S.&P. Cuts European Union’s Credit Rating

Abstract: BRUSSELS — European Union leaders gathering here for a summit meeting on Friday barely had time to congratulate themselves on their new banking deal before getting a slap in the face from the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s. The agency removed the bloc’s top-level AAA long-term credit rating, lowering it one level to AA+, citing “the overall weaker creditworthiness of the E.U.’s 28 member states.” On Friday afternoon, S.&P. issued a clarification, emphasizing that the downgrade applied only to the European Union’s borrowing as a supranational body and that the move had no effect on individual member states. The timing of the announcement was inauspicious, coming on the last day of a meeting of European Union officials and heads of state, whose capstone achievement was an agreement for the creation of a European system for winding down failed banks. That plan, despite limits that critics have been quick to point out, was supposed to demonstrate the bloc’s commitment to building a banking union, locking member states into an ever-tighter economic embrace. S.&P. was apparently unconvinced. “We believe the financial profile of the E.U. has deteriorated, and that cohesion among E.U. members has lessened,” it said in explaining the downgrade. The firm also pointed to disputes over the European Union’s budget and to Britain’s plan for a referendum on remaining in the European Union as signs that solidarity was under strain. The European Union’s borrowings of 56 billion euros, or $76 billion, are separate from those of member states and from finance programs like the European Financial Stabilization Mechanism and the European Atomic Energy Community. The ratings agency said 80 percent of the borrowing was currently extended to Portugal and Ireland, a legacy of the sovereign bailouts. The European Commission, the executive arm of the union, took umbrage. “The commission disagrees with S.&P. that member states’ obligations to the budget in a stress scenario are questionable,” Olli Rehn, the commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said in a statement. “All member states have always, and also throughout the financial crisis, provided their expected contributions to the budget in full and in time.” S.&P. denied any link between the downgrade and the announcement of the banking resolution deal. Rather, it said it was a result of the falling credit scores of member states since it first put the bloc’s rating on review at the beginning of 2012 and delays and debate over the European Union’s budget. Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank in London, wrote in a note that the ratings downgrade “is largely symbolic as the E.U., at least in the grand scheme of things, does not borrow much.” Investors, for their part, chastened by the ratings agencies’ blessing of financial dross during the credit bubble, have ignored many S.&P. decisions in recent years, and there was no market impact on Friday.

Credit rating
Olli Rehn
EU
Standard & Poor's


Voice of Road Runners Knows About Endurance

Abstract: Ian Brooks, the public-address announcer at the finish line of the New York City Marathon , stood on a platform above the action yesterday and gripped a microphone. A jumbo screen nearby showed Paula Radcliffe of Britain heading through Central Park, with Gete Wami of Ethiopia one step behind. “All attention on the screen now,” Brooks commanded the spectators packing the bleachers lining the road to the finish. “Has Radcliffe gained those five meters over Gete Wami? This could be the significant moment in the women’s race.” As the screen showed Wami closing the gap, Brooks’s voice, an excitable tenor with a British accent, rose half an octave: “Paula Radcliffe has 10 meters. Now it’s back to five. Maybe four. Whoa. Wami looking good. Radcliffe, formidable. “This is what we live for!” Brooks, known as the voice of the New York Road Runners, nearly did not live to announce: “The world record holder! Set to win her second marathon in New York. She’s flying! Give it up, New York! Paula! Paula! Paula!” As his voice floated above the finish, he was less than a mile from the spot where he began his own marathon back to health on a rainy night in March. Brooks was in a cab at 11 p.m., riding home from a Road Runners awards event where he had been the master of ceremonies. The cab was stopped at a light on Central Park West at 81st Street when another cab hit it broadside. The police found Brooks standing in the middle of the road, covered in blood and asking for a tissue. “I don’t recall anything about the accident, which is a blessing perhaps,” Brooks said. “I remember vaguely being in an ambulance. They cut off my coat, then my tuxedo and asked me if I wanted to save the cuff links. I said, ‘Oh yeah, they’re my Great Britain ones.’ ” Brooks’s left wrist was broken. His upper lip was split to his nose, and his gums had separated from the bone. He managed to give the paramedics the home phone number of Mary Wittenberg, president of the New York Road Runners, who raced to the hospital. “It still completely unnerves me to think what he looked like,” Wittenberg said. “His lip was gone, and it was like he had a six-inch extension in his arm. I’ve never seen anything like it.” And that was the good news. After they stitched Brooks’s lip and gums, doctors discovered that he had a large cancerous tumor in his bladder. Brooks then had a series of operations: to repair his wrist; to remove the tumor; and to remove his bladder and create a new one from a section of his small intestine, a procedure that took eight hours. Although the tumor occupied about 75 percent of his bladder, it had not spread. If not for the accident, said Brooks’s surgeon, Dr. Douglas Scherr: “The cat would have been out of the bag, and bladder cancer is a very aggressive tumor. I consider him very fortunate that it happened when it did.” Recovery has not been easy. Brooks, who competed for Britain as a race walker in the late 1960s, was twice hospitalized for infections after the operation, and he lost 25 pounds. Although it has taken him months to regain his strength, and he still does not have full use of his fingers, Brooks resumed his normal schedule this weekend. He spoke Saturday at the start of the United States Olympic men’s marathon trials, then took a cab to the United Nations to narrate the start of the International Friendship Run, then went back to Central Park for the finish of the trials. After the elite runners finished yesterday, Brooks descended from the platform and stood at the roadside, greeting the rest. “Come on, you can do it, sir,” he urged a limping runner. “Here comes F.D.N.Y. Denise, baby, you made it.” He planned to stay until the seven-hour marathoners finished before heading to the awards dinner. “What makes him so good at announcing is his passion and pure love of the sport,” Wittenberg said. “At the finish line last year, he welcomed each runner like he or she won the race. He truly sees every person out there as an athlete.” Brooks never had formal training, but he usually announces about 40 events nationwide each year, from marathons in Phoenix and Nashville, to the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival in Queens, to indoor track meets at the Armory in Upper Manhattan. He practices pronouncing unusual names, and he closely follows running results throughout the year. Weekend warriors love Brooks’s unusual voice, his daring sartorial choices (he wore orange pants yesterday), and his contagious enthusiasm. Elite athletes appreciate that he can educate spectators with a few words and get them involved in a race. “He himself is excited about the event,” said Alan Webb, a friend of Brooks’s, who holds the American record for the mile. “And he’s very good at communicating that with the audience. So the audience then becomes excited, and I can feel that during a race.” As the women’s race was ending yesterday, at least one spectator needed Brooks to keep him informed — Gary Lough, Radcliffe’s nervous husband. “It got to the point where I couldn’t watch, so I turned my back,” Lough said. “But I could hear his voice, so I knew what was going on.”

New York City Marathon
Cancer
Medicine and Health
Marathon Running
Radcliffe Paula
Wami Gete


Bahrain: Trial Begins for Shiites Accused of Plot

Abstract: The trial of 25 Shiites accused of plotting to topple the Sunni-dominated government of Bahrain began Thursday with defendants saying they were tortured and police officers encircling the area to keep protests at bay. All except one of the 23 defendants present in court said they had been subjected to beatings, electric shocks and other forms of mistreatment. A defense lawyer, Jalila al-Sayed, called for the trial to be suspended because of the torture allegations. A government statement quoted a forensic expert as saying a medical examination of 13 defendants who had complained of torture found no sign of mistreatment. The judge ordered medical tests for some defendants to try to verify the accusations, defense lawyers said. The trial could become a bellwether for the Shiite majority, who complain of discrimination in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.

