Selig Can Send Message on Arizona Immigration Law

Abstract: In 18 years as the head of Major League Baseball, Bud Selig has been fed a steady stream of fastballs. There have been labor fastballs and steroid fastballs, pitches he has learned how to hit. Lately, he has been taking his hacks at human growth hormone fastballs. But just as he was getting a bead on that pitch, just as he was moving toward H.G.H. testing in the minor leagues, fate has thrown Selig a nasty changeup. Now comes the Arizona immigration law, an issue that has so handcuffed Selig that he has been unable to react. And if this legacy-conscious commissioner is not careful, or perhaps if he is too careful, he will whiff on this issue without ever taking the bat off his shoulder. Last week, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigration. The law makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and directs the police to question people about their immigration status and demand to see their documents if there is reason to suspect they are illegal. The outcry has been immediate, and baseball has been dragged into the fray. The major leagues, after all, have a substantial number of Hispanic players, have a team in Phoenix, and half of the teams conduct spring training in Arizona. At least one New York Congressman has urged baseball to move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix. Other groups have called on people not to fly Tempe-based US Airways or rent trucks from Phoenix-based U-Haul or go to Arizona Diamondbacks games. The American Immigration Lawyers Association canceled a fall conference to be held at a resort in Scottsdale. The nation’s oldest black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, announced Friday that it would move its July convention to Las Vegas from Phoenix. Baseball’s players union has also weighed in, saying it opposed the new law and expressing concern about the way in which foreign-born players and their families would be affected. Major League Baseball and Selig have remained silent, presumably in hopes that the issue will go away. Except that it isn’t going away, at least not anytime soon. • Selig needs to recognize this, to acknowledge that people are looking to Major League Baseball to make a statement. The question, of course, is what he should say. What message should he send to the various constituencies nipping and tugging at baseball to become involved, to the many Hispanic players in the sport who may feel threatened by the new law and to the numerous fans who no doubt are uneasy, and angry, about illegal immigration. Maybe the answer is that Selig should address fans the way a Little League coach talks to a wayward team that has forgotten — as Arizona apparently has — about teamwork. In baseball, the essence of teamwork is sacrifice. That is, after all, why we have the sacrifice fly and the sacrifice bunt. It is what still makes baseball the great American game. And consider the scene at any given home game at Chase Field in Phoenix, with Diamondbacks fans sitting side by side. Presumably, some heartily agree with their state’s new immigration legislation, and others disagree. But if a Diamondbacks player born outside the United States hits a home run, everyone stands and cheers; if the moment is large enough, they hug. That is the power and glory of sports — and also part of the hypocrisy. Some of the same fans who root for their team’s foreign-born players are the same ones who clamor for a tough approach on immigration. They are one reason Major League Baseball has already received hundreds of phone calls urging it not to become involved in the debate over the Arizona law, and not to threaten any boycott as other groups have. So Selig should keep his message simple. Basic. The truth is that Major League Baseball makes a strong statement about inclusion 162 times a season. Selig could note that baseball takes everybody — the tired, the poor, the masses yearning to make a good living at a sport they love. If you can play, baseball takes you. The first question from a politician is often not “What’s right?” but rather, “Are the politics right?” The first thing a major league manager asks is, “Can he play? • Selig can remind his fans, those who support the Arizona legislation and those who oppose it, that close to 30 percent of major league players were born elsewhere. That these international players help provide the strength of the game. That it is unthinkable that they should feel in any way unwelcome. This is the message Selig should convey. With his legacy on the line, it’s the swing he eventually has to take. He can’t stand there forever with the bat on his shoulder.

Arizona
Major League Baseball
Baseball
Immigration and Emigration
Selig Bud
Law and Legislation
Hispanic-Americans


Obama Could Name Chuck Hagel to Defense Post Next Week

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel appears to have weathered a concerted and vocal campaign to derail his chances for defense secretary, with President Obama likely to nominate him as early as next week, administration and Congressional officials said Friday. Since Mr. Hagel’s name emerged as a candidate for the Pentagon in early December, conservatives, pro-Israel groups and gay rights organizations have raised objections to his views on Israel and Iran, as well as disparaging comments he made about a gay former diplomat. Administration officials cautioned that Mr. Obama has not made a final decision or offered Mr. Hagel the job. But people on Capitol Hill who know Mr. Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, have said that all signs were pointing to his selection. In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” last month, Mr. Obama defended Mr. Hagel from the criticism, saying that while he had not decided on a defense secretary, Mr. Hagel was a “patriot” and that nothing in his record would disqualify him for the job. The president could announce the selection as early as Monday, officials said, after returning from a vacation in Hawaii. That would come days before a visit to Washington by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, during which he and Mr. Obama are expected to discuss options for American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. Mr. Hagel, should he be named by Mr. Obama, will most likely be comfortable with what Pentagon officials say is a White House desire to draw down the remaining 66,000 troops as quickly as conditions allow. “One of the reasons we’re in trouble in Afghanistan is because we went well beyond our mission,” Mr. Hagel told Robert Nolan, an editor and television producer, in May 2012 for a PBS series on foreign policy. “And now, 12 years later, we’re not sure what our mission is.” Critics faulted Mr. Hagel for referring to pro-Israel lobbying groups as the “Jewish lobby,” and said he offered inadequate support for Israel and was soft on Iran. He apologized last month for saying 14 years ago that President Bill Clinton’s nominee for ambassador to Luxembourg, James C. Hormel, was not qualified because he was “openly, aggressively gay.” But Mr. Hagel has influential defenders. “He has a very sound, thoughtful mind,” said Brent Scowcroft, a longtime friend and the national security adviser in the administration of the elder President George Bush. Mr. Hagel is the second rumored cabinet nominee to encounter fierce resistance. Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, withdrew her name from consideration for secretary of state after Republican lawmakers vowed to block her nomination because of statements she made after the deadly attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya. Mr. Obama instead named Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to step down.

Chuck Hagel
Pentagon
Barack Obama
US Politics
US Military


Weakening Seen in Economic Growth Data

Abstract: WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Consumer prices fell in March for the first time in four months and industrial production slipped, strengthening the argument for the Federal Reserve Board to maintain its monetary stimulus to speed up economic growth. Other data released on Tuesday suggested that the housing market recovery was losing momentum, even though builders started work on new homes at an annual rate of more than one million units for the first time since June 2008. “For the Fed, it’s business as usual,” said Millan Mulraine, senior economist at TD Securities. “There is not likely to be an acceleration in growth momentum that would cause them to shift their policy stance anytime soon.” Image The Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index edged down 0.2 percent last month as gasoline prices tumbled, unwinding some of February’s 0.7 percent increase. Economists expected a flat reading. Underscoring the benign inflation environment, consumer prices rose just 1.5 percent in the 12 months through March — the smallest increase since July. Prices increased 2 percent year-on-year in February. Stripping out volatile energy and food costs, the so-called core C.P.I. was up only 0.1 percent after gaining 0.2 percent in February. That lowered the 12-month increase to 1.9 percent in March from 2.0 percent in February. A separate report from the Fed showed that production at the nation’s factories decreased 0.1 percent after advancing 0.9 percent in February. The decline was fairly broad-based, with output dropping for primary metals and electronics. Automobile assembly, however, increased. Image Despite the factory weakness, overall industrial production rose 0.4 percent last month, mainly because of a jump in utilities’ output. Economic data for January and February have suggested growth accelerated in the first quarter after activity almost stalled in the final three months of 2012. But in a replay of the previous two years, the economy appears to have hit a speed bump at the end of the quarter, with data ranging from employment to retail sales and manufacturing weakening significantly in March. Much of the weakness is blamed on higher taxes and deep government spending cuts put in place in Washington. Image “We definitely see the second quarter slowing from the first in terms of overall growth across many of the sectors. Obviously, the drag from fiscal policy is playing into this a little bit,” said Erik Johnson, senior United States economist at IHS Global Insight. A third report from the Commerce Department showed that housing starts rose 7.0 percent last month to a 1.04 million-unit annual rate, the highest in nearly five years. The increase in home building was driven by the volatile multifamily sector, while groundbreaking for single-family units fell. In addition, permits for future construction tumbled 3.9 percent — reversing February’s gain. That suggested a slowdown in housing activity, coming on the heels of a report on Monday that showed a third consecutive decline in homebuilders’ confidence in April. “The decline in single starts and permits is consistent with recent hints the housing recovery has lost some momentum,” said David Sloan, senior economist at 4Cast Ltd.

Consumer price index
Manufacturing
US Economy


Suspect in Rwandan Genocide Is Captured After 15 Years in Hiding

Abstract: KIGALI, Rwanda — A mayor who was indicted for orchestrating the massacre of more than 2,000 Tutsi seeking refuge in a church during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was captured and arrested this week in eastern Congo after 15 years in hiding, according to Congolese officials. The fugitive, Grégoire Ndahimana, who is wanted for genocide and complicity in genocide, was arrested in North Kivu Province late Tuesday evening by Congolese armed forces. He had been fighting in eastern Congo with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or F.D.L.R., a primarily Hutu rebel group of genocide committers and other combatants who are now stirring chaos in Congo’s troubled east. Congolese officials said the fugitive was caught by surprise. “He was captured while he was coming to look for some food within the local population,” Olivier Hamuli, a spokesperson for the national army, said via telephone. Both Rwanda and Congo called the capture one of the most significant achievements to date of the joint military operations being undertaken by the two countries against rebels in the area. “He’s one of the big ones,” said Rwanda’s justice minister, Tharcisse Karugarama. “But others are still out there.” Mr. Ndahimana is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, as a Category 1 suspect, a rank reserved for the chief planners and executers of the genocide that killed nearly one million ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu. According to the indictment , Mr. Ndahimana conspired with the parish priest and other officials to exterminate the many Tutsi taking refuge in the church. The siege lasted days and ended when officials razed the church with a bulldozer, killing more than 2,000 Tutsi refugees inside, the indictment says. For over a decade, Rwanda and Congo have been at odds over the F.D.L.R. Rwanda has accused Congo of supporting the group, which seeks to topple the Rwandan government, and in turn Congo had accused Rwanda of backing a number of militias over the years that have tormented eastern Congo. Both sides agreed in January to work together to solve the problem of the F.D.L.R., but since then, the new operations have garnered attention, mostly for the suffering they have brought upon Congo’s civilian population.

