Women in the Senate Confront the Military on Sex Assaults

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Senator Claire McCaskill wandered down the dais at the Senate Armed Services Committee’s first hearing of the year and noticed a startling tableau: women to the left, women to the right. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a veteran Republican member of one of the Senate’s most testosterone-driven panels, was now flanked by them on both sides, including by two Republican colleagues, Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska. “You’re toast, Graham,” cracked Ms. McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat. Ms. McCaskill’s joke reflected the seven women now on the Armed Services Committee, a high, and the role that a record 20 female senators are playing on powerful committees. Of the four most prestigious Senate panels — Appropriations, Armed Services, Finance and Foreign Relations — women now hold 18 spots, an increase of nearly 65 percent over the last decade. But nowhere is the presence of so many women more pronounced than on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where the women on the 26-member panel have forced the long-simmering issue of sexual assault in the military to the forefront on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have tried to pursue the sexual assault problem for years, with little impact. But now a slew of attention-grabbing bills — most written by women — are intended to end what senior military officials say is a crisis and President Obama has called a disgrace. Image Senators Kelly Ayotte, left, and Deb Fischer serve on the Armed Services Committee. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times “When I raised the issue of rape in the military seven years ago, there was dead silence,” said Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat and member of the committee. “Clearly they are changing things around here.” At a widely watched committee hearing last month, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, narrowed her eyes with disdain as Michael B. Donley, the secretary of the Air Force, expressed regret about recent assault cases. She then excoriated him and Gen. Mark A. Welsh III , the chief of staff of the Air Force, when they suggested that they were making progress on the problem. “I do not think you should pat yourself on the back,” Ms. Gillibrand admonished them. Sexual assault, she said, is “undermining the credibility of the greatest military force in the world.” She has since introduced legislation that would give military prosecutors rather than commanders the power to decide which sexual assault cases to try. Her goal is to increase the number of people who report sex crimes without fear of retaliation. The sexual assault issue has caught the attention of the women on the committee in part because some have law enforcement backgrounds. Ms. McCaskill is a former prosecutor who handled sex crimes and homicides, and Ms. Ayotte was the head of the homicide division in the New Hampshire attorney general’s office. “When I saw how the military was dealing with this problem, I realized how out of step they were with the criminal justice system,” Ms. McCaskill said. Although the sexual assault issue had been brought before the committee over the years, she said, “the main people asking questions during the hearings are women. That has never really happened on this committee before.” Image Senator Claire McCaskill said that as a former prosecutor, when she saw how the military was dealing with sexual assault in its ranks, “I realized how out of step they were with the criminal justice system.” Credit J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press The women do not dominate the panel on more traditional military issues — the defense budget, the future of the Army, weapons procurement and nuclear policy, to name a few. In those cases, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the committee, and Senator John McCain, the highest-profile Republican member, have the most powerful voices. Other forceful members include Mr. Graham and Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat. The men lead on those issues in large part because of their longevity on the committee or because they have the kind of military experience not historically open to women. Mr. Levin has served on the committee for more than three decades, Mr. McCain is a former Navy pilot, Mr. Reed is a former Army Ranger, and Mr. Graham is in the Air Force Reserves. Ms. Gillibrand said there was a similar male-female pattern when she served on the House Armed Services Committee. “The men asked all the questions about ships, hardware, that sort of thing,” she said. “We asked why divorce and suicide rates were so high.” But Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, said she saw that dynamic changing. “Women have started to challenge many of the assumptions in the department,” she said, referring to the Pentagon. For example, Ms. McCaskill, a former Missouri state auditor, has repeatedly questioned waste in defense contracting and has made war profiteering one of her signature issues. Like many of the men, a number of the women are on the committee because of the military bases or shipbuilding concerns in their states, including Senator Kay Hagan, Democrat of North Carolina; Senator Mazie K. Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii; Ms. Gillibrand; Ms. Ayotte; and Ms. Shaheen. Image Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand admonished Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the Air Force chief of staff, and the secretary of the Air Force, Michael B. Donley, when they suggested they were making progress on combating sexual assault in the military. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times If there is one thing that unifies the women on the committee — five Democrats and two Republicans — it is support for a robust American military. “These are post-9/11 moms who care about foreign policy because they want our nation to be safe,” said Mr. Graham, who has traveled extensively in Pakistan and Israel with Ms. Gillibrand on trips related to antiterrorism efforts. “They want to make sure our military families are doing well because that means they are ready for the fight.” The history of women on the Senate Armed Services Committee mirrors women’s general rise in the Senate — slow and plodding — and their history within the military. The first woman on the committee was Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican who served in both the House and the Senate in the mid-20th century. Ms. Smith, who crusaded during her House career for sexual equality in the military, continued that path when she joined the Senate committee in 1953. “Women in the military today owe a debt to her getting veterans’ benefits, when the male senators on the committee never gave it a thought,” said Betty Koed, the associate Senate historian. Image Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the Air Force chief of staff, right, and the secretary of the Air Force, Michael B. Donley. Credit J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press Women have been in the armed forces since they were nurses, cooks and the occasional saboteur in the American Revolution, but it was not until World War II that large numbers served. Their numbers grew significantly after 1973, when the end of the draft created a need for more women. The huge deployment of troops in the 1991 Persian Gulf war validated the integration of women and emboldened them to seek previously restricted jobs, like flying attack planes. In the wars of the past 12 years, when more than 280,000 women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, women served in combat in all but name. Reflecting the change, the number of women on the Armed Services Committee began to creep up. In 2001, women made up 10 percent of the committee, compared with nearly 30 percent today. Women on the committee have included former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, a Republican who focused on military family issues, and Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and an early voice on the sexual assault issue, although she was largely dismissed at the time by military brass. In 2001, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the new junior senator from New York, sought a seat on the Armed Services Committee rather than the Foreign Relations Committee in part to establish her national security credentials. She traveled frequently to Iraq and Afghanistan and built such strong relationships with top generals that she was mentioned — after her 2008 presidential campaign and while still serving as secretary of state — as a possible successor to Robert M. Gates as defense secretary. Her tenure on the committee became a model of how female senators could be as influential on the panel as the men. Military families remain a priority of many women on the committee, who have focused in particular on legislation to ease debt and financial concerns. “I think women on this committee bring the perspective of family life back home, getting bills paid, that sort of thing,” Ms. Hagan said. The women have also added a dimension to Congressional delegation trips overseas. In meetings in the Middle East and parts of South Asia, female senators are often the only women present. Mr. McCain, Ms. Ayotte said, makes an effort to let them speak first to establish their equality in the delegation. “When we travel to Afghanistan and the Middle East and there are women senators there,” Ms. Ayotte said, “it really sends a strong message to the world that this is what we stand for. This is what we have.”

Claire McCaskill
Lindsey Graham
Deb Fischer
Rape
Women and Girls
US Military
Kelly A Ayotte
Kirsten E Gillibrand
US


Yahoo’s Board Is Said to Weigh Selling Off Core Business

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — The board of Yahoo will discuss potentially selling off the beleaguered Internet company’s core business during a series of meetings this week, people briefed on the plans said on Tuesday. Directors of the company will also discuss whether to move forward with plans to spin off Yahoo’s 15 percent stake in the Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce giant. The board will weigh all its options, and it is unclear whether the directors will change course, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plans. Still, the discussions — which will take place at a regularly scheduled board meeting — highlight the difficulties that have long troubled one of the most prominent Internet companies. The discussions are also sure to put attention squarely on Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, and the company’s direction under her leadership. Although Ms. Mayer is credited with stabilizing the company, which was in rapid decline, Yahoo has introduced no breakthrough products during her three years at the helm and has fallen further and further behind competitors like Facebook and Google in the battle for advertising dollars. A representative of Yahoo declined to comment on the plans. Begun as a simple website called Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web, Yahoo has grown into one of the biggest names in the Internet business. Yet for the last decade, Yahoo has struggled to find its reason for being. Under the leadership of Ms. Mayer, a highly vaunted Google executive brought in to drive the latest turnaround effort, the company has spent billions of dollars on acquisitions like Tumblr and Polyvore that have yet to prove their value. And in October, the company announced it was writing off $42 million that it had wasted on an ill-fated foray into original video programming. Hundreds of millions of people continue to use Yahoo, which was a pioneer on the Internet. So the core business could have value to a potential acquirer. “The saving grace for Yahoo is that it still has a relatively large user base that is reliant on the platform so long as they maintain email addresses there. It also has a still relatively strong (and still relatively large) sales force,” wrote Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research, in a note to clients Tuesday night. “As long as both of those factors remain in place, there would be time for an acquirer to establish new strategies and develop products while the property continues to generate cash flow.” But by far the greater value to shareholders has come from Yahoo’s large stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, which is controlled by the Japanese investment firm SoftBank. Subtract the Alibaba and SoftBank stakes and the value of the remaining company is less than zero. The planned board discussions were reported Tuesday evening by The Wall Street Journal. In an interview on Tuesday after news of the potential board talks was published, Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo’s senior vice president for communications products, said employees were continuing to work on new products and features as the larger discussions about the company’s fate continued. “It’s clear that Marissa came in with a timeline of three to five years,” Mr. Bonforte said. But he said that ultimately his team members did not have any control over how much time they would get to show results. “I just try to ship products that I’m not ashamed of,” he said. The board’s deliberations are also taking place under pressure from a prominent activist investor, the hedge fund Starboard Value, which has spent more than a year trying to push Yahoo to take action to raise its stock price. Last month, Starboard called on Yahoo to abandon the spinoff of the Alibaba stake after the Internal Revenue Service declined to bless the potential deal as tax-free. That could negate the rationale for the spinoff and lead to a tax bill of several billion dollars. While Yahoo could fight a tax determination, Starboard has argued that the upside of winning that battle would be limited. Should Yahoo put its core business up for sale, the operations are expected to draw takeover interest from other technology companies as well as private equity firms, analysts and investors have said. A representative of Starboard declined to comment.

