Florida County Rejects Planned Encampment for Homeless

Abstract: MIAMI — When retirees say they have bought guns to protect themselves from a plan to house the homeless a quarter mile from their neighborhood, Florida politicians pay attention. When 200 people show up at a 9 a.m. meeting, some wearing yellow T-shirts that say “no tent city,” elected officials tend to go along. That may be the lesson of a 4-to-3 vote Tuesday by the Hillsborough County Commission, which killed a plan from Catholic Charities to create an encampment for the homeless in Tampa. It was the end, for now, of an emotional dispute between residents fearful of the homeless and advocates who had argued for immediate help in a county with the state’s largest homeless population and where the recession has been especially severe. Frank Murphy, president of Catholic Charities for the St. Petersburg Diocese, said the commissioners sidestepped a problem that had been ignored for years. “They just don’t think it’s important, I guess,” he said. The plan would have used a 12-acre church lot to serve 250 people for up to 90 days in tents and small “casitas” that look like wooden sheds with windows. The diocese opened a similar camp two years ago in nearby Pinellas County, and Mr. Murphy emphasized that the plan for Tampa would have included background checks for the people placed there, along with fences and a round-the-clock police presence. “People call it a ‘tent city,’ ” Mr. Murphy said. “It’s more a social service model where people come in and do a lot of case work, where we ask, ‘How can we help this person?’ ” The closest residential neighborhood, East Lake, is across a divided highway and behind a row of businesses — 1,200 feet away in all. That was not nearly enough for Randall Woosely, 46, an unemployed former cab driver living with his sister in East Lake, who came to pressure the commission to vote no. “I’ve been in jail; I know this criminal element,” Mr. Woosely said, noting that he had just served 10 months on a charge related to stolen property. He added: “I’m not opposed to helping homeless people. It’s just this is no place for that.” County leaders agreed. Three of those who voted no — Al Higginbotham, Kevin White and Ken Hagan — said there must be a better place for the homeless. They also cited crime as a concern, despite testimony from the police in Pinellas County, who called the camp there a success. Mr. Higginbotham initially seemed to favor the idea. “In these tough financial times, someone has stepped forward and has been willing to reach out a hand of generosity,” he said. “That’s what this country has been founded on.” Then he introduced a motion to reject the plan. For explanation, he read accusations from police incident reports at the Pinellas County camp, including those for domestic violence, theft and an alleged rape. He offered little context: In the rape case the victim was a camp resident who had recently smoked crack cocaine and refused to prosecute. The impression Mr. Higginbotham and opponents created was that of a lawless shantytown where the homeless would benefit from programs paid for with tax money — an idea many saw as unfair. As Mr. Woosely’s stepfather, William Aguiar, put it: “I’ve gotten by. If I can manage that, so can anybody else.” Few opponents of the plan accepted advocates’ arguments that the recession had pushed otherwise hardworking families into the streets, or that the needs were greater than the current infrastructure could handle. Linda Hinson, 61, a retiree in East Lake, said defeat of the camp plan meant “I don’t have to go out and get a gun.” She declared that there were already enough shelters. “No there’s not,” interjected Tom Atchison, director of a social service agency with 120 long-term beds for the homeless. Mr. Atchison told Ms. Hinson there was a six-month wait for a bed, but she ignored his comment. She kept talking about crime as she pushed an elderly neighbor in a wheelchair toward the parking lot.

Florida
Catholic Charities
Homeless Persons
Recession and Depression


French Soldiers Reach Air Algérie Crash Site

Abstract: PARIS — As a detachment of French soldiers reached the crash site of an Air Algérie jetliner in Mali, officials in Paris said on Friday that the accident was most likely weather-related and that the distribution of the wreckage over a limited area suggested that the plane probably hit the ground intact. “We rule out — and have from the start — any ground strike,” Frédéric Cuvillier, the French junior minister for transport, told France 2 television on Friday. President François Hollande of France said that the “black box” data recorder had been found at the crash site and confirmed that there were no survivors. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mr. Hollande said that the number of people who died in the crash was 118, two more than the government and airline officials said on Thursday. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said that verification of the passenger manifest overnight had confirmed that there had been 112 passengers and six crew members on board. The number of French victims was also revised, to 54 from 51, including several dual nationals, Mr. Fabius said. Mr. Hollande said he spoke by telephone on Friday with Mali’s president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, and offered France’s full cooperation with the investigation as well as the repatriation of the victims’ bodies. Following international rules, Mali will lead the investigation into the cause of the accident. But Mr. Fabius said that experts from the French Bureau of Investigation and Analysis were expected to arrive in Mali on Saturday and would assume a significant role in the inquiry. The wreckage of Flight 5017 was found by an international search team just before nightfall on Thursday in an isolated area, about 60 miles south of the town of Gao in eastern Mali. Soldiers from Burkina Faso, who were the first to arrive on the scene, said they had found several bodies among the burned-out hull of the plane, a Boeing MD-83. “We think the aircraft crashed for reasons linked to the weather conditions,” Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, said in an interview on the French radio station RTL. Image Relatives of people killed in the Air Algérie plane that crashed in Mali mourned in south Lebanon on Friday. Credit Mahmoud Zayyat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, chief of the Burkina Faso general staff, said on local television that troops had discovered the remains of the plane “totally burned out and scattered on the ground.” Video taken at the crash site by soldiers from Burkina Faso, and broadcast on French television Friday morning, showed the plane’s charred, fragmentary remains scattered over a broad area of muddy terrain. A French Defense Ministry spokesman said the wreckage had been found by a Reaper surveillance drone operated by the French military based on information provided by the authorities in Burkina Faso. Roughly 100 French troops and 30 vehicles left Gao for the crash site early on Friday, said the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian. French officials noted that the site was extremely remote, about a three-hour drive from Gao. “It must be recognized that the physical conditions on the ground complicate the search,” Mr. Fabius, the foreign minister, said. “Our intention is to bring the bodies to Gao as quickly as possible.” He said initial identification of the victims would have to take place on site before the remains could be repatriated. Mr. Fabius said that “there were powerful storms active in the region” at the time the plane lost radio contact with air traffic controllers. The plane took off early Thursday from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on a flight to Algiers. The Burkina Faso government said that the aircraft’s last contact with ground control came a few minutes after it had passed northward out of the country’s air space. It said the crew later contacted air traffic controllers in Niamey, Niger, to say that the plane had encountered storms. Swiftair, the Spanish company that owned the plane, confirmed that all six crew members were Spanish citizens. Government sources said the passengers came from 14 countries, with France having the highest number of citizens aboard. Burkina Faso said 28 of its nationals were on board. Details about some of the French victims began to emerge in local news media reports. One family in eastern France appeared to have 10 members aboard Flight 5017, said a spokesman for the prefecture of the Rhône-Alpes department, Agence France-Presse reported. The crash comes at a time when the aviation industry is already reeling from the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine last week, the crash of TransAsia Airways Flight 222 in Taiwan on Wednesday and the suspension of flights to and from Tel Aviv this week because of rocket fire from Gaza. France, which was once a colonial power in the region, led an international effort last year to expel Islamist militants from towns in northern Mali that were overrun by Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate in 2012. The militants left behind stacks of manuals explaining how to use SA-7a and SA-7b shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, which can shoot down an airliner flying low for takeoff or landing. But those militants are not known to possess heavier weapons that could strike an aircraft at cruising altitude.

Air Algérie
Mali
Burkina Faso
Plane Crashes and Missing Planes
Algeria


X Marks Spot of HC of NYJ, Who Is M.I.A.

Abstract: Hempstead, N.Y. - IT wasn't the coldest thing that ever happened in this auditorium. The Jets' official see-ya to Herman Edwards yesterday was an emotional love fest compared with the way Bill Belichick got out of Dodge five years earlier. In fact, if the Jets had a sense of humor (if anybody in pro football had a sense of humor), they would rename the room the HC of the NYJ Auditorium, in honor of Belichick, who performed his own personal quarterback draw out of the Jets' lives. That's correct. X marks the spot where the winner of at least three Super Bowls left the Jets flat-footed nearly five years ago, after scribbling his resignation notes on a slip of paper. On this very same stage yesterday, Jets General Manager Terry Bradway bid a tepid adieu to Edwards, who had given five years of energy, and a good bit of success, to this franchise. Later in the day, Edwards accepted the coaching job in far-off Kansas City. Bradway wished him luck, falling somewhere between cheering and mourning. It was pretty cold. It sounded as if Edwards had wanted a longer and richer contract, and as if the Jets' owner, Woody Johnson, could not wait to deliver an emphatic "no way!" Bradway, who is not a very public person, had to act like a general manager, out in front of the news media types yesterday, to explain why Edwards was gone. By Bradway's own admission, never once, in the last weeks of overt public negotiating and private leaks and demands, did he say: "Herm, we want you here. What will it take to keep you?" Upon prodding yesterday, Bradway said, "It may not have been the right thing to do," suggesting there is some kind of guy code that keeps a general manager from trying to persuade his coach to stick around. That was cold, too. Edwards hit the lucky-protégé jackpot. He is close with Carl Peterson, the Chiefs' president, and Dick Vermeil, the retiring coach, each of whom wanted Edwards to go to work in Kansas City. Bradway also has Kansas City associations, but he and the Jets seemed quite all right with waving goodbye to Edwards. "It's like Parcells used to say, 'You can be in one place too long,' " Bradway said yesterday, quoting Bill Parcells, who hired him for the Jets' front office and who has profited from never staying in one place for long. Change is good, Bradway said yesterday, early and often. He admitted he was speaking of both the Chiefs and the Jets. Edwards leaves with a 39-41 record with the Jets and a 2-3 playoff record. No other Jets coach had ever taken the team to the playoffs three times. This is not exactly one of the great franchises. Under different regimes, the Jets have watched Lou Holtz walk, have sacked Pete Carroll after one year, have let Parcells bully Belichick into leaving without ever coaching a game and have now let Edwards go without trying to keep him. It was possible to find fault with Edwards's game management, and with his dependence on coordinators of his offense and defense, but there was no missing his essential leadership. Players hustled for Edwards. He was one of them, and he was decent, and he spoke with gospel flair. Heck, sportswriters would have played for Edwards. In this same HC of NYJ auditorium in the spring of 2001, the new coach held a full day of seminars for the Jets' news media corps -- then he led us out on the field for drills, just so we would know what his cadre of coaches was doing. I popped a hamstring chasing a punt. On chilly days I can feel it twanging, a lasting memory of Herman Edwards. Thanks, Coach. Over the years, Edwards was not able to hide his insecurity about money. Whenever a coaching friend of his was fired or threatened, Edwards would wax bitter about the vagaries of his business. It was plain to see he was thinking about himself. Now he was coming off a 4-12 season, with a bum-shouldered quarterback and an aging running back, and he had only two years left on his contract, worth about $4 million. Edwards does not come from money. One more contract and he would be set for life. He understood that, but the owner, who does come from money, let him walk. There is no suggestion that Edwards is going to win three Super Bowls the way Belichick has. Neither is there reason to believe Bradway is about to create a dynasty with the list of leftover coaches he is about to interview. The Jets had a coach but they let him get away. That was cold, and quite possibly stupid. Sports of The Times E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com

