History and Giuliani’s Run: There’s Good News and Bad News

Abstract: No United States senator has been elected president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, but former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is challenging an even more formidable historical hurdle: No former mayor has been elected president since Grover Cleveland of Buffalo in 1884 and Calvin Coolidge of Northampton, Mass., in 1924. And no mayor has ever become president without serving first in some other elective office beyond City Hall. “Should Rudolph Giuliani attain the presidency in 2008 he will have faced down this longstanding record,” Michael H. Ebner, a history professor at Lake Forest College, said in a telephone interview. Professor Ebner, writing on the History News Network, a Web site, quoted the columnist Walter Lippmann as concluding that what cost another New Yorker, Gov. Alfred E. Smith, the presidency in 1928 was voters’ antipathy to Smith’s “distinctly urban values,” rather than opposition to his Roman Catholicism alone. Mr. Giuliani, who would be only the second Catholic president and the first of Italian heritage, faces an additional hurdle: “urban values” have tended to resonate more with Democratic voters; before he faces them, he must win the nomination from Republicans. “I’m running,” Mr. Giuliani said on Wednesday, removing any lingering doubts about his intentions, but he faces yet another daunting precedent. No former mayor of New York has won federal elective office since Fernando Wood was elected to Congress in 1862. While New York’s City Hall has, historically, been more diving board than springboard, Mr. Giuliani’s candidacy presents several opportunities for optimism in this political campaign. He enjoys unusual national stature for a former city official at a time when being identified with New York might become a political advantage. In a field crowded with senators and governors — including a woman, a black and a Mormon — a former mayor could present himself as the ultimate beyond-the-Beltway outsider. Thanks, in part, to Mr. Giuliani, the image of mayors generally is improving, from beleaguered victims of federal neglect to can-do managers on the front lines of the delivery of public services. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Giuliani was applauded for his leadership skills and became identified with national issues like domestic security and even foreign policy (a subject in which his most famous previous encounter was evicting Yasir Arafat from the city’s 50th birthday concert for the United Nations). He left office a few months after the terrorist attacks, having achieved a singular distinction: no other modern mayor of New York had departed at the crest of his popularity. When one of Mr. Giuliani’s predecessors, John V. Lindsay, briefly sought the presidency in 1972, said Chris McNickle, the author of “To Be Mayor of New York,” “he was seen as the representative of urban America, but he was not seen as America’s mayor.” Mr. Lindsay suffered from another handicap. “As a sitting mayor it’s virtually impossible to run a campaign,” said Richard Aurelio, who ran Mr. Lindsay’s. “As a former mayor it’s marginally better.” David Garth, a media consultant who advised both Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Giuliani, said the reason for their contrasting presidential prospects was obvious: “You have a successful mayor and an unsuccessful one.” “Rudy will be a long shot for president, but he got a tremendous start-off on Sept. 11,” Mr. Garth continued. “And he’s done a very good job at being mayor. If those things had happened to John Lindsay, it would have boosted him to the top of the heap, too. I’m not sure how long it would have lasted. I’m not sure how long this will last.” For eight years, Mr. Giuliani presided over a city with a larger population than all but about 10 states and a bigger budget than about 7. “The problem,” said Jeff Greenfield, a former Lindsay speechwriter and now senior analyst for CNN, “is when you think of a mayor you think of someone who picks up the garbage and fills potholes, and the leap from mayor to president is a bridge too far. “What’s different with Rudy? The obvious answer is 9/11,” Mr. Greenfield said. “It has transformed him into a kind of general in the global war on terror. And 9/11 transformed New York into a sympathetic place. If you buy his story, Rudy applied conservative values and transformed New York. If voters want a leader to transform all the things they don’t like, Rudy can use New York and say, ‘I did this.’ ” As if on cue, Anthony Carbonetti, a senior adviser to Mr. Giuliani, said yesterday: “Mayor Giuliani is a proven problem solver who transformed New York City by cutting taxes, balancing an out-of-control budget and making the city safe for families. There’s no better record of results. Americans will pick the next president based on their ability to lead, and Rudy Giuliani is a demonstrated leader with results.” Historically, most former mayors with White House ambitions, among them Hubert H. Humphrey of Minneapolis and Richard G. Lugar of Indianapolis, have been defeated for the presidency. In New York, none ever fared as well as Theodore Roosevelt, who lost for mayor but parlayed his record as police commissioner into the governorship and later was elected vice president and president. Among New York City mayors, Edward Livingston, a former congressman and an appointed mayor, became a senator from Louisiana early in the 19th century. Mayor De Witt Clinton was elected governor and was the Federalist presidential nominee. (Mayor George B. McClellan received three votes at the 1904 Democratic National Convention). Robert F. Wagner flirted with the vice presidency (he ran fourth on the first convention ballot in 1956). In 1982, Mayor Edward I. Koch unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor. What happened to the last mayors who won higher office? John T. Hoffman became governor in 1868 and was embroiled in scandal. (Mark Twain, running as an independent against Hoffman and a rival, wrote, “I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage over these gentlemen, and that was, good character.”) The same year, Representative Wood was formally censured by his Congressional colleagues for doing what many New Yorkers do naturally: bluntly speaking his mind.

Giuliani Rudolph W
Presidential Election of 2008
Politics and Government


Polish Newspaper Report on 2010 Crash Causes Furor

Abstract: MOSCOW — Suspicions among some in Poland that a 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and much of the country’s senior leadership was not an accident were revived on Tuesday by a disputed newspaper report suggesting that traces of explosives may have been found in the wreckage in western Russia . A spokesman for Poland’s military prosecutor dismissed the article as “sensationalist,” saying at a news conference on Tuesday that the highly sensitive equipment that experts used to examine the wreckage frequently yielded false positive results. “It is not true that investigators found traces” of explosives, said the spokesman, Col. Ireneusz Szelag, who added that it might be as long as six months before conclusive test findings were available. “Evidence and opinions collected so far have in no way provided support to the belief that the crash was the result of actions of third parties, that is to say an assassination.” Later in the day, the newspaper, Rzeczpospolita, partly retracted its report online, saying that the findings about the chemical traces were not as definitive as it had initially said. Even so, the report seemed likely to increase distrust of the official inquiry into the crash, which concluded that it was an accident. By Tuesday afternoon, public response to the article was so strong that Prime Minister Donald Tusk appeared on television to condemn those who were repeating conspiracy theories about the crash. “It is unacceptable to formulate these drastic accusations, which are degrading to Polish public discourse,” he said. The newspaper initially reported that government experts had found traces of explosives, including TNT and nitroglycerin, on as many as 30 seats from the wrecked plane and on a segment of one wing. The newspaper noted that such traces could have come from the ground where the plane crashed, a wooded area near Smolensk that was the scene of intense combat during World War II and may still contain unexploded bombs and shells from that time. In its later statement, Rzeczpospolita said that while the chemicals that were detected might be TNT and nitroglycerin, they were not necessarily so. The paper defended its report, saying that “in the context of the multiplying conspiracy theories, the delay and hoarding of such important information is incomprehensible.” The report dominated news broadcasts in Poland all day, edging out coverage of the hurricane that hit the East Coast of the United States. And it split open old wounds that formed around the crash. In the days afterward, Mr. Tusk mourned publicly at the crash site alongside Vladimir V. Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, in an unusual show of unity. But the more conservative, nationalist faction in Poland represented by Mr. Kaczynski was deeply suspicious that the official inquiries were covering up sabotage by Russia, or perhaps even by their own government. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president’s twin brother and the chairman of Law and Justice, which is now the largest opposition party, called on Tuesday for the government to resign. He then reacted furiously after military prosecutors dismissed the newspaper report. “It looks like a big hoax,” he said. The plane was approaching the Smolensk airport preparing to land in a thick fog but missed the runway by about half a mile. It snagged one wing on treetops and broke up, scattering chunks of fuselage across the forest. Russian officials said the Polish president’s crew tried to land despite warnings from Russian air traffic controllers on the ground in Smolensk; Polish analysts maintained that the Russian controllers should not have allowed the approach. Talk of a conspiracy began almost immediately, with members of Law and Justice saying Russian officials had demanded that witnesses to the crash surrender their cameras and cellphones. Those suspicions have never dissipated, and they received new life over the weekend when a witness who was scheduled to testify before a parliamentary investigation was found hanged in his house in Warsaw, presumably a suicide. The witness, Remigiusz Mus, was a flight engineer who flew into Smolensk an hour before Mr. Kaczynski’s plane crashed. He had said afterward that Russian air traffic controllers gave his flight’s pilot permission to descend to a low altitude in preparation for landing, contradicting an official investigation by the Interstate Aviation Committee. In January, a prosecutor linked to the case excused himself during a media briefing and shot himself in the head. He survived. As the new report about explosive traces rocked the Polish political scene on Tuesday, some observers faulted the government for failing to speak clearly and consistently about the causes of the crash. The new furor was seen as potentially damaging for Mr. Tusk and his party. “The various ambiguities, uncertainties, the prosecutor’s office’s silence, the lack of consequent actions and then discoveries such as this one will add up, contributing to the rising distrust of those who have conducted the investigation and the rising distrust of the government,” Aleksander Smolar, a political scientist, said in a radio interview.