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


Best Buy Reports a 10% Sales Increase

Abstract: The Best Buy Company , the consumer electronics retailer, posted a fourth-quarter profit on Thursday that was better than expected as sales rose 10 percent. “We prepared for reduced consumer spending, and we were pleased when the quarter finished stronger than it began,” the chief executive, Bradbury H. Anderson, said in a statement. Best Buy’s profit fell 23 percent, to $570 million, or $1.35 a share, as revamping charges dragged down results. That compared with $737 million, or $1.71 a share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time charges of 26 cents a share, Best Buy earned $682 million, or $1.61 a share, better than the $1.40 expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Revenue in the period, which ended Feb. 28 and was the fourth quarter of Best Buy’s fiscal year, was $14.72 billion, up 9.7 percent from $13.42 billion in the period a year earlier. The increase came from strong sales of laptop computers and cellphones, with help from Best Buy Europe and 213 store openings in the last year. The revenue results were tempered by a 4.9 percent decline in sales at stores open at least a year, which Best Buy attributed to reduced traffic. Best Buy said traffic fell, but the average amount shoppers were spending climbed in the period. Best Buy now expects a 2010 profit of $2.50 to $2.90 a share on revenue of $46.5 billion to $48.5 billion. Analysts expect earnings of $2.47 a share on sales of $48.05 billion. Stock in Best Buy, which is based in Richfield, Minn., rose $4.21, or 13 percent, to $37.67 a share.

Best Buy Company Incorporated
Company Reports


Ford Ekes Out a Profit in Europe

Abstract: FRANKFURT — The European unit of Ford Motor eked out its first profit in three years in the second quarter, the company said Thursday, even as it warned that it would probably slip back into the red later this year in part because of slumping sales in Russia. And in a reminder of how difficult the European car market remains, General Motors reported Thursday that its loss on the Continent had widened to $300 million, compared with a loss of $100 million in the second quarter of 2013. For G.M. over all, profit slumped to $190 million from $1.2 billion a year earlier as it absorbed the cost of recalling models with a faulty ignition switch that has been tied to 13 deaths. Europe is slowly emerging from the worst slump in car sales in two decades, which has been particularly hard on makers of midprice cars like Ford and G.M.'s Opel unit, as well as PSA Peugeot Citroën and Fiat. Passenger car registrations in the European Union rose 6.5 percent through June, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, known by its French initials A.C.E.A. However, sales in June, which totaled about 1.2 million cars, were still the second-lowest for the month since the association started keeping track of the European Union as a whole in 2003. Ford, which on Thursday beat Wall Street’s estimates with a 6 percent increase in its overall net income, to $1.3 billion, and a record quarterly profits in North America, barely edged into the black in Europe. The company said it earned a pretax profit of $14 million in the quarter, just barely above break even. But it was a substantial improvement from the $306 million loss the company reported a year earlier for the region — and Ford’s first profit in Europe since the second quarter of 2011, when it reported pretax earnings of $176 million for the region. Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, said Thursday that he was “pleased by the response of our European consumers” and that the company expected to meet its European profit prediction for 2015. Makers of midrange cars have lost sales to lower-priced competitors like Hyundai at the same time that luxury carmakers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz have been crowding their territory with less expensive models. Ford’s market share in the European Union was stable at 7.5 percent during the first six months of 2014, according to the A.C.E.A. The market share of G.M.'s Opel and Vauxhall brands rose to 7 percent from 6.9 percent. However, G.M.'s overall market share in the Union fell to 7.5 percent from 8 percent because of declines by Chevrolet. G.M. attributed two-thirds of the most recent loss in Europe to restructuring costs as it tried to rebuild sales of Opel brand cars, sold under the Vauxhall name in Britain. G.M. is phasing out the Chevrolet brand in Europe to focus on Opel. Ford, meanwhile, said that its second-quarter earnings in Europe improved in part because it booked lower restructuring costs, like those related to closing of a factory in Genk, Belgium, where the company encountered bitter resistance last year from local unions and government officials. Ford said, however, that it expects to lose more than $180 million in Europe during the second half of the year. That is partly because it typically sells fewer cars in the summer but also because of the cost of introducing a new version of its high-end Mondeo model as well as a new version of the midsize Focus. Ford also illustrated how tension between Ukraine and Russia is beginning to have an economic impact in Western Europe. Ford said that sales fell in Russia as well as Turkey during the second quarter, but that it has not given up on the market. “Although the current environment in Russia is difficult,” Ford said in a statement, “Russia remains a large and important market.”


Lingering on the Edge of His Father’s Long Shadow

Abstract: BARCELONA, Spain — Just occasionally, as he begins another story about what his father did, or said, or thought, Jordi Cruyff lapses into the present tense. It is now six months since his father, the Dutch great Johan Cruyff, died at 68 at his home in Barcelona, his battle with lung cancer lost . It is now six months since soccer stood still to mourn one of its immortals, a game-changer and trendsetter, both as elegant player and pioneering coach. And as his son speaks, language betrays him: Not enough time has passed for those who knew Johan best to get accustomed to the idea that he is no longer here. “My father is a guy with a strong personality and strong opinions,” Jordi said at one point. At another: “He is a person with a social conscience, with amazing moral values.” Or even: “He has always been very good at driving.” It is as though they were in the car together, just the other day. Jordi must remind himself that his father is gone. Image Jordi Cruyff, left, with his father after playing in the UEFA Cup final for Deportivo Alavés in 2001. Credit Rex Features via AP Images Jordi, 42, still carries his father with him; he does not have much choice. He has long been accustomed to the realities of life as the son of a legend who was honored three times as Europe’s best player. “Only later do you realize that he means something bigger,” he said. In the months since Johan’s death, what he meant to the soccer world has become clear to his son. Jordi’s initial reaction to his private grief was to throw himself into his work as technical director of the Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv. It was, he conceded, an attempt to find distraction. But there have been reminders at every turn. Along with his mother and sisters, he devoted part of his time to the two nonprofit groups close to his father’s heart, as well as to a series of audio recordings that Johan made in the last year of his life. The tapes will constitute a posthumous autobiography scheduled to be published next month. Jordi has listened to them all, a process he said had been both arduous and cathartic. Then there have been the spontaneous eulogies. No matter where in the world Jordi has found himself, he has been told countless stories, been shown hundreds of pictures, and been inundated with messages on social media. All of them are tributes to his father. It has been, he said, an experience “full of contradictions” — at once intensely painful and immeasurably proud. “You are never allowed to forget anything,” he said. “There are new anecdotes, almost every day — lots of stories I did not know. People always say how sorry they are, what he meant to them. I have been to various countries these last few months, and you see men who are 65, 70, and they are emotional. They had moments when my father touched them, in whatever way, and they want to talk about it. “They say where they were in 1974 or 1978, for the World Cups, or they have these pictures on their phones from 30 years ago. I don’t know how they get them on there. It is maybe their way of grieving, and it is out of respect. They just need to say something. Because they come every day, you can never really get over it.” Image Jordi Cruyff at a news conference in Barcelona on March 29, five days after the death of his father. Credit Manu Fernandez/Associated Press On one hand, they are constant reminders of his father’s death. But on the other, Jordi said, “there is a unanimous feeling that he meant something.” It is not the first time Jordi has been of two minds about his father. He acknowledged that it would have been easy, during his career, to allow resentment to fester. His surname alone, after all, was “always a bit” of a burden; while a young player at Barcelona, during his father’s time as coach there, he was aware of accusations of nepotism. He said that those suggestions had affected him as a teenager but that he felt he had “let all that go” once and for all in 1996, when both father and son left the Camp Nou. Johan departed as coach, and Jordi went off to play for Manchester United. “I had a lot of good offers,” he said. “These teams do not come for you unless they see talent. That gave me a lot of confidence.” That was the start of a career path that suggests he has, perhaps, done all he can to disprove the charge that he traded on inherited fame. That his uniform as a player — except for his first season at United — always bore the name Jordi, rather than Cruyff, was a simple business decision: “My father had trademarked ‘Cruyff 14,’ so nobody else could have that name and number on their shirt.” But many of his other choices have been made with an eye toward striking his own path. “I specifically chose my own way, in different environments and a different kind of football,” he said. As a player, Jordi spent time in Ukraine and Malta, rather than taking lucrative deals in Qatar. After his playing career, he decided that working as a technical director — in Cyprus and, since 2012, at Maccabi — suited him more than coaching. He said he had enjoyed working away from the limelight. “It is easy to convince people to go to the Premier League,” he said. “In Israel, there is a lot of convincing, a lot of explaining.” And he has had successes of his own. He helped guide Maccabi into the Champions League group stage in 2015, and to the Europa League this season , and he has kick-started the careers of a host of coaches, most notably Paulo Sousa, now of Fiorentina. That he is a Cruyff, of course, has helped. There is something of an echo of his father in his assertion that his work “is all about disagreements, between the coach and the sporting director,” and his admission that he “needs to be in a certain environment, with a good feeling with the owner and the chief executive.” For a long time, he had his father to fall back on for advice, and Johan had an “irritating” habit of being right most of the time, Jordi said. “Even with things like driving,” he said. “He would know the right route, and more than that, he would go all these different ways to make sure he got as many green lights as possible. He would calculate that if this one was red, the next two would be green. He was always trying to find the quickest way, the best way. He was a step ahead. His brain was never sleeping.” Every so often, though, Johan had to demur to his son. “We had one situation where he wanted me to take one coach and I wanted another,” Jordi said. Often counseled by his father to “trust your intuition,” he went with his instinct. “I was right on that one,” he said. The apple, perhaps, does not fall far from the tree. But Jordi Cruyff knows that he can never be his father, that he will not leave the same legacy or touch as many people. “He was part of the 1 percent, who will always be remembered,” he said. “I realized a long time ago that I am part of the 99.”

