Appeals Court Rules Against Defense of Marriage Act

Abstract: A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that gay Americans are a class of people who deserve the same kinds of constitutional protections as many other victims of discrimination. The 2-to-1 ruling, by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, came as the panel struck down the federal law prohibiting federal recognition of same-sex marriage . It is the first time that a federal appeals court has applied this level of constitutional protection — known as heightened scrutiny — to those unions. The case is now considered by some legal scholars to be the leading candidate for a Supreme Court review of the same-sex marriage issue. Thursday’s decision was the second by a federal appeals court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. Now the case, Windsor v. United States , could be considered by the Supreme Court, or the court could choose other cases in its pipeline concerning same-sex marriage. Those include an earlier decision on the act by the First Circuit in Boston and one from the Ninth Circuit overturning California’s ban on same-sex marriage. It could also decide to hear all of them. “It’s an incredible moment in the struggle for gay rights in this country,” said James D. Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s project dealing with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. The new case was brought on behalf of Edith Windsor of New York City, who married her longtime partner, Thea Clara Spyer, in 2007 in Canada. When Ms. Spyer died in 2009, Ms. Windsor inherited her property. Because the Internal Revenue Service was not allowed, under the Defense of Marriage Act, to consider her a surviving spouse, she faced a tax bill of $363,053 that she would not have had to pay if the marriage had been recognized. Because the Supreme Court now has disagreement among circuits on a major issue of law involving the Defense of Marriage act, “this makes it more likely” that the Supreme Court will take up the cases, said Douglas NeJaime, an associate professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He said the most important justice in consideration of marriage cases was likely to be Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has sided with the liberal majority on such cases as Lawrence v. Texas, in which he wrote the opinion that struck down state sodomy laws. As Justice Kennedy has proved mindful of federalism issues, Professor NeJaime said, he might be reluctant to take a case in which federal courts have struck down a state law like Proposition 8 , in California. The Defense of Marriage Act cases, by contrast, struck down a federal law, and any decision by the Supreme Court would have an effect only in states that allow same-sex marriage. “This is the kind of case that would appeal to Justice Kennedy for the court’s first intervention on same-sex marriage,” he predicted. It could also be a likelier case for the court to take instead of the First Circuit case because it could be heard by the full court, Professor NeJaime said. Justice Elena Kagan might recuse herself from hearing the First Circuit case because of her former role as solicitor general, leaving the possibility that the other justices could find themselves in a 4-4 tie. Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, and in 2010 a federal judge in Massachusetts struck down the law as unconstitutional, declaring that restrictions on same-sex marriage had no rational basis and failed even the most lenient test for constitutional scrutiny. That decision was upheld in May 2012 by the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which also declared the act unconstitutional. The Obama administration initially defended the marriage act under the Department of Justice’s traditional role of defending acts of Congress as presumptively constitutional. In February 2011, however, the Justice Department declined to defend the act in court, though the government continued to enforce the law. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, a House panel, took on the case under the leadership of Paul Clement, a former solicitor general in the administration of President George W. Bush. Mr. Clement did not respond to requests for comment. The majority opinion on Thursday was written by Judge Dennis Jacobs, the chief judge of the circuit; he was appointed by the first President Bush. The decision was joined by Christopher F. Droney, who was appointed by President Obama. Judge Chester J. Straub, appointed by President Bill Clinton, filed a partial dissent in which he argued that the issue of same-sex marriage “is not for the courts to decide, but rather an issue for the American people and their elected representatives to settle through the democratic process.” The court in the Windsor case parted ways with previous courts by elevating the standard of review for laws restricting same-sex marriage to what is known as “heightened scrutiny,” and which is based in large part on whether the people subject to the law have been discriminated against. “It is easy to conclude that homosexuals have suffered a history of discrimination,” the court wrote. Thus they are part of what the law refers to as a “quasi-suspect” class that deserves any law restricting its rights to be subjected to such “heightened scrutiny.” Because the law could not pass that test, Judge Jacobs wrote, it is unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Ultimately, Judge Jacobs wrote, the court’s legal analysis “sidesteps the fair point that same-sex marriage is unknown to history and tradition,” but those are questions concerning “holy matrimony,” not the civil status recognized under the law. “A state may enforce and dissolve a couple’s marriage, but it cannot sanctify or bless it,” he wrote. “For that, the pair must go next door.” Ms. Windsor, speaking on Thursday afternoon at a news conference, proclaimed herself “thrilled” by the decision. Ms. Windsor, who is 83, said that she found it “so offensive that this woman that I lived with and adored, and had loved me, that they treated her as if she was a stranger in my life.” Ms. Spyer, she said, is “here with me in spirit and would have been so proud to see how far we’ve come.”

Same-Sex Marriage Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships


Elephants Give a Helping Trunk

Abstract: Elephants are known to be highly social and intelligent. Now there is evidence that they engage in something that looks very much like a group hug when a fellow elephant is in distress. Joshua Plotnik, who leads a conservation and education group called Think Elephants, and teaches conservation at Mahidol University in Thailand, studied elephants at a park in Chiang Rai Province in Thailand, to look for consolation behavior. Image Credit Elise Gilchrist/Think Elephants International Inc. As defined by Frans de Waal, Dr. Plotnik’s Ph.D. adviser at Emory University, consolation behavior involves bystanders responding in a reassuring way to an animal that is in emotional distress because of a conflict with another member of the group. “We’re pretty confident it’s relatively rare” in animals, Dr. Plotnik said in an interview. He said there was good evidence for the behavior in apes, wolves and some birds. And he said there had been anecdotal reports of such behavior in dolphins and elephants. Elephants clearly have strong emotional connections to other elephants and are highly intelligent, so it made sense to think that they might console one another. To find out, Dr. Plotnik observed 26 elephants in six groups at a managed park. When one elephant was disturbed, Dr. Plotnik said, other elephants — bystanders — gathered around. They made chirping sounds and touched the distressed elephant, trunk to mouth or trunk to genitals, which are reassuring gestures, for elephants. Dr. Plotnik said that since he couldn’t always observe the original source of the distress, he couldn’t say that the behavior met the narrow definition of consolation, as it was not clear whether it followed conflict. The elephants might have been scared by a person, dog, or, in some cases, a noise that humans couldn’t hear. But, he said, in every other way the elephant behavior showed that they were acting to reassure elephants that were upset. He and Dr. de Waal reported the findings in an article last week in PeerJ , an online scientific journal.

Elephant
PeerJ
Science and Technology
Empathy


Mets’ Sept. 11 Caps Rejected for Sake of Uniformity

Abstract: Major League Baseball told the Mets not to wear caps honoring the first responders of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks during their game Sunday night because it is trying to streamline the way that various causes and tragedies are commemorated. The stance, on the attacks’ 10th anniversary, caused consternation among Mets players who wanted to wear caps with the New York Fire Department’s logo, as the team had done on several occasions during the past decade. But in the last two years or so, Major League Baseball has received a significant increase in requests from players and teams to wear commemorative hats. To maintain a sense of consistency, it has rejected many of them, including one this summer from the Washington Nationals, who wanted to pay tribute to Navy Seals who were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. “When you’re dealing with 30 teams, it’s tough to pick and choose to do certain things,” said Joe Torre, executive vice president for baseball operations at M.L.B. “If the Mets wore them, people would say, ‘Why didn’t the Yankees wear them, too?’ ” Sept. 11, he said, is “a date we need to remember for sure.” “But I’d like to do something in the future in a uniform way,” he added. Instead of letting the Mets and other teams wear nonteam caps, the league organized a slate of tributes under a banner that read, “We Shall Not Forget .” The league’s decision to prevent the caps from being worn during the game has drawn criticism from players who wanted to continue wearing them. R. A. Dickey said the Mets were conspiring to wear the caps during the game, but team officials confiscated them in the fourth inning. “For all those upset that we didn’t wear the hats, I understand your anger,” Dickey wrote on his Twitter account . “However, they physically took them from us after the ceremony.” Like Dickey, Josh Thole also wanted to wear the caps on the field during the game, but reluctantly followed the league’s directions, which were relayed to the players by Manager Terry Collins. “We wanted to and it was the right thing to do,” Thole said. “Unfortunately, we were pretty much reprimanded, I guess, not to do it and we had to follow the rules.” On Monday, Thole said he would try to get his teammates permission to wear the hats in future years. Thole said he had contacted the union to discuss marketing and licensing possibilities. Teams wear red, white and blue hats on July 4, and they wear multiple uniform designs, including historical throwbacks, on various occasions. The Mets have also worn jerseys saying Los Mets on the front during Hispanic Heritage Night at Citi Field. The Mets have also worn caps of first responders with little trouble in the past. On Sept. 21, 2001, the league told the Mets not to wear nonteam caps during the first game in New York after the terrorist attacks 10 days before. Manager Bobby Valentine handed out Fire Department, Police Department and other hats to the players anyway. In 2002, Al Leiter wore six different first responder caps on Sept. 11 when the Mets played in Atlanta, and Valentine wore a police canine unit hat. In 2005 and 2007, the Mets wore the caps of seven New York service agencies that had members killed in the attacks on Sept. 11. The Mets asked for permission to wear the caps again this year, but their request was turned down in favor of the leaguewide tribute. Torre said he spoke with the Mets several times during the past few weeks to clarify the league’s policy, and there was no disagreement. “Unfortunately, the cap issue has become a distraction from what really is important,” said Dave Howard, the Mets’ executive vice president for business operations. “We’d prefer the sole focus be on the people we honored last night before and during the game.” Valentine, an ESPN analyst for Sunday’s Mets game, said he understood the reason for the M.L.B. policy. “The question is, where do you draw the line?” he said in an interview, adding, “In 2001, things were a lot different; things were a lot less regulated and a lot less organized.”