Poland
Russia
Kaczynski Lech
Aviation Accidents and Safety


Chief of Syria’s Air Defense Dies in Battle Near Capital

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — The general in charge of Syria’s air defense has been killed in fighting near Damascus, an opposition monitoring group and Syrian security officials said Sunday. The officer, Lt. Gen. Hussein Ayoub Ishaq, one of the highest-ranking officers to die during the country’s three-year conflict, commanded 60,000 troops in Syria’s air defense forces, said Hisham Jabber, a retired Lebanese Army brigadier general who closely follows the military in neighboring Syria. But it was unclear what impact General Ishaq’s death would have on the battlefield, given that Syrian opposition fighters possess no aircraft, General Jabber added. “Will this have any effect on the military operation? No,” he said, noting that such officers usually groom a successor. “It could have an effect on morale, but in the field there are many officers who can take his place.” General Ishaq died of injuries sustained on Saturday in Mleha, a district on the outskirts of Damascus where there have been intense battles in recent weeks, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain that monitors the conflict with a network of contacts inside Syria. Syria’s state news agency did not immediately report the death. General Jabber said it was unclear how General Ishaq had been wounded. He surmised that the officer had been helping direct the battle in the area from an operations room rather than leading a fighting formation on the ground, and that he could have been hit by a mortar shell, by a rocket or in an ambush. Insurgents have attacked many of the antiaircraft batteries around Damascus, in part to seize weapons that they could use against government warplanes that have bombed rebel-held areas. The government has been seeking to clear insurgents from the suburbs ringing Damascus and has called many of its most respected officers and elite units to battles there. Four of the country’s most senior security officials were killed in an explosion in Damascus in the summer of 2012, and a few other top-ranking officers have died, most recently Hilal al-Assad, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad’s who commanded the pro-government militias known as the National Defense Forces. But the high-profile deaths have not typically shifted the tide of battle. Government forces have made advances lately in central Syria while insurgents keep up pressure in the north, east and south, leaving the conflict far from a military resolution even as efforts to reach a political settlement falter. Before commanding the air defense forces and running an air-defense academy in the northern city of Aleppo, General Ishaq was a fighter pilot who shot down an Israeli jet during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a rare accomplishment for the outgunned Syrian Air Force, which lost many planes for every one it shot down, General Jabber and others said. General Ishaq was given the honorary rank of lieutenant general after his death, General Jabber said. The only living Syrian to hold that rank is President Assad, who is also the general commander of the armed forces. Lieutenant general is the highest rank in the Syrian Army because it was the rank of Mr. Assad’s father and predecessor as president, Hafez, and no one can outrank him, General Jabber said. General Ishaq had been an officer in the elite Republican Guard and had good relations with Mr. Assad and a good reputation in the military, according to Syrians with contacts in the security forces. He was a member of the Sunni majority, one of many high-ranking Sunnis in a military pitted against a Sunni-led uprising, they said.

Syria
Damascus
Hussein Ayoub Ishaq
Military
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
Bashar al-Assad
Syrian Army
Arab Spring
Free Syrian Army


Seahawks Top Giants With Strong Second Half

Abstract: SEATTLE — With flagging hopes, waning confidence and deteriorating solidarity, the Giants visited Seattle on Sunday, an unlikely place for the upset victory that would resurrect a season spiraling toward a non-postseason oblivion. And yet, late in the third quarter of a tied game, there were the Giants driving in Seahawks territory. The Giants even seemed to have momentum on their side. The Seattle crowd, celebrated for earsplitting cheers that greet a steady succession of home victories, had been suppressed. Led by the precise downfield passing of quarterback Eli Manning and the precocious rookie wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., the Giants had startled and confused the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks. Then, on a first down from the Seattle 39-yard line, Manning wanted to throw to tight end Larry Donnell over the middle, but Donnell was covered. Nudged in the pocket and rushed, Manning stole a thought from his daring and sometimes reckless past. He decided to throw deep to Beckham again. The pass, toward the right side of the end zone, was off line and ill-advised. Beckham deflected the ball with one hand to Seattle safety Earl Thomas, who returned the interception 47 yards. Whatever spell the Giants had cast on the Seahawks was lifted, and less than three minutes later, Seattle had a 7-point lead after scoring the first of three fourth-quarter touchdowns in what became a 38-17 thumping. There would be no season-saving upset in the Pacific Northwest. Instead, with the Seahawks (6-3) rushing for a whopping 350 yards, the Giants, losers of four successive games, tiptoed out of Seattle demoralized and dispirited. They are 3-6 and staring at a second consecutive losing season. “It’s embarrassing as a team and an organization,” safety Antrel Rolle said. “We just got handled at the end of the game. We didn’t do anything right. We didn’t make one stop.” It was the most rushing yards given up by the Giants since the Buffalo Bills rushed for 366 in 1978. Seattle played a game of cat and mouse with the football. Marshawn Lynch ran for 140 yards, mostly through the middle of the Giants’ defensive line. Quarterback Russell Wilson, operating a read-option running game behind the line, often kept the ball himself and dashed outside, fooling the defense as he picked up 107 yards on 14 carries. Seattle’s backup running back Christine Michael gained 71 yards on four carries, averaging 17.8 yards per attempt. “It was like they had the whole field to run,” defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins said. “We’d go inside, and they’d go outside, and vice versa.” The Giants had prepared for the Seattle deception, but the Giants’ defenders either overcommitted to Wilson fakes or did not commit soon enough on straightforward runs. “They ran the same play all day, and still it worked,” Rolle said. “I honestly don’t know what we’re doing wrong. But whatever it is, it isn’t the answer.” Seattle scored 24 unanswered points in the second half, an offensive explosion that obscured an efficient and resourceful first half by the Giants — the best they had played in more than a month. Image Andre Williams getting help from center J. D. Walton on a 3-yard second-quarter score that put the Giants up by a touchdown. Credit Joe Nicholson/Reuters The Seahawks scored the game’s first touchdown, but after an interception by Giants cornerback Zach Bowman, the Giants took over at the Seattle 24. Manning, who completed 29 of 44 passes for 283 yards, threw two passes to Beckham for a total of 14 yards and then connected with wide receiver Preston Parker for a 6-yard touchdown that tied the game. On the Giants’ next possession, Manning started looking frequently for Beckham, who was often working against the stellar cornerback Richard Sherman. Beckham sprinted past Sherman along the sideline on a second-down play, and Manning fired a perfect pass to him for a 44-yard gain. Two plays later, Manning found Beckham again for 26 yards, putting the Giants at the Seahawks’ 3. The rookie running back Andre Williams bulled into the end zone for a 14-7 Giants lead early in the second quarter. A Josh Brown 41-yard field goal as the first half ended put the Giants ahead, 17-14. The teams sparred early in the third quarter, and Seattle drew even on a field goal. But Manning confidently moved the Giants from their 20 to the Seattle 39 as the third quarter was nearing its end. He had just thrown to Beckham for 8 yards and a first down when he looked off Donnell and again let the football fly in Beckham’s direction. “I went late to Odell, and it was just a bad decision — a bad choice by me,” Manning said. “I should have thrown it away.” Thomas’s interception on the play was one of only two turnovers by the Giants — Seattle had three — but it energized the Seahawks and the crowd at Century Link Field. “Earl’s interception gave us the spark we needed,” said Wilson, who had to throw just 17 times and completed 10 for 172 yards. “We didn’t really look back after that.” Image Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch after scoring in the fourth quarter. Credit Steven Bisig/Reuters That is an understatement. On the go-ahead drive, after Thomas’s long return, Wilson scrambled for 11 yards, and Lynch rumbled for 17 more. Lynch’s 3-yard run for a touchdown, one of four he rushed for in the game, gave Seattle a 24-17 lead. At this juncture, the Giants, who had some success on the ground in the first half, suddenly could not run the ball. The lack of offensive balance severely limited the validity of their play-action run fakes and ultimately inhibited the passing game. The Giants’ next series was a three-and-out. Seattle took the ball and roared down the field again, scoring after a seven-play, 53-yard drive that put the game out of reach for the Giants, who trailed by 31-17. On their next possession, the Giants turned the football over on downs, and soon Wilson was running into the end zone for a 38-17 lead. Giants Coach Tom Coughlin was not at a loss for words after the game, but he did appear somewhat dumbfounded by the turn of events. “It’s a four-quarter game,” Coughlin said. “We played well in the first half, and I thought the third quarter was O.K., too. But, you know, you have to play the whole game.” Asked what expectations he had for his team, Coughlin answered: “We talked about improving this week. We did show improvement. But obviously, there is a lot more work to be done. “Everyone is going to be disappointed and embarrassed, and rightly so.” EXTRA POINTS The Giants’ backup running back Peyton Hillis, who has often been relied on for his ability to block on pass plays, left the game in the first half and did not return, because of a concussion. Michael Cox, who replaced Hillis, had a lower leg fracture late in the game and left the locker room in a wheelchair.

