Dawn of Nuclear Arms, Declassified

Abstract: It was near midnight when John Coster-Mullen , the author of “ Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man ,” was scrutinizing one image among hundreds newly released by Los Alamos, the birthplace of the bomb . First, he glanced at the scientists assembling what they called “the gadget,” a spherical test device five feet in diameter. Then, atop a wooden crate nearby, he noticed a small, blocky object, nondescript except for the role he suddenly realized it played: It was a uranium slug that held the bomb’s fuel. In July 1945, its detonation lit up the New Mexican desert and sent out shock waves that begot a new era. “I let out a scream,” Mr. Coster-Mullen said. “My son thought I woke up the whole neighborhood. Before, they had never shown that slug. And here it was on top of the crate in all its glory. I just about had a coronary.” It was 2009. He quickly assessed the slug as 5 inches wide and 8.75 inches long, and soon after incorporated the photograph into a revised edition of his book. Waves of declassified photographs and movies from the nation’s push to make Little Boy and Fat Man — the world’s first atom bombs — are exciting not only to Mr. Coster-Mullen but a generation less familiar with the nation’s atomic past. Image Fat Man and Little Boy Revisited Newly available photographs and movies have made the dawn of the nuclear weapons era go viral, providing a history lesson to a new generation. “They hit geek culture and go viral,” said Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. Early this year, Dr. Wellerstein posted on his blog and on Reddit, a social news site, an annotated silent movie a little more than 11 minutes long that showed scientists and soldiers preparing Fat Man and loading the weapon onto a B-29 aircraft that would soon take off for Nagasaki, Japan; the bombing instantly killed an estimated 40,000 people there. The movie was viewed more than 100,000 times in just one day on Reddit, and received 700 comments. Among the posted questions: Did the men know what they were doing? Probably so, Dr. Wellerstein replied on his blog, “because they knew what had happened at Hiroshima.” A few years ago, the Los Alamos National Laboratory started posting historical pictures on Flickr, a photo-sharing site. The lab’s history section now has 515 images like early bombs and scientists and rapidly expanding fireballs and rising mushroom clouds. The set includes the gadget photograph from 1945 that left Mr. Coster-Mullen agog. A recent wave of Internet photographs has featured Little Boy and Fat Man preparations; one shows a man signing the nose of the Nagasaki bomb, and another is a tail fin close-up of scrawled names and home states, including Wisconsin and New York. Holly Reed, a photo expert at the National Archives , the source of those images, said they went public in 1997 but received much attention recently when they were widely described online as newly released. “There’s a kind of barrier between what’s out there and what’s known,” Dr. Wellerstein said. With the rise of global networks, he added, “there’s a real opportunity for these to go viral.”

Nuclear weapon
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Archive
World War II
Classified Information
Manhattan Project


New York State’s Decision on Hydrofracking Will Await Health Review

Abstract: After four years of study by the state, the Cuomo administration now says its decision on whether to allow high-volume hydraulic fracturing in New York will have to wait until it conducts a review of the potential public health effects of the controversial natural gas drilling process. On Thursday, Joseph Martens , commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Conservation , announced that he had asked the health commissioner, Dr. Nirav Shah , to assess his department’s analysis of the health effects closely. Mr. Martens said he was responding to widespread concerns that the state had not adequately addressed potential health consequences in its environmental assessments as it moved toward a decision on whether to permit the drilling process and what rules would govern it. “Only after this evaluation is completed will a decision be made about whether to permit high-volume hydraulic fracturing in New York,” he said. “Obviously, if there was a public health concern that could not be addressed, we would not proceed.” The process, also known as hydrofracking, involves pumping vast amounts of water laced with chemicals into underground shale deposits, under high pressure, to release natural gas. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has been under pressure to ban the drilling process, or at least to hold off on a decision until more research is done. Mr. Martens said many of the 80,000 public comments the state had received on hydrofracking during its deliberations focused on the possible harm to public health. Among the areas of concern are the contamination of drinking-water supplies, air pollution produced by the drilling equipment and the danger of accidents from increased truck traffic. State legislators, medical societies and health experts have called for a thorough health assessment. Last month, members of major environmental groups met with Mr. Martens to press for an independent review by medical experts before any regulations are made final and drilling is allowed to start. In his statement on Thursday, however, Mr. Martens rejected the idea of commissioning an outside study, calling it “an inappropriate delegation of a governmental responsibility.” “To suggest private interests or academic experts bring more independence to the process than government is exactly wrong,” he added. But he also said that Dr. Shah could solicit advice from “the most qualified outside experts” in his review. Mr. Martens’s statement did not say how long the health study might take, and officials with the environmental department did not return calls. The state has been studying the possibility of opening up the Marcellus Shale to natural gas drilling since 2008, and released a revised draft report on environmental effects last year. In moving to conduct a separate health review, Mr. Martens said, the state is seeking to prepare “the most legally defensible” environmental report in the event of any litigation that could ensue if the state allows fracking to proceed. Kate Sinding, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said her organization would have preferred an independent study. “This is not exactly what we were asking for,” she said. “But if they really solicit the input of truly independent experts as well as hear the concerns of the public, this could provide real value.” She suggested that the state health review could take a few months or more than a year, depending on how much work the environmental department has already done on studying the potential health effects. The reaction from the gas industry was resigned. “While we’re extremely disappointed in yet another delay, we have full faith and confidence in the D.E.C.’s analysis and decision,” said Brad Gill, executive director of the industry group the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York.

New York State
Hydraulic Fracturing
Natural Gas
Marcellus Shale
Water Pollution


Russian Police Get Tough on Illicit Cheese

Abstract: MOSCOW — One of Russia ’s tabloid TV channels began a news bulletin Tuesday with a breathless report about a major “international criminal gang” freshly rolled up in the Moscow region. The report included typically jerky shots from an overnight police dragnet — officers in combat fatigues and black balaclavas frisking suspects who were spread-eagled against vehicles or pinned to the ground. Ample evidence was on display, too: giant warehouses and transport trucks stacked with the gang’s shrink-wrapped contraband. Heroin? Marijuana? Weapons? Nope. More like Edam. That’s right. Cheese. When the Russian government banned dairy products from a host of nations, including the United States and members of the European Union, last year in response to Western economic sanctions imposed over Russia’s military meddling in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin said the restrictions would create a profitable opportunity for domestic industries. Instead they appear to have created an opening for forgers and smugglers. The “cheese ring” was busted with an estimated $30 million worth of the stuff, nearly 500 tons, according to the Interior Ministry police. Image A bulldozer in Belgorod, Russia, destroyed cheese and other food that was said to violate Russia&aposs ban on European food imports. Credit Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, via Reuters The cheese was produced locally with Western rennet , an enzyme base used in cheese production that is now banned in Russia. The “criminal gang” had been peddling its illicit cheese since March, according to a police statement, selling it to supermarket chains and other distributors in and around Moscow and St. Petersburg. The police raided 17 sites, including residences and warehouses, the statement said, and arrested six people, who are to face charges of fraud and other crimes. The raids were part of a new government effort to make sure that the ban is respected — and a tacit admission that it had been subverted. The government also opened a hotline on Tuesday, encouraging Russians to snitch on suspected food scofflaws, and it generated more than 50 calls the first day, the prosecutor general’s office announced. About two weeks ago, tons of cheese, fruits and other goods were either burned or buried on the orders of Mr. Putin. That prompted some applause, but also grumbling that the food should have been donated to the poor in a country where food prices have doubled, and in some cases tripled, because of sanctions and the nosediving value of the ruble. The latest cheese bust produced mostly giggles across social media, with one commenter noting that during American Prohibition in the 1920s and early ’30s, smuggling liquor become a lucrative industry that spawned the word “bootlegger.” The writer mused whether there was such a thing as a “cheeselegger.”

Russia
Cheese
Smuggling
Vladimir Putin
Embargoes Sanctions


Harlem Figure Skaters Say Park Favors Boys’ Hockey

Abstract: A long-simmering dispute over the use of the ice rink at Riverbank State Park in Harlem burst into the open under the bright skies of Sunday afternoon, with protesters from a girls’ figure skating organization charging that hockey teams, made up mostly of boys, dominated the ice time. Waving homemade signs, members of the organization, Figure Skating in Harlem , which has provided skating opportunities to local girls for almost 15 years, gathered at the park’s entrance, along with some of their parents and others. They said the girls got only four and a half hours a week to practice; that, they said, has forced some parents to send their daughters to other rinks. “My daughter isn’t getting enough ice time,” said Ruth Hernandez, 37. “It’s very unfair.” Her daughter, Thalyia Thompson, 10, has been a member of the group since she was 6. Though they live just blocks away, Ms. Hernandez said the restricted schedule meant that Thalyia had to travel a total of two hours every Sunday for coaching at Chelsea Piers. Other parents said their daughters had to go as far away as the World Ice Arena in Flushing, Queens, for sufficient practice time. Officials from Riverbank State Park say the problems stem from high demand both inside and outside the community. The rink, which is open from November to March, depending on the weather, currently allots practice time to the general public, to private permit holders, and to Riverbank Youth Ice Hockey , a program for boys and girls. Members of Figure Skating in Harlem say they need at least 10 hours a week, either after school or on weekends. The group currently has 130 members, but parents say it has had to put another 100 girls on a waiting list because of the scant ice time. “We’d like to be able to give them more hours, but there’s only a finite number of hours,” said Dan Keefe, a spokesman for the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . “It would be unfair for us to kick off somebody else,” he added. Mr. Keefe said the times the figure skaters were asking for conflicted with the schedules of other private permit holders, like St. David’s School on the Upper East Side, the Fieldston School in the northwest Bronx and other private schools, each of which is getting 1.5 hours a week of the prime practice slots between 4 and 7 p.m. A letter written by the park’s director, Reggie Magwood, to Sharon Cohen, the founder and executive director of Figure Skating in Harlem, said her group had more than 30 percent of the available time for permit holders. The rest of the time was dedicated to public skating and practice for Riverbank Youth Ice Hockey. The protesters claimed there was a gender disparity in the allotted ice time, arguing that Riverbank’s hockey program as well as the private schools’ teams are predominantly male. “It’s a real equity issue. We already know girls get the short end of the stick in sports,” said Peggy Shepard, executive director of We Act for Environmental Justice . She pointed to part of what had long been a subject of controversy in Harlem: the North River sewage treatment plant. The park, which runs between 137th and 145th Streets, was built on top of the plant. “The park was a benefit for the community for hosting the sewage treatment plant,” said Ms. Shepard, who in the 1990s filed suit against the Dinkins administration over environmental concerns about the plant. Not everyone agreed with the protesters. Windell Williams, 49, a filmmaker from Harlem, said his son, Takashi, 7, played ice hockey at the rink. Mr. Williams denied that the team, or the park, discriminated against females. He added that his daughter, India, 5, planned to join the hockey team next year. Mr. Williams felt that all teams using the rink, private or not, had a right to be there. “This is a state park,” he said. “If there are kids that go to private schools, public schools, it doesn’t matter.”

