Frank Macchiarola, Highly Regarded New York Schools Chancellor, Dies at 71

Abstract: Frank J. Macchiarola , who was widely regarded as one of the canniest and most effective New York City schools chancellors of the last half-century, died on Tuesday at his home in Downtown Brooklyn. He was 71. His death was confirmed by a spokesman for St. Francis College in Brooklyn. Dr. Macchiarola, a graduate of the college, was its president from 1996 to 2008. He had been treated for liver cancer. Dr. Macchiarola (pronounced MAC-kee-ah-row-la), a sanitation worker’s son and a devout product of Roman Catholic schools, was 37 when Mayor Edward I. Koch appointed him to lead New York’s public school system in 1978. He held the post until 1983. Succeeding Irving Anker, who had retired, Dr. Macchiarola took the job after he helped the city emerge from near-bankruptcy in the mid-1970s as deputy director of the New York State Emergency Financial Control Board, which had been created during the crisis to oversee the city’s finances. The school system at the time was reeling from budget cutbacks, teacher layoffs and crowded classrooms. The year before, 15,000 teachers, guidance counselors and teachers’ assistants were laid off. In a demanding job that in some eras seemed to change hands almost every year, Dr. Macchiarola had a tenure that, at five years, was notable for its relative longevity. It was testimony to the unusual amalgam of political, managerial, legal and educational skills he brought to the post, salted with street smarts. Dr. Macchiarola set about imposing rigorous standards for both students and educators. He replaced more than 60 of the system’s 110 high school principals, rating their performance poor. He blocked automatic promotions for fourth and seventh graders, requiring them to take remedial summer classes or be held back if they failed to meet certain goals. (Almost 25,000 students were left back in June 1981; in later years, the policy sometimes lapsed and was sometimes revived.) To address a plague of disrespect in the classroom and occasional violence toward teachers and administrators, he introduced a 307-page required “citizenship” curriculum stretching from kindergarten through 12th grade. “Anybody who says that what we are trying to do is corny doesn’t understand how fragile this democracy is,” Dr. Macchiarola said at the time. In 1982, reading and math scores exceeded the national average for the first time in more than a decade, and crimes against teachers declined by 22 percent. “He was the standard for chancellor,” Mr. Koch said in an interview. “He had great courage, extraordinary knowledge, and his administrative abilities effectuated what he wanted to do.” Dr. Macchiarola, a portly man with thinning hair, impish eyes and a prankster’s smile, was notably outspoken in a job known for inspiring taciturn discretion. Before stepping down, he told an interviewer that the school system “would be better off” if its seven board members — five of whom were chosen by borough presidents — were all appointed by the mayor and served without salary. Today the entire system is under the mayor’s control. A longtime member of Brooklyn’s Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club, Dr. Macchiarola had been schooled in both Brooklyn and Albany politics by two virtuosos — Assemblyman Anthony J. Genovesi and Stanley Fink, the Assembly speaker. In 1989, he ran for a top elective office in the city, finishing third in the Democratic primary race for comptroller. He put his political skills to use in the chancellor’s office. One victory came in 1981, when, to promote racial integration, he ordered the closing of a middle-school annex in Rosedale, Queens. In protest, many white and some black middle-class parents waged a six-week boycott, but the closing was upheld by the federal courts, which said the annex had led to the segregation of Intermediate School 231 in the largely black Laurelton neighborhood next door. There were also defeats. He left office without having succeeded in preventing cuts in the school budget, an effort that had put him at odds with his benefactor, Mayor Koch. He lost another power struggle when he took on the teachers’ union, the local school boards and what was then the central Board of Education in proposing to move ninth graders out of junior high schools, which the local boards controlled, and put them in high schools, which the chancellor controlled. (Today, city high schools begin at ninth grade, and sixth, seventh and eighth graders attend middle schools.) Still, he earned the union’s respect. When he decided to step down in 1983 to take over the New York City Partnership, a business and civic group led by David Rockefeller, Albert Shanker, the union’s president, appealed to him not to resign. Dr. Macchiarola was succeeded by Anthony J. Alvarado. Dr. Macchiarola remained a fixture in city government, serving on panels like the Charter Revision Commission, which in 1989 turned most civic powers over to the mayor and City Council. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg chose him to head another charter commission in 2003. In the 1990s, he was dean and professor of law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University before closing out his career as president of St. Francis College. Francis Joseph Macchiarola was born on April 7, 1941. His father, a sanitation worker who had never finished high school, moved his family to Jewish neighborhoods so that his children might be instilled with the value that Jews placed on learning. Young Frank met his wife, the former Mary T. Collins, in kindergarten at Holy Cross School in Flatbush. The couple had three sons, Joseph, Michael and Frank. They and his wife survive him, as do three brothers — Joseph, James and Henry — and seven grandchildren. After earning his bachelor’s degree at St. Francis, he studied law at Columbia University, where he also earned a Ph.D. in political science. The Macchiarolas moved to the Midwood section of Brooklyn and sent their sons to public schools. Deeply religious, he prayed three times a day and went to retreats at a Trappist monastery. Dr. Macchiarola started his career teaching law and business at Baruch College in Manhattan, part of the City University of New York. He moved on to become an assistant vice president for academic affairs at Columbia and then a vice president for institutional advancement at CUNY. He began learning about governing public schools as an elected member and chairman of Community School Board 22 in the Sheepshead Bay, Flatbush and Mill Basin sections of Brooklyn. When the city’s finances nearly melted down in 1976, he took a leave of absence from CUNY to work for the Financial Control Board, where he impressed colleagues. It was a short hop to the chancellorship. “It was the best job I ever had, and I loved it,” Dr. Macchiarola told an interviewer in 2000 when his name was being floated for the chancellorship again. It was an unusual remark for the former holder of a job that exhausts most of its occupants. He also had advice for those who would hold the office. “As chancellor I constantly prayed not to confuse myself with God,” he said. “They need to find a chancellor committed to providing leadership but who never shuts the door to someone’s ideas, or to the people who harangue and torture you. Otherwise, you end up defending something just because it’s yours.”

New York City
Macchiarola Frank J
Education Department (NYC)
Education (K-12)
Deaths (Obituaries)
St Francis College


Unrest in Iran Sharply Deepens Rift Among Clerics

Abstract: TEHRAN — A bitter rift among Iran ’s ruling clerics deepened Sunday over the disputed presidential election that has convulsed Tehran in the worst violence in 30 years, with the government trying to link the defiant loser to terrorists and detaining relatives of his powerful backer, a founder of the Islamic republic. The loser, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the moderate reform candidate who contends that the June 12 election was stolen from him, fired back at his accusers on Sunday night in a posting on his Web site, calling on his own supporters to demonstrate peacefully despite stern warnings from Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that no protests of the vote would be allowed. “Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” Mr. Moussavi said in a challenge to Ayatollah Khamenei’s authority. Earlier, the police detained five relatives of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who leads two influential councils and openly supported Mr. Moussavi’s election. The relatives, including Mr. Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, were released after several hours. The developments, coming one day after protests here in the capital and elsewhere were crushed by police officers and militia members using guns, clubs, tear gas and water cannons, suggested that Ayatollah Khamenei was facing entrenched resistance among some members of the elite. Though rivalries have been part of Iranian politics since the 1979 revolution, analysts said that open factional competition amid a major political crisis could hinder Ayatollah Khamenei’s ability to restore order. There was no verifiable accounting of the death toll from the mayhem on Saturday, partly because the government has imposed severe restrictions on news coverage and warned foreign reporters who remained in the country to stay off the streets. It also ordered the BBC’s longtime correspondent in Tehran expelled and ordered Newsweek’s correspondent detained. State television said that 10 people had died in clashes, while radio reports said 19. The news agency ISNA said 457 people had been arrested. Vowing not to have a repeat of Saturday, the government on Sunday saturated major streets and squares of Tehran with police and Basij militia forces. There were reports of scattered confrontations but no confirmation of any new injuries by evening. But as they had on previous nights, many residents of Tehran clambered to their rooftops and could be heard shouting “Death to the dictator!” and “God is great,” their rallying cries since the crisis began. It was unclear whether protests, which began after the government declared that the conservative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won re-election in a landslide against Mr. Moussavi, would be sustained in the face of the clampdown. Amateur video accounts showed at least one large protest gathering , on Shirazi Street, though it was unclear how long it lasted. But in the network of Internet postings and Twitter messages that has become the opposition’s major tool for organizing and sharing information, a powerful and vivid new image emerged: a video posted on several Web sites that showed a young woman, called Neda, her face covered in blood. Text posted with the video said she had been shot. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the video. The Web site of another reformist candidate , Mehdi Karoubi, referred to her as a martyr who did not “have a weapon in her soft hands or a grenade in her pocket but became a victim by thugs who are supported by a horrifying security apparatus.” Accounts of the election’s aftermath in the state-run press suggested that the government might be laying the groundwork for discrediting and arresting Mr. Moussavi. IRNA, the official news agency, quoted Alireza Zahedi, a member of the Basij militia, as saying Mr. Moussavi had provoked the violence, sought help from outside the country to do so and should be put on trial. The Fars news agency quoted a Tehran University law professor as saying that Mr. Moussavi had acted against “the security of the nation.” State television suggested that at least some of the unrest was instigated by an outlawed terrorist group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, which does not have a strong following in Iran. Mr. Moussavi was not seen in public on Sunday but showed no sign of yielding. In his Web posting, he urged followers to “avoid violence in your protest and behave as though you are the parents that have to tolerate your children’s misbehavior at the security forces.” He also warned the government to “avoid mass arrests, which will only create distance between society and the security forces.” The moves against members of Mr. Rafsanjani’s family were seen as an attempt to pressure him to drop his challenge to Ayatollah Khamenei — pressure that Mr. Rafsanjani’s son, Mehdi Rafsanjani, said he would reject. “My father was in jail for five years when we were young. We don’t care if they keep her even for a year,” Mehdi Rafsanjani said in an interview, referring to his sister, Ms. Hashemi. Mr. Rafsanjani was deeply critical of Mr. Ahmadinejad during the presidential campaign, and is thought to have had a strained relationship with Ayatollah Khamenei for many years. But he remains a major establishment figure, and the detention of his daughter, albeit briefly, was a surprise. In Ayatollah Khamenei’s sermon on Friday, in which he backed Mr. Ahmadinejad and threatened a crackdown on further protests, he praised Mr. Rafsanjani as a pillar of the revolution while acknowledging that the two have had “many differences of opinion.” Last week, state television showed images of Ms. Hashemi, 46, speaking to hundreds of people to rally support for Mr. Moussavi. After her appearance, state radio said, students who support Mr. Ahmadinejad gathered outside the Tehran prosecutor’s office and demanded that she be arrested for treason. Mr. Rafsanjani, 75, heads two powerful institutions. One, the Assembly of Experts, is a body of clerics that has the authority to oversee and theoretically replace the country’s supreme leader. He also runs the Expediency Council, empowered to settle disagreements between the elected Parliament and the unelected Guardian Council. The Assembly of Experts has never publicly exercised its power over Ayatollah Khamenei since he succeeded the Islamic Revolution’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989. But the increasingly bitter confrontation between Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr. Rafsanjani has raised the prospect of a contest of political wills between the two revolutionary veterans. In a sign that the crisis in Iran threatened to spill far beyond the nation’s borders, the speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, on Sunday called for reconsidering relations with Britain, France and Germany after their “shameful” statements about the election. State radio reported that Mr. Larijani, who has his own aspirations to one day become president, made his comments in a speech to the full Parliament. Mr. Larijani’s position, which reflects the anti-Western orientation of the hard-liners in charge, could further undermine President Obama’s efforts to reach out to Iran and begin a diplomatic dialogue. The United States severed ties with Iran 30 years ago. In Washington, Mr. Obama resisted pressure from Republicans who have called his response to the Iranian crackdown too timid. On Saturday, Mr. Obama stepped up his criticism of Iran’s government, calling it “violent and unjust,” and said that the world was watching its behavior. Mr. Obama has argued that a more aggressive White House stance against the Iranian government crackdown would be used by Tehran as anti-American propaganda. “The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with Harry Smith of CBS News broadcast Friday. “We shouldn’t be playing into that.” In an interview broadcast Sunday on Iranian television, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that officials were examining the charge of voting fraud and expected to issue their findings by the end of the week. But like Ayatollah Khamenei, Mr. Mottaki appeared to have already judged the vote as clean and fair. He said the “possibility of organized and comprehensive disruption and irregularities in the election is almost close to zero,” according to Iran’s English-language Press TV. At the same time, serious new questions about the vote’s integrity were raised outside of Iran. Chatham House, a London-based research organization, released a study done with the University of St. Andrews challenging the Iranian government’s declared results, based on a comparison with the 2005 elections as well as Iran’s own census data. The study showed, for example, that in two provinces where Mr. Ahmadinejad won a week ago, a turnout of more than 100 percent was recorded. The study also showed that in a third of all provinces, the official results, if true, would have required that Mr. Ahmadinejad win not only all conservative voters and all former centrist voters and all new voters, but up to 44 percent of formerly reformist voters. With the police on the streets demonstrating a willingness to injure and even kill, one question political analysts and opposition members were beginning to ask was whether it was time to shift strategies, from street protests to some kind of national strike. It was unclear if the opposition had the support or organization, especially within the middle class, to carry out such a measure, but a strike would be immune to the heavy hand of the state and could wield leverage by crippling the already stumbling economy, analysts said.

