As New York-Area Roads Fall Apart, Money for Repair Dries Up

Abstract: OF all the tattered swaths of pavement that pock the New York area’s road system, home to some of the country’s most bone-rattling stretches of asphalt, few can match the combination of structural disrepair and functional obsolescence of the Pulaski Skyway . Opened in 1932, the hulking 3.5-mile elevated highway connecting Jersey City, South Kearny and Newark stands today as a kind of industrial Acropolis: its entrance ramps and lane widths dangerously outdated, its roadbed and concrete railings crumbling so badly that the state has installed netting to catch the falling debris. New Jersey spends tens of millions of dollars each year to maintain the worn roadway, but it will likely be a decade or more before the state can afford the $1.2 billion needed to replace or refurbish it. “When you get on the entrance ramp of the Pulaski Skyway, you feel your pulse start to race, your adrenaline starts to pump and your eyes dart back and forth looking for holes,” said Jeff Jotz, who lives in Rahway, N.J., and lost all four of his car’s hubcaps during two months of commuting on the Pulaski. “People are darting in and out, and there’s no shoulder. You’re up in the air, and there’s just nowhere to go.” Mr. Jotz and the 85,000 other people who drive the Skyway daily are hardly alone in their distress. A June study by the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials ranked road conditions in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey 43rd, 44th and 50th, respectively, among the states. The shoddy conditions are partly due to the sheer volume of traffic in the country’s most densely populated region. But urban planners and infrastructure experts say the deterioration of the area’s roads is also the result of shortsighted policy decisions by state government officials who have often been more eager to build new highways than repair existing streets or alleviate traffic by improving mass transit, and who have repeatedly tapped transportation funds for other projects. Drivers may finally notice some relief this year as states use federal economic stimulus money to pay for billions of dollars in road improvements. New York City is spending $261 million of its stimulus money on road and bridge improvements, including repairing access ramps on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn and Queens, and reconstruction projects on the Brooklyn Bridge and East Houston and West 125th Streets in Manhattan. New Jersey is anticipating $652 million for road and bridge projects, including repaving parts of Interstate 295. Connecticut plans to spend $302 million on, among other things, upgrades to the Merritt Parkway and a bridge on busy Route 5. New York State is using $154 million to make improvements on roads and bridges on Long Island, including the Meadowbrook, Sagtikos and Southern State Parkways. But the stimulus money is a one-shot deal to finance repairs long delayed. To redress years of neglect, states would need to find a way to significantly increase spending and refocus their priorities, transportation planners say. Federal money finances the bulk of major highway costs, but state and local governments around New York have been inconsistent, at best, at picking up the rest. Since 1984, New Jersey has used a gasoline tax to underwrite a transportation trust fund, but the fund has piled up so much debt that officials have said it could cease taking on new projects by 2011. Local officials in New York State have long complained that Albany diverts millions in tax revenue intended for road repairs to pay for other projects. Officials in Connecticut, which relies more on federal aid for road projects than most other states, have also been criticized for siphoning off road repair money to the general budget. “They’re hijacking the money to pay for other pet projects in the budget,” said Donald Shubert, executive secretary of the Connecticut Road Builders Association, an advocacy group for construction firms. “And the drivers in the state are paying for it.” The recession has made a bad situation worse, because most roads belong to counties, cities and towns that are facing mounting budget problems. “We’ve created this bind, this suburban-oriented society, where we want more roads and use them more quickly, but aren’t willing to pay for them,” said Robert E Paaswell, a civil engineering professor and director of the University Transportation Research Center at the City University of New York. Years of putting off maintenance have left the 84,000 miles of roads traversing New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island and Westchester County in pitiable shape. The national highway study found that the percentage of local roads in poor condition exceeded the national average of 13 percent: in New Jersey it was 46 percent, New York, 22 percent, and Connecticut, 14 percent. That caused more than just frayed nerves: the study estimated that bad roads cost a typical New Jersey driver $596 per year in repairs and vehicle wear and tear. New Jersey officials say they have begun the long process of upgrading: this year, a transportation spokeswoman said, the state is repaving 623 miles. Since 2000, New Jersey has spent less than 5 percent of its capital budget for transportation on expanding the capacity of its roads. During the 1990s, the state spent more than 50 percent of it some years on new roads, a practice that Kate Slevin of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, an infrastructure planning group, called “misguided.” Transportation officials in the region say they are making incremental progress in improving road conditions. Eileen Peters, a spokeswoman for New York State’s Department of Transportation, said that 86 percent of roads maintained by the state in Nassau and Suffolk Counties were rated good or excellent in 2007. But those numbers offer little comfort to drivers who travel the thousands of miles of county and municipally maintained roads on Long Island, where, local officials say, there is an extensive backlog of streets in need of repair or replacement. In Hempstead, for example, road engineers usually have enough money to repave six to eight of the 300 miles of roads each year, so residents must endure pockmarked streets for weeks, months and sometimes years. The situation is even more pressing in the Westchester city of Peekskill. Last year, city engineers assessed its 50 miles of streets, some of which are so badly worn that grass grows through the pavement, and estimated that $9 million would be needed just to restore them to average condition. But the amount of state aid Peekskill gets for road repaving — $245,000 — has stayed the same for a decade, so city officials are considering a bond issue of $1.3 million to buy 11 tons of asphalt and repave about five miles. “They say they’re going to fix things, but they usually don’t,” said Ralph Nardone, who is 83 and has lived in Peekskill for 35 years. “Maybe they patch a pothole or fill a hole. But repaving? They’re not going to spend that kind of money. There are so many problems all over Peekskill that no one would even know where to start.”

New Jersey
Connecticut
New York City
Infrastructure (Public Works)
Roads and Traffic
Westchester County (NY)
Long Island (NY)


Postal Service’s Operation Santa Resumes, With Privacy Measures

Abstract: As first graders from Public School 33 in Chelsea gathered in the lobby of the James A. Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan on Tuesday morning, they might not have realized that they were part of the return of a nearly century-old tradition — Operation Santa. But when the guests of honor — Postmaster General John E. Potter, Santa Claus , and Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear (both representing the Muppets, who have partnered in the program) — took to the stage, there was understandably no mention of a scandal that shook the program last year and caused it to be temporarily shut down in New York and other major cities. The service was briefly suspended when a postal worker in Maryland recognized a registered sex offender as having “adopted” a child’s letter. The man was prohibited from answering the child, and new privacy rules were put into effect. Since 1954, volunteers in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where the light posts are striped and curved like candy canes, had responded to any letters addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole.” They dealt with up to 150,000 a year from children around the world until they were told they would have to stop this Christmas because putting added privacy measures in place was not feasible in Alaska, according to an Associated Press report. It was announced, amid an outcry, on Nov. 20 that the Postal Service had reversed its decision and would allow the volunteers of North Pole to run the program. “We have now put protections in place,” said Mr. Potter. “We’re redacting the last name and address before we send any letters on,” he explained. The new system replaces those details with code readable only by post office computers. “If people then want to give, they can send us the letter and whatever gift, and we will pass it on,” said Mr. Potter, who added that he was confident there would be no further problems. The children were blissfully unaware of the turmoil — they had bigger issues to deal with. Jalen Sampson, 6, planned to write a letter to Santa asking him to make Christmas come faster. “I’m excited,” he said.

Santa Claus
Letters
Christmas
Postal Service (US)


U.S. Happy to Show England, and Everyone Else, How Much It Has Grown

Abstract: Rustenburg, South Africa Five hours before the long-awaited World Cup match Saturday between the United States and England ended in a tie, a cafe across the street from Royal Bafokeng Stadium was an elbow-to-elbow crush of red, white and blue, overflowing with English and American fans, a mixed zone of beer and good-natured trash-talking. They mixed and mingled, blew vuvuzelas at one another and ate steaks and sausages. Victor Rangaka and Tshepo Monnakgotla opened the restaurant earlier this month — a little later than they had wanted, but just in time to capture the horde of soccer fans in town for the World Cup. Saturday was the busiest they had been by far.  Conor Bozzi, from the United States, only passed by. He decided better of going inside. Too many English fans. “I’ll root for England against many other teams, but now that things have changed a little, we’re going to have to go back to 1776 a little,” he said. For the United States, the match against England was far more than a game. It was a litmus test of where the United States stood relative to the soccer elite, especially the English. On Friday, almost 85,000 fans inside Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg saw the home team almost paralyzed by expectations. A couple of hours away on Saturday, a substantially smaller crowd — 38,646, most of them cheering for England — generated similar electricity. Unlike the vibe surrounding South Africa’s team at Soccer City, the excitement for United States-England was almost clubbish. There was no larger point, nothing socially significant, like South Africa’s hosting the first World Cup game in Africa. There was only a question: could the United States measure up? This was the 10th United States-England match since 1950, when they met in the World Cup and the United States won, 1-0. That victory was followed by four consecutive losses by the United States, a victory in 1993 and losses in 1994, 2005 and in the last meeting, in 2008 in London. Going into Saturday, England led the series, 7-2. But the burden of pressure cuts both ways. While England is trying to win its first World Cup since 1966, the Americans want to be taken seriously as a soccer presence, if not an emerging power. They made a strong case Saturday, coming back from an early goal by Steven Gerrard to tie the score when England’s goalkeeper, Robert Green, handed them a goal. The Americans fought off repeated attacks in the second half to preserve the tie. “We’re glad it’s over,” United States goalkeeper Tim Howard said. “We talked about England for six months, a lot of hype, a lot of pressure.” Now it’s about soccer for the Americans. The task at hand was football and resolution of the big brother-little brother soccer relationship between the countries. “If you’re here now, you’re a good team,” said Norman Mann, a 65-year-old Englishman born in Leeds. He was attending his ninth World Cup, the first being in 1966. “It’s the luck of the game,” he said. “Everybody that puts on a pair of boots and goes onto that pitch, they become superheroes. You can miss a goal by 10 yards, you can hit the post; if it goes in the net, that’s what it’s all about.”  Indeed, luck matters. Trailing by 1-0, the United States received a sensational break when Green seemingly made the initial save of a Clint Dempsey shot, only to allow the ball to go off his hands and across the line. “For U.S. soccer, this is a chance to make a statement whether the Confederations Cup was a fluke or whether it was the real thing,” Bozzi said, referring to the United States’ runner-up finish to Brazil in last year’s World Cup prelude in South Africa. “If we can hang and we can play with these British boys, that will say a lot about this year’s Cup and something hopeful will come in four years in Brazil as well.” Does England take the United States seriously? It certainly does now.