Bahrain
Torture
Shiite Muslims
Coups D'Etat and Attempted Coups D'Etat


Success Academy Charter Schools Force Mayor Bill de Blasio to Confront New Law

Abstract: A charter school network’s plan to double in size over the next few years could reignite a war over classroom space in New York City, only this time with the ground rules already tilted against the mayor. A new state law passed in April gives the city just two options to meet the demands of the Success Academy network: It can hand over free space in public or private buildings, or give the schools money to find their own space. The first option has frequently led to angry protests from the parents and teachers in schools that have to share space. The latter route would come with spiraling financial costs, as well as potential political ones, underscoring the new law’s unspoken aim: to get the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio to be more collegial to the charter school sector. “There are all sorts of hidden ways that this work can be made much harder than it has to be,” said Eva S. Moskowitz, the Success Academy founder. Ms. Moskowitz is adroit at mobilizing support from parents and public officials. Her march on Albany last winter, after the mayor briefly blocked three of her schools from city space, helped set the new law into motion, and she vowed last week to ensure that “the law is followed.” With 22 schools serving 6,700 students, her network is already larger than many New York State school districts. She already has approval to open 10 more schools in the city, and said last week that she intends to apply to the state for permission to open 14 more, which would give her 46 schools, in every borough but Staten Island, by 2016. Ms. Moskowitz’s rapid growth and penchant for picking fights over space were tolerated, even encouraged, by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who incubated the charter school movement in New York by giving many of the institutions free space in city schools. Ms. Moskowitz’s schools, known for a hard-driving work environment and high test scores, tend to be very popular among parents in poor-performing districts, and unpopular elsewhere, where they are seen as taking resources from regular schools. Charter schools are privately run but publicly funded. Mr. de Blasio promised to change the city’s approach to charter schools and be pickier about which ones he would embrace, making it clear that Ms. Moskowitz’s schools were not in that group. Norm Fruchter, a mayoral appointee to a panel that votes on educational policy, conceded that the new law “created some really difficult problems” for the city, just as it is trying to find space for universal prekindergarten classes, relieve crowding and house classrooms that are now in trailers. But he had not lost hope, he said. “I think the administration has a number of things going, including a working group on space utilization, to try to relieve some of the problems that past co-locations have created,” said Mr. Fruchter, who is a senior policy analyst at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. “I have hopes that what they come up with will be of some use in the current situation.” That working group has some representatives from the charter world, but ones who are on better terms with the city than Ms. Moskowitz. Image Eva S. Moskowitz the founder of the Success Academy group of charter schools, wants permission to double its size by 2016, which could reignite protests over sharing classrooms in crowded districts. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times One of the districts she is eyeing for a new school is Brooklyn’s District 15, where some parents — and Carmen Fariña, before she was chancellor — unsuccessfully fought to keep a Success school from opening in Cobble Hill. “We’re a crowded district; we need space, and we don’t have any space as it is,” said Naila Caicedo-Rosario, president of the Community Education Council, which represents parents, in District 15. “The last thing we need is a Success Academy in our district. We will fight it and we will organize parents and we will do our best; we will not allow it.” To that, Ms. Moskowitz said the community is broader than “institutional interest groups,” like the education council, and noted that for the 10 new schools she is set to open in August, 14,400 families applied for 2,870 seats. “I think we have to ask ourselves, ‘What does the community want?’ And, ‘Who is the community?’ ” said Ms. Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman who wants to hold elected office again someday. How Ms. Moskowitz’s effort plays out could resemble a municipal Ping-Pong game. If the SUNY Charter Schools Institute approves her applications — it has never turned her down — the focus would shift to the city. The new law — Section 2853 of New York’s education law — gives the city the option to offer a charter school space within the school system, or other public or private space, at the city’s expense. Under the law, the city cannot make its offer of space conditional on Success Academy’s opening its doors to certain numbers of students with disabilities or limited English proficiency — students critics claim the network has ignored. The network’s schools have a somewhat smaller percentage of these groups than city schools as a whole, but Susan Barker Miller, the executive director of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, said, “In general, institute staff reports to me that Success Academy has a strong literacy environment, which is first and foremost a good foundation for an English language learner’s program.” If the school deems the offered space unsuitable, it can appeal to the courts, the state’s Education Department or an arbitrator. If the school wins, the city would be forced to pay the charter school’s rent or an amount equal to 20 percent of what taxpayers pay charter schools for tuition, now $13,877 per pupil, whichever costs less. That would force the school to find its own space, not a simple task in New York City. “The law gives us a tremendous leg up in the funding department, but if there’s no resolution with the D.O.E., new charters still need to find their own space to run their schools,” said Kyle Rosenkrans, the vice president of the Northeast Charter Schools Network. But Mr. de Blasio could be wary of going that route. The last time he denied space to Success Academy schools, it led to the law that now handcuffs him. Devora Kaye, a spokeswoman for the city’s Education Department, said in a statement: “We are continuing to evaluate the new state law and how it will affect our decisions around school space. At this point, it is too early to determine its impact on future proposals.”

Success Academy Charter Schools
Charter school
Bill de Blasio
Eva S Moskowitz
NYC Department of Education
K-12 Education
NYC


Eisner Brings His Media Expertise to Local TV Markets

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Michael D. Eisner is best known for developing the Walt Disney Company into a diversified entertainment conglomerate, but one specific slice of the media business has always been his sweet spot: television. He saw the potential of ESPN and bought it for Disney in 1995. Earlier in his career, as an ABC executive, he helped discover seminal shows like “Happy Days.” Now, as owner of the Tornante Company, which he founded after leaving Disney in 2005, Mr. Eisner sees opportunity in an area that’s considered television’s biggest backwater: original shows aired by local stations, mostly during the day. Tornante and Sinclair Broadcast Group , which owns 162 stations, have formed a company, Tornante-Sinclair, that aims to produce and distribute new syndicated talk shows, court shows and game shows. “It’s not maybe the sexiest area, but it’s also not an irrelevant area,” Mr. Eisner said in an interview. “It’s one where there is a voracious appetite for content, and there is not the kind of competition among suppliers that there was before.” Original programming for local stations — what the television industry calls first-run syndication — fell out of favor at studios over the last decade as daytime ratings declined and expensive new offerings like “Katie,” with Katie Couric, failed . In fact, only three new first-run shows will arrive nationwide in the fall. Studios have also increasingly tailored syndicated programming to the needs of stations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. That shift has forced independent station owners like Sinclair, which operates in smaller, more conservative markets, to buy shows that are not always the best fit for those audiences. (As a rule, stations produce news content and rely on studio suppliers and network affiliates for everything else.) Sinclair — which has recently been on a station-buying spree, expanding to 40 additional markets — now considers its footprint large enough to warrant making its own shows, in partnership with a production expert: Mr. Eisner. “It became clear that if we were going to get into the content business, then we couldn’t find a better team than the one at Tornante,” said Steven J. Pruett, Sinclair’s co-chief operating officer. Part of the opportunity, Mr. Pruett said, comes from owning digital rights. At the moment, studios typically retain the streaming rights for shows they produce. But station owners see streaming as crucial to their future. Mr. Eisner said he had begun talking to David Smith, Sinclair’s chief executive, about a deal because Sinclair airs “Judge Faith,” a Tornante-made court show. Tornante also makes the animated “ BoJack Horseman ” for Netflix.

TV
Tornante
Sinclair Broadcast Group
Michael D Eisner


Court Clears Way for Spy Lawsuit Against Army Workers

Abstract: Several activists from Washington State can continue with a lawsuit accusing two civilian employees of the United States Army of spying on organizers of protests against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday. The ruling , from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, appears to clear the way for a trial involving assertions that the Army was involved in the surveillance of civilian groups, which several statutes forbid. The activists filed the lawsuit in 2010 saying that John J. Towery, who worked as a criminal intelligence analyst for the force protection division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash., infiltrated protest groups using the alias John Jacob. Mr. Towery then provided information on the groups to the Army, law enforcement agencies and private security firms in an effort to thwart protests and target the protesters, the lawsuit said. “John Towery had an intimate knowledge of our personal lives, our relationships, our political beliefs, even actions we were planning,” said Brendan Maslauskas Dunn, one of the activists who filed the lawsuit. “People were followed. They were routinely harassed, detained and arrested.” The lawsuit said that Mr. Towery began spying in 2007 on a group called Port Militarization Resistance, which was formed to disrupt military shipments from ports in Olympia, Tacoma and other cities in Washington. Protesters figured out Mr. Towery’s real identity in 2009 after filing a series of public information requests. Defendants in the lawsuit also include another civilian employee of the Army, Thomas Rudd, and police officers in Olympia and Tacoma. Judge Ronald B. Leighton, of Federal District Court in Tacoma, dismissed parts of the suit in 2011 but said claims that Mr. Towery had coordinated actions to silence the protesters and taken steps that led to some being wrongly arrested could continue. Mr. Towery and Mr. Rudd asked the appeals panel to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that it was not supported by facts and that they were entitled to qualified immunity as government employees. But the judges on the panel rejected those arguments, writing, “The district court correctly determined that these allegations are plausibly supported by sufficient factual detail,” including “specific times and places that Towery spied.” Lawyers for Mr. Towery and Mr. Rudd did not respond to requests for comment. Lawrence A. Hildes, the lawyer for the other plaintiffs, said the decision on Monday was the first time an appeals panel had ruled that citizens could sue military employees over spying. “The military decided that these people were the enemy because they were opposed to what the military was doing, so they launched a military intelligence operation to stop them,” Mr. Hildes said. “Wherever you draw the line, this should be across it.” In 1972, the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision , dismissed a case challenging the Army’s right to conduct surveillance of domestic political groups, saying that citizens who had been spied upon but not harmed lacked the standing to stop the surveillance. Those suing Mr. Towery and the others contended, however, that the spying had deterred their free speech and led to their arrest, violating First and Fourth Amendment rights. The lawsuit said that Mr. Towery had attended meetings of Port Militarization Resistance and Students for a Democratic Society, then had given information about members of the groups to the Army and police agencies. As a result, the suit said, law enforcement officials compiled lists of license plates belonging to protesters and placed a surveillance camera on a pole outside a house where activists lived. Documents show that Mr. Rudd composed detailed memorandums containing information about activist groups that were circulated to people with military e-mail addresses, police officials and people identified as contractors. In November 2007, several memos by Mr. Rudd described plans by protesters to block trucks that were planning to leave the port of Olympia while transporting military equipment. The memos also included descriptions of events that appeared to be lawful, including a vigil to “raise awareness of the redeployment” and a “die-in” planned for the campus of The Evergreen State College in Olympia.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Swede Hangs on for First Win

Abstract: Fredrik Andersson Hed of Sweden won the Italian Open in Turin by two shots after shooting a one-over-par 73, his first tournament victory in 245 attempts over 13 years. Andersson Hed, who led by six strokes heading into the last day, totaled 16-under 272. Andersson Hed first joined the European tour in 1992 but has made 14 visits to its qualifying school.


