Gay Marriage Puts Mexico City at Center of Debate

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — Angela Alfarache and Ivonne Cervantes met at a party 16 years ago and have been a couple ever since, filling their lives with books and writing and friends. After their daughter, Constanza, was born six years ago, they became a family. Mexican law never saw it that way. Only Constanza’s biological mother — the pair will not say which one gave birth to her because, as they explain, they are both her mothers — is her legal parent. The law does not recognize the other mother. In a few weeks, that will change. A new Mexico City law goes into effect March 4 that will allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt children, propelling the city to the forefront of the global gay rights movement. “We want society to change its chip that says there is only one kind of family,” said Ms. Alfarache. But fierce opposition erupted almost as soon as the law was passed on Dec. 22. In his final homily of the year in Mexico City, Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera said, “Today the family is under attack in its essence by the equivalence of homosexual unions with marriage between a man and a woman.” Roman Catholic groups asked the conservative federal government to intervene. President Felipe Calderón said the Constitution defined marriage as between a man and a woman, although legal experts disagree. His attorney general filed a challenge before the Supreme Court, arguing that the law violates a constitutional clause protecting the family. Under its left-wing mayor and city assembly, Mexico City has stretched the nation’s limits in acknowledging just how much the conceptions and realities of family have changed here. The city legalized abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, untangled its cumbersome divorce laws and recognized civil unions. But while many families have been fractured by migration, teenage pregnancy, divorce and abandonment, most Mexicans still cherish the ideal of a nuclear family. “The same word cannot have two different meanings,” said Mariana Gómez del Campo, the Mexico City leader of the president’s National Action Party, or PAN. “It will weaken the legal definition of marriage.” More important, she said, is protecting children’s rights. “One of their rights is to have a family,” she said. “A child does not get to decide what kind of family it is.” In an unscientific poll taken and cited by the party, just over half of the respondents disapproved of gay marriage and about three-quarters opposed adoption by same-sex couples. But even if that accurately represents Mexican sentiments, the law’s backers in the city assembly as well as among gay men and lesbians argue that their vote was aimed at expanding rights, a decision that cannot be based on opinion polls or referendums. “Politically, the federal government is declaring that the Constitution only protects heterosexual families,” said David Razú, the city legislator who proposed the new law. “It’s a government that discriminates against its own citizens.” The federal government says that Mexico City’s 2007 civil unions law gives same-sex couples the rights they have been seeking. But in practice — when it comes to including a partner in public health insurance plans, applying for state bank loans or recognizing a parent — the law has not worked, said Judith Vázquez, a gay rights activist. In positioning himself as a defiant social liberal, Mexico City’s mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, is taking a political gamble. He wants to run for president in 2012, and his views may find little resonance outside the capital, where the Roman Catholic Church holds much greater sway. “We are looking at the recognition of rights and liberties, and in this there is a big difference between conservatives and those of us with a liberal or different or advanced ideas of rights,” Mr. Ebrard told reporters in response to the federal government’s court challenge in January. The city will not wait for the Supreme Court ruling, which could take as long as a year, Mr. Ebrard added. Once they marry, same-sex spouses will be able to adopt openly as a couple in Mexico City. The city’s decisions — along with the election of two national presidents from the conservative PAN since 2000 — have emboldened the Catholic Church to speak out and even lobby politically in the past few years. Mexico has a long history of anticlericalism, going back to laws in the mid-19th century. Even after Mexico restored full rights to religious groups in 1992, the Catholic Church was at first careful not to be seen as involving itself directly in politics. Elsewhere in Latin America there have been steps toward approving gay marriage. In Argentina, the debate over gay marriage is making its way through the courts, although the southernmost province, Tierra del Fuego, welcomed Latin America’s first gay wedding there on Dec. 29 . Uruguay allows civil unions and is moving toward allowing same-sex couples to adopt. Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia all recognize some form of civil unions. For the gay rights movement, Mexico City’s law was the result of 30 years of activism. Ms. Cervantes, 44, a fiction writer, and Ms. Alfarache, 50, an anthropologist who works on women’s rights issues, have been able to raise their daughter in the open-minded environment of the capital’s university-educated minority. Working-class couples or those outside the city face many more barriers, they say. Several members of Ms. Cervantes’s family are conservative Catholics who are struggling to reconcile their faith with their uncomfortable acceptance of her family. “Once you know what scares you, it begins to break down what you believe in,” Ms. Cervantes said. Even in their liberal enclave, the couple contend that they and their daughter should be assured of their rights. “Our families, our doctors, the teachers — they all know that there are two mothers,” said Ms. Alfarache, nodding at Constanza. “But you can’t leave rights to people’s good will. We want the whole package, the rights — and the responsibilities.”

Same-Sex Marriage Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships


Body of Former Rwandan Spymaster Is Found in Johannesburg Hotel

Abstract: JOHANNESBURG — The South African police said on Thursday that they had opened a murder investigation into the death of an exiled former spy chief from Rwanda, who was found dead in a hotel room with signs of possible strangulation. The body of Patrick Karegeya, a onetime head of Rwanda’s military intelligence who was a critic of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, was found on Wednesday on a bed at the upscale Michelangelo Towers hotel, a police statement said. His neck was swollen and a bloody towel and rope were found in the hotel room safe, the statement added, saying he might have been strangled. The killing raised the prospect of Rwanda’s political feuds spilling far beyond the country’s borders. Mr. Karegeya, 53, a former ally of Mr. Kagame who turned against him, fled to South Africa along with a former army chief, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, several years ago after being accused of plotting a coup. Mr. Nyamwasa survived a shooting in the driveway of his home here in 2010. As on that occasion, the Rwanda National Congress, an opposition political organization, accused Mr. Kagame’s government of seeking to assassinate its enemies. “By killing its opponents, the criminal regime in Kigali seeks to intimidate and silence the Rwandan people into submission,” the group said in a statement on Thursday. While the authorities in Rwanda had no immediate comment on the death of Mr. Karegeya, they had frequently accused him of plotting violent revolution, blaming exiled Rwandans in South Africa for a series of grenade attacks around the time of elections in 2010. “There cannot be any change through election but through violent means,” Mr. Karegeya said at the time. In 2011, Mr. Nyamwasa, Mr. Karegeya and two other exiled dissidents were tried in Rwanda in absentia and sentenced to 20 years in prison for threatening state security. “We encourage the authorities to really look into the matter so that we know exactly what happened,” Reuters quoted Rwanda’s ambassador to South Africa , Vincent Karega, as saying on Thursday. According to The Associated Press, Theogene Rudasingwa, an official of the Rwanda National Congress, said Mr. Karegeya had gone to the Michelangelo Towers to meet a man presenting himself as a friend of the opposition, who was identified only as Apollo. The rivalries in Rwanda date to the 1980s, when Rwandans fought alongside Ugandan rebels supporting President Yoweri Museveni, who, once in power, sponsored Mr. Kagame’s own insurgency. As the military spymaster, Mr. Karegeya wielded significant influence for a decade before he fell out with Mr. Kagame, who took power in 1994. He was stripped of his rank and fled the country in 2006.

Rwanda
Johannesburg
South Africa
Murders
Patrick Karegeya
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


