Cambodia: Villagers Arrested Over Appeal to Obama

Abstract: Eight villagers near Phnom Penh, the capital, were arrested Thursday for plastering President Obama ’s picture on their rooftops beside spray-painted SOS messages ahead of Mr. Obama’s visit to Cambodia next week. The village of about 400 families has rickety homes with corrugated tin roofs and is adjacent to the Phnom Penh airport’s only runway. Villagers say they were ordered in July to vacate their land so the airport could enlarge the runway and build a security buffer zone. “We are being forcibly evicted from our land without proper compensation,” said one villager, Sim Sokunthea. “We didn’t mean any harm. We just wanted Obama to help us.” Dozens of police officers arrived at the village on Thursday and ordered villagers to remove the rooftop messages. The officers arrested eight villagers said to be responsible for the appeal, said Long Kimheang, a spokesman for Housing Rights Task Force, an advocacy group that works with villagers facing eviction.

Far East South and Southeast Asia and Pacific Areas


Morning Agenda: Deepening Divides, ‘Gutless Leadership,’ Exxon’s Workings

Abstract: The income gap doesn’t just apply to people — it applies to states, as well. American corporate might is increasingly concentrated in just four states: California, Massachusetts, New York and Texas. In fact, California alone accounts for a fifth of public companies in the United States, despite having only 12 percent of the population. By contrast, states like Illinois and Ohio are home to a shrinking proportion of public companies, according to analysis by the Deal Professor . The change reflects a shift toward the technology and biotechnology industries. There does not seem to be a special template, though, for making a state attractive — it just seems to be winner takes all. The concentration needs to be studied further but, in the meantime, the West Coast is likely to strengthen its pull, especially on lawyers and bankers. The direction of trade — shifting low-skilled manufacturing jobs to places where labor is cheaper — also continues apace. Sure, it might not have looked that way when General Motors agreed to stop manufacturing an automobile engine at a factory in Mexico and move jobs to a plant in Canada. But the deal is just more evidence of how companies can use international factories to tilt the dynamics of labor negotiations in their favor. Jobs being “brought back” are actually jobs being forged in advanced manufacturing. Workers themselves had to give up their fight for pensions that pay fixed amounts, while G.M. managed to lock in a highly skilled set of workers in Waterloo, Canada’s Silicon Valley. Less-educated workers, however, are still likely to be left behind. Wells Fargo Chief Accused of ‘Gutless Leadership’ The chief of Wells Fargo, John G. Stumpf, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee . He apologized. He expressed regret. He vowed to make amends. But the senators were not having any of it. And the more he tried to explain, the more skeptical they became. Senator Elizabeth Warren even suggested he resign, saying that his pushing responsibility onto low-level employees showed “gutless leadership.” On the issue of clawing back pay, Mr. Stumpf said it was a process that he could not get involved in. And this is not the end of it — Wells Fargo is under fire from multiple directions : • Mr. Stumpf has been invited to testify before the House Financial Services Committee, which is also investigating Wells Fargo. • Prosecutors are examining the scandal. • The Securities and Exchange Commission has been invited to join the fray by Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon. Exxon Mobil’s Workings One company the Securities and Exchange Commission is already scrutinizing is Exxon Mobil. It has asked for information from Exxon Mobil about its policy of not writing down the value of oil reserves . The request, earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal , comes after the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, investigated how Exxon Mobil valued its assets in light of future climate change regulation. The slump in oil prices have already forced most major oil and gas companies to lower their valuations. Exxon Mobil argues that fossil fuels will be essential for a growing world population and its assets will be valuable in the long term. It also says that it is working to curb climate change through its research. It has denied allegations being investigated by Mr. Schneiderman and other state attorneys general that it hid its own scientists’ climate research while publicly raising doubts about established climate science. Coming Up • The Federal Reserve will announce its latest policy decision. It is expected to leave its benchmark rate unchanged , although officials did appear to be considering a rate rise . • Mylan’s chief executive, Heather Bresch, will testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She is likely to be grilled on her company’s decision to raise the list price of the EpiPen allergy treatment. Number of the day • $7.4 Billion : The amount raised by Postal Savings Bank of China in the largest initial public offering so far this year. Only a fraction of the shares will be held by nongovernment investors, though — more than 75 percent of the shares were presold to cornerstone investors (big buyers that get priority by promising not to sell their stakes for six months).

Manufacturing
Exxon Mobil
US Economy
Banking and Finance
Oil and Gasoline
GM
Wells Fargo &


With E.C.B. in Spotlight, Bundesbank Finds Itself in the Shadows

Abstract: FRANKFURT — The exposed-concrete slab of the Bundesbank headquarters stands like a bulwark outside the downtown financial district here, a stolid, Brutalist structure that in its sheer mass evokes not just the German central bank’s stubborn resistance to change but, above all, its obsessive commitment to crushing inflation. Built 45 years ago, the modernist building is hardly old by European standards, yet it is a temple to tradition, embodying the ethos of this most conservative of institutions. “We are trying to keep it just the way it is,” said Reiner Bruckhaus, head of the bank’s centralized construction management division. That starts with the granite floors, the Barcelona chairs in the lobby (designed by the Bauhaus great Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), and the grand, white Carrara marble by the elevators, and goes all the way up to the wood grid ceilings on the top floor. “You will find not even the slightest changes,” Mr. Bruckhaus said. When the building was erected in 1967, the Bundesbank’s dominance in European monetary policy went unchallenged. But in the hazy distance of the Frankfurt skyline, significant change is evident in the outline of two towers and three cranes, the new headquarters of the European Central Bank — a visible reminder of the institution that has supplanted the Bundesbank, just as the euro replaced the German mark. European leaders established the European Central Bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt as a symbol of its status as heir to the Bundesbank. But the danger posed by Europe’s continuing debt crisis demanded improvisations at odds with the Bundesbank’s conservative teachings. Over the summer the E.C.B.’s president, Mario Draghi , pursued an expansive policy that was anathema to the old guard, whose cause was championed by the Bundesbank’s youthful president, Jens Weidmann. He and his supporters base their views not, they say, on rigid orthodoxy but on experience gleaned from the disaster of hyperinflation and the success of adhering to a hard-money path. In an increasingly uncomfortable pairing, the Bundesbank functions as the largest piece of the E.C.B. puzzle. With more than 9,500 full-time workers, the Bundesbank dwarfs the 1,600-strong central bank. Because of that limited staff, the E.C.B. depends on the Bundesbank to handle many of the back-office functions of the common currency. But the European Central Bank’s influence continues to grow. Euro-zone finance ministers agreed to a deal Thursday to put 100 to 200 of their largest banks under its direct supervision. The arranged marriage between the two banks will take enormous effort and flexibility. As its massive headquarters suggests, the Bundesbank is capable of enormous and sustained effort, but flexibility may be inimical to its nature. Founded in 1957, the Bundesbank quickly grew into one of Germany ’s most respected institutions. The rank-and-file behind Mr. Weidmann, 44, represent an unusually tight-knit group, almost like a monastic order, and they are steeped in the bank’s secular religion — often at the bank’s own school, a kind of Hogwarts for its future financial wizards, in a hilltop 12th-century castle in the town of Hachenburg. “You hear it in the first lecture,” said Silke Frühklug, 32, a graduate and Bundesbank employee. “You hear it in the last lecture and every day in between: price stability.” Ms. Frühklug married a classmate and in her free time plays on the central bank’s badminton team, which on a recent evening practiced in a gymnasium on the Bundesbank campus right after the handball team. The bank also has a theater society and “hobby artists” club, which exhibits in the lobby of the headquarters. It owns apartments for workers in tight real-estate markets like Munich and here in Frankfurt. Retired employees still lunch at the cafeteria, helping to nurture the all-important continuity. “People feel connected with the goals of the bank,” said Matthias Endres, 43, editor of the Bundesbank’s internal magazine. Like Ms. Frühklug, he married a fellow graduate from the school in Hachenburg. He has vacationed with his wife and their three children at all three of the Bundesbank getaways, on the North Sea, in the Black Forest and on a lake in Bavaria. Mr. Endres’s wife, Simone, works part-time in the headquarters’ Money Museum, which houses some 350,000 objects, of which roughly 1,300 are on display, including the worthless bills in denominations of millions and billions from the hyperinflation of the Weimar-era and examples of commodity money, like a gold bar, a tea brick and even a preserved cow standing near the entrance, a silent bovine greeter. Museum visitors can try their hand at the Stability Game, which replicates the difficulty of managing money supply. Grasping the joystick, players inject and remove liquidity from the economy. But the game functions on a lag where, by the time the system begins lurching into inflation, it is too late to pull back. German policy makers, particularly at the Bundesbank, underline that peril every chance they get. “As one of my predecessors said, ‘If you flirt with inflation, you end up marrying inflation,’ ” Mr. Weidmann told an audience in Berlin last month. Erich Keller, rector at the Deutsche Bundesbank University of Applied Sciences in Hachenburg, said, “We have a mantra, only one goal — price stability.” “This stability orientation is in the genes of the Bundesbank,” he said. “We are bringing in those genes.” The Bundesbank bought the hilltop castle in 1974 for 3.9 million German marks, or what today would be around $7.6 million. The goal was to have a place to train the core of the Civil Service, preferably away from the distractions and temptations of the corporate banking world. Tuition is free. Students are technically civil servants and receive monthly stipends of around $1,200 for recent high school graduates and roughly $1,600 for previously trained bank employees. They have to pay back much of the money if they do not go to work for the Bundesbank or one of several other public institutions for at least five years. “In the last course, we were talking about recent developments in monetary policy,” Thomas Fehrmann, the school’s deputy rector, said recently, “and it’s really hard for me to make clear to the students that there are some reasons why Mr. Draghi could be right. They are members of the club and soldiers for Mr. Weidmann.” Officially, Mr. Weidmann is no more powerful than his colleagues from tiny euro member countries like Malta and Luxembourg. Unofficially, as representative of the European Union ’s largest economy and head of the Bundesbank’s muscular staff of financial experts, he ranks behind only Mr. Draghi in influence and importance. The German news media speculate about the tenor of the relationship between the two men the way gossip magazines track the “Twilight” stars. Since he pointedly opposed Mr. Draghi’s bond-buying plan, Mr. Weidmann regularly hears the question of when he will resign, like his predecessor, Axel Weber, did. Mr. Weidmann has tried to play down the conflict, which hibernates until the mere promise to buy bonds awakens into action. “I’m not lonely in the E.C.B. board,” Mr. Weidmann said at the conference in Berlin. He might feel lonely in the halls of the Bundesbank, however, if he had a change of heart and supported Mr. Draghi against the judgment of his own staff. “We’re too conservative to boo him,” Ms. Frühklug said. “A lot of people would write e-mails.”