Major League Baseball
Baseball
September 11 (2001)
New York Mets


For the Newark Mayor: Exercise, Church, Twitter and Then TiVo

Abstract: There are no days off for Cory A. Booker , the ambitious and peripatetic mayor of Newark, who stars in the Sundance Channel’s documentary series “Brick City,” starting Monday. But Sundays generally mean no meetings unless he calls them, and often include some down time for a movie date, like one he recently had with Gayle King, a mutual friend of his and Oprah Winfrey’s (he could not recall what they saw). Sundays also mean more time to work out, which along with “eating like a human being” (egg whites, light yogurt) has helped Mr. Booker, 40, lose about 50 pounds over the past year. BODY CLOCK My problem with Sundays, frankly, is that even though I may have more time to sleep, my body still wakes up around 6 o’clock. If I wake up and I’m lying in my bed, getting mad at myself for not being able to sleep even though I’m tired, I will then get out of bed and work out. It will probably involve jogging around the neighborhoods, riding my stationary bike and lifting weights. IN DEMAND Inevitably, there are events that I’m invited to. There are community events — the Puerto Rican parade, the Dominican parade, the Brazilian festival. There are block parties, there are cultural events, nonprofits have events. There’s church services that I’ll go to, between one and three, sometimes, depending on what’s happening. I have my church that, frankly, my pastor probably wishes I came to more, but I try to visit churches as much as I can. CHURCH OF ONE I will sit, often in a black chair in my bedroom if it’s not full of clothing, and I will close my eyes, and sort of focus on my breathing for a while, clear my thoughts. Then sometimes I’ll sort of have a conversation with God. Sometimes I’ll recite a prayer that my mom taught me when I was young: the Lord’s Prayer. EVER CONNECTED I Twitter a lot. I tweet a lot, I’m doing a lot more tweeting. I do it every day. Never, ever, ever would I tweet in church, check my BlackBerry, text message, nothing. My Sunday tweets often are of the religious ilk. Jonathan Swift, I quoted him on a Sunday: Sometimes we have just enough religion to make us hate. DOWNTIME The challenging thing about my week is, getting home before 9 p.m. is a rarity — Sundays, I usually do. There’s often the “have dinner and watch whatever I’ve TiVo’d.” I’m embarrassed to tell you — don’t make me. I have not watched the last few Sundays, but I have it all TiVo’d for a mini “True Blood” marathon. It’s about vampires. I love the Syfy channel, so I watch a show called “Eureka.” I always tape the Sunday morning news shows, so it’s usually Stephanopoulos or “Meet the Press.” I tend to watch different series on DVD to help me fall asleep. Right now I’m in the middle of watching “Monk.” I’ll either try to read myself to sleep or put on an episode of “Monk” and fall asleep to that. ON CALL The one thing I can say about my life is that I have no routine, it really depends what’s going on in the city. If I’m going to bed at 11 o’clock and a police incident has just happened, I’m not going to bed. I’m waiting to see what happened. I may throw on clothes and go out and see what happened.


Massacre Is Reported in Homs, Syria

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian opposition activists said on Monday that soldiers and pro-government thugs had rounded up scores of civilians in the devastated central city of Homs overnight, assaulted men and women, then killed dozens of them, including children, and set some bodies on fire. Syria immediately denied responsibility. The attacks prompted a major exile opposition group to sharpen its calls for international military action and arming of the rebels. Some activists called the killings a new phase of the crackdown that appeared aimed at frightening people into fleeing Homs, an epicenter of the rebellion that the Syrian government had claimed just a few weeks ago it had already pacified after a month of shelling and shootings. The government reported the killings as well but attributed them to “terrorist armed groups,” a description it routinely uses for opponents, including armed men, army defectors and protesters in the year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad . Syria’s restrictions on outside press access made it impossible to reconcile the contradictory accounts of the killings, which appeared to be one of the worst atrocities in the conflict. But accounts of witnesses and images posted on YouTube gave some credence to the opposition’s claims that government operatives were responsible. An activist in Homs, Wael al-Homsi, said in a telephone interview that he had counted dozens of bodies, including those of women and children, in the Karm el-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs while helping move them to a rebel-controlled area in cars and pickup trucks. He said residents had told him that about 500 athletically built armed men, in civilian clothes and military uniforms, had killed members of nine families and burned their houses, adding, “There are still bodies under the wreckage. “I’ve seen a lot of bodies but today it was a different sight, especially dismembered children,” Mr. Homsi said. “I haven’t eaten or drunk anything since yesterday.” In a video posted on YouTube, a man being treated for what appeared to be bullet wounds in his back said he had escaped the killings in Karm al-Zeitoun. “We were arrested by the army, then handed over to the shabiha,” he said, using a common word for pro-government thugs. After two hours of beating, he said: “They poured fuel over us. They shot us — 30 or 40 persons.” Both activists and the Syrian government described the attacks as “a massacre,” a day after a special emissary of the United Nations and the Arab League , Kofi Annan , a former United Nations secretary general, left the country without reaching a deal to end the fighting. News of the killings came as the United Nations Security Council debated in New York, where the United States and Russia , Syria’s main international backer, tangled over how to address the Syria crisis. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Russia and China , which have vetoed previous resolutions aimed at holding Mr. Assad accountable and beginning a political transition, to join international “humanitarian and political efforts” to end the crisis, which she attributed directly to Mr. Assad. Mrs. Clinton added, referring to shelling and other government military action in Syrian cities over the weekend, “How cynical that, even as Assad was receiving former Secretary General Kofi Annan, the Syrian Army was conducting a fresh assault on Idlib and continuing its aggression in Hama, Homs and Rastan.” Her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, agreed that any solution in Syria “requires an immediate end of violence.” But he said armed elements of the opposition in Syria were also responsible for the crisis there, and that the Security Council must act “without imposing any prejudged solutions.” Mrs. Clinton had a separate meeting with Mr. Lavrov, calling it “constructive.” She told reporters he would deliver to Moscow her “very strong view that the alternative to our unity on these points will be bloody internal conflict with dangerous consequences for the whole region.” The Syrian National Council, the main expatriate opposition group, held a news conference in Istanbul and issued a statement that intensified longstanding calls by some of its members for outside military action. George Sabra, an executive board member and a spokesman for the council, told reporters that it was a moral imperative for the international community to stop the killing and to arm the opposition Free Syrian Army. “Words are no longer enough to satisfy the Syrian people. Therefore, we call for practical decisions and actions against the gangs of Assad. We demand Arab and international military intervention,” he said. The council, however, does not represent the entire opposition, which has struggled to agree on a unified message and includes people who oppose further militarizing the uprising, which has come to resemble a civil war. The United Nations estimates that 7,500 people have died since the crackdown began, making Syria’s the bloodiest of the Arab revolts. Some individual council members have long pushed for various degrees of armed opposition. But Samir Nachar, a member of the executive office of the council, said that the overnight killings had taken the government’s crackdown to a new level and that the council would intensify public calls for the use of force. “All these massacres are ethnic and sectarian cleansing against people in Homs. They’re terrorizing people there in an attempt to make them flee the city,” he said. “Bashar is saying, ‘I will carry on,’ so what political solution are we still seeking?” Reports of the Homs killings also prompted street protests in at least five Syrian towns and cities, including the commercial center of Aleppo and the southern city of Dara’a, where the uprising began, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, an activist group. Activists’ reports of killings in at least two neighborhoods in Homs varied in some of the details and in the death tolls, which were estimated at between 47 and 53. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, echoing what individual activists said in videos and interviews, said in an e-mail that the army had arrested several families and took them to shabiha in nearby neighborhoods known for supporting the government. About 30 men were tortured, shot, doused with gasoline and set on fire, and women and children were killed separately, according to the group, which is based in London . But the state news agency said it was “terrorist armed groups” who had “kidnapped scores of civilians, mutilated their corpses and filmed them to be shown by media outlets.” Mulham al-Jundi, an activist from Homs who fled the city a few days earlier, said in a Skype interview that he had spoken with an activist who had filmed the bodies, Karam Abu Rabeaa. He said that the neighborhood was deserted and that some kidnapped women were still missing. In an activist video , a distraught man pointed to what appeared to be 6 bodies wrapped in blankets in one room of a building, and at least 10 more crammed into another small, blood-spattered room. “The army encircled the area and the shabiha entered,” a man declared in a video posted on YouTube. “Where are you, Arabs?” he shouted. “Where are you, Kofi Annan?” Mr. Annan said through a spokesman on Monday that he felt that his Syria mediation mission was moving in the right direction despite the new spasms of violence. “This is the beginning of a process, and the joint special envoy feels the process is on the right track,” his spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, told reporters.


