Mexico’s Oil Politics Is Causing Woes

Abstract: VENUSTIANO CARRANZA, Mexico — To the Mexican people, one of the great achievements in their history was the day their president kicked out foreign oil companies in 1938. Thus, they celebrate March 18 as a civic holiday. Yet today, that 72-year-old act has put Mexico in a straitjacket, one that threatens both the welfare of the country and the oil supply of the United States. The national oil company created after the 1938 seizure, Pemex, is entering a period of turmoil. Oil production in its aging fields is sagging so rapidly that Mexico, long one of the world’s top oil-exporting countries, could begin importing oil within the decade. Mexico is among the three leading foreign suppliers of oil to the United States, along with Canada and Saudi Arabia. Mexican barrels can be replaced, but at a cost. It means greater American dependence on unfriendly countries like Venezuela, unstable countries like Nigeria and Iraq, and on the oil sands of Canada, an environmentally destructive form of oil production. “As you lose Mexican oil, you lose a critical supply,” said Jeremy M. Martin, director of the energy program at the Institute of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s not just about energy security but national security, because our neighbor’s economic and political well-being is largely linked to its capacity to produce and export oil.” Mexico probably still has plenty of oil, especially beneath the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, but Pemex lacks the technology and know-how to get it out. Inviting foreign companies into the country to help is one of the touchiest propositions in Mexican politics. As the Mexican government struggles to find a way forward, production keeps falling. The basic problem is simply that Mexico’s readily accessible oil is used up — pretty much the same thing that happened to the United States when production began falling in the 1970s. Output from Mexico’s giant Cantarell field, in shallow waters near the eastern shore, has plunged by 50 percent in recent years. Output at the country’s other large field is expected to begin falling in the next year or two. Historically, oil has supplied 30 to 40 percent of the Mexican government’s revenue. Confronting a potential calamity, President Felipe Calderón has pushed through the strongest reforms he can defend politically, in hopes of attracting foreign investment. But he dare not do anything that would appear to reverse the 1938 nationalization. Even the modest reforms he has managed to pass are being challenged in court. Officially, the government is optimistic that Mexico can reverse its decline as an oil-producing nation. But its efforts so far have yielded more rhetoric than oil. Last year, on the day celebrating the 1938 seizure, the president’s helicopter landed in a hilly oil field outside this farming town. He announced that a new era of Mexican gushers would dawn soon. “Under this soil,” Mr. Calderón told thousands of oil workers, lay “the richness that could propel development in our country and help Mexico accelerate our path to progress and well-being.” He promised that 20 wells would be spurting crude “very soon” from the ground on which he stood. Almost a year later, only three wells were pumping on a recent afternoon. Eleven had been shut after producing little or no oil. In fact, the effort to develop the geologically challenging Chicontepec field here, near the gulf coast, is deteriorating into an embarrassing disaster for Pemex, the latest in a string of them. In all, Mexican oil output has dropped from just short of 3.5 million barrels a day in 2004 to a projected average of 2.5 million barrels this year. Mexican oil exports to the United States, now 1.1 million barrels a day, have fallen by nearly a third in the last six years. The United States Energy Department projects that Mexican production will decline by an additional 600,000 barrels a day by 2020; combined with growing domestic demand, that would probably make the country an oil importer. In the last two years, Mexico provided about 12 percent of all crude oil imports to the United States, supplying about 8 percent of the total oil used by American refineries, according to the Energy Department. Pemex — officially Petróleos Mexicanos — is the most important company in Mexico, employing 140,000 people. Oil money is used for everything from building schools to fighting the war against drug cartels. “The fact that Mexico’s production is rapidly declining could potentially cause a financial crisis not only for Pemex but for the government,” said Enrique Sira, the Mexico director of IHS Cera, an energy consulting firm. Mexican officials put the best face on the situation, hailing a reform package passed by Congress two years ago that gives Pemex more independence and leeway in negotiating service contracts with foreign firms. “There is nothing to stop us from improving,” Pemex’s director general, Juan José Suárez Coppel, said at a recent university conference. In an interview, the Mexican energy secretary, Georgina Kessel, said she expected the drop in oil production to level off this year, “and we can begin on the road back toward reversing the fall in production in the coming years.” To accomplish that, Ms. Kessel said, “Mexico is going to have to go to the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico,” where she estimated there are at least 50 billion barrels in potential oil reserves — more than double the country’s current proven reserves. International oil executives share the enthusiasm for Mexico’s potential deepwater fields, which lie near rich new American fields. Mexico “potentially has, if not the largest, one of the largest undiscovered deepwater petroleum resources in the world,” said Jon Blickwede, a senior geologist at Statoil, a Norwegian oil company active in the Gulf. Pemex has stepped up exploration of its deep waters, but it will take specialized expertise and enormous financing to produce oil there. Just one deepwater rig can cost $365 million a year to operate, which is why even companies the size of Chevron and Shell look for partners to share the financial risk. Carlos Morales, head of Pemex production and exploration, said in an interview that the company was in advanced discussions with foreign companies to develop “new models” of contracts to share costs and technology on land and offshore that would include cash payments. “Without doubt, Pemex is in a key moment in its history,” he said. Like the government, international oil executives said they were cautiously optimistic some arrangement with Pemex could be worked out. But in the best case, it will be 10 or 15 years before significant production can begin in the deep gulf — and by then, Mexico could already be an oil importer. Stumbling blocks remain. The recent reforms do not lift constitutional prohibitions that effectively prevent foreign companies from booking Mexican reserves they help discover, which undermines their incentive to sign deals with Pemex. The Mexican government hopes to interpret the new rules to allow foreign firms to share the profits of new discoveries, but opposition political parties have filed a constitutional challenge to the rules. The case is before the Mexican Supreme Court. The 1938 nationalization, by the leftist government of Lázaro Cárdenas, came at the end of a long period of revolutionary ferment in Mexico. It occurred amid rising tensions between foreign oil interests, including American companies, and Mexican workers who felt they were being exploited. Schoolchildren learn about it as one of the great assertions of Mexican sovereignty. An outright reversal of that act is unthinkable in Mexican politics. Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist and former ambassador, said any government leader who would try to change the legal status of oil “would be hanged in the Zócalo,” referring to Mexico City’s main square, though he personally would like to see some arrangement with foreign oil companies worked out. As a symbol of nationalism and sovereignty, Pemex is run like a government agency, not an oil company. Its budget is set by the Congress, so it cannot plan exploration far in advance. It is burdened by taxes, debt and pension liabilities that limit its ability to spend money discovering new fields. Mexico’s most important field has long been Cantarell. When production first faltered in the late 1990s, Pemex injected huge amounts of nitrogen gas to raise the pressure and increase production. But experts say the company may have gone overboard, bolstering production so much that the eventual collapse was accelerated. With production in deep gulf waters still a distant dream, the hope of stabilizing Mexico’s production has centered on the Chicontepec field here, on land. But Pemex’s production forecast, of up to 700,000 barrels a day by 2017, has evaporated as hole after hole came up dry. Chicontepec is now yielding only 35,000 barrels a day. The oil is contained in small pockets, and wet, hilly terrain makes it difficult to transport gear. Local corn farmers are slowing the drilling by blockading roads, demanding improvements like parks and pavement. “The oil is down there,” said Sergio Gómez, the Pemex production coordinator in Chicontepec. “The problem is getting it out of the ground.”

Mexico
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
International Trade and World Market
Offshore Exploration and Installations
Politics and Government


Margie Stewart, World War II Pinup Girl, Dies at 92

Abstract: For American troops in World War II , Margie Stewart was the girl they’d left behind. For the Army, she was a wholesome pinup girl who had an important message for the boys. The Army made a dozen posters of her, and ultimately printed 94 million copies. Most pictured a handwritten letter at the poster’s forefront. “Please get there and back,” was the message on some posters. “Be careful what you say or write.” Miss Stewart, the Army’s official poster girl, posed in practical clothes, in contrast to the provocative pinup photos of stars like Betty Grable (“the girl with the million-dollar legs”) or Ann Sheridan (the “Oomph Girl”) that soldiers carried to distant battlefields. Miss Stewart hit a tender spot in homesick soldiers’ hearts. Stars and Stripes, the armed services’ newspaper, told of a pair of soldiers, one from Iowa and one from Kansas, agreeing that she had to be a farm girl — but hotly debating which of the two states she was most likely from. Even soldiers’ wives applauded Miss Stewart’s wholesome look. Eleanor Roosevelt tried to stop the posters on the grounds that this salubrious image might turn warriors’ thoughts homeward, Miss Stewart later wrote. But soldiers were sending barrages of letters to the Army asking who the pretty girl was and asking for more pictures. So nine more posters followed the initial three. These carried letters urging servicemen to buy war bonds so they could save money to buy homes after the war. The same images and messages on the posters were included in inserts sent to soldiers with their paychecks, accounting for many millions of reproductions. Miss Stewart, who had long been Mrs. Margie Stewart Johnson, died at 92 on April 26 in Burbank, Calif., her family announced. She had recently enjoyed a renewed popularity after the Web site reminisce.com printed an essay she wrote about her life. On her own site, margiestewart.com , she enjoyed answering requests for autographed pictures. Margie Stewart was born on Dec. 14, 1919, in Wabash, Ind. She attended Indiana University for a year and was elected freshman princess, a title that included a free trip to Chicago. There she met an advertising executive who was looking for two women to pose in a rowboat on Lake Michigan for an outboard motor ad. That led to a job modeling in a Chicago department store, then at a store in Los Angeles. RKO signed her to a movie contract in 1942, and she appeared in about 20 movies over the next three years, often uncredited. She said she did not become a star because she “wanted to be me.” The ad executive who had put Miss Stewart in a rowboat was a retired Army major who approached the War Department with an idea: to bolster troop morale with a series of pinup posters. That led to photos taken by George Hurrell, who is credited with helping invent Hollywood glamour photography, for at least the first three posters. The second group of “Margie posters” was printed in response to demand from the men Miss Stewart called “my boys.” In 1943, she traveled around the country, with stars like Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Harpo Marx, to sell war bonds. She was one of four young starlets on the tour called Bondbardiers. In 1945 Miss Stewart toured Europe and was one of the first Americans to enter the defeated Germany in civilian clothes. In London, The Daily Telegraph reported that “Uncle Sam’s Poster Girl” caused gridlock at Hyde Park Corner as crowds tried to catch a glimpse of her. In July, in Paris, she married Jerry Jeroske, an Army captain who later changed his last name to Johnson. One edition of Stars and Stripes said one of its editors had fainted in dismay at the news. Another edition carried the headline, “Margie, How Could You?” Mrs. Johnson said that headline haunted her for years, because she feared that her admirers felt abandoned. Mr. Johnson died in 2003. Mrs. Johnson is survived by her son, Stephen, and three grandchildren.