Iran
Elections
Basij
Demonstrations and Riots
Defense and Military Forces


Tiger Woods Part of Marquee Threesome at Torrey Pines

Abstract: SAN DIEGO — Rocco Mediate feigned surprise Tuesday when he heard about his “coincidental” pairing with Tiger Woods in the first two rounds of this week’s Farmers Insurance Open. “It’s funny how that pairing happened, huh?” said Mediate, who will go off the No. 1 tee at Torrey Pines North at 9 a.m. on Thursday with Woods and Anthony Kim. “What a shocker. The computer had a glitch.” Actually, there was a little bit of help for the computer that sorted through the 156 names and spit out the tee times for the 52 threesomes that will play over the North and South courses at Torrey Pines Golf Course on Thursday and Friday this week. In the showbiz pairing of the week, the tour subjectively reunited Woods and Mediate — whose epic 19-hole Monday playoff in the 2008 United States Open was won by Woods in his last appearance at Torrey Pines — then threw in the talented Kim for good measure. The release of the pairings generated some early buzz here, even though Woods did not make it out to Torrey, where he has won seven times, including his last five appearances. The tour commissioner, Tim Finchem, said the practice would continue this year. “I think you will see it more often,” Finchem said. “I don’t think you’ll see more of it in any particular week, but we are going to do it a fair amount during the course of the year. It does help our television product, we think. We also think it creates a little bit more interest.” The grouping of the local favorite Phil Mickelson, the budding star Dustin Johnson and the English standout Justin Rose also appeared to be no accident. Mickelson and Johnson often play practice rounds together, were teamed up in last year’s Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor, and should put on a long-drive display guaranteed to provoke some wonderment from galleries likely to be enlarged by the perfect golf weather forecast. Perhaps the longest-hitting group in the field will be led by the Venezuelan rookie Jhonattan Vegas, who won last week’s Bob Hope Classic in a playoff and whose swing speed has been clocked at 125 miles per hour. Vegas will be flanked by Charley Hoffman, last year’s Deutsche Bank Championship winner, and Nick Watney, the 2009 Farmers Insurance Open champion. But the largest galleries will surely belong to the Woods as he tries to come back from his first winless season on the PGA Tour at a course he has dominated like none other. Mediate could not seem to be happier to be along for the show. “I always enjoy his company and his game and the people that follow him,” Mediate said. “And all the excitement and the loudness and screaming and hollering. I love all that stuff.” So does the tour, which will need the lift as it begins negotiations this year to renew its network television contract, which is set to expire in 2012.

Farmers Insurance Open
Torrey Pines Golf Course
Golf
Mediate Rocco
Woods Tiger


Brooklyn Boy, 11, Killed by Hit-and-Run Driver

Abstract: An 11-year-old Brooklyn boy was killed early Saturday by a hit-and-run driver in front of a house where his family and friends had gathered for a barbecue, the police and neighbors said. The police said the boy, Rondell Grant Jr. of 505 East 43rd Street in East Flatbush, was struck in front of 608 East 42nd Street, between Foster Avenue and Avenue D. The police said that three cars had sped down the one-way street and that the third hit the boy and did not stop. The police later arrested the driver of the third car, Naquan Mandry, 19, of 212 Linden Boulevard, on charges of leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in death. Just after 1 a.m. on Saturday, Rondell, his eight siblings, his parents and friends were outside the house getting ready to leave after the barbecue. “We were all outside having a good time,” said an aunt of the boy, Una Alphonso, 41. “I heard a skid like tires, then I heard a bang. It sounded like two cars colliding. Then I heard crying, so much crying.” “His brother stood over him and kept yelling, ‘Rondell, get up!’ ” Ms. Alphonso said. “I kept yelling, ‘No, no, he is gone!’ ” Rondell was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital Center, the police said. A video security camera on a nearby building captured the accident. It showed two cars appearing to speed down the street, which was lined on both sides with parked vehicles. A van, which was used by Rondell’s mother, Keisha Grant, to pick up the children, was double-parked. The tape shows Rondell stepping off the curb near the parked van to peer down the street after the two cars sped off. He was then struck by the third car, a Honda Civic, and flung through the air. The car did not stop. Mr. Mandry was arrested later at his home, the police said. The car was parked in the driveway, its front bumper and windshield damaged, the police said. Rondell was described as a nice boy who liked to ride his bicycle. Later in the day, a small memorial to the boy took shape. A bouquet of red and white artificial flowers with a blue ribbon was mounted on a ledge outside the house, with candles. Neighbors said the family was close-knit. “They’re all good kids,” said Gregg Hawkins, who lives at 604 East 42nd Street, where the security camera was set up. “They don’t bother anybody. It’s just such a tragedy.” Many residents said that speeding was a problem on their street and that speed bumps were needed. “I see cars speeding around here every day,” said Juliette Rawlins, 57, a family friend who lives in the neighborhood. “This street is like a racetrack sometimes. The stop signs don’t even work; they’re a joke.” Ms. Alphonso said: “They need to take teenagers off the streets. Down this block, there is speeding here and there; you can hear it sometimes. Other than that, this is a quiet block with lots of families.”

