Afghans to Alter the Government

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — The deal that Secretary of State John Kerry brokered to ease the Afghan election crisis with a sweeping audit of the vote was quietly built on an even more profound reshaping of the entire government system, American and Afghan officials confirmed Sunday: The sides have agreed to gradually create an empowered prime minister post after years of an all-encompassing presidency. Nearly a decade after American officials pushed a Constitution that enshrined near-dictatorial powers for the president, it is a tacit admission that changing to a more parliamentary system — a fraught undertaking at any time — is now seen as crucial to holding the country together after years of mounting political crises and ethnic and factional hostilities, officials said. The change was a central goal for the candidate Abdullah Abdullah, who has brought the entire political system to the brink with accusations of rampant fraud and threats to form a breakaway government , according to officials who were close to the negotiations. They, like other American and Afghan officials who confirmed the agreement, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details had not yet been worked out. They stressed that only a “framework” had been accepted in talks with Mr. Kerry, but they all agreed on its outlines. The candidate who is declared president after a complete vote audit in the coming weeks would then appoint either the loser, or that candidate’s nominee, to become a “chief executive” for the government, with powers to be agreed on later. Then, in the following two or three years, the Constitution would be amended to create a parliamentary democracy with a prime minister as head of government and a president as the head of state. That timeline puts important decisions off into a very indefinite future, and will revive a debate that deeply divided Afghan officials a decade ago, with some arguing then that a parliamentary system risked instability. With no assurances even that the auditing for fraud will go smoothly over the next month, or that the result will be widely accepted, the change then would require a successful parliamentary election and the Afghan equivalent of a constitutional convention, all under the continuing threat of Taliban offensives to seize territory. More immediately, the two candidates, Mr. Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, despite the recent tensions, are in the coming weeks to divvy up cabinet posts, governorships and other jobs as Afghan and international elections officials review each one of the more than eight million votes cast in the June 14 runoff. Both Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Ghani pledged to accept the results and form a national unity government when they announced the deal with Mr. Kerry on Saturday. But the only details they gave were about the audit; all three made vague references to a “political framework” without elaborating. But Afghan and American officials said Sunday that repeated election crises had made it clear that the Afghan government in its current form rewarded the winner of presidential elections too richly, and cut out the loser too thoroughly for a country with a history of civil strife that has often cut along ethnic and regional lines. Though the plan does not explicitly account for those differences, officials said, the hard lessons of the recent weeks were a signal that Afghanistan’s divides could no longer be denied out of existence. In essence, Afghan and Western officials had concluded that the only way to hold Afghanistan together in the coming years, as NATO-led combat forces withdraw and the West steps further into the background, was to embrace what divides its people in hopes of creating a government that could keep them united. Though the deal brokered by Mr. Kerry appeared to be a major potential victory for Mr. Abdullah, some in his camp expressed caution on Sunday. They said that if Mr. Ghani ended up winning, he would probably be able to control the majority in any constitutional convention, and might limit the changes made. “I wouldn’t call this a winning situation for us, not yet,” said an Abdullah campaign official. “We don’t know yet what is going to happen. We only have an idea. But it is better than what we had when last week started.” Afghan and American officials said they had been asked by their superiors not to discuss the political component of the agreement brokered by Mr. Kerry. One Western official, who was not briefed on its details, was told that it was too sensitive and that officials wanted time to make sure everyone was on board before talking more widely about it. Video Abdullah Abdullah, a candidate for Afghanistan’s presidency, said he suspended work with the country’s electoral bodies and asked officials to stop counting votes because of widespread fraud. Credit Credit Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images But not everyone got the message. Mohammad Mohaqiq, Mr. Abdullah’s vice-presidential running mate, told the BBC Persian service on Sunday that in the national unity government agreed upon with Mr. Kerry, the loser of the election would become the chief executive in the government. The post would become the prime minister in two years, once the Constitution was amended, the report quoted him as saying. Other Afghan and American officials confirmed those claims, and added some details in interviews. Similar setups, with dual poles of power in the presidency and in Parliament, exist elsewhere, like France. But it is a revolutionary break from what the United States created in Afghanistan. The irony here was that it was largely through the efforts of President Hamid Karzai, the one Afghan who American officials were most eager to be rid of after the election, that Afghanistan’s imperial presidency did not stoke the country’s divisions. From the outset of his tenure, Mr. Karzai sought to carefully balance his government. He was a southern Pashtun, and so he put an ethnic Tajik in the No. 2 spot, and ensured that leaders of the Hazara and Uzbek minorities had prominent roles. A sense of national responsibility helped drive Mr. Karzai’s decisions, by most accounts. But there was also self-interest: He found over the years that the old Northern Alliance, a mainly Tajik alliance of militias that fought the Taliban, remained too dominant a force in Kabul to ignore. Loyalists of the Northern Alliance, including Mr. Abdullah, who once served as Mr. Karzai’s foreign minister, were spread among the army, police and intelligence service. Mr. Karzai could not operate without some kind of alliance with them, though that also meant keeping some of Afghanistan’s most notorious and corrupt former warlords in his government, earning him criticism and scrutiny from the United States and other Western backers. Still, Mr. Karzai has expressed deep opposition to the idea of a parliamentary system, fearing it would tear the country apart. In fact, his rivalry with Mr. Abdullah, who challenged him in the 2009 presidential elections, was centered on the issue, and he is widely believed to have backed Mr. Ghani, a former finance minister and World Bank official, in this year’s runoff. Asked about the deal brokered by Mr. Kerry, Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Mr. Karzai, refused to confirm the details. “The candidates have not said it publicly yet so no comment from palace,” he said. What brought Mr. Ghani around to agreeing to the creation of a parliamentary system was harder to discern. Abdullah Poyan, a spokesman, would say only: “We never refused a national unity government. We know this is very sensitive.” Though Mr. Ghani had a vast constituency behind him in his fellow Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, he had scant support among northern Tajiks, which would have presented a potentially life-threatening problem for him should he have won a disputed election amid accusations that his team had committed fraud. As one senior member of the Northern Alliance asked Mr. Ghani before the election: “If you win, who will drive you to the palace? You need allies.” For American officials, as well, the support for the idea of revamping the Afghan government was born of necessity. This year’s election crisis was the third in five years, including the 2009 presidential election and parliamentary elections a year later, both of which were marred by widespread fraud. In fact, it was Mr. Kerry who had to come to Kabul in 2009 to talk Mr. Karzai into agreeing to a runoff against Mr. Abdullah, who subsequently dropped out of the race. “You can say that the idea here is to make sure that Afghans don’t have to have negotiations to create an inclusive government each time they have an election,” one American official said. “The political system itself, in the way it is set up, should be set up to be more inclusive.” Though there have been differences of opinions among American officials about it, the United States did not always see it that way. At a 2004 constitutional loya jirga, or grand council, it was American officials who pushed hardest for a strong president, arguing that a parliamentary system would be too risky. American support helped Mr. Ghani and other Pashtuns overcome the resistance of Mr. Abdullah and his allies in the old Northern Alliance in that debate. According to a diplomatic cable from 2003 that was released by WikiLeaks, Robert Finn, who was then the American ambassador, was reported to have told his French counterpart that “Afghanistan needed a strong president given all the vectors of power.”

Afghanistan
John Kerry
Election
Constitution
Abdullah Abdullah
Ashraf Ghani
Hamid Karzai
US Foreign Policy