Alibaba
Marissa Mayer
Starboard Value
Yahoo!
Board of directors
Search Engines
Mergers and Acquisitions
Shareholder Rights


Preparing for Hurricane Babies

Abstract: Late last October, Hurricane Sandy pumped six feet of water into the lobby of a residential building in downtown Jersey City, trapping Meaghan B Murphy and her husband, Patrick, in their apartment and leaving them without electricity for days. Ms. Murphy, 37, deputy editor of Self magazine, is expected to give birth to her third child at the end of July. “We were content with two children; three were not in the plan,” she recalled. “But with no power, no TV, no lights, even without that much food, there was not much else to do.” “And my husband is so handsome,” she added of Mr. Murphy, a 33-year-old private client manager for a bank. “I couldn’t resist.” In rural India, sociologists have found links between improved electrical service and declining birthrates. In New York, Hurricane Sandy may have induced the opposite effect. Couples stuck at home for days with the lights out, elevators inoperable, and lobbies deluged may have had more time for romance. Call it Sandy Syndrome. Several New York hospitals are bracing for an increase in births during the last weeks of July and early August. That would be about nine months after power failures and floods caused by Hurricane Sandy paralyzed large swaths of the New York metropolitan area and kept couples at home. The idea that blackouts, whether caused by storms or accidents, lead to a rise in births has become a virtual cliché. But it is not necessarily accurate, according to researchers. “My first instinct is that people are home, they want to be together more and so there’s an increased rate,” said Dr. Michael R. Berman, medical director for labor and delivery at Beth Israel Medical Center. “But after looking at some of the past catastrophes there wasn’t.” Image Caroline Hagood, whose baby is due in late July, said, "There’s something lyrical about the concept of a seize-the-moment hurricane baby.” Credit Bryan Thomas for The New York Times No statistically sound effect on births was found after the 1965 power failure in the Northeast. Nine months after the 2003 blackout in the region, the number of births in New York City actually dipped slightly compared with a year earlier. A study several years ago in the Journal of Population Economics revealed a mild correlation between more births after minor squalls, but the opposite effect after severe storms like Hurricane Sandy. Other research found that birthrates sometimes rose during a hurricane, possibly the result of anxiety, but not necessarily nine months later. And the number of births in New York often peaks in July. Still, officials at other local hospitals say that, based on patient due dates, they are anticipating increases of 10 to 30 percent in midsummer births compared with the last year. “There’s definitely an uptick,” said Dr. Jacques Moritz, director of the division of gynecology at St Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. “This is just old basic physiology. There’s no Internet and no cable. What else is there to do?’ Dr. Moritz estimated that the number of women expected to deliver at his hospital at the end of July would be 10 to 20 percent higher than it was last year. At NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Amos Grunebaum, chief of obstetrics and gynecology, said, “when we looked at the numbers, it’s 20 to 30 percent busier than usual for the last week of July and going into that first week of August.” One of his patients, Rachel DeGregorio, has a 3½-year-old daughter and had been trying for nearly two years to have a second child. She had even scheduled fertility treatments. Then the hurricane struck. Ms. DeGregorio, 34, who has a doctoral degree in neuroscience, and her husband, Scott, a 33-year-old radiologist, spent the day stranded in their Upper East Side apartment after his office in New Jersey was closed because of the storm. Their son, who they are planning to name Jack, is due July 24. Image Rachel DeGregorio, her husband, Scott, and their daughter Sofia. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times “I have documented the day Jack was conceived,” she recalled. “We had sex three times, because Dr. Grunebaum said, ‘The more the better.’ ” Ms. Murphy’s brother and sister-in-law, lawyers who were stuck in their New Jersey apartment in the storm’s aftermath, are expecting a baby a week after Ms. Murphy’s is due. Some doctors, while acknowledging the increase in the number of anticipated births, are reluctant to immediately make a correlation between the storm and the expected blip in the birthrate. “Obviously, people are talking about ‘Sandy babies,’ ” Dr. Grunebaum said. If there is an increase, it could be attributable to other factors, including an improving economy. Still, Dr. Moritz said, “I don’t think the economy has gotten good enough to say that last October people were deciding to have babies.” Caroline Hagood, a 30-year-old doctoral candidate at Fordham whose baby is due in late July, said that she was unaffected by the hurricane at home and “wasn’t conscious of Sandy’s effect,” but, nonetheless “as a poet, I can’t deny that there’s something lyrical about the concept of a seize-the-moment hurricane baby.” At New York Downtown Hospital in Lower Manhattan, Dr. Warren Licht, the former chief medical officer and now a specialist at the hospital’s Women’s Health Center, said his colleagues were anticipating a “notable increase” in deliveries for midsummer. “It makes perfect sense,” Dr. Licht said, “that during a period of a prolonged loss of electricity, people take comfort in creating their own.”

Hurricane Sandy
New York Metropolitan Area
Birth Rates
Pregnancy


In Challenge, Former Rebels in Libya Form Own Oil Company

Abstract: Former rebels who fought the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and are now challenging Libya’s shaky central government have announced the creation of their own oil company to sell crude from oil fields and port terminals they currently occupy. For the past three months, most of Libya’s oil production and exports have been halted by loosely aligned militias in the eastern region of the country that are pushing for autonomy. They have made Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s government, which has repeatedly threatened to arrest the occupiers, look increasingly impotent, which emboldened eastern political leaders, including some former rebels, to form an autonomous regional government last month. The establishment of a regional oil company was largely seen as a symbolic move since few oil shipping companies would rush to challenge Tripoli authorities and Western governments that want to see a central government succeed. But the company represents another escalation of tensions over the country’s most strategic economic asset. “It’s just another sign that the political process of forming a national government is in deep disarray,” said David L. Goldwyn , the State Department coordinator for international energy affairs from 2009 to 2011. Mr. Zeidan, who was briefly kidnapped by a militia group last month, spoke of the oil blockades in stark terms at a news conference on Sunday. “We have given these groups a week to 10 days after which the government will exercise its functions,” he said. “We will act appropriately.” Libya’s economy is largely dependent on the oil industry, which is dominated by the national oil company working in partnership with several major international ones. Last year, more than 90 percent of the government’s revenues and the country’s export revenues came from oil and gas. Under normal circumstances, Libya supplies about 1.5 million barrels a day, or roughly 2 percent of global market needs. But in recent months, it has produced less than 300,000 barrels a day. Southern Europe is most dependent on Libyan oil and gas exports, and that dependency became more tenuous on Monday when protesters shut down a gas export pipeline while demanding more rights for the Berber minority that lives mostly in the southern desert. Abd-Rabbo al-Barassi, a Libyan air force commander who defected and is now the self-proclaimed leader of the new eastern autonomous government, announced the formation of the new oil company as well as a new regional central bank late Sunday. Mr. Barassi is a close ally of Ibrahim Jathran, a tribal leader and former head of Libya’s Petroleum Protection Force who turned on the government this past summer when he led his guards in the seizure of the main eastern oil export terminals. The formation of a regional oil company independent of the Libya’s national oil company was particularly provocative coming less than a week after the central government issued a statement threatening that the country’s air force and navy would use “force, arrest and detention” against anyone who tried to buy oil from the militia guards. The self-created regional government, known as the Cyrenaica Political Bureau, is intended to recreate the system maintained by King Idris in the 1950s when Libya was divided into three semiautonomous states. The oil-rich east, the base for the insurrection against the Qaddafi government, has long complained of being exploited for its mineral wealth by the western political elite in Tripoli. Libya analysts say that the formation of the oil company, to be based in the port of Tobruk, may have its roots in the jockeying between the Cyrenaica Political Bureau and a competing autonomous group, the Cyrenaica Transitional Council, and that the impact on oil exports may be limited, at least in the short term. “It’s not clear the company would have title to the oil,” said Geoff D. Porter, the head of North Africa Risk Consulting . “If you are a trader buying the oil, that leaves you vulnerable to lawsuits.”

