The Old Dependable Is Depended Upon Once Again

Abstract: A NEW campaign for New York Life, from its new creative agency, expresses an idea that is tried and true. What, you were expecting maybe new? The television, print, digital and outdoor campaign, now under way, carries the theme “Keep good going,” which is meant to extol the virtues of buying life insurance and other financial products from the New York Life Insurance Company. The budget is estimated at $20 million through the end of the year. The print advertisements that are part of the campaign detail the premise: “Consider all the good you do in your life. And all those it touches, supports and inspires. At New York Life, everything we do is to help you continue that good.” The concept is brought to life through pithy sayings that are numbered as if part of an altruistic bucket list. For instance, No. 8 is “Be there for the ones who are there for you;” No. 17 is “If you love someone, act on it;” No. 27 is “Be the man your dog thinks you are;” No. 54 is “Simple actions often speak the loudest;” and No. 79 is “You’re always a role model to somebody.” The “Pay it forward” intimations of “Keep good going” are reminiscent of other recent campaigns, among them one for Delta Air Lines , which carried the theme “Good goes around,” and one for another insurer, Liberty Mutual , which since 2006 has carried the theme “Responsibility. What’s your policy.” Executives at New York Life and Euro RSCG New York, which replaced the New York office of Taxi as the insurer’s creative agency in December, call the new theme a better presentation of a thought that had been at the center of the ads created by Taxi New York, which described the purchase of a life insurance policy from New York Life as “a selfless gift for your family.”  “Keep good going,” the executives say, is the distillation of a new brand positioning for New York Life called “For good,” which was developed with Landor Associates, the corporate and brand identity agency that is part of the Young & Rubicam Group division of WPP. “Our category as a whole has a tough time connecting with consumers,” said Liz McCarthy, senior vice president for corporate communications at New York Life, invoking “an adage in our business” that life insurance “is sold, and not bought.” Then, too, “there’s the other challenge,” she added, that life insurance is “frequently a ‘one and done’ purchase, not top of mind.” The “selfless gift” campaign was “the first time we talked with consumers about them instead of about us,” she said, which began to “make a much stronger connection” with potential customers. The new approach is also more appropriate for a time when “people are looking for goodness in the world around them,” Ms. McCarthy said, because of the dislocations from the financial crisis that still affect families. The focus on goodness will assist the campaign in reaching a target audience she referred to as “practical optimists”: consumers who are interested in, or already have, life insurance.  Asked about the Liberty Mutual campaign, which in July added a second theme , “When things are at their worst, we are at our best,” to the “Responsibility” theme, Ms. McCarthy said: “Certainly, within our category, it’s probably the closest to our positioning. We’re aiming a little broader.” Another difference is that the Liberty Mutual ads have celebrated random acts of kindness that are paid forward in a continuous, virtuous circle, while the New York Life ads are about taking care of family members. The commercials that are part of the New York Life campaign are somewhat more emotional than the print ads. One commercial begins with: “I always thought I would have a son who loved to play ball. Turns out, it was my daughter.” As the daughter’s accomplishments on the diamond are chronicled in photos and video clips, these words appear: “She got her mother’s looks and my fastball. Thankfully, it wasn’t the other way around.” The spot ends with life lesson No. 22, “Pave the way for the greatness of others.” In another commercial, as a video plays of an elderly man speaking, words on screen describe how someone, presumably a grandson or granddaughter, taped him talking about “God, women, money, art and family.” “He passed six months later,” words on screen declare, followed by life lesson No. 64, “Pass down more than your name.” The idea “feels like such a bigger thing than telling people, ‘Go buy life insurance,’ ” said Lee Garfinkel, co-chairman at Euro RSCG New York and chief creative officer for global brands at Euro RSCG Worldwide, part of the Havas Worldwide division of Havas. The use of “life lessons is a way to get the sales message across in a way that’s more relatable,” he added, although it can be a tricky task to “do emotional advertising that’s not maudlin.” Contrasting New York Life with Liberty Mutual, Mr. Garfinkel said the New York Life campaign is “not necessarily about the greater good of society” but rather “about perpetuating the good in your life, changing the world you have control over, your family.” According to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP, New York Life spent $80.3 million on advertising last year, $71.1 million in 2010, $69.8 million in 2009 and $58.7 million in 2008.

Life Insurance
Insurance
Euro RSCG Worldwide
New York Life Insurance Co
Advertising and Marketing
Consumer Behavior


Criticized in Years Past, The Giants’ G.M. Rebounds

Abstract: From 2004 through 2009, a grim six-year run of playoff-free baseball in San Francisco, Giants fans routinely took to the airways to call for the head of General Manager Brian Sabean. They said the contracts Sabean passed out were exorbitant and awarded to the wrong players. He placed too much emphasis on veterans over youth, on pitching over offense, and refused to embrace the innovations popularized by Billy Beane, the much-praised Oakland A’s general manager across the bay. Those fans — the “lunatic fringe,” as Sabean once called them — are not making much noise these days. With his fingerprints all over the Giants’ eclectic World Series roster, Sabean is being hailed as the architect of perhaps the most popular San Francisco sports team in a generation. Sabean endured the abuse for so long that he might be tempted to view the Giants’ magical season as a form of redemption. But in interviews this week before the Giants hosted the Texas Rangers in the Series’ first two games, he said he understood that the blow-back was part of what he called “a very fallible business.” “I’m not like that; my skin is too tough,” he replied, when asked if the Series had vindicated him. “Some years you make good decisions; other years you miss the mark. You don’t want to sign players who don’t perform like you want them to, but it happens.” The Giants beat the Rangers, 11-7, on Wednesday night, to take the early lead in the Series heading into Thursday night’s game. Sabean, 54, is in his 14th year as Giants general manager. He spent eight years in the Yankees scouting department before coming to San Francisco in 1993. He has spent a career dissecting the strengths and weaknesses of baseball players, and he speaks with the gruffness of someone for whom the romance of baseball is distinctly secondary. And yet, on the fly, he has put together a team that is engaged in a giddy whirlwind love affair with its city. After Game 1, fans were lined up 50 deep buying T-shirts, caps and other memorabilia — some of it devoted to players who arrived on the scene in the middle of the season. San Francisco, in fact, seems to have embraced the Giants as castoffs. One hot-selling T-shirt depicted the bald outfielder Cody Ross, who was acquired in August after being waived by the Florida Marlins. “The players they acquired weren’t through typical deadline trades, where the team leverages the future to get some high-priced rent-a-player for the last few months of the season,” said Michael Fogelman, 40, a Berkeley real-estate broker and Giants season ticket-holder since 2000. “The fact that Cody Ross was somebody else’s castoff makes it all the sweeter.” San Francisco’s epic fifth inning Wednesday night — in which the Giants pummeled the dominating Rangers left-hander Cliff Lee — was a case study in how Sabean put the Giants together. Recent acquisitions accounted for all six runs in the inning. There were back-to-back doubles by Andres Torres (signed as a free agent in 2009) and Freddy Sanchez (acquired through a 2009 trade-deadline deal for a minor leaguer). That was followed by a walk to Pat Burrell (signed in May after being cut loose by Tampa Bay), a base hit by Ross, a single by Aubrey Huff (signed as a free agent one month before spring training) and a three-run homer by Juan Uribe (ditto). “We’re proud of all the moves we’ve made,” Sabean said. “I wouldn’t trade anybody who’s on the roster or how they got here.” In many ways, Sabean’s approach to building this year’s squad was not much different than the one he used to construct San Francisco’s last World Series team in 2002. Then, he took advantage of the best player in baseball, Barry Bonds, and filled in much of the roster with spare parts. This season, the nucleus is not a single superstar, but four home-grown starting pitchers: Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez and Madison Bumgarner. Throughout the season, Sabean mixed and matched pieces, eventually settling on a fit that suited him. His style is a departure from the one used by Beane, whose emphasis on statistical analysis was made famous by the best-selling “Moneyball,” which is being made into a movie, with Brad Pitt starring as Beane. “The whole ‘Moneyball’ thing’s overplayed; the whole statistical analysis is overplayed,” Sabean said. “The biggest thing about baseball is that it’s a human game, and you have to have relationships, including in your decision-making.” Those relationships allow Sabean to vacuum information from coaches, players and scouts throughout the organization, and their baseball contacts are critical to making moves at the right time. At the end of July, the Giants were seeking a left-handed reliever when the team got word the Pirates were shopping Javier Lopez, a side-arming lefty. Lopez appeared in 7 of the team’s 10 games over the first two rounds of the playoffs, and was crucial against the Phillies’ left-handed hitters in the National League Championship Series. The deal was typical of Sabean’s moves this year. None were seen as having significant impact at the time. There’s one exception, and it serves as Sabean’s favorite of all the moves he made this year. It involved shipping the rookie catcher Buster Posey to Triple-A Fresno to start the season. Posey was called up in May, once the organization deemed him major-league ready. His arrival in San Francisco was followed in June by that of Bumgarner, who was 20 when he joined the major-league team. “Stuff like Lopez’s reputation as a situational lefty reliever, or the fact that Ross can hit home runs, is pretty standard,” Sabean said. “We knew that when we acquired them. What isn’t standard is how guys like Posey and Bumgarner have really taken their games above and beyond what anybody thought. That’s what we take pride in.”

