Tae Hea Nahm of Storm Ventures: A Believer and a Skeptic in One

Abstract: This interview with Tae Hea Nahm , managing director of the venture capital firm Storm Ventures , was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. What were some early influences for you? A. I was born in South Korea, and we immigrated to St. Louis when I was 5 years old. In the beginning, it was all about learning how to get acclimated to life in the United States. I remember starting kindergarten not being able to speak English. I felt like I was going to flunk kindergarten, but somehow survived. Tell me about your parents. My father was a medical school professor in Korea and became a doctor here in the United States. My mother was very hard-driving. If I got 99 on a test, the first question was, “Why didn’t you get 100?” If I got 100, the next question was, “Can you do it again?” That pressure can be hard on some people. I wasn’t happy about it, but once I went to college and met other Korean students like myself, I realized we were all sort of trained the same way — almost like thoroughbreds to run races. After a while I just learned to accept it for what it is. It’s not a question of good or bad; it’s how we got trained. But I almost felt like I had a second set of parents because my brother and sister are 12 and 14 years older than I am. My sister is an architect, and very artistic. My brother is as logical as you can be, and he became a medical school professor. I remember listening to a lot of family debates where it was almost like two ships passing in the night because there wasn’t a fundamental basis of communication. Their perspectives were so different. That taught me the importance of really trying to understand others and their motivations, because so much depends on their backgrounds and their perspectives in terms of how they’re going to make decisions. Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do for a career when you went to college? I was an applied math major. I really like modeling and trying to understand and predict things. As you might expect, given my father’s and brother’s careers, there was tremendous pressure to follow in their footsteps. But I wanted to be different. I actually wanted to program and then go to business school, and we ended up compromising on law school, and that’s how I ended up in law school. For a Korean family, law is a profession that is close to medicine. My friends were all shocked that I went to law school because I was so hard-core about math and science. It worked out fine because I felt comfortable with technology and wanted to work with companies. I ended up joining a law firm in Silicon Valley, and over many years, I worked with several hundred start-ups. Then you decided to become a venture capitalist. What did you learn from the transition? After we started Storm Ventures, we incubated a company, and I was the founding C.E.O. I hired the first 24 employees. As C.E.O., I learned firsthand what an emotional roller coaster it is to run a company. You can feel so high and so low in the space of a single day. Now, when I work with start-up C.E.O.s and they tell me life is so great, I figure it’s never that great, and when they tell me it’s so bad, it’s never so bad. The other thing I learned as C.E.O. is that it’s very lonely. If you share all the doubts and fears with people, then people sort of freak out, whether they’re other investors or employees or executives. You have to provide a path to success. So what I found as C.E.O. is that you almost need a split personality. On the one hand, you have to appear like Moses, so that people believe that you’re going to take them to the Promised Land. And you have to present a very simple, clear path to success. On the other hand, if you just believe all of that, you can easily run the company off a cliff. Being a C.E.O. requires a lot of faith and passion, but for making decisions, sometimes truth and faith are different. So you also have to be a skeptic, almost like Galileo. You can have beliefs, but you have to really search for the truth, which is often tied to bad news. You’ve worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs. What’s the most important quality that sets the best ones apart? The most important thing is just sheer passion. It doesn’t mean the person’s naturally a great salesperson. Somebody can be really shy and introverted, and you’d think they would be horrible at selling. But for their particular idea, they’re just so passionate about it and they have this clarity of vision. That forms the basis for creating something great out of nothing. And you’re not trying to pursue 100 things. You’re pursuing that one, focused effort. You’ve observed a lot of different corporate cultures in action, too. What makes the biggest difference in terms of culture? Culture, to me, is about getting people to make the right decision without being told what to do. No matter what people say about culture, it’s all tied to who gets promoted, who gets raises and who gets fired. You can have your stated culture, but the real culture is defined by compensation, promotions and terminations. Basically, people seeing who succeeds and fails in the company defines culture. The people who succeed become role models for what’s valued in the organization, and that defines culture. If the C.E.O. can outline, as part of the vision statement, what the stated culture is, and if that official proclamation of culture is aligned and consistent with the unofficial culture — based on who gets raises and promotions and who gets fired — then you have the best culture. When the two are disconnected, you have chaos.


Japan and China Trade Sharp Words Over Islands

Abstract: BEIJING — In an unusually vigorous rebuttal to Japan’s latest accusations that China is using aggressive tactics to expand its maritime reach, the Chinese Defense Ministry said Japan was undermining stability in the region with its claims to disputed islands known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkakus in Japan. The Defense Ministry, which issued its statement on Friday, rarely mentions another country by name, Chinese experts said. The Chinese military is “strongly discontented and resolutely against” the accusations in a Japanese white paper , an annual assessment of the country’s military situation, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry, Geng Yansheng, said in a statement. The heated exchange, which started after the Japanese government issued its defense paper last week, underlined the intensifying distrust between the two nations, both of which dispatch ships and planes to patrol the islands in the East China Sea. Japan has administered the islands for decades. Experts said the strongly worded statements on both sides may be a precursor to worsening dynamics between the two countries as each tries to outmaneuver the other in the region and talk each other down in diplomatic settings. The enmity is partly historical, driven by grievances from imperial Japan’s land grabs in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and from World War II. Japan’s purchase of some of the uninhabited islands in September stirred outrage in China, where many see them as Chinese territory that remains in Japan’s hands from its foray into empire-building. Japan says China started showing interest in the islands only in recent decades, after scientists found evidence of nearby undersea oil and natural gas deposits. The latest battle of words comes as China says it has gained ground in its claims to the islands with almost continuous maritime patrols since September. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative party appears headed for an electoral victory in upper-house elections this month that would enable the nationalistic leader, if he chooses, to try to alter the antiwar Constitution so that Japan could maintain a regular army rather than a self-defense force. That would incense China and drastically alter the regional security architecture that is already shifting under the weight of China’s growing military strength. Whether Mr. Abe decides to aim for such far-reaching change or not, China is watching closely as the Japanese leader forms new defense guidelines that will almost certainly result in a more robust posture by the Japanese military. The Abe government has already announced a 0.8 increase in military spending, the first rise in 11 years, but still a small fraction of the gains by the Chinese military over the past decade. The Japanese white paper was the “toughest” ever on China, and reflected the intense concern about China’s military gains, particularly by the rapidly modernizing navy, said Prof. Hu Lingyuan, the deputy director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. “Abe let it all out,” Professor Hu said of the white paper. “Traditionally, the Japanese are more ambiguous, but this time it was quite direct.” The report said the Chinese had repeatedly intruded into Japan’s territorial waters and violated Japan’s airspace. It added that China resorted to “highhanded” tactics that were inconsistent with international law, and had taken “dangerous actions that could lead to unintended consequences.” Underlining the unease in Japan about China’s military spending and technical progress, the report said the Chinese held a vast advantage in sheer numbers of vessels and planes. It estimated that China had 970 ships and 2,580 aircraft; Japan had 141 ships and 410 aircraft. But China’s numerical superiority does not translate into operational superiority, said Prof. Bernard D. Cole of the National War College in Washington. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force remained ahead in technology, and the experience and expertise of its personnel were far better, Professor Cole said. Although the Japan Air Self-Defense Force was outmatched in the number of aircraft by China’s air force, Japanese pilots were more experienced and flew many more hours than the Chinese, he said. Still, the Chinese air force flew more advanced aircraft than the Japanese, he said. For the first time, Professor Cole said, the Japanese white paper reflected Tokyo’s shift in defense security concerns from the north, where the Soviet Union was the threat during the cold war, to the southwest, focusing on China. Which country would prevail in a clash between Japanese and Chinese vessels in the East China Sea was hard to predict, Professor Cole said. “It would depend on many factors, including location, weather and whether the incident was preplanned by one side,” he said. “That said, the Japanese maritime self-defense force remains superior to the People’s Liberation Army Navy.” But that edge is fading, experts say. The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said in “ The Military Balance 2013 ,” its annual report on militaries around the world, that China was quickly reinforcing its paramilitary naval forces as part of its overall naval power-projection effort. The China Marine Surveillance force, which conducts most of the patrols around the disputed islands, would receive 36 new vessels over the next five years, as well as a number of old navy ships, the report said. The modernization of China’s navy, and the political emphasis placed on maritime strength by the new Chinese government, made the Japanese “very nervous,” said Professor Hu, of Fudan University. He said, however, that Japan was overreacting. “Japan is overly sensitive,” Professor Hu said. “China developing its naval strength or military strength is not necessarily directed at Japan.”

Japan
China
Military
East China Sea
International relations


Businesses Are Turning to Beacons, and It’s Going to Be O.K.

