British Insurer to Acquire Hilb Rogal for $2.1 Billion

Abstract: The Willis Group, a British insurance brokerage firm, announced that it will acquire Hilb Rogal & Hobbs for about $2.1 billion, in a merger aimed at bolstering its presence in the United States. The merger, disclosed by the companies, was made possible after a settlement with the New York attorney general’s office last week that allows Willis and two other big brokerage firms, Marsh & McLennan and the Aon Corporation , to acquire smaller firms that still collect contingent commissions. That deal may kick-start a wave of consolidation among insurance brokerage firms. “These days in our sector there’s been a lot of retrenching,” Joseph J. Plumeri, Willis’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview. “But we’ve tried to go against the grain, and we’ve been growing.” Both Willis and Hilb Rogal, based in Glen Allen, Va., draw much of their business from the middle market. Willis estimates that its percentage of revenues drawn from North America will rise to 45 percent from about 30 percent. The settlement last week, between Andrew M. Cuomo , the New York attorney general, and the three brokers, involved contingent commissions, the subject of a 2004 investigation under Mr. Cuomo’s predecessor, Eliot Spitzer. That investigation plumbed bid-rigging in the insurance industry, centering on contingent commissions, or a legal kickback that a broker could receive for placing business with an insurer. Mr. Spitzer accused brokers of steering business to insurance providers that paid the highest fees, without regard to the lowest price for customers. As part of a settlement reached in 2005, Marsh, Aon and Willis agreed to forswear contingent commissions. But smaller brokerage firms, like Hilb Rogal, were allowed to continue receiving those fees. Under the terms of the deal struck June 3, Marsh, Aon and Willis can acquire smaller brokerage firms that still receive contingent commissions. Yet in any such deal, those commissions must be phased out within three years, which Mr. Plumeri said Willis will do. He argued that Willis’s customers were unlikely to pay higher prices because of the deal. Talks began four months ago after Mr. Plumeri called Martin L. Vaughan III, Hilb Rogal’s chairman and chief executive, about a possible deal. Mr. Plumeri said that while the two companies were aware that Mr. Cuomo was leaning toward amending the 2005 settlement’s terms, neither firm was aware of any particular timetable for that change. “They sort of happened at the same time,” he said, calling the intersection of the two developments a fortunate coincidence. Keith F. Walsh, a Citigroup analyst, wrote in a research note on Thursday that the new settlement terms now make thousands of small brokerage firms candidates for mergers. “This opens up the domestic M&A game for the global brokers as they can now compete effectively vs. smaller brokers on deals,” he wrote. In that note, Mr. Walsh identified Willis as the biggest beneficiary of the new settlement and Hilb Rogal as the firm most likely to be hurt. As part of the deal, Willis will rename its North American operations Willis HRH. Don Bailey, the chief executive of Willis’s North American operations, will become its chairman and chief executive, and Mr. Vaughan will become a Willis vice chairman. The deal is scheduled to close in the fourth quarter, and Willis expects it to be accretive to cash earnings within the first year.

Insurance
Aon Corporation
Hilb Rogal & Hamilton Company
Willis Group Holdings Limited
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Marsh & McLennan Cos
New York State
Cuomo Andrew M


5 Things You May Not Know About Jeb Bush

Abstract: He is the son and the younger brother of presidents and was a two-term governor of Florida, now the nation’s third most populous state. But there is much voters can still learn about Jeb Bush, who announced his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Monday. Here are some things you may not know about him. He Threw Right, Batted Left and Served Hard To his mother, he was a “quiet, respectful boy” who stood out among the five Bush siblings for his love of music and his athleticism. He excelled at backyard baseball — batting left-handed while throwing right-handed — but was captain of his prep school tennis team and joined the University of Texas varsity team as a sophomore. He Found Himself — and a Bride — in Mexico He struggled in his first year at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., drinking alcohol and smoking a lot of marijuana , according to The Boston Globe, while earning grades so poor he came close to being kicked out. But midway through his senior year, he spent a trimester in central Mexico, where he met his future wife, Columba Garnica Gallo , and came back transformed: He made the honor roll in his final trimester. He May Have Misunderstood ‘Reply All’ If you emailed Mr. Bush when he was Florida’s governor, you very likely got a response. He was so prolific on email that a BlackBerry appears in its charging station in the background of his official state portrait . And he got back to just about everybody, including a middle school student who sent him a list of questions in 2006. One asked about his favorite cuisine. “Mexican food,” he said. From Nickels to High Finance His first paid job was as a journalist, according to The Texas Tribune: At 10, Mr. Bush was co-editor of the “Neighborhood Round-Up,” a handwritten sheet that he and a friend circulated door-to-door in their wealthy Houston subdivision for “only 5 cents.” After college he worked in banking and real estate, and following two terms as governor, he returned to the private sector, including working as a paid adviser to Lehman Brothers , the Wall Street bank that collapsed in the fall of 2008. That summer, he was sent to Mexico to try to persuade the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú to invest in Lehman. The plan, called “Project Verde,” was unsuccessful. He’s Not a Fan of ‘W.’ The film, that is. Mr. Bush did not mince words about Oliver Stone’s cinematic takedown of his older brother. Admirers of the 2008 film may recall a single scene featuring Jason Ritter as a young Jeb (in which his older brother challenges their father to a duel). But Mr. Bush said the film’s depiction of their relationship was way off the mark. “The Oedipal rivalry is high-grade, unadulterated hooey ,” he told The Washington Times.

Jeb Bush
Oliver Stone
2016 Presidential Election
Phillips Academy Andover Mass
Carlos Slim Helu


In a Texas Home, 11 Children Found in Grim Conditions

Abstract: DAYTON, Tex. — A 2-year-old girl was tied up in a restraint attached to her bed. Nearby another 2-year-old child, a boy, was restrained to his bed, too. A third child, a blind 5-year-old girl who appeared to be in a daze, was tied up on a filthy mattress. An 11-year-old boy had a black eye and finger marks on his forearms, and one of his teeth had been knocked out. They were among the 11 children found in a home in this rural town of about 7,200 people 40 miles northeast of Houston, their plight described in a court document filed by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the state’s child welfare agency. They were discovered last month when a Dayton police sergeant and an investigator with the child welfare agency visited the house in response to a report made to the police alleging physical abuse of the children. Eight of the children were found inside a 10-foot-by-10-foot back bedroom. Though it was about 2 p. m., the room was dark because the window was covered with plywood and there was no light fixture, according to the court filing. Three of the eight children in the room were restrained to their beds at the time the authorities visited. One child told the authorities that the children were placed in restraints while they slept at night and sometimes during the day when they were awake, and another child said they were kept in the room for up to three days at a time. The harness-style cloth restraints, tied around the chests of some of the children and attached to their small beds, were so tight that they had only about one or two feet to maneuver. None of the older children attended schools, the court papers said. Two of the children, infant boys 4 months old and 6 months old, were taken to Texas Children’s Hospital because paramedics called to the scene were concerned they were showing signs of pneumonia and “failure to thrive,” the court filing said. Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the child welfare agency, said all 11 of the children had been removed from the home and placed in foster care. The children ranged from infants to 11-year-olds. No criminal charges have been filed against any of the adults who own the home or live there, and no arrests have been made. The police sergeant who visited the house, Doug O’Quinn, said the Dayton Police Department was investigating, along with the Liberty County district attorney’s office. “I would think any time any normal person or any investigator enters a room with children being restrained it would be startling to them,” Sergeant O’Quinn said. “I wouldn’t say it was overly disorderly or filthy. The children had movement. It was just restricted. This is something we take seriously. We are going to present this to a grand jury.” Most of the children removed from the house were the grandchildren of a woman identified in the legal papers as Tanda Marsh-Smith, who lives there with her husband, Odice Smith. Nobody answered the door on Wednesday afternoon. There were two signs in the living room window by the front door: “No Smoking” and “No Trespassing.” A skateboard was propped up next to the door. The children appeared to live in a chaotic environment. One of Ms. Marsh-Smith’s adult children, Mark E. Marsh III, 34, is a registered sex offender who lists the house as his address but was not there at the time the children were removed, the court filing stated. Two 16-year-old boys who ran away from different foster homes were found at the house with a stolen car. The document said that Ms. Marsh-Smith was reported to have had six children removed from her home in Michigan in the early 1980s and had been accused in more recent years of physical and sexual abuse of her grandchildren. The court document states that none of the adults in the home thought there was anything wrong with restraining the children. “All adults in the home were interviewed, in which none of them felt like this was a problem, and stated that they tie the children up for safety,” the legal papers said. Like the other homes alongside it on a quiet residential street, the red-brick house where the children lived has a large front lawn, a long driveway and a spacious backyard. Nearly two dozen people appeared to be living in the home at the time the authorities visited. The court document said that at least 10 adults were in the house, in addition to the children. Three large prefabricated structures, including one red barn-style shed, had recently been placed in the backyard and were occupied by people at night, neighbors said. “I was shocked,” said a neighbor, Wayne Hardin, 59, who is the pastor of Grace Community Baptist Church in Dayton. “The people mainly stayed in the house. They have not had a good relationship with neighbors at all. If you walk on their sidewalk, they consider that their property, and they’ll go out there and holler at people.”