Stewart Margie
World War II (1939-45)
Models (Professional)
Deaths (Obituaries)


Treasury Auctions Set for This Week

Abstract: The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week includes Monday’s regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday. At the close of the New York cash market on Friday, the rate on the outstanding three-month bill was 0.09 percent. The rate on the six-month issue was 0.11 percent, and the rate on the four-week issue was 0.07 percent. The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week: TUESDAY Howard County, Md., $99.1 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. New Mexico, $140.2 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. Oklahoma City, $90 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. WEDNESDAY Florida Department of Transportation, $194.9 million of debt securities. Competitive. Massachusetts, $525 million of general obligation bonds. Competitive. New York City Transportation Finance Authority, $100 million of revenue bonds. Competitive. ONE DAY DURING THE WEEK Arizona School Facilities Board, $315.4 million of taxable school improvement revenue refinancing bonds. Bank of America. Birmingham, Ala., $72.8 million of general obligation convertible capital appreciation bonds. Loop Capital Markets. Bucks County, Pa., $63 million of general obligation bonds. Piper Jaffray. California Public Works Board, $422.1 million of lease revenue bonds. Barclays Capital. Clark County, Nev., $80 million of jet aviation fuel tax revenue refinancing bonds. Citigroup Global Markets. Colorado Regional Transportation District, $97.4 million of taxable sales tax revenue refinancing bonds. Goldman Sachs. Delaware, $204 million of University of Delaware revenue bonds. Morgan Stanley. District of Columbia, $86.1 million of revenue refinancing bonds. Morgan Stanley. Erie County, N.Y., Fiscal Stability Authority, $57.7 million of refinancing debt securities. Roosevelt & Cross. Florida, $270.7 million of toll system revenue refinancing bonds. Bank of America. Florida, $77.2 million of school board certificates of participation. Morgan Stanley. Harris County, Tex., Cultural Education Facilities Finance Corporation, $305.1 million of hospital revenue refinancing bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. Hartford, Conn., $125 million of general obligation bonds. Wells Fargo Securities. King County, Wash., $128 million of sewer revenue refinancing bonds. Citigroup Global Markets. Midland, Tex., Independent School District, $81 million of unlimited tax school building refinancing bonds. Raymond James. Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, $89.1 million of homeownership finance bonds. RBC Capital Markets. New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, $241 million of multifamily housing revenue bonds. Citigroup Global Markets. New Jersey Turnpike Authority, $1.4 billion of turnpike revenue bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, $110 million of debt securities. Citigroup Global Markets. New York City Transitional Finance Authority, $900 million of debt securities. Wells Fargo Securities. New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, $500 million of transportation revenue bonds. Barclays Capital. Ohio, $187 million of library improvement bonds. Stifel, Nicolaus. Ohio, $71.1 million of port authority development revenue bonds. Piper Jaffray. Rhode Island Convention Center Authority, $50 million of revenue refinancing bonds. Bank of America. Sacramento, $219.9 million of water revenue bonds. Goldman Sachs. San Bernardino County, Calif., $100 million of high school district general obligation bonds. RBC Capital Markets. San Bernardino, Calif., $244 million of community college district general obligation refinancing bonds. Piper Jaffray. Southwest Texas Education Authority, $90.4 million of higher education revenue bonds. J. P. Morgan Securities. Texas, $90 million of university debt securities. Bank of America.

Tax Credits Tax Deductions Tax Exemptions


Insects That Can’t Beat Them, So They Scare Them

Abstract: Imagine that you are a one-half-ounce, two-inch-tall insect-eating bird foraging for dinner on the dimly lighted floor of a Costa Rican rain forest . You come face to face with a pair of beady eyes. Study them for a moment. If those eyes belonged to a snake, that moment of study would mean that you would be dinner by now. The face, however, is not a snake’s, but the chrysalis of a skipper butterfly. An uncanny resemblance — but, as it turns out, not a unique disguise. In one area of Costa Rica alone, a team of researchers led by Daniel H. Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs of the University of Pennsylvania and John M. Burns of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History have discovered hundreds of species of moths and butterflies whose caterpillars or chrysalises display false eye and face patterns that mimic those of snakes, lizards or other animals. In a study published this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they propose that this plethora of counterfeit patterns has evolved to exploit birds’ innate instinct to avoid potential predators. The idea is a fresh twist on the well-established phenomenon of mimicry among animals. First described by the British explorer Henry Walter Bates in the 1860s (the subject of my column on Feb. 16), the original insight was that harmless, edible species could gain protection from predators by resembling distasteful, noxious species. Bates assumed that for this mechanism to work, the potential predators had to learn which prey in their range were to be avoided. And the potential prey — say, a large, colorful adult butterfly — must closely resemble the inedible species it mimics. But when it comes to a deadly encounter with another species, there may be no second chances, no opportunity for learning. Hence, natural selection would favor instant recognition, and hard-wired rapid responses, in a close encounter with potential danger. Harmless creatures that evolved some general resemblance to the variety of creature features to be avoided (eyes, scale patterns) would then gain some protection. Dr. Janzen and colleagues have cataloged a delightful assortment of striking false eye patterns on the front and rear ends of caterpillars and the front ends of chrysalises. Their bounty and insights are the product of a dedicated, and somewhat accidental, long-term study of the denizens of the Área de Conservación Guanacaste, or A.C.G. , in northwestern Costa Rica. It began in 1978, when Dr. Janzen broke some ribs falling into a ravine while conducting field studies in the region. The road to the hospital was too rough to navigate, so he wrapped his sore rib cage and confined himself to a chair for a month. Unable to explore the rain forest, he soon went a bit stir-crazy. The field station had only two hours of electricity each night, and just enough power to run a 25-watt light bulb. Fortunately for Dr. Janzen, that was a bumper year for moths, which were attracted to the light. So he passed the time building a moth collection. When he recovered enough to wander back into the rain forest, he discovered that it was also a bumper year for caterpillars. The challenge was to identify which of the many different kinds of caterpillars belonged to which species of moths or butterflies. Now 71, he told me from his field station 32 years later that “my private insanity was to find all of the species before I die.” To accomplish his goal, he had to set up a system of collecting the caterpillars, photographing each of them, raising them into adults, then identifying each of the species, at least half of which had not been described previously. He started by himself, then was joined by his wife, Dr. Hallwachs, an expert on rodents and now caterpillars. The operation continues to this day, 365 days a year, with the help of 33 trained Costa Rican assistants. In an area of about 77 square miles, more than 450,000 caterpillars have been studied. As of a few years ago, the team had identified more than 12,000 species. That number ballooned to 15,000 species when the team discovered, through the use of DNA typing, or “bar coding,” that many of the species were actually made up of multiple distinct species, as many as 11 in one case . The total number of species in just this one region equals that of all of the moths and butterflies species of North America. With caterpillars and chrysalises coming into the station at the rate of more than one hundred a day, Dr. Janzen began to discern a trend. In species belonging to many different groups, he saw caterpillars or chrysalises that bore all sorts of paired eyelike markings of various color schemes, with round or slit pupils. The variety of patterns suggested that the bugs do not have to match exactly the appearance of any particular predator for the ruse to work. Moreover, the distinct behavior of many caterpillars when handled underscored that the whole game was to startle the many species of insect-eating birds that foraged in the dry, cloud and rain forests of the conservation area. Some eye patterns became visible only when the caterpillars were molested and expanded part of their body, and some large specimens wriggled and rattled like snakes. Dr. Janzen and his colleagues estimate that a typical foraging bird might encounter tens to hundreds of false-eyed bugs each day. It is unlikely that a bird encountering such a spectrum of patterns could learn to discern which specific ones were safe and which were not, especially when one mistake would mean its demise. It would be better to leave suspicious items alone and to quickly move on. For two centuries, naturalists have sought to catalog and make sense of the dazzling diversity of life, particularly as found in the tropics. Often, new insights have come from asking very simple questions, like “Why does this small caterpillar look like a snake on one end?” But the answer to such questions requires finding many more creatures and understanding where and how they live. And that requires a special breed of human willing to live far from the comforts of home and eager to look at 450,000 bugs for 32 years.

