European Union Prepares for Economic Crisis Meeting

Abstract: STRASBOURG — As the European Parliament gathers to install a new team of commissioners Tuesday to work with José Manuel Barroso , president of the European Commission , in his second term, Europe’s economic modernization agenda risks being overwhelmed by one issue it would rather not have to tackle: The debt crises that has swept across the Continent. With the markets taking fright at budget deficits in Greece, Portugal and Spain, and sapping confidence in Europe’s single currency, the need for strong leadership within the 27-member European Union has rarely been greater. But the crisis has raised questions about the European Union’s ability to deal with the structural problems that have led to a rift between richer and poor nations within the eurozone. The first test comes Thursday in Brussels when, rather than addressing growing concerns about the euro, E.U. leaders will start work on a broader economic strategy designed to bolster competitiveness in the next decade. Talks are underway on what kind of statement can be issued to calm market fears over eurozone debt. But diplomats said Monday that unless there were dramatic market developments, the main focus of the meeting to be held in the elegant Bibliothèque Solvay will be the longer-term economic plan, rather than fire-fighting the euro debt crisis. “They are basically fiddling while Rome is burning,” said Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies, in Brussels. “What’s the use of even the best plan for 2020 when you don’t get there because in the meantime Greece or Portugal explodes?” Mr. Gros argued that the E.U. leaders should be talking about creating a European monetary fund, operating on similar lines to the International Monetary Fund, to deal with potential eurozone defaults. “These summits are worse than useless,” he said, “because they create the impression that something is being done when what could be done is not, and when what should be discussed is not.” Moreover, the meeting Thursday will have to be carefully choreographed to avoid exacerbating tensions among the bloc’s leaders, as Mr. Barroso finds himself jostling for power with the European Union’s new figurehead, Herman Van Rompuy , the first full-time president of the European Council. It was Mr. Van Rompuy, a former Belgian prime minister, who called Thursday’s meeting, thereby seeking to define economic modernization as his priority. “From Barroso’s side it is a bit of a problem that Van Rompuy is taking all the attention,” said an E.U. diplomat who was not authorized to speak publicly. Thomas Klau, senior political analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, added that, since enforcement of the Union’s new Lisbon Treaty , “we are in a situation where there are not fewer, but more, players.” Although Mr. Barroso and Mr. Van Rompuy have been discussing strategy over breakfast once a week, both have drawn up documents for the Thursday meeting and had to negotiate to avoid duplication. Mr. Barroso will concentrate on specific policies — with about five priorities for reform — and Mr. Van Rompuy will focus on how to achieve them. His ideas include asking national governments to submit annual reform programs with targets — such as research and development investment — and for those to be assessed each year. This is a familiar territory for Mr. Barroso since he left as prime minister of Portugal five years ago to become president of the commission and identified “growth and jobs” as his central objectives. Five years and a recession later, the debt crisis is a reminder of both the eurozone’s short-term frailties and its structural weaknesses. In Brussels last week, Mr. Barroso argued that, before the crisis struck, the European Union had made gains in employment — from 2005 to 2008, he said, 9.5 million jobs were created while the unemployment rate dropped to 7 percent. “If we want to keep the gains we have achieved before the crisis and keep the high standard of living, you need to go on in terms of reforms and competitiveness,” he said, adding that one of the lessons of the current crisis was not to underestimate “the interdependence of our economies, particularly in the eurozone — reforms or lack of them affect the performance of others.” In theory, once the European Parliament has approved his new team on Tuesday, Mr. Barroso should be freer than before to use the economic tools held by the commission, which acts as anti-trust regulator, trade negotiator and guarantor of the Union’s single market, as well as distributing tens of billions of euros in subsidies each year. In practice, it remains possible that Mr. Barroso will find himself more hemmed in than ever both by Mr. Van Rompuy’s arrival and by the big member states. “The crisis has thrown economic and financial issues back to the top of the policy agenda,” said Mr. Klau of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “These are areas where the commission has an important voice and it will be up to Barroso whether he tries to become a driving force in the economic and financial agenda or whether he continues to be more reactive.” One key question is whether national governments will take charge of the process of economic reform, effectively sidelining Mr. Barroso. Another is how much support he can expect from big member states for his initiatives. Internally, the European Commission became highly centralized in Mr. Barroso’s first term, operating like a cabinet under a powerful leader. “It is a highly presidential system under him,” said Joachim Fritz-Vannahme, Europe director of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a German research organization that focuses on democratic reform. “He is always the guy who will decide.” But outside the commission’s headquarters, the climate has become more complex as the Union has grown and skepticism over European integration has increased. In the enlarged European Union, French and German support is essential — but not sufficient — for any political project Mr. Barroso frames. Not only have both countries’ enthusiasm for the Union dimmed, but their relations with each other have become less harmonious. Mr. Vannahme argued that Mr. Barroso’s main task will be to manage the 27 nations rather than to define new political strategies, and that his powers will be circumscribed. “The E.U. has so many challenges that you don’t have to create a new vision or create a new raison d’être,” Mr. Vanhamme said. “The raison d’être is to get the right answers from the 27 member states to these challenges.”

European Union
European Parliament
European Commission
Brussels (Belgium)
Barroso Jose Manuel
Van Rompuy Herman


Hammer Attack Suspect Is Arraigned From Hospital Bed

Abstract: A man who the authorities say attacked several people with a hammer at random in New York City and was later shot by the police was arraigned from his hospital bed on multiple assault charges on Wednesday, appearing before a judge via a video link. Judge Tamiko A. Amaker of Criminal Court in Manhattan ordered the man, David Baril, 30, to remain in state custody until his trial. The police say Mr. Baril has schizophrenia, and his most recent address was a shelter for mentally ill people on West 113th Street. His social media accounts contained images of a hammer with blood dripping from it. A public defender, Tara Collins, asked Judge Amaker to order a psychological examination of Mr. Baril to determine whether he was mentally fit to stand trial. The judge complied. Lisa Franchini, an assistant district attorney, said a grand jury had heard evidence and voted to indict Mr. Baril, though she did not make details of the indictment public. Instead, Mr. Baril was arraigned on two criminal complaints sworn out by the police, charging him with four counts of attempted assault, five counts of assault and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon. He did not enter a plea. Four people were attacked by a man with a hammer over six hours on May 11, all of them on the West Side of Manhattan between 35th Street and 17th Street. The attacks seemed random, as a man similar in look and build to Mr. Baril hit passers-by over the head with the tool. Detectives zeroed in on Mr. Baril, a drifter with a history of arrests, and alerted officers to search for him. On May 13, two officers spotted Mr. Baril near the corner of Eighth Avenue and 37th Street, recognizing him even though he was wearing a face mask, Ms. Franchini said. When the officers approached him, he pulled a bloody hammer from a pocket and began to swing hard at Officer Lauren O’Rourke’s head, hitting her in the back and shoulders, Ms. Franchini said. Her partner, Officer Geraldo Casaigne, pulled his pistol and fired four times , wounding Mr. Baril and taking him down. He has been recovering at Bellevue Hospital Center. Ms. Collins said she planned to investigate not only the attacks but also her client’s psychiatric history “to put forth the best defense possible” for him.


At Muslim Day Parade, Celebration Amid Controversy

Abstract: The scene seemed surreal, yet oddly poignant: at a silent, deserted intersection in the center of Midtown Manhattan, beneath bland corporate logos and brick office buildings, hundreds of Muslims knelt on a sprawling tarpaulin, faced due east and commenced the midday call to prayer. The ceremony, held along a blocked-off portion of Madison Avenue, marked the start of the American Muslim Day Parade on Sunday, an annual event, first held in 1985, that brings together Muslims of many ethnicities and nationalities who worship in the New York region. The parade is intended as a celebration of diversity and pride in the Muslim community, but this year it had a difficult context: national controversies over a planned Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, the threatened desecration of Korans by anti-Muslim ministers, and recent incidences of what the authorities called hate crimes against Muslims, including a New York City cabdriver who was slashed . Some marchers had feared protesters on Sunday, but only the occasional Christian missionary appeared. Still, the turnout was far smaller than at the city’s better-known ethnic parades, and a few organizers speculated that safety concerns kept many Muslims away. “Some people are too scared to show up,” said Zaheer Uddin, executive director of the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York, a sponsoring group. But many participants, while acknowledging their concern over the increase in anti-Muslim rhetoric, said the troubles had only further encouraged them to attend this year. “This has been a tough year for Islam,” said Shahid Khan of East Northport, N.Y., who brought his entire extended family into the city for the event. He and his children wore traditional Muslim clothing, outfits that he said they did not otherwise wear during the year. “This is for my children to see different cultures, different people speaking different languages, marching together under the banner of Islam,” Mr. Khan said. “We want to come down here more than previous years to show we’re united against this bigotry.” The participants included imams wearing full-length religious garb and more secular Muslims in T-shirts and denim. A group of Muslim police officers, in full uniforms, marched the length of the parade. A lieutenant with the fire department of Elmsford, N.Y., Syed Alirahi, said: “We are public servants. Most of us are born here, live here and die here. We’re going to fight for our country. Today is our opportunity to show ourselves to other people, and our contributions to the country as Muslims.” Still, for all its celebratory nature, the event could not stray far from recent controversies. “To the man sitting in the Sunshine State, I feel sorry for that man,” said Shamas us-Zaman, the event’s master of ceremonies, referring to Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who gained worldwide attention for threatening to burn Korans. “We want to send a message to these kind of sick people: Muslim Americans respect the holy Bible, the Koran and other religious books.”