Baseball
World Series
Sabean Brian
San Francisco Giants


F.B.I. Warrants Into Service Attacks by WikiLeaks Supporters

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had executed more than 40 search warrants in the United States on Thursday as part of an investigation into an international group of computer hackers who attacked corporate Web sites last year in a show of support for WikiLeaks . The F.B.I. investigation is part of a larger international inquiry into a loose confederation of hackers calling itself “Anonymous” that coordinated the cyberattacks against the Web sites of companies like PayPal, Visa and MasterCard late last year after they severed ties with WikiLeaks. Law enforcement agencies in France, Germany and the Netherlands have also sought to find members of the group. On Thursday, the authorities in Britain also executed several search warrants and arrested five people, whose ages were said to range from 15 to 26, accusing them of playing a role in the attacks. WikiLeaks solicits and publishes leaked documents on its Web site. It gained prominence last year after it made public hundreds of thousands of classified United States military documents and videos from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. More recently, WikiLeaks has begun to make public some of more than 250,000 leaked State Department cables. For the most part, it has published only cables that were selected as newsworthy and redacted by a consortium of news organizations that obtained advance access to the database, including The New York Times. The Obama administration has condemned WikiLeaks, and the leaked State Department cables led several major companies to sever ties with it late last year. Amazon.com’s Web-hosting service dropped WikiLeaks, and companies that provided donors with the ability to contribute money online, like PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, stopped processing donations to it. The “Anonymous” hackers, calling the actions an affront to Internet freedom, retaliated with what they called “Operation Payback.” They launched so-called distributed-denial-of-service attacks, in which a target’s server is flooded by so many requests that it goes down. The F.B.I. said that facilitating or conducting such an attack is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Classified Information and State Secrets


Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to Continue Off Australia

Abstract: SYDNEY, Australia — The search for a missing Malaysian jet in waters off Australia’s western coast will continue as planned, Australia’s prime minister said on Thursday, hours after his Malaysian counterpart announced that a wing part found thousands of miles away was the first confirmed debris from the Boeing 777. Tony Abbott, the Australian leader, said the fact that a piece of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had turned up on Réunion, a French island near Madagascar, fit investigators’ theory that the plane had crashed in the area where his country has been leading a seabed search. Experts have said that ocean currents could have carried debris to Réunion from that area. “What we have found in the western Indian Ocean does seem to indicate the plane did come down more or less where we thought it did,” Mr. Abbott told reporters in Geelong, Australia. “And it suggests that for the first time we might be a little bit closer to solving this baffling mystery.” Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, said early Thursday morning that the object found last week on Réunion — which experts said was a wing part called a flaperon — had been “conclusively confirmed” to be from Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people aboard. How Missing Jet’s Debris Could Have Floated to Réunion This animation shows where floating debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could have drifted if experts are correct about where the plane went down. Officials in France, where the part is being examined, were somewhat less definitive at a news conference in Paris, with one saying there were “very strong presumptions” that it was from the Malaysian jet. While Australia leads the undersea search for the plane, Malaysia is conducting the broader investigation into its disappearance, which remains a mystery. Flight 370 stopped communicating with ground controllers not long after leaving Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, for Beijing. According to radar data and satellite signals, it veered off course less than an hour into the flight, heading west across the Malay Peninsula and then flying south for several hours. Investigators believe it ran out of fuel and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. Mr. Abbott said the search of ocean floor in that area, which after 10 months has yet to turn up any debris from the plane, would continue. “We owe it to the hundreds of millions of people who use our skies,” he said. David Griffin, an Australian scientist who has mapped ocean currents in the area, said on Thursday that he believed more debris from Flight 370 could wash up on Madagascar, the much larger island to the west of Réunion. “There could be a very large amount of debris floating, or a very small amount,” said Mr. Griffin, who is with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia. “I am slightly surprised that something turned up at Réunion, rather than Madagascar, because Madagascar is so much bigger.”

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Tony Abbott
Indian Ocean
Plane Crash


Jerry Ford, 83, Man Behind the Models, Dies

Abstract: Jerry Ford, who with his wife, Eileen, established one of the most recognizable modeling agencies in the world, turning a profession regarded as practically a hobby in the 1940s into one dominated by well-paid supermodels in the 1980s, died on Sunday in Morristown, N.J.. He was 83 and lived in Oldwick, N.J. The cause was complications of endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, said his daughter Katie Ford, who was chief executive of Ford Models until last year and remains with the agency as a board member. While Eileen Ford, as the public persona behind Ford Models, was considered the doyenne of the New York modeling industry for more than four decades, it was her college sweetheart (later her husband) who first recognized the potential of a company that would approach modeling as a big, sophisticated business. Shortly after the company was started in 1946, Mr. Ford successfully introduced a payment system for models in which they were paid for their work in advance. Ford later recouped their fees from their various clients. In the 1970s, Mr. Ford was credited with creating the first contracts for models to represent specific brands exclusively, commanding significantly higher fees for the models. He negotiated the first such contract for Lauren Hutton to represent Revlon in 1974. “Before Jerry came along, there were only robber barons who were out there running modeling schools,” said Carmen Dell’Orefice, who has modeled with the Ford agency for 60 years. Ms. Dell’Orefice said she was introduced to the Fords by the photographer Erwin Blumenfeld in 1947, months after they had opened the agency in an apartment on the Upper East Side. It had been common then for models to manage their own invoices and billings, and it was therefore not uncommon for them to be paid one or two years after a job, she said. “He knew about business and he saw what was going on with the models, the clients and the photographers,” she said. Mr. Ford established a five-day workweek, and every Friday the models were paid their fees, less Ford’s 10 percent cut, whether the clients had paid the agency or not. Within a decade, those fees began to skyrocket, to as high as $3,500 a week for top models like Dorian Leigh and Mary Jane Russell, the first stars of Ford Models. In 1956, Mr. Ford said the agency was interviewing as many as 5,000 models a year but would accept only about 15. Ford represented the biggest names for decades — China Machado in the 1960s, Ms. Hutton in the 1970s, Christie Brinkley in the 1980s, Veronica Webb and Kristen McMenamy in the 1990s. Mr. Ford also managed the early modeling careers of Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Brooke Shields and Ali MacGraw. Gerard William Ford was born Oct. 2, 1924, in New Orleans, one of six children of John William and Ermine Ford. According to Michael Gross’s 1995 book, “Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women,” Mr. Ford was a boxer and football player at Notre Dame (his roommate was John Lujack, a Heisman Trophy winner) before transferring to midshipman school at Columbia University. Mrs. Ford, then Eileen Otte, was studying at Barnard College and was herself briefly a model. The couple met and eloped in 1944 as Mr. Ford was waiting to ship out with the Navy. In addition to Mrs. Ford and Katie Ford, Mr. Ford is survived by three other children, Jamie Ford Craft of Washington, Gerard William Ford Jr. of Palm Beach, Fla., and Lacey Williams of Los Angeles; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. In December, the modeling company was sold to an investment bank, Stone Tower Equity Partners. After serving on a supply ship based in Asia, Mr. Ford, upon his return to New York in 1946, resumed his studies, in accounting, at Columbia, while Mrs. Ford worked as a secretary for several model friends and eventually became their informal agent; when she became pregnant, he stepped in to manage the business and found that he liked it. “I’m not from New York,” Mr. Ford is quoted as saying in Mr. Gross’s book. “I thought models were the most incredible things in the world.”

Ford Models Inc
Models (Professional)
Deaths (Obituaries)


Newark Library Showcases Peruvian Community in New Jersey

Abstract: THERE were only 30 Peruvian families in Paterson when Daniel Jara arrived in 1963, a homesick 14-year-old sent by his parents to live with an older brother. Mr. Jara planned to return home to Surquillo, near Lima, after college, but stayed in New Jersey, becoming a citizen in 1979. Thousands of other Peruvian emigrants streaming into Paterson also stayed, forming a durable and vibrant community. Estimates of their number vary, but New Jersey has the third-highest concentration of Peruvians in the United States, after Florida and California, according to the 2007 Census, with sizable enclaves not only in Paterson, but also in East Newark, Harrison and Kearny. Many of the traditions kept alive in their hearts and homes will be on display Sept. 17 to Dec. 31 in a new exhibition at the Newark Public Library , “A Journey from Ancient Times: Peruvians in New Jersey.” Mr. Jara, who lives in Hackensack, is president of the Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the exhibition’s organizing committee. Special programming, including dance performances by the Peruvian Arts and Folklore School in Harrison and the Ballet Folklórico Perú of Paterson, will augment the exhibition. A film, “Soy Andina,” about two dancers who reconnect with their Peruvian heritage; a documentary about a Peruvian Catholic brotherhood in New York City; and a poetry reading with contemporary Peruvian poets are also planned. But its core consists of artifacts and mementos lent by New Jersey Peruvians, recalling the country they left: A wall hanging of alpaca. A quiver of handmade arrows. Carved dolls from the mystical realm of Machu Picchu. Reproductions of El Señor de los Milagros, Our Lord of Miracles, an iconic depiction of Jesus Christ, and bejeweled, two-foot-high candles used in processions commemorating the Lord of Miracles festival, held every October in many places where Peruvians live. Other items document the rise of the Peruvian community here. Mr. Jara provided a poster of the first Peruvian Parade in New Jersey, in 1986. Isabel Calero, an auditor for the city of Newark, brought a soccer uniform belonging to a friend’s uncle, who played in one of Paterson’s original Peruvian soccer clubs. Roberto Bustamante, a public information officer in the New Jersey attorney general’s office, lent old magazine and newspaper clippings. Peruvians have come to New Jersey from its coastal region and Andean highlands since the 1960s, but there has been a huge influx during the last 15 years, said Ingrid Betancourt, the librarian who curated the exhibition. “Paterson remains incredibly Peruvian, but the community is spreading into the suburbs,” she said. “We’re into the fourth generation now.” Regional differences, important in Peru, are set aside when the immigrants start new lives here, said Mr. Jara. “Here, the bond is about helping people back in Peru,” he said. “And everyone shares the country’s main values, which are family and religion.” The exhibition is part of the library’s annual Hispanic Heritage Celebration, begun in 1980. It will open with an evening reception on Thursday at the library, where the keynote speaker will be Carlos I. López Cano Vieira, a native of Lima and professor at the University of the Algarve in Portugal. “A Journey From Ancient Times: Peruvians in New Jersey,” Newark Public Library, 5 Washington Street, Sept. 17 through Dec. 31. Information: npl.org .