Abstract: THE beacons are here. And they might not be all bad. Beacons, tiny low-powered radio transmitters that send signals to phones just feet away, have quickly become a new front in the advertising industry’s chase to find you whenever, and exactly wherever, you are. Although most consumers are just learning about these devices, tens or even hundreds of thousands of them have been installed across the country: outdoors on buildings, inside stores and even at National Football League and Major League Baseball stadiums. The point of the devices is to send a specific signal, using low-energy Bluetooth, to phones that come into proximity, as long as those phones are running apps that can respond to the beacon. Those codes then set off an action on the phone, like a coupon, a reminder, a reward or just information. A beacon at the gates of a baseball stadium could open a map to the user’s seat and offer a beer or hot dog coupon. Already, though, pitfalls have emerged. Last week, BuzzFeed reported that an advertising company had installed hundreds of beacons in phone booths across New York, with the city’s permission. The devices could communicate with a select few apps on people’s smartphones as they passed by, pushing advertising to those phones. Shortly after the beacons’ presence was reported, the city ordered that they be removed. The flap illustrates the unfortunate ways that beacons are likely to be used in the short term: as a cheap, easy way to set up advertising networks that use the apps on our phones to send us spam with promotional messages or collect personal information about us. That’s too bad, because while it is easy to think only of coupons, advertising and data collection when we think of beacons, the reality is that these little transmitters could also make the world around us richer, more useful and more interactive. They could enrich museum experiences, deliver the right recipe in the grocery store aisle, take us on interactive tours of cities and towns, let us quickly and easily check in to hotels or even pay at the gas pump. And used properly, sure, they could also deliver the right coupon at the right time. One important point to keep in mind about beacon technology is that the transmitters — which range in size from a tiny USB dongle to a silver dollar — don’t store or send any information. The devices use low-energy Bluetooth to send unique codes that cause an action from an app. In order for any beacon-led action to happen on a phone, you must install an app that communicates with beacons. And installing one kind of app doesn’t mean you are authorizing all beacons to talk to your phone. An N.F.L. app, for example, can communicate only with the beacons the N.F.L. has installed. However, some apps might have broader reach, so be careful. Most of those beacon-friendly apps are available on Apple’s iOS operating system, because Apple included the necessary technology in iOS 7, and the OS communicates with a network of beacons built to Apple’s specifications, called iBeacons. Recent versions of Android have limited capability to recognize beacons, but not to respond to them. The next version of the mobile operating system, code-named Android L, is expected to be able to respond to beacon codes. The apps that now work with beacons include the Apple Store app, which responds to the devices inside Apple’s physical stores. The app then offers in-store notifications that let you pick up online orders, check in for a tech support reservation or buy accessories from your phone. Or you could be using an app like Shopkick, which offers shopping rewards once users enter a store, and which recently conducted a beacon-specific experiment with the clothing retailer American Eagle. “Looking at these beacons, we saw tons of potential but really started with something simple,” said Joe Megibow, the chief digital officer of American Eagle. “With just little tiny incentives, nudges or pushes, could we actually change the behavior and get a positive reaction out of our customer?” The test focused on users who had installed the Shopkick app and were already using it to get rewards when they shopped in physical stores. When those users entered an American Eagle store, about half of them were told they could get more rewards for trying on clothes in the fitting room. Beacons installed near the fitting rooms determined whether those shoppers went inside. Mr. Megibow said people who got a reward for trying on clothes visited the fitting rooms at twice the rate as those who didn’t get the reward message. “That’s pretty amazing,” he said. “It tells you the power of getting the right message at the right time.” The technology has uses far beyond shopping, though. Doug Thompson co-founded a marketing company called Dot3, which uses beacons to enhance real-world experiences like museum visits. In Britain, Dot3 is introducing a beacon experience at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, a World Heritage Site that includes a palace and several greenhouses spread over about 300 acres just west of London. “Kew Gardens said to me, we have all these really great databases,” Mr. Thompson said. “I was picturing servers and things and they said, ‘We have Charles Darwin’s diaries.’ ” An app that guides visitors through the gardens, he said, will display horticultural illustrations and pictures of the garden from the 1800s, as well and paintings and photographs. Users don’t have to search for the information and it will appear on their devices when they are near the relevant spot. Mr. Thompson and others see beacons as a way for local businesses to add messaging to their users — even personal messages, like from a trainer to a client, sent when the client walks in the gym door. “The most important thing is that your app is more aware,” he said. “You might have the grocer’s app and get a message when you walk in but what you really want is when you open the app in the fish department, it has fish recipes.” With that power will come temptation. Some companies will surely consider beacons as an easy way to set up networks of ad-serving transmitters that pop up messages. And the apps they use could collect and share data about you, including your location history. Such networks are already being installed, experts say. Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said he would like restrictions on the data that could be collected and how it was sent. The platforms, he said, needed to “find ways to put contractual limits in place to find out what installed apps can collect and whether they can phone home.” But consumers can take their own steps to avoid beacon alerts. For one thing, you can simply uninstall any app that starts showing unwanted messages. And if you’re really concerned that you have accidentally installed apps that communicate with beacons, you can turn off Bluetooth. Unfortunately, data collection and aggressive advertising will almost certainly be part of the early days of the beacon rollout. But hopefully the phase will pass quickly, because beacons have a lot of potential to deliver rich digital context on top of the real world. To realize that future, users will have to know which apps to trust and reject the apps and the companies that take advantage of our phones’ home screens. The ultimate future of beacon technology is really up to us.

Bluetooth
Retail
advertising,marketing
Mobile Apps
Wireless


Dr. Beny Primm, Pioneer in Addiction and AIDS Prevention, Dies at 87

Abstract: Beny J. Primm, a doctor who started some of New York City’s first methadone clinics to treat heroin addicts in the 1960s and who, during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, became a nationally prominent advocate for changing public health policy toward intravenous drug users, died on Oct. 16 in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 87. His daughter Annelle Primm confirmed the death. Dr. Primm was treating trauma cases at Harlem Hospital in the early 1960s when he became aware of the havoc that drug addiction was causing. “As an anesthesiologist, I saw young people in the E.R., their bodies riddled with bullet and knife wounds,” he wrote in his 2014 memoir, “The Healer: A Doctor’s Crusade Against Addiction and AIDS,” written with John S. Friedman. “I knew that behind this devastation was the scourge of drugs, and I made a promise to myself that I would work to stop these black kids from going down.” In 1969, he founded the Addiction Research and Treatment Corporation, which opened a methadone clinic in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn and, within a few years, a half-dozen treatment centers in Brooklyn and Manhattan. He became recognized as an authority on heroin addiction and its treatment. Dr. Primm saw his first AIDS case in 1983 when examining an addict at one of his treatment centers. As tests became available for H.I.V., the virus that can lead to AIDS, he discovered that more than 40 percent of his patients were infected with the virus. The finding turned him into an outspoken advocate for clean-needle programs and robust information campaigns aimed at high-risk populations. “IV substance abusers multiply in greater numbers than gays,” he told The New York Times in 1985. “They’re dying more frequently than gays. We now have to turn the spotlight on IV substance users.” He was particularly concerned about the disease’s impact in minority communities. Beny Jene Primm was born on May 21, 1928, in the coal town of Williamson, W.Va. His father and uncle owned a funeral home, and his mother taught in a one-room schoolhouse in a nearby town. Because of the family business, local doctors often visited, and from early childhood Beny set his sights on entering the medical profession. In 1941, the family moved to the Bronx, where Beny attended DeWitt Clinton High School. He was an indifferent student and, after failing the state Regents exam twice, graduated with a general rather than an academic diploma in 1945. At West Virginia State University, a historically black institution near Charleston, he improved only slightly as a student but thrived in the R.O.T.C. After graduating in 1950, he was assigned to the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg and trained as a paratrooper. With lackluster academic credentials, he looked outside the United States for a medical school after leaving the Army in 1953. Having studied German in college, he enrolled in the Heidelberg University but, for financial reasons, left after a year. Without knowing French, he entered the University of Geneva, where he received a medical certificate and, in order to practice in the United States, the more advanced diploma in 1959. To satisfy the requirements for a diploma, he wrote a thesis on the effects of morphine and chlorpromazine on hypothermia in guinea pigs. While studying in Geneva he had an externship at Morrisania Hospital in the Bronx in obstetrics and gynecology, which he greatly enjoyed. As a resident at Meadowbrook Hospital on Long Island, however, he found that many white patients did not want to be treated by a black doctor. He became an anesthesiologist instead, taking a job at Harlem Hospital in 1963. Because of his AIDS work, Dr. Primm was named to Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic in 1987. When the commission drafted a 600-point plan for dealing with the AIDS crisis, he inserted the recommendation that intravenous drug users be given treatment on demand. Under President George Bush, Dr. Primm served on the National Drug Abuse Advisory Council and was associate administrator of the Office of Treatment Improvement (later the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment), an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services that works with state programs and community groups offering drug and alcohol treatment. In addition to serving as executive director of the Addiction Research and Treatment Corporation (now Start Treatment and Recovery Centers ) until his retirement in 2013, Dr. Primm was president of the Urban Resource Institute , which he founded in 1981 to provide career counseling and job training for addicts and to provide a safe haven for victims of domestic violence. In addition to his daughter Annelle, Dr. Primm, who lived in New Rochelle, is survived by two daughters from his marriage to the former Annie Delphine Evans, who died in 1975: Martine Primm and Jeanine Primm Jones. Other survivors are a daughter from a later relationship, Eraka Bath Fortuit; his fiancée, Ellena Stone Huckaby; and two granddaughters.