Parades
Muslim-Americans
Manhattan (NYC)


Calculating Worth of ‘Waterfalls’ Exhibit on the East River

Abstract: Amid all the hoopla over Olafur Eliasson ’s “New York City Waterfalls,” which opened on Thursday along the East River, one might think the city was in for a windfall. When asked whether the public art installation was worth the $15.5 million it cost to erect it, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other “Waterfalls” enthusiasts have said the exhibit is expected to generate $55 million in economic activity during its run, which ends in October. That amounts to about 0.09 percent of the $59.1 billion budget city officials agreed upon hours after the water began to cascade under the Brooklyn Bridge on Thursday — roughly the amount generated by a single World Series game during the Subway Series in 2000. And while such forecasts on economic impact are often bandied about by elected officials and tourism boosters, their accuracy is difficult to assess, particularly in the case of a public display like “Waterfalls” that has no admission charge and can be taken in during a walk, a bicycle ride or even while taking the subway — or sitting in traffic — over the Manhattan Bridge. How much of the money visitors spend on T-shirts or bottled water while viewing the exhibit would otherwise have gone to, say, movie tickets or museum souvenirs (or bottled water while doing something else)? “The methodology is not invented; it is based on something,” said John Tepper Marlin, a former economist for the city who was responsible for many an economic-impact evaluation in his day. “But the margin of error is quite wide. How many people are going to come from out of town? You could say 10,000 and I could say one million, and who knows?” Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, estimates that 10,000 people will come from out of town specifically to visit the “Waterfalls” over the next three months. He guesses that 7,500 of these will be from the United States and 2,500 from other countries. Nearly 76,000 people from the New York metropolitan area are expected to make special day trips to glimpse the installation, Mr. Pinsky said in an interview, for a total of 86,000. Then there are the 254,000 people who would have been in New York anyhow and will probably take a look at the flowing water. These numbers, and the attendant dollar amounts they might yield, were calculated based on how many people visited other public art installations, including the opening of Millennium Park in Chicago in 2004, “The Weather Project” at the Tate Modern in London in 2003 and “The Gates” in Central Park in 2005. The Economic Development Corporation expects the visitors to spend $19 million while visiting the “Waterfalls” — that would be 1.9 million $10 adult tickets on a Circle Line boat tour (if there were that many available) or more than nine million hot dogs purchased at carts along the route. That spending, in turn, would generate an additional $13 million in indirect benefits like sales taxes. The crowd on the sold-out Circle Line Downtown 30-minute cruise at 1:30 p.m. on Friday was indeed a mix of locals and tourists from California, Connecticut and Kentucky. Several passengers on the boat, which fits 115 people, said they had come to New York to see other sights and took the cruise, but doubted others would come just to see the “Waterfalls.” “I wouldn’t have made a special trip from California to see it, but it’s interesting,” said Julie Greenfield, a school nurse from Castro Valley who was in town visiting her cousin. “Then again, I think compared to the rest of New York, it pales in comparison.” Others thought the same thing. “It looks like a construction site that sprang a leak,” said Christina McVaney, who was visiting from Westport, Conn., with her two children. “They should have put some fake rocks around it to cover up the scaffolding. That would have worked better.” Perhaps the more dubious part of the economic-impact calculus concerns the $23 million that Mr. Pinsky counts from the construction of the exhibit. There is the $15.5 million it actually cost to construct the installation (paid for with $2 million from the quasi-public Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and donations from 120 individuals and groups, including Mr. Bloomberg and his company). And then there is nearly $8 million in more of those indirect benefits — what the construction workers spent on lunch and parking, and all the accompanying taxes. “The city’s economy is one that aggregates from lots of small impacts, so $55 million for three months is not chump change,” Mr. Pinsky said. He noted that with “The Gates” exhibit, the city predicted an economic benefit of $80 million and eventually counted $250 million in “Gates”-connected revenue. The “Waterfalls” is not the first controversial water element to grace the city’s shores and headlines. The philanthropist George T. Delacorte donated $400,000 to build a 450-foot geyser at the end of Roosevelt Island, then known as Welfare Island, that opened in 1969. Upon learning that the source of the water was the East River, which then had 160,000 fecal coliform bacteria per 100 milliliters, the city’s health department demanded that the water be chlorinated to reduce the risk to public health. The chlorine spray damaged a stand of 55 pine trees donated by residents of Sutton Place to improve their view. After occasionally failing, being vandalized and turning red from too much chlorine, the fountain fizzled out in 1987. While many New Yorkers have expressed concern about the environmental impact of the “Waterfalls” exhibit, Michael V. McGraw, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said that Mr. Eliasson, the artist, “has taken some precautions to make sure that wildlife is not hurt.” He said, however, that the site should be checked several times a day, declaring, “Not one fish should get caught in the intake areas.” At the Seaport Cafe at Pier 17, Mohammed Alangir, 33, the manager, expressed hope on Friday that the exhibit would bring in new business, but worried about tourism in general because of the high cost of fuel. “This year may be slow because of the economy,” Mr. Alangir said, adding that the weather had not helped business. Employees at Bike and Roll, which is already double-booked for tours of the exhibit this weekend, were more optimistic. “There is a lot of excitement in the city,” said Steve Howson, 28, a guide on tours that cost $40 for about three hours and include a bike, a helmet and a guide. “Some people have just heard about it, some ask, and some have known for months.” The Ritz-Carlton New York at Battery Park has created a special package for visitors who want to see the “Waterfalls.” For $480, visitors get a room with a harbor view, a telescope, two tickets for a 60-minute cruise and shuttle bus tickets. Jennifer A. Oberstein, a spokeswoman for the hotel, said that a better-than-expected 30 customers had already bought the packages and that the company had advertised in Germany, Switzerland and Russia. Andreas Sappok, the general manager at Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises on 42nd Street, said it was too early to say whether his company would benefit from the “Waterfalls.” “You can put the best exhibits in the river,” he said. “But if it rains 60 days in a row, it won’t matter.”

Water
New York City
Art
Eliasson Olafur
Economic Conditions and Trends


Jimmy Kimmel Gets a Two-Year Contract Extension

Abstract: ABC has affirmed its commitment to its late-night star Jimmy Kimmel, extending the host’s contract for two more years. The new deal, to be announced Tuesday, will keep Mr. Kimmel on ABC through January 2017, locking him into what is shaping up as a long-term, three-pronged network battle for late-night supremacy. Mr. Kimmel, 46, will be matched head-to-head for at least the next several years with two generational contemporaries: Jimmy Fallon, who is 39, on NBC; and Stephen Colbert, 49, on CBS. (Mr. Colbert will replace David Letterman as CBS’s host next year.) ABC’s vote of confidence in Mr. Kimmel comes during his 11th season as the network’s entertainment star in late night. He began his program, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” in January 2003. For nine years, the show occupied second position in ABC’s late-night lineup after “Nightline.” But in January 2012, ABC switched the shows and placed Mr. Kimmel at 11:35 p.m., directly after the late news on local stations. Since then, Mr. Kimmel has lifted his late-night profile, gaining special attention for some special comedy pieces that have become hits on the Internet. “ Worst Twerk Fail Ever ,” his joke video last year, has more than 16 million views on You Tube. (A video of him revealing the joke on his show received more than 19 million views.) This season, Mr. Kimmel has had to weather an explosion of interest in NBC’s new “Tonight” show host, Mr. Fallon. But Mr. Kimmel’s show is up 16 percent in total viewers for this season and 13 percent among the viewers preferred by late-night advertisers, those between the ages of 18 and 49. This is the fourth straight season Mr. Kimmel has increased his audience.


Carmelo Anthony’s Performance Lags as Rumors Swirl

Abstract: If this was Carmelo Anthony’s farewell, he sure did not go out on a high note. Anthony scored only 8 points in the host Denver Nuggets’ 96-87 loss to the New Orleans Hornets on Sunday night, putting a sour finish on a day filled with speculation that Anthony was close to heading to the Nets after seven and a half seasons in Denver. Anthony declined to comment on the rumors before the game, but his performance was one of the worst of his career. He was in foul trouble early, and his first basket came with 6 minutes 51 seconds left in the third quarter, when his finger-roll layup pulled Denver to 65-49, drawing scattered cheers. When he returned to the game a minute into the fourth quarter, he was greeted with jeers and was even booed when the Nuggets rallied after trailing by 19 in the third. HEAT 107, TRAIL BLAZERS 100 LeBron James had 44 points, 13 rebounds and 6 assists, Dwyane Wade added 34 points and 8 rebounds, and Miami beat Portland in overtime for its 13th straight road victory. James buried two deep 3-pointers and made two free throws in the extra period for the Heat (30-9), which has won 21 of its last 22 games. SPURS 94, TIMBERWOLVES 91 Manu Ginobili scored 14 of his 21 points in the second quarter, and host San Antonio claimed its 15th straight win over Minnesota. San Antonio put six players in double figures, ran its N.B.A.-best record to 31-6, and extended the league’s longest current winning streak against an opponent. CLIPPERS 105, WARRIORS 91 Eric Gordon scored 25 points, Blake Griffin had 23 points and 12 rebounds, and host Los Angeles beat Golden State for its seventh win in 10 games. Baron Davis had 17 points and 11 assists for the Clippers, who have come to life after a 5-21 start to the season. SUNS 108, CAVALIERS 100 Jared Dudley scored 21 points, Steve Nash had 20 points and 15 assists, and host Phoenix handed undermanned Cleveland its 10th consecutive loss. Anderson Varejao, the Cavaliers’ leading rebounder, will probably miss the rest of the season because of a torn tendon in his right ankle. RAPTORS 118, KINGS 112 Andrea Bargnani had 30 points, DeMar DeRozan had 28 and Toronto handed Sacramento its 10th straight road loss.