Jordi Cruyff
Johan Cruyff
Soccer
Maccabi Tel Aviv
Barcelona Soccer Team


2 Plans and Many Questions on the Uninsured

Abstract: ATLANTA — Brandy Coons is what health economists call a free rider. She may not fully appreciate it, but her decision to go without health insurance , like millions of similarly situated Americans, has become central to the pre-eminent policy dispute of the Democratic presidential campaign. Ms. Coons, a 23-year-old waitress who rents a room and rarely eats out, said she could probably afford a high-deductible policy if she gave up her gym membership and spent less on her amateur photography. But she chooses instead to gamble against the odds of confronting a bankrupting catastrophe. “I’m young and in pretty good shape,” Ms. Coons said one recent afternoon, on her way to the treadmill at the Fitness Factory in Midtown Atlanta. “I looked at Blue Cross Blue Shield. But the only thing I could see myself really needing it for are prescriptions and dental because there are so many free clinics, or a hospital visit really isn’t all that expensive.” She continued, “The insurance premium was more than what I would pay for my prescriptions, so I just decided not to deal with it.” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton contends that the only way to achieve universal health coverage, and to make the marketplace fair and efficient, is to require that everyone have insurance. That would include people like Ms. Coons, who may not currently rank health care above other needs and wants. Senator Barack Obama , Mrs. Clinton’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, shares her goal of insuring all Americans. But he says that a mandate could mean financial devastation for middle-class families if the government did not first adequately reduce the cost of insurance. Both candidates express confidence that by pumping at least $110 billion into subsidies and tax credits they can make policies affordable for all. The difference is that Mr. Obama insists he will be able to lure all of the uninsured simply by dangling the carrot of low premiums; Mrs. Clinton believes there will always be some free riders who respond only to a government stick. Neither campaign has provided enough detail about its plan to enable more than guesswork about how it might influence consumers like Ms. Coons. They have not detailed what kind of subsidies would be needed or who would be entitled to them. Mrs. Clinton has not fully explained how she would make everyone comply with her plan or exactly how she would cap the amount a family would have to spend on premiums. Each candidate would raise the money needed to subsidize premiums by rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts for high earners, taxing businesses that do not insure their workers and reducing costs through electronic record keeping, preventive medicine and chronic disease management. But there is little certainty about how much those initiatives might save, or when. Nor can it be known if the savings would offset the potential cost of new technology and drugs and the cost of providing care to the newly insured. There are also questions about whether the new savings and tax increases would be enough to subsidize insurance for all who need help. Both candidates are backed by teams of prominent economists from top universities and policy groups. But with little real-world precedent to guide them, their assessments are necessarily an amalgam of statistical modeling and back-of-the-envelope calculation. “In a campaign, people put out proposals that aren’t highly specified, that don’t have enough detail to model them effectively,” said E. Richard Brown, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an Obama adviser. “These numbers are based on a lot of assumptions.” In speeches, debates and dueling advertisements, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have brandished projections that even their originators acknowledge are tenuous. Mrs. Clinton, for instance, has charged repeatedly that Mr. Obama’s plan would leave 15 million people uninsured. Doing so, she has said, amounts to Democratic apostasy. “I don’t want to leave anybody out,” she said in Thursday’s debate in Austin, Tex. But the economist who devised that number, Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that while he felt strongly that a mandate was needed to achieve universal coverage, he was less firm about his projection. “There is a lot of margin for error around that estimate,” Mr. Gruber said. Mr. Obama, meanwhile, maintains in a television advertisement that his plan will “cover everyone.” That claim is disputed by some of his own advisers, including Mr. Brown, who recently calculated that the Obama plan might leave behind two million free riders. “That’s the number we would expect to continue to be uninsured unless they’re forced to buy coverage,” Mr. Brown said. There is no consensus among health economists about how many free riders there are, or on their economic impact. But of the 47 million uninsured people in the United States, 7.3 million come from families with incomes of $75,000 or more, and an additional 6.9 million earn between $50,000 and $75,000, according to 2006 census estimates. Some of those with moderate or high incomes may have been shut out of the insurance market because of age or pre-existing health conditions. Researchers believe a majority are self-employed or among the growing number of Americans whose employers do not offer affordable insurance. Their only insurance options may be high-priced individual policies. Many free riders are assumed to be young and at little risk of major illness, but they do consume health care. A recent analysis by the New America Foundation, a Washington policy group, found that 16 percent of the patients who received uncompensated medical care in 2004 had family incomes of at least four times the federal poverty level (which would currently be $41,600 for an individual and $84,800 for a family of four). They accounted for $5.8 billion of the estimated $41.4 billion in uncompensated care that year. Most of it was delivered in hospitals , which are required by federal law to treat patients with emergency conditions, regardless of ability to pay. A vast majority of that care is covered by the federal, state and local governments in a direct cost shift to taxpayers. But there is also a shift to the privately insured. Hospitals and doctors raise their fees to compensate for the losses they incur by treating uninsured and underinsured patients, and insurers pass those increases along to consumers. A 2005 study found that the shift added 8.5 percent to the average premium. Many free riders, including Ms. Coons in Atlanta, never consider that the care they receive in community clinics and emergency rooms is subsidized by taxpayers and private policyholders. “I still pay for everything,” Ms. Coons said, “and I certainly pay taxes.” Mrs. Clinton says that requiring everyone to get insurance, in addition to addressing the taxpayers’ cost-shift, is a prerequisite to ending discrimination against those with pre-existing medical problems. Only then, she argues, would it be fair for the government to require insurers to cover even those likely to require expensive care. “By allowing people to stay out, you risk that only the sick will come in,” said Len M. Nichols, director of health policy for the New America Foundation, and a reluctant supporter of a mandate. “Insurers have to protect themselves. Bringing everyone in also lowers costs across the board because the risk pool is wider.” Mr. Obama, for his part, all but denies the existence of free riders. “I don’t see those folks,” he said when asked last month about people who may need to be forced to buy insurance. He said he would mandate coverage for children and allow parents to cover children up to age 25 on their policies. But recognizing that affordability is often in the eye of the beholder, he would not immediately require coverage of adults. He says he would be open to a mandate later if there were holdouts, convincing some economists that the dispute is more about the timing of a mandate than the need for one. “I believe the reason people don’t have health care isn’t because no one’s forced them to buy it,” Mr. Obama said this month in Wisconsin. “It’s because no one’s made it affordable.” There is no settled view about what makes health insurance affordable. A survey last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the average annual premium was $4,479 for an individual and $12,106 for a family. Massachusetts, the only state that mandates insurance coverage, considers insurance to be affordable for anyone with a family income that is more than three times the federal poverty level, above $31,200 for an individual and $63,600 for a family of four. Coverage for those making less is subsidized in full or in part by the state. Unlike Mrs. Clinton’s plan, however, Massachusetts offers exemptions from the mandate to those who can demonstrate they would otherwise suffer financial hardship. It expects to offer 60,000 such waivers this year. Some share of the population will disregard virtually any government mandate, either by intent or inertia, and the early evidence about the Massachusetts law is mixed. Only half of the state’s estimated 600,000 uninsured enrolled by the end of 2007, the first deadline. That may be because the state set a gentle initial tax penalty of $219 to soften any perception of heavy-handedness. This year, the fine will rise to as much as $912 for some residents. “The Massachusetts experience shows that unless you have very clear, very stringent penalties that are directly enforceable, mandates don’t work,” said Austan D. Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who advises Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton acknowledged Thursday that a mandate would be politically unpopular, noting in the debate that she “took a big risk” to propose one. “You chose to put forth a health care plan that will leave out at least 15 million people,” she told Mr. Obama. “That’s a big difference.” Mr. Obama responded that his goal was the same as hers, to cover everyone. “We think,” he said, “that there’s going to be a different way of getting there.”

