Chinese Official Reaffirms ‘Rebalancing’ of Economy

Abstract: BEIJING — A senior Chinese official reaffirmed on Saturday a national goal of shifting China ’s economy away from its dependence on investment and exports and toward a more sustainable emphasis on consumption spending. In doing so, the official, Zhang Ping, the chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission , glossed over recent data that suggested the reverse might be happening. Mr. Zhang, whose agency oversees economic planning and coordinates the country’s economic ministries, said in a news conference held in conjunction with the 18th Party Congress that the Chinese economy was growing again, crediting government policies aimed at moving China away from its reliance on capturing an ever greater share of overseas markets for its exports. He also claimed success in easing the economy’s dependence on enormous investment, which has become less efficient and less productive as many industries struggle with overcapacity. “Starting from August, the turn toward a slower economy has been effectively curbed,” Mr. Zhang said. “From the October economic data, we can see that the trend toward a rebalancing of the Chinese economy is all the more obvious.” But independent economists question whether any such conclusion is justified. China’s General Administration of Customs announced on Saturday morning that the country’s trade surplus in October had soared to $32 billion, the highest level in nearly four years. Exports surged 11.6 percent from a year earlier, while imports rose 2.4 percent. Chinese officials are acutely conscious of the frictions that their trade surpluses create with importer nations like the United States, and have argued for many years that the surpluses are temporary and should not be an issue because they might soon disappear. President Obama and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, vied during the presidential election campaign over who could be tougher in trade and currency disputes with China over the next four years. Commerce Minister Chen Deming tried again on Saturday to allay foreign concerns about rising Chinese exports, describing the surge as unlikely to last. He said exports would probably not remain strong because of economic troubles in overseas markets and because of what Mr. Chen described as an international rise in protectionism . “The trade situation will be relatively grim in the next few months,” he said, “and there will be many difficulties next year.” Investment has also surged rapidly this autumn , government statistics released on Friday showed, as state-owned banks have lent heavily to state-owned enterprises . A series of news conferences on economic policy — a third was held on Saturday evening on efforts to encourage industrial innovation — came as the 2,268 delegates to the Party Congress attended closed-door meetings on the third day of the gathering, which is held every five years. The Congress is scheduled to choose a new Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party this coming week, and that committee will approve a list of leaders who are expected to run the country for the next decade. Mr. Zhang said in his news conference that the economy was becoming less reliant on exports and investment spending. He omitted October in citing data from 2012’s first nine months that he described as showing that consumption had been playing a bigger role than investment in economic growth. He also said exports had been a drag on growth. But investment, which had slumped early this year as the government limited bank lending and restricted real estate sales to pop a housing bubble, has been bouncing back as the restrictions have been eased. Exports were also very weak early this year because of Europe’s difficulties, but are strengthening as American demand rebounds. Wang Tao, a China economist at UBS in Hong Kong, said short-term changes in various sectors of the economy made it hard to draw any reliable conclusions about whether policy makers had been able to shift the foundations of the Chinese economy onto a firmer and more sustainable footing. But she expressed skepticism that any fundamental shift had taken place so far, saying: “These are cyclical moves. Rebalancing happens very slowly.” At the news conference on innovation, corporate executives expressed concern about China’s ability to create its own inventions. But Liang Wengen, the president of Sany Heavy Industry, a big construction equipment manufacturer, answered a last question on American investment policies. Mr. Liang is widely viewed as a well-connected industrialist with the best chance of becoming the first business tycoon to join the Central Committee, possibly this coming week. He bitterly criticized the Obama administration on Saturday evening for its decision not to allow an American company owned by Sany executives to install Sany-made wind turbines in or near restricted airspace next to a United States Navy site where drones are developed. Mr. Liang promised a long legal battle against the decision, saying: “We will fight to the end. We hope we will achieve final victory, because we believe in the justice of U.S. law, the courage of the American people and the justice of the world.”

China
International Trade and World Market
Economic Conditions and Trends
Communist Party of China


Accusations of Fraud at Wells Fargo Spread to Sham Insurance Policies

Abstract: When Wells Fargo admitted a few months ago that thousands of its employees had created as many as two million unauthorized accounts for its customers, alarm bells went off at Prudential, one of the nation’s biggest insurance firms. Wells Fargo has a partnership with Prudential to sell a low-cost life insurance policy to the bank’s retail customers. After news of the Wells Fargo settlement in September , Prudential ordered an internal review of its dealings with the bank, to make sure nothing was amiss with the joint endeavor. A lot was amiss. According to three former managers in Prudential’s corporate investigation division, Wells Fargo employees appeared to have signed up bank customers for Prudential insurance without the customers’ knowledge or permission. In some cases, they even arranged for monthly premium fees to be withdrawn from their customers’ accounts. When investigators reviewed tapes of calls to Prudential’s customer service line, they found complaints from Wells Fargo customers about policies they did not remember buying. Many of the customers did not speak English and needed a Spanish interpreter, the three plaintiffs said. “This definitely was the same kind of conduct that Wells was committing, but through Prudential,” said one of the three whistle-blowers, Julie Han Broderick, an attorney and former co-head of Prudential’s corporate investigations division, which has about 30 employees. Prudential Wrongful Termination Lawsuit Three managers in Prudential’s corporate investigation division found signs that Wells Fargo had signed up customers for insurance without the customers’ knowledge. Ms. Broderick and two of her colleagues, Darron Smith and Thomas Schreck, filed a wrongful termination suit against Prudential on Tuesday. They say they were fired in November for trying to escalate attention internally to their discoveries about conduct at Wells Fargo. Prudential said on Friday that the three were fired for “appropriate and legitimate reasons” that had nothing to do with Wells Fargo. A Prudential spokesman, Scot Hoffman, says the company continues to investigate the policies sold through Wells Fargo. Once it is finished, Prudential anticipates “reviewing this matter with our regulators,” he said. Since bankers are not licensed to sell insurance, Wells Fargo employees were encouraged, without discussing specific terms, to steer customers to either a self-service kiosk in bank branches or a website on which they could sign up for MyTerm, a policy that does not require applicants to take a medical exam. Bankers who sold the product got credit toward their steep quarterly sales quotas. Some Wells Fargo bankers appear to have signed people up for MyTerm without telling them, according to the three whistle-blowers from Prudential. In some cases, bankers opened MyTerm policies, closed them after a month or two and then promptly reopened them to bolster their sales numbers, the evidence in the lawsuit suggests. Wells Fargo said in a statement on Friday that it was investigating any alleged improprieties that were brought to its attention. “As we have consistently reinforced, if we identify any instances where a customer received a product they didn’t ask for, we will make it right,” said Mary Eshet, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman. Image “This definitely was the same kind of conduct that Wells was committing, but through Prudential,” said Julie Han Broderick, a former co-head of Prudential’s corporate investigations division and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times The lawsuit, filed in New Jersey state court, provides elaborate details of how the same issues that have disgraced Wells Fargo — which forced the bank to pay $185 million in fines , to account for its actions in Congress , to replace its chief executive and to apologize profusely to customers — are now showing up at Prudential in the accounts that Wells Fargo handled. Under intense pressure to meet sales goals , which have since been eliminated, thousands of Wells Fargo’s workers used customers’ personal information to create sham accounts in the customers’ names; some incurred fees on those unwanted accounts, which included checking accounts and credit cards. More than 5,000 employees have been fired, and an internal investigation is underway. The three people who filed the wrongful termination suit were part of an investigations unit at Prudential that was asked to comb for irregularities in the 15,000 MyTerm accounts that were sold through Wells Fargo. Those in the unit found that some customers who signed up for MyTerm listed addresses like “Wells Fargo Drive” on their applications, according to the complaint. Some of the policy applications listed suspicious email addresses for customers, and the name listed on a policy sometimes did not match the name in the customer’s email address — “for example, where the MyTerm policy holder was Jason Smith, the email address might be for johndoe@wellsfargo.com,” the complaint said. Additionally, the lawsuit said, “Cellphone numbers were listed as emails, such as 1234567@verizon.net, which was very similar to how fraudulent bank accounts were opened at Wells Fargo Bank.” The MyTerm policies were “sold predominantly to individuals with Hispanic-sounding last names concentrated in Southern California, southern Texas, southern Arizona and southern Florida,” the lawsuit states. Those four states also accounted for the bulk of the sham accounts created by Wells Fargo’s employees, according to the bank’s disclosures. “When we started peeling back the onion, everywhere we looked, it stunk,” said Mr. Smith, a plaintiff, who earlier this year was a featured speaker at a conference focusing on insurance fraud. An unusually high rate of the Prudential policies that Wells Fargo sold in its first year had lapsed — 70 percent — and many were dropped after only one or two months. In some cases, customers never made a single premium payment. There was also a suspicious pattern of MyTerm policies being closed and reopened, suggesting the unseen hand of a banker trying to buoy sales numbers. For example, “18 clients who purchased the MyTerm policies allowed them to lapse, or they were canceled and then repurchased them two more times,” the lawsuit states. A former Wells Fargo employee said the bank made no secret that it wanted employees to push various insurance products. “We were like insurance salespeople without the license,” said Michael Barborek, a former Wells Fargo banker in Orange, Tex. “They wanted us to offer it to everybody who came in.” To meet their sales goals, some bankers in his branch would sometimes buy cheap policies for their friends and relatives, pay the first month’s premium and then cancel, according to Mr. Barborek — a blatant violation of regulatory rules and Wells Fargo’s own policies. Managers, facing their own pressure to make numbers, looked the other way, he said. Image Thomas Schreck, the third plaintiff in the suit against Prudential. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times The life insurance product is quick and easy to buy: A customer can complete the application in 15 minutes by answering a few basic medical questions online, without ever speaking to a licensed insurance sales agent. Prudential then, with the permission of the applicant, checks databases, such as pharmaceutical records, to assess the health of an applicant before deciding to issue a policy. The average annual premium is $288.71 for a policy sold through Wells Fargo, which continues to offer MyTerm. According to the Prudential employees’ lawsuit, one person who contacted Prudential appeared to have had funds removed from his Wells Fargo savings account by a bank employee to pay for a policy he said he had not authorized. And others who called Prudential were confused about how much they owed each month in premiums, and why. As is not uncommon with whistle-blower cases, the three employees did not have entirely clean slates at Prudential. They said Prudential told them it was putting them on unpaid leave after another employee had turned over a series of text messages, most more than a year old, in which they were complaining about others within the corporate investigations division. They contend that the text messages are being used as a pretext by the company to dismiss them for complaining about the handling of the MyTerm investigation. Mr. Hoffman, the Prudential spokesman, said that the termination of the three employees was “entirely unrelated to Prudential’s business with Wells Fargo and Prudential’s decision to examine the sale of the MyTerm product.” He declined to elaborate on the reason for the firings, noting that Prudential does not comment on employment matters. Mr. Hoffman said that Prudential began reviewing issues with MyTerm sales after complaints from customers in 2015, and expanded the review after news of the Wells Fargo settlement with regulators became public. Before they were fired, Ms. Broderick said, she and her two colleagues ran into obstacles when they pressed others at the insurer, which is based in New Jersey, to investigate their findings more aggressively and to notify regulators. They were kicked out of Prudential’s office in Newark, N.J., and put on unpaid leave just days before Thanksgiving, she said. “We were totally shocked,” Ms. Broderick said. “The game plan was to sweep this under the rug.” In addition to the suit they filed in State Superior Court in New Jersey’s Essex County, the three intend to file a Dodd-Frank whistle-blower complaint next week with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said one of their lawyers, Christopher Chang, a former Manhattan prosecutor.