Peru
Art
Newark Public Library
Paterson (NJ)
Immigration and Emigration
Documentary Films and Programs
Hispanic-Americans


‘British Subjects’ Art Exhibition at the Neuberger Museum

Abstract: There are certain essential elements that make up any good exhibition. The first is a collection of exceptional objects, things that people really want to see. The second is a story that can give displays a meaningful social or cultural context. Yet it is surprising to me how many exhibitions at museums in the region lack one or the other of these elements. “British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1967-2009” is a thoughtful and handsome but in many ways imperfect exhibition showing at the Neuberger Museum of Art . The show has some excellent works and an intriguing and well-reasoned storyline, but as it is installed, it is somewhat confusing for the viewer. In fact, without the aid of a printed gallery guide, it is almost unintelligible. On a recent tour of the show, Louise Yelin, the exhibition curator and a professor of literature at Purchase College, said her original idea was to install the art thematically but that the exigencies of the space demanded a last-minute reorganization. That is perfectly understandable, for when shows are installed things never go fully as planned: works don’t sit well together or are too big or small for a space. But even if compromises are made during the installation, the exhibition still needs to be laid out and sign-posted so that the story is intelligible to the average viewer. It is not just a matter of knowing what is seen, but more importantly how the pieces fit together. “British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1967-2009” is ostensibly about how Britain became a multicultural society in the postwar period. The more than 60 works are pretty much two-dimensional, largely paintings and photographs by many of the brightest British artists of the past few decades on loan from museums and private collections across Britain. Several works are being shown in the United States for the first time. Not surprisingly, many of the artists are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Several of them, like Sutapa Biswas , an Indian-born and now British-based artist, openly celebrate their multicultural heritage in their work. Ms. Biswas’s painting, “Housewives with Steak-Knives” (1985), is a many-armed portrait of herself as the Indian goddess Kali brandishing a knife and severed head. Other artists, including Tracey Emin , who is the daughter of a British mother and Turkish-Cypriot father, treat the issue more obliquely. Rather than making a specific reference to her heritage, Ms. Emin’s work is introspective and at times confessional, concerned with a sense of self. Many of her works are about personal relationships, love and sex, including a pair of flashy neon sculptures installed in the main gallery. The most pertinent works in the show are those that invite us to consider the increasingly transnational nature of what it means to be British. The photographs of Yinka Shonibare , who was born in London to Nigerian parents, are exemplary in this regard. The artist — impersonating a dandy — inserts himself into scenes of Victorian-era leisure, where he stands out as the only black person in the picture. There is a tremendous amount of interesting portraiture and self-portraiture hanging in this exhibition, some of which seems to relate to the theme, some of which feels oddly out of place. Sarah Lucas, Sam Taylor-Wood and Jo Spence are all represented by important artworks, but they have more to do with gender issues and social pressures on women than with evolving ideas of being British. Images dealing with motherhood, homosexuality, sex, aging, racism, travel and more provide much to look at and help round out the show, presenting a vision of Britain as an increasingly diverse society that is accepting of minority cultures. Overall, though, the impression is one of a fairly random selection with the makings of something that could have had a more powerful effect if the choice of works and their installation were more focused.

Art
Neuberger Museum of Art
Westchester County (NY)
Great Britain


Investor Adds a New Twist to Williams’s Bizarre Tale

Abstract: The Williams Companies, the American pipeline operator, is getting the proxy fight it deserves. Keith Meister, an aggressive investor who recently quit as a director, is back challenging the board with a whole new slate. Because of a deadline, however, his hedge fund’s nominees are merely stand-ins until real candidates can be found. The year of merger and acquisition helter-skelter for Williams makes this new madness somehow fitting. Mr. Meister, the Carl Icahn protégé whose Corvex Management owns about 4 percent of the $21 billion Williams, said on Monday that he planned to put forward 10 of his employees to serve on the Williams board. If voted in, they would be replaced by independent directors whom Corvex intends to identify before shareholders submit their ballots on Nov. 23. This bizarre — and maybe even unprecedented — maneuver seems par for the course at Williams, which recently announced plans to add three new independent directors . Under its chief executive, Alan S. Armstrong, the company tried to collapse its byzantine financial structure by absorbing its master limited partnership. Then Energy Transfer Equity came along with a takeover bid that Williams resisted for some time. Ultimately, Mr. Armstrong caved and accepted the $33 billion offer last year. The deal quickly devolved into farce as oil prices collapsed. Energy Transfer twisted its way out, first by undermining its own transaction and then winning on a courtroom technicality this year. Mr. Armstrong, who was forced to back a sale he had opposed, found himself under siege but ultimately prevailed. For good measure, he resisted another, more recent takeover entreaty from a rival, Enterprise Products Partners. Corvex’s proxy by proxy only complicates matters further. As a director, Mr. Meister was in position to push for change from the inside. What is more, his position means he should have been well aware of the filing deadlines and lined up suitable board replacements in time. This unconventional method instead will require Corvex to produce worthy candidates and for shareholders to trust that the hedge fund employees will abdicate as they say they will. Given the odd nature of the approach, there is also the chance for a legal challenge. For Williams these days, nothing — not even a proxy fight — is straightforward.

Williams
Mergers and Acquisitions
Corvex Management
Shareholder Rights
Keith A Meister


When a Picture Is So Good It Deserves a Frame

Abstract: THE time is right for buying digital picture frames. More than 30 million digital cameras were sold in the United States last year alone, yet millions of snapshots taken with them are never printed. Instead, they remain stuck on computer hard drives, brought up only by an occasional slide show or screensaver. There is a better way to enjoy your photographs. An evaluation of nine frames found a few winners and more losers, based on subtle differences in style, technical ability and user interface. Most of the frames shared certain traits: bright L.C.D.’s, memory-card readers that support most digital-camera formats and, unfortunately, power cords. Because they are meant to display still images, these devices are not held to the same criteria as L.C.D.-TVs or computer monitors of the same size. Many frame makers persist in reporting those familiar L.C.D. specifications, like resolution, contrast ratio and maximum brightness, but they had little relevance in quality. A surprising number of frames can play MP3s and MPEG movies, and come with infrared remote controls. Those features, however, are often put in at the expense of user interface and visual performance. A truly advanced digital frame will connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi , Ethernet or dial-up telephone modem. When they go online, these frames can download photos that you have uploaded to photo-sharing sites, ones sent to you by other people or those shared over the Internet through photo-sharing sites like Flickr. But a frame should never be measured by its bonus features. The ideal main priority of a frame is its visual appeal and its simplicity. Connectivity is nice but optional. A well-known brand name does not necessarily mean better. At least four of the nine frames — Aluratek, Coby, PanDigital and Westinghouse — are based on the exact same blueprint: the same plastic housing with card reader, the same button array in the rear, the same software and the same ability to play MP3s and video files and connect U.S.B. devices. They differ in features, screen quality and frame elegance. The 14-inch Westinghouse DPF-1411 ($350) has a sleek ebony trim and no remote control — the dot of an infrared receiver on its face would mar the aesthetics, a Westinghouse representative said. The 15-inch PanDigital Digital Photo frame ($300) has a remote control and an equally beautiful wooden frame. Viewed head-on, the Westinghouse and the PanDigital have tolerably good screens. The PanDigital is easily viewed from many angles in the room, while the Westinghouse screen’s color and brightness are distorted when seen from the side. The two other frames in this family are cheaply made. The design of the 10-inch Coby DP-102 ($140) made it look too much like a PC peripheral. The 10.5-inch Aluratek ADMPF110 ($180) had wood-and-gilt trim that might be appealing to some and gaudy to others. Both have unattractive screens. Aluratek says its screen is high definition, but the images were pixilated and gritty. Digital Foci’s 8-inch Image Moments ($200) was in the middle of the pack. Its nice-looking frame made a good first impression, but the screen distorted photos, so that people and objects appeared smushed. The right balance of frame and screen is found in the nine-inch Philips Photo Frame 9FF2CME ($200). Philips designed and built its own product, emphasizing usefulness rather than extras. One exception to this approach is an internal battery that provides an hour of use, which is enough time to pass the frame around the living room, like a photo album. The frame’s brushed-steel bezel is slick yet versatile for home or office, and is attached magnetically; you can buy other bezels to suit rooms or moods. Where Philips is simple, frames from Kodak and Ceiva are sophisticated. Both are designed to display images you can upload to the Internet or send by e-mail or camera phone. Ceiva, which pioneered the connected frame concept more than seven years ago, said a lot of people have its frames connected to phone jacks. (They pay around $100 a year for this service.) In the middle of the night, the eight-inch Ceiva LF-4008 ($200) dials a central server and downloads pictures that you have uploaded or family members have shared. For people with broadband connections, the Ceiva LF-4008 connects by Ethernet or Wi-Fi (using adapters sold separately, $25 and $35 respectively). If you, friends or family members all have Ceiva frames and accounts, it is easy to blast photos to each other and even automate the flow. Unfortunately, the Ceiva looks like a digital appliance. Kodak took a more traditional route with the EasyShare EX811 ($230), a nondescript glossy black eight-inch frame. In this higher-end model, Kodak integrated Wi-Fi so the frame can connect to Kodak’s free EasyShare Gallery. If you have a Wi-Fi network, you can log in directly from the frame to retrieve photos from your stored albums. When albums are shared through the gallery, you can find them. Unlike the Ceiva, the Kodak frame does not alert you to incoming photos. Some day, all photo frames may be connected to the Internet, but the technique still has kinks. For the Ceiva and Kodak, you may need tech support getting started. One frame, the Wi-Fi Digital Frame from a start-up called eStarling, highlighted its photo sharing from Flickr and other Web services. But at $249, it was expensive for its size and its screen quality was poor. Digital photo frames do not have it easy. It is not enough for them to masquerade as ordinary glass-faced 5-by-7 or 8-by-10 frames — they must somehow justify their price. But straying too far from their traditional role will lessen their value, as will sacrificing picture quality for perks.