Beny J. Primm
Doctor
Methadone
Drug Abuse
Obituary
AIDS,HIV


Police in China Push for Trial of Tibetan Education Advocate

Abstract: BEIJING — Police officers in western China have investigated a Tibetan language education advocate for interviews he did last year with The New York Times and are pushing for a court trial on a charge of inciting separatism based on his contact with Times journalists, according to his lawyer. The advocate, Tashi Wangchuk, 31, has been detained by the police in the town of Yushu, which is mostly Tibetan, since January. He was formally arrested in March on the charge of inciting separatism, which can result in a 15-year prison sentence. Mr. Tashi has no known record of advocating Tibetan independence or separatism. Mr. Tashi’s case entered a new phase on Thursday, when the police concluded an additional investigation at the prosecutors’ request and handed over those results. Prosecutors now have about 90 days to decide whether the case should go to court, said Liang Xiaojun, Mr. Tashi’s lawyer. If the case goes to court, Mr. Tashi, who was interviewed at length by The Times on Tibetan culture last year, will almost certainly be convicted. The conviction rate in China is more than 90 percent. Inciting separatism is a serious political charge that is used to silence people from ethnic minority groups who are deemed troublemakers by officials. Mr. Tashi’s case is known among international human rights groups that focus on Chinese government abuses and among Tibet advocacy groups. In April, Amnesty International urged people to call on the Chinese government to “immediately and unconditionally” release Mr. Tashi. International Campaign for Tibet, based in Washington, has asked the United States government to raise the cases of Mr. Tashi and Shokjang , an imprisoned Tibetan writer. Video Worried about the erosion of Tibetan culture and language, one man takes his concerns to Beijing, hoping media coverage and the courts can reverse what he sees as a systematic eradication. Credit Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times Officials from the United States, Britain and other Western nations have received information on Mr. Tashi’s detention. President Obama and other Western leaders are traveling to China this weekend for the Group of 20 summit meeting, and they may raise human rights issues with Chinese leaders. Mr. Tashi was detained on Jan. 27 by police officers in Yushu, the town on the Tibetan plateau of Qinghai Province where Mr. Tashi lives with his parents. Mr. Tashi, a shopkeeper, wrote blog posts about the disintegration of the Tibetan language among younger Tibetans and urged governments in the region to adopt true bilingual education, using Tibetan and Chinese equally as teaching languages in schools. In September 2015, he traveled to Beijing to try to file a lawsuit against Yushu officials for not properly supporting the Tibetan language, but failed to do so. He was quoted later that year in two Times articles on Tibetan language and culture written from Yushu, and he was the centerpiece of a nine-minute Times documentary video . He had come into contact with Times journalists in May while on an exploratory visit to Beijing and insisted on doing on-the-record interviews. Mr. Liang, the lawyer, said the police case files, which he had seen on a June visit to Yushu, showed that the police had focused their investigation on Mr. Tashi’s interviews with The Times, which were conducted by this reporter and Jonah M. Kessel, a video journalist. He said the police were especially incensed by the video, produced by Mr. Kessel. (One section of the police case files mistakenly names additional people as producers.) Mr. Liang, who was retained by Mr. Tashi’s family, met separately with Mr. Tashi and the Yushu police chief. “I met with Tashi in the detention center for more than one hour,” he said. “Tashi was doing well. He thinks that what he did wasn’t wrong. Tashi said he had had no intention of inciting separatism.” In his interviews with The Times, Mr. Tashi never advocated Tibetan independence. He said Tibet should remain under Chinese governance and called instead for greater regional autonomy, especially in language use and education. Mr. Tashi also praised Xi Jinping, the Chinese president and Communist Party chief. “All he wants is to try to preserve Tibetan culture,” Mr. Liang said. He added that it was possible that prosecutors could ask the police for further investigation into Mr. Tashi and delay the decision on whether to bring the case to court. Mr. Tashi’s family said in early March that the police were illegally holding Mr. Tashi since officers had not notified family members of Mr. Tashi’s detention. Chinese law requires the police to notify family members of a detainee within 24 hours of a detention, with only a few exceptions. In late March, the police finally told family members of Mr. Tashi’s arrest and of the separatism charge . Mr. Tashi sold goods from the Tibetan plateau in a shop in Yushu and online via the popular Taobao platform, started by Alibaba, the online commerce giant. In 2014, Alibaba featured Mr. Tashi in a video produced for its international roadshow before a prominent initial public offering. Last year, Mr. Tashi also contacted employees at Alibaba in hopes of getting Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba, to support his efforts at compelling local officials to expand Tibetan-language education.

China
Tibet
Language
The New York Times
Tashi Wangchuk
Human Rights
Qinghai
Bilingual education


OPEC to Hold Oil Output Steady as Turmoil Rocks Some Member States

Abstract: LONDON — OPEC agreed on Wednesday to keep its petroleum production target at 30 million barrels a day for the rest of the year, a decision intended to calm global concerns about the supply and price of oil, despite increasing geopolitical tensions in some of the main supplier countries. The takeover of Iraq’s second-largest city , Mosul, on Tuesday by Sunni militants who crossed the border from Syria added to the uncertainties as OPEC oil ministers assembled on Wednesday in Vienna. The unrest made it all the more crucial that the cartel’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, signal that it would continue to play a stabilizing role in the oil market and that current quotas and prices were satisfactory to the country, the biggest producer of OPEC’s 12 members. “Supply is good; demand is good; the price is good,” the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, told reporters before the meeting. Prices for Brent crude, an oil benchmark, rose about 40 cents a barrel to about $110 in trading on Wednesday. The Persian Gulf states have so far largely weathered the turmoil in the Middle East and are producing oil unhindered. That is in contrast, though, to a range of problems curbing production in several OPEC states. The worst off is Libya, where militias are holding oil production for ransom and are practically cutting off oil exports . Nigerian production is plagued by several ills, ranging from political turbulence to theft. Iraq had been increasing output rapidly and has surpassed Iran, whose industry is hobbled by sanctions , to become the second-largest OPEC producer after Saudi Arabia. But Iraq is now something of a question mark given the recent wave of violence in the country, in which the government has lost control of Mosul as well as facilities in Baiji, the important refining town about 100 miles south of Mosul, to Sunni Muslim fighters. Although the fighting in Iraq is not near the main oil-producing areas in the south of the country, the concern in the markets is that the growing disorder will spread, eventually threatening oil exports. The instability may also slow or reverse Iraq’s output growth by discouraging investment. Production in the northern part of the country, which accounts for a small part of Iraqi output, would also most likely be reduced if the Baiji refinery was shut down, according to Richard Mallinson, an analyst at Energy Aspects, a London research firm. Those problems were a reason that market conditions were quite different from those that OPEC members faced in their last few meetings. For a couple of years, the talk among analysts and traders had been about an oversupply of oil, production increases in the United States and, as a result, the weakening of OPEC. But because of the political unrest’s curbing output in several countries, the focus is once again on Saudi Arabia and by how much it might need to increase supplies. “Speculation that the market may need significantly more oil from Saudi Arabia is a complete turnaround from the last few meetings, where all the talk was of a looming glut,” Seth M. Kleinman, an analyst at Citigroup in London, wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. Image An oil refinery in Baiji, Iraq, in 2011. The Iraqi government recently lost control of the facilities to Sunni Muslim fighters. Credit European Pressphoto Agency To make up for shortfalls from countries like Iran and Libya, Saudi Arabia is likely to bolster production this summer to well over 10 million barrels a day, from 9.7 million barrels a day in May, according to Bhushan Bahree, an analyst at IHS Energy, who was observing the meeting. Under the informal leadership of Mr. Naimi, the organization no longer assigns output quotas to individual countries, instead maintaining the loose output target of 30 million barrels a day. Mr. Bahree noted that a Saudi increase to more than 10 million barrels a day would erode its closely watched buffer of unused or spare capacity to razor-thin margins of around two million barrels a day. The country says it can produce up to 12.5 million barrels a day in extreme circumstances. “This leaves spare capacity in a precarious condition,” Mr. Bahree said, adding that further shortfalls among OPEC members like Nigeria or Venezuela, both real possibilities, might add to nervousness in the markets. “Prices could rise on concerns about further supply disruptions in key oil-producing countries and when the spare production capacity cushion in Saudi Arabia shrinks,” he said. “Much will depend, of course, on how much increased supply is needed from the kingdom.” When spare capacity falls to low levels, traders become edgy, worrying about, among other things, whether the Saudis can indeed produce the 12.5 million barrels a day they say is within their capability. During the summer, the Saudis, who are short of natural gas, also burn several hundred thousand barrels a day of crude oil to generate electricity to meet high demand for air-conditioning, which cuts into their exports. How much the Saudis will increase production by will not be determined by OPEC in Vienna but in Riyadh, their capital, possibly in consultation with the country’s allies in the Gulf, like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The flexible system of not assigning output quotas to individual countries allows some members of OPEC, particularly Saudi Arabia, to increase output to make up for shortfalls from members like Venezuela without protracted political battles over reassigning quotas. This arrangement has worked well, especially for the Gulf countries. With the Saudis continually raising production when needed and then cutting back when customers are less thirsty, prices have been stable. Prices per barrel have averaged about $108 this year, compared with $109 in 2013 and $112 in 2012. During this period, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have substantially increased their market share at the expense of the rest of OPEC. Away from the opulent hotels of Vienna, where OPEC delegations sip coffee and chat with colleagues, the organization is divided in terms of the circumstances in its member countries. Attention in the oil industry has also focused more recently on the United States, which has increased its production after a long decline through exploitation of so-called tight oil from shale rock. But the United States, which does not export crude oil, can do little to make up for the drops around the world. Only Saudi Arabia and to a certain extent its allies Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have the ability to add and subtract oil supplies from the world market at will.

