A.I.G. May Get More in Bailout

Abstract: The Bush administration was overhauling its rescue of the American International Group on Sunday night, according to people involved in the deal, amid signs that the interest on its current credit line of more than $100 billion was putting too much strain on the ailing insurer. The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve were near a deal to abandon the initial bailout plan and invest another $40 billion in the company, these people said. The government created an $85 billion emergency credit line in September to keep A.I.G. from toppling and added $38 billion more in early October when it became clear that the original amount was not enough. When the restructured deal is complete, taxpayers will have invested and lent a total of $150 billion to A.I.G., the most the government has ever directed to a single private enterprise. It is a stark reversal of the government’s assurance that its earlier moves had stabilized A.I.G. The revised deal, which may be announced as early as Monday morning, is likely to intensify the debate in Washington over why some companies should be saved by the government while others are left to wither. The money would come from the $700 billion that Congress authorized the Treasury to use to shore up financial companies. Just this weekend, Democratic leaders in Congress called on the Bush administration to drop its opposition to using some of that money to rescue Detroit automakers. The government’s original emergency line of credit, while saving A.I.G. from bankruptcy for a time, now appears to have accelerated the company’s problems. That short-term loan came with a high interest rate — about 14 percent — which forced the company into a fire sale of its assets and reduced its ability to pay back the loan, putting its future in jeopardy. The new deal would make the government a long-term investor in A.I.G., something that Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had said he hoped to avoid. As part of the revamping, the government would lower the loan amount to $60 billion from $85 billion, lengthen the payment schedule to five years from two years, and lower the interest rate. At the same time, the government, using part of the $700 billion fund, would buy $40 billion in preferred shares in A.I.G. In return, A.I.G. would pay a 10 percent interest rate on those shares, similar to the interest rate that banks agreed to pay last month when they received cash injections. The government is also planning to spend an additional $30 billion to help A.I.G. buy up a type of securities called “collateralized debt obligations” that the company had agreed to insure against default. As the insurer of those securities, A.I.G. has been forced to put up large amounts of cash as collateral as the global economy has soured and the securities seemed increasingly likely to default. Indeed, these securities, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, are held by institutional investors around the world, a fact that government officials have cited to justify saving the company using taxpayer money. The new arrangement calls for A.I.G. to put the securities into a new entity, effectively removing them from the company’s balance sheet. A.I.G. would contribute $5 billion to the new entity, which would buy $70 billion of the securities at 50 cents on the dollar, or $35 billion. The remaining $30 billion of the purchase price would come from the government. Finally, the government would invest another $20 billion in A.I.G. to help the company buy residential mortgage-backed securities that it also insured, and similarly place them into another entity off the company’s balance sheet. The goal of both programs is to create separate entities to buy and hold the most toxic assets A.I.G. had promised to insure, so that if their value continues to fall A.I.G. would not have to account for those losses. The company has argued that the securities’ falling value does not necessarily mean it has suffered a financial loss. Once A.I.G. buys the securities back from its trading partners, it will no longer have to provide cash as collateral under the terms of its insurance contracts — and collateral has been eating up more of A.I.G.’s cash than anything else since the broad financial crisis began. A spokeswoman for the Fed declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Treasury did not return a call for comment. A spokesman for A.I.G. declined to comment. A.I.G. negotiated the original $85 billion revolving credit line with the Federal Reserve after its efforts to raise money from private lenders failed in the panic of mid-September. The amount that it needed ballooned in just a few days, as counterparties to A.I.G.’s insurance on complex debt securities laid claim to whatever collateral they could get. People briefed on the negotiations said the $85 billion was thought at the time to be the maximum amount that A.I.G. would need, including a little extra for a cushion. The interest rate was set at the three-month Libor plus 8.5 percent, which currently works out to around 14 percent. (Libor, or London interbank offered rate, is a commonly used index that tracks the rates banks charge when they lend to each other.) In exchange for making the loan, the Fed was promised a 79.9 percent stake in A.I.G. The $40 billion of preferred shares will not change the size of the government’s stake in A.I.G., people briefed on the plans said. Edward Liddy, the insurance executive brought in to lead the company out of the crisis, initially said he believed the Fed money would be like water pouring into a bathtub — a lot might be needed at first, but eventually the tub would be filled and the faucet could be turned off. Since then, A.I.G. turned out to need more money than expected, and it has not been able to sell subsidiaries quickly enough to pay down the loan as required. Even as the government works to solidify A.I.G.’s finances, elected officials have been demanding a fuller accounting of the company’s business practices and executive pay structure. In October, the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, reached an agreement forcing A.I.G. to freeze payments to former executives. “I find it hard to conceive of situation that you could justify a performance bonus for management that virtually bankrupted the company,” Mr. Cuomo said after the agreement was made. That agreement followed the revelation, in a hearing convened by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, that the former head of A.I.G.’s troubled financial products unit, Joseph J. Cassano, had been put on a retainer of $1 million a month after being dismissed in February. Mr. Waxman, as well as Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, have demanded that A.I.G. provide a more detailed accounting of its credit derivatives business.

American International Group
Treasury Department
Federal Reserve System
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Thailand Looks to Likely Future King With Apprehension

Abstract: TUTZING, Germany — For more than two years, the king of Thailand lay ill in a Bangkok hospital. During much of that time, his son, the heir to Thailand’s throne, was far from the kingdom, flying around Europe in his Boeing 737 and ensconced in luxury villas and hotels amid the misty lakes and mountains of southern Germany and Austria. The lavish European lifestyle of the son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, and his tastes for airplanes, fast cars, women and the high life have caused great anxiety in the kingdom for decades. Now he is on the cusp of ascending the throne. The death of the beloved King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Thursday has set in motion a succession that many Thais say they wish they could avoid. King Bhumibol had been a unifying figure in a country that is torn by deep divisions of class and politics and is currently ruled by a military junta. The issue is whether the prince, seen by many Thais as lacking the deep public devotion that his father enjoyed, can hold the country together. The prince’s ascension also raises questions about the future of the monarchy , as a less-beloved king could give strength to a republican movement that has gained a foothold in recent years. Among the issues at stake is control over one of the world’s great royal fortunes, an estimated $31 billion in real estate holdings alone. Succession may force the consideration of an unresolved and rarely discussed question of whether those assets and others are the property of the royal family or of the Thai public. The crown prince, 64, has led a stormy life of byzantine quarrels and breakups with various lovers that were rarely fully elucidated in public. To his critics, his romantic liaisons have been more than just a royal soap opera; they have raised questions about whether his character suits the institution he is about to lead. Having multiple lovers is a dynastic tradition — his great-grandfather King Rama V had more than 150 wives and consorts — but the prince’s former partners have endured spiteful separations and the purged members of his entourage have died under suspicious circumstances. His three divorces, and the brusque ways they were handled, turned many Thais against him and left a trail of broken families, including four children in the United States with whom he has cut ties. The crown prince returned to Thailand in time to be present for his father’s death on Thursday. But the timing of his accession remains in question. Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, the prime minister, surprised the nation on Thursday when he told reporters that the prince had decided to wait until the “appropriate time” to ascend the throne, which is still replete with the ancient pageantry and extreme formality made famous by the musical “The King and I.” Image King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, left, and the crown prince in Bangkok in 2015. Credit Phamorn Manapornchai/Daily News, via Associated Press What details are known of the crown prince’s life are whispered and passed along furtively on social media in Thailand, where the military government, enforcing a strict lèse-majesté law, has sentenced dozens of people to long prison terms for offending the monarchy. The law has been interpreted broadly, stifling most public discussion of anything related to the royal family. But the few details that have emerged in public records, leaked documents and videos, and in publications from abroad offer a glimpse into the man who stands to be Thailand’s next king. The prince was still married to his first wife, his cousin Soamsawali Kitiyakara, in the 1970s and ’80s when he fathered five children with another woman, according to Thai news accounts at the time. The other woman, an aspiring actress and a commoner, Sujarinee Vivacharawongse, would become his second wife. That second marriage ended in the late 1990s in such acrimony that a public notice was posted at the prince’s palace accusing Ms. Sujarinee of corruption and infidelity with a soldier. The prince cut off communication with four of the five children from the marriage, stripped them of their royal titles and diplomatic passports, and wrote letters, since posted online by an exiled academic, to their British boarding schools informing them that he would no longer pay their tuition. They now live in the United States, as does their mother. His third marriage, also to a commoner, Srirasmi Suwadee, in 2001, produced the boy who is considered the next heir to the throne, Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti, 11, who lives in Bavaria with his father. Thais got a rare insight into the third marriage when a video clip of an elaborate poolside birthday party circulated widely on computer discs and on the internet. The video, which showed the princess topless with a string bikini bottom being attended to by submissive palace staff, scandalized a public accustomed to perceiving the monarchy as a paragon of virtue. It was never clear how the video had been leaked but some suggested that the prince’s enemies had spread it to promote the possibility that his sister Princess Sirindhorn, beloved by the public for her devotion to charitable causes, could become monarch in his stead. Image Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn’s villa on the exclusive Lake Starnberg in southern Germany. Credit The New York Times The footage of the party was never publicly discussed in Thailand’s news media. The crown prince’s marriage to Ms. Srirasmi blew up spectacularly in 2014, when members of her family were suddenly swept up by the police, charged and brought to trial. At least three of Ms. Srirasmi’s siblings were sent to prison for crimes including illegal possession of firearms and insulting the monarchy, according to police statements. Her mother and father were sentenced to prison for insulting the monarchy. Her uncle Pongpat Chayapan, a high-ranking police officer, was convicted of running illegal casinos, oil smuggling, money laundering and other crimes. Ms. Srirasmi gave up her royally bestowed name , according to an entry in The Royal Gazette, but she was given a stipend of more than $5 million of government funds from the Crown Property Bureau, a payment made public in a letter signed by the junta chief. The purge reinforced fears of an ominous, violent side in the prince’s entourage. One of a handful of police officers purged in the 2014 separation, Akkharawit Limrat, died under mysterious circumstances, his body hastily cremated, according to a funeral certificate published in the Thai news media. The police, calling the matter “sensitive,” gave only scant details. Lt. Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri, then the police spokesman, described the death this way: “He got stressed out. So he jumped out of the building and died.” A separate purge last year of aides to the crown prince had a similar outcome. Two of the three men arrested died in custody in military barracks. Image King Bhumibol Adulyadej, with Queen Sirikit and Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn in Britain in 1966, when the prince was 13. Credit Harris/Associated Press The purges have somewhat overshadowed recent efforts by the government to rehabilitate the prince’s image, including broadcasts of his riding in bicycle tours to celebrate the king and queen and the release of a video showing him caring for his son Dipangkorn in Germany. Critics said that after the purge of his third wife, those images sought to present him as a healthy, responsible father. The efforts suggested that the military had cast its lot with the prince, trying to forge the same kind of mutually beneficial alliance it had with his father. The king heads the armed forces and must approve all governments, while the military draws its legitimacy from the monarch’s blessing. Then there’s the matter of who will be the new queen. Like so many other parts of the crown prince’s life, the answer is shrouded in secrecy. A former flight attendant, Suthida Vajiralongkorn na Ayudhaya, has appeared by the prince’s side on the official royal broadcasts and has been bestowed the military rank of lieutenant general. Kasit Piromya, a former foreign minister, said he met Ms. Suthida many times when he was in government. “She’s an air hostess, very lively, highly intelligent,” he said. “She can ski, she can bike. She loves music. She knows what is good wine in Italy.” Ms. Suthida appears to live with the crown prince in Bavaria. Bild, the German tabloid, published a photograph in July of the crown prince on an airport runway in low-slung jeans, with what appeared to be tattoos covering his back and arms. The prince’s companion, possibly Ms. Suthida, is wearing stiletto heels and a tight shirt, midriff exposed, an outfit that might not raise eyebrows in Europe but would disqualify any tourist from entering the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Image The crown prince and his third wife, Srirasmi Suwadee, in 2007. Their marriage collapsed in 2014 when several of her siblings were imprisoned on various charges. Credit Vincent Thian/Associated Press The prince bought two villas in southern Germany last year, one on the exclusive Lake Starnberg for an estimated $13 million, and another, said to have cost some $5.5 million, in the adjacent community of Feldafing. When Andreas Botas, a real estate agent in Tutzing, showed the prince and his entourage a property there last year, three black Mercedes vans, a white Porsche and three more vans arrived for the appointment. The driver of the Porsche turned out to be the prince, “dressed in a skimpy T-shirt and jeans but very good shoes,” Mr. Botas said. The prince looked carefully at the villa’s 12 main rooms as servants lay prostrate or knelt on the ground ready to start the white Porsche and open the driver and passenger doors. Ultimately, Mr. Botas said, the prince bought the other villas. Bavaria offers the crown prince the privacy that he appears to crave. In Tutzing, the prince’s three-story villa is defended from prying eyes by a fence and hedge more than six feet tall. In Feldafing, few locals seem to know the prince, but neighbors said they heard parties around the private pool late into the night last summer. Occasional public appearances sometimes make news in the German and Austrian news media. The crown prince’s entourage, they reported, has visited a pumpkin farm, picked strawberries and toured parts of Bavaria on mountain bikes. In the Austrian ski resort of Zell am Ziller, the prince’s entourage in 2014 rented 70 rooms in a spa hotel and demanded the installation of a kitchen where the prince’s own cook prepared his food, according to an article in the Innsbruck newspaper Tiroler Tageszeitung. But for the most part, this community shelters its wealthy residents with discreet propriety. The deputy mayor of Tutzing, Elisabeth Dörrenberg, said only that her community of some 10,000 welcomed wealthy and prominent people, but said nothing specifically about the prince. The town does not show off its wealth; there is no five-star hotel or Michelin-starred restaurant. The mayor of Feldafing, Bernhard Sontheim, was equally reticent. The prince’s entourage showed up at his office in July, the mayor said, and spent half an hour chatting about generalities. The prince, he said, “is now a resident of Feldafing, he lives here and that is that.”


