Acorn Replies to Questions About Role With Voters

Abstract: WASHINGTON — A community organizing group that has been attacked by Republicans and the McCain campaign over accusations of fraudulent voter registrations sought to provide assurances on Tuesday that instances of wrongdoing were not widespread. At a news conference here, officials with the group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, acknowledged cases where canvassers submitted false or duplicate registrations, but said they represented only a tiny fraction of the 1.3 million new voters the group signed up during this election cycle. “Out of 13,000 workers there were inevitably a few who decided they’d pad their hours by duplicating a card and filling out another one or making up a name,” said Kevin Whalen, an Acorn spokesman. “If we discovered this,” he said, “we not only turned that information over but turned the information we had about that former employee — because they’d been fired by that point — to elections officials and asked for their help in prosecuting that person.” On Tuesday, Acorn was surveying local offices to come up with a tally of the number of “problematic” registration cards it had submitted to states. A spokesman for the group indicated that the number of employees who had been fired for job-related problems could reach 1,000 or more nationwide, but later backed off that estimate. The spokesman confirmed that more than 100 Acorn workers in Ohio and Michigan had been fired. Boards of elections in several states are investigating the reports of fraudulent registrations. Acorn officials said that in many states they were required by law to turn in all registration forms even if they were deemed problematic. The McCain campaign has been using the connections between Acorn and Senator Barack Obama as a line of attack in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign. Acorn’s political arm has endorsed Mr. Obama. Speaking to reporters in Ohio, Mr. Obama sought to draw a distinction between voter fraud and voter registration fraud. He said people with phony names would not be allowed to vote. The two campaigns also traded barbs on Tuesday over whether they would cooperate to prevent problems at the polls. The McCain campaign said Obama officials failed to respond to an invitation last month to form bipartisan teams to monitor polling sites. In a letter dated Sept. 23, David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager, did not directly address the McCain campaign’s proposal, but accused Republicans of engaging in maneuvering to “deflect attention” from voter “suppression strategies pursued by national, state and Republican Party committees.”

Assn of Community Organizations for Reform Now


Canada: Request to Leave Guantánamo

Abstract: Omar Khadr has applied to be transferred to a prison in Canada from Guantánamo Bay to serve the remainder of his sentence for war crimes. Mr. Khadr, a Canadian, was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 after a firefight that left an American sergeant, Christopher Speer, dead. In 2010, a United States military commission sentenced Mr. Khadr, who was 15 at the time of the episode, to 40 years in prison, but he is only required to be imprisoned for a maximum of 8 years under the terms of a plea bargain . The Conservative government had been reluctant to repatriate him. But a government official, who declined to be identified because of restrictions on discussing negotiations with other governments, said American officials had asked for his application to be granted as “a diplomatic favor.”

Canada
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (Cuba)
Khadr Omar Ahmed
Sentences (Criminal)
Detainees
Speer Christopher


Frenchman Will Return to China Prized Bronze Artifacts Looted in 19th Century

Abstract: BEIJING — One of France’s wealthiest businessmen has agreed to return to China two bronze animal heads that were looted from the imperial Summer Palace near Beijing by invading French and British troops in the 19th century, according to a report on Friday by China Radio International, a state news organization. To China, the looting of the palace epitomizes the humiliation it suffered at the hands of imperial Western powers during the Second Opium War. The offer to return the heads came from François-Henri Pinault, one of 60 high-powered Frenchmen who are accompanying the French president,François Hollande, this week on his first visit to China. Mr. Hollande is seeking to strengthen diplomatic and trade relations with China, and also brought eight cabinet ministers. Mr. Hollande has received a warm welcome since landing in Beijing on Thursday. The previous French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, angered Chinese leaders after he met with the Dalai Lama , the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in 2008, months after a widespread Tibetan uprising in western China. “It is easy to forget, watching China emerge as a great power, that the legacy of humiliation at the hands of modern imperialist aggressors back in the 19th century retains a palpable sense of immediacy even today,” said John Delury, a historian at Yonsei University in Seoul who, with Orville Schell, is writing a book on China’s quest for wealth and power. “So what might seem a rather obscure gesture of returning a pair of bronze animal heads takes on outsized significance as a kind of restitution of historical justice, a long-awaited righting of wrongs to the Chinese nation.” The bronzes emerged as a point of contention between China and France in 2009 , when Christie’s auction house handled the sale of the French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection after his death. Mr. Pinault is the chief executive officer of Kering, the company that owns Christie’s. After China failed to block the sale legally, a Chinese businessman made successful bids totaling about $40 million for the heads, then refused to pay, citing national pride. According to Mr. Pinault’s company, Mr. Pinault acquired them himself and decided to return them to China, which just this month decided to allow Christie’s to become the first international auction house to operate independently on the mainland. Mr. Pinault told Chinese officials that the heads would be returned by the second half of this year. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage in China said Mr. Pinault’s offer was “an expression of friendship toward the Chinese people,” according to a state news report. “The Chinese side offers its high praise for this action and considers that it conforms with the spirit of relevant international cultural heritage protection treaties,” the government agency said. The two bronzes, a rat head and a rabbit head, were among 12 animal heads, replicating the Chinese zodiac, in a central fountain clock at the palace, spewing water to tell time. All disappeared after the palace, also known as Yuanmingyuan and used by rulers of the Qing dynasty, was destroyed by Western troops in 1860. So iconic are the animal heads that Ai Weiwei, the rebel artist, made a sculpture with versions of all 12. Typical of Mr. Ai, the sculpture was constructed with a sense of irony. It was first displayed in May 2011 at the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan while Mr. Ai was being illegally detained in Beijing by security forces, and it quickly came to symbolize the constant conflict in China over issues of free speech. The China Poly Group, a state-owned enterprise with ties to the People’s Liberation Army that has a museum and theater in Beijing, has acquired several of the animal heads, but the owners and locations of the rest remain unknown. Mr. Pinault, 50, is the son of Kering’s founder,François Pinault, an art collector. The gift was from the Pinault family. The company has significant stakes in China, where some of its fashion brands, like Gucci, are doing well. France has a significant trade deficit with China and wants more Chinese investment. But the French president is under some pressure to raise human rights issues with the new Communist Party leadership. Mr. Hollande doled out his criticisms more freely when he was simply the leader of the Socialist Party. Mr. Hollande wants to reassure the Chinese that his government will protect the security of Chinese tourists in France and intends to discuss making it easier for Chinese to obtain visas. Mr. Sarkozy had tendentious relations with Beijing after the meeting with the Dalai Lama in 2008. Relations deteriorated that year when Western and Tibetan protesters interrupted the Olympic torch relay when it passed through Paris on the way to Beijing. Tensions eased just before France took the presidency of the Group of 20 in 2010. Ties became strained again when France criticized China’s reluctance to support the battle against Col.Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator.

China
Art
Looting
France
Kering
Sculpture
Francois-Henri Pinault
Francois Hollande
Christie's


News From the Advertising Industry

Abstract: Accounts ¶Nissan Motor Company expanded its relationship with TBWA Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, by naming TBWA as the global marketing agency for the reintroduction of the company’s Datsun brand. Spending has not been determined. Datsun was the original name for the Nissan brand; it is being brought back as a lower-price car line aimed at young, middle-class drivers in fast-growing markets like India, Indonesia and Russia. The worldwide creative and strategic work for Datsun will be led by TBWA Hakuhodo, Tokyo, and TBWA London. TBWA is also the creative agency for the Nissan and Infiniti brands sold by Nissan Motor. ¶Vonage Holdings, Holmdel, N.J., selected two agencies for assignments that had been handled by agencies owned by the Omnicom Group. Spending was estimated at $150 million. JWT New York, part of WPP, will handle the Vonage creative account, which had been handled by TBWA/Chiat/Day, part of the TBWA Worldwide division of Omnicom. And Horizon Media, New York, will handle the Vonage media account, which had been handled by PHD, part of the Omnicom Media Group division of Omnicom. ¶Chopin, the Polish vodka owned by Tadeusz J. Dorda, named Clarity Coverdale Fury, Minneapolis, as its worldwide agency of record. Spending has not been determined. Clarity Coverdale helped introduce Chopin in North America in 1997 and was the brand’s agency for eight years; recently, the account had been handled internally. People ¶Deanie Elsner, president for the beverages business at the Kraft Foods Group, Northfield, Ill., was named the company’s first chief marketing officer. The Kraft Foods Group was formed after Kraft Foods spun off its snack foods brands into a stand-alone company, Mondelez International. The Kraft Foods Group sells former Kraft Foods products like Kraft cheeses, Maxwell House coffee and Oscar Mayer meats. ¶Chris Tussing rejoined DDB Worldwide, New York, part of the Omnicom Group, as global business director, overseeing the agency’s new Reebok account . He had most recently been account managing director at the Chicago office of McGarryBowen, part of the Dentsu Network unit of Dentsu, and earlier in his career was group account director at the DDB West division of DDB, based in San Francisco. ¶Lori Erdos, business development director for digital at Smithsonian Media, based in the New York office, was named to a new post, publisher for media and business development. Smithsonian Media is part of the Smithsonian Enterprises unit of the Smithsonian Institution. Miscellany ¶Peter Arnell, who in 2011 left his agency, the Arnell Group, New York, in a dispute with its parent, the Omnicom Group, has returned to the industry, working on his own on a new campaign for a former Arnell Group client, GNC Holdings. The campaign, carrying the theme “Respect yourself,” is being created by Mr. Arnell and an internal marketing and communications team at GNC, the company said. A lawsuit between Mr. Arnell and Omnicom was settled last year. “We are pleased to once again be working directly with Peter,” Joseph Fortunato, chief executive of GNC, said in a statement. ¶Parry Branding Group, a brand identity agency for the health and wellness market, was opened in Brooklyn by Vince Parry. ¶Philabundance, Philadelphia, an organization that specializes in hunger relief, named CBX, New York, a brand agency and retail design consultancy, to design a prototype for Fare & Square, a nonprofit grocery store that is scheduled to open this summer in Chester, Pa. The store will sell staples like produce, dairy and meats at everyday low prices to residents of Chester, which has been identified as a so-called food desert.