FOOTBALL
KANSAS CITY CHIEFS
NEW YORK JETS
EDWARDS HERMAN
SPORTS OF THE TIMES (TIMES COLUMN)
COACHES AND MANAGERS


Fuel Removal Underway at Crippled Plant in Japan

Abstract: TOKYO — The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant on Monday began removing nuclear fuel assemblies from a storage pool atop one of the site’s blown-out reactor buildings, a delicate yet critical operation that could help reduce risks at the plant. The Tokyo Electric Power Company released frequent updates about its progress on Monday, when it extracted four of the 1,533 fuel assemblies that lie in a pool of water at the plant’s No. 4 reactor. That reactor, along with three others, was heavily damaged by hydrogen explosions in the early days of the accident, set off by the enormous earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. The state of the No. 4 reactor has been a particular concern because all the fuel at the unit, which was shut down for checks when the crisis hit, lies inside a spent-fuel pool that is perched on the damaged reactor’s upper floors. Experts had warned that leaving the fuel assemblies atop a structurally compromised building was extremely dangerous. Over the past months, Tepco has focused on devising a plan to place the fuel assemblies in a steel cask, which will be lifted out of the water and transported by trailer to a more secure fuel pool on the ground. To prevent the nuclear fuel assemblies from overheating, engineers must keep them covered with water. On Monday morning, workers carefully lowered the cask into the spent fuel pool . They then used a crane to extract the first fuel assembly from racks inside the pool and transferred the assembly into the cask. By Tuesday, engineers will transfer 21 more fuel assemblies into the cask before they lift it out of the water and onto a trailer. Naomi Hirose, the president of Tepco, called the start of the work at the No. 4 unit a milestone in a cleanup and decommissioning process that is expected to take decades. Tepco hopes to finish removing fuel from the No. 4 reactor pool by the end of next year. “The extraction process represents the beginning of a new and important chapter in our work,” Mr. Hirose said in a statement. But Japan’s nuclear regulator has pointed out that the process also poses some risks. If damaged or left uncovered, the fuel assemblies could overheat or emit large amounts of radiation. Another difficulty is that engineers could have trouble extracting the fuel assemblies from storage racks in the pool, which is strewn with debris that might cause some assemblies to jam. Lake Barrett, a former United States nuclear regulator involved with the cleanup after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, said he had been invited by Tepco to review its contingency plans and found them thorough. Even if assemblies got jammed, for example, Tepco engineers could ultimately use underwater cutters to free them, he said in a telephone interview. “I’m not trivializing what is an important operation. And yes, there’s small debris on top. Several of the assemblies will probably get stuck,” he said. “But it can be dealt with. The technological safety risk of moving the fuel is very, very low, and I believe they’re ready to go.”

Japan
Tokyo Electric Power
Naomi Hirose
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Japan Earthquake Tsunami
Accidents and Safety
Nuclear energy


Russian Police Arrest a Suspected Racketeer

Abstract: MOSCOW — Semyon Y. Mogilevich, a reputed kingpin of the Russian mob, was arrested in Moscow this week on tax evasion charges. Western law enforcement and intelligence agencies have identified Mr. Mogilevich, a native of Ukraine with Russian citizenship, as a pioneer in using sophisticated Western financial instruments to launder money in the former Soviet Union. Russian police arrested Mr. Mogilevich, who appears in his F.B.I. wanted poster as a portly and balding man in a sports blazer, outside a central Moscow office building late Wednesday after he had met with the owner of a cosmetics company. He was accused in a $2 million tax evasion scheme at the company, a charge unrelated to F.B.I.’s allegations against him. Mr. Mogilevich, 61, has in the past denied links to organized crime, and his lawyer denied the new charge Friday, Russian media reported. It was unclear why the announcement of his arrest was delayed until Friday. On its evening broadcast, Russia’s NTV television showed video clips of agents escorting Mr. Mogilevich down a snowy street and into a police van. On its Web site, the F.B.I. lists eight aliases for Mr. Mogilevich; Russian authorities said he had used 17 different names. When he was arrested, he was using the name Sergei Schneider, Russian media reported. His renown as a criminal figure in the West had not hampered his ability to live and move about freely in Moscow. The F.B.I. is seeking Mr. Mogilevich for racketeering, money laundering and defrauding investors through a suburban Philadelphia company, YBM Magnex International. The company, which supposedly dealt in industrial magnets, was one of Mr. Mogilevich’s more elaborate scams. It was unclear Friday whether the United States would seek extradition, which would be unlikely to be successful as Russia and the United States have no extradition treaty. British and American investigators have said Mr. Mogilevich made a fortune in a career of violent street crime as the Soviet Union fell apart, and later pioneered a new form of money laundering using publicly traded companies during the bull market of the 1990s. Mr. Mogilevich’s move into the North American equity markets came through YBM Magnex, the publicly listed magnet business which issued glossy annual reports and had a Web site. The scheme began to unravel after the auditor Deloitte & Touche refused to sign off on the company’s 1997 accounts. The F.B.I. shut it down in 1998, revealing the company as a sophisticated cover for Russian money-laundering operations. Investors lost $150 million, according to the F.B.I. A year later, investigators say, Mr. Mogilevich used a company called Benex Corporation to launder money through the Bank of New York. That eventually unraveled, resulting in convictions for some American employees of the bank and a fine for the bank, though Mr. Mogilevich was not charged. In Ukraine, after the 2004 street protests known as the Orange Revolution led to a change of government, a former director of Ukraine’s secret police agency claimed that Mr. Mogilevich played a prominent role in natural gas trading in Ukraine. RosUkrEnergo, a joint venture between the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom and two Ukrainian investors that was established as the monopoly trader in 2006, has denied any ties to Mr. Mogilevich.

Russia
Organized Crime
Moscow (Russia)
Frauds and Swindling
Racketeering and Racketeers


Simmering Tension on a Corner, and Then a Fire

Abstract: The potter opened the door of her studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn, one morning eight months ago, as she had for decades, but this time she stopped short. Something was wrong — black smudges marked her wooden floor, and a thick stench hung in the big room. A window was broken. The room smelled of lighter fluid, and a burned book of matches and a melted bottle lay amid the scarred wood. Inside the broken window was a potted succulent plant, partially burned, with a cigarette butt beside it. Outside the window was a rock. The fire had simply put itself out. A lucky break — there were several floors of other artists and apartments above. Fire investigators sent the cigarette butt to the police laboratory for DNA testing. They interviewed neighbors and examined footage from the nearby video cameras on the once-industrial corner. An auto shop down the block had a camera, but it did not record; it showed only a live feed. The owner of a charter bus company, Abderraham Mouna, 53, was no help, either. This was no surprise to the potter, who asked that her name be withheld, or to several of her neighbors. They said, in interviews this week, that Mr. Mouna — everyone called him Abdul — had for years cloaked the streets in bus exhaust fumes. They said Mr. Mouna, who was born in Syria, arrived at the Gowanus corner about five years ago and opened his bus company, Executive Charters, on Union Street. His arrival was a reversal of the usual trends in Brooklyn real estate, with artists edging out industrial anchors. Sure, that was happening, too: an ironworker recently moved out, and an ice cream shop replaced him. And a brand new nightclub for shuffleboard players, featuring cocktails and “yacht rock,” will open soon nearby. But the veterans are artists: potters, glass blowers, niche magazines, a gallery. Right away, neighbors said, there was tension when Mr. Mouna parked buses up and down the block. “They were idling, spewing smoke,” a neighbor said. “He was repairing them.” He was seen dumping sewage from the buses down the sewer grates, neighbors said. After people complained, “he would just kind of go off and start screaming, immediately angry, cursing,” the potter said. Vandals struck the potter’s building, breaking windows with ball bearings and spray painting cars, but no one seems to have called the police. There were no complaints filed against Mr. Mouna, and he had no arrest record, the police said. Neighbors said they called 311 many times. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection was called to investigate reports of illegal dumping in the storm drains 10 times from 2009 to 2013, but issued no citations for violations, a spokesman said. The agency did cite Mr. Mouna with two violations for idling buses. The potter said the friction had ebbed and flowed, and that there were no particular confrontations with Mr. Mouna that she was aware of before May 8, when someone started the fire. “All the people in the area pointed us to the bus company,” said Robert G. Byrnes, chief fire marshal for the New York City Fire Department. When marshals interviewed Mr. Mouna, he played down any trouble with neighbors. “ ‘It’s a little difficult parking,’ ” Chief Byrnes quoted Mr. Mouna as saying. “ ‘A year ago we had a little issue.’ ” The police lab returned with a DNA match to a man named Jose Andujar, 49, a career criminal with more than 90 arrests on his record. He was arrested in August. He did odd jobs for the bus company, Chief Byrnes said. Mr. Andujar told investigators that Mr. Mouna had paid him $500 to set the pottery store on fire, a criminal complaint states. Mr. Mouna wanted the job done while he was out of town, Mr. Andujar told authorities. He said Mr. Mouna was to hide a bottle of accelerant inside the gate of his bus company, where Mr. Andujar could reach it, and he would leave his cameras off that night. Mr. Andujar broke the window, squirted the accelerant inside the shop and tossed in a lit cigarette and the matches, he said. “The defendant saw a flash and left,” the complaint states. He said he called Mr. Mouna and told him the job was done. Mr. Mouna’s lawyer said he was a businessman, a husband and a father of three who ran into the usual tension in a mixed industrial and residential neighborhood. “He would never hurt anyone, never do anything as nefarious as what they charged him with,” said the lawyer, Dru Carey. “This is a good citizen of Brooklyn, not a criminal.” Both men, charged with arson and conspiracy, remain in jail as the case moves forward. There is little to show for the fire that almost was — just a black patch on the potter’s floor.