Bundesbank
Europe
European Central Bank
Germany
European Union
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Banking and Financial Institutions
Draghi Mario


Cavaliers Win 12th in a Row

Abstract: LeBron James scored 23 points, Kevin Love had 24, and the Cleveland Cavaliers pushed their winning streak to 12 games on Thursday night with a 105-94 victory over the visiting Los Angeles Clippers, who also lost their composure. The Cavaliers built a 32-point lead in the third quarter, allowing James and Love to sit out the fourth and rest. With its longest winning streak since a franchise-best 13-game stretch in 2010, Cleveland moved into first place in the Central Division. The Cavaliers were seven games behind the Chicago Bulls when the streak began with a victory over the Los Angeles Lakers on Jan. 15. The Clippers were whistled for five technical fouls, including four in a contentious third quarter when they lost their cool and forward Matt Barnes was ejected. Blake Griffin scored 16 and Jamal Crawford 13 for Los Angeles, whose substitutes made the score respectable in the fourth. On Jan. 16, the Cavaliers beat the Clippers, 126-121, for the second win in their streak. Cleveland was a different team back then, “in disarray,” as Clippers Coach Doc Rivers put it before the game. But the Cavaliers are now connecting at both ends of the floor; their first-year coach, David Blatt, has his team’s attention; and Cleveland is looking every bit like an N.B.A. title contender. Image Orlando Magic Coach Jacque Vaughn was fired after a two-and-a-half-year tenure. Credit Jason Decrow/Associated Press The Clippers figured to be a strong test for the Cavaliers but were no match as Cleveland won its eighth straight over Western Conference opponents. HORNETS 94, WIZARDS 87 Gerald Henderson scored 27 points, and host Charlotte rallied to earn its second win over Washington this week. Henderson shot 10 of 15 from the field as the Hornets beat the Wizards for the fifth straight time. Charlotte won at Washington on Monday night, 92-88. Brian Roberts had 12 points and provided a huge lift late in the third quarter after Charlotte had fallen behind by 11 points. Charlotte picked up its defense in the fourth quarter, holding the Wizards to 5-of-19 shooting from the field. ORLANDO FIRES COACH The Orlando Magic fired Coach Jacque Vaughn after a 15-37 start to the season. The Magic ended the two-and-a-half-year tenure of Vaughn, who had been a first-time N.B.A. head coach, after a series of lopsided defeats during a 10-game losing streak. It is Orlando’s second skid of five games or more since the start of 2015. The Magic were also 15-37 through 52 games last season. James Borrego, a top assistant, was named the interim head coach. Rob Hennigan, the Magic’s general manager, did not give a timeline for appointing Vaughn’s successor but said that the team was “100 percent” behind Borrego and that he would have a chance to vie for the full-time job. Vaughn, 39, ended his Magic tenure with a 58-158 record. His dismissal came after Orlando picked up the fourth-year option of his contract last off-season.

Cavaliers
Clippers
Orlando Magic
Jacque Vaughn
Rob Hennigan
Basketball


Blasts Kill 2 and Injure an American in Myanmar

Abstract: BANGKOK — A series of unexplained blasts across Myanmar over the past several days has left two people dead and raised anxiety in the country’s main city, Yangon, where an explosion on Monday at a luxury hotel injured an American tourist. Since Friday, six explosions have hit hotels, a Buddhist pagoda, and restaurants in Yangon and two regions north and northeast of the city, the authorities in Myanmar said. No one had claimed responsibility as of Tuesday for detonating the small, homemade bomb in the Yangon hotel, according to The Associated Press bureau in the city — adding to confusion over whether the blasts were coordinated and who was behind them. As Myanmar sheds the legacy of five decades of military rule, the explosions are another source of concern for a country already plagued by religious violence and fighting between ethnic groups and the military. The blast at the Traders Hotel, one of the best known hotels in Yangon and the former address of some United Nations agencies, occurred just before midnight on Monday, the police said. The United States Embassy said that the blast had “seriously injured” the American tourist, but that “there is no indication at this time” the bombs were targeting Americans. The Myanmar news media reported that the wounded American was on vacation with her husband and two young children. The bomb was a crude device that was planted in the bathroom of the family’s room on the ninth floor, according to The A.P. U Zaw Htay, a director in the office of President Thein Sein, said in a telephone interview that the people behind the bomb blasts “intentionally attempted to portray Myanmar as not peaceful, just as more tourists, more investors and other important guests arrive.” Mr. Zaw Htay said the motive for the blasts may have been to scuttle negotiations between minority ethnic groups, the government and the military. The blasts were carried out by “individuals or groups who dislike democracy and development,” he said. The police said they had arrested four suspects on Tuesday in connection with the explosion at the Traders Hotel, but that it was too early to establish why the hotel was targeted. “The explosions are a form of organized crime that require planning, manpower and money,” said U Aung Moe Zaw, a former dissident and member of a political party, the Democratic Party for a New Society. “I think this could have been carried out by a powerful group that wants to discredit the current government or wants to put the security forces back in charge.” Mr. Thein Sein, a former general, has been moving his country quickly through democratic overhauls, earning international recognition for his efforts and the lifting of sanctions. Last week, Myanmar accepted the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a responsibility that entails hosting numerous meetings of government leaders and steering the agenda of the regional group. Some analysts have questioned whether the government of Myanmar, which is preoccupied with the transition from military rule, is equipped to handle the chairmanship. Myanmar is also hosting the Southeast Asian Games, a regional sporting event, in December. The two people reported killed in blasts on Friday, a policeman and a female civilian, were in a hotel in the city of Taungoo in the Bago region, according to Myanmar news media accounts. It was unclear whether the police officer was on duty at the time. The authorities gave little information on Tuesday about the types of explosive devices that were used in the blasts. The United States Embassy described the bombs as improvised explosive devices.

Yangon
Bombs
Thein Sein
Myanmar,Burma
Assn of Southeast Asian Nations


Egyptian Leaders Meet in Defiance of Court and Military

Abstract: CAIRO — Summoned by a decree from the newly elected president, Egypt ’s Parliament met on Tuesday for the first time since the nation’s military rulers dissolved it three weeks ago, escalating a power struggle between the Islamist elected officials and the top generals. In a 15-minute session, the Parliament voted to appeal the court decision authorizing its shutdown, and Egypt’s Constitutional Court, one of three courts considering the issue, later responded with a rebuke insisting that the Parliament remain closed. The appeal creates a chaotic mess of conflicting legal authorities and jurisdictions that suggests the dispute over the Parliament is unlikely to end any time soon. And it underscored the fact that even 18 months after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, both the newly elected Islamists and the military leaders remain determined to seek legitimacy from the existing courts even though they are a vestige of the old Mubarak system. The newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood , issued a decree on Sunday night calling back the lawmakers, and the generals promptly rejected his order. But indicating some degree of accommodation to the new president, the generals did nothing on Tuesday to stop the mostly Islamist lawmakers from entering the Parliament building. A heavy guard stationed around the building had previously kept them out. The Supreme Constitutional Court, which issued a hasty ruling authorizing the military’s dissolution of the chamber, fired back with new force. After a daylong emergency session, the court issued a new ruling reinforcing the first, and threatened the new president with the equivalent of contempt of court if he continued to reject its decisions. “If Morsi does not comply with today’s verdict, he will be liable” for defying a court order, said Judge Maher Sami, the official spokesman of the Supreme Constitutional Court, according to the state newspaper Al Ahram. Ahmed Abo Baraka, a lawyer for the Muslim Brotherhood, called the court’s decision on Tuesday “political thuggery in the name of the law.” A legal adviser to Mr. Morsi said the Constitutional Court, which rules on the validity of statutes, did not have the authority to order the dissolution of Parliament no matter what flaws it found in the election law, Al Ahram said. But the adviser also said it was up to Parliament, not the president, whether it held or discontinued its session. Mr. Morsi had appeared to claim sufficient authority in his decree to undo the generals’ dissolution of Parliament. He said he was merely delaying putting the court’s ruling in place by ordering new elections two months after the ratification of a planned new constitution. But the Muslim Brotherhood and its lawmakers were not satisfied to convene only on the authority of the presidential decree. Brotherhood lawyers appealed the original decision to the same court that issued it; the Constitutional Court rejected the appeal on Tuesday. Almost as soon as the lawmakers convened, Speaker Saad el-Katanti of the Muslim Brotherhood held a voice vote approving a new legal appeal of the dissolution to a different high court, the Court of Cassation. He said Parliament respected the Constitutional Court’s determination of principles but wanted “to find a mechanism to implement those rulings out of respect for the principles of law and the separation of powers.” Some of the secular-minded lawmakers opposed to the Brotherhood did not attend the session to show their support for the military’s dissolution of the Islamist-led body even though it cost their own seats. Unlike the system in the United States, the Egyptian judiciary has three parallel high courts: a Constitutional Court to review statutes, a Court of Cassation to handle appeals of lower court rulings, and an administrative court that reviews executive actions. With Parliament’s appeal on Tuesday, all three were preparing to weigh in on the dissolution. Citing rules giving the Court of Cassation jurisdiction over certain election disputes in the period after a vote, Parliament asked it to essentially overrule the aspect of the Constitutional Court’s decision holding that the whole Parliament must be immediately dissolved because of flaws in the electoral system used to fill a third of the seats. The Administrative Court is also weighing that question and has said it will issue its own ruling on July 17. At that moment, the Constitutional Court was still considering the issue. “Egypt will have no shortage of lawsuits over this,” said Nathan J. Brown, a political scientist at George Washington University who studies the Egyptian legal system. By nightfall, thousands of protesters, many of them arriving in buses arranged by the Muslim Brotherhood, packed Tahrir Square to protest the court’s dissolution of the Parliament and support Mr. Morsi, and a spokesman for the Brotherhood was threatening an open-ended sit-in.

