typically required four to six weeks of immobilization for the toe to heal. Sometimes a cortisone shot can aid the recovery. If the bone does not heal properly, surgery would be necessary. Miller was expected to see a hand specialist Friday in Miami, where the Yankees were headed for their final two exhibition games after a 9-1 loss to St. Louis in their final game of spring training at Steinbrenner Field. Dr. Michael Hausman, the chief of hand and elbow surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said that of the 12 bones in the upper hand and wrist area, the pisiform was nonessential. “If you’re going to break a bone in the wrist, the pisiform is an excellent choice,” Hausman said. “He may well be able to play with a broken pisiform. It’s worth trying. There’s no downside. He’s not going to cause further injury.” Hausman said the pisiform, which will not heal from the break, is simply removed if it causes chronic pain. Miller, who fired his cap into the dugout after being hit on Wednesday, said Thursday that he was relieved after conducting his Internet research. “I think my reaction showed I knew it was hurt pretty bad,” Miller said. “It got me pretty square, I could tell. It was at least going to be a pretty good bruise. All things considered, it couldn’t be in a better spot.” But with their bullpen thinned and the season set to begin on Monday, the Yankees could be. INSIDE PITCH Joe Girardi announced that Masahiro Tanaka would be the opening day starter. Girardi also said that Austin Romine would be the backup catcher after beating out Carlos Corporan. After the game, the Yankees reassigned pitcher Anthony Swarzak and outfielder Cesar Puello to their minor league camp.

Yankees
Andrew Miller
Bryan Mitchell
Sports injury
Baseball


Afghanistan: German Troops Fired on Protesters

Abstract: The German Defense Ministry acknowledged Friday that its troops had fired on demonstrators during a violent protest in the northern Afghan city of Taliqan this week, wounding several civilians and possibly killing some. The demonstrations erupted Wednesday after a joint American and Afghan night raid at a family compound just outside the city that left four people dead, two of them women. NATO said the four were insurgents who tried to fire at its troops, but local officials insisted they were civilians. When the protesters tried to attack a small German-run NATO base on the outskirts of the city, the ministry said, German troops fired warning shots in the air before shooting at the legs of the attackers. Some protesters were hit in the torso and at least one was hit in the neck and head region, the statement said. At least 12 people were killed in the two days of protests. German authorities said they were investigating the shootings.

Afghanistan
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Germany
Defense and Military Forces


Opening Champagne With a Saber at the Baroness

Abstract: On the eve of New Year’s Eve, one neighborhood bar was already celebrating — as usual. The Baroness, six weeks old, in a nearly 100-year-old building in Long Island City, was offering instruction in the French art of sabrage. That is to say, patrons could open their own Champagne bottles with a saber, after a quick lesson from Mélanie Lemieux, owner and sommelier. But buyer — and buyer’s friends watching — beware. On very rare occasions, the bottle explodes. Along with her husband, Kyle Radzyminski, 35, Ms. Lemieux, 27, a Montreal transplant who named the bar for her French great-great-grandmother, has given a Napoleonic boost to a dark street with a laundromat, a liquor store and new apartments. JetBlue employees from nearby, first dates and regulars are relieved to find funky quaintness; only wine, beer and sparkling beverages are served, along with Murray’s cheeses, flatbread pizzas and charcuterie. A soundtrack of covers stirs reminiscent smiles or singalongs, accentuated by the occasional popping and clapping. IN THE SEATS The good friends Amanda Speranza, 29, a mental health counselor, and Enaoris Hernandez, 27, a marketer for a home health care company. Ms. Speranza helps people all day but had a bad one herself on Monday. She was worn down by holiday stress and frayed friendships with those moving away or having babies — “just the responsibilities of growing up,” she said. But Ms. Hernandez was there for her, arriving at her door in Bayside with a car and cannolis, insisting on a girls’ night out. What better way to get out that pent-up frustration? SWORDPLAY AT THE BAR Ms. Lemieux instructed a nervous Ms. Speranza to move the sword up the neck along the seam of the bottle, toward its collar. Ms. Speranza pointed the saber at a burlap sack hanging next to the bar and threw her arm into the act. Suddenly, the bottle shattered in several large, jagged pieces, one striking the stomach of a photographer standing two feet away. (A sweater provided some cushion.) Mr. Radzyminski said that pressure had probably built inside a defective bottle, and that this had never happened before. They gave Ms. Speranza another try. This time, she broke the glass collar in one clean piece, the cork popping resoundingly. Ms. Hernandez shouted, “Mazel tov!” Ms. Speranza couldn’t stop smiling. “That felt so ... triumphant,” she said. TIME TO EAT Sitting on couches in the raised corner, complete with French romance novels, they ate a cheese plate with tomme de Savoie and Brie double crème, dried fruit and bread ($15) and a margherita flatbread ($12). A bottle of Duc de Romet Prestige Brut ($60) chilled in a bucket. WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT The power of the documentary “Blackfish,” about a SeaWorld orca implicated in three deaths. They caught up on their respective holidays and felt invigorated by the evening. “Thank you so much for dragging me out tonight,” Ms. Speranza said, adding that what happened with the bottle was much like her day: “I got a second chance.” At $60 a pop, their outing may not become a weekly ritual, but it felt perfect for the second-to-last night of the year. “I love Saber Monday!” Ms. Speranza exclaimed.

bars,nightclubs
Long Island City Queens
The Baroness Queens NY Bar


Twitter Gets More Features, and Competitors

Abstract: Twitter ’s first developer conference, held this week in San Francisco, served as a coming-out party for the four-year-old service. Twitter the start-up is becoming Twitter the big company, with more polish, controversy , competition and revenue . At the conference, called Chirp, Twitter announced several new features that will make it more useful, including geo-location services, a database of places and additional metadata for posts. It also offered details about @anywhere, a new service that lets people gain access to Twitter from elsewhere on the Web. These new features could expand Twitter’s reach, but it also pits the company against other popular Web companies, including Facebook and Foursquare . “They’ve gone from a data play to a platform play,” said Jeremiah Owyang , a partner at Altimeter Group, a digital strategy consulting firm. “You’re seeing the same behavior that Facebook, Google and other online communities have done. This is a natural evolution of a Web company.” As evidence of its growth, Twitter revealed some previously undisclosed numbers. It has 106 million registered users and is adding new users at the rate of 300,000 a day. Those customers write 55 million daily posts, and 180 million people log on to Twitter.com each month to read them. Despite the growth, Twitter has a pressing need to make the service easier to understand for new users, said Evan Williams, its chief executive. “It’s amazing it’s grown so fast given how hard it is to use.” One of the new features Twitter announced is called points of interest. People on Twitter have been able to include their general location . But now they will be able to reveal exactly where they are. People will be able to search for a certain location, like a concert hall or hotel, and see all the posts written from that spot. This is similar to the check-ins on Foursquare, Gowalla and other services that people use to share their location. Mr. Williams said that Twitter was not trying to duplicate those services but rather provide Twitter users with more relevant content. “Where you are defines what you’re interested in,” he said. Twitter and its developers will build a database of places — parks, restaurants, hospitals and the like — across the world so people can refer to them in posts. Another new tool is called annotations. Already, individual posts show which app someone used to write the post and the date, time and (if users choose to make it public) location. With annotations, software developers will be able to add other material, which Twitter calls metadata, to Twitter posts. This could significantly expand the amount of information a post includes, beyond its 140 characters, and could enhance the way Twitter is used. Posts could include the name of the restaurant where a post was written and its star rating on Yelp, for instance. Then, someone could find Twitter posts about restaurants nearby with five stars. Or developers could add a way to make a payment and purchase, so retailers could sell items from within a post. Twitter does not know what developers will decide to do with the tool, said Ryan Sarver, who manages the Twitter platform. “The underlying idea is think big, push yourself.” Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief operating officer, gave details about @anywhere, which was first announced at the South by Southwest conference. (Initial partners include more than a dozen news sites, including The New York Times Company.) Similar to Facebook Connect, @anywhere will allow people to log in to Twitter from other Web sites. When visiting a magazine Web site, for instance, a user could sign in to Twitter, hover the cursor over a writer’s byline and follow the writer on Twitter or write a post without leaving the page. The magazine could also suggest other writers that the reader should follow on Twitter. Twitter also said it would incorporate more outside services — including an Android app and a link shortener — into its own service, either by acquiring start-ups or building its own tools. This added to the unease that many software developers have felt since last week, when Twitter announced its own iPhone and BlackBerry apps. Developers who make these types of apps worry that Twitter could put them out of business. Twitter tried to reassure developers, by emphasizing how crucial they have been to Twitter’s success. Developers have built more than 100,000 Twitter apps, and 75 percent of Twitter’s traffic comes from people using these apps instead of Twitter.com .

