Marching in One St. Patrick’s Parade, de Blasio Spurns Another

Abstract: There were shamrock ears, bagpipers and green top hats, and more than a little politics on display Sunday at a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Sunnyside, Queens, that emphasized a message of inclusiveness as it moved down Skillman Avenue. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who provoked the Irish when he skipped New York City’s marquee parade on Fifth Avenue last year because of the organizer’s policy against displays of gay pride, strode through the snowfall at the smaller parade alongside rainbow banners and placards proclaiming gay rights. The mayor — the first to skip the Manhattan parade in two decades — vowed to continue his boycott, no matter that the parade has opened its doors a crack, permitting one gay group to fly its flag this year. “A lot of people feel, I think rightfully, that that is too small a change to merit a lot of us participating who have wanted to see an inclusive parade,” Mr. de Blasio said. This year, the Manhattan parade will include a delegation of NBCUniversal employees walking under a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender banner. NBC televises the parade. “Even though it is a statement of some progress that this NBC delegation has been included,” the mayor said, “we need something more to really feel like we have turned a corner.” Image Bagpipers at the parade on Sunday. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times Craig Robinson, executive vice president and chief diversity officer for NBCUniversal, issued a statement last month on the group’s participation. “We are mindful of the efforts of others, both within and outside of the company, that have led us to this historic point,” he said. “We approach the opportunity with respect for the event’s heritage, culture and tradition, as well as hope and excitement for this first step towards an increasingly inclusive era for the parade.” The Manhattan parade, which is scheduled for March 17, has been held for more than 250 years. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, will be the grand marshal. At Sunday’s parade, called St. Pat’s for All, Kerry Kennedy, the human rights activist, was a grand marshal. She stood on a flatbed truck before the kickoff, criticizing the big parade’s exclusionist policy and drawing on her work in Uganda, where homosexuality is criminalized. The Manhattan parade is just one source of friction in Mr. de Blasio’s relations with the city’s dwindling community of Irish leaders. Members of the community, long accustomed to outsize access to public officials, became nervous when it seemed the mayor was on the brink of canceling a traditional breakfast with Hibernian leaders at Gracie Mansion last year. (The breakfast went on, albeit smaller than in previous years; invitations were sent later than usual, the mayor’s staff said.) Image Marchers on Skillman Avenue, part of the annual St. Pat's for All parade. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times There are other points of contention, such as Mr. de Blasio’s objection to horse-drawn carriages, a profession deeply linked to the city’s Irish; shop windows in Sunnyside proclaimed support for the buggies. And Mr. de Blasio did not attend a St. Patrick’s parade in the Rockaways last year, upsetting the peninsula’s residents still reeling from Hurricane Sandy by incorrectly suggesting that their march excluded certain groups. “That was an error on our part; it is inclusive,” Mr. de Blasio said at the Sunnyside parade, adding that he would march in the Rockaways this year. “There was a misunderstanding.” As the flakes fell more thickly, snow-covered children jigged in the flurries to stay warm, two-stepping to the sounds of Irish fiddling down the avenue. Some marchers waved placards, but others, like the students in the Marching Cobras drum line, just enjoyed the parade. The Cobras have marched in the Manhattan parade in past years. When informed about the policies that drove the mayor’s boycott, Emmanuel Heredia, a 17-year-old member of the Cobras, said, “That’s kind of messed up, because we should all just be able to march.” Still, Emmanuel added, he would march in it if asked. For the teenager, all the politics missed the point. Any parade is a good parade, he said, “as long as I’m drumming.”

Parade
Bill de Blasio
Boycott
Saint Patrick's Day
Gay and Lesbian LGBT
NYC
Sunnyside Queens
Fifth Avenue Manhattan
Irish American


Exchange Programs Foster an Arab Ideal of Democracy

Abstract: BERLIN — Last week, a group of young men and women from North African and Middle Eastern countries packed their bags and set off for home, having spent a month on a scholarship funded by the German Parliament. These annual scholarships were established two years ago, soon after the Arab Spring swept across Europe’s southern neighbors. The aim behind the program was to bring young people to Germany to debate with them how democratic systems function. “These exchange programs are important,” said Zina Mahmoud Hamada El Nahel, 24, a participant who is employed by a German political foundation in Egypt. “But one of the messages that we want to get across from our side is that European countries should stop selling weapons to the region. And don’t give any money to any of the governments. It will all be stolen.” The participants said more weapons undermined efforts to build democracy. Yet European countries continue to sell arms to many Arab governments. One exception is Syria, but that war-torn country is awash with weapons anyway. These bright people from Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and other Arab countries — many of whom had taken part in the democratic uprisings in 2011 — described their new governments with a considerable amount of skepticism. They were doubtful about their leaders’ commitment to building democratic institutions. After decades of misrule in the Arab world, corruption and authoritarianism are deeply entrenched, they said. The new governments also have an inherent suspicion of independent thinking. “Our government, for example, hates the foundations,” said Imen Nefzi, 29, who is involved in a nongovernmental organization in Tunisia. “They think we are foreign agents, that we are trying to undermine the system. It is not easy trying to build democracy even on a small level.” Some German nonprofit organizations — like the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is affiliated with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party — have been under constant pressure by the Egyptian authorities since 2011. Last June, its offices and property were confiscated. Maha Wissa, 34, from Egypt, said she had no illusions about how long it would take to build a democratic state in her country. “A decade, at least — and that’s being optimistic,” she said. In the meantime, she would like the foundations, the European Union and individual European governments to pursue a different tack to facilitate the transition. “First of all, we have to reach out to schools, to younger people,” Ms. Wissa said. As it is, German and European foundations have a built-in bias. They tend to focus on university students and those who speak their language. The German Parliament’s scholarship has particular weaknesses. The Parliament’s administration asked the German Embassy in Cairo for help in finding participants. The embassy then contacted the foundations and other prominent nongovernmental organizations, choosing established, predictable channels rather than reaching out to different strata of society. One participant, who wished to remain anonymous, was critical of this approach. “All of us on this scholarship are committed to democracy,” he said. “But it should not only be us who receive these scholarships. The European foundations and the E.U. should be much more ambitious about reaching out to young people and how they target their funding,” Many participants said that the foundations and the European Union were insular in their approach. “The foundations have to get out of the capital cities and go to the towns and villages,” Ms. Nefzi said. “You do have the problem of not having staff or funding to do this. But there is another world out there that is very important to relate to. Otherwise you won’t understand how difficult it is to build democracy.” Other participants said the concentration on the cities by the foundations and the E.U. helped perpetuate the wide gap between the cities and the countryside. “We don’t have illusions about how difficult it will be to overcome this huge polarization but it is something that we have to deal with if we want to build a democracy that is inclusive,” said Salma Hamed, 22, also from Egypt. The issue of building a democracy became a recurring theme during the conversations with this fascinating mix of people. What they also want from the European foundations, European donors and the Union itself is transparency in funding. “The funding should be transparent,” Ms. Wissa said. “We want it to help women, for example, but we also want to know the criteria for this funding.” Others said that the Europeans were too selective. They supported only liberal parties while shunning the moderate Islamist movements that represent large parts of these countries’ populations. This writer responded that at least Europe’s approach was better than before 2011. That was when Europe cooperated with authoritarian regimes across the region instead of supporting independent, pro-democracy movements. Even the German foundations had, for a long time, a policy of allocating funding only to nongovernmental organizations sanctioned by the regimes. As the conversation went on, it inevitably touched on Syria, a country that descended into civil war after the regime tried to put down a democratic uprising. These engaged men and women said they opposed any Western military intervention. It was a long, thoughtful discussion about experiences, values and the limits of outside help. These bright young Arabs want their countries to change, but according to their own values, not rules imposed by the West.

Arabs
Democracy
Scholarships
Arab Spring
Germany
Syria
Konrad Adenauer Foundation
EU
Arms Trade


