Slowly They Modernize: A Federal Agency That Still Uses Floppy Disks

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The technology troubles that plagued the HealthCare.gov website rollout may not have come as a shock to people who work for certain agencies of the government — especially those who still use floppy disks, the cutting-edge technology of the 1980s. Every day, The Federal Register, the daily journal of the United States government, publishes on its website and in a thick booklet around 100 executive orders, proclamations, proposed rule changes and other government notices that federal agencies are mandated to submit for public inspection. So far, so good. It turns out, however, that the Federal Register employees who take in the information for publication from across the government still receive some of it on the 3.5-inch plastic storage squares that have become all but obsolete in the United States. Now government infrastructure experts are hoping that public embarrassments like the HealthCare.gov debacle will prompt a closer look at the government’s technological prowess, especially if it might mean getting rid of floppy disks. “You’ve got this antiquated system that still works but is not nearly as efficient as it could be,” said Stan Soloway, chief executive of the Professional Services Council, which represents more than 370 government contractors. “Companies that work with the government, whether longstanding or newcomers, are all hamstrung by the same limitations.” The use of floppy disks peaked in American homes and offices in the mid-1990s, and modern computers do not even accommodate them anymore. But The Federal Register continues to accept them, in part because legal and security requirements have yet to be updated, but mostly because the wheels of government grind ever slowly. Davita Vance-Cooks, the head of the Government Printing Office, which prints The Federal Register and publishes it online, spoke at a congressional hearing on Wednesday about her department’s attempts to make its work remain relevant in a post-print world. Despite creating mobile apps, The Federal Register still requires agencies to submit information on paper, with original signatures, though they can create a digital signature via a secured email system. Agencies are also permitted to submit the documents on CD-ROMs and floppy disks, but not on flash drives or SD cards. “The Federal Register Act says that an agency has to submit the original and two duplicate originals or two certified copies,” said Amy P. Bunk, The Federal Register’s director of legal affairs and policy. As long as an agency does that through one of the approved methods of transmission, she said, “they’ve met the statutory requirement.” But the secure email system — which uses software called Public Key Infrastructure technology — is expensive, and some government agencies have not yet upgraded to it. As a result, some agencies still scan documents on to a computer and save them on floppy disks. The disks are then sent by courier to the register. Ms. Bunk said that although many agencies did use the secure email system, The Federal Register could not require it until Congress made it compulsory by law. “There are limits as to how far we can make the agencies do everything in lock step,” said Jim Bradley, the assistant public printer for the Government Printing Office. Federal budget cuts, he said, had helped slow down any modernization. “We’ve got to accommodate the funding and everything else,” Mr. Bradley said. “Some agencies move forward with technology, and that’s great. Other agencies aren’t ready to go this year, maybe not next year.” A spokesman for The Federal Register would not say which agencies still used floppy disks. But at The Register’s office, a modest space on North Capitol Street in sight of the Capitol dome, couriers were recently seen coming in and out as an employee pulled a floppy disk from one package and at least two CD-ROMs from others. Meanwhile, experts say that an administration that prided itself on its technological savvy has a long way to go in updating the computer technology of the federal government. HealthCare.gov and the floppy disks of The Federal Register, they say, are but two recent examples of a government years behind the private sector in digital innovation. Mr. Soloway, of the Professional Services Council, said that the government’s technology was also causing it to fall behind in cooperation with the private sector. “It’s undoubtedly inhibiting the expansion” of what corporations are willing to do with the government, Mr. Soloway said. “And it remains an inhibitor for the next generation of companies.”

Government Printing Office
US Politics
Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry


Manufacturing Contracts for 2nd Straight Month

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Manufacturing in the United States contracted further in December, and construction spending fell in November for the first time in nearly a year and a half, suggesting the economy ended 2015 with less momentum. The downbeat reports on Monday cast a dark cloud over the near-term growth outlook and prompted economists to sharply lower their growth estimates for the fourth quarter. “The year begins with manufacturing activity shrinking and, looking further in the data, the shrinkage looks to be increasingly sourced in domestic demand rather than exports,” said Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research in New York. The Institute for Supply Management in the United States said its index of national factory activity fell to 48.2 from 48.6 in November and is now at its lowest level since June 2009. While a reading below 50 indicates a contraction in manufacturing, the index remains above 43.1, which is associated with a recession. Manufacturing, which accounts for 12 percent of the economy, has been hammered by a strong dollar, as well as slower global demand and efforts at home by businesses to reduce excessive buildups in inventory. All that is keeping downward pressure on new orders. The institute said a gauge of new orders rose 3 percentage points, but remained in contractionary territory. Export orders gained 3.5 percentage points to 51 last month, suggesting much of the weakness could be concentrated in the energy sector, where spending has been undercut by lower oil prices. Ten out of 18 manufacturing industries, including apparel, machinery, primary metals and electrical equipment, reported contraction in December. The six reporting growth included textile mills, paper products and chemical products industries. Inventories at manufacturers rose slightly, but that was offset by an increase in customers’ reporting that stocks of unsold goods were too high. With activity weakening, manufacturers adjusted their hiring plans. The employment index fell to 48.1 from 51.3 in November. An alternative reading from the private data vendor Markit showed continued expansion in manufacturing but at a slower pace. Markit’s purchasing managers’ index fell to 51.2 from 52.8 in November, the lowest since October 2012. In a separate report, the Commerce Department said construction spending slipped 0.4 percent, the first and also biggest drop since June 2014, after a downwardly revised 0.3 percent gain in October.

Manufacturing
Construction
Institute for Supply Management
Commerce Department
US Economy


Republicans Go After Jewish Vote

Abstract: BOCA RATON, Fla. — Using billboards, television advertisements and finely honed voter lists, Republicans here and in other battleground states have intensified an effort to lure a small but potentially significant group of new or wavering voters from President Obama . Focused on South Florida, Ohio and Nevada, the Republican Jewish Coalition , backed mostly by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson , a Zionist, has begun spending $6.5 million on an air-and-ground strategy to reach Jewish voters who may view Mr. Obama as unreliable on the question of Israel’s security. Jewish voters, who generally vote for Democrats in big numbers, overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama in 2008, giving him 78 percent of their vote, according to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky. In Florida, where the largest share of the $6.5 million is being spent, one of the group’s most visible messages is along Interstate 95 and the Florida Turnpike, including in Boca Raton and in Broward County, areas with large Jewish populations. A series of red-and-blue billboards lament: “Obama ... Oy Vey!!” Then ask, “Had enough?” Last week, the coalition began the first in a series of “buyer’s remorse” television ads featuring a Jewish voter concerned about Israel and the economy who declared that he would not vote for Mr. Obama this time around. The hope among Republican groups is to continue to erode Mr. Obama’s deep-seated popularity in the Jewish community, which polls show has dropped slightly since 2008, by emphasizing first Israel and then the economy. A study of Jewish voters in Florida conducted early this month by the American Jewish Committee showed that about 7 in 10 said they would vote for Mr. Obama. According to the Gallup daily tracking poll conducted from July 1 to Sept. 10, 70 percent of registered Jewish voters planned to vote for Mr. Obama, compared with 25 percent for Mitt Romney . In the spring, Gallup’s poll showed Mr. Obama up 64 percent to 29 percent against Mr. Romney. Some Republicans see those numbers as an opportunity. “Sixty-nine percent still shows that President Obama has real trouble in the Jewish community, and it hints at the challenges he is facing among a reliable Democratic constituency,” said Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “It is a significant drop,” Mr. Brooks added. “And keep in mind, it is taken at the height of all the negative press and all the challenges Romney has been facing.” At the same time, the latest Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll of likely Florida voters showed Mr. Obama with a widening lead, 53 percent to 44 percent. Democrats said the effort to steer a meaningful number of Jewish votes to Mr. Romney was wishful thinking. Surveys show that most voters are content with Mr. Obama’s handling of Israel. And while Israel is important to most Jewish voters, domestic issues hold sway. On issues like immigration , gay rights, abortion and health care, most Jewish voters align with Democrats, analysts say. As the Republican Party tilts further to the right, the task of winning over Jewish voters gets increasingly complicated, analysts add. The coalition routinely makes a run at Jewish voters — although never with as much cash as this year — and walks away with little to show for it, Democrats said. Nineteen percent of Jewish voters are Republicans, according to a March survey by the American Jewish Committee, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “People understand the president’s commitment to the state of Israel,” said Representative Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who is outspoken on the question of Israel. “Beyond that, the community really does care about women’s rights and seniors and about what the Supreme Court would be like with multiple appointments by Mitt Romney.” But Mr. Brooks said the coalition was not interested in winning over liberal voters, only a more conservative slice of the community. “We’re not trying to appeal to the hard-core Democratic voters,” he said. Jewish voters are coveted on both sides because they register to vote and cast ballots in disproportionally large numbers. As a result, a shift of even 5 percent, or 25,000 voters, in a swing state like Florida, known for its cliffhanger elections, can make a difference, Mr. Brooks said. In Florida, 3.4 percent of registered voters are Jewish, but they make up as much as 8 percent of the electorate, said Ira M. Sheskin, the director of the Jewish Demography Project at the University of Miami. For this reason, the Republican Jewish Coalition is investing on the ground — not just the air — in Florida, Ohio and Nevada, the state that is now receiving the money originally intended for Pennsylvania, Republicans said. Working with research that microtargets Jewish voters who might choose Mr. Romney, the coalition dispatched hundreds of volunteers this month to South Florida and elsewhere to knock on thousands of doors; stuff mailboxes with brochures that exhort, “We need a president that stands with Israel”; and make 55,000 phone calls. It is also using high-profile Jewish Republicans, like Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush’s press secretary, to talk to Jewish voters. “As I like to say, Palm Beach County is ground zero for the Republican Jewish movement,” said Sid Dinerstein, the garrulous chairman of the Republican Party there, who described a rising chorus of disaffected if discreet Jewish voters in his area. “The taking for granted of Jewish votes by the Democrats reached a tipping point because of how openly hostile the president is to Israel and the relationship with Israel.” Israel is the most obvious wedge issue. Republicans portray Mr. Obama’s stance on Israel as limp, misguided or worse. Among other things, Mr. Obama’s critics say the president has weakened military aid to Israel, is soft on Iran and has snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Last week, another group, Secure America Now, which is backed by two Republican strategists, ran an ad in Florida featuring Mr. Netanyahu making public remarks on Sept. 11. In the ad, Mr. Netanyahu says that while the world waits, Iran gets closer to building a nuclear bomb. “And I say wait for what?” he asks. “Wait until when?” This is precisely why Marcia Kaleky Stern, 67, who works as an administrator at an online university in South Florida and who says she voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and usually backs Democrats, has switched to Mr. Romney. “He promised to be good to Israel, and I am very, very passionate about Israel,” Mrs. Stern said. “The president has proved not to be. Most of the Jewish Democrats, and I hate to say I was one of them until last December, they have their eyes closed.” But Jewish Democrats say the Republican groups are twisting Mr. Obama’s record on the Middle East. In fact, they say, Mr. Obama has showered Israel with large amounts of military aid, put in place sanctions against Iran and met with Mr. Netanyahu nine times since taking office. “They are distorting the president’s stellar record on Israel in their hopes to shave off a couple of votes,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, who is chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. “It’s cynical and harmful to Israel to put partisan politics and love of party ahead of a love of Israel.” Despite their natural kinship with Jewish voters, Democrats say they are not taking them for granted. In Florida and elsewhere, they have run phone banks and hosted house parties for Jewish voters to discuss Mr. Obama’s contributions. They formed Rabbis for Obama , a group of more than 600 rabbis who have endorsed the president. And they have sent high-profile Democrats around the country to speak out, including former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. “The amount of money being put in by Adelson and others is unprecedented, and we don’t know what the impact is going to be,” acknowledged Mik Moore, co-founder of the Jewish Council for Education and Research , a “ super PAC ” that supports Mr. Obama and created the “Great Schlep” campaign aimed at increasing Jewish support for Mr. Obama in 2008. “We are taking very seriously what millions of dollars’ worth of print and radio ads can do in an election.”