Seahawks
Giants
Eli Manning
Football
Marshawn Lynch
Russell Wilson
Tom Coughlin


Giants Rush Hillis Onto Roster and Into Plans

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — If Peyton Hillis had reached the end of his professional football career, even at age 27, he was fine with that. He spent a week as a volunteer assistant coach for the Adamsville High School Cardinals, in southwestern Tennessee, drawing up plays for last Friday’s 35-25 loss to local rival Hardin County and watching from the sidelines with a headset. A onetime leading rusher for the Cleveland Browns who was featured on the cover of the 2012 edition of the Madden video game, Hillis thought he might have found a second calling. “That’s not the way I wanted to go out,” Hillis said, “but it felt like, if this is where the Lord has put me, I’ve got to accept it, you know? And just go with it.” Then the Giants called. Hillis worked out on Tuesday and signed Wednesday, and on Monday night against the Minnesota Vikings, the Giants could be counting on him to produce. That game will come 30 days after Hillis was cut by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, unable to get into action in either of the season’s first two games. He rushed for nearly 1,200 yards in 2010 for the Browns, but injuries and an ugly contract dispute eventually led to a divorce from that franchise. He spent one season with the Kansas City Chiefs and signed with the Buccaneers in the summer. When that did not last, Hillis went home to his 1,300-acre soybean farm in Pittsburg Landing, Tenn. — a plot, he pointed out, that borders many of the landmarks from the 1862 Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War. He began to map out what he might do with his life apart from football. There would be farming, of course, and plenty of deer hunting. Coaching came up, too. Hillis described himself as an enthusiast for military history. He believes parallels can be drawn to executing plays on a football field. “I like the strategy of it,” Hillis said. “That’s just what football is, without really hurting anybody.” He beamed as he described the advice he gave the other coaches at Adamsville: run the Wildcat, the formation he helped popularize while at the University of Arkansas in 2006 and 2007. It led to three second-half touchdowns for the Cardinals. He taught the teenagers some of the nuances of the formation, in which the running back takes snaps from the center. Only a week later, Hillis spoke in the Giants’ locker room about returning and perhaps even running the Wildcat in an N.F.L. game again. “It’s kind of like a second chance,” Hillis said. “I’m right off the street. I’ve got to get right with my conditioning. But it seems like I can get thrown right into the fire, so I’m trying to learn fast and trying to help this team win.” The Giants signed Hillis as insurance to bolster their depth at running back, which remains a concern. The rookie Michael Cox was the lone running back at practice Monday. Brandon Jacobs has been limited in practice by a hamstring injury. David Wilson, who is dealing with neck problems, said Friday that he would not be re-evaluated for another month. So the Giants are undoubtedly hurrying Hillis into their Monday night plans. “Fortunately, he’s a bright guy,” said Kevin Gilbride, the offensive coordinator. “He’s been down in Tampa Bay, which uses our system, so he’s more familiar than the average guy would be coming into a brand-new situation. There’s a lot of nomenclature and terminology that he’s familiar with, so I think that’s going to expedite the process. But it’s still new.” With Hillis and Jacobs, the Giants have two of the largest backs in the league — 511 pounds between them. But questions about Jacobs’s durability have already surfaced. Hillis also dealt with a knee injury this preseason and has played just 23 games, rushing for 896 yards, since his breakout year in 2010. “He’s a bigger back,” Coach Tom Coughlin said. “We know he can handle the first- and second-down stuff, and hopefully he’ll not be too hard pressed to pick up the third-down stuff as well.” EXTRA POINTS Giants cornerback Corey Webster did not practice Friday, but he seemed hopeful he could suit up for the first time since Sept. 22. “Everything’s on course to be out there,” Webster said. Center David Baas (neck) did practice Friday and also seemed hopeful to be ready for Monday. ... Defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul missed practice. Tom Coughlin said Pierre-Paul was sick.


Challenge to Immigration Law Is Upheld

Abstract: A Federal District Court judge ruled Friday that one of the main lawsuits seeking to overturn Arizona’s new immigration law could go forward, despite efforts by Gov. Jan Brewer and several sheriffs to have the suit thrown out. But the judge, Susan R. Bolton , dismissed some portions of the suit, filed by the National Immigration Law Center and other advocacy groups, including their claim that the law would restrict immigrants’ rights to travel and to use a foreign language.

Arizona
Arizona Immigration Law (SB 1070)
Illegal Immigrants
Suits and Litigation
Brewer Jan
Bolton Susan Ritchie


Rick Welts to Quit as Suns’ President, Calling Decision Personal

Abstract: Rick Welts is resigning as the president and chief executive of the Phoenix Suns , only four months after becoming the most prominent sports executive to publicly say that he is gay. Welts will step aside on Thursday, after nine years as the Suns’ top business executive. He is not leaving for another job, and is framing the decision as more personal than professional. He told The Arizona Republic that he would move to Sacramento to be closer to his partner. “The most important thing for me is to get my personal and professional lives better aligned,” Welts was quoted as saying. “They’ve probably never been aligned. I’m 58 years old and it’s time to do that. This isn’t one of those departures to see greener pastures. It really is completely a personal situation. These guys have been tremendously accommodating and any other inference than that is absolutely crazy.” Before joining the Suns, Welts spent 17 years working in business and marketing for the N.B.A. league office in New York. He is credited with creating All-Star weekend in 1984. In May, Welts stunned many around the league by disclosing his sexual orientation . “This is one of the last industries where the subject is off limits,” Welts said in a New York Times article. “Nobody’s comfortable in engaging in a conversation.”

Phoenix Suns
Welts Rick
Homosexuality
Basketball


Boardwalk Returns to Rockaways in Time for Beach Season

Abstract: Ever since Hurricane Sandy battered the Rockaways — even as residents and business owners in the area restored and remade their lives with muscle, will and money — a big hole has remained in the fabric of the community. For two and a half years — two and a half very long years, residents say — the Rockaway Peninsula was missing one of its signature features: the boardwalk, at once a transportation corridor, clubhouse, gym, date destination, classroom, art studio, reading room, meditation retreat and landmark. The hurricane turned it to splinters, leaving what Susannah Ray, an artist and local resident, called, “an emptiness.” On Friday, that void began to fill as New York officials opened the first full section of a new Rockaway Boardwalk. There was no mistaking this walkway for the old one, which was made of wood planks and in perpetual need of repair. The new section, which runs from Beach 86th Street to Beach 97th Street, is a gleaming sweep of concrete, poured in wavelike designs and colored light blue and sand. Portions of the boardwalk incorporate a material known as plastic lumber that simulates the look and feel of wood. A second new section is to open on July 4, and the full 4.7 mile-length of the boardwalk, with some pieces of the old structure that survived the hurricane, is expected to be completed by Memorial Day 2016, city officials said. The project’s final phase, including the replacement of the older sections with new construction, is to be finished by Memorial Day 2017. Image Students from Waterside School for Leadership on a new section of the boardwalk. For two and a half years after Hurricane Sandy, the Rockaway Peninsula was missing the boardwalk. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times “When the boardwalk bore the brunt of Sandy, I think people felt it in their hearts,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference on Friday afternoon that marked the official opening of the new section of boardwalk and the ceremonial start of beach season. The structure, the mayor said while standing at a lectern on the boardwalk, is “about heritage, it’s about the identity and culture of the extraordinary communities of this peninsula.” The new stretch was given a “soft opening” around 10:30 a.m. on Friday, and the curious tested it with their flip-flops, running shoes, bicycles, skateboards and roller skates. In short order, it was busy with children flying kites, retirees taking morning strolls, people walking dogs and, of course, knots of kibitzers swapping gossip and sharing opinions — with topic No. 1 being the boardwalk itself. And though the sentimental among those on hand could be forgiven their longing for the old wood planks, consensus seemed to overwhelmingly favor the new construction. “It’s a miracle — a miracle long overdue!” said Jeffrey Fischer, 73, who was walking his German shepherd, Angel. “You didn’t think it was going to be this attractive. This is really nice.” The new boardwalk allows residents to reclaim a part of their life that has been absent since the hurricane, Mr. Fischer said. For him, it allows peaceful views of the ocean. “It’s enjoyable to sit on a bench and look at the water,” he said. “It’s a good meditational process.” City officials on Friday promoted the new boardwalk’s design, using the word “resiliency” to describe the structure’s ability to withstand extreme weather and the effects of climate change. The new boardwalk is made of steel-reinforced concrete fastened to steel support piles, and sits above the 100-year flood plain, allowing it to better endure huge storms. In addition, layers of protection are being integrated into the design, officials said, including planted dunes and retaining walls meant to help keep the sand in place. Image Outside of Rippers, a burger and hot dog concession stand, off the boardwalk. The new section runs from Beach 86th Street to Beach 97th Street. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times Not only is this boardwalk stronger than the old one, but its design will act as a bulwark against flooding to help protect the community from storm surges, officials said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has allocated $480 million for the entire project. City officials said they expected the total cost to be less than that, and Mr. de Blasio announced on Friday that any money left over “will stay in the Rockaways.” “It’s great, man,” said Samlal Boodoo, 82, a Trinidadian immigrant and Rockaway resident who was strolling on the boardwalk on Friday morning. He gestured with a sweep of his arm toward the walkway, new railings and ramps swooping up from the sidewalk and down to the beach. “I like this better than it was, no matter what they say,” he added. “This is something stronger.” But even amid the seemingly widespread celebration of the new stretch of boardwalk, the lack of wood left some residents with a semantics quandary. “What do we call it?” wondered Mary O’Sullivan, who had paused during a bike ride with her neighbors Kathy and Bobby Johnson. They considered whether “promenade” was not a more appropriate term. (City officials clarified that a boardwalk is elevated — like the structure in Rockaway — and a promenade is at ground level.) Further along the boardwalk, Alan Pearlberg and his wife, Sarah, also weighed the change in material. “It’s not wood,” Ms. Pearlberg said as the couple’s 20-month-old twin daughters, Maya and Lia, ran around. Mr. Pearlberg shrugged. Sure, he said, running on the new boardwalk would be a different experience, recorded most acutely in one’s knees. But at least the family had a place to stroll without having to navigate the traffic on nearby Shore Front Parkway. “After three years of having nothing,” he said, “I’ll take it. This is a boardwalk to me.”