Illinois Incumbents Carve Out a New Congressional Map

Abstract: During debate this week on Democrats’ remapping of Illinois congressional districts, criticized as heavily weighted against Republicans, Senate President John J. Cullerton hoisted a newspaper from 2001. An article in that paper detailed state lawmakers’ discontent with that year’s redistricting map, which was drawn by incumbent congressmen from both parties. They were allowed to design their own districts with Democrats and Republicans striking handshake deals. Mr. Cullerton, Democrat of Chicago, used the newspaper story to further a point. The process this time, he said, was more transparent than in 2001. Members of Congress did not sketch their own boundaries. “I was here 10 years ago when we had one hour to vote on a map drawn by all the incumbents,” Mr. Cullerton said. “The map we passed this year is so much more compact and splits fewer counties.” Still, their incumbent status and their party’s control in Springfield enabled Democrats to customize a map that jeopardizes five freshman Republicans. No matter their repeated attempts to justify the jigsaw puzzle based on census changes, Democrats took a razor to their colleagues’ domain. They activated every switch at their disposal: clout, secrecy and spools of electronic data that guided block-by-block precision. The Democratic mapmakers — House and Senate staff members in Springfield whom party leaders declined to name — took into account such factors as incumbents’ home addresses, district offices, favorite churches and potential opponents, according to those familiar with the process, who asked not to be named. Lawmakers and staff members were warned not to talk publicly about redistricting because their comments could harm the map’s survival, as it is certain to land in court. Aides to Representative Bobby Rush, Democrat of Chicago, studied vote totals precinct by precinct to ensure that his new district maintained his strongest pockets of support and dumped those areas in which he was less popular, the sources said. Mr. Rush also wanted certain churches to remain in his district, spawning juts and curves on the new map. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., Democrat of Chicago, picked up eastern Will County, which is hostile territory for him. The rationale was to add the site of a proposed airport outside Peotone that Mr. Jackson supports because it would provide jobs for his South Side core constituents. By shifting him into the farming communities fighting the airport, Mr. Jackson is immune from being chastised for ignoring protocol and engaging on an issue outside his district. Democratic staff members were especially kind to Representative Dan Lipinski, Democrat of Western Springs. With a pen stroke, they sliced out of his district John Atkinson of Burr Ridge, who was raising money to challenge Mr. Lipinski in the 2012 primary election. Mr. Atkinson said he might still run against Mr. Lipinski, but the new map puts him in the 11th District, where he is also considering running. Mr. Lipinski said the new map did not guarantee a clear field for his re-election campaign. “We don’t know where anyone is going to run at this point,” he said, “so you can’t really say I’ve been spared any possible primary opponent or general-election opponent.” Mr. Lipinski said he was satisfied with the boundaries of his district, which include his boyhood home in Midway Airport’s bungalow belt. That working-class neighborhood gave his father, former Representative William Lipinski, the nickname Bungalow Bill. Mr. Lipinski said he spoke to House Speaker Michael Madigan, a longtime ally of his father, and Mr. Cullerton about how his district might look. “I had conversations with them about what I was interested in,” he said. Natural population shifts and the need to protect minorities determined the outlines of his new territory, pushing him farther southwest, he said. Members of Congress were invited to view the map in Springfield two weeks ago, before the measure was released publicly. Some congressmen, including Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Chicago, made the three-hour drive from Chicago. Mr. Quigley, who lost 120,000 voters — about one-fifth of his current district — from his Northwest Side base, said he was allowed to view the boundaries on a computer screen, but he was not invited to provide much input. He compared the process to “being in a roller coaster with no steering wheel.” “People say the process isn’t political, but it is,” he said. “What is unnecessary are some of the things people do on both sides of the aisle to see how much they can hurt the other side. There’s not much I can do about it except serve the constituents under the current map and get myself known in the new parts of the map.” Mr. Cullerton said political considerations did not determine the map’s boundaries. But he added, “The D.C.C.C. is very happy with the fact that it’s a very fair map,” a reference to the highly partisan Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is counting on Illinois to help swing control of the House of Representatives back to its party.

Illinois
Maps
Redistricting and Reapportionment
Politics and Government
Republican Party
Democratic Party


Commerzbank to Meet New Capital Rules Without Public Help

Abstract: FRANKFURT — Commerzbank said Thursday that it was more than halfway to its goal of raising the capital demanded by European regulators — and could do so without asking for more state aid. Shares in the bank, Germany’s second-largest after Deutsche Bank, soared as much as 15 percent during the day on the news. Commerzbank said that asset sales, retained earnings and capital management fulfilled 57 percent of its target of €6.3 billion, or $8.1 billion, by the end of 2011. That is more than the €5.3 billion shortfall, the largest among German banks, identified by the European Banking Authority. The bank said it could make it the rest of the way by a June 30 deadline by raising funds and reducing risk-weighted assets. “We stand by our word: We do not intend to make use of additional public funds,” Eric Strutz, the company’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. “With the approved set of measures the bank is showing that it is able to meet the capital requirements of the E.B.A. relying on its own strength even in a difficult environment.” European leaders are demanding that banks increase reserves to bolster confidence after having agreed to accept losses on Greek government bonds. In December, the E.B.A. told banks to raise €114.7 billion in fresh capital by the end of June as part of measures introduced to respond to the euro area’s fiscal woes. The regulator called for lenders to have core Tier 1 capital, a measure of financial strength, equivalent to 9 percent or more of their risk-weighted assets after accounting for write-downs on some European sovereign bonds. Commerzbank said it had reduced risk-weighted assets by more than €17 billion by the end of 2011, which increased core Tier 1 capital, a measure of financial strength, by €1.6 billion. The company also had about €1.2 billion of retained earnings in the fourth quarter, which includes income from the buyback of hybrid equity instruments and excludes potential further Greek write-downs. Commerzbank increased its core Tier 1 capital by €200 million with “efficient” management of its capital structure, according to the statement. The bank said it could close the remaining gap with a mix of measures including a further €17 billion reduction in risk-weighted assets and another €1.2 billion in retained earnings. Commerzbank also cited €350 million in lower regulatory capital deductions for securitization positions, as the lender winds down some businesses and sells assets. The bank said it could also raise €250 million if employees accepted more stock as compensation. Commerzbank’s chairman, Martin Blessing, has spent three years trying to free the lender from debt from government aid needed to survive the fallout from the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. The German government owns 25 percent of Commerzbank as a result of the bailout.

Commerzbank
Regulation and Deregulation of Industry


Kraft Recalls Some Cheese Products Over Choking Concerns

Abstract: The Kraft Heinz Company has recalled some of its individually wrapped cheese products over concerns that the plastic packaging could stick to the slice after being removed and cause a potential choking hazard. The company said on Friday that the voluntary recall was in response to 10 consumer complaints about the wrapping, including three reports of choking. The company said the recall covered about 36,000 cases of 3-pound and 4-pound Kraft Singles American and White American cheese products sent to retailers in the United States, Puerto Rico and Grand Cayman. Those cases were stamped with the numbers S54 and S55, referring to the two production lines where they were manufactured. The cheese products that were recalled had use-by dates of Dec. 29, 2015, through Jan. 4, 2016. No other products were affected, the company said.


The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype

Abstract: Talk about hype. In the last six months, Apple ’s iPhone has been the subject of 11,000 print articles, and it turns up about 69 million hits on Google. Cultists are camping out in front of Apple stores; bloggers call it the “Jesus phone.” All of this before a single consumer has even touched the thing. So how is it? As it turns out, much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones. Unless you’ve been in a sensory-deprivation tank for six months, you already know what the iPhone is: a tiny, gorgeous hand-held computer whose screen is a slab of touch-sensitive glass. The $500 and $600 models have 4 and 8 gigabytes of storage, respectively — room for about 825 or 1,825 songs. (In each case, 700 megabytes is occupied by the phone’s software.) That’s a lot of money; then again, the price includes a cellphone, video iPod , e-mail terminal, Web browser, camera, alarm clock, Palm-type organizer and one heck of a status symbol. The phone is so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese. The glass gets smudgy — a sleeve wipes it clean — but it doesn’t scratch easily. I’ve walked around with an iPhone in my pocket for two weeks, naked and unprotected (the iPhone, that is, not me), and there’s not a mark on it. But the bigger achievement is the software. It’s fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate. You can’t get lost, because the solitary physical button below the screen always opens the Home page, arrayed with icons for the iPhone’s 16 functions. You’ve probably seen Apple’s ads, showing how things on the screen have a physics all their own. Lists scroll with a flick of your finger, CD covers flip over as you flick them, e-mail messages collapse down into a trash can. Sure, it’s eye candy. But it makes the phone fun to use, which is not something you can say about most cellphones. Apple has chosen AT&T (formerly Cingular) to be the iPhone’s exclusive carrier for the next few years, in part because the company gave Apple carte blanche to revise everything people hate about cellphones. For example, once the phone goes on sale this Friday, you won’t sign up for service in a phone store, under pressure from the sales staff. You will be able to peruse and choose a plan at your leisure, in the iTunes software on your computer. Better yet, unlimited Internet service adds only $20 a month to AT&T’s voice-plan prices, about half what BlackBerry and Treo owners pay. For example, $60 gets you 450 talk minutes, 200 text messages and unlimited Internet; $80 doubles that talk time. The iPhone requires one of these voice-and-Internet plans and a two-year commitment. On the iPhone, you don’t check your voice mail; it checks you. One button press reveals your waiting messages, listed like e-mail. There’s no dialing in, no password — and no sleepy robot intoning, “You...have...twenty...one...messages.” To answer a call, you can tap Answer on the screen, or pinch the microscopic microphone bulge on the white earbud cord. Either way, music or video playback pauses until you hang up. (When you’re listening to music, that pinch pauses the song. A double-pinch advances to the next song.) Making a call, though, can take as many as six steps: wake the phone, unlock its buttons, summon the Home screen, open the Phone program, view the Recent Calls or speed-dial list, and select a name. Call quality is only average, and depends on the strength of your AT&T signal. E-mail is fantastic. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with graphics; you can even open (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF documents. The Web browser, though, is the real dazzler. This isn’t some stripped-down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit the screen. You scroll with a fingertip — much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies the image to fill the wider view. Finally, you can enlarge a Web page — or an e-mail message, or a photo — by spreading your thumb and forefinger on the glass. The image grows as though it’s on a sheet of latex. The iPhone is also an iPod. When in its U.S.B. charging cradle, the iPhone slurps in music, videos and photos from your Mac or Windows PC. Photos, movies and even YouTube videos look spectacular on the bright 3.5-inch very-high-resolution screen. The Google Maps module lets you view street maps or aerial photos for any address. It can provide driving directions, too. It’s not real G.P.S. — the iPhone doesn’t actually know where you are — so you tap the screen when you’re ready for the next driving instruction. But how’s this for a consolation prize? Free live traffic reporting, indicated by color-coded roads on the map. Apple says one battery charge is enough for 8 hours of calls, 7 hours of video or 24 hours of audio. My results weren’t quite as impressive: I got 5 hours of video and 23 hours of audio, probably because I didn’t turn off the phone, Wi-Fi and other features, as Apple did in its tests. In practice, you’ll probably wind up recharging about every other day. So yes, the iPhone is amazing. But no, it’s not perfect. There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialing. You can’t install new programs from anyone but Apple; other companies can create only iPhone-tailored mini-programs on the Web. The browser can’t handle Java or Flash, which deprives you of millions of Web videos. The two-megapixel camera takes great photos, provided the subject is motionless and well lighted . But it can’t capture video. And you can’t send picture messages (called MMS) to other cellphones. Apple says that the battery starts to lose capacity after 300 or 400 charges. Eventually, you’ll have to send the phone to Apple for battery replacement, much as you do now with an iPod, for a fee. Then there’s the small matter of typing. Tapping the skinny little virtual keys on the screen is frustrating, especially at first. Two things make the job tolerable. First, some very smart software offers to complete words for you, and, when you tap the wrong letter, figures out what word you intended. In both cases, tapping the Space bar accepts its suggestion. Second, the instructional leaflet encourages you to “trust” the keyboard (or, as a product manager jokingly put it, to “use the Force”). It sounds like new-age baloney, but it works; once you stop stressing about each individual letter and just plow ahead, speed and accuracy pick up considerably. Even so, text entry is not the iPhone’s strong suit. The BlackBerry won’t be going away anytime soon. The bigger problem is the AT&T network. In a Consumer Reports study, AT&T’s signal ranked either last or second to last in 19 out of 20 major cities. My tests in five states bear this out. If Verizon’s slogan is, “Can you hear me now?” AT&T’s should be, “I’m losing you.” Then there’s the Internet problem. When you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot, going online is fast and satisfying. But otherwise, you have to use AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow. The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear; Amazon.com, 100 seconds; Yahoo. two minutes. You almost ache for a dial-up modem. These drawbacks may be deal-killers for some people. On the other hand, both the iPhone and its network will improve. Apple points out that unlike other cellphones, this one can and will be enhanced with free software updates. That’s good, because I encountered a couple of tiny bugs and one freeze. (There’s also a tantalizing empty space for a row of new icons on the Home screen.) A future iPhone model will be able to exploit AT&T’s newer, much faster data network, which is now available in 160 cities. But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles. In other words, maybe all the iPhone hype isn’t hype at all. As the ball player Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t bragging if you done it.”