Republican Jewish Coalition
Israel
Presidential Election of 2012
Adelson Sheldon G
Romney Mitt
Obama Barack
Jews and Judaism


Profit at Jones Apparel Better Than Expected

Abstract: The Jones Apparel Group posted a quarterly profit that was slightly better than expected but cautioned that sales trends were in a steep decline as the economy slowed. The clothing maker, whose brands include Jones New York, Nine West and Anne Klein, also forecast a weak holiday shopping season for the retail industry and said it would rein in spending in 2009. Jones’s third-quarter net income tumbled to $27.3 million, or 33 cents a share, from $400.1 million, or $3.97 a share, a year earlier. Revenue fell 6 percent, to $964.7 million from $1.1 billion, because the company eliminated certain sportswear lines. Same-store sales in Jones’s own stores rose during July and August but fell more than 8 percent in September “as consumer confidence plummeted.” Jones is slowing its store expansion plans for 2009 and has lowered its capital spending forecast.

Apparel
Jones Apparel Group Inc
Company Reports


Colts and Bengals Treat a Meaningless Game as, Well, Meaningless

Abstract: CINCINNATI, Aug. 30 (AP) — The last time the Indianapolis Colts visited for the final preseason game, their starters could have driven over in a minivan and had plenty of room left for their equipment. Their return trip could be as meager. Two years ago, the Colts played only two starters — both on defense — in the final preseason game in Cincinnati. Last year, they used only one starter — again, on defense — in their last tuneup game, in Indianapolis. There is a pattern. The Colts (1-2) will give most of their starters the day off Friday night at Paul Brown Stadium, adhering to Coach Tony Dungy’s practice of keeping his best players out of harm’s way in the final preseason game. “You certainly could see some,” Dungy said. “There are some guys who need to play a little bit. We’ve got some first- and second-year players that need some time.” At this point, the defending Super Bowl champions are buying time until their season opener against New Orleans. That game will be on Thursday night — another reason not to let his starters do too much. “Well, hopefully we will get a win Friday night, but this time of year, you certainly do start getting excited about the regular season,” quarterback Peyton Manning said. The Bengals (0-3) are not much different. Their offense finally started rolling last Monday night in Atlanta, reaching the end zone for the first time in the preseason. With only three days off between games, there is no need to push anybody. Although Bengals Coach Marvin Lewis will not say, it is likely that the starters will play the first series and then start exchanging helmets for baseball caps. “There are things we can clean up and that we need to clean up before we get to our opener, but it’s all things we’re capable of doing,” quarterback Carson Palmer said. “We’ll get them taken care of.” One of the Colts’ interests for the final preseason game revolves around two draft picks. The fourth-round defensive back Brannon Condren and the fifth-round defensive back Michael Coe could get into the game at some point. Condren has missed the preseason with a groin injury. Coe has not played since the first game against Dallas because of a groin injury. Each was doing much better this week. The Bengals say they are curious how their two offensive tackles are doing with little more than a week left before the season opener. Left tackle Levi Jones played Monday night in Atlanta, his first appearance of the preseason. Jones has been recovering from knee surgery that sidelined him for most of training camp. Right tackle Willie Anderson returned to practice Wednesday, but it was unclear whether he would get into the game against the Colts. Anderson, an 11-year veteran, has chronic pain in his right foot. Even if he is in the starting lineup in the season opener against the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 10, he may not be in shape to play the entire game. “It’s going to take awhile for me to get back up to par,” Anderson said. “Marvin hasn’t told anybody what the goal is. We’re going to take it one game at a time.” The Bengals also will be taking a look at a new kicker, Aaron Elling. The regular kicker, Shayne Graham, bruised his right hip while helping with a tackle in Atlanta. On Wednesday, the Bengals brought in Aaron Elling to kick against the Colts, giving Graham more time to rest. If Graham has not healed in time for the opener, Elling could be his temporary replacement — provided he does well against the Colts. “If I do good and maybe Shayne is not ready, they feel comfortable,” Elling said.

Indianapolis Colts
Dungy Tony
National Football League
Football
Athletics and Sports


Tennessee: More Charges in Breach at Weapons Plant

Abstract: A federal grand jury has toughened charges against three antiwar protesters who authorities say cut their way through security fences and sprayed slogans on the walls of a nuclear weapons plant. The indictment released Thursday charges the three, including an 82-year-old Roman Catholic nun, with “depredation” of the plant, the Y-12 National Security Complex in Knoxville. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The indictment includes previous charges of trespassing and malicious destruction of property. The complex stores the nation’s supply of weapons-grade uranium, makes nuclear warhead parts and provides nuclear fuel.

Nuclear Weapons
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Knoxville (Tenn)
Graffiti


Pennsylvania: Ex-Judge Guilty Plea

Abstract: One of two former judges accused of taking kickbacks to send youths to for-profit detention facilities has agreed to plead guilty to a federal racketeering charge. Michael Conahan, a former Luzerne County judge, will plead guilty in the $2.8 million “kids for cash” scandal, according to an agreement filed Thursday in Scranton. Prosecutors said Mr. Conahan and another former judge, Mark Ciavarella Jr., took kickbacks from the owner and builder of two private juvenile detention facilities.

