Hezbollah Seeks to Marshal the Piety of the Young

Abstract: RIYAQ, Lebanon — On a Bekaa Valley playing field gilded by late-afternoon sun, hundreds of young men wearing Boy Scout-style uniforms and kerchiefs stand rigidly at attention as a military band plays, its marchers bearing aloft the distinctive yellow banner of Hezbollah , the militant Shiite movement. They are adolescents — 17 or 18 years old — but they have the stern faces of adult men, lightly bearded, some of them with dark spots in the center of their foreheads from bowing down in prayer. Each of them wears a tiny picture of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shiite cleric who led the Iranian revolution, on his chest. “You are our leader!” the boys chant in unison, as a Hezbollah official walks to a podium and addresses them with a Koranic invocation. “We are your men!” This is the vanguard of Hezbollah’s youth movement, the Mahdi Scouts . Some of the graduates gathered at this ceremony will go on to join Hezbollah’s guerrilla army, fighting Israel in the hills of southern Lebanon. Others will work in the party’s bureaucracy. The rest will probably join the fast-growing and passionately loyal base of support that has made Hezbollah the most powerful political, military and social force in Lebanon. At a time of religious revival across the Islamic world, intense piety among the young is nothing unusual. But in Lebanon, Hezbollah — the name means the party of God — has marshaled these ambient energies for a highly political project: educating a younger generation to continue its military struggle against Israel. Hezbollah’s battlefield resilience has made it a model for other militant groups across the Middle East, including Hamas. And that success is due, in no small measure, to the party’s extraordinarily comprehensive array of religion-themed youth and recruitment programs. There is a network of schools — some of them run by Hezbollah, others affiliated with or controlled by it — largely shielded from outsiders. There is a nationwide network of clerics who provide weekly religious lessons to young people on a neighborhood basis. There is a group for students at unaffiliated schools and colleges that presents Hezbollah to a wider audience. The party organizes non-Scout-related summer camps and field trips, and during Muslim religious holidays it arranges events to encourage young people to express their devotion in public and to perform charity work. “It’s like a complete system, from primary school to university,” said Talal Atrissi, a political analyst at Lebanese University who has been studying Hezbollah for decades. “The goal is to prepare a generation that has deep religious faith and is also close to Hezbollah.” Much of this activity is fueled by a broader Shiite religious resurgence in Lebanon that began after the Iranian revolution in 1979. But Hezbollah has gone further than any other organization in mobilizing this force, both to build its own support base and to immunize Shiite youths from the temptations of Lebanon’s diverse and mostly secular society. Hezbollah’s influence on Lebanese youth is very difficult to quantify because of the party’s extreme secrecy and the general absence of reliable statistics in the country. It is clear that the Shiite religious schools , in which Hezbollah exercises a dominant influence, have grown over the past two decades from a mere handful into a major national network. Other, less visible avenues may be equally important, like the growing number of clerics associated with the movement. Hezbollah and its allies have also adapted and expanded religious rituals involving children, starting at ever-earlier ages. Women, who play a more prominent role in Hezbollah than they do in most other radical Islamic groups, are especially important in creating what is often called “the jihad atmosphere” among children. ‘This Is Women’s Jihad’ As night fell in the southern Lebanese town of Jibchit, a lone woman in a black gown strode purposefully into the spotlight on a makeshift stage. Before her sat hundreds of Mahdi Scout parents, who had come to watch one of the central events of their young daughters’ lives. “Welcome, welcome,” their host said. “We appreciate your presence here tonight. Your daughters are now putting on this angelic costume for the first time.” Munira Halawi, a slim, 23-year-old Hezbollah member with the direct gaze and passionate manner of an evangelist, was the master of ceremonies at a ritual known as a Takleef Shara’ee, or the holy responsibility, in which some 300 female scouts ages 8 or 9 formally donned the hijab, or Islamic head scarf. For the girls, the ritual was a moment of tremendous symbolic significance, marking the start of a deeper religious commitment and the approach of adulthood. These ceremonies, once rare, have become common in recent years. It was a milestone as well for Ms. Halawi, who had been practicing with the girls for weeks: she was now a qa’ida, a young female leader who helps supervise the education of younger girls. Born in 1985, Ms. Halawi is in some ways typical of the younger generation of female Hezbollah members. She grew up after Hezbollah and its allies had begun establishing what they called the hala islamiyya, or Islamic atmosphere, in Shiite Lebanon. She quickly became far more devout than her parents, who had grown up during an era when secular ideologies like pan-Arabism and Communism were popular in Lebanon. She married early and had the first of her two children before turning 17. As Ms. Halawi finished her introduction, the girls began walking up the aisle toward the stage, dressed in silky white gowns with furry hoods. Bubbles descended from the wings. White smoke drifted up from a fog machine. A sound system played Hezbollah anthems — deep male voices booming to a marching band’s rhythm. The parents applauded wildly, the mothers ululating. The two-and-a-half hour ceremony that followed — in which the girls performed a play about the meaning of the hijab and a bearded Hezbollah cleric delivered a long political speech — was a concentrated dose of Hezbollah ideology, seamlessly blending millenarian Shiite doctrine with furious diatribes against Israel. Again and again, the girls were told that the hijab was an all-important emblem of Islamic virtue and that it was the secret power that allowed Hezbollah to liberate southern Lebanon. The struggle with Israel, they were told, is the same as the struggle of Shiite Islam’s founding figures, Ali and Hussein, against unjust rulers in their time. Through it all, Ms. Halawi was the presiding figure on the stage, introducing each section of the evening and reciting Koranic verses and her own poetic homages to the veil. “Our veil is a jewel-encrusted crown, dignified and lofty, that God made to make us blossom,” she said at one point, gazing out into the darkness with a look of passionate intensity. “He opened the door of obedience and contentment for us.” A few days later, relaxing over tea at her sister’s house, Ms. Halawi, still dressed in a black abaya, an Islamic gown, expanded on the theme of the ceremony. Religious education now begins much earlier than it did in her parents’ time, she explained. Islamic schools, some run by Hezbollah, begin Koranic lessons at the age of 4, and it is common for girls to start fasting and wearing a hijab at 8. In all this, the mother’s guidance is the key. “This is women’s jihad,” Ms. Halawi said. Camp, With a Moral Portion From a distance, it resembles any other Boy Scout camp in the world. Two rows of canvas tents face each other on the banks of the Litani River, the powder-blue stream that runs across southern Lebanon not far from the Israeli border. A hand-built wooden jungle gym stands near the camp entrance, where pine trees sway in the breeze and dry, brown hills are visible in the distance. Then, planted on sticks in the river, two huge posters bearing the faces of Ayatollah Khomeini and Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, come into view. “Since 1985 we have managed to raise a good generation,” said Muhammad al-Akhdar, 25, a scout leader, as he showed a visitor around the grounds. “We had 850 kids here this summer, ages 9 to 15.” This camp is called Tyr fil Say, one of the sites in south Lebanon where the Mahdi Scouts train. Much of what they do is similar to the activities of scouts the world over: learning to swim, to build campfires, to tie knots and to play sports. Mr. Akhdar described some of the games the young scouts play, including one where they divide into two teams — Americans and the Resistance — and try to throw one another into the river. The Mahdi Scouts also get visits from Hezbollah fighters, wearing camouflage and toting AK-47s, who talk about fighting Israel. Mr. Akhdar led a visitor around the tents, where boys had been spelling out Koranic phrases like “the promise” and “the owner of time” using stones. There was also a meticulously arranged grave, complete with lettering and decoration. In place of the headstone was a small photograph of Imad Mugniyah, the Hezbollah commander who was killed in February and who was widely viewed in the West as the mastermind of decades of bombings, kidnappings and hijackings. The Mahdi Scouts were founded in 1985, shortly after Hezbollah itself. Officially, the group is like any of the other 29 different scout groups in Lebanon, many of which belong to political parties and serve as feeders for them. But the Mahdi Scouts are different. They are much larger; with an estimated 60,000 children and Scout leaders, they are six times the size of any other Lebanese scout group. Even their marching movements are more militaristic than the others, according to Mustafa Muhammad Abdel Rasoul, the head of the Lebanese Scouts’ Union. While the Mahdi Scouts fall under the umbrella of the Lebanese union, they have no direct affiliation with the international scouting body based in Switzerland. Because of the Scouts’ reputation as a feeder for Hezbollah’s armed force, the party has become extremely protective and rarely grants outsiders access to them. Still, Hezbollah officials often casually mention the link between the Scouts and the guerrilla force. “After age 16 the boys mostly go to resistance or military activities,” said Bilal Naim, who served as Hezbollah’s director for the Mahdi Scouts until last year. Another difference from most scout groups lies in the program. Religious and moral instruction — rather than physical activity — occupy the vast bulk of the Mahdi Scouts’ curriculum, and the scout leaders adhere strictly to lessons outlined in books for each age group. Those books, copies of which were provided to this reporter by a Hezbollah official, show an extraordinary focus on religious themes and a full-time preoccupation with Hezbollah’s military struggle against Israel. The chapter titles, for the 12- to 14-year-old age group, include “Love and Hate in God,” “Know Your Enemy,” “Loyalty to the Leader” and “Facts About Jews.” Jews are described as cruel, corrupt, cowardly and deceitful, and they are called the killers of prophets. The chapter on Jews states that “their Talmud says those outside the Jewish religion are animals.” In every chapter, the children are required to write down or recite Koranic verses that illustrate the theme in question. They are taught to venerate Ayatollah Khomeini — Iran has been a longtime supporter of Hezbollah, providing it with money, weapons and training — and the leaders of Hezbollah. They are told to hate Israel and to avoid people who are not devout. Questions at the ends of chapters encourage the children to “watch your heart” and “assess your heart” to check wrong impulses and encourage virtuous ones. One note to the instructors reminds them that young scouts are in a sensitive phase of development that should be considered “a launching toward commitment.” Secular Influences In the West, the image of Hezbollah is often that of its bearded, young guerrilla fighters, dressed in military camouflage and clutching AK-47s. But Hezbollah’s inner core of fighters and employees — its full-time members — is a far smaller group than its supporters. This broader category, covering the better part of Lebanon’s roughly one million Shiites, includes reservists, who will fight if needed; doctors and engineers, who contribute their skills; and mere sympathizers. In that sense, a more representative figure of the party’s young following might be someone like Ali al-Sayyed. A quiet, clean-cut 24-year-old, Mr. Sayyed grew up in south Lebanon and now works as an accountant in Beirut. Hezbollah has offered him jobs, but he prefers to maintain his independence. But his entire life has been lived in the shadow of Hezbollah. He attended a Mustafa high school, one of a national network of schools affiliated with the party, where he spent at least five class hours every week studying religion and listening to his teachers pray for Hezbollah’s fighters and Ayatollah Khomeini. After school and during the summers, he was with the Mahdi Scouts. Later he became a Scout leader. He is extremely devout — he will not shake hands with women — and mentions his willingness to fight and die for Hezbollah as though it were a matter of course. “They made us, so of course I would sacrifice my life for them,” he said as he sat gazing through the glass wall of a Beirut cafe on an autumn evening. “Before, the Shiites were in a wretched condition.” Yet Mr. Sayyed’s generation is also in many ways more exposed to the temptations of Lebanon’s secular and often decadent society than its predecessors. That shift is apparent even in the Dahiya, or Suburb, the vast enclave on the southern edge of Beirut where most of Lebanon’s Shiites live and where Hezbollah has its headquarters. Once an austere ghetto where bearded men would chastise women who dared to appear in public without an Islamic head scarf, the Dahiya is now a far more open place. There are Internet cafes, music and DVD shops, Chinese restaurants and an amusement park called Fantasy World. There is no public consumption of alcohol, but the streets are thick with satellite dishes and open-air television sets. Lingerie shops display posters of scantily-clad models in their windows, and young women walk past in tight jeans, their hair uncovered. The cafe where Mr. Sayyed was sitting, on the outskirts of Dahiya, was typical. Hezbollah banners were visible on the street outside, but on the inside young people sat at aluminum tables sipping cappuccinos, eating doughnuts and listening to their iPods. “Hezbollah tries to keep the youth living in a religious atmosphere, but they can’t force them,” he said, gazing uneasily at the street outside. Mr. Sayyed mentioned Rami Olaik, a former Hezbollah firebrand who left the party and this year published a book about his indoctrination and gradual disenchantment. The book recounts Mr. Olaik’s struggle to reconcile his sexual yearnings with the party’s discipline, and his disgust at the way party members manipulated religious doctrine to justify their encounters with prostitutes. Some unmarried Hezbollah members engage in “temporary marriage” to have sexual relationships, an arrangement allowed by some Shiite religious authorities. Hezbollah officials say they cannot coerce young people, because it would only create rebels like Mr. Olaik. Instead, they leave them largely free in Lebanon’s pluralistic maze, trusting in the power of their religious training. But there is a limit to Hezbollah’s flexibility. All young members and supporters are encouraged to develop a hiss amni, or security sense, and are warned to beware of curious outsiders, who may be spies. After Mr. Sayyed had been talking to a foreign journalist in the coffee shop for more than an hour, a hard-looking young man at a neighboring table began staring at him. Suddenly looking nervous, Mr. Sayyed agreed to continue the conversation on the cafe’s second floor. But he seemed agitated, and later he repeatedly postponed another meeting planned for the next week. Finally, he sent an apologetic e-mail message explaining that he would not be able to meet again. “As you know, we live in a war with Israel and America,” he wrote in stumbling English, “and they want to war us (destroy) in all the way.”

