New Jersey Paying Fees to a Financial Firm That Employs Christie’s Wife

Abstract: New Jersey has paid about $470,000 in management fees to a financial firm that employs the wife of Gov. Chris Christie in the years she has been working there, a vestige of an investment the state’s pension fund made before the governor took office. The fees were reported on Wednesday by the International Business Times , which filed a public records request seeking the information. New Jersey’s State Investment Council , which oversees investments of state pension funds, invested $150 million in a hedge fund run by the firm Angelo Gordon & Company in 2006, under the administration of Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat. In October 2011, nearly two years after Mr. Christie, a Republican, took office, state investment officials sent a letter to the company requesting that the state’s capital in the fund, known as A. G. Garden Partners, be returned by the end of the year. But the state continues to have $6.8 million in what officials called “illiquid” assets in the fund. State officials said they could not identify the assets, but a spokesman for Mr. Christie said that they “could not be sold without a significant loss to New Jersey taxpayers.” In general, assets are illiquid if they could be sold only at a fire-sale price or if legal agreements preclude terminating the investment before a certain date. The fund has slowly returned the state’s investment. The state had $11.1 million invested in October 2012, and $9.3 million last year. The state does not disclose its partnership agreements, but the spokesman for the governor said that under the rules of the original agreement, the money from the fund was to be returned as Angelo Gordon sold off investments. That agreement gave the fund “investment discretion” to sell off assets and said that the company was “entitled to receive management fees and performance-based compensation” for assets it was working to sell. The state paid $1.8 million in management fees to Angelo Gordon in 2007, the first full year it invested in the firm, and as much as $2.5 million in 2011, according to records provided to the International Business Times. Those fees declined with the size of the investment; New Jersey paid $255,470 in management fees to Angelo Gordon in 2012, $132,347 last year and $82,819 through September of this year. Mr. Christie’s wife, Mary Pat Christie, formerly a bond trader with Cantor Fitzgerald, began working at Angelo Gordon in September 2012, as a managing director for strategic planning and marketing, focusing on bank debt and distressed funds. A specific breakdown of how much the state paid Angelo Gordon from the time she arrived in 2012 through the end of that year was not available. Mrs. Christie earned $475,854 at Angelo Gordon in 2013, according to the couple’s tax filings. In 2010, Mr. Christie named a longtime adviser and private equity investor, Robert Grady, as head of the State Investment Council. Mr. Grady steered more of the state’s pension money into hedge funds and other investments, which can have higher returns but also charge higher fees than traditional pension investments. In September, the state’s largest union, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., filed an ethics complaint against Mr. Grady, accusing him of bringing politics into the pension investments, after reports by the International Business Times and Pando Daily that executives of some of those firms had donated to state and national Republican groups that helped Mr. Christie. Mr. Grady, who has commuted from Wyoming to serve on the council, stepped down in November, but continues to play a prominent role as a political adviser to Mr. Christie as the governor considers a run for president. The acting chairman of the investment council, Thomas Byrne, said on Wednesday that he did not know what the illiquid assets were, but that it is standard to pay fees so long as money is invested. “We’re a limited partner in this investment and we simply don’t have any power to tell the general partner how quickly to liquidate an illiquid investment,” said Mr. Byrne, a Democrat.

New Jersey
Chris Christie
International Business Times
State Investment Council
Mary Pat Christie
Pensions and Retirement Plans


In Off-Season, Mets Flawed Outfield Goes Unaddressed

Abstract: Wanted: Able-bodied candidates for a professional baseball team in Queens. The ideal candidate has experience working in a big-league outfield. The starting salary is modest, though there will be ample opportunity and room for growth. The position is seasonal. Lefties need not apply. Does such an advertisement for the Mets , at the moment, feel all that far-fetched? The organization has had a few days of relative peace since resolving the two major items on its off-season agenda: signing third baseman David Wright to a long contract extension and trading the Cy Young winner R. A. Dickey for a package of prospects. But now, the calm has begun to feel deceptive. Wright and Dickey represented the team’s main priorities, but only a fraction of its on-field concerns. Yet, as of Friday, the Mets were the only team that had not signed a major league free agent this off-season. And to date, their outfield, the most flawed part of the club, has barely been addressed. Signing several free agents is by no means a guarantee that on-field success will quickly follow. But the Mets’ inactivity has only made their outfield situation more curious. Just who is going to fill those three spots over the course of a 162-game season? As it stands, the Mets do not seem to possess a single everyday outfielder on their roster. They have three left-handed-hitting outfielders in Lucas Duda, Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Mike Baxter, and one right-handed bat, Collin Cowgill. This week, Cowgill became the team’s first significant off-season addition, when he was acquired from Oakland for Jefry Marte, a minor league infielder. Cowgill, 26, has a .255 average, a .654 on-base-plus-slugging percentage and just 2 home runs through 74 games in the majors. Modest numbers, for sure, but so are the ones for Duda, Nieuwenhuis and Baxter. The 26-year-old Duda showed he couldn’t play right field last season, was shifted to left, and while he did hit 15 home runs in 401 at-bats, he hit just .239 over all and was even temporarily demoted to the minors. Nieuwenhuis, 25, was a rookie last season and, after starting off well, went into a tailspin. He went back down to the minor leagues as well. His overall average, .252, wasn’t all that bad, and his seven home runs were encouraging, but his strikeouts — 98 in 282 at-bats — were frightful. Then there’s Baxter, who is 28. He hit .263 last season in 179 at-bats, with three home runs. He also hit .053 against left-handers in a small sample of 19 at-bats. Nieuwenhuis didn’t do much better, hitting .180 against lefties. Duda was the model of mediocre consistency, hitting .239 against lefties and .240 against righties. The best outfielder for the Mets in 2012 was the 32-year-old journeyman Scott Hairston, who, as a platoon player, hit .263 in 377 at-bats while slugging a career-high 20 homers and driving in 57 runs. His right-handed bat would seem almost vital for the Mets in 2013, but he is a free agent almost certainly looking for a lucrative two-year deal that is probably out of range for the still-frugal Mets. He could remain in New York, but if he did, it might very well be as a Yankee. So whom can the Mets afford? Probably not Cody Ross, who, like Hairston, is a right-handed-hitting outfielder with decent power and who probably wants even more money than Hairston is seeking. That leaves right-handed spare parts like Matt Diaz and Austin Kearns. In the minors, the Mets are unlikely to find an outfielder who can help right now. From a generally thin group, their most highly regarded outfield prospects — like Brandon Nimmo, 19, and Cory Vaughn, 23 — are still considered far from being ready for the majors. The most advanced minor league outfielder is probably Matt den Dekker, and he hit .220 at Class AAA Buffalo last season. Like Nieuwenhuis, he bats left-handed, and like Niewwenhuis, he strikes out a lot. “They don’t really have anyone who is close,” said Jim Callis, who tracks minor league prospects closely as executive editor of Baseball America. Callis suggested that the Mets could get creative and identify infielders in their system who might be able to be converted into outfielders. He mentioned, as an example, Wilmer Flores, 21, who saw considerable time at Class AA Binghamton last season at third base and hit .311 after spending previous years at shortstop. The thought processes of most people in baseball, Callis said, could be summed up this way: “If he hits, he’s a playable outfielder. If he doesn’t, he’s a terrible outfielder.” So maybe Flores, a 6-foot-3, right-handed hitter from Venezuela, will end up in the outfield. Why not? It is always possible that Sandy Alderson, the Mets’ general manager, will surprise everyone and make a trade that will provide the Mets with a bona fide outfield regular. “There’s a lot of time between now and when we report to spring training, so we do expect to do some other things,” Alderson said this week. “We do expect to acquire some other players.” And, who knows? Maybe the Mets will post a want ad. Somehow, some way, they need to upgrade the outfield.