Middle East and North Africa Unrest (2010- )


Defenseman Suspended

Abstract: Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Nikita Nesterov has been suspended for two games without pay for boarding Dallas Stars forward Curtis McKenzie. Nesterov was given a five-minute penalty and a game misconduct for checking McKenzie from behind in Thursday’s game against Dallas.

Tampa Bay Lightning
Dallas Stars
Ice hockey


Amy Gutmann of Penn, on Welcoming Wild Ideas

Abstract: This interview with Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania , was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.   Q. What do you consider some of your most important leadership lessons? A. The biggest influences on me for leading preceded my ever even thinking of myself as a leader — particularly my father’s experience leaving Nazi Germany. Because I would not even exist if it weren’t for his combination of courage and farsightedness. He saw what was coming with Hitler and he took all of his family and left for India. That took a lot of courage. That is always something in the back of my mind. And my mother was a child of the Depression and so she triumphed against all odds. To me, those two things are really important about leadership, to have courage and to be farsighted in your vision, not to be just reacting to the next small challenge. It probably wouldn’t be as important as it now seems to me if that hadn’t been something that gets repeated over and over in my experience. Q. Were you in leadership roles as a teenager? A. As a teenager, I loved math. I loved solving puzzles and I was the captain of the math team and I did all the leadership things that you would do in a public high school. But my challenge in high school was also fitting in — it was a fairly homogenous community — because my father was an immigrant. The challenge of leadership is precisely the opposite. It’s not to fit in. It’s to have combined passion with purpose, and the most inspiring and successful leaders, I think, don’t fit in. Q. So how did you square that over time? A. I was the first person in my high school to go to Radcliffe. But, interestingly, when I got there I realized that fitting in was no longer conforming. It was having bold ideas and taking risks, smart risks and branching out beyond one’s comfort zone. And when I got to college, all of a sudden I realized that I was much more social than I ever thought, and that I really liked bringing people together to do things. Q. Besides your parents, who were big influences for you? A. Every excellent teacher I’ve ever had has had a really strong influence on me, beginning with my eighth-grade math teacher who made math exciting. I loved math anyway, but I saw him motivating kids who didn’t love math. And so I learned what Emerson said: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” Besides enthusiasm, I would add hard, smart work. Q. How would you describe your leadership style today? A. I love challenges and I’m enthusiastic about taking them on with a team, and my team knows that I like good ideas even when I disagree with them, that I’m hard-driving but also reward everybody on the team who combines passion, smarts and hard work. I’ve also written a lot about the importance of deliberation, and we practice it. We bring everybody to the table and I like to say, in any given week, “this is my wild idea for the week.” We don’t execute more than half of them, but those ideas that we put into practice, everybody was at the table and I think gets the same kind of excitement and satisfaction that I get out of it. What I’ve learned over time is that while you’re driving all of your priorities forward, it’s really important to get feedback and to be open to the wild and crazy ideas, even if you’re not going to pursue but a fraction of them. And that probably makes a lot of sense for a university because we are all about ideas. If we’re not open to them, if I’m not open to them, who is going to be? Q. So you encourage others to share wild ideas? A. I encourage other people to do it and we’re not shy about shooting them down. If it’s intended to be wild and crazy, most of them are going to be shot down. But the ones that survive, we all rally behind. And, yes, I definitely expect other people to outdo me. I think people on my team recognize that I am very straightforward. When I believe that something is absolutely right and we have to do it, I don’t spend a lot of time deliberating about it. I just say, “We’ve got a problem here and we’ve got to solve it and tell me how to do it.” When I have a wild and crazy idea, I want them to know that I have no idea whether we can run with it, so tell me what you think and be as straightforward as I am about it. Q. And do you schedule time for brainstorming? A. I have a weekly meeting with the inglorious title, discussion group, which has no agenda other than to bring ideas to the table. Q. How would you say your leadership style has evolved? A. I’ve learned over time, in an organization that’s as large as Penn, with 31,000 employees, that you have to say a lot and to a lot of people. I think I’m much more communicative than I used to be. I used to think that if you said something once, it should be enough. If you’re a scholar and you write something once, you don’t want to repeat it over and over again. There’s no such thing as plagiarizing yourself but there is such a thing as being boring. So I communicate more, and I also do more outreach to multiple constituencies. And I really believe in communicating in every possible way, walking around the university, e-mailing, calling, visiting people especially in their offices where they work. And I’ve started just randomly going to offices I’d never see otherwise and thanking people when they’ve done a great job but also asking them, “What’s the single thing you’re most proud of?” I ask them both because I’m genuinely interested in their answer but it’s also a check as to whether our highest priorities are reflected at the grass-roots level in the organization. Q. How do you hire? A. I am notorious at Penn among my executive team for warning people not to place too much emphasis on interviews. References, and what somebody has done, are more important than what somebody tells you in an interview. Well done is better than well said, and there’s no substitute for good referencing. But there are things I can learn in an interview and what I do is some form of asking people, “O.K., take 10 minutes or less and tell me your life story. How did you get to where you are now?” What I’m looking for is what motivates you. It just has worked over time. I learn what’s important to people — not by them telling me what they’ve achieved in their current job or what their strengths and weaknesses are — but by asking them about their life story. What I can learn in an interview is more motivational. It’s more about what is important to your own sense of self, and less about how skillful you are. I have to find that out from how well you did in your other jobs. Q. And what are you listening for? A. It’s less a test, actually, of whether I will hire you and more that I want to know you before I hire you. I want to know what’s important to you. I want to be able to play to your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. I know everybody has weaknesses and if I can find out what really makes you happy, what really drives you, I might be able to find a way of making you even more successful at Penn than you were at your previous job. That’s what I try to do when I promote people, too. I know I’m going to hire people who are smart. I know I’m going to hire people who are hard-working and I’ll find that out, the hard-working part, from references. But what I don’t know is who you are, who you think you are and what really makes you feel motivated and satisfied in your work. And I want people who love coming to work because we’re hard-working. There’s a challenge a minute, and I want people who love living up to those challenges. I have to make sure that I’ve created an environment for them that matches their motivations. Q. Are there other questions that you’ve found to be particularly incisive? A. I often ask people, “What’s your greatest weakness?” Q. But people often say their “weakness” is that “I work too hard” or “I’m a perfectionist.” A. I love that one, right? I gave a commencement address at Penn whose theme was, perfection is highly overrated. Do not strive for perfection. If you do, you won’t take risks. So I ask some of the standard questions, but to be frank, I learn precious little from them. The best is to simply ask: Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your life, how you got where you are now and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Then I’ll just follow the flow. Q. What would you say your batting average is, in terms of hiring? A. It’s very high. But the biggest mistakes I make are not doing enough or enough really good referencing on people. So I’m just ferocious about making sure I call enough people to the point where I feel that I really know who I’m hiring. Q. I’m trying to figure out how you manage your time. You talk about dropping in on people’s offices, reference checks, commencement speeches, dealing with all your constituents, including 31,000 employees . ... A. Well, I used to say, because it was true, that I didn’t need a lot of sleep. And then I found out from our doctors who specialize in sleep that that’s a mistake. Everyone needs a lot of sleep. We who have done without sleep overestimate how much sleep we can do without. So anyone who tells you time management isn’t a continual challenge is not telling you the truth. It is. I happen to be somebody who, since I was little, loved juggling multiple balls, keeping multiple balls in the air. So as heretical as this may seem, I did my homework in front of the television. I don’t do that anymore. The key to time management is knowing what your highest priorities are and making sure that you block out time every week that is unscheduled. It winds up being my busiest time of my week, but I make sure that I take stock and that I’m driving some really high priority forward.