Figure Skating
Parks and Other Recreation Areas
Harlem (NYC)
Hockey Ice


Tarzan and Jane’s Manhattan

Abstract: ON a recent sunny afternoon, Lucas Capra, a student at Columbia, traded in his usual earthbound fitness routine and took to the skies, Tarzan style. But no vines were required. Mr. Capra was at the traveling rings , a contraption that sits in a giant sandbox known as Hudson Beach in Riverside Park, Manhattan. Of all the fitness equipment scattered across the city, the rings offer a distinctively uplifting exercise experience. “I like to come here for about 30 minutes and treat it like a workout,” said Mr. Capra, 33, who is from Los Angeles and picked up his skills at the more famous traveling rings in Santa Monica, Calif. It has been 10 years since the ribbon-cutting ceremony that welcomed the traveling rings to Riverside Park, but this little stretch still feels relatively off the radar; even longtime New Yorkers are surprised when they happen upon them. The rings were donated by Dorlene Kaplan , a resident of the Upper West Side, who said she had fond memories of using similar ones as a youngster in the 1940s at her school playground in Miami Beach, Fla. Ms. Kaplan said that an article about the rings’ home in Santa Monica inspired her to help create a place like it in New York. She contacted the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Riverside Park Conservancy , and officials found a suitable spot. In 2005 Ms. Kaplan added a set of rings for children next to the adult set. Sandwiched between ball fields and in view of the Hudson River, the giant metal framework consists of 10 metal rings hung by swivel chains about seven feet above the sand. The object is to grab one ring and swing to the next, from one end to the other and back again, without touching the ground. It requires strength, agility, determination and, most of all, practice. Image Meagan Stanton, 9, on the sets of traveling rings. Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times Melissa Kimiadi, 27, said that when she arrived at the rings in 2009, a big obstacle was stage fright. “I was really scared of people watching me,” she said. “I could only do two or three rings at a time.” She practiced early in the day, when fewer people were around, and could eventually travel across and back. Now a weekly regular, she is one of many who offer encouragement to first-timers. In fact, it’s better to learn with other ring swingers, who can offer advice. One misconception is that the rings demand superior upper-body strength. Many newcomers mistakenly try to hoist themselves up with their biceps. It’s better to use a firm grip and hang with straight arms as you swing. Warming up first is also recommended: “I like to swing on one ring back and forth,” said Joseph Belcastro, 30, who started using the rings in 2012. “I’ll swing with one hand and then the other, then with both hands. Then I might swing between two rings for a bit, before going the whole length.” Aside from the feeling of flying, those who spend time on the rings are also improving flexibility and strengthening back and core muscles, according to Hector Salazar, a program director and gymnastics coach at Chelsea Piers, the sports complex in Manhattan. “When swinging ring to ring, you are primarily using your lats,” Mr. Salazar said, referring to the latissimus dorsi muscles of the back. “If you raise your legs as you swing, or swing with your legs bent in a tuck position, you are definitely going to be working your abs as well.” Hand health is an important factor, and many people apply chalk to help reduce friction and the possibility of skin tears. Frequent visitors also invest in ring grips used by gymnasts, which can be purchased online for $40 to $60 a pair, depending on the style. “The thing I love about the rings is that it’s healthful exercise, and it’s noncompetitive,” Ms. Kaplan said. “Everyone develops their own style, and everyone helps everyone out.”

Gymnastics
Exercise,Fitness
Riverside Park Manhattan


Sabres Back Into Overtime Win Against Coyotes

Abstract: Phoenix goalie Mike Smith’s unwitting mistake gave the short-handed Buffalo Sabres a 2-1 overtime win over the visiting Coyotes on Monday night. At 3 minutes 47 seconds of overtime, the Sabres’ Mark Pysyk took a shot that hit the Coyotes’ Martin Hanzal and became lodged in the back of Smith’s jersey. Smith retreated into his crease, unknowingly carrying the puck over the line and ending the game. “I didn’t feel it at all,” Smith said of the bizarre goal. “I didn’t know what happened. I knew that puck went up in the air, but had no idea where it went after that.” ISLANDERS 3, RED WINGS 0 Evgeni Nabokov made 23 saves for his 56th career shutout in the Islanders’ 3-0 win over host Detroit. Kyle Okposo, Michael Grabner, Casey Cizikas scored for the Islanders, who have won only three of their past 17 (3-10-4). BLACKHAWKS 5, DEVILS 2 Patrick Sharp scored twice, and Patrick Kane, Bryan Bickell and Nick Leddy also connected to lead Chicago over the visiting Devils. DUCKS 3, CAPITALS 2 Hampus Lindholm scored the winner at 14:24 of the third, and Anaheim rallied past Washington in Coach Bruce Boudreau’s return to Verizon Center. The Ducks (27-7-5) extended their franchise-best winning streak to nine games . LIGHTNING 6, PANTHERS 1 Martin St. Louis had a goal and two assists, and Tampa Bay extended its winning streak to five games by beating host Florida. Valtteri Filppula had a goal and an assist and Victor Hedman had three assists. J. T. Brown added two third-period goals for Tampa Bay. SENATORS 5, PENGUINS 0 Craig Anderson made 27 saves for his second shutout of the season and host Ottawa beat Pittsburgh. BRUINS 6, PREDATORS 2 Carl Soderberg scored a power-play goal and had two assists, Jarome Iginla added two goals and visiting Boston beat Nashville handily. Boston gave Coach Claude Julien his 400th career win. FLYERS 4, WILD 1 Wayne Simmonds had two goals and an assist, leading host Philadelphia over Minnesota. BLUE JACKETS 4, HURRICANES 3 Ryan Johansen and Jack Skille scored 1:28 apart late in the third period to rally Columbus over host Carolina. SURGERY FOR SHARKS ROOKIE The San Jose Sharks rookie star Tomas Hertl will have right knee surgery next week, sidelining him for more than a month.

Buffalo Sabres
Phoenix Coyotes
Ice hockey


Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini, a Revolutionary in the Study of the Brain, Dies at 103

Abstract: Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini , a Nobel Prize -winning neurologist who discovered critical chemical tools that the body uses to direct cell growth and build nerve networks, opening the way for the study of how those processes can go wrong in diseases like dementia and cancer, died on Sunday at her home in Rome. She was 103. Her death was announced by Mayor Gianni Alemanno of Rome. “I don’t use these words easily, but her work revolutionized the study of neural development, from how we think about it to how we intervene,” said Dr. Gerald D. Fishbach, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at Columbia. Scientists had virtually no idea how embryo cells built a latticework of intricate connections to other cells when Dr. Levi-Montalcini began studying chicken embryos in the bedroom of her house in Turin, Italy, during World War II. After years of obsessive study, much of it at Washington University in St. Louis with Dr. Viktor Hamburger , she found a protein that, when released by cells, attracted nerve growth from nearby developing cells. In the early 1950s, she and Dr. Stanley Cohen , a biochemist also at Washington University, isolated and described the chemical, known as nerve growth factor — and in the process altered the study of cell growth and development. Scientists soon realized that the protein gave them a new way to study and understand disorders of neural growth, like cancer, or of degeneration, like Alzheimer’s disease, and to potentially develop therapies. In the years after the discovery, Dr. Levi-Montalcini, Dr. Cohen and others described a large family of such growth-promoting agents, each of which worked to regulate the growth of specific cells. One, called epidermal growth factor and discovered by Dr. Cohen, plays a central role in breast cancer; in part by studying its behavior, scientists developed drugs to combat the abnormal growth. In 1986, Dr. Levi-Montalcini and Dr. Cohen shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work. Dr. Cohen, now an emeritus professor at Vanderbilt University, said Dr. Levi-Montalcini possessed a rare combination of intuition and passion, as well as biological knowledge. “She had this feeling for what was happening biologically,” he said. “She was an intuitive observer, and she saw that something was making these nerve connections grow and was determined to find out what it was.” One of four children, Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin on April 22, 1909, to Adamo Levi, an engineer, and Adele Montalcini, a painter, both Italian Jews who traced their roots to the Roman Empire. In keeping with the Victorian customs of the time, Mr. Levi discouraged his three daughters from entering college, fearing that it would interfere with their lives as wives and mothers. It was not a future that Rita wanted. She had decided to become a doctor and told her father so. “He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation,” she wrote in her autobiography, “In Praise of Imperfection” (1988). He also agreed to support her. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin medical school in 1936. Two years later, Mussolini issued a manifesto barring non-Aryan Italians from having professional careers. She began her research anyway, setting up a small laboratory in her home to study chick embryos, inspired by the work of Dr. Hamburger, a prominent researcher in St. Louis who also worked with the embryos. During World War II, the family fled Turin for the countryside, and in 1943 the invasion by Germany forced them to Florence. The family returned at the close of the war, in 1945, and Dr. Hamburger soon invited Dr. Levi-Montalcini to work for a year in his lab at Washington University. She stayed on, becoming an associate professor in 1956 and a full professor in 1958. In 1962, she helped establish the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome and became its first director. She retired from Washington University in 1977, becoming a guest professor and splitting her time between Rome and St. Louis. Italy honored her in 2001 by making her a senator for life. An elegant presence, confident and passionate, she was a sought-after speaker until late in life. “At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20,” she said in 2009. She never married and had no children. In addition to her autobiography, she was the author or co-author of dozens of research studies and received numerous professional awards, including the National Medal of Science . “It is imperfection — not perfection — that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain,” Dr. Levi-Montalcini wrote in her autobiography, “and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.”