Twitter
Social Networking (Internet)
Computers and the Internet


Taliban Publicly Execute Two Women in Northern Afghanistan

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents publicly executed two women, one of them in an apparent honor killing, in northern Afghanistan recently, according to Afghan officials, members of the victims’ families and a video posted online. The killings, which were thought to be unrelated, took place in recent months in northern Jowzjan Province, in predominantly Uzbek areas where Taliban presence has traditionally been weak except among ethnic Pashtuns. The killings came to light after a video was circulated of one of them and officials discovered evidence of the other. In one of the cases, a pregnant 22-year-old woman named Rabia, a mother of two young children, was accused by her husband of adultery, tried and convicted by the Taliban on the spot, and then publicly shot three times. Members of her family said that her husband had concocted the adultery charge because of a land dispute between their families, and that he had wanted to inherit his wife’s interests in the land. “They buried her without even allowing her family to participate in her funeral,” said Shakera, her aunt, who like many Afghans has only one name. “I know she was a very innocent woman,” Shakera said, speaking by telephone from her home in the provincial capital, Shibarghan. “She did not have the heart to be unfaithful.” Another motive for the Taliban to kill her, Shakera said, was that two of Rabia’s uncles were militia commanders loyal to the Uzbek leader, Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is also first vice president of Afghanistan. According to the deputy police chief of Jowzjan Province, Col. Abdul Hafeez, the apparent honor killing took place in Memlek village in the district of Faizabad. The district governor of Faizabad, Saira Shekib, who is one of Afghanistan’s few female governors, said it had been personally carried out by the Taliban’s shadow governor in the district, whom she identified as Qari Rasool. The killings were reminiscent of similar executions carried out frequently from 1996 to 2001, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and killed many women convicted of so-called moral crimes by shooting them in the head at the National Stadium before large crowds. In rural areas, where the group holds sway, they have often stoned women t o death for suspected moral offenses. The second Jowzjan execution is believed to have taken place four months ago, though the video surfaced only in the past couple days. The victim is seen in a blue burqa, sitting on the ground. A Taliban court convicted her of killing her husband, whose family crowded around the execution site and loudly voted to execute her. The victim’s identity was not known, but Colonel Hafeez said that the authorities believed that the video was genuine and that the execution had taken place in the Khanaqa district. The executioner’s face is covered, but he was believed to be the district’s Taliban commander. The children of Rabia, the victim in the suspected honor killing, were not present when the Taliban official summarily executed her in the yard of her home. But according to Shakera, Rabia’s 3-year-old daughter found her mother’s bloodied sandals after the killing and recognized them. “She ran to her grandma asking where is her mother,” Shakera said. “The grandma did not have an answer for her.” Rabia’s 6-month-old son had still been breast-feeding at the time his mother was killed, Shakera said, and members of the family say they have been unable to afford enough powdered baby formula for the infant. Both children remained with the father’s family. On Saturday, two coalition soldiers were killed in what may have been an insider attack in southern Afghanistan, according to a statement from the American-led coalition. The attack took place at Kandahar Air Field, inside an Afghan Special Forces compound, Afghan officials said. Samim Khapalwak, a spokesman for the Kandahar governor, described one of the gunmen as an Afghan police officer, and said four NATO soldiers had been wounded in all. The attack occurred during a training exercise, he said. While the coalition did not confirm the victims’ nationality, Afghan officials said they were Romanian soldiers. The coalition statement said that the victims had been shot by two gunmen wearing the uniforms of Afghan security forces, and that other coalition soldiers had shot and killed the attackers.

Taliban
Afghanistan
Honor killing
Uzbeks
Abdul Rashid Dostum
Women and Girls
Capital punishment


George Vecsey: Tears and Jeers on Final Day of Mets’ Season

Abstract: On the final day of the season — when the tone is “Auld Lang Syne” and Wait Till Next Year and all that bittersweet baseball stuff — the Mets drew tears from their manager, Terry Collins . As the Mets parted ways with back-slapping hugs, they also left behind a controversy after Collins removed his star Jose Reyes in the first inning of Miguel Batista’s closeout, 3-0, victory over the Reds. The memory is likely to stay with Reyes, wherever he winds up, even though he is now the National League batting champion. Reyes was given the final eight innings off, not to protect his twangy hamstring, a symbol of the entire season, but to preserve his batting average at .3370577. Perhaps on his way out the door because of the financial shortages that undermine this franchise, Reyes wanted to beat out Ryan Braun of the Brewers, who was hitting .335 going into Wednesday night’s game against the Pirates. Reyes laughingly said he didn’t do the math, but when Braun went hitless in his first three times up to fall to .333, he had no chance to catch Reyes. Earlier, Braun had said he had no problem with Reyes’s decision to leave the game. Others may not be so kind to Reyes, who had asked his manager to take him out if he got a hit the first time up. At the end of the game, fans chanted “Please Stay, Jose,” but earlier more than a few fans had expressed their displeasure with the Mets for not keeping Reyes on the field awhile longer. “I heard comments from the stands,” Collins said, sniffling in his postgame news conference. “I don’t blame them.” He said he was emotional out of pride for this team and was not bothered by criticism from fans who may not have known he was merely backing up his player. It’s been that kind of season. Their finances suspect, their architecture under review, their victories sporadic, the Mets produced sour notes right to the end. Management recently denied the Yankees permission to put their Class AAA team in Newark for one season. This dog-in-the-manger attitude was as much an insult to the struggling New Jersey city as to the lordly Yankees. The vengeful side came out as the Mets’ owners have been fighting a suit for as much as $1 billion in connection with their relationship with Bernard L. Madoff. A ruling in court Tuesday apparently limited the potential damage from the claim of $1 billion to about $300 million. It is easy for fans and reporters to say, what the heck, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz could empty the penny jars and take lunch to work for a while and therefore be able to keep the team and retain Reyes and David Wright, and firm up the pitching staff. The ruling follows charges that Wilpon and Katz either knew of Madoff’s scheme or should have known. My own sense is that Wilpon and Katz may have been foolish and arrogant in dealing with Madoff but that they never would have put the next generations, plus dear friends like Sandy Koufax, in a scheme they knew to be crooked. Either way, nothing is clear about the future of the Mets, which leads to the apprehension that Reyes and Wright could be too expensive to keep. This season has also seen a growing acknowledgment that the Wilpons — builders before they were owners — designed a cockamamie ballpark. They tossed in follies in homage to Ebbets Field, Tiger Stadium, the Polo Grounds and probably a few backyard tree houses, too. Now there is talk that the Mets will not only retool their roster but also eradicate some artificial touches like Mo’s Zone , the indented section of right-center field that terrorizes hitters and fielders alike. Before we see a revamped ballpark , the Mets said goodbye to the season, full of injuries and frustrations and occasional overachievement with 77 victories and 85 losses. This warm, muggy afternoon had a sense of change, as Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, fast approached. In T-shirt weather, fans honored 7 Reyes and 5 Wright. Behind the right-field foul pole in the upper deck was a fan wearing Fire Wilpon. Just a guess that he did not get any TV time. Reyes promptly bunted down the third-base line and never even drew a throw at first. Collins, who has been a stand-up guy all season, sent in a pinch runner. Only later did Collins reveal that Reyes had asked to come out if he got an early hit.  This was hardly the way Ted Williams did it on the final day in 1941 when he refused to nurse his .39955 average and instead went 6 for 8 in a doubleheader to hit .406 and become Last Man to Ever Break .400. That was why he was Teddy Ballgame. The Kid. The Splendid Splinter. And if the question is about relative experience or security, Williams was 22 and in his third major league season; Reyes, 28, is in his ninth. Other players have nursed a narrow lead to ensure a batting championship. “I don’t care what people say,” Reyes said. And if Braun happened to beat him out? “I still had a great year,” Reyes said. Some people will think it was a weasel thing for Reyes to do, but Collins was merely protecting his man, with his hamstring and his batting lead intact. One thing the Mets proved this year: You can’t please everyone. Not in this bittersweet season, now over. Happy New Year. And wait till next year.