Child Abuse and Neglect
Dayton (Texas)
Marsh-Smith Tanda


VW Manager in Germany Is Said to Have Pushed for Removing Evidence

Abstract: FRANKFURT — German prosecutors said Thursday that they were investigating whether a Volkswagen manager encouraged employees to destroy or remove documents last year, shortly before the Environmental Protection Agency publicly accused the carmaker of illegally manipulating emissions tests in the United States. Volkswagen employees have told investigators that a person in a supervisory position sent clear signals in August 2015 that they should remove evidence. While the person wasn’t explicit, “everyone understood,” said Klaus Ziehe, a spokesman for the state’s attorney in Braunschweig, Germany The investigation, previously reported by several German news organizations, could raise the stakes for Volkswagen, which is already under intense scrutiny by authorities in the United States, Germany and other countries. The E.P.A. formally accused Volkswagen of clean air violations on Sept. 18, 2015. The company has maintained in court documents that top executives of the company did not grasp the gravity of the accusations until shortly before the E.P.A. announcement. If a VW manager was signaling employees to remove documents in August, it suggests that at least some people in supervisory positions were aware of the possible grave repercussions. Mr. Ziehe said that employees transferred some electronic documents to thumb drives, which have been recovered, and that prosecutors do not believe that much, if any, information was lost. How Volkswagen’s ‘Defeat Devices’ Worked Volkswagen admitted that 11 million of its vehicles were equipped with software that was used to cheat on emissions tests. This is how the technology works and what it now means for vehicle owners. Prosecutors did not disclose the name of the German suspect or his job description, in line with German privacy laws. A person close to the carmaker, who declined to be named because of the continuing investigation, said the suspect was a member of Volkswagen’s legal staff and has been suspended from his job. It is not the first time Volkswagen has faced accusations that employees tried to impede investigations into widespread cheating on diesel emissions tests. In March, a former Volkswagen employee filed a whistle-blower lawsuit in Michigan, asserting that co-workers illegally deleted electronic data shortly after the United States government accused the carmaker of cheating on emissions tests. The former employee, Daniel Donovan, says he was fired from his job as an information manager at a Volkswagen facility in Auburn Hills, Mich., because his superiors believed that he was about to report the company to the authorities for obstruction of justice. Mr. Ziehe said he did not know whether there was any connection between the Braunschweig investigation, which focuses on a Volkswagen employee based in Germany, and the alleged destruction of data in the United States reported by Mr. Donovan. Prosecutors have said they have identified 17 suspects in a wider investigation into who was responsible for installing software in 11 million diesel vehicles that was designed to mislead regulators about the cars’ emissions of poisonous nitrogen oxide. The prosecutors in Braunschweig, a city near Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, have not filed formal charges against any of the suspects. Mr. Ziehe said it would most likely be several more months before prosecutors determined if they had enough evidence to make arrests. The investigation of the VW manager was earlier reported by the German broadcasters NDR and WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, who worked together on the story.

Volkswagen
Diesel engine
Automobile safety
Air pollution
EPA
Vehicle Emissions


Muslim Deli Owners Must Choose Koran or Customers

Abstract: Most of Khairul Kabir’s customers at the Madison Deli and Grocery in East Harlem do not realize that his jovial smile masks a lingering sense of shame. Mr. Kabir, 49, an immigrant from Bangladesh and a Muslim, is chagrined because he sells pork and alcohol, which are prohibited by the Koran . He also sells lottery tickets, a form of gambling that is also banned. Devout Muslims are not supposed to indulge in, sell, or even handle any of these “haram,” or forbidden, goods. Mr. Kabir’s dilemma is widespread among Muslim immigrants in New York and other American cities, where religious beliefs, the pursuit of prosperity and pressures to assimilate are often in conflict. But the spiritual struggle is especially acute in diverse neighborhoods like East Harlem, where Muslim businesses must compete for customers who expect that a deli will, for example, make them a ham sandwich or sell them a Lotto ticket or a six pack of beer. Opinions regarding the sale of haram items are as diverse as the people who form the Muslim community in America, but Mr. Kabir is unequivocal about his distaste for the practice. “Selling haram is the same as eating haram,” he said, glancing at the beer-filled coolers that line the grocery’s back wall. “I feel guilty, totally guilty. I want to sell the business and go home and not sell haram. Every day I’m thinking I should do that.” Mr. Kabir said he had to sell goods he disapproved of to survive the recession. “I am doing a lot of bad things,” Mr. Kabir said. “I pray to Allah to forgive me.” Mohammed al Naqib, who was working at Sammy’s Grocery at 165 DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, said the store, which is owned by his cousin, stopped selling beer four or five years ago, because of lack of demand and “because of religion, mostly.” “The area has changed,” Mr. al Naqib said. “My cousin, he was selling. But I return the license from the government. It doesn’t sell good.” Back in East Harlem, Ahmed Ibrahim, a 25-year-old from Egypt who works in the tiny 3-S Deli at Second Avenue and East 105th Street, was concerned because the store could not sell beer — not because of religious law but because the previous owner had lost his liquor license. From a business perspective, Mr. Ibrahim said, stores had to sell beer and other haram to be successful. “For me, I come over here to make money and stuff,” he said. “If I come over here and try to run a halal business, only Muslims will go there. You have to sell to Americans.” “Beer and cigarettes and deli sandwiches are the most important things in the deli-grocery business," Mr. Ibrahim said. As Mr. Ibrahim spoke a radio played what he said was an Islamic prayer. When a group of customers entered the store, Mr. Ibrahim changed the station. “If I see a problem with a customer, I change it,” Mr. Ibrahim said, gesturing to the radio. “To do business, I have to make the customer smile.” A worker at a grocery on Carlton Avenue in Fort Greene said the store hired the equivalent of a “Shabbos goy,” a gentile engaged by Orthodox Jews to manipulate electrical devices on the Sabbath. “We have somebody who handles the beer who is not Muslim,” the worker said. Some imams say they understand the pressures faced by Muslims trying to make a living in such a competitive city. Mr. Kabir’s imam, Mohammad Fayek Uddin, leader of the Jackson Heights Islamic Center and Mosque on Roosevelt Avenue, Queens, spoke to a reporter shortly after conducting an evening prayer service. Mr. Uddin, 42, said that while he might chide someone he knew personally for selling haram, he was not required to get involved. “In this country everyone has to do something. I deliver my speech in front of the people, it depends on their choice,” Mr. Uddin said as worshipers who remained after the prayer nodded in agreement. “No punishment, not here,” said Mr. Uddin, who also came from Bangladesh. “Allah will give punishment on the day of judgment; I do not have an authority to do that." Mr. Uddin added that he had occasionally helped observant Muslims find more acceptable work. He said believers could usually find jobs that did not conflict with their faith because “Allah will provide for the people.” Despite the temptations America presents, Mr. Uddin said he believed that life was better here. “In this country I saw the infinite independence," he said. “That’s better than in our country.”

Koran Islam Muslim-Americans Delicatessens


New Orleans Saints at Atlanta Falcons Preview

Abstract: Saints (6-9) at Falcons (8-7) 1 p.m. Line: Falcons by 4 All sorts of rumors have been swirling around the Saints. There has been talk about Coach Sean Payton and about quarterback Drew Brees being traded or released, and a newspaper columnist even implored the team’s embattled owner, Tom Benson, to sell the Saints for the sake of their future. “Selling the Saints and Pelicans outright or finding a minority partner to begin the process is a necessary step in the right direction and the best thing for you, the teams and the city,” Jeff Duncan of The Times-Picayune wrote last weekend , also referring to the N.B.A. team Benson owns. “It is the greatest gift you can give New Orleans. I sincerely hope you consider it.” While Benson responded with a strongly worded statement immediately after the Saints’ win against the Jaguars stating that he had no intention of selling, there is a possibility this could be the last time we see Payton or Brees, or both, on the Saints’ sideline, signaling the end of an era in New Orleans. PICK: Falcons