Fraud
Life insurance
Customer service
Lawsuits
Wells Fargo Bank
Prudential Financial
Banking and Finance
Wells Fargo &


Apple May Be Aiming to Makeover TV Next

Abstract: Heard of Apple TV? A lot of people have not. That is because even though Steven P. Jobs helped upend so many businesses with a string of groundbreaking products in music , mobile phones, games and tablet computers, he barely made a dent in television. Under Mr. Jobs, Apple dipped its toe only slightly into the television business with Apple TV, a set-top box for accessing Internet video. That product has been one of the rare disappointments in its lineup, especially when compared with smashes like the iPhone and iPad . But many in the tech industry contend that television is ripe for technological makeover, and that the next big challenge for Apple, after the death of Mr. Jobs, is likely to be in that area. “It’s the big area they haven’t colonized,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research . “It’s the thing we spend more of our time on than sleep." In the meantime, companies like Microsoft have started to take a stronger leadership role in helping to push the technology of television forward, as Apple did in areas like music and mobile phones. Television is such a tantalizing target in part because people spend so many hours watching it, but also because the industry over all has been slow to innovate except perhaps in making screens larger. In particular, the consuming public is still waiting for television content — everything that people watch — to be delivered over the Internet in a convenient, affordable package on all the devices people are now using. One big reason for Apple’s failure to gain traction in television is that Apple TV has not had a compelling source of television and movie content that allows the product to stand out. Although the company’s iTunes store is stocked with many popular shows like “Glee” and “Sons of Anarchy,” network and movie studio executives have hesitated to make all of their content widely available at attractive prices, in large part over concerns about angering cable companies, a big source of their revenue, and their pipeline into living rooms. In August, Apple discontinued an iTunes rental service that allowed viewers to rent television episodes for 99 cents through the store for watching on devices like Apple TV, saying that consumers were not as interested in renting episodes as in buying them. Last year, talks between Apple and television executives, including NBCUniversal, Viacom and Discovery, stalled over a plan to license their programs for an Internet subscription service akin to Netflix and Hulu Plus, according to executives briefed on talks. The cold shoulder to Apple from television executives is a stark contrast to the success Mr. Jobs had in wooing the music companies when the iTunes Store was begun eight years ago. At the time, Mr. Jobs used his personal charisma to persuade record executives to let Apple sell songs for 99 cents each through iTunes. It also helped him that the iPod hadn’t yet turned into a blockbuster product. The subsequent explosion in sales of 99-cent digital singles on iTunes further eroded compact disc sales, many music executives say. Television executives were determined to avoid the same experience. “It didn’t work in TV and movies precisely because it did in music,” said Mr. McQuivey of Forrester Research. Mr. Jobs himself often downplayed Apple TV’s impact on the market. While he used lofty words like “magical” to describe the iPad, Mr. Jobs on more than one occasion referred to the $99 Apple TV as a “hobby” for Apple because of its lackluster sales. Analysts estimate the company has sold about two million of the devices. It has sold nearly 29 million iPads since the product was introduced in the spring of 2010. In an on-stage interview last year at the D: All Things Digital conference, Mr. Jobs further expounded on his pessimism about the market by saying that it was hard to sell innovative television devices like Apple TV to consumers, when cable companies give their customers a set-top box for little or no cost upfront. “That pretty much squashes any opportunity for innovation because nobody’s willing to buy a set-top box,” he said. In the meantime, one of Apple’s rivals, Microsoft, announced a major new push into the television business on Wednesday, before the announcement of Mr. Jobs’s death. The company said it was entering a partnership with nearly 40 television providers, including Bravo, Comcast , HBO and Verizon FiOS, that will allow the 35 million members of its Xbox Live online service to watch mainstream cable programming through Microsoft’s game console. The one big catch is that Xbox users will still need to pay their regular monthly television bills to their cable providers to watch the television programming on their game consoles. But executives contend that the partnership could still make viewers happy because the Xbox is so much friendlier to use than a cable programming guide when searching for things to watch. Even if Apple TV has not worked yet, Apple is still having an impact on television watching through its mobile devices. After the Winter Olympics in Vancouver last year NBCUniversal studied how viewers watched the games. Network researchers noticed a fundamentally different way users of iPhones watched; they preferred easily accessible clips and highlights, rather than long, elaborately produced broadcasts. That behavior has since expanded to iPad users and affected the way networks deliver live events. “Every one of those devices very, very quickly went mainstream,” said Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development for NBCUniversal. The exception was Apple TV, which Mr. Wurtzel says was “a year or two ahead of its time.” “Apple TV will be among the major players in that world, except, I want to be clear, from a business standpoint there could be others to take on that role whether it’s Amazon or Netflix,” Mr. Wurtzel said. Apple TV, while still niche, has fared better than others like Google TV, said Michael Gartenberg, research director overseeing consumer technology at Gartner Inc. “We see a lot of experimentation in the TV space and they’ll eventually get it right,” he said. Part of the problem for Apple is that a television is not just another screen in the home. Viewers have a personal relationship with television. Networks view it as the last place to preserve their right to present shows on a given night and charge advertisers a premium. “It’s not a question of kinks in terms of getting the technology to work but working to get the content,” Mr. Gartenberg said.

TVs
Steve Jobs
Computers and the Internet


2 Former Albuquerque Officers on Trial in Killing of Homeless Man

Abstract: ALBUQUERQUE — The 911 call to the Albuquerque police on March 16, 2014, sounded routine: A man had been illegally camping in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, just 100 yards from the caller’s backyard. Could an officer come by and take him away? But the man refused to comply. Officers arrived in waves, a handful at first, then more of them, bringing stun guns on their belts, rifles on their shoulders and dogs by their leashes. The man, James Boyd, seemed angry, incoherent. He was wielding two knives , and when officers ordered him to drop them, Mr. Boyd bellowed, “Don’t attempt to give me, the Department of Defense, another directive.” Four hours into the standoff, two police officers fired six shots at Mr. Boyd, hitting him in the back and arms. On Monday, they will stand trial on charges of second-degree murder and, their lawyers said, both will testify in their own defense. The prosecution of Keith Sandy, who has retired since the shooting, and Dominique Perez, who was fired after his indictment, is only the latest against police officers accused of killing civilians while on duty. Two other trials are underway, in Norfolk, Va., and Monroe, La. , for the killings of men who were homeless or mentally ill, as was Mr. Boyd. Last month in Portsmouth, Va., an officer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for fatally shooting an unarmed man in a case that fits a more familiar narrative: The officer was white and the suspect was black. Mr. Boyd was white; the officers who shot him were white and Hispanic. About 1,000 times a year, an on-duty police officer shoots and kills somebody in the United States, according to an analysis by Philip M. Stinson , an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, using numbers from the Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vast majority of the shootings were deemed justified: Since 2005, when Dr. Stinson began his analysis, only 75 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter. Of those, 26 were convicted. “These used to be local stories, quite often,” Dr. Stinson said. “Now, these cases are making national and international headlines, and people from all walks of life are paying close attention.” One reason is video, which has transformed average citizens into arbiters and participants as they watch the action as it unfolds, unfiltered, on their cellphones and laptop screens. In the case of Mr. Boyd, it was video footage captured by a resident and by cameras worn by officers that showed portions of the encounter — and the shooting itself. An officer’s body camera registered more than two hours of the confrontation, including the many attempts to get Mr. Boyd to comply. Image A screen grab from video taken by an Albuquerque police body camera showed the standoff between James Boyd and police officers before he was shot. Credit Albuquerque Police Department, via Associated Press At times the officers tried to humor Mr. Boyd, and called him “bro” and “dude.” Other times, they pretended to buy into Mr. Boyd’s wild claims — that he worked for the Department of Defense, or that he was on a mission with Special Forces and could kill all of them with a phone call. Then there are the images captured by Mr. Perez’s helmet camera , which offers a clear, unobstructed view of the shooting from the officer’s vantage point. Together, the videos directly contradicted the version of events given by the Albuquerque Police Department immediately after the shooting, which is that the officers had fired at Mr. Boyd as he threatened a colleague with knives. Instead, the video showed Mr. Boyd turning his back to the officers. The special prosecutor, Randi McGinn, has called the shooting a case of “officer-induced jeopardy,” saying that the police cannot pick a fight, end it with bullets and then claim self-defense. Jurors will see much of that footage during the trial. What they will not see is what happened immediately after Mr. Boyd was shot — an officer siccing a dog on him and another firing beanbag shots at him as he lay on the ground, wounded — Judge Alisa Hadfield has ruled, to avoid influencing jurors. They will also have to decide the fate of two men with different pasts. Mr. Perez served two tours in Iraq with the United States Marine Corps, receiving a Purple Heart after his convoy was hit by an improvised explosive. Mr. Sandy was fired from the New Mexico State Police for timecard fraud — he was moonlighting as a tactical instructor while on the clock — before the Albuquerque Police Department hired him in 2007. At the time of the shooting, Mr. Sandy was part of the Police Department’s Repeat Offender Project, a tactical unit with specialized weapons. The team was disbanded when the Justice Department released a scathing assessment of the police here one month after Mr. Boyd’s shooting, accusing officers of routinely violating people’s constitutional rights through an excessive use of force. “Before the Boyd shooting, the problems in the Police Department just didn’t get the attention they deserved,” said Steven Robert Allen , the policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and a member of APD Forward, a coalition of groups seeking changes in the Albuquerque Police Department. “The visceral impact of the shooting and the video really galvanized the reform effort,” Mr. Allen said. “It was a major factor in keeping the conversation going and pushing them toward reform.” Between 2010 and 2014, city police officers fatally shot 23 people and wounded 14 others, according to the Justice Department assessment. That amounts to four deadly shootings per 100,000 residents, eight times the rate of deadly police shootings in New York City during the same period. Officers were also found to have kicked, punched and violently restrained nonthreatening people, including many with mental illnesses. Mr. Boyd, who had been given a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, spent much of his adult life on the streets, in jail and in psychiatric hospitals, tormented by delusions and voices inside his head. He had been arrested after punching, kicking and throwing chairs at the police and corrections officers, though never for carrying a firearm. His family settled a federal civil suit against the city last year for $5 million.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Council Weighs Hearings on Mayor's Hiring Habits