Without Tom Brady, New England Patriots Crash Back to Reality

Abstract: In New England’s final game without Tom Brady at quarterback, reality finally intruded on the Patriots’ dream start to the season. Jacoby Brissett played like a rookie, and every break seemed to go against New England, and they fell to the Buffalo Bills, 16-0, on Sunday. Coach Rex Ryan of the Bills was at his bombastic best during the week, and his defense delivered on his bluster, handing the Patriots the team’s first shutout at home since 1993 and erasing memories of Buffalo’s ugly 0-2 start to the season. Asked after the game how important getting Brady back next week will be for the Patriots, Rob Gronkowski paused for several seconds with a broad smile. “I don’t even have to answer that,” Gronkowski said. “Obviously it’s exciting to get Tom back.” It did not take long for the tone of the game to develop as Brissett, forced to play through a thumb injury because of a more severe shoulder injury to Jimmy Garoppolo, found Julian Edelman for what appeared to be a 90-yard catch-and-run on the game’s first play. It was not to be, as the play was called back because of a penalty. The Patriots then ran LeGarrette Blount into a wall three times before punting. The Bills responded to New England’s feeble start by reeling off a 12-play 65-yard drive that was a turn-back-the-clock moment for Buffalo’s quarterbacks coach, David Lee, who employed the wildcat formation to great effect, just like he did with the Miami Dolphins in a famous upset of the Patriots in 2008. After running back LeSean McCoy took a few direct snaps at quarterback on the drive, he lined up with quarterback Tyrod Taylor in the shotgun and Taylor found him for a 7-yard touchdown pass. It turned out to be the only time either team found the end zone. From that point on, the Patriots’ offense continued to sputter, totaling just 277 yards for the game, with Blount, who came into the game leading the N.F.L. in rushing, managing just 54 yards on 13 carries. The Bills did not muster much offense either, but the team’s defense made that irrelevant, holding strong and using the clock against New England. Brady, whose four-game suspension is now complete, will be eligible to return next week for a road game against the Cleveland Browns. With Jimmy Garoppolo injured, Brissett looking far less effective than last week, and no other quarterbacks on the roster, New England will be counting on Brady to hit the ground running.


BlackBerry Maker Forecasts Disappointing Profit

Abstract: The BlackBerry maker Research in Motion on Wednesday forecast profit at the low end of expectations because businesses are not buying its latest smartphone upgrades in the economic downturn. The shares fell more than 15 percent after the warning and recovered only slightly by the end of trading. The forecast overshadowed an unexpected jump in BlackBerry subscriptions. The company, which competes with Apple and Nokia, said net subscriber account additions were running 20 percent higher than the 2.9 million it forecast on Dec. 18. New smartphones like the touch-screen Storm or high-end Bold were attracting new sales, the company said, but existing customers, mainly businesses, were not upgrading as frequently as expected, crimping profit margins. Research in Motion said earnings per share would come in at the low end of its forecast range, and revenue would be at or near the midpoint. In December, the company forecast quarterly revenue of $3.3 billion to $3.5 billion, with earnings of 83 cents to 91 cents a share. Both were above Wall Street’s estimates at the time, and the stock surged.

Research in Motion Ltd
Company Reports
Blackberry (Handheld Device)


Phil Hughes Has Solid Outing, but Yankees Lose to Orioles in 10

Abstract: BALTIMORE — Phil Hughes confronted the fading memory of his last start by taking the mound Tuesday night at Camden Yards and throwing four straight fastballs. For much of his herky-jerky season, it had been a pitch with extreme results. Unhittable one start and uncontrollable the next, the Hughes fastball had been as fickle as a windblown paper airplane. It has been a painstaking quest for him to prove he can throw it and produce results. So he approached his start against the Baltimore Orioles hoping to regain his rhythm. And though he never felt completely comfortable in the Yankees’ 3-2 loss, especially coming out of his windup, he said he was encouraged that he was able to work through trouble. “Hopefully I can take some steps forward from this one,” Hughes said. The Orioles ended a six-game losing streak when Nate McLouth hit a game-winning homer off reliever Vidal Nuno in the 10th inning. It was a rare miscue from the Yankees’ bullpen. Nuno said he wanted to throw a cut fastball away from McLouth. It did not cut enough. “He took advantage,” Nuno said. Hughes gave the Yankees six strong innings. He allowed five hits and two runs, while striking out five. He made two mistakes, surrendering two solo home runs to Chris Dickerson. Hughes did not figure in the decision, but his effort was cause for optimism amid an otherwise disappointing night for the Yankees. “I’m encouraged,” Manager Joe Girardi said. “Hughesy’s run some pretty good streaks for us together. He hit a little rough spot. He’s come out of them before, so there was nothing that led me to believe he wouldn’t come out of it again.” Facing Seattle last Wednesday, Hughes could not escape the first inning . He gave up seven runs on six hits and two walks before Girardi removed him with two outs. Hughes threw 36 pitches, each with more disastrous consequences than the last. It was, he said, a humbling experience. On Tuesday, Hughes needed only 11 pitches to breeze his way through the first inning. It was clear from the beginning that Hughes wanted to lean on his fastball, though he said before the game that he would turn to his off-speed pitches if he was laboring with his location. Image Phil Hughes allowed five hits and two runs, while striking out five Orioles batters. Credit Nick Wass/Associated Press Command has been his biggest challenge this season, particularly early in games. Hughes tends to overthrow, which causes his mechanics to crumble like a sand castle. When that happens, his arm flies loose, outpacing the movement of his lower body, and he releases the ball sooner than he should. The end result is often a fastball that hangs high over the plate, as hittable as a piñata. Hughes described these pitches as “mistakes.” He made one in the third against Dickerson. He tried to get Dickerson to chase a two-strike slider, but Dickerson let the pitch pass for a ball. On the 10th pitch of the at-bat, Hughes uncorked a fastball that he left up over the outer half of the plate. Dickerson sent it over the wall in center. The damage could have been worse. Later in the inning, Adam Jones flied out to the warning track with two outs and two on. Center fielder Brett Gardner made the catch with about two feet to spare. Such was the razor-thin margin between a solid start for Hughes and a potentially disastrous one. “I got out of a few situations,” he said. Travis Hafner, the Yankees’ designated hitter, accounted for the team’s runs with two run-scoring singles off Baltimore starter Miguel Gonzalez. Aside from those miscues, though, Gonzalez sailed along and went seven innings. It is a rare occasion, Girardi said, when a pitcher has all his best stuff working. More often, he will need to make adjustments. Girardi cited the right-hander Hiroki Kuroda, who has a knack for surviving even when he loses the feel for his slider. In Hughes’s case, he might need to mix in more sliders and changeups when his fastball misbehaves. Girardi said he had no choice but to trust that Hughes would know when to alter his approach. “You can try to enforce it, but the enforcer is standing there with the baseball in his hand,” Girardi said, adding, “It falls upon his shoulders.” Hughes was not impenetrable — he allowed four leadoff hitters to reach base — but he persevered. The fifth inning featured Dickerson’s second homer, a comebacker off the bat of Manny Machado and an error on shortstop Jayson Nix, which left two runners on base with one out. Hughes avoided trouble by striking out Nick Markakis and inducing an inning-ending groundout by Jones. “That was an inning when I had to grind and battle out of a tough spot,” Hughes said. It was that sort of night for Hughes: good enough to give the Yankees a chance, even if it was one they squandered.