Hezbollah
Lebanon
Mahdi Scouts
Children and Youth
Camps and Camping


Israel Reminds Foes That It Has Teeth

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Israel ’s military operation in Gaza is aimed primarily at forcing Hamas to end its rocket barrages and military buildup. But it has another goal as well: to expunge the ghost of its flawed 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and re-establish Israeli deterrence. On the second day of the offensive, which has already killed hundreds and is devastating Hamas’s resources, Israeli commanders on Sunday were lining up tanks and troops at the border. But they were also insisting that they did not intend to reoccupy the coastal strip of 1.5 million Palestinians or to overthrow the Hamas government there. This is because whatever might replace Hamas — anarchy, for example — could in fact be worse for Israel’s security. So the goal, as stated by a senior military official, is “to stop the firing against our civilians in the south and shape a different and new security situation there.” This means another peace treaty with Hamas, but one that has more specific terms than the one that ended 10 days ago. Such a concrete goal, however, should not obscure the fact that Israel has a larger concern — it worries that its enemies are less afraid of it than they once were, or should be. Israeli leaders are calculating that a display of power in Gaza could fix that. “In the cabinet room today there was an energy, a feeling that after so long of showing restraint we had finally acted,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert , speaking of the weekly government meeting that he attended. Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that that energy reflected the deep feeling among average Israelis that the country had to regain its deterrent capacity. “There has been a nagging sense of uncertainty in the last couple years of whether anyone is really afraid of Israel anymore,” he said. “The concern is that in the past — perhaps a mythical past — people didn’t mess with Israel because they were afraid of the consequences. Now the region is filled with provocative rhetoric about Israel the paper tiger. This operation is an attempt to re-establish the perception that if you provoke or attack you are going to pay a disproportionate price.” Numerous commentators on Sunday, both in Israel and in the Arab world, noted that the shadow of the 2006 Lebanon war was hanging over the attack on Gaza. Then, Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Islamist group, was lobbing deadly rockets into Israel with apparent impunity and had captured two Israeli soldiers in a crossborder raid. Israel invaded southern Lebanon and for 34 days carried out air, sea and land assaults before a truce was negotiated. But Hezbollah, by successfully shooting thousands of rockets into Israel while under attack and sounding defiant to the end, won a great deal of credit among Arabs across the region and used its prestige to grab a decisive role in the Lebanese government. The risk to Israel in Gaza seems of a parallel nature — that if the operation fails or leaves Hamas in the position of scrappy survivor or even somehow perceived victor, it could then dominate Palestinian politics over the more conciliatory and pro-Western Fatah movement for years to come. Since Hamas, like Hezbollah, is committed to Israel’s destruction, that could pose a formidable strategic challenge. And despite unwavering expressions of support for Israel from President-elect Barack Obama during his campaign, Israel is also gambling that its aggressive military posture will not alienate the new administration. There are internal complications as well. At Sunday’s government meeting, Mr. Olmert portrayed the Lebanon war, which he led, not as a failure but as something of a model for the current operation, since the northern border has been completely quiet ever since. But most Israelis disagree. Israel began that war vowing to decimate Hezbollah without fully realizing the extent of its military infrastructure, underground bunkers and rocket arsenals. And while many in Lebanon and overseas considered Israel’s military activities to be excessive, in Israel the opposite conclusion was reached — that it had been too restrained, too careful about distinguishing between Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon. “We were not decisive enough, and that will not happen again,” a senior military officer said in reference to that war, speaking on condition of anonymity, some weeks ago. He added, “I have flown over Gaza thousands of times and we know how to hit something within two meters.” The current operation started only after preparation and intelligence work, military commanders said, leading to a true surprise attack on Saturday and the instant deaths of scores of Hamas men. The Israeli military had mapped out Hamas bases, training camps and missile storehouses and systematically hit them simultaneously in an Israeli version of “shock and awe,” the sudden delivery of overwhelming force. It was Ehud Barak , the defense minister, who directed the preparations, and politically it is Mr. Barak who stands to gain or lose most. As chairman of the Labor Party, he is running for prime minister in the February elections and polls show him to be a distant third to the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu , and the Kadima leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni . But if Hamas is driven to a kind of cease-fire and towns in Israel’s south no longer live in fear of constant rocket fire, he will certainly be seen as the kind of leader this country needs. If, on the other hand, the operation takes a disastrous turn or leads to a regional conflagration, his political future seems bleak and he will have given Hamas the kind of prestige it has long sought. Ron Ben-Yishai, a veteran military correspondent who writes for Yediot Aharonot, said that Mr. Barak had phoned him shortly after the 2006 Lebanon war and said it had been an enormous error. Israel should have waited and prepared before reacting to Hezbollah, choosing its moment and circumstances, he said. And that, Mr. Ben-Yishai said, is what Mr. Barak did, not only behind the scenes but through a subtle public disinformation campaign. On Friday night, after having decided to launch the operation, he appeared on a satirical television program. An attack seemed at least several days away and Hamas, which had been holding its breath, relaxed. The next day, the Jewish Sabbath and the first day of the Arab workweek, Israel struck. There is palpable satisfaction at the moment in the Israeli government and the military because the operation so far is seen as a success. Few have focused on the fact that at this stage in the 2006 Lebanon war, there was the same satisfaction — before things turned disastrous.