Abstract: The New York City Council is considering holding oversight hearings into racial and gender diversity at the top levels of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ’s administration, according to council members. Council members said the prospect of hearings stemmed from an article in The New York Times on Tuesday analyzing diversity in the Bloomberg administration. The article found that in a city in which the non-Hispanic white population is now 35 percent, Mr. Bloomberg presides over an administration in which more than 70 percent of the top senior jobs are held by whites, and roughly 60 percent are held by men. Councilwoman Deborah Rose, chairwoman of the civil rights committee, said that the article reminded her of a 2008 Village Voice article, which found Mr. Bloomberg’s record lacking in hiring minority contractors. As a result, “the mayor is called upon yet again,” she said, “to answer for his continuing poor record on minority hiring and contracting.” It was not clear when the hearings might take place. But Ms. Rose added: “Having recently brought in three out-of-town, white males as deputy mayors, the mayor has once again shown an indifference to living up to his own vows to bring diversity to his administration. In 2010, we must do more to ensure greater opportunities for all citizens.” Mr. Bloomberg had no public events on Tuesday. He declined through a spokesman to comment on the article. But based on more than 200 comments posted on The Times’ Web site, plus interviews with current and former officials on Tuesday, Mr. Bloomberg’s diversity record exposed raw feelings, both critical and supportive of the mayor. Councilwoman Letitia James of Brooklyn was attending the annual dinner of the Metropolitan Black Bar Association on Monday night — at which Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was the keynote speaker — when she saw the article posted online. After she showed several lawyers the article, she said, “some people were shocked.” “I have attended a number of similar events — ranging from Hispanic to Asian Bar Association, to the C.P.A.’s of color, to the journalists of color, to the M.B.A.’s of color, and their pedigrees range from Harvard to Howard Universities,” Ms. James said. “If I can find all of these qualified professionals, why can’t this administration do the same?” Ms. James, who has long been critical of the mayor’s diversity record, said on Tuesday that she discussed the possibility of Council hearings with both senior Council staff and other members. Comptroller John C. Liu, the first Asian-American elected to citywide office, said that those who defended Mr. Bloomberg’s record as an example of meritorious hiring practices missed the point. “In a city of 8.4 million people, at some point the law of large numbers kicks in, and it’s just not legitimate to say, ‘Oh, this is only on the merits,’ because it somehow implies that there’s a lack of skill or talent in certain communities, and that is just absolutely not true and unacceptable,” Mr. Liu said. “Nobody is talking about political correctness; this is about looking for skills and talent everywhere in the city and not limiting the places you go to look for this talent.” But others were willing to give Mr. Bloomberg the benefit of the doubt. “It’s a constant struggle,” said former Mayor Edward I. Koch. “You say to yourself, as I know Bloomberg does, that the first thing I want to do, particularly in difficult times, is to get the best people who can do a good job, irrespective of whether they are green, white, Hispanic or Asian.” Kenneth J. Knuckles, a former commissioner in the Dinkins administration who is now chief executive officer of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, said that he believed that Mr. Bloomberg’s commitment to diversity was genuine. He also said that he was consulted regularly by top Bloomberg officials for candidate suggestions, especially minorities, but that recruitment was sometimes hard because government does not pay as well as the private sector, among other factors. “You have to look long and hard — it’s not as easy as one would think to find highly qualified minority candidates,” Mr. Knuckles said. “I think they want to do it, but obviously they haven’t gone far enough.” One person who knows a lot about diversity, but wasn’t talking on Tuesday, was City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. Ms. Quinn presides over a legislative body that is more than 50 percent minority, and she has been full-throated in celebrating the Council’s diversity. But she declined to comment on whether she felt Mr. Bloomberg, a close ally, had failed in his diversity efforts. “I think individual elected officials have to speak to their own hiring status and hiring practices,” she said. “So I don’t really have any comment on that.” Then, asked whether diversity would be a priority in a potential Quinn administration should she run for mayor, as is speculated, in 2013, she joked, “I’m not going to be tricked into some question that says I’m running for mayor,” before ending her press conference with, “Bye!”

Minorities
Bloomberg Michael R
Politics and Government
City Council (New York City)


Fleas’ Spectacular Jumps Start at Their ‘Feet,’ Study Shows

Abstract: One moment, the 10 fleas were happily sucking blood from hedgehogs being treated at Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital in Aylesbury, which, of course, is in England. The next, they were being plucked from their comfortable home and transported to Cambridge, where they ended up in a glass box with a Styrofoam floor. From time to time, bright lights would flood the box, so that a high-speed camera could film them. And the fleas did what fleas do in times of crisis: they jumped. When fleas jump, it is no ordinary leap. The insects can shoot as high as 38 times their body length, about three inches. And the acceleration is so intense that fleas have to withstand 100 Gs, or 100 times the force of gravity. “You and I pass out if we experience five Gs,” said Malcolm Burrows, an expert on insect jumping at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Burrows and his Cambridge colleague Gregory Sutton obtained the fleas from Tiggywinkles to try to answer a question that had vexed naturalists for centuries: how fleas manage their spectacular jumps. In a paper published Thursday in The Journal of Experimental Biology , they report that the insects turn themselves into catapults, storing up energy that they release as they push off the ground with what passes, in fleas, for feet. Dr. Burrows and Dr. Sutton are only the latest in a long line of naturalists who have pondered these insects. In 1664, the British physicist Robert Hooke put a flea under a microscope for the first time. Hooke thought the wingless fleas jumped with all six legs. “These six leggs he clitches up altogether, and when he leaps, springs them all out, and thereby exerts his whole strength at once,” Hooke wrote. Since it takes about a thousandth of a second for a flea to hurl itself into the air, Hooke was obviously making a tremendous guess. It took three centuries for scientists to gather the first hard data about jumping fleas. In the 1960s, Eric Lucey, a biologist at the University of Edinburgh, filmed the insect with what was then the most advanced high-speed camera, at a thousand frames a second. Dr. Lucey showed the film to Henry Bennet-Clark, an expert on insects who was also at the University of Edinburgh at the time. Dr. Bennet-Clark realized that the fleas were generating a hundred times more power than their muscles could actually provide. He noticed that just before leaping, the flea bends the closest segment of its hindmost legs toward the body for about a tenth of a second. When Dr. Bennet-Clark dissected fleas, he discovered that their leg muscles were connected to pads of stretchy protein called resilin. In 1967, Dr. Bennet-Clark and Dr. Lucey proposed that the fleas stored energy in springlike tissues, which they then released. In 1972, another British naturalist, Miriam Rothschild, published a similar study and came to much the same conclusion. But Ms. Rothschild and Dr. Bennet-Clark disagreed about how the force from the spring actually lifted the flea off the ground. Ms. Rothschild argued that fleas planted a kneelike joint called the trochanter to jump. Dr. Bennet-Clark, on the other hand, thought the fleas pushed off from the footlike segments at the end of the legs, called the tarsi. Unfortunately, their films were too blurry to determine who was right. In 2009, Dr. Burrows reread the original papers and decided it was time to attack the question anew, using 21st-century technology. Over the course of a week, Dr. Sutton filmed 51 jumps, which were then analyzed on a computer. The scientists noticed that the fleas sometimes jumped with trochanters and tarsi both planted on the Styrofoam. But sometimes only the tarsi made contact. “These two jumps appear to be the same,” said Dr. Sutton. It seemed that, as Dr. Bennet-Clark had argued, only the tarsi mattered. And Dr. Sutton and Dr. Burrows got the same result when they developed mathematical models of the forces produced in flea jumps. The actual jumps matched Dr. Bennet-Clark’s hypothesis. So it seems that fleas leap by channeling their stored energy down to the tips of their legs. “Their work is pretty bulletproof,” said Steven Vogel, an expert in biomechanics at Duke University. Dr. Sutton and Dr. Burrows suspect that flea springs are more complex than originally thought. They’ve studied another jumping insect, the froghopper, and found that its resilin pads are layered over hard cuticle. This sandwich structure stores lots of energy, while the stretchy resilin keeps the hard cuticle from cracking. The scientists suspect fleas use the same biomechanical trick. Dr. Sutton thinks that superior springs are just one of several important lessons fleas can teach engineers. They might also learn how to build robots that can leap over rough terrain. “Insect jumping is incredibly precise and incredibly fast,” said Dr. Sutton. “If you could build a robot that could do that, it would be fantastic.” But Dr. Sutton acknowledged that some of the most important secrets of fleas remain to be worked out. No one knows how fleas lock their springs in place and then release them, for instance. And no one knows how fleas snap their two rear hindmost legs at the same time. If they weren’t so precise, the insects would spin wildly off course. “If you’re half a millisecond off, you’re done, and we have no idea how they do it,” Dr. Sutton said. “It’s one step at a time — we’re just going have to take on the next problem and solve that.”