Levi-Montalcini Rita
Alzheimer's Disease
Deaths (Obituaries)
Medicine and Health


Zimmerman Back in Jail

Abstract: MIAMI — Six weeks after being released from jail on bond, George Zimmerman, who is facing second-degree murder charges in the death of Trayvon Martin , is back behind bars. Mr. Zimmerman turned himself in to the authorities in Sanford, Fla., early Sunday afternoon, according to a blog post from his lawyer, Mark M. O’Mara. A Seminole County Circuit Court judge, Kenneth R. Lester Jr., revoked his bond during a hearing on Friday and gave him 48 hours to surrender. In revoking the bond, Judge Lester found that Mr. Zimmerman had misled the court about his finances, with the help of his wife, during his April bond hearing. At the time, Mr. Zimmerman had access to as much as $135,000 from a PayPal account that collected donations through a legal defense Web site. But Mr. Zimmerman’s wife testified that she was unaware of how much money had been collected through the site. Because it was believed that Mr. Zimmerman had no money, he was released on a low bond of $150,000. At the hearing on Friday, prosecutors presented transcripts of telephone conversations between Mr. Zimmerman, who was in jail at the time of the talks, and his wife. The two were discussing in code what to do with the money, prosecutors said. Mr. O’Mara said that he was unaware of the money at the time of the first hearing and that he planned to ask for another bond hearing so that Mr. Zimmerman could explain himself to the judge. “Judge Lester runs a very tight courtroom, as well he should,” Mr. O’Mara said after the ruling. “He didn’t believe they were being as straightforward and honest as he wanted them to.” The death of Mr. Martin, 17, on Feb. 26 created a national controversy after the police declined to arrest Mr. Zimmerman for more than a month, raising questions about racial profiling and Florida’s self-defense law. Mr. Zimmerman said that the unarmed teenager attacked him and that he was in such fear for his life that he was forced to shoot Mr. Martin. Mr. Zimmerman had a license to carry a concealed weapon. While witnesses heard shouts and saw figures fighting outside their windows, the rain and darkness made it difficult to see clearly. As a result, Mr. Zimmerman’s account of what happened that evening as Mr. Martin walked through a gated community in Sanford back to the home of his father’s girlfriend is critical to Mr. Zimmerman’s self-defense case. Judge Lester’s reversal on the bond will allow prosecutors to cast doubt on Mr. Zimmerman’s version of events in the Martin case, experts said. “The fact George Zimmerman was dishonest is very important because his credibility is the most important thing in this entire case,” Benjamin Crump, the Martin family lawyer, said after the court session on Friday. Mr. O’Mara said that Mr. Zimmerman’s safety was still a concern. He has been in hiding since shortly after the shooting. While he was in jail awaiting his April bond hearing, he was kept in solitary confinement to protect him from other prisoners. “We are very concerned about safety still, and we will maintain that concern,” Mr. O’Mara said after learning his client would be forced to return to jail. “There are ongoing threats and concerns and complaints. I don’t know where along the spectrum they become true threats. We have begun to process and analyze a number of the statements he has given to the police.”

Zimmerman George
Martin Trayvon
Murders and Attempted Murders
Sanford (Fla)
Lester Kenneth R Jr


Protests Planned for Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street

Abstract: The crowd sat in a circle at the edge of Battery Park on Friday, as two young women held up a large map of the financial district that had been divided into sectors and marked with assembly points. They explained the plan for early Monday: protesters will gather at those points, then converge in an attempt to surround the New York Stock Exchange. “We want to to block all the access points leading to the stock exchange by linking arms and sitting,” said one of the women displaying the map. Over the next hour or so, those in the meeting discussed plans for the surrounding tactic, called the People’s Wall . One man announced that he represented a group of 30 to 40 people willing to stand in an intersection near the stock exchange. Another said he was part of a group that intended to hold a “roving birthday party” near Wall Street replete with confetti, cake and streamers. As the Occupy Wall Street protests reach their first anniversary on Monday, numerous activities have been planned to highlight issues like the presence of corporate money in politics, the foreclosure of homes and the type of risky speculation that caused JPMorgan Chase to lose as much as $9 billion this year betting on credit derivatives. “The issues that brought us together a year ago haven’t gone away,” said Amin Husain, an organizer of the recent meeting. “Things have only gotten worse.” Over the last few months, protesters have planned three days of events, using the title “All Roads Lead to Wall Street,” including marches, a Rosh Hashana service near Zuccotti Park and a concert in Foley Square featuring members of the Dead Kennedys, Sonic Youth and Rage Against the Machine. In a reprise of a tactic used in the spring , some protesters said they were sleeping at night on sidewalks outside of banks. As the protesters began gathering on Saturday, the police were present, too. When a crowd embarked upon a sidewalk march from Washington Square to Zuccotti Park on Saturday night, the police arrested about 15 people. Susan Howard of the National Lawyers Guild said that she had reports of an additional 22 arrests on Saturday, including 17 near Trinity Church, where protesters have been sleeping. She added that there were reports of 13 arrests near City Hall early Sunday morning. Later Sunday morning, witnesses said, the police arrested a small number of people during a march to protest the construction of a natural gas pipeline on the West Side of Manhattan. Just after the marchers arrived at Foley Square, police arrested an organizer, Aaron Black. Planning for what became the Occupy protests began in the summer of 2011 when a Canadian magazine, Adbusters , called for people to “flood into Lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street.” The police sealed off the heart of Wall Street last Sept. 17 and a few hundred protesters were able to set foot there only briefly . But the tents and kitchens eventually appeared nearby, in Zuccotti Park, and that camp was followed by more than 100 others across the country and overseas. In the weeks that followed, a signature phrase used by the protesters to refer to themselves, “the 99 percent,” became part of the political lexicon, and the topic of financial inequity became popular nationally. And Zuccotti Park, with its library, kitchen, clothing dispensary and bicycle-provided energy , became the center point of a populist movement that steered clear of both major political parties. The police sometimes arrested protesters in large numbers and in controversial circumstances. Then, in mid-November, hundreds of officers cleared Zuccotti Park, arresting about 200 people in the process and preventing many journalists from observing the operation clearly. Without a central gathering spot to draw participants and attention, the Occupy movement became less visible. Some people drifted away, exhausted by the effort of organizing. Some used connections formed at Occupy gatherings to join other projects, disrupting the auctions of foreclosed homes, participating in protests opposing the construction of a natural gas pipeline under the Hudson River that would terminate in the West Village, or planning a campaign to unify people affected by debt. While such undertakings continue, organizers said the anniversary presented a chance to reinvigorate participants who had not gathered for a large-scale public demonstration since May Day. “We want to show the world we are still here,” said Brendan Burke, an organizer. “And we still have momentum.”

Occupy Wall Street
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Banking and Financial Institutions
Financial District (NYC)


After Shooting, Merchant Is Hero of Arthur Avenue

Abstract: On Arthur Avenue, a group of men piled out of Pasquale’s Rigoletto restaurant onto the sidewalk to pay their respects to a sudden local hero. “Anthony, we love you,” they shouted across the street. They summed up the local sentiment about a man, Anthony Spinelli, celebrated for protecting his livelihood. On Wednesday, Mr. Spinelli pulled one of two licensed guns in the store, and shot one of the three people suspected of trying to rob his Arthur Avenue jewelry store at gunpoint. The Bronx neighborhood seemed energized by the event, which people here saw as a testament to the toughness of one of the last Italian neighborhoods in New York City. “You don’t come in and try to take a man’s livelihood,” said Nick Lousido, who called himself a neighborhood regular. “His family’s store has 50 years on this block, they’re going to come in and rob him?” On Thursday, Mr. Spinelli, 49, had returned to his shop and sized up the broken front windows and the mess inside. He said that a man and woman had entered his store, and the man had held a gun to his head while the woman had gone through jewelry drawers and stuffed jewelry into a bag. He said he had feared for his life, and that he was still shaken. “You go into survival mode,” he said. “You think of the other people in your life. My birthday’s coming up, and I thought I may not live to see my birthday.” Mr. Spinelli shot a third person who was outside the store, apparently acting as a lookout, the police said. The armed robber inside had forced him to open a safe, the police said, which was where he kept a pistol. Holding a gun, he chased the robbers out. The two people who had been in the store jumped into a nearby car and escaped, but the third person, Steven Hall, 43, fell to the sidewalk after being shot in the leg. He was in stable condition at St. Barnabas Hospital, and has not yet been charged. At a news conference on Thursday, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said the police conferred with prosecutors and decided that charging Mr. Spinelli criminally was not “appropriate under the circumstances.” “He was threatened with the use of deadly force and he responded, and citizens, you know, have certain obligations under the law, and he did not violate the responsibilities of obligations that citizens have under the penal law,” Mr. Kelly said. However, Mr. Spinelli was given a summons on an administrative code violation related to the gun he fired; it was licensed in Westchester County, not in New York City. On Thursday, Mr. Spinelli did not strut or brag or gloat. He did not have to. The trash-talking was done by a contingent of locals who milled around the store as if taking a victory lap. They praised Mr. Spinelli as a hero. “They picked on the wrong guy, and they got what they deserved,” said a 59-year-old man who refused to give his name but said he was a lifelong resident of Arthur Avenue. “Of all the neighborhoods in the city, they picked this one? Bad move. The way we grew up here, you don’t take nothing from us. Let them come back again. You’ll find them swimming with the fishes.” Like other residents, he spoke of the audacity of “outsiders” coming into the tight-knit neighborhood and robbing a store in broad daylight, on a bustling block dense with restaurants, bakeries and cheese shops. Next door to Mr. Spinelli’s shop is M & M Painter Supplies, which has photographs of Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa next to a paint color chart on the wall. “He’s a very brave man,” said the store owner, Ernie Verino. “He had the gun, and it takes guts to use it.”