Spain and U.S. Near Accord on Atomic Cleanup

Abstract: PALOMARES, SPAIN — Forty-five years after narrowly avoiding nuclear obliteration in a U.S. Air Force accident, the villagers of Palomares, in southern Spain, have grown hopeful that the governments in Washington and Madrid will finally rid their land of contamination. Their recent optimism has been fueled by Foreign Minister Trinidad Jiménez, who told the Spanish Senate in February, in what probably amounted to the clearest commitment by the Spanish government to date, that clearing Palomares was “a priority.” Days later, Washington sent a team of experts to Palomares to help evaluate how to clean Western Europe’s most radioactive site. After that American visit, Glenn S. Podonsky, the chief health, safety and security officer in the U.S. Department of Energy, said, “The two governments are exploring the best options in dealing with the issue of the contaminated soil.” Washington has now invited a Spanish delegation to visit for the first time a U.S. rehabilitation site, although no date has yet been agreed. While the situation in Spain is far different than the developments unfolding at the damaged nuclear plant in Japan, the case of Palomares helps illustrate the ways that radioactive debris can continue to tear at a community decades later. About 5,000 barrels of contaminated earth were shipped from Palomares to South Carolina in the aftermath of the 1966 collision, when a U.S. bomber hit a refueling tanker in mid-air and dropped four hydrogen bombs, two of which released plutonium into the atmosphere, though no warheads detonated. Madrid insists that leftover plutonium will also need to be shipped to the United States because Spain still does not have any facility to store such soil. But the clearance work at the time, undertaken under U.S. military supervision, has over the past five years been found by the Spanish authorities to have been insufficient and in some respects flawed, leaving a thorn in diplomatic relations between the two countries. With indications that radioactivity levels around Palomares have risen over recent years, the renewed sense of urgency in part reflects an upgraded risk assessment following the completion of the first in-depth examination of the site by the Spanish nuclear research agency in 2008. The main scientific concern is that plutonium is being allowed to degenerate into other radioactive components like americium, which emits gamma rays that travel farther and are harder to block. So far, however, regular health checks on residents of Palomares have shown no adverse side effects from the surrounding contamination. Still, “the big problem is not what has happened so far but what can still happen here,” said Jesús Caicedo, mayor of Cuevas del Almanzora, a neighboring town under whose political jurisdiction Palomares falls. “We cannot leave our children and the next generation exposed to a danger that everybody knows to be increasing.” The U.S. government provided some compensation for the Palomares region, including a gift of $150,000 in 1968 to upgrade water facilities and the financing of the health checks for villagers. The Spanish authorities, paid landowners in return for expropriating land considered to be toxic. But financial compensation remains a burning issue, specifically over how much money the Spanish authorities paid to put land out of bounds. Although Palomares is no longer the impoverished farming community that it was when the bombs fell, local property developers say other coastal areas developed faster during Spain’s decade-long construction boom because they were not tainted by contamination. Almanzora, a property developer, is seeking €9 million, or about $12.7 million, in compensation from the Spanish authorities — instead of the €200,000 that it claims to have been offered. The reason, the company has said, is because land on which it had been granted building permission for a housing and commercial center project was eventually declared out of bounds following a revised safety assessment. Having bought the land in 1988, “we were then suddenly told that it was contaminated in 2007, which was right at the peak of the boom and when we were ready to go and start construction,” said Fraser Prynne, planning director for Almanzora. The company has been active in the region for over 25 years, and its projects there include a luxury golf resort overlooking the Palomares area. One of the mistakes made during the initial cleaning efforts was the burning of contaminated tomato crops, which helped spread the contamination, said Mr. Prynne, who added that this fact came to light only in 2007 when U.S. documentation about Palomares was declassified. “We, at the time, did not dream of contamination being sent so far from the bomb sites by smoke,” Mr. Prynne said. “No one knew.” The Spanish authorities say the original clearance work was insufficient, but do not claim foul play. “We have to believe that the Americans did the best that they knew and could, but we’re talking about the year 1966, when there was no regulation anywhere in the world on radioactive protection,” said Teresa Mendizábal, an adviser at Ciemat, Spain’s nuclear agency. After a survey completed in 2008, the contaminated land is divided into three main sections, covering a total of about 40 hectares, or 99 acres, some of which almost touch private homes, as well as fields and greenhouses. The steepest section of scrubland, moreover, was cordoned off rather than fenced off, allowing a shepherd and his herd of goats to cross last month. Such a crossing, witnessed by this newspaper’s photographer, had “never occurred before,” the nuclear agency said. It subsequently filed a police complaint against the shepherd. Still, some locals worry that the revived political debate over Palomares could in the short term prove counterproductive, reminding outsiders of the contamination risk at a time when Palomares is already struggling because of Spain’s broader economic downturn. Until the 1980s, the local tomato, lettuce and watermelon production did not carry any Palomares label. Bartolomé Peréz, a 71-year-old retired fisherman, said: “We somehow didn’t get killed that day and have managed to get on with the problems of living here since, so let sleeping dogs lie.” Mr Peréz was coming back to shore when the collision occurred on the morning of Jan. 17, 1966. He then joined a search party and eventually found “a head, an arm and a leg.” Of the 11 crew members on the two U.S. planes, 7 were killed. “There was just no way to know who these guys were,” Mr Peréz said, “or to realize that it was totally reckless to pick up body parts without wearing gloves and a mask.” Mr. Caicedo, the Cuevas mayor, was among children who scrambled across the fields to collect aircraft seats and other debris. “People here were so poor that many didn’t even have chairs in their home, so of course they took whatever they could,” he said. Assuming that Washington and Madrid complete a political agreement before year-end on clearing Palomares, as predicted by local officials, Ms. Mendizábal, the Ciemat adviser, estimated that three more years might be needed to complete the work, starting with the construction of an industrial plant in which the soil could be treated ahead of shipment. But however long the additional wait, the people of Palomares sound determined to put an end to what the local mayor, Juan José Peréz, called “a treatment worthy of second-class citizens.” “If these bombs had fallen near Madrid or in fact any place slightly more relevant and less isolated than Palomares,” he said, “I can guarantee you that this problem would have long been solved.”

Spain
Nuclear Weapons
United States Air Force
Accidents and Safety
Land Use Policies
Politics and Government
United States International Relations


Chantix, Smoking Cessation Drug, Linked to Cardiovascular Problems

Abstract: Chantix, the best-selling prescription drug for smoking cessation , was linked to an increased risk of a heart attack , stroke or other serious cardiovascular event for smokers without a history of heart disease compared with smokers who did not use the drug, according to a Canadian medical journal report released on Monday. The finding added to previous warnings about the pill’s connection to psychiatric problems and cardiovascular risks for people with a history of heart disease. It posed a new challenge to a product that has been prescribed to 13 million people and had $755 million in sales last year. Officials of Pfizer , the manufacturer of Chantix, and the Food and Drug Administration responded that they had been planning to conduct a joint analysis of clinical trials on whether Chantix posed heart risks, due next year. “This would have raised a red flag for us if the flag hadn’t already been flying,” Dr. Celia Winchell, a team leader with the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in an interview. Pfizer, in a statement, said the analysis in the Canadian Medical Association Journal was based on too few heart or cardiovascular events to draw conclusions about the risks. The company said Chantix brought “immediate and substantial” health benefits to smokers who quit. The senior author of the new report, Dr. Curt D. Furberg, a Wake Forest medical professor, said there were better ways to quit and called for removal of the drug from the market. “It piles up,” he said. “I don’t see how the F.D.A. can leave Chantix on the market.” The lead author, Dr. Sonal Singh, assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said the agency and Pfizer had failed to pursue signs of cardiovascular risk since Chantix was approved in 2006. “The F.D.A. should have already put it on their warning label,” Dr. Singh said. “The risk is substantial, the risk is present in smokers without heart disease, and Pfizer knew about this for five years.” Last month, the agency issued a safety notice about cardiovascular risk from Chantix use by people with a history of cardiovascular disease, based on a study of 700 people. The new report is broader, analyzing 14 randomized clinical trials involving 8,200 patients, excluding those with cardiovascular disease so that it gives a better picture of which heart problems the drug could cause in otherwise healthy people trying to quit smoking. The new study, known as a meta-analysis, compiled data from 14 random, blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trials that tracked cardiovascular outcomes. It found 52 out of 4,908 people taking Chantix had serious cardiovascular events, a rate of 1.06 percent, compared with 27 out of 3,308 people taking a placebo, a rate of 0.82 percent. While the absolute difference is only 0.24 percent, the weighted, relative difference is 72 percent. “We have known for many years that Chantix is one of the most harmful prescription drugs on the U.S. market, based on the number of serious adverse effects reported to the F.D.A.,” Dr. Furberg said in a statement. “It causes loss of consciousness, visual disturbances, suicides, violence, depression and worsening of diabetes . To this list we now can add serious cardiovascular events.” Dr. Furberg, who once directed clinical trials for the government and writes widely about drug safety, has been paid as an expert witness in cases against Pfizer. Dr. Singh and two other researchers said they had no conflicts of interest. When combining studies of smokers with and without pre-existing disease, the study found that doctors could expect to get one extra cardiac event associated with Chantix for every 28 smokers they treated with the drug. The researchers also estimated one additional person would quit for every 10 treated with Chantix. The benefit of Chantix was emphasized in a separate commentary in the journal by Dr. J. Taylor Hays of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He described the meta-analysis as “timely and important” but said it lacked overall size and standardization. Dr. Hays, who has been paid by Pfizer to study Chantix, said the benefits of quitting smoking outweighed the risks of the drug. Chantix is selling well overseas. In Japan, for instance, some pharmacies ran out for a while recently, even as the drug failed to meet expectations in the United States because of health warnings and bad publicity.

Chantix
Heart
Food and Drug Administration
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Smoking and Tobacco
Pfizer Inc
Medicine and Health
Canadian Medical Assn


