France to Send More Troops Into Africa

Abstract: BANGUI, Central African Republic — France will boost its troop presence in the Central African Republic by the end of the year to help prevent the country from spiraling out of control, the French foreign minister said Sunday. The Central African Republic has descended into chaos since rebels ousted President François Bozizé in March, the latest coup in a country that remains one of the world’s poorest despite resources that include gold and uranium. Geographically, it sits at the center of what some analysts have called an “arc of insecurity,” from Somalia in East Africa to Mauritania in the west. France has urged world and regional powers not to ignore the conflict, which has already led to more than 400,000 people being driven from their homes. Last week, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by France, the nation’s former colonial power, demanding that the weak interim government put in place after rebels took over adhere to previously-negotiated plans to hold elections in early 2015. The African Union has deployed about 2,500 troops there, but its resources are limited, prompting the Security Council resolution pledging support and potentially turning the operation into a United Nations peacekeeping force. “We will increase our support, especially in the logistics domain,” said France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius. “We will also increase troops, a little at first. This will be done before the end of the year.” France currently has about 400 troops in Bangui, protecting the airport and French interests. Mr. Fabius did not say how many troops would be added, but some officials said the number could be increased to about 700 or 750. Mr. Fabius said the dissolution of the rebels, an alliance known as Seleka, must be real and concrete. “We cannot have armed bands roaming the country,” Mr. Fabius told a news conference in the riverside capital. “We will not let you down.”

France
Central African Republic
Bangui Central African Republic
UN Security Council
Military
Third World


A.C.L.U. to Sue Morgan Stanley Over Mortgage Loans

Abstract: The American Civil Liberties Union is accusing Morgan Stanley of fueling the production of risky, expensive loans that targeted African-American borrowers. In the lawsuit, filed on Monday, the A.C.L.U. claims that Morgan Stanley is culpable for predatory loans made through the New Century Financial Corporation because the investment bank lent billions of dollars to New Century, a now-defunct subprime lender, and pressured it to make troublesome loans to African-American borrowers who could not afford them. Morgan Stanley packaged the loans made by New Century and sold them to pension funds and other large investors. But, the lawsuit claims, the bank went beyond the traditional role of an investment bank by requiring that the mortgage company churn out the wildly profitable loans that came with “dangerous” characteristics. For example, the lawsuit says, many of the loans ultimately sold to investors were “stated income” loans, in which borrowers could estimate their incomes without having to provide supporting documentation. The action against Morgan Stanley follows a series of lawsuits brought by investors and federal and state officials against some of the nation’s largest banks. The A.C.L.U. suit, which is to be filed in federal court in New York and will seek class-action certification, claims that Morgan Stanley violated the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Rubbie McCoy, one of the five named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, took out a loan from New Century in 2006 with an adjustable rate starting at 12.14 percent, which could not fall below 10.75 percent. It came with “excessive fees and costs,” the suit said. Ms. McCoy, a single mother, said she could not afford the payments, but the broker told her to “fudge” her income, the suit says. Now, she is fighting to save the Detroit home that she shares with her four children. “Having a house was a way to keep my kids grounded,” Ms. McCoy said. Morgan Stanley declined to comment on Sunday. Last week, in an action against another bank, federal prosecutors in New York sued Wells Fargo , the country’s largest mortgage lender, saying it made “reckless” loans for more than a decade that soured, and subsequently left them to the government’s insurance program to pay. In its first salvo earlier this month, the federal mortgage task force formed by the Justice Department sued Bear Stearns & Company, currently a unit of JPMorgan Chase, accusing the company of widespread misconduct during the heady days of the housing boom in the packaging and sale of mortgage securities. Morgan Stanley came under fire from the Massachusetts attorney general in 2010 for its packaging of New Century mortgage loans. In June 2010, the bank agreed to pay $102 million to close an investigation by the attorney general, Martha Coakley, into questionable lending practices. Ms. Coakley said the bank ignored warning signs about the quality of New Century’s loans and tried to court the lender’s business by lowering its loan standards. The A.C.L.U.’s complaint says, “Morgan Stanley actively encouraged lending tactics that increased the levels of risk associated with individual loans.” The subprime loans cited in the suit were made from 2004 to 2007. New Century, one of the country’s most prolific subprime lenders, went bankrupt in March 2007. Based on lending data from 2005 through 2007, the suit says, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency determined that New Century was responsible for the greatest share of loans in foreclosure in the 10 metropolitan areas blighted by the highest foreclosure rates. A former employee who testified in a separate civil suit against Morgan Stanley said that bank officials knowingly bought loans in which borrowers’ debt levels were more than 50 percent of their total income, according to the A.C.L.U. lawsuit. The bank, according to one former employee, typically did not require New Century to conduct a second appraisal of homes, fearing that the second look would result in a lower assessment and prevent the loans from being securitized, the suit says. While other investment banks purchased New Century’s loans, the lawsuit claims that Morgan Stanley “purchased a greater proportion of New Century’s loans than any other institution.” The loans generated by New Century disproportionately targeted African-American borrowers, the lawsuit claims. African-Americans living in the Detroit area were 70 percent more likely to wind up with a subprime loan than were white borrowers with similar financial characteristics, according to an analysis, contained in the lawsuit, of New Century loans made between 2004 and 2006. The Justice Department has accused two major banks of discriminating against black and Hispanic customers. A settlement in one case was announced in July, when Wells Fargo agreed to pay $175 million to settle claims that the bank steered roughly 34,000 minority customers into subprime mortgages, even though they could have qualified for mortgage with lower fees and less risk. The largest settlement of a residential fair-lending violation came last December, when Bank of America agreed to pay the Justice Department $335 million to put to rest claims that its Countrywide unit discriminated against minority borrowers. For Ms. McCoy, the $79,200 loan that allowed her to buy a home in 2006 quickly turned into an albatross, she said. She struggled to pay the monthly amount, which at the time consumed more than half of her monthly income. To help her qualify for the loan, Ms. McCoy said, the broker inflated her income, in part, by ratcheting up the money she received for child support. Last May, Ms. McCoy was unable to afford her monthly mortgage payments. She said she had little hope of saving her home. “I am just waiting for them to kick me out,” she said.

Morgan Stanley
Mortgages
American Civil Liberties Union
Foreclosures
Blacks
Suits and Litigation
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Real Estate and Housing (Residential)
New Century Financial Corp


Giants’ Romeo Okwara Casts a Thoughtful Eye on the World

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Giants defensive end Romeo Okwara rarely leaves home without his camera. One of them, at least. He owns a slick Canon, a Leica manual rangefinder and, as of Christmas, a Polaroid. He does not recall what sparked his interest in photography, or when it started, only that he enjoys capturing a sliver in time — streetscapes, vistas, people — and securing it forever. In virtually the click of a camera shutter, Okwara has gone from not being picked in the N.F.L. draft to starting for one of the league’s stingiest defenses. Okwara, 21, was thrust into a starting role for the playoff-bound Giants after Jason Pierre-Paul underwent surgery to repair a sports hernia. In his first start, a 10-7 victory over Dallas in Week 14, just over seven months after he went undrafted, Okwara recorded a sack and a team-high eight tackles . “If you are going to play in this league, you have to have a little bit of something inside you, a little bit of grit that says: ‘It is not too big for me. I can play in the N.F.L.,’” said Steve Spagnuolo, the Giants’ defensive coordinator. “And I think Romeo has a little bit of that.” In his spare time, such as it is, Okwara indulges his creative side. He explores New York, where he has wanted to live since he visited three years ago as a sophomore at Notre Dame. He had been enchanted by the city’s vibrancy during the winter holiday season, when the Fighting Irish played in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium. The 6-foot-5, 275-pound Okwara wanders Lower Manhattan, walking the same streets frequented by Jean-Michel Basquiat, the late artist whose photo graces Okwara’s Twitter profile and whose nom de guerre from his graffiti-spraying youth, Samo , Okwara bestowed on his French bulldog puppy. He heads to Brooklyn searching for authentic cuisine of his native Nigeria. He visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, admiring the pieces from Egypt and elsewhere in Africa. He attends Broadway shows such as “Hamilton.” Image Okwara sacked Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott and recorded a team-high eight tackles in a victory over the Cowboys on Dec. 11. Credit Elsa/Getty Images “It keeps your mind open,” Okwara said. “Being at practice all day, going through a hard day, you’re not confined to your home. There are things around you that you can go and see.” Befitting someone named after the singer Lenny Kravitz’s stage name Romeo Blue , Okwara has a deep appreciation for music. His father, Julius, urged him to learn an instrument, so he studied piano as a child in Nigeria and later learned guitar and ukulele . Before games, he centers himself by listening to jazz or blues and then revs up with hip-hop or classic rock. His coach at Ardrey Kell High School in Charlotte, N.C., Adam Hastings, shared the story of the time that he drove Okwara to a showcase for high school players. Given control of the radio in Hastings’s truck, Okwara turned to a country music station. “I’m just trying to learn about it,” Hastings said Okwara had told him. Okwara’s curiosity intensified at Notre Dame, where he focused on business — he was an accounting major — but also took courses in art history. One of them culminated in a summer program in Greece, where for three weeks he and his classmates studied ancient art and architecture. Okwara’s parents stressed the importance of education to their four children, so much so that during the recruiting process he would not even entertain interest from colleges whose academic reputations did not meet his standards. It was that desire for better educational opportunities for their children that compelled the Okwaras, in stages, to move to Charlotte, where they had family. Okwara was 10 and in the sixth grade when he and his younger brother, Julian, now a freshman defensive lineman at Notre Dame, came over. It was cold the night he arrived, and when he got off the plane, he saw his breath for the first time. Okwara played soccer in Nigeria — he was a goalkeeper — but started playing football because his older brother, Jimel, did. He was cut in eighth grade and then as a freshman sat on the junior varsity bench. “Everyone makes the team,” he said, laughing. Before Okwara started growing into his body as a junior — he gained about 70 pounds during high school — Hastings would jokingly refer to him as Bambi. “It was all very awkward for him — not knowing where to go, what goes on where, how to do things,” Hastings said. “But when that light bulb went off, he did it all better than everyone else had been doing it.” As a junior at Notre Dame, Okwara switched positions, moving to defensive end from outside linebacker when a new coordinator changed the scheme. It took him another season, and a different position coach, to begin tapping his potential. The new defensive-line coach, Keith Gilmore, watched film of Okwara to assess his strengths — intangibles, reach, strength — and identified a weakness. Image Okwara, right, and Devon Kennard hitting Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford in a 17-6 win over the Lions on Dec. 18. Credit Al Bello/Getty Images “He needed to find what he was really good at,” Gilmore said in a telephone interview. What Okwara had, Gilmore recognized, was power. Instead of trying to run around blockers, Okwara needed to use his long arms and bull his way through. They watched film of two N.F.L. players whom Gilmore had coached in college and considered good models for Okwara: Whitney Mercilus and Connor Barwin , versatile athletes capable of pass rushing as well as dropping into coverage. The play that validated Okwara’s evolution occurred against Wake Forest. Gilmore had been wanting him to leave his feet to make a play, and in the second quarter Okwara hurdled a running back to smother the quarterback for one of his three sacks in the game. Image Okwara demonstrated his talent at Notre Dame with a leaping sack against Wake Forest in November 2015. Credit Jon Durr/Getty Images Okwara finished the season with eight sacks and 12 ½ tackles for a loss. But when N.F.L. scouts visited Notre Dame’s campus, they instead asked Gilmore detailed questions about another defensive lineman, Sheldon Day, whom Jacksonville would select in the fourth round. Okwara said that he had expected to be drafted and that the longer he waited during the draft, the more his frustration mounted. After his name went uncalled for three days, he garnered interest from about 25 teams as a free agent, he said. Okwara chose the Giants in part because of a strong lineage of defensive ends, from Michael Strahan and Justin Tuck, Okwara’s fellow Notre Dame alumnus, to the team’s current pass-rushing stars, Pierre-Paul and Olivier Vernon. Okwara learned that Pierre-Paul needed surgery only through an Instagram post . Because he had replaced Pierre-Paul in the previous game, a loss at Pittsburgh, Okwara figured that he might be in the starting lineup. Not that he ever relayed the thought to his brother Jimel, who had to draw the news out of the ever-reserved Okwara. “The only way you’ll know what he can do is to watch him on the field because he’s not going to brag about himself,” Jimel said. Okwara has already provided a glimpse of the player he could be. Now he must capture his moment.