Health Insurance and Managed Care
Presidential Election of 2008
Medicine and Health
Clinton Hillary Rodham
Obama Barack


New Service From Amazon Offers Downloadable Films

Abstract: Amazon.com, the leading purveyor of goods online, has started selling digital products, offering movies and television programs that can be downloaded and watched on a computer or portable video player. The move, which was expected, is the first major effort by Amazon, the Web’s largest retailer, to sell downloadable entertainment. Amazon has at times moved toward offering music downloads but never introduced a music service. It does, however, offer some free promotional music files. Amazon’s new video service will compete with the iTunes Music Store of Apple and a growing array of other video retailers including Google, AOL, Movielink and CinemaNow. Apple has been selling television programs and music videos and is expected to announce next week that it will also sell movies. Amazon’s service, which is called AmazonUnbox, will sell most movies for $7.99 to $14.99 and most television programs for $1.99 (the same price as Apple). Users can also rent movies for a 24-hour period for $3.99. Amazon will sell current and back titles of all major movie studios except Disney and has programs from several dozen television networks as well. Indeed, Amazon is the first video service to license the original “Star Trek” series. For many new movies, Amazon’s $14.99 maximum price is lower than other download services, like Movielink, which sells most new releases for $19.99. The studios have largely set the wholesale price of downloads above $14.99 hoping to keep the retail price at $20 or above. They do not want to alienate Wal-Mart, by far the largest movie distributor, which uses discount DVD’s to attract shoppers. Amazon is pricing some current movies higher than its $14.99 cap. For example, “Silent Hill” from Sony is $16.87 and “Rumor Has It” from Warner Brothers is $19.62. Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president for digital media, declined to discuss the company’s pricing strategy or arrangements with studios. The chief executive of CinemaNow, Curt Marvis, said the high price of movies was one reason movie download services had not been popular. “We have learned that online customers expect prices to be low. Period,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if they are buying a car or a diamond earring or a movie.” Another problem, Mr. Marvis added, is that it is difficult to watch downloaded movies on home televisions. Most downloads, so far, are meant to be played back on a personal computer. While some computers can be wired to television sets, few are. CinemaNow has started selling some older movies in a form that allows them to be burned to DVD’s on computers and then played through regular DVD players. Mr. Marvis said for those titles, five times as many people burn DVD’s as watch movies on their computers. Mr. Carr declined to say why Amazon was not allowing users to create DVD’s. Amazon says its movie service improves on others because the video quality is higher. That quality comes at a price: longer download times. For example, “Inside Man,’’ which is 129 minutes long, is downloaded as a 2.2-gigabyte file on Amazon instead of a 1.5-gigabyte file on Movielink. Amazon says the typical movie will take two to seven hours to download, depending on the connection speed of the user. “We know our customers well and the one thing they tell us is they want high quality,” Mr. Carr said. To help consumers cope with the long download times, Amazon has introduced software that allows users to buy a movie while at work and have it automatically downloaded to their home computers. Amazon will also give customers that buy movies a second, smaller file that is meant to be loaded onto portable video players that use Microsoft software.

Amazon.com Inc
Motion Pictures
Computers and the Internet
Retail Stores and Trade


What’s Really Missing From the New iPhone: Cutting-Edge Design

Abstract: Forget about the headphone jack for a second. Sure, it’s pretty annoying that Apple’s newest iPhones — the 7 and 7 Plus, which were unveiled in San Francisco on Wednesday and will start shipping to customers on Sept. 16 — will not include a port for plugging in standard earbuds. But you’ll get used to it. The absence of a jack is far from the worst shortcoming in Apple’s latest product launch . Instead, it’s a symptom of a deeper issue with the new iPhones, part of a problem that afflicts much of the company’s product lineup: Apple’s aesthetics have grown stale. Apple has squandered its once-commanding lead in hardware and software design. Though the new iPhones include several new features, including water resistance and upgraded cameras, they look pretty much the same as the old ones. The new Apple Watch does too. And as competitors have borrowed and even begun to surpass Apple’s best designs, what was iconic about the company’s phones, computers, tablets and other products has come to seem generic. This is a subjective assessment, and it’s one that Apple rebuts. The company says it does not change its designs just for the sake of change; the current iPhone design, which debuted in 2014, has sold hundreds of millions of units, so why mess with success? In a video accompanying the iPhone 7 unveiling on Wednesday, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, called the device the “most deliberate evolution” of its design vision for the smartphone. Yet there are signs that my critique of Apple’s designs are shared by others. Industrial designers and tech critics used to swoon over Apple’s latest hardware; nowadays you witness less swooning and more bemusement . Last year, Apple put out a battery case that looked comically pregnant — “a design embarrassment,” said The Verge — and a rechargeable mouse with the charging port on the bottom, meaning you have to turn it over to charge it . And the remote control for Apple TV violated the first rule of TV remote design: Don’t make it symmetrical, so people can figure out which button is which in the dark. ( One tip : Put a rubber band on the bottom, so you can quickly figure out which end is up.) Then there’s software interface design. The Apple Watch, also released last year, looked fine (and some of its wristbands were truly stunning), but its user interface was so puzzling and took so long to learn that Apple was forced to go back to the drawing board. In a new update to be introduced soon, the watch’s interface has been substantially simplified. It’s the same story for Apple Music. After the streaming service was widely panned for its confusing array of options , Apple had to completely redesign it this year. It’s not just that a few new Apple products have been plagued with design flaws. The bigger problem is an absence of delight. I recently checked in with several tech-pundit friends for their assessment of Apple’s aesthetic choices. “What was the last Apple design that really dazzled you?” I asked. There was a small chorus of support for the MacBook, the beautifully tiny ( if functionally flawed ) laptop that Apple released last year. But most respondents were split between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 5 — two daring smartphone designs that were instantly recognized as surpassing anything else on the market. The iPhone 5, in particular, was a jewel ; to me, its flat sides, chamfered edges and remarkable build quality suggested something miraculous, as if Mr. Ive had been divinely inspired in his locked white room . But the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 were released in 2010 and 2012. If you have to reach back to the last presidential election to find an Apple design that really caught your eye, there’s something amiss. Apple’s design difficulties prompt two questions: How bad is this problem? And how can Apple solve it? To the first: It’s not acute, but it is urgent. Despite a slowdown in growth , Apple is still by far the most profitable consumer electronics company in the world. Consumer satisfaction surveys show that customers love its products . And even if the tech cognoscenti no longer rave about Apple’s designs, there’s little sign that their griping has affected sales. Despite criticism, Apple Music also signed up 17 million subscribers in about a year. Apple doesn’t release sales numbers for the watch, but many analysts believe that sales have been brisk , and customer-satisfaction surveys are through the roof . And the iPhone has proved remarkably durable; as I argued last year , the iPhone’s continuing dominance is the closest bet in tech to a sure thing. The real danger is in Apple’s long-term reputation. Much of Apple’s brand is built on design and on a sense that everything it delivers is a gift from the vanguard. Two years ago, the designer Khoi Vinh, a former design director for The New York Times who now works at Adobe, summed up Apple’s design prowess this way : “If there’s a single thread that runs through nearly every piece of Apple hardware, it’s conviction , the sense that its designers believed with every fiber of their being that the form factor they delivered was the result of countless correct choices that, in totality, add up to the best and only choice for giving shape to that particular product.” But in assessing the iPhone 6, then new, Mr. Vinh felt Apple had gone astray. Whereas the iPhone 5 had sharp, sophisticated lines that set it apart from everything else, “the iPhone 6’s form seems uninspired, harkening back to the dated-looking forms of the original iPhone, and barely managing to distinguish itself from the countless other phones that have since aped that look,” he wrote. That was in 2014. Now, two years later, we still have the same basic iPhone design. For years, Apple has released a redesigned iPhone every other year, but now we’re going to go three years without a new iPhone look. And while Apple has slowed its design cadence, its rivals have sped up. Last year Samsung remade its lineup of Galaxy smartphones in a new glass-and-metal design that looked practically identical to the iPhone. Then it went further. Over the course of a few months, Samsung put out several design refinements, culminating in the Note 7, a big phone that has been universally praised by critics. With its curved sides and edge-to-edge display, the Note 7 pulls off a neat trick: Though it is physically smaller than Apple’s big phone, it actually has a larger screen. So thanks to clever design, you get more from a smaller thing — exactly the sort of advance we once looked to Apple for. An important caveat: Samsung’s software is still bloated, and its reputation for overall build quality took a hit when it announced last week that it would recall and replace the Note 7 because of a battery defect that caused spontaneous explosions . To the extent that making a device that doesn’t explode suggests design expertise, Apple is still ahead of Samsung. But the setbacks from Apple’s rivals aren’t likely to last. Apple can’t afford to rest on its past successes for long.