Exonerated in Wife’s Killing, Father Renews Bonds With Son

Abstract: It had been 14 years since their last meeting. Father and son sat uncomfortably last fall in the well-appointed home of the Houston lawyer who had helped free Eric Olson’s father from prison. Mr. Olson, then 28, did not know how to feel that day, meeting the man he had always believed savagely killed his mother and felt no remorse. He sat with his pregnant wife at his side, and saw his father, Michael Morton, as an innocent man for the first time. Was this really happening? he wondered. It felt like a movie. “I remember mostly being kind of numb the whole night, mostly sitting there, listening, just waiting for ... I don’t know. Waiting for everything to make sense again,” Mr. Olson said. “Only months before that, we were still supposed to hate him.” Eric was only 3 on Aug. 13, 1986, when his mother, Christine Morton, was beaten to death in bed at their North Austin home. Six weeks after her death, the police arrested Mr. Morton, pulling his sobbing toddler from his arms as they led him to a police cruiser. Six months after losing his mother, Eric lost his father, too, when a Williamson County jury convicted Mr. Morton of murder and sent him to prison for life. Last year, when Mr. Olson and his wife, Maggie, commemorated the 25th anniversary of his mother’s death with a visit to her grave in Houston, the truth as he knew it was unraveling. That day, Mr. Morton’s lawyers received DNA test results that ultimately proved his innocence and linked another man to Christine Morton’s death. Mr. Morton’s lawyers — John Raley of Houston and Nina Morrison of the New York-based Innocence Project — had also discovered evidence in the files of investigators and prosecutors that they say could have prevented the wrongful conviction . Mr. Morton is one of at least 86 defendants in Texas who saw their convictions overturned from 1989 to 2011 after spending years in prison. An analysis by The Texas Tribune of court rulings, news media reports and pardon statements determined that in 21 of those 86 cases, prosecutors made errors, most of which contributed to the wrong outcome. The State Bar of Texas said that it had publicly disciplined very few prosecutors in recent history, though. In the wake of high-profile exonerations like Mr. Morton’s, some lawmakers and advocates for criminal justice reform have called for increased accountability for prosecutors whose errors result in wrongful convictions, forever changing the lives of innocent people and their families. Since being released in October, Mr. Morton has said that in an effort to prevent what happened to him from happening to others, he would seek accountability for the prosecutor whose mistakes he believes contributed to his wrongful conviction. His son and daughter-in-law say they are determined to help. In September, Louis E. Sturns, a state district judge in Tarrant County, is to lead a court of inquiry to decide whether Ken Anderson — who was the district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Morton and is currently a Williamson County state district judge — should face criminal charges in the case. Judge Anderson, who declined to be interviewed, has publicly apologized for the judicial system’s failures in Mr. Morton’s case but denied any wrongdoing. Among the withheld evidence that lawyers found in the prosecutors’ and sheriff’s files was a transcript of a conversation between Mr. Olson’s maternal grandmother and a sheriff’s detective. She recounted details of a disturbing talk she had with the 3-year-old one week after his mother’s funeral, in which the young boy said he saw a “monster” — who was not his father — brutally attack his mother. Mr. Olson says he has no recollection of that now. And after his mother’s death and his father’s conviction, family members tried to protect him and give him a normal childhood. “I look back now, and I should have been really, really messed up,” Mr. Olson said, as he glanced across the room adoringly at his infant daughter. Her name: Christine Marie Olson, after Mr. Olson’s mother. “But everything came out pretty good.” His mother’s sister, Marylee Kirkpatrick, who lived in Houston, won custody of him. The custody agreement required Ms. Kirkpatrick to ensure that Mr. Olson visited his father twice each year. Mr. Olson said he remembers sitting at a picnic table in the yard of the Wynne prison unit in Huntsville. His father always brought lemon drops. His aunt would sit at the table, too, quietly reading. As he grew older, though, Mr. Olson said he realized how weird the situation was. When he was a teenager, he wrote a letter to his father explaining that he wanted to stop the visits. “I don’t remember it being as emotional to say I didn’t want to go anymore,” he said. “I just did. I didn’t feel connected to it much anymore.” Ms. Kirkpatrick eventually married Paul Olson. When Eric Olson turned 18, he changed his last name from Morton to Olson. He considers the Olsons to be his parents. For his father in prison, news of his son’s name change was shattering. During dark days in prison, Mr. Morton had clung to the hope of proving his innocence and reuniting with his son. For Mr. Olson, though, changing his name was simply the next logical step in moving on with his life, being part of the family he loved. He went to Texas State University in San Marcos. After he graduated, he moved back to Houston and began working at the Catholic preparatory high school he had attended. He met Maggie Mahoney in 2009, and they were married last year. Soon after, Mr. Olson received an e-mail from Mr. Raley, Mr. Morton’s pro bono lawyer in Houston, about developments in his father’s case. “I thought it was just some wacko,” Mr. Olson said. “I just responded quickly: ‘I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what this means. Don’t ever contact me.’ ” Mr. Raley arranged for the president of the school where Mr. Olson worked to talk to him about his father. The president called Mr. Olson into his office and explained that Mr. Morton was going to be released. Mr. Olson said: “The story I was told my whole life was, ‘He killed her, and he’s in prison, and we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’ I didn’t want to, because I was a kid. I rarely thought about it.” His family had believed that his father had been denied parole because he had done something wrong. But Mr. Olson learned that the parole board had told Mr. Morton that if he accepted responsibility for killing his wife, he could be released. Mr. Morton refused. “It turns out he had said, ‘All I have left is my innocence,’ ” Mr. Olson said. “That’s pretty bold. I don’t think I would have done it.” With Mr. Morton, 57, now out of prison, father and son are building the relationship they started to forge that night at Mr. Raley’s house. They see each other about once a month. Mr. Morton fawns over his granddaughter and marvels that his son is now a father. “I never knew who he was, or what his favorite food was,” Mr. Olson said. “Being introduced to him was like remembering a movie I saw when I was a kid, like meeting a movie star.” There are still challenges ahead, though, and many questions to be resolved. For the family who raised him — Christine Morton’s sister, brother and mother — Mr. Olson said the discovery of Mr. Morton’s innocence brought a flood of terrible, long-buried memories and new guilt and questions about how things could have gone so wrong. The Kirkpatricks had a close relationship with Mr. Anderson, the prosecutor. “They didn’t have any other source of truth,” Mr. Olson said. They must now endure another trial. The DNA that exonerated Mr. Morton was connected to Mark Norwood, a 58-year-old dishwasher from Bastrop. Mr. Norwood has said he is innocent; a trial is expected to begin next year. Mr. Olson plans to attend the trial and the inquisition into Mr. Anderson’s role in Mr. Morton’s prosecution. For him, one of the biggest unanswered questions is how such profound mistakes could have been made. It goes beyond the transcript of the conversation about what 3-year-old Eric saw the morning his mother died that Mr. Morton’s trial lawyers did not see. When his new lawyers dug through the old files, they discovered that neighbors had told the police that they had seen a man in a green van casing the Mortons’ home. And there was a report that Christine Morton’s credit card had been used fraudulently after her death. “Part of my life was taken away, first of all, because my mother was killed,” Mr. Olson said. “Then I don’t understand why somebody would want to continue that chain of events by taking away someone’s father.” Eric Nichols, a former prosecutor for the Texas attorney general’s office, is representing Mr. Anderson in the court of inquiry. Mr. Nichols said that Mr. Anderson was following the lead of the chief investigator in the Morton murder — the county sheriff, who has since died. Mr. Olson says he would like to see Mr. Anderson held accountable, but he refuses to dwell on the negative. His priority is to reunite his family — the one he grew up with and the father he never got to know. “If there’s a better time to have this all come full circle, I can’t think of it,” Mr. Olson said. “This is like a movie. But it’s good now. It’s not like a scary movie anymore.”

False Arrests Convictions and Imprisonments


A Booming Serena Williams Keeps Title

Abstract: WIMBLEDON, England — At the end of the Wimbledon women’s singles final Saturday, Serena Williams turned toward her family in the stands. She flashed 10 fingers, then 3 fingers, for a total of 13 — her updated tally of Grand Slam singles titles. With her 6-3, 6-2 demolition of Vera Zvonareva, Williams accumulated another avalanche of aces, hoisted another trophy and took another step forward among tennis’s greats. Afterward, she confirmed what once seemed obvious, another otherworldly performance notwithstanding. “I’m totally human,” Williams said. Williams lingered there on Centre Court at the All England Club. She smiled, pumped her fist, leaned backward, waved and signed autographs, the celebration long and lasting. She said she felt like Frank Sinatra , as if “Fly Me to the Moon” were playing in her head. The latest trophy marked her fourth Wimbledon singles title and allowed her to pass Billie Jean King for sixth place on the women’s career major singles championships list . In an on-court interview, her smile as wide as the English Channel, Williams said, “Hey, Billie, I got you.” Two hours later, she considered her place in history, her near decade of dominance. She dodged questions about the future, about how long she would continue, about how many Grand Slam titles she expected to win. She said she considered her place in tennis history important, but added: “I love my dogs. I love my family. I love going to movies. I love reading. I love going shopping. Like, it’s not on my list to be, you know, this.” For all the unpredictable results in Wimbledon women’s singles, the tournament ended as most predicted at the beginning of the fortnight. Williams successfully defended her title with striking consistency and superior serving, without dropping a set. Williams’s tournament unfolded strangely. She said her strokes felt off, especially the first week. Her sister Venus lost in the quarterfinals, ensuring the first final without both Williamses since 2007. The sisters even suffered a rare doubles loss. Williams avenged her loss in the 2004 finals, outslugging Maria Sharapova in the fourth round. She beat Li Na and Petra Kvitova to ensure that at least one Williams sister would play in the Wimbledon final for the 10th time in 11 years. Her sister’s absence only added to the pressure Williams said she felt. But that compared little with the pressure of her serve. She managed to turn that serve into a third person, its own character. She had conversations with her serve. She described her serve’s career. The day before the final, Williams detailed how her father, Richard, used to end practice with serving sessions. She said that every time her father turned his back, the girls gabbed. When he turned back to the court, they resumed. Apparently, he watched the court enough, as evidenced by the nine aces Serena Williams collected Saturday, giving her a record 89 for the tournament, 17 more than she smacked last year. Williams broke Zvonareva three times and never faced break point herself. Zvonareva said Williams’s serve had dual purposes, not only as her most potent shot, but also as a psychological advantage. Zvonareva said she felt as if she had to hold serve each time, because Williams surely would. No less an authority than Martina Navratilova later called Williams’s serve the best in the history of women’s tennis. Even Williams, when later describing her perfect player, selected Rafael Nadal ’s speed, Roger Federer ’s forehand and her sister’s reach. Of course, she added, “I would keep my serve.” Zvonareva tried everything, tried to match Williams with power from the baseline, tried slice, tried topspin. Afterward, she said she wished she had played better. But even then, Zvonareva said, the result would probably have been the same. The inevitable question came midway through her news conference: could Williams realistically be beaten? “Of course she’s beatable,” Zvonareva said. “She’s a human being. She’s not a machine.” But then she added: “I mean, it’s very difficult to beat her. You have to play your best.” Next week, Williams will face Kim Clijsters in Belgium in a match that could break the exhibition attendance record of 30,492 that was set by King and Bobby Riggs in 1973. On Friday, the 28-year-old Williams insisted that she would play in 2011, but in regard to the next decade, she said, “Hopefully, we’ll still be around.” A day later, she instructed one reporter to “personally take me off and escort me from the court” if at 38 she is still playing. By then, Williams said, she hopes to be relaxing, or “spanking some kids, who knows.” In an interview on BBC , King said she noticed a renewed commitment from Williams these past two years, which, coupled with her continued stockpiling of championships, indicated to King that Williams would stick around for “a long time.” If so, then how many major championships will Williams win? She laughed at one questioner who wondered if she would prefer tougher matches, a greater challenge. At this point, it seems, only history will provide it. Navratilova and Chris Evert won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, a tally Williams could reach, depending on injuries and on how long she wants to continue. Asked last week if Williams would reach 18, Navratilova smiled and said, “Let her get to 13 first,” but added, “It’s possible, yeah, no doubt.” Next, Williams heads to the United States Open , the site of her confrontation with a line judge last September. In retrospect, Williams said that episode marked a turning point. “No one’s perfect,” she said. But over the past two weeks, Williams and her serve came close. UNSEEDED DOUBLES VICTORS Unseeded pairs won the men’s and women’s doubles championships at Wimbledon. Vania King of the United States and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan , who had never before even set foot on Centre Court, defeated the singles runner-up, Vera Zvonareva, and Elena Vesnina of Russia , 7-6 (6), 6-2. Earlier, Jürgen Melzer of Austria and Philipp Petzschner of Germany beat 16th-seeded Robert Lindstedt of Sweden and Horia Tecau of Romania , 6-1, 7-5, 7-5. (AP)