Israel
Hamas
Hezbollah
Palestinians
Gaza Strip


Some Like It Hot

Abstract: Most of us try to avoid the heat, but a surprising number of adventurers go the extra mile to seek it out. Take Margaret Morgan and her husband, Peter Clist, both British consultants in their 50s. Or the 43-year-old Moroccan native Aziz el-Akad. And of course, Gudrun Dautel and her husband, Hans Martin, Germans in their 60s. All were among the more than 800 participants in the Marathon des Sables last month, a 250-kilometer race, or 155 miles, spread over six days in the Sahara in southern Morocco. It is considered one of the toughest foot events on Earth. Participants consume 120,000 liters of water and 6,000 painkillers, according to runningthesahara.com . Four camels are on hand for emergencies (and perhaps for a bit of atmosphere.) The distance each day is about a standard 42.2-kilometer marathon. But what makes the race particularly challenging is the temperature, which often reaches 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Sérafin Da Silva, a street sweeper from Geneva, celebrated his 40th birthday by entering the Marathon des Sables. “It’s a kind of masochistic present,” he said. Heat is worth thinking about for anyone who spends time outdoors, no matter your level of masochism — whether you are walking the dog in the afternoon, spending a Saturday cycling with friends or training for a marathon. Any exertion is going to be made tougher when the mercury rises. The science is simple: The body sends more blood to the skin for the purposes of sweating and the general release of heat. This means that less blood is available elsewhere in the body to do things like deliver oxygen to muscles. High humidity makes it even harder to lose heat via the sweat that is meant to cool — though that wasn’t an issue for the racers in the Sahara. Sports-medicine professionals take heat seriously. Last month, less than 48 hours before the start of the Boston Marathon , the event’s medical directors, Pierre d’Hemecourt and Sophia Dyer, issued an unusual statement recommending that “if you are not highly fit or if you have any underlying medical conditions (for example-cardiac disease, pulmonary disease or any of a number of medical problems), you should NOT run this race. Inexperienced marathoners should not run.” It was a dramatic step for the organizers of one of the world’s most prestigious and popular races, but the 116th edition of the marathon was unseasonably steamy, reaching 89 degrees Fahrenheit by 12:30 p.m., about 32 degrees Celsius. The conditions spelled the demise of many elite athletes, including the defending champion, Geoffrey Mutai, who in 2011 finished in a record 2 hours 3 minutes 21 seconds. The winner this year, Wesley Korir of Kenya, completed in 2:12:40, glacially slower by marathon standards. He said after the race: “I needed a lot of water to survive. I was more concerned with my hydration than my position. I guess my biology degree kicked in there.” Many participants weren’t as lucky. Runners occupied two rows of wheelchairs outside a medical tent at the finish line. Medical personnel treated more than 800 people. The marathon organizers gave entrants the opportunity to defer to next year’s event, but few did. That is understandable for someone who has been training for months for a particular event. The 2007 Chicago Marathon was so hot a runner died on the course and the event was officially canceled before most runners crossed the finish line, though that didn’t stop many. I declined to withdraw from the 2007 Paris Marathon, which was also unseasonably warm and as a result the most miserable I had ever run. Never had I seen so many marathoners (including me) walking. The Boston Marathon doctors issued several pieces of advice for coping with the heat. They may seem obvious, but competitive people obsessed with split times and the latest Garmin GPS devices sometimes need a gentle reminder of the most basic. For one, take it slowly. They urged athletes to incorporate frequent pauses, walk and not try to break any records. “Speed can kill,” they said. Second, hydration. The doctors warned that thirst is an indication of underhydration, but they also warned that “overhydration can also be a problem.” Much has been written about just how much hydration is good: Long-distance athletes once were told to drink a lot in advance and to keep consuming heavily during exercise. But some marathoners died as a result of drinking too much, a dangerous state called hyponatremia. Excessive hydration can dilute sodium levels in blood. Osmosis then draws water from the blood into other body cells to equalize the sodium, causing those cells to swell. Death can result if that swelling takes place in the brain. The takeaway for many experts, though the debate is still alive, is: Listen to your body. Thirst is a good indication of the need to drink. Another piece of advice that is often overlooked by anyone breaking a sweat in a new locale is the importance of acclimatization. Tobias Mews was the fastest Briton in the 2011 edition of the Marathon des Sables. He prepared in part by doing seven sessions of Bikram yoga, which is conducted in humid 40-degree heat. To prepare for his stab at the same marathon several years ago, Bill Henderson ran nine times on a treadmill for 45 to 75 minutes. The first three sessions were at 35 degrees Celsius; the next five at 45 degrees; and the ninth at 35 degrees (95 degrees Fahrenheit, 113 degrees and 95 degrees). The training allowed him to decrease his heart rate by 9 percent over the period when running at the same speed and temperature. It is the watery plasma that helps in the cooling process, not red blood cells, but the two travel together. As you adapt to heat, you basically create more blood plasma over time. More plasma translated into cooler times for both Mr. Mews and Mr. Henderson. As I write this, I am relieved that excessive heat is a nonissue. I am hiking and biking through the snow-capped Himalayan mountains of Bhutan, the small kingdom nestled between China and India. It’s cool.

Boston Marathon
Athletics and Sports
Marathon Running


Study Finds Blacks Blocked From Southern Juries

Abstract: In late April in a courthouse in Madison County, Ala., a prosecutor was asked to explain why he had struck 11 of 14 black potential jurors in a capital murder case. The district attorney, Robert Broussard, said one had seemed “arrogant” and “pretty vocal.” In another woman, he said he “detected hostility.” Mr. Broussard also questioned the “sophistication” of a former Army sergeant, a forklift operator with three years of college, a cafeteria manager, an assembly-line worker and a retired Department of Defense program analyst. The analyst, he said, “did not appear to be sophisticated to us in her questionnaire, in that she spelled Wal-Mart, as one of her previous employers, as Wal-marts.” Arguments like these were used for years to keep blacks off juries in the segregationist South, systematically denying justice to black defendants and victims. But today, the practice of excluding blacks and other minorities from Southern juries remains widespread and, according to defense lawyers and a new study by the Equal Justice Initiative , a nonprofit human rights and legal services organization in Montgomery, Ala., largely unchecked. In the Madison County case, the defendant, Jason M. Sharp, a white man, was sentenced to death after a trial by a jury of 11 whites and one black. The April hearing was the result of a challenge by defense lawyers who argued that jury selection was tainted by racial discrimination — a claim that is difficult to prove because prosecutors can claim any race-neutral reason, no matter how implausible, for dismissing a juror. While jury makeup varies widely by jurisdiction, the organization, which studied eight Southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee — found areas in all of them where significant problems persist. In Alabama, courts have found racially discriminatory jury selection in 25 death penalty cases since 1987, and there are counties where more than 75 percent of black jury pool members have been struck in death penalty cases. An analysis of Jefferson Parish, La., by the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center found that from 1999 to 2007, blacks were struck from juries at more than three times the rate of whites. In North Carolina, at least 26 current death row defendants were sentenced by all-white juries. In South Carolina, a prosecutor said he struck a black potential juror because he “shucked and jived” when he walked. Studies have shown that racially diverse juries deliberate longer, consider a wider variety of perspectives and make fewer factual errors than all-white juries, and that predominantly black juries are less likely to impose the death penalty. Excluding jurors based on race has been illegal since 1875, but after Reconstruction, all-white juries remained the norm in the South. “It really made lynching and the Ku Klux Klan possible,” said Christopher Waldrep, a historian at San Francisco State University and the author of a forthcoming book about a lawyer who was able, in a rare case, to prove jury discrimination in Mississippi in 1906. “If you’d had a lot of black grand jurors investigating crimes, it would have made lynching impossible.” Back then, judges and prosecutors often argued that blacks lacked the intelligence or education to serve. That such claims persist is evidence, said Bryan A. Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, that jury selection remains largely unscrutinized. “There’s just this tolerance, there’s indifference to excluding people on the basis of race, and prosecutors are doing it with impunity,” Mr. Stevenson said. “Unless you’re in the courtroom, unless you’re a lawyer working on these issues, you’re not going to know whether your local prosecutor consistently bars people of color.” In jury selection, potential jurors are first dismissed for cause — reasons like scheduling conflicts or opposition to the death penalty. Then, both sides can ask questions and take turns dismissing jurors using what are called peremptory strikes (the number of strikes varies by state, but it is often enough for one side to eliminate all qualified minorities). In a 1986 case, Batson v. Kentucky , the Supreme Court ruled that if a pattern of discrimination emerged during peremptory strikes, lawyers must provide nonracial reasons for their strikes. The reason does not have to be “persuasive, or even plausible,” the Supreme Court ruled in a later case in which a prosecutor said he dismissed one black juror because he had long hair, and another because he had a goatee, saying, “I don’t like the way they looked.” It is up to the judge to decide if there was deliberate discrimination. That is a high bar, defense lawyers say — so high that in Tennessee and North Carolina, there has never been a successful reversal based on Batson. “Anybody with any sense at all can think up any race-neutral reason and get away with it,” said Stephen B. Bright, a capital defense lawyer in Atlanta. Prosecutors have claimed to strike jurors because they live in high-crime neighborhoods, are unemployed or are single parents. In one Louisiana case, a judge allowed a black juror to be dismissed because the prosecutor said he “looked like a drug dealer.” Often, a defense lawyer’s challenge is based on showing that white jurors who answered questions the same way or had the same characteristics were not struck. For example, in the Sharp case, Mr. Broussard said that because one juror was studying to be a minister, she “was not the kind of juror we were looking for.” But a white man who was a minister was allowed to serve. Mr. Broussard did not respond to requests for comment, but Stephen Wimberly, the first assistant district attorney in Jefferson Parish, said that of more than 2,000 jury trials since 1997, only two had been reversed because of discrimination. “The legal standard is not representation of any race or gender, but the fairness and impartiality of each respective juror,” Mr. Wimberly said. In one Mississippi case, a black man, Curtis Flowers, was sentenced to death in 2004 for killing four furniture store employees. The jury was made up of 11 whites and one black after prosecutors used all 15 of their peremptory strikes on black jurors. Montgomery County, where the crime occurred, is 45 percent black. The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the case, noting that “racially motivated jury selection is still prevalent 20 years after Batson.” At a retrial, in which prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, the jury of seven whites and five blacks was split along racial lines, resulting in a hung jury. At the second retrial, prosecutors sought the death penalty, which eliminated more blacks from the pool of qualified jurors. The jury, nine whites and three blacks, hung again when one black member declined to convict, said Andre De Gruy, the director of the state’s Office of Capital Defense Counsel. The Equal Justice Initiative study argues that jury diversity “is especially critical because the other decision-making roles in the criminal justice system are held mostly by people who are white.” In the eight Southern states the study examined, more than 93 percent of the district attorneys are white. In Arkansas and Tennessee, all of them are white.