Is D.N.C. Email Hacker a Person or a Russian Front? Experts Aren’t Sure

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Who is Guccifer 2.0, the self-proclaimed Romanian “lone hacker” responsible for copying thousands of emails and other files from the Democratic National Committee — a real person, or a front created by Russian intelligence officials? Technology specialists have been debating that question since June 15, when CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the Democratic National Committee, announced that sophisticated hacker groups with Russian links were responsible for breaching the committee’s computer servers . Within hours of the announcement, someone using the moniker Guccifer 2.0 started a blog to mock that finding, posting several of the stolen documents and claiming sole credit . But the publication by WikiLeaks of an archive of the committee’s internal emails — and the uproar they caused on the eve of the Democratic National Convention — have focused wider attention on who, or what, is operating behind that name. While WikiLeaks has not said how it obtained the emails, Guccifer 2.0 claimed in a blog post last month to have sent them to WikiLeaks. Cybersecurity specialists have pointed to an array of forensic and technical evidence suggesting that Guccifer 2.0 might not be a Romanian as claimed. That evidence included metadata hidden in the early documents indicating that they were edited on a computer with Russian language settings. American intelligence officials believe that Guccifer 2.0 is a front for the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service, according to federal officials briefed on the investigation. In blog posts, Twitter messages, and electronic chats with journalists, Guccifer 2.0 has insisted such skeptics are wrong. Against that backdrop, Guccifer 2.0’s words are taking on heightened interest. They may be clues to a person’s decision to intervene in the American election, or they may be a case study of a 21st-century Russian information campaign — the work of different intelligence officials, crowded around a keyboard. “Just because the Wizard of Oz says he’s a wizard doesn’t actually mean he is,” said Peter Singer, a security strategist at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute. Video President Trump and Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, have exchanged many compliments since the 2016 election. We look at the basis of the mutual respect between the two men. (Updated on July 5, 2017.) Credit Credit From left; Todd Heisler/The New York Times, Yury Kochetkov/European Pressphoto Agency The original “Guccifer” (pronounced GUCCI-fer) is a real person: Marcel Lazar Lehel, a Romanian hacker who used the pseudonym Guccifer to hack various accounts belonging to American celebrities and government officials, including members of the Bush family, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and Sidney Blumenthal, an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton. Mr. Lehel was arrested in Romania in 2014 for hacking the email accounts of several Romanian officials. In April, he was extradited to the United States to face hacking charges and pleaded guilty in May before a federal judge in Alexandria, Va. While awaiting sentencing, Mr. Lehel claimed to have hacked Mrs. Clinton’s private email server, but federal officials have found no evidence to support his claim. Mr. Lehel is known for his fixation on what conspiracy theorists call the Illuminati , a shadowy group that they believe controls the world. The first Guccifer 2.0 blog post, and messages Guccifer 2.0 sent along with packages of files that same day to the websites Gawker and The Smoking Gun , also denounced the Illuminati. Other oddities also arose. Technical specialists, scouring metadata on documents posted to Guccifer 2.0’s blog, found some that were last marked by a person with a user name in Cyrillic that appeared to be a nod to Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, best known for establishing the early Soviet secret police forces. On June 21, Motherboard, an online technology magazine, posted a Twitter chat log of an interview with Guccifer 2.0, in which the person using that account claimed to be Romanian and denied working with the Russian government. Pressed on why Russian language markings showed up in the metadata of the documents he had sent out, Guccifer 2.0 claimed that was just a “watermark.” “I don’t like Russians and their foreign policy. I hate being attributed to Russia,” Guccifer 2.0 wrote. During the interview, Motherboard switched from using English to Romanian and to Russian. Guccifer 2.0 claimed not to speak Russian and abruptly cut off the interview. Motherboard later reported findings of linguistics specialists who said that his Romanian answers did not seem like those of a native speaker, and that the syntax of several of his English lines echoed Russian sentence constructions. And a linguistic analysis provided to The New York Times by Shlomo Argamon, a chief scientist at Taia Global, a cybersecurity firm that has questioned cyberattack attribution claims in the past , also concluded that Guccifer 2 is Russian. Following the Links From Russian Hackers to the U.S. Election How U.S. intelligence officials have connected the Russian government to an attempt to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Argamon, who is a professor of computer science and the director of the master of data science program at the Illinois Institute of Technology, found seven oddities in the hacker’s English text, five of which pointed clearly to Russian as the speaker’s native tongue. “The linguistic evidence consistently points towards the writer being either a native Russian speaker,” Mr. Argamon said. “It is possible that the writer is a Romanian speaker who has studied Russian. However, the writer denied knowing any Russian, and so the most reasonable conclusion is that he is a Russian native speaker rather than a Romanian native speaker.” On June 30, Guccifer 2.0 posted additional documents from the Democratic National Committee’s servers on the WordPress blog. The post again denied Russian links, and spoke admiringly of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks; Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence analyst who leaked archives of surveillance documents; and Chelsea Manning, the Army private who sent a huge trove of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks in 2010. That post accused Mrs. Clinton of being “bought and sold,” in contrast to Mr. Trump, who it said “has earned his money himself. And at least he is sincere in what he says.” But the post still expressed opposition to Mr. Trump’s ideas “about closing borders and deportation policy.” Of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the post said, “He never had a chance to win the nomination as the Democratic Party itself stood against him!” The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, reported on July 13 that Guccifer 2.0 had reached out to it and had provided documents about Democratic campaign donors and lobbyists. It quoted Guccifer 2.0 as saying in an electronic chat, “The press [is] gradually forget[ing] about me, [W]ikileaks is playing for time and [I] have some more docs.” The next day, Guccifer 2.0 posted those documents on the blog. That was the last blog posting. The Guccifer 2.0 Twitter account posted a few more messages. The most recent one, on July 22, expressed excitement that WikiLeaks had posted the archive of nearly 20,000 Democratic committee emails that “I’d given them!!!” Since then, that account has fallen silent, too. No messages were posted even as the Democratic Party chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager accused the Russian government of providing the leaked emails to WikiLeaks to help Mr. Trump.

Email
Russia
WikiLeaks
2016 Presidential Election
Russian meddling in US elections
Mueller report
Cyberwarfare
Classified Information
US Politics
DNC


A Rise in Burglary Reports Follows Storm

Abstract: On the night that Hurricane Sandy hit New York, burglars broke into Kixclusive, a shoe store on the Lower East Side where rare pairs of basketball shoes are priced as high as $1,400. The proprietor told the police that 30 pairs of sneakers were stolen, saying the shoes were worth $30,000 in all, according to the police. The storefront, on Mulberry Street, was quickly boarded up with plywood. Then on Wednesday, an alert police officer, Charles Hofstetter, spied four men moving aside the plywood and entering the store. All four were arrested on charges of burglary. Across the city, there have been reports of looting since the storm hit, leading to a 7 percent rise in burglary complaints from Monday through Thursday, compared with the same period last year. Over all, reported crime is down, although some police officials caution that a full accounting is not yet possible. In Queens, 15 people were charged with burglary and other crimes in Far Rockaway, according to the Queens district attorney’s office. The affected businesses include liquor and clothing stores and a Radio Shack. In Jamaica, Queens, twin brothers were charged with using a stolen U-Haul truck to try to ram through the gate of a motorcycle shop on Tuesday. Also in Queens, a man was charged with brandishing a handgun as he pulled his car ahead of another motorist who was waiting in line at a gas station. “If you don’t pull back, you’re not getting gas tonight,” the man, Sean M. Bailey, is accused of saying. In Coney Island on Tuesday, nine people were arrested in connection with looting, including a woman who was accused of breaking into a Citibank, though she apparently left empty-handed, the police said. Others were accused of breaking into a dollar store. “They tamed it real quick,” a police commander said Tuesday about the looting that day. “But it could get ugly tonight,” the commander warned, speaking on condition of anonymity. That evening, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, visited Coney Island to examine how the police were deployed there, a Police Department spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said. But more than 24 hours later, just after midnight on Thursday morning, 18 people were arrested in a burglary of a Key Food on Neptune Avenue in Coney Island. Only a single murder was reported in the city from Monday through Thursday, compared with six during that period last year. And there were seven reported rapes, compared with 15 last year. Robberies, too, were down in that time frame, to 156, from 244 last year. But some officers warned that more property crimes may be reported as people return to their homes. It is possible, police officials say, that burglars have hit abandoned apartments in areas where the power — and lights — are out and whose tenants have not yet returned home to discover their possessions missing. “It’s a burglars’ paradise when you think about it,” said Ed Mullins, the president of the police sergeants’ union.

Looting
Hurricane Sandy (2012)
Robberies and Thefts
New York City


Syria Draws a Rare Source of Accord in Debate Between Kaine and Pence

Abstract: WASHINGTON — With the humanitarian and refugee crisis in Syria spiraling to new depths, the Democratic and Republican vice-presidential candidates, in their debate on Tuesday , called for a more forceful American response to the civil war than President Obama has undertaken. Even as they argued over Donald J. Trump’s income taxes and Hillary Clinton’s email practices, the candidates, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, found some common ground on what is perhaps the thorniest geopolitical crisis today. Both said they favored a proposal to create humanitarian “safe zones” in northern Syria to protect civilians being bombarded by the Syrian government. Neither was precise about what would be needed to create such corridors, though analysts say it would almost certainly require American warplanes to enforce a no-fly zone. Mr. Obama has steadfastly resisted such a step. Until this week, his administration was trying to negotiate a cease-fire with the Russians, who are helping Syrian government forces in their siege of Aleppo . Mr. Pence, Mr. Trump’s running mate, said the United States should be prepared not only to enforce a no-fly zone but also to carry out strikes against the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to protect civilians. “If Russia chooses to be involved and continue, I should say, to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo,” Mr. Pence said, “the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.” Mr. Kaine was more circumspect. “Hillary and I also agree that the establishment of humanitarian zones in northern Syria with the provision of international human aid, consistent with the U.N. Security Council resolution that was passed in February 2014, would be a very, very good idea,” he said. Mr. Kaine did not refer specifically to a no-fly zone, and he conspicuously avoided a question about how to stop the slaughter in Aleppo. Mrs. Clinton first advocated a partial no-fly zone about a year ago, but she has not fleshed out the proposal during her campaign, and many analysts said it had become unrealistic since Russia intervened in the conflict because of the risk that American planes would exchange fire with Russian planes. Image Children walking in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Zamalka, in Syria, on Monday. Credit Bassam Khabieh/Reuters It is a crucial moment in Syria, with Secretary of State John Kerry giving up after weeks of trying to negotiate a cease-fire with Russia. The suffering in Aleppo has become dire; aid groups estimate that 100,000 children are trapped in the city as Mr. Assad’s government bombards it relentlessly in an attempt to crush the rebellion. Mr. Obama’s national security aides are weighing other options, including strikes on Mr. Assad’s forces. But the president remains deeply skeptical about greater military involvement . His commanders have been wary of a no-fly zone, saying it would necessitate a huge commitment of troops and aircraft at a time when the United States is deploying planes and soldiers in the military campaign against the Islamic State. Mr. Pence put himself at odds with Mr. Trump on this issue. In May, Mr. Trump told the MSNBC morning-show host Joe Scarborough that he would not take military action against Mr. Assad because it would complicate efforts to combat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “I would have stayed out of Syria and wouldn’t have fought so much for Assad, against Assad,” Mr. Trump said. “Now you have Iran and you have Russia in favor of Assad. We’re supposed to fight the two of them. At the same time, we’re supposed to fight ISIS, who is fighting Assad.” Mr. Pence also used very different words from Mr. Trump to characterize President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. He described him as “the small and bullying leader of Russia,” who he said was “now dictating terms to the United States to the point where all the United States of America — the greatest nation on Earth — just withdraws from talks about a cease-fire while Vladimir Putin puts a missile defense system in Syria.” Mr. Kaine has had his own differences with Mrs. Clinton on the use of force. In the Senate, he called for Congress to pass a new authorization for Mr. Obama’s military campaign against the Islamic State, something Mrs. Clinton has said is not necessary. On Tuesday, he did not seem eager to be drawn out on Syria policy, plunging instead into an extended back-and-forth with Mr. Pence over Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Putin and Mrs. Clinton’s record as a member of Mr. Obama’s national security team. For Mrs. Clinton, who has drawn close to Mr. Obama during her campaign, Syria has become an awkward issue. While secretary of state, she advocated supplying weapons to the moderate rebels, which he initially rejected. After leaving the administration, she came out in favor of a no-fly zone. Neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton’s opponent in the primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, has pressured her to explain her Syria policy, and she has seemed content not to discuss it. On Tuesday, however, the debate between the running mates shed at least a bit of light on it.