Libya
Ali Zeidan
Oil and Gasoline
Arab Spring


Color Study Looks at Effects of Red and Blue

Abstract: Trying to improve your performance at work or write that novel? Maybe it’s time to consider the color of your walls or your computer screen. If a new study is any guide, the color red can make people’s work more accurate, and blue can make people more creative. In the study , published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science, researchers at the University of British Columbia conducted tests with 600 people to determine whether cognitive performance varied when people saw red or blue. Participants performed tasks with words or images displayed against red, blue or neutral backgrounds on computer screens. Red groups did better on tests of recall and attention to detail, like remembering words or checking spelling and punctuation. Blue groups did better on tests requiring imagination, like inventing creative uses for a brick or creating toys from shapes. “If you’re talking about wanting enhanced memory for something like proofreading skills, then a red color should be used,” said Juliet Zhu, an assistant professor of marketing at the business school at the University of British Columbia, who conducted the study with Ravi Mehta, a doctoral student. But for “a brainstorming session for a new product or coming up with a new solution to fight child obesity or teenage smoking ,” Dr. Zhu said, “then you should get people into a blue room.” The question of whether color can color performance or emotions has fascinated scientists, not to mention advertisers, sports teams and restaurateurs. In a study on Olympic uniforms , anthropologists at Durham University in England found that evenly matched athletes in the 2004 Games who wore red in boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling defeated those wearing blue 60 percent of the time. The researchers suggested that red, for athletes as for animals, subconsciously symbolizes dominance. Effects that were perhaps similarly primal were revealed in a 2008 study led by Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester. Men considered women shown in photographs with red backgrounds or wearing red shirts more attractive than women with other colors, although not necessarily more likeable or intelligent. Then there was the cocktail party study , in which a group of interior designers, architects and corporate color scientists built model rooms decorated as bars in red, blue or yellow. They found that more people chose the yellow and red rooms, but that partygoers in the blue room stayed longer. Red and yellow guests were more social and active. And while red guests reported feeling hungrier and thirstier than others, yellow guests ate twice as much. Experts say colors may affect cognitive performance because of the moods they engender. “When you feel that the situation you are in is problematic,” said Norbert Schwarz, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, “you are more likely to pay attention to detail, which helps you with processing tasks but interferes with creative types of things.” By contrast, Dr. Schwarz said, “people in a happy mood are more creative and less analytic.” Many people link red to problematic things, like emergencies or X’s on failing tests, experts say. Such “associations to red — stop, fire, alarm, warning — can be activated without a person’s awareness, and then influence what they are thinking about or doing,” said John A. Bargh, a psychology professor at Yale University. “Blue seems a weaker effect than red, but blue skies, blue water are calm and positive, and so that effect makes sense too.” Still, Dr. Schwarz cautioned, color effects may be unreliable or inconsequential. “In some contexts red is a dangerous thing, and in some contexts red is a nice thing,” he said. “If you’re walking across a frozen river, blue is a dangerous thing.” Indeed, Dr. Elliot of the University of Rochester said blue’s positive emotional associations were considered less consistent than red’s negative ones. It might also matter whether the color dominates someone’s view, as on a computer screen, or is only part of what is seen. Dr. Elliot said that in the Science study, brightness or intensity of color — not just the color itself — might have had an effect. Some previous cognitive studies found no effect from color, although some used mostly pastels or less distinctive tasks. One found that students taking tests did better on blue paper than on red, but Dr. Schwarz said the study used depressing blue and upbeat red . The Science study’s conclusion that red makes people more cautious and detail-oriented coincides with Dr. Elliot’s finding that people shown red test covers before I.Q. tests did worse than those shown green or neutral colors. And on a different test, people with red covers also chose easier questions. I.Q. tests require more problem-solving than Dr. Zhu’s memory and proofreading questions. When Dr. Zhu’s subjects were asked what red or blue made them think of, most said that red represented caution, danger or mistakes, and that blue symbolized peace and openness. Subjects were quicker to unscramble anagrams of “avoidance related” words like “danger” when the anagrams were on red backgrounds, and quicker with anagrams of positive, “approach related” words like “adventure” when they were on blue backgrounds. The study also tested responses to advertising, finding that advertisements listing product details or emphasizing “avoidance” actions like cavity prevention held greater appeal on red backgrounds, while ones using creative designs or emphasizing positive actions like “tooth whitening” held more appeal on blue. When the participants were asked if they believed red or blue would improve performance, most said blue for both detail-oriented and creative tasks. Maybe, Dr. Zhu said, that is because more people prefer blue. The study did not involve different cultures, like China, where red symbolizes prosperity and luck. And it said nothing about mixing red and blue to make purple. For what it’s worth, many newsroom walls at The New York Times are bright tomato-soup red. The newspaper’s facilities department says there are no blue rooms in the place.


States in Parched Southwest Take Steps to Bolster Lake Mead

Abstract: With a 14-year drought in the Colorado River basin showing few signs of breaking, states along the river’s path are taking new steps this month to ensure that Lake Mead — the Colorado River reservoir that is the water source for much of the Southwest — does not fail them. Officials from water agencies in Arizona, California and Nevada signed an agreement last week to jointly add as much as three million acre-feet of water to Lake Mead by 2020, mostly through conservation and changes in water management that would reduce the amount that the states draw from the lake. The agreement, signed at the Colorado River Water Users Association ’s annual conference in Las Vegas, is aimed at forestalling further drops in the level of the lake that could endanger not just the water supply for 40 million people, but also the electricity generated by dams there and upstream at Lake Powell. Three million acre-feet, roughly what six million households use in a year, would add about 30 feet of water to a lake whose level is now just a few feet above its record low. The agreement is a stopgap solution that is unlikely to solve the problems of a region whose demand for water far exceeds what the Colorado is able to deliver. Many outsiders have suggested that the drought could set off a legal battle over the allocation of the Colorado’s dwindling water that could reach the Supreme Court. But for now, at least, the states appear to have decided to share the pain. “The fact of the matter is that we work together,” said Chuck Cullom, the Colorado River programs manager for the Central Arizona Project, a web of canals whose diversions of the Colorado’s water have helped fuel the state’s rapid growth. “A direct and open conflict may create more risk and uncertainty than working collaboratively.” Arizona, in particular, has a reason to fight. In the 1960s, it bartered away its senior rights to Colorado water to get California’s support in Congress for the Central Arizona Project. Should Lake Mead run short, Arizona’s share of water would be rationed while California would continue to drink its fill — a prospect that has rankled Arizonans for decades. Much of the seven-state Colorado River basin is gripped by a hydrological drought, a long-term precipitation deficit that has slashed stream flows, soil moisture and groundwater levels. Experts say the drought is the worst in centuries. The level of Lake Mead, now about 40 percent full, is only about 10 feet above the point at which the federal government would declare a shortage and begin rationing water to downstream users. That prospect seemed remote only a few years ago, but the federal Bureau of Reclamation now predicts that it could occur as soon as spring of 2016, and is likely in 2017. A further 25-foot drop would dry up one of two water intakes that supply 70 percent of Nevada’s population with water. The agreement comes amid a flurry of activity by Colorado River states to ensure access to their share of the river’s water amid the drought. Only last week, Nevada workers completed a three-mile, $817 million tunnel into the lower reaches of Lake Mead, giving the state a steady water source should a declining lake level disable intakes at higher elevations. At the same time, the Southern Nevada Water Authority approved plans to spend $680 million to build a pumping station for the same intake — a recognition that falling lake levels could render useless the existing pumps higher up Lake Mead’s basin. Colorado issued a draft water plan this month that calls for conservation efforts and construction of reservoirs to cope with rising demand — and leaves open the possibility that eastern Colorado will pump more Colorado River water over the Rocky Mountains to supply the state’s more populous east. Last week, Wyoming released the findings of research into what may be the most unusual of all the efforts to resuscitate the Colorado: cloud seeding . With financial help from Arizona, California and Nevada, Wyoming has seeded snow clouds for a decade, hoping to build a snowpack that will deliver more water to the Colorado and its tributaries in the spring. Scientists have long been skeptical that seeding clouds with certain chemicals actually works; the National Research Council concluded in 2003 that while the process clearly changes the character of clouds, there was no proof that it produced more precipitation. But the Wyoming study found that snowfall increased by as much as 15 percent after clouds were seeded, and that the added snow increased stream flows by as much as 3.7 percent. The research found that cloud seeding could cost as little as $27 per acre-foot of water — or as much as $427 per acre-foot. But even the higher cost is lower than that of desalination , an alternative to using Colorado River water that is being considered in some states. All of the Colorado River basin states except Arizona have cloud-seeding programs, sometimes financed in part by downstream states that are the biggest water users.

Lake Mead
Drought
Colorado River
Colorado
Reservoir
Water
Arizona
California
Southwest US
Conservation of Resources


Stocks Quiet, but Oil Surges on Economic News

Abstract: Stock markets shrugged off the news on Friday that after a year and a half of recession , the economy finally appeared to be reaching a bottom. But the government’s quarterly assessment of economic growth caused big waves in other corners of the investment world. Oil prices surged higher, gaining $2.51 to settle near $70 a barrel. Prices of metals like gold, silver and copper rose as traders speculated that a recovery would reignite demand for raw materials. The dollar stumbled to its lowest levels of the year against six major currencies. And yields on government bonds fell sharply, reflecting lingering concerns that consumers were still holding tight onto their wallets. But the lukewarm day in stock markets capped a stellar July performance for Wall Street. After drifting lower during the first two weeks of the month, stock markets stormed back as stronger-than-expected corporate profits convinced investors that big banks and other companies could continue to make money despite the recession. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 7.4 percent for the month, and the Dow Jones industrial average rose 8.5 percent. Economists and market-watchers spent much of the day parsing a report from the Commerce Department showing that the gross domestic product fell at a pace of 1 percent from April through June. Although consumer spending fell 1.2 percent after growing during the previous three months, business investment fell at a slower pace, and government spending helped to stem declines in the broader economy. The report raised expectations that the recession would soon end, and that the economy would grow again late this year. Some optimists, like Philip J. Orlando of Federated Investors, even said that “the Great Recession likely ended in the second quarter.” Investors on Friday did not quite share that optimism. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 17.15 points, or 0.19 percent, to close at 9,171.61, and the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 0.73 points or 0.07 percent, at 987.48. The Nasdaq fell 0.29 percent, to close at 1,978.50. “The G.D.P. was better than forecast, better than the first quarter, but there was some strong government spending cranked into that mix,” said David Dietze, chief investment strategist at Point View Financial Services. “We can’t rely on government largess to get us out of this. The consumer’s got to get his mojo back, and we didn’t see that.” Trading in Treasury markets reflected some of that hesitance, analysts said. While interest rates fluctuated as the government auctioned off a record $115 billion in notes this week, yields fell when bond traders saw few signs of incipient inflation in the government’s economic figures. The price of the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 1 1/32, to 97 2/32, while the yield fell to 3.48 percent, from 3.61 percent late Thursday. Shares of the Ford Motor Company rose 8.25 percent, to $8, as the House of Representatives rushed to extend $2 billion in emergency funds to the “cash for clunkers” program, which offers car owners rebates for junking their old gas-guzzling cars for new fuel-efficient models.