Basketball
Los Angeles Clippers
Golden State Warriors


With Chase Starting, a Dispute Lingers About Unwritten Rules

Abstract: CHICAGO — The Chase for the Sprint Cup championship begins Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway, with the first of 10 races that will cap Nascar’s season and determine its champion. The lead-up to the race, though, has been marred by cheating allegations and questions about the integrity of the 12-driver field. Drivers met reporters at a Navy Pier ballroom Thursday morning, a day after a report was published by The Associated Press that detailed questionable radio transmissions between the teams of two drivers whose cars have the same manufacturer, Ford. The communications seemed to indicate that David Gilliland of Front Row Motorsports allowed Joey Logano of Penske Racing to pass him at the end of Saturday’s race at Richmond International Raceway. Logano finished 22nd, one place ahead of Gilliland, and earned a spot in the Chase. “Hopefully, we’ll get something out of that,” Gilliland’s spotter said on the radio, according to the report. Logano on Thursday denied cheating and said he believed his place in the Chase was secure. “That is stuff that happens week in and week out with spotters,” he said. “They are up there communicating back and forth trying to work deals out.” Nascar said it was still considering whether it would punish Gilliland and Logano. On Monday, Nascar decided to penalize other drivers for manipulating Saturday’s race based on their actions and radio discussions. Ryan Newman was leading when Clint Bowyer spun out. After the restart, Martin Truex Jr., Bowyer’s teammate at Michael Waltrip Racing, gained ground and claimed a place in the Chase. Newman lost both his lead and his spot in the Chase until Nascar’s penalties returned him to the Chase field and removed Truex . Image Joey Logano in August. A report suggested David Gilliland let Logano pass him during Saturday’s race. Credit Dave Tulis/Associated Press Bowyer declined to discuss the spin and would not definitively say that it was not on purpose. “I’ve had a rough few days, probably rougher than I’ve ever had,” he said. The outrage has put Nascar’s unwritten rules on trial. Drivers have long allowed teammates to pass them, or even take the lead for a number of laps, to earn points in the standings. The difference with the reaction to Saturday’s race appeared to be a combination of the stakes of the Chase, the overwhelming evidence and the fact that the outcome of the race was affected. “It’s been a part of our sport for a long time, but manipulating the race to change the outcome is an entirely different perspective, an entirely different situation,” Newman said. Jimmie Johnson said, “If you’re bold enough to make that direct an admission on the radio, then you’re going to pay the price.” There was discussion, in response to the growing controversy, of adding Truex and Jeff Gordon, who also lost his position after Bowyer’s spin, to the Chase field. That now looks unlikely. “You realize that people all want to do things for their teammates to help them, but you also know there’s certain lines that have to be drawn,” a frustrated Gordon told reporters Wednesday. So although the Chase is set to begin, there has been little time to talk about racing. “I think our sport, TV ratings, attendance, things are all trending the right direction,” Johnson said. “This is the last thing any of us want.”

David Gilliland
Joey Logano
Ryan Newman
Car Racing
Sprint Cup Series
Martin Truex Jr


Coalition Urges Public Financing in New York State Elections

Abstract: ALBANY — An unusual and well-heeled coalition, trying to tap public anger over the flood of money into politics, is pushing to enact a public financing system for elections in New York State . The backers include media moguls — Barry Diller and Chris Hughes, a founder of Facebook — as well as investment bankers, unions, MoveOn.org , the restaurateur Danny Meyer and the philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr. They say New York, which they call a symbol of institutionalized corruption, could become a national model for the effort to free elections from the grip of big money. The campaign will start next week with mailings to the constituents of four state senators. For years, government watchdog groups have pressed unsuccessfully for public financing of elections. Leaders of the coalition say the Citizens United ruling and the role of “ super PACs ” in the presidential race have made campaign finance a more broadly understood and urgent issue. “Right now people are feeling a little bit helpless about super PACs and how to get money out of the system at the federal level,” said Sean Eldridge, Mr. Hughes’s fiancé, who runs an investment fund and is a leader of the effort. “An opportunity to pass campaign finance reform in New York is an opportunity for people to do something — to actually be able to pass a bill, to make progress.” The coalition, called New York Leadership for Accountable Government, is notable for its diversity and its well-known names: its roster includes Jonathan Soros, the son of the philanthropist George Soros ; Jerome Kohlberg, a co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company ; and several former elected officials, including Mayor Edward I. Koch . The group is also supported by the Committee for Economic Development, a nonpartisan public-policy group backed by executives from dozens of Fortune 500 companies. The committee is holding meetings in New York this month to encourage business leaders to join the coalition. Many of the executives involved have given generously to candidates in the past. “With this effort, you have people who are big donors, who are involved with the campaign system, saying: ‘You know what, this doesn’t make sense. This isn’t what democracy is supposed to be about,’ ” said David L. Calone, a venture capitalist based on Long Island who has raised money for Democratic candidates. New York’s campaign finance system is among the least restrictive in the nation, with individuals permitted to give up to $60,800 to candidates running for statewide office. The median cap among states that limit contributions is $5,000 for candidates for governor, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures . The proposal the coalition is pushing would be modeled after the system that New York City adopted in 1988: in return for abiding by limits on their spending, city candidates can receive $6 in public funds for each of the first $175 city residents donate. The group sees the successful campaign to pass same-sex marriage in New York as a blueprint for its effort. Like same-sex marriage, public financing has been embraced in the past by the Democratic-led State Assembly, but blocked by the Republican State Senate. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ’s response will be pivotal: Mr. Cuomo ran for governor on a platform that included enacting public financing, and in his State of the State address in January, he promised to push for it in the legislative session this year. But he has not pressed the issue since then, and he has raised prodigious amounts of money under the existing rules. Asked at a news conference last month if he still planned to pursue public financing, Mr. Cuomo responded, “Yes.” He did not elaborate, and a spokesman declined to comment on Wednesday. Coalition leaders said they were prepared to spend more than $1 million promoting public financing, but they acknowledged that it could take beyond this legislative session to persuade lawmakers to embrace their proposal. The issue could be sensitive for Mr. Cuomo. Some liberal leaders and government reform groups are unhappy that Mr. Cuomo broke his promise to veto redistricting maps drawn by incumbent lawmakers, and they are hoping that the governor will make campaign finance his next big cause. National groups are also getting involved. MoveOn.org, for instance, is planning to e-mail its members next week to rally them in support of the cause. “Our New York members will be watching to see if Governor Cuomo shows leadership on the issue,” said Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s executive director. The campaign will get under way as lawmakers return from a two-week recess next Tuesday. At the outset, the Public Campaign Action Fund, a group based in Washington that supports public financing, is paying for direct mail advertising to target four Republican senators who some advocates believe could be receptive to the proposal: Martin J. Golden of Brooklyn , Gregory R. Ball of Putnam County , Roy J. McDonald of Saratoga County and Mark J. Grisanti of Buffalo . Voters in each senator’s district will soon receive a mailer featuring a photograph of the State Capitol awash in $100 bills and declaring, “It’s time Albany put voters before big-monied corporate lobbyists.” Asked about the irony of wealthy donors pledging money to an effort to get big money out of elections, Mr. Eldridge responded: “Creating legislative reform is expensive, particularly on an issue like this where the resistance we’d get from special interest groups would be tremendous.” Educating the public and organizing voters, he said, “requires resources, and that requires money, and there’s no shame in that.” Advocates of public financing say the system frees politicians to spend more time focusing on the issues and interacting with constituents, rather than dialing for contributions from special interests. They also believe it encourages competition for electoral offices. “It’s a double victory,” said Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr. , chief counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “You have lower amounts of money that can be given, and No. 2, ordinary people become engaged in political campaigns and candidates change their approach to campaigning.” Given the state’s shaky finances, however, anything that requires new spending of taxpayer dollars also tends to draw scrutiny. “The taxpayers have enough on their backs as it is,” said Michael R. Long, chairman of the state’s Conservative Party. “If Mike Long wants to run for office, why should the taxpayer have to pay for my campaign?” Mr. Long asked. “Let the taxpayers donate their own personal money to candidates they want to donate to.”