Fleas
Insects
Legs
Science and Technology


Japanese Pilots Worry About Repaired Boeing 787 Jets

Abstract: TOKYO — As Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner returns to the skies, Japanese pilots are nervous about whether they would receive enough warning about any hazards with the jetliner’s new battery system. Toshikazu Nagasawa, the director at the Air Line Pilots’ Association of Japan, said on Tuesday that some pilots remained concerned about the changes Boeing made to the 787’s lithium-ion batteries after two incidents involving smoke or fire led to the grounding of the fleet early this year. Mr. Nagasawa said the pilots were also dismayed that Boeing did not adjust its cockpit displays to provide more substantial alerts if the batteries started to overheat. Boeing officials acknowledged in interviews that they had not expanded the alerts. But they said the new battery system virtually eliminated the chance of fire or any risk to the plane. Safety regulators in the United States and Japan, and the eight airlines flying the jets, have signed off on the changes. Two Japanese airlines, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, own 27 of the 57 Dreamliners now in service. Officials at each airline said they trusted the battery repairs, and a Japan Airlines spokesman said the airline was still trying to assuage the pilots’ concerns. The two battery incidents, both in mid-January, involved a fire on a Japan Airlines 787 parked in Boston and a smoking battery that forced an All Nippon jet to make an emergency landing in Japan. Regulators in the United States and Japan have still not pinpointed the cause of the problems, though it is clear that the fire on the Boston plane started with a short circuit that spread through all eight of the cells on one of the plane’s batteries. To get the planes back in the air, Boeing changed the battery manufacturing process to reduce the chances for a short circuit and added better insulation to keep a short in one cell from spreading. It also added a stainless steel box to encase the batteries and minimize the chances of a fire. And, as a last resort, it created titanium tubing to vent any hazardous residue from the plane. “Boeing says that any battery fire will now go out on its own, so there’s no safety issue,” Mr. Nagasawa, the Japanese pilots’ union leader, said in an interview. “But that’s on paper. No pilot would ever want to keep flying with a fire on board, whether it’s in a metal box or not.” Image An All Nippon Airways worker checked the door of a battery room on a repaired Boeing 787 Dreamliner last week. Credit Kimimasa Mayama/European Pressphoto Agency Mike Sinnett, a Boeing vice president and the chief project engineer for the 787, said in an interview that the metal case would minimize the amount of oxygen near the battery to prevent a fire. Boeing also received support Tuesday from the Air Line Pilots Association in the United States. “A.L.P.A. is very satisfied with the B787 product improvements, and we have not heard any concerns from our members,” the union said in a statement. The Japanese pilots first expressed their concerns in meetings with Boeing engineers in Tokyo in late March. Several pilots from All Nippon Airways raised about 30 safety concerns, according to a written account provided by the union. Other more recent problems with the planes have added to the worries and irritated Japanese officials. A loose fastener on an electrical panel caused a small part of that panel to char last month, though that occurred on a test flight without paying customers. On Sunday, two days after the Japanese airlines resumed 787 passenger flights, a sensor that detects uneven pressures near the batteries malfunctioned on one jet, forcing Japan Airlines to change planes for a flight to Beijing. Mr. Sinnett said both problems were caused by maintenance errors by Boeing personnel. But Akihiro Ota, the Japanese transport minister, rebuked Boeing and Japan Airlines on Tuesday for the latest blunder. That the companies “failed to take all possible safety measures is deplorable,” Mr. Ota told reporters. The 787 carries two lithium-ion batteries. The main battery provides backup power for the cockpit displays. The other battery starts a small engine that provides power to the plane on the ground. According to the memorandum describing the meeting with Boeing in March, the Japanese pilots expressed concern that they would receive only a general warning of a battery malfunction, with no indication of its severity. The pilots were also worried about whether Boeing had provided enough proof that the jets could fly safely if the batteries failed. Mr. Sinnett said on Tuesday that the planes had multiple backup systems and could still fly if the batteries failed. He said the cockpit alerts were ranked in descending order by urgency — as warnings, cautions, advisories or status notices. He said that various problems with the batteries would only set off an advisory or status alert. He added that the airlines had not asked Boeing to upgrade the alert system.

Japan
Pilots
Boeing
Batteries
Airlines,airplanes
Plane Crashes and Missing Planes
Lithium Mental


New Jersey: Analysts Say Home Prices Rose Little, if at All

Abstract: After many years of double-digit appreciation in residential real estate around New Jersey , home values did not rise significantly last year and may have slipped, according to real estate market analysts. While the New Jersey Association of Realtors says the median home price climbed 2 percent, another industry analyst says it actually fell 10 percent. Whether there has been a correction or not, everyone agrees on some things: The years of rapid housing inflation are over, but there has been no crash. And houses are selling now, especially at the more affordable end of the spectrum. “We’re seeing things under $300,00 or $400,000 starting to move again,” said Bill Hanley, president of the state Realtors association. “The days of double-digit appreciation are over, but there are still multiple offers on homes when they are priced right.” Jeffrey G. Otteau, the president of the Otteau Appraisal Group Inc., an East Brunswick company that studies industry trends for real estate agents, said his analysis, which matches comparable segments of the market over time, indicates that prices have dropped substantially in 2006. He said the Realtors association overstates the actual market prices in the current year because it fails to account for the larger size of newer homes. “What we experienced was not a crash, but an adjustment of about 10 percent, which was needed to bring affordability back into balance,” Mr. Otteau said. “The housing market has now begun its recovery.” Mr. Hanley, manager of Weichert Realtors in Metuchen, and Mr. Otteau each said there were large inventories in more expensive price ranges — over $600,000 — that would take a year or more to work off at the present rate of sales. But in lower price ranges, homes have sold more briskly, they said. “You’ll find you had more appreciation in central and South Jersey, where the more affordable homes are,” Mr. Hanley said. Mr. Otteau predicted that even with sales picking up, the rapid appreciation of prices that was seen in recent years would not resume. “Although the recovery has now begun, prices will remain at or near current levels, and won’t increase anytime soon,” because the unsold inventory will keep supply above demand, he said. The trends in New Jersey are similar to those in the rest of the suburban region. On Long Island, the median home price dropped in Nassau County and rose slightly in Suffolk in January, compared with a year earlier. In Westchester County, the median price dropped 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006, compared with the same period a year earlier, and sales volume was down considerably as well. P. Gilbert Mercurio, chief executive officer of the Westchester County Board of Realtors, said he expected prices to remain flat for at least the next two quarters. On Long Island, Pearl Kamer, the chief economist for the Long Island Association, a business group, said she expected prices would continue to fall through 2008 before resuming modest appreciation of 2 to 3 percent.

New Jersey
Housing
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)


Russia Steps Up Effort to Woo Foreign Investors

Abstract: ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — President Dmitri A. Medvedev set out on Friday to woo overseas investors at his country’s largest foreign investment forum, a sharp contrast to previous years. At past meetings of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Mr. Medvedev assailed the dollar as a global currency, and his predecessor, Vladimir V. Putin, criticized the International Monetary Fund as a tool of developed nations. But on Friday, Mr. Medvedev described in the most detail yet an emerging policy to diversify Russia ’s economy away from oil by developing a high-technology sector with foreign investment. A need to maintain close ties with Western countries and businessmen to attract technology and expertise has been a recurring theme recently for his presidency. A foreign-policy document leaked to the Russian version of Newsweek recently raised arguments for improving ties with the United States and European Union with the goal of easing technology transfer to Russia. On Friday, Mr. Medvedev said he had good news for the chief executives gathered at the forum and described how Russia would seek to improve the climate for foreign investments. “We changed,” Mr. Medvedev said. Economic diversification has been a top priority for Russia, the world’s largest energy-exporting nation, since its oil-dependent economy faltered in the autumn of 2008, though there have been few results so far. What is new is the policy of linking the goals of diversification and modernization with improved access for foreign investors. “Creating a comfortable climate for investors is essentially our most important task,” Mr. Medvedev said. “These are the goals of our modernization.” Mr. Medvedev said Russia would cut capital gains taxes, reform white-collar criminal law and privatize state enterprises, all to make the country more attractive to investors in sectors other than the boom-and-bust oil and mining industries. The government, he said, would reduce the number of wholly owned state companies to 159 from 230, though this reform would not cover the largest state companies like Gazprom because they already had private shareholders. Mr. Medvedev noted changes in legislation requiring prosecutorial oversight of police enforcement of financial crime, apparently intended to curb widespread police corruption. “Russia should become an attractive country,” Mr. Medvedev said. “People from around the world will go here in search of their dreams and search for better opportunities for success and self-fulfillment.” Mr. Medvedev, a former law professor and corporate lawyer, has shown a greater inclination to foster private business than his predecessor, who is now prime minister. Mr. Putin oversaw a partial nationalization of the oil industry and is still the final arbiter of economic policy. As if to underscore that point, Mr. Putin announced on Friday new supports for the domestic banking sector and, while visiting factories in a rust-belt area of Russia, suggested he would help them by reviewing import duties on heavy machinery. All the same, businessmen greeted Mr. Medvedev’s sunny speech as a welcome pitch to foreign investors from a government known more for its cold shoulder, made plausible by the government’s need for an infusion of expertise in running technology enterprises. “International investors are engaging, and being engaged,” Darrell Stanaford, the director in Russia for CB Richard Ellis, the global real estate firm, said.