Morris Collen, Pioneer in Computerized Medicine, Dies at 100

Abstract: Dr. Morris F. Collen, a physician whose research for the managed medical care provider Kaiser Permanente led to one of the first computer databases for tracking patients’ health, an innovation that became the foundation of a medical system emulated around the world, died on Sept. 27 at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif. He was 100. The cause was cancer, according to Kaiser Permanente. In the early 1940s, Dr. Collen was recruited by Dr. Sidney Garfield to help him run a medical practice he was forming to treat thousands of workers at a California shipyard owned by Henry J. Kaiser. That practice would grow to become Kaiser Permanente, the country’s largest provider of managed medical care. Dr. Collen worked with Kaiser Permanente for more than 70 years, leading its early use of penicillin to treat pneumonia in the 1940s, developing “multiphasic” preventive exams that screened patients for potential illnesses and studying the effects of multiple prescription drugs on the elderly. But his most ambitious work may have been starting the database. Encouraged by Dr. Garfield, he began learning about computers in the early 1960s and quickly determined that the information he had gathered in his multiphasic exams could be transferred into a database. Working in Kaiser’s department of medical methods research, in Oakland, he and his staff initially entered the information on punch cards, which they fed into large IBM computers. He explained the process in an oral history interview for the University of California, Berkeley, in 2005: “They sorted out 200 questions into yes/no responses such as, ‘Did you ever cough up blood?’ We ran in all the yes responses through a card reader into the computer, and then, before the patient left, we printed out a summary report. Then,” he continued, “we developed what are now called decision rules, so if they had albumin in the urine, the computer printed out a request, ‘Come back with a morning urine specimen,’ and all these decision rules were for the patient to do a secondary screening.” The project attracted attention in Congress. When Representative John Fogarty of Rhode Island, a prominent supporter of medical research, saw a demonstration of the project in Oakland in the early 1960s, the computer happened to expose a potentially serious illness. “Somebody up there must have been watching over us, because it printed out on one patient: ‘A high white count. Consider leukemia,’ ” Dr. Collen recalled. “Fogarty said, ‘What does this mean?’ “I said, ‘Well, this is supposedly a healthy patient who has a high blood white cell count, and we will have to rule out leukemia, and then we can treat it early.’ ” Dr. Collen went on: “The remarkable thing was, the next day he called, and on the telephone he says, ‘Did it turn out to be leukemia?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir, it did.’ He says, ‘Wow.’ “You see, with that sort of exposure, we began to get busloads of people coming in, from Japan and elsewhere, taking photographs and replicating the systems all over the world.” By the early 1970s, with the help of federal funding, the database had grown to hold information on several million patients, becoming a valuable tool for tracking individual cases but also for identifying broad trends. Kaiser says it now has one of the largest non-university health research operations in the country. The use of computers to study and shape medical care has become an established field called medical informatics. And in the past year a variation of it, clinical informatics, became a board-certified subspecialty, much like pediatrics or cardiology. Since 1993, the American Medical Informatics Association has given an award in Dr. Collen’s name. He was its first recipient. In November, the award will be given to Dr. Charles Safran, who teaches the subject at Harvard and heads the division of clinical informatics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. This year, Dr. Safran was among the first informaticians to receive board certification in the field. In an interview, he said of Dr. Collen: “He in some large part created the field of medical informatics. He was a mentor to my mentors.” He added: “Who are the people in health care who are thinking about how mobile apps will transform health care? Well, lots of companies are thinking about that, but what about at the clinical level? We come at it from the point of view of the family or the population or the setting. When Morrie was at Kaiser, he was very much oriented toward the patient or the family.” Morris Frank Collen was born on Nov. 12, 1913, in St. Paul. He wrote in 2006, “I feel that I was born with an interest in data, beginning with my birth date, a series of three consecutive two-digit numbers.” After renewing his driver’s license at age 95, he enjoyed showing people that its expiration date, 11-12-13, was his 100th birthday. He renewed the license in 2013, in part so that he could keep driving to his job as a consultant at Kaiser’s research division in Oakland. Dr. Collen, a tinkerer as a teenager, did not set out to pursue medicine. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1934 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. But after meeting his future wife, Bobbie, a nurse, he decided to go to the university’s medical school. After graduating in 1939, he served his residency at Los Angeles County Hospital, where he met Dr. Garfield. Dr. Collen was chief of medical services at Kaiser Permanente’s hospital in Oakland from 1942 to 1952, when he became its medical director. The next year, he was appointed physician in chief at Kaiser’s hospital in San Francisco. He became head of the research division in 1961 and remained in that position until 1979. His survivors include two sons, Barry and Randal; a daughter, Roberta Hayertz; nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, according to Kaiser Permanente. His wife, the former Frances Bobbie Diner, died in 1996. Dr. Collen published scores of articles and books about how computerization can improve patient care. In 1995, he wrote “A History of Medical Informatics in the United States, 1950 to 1990.” In an interview in his 90s, he helped explain his productivity and his longevity. At the time, he was working on an update of the informatics history. “I sit and write most of the day,” he said. “I set a kitchen timer for 60 minutes as soon as I sit down, and when that timer goes off, then I get up and walk up and down stairs and walk around the hallway for several minutes and go back and work on the book.”

Morris F. Collen
Kaiser Permanente
Obituary
Health Insurance
Computer data storage


Guilty Verdict in Shooting Death of Police Officer

Abstract: A jury found Steven Armento guilty of murder on Thursday in the first degree in the shooting death of Daniel Enchautegui, an off-duty police officer, three years ago in the Bronx. While his defense successfully convinced the jury that he had not intended to murder a police officer, Mr. Armento, 51, faces the maximum sentence of life without parole. A co-defendant in the case, Lillo Brancato Jr., 31, who had the lead role in the film “A Bronx Tale” and also appeared in episodes of “The Sopranos,” is expected to be tried separately next month on charges including murder. According to investigators, the two men were in search of drugs when they confronted Officer Enchautegui (pronounced EN-cha-tay-gee) in the early hours of Dec. 10, 2005. Prosecutors argued during the trial that after a long night of alcohol-fueled partying at a strip club, Mr. Armento and Mr. Brancato showed up at a home on Arnow Place in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx to get prescription pills from an acquaintance who lived there. But because the man had recently died, the doors were locked and the house unoccupied, leading the two men to break a window to get in. Officer Enchautegui, who lived next door and had just finished a long shift, was awoken by the sound of the breaking glass and called 911. Then, carrying his handgun and dressed in plainclothes, he went outside to investigate. Seeing the men, prosecutors said, Officer Enchautegui shouted “Don’t move! Don’t move!” But the men moved anyway, prompting a shootout between the officer and Mr. Armento. Officer Enchautegui was struck once, by a fatal bullet to the heart; Mr. Armento and Mr. Brancato, who was not carrying a gun, were each struck multiple times. During the trial, the defense suggested that it was the officer’s own actions that led to his death. William Flack, Mr. Armento’s lawyer, argued that his client had no way of knowing that the man confronting him, dressed in plain clothes, was a cop. To bolster that argument Mr. Flack pointed to a recording of Officer Enchautegui’s 911 call, saying it indicated the officer was concerned he might be mistaken for a civilian by responding officers. “Be advised,” Officer Enchautegui can be heard telling the operator, “I’m in plain clothes, black coat. I am armed, too.” But the lead prosecutor, Theresa Gottlieb, portrayed Mr. Armento as a reckless ex-con who fired not in self defense, but with the intention of killing an officer. One witness who was called to the stand to testify for the prosecution, Andrea Bishop, a nurse’s aide, said that Mr. Armento bragged about killing a police officer as he lay in a hospital bed at Jacobi Medical Center shortly after the shooting. Mr. Armento said the murder would make him “a king in jail,” she testified. Regarding the jury’s verdict, Mr. Flack said he had not gotten “any joy in that,” because of the death of a police officer. Yolanda Rosa, the police officer’s sister, drew applause from police officers when she spoke after the verdict. “That was my baby brother,” said Ms. Rosa, who had testified in the case to provide personal details about her brother. “He served the community of New York until the day he died.”

Police
Armento Steven
Decisions and Verdicts
Murders and Attempted Murders


A Smart Guide to California

Abstract: “California Wine for Dummies,” by Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan, offers masterly guidance to an expanding cosmos of reds, whites and sparklers. Recommendations include petite sirahs, pinot grigios and viogniers. Ms. Ewing-Mulligan is president of the International Wine Center, a New York school. Savings that result from buying the “six top value pinot noirs ” easily offset Barnes & Noble’s $16.99 price.


Secretary of State David Petraeus? Supporters Make Their Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — As President-elect Donald J. Trump continues his search for a secretary of state — a conspicuously public effort, in which the fortunes of the candidates rise and fall like characters in a political potboiler — allies of one of those candidates, David H. Petraeus, are mounting a vigorous lobbying campaign on his behalf. Two influential Republican national security figures — Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — spoke out publicly in favor of Mr. Petraeus this week, declaring that he was well qualified and saying his confirmation would not be hindered by his having pleaded guilty to mishandling classified material and being forced to resign as director of the C.I.A. “He’s one of the most talented and capable leaders I have ever known,” Mr. McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in one of the most animated exchanges he has had with reporters since he was re-elected last month. As for the scandal involving the leaking of classified material — in which Mr. Petraeus resigned after the disclosure that he had given a confidential diary to his biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell — Mr. McCain said, “I think people make mistakes in life and you move on.” Among the major questions is whether Mr. Petraeus would be able to regain his security clearance; experts say Mr. Trump would be able to override any objections to that through his executive privilege. Donald Trump’s Cabinet Is Complete. Here’s the Full List. A list of appointees and nominees for top posts in the new administration. Mr. Petraeus has long captured Mr. Trump’s imagination, but he comes with the baggage from not only his own scandal but also from having been C.I.A. director during the attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Mr. Graham, who also serves on the Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Petraeus would be “an extraordinary pick.” He described him as “one of the most uniquely qualified” of the people on Mr. Trump’s list, noting that he was the best known of all of them overseas, after his C.I.A. stint and his military career ; in which he was the top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some Democrats signaled they would keep an open mind. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who will be the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, said she had “great respect for his mind.” She described his mishandling of classified material as “the one question that comes up,” but did not suggest it would prevent his confirmation. But Democrats would be likely to use a Petraeus nomination as a way to portray Mr. Trump as a hypocrite. He hammered Hillary Clinton throughout the campaign for her use of a personal email address and computer server, saying that she should be jailed, even after the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said her misconduct had been less serious than that of Mr. Petraeus. Democrats are also likely to object to the prevalence of retired generals in jobs that normally go to civilians, particularly after Mr. Trump named Gen. James N. Mattis as defense secretary. Mr. Trump met with Mr. Petraeus on Monday, declaring on Twitter afterward that he had been “very impressed!” A person close to the transition said Mr. Petraeus was also being considered for the post of director of national intelligence — a logical choice, given his tenure at the C.I.A., but one that lacks the glamour and profile of secretary of state. Trump Tower, the Center of the Political Universe A single day at Trump Tower in Manhattan provides a view of potential cabinet members and staff in the next administration. During their meeting, a person briefed on the conversation said, Mr. Petraeus spoke with Mr. Trump about his guilty plea, to a misdemeanor, for mishandling classified material and how it might affect his odds of getting confirmed. The contest for secretary of state has become the most protracted and closely watched of Mr. Trump’s transition. People briefed on the transition say the president-elect is now considering three candidates in addition to Mr. Petraeus: Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential nominee; Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City; and Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Gen. John F. Kelly, a retired Marine general, has also been in the mix and met again with Mr. Trump on Wednesday, though in recent days, his name has been mentioned more for secretary of homeland security. On Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump had a very public dinner with Mr. Romney at Jean-Georges in Manhattan, the second time they met since the election. But the deal was far from sealed. Aides to Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that their boss would take his time making the choice. Some of Mr. Trump’s closest aides — including Kellyanne Conway, who managed his campaign — have argued vehemently against naming Mr. Romney, saying his repeated denunciations of Mr. Trump during the campaign ought to rule him out. Mr. Giuliani, a fierce loyalist of Mr. Trump’s, emerged as the early favorite for secretary of state. He has made no secret of his desire for the job. But his extensive record of business dealings with foreign governments could cause him trouble in a confirmation hearing. In recent days, people involved in the process said, his prospects have dimmed.