Appointments and Executive Changes
advertising,marketing


Language Study Casts New Light on Japanese Origins

Abstract: Researchers studying the various dialects of Japanese have concluded that all are descended from a founding language taken to the Japanese islands about 2,200 years ago. The finding sheds new light on the origin of the Japanese people, suggesting that their language is descended from that of the rice-growing farmers who arrived in Japan from the Korean Peninsula, and not from the hunter-gatherers who first inhabited the islands some 30,000 years ago. The result provides support for a wider picture, controversial among linguists, that the distribution of many language families today reflects the spread of agriculture in the distant past when farming populations, carrying their languages with them, grew in numbers and expanded at the expense of hunter-gatherers. Under this theory, the Indo-European family of languages, which includes English, was spread by the first farmers who expanded into Europe from the Middle East some 8,000 years ago, largely replacing the existing population of hunter-gatherers. In the case of Japan, archaeologists have found evidence for two waves of migrants, a hunter-gatherer people who created the Jomon culture and wet rice farmers who left remains known as the Yayoi culture. The Jomon people arrived in Japan before the end of the last ice age, via land bridges that joined Japan to Asia’s mainland. They fended off invaders until about 2,400 years ago when the wet rice agriculture developed in southern China was adapted to Korea’s colder climate. Several languages seem to have been spoken on the Korean Peninsula at this time, and that of the Yayoi people is unknown. The work of two researchers at the University of Tokyo, Sean Lee and Toshikazu Hasegawa, now suggests that the origin of Japonic — the language family that includes Japanese and Ryukyuan, spoken in the Ryukyu island chain south of Japan — coincides with the arrival of the Yayoi. The finding, if confirmed, indicates that the Yayoi people took Japonic to Japan, but leaves unresolved the question of where in Asia the Yayoi culture or Japonic language originated before arriving in the Korean Peninsula. Mr. Lee is a graduate student studying language and the mind, not a historical linguist. He has used a statistical tree-drawing method that other biologists have applied successfully to language origins, despite some linguists’ skepticism. The method, called Bayesian phylogeny, depends on having a computer draw a large number of possible trees and sampling them to find the most probable. Each language is represented by a 200-word vocabulary composed of words known to change very slowly. If any fork in the tree can be linked to a historical event, all the other branch points can be dated. In this case, Mr. Lee knew dates for Old Japanese, Middle Japanese, and the split between the Kyoto and Tokyo dialects that began in 1603 A.D. when the capital was moved from Kyoto to Edo, the early name for Tokyo. Mr. Lee reasoned that Japanese would have originated with the Jomon if the root of the tree turned out to be very ancient, but with the Yayoi culture if recent. The computer’s date of 2,182 years ago for the origin of the tree fits reasonably well with the archaeological dates for the Yayoi culture, he reported Tuesday in The Proceedings of the Royal Society. John B. Whitman, an expert on Japanese linguistics who works at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, in Tokyo, and at Cornell University, called the new finding “solid and reasonable,” although the date of the Yayoi culture, he said, has now been pushed back to around 3,000 years after a recalibration of radiocarbon dates. That would open an 800-year gap with Mr. Lee’s date but not necessarily change his conclusion. The question of Japanese origins has had political consequences, with the link to the Yayoi culture having been invoked to justify the annexation of Korea and Manchuria before World War II. After the war, the link with the Jomon culture was emphasized. Quentin Atkinson, an expert on language phylogeny at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, said that Mr. Lee’s time scale was plausible but that if Japonic had spread through an agriculturally driven population expansion, his language tree should be much bushier at its root. Mr. Lee said that such earlier versions of Japanese might have disappeared when the island was politically unified about 1,000 years ago. Genetic studies have suggested interbreeding between the Yayoi and Jomon people, with the Jomon contribution to modern Japanese being as much as 40 percent. Apparently the Yayoi language prevailed, along with the agricultural technology.

Japan
Japanese Language
Language and Languages


Indian Premier League Saves Best Cricket for Title Game

Abstract: Manvinder Singh Bisla entered the Indian Premier League final as probably the least heralded of the 22 players who took part. By the time it was over, he was a lot more famous — and potentially in line for a much bigger payday next season. Few expected him to take part in the championship match Sunday, but on Saturday night the Kolkata Knight Riders made the surprise decision to pick Bisla over the hard-hitting New Zealander, Brendon McCullum. Bisla, 27, rewarded Kolkata with a performance that made him the unchallenged hero of the day as Kolkata won its first I.P.L. title by beating the Chennai Super Kings, the two-time defending champions, in Chennai, formerly Madras. He helped ensure that the I.P.L., which was checkered by on- and off-the-field incidents in its fifth season, got the perfect ending: a thrilling finish, a new champion and a storybook tale of an little-known talent triumphing on a big day. McCullum is the third-leading scorer of all time in the Twenty20 format. He holds the record for the highest-ever single innings, 158 not out for Kolkata in the first ever I.P.L. match in 2008. Bisla played just once in Kolkata’s previous 13 matches; he was dropped after a run of low scores early in the season. While Kolkata, which is owned by the Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, has a lot of highly paid players, Bisla is not among them. As an Indian never chosen to play for his country, he was not entered into the I.P.L.’s lucrative rotisserie-style auction, but confined to a fixed maximum salary of 30 lakhs, around $54,000, for the season. When Chennai, famous for its ability to defend targets, blasted a challenging 190 from its 20 six-ball overs, its move to sacrifice McCallum’s rapid scoring potential looked even more questionable. Kolkata then lost its captain and leading batsman, Gautam Gambhir, in its first over. Bisla responded by playing the innings of his life. “It was one of the best Twenty20 innings I have ever seen,” said Gambhir, who has seen plenty. “Especially against the reigning champions in their own back yard.” Bisla blasted 89 runs from only 48 balls before he was dismissed, adding a total of 136 runs with Jacques Kallis, the veteran South African batsman. “I felt a little tense, but after getting one or two over the fence, I got the confidence,” said Bisla, who also acknowledged the influence of his batting partner. “Kallis is a legend. Batting alongside him was a great opportunity. He asked me to keep it simple, and I got going.” The pair threatened to make the target look easy, but once Bisla was gone, Chennai showed the qualities that have made it the dominant force in the I.P.L., with two titles, four appearances in the finals and an unmatched five trips to the playoffs in five seasons. Three more wickets fell, including Kallis, by then handicapped by a muscle strain and unable to take the quick runs essential in tight matches. “I had to put my batting gloves on, because I was biting my nails,” said one Kolkata player, the Australian pace bowler Brett Lee. It took two thumping shots to the boundary by another young Indian, Manoj Tiwary, to take Kolkata to victory by the margin of five wickets with two balls to spare. The excited owner, Khan, turned cartwheels in the outfield and proclaimed the victory “the most remarkable thing in the lives of all of us with K.K.R.” It was also a team triumph. Kolkata had leaned on Gambhir and the spin bowling of the young West Indian Sunil Narine to get to the final, but neither contributed much on the biggest day. Narine, whose total of 24 wickets was the second-highest in the tournament, was named Player of the Season. (Narine’s wickets came at a much more affordable price than the 25 by the league leader, Albie Morkel of Chennai.) One television analyst, the Australian Dirk Nannes, a former fast bowler with Delhi and Bangalore, said Sunday that the I.P.L. was “so different, so out of the box compared to everything else in cricket .” Nannes might have added that those differences are not always for the best. The 2012 season started with one franchise, Kochi, expelled and another, Pune, allowed to play only after a lengthy legal dispute. Five young Indian players were suspended this month after a television report appeared to show them seeking under-the-counter payments. Luke Pomersbach, an Australian player with Bangalore, recently reached an out-of-court settlement with a woman and her fiancé after he was accused of assaulting them. And there were early-season indications that television audiences, the tournament’s foundation, were down from last year. The Indian cricket authorities at least appear to be addressing the issues they can deal with. Some have suggested that if young players are indeed seeking extra payments, it is because Indian players can receive only limited salaries if they have not played for India. Rajeev Shukla, the chairman of the I.P.L., told The Times of India that starting next year, Indians, even if they had not played for the national team, would join other players in the open auction. That is great news for Bisla, who did wonders for his market value with his play Sunday. And the same newspaper also reported that some on the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the ruling body for the sport there, are favoring the return of Pakistani players to the I.P.L. next year, after a four-season absence. Security concerns have often been cited for the ban on those players. The I.P.L. claims it offers its fans the best cricketers in the world, but that has to come with an asterisk, because the Pakistani national team has the best record in Twenty20 international matches. Next year, it looks as if that claim could be that much closer to the truth.


Letters: The Burdens on Consumers

Abstract: To the Editor: Re “Spend, Spend, Spend. It’s the American Way” (Economic View, Jan. 15), in which Robert J. Shiller looked at the American tendency to see consumer spending as a symbol of patriotism: We should realize, however, that while consumers today account for a vast share of gross domestic product, they are nearly spent. Many consumers have seen no significant increase in real income in decades, while Wall Street, business in general and cumulative inflation have soared. Many are also struggling under enormous retail and mortgage debt. No wonder, then, that banks won’t lend, businesses won’t expand, and unemployment remains so high. The solution is to get more money into consumers’ hands via tax rebates. This money could come either from a surcharge on business, which has profited immensely, or from a redirection of current business tax revenue. Robert Barnes Savannah, Ga., Jan. 15


Gators Fall in Quarterfinals

Abstract: Tyler Cavanaugh scored 23 points, and Kevin Larsen added 19 points with a season-high 13 rebounds to help fourth-seeded George Washington (26-10) beat visiting Florida, 82-77, in the quarterfinals of the N.I.T. The second-seeded Gators (21-15) made only 7 of 24 (29.2 percent) from 3-point range. ■ Trey Kell made four 3-pointers, tying his career high, and finished with 18 points to help No. 2-seeded San Diego State beat visiting Georgia Tech (21-15), a No. 4 seed, by 72-56 in the quarterfinals of the N.I.T. The Aztecs (28-9) will face George Washington at Madison Square Garden in the semifinals on Tuesday.