Russia
Foreign Investments
Gazprom
International Trade and World Market
Medvedev Dmitri A


Two Little League World Series Teams Buck Trend

Abstract: SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Chicago defeated Philadelphia, 6-5 , on Thursday night in a game that had implications from Little League to the big leagues. The matchup featured an increasingly rare occurrence — a prevalence of black players — in a sport in which urban youth participation has been in decline and professional rosters have become sparsely populated by African-Americans. Most immediately, Jackie Robinson West of Chicago ended the captivating run of the Taney Dragons of Philadelphia and their star, Mo’ne Davis, in the Little League World Series. Chicago earned a spot in the United States title game against Las Vegas, scheduled for Saturday. In a larger sense, with baseball seeking to broaden its appeal, Thursday’s game was viewed by officials and coaches as a showcase for what is possible if sufficient opportunity and instruction are provided to urban players. Taney was the first Philadelphia team to reach the Little League World Series. Jackie Robinson West is participating for the first time since 1983. Davis, who is black and who last Friday became the first girl to pitch a shutout in the tournament, has become a national figure of inspiration. An African-American player has not been so celebrated at the youth Series perhaps since Lloyd McClendon, now the manager of the Seattle Mariners, hit five home runs in five official at-bats in 1971 while playing for Gary, Ind., earning him the nickname Legendary Lloyd. At a news conference here Wednesday, Rob Manfred, the commissioner-elect of Major League Baseball, said that while his position required a certain neutrality, he had rooted for the racially diverse Philadelphia team and the all-black Chicago team to meet in the Little League World Series. “We think it’s crucial to commit resources, energy, time to the development of the game, particularly in the inner cities,” Manfred said. The racial and socioeconomic diversity of Philadelphia’s team, in particular, “sends a message that baseball is a wide-open sport,” Manfred said. He added, “It’s a great sport for people from all sorts of backgrounds.” Yet as the 2014 season opened, only 8.3 percent of major league players were African-American, according to the league. That is a drop from a high of 19 percent of players in 1986, according to the Society of American Baseball Research. Many theories have been proposed to explain the dwindling participation of young players in urban areas: a lack of space, a dearth of organized programs to replace the lost traditions of sandlot ball and street games, the small number of college scholarships available, the expense of buying equipment and playing in elite travel leagues. When bats cost $300 and gloves sell for $150, baseball is not an option for many children, Barry Larkin, a Hall of Fame shortstop, said on a recent ESPN telecast of the Little League World Series. Yankees pitcher C. C. Sabathia recently told The New York Times that the tradition of children playing catch with their fathers was difficult to sustain in one-parent households. “It’s hard to get kids to play,” he said. Image Philadelphia’s Taney Dragons received praise from Rob Manfred, M.L.B.’s commissioner-elect. Credit Brett Carlsen for The New York Times Martha Ackmann, a professor of gender studies at Mount Holyoke College, said the promotional appeal of baseball as a nostalgic sport had contributed to a lack of racial and gender diversity. “If we keep looking back to the good old days, we’re not looking forward,” Ackmann, who has written widely about baseball, said in a telephone interview. So how does baseball become more inclusive? First, some misconceptions should be addressed, said Steve Bandura, an official with Philadelphia’s Parks and Recreation Department who helped develop a successful sports league in the city for baseball, basketball and soccer. It is not accurate, Bandura said, that African-Americans lack an interest in baseball, find it too slow and prefer basketball and football because they provide more ready access to scholarships and professional careers. “Kids are all the same,” said Bandura, who has coached Davis, Philadelphia’s star pitcher, since she was 7. “If you give them something to do that they like, they’re going to keep doing it. There just aren’t enough quality, structured programs in our inner cities.” Suburban children often begin playing at 5 years old, participate in 50 to 100 games a year on travel teams and train year-round, Bandura said; urban players often start at 10 or 12 and have little opportunity to travel or to train in the off-season. Currently, Bandura said, most urban youths have “zero chance” of competing with suburban players. In 1999, Little League started an urban initiative that it says has created 200 leagues in 90 cities and has given 52,000 children a chance to play baseball. Major League Baseball has also implemented a number of initiatives. But in an extensive proposal sent to the league last year, Bandura said the programs were too focused on participation and public relations instead of identifying and developing raw talent into top-level stars, as is done with baseball in the Dominican Republic and is done widely with soccer. Bandura proposed a hub-and-spoke system involving an Urban Youth Academy in each big-league city. The academies would be operated by the scouting and development departments of pro teams. Talent would come from neighborhood leagues, be nurtured at local training centers and be instructed by paid staff members and certified coaches instead of volunteers. “With the rapidly changing demographics in the United States, it is imperative that Major League Baseball be proactive in reaching out to and developing these new markets,” Bandura wrote. On Thursday, Bandura said he was encouraged by the remarks of Manfred, the commissioner-elect. After the game, Davis consoled her teammates. “We made it this far; there’s no reason to cry or anything,” said Davis, who did not pitch Thursday and went 0 for 1 at the plate. “I pitched two games; I pitched against two great teams; I did well. That was a great journey for us.” She posed for a photograph with Chicago’s Marquis Jackson, who pitched three innings to earn the win. The teams had cheered each other on via social media during the regionals. “It’s a nice fraternity,” Bandura said. Thinking of Davis, he added, “Or sorority, however you want to look at it.”

Little League World Series
Baseball
Rob Manfred
Black People,African-Americans
Little League Baseball and Softball
Mo'ne Davis


Belmont Park Reunion for Buddies Who Bet

Abstract: At Belmont Park on Saturday morning, four friends met in the same spot and at the same time on Belmont Stakes day as they have for years. Over doughnuts and coffee at 9:30, near the tote board in the paddock, they talked about the races ahead and who among them would be the big winner. The scratch of I’ll Have Another, as disappointing as they agreed it was, would certainly not spoil tradition. They saw a silver lining. “I heard it on the radio and I was sad for like two minutes,” Michael Washburn said, “and then I thought, There won’t be any lines at the betting windows.” His childhood friend Michael Genaro nodded. Pete Farrell and Jeff Bissell laughed. They had taken their seats on the second floor of the grandstand, across from the 16th pole. The folding seats around them stayed empty for most of the day — again a silver lining, as they spread their copies of The Daily Racing Form and the program across the empty chairs. The sixth-largest crowd in Belmont Stakes history, 85,811, turned out even without a Triple Crown prospect. I’ll Have Another’s scratch was not enough to miss the biggest day in New York racing. For hard-bitten horseplayers like the four friends, however, the scratch meant the odds on his rivals would unfortunately drop. “I would rather have seen him run,” Washburn, 46, said. “I don’t think any one of us was going to bet on him.” Genaro and Washburn grew up in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and used to duck turnstiles at its historic racecourse and skip class to find greater excitement at Off-Track Betting locations. Farrell met Genaro at Iona College, and with Washburn, the three began coming to Belmont in 1985. Bissell, 53, was introduced to the group in 2000. They have missed the Belmont Stakes only a few times, even as they have scattered. Washburn lives outside Washington; Genaro in Greenwich, Conn.; Bissell near Saratoga; and Farrell on Long Island. The group once reached a dozen but has contracted over the years. It is the four’s task to keep alive the tradition. These are not fair-weather fans or show bettors. Genaro, 45, who works for an online publishing company, is the encyclopedia of the group. H remembered the years they missed — Risen Star in 1988 and A.P. Indy in 1992 — and was called on by his friends to remember past winners. He had small binoculars and studied the horses in the post parade. Washburn, who works for an investment bank, is a self-proclaimed numbers guy and an everyday horseplayer. His friends joked that he talked enough for the whole group. They reclined in their seats and turned over stories of past triumphs. Bissell hoped I’ll Have Another would run because it recalled memories of 2003, when Empire Maker denied Funny Cide the Triple Crown. They had no qualms betting against the people’s horse that year. “We had Empire Maker every which way,” Bissell said. With two other friends who were not in attendance on Saturday, Bissell said, they took a town car home and went for a steak dinner in Manhattan. “The money was gone by the end of the day,” he said with a laugh. That day, Farrell, who had lost touch with the group, was there for his brother’s bachelor’s party and bumped into his old friends. With that, he returned to the fold. Genaro, the sentimental one of the group, wore a fanny pack with ticket stubs and betting vouchers from memorable days reaching back 12 years. He rifled through it and found two admission tickets from 2003. “That’s Funny Cide’s year,” he said to Bissell. “You want these?” “No,” Bissell said, waving his program. “I crushed Funny Cide. I beat him.” As the day wore on, they walked from their seats to the tellers inside the grandstand. Washburn had an eye for races from Churchill Downs in Kentucky and Monmouth Park in New Jersey. His friends gave him flak for this. “I’m here to make money,” Washburn said. “I don’t have to bet on Belmont only.” They started to get hot by the fourth race at Belmont. Genaro chose a 12-1 shot after praising his physical condition during the post parade. In the sixth, Washburn and Bissell shouted themselves hoarse as their choice surged to the front at the top of the stretch. Then they pooled their money for the seventh race. Washburn was chosen to pick for the group. He selected a deep closer named Caixa Eletronica, a Portuguese name that translates to “cash machine,” sitting at 7-2. His friends were skeptical. For most of the race their fears looked real. Caixa Eletronica trailed by a dozen lengths at the top of the stretch, but as the leaders weakened from a hot pace, he charged between horses and caught the leader yards from the wire. The packed crowd on the apron and in the stands erupted. “They all made fun of me,” Washburn said as he soaked up congratulations. The four friends were jubilant. The win had looked impossible. Now this, they agreed, was a memory they would recall years from now.