Accidents and Safety
Automobiles
Brooklyn (NYC)


Chubb Turns to Humor to Make Its Pitch

Abstract: IN a current print advertisement for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, a woman stands in a verdant field, a picnic basket at her side, and shakes open a red sheet to spread on the grass. What she does not see in the background is an agitated bull galloping toward her. “Who insures you doesn’t matter,” reads the copy. “Until it does.” The theme carries through in a series of print ads — by the Levinson Tractenberg Group (formally the Levinson Group) of New York — where other moments of quietude are about to go awry. In one, a man fishes in a canoe on a river, unaware that he has drifted perilously close to a waterfall; in another, a golfer lines up a putt, oblivious to the enormous alligator behind him. For Chubb, which aims at the affluent, this is the first time it has loosened its bow tie and taken a humorous approach. “It’s a little more whimsical than our previous ads,” said Mark Greenberg, a Chubb spokesman. A decade ago, humor was anathema in ads for insurers, whose homespun slogans bore the tone of Norman Rockwell paintings: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” assured one, while another promised, “You’re in good hands with Allstate.” But the category lightened up considerably in 2000, when Geico introduced its gecko mascot, followed by humorous campaigns featuring cavemen and self-mocking celebrities. “This is not a sexy category, like watches, cars or vacations,” Mr. Greenberg said. “No one says, ‘Oh, gee, I’d love to read the copy in an insurance ad.’ We’re looking for our ad to have stopping power, for someone flipping through a magazine to stop in their tracks as they’re turning the page.” Joel Tractenberg, a partner in the Levinson Tractenberg Group, said, “A lot of the Geico stuff is great,” but adopting a mascot, as Geico did — or a duck, as Aflac did — “seemed downscale for Chubb.” He also questioned the effectiveness in general of such “borrowed interest,” marketing lingo for companies appropriating a character or celebrity that has no direct connection to its business. (Met Life, for example, has since the 1980s used Snoopy and other characters from the “Peanuts” comic strip in ads.) “It’s getting someone’s attention with something completely unrelated to the product and trying to wrap it around your point,” Mr. Tractenberg said. “Now that we have your attention, let us sell you some insurance.”  While some insurers were clobbered by the downturn — the American International Group took a federal bailout and renamed its property and casualty division Chartis because of its besmirched brand — Chubb has fared better. Chubb’s 2008 revenue of $13.2 billion represented a drop of 6 percent from the previous year’s $14.1 billion. In 2008, Geico spent $625 million on advertising in all media but Chubb just $4 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Chubb would not say how much its new campaign cost. That campaign, which aims at upscale readers of magazines like Forbes, Fortune, and Condé Nast Traveler, makes no mention of affordability, instead pitching “exceptional claim service.” For the rich, Mr. Greenberg said, that means a mishap should not resemble downward mobility. “If they’re living in a mansion and their house is being rebuilt, we’re not going to put them up in a Holiday Inn but rather in the Ritz or somewhere else that fits their station,” he said. “And when their Lexus is being repaired, we’re not going to give them a compact car — we’ll give them a car of similar quality.” In a readers’ survey about homeowners insurance in the September issue of Consumer Reports, Chubb ranked in the top three of 16 insurers, rating 89 out of a possible 100 on factors like paying claims promptly and generously. Readers did not evaluate affordability. The magazine noted, “Chubb markets itself as a high-end insurer, with premiums to match.”  While Chubb is embracing humor for the first time, Nationwide has shifted to a more serious approach. Nationwide’s “Life comes at you fast” campaign depicted comically unpredictable situations, though not all would lead to calling an insurer. One ad, for example, in which a shopkeeper entrusts his store to a young man, who uses a malfunctioning television remote control that causes a blade to fly off a fan and destroy the store, could result in a property claim. But another, in which an office worker wins the lottery and triumphantly storms into his boss’s office to quit, only to lose hold of his winning ticket and have it land in a shredder, has nothing to do with insurance. “ ‘Life comes at you fast’ was designed to really cut through the clutter immediately, and the over-the-top humor and unique voice helped us achieve that,” said Steven Schreibman, vice president for advertising and brand management at Nationwide Mutual Insurance in Columbus, Ohio. In its latest, more serious campaign — by McKinney of Durham, N.C. — Nationwide agents speak about insurance policies for things including automobiles and homes. The agents speak in glass dioramas, while insurance-related scenes play out in other dioramas, lending more visual appeal to what on its face — discussing insurance — is not inherently riveting. “What was hard to leverage in those ‘Life comes at you fast’ ads is, ‘Why choose Nationwide?’ ” Mr. Schreibman said. “And we realized consumers really just needed more meat.”

Chubb Group
Insurance
Advertising and Marketing


California: Driver Hits 11 People

Abstract: A 100-year-old man backed his car onto a sidewalk and hit 11 people, including nine children, across from an elementary school in South Los Angeles just after classes had ended Wednesday, the authorities said. Four of the children were in critical condition when firefighters arrived, but they were stabilized and in serious condition at a hospital, city Fire Capt. Jaime Moore said. Everyone was expected to survive, he said. Some of the victims were trapped under the powder-blue Cadillac before witnesses helped pull them out. The police identified the driver as Preston Carter, who told KCAL-TV that his brakes failed. Mr. Carter was pulling out of a parking space, but instead of backing into the street, he backed onto the sidewalk, Police Capt. George Rodriguez said

Traffic Accidents and Safety
Los Angeles (Calif)
Elderly
Carter Preston


JPMorgan Chase Is Said to Be Buying Out the Cazenove Group

Abstract: JPMorgan Chase is in talks to take control of a prominent British investment bank after striking a deal for half the firm five years ago, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday night. JPMorgan has offered £1 billion ($1.7 billion) to buy out its remaining stake in its joint venture with the investment bank Cazenove Group, a nearly 200-year-old firm with relationships throughout Europe and the Middle East. A deal could be announced within the next week. It would end months of speculation over the fate of Cazenove, which has been a steady source of profit amid the turbulent markets. In the last few years, JPMorgan has catapulted to the top of global investment banking and it emerged from the financial crisis stronger than its rivals. Robust trading profits have helped offset poor results in its consumer businesses this year, but it has also won a bigger share of the investment advisory business. Resolving the Cazenove situation has been a crucial item for Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive. He orchestrated a similar purchase of the bank’s remaining stake in Highbridge Capital Management this year. Both joint ventures were struck shortly after Mr. Dimon arrived at JPMorgan from Bank One. JPMorgan’s partial acquisition of Cazenove had raised eyebrows in London’s business district when it was struck in late 2004. Bankers were wary of how Cazenove, the most genteel of investment banks that counts Queen Elizabeth II as a client, would get along with Mr. Dimon’s team of cost-cutters. The deal was arranged by William T. Winters, who had been co-head of JPMorgan’s investment bank until his ouster in September. Under the terms, JPMorgan was granted an option to buy its remaining stake in Cazenove after five years of a joint venture. The deal was first reported in The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times in London.

Investment Banking
Morgan J P Chase & Co
Banks and Banking
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures


Benfica Heats Up Late in Cold of St. Petersburg

Abstract: LONDON — If there were an award for fan base of the year, the followers of Benfica would have to be candidates. Before Wednesday, Benfica had not won on Russian soil for 20 years, and it traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, without its first-string goalkeeper and with three members of its back line out because of either injuries or suspension. That did not discourage 445 hardy Benfica fans from making the 4,500-mile round trip — made longer because there are no direct flights — to cheer on their team in the Champions League in the freezing cold. The players kept them waiting. For 70 minutes, the action in the Petrovsky Stadium was as frigid as the weather, before things got red-hot at the finish, when two late goals by Benfica allowed it to take the lead and win the game. It was the second time in the series that Benfica had broken through Zenit’s overly cautious tactical game. The first leg in Lisbon had been goalless until a header in injury time from Jonas, from Brazil, gave Benfica a 1-0 lead to defend in Russia. The second game was goalless until the 69th minute, when Hulk, another Brazilian player, scored for St. Petersburg, tying the series on aggregate, 1-1. Extra time, and possibly the dreaded penalty shootout, loomed until Nicolás Gaitán stole a late goal for Benfica. Six minutes into injury time, yet another Brazilian, Talisca, wrapped up Benfica’s win, sending the Portuguese club to the quarterfinals. The final score in St. Petersburg was 2-1. The aggregate score of 3-1 made it look as if Benfica had this series comfortably under control. Nothing could be further from the truth. “We showed in the field how much we wanted to get past Zenit,” said Andreas Samaris of Benfica. “All of us players were ready to serve the team in any position the coach asked.” Samaris, normally a midfielder, could be called a success as an emergency center-back on Wednesday. He stood up to 96 minutes of battery from Zenit striker Artem Dzyuba, who was assisted by Hulk. Hulk — also known by his given name, Givanildo Vieira de Souza — is well known to the Portuguese club because he played in their league for Benfica’s great rival, Porto, before heading to Russia. But it was Dzyuba — big, powerful, awkward and physical — who tested the strange lineup in defense and the second-string Benfica goalkeeper, Ederson. Tested is perhaps a misleading term because Zenit did not press the weakened Benfica defense nearly enough, perhaps because the Russian club is just emerging from its two-month winter break. “No, I had not played in defense before now,” Samaris responded on television when asked if he had ever played central defense before. “I practiced, of course, but it was something like a test for me tonight.” Zenit had never lost at home before to a Portuguese opponent, so while we might have expected it to attack the makeshift rear-guard of Benfica, the opposite happened. Zenit’s coach, André Villa-Boas, is Portuguese and right out of the mode of José Mourinho. Villa-Boas’s preferred method of play is to counterattack, and his catchword is caution. When Villas-Boas spoke on the field before kickoff, he seemed obsessed with a fear of allowing Benfica to score. Against an opponent wounded at the back and reliant upon a gifted 18-year-old, Renato Sanches, in midfield, this was surely the wrong approach. Villa-Boas will leave St Petersburg after this season and most likely return to Portugal, possibly back to his former club, Porto. After Wednesday’s game, Zenit’s owners may be pleased to see him leave. While it is true that no Russian team has overcome the rust from the winter layoff to reach the Champions League quarterfinals in any of the past six seasons, negativity got what it deserved on Wednesday. When Hulk broke his recent barren streak and headed in an immaculate cross from Yuri Zhirkov, it did seem that the home team was coming out of a deep sleep. Benfica determined otherwise. It tied the score after 85 minutes when Raúl Jiménez, a substitute with energy to spare, suddenly turned and tried a long shot. Zenit’s goalkeeper, Yuri Lodygin, misjudged it and turned the ball against his own crossbar, and Gaitán pounced on the bounce to knock in the goal. And then, just as it did three weeks before in the first leg, Benfica summoned the greater will to strike with the last kick of the match. Another winner by another Brazilian substitute, this time the tall and slender Talisca.