Serena Williams
Wimbledon Tennis,Wimbledon


A Chechen Separatist Is Detained and Released in Poland

Abstract: MOSCOW — A self-described leader of Chechnya ’s separatist movement, wanted in Russia on charges of murder, kidnapping and terrorism, was detained by the police on Friday in Poland , where he planned to attend a gathering of Chechen exiles. The police detained the separatist leader, Akhmed Zakayev , who has denied the Russian charges, shortly after his arrival in Warsaw, though a Polish court later ordered his release, pending a ruling on his extradition to Russia, according to news services. Polish prosecutors had sought to extend his detention, and it was unclear how long it would take the authorities to reach a final decision. The decision to release Mr. Zakayev, if only temporarily, was likely to anger Russian officials who had been urging Poland to hand him over for trial. Russia has long sought the Chechen rebel’s extradition from Britain, where he has resided since receiving political asylum. Polish officials said earlier this week that the police had an obligation to detain him if he arrived in their territory because of an outstanding Russian warrant for his arrest. But on Friday, Polish authorities said that any decision on extradition would be left up to the courts and that politics would not come into play. “All decisions will be made in line with Poland’s national interest and according to our own values and sense of decency,” Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, told Polish radio, adding, “We will not take orders from Russia.” A refusal to extradite Mr. Zakayev could have serious implications for ties between Poland and Russia. The former Communist bloc allies have only recently begun to overcome years of bitterness in the aftermath of the cold war, finding reconciliation through tragedy after the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and much of the government elite were killed in a plane crash in western Russia in April. Relations between Russia and Britain chilled markedly after a London court refused to extradite Mr. Zakayev in 2003, ruling that he could face torture there. A court in Denmark also refused to extradite him. Russian forces fought two wars against militant separatists in Chechnya, a tiny, mostly Muslim part of Russia’s North Caucasus, and have yet to defeat a violent Islamist insurgency that has fanned out across the region in recent years. Militants wage almost daily attacks. A suicide attack in the region last week , for instance, killed at least 18 people. Mr. Zakayev, 51, has sought to distance himself from such violence, and has long been viewed as a moderate voice among Chechnya’s separatist leaders. While he continues to insist on independence for Chechnya, his years of exile have made him a largely irrelevant figure there. Still, many in Russia continue to associate Mr. Zakayev with Chechnya’s radical fringe, and all day on Friday, Russian authorities pressed for his extradition. “Akhmed Zakayev is an international criminal and international terrorist. He must be tried in Russia,” said Aleksandr G. Khloponin, Russia’s presidential envoy to the North Caucasus, according to the Interfax news agency. According a statement on the Russian prosecutor general’s Web site, Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general, told his Polish counterpart in a telephone conversation that his office was preparing a request for Mr. Zakayev’s extradition to Russia.

Poland
Russia
Zakayev Akhmed
Chechnya (Russia)


Korean Crisis Is Different This Time

Abstract: SEOUL — The current crisis over North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons has unmistakable parallels with the events of spring 1994. Then, as now, North Korea was plunging ahead to make bomb-grade plutonium at its nuclear complex in Yongbyon. Then as now, the United States was rallying international support for sanctions against the North. Tensions spiked as North Korea warned it would consider any sanctions an “act of war.” There is, however, one key difference. In 1994, the United States was prepared to attack the North Korean nuclear complex, says Kim Young-sam, who was South Korea’s president at the time. That prospect prompted South Korea to reject any moves against the North. How Seoul responded to Washington’s handling of the crisis in 1994, as Mr. Kim described it in a recent interview, illuminates South Koreans’ continuing quandary in the long-running nuclear standoff: They may loathe North Korea for having invaded the South in 1950, for starving its people, for building nuclear weapons. But, with the carnage of the Korean War still fresh in their collective memory, they also recoil whenever they sense the United States is pushing North Korea too hard, fearful this might provoke Pyongyang to lash out in a suicidal attack. In 1994, Mr. Kim said, “the Americans were quite adamant about attacking Yongbyon. They had 33 warships positioned off the east coast.” He envisioned an apocalyptic scene in Seoul, just 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, from the border, within striking distance of North Korean artillery and rockets. “I said absolutely no to the United States unilaterally bombing Yongbyon,” Mr. Kim said. “The North Korean artillery would have been rolling out within three minutes, and Seoul would have turned into a sea of fire.” Mr. Kim can hardly be accused of spinelessness before an adversary. He had his two military-backed predecessors arrested on corruption and sedition charges, forever shutting the military out of South Korean politics. But his rush to shield North Korea from an American strike speaks volumes about the complicated mix of disdain and fear, kinship and even nationalistic pride South Koreans — even many politically conservative, anti-Communist South Koreans — feel about the North. U.S. officials came to appreciate this mentality during the subsequent decade of liberal rule, from 1998 till 2008. As the government engaged North Korea, surveys showed that the South Korean public considered the United States a bigger threat to peace than North Korea. One liberal politician said that if the United States planned to attack Yongbyon, he would lead thousands of “peace-loving” South Koreans across the border to form a human shield around the nuclear complex. Such emotionally charged friction between Seoul and Washington has subsided in recent years, as the governments of President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul and President Barack Obama in Washington conclude that they can prevail against the North only if they forge a united approach. Still, the South Korean outlook — distrusting the North, but wary of U.S. intervention against the North — remains fundamentally unchanged. In 1994, as the United States prepared to evacuate American civilians and beefed up forces here, the South Korean stock market plummeted. Citizens stockpiled instant noodles and candles. This spring, when North Korea conducted a nuclear test and launched a long-range rocket, the local markets and the public hardly blinked, confident the United States would not take military action. U.S. officials tend to view the North’s nuclear program within the global framework of combating proliferation. But to ordinary South Koreans, it is just a latest episode in the decades-old hostilities from the Korean War, which halted with a cease-fire in 1953 and has yet to end with a formal peace. Opinions among South Koreans on how to resolve the nuclear crisis depend on how they see the North Korean government. Is it an evil regime bent on keeping its dictatorial grip on a starving people and building nuclear bombs to deter meddling from the outside? Or is it a cornered beast whose threats are a desperate cry for a way out? Whichever side they take, ordinary South Koreans hardly see the nuclear crisis in global terms, but rather within the highly local context of how to end the war and possibly reunify the peninsula. That partly explains why South Korean leaders over the years, both conservative and liberal, were eager for a meeting with their North Korean counterparts. Mr. Kim almost had one. Like most South Koreans of his generation, Mr. Kim, 81, harbors a visceral mistrust of North Korea. His mother was murdered in 1960 by a North Korean agent who attacked his island village. But when former President Jimmy Carter of the United States traveled to Pyongyang to help defuse the nuclear crisis in 1994 and returned with a proposal for an inter-Korean meeting, Mr. Kim readily accepted it. He saw a momentous opportunity as a politician. “Unifying the fatherland” is an idea drilled into the heads of schoolchildren on both sides of the border. Koreans’ greatest historical grievance is the peninsula’s division by the United States and Soviet Union at the end of World War II. Mr. Kim was to meet the North Korean leader, Kim Il-sung, in Pyongyang on July 25, 1994. But two weeks beforehand, on July 8, the 82-year-old Kim Il-sung died of a heart attack. “Fate played a trick on me,” Mr. Kim said with a tone of regret. “If I had met Kim Il-sung, I would have changed the nation’s history.” The achievement that had eluded him — becoming the first South Korean leader to hold a summit meeting with North Korea — went to Mr. Kim’s rival and successor, Kim Dae-jung. In 2000, Kim Dae-jung flew to Pyongyang and met with Kim Jong-il, Kim Il-sung’s son and successor. That year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, Kim Young-sam remains the outspoken conservative critic of North Korea, while Kim Dae-jung is still the tireless evangelist for engaging it. “Over the years, both the Americans and we have conducted many negotiations with the North Koreans, but all of them failed,” Kim Young-sam said. “We can never trust the North Koreans.” But during the interview at his Seoul residence, decorated with photos of Mr. Kim smiling and posing with American leaders, Mr. Kim said he was proud of having averted war by stopping his U.S. ally from attacking Yongbyon — even though he concedes that this may have emboldened Pyongyang. “Looking back,” he said, “I think the North Koreans think they can say whatever they want because no matter what they do, the Americans will never attack them.” Such is the South Korean dilemma.