Police Believe Boy, 16, Killed Deliveryman

Abstract: A 16-year-old and two older teenagers were arrested on Friday on murder charges in the fatal shooting of a deliveryman on a desolate street on the north shore of Staten Island, the police said. The authorities said they believed the 16-year-old, James Sanders, was the one who shot the deliveryman, Richard Salvia, 50, in the head on Tuesday night in the Mariners Harbor neighborhood. The police said that the three had planned to rob Mr. Salvia but that after he was shot they apparently took nothing. The police found Mr. Salvia’s body near the trunk of his Chevrolet Impala, with bags of Chinese food strewed across the trunk and the pavement. He still had $136. Mr. Salvia had begun working as a deliveryman for a Chinese restaurant, Crown Palace, only a few days earlier. At the time of his death, he was carrying sesame chicken, soups, egg rolls and more to a dead-end street, Grandview Avenue, filling a $50 to $60 order placed by a male caller just before 8 p.m., according to a worker at the restaurant, which is in a strip mall on Forest Avenue. While deliverymen are often robbed, Mr. Salvia appears to be the first person in New York City in at least a decade to be murdered while making a food delivery, the police said. The three teenagers — Mr. Sanders, Otoniel Carty, 17, and Devin Hill, 19 — were all being held on Friday afternoon on charges of second-degree murder and attempted robbery, the police said. Mr. Sanders and Mr. Carty also face gun charges. All lived within a mile of the crime, according to the addresses provided by the police, but none of them resided on the block where Mr. Salvia stopped.

Murders
Staten Island
James Sanders
Richard Salvia
Otoniel Carty
Devin Hill


Paris’s Voiceless Find a Megaphone Online

Abstract: BONDY, France — They gather every Tuesday for a staff meeting, bloggers, journalists and young people from the impoverished Paris suburbs, at the offices of the Bondy Blog , named for the surrounding neighborhood. The subject of a recent meeting: how best to challenge the leader of the Socialist Party, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, during his appearance on a monthly talk show, “ The Bondy Blog Café.” “Like in every love story, there is disillusion,” Nordine Nabili, the publisher of the blog, told his rapt audience, crammed around a table in one of the offices last month. The Socialists received a large share of the vote in Bondy and in other banlieues, as the suburbs are known, in the 2012 elections that propelled the party’s candidate, President François Hollande, into office. But those suburban supporters, many of them immigrants, say they have little to show for it. “At this point, nobody here even cares if the National Front is elected,” one of the attendees said, referring to the far-right party. “They have lost hope in this government.” The blog, which was created during the riots that spread through France in 2005, gives a voice to groups often underrepresented in mainstream news media coverage. Self-described citizen journalism, the Bondy Blog regularly reports on politics and social issues, with many of the writers sharing scenes and moments from their lives at work or in the neighborhood. The blog, which has 220,000 visitors a month, has won awards for its work, and its journalists regularly collaborate with outlets like Télérama , Elle , Le Monde.fr , Canal Plus , L’ Obs and Radio France . Over the years, the blog has evolved into a rich source for scholars, journalists and activists interested in the banlieues, said Hisham D. Aidi, a Columbia University researcher and the author of “ Rebel Music ,” a study on Muslim youth politics in Europe and the United States that discusses the Bondy Blog. “The French establishment is a little uncomfortable with them,” Mr. Aidi said in an interview. “The American Embassy often consults and invites the journalists to come to the United States. It gives voices to banlieue residents. Most of the journalists are from the community, and of immigrant background. And now they will send a journalist to do a story on police brutality in the U.S., or if Muslims are better off in America.” While some in the establishment may be uncomfortable with the Bondy Blog, that has not stopped a procession of politicians from making the pilgrimage to its offices. “Politicians jostle to come here,” Mr. Nabili said with a smile after the prep session, standing in front of a board full of newspaper and magazine covers and clips that mention the blog. “We are over-quoted in the media, because there is a huge void in these neighborhoods to fill.” In 2005, riots broke out in the banlieues after two teenage boys, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré , were killed after running away from a police check. A journalist, Serge Michel, who worked for the Swiss magazine L’Hebdo (not related to Charlie Hebdo), decided to cover the riots from inside the banlieues. He set up in a makeshift office in Bondy, in northeastern Paris, and began following the story on a blog, which he handed over to local journalists after he left. While the blog’s contributors have been praised for their reporting, their greater purpose is to give voice to the voiceless, and they are not shy about expressing their opinions. Widad Ketfi, 30, one of the blog’s top writers, explained her approach as she covered the trial this year of the two police officers involved in the 2005 case. She readily admits that she was furious when the two officers were cleared of the charges , and made sure her coverage reflected that. “At the trial, I was so emotional and angry that I wasn’t a journalist anymore,” Ms. Ketfi said. “I can’t get used to the cynicism of other journalists. And that court decision was an insult to the people in the banlieues.” Ms. Ketfi, who has been writing for the blog since 2007, has graduated to working for mainstream news media like Canal Plus and M6 television . An influential voice in social media, she was also featured on the cover of Le Monde in 2010. She traveled to Gaza to cover the war there last summer for the Bondy Blog. She likes to describe herself as a “no-go zone” reporter, a reference to Fox News reporting early this year, inaccurately, that the French and British police avoided some predominantly Muslim neighborhoods because they were dangerous. “When I started writing for the Bondy Blog, I had a desire to change the way young people from the banlieues were portrayed in the media,” Ms. Ketfi said. “We live in these neighborhoods, so we have a different outlook and a better understanding and approach.” The daughter of Algerian immigrants — her father is active politically, but cannot vote — Ms. Ketfi went to journalism school after discovering a passion for reporting at the Bondy Blog. She is unapologetic about being an opinionated journalist. “Journalists take a side on matters, but don’t realize it,” she said. “For example, when they write ‘Je suis Charlie,’ ” she added, referring to the rallying cry heard after the terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo , “it is not a neutral stance, which is perfectly fine.” In January, the French left-leaning newspaper Libération began hosting the blog on its website. The blog’s reputation has reached across the Atlantic, and the actor Samuel L. Jackson paid it a visit in 2010. The organization even got Serena Williams, winner of the French Open last month, to give tennis lessons to local children. Islam is a major subject for the blog, though it does not consider itself a Muslim publication. “Islam is something that many journalists still don’t know well,” said Faiza Zerouala, whose parents are from North Africa. She also found her calling at the blog. “The Bondy Blog tries to remove the blinders that newsrooms continue to wear,” she added. “A whole section of society in the banlieues is ignored in France. Many topics like Islamophobia and racism are not discussed.” Ms. Zerouala wrote a book, “ The Voices Behind the Veil ,” in which she talks about the diversity of women who are not afraid to show they are different, and wear the head scarves known as hijabs to show their Muslim faith. “There is a majority discourse in France about women wearing a head scarf being submissive,” she said. “It is always the same analysis.” Ms. Ketfi does not wear a head scarf and has never felt like an outsider in France. But she believes the local news media stigmatizes Arabs and Muslims. “You feel attacked,” she said. “In newsrooms, reporters are careful not to say offensive things in front of me, but they have shown on several occasions that they have a bias against Muslims.” Mr. Nabili, who also teaches journalism, said he viewed his work at the blog as an investment in France’s next generation of journalists. With a state-funded budget of about $135,000 a year, he manages to pay contributors around $45 an article. Every year, about 18 students are selected for a prep course to apply to journalism schools. “The media are a mirror of what society is,” he said about the negative coverage of migrant communities. “Our success is to see girls or boys who arrive at 18, 19 and cannot even look at you in the eye, and see them today anchoring the evening news.”