Insects
Costa Rica
Evolution
Science and Technology


Satoru Iwata, Nintendo Chief Executive, Dies at 55

Abstract: Satoru Iwata, who as chief executive of Nintendo oversaw the introduction of gaming systems such as the Nintendo DS and the Wii, died on Saturday in Kyoto, Japan. He was 55. The cause was a bile duct growth, the company said. A former video game development star, Mr. Iwata was appointed president of Nintendo in May 2002 and became the chief executive of Nintendo of America in June 2013. He was the first chief executive to come from outside the Yamauchi family, which founded the company in 1889 as a manufacturer of playing cards and ran it until Mr. Iwata was appointed. At the start of Mr. Iwata’s tenure, Nintendo, long a leader in home gaming systems, was fending off fierce competition from rivals like Sony and Microsoft. Under his watch, the company surged ahead with the release of the Nintendo DS, a hand-held gaming system; the popular Wii console; and Amiibo, a line of interactive toys. But the company struggled to adapt to a changing video game business and resisted the industry trend of developing games for smartphones and tablets, preferring to stick to a more traditional approach of designing games to be played on its own hardware. It did reverse course in March, but Mr. Iwata said then that the company remained committed to producing its own game platforms. It had planned to share more details about a new system, code-named NX, in 2016. “For us to create unique experiences that other companies cannot, the best possible option for us is to be able to develop hardware that can realize unique software experiences,” Mr. Iwata told Time magazine in March. As a former developer, Mr. Iwata displayed a fluency in the language of gaming and an ease with young developers that was a change from his predecessor, Hiroshi Yamauchi , who led Nintendo for 53 years while professing not to understand video games. Mr. Iwata got his start in video games as a contract programmer for HAL Laboratory, a game developer that works closely with Nintendo. The company, which Mr. Iwata later revealed was named because each letter is one in front of IBM, gave him his first experiences creating games. Over the 1980s, Mr. Iwata worked on a number of the company’s biggest titles. He became company president in 1993, just after he helped put out the first installment of the Kirby franchise, Kirby’s Dream Land. The game, which features a puffy, pink protagonist who gobbles up enemies and spits them out as projectiles, became a hallmark of casual gameplay for the mobile game device well before the era of smartphone games. Similarly, simplicity and ease of use were the driving forces behind the motion sensor technology that made the Wii console so popular. Mr. Iwata continued to head HAL until he moved to Nintendo in 2000. He presided over a number of key titles including the release of Super Smash Brothers, a game that pitted Nintendo characters like Mario and Link from The Legend of Zelda against each other in fights. He also advised on the creation of early Pokémon games for the Game Boy. Known for pushing back against complicated and expensive video games, Mr. Iwata quipped at a 2006 conference that had Tetris been introduced then, it would have required better graphics and a film deal to be feasible. In the same speech , he gave a sort of coda on his views on gaming: “Video games are meant to be just one thing. Fun. Fun for everyone.” A series of interviews about the development of Nintendo products that Mr. Iwata conducted with the company’s employees revealed an easy, amiable camaraderie. The interviews, peppered with jokes and teasing, were published on the Nintendo website under the title “ Iwata Asks .” “Since I myself come from a development background, I think I understand the minds of developers better than most executives,” Mr. Iwata said in one exchange, when asked about his relationship with employees. “I think the fact that I have been centrally involved in the creation of Wii is the biggest factor in explaining why my staff and I understand each other so well.” Mr. Iwata was born on Dec. 6, 1959, in Sapporo, Japan. He majored in computer science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Information on survivors was not immediately available. He was a much-admired figure in the gaming business, and tributes poured in on social media. “There are C.E.O.s who make a difference to the lives of the people,” Min-Liang Tan, chief executive of Razer, a maker of games hardware and peripherals, said on Twitter . “Satoru Iwata was one of the few who did.” In an interview posted to “Iwata Asks,” Mr. Iwata explained that his drive to expand Nintendo’s game offerings and user base was motivated by more than the lure of making money or beating competitors. While those things mattered, he said, he was also driven by a desire to improve “the position of video games in society.” “I believe that if we don’t make moves to get people who don’t play games to understand them, then the position of video games in society will never improve,” Mr. Iwata said. “Society’s image of games will remain largely negative, including that stuff about playing games all the time badly damaging you or rotting your brain or whatever. If that happens, then even people who enjoy games will start to feel a strange guilt when they play them.”

Satoru Iwata
Nintendo
Nintendo DS
Wii
Japan
Obituary
Computer and Video Games


Illinois: Town Pays Respects to Slain Officer

Abstract: Several hundred police officers from around the country attended a funeral Monday for a lieutenant killed last week, and residents of the area turned out by the thousands to watch the hearse go by. Charles Gliniewicz, who was 52 and near retirement from the Fox Lake Police Department, was shot shortly after he radioed in that he was chasing three suspicious men on foot. His funeral procession wound for more than a mile through Fox Lake and the lakeside forests that were the focus of a manhunt for the suspects, who were still at large.

Illinois
Fox Lake
Charles Joseph Gliniewicz
Murders and Homicides
Attacks on Police


Former S.E.C. Lawyer Settles Madoff-Related Claims

Abstract: The family of a former top lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission, David M. Becker, agreed to pay about $556,000 to settle claims over inherited money linked to Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The payment is equal to the entire amount of profit that Mr. Becker and his brothers inherited from a Madoff account held by their mother, who died in 2004, according to a statement Monday by Amanda Remus, a spokeswoman for Irving H. Picard, the trustee liquidating Mr. Madoff’s firm. Mr. Picard, in a November 2010 lawsuit filed in bankruptcy court in New York, originally claimed that the Beckers had received $1.5 million in fictitious profits. Mr. Becker, who left the S.E.C. in 2011 and is now a partner at the Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton law firm, faced criticism last year after Mr. Picard’s lawsuit was made public, suggesting he might have had a personal financial interest in policies he worked on at the S.E.C. related to how Madoff customers should be compensated. William Baker III, Mr. Becker’s lawyer, said in an e-mailed statement that he had made full disclosure of his mother’s account while he was at the S.E.C. and had followed the agency’s ethics procedures. “As Mr. Becker repeatedly said, he was unaware of his mother’s account until long after it was liquidated, and he always expected that he would return any fictitious profits that he unknowingly received,” Mr. Baker said. “Mr. Becker has done everything possible, both at the S.E.C. and in his private affairs, to assist the victims of the Madoff fraud.” The S.E.C.’s inspector general called for the Justice Department to investigate whether Mr. Becker had violated ethics laws. Federal prosecutors declined to open a case.

Securities and Commodities Violations
Picard Irving H
Madoff Bernard L
Becker David M
Ponzi and Pyramid Schemes


Hasbro Revenues Propelled by Two Top-Grossing Movies

Abstract: Hasbro reported its biggest rise in quarterly revenue in nearly five years, handily beating analysts’ estimates. The increase was driven by strong demand for toys based on the movies “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Jurassic World.” Revenue from toys aimed at boys, including action figures based on the movies, the two top-grossing films of 2015, surged 35 percent in the fourth quarter.

Hasbro
Movies
Toy
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Jurassic World
Earnings Reports