Soccer
UEFA Champions League
Zenit Soccer Team
Porto Soccer Team


Names of the Dead

Abstract: The Department of Defense has identified 2,348 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans recently: ROLAND, Matthew D., 27, Captain, Air Force; Lexington, Ky.; 23rd Special Tactics Squadron. SIBLEY, Forrest B., 31, Staff Sergeant, Air Force; Pensacola, Fla.; 21st Special Tactics Squadron.

Afghanistan War
US Military
Pentagon
Afghanistan


All Bets Are Off in British Campaign

Abstract: LONDON — With 10 campaigning days left until a general election that has seen a strong and unexpected surge by the left-of-center Liberal Democrats, Britain has been thrust into a complex new political calculus about which party — or parties — will govern after May 6. For the first time since the 1930s, the contest no longer seems like a battle for primacy between the Labour and Conservative Parties. With the latest polls showing Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats locked in a tight race, the talk has been increasingly of the possibility of a coalition government, or one in which Liberal Democrats provide the votes needed in the House of Commons to sustain a Labour or Conservative minority administration. Adding new intrigue to the campaign, the weekend newspapers and Sunday morning talk shows focused on the sense among many political analysts that Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is widely perceived as having led a faltering Labour campaign, has become a major impediment to Labour’s chance of retaining power in a deal with the Liberal Democrats. After three years in office, Mr. Brown, who has not captured anything like the approval ratings of his Labour predecessor, Tony Blair, finds himself, potentially the party’s dispensable man. He has said on the campaign trail that he plans to remain at Labour’s helm even if the party fails to win on election day, and has maneuvered to prepare for a postelection deal with the Liberal Democrats. But that party’s leader, Nick Clegg, has rejected any pact that would keep Mr. Brown “squatting in 10 Downing Street” after a clear repudiation by the electorate. Mr. Clegg has said that in negotiations to form a new government, the Liberal Democrats would support the party winning the largest popular vote and the most seats. That formula appears to have been drafted in preparation for a deal with the Conservatives. Reports in several weekend newspapers said this had prompted some senior Labour politicians to talk of dumping Mr. Brown if the party musters only a weak showing at the polls, and replacing him with someone Liberal Democrats might accept at the head of a coalition, possibly Foreign Secretary David Miliband. With British elections compressed into a few weeks of hectic campaigning, much can change in the closing days, as Labour found in 1992, when a prematurely triumphal Labour saw a large poll lead evaporate, handing the Conservatives victory. Mr. Clegg has shrugged off suggestions that his party is heading for a historic upset, telling The New York Times in an interview last week that he was not Nostradamus, capable of forecasting the vote. “I’m not daft enough to put the cart before the horse,” he said. But recent events have led pundits to say that the Liberal Democrats’ surge in the polls is more than a flash in the pan. The party took 22 percent of votes in the 2005 election, a high-water mark in nearly a century, since the heyday of the party’s progenitor, the Liberals, who governed for long periods in the second half of the 19th century. They remained a force until they crumbled before the combined power of the Conservatives and Labour after World War I. Much of the country has been waiting to see if Mr. Clegg can maintain the momentum from his performance 10 days ago in the first of three televised prime ministerial debates with Mr. Brown and David Cameron of the Conservatives. Skeptics in the Labour and Conservative Parties had warned their leaders of the potential for the debates to be a game-changer; as they foresaw, the encounters gave Mr. Clegg — leader of the traditional “third party,” with little in the way of a notable profile before the campaign — an unmatched opportunity to impress. When the party leaders met last week for the second debate, Mr. Clegg was again judged the most impressive performer in audience polls. Mr. Cameron was found to have performed better than in the first debate, with Mr. Brown, again, lagging. Perhaps more significant, new polls of voters taken over the weekend showed Labour and the Liberal Democrats vying for second place behind the Conservatives, who were short of the level of support they need to win an outright majority. Mr. Clegg’s performance has continued to shape the campaign’s dynamics. Mr. Cameron, the Conservative leader, has stepped up his “Vote Clegg, get Brown” warnings to voters who hope to end 13 years under Labour by voting for the Liberal Democrats. The phrase refers to anomalies in Britain’s electoral system that could allow Labour to finish third in the popular vote and still win the most seats. Mr. Cameron has told voters they could be shut out of negotiations over a coalition government as the parties’ leaders — whom he has likened to “Tweedledum talking to Tweedledee, who is talking to Tweedledem” — decide who should be prime minister. Labour strategists, fearful that the middle-class “floating vote” that brought the party three victories under Mr. Blair is deserting them, are facing the prospect of ending up with little more than the core vote of traditional Labour supporters. Political analysts say they make up about 25 percent of all voters. That would represent about 10 percent fewer votes than those cast for the Blair-led party in 2005. The specter of an electoral collapse of those proportions has pushed Labour to maximize the chances of the Liberal Democrats’ supporting Labour over the Conservatives in the postelection jockeying for power. Mr. Brown has promised a referendum on changing the winner-takes-all voting system, a priority for the Liberal Democrats since it would mean more parliamentary seats for smaller parties. In an election that could be the closest in decades, Labour’s support for a change in the voting system is attracting many Liberal Democrats, since it is one Mr. Cameron and the Conservatives strongly oppose. But Mr. Clegg, from his increasingly critical remarks about Mr. Brown, appears inclined, if anything, to seek a deal with Mr. Cameron ahead of any with Mr. Brown.

Elections
Great Britain
Politics and Government


Exxon’s Second-Quarter Earnings Set a Record

Abstract: HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil reported the best quarterly profit ever for a corporation on Thursday, beating its own record, but investors sold off shares as oil and natural gas prices resumed their recent decline. Record earnings for Exxon , the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, have become routine as the surge of oil prices in recent years has filled its coffers. The company’s income for the second quarter rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion, compared to the same period a year ago. That beat the previous record of $11.66 billion set by Exxon in the last three months of 2007. Exxon’s profits were nearly $90,000 a minute over the quarter, but it was less than Wall Street had expected. Exxon’s shares fell 4.6 percent, to close at $80.43. (The company calculates that it pays $274,000 a minute in taxes and spends $884,000 a minute to run the business.) The disappointment from investors is bound to put added pressure on Exxon Mobil’s chairman and chief executive, Rex Tillerson, to search for new fields in politically precarious areas of Africa and the Middle East. The sell-off in Exxon stock, as well as other oil company stocks, continued a trend of recent weeks as oil and natural gas prices have fallen sharply from record levels. But investor disappointment was also a response to problems that surfaced in the company’s report, particularly a 10 percent drop in oil production and a 3 percent decline in natural gas production from the second quarter of 2007. The production decrease, the second quarterly drop in a row, was viewed with concern by energy analysts, especially since the company spent $7 billion to find and produce from new fields, nearly 40 percent more than in the same quarter last year. “It raises the question of whether the company has been underinvesting the last few years,” said Brian Youngberg, an energy analyst at Edward Jones, an investment firm. “High commodity prices are driving the record earnings, not growth in production volumes of oil and gas.” Crude oil prices in the second quarter averaged more than $124 a barrel, 91 percent higher than the same quarter in 2007, according to a recent report by Oppenheimer & Company, an investment bank. Natural gas prices averaged $10.80 for every thousand cubic feet, up 43 percent from the quarter a year ago. After spiking even higher in early July, prices settled on Thursday at $124.08 for oil and about $9.18 for natural gas. Despite its production problems, Exxon earned $10 billion in the quarter from exploration and production, up from $6 billion in the same period a year ago. But the company’s $1.6 billion in profit from refining was less than half that in last year’s quarter because of lower worldwide refining margins. Earnings from its chemical business of $687 million were down $326 million from last year. Company officials said they were working hard to increase production with new projects in Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf of Mexico. The company reported that it intended to disburse $125 billion in capital spending over the next five years in an effort to produce more oil and natural gas. Royal Dutch Shell , Eni and Repsol, three of Europe’s largest oil companies, also reported strong profits on Thursday, although their production results disappointed analysts. Shell reported its output had declined by 1.6 percent in the quarter, and Repsol’s production fell by nearly 20 percent. Eni’s production was slightly higher. Nevertheless Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, reported a 33 percent increase in second-quarter profit, to $11.56 billion, from $8.67 billion in the period a year ago. Oil companies are under pressure to find new reserves as their traditional fields age and they face increasing competition from state-run oil companies in Russia and the Middle East. Shell is also looking to make up for production lost in Nigeria, where militants attacked an offshore production vessel in June, and in Russia, where it had to sell its share in the Sakhalin Island oil and natural gas project to the state-controlled energy company Gazprom last year. Adding together the output of all the major international oil companies, including Chevron, Conoco, BP, Shell, Total and Exxon, this appears to be the fourth straight quarter of production declines, according to Barclays Capital analysts. Barclays said the total decline might exceed 600,000 barrels a day, reflecting the difficulties the oil companies had in gaining access to new regions to make up for the decline of mature fields. (Total will report its results on Friday.) Exxon’s oil and natural gas production tumbled in the second quarter because of Venezuela’s expropriation of Exxon’s assets last year, labor and political strife in Nigeria and declining production in many fields around the world. Meanwhile, under the terms of Exxon’s contracts, governments in Russia, Angola and other places where it operates gained a larger share of production from Exxon and other international companies as crude oil prices rose. With prices now declining, Exxon may show higher production levels in future quarters even if profit is not as robust. Democrats in Congress were quick to criticize Exxon’s profit, hoping that the resentment felt by many drivers over high gasoline and diesel prices could help them in an election year. “Inside the boardrooms at the major oil companies, it’s Christmas in July,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “What’s shocking is that Big Oil is plowing these profits into stock buybacks instead of increasing production or investing in alternative energy.” The company purchased $8 billion of its own shares over the quarter, reducing shares outstanding by 1.7 percent. Kenneth Cohen, an Exxon vice president, said oil companies needed the profits to search for more oil and gas. He also challenged Congress to open up waters in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to drilling, as well as other federal lands where drilling is prohibited. “Our Congress needs to give us access to those areas that are currently off limits to the industry,” he said. Exxon’s income of $2.22 a share compared with $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue rose 40 percent, to $138.1 billion, from $98.4 billion in the quarter a year ago.