Russian Buildup in Syria Raises Questions on Role

Abstract: LONDON — Russia’s military buildup in Syria now includes surface-to-air missiles as well as combat aircraft with air-to-air capability, deployments that raise “serious questions” about Moscow’s role in the region, Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday. Russian officials have said that the purpose of the buildup at a base near Latakia, Syria, is to combat the Islamic State. But the deployment of air defense systems and fighter aircraft — weapons that can be used against a conventionally armed foe but that have little utility against extremist fighters — has spurred concerns that Moscow’s goal is also to establish a military outpost in the Middle East. It has also added to the Pentagon’s worries about the risk of an inadvertent confrontation between Russia’s military and the American-led coalition that is carrying out airstrikes in Syria against the Islamic State. “Clearly the presence of aircraft with air-to-air combat capacity” as well as “surface-to-air missiles raise serious questions, which is precisely why Secretary Carter talked with the Minister of Defense of Russia Shoigu yesterday,” Mr. Kerry said, referring to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu. At the White House’s direction, Mr. Carter began a dialogue Friday with Mr. Shoigu aimed at ensuring that American and Russian aircraft avoid unintended incidents as they operate over Syria . While Mr. Kerry did not provide details, an American official, who requested anonymity because he was discussing intelligence reports, said that a Russian SA-22 air defense system was already in place at Latakia. The United States had observed elements of the system at the base in the last week, but now the launcher and the missiles it fires are there, too, the official said. The American official added that the four Su-27 aircraft Russia had flown to the air base were armed with air-to-air missiles. “What’s the air-to-air threat there for them?” asked the official, who called the development “troubling.” Other American officials suggested, however, that the deployment might simply reflect the Russian military’s standard defensive precautions as it established an air hub in a foreign country. The prefabricated building Russia has erected at the base now has the capacity to house 2,000 military advisers and personnel. Ferrying weapons and equipment to the base has involved well over 20 flights by Russian Condor transport planes — almost all of which have flown to Syria by passing over Iran and Iraq. Syria, and the migrant crisis it has spawned, has been a major focus of Mr. Kerry’s trip to Europe. After a meeting Saturday morning with Philip Hammond, the British foreign secretary, Mr. Kerry said that it was vital to pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis but that Moscow was not putting enough pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to make him negotiate seriously. “We need to get to the negotiation,” Mr. Kerry said at a joint news conference with Mr. Hammond. “That’s what we’re looking for, and we hope Russia and Iran, other countries with influence, will help to bring that about, because that’s what’s preventing this crisis from ending.” “Right now, Assad has refused to have a serious discussion,” Mr. Kerry added, “and Russia has refused to help bring him to the table in order to do that.” Mr. Hammond and Mr. Kerry each emphasized that Mr. Assad could not remain in power if there was to be a durable solution to the conflict, but they said that the timing of his departure during a political transition in Syria would be a matter of negotiation. “It doesn’t have to be on Day 1 or Month 1,” Mr. Kerry said. “There is a process by which all the parties have to come together and reach an understanding of how this can best be achieved.” “I just know that the people of Syria have already spoken with their feet,” Mr. Kerry added. “They’re leaving Syria.” “Assad has to go,” Mr. Hammond added. “He can’t be part of Syria’s long-term future. But the modality and the timing has to be part of a discussion about a political solution.” Despite his concerns about Russia’s military buildup in Syria, Mr. Kerry said that the Obama administration welcomed a role for Russian forces if it was focused on combating the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL, and not on propping up Mr. Assad. “ISIL is plotting attacks today against the West,” Mr. Kerry said. “So to the degree that Russia wants to focus its efforts against ISIL, we welcome that.” Mr. Kerry and Mr. Hammond also discussed Yemen, Libya and Ukraine. On Friday, Mr. Kerry discussed the Syrian crisis here with Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister from the United Arab Emirates. On Sunday, Mr. Kerry plans to fly to Berlin to discuss Syria and the migrant crisis with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Russia
Syria
Military
John Kerry
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State


With School Closed, Teachers and Volunteers in Ferguson Work to Fill Gap

Abstract: FERGUSON, Mo. — The teachers stood on a street corner near Griffith Elementary School here on Thursday, jumping and dancing as they tried to get drivers’ attention. No, the school was still not open for classes. But children could at least pick up free lunches there. Parents parked their cars and children leapt up the steps toward a table where cafeteria workers passed out brown bags filled with turkey and cheese sandwiches, vegetables and fruit. “Do you want chocolate milk or white milk?” they asked, though the answer was usually the same. About a mile away at the public library, scores of elementary and middle school students buzzed around while others hunkered over arts and crafts projects and worksheets prepared by a motley group of volunteer teachers. Image Free lunches were given out by volunteer cafeteria workers to kids at Griffith Elementary School. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times More than a week after protests erupted here after the shooting death of Michael Brown, prompting school officials to delay the start of classes for fear of violence, this was, in effect, the Ferguson school system. Teachers and others are volunteering to provide some instruction to the students, who so far have missed a week of school. “I’m praying to God we can get these kids in school because kids have been out too long,” said Tyona Fields, one of the cafeteria workers at Griffith Elementary School. School is scheduled to start next Monday. More than 160 students were dropped off by parents at the Ferguson Municipal Public Library on Thursday, an increase from just 12 on Monday, when an art teacher, Carrie Pace, took to the street with a sign telling children to come inside and learn. Now the volunteer teachers separate the younger elementary school students from the older ones and enlist the high school students as volunteers. Teachers who are not working because of the school closing, as well as retired teachers, have come in with their own curriculums. Some students on Thursday studied algebra. Antona Smith, a former educator who is running the show, said, “I’m the principal.” Mrs. Smith said the library was a safe space. “In here, we’re not talking about what’s going on out there,” she said. “But if a child is sad, we have pulled kids aside and done some coloring. Color it out and then have a release.” Image Teachers at Griffith Elementary School tried to rally students in the neighborhood for school next week. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times But the students, teachers, volunteers and coaches were getting support from many corners. Gov. Jay Nixon and Capt. Ronald S. Johnson , the popular Highway Patrol official who is leading the response to the protests, stopped by the library Thursday afternoon to greet students. The St. Louis Rams football team invited high school football teams who could not practice to use the team’s facilities . All told, though, the efforts were reaching relatively few of the Ferguson-Florissant School District’s roughly 11,000 students, three-quarters of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Last year, in statewide evaluations, the district scored just shy of the goal the state has set for districts to remain accredited. Students in districts that lose accreditation may have the option to attend a school in another district, taking state education funds with them. Ferguson-Florissant remains accredited and has two more rounds of annual evaluations, which are based on test scores and other factors, to gain enough points to keep its good standing. Five different elementary schools began passing out free lunches on Wednesday. A cafeteria employee at Griffith said they had given out more than 100 lunches on both Wednesday and Thursday and planned to do the same on Friday. “Bye,” one little girl said after picking up her lunch. “See you tomorrow.”

Teachers
Ferguson
Library
Michael Brown
K-12 Education
Civil Unrest


Mobsters, Poets and the Trial of a Whale

Abstract: JIMMY BRESLIN stared helplessly out the window of his office in The Daily News one afternoon in the 1970s, seeking inspiration — through a haze of cigar smoke — from the nondescript facade of a building across 42nd Street. He betrayed no visible brain activity, not even a flicker of the genius that infused his columns, one of which was close to being overdue. I know because I was his anxious editor. But his blank stare was an illusion. Mr. Breslin was eavesdropping. He was mining a rich lode of gossip from his assistant, Ann Marie, who was chatting on the telephone outside his office door. Mr. Breslin is a very good listener. Almost imperceptibly, his head began to turn until he finally fixed his gaze on Ann Marie, and in one of those unheralded but defining moments in journalism, a series of columns about the underside of life in the Big City — with the names changed to protect the guilty and Mr. Breslin himself — was born. In “The Good Rat” (Ecco Press, $24.95), Mr. Breslin recalls another of his eureka moments, which took place in a Brooklyn courtroom where he had gone to research a book about two cops turned Mafia hit men. One was fat and sad-eyed, the other thin and listless. “Am I going to write 70,000 words about these two?” Mr. Breslin asked himself. “Rather I lay brick.” But when the trial started two years ago, he recalls, an unknown name on the prosecution witness list “turns the proceeding into something that thrills: the autobiography of Burton Kaplan, criminal.” Mr. Breslin had found his subject, a Brooklyn Tech dropout, father of a judge, who was “a great merchant, too great, and after he sold everything that did belong to him, he sold things that did not.” And lucky for us. His latest book ingeniously synthesizes Burton Kaplan’s bizarre biography, his testimony, and Mr. Breslin’s memoirs of his own earlier exploits and encounters with characters who punctuated his columns but are mostly dead, imprisoned, or hidden in witness protection programs. “You can drink with legitimate people if you want,” Mr. Breslin writes of his social circle, adding that he is a product of nights when the mobster Fat Tony Salerno looked around the Copacabana, scowled at him and asked, “ ‘Didn’t you go where I told you to?’ ” Where had Mr. Breslin been told to go? That morning, he had encountered Mr. Salerno at a court engagement where the mobster complained, “You look like a bum,” and slipped him an East Side tailor’s business card. “Tell him you want a suit made right away so you don’t make me ashamed I know you,” Mr. Salerno ordered. The book is cleverly constructed, opening with an annotated cast of characters, and it delivers canny anthropological insights into organized crime (“The feds soon realized all they had to do was follow guys who kiss each other and they’d know the whole Mafia”). Mr. Breslin also criticizes John Gotti for having “violated New York’s revered rush-hour rules when he had Paul Castellano killed in the middle of it.” Mr. Breslin’s account of a victim who was killed by mistake belies the idea that there are no innocent bystanders. And every page reveals his talent for putting a twinkle in your mind’s eye (the lawyer Bruce Cutler wore “a light khaki summer suit that could have used 10 pounds less to cover”). The book is Jimmy Breslin at his best.  “Trying Leviathan” (Princeton University Press, $29.95) isn’t just another fish story; that is plain from its subtitle, “The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature.” D. Graham Burnett, a history professor at Princeton, details an arcane 1818 legal battle that began when Samuel Judd, a New York candlemaker and oil merchant, refused to pay for state inspection of three casks of spermaceti oil — insisting that it was not fish oil, subject to state certification, but whale oil. Professor Burnett occasionally lapses into brackish academic prose. But over all, his story is riveting, one of those wonderful obscure microcosmic matters. The case, he writes, is a telling episode in the history of science and sheds light on the status of philosophy and natural history “during critical years in the emergence of the city’s learned institutions and intellectual culture.”  Lots of things seem to occur in New York without rhyme or reason, but a new book, “I Speak of the City: Poems of New York ” (Columbia University Press, $24.95), reminds jaded New Yorkers that some people can find poetry in the magnificent and the mundane. The anthology, selected by Stephen Wolf, a novelist and teacher, ranges across four centuries and presents more than 100 voices, including William Cullen Bryant (“Hymn of the City”), Langston Hughes (“The Heart of Harlem”) and Jack Kerouac (“MacDougal Street Blues”). In his introduction, the poet John Hollander writes that for poets, New York “is a great poem itself, in an unwritten tongue that constantly needs retranslation into a poet’s individual language.” The selections, Mr. Wolf writes, “have been either inspired by or in conflict with New York, and sometimes even both in the same poem.” They range from sonnets to epics, inspiring to disturbing, immortal to forgettable. Each tells us the city is defined by the eyes of its beholder.  “Goldfeder’s Modern Election Law” (New York Legal Publishing, $125) isn’t for everyone. But with the presidential primary election on Feb. 5, it is a timely and authoritative guide to New York State’s byzantine election law. Moreover, it’s surprisingly accessible, not only to candidates and their supporters, but to political junkies and concerned laymen. The author, Jerry H. Goldfeder, special counsel to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, is a respected election lawyer and professor in his own right. The guide is crammed with practical advice on deciphering the conundrums of getting and staying on the ballot. It also includes a chapter that wisely and wittily addresses ethical issues.