Fires
Bus
Abderraham Mouna
Jose Andujar
Arson
Gowanus Brooklyn
Crime
Air pollution


Double Points in Racing? Not After What Happened Last Time

Abstract: The 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was the only race in Formula One history in which the teams and drivers contended for double points. It quickly became apparent that the rule was one of the worst ideas the series ever had, and it was immediately discarded. Bernie Ecclestone, the series’s promoter, had proposed awarding double points for the final three races of the season to counter the domination by the Red Bull team and its driver Sebastian Vettel, and to try to ensure that the suspense of the title would go down to the final race. Vettel had won four seasons in a row and had earned the 2011 title with four races remaining and the 2013 title with three races left. But such early finishes in Formula One are rare. The drivers’ championship has been decided at the final race 28 times since the series began in 1950, or nearly half the time. It will happen again this weekend. While the teams refused Ecclestone’s proposal for double points at the final three races, they accepted a compromise of double points at the final race. The usual point system then, as now, awarded 25 points to the winner of the race, 18 for second, 15 for third, 12 for fourth, 10 for fifth, 8 for sixth, 6 for seventh, 4 for eighth, 2 for ninth and 1 for 10th. For the Abu Dhabi race, each points-scoring finisher would get twice the usual number, with the winner getting 50 points. What no one had considered was that although the series had again been dominated by a single team, Mercedes, there had been a tight battle between its drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. The title had once again come down to the final race between them, and even with double points no one else could catch up. Hamilton arrived in Abu Dhabi as the leader, with 334 points. Rosberg was in second, with 317 points. Daniel Ricciardo, from the Red Bull team, was third, with 214, too far out of contention. The complicating factor was that Hamilton had won 10 races in the season, while Rosberg, who finished with points more consistently, had won only five. With the double scoring system, Hamilton had to finish first or second in the race to ensure winning the title, regardless of where Rosberg placed. But under the normal scoring system, Hamilton would only have had to finish sixth. Further, the double points system meant that if Hamilton failed to score at all, Rosberg would have won the title by finishing as low as fifth. The prospect of a driver winning the title with half as many race victories and such a clear handicap system was an offense to racing purists. In fact, the system was universally condemned within the series before the race, even by Rosberg. “I find it artificial, and I don’t like it in general,” Rosberg said. “Of course, now, with the way it is, it’s great for me at the moment, but you know that’s just because of the situation.” Aside from the drivers’ title battle, some of the teams had millions of dollars at stake, in prize money and in commercial money that is paid according to a team’s final position in the championship. Only the Mercedes team, which had won the constructors’ championship, and the Red Bull team, which was a safe second, were not potentially affected. It looked bad for Hamilton on Saturday, when Rosberg scored the pole position. Hamilton, nevertheless, started second on the grid, with Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa of the Williams team starting third and fourth. On Sunday, Hamilton got off to probably his best start of the season, leading Rosberg after the first lap by 1.2 seconds. He increased his lead to 2.6 seconds by Lap 22. While Hamilton seemed to be taking control, Rosberg locked his brakes and went off the track briefly on Lap 23, rejoining 3.9 seconds behind Hamilton. On the next lap, Rosberg told his team he was losing power, and on Lap 25, at 7.1 seconds behind Hamilton, the team told Rosberg that his hybrid energy recovery system had failed. He continued to drop through the pack, and finished 14th, which meant that the new scoring system was not an issue for the title. The Mercedes team had also asked Hamilton to turn down his engine power to ensure that he did not suffer the same issues that Rosberg did. That allowed Massa to catch up and apply pressure in the final laps. Hamilton beat Massa by just 2.5 seconds. Bottas finished third, the first time the Williams team had two drivers on the podium since the Monaco Grand Prix of 2005. But for Hamilton, it was a huge relief. “This is the greatest day of my life,” he said. Then, referring to his first title, at McLaren in 2008, he said that “was a special time in my life, and the feeling I have now is way, way above that.” And for the fans and teams who like to see the title go to the driver who dominates in race victories, it was also a relief.


Montoya to Return to IndyCar

Abstract: Juan Pablo Montoya ended his underwhelming time in Nascar for a return to IndyCar, where he will drive for Roger Penske. He will be a teammate to the current IndyCar points leader, Helio Castroneves, and Will Power. He could also drive in some Nascar races. Montoya won the 1999 CART title, the 2000 Indianapolis 500 and 11 races driving open-wheel. He then moved to Formula One, where he had seven victories. Montoya has just two wins in 244 career starts since joining Nascar in 2006. He is 20th in the Sprint Cup standings.

Juan Pablo Montoya
Car Racing
Sprint Cup Series
Indy Racing League,IndyCar


Thione Ballago Seck’s Arrest at Odds With Religious Image in Senegal

Abstract: DAKAR, Senegal — Thione Ballago Seck’s high tenor croon has floated into Senegalese ears for generations, and his mournful Afro-Cuban rhythms and deep Muslim faith have powered a renowned career as a West African musical icon in this music-infused land . But when the police came for him at his multistory marble-paneled home here a few weeks ago, passing the framed photos of Senegal’s presidents smiling at him, panic struck Mr. Seck, the authorities said. He rushed toward a large gray sack stuffed with bank notes in his living room, the police said. Mr. Seck then sat on it, because he did not want the police officers to know its contents: 50 million in counterfeit euro notes, officials said. He got up only after “fierce exhortations” from the officers, according to their report. Since then the tall, dignified singer, sometimes considered Senegal’s second-ranking music star after Youssou N’Dour , has been sitting in the V.I.P. wing of a Dakar prison, accused of being part of an ambitious, if rough-hewed, counterfeit scheme. A beloved prince of the jagged and dramatic mbalax style, Mr. Seck’s most famous album is “ The Power of a Pure Heart ,” and his home’s soaring entrance hall is adorned with portraits of Senegal’s religious heroes. The scion of a family of griots, or traditional praise-singers, Mr. Seck was once a lead singer in Dakar’s legendary Orchestra Baobab , which fused African and Latin styles against a backdrop of wailing saxophones. But more recently, the police said, Mr. Seck’s taste for high living and fancy cars drove him into the embrace of forgers who produced bank notes in a Dakar living room. The sudden downfall of Mr. Seck, 60, has not left the headlines here for weeks, “piercing the serenity of the coldest souls,” wrote L’Observateur, a daily. He has been visited by legions of dumbfounded music stars, politicians, government officials, businessmen and hangers-on. On the streets of Dakar, his fans are bitterly disappointed. “We listened to him; we heard his words,” said Amadou Ba, a mechanic, sheltering from the midday sun in the Ouakam neighborhood. “He himself sang: ‘You should never do this, never do that. Don’t do bad things.’ Everyone respected him. We followed him. What he was counseling, did he apply it?” Kharma Matar, a retired telephone operator, said: “A singer like that, he’s a speaker of truth. He counsels people. He shouldn’t make mistakes.” Senegal’s newspapers have been filled with lamentations as fraught as the star’s songs. “Cries echoed everywhere. Tears broke the electric silence at the Dakar Criminal Court’s entrance,” began an article on his transfer to prison in L’Observateur. There has been soul-searching about the Senegalese hybrid of flashy nightclub culture and superstar singers grafted onto a land of deep Muslim piety. And there have been mutterings of influence-peddling on behalf of the celebrity prisoner. “The police investigators and the magistrates are being assaulted with every sort of pressure to cover up this affair,” a columnist in the daily Le Quotidien wrote recently. “Members of government, and members of the president’s cabinet, with no regard for the sacredness of their duties or respect for the principles of the Republic, have even been down to Police Headquarters to try to extract Thione Seck from prison.” In his Dakar office, the chief police investigator on the case, Cmdr. Issa Diack, acknowledged the intense public interest but otherwise declined to comment. The police report, leaked to Le Quotidien, contains a number of potentially damning details. On May 27, the police said, they saw “a professional forger” chatting with Mr. Seck outside his house. After arresting the forgery suspect, Alaye Djiteyi, the police went to his apartment, where they found phony euro notes and a “laboratory” for producing them. Mr. Djiteyi offered a $6,000 bribe, but it was no deal. He then admitted “being the owner of the laboratory where he scanned euro and dollar notes for his clients, in exchange for cash” in the local currency. Phone records revealed calls between him and Mr. Seck, according to the police report. For Mr. Seck’s lead lawyer — an army of Senegalese celebrity lawyers has sprung up to defend him — the cause of the singer’s downfall is clear: He was exploited by crooks with mystical powers who seduced him with false promises of an extensive European tour. “These sorts of things always occur because of mystical manipulations,” said the lawyer, Abdou Dialy Kane, pacing in Dakar’s clamorous Criminal Courts Building. “When I discussed it with his family, this mystic element was clear.” Mr. Seck himself told the investigators that the mountain of cash in his living room was merely an advance for the “105 concerts” the phony promoters had promised, according to the police report. He was “desperate” when the police came, so he sat on the sack, he told investigators. The singer’s adopted son, while saying that his “naïve” father was “the victim of a gang of swindlers,” also suggested that magic was part of the equation. “We’re in Senegal,” the son, Ibrahim Pipo Diop, said at his father’s house. “Maraboutage” — a local term connoting the bewitching influence of the marabout, or holy man — “still exists,” he added. “It is still there.” That explanation found a strong echo on the streets. “Maybe it’s magic,” said Abdoulaye Kan, a real estate counselor in Ouakam. “This is how magicians operate.” But Mr. Kan also expressed a glum feeling of betrayal. “Thione Seck is someone we have been listening to from a very young age,” he said sadly. Back at the courthouse, Mr. Kane, the lawyer, made a plea for human weakness. “Whatever one’s human values, one can be in conflict with the law,” Mr. Kane said. “As Victor Hugo said, all great men have their failing.”