Donald Trump
Appointments and Executive Changes
State Department
David H Petraeus
US Politics


Nebraska: Center to Treat Ebola Patient

Abstract: An Ebola patient in Sierra Leone will be transported to a hospital in Nebraska on Saturday if he is healthy enough to make the trip, hospital officials said on Thursday night. The patient, who recently tested positive for Ebola, would be the third person treated for the virus at Nebraska Medical Center’s special biocontainment unit in Omaha. The hospital said in a statement that that the man would be evaluated for possible treatment by a medical crew flying to Sierra Leone. “The members of the crew will determine whether the patient is stable enough for transport — if he is, he would arrive in Omaha sometime Saturday afternoon,” the statement said. The hospital previously treated two Americans: Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance cameraman released last month, and Dr. Rick Sacra, a missionary released in September. Eight of the nine people treated for the virus in the United States have recovered from it.

Nebraska
Ebola
Sierra Leone
Hospital
Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha


Lovett and Keen, From ‘Front Porch’ to Texas Concert Partners

Abstract: On a 1988 live recording of “The Front Porch Song,” which he wrote with Lyle Lovett when they were students at Texas A&M in the late ’70s, Robert Earl Keen pauses midway to describe the song’s inspiration. “We used to sit on this old porch on Church Street, right across from the Presbyterian church, and play bluegrass and folk music, and talk about girls and where we were going to move to when our parents got our grades,” he says. “Talk about someday becoming big songwriters.” Although the house Mr. Keen lived in was torn down long ago to make way for a parking lot, that youthful friendship looms large in Texas music mythology. Short of a handful of benefits, festivals and award shows, Mr. Lovett and Mr. Keen have rarely shared a stage. In February, after decades of fan requests, they paired up for a short run of acoustic shows in which they traded stories and songs onstage. The tour hits El Paso, Midland and Corpus Christi this week. Recently, the two men spoke by telephone about their friendship, songwriting and the tour. This interview has been edited and compressed. How quickly was there a mutual admiration society? ROBERT EARL KEEN At the Church Street house, I had this group of ne’er-do-well friends that came over and routinely trashed the place. It was fun, but it was sometimes really frustrating. Lyle was my first friend in college who had truly similar interests. It wasn’t just music; it was our outlook on life. We’ve always been able to laugh together about the oddball nature of people. But when we met, Lyle was a lot more advanced in making music a career than I was. I didn’t want to hang around with the old men playing fiddle tunes till I was 70. I wanted to write and play music I wrote. Lyle was already doing that. What was fortunate for both of us was that we just got along. I’d hang with Lyle at 9 a.m., and the next thing you know it was midnight. We’d just talk. A lot. LYLE LOVETT It occurred to me early on that when I’m talking to Robert I think of things I wouldn’t have thought of talking to anyone else. He brings something out of me nobody else does. KEEN It’s like in the movie “Lincoln,” when he says, “What a joy to be comprehended!” That’s always been us. Despite all this commonality, you wound up very different songwriters, right? KEEN Lyle has an incredible perspective on people and is able to insert himself inside that and give you what a narrator does in Shakespeare: ‘This is what we’ve seen, and this is what we can expect to see.’ And you always feel connected to that character because that’s where Lyle is anchored in most of his songs. I kind of float around and think, I could write a song about these rocks by my feet. It might not have a perspective, but I enjoy the puzzle of trying to explore those rocks. I don’t feel as brave as Lyle does about stepping out there and saying, this is what I saw and this is how I feel about that situation. LOVETT I, likewise, admire Robert’s ability to be objective from a detached point of view. His imagery and descriptive powers are fantastic. You get a real, concrete sense of what he’s talking about. I listen to a song of Robert’s that does that and think, that’s great writing. I wish I could do that. It must be reassuring to go into this kind of show, where the banter is as important as the songs themselves, with the amount of history you share. LOVETT If we’re standing backstage before the show talking, we just walk out onstage and keep talking. That’s about as showbiz as it gets. KEEN It’s definitely a window into our friendship. As far as the entertainment, I’d like to think we really back it up with some outstanding songs. Take “Car Talk” — those guys banter, but when it comes down to, what do I do with this car, they know exactly what they’re doing. We do, too, with the songs. The porch on Church Street — and the mythology that’s been built around it over the years — now seems even more like a central point of both your legacies. KEEN I suppose the porch does have a meaning of its own now. It’s our Walden Pond. It takes you back to a simpler place, to where you can just hang out and be yourself around friends. LOVETT The fact that Robert and I have gotten to make our livings playing music and doing something that we love to do, that we talked about and dreamed about doing back on that porch, is an extraordinary privilege. The fact that we’re friends to this day and feel the same spark from each other suggests it was real from the beginning. Our careers have been a wonderful validation of that time.

Texas
Lyle Lovett
Robert Earl Keen
Music


Plan That Would Spare Vital Programs Is Expected to Pass Senate

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The worst of the federal cuts to a major infant nutrition program would be reversed. Embassy security and construction could be spared in the wake of the consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya. And child care subsidies, once seen as critical to the success of welfare reform, would take a haircut, not the hammer blow that President Obama once loudly warned was coming. With the expected Senate passage this week of broad legislation to finance the federal government through Sept. 30, a lucky few programs will be spared the brunt of the automatic spending cuts now coursing through the federal government. Also, managers in some departments, especially the Defense Department, will gain more flexibility to carry out cuts. The overall size of the cuts will remain the same, as will the short-term impact on the economy, because total spending outside of entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security must remain beneath a hard cap of $984 billion. One program’s gain in the spending bill will mean another’s loss, caution the Democratic and Republican authors of the bill, which the House seems poised to pass as well. The bill is a mixed blessing for President Obama and others, especially Democrats, who hope Congress will eventually reverse the recent cuts. The changes make the cuts less arbitrary and damaging in the eyes of many independent experts. They reduce the effect on programs that touch national security, child health and welfare, but they inhibit long-term economic growth, through science funding and other areas. But the new continuing resolution might have a political impact beyond the numbers: It could reduce some of the most obvious disruptions in federal services, potentially easing the pressure that Mr. Obama had hoped would soften Republican opposition to a replacement that combined spending cuts with tax increases. “The combination of the various appropriations bills, funding transfers and reprogramming authority takes the doom and gloom out of sequestration,” said Chris Krueger, a senior policy analyst at Guggenheim Securities’ Washington Research Group. “You’ve still got $85 billion coming out. You’re still going to get the hit to the economy.” That means lower employment levels and slower growth this year, public and private forecasters have said. Rather than rearranging the cuts across the budget, Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has recommended holding them back until the still-sluggish recovery takes stronger hold. “Besides having adverse effects on jobs and incomes, a slower recovery would lead to less actual deficit reduction in the short run,” Mr. Bernanke said last month. Republican senators, some of whom have cheered on the “sequestration” cuts, spent Tuesday jostling for last-minute votes on their priorities. The new package of cuts cleared its biggest procedural hurdle Monday night, with a 63-to-35 vote to end debate, but failed to win approval Tuesday. It still appears likely to pass the Senate this week, given Monday’s vote, and to clear the House shortly after its final Senate vote. The legislation would replace the current stopgap spending law with a more detailed plan. On Tuesday, Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, shut down repeated efforts to get a final vote because he wanted the Federal Aviation Administration to protect control towers at rural airports. Senators Mark Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, and Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, pressed for a vote to ensure meat inspectors would not be furloughed. Image Senators Patty Murray, center, and Harry Reid, the majority leader, spoke on the budget in Washington on Tuesday, when some senators jostled to gain last-minute votes on their priorities. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, pleaded to kill what she called a missile to nowhere — a European-based missile defense system that both the Senate and House armed services committees have repeatedly tried to zero out — and to shift the money to military operations and maintenance. “There’s not going to be another funding bill for the government until the end of this federal fiscal year,” she said. “This is our only opportunity.” The primary goal of the bill is to allow lawmakers to make distinctions among programs. The bill “includes some very limited changes to fix pressing problems,” said Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. But, she said, there was only so much she and her Republican counterpart, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, could do under the constraints of assembling a measure that could pass the House. If, for instance, Congress maintained current levels of spending through September, $500 million would have gone to a space shuttle program that no longer exists, Ms. Mikulski said. The Pentagon would get too much money for wars winding down and not enough for retraining and rebuilding a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting. With the changes, the Agriculture Department’s nutrition program for woman, infants and children would receive an additional $250 million under the Senate bill, enough to serve 300,000 more people. That sum would help offset a $333 million sequester cut that the program must absorb over the next six months. The remaining cuts could still hurt, but officials involved in the program are holding off final decisions until Congress acts. Under sequestration, programs would first try to reduce the cost of the basket of goods provided to participants, by finding lower prices on goods like baby food and peanut butter, said Douglas A. Greenaway, the president of the National WIC Association — an umbrella group for state programs. But he added that the program was already lean and would most likely have to make more significant cuts, too. Pregnant women and newborns would be the first priority; postpartum women and 3- and 4-year-olds would be the lowest priority, he said. The State Department’s embassy security, construction and maintenance account had been girding for a $79 million hit. Instead, an additional $90 million for the rest of 2013 will leave the account slightly ahead of where it was last year. The federal child care and development block grant, slated for a $115 million cut, would lose $65 million instead. The Energy Department’s nuclear weapons programs, promised large budget increases to win Republican votes for a 2010 nuclear arms accord, will still take a hit under sequestration. But the cut would be $237 million instead of $600 million. In exchange, other programs would experience larger cuts. Military construction for barracks, schools and hospitals worldwide would lose billions of dollars. Energy research, already taking a 5 percent cut under the sequester, or more than $150 million, would absorb another $44 million loss. Other programs like Head Start, for early education, would have roughly the same cut as previously planned. The program is expected to lose about 70,000 slots for children out of one million over all.