Hurricane Sandy
Rockaway Beach Queens
Rockaway Peninsula Queens


2 Online Art Auctioneers to Merge and Go Global

Abstract: Over the last five years, Paddle8 has sought to shake up the world of online art auctions. In Europe, and for almost the same amount of time, Auctionata has tried to do the same in its own way. Now the two online auction houses are planning to join forces. Auctionata and Paddle8 are expected to announce on Thursday that they will merge, seeking to create a bigger specialist in selling art online with a broader international reach. Even combined, the two do not dream of displacing the giants of the art world, the auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Both Paddle8 and Auctionata focus on what they call the “middle market” for art sales: objects more valuable than can be sold on eBay, but generally topping out at $500,000. Of course, sometimes the companies run auctions for more expensive items. Paddle8 gained notoriety when it auctioned the sole copy of the final album by the Wu-Tang Clan last year, raising $2 million. (The buyer was eventually revealed to be Martin Shkreli , the former pharmaceutical executive who is facing federal securities fraud charges.) And Auctionata, whose unusual features include livestreamed auctions, sold an 18th-century Chinese clock for $3.83 million last summer. The start-ups’ aim is to disrupt scores of smaller auction houses, largely brick-and-mortar and without an online presence. By contrast, the two start-ups were born with the express intent of reaching broad audiences by tapping the Internet for both objects to be sold and potential buyers. “We will be able to pick up an object and sell it quicker than anyone else in the world,” Alexander Zacke, the chief executive of Auctionata, said in a telephone interview. Buying art online has become a small but quickly growing part of the global business in fine art. Beyond Sotheby’s and Christie’s — both of which have focused on digital sales in recent years — other players include Artsy , Artnet and 1stdibs . Since their founding, both Auctionata and Paddle8 have gained prominence as online art marketplaces. A ranking of online art platforms compiled by the research firm Hiscox, based on a survey of 672 art buyers , ranked Paddle8 fifth and Auctionata at ninth. By comparison, Christie’s LIVE placed first, while Sotheby’s BIDnow ranked fourth. Together, Auctionata and Paddle8 reported sales in 2015 of around $140 million and have a combined user base of nearly 800,000. Both companies have drawn backing from big names in the world of art and luxury: Auctionata’s investors include Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH, while Paddle8’s include the artist Damien Hirst and the gallery owner David Zwirner. All existing investors are expected to remain on board with the newly combined auction house. The two companies have known each other for years. Mr. Zacke regularly meets with Paddle8’s founders, according to Aditya Julka, a Paddle8 founder. But nearly two years ago, Mr. Zacke conceded that his company would have a difficult time breaking into the United States, and Mr. Julka said his start-up would struggle to move into Europe. Combining would allow each company to more easily move into new geographies and markets, as well as share new technologies. Founders of both companies declined to disclose specific terms of the deal, though Mr. Zacke said that because Auctionata was bigger in terms of sales, its shareholders would receive more equity in the combined company. Mr. Zacke will also lead the combined company, though all the founders will remain in top roles. Both Mr. Zacke and Mr. Julka repeatedly called the deal a merger, meant to fuse both companies’ cultures together. The combined entity — whose new name has yet to be determined — will retain both the Paddle8 and the Auctionata names and their own headquarters, in New York and Berlin, respectively. “We’re quite focused on doing this together,” Mr. Julka said. “For every practical purpose, it’s a merger.”

Art
Auction
Paddle8
Auctionata
Venture capital
E Commerce


Fight Over China Currency Policies Threatens Vote on Trade Bill

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A heated dispute over how to challenge China on currency policy has imperiled a trade bill that has become President Obama ’s top legislative priority, uniting even the president’s top Democratic supporters against taking up the bill in the Senate. Senator Mitch McConnell , Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, vowed to press forward with a vote Tuesday afternoon to begin debating legislation granting the president “fast track” negotiating authority to complete a major trade deal with 11 Pacific Rim nations. But Democrats say they will filibuster the measure unless it is combined with a separate customs enforcement bill that would crack down on currency manipulation. Both sides say the vote will be close, but absent a breakthrough in negotiations, the 60-vote threshold will be difficult to meet. At the root of the dispute is China, which is not even a party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade agreement Mr. Obama hopes to make a capstone of his administration. Voting to proceed to the measure on trade promotion “is saying this bill is worthy of debate,” Mr. McConnell pleaded on the Senate floor Monday, promising that senators could add amendments. But opponents sensed the momentum was on their side. “We’re going to win,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who has led the effort to demand trade promotion authority be considered only with other measures on trade enforcement and assistance for workers dislocated by trade accords. The customs bill in question has created a stew of conflict over issues as varied as child labor and enforcement of import duties. Candy makers want to preserve a loophole — closed in the customs bill — that allows them to import African cocoa harvested by child labor. Automakers are demanding the inclusion of a tough measure allowing companies to challenge trading partners that they say artificially depress the value of their currency to raise the price of American imports and lower the cost of their exports. Republicans accuse Democrats of reneging on their promise to move forward on trade promotion authority on the condition that it is linked only with a measure expanding assistance to workers displaced by economic globalization. Democrats say Republicans coaxed them into putting their most desired trade measures into a bill that is now being dumped. Trade promotion authority would give allow the president to complete the Pacific deal, knowing that any final accord could still be voted down by Congress but could not be amended. Mr. Obama has repeatedly framed the Pacific accord as a way to counter China’s rising power in Asia, giving countries like Malaysia, Brunei, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam an economic alliance that would be a counterweight to China’s increasingly assertive policies in the region. But a bipartisan coalition, including Mr. Brown and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, is challenging the administration to do far more. “If the White House and our foreign policy community were so interested in dealing with China, we would have been much more aggressive in passing a currency bill that would allow us to go toe to toe on these issues,” Mr. Brown said. “We’re doing none of that.” The coalition has told the White House there will be no trade promotion authority bill without a provision aimed at China’s currency policies . “I have said to them for three to four months, if you do currency alongside T.P.A. but at the same time, it would help your cause,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. But senior administration officials remain opposed to the senators’ solution, a measure that would require the Commerce Department to investigate currency policy after a complaint is filed, then impose duties to raise the cost of an imported good to counter currency manipulation. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker called it “a terrible idea,” even though it would bolster the authority of her cabinet agency. “There’s one authority over our currency,” she said. “We should strengthen Treasury. We should not dilute this by having more than one department responsible for currency.” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said any measure to counter a foreign power’s currency policies could backfire, undermining the Federal Reserve Board, which uses the flow of currency to tighten or loosen economic growth in the United States. More to the point, Republicans say, a tough currency measure attached to trade promotion authority would doom the Pacific trade accord, scaring away important countries like Japan and Malaysia in a misguided jab at China. “Is the goal to get T.P.A. done, or is it to crush the president’s trade agenda?” asked a Republican aide on the Senate Finance Committee. The customs bill in question is multifaceted. Besides the currency measure, it includes the creation of an interagency trade enforcement center and a system to respond faster to unfair trade practices like the dumping of exports at prices below the cost of production. Another provision would require the Customs and Border Protection agency to expeditiously investigate allegations of customs duty evasion. Still another would close a 75-year-old loophole that allows the importation of goods provided by child labor if a company cannot find those goods elsewhere. Candy makers are opposing that last provision on the novel ground that it would kill Ghana’s cocoa trade. But as the trade legislation becomes more complex, so does the task of winning approval. Outside conservative groups like Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, have generally stayed quiet on trade promotion authority, torn between their support for free trade and their distrust of Mr. Obama. Now they are encouraging opposition if trade promotion authority is linked to trade adjustment assistance, which they oppose as a waste of federal tax dollars. “Heritage Action has always been a free trade organization, but free-market conservatives are understandably split on this president’s request for fast-track authority,” Michael A. Needham, the group’s chief executive, said on Monday. “Including an egregiously ineffective welfare program in a bill intended to promote trade will only exacerbate the problem.” If Democrats bring down the procedural motion to proceed to trade, both sides say that is not likely to be the last word. Negotiations have already begun on a broader trade bill that could include some currency provision, perhaps weaker than the one in the disputed customs measure.

China
Mitch McConnell
Trans-Pacific Partnership
International trade
US Politics
Barack Obama
US Economy


France Pursues Tax Cheats Using Swiss Banks

Abstract: PARIS — Just days after France reached a new tax treaty with Switzerland, a French government official said the authorities had achieved a breakthrough in obtaining Swiss bank account data amid a push to catch tax cheats. “We have obtained the names of 3,000 Swiss bank account holders, of which a part very probably corresponds to tax evasion,” Budget Minister Eric Woerth of France said in an interview published Sunday by the weekly newspaper Journal du Dimanche. “These accounts, at three banks, represent a total value of around €3 billion,” or about $4.3 billion, he said during the interview. “This is the first time we’ve had this type of information, precise, with the names, account numbers and the amounts deposited. It’s exceptional.” The French authorities are prepared to pursue unregistered account holders who do not quickly “regularize” their records, he said. On Thursday, the French economy minister, Christine Lagarde, and the Swiss president, Hans-Rudolf Merz, signed a revised tax treaty, long sought by Paris, that updated the two countries’ 1966 agreement to conform with the latest international standards set by the 30 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Ms. Lagarde hailed the agreement as “the start of a new era in relations between the two governments” and said Swiss bank secrecy laws would “no longer be an obstacle to the communication of this information.” The onset of the financial crisis was the trigger for France, along with the United States and Germany, to begin a determined push for international cooperation against tax avoiders. Switzerland is by far the largest tax haven, and it has attracted most of the opprobrium and pressure this year. In Washington, the Internal Revenue Service agreed Aug. 19 to a deal with the Swiss bank UBS under which it will obtain the names of 4,450 holders of accounts that it suspects Americans are using to avoid U.S. taxes. The Swiss bank had already agreed to pay $780 million to settle civil and criminal charges in the case. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is also seeking to shore up his bona fides as a reformer as he prepares for the Group of 20 nations summit meeting in Pittsburgh Sept. 24-25. Last week, Mr. Sarkozy obtained the agreement of French banks to curb excessive bonus payments, saying, “France must lead and try to persuade the others.” Mr. Woerth estimated in the article that tax crimes of all kinds, including tax evasion, cost the French government €50 billion a year in lost revenue. “The battle against tax havens is an essential element to instilling morality in capitalism,” Mr. Woerth told the newspaper, an effort in which Mr. Sarkozy is “totally engaged, as he already showed with traders’ bonuses.” Representatives of nearly 100 governments are scheduled to meet Tuesday and Wednesday in Los Cabos, Mexico, to discuss measures aimed at increasing international tax and bank account transparency to catch tax cheats. The meeting, under the auspices of the Mexican Finance Ministry and the O.E.C.D., aims to establish a peer-review mechanism to ensure that international standards are fully implemented. France has signed similar deals with several other countries recently, including Bahrain, Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as with Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and the British Virgin Islands.