Senegal
Dakar
Music
Euro
Thione Seck
Counterfeit money
Islam
Fraud


Harry and Louise Return, in Support of Health Care Reform

Abstract: HARRY and Louise have changed their minds about health care reform . The fictional suburban couple featured in a series of national television spots sponsored by the health insurance industry in 1993 and 1994 stoked fears that helped doom a government-created health plan promoted by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton. “Having choices we don’t like is no choice at all,” the Louise character fretted to her husband in one spot set around a kitchen table stacked with medical bills. Now, the same actors are back in a new campaign , this time to support a government overhaul of the medical system promoted by a Democratic president, Barack Obama. The ad’s sponsors — a trade group representing drug makers and Families USA, a nonprofit group advocating affordable medical care — reflect the strange bedfellows lining up behind the latest reform effort. “A little more cooperation, a little less politics,” Louise says to Harry in the new spot , scheduled to appear on cable and network stations this weekend, “and we can get the job done this time.” The main issues — accessible, affordable and portable medical coverage — have not changed since the 1990s. But the reappearance of Harry and Louise as the avatars of health care reform dovetails with a new economic reality for consumers. The early-middle-aged Harry and Louise in the 1990s ads were concerned about their own welfare and their own pocketbooks. They were white middle-class me-generation professionals scripted to raise red flags about the fear of losing private health insurance. Now, the mellowed AARP-eligible Harry and Louise of this campaign seem more charitable and outward-directed. They even invoke the plight of the uninsured. Which either means that Harry and Louise have changed, or that the actors who play them — Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark — are adept at emoting whatever political point of view they are paid to evoke. For their sponsors, the characters’ seeming empathy is meant to reflect a climate in which mounting unemployment, combined with the high cost of health insurance for individuals and small businesses, has created a new urgency for change. “We ought to work together to find a good and successful health care compromise,” said Billy Tauzin, the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America , or PhRMA, a sponsor of the new spot. “Middle-class people like Harry and Louise are not going to be living in a successful society if we don’t do something about it.” The campaign could also garner good will from politicians for the group, which last month pledged $80 billion in savings to help further health reform. This is actually the fifth television campaign for Harry and Louise. The first tour placed the couple in familiar suburban scenes to raise pointed questions about the Clinton health care plan. At a time when the insurance industry felt excluded from the process, which was led by Hillary Rodham Clinton and an adviser, Ira C. Magaziner, Harry and Louise were meant to galvanize the kind of middle-class Americans who might be talking about health care reform as they sat in their kitchens looking at bills. More than a dozen different commercials ran in 1993 and 1994, at a cost of about $14 million. “Harry and Louise began a dialog with the American people in a sense,” said Charles N. Kahn III, who oversaw the original campaign as the executive vice president of the Health Insurance Association of America, a trade group that later merged with another group to become America’s Health Insurance Plans. “This was not done to beat health reform. It was done to get the attention of policy makers.” But many industry analysts viewed that series as attack ads that helped scuttle the Clinton version of health reform. Mr. Kahn reincarnated Harry and Louise in 2000 for a campaign to urge legislators to adopt an industry proposal to help people buy private insurance. Ben Goddard, a public affairs executive whose firm, Goddard Claussen, created all of the campaigns, used the couple a third time in ads to oppose a bill that would have curbed stem cell research. In 1997, Mr. Goddard married the actress Ms. Clark. But the real comeback for the couple occurred last year, when a group of nonprofit associations, including Families USA, sponsored ads before the presidential election in which the couple urged candidates of both parties to put health care at the top of their agendas. Now Families USA has teamed up with PhRMA for a $4 million campaign to be broadcast starting this weekend on channels like CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Comedy Central and on some network news and Sunday talk shows. “This is really a historic opportunity,” said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA. “We have a better chance of getting health reform done than ever before.” For political news media analysts, however, Harry and Louise signify more than mere icons of health reform. The original ads represent the first successful political issue campaign to activate consumers en masse to put pressure on Washington. The ads ushered in the era of political issue advertising as a major component of lobbying, said Evan Tracey, the chief operating officer of Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. Since that time, “there hasn’t been a major piece of policy, federal or state, that hasn’t had an issue advocacy campaign,” said Mr. Tracey. “That’s what, in essence, Harry and Louise gave birth to.” Mr. Tracey said the new ads, endorsing change, were unlikely to have the same impact as the first, more negative campaign. With Congress seemingly determined to pass a health care package this year, the return of Harry and Louise as cheerleaders for reform may be aimed mainly at keeping the issue at the top of the news cycle. Instead of framing the debate, in other words, Harry and Louise may now be symbols of going with the flow. “What would health care reform be without them?” Mr. Tracey said.

Medicine and Health
Reform and Reorganization
Advertising and Marketing


With a Classical Violinist’s Composing Debut, Watch Magazine Adds Music to Its Content

Abstract: Not that long ago, it would have sounded silly for a magazine to commission a musical score, perhaps akin to a radio show hiring a staff photographer. But adding sound to the repertoire of a print publication is a different story in an era when magazines can also be read online, on mobile devices and on tablets; have a presence in social media; and produce their own clips for platforms like web series, YouTube and video-on-demand channels. A publication that now has its own soundtrack for marketing and promotional purposes is Watch, a lifestyle, entertainment and celebrity magazine that is published six times a year by CBS Television and McMurry/TMG , a content marketing agency. Watch hired Charlie Siem, a young British classical violinist , to write the score, which he performed, too, at a recording session in London where he was accompanied by a 22-piece orchestra. Plans call for the composition, titled “Canopy,” to make its debut this week in a brand video , which will promote Watch to potential readers; the video is narrated by Pauley Perrette, a cast member of the CBS series “NCIS.” The score is also featured in an accompanying “making of” clip that offers a look behind the scenes at the recording session. “At Watch magazine, we don’t just report on culture,” the clip begins, “we create it.” The videos are to appear on CBS websites that include cbswatchmagazine.com , cbs.com and tv.com , along with websites that belong to the CBS Audience Network. Watch began last week to run teasers about the project in social media like Twitter . “ @charliesiem is definitely playing our heartstrings,” a post on Friday read. Mr. Siem has also started to promote the score — the first piece of music he has written — on his Facebook fan page . Mr. Siem, who turned 28 last month, has been on the radar of the staff members of Watch since he was featured in an article in the magazine in 2012, says Jeremy Murphy, the editor in chief of Watch. So when the idea came up to “commission our own piece of music,” says Mr. Murphy, who is also vice president for communications at CBS Television in New York, part of the CBS Corporation, Mr. Siem came to mind as a potential composer -- particularly because the goal was to have a score that would match how those involved in producing Watch perceive it. “We like to think the magazine is elegant and refined and glamorous,” Mr. Murphy says, “and this music hits those highlights.” For a video that appeared last year in social media, “we licensed a song by Chris Brown, ‘Beautiful People,'” Mr. Murphy says. But not only is licensed music “very expensive,” he adds, “a pop song that anybody can get” does not always help video content stand out amid the clutter. “This year, we wanted something more rarified and special,” Mr. Murphy says, “and Charlie is great for something like this.” Image A behind-the-scenes video of the recording of the musical score is also part of the promotional efforts for Watch magazine. The score “hits every note we want for the magazine,” he adds, pun not intended. “The full version is about five minutes and it’s a composition with five different melodies, which gives me content now for several years.” The composition has a lush, rich sound that Mr. Siem, in a phone interview from London, describes as “romantic, lyrical, almost Vaughan Williams in its style, rhapsodic.” (The reference is to the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. ) Mr. Siem also invokes another composer, Philip Glass . “Although there is nothing experimental in terms of the sound,” he says, “I could say his minimalist style was also an influence” in the score. Writing the score has “been an unusual project from start to finish, but very rewarding,” Mr. Siem says. He had no plans to try his hand at composing, he adds, but after being asked to do so by Watch he asked himself, “Why not take this challenge on and see what happens?” “I wouldn’t have been interested if it were to have followed a prescribed formula,” Mr. Siem says, or if he had been asked “to write music for an advert.” The result, he adds, “makes me feel I’d like to do another piece.” The sounds and styles of violin pieces are on Mr. Siem’s mind for another reason: He has a CD coming out in the summer from Sony Classical, he says, which will be “very much a tribute to Isaac Stern, Fritz Kreisler and that generation” of artists whose performances were part of “the violinist encore repertoire of the early 20th century.” Executives at the agency that handles branding tasks for Watch say they are excited by the possibilities provided by Mr. Siem’s score. “'Surprise’ is a word we use a lot with Watch,” says James Hendry, group creative director at the agency, Team One in El Segundo, Calif., part of the Saatchi & Saatchi division of the Publicis Groupe. “The magazine’s really different from the way you might expect a magazine from a television network to be,” he adds, giving as an example how actors from CBS sitcoms appear “in high-fashion shoots.” Asking a classical violinist to compose a score is in the same vein, according to Mr. Hendry, who calls Mr. Siem “a really cool guy.” How cool? “He refers to himself as ‘Charlie,'” Mr. Hendry says. The executives at Team One and Mr. Murphy say they are hard pressed to come up with a dollar figure for the project. Mr. Murphy describes it as “minimal,” listing cost-saving measures like staging the recording session “between two Watch shoots in London, so we were already there.” And Mr. Siem agreed to write the score “at a nominal cost,” he adds. If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that appears Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times print edition and on nytimes.com .