University of Pennsylvania
Hiring and Promotion
Executives and Management
Gutmann Amy


Thursday’s Matchup: Jets at Patriots

Abstract: Thursday, 8:20 p.m. Eastern TV: NFL Network Matchup to Watch Stevan Ridley vs. Jets’ Defense Ridley, benched Sunday for fumbling, will assume greater importance in the Patriots’ running offense with the versatile Shane Vereen injured. The Jets’ defensive front is a strength, and last week it held Doug Martin, one of the league’s best running backs, to an average of 2.7 yards on 24 carries. NUMBER TO WATCH 11 That is how many third-down conversions the Patriots were successful on last week at Buffalo, most in the N.F.L. It is imperative that the Jets, who yielded a 37.5 percent conversion rate against Tampa Bay last week, keep New England’s offense off the field. QUOTATION OF THE WEEK ‘Yeah, it is, and it’s awesome. I mean, it’s Boston-New York.’ Patriots quarterback TOM BRADY, when asked whether playing the Jets was special. BEN SHPIGEL


Food Trucks Add American Flavor to Paris

Abstract: PARIS — An artisanal taco truck has come to Paris. The Cantine California started parking here in April, the latest in a recent American culinary invasion that includes chefs at top restaurants; trendy menu items like cheesecake, bagels and bloody Marys; and notions like chalking the names of farmers on the walls of restaurants. In France, there is still a widespread belief that the daily diet in the United States consists of grossly large servings of fast food. But in Paris, American food is suddenly being seen as more than just restauration rapide. Among young Parisians, there is currently no greater praise for cuisine than “très Brooklyn,” a term that signifies a particularly cool combination of informality, creativity and quality. All three of those traits come together in the American food trucks that have just opened here, including Cantine California, which sells tacos stuffed with organic meat (still a rarity in France), and a hugely popular burger truck called Le Camion Qui Fume (The Smoking Truck), owned by Kristin Frederick, a California native who graduated from culinary school here. “I got every kind of push-back,” said Ms. Frederick, 31. “People said: ‘The French will never eat on the street. The French will never eat with their hands. They will never pay good money for food from a truck.’ ” (Her burger with fries costs 10 euros, about $13.) “And, ‘You will never get permission from the authorities.’ ” But Ms. Frederick did, and so the scarf-wearing hipsters were lining up at her truck on a recent Sunday evening. As vintage clothing shops propped open their doors nearby and two young men strummed guitars outside a gallery, the smell of onions caramelizing wafted out over the cobblestones. It could have been Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Los Angeles, but the truck was parked at the north end of the Canal St.-Martin on the Right Bank “It’s against my religion to wait for a burger,” said Guillaume Farges, who was near the front of the line, which began to form at 5:30 p.m., though the truck would not open until 7. “But for this one, I make an exception.” American chefs are at the helm of some of Paris’s hippest restaurants, like Daniel Rose of Spring , Kevin O’Donnell of L’Office and Braden Perkins of Verjus . And the city’s collective crush on high-end hamburgers continues: Parisians are paying 29 euros, or just over $36, for the popular burger at Ralph’s, the Hamptons-Wyoming-chic restaurant in the palatial Ralph Lauren store. “Younger Parisians are really into the New York food scene and the California lifestyle,” said Jordan Feilders, 28, who started Cantine California in March. “There’s a good trans-Atlantic food vibe going on Twitter and Facebook.” Mr. Feilders was raised in France, but his family has roots in Canada and the United States, and he was living in Los Angeles before moving back to Paris last year to inaugurate the truck. From the start, he said, his vision included stylish visuals, American cupcakes and fresh tortillas. The truck is chocolate brown and decorated with bright phrases like “Fresh Cut Fries” and “Real Cheese .” In designing it, Mr. Feilders said, he chose for it to “speak” in English. “We drive by the Louvre every day,” Mr. Feilders said. “And I imagine the kings and queens of France looking out the window, thinking, What the heck was that?” Many Parisians have never eaten a soft taco, much less one stuffed with succulent pork carnitas and chipotles in adobo — which, along with the masa harina for the tacos, Mr. Feilders imports directly from Mexico. For other ingredients, instead of shopping at Rungis, the enormous wholesale market outside Paris that caters to chefs, he has cultivated direct relationships with suppliers, like a cooperative in the Poitou-Charentes region that distributes certified organic beef and pork, and a mill in the Rhône-Alpes that sells the organic flour that goes into his cupcakes. (The cream cheese for the frosting, however, is Philadelphia brand.) After rejecting many brioche and baguette variations as burger buns, he found one with the right combination of lightness, mildness and chew at a bakery that caters to Muslims. This Tunisian “Ramadan bread” also has sesame seeds on top, just like a proper American bun. And to get the right texture for the burger itself, he grinds in an additional measure of fat, creating a patty much juicier than the normal French ground-beef mixture. On a bright morning last month at the Marché St.-Honoré, a weekly market in an elegant residential section of Paris, several sleekly dressed women struggled to lift the thick burgers to their mouths gracefully. (In French restaurants, and sometimes even fast-food joints, burgers are eaten with utensils, not hands.) A few brave souls were trying to eat tacos with a knife and fork. “C’est pas trop épicé,” said one, encouraging a tentative friend — “It’s not too spicy,” high praise from the chile-fearing French. Street food itself isn’t new to France. At outdoor markets like this one, there is often a truck selling snacks like pizza, crepes or spicy Moroccan merguez sausages, cooked on griddles and stuffed into baguettes. But the idea of street food made by chefs, using restaurant-grade ingredients, technique and technology, is very new indeed. Gilles Choukroun, a chef and outspoken advocate for the globalization of French cuisine, said that about five years ago chefs here began to pay attention to street food, as they saw their counterparts in New York, Los Angeles and London trying new ideas outside the confines of a restaurant kitchen. “The French understand that many new cuisines are coming to light in your country,” he wrote in an e-mail in French. “There are more and more young leaders in the U.S., creating a truly new and interesting cuisine.” In April, he served his own interpretations of cheeseburgers and milkshakes at an outdoor event called Street Food Graffiti, a “gastro-rock” homage to the film “American Graffiti,” which still enjoys cult status in France. But American chefs, not French ones, managed to get the first food trucks rolling here. Ms. Frederick waded through the thick red tape of four separate Paris bureaucracies: the business licensing commissariat; the mairie de Paris, or the local municipal office; the prefecture of police; and the authority that oversees the markets. Unlike some food trucks in the United States, the ones here are not allowed to troll for parking spots, or roam from neighborhood to neighborhood. They are assigned to certain markets and days. Since the truck’s opening day, Ms. Frederick said, it has sold every last burger on every shift. And it has received the kind of publicity most chefs can only dream about. Its first weeks were covered obsessively on the many English-language blogs — Hip Paris , David Lebovitz , Paris by Mouth and Lost in Cheeseland — that chronicle the food scene here. Many of the truck’s patrons are American expats, but even more are young Parisians enamored of the informality of New York-style noshing. “We see it on all the police shows on television,” said Sophie Juteau, who was among the first in line for Le Camion Qui Fume’s dinner shift. “Eating from the ice cream trucks, the hot-dog carts: that is, like, our dream.”


Japan Backs Off From Emissions Targets, Citing Fukushima Disaster

Abstract: TOKYO — Japan took a major step back on Friday from earlier pledges to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, saying a shutdown of its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster had made previous targets unattainable. The announcement cast a shadow over international talks underway in Warsaw aimed at fashioning a new global pact to address the threats of a changing climate. Under its new goal, Japan, one of the world’s top polluters, would still seek to reduce its current emissions. But it would release 3 percent more greenhouse gases in 2020 than it did in 1990, rather than the 6 percent cut it originally promised or the 25 percent reduction it promised two years before the 2011 nuclear disaster. The new target, however, is based on Japan’s never turning on any of its scores of idled plants, despite the government’s continued push to bring many of them back online. Highlighting the increased emissions that would result from staying nuclear free — and perhaps securing the backing of climate-change advocates — could allow the conservative government to strengthen the case to its own public that nuclear power is necessary. Japan’s environment minister, Nobuteru Ishihara, said that the new target “does not consider the possible effect of nuclear power plants reducing emissions” and that Japan “would set a more definite target” once it settled on what sources of energy it would use in the future. Environmental groups attending the climate talks criticized Japan’s new targets and said reducing emissions and keeping the country’s reactors offline were not mutually exclusive. “Japan can get dramatic emission reductions while shutting down nuclear entirely,” said Martin Kaiser, head of the Greenpeace delegation. Greenpeace said its own calculations showed Japan could achieve emissions cuts of more than 20 percent without relying on nuclear power if it more aggressively pursued renewable energy. Since the 2011 disaster, Japan’s nuclear power program, which had provided about 30 percent of the country’s electricity, has ground to a halt amid public anxiety over safety, and the country has had to fill much of the gap by burning fossil fuels. The current government has been trying for months to get the public consensus it would like before turning some reactors back on, but so far its assurances that new, tighter regulations will keep the plants safe have not convinced many Japanese. And though Japan’s largest business lobby has argued, along with the government, that energy-poor Japan needs nuclear power to bring down energy costs, opposition to bringing reactors online remains strong. Higher-than-expected emissions from Japan would be a major setback in the fight against global warming. The announcement added to concerns in Warsaw about the difficulty in reducing the atmospheric pollution that many scientists say makes extreme weather events, possibly including the devastating typhoon that hit the Philippines last week, more severe and more frequent. Climate negotiations have been moving very slowly since a meeting in Copenhagen in 2009 that ended in acrimony after the United States and rapidly developing countries like China were unable to come to terms on how to allocate responsibility. The Warsaw conference has adopted a narrow goal of creating a road map for replacing the Kyoto Protocol, which technically expired last year, and to address the thorny issues of how poor countries should be compensated for the costs of adapting to climate change. “There is regret about the announcement from Japan,” Christiana Figueres, leader of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , the body overseeing the Warsaw talks, said at a news conference. But she added that Japan had made significant strides in energy efficiency and renewable power, and said she hoped that the new target would prove conservative. In an apparent bid to deflect criticism of its new target, Japan said it would provide about $16 billion in private and public funds through 2015 to help developing countries curb their greenhouse gas emissions. While Japan’s surprisingly modest plan was an unwelcome development to climate delegates, it was just one of many indications that negotiators would have a difficult time arranging anything beyond a cosmetic deal in Warsaw. It came just two days after Australia’s new conservative government introduced a bill in Parliament to repeal the carbon tax enacted by its Labor predecessor. Signatories to the United Nations treaty agreed in 2010 to cut greenhouse gas emissions to hold the rise in global temperatures to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above preindustrial levels — the most scientists say the earth can tolerate before the effects of global warming become vastly more pernicious. Backtracking by Japan and Australia on emissions, as well as efforts by the United States and China that some criticize as too weak, would not bode well for reaching the temperature target. More broadly, Japan’s action shows the crucial role that many experts say nuclear power must play if the world has any chance of reaching its emissions goals. Just two weeks ago, four prominent climate scientists wrote an open letter calling for environmental groups to embrace nuclear power as the only hope to head off catastrophic global warming. “Energy demand is going to increase,” Stuart Neil, senior director of external relations and communications for the World Energy Council , an alliance of governments, corporations and energy activists, said Friday by telephone from Warsaw. “We need to look at that in a sustainable way. But the reality is that we’re looking at a doubling of demand by 2050,” with most growth outside the developed world. In 2011, Japan was the world’s fifth-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, the United States, India and Russia. Together, these countries and the European Union account for about 70 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. Japan had been a laggard in pursuing renewable energy, choosing instead to rely on its reactors to pare back greenhouse emissions. Before the accident, less than 3 percent of the electricity Japan generated came from renewable energy sources, excluding hydropower. The energy shortfall resulting from the closing of its nuclear plants has left Japan scrambling to fire up old coal- and gas-powered stations, and ramp up its imports of fossil fuels. In the year through March, Japan released the equivalent of 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, more than 7 percent higher than the year preceding the nuclear accident and 14 percent higher than levels in 1990. To kick-start its renewable power program, Japan introduced incentives to diversify its energy sources last year. In the program’s first 12 months, through June, the country added renewable power equal to the output of about four nuclear reactors. Japan’s new target assumes that the country will achieve energy savings of about 20 percent by investing in renewable energy sources and energy-efficient technology, Mr. Ishihara said. Japan seeks to reduce emissions from 2005 levels by 3.8 percent, he said. Japan’s nuclear reactors around the country were shut down for regular maintenance after the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi spewed radioactive materials over northeastern Japan, but the government did not count on the antinuclear feelings that greeted its attempts to try to restart them.