17 States Suing on Immigration

Abstract: AUSTIN, Tex. — Texas and 16 other states filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday challenging President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, arguing that he violated his constitutional duty to enforce the laws and illegally placed new burdens on state budgets. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Brownsville, Tex., was the first major legal challenge to initiatives Mr. Obama announced Nov. 20 that will provide protection from deportation and work permits to up to five million immigrants in the country illegally. Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas, which led the coalition bringing the challenge, said Mr. Obama was “abdicating his responsibility to faithfully enforce the laws that were duly enacted by Congress and attempting to rewrite immigration laws, which he has no authority to do.” The suit added to the broadside by angry Republicans against Mr. Obama’s unilateral actions. In Washington, Republicans in the House of Representatives moved toward holding a largely symbolic vote on Thursday on a bill to dismantle the president’s programs, with a plan to vote next week on a spending bill that could fund the Department of Homeland Security, the agency administering the new programs, for only a few months. The states’ lawsuit also argued that the Obama administration had failed to comply with requirements the federal government must follow in issuing new rules, and it warned that Mr. Obama’s measures would encourage a new wave of illegal crossings at the Southwest border, forcing Texas and other states to spend additional funds on law enforcement, health care and education. Mr. Obama and other senior officials have said that they have full legal authority for the new measures, which they said were authorized by existing statutes. Mr. Obama granted deferred deportations, using executive prosecutorial discretion, to undocumented immigrants who are parents of American citizens and legal permanent residents. “The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that federal officials can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws, and we are confident that the president’s executive actions are well within his legal authorities," Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the White House, said Wednesday after the lawsuit was filed. In presenting the lawsuit at a news conference, Mr. Abbott said Texas was “uniquely qualified to challenge the president’s executive order” because the state had suffered the brunt of illegal immigration and drug-related cross-border crime. Mr. Abbott said the president’s responsibility to enforce the laws was a “fundamental promise to the American people,” and he said any changes to immigration laws should be made by Congress, not by “presidential fiat.” Mr. Abbott, a Republican, will replace Rick Perry as Texas governor in January after winning in a landslide in November. Mr. Perry, the state’s longest-serving governor, joined a one-two punch against Mr. Obama on Wednesday from a pair of conservative Texas Republicans who have repeatedly attacked the administration on immigration and other issues. What Is President Obama’s Immigration Plan? The plan would grant as many as five million unauthorized immigrants temporary reprieve from deportation and provide many of them with authorization to work in the U.S. At a separate news conference here, Mr. Perry described heavy spending by Texas on state operations to reinforce border security, and he accused the Obama administration of ignoring the border “in favor of political posturing on immigration.” Mr. Obama’s actions had the effect of placing a “neon sign on our border, assuring people they can ignore the law” and come into the United States illegally, Mr. Perry said. He called on Congress to pass legislation providing new funds for border enforcement before any broader overhaul of the immigration laws. Republicans will control both houses of Congress next year. Mr. Perry signed an executive order requiring all state agencies to use a federal electronic system, known as E-Verify, to check the employment eligibility of current state workers and future hires. The system detects immigrants who are not legally authorized to work. States joining the lawsuit were Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Maine. The states’ lawsuit argues that the surge of illegal crossings by families and unaccompanied children over the summer was spurred by a program Mr. Obama started in 2012, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which gave deportation protections similar to the new ones to undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. The suit said the federal authorities “have contributed to the surge of illegal immigration by refusing to enforce the laws on the books.” The new directives are “certain to trigger a new wave of undocumented immigration,” the lawsuit says, imposing “enormous law enforcement costs.” Texas said it was spending an extra $1.3 million a week on troopers and other resources. For Mr. Abbott, who has been Texas’ attorney general since 2002, the multistate lawsuit was his 31st legal challenge against the Obama administration and his 34th against the federal government. “I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and I go home,” Mr. Abbott has told audiences at public events and political rallies. But with being joined by other states, Mr. Abbott’s new lawsuit seemed likely to become a primary vehicle for Republicans’ efforts to halt Mr. Obama’s immigration actions through the courts. Legal experts are sharply divided over whether Mr. Obama has overstepped his constitutional bounds. At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Thomas H. Dupree Jr., a partner in the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said the president was “attempting to write into law what Congress deliberately chose not to write into law.” Mr. Dupree warned, “If the president may use executive authority to simply ignore laws that he does not like, then it will be possible for future presidents to unilaterally revise everything from federal criminal law to tax law to environmental law and beyond.” But in an open letter, four lawyers who formerly served as general counsel to the immigration agency that will run the new programs said their “collective view” was that Mr. Obama was “well within his legal authority.”

Immigration
Texas
Lawsuits
Greg Abbott
Executive Orders
Illegal Immigration
US states
Barack Obama


Saudi Arabia to Fine Firms With Too Many Foreign Workers

Abstract: DUBAI — Like most Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia has a major unemployment problem among its citizens, resulting in a jobless rate of 10.5 percent, according to government figures. The government has been trying to encourage companies to hire Saudi citizens for years with little impact. Now the government is making a new push: Private companies in Saudi Arabia with more foreign employees than Saudis are to be hit with fees. The policy, which took effect Nov. 15, makes it mandatory for private companies with a majority of foreign staff to pay 2,300 Saudi riyals, or $640, a year for each expatriate worker, according to a statement by the Labor Ministry. Many workers are exempt from the rule. They include domestic servants, foreigners with Saudi mothers, and citizens of other Gulf Cooperation Council members — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and Qatar. “The aim of this decision is to increase the competitive advantage of local workers by reducing the gap between the cost of cheaper expatriate labor and local labor, and developing national talent,” Moufarrej Haqbani, the deputy minister of labor for planning and development, said in a statement. If strictly enforced, the policy would be a big change for companies in Saudi Arabia that are in the habit of employing large numbers of foreigners. These include construction companies that typically have large numbers of workers from China and Southeast Asia. They will now need to choose between paying a fee for each foreign employee or searching for Saudis who will demand higher wages, economists say. About 90 percent of employees at private companies in Saudi Arabia are expatriates. Not everyone thinks it is a good idea. “This can trigger a shift in focus from skills and development to maintenance and plain adherence to quotas, which can hinder productivity,” said Philippe Dauba-Pantanacce, a senior economist covering Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa for Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai. “Such regulation can increase the costs of a business through employment of a less competitive worker,” he said. The levies are the latest in a series of initiatives that the Saudi government has implemented since Adel Fakeih took over as the Minister of Labor in August 2010. In addition to new rules allowing Saudi women to work in sectors like retailing, the government asked companies to adhere to a quota of Saudi employees, depending on their size and sector, last year. Companies that do not abide by these minimum quotas are prohibited from securing visas for foreign workers. In September, the Ministry of Labor said it had created 380,000 new jobs in 10 months through the quota system, which has been criticized by some employers for raising their costs or disrupting their operations. Saudi Arabia has a population of 26.5 million, of whom 20.6 million are Saudi citizens, according to the C.I.A. World Factbook. The kingdom has a far bigger population than other Gulf Cooperation Council nations, which mostly have minority local populations. Oman is an exception, with 2.5 million citizens out of a total 3.1 million population. Out of Qatar’s 1.9 million people, only 250,000 are Qatari citizens. Because of their tiny populations the Gulf countries have relied extensively on expatriate labor to build their futuristic-looking cities and infrastructure. In Saudi Arabia, though, unemployment, particularly among young people, is a potentially explosive political issue. In January, Mr. Fakeih said the country, which has the largest economy in the Middle East, needed to create three million jobs for Saudi citizens by 2015 and six million by 2030, partly through “Saudi-izing” work now done by foreigners. The idea behind the new charges is to provide incentives to create jobs in different fields. Last week, the Riyadh-based furniture and interior design company Al Mutlaq approached Khalid Al Khudair, founder of the Saudi female recruitment company Glowork, to find local staff to avoid paying extensive fees. The company has over 500 employees — none of them Saudis. Mr. Al Khudair found two Saudi women who had graduated from the Paris School of the Arts in interior design. Al Mutlaq hired them. “Saudis haven’t been used to hard labor at all, jobs like plumbing and construction, nobody puts on a hard hat and gets their hands dirty,” Mr. Al Khudair said. “But this is a time of change and we’re even seeing Saudis working behind the register at McDonalds, which never used to happen, so they are starting to take real work seriously,” he said.

Saudi Arabia
Foreign Workers
Unemployment
Persian Gulf


Yankee Tavern Owner Is Charged With Tax Evasion

Abstract: The owner of the famed Yankee Tavern in the Bronx was charged on Thursday with evading more than $1 million in state and city taxes, according to the Bronx district attorney’s office. Authorities said Joe Bastone, owner and president of Joe Bastone’s Yankee Tavern, was arrested as a result of a two-year investigation into his tax filings and business records that was initiated by the New York City Department of Finance. Mr. Bastone was arraigned on Thursday in State Supreme Court on a list of charges including grand larceny and filing false reports. The business itself was also charged with grand larceny, filing false reports and related charges, according to the district attorney’s office. The most serious charge, grand larceny, is punishable by a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, according to the authorities. During an audit of the tavern’s business records, customer receipts and financial ledgers from 2002 through 2007, and corporate tax returns for the business from 2002 through 2006, auditors found that the amount of gross sales and profits indicated in the business records was significantly higher than what was claimed on the tax returns, according to the district attorney’s office. A message left with Mr. Bastone’s lawyer, Lewis Alperin, was not immediately returned on Thursday. According to the Yankee Tavern Web site , the business has been owned and operated by the Bastone family since it opened in 1923. Because of its proximity to Yankee Stadium, and its history as a haunt for New York Yankee legends past and present, including Babe Ruth, the tavern has long been a popular watering hole for the team’s fans.

Yankee Tavern
Tax Evasion
New York Yankees
Bronx (NYC)


Iraq: Hundreds of Inmates Freed

Abstract: Iraq has begun releasing hundreds of inmates, officials said Monday, offering a concession to Sunni protesters demonstrating against the country’s Shiite-led government. For more than three weeks, protesters from Iraq’s Sunni minority have been rallying against what they see as unfair treatment by the government. The release of detainees has been one of their main demands, and some of those freed on Monday came from areas where antigovernment unrest has surfaced. Deputy Prime Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said that 335 detainees had been freed in the past week and that more would be released in the coming days.