Watch magazine
Magazine
Charlie Siem
Classical music
advertising,marketing


Explosions Amid Crowds of Shiite Pilgrims in Iraq Kill at Least 27 and Wound Scores

Abstract: BAGHDAD — At least two explosions tore through crowds marching to the burial place of Shiite Islam’s most revered martyr Friday in the culmination of ritual mourning that has drawn millions to the holy city of Karbala in one of the world’s largest pilgrimages. At least 27 people were killed and dozens more were wounded. There was a sense of fatalism to the attacks, one of dozens this week on pilgrims that the Shiite-led government grimly predicted but was powerless to stop. The killings have underlined the meaning of the pilgrimage: a religious observance to commemorate Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad whose death in the battlefield in Karbala in 680 gave Shiite Muslims an ethos of suffering, martyrdom and resistance. “They think these explosions can stop us from marching,” said Muhaned Shaker, a 27-year-old pilgrim, “but if I die today in an explosion, that will be a gift from God.” Interior Ministry officials said a suicide car bomb had detonated at the Peace Bridge a few miles east of the city, tearing through a crowd so tight that people were standing shoulder to shoulder. Moments later, a mortar shell exploded nearby, killing and wounding more pilgrims as they frantically fled the scene. In the chaotic aftermath, officials said, the crowds rendered rescuers almost helpless to treat the wounded. The attacks came amid a stubborn crisis over the disqualifications of hundreds of candidates from Iraq’s parliamentary elections in March for ties to the Baath Party of former President Saddam Hussein. An appeals court decided Wednesday to delay their appeals until after the vote, effectively restoring their candidacies. But since then, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other Shiite leaders have called the court’s decision illegal and insisted that the disqualifications proceed, casting politics into more tumult. The dispute has taken a personal turn, with Mr. Maliki complaining in a statement late Thursday of intervention by the United States ambassador, Christopher R. Hill. He said his government would not allow Mr. Hill “to exceed his diplomatic duties.” Philip Frayne, an American Embassy spokesman, defended Mr. Hill’s role. “Ambassador Hill has been doing what any diplomat normally does, offering his government’s views on issues that could affect American interests,” Mr. Frayne said. American officials and the United Nations have played a crucial role in trying to solve the complicated dispute over the candidacies. The issue of Baathists has become incendiary in the campaign for the March 7 vote, with religious Shiite candidates competing with one another in proving their anti-Baathist credentials to a constituency that suffered dearly under Mr. Hussein’s rule. Iraqi law has also proved unhelpful in ending the dispute, as there is no precedent for resolving who has the final say on candidate disqualifications. In the attacks near Karbala, the Interior Ministry said 27 people were killed and 75 wounded. Officials in Karbala put the toll at 40 killed and more than 150 wounded, although they acknowledged the difficulty in determining numbers amid the chaos. Friday was the observance of Arbaeen, the 40th day after Imam Hussein’s death. Banned under Saddam Hussein’s government, the pilgrimage has flourished in the years since the American-led invasion in 2003. This year, city officials estimated that 10 million people journeyed to the gold-domed shrine in Karbala. Security officials put the number higher, at 11 million, and clerics insisted that it was even more. By custom, pilgrims walk to the shrine, carrying green, red and black flags and sometimes traveling hundreds of miles over days. Occasionally, pilgrims choose to walk barefoot. The sheer numbers have given the region around Karbala a cinematic quality, as people clamber through date groves and surge through the streets in one of the world’s largest voluntary movements of people. Along the way, volunteers have set up tents for the weary, offering a dish known as hareesa, a stew of lamb and beans, bananas, oranges, cakes, cookies, tea, juice and soda. According to tradition, residents open their houses to travelers to rest and sleep. Security officials have banned most vehicles from the city, and witnesses reported that crowds were lined up for miles beyond Karbala’s three entrances. United States military officials said that as of Thursday, insurgents had carried out 35 attacks against pilgrims, fewer than the 54 last year and far below the more than 180 in 2007. But as in past bombings, survivors directed their anger at the police and soldiers for failing to stop the attacks and blamed the election crisis for diverting politicians’ attention. “The explosions are just for the elections so they can say that this party or that party failed to protect the people,” said one pilgrim, Abbas Nasser. “We know the game.” About 30,000 troops and police officers have been deployed to protect the pilgrims, who in past years have been the object of attacks by insurgents bent on sowing sectarian strife. On Monday, a woman with explosives hidden under her garment killed at least 38 people on the outskirts of Baghdad, many of them marching to Karbala. Another bombing, on Wednesday, just miles from the shrine, killed at least 20 people.


Review: Trattoria Procaccini in Princeton Serves Up Tradition

Abstract: My wife and I have been fans of the Gretalia Group’s food ever since one of its restaurants, Osteria Procaccini in Kingston, started serving exquisite Neopolitan-style pizza in 2011. But something wasn’t quite right about Gretalia’s comfort-food-driven menu at Northend Bistro, which opened in 2013. A reviewer for The New York Times felt the same way , as did a lot of its customers. In March, after declining sales, the owners, the brothers John and Tino Procaccini and their business partner, Zissis Pappas, decided to ditch the comfort food and go back to the Italian fare they were known for in their other Kingston restaurant, La Principessa, which had closed in 2005. After a quick rebranding, Northend Bistro became Trattoria Procaccini . The decision to make the change couldn’t have been a better one. The idea for the trattoria was to offer traditional favorites using organic, locally sourced ingredients, and to present them in a way that was closer to how the Procaccini brothers ate in their parents’ home village of Pettoranello del Molise, Italy . Image The Molisano, with rigatoni, salsiccia sausage, broccoli rabe, garlic and olive oil. Credit Matt Rainey for The New York Times Take, for instance, the polpette di cafone, bread dumplings in marinara sauce that were historically a peasant substitute for meatballs in the old country (the name translates to “fake meatballs”). The polpette were dense but not heavy, and would have worked better had we ordered them as an appetizer or as a side dish. Traditionally, however, they serve as a main course, so that’s how they are offered at the trattoria. While we’re on the subject of meatballs, the restaurant’s carnivorous version, made from a family recipe that combines pork, veal and beef, tasted heavenly. Most dishes are straightforward and made with only a handful of ingredients. The Molisano, with rigatoni, salsiccia sausage, broccoli rabe, garlic and olive oil, offered a lot of flavor within its limited components, especially when an optional pepperoncino paste was added. The Tre P consisted of wheat lily pasta topped with the P’s in the name: pesto; panna da cucina, an Italian cooking cream; and pine nuts. Sun-dried tomatoes balanced out the flavorful dish. A porchetta appetizer made the most out of a tender and fatty roast pork, and the broccoli rabe that accompanied it had just the right bite and salty provolone. The Procaccini brothers and Mr. Pappas didn’t do much to the interior of the restaurant during its rebranding; the large windows looking out over Nassau Street are lovely and a natural fit. But some artwork and sound-deadening foam under the tables and chairs give the stark space a bit of a warmer feel. The staff during our visits was friendly and attentive, but hung back appropriately, which is what you’d expect at a casual trattoria. Image The polpette di cafone (bread dumplings) in marinara sauce. Credit Matt Rainey for The New York Times Besides the polpette di cafone, another chancy but traditional dish that scored with us was the ricotta dolce, a dessert with thick, unsweetened ricotta cheese and topped with Amarena cherries in syrup. The tartness of the dark cherries, combined with the sweet syrup and creamy ricotta, made me return to the plate again and again, even though my dining companions were enjoying sweeter desserts like tiramisù. Mr. Procaccini thought that people might not like the ricotta, but he knew he had to try it. “It’s very popular in Italy; people go crazy for it,” he said. “Cheese and fruit are big where we’re from.” Other dishes, like gnocchi in a pesto-tomato sauce, and a special that had baby lamb chops over polenta with cream sauce and mushrooms, were less memorable but still quite good, because of the level of detail in some of them. The polenta, for example, was mixed with mascarpone to give it a smoother consistency. There were a couple of missteps, like a bland fettuccine Amatriciana and some overbreaded eggplant in the rollatini. But the current menu offers more than enough fine fare to keep customers coming back for more.