France
Switzerland
Tax Evasion
Banks and Banking


E.P.A. Moves Ahead on Waterways Rule Despite Court Setback

Abstract: The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that it was going forward with a new rule to protect streams, tributaries and wetlands, despite a court ruling a day before that blocked the measure in 13 central and Western states. The E.P.A. says the rule, which took effect on Friday in the rest of the country, will safeguard drinking water for millions of Americans. Opponents say it imposes excessive burdens on small farmers and ranchers. Lawsuits to block the regulation are pending across the country, and the House has passed a bill to block it. A Senate committee has passed a measure that would force the E.P.A. to rewrite the rule.


Egyptian Military Fires on Mexican Tourists During Picnic

Abstract: CAIRO — The convoy of four sport utility vehicles full of Mexican tourists was about three hours southwest of Cairo on a typical adventure trip through the White Desert, an otherworldly landscape of monumental chalk-rock formations. Around midday on Sunday, a diabetic passenger complained that she needed to eat. So, with the blessing of their police escort, and the apparent added security of an Apache military helicopter buzzing on the horizon, the group pulled off for a picnic, according to witnesses and others briefed on the trip. Then the helicopter opened fire, killing at least a dozen people — including at least two Mexicans — while wounding a tourist police officer and at least nine others. Some were gunned down as they tried to flee toward the top of a nearby sand dune, said Essam Monem, a resident of the area who arrived that night and saw the bodies sprawled in the sand. The helicopter crew had mistaken the lunching tourists for a camp of Islamist militants operating in the area, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Monday. The error killed more tourists than any terrorist attack in recent years, raising questions about both the competence of Egypt ’s security forces and the prevalence of the militants they were hunting. The deadly mistake is the latest setback facing President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s efforts to restore stability, two years after the military takeover that brought him to power. The disaster threatens to undermine a nascent recovery in the vital tourist industry, points to a failure to re-establish public security that has driven away investors, and embarrasses Mr. Sisi just days after he sought a new beginning by firing his prime minister and cabinet. “What we saw was not just the lack of training of the military forces, but also their desperation,” said Mokhtar Awad, a researcher at the Center for American Progress, noting that Islamic State militants in the area had also released photographs on Sunday that appeared to show they had beaten an army unit in battle earlier the same day. “It tells you how chaotic the situation is,” he said, “if they feel so desperate to put an end to this that they end up taking out what we gather is the first thing they see.” Initial reports on Sunday night from Egyptian security officials said that the error took place late at night, when mistaking Mexican tourists for Egyptian jihadists might be less hard to imagine. In its statement on Monday, the Interior Ministry sought instead to blame the tour guide — who was killed in the attack — by suggesting that the convoy had entered a “banned area” without permission. A Mexican tourist group “was present in the same banned area” as a group of “terrorist elements” that the military and police forces had been chasing, the ministry’s statement said. It also said a team had been formed to look into “the accident and the justifications for the presence of the tourist group in the aforementioned banned area.” But the official union of tour guides and friends of the trip’s leader circulated photographs of the convoy’s official permit on the Internet. Union officials and friends of the guide said the tour had stuck to a common, widely used tourist route. The tour had passed through several police checkpoints and had moved only with the approval of its tourist police escort. The convoy had “no information that this region is banned, no warning signs, and no instructions from checkpoints on the road, or the Tourism and Antiquities policeman present with them,” Hassan el-Nahla, the chairman of the General Union of Tourist Guides, said in a statement. “Egypt will pay the price of the impact of this incident on the tourism industry,” he said. Although the helicopter that conducted the attack was military, a spokesman for the Egyptian armed forces deflected responsibility. “When it comes to tourists, it is a Ministry of Interior issue, not ours,” said the spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Samir. “This incident has nothing to do with the army even if the army and police carried out the operation together,” he said. “This is the system of this country, and you don’t have the right to question it.” In Mexico , Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said at a news conference that two Mexican citizens had been killed and six wounded; reports in the Egyptian state media initially said that eight Mexicans had died, and Mexico officials said later that they did not know the fates of six Mexicans on the trip. One of the dead was identified in Mexico news reports as Rafael José Bejarano Rangel, 41, a musician who studied other indigenous cultures. Some news reports on Monday said two of the Mexican wounded were dual citizens of the United States, but that could not be confirmed. “We are waiting for the appropriate Egyptian authorities to give us access to better information that will allow us to know the situation of the rest of the affected people,” Ms. Ruiz Massieu said. Image The White Desert, a Western Desert area of chalk rocks where the tourists were headed, in 2007. Credit Cris Bouroncle/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In a formal diplomatic note to the Egyptian ambassador, Mexico “expressed its deep consternation for these deplorable events and demanded that an expedited, exhaustive and thorough investigation is carried out.” Mr. Sisi, a former army general, has struggled unsuccessfully to crush a militant Islamist insurgency set off after he led the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013. The main militant movement is centered in the North Sinai, on the eastern side of the country, and last fall it declared itself the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. But militants aligned with the group have also attacked security forces in remote desert regions west of the Nile, including a major assault in July 2014 that killed at least 21 soldiers. Western diplomats briefed on intelligence reports say they believe that the Egyptian arm of the Islamic State has active cells operating in the vast desert, and they may obtain weapons or find havens across the western border in Libya as well. The air attack on the picnic, however, took place not far from the oasis town of Bahariya, a tourist hub that is a common staging ground for camping excursions into the White Desert. The Bahariya area had been considered relatively safe compared with the more remote areas farther west. But residents and security officials said that in recent days Islamic State militants had kidnapped a local Bedouin guide they suspected of having acted as a government informer. The security forces had located the militants and sought to attack them earlier Sunday in an effort to rescue the captive Bedouin, the residents and security officials said, but the militants overwhelmed and beat back the government’s troops.That battle appears to have been the subject of the photographs and statement released late Sunday by the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State, said Mr. Awad of the Center for American Progress, who tracks the militants. One photograph showed a Bedouin captive bound and beheaded, with his head resting on his back. In response, the military sent the Apache helicopter to hunt for the militant camp, the officials and area residents said. And Mr. Awad argued that shock at the earlier retreat of the government’s ground forces may have contributed to the erroneous airstrike. The attack on Sunday has received unusual attention because it involved foreigners. Mexican officials said they first learned of the episode on Sunday afternoon from the private tour operator that arranged the trip, Windows on Egypt, and the Mexican Embassy then raised the issue with the Egyptian government, which had not yet disclosed it. Residents of the North Sinai say that the security forces’ reliance on air power and shoot-first tactics lead to many civilian deaths. The Egyptian government, however, has acknowledged virtually no collateral civilian casualties. Instead, the government routinely releases only the statistics about the handfuls, dozens or hundreds of “terrorists” it has killed. None of the assertions can be confirmed because the government bars independent journalists from entering the area. In August 2014, however, the Egyptian government acknowledged a smaller episode of accidental killing, on the coastal highway heading west from Cairo near the resort town and World War II battle site of El Alamein.