Company Reports
Exxon Mobil Corp
Royal Dutch Shell Plc


Obama, in Havana Speech, Says Cuba Has Nothing to Fear From U.S.

Abstract: HAVANA — President Obama on Tuesday made a full-throated plea for Cuba ’s autocratic government to change, calling on President Raúl Castro to loosen his grip on the economy and political expression or risk squandering the fruits of a historic thaw. Likening the United States and Cuba to long-estranged brothers struggling to break free from a bitter past, Mr. Obama invoked the conflicted history of American imperialism, Cuban revolution and Cold War isolation that has long divided the two nations. “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas,” Mr. Obama said on the stage of the Grand Theater of Havana, the same building where Calvin Coolidge, the last sitting American president to visit Cuba, spoke 88 years ago. “I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people.” Speaking directly to Mr. Castro, who watched from a balcony in the ornate Spanish colonial-style hall, Mr. Obama said the United States had no intention of imposing its economic or political principles on Cuba. But he also called on the Cuban president to embrace the kinds of changes he has long resisted. “I want you to know, I believe my visit here demonstrates that you do not need to fear a threat from the United States,” Mr. Obama said. “And given your commitment to Cuba’s sovereignty and self-determination, I’m also confident that you need not fear the different voices of the Cuban people and their capacity to speak and assemble and vote for their leaders.” The speech was a striking element on the final day of a three-day presidential visit packed with extraordinary firsts: an American president speaking directly to Cuba’s people, in remarks that were broadcast live, as Cuba’s own president looked on. It came a day after the two leaders had another remarkable encounter , holding frank talks at the Palace of the Revolution and then spending 55 minutes answering questions from the news media. Mr. Obama prodded Mr. Castro, clearly uncomfortable being placed on the spot by journalists, to engage in a give-and-take that is a hallmark of American democracy. “Having removed the shadow of history from our relationship, I must speak honestly about the things that I believe, the things that we as Americans believe,” Mr. Obama said in his speech on Tuesday, addressing the Cuban people. “I can’t force you to agree, but you should know what I think.” Mr. Obama visited Cuba to cement a policy shift toward normalization that he hopes will outlast his presidency. He was accompanied by more than three dozen members of Congress who support the policy and several business leaders eager to take advantage of it through new commercial deals. But he made it clear in the speech that the engagement could not be successful unless Cuba evolves, opening its economy and its political system. “It’s time to lift the embargo, but even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba,” Mr. Obama said. “If you can’t access information online, if you cannot be exposed to different points of view, you will not reach your full potential, and over time the youth will lose hope.” Image Mr. Obama said the United States had no intention of imposing its economic or political principles on Cuba. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Mr. Obama drew loud applause, including from Mr. Castro, and a standing ovation when he said he had asked Congress to rescind the trade embargo with Cuba, proclaiming that it was time to “leave behind the ideological battles of the past.” At other points, including when Mr. Obama spoke passionately about the virtues of democracy, much of the audience sat silent, though there were short bursts of applause in pockets of the hall. Mr. Obama hopes to make the opening with Cuba a part of his legacy, akin to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 trip to China. Tuesday’s speech drew comparisons to Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, where he famously challenged the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, to “tear down this wall.” Mr. Obama put a twist on that comparison, quoting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to invoke the “fierce urgency of now” in appealing to a new generation. “Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down,” he said. “But I’m appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new.” Throughout Mr. Obama’s visit, a dynamic of cautious warmth pervaded his interactions with Mr. Castro, including when the younger American president appeared to coach the older Cuban through his first genuine news conference on Monday. At the end of his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Obama, 54, made a point of silently mouthing “Thank you” to Mr. Castro, 84. Cuba on the Edge of Change Photographs from a land of endless waiting and palpable erosion — but also, an uncanny openness among everyday people. The speech appeared to have been well received by many here. Alejandro Trelles Shaw, a retired counterintelligence officer, watched the speech at home. A 50-year-old photo of him with Mr. Castro’s older brother Fidel was perched on a nearby shelf. “I liked it,” Mr. Trelles said. “I liked all of it. There was nothing I didn’t like. There’s communication between him and Raúl, and that’s fundamental.” Mr. Trelles, 77, said die-hard communists like him were happy to see the two countries inching closer. Mr. Obama may have left crucial issues out — like how money corrupts American elections, Mr. Trelles said — but his discourse on issues that matter to the Cuban people went over well. The president’s words came across as a sincere and humble sermon that addressed unpopular topics without being overly preachy or demanding, Mr. Trelles said. “This system is not going to change even if Raúl and Fidel die — it’s well planted,” he said. “Social justice was sown here, and Obama has that — the human side.” Mr. Trelles watched the president’s speech with his son-in-law, Gabriel Hernández Porras, 28, who recently gave up a life in Havana to start a farm. The generational divide was deep. Mr. Hernández explained to his father-in-law that young people had given up on the revolution and on every political party. They wanted dishwashers, and cars to ride to school in.

Havana
Speeches
Cuba
Barack Obama
Raul Castro
US Foreign Policy


French Cabinet Is Dissolved, a Victim of Austerity Battles

Abstract: PARIS — The collapse of the French government on Monday exposed widening divisions both within France’s leadership, and Europe more broadly, over austerity policies that many now fault for threatening to tip the eurozone back into recession. Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced that he would dissolve his government after a rancorous battle in his cabinet over whether the belt-tightening measures taken by President François Hollande — at the urging of Germany and European Union officials in Brussels — were impeding France’s recovery . The dispute broke into the open when Mr. Vall’s outspoken economy minister, Arnaud Montebourg, insisted in an interview over the weekend that austerity had gone too far. “The priority must be exiting the crisis, and the dogmatic reduction of deficits should come after,” he told the newspaper Le Monde. He also took direct aim at the policies of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. “Germany is caught in a trap of austerity that it is imposing across Europe,” he said. The cabinet reshuffle precipitated by those comments was the second major shake-up since Mr. Hollande took over the presidency in 2012. Since then, the French economy has been flat and Mr. Hollande has been dogged by some of the lowest approval ratings for a French president in decades. The government collapse did more than throw France’s politics into disarray. It also bared the growing disagreement between France and Germany — Europe’s largest economies — over whether Ms. Merkel’s prescription of austerity threatened to turn a five-year euro crisis into a long-term malaise of low growth and high unemployment. The announcement in Paris coincided with a visit by Ms. Merkel to Spain, where she praised Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy for austerity measures that have included a freeze on public salaries and more flexible labor laws. While Mr. Rajoy credits the steps with restoring faint growth to Spain’s economy, the changes have not been popular. During the visit, the chancellor was forced to delay a planned speech after throngs of protesters booed her. Asked about events in France, Ms. Merkel told reporters that she wished Mr. Hollande success, but declined to comment on French domestic politics. The tension with the French government, however, has been evident. In early August, after Mr. Hollande was quoted telling French reporters that a change in economic direction might be needed in Europe, a German government spokeswoman, Christiane Wirtz, crisply commented that the German government “sees no reason to undertake any correction in its policies,” and certainly not because of “rather glib statements from Paris.” Last week, Mr. Hollande acknowledged the problems his government faced, saying in an interview with Le Monde that austerity policies the country had been compelled to follow to meet the eurozone’s budget deficit target had made it nearly impossible to achieve a recovery after six months of zero growth and more than a year of weak economic activity. The eurozone consists of the 18 members of the European Union that use the euro. As a result, he said, France will no longer try to meet a deficit reduction target this year, and may fall behind on deficit reduction next year as he seeks to put in place 50 billion euros worth of spending cuts he has already pledged to make through 2017. Mr. Hollande acknowledged that growth is so weak in France that it was unlikely to rebound any time soon. His warning that growth had been jeopardized was the most strident repudiation yet of the policies that Ms. Merkel and the union’s bureaucrats insisted countries follow at the height of the euro crisis, when there was a palpable danger that the monetary union might break up. But a rising chorus of critics and economists now say that the austerity approach has left European governments little leeway to employ the kind of growth measures necessary to restore demand. Paul de Grauwe, a professor of political economy at the London School of Economics, said that the collapse of the French government underlined a split within France and Europe as a whole over whether austerity measures, coupled with structural changes, were enough to restore Europe’s sagging economic fortunes. “The Merkel view has been discredited, not in Germany, but pretty much everywhere else,” he said. “People are starting to see that the paradigm of the past three years is not enough. Confidence has not flowed and we are still waiting for growth.” While Mr. Hollande and Ms. Merkel have tussled in the past over the future economic direction of Europe, the French news media, citing advisers close to Mr. Valls, said his anger was fueled in part by concern that Mr. Montebourg had crossed a line by voicing such strident dissent publicly and that he was threatening to upend a relationship with Germany that is considered the motor of European integration. “It’s either him or me,” Mr. Valls said to Mr. Hollande, according to Le Monde. A new government is to be formed on Tuesday and Mr. Valls is expected to remain as prime minister; Mr. Montebourg resigned on Monday and was expected to remain sidelined. The tension at the core of the eurozone comes after years of admonishments from Germany to rein in runaway debts and deficits. Those policies, pushed when the threat of the eurozone breaking up seemed urgent, are now blamed by many of Germany’s neighbors for making it harder, rather than easier, to mend tattered balance sheets and to reduce high unemployment. The eurozone now faces the threat of sliding back into its third recession in five years, after the currency bloc failed to grow at all between April and June. By contrast, the United States economy is recovering and unemployment is declining. Even though Mr. Hollande had pledged to cap austerity, Mr. Montebourg suggested over the weekend that the president had already overreached with a plan to slash spending and raise taxes to reduce the nation’s deficit. He also warned that if the French government did not shift course, it risked losing support to populist or extremist parties. The turmoil among the Socialists comes as the center-right is buffeted by a leadership crisis and as the far-right National Front is gaining ground and seeking to fill the electoral vacuum. Elsewhere in Europe, countries like Greece and Portugal, which adopted stringent austerity measures as conditions for receiving international bailouts, are still struggling to recover. Spain, whose government last year pledged to ease up on austerity, is only starting to see the return of some growth. In Italy, where the economy recently slid back into a recession, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has also backed away from austerity and called on Ms. Merkel and other European leaders to make growth a priority. Ms. Merkel has acknowledged the European economy needs to grow faster. But she has maintained that countries cannot backslide on commitments to improve their financial balance sheets. France, like many other countries, was compelled to adopt some austerity measures at the height of the euro crisis, when financial markets punished countries with high debts and deficits through higher interest rates. Today, those rates have fallen sharply, but a growth rebound has still been slow in coming.