Baseball
New York Mets
Reyes Jose
Collins Terry L
Wilpon Fred
Williams Ted S


Former Bank Employees Protest in Beijing

Abstract: BEIJING — More than 1,000 former bank employees demanding compensation for jobs lost during a revamping of China’s biggest state-owned banks a decade ago staged a noisy protest on Monday at the capital’s main petition office. The crowd, which organizers said included as many as 3,000 middle-aged men and women from across China, appeared to overwhelm the police. Officers largely stood by as the protesters held aloft signs saying, “I’ve been wronged.” It is not the first time the former bank tellers, accountants and branch managers have sought to publicize their grievances , which stem from a restructuring of China’s four largest banks as they prepared to go public, forcing out about 400,000 people during the decade-long purge. Many of those fired were over 40, and some were nearing retirement. Analysts, citing bloated work forces, say the downsizing was a necessary component of a modernization effort that transformed the country’s socialist-era banking sector. According to the London-based Banker magazine, four Chinese financial institutions are now among the world’s top 10 largest banks. The number one spot belongs to Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, or ICBC. News of soaring profits have only angered those who were let go during the streamlining drive. Many say they were offered paltry compensation; those who refused the packages were fired anyway. “We’re just asking for fairness, seeking to regain our former jobs or receive compensation,” said Zhang Guoxi, one of the protest organizers and a former ICBC employee. Mr. Zhang, who gave a brief speech to the crowd, said many would-be protesters were thwarted by the police before they could reach the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, a forbidding structure south of Tiananmen Square that draws throngs of petitioners each day — as well as men, employed by local governments, whose job it is to stop them from entering the building to file their grievances. Public security officials responded with a show of force that included scores of public buses. But rather than herd protesters onto the buses, the police stood by as the crowd chanted slogans like “We want to eat.” At one point, an officer taunted the crowd, shouting, “Then go back home and ask your mother for food.”

Jobs
China
Banking and Finance
Layoffs
Unemployment


NBCUniversal Names Co-Presidents for USA Channel

Abstract: Comcast ’s NBCUniversal division is promoting two executives, Jeff Wachtel and Chris McCumber, to be the co-presidents of USA, the most-watched channel on cable television. The co-presidency arrangement will be announced Thursday by Bonnie Hammer, who was the president of USA until Comcast gained control of NBCUniversal in January. At that time, she was promoted to chairwoman of NBCUniversal’s cable entertainment and cable studios. For several years, Mr. Wachtel has been the chief of original programming for USA, and Mr. McCumber has been the chief marketer there. “Their collaborative style is a critical part of USA’s DNA and a key component of the network’s success,” Ms. Hammer said in a statement. The two men will jointly oversee all aspects of the channel. The appointments were made as USA, known mainly for dramas and wrestling, is preparing to add mini-series, half-hour comedies and reality shows to its schedule. USA attracts about 3.1 million viewers each evening, making it more popular than any other cable channel, a title it has held for five years. But its prime-time audience dipped slightly last year from the previous year. The channel is preparing new episodes of continuing series like “Burn Notice,” and has two new dramas in the works for the summer. One, “A Legal Mind,” is about two lawyers, one of whom is a college dropout. The other new drama, “Necessary Roughness,” is about a therapist to the stars. The channel is also adding a reality TV division. As the appointments of Mr. Wachtel and Mr. McCumber indicate, Comcast is shoring up the executive structure of NBCUniversal. Ms. Hammer is searching for a new president for the E! channel, replacing Ted Harbert , who was named chairman of NBC Broadcasting in January.

Cable Television
Television
USA Network
Comcast Corp
National Broadcasting Co
Hammer Bonnie
Harbert Ted


Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Abstract: Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com . In this section of the Sept. 29 issue of In Advertising, a reader sought help in finding ads for children’s clothes he remembered seeing in The New York Times Magazine during the 1960s so that they could be shared with his own daughter. All the reader recalled was that the ads “may have been for a mill” and featured “drawings of little red-haired girls.” Before too long, I received several emails from other readers suggesting a solution to the mystery. Some of them follow. ■ I perform research for a family of advertising agencies and the librarian in me simply could not resist the challenge. It made for an entertaining lunch break. A search of the Internet turned up these examples of the ads, which were for Health-tex Children’s Clothes — which are still being made, even if the ads are not. (The company name has since been refined to Healthtex.) They feature redheaded boys and girls and the challenge to “Try and find a child who doesn’t wear Health-tex.” I see why your reader had so much fun looking at these as a child and now wants to show them to his or her own child. Image An example of the magazine ads for Health-tex from the 1960s that readers of Q. and A. helped track down. Also, other ads by Health-tex Clothing are available on eBay . When your reader mentions “the ad might have been for a mill,” perhaps the reader were thinking of these ads on eBay, where the ad addresses questions children may ask, such as “What’s paper made of?” The reader mentioned that the ads appeared in The New York Times Magazine; the Vintage Gaze Magazines website cites them as running in Good Housekeeping. The eBay listings do not specify the publication; perhaps they appeared in numerous publications. I hope this is what your reader had in mind. Please do pass on this information to him or her. ■ I know which ads used to run in The New York Times Magazine with drawings of little redheaded kids: Health-tex. I collected them! I’d love to know how to find a few. ■ The reader’s question brought back memories of the ads, which I believe were for the Health-tex line of children’s clothes. I just searched on Google and found this about Healthtex — the current version of the name — from Wikipedia: “For many years, the brand was known for their award-winning advertisements featuring artwork by children’s book artist, Susan Perl,” with the “most notable” being “The Handy Answers to Hard Questions Asked by Children in the Health-tex Years,” which began in 1966. “The campaign featured colorful print ads,” the Wikipedia entry continues, that provided “concise answers to some of the questions commonly asked by pre-school-age children such as ‘Why is the sky blue?’ and ‘How do our ears hear?’ This campaign helped make the company well-known and ran until the early 1980s.” ■ Here’s a link that’s a possibility for the inquiry. Somehow, the ad — showing redheaded boys and girls above the headline “Try and find a child who doesn’t wear Health-tex” — looks familiar even to me, born in 1962; maybe I spotted the ads in my mom’s McCall’s magazine! Stuart Elliott replies: Thanks, dear readers, for your help. I reached out to the reader who originally asked the question, passing along links, images and the suggestions that the campaign was for Health-tex. I received this response: “Yes it is! Thank you so much and please thank the readers for me. My daughter is fascinated and as for me, the memories are flooding back.”