Pennsylvania
Kickbacks
Decisions and Verdicts


A Jewish Matchmaker Whose Hand Led Hundreds Down the Aisle

Abstract: PITTSBURGH — When I walked into Tova Weinberg’s large house here in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, she looked me up and down and asked, “Are you Jewish?” I told her I was. “Are you married?” Yes, I said. That was, apparently, the wrong answer. She wrinkled her nose and said, in a disappointed tone, “Oh, O.K. Never mind.” I had just been sized up, then dismissed, as a potential match. Ms. Weinberg, 60, is one of the country’s top Jewish matchmakers. A dentist by training, she long ago gave up that career for her full-time calling as a shadchen, to use the Hebrew and Yiddish word for one who makes shidduchs, or matches. At any given time, Ms. Weinberg has the names of “hundreds, maybe thousands” of single Jews bouncing around in her head, and over the years she has introduced “about 250” couples who went on to get married. That is not including those who met online at SawYouAtSinai.com , the matchmaking website she helped found. Raised in Detroit, Ms. Weinberg made her first match as a young woman in New York, where her mother had suggested that she move to find a mate. In 1976, as Ms. Weinberg recalled, an older friend, dedicated to matchmaking, asked Ms. Weinberg to help organize a singles party. “At the party,” Ms. Weinberg said, “I meet this girl named Debbie, and I said, ‘You don’t know me, but I have this feeling you’d be perfect for my friend Mark Goldenberg.’ ” The woman was reluctant to meet a stranger. “There were so many hijackings, there was David Berkowitz,” the Son of Sam killer. “She said, ‘How do I know you’re not a mass murderer?’ I got on my hands and knees and said, ‘Do me a favor and have dinner with him.’ ” The day after the couple’s first date, Ms. Weinberg heard from the man. “He called me and said, ‘I’m going to marry her.’ And they just married off their last child.” Ms. Weinberg did find a husband for herself in New York, too. They moved to Pittsburgh for his work as a doctor, and she practiced dentistry for a time, but continued to make matches on the side. It became more than a hobby. “There was so much intermarriage in Pittsburgh, I felt I had to do something,” she said. “I started talking to all these women’s organizations. I said: ‘Listen, I have men! My husband knows all these residents and interns. Give me your daughters, I have the boys!’ ” Ms. Weinberg, who has five children and 15 grandchildren, is an observant Jew of the Modern Orthodox persuasion. She does not work or use electricity on the Sabbath, but nor does she cover her hair, as more strictly observant women do. There are dozens of other Jewish matchmakers, but most primarily serve Orthodox Jews, and many charge for their services. Ms. Weinberg is unusual for working with all branches of Judaism, and for refusing money. “Baruch Hashem” — blessed is God’s name — “my husband makes a lot of money, so I can do this for free,” Ms. Weinberg said. A conversation with her involves a lot of listening; a lot of Baruch Hashems; and talk of finding one’s bashert, one’s destiny, or soul mate. In 2004, investors approached her and asked her to help them start SawYouAtSinai.com, which uses matchmakers to pair members. When I visited Ms. Weinberg last week, the website had 18,344 members and 355 matchmakers, including Ms. Weinberg. On SawYouAtSinai.com, members can see only those profiles of other members suggested by the site’s matchmakers. Image Tova Weinberg long ago left her career as a dentist. Credit Jeff Swensen for The New York Times One of her primary tasks, on the website and for her private clientele, is to help singles be less picky, Ms. Weinberg said. One frequent mistake she sees is “looking for something they think their parents want them to have,” she said. “And thinking they can’t compromise, like on religion: ‘I have to have somebody who is superreligious and learns all day long,’ or, ‘I have to have somebody who eats shellfish out, but is Jewish.’ ” Women can be superficial — “A lot of women don’t like bald men,” Ms. Weinberg said — but men are worse. “I’ll have a singles party, they’ll come into the room, look around, say, ‘Bye!’ They don’t even get to know anybody. They don’t look at the neshama,” the soul, she said. Some of the men have mommy issues, too. “I have this one man,” Ms. Weinberg said, “whose mother used to be a ballerina, so he is looking for a woman with long legs, no chest. And he’s a rabbi!” Ms. Weinberg will work with any client as long as he or she is Jewish by the traditional standard of maternal descent: “I work with everyone whose mother is Jewish. The father could be the pope.” And she will work with clients who are gay, as long as they are looking for a straight marriage. “They have same-sex attraction,” Ms. Weinberg said, “but they don’t want to pursue that line. They want to marry a woman, and they want me to tell the girls they are homosexual but they don’t want to act on it.” Such a man “wants to have a normal house; he wants a house and a family.” And even for these men, Ms. Weinberg said, there are women. “I have to tell the woman” about the man’s situation, she said. “But there are women who are asexual, and there are women who don’t need to be — hugged and kissed, sure, but. ...” She trailed off. “I have made matches like that.” Ms. Weinberg will take extraordinary measures to help put a man and woman together for life. She told one of her sons she would give him $10,000 if he found a husband for his sister, and he did. She will also take certain liberties in the service of love. “Something you should know about Tova is she creatively alters the truth under certain circumstances,” said Beverly Siegel , a documentary filmmaker from Chicago. Widowed after a long first marriage, Ms. Siegel met her second husband through Ms. Weinberg. “She told Howard some things about me that were not exactly true,” Ms. Siegel said. “She told him that I was 55, but I was 59. She told him I was willing to relocate. Howard was living in New York at the time. My feeling was when you say you are willing to relocate, it’s a matter of how much, it’s a negotiation. But she just said, ‘She’s willing to relocate.’ Period.” Ms. Weinberg also told Ms. Siegel that her prospective date, Howard Rieger, was “the most important Jew in North America.” Mr. Rieger was the president of United Jewish Communities, a national philanthropy, and so was one very important Jew. But Ms. Siegel now finds that description a bit dubious. “I think it’s safe to say he wasn’t the most important Jew in North America,” Ms. Siegel said of her second husband. But they were married in September 2008, five months after they started emailing, four months after their first date. “Tova is an amazingly talented woman,” Ms. Siegel said. “She is obsessed in a wonderful way.”

Pittsburgh
Tova Weinberg
Dating
Marriage
Judaism


Plan to Capture an Asteroid Runs Into Politics

Abstract: It is known, informally, as the asteroid-lasso plan: NASA wants to launch an unmanned spacecraft in 2018 that would capture a small asteroid — maybe 7 to 10 yards wide — haul it closer to Earth, then send astronauts up to examine it, in 2021 or beyond. But the space agency has encountered a stubborn technical problem: Congressional Republicans. Normally, there is bipartisan support (or disapproval) in Congress for NASA’s bolder plans, particularly when they involve human spaceflight. What squabbling does take place tends to pit lawmakers from states with big NASA presences, like Florida and Texas, against those with fewer vested interests. This month, however, the science committee in the Republican-controlled House voted to bar NASA from pursuing that faraway rock. In a straight party vote — 22 Republicans for, 17 Democrats against — the committee laid out a road map for NASA for the next three years that brushed aside the asteroid capture plan, the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s agenda for space exploration. The plan, instead, included new marching orders, telling NASA to send astronauts back to the Moon, set up a base there and then aim for Mars (and to do so with less money than requested). “A costly and complex distraction,” is how one Republican critic, Representative Steven Palazzo of Mississippi, described the asteroid mission. Other legislators complained that the project seemed far-fetched and poorly articulated, and that it would not advance America’s bragging rights in space the way a return to the Moon could. The bill awaits a vote by the full House. NASA and its rocket scientists are trying to figure out how to proceed. President Obama had asked them to find a way to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030s. They presented their plan in April, describing it, perhaps immodestly, as a way to “protect our planet” from dangerous asteroids in addition to making strides in human spaceflight. A non-NASA study had estimated the total cost of capturing and redirecting an asteroid at $2.6 billion. New analysis by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is in charge of the robotic part of the mission, put the cost at perhaps half that — $1 billion plus the cost of the rocket, said Charles Elachi, the laboratory’s director. “It allows us to get to an asteroid four years ahead of time,” said Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, a former astronaut and a proponent of the asteroid plan. Mr. Nelson, like NASA officials, ticked off other possible benefits: The agency would learn how to push around heavy objects in space, which could help if a large asteroid were on a collision course with Earth; and NASA would develop technologies like thinner, lighter solar panels that would be useful for a human mission to Mars in the 2030s. “And the fourth thing it does is, if it ends up an interesting asteroid, then we’ve got the possibility of the science of mining an asteroid,” Mr. Nelson said. The proposal, unveiled in April as part of Mr. Obama’s budget, is far from dead. On Tuesday, a committee in the Democrat-controlled Senate is scheduled to work on its version of the bill, one that makes no mention of capturing asteroids but gives leeway to NASA to do whatever it thinks best for getting to Mars. On the same day, experts will convene at NASA headquarters in Washington to review work on the asteroid mission so far. As yet, those experts have not pinpointed an asteroid to kidnap, but the idea is this: First, build a robotic spacecraft with a novel inflatable cone-shaped structure that could envelop the asteroid (which will be tricky to catch, because it will probably be spinning). Next, meet the space rock as it swings by the vicinity of the Earth and the Moon. Then, after essentially wrapping the asteroid in a bag (no lassos are actually involved), the spacecraft would lug it into orbit above the Moon, a slow do-si-do of mechanics that could take a few years. “Over all, I think this is a very doable mission,” said Brian Muirhead, the chief engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After that, astronauts would travel aboard a giant new rocket that NASA is designing, to meet the asteroid for a closer look. Their trip would give NASA the opportunity to test its deep-space spacecraft, the Orion capsule, as well as its procedures for helping astronauts work with asteroids, which have almost no gravity. Asteroids have been having their moment in the news, in part because of the terrifying asteroid explosion over Russia in February, which injured about 1,500 people. Last month, NASA announced an Asteroid Grand Challenge, inviting people and organizations to collaborate in finding asteroids that threaten Earth and proposing solutions. On Friday, the agency said it had received more than 400 responses to the challenge and suggestions to help with the asteroid capture mission. Separately, at least two private companies have announced intentions to mine asteroids for rare metals, arguing that supplies on Earth are dwindling. There is near unanimity in Congress and NASA that the ultimate goal is to send people to Mars, but the logistical challenges and costs are too big to conquer right away. NASA officials depict the asteroid capture plan as an elegant interim step, one that would send humans deeper into space than before and break new ground in rocket technology. But Republicans on the House science committee complained this month that the proposal came “out of the blue,” lacking much explanation from NASA officials, support from scientists or cost analysis. Some Democrats on the committee were also skeptical, but most were willing to hear NASA out. “I was never very excited about it,” said Representative Donna F. Edwards of Maryland, a Democrat on the committee. However, she was much more critical of the Republican alternative that passed. To some Democrats, the Republican objections came across as part of a larger strategy to block Mr. Obama on all fronts. “I really thought that was really a direct insult to the president,” said Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the committee. Historically, NASA’s bipartisan support in Congress dates to its founding in 1958 in the aftermath of Russia’s launching of Sputnik. And it is far too soon to say whether the House Republicans’ objections will ultimately scuttle the asteroid plan. But some longtime NASA observers wonder if the differing views can coalesce to give NASA clear marching orders. “As long as the Republicans control the House and Mr. Obama is president, I don’t think that agreement will happen, and we’ll just muddle through,” said John M. Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. Meanwhile, Democrats say that the current House bill, the NASA Authorization Act of 2013, would give the agency an impossible mission, reviving expensive ambitions to send astronauts back to the Moon while proposing to cut NASA’s budget to $16.6 billion for the next fiscal year, down from $17.8 billion appropriated this year. Republicans have taken the position that spending plans should take into account the current budget sequester. The Senate authorization bill, being taken up this week, proposes $18.1 billion for NASA. Given the fiscal climate, the Republicans’ Moon ambitions are just not possible, according to Louis D. Friedman, a former executive director of the Planetary Society , a nonprofit group that promotes space exploration. “Frankly, it comes down to this or nothing,” Dr. Friedman said, referring to the asteroid plan. “This at least does everything we need in the American space program at a price we can afford while we debate when we are going to make those bigger commitments.”