Saudis to Join Mideast Talks; Syria Wavers

Abstract: CAIRO, Nov. 23 — Saudi Arabia joined 14 other Arab nations on Friday in an agreement to attend the American-sponsored Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., next week, while Syria — the last key holdout — was inching closer toward agreeing to participate. If Syria’s primary demand is met, that the conference also address the dispute over the Golan Heights, Syrian land that Israel has occupied since 1967, the conference could be the first chance in years to begin a dialogue aimed at a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. But it will get off to a chilly start — the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, who said he would attend, made it clear there would be no handshake with Israeli officials. In practical ways, the peace effort comes at a difficult time: the Palestinians are divided, with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip; Israel’s prime minister is relatively weak; and President Bush has little domestic political capital and is nearing the end of his tenure. But Arab leaders have taken the unusual step of uniting as one bloc — they are generally a politically divided lot — to accept a chance to address the Israeli-Palestinian problem, which they have long said is central to bringing calm to the volatile Middle East, and to helping ensure their own domestic security. The decision to attend, issued by the Arab League , was a diplomatic victory for the United States and Egypt, which had pressed reluctant parties to participate. “The Saudi position was hesitant until today, and if it was not for the Arab consensus today, we would not attend,” Prince Saud said. As the Iraq war continued and the region sank deeper into violence, Egyptian officials pressed the Bush White House to abandon its arms-length approach toward the Palestinian question and to hold talks that would focus on final status issues, like the capital of a Palestinian state. With this conference, the United States has tried to resume its role as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians. Few expect the Annapolis meeting to produce substantive results, but officials argue that the resumption of a discussion signifies progress. There is a saying in the Middle East, that there can not be war without Egypt — but there can not be peace without Syria. The Syrians know well the spoiler role they can play in the region and have used that as leverage — knowing that the conference will not be as credible if the chair for Damascus is empty. Saudi and Syrian attendance was seen as essential. “We will not decide to participate until we receive the agenda and read that the second issue on the agenda is the Syrian-Israeli track, that is, the occupied Syrian Golan Heights,” said Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem. Officials in Cairo said that the Syrians had informed Washington of their demand. Arab League officials said that there were talks taking place that left them optimistic that Syria would be allowed to attend. The distance between the sides appeared small: Syria wanted the item expressly put on the agenda, and the United States was willing to allow discussion of the Golan Heights, without putting it on the agenda, officials here said. Mr. Moallem, in reference to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said, “She promised a positive response and we are waiting to receive the agenda.” Bush administration officials said Friday that Syrian officials were free to bring up any issues they wanted during the conference, but that the United States would not specifically put the Golan Heights on the agenda. “We will not turn off anyone’s microphone,” a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, said the decision to attend had been “unanimous,” but indicated that his organization was still waiting for “some final arrangements” with the United States to ensure Syrian participation. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, hailed the Arab decision to participate. “Staying away would have ensured the meeting’s failure,” he said. “Coming gives the Arabs leverage to say to the Bush administration: ‘Do now what you didn’t do leading up to this.’” Mr. Zogby said that Arab officials would now press the United States to try to wring concessions out of Israel. Israeli officials welcomed the decision by the other Arab countries to attend the meeting on Monday and Tuesday. “Obviously, for the peace process to succeed, both Israelis and Arabs need to take bold steps,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry. “Attending the conference is important, and we would hope this is only a first step in larger and broader Arab involvement in the process.” Annapolis is supposed to start final-status negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, leading to a two-state solution. Israeli officials see high-level Arab attendance at Annapolis as crucial for giving legitimacy to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas — and for holding out the prospect for Israelis that concessions on the Palestinian front could be a catalyst for a wider Middle East peace. During a break from the Cairo meeting, Mr. Abbas told reporters that Annapolis presented a “historic opportunity,” and he gave support to the Syrian position. Israeli officials insist that the Annapolis meeting will focus on the Israeli-Palestinian agenda. But to encourage Saudi and Syrian attendance, they, too, have signaled more readiness in recent days to consider a comprehensive Middle East peace, and specifically, a possible resumption of Israeli-Syrian negotiations down the road. Until now, the Israeli government has said that renewed talks depended on Syria showing its willingness to stop supporting militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and to take itself out of the Iranian orbit. Syrian attendance at Annapolis will be seen in Jerusalem as an indication that Damascus has opted for the moderate camp, with the majority of the Arab League, over that of Iran and Hamas, Mr. Regev said. Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, and much of the security establishment are said to favor a resumption of the Israeli-Syrian track. In an interview in The Jerusalem Post on Friday, Mr. Barak said that Syrian participation at Annapolis would be “good for Israel.” He said, “In principle it is important to keep the door open for the Syrians, so that when the time comes we will be able to negotiate with them.” After meeting with Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, in Sharm el Sheik on Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, also nodded toward the Syrians and Saudis by relating to the Arab peace initiative of 2002 in warmer tones than before. The Arab initiative, which grew out of a Saudi peace plan, was reaffirmed by the Arab League at a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in late March. It offers Israel full relations with the Arab world in return for a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines, the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and an agreed solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. Mr. Olmert said that Israel “attributes great importance” to the Arab peace initiative “as part of efforts to reach a comprehensive peace agreement in the end.” The Islamic group Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June after routing pro-Abbas forces there, called on Arab countries not to normalize relations with Israel. Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, told the Palestinian news agency Ramatan that Annapolis was a “dangerous” event intended to tempt the Palestinians and the Arabs into “making concessions at the expense of Palestinian rights.”


Protesters Are in Agreement as Well: Pact Is Too Weak

Abstract: PARIS — Several thousand climate activists from across Europe and many from farther afield gathered peacefully near the Arc de Triomphe on Saturday to protest the outcome of the COP 21 climate conference about 12 miles away. The demonstration was an official exception to a ban on public gatherings across France after the Paris terrorist attacks in November. Even as the delegates at the official conference center reached a landmark accord and applauded their achievement, the crowds on the street made clear their belief that it would take much more than the measures in the deal to halt global climate change . What Does a Climate Deal Mean for the World? A group of 195 nations reached a landmark climate agreement on Saturday. Here is what it means for the planet, business, politics and other areas. “We don’t like the COP 21,” said Joseph Purugganan, who came from the Philippines to participate in the demonstration with other activists from a coalition called Focus on the Global South. “The message here is that the real solution will come from the people,” he said. “After 20 years of COPs, look at where we are.” He added that slowing the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, the goal set in the agreement, was not enough. In the Philippines, there have been record typhoons, and fishermen in Southeast Asia are being driven from their homes by rising oceans, he said. Inside the Paris Climate Deal Highlights from the final draft text of a climate agreement submitted to the delegates in Paris. Stuart Basden, 33, who came from Toronto, sounded even more disappointed. “We knew that it would be a failure,” he said. “They just decided in which decade we will become extinct.” In contrast to an earlier protest during the conference, a banned one at the Place de la République on Nov. 29 that turned violent and resulted in arrests, the mood at the Arc de Triomphe was cheerful, even festive. Almost everyone carried a red tulip, and many waved flags or carried banners, or had more creative props. A group of Danes dressed as polar bears took off their headgear periodically to get some air and see the events around them, while a group from Peru waved flags, one of which said “Nuclear Power, Non Gracias.” Video John Kerry, the secretary of state, lauded the climate agreement reached by world leaders in Paris on Saturday as "a victory for all of the planet and for future generations." Credit Credit Francois Mori/Associated Press At two locations, the Arc de Triomphe and the Champ de Mars, the climate demonstrators unfolded and carried two 100-meter red ribbons — red to symbolize that the climate situation is an emergency, and to communicate their skepticism toward the agreement. The Arc de Triomphe demonstration was organized by 350.org , a United States-based climate change nonprofit. The one at the Champs de Mars was organized by a coalition of 16 environmental groups, including the French chapters of Friends of the Earth and Attac. Many participants said that the event and even the conference had energized many climate change activists, regardless of its outcome. There was also an unofficial demonstration earlier Saturday in which about 3,000 climate activists in Paris managed to use geo-localization technology to spell out the words “Climate Justice Peace” on a virtual map . “The climate movement is growing, and climate policies now have a huge mainstream support,” said Daniel Smith, 29, who bicycled from London to join the demonstration. Video Global leaders celebrated a landmark accord on climate change on Saturday after nearly 200 nations agreed to the deal. Credit Credit Francois Mori/Associated Press Standing next to his bike, which had a globe strapped to the back, he added, “And now it’s not green anymore, it’s red.” A group of climate activists from the Netherlands had come by bus. One, Willemyn Kadyk, 19, a college student and aspiring environmental lawyer, said that while many might not care much about demonstrations, such events were an important counterpoint to the official conference. “People might think it’s not worth it to come, but if everybody thinks that way, nothing changes,” she said. “Groups will make this change.” Many French activists were there, as well, including Corine Lefort, an elementary school principal who came from Marseille with her husband. They carried a banner that read “Save the Climate.” “This is to put pressure on those officials responsible that things need to change more quickly,” she said. “It’s urgent. This is a real crime against humanity.” She added that on the Mediterranean coast there were already villages where people living close to the water had deserted their homes because the sea had risen. “This is not something for the future,” she said. “The future is already here.”

Climate Change
350.org
Friends of the Earth
Global Warming
UNFCCC
Civil Unrest
Paris France