Ex-Leader of Planned Mosque Near Ground Zero Settles Suit With Donor

Abstract: The former leader of a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero in Lower Manhattan has settled a lawsuit in which a donor accused him of spending charitable contributions on himself, both sides confirmed on Friday. The donor, Robert Leslie Deak, had accused the former leader, Feisal Abdul Rauf, of diverting millions of dollars in charitable donations – meant for the Cordoba Initiative , founded by the imam, as well as the American Society for Muslim Advancement , which is led by the imam’s wife, Daisy Khan – to buy real estate, luxury vacations and a fancy car. It also accused Mr. Abdul Rauf of failing to report approximately $3 million in donations from the Malaysian government. The parties also settled a previous lawsuit that accused Mr. Deak of inflating the price of a Washington condominium he sold to the institute and of failing to transfer the title. Mr. Deak and his wife, Moshira Soliman, returned $1.35 million to Cordoba as part of the settlement. “We are pleased that this unfortunate episode is behind us and we look forward to continuing our important work of creating mutual understanding between people of all faiths,” Mr. Abdul Rauf said in a statement. Mr. Deak, in a statement, said of Mr. Abdul Rauf: “We are now satisfied that neither he nor his wife were involved in any wrongdoing and that the charitable contributions made to the Cordoba Initiative and ASMA were used for proper, charitable purposes. Notwithstanding our differences, we respect the work being carried out by Imam Feisal and Daisy Khan.” Mr. Abdul Rauf was the spiritual leader of a proposed 13-story Islamic center on Park Place that became a touchstone of post-Sept. 11 controversy , as opponents argued that its proximity to the site of the former World Trade Center was disrespectful to those who died there. Mr. Abdul Rauf stepped down as its leader in 2011 after a falling out with the center’s developer. While the building has recently served as a prayer space, the full center has not been built.

Lawsuits
Cordoba Initiative
American Society for Muslim Advancement
Feisal Abdul al- Rauf


Bomb Scare Reveals Another Side of Times Square

Abstract: On a typical warm weekend night, Times Square teems with visitors: theater fans taking a post-show stroll down Broadway; tourists staying in high-rise hotels; suburban teenagers who gather to gawk at the jumbo-sized neon signs that fill the square with light. But when the police noticed white smoke billowing from a dark-green Nissan Pathfinder on 45th Street near Seventh Avenue, and then discovered the makings of a crude car bomb inside, the normal hubbub was replaced by a different sort of spectacle. Twelve blocks, from West 43rd Street to West 48th Street between Sixth Avenue and Eighth Avenue, were cordoned off with metal barricades. The streets and pedestrian malls were filled with ambulances, fire trucks and cars and vans full of police officers. Teams of officers wearing helmets and carrying automatic rifles stood on corners. The bomb squad showed up with a remote-controlled robot and officers wearing blast-proof suits. Onlookers assembled, leaning against the barricade, posing for pictures and asking one another what was going on. The neon lights still flickered, competing with the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. Tourists still showed up for a glimpse of the square. But for a few hours in the dead of night, with traffic diverted and throngs dispersed, the center of Times Square was quiet. Well, almost quiet. Bruno St. Clara, a 25-year-old carpenter from Brazil, wandered through the crowd near the police substation on West 43rd Street. He said he had walked north from his hotel on West 34th Street. “We saw on television that there was a bomb,” he said. “I just wanted to check it out.” Outside the sealed-off zone, plenty of other travelers were second-guessing their decision to book a room in Times Square. Many people staying there spent the better part of the night waiting to hear when they would be permitted to return to their rooms. Then there were those who willingly lingered, captivated by the drama playing out in front of them. Christina Paiva, from Carle Place, on Long Island, spent her 17th birthday glued to the barricades with a group of friends. Originally, they said, they had planned to visit M&M World at West 48th Street and Broadway, but they found themselves instead directed south by police officers as emergency vehicles arrived, lights flashing and sirens blaring. “It’s very upsetting,” Ms. Paiva said. But why had the group chosen to stay? “It’s scary,” Sabrina Papez, 17, clarified. “But it’s also intriguing.” As the hour grew later, the crowd thinned. An ABC news ticker near 44th Street read: “NYC’s Times Square evacuated in bomb scare.” The Dow Jones ticker reported on the Kentucky Derby. Around 2 a.m. a group of friends from Walled Lake, Mich., arrived, eager to see Times Square. “I expected it to be overwhelmingly crowded,” said Erica Mitchell, 23. Her friend, Chelsea Gaunt, agreed. “I never knew a city could be this quiet,” she said.

Bombs and Explosives
Times Square and 42nd Street (NYC)


Gay Hockey Teams in New York

Abstract: OUTSIDE it was fall, but inside, winter had already arrived. Huddled in the stands on a recent Friday night, a small group of fans yelled enthusiastically for the NY Lions hockey team. One of dozens of teams in the adult coed league run by Sky Rink at Chelsea Piers, the Lions are also one of five that belong to the New York City Gay Hockey Association. On the ice a spirited match against a straight team called TBD was under way. “I think maybe people are surprised that we’re just as rough and we play just as hard as they do, and I think that they might not expect that,” said Robb Riedel, who plays on two teams — the Wizards and the Hotshots — and is also the gay hockey association’s communications director. But he added, “We’re not as cutthroat as some of the other teams, and we really welcome the chance to bring in new players who haven’t played before and teach them the game.” Jeff Kagan started the association with Jeff Minck in 1999. The two had previously played on the same team, but neither knew the other was gay until Mr. Minck read an essay Mr. Kagan had written for the Toronto Gay Hockey Association in 1997. Teams in the adult hockey league are divided into divisions numbered 1 (experienced, highly competitive players) through 8 (stay upright much of the time). This fall, three gay teams are in Division 8, and one each in Divisions 6 and 7. Despite the name, not all Gay Hockey Association players are gay. “Fifty percent of our membership is straight people, and that’s such a great thing, I think, because their interest shows that they’re very open-minded,” Mr. Kagan said. One such player is John Haldi, captain of the Polar Bears. “It was a really great place to be on my first hockey team, and there is certainly no requirement to be gay,” Mr. Haldi said. “The requirement is to be open and accepting.” A few players said that they had heard the rare story about homophobic comments from players in the overall league, but Stephanie Koncicki, a lesbian on the Wizards, added: “I can tell you that there is a zero-tolerance policy if they aren’t cool with it. Chelsea Piers is very supportive.” The association is certainly not the only gay sports organization in New York. Mr. Kagan is also the president of Out of Bounds, a nonprofit group that supports a variety of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teams. The group counts Gotham Volleyball, the New York Ramblers soccer club and the New York City Gay Basketball League among its affiliates. There is even an NY Gay Pool League, as in pool hall, not swimming hole. The ethos at gay hockey is the same as that of Out of Bounds: participants should be taken seriously and respected like any other players. The Division 6 Lions seemed to have no trouble with that in the game against TBD: the Lions won, 7-3.