Cameras
Photography
Computers and the Internet


Cooperstown to Honor Baseball Pioneer Bud Fowler

Abstract: When the mayor of Cooperstown, N.Y., Jeff Katz, searched for an appropriate street to dedicate in Bud Fowler’s memory, he decided on one that led to Doubleday Field, the quaint brick stadium a baseball’s throw from the Hall of Fame. An old survey of the village indicated that the street had not been named, Katz said. Like the street itself, Fowler had gone largely unnoticed, despite being the first African-American known to have played for a white professional baseball team. That happened when Fowler pitched for the Lynn, Mass., Live Oaks of the International Association in 1878. He played 10 seasons and batted .308 as a pitcher, catcher and second baseman for integrated teams in the high levels of the minor leagues. Fowler played for teams in 21 states and territories, as well as in Canada, said Jeff Laing, whose biography of Fowler will be published in June. The dedication of Bud Fowler Way on Saturday comes the same week as Monday’s anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, when all major leaguers will wear Robinson’s No. 42. Laing and others who have studied Fowler’s life hope that the dedication will encourage baseball fans to learn about his legacy as a trailblazing player and, later in his career, as an organizer, entrepreneur and marketer of African-American teams.The street naming will “raise the profile of the Negro leagues and black baseball in general,” said Bobby Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. “And Bud Fowler is a key figure not only in black baseball but also baseball history over all,” Kendrick said. Kendrick spoke from the museum last week before heading to the premiere of “42,” the feature film about Robinson. Some baseball historians believe that Fowler deserves acclaim — and should join Robinson as a member of the Hall of Fame — for his record and for prevailing in the face of consistent discrimination. Several white teams forced Fowler off their rosters, sometimes before he had even played a game. Image Bud Fowler, in the middle of the back row, with his Keokuk teammates in 1885. This is one of two known images of Fowler. Credit National Baseball Hall of Fame Library “Even though he never played major league baseball, he deserves to be in as a pioneer of baseball,” Laing said. The spotlight now on Fowler coincides with the recent centennial of his death on Feb. 26, 1913, in Frankfort, N.Y. An annual conference on 19th-century baseball that the Society for American Baseball Research will hold at the Hall of Fame this weekend will include the presentation of a paper on Fowler by Hugh MacDougall, the Cooperstown historian. He researched Fowler because Fowler grew up there, under the name John W. Jackson. While Robinson is considered to have broken baseball’s color barrier, the first black player on a major league team was Moses Fleetwood Walker, a catcher with the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association in 1884. The legacies of Robinson, Walker and Fowler are intertwined. The so-called gentlemen’s agreement among team owners in 1887 — which barred blacks from playing on white pro clubs, until Branch Rickey signed Robinson to a contract in 1945 — can be traced to Fowler. Playing for the Binghamton, N.Y., Bingos in 1887, he was second in batting average in the International Association when the team released him, ostensibly so he could join an all-black team, Laing said. Newspaper reports subsequently revealed that Fowler’s white teammates had threatened to strike over his presence on the Bingos, and the association decided after the season to refrain from signing other black players and from re-signing those already under contract, Laing said. The two major leagues — the American Association and the National League — soon followed suit. “I think the reason they did it was they thought that blacks were more trouble than they were worth,” Laing said. Fowler would play through 1895 with integrated teams in leagues that did not adhere to the ban. He also played for all-black teams, attempted to organize an all-black league in Texas and even formed a business-sponsored team, the Page Fence Giants, in Michigan in 1895. The players traveled in parlor cars, and at each destination, they mounted bicycles to lead bystanders on a parade to the ballpark, MacDougall wrote in his paper. Much of Fowler’s life, including his reasons for adopting a new name, is shrouded in mystery. What is known comes from newspaper accounts of the day, because Fowler left behind no letters, diaries or other papers. He did not marry or have children; his sister, Harriet, in whose home Fowler died, was also childless, and no family have been located. Only two images of Fowler are known to exist; both are photographs of him with his teammates. He died in poverty, and his grave in Frankfort’s Oak View Cemetery was unmarked until 1987, when a committee with the Society for American Baseball Research sponsored a memorial stone and held a dedication ceremony there. The ceremony in Cooperstown on Saturday will, in its own way, help to bring Fowler’s legacy back to life.

Baseball
Bud Fowler
Jackie Robinson
Brooklyn Dodgers
Cooperstown NY
Black People,African-Americans
Geographic Names


Claims of Secret Arms Sales Rattle Ukraine’s Leaders

Abstract: KIEV, Ukraine — With the Ukrainian government reeling from a financial crisis and internal power struggles, the country’s pro-Russian opposition has been leveling potentially damaging accusations of improper arms sales to Georgia during that country’s brief war with Russia . And Russia’s leaders, furious with Ukraine’s president over his pro-Western leanings and vocal support of Georgia, have personally weighed in, making accusations of their own. It may not matter that the opposition has provided no conclusive evidence of the claims, despite weeks of pronouncements that the evidence — once released — will be explosive. The claims alone, which have made headlines, have nonetheless helped to further undermine the government’s authority at a time of heightened political instability, while also roiling Ukraine’s already tense relationship with neighboring Russia. At issue are accusations that the government of President Viktor A. Yushchenko, who supported Georgia during the crisis, covertly supplied it with weapons before and soon after the fighting broke out in August, and sold tanks and an antiaircraft system to the Georgians at reduced prices. A parliamentary commission set up by Ukraine’s opposition parties has been investigating the claims, which also include allegations that the president decommissioned equipment sorely needed by Ukraine’s military and gave it to Georgia. President Yushchenko has flatly denied any wrongdoing, describing the investigation as nothing more than a political show. He has indicated that Ukraine has every right to sell weapons to any country, including Georgia, that is not under international sanctions. The opposition lawmakers say the point is not whether Ukraine had a right to sell weapons to Georgia. They say the government secretly sent the arms, bypassing disclosure rules in order to avoid antagonizing Russia. They also say that some of the proceeds of the sales have gone not to the Treasury, but to people in Mr. Yushchenko’s circle, even as Ukraine’s military is in dire need of funding. “We are on the verge of a huge political scandal that could have immense political repercussions,” said Vitaly I. Konovalyuk, a member of Parliament who leads the commission. Mr. Konovalyuk is from the leading opposition party, the Party of Regions, which seeks warmer ties with the Kremlin. The charges come at a time of a deep economic downturn and political discord in Ukraine, with a seemingly intractable power struggle between President Yushchenko and his main pro-Western rival, Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko. The Parliament has often been stalemated, and President Yushchenko’s popularity has plunged. Russia’s senior officials have been fueling the dispute. Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, called the alleged weapons sales a “crime against the Russian and Ukrainian people” in a meeting with Ms. Tymoshenko in October. The Kremlin has long opposed Mr. Yushchenko because of his pro-Western bent and was infuriated by his vocal backing of Georgia during the crisis. The leadership of both Ukraine and Georgia took power in the so-called color revolutions and both want to join NATO. Russia has vociferously opposed such a step. Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, last month accused countries that supplied Georgia with weapons of helping to provoke the August conflict. “Unfortunately, several countries close to us participated in this,” he said. “We will never forget this, and, for sure, we will consider this when formulating policy.” Last week, Gazprom, the state-owned natural gas monopoly once headed by Mr. Medvedev, announced that it might double the price of gas for Ukraine if it failed to pay off $2.4 billion in debt by Jan. 1. Two years ago, in a similar dispute, Gazprom turned off the gas to Ukraine. (Gazprom has said it will try to refrain from doing so again this time.) Ukraine was left with huge stockpiles of weapons and military equipment after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, and has relied on arms exports as a major source of income. In 2007, Ukraine sold Georgia 74 T-72 tanks, some armored combat vehicles, a BUK M1 surface-to-air missile system, two 2S7 self-propelled artillery guns, among other weapons, according to the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said in a statement that the country’s last shipment of military hardware arrived at the Georgian Black Sea port in Poti on Aug. 8, the day the war started, but that the cargo “did not include weaponry.” Rather, the statement said, “pyrotechnical equipment” for aircraft emergency and fire prevention systems were delivered. Though Ukraine’s weapons export system has been criticized for lack of oversight, most analysts say controls over weapons sales have improved since the 1990s, when the country was a main source of weapons sent to conflict zones around the world. President Yushchenko has said that Ukraine’s arms shipments did not violate any laws and has indicated that Ukraine will continue to sell weapons to Georgia. Ukraine also sells military hardware to Russia. “Ukraine conducts military-technical cooperation with countries that are not under international restrictions,” the president said this month. “We will trade with those whose relations with us correspond to our national interests.” Though its inquiry began two months ago, the opposition’s parliamentary committee has not yet released a full report on its findings, despite regular statements in the Ukrainian news media from Mr. Konovalyuk about the explosiveness of the information. Ms. Tymoshenko, who rarely hesitates to snipe at Mr. Yushchenko, has remained largely silent, and no representatives from her faction sit on Mr. Konovalyuk’s commission.