England
United States
Soccer
World Cup 2010 (Soccer)
World Cup (Soccer)


Christie Ally Is Undone by Word in an Email

Abstract: His name was well known in courts and in corporate suites across the metropolitan region and revered in the halls of Trenton. But a single imprudent word, written by a subordinate, brought David Samson more notoriety than he could have ever desired. “Retaliate.” The word was forever fastened to Mr. Samson, Gov. Chris Christie’s appointee to head the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, when a trove of emails was released about the closing of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in September. The subordinate, David Wildstein, used it to describe how Mr. Samson would deal with a New York appointee at the authority who had reopened the lanes. “Samson helping us retaliate,” Mr. Wildstein wrote. The unearthing of that line brought a harsh focus upon Mr. Samson and the intersections between his efforts to advance Mr. Christie’s agenda at the Port Authority and the work of the law firm he co-founded 42 years ago. After months of news articles exploring those potential conflicts of interest, and a subpoena from federal prosecutors earlier this month, Mr. Samson had tendered his resignation from the Port Authority, Mr. Christie announced at a news conference Friday. “He is 74 years old, and he is tired,” Mr. Christie said. Mr. Samson declined to speak with the outside lawyers Mr. Christie hired to investigate the lane closings. But he has denied prior knowledge of the scheme, and there has been no explanation about what he might have done in retaliation, if anything. Others who were more directly implicated by the emails, including Mr. Wildstein, resigned or were fired by Mr. Christie. Mr. Samson released a statement on Friday saying he had been thinking about leaving for some time. “Over the past months, I have shared with the governor my desire to conclude my service to the P.A.N.Y.N.J.,” Mr. Samson said in a statement on Friday. “The timing is now right, and I am confident that the governor will put new leadership in place to address the many challenges ahead.” But his resignation does not necessarily bring the current chapter of Mr. Samson’s career to a close. The subpoena seeks to explore potential conflicts of interest related to $2.8 billion in spending that the Port Authority approved last year to replace and maintain the Goethals Bridge and to raise the height of the Bayonne Bridge, according to people who were briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak about a continuing investigation. Some of the contracts were awarded to companies with ties to Mr. Samson’s law firm, Wolff & Samson. Minutes of the April 2013 Port Authority board meeting showed that Mr. Samson did not recuse himself from either vote, and called the occasion “joyous and happy.” Questions have also been raised about his involvement in the Port Authority’s takeover last year of operations at the Atlantic City International Airport. Wolff & Samson served as bond counsel for the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which had been suffering under the burden of running the Atlantic City airport. Mr. Samson spoke favorably of the plan to his fellow Port Authority commissioners and to reporters. But authority records suggest he recused himself from the final vote. The lane closing scandal has cast a harsh light directly on the Port Authority, and Mr. Christie said at the news conference that he was “intrigued by the idea of dismantling” it, though it was unclear what form a dismantling, which would be immensely complicated, would take. Mr. Christie and Mr. Samson have longstanding connections. Both were lobbyists and lawyers in the 1990s and served as the state’s top law enforcement officers for a brief period of time: Mr. Christie was the United States attorney from 2002 to 2008, and Mr. Samson was the attorney general in 2002 and early 2003. When Mr. Christie ran for governor, Mr. Samson served as the campaign’s lawyer and then led the transition team with another Wolff & Samson lawyer. The ties appear to have benefited Mr. Samson’s firm, which saw sharp rises in its receipts for lobbying and for serving as counsel on municipal bond offerings after Mr. Christie took office. Mr. Christie said on Friday that Mr. Samson had earned the “faith and trust” of the people of New Jersey. “I have complete confidence that he acquitted himself in a way that was appropriate and ethical,” he said. “If it turns out there were some instances that weren’t handled in that way, then that’s something we’ll deal with.”

David Samson
Chris Christie
Port Authority
New Jersey
George Washington Bridge
David Wildstein
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance


Josh Smith Leads Hawks Over Kings With Defense

Abstract: When power forward Josh Smith took the challenge of defending center DeMarcus Cousins, the Atlanta Hawks finally took control Friday night against the visiting Sacramento Kings. Smith, who remained in Atlanta after being discussed in talks leading up to Thursday’s trade deadline, came through with his defense a day later. Al Horford led Atlanta’s balanced scoring with 24 points, and the Hawks overcame a slow start to beat Sacramento, 122-108. But Coach Larry Drew talked the most about the decision made by the 6-foot-9 Smith to defend the high-scoring, 6-foot-11, 270-pound Cousins. “Josh signaled he did not want any help down there,” Drew said. Smith held Cousins, who had 26 points and 13 rebounds, to only 4 points in the final quarter. Isaiah Thomas led the Kings with 30 points and 9 assists. THUNDER 127, T’WOLVES 111 Russell Westbrook scored 37 points, Kevin Durant added 27, and host Oklahoma City snapped a three-game losing streak by beating Minnesota. The Thunder avoided losing four in a row for the first time since April 2009. They hit all 22 of their free throws. Alexey Shved led Minnesota with 17 points, and Andrei Kirilenko and Dante Cunningham had 15 points apiece. CELTICS 113, SUNS 88 Jeff Green scored 31 points in his first start of the season, and short-handed Boston routed host Phoenix. Green started in place of the 36-year-old Kevin Garnett, given a rest with Boston playing its third game in four nights. Green responded by going 11 of 14 from the floor and setting his season high for points. PACERS 114, PISTONS 82 Surging Indiana crushed visiting Detroit as six Pacers scored in double figures, led by David West with 18 points and George Hill with 15. Indiana has won 3 straight and 8 of 10. Will Bynum scored 17 points for the stumbling Pistons. BULLS 105, BOBCATS 75 Taj Gibson scored 17 points on 8-of-11 shooting as Chicago won at Charlotte. Kemba Walker had 27 points to lead the Bobcats. GRIZZLIES 88, MAGIC 82 Marc Gasol had 19 points and 13 rebounds, and Zach Randolph added 16 points and 14 boards as host Memphis beat short-handed Orlando for its sixth straight win. The Magic had only seven players available. WIZARDS 119, NUGGETS 113 Emeka Okafor had 17 points and 13 rebounds for host Washington as it took down yet another contending team. Ty Lawson led Denver with 27 points and 12 assists. MAVERICKS 104, HORNETS 100 Vince Carter capped a 22-point performance with a 3-pointer that gave Dallas the lead with 6.5 seconds left, and the visiting Mavericks held on for their third straight victory. Dirk Nowitzki added 25 points for Dallas.

Josh Smith
DeMarcus Cousins
Atlanta Hawks
Sacramento Kings
Pacers
Pistons
Basketball
Oklahoma City Thunder
Timberwolves


Stocks Gain as Metal Prices Lift Commodity Producers

Abstract: Stock prices rose on Wednesday as shares of commodity producers pulled the broader market higher despite dismal housing sales and a failure by Bank of America to secure approval to raise its dividend. Commodity producer shares rose more than 1 percent after industrial and precious metal prices surged, leading to a late afternoon recovery in stock prices. Freeport McMoran, Newmont Mining and Alcoa all rose more than 3 percent. Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial, said that “headline risk” from events overseas eased on Wednesday. “The market doesn’t seem to be as obsessed with headlines from the Middle East and Japan,” she said. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 67.39 points, or 0.56 percent, to 12,086.02, while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gained 3.77 points, or 0.29 percent, to 1,297.54. The Nasdaq composite index was up 14.43 points, or 0.54 percent, to 2,698.30. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales of new homes fell 16.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 250,000 in February, the lowest levels on record. The median price of a new home fell to $202,100, the lowest since the end of 2003, the department said. While the numbers could have been affected by weather and revisions in previous months, the total was below forecasts and analysts said it spelled bad news for an economic recovery. Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist for Mizuho Securities USA, said the report showed consumer wealth might be taking another blow despite the rise in equity valuations. “Nothing good can be said about the February report on new-home sales,” he said, adding that it showed “the housing market is still in free fall.” Bank shares fell after Bank of America said the Federal Reserve had rejected its plan to increase its dividend in the second half of 2011. Shares of Bank of America fell 23 cents, or 1.7 percent, to close at $13.65. The euro slipped against the dollar late Wednesday after the Portuguese Parliament rejected a new government austerity plan and the prime minister submitted his resignation. The euro was quoted at $1.4123 in late New York trading.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan)


Manchester United’s Slide Continues

Abstract: Manchester United slumped to a 2-0 defeat at Olympiakos in its second-round Champions League opener on Tuesday night, allowing goals by Alejandro Domínguez and Joel Campbell at Karaiskaki Stadium in Piraeus, Greece. Olympiakos is the first home team to win in six second-round matches. The second leg of the series is in Manchester, England, on March 19.