France
Blog
Bondy Blog
News media,journalism
Paris France


New York Family Courts Open to Public, Officials Affirm

Abstract: New York’s top court officials issued new guidelines this week declaring that Family Courts across the state are open to the public, restating a rule issued 14 years ago but sometimes not followed by the courts themselves. “Courtrooms in the Family Court are open to the public,” A. Gail Prudenti, the state’s chief administrative judge, said in a memorandum on Monday. The memorandum reminded Family Court judges that, though they are permitted to exclude people from sensitive cases, they are required to justify any closing with findings “based upon supporting evidence.” The new guidelines follow an article in The New York Times last month that described court officials across New York City routinely barring entry to courtrooms, some of which were locked or had “do not enter” signs. Judge Prudenti said in an interview on Tuesday that administrative judges in the state had conducted an extensive review of Family Court policies over the last month, including reviewing signs that might have included misleading information. After The Times’s report, the state’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, directed the review. In the interview, Judge Prudenti said top court officials had been distressed to learn of problems with enforcement of the open-courts rule, announced in 1997 to increase accountability in the problem-plagued court. “The chief judge and I were deeply concerned that the rule was not being followed,” she said. Family courts, which include domestic violence, foster care and child neglect cases on their dockets, have been described for decades as overburdened, with too few judges and too many cases. Some Family Court judges have expressed annoyance at the recent attention. “We obviously do want the courtrooms open to the public, that goes without saying,” said Margaret Parisi-McGowan, a Queens judge who is the incoming president of the city Family Court Judges’ Association. Daniel Turbow, a Brooklyn judge who is the association’s current president, wrote in a letter published by The New York Law Journal last week that “the unique nature of those proceedings and the physical structure of the courtrooms themselves preclude entirely open entry” without court officers’ asking visitors whether they had a personal interest in a case. The new guidelines say that officers may ask “in a respectful manner” if a visitor has a personal interest in a case. If not, the guidelines say, “a person who wishes to observe the proceedings will be permitted to sit in the courtroom subject to the limitations of courtroom capacity.”

Family Courts
New York State
Prudenti A. Gail


AOL Posts Higher Revenue and Buys Company

Abstract: AOL, the online portal that owns The Huffington Post and Patch, reported on Wednesday second-quarter revenue of $541 million, up 2 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. In line with its ambitions to become a platform for live broadcasting and programming, the company also said that it had acquired Adap.tv, a video advertising company that allows purchases across the Internet and on television. The cost was $405 million. Under the terms of the deal, AOL will pay $322 million in cash and about $83 million in stock. That is more than the $315 million it paid for The Huffington Post two and a half years ago and thus is its biggest acquisition since becoming an independent company. Video, with its ability to command higher advertising rates, has been one of the biggest points of focus for Internet media companies for some time. AOL has been seeking to amass sources of video content as part of its bet that consumers will increasingly watch video online instead of on television. “AOL is a leader in online video, and the combination of AOL and Adap.tv will create the leading video platform in the industry,” Tim Armstrong, AOL’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. “The Adap.tv founders and team are on a mission to make advertising as easy as e-commerce, and the two companies together will aggressively pursue that vision.” AOL executives added in a phone interview that the acquisition was not as much about promoting their own content as it was about diversifying the company’s earnings into a revenue stream — the infrastructure for ad purchasing for online video — that it thinks has tremendous potential. In addition to the Adap.tv sale, AOL trumpeted the fact that its ad sales were up 5 percent. However, that growth was tepid compared to overall digital ad spending in the United States. That spending grew by 14.8 percent, to $10.01 billion, in the second quarter of 2013 compared with the same period last year, according to Emarketer, an online advertising research firm. Despite positive growth in advertising and traffic, up 3 percent year over year, the earnings revealed the company’s continued dependence on revenue from subscriptions to the AOL portal, a declining business. Looking at adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization, or income earned from regular operations, the membership business was a net positive at $151.6 million, but still down 4 percent year over year. Wall Street’s reaction was mixed, and AOL’s stock rose 1.4 percent, to $36.69 at the close of trading. Analysts were pleased that AOL seemed to be cutting losses. The brand groups, for example, cut losses from $15.2 million for the quarter a year earlier to $1.4 million this last quarter. Though losses increased in this area for AOL networks, Mr. Armstrong said that was because the company was in “investment mode.” But many worried about whether AOL paid too much for the Adap.tv purchase, which will be completed in September. Adap.tv, founded in 2007, counts Spark Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds among its investors.

AOL
Mergers and Acquisitions
Earnings Reports


Challenges Awaiting, Mukasey Takes Ceremonial Oath

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 — In taking a ceremonial oath of office as the 81st attorney general of the United States, Michael B. Mukasey made no reference at all Wednesday to the trouble he faces in assuming control of the Justice Department for the last 14 months of the Bush administration. He instead praised his new colleagues for the “great work that each of you, and all of you, were doing before I showed up here.” President Bush, in his own remarks at the ceremony, also said nothing about turmoil at the department, instead saluting Mr. Mukasey as an “outstanding lawyer and a fine leader” and saying he followed “in the footsteps of a fine man and a fine American, Al Gonzales.” But while Mr. Mukasey may not say so publicly, he has privately told his supporters on Capitol Hill and elsewhere that he is fully aware the department lost much of its credibility, both in legal circles and with the public, during Mr. Gonzales’s tenure. Mr. Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, is almost certain to be asked to make critical decisions soon on some of the most important legal issues facing the administration, including the harsh interrogation methods used on some terrorist prisoners. It was Mr. Mukasey’s unwillingness to answer some questions about those techniques that nearly derailed his nomination. He is also likely to be quickly faced with a decision about whether to prosecute employees of Blackwater, the security contractor that protects American diplomats in Iraq, over a September shooting in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqi civilians died. Government officials briefed on an F.B.I. investigation of the episode say 14 of the deaths were unjustified. Even more important to his stature within the department itself, he will need to address accusations that the department’s ranks and their work were politicized under Mr. Gonzales, with experienced United States attorneys replaced because they were insufficiently loyal to the administration and with prosecutions pursued on partisan grounds. Within hours of the swearing-in ceremony Wednesday, Justice Department officials met with lawyers for the Democratic governor of Puerto Rico, Aníbal Acevedo-Vilá, who charges that he has been improperly singled out in a federal corruption investigation on the island. On another issue, Mr. Mukasey and the director of national intelligence showed no signs Wednesday of veering from the administration’s stance in support of strong government wiretapping powers. In a letter to Congressional leaders, he and the director, Mike McConnell, voiced opposition to a proposal by Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, that would impose tougher safeguards on the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping abilities. They said they would urge the president to veto the proposal if Congress passed it. The administration favors an alternative plan, already approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee, that would give the agency broader wiretapping power and grant retroactive legal immunity to the phone carriers that took part in the agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants. For now, Mr. Mukasey will be forced to make important decisions without the benefit of Senate-confirmed deputies. The jobs of deputy attorney general, associate attorney general and several other top officials at the department are now filled by acting appointees, another legacy of Mr. Gonzales’s troubled tenure. In his remarks Wednesday, Mr. Bush acknowledged the vacancies and said he would announce nominees on Thursday to fill several of them. Mr. Mukasey was officially sworn in last Friday. If he is yet overwhelmed by his agenda, he gave no sign of it in the brief speech after his ceremonial swearing-in, conducted by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in the cavernous Great Hall of the department’s headquarters. “It’s great to be back,” said Mr. Mukasey, who first worked for the department as an assistant United States attorney in Manhattan in the 1970s. “Much has changed since 1972, when I took the same oath I took today to serve the United States attorney’s office,” he said. “There are laws on the books today that did not exist when I was sworn in then, and there are problems that confront us now that did not confront us then — mainly, but not entirely, involving the threat to our security from those who believe it is their religious duty to make war on us.” Addressing the 110,000 employees of the Justice Department, he said that “we do law, but the result is justice, and that is why our ultimate client, the people of this country, can and do rest secure in the knowledge that our unswerving allegiance is to the law.”