South Korean N.Y.U. Student Is Reported Arrested in North Korea

Abstract: HONG KONG — North Korea said Saturday that a man it identified as a South Korean student at New York University had been arrested and charged with illegally entering the country. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the student, Joo Won-moon, 21, from New Jersey, was detained on April 22 after crossing the Yalu River from Dandong, China. The river forms part of the North’s border with China. Mr. Joo, who is said to hold permanent resident status in the United States, admitted violating North Korean law, said the news agency, which added that an investigation was continuing. The South Korean government said it could not immediately confirm the North Korean news report. A student who identified himself as Won Moon Joo wrote on a web page for an introductory computer science course at N.Y.U. in the fall of 2013 that he was a sophomore finance major from Seoul, South Korea. It was unclear whether that student was the one detained in North Korea. Image Cora Fabian, a neighbor of Joo Won-moon, a South Korean student detained on April 22 after crossing the Yalu River from Dandong, China, spoke to the press on Saturday in front of Mr. Joo's family home in New Jersey. Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times A spokesman for the university, John Beckman, wrote in an email response to an inquiry on Saturday that a student named Won Moon Joo was a junior at the Stern School of Business. “He is not taking classes this semester, and the university was unaware of his travels,” Mr. Beckman said. Mr. Beckman said the university had been in touch with the State Department and the South Korean Embassy. In recent years, North Korea has detained several people who operated near the North Korea-China border or visited the North as aid workers or missionaries. North Korea charged them with working as spies. In March, North Korea announced the arrests of two South Korean men on espionage charges, accusing them of collecting military and other secrets and infiltrating the country with political propaganda and subversive religious materials on behalf of the South Korean spy agency. Last year, it sentenced a South Korean Baptist missionary to life in a prison labor camp on espionage and other charges. South Korea called the charges groundless and has called for the release of its citizens. Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary, and another American, Matthew Todd Miller, who were detained in North Korea on “anti-state” charges, were freed in November after the United States sent the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., to the North to seek their release.

South Korea
North Korea
Joo Won-moon
College
NYU


Drought Puts Focus on a Side of India Left Out of Progress

Abstract: PIPRI VILLAGE, India — Two very different recent scenes from India: At a power breakfast in New Delhi for many of the country’s corporate leaders and top economic officials, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee declared that India had “weathered the storm” of the global economic crisis and was witnessing “green shoots” in industry and services that signaled a return to more rapid growth by next year. Hundreds of miles away in this farming village in Andhra Pradesh, in the south, weeds were the only green shoots sprouting in the black soil that belongs to the widow Chandli Bai. Her field went 12 weeks without rain during India’s annual monsoon season before showers finally arrived on Aug. 23, splattering down too late onto the dry dirt. Her summer crop of lentils was stillborn in the ground. “We eat once a day,” said Mrs. Bai, 65, explaining how she and her family had survived the lack of rain. For the past year, as the economic crisis convulsed much of the world, India wobbled but never tumbled over. And now that the world is starting to pull itself out of the mire, India seems poised to resume its rapid economic expansion. Government officials are projecting that growth will reach or surpass 6 percent this year and approach 8 percent next year, almost the pace that established India as an emerging global economic power second only to China . But the cautious optimism about the broader economy has been tempered by a historic summertime drought that has underscored the stubborn fact that many people are largely untouched by the country’s progress. India’s new economy may be based on software, services and high technology, but hundreds of millions of Indians still look to the sky for their livelihoods; more than half the country’s 1.1 billion people depend on agriculture for a living even though agriculture represents only about 17 percent of the total economy. No one thinks India is facing the type of famines that struck it decades ago; government grain stocks can replenish any shortfalls. But the drought has focused attention, again, on the problems facing Indian agriculture as the population continues to expand at the same time that water resources come under greater pressure. During the 1960s, India introduced a “green revolution” that sharply improved grain output. Now, many analysts are calling for a second green revolution to address the complicated problems presented by global warming , rapidly diminishing groundwater supplies and stagnant incomes for farmers. “A lot of us have gotten carried away and forgotten these problems exist,” said Bharat Ramaswami, an economist at the Indian Statistical Institute. “We need to think a little more about how this economic growth could better filter down to the poor.” Last spring, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress Party won a resounding victory in national elections by promising to address this inequality, but the government has yet to announce major programs. One problem now, as opposed to in the 1960s, is that there are no obvious technological breakthroughs to radically change the status quo. During the green revolution, India introduced high-yield seeds and fertilizers and expanded irrigation. Today, the challenge is more nuanced, involving a nationwide coordination effort to improve irrigation, better capture rainwater and conserve groundwater while lifting production — the type of complicated management task that critics say is rarely the strong suit of the Indian bureaucracy. Every summer, India awaits the monsoon. Some years bring too much rain and catastrophic flooding; others bring too little rain. This summer, rainfall is down 25 percent, and roughly half of the rural districts were declared drought zones. As production has fallen, prices have risen for staples like rice. To the eye, the drought can be deceptive. In Pipri Village, as in other areas, greenery is evident, even as nearly every field without irrigation is stunted. In recent days, rains have returned to Pipri and some other areas, but not in time to save the summer, or kharif, crop. Located three hours from the high-tech center of Hyderabad , Pipri is one of thousands of Indian villages decimated by the drought. On a recent afternoon, Mrs. Bai, the widow, stood at the edge of her ragged seven acres, her toes caked in dirt as she motioned to the remains of the pyre used to cremate her husband four months ago. The family had borrowed 80,000 rupees, or about $1,640, to treat his kidney disease; the failed crop left them without money to pay off the debt. Only one of her seven children reached 10th grade, and none can find work off the land. “I may die before I can repay that loan ,” she said. This cycle of debt is a persistent problem, often blamed for periodic spates of farmer suicides , while the high illiteracy rate in the countryside makes it hard for farmers to switch to jobs in India’s services sector. Before the national elections, the Congress Party announced a plan to forgive certain farm loans. Many farmers can also take part in a government employment program that guarantees 100 days of manual labor for roughly $2 a day. But the drought has brought renewed pressure. An hour from Pipri Village, farmers recently clamored around a dilapidated branch of the government’s Syndicate Bank. One man came because of the false rumor that farmers were receiving a 1,500-rupee stipend (about $30). Others came looking for loans. “We need the loans to plant the other crops,” one farmer said. “They keep saying to come back next week.” Before the drought, rural India was helping to buttress the national economy during the global downturn as rural consumption helped drive consumer spending. But parts of that demand were driven by backdated pay increases for millions of government workers. Now the government is subsidizing seeds and diesel fuel to help farmers through the drought, even as some economists worry that subsidies will worsen the federal deficit. Too often, many analysts say, the government’s response involves such short-term fixes rather than efforts to tackle the structural problems in the rural economy. A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute noted that India spent $25 billion in 2008 on fertilizer subsidies, but only $5 billion on agricultural investment — even though investment yields 10 times more returns. India, analysts say, must learn to produce more food with less water, even while lifting rural education levels so that farmers can shift to the higher paying jobs at the heart of India’s economic rise. “We can manage the drought,” said T. Nanda Kumar, secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture. “We have managed earlier droughts. But we need to move some people out of agriculture. I don’t think that a 17 percent share of G.D.P. and a 50 percent share of employment are viable in the long run.”

Drought
India
Economy
Indian National Congress
Politics


2 N.Y.C. Officers Face Sanctions Over 2008 Shooting

Abstract: Two New York police officers cleared of department violations in a 2008 fatal shooting of a man in Coney Island will now face a disciplinary trial later this month over their decision-making in the moments before the shooting. A police advisory panel in August 2009 initially determined that Officer Dawn Ortiz did not violate department guidelines in the shooting of Gilberto Blanco, who charged at Officer Ortiz with a metal and wooden chair at a church parking lot. Officer Ortiz, a nine-year veteran at the time, fired the only shot at Mr. Blanco; the bullet pierced his heart. Her partner, Officer India Archie, stood nearby. While no violations of guidelines were found, the panel did question both of the officers’ tactics and recommended that they be retrained in situations including using “less than lethal” force. Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said Monday that the officers faced disciplinary charges for “failure to employ proper tactics during the incident.” Mr. Browne reaffirmed the notion that neither officer violated the guidelines, which concern whether it is reasonable for a police officer to use deadly force. “Either the officer or someone present was in immediate danger of being killed or seriously injured,” Mr. Browne said. Although the use of force may be “within guidelines,” Mr. Browne added, “other things can happen during a shooting that the department may have questions about and may take disciplinary action.” The officers were asked to accept a command discipline, which Mr. Browne said was five days of lost paid vacation and retraining. When the officers declined, it made a departmental trial necessary. The Daily News first reported on Monday that the two officers would face a police trial. Eric Sanders, a lawyer who will represent Officer Archie in the Jan. 13 trial, said the officers did not agree to the command discipline because they believe they acted justly. “They followed the protocols; that’s the issue,” Mr. Sanders said. According to the 2009 report of a police advisory board investigating the use of firearms, Mr. Blanco came within one foot of Officer Ortiz. When he raised the chair to swing it toward her head, she fired the one fatal round. In addition to the departmental trial, Mr. Sanders said that the family of Mr. Blanco had filed a civil suit related to the shooting. A call left for Officer Ortiz was not returned. Mr. Sanders added that he did not have the charges, but that Officer Archie had told him she was specifically “charged with conduct prejudicial to the good order of the department.” Mr. Sanders said Officer Archie was told that her “failure to use appropriate tactics caused Police Officer Ortiz to discharge her weapon causing the death” of Mr. Blanco, a day laborer from Brooklyn . Officer Archie had pepper spray but did not use it because “it was not consistent with her training,” Mr. Sanders said. To some experts, the case seemed to point out an apparent contradiction in a police shooting when it is deemed justified, yet the conduct that led to the shooting may not be. “If the department clears you and says it’s within guidelines and then disciplines you, it’s kind of a dichotomy,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina. “You can’t have it both ways.”