Asteroid
NASA
Congress
Republicans
House of Representatives


Phillies’ Jamie Moyer Leaves the Mets Baffled

Abstract: Jamie Moyer looks as comfortable as a batting-practice pitcher when he is on the mound for the Phillies . His motion is simple, he does not waste time, and he throws strikes. The strikes continually float out of his left hand, slow, achingly slow and tantalizingly slow. It does not seem as if Moyer should be difficult to conquer. His fastball does not exceed 85 miles per hour, so he does not overpower anyone. He has precise control, so batters know that his pitches will be around the strike zone. He would appear to be the type of soft-tossing pitcher most hitters would rush to attack. But as Moyer has shown throughout his late-blooming career, he is smart, he is fearless and he is a lot more than just an old lefty with a below-average fastball. The Mets discovered how exasperating it can be to try to solve Moyer on Sunday afternoon. He held them to no runs and two hits for seven innings in leading the Phillies to a 6-2 win. After Moyer dominated the Mets, a Phillies victory in the second game of the day-night doubleheader would have moved Philadelphia into a tie for first place in the National League East with them. Manager Charlie Manuel playfully said Cole Hamels would probably pitch a shutout; Carlos Delgado made sure that he did not. With Delgado hammering two homers and a single against Hamels to drive in four runs, the Mets nearly matched Philadelphia with a 6-3 victory to secure a split and regain a two-game edge. The Phillies are close enough to first place to cause the Mets to ponder last September’s disintegration, but Moyer does not believe they are doing that. “Sorry if I’m not jumping up and down, but we have a lot of baseball to play yet,” he said. Hamels said the Phillies had “a tough road” ahead after failing to sweep the Mets. But Manuel spoke optimistically about being three games better than the Mets over the next 19 games. “We can do that,” Manuel said. At 45, Moyer is the oldest player in the majors. As he leaned against a wall outside the visiting clubhouse after the first game at Shea Stadium, he answered questions about whether he could pitch until he is 50. Moyer said it would be great, but explained that he made decisions from start to start, not year to year. As Moyer discussed winning his team-leading 13th game and joining the Hall of Famer Phil Niekro as the only pitchers to do that at 45 or older, he became emotional. During Moyer’s answer, his eyes turned moist. “When I sit in my rocking chair in 5 or 10 years, maybe I’ll look back on this kind of stuff,” said Moyer, who has 243 career wins. “I’m proud to have the opportunity to play, to wear a uniform. And I cherish this.” If Moyer is in that rocking chair and remembers Sunday’s start, he will probably reflect on David Wright’s at-bat in the third inning. With the Phillies ahead, 2-0, the Mets had runners on first and second. On the ninth pitch of the at-bat, Moyer induced Wright to fly out for the third out. Moyer threw several different pitches, he changed speeds, and he worked the corners. “You can’t go up there and gear up for one, two, three pitches,” Wright said. “He’s got four or five pitches that he can throw at you. When he locates all of those for strikes, he’s tough.” The Mets pummeled Moyer for six runs and nine hits on Aug. 26, which ended his streak of 14 consecutive starts of allowing three earned runs or less. Moyer said he simply made crisper pitches on Sunday. He tossed five kinds of pitches in the opening inning, and he remained a puzzle all afternoon. Sometimes, Moyer dreamed about what it would be like to have a 90-m.p.h. fastball. But he said those thoughts never lasted long. A pitcher will lose velocity, Moyer reasoned, but not his knowledge. “I kind of look at it, fortunately, that I have what I have,” he said. “There are days where I pitch and it just doesn’t work. And there’s other days where you have a day like today and it worked.”

Baseball
New York Mets
Moyer Jamie
Philadelphia Phillies


A Candidate Plans Early for a Runoff

Abstract: Starting in December, real estate interests — which have helped bankroll so many city campaigns — will be severely restricted from giving contributions to political candidates. That is a big problem for Melinda R. Katz , a candidate for city comptroller. As chairwoman of the City Council’s Land Use Committee, Ms. Katz has taken in hundreds of thousands of dollars from the real estate industry. But Ms. Katz has come up with an unusual request that would allow her to keep the money from the real estate industry flowing. She has asked the city’s Campaign Finance Board to permit her to set up now an account that she could tap if she faced a runoff in the election for comptroller next fall. That would allow her to keep collecting big donations from the real estate industry for much of this year, while they are still legal, and then to spend the money in the heat of battle next year. “Clearly it’s a move to circumvent the campaign finance limits,” said one of her opponents, Councilman David I. Weprin of Queens. Of course, it is not unusual for a candidate, especially someone likely to be a top contender, to set up an account ahead of time for a runoff campaign. But typically, such an account is authorized a month or two before the runoff begins, not 14 months. “It’s shocking that someone this far out from the election would put forth such a transparent effort to get around the intent, if not the letter, of the regulations or limitations,” said Doug Forand, spokesman for David Yassky, another candidate for comptroller. The new limits on donations from the real estate industry and others with interests before the city were approved by the City Council last year in an effort to reduce the disproportionate influence the interests yield over city elections. Lobbyists and contractors are among those affected. At the most recent reporting deadline in January, no candidate for citywide office had attracted more real estate money than Ms. Katz, whose approval is required for all major projects and zoning changes. And if the city’s Campaign Finance Board approves her request, real estate professionals who have already given her campaign the maximum allowed by law, $4,950, would be able to contribute a fresh $2,475 to a new runoff account, rather than the $200 that will be allowed after the new rules take effect in December. In an interview, Ms. Katz said that her request was not related to the looming restrictions and that she simply wanted to raise money as early as possible so she could focus on wooing voters next fall. She said the request actually demonstrated just how qualified she was to be the city’s chief accountant, because of her ability to anticipate situations and take calculated risks well ahead of everyone else. Given that the September 2009 Democratic primary for comptroller has attracted several well-financed candidates, Ms. Katz argues that it is reasonable to expect that no one will eclipse the 40 percent threshold necessary to prevent a runoff. The board could rule on Ms. Katz’s request as early as Thursday. “I think that’s exactly the characteristic you’d want in a New York City comptroller: thinking ahead, trying to be efficient,” she said. “In order to do a proper runoff, I’d like to be finished raising money, and I’d like to prepare for the debate. This will give me that opportunity.” And far being apologetic for being supported by real estate professionals, Ms. Katz, who had raised $1.9 million over all as of January, said that she was proud of all the support she had received so far from a cross-section of unions, businesses and elected officials. “The folks that have donated to my campaign, I would hope, care deeply about the future of the economy of this city, so if developers, financial folks, business owners and others are donating, I’m proud of the fact that they believe that I would be a good steward.” Eric Friedman, a spokesman for the Campaign Finance Board, said he was not at liberty to discuss Ms. Katz’s request because it was a pending matter. But several campaign finance lawyers said they would be surprised if the board ruled for Ms. Katz, because of the precedent it would set and because of the impact such a ruling might have on the races for mayor and public advocate. The earliest the board has authorized establishing runoff accounts was Feb. 6, 2001, when Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer were dueling in the Democratic primary for mayor. Such approvals, however, are typically not given until a month or two before the September primary. But already, 2009 is promising to be an election year like no other. With the politicians occupying the offices of mayor, comptroller, public advocate, four out of five borough presidencies and two-thirds of the City Council all scheduled to leave office because of term limits, more people than ever have declared their candidacies. Fund-raising, meanwhile, is on pace to double the previous record.

City Councils
Elections
New York City
Katz Melinda R


Removing ‘Retardation’ From New York State Agency

Abstract: ALBANY — For the second time in a year, New York legislators are considering changing the name of one of the only state agencies in the country with “retardation” still in its title. The term, once viewed as clinical and neutral, is now considered so demeaning that leading advocacy groups in the state have promoted a campaign against it and have dropped the word from their own titles. And yet, the letterhead of New York’s chief caretaking agency still reads “Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.” Of the dozens of states that once used “retardation” in an agency or department title, only New York and Rhode Island still do. Given the activism against the term here, it was a surprise last year when a proposal by Gov. David A. Paterson to change the office’s name to the “Developmental Disabilities Services Office” that had passed the State Senate was pulled before reaching the Assembly floor. And the protesters who blocked it were some of the very people who have worked hardest to secure the rights of those labeled “retarded.” “There was an affinity for the name ‘O.M.R.D.D.’ by some advocates,” said Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera, who was then the chairman of the Mental Health Committee. “They felt there was a value to clarifying ‘retardation.’ ‘Developmental disabilities’ was not clarifying who you are talking about.” Opponents of the name-change bill acknowledge that it was unsettling to block the elimination of language they disdained. But Mark Brandt, executive director of Nysarc, which once stood for New York State Association for Retarded Children, said that three generations of advocates who built the system that the state office governs were concerned that they had not been involved in the discussion to change the name. The debate over erasing the term “retarded” illustrates the issues that can arise as language shifts. Terminology was important to the parents who fought on behalf of children who until the 1950s were labeled “moron” or “imbecile.” For them, the initial popularizing of the term “mentally retarded” was a victory. A once-hidden population now had a name and a state agency. What would happen if the familiar labels changed again? “I’d worry about a new, younger congressman or legislator coming in who we’d have to re-educate,” said Joan Taylor, 84, who 40 years ago began advocating for her son, now deceased, whom she describes as “profoundly retarded.” “I don’t think it would be as effective to use the word ‘developmental disabilities.’ They wouldn’t know who we mean. I think we should call people what they are.” When Mrs. Taylor’s son was born in the 1960s, the system did not always distinguish between cognitive disability and mental illness. Both populations lived by the thousands in overcrowded so-called state schools supervised by psychiatrists. Families who kept their children home invented their own schools and services. A court ruling in 1975 eventually led to the closing of the abuse-ridden Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, starting the move to vacate institutions. Federal civil rights legislation followed. For New York’s pioneering parents, the crowning achievement was the creation in 1977 of the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, which removed care of their children from the Department of Mental Hygiene. The office’s first commissioner, Thomas Coughlin, was the parent of a child with a developmental disability. “It took a Herculean effort to convince people at the state level that that is what they had to do,” said Henrietta Messier, 85, the mother of a daughter with Down syndrome, who in 1950 helped establish the Capital Region ARC, a chapter of the state ARC. “Mentally retarded meant our children weren’t being lumped together with offices for mental health or alcoholism.” The office remains an unusual bit of state bureaucracy that works in partnership with its stakeholders. The system they oversee is the largest, best-financed and among the most innovative in the country. Slowly, its goal has shifted from protecting people to recognizing their contributions in the workplace and other arenas. Many people see “retarded” as conflicting with the drive to emphasize strengths. “It really is upsetting to me because it’s not just a word anymore; it’s identifying who I am,” said David Liscomb, 63, a consultant and president of the Self-Advocacy Association of New York State , who has developmental disabilities. “I want to be identified as a person, and I don’t want the label on buildings and I don’t want the state calling me that.” States that once used “retardation” in agency names were dropping it by the 1990s, and efforts accelerated in recent years. (Like New York, Rhode Island has introduced legislation to do so.) Still, it caught advocates off guard last year when the New York Senate, at the request of Mr. Paterson, moved to rename the office. The agency has worked since then to assuage fears that a new name would hinder services. “Our name may be changing, but who we are and what we do stays the same,” it said in a written statement. In March of this year, the state agency’s commissioner, Diana Jones Ritter, convened a group of advocates in Albany, who agreed to yet another name: the Office for Persons with Developmental Disabilities. The new legislation, which was approved by mental health committees in both houses last week, goes further than last year’s, striking “retarded” from state buildings and legal language. It will now be considered by the finance committees. While some analysts say the change could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, the office maintains there will be no expense because the new name can be phased in. Some advocates say their hesitation to change the name is giving way. “Many years ago people weren’t speaking for themselves and now they are,” Mrs. Messier said. “We’ve worked very hard to give them that right, and they are saying they don’t like the denigrating language. To oppose this would be like clipping their wings.”