College basketball
University of Florida
George Washington University
National Invitation Tournament
San Diego State University
Georgia Institute of Technology


Inflation and Deflation, as the N.F.L. Knows, Are a Lot of People’s Business

Abstract: PHOENIX — Not far from where the Super Bowl will be played Sunday, at a party store called Dulceria La Nueva Pico Rico, Norma Rios, an employee, stood next to a tank of helium. The store sells hundreds of balloons each week, and underinflation can ruin a child’s day. Rios pointed to the ceiling. “They start to fall,” she said. Over at Arizona State, Gustavo Ventura, a professor of economics, was discussing various principles of inflation and deflation, too. Slight inflation seems to be the economic target of countries around the world, he said, but moderate deflation can be helpful, too. “A negative inflation rate of, say, minus 1 percent shouldn’t scare anybody,” Ventura said. “People sometimes talk about it like it’s really bad. If you have a fixed income, deflation is not such a bad idea.” Image At the Bike Zone, the owner, Ruben Flores, said of underinflated tires: “The bike’s going to make you tired. And you could ruin the tire.” Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Rios and Ventura are among those with extensive knowledge of inflation and deflation, a topic that has swirled through the N.F.L. for nearly two weeks and shows little sign of blowing over before the Super Bowl. Unlike most of the New England Patriots , Ventura and many others were happy to talk about what they knew. Footballs that the Patriots used in their 45-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in the A.F.C. championship game had too little air, which violated N.F.L. rules and made them easier to throw, catch and carry. Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady said they knew nothing about why the balls were underinflated. The Patriots have stopped talking about it, and the N.F.L. said it was investigating the matter. The inquiry could take weeks. In the meantime, at bounce houses, bike shops, tire stores and ivory towers, there are plenty of experts to explain the advantages and disadvantages of deflation. “You’re going to feel like it’s hard to pedal,” Ruben Flores, owner of the Bike Zone, said of underinflated tires. “The bike’s going to make you tired. And you could ruin the tire.” Mario Aguilar, manager of Secrets for Adults, stood near a display of life-size blowup dolls. One was named Sultry Nurse, and another was called Mr. Stud. For best results, Aguilar explained, they should be fully inflated. There is little advantage in letting some air out. Image “They won’t feel right,” Aguilar said. “You do need to have a good, full balloon.” In the N.F.L., secretly squishy footballs have become a serious issue. Fans now know what most did not before: Each team has its own set of footballs to use on offense, and they are required to have between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch of air pressure. Officials reportedly discovered that 11 of New England’s 12 balls were deflated during the game against Indianapolis. For critics of football in general, or the Patriots specifically, the scandal serves as a cultural proxy for people’s appetite to cheat or excuse those who do. The story has led the network nightly news programs and been daily fodder for tabloid newspapers. Some suggested last week that the Patriots forfeit the Super Bowl or that Belichick and Brady be suspended. Others find it all a bit, ahem, overblown. “ Saturday Night Live ” turned the matter into farce . (“Honestly, I wasn’t even aware that footballs could be inflated or deflated,” the show’s faux Brady said.) Debates flared over whether the controversy, nicknamed Deflategate, deserved the attention it received, given the N.F.L.’s other issues, including concussions and domestic violence. Image Gerardo Duran putting air in a tire at a Firestone store. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times Among those who found the whole thing a bit funny were people who spent their working lives filling things with air. “You’re talking about a couple of pounds less of air pressure,” said Hector Reyes, a service manager at a Firestone Complete Auto Care. “You’re not playing with a pancake. They’re making a big deal about it. I think it’s ridiculous.” What is not a joke is driving on underinflated tires. At Val’s Tires, the owner, Valery Yusupov, knew nothing of Deflategate. But he knows the importance of keeping tires filled to recommended standards, which is often around 40 pounds per square inch for passenger cars. Image Ruben Flores, with his grandson, working on a bike at his store, the Bike Zone. Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times “No. 1, it’s going to cost you gas mileage,” he said. “No. 2, you can ruin your sidewall if it’s too low, and the whole pressure goes on your sidewall and not the tread. The tire’s going to wear out a lot faster.” Told that the Patriots had argued that the footballs in question might have deflated naturally, losing two pounds of pressure in the cold weather, Yusupov nodded. “When the weather cools off here, lots of people come in and say, ‘Looks like my tire is too low,’ ” Yusupov said. Image Gerardo Duran bouncing a tire while doing a tire rotation at a Firestone store in Phoenix. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times At Secrets for Adults, Aguilar said the store sold a few blowup dolls a week, with a high ratio going to truckers and hosts of bachelor parties. And while underinflation is not recommended, the alternative might be worse. “We’ve had people try to return them when they’ve popped,” he said. At tire stores and bike shops, workers use gauges to check inflation. At the party balloon store, Rios uses her finger. She puts it on the stem of the balloon, and when she feels it start to bubble under her finger, she stops. To Ventura, chairman of the economics department at Arizona State’s W. P. Carey School of Business , the effects of inflation and deflation are something you feel, but not with your hands. Inflation is, essentially, the sustained increase in prices, and most countries and central banks develop policies aimed at low, steady rates of inflation as a measure of economic growth. Deflation is the opposite — the falling of prices. But as prices fall, profits often do, too, and economies have been known to spiral downward. “An advantage of deflation, and I hope people don’t take this too seriously, is that money can be viewed as an asset,” Ventura said. “It has a positive rate of return because if you hold money from today to tomorrow, and there is deflation, it’s like the money is gaining interest. If there is inflation, holding money is essentially a tax.” Ventura was less certain what any of this had to do with the Super Bowl. Ventura, who is from Argentina, did not understand why opposing N.F.L. teams got to use their own footballs. “In regular football, everybody plays with the same ball,” Ventura said, referring to soccer. “The ball is the official ball. It should be the same with the N.F.L. Then there is nothing to talk about.”


Lawmakers Reject Inquiry on Scientology

Abstract: The Senate on Thursday rejected a call for an inquiry into accusations against the Church of Scientology made by former members who said they had been abused and harassed and, in some instances, coerced into having abortions. A motion to authorize an investigation into the church received only 6 votes in the 76-seat chamber. (AP)


Woman Pleads Guilty to Burning Daughter in Voodoo Ritual

Abstract: A New York City woman pleaded guilty on Wednesday to setting fire to her young daughter during a voodoo ritual by pouring flammable liquid on the child’s head and igniting it, leaving the girl with permanent scars across her body. The woman, Marie Lauradin, pleaded guilty to first-degree assault to pouring the liquid on her daughter, then 6, at her Queens home in 2009. She faces up to 17 years in prison and possible deportation to her native Haiti. Ms. Lauradin’s lawyer, Jeff Cohen, said she admitted that her actions were reckless. He would not comment on her motives. Prosecutors said Ms. Lauradin poured the accelerant on her daughter’s head and in a circle on the floor at her home as part of a voodoo practice involving a “loa,” or spirit.


At Mass, Pope Francis Embraces ‘Misunderstood’ of Mexico

Abstract: SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico — Pope Francis came to the highlands of Mexico’s southern frontier on Monday to offer a pastoral embrace to the region’s impoverished indigenous people, expressing shame over discrimination and exploitation and honoring the legacy of a beloved local bishop who once clashed with the Mexican government — and the Vatican. In visiting the state of Chiapas, a region on the Guatemalan border long synonymous with the struggles and armed rebellions of Mexico’s Mayan communities, Francis presided over an outdoor morning Mass before tens of thousands of people ringed by rugged green mountains. Looking over the crowd, Francis invoked the harsh treatment endured by indigenous people and called for social justice. “On many occasions, in a systematic and organized way, your people have been misunderstood and excluded from society,” Francis said. “Some have considered your values, culture and traditions to be inferior. Others, intoxicated by power, money and market trends, have stolen your lands or contaminated them.” He added, “How worthwhile it would be for each of us to examine our conscience and learn to say, ‘Forgive me!’ ” Midway through a six-day tour of Mexico, Francis has blended familiar calls for hope and mercy with stinging critiques. He warned Mexican bishops against “triumphalism” and complacency. He preached against inequality while standing at the edge of one of the country’s poorest slums. And he has bemoaned the country’s drug-related violence. Yet Francis is also treading carefully. As in past trips abroad, he has so far avoided directly criticizing the nation’s leaders, alluding to corruption but resisting a sharp-worded accounting of the failures of a government with dismal popularity ratings. As yet, it was also unclear whether Francis would meet with relatives of the 43 students who mysteriously disappeared in 2014 in the state of Guerrero, a crime that has deeply embarrassed the government. In Chiapas, Francis extended a running theme of his papacy — the exploitation of native peoples and the need of the Roman Catholic Church to embrace some of their rituals and popular devotions. Chiapas is a particularly apt locale because the state’s complex social ferment had its origins in the earliest years of the colonial era, when a Dominican missionary, Bartolomé de las Casas, denounced the brutality of the Spanish conquerors, who divided up the land and enslaved the Indians living on it. Centuries later, the local Mayan communities remain among the poorest people in Mexico, often overlooked by the political class. As Francis toured the center of San Cristóbal in his popemobile, people raced after him, shouting out his name, while others seemed stunned that a pope had come to a place grappling with poverty, migration and violence, where people often feel forgotten by the government in Mexico City. “It’s so great that a Latin American pope, someone who speaks our language and is Catholic, would come here to explain his message to us — in a way we can understand,” said Arturo Lionel Galindo, 63, a street musician near San Cristóbal’s cathedral. “Unlike a European pope, he can tell us how his presence here can help us, and how we can all help end this violence, this exploitation of our people, that continues to this day.” After his tour, Francis made a short visit to the cathedral to pray at the tomb of the bishop, Samuel Ruiz García, who for decades championed the rights of native peoples. An adherent of liberation theology, Bishop Ruiz denounced abuses and discrimination, especially by powerful local leaders. “He saw that not only was their struggle for land, but that the Indians had no access to education or political power,” said Andrés Fábregas Puig, an anthropologist from Chiapas. “Something had to be done about that.” Bishop Ruiz made enemies of landowners and was also distrusted by the Mexican state for his closeness to the Zapatista National Liberation Army, the armed rebels who led a short insurgency against the state in 1994. He served as the mediator in peace negotiations between the Zapatistas and the government but later quit, accusing the government of persecuting him and not negotiating in good faith. As bishop overseeing a diocese one-fifth the size of Italy, Bishop Ruiz faced a severe shortage of priests and eased the burden by ordaining several hundred married male deacons, a vast majority of them indigenous men. But some church officials suspected he ultimately intended to ordain some of the married deacons as priests. In 2002, Pope John Paul II prohibited the diocese from ordaining any more deacons. But in 2014, Francis reversed that edict as some skeptics questioned whether the new pope was signaling a softer line on priestly celibacy, something denied by Vatican officials. Priest shortages remain a problem in the diocese, which currently has 108 priests for 1.3 million Catholics, even as evangelical Protestants have made headway in recent years with their more expansive approach to worship. Five years after his death, Bishop Ruiz, who was known as Tatic, a local term for “father,” remains a powerful presence. He is credited with building the diocese’s first primary schools and translating the Mexican Constitution into local languages so people would know their rights. Before the morning Mass, one of the speakers onstage led a cheer. “The people walk with Tatic Samuel,” the people shouted, “and with Francis.” Bishop Raúl Vera, who worked closely with Bishop Ruiz, said the symbolism of Francis’s visit to the tomb would resonate with many people — and also raise expectations. “Pope Francis is a Latin American, and his duty now is to pick up the work that men like Ruiz have done in the past,” Bishop Vera said. On Monday, leaders of indigenous groups from 15 Latin American countries came to San Cristóbal to demand that Catholic leaders take action on the pope’s environmental encyclical. Francis, returning to the themes of that encyclical during his morning Mass, said, “We can no longer remain silent before one of the greatest environmental crises in world history.”