Ortiz Dawn
Blanco Gilberto
Archie India
Police Brutality and Misconduct
Coney Island (NYC)


Manhattan: Cameraman Dies in Fall From Bridge

Abstract: A cameraman for the television news channel NY1 died in an early-morning fall from the Queensboro Bridge on Tuesday, the police said yesterday. The cameraman, Christian Milin, 27, was walking home from Manhattan to Queens with a friend about 3:30 a.m. when he fell from the pedestrian walkway, the police said. Mr. Milin fell onto the roadway below and later died at a hospital.


British Airways Strike Effect Disputed

Abstract: LONDON — A strike by British Airways cabin crew members entered its second day Sunday, causing further travel disruptions but fewer than the airline had expected. The dispute between British Airways’ management and the Unite trade union over working conditions and pay freezes intensified during the weekend after the two sides disagreed about the effectiveness of the strike. British Airways said that the “crew are voting with their feet” after more employees turned up to work than had been expected, allowing the airline to reinstate some of its canceled flights. Unite said that support for the strike remained strong and that London Heathrow Airport, the airline’s London hub, resembled a “ghost town.” Images on Sky News showed that Terminal 5 at Heathrow, which is used by the airline, was much less crowded than usual. British Airways said it had canceled 152 flights from Heathrow and 14 flights from Gatwick, also near London, on Sunday, the second day of a three-day strike. The airline said Friday that it expected to fly 65 percent of its passengers in the three days until the end of the strike on Monday but that it would have to cancel 1,100 flights of the 1,950 scheduled during the period. Another strike, this one set to last four days, is scheduled to begin Saturday. The airline’s contingency plans, which included retraining other airline employees to work as flight attendants and chartering planes from other airlines and taking on their workers, helped to avoid long lines and chaos at airports. Passengers were told days before the strike not to go to the airport if their flights were canceled and to reschedule for later dates or apply for refunds. Willie Walsh, British Airways’ chief executive, said in a statement Sunday that he was “really pleased that the contingency plans have worked.” “We have been doing much better than expected,” he said. “We’re flying every flight that we were planning to fly and indeed have introduced a couple of extra flights.” Mr. Walsh said 50 percent of cabin crew members had turned up to work at Heathrow on Saturday and 97 percent at Gatwick, allowing the airline to reinstate flights from London to Miami, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, New York and Cape Town. Unite, the biggest union in Britain, rejected assertions that the strike was not as effective as it had forecast. It said 80 percent of its 12,000 members had not reported for work Saturday and that half of British Airways’ 250 planes had been grounded that day. One of five scheduled flights departed for Kennedy International Airport in New York by 2 p.m. on Saturday, and at Gatwick one-third of the flights failed to take off, the union said. Passenger experiences were mixed. Tony Gibson from Glasgow wrote on the BBC Web site that he was stuck in Houston on Sunday after his British Airways flight was canceled. He wrote that he hoped to fly back on Wednesday. Ed Hall, another passenger, wrote that he flew as planned Saturday from Mexico City. The union has accused British Airways of “bullying and harassment” of its flight attendants, saying it aimed to “gag and intimidate cabin crew and destroy trade unionism.” British Airways rejected the accusations. Despite the harsh words, Tony Woodley, general secretary of Unite, said Sunday that he would appeal to the board of British Airways to restart negotiations and reach an agreement to avoid the second strike. But, Mr. Woodley added, British Airways “must understand that capitulation is not on the menu either.” The current strike began after months of negotiations collapsed Friday, despite Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s urging both sides to come to an agreement. It is the first walkout by British Airways employees since the summer of 1997, when a three-day strike left 25,000 passengers stranded in a dispute over changes to pay and working conditions. Analysts estimated that the two strikes would cost British Airways about £105 million, or $159 million, and hurt the airline’s brand as customers booked flights with competitors. The labor disruptions are occurring at a critical time for Britain and its fragile economy, which has been hit hard by high unemployment, weak consumer spending and a shrinking financial services industry. Disruptions like the British Airways strike could easily send the economy into another downturn, some economists feared. The trade union representing rail maintenance workers of Network Rail has also voted to strike in a dispute over job cuts and more weekend work, but has yet to set a date.

Strikes
Flight Attendants
British Airways PLC
Kennedy International Airport (NYC)


Missouri Political Donor Thrives With ‘No-Limits’ Giving

Abstract: COLUMBIA, Mo. — When the first $150,000 check showed up in his campaign account, Shane Schoeller was locked in a tight Republican primary for the unheralded office of Missouri secretary of state, battling two fellow lawmakers with virtually identical platforms. An additional $250,000 arrived in August, after Mr. Schoeller had nearly run out of money and faced a tough general election campaign against a well-financed Democratic opponent. Mr. Schoeller’s angel is a retired investor and chess enthusiast named Rex Sinquefield, who in recent years has emerged as the biggest political donor in Missouri and one of the most prolific anywhere in the country. Since 2008, when Missouri abolished contribution limits, Mr. Sinquefield has donated more than $20 million to local candidates and political action committees, driving the political debate on issues like education, upending the political world here and making him perhaps the most influential private citizen in the state. More than half of that money has gone to advance his signature cause: eliminating state and local income taxes in Missouri, a major source of government revenue, and replacing them with sales taxes. But efforts this year by a Sinquefield-backed group to abolish the state income tax by referendum stalled amid a dispute over ballot language issued by the current secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat. Now, with Ms. Carnahan stepping down at the end of her term, Mr. Sinquefield, 68, has a chance to revive the issue and has invested heavily to help Mr. Schoeller, who as a state representative voted to eliminate Missouri’s income tax, succeed her. The no-limits giving that has let him do it might soon be coming to a campaign near you. The lawyers and activists who played a critical role in abolishing limits on contributions to independent groups — culminating in the Supreme Court ’s Citizens United decision two years ago — now hope to persuade Congress to repeal the federal caps on direct contributions to candidates, one of the last vestiges of the post-Watergate reforms. Legal and legislative challenges to contribution limits are already proliferating at the state level and federally. This month, the Republican National Committee asked the Supreme Court to consider its lawsuit challenging limits on the combined amount an individual can give to party committees in each election cycle. The future of unlimited giving has already come to pass in Missouri, which in 2008 became one of four states that do not limit contributions to candidates. Mr. Sinquefield’s millions financed a successful 2010 initiative that banned new local income taxes and required citizens in two of Missouri’s largest municipalities, St. Louis and Kansas City , to reauthorize their earnings taxes every five years. His contributions to lawmakers and political action committees have propelled efforts to end teacher tenure in Missouri and to end state oversight of St. Louis’s police department. “He has been able to change the debate,” said Chuck Hatfield, a lawyer who helped lead a court battle several years ago to preserve Missouri’s contribution limits. “He’s gotten the state to consider issues that everyone considered dead.” Mr. Sinquefield has contributed about 40 percent of the money raised by Mr. Schoeller. Next week, Mr. Sinquefield will hold a fund-raiser for Mr. Schoeller at his home in St. Louis. The Democratic candidate in the race, Jason Kander , raised more money than Mr. Schoeller through the beginning of September, largely from unions and trial lawyers, but no single donor has given nearly as much. In an interview at a coffee shop here, Mr. Schoeller said he shared Mr. Sinquefield’s views on the income tax. But if elected, he said, he would treat his largest donor no differently from any other constituent. “I’m grateful for the support that Mr. Sinquefield has given to me, certainly,” Mr. Schoeller said. “But I think it’s important to say that everybody has a voice in the way that I look at government. Because you’re there to serve.” Mr. Sinquefield declined to be interviewed for this article. Laura Slay, his spokeswoman, said in an e-mail, “In general, Mr. Sinquefield’s contributions support initiatives that have the greatest potential for improving the lives of all Missouri families and moving our state ahead economically: education and tax reform.” Raised in a St. Louis orphanage, Mr. Sinquefield graduated from college in the 1960s and earned a business degree at the University of Chicago , where he absorbed the free-market thinking of the university’s influential economists. He helped pioneer index funds, founded a California -based money management fund and amassed a fortune whose exact size he has never disclosed. In 2005, Mr. Sinquefield retired to Missouri to devote himself to political and philanthropic causes. At the time, Missouri still had contribution limits as low as a few hundred dollars for some offices. To get around them, Mr. Sinquefield formed more than 100 political action committees, allowing him to legally evade the limits by directing multiple smaller contributions through many different PACs. He also founded a St. Louis-based, libertarian-leaning research organization, the Show-Me Institute, and deployed a phalanx of lawyers and lobbyists, known in political circles as “Rex’s World.” Missouri abolished contribution limits in 2008 after a lengthy legislative and legal battle, and Mr. Sinquefield and his wife, Jeanne Sinquefield, along with a few other wealthy families, began giving large checks directly to candidates. Through the beginning of September, Mr. Sinquefield had given a total of $335,000 to the re-election campaign of Chris Koster, the state’s Democratic attorney general, for example, and in June he gave $385,000 — the largest contribution to a candidate in Missouri history — to a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. This month, he gave $100,000 to the campaign of the speaker of the Missouri House. Recent years have also seen an explosion in ballot initiatives in the state, as gridlock in the Capitol — Republicans hold wide majorities in both houses of the Legislature and a popular Democrat is governor — made it difficult to move major legislation. In 2004, Missourians submitted 17 referendums for approval by the secretary of state. This year, that figure is 143. Mr. Sinquefield’s lawyer submitted 22 of them, all variations on proposals to swap income taxes for sales taxes. Legal challenges have grown at the same pace, as opponents and supporters battle over the 100-word summaries drafted by the secretary of state’s office to appear on petitions. Mr. Schoeller and his opponent, Mr. Kander, a lawyer and former Army intelligence officer, both say they want to ensure integrity in the ballot-writing process. Mr. Schoeller has proposed allowing a bipartisan committee, appointed by legislative leaders that could rewrite ballot initiatives if the secretary of state’s language is challenged. Mr. Kander opposes the measure, saying that it was the duty of the secretary of state to handle the task. Mr. Kander met Mr. Sinquefield for lunch in August, a meeting that Mr. Kander requested “in order to build a relationship of respect,” as Travis Brown, Mr. Sinquefield’s lobbyist, described it an e-mail. In an interview in his campaign office, Mr. Kander said Mr. Sinquefield “seemed like a nice man.” But Mr. Kander suggested that voters be wary of Mr. Sinquefield’s contributions to his opponent. “Any time that someone who is one of the biggest customers of an office is bankrolling a candidate for that office,” Mr. Kander said, “Missourians should take it into consideration when they vote.”