Syria
Mike Pence
Political Debates
Timothy M Kaine
Civilian casualties
2016 Presidential Election
Vice President US


Trade Schools Sued for Lending Practices

Abstract: A federal agency sued Corinthian Colleges, a major for-profit trade school chain, on Tuesday, charging that it lured students with lies about job placement and used illegal tactics to collect on student loans. The agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, asked a court to erase $569 million in debts arranged by Corinthian for current and former students. The company, which denied the charges, faces heavy losses and sanctions by government regulators, and it agreed in July to sell or close nearly all of its more than 100 campuses. The company said the new lawsuit would make that process more difficult.

Corinthian Colleges
College
Student loan
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Lawsuits
Vocational Training
For-profit education
Consumer protection


Investment Funds Worth Trillions Are Dropping Fossil Fuel Stocks

Abstract: Investors controlling more than $5 trillion in assets have committed to dropping some or all fossil fuel stocks from their portfolios, according to a new report tracking the trend. The report, released Monday, said the new total was twice the amount measured 15 months ago — a remarkable rise for a movement that began on American college campuses in 2011 . Since then, divestment has expanded to the business world and institutional world, and includes large pension funds, insurers, financial institutions and religious organizations. It has also spread around the world, with 688 institutions and nearly 60,000 individuals in 76 countries divesting themselves of shares in at least some kinds of oil, gas and coal companies, according to the report. “It’s a stunning number,” said Ellen Dorsey, the executive director of the Wallace Global Fund, which has promoted fossil fuel divestment and clean energy investment as part of its philanthropy. The movement has also received a boost from last year’s Paris climate agreement, which set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The push for emissions reductions underscored the potential for the industry to be faced with reserves of fuels that cannot be burned if the targets are to be met — a prospect known as “stranded assets.” Ms. Dorsey argued that since its beginnings as a moral statement against profiting from companies whose products were exacerbating climate change, more institutions have come to detect vulnerabilities in fossil fuel companies as the world shifts toward renewable sources of energy. “This movement began as an ethical concern, was quickly matched with financial concerns, and I think it’s now being increasingly recognized as a fiduciary duty,” she said, with liability risks to trustees of institutions who fail to recognize those weaknesses and act on them. Divesting from coal, an industry in the midst of a long-term decline , has proved to be relatively straightforward, and recent drops in the prices of oil and gas have hurt the fortunes of those industries as well. Christopher D. Tucker, a spokesman for the Independent Petroleum Association of America , said that the pro-divestment argument had been strengthened by industry troubles. “This was always going to be a kick-you-while-you’re-down strategy,” he said, “but we’re on the way up now, so the case has gotten weaker.” While the overall value of the funds announcing divestment is measured in the trillions of dollars, the actual amount of investment that was tied to fossil fuels within those funds is much smaller, because no single industry sector predominates in most broad investment funds. Ryan Strode, the director of Arabella Advisors, the group that produced the report, said the precise value of dropped investments was impossible to know. The group focuses on the overall value of the funds under management with divestment pledges, he said, because “This is the measure of the level of influence that these investors have on the market.” Many institutions remain unconvinced. Some universities, in rejecting calls for divestment, have cited their fiduciary responsibility to produce the greatest income from their endowments. Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has said that the university supported research and efforts to fight climate change, but that “The endowment is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change. ” With the election of Donald J. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax and has pledged to reverse President Obama’s signature global warming initiatives, activism will be more important, Ms. Dorsey said. And, she added, if the new president wants job growth, continuing to invest in renewable energy is the way to go. “They should focus on the explosive industries where manufacturing jobs are being created,” she said. “In a fact-driven world, it’s just very clear.”

College
Greenhouse gas
Climate Change
Endowments
Global Warming
UNFCCC
Stocks,Bonds


N.B.A. Playoffs: Why Take Pacers’ Roy Hibbert Out?

Abstract: From the looks of the N.B.A. playoff schedule, it appeared the league’s first instinct was to pencil in the Miami Heat for the N.B.A. finals. The first two games of the Western Conference finals came and went before the Heat players even had to dig their sneakers out of the closet. But perhaps realizing that the Spurs-Grizzlies series was going to alienate fans who cling to the idea that basketball is fun and involves scoring a lot of baskets, or realizing that fans had paid money for tickets to the foregone conclusion that is the Heat-Pacers series (hey, people go to movies when they know the ending, too), well, the N.B.A. relented and had an actual game in the Eastern Conference finals Wednesday night. And then the Heat and the Pacers played along and made it exciting. They went to overtime. They scored more than 100 points each. A hero stepped up at the end in a proverbial cape (LeBron James). A boneheaded decision by the tortured losing coach made it possible (Frank Vogel ... sigh). You half-expected credits to roll at the end. Best of all, there is plenty to hash over before Game 2, thanks to James and Vogel and the supporting cast. As Brian Windhorst writes on ESPN.com , this revolved around Vogel’s planting his big man, Roy Hibbert, on the bench, clearing the lane for James’s winning layup at the buzzer. Yes, it was the nascent Indiana star Paul George who learned the biggest lesson as James flew past him, writes Ian Thomsen on SI.com , but Hibbert would usually have been there to greet him at the basket. He was not, and he wasn’t happy about it, as Adrian Wojnarowski writes on Yahoo.com , and the Pacers lost their opportunity to make a series out of this, as Bob Kravitz writes in The Indianapolis Star . This is not entirely unsurprising because, after all, James can make just about anyone look silly, as Ken Berger writes on CBSSports.com , but it does not excuse Vogel straying into Overcoaching 101 territory, as John Schuhmann writes on NBA.com . While Pacers fans spend the day slapping their foreheads, Heat fans might even revel in the idea that this series could be fun, Greg Cote writes in The Miami Herald. If that’s what the script calls for. In the N.H.L. playoffs, Pittsburgh apparently dug its playoff script out of a pile of smelly hockey pads because its 7-4 victory over Ottawa looked a lot more like what folks expected out of this series. The onslaught was inevitable, writes Ron Cook in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , perhaps because the Penguins got tired of looking rather ordinary, writes Dejan Kovacevic in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review . In any case, it was a fine time for Penguins forward James Neal to reintroduce himself to the net, Scott Burnside writes on ESPN.com , and it did save Ottawa Coach Paul MacLean from making any big speeches to the media. His news conference lasted 13 seconds. Hockey’s nonplayoff news revolved around Vancouver tossing Coach Alain Vigneault overboard after the Canucks’ second straight unceremonious first-round playoff sweep, although as Iain MacIntyre writes in The Vancouver Sun , the guy doing the tossing, General Manager Mike Gillis, ended up looking worse. Football took time from its endless stream of minicamps to pause at the news that the longtime Chicago Bears stalwart Brian Urlacher decided to retire. He was largely saving himself from an undignified ending to his career, as Michael Silver writes on Yahoo.com , after the Bears bid him goodbye in March. Jerry Angelo, the Bears’ former general manager, hailed Urlacher as the greatest of team players and Michael Wilbon of ESPN.com credits him for making the Bears playoff contenders single-handedly most of his career. Meanwhile, one of those endless minicamps produced its own bit of sobering news when San Francisco 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree had a routine play turn into a torn Achilles tendon . The talk of baseball made a jarring turn of its own. After obsessing over Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper’s wall-phobia when he admitted not wanting to concuss himself cost the Nationals a game against San Francisco on Tuesday, he was apparently cured of it by Wednesday , when flirting with the outfield fence for a catch was among his heroics in a 2-1 victory. That might have been part of a script, too, if you suspect such things exist. The N.B.A. certainly has helped fuel that. Follow Leading Off on Twitter: twitter.com/zinsernyt