France
Manuel Valls
Arnaud Montebourg
Socialist Party
Francois Hollande


New Light on Origins of Ashkenazi in Europe

Abstract: A new look at the DNA of the Ashkenazi Jewish population has thrown light on its still mysterious origins. Until now, it had been widely assumed by geneticists that the Ashkenazi communities of Northern and Central Europe were founded by men who came from the Middle East, perhaps as traders, and by the women from each local population whom they took as wives and converted to Judaism. But the new study, published online this week in The American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that the men and their wives migrated to Europe together. The researchers, Doron Behar and Karl Skorecki of the Technion and Ramban Medical Center in Haifa, and colleagues elsewhere, report that just four women, who may have lived 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, are the ancestors of 40 percent of Ashkenazis alive today. The Technion team's analysis was based on mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element that is separate from the genes held in the cell's nucleus and that is inherited only through the female line. Because of mutations -- the switch of one DNA unit for another -- that build up on the mitochondrial DNA, people can be assigned to branches that are defined by which mutations they carry. In the case of the Ashkenazi population, the researchers found that many branches coalesced to single trees, and so were able to identify the four female ancestors. Looking at other populations, the Technion team found that some people in Egypt, Arabia and the Levant also carried the set of mutations that defines one of the four women. They argue that all four probably lived originally in the Middle East. A study by Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona showed five years ago that the men in many Jewish communities around the world bore Y chromosomes that were Middle Eastern in origin. This finding is widely accepted by geneticists, but there is less consensus about the women's origins. David Goldstein, now of Duke University, reported in 2002 that the mitochondrial DNA of women in Jewish communities around the world did not seem to be Middle Eastern, and indeed each community had its own genetic pattern. But in some cases the mitochondrial DNA was closely related to that of the host community. Dr. Goldstein and his colleagues suggested that the genesis of each Jewish community, including the Ashkenazis, was that Jewish men had arrived from the Middle East, taken wives from the host population and converted them to Judaism, after which there was no further intermarriage with non-Jews. The Technion team suggests a different origin for the Ashkenazi community: if the women too are Middle Eastern in origin, they would presumably have accompanied their husbands. At least the Ashkenazi Jewish community might have been formed by families migrating together. Dr. Hammer said the new study "moves us forward in trying to understand Jewish population history." His own recent research, he said, suggests that the Ashkenazi population expanded through a series of bottlenecks -- events that squeeze a population down to small numbers -- perhaps as it migrated from the Middle East after the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70 to Italy, reaching the Rhine Valley in the 10th century. But Dr. Goldstein said the new report did not alter his previous conclusion. The mitochondrial DNA's of a small, isolated population tend to change rapidly as some lineages fall extinct and others become more common, a process known as genetic drift. In his view, the Technion team has confirmed that genetic drift has played a major role in shaping Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA. But the linkage with Middle Eastern populations is not statistically significant, he said. Because of genetic drift, Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA's have developed their own pattern, which makes it very hard to tell their source. This differs from the patrilineal case, Dr. Goldstein said, where there is no question of a Middle Eastern origin.

GENETICS AND HEREDITY
DNA (DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID)


A Proposal From Albany on Stemming Foreclosures

Abstract: ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson and leaders of the State Legislature announced on Thursday an agreement to overhaul state foreclosure laws, one of the few major deals that has emerged in the final days of the legislative session. Under the proposed legislation, which is still in progress, lenders would have to give homeowners at least 90 days’ warning before initiating foreclosure proceedings, and they would have to include in that notice a list of state-approved housing counselors in the homeowner’s area. Lenders would also be legally bound to make a “reasonable and good-faith” effort to determine whether an applicant can repay a loan. With the rash of foreclosures here and nationwide has come criticism that some banks had been issuing mortgages to customers who clearly lacked the resources and income to keep up with the payments. Under another provision in the bill, the lenders would be required to meet with the borrower if the borrower defaulted and was faced with foreclosure. But the agreement did not include a yearlong statewide moratorium on foreclosures, an approach that Assembly Democrats and Speaker Sheldon Silver favored. Banking interests strongly opposed any moratorium. The agreement was announced on Thursday at a news conference with Mr. Paterson, Mr. Silver and Joseph L. Bruno , the Senate majority leader. Last week, an appearance by the three men to outline areas of potential legislative compromise turned into a lengthy, and at times tense, discussion of their disagreements on issues like Mr. Paterson’s proposed property tax cap. But the mood was more jovial on Thursday as the three lobbed gentle barbs at one another and remarked on how cordial their negotiations had been. “Albany has come through,” Governor Paterson said. “We’re not only doing this for the homeowners. We also feel in the end it will help the lenders.” The governor said that there had been 50,000 foreclosure proceedings initiated in the state last year, and that there had already been more than 38,000 this year. The legislation also includes provisions designed to forestall a future mortgage crisis, including new consumer protections for subprime loans, which critics say have been too aggressively marketed by banks and mortgage brokers. The bill would create a new “duty of care” provision that requires loan brokers to act in the borrower’s interest and present loans that are best suited to the borrower’s financial situation. Bertha Lewis, the executive director of Acorn, an advocacy group that had pressed for the moratorium, praised the legislation but said it did not go far enough to prevent some New Yorkers from losing their homes. “The fact is that the depth of this crisis and the costs to the state demand that New York slams on the brakes on home foreclosure so we can buy both borrowers and lenders time to work out individual loans,” Ms. Lewis said in a statement.

Foreclosures
Housing
Mortgages
New York State
Legislatures and Parliaments
Law and Legislation
Paterson David A
Silver Sheldon
Bruno Joseph L
Banks and Banking


A ‘Romantic’ Now in Trouble Over an Airport Kiss

Abstract: When a man ducked past security at Newark Liberty International Airport last Sunday to kiss his girlfriend goodbye, the breach in security shut down one of the country’s busiest airports, delayed flights through Monday and prompted an intensive manhunt from New Jersey detectives that ended on Friday evening on a street in Piscataway, N.J. But the man police sought was not even home. He was at the gym. When Haisong Jiang, a 28-year-old Rutgers University graduate student, returned, the police arrested him. On Saturday, some of Mr. Jiang’s roommates described him as a “romantic” now trying to secure a lawyer after the dizzying turn of events. His actions might have seemed innocently romantic to him, his friends said. But the incident was yet another lapse in airport security that frustrated harried travelers in the wake of the failed plane bombing on Christmas and incensed one New Jersey lawmaker over the leniency of Mr. Jiang’s potential penalty. According to a statement from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Mr. Jiang would be charged with defiant trespass. He was issued with a summons and told to appear in Newark Municipal Court. It is a “petty disorderly persons offense,” said Paul M. Loriquet, a spokesman for the Essex County district attorney’s office, explaining that such an offense did not qualify to be prosecuted in federal court and only carries a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail. In an interview on Saturday, Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, of New Jersey, said he was hoping that the United States attorney’s office would consider bringing federal charges because the penalty Mr. Jiang is facing, “is hardly noteworthy and would not discourage people who want to break through the perimeter.” The senator said the trouble the security breach caused far outweighed the punishment: 1,600 people stuck in the airport for six hours; flights delayed and an “incalculable” loss of money. And then for five days after the incident, New Jersey law enforcement officials searched exhaustively for the man caught on a grainy surveillance video, one which Sen. Lautenberg had released on Thursday. The video showed that Mr. Jiang was able to step past security last Sunday when a guard, identified by a law enforcement official as Ruben Hernandez, left his post. The guard has been on administrative leave since Tuesday, and he faces disciplinary action, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Without Mr. Hernandez watching, Mr. Jiang was able to slip into an area of people who had already cleared security and embraced a woman in a puffy coat and kissed her. When security officials were alerted that someone had breached a secure area, they took steps to lock down the terminal. Ning Huang, 33, a former Rutgers graduate student and a friend of Mr. Jiang’s identified the woman as Mr. Jiang’s girlfriend. Mr. Huang did not provide the woman’s name, but said she is a former Rutgers student who has dated Mr. Jiang for about a year and now lives in Los Angeles. “He loves her very much,” Mr. Huang said on Saturday, outside the two-story house Mr. Jiang shares with five roommates. Mr. Huang added that his friend “just wanted to say goodbye to his girlfriend, so it was a very emotional moment. I don’t think he realized what he’s doing.” Andy Riu, a friend of Mr. Jiang, also came to the Piscataway house after word spread on a soccer league’s online message board that Mr. Jiang would miss a scheduled 2 p.m. pickup game because he had been arrested. “I think this man is very romantic,” Mr. Riu said. Mr. Jiang, who comes from the Jiangxi province of China, said Mr. Huang, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, according to the Rutgers University Web site. He intended to find a job in Los Angeles after graduation so he could be with his girlfriend, Mr. Huang said. “I just hope this doesn’t affect his future career path.” Mr. Jiang has not spoken publicly since his arrest. He was held in a building at the airport until about midnight Friday, when he was released on his own recognizance. No date for his arraignment has been set yet, Esmeralda Cameron, a spokeswoman for the Newark Municipal Court said on Saturday.