U.S. Manufacturing Growth Improves and Hiring Gains

Abstract: WASHINGTON — American manufacturing growth improved and private-sector businesses added jobs at a robust pace in June, data released on Wednesday showed. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said on Wednesday that its manufacturing index rose to 53.5 last month from 52.8 in May. Manufacturing activity matched January’s level for the highest this year. Any reading above 50 signals expansion. Manufacturing growth has accelerated for the last two months, evidence that American factories are beginning to adapt and overcome the drags caused by a rise in the dollar’s value and cheaper oil prices, two trends that date to last fall. The gauge of new orders rose slightly to 56 from 55.8. But manufacturers are responding to the increased demand by hiring more workers, as the employment measure increased to 55.5 from 51.7, a sign that many companies expect additional orders in the coming months and are hiring in advance. “When it goes up like that, it’s in anticipation of future orders,” said Bradley Holcombe, chairman of I.S.M.’s manufacturing business survey committee. Not every element of the index reflected growth. The index’s measure of production slipped to 54 from 54.5. Of the 18 industries surveyed, four reported contracting in June: petroleum and coal products, primary metals, plastics and rubber products, and machinery. One maker of transportation equipment said in the survey that orders were soft in Europe and declining in Asia, while another manufacturer said that the downturn in oil and gas markets had hurt demand. Falling oil prices led energy companies to curtail orders for new equipment and pipelines as their margins were squeezed and rigs were shut. The stronger dollar made American goods more expensive overseas, which is weighing on sales. Still, the negative consequences of those two trends seem to be tailing off. The increase in the index “indicates that the drag on factories coming from the strong U.S. dollar and weak oil industry is no longer having as much negative impact as before,” said Michael Gregory, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. Also Wednesday, the payroll processor ADP said that businesses added 237,000 jobs last month, compared with from 203,000 in May. That is the most since December. The report buoys evidence that rising consumer spending and a healthy housing market are supporting more hiring. Americans have spent freely in recent months, and home sales are running at their best pace in eight years. Construction firms added 19,000 jobs last month, while retail, shipping and utility companies gained 50,000. On Thursday, the government will issue its official jobs report for June. Economists forecast that it will show that employers added 233,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate fell to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent. The ADP survey covers only private businesses, however, and frequently diverges from the official figures. In May, the government said employers created 280,000 new jobs, much more than the ADP estimate. Companies with fewer than 50 employees accounted for half the total job gains, adding 120,000 jobs. Medium-size businesses, with 50 to 499 workers, gained 86,000, and large companies hired 32,000 new workers.

Manufacturing
Jobs
Institute for Supply Management
US
ADP Employer Services


North Dakota Has Jobs Aplenty, but Little Housing

Abstract: WILLISTON, N.D. — When Joey Scott arrived here recently from Montana, he had no trouble finding work — he signed almost immediately with a company working to drill in the oil fields. But finding housing was another matter. Every motel in town was booked, some for months in advance. Every apartment complex, even every mobile home park, had a waiting list. Mr. Scott found himself sleeping in his pickup truck in the Wal-Mart parking lot, shaving and washing his hair in a puddle of melted snow. “I’ve got a pocketful of money, but I just can’t find a room,” said Mr. Scott, 25. North Dakota has a novel problem: plenty of jobs, but nowhere to put the people who hold them. The same forces that have resulted in more homelessness elsewhere — unemployment, foreclosure, economic misery — have pushed laid off workers from California, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan and Wyoming to abundant jobs here, especially in the booming oil fields. But in this city rising from the long empty stretches of North Dakota, hundreds are sleeping in their cars or living in motel rooms, pup tents and tiny campers meant for weekend getaways in warmer climes. They are staying on cots in offices and in sleeping bags in the concrete basements of people they barely know. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country , 4 percent, but advocates for the homeless say the number of people they see with nowhere to live — a relatively rare occurrence here until now — grew to 987 in 2009 from 832 in 2008, an increase of about 19 percent. And the problem is certain to worsen this summer as oil companies call for more rigs and thousands more workers. “It’s hard to know where this might end,” said E. Ward Koeser, the mayor of Williston, who met this month with the governor of North Dakota to plead for state help with the housing crisis. “It’s the one thing that sometimes wakes me up in the morning and doesn’t let me go to sleep,” he said, acknowledging that most mayors can only dream of having such a riddle. Still, where will all these happily employed newcomers live? “I don’t know,” said Mr. Koeser, whose city had about 12,000 people at last count, but may now be closer to 15,000. “We literally have no place.” Cranes dot the city, proof that a building boom is under way, but not fast enough. While the rest of the country was sinking into recession, North Dakota never did. Other states nursed budget deficits, but North Dakota, even now, has a surplus. The state has a wealth of other jobs. A rise in oil production here, especially, served as an antidote to any whiff of what the rest of the nation was witnessing. Beneath an enormous expanse of land here, workers have pumped an ever-growing amount of crude oil from a formation called the Bakken , thanks in part to new horizontal drilling technology. Government estimates put the potential recoverable oil from the Bakken, which stretches into Montana, at 4.3 billion barrels. Now, 109 oil rigs — with scores of workers for each — are drilling in North Dakota, and some officials say that figure could reach 150 this year. In one of the least populated states in the nation, this sudden overcrowding has upended some axioms of ordinary life. In motels here, some people have stayed so long that they know their neighbors down the hall. Dinner comes from a microwave. “It’s a horrible way to live,” said Chris Rosmus, a Minnesotan who moved into the Vegas Motel for a month and stayed a year and a half. In the Buffalo Trails campgrounds, an odd assortment of wooden boards, tarps and pink foam insulation are pressed up around campers, desperate attempts to add shells against the bitter cold. Fred Wise, in a camper he called his “8-by-18-foot jail cell,” was watching “Dancing With the Stars” alone at a cramped table. He grimaced at memories of temperatures dipping well below zero during the six months he has been here, temperatures at which ice can form inside these campers or freeze a camper door shut. “You’ve got to man up for this,” said Mr. Wise, 58. Families have been pressed and strained. Mercedes Allen, her boyfriend and their 4-month-old baby, Hunter, moved here from California. Their stay with relatives stretched on awkwardly. Her boyfriend was hired to the first oil job he sought, but the living arrangements — with four adults, two children and two babies all under one roof — grew tense. By early April, Ms. Allen said, her relatives had given her a week to move out. “It hurts to have to say, ‘I found nothing again,’ ” Ms. Allen said, as her week was running out. If the problems are bad for oil workers, who are well paid, they are worse for locals in less lucrative jobs, who have seen their rents soar. There are still some houses for sale here, but many of the newcomers arrive from grim chapters — foreclosures, bankruptcies, layoffs. They have little hope of qualifying for mortgages. In the end, a relative from California drove a 31-foot camper to North Dakota for Ms. Allen, and she moved by the appointed day. The camper sits in a mobile home park without working utility connections, like electricity, for now, but Ms. Allen said she was relieved. “At least we have our own place,” she said. In desperation a few months ago, the city began allowing trailers, campers and skid shacks (nearly windowless portable homes) to park in one of the empty, overgrown trailer parks that had been abandoned after the last oil boom ended in the 1980s. The more than 180 companies involved in the oil operations, including Hess, ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil, are also concerned about housing. Some have rented out entire motels, and others are bringing in large, portable housing units — known as man camps — for workers to live on site, as Mr. Scott, the man sleeping in his truck, ultimately did. Halliburton, with more than 300 employees in the area, has a 90-unit camp in place, and has asked to cart in a 158-bedroom camp used for the Winter Olympics. Some companies are helping workers make down payments on mobile homes. For all of these struggles, few here say they wish to go back to where they came from. Jana and Robert Stout stayed in motel after motel for four months, not finding one that could keep them for long. When Mr. Stout left for his oil job in the mornings, Ms. Stout climbed into her Buick and began the hunt for the next place. Often she sat much of the day in motel parking lots, waiting for vacancies to open up. A few weeks ago, the Stouts got off a waiting list at a motel that had been booked for two years. They can stay there indefinitely for $450 a month. The room is tiny, big enough for a bed, a television and a hot plate. Ms. Stout’s grown daughter and granddaughter may need to stay on the floor, if they cannot find a place. Still, the Stouts said they would never consider returning to Wyoming, where they used to live. “For what?” Ms. Stout said. “If I was home right now, I would be way worse. There is potential here.”

North Dakota
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Labor and Jobs
Housing and Real Estate
Homeless Persons