New Orleans Saints
Atlanta Falcons
Football


Another Night of Global Dreams

Abstract: When Carlos Alberto Pavón was 8, a child growing up in the shadow of the Mico Quemado Mountains of Honduras, his dream was born. He saw divisions that split the grown-ups and saw one thing unite every man, woman and child in this volatile Central American republic: Honduras reached the World Cup. It was far off, in Spain in 1982, but Pavón remembered it, remembered the effect on the people. Last Saturday, when Pavón missed a penalty kick and Honduras lost a home match, 3-2, to the United States, he felt personally responsible for Honduras failing, as it seemed then, to reach the second World Cup finals for the second time in history. Then came Wednesday. Late in the night, in San Salvador, where very few visitors win, Pavón rose to a tremendous cross from David Suazo. He outjumped the Salvadoran defense, he braced his neck muscles, and he headed the ball so powerfully that nobody could stop it. Honduras clung to that goal, won the game, 1-0, and then the players on the pitch and the population back home waited. There was injury time in Washington, time in which Jonathan Bornstein’s goal in the fifth minute of added time meant the United States had clawed back a two-goal deficit to finish 2-2 against Costa Rica. Pavón’s header, and Bornstein’s equalizer, combined to send Honduras into the World Cup in South Africa next June. Carlos Pavón is a veteran of his sport. He is 36. It was now or never for his career — a career that has gone full circle, so that he is now playing out his time with his first club, Real España in Honduras, after moving 20 times to teams in the United States, in Italy and in Mexico. Always a scorer, ever hopeful that he might play at his Mecca, he should now, injury or tragedy notwithstanding, reach that goal. For this Honduran, the game is life. One teammate, Wilson Palacios, was called home from his English club earlier this year after the body of his younger brother Edwin was found. Edwin Palacios had been killed and dumped by kidnappers who snatched him to demand ransom money from the soccer player. And all Hondurans live in a place that remains dangerous and divided after a military coup last June. This sport cannot be the panacea to everything, but the emotions around it produced yet another night of tension and drama, and finally relief, across the world Wednesday. Argentina escaped from its own self-induced fear of failure when, with a surprisingly subdued and controlled performance in Montevideo, it also achieved a 1-0 away win. Beating Uruguay on its own turf, plucking another new match winner, Mario Bolatti, off the substitutes’ bench, Argentina performed the great escape after a year of hysterical confusion. “We played in an intelligent manner,” Bolatti said at the postgame media conference. “We searched for the result, we played with Uruguay’s desperation, and we ended up winning.” Indeed, they did. Bolatti is the 78th player called into the squad by coach Diego Maradona in less than a year, but the team confounded many of us with the solid, compact, patient manner in which they held together and waited for Uruguay to falter. The vital moment came seven minutes from the end. Martín Cáceres, who plays in defense for Juventus in Italy, caused his team’s downfall. He was hot-headed throughout the contest, forever complaining to the Paraguayan referee, Carlos Amarilla. If Cáceres studies the video, he will see what a fool he made of himself. Amarilla was severe, but he needed to be, with players on both sides wilfully kicking one another. He was consistent in dealing out the yellow cards as play was constantly broken up by 53 fouls. On 77 minutes, Cáceres was yellow-carded for an appalling hack at an opponent’s shin bone. On 83 minutes, he was red-carded for a ridiculous rugby tackle when he grabbed the ankle of Jonás Gutiérrez. From the ensuing free kick, Lionel Messi played the ball short to Juan Sebastián Verón, and when Verón’s attempted shot spun off a defender, Bolatti was lurking. Bolatti calmly struck the only goal. “When you suffer, every achievement has more value,” Verón said on television. “Now the coach will have the necessary time to find the team that the Argentine people will like.” That coach, it is presumed, will still be Maradona at the World Cup. At the final whistle he was locked in an emotional embrace with Carlos Bilardo, the father figure whose advice Maradona had seemed to ignore. When he extricated himself, Maradona dedicated this triumph of getting Argentina to the World Cup to all of his countrymen “except the journalists. They treat me like dirt, but we qualified with honor. My players played like men, and consecrated my role as coach.” If he’s right, the soap opera will run until South Africa. If he is to be removed, the Argentine soccer president, Julio Grondona, now risks the wrath of those who still believe Maradona’s magic as a player can fix all the uncertainties of his short, extraordinarily divisive reign as coach. A real coach, waiting until near retirement to guide a team to the World Cup, is Ottmar Hitzfeld. At various times, Hitzfeld, a proven winner with Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich in the Champions League, declined the mantle of Bundestrainer, the coach to his own German national side. Last summer, after Switzerland had been eliminated in round one of the European Championships it staged in partnership with Austria, Hitzfeld accepted the challenge to take the Swiss where he chose not to take the Germans. And Wednesday night, in the stadium of FC Basel where Hitzfeld’s own playing career began in 1971, he achieved the first objective of that appointment. Hitzfeld was born in Germany, but raised 15 minutes away from the Basel stadium. “it’s a dream fulfilled,” said the 60-year-old. The dream is the same as Pavón’s. Hitzfeld’s organization, his know-how, guided the Swiss to a place among the 32 countries in the 2010 finals. They did not score a goal to celebrate it, but they didn’t allow Israel to score either. Zero-zero was sufficient for Switzerland, which had conceded just eight goals in 10 qualifying matches, to qualify. It means that Greece goes into the European playoffs for the final four places from that continent. Greece, France, Portugal and Russia will be seeded to play teams from Slovenia, Bosnia, Ireland and the Ukraine in a draw Monday. They get a loser’s reprieve. But Slovakia on Wednesday joined the elite on merit by winning, 1-0, in Poland. The only goal, in the third minute in Chorzów, was an own goal, deflected into the net by the Polish defender Seweryn Gancarczyk. With luck, Gancarczyk’s mishap will be long forgotten by the time Slovakia stops partying. But one man it is seldom easy to forget is David Beckham. The celebrity icon was given another cap for another cameo role as England strolled to the World Cup. He came on for the final half hour, when the pace had slowed, and it was announced that Beckham was the sponsors’ man of the match. Fabio Capello, who coaches England, summed it up. “It’s like Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize after eight months as president,” quipped the Italian.


Norway Violated Rights of Anders Behring Breivik, Mass Killer, Judge Rules

Abstract: OSLO — Anders Behring Breivik , the Norwegian extremist who killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in 2011, lives in conditions that would seem luxurious by American incarceration standards: a three-room suite with windows that includes a treadmill, a fridge, a television with DVD player and even a Sony PlayStation. But on Wednesday, a Norwegian court found that the government had violated his human rights, concluding that his long-term solitary confinement posed a threat to his mental health. Mr. Breivik has virtually no contact with other inmates and is subjected to frequent strip searches and searches of his cell. At a trial in March , he argued that his isolation amounted to torture. Judge Helen Andenaes Sekulic of the Oslo District Court, who oversaw the trial, which was held at the prison for security reasons, found on Wednesday that prison officials had violated an article of the European Convention of Human Rights that prohibits “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” She directed the government to reduce the extent of Mr. Breivik’s isolation — though she did not specify how — and ordered the government to pay Mr. Breivik’s legal fees of 331,000 kroner, or about $40,600. However, she dismissed a related complaint that the prison officials had also violated the convention’s guarantee of respect for private and family life, and rejected Mr. Breivik’s demand for fewer restrictions on receiving visitors and sending and receiving phone calls and letters. The government has said that it restricts and censors his communications to prevent him from encouraging violent extremism. A government lawyer, Adele Matheson Mestad, said that officials disagreed with the court’s conclusions and were evaluating whether to appeal. The decision outraged many Norwegians. “What a pathetic verdict,” Silje Grytten, a political adviser to the Labor Party in the Norwegian Parliament, wrote on Twitter. On July 22, 2011, Mr. Breivik killed eight people with a bomb at a government building in central Oslo and then fatally shot 69 people at a summer camp on the island of Utoya. Dozens of others were wounded. Mr. Breivik claimed that he had been on a “martyr operation” to stop a Muslim invasion of Europe, leaving behind a manifesto depicting himself as a modern-day crusader against jihadists and part of a larger organization. Video Marius Emberland, a lawyer for the Norwegian government, said he was surprised by a court’s decision that the human rights of Anders Behring Breivik, convicted of mass murder, had been violated. At his trial in 2012, the court found that he was instead a lone wolf, a computer game obsessive who had prepared his rants and plotted the killings from a bedroom in his mother’s house. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum, though he could serve longer if he is deemed a threat to society. Mr. Breivik sued prison officials last year, asserting that the government was “slowly killing” him. His lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, said that Mr. Breivik had already shown signs of emotional damage, though the psychiatric reports he submitted did not appear to definitively support the claim. Mr. Storrvik pleaded that the court “see beyond the popular cry of the masses” and stick to strict legal rules. He compared Mr. Breivik’s condition with that of the terrorist known as The Jackal, who had been allowed to see several lawyers, had married one of them and had published a book from his cell. Mr. Breivik’s behavior during the trial made headlines and renewed public outrage. He complained about his microwave dinners and cold coffee. He gave a Nazi-style salute and said he had renounced his faith in Christ in favor of the Norse god Odin. He demanded the right to publish a political tract every third year, in print or online, and said he had written two books already, “The Breivik Diaries” and “The Nordic State,” but was not allowed to seek publication of them. Government lawyers defended the strict confinement — noteworthy in a country known for a justice system that emphasizes rehabilitation over retribution — and said Mr. Breivik was “still a very dangerous man.” They noted that Mr. Breivik has daily access to fresh air and health care. Video Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian extremist who was convicted for killing 77 people in a bombing and gun rampage in 2011, is suing Norway for inhuman treatment in prison. Credit Credit Lise Aserud/Scanpix, via European Pressphoto Agency Ms. Mestad, one of the government lawyers, noted that Mr. Breivik had attempted to communicate with extremists in the United States and Europe, and noted that a variety of extremists — in Poland, the Czech Republic and Britain — had claimed to be inspired by Mr. Breivik. Ms. Mestad called his ideology a “poisonous mix of dehumanization, anti-Islamism, xenophobia and deep hatred.” Lars Erik Berntzen, a guest researcher at the Center for Research on Extremism in Oslo who has studied messages written by Mr. Breivik from prison and posted online, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Breivik’s fans were initially those with an interest in mass killings, as well as women who wrote him love letters, but that he now mostly tries to communicate with like-minded ideological extremists. Cato Hemmingby, a scholar at the Norwegian Police University College and co-author of a book on Mr. Breivik, said in an interview that it was “especially the lack of access to the Internet and the communication control” that had angered Mr. Breivik. Randi Rosenqvist, a court-appointed psychiatrist who interviewed Mr. Breivik in 2011, told the court during the trial that Mr. Breivik seemed rational and purposeful, and would “resume dramatic measures” if released. Since 2012, Mr. Breivik has refused to talk to psychiatrists, saying they are a part of the plot against him. Ulrik Fredrik Malt, a psychiatrist and professor emeritus at Oslo University Hospital who testified in Mr. Breivik’s 2012 trial, has long claimed that Mr. Breivik has Asperger’s syndrome. The case has divided public opinion. Norway is a famously liberal society and some argue that Mr. Breivik, even if a monster, deserves to be treated humanely. “It is important that society answers Breivik with the means at the disposal of the very democracy he attacked,” Harald Stanghelle, political editor of Aftenposten, a daily newspaper in Oslo, said in an interview. “That is what Norway displayed in 2012, and that is the same now.” He added: “If there is anything we can be sure of now, it is that he will most likely be locked up for life.”