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries


Iranian Officials Warn of Unrest Tied to Subsidy Cuts

Abstract: TEHRAN — After suppressing the political protests that followed last year’s disputed presidential election, Iran ’s security forces are now on the alert for a new kind of domestic threat — strikes and civil unrest provoked by planned cuts in fuel subsidies. Top police officials have issued a series of warnings this month against the threat of an overflow of tensions following the cuts, which some fear could set off a chain reaction of price increases and economic hardships in a country already stricken by high inflation and widespread unemployment. “The freeing up of prices has created worries in society, and this is of great importance to us,” the police chief for Tehran, Hossein Sajednia, told union and guild leaders on Thursday, insisting that security was essential for economic prosperity. The language Mr. Sajednia and other officials used echoed the warnings of sinister foreign plots the government raised when it crushed the cries of fraud and protests after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected in June 2009. The warnings also suggested an effort by the government to blame foreign adversaries and domestic collaborators for Iran’s economic problems. “The enemy is lying in wait to create problems,” Mr. Sajednia said in comments published by the ISNA news agency. “We must not give them opportunities to hurt the revolution.” Mr. Sajednia was the latest top security official within days to directly address the possibility that worsening economic conditions could spill over into civic anger. “With economic pressure they intend to push the country toward chaos, riots and insecurity, and want to bring about civil disobedience,” another senior Tehran police commander, Ismael Ahmadi-Moghaddam, said in a speech at Friday Prayer in Tehran this month. “The police are completely aware of the nature of this conspiracy,” Mr. Ahmadi-Moghaddam told worshipers. Iran’s economy showed some obvious signs of strain late last month when the United Arab Emirates restricted foreign currency dealings by Iranian banks with operations in Dubai. The move was seen as part of a tightening of money flowing to and from Iran in line with international sanctions against the country’s nuclear program, which Western nations fear could be a front for the pursuit of nuclear weapons . The currency restriction plunged Iran’s own foreign exchange market into trouble as traders sought to sell holdings of the rial, the national currency, anticipating it would fall in value. At the peak of the problem, Tehran traders reportedly skirmished with the police outside Iran’s Central Bank, protesting its initial refusal to trade rials for dollars and other foreign currencies. The Central Bank has since eased some restrictions but still limits exchanges of rial to the equivalent of $2,000. Unrest in currency markets coincided with a strike by gold traders at the Tehran bazaar and in a number of cities across the country in reaction to plans to introduce a 3 percent tax on gold transactions. Iran’s influential bazaar merchants have expressed fear that such a tax could herald further government skimming of their profits. It was the second time this year that bazaar merchants have gone on strike to protest an administration intent on reducing dependence on oil money for government revenue. In July, large parts of the Tehran bazaar went on strike for 12 days in protest of proposed income-tax increases. Web sites close to Iran’s political opposition reported that a well-known textile merchant was killed when pro-government paramilitaries raided the bazaar demanding that shopkeepers reopen for business. In a sign that Iranian authorities would take a more measured yet still decisive approach to possible disturbances, last Thursday, Tehran’s chief prosecutor said the judiciary would prosecute those who “disturb public order” by closing the bazaar or engaging in speculation. His comments echoed an earlier warning from the Tehran provincial governor, Morteza Tamadon, that the government would be tough on merchants trying to pass on price increases to consumers. “If prices increase, this can only be due to taking unfair advantage and psychological warfare,” Mr. Tamadon said in comments published on Fars News on Wednesday. “This has nothing to do with reforming price controls or plans to ‘targetize’ subsidies. There are some who have disrupted the feelings in the bazaar and are taking advantage.” Reforming Iran’s vast and inefficient subsidies system has been the stated objective of successive administrations since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, but it remains an extremely delicate subject because average Iranians have come to rely on the subsidies. Price supports amount to $4,000 per family per year, according to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund. Officials have maintained a wary silence about the exact dates when the subsidies will be eliminated and the likely price levels of formerly subsidized goods. Officials have, over the past several days, announced large-scale stockpiling of essential food products, which, it is hoped, the government will be able to distribute in the event of sudden price increases. Low-income consumers have been promised coupons for cooking oil and rice in a further move intended to allay fears. But cash reimbursements intended to compensate families faced with higher prices have not yet been made, despite assurances late last month that such reimbursements would be credited to bank accounts well before the onset of price increases. Iranian press reports have estimated that the value of these payments could be as little as $24 per month, meaning that a family of four would receive less than one-third of the government help provided under the current subsidy regime. I.M.F. analysts say that energy prices could shoot up 4 to 20 times current levels as a result of removing price supports. Government critics have expressed fears that such a “price shock” could reignite inflation which, according to Iran’s Central Bank, fell below 10 percent in May after spending years in double digits. On Thursday, a labor leader in the unemployment-ravaged western Iranian province of Hamedan warned of protests if the government did not improve the situation of workers in anticipation of the removal of subsidies. In recent months, Web sites close to Iran’s political opposition have periodically reported isolated industrial action by workers who have remained unpaid over the course of months. “Given that the implementation of this plan will definitely lead to higher prices, we expect the government to support workers and families,” Ahmad Mabudi, the labor leader, a senior official in the Hamedan Islamic Labor Council, told a group of workers’ representatives in comments published by the ILNA news agency. “The opinions of the workers need to be taken into account otherwise we will see large protests by workers around the country,” Mr. Mabudi said.

Iran
Politics and Government
Economic Conditions and Trends
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)


British Parliament Investigates Olympics ‘Chaos’

Abstract: LONDON — Organizers of the London Olympics scrambled on Tuesday to assure a skeptical nation that a drastic shortfall in security personnel that has forced the deployment of military reinforcements would not compromise the safety of the Games, whose opening ceremony is less than two weeks away. But lawmakers who interrogated the head of the huge, global security company, G4S, which has failed to meet contractual obligations to secure a guaranteed security staff of 10,400, drew different conclusions, and even the chief executive himself, Nick Buckles, acknowledged that his company’s performance had been a “humiliating shambles.” Nicola Blackwood, a Conservative legislator on Parliament’s Home Affairs select committee, which grilled Mr. Buckles for more than 90 minutes, said, “I had very little confidence in G4S fulfilling this contract before this session started, and now I don’t have any confidence at all.” For all that, Mr. Buckles said his company would not forfeit its management fee of about $90 million on a contract worth roughly $450 million because of work it had already done and would do in delivering security staff members. “I find that astonishing,” said Keith Vaz, a lawmaker from the Labour opposition who is chairman of the parliamentary panel. With cabdrivers clogging central London in a protest against “Zil lanes” for the exclusive use of Olympics traffic, and newspaper stories about Olympic athletes from the United States and Australia who became lost in traffic, Games organizers and government ministers with their prestige at stake argued on Tuesday that tribulations in advance of the Games would fade as spectators focused on the ceremony and sporting contests opening on July 27. “I think this is not the moment for a blame game,” said Jeremy Hunt, the government minister in charge of the Games. “This is the time to pull together.” Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the Games and a former gold medal-winning middle-distance runner, offered an equally positive view. “This is not a failure in numbers, we’ve got the numbers there,” he said at a news conference. “I think we’ll get them to a good position, and at the moment that is the challenge, but let’s put this in proportion. This has not, nor will it, impact on the safety and security of these Games. That of course is our No. 1 priority.” Drivers of the capital’s distinctive black taxicabs had their own priorities. More than 200 cabs converged on Parliament Square, honking horns in protest at the introduction of traffic lanes reserved for vehicles carrying athletes, Olympic officials and approved vehicles. “Taxis are excluded, which is unacceptable and wrong,” said Jonathan Myers, head of a drivers’ union. “This is a working city and we need to get around and do our job.” Because of the restricted traffic lanes, he said, “London is going to be gridlocked, and today we are showing them what it is like when it is gridlocked,” he told the Press Association news agency, referring to lawmakers inside the nearby Parliament buildings. The prelude to the Games has been overshadowed by the admission last week by G4S that it would not be able to provide the promised number of security personnel, forcing the army to provide an extra 3,500 soldiers, some just back from the war in Afghanistan, bringing the total military numbers to around 17,000. Police forces in at least eight regions have also said they will provide officers to make up the shortfall. Mr. Buckles’ appearance at the parliamentary committee subjected him to a remarkable and grueling interrogation during which he was forced to apologize, saying he was deeply sorry and blaming the failure of a scheduling system for the shortfall in security staff. Twice, David Winnick, a lawmaker from the Labour Party, asked Mr. Buckles whether his company’s performance was a “humiliating shambles.” “I cannot disagree with you,” Mr. Buckles said. Mr. Winnick asked if his company’s reputation was not in tatters. “At the moment, I would have to agree with you,” Mr. Buckles said. Another Labour lawmaker, Bridget Phillipson, told the executive that his testimony left her with the feeling that he was “making it up as you go along.” Mr. Buckles, 51, said he learned of the looming crisis while he was on vacation in the United States on July 3, but the company informed the Olympic organizers only on July 11 that it could not meet its obligations. "We’re still confident, together with the military and the police, that we can deliver a safe and secure Olympics," Mr. Buckles said. G4S has 4,200 security personnel at Olympic sites, he said, and would provide “a minimum 7,000” when the Games begin. “The problem at the moment is shortage of staff, pure and simple,” he said. “We just don’t have the staff.” “That shortage is going to manifest itself from today to the Games,” he said. He said that G4S would pay for the costs incurred by the military and the police because of the absence of G4S personnel and that the company might also pay bonuses “particularly for the military personnel who have had to come off leave to cover the Olympics.” For G4S, which employs 660,000 people globally and is one of the world’s biggest private employers, winning the contract to manage Olympic security had been prestigious. But, since the shortfall in security personnel emerged, its stock price has plummeted, hit by the company’s estimates that it could lose around $80 million on the Olympics contract, about 10 percent of its annual profit. The parliamentary panel on Tuesday opened a day after Australian and American athletes reported long delays in getting from Heathrow Airport west of London to the Olympic Village in the east of the city because bus drivers were not familiar with the route. In a further incident, members of the parliamentary panel said that only 30 out of a contracted 300 G4S personnel had arrived to provide security at a cycling event on Tuesday. “It’s chaos, absolute chaos,” said Ian Edwards, a representative of a police professional association in the West Midlands, where 150 officers had been sent to provide security at a hotel where Olympic soccer players were staying. Chris Allison, an assistant commissioner at London’s Metropolitan Police, said the overall plan to provide security at the Games was unchanged. “It’s just the mix of people that will be delivering it,” he said. “As opposed to G4S staff delivering some of the service and securing of the venues, it will be military, and in some cases it may be police officers, but the plan is the same.”