Pope Francis
Mexico
Indigenous peoples
Discrimination
Chiapas
Catholic Church
Rural Raul Isidro Burgos
43 missing students
Ayotzinapa Normal School


From World War II, Economic Lessons for Today

Abstract: AFTER the grim economic developments of the last few weeks, it’s easy to lose hope. Could the Great Recession of 2008 drag on for years, just as the Great Depression did in the 1930s? Adding to the despair is the oft-repeated notion that it took World War II to end the economic nightmare of the ’30s: If a global war was needed to return the economy to full employment then, what is going to save us today? Look more closely at history and you’ll see that the truth is much more complicated — and less gloomy. While the war helped the recovery from the Depression, the economy was improving long before military spending increased. More fundamentally, the wrenching wartime experience provides a message of hope for our troubled economy today: we have the tools to deal with our problems, if only policy makers will use them. As I showed in an academic paper years ago, the war first affected the economy through monetary developments. Starting in the mid-1930s, Hitler’s aggression caused capital flight from Europe. People wanted to invest somewhere safer — particularly in the United States. Under the gold standard of that time, the flight to safety caused large gold flows to America. The Treasury Department under President Franklin D. Roosevelt used that inflow to increase the money supply. The result was an aggressive monetary expansion that effectively ended deflation . Real borrowing costs decreased and interest-sensitive spending rose rapidly. The economy responded strongly. From 1933 to 1937, real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of almost 10 percent, and unemployment fell from 25 percent to 14. To put that in perspective, G.D.P. growth has averaged just 2.5 percent in the current recovery, and unemployment has barely budged. There is clearly a lesson for modern policy makers. Monetary expansion was very effective in the mid-1930s, even though nominal interest rates were near zero, as they are today. The Federal Reserve ’s policy statement last week provided tantalizing hints that it may be taking this lesson to heart and using its available tools more aggressively in coming months. One reason the Depression dragged on so long was that the rapid recovery of the mid-1930s was interrupted by a second severe recession in late 1937. Though many factors had a role in the “recession within a recession,” monetary and fiscal policy retrenchment were central. In monetary policy, the Fed doubled bank reserve requirements and the Treasury stopped monetizing the gold inflow. In fiscal policy, the federal budget swung sharply , from a stimulative deficit of 3.8 percent of G.D.P. in 1936 to a small surplus in 1937. The lesson here is to beware of withdrawing policy support too soon. A switch to contractionary policy before the economy is fully recovered can cause the economy to decline again. Such a downturn may be particularly large when an economy is still traumatized from an earlier crisis. The recent downgrade of American government debt by Standard & Poor’s makes this point especially crucial. It would be a mistake to respond by reducing the deficit more sharply in the near term. That would almost surely condemn us to a repeat of the 1937 downturn. And higher unemployment would make it all that much harder to get the deficit under control. Military spending didn’t begin to rise substantially until late 1940. Once it did, fiscal policy had an expansionary impact. Some economists argue that the effect wasn’t very large, as real government purchases (in 2005 dollars) rose by $1.4 billion from 1940 to 1944, while real G.D.P. rose only $0.9 billion. But this calculation misses two crucial facts: Taxes increased sharply, and the government took many actions to decrease private consumption, like instituting rationing and admonishing people to save. That output soared despite these factors suggests that increases in government spending had a powerful stimulative effect. Consistent with that, private nonfarm employment — which excludes active military personnel — rose by almost eight million from 1940 to 1944. The lesson here is that fiscal stimulus can help a depressed economy recover — an idea supported by new studies of the 2009 stimulus package . Additional short-run tax cuts or increases in government investment would help deal with our unemployment crisis. What of the idea that monetary and fiscal policy can do little if unemployment is caused by structural factors, like a mismatch between workers’ skills and available jobs? As I discussed in a previous column , such factors are probably small today. But World War II has something to tell us here, too. Because nearly 10 million men of prime working age were drafted into the military, there was a huge skills gap between the jobs that needed to be done on the home front and the remaining work force. Yet businesses and workers found a way to get the job done. Factories simplified production methods and housewives learned to rivet. Here the lesson is that demand is crucial — and that jobs don’t go unfilled for long. If jobs were widely available today, unemployed workers would quickly find a way to acquire needed skills or move to where the jobs were located. Finally, what about the national debt ? Given the recent debt downgrade, it might seem impossible for the United States to embark on fiscal stimulus that would increase its ratio of debt to G.D.P. Well, at the end of World War II, that ratio hit 109 percent — one and a half times as high as it is now. Yet this had no obvious adverse consequences for growth or our ability to borrow. This isn’t hard to explain. Everyone understood then why the nation was racking up so much debt: we were fighting for survival, and for the survival of our allies. No one doubted that we would repay our debts. We had done it after every other war, and raising taxes even before the attack on Pearl Harbor showed our leaders’ fiscal resolve. Today, we can do much more to aid recovery, including a near-term increase in our debt. But we need to make the reasons clear and make concrete our commitment to deal with the debt over time. In place of the tepid budget agreement now in place, we could pass a bold plan with more short-run spending increases and tax cuts, coupled with much more serious, phased-in deficit reduction. By necessity, the plan would tackle entitlement reform and gradually raise tax revenue. This would be the World War II approach to our problems. Equally important, someone needs to explain to the nation and to world markets just why we must increase the debt in the short run. Unemployment of roughly 9 percent for 28 months and counting is a national emergency. We must fight it with the same passion and commitment we have brought to military emergencies in our past.

Treasury Department
United States Economy
Recession and Depression
World War II (1939-45)
Federal Budget (US)
Federal Reserve System
Roosevelt Franklin Delano


Coming Online Soon: The Five-Minute ‘Charlie’s Angels’

Abstract: The question probably never occurred to viewers in the 1970s and 1980s, but suddenly it is highly relevant: exactly how much worthwhile entertainment content was there in shows like “Charlie’s Angels,” “T. J. Hooker,” and “Starsky and Hutch”? The Sony Corporation and its production studio, Sony Pictures Television, which controls the rights to those and many other relics of a distant era of television, have come up with an answer to that question: three and a half to five minutes. That’s the length Sony has shrunk episodes down to in order to create what the company hopes is an appealing new business in retooling old shows for a new era of entertainment. Sony even has a name for these shrunken slices of television nostalgia: minisodes. Sony Television is planning in June to introduce an Internet-based service called the Minisode Network, initially offering the mini-shows for an exclusive run on MySpace. (The company may consider establishing a separate Internet channel called the Minisode Network later.) However and wherever it appears, the network will consist of a lineup of tightly edited versions of shows lifted off the shelves of Sony’s television library. These are not clips of the shows, but actual episodes with beginnings, middles and ends, all told in under six minutes. As Steve Mosko, the president of Sony Television, described it, “So in ‘Charlie Angels,’ they have a meeting, Charlie’s on the intercom telling them what the assignment is, there’s a couple of fights, and then a chase, and they catch the bad guy. Then they’re back home wrapping it up.” “T. J. Hooker,” an especially formulaic cop show from the early 1980s, can be seen in short bursts of action as William Shatner interrogates suspects, fires shots and chases bad guys. “Shatner is just hilarious,” Mr. Mosko said. That sums up the main aim of the minisodes. Nobody expects these shows to captivate anyone with their exciting plotlines, writing or ageless acting. “It’s really campy and fun,” Mr. Mosko said. What he would like it to be as well is lucrative. Like other holders of vast libraries of filmed entertainment, Sony Television has been seeking ways to squeeze new value out of old assets. “We’ve been looking for a legitimate way to make money from our library,” Mr. Mosko said. “Something that could bring new life to shows that have been on the shelf for awhile.” The idea for condensed editions of these classic shows sprang from a casual conversation over a year ago between Mr. Mosko and another Sony Television executive, John Weiser, the head of distribution. They had noticed that an increasing number of people liked watching snippets of entertainment on Web sites like YouTube, rather than entire shows. The two Sony executives were aware that Viacom had been successful foraging through old libraries of shows on its cable channels like TV Land and Nick at Nite. “Take classic shows and, rather than try to jam them into the digital world, look at what the consumer wants,” Mr. Mosko said. The plan gained even more traction when Sony executives saw the “Seven-Minute Sopranos,” a condensation of the 77-hour HBO series that was posted on YouTube in March. One advantage Sony Television holds over a channel like TV Land is that the company holds the rights for all the shows it will use on the Minisode Network. TV Land must license all the shows it runs. Clips from shows do appear on the TV Land Web site, as do, occasionally, some full-length episodes. But often, according to the network, the license deals for TV Land do not include the kind of extensive digital rights that would allow wide use of the episodes on the Internet. So while you can go on the TV Land site and see the famous clip from “I Love Lucy” of Lucy and Ethel trying to keep up with the conveyer belt at the candy factory, you cannot see that whole episode — or even a condensed version of it. Mr. Mosko said Sony had gone through all the proper channels to make sure it covered all the rights associated with editing the shows this way and posting them as episodes on the Internet. “We have all the credits on every episode,” Mr. Mosko said. “There are no expensive costs,” Mr. Mosko said. “It’s just editing. Our people are really having fun with this. We’re not overthinking the process. You could almost look at this and say a group of college kids put this together.” The hourlong action shows at Sony’s disposal proved especially easy to edit down, Mr. Mosko said. Comedies have proved slightly harder to condense, he said, because certain jokes have setups and reference points that must be included for the jokes to make sense. Sony is even making a mini-version of “Ricki Lake,” one of its syndicated talk shows. “It’s great,” Mr. Mosko said. “The people get introduced, there’s a big fight, then they come together, and cry and hug. You get everything in five minutes.”