Giants’ Bradshaw and Jacobs Share a Special Bond

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Brandon Jacobs shrieked. He was standing at his locker at the Giants’ practice center a few days before Halloween when one of his teammates startled him, then momentarily disappeared. The culprit was Ahmad Bradshaw, naturally. Bradshaw, who wore Dracula fangs in the spirit of the day, playfully attempted to bite into Jacobs’s neck. Apparently satisfied by his ability to make Jacobs jump, Bradshaw scuttled away with a grin. Little Brother and Big Brother were at it again. In the N.F.L., teammates are sometimes no more than co-workers, here one season, gone the next. But Bradshaw and Jacobs have a bond that transcends their Giants uniforms. They vacation together. Their children have play dates together. They often eat dinner together. Each refers to the other as a brother from a different mother. “The point of a pin is a very fine point, and I think we both fit on that point,” Jacobs said last week while seated next to Bradshaw at their adjacent lockers. “That’s why we are the way we are. Not a lot of people in the league, or anywhere else, is like that.” They have been a special combination for the Giants, too, helping to re-establish a rushing attack that stalled last season as they both played with injuries. Bradshaw and Jacobs have rushed for 990 yards this season, the second most in the league for a running back tandem behind only Jamaal Charles and Thomas Jones of Kansas City, before the Giants (5-2) faced the Seahawks (4-3) on Sunday in Seattle. On the field, their styles could not be more different. Bradshaw is the Porsche to Jacobs’s plow, the pinball to Jacobs’s bowling ball. But off the field, their similarities have brought them together. And they are always together. “They do everything to each other,” Jerald Ingram, the Giants’ running backs coach, said. “They talk to each other. They giggle with each other. They make fun. They’re tough on each other. Everything.” The Giants drafted Bradshaw in the seventh round in 2007, two years after they selected Jacobs in the fourth round. Their friendship grew in training camps, at meetings and in the locker room. But what fostered their comfort with each other were the similarities of their upbringings. In particular, both lacked a male presence the other had. Bradshaw grew up with a father, but his older brother, Ronell, died of heart failure when Bradshaw was 10. Jacobs has an older brother named Michael James, but grew up without a father. “It’s a trust,” Ingram said. “Ahmad trusts Brandon. It goes beyond that because of their background. It creates a sincere bond. They actually love each other. They don’t just like each other. They love each other.” And they are not too manly to say it. Jacobs, who is 6 feet 4 inches and weighs 264 pounds, and Bradshaw, who ran afoul of the law while in college, share a caring side that belies stereotypes. “He doesn’t hesitate to say, ‘I love you, B. J.,’ ” Jacobs said of Bradshaw. “Being sensitive as a guy, being able to show your side no matter what the situation is or who’s around, to be able to do that is big. I’m that type of person, which is why we are the way we are around each other.” It is not always a touchy-feely friendship, though. Jacobs and Bradshaw also like to have fun. In May, they visited Las Vegas together (though they declined to tell stories from the trip because, of course, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas). In the summers, their children swim together in the Jacobses’ pool, while the Southern-raised running backs cook chitlins (pig intestines) and tripe (cow’s stomach). At training camp, Bradshaw and Jacobs could have chosen their own dorms at the University at Albany, but instead, they roomed together. There, they spent hours talking about the coming season while the video-game savvy Bradshaw taught Jacobs how to play Call of Duty. Around the Giants’ center, Bradshaw and Jacobs are always cutting up around each other, leaving their coaches and teammates shaking their heads in bewilderment. When they let the others in on the joke, they provide comic relief. “When they’re together, it’s all fun,” said running back D. J. Ware, whose locker is next to Bradshaw’s. “I wake up in the morning and come listen to their stories. They come in and talk about the weekends. I look forward to that.” The relationship between Bradshaw and Jacobs would seem to chafe against the perception that they are competing against each other for playing time. Not so, they said. Since training camp, Bradshaw has filled the starting job, displacing Jacobs. Jacobs complained openly about his reduced role in the first few weeks of the season and he was not performing like the downhill runner he once was. Jacobs’s frustration bubbled over when he tossed his helmet into the stands in a loss at Indianapolis on Sept. 19. During that time, Jacobs and Bradshaw said, their friendship was unaffected. In fact, Jacobs called Bradshaw to reassure him that their on-field lives would not spill over. Jacobs said his issue with his decreased playing time was over how it was communicated to him and had nothing to do with Bradshaw. “Football brought us together,” Bradshaw said. “I don’t think football can tear us apart.” Though it might seem incongruous, Jacobs has been Bradshaw’s biggest fan. Jacobs has publicly praised Bradshaw’s ability to make the shifty plays that he cannot, and privately, he has reminded Bradshaw to keep the ball high and tight to avoid fumbling issues. Jacobs, 28, has also tried to keep Bradshaw, 24, focused in the right direction, saying he wanted to see his career take off. “I feel much better about the situation if he goes out there and does his thing like he’s been doing,” Jacobs said of Bradshaw being the starter. “Doing his thing and producing, being what we need him to be. That’s what’s going to make me feel good about the whole thing.” This season, Bradshaw has taken off, rushing for 708 yards in seven games. He ranked fourth in the league in rushing through eight weeks this season. Meanwhile, Jacobs is happier off the field and even meaner on it since the incident in Indianapolis, pounding in at least one touchdown in each of the last four games. Their contrasting styles of play have accounted for their success, allowing the Giants to use each of them in different situations. Bradshaw can make something out of nothing with a lightning-quick cut. Jacobs can make something where there is nothing by driving a pile at the line of scrimmage. For now, Bradshaw and Jacobs are having fun as the Giants’ 1-2 punch. Whether that is the case for the long term seems irrelevant to them. “We have as much for as we can on the field and off the field right now, until someone else spoils it,” Bradshaw said. “We know we’re going to be together for life. We’re always going to be best friends.”

Football
Bradshaw Ahmad
Jacobs Brandon
New York Giants


The Surfboard Doctor to See in the Rockaways

Abstract: Fernando Pires, dusty and tired, was headed for a hammock on the porch of his Hawaiian-style bungalow on Beach 91st Street in the Rockaways, when suddenly there came a cry for help. “Fernando, I need you to fix my board,” shouted a surfer in distress who was carrying a surfboard with a small gouge in the back. It was a refrain familiar to Mr. Pires, 55, who runs the most casual of board repair services. “We have waves coming this weekend,” said the surfer, Pablo Costa, 34, an architect from Williamsburg who readily agreed to the $40 price Mr. Pires quoted him. “I got another four boards ahead of you,” Mr. Pires said as he lay the damaged board atop two bicycles. “Everybody wants their board by the weekend,” said Mr. Pires, a Brazilian immigrant whose accent, after 30 years of living in the Rockaways, is as much south Queens as South America. An avid surfer himself, he lives at the heart of the surfing neighborhood that has solidified around the city’s main break, at Beach 90th Street, and extends to a local Uzbeki restaurant called Uma’s that has a board-docking station on the sidewalk out front. The swarms of novice surfers vying for waves alongside hard-charging veterans can produce some board-damaging collisions, a boon for Mr. Pires, who can be found daily fixing boards on sawhorses in the sand where the surfers come onto the beach. “When I first moved here, the most you would see is maybe 10 guys in the water,” he said. “Now you might have 200 people out there together. But I can’t really complain, because people are bringing up boards left and right.” Mr. Pires drives a Jeep with both a religious cross and a disco ball hanging from the rearview mirror. But his primary local vehicle is an adult-size tricycle with an overhead rack. If it is parked on the boardwalk, the repairman is in, though he may be taking a break to catch some waves or give a surfing lesson. Mr. Pires, who is divorced and has four children who live a block away with their mother, also works as a customer service agent at Kennedy International Airport. The job allows him to take inexpensive surf vacations. He said he grew up surfing in Rio de Janeiro and worked for a board maker there as a teenager before moving to New York City at age 20 to stay with relatives and learn English. His plan was to head to California for the surfing. “It never occurred to me that there would be surfing in New York City, but when someone mentioned Rockaway Beach to me, I took the bus here,” he said. “I had no board and didn’t speak English, so I tried using sign language to ask the lifeguards to borrow their boards.” He moved to the Rockaways, married a local woman and in the 1990s opened the Secret Spot surf shop, which he ran for several years before it closed. His dream now is to open a surfing museum stocked with the dozens of classic boards he has in his basement, collected from all over the world. For now, his bungalow suffices. Its walls are lined with surf photos, and its Tiki-style porch is decorated with shells, plants and wood carvings and a stack of Surfer magazines that date back to 1970. “The only guy who doesn’t see the artistic merit of it is the landlord — he wants all this stuff out of here,” Mr. Pires said. At his boardwalk spot on Tuesday, there were eight boards scattered around. The pounding surf of the previous weekend had left many snapped and gouged. “Every time there’s a swell, it’s good for business,” Mr. Pires said as he reattached the nose of a small board damaged in the shore break. “This belongs to a 13-year-old local girl,” he said, dripping a second layer of thick, clear resin on to strengthen the bond. “I saw her carrying it, all bummed out. So I said I’d fix it for free.” Mr. Pires said his business comes by word of mouth and through his status as a boardwalk fixture. His tools and materials included a resin mixture, a hook-bladed knife, sanding blocks, masking tape and, in the middle of it all, a cup of coffee. White dust flew as he sanded another board in the blazing sun. He wore only his surf shorts, flip-flops and mirrored sunglasses. He said he used little in the way of protective gear. “I’ve been doing it since I was 13 and I haven’t had any problems,” he said, looking up to eye the surf. “So I think I’m O.K.”

Surfing
Doctor
Rockaway Beach Queens
NYC


Morning Agenda: Car Trouble and a Retreat, Sort of, by Mylan

Abstract: It’s been a tough year for Volkswagen’s car dealers. Cheered by the German automaker’s ambition to become a bigger player in America, they had invested millions of dollars into their franchises. As recently as 2014, dealers were paying premiums of $3 million to $4 million to buy franchises in the United States. And then the emissions scandal erupted. Sales plunged. Franchises were worth little more than the land they stood on and the basic inventory of cars. But Volkswagen will try to make amends by paying as much as $1.2 billion to offset the loss in value for 650 dealers in the United States — on top of whatever amount it will have to spend on buying back unsold and unfixable diesels. More Car Problems Uber may not own the cars chauffeuring its customers, but it has a $1.2 billion problem that it can call its own. That’s the amount of money the company lost in the first half of this year. Recruitment, marketing, and its continuing tussles with regulators and established taxi companies have added to spending. Still, its battle with Didi Chuxing in China took a major toll, and not even a fund-raising tear was able to make up for the billions of dollars it poured into subsidizing rides in the hope of gaining market share. That particular fight has come to an end, as Uber sold its China subsidiary to Didi. But Uber still faces plenty of competition elsewhere that could prove costly. Mylan Bows to Political Pressure The public spoke and the pharmaceutical company backed down. Sort of. Mylan has lowered the out-of-pocket costs of its EpiPen allergy treatment to some patients, like the uninsured. But it did not lower the list price. That means that Mylan’s revenue will take less of a hit — and that the cost borne by insurers, the federal government, school districts and others in the health care system won’t change. The company also blamed insurers for placing a greater burden on patients through higher out-of-pocket costs. It said that of the $608 list price for an EpiPen, it gets only $274, while the rest goes to pharmacy benefit managers, insurers, wholesalers and retail pharmacies. Robert Cyran at Breakingviews points out that eliminating direct expenses for customers can make price increases invisible, as most people have insurance. There may be middlemen making the system more complicated along the way, as Mylan argues, but with price increases falling largely on governments and insurers, society is likely to end up paying for the problems in the system. Coming Up Janet L. Yellen will speak at the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and may give some indication as to whether the central bank will raise interest rates in September.