Arthur Avenue
Robberies and Thefts
Bronx (NYC)
Spinelli Anthony


Rice Keeps Rambling, and Rutgers Keeps Rolling

Abstract: PISCATAWAY, N.J., Sept. 7 (AP) — It took Ray Rice only two carries against Navy to become Rutgers’s career leading rusher. The 15th-ranked Scarlet Knights had to work a lot longer and needed some big plays from their defense to finally put away from the stubborn Midshipmen. Rice rushed for 175 yards and 2 touchdowns, and caught a touchdown pass, and the defense intercepted three passes and made a big fourth-quarter stand in a 41-24 victory Friday night. “You know, that’s Navy, that’s what they are all about,” Rutgers quarterback Mike Teel said. “They hang tough, and they’ll fight to the end of the game. Give them credit, but give us credit too, for punching right back. We answered right back and our defense did a great job, too.” The night, though, belonged to Rice, who finished seventh in last year’s Heisman Trophy voting. He scored on runs of 4 and 2 yards and caught his first touchdown pass on a 22-yard catch and run from Teel late in the first half. Rice surpassed Terrell Willis’s rushing record of 3,114 yards with a 19-yard run on his second carry and put the game away with his short touchdown run on his 37th and final carry of the night. “It was coming sooner or later,” Teel said of the record. “He deserves everything he’s got, including the record. He is a tremendous football player, the heart and soul of the offense, and when we needed a play he was there to make a play. He trains for games like this.” Rice said that winning the game and helping Rutgers to a 2-0 start was more important than the record. “None of my individual stats mean that much,” said Rice, who has 3,273 yards rushing in his career. “It’s just another stat in the book. To do it here at Rutgers and have everyone supporting you is great.” Teel, who was 14 of 19 passing for 266 yards, also threw a 12-yard touchdown pass to Shamar Graves and clinched the victory with a 53-yard touchdown pass to Kenny Britt with 9 minutes 5 seconds to play. Jeremy Ito kicked field goals of 28 and 20 yards as the Scarlet Knights won their ninth straight game at home despite 11 penalties for 100 yards. Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada tossed a 3-yard touchdown pass to Reggie Campbell and scored on a 2-yard run, but he became the first Navy quarterback in 10 years to be intercepted three times in a game. And each interception was costly for the Midshipmen (1-1). “For us to be successful, we need to run the football and we need to take care of the football,” Navy Coach Paul Johnson said. “Those are the two things we’ve got to do well. We ran the football O.K. tonight; we missed some stuff in the passing game.” George Johnson got the first interception at the Navy 24 in the first quarter with Rutgers ahead, 7-0. It set up Rice’s first touchdown. With Navy trailing, 17-7, late in the first half, Kaheaku-Enhada, who had thrown one interception in his past 56 attempts, drove the Middies to the Rutgers 4. On second-and-goal, linebacker Damaso Muñoz put pressure on Kaheaku-Enhada, who threw the ball right to Rutgers safety Ron Girault in the end zone. Rutgers went 80 yards on the ensuing possession and opened a 24-7 lead when Rice scored on the screen pass with 34 seconds left in the half. Kaheaku-Enhada scored on the opening possession of the second half to cut the lead to 24-14, and cornerback Ketric Buffin intercepted Teel on the Scarlet Knights’ next possession, giving Navy the ball at the Rutgers 34. The Middies got a first down at the Rutgers 22, but Kaheaku-Enhada tried play-action after a time out and was intercepted in the back of the end zone by safety Courtney Greene. Kaheaku-Enhada completed 5 of 12 passes for 35 yards. “Navy is a tough, tough outfit,” Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano said. “I’m glad we have the victory and have this behind us.”

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey


Mubarak Is on Life Support, Egypt Security Officials Say

Abstract: CAIRO — Former President Hosni Mubarak ’s health deteriorated rapidly and he was rushed to a military hospital on Tuesday, adding to the uncertainty gripping the nation as the ousted strongman’s longtime opponents, the Muslim Brotherhood , battled his onetime allies in the military for political power. There were conflicting reports about Mr. Mubarak’s condition. Government officials and the state news agency initially said that Mr. Mubarak, 84, had suffered cardiac arrest and a stroke in prison and had been declared “clinically dead” after being taken to a military hospital overlooking the Nile. Other reports said he had been placed on life support. But by early Wednesday, an Interior Ministry spokesman said he was in critical condition but alive. Mr. Mubarak had been in a prison medical ward since the beginning of the month, when he was given a life sentence in connection with the killing of demonstrators during the 18 days of protests that ended his rule. The news of his failing health spread quickly through Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the uprising, where tens of thousands of people were protesting the military council governing Egypt . In recent days, the generals had moved to seize the kind of uncontested authority that the former president wielded during his nearly three decades in power. The confusion over his health injected new volatility into the country’s growing political and constitutional crisis, even as the two candidates to replace Mr. Mubarak as president both declared themselves the winners of the weekend’s election. Analysts marveled that Mr. Mubarak had lost consciousness at the climactic moment of the struggle over the future of the system he had defined for so long, and just two days after the vote to choose his successor. “It is very Shakespearean,” said Diaa Rashwan, an analyst at Al Ahram Center, a state-financed research institute. “To himself, he is eternal. There can be nobody after him. He does not want to hear the name of his successor.” On Monday, Mohamed Morsi , a Brotherhood leader, said he had won Egypt’s first competitive presidential election, beating Ahmed Shafik , Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, with 52 percent of the vote. The votes were counted publicly at the polling stations, and Egyptian state news media reported the same count as the Brotherhood. Official vote results are expected to be announced this week, but on Tuesday, Mr. Shafik disputed several of the tallies, including those reported in the state news media, that forecast Mr. Morsi as the winner. A spokesman for Mr. Shafik, Ahmad Sarhan, said without explanation that he had won with 51.5 percent of the vote. But that announcement seemed another tactic in a battle that began before voters went to the polls. Last week, the generals dissolved Parliament, which was dominated by the Brotherhood, saying the move was justified because of a decision by a court of judges appointed by Mr. Mubarak. The generals also proceeded to issue their own interim constitution, entrenching their power while all but eviscerating the authority of the new president. The interim constitution also provided the generals and the Mubarak-appointed judiciary with broad sway over the drafting of Egypt’s next permanent constitution. Former President Jimmy Carter , whose Carter Center monitored the election, said in a statement on Tuesday he was “deeply troubled by the undemocratic turn that Egypt has taken.” The center expressed its “grave concern about the broader political and constitutional context, which calls into question the meaning and purpose of the elections.” Mr. Carter said that in contrast to the first round of voting last month, some international observers had been subjected to “heightened scrutiny and intimidation from military personnel” during last weekend’s vote. “There was a small but notable pattern of intimidation of Carter Center witnesses,” Mr. Carter said. The military filmed observers at several polling places, and one international observer felt coerced to make positive statements about the process. Mr. Carter said he was also concerned about the limitations put on his teams’ ability to monitor the vote and the ballot counting. The “restrictions are contrary to the core principles of credible and effective election observation,” he said in the statement. “The Carter Center will not witness future elections in such circumstances.” But the Brotherhood was not about to walk away, and it vowed to use the legitimacy of the election to rally the public and fight for power. It called for large street protests until the generals backed down, and on Tuesday tens of thousands of protesters poured into Tahrir Square in response. As the crowd swelled, a protest leader issued a warning to the military, whose forces had surrounded the Parliament building to prevent elected members from entering. “We’re giving the forces now standing in front of the Parliament until the official results are announced,” he said, referring to the official election count. “After the official results, if one soldier is standing there — ” he said, his voice drowned out by the crowd. “The struggle starts now,” said Mohammed Gamal, one of the protesters. “The people’s legitimacy will not be canceled out by the greed of old generals.” As Mr. Gamal spoke, Mr. Mubarak was being transferred by ambulance to a hospital. Officials and the state news media said that his health had deteriorated rapidly, that he had gone into cardiac arrest and that he needed defibrillation , before suffering the stroke. Mr. Mubarak was last seen in public 17 days ago when he was sentenced to life. Though the judge had pronounced him responsible for a “dark, dark, dark” era of crimes and said he was broadly responsible for the killings, the verdict was followed by days of street protests. It appeared the judge paved the way for Mr. Mubarak to appeal by saying that prosecutors had shown no evidence linking Mr. Mubarak to the killings. His questionable conviction, and earlier reports that Mr. Mubarak might be released from the hospital because of his health, became a major issue in the runoff to succeed him. His health had also declined rapidly after his sentencing, when he was flown by helicopter from the courthouse to a hospital ward in a notorious prison where his government’s political prisoners had served their sentences. The subject of Mr. Mubarak’s health was a taboo subject, punishable by prison time, when he was president. The flood of reports after his imprisonment led many to speculate that the ruling generals were testing the public reaction in case they decided to move the former president out of prison to the relative comfort of the military hospital. Mr. Mubarak’s lawyer told CNN on Tuesday that his wife, Suzanne Mubarak, was by his side, and he expressed anger that Egypt’s military rulers had not moved him to the hospital sooner. It will be their responsibility “if he dies,” the lawyer said. In Tahrir Square, the news of Mr. Mubarak’s health was met with familiar doubts. “They say Mubarak really died,” said Hatem Moustafa, 22. “Maybe this time it is really true.” But he was not convinced. “I think the military council is saying this so that we will leave Tahrir Square,” Mr. Moustafa said. “They would say anything to get us to leave the Square.”

Egypt
Cairo
Hosni Mubarak
Tahrir Square
Mohamed Morsi
Ahmed Shafik
Arab Spring
Muslim Brotherhood Egypt


Federer Cruises Past Nadal at ATP World Tour Finals

Abstract: LONDON (AP) — Roger Federer turned his high-profile, season-ending match against Rafael Nadal on Sunday into little more than an exhibition. Federer gave Nadal little chance to mount a challenge in their 22nd meeting, winning his fifth season-ending title, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, at the ATP World Tour Finals. Federer won 92 percent of the points played on his first serve in the final and lost only 13 points on serve in the entire match. “I was able to stay offensive; rallies were never that long,” said Federer, who has won the season-ending tournament in Houston, Shanghai and London. “That kind of maybe frustrated him.” The top-ranked Nadal, who won the French Open , Wimbledon and the United States Open this year, was able to break Federer once in the second set, but he appeared to tire as the match wore on. On Saturday, Nadal spent more then three hours and three sets beating Andy Murray to reach the final of the tournament for the first time. “I know I didn’t spoil his vacation after this because he’s had an amazing year,” Federer said. “A year that any player dreams of.” Nadal is now 14-8 against Federer, who swept Novak Djokovic on Saturday to reach the final. In Grand Slam finals, Nadal is 5-2 against Federer, but Federer has beaten Nadal all three times they have faced each other in the final tournament of the season. In the first set Sunday at O2 Arena, Federer lost only three points on his serve and broke Nadal once. The decisive shift came early in the third set with Nadal serving and trailing, 2-1. He took a 40-15 lead when Federer sent a return long, but Federer then reeled off the next four points — the last when Nadal sent a forehand wide — to earn the break and essentially end Nadal’s chances of winning. On match point, Federer hit a forehand winner on the line, but the crowd, which apparently thought the ball was out, grew quiet. Then Nadal started going to the net to shake hands with Federer, who raised his arms in victory to set off a standing ovation. “Everybody saw the match of yesterday, so everybody’s free to think his own opinion,” Nadal said. “I’m not going to say I lost the match because I was tired. What I’m going to say and what I feel is I lost the match because I played against a very good Roger Federer in one of his favorite surfaces. And when he’s playing like this, it’s very difficult to stop him, no?”

Federer Roger
Nadal Rafael
Association of Tennis Professionals
Tennis
London (England)


Liberty Relying on Epiphanny Prince to Return to Her Old Ways

Abstract: Once upon a lifetime ago, Epiphanny Prince scored 113 points in a high school basketball game. Her phenomenal performance in 2006 broke a record set by Cheryl Miller, who had scored 105 points. Nearly a decade later, the 27-year-old Prince has become the catalyst for an inspired playoff push by the Liberty. With a young team driven by Prince and Tina Charles, the Liberty, largely ignored and marginalized by the news media, are in position to scream for attention. In February, Prince was traded to the Liberty from the Chicago Sky in exchange for Cappie Pondexter. The deal has worked out for both teams. Pondexter is from Chicago, Prince from New York, and the Sky and the Liberty could meet in the W.N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference finals. Who should get the credit for bringing Prince home? Regardless of whether General Manager Kristin Bernert made the call or whether it was the team president Isiah Thomas, Prince’s presence has been a revelation. The Liberty, who begin their playoff run on Friday at Madison Square Garden, are the top seed in the Eastern Conference for the first time since 2002 and have clinched home-court advantage throughout the playoffs for the first time in team history. Prince is not the only reason for the Liberty’s success. Charles is a perennial candidate for the Most Valuable Player Award, and Carolyn Swords, in her first season back after sitting out a season with a variety of injuries, has given the Liberty a tough inside presence, both scoring and rebounding. But Prince, who grew up at the Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, has given the Liberty the look and feel of a professional team that belongs at the Garden. She missed the first 10 games of the season because of her basketball obligations in Russia, where she has played in recent off-seasons. The Liberty went 6-4, but since her return, they have gone 17-7. Without Prince, Charles averaged 15.1 points per game and shot 38.7 percent from the field. With Prince, Charles averaged 18.9 points per game and shot 49.4 percent from the field. But the impact of Prince, who has averaged 15 points a game, goes beyond numbers. “What she brings us is the spirit of New York basketball,” the veteran Liberty guard Candice Wiggins said. Wiggins, who won a W.N.B.A. title as a member of the Minnesota Lynx, called Prince “hands down one of the most talented players that I have watched or witnessed.” After a recent practice, Prince said, “Whatever they ask me to do, I’ll do.” That is all well and good, but Liberty Coach Bill Laimbeer wants more from Prince. Asked what he wanted her to do, Laimbeer smiled and said, “Show me the 113.” “She’s a reluctant great player,” he said. “She could be so much better if she wanted to go out there and be the star.” Laimbeer, who was named the W.N.B.A.’s coach of the year on Thursday, continued, “How do you score 113 points in a high school game and don’t come out and try to drop 30 every game on somebody’s head?” The answer is complicated and has a lot to do with evolution. My first exposure to Prince came in January 2005, when her Murry Bergtraum High School team beat my daughter’s team by dozens of points and Prince scored her usual 45 or 50. Her evolution over the next decade would be dramatic. It had little to do with basketball skills and more to with life — Brooklyn to Rutgers to Russia — and learning to do whatever it took to persevere. “Really just becoming a professional,” Prince said the other day. “Learning there was so much more to basketball than playing basketball, than just playing the game.” Prince said it took her nearly five years, starting with her matriculation at Rutgers, to learn, for example, that she had to take care of her body — “that I needed to eat better and work out more and get my body into a pro body.” When she looked back at her high-scoring days at Murry Bergtraum, Prince made an astonishing discovery. “I was fat,” she said. “I have the pictures. I was scoring points, so nobody would tell me I was fat.” Finally at Rutgers, Prince was told by Coach C. Vivian Stringer that she had to get herself in better shape and monitor what she put in her body. But it wasn’t until she arrived in Russia that Prince began to put fitness first to get a pro body. Laimbeer wants the lighter, leaner, 5-foot-9, 155-pound Prince to score in bushels. This will be a necessity if the Liberty hope to make noise and elicit more than shrugs from potential fans. “I don’t care if she goes 10 for 25 in a game,” Laimbeer said. “We need that 10. That will eventually come out of her. I hope.” Maybe it will come in time for the Liberty to make a run for the title, maybe not. “We have to win,” said Laimbeer, who won three W.N.B.A. titles as the Detroit Shock’s coach. “But we started something with this franchise. We started the path.” Prince, who broke a high school scoring record nearly a decade ago, can be the unlikely trailblazer on that path for a team and a league.

Epiphanny Prince
Basketball
Tina Charles
Bill Laimbeer
New York Liberty


Leaders Deny Report of a Truce in Mideast Violence

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Islamic Jihad, the militant group responsible for firing dozens of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, announced Thursday that Egypt had intervened to restore calm, offering what at first looked like a familiar resolution to an escalation of violence that had shaken both sides of the border. But Hamas, the militant Palestinian faction that has ruled Gaza since 2007, said it knew of no such truce, a sign of just how much has changed in recent times in the coastal enclave. Throughout the evening, about a dozen more rockets were launched by smaller cells in Gaza, showing how those changes could affect events on the ground. Israel responded around midnight by bombing seven more Gaza sites, the military said. A weakened Hamas has struggled to maintain control since Egypt’s military ousted that nation’s Islamist leaders last summer. Since then, Gaza and its 1.7 million residents have become increasingly isolated and desperate as Egypt shut down hundreds of smuggling tunnels, frequently closed its border crossings and declared Hamas a terror organization. Unemployment is at 39 percent, fuel shortages have led to half-day blackouts, prices for staples are soaring, and travel is thwarted. Hamas has faced mounting challenges from its political rival, Fatah, the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, and a host of less organized radical groups. The upset to the status quo, experts said, may force Israel to rethink its longstanding deterrence strategy, known as cutting the grass, occasional incursions carefully calculated not to create too much chaos. “It’s quite clear for Israel that the balance of power in Gaza is changing, and not to a very optimistic direction,” said Shaul Shay, director of research at the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “Israel and Hamas both have no interest in escalation, but there are other parties that are playing in the Gaza Strip, other bad guys.” Tony Blair, the Middle East peace envoy, said the rocket strikes “underline and illustrate the depth of the problem.” “One thing we are going to need, medium- and long-term,” he told reporters in Jerusalem on Thursday, “is a completely new strategy toward Gaza.” After an hourlong barrage of more than 60 Islamic Jihad rockets Wednesday afternoon, which had followed Israeli strikes in Gaza, Israel on Wednesday night bombed what it called 29 “terror sites” across Gaza. It was by far the most intense exchange since the cease-fire that ended eight days of violence in November 2012. But the only reported injury was to an Israeli woman who fell while running for cover. Hostilities continued Thursday: Israeli airstrikes hit nine targets near the southern border town of Rafah, injuring three, after two rockets from Gaza hit open areas in the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod, sending panicked parents to pick up children early from schools. Image Israeli soldiers stood by the Iron Dome, Israel’s rocket interceptor system, near the southern city of Ashkelon on Thursday. Credit David Buimovitch/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “Our policy in the south is clear: We will strike at anyone who tries to attack us, and will respond forcefully to any attack,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declared at a Thursday morning appearance here. “It would be worthwhile for terrorists in the Gaza Strip to start internalizing the fact that they have an issue here with a very determined government and a very strong military.” Then, around 3 p.m., Islamic Jihad announced an Egyptian-brokered truce on Facebook. “It’s the same 2012 agreement, but today it was emphasized,” Nafez Azzam, one of the group’s leaders, explained in an interview. “We are committed to the cease-fire as long as Israel is.” But Israeli and Hamas officials denied the cease-fire, and there was no report of it on Egyptian state news media. Over the next seven hours, the Israeli military reported 10 more rockets fired from Gaza. The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for eight of them, and Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for two. No injuries were reported in Israel, but one rocket fell on a house in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, wounding a woman and two children. “This put Hamas in an embarrassing situation,” said Akram Attalah, a Gaza-based political analyst. “Hamas has always wanted to be the first force when it comes to fighting against Israel. Now, the Iranian money and military aid go to Islamic Jihad, not for Hamas. Islamic Jihad is making progress and growing, while Hamas doesn’t appear as a resistance group.” With President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority scheduled to visit the White House on Monday, Palestinian leaders accused Israel of purposely escalating the violence this week in hopes it would make Washington pressure Mr. Abbas to extend the peace talks that started last summer. Some Israelis, however, argued that the Gaza factions might be using the rockets to derail the talks. In Gaza on Thursday, many residents seemed more worried about an electricity crisis caused by Israel’s closing of its commercial crossing than about airstrikes. There was a sense of solidarity and pride on the streets. Ahmed Yousef, a Gaza-based analyst close to the Hamas leadership, said that Hamas had tried to maintain calm through a council of Gaza-based militant groups, but that Egypt’s economic stranglehold on the strip, coupled with this week’s Israeli killings, stirred things up. “The people are so angry, so upset, so frustrated — we are not going to die gradually by sanction and restriction,” Mr. Yousef said. “We are squeezed to the corner.” Giora Eiland, a fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said that after years of battling Hamas, Israel now finds itself in the strange situation of needing to shore it up as the best of bad options. “The Israeli interest should be that Hamas is strong enough and stable enough and can maintain its power and can enforce law and order in Gaza,” said Mr. Eiland, a former national security adviser and retired army general. “At the end of the day, Hamas is the only organization that has some kind of government accountability, and the more accountability they have, the more careful they will be.”

Israel
Gaza Strip
Hamas
Palestinians
Military
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Israeli settlement


Following in the Wake of Oars and Paintbrush

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — WHEN rowers descend here next weekend for the Thomas Eakins Head of the Schuylkill Regatta , they’ll be racing in a riverscape brought to life in Eakins’s celebrated rowing paintings. Eakins took great pride in his city, the backdrop for most of his life and work. In a letter from Paris in 1866, shortly after he arrived to study, he wrote that he felt “6 feet and 6 inches high” whenever he told Frenchmen about Philadelphia. He added: “Many young men after living here a short time do not like America. I am sure they have not known as I have the many reasonable enjoyments to be had there, the skating, the boating on our river, the beautiful walks in every direction.” Eakins made his rowing pictures in Philadelphia between 1871 and 1874, and although he produced fewer than a dozen oils and watercolors on the theme, they are among his most popular paintings. “The Pair-Oared Shell,” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is the only one in this city. I’ve returned to see it dozens of times since my childhood, and it comes to mind whenever I’m paddling or rowing on any river, lake or ocean. The painting’s magnetic pull comes from its tangibly realistic rendering of two rowers in their shell passing under a bridge, bathed in early evening light. What drew Eakins to this scene and to rowing pictures? For some answers, I hit the Eakins trail, choosing a sea kayak to navigate a stretch of river known even today for its world-class rowers. (This year alone, the city is host to 44 regattas.) It’s also possible to explore on foot and bicycle via the Schuylkill River Trail. The logical starting place to take a stroke in Eakins’s waters is Boathouse Row, in Fairmount Park, the nerve center of rowing. It’s where Eakins, an amateur rower, would have put in. (His family’s home, with a fourth-floor studio where he did most of his painting, is on Mount Vernon Street, within walking distance; it’s now home to the city’s Mural Arts Program, but the friendly staff has been known to give informal tours.) I wanted to follow suit. Lloyd Hall, at 1 Boathouse Row, is advertised as “ Philadelphia’s only public boathouse .” But when I ambled up to the river’s edge one recent afternoon, I found a dock with no gangplank; although some public-school groups and rowing classes put in at Lloyd Hall, it’s not the city’s recommended access point for solo boaters. Image A pier from an earlier version of the Columbia Bridge casts a shadow in Thomas Eakins’s painting “The Pair-Oared Shell.” Credit The Philadelphia Museum of Art Thwarted, I headed to the nearby Undine Barge Club. Frank Furness was a principal architect of this boathouse, as he was for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Eakins taught and served as director. Outside, a young man was loading his 26-foot racing shell on top of his car as rush-hour traffic whizzed by. He was Charlie Biddle, 27, training for the United States national team, and after I shared my problem about where to put in — except for Lloyd Hall, the dozen or so boathouses on the Row are private — he invited me to kayak from the club on another day. Philadelphia, after all, is the city of brotherly love. Eakins’s interest in painting rowing scenes may have emerged from his studies in Paris with Jean-Léon Gérôme, who painted oarsmen rowing on the Nile . The sport was also new in America, presenting a fresh subject for an artist eager to make his mark. “He loved the subject of rowing,” said Kathleen Foster, senior curator of American art at the Philadelphia Museum. She added that Eakins also loved how rowing provided “beautiful bodies in the outdoors, and a huge opportunity for figure painting.” To figure out how to render the long, slender racing shells in space, Eakins made the most detailed perspective drawings of his career. “A boat is the hardest thing I know of to put into perspective,” Eakins told his art students. “It is so much like the human figure. There is something alive about it.” Two large preparatory drawings for “The Pair-Oared Shell” (which can be viewed by appointment in the museum’s prints and drawings room) reveal how Eakins approached the shell — not just the rowers — as a portrait. One drawing positions the shell and oars on a checkerboard grid in relation to a pier from the Schuylkill’s Columbia Bridge. There’s even a shadow line on the bow of the boat that one scholar used to calculate the position of the sun and the time of day (around 7:20 p.m., in the early summer). The other drawing adds two rowers — and watercolor — in a mesmerizing study of how to render reflections in the ripples on the water. Image Another view of the Columbia Bridge. Credit Joyce Dopkeen for The New York Times On the appointed day, I launched from Undine’s dock into the brown waters of the Schuylkill (pronounced SCHOOL-kul). Mr. Biddle was in his racing shell, and I was taking my first strokes in the Focus, a new Wilderness Systems sea kayak designed for fitness paddling that the maker had sent me to test out. My mission was to paddle around three nearby bridges whose precursors featured prominently in Eakins’s work. (The locations are the same, the bridges have been updated.) I immediately noticed how the kayak cuts through the water, moving more effortlessly than other, more traditional sea kayaks that I’ve paddled recently. The Focus is a 15-foot plastic boat — with ample hatch storage space for an overnight weekend trip — that weighs 50 pounds and is meant to be easy to carry, to load on a car and to store. The thigh and hip braces made for a snug fit in the cockpit, which gave me a boost and helped make my paddling strokes more efficient. The rudder was also handy for keeping me on course when the wind or current picked up, or when I was trying to chase Mr. Biddle, who typically rows up to 22 miles a day in a sleek white Italian racing shell with a blue stripe. He introduced me to the rules of the river road that have been around since Eakins’s day. Head upstream on the west side and downstream on the east. This is especially important, since rowers face backward and kayakers forward: you want to avoid a jousting match with a high school shell powered by eight rowers and a coxswain. Our first stop was the Girard Avenue Bridge and the adjacent Connecting Railroad Bridge. The river scene (looking south, downstream) served as the backdrop for Eakins’s first finished work in the series: “ The Champion Single Sculls .” It’s a portrait of Eakins’s high school friend Max Schmitt, who had won a single-scull competition in October 1870, and it includes a self-portrait of Eakins rowing. The painting is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As an Amtrak train heading south from New York rumbled over the stone masonry arch bridge, I paused to watch a merganser dive into the dark waters. Continuing upstream, rounding a sharp bend in the river, I saw the Columbia Bridge looming, hawks circling above. This setting (the current bridge was built in the 1920s) captured Eakins’s eye; one pier of the previous bridge figures prominently in “The Pair-Oared Shell.” Eakins’s friends the brothers John and Barney Biglin were the professional rowers in that painting, and Mr. Biddle offered the best explanation for their focused posture as he talked about racing. “You’re really kind of oriented to your task,” he said. “You have to pay attention to all these things you can’t see.” Image Credit The New York Times In the midafternoon, I had the bridge practically to myself, and I couldn’t help paddling figure eights through the piers and their reflections and shadows. Before heading back downstream, I looked through the bridge and across to the west bank, where a green swath of trees dominates the view — just as it does in the painting. At that moment, I recalled what Elizabeth Milroy, an expert on Fairmount Park at the Philadelphia Museum, told me: “Once you’re on the river, there’s no city.” I floated in the waters, watching various rowers pass momentarily through the darkness into sparkling light. Eakins captured moments like these in his paintings: the light, the water, the shell, the rowers and the park. It’s all still here in Philadelphia. You can find it on the river. How to Roll on the River PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway; (215) 763-8100, philamuseum.org . PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS 118 and 128 North Broad Street; (215) 972-7600, pafa.org . The academy and the Philadelphia Museum together have the largest holdings of Eakins work in this country. THOMAS EAKINS HOME 1729 Mount Vernon Street; (215) 685-0750, muralarts.org . BOATHOUSE ROW The Schuylkill Navy posts information on all regattas in Philadelphia, as well as safety information and rules; boathouserow.org . PUBLIC DOCKS There is supposed to be a public gangway at Lloyd Hall on Boathouse Row, but the Parks Department recommends the dock just south of Columbia Bridge on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive for weekdays, and the dock south of Strawberry Mansion Bridge on Kelly Drive for weekends; phila.gov/parksandrecreation . BOATS Wilderness Systems’ Focus, the kayak I tested, retails for $1,639; wildernesssytems.com . There are no boat rentals on this section of the river. Eastern Mountain Sports, at 525 West Lancaster Avenue, in Haverford, is the closest outfitter for kayaks ($50 a day includes boat, life jackets, paddle and roof ties with foam blocks); (610) 520-8000. MAPS AND CONDITIONS schuylkillriver.org ; phillyrivercast.org . MORE INFORMATION Budget at least one and a half hours for the three-mile round-trip paddle from Columbia Bridge to Boathouse Row. Stay close to the east bank when approaching the Row, as there is a low-head dam just downstream, an extreme hazard. For a longer, seven-mile round-trip excursion to see other bridges that Eakins studied, head north from Columbia Bridge to Manayunk. Tie up at the Manayunk Brewing Company’s dock, about a mile north of the Philadelphia Canoe Club, at the confluence of Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill, for a lunch break. Manayunk Brewing Company, 4120 Main Street; (215) 482-8220. JOSHUA BROCKMAN

Philadelphia
Rowing
Thomas Eakins
Art
Schuylkill River Pennsylvania


News From the Advertising Industry

Abstract: Accounts ¶LPL Financial, a brokerage firm that is part of LPL Financial Holdings, Boston, chose Bernstein-Rein, Kansas City, Mo., as agency of record. The account had been handled by the Richards Group, Dallas. Billings were not disclosed. ¶Mobli, New York, which offers a mobile photo- and video-sharing app, named Duval Guillaume Modem, Antwerp, Belgium, as its agency, creating campaigns aimed at increasing awareness and downloads of the app. Spending has not been determined. Duval Guillaume Modem has become known internationally for offbeat campaigns to introduce the TNT channel — part of the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner — in Belgium and the Netherlands . ¶Smokey Bones Bar and Fire Grill, Orlando, Fla., part of Sun Capital Partners, selected Brokaw, Cleveland, as agency of record. Billings were not disclosed. The assignment had been handled by Pyro, part of the Richards Group, Dallas. ¶ Chill Foundation , Burlington, Vt., which was started by the Burton Corporation, hired TDA_Boulder, Boulder, Colo., as its first agency of record. Spending was not disclosed. People ¶Peter Gardiner, partner and chief media officer at Deutsch New York, is leaving, he and the agency said, to pursue entrepreneurial interests and investments in the media and technology fields. Mr. Gardiner joined Deutsch New York in 2000. The agency said it would announce this week its plans for his post. Deutsch New York is part of the Deutsch division of Lowe & Partners, which is owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies. ¶Mark Cadman joined BBDO North America, part of the BBDO Worldwide division of the Omnicom Group, as executive vice president and managing director on the AT&T account, overseeing work handled by BBDO offices in Atlanta, New York and San Francisco. He will report to Troy Ruhanen, chairman and chief executive for the Americas at BBDO, who had previously been the lead executive on the AT&T account. Mr. Cadman had been chief executive at Publicis Seattle, part of the Publicis Worldwide division of the Publicis Groupe; he is being succeeded there by Scott Foreman, who had been managing director at Publicis Seattle since 2010. ¶Stuart Sproule joined the Digital Arts Network unit of TBWA Worldwide, New York, part of the Omnicom Group, as president, succeeding Charles Clapshaw, who is on sabbatical until the summer for personal reasons, the agency said, and will not return to the post. Mr. Sproule had been managing director for international operations and talent at AKQA, part of WPP. ¶Craig Waller, chief marketing officer at Pace Communications, Greensboro, N.C., was named president, assuming the post from Bonnie McElveen Hunter, who continues as chairwoman and chief executive. Also, Leigh Ann Klee, chief financial officer, takes on added duties of chief operating officer, which is a new post. ¶Michael Lemme, chief creative officer at Duncan/Channon, San Francisco, was named the agency’s fourth partner, joining Andy Berkenfield, chief executive; Parker Channon, executive creative director; and Robert Duncan, president. Miscellany ¶CTCreative, St. Charles, Ill., was renamed the Valcort Group. ¶JWT, New York, part of WPP, said it would operate Walter, a “pop-up” agency, from Friday through March 12 at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Tex. The name Walter invokes the “W” in “JWT,” which was formerly known as J. Walter Thompson after its founder.

advertising,marketing
Appointments and Executive Changes


Takeover of Kenmore Hotel: Informer Recalls His Complicity

Abstract: It was as if the Fifth Infantry Division had come marching down East 23rd Street. Late in the morning of June 8, 1994, police officers, federal marshals and F.B.I. agents invaded one of New York City’s grand temples of dysfunction: the 22-story, 641-room ulcer known as the Kenmore Hotel. They ran into the lobby, which stank of mildew and urine. They ran up the stairs, as crack vials crackled beneath their feet. They battered down doors and rousted residents in that vast rabbit warren. They arrested 18 tenants on charges of drug dealing; the tenants sat, dazed, in handcuffs on the sidewalk. The takeover of the Kenmore was at the time the largest federal forfeiture to fight drug dealing in American history. “The Kenmore Hotel has been permeated by violence and become a virtual supermarket of crack cocaine,” Mary Jo White, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, told reporters. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo visited the scene and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani held an all-points press conference. Why not? It was liberation. There is another, more unsettling version. Two police informers now claim that the conquest of the Kenmore was a dirty victory, another chapter in an era in which the police and prosecutors fought a blood tide of homicides, crack and heroin, and too often took disturbing liberties. We love to congratulate ourselves on New York’s global reputation as a safe, even pasteurized metropolis. The informer’s tale suggests that the trail the city traveled had more disquieting byways than we realized. A confidential informer, a man whose career in snitching for the police and federal agencies extends back to the Watergate era, said the assault on the Kenmore was constructed of illegalities. This informer, Earl Robert Merritt, described how he had worked with narcotics officers — before and after the takeover — to frame more than 150 Kenmore residents as dealers. “I planted drugs, I planted guns, I made false reports,” Mr. Merritt said. “I was given a list — little stars by the list of tenants who I was supposed to set up.” “I helped send hundreds of people out in handcuffs,” he added, “and I’d say 80 percent were innocent.” Mr. Merritt, 70, who hobbles about with wrecked hips and two black canes, was an informer for nearly 40 years, according to federal and police records. The Manhattan district attorney confirmed that he had worked at the Kenmore; two officers said he was an excellent informer. He named dozens of people he said he had set up. Some served prison terms, records show. After the takeover of the Kenmore, he said, he undermined its tenants’ association, again at the direction of federal agents. Mr. Merritt took his accusations to the Manhattan district attorney last year. He said an assistant prosecutor in the mid-1990s had directed him to swear falsely that he had witnessed certain crimes. A public-corruption prosecutor interviewed Mr. Merritt and pulled court files. “Senior prosecutors have done extensive interviews with this informant, and followed several potential leads, but to date have not found provable allegations,” a law enforcement official familiar with Mr. Merritt’s allegations said. “But the file is open, and if more information comes to light it will certainly be taken seriously.” The district attorney’s investigation appears to have been confined to pulling court files. In eight months of interviewing dozens of people connected with the Kenmore, including former tenants, those arrested and police officers, I did not find one who had been questioned anew. Mr. Merritt’s charges can be difficult to verify. Many former Kenmore tenants — impoverished, haunted by addictions and bouncing along the river bottom of life — have disappeared from the public record. By his own account, those whom Mr. Merritt fingered as drug dealers and illegally set up ran the gamut, from actual dealers to low-level drug users with mental health issues to tenant leaders who angered him or federal and city agents but were not dealing drugs at all. Five people — two former tenants, a caseworker, a former lawyer and another police informer — confirmed Mr. Merritt’s core accusations. Three of the five spoke on the record. “He’d tell us a tenant was going to be arrested and the next day, out they went, out in handcuffs,” the former caseworker said. “They wanted to clean the place out, and they gave him lists, and he’d be swearing to God people were drug dealers.” Image The hotel, a warren of 641 rooms on East 23rd Street in Manhattan, was notorious for drug dealing. Credit John Sotomayor/The New York Times I reached Dominick Crispino, the former lawyer and tenant — who has since been disbarred and done time for larceny. “We kept saying Merritt was a tool of the government and told the courts he was setting people up,” he said. “If he’s coming clean, you can count on every word. He was one of the smartest people I ever tangled with.” A quick-witted fellow with owlish eyes, Mr. Merritt lived in an ethical netherworld. He was a crack addict, and in the 1980s had been convicted of felony fraud and became a fugitive. (A judge later tossed out the conviction.) In long interviews at his apartment off Fordham Road in the Bronx, however, Mr. Merritt rarely contradicted himself. Court records confirmed his mastery of details. He insisted that I portray him as deeply flawed. “You cannot paint me with a halo on my head,” he said. “I’m a nasty son of a bitch.” Three law enforcement agents described Mr. Merritt as a cunning informer. If there was a hero at the Kenmore Hotel, it was Scott Kimmins, a tall patrolman known to lawbreakers as Stretch. Before the federal takeover, he walked the hotel stairs alone. He rousted and arrested dealers and comforted marooned innocents. He came to know Mr. Merritt, who accused him of no illegalities. “He was on the money, for the most part,” noted Mr. Kimmins, now operations director for the Flatiron 23rd Street Business Improvement District. “He’d mention a room, and sure enough, you’d see drug activity.” Mr. Kimmins emphasized that he did not know the narcotics officers or their relationship with Mr. Merritt. He saw no need for illegal subterfuges. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “You could be deaf and dumb and make a bust there.” He said Mr. Merritt loved to tell tall tales of his supposed connections to intelligence agencies and Watergate. But as it happened, those tales were true. Federal records confirm that Mr. Merritt worked with the Washington police and the F.B.I. to infiltrate left-wing groups in Washington in the early 1970s; that his police handler apprehended the Watergate burglars; and that he was interviewed by investigators for the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Told of this, Mr. Kimmins chuckled ruefully. Years ago, he noted, he assumed the charges against the police officers accused of abusing Abner Louima were absurd. Those accusations, too, proved true. “I don’t believe Tony,” he said. “But I’ve been surprised before.” Mr. Merritt offers his own caution: “A confidential informant is a very powerful character. We don’t need a badge or gun. And we ruin lives.” THE KENMORE HOTEL had a seedy literary pedigree. It was a Gramercy Park refuge for Dashiell Hammett; Nathanael West worked as a night manager. Its decline was baroque. In 1985, Tran Dinh Truong, a shipping magnate who prospered mysteriously during the Vietnam War, arrived in the United States with suitcases full of gold bars. He bought the Kenmore as a tax shelter, and ran it with no regard for safety. He filled the place with ex-convicts, prostitutes and addicts. He hired security guards who waved in anyone for a few dollars. Mr. Merritt, a moth to that flame, got a job. “My main job was to hand out cash envelopes to the building and elevator inspectors,” Mr. Merritt said. “The only thing they inspected was their envelopes.” Conditions inside grew hideous. An 86-year-old was murdered in the communal bathroom. A woman was strangled in her room. For residents of Gramercy Park, an embattled middle-class pocket, the hotel visited miseries from burglaries to drug dealing. By the early 1990s, federal officials had set their eyes on Mr. Truong and his wayward hotel. Narcotics officers and federal agents made more than 100 arrests and, records show, they relied on an informer: Mr. Merritt. Image Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in 1996 unveiling plans for the restoration of the Kenmore Hotel two years after it was taken over. Credit Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times He is gifted at ingratiating himself. He could laugh with a dealer, buy vials of crack and smoke it. Then he would point out that man for the police. “If I didn’t like you, or the police wanted you gone, you were gone,” he said. It was as if he was inhaling chutzpah. “It was too outrageous for even dealers to think he’d come right back the next day,” the former caseworker said. Robert Chaney also worked there as a confidential informer. As pressure increased, narcotics officers plotted. “They would get really upset when they busted into a room and found nothing there,” he said. “They gave him drugs and maybe a gun and he’d plant it.” Asked about this, Mr. Merritt nodded. “They would tell me which rooms to target, and I would slip crack behind a mattress or under the sink.” Detectives taught him to set small fires, he said. Firefighters would batter down doors; the police would find crack and guns. He got $50 per arrest, and $100 every time he testified to a judge. Prosecutors guaranteed Mr. Merritt that he would not have to testify in public. They had suspects over a barrel: Serve six months in jail and leave the hotel — or we’ll imprison you for 20 years. SEEN from the remove of a safer city, those dark years now reveal signs of a dirty war. Too often, swaggering detectives and prosecutors eager for any victory broke rules and framed people. And confidential informers were given enormous latitude to set up people. Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was a beat officer before he became a prosecutor. The occupational hazard in dealing with informers, he said, was that “your ears are open to what you want to hear.” It was perilously easy, Mr. O’Donnell said, for an officer working with an informer to think nothing of setting up a hapless character with minor convictions. “It dovetails with the problem of false convictions,” he said. “The real danger is that we get your rap sheet, and we see a track record of minor drug abuse, and no one loses sleep over your conviction. The ends justify the means.” Mr. Merritt described being driven to the Manhattan district attorney’s office on a rainy evening. A prosecutor was typing statements for him, which he was going to swear to before a judge. “Read this carefully and don’t stray from the statement,” the prosecutor told him, he said. “You’re going to have to swear to this. Do you have a problem, Tony?” He said he looked at the prosecutor and asked: “So you want me to commit perjury?” “I don’t want to hear that,” the prosecutor replied, according to Mr. Merritt. After the takeover, Mr. Merritt said, federal marshals and the police told him to disrupt the tenants’ association. He and Mr. Chaney tore down notices and interrupted meetings and shrieked. An officer, he said, told him to vandalize Mr. Crispino’s car. “He was very skilled and very scary; he could get you arrested in about five minutes,” said Sal Martinez, a tenant leader. “I complained and a federal agent yelled at me: ‘Merritt is working for us. Don’t get in our way.’ ” There is no doubt the Kenmore is a safer, better-run place. Social services are provided; security is insistent. Maybe we’ll never know if more than 100 New Yorkers got walked out in cuffs and convicted on the basis of planted evidence and false testimony. Or perhaps the ends justified the means, and it’s a door better left closed. Except that similar raids occurred at other single-room-occupancy hotels throughout the city. Mr. Merritt worked as a confidential informer at a couple of those, too. This story, you see, may not end on East 23rd Street. “This is not just a Kenmore story,” Mr. Merritt said. “This was happening everywhere.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Pakistan Says Islamic Court Fulfills Deal With Taliban

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani government announced the creation of a new Islamic appeals court over the weekend, saying that it was meeting the terms of a February peace agreement with the Taliban and that the militants should now cease their armed struggle. But the Taliban said Sunday that they had not agreed to the two judges appointed to the provincial court. “The government has fulfilled its part of the agreement,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for North-West Frontier Province, told reporters on Saturday evening. “Now anyone carrying arms would be treated as a rebel and would be prosecuted in the qazi courts,” he said. A qazi is a judge trained in Islamic law. The peace deal has been strongly criticized in Pakistan and abroad, in particular since militants, rather than disarming, have expanded their presence into neighboring areas in recent weeks. The Pakistani Army mounted an operation against them last week in the districts of Dir and Buner. Under the February accord, the government of North-West Frontier Province agreed to impose Shariah law in the Malakand region, which covers the Swat Valley, where the Taliban have de facto rule, and surrounding districts. In return, the militants agreed to disperse and disarm and hand over their heavy weapons. The agreement achieved a cease-fire in the Swat Valley but little else. Around the main town of Mingora, the Taliban remain armed and in control. The military has ceased operations but has maintained its bases and gun positions all along the east side of the valley, said Anees Jillani, a lawyer who works at the Supreme Court and who visited the Swat Valley two weeks ago. The Taliban continue to demolish schools in the valley because the military has often used them as bases during operations. Meanwhile, fighting has shifted to the adjoining districts of Dir and Buner, which are also covered by the agreement, after Taliban incursions there. A spokesman for Maulana Sufi Muhammad, who is the pro-Taliban negotiator, said Sunday that the Taliban had not agreed to the judges appointed to the new court, but that they would talk further with the government about it. A spokesman for the militants in Swat, Muslim Khan, said the Taliban had beheaded two government officials who were abducted Saturday in revenge for the killing of two Taliban commanders in Buner, Reuters reported. He was also reported by the local news media to have said the militants would not disarm, since weapons were the “ornaments of Islam.” The provincial government, which is led by the Awami National Party, a secular Pashtun party with a strong local following, has persisted with negotiations with the militants to implement the agreement in the interests of peace. Party leaders have insisted that they have to win the people to their side, and that the only way to do that is to show that they are prepared to go the extra mile for peace and that military force, which has caused high civilian casualties, has been used only as a last resort. The Pakistani military also backs the peace deal, and has been reluctant to fight the militants without strong political and public backing. Each side has complained that the other has not kept to the deal. The militants and their supporters contend that the government has been slow to organize the Islamic courts. The government says Maulana Muhammad has repeatedly changed the militants’ demands. The provincial government created the Islamic appeals court after Maulana Muhammad refused to recognize Pakistan’s higher courts of appeal. Meanwhile, the military announced progress in its operations against militants in the district of Buner. The operational commander, Brig. Fayyez Mehmood, told local journalists that 80 militants had been killed in the weeklong operation. Three Pakistani servicemen had been killed and six wounded, he said. Pakistani forces have secured the roads into the district from the west and the south and were now moving on the last base of militants in the north part of the district around Asambar and the shrine of Pir Baba, he said.

Pakistan
Taliban
Shariah (Islamic Law)
North-West Frontier Province (Pakistan)