Balloon Boy’s Father Tries a New Gimmick

Abstract: DENVER — Having tried to convince a worried nation that his 6-year-old son had drifted across Colorado in a makeshift balloon, Richard Heene is now trying to convince the world that everyone needs his latest invention: a wooden back scratcher. In a bizarre low-budget ad reminiscent of the old Crazy Eddie electronics commercials, the man behind the infamous Balloon Boy caper is seen rambling wildly about the merits of his Bear Scratch back scratcher, which appears to be a large notched brown stick. “If you itch like a son of a twitch, than you need my latest invention,” shouts a wild-eyed Mr. Heene before rubbing his back feverishly against the Bear Scratch . “Arrrrgh!” he yells, while a twangy country jingle playing in the background praises the device. It has been about a year since the Heenes became etched in the canons of American popular fiascos after Mr. Heene and his wife, Mayumi, dreamed up a hoax where they claimed a balloon carrying their son Falcon had mistakenly taken off from their Fort Collins home. The hoax, which drew weeks of frenzied coverage, led to Mr. Heene’s 90-day jail sentence. After leaving Colorado, the Heenes moved to Florida. It seemed only a matter of time before they resurfaced, although nobody could have possibly predicted it would be like this. And Mr. Heene’s Web site promises that hundreds more “very cool gadgets” are coming in the future, for those people — most predictably, the news media — that can’t help but scratch an itch for Mr. Heene’s misadventures.


Citigroup Puts Its Money Where Its Name Will Be

Abstract: The Citi Field sign above the main scoreboard at the Mets ’ new ballpark, the first of several to be raised by April, is nearly complete. The white and red letters that are in place offer ample evidence of the 20-year, $400 million agreement to make Citigroup ’s name synonymous with New York baseball. When the deal with Citigroup, the banking and financial services giant, was made in November 2006, it had just ended its third quarter with net income of $5.3 billion. But a year later, as the subprime mortgage meltdown began to roil the economy, Citigroup’s finances began to suffer. In the past three quarters, it has lost $17 billion — including a $2.5 billion loss reported on Friday — caused by $38 billion in credit losses and write-downs for bad mortgage investments. Since early 2007, the company has cut about 28,000 jobs. The Shea name never had such troubles. Losses or not, there is no stopping the Citi Field deal, even if some of its laid-off employees may not be able to afford to take their families to a game, or even if some of them could have been retained with the $20 million a year being spent on baseball. Even in the flush times during which it was signed, the deal seemed questionable. With high name recognition and a place among the world’s banking leaders, Citigroup hardly needed the Citi name plastered on a ballpark to enhance itself. Will fans move their C.D.’s to a Citibank branch because of the Mets relationship, any more than air travelers will consider flying American Airlines because its name is on two professional arenas? Will the corporate suite-holders at the Mets’ new home want to do more or new business with Citigroup because they share deluxe accommodations at Chez Wilpon?  Rob Julavits, a Citigroup spokesman, said Friday that Citi was “strongly committed” to the deal as part of its local and global marketing efforts, and that the deal represented a “redirection of our existing and budgeted marketing funds.” In addition, he said, it “provides an incredible platform to promote our world-class brand, enhance our relationship with current clients, attract new clients and expand our considerable community efforts.” Dave Howard, the Mets’ executive vice president for business operations, would not say whether Citi has an escape or buyout clause, or whether the bank has begun to make any payments. Citi has shown no jitters and sought no financial relief, he said. “Just the opposite,” he said. “They’re very excited about the relationship and enthusiastic about being our partner as we get ready to open the ballpark with their name.” He said the Mets had no concerns about Citigroup’s long-term finances. “We’re confident and ecstatic about having them as our partner,” Howard said. There is a valid case for continuing to market companies strongly in difficult times. A financial colossus does not stop advertising, even amid enormous losses. And for a company as big as Citigroup, $20 million a year for naming rights is pocket change. Still, the spending is symbolic. It’s on a baseball stadium in a gloomy economy, an investment that seems to thumb its nose at laid-off workers. “They will have to clearly articulate to their shareholders why this will drive their business going forward,” said David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. “They have to demonstrate that they will get a return on their investment and not be sheepish about it.” He said the main value for Citigroup was in the business it could develop with companies in other suites. “You’re not closing a deal if you’re Citi only because your name is on the field,” Carter said. “But doing business there, and the relationship with the Mets, might lead to a deal.” Another bank, Barclays , followed Citigroup by a few months with its 20-year, $400 million naming-rights deal for the Nets ’ arena near downtown Brooklyn.  Barclays, based in Britain, lacked Citigroup’s substantial presence in the United States and viewed the arena — whenever the Barclays Center’s long-delayed construction starts — as part of an aggressive domestic brand-building plan. But like Citigroup, it has had problems in the credit market, with $6.5 billion in write-downs on its banking scorecard. To shore up its capital position, Barclays recently sold $8.9 billion in new stock. The bank, which sponsors the Premier League and a PGA Tour event in the FedEx Cup playoffs, is still linked with the Nets, who are seeking a 2010 arena opening if construction starts soon. On Friday, Brett Yormark, the president of Nets Sports and Entertainment, called Barclays a “stable and dynamic institution that is thriving in a very challenging marketplace.” Brandon Ashcraft, a bank spokesman, said, “Barclays is fully committed to its relationship with the Nets.”

Baseball
Citigroup Incorporated
Stadiums and Arenas
New York Mets
Shea Stadium (NYC)
Barclays PLC
New Jersey Nets


San Francisco May Let Bicyclists Yield at Stop Signs

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of defiant bicyclists lined up single file here in July to protest, halting car traffic in a one-mile zigzag of streets known as the Wiggle that is popular among riders. Motorists honked and heckled during their stalled evening commute, as cyclists crept along to make their point: that they want the common practice of treating stop signs as yield signs — rolling through them slowly and coming to a stop only if necessary — to be legalized, for practical reasons. Law enforcement officials had threatened to crack down on cyclists who failed to stop at signs, and the Wiggle “stop-in” protest was in response to their threat. Still, the police made good on their warning, issuing 204 citations over two days in August. Not to be silenced, 100 cyclists showed up at a community meeting to vent, and the crackdown was suspended. Angry confrontations among bicyclists, motorists and pedestrians are common in many cities, but tensions in San Francisco have been heightened with the introduction of a bill that would permit bike riders to yield instead of stop at stop signs (but not at red lights, which bikers would still have to observe the same way motorists do). The proposed ordinance, backed by a majority on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, is expected to come up for a vote in December. If it passes, Mayor Edwin M. Lee has vowed to veto it, telling The San Francisco Chronicle , “I’m not willing to trade away safety for convenience.” If the supervisors prevail over a veto, San Francisco will become the largest city in the United States to pass a stop-as-yield law. Idaho and a few Colorado counties are the only places in the United States that permit the rolling stop, commonly called the “Idaho stop” because of its legality there since 1982. Paris adopted a similar law this summer. And if bicyclists in this crowded and hilly city succeed, they are bracing for even more resistance from pedestrians and drivers fighting for space on San Francisco’s increasingly congested streets. Image An intersection on the Wiggle route in San Francisco, where more commuters are biking to get around parking and congestion. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times “It feels like the Wild West because there are so many people in the city right now,” said Morgan Fitzgibbons, a community activist who organized the protest at the Wiggle. “People say, ‘You are so entitled.’ But if anyone is entitled, it is the drivers who refuse to give up the privilege of having a parking spot. We have battle after battle, and nothing is ever solved.” There is no shortage of clashes among those who travel by foot, on two wheels and on four. In August, a driver was surrounded by cyclists from Critical Mass, a guerrilla bike group that holds monthly rides that often snarl traffic; when the driver tried to escape, one of the cyclists used a bike lock to smash the car’s windows and hood. The episode was caught on video . Just this month, a bicyclist named Mark Heryer was killed while riding west on Market Street, the city’s main downtown thoroughfare, when he lost control and was run over by a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency bus, according to the police. That same day, another cyclist was struck blocks away by a truck towing a horse trailer. Most people agree that there is carelessness and fault on all sides. “Cars turn and they don’t signal,” said Jean Kao, a co-founder of a start-up who works in San Francisco. She said she felt safe riding her bike to the office, although she had experienced a number of close calls. But her fellow bikers do not always have the best judgment, either, Ms. Kao said, adding, “I see people trying to pass buses and I think: ‘Whoa. That is not safe.’ ” Image “It feels like the Wild West” on the city’s streets, said Morgan Fitzgibbons, who organized a protest by cyclists on the Wiggle. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times John Avalos, the San Francisco supervisor who introduced the ordinance and a bike commuter, said the measure would not condone reckless behavior but instead allow police officers to focus on more serious violations. A friend of his was recently issued a ticket after 11 p.m. for rolling through a stop sign at an empty corner along the Wiggle. “Two blocks away, people are getting drunk in bars and falling into the street,” Mr. Avalos said. “That is where we should be spending our resources.” Avid bicyclists across the country say the Idaho stop is the de facto practice in most places, though not legal. Those who are following the proposal in San Francisco are eagerly anticipating the outcome, curious if this liberal bastion will finally be the place to break the barrier against such rules. The issue is so divisive, said Rob Sadowsky, executive director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance in Portland, Ore., that few politicians are willing to take it on. In 2009, Oregon’s Legislature debated such a bill, but it did not pass. “It became, ‘I don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,’ ” Mr. Sadowsky said. Injuries in Idaho have not increased since the law passed, said Stephen Clark , a program specialist at the League of American Bicyclists in Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, proposals not only in Oregon but also in Arizona and Montana have failed to gain support, Mr. Clark said. He attributes this to the fact that cyclists and motorists do not always agree on how best to share the road. Perhaps, Mr. Clark said, things will be different this time. “San Francisco is certainly on the cutting edge of a lot of things,” he said. Image Cyclists on the commute down Market Street in San Francisco last week. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency estimates that 70,000 bike trips are made each weekday. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times Still, everyone here agrees San Francisco has to better address the safety of its cyclists as more commuters take to biking to avoid the parking crunch and congested streets. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency estimates that 70,000 bike trips are made each weekday — a number that is rising — and it is the city’s goal to cut bike fatalities to zero by 2024. “There is work to do in this area,” said Ed Reiskin, the executive director of the transportation agency, which is charged with overseeing the city’s bike lane expansion. He conceded that San Francisco had been slow to act on goals set forth in its 2006 bike plan and had been trying to make up for lost ground since. This year, the transit authority has 15 bike-related projects scheduled. San Francisco is the second most densely populated city in the United States behind New York, with water on three sides and little room to expand. In the late 19th century, it was dominated by cable cars, which gave way to streetcars and, later, automobiles that navigated the city’s steep hills. In the 1990s, bike culture blossomed, resulting in the rift that continues today. Noah Budnick, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, supports the proposed ordinance but said he could see both sides. “There is this ‘me first’ attitude, and it depends on whether you are riding a bike or driving a car,” he said. “Sometimes that can be the same person.” Mr. Sadowsky of the Portland bike group suggested that a more palatable legal solution might be something akin to the way seatbelts are regulated — that is, making failure to stop at a street sign a secondary offense. That way, cyclists would not be ticketed for failure to stop, but if they were cited for another violation, the failure to stop would be added. That, of course, will not overcome the ire aroused by watching someone else get ahead. “In communities where street traffic is horrible, bikes move on through,” Mr. Sadowsky said. And that is frustrating for drivers idling in place, stacked 10 deep in a row, watching cyclists zip by. “It’s not jealousy,” Mr. Sadowsky said of motorists’ disdain for cyclists. “It’s more like: ‘Why are you whining? You already have it made.’ ”