Wiretapping and Other Eavesdropping Devices and Methods


Argentine President to Seize Control of Oil Company

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner , announced on Monday that the government would seize a majority stake in YPF, the nation’s largest oil company. The expropriation would reassert state control over an important pillar of Argentina’s economy, but it has already increased diplomatic tensions with Spain and the European Union. Mrs. Kirchner quickly ousted Sebastián Eskenazi as YPF’s chief executive, naming two top aides, Julio de Vido and Axel Kicillof, to run the company. Under Mrs. Kirchner’s plan, which she announced on national television, Argentina’s government would take a 51 percent controlling stake in YPF, which is now majority-owned by a Spanish energy company, Repsol YPF. Of that new stake, Argentina’s central government would get 51 percent and the country’s provinces 49 percent. The plan is part of a bill submitted to Argentina’s Congress that is widely expected to be approved. The Spanish government repeated its earlier pledge to retaliate, though it did not specify how. Following an emergency cabinet meeting in Madrid on Monday evening, José Manuel García Margallo, the Spanish foreign minister, said that Madrid “condemned with the utmost energy” Argentina’s move, adding that it “broke the climate of cordiality and friendship that presided over relations between Spain and Argentina.” The European Union also criticized the plan. Repsol owns 57 percent of YPF and said Monday that it would study “all legal options available” to defend its interests and those of shareholders against a forced sale. It was not immediately clear how YPF’s shareholders, which include Argentina’s Eskenazi family, would be affected by the takeover. A tribunal would determine how much compensation that Repsol and other shareholders would receive for their YPF shares. YPF’s shares have fallen in recent days as investors considered the likelihood of a government takeover. Its stock plunged again on Monday after Mrs. Kirchner delivered her remarks and was down about 11 percent when trading was halted. The current stock-market value of the entire company is about $7.7 billion. Mrs. Kirchner said that the expropriation of YPF, a company founded by Argentina’s government in the 1920s and privatized in the 1990s, was a “recovery of sovereignty and control.” She said the move would allow Argentina to raise production, after the country recently became an energy importer. For months, the central government and provincial officials have pressured YPF to raise its investments in Argentine production. The government’s tactics had included revoking concessions for coveted fields. Antonio Brufau, the chief executive of Repsol, Spain’s largest company, had been trying for days to meet personally in Buenos Aires with Mrs. Kirchner but was rebuffed. Seizing YPF appears to be a popular move in Argentina, where caps on residential energy prices and a growing economy have helped push energy demand to new highs. Argentina’s oil production has declined in the last decade as regulatory uncertainty persisted over price caps and the policies over profit remittances. Many Argentines still resent the privatization of state-owned companies in the 1990s, so taking on YPF gives Mrs. Kirchner the opportunity to go after a symbol of that time. “This is Malvinas two,” said Federico Thomsen, an independent economist in Buenos Aires, referring to Argentina’s claims of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, which are controlled by Britain and called the Malvinas in Spanish. “Everything that was done in the 1990s is viewed with suspicion. For most people, it is easier to blame the decline in oil and gas production on YPF than on the government’s policies and low prices.” Mrs. Kirchner has already nationalized Argentine Airlines and pension funds, while also pressuring companies here to repatriate export proceeds in an effort to slow capital flight. Seizing control of YPF sends a new signal about Argentina’s policies toward foreign investment, especially in the energy sector. Huge discoveries of shale oil resources were made in the last year in Argentina. The French oil giant Total and the American companies Exxon Mobil and Apache are among those making investments in Argentine shale fields . Energy experts warned that the expropriation of YPF could curb the activities of companies seeking to replicate in Argentina the rapid increase in shale oil production that is happening in the United States. Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company in New York, said the perception of financial risk associated with Argentina had increased considerably after Mrs. Kirchner’s move to take over YPF, particularly in comparison with other countries where companies are pursuing shale deposits. “I worry less about Apache’s operations in Egypt than in Argentina,” Mr. Gheit said. “The oil industry in Argentina is just getting ready to take off, but this may be a way to kill it in its infancy.” The takeover of YPF in 1999 by Repsol, Spain’s former national oil company, helped turn Repsol into a sizable international player. While Repsol subsequently made investments in other emerging markets, it also sold part of its Brazilian business to Sinopec of China in 2010. Over all, YPF accounts for about two-fifths of Repsol’s estimated reserves of crude oil and one-third of the company’s profits. The tussle with Buenos Aires comes at a bad economic time for Repsol and Spain more broadly. The Madrid government is already desperately fighting to blunt the impact of Spain’s second recession in three years and it faces soaring borrowing costs amid investor concerns about whether Spain will be the next euro economy to require a bailout. Any attack on Repsol is also likely to raise alarm bells for Telefónica, the telecommunications operator, and other Spanish companies that have invested significantly in Argentina and rely on their Latin American assets to offset dwindling revenue at home. Beyond Spain’s concerns, analysts tried to gauge how the expropriation will affect private investment in general. Despite the move against YPF and more government intervention, Argentina still has a diversified market economy with far fewer nationalizations than in Venezuela, where authorities have also expropriated energy concerns. “You have to be clever to do business in Argentina,” said Federico MacDougall, an economist at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires. “It was hard to do business in Argentina before. Now it is even harder.” Still, the street-level appeal of the move by Mrs. Kirchner, who sailed to re-election last October, was clear. “This is a company that has been incredibly profitable and yet none of the profits have stayed in this country,” said Gustavo Vásquez, a 31-year-old metalworker in Buenos Aires. “Now they will.”

Argentina
Spain
Nationalization of Industry
YPF S.A
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Repsol YPF S.A
Kirchner Cristina Fernandez de
Economic Conditions and Trends


Ben Carson Finds Momentum in Provocative Remarks

Abstract: For a long time, Ben Carson ’s campaign team feared that his habit of inflammatory remarks would sink his presidential hopes. They sent him to media training in Texas. The candidate pledged to police his words. But ever since Mr. Carson said on Sept. 20 that he did not think a Muslim should be president, then refused to retract the statement amid a furious reaction, his campaign has watched grass-roots support grow and donations pour in — and advisers have backtracked, deciding, in the words of one, to “let Carson be Carson.” Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon seeking the Republican nomination, has seemed lately to be a candidate unbound. He has uttered remarks on policy and national events, some divisive and some seemingly uninformed, that have led commentators on the right as well as on the left to question his fitness for the presidency. And yet none of this has deterred elements of the Republican base, which in making 2015 the year of the political outsider see in Mr. Carson’s provocative comments a more palatable variation on the bombastic insults of Donald J. Trump. Both accuse critics of “political correctness.” Now Mr. Carson is edging up behind Mr. Trump in many polls, with Carly Fiorina, a third outsider candidate, close behind. The three candidates’ lack of governing experience is not a disqualification in the eyes of supporters, and is instead seen as their chief asset, particularly as Republicans in the House descend into disarray and many in the party view President Obama as an abject failure. In recent days, Mr. Carson seemed to blame the inaction of victims of the massacre at an Oregon community college for their own fate; sounded confused in an interview on public radio on whether there was any difference between the budget deficit and the national debt ; and linked the Holocaust to Nazi gun control , later calling an objection by the Anti-Defamation League “total foolishness.” “I respect Dr. Carson for his accomplishments in life, but he’s not prepared to be president of the United States,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the Republican Party of New Hampshire. “I don’t take his policy comments seriously.” Mr. Carson’s remarks two weeks ago about a Muslim president came in answer to a question on NBC’s “ Meet the Press ” about whether a president’s faith should matter. “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” he said. Who’s Winning the Presidential Campaign? History suggests that each party’s eventual nominee will emerge from 2015 in one of the top two or three positions, as measured by endorsements, fund-raising and polling. His campaign team cringed at the statement and advised him to retract it, said Armstrong Williams, Mr. Carson’s business manager and a top outside adviser. They feared the comment “could be a game changer for him, and not in a good way,” Mr. Williams said. But Mr. Carson refused, explaining to follow-up interviewers, who noted that the Constitution forbids religious tests for public office, that he meant a Muslim who followed “ Shariah law ” should not be president. “In the past, Dr. Carson was very sensitive to the people in his campaign,” Mr. Williams said. “He would listen to others and abandon sometimes what he feels deep down. But for the last two weeks he has said, ‘No.’ ” “He came alive” after the uproar over the Islam question, Mr. Williams said, and a poll for USA Today showed three out of four Republicans agreeing with him. Mr. Carson’s campaign manager, Barry Bennett, said he never suggested Mr. Carson retract his statement about a Muslim president. “The left is hyperventilating, thinking that somehow he thinks there is a prohibition on Muslims running,” he said. Over three days last week, Mr. Bennett added, small donors sent Mr. Carson $1 million in reaction to the criticism he was receiving, including his statements about the Oregon shooting. When asked how he would respond to a gunman demanding to know his religion, Mr. Carson said on Tuesday, “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.” Critics interpreted the remark as implying that the victims had not done enough to save themselves. Mr. Carson held his ground. “I’m laughing at them and their silliness,” he told Fox News, referring to his critics. Mr. Carson also refused to modify a subsequent statement last week about gun control under Hitler. “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” he told CNN. In response, the Anti-Defamation League issued a statement: “The notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate. The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.” “That’s total foolishness,” Mr. Carson said in reply on ABC’s “ Good Morning America ,” explaining that his point was that tyrants disarm the populace on the way to taking control. Mr. Carson has a history of comparing Nazi Germany and the United States , stirring appalled reactions. He has likened political correctness in America to the silence of Germans under the Nazis. Terry Giles, Mr. Carson’s former campaign chairman, acknowledged there were some words a politician should avoid. “Hitler and Nazi are two of them,” he said. Mr. Carson once seemed to agree. Before declaring his candidacy, he visited Texas for television coaching from Merrie Spaeth, a White House director of media relations in the Reagan administration. “I’ve come to recognize that when you use certain terms, people can no longer hear anything else you say,” he told The New York Times before his announcement in May. But now Mr. Carson seems to have cast off such constraints. As he has climbed in polls and drawn more scrutiny, some Republican leaders and right-leaning commentators increasingly doubt his qualifications — based less on his intemperate remarks than his vagueness about policy. In an interview with the public radio broadcast “ Marketplace ” last week, Mr. Carson sounded confused about the difference between budget deficits and the national debt. Asked if he favored lifting the debt ceiling when the Treasury runs out of borrowing authority next month, he said he “would provide the kind of leadership that says, ‘Get on the stick, guys, and stop messing around, and cut where you need to cut, because we’re not raising any spending limits, period.’ ” Leon H. Wolf, a contributor to the conservative news site RedState , wrote: “It is time to become concerned with the personal diligence of Ben Carson, with respect to the preparation he has put into running for president.” Mr. Giles, the former campaign chairman, said Mr. Carson understood the difference between the debt and the deficit. He suggested Mr. Carson was tired during the interview, in a week he did dozens to promote a book. Supporters of Mr. Carson often insist he could handle the presidency because he would surround himself with experts. “That is the problem we have now,” said Martha Johnston, a retired surgical nurse in Waterloo, Iowa, who wants a Trump-Carson ticket, or perhaps Trump-Fiorina. “There is no one in those administrative positions that is qualified to be doing the jobs they’re doing.” Van Miller, the founder of a company in Waterloo, told Senator Marco Rubio of Florida that he should run as Mr. Carson’s vice president. “I know you don’t like to hear that,” Mr. Miller said he told Mr. Rubio before a campaign rally on Oct. 1. “But that is the way to win the primary.”