Manchester United
Soccer
UEFA Champions League
Olympiakos Soccer Team


Obama Fights for Confirmation of New Consumer Agency Chief

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The White House has undertaken an extraordinary push this week to promote the confirmation of a director for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , despite signs that Senate Republicans will not budge from their vow to block any nomination to the post unless Democrats agree to overhaul the agency’s structure. “Does anyone here think the problem that led to our financial crisis was too much oversight of mortgage lenders or debt collectors?” President Obama asked his audience during a speech on Tuesday in Kansas. To amplify that message, White House officials in recent days have conducted several briefings with reporters and arranged special access for print and television journalists from seven states where the administration thinks it might sway moderate Republican senators to break ranks. The goal is to get the necessary 60 votes on Thursday to end Senate debate on the nomination of Richard Cordray , a former attorney general of Ohio, to be the consumer agency’s first director. Forty-five of the 47 Senate Republicans signed a letter in May vowing not to allow a vote unless Congress was given more oversight of the agency, including budgeting authority. The consumer bureau, a legislative response to the predatory mortgage lending practices that many critics think were partly responsible for the financial crisis, was established as part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act, which was signed into law in July 2010. The law gives the consumer agency authority over nonbank financial companies that were barely regulated, if at all — entities like payday lenders, credit reporting agencies, mortgage companies and debt collectors. Those institutions have been accused of preying on lower-income families, prodding them into mortgages with escalating interest rates, charging high rates of interest for short-term loans and using abusive debt collection methods. The law vests that power in the agency’s director, however, rather than the agency itself — a departure from normal bureaucratic structure. After the law was enacted, the inspectors general of the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board issued opinions saying the bureau could not assume its new powers without a confirmed director in place. “It’s not how we would have done it, to be sure,” Neal Wolin, deputy Treasury secretary, said on Wednesday. “But we knew from enactment that in order to get these additional powers there would need to be a director confirmed.” Republicans, led by Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, have said they think the agency is essentially unaccountable to anyone, including Congress, in part because it has the authority to set its own budget, drawing on money from the Federal Reserve and therefore not subject to Congressional appropriations. Republicans have also pressed for the single director to be replaced with a board, much like those governing the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And the critics want to ease the ability of banking regulators to overrule any regulations drawn up by the consumer bureau that might interfere with the safety and soundness of the banking system. “We support strong and effective consumer protection,” Mr. Shelby and the other Republican senators wrote to Mr. Obama in May. “The present structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, however, violates basic principles of accountability and our democratic values.” White House officials and other supporters of the bureau maintain that there is plenty of accountability in the bureau’s structure. The director must report to Congress on its activities twice yearly. There is a cap on its annual budget. And its rules can be overturned by a two-thirds vote of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which includes the heads of the major financial regulators. Several Democratic senators said Wednesday that the aims of their Republican colleagues were clearly out of step with the mood of the nation. Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, accused Republicans of wanting to protect Wall Street rather than consumers. The White House is specifically focusing on voters in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, Tennessee and Utah, hoping they will contact their senators and urge them to allow a vote on the nomination. On Thursday, Mr. Obama will be interviewed at the White House by local news anchors from Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Memphis and Portland, Me. Senator Scott Brown, a Massachusetts Republican, did not sign the Republicans’ May letter and has already said he will vote to end debate on Thursday. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the other Republican who did not sign the letter, has not declared her position. A spokesman for her did not respond to an inquiry on Wednesday. One of the moderate Republican senators from the target states, Susan M. Collins of Maine, is not biting, at least so far. “I actually voted for the Dodd-Frank bill, but I am completely opposed to appointing a nominee to head this bureau until we correct the very serious structural flaws that are in the bill,” Ms. Collins said. “This has nothing to do with Mr. Cordray. He’s clearly a qualified individual with a good reputation. It has everything to do with accountability for how money is spent in government.” Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, said the Republicans’ strategy of denying an appointment because they dislike the way a law was structured carried a dangerous precedent. “It’s not typical and not very desirable in lots of ways,” he said, “because that would mean no legislation is good after the Congress that passed it.” Without the 60 votes, Mr. Obama’s options are limited. He can try for a recess appointment, but Congress has blocked that avenue before and could be expected to do so again. The White House could make some horse-trading promises in exchange for future support of some senators’ favorite issues. Or it could agree to the structural changes that Republicans are seeking — something Mr. Obama said Tuesday that he would never do. “Consumers deserve to have someone whose job it is to look out for them,” he said. “I intend to make sure they do. And I want you to hear me, Kansas: I will veto any effort to delay or defund or dismantle the new rules that we put in place.”

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010)


Randy Johnson’s Viewfinder Points to the Hall, and Beyond

Abstract: PHOENIX — Randy Johnson is rolling now, and when this happens, he might as well be back on a mound, dominating major league hitters. The safest response, as it always has been, is to get out of the way and appreciate his artistry. Johnson will enter the Hall of Fame this Sunday after a career that will never be duplicated. He holds the record for strikeouts by a left-hander, with 4,875. He was the last pitcher to earn 300 victories. His five Cy Young Awards are second only to Roger Clemens, who remains outside Cooperstown. Now he applies the same focus, while putting far less pressure on himself, as a photographer. Johnson said he liked the idea of devising a game plan and staring at his subject through a lens, the way he once did from under the bill of his cap. Last week at Chase Field, he described a trip to Botswana in vivid, breathless detail. “We pull up, this wild dog is eating this rib cage,” Johnson said. “The leopard is about a hundred yards away, in some bush, lying down. This is amazing to me.” Johnson explained that the leopard was upwind, so the dog could not smell it. The leopard crept closer. Johnson clutched his camera. “All of a sudden the dog looks up, sees the leopard, drops the rib cage and takes off!” Johnson said. “Now the leopard just walks, kind of like I would after I just struck out the side, grabs the rib cage — and this is where it got cool — grabs the rib cage and walks by me. My lenses were so big, he was too close, I couldn’t even take his picture. I was never anticipating something that close. “The picture that you saw, I sat there for 45 minutes. I put my camera down one time, just to take it in. It was fascinating.” Johnson has a website of his photographs , and he also posted the final product of this one to his Instagram page. The leopard is perched on a tree branch, the rib cage in its mouth, sticking out its tongue, staring directly at the camera. You can understand the competitive rush, the excitement and the release, for a pitcher who thrived, as few ever have, off power and emotion. His Hall of Fame speech is finished, Johnson said, and he hopes he can keep it to 10 or 12 minutes. But there are so many people to thank, so many who helped turn around a pitcher who first was known mainly for his height and his wildness. Johnson, who is 6 feet 10 inches, walked more than he struck out in his first professional summer, in the New York-Penn League in 1985, the last time he visited the Hall of Fame before this year. He seemed unlikely to return in glory to upstate New York. “I didn’t need to be able to strike out 12; I just needed to be able to throw strikes,” Johnson said. “I couldn’t repeat that, and as a professional athlete, that’s frustrating, when you know that you can do it, but you can’t do it today — and you can’t figure out why.” Johnson taught himself a slider in the minors, giving him the raw weapons he needed to dominate: a frame that was unfamiliar to hitters, an overpowering fastball and a wipeout breaking ball that would rival Steve Carlton’s and Ron Guidry’s for the best of its kind. But it was not until 1992, his third full year with Seattle, that two events transformed him. The first was that summer at the Kingdome, when Tom House, the pitching coach for the Texas Rangers, invited Johnson to watch Nolan Ryan throw in the bullpen. House, like Johnson, had attended the University of Southern California, and wanted to help with a mechanical flaw. Image A leopard gnawing on a rib cage in Botswana's Linyanti Wildlife Reserve. Johnson, who will enter the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday, said he watched for 45 minutes before capturing this shot. Credit Randy Johnson House told Johnson he was landing on the heel of his right foot when he threw, causing him to spin off to the third-base side. If he could instead land on the ball of his right foot, he could realign his body and direct his ferocious momentum toward the plate. “That allowed me to start throwing strikes on a consistent basis,” Johnson said. His father’s death that Christmas, he added, made an equally profound impact. “I was able to dig down a little bit deeper and pitch with a chip on my shoulder because of my dad dying,” Johnson said. “I used my emotions, and I pitched with anger.” Johnson had led the majors in walks each season from 1990 through 1992. He never did so again. In 1993 he would lead the majors in strikeouts, with 308, and do so eight more times. He finished second in the voting for the American League Cy Young Award that year and was on his way. “I look back at my career, and there weren’t many guys that embarrassed me when I was in the batter’s box,” said Mark Grace, the major league leader in hits for the 1990s. “He did. It was ridiculous how dominant he was.” Grace, now a Diamondbacks coach, faced Johnson as an opponent and later played with him in Arizona. Johnson won a championship there, to go with his four Cy Young Awards and four of the 10 best single-season strikeout seasons since 1900. Going to the park on the days Johnson pitched, Grace said, he always believed he might see history. Among other highlights, Johnson delivered a 20-strikeout game in 2001 and a perfect game in 2004. Eddie Perez struck out to end the perfect game as a pinch-hitter for the Atlanta Braves, for whom he now coaches. In his previous four at-bats against Johnson, Perez had been 4 for 4 with a home run. His hits had been on fastballs, Perez said, so he expected a slider with two strikes. Johnson challenged him with high heat. Image Johnson pitching in 2007 with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Credit Paul Connors/Associated Press “You see it as a strike and all of a sudden. ...” Perez said, slashing with his hand, upward and away, indicating the kind of fastball movement believed to be an optical illusion. “No, it goes that way, too,” Perez insisted. “You can see it on the last pitch.” If any pitcher seemed to defy the laws of physics, it was Johnson. His stuff and stature set him apart, but he rarely got credit for his pitching intellect, the way he mixed two-seamers and splitters as he aged, the way he grinded out 34 victories in two years with the Yankees, despite debilitating back pain. Johnson will be the first Hall of Famer to represent the Diamondbacks, who employ him now as a special assistant. He visited the team’s Class AAA affiliate in Reno, Nev., in April, watching a bullpen session by the left-hander Robbie Ray. He told Ray what he had said to the team in spring training: to approach every game as if it would be his last. “When he said that, I almost started cheering,” said Tony La Russa, the Hall of Fame manager and the Diamondbacks’ chief baseball officer, “because if you wanted to define the perfect frame of mind, it would be one that was based on urgency, this game is seventh-game-of-the-World-Series important, the last game of your life. It brings out the best in you, all of your senses.” Now, those senses come alive behind a camera lens — on safari, at rock concerts and auto races, at events all over the world. Johnson, who often travels with the United Service Organizations, has seemingly been everywhere, including the Korean Demilitarized Zone, Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan and a hot-air balloon high above Cappadocia, Turkey. Baseball alone did not put him there. Johnson majored in photojournalism at U.S.C., and his work has been widely published since his days in the pages of The Daily Trojan; his new career is really his old career. He said he wished he had taken more photos at ballparks, but he was preoccupied by his detour into pitching. That pursuit is over for Johnson now, his place among the greats secure. It hardly seems real to him. “It was nothing that I ever dreamed of,” Johnson said. “I never imagined any of this.”