Olympic Games (2012)
Great Britain
Olympic Games
London (England)
G4S PLC


British Newspaper Says It Caught Lords Offering to Lobby for a Fee

Abstract: LONDON — At a meeting late last year at the House of Lords, Thomas Taylor, a peer and stalwart of the governing Labor Party, told visitors who introduced themselves as representatives of a Hong Kong businessman seeking tax relief on an investment in Britain that “you’ve got to whet my appetite to get me on board.” He added that some companies he had worked with paid him the equivalent of about $140,000. “That’s cheap for what I do for them,” he said. In reality, the visitors to the Lords’ guest room overlooking the Thames were reporters for The Sunday Times, one of Britain’s most widely circulated newspapers. Their front-page account last weekend of their meetings with Lord Taylor and three other Labor Party peers who were said to have agreed to accept payments for lobbying on behalf of the fictitious businessman has sent shock waves through British politics. All four of the men named by the newspaper have denied any wrongdoing, and senior Labor officials have accused the paper of entrapment. The House of Lords has begun an inquiry, including a review of creaky, hard-to-carry-out procedures that require an act of Parliament to oust miscreants in the chamber. The newspaper’s revelations appeared to stun Prime Minister Gordon Brown, already facing a fresh plunge in Labor’s opinion poll ratings as Britain’s financial crisis deepens; Mr. Brown’s assertive handling of the crisis’ early stages had helped Labor pull nearly equal with the opposition Conservatives. “These are very serious allegations,” Mr. Brown said. “Whatever action needs to be taken will be taken.” Rumors of corruption, encouraged by loosely worded rules governing lords’ ability to engage in consulting work, have enveloped the chamber for years. Members of the chamber are allowed to accept paid consultancies so long as they concentrate their efforts outside Parliament and do not lobby parliamentary colleagues or government officials for legislative and regulatory changes that benefit their employers — a distinction that critics say is impractical and difficult to police. Lord Taylor, who has not disputed the accuracy of the transcription of the reporters’ meeting that the newspaper published, has insisted that the business arrangement he discussed did not breach the Lords’ ethics rules and said that he would provide details during the Lords’ inquiry. For Labor, there is an irony in the political damage inflicted by the affair, since the party has been in the forefront of decades of efforts to overhaul or abolish the chamber. Established nearly 700 years ago, the Lords was for centuries a bastion of Britain’s ruling class of land-owning aristocrats. That changed in the late 1990s when a Labor reform ousted all but 90 handpicked hereditary lords and vested control of the chamber in so-called life peers, appointed by the government from careers in politics, public service, the arts and other professions. But the Lords has remained an anomaly, with its 740 members, all appointed, wearing ermine-trimmed robes on ceremonial occasions, and, harsher critics maintain, using the chamber as a sort of retirement home, with its plush red leather benches ideal for after-dinner snoozing. Fresh attempts at change, including a 2007 Labor bill that would have established a new body to be called the Senate, with 80 to 100 percent of its members elected, have failed because of competing reform agendas among the major parties. The Sunday Times said it had assigned reporters posing as lobbyists to approach 10 peers. It said that four of five Labor members it approached showed a willingness to take payments to help amend a pending bill in ways that would lower taxes for the fictitious businessman in a plan to open 30 shops. The paper named the four peers: Lord Taylor, 79; Lord Truscott, 49, an Oxford-educated former energy minister in Tony Blair’s Labor government; Lord Snape, 66, a former railwayman and Labor whip in the Commons; and Lord Moonie, 61, a psychiatrist and former junior defense minister. It said three Conservative peers had not answered the reporters’ calls, and two other members representing smaller opposition parties had rejected offers of payment, one of them saying angrily that the offer was contrary to basic concepts of integrity. As a furor over the allegations erupted this week, the Labor leader in the Lords, Baroness Royall, a former Blair government minister, promised a “swift and vigorous” inquiry, and added, “The allegations have, in essence, brought this House into disrepute in the whole world.” Some Lords veterans said the scandal was lending new urgency to reform efforts. Although peers get no legislative salary, they are paid an “attendance allowance” of about $460 a day. But they are not provided offices or a support staff to assist in the chamber’s work, which involves detailed review of bills passed in the Commons. Lord Richard, a barrister who is a former Labor leader in the Lords, told a BBC interviewer that existing arrangements were ludicrous because they rested on “conventions that go back to the 19th century.” “I mean, I do get quite hot under the collar about this,” he said. “You can never actually stave off the possibility of corruption; you can’t do it in the House of Commons, you can’t do it in any legislature. But the question to start off with is what sort of House of Lords, what sort of second chamber, do you want? I want a properly constituted, functioning legislative house, and we haven’t got that at the moment.”

Labor Party
Sunday Times
Ethics
Lobbying and Lobbyists
Great Britain
Politics and Government
Taylor Thomas