Senate
Legislation
Congress
Congress
Federal Budget
House of Representatives


Product information on Alienware’s Hangar 18 entertainment center

Abstract: According to urban legend, aliens crash-landed in the desert outside Roswell, N.M., and their remains are hidden in the Air Force’s Hangar 18. Inside Alienware’s Hangar 18, however, you will find only high-end PC components and high-definition video playback systems. This media computer — available at www.alienware.com — is stylish enough to sit comfortably next to a wide-screen TV in the living room. It supports video playback at up to 1080p resolution and can connect to HDMI-capable televisions or standard computer monitors. In its least expensive configuration, which costs $1,999, the PC has a 250-gigabyte hard drive, but other configurations can take that up to two terabytes. The PC supports Windows Vista’s Media Center software for recording and playing back live television as well as downloaded music and movies. The standard version comes with two video tuners, one for digital HD content and one for analog broadcast. The Hangar 18 can handle up to four tuners and record up to four channels at once. The Hangar 18 doesn’t include an alien carcass, but it supports 802.11g and Bluetooth wireless and has a remote control that mimics the functions of a mouse when moved in three dimensions.

Alienware
Television
Computers and the Internet


Premium Food Items Help Results at Wendy’s

Abstract: Wendy’s, the hamburger chain, said Thursday that its premium food offerings, such as the Son of Baconator and the Asiago Ranch chicken sandwich, helped lift revenue by 2.7 percent at restaurants open at least 15 months, producing the sixth straight quarter that figure has climbed. The improvement helped Wendy’s shares rise 13 cents, or 3 percent, to close at $4.39. For the three months ended Sept. 30, Wendy’s reported a bigger loss, in part because of a charge related to the early payoff of debt. It lost $26.2 million, or 7 cents a share. It posted a loss of $4 million, or a penny a share, a year ago when it incurred costs related to the spinoff of Arby’s. Total revenue rose 4 percent to $636.3 million, which also fell short of the $640.6 million Wall Street expected.

Wendy's International Inc
Fast Food Industry
Company Reports


Back in Denver, Anthony Is Booed as Knicks Lose

Abstract: DENVER — The fans at the Pepsi Center booed Carmelo Anthony during pregame introductions. They booed him when he brought the ball up the court. They booed nearly every move he made on Friday night, with the notable exception of his missed shots. The crowd loved those. Anthony’s final miss came at the buzzer, a 14-foot fadeaway along the right baseline that fell several inches short of the basket. It was one final indignity for Anthony as the Nuggets escaped with a 97-95 win over the Knicks, who continue to dig their way to new depths. The Knicks (3-12) absorbed their eighth straight loss, their four-game trip ending with more of the same: more poor shooting, more defensive lapses, more disappointment. They played with improved effort, a four-letter word around the locker room over the past several weeks. But even that was not enough. “I didn’t get it done,” said Anthony, who finished with 27 points on 8-of-22 shooting against his former team. “I think we did everything coming down the stretch to win the basketball game. I didn’t pull it through for us, and that’s on me.” The Knicks were desperate to break out of their funk by any means necessary. They looked for fast-break opportunities. Iman Shumpert played with improved energy. Coach Mike Woodson even ditched his necktie. “We have to keep grinding,” he said. “We have to stay the course.” The Knicks had opportunities. Denver shot just 5 of 15 from the field in the third quarter but still led by 8 heading into the fourth. Tim Hardaway Jr. came off the bench to give the Knicks a late lift, sinking a pair of 3-pointers. The Knicks later scrambled for a loose ball that found its way to Andrea Bargnani (22 points), who was fouled and sank both free throws, trimming the Nuggets’ lead to 85-83. And while it looked like the Knicks were once again on the brink of collapse when the Nuggets’ Randy Foye drilled a 3-pointer to build a 9-point lead, they refused to go away. Raymond Felton connected on a 3-pointer, and Shumpert got loose for a layup that cut the lead to 96-95 with 19.7 seconds left. After Ty Lawson converted 1 of 2 free throws for the Nuggets, Anthony took a pass in the post and tried to find separation against Foye, who pressured Anthony into taking a tough shot. It was no good. The buzzer sounded. The crowd went bananas. “I did what I wanted to do, at a spot I wanted to get to,” said Anthony, who refused to say whether he felt he had been fouled. “I don’t know.” Lawson led the Nuggets (9-6) with 22 points, and Foye added 17. Nobody at the arena was going to let Anthony forget the circumstances of his departure from the Nuggets, specifically the trade he demanded in February 2011. Friday’s game was only his second trip back to Denver since he joined the Knicks, and he anticipated that the atmosphere would be slightly less vitriolic than it was when he returned the first time. “I think for the most part things have calmed down a little,” he said. When Anthony played here last March, the game was an unmitigated disaster for the Knicks. Anthony was laboring with a right knee injury but opted to play anyway. It turned out to be a mistake. He scored 9 points in 22 minutes as the Knicks got blown out. Fans capped the festivities by chanting, “Who needs Melo?” Anthony made an early exit, had his knee drained and missed the team’s next three games. “I should have just sat out that game, but I was being a little naïve,” Anthony said before Friday’s game. “I wanted to come back and play here, that first time, that experience.” As far as experiences go, Anthony has not relished his latest one. He reiterated that the Knicks lack chemistry. He cited an absence of leadership, the type that Jason Kidd (now spilling drinks in Brooklyn), Rasheed Wallace (now an assistant with the Detroit Pistons) and Kurt Thomas (now 41 years old) provided last season. The Knicks’ offense has been a wheezing jalopy, their fast-break opportunities few and far between. It has become a major hindrance, with the team leaning on Anthony to produce in slow-motion isolations. Against the Nuggets, they appeared determined to push the pace for a change. While the Knicks’ intentions were good, the strategy sometimes left them vulnerable in transition. The Nuggets’ J. J. Hickson had back-to-back dunks in the first quarter — the first after Lawson drove by Felton as if he were a lamppost and slipped a pass to Hickson, the second after Foye misfired on a jumper and Hickson jammed the put-back. Nobody had bothered to box him out. Andre Miller capped the first quarter for the Nuggets by launching a 27-footer at the buzzer that caromed high off the back of the rim before falling through the basket. It was an improbable shot, and the Knicks were already down by 10 points — a trend this season. “We’re playing in spurts,” Woodson said, “and we got to get it to where we’re not playing catch-up basketball.” The Knicks were 1 of 11 from 3-point range in the first half, en route to a 51-45 deficit. It could have been worse, but the Knicks were at least managing to take care of the ball (two turnovers) and Bargnani was doing his part on offense. The Knicks’ recent mantra has been that one game — one win — has the potential to change everything. They had their chances against the Nuggets. The wait continues. REBOUNDS Tyson Chandler, sidelined since Nov. 5 with a broken right leg, has yet to resume basketball activities, and Coach Mike Woodson said Chandler was at least a couple of weeks from returning. The Knicks are 2-9 without him. Chandler said he had not had any setbacks in his rehabilitation. “Still looking on schedule,” he said, “but I don’t know what that schedule is.”