Laszlo Jakab Orsos, Cultural Curator, and His Sunday Routine

Abstract: You know that tender melancholy that seeps unbidden into the last hours of the weekend? Yes, you do. Laszlo Jakab Orsos, director of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature , was trying to put his finger on it the other day. “There is this unspoken sense that behind the walls everyone is preparing for the ordeal of the next week,” he said, from his apartment in Brooklyn Heights. “You feel that anxiety somehow. Best-case scenario is when you’re home with a nice red wine, listening to music, and then a friend calls and you talk about life.” The festival comes to New York May 4 through 10, and Mr. Orsos, who is either 50 or 51 (“that’s a larger philosophical question,” he said), will be responsible for herding more than 100 writers and artists from around the world. After which a little swoony melancholy and red wine might not seem so bad. EARLY START Being a good Cancer, or being just myself, I’m a historically early riser. I wake up early, no matter what, even if I came home late from a party. I wake up around 7. If I wake up at 8, it feels like early afternoon to me. Image Looking for coffee around the neighborhood. Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times FOLLOWING THE SUN I consider myself an organic creature. I’m like a plant. If it’s sunny outside, I can’t stay inside. One of my most beloved routines if the weather is good is to wake up, grab my fantastic old bike and just bike somewhere nearby and grab coffee before the craze starts. WATER WORKS I used to be a professional swimmer. But it was a long time ago. A couple years ago I had this crazy idea to go back to the pool. It was my dream to go back to my teenage regimen, three and a half or four hours a day. Of course it couldn’t happen. But I was really curious how far I can go. I have to sadly report that this is 35, 45 minutes at the most a day. Image Enjoying the sun in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times AVOIDING THE BRUNCH SCENE I love meeting my friends if they are around. But not proper brunch. I hate standing in lines at popular places, but I can actually do a good lunch here at home. That’s one of the options. I just hate to spend time waiting and getting into noisy popular brunchy places. USEFUL THOUGHTS, USELESS STUFF Then trying to wrap your mind around the upcoming week — that starts quite early on Sunday. What’s going to happen? What do I want to achieve? But while I’m doing that I can do other stuff, too. I love flea markets. That’s my other obsession. So I go to the Flea on Saturday in Fort Greene or Sunday in Williamsburg. Like everything else in the city, it has morphed into an entertainment extravaganza more than a good old authentic flea. But I really love the vendors and just hanging out and eventually buying. I’m a big spender, so I love buying stuff. I have more useless stuff. Image Mr. Orsos hanging out on Houston Street in Manhattan. Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times DRIFTING I try to teach all my loved ones to be able to do nothing. In a competitive city like New York, it’s one of the most important skills to develop — to be able to do nothing and don’t feel guilty. So one of my happiest times is to bike to Red Hook behind Ikea to this beautiful park and just sit there and of course grab a book. But just reading a page, eating an apple, just hang out. Just drift. That’s really important. And the more you let yourself sink into nothingness, into the void, the more you can bring back. HUNGARIAN HOST A big, important chunk of my life is back home in Hungary, and Sunday afternoons find me on Skype very often, talking to my friends and family. All these relationships are very alive. From spring on, friends are coming from Europe, so I’m a host. It’s already started. As soon as the weather turns better around late March or April, you start getting emails: “Hey, we’re in town, can we meet?” I kind of like it. OUT FOR THE EVENING I love to go to Harlem to meet one of my best friends in the city. We either grab a nice late afternoon drink at the Red Rooster and some food, or I just hang out at her place and chat. Or I stay home and meet some people later for supper. Or go to movies — I don’t have a TV, and I don’t like to see movies on the computer. LOVE AND OTHER SORROWS It all finishes in bed, and you just think about love and other sorrows. That’s the best way to fall asleep. My usual bedtime is around 1 a.m. Music is always on. It’s either the Marianne Faithfull-Laurie Anderson type of music or classical music.

Laszlo Jakab Orsos
Brooklyn Heights
Writer
PEN American Center, Pen America


Radio Show Offers Advice and More to Poorest Mexican Immigrants

Abstract: FRESNO, Calif. — The voice trembled with anguish. “Please,” Esmeralda Santiago pleaded, calling into a radio show here aimed at the poorest of Mexico’s emigrants, indigenous people from the southern state of Oaxaca. “This is for Sylvia Santiago. Please, if you can hear us, call. Our mother is worried because we have not talked with you in a while.” Filemón López, the host of the show, listened and nodded. He had heard such heartache before. The woman spoke first in Spanish and then repeated her plea — breaking down in sobs — in Triqui, one of Oaxaca’s indigenous languages. “When there is no communication,” Mr. López, himself a legal immigrant who once worked the fields, said in a break, “it causes such sadness.” On this recent Sunday, there were certainly happier moments on “La Hora Mixteca” (The Mixtec Hour), Mr. López’s show, which is aimed primarily at Mixtec (pronounced MEESE-teck) Indians but draws listeners from other groups in the United States and, via satellite link, in Oaxaca, too. Soledad Martinez of Fresno wished her mother, sister, brother, cousin — the list went on — a happy day down in Oaxaca. José Ramos of Clovis, Calif., called to invite people to a ballgame in that small farming town. Cesar Cipriano requested a particular corrido, a kind of Mexican ballad. They all turned to Mr. López, who, through the show, serves as an ambassador of sorts, in good times and bad, to a community that keeps its distance from the mainstream. The Mixtecs — there are an estimated 150,000 of them in California — occupy the lowest rungs on the Latino immigrant pecking order, mocked for their rural ways, their heavily accented Spanish or inability to speak it, and their low level of education. They snare the most back-breaking jobs here in the agriculture-rich Central Valley — picking fruit and vegetables — and often have difficulty moving up. They face exploitation and discrimination in housing and employment, and are wary of strangers, a legacy, scholars say, of the relative isolation of their villages in Mexico and history of abuse by outsiders there. Even in an age of cellphones and online social networks, Mr. López’s radio show has endured since its first broadcast in 1995, picking up its 12th station in the United States a few months ago, in Santa Barbara County. The show is broadcast from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Sunday on Radio Bilingüe , the only Spanish-language public radio network in the United States, and also streams on the Internet. “ ‘La Hora Mixteca’ is very important,” said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, a Mixtec who is project director at the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It is like a replica of the talk shows in Oaxaca where you have a charismatic D.J. who combines a strong personality with lectures on culture and who we are,” Mr. Rivera-Salgado added. “This is really old-fashioned radio that has the special effect of making people feel they are part of this close-knit community and speaking in their language.” With so few shows of any kind in Mexico’s indigenous languages, Mr. López makes his an eclectic mix of education and entertainment. Amid the greetings on a recent show, Mr. López played music from his 20 storage cases of CDs, the fruits of a lifetime of collecting; interviewed health care workers about the importance of good child development; paid homage to an Indian activist killed a few years ago in Mexico; and dished out practical advice — all while swinging effortlessly between Spanish and Mixteco. “Drink a lot of water — the temperature is rising fast out there,” Juan Santiago, his engineer and de facto co-host, who is a Zapotec, said on a recent morning as the mercury edged past 100 degrees. “Yes, you have to be careful, men,” Mr. López added, and then, in Mixteco, reminded his listeners about the dangers of heat stroke, a particular concern for indigenous workers who dominate field jobs. The Oaxacan Indians, mistrustful of doctors, rely heavily on home remedies and refrain from seeking treatment of serious illness or injury. That problem has led Mr. López to spearhead a project in which Oaxacan doctors give medical advice in Mixteco by videoconference to immigrants at clinics in the Central Valley. The Oaxacan government is collaborating on the project, and the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at the University of California, Davis, Health System is the lead organizer. “We consider this population to have among the least access to care in California,” said Dr. Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola , the center’s director. “People are not aware of services, where to receive services. Transportation is an issue. When services are available, they are not culturally or linguistically appropriate for them.” Mr. López knows well the immigrant experience, arriving in the United States from Oaxaca almost 30 years ago to pick oranges in Florida, cotton in Arizona and finally grapes in California. He eventually moved on to factory work and became a legal resident under the amnesty provision of the 1986 immigration bill. With other Mixtecs, he formed a grass-roots group to advocate for his compatriots, leading to volunteer work for Radio Bilingüe, then a job there and eventually the position as host of “La Hora Mixteca.” While his voice and name are familiar to many Mixtecs, Mr. López goes unrecognized around the farming hamlets near his home — until he speaks. Stopping at a shopping center one recent morning, he met Raquel Rosales, 28, who was selling CDs. She said she appreciated the touch of home his show delivers. “I speak Spanish,” Ms. Rosales said, “but I prefer to listen in Mixteco and hear the music from back home. This is the only way I can hear the news.” Mr. López handed her a card. “Call if you want to send a greeting home,” he said, as she eagerly accepted it. “That is what I can do,” he said, getting back in his truck. “I may not have work for them, but I can offer a bridge home.”