Lawyers for Madoff Victims Have Their Day in Court

Abstract: If former Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York wanted to see what he faces as the designated mediator in the legal battle between the owners of the New York Mets and the trustee who is liquidating Bernard L. Madoff ’s enormous Ponzi scheme , he was in the right place. That place was the sunny ceremonial courtroom at the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan on Thursday, where Mr. Cuomo listened as three lively federal appellate judges poked and prodded lawyers for both sides in the dispute, pushing them to defend positions that contain almost no common ground. Whatever decision the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reaches will be felt far beyond the Mets clubhouse, affecting thousands of Madoff victims, big and small, and potentially shaping the way victims of similar frauds will be treated in federal bankruptcy courts for years to come. The core of the dispute is how to calculate the losses of victims, with both sides insisting that its preferred method was the only fair approach, the only formula sanctioned by federal law and earlier court rulings. The last round in the fight went to lawyers for the trustee, Irving H. Picard , whose arguments were supported by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the industry-financed organization that provides a limited safety net for customers of bankrupt brokerage houses. Last March, Judge Burton R. Lifland of Federal Bankruptcy Court found that Mr. Picard was correct to measure the claims of victims as the difference between the cash put in and the cash taken out of their accounts over the years, regardless of the final balance on the fictional account statements concocted by Mr. Madoff. That formula puts net losers, those who put in more cash than they took out, at the head of the line for compensation. The net winners who received their initial cash back plus fictional profits — profits paid with money Mr. Madoff stole from the net losers — could recover in the bankruptcy only after the net losers recoup their cash outlay. Moreover, the disputed formula leaves net winners with substantial fictional profits — like the Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, whose phony profits totaled about $300 million — vulnerable to Mr. Picard’s demands that those fictional profits be returned to help make the net losers whole. At the hearing, lawyers for the Mets owners and other net winners tried to persuade the appellate judges to overturn Judge Lifland’s decision and force Mr. Picard to accept the victims’ final account statements as the measure of their losses in the fraud. “Customers’ account statements should control in this case,” said Karen E. Wagner, a lawyer with Davis, Polk & Wardell, representing the Wilpon family interests. Any other approach would undermine investor confidence, added Helen Davis Chaitman, another lawyer challenging Mr. Picard. Pressed by Judge Reena Raggi, Ms. Wagner conceded that the law gives the trustee discretion in determining claims. “But he is not entitled to ignore those statements,” Ms. Wagner added. That inspired an inconvenient “what if” posed by Judge Dennis Jacobs. What if a broker stole $20,000 from a customer but pretended to have invested it in a stock that plummeted in value, leaving just $15,000 on the account statement. Would the customer’s fraud claim be limited to $15,000, not the $20,000 that was actually stolen in the fraud? Ms. Wagner did her best to juggle the question, insisting that where the final account statements protected customers, they should be relied upon. David J. Sheehan, the lawyer for Mr. Picard, had his own difficult moments as he navigated questions about whether cash advances from SIPC could be paid to net winners even if they could not share in the assets recovered by the trustee. Absolutely not, he said. But he explained that net winners, like all Madoff victims, still had fraud claims they could assert against the estate as general creditors once the net losers were made whole. While the net losers’ claims total about $20 billion, the trustee has already recovered $10 billion and has sued for a total of $90 billion in damages and fictional profits, he noted. “Our hope is that there will indeed be a general creditor fund and all of these claimants will have a chance to participate in that,” Mr. Sheehan said. Both sides later said the judges seemed extremely well versed on the debate, but no ruling is expected for several months.

Ponzi Schemes
Securities and Exchange Commission
Madoff Bernard L
Frauds and Swindling
Picard Irving H


Unions Frustrated Over Labor Coalition Leadership

Abstract: Two years after Jack Ahern won the presidency of the New York City Central Labor Council on the strength of his pledges to clean up the troubled labor coalition, the council has fallen into disarray, with top aides leaving and union leaders expressing growing frustration over Mr. Ahern’s leadership. The council’s communications director, its political director and a government-affairs strategist have resigned in recent weeks. The national A.F.L.-C.I.O. has told Mr. Ahern that he acted improperly in doubling his salary to $80,000. Other labor leaders questioned why Mr. Ahern did not speak up to rebut attacks on the city’s municipal unions, particularly criticism of the sanitation workers’ union over snow removal last month. Mr. Ahern, 57, who had been the council’s executive vice president, was seen as a welcome presence after the council’s former president, Brian McLaughlin, was convicted of embezzling more than $2 million and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But union leaders and supporters of organized labor have recently voiced disappointment over the performance of the council, an umbrella organization representing more than one million New York union members. “People used to look to the New York Central Labor Council as the leader in the nation, but no one looks to it now,” said Joshua Freeman, a labor historian at the City University of New York. He added: “It’s not what they’re doing, it’s what they’re not doing that is the big problem. They just haven’t been a presence in a year when pressures on public-sector unions and the whole union movement have been great.” The brunt of the criticism has been directed at Mr. Ahern, particularly after he pushed the council’s board to double his salary to $80,000 a year. That is on top of the $250,000 he receives each year as president of a 4,000-member Queens-based local of the operating engineers’ union. In November, the Rev. Brian Jordan, an activist Catholic priest heavily involved in labor matters, called on Mr. Ahern to resign in light of his doubled salary. “Thousands upon thousands of union workers are out of work, and you as a leading figure in the N.Y.C. labor movement have the audacity to demand a 100% increase in pay,” Father Jordan wrote to Mr. Ahern. “Shame on you!” Mr. Ahern did not respond to several requests for interviews. But Tom Kelly, a lobbyist and consultant he hired for $5,000 a month, vigorously defended Mr. Ahern. “Jack was brought in by the affiliates to lead the charge in cleaning up, and I think he’s doing a lot of great stuff,” said Mr. Kelly, who said he was reducing his pay to $2,500 a month and would step down in February. “No one is as back-stabbing and back-biting as trade union people, which breaks my heart. A lot of this stuff is scurrilous.” Last week, after the A.F.L.-C.I.O. told Mr. Ahern that he had received his raise in violation of the council’s constitutional provisions, the council sent its 700 delegates a letter, saying they are to vote on Thursday on whether to approve Mr. Ahern’s increased salary. In the fall, around the time that Father Jordan objected to Mr. Ahern’s pay increase, the council’s chief of staff, Vincent Alvarez, quit. In recent weeks, three other top aides have also handed in their resignations: Carolyn Daly, who had been the council’s communications director for 12 years; Vincent Montalbano, a government-affairs aide; and Sharada Polavarapu, the political director. Privately, several union presidents who serve on the council’s board spoke with frustration last week that Mr. Ahern had not responded more vigorously to attacks over municipal pensions and wages, or to accusations that the sanitation workers’ union engaged in a work slowdown after the Dec. 26 blizzard. Mr. Ahern is also being investigated by James R. Zazzali, a former New Jersey state judge who is the independent ethics officer of the operating engineers’ union. Several members said the investigation involved construction work done at Mr. Ahern’s house in Old Westbury. Mr. Ahern has denied any wrongdoing. In June, The Village Voice wrote that Mr. Ahern had hired a stretch limousine to take him and family members to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. He subsequently repaid the council the $1,200 cost of the limousine. Mr. Kelly said Mr. Ahern had earned his pay and was committed to standing up for unions and their members. “What Jack does is beyond a full-time job,” he said, adding, “Jack really wants to deflect some of these attacks on workers.” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said, “Now more than ever we need an effective council, especially when we’re the No. 1 city in the country in terms of income disparities.” One union leader who opposed Mr. Ahern’s salary increase, Barbara Bowen, president of the Professional Staff Congress, which represents CUNY faculty members, said Mr. Ahern had agreed at the council’s December board meeting to donate 25 percent of his council salary to charity. “I don’t think we should focus on the stipend as the central issue,” Ms. Bowen said. “The main issue is for the Central Labor Council to use its position and huge membership to build labor power.” She added: “It’s not antilabor to demand the best of union leaders. In fact, it’s a responsibility of the labor movement to demand the best of their leaders.”

American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations


An App, Happy, Offers Discounts for Drinkers

Abstract: Happy , known on Android phones as Happy Any Hour, is a new app that allows users to drink on the cheap at participating bars in Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan. Download the app, and suddenly it is as if you have joined a club: A flash of your phone screen suddenly gets you $2 off the Smuttynose I.P.A. that you have been craving. This app does not entitle users to a roving all-day happy hour. Deals are available only at certain times and bars. To find when and where they are offered, the app provides a map of all places offering discounts, both at that moment and in the future. Once on the premises, Happy users must start a countdown within the app, which gives them 60 minutes to drink and save, showing the bartender the timer upon every order. Afterward, they can stay and pay full price or crawl along to the next available deal. “What we’re really trying to do is match-make bars looking for people with people looking for bars,” Jay Reno, one of the app’s founders, said. With more than 140 bars signed up, Happy offers a nice variety of choices. The options in Manhattan include cavernous drinking halls, hookah bars and prim cafes serving wine and chocolate. The app also offers filters for specific neighborhoods, and for venue types, like dive bars or gastro pubs. With all these offerings, Happy is a slightly chunkier piece of software than your standard download. With the timer, the restaurant pages, the map, the mail and social functions, there are lots of options to navigate. It is also clean and well designed, so the busyness does not cause a problem, at least for now. But Mr. Reno has large ambitions for Happy. He wants it to compete with services like Yelp, and he plans to add more social functions to the app. The service has obvious appeal, but its biggest problem right now is getting those who have downloaded it to try it. If the app grows bigger and more complex, first-time users might feel overwhelmed. Happy plans to make money by selling advertising to alcohol brands. Bars have long offered specials on particular brands (such as a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of Jameson ), and Happy expects to exploit these natural pairings. It may also offer premium packages to the bars with which it teams up, which would entail selling data about customers attracted through the app. The idea behind Happy is a no-brainer: a promise to save people money while helping them to have a good time. I would be more skeptical as a bar owner — get a talkative show-off using the app, and soon the whole bar has it and can demand the deals. But even with that risk, Happy will likely do a good job of providing bars the patrons that they need. Happy should do well, provided users aren’t too stumped, or too embarrassed by some of the no-nonsense bartenders in the city, to start using the service. JONAH BROMWICH

Brooklyn
Manhattan
Mobile Apps
bars,nightclubs
Happy Labs Inc.