Television
Sony Corp
Computers and the Internet


Stocks Soar on Signs of Global Growth

Abstract: Stocks surged on Wednesday as investors temporarily put aside worries over Europe’s debt crisis and focused on signs of global economic growth, particularly in the United States and Asia. Hope that the United States job market may be coming back to life gave a powerful push to prices on Wall Street. The monthly report from ADP Employer Services, the payroll processing firm, said that private employers added 93,000 jobs in November, more than expected. “It would be jobs data that was the primary stimulus, and also some comfort coming out of the European situation,” said Dan McMahon, director of equity trading at Raymond James & Associates. The Dow Jones industrial average ended the day 249.76 points, or 2.3 percent, higher at 11,255.78. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 25.52 points, or 2.2 percent, to 1,206.07, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite added 51.20 points, or 2 percent, to close at 2,549.43. The 2.2 percent rise in the S.& .P 500 was the biggest gain in the index since Sept. 1. Weeks of worry that debt troubles in Europe could spread beyond Ireland appeared to settle somewhat. The Portuguese government successfully sold debt, albeit at higher interest rates, and there was speculation that the European Central Bank would step up to confront the turmoil in the euro zone. Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the central bank, hinted on Tuesday that the bank could adopt more aggressive bond-buying measures if needed, saying that investors might not fully appreciate the European Union’s resolve. “Pundits are tending to underestimate the determination of governments,” Reuters quoted Mr. Trichet as saying. The Portuguese debt management agency sold 500 million euros, or $654 million, of 12-month Treasury bills on Wednesday at an average yield of 5.281 percent — up from 4.81 percent for a similar auction in November. Although investors were asking for a higher return to take on a greater perceived risk, demand for the securities was a healthy 2.5 times the amount offered. Scott Marcouiller, the chief technical market strategist for Wells Fargo Advisors, said that investors were probably learning to live with the uncertainty over Europe’s financial troubles. “People are buying the dips,” he said. “People are looking past the negative news and willing to buy short term.” The International Monetary Fund and the European Union agreed on Sunday to rescue Ireland with a $111 billion program, after a similar bailout of Greece last spring, though neither action has done much to alleviate fears that the contagion will spread. The global stock rally on Wednesday got its start in Asia as an upbeat manufacturing report in China eased concerns that the Chinese economy could slow as it wrestled with inflation and soaring housing prices. In Beijing, the state-affiliated China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing reported that its purchasing managers index rose to 55.2 last month, from 54.7 in October. A similar manufacturing survey by HSBC rose to an eight-month high. “When days like this come along it becomes a buying opportunity for commodities,” said Paul Christopher, senior international investment strategist for Wells Fargo Advisors. As a result, the energy, industrials and materials sectors were the biggest gainers on the broader market. Indeed, recent data have suggested that manufacturing and economic activity is increasing. That, in turn, has set off a broad-based rise in the price of commodities, Mr. Christopher said. In the United States, the Labor Department revised higher the annual rate of worker productivity in the third quarter to 2.3 percent on Wednesday. The data was the latest in a series of encouraging economic reports, including better retail sales and an upward revision to the pace of the nation’s economic output in the third quarter, to an annualized 2.5 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, Mr. Marcouiller said. As a result, he said, stocks in economically sensitive sectors like industrials and materials would probably show improvement, while the dollar was likely to decline as the Federal Reserve pursued its quantitative easing program of purchasing government securities. All of the Dow components rose on Wednesday, while 483 stocks on the S.& P. 500 finished higher. Energy stocks were up nearly 3 percent, while materials and industrial stocks rose more than 2 percent. Schlumberger rose 4.54 percent, to $80.85, and Anadarko Petroleum was up 4.86 percent, to $67.28. General Electric was up 2.97 percent, to $16.30. Alcoa was up 3.39 percent, to $13.57. Bank of America rose 3.20 percent, to $11.29, retracing ground after it had fallen 3.18 percent on Tuesday on worries that it might be the target of a forthcoming WikiLeaks document release. The Treasury’s 10-year note fell more than a full point as its yield rose to 2.96 percent, from 2.80 percent late Tuesday.

Stocks and Bonds
Credit and Debt
Euro (Currency)
European Sovereign Debt Crisis (2010- )


Mayor de Blasio, Visiting Jerusalem, Hears From All Sides of Region’s Conflict

Abstract: JERUSALEM — It was the kind of encounter that Morad Muna, a Palestinian resident of this ancient city, never expected to have: a chance to explain his hopes and fears about life in Jerusalem directly to the mayor of New York. “For me, it was a big opportunity to tell our side,” Mr. Muna, 35, said, minutes after Mayor Bill de Blasio finished an unusual meeting with Jewish and Arab parents at a hilltop vineyard near here on Saturday. “I’m glad that he is interested in what is happening, that he wants to see Palestinian people, to hear from them,” Mr. Muna said, as his son, a first grader, ran between his legs. “It’s important,” he added, “to send this message to him.” Visiting the Middle East for the first time since being elected, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, was intent on showing understanding to all sides of the region’s conflict . He even considered, though ultimately decided against, a visit to the occupied West Bank. The mayor’s meeting here — with parents, students and faculty members of a liberal school that, unusual for Israel, educates Jewish and Arab children together — offered a rare and relatively uncontroversial avenue for Palestinian outreach. New York City politicians travel to Israel often, but usually to show support solely for Jewish causes. The attendees, including Jews, Palestinians and Christians, described objections from family members and the confusion they faced from neighbors uneasy about mixed classrooms. “Maybe those Arabs you meet are nice, but if they get the opportunity, they will turn against you,” Itai Mol, 40, who described himself as culturally Jewish, recalled hearing from friends. Mr. de Blasio offered nods and appreciative murmurs, and later smiled for photographs with schoolchildren. He once belonged to a school board in Brooklyn, and the meeting here resembled a parents’ round-table discussion, albeit in a more exotic setting: a fragrant cave beneath a local winery, part of a field trip for the school’s families, with olives and bottles of malbec dotting the table. Image Mr. de Blasio, left, speaking with the mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, at the Tel Aviv promenade. Credit Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Aware of the violence that has erupted here in recent days, Mr. de Blasio was careful in his public remarks, telling reporters that he understood that his visit had coincided with “a very painful reality.” “Innocent civilians are being attacked, and it’s undermining a sense of security in this country, and it’s morally wrong,” the mayor said in Tel Aviv, after sharing a beachside brunch with his counterpart there, Ron Huldai. Mr. de Blasio refrained from addressing the specifics of the attacks, in which seven Israeli Jews have been killed by Palestinians this month and at least 16 suspected assailants have been shot and killed by Israeli security forces and citizens. On Sunday, the mayor is expected to meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu . Mr. de Blasio said he was visiting “in solidarity with the Israeli people.” He added: “We can’t find a productive way forward if attacks are happening against civilians, and no one should be condoning attacks against civilians.” The mayor, who is traveling with several aides and security officers in a Renault van, toured the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Friday evening — “very powerful,” he said — and did some sightseeing on Saturday afternoon. He also visited a hospital on Saturday night with the mayor of Jerusalem to speak with victims of recent attacks. Mr. de Blasio’s trip began with a chance meeting at Ben Gurion Airport , where he saw Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, in a high-security area moments after arriving from New York. The men spoke for about 30 minutes about Middle East politics before parting ways. And though he was several thousand miles from home, Mr. de Blasio managed to find an old acquaintance from Brooklyn. Mona Henoch, a former neighbor of his who moved to Israel seven years ago, was riding her bicycle on the beach in Tel Aviv when she spotted a familiar, tall figure. “I’ve known Bill — oh, I guess, Mayor de Blasio — for many years; I still call him Bill,” Ms. Henoch, an interior decorator, said after she and the mayor spent a minute catching up. (She told Mr. de Blasio she left New York in part because the city had become overgentrified.) “Is this his first trip here as a mayor?” Ms. Henoch asked. “I’m sure people are very interested in what he has to say.”