Solid-State Drives Get You to Work Faster

Abstract: For many people, waiting for their computers to boot up is time passed drumming their fingers, making a cup of coffee or watching the grass grow. The delay is because of starting the hard drive, which has to awaken and rev up to retrieve stored data. There is a faster way to get started. Solid-state drives, or S.S.D., which are comprised of microchips and have no moving parts, easily cut the boot time in half. And opening applications happens in a blink, as does retrieving documents, images and movies. The catch (there had to be one) is that solid-state drives cost 10 times as much as hard drives, gigabyte for gigabyte. But the cost is a fifth of what it was three years ago when solid-state drives first became widely available. With prices coming down, more computer users are buying solid-state drives, figuring the increased performance and productivity are worth the extra expense. “It’s one of those things that once you have one, you can never go back,” said Doug Crowthers, 37, a quality manager for a printing company in Lynchburg, Ohio. A computer enthusiast and avid gamer, Mr. Crowthers is on his second solid-state drive, having bought an 80-gigabyte drive for his custom desktop computer in 2009 and then upgrading to a 240GB drive in February. “Replacing a hard drive with a S.S.D. is like going from driving an old VW bug to driving a Ferrari,” he said. Hard drives are stacks of disks coated with magnetic material that rotate on a spindle like an old-fashioned L.P. record. But instead of a needle, there are little drive heads that pivot back and forth across the disks to read and write data. Solid-state drives have no moving parts so there is no waiting for disks to spin or the dither of drive heads to execute commands. Solid-state drives are also quieter than hard drives and don’t consume as much power, which extends battery life. Solid-state drives also generate less heat, which can make computers run cooler. Moreover, solid-state drives aren’t as susceptible to failure after being bumped or jostled because, again, there are no spinning disks nor frenetic read/write heads hovering, perilously, less than a hair’s-width away. Solid-state drives have been around for decades, but the technology to make them practical and affordable didn’t emerge until 2008, when manufacturers like Intel, Toshiba, Samsung, Kingston, Corsair and OCZ began selling them for around $10 a gigabyte. While prices have come down, solid-state drives today are about $2 a gigabyte vs. a mere 20 cents a gigabyte for a hard drive. For instance, a 64GB model from Samsung (model MZ-5PA064) costs about $112. Nevertheless, sales of solid-state drives have been brisk, according to Jeffrey Janukowicz, an analyst with International Data Corporation, a technology market research company in Framingham, Mass. He said revenue increased last year by 150 percent to $1.3 billion compared with 2009. He expects sales to double this year. The market leader, Intel, began making solid-state drives because hard drives were not keeping up with the increasing speeds of the company’s computer processors. While Intel processors had become 175 times faster over the previous decade, hard drives gained only 1.3 times as much speed, said Troy Winslow, a director for product marketing at Intel. “This caused a system bottleneck that S.S.D.’s solved, so users could get more out of their microprocessor investment.” Chris Angelini, editor in chief of tomshardware.com , a Web site that does benchmark testing of computer components, said that some of the first solid-state drives on the market were not reliable, making “weird stuttering issues” that prompted repeated firmware updates and some manufacturer recalls. “But that’s over now,” he said. “It’s a mature enough technology that people don’t really have to worry.” Indeed, Apple this year began offering solid-state drives as an option on all its computers. But they come at a hefty premium. For example, a 256GB solid-state drive adds around $600 to the cost of a MacBook Pro. Solid-state drives are standard in Apple’s MacBook Air and iPad tablet computers, but in those devices the microchips are liberated from the usual rectangular housing and attached directly to the motherboard, which gives Apple’s designers the freedom to streamline the computers’ shapes. Jake Boshernitzan, 29, an Internet entrepreneur in Houston, paid $170 for a 64GB solid-state drive four months ago to replace the sluggish 120GB hard drive in his four-year-old Dell Latitude D380 laptop. For the same price, he could have bought a 1.5-terabyte hard drive. “I was impressed with the responsiveness of the S.S.D. in my wife’s MacBook Air, so I was willing to sacrifice capacity for performance,” he said, particularly when he had a 1.5 terabyte network-attached storage device and he used the cloud storage service, DropBox. “Also, my job is my data, so it gave me peace of mind to have a drive that wasn’t going to bust if I dropped it.” While price is the biggest drawback to solid-state drives, there is also a limit to how many times you can write to one. After a while the transistors in the memory chips wear out and no longer hold their charge, which means the chips can no longer write, or store, data. But the number of times the drive can write is in the tens of billions and thus probably not a concern to most computer users. If it were in a Google data center getting heavy use, it might last only a year, said Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, professor of computer science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who studies computer use patterns. For regular people the other parts of your computer will fail long before the solid-state drive. “Given the typical usage as you might find in the home, you really have very little to worry about,” he said. More of a concern perhaps is the difficulty of encrypting data on a solid-state drive. On a hard drive, if you change a file, you are overwriting the data on that same file. That’s not the case on a solid-state drive, which has to write any changes to a new location on the disk and mark the old location for deletion before it is eventually cleared of the old data. So typical encryption software doesn’t work. You will get an encrypted file in a new location on the disk, but the old unencrypted file is still there awaiting deletion. “The problem is those love letters you thought you’d encrypted might not be,” said Steve Swanson, director of the Nonvolatile Systems Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, which studies the security and reliability of solid-state drives. He advises looking for the drives that have a so-called secure erase feature, which often involves 128-bit encryption. These work by encrypting all data saved on the disk and requiring users to enter a password to activate the key. And if you want to wipe the entire drive, there’s a poison pill command that will destroy the key, rendering everything gibberish. On a hard drive, the sanitization process involves multiple overwrites and takes much longer. “Destroying the key is what you do when the plane is going down or people with pickaxes are at the door,” said Dr. Swanson.


Atheists Sue to Ban Display in 9/11 Museum of Cross-Shaped Beam

Abstract: In the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, some workers and mourners at the World Trade Center site seized upon a cross-shaped steel beam found amid the rubble as a symbol of faith and hope. For the past five years, the 17-foot-tall cross was displayed outside a nearby Catholic church. On Saturday it was moved again, to the site of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, where it is to be in the permanent collection. But the move quickly provoked a lawsuit from American Atheists, a nonprofit group based in New Jersey . It argued that because the cross is a religious symbol of Christianity and the museum is partly government financed and is on government property, the cross’s inclusion in the museum violates the United States Constitution and state civil rights law. The lawsuit, in turn, provoked the ire of the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative public interest law firm, as well as others. Now, the dispute over the “World Trade Center cross” is becoming the latest in a string of heated conflicts over how to memorialize the Sept. 11 attacks. It comes less than two months before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and in the wake of a feverish debate over the construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque within blocks of the trade center site. Marc D. Stern, who is the associate general counsel of the American Jewish Committee and has long studied church-state issues, said the lawsuit presented “an extra-difficult case.” “It’s a significant part of the story of the reaction to the attack, and that is a secular piece of history,” he said. “It’s also very clear from the repeated blessing of the cross, and the way believers speak about the cross, that it has intense present religious meaning to many people. And both of those narratives about this cross are correct.” Ira C. Lupu, a professor at the George Washington University Law School and an authority on faith and the law, described the lawsuit as “plausible.” The outcome, he said, could depend on how the beam was displayed when the museum opened. “If the cross is presented in a way that ties it to the history of its discovery and the religious perception of it by some firefighters or neighbors, then the museum would be framing it as a historical artifact, rather than as a symbol deserving religious reverence,” Professor Lupu said. “I think if it were framed in that way, it could be effectively defended on the merits.” The atheists ’ lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan , lists multiple defendants, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey , the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg . “The challenged cross constitutes an unlawful attempt to promote a specific religion on governmental land,” the lawsuit charged. David Silverman , the president of American Atheists, said the suit’s goal was either the removal of the cross or what he called “equal representation.” “They can allow every religious position to put in a symbol of equal size and stature, or they can take it all out, but they don’t get to pick and choose,” Mr. Silverman said. And if atheists could put a symbol in the museum, what would it be? Perhaps an atom, Mr. Silverman suggested, “because we’re all made out of atoms,” or maybe a depiction of a firefighter carrying a victim. “It would be about helping,” he said. “It would not be derogatory against any religion or anybody.” The Port Authority, which owns the land where the museum is being built, declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department said the city had not yet been notified of the suit. Joseph C. Daniels, president and chief executive of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, said that the cross was clearly of historical significance and that the lawsuit was “without merit.” “We have a responsibility at the museum to use the authentic artifacts that really came from the site itself to tell the story of not only what happened on 9/11, but the nine-month recovery period,” he said, adding that the cross was an artifact with “very true meaning.” “It provided comfort to hundreds and hundreds of people who were working in some of the most hellish conditions imaginable,” he said. The Rev. Brian J. Jordan , a Franciscan priest who began holding Mass by the cross in September 2001, described the lawsuit as “the bizarre ramblings of angry minds.” “One person might pray in front of it; another person would just ignore it; another person might say, ‘What’s this all about?’ ” he said. The American Center for Law and Justice said it planned to file a brief in opposition to the atheist group’s lawsuit. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the group, said the suit was “bordering on the absurd.” He pointed to parts of the lawsuit naming four individual atheists, who are described as having suffered “ dyspepsia , symptoms of depression, headaches, anxiety, and mental pain and anguish from the knowledge that they are made to feel officially excluded from the ranks of citizens who were directly injured by the 9/11 attack.” “They want their day in court,” Mr. Sekulow said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a long day.”