Norway
Anders Behring Breivik
Oslo
Human Rights
Solitary Confinement
Murders and Homicides
Terrorism
Utoya Norway


New York City’s Jobless Rate Held Steady in July

Abstract: New York City’s unemployment rate held at 8.4 percent in July, despite a summertime surge in hiring on Wall Street, the State Labor Department reported on Thursday. The city’s investment banks and brokerage firms added over 2,000 jobs last month, before any adjustments for usual seasonal fluctuations in hiring and layoffs, according to the labor department. Wall Street has traditionally been the main engine of the city’s economy, but it has lagged behind other industries in rebounding from the financial crisis that began about five years ago. The number of jobs on Wall Street is still about 1 percent lower than it was a year ago, while employment in the city’s private sector has risen by about 90,000 jobs, the department’s data show. Since July 2012, the city’s unemployment rate has dropped a full percentage point, but it is still significantly higher than the national rate of 7.4 percent. New York State’s unemployment rate was 7.5 percent in July, unchanged from June. Statewide, the number of private-sector jobs fell slightly in July, after seasonal adjustments. With a small upward revision in the June total, though, the state added almost 130,000 in the past year and is one of only nine states to have regained all of the jobs lost in the last recession, said Bohdan M. Wynnyk, deputy director of the Division of Research and Statistics at the Labor Department. New Jersey lost even more jobs in July, a decline of 11,800, but that state’s unemployment rate edged downward to 8.6 percent, from 8.7 percent in June, according to its Department of Labor and Workforce Development. New Jersey has gained back less than two-thirds of the jobs it lost during the recession. The changes in employment and a state’s unemployment rate often seem to contradict each other because they are derived from separate monthly surveys. The jobs numbers come from a survey of employers, while the unemployment rate is calculated from interviews of residents. In New York City, the unemployment rate has persistently remained higher than the national rate, even though hiring has been relatively strong. One reason is that the city has continued to attract job-seekers. There are more people working or looking for work in the city than there have ever been. For many of them, finding a job is still difficult: there are about 350,000 city residents without jobs — about half of the unemployed residents of the state. And as the federal government has reduced emergency spending, unemployment benefits are available to fewer of them. Only 4 of every 10 unemployed New Yorkers were collecting unemployment insurance payments in July, the state’s Labor Department said.


J. C. Penney Tries to Make a Splash in Manhattan

Abstract: J. C. PENNEY , a retailer with middle-American roots, intends to make a grand entrance with its first store in Manhattan, a place at the heart of retailing. The campaign, which is estimated to cost as much as $1 million, seeks to demonstrate that Penney will be at home in Manhattan. The potential “halo effect” on the Penney brand of opening and operating a store in the fashion and media capital of the country has inspired the extensive campaign, said Mike Boylson, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at the J. C. Penney Company in Plano, Tex. “A special case gets a special level of attention,” he added. “When you consider how expensive it is to live in New York, I think people will appreciate the style and quality” of Penney merchandise, Mr. Boylson said, which is sold “at very affordable prices.” On July 31, Penney plans to open its first store in Manhattan, which will join stores in three other boroughs, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. (So what is Brooklyn, chopped liver?)  The Manhattan store — in the Manhattan Mall at Herald Square, 33rd Street and Avenue of the Americas — is the subject of a major, multimedia marketing campaign, a rarity for Penney, which usually promotes store openings with print and radio advertising. In addition to the special ads, there will be shopping bags designed for the store, highlighting the letters “NYC” inside the name “JCPenney,” along with other customized touches like a unique logo, celebrity events and tailored content on a Web site . “It will give them a real break in their pocketbook,” Mr. Boylson added — a good argument for shopping at a store during a recession. Still, arriving now in Manhattan, where many a retailer has foundered even in good times, is a risk for Penney, which had its headquarters in Manhattan before moving to Plano in 1988. “We’re seeing some businesses start to get stronger,” Mr. Boylson said of Penney’s merchandise offerings, but “our customer is obviously still feeling the pinch.” That is why a large part of the campaign for the Manhattan store is devoted to reaching out to shoppers who are not Penney customers, he added, as they are “opting for much more affordable price points.” To that end, the campaign takes a direct, even cheeky tack — New York style — to lure customers of other stores. “Our neighbors must be shaking in their overpriced boots,” an ad asserts. Another ad promises: “NYC style. JCP prices.” Other ads take a poke at the most prominent retailer in Herald Square, Macy’s. “We heard Herald Square needed a good department store,” an ad proclaims. Another ad declares, “The real miracle is now on 33rd Street” — a reference to the classic Christmas movie, “Miracle on 34th Street,” about a Santa Claus working for Macy’s who believes he is the real Kris Kringle. (A subplot in the movie describes the battle between Macy’s and another department store that at the time was also in Herald Square, Gimbels. The space Penney is taking in Manhattan Mall, it turns out, once housed Gimbels, as well as other bygone stores like Abraham & Straus and Stern’s.) However many zingers Penney aims at Macy’s, that retailer, which has been in Herald Square since 1902, is forgoing a chance to respond. “I don’t think we’re going to comment on the record,” said Holly Thomas, a spokeswoman for Macy’s, part of Macy’s Inc. The idea for the campaign came from the Penney creative agency, Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe, which produces the national ads for Penney carrying the theme “Every day matters.” The media agency is OMD in New York, part of the Omnicom Group. It was Saatchi & Saatchi that said, “ ‘You know, you have an “NYC” in your name,’ ” said Jim Francois, vice president and director for visual marketing at Penney, who oversees the internal work on the campaign with Lisa DeStefano, divisional vice president at Penney for brand communication and strategy. Ms. DeStefano said the campaign “had to be authentically J. C. Penney because we are who we are, but we also wanted to make a statement about coming to New York.”  To that end, the campaign includes ads that address Penney attributes. For instance, one says, “Our brand-new store offers something not new at all: Trust.” Another states: “We’ve been around a long time, yet our style is impeccable. Kind of like you, Manhattan.” Because of the economy, said Steven Gilliatt, managing director at the New York office of the Partners, a strategy and design agency that is owned by WPP, brands and products “have to communicate a certain authenticity” to allay concerns of consumers who have lost faith in so many businesses. That is why “you see a lot of corporate reputations peeking out behind ads for products and services,” he added — as in the Penney campaign. Scott Davis, senior partner at the Chicago office of Prophet, a marketing and branding consultancy, said he understood why advertisers were “not willing to take on a lot of risk” during a severe recession. But “those that are stepping out, willing to roll the dice,” he added, are more likely “to come out ahead” when the economy recovers. After all, famous brands that got their start during the 1930s include Snickers, Monopoly and Fortune magazine. And Macy’s held its annual Thanksgiving Day parade — with Santa Claus as the finale — throughout the Great Depression .

Penney J C Co
Manhattan (NYC)
Advertising and Marketing


Nippan Daido Offers Hard-to-Find Japanese Foods

Abstract: It’s not that easy to find good mochi ice cream in Westchester. The small round shells of sticky-rice dough filled with ice cream, served at some Japanese restaurants, are usually thick and hard, not thin and soft like the best versions I’ve tasted. But Nippan Daido , a wide-ranging market of all foods Japanese, has an entire mini-freezer dedicated to mochi — including the subtle thin-shelled kind my family loves. And that’s not all the store offers. There’s a fresh vegetable section that features burdock root ($2 each), green bitter melon ($2.19 a pound) and kabu radishes ($2.99 a pound). Sushi-grade fish, including fatty tuna, blue fin toro, uni and fluke, is available in refrigerators along the back wall. There’s also a sushi station, where you can get freshly made tuna rolls ($6), California rolls ($7), nigiri ($8) and more. Ten aisles of grocery items are filled with bag after bag of rice, about 20 kinds of green tea and every kind of Japanese sauce you can think of, from yakitori and soy to okonomi, yakisoba and tonkatsu. A wall of freezers carries many brands of gyoza and shumai dumplings, noodle dishes and tubs of miso paste. Fresh-baked cakes and desserts include Japanese doughnuts ($1.25 each), steamed green tea or sweet potato buns ($1.95 each) and various roll cakes ($1.95 a slice). There’s even a health and beauty care section and a wall of DVDs, all in Japanese. For a fun snack at the movies, the racks near the checkout feature gums and hard or chewy candies without a word of English on the wrappers (around $1.39 each). EMILY DeNITTO Nippan Daido, 522 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains. (914) 683-6735; daidomarket.com . Open daily, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Restaurants
Sushi
White Plains (NY)
Cooking and Cookbooks


Sam Hinkie Quits as 76ers’ General Manager

Abstract: Sam Hinkie, the 76ers’ general manager, has quit after turning Philadelphia into one of the worst teams in N.B.A. history. The 76ers went 19-63 in his first season, went 18-64 last season and are 10-68 this season. Hinkie ran an analytics-minded front office. His power was weakened in December when the Sixers hired the longtime N.B.A. executive Jerry Colangelo as chairman of basketball operations. ■ Ramon Sessions collected 18 points and 13 assists while starting in place of the injured John Wall to help the host Washington Wizards beat the Nets, 121-103. Washington (38-40) is three and a half games behind Detroit for the final Eastern Conference playoff berth. The Nets have lost six straight games by an average of 19.3 points. ■ Paul George scored 29 points as the Indiana Pacers beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 123-109. The Cavaliers gave LeBron James the night off. Indiana leads eighth-place Detroit by a half-game in the Eastern Conference playoff race. ■ Isaiah Thomas scored 32 points to help the host Boston Celtics fend off the short-handed New Orleans Pelicans, 104-97. New Orleans played without its five top scorers due to injuries, and had only eight active players. ■ The Hall of Fame coach Jerry Sloan, 74, told The Salt Lake Tribune that he had Parkinson’s disease and a form of dementia.