Jerusalem
Palestinians
Bill de Blasio
Middle East
Israel
NYC


Job Hunting Is, and Isn’t, What It Used to Be

Abstract: WHEN I think back to my job-hunting days, my methods seem as quaint as comparing a Victrola to an iPod. First, there was no Internet. I perused trade journals for job possibilities. I painstakingly typed my résumé on a typewriter (electric) and had to retype — and retype and retype — when I made a mistake. I cut and pasted my newspaper clips, which I needed to send along with the résumé, onto letter-size paper, which was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing. Then, because self-service copying was in its infancy, I had copies of my clips made. Then, I stuffed them into manila envelopes and took them to the post office to mail. I followed up with telephone calls, because, of course, there was no e-mail. In fact, voice mail also barely existed. (I’m not that ancient. We’re talking less than three decades ago.) So either I never got past the switchboard or I was shunted off to a bored secretary, who I’m sure never bothered writing down my message. With all the innovations since then, what hasn’t changed is how frustrating it can be to get the right job. Or even a personal response to a résumé. And while many of the tools available through the Internet can help searches, they can also become obstacles to actually finding employment. “Online sites tend to overwhelm people,” said John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a firm that helps place people in jobs and does business consulting. “The key for most people to realize is that you can’t conduct your search from your computer. You have to get in front of prospective bosses to get an offer.” It is too easy, Mr. Challenger said, to spend hours trolling job sites instead of doing the harder work of calling and meeting people. “You have to do a performance check on yourself,” he said. “I’ve spent so much time on the computer, and how many times did I get to the person I’d be working for, not just H.R. or a recruiter?” But it’s no wonder that people become addicted to the online searches. The Conference Board, a business research organization, estimated that 4,833,700 job vacancies were posted online last month. The big three sites are Monster.com , CareerBuilder.com and Yahoo HotJobs.com . Craigslist is also a popular option, as are those like Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com , which aggregate big and small jobs sites. Niche sites are also growing. Doctors can check out PracticeMatch.com ; those seeking nonprofit work can go to Idealist.org . TheLadders.com is popular for job seekers looking for executive positions that pay more than $100,000 a year. And I made a note of JournalismJobs.com . Because you never know. Most of these sites are free for those looking for work. It’s the employers who pay to post the positions. But the cost of using a site like TheLadders ranges from nothing for limited access to as much as $180 for a year of unlimited job hunting and a weekly newsletter. But the trouble with many of these sites, especially the bigger ones, job hunters say, is that they have become an indiscriminate morass. Prescott Perez-Fox, of Brooklyn, who describes himself as “underemployed” as a graphic designer since finishing graduate school three years ago, said that he assumes when he applies for a job online that “I’ll be up against at least 100 other candidates.” With mainstream sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, “the numbers can be in the thousands,” he said, adding: “It took me a long time to realize that I would never find a job from a job board, especially a larger, mainstream site. I still apply for jobs at the rate of about three per week, but my expectations are almost nil.” In addition, many job seekers have applied for what they thought was the perfect post, only to end up on the receiving end of a bait and switch. Jessica McKenzie of Salt Lake City, for example, said she perused all the big and small job boards when looking for a job in public relations. She applied for one post that seemed like a good possibility, and even went for two interviews. “The second interview turned out to be a ride along with a door-to-door salesman of discount coupons to places like amusement parks and ballgames,” she said. The job sites do try to monitor such misleading ads. Ms. McKenzie said that when she reported her experience to CareerBuilder, where she found the post, it responded. Because of these concerns, many job hunters are abandoning the job sites, or using them much less frequently, in favor of what are called social networking sites like LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook. In fact, Michelle Robinovitz, who has been a recruiter for 15 years and now is director of recruiting for an accounting firm in Atlanta, said she had stopped using job sites altogether and relied almost completely on LinkedIn. “I feel like they’re a waste of time and money,” she said of job search sites. “I’ve seen a decline over the past two years of qualified candidates. It used to be that we would get 300 résumés. Now you are lucky to get one. I think qualified people are much more savvy.” Ms. Robinovitz said her firm paid $200 a month to directly e-mail up to 50 people on LinkedIn. Often, it’s not the people she contacts who want the job, but rather friends of those contacts who end up getting the job. For those (yes, like me) who don’t know how to make the best use of such social networking sites, several books out there can lead you by the hand. But a word of warning, especially as sites like Facebook become more popular tools for recruiters: get anything that looks bad off your page. That photo of you drunk at a Halloween party, those musings about how much you hate your boss — not a good impression. The Society for Human Resource Management, a trade organization, recently compiled responses from 571 of their members about how they use the Internet to fill jobs. It found that recruiters use social networking sites 23 percent more now than they did in 2006 to fill vacancies, verify résumés and screen applicants. Even more interesting, negative information on an applicant’s profile, like “personal views or values contradictory to the hiring organization or excessive alcohol abuse,” have a greater impact on hiring decisions than positive information, the survey found. When looking for a job, especially in these tougher economic times, the trick is to cast as wide a net as possible. Don’t ignore the online job sites, experts say, but use them sparingly. Also check alumni and professional associations. Mr. Challenger suggests limiting yourself to surfing such sites only after dinner. Use the daytime to get out and meet people as much as possible. Also learn how to use the system. Many companies don’t even glance at all the résumés they receive, but have programs that search for keywords to weed out the ones they don’t want. Tom Musbach, managing editor of Yahoo HotJobs, advises using phrases that appear in the job posting. “For example, if you apply for a job that says you should have ‘strong media relationship skills,’ use that phrase in your résumé and cover letter,” he said. “That may get the résumé to the top in a keyword search.” It’s not enough, however, to just parrot words back, he said. Make sure your résumé doesn’t simply list job descriptions, but focuses in on what you’ve achieved. Also check out sites intended to make you more knowledgeable about the culture and pay of the career you’re seeking. Glassdoor.com , for example, allows people to anonymously share reviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs and employers. So, I guess the lesson is that job hunting has been transformed to some extent. You can do a lot more of it at home in your pajamas. But some things never change. When push comes to shove, you still have to put on a suit and go out and meet people.

Hiring and Promotion
Computers and the Internet
Employment Agencies
Social Networking (Internet)


Dressed for a Meeting, Ready for Mayhem

Abstract: From his precinct on the fringes of Hell’s Kitchen, Detective Kevin P. Schroeder has cracked the case of a corpse in a Dumpster, wrestled a man into handcuffs on the sidewalk, and chased suspects across rooftops and down fire escapes. When he prepares for a day at work, he puts his handgun in a holster, clips his cellphone and radio on his belt, and tucks handcuffs into his waistband, letting one of the cuffs dangle outside where he can easily grab it. And then, in a well-worn tradition that has endured for more than a century, Detective Schroeder adds one more crucial piece of gear. He puts on a tailored suit jacket that has been cut with extra material around the waist. That way, there are no unsightly bulges from gun and gear. “I like room in it because of my pistol, my handcuffs, my radio,” Detective Schroeder said. “You want it a little bigger than you normally would get.” “I try to wear my less expensive suits if I am going out to track a bad guy,” he added. From streets to stairwells, garbage bins to muddy riverbanks, the tradition of the dapper detective runs through years of law enforcement, surviving the rough-and-tumble of gritty streets and a trend in recent years toward dress-down Fridays and casual attire. Never mind that it can seem incongruous to wear business attire to make arrests, scrutinize the blood and debris of a murder scene, and confront killers and thieves. “A suit and tie is our uniform,” said Joel E. Potter, 64, a veteran homicide detective who retired in 2000. “A lot of times you’re set up in a car at 3 in the morning, or there are two dead bodies on the sidewalk. And when you step out of the car, you look like a professional. They know the man is there. They know the suits mean business.” There are about 5,400 detectives in New York City, many of them involved in dangerous undercover work, dressing in jeans for drug busts or posing as mechanics in greasy work pants. Then there are thousands like Detective Schroeder, in homicide and precinct units, who not only work at crime scenes but also operate on the public front lines, notifying families of the death of a loved one, interviewing victims and witnesses or testifying at trials. The ability to go from interrogation rooms to living rooms is so essential that some psychologists lecture detectives on both the influence of suit attire on suspects and the need to tip tailors to ensure that alterations hide the appearance of guns and handcuffs. “I suggest they bring along every piece of equipment when they go buy it,” said Richard E. Ovens, who has given lectures to detectives in New York and other places. “You want the weapon to disappear.” Dressing in a suit can set a boundary against what Guy O. Seymour, who has worked as a psychologist for the Atlanta police, called “crime-scene corruption.” “Because they are all well dressed it establishes a barrier between them and the messiness,” Dr. Seymour said. That was the case in some instances for Vernon J. Geberth, who wore two- or three-piece suits on the job before he retired as a detective commander in 1987. “I looked like a banker,” said Commander Geberth. “It put me in a different mode. It slowed me down: ‘Look at this guy. He is all dressed up and he is in an abandoned building.’ I am here to put things back together.” “I was above the fray,” he added. “My psychological armor.” But just because a detective knows the ropes of a homicide investigation does not mean he can find his way around a clothes closet. Some detectives are less than expert at color coordination and tailoring, committing crimes of fashion like pairing dark suits with deep blue shirts, or wearing oversize jackets made of cheap material. With ample opportunities for cleaning or replacing blood-spattered or torn suits, detectives, whose salaries range from $68,000 to $93,000, share tips about favorite designers, like Joseph Abboud, Calvin Klein and Zanetti, and retailers, like Macy’s and Men’s Wearhouse. They also rely on Stewart H. Altschuler, known by detectives as the “Suit Man,” for advice. Most of his clients are detectives, and as a visit to his Midtown office suggests, his is no ordinary suit business. On one wall is a rack of suit samples and framed letters of appreciation from detectives who have bought them. On another are feng shui candles and mounted martial-arts swords, acknowledging a world of both calm and combat. “I want to make them feel comfortable as soon as they come in,” said Mr. Altschuler, 56. There are no set office hours. Mr. Altschuler operates on call to accommodate detectives after night shifts. He hauls samples to precincts, advising detectives on “power colors” like gray and black. “Camel is less forceful,” he said. “But it depends on the area. In upper Midtown, a lot of detectives love the look.” Proper fit is a matter of survival rather than vanity for men who are more likely to subdue a suspect than to peer at a computer all day. “For their own safety, a lot of our suits are side-vented and big-shouldered, in case they have to move around on the ground,” Mr. Altschuler said. James Nuciforo, who retired as a transit detective in 2005, had a specific test for whether a suit fit. “One thing I would always do is put the suit jacket on and point both arms out in front as if I was holding the gun,” he said. “I always wanted to make sure I had enough room to do that.” Detectives’ suits are rooted in New York City law enforcement history. In the early 1900s, a young detective named Michael Fiaschetti wrote about his exploits on the streets of New York in a memoir titled “You Gotta Be Rough,” in which he extolled the “dapper and sleek” and “staidly well-dressed” investigators of his time. Some detectives trade fashion books, like “Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion” by Alan Flusser. They don similar trench coats and ties, and draw inspiration from predecessors, as Detective Schroeder did when he was a rookie 20 years ago and looked up to the detectives in his neighborhood precinct. Detective Schroeder and others go where the crime is, suit and all, no matter how messy it may get. “About five or six years ago, trying to handcuff a bad guy, it took three of us to handcuff him,” Detective Schroeder recalled. “And we started rolling around on the ground. And it’s the streets of New York, and unfortunately they are not the cleanest streets at times. And I don’t know if it was glass or whatever, but I just ripped my whole pants suit.” Detective Nuciforo remembers what he was wearing when his boss ordered him to be lowered by rope down a steep hillside to look for a corpse. “Suit, tie, wingtips,” he said. “The works.” “I have gone through garbage, I been through bloody crime scenes,” said Detective Nuciforo, who is now a consultant for “Law and Order.” “You do what you got to do.” Detectives are ribbed for food stains or wrinkled shirts, or if they commit style gaffes like wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a tie. Detectives in Manhattan are perceived to be better dressers than those in other boroughs because it is high-profile. Older detectives look down on younger ones who show up in jeans and keep a suit in a locker. And there are sins of attitude, such as unnecessarily flashing their shields like detectives on television. “This is not Hollywood,” said Robert Mooney, a veteran homicide detective who keeps his shield in his back pocket unless he is at a crime scene. “If you have to take a shield out to show who you are, you are not doing your job,” he said, paraphrasing the philosophy of a former partner. Many detectives customize their gear. Detective Nuciforo reinforced his jacket lining so his handgun would not wear a hole in it. He had shoes fitted with Vibram soles for better traction. And he avoided belts with a clasp, which were more likely to pop open in a tussle, causing his hip holster to flop around and making it harder for him to draw his gun. When Detective Mooney packs his gear — his weapon, handcuffs, cellphone, business cards, notepad and ammunition — he also tucks a stain remover stick into a suit pocket. “You don’t want to look sloppy,” he said.