Behind the Scenes With Shimon Peres

Abstract: I was on my way to Afghanistan in 2013 when I received a call from my editor asking me to stop in Jerusalem and photograph Shimon Peres, who was about to celebrate his 90th birthday. Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times The difficulty of photographing a world leader is to see past his carefully curated persona in order to reveal a more intimate portrait. Mr. Peres, then the president of Israel, evoked both the weight and levity of accumulated wisdom. Whether in the sanctuary of his official residence or among the throng of admirers vying for his ear at an endless stream of public appearances, he possessed the grandeur of a man who had spent his life making history. His schedule was relentless. I began photographing him one day just after dawn. In the quiet of the morning, he adjusted his tie, pushed on his cuff links as he fielded phone calls, and sat down to work methodically on a speech. Despite his long list of accomplishments over seven decades in politics, he was humble and industrious, sharp and focused. Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times His age meant that he had outlived many of his friends, colleagues and family members. Experience had taught him that regrets were futile. As he was whisked from an elementary school to a tech conference to a wedding, he appeared to hover above the frenzy. Before his death at 93, Mr. Peres served as Israel’s defense minister, finance minister and transportation minister, and twice as prime minister. When I met him, he was six years into a seven-year term as president. I have spent most of my career covering strife and suffering in the Middle East and Africa. And at the end of the day with Shimon Peres, I wondered whether anyone could ever have enough power or wisdom to bring peace to the region. Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times A protégé of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, Mr. Peres was the last of the nation’s founders still in office in 2013. He stretched the largely ceremonial contours of the presidency by speaking out on the urgency of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and against a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times His public career paralleled the development of the modern state of Israel. “I never dreamed we should be eight million people,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 2013. “I never knew that there will be more Hebrew-speaking people than, say, Danish-speaking people.” Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times “For me, work is not tiring but enjoying,” he said. “I don’t like vacations. I think this is another invention which is foolish. I see a person sitting on the shore of the sea with a dog, I say, ‘My God, what is he doing there?’ He can better read. He can better think.” When his term ended in 2014, Mr. Peres moved from the presidential residence to a modest apartment he owns in Tel Aviv and continued to promote his ideas on medical research, teaching English in Israeli kindergartens and providing free food for children until age 3. Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times “When did civilizations start?” he asked while adjusting his tie before a meeting during my 2013 visit. “When a very primitive instrument was introduced: the mirror. Before the mirror, people didn’t comb their hair, didn’t cut their nails. With a mirror, everybody washes himself any morning, without any order from the government.” Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times At the wedding of the daughter of the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Mr. Peres posed with the family for pictures and left immediately after the ceremony. Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times Mr. Peres then spoke at a technology conference. In his interview with The Times, he lauded Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, for making “a revolution without revolutionaries, a revolution without bloodshed.” Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times Asked whether he regretted his early support for Israeli settlements or ordering the assassination of a Palestinian master bomb-maker, Mr. Peres said: “The past for sure is unchangeable, so what can I do with my regrets? I’m trying to mobilize all my energies to understand what is next.” Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times Of the myriad public positions he held over the years, Mr. Peres told The Times that his favorite was among his first: director general of the Defense Ministry in the 1950s. Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times “To end poverty,” he said, “you have to do a very simple thing: to teach the children English, which is a global language. Otherwise, you will remain provincial. Poverty is immobility, and when you have another language, you can move.” Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times In the interview, he described the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with whom he had quarreled publicly, as “a personal tragedy,” adding, “Two persons are more than two when they are together; one person is less than one when he loses his colleague.” Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times Mr. Peres often found himself offering condolences or delivering eulogies for friends and colleagues, many of them younger than he was. “It’s not a reason to celebrate,” he said of his then-approaching birthday. “It’s a sad day, you know, because it means that I’m a year older.” Image Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times “Here, I’m alone on Fridays and on Saturdays, so I have time to read, I have time to think,” Mr. Peres said. “I decided to make my loneliness an advantage.”


Maliki Wields More Power in Iraq After Crisis

Abstract: BAGHDAD — When Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki rounded up hundreds of former Baathists, accused the vice president of running a hit squad and threatened to use the apparatus of state to target other top Sunni leaders, some rivals and critics said that Mr. Maliki’s authoritarian streak had finally antagonized enough of Iraq ’s political class to jeopardize his hold on power. Instead, Mr. Maliki appears to have emerged from a potentially destabilizing political crisis with even more power over the Iraqi state and more popularity among his Shiite constituents, many people here said. “People trust him more and more after this,” said Rahman Tal Jukon, a retired businessman in Hilla, a town in the Shiite-dominated south where expressions of support for Mr. Maliki, once tepid, are now more common and enthusiastic. “He is a brave man. He has guts.” Mr. Maliki’s political calculus, pushing to the edge of a full-blown crisis, appears to have paid off, though worries remain that Iraq is sliding toward one-man, one-party rule under Mr. Maliki. His rivals among the Sunnis are busy retrenching as their political leadership fractures, causing a pervasive feeling that Sunnis have lost any meaningful stake in Iraqi public life. In a recent report , Ramzy Mardini , an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, wrote: “It is clear that Maliki has come out as the winner in the political crisis he provoked. He has made it more difficult for his Shia rivals to dissent while simultaneously confining his Sunni opponents in a position suitable for exerting pressure and exploiting divisions within their ranks.” Iraqiya, the largely Sunni bloc of lawmakers that is led by a secular Shiite, Ayad Allawi , was forced to end boycotts of Parliament and the cabinet that were staged to protest Mr. Maliki’s actions, without winning any rewards. Members of the bloc have split, and some ministers refused to participate in the boycott, adding to a sense that Sunni optimism after the 2010 parliamentary elections, when Iraqiya won the most seats, has dissipated completely. Zuhair Araji, a former Iraqiya member who withdrew from the party, called the boycott “unwise” and said the alliance had embarrassed itself. Similar sentiments are heard in the capital’s Sunni neighborhoods. “Iraqiya came back to the Parliament and the government because they failed and they have lost all their popularity in Iraq,” said Aymen Fakhry, who lives in Adhamiya. Obaida al-Jobori, a Sunni and a restaurant owner in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad, said: “Sunnis made a big mistake when they decided not to participate in the political process with the Shias and Kurds. They proved Sunni leaders are not experienced enough to help their people in the right manner.” Two months ago, just as the last American troops were leaving, Iraq seemed at the edge of the abyss. The American ambassador cut short his vacation to rush back to Baghdad. President Jalal Talabani returned from knee surgery in Germany to mediate the crisis. The vice president and top Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, left Baghdad, running from an arrest warrant on terrorism charges. A spate of attacks wrought familiar scenes of grief and bloodshed. Politically, analysts worried that the government was close to collapse and that its fracturing would start a new civil war. Mr. Maliki has made some concessions. Local officials say many of the former Baathists who were arrested late last year have been released. And to head off efforts made by Sunni-dominated regions to gain more autonomy, Mr. Maliki has pushed for legal amendments that would give provinces more autonomy on budgets and the right of consent over when national security forces are deployed within their borders. “There was no crisis from the beginning, but problems, you could say,” said Ali al-Allaq, a member of Parliament from Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party and a close adviser to the prime minister. Mr. Allaq, his head wrapped in a black turban as he glanced at his two iPhones resting on a tabletop, described the problems as those that “any young democracy would have.” The overarching question for Iraq is how long it can continue without genuine reconciliation before the sectarian divide leads the country back to bloodshed. While Mr. Maliki cemented his support among the Shiite majority and neutralized rivals from his own sect, like the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, Sunnis seem more adrift than ever. That is a potentially combustible set of circumstances when coupled with the chaos across the border in Syria, where the country’s Sunni majority is battling a government whose leaders adhere to an offshoot of Shiism. “Sunnis after 2003 are like fish inside a small pool with a shark,” said Mayson Merza, a Sunni who lives in Karada. “They can’t get out, and they can’t remain inside. We have a very sectarian government, which is looking to eliminate all Sunnis and replace them by thieves and Iranian agents out to destroy Iraq and the Arab nation.” After the crisis erupted in December, analysts warned the country was on the edge of a civil war. “There has been a rapid and widespread deterioration of security in Iraq since the mid-December end of the U.S. military mission there,” Michael Knights, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, wrote this month in The National Interest. After a bloody January — by some accounts a deadlier month than any last year — February had been on pace to be one of the least violent months since the American-led invasion nine years ago, until a series of car bomb attacks in Baghdad and around the country on Thursday left more than 40 people dead. The Iraqi psyche, weighted by history and past grievances, still frames political issues through a simplistic sectarian lens: Shiites fear the restoration of Sunni power, and many Sunnis — who feel they are the natural leaders — are beholden to their resentments over the Shiite empowerment wrought by America’s war. Mr. Jukon, the retired businessman in Hilla, spoke of Sunni domination from the British colonial mandate after World War I until the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003. “That affects how some people see this,” he said of the political crisis. Ahmed al-Khafaji, the deputy interior minister, a Shiite whose life, like many Iraqi leaders, was shaped by years in exile in Iran, dismissed criticisms that the Iraqi state had shut out Sunnis from power. “Freedom is the most important thing,” he said. “Here is an Islamic newspaper,” he said, waving it about. He pointed to his laptop, and his cellphone. “Now we have 600 satellite channels.” He echoed the familiar refrain here that it will take generations to achieve a durable sectarian co-existence. “With time, democracy will continue, and one day we will be like Switzerland, or France or the Italians,” he said. “In the United States in the 1960s, a black man couldn’t get on a bus, and now Obama is president.”