In the Wilds of New Jersey, a Legend Inspires a Hunt

Abstract: SMITHVILLE, N.J. Late summer is not optimum devil-hunting time. For one thing, the creature tends to reveal itself more often in winter, when the somewhat suffocating Pine Barrens of South Jersey carry an extra sense of dread. For another, the ticks are murder this time of year. A few dedicated hunters gather instead at JD’s Pub, in a strip mall near the epicenter of the Jersey Devil phenomenon. On the surrounding walls hang old illustrations of that which they seek: cloven hooves, a horselike face, a wing span perhaps too wide for browsing the aisles at the Super Foodtown a few doors down. These college-educated people, who call themselves the Devil Hunters, order a round of soft drinks that includes two Shirley Temples. They say they are the “official researchers” of the Jersey Devil, a shy specimen of cryptozoology that has haunted these parts long enough to have sent tricornered hats spinning from the mops of frightened colonists. Laura Leuter, 30, the group’s president, already knows what you’re thinking: Why don’t these “devil hunters” wake up, walk down to that Super Foodtown and buy some coffee to smell? “I’m the first one to say, ‘Yeah, I search for the Jersey Devil, ha-ha,’ ” says Ms. Leuter, who supervises a call center when not searching for devil spoor. “But why, to this day, do people still report sightings?” Here’s another question: Why do we wish for such things? Why do we root for the discovery of beings that would subvert our understanding of the natural order? Why, oh why, would a group of people actually hope that somewhere in the dark expanse, beyond the fluorescent lights of a New Jersey strip mall, there frolics — a devil? This curious desire was in full evidence recently when two men announced their discovery of a half-ape, half-human carcass in the backwoods of Georgia: an ex-Bigfoot that had ceased to be. They placed the remains in a freezer and promised that DNA analysis would conclusively prove the existence of this legendary creature. That the supposed Bigfoot carcass turned out to be a defrosting rubber costume stuffed with animal entrails is less instructive than the way news outlets reported the matter — first with a kind of hopeful skepticism, then, once the hoax was exposed, with a dismissive, we-knew-it-all-along harrumph. “Hoaxes,” an annoyed Ms. Leuter says. “A complete waste of everybody’s time.” In this sense, these soda-sipping devil hunters, sitting here discussing their hobby the way others might discuss a shared interest in model trains, or Cabbage Patch dolls, search on our behalf. They explore that dark piney chasm between fact and legend, acting upon what most of us, at one time or another, have thought: Something’s out there. The beautiful and mysterious Pine Barrens can encourage such thoughts. A largely undeveloped swath of pines and oaks, swamps and bogs, it covers more than a million acres at the bottom of the country’s most densely populated state and has produced scores of legends and stories, though none as famous as that of the Jersey Devil. The most common version, dating to 1735, concerns a local woman named Mother Leeds. Married to a drunken ingrate and pregnant with her 13th child, she had what today might be called a “moment.” She expressed weariness with children and a wish that her unborn baby be a devil. Have you ever wished you could take back something you’ve said? Instead of greeting the world with coos, the story goes, the newborn mutated into a serpentine-tailed devil and introduced himself to family members by eating a few of them. He then flew up the chimney and out into the Jersey wilderness to begin centuries of shrieking, lurking and occasional mauling. Maybe the birth of a deformed child led to the story’s creation; maybe parents concocted the tale to keep children from straying into the enveloping woods. Whatever the origin, the place of the devil in lore was secured in January 1909, when strange footprints, attacks on livestock and reported encounters with the devil over several days created panic in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Posses conducted searches, police officers fired guns, and schoolchildren and mill workers found reason to stay home. Occasional sightings since then have provided fiery breath for the legend. And despite the demonic naming of a professional hockey team, the crush of television programs desperate for Halloween footage and a movie that was scary for all the wrong reasons — “13th Child: Legend of the Jersey Devil,” starring Cliff Robertson (!), Lesley-Anne Down (!!) and Robert Guillaume (!!!) — the creature remains real enough for some people to warrant pursuit. Ms. Leuter, for one, became so frightened by stories of the Jersey Devil when she was a child that she decided to conquer her fear by reading everything she could about the creature. Several years ago, she helped to create the Devil Hunters, a group that today has a dozen active members, a very active Web site, www.njdevilhunters.com , and a somewhat rigorous application process. Prospective members fill out a questionnaire and are interviewed at JD’s Pub, where they are judged on their knowledge of devil lore, friendliness and likely dependability during nighttime tramps through brush and swamp. Those who express a desire to kill the Jersey Devil are rejected. The hunters spend some of their time investigating sightings reported to the Web site: conducting interviews, visiting scenes, the usual shoe-leather stuff. Although they try not to appear too skeptical, for fear it might discourage candor, they know instantly when a report strays too far from the creature’s known habits. “The devil at a busy intersection in Philadelphia, getting out of a cab?” Ms. Leuter says. “No way.” The rest of the time they are visiting traditional devil haunts: deserted, historic Batsto Village, perhaps, or the remnants of what is said to be Mother Leeds’s home. So far, they have encountered little more than creepy noises, but they adhere to the credo embraced by all seekers of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and Great Caesar’s ghost. As Ms. Leuter has written: “Until someone proves that there isn’t something out there, I will continue to believe that there is, and I will also continue my efforts to find proof that the Jersey Devil does in fact exist. So there.” The group routinely receives calls, including more than a few from people wanting to report something seen decades ago. A woman named Gretchen, for example, reported seeing a devil-like creature while driving with her family through the Pine Barrens in 1966. It was the size of a man, she said, with small horns, a long tail and wings that were “not leathery bat wings but not big fluffy angel wings” either. This year alone, there have been at least 10 possible encounters, including a horselike creature flying over Jackson and a shrieking, winged animal perched on a chicken coop in Eldora. Not long ago a woman reported seeing “a very large creature with red-orange eyes” flying out of the woods along the Garden State Parkway in Seaville. So vivid. So real. So wishing it were true.

New Jersey
Jersey Devil
Pine Barrens (NJ)
Myths
Superstitions


Greek Lawmakers Pass Bill to Reopen State Broadcaster ERT

Abstract: ATHENS — The Greek Parliament enacted legislation on Wednesday to reopen the former state broadcaster ERT, which was abruptly shut down by the previous government as part of its austerity program. The move, which paves the way for the rehiring of hundreds of state employees, is a significant step toward fulfilling an important election campaign pledge of the leftist Syriza party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. It was unclear how the news would be received by the country’s international creditors, which are waiting for Greece to flesh out a list of planned economic overhauls before they release another tranche of rescue loans. If Athens does not receive the aid in the coming weeks, it is at risk of default. Antonis Samaras, a conservative who was prime minister at the time, described ERT as a “haven of waste” when he shut down the television and radio broadcaster in June 2013, leaving 2,600 people out of work. The decision provoked angry demonstrations and led the government’s junior coalition partner to withdraw its support. Mr. Samaras’s administration later established a smaller broadcaster, named Nerit, with a staff of around 700. Mr. Tsipras’s government has pledged to move Nerit’s staff to the revived ERT and rehire around 1,500 additional employees at an annual cost of 30 million euros, or $32.7 million. Officials have insisted that the sum will be covered by television license fees and not burden the budget. The new ERT will incorporate programming from an online protest channel that laid-off ERT staff have been operating for the past two years. The revival of ERT carries strong symbolism for Mr. Tsipras, who has described the broadcaster’s closure as a “great wound.” But it comes at a time of rising pressure on his government to commit to belt-tightening and revenue-raising measures. Greece’s creditors have signaled in recent weeks that they are running out of patience with Athens’s foot-dragging during negotiations to unlock a €7.2 billion installment of bailout funding. On Monday, Mr. Tsipras overhauled his negotiating team in an apparent effort to accelerate the negotiations, diluting the role of Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who has frustrated eurozone officials with his abrasive style. The initiative appeared to partly appease creditors. But the prime minister raised fresh concerns just hours later, when he suggested that he might call a referendum if a potential agreement with creditors would have to include terms that were contrary to his mandate to fight austerity measures. A list of proposed economic overhauls — including measures to improve the collection of value-added tax on the Greek islands — is to be discussed by Greek officials and creditors’ representatives at the technical level in Brussels on Thursday, a Greek Finance Ministry official said. In Athens, Mr. Varoufakis was the focus of media attention again after being set upon by anarchists at a central Athens restaurant. The minister, who was visiting a taverna in the district of Exarchia, a neighborhood popular with anarchists, had had dinner with his wife late Tuesday when a group of around 40 people jeered and threatened them, the restaurant’s owner told Greek television. A few members of the group hurled glasses at the couple but did not hit them, Mr. Varoufakis said in a statement on Wednesday. It “was not an organized incident, an attempt to seriously injure us, a provocation, or part of an orchestrated effort over the past few days aimed at my political ‘deconstruction,’ ” he said, in an apparent reference to news coverage suggesting that he has been sidelined in the negotiations with creditors. He said that he had spoken with “some of the angriest” members of the group on leaving the taverna, and that tempers had eased. Unlike ministers of the previous, conservative-led coalition government, Mr. Varoufakis has moved about Athens quite freely, forgoing the protection of bodyguards, and has largely not been heckled since his appointment in January.

Greece
Yanis Varoufakis
Politics
Euro Crisis
ERT Hellenic Broadcasting
Syriza,Coalition of the Radical Left


Andrew Grima, Famed Jeweler, Dies at 86

Abstract: GSTAAD, Switzerland (AP) — Andrew Grima, whose jewelry adorned royalty and celebrities, died here on Wednesday. He was 86. Mr. Grima died after contracting pneumonia following a fall last month, his family said. Mr. Grima came to prominence in the 1960s with an organic style that captured the mood of a new generation of postwar fashion designers. “At that time, everything was pretty representative,” said his second wife, Jojo Grima. “There were bows, there were bees, there were little dogs. Andrew used a lot of rough stones and he made large pieces. It was a completely different philosophy.” One of those who took an interest in Mr. Grima’s early work was Lord Snowdon, then married to Britain’s Princess Margaret. The Snowdon connection as well as numerous prizes Mr. Grima received for his work during the 1960s earned him a coveted royal warrant as a supplier of jewelry to the British royal family. Other customers included the former first lady Jacqueline Onassis, the actress Ursula Andress and the sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

Jewels and Jewelry
Grima Andrew
Deaths (Obituaries)