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission


U Thein Sein Begins Transformation in Myanmar

Abstract: KYONKU, Myanmar — He is sometimes called the Mikhail Gorbachev of Myanmar, a once-loyal apparatchik of one of the world’s most brutal military dictatorships who is chipping away at some of its worst legacies — freeing political prisoners, partially unshackling the press and allowing the long-persecuted opposition to run for election last Sunday. Why U Thein Sein, Myanmar’s president, evolved from the right-hand man of a much-feared dictator to a campaigner for democratic change is as much a mystery as why the leaders of the former military junta have allowed him to do so. But in a series of interviews with those who watched Mr. Thein Sein’s rise in the military, including two advisers, and a rare visit to his hometown, a picture has begun to emerge of a man who was always a shade different from his fellow generals. At 66, Mr. Thein Sein is slight, bookish and considered softer — or at least less ruthless — than the other members of the junta that took power after a popular uprising in 1988 . He is widely viewed as being free of the corruption that stained so many of those generals; even former critics have noted with approval that his wife and daughters have avoided the ostentatious shows of wealth that earned his predecessor’s family so much animosity in one of Asia’s poorest countries. In interview after interview, former critics and longtime supporters alike made much of his sincerity and humility. One former adviser and presidential speechwriter, U Nay Win Maung, offered this assessment last year: “Not ambitious, not decisive, not charismatic, but very sincere.” Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the country’s democracy movement, said it was Mr. Thein Sein’s sincerity about reform that persuaded her to re-enter politics last year . That decision was a turning point for the president, not only winning him support at home, but also moving him closer to the United States, the champion of international sanctions. Within days of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s declaration, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Myanmar , becoming the highest-ranking American to visit the country in half a century. Mr. Thein Sein is becoming someone the administration will look to as it tries to assert its power in Asia to check China’s rise. On Tuesday, Mr. Thein Sein continued to publicly support the reform process, despite the opposition’s near sweep of the parliamentary by-election on Sunday, saying that the vote was “conducted in a very successful way.” Although relatively few spots were filled in the election, the opposition’s commanding showing, coupled with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s winning her own seat, could be perceived as a threat to the governing party, which faces a general election in 2015. Former critics’ early praise for Mr. Thein Sein is not to say that they are fully satisfied with the changes he has made. Although many political prisoners were freed, some activists calculate that hundreds remain in prison. Nor are they blind to Mr. Thein Sein’s past: he spent his adult life, until last year, in a military known for cruelty. He was acting prime minister during the so-called Saffron Revolution in 2007, an uprising led by Buddhist monks that was violently suppressed. And he had a command during the crushing of the 1988 uprising that left thousands of civilians dead. But The Irrawaddy , a publication run by exiles in Thailand, recently noted a distinction, reporting that his unit in 1988 had either released the democracy activists it captured or handed them to the local authorities, perhaps sparing their lives. Khuensai Jaiyen, an editor of an organization that reports news about one of the largest of the country’s many minority groups, summed up the relative good feelings about the president, who later commanded troops in his region. “If you ask the people here which commander they liked the most, it would go to him,” Mr. Khuensai said by telephone. “Or, more accurately, he was the commander that people hated the least.” Like so much about Mr. Thein Sein’s past, The Irrawaddy story is difficult to confirm independently. The freer press in Myanmar is still far from free. And there are few in-depth reports about the man who became president last March in elections that brought in a nominally civilian government and that many condemned as a sham. (Mr. Thein Sein and the other former generals now ruling the country simply shed their military titles before taking office.) An adviser to the president did not respond to e-mailed questions about Mr. Thein Sein’s background and his motivations for leading the reforms. With so little to draw on, it is impossible to say what is driving Mr. Thein Sein as he sends his country hurtling, at least for now, toward a more open society. One catalyst appears to have been Cyclone Nargis . The storm four years ago was Myanmar’s worst natural disaster , killing more than 130,000 people and transforming the fertile countryside of Mr. Thein Sein’s childhood into a landscape of flattened villages and rivers clogged with bloated bodies. At the time, Mr. Thein Sein was the leader of the military junta’s emergency response efforts. But as he crisscrossed the devastated Irrawaddy Delta in a helicopter, he saw how woefully unprepared his impoverished country was for the catastrophe. The cyclone became a “mental trigger,” said U Tin Maung Thann, the head of a research organization based in Yangon that provides policy advice to the president. “It made him realize the limitations of the old regime.” As the leader of the country’s preparedness committee, Mr. Thein Sein would have been partly to blame for the government’s failings. Critics were scathing about the decision to turn down foreign assistance in the distribution of food and other aid, a move that slowed the response as the world was captivated by images of haggard villagers desperate for help. But analysts pointed out that Mr. Thein Sein did at least make himself accessible to his people, unlike his fellow generals, who in the days immediately after the storm remained hunkered down in the capital, Naypyidaw, which was untouched by Nargis. In the remote village of Kyonku, his birthplace, Mr. Thein Sein and his family are known for being slightly different. (A trip to the village showed both the recent press freedoms and their limits: government minders greeted a reporter and monitored interviews.) Like most of Myanmar’s top generals, Mr. Thein Sein grew up in poverty. The youngest of three children, he was born in a small wooden house on the road that runs through the center of the town, which is an eight-hour drive southwest of Yangon, the nation’s biggest city. His parents did not own any land, and his father, U Maung Phyo, made a living, in part, by weaving bamboo mats, said U Kyaw Soe, who grew up across the street from the president. But the president’s father was a former Buddhist monk, whom villagers described as unusually literate for the time. “The main reason for his success is his father,” Mr. Kyaw Soe said. “He was a great teacher and respected moral values.” Mr. Kyaw Soe said the village’s lack of development today stands as a testament to the president’s honesty; he has not favored Kyonku since assuming power a year ago. The village remains without running water or paved roads. Visitors are warned not to travel after dark on the dirt road that connects Kyonku to the outside world because they risk of colliding with the elephants that inhabit the hills. Mr. Kyaw Soe’s assessment of the president’s character was echoed by others. “There were certainly people who were close to the military who thought that he was one of the better ones, that he was not personally corrupt,” said Larry M. Dinger, who until August led the United States Mission in Myanmar, which was formerly known as Burma. His lack of ostentation has made a favorable impression on average Burmese, who witnessed increasingly unabashed displays of wealth by former military leaders after the junta sold off many of the country’s prized assets to friends and allies in the year leading up to the handover of power in 2011. Some analysts speculate that the cash bonanza may partly explain the former leaders’ acquiescence to the president’s reforms. With Mr. Thein Sein about to enter his second year as president, he is again articulating bold goals. In his equivalent of a State of the Union address in March — an innovation in itself — he vowed to put in place a system of universal health care, and he said spending on education would double. He also repeatedly called the news media the “fourth estate” and said it “can ensure liberty and accountability.” At least so far, Mr. Thein Sein has shown a fair level of political, and geopolitical, savvy. By suspending work on a controversial Chinese hydroelectric dam, he played to popular worries of Myanmar, with a population of 55 million, being exploited by its far larger neighbor. The move also signals to the United States that renewing ties with Myanmar may have an upside in the battle for regional power with China. Many still worry that the reforms could stall, and that too much hinges on the president. The presidential speechwriter Mr. Nay Win Maung, who died Jan. 1 , suggested in an interview late last year that there was reason for concern. “The changes have been ad hoc,” he said. “There’s been no strategy. It’s been personality-based.”