Pacers
Roy Hibbert
Miami Heat
Basketball
LeBron James
Frank Vogel
Brian Urlacher


Fight Rages in Selma, Ala., Over a Civil War Monument

Abstract: In Selma, Ala., a battle over what to do with a bronze bust of a contradictory and controversial Civil War general has lasted far longer than the war itself. Since the monument honoring Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was unveiled in a city park in 2000, critics have called it a symbol of hate. Vandals littered it with trash, pelted it with cinder blocks and tried to pull it down with ropes before it was moved to a private cemetery. Finally in March, the bust vanished. A historical society called Friends of Forrest has offered a $20,000 reward for its return, and vowed to replace it with a new bust on a taller pedestal, guarded by an iron fence and a surveillance camera. The fight continued this week as about 20 protesters tried to block construction of the new monument by lying in the path of a concrete truck as crews tried to pour a ramp. Late on Thursday night, the Selma mayor, George Patrick Evans, decided to halt the work until the city attorney could review the plans. Meanwhile, an online petition at Change.org asking the City Council to ban the monument has more than 69,000 signatures. The dispute has revived thorny questions about race, history and identity, familiar territory in a city known for a landmark civil rights clash between marchers and the police in 1965. The general is a contentious figure, even among historians. Monuments and statues honoring General Forrest are in dozens of cities; high schools in Tennessee and Florida are named for him; and even Forrest Gump, the fictional character in the novel and movie by the same name, claimed that his mother had named him for the general. But although General Forrest is recognized as a brilliant cavalry officer, he was accused of war crimes for allowing his forces to massacre black Union troops who had surrendered after the Battle of Fort Pillow in Tennessee in 1864. Following the war, he joined the newly formed Ku Klux Klan and became its first grand wizard. “Some people think he was one of the most successful military practitioners of the war, and say that trumps all else he did later in life,” said Brian Steel Wills, the director of the Civil War Center at Kennesaw State University in Georgia and a history professor there. “Others condemn him out of hand as evil incarnate and dismiss him. Of course, he’s far more complex than either extreme.” “Glorifying Nathan B. Forrest here is like glorifying a Nazi in Germany,” said Rose Sanders, a lawyer and local radio host. “For Selma, of all places, to have a big monument to a Klansman is totally unacceptable.” Since the bust disappeared on March 12, the Friends of Forrest society has criticized Ms. Sanders for saying on the air that she wished the statue did not exist. She in turn has accused the society of hiding the statue, to attract sympathy. The society began to move ahead with a new monument, and plans approved by the Selma Historic Development Commission call for it to be 12 feet high, illuminated by L.E.D. lights, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence and protected by 24-hour security cameras. “We take the position that, in this country, we’re allowed to venerate our heroes,” said Todd Kiscaden, a Friends of Forrest member overseeing the construction. “There’s a monument to Martin Luther King in town. We don’t deface that monument. We don’t harass people. So let us enjoy the same treatment.” The police were called to the construction site at least twice this week, once when protesters lay in the path of the truck, and again when Ms. Sanders said Mr. Kiscaden pushed her off the site while she was taking pictures. He said he was keeping her out of the way of construction equipment; she said she planned to press charges of assault. Mayor Evans said it was unclear whether Friends of Forrest had permission to build on the cemetery site. The group does not hold the deed to the property, but it says that descendants of Confederate soldiers were granted ownership in the late 19th century and have cared for it since. Malika Sanders-Fortier, Ms. Sanders’s daughter, who started the online petition, wondered why the group would choose to honor the general. “Here we are on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War,” she said, “and we’re still having the same fights.”

Ku Klux Klan
Monuments and Memorials (Structures)
Forrest Nathan Bedford
Alabama
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Civil War (US) (1861-65)


Postal Chief Seeks Ability to Cut Costs to Stem Losses

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Unless Congress passes far-reaching legislation soon to give the Postal Service the flexibility it needs to cut costs, the agency will suffer disastrous losses that could jeopardize its long-term future, Patrick R. Donahoe, the postmaster general, warned on Monday. Speaking at a National Press Club luncheon, Mr. Donahoe said that neither of the two bills passed recently by House and Senate committees went far enough to help the post office achieve its goal of cutting $20 billion from its annual costs, which are now about $75 billion, by 2015. “If passed today, either bill would provide at best one year of profitability, and at least a decade of steep losses,” Mr. Donahoe said. Last week, the Postal Service reported a $5.1 billion loss for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. Mr. Donahoe criticized the Senate bill for not letting his agency move immediately to cut deliveries to five days a week from six, a move he said would save $3 billion a year. Instead, the Senate bill would require two years of study and set several conditions for such a cut. The Postal Service has fallen into an economic crisis for complex reasons. A big factor is that annual mail volume has dropped more than 20 percent — some 40 billion pieces — from five years ago. The decline is largely because of the explosion of e-mail and electronic bill-paying, along with the overall economic slump. Mr. Donahoe said his agency’s finances were also severely constrained by regulations making it hard to raise the price of stamps, to introduce products or to close post offices. Mr. Donahoe, who noted that the Postal Service did not receive any taxpayer dollars, said 25,000 of the nation’s 32,000 post offices operated at a loss, with thousands having less than $20,000 in annual revenue, but costing more than $60,000 a year to operate. “We’re in a deep financial crisis today because we have a business model that’s tied to the past,” he said. “We are expected to operate like a business, but don’t have the flexibility to do so. Our business model is fundamentally inflexible. It prevents the Postal Service from solving its problems.” Another cause of the agency’s deficit is a 2006 law that requires it to set aside an average of $5.5 billion annually for 10 years to finance retiree health costs for the next 75 years. The Senate bill would reduce that obligation, but Mr. Donahoe noted that even without such payments, his agency had an operating loss of $2.2 billion last fiscal year. About 10 minutes into his speech, a handful of protesters stood at their table, declared, “We are the 99 percent” and shouted: “Stop closing post offices. Stop breaking the postal unions. Hey, ho, Donahoe has got to go.” On the sidewalk outside, about 30 union members chanted and held signs saying, “Stop the Attacks Against Postal Workers.” Early this year, Mr. Donahoe proposed closing up to 3,700 post offices, slashing the number of sorting facilities to 200 from 500 and trimming the agency’s work force by 220,000 people, 120,000 of them by layoffs. Infuriating the postal unions, he said he would ask Congress to enact a law that would vacate the no-layoff clause in union contracts, a move the unions said would be unconstitutional. Mr. Donahoe did not talk of layoffs in his speech on Monday. The management of the Postal Service is in talks with two major postal unions whose contracts expired on Sunday. At a news conference after the luncheon, Fred Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, denounced the idea of layoffs and said his union was working hard with the Postal Service to hold down costs and develop ideas for new services and products that would generate revenue. The Senate bill aims to make money available for the agency to trim its work force through buyouts, in part by returning several billion dollars that the postal service overpaid to a federal pension fund. Because neither the House nor Senate has passed a bill, the two chambers have not yet worked on reconciling their differences. The Senate sponsors say their bill gives the agency much of what it needs. Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and the chief sponsor of the House bill, criticized the agency on Monday, saying it had not made enough cuts and had long overestimated its supposed excess contributions to its pension plans. Mr. Issa said his bill, which directs the Postal Service to consolidate facilities and reduce deliveries to five days, gives the postal service the tools its needs to fix its finances. He said accounting gimmicks, like returning the pension money, would give the agency only the “flexibility to push back insolvency for a few more years.”

Postal Service and Post Offices
United States Politics and Government
Postal Service (US)
Donahoe Patrick R


Maine: Medicaid Purge Is Rejected

Abstract: The Obama administration rejected Gov. Paul R. LePage’s request to drop thousands of people from Medicaid rolls. Mr. LePage, a Republican, had sought to eliminate Medicaid coverage for nearly 15,000 parents with incomes between the federal poverty level ($23,050 for a family of four last year) and 133 percent of that level ($30,657 for a family of four). He also wanted to end coverage for more than 6,000 19- and 20-year-olds. Marilyn Tavenner, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told Mr. LePage in a letter that the cuts would violate a provision of President Obama’s health care law requiring states to maintain Medicaid eligibility levels. But Ms. Tavenner did approve a separate plan to end Medicaid coverage for Maine parents earning more than 133 percent of the poverty level. Mr. LePage had hoped to save more than $20 million from the cuts.