Trattoria Procaccini
Restaurant
Princeton NJ


New Indications Housing Recovery Is Under Way

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Announcements of a housing recovery have become a wrongheaded rite of summer, but after several years of false hopes, evidence is accumulating that the optimists may finally be right. The housing market is starting to recover. Prices are rising. Sales are increasing. Home builders are clearing lots and raising frames. Joe Niece, a real estate agent in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, said he recently concluded a streak of 13 consecutive bidding wars over homes that his clients wanted to buy. Each sold above the asking price. “I just had a home that wasn’t supposed to go on the market for two weeks sold before it even went on the market,” Mr. Niece said. “It’s definitely a lot different than what we saw” during the last few summers. Like the economic recovery that began three years ago, what happens next is likely to prove a little disappointing. The pace of recovery will probably be slow, and the prices of many homes will continue to decline. Millions of people remain underwater, owing more on their homes than the homes are worth, and unable to sell. Millions of families still face foreclosure . And a setback in the still-fragile economic recovery could easily reverse the uptick in housing prices, too. But roughly six years after the housing market began its longest and deepest slide since the Great Depression , a growing number of experts and people who actually put money into housing believe the end has come. “Our sense is that the market is recovering, and we’re extremely confident that it’s not going to get worse,” said Ronnie Morgan, a San Diego real estate professional who recently created a $10 million partnership to buy foreclosed homes. The group, Alegria Real Estate Funds, already has bought about 20 homes in suburban communities, most of which they plan to hold as rental properties. “It feels very much like we’ve hit a bottom and we’re starting to come off of that bottom,” said Stuart Miller, chief executive of Lennar, a major national home builder based in Miami . The company said Wednesday that second-quarter profits were higher than expected, and orders for new homes rose 40 percent. “I’m a little nervous,” Mr. Miller quickly added in a conference call with analysts, “about saying the word ‘recovery.’ ” The trend is clear in the data. The widely respected S.&P./Case-Shiller index reported earlier this week that sales prices for existing homes rose in April for the first time this year. Several other measures, including a seasonally adjusted version of the index, show that price increases began in February. The pace of housing construction has increased . And the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that pending home sales climbed to the highest level since the end of a federal tax credit for first-time buyers in September 2010. This is the fourth consecutive year that the housing market has shown signs of revival, and each previous episode ended with prices renewing their downward slide. But with each passing year, an eventual recovery has grown more likely. Prices have continued to fall, and the economy has continued to recover, a combination that has expanded the pool of potential buyers. The population has continued to grow while few new homes have been built. Basic indicators of market health that bulged during the bubble, like the ratio of housing prices to income, have returned to more normal levels. Government efforts to help homeowners have intensified, allowing more borrowers to refinance or avoid foreclosure. “All bets are off if anything happens to the economy, but apart from that, I think the fundamentals look better than they’ve looked in 17 or 18 years,” said Richard K. Green, a professor of real estate at the University of Southern California . Professor Green cited the combination of rising rents and low mortgage rates as a powerful inducement to potential buyers, both renters who would prefer to own and investors who want to become landlords. “Compared to a lot of other investments right now this looks pretty good,” he said. The influx of investors is a major reason that the market is looking stronger. Mr. Morgan, 56, built apartments before the housing crash. In 2010, seeing a new opportunity, he and some friends started bidding at the foreclosure auctions then held on the steps of the San Diego County Courthouse. At first they bought properties to renovate and resell. Now they are focused on potential rental properties in the kinds of gated, planned communities in suburban San Diego that once were populated almost exclusively by people who owned their homes. Some of their tenants are former homeowners. And competition has increased. The auctions were moved from the courthouse steps last year because the crowds had grown too large. “There’s not a whole lot of other places to put your money,” Mr. Morgan said. There are still reasons for caution. An unusually warm winter seems to have given a temporary and misleading boost to a range of economic indicators. The pace of economic growth remains slow and fragile, shadowed by the risk that politicians in Europe and Washington will fail to address looming problems. And the rise in prices is happening despite the vast number of vacant houses awaiting buyers, up to two million more than the normal level, with several million more houses still at risk of being foreclosed. But this “shadow inventory” is not distributed uniformly, according to a new analysis by Goldman Sachs . Even within metropolitan areas like Phoenix , the vacant houses are clustered in less desirable neighborhoods, while buyers are seeking homes in areas where there are few vacancies. Under these circumstances, the researchers concluded, “It is possible for us to see both house price increases and excess housing supply at the same time.” Indeed, in a growing number of areas demand for homes is outstripping supply. The number of homes for sale has been falling for more than a year, according to the National Association of Realtors . Some owners are waiting for prices to rise; some of them must wait because they are underwater. Mr. Niece, the Minnesota real estate agent, said he and his partner had seen their book of listings decline from about 120 properties to 70 properties, about 45 of which already are under contract. “I have buyers every single day complaining that they can’t find houses,” he said. Driving through a neighboring suburb last week, Mr. Niece said that he passed a sign outside another real estate office that read, “The market is great. We’ve sold all of our inventory. We need listings.”

National Association of Realtors
Economy
US Economy
Real Estate and Housing


Love Is Out of This World. Far Out.

Abstract: People who fall in love actually physically fall down, weak-kneed, repeatedly. A woman with a broken heart carries it around in a brown paper bag. That’s the way the world works in John Cariani’s plays. Those examples are from “ Almost, Maine ,” his first. With “Love/Sick,” his latest, being staged now through June 22 at TheaterWorks Hartford, love at first sight means two strangers’ eyes meeting as they push their carts at a big-box store, followed immediately by a series of passionate kisses. And you’ve heard of people who won’t let people in, emotionally? One man won’t allow the guy he’s dating beyond his front porch, although he really likes him. When Man No. 2 declares his love, Man No. 1 develops hysterical deafness. You could call Mr. Cariani an absurdist (he remembers being impressed when he first saw Ionesco’s “The Chairs” years ago), but his work so far is distinguished equally by another factor: shortness. “I love essays,” he said. “I love short plays. I love short films. I love short stories. Short stories are my favorite form.” For reading, that is. Image Laura Woodward and Ms. Armand. Credit Lanny Nagler “Almost, Maine” is made up of nine short plays (he really doesn’t like it when you call them vignettes, and critics and reporters inevitably do), and “Love/Sick” consists of 10. On opening night at TheaterWorks, the production was running a little over two hours, and Mr. Cariani said he was working during the play’s monthlong run to trim it considerably. “I love discipline in my art,” he said. “I really do.” As he sees it, in novels, even the great ones, authors sometimes seem to be rattling on for themselves instead of for the reader. Mr. Cariani was sitting in a tiny deli near his apartment in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan on a recent Sunday afternoon. Wearing a T-shirt and shorts and sipping juice, he looked like a busy young actor, which is exactly what he is when he is not in playwright mode. (How young? His agent has advised him not to answer that question, lest it limit his possibilities.) Mr. Cariani earned a Tony Award nomination for the 2004 Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” for his role as Motel, the shy tailor who marries Tevye’s eldest daughter. When “Almost, Maine” was revived in New York this year, Mr. Cariani portrayed several of his own creations. He will be off to Massachusetts for most of this summer to star in Mark St. Germain’s new play, “Dancing Lessons,” at Barrington Stage Company. But it is Mr. Cariani’s writing that is familiar to Hartford audiences. “Almost, Maine” (which by 2010 was said to be the most frequently performed play in North American high schools) was staged at TheaterWorks last year. He also wrote a segment of “Christmas on the Rocks,” the theater’s 2013 holiday show. In it, Ralphie, the BB-gun-loving boy in the film “ A Christmas Story ,” has grown up and works for the National Rifle Association. Image Mr. Cariani, who is a busy actor as well as a playwright, in 2010. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times “Love/Sick,” which is promoted as a “comic romantic tragedy,” has another thing in common with its famous predecessor: Both are set in an alternate reality. Yes, the characters have iPads and smartphones. They read studies, like the kind one woman saw “that was done in a journal that was featured on one of those news aggregator sites.” But things often go surrealistically wrong. One couple forgot to have a baby, even though the wife had it on her calendar. Another woman is so bored with her husband that she could kill — and oops, she has a gun. A husband wants a divorce because “beige is not the color I wanted my life to be.” A woman with a new beau is thrilled to receive a singing telegram from him, but receives a shocking message. So a playwright with this worldview must be flitting from romance to romance, carrying his broken heart in his gym bag? Or at home alone every night, binge-watching Netflix? Nope. Mr. Cariani has been in a relationship for 14 years. Asked which of the plays in “Love/Sick” represents what he was currently experiencing, he first said none of them. Then he named the one about a couple with two children who have willingly chosen their roles as caregiver and breadwinner, but now feel they have lost their identities. “I haven’t lost myself,” Mr. Cariani said. “But my partner — he’s an N.Y.P.D. detective — and I are extremely busy right now, with our careers. We have to make time to hang with, and be good to, each other.” But the most vital lesson in “Love/Sick,” he said, is expressed by the singing-telegram messenger, consoling the stunned recipient. “This is temporary,” he tells her. “Everything is.”