Giants
Romeo Okwara
Photography
Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Football
Sports Drafts and Recruits
NFL
Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2015


Driving School Students Wait Out the Governor

Abstract: The M-Punctual driving school, a gray-carpeted shoe box of an office on a side street in Kensington, Brooklyn, has been a bit livelier in recent weeks. More immigrants with questionable documents, or no documents, every one of them a potential customer, have been inquiring about the governor’s driver’s license proposal. “For us, it is a great thing,” said Faina Aynbinder, who manages the office and also sells car insurance. Her paean to the forces of opportunity and open markets was cut off by her colleague, Yefim Shpatserman. “Wait a minute,” Mr. Shpatserman said. “I explain. It’s different. Now they propose separate license for illegal immigrants.” A lively debate in Russian followed, by the end of which nothing seemed to have been settled. “I tell you,” said Mr. Shpatserman, a Ukrainian immigrant who runs a truck-driving school out of the office, “in my view, it’s not good. If you have this license, the police pull you over, immediately they check you.” And so it goes, back and forth, all around the city. If the governor’s shifting plan to let illegal immigrants get driver’s licenses has sown chaos and controversy among politicians and advocates on all sides of the immigration debate, things are just as uncertain among those who would be most directly affected: immigrants looking for a chance to drive, and the small driving schools that depend on their business. The schools are fixtures in many immigrant neighborhoods, often doing a side business in tax preparation, translation or other services for those seeking to make their way as Americans. Since Gov. Eliot Spitzer offered, then scaled back, his proposal, the driving schools have dealt with a steady stream of calls asking for hopeful news. (On Friday, the governor indicated that he had not ruled out disposing of the plan altogether.) The answer to most of the questions, so far, is “We don’t know.” “I tell them, there’s been no newsletter, no communication, they just have to wait,” said Mohammad Iqbal, the owner of Al Noor Auto Driving School, a few blocks from the M-Punctual school. Mr. Iqbal, whose sign on Foster Avenue advertises incorporation forms, notary services and typing as well as the standard packages of behind-the-wheel lessons and instruction for the written test, said he was not even sure if an easier-to-get license was a good idea. “Of course it’ll be good from a business point of view,” said Mr. Iqbal, whose customers are from Pakistan, India and Eastern Europe, among other places. “And I understand the advantages: Now we can identify a person — if someone is living here with no ID, then we know who he is. But we have to make sure these IDs would not be abused. If they’re lenient about issuing them, one person can have multiple licenses.” Mr. Iqbal said that before 9/11, customers who failed the driving test would sometimes return a few weeks later using a different identity. That does not happen anymore, he said. Mr. Iqbal, like the other driving school operators, said he accepted people for lessons only if their papers looked legitimate. Henry Chavez, a legal immigrant from Mexico and a student at Julian’s Auto Driving School in Corona, Queens, said that some of his relatives who were in New York illegally were divided on the latest version of the governor’s plan. That plan would create a license valid only for driving, not for identification at places like airports, that would be available to all New Yorkers, including those without immigration papers. Mr. Chavez said his cousin Pablo would rather not risk the scrutiny that holding Mr. Spitzer’s limited license might expose him to. “He’d rather stay as he is now,” said Mr. Chavez, 21. “He doesn’t want to be in a government database.” Mr. Chavez said his cousin Araceli, on the other hand, might be willing to get the new license. “She wants to drive,” he said. “Her dream is to take a road trip across the 50 states.” Much of the confusion around Mr. Spitzer’s plan is understandable. Even if it survives the national political firestorm it has created, it would not take effect until the end of next year at the earliest, and its details might change. As they stand now, they are fairly complicated. Mr. Spitzer’s initial plan, announced in September, was to reverse a 2004 state policy requiring driver’s license applicants to show proof of legal immigration status. That plan was withdrawn under pressure from the federal government and critics. The new plan, unveiled late last month, would create three classes of licenses. The two highest levels would require proof of citizenship or legal immigration status and would be valid forms of federal identification, meaning they could be used to board domestic flights or to enter federal buildings. The third, “basic” level would be valid for driving but stamped “Not for United States Government Purposes.” Officials in the Spitzer administration say that plenty of legal residents and citizens might choose the basic license because it might be somewhat cheaper and easier to obtain. A driver who already has a passport to board a plane would not need the federally valid license, the administration officials say. At the M-Punctual school, Mr. Shpatserman said he doubted anyone who could qualify for a higher-level license would intentionally choose a lower one that could draw scrutiny. “If you’re a regular person,” he said, “you’re not going to want to obtain a cheap license if it can cause you problems in the future.” But Ms. Aynbinder said that a license with drawbacks was better than having no chance of getting a license at all. “I have a lot of people, Mexican people, Ukraine people, who would want to get a license to work,” she said. If the limited license were offered, she added, “it’s their business to do it or not to do it. It’s up to them if they want to take it.” On Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, several school operators said they would like to see a workable plan, even if they disagreed on what the end product should be. At Julian’s Auto Driving School, under the tracks of the No. 7 train between a record store and a shuttered Mexican restaurant, the owner said he was already shopping for more double-pedal training cars. A few blocks away at the Pozo-Cohen insurance agency, Helen Jenny Pozo said that even a limited license would mean fewer untrained drivers taking to New York City’s challenging streets. “I think you need a big red stamp,” she said. “Not valid ID, for driving purposes only. That would be fine.” Outside her office, a black Honda with a green “student driver” sign pulled over. The student, Luis Suarez, a legal immigrant from Lima, Peru, hopped out one side. His instructor, Jorge W. Villarruel, hopped out the other. “He’s getting there,” Mr. Villarruel said. “He needs more practice.”