World Trade Center
Lawsuit
American Atheists
American Center for Law and Justice
Crosses and Crucifixes
9/11,Sept 11


Jail in Downtown Brooklyn to Reopen, but Not Expand

Abstract: Despite neighborhood unease, the city is moving forward with plans to fully reopen a jail in downtown Brooklyn, but has dropped plans to double its size, the city’s corrections commissioner said Wednesday. The move is part of a reconfiguration of the city’s jail system, which also includes the demolition of rundown buildings at Rikers Island , the construction of a new but smaller building there and the reopening of a jail near the courthouse in Kew Gardens, Queens. With the changes, expected to be completed by 2017, the Department of Correction should be able to house 16,500 inmates, Commissioner Dora B. Schriro said. Although that would be a decrease from the current 19,400 beds, Ms. Schriro said it would still be enough. The average daily inmate populations have steadily fallen, from a high of about 21,400 in 1992 to fewer than 14,000 in recent years. A jail barge in the Bronx that holds 870 inmates will be moved to Rikers Island as part of the project, Ms. Schriro said. The plan is expected to cost $660 million, or about $400 million less than a plan proposed years ago that called for an expansion of the Brooklyn jail , at Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street, and the construction of a new jail in Hunts Point, the Bronx, Ms. Schriro said. The Brooklyn House of Detention, which has 759 beds, has been closed since 2003, and the Queens jail, which has 467 beds, since 2002. They have been used in a limited capacity as office space for the department and as temporary holding cells for defendants awaiting appearances in nearby courthouses, Ms. Schriro said. Brooklyn community leaders said Wednesday that they were pleased that the city had decided against expansion, but hoped that the jail would be better run than it was. In the past, residents have been angered by congestion from police cars parked on the sidewalk and buses constantly shuttling prisoners to and from the building. Some parents expressed concern that their children would have to walk past an occupied jail on their way to school, community leaders said. “It’s nobody’s favorite neighbor,” said Judy Stanton, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association. “People who occupy apartments and houses nearby don’t enjoy looking down from their windows at prisoners in shackles and police cars and buses with wire.” The Brooklyn and Queens jails were closed as the inmate population, along with the city’s crime rate, continued to fall, but the city has since changed its mind. With the deterioration of some buildings at Rikers, where most prisoners who are awaiting trials or serving relatively short sentences are housed, it makes sense to use buildings that already exist and can easily be reopened, Ms. Schriro said. The city had planned to go even further, with a vast renovation project that would have nearly doubled the capacity of the Brooklyn jail, and added stores as a way to soften the blow to the surrounding neighborhood, known for its well-tended brownstones and vibrant night life on Smith Street. But a judge ruled last year that the city would have to undergo a lengthy public review process if it wanted to expand the building. The current plan, which would not entail any expansion, will be set in motion immediately, with repairs being made to prepare the Brooklyn and Queens buildings to house overnight inmates again, Ms. Schriro said.

Prisons and Prisoners
Buildings (Structures)
Rikers Island Prison Complex
Schriro Dora B
Downtown Brooklyn (NYC)
Kew Gardens (NYC)
Brooklyn (NYC)
Queens (NYC)


House Approves Stopgap Spending Bill

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday gave quick approval to a stopgap spending bill that will finance the government for the first four days of October, until lawmakers can return and vote on a more ambitious seven-week spending bill. The stopgap bill, passed Monday by the Senate, goes now to President Obama , who is expected to sign it. The House action came in a brief session attended by just a few lawmakers. Both houses of Congress are in recess, holding only pro forma sessions like the one on Thursday. A partisan fight over the stopgap spending bill had raised the possibility that the government might have to shut down many of its operations starting on Saturday, the first day of the new fiscal year. The fight, like so many on Capitol Hill this year, involved a dispute over money, as Republicans and Democrats disagreed over how to pay for assistance to victims of natural disasters like hurricanes , floods, tornadoes and wildfires. The dispute was not resolved but simply deferred as the Federal Emergency Management Agency discovered that it had enough money to continue providing disaster aid through the end of the current fiscal year on Friday. Administration officials had previously said that the agency’s disaster relief fund might be depleted early this week. The measure approved Thursday will be the 157th stopgap spending bill enacted since 1977, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Such bills have become a regular feature of government as Congress has had difficulty completing the regular annual appropriations bills in a timely way. From 1978 to 2011, Congress has enacted an average of more than four stopgap spending bills per fiscal year, according to the research service. In only three years were all the regular appropriations bills adopted on time. Congress resorted to temporary measures, also known as continuing resolutions, in the other years. The latest dispute revolved around the question of how much, if any, of the cost of disaster assistance should be offset by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget . Many House Republicans said such cuts were needed to keep federal spending under control. They voted for cuts in Energy Department programs that guaranteed loans for production of clean cars and the use of solar energy technology. Democrats argued that disaster aid should not be held up while Congress hunted for ways to pay for it. And they said the loan guarantee programs were creating thousands of jobs. Representative Robert B. Aderholt, Republican of Alabama , said last week that Congress needed to “scrutinize FEMA’s preliminary damage estimates” and could “no longer afford to simply throw money at calamities and then ask the hard questions later.” Senator Mary L. Landrieu , Democrat of Louisiana , said this was a dangerous doctrine. Americans, she said, should not have to “scramble to find offsets while the water is rising and the wind is blowing.” “If it is a manufacturing program today,” Ms. Landrieu said, “maybe next time we have a disaster, we will have to offer up education programs. And the next time we have a disaster, we will have to offer up a fourth of our transportation budget. And the next time we have a disaster, we will have to offer up aid to Israel . When does the offering up stop?” The House approved the four-day spending bill without objection or debate in a session that lasted six minutes on Thursday. “Once you get to yes, things can move quickly,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland , the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “But it took too long to get to yes.” Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland, who presided over the session on Thursday, said that the next stopgap spending bill, which runs to Nov. 18, “will be more contentious.” Mr. Harris said some Republicans would probably vote against that bill because they wanted deeper cuts in spending for many programs, including the one that guaranteed a loan for Solyndra , the solar equipment manufacturer that filed recently for bankruptcy protection.


Hack of Democrats’ Accounts Was Wider Than Believed, Officials Say

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached the private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups, officials with knowledge of the case said Wednesday. The widening scope of the attack has prompted the F.B.I. to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts. The main targets appear to have been the personal email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials and party operatives, along with a number of party organizations. Officials have acknowledged that the Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, and to the Democratic National Committee, including a D.N.C. voter analytics program used by Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. But the hack now appears to have extended well beyond those groups, and organizations like the Democratic Governors’ Association may also have been affected, according to Democrats involved in the investigation. However, in a statement Thursday, the governors association said it “was informed that our analytics data was not compromised as part of the D.N.C. breach that affected the Clinton campaign.” The group added that “we have no reason to believe that any D.G.A. emails were compromised by the D.N.C. breach.” Democrats say they are bracing for the possibility that another batch of damaging or embarrassing internal material could become public before the November presidential election. The attack has already proved politically damaging. On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as D.N.C. chairwoman after WikiLeaks released a trove of hacked internal emails showing party officials eager for Mrs. Clinton to win the nomination over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. American intelligence agencies have said they have “high confidence” that the attack was the work of Russian intelligence agencies. It has injected a heavy dose of international intrigue into an already chaotic presidential campaign as Democrats have alleged that the Russians are trying to help tilt the election toward the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump stunned Democrats and Republicans when he said last month that he hoped Russian intelligence services had successfully hacked Mrs. Clinton’s email, and encouraged them to publish whatever they may have stolen, although he said later that he was being sarcastic. Intelligence and law enforcement officials, however, are taking the issue seriously. F.B.I. officials briefed staff members of House and Senate Intelligence Committees last week on the investigation into the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee. Briefings for other congressional committees are expected in the coming days. Video Donald J. Trump encouraged Russia at a news conference to find Hillary Clinton’s missing correspondence. Credit Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Much of the briefing to the committee staff focused on the fact that American intelligence agencies have virtually no doubt that the Russian government was behind the theft, according to one staff member, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss elements of the confidential briefing. The extension of the hack’s scope beyond the D.N.C. and the House Democratic committee added a troubling new element to the case, the staff member said. American authorities remain uncertain whether the electronic break-in to the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage or as part of an effort to manipulate the presidential election. Russian motives are still an open question, said a federal law enforcement official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. There is no evidence so far that the theft penetrated the emails of lawmakers or staff members who serve on the Intelligence Committees, two staff members said. The F.B.I. says it has no direct evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was hacked by the Russians or anyone else. But in June, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that intruders had tried, and that any successful intruders were probably far too skilled to leave evidence of their intrusion behind. Law enforcement officials said he had the Russians in mind. Mrs. Clinton’s aides were concerned about the possibility of an outside breach after a hacker calling himself “Guccifer” got into the email account in 2013 of Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime confidante of Mrs. Clinton’s who often emailed her on her private server, according to new documents released Wednesday. Cheryl D. Mills, a lawyer and adviser for Mrs. Clinton, said she discussed the 2013 hack with the technician who ran Mrs. Clinton’s private server and considered “whether this event might affect Secretary Clinton’s email,” according to a written account Ms. Mills provided to Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that is suing the State Department. So far, it does not appear that the Russian hackers sought or gained access to any computer systems used by Mr. Trump, who is known to avoid email, officials said. Since news of the D.N.C. hack broke in June, a number of Democratic organizations have been scrubbing their files to determine what internal information might have been compromised. They have also been shoring up their cybersecurity defenses to guard against another attack. An official with the D.N.C., speaking on condition of anonymity, said the committee took the threat very seriously, but would not comment on specific security steps taken. WikiLeaks, the group that put out the D.N.C. emails publicly last month, interjected itself into the hacking case again this week when it offered a $20,000 reward for information on the shooting death last month of a former D.N.C. staff member, Seth Rich, outside his Washington home. His killing fueled speculation on the internet that he was somehow tied to the hacked emails, but the police have not given any credence to that speculation. The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has made it clear that he would like to hurt Mrs. Clinton’s bid for the White House, opposing her candidacy on policy and personal grounds. He has hinted that he has more material about the presidential campaign that he could release.