Organized Crime
Breslin Jimmy
Writing and Writers
Books and Literature
New York Daily News


Replay Rules Are Modified

Abstract: The N.B.A.'s Board of Governors approved several modifications to the league’s instant replay system. The most notable change allows officials to use replay in overtime only in the last two minutes. Last year, instant replay was available for use in the entire overtime period. Referees can also now review plays to determine if a clear-path foul is warranted even if they did not initially call a clear-path foul. Previously, a clear-path foul had to be called for the play to be eligible for review.


New York Post Says Freelancer Is Subject of Extortion Inquiry

Abstract: A contributor to the Page Six gossip column in The New York Post is being investigated by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors on suspicion that he tried to extort money from a billionaire Democratic fund-raiser, The Post reported on its Web site last night. The fund-raiser, Ronald Burkle, complained to the authorities that the contributor, Jared Paul Stern, had demanded money in exchange for keeping negative information about Mr. Burkle from running in the gossip column, according to the newspaper and people with knowledge of the investigation. The Post reported that the inquiry is examining allegations that Mr. Stern wanted a $100,000 payment with additional $10,000 annual stipends and also requested that Mr. Burkle pass along gossip about other celebrities. In a statement issued last night, the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Col Allan, identified Mr. Stern as a freelance reporter for the paper, and said that he "has been suspended pending the outcome of the federal investigation. "Should the allegations prove true," Mr. Allan said, "Mr. Stern's conduct would be morally and journalistically reprehensible, a gross abuse of privilege, and in violation of the New York Post's standards and ethics." Suzanne Halpin, a Post spokeswoman, said she would not comment and referred a reporter to the Web site. The online article said that the federal authorities had asked newspaper management for a meeting on Wednesday to preserve evidence in the investigation, and that the management agreed. Calls and e-mail messages to Mr. Stern, 35, were not returned last night. Mr. Stern's lawyer, Edward Hayes, declined to comment, saying, "I haven't had an opportunity to learn yet what went on." The United States attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment. Mr. Stern has not been arrested, and no formal charges have been brought against him. Prosecutors have obtained tape recordings in connection with the investigation, according to a person who has been briefed on the matter. It is unclear, however, how much evidence has been collected by the federal authorities. Mr. Burkle, a private equity investor who ranked 335 on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, claims he has been the subject of false items in the gossip column. In a statement, Mr. Burkle said that both he and his lawyers "have repeatedly written and or told the New York Post lawyers, editors and management that the articles and the items about him in Page Six are inaccurate but to no avail. " Ms. Halpin declined to comment on Mr. Burkle's contention. Mr. Burkle, who lives in Los Angeles, has led a number of mergers and acquisitions of supermarket chains. His firm had also recently teamed with newspaper unions to place bids to buy the former Knight-Ridder newspapers that the McClatchy Company has tried to sell. Mr. Stern, known for dressing in three-piece suits and fedoras, has built his career out of fashion and celebrity. He was hired for a brief tenure as the executive editor of Star magazine under Bonnie Fuller in 2003. Mr. Stern also has a clothing line called Skull & Bones by Jared Paul Stern, which sells preppy clothing emblazoned with a skull and bones icon. He is originally from Philadelphia and is a 1994 graduate of Bennington College in Vermont.

NEW YORK POST
GOSSIP
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
BURKLE RONALD
STERN JARED PAUL
EXTORTION AND BLACKMAIL
NEWS AND NEWS MEDIA
COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET


Mapping a Human Genome, via an eBay Auction

Abstract: How much would you bid to have your personal genome mapped? In a sign that genome-mapping is becoming increasingly common, a company called Knome plans to offer its personal gene-sequencing service to the highest bidder in an eBay auction set to begin on Friday and continue for 10 days. The company plans to opening the bidding at $68,000. Any winning bid below $99,000 would be a relative bargain, since that is the price Knome now charges to sequence a person’s complete DNA. And it would be a deep discount from the $350,000 that Knome (pronounced like gnome) was charging for a personal genome as recently as last year. Scientists envision that in a few years it will cost only $1,000 to determine the sequence of virtually all 6 billion chemical units of DNA in a person’s 46 chromosomes. Someday, such personal genetic blueprints could be used to predict people’s risk of disease and what drugs might work best for them. But at present the information has little value — even for a low-ball bid of $68,000. Just last week, experts writing in The New England Journal of Medicine acknowledged that scientists still know very little about which genetic variations contribute to the risk of common diseases. Knome’s chief executive, Jorge Conde, declined to say how many customers the company currently has, although he said there was an uptick in business in December. “People ordered genomes for Christmas,” he said. “I wouldn’t have anticipated that.” The auction is essentially a publicity stunt. Proceeds will go to the X Prize Foundation, which is offering a $10 million prize to the first group that can sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days at less than $10,000 per genome. There are 17 entrants in the X Prize contest. Knome’s auction will be run by Kompolt Cause Media, which has conducted other charity auctions on eBay, liked selling lunch with Warren E. Buffett for $2.1 million last year to benefit the Glide Foundation in San Francisco. Mimicking that idea, Knome is throwing in a bonus to help attract bidders — a private dinner with George Church, a prominent Harvard scientist who co-founded Knome.

Auctions
Knome Inc
Genetics and Heredity
Genetic Engineering
eBay Inc


In Mexico, León Is on Top

Abstract: The culmination of the Apertura (opening) season Sunday night did not quite rise to the suspense and drama of a Mexican telenovela , but it came pretty close. More than 100,000 fans were packed into Estadio Azteca, most of them clad in the canary yellow of the home team, Club América, for the return match against León. The story lines were many and juicy: the two clubs’ owners, Carlos Slim (León) and Emilio Azcárraga (América), are billionaire telecommunication giants; León is led by the Mexican international defender Rafael Márquez, a veteran of his country’s national team who also played for Barcelona and had a less-than-fruitful run with the Red Bulls of Major League Soccer; León goalkeeper William Yarbrough, 24, was born in Mexico to parents who moved south of the border from Texas 30 years ago; and Miguel Herrera was in his final game as the coach of América before leaving to take over the national team as it prepares for the World Cup in Brazil. The teams entered the second leg of the two-game Apertura finals with León holding a 2-0 lead after the first match last week. On Sunday, León’s Argentine striker Mauro Boselli (who scored five goals in the playoffs) gave his team a 1-0 lead in the 13th minute before América regained some hope on an own goal. But second-half goals by Juan González and then Edwin Hernández, coupled with the sending off of Francisco Rodríguez, gave León the 3-1 victory , 5-1 on aggregate. Image Rafael Márquez, center, hoisted the championship trophy Sunday night in Mexico City. Credit Christian Palma/Associated Press “I’m very happy, I’ve worked very hard for this,” Márquez, 34, told Mexican television after the game. “A lot of people had written me off to the verge of retirement. Today I’ve shown with Club León that I’ve given my all to achieve this.” The Liga MX crown was the first domestic title of Márquez’s career. In addition, Márquez was instrumental as Mexico’s staggering quest for a spot in the World Cup came down to a home-and-away playoff series against New Zealand for a berth in Brazil. It was a series that Mexico won handily and that possibly has thrust the veteran defender back into the picture for Herrera’s World Cup squad. That remains to be seen. Yarborough, the León keeper who was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, after his parents left the United States, played a strong game in goal, making several important saves. He has never appeared internationally for Mexico or the United States, though he was on Mexico’s roster for Olympic qualifying for the 2012 Games, a tournament won by Mexico in England. “People think I’m German, I’m from the U.S. or they think I’m from anywhere but Mexico,” he told MLSsoccer.com last year . “The first reaction of everyone is, ‘Oh, you speak Spanish.' ” The two clubs’ owners are among the richest men in Mexico, if not the world. Slim, who owns a stake in The New York Times , owns a minority share in León (and a piece of the Pachuca club). Through his digital company, American Movil, he is a rival of Azcárraga's Televisa network. American Movil controls most of the Mexican (and Latin American) mobile phone market and Televisa controls a comparable share of the country’s broadcast audience. Slim has taken Leon’s TV rights to Fox Sports and Uno TV Noticias. The championship was the sixth for Leon, but its first since Slim, 73, became involved in the club. According to The Associated Press , Slim entered the locker room after the first-leg match and presented each player with iPads and iPhones, telling the players not to lose their focus for the return game.