Randy Johnson
Baseball
Baseball Hall of Fame
Photography


European Leaders Gather to Grapple With Donald Trump’s Victory

Abstract: BRUSSELS — An emergency meeting of European Union foreign ministers on Sunday was the latest sign of the global disquiet in the wake of the election of Donald J. Trump, who has questioned some of the central tenets of American foreign policy. Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, hastily scheduled the dinner meeting after Mr. Trump’s victory, which threatens to foment further division in a continent already reeling from crises over Greece’s debt, migration and Britain’s decision to exit the bloc . A number of European countries face the same powerful populist forces that elevated Mr. Trump. Some, like Hungary, may be prepared to embrace changes that could include warmer ties with Russia. Others, like Poland, want to double down on the decades-old trans-Atlantic alliance, with NATO as its cornerstone. There were concerns in some European capitals that scheduling the gathering before Mr. Trump appointed a secretary of state or announced his policy agenda cast too much doubt on his ability to devise a working relationship with Europe. The British government said that the meeting was unnecessary and that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson would skip it. Last week, Mr. Johnson dismissed concern over Mr. Trump’s victory as unjustified complaining, or a “ collective whinge-o-rama, ” by other Europeans. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, also did not attend the dinner, a decision that French officials attributed to scheduling issues, and Hungary’s foreign minister did not make it, either. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary described Mr. Trump’s win as “great news” on his Facebook page. Image Jens Stoltenberg is the secretary general of NATO. Credit Stephanie Lecocq/European Pressphoto Agency Ms. Mogherini emphasized Europe’s potential to be “a superpower” in an era of global cooperation after Mr. Trump’s victory. But the list of foreign policy challenges that Europe faces has grown longer. Baltic nations like Estonia are newly vulnerable because Mr. Trump has threatened to break with an article of the NATO alliance that obliges the United States to defend all other members in the event of an attack. Mr. Trump has said the guarantee should apply only to those countries that “fulfill their obligations to us.” Then there is Mr. Trump’s open admiration for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin . That could make it even more of a challenge for Europe to maintain economic sanctions imposed on Moscow for annexing Crimea and destabilizing Ukraine. Before the gathering, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, underscored his concerns by warning in an opinion piece for The Observer, a British newspaper, that the West faced its greatest security challenge in a generation. “This is no time to question the value of the partnership between Europe and the United States,” Mr. Stoltenberg wrote . “European leaders have always understood that when it comes to security, going it alone is not an option.” But regional analysts are still grappling with the implications of Mr. Trump’s win, particularly for Europe. “The entire European project has always taken place in the context of American hegemony and the security guarantee, and all of that now is in question,” Hans Kundnani, a senior trans-Atlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, said in an interview on Sunday. “The argument that Europeans finally pull together as a result of the election of Trump could be very wrong, as it may well sharpen their differences and help pull them even further apart,” Mr. Kundnani said. Miroslav Lajcak, the Slovak foreign minister, told reporters after the dinner that concerns that Mr. Trump would base his policies on friendly relations with Mr. Putin could turn out to be overblown. “There is always a distance between a candidate and an elected president, so I don’t really believe we have to waste our time speculating about this kind of stuff,” Mr. Lajcak said. Europe also faces the prospect that the Trump administration will pull the United States out of the nuclear accord that Iran reached with a group of world powers, including European Union nations. In September, Ms. Mogherini praised the accord, which restricts Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons, calling it of “historic political importance.” In addition, Mr. Trump has promised to tear up a landmark global accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite warnings by the United Nations that climate change will sow global unrest by contributing to desertification, heat waves, floods and rising sea levels. The meeting did give ministers an opportunity to process Mr. Trump’s victory before moving forward with a long-planned meeting on Monday to outline incremental steps toward greater defense cooperation. The plan for greater cooperation, which has been in the works since long before the United States’ presidential election, is intended to complement NATO, rather than provide an alternative to American-backed collective defense. An outline of the plan, which was still being discussed on Sunday, is expected to recommend steps toward more joint military procurement, activating dormant battle groups and centralizing more military decision-making in Brussels. That will do little to address the immediate threats to the bloc from Turkey’s slide toward authoritarianism, the war in Syria and Russian aggression in Ukraine. Some member nations, including Austria, were expected to push on Monday to suspend talks with Turkey about its application for membership in the European Union because of a crackdown by the Turkish government after an attempted coup in July. But no immediate decisions were expected.

Donald Trump
NATO
Boris Johnson
Jean-Marc Ayrault
Viktor Orban
Jens Stoltenberg
2016 Presidential Election
EU
Vladimir Putin


Strasburg and Harvey Set for Early Showdown

Abstract: TAMPA, Fla. — For anyone wondering what to make of C. C. Sabathia’s spring training performances — he surrendered two homers Saturday pitching against minor leaguers after giving up three to the Mets in his past start — he had a forceful message, using profane language to say that he did not care “what stock they put in” his spring results. Sabathia could have a point about the foolhardiness of projecting anything meaningful from exhibition games, but he is also 34 years old, with a diminished fastball, and he is returning from knee surgery that limited him to eight starts last season. Sabathia said he was pleased with his health and a fastball that has hovered at a little more than 90 miles per hour. He focused Saturday on developing his changeup, a pitch Sabathia has said he wants to use more effectively. He threw three consecutive changeups to Elias Diaz, who plays for Pittsburgh’s Class AAA affiliate, the last of which Diaz belted for a three-run homer. Earlier, Alen Hanson blasted a fastball on the first pitch of the game over a 30-foot-high fence in left-center field. Sabathia said he was just trying to throw a strike and was ambushed. “I think there should be a rule against swinging at the first pitch of the game,” he said. “That’s what I was thinking, anyway.” While Sabathia was toiling at the minor league complex, the Yankees were losing to the Baltimore Orioles, 10-2. Alex Rodriguez and Stephen Drew homered for the Yankees, but Dellin Betances, whom the Yankees are considering naming their closer, continued his uncertain spring, giving up a hit, a walk and a run in one inning. The Yankees were spared considerably worse news after Didi Gregorius left the game with a sprained wrist, sustained as he dived for a ball. Although Gregorius’s wrist was in a brace afterward, X-rays were negative and he was expected to return to the lineup Wednesday. SHOWDOWN LOOMS As enticing as Saturday’s pitching matchup was, seeing Jacob deGrom of the Mets and Stephen Strasburg of the Nationals square off in Port St. Lucie, Fla., fell a tad short of the duel that is shaping up early in the regular season: Matt Harvey versus Strasburg. Barring the unforeseen, the third game of the regular season between the Mets and Washington will pit Harvey against Strasburg, two young right-handed power pitchers who have also undergone Tommy John surgery. Nationals Manager Matt Williams announced Saturday that Max Scherzer, the team’s marquee free-agent acquisition in the off-season, would get the opening day assignment, and he will be followed in the rotation by Jordan Zimmerman. The Mets will open with Bartolo Colon, followed by deGrom and then Harvey, who has been dazzling this spring with a 1.45 E.R.A. and 17 strikeouts in 182/3 innings. Saturday’s matchup between Strasburg and deGrom was won easily by the latter. DeGrom, last season’s reigning rookie of the year in the National League, pitched seven strong innings, surrendering one run on a homer by Bryce Harper in the sixth inning. Strasburg gave up four runs in four innings, thanks to Curtis Granderson’s three-run homer, which was followed by a David Wright homer in the third, and the Mets cruised to a 10-2 victory. Granderson pushed his spring batting average to .447 after hitting only .157 last spring. This spring, Granderson has been reunited with the hitting coach Kevin Long, who was fired by the Yankees before joining the Mets in the off-season. “We’ve swung the bats very good with all sort of different pitchers,” said Terry Collins, the Mets’ manager. “The guys have bought into it. I’m seeing drills on a daily basis that I didn’t see before.” The Mets have sustained a number of injuries in spring training, but on Saturday, two players took tentative steps back toward regular action. Second baseman Daniel Murphy (hamstring) got five at-bats in a minor league intrasquad game. Collins said he would continue to have Murphy hit in minor league games but not play in the field. It is doubtful that Murphy will be ready for opening day. In perhaps a bit of better news for the Mets, the right-handed pitcher Vic Black (shoulder) threw 24 pitches off the mound and said his arm “felt great.” PETER KERASOTIS RANGERS GET A RELIEVER Pitching-depleted Texas acquired the left-hander Sam Freeman from the St. Louis Cardinals for a player to be named or cash. Freeman, 27, was 2-0 with a 2.61 E.R.A. in a career-high 44 relief appearances last season with the Cardinals. He pitched once against the Dodgers in the playoffs. Rangers General Manager Jon Daniels said he expected Freeman, who is out of minor league options, to make the Rangers’ opening day roster. “He’s got a good arm, and the acquisition price was right,” Daniels said. “We’ll bring him in here and give him an opportunity.” The Texas pitching staff has been troubled by health problems in spring training, including a season-ending injury to its ace, Yu Darvish. (AP) SPECIAL VISITOR Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson spent a day with the Rangers and drew on his Super Bowl experience to deliver a message to the team. Wilson hit a home run in batting practice at the Rangers’ spring training camp in Surprise, Ariz. He had played two seasons of minor league ball as an infielder with the Colorado Rockies before starring in the N.F.L. In his last game in the Phoenix area, Wilson threw an interception at the goal line in the final seconds against New England, costing the Seahawks a second straight Super Bowl victory. Wilson said his message to the Rangers focused on what it takes to get back to that same opportunity. (AP)

Mets
Yankees
Stephen Strasburg
Matt Harvey
Baseball
C C Sabathia
Washington Nationals