Maine
Medicaid
Medicare
Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act
Reform
Paul R LePage
Marilyn B Tavenner


Yankees’ Hughes Eager to Get Started on New Season

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The one good thing Phil Hughes thinks about last season is that it is over. It was a frustrating campaign for Hughes that included a stint on the disabled list from April 15 until July 6 with inflammation of his right shoulder. Hughes, who missed 84 games and roughly 17 starts, finished his abbreviated season 5-5 with a 5.79 earned run average. He cannot erase that record from his baseball résumé. But on Sunday against the Tampa Bay Rays he will get an opportunity to write a new line for the 2012 season. “It’s a chance to hit the reset button,” Hughes said. “That’s the great thing about a new season. I can wipe the slate clean and have a productive year. As much as positive things are erased from year to year, the same goes for the negative ones, as well. That’s a good thing for me.” In 2010, Hughes went 18-8 with a 4.19 E.R.A., giving the Yankees reason to believe he can be a successful pitcher. But in 2011, he lost some power on his fastball. During the off-season he took extra time to rest his arm, then began a vigorous regimen to rebuild and recondition it. He arrived in Tampa early for training camp and had the best spring of any starting pitcher on the Yankees’ staff. Hughes’s confidence is high leading into his first start of the season. “Everything feels great,” he said, “and so to not have those thoughts in my head helps out a lot. So I’m really looking forward to 2012 and erasing last year.” The biggest problem for Hughes last season was his drop in velocity. This spring, with his improved arm strength, the velocity on his fastball has been better, and Hughes is expecting even more once the adrenaline of pitching in a real game kicks in. He also expects to use more of his secondary pitches, including his cut fastball to both right-handers and left-handers, as well as his changeup. Hughes has been trying for years to perfect a changeup as a way to enhance his fastball and keep hitters off balance, but it has not been an easy pitch for him to master. “I almost feel like I’m blowing smoke when I talk about the changeup because I’ve been talking about it for so long,” he said. “But it really is an important pitch for me. I really look forward to using it as an equalizing pitch, and the cutter falls into that category as well.” EARLY REST Manager Joe Girardi did not waste time getting one of his aging infielders a day at designated hitter. Derek Jeter, 37, was the D.H. Saturday, and Eduardo Nunez was at shortstop. Girardi said he might also give Alex Rodriguez, 36, a game at D.H. on Sunday, with Eric Chavez perhaps playing third base. “The turf can be hard on guys and we have a day game tomorrow,” Girardi said. With David Price, a left-hander, starting for the Rays on Saturday, Girardi flipped Nick Swisher and Curtis Granderson in the lineup, something that may become a regular look for the Yankees against left-handers. Girardi had Swisher batting second because he went into the game with a career .405 on-base percentage against left-handers. Girardi said the lineup switch was something he and his staff had been discussing for some time. He said he also liked the idea of Granderson having a chance to display his power in the middle of the lineup. “Grandy has been extremely successful against left-handers, too,” Girardi said, “so maybe we get some guys on base and he pops one.” PINEDA STAYS BEHIND Michael Pineda, who is on the disabled list with tendinitis in his right shoulder, is scheduled to throw long toss twice over the next three days. When the Yankees leave Tampa for Baltimore on Sunday night, Pineda will remain behind to rehabilitate his shoulder. He is not expected back with the Yankees until at least next month.

Baseball
Hughes Phil
New York Yankees
Sports Injuries


BBC Host Admits Killing Terminally Ill Partner

Abstract: LONDON — The revelation seemed to slip out, almost as an aside. In the midst of narrating a television program about end-of-life decisions, the documentary maker Ray Gosling departed from the prepared script and declared , his voice shaking with emotion, “I killed someone once.” He said the person had been a partner from long ago, stricken with AIDS . “In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said, ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ and he was in terrible, terrible pain,” Mr. Gosling, 70, said Monday in the BBC program “Inside Out.” “I said to the doctor, ‘Leave me just for a bit,’ and he went away. I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead.” The confession put Mr. Gosling, a well-known figure who has made dozens of documentaries for radio and television, in the center of a furious long-running debate about euthanasia in Britain . But if he was defying the authorities to do something about it, they called his bluff. On Wednesday, Mr. Gosling was arrested on suspicion of murder and taken to a Nottinghamshire police station for questioning. He has not yet been formally charged. In interviews after the initial broadcast, Mr. Gosling refused to name the man he said he had killed or to reveal where the killing took place. He has also said that he would not give the name to the police. Assisted suicide is illegal in England and Wales ( Scotland has its own legal system ) and carries a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. But though the law seems perfectly clear, it is full of ambiguity. Recent cases have tested when and in what way the state is prepared to intervene. In September, the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, issued interim guidelines laying out factors he said the state would consider in deciding when to file charges in cases of assisted suicide. These include whether the deceased wanted to die and was incurably ill, and whether the deceased was 18 or older and competent to make decisions. Mr. Starmer was responding to a lawsuit brought by Debbie Purdy , who has multiple sclerosis and wants assurances that her husband will not be prosecuted if he helps her end her life. In the last decade, dozens of terminally ill Britons have traveled to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal, and killed themselves with the help of friends or family members. No one has yet been charged in connection with the deaths. But in two high-profile cases this year, two mothers were prosecuted in connection with the deaths of gravely ill children in Britain. In one case, Frances Inglis, 57, was sentenced to life in prison after injecting her severely brain-damaged 22-year-old son, Thomas, with heroin, as he lay in a nursing home. She said she had acted out of love and that Thomas, who had jumped from a moving ambulance after being injured in a brawl in 2007, had never been able to express his desire to end his life. In the second case, Bridget Kathleen Gilderdale, 55, was acquitted of attempted murder after helping her 31-year-old daughter, Lynn, kill herself with a lethal cocktail of drugs. The circumstances seemed clearer: for 17 years Lynn had suffered from severe myalgic encephalomyelitis that left her bedridden, in severe pain and unable to eat except through a tube. She had yearned to die , the evidence showed, and had tried several times to commit suicide before begging her mother to help her in her final attempt. The judge in that case condemned the prosecution for bringing the case and praised the jury for its “common sense, decency and humanity.” The courtroom erupted in cheers as the verdict was announced. Mr. Gosling’s confession raised a flurry of condemnation from groups opposing assisted suicide. In several interviews the next day, on radio and television, Mr. Gosling said he had no regrets. He also said that he had promised his former partner that he would help him end his life if the pain became unbearable. “I did the right thing,” he told the BBC. “If there’s a heaven and he’s looking down, he’d be proud of me.”

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
Great Britain
British Broadcasting Corp
Gosling Ray


Close Finish in Ironman Final

Abstract: Chris McCormack of Australia won the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii for the second time in four years, finishing the 140.6-mile triathlon in 8 hours 10 minutes 37 seconds. McCormack held off a late challenge from Andreas Raelert of Germany.

Hawaii
Ironman Triathlon (Hawaii)
McCormack Chris


Switzerland: Scientists Find the Secret to the Holes in Swiss Cheese: Hay Dust

Abstract: The mystery of Swiss cheese and its disappearing holes has been solved: The milk is too clean. A Swiss agricultural institute discovered that tiny specks of hay are responsible for the famous holes in traditional Swiss cheeses like Emmentaler and Appenzeller. As milk matures into cheese, these microscopically small hay particles help create the holes in the cheese. The government-funded Agroscope Institute said in a statement on Thursday that the transition from age-old milking methods in barns to fully automated, industrial milking systems had caused the holes to decline during the past 15 years. In a series of tests, scientists added different amounts of hay dust to the milk and discovered that it allowed them to regulate the number of holes.