North Korea
Nuclear Weapons
South Korea
Nuclear Tests
Yongbyon (North Korea)
Pyongyang (North Korea)


Household Income Flat as Consumer Spending Rises

Abstract: Consumers spent slightly more money in July as they took advantage of the government’s cash-for-clunkers automobile rebate program, but personal incomes were flat for the month, an indication that workers were still struggling to get by as prices of gasoline and food threatened to creep higher. In its monthly snapshot of consumer spending and earnings, the Commerce Department reported that personal spending rose 0.2 percent in July from a month earlier, roughly in line with expectations. Forecasters expect that the spending numbers will leap in August, reflecting the strong demand for cars spurred by the $3 billion in rebates offered by the government. But they warn that spending is likely to fall back as the effects of the program fade. While personal incomes remained unchanged from a month earlier, the savings rate fell to 4.2 percent in July, after earlier reaching 6 percent. Economists expect a new era of thrift among consumers worried about the value of their homes and stock portfolios and the specter of unemployment. But if incomes remain stagnant, that move toward higher savings could slide back. “The savings rate got a big boost from the government subsidies, and now those are quickly fading,” said Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com . “Looking beyond the cash for clunkers , underlying consumer spending is extremely weak. Household finances are stretched. It’s unlikely that the consumer will lead us out of this recession.” In a separate report Friday, the Reuters-University of Michigan consumer survey said that worries about high unemployment pushed consumer confidence to a four-month low in August. The final index of confidence for August fell to 65.7, the lowest since April, from 66.0 in July.

Income
Consumer Behavior
United States Economy


Toys 'R' Us Said to Name a New Chief

Abstract: Toys "R" Us, the nation's largest specialty toy retailer, has chosen Gerald L. Storch, the former vice chairman of the Target Corporation, as it next chief executive, a position left vacant since the chain's sale last year, people briefed on the decision said last night. The surprise selection of Mr. Storch, which is expected to be announced as early as today, is an indication that Toys "R" Us is reaching outside the company -- searching for a chief executive with experience at a major rival -- as it seeks growth in the ailing toy industry. A Toys "R" Us spokeswoman did not return calls or e-mail messages last night seeking a comment. Discount retail chains like Target and Wal-Mart Stores have pummeled traditional toy sellers over the last decade, driving at least two, KB Toys and FAO Schwartz into bankruptcy protection. Mr. Storch left Target abruptly in October. At the time, Target declined to comment on the circumstances of his departure. Mr. Storch, who had been a partner at McKinsey and Company, joined Dayton Hudson, which later became Target, in 1993. He eventually led Target's new business development, spearheading the growth of Super Target stores, which include groceries. Toys "R" Us, based in Wayne, N.J., has operated without a permanent chief executive since its sale in March to two private equity firms, Bain Capital and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, and a real estate developer, Vornado Realty Trust. After the sale, which took Toys "R" Us from a public company to a private one, the chain's chief executive, John H. Eyler Jr., stepped down and control fell to Richard L. Markee, head of Baby's "R" Us, who was named interim chief executive. Sean P. McGowan, a toy industry analyst at Harris Nesbitt, said the selection of Mr. Storch was an acknowledgment of the rapid success Target has had as a toy retailer, where it now threatens to edge Toys "R" Us out as the No. 2 in the market. "Pound for pound, Target does the best job in toys," Mr. McGowan said. "If you were going to take an executive from a rival, you would take from Target." He added: "If Toys "R" Us is going to mount a turnaround they are going to have to convince the Target shopper to come back." Mr. Storch now faces several serious challenges in his new role. Toys "R" Us, once the largest toy seller in the country, was dethroned by Wal-Mart in 1998 and has struggled to regain its footing. In December, the company said third-quarter sales at stores in the United States open at least a year dropped 8.9 percent. Brutal price wars -- most pronounced during the 2003 holiday season -- have eaten into the chain's profits and forced the chain to put itself up for sale last year. Today, Wal-Mart controls 22 percent of the United States toy market, compared with about 17 percent for Toys "R" Us, analysts said. The president of Toys "R" Us in the United States , John Barbour, had earned praise for his efforts to revitalize the chain. He introduced sweeping changes, from stores maps on shopping carts to dioramas that showcase toys at a child's eye level. But the changes did not turn around the crucial Christmas season. Sales at Toys "R" Us have been sinking, from $7 billion in 2000 to $6.3 billion in 2003. Last month, Toys "R" Us announced that it would close 75 stores this spring and eliminate 3,000 jobs. The job cuts represent 11 percent of the company's work force, the company said at the time. The retailer will also convert 12 other locations into Babies "R" Us stores. The changes will result in $155 million in pretax revamping expenses, the company said in a regulatory filing. The store closings are the first since the company was bought last year for $6.6 billion. Toys "R" Us had a third-quarter loss of $126 million as customers shunned traditional toys in favor of electronics and as Wal-Mart attracted shoppers with low prices.


Guilty Verdict in Chandra Levy Murder Case

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A jury convicted a Salvadoran immigrant of killing Chandra Levy , the government intern whose relationship with Gary A. Condit ended his Congressional career and made her disappearance a national media sensation. Ingmar Guandique, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant, was convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of Ms. Levy, 24, who vanished on May 1, 2001. Her body was found a year later in Rock Creek Park here. Investigators initially focused on Mr. Condit, a Democrat who represented California’s 18th Congressional District. But they eventually concluded that he was not involved, and the case went cold. The negative publicity hurt the re-election bid of Mr. Condit, who was married at the time. Mr. Condit, who now lives in Arizona, has refused to say whether he had an extramarital affair with Ms. Levy. He has long denied any involvement in her death. The case dragged on for years with no leads but was resurrected in 2009, when investigators charged Mr. Guandique, who was serving time for attacks on other women in the same park around the time Ms. Levy disappeared. Speaking outside the courthouse on Monday, the District of Columbia police chief, Cathy L. Lanier, said investigators and detectives never gave up. The case had put intense pressure on the Police Department, though it was eclipsed by the Sept. 11 attacks and the Washington-area sniper shootings. “It’s not like it is on TV,” Chief Lanier said. “Cases can be very complicated,” she said, adding that detectives “can sometimes discover things that were not discoverable at the beginning.” At the heart of the prosecution’s case was testimony from an inmate, Armando Morales. He had served time with Mr. Guandique and said Mr. Guandique had confessed to killing Ms. Levy. At the time of the trial, which lasted about a month, Mr. Guandique was serving sentences for attacks on women in the park in May and July of 2001. Women from those attacks testified. In each case, he grabbed the victim from around the neck at knifepoint, the United States attorney’s office in the District of Columbia said, but the women struggled and escaped. The women’s testimony seemed to have been persuasive for jurors in a trial that otherwise offered little in the way of forensic evidence. “It would have been hard for anyone in that courtroom not to be moved,” said Susan Kelly, a juror, referring to the testimony of the women joggers. Mr. Guandique’s sentence was coming to a close for those crimes, and he was due to be released at the end of this year. Now he faces 30 years to life for the conviction in Ms. Levy’s case, which includes kidnapping and attempted robbery counts. “Today’s verdict sends a message that it’s never too late for justice to be served,” said Ronald C. Machen Jr., the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. Judge Gerald I. Fisher of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia set Mr. Guandique’s sentencing for Feb. 11. Susan Levy, Ms. Levy’s mother, exhaled audibly as Judge Fisher repeated the verdict, craning her head to get a glimpse of Mr. Guandique, whose face remained expressionless. He was wearing a blue turtleneck to cover gang tattoos, a gray sweater vest and headphones that translated the proceedings into Spanish. “The result of this verdict may be guilty,” Ms. Levy said shortly after the verdict, “but I have a life sentence of a lost limb missing from our family tree.” Defense lawyers argued during the trial that Mr. Morales was trying to get in the good graces of prosecutors, according to The Associated Press, and that his account was concocted. There were no eyewitnesses or DNA evidence linking Mr. Guandique to Ms. Levy, and the only piece of actual proof — DNA on Ms. Levy’s running tights — did not belong to Mr. Guandique. The Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, which represented Mr. Guandique, did not return calls for comment. Mr. Condit’s lawyer, Bertram Fields, responded to calls on Monday. “Who gives him his career back?” Mr. Fields said. “That career has been destroyed and his life turned upside down, and that will never change.” Mr. Condit was a seven-term representative and a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He sued several journalists over their coverage and “had a successful outcome” in at least one case, Mr. Fields said. He declined to provide details, citing a nondisclosure agreement in the case.