A Couple Find Their Dream in the Field

Abstract: Old Bethpage DANIEL HOLMES and Caroline Fanning have taken an unlikely route to realize their dream of farming. They started out tilling the soil in the Hudson Valley and in Suffolk County. Then, last June, the couple began cultivating more than seven noncontiguous acres at Old Bethpage Village Restoration in Nassau County. “This is the complete opposite evolution of most people that are looking to farm,” said Mr. Holmes, 32. Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi initiated the idea of growing fresh produce at the village, which is a county park replicating 19th-century life, as part of his “Healthy Nassau” campaign. He requested bids last spring for an economically viable farm on the property. The proposal of Mr. Holmes, who had previously volunteered at Old Bethpage, and Ms. Fanning, was one of two received. After investing $40,000 in equipment, Mr. Holmes and Ms. Fanning, 25, who live in Bay Shore, started Restoration Farm. This fall they sold their first small harvest of organic tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, peppers and summer squash at a farm stand and began to recruit members for a community-supported agriculture program scheduled to start next spring. Mr. Holmes and Ms. Fanning hoped to sign 30 to 40 members who would pay $350 in advance for a box of freshly picked produce every other week of a 22- to 24-week season. (Full memberships are also available at $700.) So far 15 families have joined and paid to be shareholders in the buying club, which includes the possibility that certain crops may do poorly or even fail, Ms. Fanning said. “Like we are taking a risk, they are taking a risk,” Mr. Holmes said. On a recent morning, mounds of manure — from Old Bethpage’s oxen and cows and a nearby horse farm — were piled by fields being prepared for the winter. Ms. Fanning planted garlic that will come up next summer, but the couple were still figuring out where to place the arugula, peas, broccoli, kale, potatoes and spinach in the months ahead. They have no budget to hire help but are encouraging volunteers. Some of the more irregular parcels will be turned into perennial gardens with flowers and berries, while three to four acres of vegetables will fill the larger plots, Ms. Fanning said. “We are going to be as creative as we can to make it beautiful and productive,” Mr. Holmes said. Though they are using modern methods, the couple tries to keep tractors from rolling through the historic village while visitors are milling about. Under the terms of their six-year contract, Mr. Holmes and Ms. Fanning share with the county a portion of the proceeds from their organic bounty. Jim McKenna, the village’s site director, said Old Bethpage already has three gardens where “historic varieties” of squash, cucumbers and beans are grown, though the old-style vegetables “are not always the prettiest.” That harvest is used in cooking demonstrations. But the park is understaffed, Mr. McKenna said, and the organic farm allows previously untended fields to be utilized. Besides, he added, the eggplants that the farmers grew last summer were a “very tasty variety.” Neither Mr. Holmes nor Ms. Fanning comes from a farming family. Originally from Bay Shore and a graduate of Stony Brook, Mr. Holmes said he planned to teach English but realized he was happier working outdoors. Moving up to the Hudson Valley after college, he started at the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, a seven-acre organic community-supported agriculture program on the grounds of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and “got a fire,” he said. Ms. Fanning grew up in Amityville and was pursuing a degree in American studies at Vassar when she met Mr. Holmes during a summer internship at the farm. After leaving Poughkeepsie, Mr. Holmes further demonstrated his prowess as the farmer for four years at the Sophia Garden and Learning Center, a one-and-a-half-acre community-supported agriculture project of the Sisters of St. Dominic in Amityville. Sister Jeanne Clark, a Dominican nun who worked with Mr. Holmes, said that he had “a farmer’s heart.” Ms. Fanning, who had been working at an antihunger nonprofit organization in New York City, joined him at Sophia Garden in March 2006; they started dating soon afterward and moved in together last December. “This is the lifestyle that I want to lead,” Ms. Fanning said. To make ends meet, she baby-sits and also waits tables five nights a week at Gino’s Tuscany restaurant in Islip. Mr. Holmes tends bar at the Southside Hotel in Bay Shore and does maintenance work. They are eager to help revive small-scale agriculture. “We don’t have a family farm to inherit,” Ms. Fanning said. “Unless we were going to leave Long Island, we would never be able to afford land on our own. We needed something like this to come along if we wanted to continue farming.”


Bosnia: Memorial Ceremony Disrupted

Abstract: A crowd of furious Bosnian Muslims jumped over fences and attacked Serbia’s prime minister with stones and water bottles on Saturday, marring the 20th anniversary commemorations of the massacre in Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia. Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, a former ultranationalist, escaped serious injury. Mr. Vucic, right, in the center surrounded by bodyguards, said he was hit in the face with a rock as the crowds chanted “Kill, Kill.” The scene at a memorial center in Potocari, a Srebrenica suburb, overshadowed what was supposed to be a day of reflection and remembrance for the 8,000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered at the hands of Serb forces in Srebrenica in 1995. Two United Nations courts ruled that the killings constituted genocide. During the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Mr. Vucic was known for making incendiary statements about Bosnian Muslims.