City to Pay Damages for Strip Searches

Abstract: The city’s Department of Correction conceded yesterday that tens of thousands of nonviolent inmates taken to Rikers Island on misdemeanor charges had been wrongly strip-searched in violation of a 2002 court settlement, and were entitled to payment for damages. As many as 150,000 such inmates have been searched at Rikers Island since 2002, lawyers for the inmates said. As part of a settlement agreement reached in Federal District Court in Manhattan yesterday, the Correction Department said it would immediately cease all strip-searches of inmates awaiting trial on misdemeanor charges at the jail. The agreement forestalled a trial that was to have begun this week on a federal lawsuit brought by several former inmates who had challenged the searches. It was the third time since 2001 that the city admitted errors in the way it performed strip-searches. Lawyers for the inmates said correction officials ignored a federal appeals court ruling and a prior settlement in the case. “This is a milestone agreement,” said Richard D. Emery, the lead lawyer for the inmates. “I believe the city will now change the vile culture in the prisons of degrading and humiliating people by strip-searching them.” Before July 2002, all inmates at Rikers Island were forced to undergo strip-searches when they first entered the jail. Often in groups of 10 or 12, they were made to stand naked and have their armpits, mouths, ears, noses, navels, genital areas and anal cavities searched by correction officers, according to papers filed in the case. The policy was kept in place despite a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling in 2001 that strip-searches of misdemeanor suspects were illegal, unless officials suspected that they were carrying contraband. (Inmates accused of felonies are still permitted to be strip-searched at the jail.) Following that ruling, the Giuliani administration agreed to pay up to $50 million to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of tens of thousands of people who were illegally strip-searched after being arrested for minor offenses, many of which occurred during the city’s crackdown on quality of life violations. Those searches occurred before suspects were arraigned in various courthouses around the city. In 2002, under an agreement reached between the city and a separate set of plaintiffs, officials at the jail were to have given inmates disposable paper gowns to wear during searches in order to give them a modicum of privacy. The city also agreed to pay $750 to each misdemeanor inmate who was strip-searched once and $1,000 to those who had been strip-searched twice. In 2005, Mr. Emery and his law partners intervened in the case, maintaining that the sum paid to each inmate was much too low and that the first agreement did not cover enough detainees. In the course of his investigation, Mr. Emery said, he discovered that, despite the appellate ruling and the first agreement, misdemeanor inmates were still being strip-searched at the jail. In fact, he charged in his papers that department officials “repeatedly resorted to lying to cover up deliberate indifference to the continued practice of humiliating detainees by forcing them to strip naked in groups.” At the same, he said that Martin F. Horn, the commissioner of correction, had acted in “good faith” during the most recent negotiations. “It was a paradigm for a public servant dealing with what has been an intractable problem,” Mr. Emery said. Stephen J. Morello, a deputy commissioner of correction, said the department had “a policy in place which met the law and insured that strip-searches would not be conducted on new admissions misdemeanor detainees; however, we lacked procedures needed to guarantee that the policy was consistently followed. “We regret that,” Mr. Morello added, “and we have already begun to implement new procedures to ensure that we comply with the law.” Had the case gone to trial, Mr. Emery planned to submit a deposition from Mark Cranston, a deputy chief in the department, who testified that even though a new policy banning strip-searches had been promulgated in July 2002, he was not sure that it was actually implemented. “I can only speak to the promulgation of the policy and not the implementation,” Chief Cranston said, according to a transcript of the deposition, “because it’s not in my purview to make sure that policies and procedures are complied with at the facility level.” Mr. Emery also said he discovered that only 46,000 gowns had been ordered from July 2002 to August 2007, even though some 150,000 inmates who needed the gowns were admitted to Rikers Island in those years. In a separate deposition, the plaintiffs’ lawyers asked Chief Valerie Oliver, another correction official, if she believed that the department was complying with the strip-search ban. According to a transcript of the deposition, Chief Oliver said no. Under yesterday’s agreement, the city said it would post signs at Rikers Island telling misdemeanor detainees they do not have to submit to strip-searches, Mr. Emery said. The signs will include a toll-free number for an independent monitor of the strip-search policy to be named by the court. In the next few months, the plaintiffs and the city plan to negotiate the amount of damages to pay thousands of inmates wrongly strip-searched. The damages will be overseen by the case’s presiding judge, Gerard E. Lynch.

Correction Department
Rikers Island Prison Complex
Suits and Litigation
Prisons and Prisoners
Search and Seizure


4 Wheelchair Titles in 4 Top Marathons

Abstract: Nothing could stop Tatyana McFadden’s race toward a milestone — not the headwind, not the concern about another searing rib injury, not the threat of another crippling flat tire and certainly not the other female wheelchair competitors Sunday in the New York City Marathon. McFadden sped past them all. With her win in 1 hour 59 minutes 13 seconds, McFadden, 24, completed a Grand Slam in distance racing, becoming the first person to win four major marathons in a year (Boston, London, Chicago and New York). She also won here in 2010. In 2009 and 2011, her tires were punctured along a rutty city street, costing her positioning. But there was no such misfortune Sunday. “A few times during the race, I hit a few bumps, and I was like, ‘Oh no,’ ” McFadden said. “I just quickly looked at my tires and saw they were still rolling.” She built her lead to two and a half minutes over the second-place finisher, Wakako Tsuchida of Japan, 15 miles into the race and simply kept building. Her neck was craned, her upper torso pressed virtually flat against her chair, like a diver frozen in the pike position. McFadden was born with spina bifida, which left her paralyzed below her waist. She grew up in an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia, walking on her hands for the first six years of her life, with no wheelchair, before Deborah McFadden, the director of the International Children’s Alliance, met and adopted her in 1994. Ten years later, she was the youngest member of the United States track and field team at the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games, her first international competition, as a rising star in wheelchair sprinting. She took up marathon racing in 2009 and, in a whirlwind seven months, has come to dominate the sport at an unparalleled level. “Slowly and surely, those races came,” McFadden said. “It’s just about the training and taking the time to really develop my muscles, develop the sprint aspect and develop the endurance and try to put those together.” A Race Through the City 31 Photos View Slide Show › Image Karsten Moran for The New York Times The men’s race was among five closely matched competitors: Japan’s Masazumi Soejima and Kota Hokinoue, Switzerland’s Marcel Hug, South Africa’s Ernst Van Dyk and Australia’s Kurt Fearnley, each of whom shared a piece of the lead at some point. And all five finished within two seconds in a sprint to the finish line, with Hug, 27, edging out Van Dyk, the 2005 winner, in 1:40:14. Hug, in his fourth appearance in the New York marathon, had never finished higher than third (2009). He burst past the finish line with a scream, neck veins bulging. He said he owed his victory to how he timed his finish. “I was confident, but I was also thinking about not to sprint too early,” Hug said. “Too early it’s not good. So there was good timing at the end.” McFadden was anticipating a close race, too, like the sprint in which she edged Manuela Schär by two seconds in Chicago on Oct 13. McFadden did that with a displaced rib, which required four weeks to heal. “I had a hard time putting my wheelchair in the car — simple activities that were difficult,” McFadden said. The rib remained a concern on Sunday, as did New York’s hilly course — not the climbing, necessarily, but the coasting, which McFadden said was not her strongest suit. But a 17-miles-per-hour north wind actually worked in her favor. “It slowed us down,” McFadden said. “I just kept pushing.” She finished nine seconds off the course record, set in 2011 by Amanda McGrory, who finished fourth this year but nearly six minutes behind McFadden. “It’s taken me a long time to get where I am,” McFadden said. “I didn’t just wake up, and this all happened.”