To Combat Elder Abuse, Doormen Are Enlisted to Keep a Watchful Eye

Abstract: Michael Marlow, a doorman at the Gracie Mews apartment building on the Upper East Side, does a lot more than just open doors for residents. He unscrews their jar lids, runs to the store for apple juice, listens to their complaints about spouses and children, and even reaches into his own pocket to lend a couple of dollars for cab fare. Now the amiable doorman’s ever-expanding job will include one more task: looking out for abuse of elderly residents. “We see everybody coming in and out,” said Mr. Marlow, 54, who has worked at Gracie Mews for 15 years. “If something’s wrong, we would notice.” Mr. Marlow and his co-workers at Gracie Mews, a full-service building where the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,500, are part of a new program that aims to use the existing human infrastructure of city living to keep a closer eye on the elderly. The program, which was developed by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, offers free on-site training and assistance to doormen, concierges, porters and other building staff across New York City. The effort to combat elder abuse comes as many buildings have growing concentrations of older residents, in part because the baby boomer generation is moving into retirement. By 2040, an estimated 21 percent of all adults in the city will be 60 or older, up from 17 percent in 2010, according to an analysis of census data by Queens College. Joy Solomon, the director and managing attorney of the Weinberg Center, said abuse of the elderly could take many forms, like one spouse battering the other and a telemarketing scheme that drains someone’s retirement account. In a tough economy, she said, she has also seen more adults moving back in with their parents, or grandparents, and helping themselves to their Social Security benefits and assets. Ms. Solomon said that because many of the elderly did not come forward on their own to report abuse, the center had focused on educating those around them: speech therapists, estate lawyers, even those who deliver hot meals to their homes. The new doorman program expands upon earlier presentations that she gave to a human resources class for doormen sponsored by their union. Image Joy Solomon, director and managing attorney of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention, held a training session for doormen from several Manhattan buildings. Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times At Gracie Mews earlier this month, Ms. Solomon dispensed advice and encouragement to a dozen doormen, concierges and other representatives from that building and a sister property, Symphony House in Midtown West, who were expected to share what they learned with co-workers unable to attend. Ms. Solomon told them about an elderly man who was living in a building on the Upper East Side about five years ago when he became entangled with a woman who wanted to steal his money. She said the building’s staff did not stop the woman even as she took valuables from his apartment. “They knew something was wrong,” she said. “They didn’t do something when they could have. I think it’s really important to take that step.” Several of the doormen and concierges said that while they wanted to help, they also did not want to overstep and become intrusive. Anthony Masina, 32, a doorman and porter at the Symphony House, recalled his experience last year with a longtime resident — an widow living alone who asked him to help pay her rent. “You could tell she wasn’t O.K. to be by herself,” Mr. Masina said. “I didn’t know what to do, really.” (The building’s management eventually contacted city officials about the woman, who is receiving medical care). James Soto, 50, who has been a concierge and doorman at Gracie Mews for 12 years, said he already worried about older residents. He said he kept track of who received regular visits from family and friends, and who did not — reminding the latter that he is there to help. If he sees a bruise, he said, he asks what happened. And last month, when an older woman came in looking flushed, he grabbed one of his water bottles to give to her. “I see her every day and we talk,” he said. “So this day I noticed she did not look herself.” Ms. Solomon said that the center planned to roll out the doorman program in neighborhoods with large elderly populations, but would eventually provide the on-site training as often as needed at any building that requested it. Dennis P. Brady, executive managing director for Jack Resnick & Sons, which owns and manages Gracie Mews and Symphony House, said he arranged for the training because he saw it as a benefit for both building workers and residents. “It’s a good thing to do if we can help one person,” he said. Several Gracie Mews residents also said they liked the idea, even if it meant staff members could be prying into someone’s personal business. “I have no problem with that,” said Richard Lord, 88, a retired advertising executive. “If you see something wrong and you don’t do something about it, that’s even worse.” In the lobby, Mr. Marlow, who could not attend the training because he was working the door, said he hoped to pick up pointers from his colleagues. He said he did not mind taking on another responsibility and, in fact, had already found himself in the awkward position of having to report to two mothers that their nannies were not watching their children. One nanny was fired, and the other was reprimanded, he said. “I had to tell the moms,” he said. “I would feel the same thing if I saw someone abused. Basically, we already look for that without looking for it.”

Elder abuse
Doorman
Hebrew Home at Riverdale
Housing
NYC
Building Service Employees
Real Estate
Riverdale Bronx


Oregon: Court Rules Against Cigarette Maker

Abstract: The Oregon Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Philip Morris tobacco company must pay the state 60 percent of a $79.5 million award in a 14-year-old lawsuit by the family of a Portland smoker. The company has already paid the family its part of the award but contested the state’s share. Under Oregon law, 60 percent of punitive damage awards go to a state fund to compensate crime victims. Philip Morris argued that Oregon gave up its right to the payment in a 1998 agreement with tobacco companies and 45 other states over health and smoking issues. But the court said the state’s share of punitive damages is due no matter what sort of lawsuit led to the award.

Oregon
Philip Morris Companies Inc
Smoking and Tobacco
Decisions and Verdicts
Suits and Litigation
Courts and the Judiciary


As Japan Ages, Prisons Adapt to Going Gray

Abstract: ONOMICHI, Japan — In the prison’s brightly lighted workroom here, 47 inmates sat behind long tables and quietly performed their chores. Grasping some pink checkered fabric, No. 303 unhurriedly started making a pair of knit slippers. Some seats away, No. 335 gently threaded gray envelopes with white string. Up front, No. 229 was gluing together corrugated cardboard pads, and his stack rose steadily, though slowly. Not the hard prison labor you might expect, but at an average age of 74 — with the oldest at 88 — these were not typical inmates. Work was kept light, and if any felt ill, they could lie down nearby on a tatami mat. Prescription drugs, wheeled walkers and a stretcher were also kept on hand, as well as a box of “discreet, underwearlike” adult diapers. “In our workshop for the elderly, we definitely receive preferential treatment,” said one 76-year-old, who works six hours a day, or two hours less than younger inmates with more strenuous jobs. “In general, you know, the conditions are much, much more severe.” With one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies, Japan is confronting a sharp increase in the number of older criminals and prisoners. Japanese 65 and over now make up the fastest-growing group of criminals. The prison population is aging in the United States, too, but that is a result mostly of long mandatory sentences and restrictive parole practices. In Japan, by contrast, the rise is being driven by crime, mostly nonviolent. From 2000 to 2006, the number of older criminals soared by 160 percent, to 46,637, from 17,942, according to Japan’s National Police Agency. Shoplifting accounted for 54 percent of the total in 2006 and petty theft for 23 percent. As a result, penitentiaries are struggling to adapt environments designed with the young in mind to a lawbreaking population that is fragile physically and often mentally. If work programs, toilets, cafeteria menus and health services are changing, so are smaller things in the prison landscape. Older convicts are exempted from marching in formation in some prisons. On New Year’s Day, rice cakes are cut into tiny pieces so they won’t become stuck in aging throats. Here in western Japan, Onomichi Prison, a small facility with a special ward for older inmates, who make up 22 percent of the prison’s population, is in the vanguard in dealing with this new problem. But recent visits to two large penitentiaries, one maximum security and the other minimum, underscored the more deep-rooted problems associated with the increase in older prisoners. A recent Justice Ministry report said that older people were increasingly turning to crime out of poverty and isolation, suggesting a breakdown in traditional family and community ties. With nowhere else to go, more of the older inmates serve out their full sentences, instead of being released on parole like younger prisoners. What is more, recidivism is higher among the older inmates. “There are some elderly who are afraid of going back into society,” said Takashi Hayashi, vice director of Onomichi Prison. “If they stay in prison, everything’s taken care of. There are examples of elderly who’ve left prison, used up what money they had, then were arrested after shoplifting at a convenience store. They’d made up their minds to go back to prison.” While the main reason behind the explosion in graying lawbreakers is the rapid aging of Japan’s population, the rates have far outpaced the increase of older people in the general population. Between 2000 and 2006, while the total population of Japanese 60 and over rose by 17 percent, inmates of the same age group swelled by 87 percent. In the country’s 74 prisons, the proportion of older inmates rose to 12.3 percent in 2006 from 9.3 percent in 2000, while the share of those in their 20s declined and in other age groups remained flat. Japan’s rates are much higher than those in the West. America’s prisons — where those 55 years and over are categorized as elderly — are also graying. But such prisoners accounted for only 4.6 percent of the total prison population in the United States in 2005, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. It is not clear how much the graying of the population has added to the costs of running Japan’s prisons. But officials said health care costs presented a particular burden. In Fuchu Prison in suburban Tokyo, a maximum-security facility and the country’s largest and oldest prison, four nurses look after older inmates with ailments like high blood pressure and diabetes, and with psychological problems. An increasing number with more serious illnesses are hospitalized outside the prison, requiring guards, said Kenji Sawada, an official at Fuchu, where 17 percent of the inmates are 60 and over. Here in Onomichi, the ward for older inmates was built in the mid-1980s, long before the boom in the older population. Since then, officials have tried to handle the flood of older prisoners through “trial and error,” Mr. Hayashi, the vice director, said. In the workroom, adjustable chairs were brought in two years ago. In the locker room, names were added below inmates’ identification numbers, which they tended to forget. On a recent visit, dietary restrictions had been posted on a signboard: 5 inmates required bite-size meals; 12 were on low-sodium diets, which meant they could have no dumplings and soy sauce only if it was low-sodium. A handrail ran through the middle of the corridor in the residential wing. On either side were small private cells, each with a tatami floor, a futon, a television, a toilet, a sink and a large suitcase for personal possessions. “Hard of hearing,” read a sign on one door. On another, leading to the cell of an inmate with dementia, a sign instructed prison workers to give him medication before every meal “even if he did not request it.” “The elderly tend to be stubborn and don’t get along with others,” Mr. Hayashi said. “So to avoid problems, we give them priority in assigning private rooms.” A 71-year-old inmate, a first-time offender serving four years for mugging an old woman to feed a gambling habit, said he had found prison life “much better than expected.” In his one year here, he said, he had witnessed only two quarrels, both over food. “It sounds strange, but we’re all old folks in here,” he said. “I’m old, too, and we’re all pretty quiet.” The 76-year-old, who said the older inmates received “preferential treatment” in working, was serving six years for larceny, his fourth time in prison. In his five years here, he said, he had seen some inmates come back two or three times. “‘You’re back?’ I’d ask, and they’d say, ‘Just let me rest here for a while,’” he said. “I guess most of them were having a hard time finding their next meal, so they got caught shoplifting or ran off without paying for a meal.” Mr. Hayashi described a “vicious circle” that often sends older people back to prison: Once outside, they cannot find work; without work or a guarantor, they cannot rent an apartment. “This is not a society that lets them stand on their own two feet,” he said. Compounding their difficulties is Japan’s traditionally unforgiving attitude toward ex-convicts, said Hideo Nemoto, an official at Shizuoka Prison west of Tokyo, for first-time offenders. Relatives usually sever ties, so many inmates never receive visitors. In addition, welfare benefits are difficult to obtain; nursing homes are scarce and not a viable option for ex-convicts. Against that backdrop, prison life — which, in Japan, means spotless surroundings largely free of the violence in American prisons — may seem the lesser of evils. “There are worries that prisons could become a sort of social welfare facility for the elderly,” Mr. Nemoto said. Still, inmates interviewed said that stress accompanied aging in prison. In Shizuoka, a 72-year-old first-timer was serving four years for killing his terminally ill wife. Unlike the older inmates in Onomichi Prison, those in Shizuoka are placed in cells with inmates of various ages. He was strong enough to work eight hours a day coating auto parts with oil. But other older people were having a rough time, he said. In Fuchu, a white-haired, hard-of-hearing 77-year-old lifelong pickpocket was serving four years, his 17th time in prison since 1945. Though he had spent more than half his adult life behind bars, he said he found this term particularly hard. There were little things. The prison’s centrally controlled television channel showed mostly youth-oriented music programs. He and his cellmates longed to watch samurai dramas and baseball games. The occupants of his 14-man cell were all frail. Unable to navigate the stairs to the workroom below, they sat on the tatami floor in their room before low tables and made plastic hangers. At night, they put away the tables and spread futons on the floor. “We’re all in bad shape,” he said, adding that only 3 of the 14 received visitors. Inside the room, the men avoided talking about the future. They talked instead about their greatest fear, of dying inside, the way one cellmate had a couple of years earlier and the way nearly 20 men do every year inside this prison. Death outside would perhaps redeem life inside. “I’ve already seen several die, you know, inside here,” the 77-year-old pickpocket said. “Everyone says he doesn’t want to die in here. No way. I don’t want to die in prison.”