Kobe Bryant Is Nearly an Equal of Michael Jordan, Except in Fan Adoration

Abstract: Kobe Bryant is one of the most talented players to grace an N.B.A. court, but he has often undercut his greatness with distractions. In another era, he would have been allowed to focus on basketball and would have been praised for his otherworldly game. But with today’s 24-hour news cycle, he has spent much of his career answering for his personality and his off-court actions. Entering Sunday’s game against Minnesota, Bryant has 32,284 points, 8 behind Michael Jordan for third place on the career scoring list. But in terms of fan adoration, he will never catch Jordan, whose game most resembles his, possibly because we know too much about him. An example of how Bryant tends to get into his own way happened in the past week. His focus could have been the pursuit of Jordan, but instead Bryant had to answer questions about a tirade during practice in which he repeatedly said his teammates were “soft like Charmin” among a host of expletives and other insults. It did not matter that he was right, that his teammates had played poorly all season. It did not matter that he was praised by Nick Young, one player he had vocally attacked, for bringing some life to the team. It did not matter that Jordan similarly berated teammates, sometimes throwing punches and deflating egos. Largely protected by the news media, Jordan was described as determined and relentless. Bryant has been labeled selfish and abusive. After a surprising road victory in San Antonio on Friday night, Bryant was quick to say that his style has led to plenty of success over the years. “Look, we can all criticize my style of leadership all day long,” Bryant, 36, said. “You can sit there, and it’s uncomfortable, it’s whatever, but I’ve been doing that since high school. We play this game to win championships, and I have five of them.” The game-winner was hit by Young, a rambunctious player Bryant has seemingly taken under his wing. In the practice that made headlines, Young talked back to Bryant, and continued to do so after his 29-point effort in Friday’s overtime victory. “When I’m out there, I don’t play like Charmin,” Young said. “I like Scott Tissue. It’s a little rougher.” Bryant has earned his reputation by belittling his coaches, failing to get along with Shaquille O’Neal, showing a somewhat obtuse shot selection and being accused of sexual assault, charges that were dropped in 2004 . But those who contend he has fallen far short of Jordan on the court may want to take a second look at the numbers. Jordan has clear advantages over Bryant in terms of career totals or even per-game averages. In nearly 200 fewer games, on a per-game basis, Jordan had more points, more rebounds, more assists, more steals, more blocks, a higher field-goal percentage and fewer turnovers. But adjusted to a 36-minute pace to negate the 5,000-plus-minute disparity in playing time, Bryant and Jordan are far more similar. Jordan averaged 28.1 points per 36 minutes, and Bryant has averaged 25.1. But in other categories, Jordan has a smaller advantage: rebounds (5.9 to 5.2); assists (4.9 to 4.7); steals (2.2 to 1.4); blocks (0.8 to 0.5). Efficiency is a word rarely associated with Bryant. But he played in an era with far more 3-pointers — he has 1,673 to Jordan’s 581 — so his True Shooting Percentage, an advanced statistic accounting for the added value of the 3-point shot as well as free throws, is .554, which is closer to Jordan’s .569 than some would assume. Bryant has been accused of being a ball hog, and the numbers back that up. His Usage Rate, a statistic that determines the percentage of a team’s plays involving an individual, is a whopping 31.8 percent. Jordan’s was 33.3 percent. Passing Jordan on the career scoring list will probably be the last great accomplishment of Bryant’s career . He trails Karl Malone by more than 4,000 points for second place on the list and would need at least two seasons to get there. Having missed significant time to injury in the last few seasons, and unable to practice regularly because of his age, Bryant is not expected to stick around that long. With the Lakers in rebuilding mode, a sixth championship also seems out of the question. If he is truly on his way out, he will retire as perhaps the league’s second-greatest wing behind Jordan. But Bryant being Bryant, he will probably make a few more headlines before he calls it a career. They are just not likely to involve basketball.

Kobe Bryant
Michael Jordan
Basketball
Lakers
Chicago Bulls


Live-Streaming Florida Woman Charged With Drunken Driving

Abstract: Drunken drivers are often caught weaving down a street in their cars or running stop signs. But the police in a Florida town have found a new way to track down a suspected drunken driver. The police in Lakeland, Fla., said in a statement that 911 dispatchers started receiving calls Saturday from viewers who were watching a woman broadcasting herself while apparently driving drunk, using the live-streaming app Periscope. Despite the tip being generated in the virtual world, it took some traditional police sleuthing to find the woman and, ultimately, arrest and charge her. The woman, identified by the police as Whitney Marie Beall, 23, first invited her viewers to follow her as she went bar-hopping in downtown Lakeland, according to reports. At first, the police statement said, after she got behind the wheel, two viewers sent her text messages, telling her to pull over before she killed herself or someone else. One caller who was watching told the police that the woman was driving in the north Lakeland area. As he watched, according to the police statement, she said she was drunk and lost and had a flat tire, but the video feed was sporadic and the caller was unable to tell the police exactly what type of vehicle the woman was driving. During the live stream , published by WFTV in Orlando, Fla., Ms. Beall repeatedly said that she was drunk and appeared to be asking viewers for directions. She noticed that there were at least 57 people watching and asked, “So where am I right now, people?” Officers in Lakeland are not provided with access to Periscope through the department, the police statement said. But one officer had a personal account, which officers used to scrutinize the landscape, picking out landmarks to pin down where she was: a street called Carpenters Way. As officers pulled her over, her 2015 Toyota Corolla, which already had a flat right front tire, rammed into a curb. She failed a roadside sobriety test and was charged with drunken driving, the police statement said. The Florida news television channel WFLA in the Tampa Bay region said that it tracked down Ms. Beall at her home, but she did not want to comment. “She hung her head down and said this was a big mistake. And she is learning a lesson from it all,” said the station’s reporter, Holly Bounds. Ms. Beall’s lawyer, Lee Cohen, said in a statement that he would enter a plea of not guilty on her behalf, the station reported.

Florida
Periscope
Driving Under the Influence DUI


Kansas City Is Warmer, but Rays Are Cold

Abstract: Jeremy Guthrie held down the Tampa Bay Rays for five innings as the Royals rolled to an 11-1 victory Monday at Kansas City in the makeup of a game that was snowed out in early May. Guthrie (13-10) allowed six hits and three walks but twice delivered timely strikeouts. He struck out Kelly Johnson with two aboard to end the third inning, then retired David DeJesus on a called third strike to leave the bases loaded in the fourth. Rays Manager Joe Maddon argued the call and was ejected by the plate umpire, Greg Gibson. Jeremy Hellickson (10-8) allowed five runs in two and two-thirds innings, his shortest start since June 30, 2012. Salvador Perez hit a three-run homer and finished with four runs batted in, Billy Butler homered and drove in three, and Mike Moustakas drove in a pair as the Royals won their second straight game after a seven-game slide. Image James Loney drove in the Rays’ only run in an 11-1 loss to Kansas City. Credit Charlie Riedel/Associated Press James Loney drove in the only run for the Rays, who no doubt rued having to make the quick trip to Kansas City in the midst of a six-game homestand. They began the day a game back of the Red Sox in the American League East and clinging to a slender lead in the wild-card standings. When the teams first tried to play, on May 2, the temperature was 41 degrees and snow began to fall in the fourth inning. It was 93 degrees when the first pitch was thrown Monday. ATHLETICS 8, TIGERS 6 Coco Crisp and Daric Barton each drove in two runs to lift visiting Oakland. A .J. Griffin (11-9) allowed four runs and seven hits in five-plus innings to win for the first time since July 29. Miguel Cabrera hit his 43rd homer for Detroit. CARDINALS 8, REDS 6 Allen Craig hit his first grand slam and Matt Holliday had a three-run homer as host St. Louis moved into sole possession of first place in the National League Central. Carlos Martinez (1-1) pitched two innings for his first major league win and Edward Mujica worked a perfect ninth for his 35th save. ROCKIES 6, GIANTS 1 Todd Helton homered to move to three hits from 2,500, and Juan Nicasio tossed six shutout innings and added an R.B.I. single for host Colorado. CUBAN STAR SAID TO DEFECT An official Cuban newspaper said that the star first baseman Jose Dariel Abreu had defected to try to play in Major League Baseball. The weekly Trabajadores newspaper reported that Abreu had departed for a Caribbean nation, probably Haiti or the Dominican Republic. Abreu, 26, played in all six games for Cuba in the World Baseball Classic in March, hitting .383 with three home runs and nine R.B.I.

Jeremy Guthrie
Tampa Bay Rays
Baseball
Wil Myers


A Diverse First Presidential Morning Prayer

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama spent his first morning as president in a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral that highlighted the nation’s religious diversity while unveiling a lineup of clergy members who may serve as advisers and supporters of his administration. The service in the cavernous limestone cathedral grew surprisingly intimate when a row of interfaith clergy leaders offered prayers for the nation’s leaders while standing only a few feet in front of the pew that held President Obama and his wife, Michelle; Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill; and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. “On this day of new beginnings, with hearts lifted high in hope, may we be a people at peace among ourselves and a blessing to other nations,” prayed Dr. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America. Standing beside Dr. Mattson, who wore a bright blue head scarf, were two black ministers, two rabbis, an evangelical Christian, an Episcopalian and a Hindu. Previous national prayer services have featured Muslims and Jews, but the inclusion of a Hindu and a strong representation of women and African-Americans underscored the emphasis on diversity. The Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, Donald W. Wuerl; the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori; and the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, Archbishop Demetrios, also offered prayers at other moments in the service. “It was a conscientious effort to have a broad tapestry representing the faces of American religion,” said Rabbi David N. Saperstein, director and counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, in Washington. The participants, prayers and even the hymns were chosen by a committee of Mr. Obama’s advisers on religious issues. Altogether, there were three rabbis because the committee wanted to have representatives from the Reform, the Conservative and the Orthodox branches of Judaism (the Orthodox branch usually prohibits participation in a prayer service in a Christian sanctuary). The Rev. Jim Wallis, a liberal evangelical who is president of Sojourners, a magazine and grass-roots organization based in Washington, said that he and other religious leaders were preparing for a dual role: to challenge the president on policies, and “to clear the way” so people will be prepared to accept the changes he institutes. “I think Barack Obama understands that big changes won’t happen unless there are social movements pushing from the outside,” said Mr. Wallis, who has known Mr. Obama for 10 years. “Our job is to change the wind.” The service featured a gospel choir of black children in crisp white shirts and black pants and dresses, many of whom broke into smiles as they filed in and glimpsed the new president. They sang “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” The president sang along, and the first lady clapped. For the first time, the main sermon was delivered by a woman, the Rev. Sharon E. Watkins, general minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She related an oft-told Cherokee tale about a grandfather who explains to his grandson that within every person are two wolves fighting — one the wolf of anger, resentment and fear, the other of compassion, hope and love. The grandson asks which wolf wins, and the grandfather answers, “The one you feed.” Ms. Watkins flattered the president, saying: “It is right that college classes on political oratory already study your words.” But then she challenged him, saying, “You, as our president, will set the tone for us. You will help us as a nation choose again and again which wolf to feed.”