Chelsea Piers
New York City
New York City Gay Hockey Association
Hockey Ice
Homosexuality
Athletics and Sports


U.A.E. Strives to Promote Local Farm Goods at Home

Abstract: DUBAI — It is a sunny, chilly Friday morning in January. Most Dubai residents are slowly rising on their weekly day off and central Dubai is calm. Across the lake, at the base of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, there is a small patch of bustle, rare for that time of the weekend. About 60 shoppers are milling around four stalls of fruit and vegetables at the weekly farmers’ market organized by Baker & Spice, a nearby restaurant. The market was first held last April, and operates during the United Arab Emirates ’ growing season, from November through April. Three local organic farms and one fruit and vegetable supplier have set up stalls displaying their range of seasonal produce, like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, lettuce and herbs. “I had no idea it was possible to grow anything, organic or otherwise, in the U.A.E.,” said Kim Cook, an English expatriate living in the Gulf region since 2002 and a market regular. Most of the estimated 38,000 farms in the U.A.E. are in Abu Dhabi, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the country’s total area and has a history of planting trees and cultivation. “The country has farms, but finding them has been and continues to be an incredible challenge,” said Yael Mejia, a food consultant with Baker & Spice and founder of the farmers’ market. “In the last 30 months of my being here, I’m yet to come across a registrar or database that lists farms with their products,” Ms. Mejia added. “All our sourcing has been driven by self-obsession, as our business ethic is based on using local organic ingredients.” Part of the challenge of locating farms derives from the need to first identify which authority is responsible for what, in a confusing agricultural structure that reflects the country’s federal nature, with a national government capping the seven emirates, including the capital Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Trying to clarify things, a 2007 decree shifted responsibility for Abu Dhabi’s agricultural sector to the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority. “As part of drawing up a revised agricultural framework, the A.D.F.C.A. is restructuring the sector,” said Mohamed Jalal al-Reyaysa, the authority’s spokesman and the director of its department of communications and community services. Last year, the authority ended various subsidies, including one that farmers previously received from the government for growing Rhodes grass, which is used as animal feed. “We’re focusing on a sustainable policy that has social, economic and environmental benefits,” Mr. Reyaysa said. “Cultivating Rhodes grass, for example, consumes far too much water.” According to the Food Control Authority, cultivation of Rhodes grass requires 24,000 cubic meters, or 848,000 cubic feet, of water per hectare, or 2.5 acres, annually. The Abu Dhabi government provides free irrigation to the 24,097 farms in its region — 95 percent ground water and 5 percent desalinated water. The farmers, though, would like more government assistance, like subsidies for seeds, equipment and technology and access to marketing platforms. “Many Emirati farmers were encouraged by Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan to grow fruits and vegetables,” said Mohammed Saeed al-Hemeli, a 41-year old Emirati farmer, referring to the founding president of the U.A.E., who introduced loans and other aid to farmers in 1972. Now, with the reduction in subsidies to farmers, “many of them are leasing out their farms as they don’t find farming commercially viable,” he said. Mr. Hemeli, who started farming in 1992 and markets his produce under the brand So Fresh, was speaking to reporters this month on the sidelines of the inauguration of a two-week festival showcasing local agriculture. His farm, comprising 280 greenhouses in Abu Dhabi’s Liwa region, produces tomatoes, cucumbers, organic lettuce and peppers. “We need to concentrate on our seasonal produce so we can compete with foreign prices,” he said. “In summer, I can grow lettuces to sell at market for one dirham a head, compared with up to 10 dirhams for an imported lettuce, but there needs to be more awareness about local growing.” One dirham is worth 30 U.S. cents. The Food Control Authority set up a service center a year ago to help farmers to adapt. Membership is free, and farmers who register benefit from an annual assistance payment of 100,000 dirhams, or $27,250, and access to modern irrigation methods like hydroponics, seeds, technical expertise and training. “We want local produce to reach local kitchens,” Mr. Rayaysa said. “As the population of the U.A.E. grew, the dependence on food imports has increased,” said Ali Nassar al-Refaee, sales manager of NRTC Group, a regional trading company supplying fresh fruit and vegetables to palace kitchens, hypermarkets and hotels. “It’s possible to fly in fresh produce from anywhere in the world to the U.A.E.,” he said, “but when you have a food crisis in one country in the near region, it immediately affects us here.” NRTC acquires products from 72 farms in the Emirates. It also imports produce from regional suppliers, primarily in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Oman. Early this month, the 40-member U.A.E. legislature, the Federal National Council, discussed the country’s food security following the release of a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization, an arm of the United Nations. The report showed that food prices globally had climbed above the already alarming historical highs of 2008. Afterward, local news outlets reported that Sultan Bin Saeed al-Mansouri had said the U.A.E. was investing in farms in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, Pakistan, Romania and the United States to secure food supplies. The country has also relaxed import restrictions on 15 products as a way of slowing inflation. Prices in the U.A.E. are acutely sensitive to food shortages in other countries, and to external events like the Icelandic volcano eruption last year, floods this month in Australia, droughts in Russia and Argentina, sparse rainfall in Syria and even India’s ban on onion exports. “Increased interest in locally grown produce is inevitable,” said V. Nandakumar, a spokesman for Lulu hypermarkets and supermarkets, a regional chain that organized the local farm festival. “Until about a year ago, the price of U.A.E.-grown vegetables was higher than imported produce from Jordan, Iran or India,” he said. “It was simply because they weren’t producing enough to meet local demand. Now, out of our daily sales of 850 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, we procure 200 tons from about 80 local farms.” According to Mr. Refaee and Mr. Nandakumar, consumers in the U.A.E. often prefer an aesthetic, manicured fruit or vegetable flown in from afar to a fresher homegrown alternative. Mr. Nandakumar added: “There is a slow but sure change in perceptions about local produce as people realize the importance of reducing their carbon footprint. Authorities are issuing stricter guidelines and farmers are interacting with the end consumer, so there’s no room for myths such as ‘nothing can grow here without chemical interference.”’ Back at the farmers’ market, Sandra, the 9-year-old daughter of Ms. Cook, the English expatriate, was offered a bright red cherry tomato by a vendor at the Abu Dhabi Organics stall. She hesitated, but at her mother’s urging, bit into the tomato and murmurs her approval. “The interaction between growers and consumers makes any farmers’ market so priceless,” Ms. Cook said, “and exposure to everyday produce outside of malls is just what our children need.”

United Arab Emirates
Agriculture
Farmers' Markets


With Comparison to Phil Jackson, Mike D’Antoni Poised to Validate Lakers’ Choice

Abstract: The record will show that Mike D’Antoni has beaten Phil Jackson before, twice, when it mattered most. In 2006, D’Antoni’s Phoenix Suns ousted Jackson’s Los Angeles Lakers in a seven-game playoff series. A year later, Phoenix triumphed again, in five games, while D’Antoni and Jackson sniped at each other across the hardwood. Back then, the Suns were ascendant and the Lakers were in an awkward transition phase known as the Smush Parker Era. It was a moment in time, one Lakers fans would just as soon forget. But Jackson was soon collecting championships again while D’Antoni was mired in basketball purgatory in New York, subjecting himself to payroll purges, front-office meddling and Nate Robinson. So when the two coaches’ paths crossed again, strangely, unpredictably, in the Lakers’ very public coaching search, D’Antoni expected the same outcome as everyone else. “Phil Jackson, my gosh, he’s only got 11 rings, and one of the greatest coaches ever,” D’Antoni said Tuesday, two days after the Lakers chose him over Jackson. “Yeah, I was surprised. I was shocked. But also at the same time excited about the possibilities.” It is all about the possibilities now — for a star-stocked lineup in search of cohesion, for a proud franchise trying to extend an era, while simultaneously breaking with its recent past, and for a 61-year-old coaching contrarian seeking the ultimate career validation. The Lakers needed a coach who could blend the talents of Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash and Pau Gasol, one who could put them in championship contention, immediately, before Bryant’s stubble turned gray. Defying all expectations and résumé comparisons, the Lakers chose D’Antoni. Team officials felt D’Antoni’s pick-and-roll heavy system was the best fit for its stars, Nash and Howard in particular. Now D’Antoni has to validate the faith, while coaching before a crowd that just days ago was chanting, “We want Phil!” Oh, and he also has to win a championship or be deemed a failure. Given where he has been for the last four years, D’Antoni will happily take the pressure, the unfair comparisons and the ghost of Jackson. “If your expectations are way up there and you don’t have the team, then you’re doomed,” D’Antoni said by telephone. “The expectations are where they are because this team is built to win a championship.” He added: “I like my chances. I like the guys we have.” D’Antoni will arrive in Los Angeles on Wednesday, meet reporters on Thursday and be in the arena Friday night when the Lakers host — of all teams — the Suns. But his debut on the bench will not come until Sunday, at the earliest. D’Antoni had knee surgery Oct. 31 and is still walking with a cane or crutches. He has weeks of physical therapy ahead of him. He said he was aiming to coach his first game Sunday, against the Houston Rockets, presenting another intriguing reunion — with Jeremy Lin, the Harvard graduate who blossomed into a star under D’Antoni last season. Physically, D’Antoni said he should be fine, but added with a chuckle, “I’ll probably be a little more calmer to start with than I normally am.” The truth is, D’Antoni never expected to be back on the bench so soon. After losing a battle of wills with Carmelo Anthony and walking away from the Knicks in March, D’Antoni planned to take a year off, to let his son Michael graduate from high school before moving again. He had the knee surgery believing he had months to recover. Then the Lakers called. “Probably the Lakers are the only team that could make me do this, this early,” said D’Antoni, who added that he had the blessing of his son and his wife, Laurel. Seven years ago, D’Antoni was hailed as an innovator, even a genius, after reviving the Suns with a fast-breaking, ball-moving, 3-point-shooting, never-a-dull-moment offense that dazzled fans. The Suns, powered by Nash, made the Western Conference finals twice and averaged 58 wins over four years. They were the darlings of the N.B.A. They also lost to the San Antonio Spurs in three postseasons, played marginal defense and never made the N.B.A. finals. Dozens of great coaches, teams and systems have stumbled, but these failings have seemingly stuck to D’Antoni more than most. His bumpy four years with the Knicks, which ended with his resignation last March, did nothing to enhance his résumé. The opportunity in Los Angeles is clear. For the first time since he left Phoenix, D’Antoni has a legitimate shot at the title, and the chance to prove his offensive philosophy can win at the highest level. “For sure,” D’Antoni said of the desire for validation. “I think that motivates you a lot. It’s a competition thing.” There will, necessarily, be adjustments. Nash is 38, and no longer a fast-breaking wizard. Bryant and Gasol are also in their 30s, leaving Howard (26) as the only star in his prime. The Lakers will not be replicating the Suns’ frantic tempo, which was immortalized in the phrase “seven seconds or less.” “It’s going to be ‘24 seconds or less,’ ” D’Antoni said with a chuckle. “It’s going to be the best shot we can get in 24 seconds. It might happen at seven seconds. It might happen at 10. The team takes a life of its own. But I do know that there are certain principles that we want to follow.” Along with his fame, D’Antoni got a reputation for being stubbornly wedded to his system — “you get pigeonholed a little bit,” he said — and the move to Los Angeles will give him the chance to recast his image. The frantic pace was only part of the Suns’ equation, and the piece most easily excised from D’Antoni’s playbook. The real virtue of his offense was the spread floor, the open lanes, the emphasis on pick-and-roll play and the 3-point shooting, and of course the orchestration by Nash. Those principles will remain. “I like what we do,” D’Antoni said, but he is open to “tweaks,” as he calls them. The Lakers do not have the abundance of 3-point shooters that the Suns had, but D’Antoni believes they have enough. And Nash has a history of lifting everyone’s percentages. In Howard, the Lakers have the best pick-and-roll big man in the league. But the presence of Gasol, an All-Star power forward, means the Lakers will play big, not with the small-ball approach that D’Antoni deployed in Phoenix. “It’s a little bit of a give-and-take,” he said. “And I’ll tell you what, I’ll give a little bit because our defense should be really good.” D’Antoni has long been accused (inaccurately) of not caring about defense — another reputational blemish that should fade under the bright Southern California sun.