Radio
Indigenous People
Mixtecs
California
Oaxaca (Mexico)
Language and Languages
Immigration and Emigration


Discovery of Evidence Bag Adds Twist to Kane Case

Abstract: BUFFALO — A lawyer for the woman who has accused the Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane of rape announced at a news conference Wednesday that a rape-kit evidence bag was left on the doorstep of the accuser’s mother Tuesday afternoon. But police officials quickly dismissed the claim as untrue, even as it raised new questions about the investigation in the increasingly bizarre case. The rape kit was not inside the brown paper evidence bag when it was found, said the lawyer, Thomas Eoannou, but the bag contained identifying information, including his client’s name and birth date and the name of the hospital where the rape kit was collected, Erie County Medical Center. Eoannou brought the bag to a news conference he had called at his law office and said it had been authenticated, although investigators disputed that contention hours later. “All evidence related to this case that was given to Erie County Central Police Services by the Town of Hamburg Police Department is accounted for and remains in its original packaging in the possession of Erie County Central Police Services,” the Central Police Services commissioner, John Glascott, said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. “This includes the evidence in the rape kit and the packaging itself.” The back and forth was the latest twist in the case involving Kane, a three-time Stanley Cup winner and one of the best players in the N.H.L., and his unnamed accuser. She told the police that Kane had raped her in his $2.6 million lakeshore home near Buffalo in the early hours of Aug. 2, after they had met at a nightclub. She was examined at a hospital and was found to have scratches on her legs and bite marks on her shoulder, The Buffalo News reported. Kane has not been charged in the case, and he told reporters last week that he had “ done nothing wrong ” and that he expected to be exonerated. At Wednesday’s news conference, Eoannou, the woman’s lawyer, passed around photos of the package, with the identifying information redacted, and said that the accuser’s mother found it when she returned home at about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. If it is authentic, the envelope’s existence outside the chain of custody will seriously taint the investigation of Kane, a 26-year-old All-Star. “We’re hoping to find out how this happened and who had the incentive to modify and tamper with the evidence,” Eoannou said, “and finally get to the bottom of it, rather than have misinformation about semen and undergarments.” Eoannou was referring to leaked news reports that had suggested that Kane’s DNA evidence was not detected in the rape kit, which is used by medical personnel to gather physical evidence. The consequence of the leaks, Eoannou said, has been to discredit his client. Kane’s lawyer, Paul Cambria, played down Eoannou’s disclosure in comments to The Chicago Tribune , saying that the results of the rape kit had been released to both sides in the case two weeks ago and that they had not implicated Kane. “The evidence technician who works for the county tested it,” Cambria told The Tribune. “He said there was no Patrick Kane, and that’s all I needed to know.” Eoannou said that his client disputed the leaks about DNA evidence and that she intended to pursue prosecution. “This is a significant development in this case,” Eoannou said. “We need to bring in the F.B.I. or state troopers or some other law enforcement agency to try and figure out who had that bag, who put it in my clients’s mother’s doorstep, and why.” The police in Hamburg, a suburb 20 miles south of Buffalo, acknowledged in early August that Kane was the subject of an investigation involving forensic testing for an episode that the accuser said took place at his summer house on Aug. 2. Under increasing scrutiny, Kane kept a low profile, canceling appearances with the Stanley Cup in Buffalo, his hometown, where he had celebrated publicly in the past. Kane has been in trouble during the off-season before. In 2009, he and his cousin James Kane were arrested in Buffalo and accused of punching a cabdriver in a dispute over a fare. The two pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and were given conditional discharges. Kane’s carousing has courted attention, too. Months after his run-in with the Buffalo cabdriver, he and his Chicago teammates Kris Versteeg and John Madden were photographed shirtless in the back of a limousine in Vancouver with a group of women. Kane apologized for that incident, and again in 2012 for photos that showed him appearing intoxicated at Cinco de Mayo celebrations at the University of Wisconsin soon after Chicago was eliminated from the playoffs.

Chicago Blackhawks
Patrick Kane
Rape
Thomas Eoannou
Ice hockey


Representative Grimm’s Ex-Business Partner Has Mob Ties, Prosecutors Say

Abstract: In 2006, when Michael G. Grimm retired from a career as an undercover agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a businessman named Bennett Orfaly helped smooth his return to civilian life. Together, they opened a small restaurant on the Upper East Side called Healthalicious that served salads, wraps and smoothies. The business helped Mr. Grimm, a Republican, burnish his image as an entrepreneur in his victorious 2010 campaign for the Congressional seat representing Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. Now, federal prosecutors are contending that Mr. Orfaly has ties to a member of the Gambino organized crime family, Anthony (Fat Tony) Morelli, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for racketeering and extortion in an elaborate tax fraud. The prosecutors made the accusation public at a bail hearing last month for a former campaign fund-raiser for Mr. Grimm. The fund-raiser, Ofer Biton, an Israeli, is charged with immigration fraud. Mr. Biton is also at the center of an inquiry by the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn into Mr. Grimm’s campaign finances. Investigators are examining whether Mr. Grimm and Mr. Biton raised donations for Mr. Grimm’s 2010 campaign that exceeded contribution limits, were given in cash or came from foreigners without green cards. At the hearing for Mr. Biton, Anthony Capozzolo, a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn who specializes in public corruption, objected to Mr. Orfaly’s being allowed to pledge cash and assets to assure Mr. Biton’s bail. “Mr. Orfaly maintains constant contact” with Mr. Morelli in prison, Mr. Capozzolo told the court, noting that Mr. Orfaly “has visited him and engaged in telephone conversations.” The prosecutor also mentioned in court that F.B.I. agents had found a car registration that ties Mr. Orfaly to Mr. Morelli’s wife, Mary Ann. “Our position is that this is not someone who should be acceptable as a surety with regard to Mr. Biton,” Mr. Capozzolo said. Mr. Grimm’s office did not respond to questions last week about Mr. Orfaly. The New York Post on Monday quoted Mr. Grimm’s lawyer, William McGinley, as saying that Mr. Grimm had no knowledge of Mr. Orfaly’s associates. Mr. Grimm has said he no longer has an ownership stake in the restaurant. Mr. Grimm is in a re-election race with a Democratic challenger, Mark Murphy, who has sought to make an issue of Mr. Grimm’s ethics . Mr. Grimm has declared that the federal inquiry will exonerate him. At the bail hearing, Mr. Biton’s lawyer, John Meringolo, argued that simply knowing someone who committed a crime or visiting someone in prison should not disqualify a person from assisting with bail. Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis, in approving a $1.5 million bond package for Mr. Biton, allowed Mr. Orfaly to put up $30,000 in cash and his interest in two restaurants as assets that would be forfeited if Mr. Biton failed to appear for trial. Approached by a reporter at the hearing, Mr. Orfaly declined to discuss his relationship with Mr. Morelli. It could not be determined whether Mr. Grimm ever had dealings with Mr. Morelli before or after he resigned from the F.B.I. in 2006. New York City records indicate that Mr. Grimm’s ties to Mr. Orfaly begin as early as 2006, when Mr. Grimm began laying the legal framework for the restaurant that the two men would jointly operate at Second Avenue and 83rd Street. Their work together continued for at least three years. In June 2009, both men signed a city health department application to renew a license for the restaurant, documents show. A few months later, the accountant for the restaurant, Wayne Muratore, was listed in campaign finance documents as the first treasurer of Mr. Grimm’s 2010 campaign for the House. Mr. Muratore did not respond to phone calls or e-mails. Mr. Grimm has said that he sold his interest in Healthalicious before taking office in January 2011, although he has given varying accounts of how and when the deal transpired. He continues to be a defendant in legal actions brought by restaurant employees and New York State officials over the restaurant’s labor practices.