Tatyana McFadden
Spina bifida
NYC Marathon
Disability


Week 11 N.F.L. Matchups

Abstract: Eagles (7-2) at Packers (6-3) 4:25 p.m. Sunday Line: Packers by 6 ½ The Mark Sanchez comeback story will have to be put on ice for a week. The last two games have been all about redemption for Sanchez, who spent his years with the Jets under a microscope. Most considered Sanchez an epic failure when he left the Jets, despite his early promise and poise. Now, Sanchez’s ability to run Philadelphia’s fast-paced offense while Nick Foles is injured has many wondering whether there is more to him than he has previously displayed. But expectations should be tempered as Sanchez heads to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, where the home-field advantage carries more weight than anywhere else in the world as long as Aaron Rodgers is the Packers’ quarterback. In the regular season, Rodgers is 41-10 as a starter at Lambeau. On Sunday, the high temperature in Green Bay is expected to be in the 20s, which would render a stadium rarely kind to visiting teams even more inhospitable. At home this season, the Packers are 4-0 and have outscored their opponents, 166-65. The team’s defense, far improved from a season ago in terms of defending the pass, has held opposing quarterbacks to four touchdown passes at Lambeau. “We like playing at home,” Coach Mike McCarthy said in what seemed like an understatement. “We want to play as many games as possible here.” Sanchez, who looked sensational in a start against Carolina on Monday, has always struggled with turnovers. The Packers, with the N.F.L.’s third-best differential between giveaways and takeaways, will undoubtedly look to exploit that weakness as they try to secure better footing in the N.F.C. playoff race. Pick: Packers Patriots (7-2) at Colts (6-3) 8:30 p.m. Sunday Line: Colts by 2 ½ Tom Brady has taken New England to the Super Bowl five times, winning three, but when Andrew Luck’s name comes up, even Brady can manage something resembling envy. “Their offense is doing a great job this year,” Brady said of the Colts. “They score a lot of points, especially at home. He’s kind of the ringleader. He does a lot of things I wish I could do.” Luck is certainly having a season to remember for Indianapolis. His N.F.L.-leading 3,085 passing yards trail only Peyton Manning’s 3,249 in 2013 for the record through nine games of a season. Luck is 737 yards short of his total in 16 games last season. But Brady has always been more about wins than about statistics, and with Rob Gronkowski fully healthy, the Patriots’ offense will easily be able to keep up with the Colts. Pick: Patriots Lions (7-2) at Cardinals (8-1) 4:25 p.m. Sunday Line: Cardinals by 1 Arizona’s response to Carson Palmer’s season-ending knee injury should be fascinating. The Cardinals have the best record in the N.F.L. largely because of their suffocating defense, which makes it almost impossible for opposing teams to establish a rhythm. When Palmer missed three games early this season, they went 2-1 with Drew Stanton in his place. But the Cardinals’ morale took a hit when they lost Palmer, their offensive leader, and that has the potential to affect all facets of their game. With a Detroit team that is firing on all cylinders coming to town, the Cardinals do not have enough time to adjust to their new circumstances. If Arizona’s defense does not take a step back, it is hard to imagine that the team will collapse. But a week after the Cardinals were discussing the possibility of playing in a Super Bowl at home, their expectations for the season have to be radically adjusted. Pick: Lions Seahawks (6-3) at Chiefs (6-3) 1 p.m. Sunday Line: Chiefs by 2 Seattle has been a mess of distractions this season. But instead of talking about all of the drama last week, the Seahawks put their offense on the back of running back Marshawn Lynch, who almost never talks, and rode him to a big win. Lynch had 140 yards and a career-high four touchdowns, and Russell Wilson became the second quarterback to have three 100-yard-rushing games in one season as Seattle defeated the Giants, 38-17. Image Aaron Rodgers is 41-10 as a starter at Green Bay's Lambeau Field. Credit Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images Kansas City should put up more of a fight, but if the Seahawks keep their commitment to the running game, their stellar defense will take care of the rest. Pick: Seahawks 49ers (5-4) at Giants (3-6) 1 p.m. Sunday Line: 49ers by 4 ½ Patrick Willis is out for the season. NaVorro Bowman still does not know when he will return. For most teams, the loss of one All-Pro middle linebacker would be crushing, but San Francisco’s 3-4 defense has allowed the second-fewest yards in the league without Willis and Bowman. In a testament to the 49ers’ depth, the rookie Chris Borland has played exceptionally well while helping to fill the gigantic hole in the middle of the field, and his fumble recovery in overtime won the Week 10 game against New Orleans. If Borland can keep up the excellent work, and the expected return of Aldon Smith can solidify the pass rush, San Francisco might be able to salvage a season that once seemed to be slipping away. Pick: 49ers Bengals (5-3-1) at Saints (4-5) 1 p.m. Sunday Line: Saints by 7 ½ It is hard to imagine a quarterback performing much worse than Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton did against Cleveland in Week 10. His line of 10 for 33 passing for 86 yards with three interceptions produced a quarterback rating of 2.0. Among quarterbacks with 30 or more passes in a game, it was the fifth-worst rating since 1960. The good news is that only $25 million of Dalton’s $115 million contract, which he signed in August, is guaranteed. Pick: Saints Broncos (7-2) at Rams (3-6) 1 p.m. Sunday Line: Broncos by 10 ½ Robert Quinn and the St. Louis defense have come alive in terms of getting to the quarterback in recent games. But on Sunday they will be chasing Denver’s Peyton Manning, a seemingly statuesque passer who uses his ability to change plays at the line of scrimmage and release the ball quickly to avoid sacks. Despite a big and slow appearance, Manning was sacked just 18 times in 16 games last season, and he has gone down nine times this season. Given that the Rams’ defense provides little other value, and that the journeyman quarterback Shaun Hill has been reinserted into the starting lineup, this game could become ugly quickly. Pick: Broncos Vikings (4-5) at Bears (3-6) 1 p.m. Sunday Line: Bears by 3 ½ “This has been a very disturbing stretch of three weeks,” Chicago Coach Marc Trestman said, and he was not kidding. The Bears lost to New England, 51-23; had a bye; and were routed by Green Bay, 55-14. A franchise historically known for defense, the Bears had allowed 50 points or more seven times in 1,048 regular-season games from 1940 to 2013. Pick: Vikings Texans (4-5) at Browns (6-3) 1 p.m. Sunday Line: Browns by 3 ½ Ryan Mallett threw 32 touchdown passes in 2010, which was his third and final college season. Since then, he has four passes as a professional. The last time he threw a pass was 2012, when he was Tom Brady’s backup for New England. Mallett came in for mop-up duty in a blowout win over Houston, and his lone attempt was intercepted. Named Houston’s starting quarterback for the remainder of the season, he will probably have to shake off some rust after all that inactivity. Pick: Browns Falcons (3-6) at Panthers (3-6-1) 1 p.m. Sunday Line: Falcons by 1 Atlanta and Carolina have realistic playoff hopes, which is more an indictment of the N.F.L.’s division system than an accurate measure of either team’s quality. The Panthers have been so bad that some have speculated that Cam Newton is hiding injuries. Newton insists that is not true, which means Carolina might actually be this bad. Pick: Falcons Buccaneers (1-8) at Redskins (3-6) 1 p.m. Sunday Line: Redskins by 7 ½ Two seasons ago, the thought of having to defend the decision to start Robert Griffin III over Colt McCoy would have been laughable. Yet DeSean Jackson was not the only person of late to find himself in that position after McCoy lost his job despite leading Washington to two wins. Even with his injury history, Griffin offers the most upside for the team. And against Tampa Bay, which consists of Gerald McCoy and not much else, Griffin should be able to get a win of his own. Pick: Redskins Raiders (0-9) at Chargers (5-4) 4:05 p.m. Sunday Line: Chargers by 10 ½ San Diego has lost three consecutive games, with nearly everything going wrong. Philip Rivers lost the magic he possessed while leading the Chargers to a 5-1 start, they suddenly struggled to run the ball, and their defense was beaten badly in a shutout against Miami in Week 9. Nevertheless, they are double-digit favorites against Oakland, which speaks volumes about the hopeless Raiders, who appear to be on the way to their 16th consecutive defeat. Pick: Chargers Steelers (6-4) at Titans (2-7) 8:30 p.m. Monday Line: Steelers by 6 ½ Pittsburgh might be the N.F.L.’s most confusing team. In Weeks 8 and 9, the Steelers scored a total of 94 points in beating Indianapolis and Baltimore. The same team lost to Tampa Bay in Week 4 and was stunned by the Jets in Week 10. Pundits have often talked about teams that play up or down to their competition, but this is getting out of hand. After the Steelers’ 20-13 loss to the Jets, Ben Roethlisberger insisted that a pregame visit by the pop star Justin Bieber had not cursed the team. Since nothing about this Pittsburgh season makes sense, it is nearly impossible to predict which team will show up. But even if they are not at the top of their game, the Steelers will be able to take care of Tennessee. Pick: Steelers

Packers
Mark Sanchez
Aaron Rodgers
Football
Philadelphia Eagles


Jason Kidd, About to Face Nets, Again Sheds Little Light on His Departure

Abstract: MILWAUKEE — On the eve of his return to Brooklyn, Milwaukee Bucks Coach Jason Kidd had little to say about his acrimonious departure from the Nets during the off-season. “I can only think about the Knicks right now,” Kidd said before the Bucks beat the Knicks, 117-113, at the BMO Harris Bradley Center. Asked a second time about facing Brooklyn, Kidd said: “The big thing right now is I’m in Milwaukee preparing for the Knicks. Tomorrow you can ask me that question.” Kidd, who was surrounded by a scrum of news media members from New York, declined to say what he expects from the Barclays Center crowd when the Nets host the Bucks on Wednesday. As he has done since he left Brooklyn, Kidd shed little light on the circumstances of his departure. Reports at the time indicated that a power struggle with General Manager Billy King was the cause, although in his introductory news conference here Kidd denied asking the Nets for more say over personnel decisions. In July, the Nets gave Kidd permission to speak with the Bucks’ new owners, the New York-based hedge fund managers Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry, who quickly hired him. In his only season as the Nets’ coach, Kidd posted a 44-38 record, leading the Nets to the Eastern Conference semifinals, where they lost to the Miami Heat. The Nets are off to a 4-6 start this season under Coach Lionel Hollins. The Bucks are the youngest team in the N.B.A., and they have two budding stars in the 19-year-olds Jabari Parker and Giannis Antetokounmpo. After winning only 15 games last season, the Bucks are 6-5.