Japan
Aged
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Prisons and Prisoners


Kennedy Says Children Had No Role in Senate Decision

Abstract: In a television interview Monday, Caroline Kennedy denied a recently published report that she dropped her Senate bid because her children were unhappy with her campaigning. Appearing on the “Today” show, Ms. Kennedy faced questions from one of the hosts, Matt Lauer, about an article in the June issue of Vanity Fair, which reported that days before Gov. David A. Paterson was set to announce his pick for New York’s vacant Senate seat, Ms. Kennedy’s three children asked her to drop out of contention. “Anybody who knows my children and knows me knows that that is absolute nonsense,” said Ms. Kennedy, who was appearing to promote this year’s winners of the Profile in Courage Award , founded to honor her father, President John F. Kennedy. “All in all, it was a great experience for me,” Ms. Kennedy added. “I know you may find that hard to believe, but I met a lot of interesting people; I saw, you know, how much there is to do.” And when asked what had driven her to withdraw abruptly in January, Ms. Kennedy deflected the question. “That was the right decision,” she said. “When you make the right decision, it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks.” She also declined to say what she thought of the way Mr. Paterson handled her exit, after which his administration leaked confidential personal information about her — leaks that are now under review by the state’s Commission on Public Integrity. “As I said, I’ve moved on,” Ms. Kennedy said. Smiling but apparently irritated, she added, “And I’m so glad that you asked about that.”

Vanity Fair
Kennedy Caroline
New York State


Whole Foods’ Scaled-Down 365 Store Has Robots, but No Tattoo Parlor

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — There’s a lot riding on a robot — the teaBot, to be exact — but not for the Canadian start-up behind the machine. Rather, it is 365, the much anticipated new grocery concept from Whole Foods Markets, that is banking on the robotic kiosk and a host of other bells and whistles to reverse the company’s waning fortunes. The first store, here in Silver Lake, a neighborhood in the East Side of Los Angeles, opens in two weeks. On Wednesday, Jeff Turnas, the president of 365, gave a tour of the store, which feels like a sort of foodie playroom. Shelves, racks and refrigerated cases are splashed with bright primary colors and surrounded by exposed insulation and polished concrete floors. All the fixtures are low profile — the highest shelving rises just 72 inches. Electronic terminals are lined up, ready to accept orders. Instead of a human sommelier, there’s Banquet, a wine app developed especially for 365 stores by Delectable. Want a bottle of special Frankies olive oil for $9.99? The Green Gold olive oil is sold exclusively at 365. The store will also feature “Flash Finds,” the name for goods procured and available only temporarily. “Look, we’re all foodies here, we love food,” Mr. Turnas said. “I think that’s kind of gotten lost in all the buzz about this store, which has mostly been about the business aspects.” Over the last couple of years, mainstream grocers like Costco and Kroger, which have studied the Whole Foods playbook, have started to offer big selections of organic and other natural products — often at lower prices — attracting some millennials and devotees of organic and natural merchandise. The competition has hurt Whole Foods’ bottom line. In the quarter that ended on April 10, the company’s revenue was flat and sales in stores open at least a year fell 3 percent. Profit dropped roughly 10 percent to $142 million, in part because the company had lowered prices and offered discounts in an effort to retain and attract customers. Its shares are down more than half from their peak in October 2013. “Right now, the legacy Whole Foods stores have difficulty attracting new customers, customers who don’t already shop there,” said William Kirk, an investment analyst at RBC Capital. “Conventional grocery stores have increased the amount of products they sell that overlap with Whole Foods and are offering them at cheaper prices.” The company has plans to open at least two other 365 locations this year. The others will be in Lake Oswego, Ore., outside Portland, and Bellevue, Wash., outside Seattle. (Whole Foods plans to open up to 25 traditional stores this year, as well.) “We’re testing three different demographics to see how different customers react,” said David Lannon, executive vice president for operations, in a phone call from Bellingham, Wash., where a new Whole Foods just opened. He added that the company was also opening larger Whole Foods stores that would allow it to expand higher-margin businesses, like the restaurants and bars inside its stores. Anticipation of the new 365 store has generated a fierce round of rumors. Mr. Turnas said he was almost as tired of hearing that it would be a cheaper version of Whole Foods as he was of the rumor that it would have a tattoo parlor in it . Neither rumor, he says, is true. It does not have a tattoo parlor. Nor is it merely a stripped-down Whole Foods. Instead, it’s more like what Old Navy is to the Gap, or Madewell to J.Crew. How is it different? The 365 stores will stock roughly 7,000 items, compared with 35,000 to 52,000 for a traditional Whole Foods. Meat is sold only in packages, lowering the cost of offering specialty cuts of meat served up by a butcher. The store will still sell a wide variety of organic produce, though its selection of conventional produce is wider. As an example of how it might keep prices lower than Whole Foods, Mr. Turnas pointed to apples. “At Whole Foods, we love big, round apples,” he said. “At 365, we love apples too, and get them from the same suppliers, but they may be smaller, less beautiful.” Fruit is sold atop bright red fixtures straight out of the boxes and crates in which it is delivered, rather than in the handmade heaps found in a Whole Foods store. For dry goods, 365 will stock the company’s private-label brand, from which it gets its name, and a few branded products, leaving the shoppers at Whole Foods to scope out the latest interesting natural and organic brands. Despite the interest in the new line of stores, Mr. Kirk of RBC Capital points out that residents of Silver Lake protested the arrival of the 365 because they wanted the traditional Whole Foods that was originally planned for the site. “People like me think almost universally this is some kind of panicked or desperate or rushed maneuver that will cannibalize Whole Foods,” Mr. Kirk said. “But I don’t think they’re giving the company enough credit for thinking about this and planning it for a very long time.” The 365-branded locations will have about 100 employees, compared with 250 to 500 in a traditional Whole Foods. Mr. Turnas, 44, who typically has a small ponytail and wears a hooded sweatshirt and canvas Camper shoes, looks like the textbook 365 customer. He is even living in a place here that he rented through Airbnb for the month before the store opens. He got the job after leading the Whole Foods business in Britain, where the company entered the market with the acquisition of a chain called Fresh & Wild in 2007. Mr. Turnas is credited with helping turn around the company’s fortunes there. “We did everything to make that store about convenience for the customer, and a lot of that is what we’re doing here,” Mr. Turnas said. In addition to teaBot, which contacted him via LinkedIn, 365 in Silver Lake will have the first West Coast outpost of By Chloe, a hot vegan restaurant in New York City, and an outpost of Allegro Coffee Roasters. Such partnerships reduce the need for extensive kitchen operations like the ones that churn out hot meals and prepared foods in Whole Foods stores. While 365 does have a kitchen, its main job is to make grab-and-go items like pizza and prepared foods. “So no, we don’t have a tattoo parlor,” Mr. Turnas said. “But we do have a lot of other cool stuff.”