Washington National Cathedral
Obama Barack
Religion and Churches


South Korea Rescues Crew and Ship From Pirates

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean special forces staged a daring early morning rescue on a hijacked freighter hundreds of miles off the coast of Somalia on Friday, killing eight pirates and rescuing all 21 hostages, the South Korean military said. President Lee Myung-bak, who was sharply criticized last year over what was deemed a weak response to the sinking of a warship and the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island, reaffirmed his country’s tough stance against pirates and appeared pleased with the operation in a televised statement. “We will not tolerate any behavior that threatens the lives and safety of our people in the future,” Mr. Lee said. Rescue operations on hijacked ships are rare, with countries often deciding against such attempts over concerns for the safety of the crew. Most shipping companies, in turn, opt to pay the expensive ransoms demanded by Somali pirates to release hijacked ships rather than engage in confrontations. The rescue began at 5 a.m. Friday, when a special forces team from a South Korean destroyer piled into a small vessel and approached the hijacked ship as the destroyer provided cover, according to the military. The commandos then confronted the pirates, who were armed with AK-47s, heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, in a battle that lasted five hours. Three South Korean soldiers were wounded, the military said, and the hijacked ship’s captain, a South Korean, was shot in the abdomen, but his injuries were said not to be life-threatening. The entire crew was then brought to safety. The 11,500-ton freighter, the Samho Jewelry, was traveling to Sri Lanka from the United Arab Emirates last Saturday when it was seized by the pirates about 800 miles off the coast of northeast Somalia. The South Korean government dispatched a naval destroyer on antipiracy patrol to track the ship. South Korea , like other nations, patrols the waters off Somalia since the increase in pirate attacks in recent years. While the pirates held the 21-person crew — including 8 South Koreans, 2 Indonesians and 11 citizens of Myanmar — they simultaneously began using the large cargo ship as a base to try further attacks on nearby ships. The standoff between the destroyer and the pirates lasted several days, with the South Korean military sending messages ordering the pirates to surrender. A South Korean military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said while the operation to free the hostages was not free of risk, the military had confidence it would succeed because “the pirates were exhausted” after the long standoff. “The decision to carry out the operation was made to send a message that there will not be any negotiation with the pirates,” the official said. The Samho Jewelry was the second vessel of South Korea-based Samho Shipping to be hijacked in the past several months. In November, Somali pirates freed the Samho Dream and its 24 crew members after seven months of captivity.

South Korea
Somalia
Hostages
Piracy at Sea
Defense and Military Forces
Ships and Shipping
Arabian Sea


Civic Group Sues to Halt Hudson River Park Backed by Barry Diller

Abstract: Critics of the billionaire Barry Diller ’s plans for 2.4-acre park on a platform over the Hudson River asked a court on Thursday to halt construction of the $130 million project until it undergoes a new environmental review and is approved by the State Legislature. Opponents contend that the project was a result of a “secretive process designed to reach a preordained outcome that lacked the transparency required by state law and was not designed to elicit meaningful public scrutiny,” according to a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan by the City Club of New York, a civic organization, against the Hudson River Trust and a Diller entity. The Hudson River Park Trust has approved plans to build a pier 186 feet into the river from the foot of 13th Street, which would be known as Pier 55 and would include theater productions at three sites. Mr. Diller, a leading figure in the media industry, has pledged $113 million through a family foundation to construct the pier. Pier 55 would replace an existing structure, Pier 54, which has fallen into disrepair. The project won the support of Community Board 2, which includes that neighborhood, but was criticized by many environmentalists wary of building a platform the size of a Home Depot over the Hudson. The suit argues that the trust failed to conduct a required environmental review, relying instead on an older analysis that did not envision Pier 55, the demolition of Pier 54 or development along the river since then. This enabled the trust to conclude, the lawsuit says, that building an island and walkways and driving 547 pilings through the river bottom to bedrock was “free of potential environmental impacts.” “We want to stop it at this time to allow for further public consideration,” said Michael Gruen, president of the City Club. Two activists joined the City Club in bringing the action: Tom Fox, the first president of the Hudson River Park Conservancy, the trust’s predecessor, and Rob Buchanan, who teaches journalism and environmental studies at the New School. Madelyn Wils, chief executive of the trust, did not immediately return calls requesting comment. The Pier 55 project surfaced last November when Mr. Diller and the trust talked about it publicly. He hired an architect for the pier and recruited a high-powered group to oversee events, including Scott Rudin, the film and theater producer; George C. Wolfe, the former artistic director of the Public Theater; and Stephen Daldry, the British film and theater director and producer. But the trust had been negotiating with Mr. Diller for more than a year. State Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, a Democrat whose district includes part of the Hudson River Park, said she had been left in dark about the trust’s plans when she agreed to legislation in 2013 allowing construction outside the historical footprint of Pier 54. The Army Corps of Engineers and the State Department of Environmental Conservation still need to approve the project.

Hudson River
Parks
Barry Diller
Manhattan
Hudson River Park Trust
Hudson River Park Manhattan
Environment


Iraq: Security Forces Open Fire on Sunni Demonstrators in North

Abstract: Security forces fired on stone-throwing Sunni demonstrators in the northern city of Mosul on Friday, killing one and wounding five, according to Iraqi officials. The demonstrators were demanding the release of Sheikh Hussain al-Jubori, a local leader of antigovernment protests that have been going on in Iraq for two months. He was arrested early in the day on suspicion of links to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown terrorist group. After the shootings, members of the mainly Sunni Iraqiya bloc held a news conference to denounce the government as “reckless,” and the minister of agriculture, Izzeddin al-Dolah, resigned, the second high-profile Sunni to do so this month.


Fast Growth Seen in Service Sector

Abstract: The nation’s service economy grew in October at a quicker pace than in September, and faster than analysts had expected. The Institute for Supply Management said yesterday that its index of business activity for the service sector registered 57.1 in October. That is above September’s reading of 52.9, which was a three-year low, and above August’s reading of 57.0. Analysts had been predicting a reading of 54.5. The service sector, which includes banking, construction, retailing and travel, generates about two-thirds of the nation’s economic activity. A reading above 50 signals expansion, while a reading below 50 indicates contraction. The October figure represented the 43rd consecutive month of growth in the service sector.