An Emotional Urge to Get Up and ‘Gro’

Abstract: An energetic new campaign that urges consumers to go outdoors and get their hands dirty looks and sounds as if it could be promoting brands like Gore-Tex, Jeep, North Face, Range Rover or Patagonia. The actual sponsor can be inferred from the upbeat theme, “It’s Gro Time.” Indeed, the Miracle-Gro line of gardening products, sold by the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, is behind the emotional campaign. That is surprising because until now its marketing efforts have been sedate, even a bit stodgy. The new campaign is by the same creative agency that Miracle-Gro has used for several years, ML Rogers in New York. And Mediaedge:cia in New York, part of the GroupM division of the WPP Group, remains the media agency. But the more assertive attitude and younger tone for the campaign represent a sea change — or, in this instance, maybe a land change is a more accurate way to put it. “It’s time for your dirt manicure,” declares the headline of one print advertisement. “It’s time to find your tomato mojo,” the headline of another print ad proclaims. (And remember, home-grown tomatoes are salmonella -free tomatoes.) “Grow a little you in the yard,” advises a statement on the home page of a new Web site dedicated to the campaign ( itsgrotime.com ). “Vibrant veggies or far-out flowers — be creative, get out there and express yourself.” Resource Interactive in Columbus, Ohio, worked with an internal team at Scotts Miracle-Gro on tasks that included the new microsite. Television commercials take a similar tack to the print and online ads. In one spot, an announcer tells viewers that “it’s time to jump-start the geraniums and dial up the daisies.” In a second commercial, the announcer borrows a slogan from the 1960s. “It’s time,” he says. “It’s time to discover the power of flowers.” The campaign is emblematic of efforts by advertisers to periodically update how they peddle their products, reflecting the continuous changes — demographic and psychographic — that are taking place among consumers. Such efforts are risky because they can turn off the customers a brand is trying to reach while putting off the customers the brand already has. A notable failure was the effort by General Motors to give a newer sheen to its Oldsmobile division with a campaign that carried the theme “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile. This is the new generation of Olds.” Sales kept falling and not long after, G.M. discontinued the brand. For decades, ads for Miracle-Gro were focused on product attributes and benefits, making claims about the size and robustness of the flowers and vegetables that could be grown by using its garden soil, potting mix and other plant foods. “We had a much more functional message, ‘Grows plants twice as big,’ which we have been saying for years and years and years,” says Jan Valentic, senior vice president at Scotts Miracle-Gro in Marysville, Ohio. “What we’re trying to do now is attract more people to the activity of gardening,” she adds, with the message that Miracle-Gro “is a product that helps Mother Nature be all she can be, and more so.” At the same time, Ms. Valentic says, the campaign is “aimed at people who are already engaged in gardening” and are already familiar with the Miracle-Gro brand. For both types of consumers, “we’re showing how gardening can be an expression of creativity,” she adds, which is “a new piece of communication for us.” “We want to get people to think of gardening as a great pastime,” Ms. Valentic says. “Ideally, I’d love to have gardening considered, regarded as sexy as cooking.” And as “the dominant brand in the category,” she adds, Miracle-Gro would most likely be a beneficiary of any big influx of gardeners. Miracle-Gro also sought to update its pitches in 2002, when the venerable actor James Whitmore, who had been the public face of the brand in ads since 1982, was replaced by the actor Peter Strauss. At the time, Mr. Whitmore was 80 and Mr. Strauss was 55. A commercial that was part of the 2002 campaign featured the song “You Sexy Thing” by the 1970s rock band Hot Chocolate, known for the lyric “I believe in miracles.” The song is returning for the TV commercials that are part of the new campaign. The changes being made now “came out of a lot of research we had done over the years,” says Mike Rogers, president at ML Rogers, who worked on Miracle-Gro when he was at the Wolf Group New York agency. (When the Wolf Group, based in Toronto, collapsed, Mr. Rogers opened his own shop with clients of the New York office like Scotts Miracle-Gro.) Among the research findings were that “a lot of young people” were getting into gardening, Mr. Rogers says, becoming “passionate about it” not only because they found it fun but also because they perceived it as “gratifying and fulfilling.” To appeal to them is one reason the campaign “is saying, ‘Get off your butt, go outside, stick your hands into the soil and grow something,’” he adds. The emphasis on getting dirty is no accident, according to Janique Helson, director for client services at ML Rogers, for it represents the intangible benefits of gardening. “For some people it’s emotional, for some people it’s spiritual, for some people it’s exercise,” Ms. Helson says. “But the brand wasn’t tapping into that,” she adds, “because we were all about the efficacy” of Miracle-Gro products — and that was losing its efficacy as an ad theme because “everyone knows Miracle-Gro works.” Presenting the brand as more contemporary, Ms. Helson says, in ways that include casting the ads with actors who are “younger and fresher,” is not like Oldsmobile because in this instance, she says, Miracle-Gro “is not a dated brand.” “We have the permission to go there,” Ms. Helson says of the campaign, for the Miracle-Gro brand “is fresh because of what it does.” The executives at ML Rogers and Scotts Miracle-Gro are describing the campaign as the most integrated for Miracle-Gro because it includes television, radio, promotions, public relations, direct mail, sampling and the increased presence online. The “Gro Time” microsite is in addition to the regular Web site for the brand ( miraclegro.com ). The microsite will give consumers the opportunity “to share stories, tips and tricks,” Ms. Valentic says, as well as to “upload images and videos” and have questions answered by “agronomists and other experts.” “We want to build a groundswell around gardening,” she adds, “and be that go-to resource as a problem-solver and imagination-provider.” The bulked-up Internet presence also includes buying key search words, a tactic known as search engine optimization. “We try to capture how consumers are going to search for something, how they describe it,” Ms. Valentic says. “It’s a category where people don’t always know the terminology,” she adds. “They don’t know the type of grass they have, ryegrass or Zoysia or crabgrass.” As for the campaign starting as the home market nationally is suffering so many problems, Ms. Valentic says, “we’re more dependent on good weather than the economy.” “Even in bad economic times, if we have good weather we have good business results,” she adds. “Consumers might spend a few hours or an afternoon planting annuals or remulching. The amount of time it’s enjoyed is disproportionate to the amount of time spent.” Mr. Rogers and Ms. Helson both describe themselves as avid users of Miracle-Gro in their personal and professional lives. Professional? “We have the rights to the roof deck” atop the building where the ML Rogers office is located, Mr. Rogers says. “We call it the Miracle-Gro R&D Facility.” “Every spring, we plant stuff,” he adds. “We’ve grown tomatoes and strawberries and herbs.” “When you go up to the roof and you see a cucumber or tomato that wasn’t there a few days ago,” Mr. Rogers says, “it’s pretty amazing.” With the new approach for Miracle-Gro under way for this season, Ms. Valentic says, “we have interesting things up our sleeves for next season for Ortho,” which is among the herbicides that Scotts Miracle-Gro also sells. “It’s one of our killing brands,” she adds, laughing. “We have growing brands and killing brands.” Asked if that isn’t being just a wee bit callous, to quote a line from the movie “North by Northwest,” Ms. Valentic replies: “A weed is just a plant in the wrong place.”  If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that appears Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times newspaper and on nytimes.com .

Advertising and Marketing
Gardens and Gardening


Trade-Off Looms on Mitchell Proposals

Abstract: With all 30 major league teams about to begin the regular season, the players association and the commissioner’s office continued efforts Thursday to reach an agreement on the Mitchell report ’s recommendations on performance-enhancing drugs. As of a few days ago, the commissioner’s office and the union were close to a deal in which none of the active players linked to banned substances in the report would be disciplined. The union would accept increased year-round drug testing and other measures, according to two lawyers and a baseball executive who were familiar with the negotiations but were not authorized to discuss them. While all three said significant progress had been made, no agreement was in place as of Thursday night. When George J. Mitchell issued his report Dec. 13 on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, he listed 20 recommendations that he thought the sport should embrace. Among them was a call for a more independent drug-testing program and an increase in the number of drug tests that players must undergo. One of the lawyers said both sides felt compelled to accept many of recommendations so as not to anger Congress, which has held several hearings on baseball and drugs the last three years. Congress has threatened to take action unless baseball tackles drug use more aggressively. “The last thing both sides want is to be hauled back in front of Congress,” one lawyer said. That lawyer also said the union had agreed to increased year-round testing to supplement the minimum of two tests — one during spring training and one during the regular season — now required of each player. Under the current program, there are only about 60 out-of-season tests conducted, a glaring hole in the sport’s testing regimen, antidoping experts have said. However, contrary to what some members of Congress may want and what Mitchell seemed to suggest, neither the players association nor the commissioner’s office has supported turning over the testing program to an independent testing administrator, like the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Mitchell has said no players linked to drug use in his report should be disciplined. “Spending more months, or even years, in contentious disciplinary proceedings will keep everyone mired in the past,” he wrote. Fewer than a dozen of the 90 current and former players named in the report appeared to be in danger of being disciplined because most of the drug activity cited in the report occurred before punitive drug testing was instituted at the start of the 2004 season, essentially to discourage the use of steroids. A year later, baseball banned the use of human growth hormone, although it still does not test for H.G.H. And in 2006, baseball banned amphetamines and established punitive testing for them. “The commissioner could not accept nearly all the recommendations in the report and then say he wasn’t going to listen to Mitchell and discipline the players,” one of the lawyers said in explaining why Commissioner Bud Selig appears to be willing to forgo punishment. Enacting recommendations in the Mitchell report will require the reopening of the collective bargaining agreement for the third time since 2005. In each instance, the driving force has been performance-enhancing drugs. Major League Baseball has said it would adopt measures proposed by Mitchell that do not, in its opinion, require the consent of the union. Those changes include creating a new department of investigation to look into reports of drug use by players who have not tested positive, drug tests and background checks for clubhouse attendants, and the logging of packages received at stadiums.