Illegal Immigrants
Drivers Licenses
Immigration and Refugees
Spitzer Eliot L


ESPN Pays Top Dollar for Football, but Audience Isn’t Buying

Abstract: With ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” viewership still falling after the presidential election, I began to think about what it meant to be the network that pays, by far, the most for its N.F.L. rights. ESPN gets a less-impactful schedule than NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.” ESPN never gets a Super Bowl and only began to carry a single annual playoff game in 2015. ESPN lacks the flex rights of NBC, which can swap a suboptimal matchup for one that is more promising on CBS or Fox, as it did Sunday. Instead of carrying its scheduled Jets-New England game, NBC took Denver-Kansas City from CBS. For that lesser deal ESPN pays the N.F.L. $1.9 billion annually, nearly twice what any of its network rivals shells out. Yes, the contract includes the extremely valuable video and highlights rights that sustain the network’s numerous programs and platforms, as well as the draft and other goodies. But it hardly seems like a bargain. “Our deal is so much more than ‘Monday Night Football,’ ” said Burke Magnus, an executive vice president of ESPN. “For us, it’s a year-round proposition.” Comparing ESPN’s and other networks’ N.F.L. investments, he said, “is apples and oranges to the nth degree.” He added, “I understand the comparison, but we don’t agonize over it.” ESPN’s profitability has long enabled it to pay $1.9 billion a year. The league understood ESPN’s ability to pay a decade ago when ESPN succeeded ABC as the home of “Monday Night Football” and NBC took over on Sunday nights from ESPN. The N.F.L. shrewdly, even cravenly, acknowledged that even as it sold NBC the premier prime-time package, it could still soak ESPN. More than any other network, ESPN needed N.F.L. games to help sustain its monthly subscriber fees, the foundation of its financial structure. So, in the contract that began in 2006, ESPN agreed to pay $1.1 billion annually, nearly twice NBC’s $600 million. When it came time to renew the deal through 2021, the price rose to $1.9 billion a year. NBC is paying $950 million. No one has laid out the ESPN-N.F.L. relationship better than the Denver Broncos owner, Pat Bowlen, who was the chairman of the league’s broadcasting committee when that deal was signed. He was blunt about why ESPN was paying so much more than other networks, and he did not dwell on the dual stream of subscriber and advertising revenues that the others lacked. “We felt we deserved a larger share of that money because the N.F.L. is a big part of their programming,” he said. “They wouldn’t be anything near what they are without us.” Ten years later, “Monday Night Football” is not the powerhouse it once was — and you cannot really blame it on the announcer Jon Gruden confusing viewers with his play-calling arcana. Viewership is down 17 percent to 10.7 million, and the decline at ESPN has continued in the two games after Donald J. Trump was elected president. By contrast, NBC’s audiences increased in each of the two weeks after the election, cutting the season’s decline to 14 percent. But on Sunday, the viewership of 18.4 million for for Kansas City’s 30-27 overtime win over Denver tumbled 27 percent from last year’s Week 12 game. Perhaps it was premature to think that Election Day would magically lift the cloud over N.F.L. ratings when so many other factors were also in play, such as the absence of a superteam, the national anthem protests, concerns about concussions and domestic violence and the early-season suspension of New England quarterback Tom Brady. In addition, the legal problems of the daily fantasy companies FanDuel and DraftKings have prevented those companies from focusing their customers’ attention on this season. The loss of millions of subscribers over the years to cord-cutters and internet services may also be hurting ESPN. Saturation is another possible problem: Three windows of Sunday games, Monday and Thursday night games and a few early Sunday games from Europe may be more football than most people need. Pro Football Talk reported recently that the league was considering whether to reduce or eliminate Thursday games. Players and coaches have long disliked the short preparation time for those games, but the league enjoys the $450 million CBS and NBC are paying for them this season and next. A league spokesman denied the report. There will, of course, be no reduction in Monday night games. So ESPN must endure a schedule that this season, for instance, features only one appearance each for Green Bay, Denver and Dallas, while NBC has three for the Packers and the Cowboys and four for the Broncos. NBC has yet another advantage: While teams can play on prime-time five times a season (four total on NBC and ESPN and one on Thursday night), three can play a sixth time — but all have to be shown by NBC. “NBC’s advantages have been there since the deals were done,” Magnus said. “They’ve been a constant since the beginning.” Perhaps Monday night’s Green Bay-Philadelphia game would bring positive news for ESPN. The Packers are usually a good national draw, but it was ESPN’s misfortune to carry a Packers game when they were 4-6, facing a 5-5 Eagles team. “If you told me at the beginning of the year that Green Bay would be 4-6 when we carry them, I still would have said, ‘I’ll take another Packers game,’ ” Magnus said. That faith in the Packers was rewarded: The game’s audience of 13.1 million was 29 percent larger than the network got for showing Baltimore’s 34-27 win over Cleveland a year earlier.

ESPN
Football
NBC
Super Bowl
Ratings
TV
NFL
Super Bowl 2015


A Review of Luca’s Ristorante, in Somerset

Abstract: Andréa Di Meglio believes that the ambience of his restaurant should be as enticing as its food. Which is why, no matter where I sat at Luca’s Ristorante in Somerset, I got an eyeful. One time, I was fascinated by the gigantic pots and vases that line the entrance and split the dining area in two. On another visit, tile murals of famous Neapolitans preparing to have a meal together got my attention. And no matter where I sat, it was hard to miss a masked visage, which I later learned represented the classic Italian commedia dell’arte character Pulcinella, repeatedly jutting from the wall to join me in a plate of pasta or cup of espresso. “It’s a working chaos,” Mr. Di Meglio said of the décor. In 1994, Mr. Di Meglio, now 39, opened Luca’s with his older brothers as a pizzeria in a strip mall on Route 27. They updated the space and expanded the menu in 2002 to include dishes inspired by their native Ischia, a small volcanic island not far from Naples. The younger Di Meglio has fully owned Luca’s in Somerset for five years, while his older brothers now own Luca’s in Flemington. Image Dishes include fico in camicia, figs wrapped in prosciutto. Credit Aaron Houston for The New York Times Some of the distinctive features of Ischian cuisine, according to Mr. Di Meglio, are pine nuts and fruits like figs and raisins. Dishes with these ingredients are prominent on the menu, starting with a light and tasty plate of meatballs. Another appetizer, figs stuffed with mascarpone and pine nuts and wrapped in prosciutto, was a well-balanced mix of the sweet and savory. The calamari Mamma Amelia contained perfectly cooked squid as well as homemade schiaffoni, thick rings of pasta, which Mr. Di Meglio said was an Ischian favorite. The bread basket came with four warm pieces of focaccia stuffed with mozzarella, raisins and broccoli rabe, a surprise that was popular with my companions. It turns out they’re not alone. “Some people just eat so much of it,” he said of the focaccia, whose fillings change so the customers never get tired of it. “They eat a little piece of the entree and they take it home because they stuff themselves with bread.” In making dishes that are a little out of the ordinary, like the delicately sweet agnolotti di cacao, a cocoa-infused pasta stuffed with a butternut squash mixture and bathed in a cream sauce, Mr. Di Meglio is trying to make his food stand out to different generations of diners. “I need to be a little more hip with things on the menu,” he said. But he added that it’s also important to retain the “chicken parm” crowd. Image Dishes also include agnolotti di cacao, stuffed cocoa pasta. Credit Aaron Houston for The New York Times Luca’s menu is consistently strong. A brick of fresh mozzarella breaded and fried and smothered in what Mr. Di Meglio called a “beef tomato” sauce — a variation on a recipe by Mr. Di Meglio’s aunt — quickly disappeared from our table. A veal osso buco was tender, well covered in a white wine and oregano-tinted plum tomato sauce and served over risotto. “It’s the hardest thing to put together sometimes,” he said of the osso buco, the preparation of which includes a stock made with veal bones. The shellfish in the shrimp nuovi, from the jumbo shrimp to the crabmeat to the bay scallops, were perfectly cooked, as was the black bass special in a white wine leek purée. A young staff of waiters is enthusiastic about the restaurant’s history and the food. I overheard one waiter describe a dish my wife had, the schiaffoni romolo, as something that fooled him into thinking it was made with beef or lamb. His description wasn’t far off; the schiaffoni, or “slap pasta,” is paired with caramelized shallots, roasted garlic and pancetta in a hearty ragù that contained huge chunks of chicken. It tasted meatier than the ingredients suggested, and was one of the more satisfying chicken entrees I’ve had in years. There were a few minor misses, like a breaded fried green tomato appetizer special that was mostly bland, a lobster cannelloni that was swimming in too much brandy cream tomato sauce, and a sauce on the margherita pizza that was too sweet for my taste. But the rest of the dishes we had during our visits, including desserts like a fresh cannoli with orange-tinged cream and a fluffy tiramisù, were successes. Dinner proceeded at a leisurely pace at Luca’s, but courses came out in a timely manner; this process has been smoothed out in recent years, said Mr. Di Meglio, because of a streamlined menu. People with later reservations still wait, but know Mr. Di Meglio isn’t rushing anyone out the door. This comes back to his appreciation for décor as part of the dining experience. “Why do people stay here? Because I put the cushions on the seats.”