San Francisco
Biking
Traffic and Parking Signals and Signs
Car Crash
Roads and Traffic


SunEdison at ‘Substantial Risk’ of Bankruptcy

Abstract: The American solar energy company SunEdison, whose aggressive acquisition strategy has saddled it with almost $12 billion of debt, is at “substantial risk” of bankruptcy, one of its two publicly listed units warned on Tuesday. A bankruptcy would rank among the largest involving a nonfinancial company in the last 10 years, according to bankruptcydata.com. SunEdison declined to comment. SunEdison’s shares fell as much as 60 percent to a record low of 50 cents on Tuesday. The SunEdison unit, TerraForm Global, said in a regulatory filing that it would join its parent and fellow subsidiary TerraForm Power in delaying its annual report for the year ended Dec. 31. However, the company said that it did not rely substantially on SunEdison for funding or liquidity and that it would have sufficient liquidity to support its operations even if its parent sought bankruptcy protection. SunEdison has problems of its own. The company, which has delayed filing its annual report twice, said this month that it had identified material weaknesses in its financial reporting controls. It had debt of $11.67 billion as of Sept. 30.


Knicks' Cupboard Full of Guards, and Losses

Abstract: Change is not the Knicks' only certainty this season. Add losing to the list. As the Miami Heat soundly outclassed the Knicks, 103-83, in Madison Square Garden last night, guard Steve Francis watched his new team from the locker room while taking his physical exam. When he puts on a New York uniform tomorrow night against the Nets at the Garden, 29 games will remain in a season of confounding transition. Destination: unknown. For now, the five other guards had a chance to prove why they deserved the remaining minutes. With Coach Larry Brown using his 32nd starting lineup of the season, nobody made much of a case against the All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal. The Knicks, who fell to 15-38, finished with 13 assists and 16 turnovers. "I have to figure out a way we get some passion," Brown said after the game. "We'll start playing guys who pass the ball and catch the ball and make other people better. We won't play all these guards. We're just not going to be able to." Stephon Marbury looked rusty in his 2-for-11, 7-point night, returning after missing the last eight games with a bruised left shoulder. When Francis joins him in a backcourt that all but begs for the basketball, the Knicks will have to adjust again. "We still don't have a foundation down for how we play now," Marbury said. "We're 50-something games in. Every day, we're doing something different. We're trying to figure it out. We don't do just one thing consistent, because if we did, we would be sticking to it." Other than the rookie Channing Frye, who led the team with 17 points, every Knick struggled. Nate Robinson, flushed from his All-Star dunk contest victory, missed defensive assignments and rushed shots. Jalen Rose -- the hoopla over his trade three weeks ago already faded -- added 5 points. Eddy Curry had another foul-plagued game, even if it was against O'Neal. Upset with a dirty play from Malik Rose in the fourth quarter, O'Neal later got into a scuffle with him. The Heat dashed to a 19-point lead in the first half. While the Knicks pulled to within 10 points midway through the third quarter, Wade slammed the door on the game when he lead the Heat on a 13-2 run. Pat Riley, the Heat's president and coach, defended Thomas's acquisition of Francis, although both Francis and Marbury shoot first and are ultracompetitive guards not known for their defense. "I know all of you look at this as one of the worst things going on, but they have accumulated a tremendous amount of talent, and ever since he's come here, the talent level has gone through the roof," Riley said. Thomas has brought 29 different players to the Knicks while 15 have left in trades and free agency. Riley, who was booed soundly in introductions by Garden fans remembering how he jolted the Knicks to coach the Heat in 1995, has also stockpiled talent. But the Heat is 34-20. "Whether or not it's going to work one day is going to be up to whoever coaches the team," Riley said, although Brown still has four years and $40 million left on his contract to coach the Knicks. Then he added of Thomas: "He has a whole summer now to take a tremendous amount of talent and mold it, trade more of it, whatever he wants to do. But the cupboard's full." Right now, so far as guards go, it is overstocked.

MIAMI HEAT
BASKETBALL
NEW YORK KNICKS
NEW YORK KNICKERBOCKERS


Bidding Adieu to a Treasured American Heirloom

Abstract: He is a French aristocrat who created a stir in America as a precocious teenager, and then returned decades later to the United States to be celebrated in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston. The Marquis de Lafayette? Yes, of course. But that was then. This time, it is his great-great-great grandson. Arnaud Meunier du Houssoy arrived in New York from Paris on Saturday to be celebrated at events in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and the nation’s capital to mark a season of Lafayette commemorations. It is the 250th anniversary year of the birth of the Revolutionary War general, and a major new exhibition — “French Founding Father: Lafayette’s Return to Washington’s America” — recently opened at the New-York Historical Society. Next month there will be a multimillion-dollar auction of a historic gold medal of the Society of the Cincinnati: an enameled patriotic badge created for George Washington that was presented to Lafayette in 1824 after Washington’s death. “The medal has been kept in our family for more than 180 years,” the 48-year-old M. du Houssoy said, “but it was originally George Washington’s, and it belongs to America.” Six days before the Dec. 11 auction, it will be on display at Sotheby’s; on view in America for the first time since the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago. The medal was commissioned by George Washington after the Revolutionary War, and created to his specifications in Paris by Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the Continental Army commander who later designed the street plan for Washington, D.C. “This object was significant to two of our greatest Revolutionary War heroes,” said David N. Redden, a vice chairman at Sotheby’s who will be the medal’s auctioneer. “Its importance transcends that of a simple badge or medal, to a symbol of the ideals that George Washington fought for.” Sotheby’s has estimated that the medal will command $4 million to $10 million at the auction. “There is no other like it, it is almost like a living thing,” said Ute Wartenberg Kagan, executive director of the American Numismatic Society in Manhattan, which has a less illustrious 18th-century Cincinnati medal in its collection. “And that both Washington and Lafayette held it — how much better can it get?” Margaret K. Hofer, curator of decorative arts at the historical society, which owns five Cincinnati medals, said, “These rarely come to auction.” The few 18th-century Cincinnati medals offered for sale have fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars, Mr. Redden said. The insignia (variously termed a medal, badge or order), measures about 1 ½ inches high and is finely chased (ornamentally engraved) in gold in the form of an eagle surrounded by a laurel wreath; it is believed to be adorned with its original silk ribbon of sky blue and white. It is decorated with a medallion honoring Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a Roman nobleman in the fifth century B.C. who was called away from tilling his fields to save the republic from invaders — then returned to his farm instead of seizing power. Eighteenth-century Americans often likened Washington to Cincinnatus. In linking Washington and Lafayette, the importance of M. du Houssoy’s badge is that “this is a great American story,” Mr. Redden said. That tale centers on Lafayette, a wealthy aristocrat who arrived in 1777 at the age of 19 to assist Washington, his idol and mentor. The marquis became a military tactician and a hero of the decisive Battle of Yorktown before he returned to France. The patriotic and hereditary Cincinnati society for Revolutionary War officers’ descendants, which has more than a thousand members in the United States and France, originated in the dark days of 1783 when a group of disgruntled American officers contemplated a military coup but were faced down by Washington, who appealed to their patriotism. The Cincinnati order was formed by Washington and a few officers, including Lafayette, to ensure that the ideals of the Revolution would not die after one generation. Decades after he left America, Lafayette was invited by President Monroe to return as “the nation’s guest,” triumphantly making a 13-month, 6,000-mile tour of the young country’s 24 states, and receiving the Washington medal, which he is said to have cherished. “I grew up with this, and the Lafayette legend,” M. du Houssoy said of the medal, which was framed on the wall of his parents’ home in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. He had a chance to live the legend when, at the age of 18 in 1978, his parents sent him to explore America for two months. He practiced his English, was feted by Cincinnati society members, met the Governor of Virginia, “and could finally understand what my ancestor meant to Americans,” he said. M. du Houssoy returned to Paris to become an investment banker, and now runs his own merger-and-acquisition firm. The medal was consigned to Sotheby’s by M. du Houssoy’s mother, Lafayette’s great-great granddaughter, the Baronne Meunier du Houssoy. The return of M. du Houssoy echoes that of his forebear: Already, there has been a reception at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and a dinner in Manhattan held by the historical society and Sotheby’s. Today there will be a celebration at the historic Dacor Bacon House in the nation’s capital and a visit to Mount Vernon, and tomorrow there will be a reception at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston. M. du Houssoy is in line to inherit the baronetcy; he would also have inherited the medal. Giving it up “will be a loss, but many know nothing of its history,” he said. “We’ve been proud to have it in our home, but it is too important to be seen only by one family.”