Daniel H. Cohen, Former Times Executive Who Led Advertising Growth, Dies at 64

Abstract: Daniel H. Cohen, who was the senior vice president in charge of advertising when The New York Times became the first publication to generate more than $1 billion in advertising in a single year, died on Friday in Zurich. He was 64. He had traveled to Zurich with family members and died there after a long struggle with brain cancer, his family said. Mr. Cohen was a great-grandson of Adolph S. Ochs, the family patriarch who bought The Times in 1896, and a first cousin of Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the company’s current chairman and publisher, and of Michael Golden, the vice chairman. He held several senior executive positions in the circulation and advertising departments before he left to begin a television production company in 1999. On his leaving, Mr. Sulzberger said of Mr. Cohen: “Even as he led The Times to unparalleled levels of print advertising revenue, he has been a strong voice for our electronic future, both on the internet and in broadcast.” Mr. Cohen was a director of The New York Times Company from 2007 to 2010 and a trustee of the family trust that owns most of the class B shares that elect a majority of the company’s board members. Alex S. Jones, who with Susan E. Tifft wrote “The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times” in 1999, said in an interview that Mr. Cohen was instrumental in the decision by Ochs heirs in the mid-1990s to change the family’s ownership structure, a move that consolidated and assured the continuity of its control. Mr. Cohen’s supporting the change “was typical of Dan’s generous nature,” Mr. Jones said, noting that the decision could potentially have represented “a significant financial cost” to him. As a result, he said, the restructuring “has proved key to sustaining family stewardship of The Times.” Mr. Cohen joined The Times’s strategic planning department in 1983. He served as Northeast circulation manager and circulation sales development manager in the circulation department, then shifted to the advertising department, where he was managing director of sales, group director of promotion and vice president of advertising. In 1996, he was promoted to senior vice president for advertising. Later, his production company, Dan Cohen & Sons, produced television shows, some with culinary themes. One, “A Cook’s Tour,” on the Food Network, introduced the chef Anthony Bourdain to a television audience in 2002. (He later moved to CNN.) The Cohen company also produced two other Food Network shows starring the chef Bobby Flay: “Boy Meets Grill” and “Throwdown With Bobby Flay.” Image Daniel H. Cohen, date unknown. His production company introduced the chef Anthony Bourdain to a television audience in 2002. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Mr. Cohen later founded DeepSee, an oceanic exploration and submarine leasing company. “Dan, at heart, has always had a strong streak of the entrepreneur in him,” Mr. Sulzberger said when Mr. Cohen left The Times. “He must be related to Adolph Ochs.” Daniel Hays Cohen was born in Manhattan on Aug. 1, 1952, the son of Dr. Judith P. Sulzberger , a physician and Mr. Ochs’s granddaughter, and Dr. Matthew Rosenschein Jr., whom she had met in medical school. (He was certified in psychiatry and internal medicine.) They divorced in 1956. Daniel and his brother, James, who is known as Jace, were adopted by Dr. Sulzberger’s second husband, Richard N. Cohen, a Yale-educated insurance broker, whom she married in 1958. After graduating from Tufts University with a bachelor of arts degree in 1974, Mr. Cohen was hired by the Multimedia Corporation as a management trainee. He went on to work from 1976 to 1980 as a television cameraman; a broadcast journalist and a director at WESH-TV in Orlando; a program director for Warner Amex Cable in Dallas; and, from 1981-83, vice president for business affairs for Fort Worth Productions, an independent film company that supplied content for public television. In Orlando, he was so successful as an investigative reporter that local power brokers implored him, unsuccessfully, to run for mayor. There he met and married a rival TV reporter, Leah Thompson Keith. She became a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and now represents accused young people pro bono. They lived in Manhattan. She survives him, along with their two sons, Alex and Adam; and his brother, Jace. Mr. Cohen was director of education and corporate development for ReServe Inc. (Retired Professionals Serving the Nonprofit Community) and a volunteer math and reading mentor at Spark Academy in Newark, an elementary school that is a part of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) network of nonprofit public charter schools. He also served on the Tufts University Board of Overseers for Arts and Sciences. An avid outdoorsman, he was on the board of the Rainforest Alliance, a conservation group, and treasurer of the nonprofit Arctic Explorer Fund. In voting to restructure the family’s ownership of The Times in the 1990s, Daniel and Jace Cohen joined other Ochs-Sulzberger cousins in consolidating four separate trusts, which held 85 percent of the controlling Class B stock, into a single trust, in which each of them and their children would share equally. Theoretically, if those shares were ever distributed, the two brothers’ stake could be less valuable. But as Ms. Tifft and Mr. Jones wrote in “The Trust,” “the centripetal pull of the family, and the decision to speak with one voice regarding the fate of The New York Times, was a powerful incentive.” The book quoted Daniel Cohen as saying that he and his brother had “made it not an issue of wealth; we made it an issue of the mission of the newspaper and of the company.”

The New York Times
Obituary
advertising,marketing
Daniel H Cohen


Nagin Guilty of 20 Counts of Bribery and Fraud

Abstract: NEW ORLEANS — C. Ray Nagin, a former corporate executive who became mayor in 2002 pledging to modernize city government and instead became an emblem of government dysfunction in the months and years after Hurricane Katrina, was found guilty in federal court on Wednesday on 20 counts of bribery and fraud. The verdict marks a dubious milestone in a city long associated with an ethically loose style of politics: It makes Mr. Nagin the first New Orleans mayor to be charged, tried and convicted of corruption. He was found guilty of all but one of 21 counts, including bribery, wire fraud and filing false tax returns. Sentencing has been set for June 11, Mr. Nagin’s 58th birthday. Mr. Nagin could face 20 years in prison by federal sentencing guidelines, said Tania Tetlow, a Tulane University law professor and a former federal prosecutor. On his walk out of the courtroom and across chilly Lafayette Square to his lawyer’s office, Mr. Nagin, who will be confined to his home near Dallas for now, kept up a stoic demeanor in the middle of a swarm of cameras. He told reporters he maintained his innocence, and his lawyer, Robert Jenkins, said Mr. Nagin intended to appeal. Over the eight-day trial, federal prosecutors and more than two dozen government witnesses had described Mr. Nagin’s involvement in a series of roughly similar schemes: city projects would be awarded to — or municipal problems fixed for — businessmen who in turn would give Mr. Nagin large payments, private trips to Jamaica and New York, free cellphone service, lawn care, do-nothing consulting jobs or free shipments of granite for the countertop company he ran with his two sons. Much of this was known to New Orleans residents through reports in the local news media during his second term and later through the guilty pleas and criminal trials of others involved in the schemes, several of whom were government witnesses. Mr. Nagin, who testified over two days, had claimed that he had little control over the contracting process, and described some of the payoffs as legitimate investments in his sons’ business. In one case involving a contractor’s $10,000 payment to Mr. Nagin’s sons, the jury agreed with Mr. Nagin. But they sided with the government on the rest — a total of illicit proceeds that the government put at half a million dollars. “Our public servants pledge to provide honest services to the people of Southeast Louisiana,” said Kenneth Allen Polite Jr., the United States attorney for Louisiana’s Eastern District, in a statement after the verdict. “We are committed to bringing any politician who violates that obligation to justice.” Mr. Nagin was elected in 2002 as an outsider dismissive of the old political machines. A cable TV executive with no prior governing experience, Mr. Nagin, a Democrat, was impatient with the stubborn rhythm of the city’s bureaucracy, a quality that endeared him to the media, reform advocates and upscale voters. Of the city’s airport, he said in his first campaign that the city should “sell that sucker,” and many applauded his moxie. That he turned out to be much more adept at proposing big ideas than following through with them was something he acknowledged, and it became one of the qualities that most infuriated New Orleanians in the years following Katrina. During his time on the witness stand, Mr. Nagin brought up Katrina several times, talking about how much work there was to be done in the recovery, how demanding his job was and how much pressure was put on the daily business of the city. But prosecutors turned this around, asking Mr. Nagin how he could eat expensive meals on the city credit card, or help a businessman get rid of steep tax bills in return for a trip on a private jet, when residents were hurting so badly. They also pointed out that some of the schemes predated the storm and continued after he left office in 2010. Gary Clark, a political science professor at Dillard University in New Orleans, who as a Civil Service commissioner dealt with the mayor, dismissed any notion that the mayor did not know what he was doing. “He’s a shrewd tactician,” he said of Mr. Nagin, pointing out how adeptly he had shifted from a largely white constituency in 2002 to largely black one in 2006. “You don’t win the mayorship of New Orleans by being naïve.” Still, the inattention to detail for which Mr. Nagin was known seemed to form a part of his defense at trial. From the witness stand, he testified that the extensive paper trail on which much of the case rested — calendar entries, tax filings, legal documents and city paperwork — was mostly handled by others, like accountants or assistants. His lawyer asked whether a person taking bribes would really be so careless as to leave such a record, behavior that brazenly flouts the wisdom shared by a former Louisiana governor, Earl K. Long: that one should never put in writing what one can convey in a smile, a nod or a wink. Those who knew him say it is unsurprising. “I think he may have been reckless,” said Oliver Thomas, a city councilman during Mr. Nagin’s term who pleaded guilty to taking a bribe in 2007. Mr. Thomas raised a sentiment common among those who knew Mr. Nagin. While he may have been guilty of the charges, Mr. Thomas said, and may have known that his actions were against the law, Mr. Nagin may still question whether he truly did anything wrong. Having spoken from the witness stand about a “300 percent cut in salary” when he left the private sector, some said Mr. Nagin may have preferred to maintain the lifestyle he had enjoyed in the corporate world. “I think when he went into the government sector he could not remove his private sensibilities,” said Andre Perry, an activist and professor who was involved in public education issues during Mr. Nagin’s second term. “You just can’t do the things you did” in the private sector, he said.

Fraud
New Orleans
Ray Nagin
Corruption
Decisions and Verdicts
Bribery and Kickbacks


Leaving Europe With Another Close Win

Abstract: LONDON (AP) — Vince Carter made three free throws in the final 10 seconds on Sunday, helping the Nets hold on for a 94-92 victory against the Miami Heat in a preseason game in front of a boisterous crowd. It was the Nets’ second win against the Heat in four days, after a 100-98 overtime victory in Paris on Thursday as part of the N.B.A. ’s European preseason tour. But for the Nets’ new-look squad, the weeklong chance to get to know one another could prove even more important than the two close wins. “With a new team like this, these are the situations you need,” Carter said. “We have a good time on the bus going wherever we go. We have a bunch of comedians on the team, so we have a good time laughing and joking.” Carter finished with 19 points, and Yi Jianlian added 17 in his debut for the Nets (2-0) in a game that treated the British fans to a number of high-flying dunks but even more sloppy turnovers. Marcus Banks had 19 points and Dwyane Wade added 18 for the Heat (0-3), which fought back from a 19-point first-quarter deficit and pushed the game to the final seconds. Miami has not won a preseason game since 2006; the Heat went 0-7 in exhibition contests last season before posting the league’s worst record (15-67). “These two close-game situations are invaluable for the younger players and also the veteran guys,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “But now, as we move forward and we get back to Miami, we really have to have a productive week.” The teams struggled to keep possession of the ball and combined for 47 turnovers. The Nets went on an early 17-0 run and led by 21-5 before Coach Lawrence Frank pulled his starters 6 minutes 50 seconds into the first quarter. Carter scored 8 of the Nets’ first 12 points, including a thunderous one-handed slam off a bounce pass from Yi.