Republicans
Islam
2016 Presidential Election
Ben Carson,Benjamin S. Carson
Holocaust and Nazis


Nissan and Chrysler to Make Vehicles for Each Other

Abstract: DETROIT — The Nissan Motor Company said Monday that it would make a new small car designed by a rival Chrysler and that Chrysler would make a full-size pickup truck designed by Nissan. Both products will be sold in North America, and the new Chrysler small car will also be sold in Europe and other global markets starting in 2010. The new Chrysler small car will be made at Nissan’s Oppama plant in Japan. Chrysler will make the pickup truck at its plant in Saltillo, Mexico, and it will go on sale in 2011, the companies said. To make room to build the Nissan pickup in Saltillo, Chrysler will shift production of its pickup trucks to plants in the United States, the companies said in a statement. “Forging the right tactical partnerships is critical to the long-term success of Chrysler,” the president and vice chairman Thomas W. LaSorda. said in the statement. Aaron Bragman, an analyst with the consulting company Global Insight, said the agreement did not necessarily mean Chrysler is headed for a full-fledged alliance with Nissan-Renault, although the two automakers are a good fit for Chrysler. “I think this is exactly the kind of thing that Chrysler needs to be doing to guarantee its future,” Mr. Bragman said. Analysts have said similar deals between two automakers allow each to play to their strengths and share the risk and capital costs of bringing products to market. The agreement is part of a growing relationship between Chrysler and Nissan. In January, the two companies announced a deal for Nissan supply versions of its Versa subcompact for Chrysler to sell in undisclosed parts of South America. No specific terms were announced. Under the deal, both the Chrysler small car built by Nissan and the pickup truck built by Chrysler will be unique designs. Chrysler has been desperate for a small car in North America as high fuel prices send consumers away from its trucks and sport utility vehicles to more fuel-efficient models.

Automobiles
Nissan Motor Co
Chrysler LLC


Arrested After His Vulgar Response to Traffic Ticket, Man Files Suit

Abstract: It is often said that liberty comes at a price. For Willian Barboza, it was speeding in the Village of Liberty in upstate New York that carried a hefty cost. But when Mr. Barboza expressed his frustration by sending a profanity-laced message when he mailed in the payment for his traffic ticket, the cost would grow to include his own personal liberty — at least for a few hours. In a pique of anger, Mr. Barboza, 22, crossed out the town’s name, “Liberty,” and replaced it with one he thought more appropriate: “Tyranny.” He then added a vulgar little note that made it clear what he thought of the town. Upon receiving the missive, Justice Brian P. Rourke informed Mr. Barboza that his payment had been rejected and that he would be ordered to appear in court in Liberty, two hours from his home in Connecticut. At the hearing, on Oct. 18, 2012, Mr. Barboza received a lecture from the judge about using foul language, according to court documents, before being arrested, charged with “aggravated harassment” and handcuffed to a bench in the police station. Mr. Barboza was booked, fingerprinted and eventually released on $200 bail after four or five hours. The charges ended up being dismissed several months later by another judge (the original judge had recused himself from the case), but for the New York Civil Liberties Union , the episode is emblematic of a broader issue: how law enforcement officials can use a state statute in ways that may violate a person’s right to free speech. On Thursday, the organization and another law firm, Bergstein & Ullrich, filed a suit on behalf of Mr. Barboza in federal court in the hopes of getting the statute struck from the books. The statute, in part, says that people are guilty of aggravated harassment when they act “with intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm” someone else by communicating “anonymously or otherwise, by telephone, by telegraph, or by mail, or by transmitting or delivering any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm.” Mr. Barboza is seeking unspecified damages for the time that he devoted to legal proceedings on Oct. 18 and in other related court appearances. Officials in Liberty said they had not been served with any court documents, and law enforcement officials also said they were unaware of any lawsuit. “Not liking someone’s speech isn’t a reason to arrest them,” Stephen Bergstein of Bergstein & Ullrich, the lead counsel on the case, said in a statement. “You cannot be arrested and prosecuted for writing a note of displeasure on a traffic ticket. As long as you are not threatening anyone, public officials have to put up with offensive language.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Serena Williams Tops Jankovic to Reach Semifinals

Abstract: Serena Williams advanced to the semifinals of the Western & Southern Open in Mason, Ohio, a tournament she has never won. She needed only 58 minutes to beat Jelena Jankovic, 6-1, 6-3. In the men’s bracket, Julien Benneteau upset the Australian Open winner, third-seeded Stan Wawrinka, 1-6, 6-1, 6-2. Second-seeded Roger Federer beat eighth-seeded Andy Murray, 6-3, 7-5. ■ Israel’s Davis Cup match with Argentina next month has been moved to Sunrise, Fla., because of the conflict in Gaza. ■ Juan Martín del Potro, the winner of the 2009 United States Open, pulled out of this year’s event because he is still recovering from wrist surgery.


What Counts at the Box Office Is the Buzz

Abstract: The amount of Internet buzz a movie generates is a strong predictor of its box-office take. But it hardly matters whether that buzz is good or bad, according to a study by Yong Liu, an assistant professor of marketing at the Eller College of Business at the University of Arizona. The study, published in the July issue of Journal of Marketing, examines 12,136 messages posted to the Yahoo Movies message board during the summer of 2002, praising or panning movies like “Scooby-Doo” and “xXx.” Dr. Liu found that movies that generated many messages in a given week tended to have high box-office receipts the week after, and movies with much prerelease buzz did well over all. But whether most posters liked or hated the movies had little effect on the box office. “Word of mouth mainly influences people by affecting their awareness, not their attitude,” Dr. Liu said. “You could tell me it’s a good movie, but I know we are very different people, and a movie you liked would not be a movie I like.”

Computers and the Internet
Motion Pictures


Officials Confirm Norovirus in a Chipotle Outbreak

Abstract: Over 120 Boston College students have fallen ill and public health officials said Wednesday that norovirus was found at a Chipotle restaurant at the center of the outbreak. The Boston Public Health Commission said lab testing confirmed the presence of the gastrointestinal illness, which causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, at the Chipotle restaurant in the city’s Cleveland Circle neighborhood, near the Boston College campus. The restaurant remains closed. A spokesman for Chipotle said the illnesses were most likely isolated and not related to the E. coli cases that have turned up in the company’s restaurants in nine states.

Norovirus
Boston
Boston College
Restaurant
Food Safety
Chipotle Mexican Grill


Two, Deux, Dos: Heavily Used Words Evolve More Slowly

Abstract: Languages evolve just as species do, and just as with organisms, the rate of evolution is hardly uniform. Some words evolve rapidly, with a result that there are many different word forms, what linguists call cognates, for meanings across languages. “Bird,” for example, takes many disparate forms across other Indo-European languages: oiseau in French, vogel in German and so on. But other words, like the word for the number after one, have hardly evolved at all: two, deux (French) and dos (Spanish) are very similar, derived from the same ancestral sound. “If you study evolution, you immediately ask why is that the case?” said Mark Pagel, a professor at the University of Reading in England. Now he and colleagues Quentin D. Atkinson and Andrew Meade have come up with a mechanism to answer that question. Put simply, the more a word is used, the less it evolves. In their research, described in Nature, they first looked at 200 word meanings across 87 Indo-European languages and determined how many cognates each had. That enabled them to develop estimates of how rapidly the words were evolving, Dr. Pagel said. Then they analyzed spoken- and written-word databases in four of those languages: English, Spanish, Russian and Greek. The English database, for example, has 100 million words of spoken English. They looked to see how frequently the words from the first part of their research were used. “What we found, to our great delight, is that at least for those four very disparate languages, correlation between the frequencies is very high,” Dr. Pagel said. Words that were frequently used had few cognates across the Indo-European family, while words that were used rarely had many. As to how frequency of word use would affect evolution, Dr. Pagel said a possibility is that if errors are made in speaking common words, they may tend to be corrected, precisely because they are so common and so important for communication. Rarely used words may not necessarily be corrected, however, because they are infrequently heard. “That allows you to develop a stronger linkage to the mutant form, and you are likely to express it again,” he said. And as with living things, Dr. Pagel added, that kind of variation “is the raw stuff that evolution acts on.”