Restaurant
Somerset NJ
Andrea Di Meglio
Luca's Ristorante


Secret Corps of Filmmakers Documented Nuclear Bomb Tests

Abstract: They risked their lives to capture on film hundreds of blinding flashes, rising fireballs and mushroom clouds. The blast from one detonation hurled a man and his camera into a ditch. When he got up, a second wave knocked him down again. Then there was radiation. While many of the scientists who made atom bombs during the cold war became famous, the men who filmed what happened when those bombs were detonated made up a secret corps. Their existence and the nature of their work has emerged from the shadows only since the federal government began a concerted effort to declassify their films about a dozen years ago. In all, the atomic moviemakers fashioned 6,500 secret films, according to federal officials. Today, the result is a surge in fiery images on television and movie screens, as well as growing public knowledge about the atomic filmmakers. The images are getting “seared into people’s imaginations,” said Robert S. Norris, author of “Racing for the Bomb” and an atomic historian. They bear witness, he added, “to extraordinary and terrifying power.” Two new atomic documentaries, “Countdown to Zero” and “Nuclear Tipping Point,” feature archival images of the blasts. Both argue that the threat of atomic terrorism is on the rise and call for the strengthening of nuclear safeguards and, ultimately, the elimination of global arsenals. As for the atomic cameramen, there aren’t that many left. “Quite a few have died from cancer ,” George Yoshitake, 82, one of the survivors, said of his peers in an interview. “No doubt it was related to the testing.” The cinematographers focused on nuclear test explosions in the Pacific and Nevada. Electrified wire ringed their headquarters in the Hollywood Hills. The inconspicuous building, on Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon, had a sound stage, screening rooms, processing labs, animation gear, film vaults and a staff of more than 250 producers, directors and cameramen — all with top-secret clearances. When originally made, the films served as vital sources of information for scientists investigating the nature of nuclear arms and their destructiveness. Some movies also served as tutorials for federal and Congressional leaders. Today, arms controllers see the old films as studies in gung-ho paranoia. “They have this very odd voice,” said Mark Sugg, a film producer at the World Security Institute, a private group in Washington. “You and I would be appalled that some hydrogen bomb vaporized a corner of what used to be paradise. But they’ve got a guy bragging about it.” A 2006 book, “How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb,” explores the nature of the cameramen’s secretive enterprise, its pages full of declassified photographs and technical diagrams. “They’re kind of unrecognized patriots,” said Peter Kuran, the book’s author and a special-effects filmmaker in Hollywood. “The images that they captured will, for a long time, be a snapshot of what our last century was like.” After inaugurating the nuclear age and dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in World War II, the United States threw itself into expanding its nuclear arsenal. New designs required test detonations to make sure they worked properly. Between 1946 and 1962, the nation set off more than 200 atmospheric blasts. The secret film unit, established in 1947 by the military, was known as the Lookout Mountain Laboratory . Surrounded by the lush greenery of Laurel Canyon, just minutes from the Sunset Strip, the lab drew on Hollywood talent and technology to pursue its clandestine ends. “The neighbors were suspicious because the lights were on all night long,” Mr. Yoshitake recalled. Film historians say the unit tested many technologies that Hollywood later embraced, including advanced lenses and cameras, films and projection techniques. The cameramen fanned out from Wonderland Avenue to governmental test sites in the South Pacific and the Nevada desert, their job to chronicle the age’s fury. It put them as close as two miles from the blasts. The visual records helped scientists do everything from estimating the size of nuclear detonations to measuring their destructive power. Mock towns went up in flames. Mr. Yoshitake recalled documenting what a fiery explosion did to pigs — whose skin resembles that of humans. “Some were still squealing,” he said. “You could smell the meat burning. It made you sick. I thought, ‘Oh, how terrible. If they were humans they would have suffered terribly.’ ” The cameramen were allowed to simply witness, not photograph, their first hydrogen bomb explosions, which were roughly one thousand times more powerful than atomic blasts. The goal was to get them accustomed to the level of violence. “The purple glow in the sky — that was so eerie,” Mr. Yoshitake recalled. “And we were not even close, about 20 miles way. It filled the whole sky.” Hollywood stars appeared in some of the films. Reed Hadley, star of the 1950s television show “Racket Squad,” portrayed a pipe-smoking military observer who, in 1952, witnessed the world’s first hydrogen blast. “As you can imagine, feeling is running pretty high,” he said, standing aboard a warship in the Pacific. “And there’s reason for it. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll soon see the largest explosion ever set off on the face of the earth.” Official Washington saw many of the films. Members of Congress, who controlled the appropriation of atomic funds, got special viewings. Atomic leaders “put on their best shows” for Congress, Charles P. Demos, a former classification official with the Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear weapons program, recalled in an interview. “They probably affected a lot of the decisions.” The guarded enterprise lost its subject matter in 1963 when the superpowers agreed to move all testing of nuclear weapons underground, ending the spectacle of atmospheric blasts and what governments had come to regard as serious risks to human health from radioactive fallout. In 1997, Hazel R. O’Leary, the secretary of energy under President Bill Clinton, sought to declassify the old movies. At a news conference, Ms. O’Leary called the archive “a treasure trove” and promised to release the films after they had undergone any needed redactions for purposes of national security. Nuclear specialists say the shape and size of a weapon — especially a hydrogen bomb — can reveal design secrets. The department’s goal was to make public up to 20 films a month and complete the declassification project in five to seven years. Late in 1997, an event in Hollywood at the American Film Institute honored the atomic filmmakers. Present were some two dozen of the survivors. “You had to have the cameras running before the detonation,” Douglas Wood, 75, a cinematographer, told a reporter at the gathering. If not, he said, the blinding flash “would burn the film and jam the film gate.” Mr. Kuran, the filmmaker, organized and filmed the Hollywood event. Impressed with the skill and courage of the cinematographers, he mixed the event footage with declassified bomb imagery to produce “Atomic Filmmakers,” a video he sells on his Web site, www.atomcentral.com . The declassifications stopped in 2001. The arrival of the Bush administration, and an outbreak of atomic jitters after the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, combined to bring about the program’s demise. Today, the Energy Department says it has released publicly some 100 movies from the vast stockpile, which the military controls. “What you see is what we have,” said Darwin Morgan, a department spokesman in Las Vegas. A page on the department’s Web site features links to clips from the atomic films that visitors can view free of charge and sells full versions as videodiscs for $10, plus shipping. It calls them “an enduring, awesome visual documentation of the power and destruction of nuclear weapons.” Many are available free on YouTube under the search heading “declassified U.S. nuclear test film.” Mr. Kuran continues to work on the old movies, using high-tech methodologies to improve their clarity and restore faded images to their original glory. “He fixes things pixel by pixel,” said Mr. Sugg of the World Security Institute. “He’s this fanatical quality guy.” “My passion is to find ways of fixing them up,” Mr. Kuran said in an interview. “The whole point is not to lose something that needs to be preserved. I doubt very much that they’re going to be shooting off these bombs again in the atmosphere.” Viewers include President Obama. In April, he hosted a White House screening of “Nuclear Tipping Point.” The documentary profiles a bipartisan group of former atomic officials who are promoting a vision of the world free of nuclear arms — an objective in line with Mr. Obama’s own policies. Mr. Yoshitake, the atomic cameraman, said the release and restoration of the images were healthy developments because their disclosure improved public understanding of the nuclear threat. “It’s a good thing to show the horror,” he said. And he wondered — now that the cold war is over — why advanced nations still retain more than 20,000 of the deadliest of all weapons. “Do we need all these bombs?” Mr. Yoshitake asked. “It’s scary.”

Classified Information and State Secrets

United States Defense and Military Forces


A Victory for Gay Rights in Virginia, but Opponents Vow to Fight On

Abstract: Supporters of gay rights celebrated on Friday their latest courtroom victory, the overturning of Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage, as opponents condemned the decision as an infringement on states’ rights and vowed to take the issue to the Supreme Court. Invoking Abraham Lincoln and the nation’s historic struggle against racial discrimination, a federal judge declared late Thursday that Virginia’s laws that limit marriage to a man and a woman violated the due process and equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment. The ruling was the first to overturn one of the state amendments banning same-sexmarriage that prevail throughout the South. It followed similar recent decisions overturning marriage restrictions by federal courts in Utah and Oklahoma, and by state courts in New Jersey and New Mexico. “We have arrived upon another moment in history when We the People becomes more inclusive, and our freedom more perfect,” wrote Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen of United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Norfolk. But a lawyer defending the marriage law in this case, Ken Connelly, said Friday that the ruling “interferes with the right of Virginians to determine the future of marriage in their state, and it raises serious constitutional issues.” Mr. Connelly is a staff counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group. Gay and lesbian couples in Virginia will not be able to obtain marriage licenses immediately because Judge Wright Allen issued a stay, pending the outcome of an expected appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond. Still, the plaintiffs, including two gay men who seek to marry and two lesbians who want their California marriage recognized by Virginia, were overjoyed. “This is not only important for us as a couple, it’s even more important for us as parents,” said Mary Townley, one of the plaintiffs, on Friday. She and her partner have a 16-year-old daughter and, she said, “It means the world to her that our family will be treated like any other family.” The ruling, which overturned a constitutional amendment adopted by Virginia voters in 2006 as well as previous laws, also said that Virginia must respect same-sex marriages that were carried out legally in other states. This week, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that the state must honor same-sex marriages legally performed in other states, but the ruling did not address Kentucky’s own ban on such marriages. If the Court of Appeals upholds Thursday’s decision, the repercussions in the South, where opposition to same-sex marriage has been strongest, could be wide. Restrictive state amendments would most likely be voided in other states of the Fourth Circuit, including North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia. (Maryland, the fifth circuit member, approved same-sex marriage in 2012.) But legal experts on both sides of the issue expect that this case, or others among the dozens now being argued in federal courts around the country, will be taken up by the Supreme Court, perhaps within the next year or two. Leaving out Virginia as well as Utah and Oklahoma, where the rulings are also stayed pending appeal, same-sex marriage is now authorized in 17 states plus the District of Columbia. The challenge to Virginia’s ban was argued by the same bipartisan team of legal stars , Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, that successfully contested California’s ban in 2010. They argued the case on behalf of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, a private national group. When the case was first filed, Virginia’s Republican governor and attorney general strongly defended the state’s marriage laws. But Democrats won the two offices in November and the new attorney general of Virginia, Mark R. Herring, announced that his office considered the marriage ban unconstitutional and would assist the challenge. In a news conference Friday, Mr. Herring hailed Judge Wright Allen’s decision, saying it was “putting Virginia on the right side of the law and the right side of history.” Officially defending the state law were two court clerks, one of them represented by Alliance Defending Freedom. The plaintiffs are Tim Bostic, an English professor, and Tony London, a real estate agent, who live in Norfolk. They are joined by Carol Schall, an autism researcher, and Ms. Townley, who also works with special needs youth, from Richmond. They married legally in California in 2008, but Virginia refused to recognize that status.

US Constitution,United States Constitution


Job Opening: State Treasurer. Pay: Not Much for an Executive. Burdens: Huge.