Knicks
Carmelo Anthony
Nuggets
Basketball


A Search for Self in a Brain Scan

Abstract: St. Louis — I knew I wouldn’t find my “self” in a brain scan. I also knew as I headed into the noisy torpedo tube of a souped-up M.R.I. machine at Washington University in St. Louis that unless there was something terribly wrong (“Igor, look! His head is filled with Bitcoins!”), I would receive no news of the particulars of how my brain was arranged. Even if I had been one of the 1,200 volunteers in the part of the Human Connectome Project being conducted there, I wouldn’t have gotten a report of my own personal connectome and what it meant. Once the 10 hours of scans and tests are finished, and 10 hours more of processing and analysis done, the data for each of the volunteers — all anonymous — becomes part of a database to help scientists develop tools so that one day such an individual report might be possible. Besides, I was just going through a portion of the process, to see what it was like. Even so, I do have this sense of myself as an individual, different from others in ways good, bad and inconsequential, and the pretty reasonable feeling that whatever a “self” is, it lies behind my eyes and between my ears. That’s where I feel that “I” live. So I couldn’t shake the sense that there would be something special in seeing my brain, even if I couldn’t actually spot where all the song lyrics I’ve memorized are stored, or locate my fondness for cooking and singing and my deep disappointment that I can’t carry a tune (though I can follow a recipe). My genome may be easier to read, but a GATTACA database doesn’t feel as intimate as a picture. A video of a colonoscopy would be too intimate by a long shot, and who wants to find himself in his gut, even if the microbiome is the big deal it seems to be? So I climbed into the M.R.I. machine. I tried to hold my head perfectly still as I stared at a spot marked by a cross, tried to corral my fading memory to perform well on tests, curled my toes and moved my fingers so that muscle motion could be mapped, and wondered at the extraordinary noises M.R.I. machines make. The preliminary results are here for anyone to see: my brain, with all my innermost secrets. Except the secrets cannot yet be read. I don’t mind seeing that my lungs look like lungs. I would be happy if my knees turned out to look perfectly normal. So how can it be that I was both relieved — it was all there — and disappointed in the brain scans? In earlier research, scans have shown activity that seems to correlate with autism and schizophrenia. Some would argue that there are scans that are characteristic of psychopaths, although other scientists dispute the validity of psychopathy as a legitimate category. But while subtle differences can also be seen, science just doesn’t know enough yet to use them in diagnosis, or to give me a feeling that, “Yes! There I am!” Philosophers might say that my desire and disappointment are all the result of a basic, and pretty dumb, misunderstanding. The “me” I hoped to glimpse might emerge from the physical brain, but it is in a different category from an actual brain region or pattern. Or perhaps my mistake is reification, looking for the concrete presence of an abstraction. “I” am the abstraction. I look forward to letters enlightening me. But I think that the scientists at Washington University and I are actually interested in something far less. They want clear indications of what structures and activities are associated with differences in personality or mental health. They want reliable, detailed information on what is normal in a brain, for entirely practical purposes. I was looking for a hint of my individuality, for reasons of vanity. Not yet. Maybe I’ll get my microbiome sequenced.

Brain
Washington University
Mental Health
MRI


On Labor Day, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Begin a Final Sprint

Abstract: CLEVELAND — Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump ran virtually parallel campaigns on Monday as they geared up for the final stretch of the presidential race. She made nice with the news media by opening up her campaign plane and chatting with reporters. He followed suit, inviting a smaller group of reporters onto his plane and answering questions during the 30-minute flight. She took along her running mate, and so did he, as both focused on Ohio and nearly crossed paths in Cleveland. Their motorcades all but passed each other, and all four candidates’ planes ended up on the tarmac at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at the same time. Mrs. Clinton moved on several fronts on Monday to confront nagging doubts about her candidacy, despite her comfortable lead in many swing-state polls. Courting labor supporters, she met with union leaders in Cleveland while her husband, Bill Clinton, appeared at a Labor Day parade in Detroit. Seeking the backing of progressive voters, she enlisted her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who made his first solo appearance on Mrs. Clinton’s behalf at a rally in New Hampshire. And her outreach to reporters included her most extensive question-and-answer session with them in months. She expressed alarm “about the credible reports about Russian government interference in our elections” through hacking , saying, “We’ve never had a foreign adversarial power be already involved in our electoral process.” Image Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, greeted diners on Monday at Goody’s Family Restaurant near Cleveland. Credit Ty Wright for The New York Times Not to be outdone, Mr. Trump used his airborne meeting with reporters to clarify his views on immigration, saying he opposed any path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. But he did not explicitly rule out a long-term path to legal status if the nation’s immigration system is overhauled. “We’re going to make that decision into the future,” Mr. Trump said. But, he added, “to become a citizen, you are going to have to go out and come back in through the process. You’re going to have to go out and get in line. This isn’t touchback. You have to get in line.” On the plane, Mr. Trump also told reporters that, “as of this moment,” he planned to attend all three debates, and that only a “natural disaster” could make him change his mind. He added that, while he was preparing, he was not holding mock debate sessions. Labor Day is traditionally the beginning of a two-month sprint to Election Day, in which candidates try to seize voters’ attention as summer fades and debates loom. Monday was no exception. The visits to Ohio by Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton — along with their respective running mates, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia — highlighted the importance of a state that Republicans believe Mr. Trump must win to have any shot of reaching the White House. Image Hillary Clinton on Monday at a Labor Day rally in Cleveland. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times “Labor Day comes, and it’s kind of like a recalibration,” said Beth Myers, who managed Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign and served as his senior adviser in 2012. “You see the finish line, you see that there’s not too many game-changing events left, and most campaigns take a measure of where you are on Labor Day.” This cycle, however, both candidates have eschewed traditional campaigning, albeit in divergent ways. Normally, they would already have been circling each other in swing states. But Mrs. Clinton has spent most of the summer away from the campaign trail, focusing on fund-raising in places like the Hamptons and Beverly Hills with celebrities like Jimmy Buffett and Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Trump has also kept a languid pace, favoring large rallies, often in the evening, over several daily stops. Mr. Trump, a political novice, and Mrs. Clinton, a veteran politician, are confronting historically low approval ratings among voters for whom they are well-known commodities. Image Donald J. Trump, right, with his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, spoke to reporters on his plane on Monday. Credit Ty Wright for The New York Times “Labor Day used to be this big, important marker in the campaign season,” said Amy Walter, the national editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “A kickoff, if you will. Today, it feels like the start of the third quarter instead of the kickoff.” “The candidates are well-defined, the ads have been running for months and TVs have been saturated with talking heads,” she added. Mr. Trump tried to burnish his image as a statesman last week with a hastily arranged trip to Mexico City. He has also tried to increase his outreach to minorities, from a promised “softening” on immigration that concluded with a fiery, nativist speech in Phoenix, to a stop at a black church in Detroit. That approach was also on display on Monday. At a diner in Cleveland, Mr. Trump met Maria Hernandez, a Mexican-American who said she was supporting him. “Mexican-American supports Trump,” he said. “It’s so nice.” Then he turned to the nearby reporters to emphasize his focus group of one: “Make a note of it, guys,” he said. Earlier, speaking to a dozen white men and a lone white woman at an American Legion post here, Mr. Trump criticized China’s treatment of President Obama: When the president landed in Hangzhou for the Group of 20 summit meeting, the host country forced him to disembark from the plane’s belly . Mr. Trump said he would not have gotten off the plane, but instead would have urged his crew to “get out of here.” Mrs. Clinton’s appearance in Cleveland was meant as a show of labor support during a campaign in which many rank-and-file union members were drawn to Mr. Sanders’s promise to take on income inequality. At a Labor Day festival here, she and Mr. Kaine were joined by the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president, Richard L. Trumka; Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the first unions to endorse Mrs. Clinton . Mrs. Clinton’s surrogates were also out in force. In Pittsburgh, Mr. Kaine and the man he hopes to succeed, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., spoke at a rally before the city’s Labor Day parade. Mr. Kaine assailed Mr. Trump for refusing to release his tax returns, then turned the stage over to Mr. Biden. “My name is Joe Biden, and I work for Hillary Clinton and whatever the hell this guy’s name is,” he said. Mr. Sanders, at a rally in Lebanon, N.H., praised Mrs. Clinton for supporting a host of progressive positions. “I would hope and ask you all, very much, that we have got to do everything we can to make sure that Hillary Clinton is elected president,” he said. “But two days after the election, we have got to continue the pressure.” Addressing an issue that has dogged the campaign, Mr. Clinton defended the Clinton Foundation. And he criticized Mr. Trump over his own foundation, referring to a Washington Post report that found that his charitable organization paid the Internal Revenue Service a $2,500 penalty this year after improperly giving a political contribution to a campaign group with ties to the attorney general of Florida, Pam Bondi. Mr. Trump discussed the issue in his talk with reporters aboard his plane. He denied any impropriety on either his part or Ms. Bondi’s concerning the $25,000 donation. At the time of the donation in 2013, Ms. Bondi was considering whether to investigate Trump University for fraud. In the end, she did not do so. “I never spoke to her, first of all, she’s a fine person beyond reproach,” he said when asked about the controversy. “I never even spoke to her about it at all. She’s a fine person. Never spoken to her about it. Never.” Many attorneys general besides Ms. Bondi, he said, decided against pursuing any action regarding Trump University. “I’ll win that case in court,” he said. “Many turned that down.” “I never spoke to her,” he added, again referring to Ms. Bondi. When asked what he expected to get out of the donation, he would only say: “I’ve just known Pam Bondi for years. I have a lot of respect for her. Never spoke to her about that at all. I just have a lot of respect for her, and she’s very popular.”

Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton
Ohio
Mike Pence
2016 Presidential Election
Timothy M Kaine


Transferred to Manhattan, Pataki Has Intestinal Surgery

Abstract: An ailing Gov. George E. Pataki was transferred yesterday to a hospital in New York City where he underwent surgery to try to alleviate the intestinal problems that have troubled him since he had his appendix removed five days earlier, state officials said. The governor was transferred from the Hudson Valley Hospital Center in Westchester County to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital in Upper Manhattan, where he had "surgery to alleviate a blockage in his digestive system," David M. Catalfamo, the governor's communications director, said in a statement. Mr. Catalfamo said that "doctors have indicated that the surgery was performed as expected without incident." But the governor's new medical team, unlike his doctors in Westchester, who held several news conferences, did not brief reporters on his second operation. Mr. Pataki's hospitalization has forced him to cancel several political trips, including one to New Hampshire last Friday, and one to San Jose this Saturday, where he had planned to make a speech at the California Republican Party's winter convention. Mr. Pataki, who is stepping down at the end of the year, is exploring a run for president. Aides also said that they expected Mr. Pataki to cancel a trip to Washington next week, where he had planned to attend the National Governors Association's winter meeting, an opportunity for governors seeking higher office to network with their colleagues and the national press. That trip was to have included a dinner at the White House with the other governors and a speech at the National Press Club. The governor was taken from the Westchester hospital to Manhattan in an ambulance with its lights and sirens off around 9 a.m. yesterday. An aide to the governor said that doctors from the NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital had been consulted on the case for several days, and that all the doctors agreed that the governor should be transferred for further evaluation. After the governor was examined in Manhattan, doctors there performed the surgery to try to ease the blockage in his intestines. Asked if any part of the governor's digestive system was removed during the procedure, Mr. Catalfamo said no. When the governor was anesthetized for the second surgery, the state's little-known lieutenant governor, Mary O. Donohue, automatically became the state's acting governor for a little over an hour for the second time in a week. A call to her office, for information about how she spent her brief time as acting governor, was returned by Governor Pataki's press office, which reported that no issues arose requiring her action. With the State Legislature in its winter recess, Governor Pataki is missing little action in Albany. Officials said that the governor's staff and the legislative staff were continuing to talk, as they attempt to make a deal and pass the budget by the April 1 deadline for the second year in a row, after two decades of late budgets. Governor Pataki's medical troubles began last Wednesday, when he awoke complaining of "a rotten stomachache," his wife, Libby, said last week. The governor canceled a news conference that day with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, but did make it to a book party in Manhattan that night for Edward Hayes, a lawyer who just published his memoir. When the governor returned to his home in Garrison, N.Y., the pain worsened, and at 1 a.m. Thursday his personal doctor advised him to go to the hospital, officials said. There, at Hudson Valley Hospital Center, doctors diagnosed appendicitis and removed Mr. Pataki's appendix in an emergency operation at 5:45 a.m. Thursday. Doctors originally said that they expected Mr. Pataki to be released in about 48 hours, and on Friday, the governor's office said that he was expected to be released from the hospital on Saturday morning. Then doctors grew concerned. Dr. Wiji Ratnathicam, the senior attending surgeon at Hudson Valley, said over the weekend that the governor's bowels had not moved since the surgery, and that hospital officials did not want to release the governor until his intestinal functions returned to normal. Doctors not involved in the governor's treatment said the problem was not uncommon. State Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican majority leader, told reporters yesterday that the governor had been attending to state business from the hospital. "The governor, really, other than when he was under the influence of the anesthesia, he's been functioning," Senator Bruno said. On Friday, while Governor Pataki was hospitalized, he activated the state's emergency command center to deal with high winds that had killed at least two people and knocked out power in upstate New York. And on Monday he announced that he was weighing legal action to prevent an Arab-owned company from taking over operations of several American ports -- a deal that was approved by the Bush administration. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he thought that the governor just needed a little peace and quiet, especially from the news media. "If you were to leave the guy alone, and not try to follow his every increase or decrease in any tests, he'd probably be a lot better off," the mayor said.

HUDSON VALLEY HOSPITAL CENTER
NEW YORK STATE
WESTCHESTER COUNTY (NY)
NEW YORK PRESBYSTERIAN HOSPITAL
PATAKI GEORGE E
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT


U.S. Wants Former Salvadoran Ally to Face Justice in 1989 Massacre

Abstract: Early in the morning on Nov. 16, 1989, soldiers from an elite battalion of the Salvadoran Army walked into the religious center of a Jesuit university and killed everyone they found inside. The murders — of six priests, their housekeeper and her daughter — broke the stupor of a world inured to the constant blood baths of El Salvador’s civil war from 1979 to 1992, hastening the end of American support for the military regime and clearing the way for a peace accord. Twenty-six years later, the United States government, which spent more than $4 billion in assistance to El Salvador’s military during the conflict — including training the Atlacatl Battalion, which massacred the Jesuits — is now working to bring some of the officers it once partnered with to justice. This quiet shift, taking place in hidden discussions and nearly empty courtrooms, is a sign of how much has and has not changed since the end of the Cold War. Championed by human rights advocates and condemned by critics who say it amounts to selling out old allies, the move speaks to the ever-complicated relationship between American foreign policy and human rights around the world. For months, the most prominent example of this shift has been the push to extradite Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, a former vice minister of defense accused of participating in the meeting where the order was given to kill the Rev. Ignacio Ellacuría, the rector of the José Simeón Cañas University of Central America, and to leave no witnesses alive. The officers believed that Father Ellacuría, who was trying to help broker peace, was an intellectual leader of the leftist guerrillas with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or F.M.L.N. The Justice Department is now pressing for Mr. Montano, who is in American custody after immigration violations, to be extradited to Spain , where he and 19 other former officers have been charged with murder and terrorism in the massacre. Five of the six priests were Spanish citizens. “The U.S. government has moved from an era in which we help provide visas to resettle the Salvadoran military in the United States to an era in which we are supporting their deportation and extradition for criminal charges,” said Geoff Thale, program director of the Washington Office on Latin America and a longtime El Salvador observer. “That’s a really significant shift.” Mr. Montano, who was living in Massachusetts and was arrested by federal officials in 2011, is the only defendant in custody. At an Aug. 19 hearing, the judge in the case said she would most likely issue a ruling on the extradition request in the coming weeks. If Mr. Montano is sent to Spain, other defendants can be tried with him in absentia. Those familiar with the case against Mr. Montano say it began as a result of efforts by human rights advocates and a specialized unit of the Justice Department, the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, as opposed to a directive from higher levels of government. But, they add, it would not have gotten this far without support from the top. The action coincides with a renewed engagement by the Obama administration in Central America — especially the so-called northern triangle region of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — spurred in part by recent surges in migration by people fleeing violence and poverty there. The administration’s plan calls for a tripling of spending on American-run programs in the region to $1 billion, concentrating on areas like military cooperation, business development, education and reducing police corruption. Still, a senior State Department official said the legal proceedings against Mr. Montano and others were on a separate, independent course. “I would say that those cases reflect U.S. commitment to due process under our laws and do not reflect any policy agenda that we have related to El Salvador,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss department proceedings. Not everyone in the United States is on board with the effort to prosecute the former officers. There were howls of protest this spring when Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, a former Salvadoran defense minister who had been living in Florida for 25 years, was deported after an immigration court ruled that he bore responsibility for the rape and murder of three American nuns and a missionary by troops under his command in December 1980. Image Six Jesuit priests and two assistants were murdered on Nov. 16, 1989, in San Salvador. The massacre hastened the end of American support for the Salvadoran military regime. Credit Ivan Montesinos/Reuters Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs under President Ronald Reagan, and Edwin G. Corr, a former American ambassador to El Salvador, argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Salvadoran military officials were American allies and that American officials today were forgetting “the circumstances in which they acted, and the debts owed to those who made American successes around the world possible.” The Reagan administration viewed the right-wing Salvadoran regime as a bulwark against the formation of a leftist government that might have aligned itself with the Soviet Union. The tiny country, home today to 6.3 million people, was by far the largest recipient of American aid in Latin America in the 1980s. Mr. Vides remains a free man in El Salvador, where there is a similar hesitance to revisit the past among many officials. A 1993 amnesty law there prohibits prosecutions for human rights violations committed during the war. The only two military officials found responsible for the massacre and briefly imprisoned in El Salvador were released once the law was adopted. Observers say some politicians, including allies of the leftist government of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, fear they could be implicated if the amnesty law were to be modified or lifted. Others feel differently. In a 2014 poll of 1,267 Salvadorans, 76 percent said they would favor a government investigation into serious human rights abuses during the war. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Confronting the past is an essential part of dealing with El Salvador’s troubled present, said Jeannette Aguilar, the director of the University of Central America’s Public Opinion Institute, which conducted the poll. A truce between two gangs — the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, and Barrio 18 — has broken down. In August, the country recorded its highest one-month homicide rate since the war. The gangs trace their roots to Los Angeles, where former guerrillas banded with immigrant youths to protect neighborhoods and commit crime. Many of the gang members were then deported back to El Salvador. (“Salvatrucho” was a nickname for guerrilla fighters.) “Above all in this new stage of crisis, this state of violence the country finds itself in, it is fundamental to look toward the future in terms of taking back this grand debt, these historical deficits, with the removal of impunity,” Ms. Aguilar said. “To me, the extradition issue sends a message,” she added, that the United States “is not going to support violators of human rights, even though in the past there were governments and politicians that backed that type of abuse.” The Justice Department unit pressing the case against Mr. Montano is a successor of the Office of Special Investigations, which was created to prosecute Nazi war criminals hiding in the United States and is now focused more broadly on human-rights abusers. The prosecutors used one of the office’s oldest tactics to get Mr. Montano into custody: charging him with having lied on an immigration application about his military past and date of entry to the United States. The retired colonel pleaded guilty to six counts of immigration fraud and perjury in 2012. At his hearing at John Joseph Moakley United States Court House in Boston, named for the congressman whose task force revealed that senior military officers were responsible for the Jesuit massacre, Mr. Montano denied involvement in the murders. “I don’t want to deny that there were violations of human rights in El Salvador in the hands of the soldiers or officers or commanders,” he said, according to court transcripts. But, he added, “the institution is made up of individuals that were subject to commit errors.” Now 73, relying on a walker, Mr. Montano is being held at the Pitt County Detention Center near Greenville, N.C. He awaits a decision on his deportation in his cell, two hours up a country highway from Fort Bragg, where members of the Atlacatl Battalion once trained.