Newark Liberty International Airport (NJ)


Dan Feyer, the Crossword Wizard Who Is Fastest of All

Abstract: The cameras were set to shoot for only eight minutes. “Oh, it won’t take that long,” Dan Feyer said, with the hint of a smile. Hubris, anyone? The pressure was on. Mr. Feyer (FAY-er), 33, a soft-spoken, balding musician, had come to a photo studio at The New York Times to demonstrate one of his odder talents. With the clock ticking and the shutters clicking, he put pencil to crossword. Not just any puzzle, but the Saturday one from The New York Times — the week’s hardest, notoriously clever and tricky. Fiendish, even, some would say. A form of mental cruelty. There are people who spend hours on this puzzle, people who give up, people who won’t even touch it. And then there is Dan Feyer. His left hand tracked the clues while his right skittered over the grid. He pressed his lips together and grimaced. He erased, and rapidly filled in more boxes. Then he paused, erased again, and resumed skittering. Nearly five minutes had passed and he still seemed to be working the top left corner of the puzzle, the very beginning. He mumbled once and erased three more times. Was he in trouble? He wrote something, looked up, put his pencil down. Done. Five minutes, 29 seconds. Penmanship, neat as a nun’s. Mr. Feyer, in jeans, sneakers and a black T-shirt, hadn’t broken a sweat. Who is this guy? What kind of person knows the name of Gorbachev’s wife (Raisa), a synonym for no-good (dadblasted), the Rangers coach in 1994 (Keenan), a platinum-group element (iridium) and the meaning of objurgation (rant)? The kind of person who whips through 20 crosswords a day (at least 20,000 in the last three years), who won this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and who has 100,000 puzzles saved on his computer. “I feel I want to do them all, somehow,” Mr. Feyer said. “I’ve probably done more crosswords than anybody in the world in the last three years. I don’t know if that’s something to be proud of, but it’s a claim to fame.” He does have another life, as a pianist and music director for musical theater productions. His most recent shows were “ With Glee ,” which ran Off Broadway in Manhattan last summer, and “Dracula, a Rock Opera,” which ran in Rochester, Mich., in October. “Music directors teach actors the music, accompany them in rehearsals and conduct the band,” Mr. Feyer said. “On Broadway, the music director is the guy with the baton in the pit. Off Broadway, it’s the guy sitting at a piano conducting with his head.” So how does that guy become a puzzle ace? Besides training like an athlete, Mr. Feyer said, it helps to have “underlying brain power and a head for trivia.” He always had high grades and test scores, he said. He excelled at math as well as music, abilities that he thinks go together with crossword solving. What they all have in common, he said, is pattern recognition — as he begins filling in a puzzle grid, he starts recognizing what the words are likely to be, even without looking at the clues, based on just a few letters. “A lot of the time, crossword people are musicians,” he said, noting that Jon Delfin, who has won the tournament seven times, is a pianist and music director. “Mathematicians and computer scientists are also constructors.” Arthur Schulman, a crossword constructor and retired psychology professor from the University of Virginia, who taught a seminar called “The Mind of the Puzzler,” agreed that there is a strong correlation between skill at word puzzles and talent for math and music. All, he said, involve playing with symbols that in and of themselves are not meaningful. “There’s an underlying connection, but I’m not sure what it might be,” Professor Schulman said. “It’s finding meaning in structure.” Mr. Feyer is a relative newcomer to the world of competitive crosswords, though he has liked all sorts of puzzles since childhood, when his parents bought him books of brain teasers to make up for his boredom at school. He grew up in San Francisco, where his father is a municipal bond lawyer, his mother a law professor. He has two younger brothers, one a management consultant and the other an English teacher in Bhutan. His grandfather George Feyer was a pianist, and played for decades in the lounges of some of Manhattan’s most elegant hotels. Mr. Feyer went to Princeton, majoring in music. He did crosswords from time to time over the years, but he didn’t get hooked on them until he saw the 2006 movie “Wordplay” , a documentary about crosswords, the tournament and Will Shortz , the New York Times puzzle editor and the founder and director of the tournament. “I didn’t realize this whole puzzle world existed,” he said. He bought a book of crosswords, and then another, and began following crossword blogs and downloading puzzles. Before he knew it, he had become one with the puzzle people. In 2008 he entered his first tournament, in which hundreds of people in a hotel ballroom race to finish a series of puzzles. He had found his niche: the sound of 700 people turning over a piece of paper at the same time thrilled him. He finished “50-somethingth,” he said. But that put him at the top of the rookie division for which he had qualified. The following year, he finished fourth. This year he won , beating many veterans, including Tyler Hinman, the champion of five previous tournaments. His brain is jammed with factoids: the names of songs and rock bands that lived and died before he was born, far-flung rivers and capitals, foreign sports equipment, dead astronomers, fallen monarchs, extinct cars, old movies, heroes of mythology, dusty novelists and the myriad other bevoweled wraiths that haunt the twisted minds of crossword constructors. He has learned their wily tricks and traps, like using “number” in a clue that most people would take to mean “numeral” but that really meant “more numb.” He was almost stumped recently, by a clue asking for a type of wheel. The answer: wire spoke. “I had a heck of a time with that,” he said. Cruel? Maybe so, he said, but he shrugged and added, “That’s what Saturday is for.” Each morning, he finishes a half dozen newly published puzzles and a few more from the trove stashed in his computer. The easier ones take him only two or three minutes. He does puzzles while riding the subway and while watching TV. He may do a few before going to sleep and even take one to bed with him. He said he now spends about an hour a day on puzzles. “It hasn’t taken over my life or anything,” he said, then added, “I don’t think.” Nonetheless, on his blog , Mr. Feyer describes himself as “a mild-mannered musician who developed an addiction to crosswords,” and he posts his solving times every day. There is, he says, a friendly competition among top-ranked solvers. For a Monday puzzle in The New York Times, his fastest time by computer was 1 minute, 22 seconds. Paper takes longer, 1 minute 58 seconds, maybe 59. His fastest time ever was 1 minute, 9 seconds, for a Newsday puzzle. But he admits that in speed-solving, one can lose the “Aha!” moment and the chance to savor a clever solution. Another musician who works in puzzle publishing helped Mr. Feyer land freelance editing and proofreading work for a company that produces books of puzzles, and signed him up to write a book of word-search puzzles. He has tried his hand at constructing puzzles, but decided that just as he is better at playing or directing music than composing, he is better at solving puzzles than creating them. Even so, he has managed to sell a few puzzles, including one to the Times; it will run on a Tuesday, a relatively easy day (the Times puzzles get harder each day, with the easiest on Monday and the hardest on Saturday). He spent 20 hours creating it, off and on over six months. The pay for a daily puzzle is $200 ($1,000 for the big Sunday one). Given a choice, he prefers to solve crosswords on a computer. But in competitions the puzzles are done on paper, where the clues are arranged a bit differently, so as the yearly tournament approaches (the next one is in March), he switches to paper to stay on top of his game. Otherwise, he said, “you can lose precious, precious seconds looking for clues.” He writes with a mechanical pencil, the same kind he uses to mark up musical scores. He plans to compete again. “I’ll definitely try to defend the title,” he said. Winning is fun, but also, he added, “the only way to make money with this hobby.” The grand prize is $5,000. He professed mock outrage that Sudoku tournaments pay much more — $10,000. “I’m not particularly good at Sudoku,” he said. He does not play Scrabble. That game and crosswords differ in the types of words they use. “It would probably hurt my championship chances if I tried to memorize the Scrabble list, too,” he said. “My brain is full of crossword vocabulary.” He figures he has seen just about everything that is likely to appear in a crossword puzzle. But he continues to collect them. “One day,” he said, “I will have done them all.”

Music
Puzzles
Crossword Puzzles
Science and Technology


Owner of Grand Central Sues Developer and City for $1.1 Billion Over Air Rights

Abstract: When he bought Grand Central Terminal nine years ago, Andrew S. Penson figured that the unused development rights, or air rights, over the country’s busiest train station were worth a fortune. The soft-spoken real estate investor, however, failed to come to terms with a developer next door who needed them, or to sell even one square foot of more than a million square feet of those rights. On Monday, Mr. Penson filed a $1.1 billion lawsuit in United States District Court in Manhattan that argued that the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, the City Council and the developer, SL Green Realty Corporation, had deprived him of his property rights when the city gave SL Green permission to build a 1,501-foot tall office tower, without having to buy any air rights from him. The lawsuit involves complex questions of zoning, constitutional law, politics and potential conflicts of interest, but it boils down to what always matters most in New York real estate: millions and millions of dollars. It is the latest chapter in a dispute that has festered for years, with supporters of Mr. Penson describing SL Green as politically connected, while critics of Mr. Penson dismiss him as a speculator. The city designated Grand Central as a landmark in 1967, partly to block a proposed office tower that would have risen overhead. The designation, the city argued in United States Supreme Court, was not an unconstitutional taking of land because the unused development rights over the terminal could be sold to nearby developers. But Mr. Penson’s lawyers argued in the suit that by granting SL Green the rights to build a tower “for free” that is twice as big as had been permitted by zoning, the de Blasio administration and City Council had rendered Grand Central’s air rights “worthless.” “Taking the property of a private citizen for the benefit of another private citizen without any public purpose,” the lawsuit contended, is a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Therefore, “plaintiffs are entitled to be paid ‘just compensation’ by the city for the value” of the air rights, the lawsuit stated. But SL Green and city officials pointed out that the developer had to commit to approximately $220 million in improvements to the crowded subway platforms and stairwells below Grand Central in exchange for the right to build the oversized tower. Construction of the tower, known as 1 Vanderbilt, has yet to start. Jonathan Rosen, a spokesman for SL Green, said the project would not be “sidetracked by frivolous litigation.” One Vanderbilt has received broad support within the city, Mr. Rosen said, “because of the project’s unprecedented commitment to improving the commutes for millions of New Yorkers and bringing state of the art office space to East Midtown.” City officials declined to comment on the suit because they had not seen it. But Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for the mayor, said the rezoning and project were “critical” to the city’s future. An investment group led by Mr. Penson bought Grand Central for about $80 million in 2006. The terminal itself had little value, the lawsuit on Monday contended, because the building was under a long-term lease to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for a relatively modest rent that declines over time. Mr. Penson was betting, however, that the 1.2 million square feet of air rights connected to the terminal, which he bought for less than $60 a square foot, could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in a real estate boom. The lawsuit contended that the air rights were worth $880 per square foot, a not-unheard-of sum for luxury residential projects, but one that most commercial developers believed was prohibitive for an office building. In 2012, the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a political independent, proposed rezoning the area around Grand Central for taller office towers. Under the proposal, which was unsuccessful, developers could buy additional development rights from the city or from district property owners, like Mr. Penson. Mr. Penson’s secret negotiations with SL Green to sell his air rights collapsed after the developer concluded his price was too high. This year, Mr. de Blasio and the City Council approved a plan to rezone a smaller section of the district known as Vanderbilt corridor. SL Green was allowed to build a 65-story office tower on the block bound by Vanderbilt and Madison Avenues, between 42nd and 43rd Streets, in exchange for the transit work beneath Grand Central.