S.E.C. Chairwoman’s Ethics Under Fire

Abstract: The Securities and Exchange Commission took a beating two years ago for failing to detect Bernard L. Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme during the decades that he ran it. Now, its chairwoman is coming under Congressional fire for hiring as the S.E.C.’s general counsel someone with a Madoff financial interest — David M. Becker, who participated in matters involving how the scheme’s victims would be compensated. The revelations about Mr. Becker’s role have raised fresh questions about ethical standards and practices at the agency, where Mary L. Schapiro was brought in as chairwoman two years ago with a mandate to strengthen its enforcement unit. Ms. Schapiro will appear before Congress on Thursday to discuss the matter. Questions about Mr. Becker arose last month after Irving H. Picard, the trustee overseeing the Madoff case, sued him and two of his brothers to recover $1.5 million of the $2 million they had inherited in 2004 from a Madoff investment by their late mother. Mr. Becker’s financial ties to Madoff had not been publicly disclosed until that suit. Mr. Becker said that he advised Ms. Schapiro and the chief ethics officer of his financial interest in a Madoff investment account, “either shortly before or after” joining the agency in February 2009. Last Friday, H. David Kotz, the agency’s inspector general, announced that he would investigate the potential conflicts in Mr. Becker’s role as a Madoff recipient who was also the S.E.C.’s general counsel and senior policy director involved in decisions relating to the Ponzi scheme. Ms. Schapiro requested the review, a commission spokesman said. Lawmakers have also asked Ms. Schapiro for details of her discussions with Mr. Becker about his Madoff account when she hired him in 2009. Ms. Schapiro missed a deadline on Monday for those responses. An S.E.C. spokesman said Ms. Schapiro declined to comment on Tuesday. “One of the things the S.E.C. does is hold companies to a very high standard with regards to transparency and disclosure,” said Representative Randy Neugebauer, Republican of Texas, who is one of four Republican lawmakers asking Ms. Schapiro about her dealings with Mr. Becker and his disclosures. “We think it’s important that the same integrity exists within the S.E.C., ensuring that people working there do not have conflicts of interest and that here is a process to vet those issues and make sure they are taken care of in a way that gives confidence.” Perhaps the most significant Madoff matter involving Mr. Becker is a proposed reversal of the agency’s recommendation on how to compensate victims of the scheme, according to two people briefed on the S.E.C.’s discussions who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. While the agency had agreed on a deal that would return to investors only the money they had put into their Madoff accounts, Mr. Becker argued that the commission should change its stance to allow victims to keep some of the gains their investments had generated, since the investment would have grown somewhat over time even in a low-interest account. The Becker family would benefit from this approach. Mr. Becker did not return a call for comment. In correspondence with lawmakers late last month, Mr. Becker also said that he alerted the ethics office about his family’s Madoff investment again that May after he received a letter from a number of law firms representing Madoff victims asking that the commission change its proposed compensation formula. Among the issues are whether Madoff investors who withdrew money before the fraud was exposed must return some of their proceeds — and if so, how much — to other investors. “I recognized that it was conceivable that this issue could affect my financial interests because the issue could affect the trustee’s decision to bring clawback actions against persons like me,” Mr. Becker wrote in response to lawmakers. The ethics officer approved his participation, he said. That officer reported directly to Mr. Becker and spent only 25 minutes reviewing the matter, according to Congressional staff members briefed on the discussions who requested anonymity because they also were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Congressional investigators want to know if Mr. Becker and Ms. Schapiro took all the necessary steps outlined in government ethics rules. Under the United States code, for example, Ms. Schapiro may have been required to make a written determination that Mr. Becker’s financial interest was not substantial enough to affect his job performance. A spokesman for the S.E.C. said that such a waiver would not be required unless Mr. Becker had been found to have a substantial financial conflict. Congress also asked Ms. Schapiro whether she discussed Mr. Becker’s Madoff account with other staff members or commissioners and if she took up the matter with officials in the federal government’s Office of Government Ethics, or the commission’s ethics counsel. “As the government official responsible for appointing Mr. Becker to his position in 2009, what steps did you take to manage the appearance of or actual conflict of interest presented by Mr. Becker’s financial interest in the Securities Investor Protection Corporation’ liquidation?” asked a March 1 letter signed by four Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee. They are Spencer Bacchus of Alabama, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Mr. Neugebauer. In any Ponzi scheme, there are victims who withdraw money before the fraud is exposed. There are many such Madoff investors and determining how much they may keep is being sorted out in two places. Some investors are fighting in court to be entitled to the amount of money on their final Madoff statements, though they have been unsuccessful so far. Another battle involves how much customers can be compensated by the Madoff trustee and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, a government entity that helps recover money for customers of failed brokerage firms. The S.E.C. oversees SIPC; neither matter has been decided. Mr. Becker’s late mother, Dorothy, invested $500,000 with Mr. Madoff’s company; when she died in 2004, her three sons transferred the money into a new account at the firm. The next year, the investment was worth $2.04 million and they withdrew it. Mr. Picard said that the family should be allowed to keep the original $500,000 investment but return $1.54 million — all of the gain — to compensate other victims. If the S.E.C. gets its way, Mr. Becker and his brothers would be allowed to keep more than that to compensate them for the time the money was invested with Mr. Madoff. How much more is unknown because details of the commission’s proposal have not been disclosed. Both SIPC and Mr. Picard, the trustee for the Madoff estate, have proposed that the customers who withdrew funds before the fraud was uncovered should be allowed to keep only as much money as they put in. Initially, the full commission agreed and approved that approach in early 2009, according to the two people briefed on the discussions. Mr. Becker joined the commission in February that year. By spring, he began meeting with lawyers for Madoff customers seeking a different formula. They wanted to let longer-term investors keep more money than those who had money with Mr. Madoff for shorter periods. Mr. Becker apparently dismissed arguments that investors were entitled to the amounts Mr. Madoff had listed on their final statements. In the summer of 2009, Mr. Becker did reverse the commission’s earlier decision, however. His legal staff came up with a new proposal to reflect the length of time the money was invested, and the commissioners approved it at the end of the year. Some at the agency who worked with SIPC expressed dissent about the change, according to the people briefed on the deliberations. Stephen P. Harbeck, the chief executive of SIPC, confirmed that his investor protection unit and the S.E.C. had initially agreed that victims should be able to keep only the money they had originally put into the Madoff firm. “Then they refined their opinion,” he said on Monday, referring to the S.E.C. He said that he did not know who had pushed for the change. The S.E.C.’s definition, Mr. Harbeck said, would benefit anyone who withdrew more money from their Madoff accounts than they had put in. Mr. Becker’s family would be among them.

Ethics
Securities and Exchange Commission
Conflicts of Interest
House Financial Services Committee
Schapiro Mary L
United States Politics and Government


Israel Rejects Bid to Free Suspected Qaeda Operative

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal for the release of a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian who has been held in Israel without trial for more than three years, accused by the Israeli authorities of being a biological weapons expert in the service of Al Qaeda. The prisoner, Samer Hilmi Abdullatif al-Barq, who has been in administrative detention since the summer of 2010, has gone on a hunger strike several times, drawing the attention of rights organizations like Amnesty International and Addameer , which supports Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The detention order has been renewed periodically based on secret information. The extraordinary accusations against Mr. Barq, 39, detailed in legal documents, came to light only this week when his lawyer, Salih Mahameed, brought his case to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. In a document presented to the court, the military prosecutors described Mr. Barq as an operative in the global Qaeda organization with “a rich background in the field of nonconventional weapons, with an emphasis on the biological field,” having studied microbiology in Pakistan. The prosecutors argued that Mr. Barq’s release at this time to the West Bank, where he is a resident, would constitute “a point of no return in the development of a significant global jihadist infrastructure in the area.” The Israeli allegations could not be independently verified. Addameer lists Mr. Barq’s place of residence as Jayus in the Qalqilya district of the West Bank and his occupation as science teacher. Mr. Mahameed, the lawyer, said Mr. Barq had denied the Israeli accusations. “If there was proof they would put him on trial,” he said. Israel says it uses the tool of administrative detention in cases when there is not enough evidence to prove guilt in court but the detainee is deemed to present a security danger, or in cases when the exposure of intelligence information in court could be harmful to the country’s security. In their ruling, the Supreme Court judges said that based on explanations about Mr. Barq’s background and activities they had received from Israeli security agents, including what they described as continued attempts by Mr. Barq to recruit others from the West Bank to his cause, it was necessary to keep him in detention. An investigation of Mr. Barq was closed soon after he was detained by Israel, the judges said, because the evidence pertained to an episode dating from 1998 and because of other considerations. They said that Israel had looked into the possibility of sending him abroad but that it did not find a third country willing to receive him. According to the court documents, Mr. Barq left the West Bank in 1997 for studies in Pakistan, underwent military training in Afghanistan and in 2001 was recruited by Al Qaeda. They stated that Mr. Barq had been involved in what they described as a Qaeda biological weapons project and that he had even led it. The documents said that Mr. Barq had been arrested and questioned at some unidentified date by the American authorities and that he was later arrested in Jordan, where he spent about five years in prison. In July 2010, the Jordanian authorities sent Mr. Barq back to the West Bank, where he was detained by the Israelis.