War Crimes,Genocide,Crimes Against Humanity


Plushenko’s Artistry at Root of Olympic Figure Skating Controversy

Abstract: VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Figure skating has yet to begin at the Winter Olympics, and already strange things are happening. O.K., not as strange as Lindsey Vonn wrapping her ailing shin with Austrian cheese curd , but strange nonetheless. The cold war ended two decades ago, except somebody forgot to tell the people involved in figure skating. The East German judges are long gone, the Soviet bloc has been dismantled, but obsession, paranoia and conspiracy still rule. If skating didn’t exist, Robert Ludlum would have invented it. “This sport is so political, nobody trusts anybody,” said George Rossano, an American expert on the arcane and controversial points-based scoring system. The latest controversy centers on Yevgeny Plushenko , the defending Olympic men’s champion from Russia. He retired, then made a comeback for Vancouver, where he is favored to win a second gold medal. There is no better leaper in the world. Plushenko jumps like a teenager at a horror movie. He is also fast and calm under pressure. And in the words of Dick Button, the 1948 and 1952 Olympic champion, “He has enough chutzpah to fill the Grand Canyon.” Still, there are drawbacks to Plushenko’s skating: footwork and artistry. This is a guy who could use a few lessons at Arthur Murray . It was the same problem that Tom DeLay had on “Dancing With the Stars.” Both men have terrific charisma, but would be well advised in the future to avoid rhinestones, bolero jackets and the cha-cha. Plushenko freely admits this flaw in the transitional moves — footwork, choreography and musicality — that link his soaring triple axels and quadruple toe loops. At a news conference last month, referring to himself and Brian Joubert of France, Plushenko said, “We don’t have any transitions, because we focus on our jumps.” He also suggested that judges could prop up skaters under the new scoring system, just as in the old 6-point system, by inflating their “component” scores, the equivalent of the old artistic marks. This added to the suspicion by some that exaggerated artistic marks were given to Plushenko at the recent Russian and European championships. Joe Inman, an influential American judge who helped write the rules for component scores, passed along Plushenko’s remarks in an e-mail message to friends, including some fellow judges. The e-mails were detailed in The Globe and Mail of Toronto. In them, Inman wrote that despite Plushenko’s admission of weakness in transitions, “The judges seem to miss what he is saying.” Inman also wrote, “We as judges should think about what we saw before putting that mark down.” In a telephone interview Thursday, Inman, who is not a judge at these Games, said he was not trying to influence the outcome of the men’s competition at the Vancouver Olympics. “It was innocuous,” he said. “I wasn’t telling people how to judge.” Except that is not how his remarks were interpreted by the Russians and the French, who detected a full-blown North American conspiracy against European skaters. Perhaps Inman should have known better. If there is a chance to twist words in this sport, they will be contorted like a skater’s body during a Biellmann spin. Didier Gailhaguet, the president of the French figure skating federation, told the sports newspaper L’Equipe, “This proves the North American lobby is under way.” The Russians were also not happy that DVDs, used this season to train judges about proper and improper skating techniques, included video of Plushenko from the 2006 Winter Olympics and harsh comments about his artistry. It did nothing to calm the fear of conspiracy that American and Canadian officials helped make the DVDs. At the Russians’ behest, USA Today reported, Plushenko was removed from the video, like an out-of-favor Politburo member airbrushed from viewing-stand photos at a May Day parade. The men’s short program begins Tuesday, but what is happening off the ice might be more engaging than whatever will happen on the ice. Plushenko is not talking; he did not even bother to show up for practice Friday. But everybody else is speaking his mind, often dyspeptically and hilariously. Button called The New York Times to say that Gailhaguet of France had a lot of nerve to complain about a supposed North American conspiracy. After all, Gailhaguet was barred from skating for three years , accused of conspiring to manipulate the pairs and ice dancing competitions at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. “He’s an international manipulator himself,” Button said. “I wouldn’t believe a word he said if you removed all his blood and replaced it with truth serum.” Gailhaguet did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for an interview. Geopolitical lines have blurred. Some Americans are criticizing other Americans. Johnny Weir, competing in his second Olympic Games for the United States, has a Russian coach and is enamored of all things Russian. He said Friday that Inman “put egg on my face” and “tarnished my reputation” by seeming to try to influence the judging. And, oh yeah, he wants Inman barred for life as a judge. “As much as we make about the judging scandal in Salt Lake City, that it’s not American, that we don’t do things like that, this shows we are just like anybody else,” Weir said. Odd things are happening all around. A wild lynx has been spotted on the downhill course and near the luge track in recent days. Perhaps it was on the run, desperate to avoid becoming part of Weir’s costume for the free skate.

Figure Skating
Olympic Games (2010)
Plushenko Yevgeny
Inman Joe
Button Dick
Gailhaguet Didier
Weir Johnny


Camping in the Spartan Nomad Lands of Tibet. With a Cocktail. And a Sauna.

Abstract: SANGKE GRASSLANDS, China — The campsite called Norden here on the Tibetan plateau is not quite as spare as the tent homes of nomads who drive yaks across these wind-scrubbed pastures. The cabins and yak wool tents have wooden floors, custom-made felt blankets and access to hot showers. An American bartender in a new lounge with blond wood furniture mixes a cocktail called the Cloudy Nomad (barley wine and honey). This year, the camp also opened a yoga center that doubles as a communal dining hall. A sauna sits nearby. Needless to say, this is not your typical business on the plateau. Norden Camp is the first site for “glamping,” or glamorous camping, in the vast Chinese-ruled Tibetan region, one of the most austere parts of the world. “In the high-end market, it’s difficult to get heard out there and reach the right people,” said Dechen Yeshi, 34, who runs the camp with her husband, Yidam Kyap, also 34. “We had to ask ourselves the question: What is luxury?” Image Norden Camp was built at more than 10,000 feet in a clearing of yellow wildflowers near Yidam’s ancestral home, in the region that Tibetans call Amdo. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times The camp was built at more than 10,000 feet in a clearing of yellow wildflowers near Yidam’s ancestral home, in the region that Tibetans call Amdo. “It was so challenging to set this thing up here in the middle of nowhere,” Dechen said. (Tibetans prefer to be known by their given name.) The camp and a carpet workshop in the area’s main town, Xiahe, are the newest pieces of an ambitious social enterprise started by the Yeshi family, which has a mother-daughter team at its heart. I first heard about the Tibetan-American family from a filmmaker friend, Ruby Yang , and traveled this summer to Gansu Province to meet them. The camp is next to a road leading to Xiahe and its famous sprawling Tibetan monastery, Labrang. The family opened the camp in 2013 to raise revenue for its core enterprise: a textile-weaving business called Norlha that employs mostly women from a nearby village. The textiles are made of yak wool and are sold in New York, Paris and other Western cities, as well as online. A shop at the camp has products on display: shimmering blue shawls and smooth scarves and pillowcases with white cross icons, a traditional design on some Tibetan cloths. I arrived at the camp, coincidentally, on the same weekend in July as an acquaintance from Beijing, Hung Huang, a fashion and publishing entrepreneur. She had come to stay three nights with her young daughter and friends, among them design teachers from Guangzhou. She has posted a stream of photos from the camp on Instagram. Image The Norlha boutique at Norden Camp. Norlha, owned by the same family that opened Norden Camp, is a brand of textiles made of yak wool from the region. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times “I miss it so much,” she wrote. On another day, two red-robed Tibetan monks who once lived at Labrang checked in with several ethnic Han followers. Monks from Labrang arrived to greet them. The Yeshi family has its immediate roots in the Tibetan exile community of Dharamsala, in northern India — the “forbidden land,” as Dechen jokes. That is where Dechen’s parents live and where she grew up. There, the family had heard countless grim tales of China’s policies in Tibet, which the Chinese Army occupied in 1951. Nevertheless, they decided to try to engage with Tibetans in the Chinese-ruled region and make an attempt at social enterprise here. “My standpoint is to work with what we’ve got; this is the situation here, and I’m just going to work with what there is,” said Kim Yeshi, Dechen’s mother and a scholar of Tibetan religion originally from the United States. “There are a lot of things you have in hand. If you deal with those, there’s a lot you can do to help improve the people’s livelihoods and preserve their culture.” Ms. Yeshi met her Tibetan husband, Kalsang, while attending Vassar College. Then the pair moved to Charlottesville, Va., where Ms. Yeshi pursued graduate studies in Tibetan Buddhism at the University of Virginia. She then traveled to Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama, to continue her studies. She said she became interested in textiles and in how weaving could help preserve a culture and provide employment for refugees who had crossed the Himalayas from Tibet. She helped found the Norbulingka Institute , where refugees practice traditional crafts. Image Tibetans at Norden Camp fixing a tent made of yak felt. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times Her focus turned to yak wool and creating textiles with it. She mentioned the idea to Dechen. In 2004, Dechen, who had just graduated from Connecticut College, came to Amdo for the first time, as an aspiring documentary filmmaker. She returned the next year to travel for seven months with her younger brother, Genam. At her mother’s request, they gathered two tons of yak wool to bring to Nepal to have it woven at a friend’s workshop. In 2006, Ms. Yeshi came to help her daughter set up a workshop here. It was the first time she had set foot in Tibet. “The strangest reaction I had was that you could just drive through and get from one area to another,” she said. “The stories I had heard were that travel to places in this area was one to two days by horse.” It was July, and Ms. Yeshi said some of the grasslands looked “shaved.” She concluded that overgrazing was a problem, and this contributed to her idea of helping to create employment for nomads that would not rely on traditional herding. (The Chinese government also points to overgrazing to justify a policy of forcing nomads into resettlement villages , which many Tibetans criticize.) Ms. Yeshi said she also found that “young people don’t want to become nomads anymore.” “Children who have been to school can’t imagine the type of life a nomad would have, especially the women,” she added. “It’s change that happens because of the way life evolves, markets evolve.” They found land for the textile workshop by the village of Zorge Ritoma, which has 200 nomadic households. The Yeshi family members and some locals traveled to Cambodia and Nepal to train in weaving. Machines in the workshop are from Nepal, and Nepalese sometimes come to teach the nomads. Image The food at Norden uses local products, in this case yak meat. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times The textile business now has 120 employees, about 110 at the workshop itself. “Providing jobs in a village, people could continue to live together, and people could stay with their parents and kids,” Dechen said. “They don’t have to leave their hometown for jobs.” Her mother said the long-term goal is to figure out how to replicate these efforts around the plateau to create a sustainable economy for nomads. “I think if we can be successful with Norlha, a lot of people will see what’s possible,” Ms. Yeshi said. “Other people may try what we’re doing. Maybe if we’re lucky, we can have basic management courses on how to run businesses in a modern way, in an efficient way.” Norlha is trying to raise awareness of the region in different ways — for example, putting on a basketball tournament with Tibetan and American teams at the end of August. Though he has ancestral roots in the area, Dechen’s husband, Yidam, said he had been reluctant to move to Amdo, having grown up among exiles in India. But he has settled here now, and Norden Camp is his project. Yidam secured a 10-year land lease because of his family background. The head of food at the camp is an American, Andy Knott, who used to work at an Aman resort in Bhutan. Mr. Knott sometimes doubles as the bartender. The Yeshi family employs a few other Americans. But the 20 or so camp employees are mostly from nomad families in the area. A front-desk manager, Jamyang, 30, grew up in a nomad family, then began traveling himself at age 16, going to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to learn English. He ended up at Norden Camp because he knew Yidam. “I like working here because the environment is so natural,” he said. “I grew up on the grasslands. This is like the place of my childhood.”

Camping
Nomad
Tibet
China
Wool
Textile
Travel,Tourism
Gansu Province China
Luxury Goods


Solskjaer Is Named Cardiff’s Manager

Abstract: The former Manchester United striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was hired as manager of struggling Cardiff. Solskjaer left Molde in his native Norway to take over at Cardiff, which is 17th in the 20-team Premier League.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
Soccer
Cardiff City Soccer Team