Grand Central
Lawsuits
SL Green Realty
Commercial Real Estate
Andrew S Penson
New York City Council
Midtown Area Manhattan


Manhattan: Clarification on Teachers

Abstract: Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein sent a letter to all teachers in the city’s school system yesterday, praising their efforts and saying that a new push to remove unsatisfactory teachers had been “badly misunderstood and mischaracterized.” The letter came as teachers held a candlelight vigil on the steps of the Education Department headquarters to protest the new teacher performance unit, made up of five lawyers, that Mr. Klein created earlier this year. Recently, Randi Weingarten , the president of the city’s teachers’ union, said Mr. Klein was creating a “climate of fear” among teachers. In his letter, sent via e-mail, Mr. Klein emphasized that just 10 of the city’s 55,000 tenured teachers were removed last year because of incompetence. At the protest, Ms. Weingarten called the letter a “good step,” and said she hoped that “the blame-the-teacher routine will stop and we can get back to helping kids.”

Education and Schools
Klein Joel I
Weingarten Randi
Manhattan (NYC)


New Developer Signs $1 Billion Deal to Transform West Side Railyards

Abstract: Less than two weeks after the collapse of a billion-dollar deal to develop the railyards on Manhattan’s Far West Side, a new developer has agreed to salvage the plan and help keep alive the Bloomberg administration’s campaign to transform the area into a major business district. Stephen M. Ross, chief executive of Related Companies, signed an agreement Sunday night with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to develop 12 million square feet of office towers, apartment buildings and parks over the 26-acre railyards, which sit on both sides of 11th Avenue, between 30th and 33rd Streets. It was a welcome turnabout for the authority, which is counting on the railyards deal to provide hundreds of millions of dollars for new trains, stations and rail work. The speed of the new agreement, occurring 10 days after the collapse of the authority’s earlier deal with Tishman Speyer Properties, is also a measure of how much Mr. Ross, one of the city’s most prolific developers, wants control over the railyards. Mr. Ross, who had bid on the yards before and clearly suffered loser’s remorse, essentially agreed to the same tentative $1.054 billion deal that Tishman had signed in March. The deal requires the approval of the authority’s board, which will vote on the agreement at a special meeting on Thursday. The two sides will take the next four months to complete a contract to buy the development rights. “We knew we had this one opportunity,” said an elated Mr. Ross, who sealed the deal with an $11 million deposit. “We weren’t going to start negotiating.” “It’s not often that you get a second chance at a dream of a lifetime,” added Mr. Ross, who returned from China on Saturday for the last round of negotiations. “We will create New York’s next great neighborhood: the Hudson Yards .” Tishman Speyer, which had won a bidding war with four other developers, abandoned the deal amid growing concerns about the softening economy, tightening credit markets and the lack of an anchor tenant. Gary Dellaverson, the authority’s chief financial officer, vowed to strike a new deal with one of the other bidders within a week, a promise that many real estate executives scoffed at. Even Elliot G. Sander, executive director of the transportation authority, conceded on Monday that he had been unsure Mr. Dellaverson could make good on his vow. Mr. Ross had effectively abandoned the bidding for the railyards in March when his partner and anchor tenant, News Corporation, dropped out. But even without an anchor, he said he “jumped on” a second chance to grab the largest undeveloped site left in Manhattan, one that offers unobstructed views of the Hudson River and New Jersey. Mr. Ross’s financial partner is Goldman Sachs. “The selection of Related demonstrates that even in an uncertain credit market, the ability to unlock the value of this area can substantiate the price the M.T.A. is seeking,” said Ross Moskowitz, a real estate partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan L.L.P. Under the agreement, Related is required to pay $18.8 million at the closing on the eastern part of the railyards later this year. The company would close on the section west of 11th Avenue once it completed environmental and land use reviews — a process that could take 18 months. At that closing, Related would pay another $24.7 million. The transportation authority’s agreement with Tishman Speyer had fallen apart because the company wanted to delay payments on both the eastern and western portions until after the land review was done. Under the new deal, Related can suspend its annual rent payment for up to two years because of a recession or a lack of tenants, a clause intended to keep it in the deal, people on both sides of the talks said. But the deal also requires the company to pay penalties if it suspends rent payments. Though the profits from the project are potentially huge, it is not without great risk. The developer must spend about $2 billion erecting platforms, columns and foundations over a working railyard before it can build the first tower. The company will also be competing for commercial tenants against three big developers: Brookfield Properties, which plans to start construction at a site at Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street; Larry Silverstein, who is building three towers at the World Trade Center site; and the Port Authority, which is building the Freedom Tower there. Related Companies, like the four other teams competing for the project, spent millions of dollars hiring architects to design the towers that would sit atop the platform. Although News Corporation is no longer part of the deal, Mr. Ross and Related plan to use the same general layout and design, although few executives expect any of the 13 towers to look like the images distributed by Related Companies. The plans call for about 5.5 million square feet of commercial space, including a hotel, and about 5,500 apartments, as well as a park and a cultural center. The architects include Kohn Pedersen Fox, Arquitectonica and Robert A. M. Stern. Much as he did on March 26, when the authority selected Tishman Speyer, Gov. David A. Paterson said yesterday that the railyards deal represented “a renewed commitment to the future of the city and the region.” “This agreement highlights the resilience of public-private partnerships in the face of the national economic downturn that we are experiencing,” Mr. Paterson said in a statement. “An alliance between Related Companies, one of the country’s premier real estate firms, and Goldman Sachs, a global financial leader, will lay the foundation for a reimagined Far West Side.” Deputy Mayor Robert C. Lieber said the city had worked hard with the transportation authority to revive the agreement. “This is such a unique project with such a long-term upside,” Mr. Lieber said. “We had to strike quickly. The outcome speaks for itself.” But critics of the project were not so quick to embrace Related. “Until we get a handle on the level of subsidies involved, there’s no way to determine whether this is a good deal or a bad deal,” said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester who is holding a hearing on West Side development on Friday. Some residents of the area derided the design as a grassy yard surrounded by tall towers. “The giganticism of the proposed developments on the yards and the speed with which the M.T.A. and the city seem to be rushing to adopt a plan are a great concern,” said Andrew Berman, a member of the Hudson Yards Community Advisory Committee. “Development of this scale could completely transform our neighborhoods, overwhelm our infrastructure and offer very little in return in terms of affordable housing or other much-needed amenities.” But transportation and city officials were relieved yesterday, particularly since a number of projects on the West Side have stumbled in recent months. Earlier this year, the state abandoned long-awaited plans to expand the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. More recently, plans to demolish Madison Square Garden in order to build a monumental train station and a half-dozen skyscrapers also collapsed. “The fact that developers are willing to put money in to this project shows that New York will certainly need more office space in the near future,” Senator Charles E. Schumer said. “It now makes it even more important that the 7 train extension is built, and built on time.”

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


Popes Move Closer to Sainthood

Abstract: ROME — Pope Benedict XVI moved two of his predecessors a step closer to sainthood on Saturday, confirming the “heroic virtues” of John Paul II and, in a surprise move, of Pius XII, the pope during World War II. After John Paul’s death in April 2005, Benedict bypassed a traditional waiting period to put the much beloved pope on a fast-track to sainthood. At John Paul’s funeral, crowds at Saint Peter’s Square chanted “santo subito,” or “sainthood now.” Pius XII, however, has been a point of contention between the Vatican and some Jewish groups, who say he did not do enough to stop the Holocaust. They have called on the Vatican to open the sealed archives from Pius’s papacy, from 1939 to 1958, for examination by scholars. On Saturday, the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants called the decision on Pius “profoundly insensitive and thoughtless” and said it would cause “an inevitable blow” to interfaith relations. “Pairing the announcement on Pius — who remained publicly silent during the Holocaust — with that on John Paul II, himself a victim of the Nazis, is a particularly disturbing and callous act,” the group added in its statement. Benedict has said that Pius worked “secretly and silently” to help save Jews. Although a Vatican committee confirmed his “heroic virtues” in 2007, Benedict had asked for time for reflection, which many saw as a diplomatic effort aimed at calming polemics. On Saturday, the pope confirmed the committee’s findings. Before the two popes can become saints, another Vatican committee must determine that miracles have been attributed to them. Benedict also confirmed the “heroic virtues” of six other potential saints and miracles for 11. He declared the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, the “Solidarity chaplain” murdered by the Polish secret service in 1984, a martyr. Vatican insiders speculate that John Paul could be beatified as soon as next fall.

Popes
Benedict XVI
John Paul II
Pius XII
Beatifications and Canonizations