Kurt Thomas Helps Short-Handed Knicks Hold Off Jazz

Abstract: SALT LAKE CITY — Kurt Thomas sat at his locker, his right foot in a bucket of ice, in the visitors’ locker room at EnergySolutions Arena. He had a smile on his face, appearing content to quietly reflect on his night. As reporters began to approach him, he seemed slightly surprised to be the center of attention. His teammates were not. “Interview K.T.!” shouted Marcus Camby, who sat a few feet from Thomas. It was Thomas’s play, his teammates said, that helped inspire them as they snapped a four-game losing streak with a 90-83 victory over the Utah Jazz on Monday night that wrapped up a five-game western swing. The 40-year-old Thomas, the oldest player in the league, produced his best performance of the season after learning earlier Monday that he has a bone spur in his right foot. The Knicks were concerned he would not be able to play, and have scheduled Thomas for a magnetic resonance imaging on Tuesday in New York. Not only did he play, he provided the spark the Knicks needed after losing their previous four games by an average of 20 points. Thomas did a little bit of everything, finishing with 6 points, 3 rebounds, 3 blocks and 2 assists. He also played 27 minutes, a season-high for him. “Once the ball goes up you try to block it out as much as possible and get the adrenaline going,” Thomas said of his injury. He added: “I was just trying to compete. I wasn’t thinking about how many minutes I had out there. I was just trying to have fun.” With the victory, the Knicks kept a one-game lead over the Nets in the Atlantic Division, and remained in the No. 3 spot in the Eastern Conference standings. Image Kurt Thomas gave the Knicks the push that they needed to beat the Jazz. “I wasn’t thinking about how many minutes I had out there," he said. "I was just trying to have fun.” Credit Jim Urquhart/Reuters Thomas was given an opportunity Monday because Coach Mike Woodson had almost as many injured players as he did healthy ones. The Knicks (39-26) were without Carmelo Anthony (knee) and Tyson Chandler (strained neck muscle) for a third straight game. They lost Amar’e Stoudemire to season-ending knee surgery last week. Thomas entered the game to start the second quarter. Jazz fans taunted Thomas for much of the game, making sure he did not forget he was the eldest player in the league. Thomas took it all in stride. “I like communicating with the fans,” Thomas said. “That really helps me get going.” Thomas moved well around the court, helping open the lanes for J. R. Smith (20 points) and Raymond Felton (19). Thomas forced the Jazz into turnovers, but was best at solidifying the Knicks interior defense to slow Utah’s frontcourt of Al Jefferson and Derrick Favors. The Jazz (34-33) scored only 2 points in the final 3 minutes 38 seconds, and that basket came in the final seconds after the Knicks had secured the victory. “Our defense really shined tonight, especially in that second half, holding them to 31 points,” Woodson said, calling Thomas the heart of that defense and rewarding his effort with the game ball. “He deserved it,” Woodson said. “He hadn’t played 26 minutes all year and we really didn’t even know if he was going to play tonight.” Thomas’s teammates offered their congratulations, an act he appreciated. “It just showed how much my teammates love me and how much we enjoy playing with each other,” he said. “There was a lot of love in the locker room.” He added, poking some fun at himself: “The first game ball ever. I didn’t know this was the N.F.L.” The Knicks also got a boost Monday from Smith, who has struggled to keep the Knicks in games as he tries to fill the scoring void left by Anthony. Smith played poorly in the first half, but made a quick adjustment. Image The Knicks' Raymond Felton had 19 points against the Jazz. Credit Rick Bowmer/Associated Press Instead of forcing off-balanced jumpers, Smith drove the basket over and over again. He made all six of his free throws — he averages just 3.2 attempts per game — in the second half. Smith scored 10 of the Knicks’ last 17 points in the third quarter to give them a 66-63 lead, and the Knicks never trailed in the fourth. “I haven’t been shooting the ball well,” said Smith, adding: “I was just trying to make something happen after 3 turnovers and 2 points in the first half. That changed everything for me.” Smith has also been playing through minor leg injuries the last five games. But he said watching Thomas play through his pain motivated him. “I have ice bags on my little nicks and bruises and if he can do it,” Smith said of Thomas, then Smith could too. “He’s a pure warrior. With getting the X-ray today and being questionable, and to come in and do the job he did on the defensive end and make shots, that’s a true warrior right there. They don’t make that breed anymore.” When Anthony and Chandler return to the lineup, Thomas will not be on the court as much as he was Monday night. Thomas said he knew he might not play 26 minutes in a single game again in his career. But on this night, Thomas helped the Knicks end a brutal losing streak, giving him and his teammates reason to celebrate. And, for at least one night, he said he did not feel like a 40-year-old. “Not at all,” he said, smiling. “I feel good, other than the foot. I feel really good.” REBOUNDS Jason Kidd sustained a bruised left wrist in the third quarter, and an X-ray on the wrist was negative. Kidd said he hoped to play Wednesday against the Orlando Magic at Madison Square Garden. “It’s just going to be a bruise, that’s all,” Kidd said. “I just wanted it to take a look at it, but it’s fine.” Kidd said he injured his wrist when his wrist hit the arm of a Jazz player as he tried to make a steal.

Kurt Thomas
Knicks
Utah Jazz
Raymond Felton
Basketball
J R Smith


Brooklyn: Mayor Against Spending Surplus

Abstract: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg rejected suggestions yesterday that the city spend part of a newly projected surplus of $1.9 billion this fiscal year. The city’s financial forecast was revised on Wednesday because tax revenues have been higher than expected. Councilman Michael E. McMahon of Staten Island urged the mayor yesterday to use the surplus to rescind part of a 2002 property tax increase, while Directions for Our Youth, a nonprofit group, urged more youth programs. “We have to make sure that we have a cushion,” the mayor said.

Property Taxes
Bloomberg Michael R
Budgets and Budgeting


Jacob Jensen, Designer in Danish Modern Style, Dies at 89

Abstract: Jacob Jensen, an industrial designer whose sleek minimalism exemplified the style known as Danish modern, most notably with the stereo systems and other audio products he created for the consumer electronics company Bang & Olufsen, died on May 15 at his home in Virksund, Denmark. He was 89. His death was confirmed by Rikke Boe Nielsen, the global brand director for Jacob Jensen Design , the company Mr. Jensen started in the 1950s. Beginning in 1964, Mr. Jensen worked regularly for Bang & Olufsen, a long-established Danish manufacturer known for its high-end electronics for home use, for more than a quarter-century. With their smooth surfaces, simple shapes and futuristic controls, his best-known designs — turntables, amplifiers, speakers, tuners — helped transform the conventions of home entertainment systems. Image A 1973 Bang & Olufsen turntable. Mr. Jensen emphasized a forward-looking technological aesthetic. Credit Jacob Jensen Design Using materials like brushed stainless steel and white and black plastic, rethinking the standard ideas for knobs and dials and replacing them with, among other things, sliding, clear-plastic panels or wafer-thin push buttons, Mr. Jensen emphasized a forward-looking technological aesthetic, helping to push interior design in a new direction as well. Recognizing the groundbreaking look of Bang & Olufsen products, the Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted an entire exhibition to the company’s stereo equipment and the work of Mr. Jensen in 1978. A dozen or more of Mr. Jensen’s designs remain in the museum’s collection. “The Bang & Olufsen pieces are, by and large, among the most beautiful mass-produced objects ever made available in the United States,” the critic Paul Goldberger wrote, assessing the exhibition in The New York Times. Of Mr. Jensen’s contribution, he added: “This body of work is enough to earn him major rank among the 20th-century’s industrial designers.” He was born Jakob Jensen in Copenhagen on April 29, 1926, a son of Alfred and Olga Jensen, who was known as Bebbe. His father was an upholsterer who later made and repaired furniture. Image A watch from 1986. It was later included in a collection at the Museum of Modern Art. Credit Jacob Jensen Design (Ms. Nielsen explained in an email that though the MoMA exhibit referred to Mr. Jensen as Jakob, Mr. Jensen always made a distinction between his “Christian” name and his “artist” name, and that the name of the company was always Jacob Jensen Design. “To my knowledge, it has never been officially documented which spelling was the right one,” she wrote.) Young Jakob left school after the seventh grade, trained as an upholsterer and worked for a time in his father’s furniture workshop, where he designed chairs. He later attended the School of Arts and Crafts, now part of the School of Design of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1952. From 1952-58 he worked for the Copenhagen design firm of Bernadotte & Bjorn, where he is credited with creating the Margrethe bowl , an enduring mixing-bowl design. He started his own studio in 1958. In addition to his Bang & Olufsen work, Mr. Jensen and his company designed hundreds of other products, including hearing aids, office chairs, phones, wristwatches and kitchen hardware. Image A 1977 push-button phone for Kirk Telephone of Denmark. It was the first fully electronic telephone in the world. Credit Jacob Jensen Design In 1990, though he continued to design, he handed the reins of the company to his son, Timothy Jacob Jensen, who as chief executive and chief designer has expanded the company internationally. It now has studios in Shanghai and Bangkok, in addition to its Danish home in Hejlskov, on the shore of Limfjord in the northern part of the country. Mr. Jensen’s first two marriages ended in divorce. Besides his son Timothy, he is survived by his wife, Nanna, and four other children. His autobiography, “Different but Not Strange,” was published in Denmark in 1997. On the firm’s website, Mr. Jensen wrote of his working method: “In my view, constructing a fountain pen, writing a poem, producing a play or designing a locomotive, all demand the same components, the same ingredients: perspective, creativity, new ideas, understanding and first and foremost, the ability to rework, almost infinitely, over and over. That ‘over and over’ is for me the cruelest torture. “The only way I can work,” he continued, “is to make 30-40 models before I find the right one. The question is, when do you find the right one? My method is, when I have reached a point where I think, O.K., that’s it, there it is, I put the model on a table in the living room, illuminate it, and otherwise spend the evening as usual, and go to bed. The next morning I go in and look at it, knowing with 100 percent certainty that I have 6-7 seconds to see and decide whether it’s right or wrong. “If I look at it longer, I automatically compensate. ‘Oh, it’s not too high,’ and ‘It’s not so bad.’ There are only those 6-7 seconds; then I make some notes as to what’s wrong. Finished. After breakfast, I make the changes. That’s the only way I know.”