Jason Kidd
Bucks
Basketball
Brooklyn Nets


John D. Goeken, Founder of MCI, Dies at 80

Abstract: John D. Goeken, a tenacious entrepreneur who founded the long-distance carrier MCI, which changed the shape of the nation’s telephone industry by challenging the monopoly of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, died Thursday night in Joliet, Ill. He was 80. Mr. Goeken, who died at Provena St. Joseph Medical Center, had been treated for esophageal cancer for five years, said Patricia A. Schneider, executive vice president for the Goeken Group Corporation. He lived in Plainfield, Ill., near Chicago. Mr. Goeken, known as Jack, had a long track record of creating communications companies, often in the face of stubborn opposition and heavy skepticism. His ventures include Airfone and In-Flight Phone, which are credited with establishing air-to-ground telephones, and the digital network used by FTD florists. But probably his most important achievement was MCI, which he began in the early 1960s to sell more two-way radios. The company would eventually lead to a transformation in the telephone industry, bringing lower-cost long-distance service to millions of American households and businesses. In 1974, Mr. Goeken helped start the process that broke up AT&T. An antitrust suit against AT&T that year, in which MCI was joined by the Justice Department, led to a settlement in which AT&T agreed to break itself apart a decade later. This allowed AT&T, nicknamed Ma Bell, to supply long-distance service and seven regional companies, known as the Baby Bells, to provide local phone service. Mr. Goeken (pronounced GOH-ken) started his company, originally called Microwave Communications Inc., after being discharged from the Army, where he had learned about microwave technology. At the time, truckers who traveled between Chicago and St. Louis could not use two-way radios to speak with their home offices because their radio signals covered only shorter distances. Mr. Goeken’s answer was to construct a network of microwave towers following the routes between the two cities to relay the radio signals from one tower to the next. However, Mr. Goeken’s business was challenged by other communications companies. They filed briefs with the Federal Communications Commission opposing Mr. Goeken’s company, beginning MCI’s long battle to establish itself. In 1971, the F.C.C. granted MCI the right to compete with AT&T for long-distance service throughout the United States. In 1974, MCI filed its antitrust suit against AT&T, accusing it of unfairly thwarting the expansion of competition in the long-distance market. Mr. Goeken left MCI that same year after disagreement over the direction of the company with William G. McGowan, whom he had brought in to help raise money when MCI became a long-distance phone company for consumers. Mr. Goeken had wanted MCI to focus on businesses. Mr. McGowan went on to become the longtime chairman of MCI Communications, as the company was later known. Mr. Goeken kept an ownership stake when he left. He soon went on to new projects. Mr. Goeken established the computer network, known as FTD Mercury, that florists used to wire flower orders. In spite of industry skepticism that executives would not want to make calls from the air, he founded Airfone. He sold an interest to the GTE Corporation to raise cash, but eventually left after disagreement over how GTE wanted to run the operation. While not all of his businesses were profitable while he was at the helm, Mr. Goeken was considered a brilliant entrepreneur, a man with vision and dogged determination who created companies that changed industries. In 1995, he started the Goeken Group, a holding company to foster new ventures. His most important current new business was PolyBrite International, an LED lighting company developing energy-efficient technology to replace traditional bulbs, Ms. Schneider said. Ms. Schneider, who knew Mr. Goeken for 35 years, said that the company was destined to have a big impact on the lighting industry and was typical of his way of doing business. “He found an area and went for it in a big way,” she said. “He could change the world.” She remembered he was called “Jack the Giant Killer” for his business battles. But she added that he had not changed throughout his life and that he and his wife had lived in the same house in Plainfield for more than 40 years. John D. Goeken was born on Aug. 22, 1930, in Joliet, where his father was a Lutheran minister. He stayed close to Joliet all his life, Ms. Schneider said, and developed a passion for flying, becoming a pilot. Mr. Goeken is survived by Mona Lisa Goeken, his wife of 59 years, whom he had met in high school; his daughter, Sandra Goeken Miles, who worked closely with Mr. Goeken in his business ventures; a son, John, and seven grandchildren.

Telephones and Telecommunications
MCI Communications Corp
Deaths (Obituaries)
Goeken John D.
AT&T Inc


San Diego Mayor Building Economic Bridges to Tijuana

Abstract: SAN DIEGO — Opening a satellite city office in a far-flung neighborhood is not unusual in sprawling cities like this one. But one thing sets apart Mayor Bob Filner’s newest outpost: it is in another country. When he opened San Diego’s Tijuana office this year, Mr. Filner spoke in grand terms about the future of cross-border relations. “Dos ciudades, pero una region — we are two cities, but one region,” he said, using the phrase popular among those who want more collaboration in the area. San Diego would put in a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, he said, but only to host jointly with Tijuana. For years, this coastal city was widely viewed as a hotbed of illegal immigration. Neighbors traded stories of migrants hiding in their garages and hopping through their backyards. But now the region is considered one of the safest parts of the Mexican border, and the number of apprehensions of people crossing illegally is a tiny fraction of what it was a decade ago. The changes have helped bring an astounding shift in residents’ attitudes toward the border: far from seeing it as a threat, more are embracing it as a potential economic engine for the region. Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about Mr. Filner’s efforts to bolster Tijuana is that there has been no opposition from other politicians or organized protests from conservative critics. Image The Otay-Mesa border crossing in San Diego, which about 3,000 commercial trucks use each day via two small local roads. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times “We need to make the border the center, not the end — but the biggest problem we have is not security, it is openness and communication,” Mr. Filner said in an interview in his City Hall office. “People have to understand that the infrastructure that we need should be an important part of any discussion on immigration. The volume here is so incredible, yet nobody understands how much this matters. People can’t go back and forth, and we’re losing out.” Border security has been at the center of the debate on an immigration overhaul in Washington, with many lawmakers pushing for more security and fences at the border. The bipartisan group of eight senators who proposed sweeping changes have pointed to San Diego as the example of a secure border. But here, where a multimillion-dollar secondary fence was added a few years ago, many worry about the enormous economic cost of improving security that they feel is already too tight, not too loose. Mr. Filner and his supporters cite delays at the border crossings that frequently stretch to more than three hours as the prime example of the problems the region faces. They say that more crossing lanes and agents are needed to allow people to cross quickly, and that technology could allow inspections to be completed in seconds rather than minutes. A study by the San Diego Association of Governments estimated that the region loses more than $2 billion annually because of the waits. “The political buzz made it so that there is a self-evident truth that the border was out of control, and that national stigma remains,” said Paul Ganster, the director of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University. “It might make people from Iowa feel better knowing that it takes hours to cross the border, but a better approach is to fix the border so it functions for legitimate purposes. Right now we’re just penalizing ourselves with huge inefficiencies.” While several former mayors have had warm relations with Tijuana officials, Mr. Filner has made cross-border relations a centerpiece of his administration, appointing a binational affairs director and mentioning Mexico at nearly every opportunity. In his inaugural speech, he congratulated the Tijuana soccer team, the Xolos, for winning the Mexican league title the day before, calling the team “our champions.” And while the Olympic Committee has already rejected the cross-border bid, Mr. Filner is not deterred. Image "We need to make the border the center, not the end,” said Mayor Bob Filner of San Diego. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times He was elected last fall after serving for nearly two decades as the Democratic congressman representing a district that included all of California’s Mexico border communities. In Congress, he routinely complained about the long lines at the border here , the busiest land crossing in the world. There are still signs that the longstanding ambivalence about the border here remains. While other American cities along the border have deep ties — or even a reliance — with Mexico, many here say San Diego residents mostly have their back to the border and give little thought to their southern neighbor. A recent survey by one local group found that less than 10 percent of residents believed that strengthening the border region should be a priority for improving the local economy. By some estimates, more than 60 percent of San Diego residents have never crossed the border. “People here tend to think about ourselves as the edge of the Earth, as if there’s nothing beyond the border,” said Denise Moreno Ducheny, a former state senator and an analyst at the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. “When you see a place as poor, you can tell yourself it can be ignored or mistreated. But people are starting to understand that it is the front door for a lot of good things that we want to come our way.” Mexico receives more exports from the United States than any country besides Canada, according to the North American Center for Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. At the Otay-Mesa crossing, a primarily commercial port of entry just eight miles east of the coast, some 3,000 trucks cross daily using two small local roads. While plans to expand the larger crossing to the west have been approved, the federal money has never been appropriated. The Mexican government completed a renovation on its side of the San Ysidro-Tijuana crossing, but the plans on the American side of the border have stalled, although President Obama included $226 million for the project in his proposed federal budget last month. Image “We are an economic force now in a way that we were not a decade or two ago,” said Carlos Bustamante, Mayor of Tijuana, Mexico. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times “The problem has always been getting others to listen to us,” said Mayor Carlos Bustamante of Tijuana, who was born in California and attended the University of San Diego. “But we are an economic force now in a way that we were not a decade or two ago. It is in everyone’s interest to take advantage of that.” Many business leaders here say that marketing San Diego and Tijuana as one large region can help attract jobs and have encouraged manufacturers to move operations from China to Mexico. They mention the success of DJO, an orthopedic company based in Vista, just north of San Diego, with a factory in Tijuana. Over the last several years, the company has added hundreds of jobs on both sides of the border, and several executives work in Tijuana but live in San Diego. The commute also works the other way. Mario Lopez, Mr. Filner’s binational affairs director, still owns a home in his native Tijuana and uses a border pass designed for frequent crossers. A poster of San Diego hangs prominently in Mr. Lopez’s downtown office, meant to remind him of the popular image of the city: sailboats docked in a marina with the picturesque bay and sunny skies in the distance. Like the view from his City Hall window, there is no trace of the border in sight. He pointed to another photo, taken from the vantage point of the hills of Tijuana, which shows a sprawling metropolis on both sides of the border. “That’s what I have to get everyone to see,” he said.