Chinese Stifle Grieving Parents’ Protest of Shoddy School Construction

Abstract: DUJIANGYAN, China — Police officers here on Tuesday surrounded more than 100 parents protesting shoddy school construction and mourning the deaths of thousands of children during the recent earthquake . The police dragged away several crying mothers and removed some journalists trying to report on the event, according to witnesses and photographs of the protest. The attempt to snuff out the protest was the strongest sign so far of the government’s growing impatience with public airing of grievances over unsafe school construction. A standoff between the parents, many carrying framed photos of their dead children, and the police officers, dressed in black uniforms, lasted for several hours. In the end, the parents walked away. Some said they felt intimidated and frustrated. “Because so many police surrounded us, we couldn’t do anything, so we went home,” said a protester, Ms. Li, who had lost a teenage daughter. Dujiangyan was the scene of several school collapses when the earthquake struck in the afternoon of May 12. Across the hardest-hit areas of mountainous Sichuan Province in southwest China, parents have been demanding investigations into why so many schools collapsed even as, in many cases, surrounding buildings remained standing. About 10,000 schoolchildren are estimated to have been killed in the earthquake, whose confirmed death toll rose on Tuesday to more than 69,107. The government lists 18,230 people as missing. The growing number of protests over school collapses has emerged as the greatest challenge to government officials here in Sichuan, and the grieving parents have become a potent symbol to many Chinese of people victimized by corruption. In some instances, local officials have begged parents to quiet down and accept financial compensation for the loss of their children. But the recent spate of government intimidation and censorship shows that the civic empowerment that has flourished in the aftermath of the earthquake could quickly unravel. Several Chinese journalists have said in recent days that officials from the central government told their news organizations not to continue reporting on the issue of unsafe schools. Here in Dujiangyan, the police and soldiers have cordoned off the sites of collapsed schools and are turning reporters away. The protest on Tuesday morning took place outside a five-story courthouse on a wide boulevard in central Dujiangyan. It was organized by parents who lost their children in the collapse of Juyuan Middle School, in a suburb. Most of the school’s 900 students were killed in a deluge of bricks and concrete, even though buildings around the school remained largely intact. Rescue workers and soldiers scoured the rubble for days afterward, but few survivors were pulled out. Calls seeking comment on Tuesday’s protest, made to the courthouse, petition office and city government headquarters here, were not answered. Government intimidation of the parents organizing the protest began as early as the previous night, Ms. Li, a participant in the protest, said in an interview. Ms. Li, who lost a 14-year-old daughter in the Juyuan collapse, agreed to speak on the condition that only her last name be used, for fear of government retribution. Officials in Juyuan visited with seven leaders among the parents on Monday night and persuaded six of them not to attend the Tuesday rally, Ms. Li said. The visits came after parents carried out a protest earlier that day demanding that Juyuan officials apologize for not pushing rescue workers to keep searching for the bodies of children classified as missing. But the protest took place anyway. It started at 8 a.m. When the parents reached the courthouse, they were confronted by police officers in black caps and uniforms. A handful of reporters who were on the scene were taken by the police into the courthouse against their will, according to Ms. Li and a firsthand account by a reporter for The Associated Press. “There were so many police,” Ms. Li said. “They surrounded the parents.” “The parents there were very angry,” she added, “and the police asked them to go to the petition office next door, but they refused.” The head of the courthouse came out to speak to the parents. So did the deputy mayor, Gao Shoujun. An official with the surname of Pan asked the parents to remain obedient and not cause chaos, and he said families that had lost a child would receive financial compensation. But the parents kept demanding a thorough inquiry into the school collapses, Ms. Li said. “The parents went there to make sure the construction of the buildings would be investigated,” she said. Some mothers knelt on the ground and began crying. They held up photos of their children. Then the police dragged several of them to their feet and walked them to the petition office, which was nearby. One photo taken of the protest shows two police officers picking up a crying mother by her arms as she clutches against her chest a portrait of her dead son. At 11 a.m., the parents gave in to the pressure from the police and went home, Ms. Li said. In late afternoon, the lot in front of the courthouse was quiet. But there were signs of the earlier tension: Ten police officers sat listlessly at the top of the steps leading up to the courthouse, forming a ragged barrier; several police vans and squad cars were parked at the bottom. Sichuan officials began investigating school construction on May 25 and have blamed design defects and obsolete buildings for many of the collapses, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. In Beijing, national education officials have promised to change requirements to ensure that schools built in the future meet stricter standards than other structures. Parents here have yet to receive any reports from the investigations. Hours after the protest on Tuesday, a separate group of parents, one whose children died in the collapse of Xinjian Primary School in Dujiangyan, sat talking and drinking hard liquor in the verdant hills high above the city. They said that policemen had taken away the wreaths atop a memorial the parents set up outside the school, but after the parents complained, the police brought the wreaths back. “We trust the government officials to help us,” said Tian Wenyao, 40, who lost her 12-year-old son. “We have no other way — we have to trust the government.” “But of course we’re angry,” she added. “Who wouldn’t be angry? In the morning, my child said to me, ‘Mama, I’m going to school.’ In the evening, he turned up a corpse.”

China
Police
Earthquakes
Education and Schools
Demonstrations and Riots
Building (Construction)
Families and Family Life
Dujiangyan (China)


On Single-Sex Buses, Relief From Unwanted Contact

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — Body-to-body contact is inescapable on Mexico City’s crowded public transportation system. Get on a train or a bus during rush hour and a man in a business suit may have his arm resting against your shoulder, a woman toting a bulky shopping bag may have her back pressed against your flank, and a teenager listening to an iPod may tap his sneaker all over your newly shined left shoe. But many women complain that not all the contact is incidental. Among the 22 million passengers who use the bus and subway system daily, women say, are lecherous men taking advantage of the cheek-to-jowl conditions to leer and grope and then quietly disappear. “There are good men in Mexico , but they’re not the ones on public transport,” said Mariana Vasquez, 30, who waited to board a bus recently on her way to a job interview at a law firm. “They try to touch you. They don’t give you a seat. Where are the gentlemen?” One place they are not is on new women-only buses that Mexico City began running in January to reduce the harassment. With pink placards and insistent drivers who growl at any man who tries to step aboard, the buses are quickly becoming a hit among women. “Woo-hoo!” bellowed Catalina Garduño the other day as man after man was turned away from the bus she was riding. Her outbursts animated the other women on board, who joined in the celebration. As they rolled along Paseo de la Reforma on their way home from work, the atmosphere resembled a ladies’ night on wheels. Their relief reached beyond their escape from being accosted physically. “We don’t get paid as much as they, yet we work just as hard,” said Ms. Garduño, a saleswoman. “We are tired of their machismo. We don’t feel sorry for them at all.” A few rows back, Abigail Llanes, 21, expressed a similar sentiment. “We get to sit now,” she said, beaming. “It’s great.” As complaints of harassment have grown, Mexico has experimented over the years with various remedies. Some subway cars have been reserved for women. Some buses allow women, disabled people and those with children to use designated entrances at the front. But the new buses may be the boldest approach so far. Men’s reactions run the gamut. Some declare the program discriminatory. Some curse at the bus drivers who leave them standing at the curb. Plenty of men, though, say they endorse the idea. “We have no respect,” Adolfo Flores, 30, a law student, said of the unseemly way many men treat women. Mr. Flores was getting his shoes shined as buses passed by behind him. The shoeshine man, Esteban Hernández, 57, piped in with his own theory about the groping. “We have the animal instinct,” he said, smiling. Touching a woman, he said, “is a way of showing masculinity — it’s very bad.” Just how bad the abuse problem — which is raised by women in cities the world over — has become in Mexico is difficult to say. Last year, just seven women lodged official complaints of harassment on Mexico City’s buses. There are more reports of sexual incidents on the subways, with roughly one a day filed with the authorities. But Mexican officials believe those figures do not reflect the full extent of the problem. “Most women don’t report what happens to them,” said Ariadna Montiel, who directs the public bus system, noting that as a young architecture student years ago she traveled by public transportation and experienced the harassment firsthand. “I know it’s a serious problem.” Ms. Montiel said she had no intention of neglecting men. “We have to guarantee that all users are taken care of,” she said, adding that coed buses roll along in close proximity to the women’s buses to ensure that nobody is waiting too long. Passengers say the atmosphere aboard women’s buses is entirely different. As the buses become more popular, and crowded, some women politely offer their seats to others. And, they say, the lechers are gone. Still, the experiment cannot solve the underlying problem of how the sexes interact in the metropolis. Only four of the city’s bus routes have women-only buses. That number will rise to 15 in the months ahead, but coed buses will remain the rule in most areas. To complement the single-sex buses, the Institute of Women in Mexico City, a government body that promotes opportunities for women, is pushing a public education campaign to make clear to men that inappropriate touching is illegal. In March, a new ordinance will make it easier to prosecute those found harassing women in public places. “This is not against men,” insisted Martha Lucia Micher Camarena, the institute’s director general. “This is positive discrimination that responds to the demands of women. And it’s also for men because it protects their daughters, sisters and mothers.”