Auctions
United States Armament and Defense
Sotheby's Holdings Incorporated
Washington George


Yankees’ Late Rally Can’t Offset Kuroda’s Shaky Start

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — When Hiroki Kuroda pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers, runs were usually at a premium, and Kuroda pitched accordingly. He was precise and careful, knowing he had to limit damage early on because one run in the first inning might determine the outcome of the game. But now, pitching for a superior offensive team like the Yankees , that kind of cautious approach is not necessary, and on Saturday it hurt Kuroda. Making his American League debut after signing a one-year, $10 million contract in the off-season, Kuroda nibbled at the edges of the plate, throwing 40 balls among his 95 pitches, and when he had to throw a fastball, the opposition punished him. He allowed six runs, four of them earned, in five and two-thirds innings, and the Tampa Bay Rays withstood a late rally to hold off the Yankees, 8-6 . The defeat sent the Yankees to their second loss in two games. The Yankees did score four runs in the ninth to make the game interesting, the last three coming across on Nick Swisher’s three-run homer with two outs. But that is where their scoring stalled. Robinson Cano followed with a hard-earned walk, but Fernando Rodney got Alex Rodriguez to ground into another of the Rays ’ many defensive shifts to end the game. Despite all of Tampa Bay Manager Joe Maddon’s defensive machinations, the Yankees have now scored six runs in both of their games on days when very good pitchers started — James Shields on Friday and David Price on Saturday — and have come away with two losses. “That can be a little frustrating,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “At times the pitchers are going to have to pick up the hitters.” It is hard to fathom, but in a game in which 14 runs were scored, it was a few key defensive maneuvers by Maddon that helped determine the outcome. As he did Friday, Maddon ordered defensive shifts against Swisher; Mark Teixeira, who hit a laser right into the teeth of it for a double play in the eighth; Curtis Granderson; and finally Rodriguez, whose hard-hit ball up the middle could not find an opening. “I don’t really care about that kind of stuff,” Rodriguez said. “I like getting a good pitch to hit and smoking it.” Swisher said it felt like there were 15 fielders on one side of the infield against him, and Teixeira looked particularly annoyed when his line drive was caught by second baseman Sean Rodriguez playing in shallow right field. At the time the Yankees were trailing by 8-2, but they had runners at second and third after Swisher walked and Cano doubled. Teixeira’s ball seemed headed for a two-run single, at least, but Rodriguez snared it and fired to Reid Brignac covering second for the inning-ending double play. “We scored a lot of runs the last few days,” Teixeira said. “But we did hit a few balls into the shift. Sometimes they go through, and sometimes they don’t.” The two runs that gave the Rays their eventual margin of victory came across in unusual fashion in the seventh. The new Yankees left-handed reliever Clay Rapada walked Carlos Pena to lead off the inning. With the score 6-2, Girardi elected to leave Rapada in to face Evan Longoria, who blasted a pitch over the wall in right field for what looked like a home run. It was originally ruled as such, but Swisher and the Yankees argued that a fan reached over the wall and caught the ball. The play was reviewed and overturned in the Yankees’ favor, to an extent. The umpires determined that the ball would have hit the top of the wall — Swisher and Girardi both agreed — and Longoria was awarded a double instead of an out. But both he and Pena eventually scored on a bloop single by Matt Joyce, who also homered off Kuroda in the third inning. Kuroda’s command was in doubt early and often, and he walked four batters. He was not helped when Eduardo Nunez, playing shortstop while Derek Jeter was the designated hitter, made an error that led to two unearned runs. But Kuroda did not blame Nunez. He said his command was off on all his pitches, and he just could not find one pitch to go to that would bail him out, as he normally can, making for a disappointing Yankees debut. “It’s really disappointing no matter what the situation,” he said. “You go to the mound to get a win and I wasn’t able to do that, so it’s very disappointing.” INSIDE PITCH Joe Girardi did not waste time initiating his new designated hitter rotation. Derek Jeter was the D.H. on Saturday and Eduardo Nunez played short, and Girardi said Alex Rodriguez might be the D.H. Sunday, with Eric Chavez playing third. Girardi said he wanted to limit the effects of a hard infield at Tropicana Field on his veteran infielders. Girardi also unveiled a new lineup configuration against left-handed starters, with Nick Swisher batting second and Curtis Granderson sixth. ... The last time the Yankees started a season 0-2 was 2009, when they won the World Series. ... The Rays sold out the first two games at Tropicana Field for only the second time. The other occasion was in 2009, also against the Yankees.

Tampa Bay Rays
Kuroda Hiroki
New York Yankees
Baseball


Judge Rejects Suit Over Term Limits

Abstract: A federal judge on Tuesday rejected an attempt to overturn the legislation that cleared the way for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and most other city elected officials to seek a third term this fall. The measure — which the City Council passed in October and Mr. Bloomberg signed on Nov. 3 — revised a two-term limit that was twice affirmed by referendums in the 1990s. It set off intense anger among many voters, who charged that the mayor had disregarded their will. The decision, by Judge Charles P. Sifton of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, closes the first round of a legal battle that followed one of the most divisive debates in the city’s recent political history. In a 64-page opinion, Judge Sifton rejected the claim that the mayor and the Council, in replacing the two-term limit with a three-term maximum, infringed on the rights of voters who had twice affirmed the two-term limit. While the plaintiffs had suggested that the revision of term limits “was no different than if the Council had destroyed the ballots” cast in the earlier plebiscites, the judge called the analogy “spurious.” He added: “To hold that overturning a law enacted by referendum infringed on First Amendment rights would effectively bar repeal, amendment, or revision of all laws initiated by the people.” In a statement released shortly after the judge’s decision, Stephen Kitzinger, who argued the case on the city’s behalf, said that the plaintiffs’ true complaint “was not that their First Amendment rights of political expression were violated, but rather that their views did not prevail.” On one side of the dispute was Mr. Bloomberg, who had previously and loudly supported limiting city officials’ tenure to two terms, but changed course as his other opportunities for political advancement faded last year. The mayor, citing the worsening economy, said that he was the best person to lead the city at a time of crisis. On the other side were some council members, aspiring candidates and others who said that if the mayor wished to extend term limits, he should have tried to do so by plebiscite. On Nov. 10, 25 plaintiffs — including the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., who is a mayoral contender, and Councilman Bill de Blasio, who is running for public advocate — filed the federal lawsuit, which sought to quash the new law. The plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that by changing the limits legislatively, the city had violated voters’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process. They charged, in essence, that the new term limits law annulled a decision that had been twice endorsed at the polls and gave an unfair advantage to two-term incumbents over political newcomers who might have wished to challenge them. In addition, the plaintiffs claimed that a law established by referendum could be changed or rescinded only by another referendum. City lawyers argued otherwise, saying at a hearing on Jan. 5 that state law did not require the Council to hold a referendum before revising the term limits. They also homed in on a crucial point: Allowing officeholders to vie for a third term does not guarantee their re-election. In November, when most political posts will be up for grabs citywide, the lawyers said, voters will still be able to choose whoever they think will best represent them. Judge Sifton agreed. In his opinion, he said that because of the term limits change, “incumbents and challengers can now face off in an election or in a new referendum to argue before the public whether, for example, seniority has greater value than change in the current economic climate.” The plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, Randy M. Mastro, said he would review the decision with his clients and would consider an appeal, which could drag out the dispute for a few more months. “We strongly disagree with the judge’s opinion,” Mr. Mastro said in an interview. “We think the term limits extension is illegal, and we know it’s wrong.” Legal experts said, however, that an appeal was unlikely to change the outcome. Still, the city will have to clear one more legal hurdle, as the change must be approved by the Civil Rights Division of the federal Justice Department, under a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 known as preclearance. That process is meant to ensure that changes in election law do not adversely affect a racial or ethnic minority group. A bill is pending in Albany that would require a referendum in any municipality in the state that wished to change term limits legislation.