Los Angeles Lakers
Basketball
D'Antoni Mike
Jackson Phil
Coaches and Managers


Graham Motion: The Horseman as Homebody

Abstract: ELKTON, Md. — He was late for his morning coffee and missed Jane and Marcus before they went to school. Bentley and Sasha, a couple of Labradors, were waiting at the door and his wife, Anita, was in the kitchen. Six minutes away at a European-style equine oasis, the Herringswell Stable was humming along. Graham Motion is a horse trainer, a stay-at-home one. He started his morning at 5:30 at the Fair Hill Training Center by putting half of his more than 100 horses through their training paces. In a few minutes, he would return to his barn to condition the rest of them. Some were sent out for a hack, as Motion, an Englishman, calls a jog through the wooded trails and open fields; others went to the turf course. Before the day is over, all of them would be turned out into paddocks to be, well, just horses. What Motion was not going to do this afternoon or most other days was go to Pimlico or Delaware Park. He has a “traveling lad” to oversee the loading and transport of his horses, and two longtime assistants to accompany them. Instead, Motion works with the horses until early afternoon and watches them race on television. “My job is to get them prepared for the track,” said Motion, 46, who retains a polished British accent despite having lived in the United States for 30 years. “I got into this to be around animals, and that’s where I like to spend my time. I also like being home when the kids come home.” On Tuesday, however, Motion will break his routine and fly to Louisville for the 137th running of the Kentucky Derby . One of his horses, the Spiral Stakes victor Animal Kingdom , is stabled at nearby Keeneland. Motion’s Big Horse, the Wood Memorial champion Toby’s Corner, will ship on Tuesday. Motion has made the trip to the Derby twice before and had miserable experiences. In 1998, Chilito fell apart mentally in the weeks leading to the race and finished 11th. Ten years later, he watched Adriano finish 19th out of 20. “Chilito went the wrong way and I was green,” Motion said. “I knew I was in trouble when he tried to mount the horses next to him in the saddling paddock. With Adriano, I overreached. I promised myself that I wouldn’t go again unless I had a horse that belonged. I wanted one to take me, not have me drag one there.” In the case of Toby’s Corner, Motion needed fate and the colt’s owners, Julian and Dianne Cotter, to intervene. Like his trainer, Toby, as he is known here, is a homebody. He did not go to Florida, the traditional winter proving ground for East Coast-based 3-year-olds. Instead, he wintered here amid brutal mid-Atlantic weather and galloped in the snow. Toby’s Corner, a son of Bellamy Road, shipped to Delaware, Laurel Park and Aqueduct, winning three of four races. But in March, when Toby finished a disappointing third in the Gotham Stakes, Motion decided to regroup and wait until the Preakness to enter the Triple Crown fray. The Cotters had a feeling, though. They had bred Bellamy Road and in 2005 had watched from their home in Florida as he rocketed to a brilliant 17 ½-length victory in the Wood for his owner, George M. Steinbrenner. Dianne Cotter decided then that the first opportunity they had to breed to Bellamy Road, they were going to keep the offspring. Julian Cotter took it a step further. He not only told Motion that Toby’s Corner should run in the Wood, but also guaranteed that the colt would win it. Adrian Rolls, another Englishman and Motion’s assistant for nearly 20 years, agreed. “He was a May foal,” Rolls said of Toby’s Corner, “and you could watch his hacks and gallops and see he was getting full of himself. He was growing up before our eyes.” So Motion shipped Toby’s Corner to New York last month to take on the juvenile champion Uncle Mo, then a Derby favorite. When the field of nine turned for home, Toby’s Corner was threading his way from sixth place past Uncle Mo and the runner-up, Arthur’s Tale. He was sent right back here to a barn that is a virtual penthouse, with expansive polished wood stalls and set amid 350 acres of tranquillity. It is as close to the “yard” way of off-track training favored in much of Europe as there is in the United States. Motion came by it honestly. He grew up at Herringswell Manor Stud, a boarding farm 10 minutes from Newmarket, England, that was operated by his parents, Michael and Jo. Michael, now 80, was an international bloodstock agent who came to the United States as Tattersalls’ North American representative. Jo, 79, an amateur steeplechase rider in England, was among the first women to take out training licenses in the United States. It is serene here, and Motion sets a unhurried pace, another characteristic of European racing, for his employees and his horses. He does not overwork his horses — Toby’s Corner will have only one timed workout between the Wood and the Derby and that will be here on Sunday. “He knows what to do with these horses,” said Barry Irwin, whose Team Valor International gave Motion more than 30 horses to train, including Animal Kingdom. “He can train all kinds of horses, and he and his team really care for them. His creates a relaxed environment. He’s refreshing.” Motion is also one of only two trainers in last year’s leading money list who have never had a medication violation. Christophe Clement, a New York-based Frenchman, is the other. “We’re very conservative,” Motion said. “If they came out tomorrow and said there can be no medications at all, it wouldn’t affect us in the slightest. I think too many people use it as a crutch.” Motion’s love for his horses is perhaps best summed up by the two old fellows who have permanent stalls in his barn: Gala Spinaway, 23, and Better Talk Now, 12. “We call them the grumpy old men,” said Anita Motion, who runs the business end of Her-ringswell Stable. Gala Spinaway was Motion’s first stakes winner and Better Talk Now gave him his first Breeders’ Cup victory, in 2004 . “They are the two most important horses in my career so far,” Motion said. “I made friendships and gained clients because of them. They are lovely animals as well and will always have a home with us.” Will Toby’s Corner become Motion’s first Derby winner, and earn a retirement in the place where both trainer and horse have been so comfortable? For now, Motion cannot see past tomorrow. “I am apprehensive,” he said. “He could get a fever tonight and be done. He could step on a stone. We’re done. Every morning I come to the barn, there’s a horse that has gotten an infection or bruised shin it didn’t have yesterday. Every morning, I hope it’s not him. Let’s just get to the Derby in good shape first.”

Kentucky Derby
Motion Graham
Horse Racing
Triple Crown (Horse Racing)
Series
Jockeys Drivers and Trainers
35 000 To 1 (Series)


At Memorial, Scalia Remembered as Happy Combatant

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Justice Clarence Thomas paid tribute on Tuesday to “Brother Nino” at a memorial service for Justice Antonin Scalia at the Mayflower Hotel attended by all eight remaining members of the Supreme Court. So did Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Scalia’s frequent judicial adversary and best friend on the court. “He was once asked how we could be friends given our disagreements on lots of things,” she said. “Justice Scalia answered: ‘I attack ideas. I don’t attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas.’” Justices, clerks and four of Justice Scalia’s nine children recalled a happy combatant, in love with law and the power of words, a man of deep Roman Catholic faith, a demanding but loving father and a driver best avoided. Justice Scalia, who died Feb. 13 at age 79, was awfully proud of some of the hundreds of opinions he wrote in his 30 years on the court, Justice Thomas said. “‘Clarence, you have got to hear this,’” Justice Thomas recalled him saying. “‘This is really good.’” “Whereupon,” Justice Thomas continued, “he would deliver a dramatic reading, after fumbling with his computer for a while.” But once, Justice Scalia was harshly critical of an important precedent. “‘Just a horrible opinion,’ he said. ‘One of the worst,’” Justice Thomas related. It fell to Justice Thomas to break the bad news: “Nino, you wrote it.” Justice Thomas, who on Monday asked his first question from the bench in over a decade, said he had loved sitting between Justice Scalia and “our friend Steve Breyer.” “I loved the back and forth that took place,” Justice Thomas said, “especially the passing of notes from Steve to Nino and Nino to Steve.” Justice Scalia would mutter remarks and solicit comments during arguments, leaning far back in his chair for private communication. “He would say, ‘Brother Clarence, what do you think?’” Justice Thomas said. Image Justice Clarence Thomas described an “unbreakable bond of trust and deep affection.” Credit Pool photo by Susan Walsh The two men comforted each other when they encountered setbacks. “There were many buck-each-other-up visits,” Justice Thomas said. “Too many to count.” “We developed an unbreakable bond of trust and deep affection,” Justice Thomas said with emotion near the end of his remarks. “God bless you, Brother Nino.” Justice Ginsburg also described a warm friendship that included a shared love of opera, roses on her birthday and late-night calls to her chambers urging her to stop working and head home. Justice Scalia could be simultaneously courteous and cutting. She recalled, for instance, receiving a preliminary draft of Justice Scalia’s dissent from her majority opinion in United States v. Virginia , the 1996 decision that required the Virginia Military Institute to accept women. He had wanted to give her as much time as he could to let her respond. “It was a zinger,” she said of the dissent. “It took me to task on things large and small.” “I was glad to have the extra days to adjust the court’s opinion,” she said. “My final draft was much improved thanks to Justice Scalia’s searing criticism.” The two had worked together as federal appeals court judges. In 1993, when President Bill Clinton was deciding on a nominee to replace Justice Byron White, Justice Scalia was asked whether he would prefer that his new colleague on the Supreme Court be Laurence H. Tribe, the Harvard Law professor, or Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York. “Justice Scalia answered quickly and distinctly: Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Justice Ginsburg said at Tuesday’s service, beaming. (She got the job.) Prof. John F. Manning, a former law clerk who now teaches law at Harvard, said Justice Scalia welcomed debate and disagreement in his chambers, to a point. “When one of us got a little overinvested, he had to say, ‘Hey, remember, it’s my name that has to go on the opinion,’” Professor Manning said. “And especially with me, for some reason, this was often followed by the further observation, ‘And I am not a nut.’” Like other speakers, Justice Joan L. Larsen of the Michigan Supreme Court, another former law clerk, described a cheerful soul. “The justice was fundamentally a happy man,” she said. “He sang in his chambers. He whistled in the corridors. His sonorous laugh reverberated throughout the courtroom. “His wit was sharp, and he delighted in testing it against anyone who was foolish enough to try.”