Miami Heat
New Jersey Nets
Basketball
National Basketball Assn
Paris (France)


New Novel From Shteyngart Will Be an ‘International Thriller’

Abstract: Gary Shteyngart, the author of “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook” and “Super Sad True Love Story,” is writing an “international thriller” for Random House, the publisher said on Tuesday. The new novel, titled “Hotel Solitaire,” tells the story of a young woman who works in finance, travels the world and searches for her brother, who has mysteriously disappeared. A spokeswoman for Random House said it would be published in 2017. Mr. Shteyngart’s most recent book, the memoir “Little Failure,” was published to critical acclaim in January. “At its heart ‘Hotel Solitaire’ is a family drama set in the high-stakes world of global finance, moving from upstate New York to Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai,” Mr. Shteyngart said in an email. “It’s about how power is disseminated in the world today and what happens when a spreadsheet jockey trades in her Excel for a Glock 22.”

Gary Shteyngart
Books
Random House
Publishing


Police Official Faces Discipline for Growth-Hormone Use

Abstract: A high-ranking New York police official broke department policy by using human growth hormone and should be suspended for 30 days and placed on probation for one year, an administrative trial judge has determined. The official, Deputy Chief Michael Marino, who said the substance was medically necessary, was the highest-ranking officer caught up in a national steroid investigation that in 2007 led to the raid of a Brooklyn pharmacy where nearly two dozen New York police officers had been suspected of buying steroids. At least six officers were disciplined. Chief Marino turned down a plea offer that would substantially have given him the punishment he now faces, according to a law enforcement official who has been briefed on the case. Short of dismissal, it is the harshest administrative penalty the department can impose except by agreement of the officer. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly must make the final decision in the case and can modify or drop the penalties. Chief Marino, of Patrol Borough Brooklyn North, is also a central figure in a federal lawsuit filed by Officer Adrian Schoolcraft. He claims department officials retaliated against him after he accused officials in the 81st Precinct of manipulating crime statistics and pushing ticket and arrest quotas on officers. In the suit, Officer Schoolcraft claims Chief Marino was among several high-ranking officers who showed up at his home in Glendale on Oct. 31, 2009, and took him by force to a hospital for psychiatric observation. The suit claims Chief Marino placed his boot on Officer Schoolcraft’s head as he was pinned down and said, “It didn’t have to be like this.” In 2006, an arbitrator ruled that Chief Marino, then commander of the 75th Precinct, violated state labor law by punishing officers who did not meet ticket and arrest quotas. His lawyer, Michael Shapiro, did not return phone calls on Tuesday.

Human Growth Hormone
Marino Michael
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations
Police Department (NYC)
Brooklyn (NYC)
Suits and Litigation
Schoolcraft Adrian


Clash of Values Emerges After Afghan Child Bride Burns to Death

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — As a young girl, Zahra became consumed with the idea of a life of learning, seizing on every new opportunity that trickled to her isolated town in the western Afghan province of Ghor. In a school drama, she performed the role of Parisa, a young girl barred from attending school by her conservative family. When an educational circus traveled through about three years ago, she was one of the enthusiastic participants, selected as one of three students among 70 to take her new juggling act to Kabul. But within the short span of her life, she was bartered away. When her mother was paralyzed and her father decided to marry again, Zahra, then around 11 years old, became part of the dowry, according to her father’s accounts to reporters. Then, about two years later, as a sixth grader, she was married off. Last week, Zahra arrived at the central hospital in Ghor with burns over 90 percent of her body. She died six days later, on Saturday, in a Kabul hospital. She was four months pregnant, and she was 14 years old, her father said. The father, Muhammad Azam, said that her death was the culminating act of long abuse by her husband’s family. He accused them of beating and stabbing her after she refused to work in the opium fields while pregnant, and he said they then set her on fire with gasoline to cover their crime. Zahra’s husband’s family insists that her death was by self-immolation, according to the police. As investigators in Kabul and Ghor tried to piece the episode together, the conversation about her life and death once again brought to the fore the issue of child marriage and women’s rights in Afghanistan. Despite years of effort to advance women’s basic rights and build a government that protects them, they largely are still treated as little more than property. Zahra’s family, with the help of activists, has set up a protest tent near the hospital in Kabul to demand justice. The arguments a New York Times reporter saw there on Monday over her age and the circumstances of her death also highlight a clash of values still unfolding in the country. Even her own relatives were quick to defend the tradition of marrying young girls off to settle family disputes. And by his own account, though it was later contradicted by other relatives, Mr. Azam bartered her away for a marriage performed before it would be legal under Afghan national law at age 16. Image Zahra Mr. Azam initially told reporters in Ghor, as well as in Kabul, that Zahra, who had just one name, had been 11 years old when she was promised into marriage, and figured she was 14 when she died. Circus organizers as well as locals in Ghor recalled her as a “very lively” 13-year-old sixth-grader before she was married two years ago, which would make her 15 when she died. But later in the day at the protest tent in Kabul, other relatives tried to control the narrative and speak over Mr. Azam, as it became evident that he could be liable for forcing a child into marriage. They said Mr. Azam was in shock and did not know what he was saying — that in fact, Zahra had been 15 when she was married and 17 when she died. Tensions were rising between activists and the family at the tent even before Col. Hassina Yousufi, the deputy director of criminal investigations, arrived late in the afternoon to announce that Zahra’s in-laws had been arrested in Ghor. One of Mr. Azam’s relatives, Hajji Abdul Khaliq, tried to revise Mr. Azam’s account to the police about when Zahra had married, insisting that she was older and restating more smoothly that the in-laws had abused and killed her. At first, Colonel Yousufi found the man’s coherent narrative persuasive. “In fact, the account of this brother is correct,” she said, calling on one of her clerks to start recording his account. But Mr. Khaliq dug himself into a hole when he tried to exonerate Mr. Azam, the father, saying Zahra had probably been old enough when she married and might even have given her consent. The women’s rights activists in the tent could no longer hold it. “If I was you, I would handcuff this man and take him as a criminal!” said one activist, Hamida Wardak, while pointing at Zahra’s father. He showed no emotion, while his second wife, fully covered in a burqa, hugged her knees and just listened. Next to her, under a yellow and orange shawl, their infant child was sleeping fitfully. “Whether I am a criminal or not does not bring Zahra back to life,” Mr. Azam said softly. With protest from activists intensifying, Colonel Yousufi’s opinion of Mr. Khaliq turned. She questioned whether a girl as young as Zahra was in a position to decide. “Why are you asking me? Go ask the Prophet,” Mr. Khaliq said, explaining that they were merely following traditions from the Prophet Muhammad’s time. With the argument getting out of hand, the clerk who had been taking notes walked out. Colonel Yousufi soon followed him. When his wife was paralyzed about 10 years ago, Mr. Azam and his relatives said, he decided to marry again to have a caretaker for his young children. He had been working as a laborer for the family who would become his in-laws. They offered him a daughter to marry rather than the salary they owed him, he said. Later, the family found a different suitor and backed out of the deal. But he eloped with the girl anyway, and the family demanded restitution. Whether Zahra, who would have been 6 at oldest, was part of that initial dowry agreement is unclear. But Mr. Azam said that she was definitely part of a deal they reached years later, when she was 11, that would have her marry into the other family once she reached puberty in order to keep the peace. But he said that the in-laws, a powerful family connected in the Ghor government, started pressuring Mr. Azam to marry off Zahra right away. He said the harassment got to a point where Mr. Azam was forced to leave town for another western city with his family for more than a year. By the time Zahra was married — to the son of Mr. Azam’s brother-in-law — her in-laws claimed she was no longer the same modest girl they had been promised. They said she had been “urbanized.” Mr. Azam says he repeatedly lodged complaints with the local government and provincial council in Ghor that his daughter was abused, but he was ignored because of the family’s connections. His account was confirmed by Abdul Rahman Atshan, a member of the provincial council. On Monday, the police chief of Ghor, Mustafa Hussaini, first said Zahra had been forcibly set on fire, and then changed his stance, saying that Zahra had self-immolated because of the abuse she was facing. In either case, another Afghan child of promise died horribly, in circumstances that had been decided for her. “Except for the soles of her feet, every other part of Zahra’s was burned,” said Dr. Saber Nasib, whose team in Kabul, unsuccessfully, made a last-minute effort to save her. “Her veins and arteries had burned, and there was no way of inserting an IV drip to keep her liquid balance.”

Afghanistan
Child Marriage
Child Abuse
Women and Girls


Topping Estimates, Tesla Narrows Quarterly Loss

Abstract: DETROIT — The electric carmaker Tesla Motors reported a narrower net loss for the second quarter late Wednesday, but it surprised Wall Street with an unexpected operating profit. The company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., reported that it lost $30.5 million, or 26 cents a share, in the April-June period. That compares with a loss of $105.6 million, or $1 a share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items and lease accounting, Tesla Motors said it had a profit of 20 cents a share. The one-time items included a $16 million charge associated with the payoff of a $465 million loan from the Energy Department. Tesla paid off the loan in May, nine years earlier than it was due. On that basis, analysts had been expecting a loss of 19 cents a share, according to FactSet. Revenue rose to $405.1 million from $26.6 million a year ago. That beat analysts’ forecast of $386.9 million. “Our financial position and balance sheet have never been stronger,” Tesla’s chairman and chief executive, Elon Musk, said in a letter to shareholders. Tesla’s stock jumped $17.61, or more than 13 percent, to $151.84 in after-hours trading. Mr. Musk said the company ended the quarter with $750 million in cash. It recently used some of that money to buy 31 acres next to its plant in Fremont, Calif., for future expansion. It also expects to accelerate development of its next vehicle, the Model X crossover, as well as a right-hand drive version of the Model S in the second half of this year. The Model X is expected to go on sale next year. Tesla currently makes one car, the $70,000 Model S, which won Consumer Reports’ top rating in July. The company delivered 5,150 Model S sedans in the quarter, surpassing its expectation for 4,500. In a letter to shareholders, the company said it remained on track to deliver 21,000 cars worldwide this year. Tesla delivered the Model S to its first European customers this week.