New York State
Mental Retardation
Mental Health and Disorders
Names Organizational


Morgan Stanley Posts $2.36 Billion Loss

Abstract: Morgan Stanley reported a fourth-quarter loss of $2.36 billion — or $2.34 a share — on Wednesday, as the bank remained battered by old investments. The quarter was Morgan’s first loss this year, though it did not outweigh the profit earned earlier this year. Morgan reported a full-year profit of $1.59 billion, or $1.54 a share. Revenue in every corner of the bank fell, even when compared with last quarter, showing a deteriorating environment that cut across businesses. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast a loss of 34 cents a share. The loss from continuing operations for the quarter, which does not include Discover, the credit card unit that was spun off, was $2.20 billion, or $2.24 a share. “I was very disappointed with what Morgan Stanley had to report,” Ada Lee, an analyst with Sterne Agee, said. “I just don’t know how this organization got to this point.” Ms. Lee said she was wrong to have issued a positive report on Morgan’s prospects last month. She said she did not appreciate the bank’s continued exposure to toxic assets at the time. The bank’s expenses are bloated, she said, and a turnaround could be years away. In a statement, the bank’s chief executive, John J. Mack, pointed to the financial crisis but said Morgan Stanley was aggressively repositioning itself. “These exceptional market conditions profoundly impacted our performance this year, especially in the fourth quarter,” Mr. Mack said. “The environment will continue to be challenging. But we have successfully evolved and adapted our business across numerous cycles and the current market dislocation gives us openings.” In response to the earnings release, Moody’s downgraded Morgan’s long-term senior debt rating to A2 from A1 because of the deterioration of its businesses. Morgan shares, which were down as much as 6 percent in morning trading, were up 1.1 percent at noon, The bank’s chief financial officer, Colm Kelleher, warned in a call with analysts that 2009 would be a year of transition. “We do expect the near-term environment to be very challenging,” Mr. Kelleher said. “This recession has turned global in a relatively short time frame.” The bank is trying to chart a new course as a deposit-taking institution, which will provide new types of earnings as well as a steady base of financing for some of the bank’s operations. But the makeover includes a retrenchment from areas that once provided handsome profits like proprietary trading, principal investing and prime brokerage, the business that services hedge funds. Morgan — and its closest rival, Goldman Sachs — have yet to prove they can find new ways to churn out high profits again in the new environment. Goldman reported a quarterly loss of $2.1 billion on Tuesday, its first loss ever. Investors pushed Goldman’s stock upward on the news, because the loss was not as bad as some had feared. Much of Morgan’s woes continue to relate to investments it made before the credit crisis began. The bank continued to take losses on those all year, but in the last three quarters, revenue outweighed those losses. In the fourth quarter, the worst losses came from mortgage investments, private equity and real estate. The bank’s loss this quarter was less than its fourth-quarter loss last year of $3.6 billion, or $3.61 a share, when Morgan took the bulk of its mortgage write-downs. But profit this year was down over all 49 percent — to $1.59 billion — from last year, when it was $3.14 billion. Morgan’s pain was most concentrated in the bank’s asset management unit, where revenue was a negative $386 million, down 160 percent from the third quarter. The unit was stung by a $187 million loss related to structured investment vehicles on its balance sheet and write-downs on real estate and private equity in its merchant bank. It also took a $243 million impairment charge on its Crescent real estate subsidiary. And customers also withdrew $76.5 billion of assets from the unit, leaving Morgan with much lower fee revenue. The institutional securities group also suffered from write-downs, recording revenue of $844 million, down 86 percent from the third quarter. The tally of losses included: $1.2 billion on mortgage assets, $1.1 billion of write-downs on loans related to buyout commitments and $1.8 billion in loses in real estate and other investment funds. And revenue in businesses like underwriting, equity sales and credit products remained lower than a year ago. The global wealth management unit showed the least decline, with $1.422 billion in revenue, down 9 percent from the third-quarter. This unit includes Morgan’s brokerage network, which the bank has been trying to expand. The unit took $364 million in charges related to auction-rate securities that the bank agreed to repurchase from customers earlier this year. And, reversing a three-quarter trend of growth, the broker’s unit had net client outflows of $3.9 billion. Through the third quarter, the unit had attracted $38 billion in new client assets at a time when customers were pulling money from elsewhere, and the outflow in the fourth quarter raises questions about whether the growth will continue next year. Morgan appointed two executives from Wachovia last month to oversee its deposit base, which it hopes to increase in part through its brokerage network. The bank is also hoping to purchase small banks around the country. Morgan is also planning joint strategies with its most recent investor, Mitsubishi UFJ, a large bank in Japan. But details of the partnership have not been released yet.

Morgan Stanley
Company Reports
Subprime Mortgage Crisis


Rafael Nadal Wins a Marathon to Set Up a Final With Roger Federer

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — Rafael Nadal completed a slate of throwback singles finals at the Australian Open, beating Grigor Dimitrov, 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (5), 6-7 (4), 6-4, in a battle of 4 hours 56 minutes that started Friday evening and ended at 12:44 Saturday morning. In Sunday’s final, Nadal, 30, will face his longtime rival Roger Federer, 35, a nostalgic counterpoint to the women’s championship match between Venus Williams, 36, and Serena Williams, 35. Nadal and Federer have not met in a Grand Slam final since the 2011 French Open. Against Dimitrov, Nadal saved three break points in a tightly fought fifth set, including two at 3-4. With a backhand winner down the line, he earned the crucial break in the next game to go up by 5-4 and serve for the match. On Nadal’s third match point, Dimitrov’s final backhand landed long to end a 13-shot rally, and Nadal fell to the ground in relief. “Difficult to describe the emotions,” he said in his on-court interview. “First of all, I was tired.” That last point was emblematic of how the ninth-seeded Nadal managed to outlast the 15th-seeded Dimitrov, time and again showing his superior physicality in the longest exchanges. The two were more evenly matched on shorter points, but of the 64 points that lasted nine or more shots, Nadal won 39. Dimitrov, 25, had reached only one previous Grand Slam semifinal, at Wimbledon in 2014, but he rarely seemed daunted by the occasion. Already 10-0 to start the year and a title in Brisbane to his name, Dimitrov frequently displayed improved power and consistency in the match, even as it wore on into the fifth set, striking 79 winners to 45 for Nadal. But he could not match Nadal’s ability to turn defense into offense; few can. Dimitrov’s one-handed backhand was particularly exposed by Nadal’s attacks and counted for the majority of his forced and unforced errors. “It’s never easy to lose a match like that,” Dimitrov said. “I’m happy, though, with a lot of things. I’m going to stay positive and keep my head up high. For sure, Rafa deserves pretty much all the credit right now since he’s such a fighter, such a competitor. At the same time it was an honor for me to play a match like that against him. It also shows me that I’m in a good way, I’m on the right path.” Nadal started the match with dominant serving, winning 90 percent of points on his serve in the first set. But in the second set, Nadal dropped serve three times and Dimitrov twice. Dimitrov, former top-10 player who tumbled to 40th last summer, held firm after Nadal won the third set in a tiebreaker. Neither player faced a break point in the fourth set, won by Dimitrov in another tiebreaker. Nadal, a 14-time major champion, last reached a Grand Slam final at the 2014 French Open, which he won . He last reached a final in Melbourne earlier that year, losing to Stan Wawrinka . Nadal has missed large stretches of competition in recent years because of various injuries, including a wrist ailment that forced him out of the French Open and Wimbledon last year. “I never, ever dreamed to be back in a final of the Australian Open, the second tournament of the year, after a lot of months without competing,” Nadal said on the court after the match. “But here I am, and I feel lucky, and I feel very, very happy.” Sunday’s match will be the ninth Grand Slam final between Federer and Nadal, and their second here. In their previous one in 2009, Nadal beat Federer , 7-5, 3-6, 7-6 (3), 3-6, 6-2, a match perhaps best remembered for Federer’s tearful runner-up speech in the trophy ceremony. That final was also preceded by an epic semifinal for Nadal , who needed 5 hours 14 minutes to put away Fernando Verdasco in five sets. Federer, the No. 17 seed, needed five sets Thursday to take his semifinal against Wawrinka, but that match was nearly two hours shorter than Nadal’s win Friday. Nadal has won 23 of 34 matches against Federer, and 9 of 11 meetings at Grand Slam events. Nadal’s 14 Grand Slam titles is second among active players, behind Federer’s 17. Federer has not won a major tournament since Wimbledon in 2012 . “It’s special to play with Roger again in a final of a Grand Slam,” Nadal said. “I cannot lie. It’s great. It’s exciting for me, and for both of us, that we’re still there and we’re still fighting for important events.” The women’s final Saturday night also will feature the two active players with the most Grand Slam singles titles, with the 22-time winner Serena Williams meeting her sister, the seven-time winner Venus Williams. This is the first Grand Slam tournament in the Open era in which all four singles finalists are 30 or older.