Antonin Scalia
Funerals
Supreme Court,SCOTUS


Families Bear Brunt of Deployment Strains

Abstract: WAUTOMA, Wis. — Life changed for Shawn Eisch with a phone call last January. His youngest brother, Brian , a soldier and single father, had just received orders to deploy from Fort Drum, N.Y., to Afghanistan and was mulling who might take his two boys for a year. Shawn volunteered. So began a season of adjustments as the boys came to live in their uncle’s home here. Joey, the 8-year-old, got into fistfights at his new school. His 12-year-old brother, Isaac, rebelled against their uncle’s rules. And Shawn’s three children quietly resented sharing a bedroom, the family computer and, most of all, their parents’ attention with their younger cousins. The once comfortable Eisch farmhouse suddenly felt crowded. “It was a lot more traumatic than I ever pictured it, for them,” Shawn, 44, said. “And it was for me, too.” The work of war is very much a family affair. Nearly 6 in 10 of the troops deployed today are married, and nearly half have children. Those families — more than a million of them since 2001 — have borne the brunt of the psychological and emotional strain of deployments. Siblings and grandparents have become surrogate parents. Spouses have struggled with loneliness and stress. Children have felt confused and abandoned during the long separations. All have felt anxieties about the distant dangers of war. Christina Narewski , 26, thought her husband’s second deployment might be easier for her than his first. But she awoke one night this summer feeling so anxious about his absence that she thought she was having a heart attack and called an ambulance. And she still jumps when the doorbell rings, worried it will be officers bearing unwanted news. “You’re afraid to answer your door,” she said. Social scientists are just beginning to document the rippling effects of multiple combat deployments on families — effects that those families themselves have intimately understood for years. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in January found that wives of deployed soldiers sought mental health services more often than other Army wives. They were also more likely to report mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and sleep disorder , the longer the deployments lasted. And a paper published in the journal Pediatrics in late 2009 found that children in military families were more likely to report anxiety than children in civilian families. The longer a parent had been deployed in the previous three years, the researchers found, the more likely the children were to have had difficulties in school and at home. But those studies do not describe the myriad ways, often imperceptible to outsiders, in which families cope with deployments every day. For Ms. Narewski, a mother of three, it has meant taking a grocery store job to distract her from thinking about her husband, a staff sergeant with the First Battalion, 87th Infantry, now in northern Afghanistan. For Tim Sullivan, it has meant learning how to potty train, braid hair and fix dinner for his two young children while his wife , a sergeant in a support battalion to the 1-87, is deployed. For young Joey Eisch, it meant crying himself to sleep for days after his father, a platoon sergeant with the battalion, left last spring. His older brother, Isaac, calm on the outside, was nervous on the inside. “It’s pretty hard worrying if he’ll come back safe,” Isaac said. “I think about it like 10 or more times a day.” Joining the Army Life Soon after Christina and Francisco Narewski married in 2004, he applied for a job with the local sheriff’s office in Salinas, Calif. But he got tired of waiting and, after talking things over with Christina, enlisted in the Army instead. “We both signed up for it,” Ms. Narewski said. “We knew deployments were going to come.” That day arrived in the fall of 2007, when their third child was just 5 months old. Ms. Narewski missed Francisco dearly and sometimes cried just hearing his voice when he called from Iraq . But when he returned home in October 2008, it took them weeks to feel comfortable together again, she recalled. “It’s almost like you’ve forgotten how to be with each other,” she said. “He’s been living in his spot for 15 months. Me and the kids have our own routine. It’s hard to get back to, ‘Oh, you’re home.’ ” Last April, he left again, this time to Afghanistan. Ms. Narewski, who lives in Watertown, N.Y., thought she was prepared. Her mother came to live with them. She signed up for exercise classes to fill the hours. She and Francisco bought BlackBerrys with instant messaging service so they could communicate daily. And yet. “I’ve never missed him as much as I do right now,” she said recently. “It doesn’t feel like we’re moving. It’s like you’re in a dream and you’re trying to get something and you can’t get it.” Not all the spouses back home are women. Tim Sullivan’s days have revolved almost entirely around his two children, Austin, 4, and Leah, 2, since his wife, Sgt. Tamara Sullivan, deployed to Afghanistan in March. He rises each weekday at 5:30 a.m. to dress and feed them before shuttling them to day care. Evenings are the reverse, usually ending with him dozing off in front of the television at their rented ranch-style house in Fayetteville, N.C. He has moved twice and changed jobs three times in recent years to accommodate his wife’s military career. But he does not mind being home with the children, he says, because his father was not, having left the family when Mr. Sullivan was young. “I’m not going to put my kids through that,” said Mr. Sullivan, 35, who handles child support cases for the county. “I’m going to be there.” He worries about lost intimacy with his wife, saying that they have had a number of arguments by phone, usually about bill paying or child rearing. “She tells me: ‘Tim, you can’t just be Daddy, the hard person. You have to be Mommy, too,’” he said. “I tell her it’s not that easy.” Yet he says that if she stays in the Army — as she has said she wants to do — he is prepared to move again or even endure another deployment. “I love her,” he said. “I’m already signed up. I made a decision to join the life that goes with that.” Doing What Uncle Sam Asks Isaac and Joey Eisch have also had to adjust to their father’s nomadic life. “I don’t try to get too attached to my friends because I move around a lot,” said Isaac, who has lived in five states and Germany with his father. (Joey has lived in three states.) “When I leave, it’s like, hard.” When Sergeant Eisch got divorced in 2004, he took Isaac to an Army post in Germany while Joey stayed with his mother in Wisconsin . Soon after returning to the States in 2007, the sergeant became worried that his ex-wife was neglecting Joey. He petitioned family court for full custody of both boys and won. In 2009, he transferred to Fort Drum and took the boys with him. Within months, he received orders for Afghanistan. After nearly 17 years in the Army with no combat deployments, Sergeant Eisch, 36, was determined to go to war. The boys, he felt, were old enough to handle his leaving. Little did he know how hard it would be. When Shawn put the boys in his truck at Fort Drum to take them to Wautoma, a two-stoplight town in central Wisconsin, Isaac clawed at the rear window “like a caged animal,” Sergeant Eisch said. He still tears up at the recollection. “I question myself every day if I’m doing the right thing for my kids,” he said. “I’m trying to do my duty to my country and deploy, and do what Uncle Sam asks me to do. But what’s everybody asking my boys to do?” Within a few weeks of arriving at his uncle’s home, Joey beat up a boy so badly that the school summoned the police. It was not the last time Shawn and his wife, Lisa, would be summoned to the principal’s office. The boys were in pain, Shawn realized. “There was a lot more emotion,” he said, “than Lisa and I ever expected.” Shawn, a state water conservation officer, decided he needed to set strict rules for homework and behavior. Violations led to chores, typically stacking wood. But there were carrots, too: for Joey, promises of going to Build-a-Bear if he obeyed his teachers; for Isaac, going hunting with his uncle was the prize. Gradually, the calls from the principal declined, though they have not ended. In September, Sergeant Eisch returned for midtour leave and the homecoming was as joyful as his departure had been wrenching. Father and sons spent the first nights in hotels, visited an amusement park, went fishing and traveled to New York City , where they saw Times Square and the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum . But the two weeks were over in what seemed like hours. In his final days, Sergeant Eisch had prepped the boys for his departure, but that did not make it any easier. “Why can’t we just, like, end the war?” Isaac asked at one point. As they waited at the airport, father and sons clung to each other. “I’m going to have to drink like a gallon of water to replenish these tears,” the sergeant said. “Be safe,” Isaac implored him over and over. Sergeant Eisch said he would, and then was gone. Despite his worries, Isaac tried to reassure himself. “He’s halfway through, and he’s going to make it,” he said. “With all that training he’s probably not going to get shot. He knows if there’s a red dot on his chest, run. Not toward the enemy. Run, and shoot.” But his father did not run. Dad Comes Home Just weeks after returning to Afghanistan, Sergeant Eisch, the senior noncommissioned officer for a reconnaissance and sniper platoon, was involved with Afghan police officers in a major offensive into a Taliban stronghold south of Kunduz city. While directing fire from his armored truck, Sergeant Eisch saw a rocket-propelled grenade explode among a group of police officers standing in a field. The Afghans scattered, leaving behind a man writhing in pain. Sergeant Eisch ordered his medic to move their truck alongside the officer to shield him from gunfire. Then Sergeant Eisch got out. “I just reacted,” he recalled. “I seen a guy hurt and nobody was helping him, so I went out there.” The police officer was bleeding from several gaping wounds and seemed to have lost an eye. Sergeant Eisch started applying tourniquets when he heard the snap of bullets and felt “a chainsaw ripping through my legs.” He had been hit by machine gun fire, twice in the left leg, once in the right. He crawled back into his truck and helped tighten tourniquets on his own legs. He was evacuated by helicopter and taken to a military hospital where, in a morphine daze, he called Shawn. “Are you sitting down?” Brian asked woozily. “I’ve been shot.” Shawn hung up and went into a quiet panic. He could not tell how badly Brian had been wounded. Would he lose his leg? He called the school and asked them to shield the boys from the news until he could get there. Outside school, Shawn told Isaac, Joey and his 12-year-old daughter, Anna, about Brian’s injury. Only Isaac stayed relatively calm. But later, Shawn found Isaac in his bedroom weeping quietly while looking at a photograph showing his father outside his tent, holding a rifle. Shawn helped him turn the photograph into a PowerPoint presentation titled, “I Love You Dad!” For Shawn, a gentle and reserved man, his brother’s injury brought six months of family turmoil to a new level. Sensing his distress, Lisa urged him to go hunting, a favorite pastime. So he grabbed his bow and went to a wooded ridge on his 40 acres of property. To his amazement, an eight-point buck wandered by. Shawn hit the deer, the largest he had ever killed with a bow. It seemed a good omen. A few days later, Shawn flew with the boys, his father and Brian’s twin sister, Brenda, to Washington to visit Sergeant Eisch at Walter Reed Army Medical Center . At the entrance, they saw men in wheelchairs with no arms and no legs. Others were burned or missing eyes. Shawn feared what the boys would see inside Brian’s room. But Brian, giddy from painkillers, was his cheerful self. His right leg seemed almost normal. His left leg, swollen and stapled together, looked terrible. But it was a real leg, and it was still attached. The boys felt relieved. Within days, Brian was wheeling himself around the hospital and cracking jokes with nurses, a green-and-yellow Green Bay Packers cap on his head. While Joey lost himself in coloring books and television, Isaac attended to his father’s every need. “I feel a little more grown up,” Isaac said. “I feel a lot more attached to him than I was when he left.” One doctor told Brian that he would never be able to carry a rucksack or run again because of nerve damage in his left leg. Someone even asked him if he wanted the leg amputated, since he would certainly be able to run with a prosthetic. Brian refused, and vowed to prove the doctor wrong. By December, he was walking with a cane and driving. For Shawn, too, the future had become murkier. It might be many weeks before Brian could reclaim his sons. But he also knew how glad the boys were to have their father back in one piece. “Brian came home,” Shawn said one evening after visiting his brother in the hospital. “He didn’t come home like we hoped he would come home, but he came home.” “Every single day I think about all those families and all those kids that are not going to have a dad come home from Afghanistan,” he said. “That hurts more than watching my brother try to take a step because I know my brother will take a step and I know he’s going to walk down the dock and get in his bass boat someday.” It was late, and he had to get the boys up the next morning to visit their father at the hospital again. The holidays were fast approaching and the snow would soon be arriving in Wisconsin. Shawn wondered whether he could get Isaac out hunting before the season ended. Yeah, he thought. He probably could.