Organized Crime
Campaign Finance
New York State
Orfaly Bennett
Grimm Michael G
Biton Ofer
Gambino Crime Family
Politics and Government


Lundqvist Returns to Net, and Form, as Rangers Win

Abstract: Henrik Lundqvist had a positive return performance to help the visiting Rangers pull out a one-goal victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday night. Lundqvist made 37 saves in his first start in four games, and Mats Zuccarello had a goal and two assists in the Rangers’ 4-3 win. “Sometimes, it’s a good thing to get a lot of work,” Lundqvist said. “There’s been a lot of games where I’ve been waiting for shots and then there’s been some odd-man rushes or breakaways, and it’s been hard to really get the game going. “A game like this definitely helps you to work on your positioning and a lot of different things.” Lundqvist watched from the bench as the backup Cam Talbot started the previous three games, winning two, after Lundqvist struggled through a 1-4-2 stretch. “He played a real strong game, gave us a chance to win, especially in the third when they had a real strong push and they were tough to handle,” Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault said. Rick Nash, Chris Kreider and Benoit Pouliot also scored for the Rangers, who had three power-play goals. Tampa Bay got goals from Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat and Valtteri Filppula. ISLANDERS 5, WILD 4 Kyle Okposo scored twice in the third period, and the Islanders overcame a three-goal deficit to beat host Minnesota. John Tavares, Cal Clutterbuck and Thomas Hickey also scored for the Islanders, who won for the third time in eight games. Ryan Suter, Jonas Brodin, Nino Niederreiter and Justin Fontaine had goals for the Wild, who have lost five straight. Okposo scored the winner with 5:48 to play when he raced in from the left wall and put in a rebound after Thomas Vanek was stopped by Josh Harding. SABRES 2, CAPITALS 1 Ryan Miller made 49 saves, and host Buffalo beat Washington in a shootout. Drew Stafford netted Buffalo’s goal in regulation, and Steve Ott scored the lone shootout goal in the sixth round as the Sabres improved to 5-0-1 in their past six home games after starting 3-12-1 there. JETS 2, AVALANCHE 1 Blake Wheeler scored at 4:58 of overtime, and visiting Winnipeg beat slumping Colorado. Al Montoya stopped 32 shots, and Andrew Ladd also scored for the Jets. BLUES 3, STARS 2 Kevin Shattenkirk scored a power-play goal 4:49 into overtime, giving St. Louis a victory over host Dallas. Jaden Schwartz had a goal in his fifth straight game, and T. J. Oshie also scored for the Blues, who improved to 12-0-1 against Central Division opponents. Brian Elliott made 28 saves. CANUCKS 2, FLAMES 0 Jannik Hansen scored the winning goal, and the rookie goalie Eddie Lack made 18 saves to lead visiting Vancouver past Calgary. Vancouver took the lead in the final minute of the first period on a terrific breakaway pass from Henrik Sedin and an even better finish by the speedy Hansen. PENGUINS 5, BLUE JACKETS 3 James Neal scored three times and had two assists, and Sidney Crosby scored the go-ahead goal and set up two others to lead visiting Pittsburgh past Columbus. Chris Kunitz added his 21st goal and 2 assists, and Jeff Zatkoff made 25 saves for the Penguins. MAPLE LEAFS 5, HURRICANES 2 Phil Kessel scored twice, reaching the 20-goal mark for the sixth straight season, to help host Toronto beat Carolina. Kessel, a speedy forward, could have had more, but he failed to score on two breakaways. PANTHERS 4, CANADIENS 1 Brian Campbell, Aleksander Barkov and Dmitry Kulikov each scored to lift host Florida over Montreal. Sean Bergenheim added an empty-net goal with 17 seconds left. Tom Gilbert had two assists.

Rangers
Henrik Lundqvist
Tampa Bay Lightning
Ice hockey


Bills Put Aside Off-Field Concerns and Shut Down the Giants

Abstract: ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Quarterback Tyrod Taylor and the Buffalo Bills overcame another series of preseason distractions to beat the Giants, 21-0, on Saturday. Taylor zipped a 13-yard touchdown pass over the middle to LeSean McCoy to cap his fourth and final series. Taylor’s backup, E. J. Manuel, then secured the win by leading two touchdown drives on an afternoon that had begun with Buffalo cutting the backup running back Karlos Williams and announcing that defensive tackle Marcell Dareus, the team’s highest-paid player, was entering a rehabilitation clinic. The Bills gave up on Williams, who reported to training camp out of shape and had been suspended by the N.F.L. for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy. Dareus’s decision to seek help came four days after he was suspended for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy for a second consecutive season. For the Giants, the exhibition debut of quarterback Eli Manning and receiver Odell Beckham Jr. failed to lift up the Giants a week after a 27-10 loss to Miami. Manning completed 4 of 9 passes for 44 yards in four series, in which the Giants had 33 yards of offense and one first down. Beckham had a 33-yard catch and was targeted three times. Turnovers continued to plague the Giants. The backup quarterback Ryan Nassib lost a fumble when sacked by cornerback Sterling Moore. Against Miami, Nassib threw two interceptions and lost a fumble. Nassib missed his first seven attempts before hitting the rookie tight end Jerell Adams to open his eighth series. Nassib finished 2 of 12 for 25 yards. The Bills’ rookie running back Jonathan Williams scored on a 1-yard plunge, and Manuel completed a 19-yard touchdown pass to Greg Little in the second quarter.

Bills
Giants
Tyrod Taylor
LeSean McCoy
Football


How Are New York City Taxi Plates Assigned?

Abstract: Q. Is there any formula to the way New York City taxi plates are assigned? Can they be identified by borough? Also, what is the significance of the small letter after the license number? I have seen A to H. A. Allan Fromberg, the spokesman for the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and his colleagues provided this answer: Medallion numbers are assigned by the commission, and there is no borough formula. Some numbers, however, were designated for mini-fleet and corporate medallions, and some for individual medallions. The taxi medallion’s number is also the vehicle’s plate number. “The little letter you see to the side and below the medallion number is what we call a subscript,” Mr. Fromberg said in an email, “and it denotes how many times the medallion has changed hands. ‘A’ is the original owner, ‘B’ is the second owner, etc.” It gets trickier. The Department of Motor Vehicles, when it introduced new plate colors a few years ago, decided to push all current plates to the letter ‘H’ as the first plate, in order to distinguish new plates from old ones. “H” was the first letter no one had reached, so the D.M.V. used it as the new “A.” So if an old white plate on a taxi is, say, 1T10A, and if that plate is lost, stolen or destroyed and replaced with a new plate, the number would be 1T10H. If that medallion changes owners, the replacement would be 1T10I.


F.D.A. Panel Endorses an Eye Treatment

Abstract: A new eye medicine from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Bayer A.G. is safe and effective for treating a common cause of vision loss, a federal advisory panel said on Friday. The panel, which makes recommendations to the Food and Drug Administration, voted unanimously to recommend the treatment, Eylea, for a form of macular degeneration that affects at least 1.5 million Americans. The advisers also said the drug, which is given by injection, could be given once every two months, giving it an edge over the typical monthly dosing of its chief competitor, Lucentis, from Roche Holding. The F.D.A. usually follows the advice of its advisory panels and is expected to rule on Eylea by Aug. 20.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc
Bayer AG
Drugs (Pharmaceuticals)
Eyes and Eyesight


Former Phone Chief Says Spy Agency Sought Surveillance Help Before 9/11

Abstract: The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the former head of the company contends in newly unsealed court filings. The executive, Joseph P. Nacchio , also asserts in the filings that the agency retaliated by depriving Qwest of lucrative outsourcing contracts. The filings were made as Mr. Nacchio fought charges of insider trading. He was ultimately convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading and has been sentenced to six years in prison. He remains free while appealing the conviction. Mr. Nacchio said last year that he had refused an N.S.A. request for customers’ call records in late 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the agency initiated domestic surveillance and data mining programs to monitor Al Qaeda communications. But the documents unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Denver, first reported in The Rocky Mountain News on Thursday, claim for the first time that pressure on the company to participate in activities it saw as improper came as early as February, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks. The significance of the claim is hard to assess, because the court documents are heavily redacted and N.S.A. officials will not comment on the agency’s secret surveillance programs. Other government officials have said that the agency’s eavesdropping without warrants began only after Sept. 11, 2001, under an order from President Bush. But the court filings in Mr. Nacchio’s case illustrate what is well known inside the telecommunications industry but little appreciated by the public: that the N.S.A. has for some time worked closely with phone companies, whose networks carry the telephone and Internet traffic the agency seeks out for intercept. Some of the cooperation is related to the agency’s second major responsibility — the protection of classified government communications systems against eavesdropping or hacking by adversaries. The documents reflect constant meetings and negotiations between the agency and Qwest officials over the global communications network. The claims could influence a battle in Congress over whether companies that assist the N.S.A. should be given immunity from civil or criminal liability. Some Democrats have opposed granting such immunity unless the Bush administration agrees to reveal more about the companies’ participation in eavesdropping and data mining programs. Jeffrey Speiser, a lawyer for Mr. Nacchio, declined to comment yesterday. As part of his defense, Mr. Nacchio claimed that he had knowledge of top secret contracts with the N.S.A. and other government agencies that made the company’s financial prospects brighter than was publicly known. Prosecutors denied the claims. At the time of the claimed meeting at the N.S.A.’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters on Feb. 27, 2001, Mr. Nacchio was chairman of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, whose members included top executives of most of the major communications companies. Like nearly every chief executive in the industry, he had been granted a security clearance to work with the government on secret projects. In the court papers, Mr. Nacchio’s lawyers said he and James F. X. Payne, then Qwest’s head of government business, spoke with N.S.A. officials about the agency’s Groundbreaker project, in which the agency’s non-secret information technology would be contracted to private companies. At the same meeting, N.S.A. officials made an additional proposal, whose exact nature is not made clear in the censored documents. “The court has prohibited Mr. Nacchio from eliciting testimony regarding what also occurred at that meeting,” one of the documents states. Another passage says: “The court has also refused to allow Mr. Nacchio to demonstrate that the agency retaliated for this refusal by denying the Groundbreaker and perhaps other work to Qwest.” Another document, a transcript of an interview that the F.B.I. conducted with Mr. Payne in 2006, stated that the N.S.A. pressed its request for months afterward. “Nacchio said it was a legal issue and that they could not do something their general counsel told them not to do,” Mr. Payne told the F.B.I. “Nacchio projected that he might do it if they could find a way to do it legally.” Mr. Payne declined to comment. In support of Mr. Nacchio’s accusations, his lawyers quoted from one of several lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies, accusing them of violating their customers’ privacy. That lawsuit, filed last year against several companies, asserts that seven months before the Sept. 11 attacks, at about the time of Mr. Nacchio’s meeting at the N.S.A., another phone company, AT&T, “began development of a center for monitoring long distance calls and Internet transmissions and other digital information for the exclusive use of the N.S.A.” The lawsuit contends that the center would “give the N.S.A. direct, unlimited, unrestricted and unfettered access” to phone call information and Internet traffic on AT&T’s network.