Rafael Nadal
Australian Open
Grigor Dimitrov
Tennis


Morbid Anatomy Museum’s Taxidermy Classes Offer a Slice of Life (and Death)

Abstract: Down in the basement, dead pigeons lay on their backs, wings splayed, their bodies sliced open at the breastbone. White powder, an abrasive, was sprinkled liberally over the carcasses. Then a hand carefully reached in behind each of the birds’ knees and tugged, patiently pulling the torsos free from the wings. This was not part of some kind of odd ritual or a scene from a disturbing horror movie. It was just another Saturday afternoon taxidermy class at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Other classes, which typically sell out in advance, have featured chipmunks and the heads of mammals, like coyotes or foxes. “We started offering taxidermy classes about five years ago and they were an immediate and insane sensation,” Joanna Ebenstein, the museum’s creative director, said. “At one point we had a 600-person waiting list.” Katie Innamorato , 25, one of the two taxidermists who teaches the classes, said most students had a serious interest in taxidermy or loved nature and the natural sciences. For women, who represent a vast majority of the students, taxidermy is also a chance to learn a new and unusual craft. “There is something taboo about this, so it’s as if we are expressing our repressed tomboy nature,” she said. Ms. Innamorato, who prefers the larger mammals (“Squirrels are as small as I like to go”), said men tend to show up for a chance to slice into the heads of larger animals. Image A student, Jackie Mock, sewed her pigeon over a wood-wool form. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times Some smaller animals, like mice and rabbits, often end up wearing clothes and posed in atypical positions — this is called rogue taxidermy. “I think they get the anthropomorphic treatment because they’re cute and they’re featured in stories when we’re children,” she said. Divya Anantharaman , the other taxidermist teaching the classes, said she preferred “the small, overlooked animals we don’t value as much.” She came by her fascination early. “My mom was a biology teacher and she had skins and lamb’s brains in jars in her classroom, so that had a huge influence on the way I saw nature and wildlife,” Ms. Anantharaman, 30, said. “I was able to see anatomy as something that isn’t gross but that is pretty cool.” Ms. Anantharaman’s first attempt at animal preservation failed. “I was 5 or 6 and saw a lizard had died in our bug zapper,” she said. “I put it in my box with my collections of rocks and seashells. Of course it stunk after a few days.” Her mother explained to her how animals were best preserved, but barred her from bringing home any roadkill. After Ms. Anantharaman moved from Miami to Brooklyn to study fashion and art at Pratt Institute, she worked as a shoe designer, but taught herself taxidermy and then studied with a taxidermist in upstate New York. Two years ago she became a full-time taxidermist, selling art pieces and later becoming a taxidermist in residence at the museum. The museum, which opened in Gowanus last year as an outgrowth of Ms. Ebenstein’s blog, library collection and course offerings, explores the rituals and oddities surrounding human life and especially death. Image An instructor, Divya Anantharaman, right, blow-dried bird skins. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times The six students in the fancy pigeon class ranged in age from 17 to 57; all but one was a woman. “It’s kind of weird I’m the only guy here,” said Danilo Miglietta, who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and who “likes to support my local creepy places.” Half the students were from Manhattan, though Hanna Cable, 17, had traveled from Lexington, Ky., saving her money and persuading her mother, Katrina, to drive to Brooklyn during her spring break. The classes often attract artists, and this one drew Jackie Mock, a sculptor and bartender, and Audrey Channoller, a painter, who envisioned using her pigeon in a still life. “Life and death are always part of my art,” said Ms. Channoller, who brought a hatbox to transport her bird on the subway to her home in SoHo. The class is comprehensive, covering topics like the use of abrasives in cleaning the birds and the ethics of procuring the animals. Ms. Anantharaman described the Migratory Bird Treaty Act , an international agreement that made it illegal to use most wild birds for taxidermy. She gets the birds for her classes — already dead — from breeders. Ms. Anantharaman explained anatomy in easily understood terms, pointing out that pigeons do not fully extend their necks so the students had to “roll it out like a sock or condom.” She made plenty of other statements that are not often heard — even in New York: “There’s a hole in his head, but we can fix it.” “Whose carcass is whose?” “I’ll bring out little scoops to take out the heads.” While some remarks prompted a smile or a raised eyebrow, the students remained serious hour after hour, most working quietly by themselves. The class was scheduled to run from noon until 6 p.m., but as the clock ticked past 7:30, Ms. Anantharaman patiently circulated, helping everyone finish sewing and posing their birds. “It’s hard but I thought it would be more difficult,” said Donna Orton, a nurse who lives in the East Village. Still, she said, she was likely to take another class before trying taxidermy at home: “I still have a lot to learn. This one may go in the closet.”

Morbid Anatomy Museum
Taxidermy
Brooklyn
Joanna Ebenstein
Gowanus Brooklyn


Recall Vote on Guns Exposes Rift in Colorado’s Blue Veneer

Abstract: DENVER — When Colorado passed a series of tough gun restrictions last winter, Democrats and gun control advocates hailed it as a sign of changing attitudes in a Western swing state. But moments after a pivotal vote in the state Senate, a Republican lawmaker named Greg Brophy warned that Colorado’s independent-leaning voters would rebel against the new laws. “The backlash will be severe,” he said. On Tuesday, Democrats here got a taste of that popular anger, as voters in a recall election ousted two state senators who had been strong supporters of the gun control laws. Although it was a small, off-year election, the recall campaign grew into a referendum that pitted the National Rifle Association against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. On Wednesday, gun advocates called the result a huge victory that they said would dampen other states’ efforts to pursue gun restrictions. While some voters in the two districts groused about the flood of donations Mr. Bloomberg and outside groups made in the recall campaigns, analysts in Colorado said the election results were shaped by an eruption of local discontent from voters who say their leaders are ignoring the concerns of gun owners and abandoning Colorado’s rural, libertarian roots. After years of gains propelled by shifting demographics and voter attitudes, Democrats now control the state legislature and the governor’s mansion, and make up most of Colorado’s Congressional delegation. But state officials said that the recalls showed how Colorado’s political pendulum could still swing in surprising directions, and that deep rifts still lay beneath its increasingly blue veneer. “This is a state with a wide variety of interests at stake,” said Bill Ritter, a Democrat and former governor. “The Democratic Party cannot be the party of metro Denver and Boulder. It has to be the party who understands the values, views and aspirations of people who live outside of those areas.” In addition to the gun laws, Democratic majorities in the legislature passed green-energy requirements for rural electric cooperatives, offered in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants who were Colorado high school graduates, and expanded mail-in voting. And Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, granted a reprieve to a convicted killer, heading off the state’s first execution in 16 years. Republicans opposed many of those acts. As they fought for their political lives, the two senators facing recall, John Morse and Angela Giron, described themselves as common-sense Democrats who understood their state’s values. Mr. Morse, also the state Senate president, had been a police chief. Ms. Giron represented the heavily Hispanic, working-class town of Pueblo, which has struggled through years of layoffs at its steel mill. They said the new gun laws, which include background checks on private gun sales and limits on ammunition magazines, were moderate restrictions that made sense in a state scarred by gun massacres at Columbine High School in 1999 and a movie theater in Aurora last year. In a state where hunting and shooting have long been part of everyday life, Mr. Morse and Ms. Giron had to make a nuanced case that they supported both gun rights as well as some restrictions. But on Tuesday, many of their constituents seemed to reject their arguments. Mr. Morse lost his recall by 343 votes — almost the same margin by which he had eked out re-election in 2010. Ms. Giron’s loss raised far more red flags for Democrats. She represented a district where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by two to one, and she won her seat in 2010 by 10 percentage points. But on Tuesday, voters lined up against her, 56 percent to 44 percent. Image Senator John Morse was also recalled. The two Democrats had backed tough gun restrictions. Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times Of the state’s four Hispanic lawmakers from Pueblo County, Ms. Giron was the only one to back the most contentious gun legislation, said Theresa Trujillo, the Southern Colorado director for the Colorado Progressive Coalition . She also said that young Latino voters — a likely source of support — were not committed to the election. Recall proponents, she said, were gung-ho. “Our opposition was really very effective at establishing this binary that either you’re for guns or you’re against guns,” Ms. Trujillo said. “It was a simple message, but that sound bite really caught on and sold well. We used every tool possible to fight it, to try and build the same kind of momentum, but it wasn’t as effective.” Dick Wadhams, a former state Republican Party chairman, said that the district’s more conservative Democrats appeared to break with Ms. Giron on issues like guns and abortion. A decade ago, Mr. Wadhams said, voters bristled at a series of Republican actions that were seen as too socially conservative. Now, he said, new Democratic majorities were beginning to anger independent voters. “These recalls are a reaction to the overreach of Democrats, and their arrogance,” Mr. Wadhams said. Cracks are also spreading in Northern Colorado, where agriculture and oil-and-gas development dominate the economy. There, several counties upset with what they call the leftward drift of Colorado’s leaders will vote this fall on whether to secede and form their own state. A quixotic goal perhaps, but analysts said it highlighted the widening urban-rural rift in the West. Despite their symbolic heft, the recalls will have limited immediate effects. Mr. Morse and Ms. Giron will be replaced by two Republicans who were on the recall ballots. Democrats, though, will still cling to a majority in the state Senate. And all of the gun control laws remain on the books. On Tuesday, 52,540 people voted in the two Senate districts — a tiny fraction of Colorado’s population of more than five million, and about 21,000 fewer than voted in the two districts in 2010 . And it is far from clear whether most Coloradans agree with the results of the recalls. A Quinnipiac University poll in August found that voters did not like the special elections, even if they did not agree with the legislators. Politicians who have flourished here, a state where voters are almost evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans and those who do not identify with any political party, have often had to tack to the center. Political analysts say the next real test for Colorado’s band of Western Democrats will come next year, when Mr. Hickenlooper and many of the state’s other lawmakers are up for re-election. Mr. Hickenlooper, who earned high marks from many analysts for guiding the state through the aftermath of Aurora and two brutal summers of wildfires, has seen his popularity dip recently. The Quinnipiac poll found that only 45 percent of voters said he deserved another term. “The reason the recalls prevailed is because the Democrats went too far,” said Mr. Brophy, the Republican senator. Mr. Brophy has announced his candidacy for governor, joining Tom Tancredo, a former congressman, in running for the Republican nomination. Colorado’s secretary of state, Scott Gessler, is also expected to seek the nomination. Mr. Brophy is now driving through the mountains of southwest Colorado, meeting people and trying to build support. He said he had been hearing from many frustrated voters. “Politics is a team sport,” he said, “and that team has gotten too extreme for Colorado.”