Israel
Palestinians
Al Qaeda
Samer Hilmi Abdullatif al- Barq


On Day of Symbolism, Honoring Kennedy, and Successor He Inspired

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Standing wordlessly before a flickering flame, their faces etched in the sunlight slanting through a canopy of thinning trees, two Democratic presidents came together Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the memory of a third. President Obama and former President Bill Clinton walked up a hillside to the grave of John F. Kennedy, where, joined by Michelle Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, they laid a wreath to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s death by an assassin’s bullet. A military bugler called out taps, the mournful notes resounding on a crisp, clear autumn day that seemed a softer echo of the stark grandeur of the state funeral on Nov. 25, 1963. It was the emotional highlight of a day laden with symbolism, uniting Democratic presidents past, present and possibly future, to pay tribute to a beloved predecessor, a leader whose legacy and family played a formative role in the lives of Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton. The president and the former president escorted Ethel Kennedy to the grave site. Later, they mingled with members of the Kennedy family. In timing that scarcely seemed accidental, Caroline Kennedy, who recently took up her post as Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Japan, had left for Tokyo only days before this week’s milestone. Earlier Wednesday at the White House, Mr. Obama bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom — conceived by Kennedy a half-century ago as the nation’s highest civilian honor — on Mr. Clinton and 15 other luminaries from the worlds of sports, politics, journalism and academia. Image At the grave of John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, marking the 50th anniversary of his assassination. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Under the twinkling chandeliers of the East Room, Mr. Obama paid tribute to Mr. Clinton for his achievements as governor of Arkansas, as the 42nd president, and as the founder of the Clinton Foundation, which Mr. Obama said had saved millions of lives. “Lifting up families like his own became the story of Bill Clinton’s life,” the president said, as Mrs. Clinton sat in the front row of the audience. “He wanted to make sure he made life better and easier for so many people across the country.” Mr. Obama’s remarks were a graceful acknowledgment of Mr. Clinton’s record, but they came with a sly wink at the complexities of a relationship between the president and his opinionated predecessor. “I’m grateful, Bill, as well, for the advice you’ve offered me, on and off the golf course,” Mr. Obama said, alluding, perhaps, to a recent report that the president chafed at his chatty golf companion and told his aides he liked Mr. Clinton only “in doses.” As Mr. Obama struggles through one of the bleaker stretches of his presidency, Mr. Clinton has again taken on the role of critic, urging the president to fix the health care law to honor his pledge that if people like their health insurance, they should be allowed to keep it. He has also criticized Mr. Obama’s Syria policy, saying that any president would be a “total fool” to avoid taking action to stem a brutal civil war because of public resistance to foreign engagement. The White House insists that it welcomes Mr. Clinton’s advice on health care, though some political analysts have speculated that he is distancing himself and his wife from an increasingly unpopular health care law before Mrs. Clinton runs for president in 2016. Video President Obama presented the award to 16 Americans, including former President Bill Clinton. Credit Credit Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times Mr. Obama alluded to Mrs. Clinton only indirectly, thanking Mr. Clinton for having patience “during the endless travels of my secretary of state.” In the East Room, the president also saluted two members of the Kennedy clan: Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, and Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy and son of Caroline Kennedy. Among those on an unusually star-studded list of 16 recipients for the Presidential Medal of Freedom were Oprah Winfrey, the television entrepreneur; Dean Smith, the Hall of Fame college basketball coach; the late Bayard Rustin, the civil rights campaigner; the late Sally Ride, an astronaut who was the first American woman in space; Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Watergate-era editor of The Washington Post; the late Daniel K. Inouye, the senator from Hawaii; Loretta Lynn, the country music singer; and Gloria Steinem, the feminist writer. After praising Mr. Bradlee for his transformation of The Post into a leading newspaper and his role in nurturing a generation of investigative journalists after the Watergate scandal, the president could not resist a reference to the editor’s bespoke bold-striped shirts. “He can pull off those shirts, and I can’t,” Mr. Obama said to chuckles. “He always looks so cool in them.” In his tribute to Ms. Winfrey, Mr. Obama recounted that when she was a young girl, she was advised to change her name to Susie. It was advice that the president said he too had gotten as a young man — though not, he hastened to add, to change Barack to Susie. “People can relate to Susie,” Mr. Obama said of the rationale given to Ms. Winfrey. “It turns out people can relate to Oprah, too.”

Bill Clinton
Presidential Medal of Freedom
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Barack Obama
President of the United States


Freshman Lifts No. 2 U.C.L.A. After Sluggish Start

Abstract: The U.C.L.A. freshman Kevin Love adjusted after being frustrated by Maryland’s early physical play, scoring 18 points and grabbing 16 rebounds last night to help second-ranked Bruins overcome a sloppy first half in a 71-59 victory over Maryland in the semifinals of the CBE Classic in Kansas City, Mo. U.C.L.A. (4-0) had only eight scholarship players in uniform because of injuries to several key players. The lack of depth showed early with numerous turnovers and bad shots. But the Bruins, led by Love’s crisp passing against Maryland’s press, settled things down by the second half. Maryland (3-1) had 21 turnovers and was just 1 for 11 on 3-pointers. Greivis Vasquez led the Terrapins with 18 points, and Bambale Osby added 13. MICHIGAN ST. 86, MISSOURI 83 Drew Neitzel made a late 3-pointer and hit two free throws with 2.4 seconds left, helping No. 10 Michigan State win in the semifinals of the CBE Classic. Michigan State (3-0) struggled all night with Missouri’s full-court pressure, twice losing double-digits leads. Missouri’s Stefhon Hannah made three 3-pointers in the final 90 seconds, the last an off-balance heave with 3.5 seconds left that hit the rim and bounced in to cut Michigan State’s lead to 84-83. The Tigers immediately fouled Neitzel, who calmly made both free throws. The Spartans will face U.C.L.A. in tonight’s title game. MARQUETTE 74, CHAMINADE 63 Jerel McNeal scored 8 of his 22 points in a late 11-2 run that let No. 11 Marquette hold on in the opening round of the Maui Invitational. Chaminade, the Division II host of this eight-team tournament, cut its deficit to 3 points in the second half, immediately bringing to mind the Silverswords’ shocking upset of Virginia almost 25 years ago. DUKE 83, PRINCETON 61 The freshman forward Kyle Singler had 21 points and 12 rebounds as No. 13 Duke kept its perfect record at the Maui Invitational intact. Duke (3-0), which won the title in 1992, 1997 and 2001, is 10-0 in the event, and six of the wins have been by 20 points or more. RIDER 85, FAIRLEIGH DICKINSON 70 Jason Thompson had 20 points, 9 rebounds and 7 blocked shots for host Rider (2-1). PADGETT OUT AT LEAST 10 WEEKS Louisville center David Padgett has a fractured right kneecap that will cause him to miss at least 10 weeks and possibly the rest of the season. Women NORTH CAROLINA 99, GEORGIA ST. 64 Rashanda McCants scored 18 points to lead six players in double figures as No. 5 North Carolina won at home.

University of California Los Angeles
Basketball
Marquette University
College Athletics


Zimbabwe Stands Still as President Vacations Off the Grid

Abstract: HARARE, Zimbabwe — It was an urgent matter for President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe: His approval was needed so that a loyal supporter who had just died could be buried at a cemetery for national heroes. But with Mr. Mugabe off on his extended annual holiday in Asia this month, it took the acting president a couple of days to track him down, en route from Beijing to his Asian base in Singapore. “I phoned the president telling him about the death, and he told me that he had learned about it through the first lady, who had read about it on the internet,” said the acting president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, one of Mr. Mugabe’s two vice presidents. Mr. Mugabe’s annual holidays are one of the unusual aspects of the rhythms of political life in Harare, the capital of this southern African nation. Every year, from mid-December through the end of January, Mr. Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years with a tight grip, seemingly releases it. He vanishes in Asia, going off grid, becoming at times unreachable to his own deputies. A couple of years ago, one of Mr. Mugabe’s sons posted photos on Instagram showing the family at a high-end Japanese restaurant in Singapore, apparently enjoying teppanyaki. But the Mugabes have otherwise remained discreet about their holiday activities, sensitive perhaps to criticism back home that they are wasting public money while government coffers are nearly empty. So committed has Mr. Mugabe been to staying away from Zimbabwe that even when he interrupts his long Asian holiday with an official trip to an African nation — as he did in mid-January by traveling to Mali — the presidential plane, Air Zimbabwe Flight 1, has made a beeline right back to Asia. In Harare, government decisions, big and small, are put off. It’s a slow month and half for political journalists, even as rumors fill the vacuum. But even in Mr. Mugabe’s absence, the grip of the only leader Zimbabwe has ever known never really loosens. “When Mugabe goes on holiday, he goes on holiday with the state,” said Pedzisai Ruhanya, a political analyst and the director of the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, a research group. “Mugabe’s behavior is inconsistent with practices in other countries, with general state practices. This is kind of strange.” This time, Mr. Mugabe left for Asia immediately after his party’s annual conference in mid-December, which was dominated by his wife, Grace Mugabe, 51. Mr. Mugabe, the world’s oldest head of state, who will be 93 in February, slept through most of the conference but was selected as his party’s candidate in next year’s presidential election. His party is increasingly divided by fighting over succession, and Mr. Mugabe has lost the support of longtime allies like veterans of the country’s war of liberation. Zimbabwe’s financial state remains so precarious that government workers were paid late in December, after Christmas, and have yet to receive their year-end bonuses. “Under normal circumstances, when things are not O.K. in your house, you wouldn’t leave for such a long time,” said John Masuku, a journalist who worked for 27 years at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, including as a presidential correspondent. And yet, even in increasingly frail health, Mr. Mugabe has not cut short his annual holidays. The reality, allies and rivals alike say, is that he has secured the loyalty of the political class through patronage, eviscerated the opposition and installed relatives and close associates in important posts in the army and the police. Unlike less-secure strongmen who rarely venture abroad, Mr. Mugabe sticks to his annual routine, leaving Zimbabwe at the same time every year, and he has even lengthened his holidays in recent years. “He feels quite comfortable,” said Rugare Gumbo, who was a longtime ally of Mr. Mugabe and is now in the opposition. “No one can take a chance by raising any controversial issue because he would be accused of trying to overthrow the old man.” Indeed, when Mr. Mnangagwa, the acting president, was shown recently in Facebook photos holding a mug with the words, “I Am the Boss,” the attacks against him by party rivals were immediate and relentless. Accused of wanting to push Mr. Mugabe aside, Mr. Mnangagwa had to issue a statement to the contrary. Mr. Mugabe, a well-known Anglophile, used to spend his annual holidays in London or elsewhere in Europe. But sanctions imposed by Western governments after the seizure of white-owned farms in 2000 pushed the Mugabes to look elsewhere. The Mugabes have vacationed in Malaysia and Hong Kong as well as in the Middle East, mostly in Dubai. But Mr. Mugabe has settled in recent years on Singapore, which, in addition to having excellent Japanese food, has a leading medical tourism industry — and, perhaps most important, is a former British colony. “He finds it congenial to be in a former British colony than in any other country,” Mr. Gumbo said. “If you can’t get pleasure in London, you might as well get it in its colonies.” With Mr. Mugabe gone, neither the government nor the ruling party bothers to hold high-level meetings. “We didn’t hold cabinet meetings in Mugabe’s absence because he is the one who chairs the meetings,” said Didymus Mutasa, who served as a minister to Mr. Mugabe for many years and is now in the opposition. “When Mugabe goes on leave, some of his ministers also go on leave.” Tendai Biti, an opposition leader who served as finance minister in a coalition government from 2009 to 2013, said that Mr. Mugabe’s annual holidays have long been a drain on Zimbabwe’s finances. In a system established before independence, government officials traveling overseas are given hard currency, usually American dollars, upon authorization from the Finance Ministry, Mr. Biti said. During Mr. Biti’s tenure, Mr. Mugabe typically asked for $3 million for his annual holidays, and Mr. Biti said he authorized from $800,000 to $1.2 million. “The money comes as cash,” Mr. Biti said. “But whether they put it in suitcases or whatever, I don’t know. That was not my job.” Unspent money — from Mr. Mugabe’s annual holidays or his frequent trips outside Zimbabwe — is not returned to the state. “It has become a vehicle for looting,” Mr. Biti said. Most high-ranking government and ruling party officials refused to comment on Mr. Mugabe’s annual holidays. But Tshinga Dube, Mr. Mugabe’s minister for war veterans, said that he carried out his duties the same way whether Mr. Mugabe was in or out of the country. Describing himself as an “ambassador” serving under “a Julius Caesar,” Mr. Dube said, “You cannot do things differently just because he is not there.” Asked about popular criticism that Mr. Mugabe is out of touch by taking such long and costly holidays while the country’s economy teeters, Mr. Dube said that it was “a matter of personal opinion.” “It is very difficult,” he added, “to talk, to comment about your boss, especially on issues that relate to his health, his age, and things of that nature.”