Egypt
Military
Mexico
Civilian casualties
Terrorism


An Altar Beyond Olympus for a Deity Predating Zeus

Abstract: PHILADELPHIA — Before Zeus hurled his first thunderbolt from Olympus, the pre-Greek people occupying the land presumably paid homage and offered sacrifices to their own gods and goddesses, whose nature and identities are unknown to scholars today. But archaeologists say they have now found the ashes, bones and other evidence of animal sacrifices to some pre-Zeus deity on the summit of Mount Lykaion, in the region of Greece known as Arcadia. The remains were uncovered last summer at an altar later devoted to Zeus. Fragments of a coarse, undecorated pottery in the debris indicated that the sacrifices might have been made as early as 3000 B.C., the archaeologists concluded. That was about 900 years before Greek-speaking people arrived, probably from the north in the Balkans, and brought their religion with them. The excavators were astonished. They were digging in a sanctuary to Zeus, in Greek mythology the father of gods and goddesses. From texts in Linear B, an ancient form of Greek writing, Zeus is attested as a pre-eminent god as early as 1400 B.C. By some accounts, the birthplace of Zeus was on the heights of Lykaion. After reviewing the findings of pottery experts, geologists and other archaeologists, David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania concluded that material at the Lykaion altar “suggests that the tradition of devotion to some divinity on that spot is very ancient” and “very likely predates the introduction of Zeus in the Greek world.” As Dr. Romano remarked, quoting a quip by a friend, “We went from B.C. to B.Z., before Zeus.” The discovery by the Mount Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project was described last week in interviews and a lecture by Dr. Romano at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Penn. Mary E. Voyatzis, a project co-director from the University of Arizona, discussed her analysis of the telltale pottery. The project’s third co-director is Michaelis Petropoulos of the Greek Archaeological Service. Other archaeologists familiar with the discovery tended to agree with Dr. Romano’s interpretation, though they said that continuing excavations this summer and next should reach a more definitive understanding of the altar’s possible pre-Greek use. “Evidence uncovered certainly points to activity at the altar in prehistoric times,” said Jack Davis, director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, who visited the site several times. The project was conducted under the auspices of the American school, but he was not a participant. “We certainly know that Zeus and a female version of Zeus were worshiped in prehistoric times,” Dr. Davis continued in an e-mail message. “The trick will be in defining the precise nature of the site itself before historical times.” Ken Dowden, director of the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham, in England, who was not involved in the research, said that it was not surprising to find the migrating Greeks adapting a sanctuary dedicated to gods of an earlier religion for the worship of their own gods. “Even Christians would on occasion reuse a pagan sanctuary in order to transfer allegiance from the preceding religion to Christianity,” he noted. “You have some god being worshiped on a mountaintop, and the arriving Greeks have translated the god as ‘Zeus,’ their god of the sky, lightning, weather and so on,” Dr. Dowden said. “It’s going to be pretty close to what they found there, and given the site, it makes very good sense.” The affinities of Roman gods and goddesses to earlier Greek ones are well known. Jupiter, for example, is a virtual stand-in for Zeus. In antiquity it was perhaps no heresy to have different names for the same deity. The place of Mount Lykaion in practices venerating Zeus is documented in literature and previous archaeological research. The Greek traveler Pausanias, writing in the second century A.D., described the sanctuary of Zeus on the mountain, 4,500 feet above the rural countryside. “On the highest point of the mountain is a mound of earth, forming an altar of Zeus Lykaios, and from it most of the Peloponnesus can be seen,” Pausanias wrote. “Before the altar on the east stand two pillars, on which there were once gilded eagles. On this altar they sacrifice in secret to Lykaion Zeus. I was reluctant to pry into the details of the sacrifice; let them be as they are and were from the beginning.” In “Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion,” Jane Ellen Harrison, a British scholar, wrote in 1903, “The Zeus of Homer demanded and received the titbits of the victim, though even these in token of friendly communion were shared by the worshipers.” The proximity of Mount Lykaion to Olympia, 22 miles northwest, initially attracted Dr. Romano’s attention. Another sanctuary of Zeus, Olympia was a prominent site of the Pan-Hellenic athletic competitions after which current Olympic Games are modeled, and Dr. Romano is an authority on these ancient festivals of sports. His colleagues point out that he is the only archaeologist they know to have a master’s degree in physical education. At Lykaion, Dr. Romano began excavations of the hippodrome on a high meadow, where Greek athletes competed in horse and chariot races and other sports. Not far above, on the southern summit, meanwhile, the research team mapped the altar site and dug a test trench, under the direction of Arthur Rhon, emeritus professor of anthropology at Wichita State University. Bones, mostly goats and sheep, were collected. A few bronze artifacts were recovered. Also a seal stone with an image of a bull, suggesting influence at one time from Minoan Crete. Altar stones were burned and cracked from the sacrificial fires. A geological survey by George Davis of the University of Arizona revealed an ancient fault bordering the altar site on three sides. Could this fault be related to the selection of the site? The region is prone to earthquakes. Dr. Voyatzis said the potsherds were the most telling finds. Their undecorated style, gray color, the feel of the clay and the way it was fired, she said, were diagnostic of pottery 5,000 years ago. “You wouldn’t establish a settlement in a stark, fearful place like this,” Dr. Voyatzis said in an interview while visiting Penn. So the pottery, she added, was presumably there as part of ceremonies at the altar. Like Dr. Voyatzis, Gullog Nordquist of Uppsala University in Sweden was troubled by the jumbled nature of the potsherds in the trench. She said it “raises questions of exactly how it came to be there.” In an e-mail message last week, Dr. Nordquist, who has visited the site but was not a team member, said that the potsherds “may have belonged to vessels found in graves by people in later times and given to the gods as offerings.” Or they could be remains from an early Bronze Age settlement, although she, too, said “it would be a very inconvenient place to live.” Dr. Nordquist said that she preferred the explanation that the Lykaion site was indeed used as a cult sanctuary in the time before Zeus. Little is known of the pre-Greek inhabitants, but some scholars think they originated in what is now western Turkey. “We do not yet know exactly how the altar was first used in this early period, 3000-2000 B.C., or whether it was used in connection with natural phenomena such as wind, rain, lightning or earthquakes, possibly to worship some kind of divinity, male or female, or a personification representing forces of nature,” Dr. Romano said. “But this is what we are thinking at this moment.”

pre-Greek
Greece
Archaeology and Anthropology
Greek Civilization
Ceramics and Pottery


When Freedom Is the Right to Stay Under Wraps

Abstract: TEHRAN — Cars honked frantically, their drivers in despair as separate columns of Iranian men and women in black chadors fist-pumped their way through the capital’s afternoon rush on Wednesday, shouting for the government to arrest all women who are improperly veiled. “Corruption and immorality have engulfed the nation,” Shala Mousavi, a round-faced conservative woman, told an eager reporter for Iran’s state television. “We are forced to act.” Tehran’s governor had said in an extremely polite statement that there would be no permit issued for the protest. But here the protesters were, descending on Fatemi Square, right in the middle of this city of 12 million and a stone’s throw from the Interior Ministry building, casually defying a government ban on rallies conducted without permits. Nervous police officers stood by as the protesters blocked traffic in the square to deliver their demand for harsher measures against women who flout Iran’s obligatory Islamic dress code, especially now that the hot Tehran summer is approaching. In its numbers, the demonstration, organized by a Shiite seminary in Qum, was unimpressive. But that it was allowed to take place at all drove home the point to many here that powerful forces are conspiring to undermine President Hassan Rouhani’s frequent promises of delivering more personal freedoms. Right after the rally for more conservative dress, the organizers announced a new protest to express their doubts on the nuclear talks with the West. Wednesday’s front in the long cultural war between Iran’s hard-liners and those seeking reforms within its political system focused on one of the cornerstones of Iran’s Islamic revolution: the obligatory veil. All women in Iran, including visiting dignitaries and foreign tourists, are obliged to cover their hair and wear a coat, preferably just over the knees, in public. The state does not prescribe exact shapes, colors and sizes for the scarves and coats, so over the years many urban Iranian women have come up with spectacular outfits, combining tight coats with fluorescent scarves the size of handkerchiefs, from which locks of hair cascade. While no woman in Iran ventures out on the city streets without a scarf, hard-liners, speaking on television and during Friday prayers, frequently accuse some women of “roaming the streets practically naked.” Western clothes are also uncomfortable, a prominent ayatollah said on Wednesday. “Wearing very tight clothes, some cannot easily sit or stand. Such dresses are in fact a prisons and not a clothes,” Naser Marakem Shirazi said in a statement. “Our clothing culture must be altered.” First, the state tried “cultural work” (long debates by clerics on state television), to persuade women to fully cover up, pointing out that showing too many tresses can lead to “moral depravations.” Recently, posters have gone up in Tehran showing Iran’s national delicacy, the pistachio nut, with text saying that everything that is good is wrapped in a shell, just like the head scarf, the hijab. “But this is not working,” said an angry woman during the demonstration regarding the educational approach toward the hijab. “Every summer the ‘bad hijabis’ come out again. It is just awful.” Giving her name only as Masoumeh, she said she and her friends had rented a bus to travel from their neighborhood, Yaftabad, “in order to end this situation.” As she was speaking about Iran and Islam, and how everyone should obey the law, a bald man clearly opposing the protest came up to her and said, “Leave us alone. I am ashamed you are Iranian,” and walked off. “May you be bald forever,” she replied, causing her friends to burst into laughter from behind their chadors. The solution, “unfortunately,” Masoumeh said shaking her head, is to give the morality police free rein. All her friends nodded in agreement. Faced with a quickly changing society, where more people are focusing on individual rights than traditions, Iran’s judiciary and police in 2005 established a special police, called the Gashte Ershad, or guidance patrol, in order to enforce the dress code. For years they stood at shopping centers, main squares and subway stations where they intercepted women they deemed improperly dressed, put them on buses and drove them to a police station. Their fathers, husbands or brothers would have to go to the station to get them released. During his campaign in June, Mr. Rouhani promised to take the much-hated force off the streets. After his election, he changed several police commanders and made sure the responsibility for the morality police would fall under the Interior Ministry, which he controls. But even that was not enough to force change. During a visit last week, when Mr. Rouhani said at a book fair that “cultured people do not need guidance,” Ismael Ahmadi Moghaddam, an old-school police commander, responded that “uncultured people do need guidance.” The next day, vans and officers from the morality police appeared at the entrance to the book fair. There are signs, though, that the morality police and their hard-line backers may have a tough summer ahead. A newly created Facebook page posts photographs of Iranian women taking off their head scarves during tourist outings. The page, titled “Iranian Women’s Freedoms Stealthy” has received more than 31,500 likes since Saturday. Its administrators are anonymous, and a cover photo at the top of the page says, “We’re just ourselves.”