Spaniard Wins Tour of Beijing

Abstract: Benat Intxausti of Spain won the Tour of Beijing. Intxausti, whose powerful attack in Monday’s hill stage had given him the overall lead, raced home safely in the peloton to take the title for the Movistar team.


Ex-Software Officer Settles With S.E.C.

Abstract: WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 (AP) — A former executive of McAfee, the antiviral software maker, agreed to pay about $757,000 to settle charges that he played a role in the company’s $622 million accounting fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday. The S.E.C. charged in a civil lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco that the company’s former treasurer, Eric Borrmann, aided in fraud from mid-1999 until he left McAfee in July 2000. The S.E.C. also said he used confidential information regarding the fraud to illegally profit from sales of company stock after he had resigned. Mr. Borrmann neither admitted nor denied the S.E.C.’s allegations. McAfee, formerly known as Network Associates, agreed in January to pay a $50 million civil fine to settle the S.E.C. fraud charges. In October 2003, McAfee restated its earnings to correct for accounting and sales practices that inflated its revenue by $622 million from 1998 through 2000.

Securities and Exchange Commission
McAfee Inc
Frauds and Swindling
Securities and Commodities Violations


An Ugly Final Chapter to Gerrard’s Long Career at Liverpool

Abstract: LONDON — For Steven Gerrard, the flight to a new life in California cannot come soon enough. He is as much an icon in Liverpool, his hometown, as the Beatles were, but he needs a new field. Right now age, and rage, are consuming him. He is almost 35, and England’s Premier League moves too fast for a man who still wants to be the enforcer, the swashbuckling leader of the team he grew up with. On Sunday, his 703rd appearance in a Liverpool shirt lasted precisely 38 seconds. In that time, he rushed into a tackle that cleaned out both the ball and Manchester United’s Juan Mata. It was a bone-shaking, borderline tackle that was inches away from illegality. Seconds later, when United’s Ander Herrera took a retaliatory lunge toward Gerrard, the Liverpool skipper stomped on the outstretched leg of Herrera. Gerrard was instantly red-carded. Even he admits that there is no place in the sport for such a potentially leg-breaking use of force. The referee was completely right in showing him a straight red. Liverpool lost the game to two fine goals from Mata. The first, before Gerrard entered the field as a substitute at halftime, was a work of precise movement and passing along the ground by Marouane Fellaini, Herrera and Mata. The second, after Gerrard had departed, was beauty itself as Ángel Di María returned the ball to Mata, who leaped and, with his body horizontal to the ground, scissors-kicked the ball inside Liverpool’s far post. It was the perfect finish to put before the man they called the king of soccer. Pelé, now 74, was at Anfield stadium to witness Mata’s leap, and though he scored a thousand times in Brazil and the United States, not even he could have improved on the perfection of that second goal. Liverpool, beaten by beauty and a man short, rallied to score once. But the game, a most important one between teams vying for a place in next season’s Champions League, was already won by the exquisiteness of Mata and lost by the rashness of Gerrard. By the time of the final whistle, Gerrard, already showered and suited, was requesting the opportunity to apologize on television. “The decision was right,” he said of his expulsion. “I’ve let my teammates, the manager and the supporters down today. It was a reaction to the initial challenge. I take full responsibility.” His mea culpa was manly, but it could not change the result. Gerrard faces a three-match ban, meaning that he has, at best, six games remaining as a Liverpool player before he flies out to join the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer. He goes there with his wife and young daughters, and being the person he is, Gerrard will give every part of himself — responsibility, knowledge and desire — until he can run no more. There lies the crux of his problems at home. He is trying to deny the dying of his light. In his heart, he is still the same marauding Liverpudlian who in Istanbul in 2005 led his beloved Reds to come from three goals down at halftime in the Champions League final to tie A.C. Milan, 3-3, and then win the penalty shootout after extra time. Gerrard headed the first goal that game, was brought down for a penalty that led to another and scored the first penalty kick in the shootout. In more than 40 years observing games in stadiums around the world, I have never seen a more stirring example of leadership than that. But time marches on. A year ago, Gerrard made a slip that allowed Chelsea to score at Anfield, effectively ending the best chance Liverpool had in Gerrard’s time of winning the Premier League title. Then, at the World Cup, a mistimed jump for a header led to the score that knocked England out of the World Cup. How cruel is fate? Gerrard has given everything he could for club and country throughout his career, but a slip, a failed header and a rash foul have been catalysts for defeats — and undone all that he has strived for. Gerrard, the leader of Liverpool for more than a decade and England’s national team captain at the last World Cup, might seem to be luckless — or a liability to the causes he strives for. The critics all have their theories. Jamie Carragher is one of the best and the most honest of the former Liverpool players that now are TV analysts. He had been Gerrard’s close friend with the Reds and his second-in-command before retiring in 2013, but Carragher had to call it as he saw it during Sunday’s game. “Steven Gerrard is an emotional player, and he’s taken Liverpool to some unbelievable heights,” Carragher said on Sky Sports. “This was a moment of madness.” Carragher’s informed opinion was that Gerrard was frustrated at being left on the bench after missing games because of that nemesis of the aging player, the strained hamstring. He watched his team being submissive, barely putting in a tackle, and allowing Manchester United — Liverpool’s greatest rival — to run the show at Anfield on Sunday. “Previously, Steven had always been the main man,” continued Carragher. “Whenever Steven has come back from injury before, he has gone straight back into the side. I think that has played its part — it was a moment of madness.” Carragher was speaking from experience. His own Liverpool career, like Gerrard’s, was studded by expulsions for hot-headed tackles in highly charged contests. In the aftermath to Sunday’s game, one thinks of Gerrard’s puzzlement when a previous England national team coach, Fabio Capello, seemed reluctant to trust him with the captain’s armband. Capello may not have told him directly why, but the Italian suspected that Gerrard led with his heart. He valued Gerrard’s never-say-die personality but wanted a more cerebral leader. Gerrard’s strength, his unquenchable spirit, could at crucial times also be his weakness. A captain is the last man you need sidelined through indiscretion.

Premier League
Soccer
Los Angeles Galaxy
Liverpool Soccer Team


Setbacks in Portugal and Ireland Renew Worry on Debt Crisis

Abstract: LONDON — A higher-than-expected budget deficit in Portugal and the need for more money to rescue Ireland’s failing banks have renewed fears that Europe’s debt crisis is worsening despite its sizable bailout fund. Officials in Lisbon said Thursday that the country’s budget deficit last year was 8.6 percent of its gross domestic product, well above the goal of 7.3 percent. Although officials said the revision would not affect the government’s goal of reaching a deficit of 4.6 percent of domestic product in 2011, the news was a reminder that, even after the problems from Greece’s fraudulent deficit statistics, some numbers from the euro zone remain unreliable. Also Thursday, Ireland’s central bank announced that four of the country’s most prominent financial institutions would need an additional 24 billion euros to cover sour real estate loans, a move that pushes the country’s banking system closer to being nationalized. The new figure, which includes 10 billion euros that the International Monetary Fund has already committed, was included in the results of a rigorous stress test of the nation’s banks. While largely expected, the announcement brings the total banking bill for the Irish government to 70 billion euros. The cost of insuring the debt of Portugal and Ireland, as well as that of Spain and Greece, rose on Thursday, as did the yields on all their 10-year benchmark bonds. Late Wednesday, a plan to merge four troubled savings banks in Spain collapsed, and that news appeared to add to investor fears on Thursday. It seems just a matter of time before Portugal, like Greece and Ireland, is forced to seek assistance from Europe and the I.M.F.; it lacks a government plan, and its 10-year debt has a yield of 8.5 percent, above the level that Greece and Ireland had when they were bailed out. But with Europe having increased its rescue fund to 440 billion euros, it is now in a position to cover Portugal’s financing requirement. And for that reason, Portugal’s slow-motion collapse has not set off a broader market panic, especially since neighboring Spain appears to be able to address its problems without outside financial help. Still, any sign that Spain may be wobbling again is likely to renew concern that Europe has yet to definitively address its problems. “The problems in the periphery are getting worse, not better,” said Jonathan Tepper, an analyst at Variant Perception, a research firm based in London. “Ireland and Greece are undergoing major contractions with no end in sight. It is a matter of time before Portugal is bailed out and Spain is very much like Ireland with extremely large exposure by the banks to property developers and to overvalued land.” In Ireland, the announcement by the central bank about the needs of the country’s top financial institutions vividly illustrates the extent of the country’s financial troubles. “This has been one of the costliest banking crises in history,” said Patrick Honohan, the governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, which oversaw the stress tests. “There was a need for the banks to have ample capital to meet the markets’ gloomy prognostications.” In a step that could ease some of the pressure on Ireland, the European Central Bank said Thursday that banks could use government bonds as collateral for borrowing from the central bank, regardless of how the bonds are rated. Because of that, banks would have more flexibility to borrow from the European bank at its benchmark rate. Also on Thursday, a fallen Irish bank not included in the stress test, Anglo Irish, disclosed a loss of $25 billion, the largest loss in the country’s corporate history. Anglo Irish, which is expected to receive 34 billion euros in funds from the state, was not included in the test because it is being gradually wound down. The 24 billion euros needed to shore up the four Irish banks includes 10.5 billion euros for Allied Irish Bank, 3.7 billion for the Bank of Ireland, 4.5 billion for two smaller institutions and an additional 5.3 billion to serve as an extra layer of equity. Officials said the process of reducing the Irish financing gap, or the difference between bank deposits and loans, will take years and will require the write-off and disposal of 72 billion euros in problem loans by 2013. The gap, otherwise known as the loan-to-deposit ratio, now stands at 171 percent against a government goal of 122 percent and it is currently being financed by the European Central Bank and the Irish Central Bank at a cost of about 150 billion euros, an amount that is about equal to the country’s gross domestic product.

Ireland
European Central Bank
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )
Banking and Financial Institutions