April Retail Sales Dipped, but Some Sectors Held Up

Abstract: United States retail sales weakened modestly in April, but outside the hard-pressed auto sector they were more resilient than many economists had forecast, a government report showed on Tuesday. The report echoed recent data showing underlying economic durability, including fewer job losses in April than feared and a surprisingly strong pace of first-quarter productivity. The Commerce Department said overall retail sales declined 0.2 percent, but if cars were excluded, sales rose 0.5 percent. Economists expected total sales to slip 0.1 percent, but had forecast a gain of just 0.2 percent excluding autos. “I think it’s a report that tells you the economy is very weak, but if we are in a recession it’s going to be a real short one,” said Robert B. MacIntosh, chief economist at Eaton Vance in Boston. Analysts are hoping that consumer spending will at least cushion an economic slowdown and offset the dampening impact of falling housing prices. Government checks are being sent to about 130 million taxpayers under a stimulus plan . The economy is forecast to grow at an anemic 0.2 percent annual rate in the second quarter, slowing from the scant 0.6 percent growth rate in the previous two quarters, according to a survey of economists released by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank on Tuesday. The retail sales data helped bolster the dollar, while prices for Treasury securities fell as investors bet that the data reduced chances for more cuts in interest rates. Other data highlighted the squeeze on consumers, who have been caught between rising food and energy prices and a crumbling housing market. The Labor Department said import prices climbed 1.8 percent in April as prices for both petroleum and nonpetroleum products climbed, feeding worries about the potential for inflation. Import prices have jumped 15.4 percent over the last year, the biggest 12-month gain since the government began publishing the data more than a quarter-century ago. Tuesday also brought a report from the National Association of Realtors saying median values of existing single-family homes in metropolitan areas fell 7.7 percent from a year ago. The Federal Reserve has cut official interest rates 3.25 percentage points, to 2 percent, since September to shield the economy from a credit squeeze stemming from the housing crisis, hoping to keep consumers from choking off their spending, which fuels two-thirds of American economic activity. In April, sales of building materials gained 1.9 percent, more than reversing March’s 1.5 percent fall. Sales at general merchandise stores were up 0.5 percent, well ahead of March’s 0.1 percent rise. The lofty gasoline prices that have pinched consumers’ pocketbooks have also reduced their interest in new cars. Auto dealers experienced a 2.8 percent drop in sales during April, adding to the 0.5 percent decline posted in March. Gasoline stations reported a 0.4 percent decline in April sales after a 1.6 percent rise in March. The new level of cost consciousness turned up in results for Wal-Mart Stores; net income rose 7 percent in the first quarter, which ended April 30. The retailer noted that its customers were seeking bargains on necessities like food and were straining from paycheck to paycheck.

Sales
Commerce Department
United States Economy
Retail Stores and Trade
Economic Conditions and Trends
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)


Left Behind by a Fallen Soldier, and Fighting Flashbacks 10 Years Later

Abstract: I have been fighting sleep every night this week to keep the flashbacks from flooding in. They are flashes of the day when two military officers showed up at my door. The day I screamed so loud I scared my baby and then collapsed onto the hardwood floor. The day my soldier, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, was killed in combat in Iraq . Today marks a decade since an improvised explosive device decimated his body and our life. And every night this week I have struggled to stay awake to keep my mind from replaying that dreadful day in an almost continuous loop. In the 10 years he has been gone, I have settled into a new normal, rebuilding a joyful life in New York City with our now 10-year-old son, Jordan. I have fought hard to reclaim that joy, helped by summers by the sea and fall weekends cheering for my boy at flag football games It has not been easy, certainly not when Jordan asked me at age 4 if Daddy was “above the clouds or below the grass.” Even today I struggle with the guilt of loving a man who knows he shares my heart with Charles. I often wonder how other military families who have suffered the ultimate sacrifice have been transformed by the passage of time. Is your warrior, like mine, frozen in time? For me, Charles will forever have a sculpted soldier’s body, even though mine has become plumper and slower in the decade that has passed. He will always be my older man, even though I’m now older than he was, 48, when he died. We will forever be in the sweet spot of our relationship, even though time surely would have tested us, as it does all couples. Overcoming grief is never easy, of course, no matter what the circumstances of the loss. But I wonder how other military families have coped long after the letter of condolence from the president has been framed and the American flag, presented on behalf of a grateful but battle-weary nation, has been tucked away. As the years have passed for me, one of my greatest sources of distress has been enduring well-meaning people expecting me to move on before I was ready because “it is what he would have wanted.” As their empathy turned to pity I had to give myself permission to still sink in sorrow on his birthday or when I awoke from the recurring dream that he has been alive all this time and hiding from me. Lately, I have wondered what Charles would think today of the country he died defending. Have other military families who have lost a soldier wondered that too? The career military man I loved surely would have been troubled by the ugliness of the political and social unrest that is dividing so many Americans. And yet, I have no doubt that he would tell our son that this country has been challenged before and became a better version of itself. I know he would say that its ideals are still worth fighting — and dying — to protect.


Turkey Arrests Dozens in Crackdown on Protests

Abstract: ISTANBUL — The Turkish authorities arrested dozens of people in several cities early on Tuesday as part of a determined and intensifying effort to stamp out weeks of antigovernment protests. Some protesters, in Istanbul and other cities, reacted to the broadening crackdown by adopting new tactics in an effort to avoid violent confrontations with the police and recapture the public spotlight. Turkey’s Interior Ministry said more than 70 people had been detained in the sweeps in Istanbul and Ankara on Tuesday. The semiofficial state news agency said those detained were alleged to be “members of terror organizations who destroyed public property, incited the public and attacked the police.” The announcement came after days of bellicose statements by Turkish officials, who have cast the three-week-old protest movement, which started in opposition to the planned destruction of a park here, as part of a plot to topple the government. The officials have promised to respond to the protests with the full power of the state, including the military if the police cannot contain the unrest. The confrontation has laid bare Turkish arguments over the country’s identity and its future, and shaken the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been a lightning rod for most of the protesters’ complaints. The state news agency said antiterrorism units had been deployed during Tuesday’s arrests. But lawyers for the detainees said most of the people swept up were suspected only of illegal gathering, and had no connections to terrorism. Among them were more than 60 members of a leftist group detained on illegal gathering charges overnight, a representative of the bar association in Istanbul said. The bar association estimated that in Ankara, the capital, there had been at least 23 arrests. More than a dozen people were detained overnight in Eskisehir, a university town in northwestern Turkey where many students have joined the protests. After days of running street battles and arrests that have deepened the crisis, protesters have tried something new in the past two days: standing still. The approach appeared to have been first used on Monday by Erdem Gunduz, a performance artist who stood in the middle of Taksim Square here for hours, facing a building draped with two Turkish flags and a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state. Mr. Gunduz told the BBC that he was practicing “silent resistance.” For a time, the authorities, apparently befuddled, left him alone, until night fell and the police detained several people who had joined Mr. Gunduz in static repose. Word of the protest spread on Twitter and television, and by Tuesday similar vigils had been staged in Istanbul and beyond, including in Ankara. As Taksim Square filled on Tuesday afternoon with people who stood — eyes closed, holding signs, and or just tranquil for a minute before catching a bus — the police also stood, and watched. Some officers took pictures. Turkey’s interior minister said Tuesday that the authorities would not interfere in the protest, unless it “breaks public order.” In another Istanbul square, four teenagers read books. Shoes were laid on the ground in memory of protesters killed in the unrest. A ship’s captain named Onur, 35, was one of the few standing protesters who agreed to break his silence. “I don’t think this act will change the government,” he said. “I wish it would change the views of people who blindly support them.”