Colorado
Gun Control
State legislature
Legislation
John Morse
Angela Giron
NRA
Mike Bloomberg
NYC


Bailout Plan Wins Approval; Democrats Vow Tighter Rules

Abstract: WASHINGTON — After the House reversed course and gave final approval to the $700 billion economic bailout package , President Bush quickly signed it into law on Friday, authorizing the Treasury to undertake what could become the most expensive government intervention in history. But even as Mr. Bush declared that the measure would “help prevent the crisis on Wall Street from becoming a crisis in communities across our country,” Congressional Democrats said that it was only a first step and pledged to carry out a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system. The final tally in the House was 263 to 171, with 91 Republicans joining 172 Democrats in favor. That was a wider bipartisan majority than vote-counters in both parties had expected, completing a remarkable turnabout from Monday, when the House defeated an earlier version of the bill by 228 to 205. The financial markets, however, were not enthusiastic. Already weighed down by another round of bleak economic data, including a report showing that 159,000 jobs were lost in September, the Dow fell 157 points to close at 10,325, or nearly 818 points lower than when the week began, before the House’s initial rejection of the bailout. Some measures of the credit markets improved after the bill was approved, but only modestly. Analysts said it was too soon to tell whether borrowing rates — the interest rates banks charge each other for loans, and a key indicator of the flow of credit — would fall. The change in course by the House was prompted by fears of a global economic meltdown, and by old-fashioned political inducements added by the Senate: a portfolio of $150 billion in popular tax provisions, including credits for the production of solar, wind and other renewable energy, and an adjustment to spare middle-class families from paying the alternative minimum tax . In the end, 33 Democrats and 24 Republicans who had voted no on Monday switched sides on Friday to support the plan. Both Mr. Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain , voted for the measure when the Senate approved it on Wednesday, and both hailed Friday’s outcome. Mr. McCain said that lawmakers had acted “in the best interests of the nation,” while Mr. Obama warned that “a long and difficult road to recovery” might still lie ahead. In a sign of the urgency surrounding the economic rescue effort, Congressional staff rushed the newly printed legislation into a news conference where Democratic leaders gathered after the vote. Speaker Nancy Pelosi , of California , signed it at 2 p.m., and it was sent to the White House for Mr. Bush’s signature. Appearing in the Rose Garden , Mr. Bush praised Congress for acting just two weeks after the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr. , requested the emergency bailout legislation with a warning that the American economy was at risk of the worst economic collapse since the Depression . “We have shown the world that the United States will stabilize our financial markets and maintain a leading role in the global economy,” Mr. Bush said. But it was a hollow victory for the administration, which after long favoring a hands-off approach toward the financial industry has found itself interceding repeatedly this year to avert one calamity after another. Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats, who expect to widen their majority in Congress in the November elections, said they intended to tighten controls. “High-fliers on Wall Street will no longer be able to jeopardize that personal economic security of Americans,” Ms. Pelosi said, “because of the bright light of scrutiny, accountability and the attention given under regulatory reform.” Representative Barney Frank , Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Financial Services Committee, said: “We will be back next year to do some serious surgery on the financial structure.” The Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio , had urged his colleagues to vote yes. “We know if we do nothing this crisis is likely to worsen and put us in an economic slump the likes of which we have never seen,” he said. “I am going to vote for this bill because I think it’s in the best interests of the American people.” Opponents of the bailout called it a costly Band-Aid that did not address the core problems in the financial system. “Some things have changed in this bill but taxpayers will still be picking up the tab for Wall Street’s party,” said Representative Marilyn Musgrave, Republican of Colorado . “I am voting against this today because it’s not the best bill. It’s the quickest bill. Taxpayers for generations will pay for our haste and there is no guarantee that they will ever see the benefits.” Among House Democrats as well as Republicans, many lawmakers facing the toughest challenges for re-election remained in the no column. Those with easier races were more likely to switch. Many said they agonized over the decision amid a torrent of calls from constituents. Several who switched to yes cited a provision added by the Senate increasing the amount of savings insured by the Federal government to $250,000 per account, from $100,000. Fears about the economy also motivated support. “Nobody in East Tennessee hates the fact more than me that I am going to vote yes today after voting no on Monday,” Representative Zach Wamp, a Republican, said. “Monday I cast a blue-collar vote for the American people,” he continued. “Today I am going to cast a red, white and blue-collar vote with my hand over my heart for this country, because things are really bad and we don’t have any choice.” Several Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus said they were persuaded to support the bill by Mr. Obama. Representatives Elijah E. Cummings and Donna F. Edwards, both of Maryland , said they had each spoken to Mr. Obama who helped persuade them to support the bill, in part by assuring them that he would work to achieve a goal that Democrats gave up during negotiations: a change in bankruptcy laws to let judges modify first mortgages. Mr. Obama, speaking in Abington, Pa., said he had urged lawmakers from both parties to “not make the same mistake twice.” But he warned that passage of the measure should be just “the beginning of a long-term rescue plan for our middle class.” Mr. McCain, speaking in Flagstaff , Ariz., warned that the bill was not perfect and there was more to be done. “It is an outrage that it’s even necessary,” Mr. McCain said. “But we must stop the damage to our economy done by corrupt and incompetent practices on Wall Street and in Washington.” Mr. McCain said he spoke to House Republicans before Friday’s vote and urged them to approve the bill. Friday’s vote capped an extraordinary two-week final stretch for the 110th Congress. Lawmakers, eager to get home for the fall campaign season, had intended to wrap up by adopting a budget bill to finance government operations through early March. Instead, after dealing with the budget, they found themselves still in Washington, just five weeks before Election Day, facing the most important vote of the year — the most important vote of their lives, many lawmakers said — and under extreme pressure by the White House, the presidential nominees, and Congressional leaders of both parties to make a quick decision. Supporters said the bailout was needed to prevent economic collapse; opponents said it was hasty, ill conceived and risked too much taxpayer money to help Wall Street tycoons, while providing no guarantees of success. The rescue plan allows the Treasury to buy troubled securities from financial firms in an effort to ease a deepening credit crisis that is choking off business and consumer loans, the lifeblood of the economy, and contributing to a string of bank failures. Officials say the final cost of the bailout will be far less than $700 billion because the government will resell the assets that it buys. The final agreement disburses the money in parts, with Congress able to block the second $350 billion. It also provides for tighter oversight of the program by two boards, and requires the government to do more to prevent home foreclosures. Lawmakers also included efforts to restrict so-called golden parachute retirement plans for some executives whose firms seek help, and a provision allowing the government to recoup any losses after five years by assessing the financial industry.