Japan
Greenhouse gas
Global Warming
Kyoto Protocol
Climate Change
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
UNFCCC


Bigger Cars, Flip-Up Seats, Poetry: How Riders Would Run a Subway

Abstract: The bubble. Doing something to keep the bubble from ruining people’s days would be the first thing on Melanie Muccio’s to-do list if she were in charge of the No. 7 line. After a year and a half as a regular rider on the No. 7, she has learned all about the bubble, a 15-to-20-minute stretch of the morning starting just before 8 a.m. She has also learned that arriving at evenly spaced intervals is not one of the No. 7’s strengths, at least not during the bubble. The bubble is what builds when coffee-juggling commuters swarm onto the platform at her stop, 40th Street in Sunnyside, Queens. That is also when Manhattan-bound trains seem to take forever to arrive — and when one finally pulls in, it is already too crowded to squeeze into. “I’ve waited 10 minutes for the first train to come by,” said Ms. Muccio, a public relations executive. “Can’t get on it. Some people do. I refuse. You wait another 10 minutes. Another packed train. And then for some strange reason, the third packed train is always followed right behind by an empty train.” This is New York, the city where everyone is a critic sometimes. It is not much of a stretch for everyone to think that he or she could run a subway line. Interviews with more than 20 passengers on the No. 7 and the L yesterday confirmed that. New York City Transit is not going that far. But it does have a new plan to decentralize the way it runs the subways. The agency announced plans yesterday to subdivide the octopuslike system and make the manager of each line responsible for everything on that line, from bunched-together trains to unintelligible public-address announcements. Howard H. Roberts Jr., the president of New York City Transit, said this week that giving each line autonomy would lead to faster responses to riders’ complaints and, ultimately, better service. He said the No. 7 and L lines would try out the new way of doing things, in part because they already have a certain degree of autonomy: They do not share their tracks with any other lines. He said that makes it easier to keep tabs on whether conditions actually improve. So the idea yesterday was to ask passengers on the No. 7 and L lines what they would do if they were put in charge. On the No. 7, several passengers said they would order bigger cars. Never mind that subway-line managers’ check-writing authority may not be as big as the passengers’ imagination might want. Jay Diaz, a piano technician who works in Long Island City, echoed Ms. Muccio: He wants a more dependable schedule on the No. 7. But he is going in the opposite direction — toward Queens in the morning, when Ms. Muccio is heading to Manhattan. Mr. Diaz lives in Washington Heights, so he takes the A train to Times Square and changes to one to Queens. “I don’t trust the 7 to get me to work the way I trust the E,” he said. “So the first thing I would do is make the 7 more consistent as far as departure times and arrival times.” On the L, Jeffrey Griffith said he would redesign the cars. “In Japan,” he said, “all the seats on trains flip up. The conductor latches the seats up so at rush hour there is standing room only.” He also said he would move the poles away from the doors because “people get packed in around the poles—it causes congestion.” Other passengers on the L said they would put a priority on bringing reality to signs that are supposed to tell riders how long before a train is due. Passengers complained that the signs sometimes say a train will arrive in one minute. They said 15 minutes can tick by before the white eyes of a train appear in the darkness beyond the platform. Dia Roundtree, a special education teacher who lives in Canarsie, Brooklyn, said that fixing the roofs would be her top priority. At her station on the L line, she said, “if it’s raining or snowing, you’ve got to walk through there with an umbrella, and you don’t know what’s falling on your head. That water is dirty.” Some passengers said they would emphasize better communication. Asif Javin said that if he were in charge, what happened to him recently would never happen again. He had swiped his MetroCard and headed into the Main Street station, only to find out from a subway worker that the No. 7 was not running. He said the worker told him he should leave the station and catch a bus. He said the worker did not tell him which bus. At the bus stop outside, several buses were waiting. It took him a while to figure out the one to board. Other passengers said they would put a premium on different kinds of communication. Travis Moe, a New York University student, said that if he ran the L line, he would order “unexpected things” — like having the conductors recite poems as well as deliver their announcements. Iambic pentameter or heroic couplets? How would Emily Dickinson say, “Watch the closing doors,” anyway? Mr. Moe did not say. “The thing about subway culture, if you can call it that, is that people don’t talk, they stare at the floor,” he said, adding that presenting “poems instead of information” would change that.

Subways
Commuting
New York City
New York City Transit


Chris Bosh’s Return Presents the Heat With an Enviable Puzzle

Abstract: It was easy to underestimate Chris Bosh when he joined the Miami Heat at the dawn of the Big Three era. LeBron James was considered the best player in the game, and Dwyane Wade was the Heat’s incumbent superstar, with one title already under his belt. Bosh seemed like a somewhat lower-grade star. To be labeled less than James or Wade is hardly an insult, but to some casual observers, Bosh did not deserve a place next to his famous friends despite having been named to five consecutive All-Star Games as a dominant power forward for the Toronto Raptors. Now in his sixth season in Miami, and working his way back from a second consecutive season marred by a health scare, Bosh has emerged as that rare star who truly believes he would do anything to win. Bosh has served in numerous roles for the Heat, and this season extended his streak to 11 consecutive All-Star selections. Image Hassan Whiteside’s game blossomed in Bosh’s absence last season. Credit Steve Mitchell/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Initially, he was willing to take fewer shots to open the offense for James and Wade. Later, to increase the team’s speed, he moved from power forward to center, helping to create the small-ball revolution that has become ubiquitous in the league. Bosh transitioned back to being a No. 1 option on offense when James left as a free agent and health problems forced Wade to step back. With Hassan Whiteside developing into a dominant center in his absence last season, Bosh was again willing to change positions, moving back to power forward this year. With 17 games left in the regular season heading into the weekend, Bosh, who has dealt with blood clots, says he is healthy enough for basketball-related activities. This presents the Heat, who have been playing well without him, with a conundrum: They recognize Bosh’s value but do not want to jeopardize his health or the team’s success. “I have been working out, training with the team, watching film of the games, walking through plays and have attended home games despite not being visible to the public,” Bosh said in a statement released by his public relations firm on Thursday. “I remain positive that I will be able to return this season.” There is little doubt that a healthy Bosh is one of the Heat’s best players, and if they expect to make a deep playoff run, then a battle-tested power forward with two N.B.A. championship rings and an Olympic gold medal would certainly be an asset. However, it will very likely take some time to work him into the style of play that the Heat developed while he was out. Relying mostly on defensive efficiency to succeed with Bosh, the Heat had gone 9-3 without him entering the weekend, and the offense had been reborn. They had scored nearly 7 more points per 100 possessions, and their defense had improved its efficiency despite a pace that had increased to 99.9 possessions per 48 minutes, as compared with the 94.67 they averaged with Bosh. A big part of the surge has been the continued development of Whiteside. Considered a box-score darling by critics who claim his ability to rack up statistics does not translate to his making a basketball team better, he has made the most of his opportunities in the absence of Bosh. Whiteside, 26, was looking like a journeyman before breaking out last season. A devastating shot-blocker and a terrific rebounder, his game has gone to another level recently. He had played in 11 of the 12 games Bosh has missed entering the weekend, and though his playing time had not increased drastically, he had gone from scoring 12.2 points a game next to Bosh to 18 without him. He had a similar increase in rebounding, averaging 15.1 a game from 11. His offensive and defensive ratings, which are estimates of how many points he scores and allows per 100 possessions, had both improved considerably. Whiteside has had plenty of help, with Wade, Goran Dragic and Luol Deng all playing well in the 12-game stretch. And recently, the team has gotten an unexpectedly strong contribution from Joe Johnson, a seven-time All-Star who has looked rejuvenated since negotiating his release from the Nets. Johnson was scoring 13.7 points a game while shooting 58.2 percentfrom the field with the Heat. Interestingly, Coach Erik Spoelstra has been using a starting lineup that eschews the traditional positions. With Wade, Dragic, Deng, Johnson and Amar’e Stoudemire, the Heat’s lineup consists of two combo guards, two small forwards and a power forward. Whiteside, despite his gaudy statistics, has been coming off the bench. The obvious solution would be to replace Stoudemire in the starting lineup with Bosh and leave Whiteside’s role as is, but it remains to be seen if Bosh will have a limited role until the team better understands his condition. Worrying about where Bosh fits in the lineup is the kind of problem any team would be happy to have, but if he is cleared to play, it will not be a surprise for the Heat’s rhythm to falter some as he finds his way in the new-look offense. But they can rest assured that if Miami needs him to change the way he is doing things, he will do it without complaint. He has been doing that for them since Day 1.