Yi Fuxian, Critic of China’s Birth Policy, Returns as an Invited Guest

Abstract: BEIJING — Eight thousand miles is a long way to fly someone so he can tell you you’re wrong. That’s what awaits Chinese officials on Friday when Yi Fuxian , a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, speaks at a panel on China’s population policies at the Boao Forum , an annual gathering of hundreds of politicians, businesspeople, opinion leaders and journalists. The day will mark a remarkable transition for Dr. Yi, from pariah to V.I.P. Six years ago, officials in his home province of Hunan threatened to arrest him if he returned from the United States, where he has lived since 1999, for helping his sister-in-law escape a forced abortion at seven months, he said in an interview in Beijing this week en route to the forum in Hainan Province. Also, his cousin’s wife’s baby was killed in utero one week before the baby’s expected birth, he said. It was not possible to confirm Dr. Yi’s accounts, but they echo many confirmed ones. Dr. Yi has a message for Boao: Because of China’s birth control policies beginning in 1980, there is no way its economy will overtake that of the United States. Growth is already beginning to fall amid a distorted demographic structure, he said. After the 1949 revolution, “we had the advantages of having lots of young people,” said Dr. Yi, who remains a Chinese citizen. “But that’s ending.” “People say we can be two to three times the size of America’s economy,” Dr. Yi said. “I say it’s totally impossible. It will never overtake America’s, because of the decrease in the labor force and the aging of the population.” The United States has a much healthier age distribution, he said. Sharing this concern, last year the government increased the number of permitted children , from one for most couples, to two. It won’t help, said Dr. Yi, a medical researcher, father of three and author of the 2007 book “ Big Country With an Empty Nest ,” which criticized the birth policies and was banned in mainland China until 2013. Image Yi Fuxian, in Madison, Wis., last year, in a photograph he provided. As the number of women of childbearing age shrinks, so will births in a long-term trend, he said. Meanwhile, a rising median age is creating great financial burdens. Dr. Yi creates scores of graphs using data from the government’s national population censuses and its “one-percent” mini-censuses. He pieces official figures together as they are released in snippets, updating constantly. The projections are his own, he said. In 2013, the government had already relaxed its policy to allow couples in which one partner was a single child to have two children, expecting a rise in births. Instead, there were 320,000 fewer births in 2015 than in 2014, bolstering his point that it was too little, too late, Dr. Yi said. “The 2015 one-percent census will show that fertility in 2014 was 1.25 children per woman,” he predicted. “They expected 1.8.” “Now they say with two kids, they’ll get 2.1 children per woman,” Dr. Yi said. “But they won’t. I think they’ll get 1.4. Over all, they say they’ll get 21 million births per year. I don’t think so. Maybe 15 million.” He sees China’s population, now at 1.35 billion, declining. “By 2060 there will be one billion Chinese. By 2080 there will be 700 million. And the result will be — all old people,” he said, flicking through graphs for a lecture he will deliver at universities across the country in April, after Boao. He predicts that within two years the government will have to lift all birth restrictions. The world has grown accustomed to hearing from Western and Chinese economists and businesspeople that China’s economy will overtake that of the United States in 2025, or in 2030 or another point in the future. That makes Dr. Yi’s message one that will be hotly debated, including by China’s leaders, who only partly understand, he said. “They’re not as worried as I am, because they haven’t fully understood the problem yet,” he said. “I can go to Boao because the Chinese government isn’t against me anymore!” he said. “Before, they said I was a traitor because I opposed state birth policies. Where I used to be a traitor, I’m now being paid to fly, business class, from Madison to Chicago, to Beijing, to Hainan.”

China
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Birth control
Fuxian Yi


Advertisers Change Game Plans for Super Bowl

Abstract: YES, Virginia, and the other 49 states, there is a Super Bowl on Sunday, despite the awful economy. And it appears that NBC will be able to sell all 33 ½ minutes of commercial time the network intends to run in the game, even at a record price estimated to average $3 million for each 30-second spot. Still, the uncertainties of this challenging year are manifesting themselves in the days before Super Bowl XLIII as advertisers think, rethink — and rethink again — what they intend to do. The problem is not so much Hamlet-like indecision. Rather, Madison Avenue is worried that its myriad, carefully laid plans will turn out to be inappropriate or unseemly for the unusual national mood of pervasive gloom leavened with a soupçon of hope. For instance, Hyundai Motor America decided months ago to buy two 30-second commercials in the game, both for the 2010 Hyundai Genesis coupe. But as the financial crisis unfolded, the company began to reconsider that, to perhaps add a spot that would directly address the economy. Such a spot would promote an insurance policy called Hyundai Assurance, which offers car buyers the chance to undo their deals if they lose their jobs. The idea was “to take advantage of the fact Hyundai has some unusual positioning in the market right now” for reasons that include the insurance policy as well as the lower prices of its cars, said Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of the Hyundai agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group. “These guys do have something to say,” he added. “It’s a question of whether you have the money or not.”  On Tuesday afternoon, Hyundai announced that it had indeed rethought its lineup. There will be one spot in the game for Hyundai Assurance, and one saluting the 2009 Genesis sedan for winning a “car of the year” award. One spot for the Genesis coupe, with the rock musician Billy Corgan, is being moved to the pregame show, where Hyundai will also run a second spot for Hyundai Assurance along with a second spot for the Genesis sedan. Those three commercials will earn Hyundai a title sponsorship of that program. In the end, the other spot for the Genesis coupe, featuring the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, “didn’t make the cut,” said Joel Ewanick, vice president for marketing at Hyundai Motor America. Asked how Mr. Ma could make the inauguration ceremony but not the Super Bowl, Mr. Ewanick laughed and replied that the Ma spot would run instead during the Academy Awards on Feb. 22. Like Hyundai, Cars.com , owned by a consortium of media companies like Gannett and McClatchy, took another look at its Super Bowl playbook after the economy worsened last fall. The goal was to find “what’s the right tone for the current environment,” Carolyn Crafts, vice president for marketing at Cars.com, said in an interview on Tuesday where she shared the company’s revised plans, while at the same time reflecting that the Super Bowl is typically “a big entertainment event” for viewers regardless of the economic climate. The 60-second commercial that Cars.com is buying during the game will take a gentler, more lighthearted approach than the two spots the company ran during the Super Bowl last year. The 2009 commercial will play up the premise that using Cars.com to buy a new or used car will bolster the buyer’s confidence that he or she is making the best deal. Typically, the PepsiCo North America Beverages unit of PepsiCo has its lineup of Super Bowl commercials decided well before the game. But on Tuesday, at a news conference in Midtown Manhattan, executives acknowledged their plans for Sunday were still in flux. The company and its agencies have completed or are finishing many more commercials than can fit into the air time they previously purchased, said Massimo d’Amore, chief executive at PepsiCo North America Beverages. As a result, “we’re talking to NBC right now,” he added, “to buy more time.” The company originally bought about three to four minutes of commercial time in the game. One decision has been made: which beverage brands will be advertised during the game. There will be two commercials by the Arnell Group in New York, part of Omnicom, for varieties of SoBe Life Water; one spot will be in 3-D, as part of a promotion for a new film, “Monsters vs. Aliens,” from DreamWorks Animation. (A 3-D commercial for the film, to be placed by DreamWorks Animation and the Paramount Pictures division of Viacom, will precede the SoBe spot, creating what may be the first “pod,” or cluster, of 3-D commercials during a Super Bowl.)  Other PepsiCo North America Beverages brands to be advertised will be in spots created by the Playa del Rey, Calif., office of another Omnicom agency, the TBWA/Chiat/Day division of TBWA Worldwide. They will be for Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola and Pepsi Max. For Gatorade, there may be one 60-second or two 30-second spots, part of a new campaign that refers to Gatorade as “G.” Teaser ads in the campaign have drawn considerable comment on blogs and other Web sites. Concepts for the spot or spots for Gatorade are being tested online, said Julie Hamp, senior vice president at PepsiCo, which is “a new approach” for the company’s Super Bowl ads. Pepsi-Cola may have more than one commercial, possibly with a spot that features the singers Bob Dylan and Will.i.am. Pepsi-Cola is also getting a new campaign, carrying the themes “Refresh everything” and “Every generation refreshes the world.” More certain are the Super Bowl plans for Pepsi Max, which call for two spots, one 15 seconds and the other 30. There is also a new campaign for that brand, formerly called Diet Pepsi Max. The PepsiCo beverage executives “are taking every minute they can, right up to the final deadline, to decide what to put in the game,” said John D. Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, a trade publication, who attended the news conference. “They’ve got a very, very full platter with the range and depth of changes they’re making across the entire beverage portfolio,” which in addition to new campaigns include new brand-names and redesigned packaging. In another example of how mercurially some marketers are behaving, one Super Bowl advertiser arranged to be interviewed by a reporter on Monday to describe its commercial for this column. But executives at the company had second thoughts and called off the interview. On the other hand, Anheuser-Busch InBev, which often does not complete its Super Bowl ad plans until a day or two before the game — and has been known to switch beer spots around mere hours before game time — told reporters on Tuesday that its lineup for Sunday was set. “I think this is it, locked down,” said Bob Lachky, chief creative officer at Anheuser-Busch, listing three commercials for Bud Light; three for Budweiser, all featuring the Clydesdale horses; and one for Bud Light Lime. The plans call for at least one spot in each quarter, Mr. Lachky said, adding that a commercial for a new brand, Budweiser American Ale, would appear if the game went into overtime.

Super Bowl
Advertising and Marketing
Subprime Mortgage Crisis
United States Economy


A Return to Growth in Jobs?