Term Limits (Political Office)
Bloomberg Michael R
Decisions and Verdicts
Manhattan (NYC)


Russian Political Activist Is Hospitalized With Mysterious Illness

Abstract: MOSCOW — A prominent Russian political opposition activist, whose civic group this week released a film critical of an ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, has been hospitalized in Moscow after collapsing and losing consciousness on Tuesday from a mysterious illness. The activist, Vladimir V. Kara-Murza, 33, is the federal coordinator of Open Russia, a civic organization founded by Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a fierce critic of Mr. Putin. His political activism immediately raised suspicions of poisoning or other foul play, but so far there has been no confirmation of this from doctors or the Russian authorities. Mr. Kara-Murza’s wife, Evegenia, said that he remained unconscious on Wednesday and was undergoing dialysis to treat acute renal failure, which doctors said was a result of “grave nonalcoholic intoxication.” Ms. Kara-Murza , who lives with the couple’s three young children in the United States, said in a telephone interview that her husband had been in good health and that his family feared that he had been the victim a poisoning attack and that he might still be in danger. “In today’s Russia, things can happen,” she said. “And he was taken ill suddenly. He wasn’t taking any medication that could have resulted in this.” Image Vladimir Kara-Murza Credit Alex Wong/Getty Images Open Russia released a documentary this week accusing Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Chechnya and a loyal supporter of Mr. Putin, of corruption and human rights abuses. The film is called “Family,” a reference to Mr. Kadyrov’s frequent description of the Russian president as a kind of surrogate father. Mr. Kara-Murza was also a close friend and ally of Boris Y. Nemtsov, another political opposition leader and critic of Mr. Putin, who was assassinated just outside the Kremlin walls in February, in the most brazen political assassination in Russia’s recent history. The Russian authorities have arrested several Chechen suspects in Mr. Nemtsov’s killing, including a former deputy commander of one of Mr. Kadyrov’s security battalions. The suspects all maintain their innocence. Mr. Kara-Murza suddenly fell ill on Tuesday and was taken by ambulance to the First City Hospital, where he was reported on Wednesday to be in serious but stable condition. Ms. Kara-Murza said that while doctors said they had not found evidence of poisoning, they also had not ruled it out. They also said he was too weak to be transported out of Russia. “Since the doctors cannot come up with a definite source of his intoxication, we do not know how safe he is there,” Ms. Kara-Murza said. “That’s why we are trying to attract as much attention to his condition as we can.” There is basis for the concern. Critics of the Kremlin have occasionally died under mysterious and sinister circumstances. A former K.G.B. officer and caustic critic of Mr. Putin, Alexander V. Litvinenko, died of radioactive poisoning in Britain in 2006. The cause of his death was determined to be the rare isotope polonium 210. Another Russian citizen, Alexander Perepilichny, 44, died in England under mysterious circumstances in November 2012, after helping to expose a huge tax fraud in Russia allegedly involving senior officials. Aleksei Svet, the chief doctor at the First Moscow City Hospital, told the Interfax news agency that Mr. Kara-Murza appeared to be suffering from double pneumonia and pancreatitis. Several acquaintances said they had seen Mr. Kara-Murza in recent days and that he had been in good health. Andrey Bystrov, who works with Mr. Kara-Murza at Open Russia, said he saw him Monday and he was fine. Mr. Bystrov said he was trying not to jump to conclusions, but that it was difficult not to suspect an attack. “We are now in such a phase with Russia, you never know what really can happen,” he said in a phone interview. In interviews, Mr. Kara-Murza’s father, also named Vladimir, said there was no reason yet to suspect his son was a victim of a nefarious plot. Ms. Kara-Murza said that her husband had not received any threats but had been in Russia when Mr. Nemtsov was murdered. He attended Mr. Nemtsov’s funeral and was aware of the dangers of political activism in Russia but felt compelled to continue his work. In recent weeks, that included helping to prepare the release of the documentary film about Mr. Kadyrov, who has served Mr. Putin loyally by maintain control over Chechnya, the predominantly Muslim republic where Russia fought two bloody wars. In the months before his murder, Mr. Nemtsov had also sought to draw attention to the relationship between Mr. Putin and the Chechen leader and had posted online a video of Mr. Kadyrov with thousands of heavily armed troops in Chechnya, with a commentary wondering if one day they might be sent to Moscow.

Russia
Open Russia
Poison
Family
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Documentaries
Mikhail B Khodorkovsky
Boris Y Nemtsov
Ramzan Kadyrov


Paris Theater, an Oldie but Goodie, Marking 60th Anniversary

Abstract: ON Sept. 13, the Paris Theater, on 58th Street just west of Fifth Avenue, will celebrate its 60th anniversary. This is a remarkable accomplishment, as the Paris does not go in much for films in which things get blown up. In a city teeming with faux vieux Irish saloons and restaurants adorned with plaques reading “A tradition since 1988,” the single-screen Paris is the real thing, a bona fide vestige of a storied past. The Plaza Hotel, which sits directly across the street, may no longer function exclusively as a hotel — it has added condominium units — but the Paris, with its plush seats, plush carpets, microscopic lobby, scalloped balcony and policy of showing just one film a week, remains as it long has been. The 586-seat theater is one of the oldest art houses in the United States. Opened by Pathé Cinema in 1948, the Paris started out showing French films (“La Symphonie Pastorale,” which ran for eight months), and it still shows French films, both revivals (“Belle de Jour”) and new ones (“Amélie”). When French films are not available, the theater shows movies that seem French, including the Foreign Films Lite oeuvre of Merchant and Ivory. The Paris is what people of a certain age once referred to as “a classy joint.” There is no on-screen advertising or any of the other packaged sludge that most theaters inflict on their clientele. The staff is renowned for its courtesy. Before the curtains part, the audience is treated to thematically appropriate music selected by the projectionist, Marty Knopf. Jeffrey Jacobs, the film buyer and managing director of the theater, said in an interview that the raison d’être of the Paris was “to continue in the tradition of the great moviegoing experience of a different day in New York.” The Paris belongs to an era in which foreign films were a distinct genre, which was also an era in which people found such movies threatening. In 1950, protests erupted when the Paris showed Roberto Rossellini’s “Miracle.” Catholic groups, enraged by the story of a peasant woman who believes she is carrying the child of Jesus (a ne’er-do-well played by Federico Fellini), succeeded in having the license then required to show the film withdrawn. The film’s distributor sued the New York State Board of Regents, which had revoked the license, resulting in a decision that said movies were a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. Over the years, the Paris has shown many classics, such as “Divorce — Italian Style,” Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” and “Tom Jones.” It has also shown less memorable fare along the lines of “The Gold of Naples,” “The Thirst of Men” and “Babette Goes to War.” Because of its enviable location, and the onslaught of the multiplex, the theater’s ability to survive is one of the great mysteries of New York life. In the early 1990s, when Pathé lost its lease and was replaced by Loews, the Paris briefly underwent a name change. At the time, it was feared that the landlord would convert the theater to retail space. But Loews cleared out in 1994, and when the new owner, Sheldon Solow, assumed control, the conversion didn’t materialize. It still hasn’t. Millions of New Yorkers have never been inside the Paris, perhaps because they associate the place with those snooty Merchant and Ivory films. I myself have often referred to the theater as the Maison du Tea With Mussolini, as it seems to be partial to those coy, bittersweet movies set somewhere in Europe that showcase the talents of venerable British actresses like Joan Plowright and Maggie Smith. Yet lately, along with screening standard Paris Theater fare like “The Namesake,” a heartwarming, preachy 2007 adaptation of a Jhumpa Lahiri novel, the theater has been showing “Transsiberian,” a thoroughly creepy thriller starring Woody Harrelson. So the old girl may have some life in her yet. THE clientele of the Paris has grayed as the years have passed. Unlike some other art houses, like the Angelika or Film Forum, it is not a hipster’s paradise, nor is it a one-stop cultural shopping center like the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, where the hoity-toity gather to watch esoteric Iranian movies on screens the size of thumbtacks. The Paris also has an understatedly elegant décor and does not cater to Irony Vixens who think that watching Icelandic films makes them morally superior to truck drivers. Best of all, at least to my mind, it has that balcony, a link to an era when sitting in the balcony began as a rite of passage, and then became an honor. People like me, who grew up outside the city, have a different relationship with New York institutions than do natives. We did not grow up eating at Ratner’s, and our grandparents did not take us on Sunday excursions to Coney Island. For this reason, we never get tired of the Staten Island Ferry and will resist all attempts to convince us that the Empire State Building is not, in fact, the tallest skyscraper in the world. By the time I started visiting New York from my hometown, Philadelphia, in the late 1960s, the golden age of the Paris was fading. Yet I never entered the theater without feeling that I was treating myself to something special, something we did not have back home. Whether the film was “King Lear” (1971) or “Fitzcarraldo” (1982) or the revival of the 1967 “Belle de Jour,” going to the Paris always seemed like a way to plunge back into the New York of lore and myth. It was never a theater I wanted to visit all the time, in part because of those Joan Plowright movies. But it was a great place to duck into during a rainstorm or when you wanted to take a breather from reality. The Paris is the kind of establishment where, when you show up, not one but two pipe smokers are congregating outside. They are throwbacks to an era when emaciated young men raved about Samuel Beckett, questioned the political ramifications of existentialism and lined up to see Brigitte Bardot in “... And God Created Woman” while meticulously cleaning their meerschaums. Some people may think this sort of thing is a bit passé and corny. The folks at the Paris do not agree. Neither do I.