Abstract: TRENTON, Nov. 6 — Gov. Jon S. Corzine may soon need to hang a help-wanted sign outside the treasurer’s office. Ever since Mr. Corzine announced this summer that the state treasurer, Bradley I. Abelow, would become his chief of staff, there has been a glaring vacancy for one of the marquee jobs in state government. Government experts say that the treasurer here, who oversees everything from annual budgets to pension investments, commands a much bigger portfolio than counterparts in most states. Yet Mr. Corzine does not appear to be close to picking anyone, according to administration officials, legislators and lobbyists. Because of New Jersey ’s bleak finances, and because the nominee must open his own books to public scrutiny and sever business ties that could pose a conflict of interest, the $141,000-a-year salary hardly seems worth the bargain to many who would qualify for the job. Still others may feel intimidated because the governor and Mr. Abelow — both former executives of the Goldman Sachs investment firm — are just 50 yards down the hall. “What is in it for somebody to want to be in a role where they’re being supervised by two bazillionaires?” said Mary Key, who advises corporations and governments on leadership practices for the Institute for Corporate Productivity in Tampa, Fla. “One would be the power of association, and another is contacts. But do you give that person the responsibility and authority to achieve certain results, to hold them accountable, or not?” For now, Michellene Davis, a lawyer and former executive director of New Jersey Lottery who had been Mr. Abelow’s chief of staff, is acting treasurer. But administration officials say that Ms. Davis, 36, does not want the job. In an interview, Mr. Abelow said that he had not yet offered the job to anyone nor was he in any hurry because of his “enormous confidence” in Ms. Davis and the rest of the senior staff. He also said that he and the governor wanted to tap “someone who has the strength to stand up and say, ‘This is what I think is right,’ and add skills to the organization.” Still, Mr. Abelow conceded that the search had not been easy. “It is hard to find people of substantive experience with terrific leadership skills who want to give up their jobs and work in the public sector,” he said. If anything, the job figures to be even more difficult than in past years because Mr. Corzine’s vision for shoring up the state’s sagging finances figures to dominate the state’s agenda in the months ahead. With a $3 billion budget deficit threatening, Mr. Corzine has already directed his cabinet members to scour their departments for as many cuts as possible, something many regard as trying to squeeze blood from a turnip after years of paring the budget. Soon he is expected to roll out his plans to try to get more money out of state assets like the New Jersey Turnpike. And if that is not enough, the governor and whoever becomes the next treasurer must eventually grapple with the state’s soaring debt burden, and pension and health care systems that face tremendous shortfalls. Then there is the growing drumbeat of complaints about soaring property taxes and how they are chasing residents to other states. The longer Mr. Corzine waits to pick a treasurer, the less time his appointee has to be confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and absorb the Corzine playbook on finances. “I think it’s unusual that it’s taken so long for it to be filled,” said Michael M. Horn, a treasurer in the Kean administration who was co-chairman of Mr. Corzine’s budget transition team. “I can’t remember it being this vacant for this long. It’s a real void because the treasurer’s job includes involvement on all of the major boards and authorities in the state, and leadership is needed to see that there’s input into those boards.” Mr. Corzine’s protracted search does not come as a total surprise to many who follow the workings of state government here. Critics say he tends to take his time gathering information and making decisions, though allies insist he is merely being thoughtful. It should be noted that Mr. Abelow was not Mr. Corzine’s first choice to be treasurer. Indeed, people in his administration say that several candidates — including another Goldman Sachs colleague — declined the offer because of the scrutiny and the financial-disclosure requirements, among other reasons. This time around, the speculation goes, he will not promote someone from within the treasurer’s office, and may also shy away from yet another Goldman Sachs recruit, since there are already several who are among his closest advisers here. One option, Mr. Horn suggested, was that Mr. Corzine might pick another cabinet official to fill the slot, then appoint someone else for that position. This is what happened to Mr. Horn, who was insurance commissioner before Gov. Thomas H. Kean shuttled him over to Treasury. One thing that Mr. Abelow promised was that his replacement would be entrusted to do the job unfettered. As he put it, “I am not looking to be a dual officeholder.”

New Jersey
Abelow Bradley I
Corzine Jon S


Patriots’ Offense Stalls at Familiar Time: Second Half

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Tom Brady could barely spit out the words, so great was his frustration. Another fast start petering out in the second half, a troubling trend that has carried over from last season. A chance to scorch the Jets without their best player on the field wasted. “We couldn’t do anything in the second half,” Brady said. “We had a hard time gaining yards. We couldn’t run it. We couldn’t throw it.” It was unusual candor from Brady, who completed just seven passes and was intercepted twice in the second half Sunday. The Patriots , their aggravation leaking out after they dominated the Jets for much of the first half, went on to lose, 28-14 . Even more confounding was that the Patriots, who marched down the field with ease on their first two drives, could not take advantage when cornerback Darrelle Revis went to the locker room at halftime with a hamstring injury and stayed there. The anticipated bombs to Randy Moss, the slicing and dicing to Wes Welker never materialized. In the first half, with Revis mostly matched up on him, Moss caught just two passes. But one of them was a for-the-ages one-handed touchdown catch on what wound up being Revis’s last play on the field. Welker caught four passes in the first half for 33 yards, an 8.3-yard average In the second half, though, the Patriots managed just 80 yards and 8 first downs after rolling up 211 yards and 12 first downs in the first half. They converted just one third-down opportunity. Their second drive of the second half summed up their issues: a run on first down was stopped for 1 yard, a deep pass was incomplete on second down, and a pass on third-and-9 was incomplete. The Patriots insisted that the Jets did nothing different in the second half, except for moving Antonio Cromartie over to cover Moss. But on some plays, at least, it was clear the Jets did not blitz as many players, leaving more defenders in coverage. “There were plays to be made, we just didn’t make them,” Brady said. “It’s about playing consistently. We can obviously do better jobs like we did in the first half. We’ve got to get the ball in the end zone. There were way too many third-and-longs today. That was a joke.” Making matters worse was that the young New England secondary that played so well last week against Cincinnati fell apart when the Jets finally took the handcuffs off Mark Sanchez, who completed 21 of 30 passes for 220 yards and 3 touchdowns. The Patriots yielded a gut-wrenching Jets field goal late in the first half that narrowed the Patriots’ lead to 4 points. Cornerback Darius Butler was called for pass interference twice on the Jets’ drive that gave them the two-touchdown lead, both on deep attempts. Those two penalties accounted for 39 yards of that drive — shades of the kind of mental lapses that Cromartie made last week against Baltimore. But the Patriots used to be able to score 28 points at will before their opponent even knew how to adjust. On Sunday, they sputtered, even without the Jets’ best defender. Moss said that it was “a big, big difference” between Revis and Cromartie — perhaps the most obvious statement in the N.F.L. — although he also said he did not know for two or three plays that Revis was even absent. But he commended the Jets for backing up their talk. Moss has become the Patriots’ philosopher king, and he seemed to indicate that it was ennui as much as execution that was foiling the Patriots. “It’s being able to handle adversity,” Moss said. “The Jets handled adversity the right way, and we handled it the wrong way. When things happen, it’s what team can handle adversity the best. We just didn’t work together in critical situations. Just will and determination. They did the same things. They blitzed us, manned us, zoned us, it just showed they wanted it more. The plays they made, they made in the second half, we didn’t make in the second half.” The Patriots play Buffalo next week, a team so bereft of offense that it is likely to help the Patriots heal their substantial wounds. But they are a long way from the 2007 team that started games in high gear, then got even faster as the game wore on. The Patriots used to be the team that wore down others with toughness. Now, they are a victim of that style. It is a jarring reversal of fortune for a team that, at least for 29 minutes, looked as if it had a 2-0 start, and a chance to bury its fiercest rival, easily in hand. “It was very frustrating sitting in the locker room knowing we can play a lot better than we did in the second half,” Brady said. “I wouldn’t say it had anything to do with last year. We just couldn’t sustain anything. It was very uncharacteristic. When it comes down to the second half of games, our level of toughness, we have to play tougher.”