Evolution
University of Reading
Language and Languages


In Defiance on Gay Marriage, Alabama Sets Itself Far Apart

Abstract: BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — On Sunday night, Blake Guinn, a 21-year-old city councilman in a deeply conservative suburb here, looked on Facebook and learned that, once again, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the State Supreme Court had defied a federal court in the name of state sovereignty. Somehow, it did not seem entirely unexpected. “I support states’ rights, too,” said Mr. Guinn, a self-described Christian conservative who voted for Chief Justice Moore in 2012. “But I just feel like time and time again we pick the wrong and losing battles.” Alabama is a conservative state where more than a third of the residents are evangelical Protestants, seven out of 10 oppose same-sex marriage — including blacks and whites alike — and the state motto is a bellicose “We Dare Defend Our Rights.” Alabama is not unique among states in strongly opposing same-sex marriage, and it is not alone in bristling under a federal court order that goes against a substantial popular majority. It is, however, the only state where probate judges who would issue same-sex marriage licenses were instructed not to comply with a federal court order. “In terms of what’s been going on in marriage equality in the past 18 months, this is really the only type of defiance of its kind,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign. Tracking Where Same-Sex Marriage Is Being Refused Counties where probate judges are declining to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Alabama, according to Freedom to Marry. Such brazen and often futile campaigns are practically hard-wired into the state’s character. Long after George Wallace’s stand against integration in the schoolhouse door, to which Chief Justice Moore’s stance has been inevitably compared, the state’s record of taking on the federal government in long-shot battles has continued to set it apart even from its conservative neighbors. In the 1990s, Gov. Fob James argued that the Bill of Rights did not apply to states. In 2003, Chief Justice Moore was removed from his first term for refusing to take down a two-ton monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state judicial building. And in 2011, the State Legislature passed a sweeping immigration enforcement law, much of which was later blocked in court for encroaching on federal turf. “It’s like our oxygen is defiance and our identity is aggrievement,” said Diane McWhorter, an Alabama native and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book about civil rights-era Birmingham, “Carry Me Home.” While saying that Chief Justice Moore and Wallace were “on the wrong side of history,” Ms. McWhorter also said their losing battles brought to mind one of the icons of Alabama literature, the proto-civil rights lawyer Atticus Finch, who unsuccessfully, and unpopularly, defended a black man in a small-town trial. “What they have in common is their heroism is bound up in the futility of their cause,” she said. This often pugnacious insistence on state sovereignty is a point of pride; in 2012, the speaker of the state’s House of Representatives appointed a Commission on the Protection of Alabama Values and States Rights. But it also carries a burdensome legacy, forcing some state leaders into a tightrope act. In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Gov. Robert Bentley said he disagreed with the federal order but insisted that defiance was inappropriate, particularly around the coming anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery. “I don’t want Alabama to be seen as it was 50 years ago when a federal law was defied,” he said. “I’m trying to move this state forward.” Image James Strawser, left, and John Humphrey waited Tuesday at the Probate Court in Mobile, Ala. For a second day in a row, the court was closed, and it was not issuing any same-sex marriage licenses. Credit Jeff Haller for The New York Times Alabama has moved a long way in 50 years. German, Korean and Japanese auto plants are part of the landscape, a large Airbus jetliner production facility is set to open in Mobile this year, and Birmingham has become a destination in the highly competitive field of new Southern cuisine. The monolith of public opinion that once characterized the white establishment is neither as white nor as monolithic: Rather than the old ways of retrenchment, the recent court rulings have sparked a lively debate here on talk radio, in the newspapers and over Facebook. And Alabama, like the nation, has its own divide between culturally diverse cities like this one and more conservative and rural areas. Some see progress in the state’s willingness to acknowledge the past. Last week a historical marker honoring Fred Gray, a civil rights lawyer whose clients included Rosa Parks and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was unveiled in view of the Alabama Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Moore presides. “It lists all these cases against the state of Alabama, all of which the state lost,” Mr. Gray said. “The State Department of Tourism is one of the ones who sponsored the plaque.” Losing is part of the point, however, said Dan T. Carter, the author of a book on Wallace called “The Politics of Rage.” “George Wallace knew he was going to lose, too,” he said. “But for political reasons it was important to emphasize that you were resisting to the end.” He added:. “That is this kind of cultural tradition. It is part of this white Southern mystique — you lost the Civil War, but you went down fighting.” Chief Justice Moore has dismissed comparisons between him and figures like Wallace, arguing that his emphatic defense of state sovereignty should not be stained by its misuse in the past. Image Alabama’s record of taking on the federal government includes the stand against integration by George Wallace, right, in 1963. Credit Associated Press “From a moral perspective I have no hesitancy to argue states’ rights,” he said in an interview on Monday. “Indeed Alabama and any other state that prohibited racial equality was wrong. And if they prohibited such, what they did was wrong. But that is not a disclaimer over states’ rights.” While his recent actions may elicit cringes among the economic development crowd and the business community, his views on same-sex marriage and federal overreach are widely echoed across the state. “Two girls and two guys together in a relationship?” asked Junior Day, who was a few blocks from the Mobile County Courthouse on Tuesday afternoon. “It needs to be protested. Where are the people protesting this?” Mr. Day’s friend, who declined to give his name, saw it as forced intrusion. “It’s not moral, and it’s not fair to shove this down the people of Alabama’s throats,” he said. Both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage agree that Chief Justice Moore’s efforts to forestall the federal order would likely be temporary and gain little in the end. But there is a longstanding tradition here of going down swinging. “We have grown up with that psyche here in Alabama,” said Mark Kennedy, a former State Supreme Court justice who is married to George Wallace’s daughter. “It’s all about fighting. That’s why we’re so crazy about college football.”

Alabama
Federalism
Civil Rights
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Roy S Moore
George Wallace Jr


With Romance on Upswing, Patrick Looks for Racing to Follow

Abstract: CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Danica Patrick traditionally winds down each season with a series of interviews designed to reflect on the last year and look ahead at what is next. She deliberately left something out of her 2012 exit interviews, waiting until two days after the season ended to announce she was divorcing her husband of seven years. So as she relaxed last month at Homestead-Miami Speedway, in a motor home parked near the bus of her boyfriend, the driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr., it was imperative to get the important stuff out of the way first: Was she planning any bombshell announcements in the next week? Pregnant? Engaged? “Pregnant? No. I can promise you not,” Patrick said, laughing. “The other one? I don’t know. I’m the girl. It could be never, it could be tomorrow.” Patrick, who disclosed two months after announcing her divorce that she and Stenhouse were dating, is open to getting married again. “I would absolutely,” she said, adding, “Should we go get Ricky and you can ask him yourself?” This is the new Danica Patrick, who for most of her career has been viewed as guarded, even cold. She was light and playful as the sometimes scantily clad “GoDaddy Girl” in all those Super Bowl commercials, but she was strictly business at the racetrack, where she has struggled to put together results to match the hype. Patrick spent five seasons driving for Michael Andretti in the IndyCar Series, her superstar status exploding far beyond the world of open-wheel racing. She began dabbling in Nascar in 2010, and left Andretti behind when she made the full-time jump to stock cars in 2012. She became the first woman to win the pole at the Daytona 500 earlier this year. Patrick has become more grounded in her two years in Nascar. She credits Stenhouse, a Mississippi native who had never been to New York before he began dating Patrick, with contributing to her transformation. Asked how Stenhouse has changed her, she flips rapidly through her phone showing pictures of the couple at country music concerts. She watches dirt track racing, goes to Professional Bull Riders events and has taken up golf. “I’d say I have a lot more fun doing a lot of different things,” Patrick said. “There’s a lot more things that I’ve tried for the first time this year and I’m open to doing, whether it’s going skeet shooting or learning how to play golf. The fun we’ve had having our families here on the weekend, just having everybody stay on the buses and be with us. It’s just been a great year.” And that goes for the track, too, regardless of what the statistics show. Patrick finished 27th in the final Sprint Cup standings and lost the rookie battle to Stenhouse, who finished 19th. Although she completed 94.2 percent of the laps, she finished on the lead lap in only 12 of 36 races. It was not the season anyone hoped for, particularly after Patrick became the first woman to lead laps in the Daytona 500. She wound up eighth when she failed to anticipate Jimmie Johnson’s race-winning move and could not stop Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s late-race jockeying for position. Although she is hard on herself, the team co-owner Tony Stewart believes Patrick did just fine this season. “I see room for improvement, but I see a lot of potential,” he said, praising her attention to details, preparation, focus and communication with her crew. “I think she realizes to a certain degree she took a big bite doing this as early as she did, and I think everybody’s judging of her, grading of her, I think you have to look at how much time she’s really had in a stock car.” Patrick had just 10 Sprint Cup starts before this season, and 58 starts in the Nationwide Series, where the cars are heavier but have less horsepower. Stewart has seen that Patrick lacks confidence at the start of each race, and often needs to wait for her GoDaddy team to make adjustments to her No. 10 Chevrolet to get comfortable. “I’m not sure if she’s so used to IndyCar and how it is, I think she struggles finding and knowing what to do to work around the problem,” Stewart said. “As soon as they get it close for her, the pace comes up. But at the beginning, when everybody’s cars aren’t driving well, we have to figure out how to get her more comfortable wrestling the car.” Patrick knows exactly where and when she struggles, and blames inexperience. “When you need to get to the very limit of the car, especially when things are challenging, is when it shows up,” she said. “Like first laps of practice, or qualifying, restarts, start of a green flag run — all the things when you are testing the limit and having to be confident and know the limits. I don’t know them yet, and I’m not confident. When the car is right, it’s all good, I will gain spots. There is a big contrast in those moments.” She is judged harshly by fans who look at her numbers, or see her running at the back of the field, and scoff at her presence in the Sprint Cup Series. They argue she is with Stewart-Haas Racing only because the sponsor GoDaddy pays her tab, and she has not earned the right to race alongside her teammates Stewart, Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch in 2014. “She doesn’t read the comments at all,” Stenhouse said. “She’s pretty hard on herself, she doesn’t need to read it from anyone else.” Happier than she has ever been, personally and professionally, Patrick will travel to Las Vegas for the season-ending awards banquet, where she will play a supporting role as Stenhouse collects his rookie of the year title. The competitor in her is not thrilled, and Patrick feigned a halfhearted cheer. “I’m just kidding, babe,” she said, smiling at Stenhouse. “I’m extremely happy for you. You had to beat me.”