Laurie the Moose Lady Puts ‘Heart and Soul’ Into Roadkill

Abstract: SEATTLE — Laurie Speakman is passionate about moose meat. Partly it is the flavor of the meat, which to her is milder than beef, and great on the barbecue. What matters even more, she said, is moose meat for charity. When a moose weighing half a ton or more is killed on a highway on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage — something that can easily happen 125 times a year in that part of the state — Ms. Speakman gets the call. As a volunteer with the Alaska Moose Federation , she goes to the scene, winches the carcass onto her truck and delivers it to hungry families or religious and civic groups on a waiting list, which then butcher and distribute the meat. “I work my life around roadkill,” said Ms. Speakman, 45, whose Facebook page declares her alter ego, Laurie the Moose Lady . “My heart and soul is into this because people are getting fed.” So it irks her, she said, when moose go missing. Under state law, animals struck and killed on Alaska’s highways are state property and may be handled only by authorized groups like the federation. But illegal carcass harvesting is occurring with increasing frequency in Alaska, said the group’s executive director, Don Dyer, who just last week stumbled upon evidence that pointed to moose theft. Image Ms. Speakman collected a moose calf that was killed on the road. “I work my life around roadkill,” Ms. Speakman said. Credit Joshua Corbett for The New York Times “This last Sunday about 3 o’clock in the morning, we got a call, and we got out there and someone had cut an entire shoulder out of a moose,” Mr. Dyer said in a telephone interview. “Some people out there say, ‘Well, it’s just roadkill,’ and if they’re hungry, they’re entitled to it, but the fact of the matter is that when somebody steals a whole moose, it impacts a lot of people.” The goal of distributing meat from animals killed on the road is not new in Alaska, but before the creation of the federation in 2002, that meant butchering the animal where it died. The work could take a team two or three hours, cutting up 250 to 300 pounds of meat or more, sometimes in dangerous traffic and brutal weather. Transport by the federation’s drivers — there are now six, including Ms. Speakman — cleared crash sites faster and saved time and money for state troopers. Roadkill’s power as a punch line for stand-up comedians, politicians and songwriters probably dates to the early days of the automobile. But harvesting food from the highway is increasingly earning some respect beyond Alaska. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, for example, the advocacy group better known by its acronym, PETA, has endorsed the harvest of animals killed on the road as a more ethical and humane way to get meat than through commercial agriculture practices that use feedlots and slaughterhouses. In a statement, the group said, “If the state is going to provide the needy with animal carcasses rather than doing the right thing by serving healthy plant-based food, roadkill is a superior option.” About 20 states — including Florida, Vermont, Colorado and Illinois — allow some legal taking of wild meat killed by accident, according to the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, which changed its rules last month to allow the practice. In most of the United States, deer are by far the most likely animals to be hit by a vehicle. State Farm Insurance estimates that more than 1.2 million deer, elk and moose — mostly deer — were struck in 2015 in the United States, with West Virginia being statistically the most dangerous place to be an ungulate crossing the road. Image A moose calf on the roadside. About 20 states allow some legal taking of wild meat killed by accident, according to the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. Credit Joshua Corbett for The New York Times And at least one academic who has studied the issue said he believed evolution was changing the behavior of animal populations, which have learned to adapt to the ribbons of highway and the shiny machines that roar past day and night. “There is just less space for creatures, and they have in some cases been changed,” said Roger M. Knutson, a retired professor of biology and the author of the book “Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets, and Highways.” Mr. Knutson’s book, first published in the mid-1980s, quotes, for example, a study of hedgehogs — a kind of animal famous for curling up into a ball when threatened. When the animals come to highways now, the study said, they have learned to run instead. The legal wrinkles of harvesting animals killed on the road vary. In Idaho, for example, people are required to call a wildlife worker or law enforcement official to kill an injured animal before it can be taken. In Washington, salvagers can load a dead deer or elk into their vehicle and drive away, but they must contact the Department of Fish and Wildlife within 24 hours to get a permit. Ms. Speakman said she feels loved by those she helps. Several local organizations and Alaska Native tribal groups regularly give her gas cards to help out. “I’ve had a few charities that made me breakfast. Some will give me coffee. I kind of get spoiled a little bit,” she said. But she draws the line at taking any meat for herself. “I’ve had a couple of charities offer some to me, and I will not accept it — there are needy families out there, and I don’t want to take away from them.” She gets her moose meat by hunting. And she is thinking of eventually writing her own moose-meat cookbook. “I’ve got some recipes,” she said.

Moose
Roadkill
Meat
Alaska
Car Crash
Poaching
Kenai Peninsula Alaska


As a Meal Tax Shrinks, Restaurants Hope to Gain

Abstract: PARIS — The enormous tax on restaurant meals in France is finally dropping on Wednesday, but not many restaurant and cafe owners, already hit hard by changing social habits and a smoking ban, think the reduction will make a big difference to their businesses. “It’s smoke and mirrors,” said Christian Godin, whose drooping gray mustache presides over the packed and popular Le Petit Vendôme, on the Rue des Capucines. “For myself, it’s been six or seven years that I haven’t raised prices on any product, not coffee , not sandwiches, not anything. So what do you want me to lower prices on now?” The drop in taxes, however, may help save his business and even, Mr. Godin said, allow him to hire another worker, which was part of the reason for the change in the law. With the economic crisis, the smoking ban and a generation that is drinking less, “we’ve lost 30 percent of our clientele,” he said. With the extra income, “I’m going to get myself back on course and I might hire, even though right now, I should have been firing.” Restaurants, bars and cafes are an important lobby in France, and they have been suffering, especially the smaller bar-cafes, which are continuing to close. In 1960, France had 200,000 cafes, according to the National Federation of Cafes, Brasseries and Discothèques. Now there are 38,600, with more than 2,000 closing last year alone. Beginning Wednesday, after years of pleas from French presidents, the European Union will allow member states to drop the value-added tax on restaurant meals to 5.5 percent from 19.6 percent. The former is the rate that governs sandwich shops and fast-food restaurants, like the much-despised and much-patronized McDonald’s, which is making money during the economic crisis and is rolling out a series of coffee bars to compete with Starbucks and more traditional cafes. Restaurant owners complained that they were being discriminated against and that they were losing ever more business to fast-food shops and sandwich places. The cheaper establishments have been thriving in French cities, given the increasing propensity of workers to grab something near the office rather than indulge in the fabled hours-long boozy lunch. And the unions complained that salaries were too low and that no one was hiring. The drop in taxes is expected to cost the French budget about $3.3 billion. But that, in turn, is supposed to create 40,000 new restaurant jobs, half of them for younger people, by 2011. But as the big day approached, it was hard to find a restaurant owner here who thought the change was going to reverse the industry’s dismal trends. Patrice Tatard, a former architect who runs La Bourse ou la Vie, a restaurant and cafe in the financial district, on the Rue Vivienne, does a great steak-frites. He says that he will drop prices, but that it will not make a lot of difference. “I’m going to drop prices out of solidarity and because I don’t want to be stuffing my pockets compared to others,” he said, sipping a chilled red wine as the lunch crowd cleared out. But people worried about money will not suddenly come “because I drop prices by 2 euros,” or $2.80. He wonders how he can now, as the government and unions urge, lower prices, raise salaries and hire new people all at the same time. “I’d like someone to explain to me how to do it,” he said. With the financial crisis, business is down 30 percent, he said. So how is he coping? “I sold my car.” Lowering prices is not obligatory, and this being France there are strict rules to follow if owners display the officially approved language that “the VAT is dropping, and prices too.” Still, such signs are common in restaurant windows, indicating that owners, like Mr. Tatard, have agreed to drop their prices on 7 of 10 targeted categories, including an entree, a dessert and coffee — but not including alcohol, on which taxes (and profits) remain unchanged. New and old prices are supposed to be displayed. Alexandre Jacobsen, 26, the young co-owner of Le Reflet, an inexpensive bar-restaurant near the Sorbonne on the Rue Champollion, already sells coffee for just $1.40 and beer at the counter for $2.80. But he will lower most of his prices a little in any case. A salad, a bit more than $13 now, will fall by around 50 cents. “We’re really a cheap bar, so it’s slightly awkward to lower prices more,” he said. But he thinks the new law will help. “Simply put, at the end of the year we’ll have money that we can spread around, on employees, for the customers. It will help employment and consumption.” Still, he said, it is more important for restaurants than for bars. “The heart of our business is alcohol, and nobody is about to lower prices on that,” he said. Jacques Delpiroux, 59, owns Élysée Boétie, a brasserie on the Rue la Boétie, with his wife. He sees the drop in taxes as “justice, plain and simple.” He thought he’d be able to hire someone. But his optimism faded after he spoke to his accountant. “He said to me, ‘Who is it that you want to hire? You’re only going to have 200 euros left over at the end of the month.’ We can’t hire anyone.” Twenty years ago, he and others said, business was much better, and so were their incomes. “It’s our way of life that’s changed,” Mr. Delpiroux said of the French. The bars and cafes were busy day and night. “That’s over,” he said. Life is harder even at the grand three-star restaurants like Pavillon Ledoyen , which will also lower prices on some items, said the restaurant’s chef, Christian Le Squer. “I think it will give people back a little bit of confidence to go out and eat,” he said. What Ledoyen needs is not a drop in the VAT, he said. “What we need is an international clientele, which isn’t coming,” he said. “That’s the global economy.”

Restaurants
Taxation
Le Squer Christian
Paris (France)


Trump Won the Election, but 3 Manhattan Buildings Will Lose His Name

Abstract: President-elect Donald J. Trump will not be sworn in for two more months, but as of next week, the big gold letters spelling out his name will be removed from three large apartment buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, tenants were told on Tuesday. Hundreds of tenants at the buildings at 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Boulevard, which contain a total of 1,325 apartments, signed a petition to “Dump the TRUMP name,” last month after Mr. Trump’s provocative campaign statements had offended women, immigrants and liberals on the Upper West Side. The buildings, between 66th and 69th Streets, along Riverside Boulevard, are owned not by Mr. Trump but by Equity Residential, a publicly traded company based in Chicago, which bought them in 2005 for $809 million. Mr. Trump, a Republican, had been involved in the development known at various times as Riverside South and Trump Place. Equity Residential kept the name Trump Place on the exterior of the buildings and on their letterhead, signage and uniforms. Tenants got a hint that change was afoot in late October when doormen told residents that they were being measured for new uniforms that would no longer bear the Trump name. Then, on Tuesday, they received an email from Mary Pawlisa, a senior regional manager for Equity. It read: “This week, the Trump Place building names will change to the street addresses — 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Boulevard. The purpose of this change is to assume a neutral building identity that appeals to all current and future residents. ” Asked whether the T-R-U-M-P letters on the buildings had hurt the company’s ability to lease vacant apartments, Martin McKenna, Equity Residential’s vice president for investor and public relations, said: “I don’t have a comment on that. A more neutral identity going forward is the path we’re taking.” Equity Residential’s portfolio consists of about 80,000 apartments in New York, Boston, Seattle, Southern California and Washington — coincidentally all areas where Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, won a majority. Mr. McKenna preferred to describe those markets as “24/7 gateway cities.” Linda Gottlieb, a resident who started the petition, was elated. “We won,” Ms. Gottlieb, a film and television producer, said. “We used the power of protest to say that we don’t have to accept the spread of the man’s influence into our very homes. To me, it feels like a cleansing of the place where I live.” But in an interview on Tuesday, Sam Zell, the chairman of Equity Residential, said, “The tenants had no role in this.” Mr. Zell said he and “Don” — as he called Mr. Trump — had talked about it a year ago. “We didn’t want anything to happen while the election was going on,” he said. According to Mr. McKenna, Equity entered a “use of name contract” with the Trump Organization, which did not require it to pay Mr. Trump to use his name. That contract has now expired. Amanda Miller, vice president of marketing for the Trump Organization, issued a statement saying the change “was mutually agreed upon.”