New England Patriots
Football
New York Jets


Christie, Candidate for New Jersey Governor, Is Springsteen Fan

Abstract: MENDHAM, N.J. — Sitting in first class waiting for his flight to take off from Minneapolis, Christopher J. Christie froze in his seat: Bruce Springsteen had settled into the very next row. Mr. Christie tried to play it cool, but made a furtive cellphone call to a friend and whispered excitedly, “He’s sitting right behind me!” Mr. Christie introduced himself and said he was a big fan. Mr. Springsteen was polite. “I was hoping he’d say, ‘Let me slide over and I’ll sit with you,’ ” Mr. Christie said of the 1999 encounter. “But it didn’t happen.” If it had, Mr. Christie could have told Mr. Springsteen that at age 13, even though he was wearing headphones, his parents had to yell at him from their bedroom to turn down the volume when he listened to “Born to Run.” That in college, Mr. Christie’s roommates called a meeting to set certain hours during which he could play Springsteen. And that all four of his children had been to Springsteen concerts — in utero. There are many ways to determine people’s New Jersey-ness: where they grew up, perhaps, or how they talk. But on the most culturally resonant measure, Springsteen fandom, Mr. Christie, the Republican candidate for governor, is way off the charts. He has attended 120 Springsteen concerts, in places as far away as Paris and London, and once ducked out of a Trenton fund-raiser — “Gotta go, another event!” he said — and raced to Philadelphia, arriving at the Spectrum just as the band was cranking up “Badlands.” His devotion has created complications this week, as Mr. Springsteen arrives at Giants Stadium on Wednesday for the first of five shows and Mr. Christie is locked in a close campaign for governor with the Democratic incumbent, Jon S. Corzine. Over the objections of aides, Mr. Christie is insisting he will attend Wednesday’s concert — despite a crucial debate on Thursday — and at least one more. The concerts offer him escape, he said during an interview at his home here. “It’s kind of like I check out,” he said. “When it starts, I’m done.” Mr. Christie’s attachment to Mr. Springsteen’s music has generated tension in the governor’s race. After all, Mr. Christie was appointed to be United States attorney in Newark by President George W. Bush — a favorite target of Mr. Springsteen’s onstage political barbs. Mr. Springsteen has grown more politically outspoken in recent years: After endorsing Mr. Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, for president in 2004, he supported Barack Obama four years later. Jon Landau, Mr. Springsteen’s manager, said the rocker, who grew up in Freehold and lives in Colts Neck, has no plans to make an endorsement in the governor’s race and would not comment for this article. Still, Mr. Christie, 47, is not simply fond of Springsteen songs; he has made them almost a soundtrack for his campaign. Springsteen music blares from speakers at his rallies, and he even twisted Springsteen song titles into an attack on the governor that he called “Corzine’s Greatest Hits on Taxpayers.” Governor Corzine, who boasts his own friendship with Jon Bon Jovi, a Sayreville native, said he was a fan of the Boss, too (though not in Mr. Christie’s class; he’s seen about a dozen shows). As to his rival’s admiration of Mr. Springsteen, Mr. Corzine said: “Last time I checked, Bruce Springsteen was for the working man, not giant corporations and the very wealthy.” Mr. Christie said he did not have any illusions that he could win Mr. Springsteen’s endorsement. Asked how he would feel if Mr. Springsteen backed Mr. Corzine, he said that would be tough. “But in the end, I was a fan 34 years ago. I’d be a fan afterwards,” Mr. Christie said. “It is now just too much a part of my life.” At times, the passion seems to overtake his life. In 2003, his second year as United States attorney, Mr. Christie went to 9 of 10 Springsteen concerts at Giants Stadium. He skipped one at the insistence of his wife, Mary Pat. “It gets to be a little much,” she said. As a prosecutor, in preparation for a news conference after a major arrest, Mr. Christie would close his office door and pump himself up listening to songs like “ Prove It All Night ” and “ Jungleland .” “Putting that music on, closing the door, taking a deep breath, going over my notes, and getting that energy level back up helped to make me better in there — better able to present the case, answer the questions and be on my game,” Mr. Christie said. His wife got more than she bargained for in 2007 when he finally relented to her pleas for a Paris getaway: He checked the Springsteen tour schedule and proposed four days in Paris and four in London. “We can do whatever else you want to do,” he told her. “I just need two nights.” Mr. Christie has come to know a few E Street Band members. He’s given legal advice to the guitarist Nils Lofgren, and become friendly with the drummer Max Weinberg. But Mr. Christie’s admiration for Mr. Springsteen appears unrequited. They’ve said hello twice backstage since their airplane meeting a decade ago. “He’s Bruce,” Mr. Christie said. “I don’t know that he has any deep-seated desire to talk to me.” Mr. Christie views Mr. Springsteen’s politics as a populism that anyone can identify with. But the singer’s high-profile advocacy of Democratic candidates has made for some awkwardness. After Mr. Springsteen campaigned for Mr. Kerry, Mr. Bush’s attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, visited Mr. Christie’s Newark office. He asked about a blue and white Fender guitar, signed by Mr. Springsteen, mounted behind Mr. Christie’s desk. When Mr. Christie replied that he was a fan, he recalled, Mr. Gonzalez shot back: “I’ll be sure to tell the president.” Mr. Christie said he brushed off Mr. Springsteen’s broadsides against the Bush administration, but said the singer had every right to express himself. “If that helps him do two and a half or three hours for me, amen — go ahead and do it,” he said. “I don’t take it personally,” he added. Mr. Christie said he thought he and Mr. Springsteen might agree on ideals like equal opportunity. But he said he did not share the rock star’s oft-stated credo, “Nobody wins unless everybody wins.” “I think that in life there are winners and losers — there just are,” Mr. Christie said. “We can’t make everybody winners. But you can make more people winners.” If Mr. Christie is a winner on Nov. 3, it seems safe to say that the Fender guitar will hang in the governor’s office. That the State House will routinely rock to the songs of Mr. Springsteen, played very loud. And that, when the E Street Band returns to New Jersey again, one recognizable member of its audience, guarded by troopers in plainclothes, will be singing along and trying to lose himself in the music.

New Jersey
Christie Christopher J
Springsteen Bruce
Politics and Government
Elections


Logano Dominates at Dover

Abstract: Joey Logano romped to a win in the Nationwide Series race at Dover International Speedway in Delaware. Logano led 184 of the 200 laps in the No. 18 Toyota and raced to his seventh victory of the season.


Dealing With Quirks in a Metal and in the Start-Up Game

Abstract: Five years ago, James E. O'Keefe was a technology consultant making a modest living assessing business and military uses of a quirky 20th-century invention: metal alloys whose molecules are arranged as randomly as those in liquids or glass. That all changed in the fall of 2001 when he came across a glass-coated, hair-thin form of the invention. The more he looked at the technology, the more convinced he became that such microwires could be cheap to make and could serve as powerful signaling devices. Closely related devices were already being used by clothing and electronics retailers in tags to combat theft, but Mr. O'Keefe thought he could sharply cut the cost of antitheft devices and open up numerous related markets with improved microwires. Over the last few years, Mr. O'Keefe, 51, a burly ceramics engineer who has gravitated toward marketing, has also persuaded a handful of individual investors and a number of experts in the peculiar metals, known as amorphous alloys, that his instincts were sound. Now comes the hard task of swaying those who can make or break his dreams: customers big enough to put Mr. O'Keefe's microwires on the map, and manufacturers with the influence and resources to support him financially and in the marketplace. "Choosing strategic partners is the key," Mr. O'Keefe said in a recent interview. "We need them to convince the market we're serious." That is a familiar challenge to many small businesses. But it is especially acute for any in the arcane world of new industrial materials. Most roads in materials either start with or eventually run through manufacturing giants like DuPont, General Electric and Honeywell (which in 1999 merged with AlliedSignal, a pioneer in the 1950's in developing amorphous metals). Mr. O'Keefe has been showing a prototype to retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue. He says his start-up company, Demodulation Inc., could provide security tags at half the cost of the amorphous metal tags used in systems sold today by companies like Sensormatic, a division of Tyco International that is the leader in retail article tracking. In addition, Mr. O'Keefe says, the tags could be scanned from distances up to 20 feet and would be harder for thieves to fool than most current systems. Such an unobtrusive system would be welcomed in stores focused on designer clothing, according to Anthony Montes, director for special projects and corporate asset protection at Saks, who wants to do on a test on a theft-prone item like handbags. Saks uses 10 million tags in its stores and another million in its warehouses, Mr. Montes said. But Mr. O'Keefe is already looking beyond the $1 billion market for electronic article surveillance systems. Research suggests that the magnetic regions in the snippets of wire could be manipulated to store digital information and tiny bar codes could be applied to the glass coating. Such versions of the microwires could become a much cheaper alternative to the radio identification tags currently being developed to help Wal-Mart Stores and other retailers track goods flowing into and through their vast supply chains. Unlike most radio tags, the microwire signals are not disrupted by metal foil or liquid. Glass-coated microwires might also one day be used as chemical and temperature sensors, according to Dr. William P. Weismann, an entrepreneur and former military medical researcher. He began looking at them last year in his role as adviser to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program to develop prosthetic devices for wounded soldiers. But there are still more ways for Demodulation to fail than succeed. Demodulation has reached the treacherous stage of small-business development where its accomplishments -- technical advances, acquisition of crucial patents, stealth networking -- are generating buzz but not much investment on Mr. O'Keefe's terms. He is holding out for freedom to continue pursuing multiple development paths, maintain control of the technology and continue in his role as chief executive. "I'd like to make money," said Mr. O'Keefe, who said he had worked without a salary for five years but declined to say how much he or his initial backers had invested so far. "But you have to take care of the people around you, and the only way to do that is to retain control of the vision. It's easy to flip a business. It's hard to grow it." One way to move faster would be to court venture capital, but Mr. O'Keefe said talks with such firms in the past had convinced him that their need for control and quick profits would be more likely to derail Demodulation than fulfill its promise. Instead, he is prospecting for support from industrial partners who would use or distribute microwire devices. Mr. O'Keefe said that he was close to agreement with one major military contractor, but was barred from disclosing its name. Demodulation and Universal Guardian Holdings, a security company based in Newport Beach, Calif., that trades on the over the counter bulletin board, have this week negotiated the outlines of a joint venture for work on anticounterfeiting applications and manufacturing of the tags for Universal, according to Michael J. Skellern, chairman and chief executive of Universal Guardian. Financial details are not being disclosed. Not surprisingly, most experts Mr. O'Keefe encounters are wary. "It's a very pretty technology but the first thing you hear about a technology is always the best," said Toni Marechaux, until recently the director of the National Academies of Science Board on Manufacturing and Engineering Design. So Ms. Marechaux thinks the microwire story sounds too good to be true? Well, not exactly. When the Treasury Department asked the National Academies last year to look at the technology's potential for combating forgery, she was impressed enough to advocate that Demodulation reach an agreement with Crane & Company, the longtime producer of paper for American currency, to work on embedding snippets of wire in the blank bills it ships to the Treasury. But no deal was struck. From Mr. O'Keefe's perspective, currency did not appear to be a profitable enough market for Demodulation to pursue. Tim Crane, director for research at the family-controlled company, said that Crane had looked at similar microwires in the past, and they were far more difficult to embed in currency than their inventors realized. Moreover, he said, there was no point in pursuing the technology until customers who would have to invest in scanning equipment -- the Federal Reserve banks in the case of the United States -- indicated they wanted it, a point Mr. O'Keefe seconded. But as Ms. Marechaux saw it, the ultimate barrier might be that Mr. O'Keefe and his backers expect too sweet a deal. "They think the world's going to come to them," Ms. Marechaux said.