Levy Chandra Ann
Condit Gary A
Guandique Ingmar
Murders and Attempted Murders
Decisions and Verdicts


Lakers Acquire Carlos Boozer

Abstract: Carlos Boozer is headed to the Lakers’ crowded frontcourt after Los Angeles made the winning bid for the veteran forward waived by the Chicago Bulls via the amnesty clause. The Lakers made the highest bid under the NBA’s modified waiver process for players who were amnestied, the team announced Thursday. “Carlos is an established veteran and a proven All-Star, who will be a welcome addition to our team,” Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said in a statement. “We’re very pleased to have won the bidding process and to have gained his rights, and look forward to his contributions next season.” According to NBA rules, teams with room under the salary cap had to bid at least $1.4 million, the amount of the minimum salary for veterans next season. Details of the winning bid were not provided, though ESPN.com reported that it was $3.25 million. The amnesty clause allows teams to waive one player in the first five years of the current collective bargaining agreement without his salary counting for cap and tax purposes. Boozer will still be paid the $16.8 million he is due next season in the final season of a contract he signed in 2010. He will join a Lakers team that has already agreed to deals with fellow power forwards Jordan Hill and Ed Davis during free agency, and drafted Kentucky’s Julius Randle with the No. 7 pick. Boozer, a two-time All-Star, averaged 15.5 points and nine rebounds in 280 games with the Bulls. His playing time diminished in recent seasons with the emergence of Taj Gibson, and the Bulls needed to clear his salary to sign Pau Gasol and European star Nikola Mirotic.


Parker’s 37 Carry Spurs to Sweep and Finals

Abstract: Tony Parker scored 37 points in his best game this postseason, and the visiting San Antonio Spurs advanced to their first N.B.A. finals since 2007, when they won their last championship, by beating the Memphis Grizzlies, 93-86, on Monday night. The Spurs now have won six straight in these playoffs from when they finished off Golden State in the semifinals to sweeping the Grizzlies in the Western Conference final. The Grizzlies went from being undefeated on their own court in their best postseason in franchise history to being swept by the very same franchise that needed four games to knock them out of their first playoff appearance back in 2004. Parker had his best game this postseason as he hit 15 of 21 and all six at the free-throw line, earning the Spurs and Tim Duncan plenty of rest before Game 1 of the Finals on June 6. FIBA INDUCTEES David Robinson, Pat Summitt and Teresa Edwards headlined the 12-person 2013 FIBA Hall of Fame class announced Monday. Robinson won two gold medals and a bronze in the Olympics. He played for the United States on the 1988, 1992 and 1996 teams, becoming the first American basketball player to appear in three Games. He’s the leading rebounder and shot blocker for the United States in the Olympics and the No. 2 scorer. Robinson also helped the United States win a gold medal at the 1986 world championships when the Americans still sent college players to take on other nations’ pros. Summitt, the leader in coaching victories in college basketball, won a silver medal as a player on the 1976 Olympic team and guided the United States to gold in 1984. She is one of only two American women to win a medal as both a player and head coach, joining Anne Donovan. Summitt also was the coach of the 1979 world championship team that won America’s first gold medal at the event since 1957. Edwards helped the United States win four gold medals and a bronze in her five Olympics from 1984-2000, making her the most decorated Olympic basketball player.

Spurs
Tony Parker
Memphis Grizzlies
Playoffs
Basketball


Saudi Arabia: 4 Convicts Are Executed

Abstract: Saudi Arabia announced Wednesday that it had carried out four executions, raising the total to 130 so far in 2015. Three executions were of Saudi citizens convicted of murder, and a Syrian man was executed for drug smuggling. Analysts say it is not clear why the number of executions has increased so much from last year, when 88 people were put to death, or 2013, when at least 64 were executed, according to Human Rights Watch. Some diplomats in Saudi Arabia have said that judicial changes, including the appointment of more judges, have allowed a backlog of appeals cases to be heard, leading to a short-term rise in executions. Others have said that regional instability may have led Saudi judges to impose harsher sentences.

Saudi Arabia
Human Rights Watch
Capital punishment


Kagan Says Her Path to Supreme Court Was Made Smoother by Ginsburg’s

Abstract: They share New York City roots, a liberal outlook and a personal trainer. But a gap separates Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, one they explored during an often lighthearted joint appearance last week at the New York City Bar Association. Justice Ginsburg, 80, is the oldest member of the Supreme Court, and she came of age when many legal careers were closed to women. Justice Kagan, 53, is the court’s youngest member, and she seemed to have little trouble compiling a glittering résumé. She was the first female dean of Harvard Law School and the first female United States solicitor general. “What explains this gulf between Justice Ginsburg’s experience and mine?” Justice Kagan asked. “In large part the answer is simply Justice Ginsburg. As a litigator and then as a judge she changed the face of American antidiscrimination law.” Justice Ginsburg, having been turned down by law firms and refused judicial clerkships, became a professor at Rutgers Law School, where she experienced the sort of blatant discrimination that was common at the time. “Rutgers told her that she was going to be paid less than her male colleagues because, quote, your husband has a very good job,” Justice Kagan said. As a lawyer, Justice Ginsburg framed and argued cases that established an entirely new body of constitutional law, one requiring the equal treatment of women. As a judge, she kept pushing, sometimes in the face of headwinds from her more conservative colleagues. In what Justice Kagan called “possibly the most effective dissent of this generation,” Justice Ginsburg in 2007 called on Congress to overturn Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company , which said a federal law had imposed strict time limits for bringing lawsuits in workplace discrimination cases. “I suspect that when Justice Ginsburg wrote those words she remembered her own experience of pay discrimination at Rutgers,” Justice Kagan said. Congress responded to the dissent with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 . A framed copy of the law hangs in Justice Ginsburg’s chambers . The occasion for the justices’ appearance last week was an annual lecture in Justice Ginsburg’s honor, delivered this year by Justice Kagan. Justice Ginsburg introduced her colleague, saying her rise had been marked by wit and grit. “The personal trainer with whom she boxes has been my physical fitness guardian since 1999,” Justice Ginsburg said. “He tells me she has the best jab-cross-hook-punch combination on the federal bench.” Justice Kagan responded by taking a couple of affectionate jabs at the honoree. She admitted to having nursed a “minor grudge” for almost three decades arising from her efforts as a law student to secure a judicial clerkship on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where Justice Ginsburg served from 1980 to 1993 before joining the Supreme Court. “I had the good fortune to be offered a clerkship by several of Justice Ginsburg’s colleagues: Abner Mikva, whom I eventually clerked for, Harry Edwards and Pat Wald,” Justice Kagan said. “The only one of President Carter’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit who thought me not quite good enough was Judge Ginsburg. She didn’t even interview me.” Justice Kagan also had a little fun with Justice Ginsburg’s writing and interests. “As a law professor, she was a pathmarking scholar of civil procedure,” Justice Kagan said, and then paused. “Pathmarking. Have you ever heard that word before? It appears in about 30 Justice Ginsburg opinions — although it appears actually not to exist. Oh well.” Justice Ginsburg is also an expert in comparative civil procedure, Justice Kagan said: “She wrote what I am confident is the definitive American volume on civil procedure in Sweden. That’s why when the Supreme Court faces a tricky question of Swedish civil procedure, we always go straight to Justice Ginsburg.” Justice Ginsburg later explained that the locution and her expertise in things Swedish were related. “Pathmarking” was a tribute, she said, to a book by the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjold. (The book, a volume of journal entries , was called “Markings” in an English translation, though Swedes say “Waymarks” or “Pathmarks” would have been more apt.) Justice Kagan, the newest justice, does not appear in public as often as some of her colleagues, but that is not saying much. The current Supreme Court ought to have its own speakers bureau. On the same day that Justices Ginsburg and Kagan appeared in New York, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was speaking in Connecticut , Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in Florida and Justice Antonin Scalia in Hawaii . The two justices in New York had differing views about another sort of publicity: cameras at the Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg was against them, on the ground that viewers would misunderstand the significance of oral arguments. The bulk of the court’s work, she said, is based on written submissions and private discussion, reflection and writing. “What the public will see is two people with a half-hour a side having a conversation with the justices, and they come away with the idea that, well, the best debater is going to win that contest,” Justice Ginsburg said. “It would leave a false impression of the appellate process to think that the oral argument is what is decisive in the cases.” Justice Kagan was more equivocal. She acknowledged Justice Ginsburg’s concern, along with the possibility of grandstanding, but she said there were important values on the other side. “It’s a really hard issue,” she said. “Transparency is an important thing in government institutions, and for the most part the court would look pretty good.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Elena Kagan
Discrimination
Lawyers
Women and Girls
Supreme Court,SCOTUS