With Every U.S. Open Victory, Andy Murray Advances Gender Equity

Abstract: Anyone who would like to see more female coaches in professional tennis might want to join the Andy Murray fan club. Volunteer to wear a T-shirt with an “A” on it, and join three others to spell out “A-N-D-Y” while standing in the nosebleed seats at Arthur Ashe Stadium, as some of his fans did at the United States Open last week. Sing his praises between sets, as others did by modifying the pop song “I Want Candy.” Supporting Murray doesn’t just mean you are pulling for a great player, though he certainly looked like one on Monday when he advanced to the quarterfinals. Supporting Murray also means that you are supporting his decision to choose Amélie Mauresmo as his coach. When he hired her this summer, he broke the stereotype that top men can’t be coached by women, and he said his choice wasn’t about gender, but about finding a good fit. Murray, who is ranked No. 9 in the world, is a friend to the women’s game. He learned the sport from his mother and has long promoted gender equality in interviews and on Twitter. But supporting female players and succeeding with one as a coach are two different issues. Now, with the spotlight on him and Mauresmo, can they deliver? Billie Jean King, a pioneer for women in sports and a winner of 39 Grand Slam titles, said they must, even though women coaching men should be a nonissue by now. Image Andy Murray is coached by Amelie Mauresmo, left. Credit Charles Krupa/Associated Press “Mauresmo was validated as a coach when Murray hired her, but every time he wins, she’s validated a little more, and that’s huge,” King said last week. “She will attract more women to coaching, and if we had more women like her in high-profile positions, it would be normal for every girl or guy coming up in the ranks to say, ‘You know, I’m going to work with a woman.’ But we don’t. So all eyes are on her.” Forty-two years after Title IX pushed for gender equity in sports, it is still uncommon for a woman to coach a top player, even in tennis, a sport where the best women have the power and the money to choose the members of their entourage. Murray is the only player in the top 40 who is listed as being coached by a woman. The top women’s player coached primarily by a woman is Ekaterina Makarova, ranked 18th. These days, though, it’s hard not to notice that the sports world is changing, albeit inch by inch, when it comes to women elbowing their way into traditionally male roles. Just last month, Becky Hammon became the first woman hired as a full-time assistant coach in the N.B.A. Just last weekend, for the first time in W.N.B.A. history, four female head coaches led their teams to the conference finals. But as King told me, “We have so far to go.” This year, Helena Costa of Portugal became the first woman hired to coach a men’s professional soccer team in France. She lasted for only a millisecond, stepping down because, as she later claimed, she had been brought in only as a figurehead, her plans undermined by others at the club. While the team hired a woman to replace her , the damage had been done, leaving people to wonder if the moves had more to do with public relations than coaching qualifications. King said that the best way to stop people from guessing would be to succeed, but that it can be a struggle when the pressure is so high. “I think it’s tougher because women get more scrutiny than guys; it’s like we have to be perfect,” she said, adding that the main problem for female coaches rising in professional tennis is that “the world is run by the old-boy network still and ‘like’ speaks to ‘like.’ ” In the United States Tennis Association, King pointed out, there are a lot of boys speaking to boys. The U.S.T.A.’s high-performance program, which guides the country’s top juniors, has only two women on its coaching staff of 26. Only three women serve on the association’s 15-member board of directors, and only two are on its senior executive staff. Image Billie Jean King, right, contends that women coaching men should be a nonissue. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times King said the U.S.T.A. needs to work harder — if it is working at it at all — to develop female coaches and encourage them to apply for high-level paying jobs. And Taylor Townsend, a rising American star who lost in the Open’s first round, argued that it would help the women’s game if more women coaches were involved. “I feel like women are better at getting you through a tough situation, because they really know how you feel,” said Townsend, who is coached by Zina Garrison. “I think it will change eventually, and will someday be more equal, men to women, but I just don’t know how long that will take.” Townsend said it would be nice to see more women coaching at elite events, like the Open, and on Monday, she actually got her wish. Two players with female coaches won to advance to the quarterfinals. Murray played on Arthur Ashe and, with Mauresmo looking on, beat Tsonga in straight sets. In nearby Louis Armstrong Stadium, Makarova beat the Wimbledon finalist Eugenie Bouchard, also in straight sets. Makarova’s coach is another former top-20 player, Evgenia Manyukova. It was a relatively rare moment, enough to make you want to gather some friends and throw on some T-shirts that spell out “M-O-R-E.”

Andy Murray
Coaches
Tennis
Arthur Ashe
Billie Jean King
Amelie Mauresmo
Women and Girls
US Open Tennis


New York Bus Driver Arrested After Fatally Striking Pedestrian

Abstract: A Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus driver was arrested on Wednesday after his bus struck and killed a 78-year-old man on Tuesday night in Brooklyn. The driver, Reginald Prescott, was charged with failing to yield to a pedestrian and violation of highway law, the police said. Mr. Prescott, 57, was driving a B44 bus eastbound on Farragut Road in East Flatbush when he made a turn onto New York Avenue around 6 p.m., according to the police. As he was making the turn, Jean Bonne-Annee was crossing the street and was struck by the bus, the police said. Mr. Bonne-Annee was pronounced dead at the scene. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, the M.T.A. said Mr. Prescott, a 7 1/2-year veteran of the authority, was being suspended from service while the agency investigated the accident. The authority also offered condolences to Mr. Bonne-Annee’s family. Representatives of the union for city bus drivers said they would release a statement later on Wednesday. It was unclear if Mr. Prescott had a lawyer. Law enforcement officials declined to discuss details of the case. The arrest comes as the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio continues its efforts to drive down the number of pedestrians killed in traffic accidents. In 2013, 176 pedestrians were killed in traffic in New York, according to police statistics. In February, Mr. de Blasio introduced a set of initiatives called Vision Zero. The plan calls for a variety of changes, including lowering speed limits across the city, enhancing street lighting at 1,000 intersections, installing 250 speed bumps and expanding bike paths. Most critically, the initiative calls for stepped-up enforcement of existing traffic laws. In recent months, there has been a steady increase in the number of summonses issued for traffic violations, including failure to yield. Still, it is unusual for a driver of a city bus to be charged with a crime in accidents that result in pedestrian deaths. In November, when a bus driver in Queens struck and killed a 60-year-old man crossing Union Street at Northern Boulevard while making a turn, no charges were filed. The transportation authority said in its statement that it had worked this year toward reducing pedestrian deaths. “Managers are conducting more observational rides to ensure safe bus operation, and safe driving tips have been posted throughout bus depots,” the statement said. Since February, nine pedestrians have been killed by city buses, but the arrest on Wednesday was the first of the cases to result in charges against the driver. (In addition to the nine pedestrians struck by buses, a woman died this year after she was run over while trying to retrieve a cellphone she dropped upon exiting a bus.)

Bus
Reginald Prescott
Jean Bonne-Annee
Car Crash
MTA
NYPD
Fatalities,casualties
Flatbush Brooklyn