SMALL BUSINESS
DEMODULATION
SENSORMATIC ELECTRONICS CORP
O'KEEFE JAMES E
SECURITY AND WARNING SYSTEMS
SCANNING DEVICES
INVENTIONS AND PATENTS
WIRE AND CABLE


Polish Crash Inquiry Looks at Decision to Land

Abstract: MOSCOW — As the investigation into the crash of the Polish president’s plane continued Monday, relatives of the victims arrived in Moscow to try to identify the remains. But officials said the process may be difficult because many of the bodies were badly burned or damaged. “It’s not an easy procedure,” the Polish Health Minister, Ewa Kopacz, said in Moscow. “In many cases, it’s only possible to identify the dead with the help of genetic expertise.” Russia held an official day of national mourning on Monday for the victims, and President Dmitri A. Medvedev visited the Polish Embassy in Moscow to offer his condolences. Investigators examining the crash appeared to be focusing on why the pilot did not heed instructions from air traffic controllers to give up trying to land in bad weather in western Russia on Saturday morning. Their inquiry may lead to an even more delicate question: whether the pilot had felt under pressure to land to make sure that the Polish delegation would not be late for a ceremony on Saturday in the Katyn forest, where more than 20,000 Polish officers and others were massacred by the Soviets during World War II. Officials have recovered the flight voice recorder, but on Sunday they did not release transcripts of conversations in the cockpit or the control tower. Still, attention has been drawn to the pilot’s state of mind because of a previous incident involving the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, who died along with numerous other senior Polish government and military officials in the crash. In August 2008, during Russia’s brief war with Georgia, Mr. Kaczynski got into a dispute with a pilot flying his plane to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, according to reports at the time. Mr. Kaczynski demanded that the pilot land despite dangerous conditions, but the pilot disagreed and diverted to neighboring Azerbaijan. Mr. Kaczynski threatened that there would be consequences for the pilot, the Polish newspaper Dziennik reported. “If someone decides to become a pilot, he cannot be fearful,” Mr. Kaczynski said. “After returning to the country, we shall deal with this matter.” That pilot was not disciplined and received a medal for his service. But the defense minister later said that the pilot had suffered depression in the wake of the incident. Lech Walesa, the former Polish president, told the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza over the weekend that in these situations, the captain often sought the views of the government leaders on the plane. “If there were any doubts, the leaders were always approached and asked for their decision, and only on this basis were further steps taken,” he said. “Sometimes the plane captain would make the decision himself, even against the recommendations. We do not yet know what happened, so let’s leave the explaining to the experts.” Officials from both Russia and Poland were taking part in the inquiry into the crash, which killed 96 people, and they said preliminary evidence seemed to indicate that there were no technical malfunctions on the plane, though it was a 20-year-old, Soviet-designed Tupolev. Prosecutors, forensic pathologists and crash investigators were working in Moscow and at the crash site in the city of Smolensk. Throughout the weekend, the Russian government seemed to go out of its way to demonstrate its despair over the crash and its determination to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry, efforts that were well-received in Poland. The two countries have long had an uneasy relationship, though it has improved recently. Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia went to Smolensk on Sunday for a ceremony to return Mr. Kaczynski’s body to Poland. Russian soldiers wearing red and black armbands carried his coffin, while a band played the Polish and Russian national anthems. Mr. Putin and the Polish ambassador to Russia laid bouquets of red flowers beside the coffin as the red and white Polish flag covering it fluttered in the breeze. A Polish military honor guard carried the coffin onto the military plane back. In Smolensk, Mr. Putin also held a meeting with top Russian public safety and law-enforcement officials that was broadcast on national television in Russia. Aleksandr I. Bastrykin, chief of the prosecutor general’s investigation committee in Russia, told Mr. Putin that a preliminary examination suggested pilot error was to blame. “The pilot was informed of severe weather conditions, but nonetheless made a decision to land,” Mr. Bastrykin said. Russian officials said Saturday that traffic controllers had several times told the plane not to land because of heavy fog, warned that it was descending too low and recommended that it go to another airport. On Sunday, a Russian news service, Lifenews.ru, published an interview with an official who was identified as an air traffic controller at the airport. The controller said the pilot, after trying several times to land, indicated that he wanted to try once more. “He said that if he did not land, then he would go to an alternate airport,” the controller said. The traffic controller said that at that point, the pilot was asked for the plane’s altitude, but stopped responding to communication from the traffic control tower. Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States and a retired Air Force major general, said the fact that the plane made several attempts to land indicated that “these guys were truly wanting to complete this mission at all cost.” Mr. Rosenker was the head of the White House Military Office during the administration of President George W. Bush, and was thus responsible for the president’s transportation. He said Sunday that the Polish pilot could have followed the air traffic controller’s warnings. But if he chose to do so, “He’s going to have to explain to somebody if he’s going to land somewhere else.” And that could be difficult, Mr. Rosenker said.

Poland
Kaczynski Lech
Accidents and Safety


Gay Bishop Plans His Civil Union Rite

Abstract: Bishop Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal prelate whose consecration led conservatives to split from the church, said in an interview on Thursday that he and his partner of 20 years were planning a civil union ceremony to be held in his home church in the diocese of New Hampshire in June. Bishop Robinson said that by scheduling the ceremony for June, he did not intend to further inflame conservatives just before the Anglican Communion gathers in August in Cambridge, England, for the Lambeth Conference, which happens only once every 10 years. He planned his civil union for June, he said, because he wanted to provide some legal protection to his partner and his children before he left for England for the conference. Bishop Robinson has received death threats, and he wore a bulletproof vest under his vestments at his consecration in 2003. “We could have, I suppose, just gone to the town clerk and had that signed,” he said, “but, you know, I’m a religious person, and every major event in my life has been marked with some kind of liturgy and giving thanks to God.” Bishop Robinson will not be attending the Lambeth Conference’s official sessions with his more than 800 fellow bishops. He was excluded from participating by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who, as leader of the Church of England, is responsible for issuing the invitations. The archbishop came under pressure from conservative bishops who warned that they would boycott the conference if Bishop Robinson attended. And recent efforts by three American bishops to negotiate a compromise that would have allowed him to attend in a “diminished capacity” failed. Bishop Robinson initially rejected, but has now accepted, the idea that he will spend the conference days in the Marketplace, an adjunct bazaar where church advocacy groups and purveyors of Christian merchandise promote their causes and wares. He said he would position himself in the Marketplace and at several evening events to make his case about how gay relationships are compatible with Christianity. “My hope,” he said, “is that even some of the more negative bishops will be encouraged by the American participants to come with them and to see that I don’t have horns, or I don’t wear a dress or I don’t fit any of the stereotypes that are often held by people who don’t really know gay people, and in fact will see how normal I am, and to hear about the incredibly normal life I have as a bishop in my diocese.” In the last five years, conservatives in the Anglican Communion have threatened schism ever since the American church’s General Convention, its highest governing body, consented to the election of Bishop Robinson, and refused to issue a blanket prohibition of same-sex blessings. It is up to the bishop of each diocese to decide whether to permit such blessings. Bishop Robinson, after consulting with a council in his diocese, has approved his own ceremony. Bishop Robinson said he was surprised at another controversy that arose last year when he endorsed Senator Barack Obama before the New Hampshire primary. Some voters in the state said religious leaders should stay out of politics. Bishop Robinson said he had talked three times with Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and advised him on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. Bishop Robinson spoke in an interview at The New York Times, and is promoting his new book, “In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God” (Seabury Books). The publicity tour will take him to a few unexpected places: a conference of black church leaders and the Hay Festival, a literary gathering in England. In England, the Anglican church has plenty of gay clergymen, he said, but the difference with the church in the United States is that they are in the closet. “I myself have probably met 300 partnered gay clergy there,” Bishop Robinson said. “I have met bishops who will go and have a lovely dinner with a priest and his gay partner, and then warn the priest that if the dinner becomes public, the bishop will be your worst enemy.”