Israel Faces Deepening Tensions With Turkey Over Raid, and Bond With U.S. Frays

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Tensions deepened between Turkey and Israel on Friday, and a new fissure threatened to open between the United States and Israel, as the three countries continued to deal with the fallout from Israel’s deadly raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla off Gaza. A senior Turkish diplomat warned that his country might sever diplomatic relations with Israel unless its government apologized for the attack, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed; consented to an international investigation; and lifted its blockade of Gaza. “Israel is about to lose a friend; this is going to be a historical mistake,” said the diplomat, Namik Tan, Turkey’s ambassador to Washington. “The future of our relationship will be determined by Israel’s actions.” Israeli officials refused Turkey’s demands, saying their commandos acted in self-defense after activists on one ship set upon them with knives, clubs and metal rods. Israel also took issue with the Obama administration’s assertion that the United States had warned Israeli officials to exercise caution and restraint in intercepting the flotilla. “I was not contacted by anyone in the administration about this,” said Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Mr. Oren said he was not aware that anybody else in the Israeli government had been called and was seeking clarification from the administration. A spokesman for the State Department, Philip J. Crowley, said the United States had “extensive contacts” with Israel and Turkey before the flotilla set sail. “We expressed to the Israelis the need for caution and restraint in dealing with civilians, including American citizens,” he said. With another aid ship steaming toward Gaza, this one from Ireland, the United States seems determined to avoid a repeat of the last raid. The White House issued a statement on Friday urging the ship, the Rachel Corrie, to instead go to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where its cargo could be unloaded and shipped to Gaza. The dispute over who said what to whom symbolizes the fragility of the mood between the United States and Israel. The administration initially resisted worldwide condemnation of Israel, watering down a United Nations resolution that could have placed the blame on Israel. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. voiced support for Israel. But privately, President Obama and other officials have pressed Israeli leaders to do more to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Administration officials said they were working to devise an investigation that would satisfy the Turkish demand for international involvement, while being acceptable to the Israelis, who said they would reject outside oversight. The deepening imbroglio does not appear to have derailed the administration’s most pressing diplomatic priority: imposing new United Nations sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Administration officials and European diplomats said that despite opposition from Turkey and Brazil, the Security Council was on track to pass a resolution in the next two weeks. The focus now, officials said, was on trying to persuade these two countries to abstain rather than vote against a resolution. Turkey and Brazil brokered a last-minute deal with Tehran to further enrich some of its uranium outside the country. But the Obama administration threw cold water on the agreement, saying it did not address all the issues. Mr. Tan declined to say how Turkey would vote in the Council. But he said that Turkey believed that sanctions were a mistake, and that Turkey and Brazil had pursued their agreement with the administration’s blessing. The United States has tried to mollify Turkey, with long meetings and phone calls to Turkish leaders by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Tan said Turkey appreciated American pressure on Israel to release the passengers and return the bodies from the ship. But he repeated Turkey’s disappointment over the Americans’ refusal to condemn Israel. “There is no word of condemnation, nowhere,” said Mr. Tan, who was once Turkey’s ambassador to Israel. In Turkey, the vitriol toward Israel continued. Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told Turkish television that Turkey could reduce its relations with Israel “to a minimum.” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of breaking the biblical commandment against killing. Mr. Erdogan also talked in favorable terms about Hamas, which controls Gaza, calling the group “activists in a struggle to defend themselves.” Israel and the United States consider Hamas a terrorist group. American officials are watching the rift with growing alarm. Turkey’s deepening cooperation with Israel was one of the most promising diplomatic developments in the Middle East over the past decade, said a senior administration official. “We’re not taking anything for granted,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation. “We’ve seen how much emotion there is in Turkey.” The administration, he said, is studying proposals for an Israeli-run investigation that could include outside participants. One model would be South Korea’s international investigation of the torpedo attack that sank its warship in March. Israeli officials do not dismiss the idea of international participation, but one said, “We’re not there yet.”

Israel
Turkey
Free Gaza Movement
International Relations
United States International Relations
Embargoes and Economic Sanctions


Not for Followers

Abstract: The rush of compelling ideas for new smartphone apps has slowed. In 2007, Twitter still seemed pretty revolutionary for the way it bridged the gap between public figures and private ones, between celebrity and anonymity. The most widely used new app these days, at least among my 20-something cohort, is Snapchat . It allows the bored user to send innumerable so-called selfies to any friend unlucky enough to have signed up, with the assurance that all pictures will disappear in the span of 10 seconds. But the stall on cutting-edge app concepts allows for the refinement of the ones we do have. Our smartphones still look shiny and new, but the truth is that we are working with the equivalents of the Harvard-Mark 1 , one of the earliest computers. So while innovation may not be a constant in new smartphone apps, improvement and specialization almost certainly will. Sosh , an app that was introduced in New York City in April , is a prime example of that phenomenon. The app is often described as a concierge service, a slick way of saying that it picks out restaurants, bars and activities for the discerning New Yorker (or at least the ones who have heard of Sosh) to peruse at leisure. What the app really resembles is a highbrow version of Yelp , with a complex algorithm and a set of handpicked tastemakers replacing anything so democratic as actual reviews as a way to provide recommendations. Sosh is ideally suited for those snobs who feel that crowd-sourced opinions simply cannot be trusted. Image Credit Christoph Hitz/The New York Times Upon joining Sosh, the user is asked what sort of activities he or she is interested in (beer fanatic? museum obsessive?) and in which neighborhoods. The app chooses likely locales based on a user’s location and the location of Facebook friends who also use the app. At first, given the number of Manhattanites I know who use Sosh, the app restricted itself almost completely to the island. But as it’s grown to know me better, it has started to point more and more in the direction of Brooklyn. Activities are then suggested according to those interests and locations: I do really like museums, so every time I logged in last month, the app insisted that I check out the now-closed Museum of Modern Art’s “Rain Room,” despite a wait of more than four hours. Sosh is also urging me to check out David Hockney’s “The Jugglers,” a video exhibit at the Whitney Museum, showing “a group of jugglers as they move in a procession across a grid of 18 screens.” Does that sound a little weird? Yes. Am I planning on going? Absolutely. It’s easy to be suspicious of Sosh’s listings, and think that the app is nothing more than a paid pitch-maker. But Rishi Mandal, Sosh’s chief executive, assured me that the company received nothing in return for listings and was entirely venture capital-backed. Mr. Mandal, a believer in the long game, has faith that the app will gather enough information to “show local businesses their moneymaking value and connect them with people who will want to consume their services.” At that point, Sosh is likely to become a part of the transaction. Though Sosh’s suggestions are not always spot on (no interest in seeing the Lumineers in concert, thank you very much), the app is dedicated to self-improvement, applying a user’s choices to an ever-evolving algorithm that determines the next activities picked. The more you use Sosh, the better it knows what you like. As is becoming more and more common among relatively young apps, Sosh is beautiful, easy to use and comprehensive in the possibilities it presents for exploration. There’s nothing new about the idea behind it, but in its refinement and distinct targeting of a certain choosy demographic, it’s a fine example of how a new generation of apps is likely to develop.


I.P.O. Could Value GE Capital’s Czech Business at $1.6 Billion

Abstract: LONDON — GE Money Bank, a unit of GE Capital in the Czech Republic, said on Monday that its initial public offering could value the banking business at 39.1 billion Czech korunas, or about $1.6 billion. The initial public offering is the latest in a series of moves by General Electric as it seeks to retreat from finance and focus on its industrial roots. General Electric said last year that it planned to sell the bulk of GE Capital within two years. Since then, GE Capital has entered into agreements for asset sales worth about $165 billion. The Czech business, which will be renamed Moneta Money Bank, said it planned to price its offering on the Prague Stock Exchange at 68 korunas to 85 korunas a share. That would value the bank at 39.1 billion korunas at the midpoint of the expected range. GE Capital will retain a minority stake in the Czech bank. “We are pleased to be launching our planned I.P.O. today, after a strong initial response from institutional investors,” Tomas Spurny, the chief executive of GE Money Bank, said in a news release. Plans to pursue an initial public offering for the Czech business were announced this month. The bank, based in Prague, has 229 branches and 629 A.T.M.s in the Czech Republic. It serves 1.17 million retail and commercial customers in the country. The company posted a profit of 4.5 million korunas in 2015. GE Capital plans to sell 260.6 million shares in Moneta Money Bank in the offering, or about 51 percent of the bank’s shares. Conditional trading of Moneta Money Bank is expected to begin in Prague on May 6. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are serving as joint global coordinators on the offering.