Ukraine
Russia
Georgia (Georgian Republic)
Arms Sales Abroad
International Relations


Congress Votes to Stop Stockpiling Oil

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Groping for a quick response to rising gas prices, Congress voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to order the Bush administration to stop depositing oil in a national reserve even though lawmakers predicted the impact for consumers would be modest at best. “Is it a giant step? No,” said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, a leading proponent of the idea of trying to influence the price of gas by redirecting supplies from the reserve to the commercial market. “But is it a step finally, at long last, in the right direction? It is.” Despite initial resistance from the White House, the Senate voted 97 to 1 to stop putting 70,000 barrels of oil a day in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve through the remainder of this year; the House later approved a similar bill by a vote of 385 to 25. Senators of both parties said the House bill could clear the Senate within days and be sent to the president. The rapid action demonstrated lawmakers’ anxiety about election-year howls from constituents who are straining the family budget at the gas pump. It also was a rare break between Congressional Republicans and Mr. Bush as his usual allies voted en masse for the measure even though the White House has portrayed filling the reserve as a security issue and a way to guard against supply disruptions. The administration reiterated skepticism about the impact of the bill on Tuesday, with one spokesman, Scott M. Stanzel, saying “there is no evidence that it will affect the price of oil or gasoline in a meaningful way.” But he said Mr. Bush, who left on a trip to the Middle East, would not veto it. The margins were adequate to easily override him if he did. In an interview conducted Tuesday for Yahoo and Politico, a Washington journal concentrating on politics, Mr. Bush said he was open to the idea of withholding oil deposits to try to encourage a price decrease at the pump. At the same time, he said, both the government and consumers must do more to address the rise in gasoline prices. “The truth of the matter is that in order for there to be a substantial change either consumers have to change their habits — which we’re encouraging through alternative tax of automobiles — or there has to be an increase of supply,” he said in the interview. Estimates of the impact of suspending the deposits varied. Some economists predicted the impact would be negligible, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi, citing others who have studied the issue, said prices could drop 5 to 24 cents a gallon. But Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the measure was meaningless. “If all the members of the House would go out onto the steps and clap our hands three times and say, ‘Down prices, down prices,’ that would have as much impact as passing this bill,” he said. In any event, lawmakers cautioned that any price decline from suspending the oil deposits would be temporary and that the plan pushed by Democrats was not a long-term solution. “They have just a one-shot bill here, and it’s pretty good, but it isn’t an energy policy,” said Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the senior Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Before the Senate voted to halt the deposits into the reserve, which is now near 97 percent capacity, lawmakers voted 56 to 42 against a Republican energy proposal that pushed for greater domestic production of oil by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other coastal areas to drilling. The measure fell 18 votes short of the 60 needed, with 6 Republicans joining Democrats in opposing the measure. Republicans said that they had been willing to back some investment in alternative energy and higher automobile mileage standards, but that Democrats refused to consider tapping new domestic sources of oil as part of a broad energy approach. “We have offered a plan that would increase supply,” said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas. “And it would be from our own resources, so that America would not have to depend on foreign sources for our energy needs.” But Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, said it was too late for “us to produce our way out of the problems that we now have.” Mr. Reid said he hoped, within the next week, to start consideration of a Democratic energy plan. But even if he can bring it to the floor, the proposal is unlikely to overcome a filibuster by Republicans objecting to new taxes on oil company profits to pay for alternative energy investment. And Mr. Reid said he was not inclined to pursue separately another idea that has bipartisan support — an effort to rein in speculation in the oil markets. A group of Democratic senators also sought to put pressure on Saudi Arabia, where Mr. Bush will be visiting this week, as they called on the Saudis to increase their oil production or face the possibility of Congress blocking a pending arms deal. “We are saying to the Saudis that if you don’t help us, why should we be helping you?” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “We are saying that the relationship has to be a two-way street. We are saying that we need real relief and we need it quickly.”

Senate
Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Bush George W


India’s Upper House Approves Anticorruption Agency

Abstract: NEW DELHI — India’s upper house of Parliament passed a measure on Tuesday to create an independent anticorruption agency, after more than four decades of debate and controversy over how to curb corruption. The vote all but ensured that the measure, called the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, would become law. Setting up such an agency was the central demand of the social activist Anna Hazare in 2011, when his fasts and protests electrified the country and brought thousands of people into the streets. But the bill stalled in the upper house for two years, stymied by squabbling among India’s political parties and by deep uneasiness among senior politicians about creating an agency with broad authority to investigate them. Mr. Hazare drew attention to it again last week with renewed fasts in his village in Maharashtra state. The political calculus also changed last week when the main governing party, the Indian National Congress, suffered severe defeats in four major state elections at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Congress Party got an especially unwelcome surprise in Delhi, the state that includes the capital, where it was also outpolled by an upstart group, the Common Man Party, whose sole issue was a promise to end corruption. The national governing coalition led by the Congress Party has been buffeted by repeated allegations of corruption, including one involving licenses to mine coal that directly involved Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Other scandals revolved around the allocation of telecommunications spectrum and the construction of facilities for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. With national elections scheduled for next spring, Congress Party leaders sought to change the party’s image this week by pushing the anticorruption measure through Parliament. The debate before the vote on Tuesday was unusually cordial and free of disruptions. Arun Jaitley, the leader of the opposition in the upper house, hailed the measure as an effort to “restore the credibility of the political system.” The bill goes next to the lower house, where it is expected to pass overwhelmingly this week. After news of the bill’s passage reached him, Mr. Hazare addressed his jubilant supporters and thanked the members of Parliament who helped pass the bill. He promised to continue his fast until the lower house passed the bill.

India
Corruption
Anna Hazare
Election
Legislation


How the Family of a Dissident Fled China

Abstract: Gao Zhisheng, one of China ’s most irrepressible dissidents, began the day of Jan. 9 the same way as most days since security officials had begun watching him around the clock. He and his wife, Geng He, ate a breakfast of soy milk, fried eggs and peanuts. Mr. Gao left the apartment to run some errands. By the time he returned, his wife and two children were gone. With only the clothes they were wearing, roughly $60 in cash and, out of habit, their keys, the three embarked upon a harrowing odyssey orchestrated by human rights activists that began in the bitter cold of northern Beijing and ended, seven days and some 2,000 miles later, in the humid safety of Thailand. “I had no time to think,” Ms. Geng, whose children are 16 and 5, said. “I didn’t have a watch. I had no concept of time. All I knew was that we had to move forward. We couldn’t go back.” She spoke during an interview late last month in New York, where she and her children settled after arriving in the United States in March. Ms. Geng’s tale stands out not just because it involves a cinematic escape, with elements like stalled motorcycles and nonstop travel with little food or sleep. It is remarkable, human rights activists say, because it reveals how China uses family members of dissidents as leverage against them. And it shows the extreme measures a small number of political opponents will take to deny the authorities that leverage. Ms. Geng insists, though, that her husband knew nothing of her plans. Mr. Gao said in earlier interviews that security officials used threats against his children to extract a humiliating public confession from him in 2006. So the departure of his family gave him greater leeway to challenge the leadership, though at a high cost: he has not been seen or heard from since Feb. 4, when the security forces hauled him away. His family’s escape upended the way security officials managed the provocative Mr. Gao, a human rights lawyer who has embraced causes including the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong, displaced urban residents and the Christian underground church . He issued angry manifestos calling for the end of Communist Party rule. Since his release from prison in 2006, Mr. Gao had been allowed to live a superficially normal life in Beijing. But he was shadowed by plainclothes guards, and he said he felt constrained by the threat of retribution against his family if he violated the terms of his parole. Though he has not been charged with a new crime, he has vanished altogether since three months ago. Mr. Gao’s disappearance has become a delicate diplomatic issue ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement on June 4. Laura Tischler, a State Department spokeswoman, said that American diplomats had not yet met with Ms. Geng. But she said that a senior American official discussed the case on March 31 with high-ranking Chinese officials in Beijing, and that State Department officials had raised the case, most recently on April 15, with the Chinese Embassy in Washington. “The United States is deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of well-known human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng,” Ms. Tischler said. “We have raised our concerns about Mr. Gao’s whereabouts and well-being repeatedly, both in Washington and in Beijing.” Congress is watching, too. With Ms. Geng in the gallery, Senator Byron L. Dorgan , a North Dakota Democrat, saluted her courage during a Senate floor speech on April 23 and warned that Mr. Gao, a “devout Christian,” had been thrust into an “extremely grave” situation. “There are many today that languish in dark cells, dark cells of Chinese prisons, just because they spoke out to defend the rights of others,” said Mr. Dorgan, who is the chairman of a Congressional commission responsible for monitoring China’s human rights record. “None have done so more than Mr. Gao.” Beijing officials, however, say that nothing untoward has happened to the Gaos. “There’s no political persecution or limits on the freedom of the family,” Qin Gang, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said at a briefing in Beijing in March. “We’ve handled the case in strict accordance with the law.” In response to inquiries about Mr. Gao’s whereabouts, the Chinese authorities have not furnished further information and have not acknowledged that he was taken into custody. Mr. Gao, 45, was once a populist litigator battling corruption and land seizures, and he was recognized by the Ministry of Justice in 2001 as one of China’s 10 best lawyers. But he became more active handling cases of police abuse and religious freedom for Christian churches and the Falun Gong. In 2006, he rallied grass-roots organizers around China to go on a hunger strike to protest the way security forces treated another activist. He was later arrested and convicted of sedition. In December 2006, he was given a suspended sentence because, the authorities said, he confessed to his crimes and provided information about other dissidents. The next year, Mr. Gao said his confession had been coerced. Interrogators threatened to punish his children and deny them an education unless he cooperated, he said in April 2007. “In the end I decided I could not haggle about my children’s future,” he said. He was tortured, Ms. Geng and human rights watchdogs say, with electric prods, bamboo sticks lancing his genitals, and cigarette burns to his eyelids. Mr. Gao continues to suffer from ailments that Ms. Geng attributed to his “zhemo,” or torment, a word she used repeatedly during the interview, which was conducted in Mandarin at the offices of Human Rights in China , a watchdog group. “My husband may be in his 40s, but he’s got the body of someone in his 60s,” she said. For Ms. Geng, the turning point came last September, when her daughter, Geng Gege, now 16, stopped going to school. The teenager felt ostracized by her peers; they felt that her father’s status was the reason everyone’s cellphone had been confiscated, and why the police shadowed her to and from class. “Her classmates would bully her and say, ‘Your father is involved in organized crime,’ ” Ms. Geng recalled, her voice trembling. “She could not handle it anymore and she tried to kill herself.” Because of her daughter and her 5-year-old son, Gao Tianyu, Ms. Geng decided to flee. And on Jan. 9, when she got the signal from activists that it was time, she hurriedly scribbled a brief note for her husband and left it on the dining table. It read, “I am taking Gege to school,” she said. “I did not tell my husband because I didn’t think he could take it,” she said. The journey was fraught with danger and paranoid moments. The family was always moving, usually at night, via overnight trains, overnight tour buses and motorcycles, and on foot. Only once did they stop overnight at someone’s house. The most trying moment, Ms. Geng said, came when, for security reasons, the guides separated her from her son for several hours. Their motorcycles could not make it up a slippery hill, Ms. Geng said, and she got into an argument with her daughter. “She said, ‘I’ll go to jail, I don’t care! I can’t do this anymore,’ ” Ms. Geng recalled, continuing, “I begged her not to give up, because we had to be reunited with Tianyu. I was worried that I would be separated from my child forever.” Ultimately, the three made it to Thailand, where they were granted refugee status, facilitated by international rights groups including China Aid , a Christian organization based in Midland, Tex., which has sought to promote Christianity and protect underground church leaders in China. Ms. Geng says she is still adjusting to her new life, settling in an apartment in Fresh Meadows, Queens, with the assistance of the American government. Her children are taking English classes but are worried about when they will see their father again. One night last month, Ms. Geng woke at 3 a.m.; the light was still on. Her daughter was staring at a computer, donated by a friend. The screensaver image was Mr. Gao. “She said, ‘I just want to say a few things to my dad,’ ” Ms. Geng recalled, sobbing. “ ‘Go back to sleep, Mom.’ ”