Wiretapping and Other Eavesdropping Devices and Methods


Nasty Gal, an Online Start-Up, Is a Fast-Growing Retailer

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — If ever there were a Cinderella of tech, Sophia Amoruso might be it. In 2006, Ms. Amoruso was a 22-year-old community college dropout, living in her step-aunt’s cottage, working at an art school checking student IDs for $13 an hour. Then she started a side project, Nasty Gal, an eBay page that sold vintage women’s clothing. Last year, Nasty Gal sold nearly $100 million of clothing and accessories — profitably. For the last seven years, Ms. Amoruso has been courting a cult following of 20-something women. Nasty Gal has more than half a million followers on Facebook and more than 600,000 on Instagram . But it is not yet well known beyond that base. At fashion trade shows, the company’s name still gets strange looks. “People say: ‘Nasty Gal? What’s that?’ ” Ms. Amoruso, now 28, said in an interview at her new headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. “I tell them, ‘It’s the fastest-growing retailer in the country.’ ” Back in 2006, she toyed with the idea of going to photography school, but couldn’t stomach the debt. Instead, she quit her job and started an eBay page to sell some of the vintage designer items she found rummaging through Goodwill bins. She bought a Chanel jacket at a Salvation Army store for $8 and sold it for $1,000. She found Yves Saint Laurent clothing online on the cheap by Googling misspellings of the designer’s name, reasoning that anyone who didn’t know how to spell Yves Saint Laurent probably didn’t realize his value. She styled, photographed, captioned and shipped each product herself and sold about 25 items a week. She named the eBay page “Nasty Gal” after the 1975 album by Betty Davis — not the smoky-eyed film star Bette Davis, but the unabashedly sexy funk singer and style icon Betty, whose brief marriage to the jazz legend Miles Davis inspired the song “Back Seat Betty.” Ms. Amoruso curated her eBay page to match her own style, which on a recent rainy Friday included a floor-length trench coat, vintage rock T-shirt, no-nonsense bob and blood-red lipstick. Her look and attitude resonated with the type of young, body-confident women who would not be caught dead in Tory Burch. She created a Myspace page to market Nasty Gal and garnered 60,000 “friends” by reaching out to fans of brands like Nylon, the music and fashion magazine, who she thought might appreciate Nasty Gal’s fierce aesthetic. Every week, her new finds ignited bidding wars among shoppers from Australia to Britain. She began enlisting friends to model and photograph her products, which quickly outgrew her step-aunt’s cottage. She moved Nasty Gal’s headquarters to a 1,700-square-foot studio in Berkeley, Calif., in 2007, and eight months later moved again — this time to a 7,500-square-foot warehouse space in Emeryville. Ms. Amoruso also outgrew eBay, which she said was a terrible platform to start a business. Competitors started flagging Nasty Gal for breaking the site’s rules by, for example, linking to Ms. Amoruso’s Myspace page. Fed up, she decided it was time to start ShopNastyGal.com. (At the time, NastyGal.com belonged to a pornography site. Nasty Gal now owns the domain.) She recruited a friend from junior high school to build a Web site and taught herself to use Photoshop. She eventually abandoned Myspace for Facebook, where she tantalized fans with coming inventory, from cheap shrunken motorcycle jackets to high-end vintage Versace clothing. She challenged her Facebook fans to come up with the best titles for vintage products and gave gift cards to the winners. She used models who were approachable and “looked like nice people, not dead people,” she said, and had to fire some when customers complained that they looked too skinny or annoyed. That constant conversation with customers created a loyal following. Nasty Gal has no marketing team, but fans comment on its every Facebook, Instagram, Twitter , Tumblr and Pinterest post and regularly post pictures of themselves in their Nasty Gal finds. A quarter of Nasty Gal’s 550,000 customers visit the site daily for six minutes; the top 10 percent return more than 100 times a month. With Nasty Gal having made just shy of $100 million in revenue last year, analysts say they would expect a bigger audience. “I would expect them to have a few million visitors a month,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester analyst. On the flip side, Ms. Mulpuru said Nasty Gal’s conversion rate must be significantly higher than the industry standard of 3 percent. “It speaks to an engaged audience,” she said. “They’ve figured out the marketing tool. That’s the real story.” Ms. Amoruso knew Nasty Gal couldn’t grow by selling one-off vintage items forever; customers were asking why she didn’t have more sizes. So in 2008, she posted an ad on Craigslist for a buying assistant and hired Christina Ferrucci, the first person who answered. Image Nasty Gal is “the fastest-growing retailer in the country,” its founder, Sophia Amoruso, says. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times The two experimented with buying vintage-inspired clothes from vendors in Los Angeles’s fashion district. Soon, the items were selling so quickly that Ms. Amoruso and Ms. Ferrucci were making the six-hour drive to Los Angeles every other week. They ventured to the Project trade show in Las Vegas, where fashion brands and buyers convene every August, but higher-end brands weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of having their products sold by a brand called Nasty Gal. Many dismissed it as an online sex shop. The fact that the NastyGal.com domain was at that time still owned by a pornography site didn’t help matters. Sam Edelman, the shoe brand, initially gave Ms. Amoruso the cold shoulder. She charged back an hour later, showed them Nasty Gal’s Web site on her iPhone and promised to deliver the brand some street cred. Sam Edelman acquiesced. That opened the door for a deal with Jeffrey Campbell, another shoemaker, which has become one of the most recognizable brands on the site. Nasty Gal fans will tell you Sophia Amoruso “made” Jeffrey Campbell, not the other way around. A Jeffrey Campbell spokeswoman, Sharon Blackburn, said that the brand was well established before partnering with Ms. Amoruso, but that Nasty Gal created a new channel for its more provocative styles, like the “Lita,” a towering lace-up platform boot with a five-inch heel. “Not a lot of people got it, but Sophia loved it,” Ms. Blackburn said. “She bought it in every color and fabric, wore it herself and opened the door for other styles in our collection.” By 2010, Nasty Gal started generating buzz among unlikely fans in Silicon Valley. Venture capital firms were pouring millions into e-commerce sites like ShoeDazzle.com, Kim Kardashian’s shoe subscription site, and BeachMint. But the company had been making money from Day 1. “They would say, ‘We want to invest in a woman-owned business — it’s part of our investment thesis,’ ” Ms. Amoruso recalled of her discussions with several venture capitalists. Her retort: She didn’t want to be part of their “investment thesis” and didn’t need their money. “I don’t think they got it,” she said. “It’s this bunch of guys sitting around saying, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s start a Web site and put Kim Kardashian’s face on it.’ ” Ms. Amoruso moved Nasty Gal to Los Angeles in 2011, to be closer to her merchants and models. She shunned office space in Santa Monica, where ShoeDazzle and BeachMint are based, for less glamorous space downtown, where 20-something Nasty Gal employees in mesh crop tops, leggings and platform shoes stand out from the paralegals. (Shortly after the move, one employee was berated by a lawyer in the building who saw “Nasty Gal Creative Studio” and assumed it was a pornography studio.) Last year, Ms. Amoruso, who had held on to 100 percent of her business, decided she was ready to hear what Sand Hill Road had to offer. She met with several venture capitalists but ultimately clicked with Danny Rimer, a partner at Index Ventures, who had invested in e-commerce sites like Net-a-Porter, Etsy and Asos. In March, Ms. Amoruso agreed to give Index a slice of equity for $9 million. But by August, things were moving so quickly — Nasty Gal was on track to quadruple its 2011 sales to $128 million — that she raised an additional $40 million from Index and used some of it to build a 500,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Shepherdsville, Ky. Nasty Gal now attracts more than six million visits a month, while e-commerce start-ups like ShoeDazzle and BeachMint are losing customers and executives. Bigger competitors are taking notes. Urban Outfitters recently contacted Ms. Amoruso about a potential acquisition, according to people briefed on the discussions. Asked about that, Ms. Amoruso said only, “We’re talking.” Naysayers in Silicon Valley think she should consider the acquisition. Some venture capitalists who would not speak on the record — perhaps because they did not have the chance to invest — say Nasty Gal is playing on a short-term fashion trend that will be difficult to sustain on the public market. “They’re the hot new thing, but I do think it’s risky,” said Ms. Mulpuru, the Forrester analyst. “With this type of hype, either they are looking for a big fat acquisition or a blockbuster I.P.O.” Ms. Amoruso is hardly ignorant of the possibility that it could all fall apart. Nasty Gal’s motto is, “Nasty Gals do it better.” But her personal motto is, “Only the paranoid survive.” At 18, Ms. Amoruso tattooed the Virgin Records logo on her arm. Last year, she enjoyed a small Cinderella moment when she got to show it to Richard Branson. She recently bought a Porsche — with cash — and is remodeling her dream home. But, she said, the Cinderella story ends here. “It’s been very charmed, but I’m not willing to rest on my laurels,” she said. “It’s only going to get harder to keep building from here.”