GE Capital
GE Money Bank
IPO
Banking and Finance


Agency Cuts Greece’s Debt Rating Again

Abstract: LONDON — Standard & Poor’s , the credit ratings agency, lowered its grade on Greek debt to CCC on Monday in the latest sign that the market believes that Greece will be forced to default on its debt. The three-notch downgrade makes Greece’s debt the lowest-rated in the world by S.& P., a spokesman for the agency said. The downgrade comes at a particularly awkward time for Greece. The government is trying to persuade legislators to accept a fresh set of austerity measures. At the same time, Germany , the dominant economy in the 17-member euro zone, is proposing that private sector bondholders accept some form of a loss on their Greek bonds as a condition for a broader rescue package for Greece that could approach 100 billion euros ($143 billion). S.& P. made its announcement less than two weeks after Moody’s Investors Service also lowered Greece’s credit rating, putting it three notches lower to Caa1 and saying that more downgrades were possible. While one more downgrade for Greece is unlikely to change matters much, it does put more stress on Germany, which has been facing pressure from the European Central Bank not to restructure Greek debt. In its news release, S.& P. said that its downgrade reflected the reality that any form of debt exchange — where bondholders would trade their shorter-term debt for longer-dated paper — would be seen as harmful to creditors and thus, in the eyes of S.& P., would be equal to a default. S.& P. said if that occurred, Greece’s rating would reach the level of D. “It is currently the lowest-rated sovereign in the world,” said John Piecuch, a communications director for S.& P. “We have ratings on 126 sovereigns and that is the lowest.” The ratings agency also cited the continuing depths of the Greek economic slump, pointing out that the unemployment rate was now at 16.2 percent. Greece has financing needs of close to 160 billion euros ($229 billion) through 2014. Given these steep requirements and the difficulties of the government in pushing through its austerity package, S.& P. concluded that some form of restructuring was now more likely than not. “In our view Greece is increasingly likely to restructure its debt in a manner that, under the conditions of any package of additional funding provided by Greece’s official creditors, would result in one or more defaults under our criteria,” S.& P. said in a research report accompanying the announcement. It added that the risks were rising for implementing borrowing programs from Europe and the International Monetary Fund , given the country’s financing needs and political disagreements over the conditions that Greece’s partners are demanding. When Moody’s lowered Greece’s credit rating on June 1, it also cited growing risks, noting that Greece would not be able to stabilize its debt position without restructuring. Moody’s mentioned that Europe and the I.M.F. were increasingly likely to require that private creditors take part in restructuring the country’s debt. Greece’s Finance Ministry said on Monday that S.& P.’s move overlooked the government’s commitment to tough fiscal efforts to repair public finances and remain a member of the 17-member euro currency group, according to Reuters. “The decision also overlooks the government’s moves to avoid any problems relating to Greece’s contractual obligations, as well as the will of all Greeks to plan our future inside the euro zone,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement reported by Reuters. The S.& P. move puts Greece’s rating below that of Pakistan , Ecuador , Fiji , Jamaica and Grenada , which have ratings of B-minus and are seen as having the capacity to meet their financial commitments but with the likelihood that adverse conditions would make it difficult. Austerity efforts by the Greek government have ignited public opposition, with daily protests occurring in front of the nation’s Parliament this month. Greece’s debt challenges were highlighted last week when Jean-Claude Trichet , the president of Europe’s central bank, continued a disagreement with the government of Germany by rejecting any suggestion that Greece’s creditors should be required to help with a rescue plan.

Greece
Debt
Standard & Poor's
Euro Crisis


Parasite and Host in Constant Game of Catch-Up

Abstract: In evolution, host and parasite can engage in a kind of arms race. One side adapts and evolves; the other side adapts and evolves to keep up. At the end of the day, neither side is necessarily better off than the other. Scientists who study evolution call this Red Queen dynamics, after the character in “Through the Looking-Glass” who tells Alice that all the running she does will only leave her in the same place. The phenomenon helps illustrate why sexual reproduction is important: by producing genetically varied offspring, a slower-evolving organism can defend itself against a faster-evolving one. But Red Queen dynamics are hard to spot in nature because many generations are needed and the changes from one generation to the next may be slight. “You need to be able to follow them in long-term processes,” said Ellen Decaestecker, an evolutionary biologist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. “But that’s tricky to do.” Now Dr. Decaestecker and colleagues have done just that, observing Red Queen dynamics between the water flea Daphnia magna and a bacterial parasite, using what amounts to a time machine in a shallow pond in the Belgian town of Heverlee. Layered sediments in the pond contain dormant Daphnia eggs and spores of the bacterial parasite. By reviving eggs and producing active bacteria from different layers that correspond to different times, in two- to four-year increments back to about 40 years ago, Dr. Decaestecker was able to test how the organisms evolved in relation to each other. The findings are reported in Nature. The researchers found that the bacteria infected the fleas at a higher rate when both were from the same time period than when the bacteria were from an earlier time. That showed that the bacteria had adapted to become more effective. But when the same generation of eggs was exposed to bacteria from a later period, the infection rate declined. By adapting to their contemporary hosts, these “future” bacteria had lost their advantage against the earlier hosts. Researchers also found that year-to-year infection rates among contemporary host and parasite remained stable. For all the evolutionary running around, the species were running in place relative to each other.


Red Bulls Sign Dane

Abstract: Brian Nielsen, a 23-year-old midfielder who has played for Danish youth national teams, joined the Red Bulls on loan from Denmark’s Vejle. Nielsen was with Akademisk Boldklub in 2004-5, then transferred in September 2005 to Vejle, where he was a teammate of Salou Ibrahim, who signed with the Red Bulls last week.


Apocalypse Never Happened, but a Community Did

Abstract: Eighty-five miles south of Chicago, where farmland rolls out to the horizon in every direction, sits the tiny community of Stelle. At first glance, it resembles a typical residential subdivision of ranch houses and bilevels. But its brief history is remarkable. Proclaimed as the precursor to the Kingdom of God by Richard Kieninger, its guru-like founder, Stelle began as a spiritual commune intended to survive an apocalyptic event. As that dark vision faded, the town became a vibrant outpost of the sustainability movement and evolved into an open, ecumenical community of 100 or so good neighbors. “What makes Stelle unique is that it survived,” said one resident, Steve Bell, a technical specialist for one of two photovoltaic companies with offices in Stelle. “I prefer to describe Stelle as an unincorporated village with a colorful history.” The idea for Stelle (pronounced stell) emerged in 1963, when Mr. Kieninger, under the pen name Eklal Kueshana, published “The Ultimate Frontier,” a book about a young man who was instructed by an ancient “Brotherhood” of scientist-philosophers to build a new nation based on karmic principles and the Golden Rule. Seven years later, Mr. Kieninger, a Chicago native, along with a band of mostly 20-somethings who had come from the hippie counterculture and looked the part until Mr. Kieninger mandated mainstream dress, bought a 240-acre farm in Ford County and began building Stelle. He prophesied the settlement would grow into a city of 250,000. Mr. Kieninger also foresaw a catastrophic shift of the earth’s crust. To survive, he warned, Stelle needed to become self-reliant. “If things went to hell, which is what Stelle’s doomsday culture predicted, how do you carry on? For a start,” Mr. Bell said, “you need a power source.” Although followers who bought into Mr. Kieninger’s unorthodox philosophy overlooked his failed prophecies, they did not feel the same way when he was suspected of sexual improprieties. Mr. Kieninger was expelled from Stelle by a vote in 1986, and he moved to a community called Adelphi, near Dallas. Later a Republic of Texas separatist, he served time in prison after helping distribute fraudulent cashier’s checks. Even after Mr. Kieninger’s departure from Stelle, his insistence on developing self-sufficient technologies resonated among residents. “People in Stelle may have seemed wacky,” said Brian Quirke, director of communications for the federal Department of Energy in Chicago, “but for decades, they’ve made their lives a demonstration of sustainable living.” Today, nearly a third of Stelle’s 45 households have photovoltaic panels or passive solar systems. Stelle boasts the nation’s first solar-powered telephone company, and a 21-foot-diameter wind turbine generates electricity for the water treatment plant. The town’s sense of community also remains. Members of the Monday Night Dinner Cooperative meet weekly in Stelle’s modest community center for a home-cooked meal. Chicken co-op members collect eggs year-round from Stelle’s solar-powered hen house. The tool and lawn mower cooperatives operate out of a family garage. When Wayne Malchow, a retired Marine, moved to Stelle two years ago to build an energy-efficient home, he thought his yard would be his haven. “I didn’t care about neighbors,” he said. Things change. Last summer, Mr. Malchow grew cucumbers in the community garden. In October when Stelle participated in a national tour of solar-powered homes, his house was among the stops. He belongs to the Stelle Community Association, which maintains the streets and the water and sewage systems, and he co-founded the orchard co-op. “I found a community,” Mr. Malchow said. “I like it.” Dr. Benjamin Zablocki, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, has studied cults and communes for decades. Although several Stelle residents insisted that their community did not begin as a cult, Dr. Zablocki said Stelle was originally “a prophetic and apocalyptic group.” “But,” he said, “it’s fairly common when the leader leaves or dies, for the group to evolve into a more village-like structure.” About a quarter of Stelle’s current residents date back to Mr. Kieninger’s time, but only a few still share his ideas. Many who came later were drawn by the community’s New Age, eco-conscious reputation. Others, like Joshua Denault, came because he got a good deal on a house. Growing up nearby, Mr. Denault heard rumors about people building spaceships in Stelle. “I thought people would be weird,” he said. “For a long while I kept my distance.” Then last summer, he started taking his 2-year-old child to the local pool, which is privately owned but accessible for everyone. When Mr. Denault and his wife, Jeannie, recently had a baby, neighbors brought over dinner for a week. “It wasn’t until we had kids that I understood what community is about,” Ms. Denault said. Carroll English, who has lived in Stelle the longest, keeps 69 copies of “The Ultimate Frontier” in her living room bookcase. “It’s so sensible and reasonable,” said Ms. English, who first read the book in 1967. “What we have in our lives is what we bring into our lives by what we do for others.” She wishes she could persuade her neighbors to form an “Ultimate Frontier” study group, but she has not yet succeeded. Nonetheless, Ms. English said as she lent a copy to a visitor, “Stelle is a great place.” “It’s quiet, in harmony with nature and as close to family as I’ll get,” she said.