China
Gao Zhisheng
Freedom and Human Rights


District of Columbia Told to Pay Lawyers in Gun Suit

Abstract: The District of Columbia has been ordered to pay more than $1 million in lawyers’ fees in a historic gun case that was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court . Dick Heller sued the city in 2003 over its ban on handgun ownership and the Supreme Court overturned the ban in June 2008, saying it violated the Second Amendment. A federal judge on Thursday awarded his lawyers $1,137,072 in fees and expenses. The lawyers had argued they should be awarded $3.1 million. Lawyers for the city said the figure should be closer to $840,000.

Supreme Court
Gun Control
Decisions and Verdicts
Washington (DC)


Guns and Random Death: Be Careful Out There

Abstract: The bullets were meant for him, but Andre Santana ducked in time. Or maybe the gunmen were just lousy shots. Whatever, he lived and a woman died, having committed the sole crime of walking along the wrong street at the wrong time. By his own account in a Manhattan courtroom, Mr. Santana was a lowlife, in a city with more than its share of lowlifes. He sold marijuana on the streets of Inwood, in northern Manhattan. Mostly he dealt in “nickels and dimes,” he said, meaning small amounts worth $5 and $10. “I was just a worker — nothing big,” he told a State Supreme Court jury this month. On a Saturday in May 2006, three men approached Mr. Santana looking to buy drugs. He met them later inside a building on Vermilyea Avenue. He brought along two friends, just in case. That precaution proved worthless. One of the three buyers pulled a gun, put it to Mr. Santana’s head, and grabbed the marijuana. Then the three took off. When Mr. Santana emerged from the building, he said, someone fired a shot at him. For some reason, he ran after the stickup men, even though he was unarmed. He chased them a couple of blocks to Broadway. He could see that they were headed toward a subway station at Dyckman Street. “At the heat of the moment, I was extremely upset,” Mr. Santana said. “And if I didn’t catch ’em, I wanted the police to catch ’em. I didn’t care.” He certainly did care when three more shots were fired his way. He ducked between two parked cars. He was O.K. But “when I got up,” he said, “that’s when I saw the lady got shot.” “I heard her scream,” he said. One of his friends came over and held the woman. “He gently put her down,” Mr. Santana said. That day, he swore, put an end to his drug dealing. “I changed my life around,” he said. Now 24, Mr. Santana says he works in a window factory. “The lady” who screamed had a name: Leslie Bloom. She was 62 and worked for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services. Inwood was her neighborhood. On that Saturday when the bullet intended for Mr. Santana ended her life, all she was doing was taking a stroll. We hear repeatedly that murders in New York have declined to relatively low levels not seen in decades. That is no doubt true. But this is still a city with more than its share not only of lowlifes but also dopes with guns who shoot and don’t care where the bullets land. The carnage goes on, a relentless tattoo, in every borough. Last month, Tavin Alves, 16, heard a ruckus outside his bedroom window in Bushwick, Brooklyn. When he looked out, he was fatally shot in the head by a stray bullet. Urtez Burnette, a 22-year-old immigrant from Guyana, met the same fate in July when he leaned out his window in Far Rockaway, Queens. In the Bronx, Kirsys Rodriguez, 12, caught one in the back in May, but lived. On Staten Island, Victoria Evans was hit in the leg while jumping rope on Labor Day weekend. She is all of 4 years old. Need any more examples? There are plenty of them. At least sometimes the shooters are caught. That’s how Mr. Santana wound up testifying in the Leslie Bloom case. A few months after she was killed, three men in their early 20s were arrested and charged with murder, robbery and weapons possession. Two of them accepted plea bargains: Kwame Edwards was sentenced to 20 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter, and Dana Booth to 14 years for first-degree robbery. BUT for reasons lost on everyone in the courtroom, given the strong evidence against him, Jameek Stilley chose to roll the dice with a jury. He lost. A few days ago, jurors needed little time to find him guilty of second-degree murder. Mr. Stilley, 21, could receive 25 years to life. He has a baby daughter. By the time he gets out — if he ever gets out — she might be middle-aged or older. The wreckage that his recklessness caused, the stupidity and the sheer waste of it all leave Ms. Bloom’s sister, Deborah, sad but also “frustrated and angry.” “It’s not just being angry at them for what they did,” she said. “It’s being angry at them for destroying their lives. It’s anger at why we haven’t been able to do better as a society.” And Andre Santana, the man who says drug dealing is behind him? He told the jury that he felt “very bad” about the shooting. “To tell you the truth,” he testified, “for a few months I blamed myself.” If only he hadn’t chased those three men.


Bombs Kill 14 Civilians in Afghanistan

Abstract: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Two bomb explosions in southern Afghanistan killed 14 people, including 3 children at play, Afghan officials said Thursday, as mounting violence before next week’s elections exacts an increasing toll on civilians caught up in the broadening war with the Taliban . Dawoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Helmand provincial authorities, said a roadside bomb exploded next to a van carrying civilians, killing 11, including two women, in the province’s Gereshk district. “The Taliban have planted mines everywhere,” Mr. Ahmadi said. “That’s why most of the time, civilians are the targets.” The Taliban offered no immediate comment on that explosion or another in Mirwais Mina, near Kandahar, that killed three children. Some reports said the children, aged between 8 and 12, were playing with a bomb they found at the side of a road. Abdul Ahmad, a police official, said it seemed the bomb had been recently planted “in an area where children and people are walking freely.” An American serving with NATO forces in the south was also reported killed Thursday, The Associated Press reported, quoting a military press release that attributed the death to ”a direct fire attack.”