Figuring Out What Time Is the Right Time to Start Hiring

Abstract: It can be challenging for Willan Johnson to know how many people to employ at his pool-cleaning business, VivoPools , in Los Angeles, for a number of reasons. First, he needs more people in the warmer months. He also has to consider where his jobs are and how long it will take his workers to drive from one job to another. Some jobs take longer than others, because vacuuming and scrubbing take more time than chemical treatments. Plus, he said, “Everyone wants their residential pool service on Friday.” Of course, like most business owners, Mr. Johnson always wants to avoid having too many people and not enough work. “Determining when and how many employees to hire is a bit tricky for our business as the demand for services varies based on account growth, seasonality, geography of homeowner addresses and customer requests,” said Mr. Johnson, who started the company four years ago. Many small-business owners remain skittish about hiring. The National Federation of Independent Business reported that nearly 80 percent of small, private companies made no hiring changes in July and 12 percent let workers go. Especially after the recession, many owners have been reluctant to spend the money to hire workers, especially if there’s a chance demand will recede and the workers will have to be laid off. The on-again, off-again recovery hasn’t helped. And with small businesses representing 49.2 percent of private sector employment , according to the Small Business Administration, this reluctance has inevitably had an impact on unemployment rates. Some owners have turned to paying overtime, which makes it easier to scale back if demand slips. The downside is that it can be expensive and it can lead to an overworked staff. For example, the work force at Narragansett Creamery in Providence, R.I., has grown slowly even as more customers are drawn to the company’s homemade yogurt and cheeses, said Mark Federico, the owner. Started in 2007, the company has grown to a staff of 30. “We found that if we worked too many hours for too long a period of time, people get burned out,” Mr. Federico said. “People need days off. It’s not scientific, and we’re not right all the time.” Based on the experiences of owners like Mr. Johnson and Mr. Federico, this small-business guide looks how owners determine when it’s time to hire. HOURS WORKED Mr. Johnson said he ran his employment numbers weekly, as clients were added and lost, to ensure he had enough people. He uses a spreadsheet to help him decide when the company can support the wages of new employees. He keeps careful count of the number of pools the company cleans and the hours required for each job. He separates residential jobs, which typically require 30 minutes of time, from those at commercial pools, which can take two hours. To calculate the required number of employees, Mr. Johnson estimates the number of hours required to clean all client pools and divides that by a standard 40-hour workweek. When the result is greater than the number of employees on staff, he makes a new hire. THE PAYROLL PERCENTAGE Earlier this year, when there was a surge in demand for swimming lessons at SwimLabs , in Highlands Ranch, Colo., Michael Mann was taken by surprise. Suddenly, the 15 full-time employees he keeps during the off-season — as opposed to 25 or more during spring and summer — were not enough. Opened in 2006, SwimLabs offers one-on-one lessons to children and adults. All students are videotaped and analyzed as they take their strokes in small pools equipped with water jets. The company saw the same surge in business after the 2012 Summer Olympics. “The Olympics always elevates the sport,” said Mr. Mann, who holds several masters swimming records. His business got an extra boost because the four-time gold medalist Missy Franklin lived nearby. To decide how many instructors he needed to hire, Mr. Mann looked at monthly gross earnings and calculated that the payroll should consume a maximum of 25 percent of his operating costs. If he generates an additional $10,000 a month in revenue, he knows he can afford another instructor who is paid $2,500 a month. As a result, Mr. Mann started hunting for two more part-time instructors. CALL VOLUME Growth can be deceptive. Sometimes, efficiencies may keep three times as many customers from meaning three times as much work. That is a lesson learned by Hudl , a company in Lincoln, Neb., that builds video analysis tools for coaches in 20 different sports, allowing them to break down plays and share them with their players. The company’s big market is high school football. In the 2011 season, its six-person service team went from working with 2,000 teams to working with more than 6,600. “We were staying up all night” to manage problems like software bugs, said Bryant Bone, who heads the support team. Clearly, Hudl needed help. Mr. Bone had noticed that between 2009 and 2010 Hudl’s clientele had risen by more than 550 percent, to 2,300 teams from 350 — but the volume of service calls had grown by only about 400 percent. Mr. Bone reasoned that service calls would continue to rise at a lower rate than the number of clients as the company improved its software design, development and training. Given that, he concluded that Hudl needed to increase its support team at a rate between 70 and 80 percent of the company’s client growth. Today, the company has 105 employees. “We trust that a combination of better design, development processes and more experienced users helps keep our overall growth outpacing our team’s size,” Mr. Bone said. BACKLOG ORDERS Like SwimLabs, PeggyBank in Omaha got caught short-handed recently. The company scans family photographs, VHS tapes and slides, preserving them in digital formats. Its founder, James Simon, made a deal with a social commerce Web site that offered discount coupons for PeggyBank’s services. Orders poured in, and the staff was soon overwhelmed. Suddenly, it was taking four to five weeks to finish some projects, as opposed to the customary two. And some employees were logging up to 15 hours of overtime a week. That prompted Mr. Simon to hire more help. He said that he tried to avoid the problem by looking at two crucial data points every day: the number of orders in the queue and the time it was taking for the orders to be fulfilled. He knows that he needs more workers when he is “running an excessive amount of overtime and the orders aren’t getting filled,” said Mr. Simon, who employs 16 people. “When I see the number of orders in the backlog start to breach 100, that’s my cue to start hiring people,” he said. “When it gets over 100, I know our production times will take longer than two weeks to turn around.” COMMON SENSE There are times when numbers do not tell the real story. Sometimes, Mr. Simon said, the best indication that he has to hire more people is when his supervisor starts screaming from the production floor, “Hey! We need serious help down here!” “That’s the God’s honest truth,” he said. “I listen to her instincts more than anything else.”

Jobs
Small business
Overtime
Working Hours
Job Recruiting and Hiring


Caster Semenya Eases to Victory in Comeback Race

Abstract: Caster Semenya , in her first race since being cleared to return to competition after undergoing sex-verification tests, won the 800 meters Thursday in a modest time at a low-key meet in Lappeenranta, Finland. Semenya, a 19-year-old South African, won her first race in almost a year in 2 minutes 4.22 seconds at the Lappeenranta Games — a long way off the 1:55.45 she clocked when winning the gold medal at the world championships in Berlin 11 months ago. Semenya, though, was happy with her time after such a long absence. “To come and run a 2:04 is not easy, especially after what happened,” Semenya said. “I was a little bit nervous because it has been a long time not competing.” “It’s a new beginning,” she added. Semenya, who started in Lane 4, was even with most of her competition before pulling away on the home straight. Mari Jarvenpaa of Finland finished second in 2:04.71, and Olha Yekymenko of Ukraine was third in 2:05. Semenya is aiming to be in gold-medal contention at October’s Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. Her next race is at the Lapinlahti Games on Sunday, before she heads back to South Africa to continue training. As an 18-year-old, Semenya burst onto the scene in Berlin, where she won in her first appearance at a major final. Her drastic improvement in times and muscular appearance led the International Association of Athletics Federations , track and field’s international governing body, to order sex tests. This sparked outrage in South Africa, where she had returned home a national hero after a stunning victory. Public officials rallied behind her, and her lawyers entered into negotiations with the I.A.A.F. that lasted 10 months. Semenya, who refused to criticize the I.A.A.F., said she could run faster than she did in Berlin. “Maybe it was good for me to rest after I ran my fastest time last year,” Semenya said. “I’m still young, the muscles are still developing, so yeah, I can run faster than that.” Semenya was left off South Africa’s team for the coming African championships after failing a fitness test the day after she was cleared by the I.A.A.F. to continue running as a woman. BOLT AND POWELL TO MEET The Jamaican sprinters Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell go head to head for the first time this year in the 100 meters at the Diamond League meet in Paris on Friday. Bolt and Powell, who share the fastest time this year of 9.82 seconds, meet in a much-anticipated showdown at the Areva meet at the Stade de France. “My goal will be not to lose this race,” Bolt said. “I plan to go 9.7. It should be a good race. Asafa is ready.” After an Achilles’ tendon injury, Bolt returned to competition in Lausanne, Switzerland, on July 9 and clocked 9.82 seconds. That matched Powell’s time in Rome on June 10.

International Assn of Athletics Federations


N.L.R.B. Rules Would Streamline Unionizing

Abstract: In a move that pleased labor unions, the National Labor Relations Board proposed new rules on Tuesday to speed up unionization elections. The labor board wants to tighten the process by ensuring that employers, employees and unions receive needed information sooner and by delaying litigation over many voter-eligibility issues until after workers vote on whether to unionize. The labor board’s news release and fact sheet did not explain how much the election process might be shortened as a result of the proposed regulations. But according to the board, the median amount of time from the filing of a petition for an election to the actual balloting was 38 days in 2008. The average time was 57 days. Unions have long complained that it takes too many weeks after the petition is filed for a secret-ballot election to be held. They say the process gives management too much time to mount an antiunion campaign with videos and one-on-one sessions with workers. American companies have repeatedly opposed any effort to shorten the period from petition to vote, saying it would become harder for managers to tell workers about the disadvantages of unionizing and to ensure that workers got both sides of the story. The board said its proposed rules “are intended to reduce unnecessary litigation, streamline pre- and postelection procedures and facilitate the use of electronic communications and document filing.” N.L.R.B. officials said they were not mandating any specific timetable for an election. The public will have 75 days to comment on the proposed rules, which may then be revised. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. applauded the proposed rules. “Our current system has become a broken, bureaucratic maze that stalls and stymies workers’ choices,” said Richard Trumka, the labor federation’s president. “With the proposal of these new standards, the board is taking a modest step to remove roadblocks and reduce necessary and costly litigation — and that’s good news for employers as well as employees.” But the United States Chamber of Commerce criticized the move as a gift to organized labor. “This is another, not-so-cleverly-disguised effort to restrict the ability of employers to express their views during an election campaign, to inform employees of the pros and cons of unionization,” said Randel K. Johnson, the chamber’s senior vice president for labor matters. Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota and chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, also criticized the proposal. “Big Labor has found faithful friends on the Obama N.L.R.B., who are working hard to fix a process that isn’t broken,” he said. The committee’s senior Democrat, Representative George Miller of California, defended the proposal, saying the current election process was broken and vulnerable to manipulation and delay. “Ideologues will undoubtedly criticize and scaremonger over this modest, commonsense proposal,” he said. “In reality, the proposal will reduce costly litigation for all parties and reduce unnecessary conflict in the workplace.” The board — which usually makes policy by issuing written rulings that resolve labor disputes — said that engaging in rule-making to revamp procedures had been a board tradition throughout its 75-year history. “It is fair to predict that the new proposals will be controversial,” the board’s chairwoman, Wilma B. Liebman, said in a statement. “That controversy is unfortunate, but it is not a good reason for the board to abandon its responsibilities.” The board’s most recent annual report says 1,619 unionization elections were held in fiscal year 2009, with unions winning 63.8 percent of them. Business groups say such a high winning percentage refutes labor’s claims that the process is unfair. But union officials assert that if the election process were not so skewed and unfair, that percentage would be far higher and they would be pushing to hold many more elections, perhaps helping to reverse labor’s decline. In an article about the N.L.R.B., Samuel Estreicher, a law professor at New York University, noted that unions considered the time between petition and election a problem “because employee interest in collective representation can wane and dissipate simply by the passage of time.” In one important specific change, the labor board will seek to avoid election delays by deferring a common form of litigation in which companies argue that some employees should not vote because they should be considered supervisors. Challenges to voter eligibility can delay elections for several weeks. Under the proposed regulations, such litigation would generally be deferred until after the election. In a move that board officials say will make it easier for employees, employers and unions, the labor board proposes to allow petitions and other election documents to be filed electronically. Under federal rules, signatures of at least 30 percent of a workplace’s employees are needed to petition for a unionization election. In another proposal that companies are likely to criticize because it makes campaigning easier for unions, the board would require employers to provide a voter list of all employees in electronic form sooner than now required, and require it to contain phone numbers and e-mail addresses. The board’s news release noted that one of its four members, Brian Hayes, the only Republican, dissented from the proposed rule-making. Generally, the labor board seeks to arrange a hearing within a week or two after a petition is filed. The board, in another proposal likely to upset employers, would bar the parties from later litigating issues other than the ones raised at the hearing, unless they are voter-eligibility issues.