Communes
Sustainable Living
Illinois
Solar Energy


SETI Research Head Retires After Long Search for Alien Life

Abstract: Jill Tarter once complained to me that she had no poetry in her soul. It was 1990, and NASA was getting ready to undertake a survey of the 1,000 nearest stars, looking for radio signals from aliens. Dr. Tarter, then 46 and a researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., was in charge of it. “I can’t say what they will be like,” she sighed, when asked to speculate about the nature and motives of these putative aliens. She was far too busy worrying about how to recognize a signal, not to mention how to avoid being fooled by the kid next door or a stray weather or spy satellite. For some three decades, Dr. Tarter, now 68, has been the person most likely to be the first to know if we make contact with E.T. — the one who will sound the alarm, spreading the news that We Are Not Alone. Now Dr. Tarter is stepping away from the radio telescope, retiring from her post as the director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View. SETI, of course, refers to the search for intelligent life in the universe. “The SETI Institute has a good pension plan — we’re grown-ups,” she said by telephone recently. There will be a dinner and speeches in her honor at SETIcon , a gathering of astronomers, astronauts and science-fiction fans in Santa Clara this weekend. “I hope it’s not a roast,” she said. Dr. Tarter never did get to deliver the news that we have company. But this, she contends, is not disappointing. What would be disappointing is if humans were not able to search for their neighbors at all. Over the decades she has brooked few distractions from that quest. When a reporter (O.K., it was me) once described Dr. Tarter’s blond hair tied with a pink ribbon into a ponytail, she cut her hair short. When the SETI researchers got a new radio telescope for their search — the Allen Array, at the University of California’s Hat Creek Observatory in Northern California — she got a pilot’s license so she could make the trip from her Berkeley home in one hour instead of six. Jodie Foster’s performance as an astronomer who does make contact, in the movie “ Contact ,” was largely based on time she spent with Dr. Tarter. Three times, Dr. Tarter says, she has thought we had made contact, but hard-boiled caution prevailed. Once was in France in 1980, when she and her team had to wait for a suspicious source to pass over their telescope, and Dr. Tarter was afraid to go to sleep. “I had to stay up for three days, afraid my French colleagues were going to call up Le Monde,” she said. Another time, while she was observing with a radio telescope in West Virginia, Dr. Tarter went so far as to alert colleagues in California of an auspicious signal — and then forgot to call back when she discovered it was a satellite. None of them was E.T. calling. Each one was another way to be fooled, another addition to Dr. Tarter’s checklist, another necessary step along a path that may or may not have an ending. It was in the 1970s while she was pursuing a Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and raising a daughter that she first heard of SETI: the idea that lonely species could bridge the voids between stars with radio waves. She fell in love with it after reading a NASA report on the subject edited by Barney Oliver, the former head of research at Hewlett-Packard. Reassuringly, Dr. Oliver was a crusty gear head who had made himself and others rich, not the sort of man given to romantic fantasies. Hard-boiled, you might say. Dr. Tarter said she considered herself lucky to have been born when the issue of life in the universe had become a scientific instead of a philosophical or religious one. “For the very first time we had technology where we could do an experiment instead of asking priests and philosophers,” she said. “It might take multiple generations,” she added, “but there were no reasons not to start with the tools I have.” The NASA survey that Dr. Tarter led began with great fanfare on Columbus Day of 1992, the 500th anniversary of the great explorer’s arrival in the Americas — a day that she called the high point of her life, a monument to human curiosity. “I felt so proud,” she recalled. A year later it was over, canceled at the behest of a senator, Richard Bryan of Nevada, who was skittish about “little green men.” With help from Silicon Valley friends, Dr. Tarter and her colleagues at the institute took the search private and, over time, began to expand it farther out in space, to stars identified by the Kepler spacecraft as having planets. Last year, however, the recession left the University of California with no money to operate Hat Creek Observatory, and the Allen Array had to be shut down, a moment that Dr. Tarter called the low point of her career. “To have built that beautiful instrument and then have to turn it off, that hurt,” she said. The Allen Array is now back on the cosmic search job, thanks to a deal to share observing time on it with the Air Force. But to Dr. Tarter the whole affair was a wake-up call: SETI needs a permanent endowment. “It’s on my to-do list,” she said last winter. So she is not moving far, just down the hall, to concentrate on fund-raising. It’s time, she said, to go calling on Silicon Valley 2.0. The search, she explained, is “too long and too difficult. If we want to attract the best and brightest, we want to be able to say, ‘It’s O.K., they can plan on raising a family.’ ” Once upon a time it was a crazy, romantic idea, perhaps nothing better than wishful thinking. It still is, but it makes us feel bigger and more grown-up just to try. And now it comes with grown-up benefits, like a retirement plan. There might or might not be poetry in her soul, but Dr. Tarter’s whole career has been a poem.

SETI Institute
Space
Telescopes and Observatories
Science and Technology
Extraterrestrial Life
Tarter Jill


Goalkeepers Dislike Official World Cup Ball

Abstract: Johannesburg At least everyone seems satisfied that the official World Cup ball is not rectangular. Otherwise, goalkeepers dislike the Adidas ball more than Diego Maradona dislikes reporters and photographers. Although to the keepers’ credit, they have not yet fired at the balls with air rifles or run over them in their cars. Basically, the ball is being criticized for being too light and too curvy, as if it were a fashion model who eats too little food and has too much plastic surgery. Altitude and technology will not only cause goalkeepers stress, but also make balls carry too far on crosses, causing some headers to be missed by two feet, said Marcus Hahnemann, a reserve keeper for the United States and a man not given to understatement. “Technology is not everything,” Hahnemann said Thursday. “Scientists came up with the atom bomb; it doesn’t mean we should have invented it.” Adidas has christened the World Cup ball Jabulani , which is apparently Zulu for “offends goalkeepers.” Not really. The name actually means “to celebrate.” But it has been lost in translation for the guys between the posts. ¶“A disaster,” France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris said. ¶Iker Casillas of Spain: “Like a beach ball.” ¶Italy’s Gianluigi Buffon: “Shameful.” ¶David James of England: “Dreadful.” ¶ Fernando Muslera of Uruguay said with a hiss: “The worst I’ve ever played with.” The ball was designed to be groovier than a Beach Boys album, made of molded polyurethane panels with a grippy feel, and engineered to provide the shooter maximum control. It has been tested in wind tunnels. Robots whacked at the ball to simulate free kicks and corner kicks. The party-hearty wives and girlfriends of England’s players took it out and got it drunk. O.K., maybe that last part never happened. But to hear Adidas’s breathless promotion, you would think the ball had undergone every sort of testing but a three-car pileup at Daytona. Oh, and there is a larger purpose to the Jabulani than merely kicking it into a net. Its 11 colors are meant to symbolize the 11 players on the field and the 11 official languages spoken in South Africa. “The colorful design brings together the tremendous diversity of the country in harmonious unity,” Adidas said on its Web site. As opposed to disharmonious unity, which is how the goalkeepers are responding. Of course, technology, high and low, has long been used to manipulate sports equipment for desired effects. The Colorado Rockies store baseballs in a humidor to keep them from trans-Atlantic flight in the thin air of Denver. National Hockey League teams store pucks in a freezer to reduce friction on the ice. Punters and kickers beat on oblong footballs like punching bags to make them more pliable. Some put them in clothes dryers and, reportedly, in microwave ovens. In soccer, no one wants a repeat of the 1990 World Cup, where scoring was so low that cobwebs grew between the goalposts. Tim Howard, the starting American goalkeeper, dislikes the Adidas ball, too, but realizes the competing needs of sport and entertainment. “I think I understand how that business works,” Howard said. “Shutouts don’t bring the attention. The ball is moving all over the place. I think we learned a long time ago as goalkeepers, it’s no excuse. You have to figure out the movement of the ball. If it moves too much, then you just get it out of harm’s way and don’t try to be too cute and clever with it. It’s about adapting.” In less affluent parts of the world, some youngsters grow up playing soccer with balls made of old shirts or plastic bags. Sissi, a star with Brazil in the 1999 Women’s World Cup, used to kick around the heads of her dolls. So adapting to a top-of-the-line model should not overwhelm anyone. As Bruce Arena, then the United States coach, told reporters before the 2002 World Cup: “It’s a ball. Last time I checked, it was still round. If they make it square, I’ll start to worry.” Still, it is the goalkeepers’ obligation to complain. Happens every World Cup. Perhaps this is because goals are so few and prized. And because the keepers are so alone and vulnerable to blame and their job is destructive, to obstruct, to impede, to deface the masterpiece being painted by everyone else. Their complaints, though, seem to have little merit. Goal scoring has gone down, not up, over the decades at the World Cup, peaking at 5.4 goals per game in 1954 and dropping to 2.3 in 2006. Adidas has fired back at its critics, saying forwards and goalkeepers will have a better idea where this ball is headed than any other. “If you look back in history, there have always been criticisms about the ball before the World Cup, but not so much afterward, after you’ve seen great goals and great saves,” Thomas van Schaik, an Adidas spokesman, told The Associated Press. The United States team has been practicing with the ball for nearly three weeks. Coach Bob Bradley does not seem overly concerned, though adjusting to the ball’s bending and dipping at altitude takes some time. Midfielder Clint Dempsey likes the ball and is thinking of asking it to go steady. “If you hit it just right — you don’t have to hit it as hard as you can — just hit it solid and you get a good knuckle on the ball,” Dempsey said. “That causes problems for the goalie. The only thing is, you’ve got to pay more attention to detail when you pass the ball. If you get it just a little bit wrong, you end up looking pretty silly.” James, the English goalkeeper, seems resigned to the Jabulani. “It’s horrible, but it’s horrible for everyone,” he said. Maybe he could call the Rockies and ask for a humidor.

Soccer
World Cup 2010 (Soccer)
Adidas AG