Group Buying Long Island Estate for Tesla Memorial

Abstract: A dream of 16 years came true for science enthusiasts on Friday when they struck a deal to buy a dilapidated estate on Long Island and transform it into a museum and educational memorial to Nikola Tesla, an eccentric genius who lit the world with alternating current but died penniless. The overgrown 16-acre site, in Shoreham, features his only surviving workshop. The crumbling brick laboratory was designed by Tesla’s friend Stanford White, a celebrated architect who drew up plans in Manhattan for the Washington Arch as well as neoclassical gems like the Century Club. The Agfa Corporation, which owns the heavily wooded site and once operated a factory there, agreed to sell the estate to the Tesla enthusiasts for an undisclosed sum after they succeeded in raising $1.4 million through a Web campaign. The property had been listed at $1.6 million. “All the terms and conditions have been accepted,” said John P. O’Hara, a real estate agent on Long Island who represents the property. “It’s all good. The stars have finally aligned.” Agfa’s attorney, Christopher M. Santomassimo, confirmed the deal, saying, “We have reached an agreement.” Tesla, best known for establishing alternating current as the basis for the modern transmission of electrical power, died in 1943 at age 86 on the 33rd floor of the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan. (The inventor late in life had become obsessed with the number three and its multiples.) Marc J. Seifer, author of “Wizard,” a Tesla biography, said the memorial would become a magnet for visitors from around the globe while providing jobs on the island’s North Shore and a lift for the local economy. “It’ll be a beacon,” he said in an interview. “Tesla was an inventor in so many different realms — aircraft design, robotics, beam weapons, mass communications — that he’s an inspiration for what true genius really is.” Mr. Seifer said donors from more than 100 countries contributed money to the Web campaign, run by the comic The Oatmeal and another site, Indiegogo . “I think people from all over the world will want to visit the site of his laboratory,” he said. “It’s going to be a tremendous thing.” The effort of the Tesla enthusiasts to acquire the Agfa property on Long Island began officially in 1996 with the founding of Friends of Science East , a nonprofit corporation spun off from the science museum at Shoreham-Wading River High School. The group investigated Tesla and the site’s history and redoubled its acquisition efforts after Agfa in early 2009 put the property up for sale . Friends of Science East now calls itself the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, after Tesla’s name for the site during its heyday. By 1903, the inventor had erected a wooden tower there that rose more than 18 stories above the surrounding farms. One night, it fired bolts of electricity into the sky. But Tesla eventually sold Wardenclyffe to satisfy his debts. In 1917, the new owners had the giant tower blown up and sold for scrap. Today, the brick laboratory is the main Tesla relic.

Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe
Tesla Nikola
Long Island (NY)
Monuments and Memorials (Structures)
Shoreham (NY)
Electric Light and Power


2 Casualties Don’t Deter All-Business-Class Rivalry

Abstract: THE two start-up airlines that helped established the international all-business-class model in late 2005 have now expired and joined the Choir Invisible, as the Monty Python sketch said of the dead parrot. Eos Airlines, which flew 757s configured with a mere 48 flat-bed seats between New York and London Stansted Airport, went out of business on Sunday. Last December, it was predeceased, as they say in the paid obituaries, by MaxJet Airways, which flew 767s configured with 100 reclining business-class seats between Newark and Stansted. Surely, the smart money is saying, this must be the end of the all-business-class concept, consigned as it must be to the ash heap by high oil prices and hard-driving competition from major airlines. Not so fast. Silverjet, the all-business-class airline that began flying 767s with 100 flat-bed seats between Newark and London Luton Airport in January 2006, says it is still hanging in there, largely because it manages to keep its round-trip prices in the $2,000 range, well below the ability of competitors to match. The French all-business-class start-up l’Avion is also flying 757s with 90 reclining seats between Newark and Paris Orly Airport, though British Airways plans to barge into the New York to Paris route with a mostly premium-class start-up called OpenSkies early this summer. Both Silverjet and l’Avion are struggling to achieve profitability as oil prices surge. Nevertheless, the well-heeled German carrier Lufthansa is pushing ahead in the niche. Lufthansa plans to expand its own all-business-class service with new flights between Munich and Dubai starting May 1, and between Frankfurt and Pune, a rapidly growing international business center in western India, starting July 1. The routes will be flown using Airbus A319 aircraft. The planes, which typically hold 124 seats in a two-class configuration, are going to be fitted with just 48 flat-bed seats. The flights will be operated for Lufthansa by PrivatAir, the Swiss business jet specialist. (PrivatAir is the company that has ordered two new long-haul Boeing 787 Dreamliners that it plans to convert into luxury business jets for charter flights.) Lufthansa plans its all-premium routes for “business centers where you wouldn’t necessarily make the commitment to a large aircraft” outfitted with two or three cabin classes, said Don Bunkenburg, director of corporate sales in North America. “We’re constantly looking for destinations that could fit this hybrid model,” he added. Lufthansa already runs all-business-class service, using 737s fitted with 44 seats between Newark and Frankfurt. The airline formerly flew all-business-class routes between Düsseldorf and New York and Chicago. But those routes have been converted to full three-class service on big Airbus A330 jets, as the market expanded from high-end business demand to a combination of business and leisure. The service between Newark and Frankfurt draws heavily from the banking and pharmaceutical businesses, Mr. Bunkenburg said. “They tend to want to fly on the long-haul flights on a larger aircraft on an established airline” and sometimes connect onward using shorter-haul business jets after reaching either Frankfurt or Newark, he said. Major established airlines play hardball in the premium markets where they make most of their money, especially on the trans-Atlantic routes. This partly explains what happened to Eos Airlines, which found itself reeling after major airlines reduced business-class fares across the Atlantic. American Airlines, for example, dropped right into Eos’s market when it started flying between New York and London Stansted last October. American recently added a second flight — and offered discounted round-trip business-class fares that competed aggressively with Eos’s in the $3,500 to $4,000 range. British Airways, meanwhile, recently extended through mid-May a sale on its trans-Atlantic Club World business-class service, with advance-purchase fares as low as $2,500 between New York and London. With major airline competitors reducing business-class fares over the Atlantic, “Eos no longer had a price advantage,” said Lawrence Hunt, the chief executive of Silverjet.

Eos Airlines
Airlines and Airplanes
Oil (Petroleum) and Gasoline
Silverjet Travel Inc


Flint’s Former Manager Resigns as Head of Detroit Schools

Abstract: CHICAGO — The state-appointed emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools, who had also managed the city of Flint and oversaw its decision to draw its water from the Flint River, resigned on Tuesday, the day before a congressional committee hearing in Washington on Flint’s water. Michelle Zdrodowski, a spokeswoman for Detroit Public Schools, said the manager, Darnell Earley, had declined to testify before a panel investigating the widespread contamination of Flint’s tap water after the city switched its water source, which led to elevated blood lead levels throughout the city. On Tuesday evening, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued a subpoena for Mr. Earley to testify on Wednesday, but his lawyer, A. Scott Bolden, said Mr. Earley would not be able to appear. Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said in a statement, “Mr. Earley has a right to assert the Fifth Amendment, but his abrupt resignation earlier today and his refusal to testify before the committee make it even more urgent that we hear directly from the governor as soon as possible about this escalating scandal.” Mr. Earley was appointed to the Flint and Detroit management positions by Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican. His oversight has come under scrutiny, both for his support of switching water sources, which triggered its current public health crisis, and for the condition of the Detroit Public Schools, which have been hit by a series of teacher “sickouts” in protest of the district’s conditions. Last week, the Detroit teachers’ union sued the Detroit Public Schools and Mr. Earley, arguing that under his management, he allowed the schools to “deteriorate to the point of crisis.” In a letter to Governor Snyder dated Tuesday, Mr. Earley wrote that his resignation will be effective Feb. 29. “While there is still much work yet to be done,” he said, he believed his work had helped lead the school district to long-term financial health. Mr. Earley also said he had developed a plan that would eventually help the district return to “some form of local control” — a sore point with many residents, who unwillingly surrendered that control. Mr. Earley inherited a school system already suffering from low academic achievement, declining enrollment, crumbling buildings and in financial distress. The system is in so much debt it could be insolvent by spring. Events That Led to Flint’s Water Crisis Timeline of the critical moments leading to the public health emergency. His appointment as the Detroit school system’s emergency manager in January 2015 followed two years in which he played a similar role in Flint at the behest of Mr. Snyder. In a statement, the governor praised Mr. Earley for doing “a very good job under some very difficult circumstances.” “He restructured a heavily bureaucratic central office, set in place operating and cost-containment measures, and has taken steps to stabilize enrollment,” he said. Mr. Snyder said he would appoint a transition leader by the end of the month. Mr. Earley’s departure was announced on the same day that federal officials said the F.B.I. was investigating how Flint, a city of nearly 100,000 people, had failed to provide clean water. Failure to treat the water from the Flint River caused the pipes to corrode, leading to the leaching of lead and other toxic chemicals into the system. Residents are using filters and bottled water for drinking, cooking and, in some cases, bathing. The United States attorney’s office, the Postal Inspection Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and a task force appointed by the governor have already started investigations. The F.B.I.’s involvement could indicate that criminal acts are suspected. On Tuesday, Karen Weaver, the mayor of Flint, called for the lead pipes in the city’s water system to be removed immediately, starting with the homes that have the highest recorded levels of lead. Ms. Zdrodowski, the Detroit schools spokeswoman, said Mr. Earley was not available for an interview. Mr. Earley was the fourth emergency manager for the school system since 2009. His resignation was hailed as a victory for Detroit teachers.. “He was a very tight-lipped agent of the governor,” said Steve Conn, a former president of the Detroit teachers’ union. Mr. Conn said he told his fellow teachers last year “that the only way we would get anywhere with Earley or Snyder was by mobilizing in the street.”