National Labor Relations Board
Organized Labor


Chicago’s ‘Mayor for Life’ Decides Not to Run

Abstract: CHICAGO — Mayor Richard M. Daley dropped the bomb at a routine news conference at City Hall on Tuesday. With no prelude or fanfare, Mr. Daley announced that he would not seek re-election when his term expires next year. “Simply put, it’s time,” he said. “Time for me. And time for Chicago to move on.” Later, he continued: “I’ve done my best. Now, I’m ready with my family to begin the next phase of our lives.” The shock waves spread across the city — which years ago nicknamed Mr. Daley, a Democrat, Mayor for Life — and all the way to Washington, where the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel , said earlier this year that he would like the job. On Tuesday, Mr. Emanuel issued a statement honoring the mayor’s service. He did not say whether he intended to run. (The filing deadline for the Feb. 22 election is Nov. 22.) For the better part of 56 years — for better and for worse — the Mayors Daley will have run Chicago: first, Richard J. Daley, the current mayor’s father, from 1955 to 1976, when he died in office, then Richard M. Daley, from 1989 to 2011. The day after Christmas, he will become the longest-serving mayor in the history of the city, surpassing his father. Historians may see that as a theme. The younger Daley, 68, inherited a city riven by racial strife and mired in official corruption. Even if he failed to eliminate those ills, some would say, he turned the city into an economic success story, paying particular attention to beautifying Chicago’s aging core. The younger Mr. Daley promoted the city’s business, tourism, culinary and art industries in a way that positioned Chicago to compete with American cities better known for such things, like New York and San Francisco. “If you look at other major industrial cities in the Midwest, Chicago has really reinvented itself” over and over again, said Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. “It is a beautiful, world-class city, which is not to say it doesn’t suffer from great inequities and crime, or that the Daley administration hasn’t been touched by corruption. But on balance, we have been a city that has been able to thrive. There has been an urban renaissance here, and Mayor Daley played a very big role in that.” He also tore down some of what his father built, sometimes literally. For instance, the first Mayor Daley built the high-rise public housing projects that became a model for the rest of the country. The second Mayor Daley began tearing down some of the largest projects — considering them a failed experiment in public housing — and many cities followed his example, too. Despite both mayors’ administrations being plagued by corruption, both are also credited with preventing Chicago from experiencing the ignominious slide that other Midwestern cities had, like Cleveland, Detroit or St. Louis. Coming out of the midcentury, Chicago was known mostly as hog butcher to the world. Over the decades, the Daleys (and the fewer than a half-dozen intervening mayors) diversified the city, keeping it growing as comparable Rust Belt cities shrank. The elder Daley built O’Hare International Airport, securing Chicago’s place as a national transportation hub in the modern era, as it had been in the age of railroads. The younger Daley expanded O’Hare, a mission that continues to this day. “The Daley legacy is political continuity, economic development and revitalization,” said Kent Redfield, a political scientist from the University of Illinois, Springfield. “Having stability and continuity in local government has been a big plus in terms of developments, and there’s been a strong relationship with big business and big labor. It was certainly also a hallmark of the first Daley administration, being able to bring economic interests together.” Last fall, Mr. Daley suffered what was perhaps his most significant recent defeat not in an election but when Chicago lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympic Summer Games. He emerged globally as the city’s promoter in chief and suffered a blow when Chicago was among the first cities eliminated. Here in Chicago, the news of Mr. Daley’s imminent departure was greeted with near universal shock. “Oh, my God! We know we knew it would happen someday, but I certainly didn’t wake up thinking it would be today,” Ms. Canary said. “It’s very exciting and a little scary.” Professor Redfield added, “It is remarkable when you see people walk away from power.” Perhaps the very definition of a strong mayor with almost absolute command, Mr. Daley leaves no apparent political heirs. He was widely expected to seek a seventh term without serious opposition. Few have been willing to challenge him. But now that he is stepping down, some political experts expect to see a flood of contenders. In the recent past, several potentially strong candidates have said they would be interested in running for mayor should Mr. Daley decide not to. “One day I would like to run for mayor of the City of Chicago,” Mr. Emanuel, a former mayoral campaign aide, said during an April interview on “The Charlie Rose Show.” Thomas J. Dart, the Cook County sheriff, is also a possible candidate. Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., who serves the South Side of Chicago and its suburbs, is known to have his eye on the post-Daley era of city politics, though Mr. Jackson has remained largely quiet since becoming entangled in the corruption trial of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich. Mr. Jackson did issue a statement on Tuesday. He said Mr. Daley was leaving the city in poor fiscal shape. “Regarding potential successors, I expect there will be numerous candidates, but only a few can mount a serious bid for mayor,” Mr. Jackson said, not noting whether he would. Other possible contenders have said they were biding their time. “I can’t remember the last time we had a truly open seat like this,” said State Representative John Fritchey, a Democrat who said he was considering whether to run. “Right now, not knowing who’s running, it’s difficult to make the determination.” Mr. Daley said at his news conference that although the news media and others might seek some hidden reason for his decision, there was none. “In the end, this is a personal decision,” he said. “No more, no less.” Chicagoans in political circles said they believed him. Mr. Daley’s wife, Maggie, has been suffering from breast cancer since 2002. She is a well-known and respected figure here, having done much to help beautify the city. “In the end, family trumped politics, and we shouldn’t be surprised, because that’s who he is," said Andy Shaw, executive director of the Better Government Association, a local watchdog group. "I think he visualized a tough re-election campaign interrupted frequently and unexpectedly by new complications in his wife’s cancer fight, and that’s a scenario he wanted to avoid," he added.

Mayors
Daley Richard M
Chicago (Ill)
Emanuel Rahm
Politics and Government


More Land in Colombia Used to Grow Coca, U.S. Says

Abstract: CARACAS, Venezuela — The amount of land in Colombia used to grow coca, the plant that drug traffickers use to make cocaine, increased significantly last year, according to an annual survey by the United States government. The data was posted on the website of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy this week, several days after the Colombian Health Ministry called for a ban on the use of a common herbicide that is the centerpiece of a controversial spraying program financed by the United States to eradicate the country’s coca crop. The government of Colombia is currently involved in peace talks with the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has long used drug trafficking to finance its activities. The two sides have reached a preliminary agreement to fight drug activity and work together to stop coca growing. An annual study conducted for the White House drug policy office, which uses satellite images and other data, estimated that last year there were 276,758 acres of coca grown in Colombia, compared with 198,919 acres the previous year, a 39 percent increase. Coca acreage had previously fallen or remained relatively stable for several years in a row, according to the survey data. From a recent peak of an estimated 412,665 acres in 2007, it fell each year until reaching 192,741 acres in 2012. It rose slightly in 2013, to 198,919 acres, the data said. The drug policy office’s website said the increase could be a result of several factors, “including increased cultivation in areas off limits to” spraying. Colombia does not spray along its border with Ecuador because of objections from Ecuador’s government. It has also stopped spraying near the northeast border with Venezuela, where peasant groups have protested against the program, said Adam Isacson, a senior associate of the Washington Office on Latin America , an advocacy group. Mr. Isacson said some experts thought the decrease in coca planting in previous years could be partly attributed to the fact that many poor peasants had switched to illegal gold mining while gold prices were high. As prices have fallen, he said, farmers may have returned to coca. He questioned the timing of the release of the White House data, saying it appeared to be intended to influence Colombia’s coming decision on the use of the herbicide glyphosate. “I think the U.S. government is working hard to influence the decision to suspend the fumigation program,” Mr. Isacson said. “They view it as a key tool, and they don’t want to give it up.” Colombia’s Health Ministry recommended a ban on the use of glyphosate in coca eradication after an arm of the World Health Organization said that it probably causes cancer in people. The government has yet to make a determination on whether to continue the spraying. The White House data also showed how the spraying campaign had dropped off in recent years. Last year, 137,274 acres were sprayed, down from a peak of 405,546 acres in 2006. Manual eradication, in which government patrols remove coca plants by hand, has also fallen, covering just 28,918 acres last year. That was just over half the acres manually eradicated in 2013 and a fraction of the 236,556 acres destroyed manually in 2008.

Colombia
Coca
Office of National Drug Control Policy
Ecuador
Drug Abuse
Defoliants and Herbicides
WHO
US
International relations
Agriculture