Financial Firms Face Subpoenas on Tax Strategy

Abstract: The New York attorney general is investigating whether some of the nation’s biggest private equity firms have abused a tax strategy in order to slice hundreds of millions of dollars from their tax bills, according to executives with direct knowledge of the inquiry. The attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman , has in recent weeks subpoenaed more than a dozen firms seeking documents that would reveal whether they converted certain management fees collected from their investors into fund investments, which are taxed at a far lower rate than ordinary income. Among the firms to receive subpoenas are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company , TPG Capital, Sun Capital Partners, Apollo Global Management, Silver Lake Partners and Bain Capital , which was founded by Mitt Romney , the Republican nominee for president. Representatives for the firms declined to comment on the inquiry. Mr. Schneiderman’s investigation will intensify scrutiny of an industry already bruised by the campaign season, as President Obama and the Democrats have sought to depict Mr. Romney through his long career in private equity as a businessman who dismantled companies and laid off workers while amassing a personal fortune estimated at $250 million. Some executives at the firms said they feared that Mr. Schneiderman, a first-term Democrat with ties to the Obama administration, was seeking to embarrass the industry because of Mr. Romney’s roots at Bain. Others suggested that the subpoenas, which were issued by the attorney general’s Taxpayer Protection Bureau, might be part of an effort to recover more revenue for New York under state tax law. The attorney general’s office does not have the power to enforce federal tax laws. A spokesman for Mr. Schneiderman declined to comment. The tax strategy — which is viewed as perfectly legal by some tax experts, aggressive by others and potentially illegal by some — came to light last month when hundreds of pages of Bain’s internal financial documents were made available online. The financial statements show that at least $1 billion in accumulated fees that otherwise would have been taxed as ordinary income for Bain executives had been converted into investments producing capital gains, which are subject to a federal tax of 15 percent, versus a top rate of 35 percent for ordinary income. That means the Bain partners saved more than $200 million in federal income taxes and more than $20 million in Medicare taxes. The subpoenas, which executives said were issued in July, predated the leak of the Bain documents by several weeks and do not appear to be connected with them. Mr. Schneiderman, who is also co-chairman of a mortgage fraud task force appointed by Mr. Obama, has made cracking down on large-scale tax evasion a priority of his first term. As a retired partner, Mr. Romney continues to receive profits from Bain Capital and has had investments in some of the funds that documents show used the tax strategy. The campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Romney did not, however, benefit from the practice. “Investing fee income is a common, accepted and totally legal practice,” said R. Bradford Malt, a lawyer for Mr. Romney who manages his family’s investments and trusts. “However, Governor Romney’s retirement agreement did not give the blind trust or him the right to do this, and I can confirm that neither he nor the trust has ever done this, whether before or after he retired from Bain Capital.” Managers at a typical private equity firm or hedge fund collect from their investors management fees based on the size of the fund. But most of their compensation comes as a share of the profits earned by the fund. The Internal Revenue Service allows those profits to be considered “carried interest,” taxed at the capital gains rate typically reserved for investments. The tax strategy used by Bain and other firms to convert management fees — the compensation normally taxed as ordinary income — into capital gains is known as a “management fee waiver.” The strategy is widely used within the industry: 40 percent of the 35 buyout firms based in the United States surveyed in 2009 by Dow Jones said their partners used at least some of the firm’s fees to make investments in their funds. But some prominent firms appear to avoid the practice. The Carlyle Group and Blackstone Group have stated in regulatory filings that their partners have not diverted management fees into investments in their funds. In the varied world of private equity, some firms may have lawyers who are not aware of the strategy or have steered their clients away from it, said a lawyer at one firm who has used the strategy for his clients. Others, he said, may not have the operational capabilities to handle the complex transactions. Apollo Global Management, the buyout firm co-founded by Leon Black and now publicly traded, is among those that use the conversion strategy. Between 2007 and 2011, Apollo converted more than $131 million in fees into investments in its funds, according to S.E.C. filings. A spokesman for the firm declined to comment. Likewise, K.K.R. converted more than $180 million in fees between 2007 and 2009, according to its filings. Kristi Huller, a spokeswoman for the firm, declined to comment about any regulatory matter, but said in an e-mail that K.K.R. had not used the tax strategy “for the past few years.” Other firms that received subpoenas include Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; Crestview Partners; H.I.G. Capital; Vestar Capital Partners; and Providence Equity Partners. Representatives for all these firms declined to comment. Tax lawyers have justified the arrangements by arguing that converting the management fees into carried interest, which could lose some or all of its value if a fund does poorly, entitles the managers to the lower capital gains rate, which is intended to help mitigate the risks taken by investors. “They’re risking their management fee — they’re giving up the right to that management fee in any and all events,” said Jack S. Levin, a finance lawyer whose firm has represented Bain on some matters. Mr. Levin said he did not consider the practice risky or even aggressive. “The I.R.S. has known that private equity funds have been doing this for 20 years,” he said. In 2007, the agency began taking a closer look at suspected tax abuses at hedge funds and private equity firms. In a statement at the time, an I.R.S. spokesman said that management fee conversions were among several “areas of possible noncompliance.” But no formal ruling appears to have emerged. Some private equity firms take what tax experts consider a less aggressive approach to the conversions, waiving fees on all of a given fund’s investments over the lifetime of the fund, which can be 10 years. But other firms choose which funds or even which particular investments to waive fees on frequently, like every year or every quarter. Such arrangements may allow the executives to apply the waiver only when they believe their funds are more likely to appreciate in value, substantially reducing their investment risk. Mr. Schneiderman is also looking at whether private equity executives treated management fees as a return of invested capital — potentially escaping taxation entirely — or deferred payouts of the converted fees in ways that improperly reduced their tax liabilities. Executives at three of the firms subpoenaed by Mr. Schneiderman, who asked for anonymity because they were bound by confidentiality agreements, said that disclosures to their investors clearly stated that the waived fees were allocated equally to all the investments in a fund. The leaked documents show that Bain has in recent years waived management fees in at least eight private equity and other funds, including one formed as early as January 2002. The documents stated that Bain executives had the right to decide either annually or each quarter whether to waive some or all of their management fees; they also had the ability to convert the waived fees into investments in particular companies held by the funds. Victor Fleischer, a law professor and finance expert at the University of Colorado who has been critical of the tax rules for private equity firms, said he believed Bain had waived management fees into investments with so little risk that the arrangement would not qualify for the capital gains rate if challenged by the I.R.S. “There is a tension between economic risk and tax risk that is supposed to be inversely proportional,” Mr. Fleischer said. “The way Bain set it up there’s not much risk at all, so it’s hard to see how this income should receive capital gains treatment.”

Private equity
TPG Capital
Sun Capital Partners
Apollo Global Management
Silver Lake Partners
Bain Capital
Mitt Romney
Tax Evasion
Eric T Schneiderman
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts,KKR


South Korea Is the Latest to Cut Interest Rates

Abstract: HONG KONG — The South Korean central bank surprised analysts on Thursday by trimming interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point — the latest central bank to cut rates in the face of tepid growth. Australia, Europe and India have all lowered borrowing costs this month in a bid to oil the wheels of faltering economic activity. The euro zone is still haunted by its festering debt crisis, while in Asia, the giant Chinese economy is in the midst of a major transition that entails slower growth driven more by domestic demand. In addition, economists have said the constant saber-rattling from North Korea may take a toll on sentiment. In trimming rates to their lowest level since early 2011 — the cut took the base rate to 2.5 percent — the central bank in Seoul joined growth-bolstering efforts by the government, which on Tuesday signed off on plans for billions of dollars’ worth of additional stimulus spending to prime the economic pump. The “sluggishness of economic activities in the euro area” has deepened, the Bank of Korea said in a statement accompanying its rate decision, while economic indicators in emerging-market countries like China “have been weaker than initially anticipated.” For South Korea, the weakening of the currency in Japan, whose companies are major competitors to South Korean exporters in many areas, adds to the pain of an already tough trade environment. The yen has fallen sharply against major currencies, including the South Korean won, in the wake of efforts by the Japanese government and central bank this year to combat persistent deflation and reinvigorate growth. “The rate cut will lower the funding cost of investment and may revive the prolonged slump of the property and construction sector,” Raymond Yeung, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking in Hong Kong, wrote in a research note. “As the government is also pushing forward a supplementary budget and other fiscal stimulus packages, today’s cut will help accelerate recovery and increase the upside of Korea’s” gross domestic product, he added. The central bank last cut rates in October 2012.

South Korea
Interest rate
North Korea
European Central Bank


Profit at Tiffany Doubles on Sales in Asia and Europe

Abstract: The jewelry retailer Tiffany said Thursday its quarterly profit doubled, beating Wall Street expectations as sales rose by more than 10 percent in Asia and Europe. Tiffany said it earned $80.8 million, or 63 cents a share, in the period, up from $40.5 million, or 29 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue in the period, which ended July 31 and was the second quarter of Tiffany’s fiscal year, rose 11 percent, to $732.4 million from $662.6 million. Stock in Tiffany, which is based in New York, rose $4.24, or 11 percent, to $43.85 a share.


Army Sniper Acquitted of Murder in 2 Deaths

Abstract: CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq , Sept. 28 — A military jury acquitted an American Army sniper of murder charges on Friday in connection with the deaths of two Iraqi men during the spring, but convicted him of planting incriminating evidence on one of the bodies after the killing. Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. received congratulatory embraces from his two military lawyers after the verdict was announced in a small courtroom here, a short armored Humvee ride from Saddam Hussein’s former palace on the grounds of what is now a sprawling American military base. Specialist Sandoval, 22, from the First Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, was convicted of planting a coil of copper wire on the body of a man he killed near Iskandariya on April 27 during an operation in a dangerous Sunni Arab region south of Baghdad. The copper roll, what soldiers call “command wire,” is commonly used by insurgents to make or detonate roadside bombs, the leading killer of American forces in Iraq. The jury of three officers and four enlisted soldiers did not decide on a sentence on Friday; it is scheduled to reconvene Saturday morning to consider a punishment. Army lawyers here said such a crime could be punished with as few as six months in prison, or as long as five years. The jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning its verdict. Specialist Sandoval has admitted killing the man in April after his team leader, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, ordered him to fire. The man, who was cutting grass in a field using a scythe when Specialist Sandoval killed him, had been considered by the sniper team’s leaders to be an insurgent trying to disguise himself as a farmer after battling Iraqi Army soldiers minutes earlier. Army prosecutors had argued that the killing was illegal because the man was unarmed at the time, aside from the rusty scythe, and was not demonstrating hostile intent or a hostile act when Specialist Sandoval killed him with one shot. The other killing, on May 11, was of a man who had inadvertently walked into the concealed location where Specialist Sandoval, Sergeant Hensley and three other snipers were, near a water pumping house close to Iskandariya. Prosecutors had charged Specialist Sandoval with premeditated murder for that killing because he did nothing to stop another sniper, Sgt. Evan Vela, from shooting the man at close range after the man was detained. During his court-martial, Specialist Sandoval’s lead lawyer, Capt. Craig Drummond, told the jury that his client had not been part of any plot to kill the man and was standing 100 feet away when Sergeant Vela fired two shots into the man’s head. Sergeant Vela is charged with murder for that killing. After striking a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to testify without incriminating himself on Thursday in Specialist Sandoval’s court-martial, Sergeant Vela took the stand and admitted killing the man, with no encouragement or assistance from anyone except Sergeant Hensley. Sergeant Hensley’s court-martial, on murder charges related to those two killings and that of a third man, on April 14, is scheduled to begin here in about three weeks.

Iraq
United States Army
Courts-Martial
Decisions and Verdicts
Murders and Attempted Murders
United States Armament and Defense