Service Industries
United States Economy


Aaron Swartz, a Data Crusader and Now, a Cause

Abstract: At an afternoon vigil at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Sunday, Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old technology wunderkind who killed himself on Friday, was remembered as a great programmer and a provocative thinker by a handful of students who attended. And he was recalled as something else, a hero of the free culture movement — a coalition as varied as Wikipedia contributors, Flickr photographers and online educators, and prominent figures like Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and online vigilantes like Anonymous. They share a belief in using the Internet to provide easy, open access to the world’s knowledge. “He’s something to aspire toward,” said Benjamin Hitov, a 23-year-old Web programmer from Cambridge, Mass., who said he had cried when he learned the news about Mr. Swartz. “I think all of us would like to be a bit more like him. Most of us aren’t quite as idealistic as he was. But we still definitely respect that.” The United States government has a very different view of Mr. Swartz. In 2011, he was arrested and accused of using M.I.T.’s computers to gain illegal access to millions of scholarly papers kept by Jstor, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals. At his trial, which was to begin in April, he faced the possibility of millions of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison, punishments that friends and family say haunted him for two years and led to his suicide. Mr. Swartz was a flash point in the debate over whether information should be made widely available. On one side were activists like Mr. Swartz and advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Students for Free Culture. On the other were governments and corporations that argued that some information must be kept private for security or commercial reasons. After his death, Mr. Swartz has come to symbolize a different debate over how aggressively governments should pursue criminal cases against people like Mr. Swartz who believe in “freeing” information. In a statement, his family said in part : “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office and at M.I.T. contributed to his death.” On Sunday evening, M.I.T.’s president, L. Rafael Reif, said he had appointed a prominent professor, Hal Abelson, to “lead a thorough analysis of M.I.T.’s involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present.” He promised to disclose the report, adding, “It pains me to think that M.I.T. played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy.” M.I.T.’s Web site was inaccessible at times on Sunday. Officials there did not provide a cause, but hackers claimed responsibility. While Mr. Swartz viewed his making copies of academic papers as an unadulterated good, spreading knowledge, the prosecutor compared Mr. Swartz’s actions to using a crowbar to break in and steal someone’s money under the mattress. On Sunday, she declined to comment on Mr. Swartz’s death out of respect for his family’s privacy. The question of how to treat online crimes is still a vexing one, many years into the existence of the Internet. Prosecutors have great discretion on what to charge under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law cited in Mr. Swartz’s case, and how to value the loss. “The question in any given case is whether the prosecutor asked for too much, and properly balanced the harm caused in a particular case with the defendant’s true culpability,” said Marc Zwillinger, a former federal cybercrimes prosecutor. The belief that information is power and should be shared freely — which Mr. Swartz described in a treatise in 2008 — is under considerable legal assault. The immediate reaction among those sympathetic to Mr. Swartz has been anger and a vow to soldier on. Young people interviewed on Sunday spoke of the government’s power to intimidate. “Using certain people as poster children for deterring others from doing that same action, ultimately it won’t work,” Jennifer Baek, a third-year student at New York Law School, said by telephone, referring to Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been charged with multiple counts in the leaking of confidential documents, and Mr. Swartz. Ms. Baek, a member of the board of Students for Free Culture, said the comments on blogs and discussion boards she had visited since Mr. Swartz’s death showed that “people aren’t afraid to say this is what the injustice was.” The ingredients for trouble perhaps lay in Mr. Swartz’s personal and direct approach to solving problems. As one mentor, Cory Doctorow of the popular Web site Boing Boing, wrote in tribute , he was highly impressionable and sought after and was forgiven by those he worked with and worked for. A permanent “kid genius,” Mr. Swartz had often put his skills to the task of making information more accessible. At 14 he was a co-creator of RSS, a tool that allows online content to be distributed, and then made a tidy sum as one of the creators of the social-news site Reddit, now part of Condé Nast. But even before, and certainly after, he crusaded for open access to data. His projects include a range of influential efforts like the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Wikipedia and the Recap collection of legal documents. He also began more traditional projects for subjects he took an interest in. At 19, he volunteered to upload the archive of a defunct magazine he loved, Lingua Franca. In 2005, he called up the writer Rick Perlstein to offer to create a Web page for him after reading a book of his he liked. “I smelled a hustle, asking him how much it would cost, and he said, no, he wanted to do it for free,” Mr. Perlstein wrote in The Nation over the weekend. “I thought: ‘What a loser this guy must be. Someone with nothing better to do.’ ” Mr. Perlstein writes that he ended up becoming friends, and he sent chapters of his next book, “Nixonland,” to Mr. Swartz before he showed them to anyone else. Mr. Swartz outlined his views in the manifesto: “It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.” And he said the stakes were clear: “We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks.” Still, even many of his allies concede that Mr. Swartz’s passion for free information may have taken him too far in the Jstor downloads. According to the government’s indictment, in September 2010 Mr. Swartz broke into a computer-wiring closet on the M.I.T. campus; when retrieving a computer he connected, he hid his face behind a bicycle helmet, peeking out through the ventilation holes. At the time, he was a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at nearby Harvard. Some would say that perhaps a punishment for trespassing would have been warranted, but the idea that he could have seen serious prison time was infuriating. Lawrence Lessig, the Harvard Law professor who founded Creative Commons to advocate greater sharing of creative material online, called the prosecution’s case absurd and said that boxing in Mr. Swartz with an aggressive case and little ability to mount a defense “made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it.” E.J. Hilbert, a former cybercrimes investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said that the broader issues around such activist transgressions raise many complex questions that are subject to “a lot of discretion from prosecutors.” He added that the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts has long been renowned for a particularly aggressive pursuit of cybercrimes. Jstor, for its part, declined to pursue the case and posted a note over the weekend describing Mr. Swartz as “a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the development of the Internet and the Web from which we all benefit.” Michael McCarthy, a 30-year-old animator from Providence who was also at the M.I.T. vigil, said Mr. Swartz was let down by the university. “If places like M.I.T. aren’t safe for people to be a little miscreant in their quest for truth and understanding, then we’re in a lot of trouble,” he said. It’s unclear how much the impending case contributed to Mr. Swartz’s decision to take his own life. Years back, he wrote about his struggle with depression in his blog, Raw Thoughts. The last post he wrote on that blog, in November, was a detailed analysis of the final installment of the “Batman” series. Having warned his readers that he was about to reveal the conclusion of the movies, he ended the post by writing: “Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide.”

Aaron Swartz
Jstor
Hacker (computer security)
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Computer security


Establishment Choice Is G.O.P. Pick for Colorado Governor

Abstract: DENVER — Bob Beauprez, a buffalo rancher and a former congressman and community banker, defeated three rivals in a crowded Republican primary election on Tuesday to become his party’s choice to take on Colorado’s governor this November, The Associated Press reported. With about 73 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Beauprez had 31 percent. His closest competitor, Tom Tancredo, also a former congressman, had 26 percent. For Colorado’s Republicans, it was a victory for pragmatism over populism. While Mr. Beauprez (pronounced beau-PRAY) also beat out Scott Gessler, the secretary of state, and Mike Kopp, an Army veteran and a former state senator, the candidate with the highest profile was Mr. Tancredo, a conservative who had built a national profile for incendiary comments and staunchly opposing illegal immigration. Despite Mr. Tancredo’s popularity among grass-roots conservatives, anti-immigration activists and some Tea Party enthusiasts, Republicans leaders feared for their party’s chances in November if he had won the nomination. They worried that he was too polarizing and would energize Democrats while alienating the suburban Denver voters whose support is crucial to winning elections in this increasingly blue swing state. Throughout the primary campaign, Mr. Beauprez, the establishment choice, promoted his experience and organization, arguing that he was the candidate who could beat Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, 62, in November. That may be, said Katy Atkinson, a Republican political strategist, but she added, “It’s an uphill fight.” Mr. Beauprez, 65, lost the governor’s race in 2006 by about 15 points to Bill Ritter, a Democrat. Mr. Beauprez has said that he has learned from his mistakes, and argues that, like Peyton Manning after the Denver Broncos’ blowout loss in the Super Bowl, he deserves another shot on the field. Many analysts say that Mr. Hickenlooper is well positioned to win a second term. He has raised $2.9 million, and now has 20 times as much money on hand as Mr. Beauprez, according to state campaign-finance data. Mr. Beauprez and other conservatives have said they will attack Mr. Hickenlooper on crime and justice issues like his decision to grant a reprieve to Nathan Dunlap, one of the three men on Colorado’s death row. As Mr. Dunlap’s execution date for killing four people approached in May 2013, Mr. Hickenlooper gave him a temporary reprieve, sparing his life but potentially raising the issue again when a new governor takes office. In another primary for governor, in Maryland, Anthony G. Brown, the lieutenant governor, defeated Doug Gansler, the attorney general; Heather Mizeur, a state delegate; and three other challengers for the Democratic nomination to succeed Gov. Martin O’Malley. Larry Hogan, a businessman, won the Republican primary over three rivals. Term limits prevented Mr. O’Malley, a Democrat, from running for re-election, and he has backed Mr. Brown. Analysts say a victory for Mr. Brown, who would be Maryland’s first black governor, would validate Mr. O’Malley’s tenure and bolster him if he seeks the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.

Colorado
Bob Beauprez
Republicans
Primaries
Tom Tancredo
Democrats
2014 Midterm Elections
John W Hickenlooper
Gubernatorial races


Racy Photos Were Often Shared at N.S.A., Snowden Says

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden said in a wide-ranging interview published on Sunday that the oversight of surveillance programs was so weak that members of the United States military working at the spy agency sometimes shared sexually explicit photos they intercepted. He also said the British government often pioneered the most invasive surveillance programs because its intelligence services operate with fewer restrictions intended to protect individual privacy than its counterparts in the United States and other allies. The interview, which was published by The Guardian , was conducted in Moscow, where Mr. Snowden has been marooned for a little more than a year. He fled there from Hong Kong after he gave journalists hundreds of thousands of classified documents he downloaded from the N.S.A., which specializes in electronic surveillance. He had most recently worked for the agency in Hawaii. In the interview, Mr. Snowden said that some of the American military personnel working on agency programs were between the ages of 18 and 22 and did not always respect the privacy of those whose communications were intercepted. “In the course of their daily work they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work, for example an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation but they’re extremely attractive,” he said. “So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and they show a co-worker. And their co-worker says: ‘Oh, hey, that’s great. Send that to Bill down the way.’ ” Image Edward J. Snowden Credit NBC News, via Reuters Mr. Snowden said that type of sharing occurred once every couple of months and was “seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions.” He said that this was never reported and that the system for auditing surveillance programs was “incredibly weak.” “Now while people may say that it’s an innocent harm — this person doesn’t even know that their image was viewed — it represents a fundamental principle, which is that we don’t have to see individual instances of abuse,” he said. Asked to comment, an N.S.A. spokeswoman, Vaneé Vines, said that the agency had zero tolerance for willful violations of authority or professional standards, and that it would respond as appropriate to any credible allegations of misconduct. Mr. Snowden had particularly stark criticism for the British government’s surveillance programs, because in Britain the respect for individual privacy, he said, “is not strongly encoded in law or policy.” Because it has fewer restrictions, British intelligence platforms “are used as a testing ground” for programs of all five intelligence partners, a group referred to as “Five Eyes,” which includes Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. For at least the second time in an interview, Mr. Snowden cast himself as someone who had far more responsibility than a low-level contractor , as some American officials have described him. “I began to move from merely overseeing these systems to actively directing their use,” he said. “Many people don’t understand that I was actually an analyst and I designated individuals and groups for targeting.”

Privacy
Edward Snowden
NSA
Great Britain
Classified Information
Government Surveillance
Spying and Intelligence Agencies
Guardian British Newspaper