Subprime Mortgage Crisis,2008 Financial Crisis


Queens Parish Dwindles as Its New Church Sits Unfinished

Abstract: When a fire ravaged the Prince of Peace Missionary Baptist Church in Queens one winter day, the pastor of the small congregation vowed to rebuild. That was in 1997. Ten years later, a new building large enough to accommodate 250 worshipers, three times the congregation’s size, had risen on the site in St. Albans. But this is not a feel-good story of destruction and rebirth. For more than two years, the church’s new brick building has stood as nothing but a vacant shell, with its boarded-up windows and scraggly lawn in stark contrast to the well-kept homes on the rest of the block. The congregation, led by the Rev. Arthur Harris, now holds services in a rented storefront that once housed a barbershop. “Reverend Harris said the fire wasn’t going to stop us,” said Katherine McBride, who has been a member of the church since 1983. “He said we were going to persevere.” The church has run into financial problems that have left the construction project in limbo. In recent months, church members have mailed 220 letters seeking donations from other churches and from celebrities like Bill Cosby, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. They have received $600 in response, none of it from celebrities. The church has also sought help from its influential neighbors, including Representative Gregory W. Meeks, who lives next to the church, and City Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr., who lives two blocks away. “The bottom line is the reverend has no money, and he owes me money,” said Richard Dennis, the builder who broke ground on the project in 2004 only to stop work in 2007 when the church failed to get a loan to complete the job. Prince of Peace began humbly in 1970, meeting on the second floor of Mr. Harris’s home, but the congregation kept growing and eventually moved into the building that was destroyed. The fire erupted before dawn on Dec. 28, 1997, on the second floor of the church, on 109th Road near 194th Street. It was a Sunday, and Mr. Harris, who expected to preside over services that morning, was still at home in Ozone Park. “I had a member who lived right next door to church, and she called and told me that the church was on fire,” Mr. Harris recalled. “My wife and I got in the car and went over there. The building was still ablaze. I said, ‘Lord don’t let it burn down the community.’ ” The fire did not spread, but it gutted the building that the congregation had occupied for nearly 15 years. The fire was deemed accidental, Mr. Harris said, and the church collected about $100,000 in insurance money. But new and existing expenses consumed that money nearly as quickly as the fire had destroyed the building. “We spent $48,000 to take down the building,” Mr. Harris said. “We spent $36,000 to pay off the mortgage.” Still, the congregation was determined to rebuild, buying blueprints for a new building, hiring an accountant to prepare financial reports and selling off parts of its large lot to raise construction money. The councilman who represented the neighborhood at the time, Archie Spigner, referred Mr. Harris to Mr. Dennis. “I knew he wouldn’t recommend anyone who was not honorable,” said Mr. Harris, who would later agree to sell Mr. Dennis some of the church’s property. In 1999, Mr. Dennis bought one strip of land, which he divided into four lots, building a single-family home on each. He continued buying church-owned parcels and wound up building nine houses, which he sold for roughly $3 million, according to city records. The church kept one property for its new building. When they broke ground in 2004, the church had $400,000 in proceeds from the land sales, about half of what was needed to build the new church, Mr. Harris said. The project began, and both men were confident that the church could obtain a loan for the remainder of the cost. The plans for the new church, though far from lavish, called for several expensive features: a large, open sanctuary, a baptismal well deep enough for full immersion, and a finished basement. The church had been promised a loan by Community Capital Bank in Brooklyn, but the deal fell through when the bank was acquired by Carver Federal Savings Bank, the minister said. And Mr. Harris, who is 85, said that his age may have contributed to the bank’s reluctance to make a loan. “We had $400,000 on hand,” he said. “We owned the land. I thought we’d be able to get a loan for the rest.” For now, the building’s exterior is largely completed, but work on the inside has barely begun. Exposed aluminum studs ring the sanctuary. A platform for an altar rises at the front of the church. Lights and other building materials are stacked in the middle of the sanctuary. Mr. Dennis estimates that it would cost about $300,000 more to finish the job — on top of $106,000 that the church already owes him for the work that has been completed. “This was a good-intentioned deed that has not gone well,” he said. “I told them when they get more money, I’d be glad to go back and finish it.” The congregation has dwindled to about 30 members. “Quite a few died,” Mr. Harris said. “Others got discouraged that we didn’t go back to our sanctuary and stopped attending.” But the minister, sustained by his faith, believes his church will be finished. “It’s a miracle they’ve stayed together this long and still have got confidence we’re going to rebuild,” he said. “I surely want to make this happen for my flock. They have stuck in this with me.”

Baptist Churches
Fires and Firefighters
Queens (NYC)


2 Workers Killed in Construction Accident in Queens

Abstract: A crane operator and a construction worker were killed on Tuesday when a steel beam fell from a crane on a gusty day in Queens, officials said. The accident occurred around 12:10 p.m. at a construction site at 81-10 134th Street in the Briarwood neighborhood, where work was being done on an apartment complex. The beam had been lifted about four stories when it fell, striking the cab of the crane and killing the operator inside before hitting the worker on the ground who had been helping to guide it with a flag. The two unidentified workers, ages 47 and 43, were dead by the time emergency workers arrived, officials said. The I-shaped beam weighed about 6,500 pounds, officials said. Officials at the scene said investigators were trying to determine why the beam fell. Their preliminary findings indicated that the cause was a failure of the crane’s rigging, unrelated to the wind, Rick D. Chandler, the commissioner of the city’s Buildings Department, said. But Mr. Chandler cautioned that investigators were at the beginning of their inquiry and that they had not made any final determinations. The work site had no open violations and the crane operator had no history of discipline, the Buildings Department said. The crane passed an inspection in June. Image Officials at the scene of the accident on 134th Street. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times Around the site, a low-density area near the Van Wyck Expressway, construction workers stood solemnly in groups as investigators and union officials went in and out. At an unrelated news conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio called the accident a tragedy. Mr. Chandler echoed the sentiment as he spoke at the site in the afternoon. “Those two gentlemen won’t be going home tonight, and we’re very, very sorry about that,” he said. In February, the mayor, a Democrat, temporarily tightened the rules for cranes operating in high winds after a crane fell in Lower Manhattan on a blustery day, killing one person and injuring three others. The new rules required that crawler cranes stop operating if steady winds exceeded 20 miles per hour or gusts exceeded 30 m.p.h. The federal Labor Department later issued two violations to the crane’s operator in that crash, Galasso Trucking and Rigging. After the rules expired this spring, they reverted to guidelines dating to the 1960s that restrict crane work during steady wind speeds of 30 m.p.h. or higher. Construction industry representatives had complained that the tighter rules were unnecessary and hurt business, Crain’s New York reported in February. According to the National Weather Service, winds in some parts of the city on Tuesday exceeded 30 m.p.h. A woman who answered the phone at Pav-Lak, which the Buildings Department said is the contractor of the Briarwood site, declined to comment. “I don’t have any information at this time,” she said. Pete Corrigan, an organizer for the New York City District Council of Carpenters, said contractors around the city had sent some workers home on Tuesday because of the winds. Other workers pressed on, he said. “You’re at your own peril,” Mr. Corrigan said.

Construction
Queens
Derricks and Cranes
Accidents and Safety
Fatalities,casualties


Enrique Peña Nieto Takes Office as Mexico’s President

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — With protests and little pomp, Enrique Peña Nieto on Saturday began his six-year term as president of Mexico , promising big spending and sweeping changes to bring peace and prosperity to a country troubled by drug violence and uneven economic growth. “This is Mexico’s moment,” Mr. Peña Nieto declared in his inaugural address before a gathering of domestic and foreign leaders at the national palace, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., seated in the front row, while demonstrators kept far from the scene vandalized buildings and clashed with riot police officers outside. Mr. Peña Nieto, 46, a lawyer who had been governor of Mexico State, has pledged to work closely with the United States to strengthen security and economic ties, which he believes would bring Mexico closer to a middle-class society and reduce the kind of drug war violence that has left tens of thousands dead in the past several years. He made no promise to dismantle the drug-trafficking organizations, a focus of his immediate predecessor, Felipe Calderón . Instead, he unveiled a sweeping 13-point agenda focused more on domestic goals for crime prevention that would revise the penal code to attack impunity, give more attention to victims of violence, lessen poverty and hunger, improve schooling and even build new passenger train lines and expand Internet access. “We are a nation that is growing at two speeds; some live behind and in poverty and others live in the developing part,” he said, alluding to new manufacturing plants and investments but also grinding poverty that affects half the population. “There are a great number of Mexicans who live every day worried about the lack of employment and opportunities,” he added. “Those conditions also damage the image of Mexico abroad, and that is the Mexico that must be transformed.” Still, his administration will be watched to see if it is propelling Mexico forward or backward. Mr. Peña Nieto ushers in a new era for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which ruled Mexico for more than 70 years before the more conservative National Action Party toppled it in 2000 and again in 2006. Mr. Peña Nieto and his associates say they represent a new, chastened party bent on promoting efficiency and economic change — there were no public inaugural celebrations — and promising to fight the kind of corruption long associated with it. “It’s a very common misconception to think that the PRI’s return to power means the return of something that is already in history,” Luis Videgaray, who led the president’s transition team and is now finance minister, said in a recent interview. “The PRI of today is like any other party: a party that competes in a democracy, that accepts results and understands that only through good government would it be able to compete again in elections,” he said. But Mr. Peña Nieto hardly begins with a mandate; he won 38 percent of the vote and faces a divided legislature, where his party often blocked significant changes proposed by Mr. Calderon. He recited the oath of office before Congress amid cheers and jeers, mostly from leftist legislators, and left the congressional chamber quickly. Later, outside the national palace, scores of mostly young masked people, shouting anti-PRI slogans, clashed with the police, set fires, threw rocks and vandalized hotels and stores along several blocks. More than 90 were arrested and several were injured, and Mayor Marcelo Ebrard later blamed anarchist groups for the trouble.. When Mr. Peña Nieto announced his cabinet on Friday, it was clear that he had relied largely on PRI stalwarts, including five former governors. But he also placed several foreign-educated technocrats from his inner circle, including Mr. Videgaray, in prominent positions. Andrew Selee, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute in Washington, said Mr. Peña Nieto seemed intent on reaffirming the power of the state, a hallmark of his party, while also hinting at taking on interest groups. He specifically promised an end to entrenched employment in the education system, seen as a jab at the powerful teachers’ union, which has stymied changes. “After several years of decentralized government in Mexico, Peña Nieto seems intent on showing that the Mexican state is back and that all of the interest groups in the country will need to respect his authority,” Mr. Selee said. “How significant these efforts are in reality depends on what he does next, but symbolically Peña Nieto reasserted the power of the presidency after years of what many Mexicans feel has been fragmented and ineffective government.”

Institutional Revolutionary Party (Mexico)

Party of the Democratic Revolution (Mexico)


Pakistan Plans to Relax YouTube Ban

Abstract: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan will restore access to YouTube but will block videos offensive to Muslims that are posted on the video-sharing site, the government said Wednesday. A number of high-profile Web sites were blocked in Pakistan last week over what the government deemed to be offensive content, like a Facebook page that urges users to post images of the Prophet Muhammad. Many citizens supported the crackdown, but some questioned why entire sites were blocked rather than specific pages or videos. The government seemed to move in that direction on Wednesday by deciding that it would restore access to YouTube but continue to block videos “displaying profane or sacrilegious material,” said Najibullah Malik, the secretary at Pakistan’s information technology ministry. The government is issuing orders to Internet service providers to carry out the decision, he said. Facebook is still blocked, and Mr. Malik said no decision on it would be made until a court hearing at the end of the month.

Pakistan
Recordings and Downloads (Video)
YouTube.com