Equity Residential
2016 Presidential Election
Organizational Names
Donald Trump
Upper West Side Manhattan
Real Estate
Housing
NYC


Chrysler Pauses to Mark an Unlikely Comeback

Abstract: DETROIT — Just a few years ago, as it plunged into bankruptcy, Chrysler was a wreck of a company. But strong sales and hot new products have made the automaker the envy of Detroit. And Chrysler’s unlikely revival is accelerating, leaving General Motors and the Ford Motor Company scrambling to catch up. Chrysler, the smallest of the American automakers, kicked off the annual Detroit auto show on Monday with new versions of its Grand Cherokee and Compass S.U.V.’s. The two Jeep models have helped propel the company’s strong sales growth since its government bailout and bankruptcy in 2009. Chrysler outperformed the industry last year with a 20.6 percent increase in domestic sales in a market that grew by 13.4 percent. Its bread-and-butter products like the Grand Cherokee and the Ram pickup had big gains, and new cars like the Dodge Dart began to reduce the company’s traditional reliance on larger vehicles. By comparison, sales increased just 3.7 percent at General Motors and 4.7 percent at Ford. Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of both Chrysler and its Italian parent, Fiat, said Monday he expected Chrysler’s upward sales trend to continue this year, particularly in pickup trucks and S.U.V.’s. “I think there’s a general feeling that the U.S. market is in healthy shape,” Mr. Marchionne said in a meeting with reporters. “And we’re certainly going to improve in the market.” Mr. Marchionne is laying plans to build a new, entry-level Jeep at an underutilized Fiat plant in Italy — evidence of how the American company is shepherding its European parent company through difficult times. Sales of Chrysler products now account for more than 60 percent of the total vehicles sold under the Fiat corporate umbrella, which also includes brands like Alfa Romeo and Maserati. When Mr. Marchionne negotiated Fiat’s acquisition of Chrysler during its federal bailout, industry executives were skeptical that the American company could thrive after the failures of its previous owners, the German carmaker Daimler and the private equity firm Cerberus. Now, however, “it’s not Fiat saving Chrysler, it’s Chrysler saving Fiat,” said David Cole, a founder of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. While Chrysler appears poised to build on last year’s gains, General Motors and Ford are retrenching after lagging the overall market in 2012. G.M. brought some sizzle to the Detroit show on Monday with the introduction of a sleek, new version of its Corvette sports car. But the more important products were redesigns of the company’s Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, which historically are top sellers. The pickup market is expected to grow this year as a result of increased housing starts and other construction activity. G.M. had been losing truck sales to Chrysler and Ford, but is counting on the new models to become more competitive. “I don’t think our timing could have been any better for the new trucks,” said Mark Reuss, head of G.M.’s North American operations. G.M. is also hoping that its recent agreement with the Treasury Department to reduce its investment stake in the company will attract consumers who were opposed to its government bailout and avoided its products. Ford, the only American automaker to survive without bankruptcy and government aid, has been unusually quiet at the Detroit show so far. On Monday, the company unveiled a future concept version of the Lincoln MKC compact S.U.V. While executives declined to say when the model would hit showrooms, it is considered an integral part of Ford’s overall attempts to revitalize the Lincoln brand. Analysts expect Ford to offer an early peek at the next generation of the F-series pickup truck on Tuesday. “Ford is hoping that by showing the concept F-150, it will stop buyers from purchasing from its rivals, especially the new Silverado and Sierra,” said Jesse Toprak, chief analyst for the auto research site TrueCar.com. At Chrysler, a crucial part of the growth will come from its Jeep brand, which has been updated with better fuel efficiency and improved quality. On Monday, the company showed off the first diesel-engine version of the Grand Cherokee, which officials said could get 30 miles per gallon in highway driving. A new version of the Jeep Liberty is scheduled to be introduced later this year, Mr. Marchionne said. Also coming this year is the compact Jeep that will be built alongside a Fiat model in the Italian plant. The plan helps solve Fiat’s glaring overcapacity issues in Europe, where vehicle sales have dropped to their lowest level in years. It also represents an aggressive step to expand the Jeep brand outside the United States. “The brand needs an entry-level Jeep” that people can get at a lower price point, Mr. Marchionne said. Chrysler was also close to completing plans to build Jeeps in China, he said. Mr. Marchionne said it was important for Chrysler to expand its product lineup to help Fiat weather the European sales crisis, which is affecting most auto companies there. He estimated that mass-market carmakers in Europe were collectively losing as much as 5 billion euros a year, mostly because demand is falling well short of supply. Automakers have so far announced a handful of European plant closings to address the overcapacity issue. But Mr. Marchionne has consistently argued for a broader reduction in the number of factories in Europe. “The gap is too large,” he said. “You can’t close a 5 billion euro gap in operating profit by tweaking the machine.” Mr. Marchionne said that he was driving Chrysler to make up the difference in profits as Fiat falters and as comeback plans for Alfa Romeo take shape. He said that overcoming the “threat of complacency” was Chrysler’s biggest issue. Speaking shortly after the company’s Ram pickup won the truck of the year award at the Detroit show, Mr. Marchionne had already moved on. “Celebration is fine. I’m delighted,” he said. “But it’s over.”

Detroit
Cars
North American International Auto Show
Chrysler Group


Draft Decisions Pivot Around Players’ Potential Character Flaws

Abstract: The pressure of the N.F.L. draft is as high for teams’ decision makers as it is for the players hoping to build a career. While general managers say they have always paid attention to a prospect’s character and behavior, never before have those issues been such a focus of the draft, which is set to begin Thursday in Chicago. And it starts right at the top with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Jameis Winston. The question marks do not stop with Winston, who was investigated after an accusation of rape and has exhibited immaturity often enough to raise red flags. There are a number of other players who have had run-ins with coaches, university officials, teammates, fellow students or the law, which could jeopardize their standing in the draft. This group includes Missouri receiver Dorial Green-Beckham, Nebraska linebacker Randy Gregory, Washington cornerback Marcus Peters, Florida State cornerback P. J. Williams and Michigan defensive end Frank Clark. So when the Buccaneers open the proceedings, how many background checks will they have performed on Winston? Plenty. “I’ve been around some picks where we have done almost as much work,” Bucs General Manager Jason Licht said, adding that the amount of work was not bothersome. “Sometimes you find out more and more good as you go,” he said. “So it’s not unsettling that we are doing this much. It’s actually comforting that we are putting as much work into it as we are.” It has become necessary not just because so much is at stake with high draft picks, or because several prospects made the wrong kind of headlines in school. The headlines made by Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Greg Hardy and Jonathan Dwyer, all a part of the N.F.L. when they ran into trouble, make it essential. “I think teams always have emphasized that in the draft process, they get good background info,” said Bill Polian, who built the Buffalo Bills, the Carolina Panthers and the Indianapolis Colts into Super Bowl teams and is now a TV and radio analyst. “I think the fact that the league office has been so public and has been quite forthright in terms of discipline will give clubs some pause,” Polian said. “So if there is a chance that a player could come into the league and have some difficulty, you are going to think twice about him and think twice about where you might draft him, or if you draft him at all.” Sometimes a player’s indiscretions are isolated or are not that much different from those of other college students. Teams must weigh that possibility, too. “They do young kids’ stuff,” Giants General Manager Jerry Reese said. “You can’t just absolutely kill them. You wouldn’t have anyone to draft. Kids do kid things and do college things, and it happens. “If a guy has a long list of issues, that is when you have to throw the red flag in there.” And in today’s social media environment, nothing escapes scrutiny. No N.F.L. team will rely on Twitter or Facebook accounts of such events. But all 32 teams know they need extra diligence this year and more precise evaluations of player personalities. Were Peters’s run-ins with coaches at Washington a sign he cannot handle instruction or discipline, or a matter of allowing his temper to get the better of him? Peters has the talent to go in the first round, and might have in other years. “We want to get as much exposure to those players as possible,” said Ed Marynowitz, the Eagles’ vice president for player personnel. “The combine affords us a small window to do that. There is a 15-minute formal interview period that we’ll visit with those guys there. Guys that we have additional questions on, we have an opportunity to bring 30 players to Philadelphia for the top 30 visits. We go out and see those players.” Teams use every segment of scouting — interviews, private workouts, pro days — to evaluate players. And still, as Marynowitz noted, “You can only know to a certain degree, but we try to do our due diligence on every player to make sure if we bring a guy in that there are no surprises.” Yet there are surprises. Rice was generally considered a good citizen with no demons until that night in an Atlantic City casino when he hit his fiancée. Ozzie Newsome, the man who drafted Rice for the Baltimore Ravens, recognized that his franchise would be in the spotlight as much for the character of the players it selected this year as for their talent. The Ravens had one 2014 draft pick, running back Lorenzo Taliaferro, who was arrested and charged with public intoxication and destruction of property two weeks after he was selected. “I would hope that wouldn’t happen again, but we will do any and everything that we can to make sure the 10, 11 or six, seven or eight players who we bring into Baltimore will hopefully stay out of trouble,” Newsome said. “And we’ll probably do the extra work on that. But there’s not a guarantee that it’s going to happen. It’s just impossible for us to guarantee that.”