Taliban
Afghanistan War (2001- )
Bombs and Explosives


Donald Trump’s New York: The City of the ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ Set

Abstract: When he ventured out of Trump Tower for a meal with his family on Tuesday, President-elect Donald J. Trump went to the “21” Club , a former speakeasy on West 52nd Street where cast-iron lawn jockeys line the balcony above the front door. It is all of four blocks from Trump Tower. But convenience was not necessarily the reason. The place is one of Mr. Trump’s regular hangouts. He has long had a favorite table there, one strategically placed for maximum visibility. His father was a regular, too, and has a plaque at what was his preferred table. “The Apprentice,” the reality television show that greatly elevated Mr. Trump’s celebrity, included a scene shot in the wine cellar. The restaurant is a stop on the see-and-be-seen circuit that has helped define Mr. Trump’s New York City for more than 40 years. It is a circuit shaped not so much by discriminating taste as by celebrity culture — the right nightspots and parties, Broadway openings, red carpets, paparazzi with their cameras and flash guns. Image A plaque near the favorite “21” table of Mr. Trump’s father. Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times In some ways, Mr. Trump’s New York is the city of the “Bonfire of the Vanities” set. In the 1970s, he spent late nights at Studio 54, the notorious disco for the rich and famous. More recently, when he treated Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, to pizza, he took her to a Famous Famiglia on Broadway, a chain restaurant where most pizza-savvy New Yorkers would be unlikely to dine. Mr. Trump is a New York power broker, but he has tended to shun the kinds of places that power brokers are known to frequent. He is not likely to be seen digging into a $26 omelet at the Loews Regency , the Park Avenue way station for the power-breakfast crowd. “He was never in that group, although he’s friends with many of the people who go there,” said Matt Rich, a publicist who worked for many years as a consultant for Mr. Trump’s Miss Universe pageant. Nor will the next president of the United States be spotted pushing a fork into a $34 niçoise salad at Michael’s, the West 55th Street restaurant for power-lunch types “I don’t know that he’s ever crossed the threshold,” Mr. Rich said. Image The couple with their son, Barron, at Rockefeller Center in 2011 for the Christmas tree lighting. Credit Gary Gershoff/Getty Images for NBC What Mr. Trump appreciates as much as anything is an entrance. “He’d go out to be seen for maximum impact,” said Jonathan Marder, a publicist with a long list of A-list connections. “Don’t expect him to find an out-of-the-way little restaurant, unless it’s some place he owns.” Like many New Yorkers and visitors to the city, Mr. Trump enjoys Broadway, but he has yet to see one of the most highly regarded and popular shows of recent years — “Hamilton,” the hip-hop-infused take on the nation’s founding. President Obama has attended two Broadway performances of the musical. Vice President-elect Mike Pence went to a performance on Friday evening, where he was called out in the audience by the actor who played Aaron Burr and urged to work on behalf of all Americans. Mr. Trump took to Twitter the next morning to denounce the episode . He went to a different kind of show, “Kinky Boots,” in 2013, early in its run. He was photographed at “Come Fly Away” on Broadway in 2010, and he and his wife, Melania, were seen at “American Idiot,” also in 2010, to name just two Broadway openings he attended. “They’re both New Yorkers, and he likes the razzle-dazzle,” said Daryl Roth, the lead producer of “Kinky Boots.” (Mr. Trump named her husband, the real estate developer Steven Roth, an economic adviser to his campaign in August. Mr. Roth was quoted in September as saying he had not spent time on the campaign.) Image Shaker Naini has greeted guests like Mr. Trump at “21” for decades, calling the regulars “movers and shakers.” Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber said in a BBC interview this week that he had persuaded Mr. Trump not to attend the opening of “School of Rock” last December, as his presidential campaign was accelerating. The show’s publicists had already issued a news release naming him as one of the first-nighters expected to be there. The list also included the musicians Sting and Stevie Nicks; the actress Helen Mirren; and William J. Bratton, the city’s police commissioner at the time. The concern was that Mr. Trump’s presence would prove distracting. In the days since he was elected president, with potential cabinet picks marching into Trump Tower every day, Mr. Trump is not getting out much. He really does not have to: Everything he needs is in his own building. “This is not like a normal situation,” said the celebrity photographer Patrick McMullan. “Here you have a person who was a regular New Yorker and did New York things and now he is the president-elect, which at best is an interim thing. Can he be random and go to ‘21’? Yes. But as far as a gala tonight at the Plaza, I wouldn’t expect it. Perhaps before, he would have gone, but now it’s all different.” But from images taken over the years by photographers like Mr. McMullan, Mr. Trump’s New York seems confined within a limited circle — places in Midtown Manhattan with which he is closely identified, like the Plaza Hotel, a property he once owned. And restaurants like “21.” Image Lawn jockeys at “21.” Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times Shaker Naini, who has greeted guests at “21” for 40 years from his post by the front door, remembered Mr. Trump’s arrival on Tuesday, just as he remembered the first time he arrived, in the early 1980s. On that occasion, Mr. Naini said, another regular made the introduction — Roy M. Cohn , a widely feared lawyer who represented Mr. Trump for more than a decade before his death from AIDS in 1986. Mr. Cohn “walked in the door and said, ‘This is Mr. Trump,’” Mr. Naini recalled. “We already knew his father. Table 53.” Table 53, also a favorite of the singer Andy Williams and the actor Alan King, is in the “17 section.” The restaurant has sections for each of the three brownstones it occupies. The “17 section” is “what is known as the quieter side of the dining room,” said Avery A. Fletcher, the restaurant’s director of sales and marketing. Donald Trump found his place in the “21 section,” across the room — “where,” Mr. Naini said, “he’d see everyone, and everyone would pass him.” Image Mr. Trump at a U.S.O. gala in 2010. Credit Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for USO of Metropolitan New York “It’s the movers and shakers,” he said. “The same crowd that’s here one day, the next day they’re at the Four Seasons or Le Cirque.” But the Four Seasons restaurant closed in July, and Mr. Trump’s last appearance at Le Cirque was in October, when he attended a fund-raiser for his campaign. Carlo Mantica, a chief executive of the company that owns Le Cirque and other restaurants, said that Mr. Trump was partial to the Dover sole, listed at $80 on the menu, and the pasta primavera, which, because of a tradition dating to the 1970s, is not listed at all. Those who know simply ask for it. At the “21,” Table 11, Mr. Trump’s favorite, was too small for the president-elect’s party for dinner on Tuesday, and he was seated instead at Table 14. The restaurant’s website says that Table 14 was a favorite of Frank Sinatra, Mayor Edward I. Koch and Nancy Reagan. To that list, Mr. Naini added Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Image Among the items in the collection of toys suspended from the “21” ceiling are a model of a PT-109 torpedo boat, a gift from President John F. Kennedy, and a model of Air Force One, a gift from President Bill Clinton. Credit Emon Hassan for The New York Times No one at the restaurant would say how far in advance the Trumps had made their reservation for that night. Mr. Naini said that Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, had arrived first. Like Mr. Trump’s father, Mr. Kushner’s father “was a regular, too,” Mr. Naini said. Mr. Trump arrived a few minutes later with his wife; his daughter Tiffany; and two of his sons. Other diners said the president-elect had a burger with fries. Mr. Naini said that as Mr. Trump left, the president-elect tapped him on the arm and said, “I left a tip for you guys on the bill.” That raised an after-the-fact question: Did Mr. Trump get Mr. Naini’s vote? Mr. Naini, in an interview on Thursday, would not say. “That’s a personal thing,” he said.

Donald Trump
Celebrity
Restaurant
Party
NYC
21 Club Manhattan NY Restaurant


Michelle Rhee, Ex-Schools Chief in Washington, Re-emerges

Abstract: Ever since Michelle Rhee resigned under pressure as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools in October, rumors have flown about her next move. Would she relocate to Newark to spend the $100 million gift from Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to fix its troubled schools? Would she become education commissioner of New Jersey or Florida? Ms. Rhee, one of the best recognized, and most polarizing, figures in public education, answered Monday with timed appearances on “Oprah” and the cover of Newsweek. The media splash said as much about her ability to market herself and her brand of school reform as the details of her next chapter. She announced she would lead a new advocacy group, StudentsFirst , setting a highly ambitious target of raising $1 billion to promote “transformative reform,” primarily by backing laws and political candidates, from local school boards to Congress. The group will solicit memberships for as little as $5 per month, but it will also take advantage of changes in campaign finance laws that allow it to broadcast political advertisements paid for by rich individuals and corporations. “The ultimate goal is to shift the power dynamic of education in this country, which I think for far too long has been dominated by special interests, whether the teachers’ unions or textbook manufacturers,” Ms. Rhee, 40, said in an interview. One issue she would tackle, she said, was the practice of laying off teachers, according to their contracts, by seniority rather than classroom effectiveness. “We won’t shy away from the fight,” she said. “We’re a little too obsessed right now with harmony in public education. How can we all come together and collaborate? That’s been happening the last 30 years, and because we’ve been trying to smooth each other’s feathers over and make the adults happy,” students have suffered, she added. Ms. Rhee’s three-year tenure as head of Washington’s public schools was marked by rising test scores and the end of a long trend of declining enrollment by families fleeing dismal schools. But her blunt style also made enemies. She fired hundreds of principals and teachers. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine wielding a broom to symbolize her desire to sweep away teachers’ tenure. When Washington voters unseated Mayor Adrian M. Fenty in a primary election this fall, which some saw also as a referendum on Ms. Rhee, she jumped before she was pushed. Since then, Ms. Rhee said, she has spoken with governors, mayors and state board of education members interested in hiring her. She declined to be specific. Rather than accepting one, she decided that “what’s really missing is a national organization pushing a national agenda that has the heft to put the pressure on the politicians,” she said. Reactions to her new group and its enormous fund-raising goal took stock of her outsize public image. “If there’s anyone who can raise a billion for this, it’s going to be Michelle,” said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, recalling that Ms. Rhee was greeted like a rock star at a political event his group hosted a couple of years ago in Denver. Joel I. Klein, the departing New York City schools chancellor, credited Ms. Rhee’s outspokenness and media presence — she is a principal figure in the hit education documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” — with raising the profile of education issues. “I never thought I’d say this, but education has become sexy in America, partly because of Michelle,” Mr. Klein said. Despite her setback in Washington, Ms. Rhee is not tempering any of the fire that sometimes made her divisive. The Newsweek cover article, which appears under her byline, unapologetically defends her record. She writes that she was “stunned” by voters’ rebuke of Mr. Fenty. She faults shortsighted parents who did not recognize that schools had improved, and the teachers’ union for pursuing narrow self-interests. “Michelle Rhee likes to say that teachers unions are the problem, but the leading states and countries in educational outcomes — such as Finland, South Korea and Singapore — are heavily unionized,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who negotiated the Washington contract, said in a statement. During contract talks earlier this year, Ms. Rhee turned to Anita Dunn, the former communications director for President Obama, to help with her image. A gift of $100,000 toward her fee was paid by an education philanthropist, Katherine Bradley, the wife of the publisher David Bradley of The Atlantic Monthly and National Journal. Now it is Ms. Dunn’s firm, SKD Knickerbocker, that is coordinating Ms. Rhee’s rollout of her new group. Whatever advice it may have given her to bring all sides together when she was a public official, she clearly feels unrestricted by that now. Andrew Rotherham, an education adviser in the Clinton White House and now a partner in Bellwether Education, a research and consulting group, said an uncensored Michelle Rhee would have an advantage. “Most current and former large city school system leaders are reluctant to speak really forthrightly about the nature of the challenges,” he said. “Rhee is not constrained that way. That’s going to give her a niche and a brand in the debate.”