Abstract: WALL STREET has been preoccupied with the quality of the job the Federal Reserve has done to try to avert a recession or a crisis in the financial system. This week, the main issue is likely to be the quantity of jobs created by the economy. Traders were shocked a month ago by the announcement that a net 4,000 jobs were lost in August. A Bloomberg News poll of economists expects a strong recovery for September, with 100,000 net new jobs. The unemployment rate, however, is predicted to edge up to 4.7 percent, from 4.6 percent. John Lynch, chief market analyst at Evergreen Investments concurs that the report on Friday will show creation of about 100,000 jobs. Such a total should be enough to continue the rally in stocks, in his view. “At this stage in the game, the greater support for the market will be that the number wasn’t negative,” Mr. Lynch said. “With 100,000, they’ll say, ‘It looks like we dodged a bullet’” Even if there is a second consecutive net loss of jobs, the economy is not necessarily heading into a recession, he added. And he does not expect a moderately positive number, like the one he is forecasting, to persuade the Fed to cut interest rates again this month. It was barely two months ago, he recalled, that the Fed’s main concern was inflation. Recent developments, like a fresh high in crude oil prices and gold trading above $700 an ounce, suggest that inflation may occupy the Fed’s thoughts anew, now that calm has been restored to the equity and credit markets. “Looking at $80 oil and $700-and-change gold, I’m not convinced that the employment report will have a number that will make them do another 25 basis points,” he said, meaning a quarter-point rate cut. “Forward-looking market indicators are saying, ‘Watch out.’” DATA WATCH Investors may want to watch out for other bits of information this week. A modest decline is foreseen in the Institute for Supply Management’s survey of conditions in the manufacturing economy; that report will be released on Monday. The Bloomberg poll calls for an index reading of 52.5 for September, after 52.9 for August. A similar result is expected on Wednesday when the institute issues its report on services and other nonmanufacturing sectors. An index reading of 55.0 is forecast for September, down from 55.8. In a report due on Tuesday, motor vehicle sales are estimated to have fallen in September to 15.9 million, at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, from 16.3 million in August.

Unemployment
United States Economy
Labor


Transportation Dept. Bans Drug-Screening Company

Abstract: Michael R. Bennett is not a doctor. But he played one when he signed off on thousands of drug tests for aviation and transportation companies, federal officials said Tuesday as they announced that his company had been banned from doing further tests for the industry for five years. Mr. Bennett’s company, Workplace Compliance Inc., based in North Carolina, was hired to provide a medical review of thousands of drug tests in recent years for employers who are regulated by the Department of Transportation. But while the company used a doctor’s name on the test results it verified, officials said, a department investigation found that Mr. Bennett had performed the reviews himself. “Mr. Bennett’s actions have created risks to transportation safety and have interfered with the privacy rights of the individuals who he interviewed,” wrote Patrice M. Kelly, the deputy director of the department’s office of Drug and Alcohol Policy and Compliance, in a July 31 decision banning his company. The ban was made public on Tuesday in the Federal Register . The role of a medical review officer that Mr. Bennett assumed is supposed to be held by a licensed physician with special training. The officers have the power to downgrade a positive drug test result if they find that it was caused by properly used medications. The decision banning Mr. Bennett and his company reported that no accidents had been linked to his reports but warned that “incorrectly downgrading a result can have disastrous results for transportation safety because this would allow an illegal drug user to continue to operate in a safety-sensitive position.” According to the decision, Mr. Bennett admitted that neither he nor his company was associated with a qualified medical review officer from 2005 through 2009. It said he had undertaken the job himself, using a manual to guide him. Mr. Bennett did not return two calls seeking comment. Among Workplace’s clients was Kroll, the risk consulting company, which said in a statement that it acquired a small screening services company in 2006 that used Workplace Compliance for its medical review services. Kroll said that when it learned of Workplace’s certification problem, it informed federal officials, offered to help clients whose tests had been sent there, and redirected all work to “providers who held the necessary certifications.”

Doctors
Transportation Department
Tests and Testing


Bernie Sanders Heads to New Hampshire on Iowa Momentum

Abstract: MANCHESTER, N.H. — Senator Bernie Sanders, who came within half a percentage point of defeating Hillary Clinton in Iowa, will spend the next week trying to maintain a significant advantage in New Hampshire, where he has been leading in polls for months. His campaign will stage rallies in the more populous southern parts of the state, where he also will air more than $1 million worth of television ads. “Now we have a two-way race, one-on-one, and it is going to be played out here in New Hampshire,” said Tad Devine, a senior strategist for the campaign. To hear the Sanders campaign tell it, the close race in Iowa established the Vermont senator as a viable alternative to Mrs. Clinton and raised his profile with voters around the country. Now, campaign officials say, they hope a New Hampshire victory will help him press forward by generating excitement among voters in later-voting states and bringing in money for his upstart campaign, which raised more than $1 million in the 90 minutes after his speech Monday night, according to Michael Briggs, campaign spokesman. “That’s our big test right now,” Mr. Devine said. “We have to demonstrate that he can take on Hillary Clinton and defeat her.” New Hampshire presents ideal test conditions for Mr. Sanders, a senator from neighboring Vermont who is already polling well here. The Clinton campaign has already sought to dismiss any potential victory by Mr. Sanders here as irrelevant because of the state’s history of rewarding candidates from New England. But Mr. Devine said that Mr. Sanders was really well known only in the part of the state that borders Vermont — where he was mayor of Burlington —and shares a media market with 14 percent of New Hampshire voters. He said that Mr. Sanders still had to introduce himself to people in the southern part of the state, where most people lived and where he would spend most of his time. Mr. Devine seemed confident that what separated Mr. Sanders from previous insurgent candidates was a vast fund-raising network of small donors that had neutralized Mrs. Clinton’s establishment edge. Mr. Sanders didn’t waste any time hitting the campaign trail in New Hampshire on Tuesday, driving as soon as his plane touched down in Manchester to Bow. There, at 5 a.m., he stood in the flatbed of a pickup truck and rallied scores of supporters who had waited all night for his arrival. His first event — after the sun came up — was in Keene, toward the Vermont border. “If we have a strong base of support in places, we want to make sure it’s enthusiastic,” Mr. Devine said. This evening Mr. Sanders plans to hold another rally, this time in Claremont, also in the western part of the state. Mr. Devine said that it was possible Mr. Sanders might spend a night to recharge his batteries and get some clean clothes at home in Burlington. And next week he could dip into Massachusetts, another New England state where he does well and which has a primary on March 1. But for now, he said, all the attention was on New Hampshire, where Mrs. Clinton was already campaigning.

New Hampshire
Iowa
Hillary Clinton
New England
2016 Presidential Election
US Politics
Bernard Sanders,Bernie Sanders


Grammys Broadcast Draws More Than 28 Million Viewers

Abstract: Live events continue to defy the general drift of viewers away from network television as this year’s edition of the Grammy Awards proved convincingly. Sunday night’s broadcast was the second-most watched edition of the awards show in 21 years, with an average audience of 28.5 million viewers. That was up ever so slightly from last year’s audience of 28.4 million. CBS strategically moved the show from February to avoid both the Super Bowl on Fox and the Winter Olympics on NBC. The move paid off even though the Grammys competed against the Pro Bowl on NBC. Since 1993, the only Grammy Awards show to top this year’s was 2012, when an audience of 40 million tuned in to see tributes to Whitney Houston, who had died the day before.


Federer, Nadal and Djokovic Advance in Madrid Event

Abstract: Roger Federer was nearly upset before beating Feliciano López, 7-6 (13), 6-7 (1), 7-6 (7). Federer saved a match point in a three-hour victory at the Mutua Madrilena Masters in Madrid. Novak Djokovic ran his winning streak to 30 by defeating Kevin Anderson, 6-3, 6-4. Rafael Nadal is unbeaten in 35 matches on clay after routing Marcos Baghdatis, 6-1, 6-3.