U.S. Homes Go Under Contract at Fastest Pace in 9 Years

Abstract: In April, Americans signed contracts to buy homes at the fastest pace in nearly nine years, evidence that steady job growth is strengthening the real estate market. The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday that its seasonally adjusted pending home sales index climbed 3.4 percent, to 112.4 last month, for a fourth consecutive monthly gain. The index is now at its highest since May 2006. “The confidence has returned to housing, not only as shelter but as a good long-term investment,” said Ronald J. Peltier, chief of Berkshire Hathaway’s real estate affiliate, HomeServices of America. Also on Thursday, the Labor Department said that more Americans sought unemployment benefits last week. The overall level remained low, though, with weekly applications increasing by 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 282,000.

Real Estate
National Association of Realtors
Housing
US Economy
Economy


Democrats Are Warming to Obama Connection

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Just six months ago, having their names uttered in the same sentence as President Obama ’s was something many Congressional Democrats could have lived without. But with the economy slowly crawling back to life, a shift in messaging at the White House and a Republican push on social issues, Democrats are accepting — and in some cases openly embracing — the inevitable yoking of their campaigns to Mr. Obama’s as election-year activities accelerate. On Capitol Hill, Democrats have begun to mention Mr. Obama more often and have gone out of their way to publicly back some of his proposals. Democrats say Mr. Obama’s near monophonic campaigning in recent months — highlighting his differences with Republicans on policies affecting the middle class — is far more resonant in their districts and states than defending the health care law or the stimulus package , issues that have dogged Democrats. Further, while Republicans spent most of 2011 dominating the national conversation on the federal deficit and seeking the upper hand in Congressional budget battles, Democrats have found themselves this winter on the more popular side of fights, including the recent one over a payroll tax holiday, which they believe Republicans turned into an unforced error for their team. “I think it’s definitely shifting now,” said Senator Thomas R. Carper , Democrat of Delaware . “In part it’s just because the economy is improving. I don’t know that it’s springtime just yet, but the wind is coming back.” This month, Mr. Obama’s pivot into an “all of the above” energy policy platform, one more or less lifted from the Republicans’ 2008 campaign, is something moderate Democrats, many of whom support things like the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that Mr. Obama has blocked, are also happy to hear. “His focus on building jobs and restoring some stability in the middle class is what I have been focusing on all along,” said Representative Timothy H. Bishop of New York. “In 2010 the conversation was almost exclusively about health care, and there was so much emotion and so much fury. I think the climate is much calmer now.” Republicans believe strongly that Mr. Obama remains a significant liability in states like Missouri , Montana and North Carolina , all places where Democrats are in jeopardy, as well as many Congressional districts where his policies remain radioactive. Further, creeping gas prices, an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East or other factors could create severe head winds for Mr. Obama this year. “By all means we would encourage Claire McCaskill , Jon Tester , Tim Kaine and all other Senate Democratic candidates to campaign on the president’s record of massive government mandates, record spending, lost jobs and a $15 trillion debt,” said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. While it is far too early to see if Democratic incumbents are willing to actually campaign with Mr. Obama, the evidence of their willingness to align with him is legislatively apparent. For instance, Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania , who last year proclaimed the president’s large jobs package as too big to get his vote, happily picked off the payroll tax cut component of the bill and made it his own. Mr. Tester, in a tough re-election race in Montana, also focused on one piece of the bill — a tax break for employers who hire veterans, which would be paid for by a surtax on millionaires — and claimed it for his own. Some lawmakers are seizing on what they perceive as the best part of Mr. Obama’s record, and running with it, rhetorically. On the House floor recently, Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee said, “I want to say that I’m proud to support President Obama, his jobs plan, his efforts to maintain the automobile industry strong in America, and to support him in Libya and root out Qaddafi and Al Qaeda in other places.” Joyce Beatty, who won the Democratic primary Tuesday for a House seat in Ohio , has already sided with the president, ending a recent campaign advertisement with a shot of herself and Mr. Obama. Senator Mark Begich of Alaska , who in September called Mr. Obama’s proposal to eliminate tax breaks for oil companies “frustrating,” said last week that he was buoyed to hear Mr. Obama shift the conversation to his campaign-year energy policy, which includes increased domestic oil production. “He goes down to Florida and actually mentions energy?” Mr. Begich said. “To me, that’s what we should be focused on. We should talk about what middle-class Americans care about, and that’s jobs, the economy, their tax rates.” Mr. Begich, who is not up for re-election this year, even said that the much-maligned stimulus package had been good for his state, and that he was happy to embrace it. “I am the only member of the delegation that voted for the recovery money,” he said. “You bet I talk about it.” Many Republicans also concede that Mr. Obama is not quite as effective a symbol as he was in 2010, and that they will have to focus harder on specific policies where they part ways with Democrats to get their message out. “It’s probably not as much as a liability as you saw in 2010,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, about ties between Congressional Democrats and the White House. Democrats also see opportunities to seize on cases in which Republicans have distanced themselves from some of the positions of Mitt Romney , a leading Republican presidential candidate. In Michigan , Representative Fred Upton and other Republicans have said they disagree with Mr. Romney’s criticism of the auto industry bailout, and in foreclosure-wracked Nevada , Representative Joe Heck said he was not on the same page as Mr. Romney when it came to housing policies. Of course, Democrats will not have a choice; Republicans are already running campaigns that will link them to the president in a negative way. “I think without any question my opponent will, whether it is true or not, connect me to him,” Mr. Bishop said. So they say they are trying to embrace what they can, and worry less about what they cannot stop. “I try to control the things I can control, and the things I can’t control I just need to be honest about.” Mrs. McCaskill said. “In many ways the president can be an asset, in some ways he is definitely not an asset in my state. It’s a mixed bag.” The recent drop in Missouri’s unemployment rate, she hopes, will help her in areas of her state where Mr. Obama remains unpopular and is likely to run behind this year. “I really think come November, if most Missourians are paying attention, they are going to realize it’s in their best economic interest to re-elect the president,” she said. “And me, of course.” Other Democrats said they would try to cherry-pick Mr. Obama’s campaign themes, while still keeping their physical distance. “The message that the president is running on is a message that most Democrats can get on board with now,” said Representative Daniel Lipinski, who represents a more conservative district in and around Chicago . “The people need a champion now, and that’s more and more the president.” However, asked if he was longing to campaign with Mr. Obama, Mr. Lipinski said, “I am not answering that question.”

Democrats
Barack Obama
US Economy
US Politics
2012 Presidential Election
US


For Obama, an Unsuccessful Campaign

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama not only failed to bring home the gold, he could not even muster the silver or bronze. A 20-hour mission across the ocean to persuade the International Olympic Committee to give the Summer Games of 2016 to Chicago ended with the president’s adopted hometown finishing fourth of four candidate cities. Although Chicago might have lost to Rio de Janeiro for reasons that had little to do with Mr. Obama, the fact that he made himself the face of its bid invariably meant that its defeat would be taken as a stinging rejection of its favorite son. Losing out on the Olympics, of course, is not the sort of war-and-peace issue that defines a presidency, and the embarrassment will presumably fade in a news cycle or two. But it provides fodder for critics who are already using it as a metaphor for a president who, in their view, focuses on the wrong priorities and overestimates his capacity to persuade the world to follow his lead. Mr. Obama looked glum as he returned to Washington on Friday afternoon and said, “I wish that we had come back with better news from Copenhagen.” He portrayed the defeat as if it were little more than a lost game of pickup basketball. “One of the things that I think is most valuable about sports is that you can play a great game and still not win,” he said in the Rose Garden. Republicans excoriated Mr. Obama’s decision to go in the first place, even sending out an e-mail statement while he was addressing the committee in Copenhagen with the subject line “Wrong Priorities.” Republicans also quickly linked the failed effort to Friday’s jobs report, which showed the unemployment rate ticking up to 9.8 percent in September. “Our country needs the president’s undivided attention on the urgent issues facing American families today: rising unemployment, soaring health care costs, winning the war in Afghanistan and dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat,” said Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Some International Olympic Committee members said that the vote was not a rejection of Mr. Obama and that his presentation was formidable. Richard W. Pound, a committee member from Canada, said that the other cities wanted to knock Chicago out early because they thought it would have been more difficult to do so in the later rounds. “I’m sure that a lot of the political maneuvering was based on the fact that Obama was probably going to come and was coming, so they said, ‘We’ve got to keep Chicago out of play or we’re all dead,’ ” said Mr. Pound, who added, “I think he made a lot of friends here, got a lot of respect.” In Chicago, the disappointment was deep but not aimed at the president. A city preparing for a victory rally — even the famed Picasso in Daley Plaza was decorated with an enormous Olympic medal — reacted with silence and disappointment. Barry Bowlus, one of those waiting in Daley Plaza, said that at least Mr. Obama had tried. Had he not gone at all, Mr. Bowlus said, “there would have been a lot more heck for him to pay around here.” Mr. Obama’s decision to become the first American president to lobby the Olympic committee in person, just two weeks after saying he was too busy with health care legislation, was a gamble from the start. It was predicated on the theory that Mr. Obama’s star power overseas — “the best brand in the world,” as his advisers have put it — was luminescent enough to make the difference. Given that Mr. Obama flew overnight and made his presentation about 3 a.m. Washington time, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said it consumed few regular work hours that would have gone to other priorities. Mr. Obama also used the opportunity to meet for 25 minutes with his commander in Afghanistan , Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who flew to Copenhagen from London, where he was on business. “The biggest loss of anything on this trip was sleep,” Mr. Gibbs said. How much it cost taxpayers to fly Air Force One and its backup plane, transport the armored presidential limousines across the ocean and provide security for the whirlwind trip was uncertain. Mr. Obama was in Copenhagen for just five hours and did not stay for the vote. He learned Chicago lost in the first round while watching a CNN transmission whose signal cut in and out as Air Force One passed over Cabot Strait between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses. But officials said the administration did not independently verify Chicago’s chances, relying instead on the Chicago 2016 committee assertions that the city had enough support to finish in the top two. Mr. Obama, Michelle Obama , Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Jarrett worked the phones in recent weeks without coming away with a sense of how behind Chicago really was. “Most of our information came from the committee and the Chicago folks,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president. “But I don’t want to leave the impression that somehow we went on the basis of faulty information. We went because it was the right thing to do.” When Chicago was eliminated in the first round after receiving only 18 of 94 votes, senior Democrats began debating whether it had been wise for the president to become so invested in the bid. But with Mr. Obama flying back to Washington and out of pocket for hours, Mr. Axelrod rushed onto television to defend the effort. “I don’t view this as a repudiation of the president and the first lady,” he said. “He would do it again if he had the opportunity.” Still, several friends and aides to Mr. Obama said Friday’s outcome had a similar feeling to the campaign’s loss in the New Hampshire primary . But unlike the presidential race, the quest to host the Olympic Games had no more contests to go.