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


Review: The Lure of Steak at Noches de Colombia in Montclair

Abstract: Skirt steaks are an obsession. I love them. Pick one up at Kings or ShopRite, toss it on the grill, and the result is a steak that can be as satisfying as, say, the porterhouse at the original Peter Luger, in Brooklyn. Skirt steaks are also affordable. This year, they were around $14.99 per pound at my local market. Now that barbecue season is ending, the skirt steaks at Noches de Colombia in Montclair, one of nine festive and loosely affiliated restaurants, are a fine alternative. The Montclair branch, which opened in June 2014, serves skirt steak with or without chimichurri sauce, which is a parsley-based version of pesto that, during a recent visit, was so deliciously tart, it made me wonder if the chef had sneaked in a handful of sorrel. Fresh lime, not sorrel, it turned out, was the culprit. Over salad, the steak released so much of its rich, meaty, fatty juice that neither the ho-hum lettuce nor shredded carrots needed additional dressing. The ensalada de churrasquito con camarones paired the meat with plump and juicy shrimp. If you’re looking for a meal that is filling but not overwhelming, this is the entree to order. Image The menu includes churrasquito with chimichurri sauce, left, and ensalada de pollo con mango y fresa. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times Several grilled chicken dishes had equal appeal, especially the ensalada de pollo con mango y fresa, a colorful plate accompanied by strawberries, mangos and ripe, buttery avocado. Orange juice is part of the marinade, which keeps the boneless, skinless strips moist and lively. Based on the chicken and the tomato-flecked arroz con pollo that followed, my fellow diner pronounced the restaurant “a find.” And in general, Noches de Colombia is, especially for carnivores. Colombian food does not have a distinctive profile with the American public, but it does have many appealing qualities. It tends to favor hearty meat-and-potatoes-style dishes and simple breads like pandebono, the pillowy and slightly sweet cheese bread baked on the premises daily. It also features an abundance of fatty dishes. Bandeja Paisa (Paisa refers to people who live in or are from northwest Colombia, and bandeja means platter), is notable for both its size (huge) and the variety of items offered. Here, it included two slabs of top butt sirloin; a hot-dog-size link of chorizo; a half circlet of chewy, deep-fried pork belly; sweet fried plantains; a bowl of beans; an arepa (a flat corn cake); avocado; rice; and, crowning the whole plate, two perfectly fried sunny-side-up eggs. As another companion said, to enjoy either this dish or the sloppy Joe-like concoction of ground beef, chorizo and fried plantains known as frijolada, “you have to abandon your fear of fat.” My husband has no such fear and enjoyed both dishes. Healthier, lighter entrees, like the filete à la plancha (grilled flounder) and camarones con vegetales (garlic shrimp with steamed vegetables), were less successful. A dull, bready coating encased the flounder, and too much oil surrounded the shrimp, which needed seasoning. Dishes like those might benefit from a more nuanced style of cooking. Many desserts were also ordinary — the tres leches cake arrived partly frozen — but a bakery in the smaller, cafelike area offered more interesting options: a flaky, caramel-filled turnover and a guava and cheese pastry, which was like a cream cheese and jelly sandwich for adults. Other good choices were the batidos (shakes), especially the improbable favorite, made with avena (oats). The two dining rooms are a happy mix of dressed-up and dressed-down. The more formal dining room is embellished by a large chandelier and a mosaic tiled by a local artist. The casual front room, which encompasses a bakery and a coffee bar, is clubby in the friendliest way. Come more than a few times and the staff will serve coffee the way you like it before you even utter a word.

Noches de Colombia
Restaurant
Montclair NJ


Postal Service Reports $5.2 Billion Loss for Quarter

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Postal Service’s financial problems worsened in the spring. The agency reported a $5.2 billion net loss on Thursday for the quarter that ended June 30. In the same period last year, the agency reported a net loss of $3.1 billion. In the first quarter of 2012, the service had a $3.2 billion loss. The latest report brings total losses so far in its fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, to $11.6 billion, compared with $5.7 billion over the same period a year earlier. The Postal Service’s revenue in the quarter fell to $15.6 billion, a decrease of $153 million, or a 1 percent decline, compared with the same period last year. The agency had operating expenses of $20.8 billion, an increase of $1.9 billion, or 10.2 percent. The Postal Service attributed the net loss mostly to a 2006 law requiring that the agency prefund future retirees’ health benefits, amounting to a $5 billion payment each year for 10 years. The agency defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment due at the beginning of this month that was deferred from last year. It is also expected to default on another $5.6 billion payment that is due in September. While the agency failed to make the August payment and does not expect to make the payment next month, it said it still accounted for a portion of the cost in the quarter. It also accounted for a $1.4 billion workers’ compensation payment to the Labor Department that is due in October. The service said the prefunding requirements, along with the continued decline in first-class mail, overshadowed a bright spot: a 9 percent growth in revenue from shipping services and package delivery. The agency said it brought in about $3.3 billion in revenue from its shipping and packaging business. The Postal Service said losses were expected to continue until legislative changes are made to help it return to financial stability. It has asked Congress for several changes like refunding $11 billion overpaid into one of its pension funds, eliminating Saturday mail delivery and eliminating prefunding for future retiree health benefits and replacing it with its own health insurance program. Without Congressional action, the Postal Service’s internal projections show that it could run short of cash in October and again next year, according to the agency’s inspector general. The Senate passed a bill in May that would overhaul the agency, but the House failed to bring up its version for a vote. Lawmakers left town last week for a five-week recess without acting on the bill. “Congress needs to act responsibly and move on this legislation,” said the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe. “We can only go so far.” Despite projections that show very low levels of cash, and no remaining borrowing capacity, Mr. Donahoe said the Postal Service would continue to ensure that employees and vendors will be paid on time to avoid a disruption of mail deliveries. “We are going to continue to deliver the mail,” he said. Senator Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware, and a co-sponsor of the Senate bill, said the post office’s financial decline should prompt lawmakers to act. “I’m not sure how much more evidence leaders in the House of Representatives need before they realize that the Postal Service is in dire straits and that the need for them to act on comprehensive postal reform legislation is urgent,” Mr. Carper said.

Senate
House of Representatives
Postal Service and Post Offices
Postal Service (US)
Law and Legislation


Turkish Runner Fails Retest

Abstract: The Turkish 10,000-meter runner Elvan Abeylegesse could be stripped of silver medals from the 2007 world championships and the 2008 Olympics after testing positive for steroids in a reanalysis of her doping samples. The Turkish Athletics Federation said Abeylegesse, 32, was among the 28 athletes whose doping samples came back positive in retroactive testing from the 2005 and 2007 world championships.


Cuomo Names Allison Gollust as Communications Director

Abstract: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo , making one of the first changes to his inner circle since he took office nearly two years ago, has hired a former chief spokeswoman for NBC Universal to serve as his communications director. The new adviser, Allison Gollust, was the executive vice president of corporate communications at NBC Universal when Jeff Zucker was its chief executive. Ms. Gollust replaces Richard Bamberger, a former television producer whom Mr. Cuomo hired as his communications director in 2008 when he was the New York State attorney general. Mr. Bamberger said last week that he would soon be leaving the Cuomo administration to pursue work in the private sector. Ms. Gollust has spent most of her professional life at NBC. She became close to Mr. Zucker when he was the executive producer of the “Today” show and she was its chief spokeswoman. She later oversaw communications for NBC News and then for all of NBC Universal . She left NBC , along with Mr. Zucker, when Comcast took it over. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, is known for paying close attention to how he is covered by the news media. In a statement on Tuesday, he described Ms. Gollust as “a consummate professional who has a wealth of experience in communications and management.” “Her extraordinary work ethic, intellect and dedication will be essential to this position, and I look forward to working with her,” the governor added. Ms. Gollust’s first day will be Monday, and Mr. Cuomo’s office declined to make her available for an interview before she starts her job. In a statement , she said, “The opportunity to join the governor and his team to build on the tremendous success they have already achieved in transforming the state is one that I truly could not pass up.” Her appointment is the biggest change to the senior ranks of Mr. Cuomo’s office since his top aide, Steven M. Cohen, left the administration last year to return to private law practice . He was replaced as the governor’s secretary with Lawrence S. Schwartz , who held the same position for Mr. Cuomo’s predecessor, Gov. David A. Paterson.

NBC Universal
Television
New York State
Cuomo Andrew M
Gollust Allison
Bamberger Richard
Politics and Government


Kyle Busch Rallies

Abstract: Kyle Busch won the Nationwide race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., for his second straight victory in Nascar’s second- tier series. Busch, the defending series champion, battled back from two laps down for his fifth win of the season. Brad Keselowski finished second, followed by Joey Logano, Justin Allgaier, Ryan Newman and Kevin Harvick.

Kyle Busch
National Assn of Stock Car Auto Racing
Automobile Racing