Iraq
Iraqiya
Iraq War (2003-11)
Maliki Nuri Kamal al-
Islamic Dawa Party
Allawi Ayad
Politics and Government


Fighting N.Y.C. Soda Ban, Industry Focuses on Personal Choice

Abstract: Lobbyists from Coca-Cola and other big soda companies have met with mayoral candidates and City Council members. Canvassers hired by the beverage industry are stopping New Yorkers on the street to solicit signatures on petitions. Facebook and Twitter pages tell readers to “say no to a #sodaban.” Confronting a high-profile attack on its fizzy products, the American soft-drink industry is beginning an aggressive campaign to fight New York City ’s proposed restrictions on large servings of sugary drinks. Hoping for a debate about freedom, not fatness, the industry has created a coalition called New Yorkers for Beverage Choices to coordinate its public relations efforts in the city. On Thursday, the group introduced its first radio spot, a one-minute advertisement featuring “Noo Yawk”-accented actors proclaiming, “This is about protecting our freedom of choice.” “This is New York City; no one tells us what neighborhood to live in or what team to root for,” says the narrator, as Yankees and Mets fans shout in the background. “So are we going to let our mayor tell us what size beverage to buy?” Adds one Brooklyn -tinged voice: “It’s unbelievable!” The charge is being led by the industry’s leading trade group, the Washington -based American Beverage Association, which has retained several powerhouse political consultants for the cause, including the strategists responsible for the “Harry and Louise” television advertisements that helped defeat President Bill Clinton ’s health care plan in the 1990s. The beverage association would not disclose its budget for the New York campaign, but Eliot Hoff, a spokesman for the coalition, said it was “prepared to utilize whatever resources are necessary.” The city has also waged a campaign to influence public opinion. Since 2009 it has run five waves of advertising, in subways, in print, on the Internet and on television, linking soda consumption to obesity . The campaign has cost $2.8 million, city officials said, of which 87 percent was financed by the federal government. The battle is a consequential one for the soda industry, which is on the defensive as public health officials increasingly cite sweetened beverages as a major contributor to America’s runaway obesity rate. The industry has already committed tens of millions of dollars to help defeat proposed taxes and regulations on its products across the country — including $13 million in Albany in 2010 to successfully lobby the Legislature to reject a proposed 1-cent-an-ounce state tax on sodas. But the industry has been facing even more challenges since May 30 when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed banning the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in regulated food establishments, including in movie theaters and sports arenas. The mayor of Cambridge , Mass., Henrietta Davis, has proposed that her city take a similar step, and Senator Frank R. Lautenberg , a New Jersey Democrat, proposed a federal study of the link between sugary beverages and obesity. The industry faces a particularly tough fight in New York City, because the proposed restrictions require approval only by the Board of Health, whose members were appointed by Mr. Bloomberg. The board plans to hold a public hearing on the proposal on July 24, and the industry, as a first step, hopes to encourage opponents to show up in droves. The Bloomberg administration said it was unsurprised by the industry’s efforts to stymie the plan. “There’s an impartial group of health experts who are going to make the decision,” said Howard Wolfson , a deputy mayor who is shepherding the proposed ban. “I think they will be influenced by science, and not any P.R. campaign.” Soda executives are vague about their long-term strategy, saying they are focused for now on recruiting local businesses, unions and lawmakers to join their cause. But the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn , and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo , seemingly closing the door on city or state legislative action, have said they do not wish to get involved. The industry said it was also considering a court challenge, but only after the regulatory process was completed. In recent weeks, lobbyists from Coca-Cola met with three likely mayoral candidates: Bill de Blasio , the public advocate, and Scott M. Stringer , the Manhattan borough president, who support the proposed restrictions; and William C. Thompson , a former city comptroller, who does not. The company also approached Ms. Quinn, another likely candidate for mayor, but has not met with her. “This is the stuff that you would expect any industry to do,” said Christopher Gindlesperger, a spokesman for the American Beverage Association. “It’s important, regardless of the endgame here, to make sure people understand the impact of this thing, to let them know how it will impact their daily lives.” On June 20, representatives of soda companies, local restaurants and movie theaters — all of whom oppose the mayor’s plan — met for an hour with four members of the City Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus . “There was a discussion about joining forces with the industry, and we are considering that,” said Councilwoman Letitia James, who invited the industry to meet with her colleagues. She said members of her caucus mostly opposed Mr. Bloomberg’s plan, saying the 16-ounce restriction could put a disproportionate financial burden on lower-income families and small businesses. Ms. James said that she and other Council members would consider filing a brief in support of any lawsuit brought by the industry. Was soda served at the meeting? “No refreshments at all,” Ms. James said, “other than the water cooler.” The beverage industry, like the tobacco industry before it, has cultivated relationships with minority-group lawmakers, arguing that their communities are disproportionately affected by sales regulations. “There’s one thing that all of these bans and attacks and other discriminatory proposals have in common, and that is that they’re regressive,” Mr. Gindlesperger said. “They’re discriminatory in that they target our products; they are regressive in that they target low- and middle-income families.” Critics of the soda industry say its New York campaign follows a familiar playbook. “The talking points are ‘Nanny State,’ that it won’t work because people will just buy as much as they ever would, and that this disproportionately hurts the poor,” said Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University . In New York, though, some strategists questioned why the industry would spend time speaking with City Council members, since the Council is effectively powerless to overrule the mayor. The beverage association also learned an early lesson about Mr. Bloomberg’s overwhelming influence around the city. Last year, the group retained SKD Knickerbocker, an influential consulting firm that produced advertisements for Mr. Bloomberg’s mayoral campaigns, to advise it on political strategy in New York. When a Knickerbocker spokesman, speaking for the beverage industry, denounced the mayor’s plan last month, Mr. Bloomberg’s camp was taken aback, according to several people with direct knowledge of the situation. Allies of Mr. Bloomberg conveyed their anger to the firm. The company still represents the beverage association but is no longer working on the soda-ban issue.

Soda
Obesity
Lobbying
Legislation
NYC
Mike Bloomberg


Hurricane Brings More Worry to Neighbors of Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant

Abstract: LACEY, N.J. — Some years ago, Janet Tauro moved to the pine barrens and salt-flecked flats of the Jersey Shore, where she would raise her children. Then she found that Oyster Creek, the nation’s oldest nuclear plant, sat on her doorstep. She became a nuclear activist, one of dozens who bird-dog the Oyster Creek plant, and helped persuade Gov. Chris Christie to shutter the place by 2019. But not even the closing notice set her mind at ease. Then Hurricane Sandy blew through, spinning houses off foundations, blowing holes in barrier islands and wrecking lives. In the midst of this mayhem, Oyster Creek sounded a modest alarm. Rising waters in Barnegat Bay threatened to submerge the pumps the plant uses to pull in water to cool its reactor and spent-fuel pools. Had workers with Exelon Corporation, which owns Oyster Creek, been forced to turn off the water-intake pumps, they might have had to dip fire hoses into the floodwaters to refill the ever-hot pool. The plant issued an alert, the second lowest on the four-stage scale established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the same time, 39 of 42 warning sirens, which are perched on poles for miles around the plant and intended to warn local residents in event of a nuclear emergency, lost power. Ms. Tauro pulled her coat tight against winter winds as she walked along a bridge within sight of the plant’s smokestack; this area, she noted, was underwater on Oct. 29. “We know what the company will say: this is another ‘lesson learned,’ ” she said. “But we’ve got 3.5 million people in a 50-mile radius of this plant, and it feels like we’re sitting ducks.” In fact, Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon, said, “Everything went very well.” And Gordon K. Hunegs, of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, pointedly added, “The plant was always safe.” “What if” disaster tales are a risky business; our world is filled with unrealized perils. This is particularly true of nuclear power, as it inflames our imagination and stirs primal fears. Image Oyster Creek is the nation's oldest nuclear plant. Credit Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Still, the N.R.C.’s conclusion feels too tidy. Oyster Creek is a sometimes troubled nuclear plant. And there is the impression, built up year after empirical year, that the N.R.C. is a tiger denuded of claws. Even the agency’s internal monitors found it was notoriously cautious about actions that might cost plants time and money. In 2007, Exelon Corporation ignored corrosion in pipes used to circulate cooling waters in an Illinois plant. A pipe broke. Had the pipe ruptured during an emergency, experts told The New York Times in 2011, there might have been a catastrophe 100 miles west of Chicago. The N.R.C. handed out two low-level reprimands, akin to sending the company to its room without dinner. A couple of years later, Gregory B. Jaczko, a rare activist at the agency, argued that poor management of erosion in the drywall shell of the reactor at Oyster Creek merited closer attention. “The company’s series of errors,” he wrote, “provides evidence that directly contradicts Exelon’s ability to meet the commitments.” The majority of the commissioners ignored him. Then there are those broken sirens. Exelon and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say not to worry; there was a back-up system. That involved sending out local deputy sheriffs in patrol cars with loudspeakers. Wouldn’t 85 mile-per-hour winds and washed-out roads prove problematic? “The state has said it could have carried out that plan,” an agency spokeswoman replied. Another agency official interjected that the best move during a radiological release was to stay indoors. So mission accomplished, sort of. Let’s acknowledge that nuclear power is complicated. Its carbon footprint is minimal. A few prominent environmentalists argue that the rapidly heating world cannot make wrenching changes without nuclear power to ease the transition. Mr. Nesbit of Exelon argues, reasonably, that Oyster Creek had backup for the back-up plans. There were generators, and fire engines on trailers. But experience teaches that problems can become a stumble down a staircase. Great storms blow up the coast with unnerving regularity of late. (While the N.R.C. has required Oyster Creek to thoroughly evaluate its flood plan in three years, it has not required Exelon to look at the effect global warming will have on flood preparation.) “This was not the big one,” Ms. Tauro said. “I get the feeling we’re regulating with our fingers crossed.”