Whole Foods
Los Angeles
Jeff Turnas
Supermarkets
365 by Whole Foods
Organic Food
Generic brand


William C. Rhoden: Giants Get the Ball Rolling Again

Abstract: East Rutherford, N.J. In the Giants ’ Super Bowl run last season and in the first 12 games of this season, the team’s signature was resilience. Whether it was the Brett Favre-to-the Jets distraction in the summer, disrespect from the national news media or injuries, the Giants seemed oblivious to distractions. They kept on chugging. But after the numbskull madness of Plaxico Burress last month, and while Brandon Jacobs’s injured knee limited his effectiveness, the Giants were faced with circumstances they could not ignore. “We just couldn’t get that spark, we couldn’t build momentum,” offensive tackle Kareem McKenzie said after the Giants’ electric 34-28 overtime victory Sunday night against Carolina.  After the opening drive against the Panthers, the Giants sensed they had rediscovered the spark. The drive produced only a field goal, but quarterback Eli Manning made a big play (a mini re-creation of the Super Bowl miracle in which he escaped and threw a completion) and Domenik Hixon made a big catch. Jacobs, while clearly hurting, was back to the punishing style of running that has put N.F.L. defenses on their heels. “After that drive,” McKenzie said, “I knew we got that spark back. We’d regained momentum.” Consecutive losses to Philadelphia and Dallas had compelled the Giants to do some soul-searching. Words like accountability began to float around the locker room. There weren’t any team meetings, although a number of players convened in smaller groups. “Everyone has to look themselves in the mirror,” tackle David Diehl said on Sunday. “It’s about accountability, selling out for each other and working your way back through adversity. “We knew this was an important game. This was a one-game season for us.” The most important pep talk might have been the one Jacobs gave to running back Derrick Ward just before overtime. “I told him before we went to overtime, ‘Look, you’re the better man out of us tonight; I want you out there,’ ” Jacobs said. “And he got out there and proved that. He went out there and picked up the slack for me. That’s what a teammate is for. I love him to death. So we just have to keep on pushing. We have a long road still ahead of us.” While Sunday’s victory gave the Giants home-field advantage throughout the N.F.C. playoffs, their saving grace was clinching the division weeks ago. Clinching so early afforded the Giants the luxury of concentrating on playing well rather than being caught up in the hysteria of earning a playoff berth. “In a way, I looked at it a little bit like the win or loss at the end wasn’t going to be the biggest difference,” Manning said Sunday night. “I thought as long as we came out and played well, we made some plays, we got into a rhythm, we ran the ball, we threw the ball, mixed it up. We got back to having fun out there. We haven’t had much fun because we haven’t had that much success in the past.” After Burress accidentally shot himself in the thigh in a Manhattan club in November, the sky seemed to fall on the Giants. Burress’s injury created a domino effect that many, even those within the Giants’ organization, might not have fully appreciated. With Burress out, the Giants’ opponents no longer needed to assign an extra defender against him, leaving them free to use that extra defender to stop the Giants’ vaunted running game. With Burress out and Jacobs limited, the Giants’ offense had all but come to a halt before Sunday. More than any other Giants player, Manning has felt the brunt of the Burress domino effect.  The best news of all on Sunday was that Manning can carry the Giants. He completed 17 of 27 passes for 181 yards, with a touchdown. He also completed a 2-point conversion pass to Hixon with 3 minutes 21 seconds left to tie the score at 28-28. In the exhilaration of victory, many players said they had never lost faith or doubted that they would rediscover the Super Bowl spark. Frankly, I had my doubts. Five weeks ago everything seemed so sure for the Giants, but after consecutive losses their Super Bowl hopes appeared to be fading. On Sunday, they rediscovered a spark. Maybe they’ll repeat as Super Bowl champions, maybe they won’t. The Giants at least know that they’ve recaptured their groove, and not a game too soon.

Football
New York Giants
Jacobs Brandon
Manning Eli
Burress Plaxico
Ward Derrick


Health Group Retracts Report on H.I.V. in Greece

Abstract: LONDON — It took a while for people to notice, but once they did, the news spread like wildfire: The World Health Organization had said that about half of new H.I.V. cases in Greece were “self-inflicted” as a way to get state benefits. Social media erupted on Monday. There were headlines on The Daily Mail , the Drudge Report and Al Jazeera . Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, said the report showed “what the welfare state does to people.” But on Tuesday morning, the World Health Organization and the group that produced the report acknowledged that the H.I.V. claim was not true. “There is no evidence of people in Greece or anywhere else in Europe deliberately infecting themselves,” said Martin C. Donoghoe, a spokesman for the health organization. So what happened? It was an editing error, the group said. It apologized. The startling claim was contained in a single sentence on page 112 of the organization’s European report , published in September and more broadly publicized by the agency in late October. “H.I.V. rates and heroin use have risen significantly, with about half of new H.I.V. infections being self-inflicted to enable people to receive benefits of €700 per month and faster admission on to drug substitution programs,” the sentence read. The report was produced by the Institute of Health Equity at University College London and overseen by Sir Michael Marmot , an epidemiologist. (Its full title was “Review of Social Determinants and the Health Divide in the W.H.O. European Region: Final Report.”) In response to questions from The New York Times, a spokeswoman for the Institute of Health Equity, Felicity Porritt, said by email this week that the claim came from a Lancet study produced by researchers from the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the University of California, San Francisco. But that Lancet study , published in 2011, said that only “a few” such cases had been found, and it in turn cited yet another report, by researchers in Greece. The Greek report , however, said that it was only a “well-founded suspicion that some problem users are intentionally infected with H.I.V., because of the benefit they are entitled to.” On Tuesday morning, Ms. Porritt told The Times that the W.H.O. report should have said that “about half of infections are due to needle injection, some of which is deliberate self-infection.” It was not clear, though, whether there was evidence to say even that much. The various reports included no apparent documentation of any cases. By Tuesday afternoon, the W.H.O. had issued its own correction: “The sentence should read: ‘Half of the new H.I.V. cases are self-injecting, and out of them, few are deliberately inflicting the virus.’ ” Later in the day, it retracted that statement, too, and said instead, “There is no evidence suggesting that deliberate self-infection with H.I.V. goes beyond a few anecdotal cases.” The Greek H.I.V. claim did not receive much attention when the report first came out, though it was mentioned in an article late October on the website of the magazine New Scientist . But the claim gained traction quickly Monday on Twitter, and it was reposted by European journalists and politicians. A Sky News headline said “Greeks ‘Injecting HIV to Claim €700 Benefits’ ,” while a Fox Business headline said “European Crisis: Half of HIV Infections in Greece Are Self-Inflicted.” Not all accepted it at face value, however. Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group, wrote online Monday that “the W.H.O. report is incorrect,” after studying the citation. What is not in dispute is that while Greece saw a sharp rise in cases of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, with the onset of its economic crisis, the latest government figures show the number of new cases falling this year. A report released last year by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said that, because of a breakdown of preventive services, “the number of new cases reported among people who inject drugs exceeded the number of new cases reported among men who have sex with men” in the first eight months of 2012. “The current economic turmoil will continue to have adverse effects on H.I.V. prevention not only in Greece, but also in other parts of Europe,” the report said. A study published this month in the scientific journal PLoS One that focused on Athens said the increase in H.I.V. infections among intravenous drug users jumped annually to 260 in 2011 from 11 to 19 from 2002 to 2010. And that jumped to 522 in 2012, the report said. It noted that it had been previously established that “economic and sociopolitical transitions have helped unleash H.I.V. epidemics in some countries.” On Tuesday, the World Health Organization said the recent rise of H.I.V. in Greece was “largely driven by infections among people who inject drugs.” Researchers, the agency added, were working “to fully understand the underlying reasons and recommend appropriate measures” to help those infected. Greece’s deputy health minister, Zeta Makri, said in Geneva on Tuesday that she was “annoyed” by the inaccurate claim in the report and would complain to the W.H.O. about it in a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with the head of the organization. “It’s sad, it’s regrettable, but at least they retracted the error,” Ms. Makri said. “It appears that this was not an intentional attempt to cause harm, but a real mistake.”