Nasty Gal
Sophia Amoruso
Fashion
E Commerce


Taking New Tack in Hetch Hetchy Battle

Abstract: Generations of environmentalists have looked upon John Muir’s unsuccessful battle to save Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite as the beginning of their modern movement. And just as many have wondered if the majestic, granite-walled valley might some day be restored to its natural state. The great irony is that the valley’s demise was the work of the City of San Francisco, which now is home to many environmentalists who would lay their bodies down in protest if anyone tried to build such a thing today. But San Francisco is hooked: how do you tear down a dam and remove a reservoir that helps deliver 85 percent of a city’s water? Mike Marshall thinks he knows how. As director of Restore Hetch Hetchy , a nonprofit group spun off from the Sierra Club a decade ago, Mr. Marshall is laying the groundwork for a ballot measure that would ask San Franciscans to endorse a long-term plan to wean the city off its high Sierra water supply — or at least the part stored in the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Unlike earlier efforts to restore the valley, this one might have more potential, if only because it is not a direct attack on the city’s water supply. If San Francisco can conserve and recycle enough water, capture enough rainfall and recharge its once-generous groundwater basin, the argument goes, by 2020 or 2025 the Hetch Hetchy reservoir might no longer be needed. O’Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River could then be torn down and the valley returned to the federal government for restoration to its old contours, which resembled those of Yosemite Valley. “Our goal is to focus not just on restoring Hetch Hetchy, but on creating more sustainable water management practices for the city of San Francisco,” Mr. Marshall said in an interview last week. “We live in the 21st century, not the 19th century, when this system was designed.” City officials are used to defending the reservoir from such broadsides. “Every few years, a handful of people get together and threaten to put something on the ballot to tear down the reservoir,” said Tyrone Jue, a spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which operates the water system. The commission has argued in the past that the city’s pipes would go dry without Hetch Hetchy water. And today, with Californians fighting over their water supply and preparing to vote on a $12 billion bond measure that could be used to build more dams, it seems like a strange time to be talking about tearing one down. But mindful of the times and the city’s evolving politics, the commission is also using a new argument: the Hetch Hetchy reservoir is actually good for the environment. Because the water system flows off gravity, Mr. Jue said, it requires little energy. The dam actually produces electricity, filling 20 percent of the city’s needs without burning carbon or producing greenhouse gases. And since the water sits in that granite bowl that John Muir so admired, it requires no filtration, and no chemicals. Finally, the lake behind the dam is surrounded by well-maintained trails that make the area a haven for hikers. “The current system,” Mr. Jue said, “is probably one of the greenest systems around.” Mr. Marshall naturally disagrees. He notes that the power produced by the dam is not considered renewable or clean by the state because it comes from a system that “requires the ongoing destruction of a huge ecosystem.” Besides, he said, the same amount of power could be generated on the river using flow-through dams that would be better for the environment. And while it is true that the water requires no filtration, Mr. Marshall said that leaves it with micro-organisms that are potentially dangerous to people with compromised immune systems, including the city’s many residents infected with H.I.V. The next step in the Restore Hetch Hetchy campaign is to try to persuade a majority of the Board of Supervisors to place a measure on the ballot in November or in time for next year’s mayoral election. “We are pushing pretty fast,” Mr. Marshall said, “but our window is closing for this year. We don’t want to put something on the ballot that is not sound policy and is not understandable to voters. “This is a simple idea with a complicated explanation.”

Yosemite National Park
San Francisco (Calif)
Greenhouse Gas Emissions


Resigning as Envoy to Syria, Annan Casts Wide Blame

Abstract: Frustrated by the seemingly intractable Syrian conflict, Kofi Annan announced his resignation on Thursday as the special peace envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League , throwing new doubts on whether a diplomatic solution is possible. He also said President Bashar al-Assad of Syria “must leave office.” In an announcement tinged with bitterness and regret, Mr. Annan tied his decision to what he described as Syrian government intransigence, increasing militance by Syrian rebels and the failure of a divided Security Council to rally forcefully behind his efforts. “I accepted this task, which some called ‘Mission: Impossible,’ for I believed it was a sacred duty to do whatever was in my power to help the Syrian people find a peaceful solution to this bloody conflict,” Mr. Annan said at a news conference at the Geneva offices of the United Nations. But, he said, “without serious, purposeful and united international pressure, including from the powers of the region, it is impossible for me, or anyone, to compel the Syrian government in the first place, and also the opposition, to take the steps necessary to begin a political process.” Mr. Annan also was critical of what he called “finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council.” The announcement was coupled with an opinion article Mr. Annan wrote that was posted Thursday on the Web site of The Financial Times and headlined “My Departing Advice on How to Save Syria.” In the article, he castigated all parties in the conflict but appeared to reserve particular criticism for the Syrian government, which he described as “40 years of dictatorship.” “It is clear that President Bashar al-Assad must leave office,” Mr. Annan wrote. “The greater focus, however, must be on measures and structures to secure a peaceful long-term transition to avoid a chaotic collapse.” Diplomats and experts on Syrian politics said they were not surprised at Mr. Annan’s resignation. Some wondered why it had taken him this long, given the rising levels of violence and refusal of Mr. Assad and his antagonists to negotiate, making Mr. Annan’s peace plan seem increasingly irrelevant. “Bottom line on Kofi’s mission. D.O.A. from the get-go,” Aaron David Miller, a Middle East scholar at the Wilson Center, a research group in Washington , said in an e-mail. “Too much blood spilled for a negotiated settlement between the Assads and the rebels, and not enough for foreign intervention to pressure the Assads to leave.” Ban Ki-moon , the United Nations secretary general, said in an announcement that the search was on for a successor to Mr. Annan, who will serve until the end of August, when his mandate expires. It was unclear what the resignation might mean for the United Nations observer mission in Syria, which was sent there by the Security Council as part of Mr. Annan’s peace plan and suspended most work in mid-June because of the violence. The observer mission’s mandate expires on Aug. 19. Gérard Araud, France ’s ambassador to the United Nations and the president of the Security Council, said he did not believe it would renew the mandate. But later in the day he softened his remarks, saying he could not rule out an extension. Mr. Annan, one of the world’s most experienced diplomats, would not speculate on who might replace him but sought to counter suggestions that with his departure, the peace effort was over. “Let me say that the world is full of crazy people like me, so don’t be surprised if someone else decides to take it on,” Mr. Annan told reporters in Geneva. It was no secret that Mr. Annan had grown increasingly flustered over his failure to achieve even a basic cease-fire in the conflict, which began 17 months ago as a peaceful uprising against Mr. Assad and has now escalated into civil war. A Nobel Peace Prize winner and former United Nations secretary general, Mr. Annan, 74, agreed in February to act as a special representative for both the United Nations and the Arab League to negotiate a peace plan. He received unanimous backing from the Security Council. He negotiated a six-point proposal that called for the Syrian government to withdraw its heavy weapons and troops from populated areas and for anti-Assad fighters to put down their guns. Other provisions included a process for a political transition that, in theory at least, would have replaced Mr. Assad, a member of Syria’s Alawite minority whose family has dominated politics for four decades. Despite a pledge from Mr. Assad on March 27 to abide by the peace plan, the Syrian government never put it in place. Mr. Assad’s opponents, concluding that he had no intention of honoring his commitments, did not lay down their weapons, either. Although the Security Council supported Mr. Annan’s efforts, two permanent members, Russia and China , blocked any additional coercive measures that they feared could lead to a change of government imposed by outside powers, foreign military intervention, or both. Their actions led to bitter recriminations on the council, pitting Russia and China against the United States , Britain and France, the three other permanent members, which had been pressing for more forceful action. Mr. Ban noted in his statement that the Security Council’s own divisions “have themselves become an obstacle to diplomacy, making the work of any mediator vastly more difficult.” Word of Mr. Annan’s resignation came as the United Nations General Assembly was preparing to vote on a resolution drafted by Saudi Arabia that demands compliance by the Syrian government with his plan. But the General Assembly resolution, scheduled for a vote on Friday, does not have the enforcement power of a Security Council measure, and has been viewed as a symbolic effort to embarrass Syria and its backers. Major powers expressed regret over Mr. Annan’s resignation and acknowledged the difficulties of his assignment, but in doing so they appeared to commit the kind of blame-laying he cited as one reason for quitting. Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Annan’s resignation “highlights the failure in the United Nations Security Council of Russia and China to support meaningful resolutions against Assad that would hold Assad accountable for his failure to abide by the Annan plan.” Russian news agencies quoted President Vladimir V. Putin as calling Mr. Annan a “very respectable person, a brilliant diplomat and a very decent man, so it’s really a shame.” At the same time, Russia’s United Nations ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, said Russia opposed the General Assembly resolution on Syria, calling it unfairly biased against the Syrian government. There was no immediate reaction to Mr. Annan’s departure from Mr. Assad or the array of Syrian opposition groups, some of which have long expressed doubts about Mr. Annan’s efforts. But Louay Hussein, a Syrian writer and opposition activist, said in an e-mail: “The responsibility of the failure of Mr. Annan in his mission is the responsibility of the international community, and not the Syrian parties to the conflict. It will have very negative consequences on the armed conflict in the country.”

Syria
Kofi Annan
Bashar al-Assad
Arab Spring
UN
UN Security Council