Hurricane Sandy
Exelon
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Nuclear energy
New Jersey
Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant


In Rookie Duel, a Met Gets a Loss, and a Hit

Abstract: The first 39 games of the baseball season had already taken their toll on the Yankees and the Mets, and the first three games of the Subway Series had been emotional, exhausting affairs. The Mets had battered the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, and Masahiro Tanaka had stifled the Mets at Citi Field. Everyone seemed a bit woozy. Injuries forced both teams to start rookies in their major league debuts Thursday: Chase Whitley for the Yankees and Jacob deGrom for the Mets. The way the first three games had gone, both teams could use an injection of youth. “It’s an exciting four days for everybody,” Mets Manager Terry Collins said, and under his breath, barely audible, he added, “but let’s get it over with.” DeGrom did all that he could, carrying the Mets for seven innings. But he could not win the game alone. Whitley and the Yankees’ bullpen combined to throw a three-hit shutout, as the Yankees won, 1-0. This year’s edition of the Subway Series ended up tied at two games apiece, and the visiting team won every game. Of the Mets’ three hits, one belonged to deGrom. He singled, breaking the Mets pitchers’ hitless streak to start the season, and received a standing ovation. Whitley singled in his first at-bat, too. So in what was probably Derek Jeter’s last game against the Mets, these two rookie pitchers dueled and took center stage. Mets fans had been awaiting deGrom’s debut. Rafael Montero, Noah Syndergaard and deGrom were considered to the team’s best pitching prospects. Syndergaard was tall and powerful and nicknamed Thor. Montero was shorter and lithe, with pinpoint control. DeGrom was spindly with his distinctive long, brown hair. Syndergaard is expected to join the Mets later this season, and Montero made his debut Wednesday to rave reviews. But this was deGrom’s chance to prove he could start here. He would perhaps have only two starts to do so, until Dillon Gee returned from the disabled list, which might force deGrom to the bullpen. Image Mets starter Jacob deGrom, who pitched seven innings in his debut, singled in the third for the first hit by a Mets pitcher this year. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times As he overcame his nerves, deGrom allowed four base runners over the first three innings, but he kept his composure in each situation. He ended the first by staring down Mark Teixeira and striking him out swinging through a high, 95-mile-per-hour fastball. He ended the second with Yangervis Solarte’s grounding into a double play. He ended the third by calmly catching a Jeter line drive and turning a double play. Whitley cruised through the Mets. He retired the first six batters he faced. He located his fastball, mixed in his slider, and then unleashed his changeup. He struck out David Wright on a fastball that appeared off the plate. He allowed his first hit in the third, when Ruben Tejada and deGrom singled. The Mets pitchers had started the season 0 for 64 at the plate, which set a record. Sandy Alderson, the Mets’ general manager, had called it an “embarrassing statistic,” the “proverbial elephant in the room” anytime one of their pitchers came to bat. With one swing, in his first career at-bat, deGrom had ended the Mets’ misery. Whitley escaped the jam, retiring Eric Young Jr. and striking out Daniel Murphy. But after walking two batters in the fifth, Whitley was pulled. He had thrown only 74 pitches, holding the Mets scoreless and to only two hits over four and two-thirds innings. “After I got a couple of innings under my belt, I just told myself to remember I’m just playing the same game I played since I was 5 years old,” Whitley said. The Mets were content to ride deGrom as long as they could. After the third, he retired the next 10 Yankees. At one stretch, over the fifth and sixth innings, he strung together four strikeouts in five batters. His third time through the order, deGrom walked Teixeira on five pitches. Even then, he got Brian McCann to hit a ground ball into the shift, but Wright could not turn the double play at second base. The next batter, Alfonso Soriano, ripped a double to the gap, bringing in McCann from first. That was deGrom’s lone blemish. He needed only 91 pitches to go seven innings, holding the Yankees to four hits and that lone run. He registered six strikeouts and issued only two walks. “I felt like myself out there,” deGrom said. Once Whitley left, the Yankees’ bullpen — Dellin Betances, Adam Warren and David Robertson — combined for 10 strikeouts. Betances was particularly dominant, striking out the side in the sixth and the seventh. Mets hitters were helpless, shut out by the Yankees for the second straight night, and deGrom’s debut, while impressive, had been wasted. “I’m anxious to see him when he gets back out there,” Collins said. INSIDE PITCH The Mets placed catcher Travis d’Arnaud on the seven-day concussion list Thursday after he was hit in the head Tuesday on an Alfonso Soriano backswing.

Mets
Baseball
Yankees
Chase Whitley
Jacob deGrom


Davis Cup Finalists Love Living in Switzerland (and Those Are Just the French Players)

Abstract: VILLENEUVE D’ASCQ, France — It is Switzerland versus France in this weekend’s Davis Cup final. It is also Swiss resident versus Swiss resident. All four French players — Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Gaël Monfils, Richard Gasquet and Julien Benneteau — live on the Swiss side of the border. So does the chief substitute Gilles Simon, just like many French stars of the past, including Amélie Mauresmo, Guy Forget, Marion Bartoli and Cédric Pioline. “It’s true, but we can’t talk too much about that, especially with President Hollande coming,” Pioline, a former United States Open and Wimbledon finalist, said with a chuckle. France’s president, François Hollande, will watch two teams that represent different nations but reside in only one — teams that know each other well and mixed easily at Thursday’s draw ceremony in the historic center of Lille. “There’s a connection,” said Pioline, who is here for the final. “The fact that the Swiss players speak French also makes a difference. It’s more of a final between cousins than brothers, but it’s still a final, so I wouldn’t expect any presents.” The French tennis exodus to Switzerland is largely due to the lighter fiscal load in Switzerland. “After my first year, I saw what I earned and then I saw what was left in my bank account, and then I moved,” said Simon, who said he relocated in 2006. Asked how much he had saved by moving, Simon answered in a recent interview, “Uh, a lot.” He then started to walk away. “That’s enough,” he said of the topic. “It’s not politics.” Even if Simon would prefer to talk tennis, politicians have become involved. In 2012, Yannick Noah and Forget were called in front of a French Senate committee that was investigating the phenomenon of tax exiles. Tsonga made a point last year of explaining that he did pay some taxes in France. “People don’t necessarily have all the elements to judge,” Tsonga said. “On my last tax declaration in 2011, I paid about 230,000 euros for 47 days of presence in France.” All earnings in French tournaments and the Davis Cup are directly taxable by French authorities, as are some sponsorship contracts. Tsonga also pointed out that professional tennis players were independent contractors who typically had high earnings for a relatively short period and needed to maximize their savings to prepare for the time when their playing careers were over. To maintain his advantageous tax status in his Swiss canton, Tsonga is not permitted to work in Switzerland. That is not difficult given how many months a year he spends on the road, but it is odd in that he is unable to play in pro tournaments in Switzerland. French players also cite the quality of life on the Swiss side of the border and, in some cases, the quality of education for their children as motivation. Some also like that they can have a lower profile in French-speaking Switzerland than in their own country. Also, one former player pointed out, they get fewer dirty looks when they drive their fancy cars. But this does not mean they feel Swiss, a point underscored when the French sports daily L’Équipe gave a quiz this week to the French Davis Cup players. Tsonga incorrectly answered that the capital of Switzerland was Zurich instead of Bern, and none could name the Swiss national anthem (“Le Cantique Suisse”). All five players, Simon included, answered correctly when it came to last season’s Swiss Super League club soccer champion (F.C. Basel). “I just feel we are representing France no matter where we live,” Simon said. “I mean, we are not the only country where the players are not living in their country.” That is certainly true. There are top players who seek tranquillity and optimal training conditions far from home, like Kei Nishikori of Japan, who is based in Bradenton, Fla. Maria Sharapova, who was born in Russia and continues to represent Russia, has spent most of her life in the United States (and trains in Bradenton at IMG Academy). European tennis players and other athletes have been seeking tax shelter and sunshine for decades in Monaco, a tiny principality that offers no appreciable tax advantages to French citizens. Among the Monaco residents in this era are Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark and Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 male player, of Serbia. “When we played against Serbia in 2010, did you think that we are playing against Serbia or Monte Carlo?” Simon asked. Still, there has never been a Davis Cup final quite like one, with all of the men on both rosters living in the same country. “Of course we tease them,” Marc Rosset, a former Swiss player and Davis Cup captain, said in an interview with the French newspaper La Dépêche du Midi. “And I would not be at all surprised to see a banner relating to that in Villeneuve d’Ascq.” Tsonga told L’Équipe in an interview: “What I like here is that I don’t have to talk about my life all the time; nobody comes to bother me. I have the impression I have a normal life. Here people don’t care what I do. They see me. They give me a wave. It’s real life. When I first came here, it was a fiscal decision. But I could have lived in Geneva. If I came here, it’s not by chance. I am at the foot of the mountains. I can take bike rides. I can fish in the rivers and lakes. Everything I like. When my career’s over, it’s not impossible that I’ll stay.” France does have bike rides, mountains, fish, rivers and lakes of its own, however. Arnaud Clément, the French Davis Cup captain, who only recently retired from the ATP Tour, is back in France after his Swiss sojourn. Other retirees have stayed put, including Mauresmo, the former women’s No. 1 who now coaches Andy Murray, and Forget, the longtime French Davis Cup captain who won the competition as a player in 1991 and 1996. But in neither of those years did Forget have to play against his almost-fellow Swiss in the final.

Davis Cup
Switzerland
France
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga
Richard Gasquet
Julien Benneteau
Tennis
Gael Monfils
Francois Hollande