Paris Theater
Motion Pictures
New York City


Man Facing Homicide Charge Is Killed in Brooklyn

Abstract: A 23-year-old man who was facing charges in a killing in SoHo was himself shot to death near Prospect Park in Brooklyn on Wednesday night, the police said. The man, Julio Locarno, had been released from Rikers Island on bail last week. He had been jailed after prosecutors charged him as an accomplice in the killing of an off-duty city medical worker, Jason Green , who was shot to death near a nightclub in SoHo last July. It was not clear if Mr. Locarno’s death was connected to the earlier killing, which remains an open case. At the time, Mr. Green’s death received significant attention because he had been at the center of an investigation into how medical workers responded to an emergency at a sandwich shop in Brooklyn in December 2009. Mr. Green and a colleague had been on break at the sandwich shop when a pregnant cashier was suddenly stricken; she eventually collapsed and died. At issue was whether the two workers had ignored pleas for help. In an interview, the two said that the woman’s colleagues did not convey any sense of urgency and that the two medical workers had called an ambulance to the location. In July 2010, while off duty, Mr. Green got into a fistfight with Mr. Locarno, who was apparently a stranger, and others on Vandam Street near a club about 5 a.m. The circumstances leading to the fight are unclear. But it escalated, and Mr. Locarno encouraged another person present to shoot Mr. Green, according to an account given in court papers by an investigator, Detective Matthew Briscoe of the New York Police Department. Prosecutors have not yet charged anyone besides Mr. Locarno in the case. He was arrested in February and charged with manslaughter and gang assault. At the time of his arrest, he offered a few biographical details about himself to investigators: He had an office job at a marketing firm and had recently moved out of his mother’s home in Crown Heights to enjoy a more active night life. He spent a little over a month in jail before he was released last Friday, records from the Department of Correction show. The police found him Wednesday night, after responding to a call of shots fired. He was lying on a pathway leading to the Parade Ground at the southern end of Prospect Park, the police said. He had been shot four times and was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital Center. “This kid was undeserving of this,” Mr. Locarno’s lawyer, Mitchell Elman, said. “It was a terrible tragedy.”

Murders and Attempted Murders
Green Jason
Locarno Julio
Prospect Park (NYC)
SoHo (NYC)


Euro Zone Shifted to Contraction From Stagnation in 2nd Quarter

Abstract: FRANKFURT — The economy in the euro zone officially shifted to contraction from stagnation in the second quarter of 2012, data showed on Tuesday, portending a recession for the region later in the year that would put even more pressure on political leaders struggling to keep the common currency intact. Gross domestic product from April through June fell 0.2 percent from the previous quarter for the 17 countries that use the euro , according to preliminary estimates by Eurostat , the European Union ’s statistics agency. In the previous quarter, growth was zero. Economists said the decline in output, caused partly by government budget cutting, meant the euro zone was likely to enter recession, broadly defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking output. Even the German economy, which has helped compensate for weakness in Italy and Spain, seemed to be losing momentum. “Growth of the German economy was no longer strong enough to keep the total euro zone economy above the zero line,” Christoph Weil, an economist at Commerzbank, wrote in a note to clients. The newest data added to the challenges facing euro zone leaders as they return from vacation and again confront the debt crisis. Slower growth almost automatically translates into lower tax receipts, because people lose their jobs and companies earn less profit. That, in turn, puts even more stress on government budgets. Germany did grow more than expected from April through June, expanding 0.3 percent, according to Eurostat. In addition, France avoided a downturn with a third consecutive quarter of zero growth. Economists had predicted that France would sink into negative territory. But this modest encouraging news was outweighed by data suggesting that the German economy would slow later in the year and might even decline. The German Federal Statistical Office said growth in the quarter was driven by exports and consumer spending, while investment by business fell. Surveys like the ZEW indicator of economic sentiment , which fell Tuesday to its lowest level of the year, showed that German manufacturers were worried over how the euro zone crisis might play out. As a result, they were hesitant to buy new equipment. Slower growth in the rest of the world has also hurt demand for exports from Germany and other European countries like Finland, where growth fell 1 percent. Italy and Spain, which have the third- and fourth-largest economies in the euro zone, after Germany and France, remained mired in recession. The Italian economy shrank 0.7 percent, while Spain declined 0.4 percent. Neither country has had economic growth for more than a year. Inevitably, Germany is being affected by slack demand from the rest of the euro zone, which remains its biggest market. In the first quarter of 2012, the German economy grew 0.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011. The Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, has predicted modest growth during the rest of 2012, but some economists disagree. Recent figures have shown a decline in German industrial production and in new factory orders, indicating a further weakening of growth. In a note to clients, Carsten Brzeski, senior economist at the Dutch bank ING, said investors should not be “carried away” by the seeming invulnerability of the German economy. “A further slowdown of the economy dozes under the surface of today’s strong numbers,” he said. Poor economic performance by Spain and Italy could further shake investors’ confidence in their creditworthiness, causing their borrowing costs to rise. Major European stock indexes rose Tuesday, while the euro was little changed against the dollar . “It shows just how dire things have become in the single-currency area when the markets take comfort from figures that show the French and German economies are pretty much flat on their backs,” Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, wrote in an e-mail. Countries in Southern Europe continue to experience the worst economic declines. Portugal’s economy slumped 1.2 percent in the quarter. But some northern countries are feeling the pain, too: the Belgian economy shrank 0.6 percent. Austria and the Netherlands each grew 0.2 percent. Greece reported Monday that its economy shrank 6.2 percent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. That was a slight improvement over its first-quarter decline of 6.5 percent. The country, which has been largely cut off from debt markets, sold 4.06 billion euros, or about $5 billion, of 13-week treasury bills on Tuesday, the Greek Public Debt Management Agency reported . The sale was larger than the planned maximum of 3.13 billion euros. The bills yielded 4.43 percent, up from 4.28 percent at the previous auction on July 17. The auction was not a sign that Greece was creditworthy again. The buyers were primarily Greek banks that will use the debt as collateral to borrow cheaply from the country’s central bank under an emergency program authorized by the European Central Bank . The proceeds from the bond sale will allow Greece to repay 3.2 billion euros in maturing bonds held by the central bank. The circular transaction allows Greece to avoid defaulting on its bonds, which would also create losses at the central bank.

Gross Domestic Product
European Union
Germany
France
European Central Bank
Euro (Currency)
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Economic Conditions and Trends


Serena Williams Closer to Making Her Indian Wells Return Triumphant

Abstract: INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Fifteen years after she last won here in front of a virulently hostile crowd, Serena Williams booked a spot in the final of the BNP Paribas Open, beating Agnieszka Radwanska, 6-4, 7-6 (1), in a semifinal match Friday evening. Williams, who skipped this event 13 times after the abrasive treatment she and her family received during her win in the 2001 final, returned last year but withdrew before her semifinal match, citing knee problems. “Definitely didn’t think I would be in another final here, ever,” Williams said. “Then, last year — just really, really bad luck. I felt devastated that I wasn’t in the final or at least even being able to play. After the last final I had here, I never pictured myself being back. So it’s an interesting feeling.” Williams, whose sister Venus only ended her own boycott of the event this year, said that her return to the final would bring some closure to the family’s story at the tournament. “It’s kind of cool that I can really close the door by being in the final again,” Serena Williams said. “I think it’s something that really kind of came full circle.” Williams has been received warmly throughout the tournament, allaying the trepidation she felt when she returned last year. “I would love to walk out there with everyone, you know, clapping,” she said of the final. “That’s the only thing I can hope for.” The top-ranked Williams booked her spot in Sunday’s final with a convincing win over Radwanska, who will rise to No. 2 in the WTA rankings next week. After a torpid start, Williams recovered from a 2-4 deficit to take the first set and then opened the second set by winning the first 11 points of the second set. Radwanska, who has never beaten Williams in 10 meetings, was able to pull even in the second set with a slew of short slices that drew Williams forward in the court. But in the second-set tiebreaker, Williams announced herself with two blistering return winners off Radwanska’s first two serves and cruised to a 7-1 finish. Williams told the crowd after her semifinal win that she had appreciated hearing cheers of “Go, Serena” and “U.S.A.” during the match, and she later said she had noticed an increase in support as her career progressed, adding to the base of “die-hard” fans she had enjoyed all along. “When you see great athletes, or athletes that have been around for centuries, like me, you know, you just kind of appreciate them and realize they might not be around for the next century or two,” said Williams. “You have to take it in.”

Serena Williams
Agnieszka Radwanska
Boycott
Tennis
Indian Wells Masters,BNP Paribas Open


Refreshing Riesling

Abstract: For years, Long Island’s wine industry expected Roman Roth, Wölffer Estate’s winemaker, to make his own riesling. He was born and trained in Germany, where riesling is the main grape and wine, and has made riesling for Martha Clara Vineyards in Riverhead as a consultant. Wölffer doesn’t grow riesling. In 2007, Mr. Roth found beautifully ripened grapes, he said, in Split Rock Vineyard, near Greenport. He bought four tons and produced an off-dry, low-alcohol (9.6 percent) riesling under his own label, Grapes of Roth. This pale, slightly fizzy, middle-weight white ($24), recently released, has a winsome peach-like aroma. The lingering, tart, full-fledged flavor offers a refreshing citric bite. It’s best drunk lightly cool, not cold. Tasted blind, this rich, potentially subtle riesling could be confused with one from the Rheingau region of Germany. Seasoned riesling fans, who can sort out key international styles, probably will spot a complex but elusive German leitmotif in the Roth wine. (To order: www.thegrapesofroth.com .) Such hard-to-pin-down grace notes also emerge in the successful rieslings of Paumanok Vineyards in Aquebogue, where winemaking values are influenced by Ursula Massoud, an owner who comes from the Pfalz (formerly Rheinpfalz), a riesling stronghold in Germany. I’ve never been present when Charles Massoud has made a new dry or semidry riesling, but I can imagine his wife tasting a barrel sample and saying: "It isn’t quite right. Why don’t you ...?" Consumers aren’t likely to find Germanic accents in the well-made, simpler North Fork rieslings from Palmer, Peconic Bay Winery, Pindar and Martha Clara. They represent a more straightforward American style. National differences among rieslings almost defy description. Think of them this way: a Chicago brass quintet can’t toot a German march the way an oompah band in a Munich beer hall can.