Danica Patrick
Sprint Cup Series
Car Racing


Assad Makes Unannounced Trip to Moscow to Discuss Syria With Putin

Abstract: MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called his Syrian counterpart, Bashar al-Assad, to Moscow for an unannounced visit to discuss their joint military campaign and a political transition in Syria, the Kremlin announced on Wednesday. According to a transcript posted on the Kremlin’s website , Mr. Putin met Mr. Assad late Tuesday and told him that Russia was ready to contribute not only to the fight against terrorism but also to a political settlement of the conflict that has raged for more than four years. Mr. Assad, in turn, briefed the Russian leader about the situation on the ground and on next steps. The surprise visit — evidently Mr. Assad’s first trip outside Syria since the civil war began there in 2011 — highlighted how the political and military horizon of the long war of attrition has shifted drastically because of Russia’s intervention. In the brief remarks released by the Kremlin, Mr. Putin told Mr. Assad that the military and political issues were linked. “On the question of a settlement in Syria, our position is that positive results in military operations will lay the basis for then working out a long-term settlement, based on a political process that involves all political forces, ethnic and religious groups,” Mr. Putin said. “Ultimately, it is the Syrian people alone who must have the deciding voice here.” Untangling the Overlapping Conflicts in the Syrian War What started as a popular uprising against the Syrian government four years ago has become a proto-world war with nearly a dozen countries embroiled in two overlapping conflicts. In his response, Mr. Assad said that Russian intervention had halted the spread of terrorism and that a political transition could come after that threat was addressed. “If it were not for your actions and decisions, the terrorism that is spreading through the region now would have made even greater gains and spread to even wider territories,” Mr. Assad said, according to the Kremlin transcript. “We all know that any military action must be followed by political steps,” Mr. Assad said, calling the threat from terrorism a “real obstacle” to any political settlement. A summary of the discussion, also carried by the official Syrian news agency , said Mr. Assad had demanded that the United States and regional players like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar halt support for his opponents. “Of course, the whole nation wants to participate in deciding the destiny of their state, not only the ruling party,” Mr. Assad said. Dmitry S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, would not comment on whether the two men broached the topic of Mr. Assad’s future during the talks, which Mr. Peskov described as “lengthy.” Video Russia’s intervention in Syria is partly strategic, but President Vladimir V. Putin has another reason, a long-held belief, for supporting the Syrian president’s government. Credit Credit Regis Duvignau/Reuters The most obvious focus of the talks was “the fight against terrorist and extremist groups, issues of the continuation of the Russian operation supporting the offensive of the Syrian military,” Mr. Peskov said. Just a day earlier, Turkey, one of Mr. Assad’s most implacable critics, said it would accept the Syrian leader’s staying in office for the first six months of a political transition , although the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, told reporters Wednesday that Turkey’s insistence that Mr. Assad must go had not changed. The United States and its regional allies, as well as central factions of the Syrian opposition in exile, reject the idea of a significant role for Mr. Assad in any transition. Those differences have stymied international efforts to negotiate a political settlement. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, is scheduled to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry, along with the foreign ministers of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, in Vienna on Friday for talks focused on Syria, the Russian foreign ministry announced. Aside from the obvious issues of mutual concern given the current military alliance of Russia and Syria, the meeting between Mr. Assad and Mr. Putin was another chance to emphasize Russia’s re-emergence as a crucial player in the Middle East. Part of the inspiration for Russian interference in Syria was to break out of the isolation imposed on Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine. In the remarks posted on the Kremlin website, Mr. Putin highlighted the fact that he was the one who called the meeting and that Russia wanted to be involved in the military and political goals. “Despite the dramatic situation in your country, you have responded to our request and come here to Russia, and we thank you for this,” Mr. Putin said. He added, “We are ready to make our contribution not only to the military operations and the fight against terrorism, but also to the political process.” He said Russia would do this in coordination with other global powers. The lack of enthusiasm from Washington to Russia’s initiatives on Syria has been a disappointment to the Kremlin, and the meeting with Mr. Assad might put new pressure on the Obama administration to engage. Russia expressed displeasure on Tuesday that an agreement signed between the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defense earlier in the day had not gone further in forging cooperation in Syria. Mr. Assad has not made any public visits abroad since the uprising began in March 2011, with diplomats long speculating that, if he left, those around him might overthrow him. But the new Russian support, including this high-profile meeting in Moscow, has clearly given him extra clout and a new political lease on life. “He’ll return to Damascus temporarily reinforced by the Russian military and publicly expressed political support,” said a Western diplomat in the Middle East, who spoke on the condition of anonymity according to the rules of his ministry. Mr. Putin has also made a habit of staking out policy positions or taking other actions that appear to contradict or at least supplant his previous statements. He was playing down the chance of military action in the days before his air force started bombing in Syria on Sept. 30. Paris Attacks Intensify Debate Over How Many Syrian Refugees to Allow Into the U.S. A growing number of governors said they oppose the entry of Syrian refugees into their states. He and other Russian officials have also repeatedly said that they are not married to the idea of Mr. Assad as leader of Syria. But the meeting gave Mr. Assad a certain endorsement, and it also pointed to Russia as the crucial player in any future political transition in Syria. Analysts say they believe that Russia hopes to shore up Mr. Assad’s power over key parts of central Syria and then push the fight against Islamic State strongholds in the West. Russia and Syria tend to group the armed opposition organizations, including both the Islamic State and rebels backed by the West, as Islamic terrorists. Mr. Putin repeated his previous statements that at least 4,000 men from Russia and the former Soviet republics who have gone to Syria to fight for the Islamic State represent a real danger should they come home. That argument has fueled the popularity of the war at home. He has also sought to use Syria to burnish Russia’s credentials as a global power and his own as a central figure in solving international problems. During the visit, senior Russian officials joined Mr. Putin and Mr. Assad for dinner including the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu; the prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev; and Mr. Lavrov, the foreign minister. The Moscow meeting was the first encounter between the two presidents since Russian forces began airstrikes in Syria , and it is believed to be their first meeting since 2007. Diplomats have said previously that there was little warmth or chemistry between the two men. Although the air campaign has been publicly portrayed as an effort to turn back Islamic State militants, the main targets thus far have been the opposition units that most directly threaten Mr. Assad. Under the cover provided by about 50 Russian military aircraft, the Syrian armed forces, along with fighters from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, have been pressing a ground offensive in and around important central cities, including Aleppo.

Moscow
Syria
Bashar al-Assad
Military
Vladimir Putin


Pakistan Releases Video of Indian Officer, Saying He’s a Spy

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Civilian and military leaders in Pakistan accused India on Tuesday of sponsoring and orchestrating terrorism and separatist movements, presenting what they said was clear evidence: a video confession. Pakistani officials say they arrested Kulbhushan Yadav, an officer in the Indian Navy, this month in Baluchistan, a mineral-rich province in southwestern Pakistan where an insurgency has simmered for years. Officials in Pakistan have accused India of fanning separatist sentiment there. The information minister in Pakistan, Pervaiz Rasheed, and Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, the military spokesman, released a six-minute video of Mr. Yadav at a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, the capital. “It is very rare that a country’s intelligence officer is caught in another country,” Lt. Gen. Bajwa told reporters. “It is a big achievement.” Video In a rare move, India has allowed a team of Pakistani investigators to look into an attack at an air base in Pathankot, India. Credit Credit Jaipal Singh/European Pressphoto Agency The timing of the release of the video on Tuesday was notable. It came on the same day that a Pakistani team of investigators was visiting Pathankot in India, the site of a terrorist attack in January that India says was the work of gunmen from Pakistan. Referring to the video, General Bajwa said, “There can be no clearer evidence of Indian interference in Pakistan,” and added that Mr. Yadav’s activities were “nothing short of state-sponsored terrorism.” In the video , Mr. Yadav appears relaxed as he acknowledges carrying out a long list of operations in Baluchistan and in Karachi, the major southern port. Mr. Yadav is heard to say that he is a naval officer, with six years to go before retirement, and that he was enlisted in 2013 to join RAW, the Indian intelligence agency. Since then, he said, he has been involved in a variety of activities meant to destabilize Pakistan. India has denied that Mr. Yadav is an intelligence operative. General Bajwa said Mr. Yadav told the Pakistanis to use a code phrase in communicating with the Indian authorities, to demonstrate to them who it was that they had captured. The phrase, the general said, was “Your monkey is with us.”

Pakistan
India
Military
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


China’s New Requirement for U.S. Tech Companies

Abstract: China has shown time and again the power it can wield over American technology companies. Facebook is blocked in the country, as is Twitter. Microsoft and Qualcomm have faced investigations by Chinese authorities. Numerous other companies have tried to crack the vast market and failed. Now add another tool that China is using that demonstrates its clout over foreign tech companies: technology reviews. Chinese officials have quietly begun conducting reviews of tech products sold in China by companies such as Apple, write Paul Mozur and Jane Perlez. The reviews, which require company executives or employees to appear in person, involve consumer software and mainstream devices and looking at the products’ encryption or data storage. The reviews have been undisclosed and unconfirmed until now, write Mr. Mozur and Ms. Perlez. The meetings are set to raise questions about the amount of information that foreign tech companies must give up to do business in China, and what — if anything — is done with the information obtained during the reviews. More broadly, it is another indication of how China is going its own way with its approach to the tech industry. The country has essentially carved out its own Internet through the Great Firewall, a system of technological controls that has created what some call a parallel online world. And it is building up its own muscular tech companies to reduce reliance on foreign companies, like semiconductor makers, providers of networking equipment and e-commerce and messaging giants.

China
Tech Industry
Computers and the Internet
Computer security


Robert Griffin III Impresses With Speed at N.F.L. Combine

Abstract: INDIANAPOLIS — Andrew Luck of Stanford is considered the best N.F.L. quarterback prospect since John Elway, and is expected to be drafted by the Indianapolis Colts with the first overall pick in April. But Baylor’s Robert Griffin III might have solidified his spot at No. 2 — and improved the St. Louis Rams’ leverage in trade talks for their second overall pick — when he ran the 40-yard dash Sunday morning in a scorching 4.41 seconds. For comparison, Carolina quarterback Cam Newton, who terrorized defenses as a rookie with his ability to run and pass (and who is three inches taller than Griffin), ran the 40 in 4.6 seconds. That is about what Luck, who is 6 feet 4 inches and 234 pounds, clocked when he ran the 40 in 4.67 seconds. And Tim Tebow, a running quarterback who lifted Denver to a division title last season, ran it in 4.72. Griffin, like Luck, did not throw during Sunday’s quarterback workouts, preferring to wait for his pro day. That will not damage his stock. While Luck is considered the more complete, N.F.L.-ready prospect — Stanford ran a pro-style offense — scouts think Griffin throws deep passes better. Considering the number of quarterback-desperate teams, St. Louis, which has already made clear it is open to trading the No. 2 pick, should have plenty of suitors, including Washington, Cleveland and perhaps Miami. Times in the 40-yard dash are of minimal value in evaluating quarterbacks. Coaches are more concerned with a quarterback’s ability to throw accurately and manage an offense — Tom Brady is so slow that his father once joked he was clocked by sundial — but Griffin’s time was so blazing that many receivers and defensive backs in the draft would be thrilled to post it. Except, maybe, for Georgia Tech receiver Stephen Hill. He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.3, a staggering time for a 6-4, 215-pound player. Hill’s next task will be convincing teams that he has receiving skills to go with his size and speed. Georgia Tech runs the option, and Hill caught just 49 passes in college. But he performed well in a receiver drill called the gantlet, which requires a player to run across the field while catching passes that are fired at him from two directions, then to cut near the sideline to run up the field.

Football
National Football League
Griffin Robert
Luck Andrew
Draft and Recruitment (Sports)
Griffin Robert III