Federal Prosecutors Looking Closely at Christie Aides, Court Papers Show

Abstract: Court papers filed by a lawyer for Gov. Chris Christie’s former campaign manager indicate that federal prosecutors are moving aggressively to investigate the role of the governor’s aides in the George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal. An agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation telephoned the campaign manager, Bill Stepien, in January, about a week after a cache of electronic messages were released showing that the governor’s allies planned to close access lanes to the bridge as a political act against the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., who had declined to endorse the governor for re-election despite assiduous courting from the campaign. Two federal prosecutors later telephoned his lawyer, Kevin Marino, who declined their request to interview Mr. Stepien. In mid-February, according to papers from Mr. Marino, the agent and a criminal investigator from the United States Department of Justice visited Mr. Stepien’s home in central New Jersey, questioning his landlord “about his conduct and character — was he married, was he a rowdy tenant, did he pay his rent on time.” The United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, acknowledged in early February that the office was looking into the lane closings, on the day Mr. Christie cut ties with Mr. Stepien and fired an aide who had sent an email calling for “some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” But his office has been silent about the investigation, leading to speculation that federal prosecutors are focusing more on later allegations from the mayor of Hoboken, Dawn Zimmer, who said that Christie officials threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy relief money if she did not approve a real estate development the governor wanted endorsed. The papers filed by Mr. Stepien’s lawyer suggest an active investigation into the lane closings — as did the announcement last week by a lawyer for Mayor Mark Sokolich of Fort Lee that the mayor had been interviewed by federal prosecutors. Rebekah Carmichael, a spokeswoman for Mr. Fishman, said Monday, “We have acknowledged generally that we are looking into this, but can’t comment on the specifics of our inquiry.” Mr. Stepien, who managed Mr. Christie’s two campaigns for governor and had been his pick to lead the New Jersey Republican Party, is seeking to quash a subpoena from a legislative committee investigating the lane closings, which asked him to turn over calendars and electronic devices that might show communications regarding the closings. Bridget Anne Kelly, Mr. Christie’s former deputy chief of staff who sent the email calling for traffic problems, is also fighting a similar subpoena, and her case and Mr. Stepien’s will be heard together in a Trenton courtroom next Tuesday. Their lawyers have argued that the subpoenas would force their clients to testify against themselves, because they require them to accept the premise that they have emails or documents in their possession that relate to the lane closings. “Any response by Mr. Stepien will have a tendency to ensnare him in the wide net the committee has cast,” Mr. Marino wrote in papers filed Monday. Mr. Stepien was included on emails discussing the mayor’s protests about the lane closings and news stories regarding them. In his filing, Mr. Marino said those mentions “hardly justify” the subpoena seeking details of his daily activities for the last 18 months. Lawyers for the legislative committee have argued that Ms. Kelly and Mr. Stepien cannot invoke their constitutional right against self-incrimination because they are not at risk of incrimination. Mr. Marino disputed that notion in a 67-page brief: “Mr. Stepien is undeniably a subject, if not a target, of both inquiries.”

Chris Christie
George Washington Bridge
Bill Stepien
New Jersey
Dawn Zimmer
FBI


National Marine Fisheries Service Proposes Protections for Corals

Abstract: The National Marine Fisheries Service on Friday proposed listing 66 coral species in the Pacific and Caribbean Oceans as endangered or threatened. Corals provide habitats that support fisheries, generate jobs through recreation and tourism, and protect coastlines from erosion. Research indicates that climate change and human activities are putting corals at risk, said Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Listing the species would not prohibit fishing or diving near corals, but it could outlaw harming, wounding, killing or collecting them. The fisheries service will be seeking public feedback on the proposed protections over the next 90 days.

National Marine Fisheries Service
Coral
Endangered and Extinct Species


Kuroda Gives Yankees a Pair of Aces

Abstract: C. C. Sabathia’s command performance Friday night lent assurance to the notion that he was still the Yankees’ ace and could be depended on to pitch well the rest of the season. But Sunday night’s starting pitcher, Hiroki Kuroda, has been every bit as good, if not better, since the Yankees acquired him before the start of last season. Kuroda goes into Sunday’s game against the Red Sox with a 6-3 record and a 2.39 earned run average. Since joining the team, Kuroda is 22-14 with a 3.10 E.R.A. in 44 starts. During the same period, Sabathia is 20-10 with a 3.47 E.R.A. in 40 starts. Kuroda has never been seen as an ace while in the United States. But every time he take the mound, his competitive nature, guile and talent are plain to see. “The two years that we’ve had him, he’s been very consistent, and when he pitches you are always going to have a chance to win,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “You look at his last start, it was him and Harvey, and he pitched great.” Against the Mets and Matt Harvey last week, Kuroda allowed no runs in seven innings and left with a 1-0 lead. But the Mets won the game in the ninth when Mariano Rivera had his first blown save of the season. Kuroda, 38, is one of the few pitchers to improve after moving to the American League. He was 41-46 with a 3.45 E.R.A. in four years with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He is 2-2 with a 3.74 E.R.A. in his career against the Red Sox. WHO MUST LEAVE? With Andy Pettitte due to come off the disabled list to pitch Monday, the Yankees will have to make a difficult decision regarding their roster. Pettitte’s return will very likely be at the expense of a position player, since the Yankees have 12 pitchers and usually prefer to go with 11. But there is no obvious choice for demotion. If they send outfielder Brennan Boesch to the minors, they will have only three outfielders. Another option could be third baseman David Adams. But the Yankees would like to find a way to keep him on the roster because they value his bat from the right side. Lyle Overbay is a left-handed first baseman who just lost his starting job because of the return of Mark Teixeira. But if the Yankees take him off the roster, they will have to release him and will almost certainly lose him to another team. Overbay plays only first base, while Kevin Youkilis can play first or third. Still, Overbay provides insurance if Teixeira reinjures his wrist. Girardi has given few hints other than to say it would be almost unthinkable not to have two shortstops, suggesting that Jayson Nix and Reid Brignac are safe. “Let me explain this to you real simple,” Girardi said. “I would never tell you the move we’re going to make before we do it just because, A, there’s feelings in that clubhouse, and B, you don’t want a guy ever to think that he’s going to be the guy that’s going down and is just kind of a lame duck. “So I would never give you any idea of what we’re going to do, because my job is to get the most out of the guys in the room, and they are all very important to us. And the other thing is, something could happen before then. “It’s Saturday and we haven’t even played yet. So to me, giving a move before you’re going to make it doesn’t make any sense.” When Teixeira and Youkilis returned from the disabled list Friday, Ivan Nova and Vidal Nuno were optioned to Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. A FAN FOR A CENTURY The Yankees had a special visitor during batting practice Saturday. Bernando LaPallo, who said he would be 112 years old on Aug. 12, recalled watching the Yankees play at Hilltop Park in Upper Manhattan, the Yankees’ first stadium in the early 20th century. The Yankees, originally known as the Highlanders, played there from 1903 until 1912, and the next year they moved into the Polo Grounds, according to the team’s media guide. Asked what he remembered about Hilltop Park, LaPallo looked around at their current home and said, “It was nothing like this.” LaPallo, who walked on the field with a cane before the game, spoke to Derek Jeter. LaPallo said he met Babe Ruth when Ruth was pitching for the Red Sox.

Yankees
Hiroki Kuroda
Baseball
C C Sabathia