Rhee Michelle A
Education (K-12)
Reform and Reorganization
Equal Educational Opportunities


World Cup 2014: Residents Wonder How New Stadiums Will Benefit Region After Cup

Abstract: NATAL, Brazil — From her crumbling house with the leaky roof, across a new highway from a new World Cup stadium, Maria Ivanilde Oliveira heard everything. Notes of the national anthems floated through the humid air into her living room, where her black vinyl couch was losing its stuffing and a metal bookshelf was secured by gnarly wire. A mix of loud cheers and moans from 40,000 soccer fans told her that a team had scored. With no job and little money, Oliveira, 62, could not afford a ticket to see one of the four games played at the $450 million Arena das Dunas, one of 12 stadiums hosting the World Cup in Brazil. To squeeze out a living, Oliveira usually sells ice out of her house, mostly to beachgoers headed to the town’s popular waterfront. But construction of the highway to accommodate the World Cup games stopped her ice deliveries about four months ago. The 420-page stadium manual published by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, says that a new arena “provides many benefits for the local community” and enhances community pride. It says many new stadiums have gymnasiums, shops and other perks for residents. FIFA does not demand that World Cup host countries build stadiums, but just in case, it describes how they should be constructed, including the location of pipes for field drainage and requirements like telephones with recording capability in more than a dozen places, such as FIFA offices. Oliveira is proof that a new stadium doesn’t necessarily improve the lives of its neighbors. Bare wires hung from her ceilings where light fixtures used to be. Surrounded by walls with cracks big enough to slip her hand into, Oliveira was left to listen to the soccer soundtrack, sometimes by candlelight. Outside the Arena das Dunas A panoramic view from outside the Arena das Dunas, one of 12 stadiums hosting the World Cup in Brazil. “I haven’t had electricity for a year and a half now because it’s too expensive,” she said through an interpreter as pails dotting her floor collected water dripping from her ceiling and attracted mosquitoes. “That’s not the World Cup’s fault; it’s our politicians’ fault,” she said. “But I can say that the money spent on the Cup, well, it could have been spent on better things.” She was right. The seven cities that built stadiums for this World Cup and the five cities that renovated existing ones spent billions that could have improved the lives of people like Oliveira, who has high blood pressure and struggles to afford her medicine. Some of the money could have helped her 20-year-old son, Luiz André Louseiro, who had problems finding a job after high school. For years, protesters have reminded the Brazilian government that hosting the world’s biggest soccer tournament is the world’s worst idea for their country. They have marched all over criticizing waste and cost overruns on projects for the World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, which will be based in Rio de Janeiro. If FIFA officials heard about those protests, it’s unclear whether they cared. Like International Olympic Committee executives, they seem to choose host cities while wearing blinders. When Brazil proposed to FIFA that it would build an array of shrines for soccer, the national sport, it most likely sounded like a great idea. What better place for the World Cup than Brazil, where soccer is sacred? The game is played on beaches, with coconuts marking the goals. Youngsters in favelas write their players’ favorite numbers on their bare backs because they don’t have money to buy jerseys. The fans would come, the television shots would be breathtaking. Image Arena das Dunas as seen from a nearby hotel that remains under construction. Credit Alexandra Garcia/The New York Times Neither FIFA nor Brazil learned from the past. So many cities regret playing host to huge sporting events. Athens, for one, fell into debt after hosting the 2004 Olympics. Most of its once-sparkling athletic venues, including an arena just for taekwondo, are used sparingly at best and stand as reminders that holding the Summer Games in their birthplace sounded wonderful but wasn’t at all practical. “What are we going to use this stadium for after the World Cup?” Marília Sueli Ferreira, who works at a stationery store in view of the Natal stadium, asked through an interpreter. “The World Cup is made for tourists, not for residents, and the tourists are going to disappear very soon.” The tourists started leaving Natal after the last game here, on Tuesday. The stadium will not regularly host tens of thousands of fans. This city of fewer than a million people in northeastern Brazil does not have a top-level soccer team, and its lower-level teams attract several thousand fans only on their biggest game days. Without a guaranteed tenant, the stadium has a murky future. But it has company. The stadiums in Manaus, surrounded by rain forest; Cuiabá, the soybean capital of Brazil, near Bolivia; and Brasília, the capital, are also expected to become World Cup white elephants because none of them have soccer teams that can consistently fill them. The four stadiums cost about $2 billion, most of it public money. (The human toll was also great, as nine workers died during the construction in Brazil.) History has hinted that the fate of those stadiums will be dire. Last fall, I paid about $4 to tour Cape Town Stadium, which was built for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa but had turned into a cavernous ghost town. Maybe 100 people a week buy tickets to get a close look at the Cup-generated waste. The space can be rented for weddings or other events, like the small fashion show that I saw there. Suites that once held World Cup parties were dusty and silent. The state-of-the-art locker rooms, with tiny safes at each stall and rows of sinks to wash dirt off cleats, remained untouched. Thousands of tiny lights glistened from the ceiling of a V.I.P. entrance. The 55,000 seats remain empty most of the time, except when a handful are filled for games of a local soccer team, or when fans pack it for an occasional concert, as they did to see Justin Bieber. The playing surface is pristine and green. Image Arena da Amazônia in the rain forest city of Manaus. Credit Jeon Heon-Kyun/European Pressphoto Agency South Africa’s initial bid placed Cape Town’s stadium in a historically poor section of town, but FIFA expressed concern about what television viewers would think when they saw “shacks and poverty.” It persuaded the city to build a cutting-edge stadium on the waterfront instead. The local government expected a popular local rugby team to move in after the World Cup, but that team balked because the rent was too high. It looks as if some towns in Brazil will be faced with the same problem. Here’s what those towns are about to learn: It’s expensive to maintain a huge stadium and nearly impossible to do so, even in a city as big as Cape Town, if a major team doesn’t call that stadium home. That cities are left with that quandary is partly FIFA’s fault. As the worldwide soccer ambassador, FIFA should discourage host countries from constructing permanent stadiums and encourage them to build temporary ones or rely on existing buildings. The I.O.C. should do that, too. But these countries and governing bodies never learn. Maybe an entire section of FIFA’s 420-page stadium manual needs to cover the downsides of building a stadium without a long-term plan to use it. One section would describe how some Cape Town residents are so upset by the World Cup extravagance that they have called for their sparkling, state-of-art stadium to be razed to make room for affordable housing. In Natal, some residents are expressing their displeasure through graffiti. The side of one building reads: “We want FIFA-standard jobs. We want FIFA-standard education and health care.” FIFA doesn’t publish a thick manual for that. It has the money to, though. According to Forbes, the governing body will generate $4 billion in revenue from this World Cup, with a $2 billion profit. Image Estádio Nacional in Brasília, the capital. Credit Celso Junior/Getty Images Oliveira said she would love to see some of that money benefit the residents of host cities. But for now, she’s just wondering how to pay for her next doctor visit. Lately, she has been feeling weak. That worries Louseiro, her son, who lives with her. Sometimes she can’t breathe well or stand up, he said. She has been told she needs surgery to clean out an artery, but the family cannot afford it now. Even when the family can pay, health care leaves a lot to be desired. One hospital visit yielded an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon, family members said, but Oliveira needed a doctor to examine her heart. Another time, an ambulance dispatcher told her to take a cab to the hospital. “This is not about soccer,” Louseiro said. “It’s about politicians needing to use public funds to help people who need it. But we know how things work. The politicians, they rob us, they take our money, and nothing changes for us. The World Cup didn’t make anything better, and it didn’t make anything worse. It just pointed out our problems to the world.” But the World Cup did help Oliveira’s family, at least temporarily. An influx of construction workers to the city — for projects including the Ibis hotel next to the stadium and the pedestrian overpasses that lead to the stadium — provided jobs for residents. (The hotel is still a skeleton of concrete, and one of Oliveira’s neighbors pointed out a huge gap in a walkway, saying: “Look, take a picture of that. It’s going to fall down.”) Louseiro was so desperate for work that he took a job serving food to the workers. He earns about $450 a month to support himself and his mother. He brings home food, but only enough to eat right away because they have no refrigeration. He is saving for his mother’s surgery. What will happen when the construction surrounding the now-empty stadium ends and his job disappears? He doesn’t know. “No one will pay any attention to us anymore,” he said. “Just like always.” The same fate awaits other places with new stadiums, in Brazil and in other countries. Next up is Russia, host of the 2018 World Cup. It plans to spread the tournament among nearly a dozen cities. Here’s no surprise: Most will have new stadiums. Let’s see how that works out.

Brazil
Soccer
2014 World Cup
Stadiums Arenas