How Texas Keeps Voters in the Shadows

Abstract: Ross Ramsey, executive editor of The Texas Tribune, writes a column for The Tribune. For all of the public love politicians give to transparency these days, the state keeps a lot of information out of sight, or in places where it is really inconvenient to view. Their personal financial statements, for instance, don’t have a specific online residence, and because of filing deadlines are often way out of date. Lawmakers file the forms on paper. Anyone who wants to peek must visit the Texas Ethics Commission in Austin or send a request and wait by the mailbox. (The Texas Tribune has requested, paid for and posted those disclosures online, but the state still has not posted them.) It’s translucent, but not transparent. Money spent during the last week of a campaign doesn’t have to be disclosed until after the election. The last report is due eight days before Election Day, and the next one isn’t due for weeks. Campaigns have to report donations during that last week, but not spending. That means when voters cast ballots, they aren’t aware of Hail Mary advertising buys and late get-out-the-vote efforts. It’s one of those “man on the moon” questions, as in: Why is it they can put a man on the moon, but can’t file instant — or daily — reports on campaign spending? It’s opaque, unless you count historical access as transparency. Information that isn’t available to the decision-makers before they go to the polls hardly improves their decisions. Lawyers, for perfectly good reasons, don’t have to disclose their clients’ names; those clients, after all, have a right to hire their lawyers without telling everybody else they’ve done so. But on the public official side, that creates a loophole big enough for a fire engine: a legislator-lawyer doesn’t have to tell the rest of us when a bit of official business might benefit one of his or her unnamed clients. Consultants don’t have the attorney-client privilege that lawyers do, but lawmakers can — and do — list consultant as their occupation without telling us whom they’re being paid to advise. That describes the swap for a citizen Legislature. If legislators are supposed to have real jobs, they’ll run into conflicts. But they can run into conflicts even when they don’t have real jobs — or did you forget about the full-time Congress? Disclosure is supposed to be the remedy. It would be one thing for a legislator to vote in his or her own interests in the dark, and another to do so where voters, future opponents, reporters and other lawmakers can see what he or she has done. At some point in every session, a senator or state representative will jump up and vote for something like that — whether it’s Representative Gary W. Elkins, Republican of Jersey Village, debating a payday lending bill in 2011 while pointing to his ownership of a payday lending operation as proof of his expertise — or every civil lawyer in the Legislature voting on tort reform bills that change the laws they work with in their real jobs. Formal recusals don’t happen often. Representative Donna Howard, Democrat of Austin, recused herself in 2011 when the House was deciding whether she or her opponent had won a close election in 2010. Speaker Joe Straus, Republican of San Antonio, entered a statement in the House Journal in 2009 saying he would recuse on “matters related to the expansion of gambling at parimutuel racetracks in Texas” — a business his family was involved in. As a representative in 2003, Gene Seaman, Republican of Corpus Christi, recused himself from voting on a regional tax that had a direct impact on several of his properties. Sometimes, members “vote a white light” — which means they’re present but not voting yes or no — without saying why. Votes like that and votes that raise eyebrows are a lot more common than formal abstentions. This is allowed: voting on a bill that affects everyone in your industry — doctors on health care, lawyers on law, farmers on agriculture, etc. This is not allowed: voting on a bill that benefits a lawmaker’s own business in particular. It’s a fine distinction, but an important one, separating personal interests from broader industry or community interests. And it doesn’t work if there’s no disclosure to the rest of us — if the decision-makers are separated from information that would be useful in their decisions. That connection, or the lack of it, is why transparency is so popular.


Handling a Thief in Business Class

Abstract: I WAS born and raised in Ireland. I graduated from university on a Saturday and took my first overseas flight the next day to New York City where I was going to start a job as a commodities trader. I remember landing at J.F.K. airport, getting off the plane, and walking through some sliding glass doors to get my first glimpse of America. There was this weird déjà vu moment like I had seen America before, but I think that was just due to all the American television I watched growing up, with shows like the “The A-Team,” “Star Trek,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Sesame Street” and “Beverly Hills 90210” shaping my perception of the United States. But I still couldn’t believe how big the cars were. Considering all the American TV I watched, I’m surprised that I still have an Irish accent. When I first started working in the U.S.A., some of my colleagues had a hard time understanding me, especially when it came to numbers. I would yell out the number three, which when I say it, sounds like “tree,” or the number five, which sounds like “foive.” I always think I’m speaking in a neutral accent. Apparently I’m not. I flew quite a bit for business while working as a trader, and now that I’m chief executive of Money.Net, I’m still flying all the time. I enjoy it, and I’ve found the confined nature of air travel isn’t always negative since airport gates are one of the few places where people’s use of computing is easily seen by strangers. Image Morgan Downey, the chief of Money.Net, in Ho Chi Minh City. I was flying to Houston earlier this year just after we had launched Money.Net. While we were waiting by the gate, I noticed that Money.Net was running on a gentleman’s laptop. This was my first sighting of our product randomly “in the wild” and it was that moment of airline-gate validation by a random stranger that confirmed to me that, even though we were a start-up, we were on our way. I’m a friendly person, and I would share my meal with you, if you asked. The key, though, is to ask. I was flying in business class from New York to London on a Sunday evening so I could make my early Monday morning meeting there. I was tired after working the entire week and weekend. Once on the plane, I got comfortable and fell asleep right before dinner service. My tray was down and I was served dinner. I woke up and saw my seatmate grab some of my meal. He had his own, but perhaps he wanted my vegetarian offering. He had already worked through a portion of it. There was still five hours to go into the flight, and I didn’t want to create a scene. Sometimes you have to choose your battles. Giving this guy a lesson in ethics wasn’t going to achieve anything as he had already been on the receiving end of my glare and knew what he was doing was wrong and also a weird invasion of the small amount of personal space one has on a flight. I called the flight attendant and informed him of the situation while making sure my new dining buddy could hear me clearly. I got a new meal and moved on with my life. The lesson I learned that day is that while taking a 30,000-feet-view can sometimes be helpful in business, you have to always stay alert and focused. But I also learned that even at 30,000 feet there is always someone trying to eat your lunch.