Tennis
Federer Roger
Djokovic Novak
Nadal Rafael


Promoters of Coming ‘Star Wars’ Film Have a Delicate Dance at Comic-Con

Abstract: SAN DIEGO — As the Comic-Con International fan convention opened here this week, one of the most anticipated movies of the decade, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” was strangely invisible. Promotions for films arriving as far off as 2017 festooned the sides of hotel towers, light poles, trolley cars and shopping bags. But there was nary a key chain for “The Force Awakens,” set for release by Disney in December. The Force sleeps? Disney and its Lucasfilm unit finally made some noise late Friday, by trotting out the movie’s director, J.J. Abrams, and new cast members like John Boyega in a presentation for roughly 6,500 fans. But it was not an especially flashy affair — they revealed no footage, no new trailer — becoming less of a promotional moment than an example of how Disney is carefully conducting what may be history’s most delicate exercise in fan management. Interest in “The Force Awakens” is already so extreme that Disney knows its safest option is to hold back. Revealing too much too soon could overheat the marketplace at the wrong time, perhaps even making casual ticket buyers less interested in turning out on Dec. 18. Hard-core fans, meanwhile, could recoil at what they see — Jar Jar Binks: never forget — leading to an impossible-to-contain surge of bad buzz that could spill into the mainstream. It would be better for Disney’s stock price, too, if the movie over-delivers on tamped-down expectations. Some analysts, noting that a decade-long absence of new “Star Wars” films has created pent-up box office demand, are already predicting global ticket sales in excess of $2 billion, the realm of “Titanic” and “Avatar.” But revealing too little carries its own risks. Disney knows that “Star Wars” fans will stomp their Stormtrooper boots if they feel ignored. When fans felt burned by George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” after his digital tinkering with the original trilogy, the result was a 2010 attack documentary: “The People vs. George Lucas.” (One song from the film was titled “George Lucas Raped Our Childhood.”) The ability of fans to hijack studio marketing campaigns has only grown since then. This year, Comic-Con panels have included “The Wrath of Con Bloggers,” focused on using the Internet as a tool to better empower fans. A session Friday centered on the emerging concept of the super fan, which is apparently akin to a drug-resistant bacterium — very powerful, potentially troubling. “They don’t want to be led,” said Eric Moro, vice president for programming at Wikia, an online clearinghouse for specialized fan communities. Adding to Disney’s intergalactic challenges, the overseas marketplace needs stoking in a way the domestic one does not. When the first three “Star Wars” movies came out, for instance, they were not released in China, now the world’s No. 2 film market, behind the United States. In other words, there may not be the same generational love for the series there, making marketing more necessary. But any pocket marketing overseas will instantly travel the globe. The upshot: Disney has so far mounted an amuse-bouche campaign for “The Force Awakens” — a teaser trailer here, a Vanity Fair photo shoot there. The information that has been distributed has been carefully shaped to simultaneously respect Mr. Lucas and telegraph that the new movie will be better than his last few, which many fans received coolly. Disney declined to comment on its “Star Wars” marketing strategy. Almost nothing has been revealed about the movie’s plot. Many character descriptions and droid designs have been kept state secrets. Even Princess Leia’s hairstyles have been carefully guarded, although Carrie Fisher let slip that there would be no side-mounted buns, prompting headlines across the web. In part because of the shortage of information, whenever a “Force Awakens” tidbit has been divulged, the reaction has been like food sprinkled over a piranha tank. A trailer lasting 1 minute 22 seconds, released at a fan event in April, generated 88 million online views in 24 hours, setting a Guinness World Record . In the meantime, Disney, which bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012, has spent a lot of time tap-dancing. “Director J.J. Abrams and the amazing cast have created something truly spectacular,” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive and chairman, told an audience at the entertainment conglomerate’s annual meeting in March. “Unfortunately, that’s all I can tell you about this movie. Since, you know, secrecy is a longstanding Lucasfilm tradition. I figured I’d blame it on Lucasfilm, right?” The crowd made its displeasure known. “O.K. All right. I know you’re disappointed,” Mr. Iger said, before changing the subject to other “Star Wars” offerings, including new spinoff movies, like one featuring a young Han Solo . Disney and Lucasfilm tried a similar strategy at Comic-Con, choosing, whether consciously or by herd instinct, to promote various “Star Wars” properties across the convention on Friday, as people associated with “Star Wars”-related products popped up on at least 20 panels. Mr. Moro, for instance, was hosting two “Star Wars” specialists — Leland Chee, from the Lucasfilm story group, and Gary Whitta, a writer on the coming “Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One” — on that super fan panel. Some older Comic-Con participants say they feel as if Lucasfilm owes them after years of loyalty. Mr. Lucas first came to the convention in 1976 and all but begged for support for a movie called “Star Wars” that Hollywood marketers, as surprising as it sounds, did not quite know how to handle. (Was it for a mass audience or a limited one?) On Friday, Disney and Lucasfilm briefly brought out familiar stars like Harrison Ford and ended their session on an unusual note by inviting attendees to a live concert of “Star Wars” music. But the companies largely used their panel presentation to hammer home the message that Mr. Abrams filmed “The Force Awakens” with real sets and real creatures, showing a video at one point of crew members building spacecraft. Left unsaid was the real memorandum: The new “Star Wars” will veer away from the maligned computer-generated imagery that captivated Mr. Lucas late in his career. But when an audience member asked about the movie’s plot, Mr. Abrams politely shut him down. “We don’t want to be talking about story too much, too soon,” he said.

Star Wars
Movies
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Lucasfilm
Walt Disney
advertising,marketing
J J Abrams


Germany Uncovers Euro-Coin Scam

Abstract: LONDON — German prosecutors on Thursday uncovered a multimillion-euro scam that stretched over three years and involved shredded euro coins, China, flight attendants and the German central bank. The Frankfurt prosecutor said six men, four of them Chinese, had been arrested and 10 locations in Frankfurt and its vicinity searched in a peculiar case of fraud to turn scrap metal into cash. The scam generated a total of €6 million, or $8.5 million, from 2007 to November 2010 for the suspects, the prosecutor said. The suspects worked with groups in China that reassembled shredded €1 and €2 coins, according to the prosecutor. The euro coins were probably shredded in Europe and then sold to China as scrap metal, the prosecutor said. The reassembled coins were then probably flown to Germany with the help of four flight attendants, who did not have any weight restrictions for their luggage, the prosecutor said in a statement. Lufthansa, the biggest German airline, was informed that some of its employees were part of the investigation, Claudia Lange, a spokeswoman for the airline, said Thursday. She declined to give any more details. Once in Germany, the prosecutor said, the coins were mixed with real €1 and €2 coins, put in official bags and taken to be exchanged for cash at the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, in Frankfurt. The Bundesbank is the only central bank in Europe that exchanges old or damaged euro coins without a fee and then transfers the amount to any bank account. The bank generally weighs the bags of coins it receives to determine the value. Trying to exchange such reassembled coins at the bank is legally seen as fraud and distributing counterfeit money, the prosecutor said. The prosecutor said that no Bundesbank employees were being investigated. The Bundesbank said that it was familiar with the investigation and that it was not involved in the destroying of the coins or the recycling of the metal. The bank would not comment further. During the raids, the prosecutor confiscated some documents, laptops and desktop computers and found about three tons of coin parts as well as a machine to reassemble coins. Five of the six arrested were men who handed in the damaged coins at the central bank, according to the prosecutor.

Bundesbank
Currency
Frauds and Swindling


Dallas Design District Is a Destination for Art and Food, Too

Abstract: Five years ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a cocktail-craving 30-something headed to a haute bar in Dallas’s design district, a once-industrial enclave centrally situated close to the Main Street district, near downtown. But now the design district is attracting new retailers, deep-pocketed developers and plenty of shoppers, thanks to a slew of buzz-worthy restaurants, chic stores and daring art galleries opening alongside brand-new apartments and lofts. While the area’s moment as the city’s “it” district has finally arrived, this historically hard-working part of Dallas has been a destination of sorts since the 1970s. Several decades ago, furniture and antiques dealers set up shop in manufacturing warehouses to showcase global goods. “It’s always had a great ethos,” said Michael Ablon, whose real estate development firm, PegasusAblon, bought 42 of the warehouses, showrooms and galleries in 2007, then in 2009 opened the area’s first main residential complex, where one-bedroom lofts now go for up to $1,500 a month. “We thought, let’s keep that authenticity and supplement it, not replace it,” Mr. Ablon said. To get a sense of the district’s culture, head to the Meddlesome Moth (1621 Oak Lawn Avenue, 214-628-7900, mothinthe.net ), referred to by one loft-living resident as the design district’s version of the Cheers bar in Boston. Friendliness and familiarity seem bred into the staff and the clientele, but that is where the Moth’s similarity to the famous East Coast institution ends. The centerpiece of this gastropub is the long, sleek bar where fashionable young professionals enjoy cocktails or a pint of one of the 40 beers on tap, which include hard-to-find brews like Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. The owners of the bar took care to preserve the warehouse’s past — it was once a tile showroom — by maintaining its original tile flooring, a patchwork of shapes, colors and textures. The district’s newest restaurant is Oak (1628 Oak Lawn Avenue, 214-712-9700, oakdallas.com ), helmed by the chef Jason Maddy, the former chef de cuisine at the Mansion on Turtle Creek. Design firm Plan B put an upscale spin on the neighborhood’s mercantile vibe. Wood tables are lighted with fixtures ranging from arched floor lamps to modern chandeliers, and a large media screen against the back wall features a tree rustling in the wind. The carefully plated seasonal dishes include bites of crispy pork jowl nestled next to tender octopus and wild Alaskan halibut with thinly sliced asparagus and sharp baby turnips. Leave room for salty crème brûlée paired with a stack of delicate chocolate, caramel and shortbread cakes. Culture enthusiasts should not miss the district’s avant-garde galleries and museums. Owned by the singer George Michael and a partner, the Goss-Michael Foundation (1405 Turtle Creek Boulevard, 214-696-0555, goss michaelfoundation.org ), has more than 500 pieces by 75 artists from the U.K., including Damien Hirst. Swing by before July 28 to see a special exhibition of works by Adam McEwen, best known for his text-based compositions. Dallas Contemporary (161 Glass Street, 214-821-2522, dallascontemporary.org ) has been established since 1978 but relocated to the design district two years ago after outgrowing its former space. This noncollecting museum commissions work by artists; current shows include performance and sculptural work by the Vienna-based artist Erwin Wurm and a series of photographs by Zoe Crosher. Of-the-moment art continues at Circuit 12 Contemporary (1130 Dragon Street, Suite 150, 214-760-1212, circuit12.com ), with site-specific installations by Eddie Villanueva, as well as Michael Dotson’s vibrant, geometric landscapes. High-design shopping, however, reigns on these wide, sunny streets. Though large souvenirs like furnishings are the design district’s sweet spot, small mementos can be found at f. is for frank (1216 Manufacturing Street, 214-749-0709, fisforfrank.com ), where the designers Shoshannah Frank and Casey Melton create architectural jewelry cast in pewter and plated in 24-karat or rose gold. Otherwise, hit showrooms that are open to the public — meaning they do not cater only to designers and interior decorators — can give your home a top-to-bottom makeover. New stores include the Rug Company Handmade (1626 Hi Line Drive, Suite B, 214-760-4888, therugcompany.info ), with rugs by Kelly Wearstler, Tom Dixon and Diane von Furstenberg. Order bespoke furnishings, like replicas of 18th- and 19th-century English country tables and chairs, at the recently opened Highgate House (1230 Dragon Street, 214-537-0154, highgatehouseonline.com ). Those on the hunt for unusual accent pieces will not leave empty-handed after visiting the Griffin Trading Company (159 Howell Street, 214-747-9234, griffintrading.com ). “There’s no method to my madness,” Stephen Hansrote, the owner, said of his collection, which ranges from antique trophies and bumper cars to midcentury Italian drawer chests and vintage neon signs. Once you have filled your U-Haul with new furniture, refuel at the new Off-Site Kitchen (2226 Irving Boulevard, 214-741-2226), where Nick Badovinus makes burgers with caramelized onions and serves what he calls Oklahoma-style sweet tea — surely an illegal libation on this side of the state line. “We’re more in the install district — that is, where the guys swing the hammers and install the floors — than the design district,” Mr. Badovinus said, with a laugh, of his semi-derelict outskirts location. In another five years, we’ll see about that.

Bars
Restaurants
Dallas (Tex)
Interior Design and Furnishings
Shopping and Retail