San Diego
Tijuana
Bob Filner
Illegal Immigration
Immigration


World Bank Says China’s Growth Is on Track

Abstract: BEIJING — China is likely to meet its economic growth target of 7.5 percent this year, the World Bank said on Friday, but must persevere with fiscal and financial overhauls to deal with the cause of its debt problems. “The prospect of growth falling below the government target will likely trigger accommodative fiscal and monetary policies,” the World Bank said in its latest assessment of China’s economy. “These measures should help the authorities to reach the indicative growth target of around 7.5 percent in 2014, but will likely add to current imbalances and vulnerabilities.” The government unveiled a series of targeted measures after the economy got off to a weak start this year, with official manufacturing and service sector surveys for May already showing an improvement. The World Bank expects China’s economy to grow 7.6 percent this year on policy support and a recovery of global demand, while it noted growth could slow to 7.5 percent in 2015. The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday that it expected China to grow about 7.5 percent this year and then slow to about 7 percent next year. The World Bank said China’s growth momentum could accelerate in the second quarter of 2014, a more upbeat view than that held by many private economists. The country’s leaders have ruled out any large stimulus campaign, with the country still dealing with effects from the stimulus worth 4 trillion renminbi, or $585 billion, put into effect during the global financial crisis in 2008-9, which piled up local debt. The new leadership has shown greater tolerance for slower growth as it has tried to steer the economy toward domestic consumption and away from the traditional engines of exports and investment. Still, the World Bank saw risks to its 2014 China growth projection, as an abrupt reduction of local government debt and a sharp slowdown in the real estate sector could weigh on economic activity. “We keep the baseline as it is, but we also stress that there are significant downside risks to that projection,” said Karlis Smits, senior economist at the bank. He said there were signs that the government might set a lower growth target for next year to help reduce imbalances in the economy, but he did not elaborate. The World Bank urged China to speed up fiscal and financial overhauls to deal with its debt problems. “Delays in implementing coherent reforms could perpetuate resource misallocation, undermine the health of the banking system, threaten the debt sustainability of local governments and increase the fiscal costs of reforms,” it said.


France’s First Lady, Valérie Trierweiler, Seeks Her Own Path

Abstract: PARIS — Valérie Trierweiler faces an uncommon predicament. Twice married and twice divorced, she covered French politics as a journalist for more than 20 years with no inkling that she would one day become France ’s first lady, certainly not when she fell for François Hollande , a jovial, unglamorous leftist politician who hardly seemed like presidential material. “I almost want to laugh when I think of it,” Ms. Trierweiler said in a telephone interview. But Mr. Hollande was elected on May 6 and was sworn in on Tuesday, and now Ms. Trierweiler — whom he calls “the love of my life” — is concerned with preserving her independence while supporting her partner. “In France, a first lady has no status, and therefore she isn’t supposed to do anything else,” Ms. Trierweiler said. “My perception of life is not to ask François Hollande, who isn’t the father of my children, to support me financially.” Last week she told the newspaper Le Figaro that she would have to “think” about her future role. Elle magazine and other media outlets have quoted her as saying she would continue to work as a journalist. Mr. Hollande and Ms. Trierweiler are the first unmarried couple to occupy the presidential Élysée Palace together, following close on the heels of the new president of Germany , Joachim Gauck, whose live-in companion is also a journalist. That these arrangements were no bar to office is a sign of how European attitudes about families have changed. But they do raise some concerns about protocol — how to travel together to places like Saudi Arabia , for instance, where unmarried cohabitation is not accepted. In both France and Germany, some have suggested that the presidential couples ought to marry now, but in neither case does that seem likely to happen. Ms. Trierweiler “is scared of being the wife of a president and is looking for models,” said Laurent Binet, who followed the couple closely during the election campaign for a book he is writing. “She sees herself as an active woman.” Born in 1965 to a disabled father who lost a leg in a mine explosion in 1944 and a mother who worked as a cashier at an ice rink, Ms. Trierweiler grew up modestly with five siblings in a housing project in Angers, in western France. She studied political science at the Sorbonne and then took a job as a reporter on a weekly review, Profession Politique, where she was known for hard work; she later moved to the well-known magazine Paris Match. “Valérie is a very interesting mix of strength, pride and fragility,” said Philippe Labro, vice president of the TV channel Direct 8. “She cares for her own identity and loves her job.” Mr. Labro hired Ms. Trierweiler for the channel in 2005, shortly after she and Mr. Hollande became involved. “I didn’t know at all that Ms. Trierweiler was with Mr. Hollande when I hired her,” Mr. Labro said. Once he knew, he said, “we agreed with the director of the channel that it wouldn’t be that which would prevent her from working.” Mr. Hollande made the relationship publicly known in 2010. Ms. Trierweiler stopped covering politics for Paris Match in 2005 but continued her political programs on Direct 8, something that is not widely regarded in France as posing a potential conflict of interest. “We need rules, they exist, but hypocrisy reigns,” she told Le Journal du Dimanche in 2010. “All journalists have opinions, they all vote, they all have sympathy, friendships. But they’re not asked to justify them. We believe in their integrity, we trust them and we’re right to do so.” Sharp-featured, elegant and telegenic, Ms. Trierweiler began to attract more attention over the last year, as she was seen applauding and kissing Mr. Hollande at campaign meetings — not to mention her occasionally caustic comments on Twitter . When Paris Match put her picture on its cover in March, Ms. Trierweiler wrote on Twitter: “What a shock to discover myself on the cover page of my own magazine,” and added, “Bravo to Paris Match for its sexism.” She seemed happy, if a bit shocked, on the stage last Sunday in the town of Tulle when her partner delivered his victory speech. While Mr. Hollande is clearly his own man, Ms. Trierweiler’s influence is palpable. On Friday, she confirmed to Le Figaro that she had asked Julien Dray, a controversial Socialist leader, to leave the victory celebration for Mr. Hollande and his team last Sunday. Between the two rounds of the presidential vote, Mr. Dray drew criticism for inviting Dominique Strauss-Kahn , the disgraced former Socialist front-runner, to his birthday party at an unsavory bar. Ms. Trierweiler met Mr. Hollande in 1988, and the two became friends in 1997, when she was covering the Socialist Party for Paris Match and was married to a colleague, Denis Trierweiler. “François Hollande and I have been accomplices right from the start,” Ms. Trierweiler said. “But there was something more than only friendship.” They shared a passion for politics and would talk for hours on the phone, she was quoted as saying in a recent book about French first ladies. Mr. Hollande, for his part, was a party leader and legislator in a relationship with Ségolène Royal , who was then a cabinet minister under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin . Ms. Royal later ran for the presidency in 2007, losing to the man Mr. Hollande defeated this year, Nicolas Sarkozy . Ms. Trierweiler, who has three teenage sons and tries to keep them out of the public eye, described herself in the interview as an ordinary woman who struggled to make her professional and private lives compatible. “I’ve shared the fate of many working mothers, I felt guilty like them,” Ms. Trierweiler said. “I took Wednesdays off to see my children and make them crepes.” She said she turned down a posting as a foreign correspondent for Paris Match because “I wanted to stay with them.” When Ms. Royal announced in 2006 that she would run for president, she and Mr. Hollande had been together for almost 30 years and had four children. An article in Le Point described them as an “odd” couple and said “their driving force is their differences.” Mr. Hollande’s affair with Ms. Trierweiler had already begun, though he would not acknowledge it publicly for another four years. Though far from traditional, Mr. Hollande and Ms. Trierweiler are a loving couple, people who know them say. The question now is how Ms. Trierweiler can reinvent the role of first lady to fit comfortably. “I haven’t been raised to serve a husband,” she said. “I built my entire life on the idea of independence.”