New Hampshire
Anglican Churches
Robinson Gene
Homosexuality
Marriages
Religion and Churches
Christians and Christianity


Drug Industry Says 340B Discount Program Is Being Abused

Abstract: When a private oncology practice in Memphis formed a partnership with a nearby hospital in late 2011, the organizations proclaimed that the deal would “transform cancer care” in the region. What they did not emphasize was that the deal would also create a windfall for them worth millions of dollars a year, courtesy of an obscure federally mandated drug discount program. The program, known as 340B, requires most drug companies to provide hefty discounts — typically 20 to 50 percent — to hospitals and clinics that treat low-income and uninsured patients. But despite the seemingly admirable goal, the program is now under siege, the focus of a fierce battle between powerful forces — the pharmaceutical industry, which wants to rein in the discounts, and the hospitals, which say they might have to cut services without them. One issue is that the program allows hospitals to use the discounted drugs to treat not only poor patients but also those covered by Medicare or private insurance. In those cases, the hospital pockets the difference between the reduced price it pays for the drug and the amount it is reimbursed. That is what happened in Memphis. When the West Clinic teamed with Methodist Healthcare, the huge volume of chemotherapy drugs used by the clinic suddenly qualified for the hospital’s discount, while reimbursement remained the same. In a report issued on Tuesday , pharmaceutical industry trade groups say that some hospitals have gone overboard in using the program to generate revenue, straying from the original intent of helping needy patients. The report, which was supported by groups representing pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers and oncology practices, called for the discounts to be more narrowly focused. Some senior Republicans in the House and Senate are investigating the program, which they say has suffered from murky rules and lax enforcement. “If ‘nonprofit’ hospitals are essentially profiting from the 340B program without passing those savings to its patients, then the 340B program is not functioning as intended,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in letters sent to three medical centers last October. One reason for the scrutiny is that the program — named after the section in the law that created it in 1992 — now includes one-third of the nation’s hospitals, triple the number in 2005. About $6.9 billion worth of drugs, or about 2 percent of the nation’s total, are sold through the program annually, reducing revenue for the pharmaceutical companies by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The industry report says sales could grow to $12 billion by 2016. That is in part because the nation’s new health care law will make more hospitals eligible for the discounts by increasing the number of Medicaid patients they treat, even as the need for the discounts should arguably diminish because fewer people will be uninsured. Hospitals say 340B was never meant to merely provide cheap medicines to poor people. Rather, it was meant to help the hospitals that treat such patients, and to stretch federal resources. Making money from the spread helps keep the hospitals operating, which in turn helps needy patients, they say. Image Burnis D. Breland, the pharmacy director of a Georgia health system, says the federal program is essential. Credit Robin Trimarchi for The New York Times “If we didn’t have our 340B program, I seriously doubt we could have our outpatient cancer center,” said Burnis D. Breland, director of pharmacy at the Columbus Regional Healthcare System in western Georgia. Nevertheless, with the program under scrutiny, the organization representing 340B hospitals, Safety Net Hospitals for Pharmaceutical Access, has warned companies that help those hospitals run their discount programs to avoid using terms like “increasing profits” and “revenue enhancement.” A 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said that federal oversight of the program was insufficient to ensure that hospitals and drug companies were adhering to the rules. In response, the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees the program using an annual budget of only $4.4 million, audited 51 hospitals last year, its first audits since the program began. It also made all hospitals recertify themselves as eligible for the program. As a result, some 271 treatment sites belonging to 85 hospitals were ejected from the program, said Krista Pedley, the federal official in charge of the 340B program. She said that three hospitals acknowledged receiving discounts for which they were ineligible and were repaying manufacturers. Some drug companies — Genentech is the only one that has publicly identified itself — are also auditing hospitals or considering doing so. Previous studies have shown drug companies do not always offer the full discount, though no drug companies are being audited. “Basically the pendulum has swung so aggressively toward oversight of the hospitals, with little concern about the drug companies,” said Ted Slafsky, president of Safety Net Hospitals for Pharmaceutical Access. With so much money at stake, the 340B program has given rise to a cottage industry of companies that help hospitals increase their savings, and two big conferences are held each year on the program. The most recent one, in San Francisco last month, drew 800 people and about 50 exhibiting companies. Some oncologists say the 340B program is one reason that more than 400 oncology practices have become part of hospitals in the last several years. The 340B discounts apply to all drugs, but oncologists use a lot of costly ones, providing a potentially larger spread. A single oncologist might use $2.5 million to $4 million in drugs a year, according to the Community Oncology Alliance. If those drugs can be acquired for a 25 percent discount, that is a potential profit of up to $1 million. “It’s the loophole that’s made cancer drugs profitable again,” said Dr. Peter B. Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a former adviser to Medicare. Dr. Lee S. Schwartzberg, medical director of the West Clinic in Memphis, said the 340B program “definitely was a factor” in the decision to form the partnership with Methodist Healthcare. Image Some senior Republicans, like Senator Charles E. Grassley, are scrutinizing the 340B program. Credit Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images The hospital and clinic say they will donate $5 million a year from the 340B proceeds to the University of Tennessee, which is building a cancer center with which they are affiliated. The money is also being used to help pay for nursing and genetic counseling, Dr. Schwartzberg said. Some prison systems, meanwhile, save on drug costs by making a 340B hospital their official health care provider. If inmates “become ‘patients’ of the hospital, a ‘win-win’ arrangement can be negotiated with the state, county or city,” said a slide from a 2010 presentation by Safety Net Hospitals for Pharmaceutical Access. A big increase in the use of 340B occurred in 2010, when the government allowed hospitals to use an unlimited number of neighborhood pharmacies to fill 340B prescriptions. Before that, patients generally had to go to the hospital pharmacy, which can be inconvenient. The University of California medical centers, which now have 240 pharmacies under contract, expect 35 percent of eligible prescriptions to go through the 340B program this year, up from only 10 percent in 2011, said Lynn Paulsen, director of pharmacy practice standards. In these arrangements, needy patients typically get the drugs at little or no cost. But if a patient is insured, the hospital keeps the difference between the reduced price it paid for the drug and the higher price reimbursed by the insurer, and pays the neighborhood pharmacy a dispensing fee. There are already about 25,000 arrangements between a treatment site and a pharmacy, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. “It’s morphed into a big revenue-capture game — how can we get as many 340B prescriptions filled at a 340B price,” said Aaron Vandervelde of the Berkeley Research Group, a consulting firm to pharmaceutical companies. It is too early to say what, if any, changes will be made by Congress. Hospitals say that restricting the discounts to drugs actually consumed by poor patients would eviscerate the benefits of the program. The hospitals are hoping the program might be expanded to help balance the federal budget. Ailing hospitals might garner more sympathy than profitable drug companies. It is perhaps telling that no Democrats have joined the investigation of the 340B program. “It’s saving the government money, so they don’t have an incentive to change it,” said Carlton Sedberry, senior director at Medical Marketing Economics, a pharmaceutical industry consulting firm. “It’s making the hospitals money, so they don’t have an incentive to change it.” And patients, for the most part, are unaware of 340B. “The only people this smacks are the manufacturers.”

Hospital
Pharmaceuticals
Health Insurance
Obamacare,Affordable Care Act


Taxiway Work Seen as Factor in Close Call at Kennedy

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - The crew of an Israeli jumbo jet that got lost in a rainstorm at Kennedy International Airport last July apparently did not know that one of the taxiways was closed for reconstruction, one factor that caused the plane to blunder into the path of a cargo jet that was about to take off, according to the chief Israeli investigator. A continuing investigation into the near-collision also revealed that an airline official had ordered the crew to rewrite its report to play down the seriousness of the encounter. As the jumbo jet, a Boeing 767, sat in the middle of Runway 22 Right on the night of July 6, with 262 passengers and crew members and enough fuel to fly to Tel Aviv, the crew believed it was on a taxiway rather than a runway, according to the investigator, Itzhak Raz. The co-pilot of the passenger plane saw the cargo plane rumbling toward him but did not realize it was preparing to take off, and he radioed the tower to ask who was taxiing his way, Mr. Raz said. "They were mis-oriented," said Mr. Raz, a condition he described as being worse than lost, because the crew was disoriented without knowing it. "They were so sure they were right, they didn't see the lights were different." To help prevent confusion, taxiway signs are black and yellow; runway signs are red and white. A collision was averted by a series of chance factors, according to investigators. Planes taking off on that runway are often not airborne by the spot where the Israeli jet stopped. But the co-pilot of the cargo jet, at the controls that night, had started his takeoff roll from the beginning of the runway, spotted the passenger plane and then climbed at a very steep angle, missing it by less than 100 feet, by the cargo plane captain's estimate. Climbing that steeply was possible because the plane was empty. According to Mr. Raz, the Israeli crew had looked at a map of the airport before leaving the terminal and decided to turn left at the second taxiway, Bravo, and follow it to the beginning of the runway. But the first taxiway, Alpha, was under reconstruction. Its lights were turned off and the pavement itself had been torn out, he said, making the taxiway invisible to the crew of the jet, operated by Israir Airlines. So the crew passed Bravo, thinking it was Alpha, and prepared to turn left on Runway 22 Right, thinking it was Bravo, he said. A third person in the Israir cockpit recognized the problem, a "relief pilot" who was to take a turn flying during the long flight across the Atlantic Ocean and Europe, to give the two others a chance to rest. Sitting in the "jump seat" at the back of the cockpit, he reached forward, shoved the throttles open and shouted to get off the runway, Mr. Raz said, but the captain, still oblivious, yanked the throttle closed again. When the crew arrived back in Tel Aviv, the three men composed a report describing the near-collision, but an Israir executive, the vice president for operations, ordered them to rewrite it "to reduce the severity," Mr. Raz said. So the report submitted to the Israeli authorities said they had passed near another plane that was taking off, not that the other plane had flown directly over them. Mr. Raz said he was first alerted to the seriousness of the encounter by an article in The New York Times on July 21. The misleading changes in the original report were first disclosed by an Israeli television news program, "Uvda." Israir, a new airline, began flying to Kennedy last March, with temporary permission from the Israeli government; it is seeking permanent permission. The vice president has been removed from his job, and a hearing is pending, Mr. Raz said. Two Israeli crew members were demoted and sent for retraining, he said. Mr. Raz, who was in Washington on Friday to brief the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, said in an interview afterward that his investigation was continuing. The purpose of the investigation, he said, is not to find fault but to take steps to make similar mistakes less likely. A spokeswoman for the F.A.A., Laura J. Brown, said her agency was waiting for the complete report by Mr. Raz and an Israeli board of investigators.

KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY
AIRLINES AND AIRPLANES
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL