Black Monday: Now a Ritual Whose Meaning Is Clear

Abstract: The N.F.L. loves to trumpet its calendar, from Draft Day to Kickoff Weekend to Super Bowl Sunday. Then there is Black Monday, the day after the regular season ends, when a dozen teams prepare for the playoffs and some of the rest announce that they have fired their coaches or general managers or both. The league does not include the red-letter date on its schedule, and its origins are murky. But to N.F.L. insiders and fans around the country, Black Monday has its own news media ecosystem, complete with weeks of speculation, denials and news releases, followed by confessionals, goodbyes and promises to start anew. Last year, seven coaches and five general managers were replaced , one of the busier Black Mondays on record. Because many assistants are also shown the door when their bosses are fired, Black Monday 2012 was a veritable funeral procession in the coaching industry. This year will very likely be no different. As teams that started the season with high hopes have slid out of contention, rumors have swirled about the future of coaches from New York to Detroit and from Washington to Oakland. Minnesota Vikings Coach Leslie Frazier, Rex Ryan of the Jets and Greg Schiano of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are just a few of the leaders with their fates in the balance as the regular season comes to a close. As with everything in the N.F.L., there is a science behind the decision to waste no time in firing coaches. For one, no team wants the news media to spend yet more time speculating about a coach after a deflating season. Turning the page as quickly as possible allows teams to change the conversation to the future and the potential for wins and championships. But there is another practical merit to moving fast: Teams have to start searching for a new coach, and other teams that fired their coaches will be bidding for a limited pool of top replacements. Once a head coach is hired, other coaching spots must be filled. Then all of them must prepare for the combine and the draft. “Everyone’s in such a competitive environment, there’s a race to get things done because there is the same group of candidates out there,” said Mike Tannenbaum, the former general manager of the Jets who now represents coaches for Priority Sports & Entertainment . “It’s to clear the decks and move on.” Image Coach Mike Shanahan has been criticized for benching Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III. Credit Alex Brandon/Associated Press This year, more than a half-dozen teams may clear the decks. In Washington, Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan, whose team has three victories going into Sunday’s game just one year after making the playoffs, has feuded publicly with the owner Daniel Snyder over the decision to bench quarterback Robert Griffin III. Mike Munchak of the Tennessee Titans, Dennis Allen in Oakland and Jim Schwartz in Detroit are also in the hot seat. The Houston Texans, another team unable to return to the playoffs, fired Gary Kubiak earlier this month, just weeks after he collapsed on the field during a game and was hospitalized. Innovations like 24-hour sports channels, Twitter and blogs have fueled the coaching merry-go-round and given Black Monday an almost historical or hysterical feel, depending on your point of view. But the use of the phrase Black Monday to denote the coaching day of reckoning appears to date back only about 10 or 15 years. Even with an extensive search of news databases, it is difficult to determine who coined the phrase Black Monday, which the N.F.L. does not endorse. Some of the earliest references were in the late 1990s, including a story in The Chicago Tribune about several college coaches being fired at one time. In 1998, The Associated Press ran an article with the headline “Black Monday for N.F.L. coaches.” The story began: “The next time a group of N.F.L. coaches gets together and someone says ‘Black Monday,’ nobody should ask him what he’s talking about.” The New York Post and The Houston Chronicle also used Black Monday in their headlines that day. It is unclear whether the news media created the phrase or whether reporters parroted a term used liberally by football insiders. But two years later, The Associated Press ran an article that said that the day after the regular season ends “traditionally is called ‘Black Monday’ in the coaching profession,” though when this so-called tradition started was not defined. There are few examples of N.F.L. and team personnel using the phrase, though in a Jan. 6, 2000, article in The Times-Picayune, Greg Bensel, a spokesman for the New Orleans Saints, was quoted saying that he discussed with Tom Benson, the team owner, “what the state of the league was on Black Monday” and “who was around and who wasn’t.” That off-season, the Saints fired Mike Ditka and hired Jim Haslett. Bensel said he did not recall where he first heard the phrase. But within a few years, others in the N.F.L. started saying Black Monday, including Bill Cowher, then the coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He said that coaches always feared being fired and were motivated “to not be a part of Black Monday.” While the term’s roots are uncertain, it is clear that a handful of coaches, assistants and front office personnel are going to receive pink slips Monday, regardless of whether their teams win their season finales. As Cowher said in 2006, “We all understand that getting into this business.”

Coaches
Leslie Frazier
Rex Ryan
Greg Schiano
Mike Shanahan
Jim Schwartz
Football


Liberal Return Policies for Consumers Can Reduce Retail Workers’ Pay

Abstract: Earnestine Gay, a longtime worker in the fragrance department at Macy’s in Herald Square, clearly remembers a bottle of perfume that was returned recently. It was practically empty. “There was maybe a spray left,” Ms. Gay, 50, said. Yet Ms. Gay knew that the bottle, bought weeks earlier, would probably lower her commission because it would count against her sales for that week. The perfume’s return was not terribly unusual. These days, people are returning goods in record numbers, and often in worse condition, encouraged by the flexible return policies adopted by e-commerce sites like Amazon and the brick-and-mortar stores trying to keep pace. But unlike returns at online retailers, those at many department stores have a side effect: They can unexpectedly lower a worker’s paycheck weeks or months after a sale is made. “If you’re thinking, ‘This is my income for the week,’ and then you find out a month later, ‘Oh that wasn’t my income at all,’ you have to plan pretty far into the future,” said Stephanie Luce, a professor of labor studies at the City University of New York. Some of the country’s leading department stores allow returns for up to one year, like Nordstrom, or set no time limit at all, like Macy’s. The commissions paid to sales representatives at Macy’s can be affected by returns made within six months, while returns at Nordstrom affect workers for up to a year. These windows, union leaders say, are too long and fuel a culture of returns that has added instability to the paychecks of retail workers. “Macy’s used to have a 10-day return policy,” said Ken Bordieri, president of Local 1-S, which represents Macy’s workers in New York, one of the largest organized groups of the retailer’s workers in the country. Macy’s eliminated its time limit on returns, which had been six months, in 2010. “When you have a return policy that says ‘We’ll take anything back anytime,’ well, then returns go up,” Mr. Bordieri said. The union, which provided the statements and arranged for the interview with Ms. Gay, says that changing the return policy is among its top priorities as it negotiates with Macy’s for a new contract by Wednesday. In an email, a Macy’s spokesman, Jim Sluzewski, called the company’s return policy “fair and equitable” to employees. A spokeswoman for Nordstrom, Tara Darrow, said in an email that “we provide our employees with a commission agreement when they are hired that explains how we calculate commissions, and they can always get a copy of the commission agreement.” For decades, department stores have used commission as a way to motivate employees. Hone your sales skills, help customers and you, too, can share in the rewards. Returned merchandise has also long counted against an employee’s sales, which are used to calculate commission. Such policies help protect retailers from some legitimate concerns. For example, it prevents an employee from trying to game the system by selling a product to a friend, knowing the product will be returned after a commission is paid. Mark A. Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, said companies’ commission policies can help stop employees from overselling products that consumers would be more likely to bring back anyway. “It may create a distortion over a period of time,” he said of the variable paychecks. “But at the end of the day, the sales associate is being compensated for their net sales, and that is a typical practice.” Still, the surge of returns has changed the dynamic. Online retailers, many of which have made generous return policies a prime selling point to shoppers — and which do not pay employees based on commissions — have led the push. Amazon, the world’s largest virtual merchant, and many other e-commerce sites offer flexible and sometimes free returns. “Online-only retailers have conditioned consumers to be able to touch and feel products and then return them if they change their minds, hassle-free,” Kevon Hills, vice president for research at StellaService, a customer research firm, said in an email. “It is becoming best practice,” Mr. Hills said, “for retailers that want to provide consumers with the best possible experience to allow this same ability to take products home and make a final decision at a later point in time.” Americans returned $284 billion in merchandise in 2014, up 53 percent in five years, according to the most recent data available from the National Retail Federation , an industry trade group. Returns generally make up about 8 percent of overall sales, according to the group. Department stores have among the highest return rates, according to the Retail Equation , which collects shopping data. “There’s pressure on them to take these things back, but you can’t charge that back against the workers,” said Mr. Bordieri, the union local president. Worker advocates have had some success in changing return policies. In 2012, union leaders in New York pressured Bloomingdale’s, which is owned by Macy’s, to reduce the time employees could be affected by returns to 150 days from 180 days, and then to 120 days last year, according to a copy of the labor contract reviewed by The New York Times. These return policies have taken on added meaning as department stores have cut jobs and increasingly relied on part-time workers with less control over their own schedules, and therefore income, labor advocates say. “I have two sons that I was proud to raise while I was at Macy’s,” Ms. Gay said. “Thank God they’re old now, because I wouldn’t be able to make it.” Department stores employed 1.3 million workers as of May, the smallest number in a decade and 10 percent fewer than in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mr. Sluzewski, the Macy’s spokesman, said that Macy’s employees had “the opportunity to make their own schedules, within some guidelines that ensure that our stores are well staffed” during the busiest shopping periods. He noted that the company’s scheduling processes had been praised in the past by worker advocates. Ms. Darrow, of Nordstrom, said in an email that the company had increased its reliance on full-time workers and that some return policies — like buy online, return in-store — could actually benefit employees by creating an “opportunity to serve a customer on the spot and potentially make a sale.” But many employees still complain that return policies have become so lax as to encourage people to essentially borrow products, maybe for a one-time event like a vacation or a party. In 2011 and 2013, Ms. Luce, the CUNY professor, surveyed hundreds of retail workers as part of two separate studies, and said that many said that they felt return policies had gotten too lax. While she cautioned that the studies did not include enough commissioned workers to identify statistical trends, there were some repeat complaints. “We were pretty consistently hearing that for workers who had been in the industry for 10 or more years, they felt that first, your commission rates are smaller, and that this returns issue was more and more of a problem,” she said. Ann Pascarelli, 60, who works in Macy’s luggage department and has been at the store for nearly four decades, would be one of those employees. She gets particularly worried when customers announce plans for a trip. “We call ourselves the rental luggage department,” she said. “‘I’m going on my trip tomorrow and I’ll be back in a week,’” Ms. Pascarelli said, repeating what she said was an oft-heard refrain. “You can time it. In one week’s time, they’ll be back.”

Retail
Amazon
Income
Jobs
Wages and salaries
E Commerce
Macy's


Syrian Girl Born Without an Eye Undergoes Surgery in Barcelona

Abstract: MADRID — A refugee infant from Syria who was born without an eye and with a seriously disfigured face successfully underwent eye surgery at a Barcelona hospital on Friday, after being granted a special visa from Spain to receive free treatment. Antoni Arias-Enrich, the director of international services at the Sant Joan de Déu hospital in Barcelona, said that the baby girl, Sham Aldaher, would probably be able to leave the hospital by early next week, although more surgery will be required for her to receive a prosthetic eye. Sham, who celebrated her first birthday last month, was born to Syrian refugees in Jordan, and the first stage of surgery was crucial to avoid permanent disfigurement while her face is still growing. Even after Sham’s case was taken up by lawyers working pro bono from Reed Smith, an American law firm, the legal team spent months struggling to obtain a visa that would allow the infant and her family to receive treatment overseas. The Barcelona hospital agreed to perform the surgery free in March. Joan Prat and Ester Casas, surgical ophthalmologists at the Barcelona hospital, enlarged the orbit of the missing eye on Friday, inserting a graft of skin and subdermal tissue from the buttocks. The prosthetic eye will be inserted in about three months, as part of a second phase of reconstructive surgery. The family has been staying in an apartment provided by the Foundation Jubert Figueras, a nonprofit organization that focuses on providing health care to low-income families. Caritas, a charity organization affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, has been providing psychological support, and the Barcelona City Hall is offering schooling for Sham’s siblings. Sham’s family fled Syria in 2013, and had been living as refugees in Jordan since. They are expected to resettle in the United States once the medical procedures are completed in Barcelona.

Middle East and Africa Migrant Crisis,European Migrant Crisis


Badges Worn by French Athletes Might Violate Olympic Rules

Abstract: The International Olympic Committee may review whether French athletes broke rules prohibiting political protests at Olympic sites after several members of the national team wore badges with the words “for a better world” at the torch relay in Paris on Monday. The badges, which the French Olympic Committee said were not meant to be overtly political, were displayed on a day of raucous protests along the torch relay route. The Olympic flame was extinguished several times, and the final leg of the procession was canceled because of security concerns. Giselle Davies, director of communications for the International Olympic Committee, said her organization did not grant the athletes permission to wear the badges, which were created with the support of the French Olympic Committee and unveiled Friday at a news conference in Paris. Soria Zidelkhile, the communications manager for the French committee, said Monday that she hoped that the athletes would not be punished by the I.O.C., adding, “They didn’t do anything.” “They just said, ‘for a better world,’ ” she said. The political views of Olympic athletes have taken on heightened interest this year, as political advocates have increasingly sought to link the Beijing Olympics to China’s policies on Tibet and the Darfur region of Sudan. Rule 51 of the Olympic Charter prohibits athletes from engaging in political demonstrations at Olympic events or sites, although the I.O.C. has said athletes will be free to express their opinions if they are responding to questions from reporters. Ms. Zidelkhile said French athletes asked the national Olympic committee for permission to wear the badges, explaining that the athletes felt it was necessary to speak up not only about the situation in Tibet and Darfur, but also for victims of human rights violations throughout the world.

International Olympic Committee
Olympic Games (2008)
Demonstrations and Riots
France


Olympian Ryan Hall to Skip New York City Marathon

Abstract: The American Olympian Ryan Hall will skip the New York City Marathon because of several nagging injuries. Hall has been bothered by plantar fasciitis, among other problems.

New York City Marathon
Hall Ryan
Marathon Running


Cuomo’s Start-Up Program, Meant to ‘Supercharge’ Economy, Has Created 408 Jobs

Abstract: One of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most highly promoted economic development initiatives has produced just 408 new jobs across New York State in the past two years, even as the state has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting it, according to a delayed report released on Friday afternoon. Mr. Cuomo’s strategy for rejuvenating upstate New York has always centered on creating jobs — by luring big companies from out of state, cutting business taxes and pouring billions in state subsidies into nanotechnology projects from Buffalo to Albany, an initiative that has caught the attention of federal prosecutors, who are examining how contracts for such projects were distributed. With the Start-Up New York program, the focus of Friday’s report, the state has promised to create more than 4,100 new jobs by the end of 2020 by eliminating the tax burden for new or expanding businesses. A nationwide ad campaign put the pitch plainly: “Move here, expand here or start a new business here and pay no taxes for 10 years.” For his part, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said it would “supercharge” the state economy. But hard numbers on the program’s performance have been hard to come by. Not until Friday — three months after the Start-Up New York report was supposed to be released, and the day before the start of the July 4 holiday weekend — did the results from 2015 emerge, with the quiet uploading of a 16-page document to the website of the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency that administers the program. Even then, the data about the jobs the program had produced was tucked into a cluster of small-print footnotes at the bottom of the tenth page. Ultimately, the footnote says, the businesses are projected to create 4,140 new jobs by the end of 2020. There were 76 jobs created by Start-Up businesses in 2014, when it began, meaning last year’s new jobs added up to 332. In an interview, Leslie Whatley, the program’s executive vice president, said Start-Up would grow more quickly in coming years as the infrastructure the state set up began to reach its potential. Part of the program’s success, and that of the costly ad campaign that promoted it, lay in changing the perception that New York was unfriendly to business, she said. “We’re going to continue to build off the momentum; we’re going to continue to admit more companies,” she said, noting that the agency would soon announce a new crop of Start-Up companies. “Success breeds success.” Ms. Whatley attributed the delay in releasing the report to the time-consuming process of verifying the job data each company had submitted. Empire State Development had also decided to include explanations of the state’s other job-creating programs in an effort to give context to the Start-Up numbers, pushing the report’s release back even further, she said. She said the numbers had gone into a footnote in an effort to keep the report, which contains several other statistical charts about the program, from getting any longer. If there is anything less than triumphant about the results, the report does not let on. Sprinkled with job targets culled from other state programs, it credits Mr. Cuomo’s economic development strategy with producing 26,942 jobs and keeping 77,881 more. The Start-Up program has drawn 159 new, expanding and relocating businesses into tax-free zones across the state, according to the report. The companies have invested about $13 million in the state’s economy. Each zone is on or near campuses of the State University of New York, of the City University of New York or of private colleges, an arrangement designed to help the companies draw on the institutions’ academic resources, faculty and students. The companies are exempt from state and local personal income taxes for 10 years, though those benefits are reduced if they fail to meet job targets. So far, the tax benefits have added up to $1.19 million, according to the report. Jason Conwall, a spokesman for Empire State Development, said the agency was basing its evaluation of the program on performance. “And taxpayers should be, too.”

Tax Credits Tax Deductions Tax Exemptions


Mystery of Missing Lebanese Cleric Deepens

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — When the youngest son of the former Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, was arrested in Lebanon last week in connection with the unsolved disappearance of Moussa al-Sadr, an exalted Lebanese Shiite cleric who vanished while visiting Libya in 1978, speculation sprouted about new information concerning one of the biggest whodunits in the treacherous politics of the Middle East. On Monday, the mystery deepened with news that the son, Hannibal Qaddafi, may have been forcibly — and illegally — brought to Lebanon against his will in a plot involving the son of a colleague of Mr. Sadr’s, Sheikh Mohammad Yacoub, who disappeared along with Mr. Sadr and a third companion in Libya nearly four decades ago. Lebanese officials said that Sheikh Yacoub’s son, Hassan Yacoub, a former member of Parliament, had been formally placed under arrest on suspicion that he had helped orchestrate the abduction of Hannibal Qaddafi from Damascus, Syria, in the days preceding Mr. Qaddafi’s arrest here. The officials and a lawyer for Mr. Qaddafi said he had been living in Syria, granted asylum by the Syrian government in the aftermath of Colonel Qaddafi’s violent fall from power in October 2011. Even with the arrest of Mr. Yacoub, Hannibal Qaddafi remains under arrest in Lebanon, accused by an investigative magistrate of not providing all information he may know about the disappearance of Mr. Sadr, Sheikh Yacoub and Abbas Badreddine, a journalist, while they were visiting Libya at Colonel Qaddafi’s invitation in August 1978. It is unclear what information Hannibal Qaddafi, 40, could possibly share, since he was a small boy at the time. The disappearance of Mr. Sadr and his colleagues in Libya remains a potent mystery in Lebanon, where Mr. Sadr is revered as a hero to poor Shiites from the tumultuous days of the 1970s, when Lebanon was convulsed by civil war, a spillover of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other problems. The disappearance has been the subject of numerous criminal inquiries. Colonel Qaddafi, a notoriously erratic and unpredictable dictator, insisted that he had nothing to do with it and that the Lebanese visitors vanished after having flown to Italy. Many Lebanese say they believe that three Qaddafi aides, disguised as the Lebanese visitors, flew to Italy with their luggage to create a false narrative about where they had last been seen. Mr. Qaddafi’s lawyer, Boshra Khalil, said in a telephone interview that her client had been beaten and thrown into a car trunk when kidnapped from Syria by people she described as bodyguards of Mr. Yacoub. The Lebanese news media have widely reported that Mr. Qaddafi had been brought to Lebanon in Mr. Yacoub’s car. His abductors forced Mr. Qaddafi to read a statement broadcast on Lebanese television on Dec. 10, in which he said that they were disciples of Mr. Sadr and that their cause was just. They turned him over to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces the next day, and he was placed under formal arrest on Dec. 14 . Ms. Khalil said she expected him to be released soon. “He is not guilty, and he was 3 years old when Imam Sadr went missing,” she said. “He knows nothing about the case.”

Lebanon
Moussa al-Sadr
Shiite
Hannibal Qaddafi
Muammar Kaddafi
Missing person
Kidnapping and Hostages
Clergy


Subprime Fallout Could Help Venture Capitalists

Abstract: THE sky is falling. The sky is falling. The ground is rising. Could the subprime problems that have fouled the public market be a mixed blessing for Silicon Valley’s high-technology investors? Highly out of favor in recent years, public offerings of technology start-ups are enjoying a mild resurgence. And some venture capitalists are arguing that the fragile momentum could be bolstered by the problems that mortgage-related securities have caused in the stock and credit markets. The rationale is that technology investments, because they are far removed from credit-centric securities, could look relatively enticing. “People are being scared away from other investment strategies,” said Keith Benjamin, a partner at Levensohn Venture Partners, a San Francisco firm that focuses on technology investments. “The credit crunch can help venture,” he wrote on his blog. “One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.” The logic is being echoed in Silicon Valley, albeit somewhat sheepishly given the self-interest involved and the fact that there is but one major data point. That point is the initial offering of VMware, a company that makes software for servers. It went public on Aug. 14 at $29, and its shares surged 76 percent. VMware shares closed yesterday at $70.20, up $3.35. The sharp rise of VMware, while the markets have been so volatile, punctuates what appears to be the end of the technology drought for initial public offerings. In the second quarter, 26 venture-backed offerings raised $4.3 billion, compared with 19 such companies raising $2 billion in the period last year. Venture capitalists now hope that the disfavor technology companies engendered during the dot-com collapse is being more quickly erased — or put into perspective — by the risks evident in the struggling hedge-fund investment strategy. But, that said, venture capitalists said the subprime-spawned troubles could be a mixed blessing — given that those troubles could take a negative toll, though an indirect one, on the seeding and growing of high-tech companies. On the downside, venture investors said, they could have a tougher time raising investment funds from big financial institutions and other limited partners. The concern among some venture investors is that those institutions have less money because of recent declines in the market and also that they are distracted by all the fallout. In addition, limited partners tend to some extent to lump together venture firms and hedge funds as alternative investment options. That means that as hedge funds come under scrutiny, some venture firms may get less money, said Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist in San Diego and author of the blog Infectious Greed. Another concern is that tighter credit, by making it harder to borrow debt, could sap the ability of some larger companies to pay for and acquire start-ups. While technology investors would rather take their investments public than have them acquired, a potential dip in the mergers sector could hurt one of venture capital’s primary strategies for selling investments. More indirect still could be the impact the credit crunch has on the ability of venture-backed technology companies to attract and retain talent. Yogen Dalal, a managing partner at Mayfield Fund, said his biggest concern was the inflated housing market in Silicon Valley. The credit crunch “may not affect the engineers and others who are well paid, but it may affect the labor and service people who keep the machinery of the valley humming,” Mr. Dalal said, noting that the added new pressure could create an exodus of people who do essential jobs in the valley. One venture capitalist who is experiencing the mixed blessing of the market shake-up is Sunil Dhaliwal, a partner with Battery Ventures, which is in Waltham, Mass., and Menlo Park, Calif. On July 25, a company backed by Battery, Blade Logic, which makes software to automate data centers, went public. It was initially priced at $17, rose to $27, and has settled in around $25 — a healthy run that Mr. Dhaliwal said reflected in part the renewed embrace of technology investments. But the broader market dip has brought challenges for a different company that Battery has supported. That company, which operates landline telephone businesses but which Mr. Dhaliwal declined to name, needs $50 million to $100 million to make acquisitions. The trouble is that banks are not in a lending mood, and so Battery and the other backers are dipping into their own coffers to finance the acquisitions. “I’m having to put more equity at risk,” Mr. Dhaliwal said. “With a normal debt market, that’s one more risk I wouldn’t have to take.” But Mr. Benjamin, the venture capitalist with Levensohn, and a former technology industry analyst with Robertson Stephens, is bullish about the overall impact on the venture business of that latest market dynamics. He said he was hearing from investment bankers who focus on the technology sector that they were finding themselves not just coming back into favor, but freed of comparison to and pressure from hedge funds, which have held sway in the market in recent years. “When the credit crunch happened, it almost immediately led to a better mood for tech bankers,” Mr. Benjamin argued. He added that the latest events will create critical momentum for the investors tempted to return to technology start-ups. “The credit crunch pushes these people over the edge.”

Venture Capital
Housing
Banks and Banking


Biden Treads Softly in Greece

Abstract: ATHENS — What do you do if you’re a voluble American official whose words have been known to raise eyebrows, and you’re visiting the epicenter of Europe’s debt crisis at the start of a crucial week for the euro? Speak little, and when you do, try to keep it light. On Monday, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. introduced a member of his delegation to Greece ’s president, Karolos Papoulias. “This man represents the Treasury Department,” said a deadpan Mr. Biden. “He’s brought hundreds of millions of dollars.” His Greek hosts, who knew full well that Mr. Biden brought no offers of American aid, dissolved into laughter. Thus the vice president cleared the first hurdle of a day filled with many. His aides steered him away from opportunities to rattle European nerves as its leaders were immersed in delicate debt negotiations. A wreath-laying was canceled, and there were no news conferences or other public appearances. Meeting with Greece’s new prime minister, Lucas Papademos, Mr. Biden offered a staunch show of American moral support for the country’s efforts to climb out of its debt hole. His interim government, formed last month amid the mounting economic crisis, is drafting an austerity budget and negotiating the latest bailout with its creditors. “It is a difficult time for Greece, and we stand ready to help in any way we can,” Mr. Biden said. “It is overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States that Greece work its way through this financial crisis and remain a strong and vital part of the European Union.” The vice president praised Greece’s efforts to abide by the conditions of the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, whose bailout funds have come tied to stringent requirements that have infuriated many ordinary Greeks. He refrained from any comment on Europe’s broader efforts to contain the crisis. Mr. Papademos, a former central banker and an American-trained economist who taught at Columbia University, said he was confident that the “U.S. will stand by it during these hard times.” A question now is whether the International Monetary Fund, in which the United States is the largest shareholder, will play a bigger role in helping to stop the crisis from possibly spreading to Italy or Spain, where borrowing costs are also soaring. In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Biden confirmed discussions about the fund’s role, but said, “That is not something it would be healthy or correct for me to speculate on as we go into this week.” Mr. Biden has spoken at length on his eight-day trip about the American withdrawal from Iraq and the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East. But he turned almost Delphic when asked about Europe’s crisis. “Look, I’m going to choose my words here, because I don’t want to — ” he said, trailing off and staring for a long moment at the coffee table in his cabin on Air Force Two. “For a guy who doesn’t own any stock, I don’t want the market responding to me.” The atmosphere in Athens, where protests and strikes have mounted and occasionally turned violent, is less volatile now than it has been in recent months. Employees of the Greek state television service went on strike Monday, so the few images of Mr. Biden’s visit were carried only on commercial television. Mr. Biden noted that President Obama was sending Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to Europe this week, and that America’s role in the crisis was better addressed by him. “You know, in the good old days when I was a senator, I was my own man,” Mr. Biden said. “I could just tell you my views. But now whatever I say is attributed to the administration.” “I finally learned that,” the vice president added. “It took me about six months, but I got it down.”

Greece
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Biden Joseph R Jr


Telling Urbanites to Flee the Cities

Abstract: So popular are puffy down jackets made by the North Face that a winter visitor to Manhattan might suspect the coats were issued with every subway card, but advertising for the 48-year-old brand has always eschewed images of bundled-up urbanites, focusing instead on outdoor adventurers climbing snowy peaks or swooshing down ski slopes. “The American consumer sees a value-add in products that can overperform, and I call it the Range Rover effect,” said Matt Powell, an analyst at Princeton Retail Analysis. “If I have a Range Rover, I’m probably never going to drive it up the side of a mountain, but it’s really cool that you can do that, and maybe that makes me feel a little safer driving to the grocery store.” Now a new campaign by the North Face blends its typical imagery of adventurous hiking and mountain climbing with a plea to city dwellers to escape to the outdoors. For a new commercial , the brand commissioned the band My Morning Jacket to record “This Land Is Your Land,” the free-spirited song by Woody Guthrie that celebrates American landscapes. Along with footage of high-altitude adventurers, there are urban settings less typical for the brand, like a surfer holding his board on a New York subway platform and a woman running across the Brooklyn Bridge. The spot closes with the store’s long-running slogan, “Never stop exploring,” and urges consumers to download the new recording of the song from iTunes. The download will cost $1.29, with Apple pocketing its customary third and the rest going to the 21st Century Conservation Service Corps within the United States Interior Department, which hires veterans and at-risk young people to restore and preserve public land. Additionally, the retailer is contributing $250,000 to the corps. While the North Face logo is clearly visible on equipment and clothing in the commercial, there is no overt selling. Tommy Means, the executive creative director of Mekanism, the San Francisco agency behind the spot, commended the brand for going along with the concept, which functions more like a music video than an ad. “I get a lot of clients that are like, ‘We have to be brick-to-forehead — we have to make this advertising so obvious that we yell at our customers about what the features and benefits of the product are,” Mr. Means said. “And that just takes all the fun out of advertising. But the North Face is not like that — they’re letting everything be pretty authentic and real.” Aaron Carpenter, vice president for global marketing at the North Face, noted that the commercial included a defiant stanza from an early version of the song rarely included in grade-school singalongs. “As I went walking I saw a sign there, and on the sign it said ‘No Trespassing,’ ” Mr. Guthrie wrote. “But on the other side it didn’t say nothing. That side was made for you and me.” While the lyrics seem to advocate defying authority, the commercial takes a softer approach, showing a kindly rancher happily opening a gate to let some climbers onto his property, and Mr. Carpenter said the perspective aligned with the philosophy of the brand. “What we love about the song is it’s this idea of love for the land, and getting out on the land and protecting it,” Mr. Carpenter said. “But there’s also rebelliousness in that song.” A 90-second version of the spot will be introduced on YouTube on Monday and on television during the Nov. 9 “Sunday Night Football” broadcast on NBC. Shorter versions of the spot, from 15 seconds to 60 seconds, also will appear on television and online. The North Face, a division of VF Outdoor, declined to reveal the campaign’s cost, but indicated that spending this year would be up 50 percent over last year. In 2013, the brand spent $14.9 million on advertising, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP. The effort also includes a partnership with Outside magazine that promotes 50 outings across the country, like hiking on Beehive Mountain in Acadia National Park in Maine and white-water rafting in Gunnison Gorge in Colorado. Consumers are encouraged to post online photos of themselves at the locations using the hashtag #SeeForYourself. Also, from Tuesday through Thursday in Manhattan, some pedestrians will be approached by brand representatives in a vehicle that is being called a #SeeForYourself Taxi and, if they are willing to play hooky for the day, will be outfitted in equipment, paired with an outdoor adventurer sponsored by the brand and whisked off to an activity like mountain climbing or mountain biking. For the week ended Oct. 18, the North Face commanded a 25.4 percent share of the outdoor apparel market, followed by Columbia, with a 12.5 percent share, and Patagonia, with a 9.7 percent share, according to Mr. Powell, the retail analyst. David Vinjamuri, the author of “Accidental Branding” and an adjunct professor of marketing at New York University, said the North Face was what he called an expert brand, because it first caught on with adventurers through equipment and outerwear that innovatively countered the elements. Mr. Vinjamuri lauded the brand for showing outdoor adventure consistently in its advertising, even if much of its clothing is now worn by the trendy for everyday activities. “If you’re expert at making boats that don’t sink, then you better stay expert at that even if people are buying your boats for lots of other reasons,” Mr. Vinjamuri said.

North Face
advertising,marketing
Coats,Jackets
Fashion


Protecting Afghan Women From Abuse

Abstract: KABUL , Afghanistan — Mariam was 11 in 2003 when her parents forced her to marry a blind, 41-year-old cleric. The bride price of $1,200 helped Mariam’s father, a drug addict, pay off a debt. Mariam was taken to live with her new husband and his mother, who, she says, treated her like a servant. They began to beat her when she failed to conceive a child. After two years of abuse, she fled and sought help at a police station in Kabul. Until only a few years ago, the Afghan police would probably have rewarded Mariam for her courage by throwing her in jail — traditional mores forbid women to be alone on the street — or returning her to her husband. Instead, the police delivered her to a plain, two-story building in a residential neighborhood: a women’s shelter, something that was unknown here before 2003. Since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, a more egalitarian notion of women’s rights has begun to take hold, founded in the country’s new Constitution and promoted by the newly created Ministry of Women’s Affairs and a small community of women’s advocates. The problems they are confronting are deeply ingrained in a culture that has been mainly governed by tribal law. But they are changing the lives of young women like Mariam, now 17. Still wary of social stigma, she did not want her full name used. “Simply put, this is a patriarchal society,” said Manizha Naderi, director of Women for Afghan Women, one of four organizations that run shelters in Afghanistan. “Women are the property of men. This is tradition.” Women’s shelters have been criticized as a foreign intrusion in Afghan society, where familial and community problems have traditionally been resolved through the mediation of tribal leaders and councils. But women’s advocates insist that those outcomes almost always favor the men. Forced marriages involving girls have been part of the social compacts between tribes and families for centuries, and they continue, though the legal marrying age is now 16 for women and 18 for men. Beating, torture and trafficking of women remain common and are broadly accepted, women’s advocates say. Until the advent of the shelters, a woman in an abusive marriage usually had nowhere to turn. If she tried to seek refuge with her own family, her brothers or father might return her to her husband, to protect the family’s honor. Women who eloped might be cast out of the family altogether. Many women resort to suicide , some by self-immolation, to escape their misery, according to Afghan and international human rights advocates. “There is a culture of silence,” said Mary Akrami, director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Center , which opened the first women’s shelter in Afghanistan six years ago. The majority of abuse victims, she said, are too ashamed to report their problems. As recently as 2005, some Afghan social organizations did not publicly acknowledge that they were working in support of women’s rights, said Nabila Wafez, project manager in Afghanistan for the women’s rights division of Medica Mondiale , a German nongovernmental organization that supports women and children in conflict zones. “Women’s rights was a very new word for them,” Ms. Wafez said. “But now we’re openly saying it.” Women’s advocates insist that they are trying not to split up families, but rather to keep them together through intervention, mediation and counseling. “Our aim is not to put women in the shelter if it’s not necessary,” said Ms. Naderi, who was born in Afghanistan but grew up in New York City and graduated from Hunter College . “Only in cases where it’s dangerous for the women to go back home, that’s when we put them in the shelter.” If mediation fails, Ms. Naderi said, her organization’s lawyers will pursue a divorce on behalf of their clients. Cases involving criminal allegations are referred to the attorney general’s office. Ms. Naderi’s organization has even taken the bold step of helping several clients find new husbands, carefully vetted by the shelter’s staff. The men could not afford the customary bride price, making them more accommodating of women who deviated from tradition. When Mariam arrived at the Women for Afghan Women shelter in 2007, the group’s lawyers took her case to family court. Her husband pleaded for her return, promising not to beat her again. Mariam consented. In a recent interview, Mariam, a waifish teenager with a meek voice, said she had feared that “no one would marry me again.” But soon after her return, the beatings resumed, she said. She fled again. Mariam’s case was moved to criminal court because she said her husband had threatened to kill her, said Mariam Ahadi, the legal supervisor for Women for Afghan Women and a former federal prosecutor in Afghanistan. At the shelters, others told still more harrowing tales. For the same reason as Mariam, none wanted their full names used. Nadia, 17, who has been living in Ms. Akrami’s long-term shelter since 2007, recounted that to avenge a dispute he had with her father, her husband cut off her nose and an ear while she was sleeping. She has undergone six operations and needs more, Ms. Akrami said. “I don’t know anything about happiness,” Nadia said. At 8, another girl, Gulsum, was kidnapped by her father, who was estranged from her mother. She says she was forced to marry the son of her father’s lover. Her husband and her new mother-in-law beat her and threatened to kill her, she said. Now 13, Gulsum said that before eventually escaping, she tried to commit suicide by swallowing medicine and rodent poison. Advocates say governmental response to the issue has significantly improved since the overthrow of the Taliban. Judges are ruling more equitably, advocates say, and the national police have created a special unit to focus on family issues. But women’s advocates say that even so, protections for women remain mostly theoretical in much of the country, particularly in rural areas, where tradition runs deepest and women have limited access to advocacy services and courts. Mariam said she felt fortunate to have found refuge. Asked what she hoped for the future, she replied, “I want my divorce, and then I want to study.” She was pulled out of school in the fourth grade. Turning to Ms. Ahadi, she added, “I want to be a lawyer like her.” But for all of Mariam’s suffering, her family apparently has not changed. Her younger sister was married off a year ago, at age 9, in exchange for a $400 bride price that helped cover another drug debt, Mariam said, and her youngest sister, who is 6, appears to be heading toward a similar fate.


IPhone Users Urged to Update Software After Security Flaws Are Found

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — One of the world’s most evasive digital arms dealers is believed to have been taking advantage of three security vulnerabilities in popular Apple products in its efforts to spy on dissidents and journalists. Investigators discovered that a company called the NSO Group, an Israeli outfit that sells software that invisibly tracks a target’s mobile phone, was responsible for the intrusions. The NSO Group’s software can read text messages and emails and track calls and contacts. It can even record sounds, collect passwords and trace the whereabouts of the phone user. In response, Apple on Thursday released a patched version of its mobile software, iOS 9.3.5. Users can get the patch through a normal software update. Apple fixed the holes 10 days after a tip from two researchers, Bill Marczak and John Scott Railton, at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, and Lookout, a San Francisco mobile security company. “We advise all of our customers to always download the latest version of iOS to protect themselves against potential security exploits,” said Fred Sainz, a company spokesman. In interviews and manuals, the NSO Group’s executives have long boasted that their spyware worked like a “ghost,” tracking the moves and keystrokes of its targets, without leaving a trace. But until this month, it was not clear how exactly the group was monitoring its targets, or who exactly it was monitoring. A clearer picture began to emerge on Aug. 10, when Ahmed Mansoor, a prominent human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates, who has been tracked by surveillance software several times, began receiving suspicious text messages. The messages purported to contain information about the torture of U.A.E. citizens. Mr. Mansoor passed the messages to researchers at the Citizen Lab, who confirmed they were an attempt to track him through his iPhone. This latest effort was far more sophisticated than what was found aimed at his devices before. The researchers found it was connecting to 200 servers, several of them registered to the NSO Group. Strewn throughout the spyware code were references to Pegasus, the name of an NSO Group spyware product. Citizen Lab brought in Lookout to help examine the code. Together, they discovered that the spyware relied on three previously unknown iOS vulnerabilities — called “zero days” because Apple didn’t know about them and had zero days to patch them. In many cases, the NSO Group had designed its tools to impersonate those of the Red Cross, Facebook, Federal Express, CNN, Al Jazeera, Google and even the Pokemon Company to gain the trust of its targets, according to the researchers. Image Ahmed Mansoor, a prominent human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates, has been tracked by surveillance software several times. Credit Bloomberg News “NSO Group was very professional, and very effective in staying silent,” said Mike Murray, a vice president at Lookout. In recent years, zero day flaws have been traded among hackers, brokers, companies like the NSO Group, and spy agencies and law enforcement networks eager for ways to break into devices. Flaws in Apple’s iOS software are sold at a premium. Last year, a similar zero-day exploit in Apple’s iOS software was sold to Zerodium, a Washington buyer and seller of zero-days, for $1 million. Earlier this year, James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, announced that his agency had paid hackers who found a way for the F.B.I. to crack into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in last year’s mass killings in San Bernardino, Calif. Neither the hackers nor the F.B.I. have told Apple how this was accomplished. Apple’s software update patches the NSO Group’s exploits, but it is unclear whether the company has patched the vulnerabilities used by the F.B.I. to crack into its iPhone. Apple recently began a “bug bounty” program to pay hackers who report vulnerabilities in its systems. Among the other NSO targets, besides Mr. Mansoor, were Rafael Cabrera, a Mexican journalist, who broke a story on conflicts of interest among Mexico’s ruling family. In several cases, NSO Group’s tools had been crafted to target users in Yemen, Turkey, Mozambique, Mexico, Kenya and the U.A.E. Zamir Dahbash, an NSO Group spokesman, said in an email, “The company sells only to authorized governmental agencies, and fully complies with strict export control laws and regulations.” Mr. Dahbash added that NSO Group does not operate any of its systems and requires that its customers use its products in a “lawful manner.” “Specifically,” he said, “the products may only be used for the prevention and investigation of crimes.” He would not say if the software is used by government agencies in the U.A.E. or Mexico. In 2014, NSO Group sold a majority stake to San Francisco-based private equity firm Francisco Partners Management LLC for $120 million. Francisco Partners declined to comment. Mr. Mansoor said in an interview that the discoveries were a sad reminder that no matter what he does to protect his devices and digital security, he will continue to be a target for companies that provide this sort of spying technology. “I guess I am their regular customer,” he said. “I am the guinea pig.” Bill Marczak, the researcher at Citizen Lab who has been helping Mr. Mansoor protect his digital security, said that the surveillance experienced by Mr. Mansoor is likely to expand. “The targeting of these activists and dissidents is a taste of what’s to come,” Mr. Marczak said. “What they’re facing today will be faced by ordinary users tomorrow.”

Software
Apple
NSO Group
Human Rights
Privacy
Smartphone
Computer security
Spying and Intelligence Agencies


Where Weather’s Always Fine for a Run

Abstract: IF the words “wintry mix” are enough to make your inner runner want to head to the nearest treadmill, or even forgo a workout altogether, there’s another option: Visit an indoor track. New York City has a strong indoor-running scene, with an array of gyms, universities and Y.M.C.A.s offering tracks insulated from the elements. Indoor tracks vary in how available they are to the public; many have fees or membership requirements. They can have as many lanes as an outdoor track and are usually eight laps to the mile. (Most outdoor tracks are four.) The fastest indoor tracks are banked, meaning that the tight curves are elevated toward the perimeter. “When you’re running on a flat surface, and you get to the turn of a short indoor track, you have to actually shift your whole body’s direction because of your high speed, and many people slow down,” said Tony Ruiz, the distance coach of Central Park Track Club , whose members gather for winter speed workouts at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesdays on the banked six-lane track of the 168th Street Armory. “A bank helps you maintain that speed and get a more effective workout.” To adjust to the pace and avoid injury, Mr. Ruiz suggests doing intervals of equal lengths the first few times. Try starting with a weekly indoor workout: five sets of 1,000 meters (or about 0.6 miles) the first week, then six sets of 800 meters the next week and eight sets of 600 meters in the third week. To build speed, polish off each workout with three sets of 300 meters. “By then,” Mr. Ruiz said, “you’re loose and can run as fast as you want without pulling a muscle.” Don’t forget etiquette on crowded indoor tracks. Walkers and joggers should stay in the outside lane, leaving the inside to faster runners. Be prepared to shout “track” if you’re passing someone, or to move quickly to the left or inside if you hear that from behind — it means you’re about to be overtaken on the outside. Image Skye James, 10, left, and her 12-year-old sister, Sanaa, training at the Park Slope Armory Y.M.C.A. in Brooklyn. Credit Byron Smith for The New York Times The Parks Department plans to open a 200-meter indoor track in Ocean Breeze Park on Staten Island next summer, with a cushioned Mondo synthetic rubber surface, which is used in the Olympics and the World Track and Field Championships. For now, the best indoor metropolitan options include these: 168TH STREET ARMORY This track in Washington Heights hosted its first meet in 1914. After being used as a shelter for the homeless in the 1980s, it was restored in 1993 and is now regarded as one of the best racing and training facilities in the United States. Its 200-meter track has a Mondo surface. Avoid weekends, when track meets take over, and be prepared to share the space at night with track teams. The best times for recreational runners to visit are weekdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and from 7 to 10 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, said Norbert Sander, the Armory Foundation’s president. There are also occasional casual meets for adult runners on Thursday nights organized by the New York Road Runners. The next one is on Jan. 9. ($15 per track session; $300 for a season pass; armorytrack.com.) PARK SLOPE ARMORY Y.M.C.A. Brooklyn’s most popular indoor track is 200 meters long, six lanes wide and unbanked. Because it can get crowded, it’s best for recreational runners; it can resemble a playground on family fun nights, when athletes bring their children. ($51 per month or free with a one-time guest pass; ymcanyc.org/parkslopearmory.) CHELSEA PIERS This complex has a 400-meter flat indoor track and a six-lane banked 200-meter indoor track. Both have Mondo surfaces. It’s costly, but a convenient and athlete-friendly space for an indoor workout. ($50 for a day pass, $115 and up for monthly memberships; chelseapiers.com/sc.)


Smaller Wall Street Bonuses Hurt New York State’s Budget

Abstract: New York State officials staring at holes in the budget this time of year generally have had a trusty cushion to fall back on: a mattress stuffed full of Wall Street bonus money. But this year is what is known in business schools as an outlier. The tide of negative sentiment toward the big banks has thrown the normal flow and structure of pay on Wall Street out of whack. The taxes on those bonuses, in turn, are falling well short of expectations, widening the state’s budget deficit by the day. On Wednesday, the state’s Budget Division said that the deficit for the next fiscal year, which will start April 1, was already $750 million larger than it appeared when Gov. David A. Paterson laid out his proposed budget two weeks ago. The state had expected to collect $1 billion to $1.5 billion in taxes on Wall Street pay in the last two weeks of January, said Robert L. Megna, the budget director. But at the end of the month, tax revenue was about $1 billion shy of what had been projected, Mr. Megna said. “We know that big guys typically pay us at the end of January,” Mr. Megna said, referring to large banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. “Last week, after the budget came out, they didn’t pay us.” One reason for the shortfall is that the banks have been cowed by public outrage and political rhetoric into cutting back sharply on the amount of cash they pay as bonuses. Citigroup, for example, capped cash payouts at $100,000 this year, a fraction of the millions some top producers and senior executives have taken home in the past. Firms substituted restricted shares of stock for some of the cash they would have paid. In many cases, those shares cannot be sold for a year or more, leaving recipients to decide whether to pay taxes on them now or later. Most will opt for later, Mr. Megna said. The banks are “paying in stock, and they’re deferring income,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, chief executive of the Partnership for New York City , whose members include the biggest banks. “They’re making up all sorts of ways to keep talent, none of which are as good for the city and state. The pressure to hold back cash payments to New York taxpayers just means other taxpayers are going to end up paying the bill.” Mr. Megna estimated that the shifting mix of cash and stock accounts for about half the tax shortfall so far. The other half he attributed to changes in the timing of bonus payouts. Some of the biggest investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, became bank holding companies during the financial crisis and changed their fiscal years to end Dec. 31 instead of Nov. 30. Those calendar revisions resulted in bonuses being paid a month later. By April, the state should collect about half the taxes on Wall Street pay that did not materialize in January, Mr. Megna said. The rest may not arrive for another year or two, if ever, he said. But Mr. Megna acknowledged that he was guessing, something that state budget directors are loath to do. “There’s a volatility cost, there’s an uncertainty cost that makes it difficult to plan,” he said. The cutback in cash bonuses also will have a reverse ripple effect, he said. Bonus recipients are likely to spend less of their payouts immediately, reducing sales and real estate tax revenue and hurting merchants who rely on their business. On Wednesday, a Manhattan restaurant that caters to bankers and businessmen, Smith & Wollensky, ran a tongue-in-cheek newspaper ad offering to accept shares of stock as payment for steaks. The restaurant’s founder, Alan Stillman, said business had been hurt by the financial crisis. The switch from cash to stock in bonuses could have a “catastrophic” effect on the local economy, the ad said, leaving “legions of real estate brokers, personal shoppers and pet psychiatrists unemployed and massive amounts of steak and lobster uneaten.”

Bonuses
New York State
Executive Compensation
Taxation
Banks and Banking
Wall Street (NYC)
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


After Slow Growth, Experts Say, Health Spending Is Expected to Climb

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Government experts on Wednesday predicted a rebound in national health care spending as expansions in coverage and improvements in the economy take hold after four years of exceptionally slow growth in the nation’s medical bills. The combined effects of the Affordable Care Act, faster economic growth and the aging of the population will fuel the growth of health spending this year and in the coming decade, according to a report by a team of nonpartisan economists and actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “The period in which health care has accounted for a stable share of economic output is projected to end in 2014, primarily because of the coverage expansions of the Affordable Care Act,” said the report, by Andrea M. Sisko and colleagues at the federal health care agency. Still, they said, even as millions of people gain coverage, the average annual rate of increase in health spending through 2023 will be somewhat lower than it was in the two decades before the recession that began in late 2007. The expected increases will be somewhat dampened, the report says, by slower growth in Medicare payment rates required by the new health care law and by a trend toward higher co-payments and deductibles, which tend to discourage people from using services provided by private insurance. In addition, it said, a new excise tax on high-cost employer-sponsored health plans, starting in 2018, “is expected to slightly constrain premium growth.” In their annual projections of health spending, the experts predicted that the total would climb 5.6 percent this year and then an average of 6 percent a year until 2023, when health care will account for 19.3 of the nation’s total output — two percentage points more than last year. By 2023, the report said, national health spending will total $5.2 trillion, up from $2.9 trillion in 2013. The federal share of all health spending will increase, and the share paid by state and local governments will remain constant, while the shares paid by households and private businesses will decline a bit, said the report, published online Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs . The report estimates that nine million uninsured Americans are gaining coverage this year through Medicaid and private insurance. That is somewhat lower than estimates by administration officials and the Congressional Budget Office, which said in April that the number of uninsured would decline this year by 12 million. From 2013 to 2015, the new report says, federal spending on Medicaid will increase 27 percent to $323 billion, from $254 billion. In those years, it said, Medicaid spending by state and local governments will rise 12 percent to $218 billion, from $195 billion. The federal government will initially pay all the costs resulting from the expansion of Medicaid eligibility in states that choose to cover certain childless adults with low incomes. States will have to pay some of the cost for new beneficiaries who could have qualified for Medicaid under old eligibility rules. “Additionally,” the report said, “some large employers of low-wage employees will elect to no longer offer health insurance to their employees by 2016. As a result, a portion of these affected employees will qualify for, and enroll in, Medicaid.” The experts estimated that spending on prescription drugs would increase at a rapid clip, rising 6.8 percent this year and 6.4 percent next year. “This is primarily a result of increases in the use of prescription drugs by the newly insured and by those who have switched to more generous insurance plans” because of subsidies offered under the Affordable Care Act, the report said. “Early analysis indicates that compared to other forms of private health insurance, marketplace plans are experiencing greater use of drugs in several therapy classes, including higher use of specialty drugs. In addition, expensive new hepatitis C treatments are expected to contribute to an acceleration of drug spending growth in 2014.” While many factors will tend to increase the use of prescription drugs, the experts estimate that drugs will account for the same share of total health spending, 9.4 percent, in 2023 as in 2013. Ms. Sisko and her colleagues said that the growth of health spending in recent years had been constrained not just by the recession, but also by an unusually slow economic recovery. Obama administration officials have said that innovations in the delivery of health care, inspired by the Affordable Care Act, are reining in the growth of health spending. The authors of the report said they were hopeful but wanted to see the results of demonstration projects. “It’s still too soon to say what the ultimate impact of the delivery reforms will be,” Ms. Sisko said. The experts forecast substantial growth in Medicare enrollment and spending, but said the growth in spending would be moderated by cutbacks in payments to private Medicare Advantage plans, which cover about 30 percent of beneficiaries.


Suit Blames Agency in Abuse of Disabled Woman

Abstract: The father of a severely mentally disabled woman filed suit on Thursday against the agency that cares for her, contending that she was sexually abused while under its watch. The $10 million lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, claims that the agency, Episcopal Social Services of New York, acted negligently in caring for the woman, who is 43. As a result, the suit says, she was sexually assaulted and contracted a sexually transmitted disease while living in an East Harlem group home operated by the agency. “They told us that she would be taken care of and protected,” said Angel Acevedo, her father. “I want to make sure something like this does not happen again to any family.” His daughter, who is blind and can speak only a few words, has been under the agency’s care since 1977. The agency says she is under constant one-to-one care and is always with a female staff member. In 2008, the woman was found to have genital human papillomavirus, or HPV. In a report after an internal investigation, the agency concluded that she could have contracted the disease only through sexual contact. The suit says that because she is incapable of consenting to any such contact, she clearly was sexually abused. In its report, the agency pointed to an episode in 1993, when the woman was found alone while at a day camp. When she returned to the group home, the staff discovered that she was not wearing underwear and that she had what was later identified as semen on her body, the report said. The woman was taken to a hospital and the police investigated, but no suspect was identified and no charges were filed. The report did not say if Ms. Acevedo was under the care of agency staff members while at the day camp. That episode was the only evidence that Ms. Acevedo had had any sexual contact, and the HPV could have been dormant until the test in 2008, the agency report said. “The case has no merit,” Mary G. Connolly, a spokeswoman for Episcopal Social Services, said. She declined to comment further. Mr. Acevedo said that any money won from the suit would go to moving his daughter from the group home into a place where she was safe. He said he was seeking justice for her. “I want the people at E.S.S. held responsible and to find out what really happened,” Mr. Acevedo said.

Episcopal Social Services of New York
Suits and Litigation
Sex Crimes
East Harlem (NYC)
Handicapped


Shinzo Abe Faces Growing Wrath of Okinawans Over U.S. Base

Abstract: HENOKO, Japan — Orange buoys surround a wide swath of clear blue sea off the coast of Okinawa where the United States Marine Corps has long sought to build a new airfield on landfill. For more than two decades, plans for this base have gone nowhere, stymied by fierce local opposition and politicians in Tokyo without the clout or determination to overcome it. But now Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing ahead with construction, seeking to establish his credentials as Washington’s most important ally in Asia and to take Japan — whether it is ready or not — another step toward his vision of a “normal country” no longer held back by pacifist restraint or haunted by its wartime past. Daily demonstrations against the base by protesters encamped at its main gate, and the shouts of “Warmonger!” that greeted Mr. Abe on a visit to Okinawa last month, highlight what he is up against: a public that for decades has recoiled from anything resembling the militarism that led Japan into World War II. Among residents of Okinawa, that sentiment is magnified by concerns about the environmental impact of the new base on pristine coral reefs here, frustration over crime associated with the already sizable American military presence on this southern Japanese island, and a sense that Mr. Abe is using the base to make an offering to Washington that serves his interests at the expense of their own. The result is a showdown that is emerging as one of the first big political challenges for Mr. Abe, a right-wing prime minister who has cast himself as a transformative leader trying to push through an agenda of national revival. Since taking office two and a half years ago, Mr. Abe has enjoyed high approval ratings for his efforts to engineer an economic recovery and has usually seemed to get his way because of the near collapse of the largest opposition parties. But as he begins to focus on the noneconomic pieces of his agenda, resistance is stirring not only in Okinawa but across Japan. While Mr. Abe’s coalition is firmly in control of Parliament, recent polls show public support for him beginning to slip, with more Japanese saying they oppose crucial parts of his security agenda than saying they support them. There have also been growing protests in Tokyo, including one last month that drew 30,000 demonstrators, against sweeping legislation that would ease many of the restrictions placed on Japan’s military by its postwar Constitution. Analysts say the legislation is almost certain to be approved, but Mr. Abe extended the current session of Parliament by more than three months into September, the longest such extension in postwar history, to give himself more time to win over public opinion and avoid the appearance of ramming the bills through. Image Protesters held a rally in May against the construction, planned for more than two decades, of a Marine Corps airfield on landfill off the coast of Okinawa. Credit Ko Sasaki for The New York Times Central to Mr. Abe’s vision of a more proactive Japan is fulfilling a nearly two-decade-old agreement between Tokyo and Washington to relocate the busy Futenma air base, one of more than a dozen American military facilities on Okinawa, from its current site in the middle of the crowded city of Ginowan in the island’s south to Henoko Bay in its less-populated north. In recent months, Mr. Abe has signaled his resolve to move ahead with construction where his predecessors stalled, by proceeding with tests of the seabed and by marking off the area with the orange buoys. That has put him on a collision course with tens of thousands of angry and increasingly radicalized Okinawans. “Abe wants to use Okinawa as part of a deal with Washington to let him pursue his agenda,” said Masaaki Gabe, a professor of international relations at the University of the Ryukyus on Okinawa, noting that open American support for Mr. Abe’s program of pulling Japan out of its postwar pacifist shell would make it easier for the prime minister to win over the Japanese public. “Problem is, Okinawa doesn’t want to be a bargaining chip,” Mr. Gabe said. “And it is speaking out in ways that the rest of Japan has not.” Unlike the often disorganized opposition that Mr. Abe faces elsewhere in Japan, his critics in Okinawa have been able to rally around a political figure: its new governor, Takeshi Onaga, a former head of the Okinawa chapter of Mr. Abe’s governing Liberal Democratic Party who broke with the leadership to fight the air base. Since unseating a pro-base incumbent backed by Mr. Abe in December, Mr. Onaga has vowed to obstruct construction using whatever legal or moral powers he can muster as governor. But he has also stepped forward as an advocate for something new in Okinawan politics and in proudly homogeneous Japan: a budding sense of ethnic identity among the island’s residents, who in recent years have begun speaking of themselves as a minority facing discrimination by the ethnic Japanese majority. In April, Mr. Onaga drew an extended standing ovation from a stadium filled with 35,000 people protesting the base after he issued a stern warning to Mr. Abe — “Don’t mess with Okinawa!” — in his native Okinawan language, which few governors had used so openly in public before, according to political analysts. He has also warned that if Mr. Abe’s government resorted to heavy-handed tactics, such as ordering the police to disperse protesters blocking construction work, more Okinawans would embrace the goal of political independence from Japan, an idea now being advocated here by a tiny minority for the first time since the United States returned the island to Japanese administration in 1972. “Prime Minister Abe wants to regain Japan’s pride, but at the expense of Okinawa,” Mr. Onaga said in a recent interview. “We are not going to take that lying down.” Eschewing the usual dark suit of a Japanese politician for a brightly colored kariyushi shirt — Okinawa’s answer to a Hawaiian shirt — Mr. Onaga, 64, held up black-and-white photographs of cars that had been set on fire during a 1970 riot in Okinawa against its postwar control by the United States. He said the same thing could happen again, but against Japanese rule, if Tokyo ignored Okinawan opposition to the base. Image Coral reefs along the coast near Camp Schwab, on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Credit Kyodo News, via Reuters “Japan has been using Okinawa as a pawn in its big power politics for 136 years. Enough is enough,” he said, referring to the year 1879, when a fledgling Japanese empire forcibly annexed Okinawa, then known as the independent Kingdom of the Ryukyus. Mr. Abe refused to see Mr. Onaga for months after his election. When the two men finally met, just before the prime minister’s trip to Washington in late April, they appeared to speak past each other. Mr. Onaga restated his opposition to the base, while Mr. Abe said there was no alternative to the relocation plan. The Japanese government says the relocation will reduce the American footprint in Okinawa’s more densely populated southern half and improve safety for the island’s population. But the local opposition has argued that Futenma — and other bases — should be moved off Okinawa altogether, because a disproportionate share of the American military’s facilities in Japan are on the island compared with other parts of the country. The Americans say the base must remain on Okinawa to keep its aircraft near their main users, the Marine ground forces also stationed here. The Pentagon originally agreed to relocate the base following the outcry over the 1995 rape case of a schoolgirl by three American servicemen. More than 25,000 American military personnel are stationed across Okinawa. With neither Mr. Abe nor Mr. Onaga showing any sign of backing down, anger here has only grown shriller. Last month, at a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the fierce World War II battle for Okinawa, residents heckled Mr. Abe — rare in normally staid Japan — as he addressed a gathering that included the American ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy. “The people of Okinawa have been bearing a great burden for Japan’s security,” Mr. Abe said, striking a sympathetic note as he ignored the hecklers, mostly older Okinawan men. Polls show that most residents oppose the new airfield and that sympathy for their cause is growing among Japanese elsewhere, too. Analysts said Mr. Abe’s political standing would suffer serious damage if he pushed ahead with construction and protesters were injured, which would allow his opponents to cast him as a callous villain determined to build the air base regardless of the human cost. Such an incident seemed a distinct possibility on a recent morning outside the gate of Camp Schwab, where pre-construction tests of the seabed had begun. As large desert-yellow and olive Marine trucks rumbled out of the gate, demonstrators rushed from their tents, some into the road, to shout and wave placards. Masaru Shiroma, 69, the leader of about 200 protesters gathered that day, said he and his comrades would do everything they could, including lying down in front of the gate, to stop vehicles if construction starts. “This is our way of exercising our right of self-determination,” he said. “Both the Japanese and the Americans are alien occupiers here.”

Shinzo Abe
Japan
Takeshi Onaga
Ryukyu Islands
US Military
Military Bases
Civil Unrest


For Free Throws, 50 Years of Practice Is No Help

Abstract: CEDAR CITY, Utah — Basketball in the United States has changed in myriad ways over the decades, from flat-footed set shots to dunks, from crotch-hugging uniforms to baggy knee-length shorts, from the dominance of American players to the recent infusion of international stars. But one thing has remained remarkably constant: the rate at which players make free throws. Since the mid-1960s, college men’s players have made about 69 percent of free throws, the unguarded 15-foot, 1-point shot awarded after a foul. In 1965, the rate was 69 percent. This season, as teams scramble for bids to the N.C.A.A. tournament, it was 68.8. It has dropped as low as 67.1 but never topped 70. In the National Basketball Association, the average has been roughly 75 percent for more than 50 years. Players in college women’s basketball and the W.N.B.A. reached similar plateaus — about equal to the men — and stuck there. The general expectation in sports is that performance improves over time. Future athletes will surely be faster, throw farther, jump higher. But free-throw shooting represents a stubbornly peculiar athletic endeavor. As a group, players have not gotten better. Nor have they become worse. “It’s unbelievable,” Larry Wright, an adjunct professor of statistics at Columbia, said as he studied the year-by-year averages. “There’s almost no difference. Fifty years. This is mind-boggling.” There are measures in other sports that have shown similar consistency, like golf scores or batting averages, but none of them are as straightforward as lobbing a ball toward a basket. The consistency of free-throw percentages stands out when contrasted with field-goal shooting over all. In men’s college basketball, field-goal percentage was below 40 percent until 1960, then climbed steadily to 48.1 in 1984, still the highest on record. The long-range 3-point shot was introduced in 1986, and the overall shooting percentage has settled in at about 44 percent. Utah is as good as anyplace to untangle the numbers. It is home to three of the top 10 free-throw shooting teams in men’s Division I — No. 1 Southern Utah (80.5 percent), No. 4 Utah (78.5 percent before Tuesday’s game against New Mexico) and No. 7 Utah Valley (77.0 percent, but not officially recognized by the N.C.A.A. because the program is in its final season of provisional status as a Division I team). In the middle of Southern Utah’s high-paced basketball scrimmage here last week, Coach Roger Reid stopped everything. Players knew what to do. Their chests heaving in exhaustion, they silently lined up and shot free throws. A miss meant a sprint around the court. “A lot of coaches give it lip service, but when you say that games are won and lost at the free-throw line, you better back it up,” said Reid, who understands that individual players and teams can improve free-throw shooting through better technique and repetition. When Reid arrived at Southern Utah two years ago, he inherited a team that ranked 217th in free-throw percentage. There is little correlation between free-throw percentages and winning percentages. Only one of the 25 best shooting teams, No. 2 North Carolina, is also in the latest Associated Press top 25 rankings. Southern Utah has a losing record. That is why, despite accounting for more than 20 percent of scoring in men’s college basketball and just below 20 percent in the N.B.A., free throws receive a fraction of the attention from coaches, players and fans. That is, until something considered free proves costly. Last season, Memphis was 38-2 despite making only 61 percent of its free throws, missing an average of nearly 10 a game. The Tigers lost the national championship game after missing 4 of 5 free throws in the final 72 seconds against Kansas, which had made a late 3-point shot to tie the game and won in overtime. This season, Utah outshot opponents from the line in overtime victories over Brigham Young and Colorado State, and 1-point victories over Gonzaga and New Mexico. Those victories will probably carry Utah (20-8) to the N.C.A.A. tournament. Ray Stefani, a professor emeritus at California State University, Long Beach, is an expert in the statistical analysis of sports. Widespread improvement over time in any sport, he said, depends on a combination of four factors: physiology (the size and fitness of athletes, perhaps aided by performance-enhancing drugs), technology or innovation (things like the advent of rowing machines to train rowers, and the Fosbury Flop in high jumping), coaching (changes in strategy) and equipment (like the clap skate in speedskating or fiberglass poles in pole vaulting). Those factors can help explain why swimming records seemingly fall at every international event, runners broke through the four-minute-mile barrier, field-goal kickers are more accurate than ever, bowling a 300 game is not as unlikely as it once was, and home run numbers surged in major league baseball. “There are not a lot of those four things that would help in free-throw shooting,” Stefani said. Strength, for example, is not a significant advantage. W.N.B.A. players have outshot their N.B.A. counterparts twice in the past three years, and women in college have been close to the men’s average for two decades. There has not been a serious innovation in the way free throws have been shot for 50 years. The few still using a one-hand set shot from the chest, or even an underhand style, generally gave way to a flat-footed version of the burgeoning over-the-head jump shot. And although international players have helped the free-throw rate — Wright, the Columbia statistician, calculated that foreign-born players in the N.B.A. this season are shooting about 1.4 percentage points higher than their American-born counterparts — it cannot fully explain why the league is threatening the record high of 77.1, set in 1974. Equipment, too, is virtually unchanged from 50 years ago. There have been only slight alterations to the ball, the rims and the backboards. That leaves only one of Stefani’s four factors that might reasonably affect free-throw averages: coaching. Coaches admit to baselines of acceptability for their players and teams. The average, apparently, is about 75 percent in the N.B.A. and 69 percent in college basketball. When numbers slip, time is devoted to improvement. When they rebound, the game’s other facets take precedence. “A lot of coaches don’t want to spend time on it in practice,” said Blake Ahearn, a former Missouri State player who is the N.C.A.A.’s leader in career free-throw percentage (94.6) and now leads the N.B.A. Development League as a guard for the Dakota Wizards. “They want to work on defenses and offenses and schemes.” But even practice has never made perfect. The general rule is that players, in games, shoot 10 percentage points below their practice average. The difference is pressure and fatigue, hard to replicate in an empty arena. Utah Valley and Chicago State were tied with a minute left in last week’s game in Orem, Utah. About two-thirds of a winning team’s points in the final minute typically come from the free-throw line, which is why Utah Valley wanted the ball in Ryan Toolson’s hands. His career free-throw average is 94 percent. Toolson was fouled on a drive with 51 seconds left. Swish, swish. He was fouled with 18 seconds left. Swish, swish. He was fouled with 9 seconds left. Swish, bonk. The crowd murmured. The game was momentarily in doubt. But after Utah Valley escaped with a victory, thanks to two more free throws, Coach Dick Hunsaker praised Toolson as Mr. Clutch. “Except that free throw,” Toolson whispered to himself.


Kwan Earns a Last Shot at Gold

Abstract: In a nearly empty rink yesterday in Artesia, Calif., with no crowd to charm and no television cameras to capture her trademark smile, Michelle Kwan still captivated her audience. Kwan, the face of American skating for a decade despite always coming up short in the Olympics, performed so convincingly that a team of United States Figure Skating Association officials decided that she was fit to compete in her third Games. Kwan, making her last-ditch attempt at Olympic glory at 25, took the ice in a simple black sweatshirt and warm-up pants and skated her long and short programs, according to pool reporters attending the session. She beamed toward the empty bleachers as if they were packed with fans, although only some skating and Olympic officials, her parents and her sister watched from rinkside, shivering in the cold arena. When she was finished, a five-member panel unanimously determined that she could compete in the marquee event at the Turin Games, which begin Feb. 10. Kwan had been named to the Olympic team after pulling out of the national championships with a groin injury, but she was required to show skating officials that she would be ready to compete. "It is the opinion of this monitoring team that Michelle could win the Olympics," Bob Horen, chairman of the figure skating association's international committee who was among the monitors watching Kwan yesterday, said in a teleconference. "She is definitely qualified to win a medal and we really believe it. She skated that way." The uncertainty of Kwan's fate had been the most gripping issue in figure skating leading up to the Winter Olympics. Now, her presence in the Games will surely be cheered by NBC, which draws huge ratings for women's figure skating. More than 30 million households tuned in for Sarah Hughes's gold medal triumph in 2002. Olympic sponsors Visa and Coca-Cola have also invested heavily in Kwan's star power. Joining Kwan on the United States women's team are Sasha Cohen and Kimmie Meissner. Emily Hughes, Sarah's younger sister, will go to Turin as the alternate and may skate if a teammate sustains an injury. "It feels awesome," Kwan said in a teleconference from Los Angeles. "I know I have a lot to work on. I need to spend every minute I have before the Olympics working on the details." Kwan was on the other side of a similar petition in 1994, after Nancy Kerrigan was attacked at the nationals by an associate of Tonya Harding's and pulled out because of an injured knee. Kerrigan was monitored before being placed on the Olympic team, taking the spot from Kwan. Kwan said Kerrigan called her yesterday to wish her good luck. Now Kwan will be one of the most high-profile athletes on the United States Olympic team, along with the skier Bode Miller and the short-track speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno. Adding to the drama of Kwan's story is her heartbreak at the two previous Olympics. In 1998 and in 2002, Kwan entered the Games as the gold-medal favorite only to have another American win. In 1998, it was Tara Lipinski. In 2002, it was Hughes. This time, Kwan is not the favorite. That role goes to Irina Slutskaya of Russia, who has been dominant in international competition over the past year. And Cohen, who finally won the national title with Kwan injured, seems poised to surpass her nemesis. But yesterday, Kwan said she was not thinking of that. "All I know is I have a shot," she said. "I can't tell you what percentage, but I have a shot and I will take advantage of that shot and try my best." Kwan first skated her long program and completed all of her jumps cleanly, including four triples, and skipped a triple loop, according to the pool reporters. She then took only a few minutes' break and skated her short program. "She did the two programs almost consecutively," Horen said. Kwan fell on a double axel in her short program, Horen said, but after the program, she completed two of them to show the monitors she could land the jump. Horen said the group met for an hour after the session, and the vote was unanimous. Her five evaluators were Horen; the international-level judges Charlie Cyr, Paula Naughton and Lorrie Parker; and the athlete representative Brittney Bottoms. "It was pretty intense," Kwan said. "It was a situation I've never been in before. Nothing is ever certain. I made a few mistakes. But you finish skating, and it's all you can do." Getting to the Olympics has never been a problem for Kwan, who has won nine national championships and five world championships in her long and lucrative career. But the Olympics have proved frustrating. She surprised many by deciding last summer to pursue a berth in her third Games. Kwan finished last season by struggling to finish fourth at the world championships, which was the first time she competed under the sport's new scoring system, implemented to diminish subjectivity. It was adopted in response to the scoring scandal at the 2002 Games and it puts a premium on more difficult elements. Knowing she had to increase the difficulty of her jumps, Kwan sustained a hip injury last fall while working on them. It knocked her out of the international events, and she could return only for a made-for-television exhibition in December, when she did not land a triple jump. She said she sustained the groin injury a few days later. She pulled out of the national championships and announced she would enter a petition to be included on the Olympic team. But her condition was shrouded in mystery. Kwan, who guards her privacy fiercely, practices in closed sessions and rarely grants interviews. Hughes was waiting in the wings until yesterday; she would have replaced Kwan on the team had she not performed well. After Hughes finished third at the national championships -- she fell hard attempting a triple loop and landed only four triple jumps -- she handled the news of Kwan's selection gracefully. Hughes did not respond to requests for comment last night. Kwan said she was aware of criticism of her addition to the team by petition. "The decision was not up to me; it was up to the committee," she said. "So the criticism, I can't do anything about it."

FIGURE SKATING
UNITED STATES OLYMPIC COMMITTEE
KWAN MICHELLE
OLYMPIC GAMES (2006)


For ‘Lucky Losers’ at Australian Open, a Chance to Be Contenders

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — In tennis, “win or go home” is a reality of life on the tour. The single-elimination format means that losers have no reason to linger, and by the end of the tournament every player but the champion will have lost. Occasionally, a loser gets lucky. At this Australian Open, two losers have gotten very, very lucky. After losing in the final round of the qualifying draw, Martin Klizan of Slovakia and Stéphane Robert of France each ascended into the main draw, chosen as “lucky losers” to replace two players who withdrew after the qualifying tournament had begun but before their first match in the main draw. And each won his first two matches. On Saturday, Klizan and Robert played each other, the first time two lucky losers had met in the third round of a Grand Slam in more than 40 years. Robert won in straight sets, 6-0, 7-6 (2), 6-4. The first time it happened was at Wimbledon in 1973, a tournament full of statistical anomalies because of an 81-player boycott. To fill in the empty draw, 50 lucky losers were given the chance to play, and 10 reached the third round. There were two matches in the third round between lucky losers. Since that aberrational tournament, several lucky losers have reached the third round of a Grand Slam (the French Open in 1977 and 1982, and Wimbledon in 1991 and 2002), but they have not played one another. Robert became the first lucky loser to reach the fourth round of the Australian Open, and the ninth over all at Grand Slam events, the most recent being David Goffin at the 2012 French Open. No lucky loser has ever gone to the quarterfinals. At Grand Slam events, officials randomly draw the names of the four highest-ranked losers to determine the order in which they will enter the main draw as replacements. (The random order is to prevent deliberate losing in the last round.) Klizan, who lost in the final round of qualifying to Dominic Thiem of Austria, was drawn first from the losers at this tournament. He entered the main draw immediately after the draw because Nicolás Almagro, who would have been the No. 13 seed, withdrew because of a shoulder injury. “Last year was the worst year for me,” said Klizan, a 24-year-old from Bratislava whose ranking has fallen to 106th from 30th in the past 12 months. “But as a tennis player, everybody has a couple of years with these problems, and I think the most important thing is to work hard, be positive, and things can come. “Now I was working very hard, and I just got in as lucky loser, so maybe God helped me a little bit,” he said. Robert, a 33-year-old journeyman ranked 119th, had been struggling with back problems before the tournament. He said he had been satisfied with just having reached the last round of qualifying, where he lost to Michael Berrer of Germany. Robert, drawn second in the order, also seemed likely to enter the main draw, as No. 18 seed Gilles Simon of France had sprained his ankle in the week before the tournament. Robert was left waiting for an official announcement that Simon would indeed be withdrawing, as several French outlets had reported. “On Saturday night, he had dinner, and I was in the same restaurant,” Robert said of Simon. “I could see him with his crutch. So it was a bit weird.” Image Martin Klizan of Slovakia ascended into the main draw, chosen to replace a player who withdrew after the qualifying tournament had begun but before his first match in the main draw. Credit Shuji Kajiyama/Associated Press But Simon’s ankle rapidly improved, and he would go on to not only play his first-round match but win in an epic 16-14 fifth set. Despite his countryman’s unexpected perseverance, Robert found his way into the draw thanks to a late unexpected withdrawal by the No. 21 seed Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany because of a hamstring injury. Once they were into the tournament, the lucky men thrived. Klizan faced the No. 13 seed John Isner, a big-serving American who had just won a title in Auckland, and advanced when Isner retired after losing the first two sets because of a persistent ankle injury. Klizan then won his second-round match against the Slovenian qualifier Blaz Rola, the recent N.C.A.A. champion for Ohio State. “I’m just very happy that I got to main draw, and I won two rounds in main draw,” Klizan said. “So now we cannot talk about lucky loser.” Robert beat Aljaz Bedene of Slovenia in straight sets in the first round and Michal Przysiezny of Poland in four sets in the second round. For Robert, who reached a career-high of No. 61 in 2010, it was the first time he reached the third round of a Grand Slam event. “It’s another line in my curriculum vitae,” Robert said. While Klizan has already reached the fourth round of a Grand Slam once, at the 2012 United States Open, Robert was hoping for his first trip to the second week of a Slam. “He did once, so he has already this experience,” Robert said of Klizan before their match. “So I hope it’s going to be my first time.” On Saturday, his hope came true. The unlikely meeting of Klizan and Robert came at a time when lucky losers are likely to become a diminishing breed at Grand Slam events, because of the increasing incentives for players not to withdraw from tournaments. Prize money for first-round losers at the Australian Open has increased 44.2 percent in two years, from $20,800 in 2012 to $30,000 this year, part of a wider trend of increasing money for players who exit in earlier rounds. While beneficial to the players, the pay increase for what can amount to mere attendance has had the unintended consequence of convincing injured players to step on court for a first-round match even if they know that their chances are slim. The clearest example at this tournament was Polona Hercog of Slovenia, who is ranked 66th. After entering her first-round match at the Australian Open with a pre-existing shoulder injury, Hercog retired against Alizé Cornet after only six points, stopping after the first point she managed to win. Hercog earned only $212,138 in prize money last year, so first-round prize money at Grand Slam events accounts for a large percentage of her total income. John Isner, who followed the Hercog-Cornet match on court and eventually was forced to retire against Klizan, said he thought measures to allow for injured players to collect their prize money without having to play would prevent the trend of hurt players taking spots that healthy competitors would be better able to fill. “In a situation like that, maybe a rule could be put into place so that the person who pulls out gets compensated,” Isner said of Hercog. “I don’t know, 75 percent of the first-round prize money, maybe 80, maybe even 100 percent of it. I think at this point a lucky loser is just happy to get in. I would be in favor of a rule change there. I don’t know about that girl in front of me, but she earned her spot in the main draw.” Almagro and Kohlschreiber, the seeded men’s players who gave Klizan and Robert spots in the main draw, each earned more than $1 million in prize money during the 2013 season, and could better afford to decline a check when unable to compete fully. “Sometimes these guys are gentlemen,” Robert said. “And I’m happy to take this spot.”