International Olympic Committee
Olympic Games
Obama Barack
Chicago (Ill)
Daley Richard M
Obama Michelle


Toyota Sued Over a Fatal California Lexus Crash

Abstract: Relatives of a California state trooper and three family members whose fatal car wreck helped start Toyota ’s wide-ranging safety recall have sued the automaker for defects they say caused the vehicle to speed out of control and crash. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in San Diego Superior Court, was the latest in a wave of product-liability cases and other legal action brought against the Toyota Motor Corporation over complaints of sudden, unintended acceleration in its vehicles. But the Aug. 28 crash near San Diego of a Lexus ES 350 sedan driven by the off-duty Highway Patrol officer, Mark Saylor, drew intense media attention and renewed government scrutiny of safety problems that led to the recall of some 8.5 million Toyota vehicles worldwide. Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder, extended his condolences to the Saylor family in an apology he delivered to a congressional hearing last week. Mr. Saylor was driving his wife, their 13-year-old daughter, and his brother-in-law on a family outing when their car “began to accelerate on its own” and sped out of control despite Saylor’s attempts “to apply the brakes and otherwise do everything possible to stop” the car, the lawsuit says. The car reached speeds of up to 120 miles per hour before it struck another vehicle, plowed through a fence, hit a berm and flew through the air, then rolled several times into a field and burst into flames. The family’s final moments before impact were captured in the recording of a frantic 911-emergency cell phone call placed by Saylor’s brother-in-law, Christopher Lastrella. The suit names Toyota, its United States division and other corporate entities as defendants, along with the Lexus dealership where Mr. Saylor was given the car temporarily while his own Lexus was being serviced. Although the suit makes no specific allegations as to the root cause of the unintended acceleration, it says the car in question “was defective when it left the control of each defendant” and that “adequate warnings of the danger were not given.” The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages on behalf of the parents of Mr. Saylor and his wife. Toyota officials have said they do not comment on pending litigation.

Toyota Motor Corp
Accidents and Safety
Suits and Litigation
Automobiles
Liability for Products
Recalls and Bans of Products
Saylor Mark


Official Corruption in Mexico, Once Rarely Exposed, Is Starting to Come to Light

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — Andrés Granier has a sumptuous wardrobe and lifestyle. He has bragged about owning 400 pairs of shoes, 300 suits and 1,000 shirts, collected from luxury stores in New York and Los Angeles. His purchases barely fit in his several properties, scattered throughout Mexico and abroad. A tape recording of Mr. Granier’s boasts, making him sound like a highflying corporate executive, was leaked to a local radio station last month. But his job title, until December, was governor of a midsize southeastern Mexican state, a position that currently pays about $92,000 a year after taxes. “We go to Fifth Avenue and buy a pair of shoes; $600,” Mr. Granier is heard saying about one of his trips abroad. “I took clothes to Miami, I took clothes to Cancún, I took clothes to my house, and I have leftovers,” he added, saying, “I’m going to auction them off.” (The day after the recording was made public, he said that he had been inebriated while making those statements in October.) But just as eye-opening as the extravagances of a public official — now under investigation after Mr. Granier’s successor discovered that about $190 million in state funds was unaccounted for, the state government said this month — is that they came to light at all in a country where state and local corruption, a serious drag on Mexico’s development, run deep and are rarely exposed. The case of Mr. Granier, who was taken into custody on June 14 at a Mexico City hospital where he is being treated for a heart ailment, is just the latest among several former governors and public officials who have recently found themselves under investigation or facing public scorn. Watchdog groups are gaining strength, opposition parties are challenging and exposing the faults of the status quo, and social and traditional news media organizations are increasingly seeking to hold officials accountable. “There will be more of these because the issue has taken off,” said Ricardo Corona, a public finance expert at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness , a research group in Mexico City. “There is encouragement on the issues of transparency, accountability, access to information.” Mr. Granier’s case is one of the more closely followed political spectacles here in recent years. By January, when the new government in his state, Tabasco, found holes in the budget, Mr. Granier, 65, had retreated into obscurity. This month, after public shock and outrage over the recording reached a fever pitch, he suddenly resurfaced on television, saying he was in Miami. Image Tapes of Andrés Granier, center, the former governor of Tabasco State, boasting of his lifestyle were leaked to a radio station. Credit Bernardo Montoya/Reuters “I’m going back to Mexico,” he declared in an interview on one of Mexico’s most-watched morning shows, Primero Noticias. “I don’t owe absolutely anything.” Upon his arrival at the airport in the capital the following day, a chaotic news media swarm engulfed Mr. Granier — at one point he stumbled before the cameras — before he was whisked away in a white S.U.V., with camera crews on motorcycles giving chase. Three days later, the Tabasco state attorney’s office issued an arraignment order for Mr. Granier on suspicion of embezzlement and improper exercise of public service. His treasurer, José Manuel Saiz, already had been arrested this month on suspicion of embezzlement as he tried to cross the border into the United States, after boxes containing nearly $7 million in unexplained cash were discovered on a property linked to him. A decade ago, such suspicious accounting would have most likely been kept under wraps, as Mexican officials tended to protect one another and the public took their malfeasance for granted. During the uninterrupted 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, governors, who often secured their appointments based on friendly ties with the autocratic presidents, were almost expected to pillage state treasuries. When the party lost the 2000 presidential election, it left a political vacuum across the states. Governors around the country acquired unprecedented autonomy and almost no oversight, said Alfonso Zárate, the president of Grupo Consultor Interdisciplinario, a political consulting firm in Mexico. State debt rose to $30 billion in 2012 from about $15 billion in 2008, according to the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit. Accounting for inflation, that was a 70.4 percent increase, according to an article in the online publication Animal Político by Marco Cancino, a political analyst in Mexico City. Governments have reported scant details of how they have spent the money from these loans. But with governors from opposing political parties succeeding one another and doing away with the unspoken pact of the PRI years, in which incoming leaders protected departing ones, a system of checks and balances — some have called it political retribution — is emerging. Freedom of information laws, recent legislative overhauls demanding more accountability from state governments and an increasingly technologically engaged society have been more successful at preventing murky finances from going unquestioned. Image Cash that was found on a property linked to José Manuel Saiz, Mr. Granier’s treasurer. Mr. Saiz was arrested this month. Credit America Rocio/Associated Press As a result, tales of disgraced former governors are becoming a staple of the news here, and are part of what Mr. Zárate calls an “incipient democracy.” In 2011, the federal attorney general’s office opened an investigation into a $3 billion debt in the state of Coahuila, acquired mostly during the administration of Humberto Moreira, a former president of the PRI, which recovered the presidency in December . The former governor of the state of Aguascalientes, Luis Armando Reynoso, is being investigated over improper exercise of public service, news organizations have reported. Last year, Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, the former governor of the state of Quintana Roo who was extradited to the United States in 2010, pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder millions of dollars in bribes he received from the powerful Juárez drug organization, to ensure that its cocaine moved safely through his state, undisturbed by law enforcement. Inroads in transparency, however, have yet to change the culture and mentality of “El que no tranza, no avanza,” or “He who does not cheat, does not get ahead,” a popular motto here. And these victories have yet to transform the country’s image abroad: Mexico fell in Transparency International’s corruption perception index to 105th place in 2012 from 57th in 2002, with a lower ranking indicating that the country is seen as more corrupt. “We still don’t have accountability,” said Mr. Cancino, the political analyst, who warned that progress in transparency practices at the federal level would slowly make their way down to the local and state levels. “There are still 32 battles that we have to wage,” he said, referring to Mexico’s 31 states and one federal district. Small gains in transparency, seen through scandals like the one enveloping Mr. Granier, have not translated into justice served, experts say. Governors are investigated but rarely charged. “We know what is going on,” said Sergio Aguayo , a political analyst at the Colegio de México. “But no measures are being taken.” Mexicans who are active on Twitter discuss these scandals for days and sometimes weeks, shaming politicians and pressing traditional news media to cover them extensively. But political analysts argue that there are no effective mechanisms yet to translate citizen participation into structural change. “What do we do so that society goes from indignation to action?” Mr. Cancino asked. In the meantime, former politicians who endure public scrutiny and a dose of humiliation often come out of these scandals largely unscathed. In April, the newspaper Reforma reported that Mr. Moreira, the repudiated former Coahuila governor, was living with his family in an upscale neighborhood in Barcelona, Spain, while attending a local university.

Corruption
Mexico
Politics
Embezzlement
Andres Granier