Japan to Begin Restarting Nuclear Plants, Premier Says

Abstract: TOKYO — Japan will begin restarting its idled nuclear plants after new safety guidelines are in place later this year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday, moving to ensure a stable energy supply despite public safety concerns after the Fukushima disaster. In a speech to Parliament, Mr. Abe pledged to restart nuclear plants that pass the tougher guidelines, which are expected to be adopted by a new independent watchdog agency, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, as early as July. He did not specify when any of the reactors might resume operation, and news reports have suggested that it might take months or even years to make the expensive upgrades needed to meet the new safety standards. Still, by making the promise in front of the Diet, Mr. Abe indicated in the strongest way yet that he planned to move ahead with a campaign pledge to reverse his predecessor’s hopes that Japan would begin weaning itself off nuclear energy. The speech came as the World Health Organization published a comprehensive, two-year analysis on the health risks associated with the 2011 disaster suggesting that the chance of getting certain types of cancers had increased slightly among children exposed to the highest doses of radioactivity. But the report said that there would most likely be no observable increase in cancer rates in the wider Japanese population. The study’s authors warned, however, that their assessment was based on limited scientific knowledge; much of the data on health effects from radiation is based on acute exposures like those that followed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and not chronic, low-level exposure. Near the Fukushima plant, some densely populated areas are expected to remain contaminated with relatively low levels of radioactive materials for decades. The government’s initial reaction to the report — saying it overestimated the risks by failing to fully take into account government evacuations of citizens — suggested that officials did not see it as a help for Mr. Abe’s plans. Antinuclear sentiments in Japan are now strong, and the results could feed fears of any increased risks. The question of when, and whether, to restart the plants has dogged the country for two years, as politicians and ordinary Japanese try to balance their fears of a moribund economy when oil and gas costs have already hurt the balance of trade and worries over another environmental crisis, especially if the industry is not well regulated. Lax regulation and a cozy relationship between the nuclear industry and the government helped make Japan vulnerable to the Fukushima accident, the world’s second-worst nuclear plant disaster. All of Japan’s 50 operable nuclear reactors were shut down following the March 2011 triple meltdown, which spewed radiation across northern Japan after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems. Two were later restarted as an emergency measure to avert power shortages in the heavily populated region that includes the cities of Osaka and Kyoto. Leaders from the previous Democratic Party government had vowed to slowly phase out nuclear power by the 2030s in favor of cleaner alternatives like solar and wind power. But Mr. Abe, who took power after his Liberal Democratic Party won national elections in December on a platform of economic revitalization, said the phaseout would keep Japan from the cheap electricity it needs to compete economically. Image A Geiger counter measures radiation outside a kindergarten about 30 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Credit Chris Meyers/Reuters On Thursday, Mr. Abe said that Japan had learned the need for tougher safety standards, and he said the new standards would be enforced “without compromise.” Mr. Abe also said Japan would continue seeking energy alternatives to reduce its dependence on nuclear power. In January, the new nuclear agency released a list of its proposed safety regulations, which include higher walls to protect against tsunamis, additional backup power sources for the cooling systems and construction of specially hardened earthquake-proof command centers. The rules surprised many for their toughness, though skeptics worry that industry supporters in the government will manage to get around the regulations. According to a report by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, none of Japan’s 16 undamaged commercial nuclear plants would pass the new standards. The agency has said the new guidelines will be finalized and put in place by July 18. The W.H.O. study focused on cancer incidence, not deaths, and some of the cancers listed are serious but have good rates of survival. According to the study, girls exposed as infants to radioactivity in the most contaminated regions of Fukushima Prefecture faced a 70 percent higher risk of developing thyroid cancer than would be expected normally. The report pointed out, however, that the normal risk of thyroid cancer was just 0.75 percent, and that the additional lifetime risk would raise that to 1.25 percent. Girls exposed to radioactivity as infants in the most heavily contaminated areas also had a 6 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer, and a 4 percent higher risk of developing cancers that cause tumors. Meanwhile, boys exposed as infants had a 7 percent higher chance of developing leukemia. The study also said that about a third of the emergency workers who remained to try to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant were estimated to have a slightly increased risk of developing leukemia, thyroid cancer and other types of cancer. The analysis was based on data available as of September 2011, and takes into account airborne contamination as well as contaminated food, water and other sources of contamination, the WH.O. said. Some local government officials in Fukushima criticized the report for identifying specific areas and their associated exposure estimates. Radiation exposure is a sensitive topic in Japan, where victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings often experienced discrimination in marriage, for example, because of feared health effects. “I feel extreme anger over this excessive analysis, which will plunge more residents into fear,” Mayor Norio Kanno of Iitate Village, told N.H.K. Iitate was one of the areas identified in the W.H.O. report as heavily contaminated. Villagers there are among tens of thousands of evacuees who have not been able to return home.

Japan
Shinzo Abe
Standardization
Nuclear energy
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Japan Earthquake Tsunami


Routine Voter Purge Is Cited in Brooklyn Election Trouble

Abstract: The mysterious loss of roughly 125,000 Democratic voters from the election rolls in Brooklyn for one of the most hard-fought presidential primaries in years seemed to have occurred during what should have been a routine removal of residents who were ineligible to vote. Something went wrong in that purge, according to multiple election law experts and others familiar with the winnowing process. Amid investigations into the New York City Board of Elections and widespread complaints about voters being turned away from the polls on Tuesday, it now seems likely that many legitimate voters were mistakenly disenfranchised. “This happens every presidential election — the boards all over the state start purging voters,” said City Councilman Ben Kallos, chairman of the committee that oversees the board. Mr. Kallos noted that Brooklyn had historically eliminated more voters than other boroughs during periodic sweeps. “But this would be the largest number of Democrats who were taken off the rolls in recent memory,” he said. After flagging voters who do not cast ballots in two consecutive federal elections, the Board of Elections mails notices to determine whether voters still live at the address where they are registered. If no confirmation comes back, a voter can be deleted from the rolls. Board positions are equally split between Republicans and Democrats; each voter removal must be approved by both a Republican and a Democratic employee, according to the rules. It remained unclear at what point employees at the Brooklyn office stumbled, or who was at fault. One possibility was that the notices to voters were mailed incorrectly, or not at all. Another was that once the notices were returned, the computerized database that held voter lists was mishandled. On Thursday, the Board of Elections announced that it had suspended a longtime employee, Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the chief clerk at the Brooklyn office and a Republican appointee. Ms. Haslett-Rudiano’s Democratic counterpart, Betty Ann Canizio, who would, by the rules, be required to sign off on any voter removals, remained in her post. Board officials have declined to say why Ms. Haslett-Rudiano was disciplined, saying at the same time that “no voters were disenfranchised.” “There was criticism that the voter rolls had people who were dead, and so on,” said Frank Seddio, the chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, who said he had discussed the apparent mistake with Board of Elections officials. “That began a citywide review of who’s on the voter rolls and who should be removed. And there’s a possibility that people were taken off the rolls that shouldn’t have been taken off the rolls.” It is only the latest trouble of many for the board, a frequent target of elected officials, government watchdog groups and election law experts, who say blunders are inevitable when an organization is run from top to bottom by political patronage appointees and party members, as the board is. A 2013 report from the New York City Investigation Department found that the board was plagued by nepotism, badly trained poll workers and error-prone voter-removal procedures. Mr. Seddio, a longtime friend of Ms. Canizio who pushed her appointment to the deputy clerkship, said this particular voter purge occurred before Ms. Canizio arrived in 2014. But that contradicted the time frame supplied by Michael J. Ryan, the board’s executive director, who said in an interview this week that approximately 125,000 voters were removed from the rolls since fall 2015. (Some 63,000 were added in the same period, he said.) Reached by phone, Ms. Canizio said she could not comment on what happened, but added, “I didn’t sign off on anything.” Ms. Haslett-Rudiano, who had her own political sponsor for several years — State Senator Martin J. Golden, Brooklyn’s most powerful Republican official — did not respond to messages on Thursday or Friday.

Brooklyn
Election
Diane Haslett-Rudiano
Voter registration
2016 Presidential Election
Board of Elections NYC
NYC


Nicki Minaj Concert in Angola Draws Human Rights Complaint

Abstract: The Human Rights Foundation is asking Nicki Minaj to reconsider her scheduled performance in Angola on Saturday, citing a list of abuses committed by the president of the oil-rich African nation. In an Instagram post , the 33-year-old rapper said that she would be performing at a public Christmas festival hosted by the communications company Unitel. In a letter published on Tuesday, the Human Rights Foundation said that the company is controlled, in part, by the daughter of José Eduardo dos Santos, who has ruled the country since 1979. “Nicki Minaj is a global artist,” the group’s president Thor Halvorssen, said in a statement. “Millions of people look up to her for creative inspiration. There is no good reason for her to do business with the corrupt Angolan dictatorship and endorse the ruler’s family company.” It is not unusual for celebrities to receive seven figures for performing in countries with questionable human rights records. Lately, the celebrities have also been receiving some scrutiny: In 2013, Jennifer Lopez was criticized for accepting $10 million to perform for Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the president of Turkmenistan, who has long been accused of rigging elections and running a repressive government . Ms. Minaj is likely to be paid well for her visit to the country. In 2013, Mariah Carey received $1 million for traveling to perform in Angola. The two performers have the same manager, the organization said in the letter. In a profile of Angola published by The New Yorker in June, the writer Michael Specter described rampant inequality in the country — the capital, Luanda, is the most expensive in the world for expatriates to live, yet the country remains one of the world’s least-developed nations. (Angola is ranked first in the world for deaths among children under the age of 5 .) Mr. Specter also chronicled the corruption that touches the daily lives of visitors — the traffic police whose bribes must be paid, the extra fees just to be seated at a restaurant and served a bottle of water. The Humans Rights Foundation said that circumstances are even worse for Angolans. The organization cited the story of Luaty Beirao, a young Angolan rapper who was among 17 people who were jailed in June for discussing a book that covered the topic of nonviolent resistance. Mr. Beirao had long been an outspoken critic of the government. “The bottom line is this: if you try to voice your opinions and they happen to be contrary to the government’s, you’re more than likely to be chased, get a beat down in public places, have your grandmother receive death threats and all sorts of equally nasty deprivations of your basic human rights,” Mr. Beirao, 34, told the website OkayAfrica in 2012. The letter asked Ms. Minaj to consider her reputation for creativity and supporting young people before she heads to Angola. “What kind of inspirational message is she sending to millions of young Angolans by performing for the dictatorship that has literally stolen their freedom and their future?” it asked. Ms. Minaj has not directly addressed the criticism in public. On Wednesday, she seemed mostly preoccupied with responding to critics about her album performance, but it appears that the show in Angola is still on — she found time to post again about her show on Twitter. She then followed up that tweet with another : “Every tongue that rises up against me in judgment shall be condemned.”

Nicki Minaj
Angola
Human Rights
Jose Eduardo Dos Santos