Zimbabwe
Robert Mugabe
Asia
Politics
Grace Mugabe
Travel,Tourism
International relations


FIFA’s Mess Gets Even Messier

Abstract: LONDON — Sepp Blatter stands alone in the house of FIFA. With all opposition to his presidential role removed three days before the FIFA Congress in Zurich on Wednesday, he has what he wanted: a straight path to a fourth term as the world’s top soccer official. On Sunday, an ethics panel, representing a committee founded by him and funded by FIFA, exonerated Blatter, the president of world soccer’s governing body, of any wrongdoing. The panel, however, suspended two of Blatter’s foremost friends and former supporters, the FIFA vice presidents Mohamed bin Hammam and Jack Warner, from all duties in the sport. They are accused of plotting Blatter’s removal by paying bribes of $40,000 per recipient to install bin Hammam as FIFA president. So the re-election of Blatter, a 75-year-old Swiss, for another four-year term is rubber-stamped. The 208 members of FIFA have nobody else to vote for Wednesday. Bin Hammam, the Qatari who led the 46-nation Asian Football Confederation before his suspension, withdrew his candidacy even before he was barred Sunday. Jack Warner, a minister in the government of Trinidad and Tobago, is under investigation by FIFA after allegations that he enabled offers of cash inducements to members of the Caribbean, North and Central American confederation, which he leads. Two regional leaders, responsible between them for almost half the FIFA membership, are ejected from the house. Bin Hammam and Warner are kicking and screaming and now giving credence to what many people on the outside have been saying for years: that FIFA is so institutionally corrupt, no one can save or reform it. Soccer has just had a beautiful European Champions League final, after which the great debate among genuine lovers of the game is about whether Lionel Messi is the greatest player on the greatest team of all time. It is an impossible question to answer because the nature of the sport changes as it goes through its different eras. But the biggest change in soccer over time is the wealth that surrounds it, drives it and quite possibly corrupts it at many levels. One measure of these changes and its dangers is that while bin Hammam is temporarily prevented from overseeing the Asian federation, his stand-in is expected to be Zhang Jilong of China. Chinese soccer was recently overhauled by the government because of systemic corruption. When one of the barred FIFA vice presidents, Warner, threatens that a “football tsunami” will now sweep over Blatter’s rule, the threat has to be taken seriously. Warner has withstood many investigations into allegations of profiteering, from selling World Cup tickets on the black market in 2006 to being accused by the Football Association in England of seeking payment for his vote in the election last December on where to hold the 2018 World Cup tournament. Russia was awarded the 2018 tournament, which England was vying for, while Qatar was awarded the 2022 Cup on the same day, beating out the United States. These tournaments bring in $5 billion to FIFA, along with untold billions to the host countries. Blatter will, no doubt, speak on his re-election Wednesday of his mission to cleanse FIFA, to lead it to a purer and better place. He should be asked, if there are any credible challengers left within the organization, how it came to this. How, after 13 years of Blatter rule, and after 36 years of his involvement in the executive body, has it reached so diseased a state? Blatter did not invent this state of affairs. He inherited it from João Havelange, the Brazilian who transformed the wealth of soccer. Havelange won power largely through the one-country, one-vote system on which FIFA chooses its president — and won it substantially by persuading small national associations in Africa, and after that the Caribbean and Asia, to vote for him. In return, he gave them money to build up their own structures with handouts from FIFA. He paid for this by selling soccer’s crown jewel, the World Cup, held every four years. It has been transformed from a simple sporting event into a self-perpetuating golden triangle built around the Cup, television exposure and corporate sponsorship. The billions swirling around that triangle make FIFA the biggest single sporting enterprise on earth. And if the Olympic godfathers proved susceptible to bribery, is it any wonder that soccer is seen as corruptible? Blatter will argue, as he often has, that he is incorruptible. He says that there are devils and angels everywhere, not just in soccer. He will ask for more, not less, power because, as things stand, the ruling 24-person FIFA executive committee is defined by its statutes. It is automatic, for example, that the seven vice presidents are attached to the executive through geographic representation, each representing a region regardless of size or population or merit within the sport. Blatter points out that he does not choose his committee; its members are chosen for him. If some of those are devils, what can he do? When Blatter stood before journalists on Monday evening, he insisted that FIFA is not in a crisis, but it has some difficulties. “We will resolve these in the family,” he said. “The congress of FIFA will decide if I am a valid president of FIFA, and I will explain to them how, with zero tolerance and respect, we have to deal with the past.” FIFA was formed, by the French, in 1904. It is now 208 member associations strong, or weak. Its purpose has, to many observers, become overwhelmingly to preserve itself, to take in money that often exceeds the gross national products of some of its member countries, and to distribute that as it sees fit. The squabble over the December voting procedure, led one member of the FIFA ethics committee, the German lawyer Günter Hirsch, to resign. Hirsch wrote, “The events of the past few weeks have raised and strengthened the impression that responsible persons in FIFA have no real interest in playing an active role in resolving, punishing and avoiding violations against ethic regulations of FIFA.” FIFA’s response was to discredit Hirsch for failing to attend sufficient ethics committee gatherings. And to appoint the next willing volunteer. The panel that issued its ruling Sunday on Warner and bin Hammam was armed with the FIFA statutes, which were written and revised by its own ruling executive. A Namibian judge, Petrus Damaseb, presided over a panel of members from Australia, Guam and Uruguay who were presented with evidence submitted by FIFA. Damaseb described his panel as impartial, neutral and independent. He said it was not there to decide in any way the guilt or innocence of the people before it. He nevertheless stated that Blatter had no case to answer but that the two vice presidents did. He said that was sufficient to ban them until such time, probably in July, that investigators could examine what, if anything, their crimes against FIFA might be. On Sunday, Jérôme Valcke, the FIFA general secretary appointed by Blatter, read out an e-mail from the Puerto Rican soccer federation claiming that it had indeed received $40,000 from bin Hammam and was about to return that money to FIFA. Bin Hammam and Warner are in denial. Their 30-year friendship with Blatter is over. They say that he is the problem and that his panel amounts to nothing more than a kangaroo court. The “tsunami” promised by Jack Warner has begun. Blatter, meanwhile, is still standing, and still claiming that he is the man to clean up the mess.

International Federation of Association Football (FIFA)


Obama Begins His Final Asia Trip as President

Abstract: President Obama leaves on Wednesday for his final trip in office to the other side of the world, heading to China and Laos after a brief stop on a spit of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. As president, Mr. Obama has promised to reframe American foreign policy toward Asia as part of a “pivot” intended to focus more on the emerging trading partners in that region. The president’s weeklong trip is his last big effort to make that policy a reality. But on the way, the president will spend two days highlighting his commitment to combating climate change. On Wednesday, Air Force One will travel to Hawaii, with a stop at Lake Tahoe, Nev., where Mr. Obama will speak at a climate change summit meeting organized by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. On Thursday, the president will fly to Midway Atoll, a tiny island in the Pacific and the site of a critical victory by United States naval forces over the Japanese during World War II. It is now a national wildlife refuge. On the island, Mr. Obama will announce a vast expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument to highlight the importance of protecting lands and waters from the perils of climate change. Then it is on to China, where the president is expected to discuss trade and climate change, along with contentious issues like cyberintrusions and tensions in the South China Sea. In Laos, Mr. Obama will open ties with another reclusive communist state and will seek conciliation years after the United States dropped numerous bombs — many of which remain buried and unexploded — on the country during the Vietnam War.

Laos
Climate Change
Midway Atoll
Global Warming
Barack Obama