Mexico
Women
Sexual Harassment
Transit Systems
Sociology


3 Ingredients for Success

Abstract: HOW do the world’s highest achievers define success? After interviewing 200 people worldwide “who have made a difference in their fields,” three authors conclude that “success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea or business model than it does with discovering what matters to us as individuals.” In Rotman , the University of Toronto business school magazine, Jerry Porras, a professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business; and Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson, both management coaches, write that “extraordinary people, teams and organizations are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things that matter to them.” The writers, co-authors of the book “Success Built to Last” (Wharton School Publishing, 2006), point out that the people they interviewed said, “When success just means wealth, fame and power it doesn’t last and it isn’t satisfying.” Given the title of their book, it isn’t surprising that the authors refer to successful people as “builders.” “We learned,” they wrote, “that builders find lasting success when three essential elements come into alignment in their lives and work.” The first element is meaning. “What you do must matter deeply to you,” they wrote. The second is a “highly developed sense of accountability, audacity, passion and responsible optimism.” And finally, they said, these successful people “find effective ways to take action.” BEFORE YOU LEAP “Only 15 years ago, a person who changed jobs every three years or so was looked at as professionally unstable,” Judith Sills writes in Psychology Today . “Today, it’s the guy nestled on his lily pad whom the H.R. pro looks at with a critical eye,” wondering why the employee isn’t more ambitious. Is it time to move on? Ms. Sills suggests you ask yourself the following questions: ¶“How happy am I” to go to the office each day? ¶“How much am I” growing professionally at work? ¶“How does my current salary and/or level of responsibility match my aspirations?” THE DEVIL’S REVENGE As “The Devil Wears Prada” and “The Nanny Diaries” show, there is now a cottage industry of young people writing about how awful their first jobs were. In Forbes Life Executive Woman , a new magazine, employers were given the chance to turn the tables. There are stories about assistants who forgot to put ice cream cakes in the freezer for a dinner party, ones who send their boss to the wrong city on a business trip and legal assistants who faxed opposing counsel an outline of the strategy their employer planned to use in a negotiation. But our favorite tale, in the article by Ellen Ryan, involves the assistant to a partner at a Washington public relations firm. “I had just won a new client, and I wanted to take him out for a celebration,” Carolyn Tieger explained. “He liked Spanish food, so I told my young, relatively new assistant I’d like to treat the client to lunch at a tapas restaurant, and to please make reservations and let him know the details.” The assistant called the client and said she didn’t understand why, but her boss wanted to meet him at a “topless restaurant.” FINAL TAKE Want to increase your brain power? Try something different. “Your brain is a thrill seeker,” Nancy Kalish writes in Prevention . “New experiences stimulate the area that produces dopamine, a chemical involved in learning and memory. Studies show that doing new things builds brain mass and increases mental agility.” PAUL B. BROWN

Magazines
Psychology Today
Forbes Magazine


Free Newspaper Venture Depends on Local Blogs

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Amid the din of naysayers who insist that newspapers are on the verge of death, a new company wants to start dozens of new ones — with a twist. The Printed Blog , a Chicago start-up, plans to reprint blog posts on regular paper, surrounded by local ads, and distribute the publications free in big cities. The first issues of this Internet-era penny-saver will appear in Chicago and San Francisco on Tuesday. They will start as weeklies, but Joshua Karp, the founder and publisher, hopes eventually to publish free neighborhood editions of The Printed Blog twice a day in many cities around the country. “We are trying to be the first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and other user-generated content,” he said. “There were so many techniques that I’ve seen working online that maybe I could apply to the print industry.” As pay newspapers lose readers to the Internet, where they can read the same articles without charge, many free papers have held their own. “The free newspaper business model is still very workable,” said David Cohen, a founder of Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, a group of free weeklies south of San Francisco that was sold to Knight Ridder in 2005 and is now owned by MediaNews. “There’s a huge readership that wants the local news, and local businesses tend to increase their advertising in bad times because they have to capture people’s attention.” Still, Mr. Karp does not have to look far to see the difficulties of being successful in the newspaper business these days. The Tribune Company, which publishes The Chicago Tribune and its free daily, RedEye, filed for bankruptcy protection in December. Mr. Karp is betting he can make his business work by combining the best of the print and Web models. The Printed Blog will publish blog posts alongside other Weblike content, like user-submitted photographs and readers’ comments. The paper will be printed on three or four 11-by-17-inch sheets of white paper and laid out like a blog instead of in columns. Users will eventually be able to log on to its site, theprintedblog.com , to choose which blogs they want in their edition, and editors will decide which posts make the paper. A city the size of Chicago could have 50 separate editions tailored to individual neighborhoods. The Printed Blog also expects to duck many of the major costs that make traditional newspapers expensive to produce. The company will put commercial printers in the homes of its distributors, avoiding the circulation costs of papers with large, central printing presses. Advertisers will eventually be able to buy ads on the Web site, so The Printed Blog will not need to employ many sales people. By publishing articles written by bloggers who are already diligently covering topics as varied as town politics and local fashion, Mr. Karp can slash one of the biggest expenses of a newspaper: reporters. So far, 300 bloggers have given The Printed Blog permission to publish their work for a share of the ad revenue, including small-audience bloggers in Chicago and nationally known blogs like Daily Kos . The arrangement is mutually beneficial, said Lauren Dimet Waters, editor in chief of Second City Style , a Chicago blog that has agreed to be reprinted. “If they can make money off of our blog, I can’t imagine we wouldn’t, too, because of the exposure,” she said. “If it gets us exposure to 20 new people, then I’ll be happy.” Mr. Karp will still need to pay for paper, ink and contractors to print and distribute the papers. Those costs add up, which is one reason the Internet spawned bloggers in the first place. Advertising remains print’s one great advantage over Web publications: advertisers will pay much more for print ads than for online ones. Mr. Karp aims to sell 200 ads an issue. The Printed Blog will charge $5 to $10 for classifieds and $15 to $25 for business ads that reach 1,000 readers. Mr. Karp, who previously founded a software company called Freerain Systems and sold it to ESM Solutions in 2007, has invested $15,000 in The Printed Blog. He receives free office space from the Illinois Technology Association, and his 10 staff members are volunteers who work on their personal laptops. He plans to raise venture capital to pay employee salaries and eventually expand. Mr. Karp expects that each issue, to be distributed twice a day to 1,000 people, will eventually have enough ads to earn a profit of $750 to $1,500 a week. (In comparison, Mr. Cohen said that a typical weekly edition of one of the free Silicon Valley papers that reached about 20,000 people would cost about $10,000 to produce, with an operating profit margin of 11 percent to 15 percent.) Advertisers will like The Printed Blog, Mr. Karp said, because it is hyper-local. “A clothing boutique or snow removal service can advertise to the 2,000 people who are most likely to buy the service, as opposed to many, many more,” he said. About 15 advertisers have signed on for the first issue, including Flowerpetal.com , a florist in Chicago. “The great thing about it is you can change your pitch based on different neighborhoods,” said Brian Crummy, Flowerpetal.com’s founder. Ads from local businesses are one reason that free dailies have been a rare bright spot in the newspaper industry. Unlike struggling car companies and department stores, which are mainstay advertisers of metropolitan dailies, small businesses have increased their ad spending during the recession, several publishers said. “All growth in the newspaper industry for the last 20 years has been in free papers, and the fastest-growing segment of that for the last five years has been in free dailies,” said H. Harrison Cochran, publisher of The Aurora Sentinel in Colorado and past president of Suburban Newspapers of America. Still, the economic crisis has not spared free papers. In November, free dailies in Kitsap County, Wash.; Eureka, Calif.; and Norfolk, Va., closed. In December, the three-year-old Bluffton Today in Bluffton, S.C., started charging for the paper because of falling advertising and rising costs of ink and newsprint. Its circulation has since shrunk to 6,500, from 15,000, Tim Anderson, the paper’s publisher, said. Mr. Cohen, who was recently laid off by MediaNews, said The Printed Blog’s potential challenges would be magnified by its plan to publish dozens of niche papers. “It just sounds daunting,” he said. “To me, that’s why the Internet was invented.”

Newspapers
Blogs and Blogging (Internet)
Computers and the Internet


A Snail That Has a Jump on Climate Change

Abstract: A coral reef can be a scary place. There are predators like the marbled cone snail, with its deadly darts. They can make other snails jumpy. Literally. The humpback conch is one of them. It also known as a jumping snail. And one of the things that make it jump is the smell of a nearby predator. That sensitivity is very useful for researchers who are studying how the snail responds to warmer temperatures and more acidic seawater. That’s important, according to Sjannie Lefevre, who studies snail physiology at the University of Oslo, because such conditions are predicted as a result of climate change. Scientists expect damage to reefs, but not much is known about how snails and their relatives may respond. Dr. Lefevre and a colleague at Oslo and two other researchers at James Cook University in Australia used water tainted with cone snail odor to provoke the small conchs to leap (a few inches at most). The researchers tested their oxygen consumption to see if increased warmth or acidity interfered with their physiology. They did not. Neither warmer temperatures nor higher acidity stopped the snails from ramping up their use of oxygen to make the leaps. This is good for the jumping snails, but this test focused on only one aspect of snail life and physiology. Earlier experiments showed that acidity could cause some snails not to respond to cone snail odor the way they did in less acid water. These snails were jumpers, however, and researchers put them — one at a time — in a small chamber called a respirometer to test not their willingness to jump, but the physiology of energy use during jumping. Oxygen presence in the water was measured, which showed how much the snails were taking up. Just a bit of water from an aquarium with a cone snail in it was needed to make a jumping snail hop for its life. Measurements showed that the jumping metabolism was fine, and not affected by the changes in environment. The researchers published their findings in the October issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology .

Snail
Climate Change
Reef
Research
Sjannie Lefevre
Journal of Experimental Biology
Global Warming
Anatomy and Physiology


Doubling Up for Formula One’s Desert Showdown

Abstract: At the Formula One season’s finale, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday, the stage is set to have everyone from fans to teams seeing double. The math for the showdown in the desert is basic enough: The driver who leads the championship has won twice as many races as the driver in second place, but the former could easily lose the title to the latter in the Abu Dhabi twilight because of a decision this season to award double points in the final race. After the clear domination by one team and driver during the previous four seasons (Sebastian Vettel and his Red Bull team), the series sought this year to keep the title battle alive all the way to the final race. The goal was to maintain the interest of fans who might otherwise switch off once the drivers’ title had been decided, as happened last season, when Vettel had wrapped up his fourth straight title by October, with three races left to run. So now the two Mercedes drivers who have dominated the season are entering the final race with Lewis Hamilton leading Nico Rosberg by 17 points and 10 victories to five, but with double points up for grabs Rosberg is in position to snatch the title. Normally, 25 points are awarded for first place, 18 for second, 15 for third, 12 for fourth, 10 for fifth, 8 for sixth, 6 for seventh, 4 for eighth, 2 for ninth and 1 for 10th. But in Abu Dhabi this will be 50-36-30-24-20-16-12-8-4-2. Rosberg’s task is clear: He will be crowned world champion if he wins the race and Hamilton does not finish in second position. Or, if Hamilton drops out of the race, or if he finishes only 10th, Rosberg can finish as low as fifth and still win the title. In other words, Rosberg can easily win the title with half as many victories as Hamilton. By the old scoring system, he would need to win and hope Hamilton finished no better than seventh, or if Hamilton dropped out, Rosberg would have to finish no lower than second. “I find it artificial and I don’t like it in general,” Rosberg said of the Abu Dhabi scoring after he won the Brazilian Grand Prix two weeks ago. “Of course, now, with the way it is, it’s great for me at the moment, but you know that’s just because of the situation.” Hamilton, understandably, is less upbeat. “That’s the way it is. I don’t know what to say about it,” he said. “It’s the same for everyone. But no other championship we have had has it, so it is a bit odd this year.” Before the season, the series’ promoter, Bernie Ecclestone, proposed the double-points award and the teams accepted it. Then the Mercedes team started dominating, with its drivers winning all but three races — the others were won by the Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo, Vettel’s teammate — and ending up nearly equal on points. No one foresaw that they would arrive at the final race as the only two who could win the title. Hamilton, who is the leader but who has become something of a strange underdog heading into the finale, remains calm. “I feel I have done everything I can and that is all you can do,” he said. “I am going to do everything I can do, and whatever the result at the end of it is, that is the way it is.” “I will have done everything I could,” he added, “and I will go into my winter knowing I did everything I did and not look back and say, ‘If only I had done this or if I only I had done that.”’ But the situation puts into question the value of a move that the series collectively voted into being but that was immediately criticized by fans and some team directors. Some called it unfair, others even said it made the series a farce. “It would put a big shadow over the championship if it was turned by a technical issue,” said Toto Wolff, the director of the Mercedes team, where Hamilton and Rosberg both drive. “Nobody likes the double points; I don’t think Bernie even likes them now,” he added, referring to Ecclestone. “It’s going to be something that we should probably be getting rid of for next season.” Ecclestone said last week that he would not push for the double points again next year. In 2010 the series tried to avert just this kind of situation — a title won by a driver who had not even half as many victories as his nearest challenger. So it introduced a 7-point difference between the winner of a race, with 25, and the runner-up, with 18. Apart from deciding the drivers’ title, the double-points system could be a boon or a bust for teams lower down the grid. For all the teams except Mercedes and Red Bull, who are assured of finishing first and second, respectively, the double points can either drastically improve or destroy their season’s prize-money earnings. Millions of dollars of prize money are at stake depending on their finishing position in the championship, which will be decided in Abu Dhabi with a maximum of 86 points available for any one team. The Williams team could lose its third place in the series to Ferrari; Ferrari could lose its fourth place to McLaren; McLaren could lose its fifth place to Force India, while the rest of the teams stand to win or lose positions lower down that represent millions won or lost. “Overall, we knew that here in São Paulo it would have been difficult to score points,” Franz Tost, director of the Toro Rosso team, said after the Brazilian Grand Prix on Nov. 9. “But we will try to be in the best possible shape to reach this target in Abu Dhabi, the very important last event of the season.” Nonetheless, though a last-minute roll-of-the-dice victory may seem unjust, Rosberg winning the title with only half as many victories as Hamilton would not be an aberration in terms of the season overall. Rosberg will have won five or six races nevertheless — more than he has ever won in a season — and when he was not winning a race or suffering a car breakdown, he finished second in all but the Hungarian Grand Prix, when he was fourth. Hamilton finished third in two races, and failed to finish three. In fact, for a driver who had the reputation of being slower than Hamilton — whose natural speed has never been questioned — Rosberg bested Hamilton in qualifying, winning 10 pole positions to Hamilton’s seven before the final race. In short, the two drivers have been neck-and-neck all season, with Rosberg actually leading the series for a longer period and Hamilton having to play catch up. Of the two, Rosberg, who at 29 has never before been in contention for the title, appeared to be mentally stronger. He never seemed to lose his cool, while on several occasions Hamilton, a former world champion who also is 29, appeared to crack. If he does win the title, Rosberg would no doubt have to carry the stigma all his life of having done so with far fewer victories than his rival. But at least Rosberg would be able to say that he captured the title with more victories than his father, Kéké, who won only one race in the 1982 season when he was crowned champion driving for Williams. Five drivers that season won two races each. And while Kéké won only five Grand Prix races in his entire career, Nico has already won seven. Rosberg would also become only the second world champion in Formula One history whose father was also champion. Damon Hill won in 1996, following his father’s two titles in the 1960s. “I absolutely believe I still have the chance to take the title in Abu Dhabi,” Rosberg said. “It won’t be easy, but I’ll be full attack — just as I have been all season. Although this has been my first year fighting for a world championship, I’ve never felt more comfortable than I have done this year.”

Formula One
Abu Dhabi
Lewis Hamilton
Nico Rosberg
Car Racing


Jay Z’s Tidal Service Gets a New Chief

Abstract: The music streaming service Tidal has named a new chief executive, its third since Jay Z unveiled his plans for the service with much fanfare in the spring. Taking on the role will be Jeff Toig, a former SoundCloud executive. The announcement comes after months of management upheaval at Tidal. And the service is undoubtedly looking to Mr. Toig to right a company that has lost its footing in the months since Jay Z reintroduced it in March at a star-studded news conference in New York. The service, which Jay Z bought for $56 million, said in April that Andy Chen, the chief executive of Aspiro, Tidal’s corporate parent, had left . His replacement, Peter Tonstad, departed in June . And Vania Schlogel, a former private equity executive who represented Tidal to investors as chief investment officer, said last month that she had resigned over the summer. Tidal was envisioned as a hub for high-fidelity audio and exclusive content. Jay Z said a majority of the company would also be controlled by the artists themselves, which made waves in an industry grappling with the value of music in the digital age. But the company has stumbled in a market dominated by Apple, Spotify, Pandora and YouTube, even as it has celebrated some successes. In October, for example, a Tidal concert at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn featuring top artists including Lil Wayne and Beyoncé raised $1.5 million for charity . Mr. Toig, the former chief business officer for the streaming service SoundCloud, will take over his new role on Jan. 4.

Jay Z
Tidal
Jeff Toig
Appointments and Executive Changes
Audio Recordings
Downloads and Streaming


Belgium Frees 14 Held as Plot Suspects

Abstract: BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — A judge on Saturday released 14 men who had been accused of plotting to break a suspected supporter of Al Qaeda out of prison here, saying there was too little evidence to hold them. Prosecutors said the investigation would continue, as would heightened security measures imposed across the country after the men were detained in raids on Friday. “We think there is still a threat,” said Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecutor’s office. The government had said it had information that the suspects were plotting to use explosives and other weapons to free Nizar Trabelsi, 37, a Tunisian serving 10 years for planning to a drive a car bomb into the cafeteria of a Belgian air base where about 100 American military personnel were stationed. But Ms. Pellens said Saturday that a search of the suspects’ homes had uncovered no explosives, weapons or other evidence to warrant charges or keep them in jail.


Hoping to Leave Loved Ones With Only Memories, Not Debt

Abstract: Troublesome hearts run in Frank Costanza’s family. “My father died at 40, of a heart attack,” he said. “I started out in life with 14 uncles. They’re all dead of a heart attack. That should tell you a lot. So I knew I was destined to get one.” Mr. Costanza met his fate in 2004, he said, when he had the first of three near simultaneous heart attacks. He underwent a heart transplant the following year. Despite urging from doctors that he develop a workout routine, he has been largely inactive. “I’m not given to exercising, but I do like to walk,” Mr. Costanza said. Decades ago, Mr. Costanza, then working as an actor, took frequent walks from the West Village, where he has lived for 35 years, to Harlem. On a few occasions, he ventured as far as Yonkers. Today, however, even the simple task of walking down the block to the store is a feat that leaves Mr. Costanza, 70, significantly fatigued. “I get dizzy,” he said. “I get way out of breath. It hurts being 55 pounds overweight. I’m able to go out. I don’t often. When I do, I have to sit. I know every bench in New York.” Mr. Costanza depends tremendously on home health aides. The Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of the agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, has been granting him a $300 monthly stipend so that he can remain in the rent-subsidized apartment he has lived in for 35 years. His only income is $1,719 in Social Security benefits; he spent years working as an editor, inside and outside of the publishing world. In his spare time, Mr. Costanza enjoys watching old movies. He said he had not gone to a movie in 20 years. On other occasions, he leaves his seclusion to go to the theater or to grab a meal with a friend. One of his closest companions is someone he has known for 50 years: his former wife, Florence. “She’s an amazing woman,” Mr. Costanza said. “Everybody should have somebody like this woman in their life. Unwavering, loyal, always sensible. She’s generous to a fault, meaning when I do something really, magnificently stupid, she’s always there to forgive me and consider it a temporary lapse of judgment.” Only a few other close friends remain, including an older brother. Mr. Costanza said that in recent years, he had become increasingly concerned about leaving his loved ones burdened with his funeral costs. “I didn’t want to leave anybody behind to be responsible for any debts that I had,” he said. “You’re looking at somebody who doesn’t owe anybody a penny. People say, ‘How do you pay your bills?’ I say: ‘I don’t have bills. Debt, that’s a sucker’s bet.’ ” He brought those concerns to his social worker at the Caring Community at Greenwich House. The Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies gave Mr. Costanza $1,037 from the Neediest Cases fund to help cover his cremation costs. He said he asked his former wife to scatter his ashes over the Hudson River. “Seventeen ways to Tuesday, the federation has fixed me up,” Mr. Costanza said. “They came along and took care of everything. I’m at peace knowing that part of my business is taken care of and that responsible people were in charge of it. I would be living in terror today, not knowing how I’d pay for that. But now I know.” Securing his cremation may have instilled a sense of inner peace in Mr. Costanza, but he said he had become no more comfortable with the thought of dying. His newfound serenity competes with the expectation of the inevitable. “It terrifies me,” he said. “I heard somebody say once: ‘If you’re going to live, why can’t you be immortal? If you’re going to have life, why not have it forever?’ ” Some nights, Mr. Costanza finds it difficult to fall asleep. He usually stays up late watching a movie or two. In the darkness and stillness of the night, he reflects on his mortality. “I’m 70, and this is the decade most people die in,” Mr. Costanza said. “So occasionally, yeah. That keeps me up.”


Liberty Interactive Agrees to Buy Zulily for $2.4 Billion

Abstract: When Zulily , the flash-sales site for mothers, began life as a publicly traded company in fall 2013, it found plenty of favor among investors, who pushed its stock up 70 percent on its first trading day. Now, as the online retailer prepares to sell itself to the parent company of QVC, it is in a much humbler state. Zulily’s agreement to sell itself to Liberty Interactive, announced Monday, values the five-year-old company at $2.4 billion, or $18.75 a share in cash and stock. That is 15 percent below where it priced its initial public offering in fall 2013, and less than half of the $37.70 the company’s shares closed at in their first day of trading. Moreover, the deal is only the latest instance of a company going public, then selling itself relatively shortly afterward. Last week, Yodlee, a financial information company, agreed to sell itself to Envestnet less than a year after its initial public offering . And in late July, Vivint Solar announced a deal to merge with a fellow solar power provider , SunEdison, less than 10 months into its life as a public company. The three companies are linked by a common thread: poor performance as new publicly traded concerns. Zulily’s stock had tumbled nearly 67 percent from its debut until Friday, before the deal with Liberty became public. Shares of Vivint had slid 32 percent before the company’s deal with SunEdison was announced. And those in Yodlee had fallen more than 6 percent. Such performance bucks the generally good showings that market debutantes have displayed in recent years. The average return from I.P.O. prices this year has been 10.5 percent, according to data from Renaissance Capital. Not all quick flips have been as troubled. Shares of Kayak, the travel booking site that sold itself for $1.8 billion to Priceline a mere four months after going public, had fluctuated but stayed consistently above their I.P.O. price. For Zulily, the road from exuberant market debut to more muted sale has been paved by sales growth that did not keep pace with the retailer’s past. By the time of its initial offering, the flash-sales site had more than doubled revenue in the first nine months of that year. Such turbocharged growth was particularly unusual for the company, whose products ship in two to three weeks, a long lead time for a retailer. Yet that surge had evaporated by this year, with second-quarter revenue inching up just 4 percent, the company disclosed early this month. Zulily has acknowledged that it had made a mistake, telling The Wall Street Journal that the company had focused too much on attracting new customers who ended up buying only once. Now Zulily is finding a new home in Liberty Interactive, whose QVC — long known as the biggest name in TV-based sales — has been focused on bolstering its e-commerce. Executives at both companies told analysts in a conference call Monday that they viewed the two as taking aim at a similar customer: higher-income women who like to shop, and shop often. Acquiring Zulily would give QVC a chance to bring the flash-sales site’s vendors onto its own platforms, particularly on television. “QVC and Zulily are tremendous businesses with strong management teams,” Michael A. George, QVC’s chief executive, said during the call. “And we want each to remain focused on building their brands and realizing their full potential while we collaborate on those high-value opportunities that will make our combined companies under Liberty much stronger than either could be on its own.” Liberty’s chief executive, Gregory B. Maffei, said in the call that he and his team had watched Zulily and its management for some time. He added euphemistically that, as Zulilly’s valuation “became more realistic for who we were,” he approached the company’s leaders. Under the terms of the deal, which is expected to close by year end, Zulily investors would receive $9.375 in cash and a 0.3098 share of the QVC tracking stock for each Zulily share they own. After the deal, Zulily will continue to be based in Seattle and run by its current management team, including Darrell Cavens, its chief executive. The company’s chairman, Mark Vadon, will join Liberty Interactive’s board.

Liberty Interactive
QVC
Mergers and Acquisitions
HSN


Cat Lovers Lining Up for No-Sneeze Kitties

Abstract: A small California biotech company says it is ready to deliver the Holy Grail of the $35 billion pet industry: a hypoallergenic cat. At the start of next year, the first kittens — which the company calls “lifestyle pets” — will go home to eager owners who have been carefully screened and have been on a waiting list for more than two years. Since it announced the project in October 2004, the company, Allerca, of San Diego, says it has received inquiries from people in 85 countries seeking to buy a cat bred so that its glands do not produce the protein responsible for most human cat allergies . Cats ordered now will take 12 to 15 months for delivery in the United States, 15 to 18 months in Europe. Cost: $4,000. And owners must pass Allerca’s finicky screening tests. Prospective buyers are interviewed for motivation and warmth, approved as if they were adopting a child. Will they punish if kitty has an accident on the floor or scratches the furniture? Their families and their homes — from carpets to curtains — must also be evaluated for allergies and allergens. “You’re not just buying a cat; it’s a medical device that replaces shots and pills,” said Megan Young, chief executive of Allerca. “At the same time, this is a living animal, so the well-being of our product comes before our customers. This is not some high-priced handbag that you put back on the shelf if it doesn’t match.” In the United States and Europe, cats are the most common household pet — there are an estimated 30 million in this country alone — and cat allergies are one of most common human allergies. That combination has made many homes cauldrons of sneezing, itchy conflicts in which a fiancé is allergic to his beloved’s favorite pet, or a mother-in-law cannot come for a festive meal because of Fluffy’s presence. With cat owners sometimes paying thousands of dollars each year for allergy shots, antihistamines and air filters to damp down allergies, $4,000 for a sneeze-free existence may be an acceptable price tag. More research is needed, but preliminary independent studies suggest Allerca cats do not provoke allergies. “As strange as it may sound, for us the price would have been worth it — it would have saved us money, and saved us pain from all the medical and also emotional problems,” said Christopher Cullen of New York. His girlfriend’s worsening allergies resulted this week in their putting up for adoption their beloved cat, Cimbi, who had achieved “mild Internet notoriety,” Mr. Cullen said, as the star of her own Web site, harlemfur.com . Mr. Cullen and his girlfriend, Cheryl Burley, have fought a losing two-year battle to engineer a tolerable co-existence with Cimbi, because Ms. Burley, a devoted cat lover, has had cat allergies since childhood. On the Web site, you can watch Mr. Cullen, who works for the New York Senate Democratic Conference, giving Cimbi a bath to reduce her allergen load; he takes Cimbi on a leash to Morningside Park for a day, to give his girlfriend’s allergies a break. The couple never put down carpets. They installed HEPA filters and vacuumed incessantly. But Ms. Burley’s symptoms worsened in recent months and that fragile equilibrium fell apart two weeks ago when the couple took in a second cat, Marley. Ms. Burley could not work, could not breathe and had a seizure. They took Marley to an animal shelter. “Our whole life has gone downhill,” Ms. Burley said. “I missed four days of work. I’m back on inhalers, eyedrops and creams. This hypoallergenic cat would be a perfect solution for me. I’m determined to have a kitty.” Dr. Sheldon Spector, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently studied the cats and said the concept seemed to work. Ten volunteers with severe cat allergies were exposed to a variety of cats but showed no reaction to the Allerca cats, though all had symptoms with normal animals. “This is not a definitive study, but it is an interesting and intriguing concept that could really help people,” Dr. Spector said. For the moment, he said he would not recommend buying the cats because “$4,000 seems like a lot of money” and there was still the chance that some people might react to some degree to less common cat proteins. Most human cat allergies are caused by Fel d 1, a molecule that has been sequenced and its gene mapped in the last decade. At first, Allerca scientists sought a method to delete or disable the gene. But in testing to see whether the gene had been effectively silenced, they made a fortuitous discovery: A very small number of cats carry a mutant gene that produces a modified protein, far less likely to induce allergies. At that point, the research shifted course. Allerca screened thousands of cats to identify a population with the modified gene and then set those cats to breeding. Because the mutant gene is dominant, the breeding cats could be mated with normal cats to produce hypoallergenic kittens. And no special licensing or government approvals were necessary. So, for the past few months, Allerca’s small pool of hypoallergenic cats have been busy reproducing. Their breeding facility cannot be visited and “is at a secret undisclosed location,” said Ms. Young, Allerca’s chief executive. At 10 to 12 weeks, every Allerca kitten is neutered before it is delivered. The company insists this is mainly to prevent feline overpopulation. But every Allerca cat carries the dominant hypoallergenic gene and, in theory, could produce copycat hypoallergenic kittens. In tests, Allerca cats do not produce allergic reactions. But only a few of the cats have lived in private homes, and only for a few weeks. Last month, an Allerca public relations consultant, Julie Chytrowsky, kept Joshua, an Allerca cat, for several weeks at her Los Angeles area apartment. Joshua had flown to California to “do some publicity.” Ms. Chytrowsky, who says she is normally quite allergic, had no symptoms even though she allowed Joshua to sleep in her bed. “I fell in love with him,” she said. “He is a real stud — well, he is a stud, really.” The company insists on an assiduous screening of all prospective owners and their families because the cats may still not be safe for people with the most severe forms of cat allergy, such as people who have been rushed to the hospital after anaphylactic reactions. They might react to even the modified protein. A Food and Drug Administration allergy test kit arrives five weeks before each kitten and all family members must be tested. Another required test detects the presence of other allergens in the house through a collection system that clients must place on their vacuum. “We don’t want you blaming our cats if the real issue is mold or ragweed,” Ms. Young said.

Cats
Allerca
Allergies
Genetics and Heredity