France
Valerie Trierweiler
Francois Hollande
News media,journalism
Segolene Royal


Vine, the Six-Second Video App, Is Not Quite Shutting Down

Abstract: Vine has died. Vine has risen again. Fans of Vine, the six-second video app owned by Twitter, were writing their eulogies in October when the social network announced it planned to shut down . On Friday, the company changed its mind — sort of. Vine announced it would release a pared-down version of its app, in an attempt to appease its avid fans. “We’ve been working closely with creators to find out what’s important to you, to answer your questions, and to make sure we do this the right way,” the company said in a blog post . The new app, Vine Camera, will be available in January and will still let people capture the six-second looping videos that fans came to enjoy. But instead of posting them to Vine’s social network, users can share them directly to Twitter or save them to their phones. The company still plans to close the Vine social network and is allowing users to download their previous videos from the app and website. An archive of Vines will also live. For months, Twitter had considered shutting down parts of the organization that were a drain on the social media company . Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, has said that finding a path to profitability in 2017 is one of the company’s top priorities. Keeping Vine alive as it is now, the company decided, was not possible. Maintaining the app’s infrastructure, employees, content and creator partnerships were costly. The network also suffered from declining usage and fewer repeat users this year. Twitter had been in talks to sell Vine to several technology companies for the past few months, but Vine failed to excite enough interest to secure a deal, according to two people involved in the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Instead, Twitter executives hope Vine Camera will be a compromise. “Thank you for the culture that you have helped shape, and for the content you’ll continue to make everywhere,” the company wrote in the post.

Vine
Social Media
Video Recordings
Downloads and Streaming


Companies Lose Drug Patch Suit

Abstract: WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., June 19 (AP) — A federal jury on Tuesday awarded $5.5 million to the father of a man who died while wearing a drug patch made by two Johnson & Johnson subsidiaries. The jury in Federal District Court in West Palm Beach found that Janssen Pharmaceutica Products and the Alza Corporation, both based in New Jersey, were liable in the death of Adam Hendelson, 28, who died in 2003 while wearing the companies’ Duragesic patch. The patch delivers controlled doses of the powerful painkiller fentanyl. Mr. Hendelson suffered chronic hip pain after a car accident and wore the patch on his arm, said to Jim Orr, a lawyer for Mr. Hendelson’s father, Lee, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of his son’s estate. The younger Mr. Hendelson was found dead at his computer. Mr. Orr said tests showed he had at least three times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system at the time of his death. A spokesman for Janssen and Alza said the companies were considering an appeal. Tuesday’s verdict was the first in a federal case against the makers of the patch. Last year, a Houston jury awarded $772,500 to the daughter of a woman who died after wearing the patch. The Food and Drug Administration announced in 2005 that it was investigating 120 deaths among users of patches that emit fentanyl. While at least some of the deaths appeared to have been accidental, the agency at the time said it was investigating whether there were also factors related to the product’s quality.

Johnson & Johnson Inc
Decisions and Verdicts
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)


Study Finds Public Pension Promises Exceed Ability to Pay

Abstract: When Detroit went bankrupt in 2013, investors were shocked to learn that the city had promised pensions worth billions more than anyone knew — creating a financial pileup that ultimately meant big, unexpected losses for Detroit’s bondholders. Now, researchers at Citigroup say the groundwork has been laid for similar conflicts across the developed world: Governments have promised much more than they can most likely pay to current and future retirees, without revealing the disparity to investors who bought government bonds and whose investments could be at risk. Twenty countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have promised their retirees a total $78 trillion, much of it unfunded, according to the Citigroup report . That is close to twice the $44 trillion total national debt of those 20 countries, and the pension obligations are “not on government balance sheets,” Citigroup said. “Total global government debt may be three times as large as people currently think it is,” the researchers warned, after gathering as much information as they could about various government pension plans and adjusting the amounts where necessary, to permit fair comparisons with bond debt. Getting each country’s unstated pension obligations down on paper, along with the sovereign debt, showed that some countries have almost certainly promised more than they can deliver. “If you owed student loans of $44,000, and the bank called you up and said, ‘actually you owe $134,000,’ you’d fall off your chair,” said Charles E. F. Millard, head of pension relations at Citigroup. “That’s what this is.” He said he did not expect all the overextended governments to experience sudden head-on collisions between bondholders and pensioners the way Detroit did. Instead, he said many of those countries — as well as many American states, cities, school districts and other jurisdictions — would keep struggling along, cutting more and more services, raising taxes and wondering where all the money was going. “It’s not going to be, for most cities and states, some enormous collision or explosion,” he said. “It’s going to be 10 fewer cops, or three fewer teachers and ‘Let’s fix the bridge three years from now.’ ” One of the report’s recommendations was that governments start disclosing the amounts promised to retirees, “so that everyone can see them.” Government officials are in many cases loath to do that because they believe it will harm their credit ratings, driving up borrowing costs. And the unions that represent public workers believe calls for full disclosure mask a broad anti-labor campaign to cut benefits. The disclosure issue has grown increasingly contentious in Washington. Republican members of Congress are planning to introduce a bill in the next few days that would require states and local governments to measure their pension obligations using the method now universally used to price municipal bonds. States and cities currently report their pension obligations as calculated by actuaries, and actuarial numbers can greatly distort economic reality. It was actuarial numbers in Detroit, for instance, that obscured the value of that city’s pension promises before the bankruptcy. States have long argued that as constitutional sovereigns, they cannot be forced to meet any federal pension disclosure requirements. Republican lawmakers are generally sympathetic to states’ rights issues, but they are also worried about being asked to bail out troubled pension systems in places like Illinois and Puerto Rico. Since the tax-exempt treatment of municipal bonds is, in fact, a federal subsidy, they have written the bill to require full, market-based pension disclosure only in connection with tax-exempt borrowing. If states and cities remain unwilling to reveal their pension obligations, they could still borrow — but they could not market their bonds as tax-exempt. Senate Republicans introduced a similar disclosure measure late last year as part of a package to help Puerto Rico through a huge debt crisis . The island appears not to have nearly enough money to pay both its bond debt and its retirees’ pensions, but up-to-date information about its pension system does not exist in the public domain. For years there have been frequent reports of pension systems rife with pay-to-play deals, improper payouts, overly risky investment strategies and other problems. But the Citigroup researchers looked beyond such scandals and depicted the worldwide accumulation of giant, invisible pension obligations as a matter of simple demographics. Most developed countries had baby booms after World War II, and their populations are now aging and enjoying significant gains in health and longevity. When the boomers first joined the work force, they provided a big supply of labor to support what was then a much smaller population of retirees drawing pensions. Those favorable demographics made it seem that government pension systems could operate forever with minimal funding — or in many cases, no funding at all. Now that is changing as populations age in many places, and the Citigroup report said the numbers no longer work. More and more retirees are receiving benefit payments every month, straining retirement systems even when the individual amounts paid are modest. And now there are relatively fewer younger workers generating the revenue that is supposed to support those systems. The report said these demographic strains would worsen in the next few decades, noting that China now has seven workers to support every retiree, but will have only two by 2050; Japan is on track to have just one per retiree by then. Citigroup said governments were aware of these trends, but had generally been slow to adapt their retirement systems. It expressed particular concern about pay-as-you-go systems, which are common in Europe. In a few deeply troubled American jurisdictions, pension systems that were supposed to be funded have exhausted all their assets and effectively become pay-as-you-go plans, in which payments come from current tax revenues rather than dedicated, invested funds. Puerto Rico now looms as the biggest case — but while Puerto Rico’s financial troubles are widely seen as an aberration, the Citigroup research suggested they were not. “Future population and life expectancy trends will exert considerable pressure on public and private sector pension systems,” the report said. “Unless addressed quickly, we believe this could overwhelm public and private sector balance sheets, and act as a major drag on economic growth.” The report discussed possible solutions, such as “collective defined contribution plans,” in which workers’ nest eggs are pooled and professionally invested, but retirees are not promised a predetermined benefit, and taxpayers are not required to replace money lost on Wall Street.