Detroit
Water
Darnell Earley
K-12 Education
Flint Michigan
Water pollution
Michigan


Federer Wins Fourth Australian Open Title

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — How can you make breaking records look so easy? Ask Roger Federer . He did it Sunday night, winning his 16th Grand Slam title with a straight-sets victory over Andy Murray and re-establishing his grip on tennis supremacy. With Federer adding to his record for men’s Grand Slam singles titles, there is little doubt his place in the history books is secure. By winning his fourth Australian Open, Federer may have his best opportunity to join Don Budge (1938) and Rod Laver (1962, ’69) in taking down the sport’s holy grail: a Grand Slam, a sweep of the four major tournaments in the same year. Three times, Federer has won three out of four but was unable to conquer the clay surfaces of the French Open . Two of those times, in 2006 and 2007, he made it to the final in Paris only to be dashed by his great rival and a wizard of Roland Garros, Rafael Nadal, a four-time French Open champion. But Federer finally won his first French Open last year, when Nadal lost in the fourth round. Now Nadal is out for at least a month tending to a tear in his right knee that contributed to his retiring in the quarterfinals against Murray. There is no guarantee Nadal will return to top form for Roland Garros in May after a year battling tendinitis in his knees and other nagging injuries. He has not beaten a top-10 player since November. “I mean, it’s something if it happens, it does, it’s great; but it’s not something that’s like my No. 1 goal,” said Federer, who has made eight consecutive Grand Slam finals dating to the 2008 French Open, winning four of them. “It’s the same as I haven’t put a number on how many Grand Slams I want to try to win. Whatever happens, happens. “You know, I really want to try to enjoy, you know, my end to my career, because I’ve reached already so many goals I thought were never possible. “ But Federer’s 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (11) dusting of Murray at Melbourne Park should make the upstarts on the tour insecure. They have said for months that Federer, 28, was distracted, aging and vulnerable and that 8 to 10 of them were ready to knock him off his throne. The 22-year-old Murray, who was seeded fifth, seemed in position to do it. He had beaten Federer in 6 of their 10 previous meetings . He was playing phenomenal tennis here, dominating Nadal before he retired and losing only one set before the final. But Murray was reduced to tears after being outclassed by the top-ranked Federer. Murray again carried the hopes of British fans who have been waiting 74 years, since Fred Perry captured the 1936 United States Championships, for a countryman to win a Grand Slam event. “I congratulate Roger on all of his accomplishments, and to keep doing it year after year is incredible, and tonight, he was a lot better than me,” Murray said, choking on his words at the trophy presentation. “I can cry like Roger; it’s just a shame I can’t play like him.” Last year, Federer lost a five-set clash with Nadal here and was so crushed by the defeat that he cried at the trophy ceremony. There was no crying for him Sunday. “I’m over the moon winning this thing,” he said. “I’ve played some of the best tennis of my life over the last two weeks.” Federer has made 18 of the last 19 Grand Slam finals and 22 over all, another record. Some tour veterans have examined Federer’s game and found the talk that it is wanting ridiculous. Lleyton Hewitt, a former No. 1, has played him 24 times and lost the last 15, including a straight-sets defeat here in the fourth round. He says he does not understand the doubts about Federer. “He’s the limit at the moment,” Hewitt said. “He’s the No. 1 player in the world. Everyone says it wasn’t an absolutely great year for him, and he still won two Grand Slams and lost in two finals in five sets in the other two.” This was Murray’s second Grand Slam final; he lost to Federer in straight sets at the 2008 United States Open . Struggling with his serve, Murray got off to a slow start Sunday, playing his best tennis in the third set. But serving for the set at 5-3, he was broken. With another chance to force a fourth set in a marathon tie breaker, Murray blew five set points with mis-hit shots and poorly timed gambles. As badly as he wanted to win his first major, Murray conceded he had a long way to go to narrow the gap with Federer. “I think his level is a lot more consistent in the Slams,” Murray said. “Maybe, you know, in the other tournaments, he tries a few more things out. But, you know, the shots that he hits great all year round, they’re still great. He just makes fewer unforced errors, I think, than he does the rest of the year.” Just as Federer is not putting a number on how many more major tournaments he could win, he also is not putting a timetable on retirement. He acknowledged that he had a special talent, remained highly motivated and had no plans on going anywhere. “I always knew I had it in my hand,” said Federer, who won his first Grand Slam title since becoming a father of twin girls last summer. “The question is, do I have it in my mind and in my legs, you know. That’s something I had to work extremely hard at. Now I feel like obviously I’m being pushed a great deal by the new generation coming up. I always feel sort of tennis changes sort of every five years. “When I came on tour, matches were played very differently. It was more of a bluff game, guys serving well, but there was always a weakness you could go to. Today, that doesn’t exist anymore. I think that’s also thanks to guys like Murray. They’ve made me a better player, because I think this has been one of my finest performances, you know, in a long time, or maybe forever.”

Tennis
Federer Roger
Australian Open (Tennis)
Murray Andy (1987- )


An Old Friendship Where News and Music Met

Abstract: AUSTIN, Tex. — Shortly after the midterm elections, Willie Nelson confessed with characteristic humor that he was disappointed by the results. “I’ve got a new song called ‘Y’all Got the Ball,’ ” he said, referring to the Republican takeover of the United States Senate. Whether the song actually exists, Mr. Nelson won’t say. But he is working at a pace that belies his 81 years: Last week, he released “December Day,” an album of duets with his sister Bobbie. It follows “Band of Brothers,” which hit No. 1 on Billboard’s country albums chart in June. An album of duets with Merle Haggard is planned for release early next year. Mr. Nelson’s longtime friend Dan Rather, 83, also isn’t slowing down. The journalist anchors two programs for AXS television — “Dan Rather Presents,” an investigative program, and “The Big Interview,” featuring celebrities. Last month, he interviewed Mr. Nelson and Mr. Haggard together for a new program, “Inside Arlyn,” that Mr. Nelson is hosting. Still in the pilot stage, without an announced network or airdate, the program pairs Mr. Nelson with legends and newcomers for live performances recorded at Austin’s Arlyn Studios. Mr. Haggard was the guest for the first pilot episode, and the young Austin bluesman Gary Clark Jr. played with Mr. Nelson for the second. Immediately following Mr. Rather’s interviews for “Inside Arlyn,” Mr. Rather and Mr. Nelson talked about music, politics and longevity. QUESTION: You both got your starts in Texas radio. RATHER: I didn’t know until recently that Willie was a disc jockey in Houston the same time I worked at KTRH. We were the “50,000-watt voice of the golden Gulf Coast. Tall tower, full power. We break in when news breaks out.” Where were you? NELSON: KRCT in Pasadena. We played country music. I also got to promote the shows I was working in the clubs. I had a good thing going. RATHER: I have fond memories of KTRH. We had a live program at noon, “Hillbilly Bandwagon” with Babe Fritsch. We’re talking in the mid-fifties. That’s where I met Elvis Presley. He was still truck driving some between shows when he came in for an interview. He was scruffy. I had a feeling he’d been up all night driving. He apologized and said indeed he had, but whether that’s true or not, I’ll never know. Q: Dan, I’ve heard you talk about the role of music as solace and company when you’re reporting. I suspect you’ve listened to Willie in some faraway, dangerous places. RATHER: Absolutely. I don’t want to be sophomoric about this, but I always felt a strong bond because he was the voice of the Texas I knew. I knew Willie’s music before “Red Headed Stranger.” “Hello Walls” was always one of my all-time favorites. But the first time I heard his version of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” I literally pulled the car off the road someplace in Alabama. I’d heard others sing the song, but Willie cut somewhere really deep within me. I remember thinking that if Willie doesn’t record another song the rest of his life, that song will still resonate through the ages. Q: Willie, people must tell you those kinds of stories all day. NELSON: And I can listen to ’em all day. Q: But what’s that mean to you as a songwriter? You sit with pen and paper and later people have these deep, meaningful experiences. NELSON: It’s easy for me to understand how someone can be a fan of someone. I have similar experiences with Hank Williams or Floyd Tillman. I was telling a friend the other day that people pay a lot of money to come to hear me or somebody sing and there’s an energy exchange that takes place out there that you can’t put a price on. Q: Dan, you’ve got two shows. Willie, you tour nonstop. Is passion the key to longevity? NELSON: Definitely. But also anybody that sings for two hours has to be in pretty good physical condition. You’re using your lungs — one of your largest muscles in your body. It’s a good workout. I ride my bike a little, but the real workout is the show. RATHER: I do think passion is a key to longevity. Another is gratitude. God, thank you for giving me something I love to do and for letting me still do it. There’s nothing like feeling you’re out front of a big breaking story. Q: Are we at the point where politics are simply too divisive to get anything done? RATHER: The short answer is yes. And it’s something I worry about. And I’m not a worrier by nature. I’m an optimist by nature and experience. But none of us ask often enough, “What’s good for the country?” In elected politics they too often ask, “What’s good for me in the next race or for the party?” I’m a child of World War II, and I remember the time everybody pulled together. NELSON: We have to start rebuilding our infrastructure, our highways and roads, and employ all those unemployed people building our country back. That’s where the money should go. Q: There’s a Ratherism along the lines of, “The Michigan race is tighter than a Willie Nelson headband.” How tight is a Willie Nelson headband? NELSON: Pretty tight indeed.

Willie Nelson
Dan Rather
Texas
Country music
Texas Monthly