Morgan Downey
Airlines,airplanes
Business travel


Japan Struggles to Plug Leak as Radioactive Water Seeps Into the Sea

Abstract: TOKYO — Highly radioactive water is leaking directly into the sea from a damaged pit near a crippled reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, Japanese safety officials said Saturday. The leak was the latest setback in the increasingly difficult bid to regain control of the plant. Although higher than normal levels of radiation have been detected in the ocean water near the plant in recent days, this is the first time the source of any leaks was found. Because the government did not report the levels of radioactive materials in the waters near the stricken plant on Saturday, it was difficult to judge how dangerous the levels of radiation were for fish or for humans who might come in contact with it. The government has already set up an evacuation zone for 19 miles around the plant, and fishing in the area has been suspended since the earthquake and tsunami. Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of Japan ’s nuclear regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Association, said it was possible that the leak was behind the elevated radiation levels near the shore found in recent days. The government announced Saturday that higher than normal levels of radioactive materials were detected about 25 miles south of the plant, much farther than had previously been reported. The leak, found at a maintenance pit near the plant’s No. 2 reactor, is a fresh reminder of the dangerous side effects of the strategy to cool the plant’s reactors and spent fuel storage pools by pumping hundreds of tons of water a day into them. While much of that water has evaporated, a significant portion has also turned into dangerous runoff. The Japanese authorities have said they have little choice at the moment, since the normal cooling systems at the plant are inoperable and more radioactive material would be released if the reactors were allowed to melt down fully or if the rods caught fire. “It is our hope that we can stop the emissions of radioactive materials at the latest in several months” at the power plants, said Goshi Hosono, a member of the ruling party who is an envoy between the government and Tokyo Electric. Three workers at the plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company, have been injured by stepping into pools of contaminated water inside one reactor complex. On Sunday, Tokyo Electric said that two other workers who had been missing for several days had been confirmed dead. They were found in the basement of the turbine building connected to reactor No. 4 at the Daiichi plant. The company did not confirm the cause of death. But various news media reports say the men lost blood and went into shock. Workers racing to drain the excess water have struggled to figure out how to store it. On Saturday, some contaminated water was transferred to a barge to free up space in tanks on land. A second barge also arrived. “The more water they add, the more problems they are generating,” said Satoshi Sato, a consultant to the nuclear energy industry and a former engineer with General Electric. “It’s just a matter of time before the leaks into the ocean grow.” Mr. Nishiyama, , said it was possible that water in the pit had leaked from the reactor, although it could have come from other sources, like leaking pipes. In either case, any leak would be exacerbated by the enormous amounts of water being used to cool the reactor. Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University, said that the leak discovered Saturday raised fears that contaminated water might be seeping out through many more undiscovered sources. He said that unless workers could quickly stop the leaking, Tokyo Electric could be forced to re-evaluate the so-called feed-and-bleed strategy, in which they flood the reactors and fuel ponds with water and then release the steam that the hot fuel rods generate. “It is crucial to keep cooling the fuel rods, but on the other hand, these leaks are dangerous,” Mr. Iguchi said. “They can’t let the plant keep leaking high amounts of radiation for much longer,” he said. Plant workers discovered a crack about eight inches wide in the small maintenance pit, which lies between the No. 2 Reactor and the sea and holds cables used to power seawater pumps, Japan’s nuclear regulator said. The space directly above the water leaking into the sea had a radiation reading of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour, Mr. Nishiyama said, a level that could be dangerous to humans. Tests of the water within the pit later showed the presence of one million becquerels per liter of iodine 131, a radioactive substance. That level of iodine is 10,000 times what is normal for water at the plant. However, iodine 131 has a half life of about eight days. At the time the leak was discovered, the approximately 6-foot-deep pit was filled with four to eight inches of contaminated water, according to Tokyo Electric. But it was impossible to immediately judge how much water had escaped and over how long a period of time. Workers had tried to fill the crack with concrete on Saturday, but it appeared not to be setting, Mr. Nishiyama said early Sunday. He said they would switch to using polymer to try to plug the gap later Sunday. The crisis at the nuclear plant has overshadowed the recovery effort under way in Japan since the 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11 that started the problems at Fukushima Daiichi. The country’s National Police Agency said the official death toll from the disaster had surpassed 11,800, while more than 15,500 were missing. Earlier Saturday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan made his first visit to the region since the disaster, and he promised to do everything possible to help. “We’ll be together with you to the very end,” Mr. Kan said during a stop in Rikuzentakata, a town of about 20,000 people that was destroyed. “Everybody, try your best.”

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan)


Retail Vacancies Rise and Rents Fall in Fairfield County

Abstract: STAMFORD THE ill winds that capsized Wall Street have cooled commercial real estate in lower Fairfield County, creating a glut of office space, reducing rents and challenging municipalities as they try to balance their budgets. After 9/11, when many financial firms were fleeing New York City, business districts here and in Greenwich boomed, and as the stock market skyrocketed, so did space for financial services. During those heady days for suburban financial centers, rents were climbing 2 percent a month and the value of office buildings doubled in two years, said Jim Fagan, senior managing director of the Fairfield and Westchester County region for Cushman & Wakefield, a worldwide commercial brokerage firm. “The market was extra hot,” he said. But demand peaked in mid-2007, and the chill set in late last year as some of the world’s elite financial institutions collapsed. Stamford is feeling the effects more than some cities to the east because of its high concentration of financial service jobs, and by 2010, about 22 percent of Stamford’s premier office space will be empty, Cushman & Wakefield predicts. Currently, 18 percent is vacant, up from 14 percent a year ago. Empty office space across the county is about 15 percent. “We’re dealing with a marketplace tied to the financial and international markets, and we’re going to have to ride through a tough storm,” said Michael W. Freimuth, director of the Stamford’s office of economic development. Experts anticipate that commercial real estate will continue falling this year, as unemployment rises, but start to rebound in 2010. Because of their alliance to New York’s imperiled financial firms, many companies that were in full-blown expansion mode are over-correcting and shedding excess office space, Mr. Fagan said at a recent news conference. Although the decline here will be less severe than the plunge in New York, small businesses that rely on a vibrant work force are already feeling the loss of income. At Pappas Pizza on Main Street, Juan Romero, manager, said he will probably dismiss one of his two delivery people because orders from corporations and hotels have dropped off. “UBS used to call in a big order every week,” he said. These days, the call for 15 to 20 large pies comes every two weeks. At Montana for Men, a salon on Bank Street charging $45 to $60 for men’s haircuts, monthly clients now come every six or seven weeks; others have defected to their corner barbershops. “Some have been laid off, and others are watching their spending,” said Michael Warde, the owner. Sublease space is plentiful as UBS and other companies that occupy so-called Class A space, the premier offices with top amenities, look for less-expensive space to cut their costs, said Bruce W. Sheldon, senior vice president of Pyramid Real Estate Group here. The priciest locations, downtown near the train station, rent for more than $50 a square foot. “There are major companies trying to sublet 20,000 square feet,” Mr. Sheldon said. “That will take some time.” Meanwhile, “the tenant is still on the hook for the duration of the lease,” he said. Because so much of the office space becoming available is sublease space, landlords as a group have not been hard hit, said Robert Caruso, senior managing director of CB Richard Ellis’s Stamford office. The crunch for commercial buildings will come around 2015 when many commercial mortgage-backed securities are due to expire, he said. In Greenwich, one of the financial world’s hedge-fund capitals, office rents averaged $70 a square foot last year, the top price in the county. As the pendulum swings back, Greenwich rents will likely plunge 25 percent, Mr. Fagan said. Its empty office space nearly doubled the last quarter of 2008, jumping to 11 percent from 6.2 percent a year earlier, although it is still low by comparison with Stamford and Hartford, which is about 18 percent. As vacancies increase and rents fall, so do property values. Sale prices dropped from an average of $285 per square foot in 2007 to $146 a square foot. Owners of office buildings with low occupancy or loans coming due “could be in trouble because lending has come to a halt,” Mr. Fagan said. A flat real estate market is bad news for cities that rely on related revenue sources, like conveyance taxes and permit fees, to supplement their operating budgets. For the current fiscal year ending June 30, Stamford budgeted $4.5 million for conveyance taxes and $11 million for permit fees. It’s unlikely it will collect more than $4 million in conveyance taxes, and the forecast on permit fees was revised to $6 million, said Mr. Freimuth. “A couple of major projects just aren’t getting started,” he said. “There’s a multiplier effect,” Mr. Freimuth said. “Employment comes down as more space is vacant, so discretionary income drops. Restaurants and theaters feel it, and corporate giving to the arts and local organizations is down.” At City Hall, budget projections are being revised daily, Mr. Freimuth said. Declines in state income taxes and sales tax receipts could translate into less state aid, he said. Like other municipalities struggling to balance their budgets, Stamford is torn between raising property taxes or cutting services. “Everybody’s in this hold pattern,” Mr. Freimuth said. “The consequence of the drop in economic activity creates real pressure on the property tax. Or you can mitigate that with service cuts.” All over the city, landlords are eager to strike deals. Office rents in the central business district were averaging $42 a square foot, and in this tenant’s market, Mr. Freimuth believes the average will drop to $40 or the high $30s. In less expensive areas of the city, a Summer Street property that would have leased for $18.50 or $19 a square foot two years ago just rented for an average of $17 a square foot over five years, Mr. Sheldon said. Some owners are negotiating short-term leases and allowing tenants to rent for longer periods at lower prices. “Having someone stay two years is better than having them leave,” Mr. Fagan said. What officials and real estate agents fear is that Stamford will look like less of a bargain as Manhattan landlords lower rents, and that keeping occupancy up for the next two years will be trying, they said. But when capital starts to flow, opportunities will arise, brokers said. “There’s nothing wrong with these assets,” said Mr. Fagan, who is confident that Wall Street will come roaring back. “Wall Street is going to reinvent itself,” he said. “The needs that were there haven’t changed.”

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties