Austrians Cap Their Blowout With a Sweep in the Slalom

Abstract: SESTRIERE, Italy, Feb. 25 - Nearly a century and a half after the end of the Austrian Empire, the country that has remained in its place seems to have built a new kind of power on the slopes of the Italian Alps. The Austrians Benjamin Raich, Reinfried Herbst and Rainer Schönfelder swept the medals in the slalom Saturday, putting an exclamation mark on their country's dominance of the Alpine events at these Winter Olympics, at which the Austrian men and women combined for a team-record 14 Alpine medals. Raich, with his second gold medal of these Games, may have established himself as the world's top Alpine skier. "This is one of the greatest days in the Austrian ski history," said Hans Püm, the director of the country's Alpine team. If Saturday night's sweep was the defining moment for the Austrian team, then the failures of Bode Miller and Ted Ligety epitomized what the United States skiers did here. Ligety posted a good time in his first run but was disqualified because he did not get his skis around one gate. Barely out of the start house on his first run, Miller also straddled a gate and did not finish. The other two Americans, James Cochran and Chip Knight, finished 12th and 18th. The United States men and women combined for two Alpine medals at these Games -- Ligety took a gold in the combined, and Julia Mancuso won the giant slalom. "We came in here with a much higher goal than that," said Jesse Hunt, the director of the United States Alpine team. "We came into this capable of getting a medal in every discipline. We didn't hit our goal, and that's upsetting." Raich, Herbst and Schönfelder mastered a hill that gave many skiers problems Saturday. In the two runs combined, skiers failed to finish 41 times. Five skiers were disqualified, and several crashed. Perhaps the most breathtaking spill of the day was by the first skier, Giorgio Rocca of Italy, who was a favorite. Less than halfway down, Rocca's skis crossed and he tumbled to the snow, sending the flag-waving Italian fans into a chilled silence. Several skiers said the course was faster than usual and the surface inconsistent. The temperature rose before the race, softening parts of the ice and creating bumps, Hunt said. Saturday night was the third time in Olympic history that the Austrians swept the medals in an Alpine event. These Games have helped solidify Raich's reputation for all-around greatness. Should Raich, who turns 28 on Tuesday, continue to shine, he could rival the legendary Hermann Maier. What separated Raich from other skiers, Schönfelder said, was his patience and dedication. Earlier in the Games, Raich was closing in on a gold medal in the combined when he skied off the course. That did not stop him from blowing away the competition in the final two Alpine events. "For me, the important thing is, when you make bad races, or when you go out, like in the combined, don't think too much to this race," said Raich, who also won the giant slalom. "Think to the future. That was always my goal, and I think that is my secret."

SKIING
AUSTRIA
SCHONFELDER RAINER
HERBST REINFRIEND
RAICH BENJAMIN
ALPINE SKIING
OLYMPIC GAMES (2006)
WINTER GAMES (OLYMPICS)
OLYMPIC GAMES


Bridgeport Baseball Player’s House to Be Razed

Abstract: BRIDGEPORT FOR much of the past decade, a forlorn house, rising from the rubble just off Interstate 95 here, has served passers-by as an education of sorts in the life and contributions of James Henry O’Rourke. O’Rourke was a baseball legend and Hall of Famer who might be the only player to set records with his first and last base hits. His was the first hit in National League history in 1876, and his last came in 1904 at age 54, making him the oldest player to have a hit, a record that still stands. In between, he won eight league championships, earned a law degree from Yale University and made a fortune in business as well as baseball. He also built this house, a huge Victorian, with ornate ceilings, stained-glass windows and a view of Bridgeport Harbor when such a thing was worth boasting about. This particular neighborhood was leveled by the wrecking ball in the late 1990s , as the first step in an urban renewal project. Cty officials and others who wanted to keep O’Rourke’s memory alive hoped the site would include a museum about him. But now, with the redevelopment project still waiting, it appears that such plans may never come to pass, and the house is about to come down. The house has stood vacant, but it has seen plenty of use. Vagrants slept in it, teenagers smoked marijuana in it, and judging from the refuse in the yard, it has been spectacularly popular among connoisseurs of cheap vodka. And every day, roughly 100,000 people drive past, bearing witness to the slow disintegration of a home once revered as the locus of a city hero. Some time in the coming weeks, though, commuters will watch a wrecking crew put the house out of its misery, making way for a new chapter in one of Bridgeport’s biggest redevelopment projects. It is a matter of sweet historical symmetry that the person who saved the house when he was a state senator, Bill Finch, will preside over its destruction. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Finch, a Democrat who is now Bridgeport’s mayor, offered an informal tour of the property at 274 Pembroke Street and of the waterfront. Looking up as a brisk wind peeled vinyl siding from the upper stories, Mr. Finch said that when he heard about the home’s planned destruction in the late 1990s, he was already fed up with the city’s habit of razing historical landmarks like the homes of P. T. Barnum or the Harral-Wheeler mansion, which was famed for its Gothic Revival architecture. Mr. Finch said he had had no grand plan for the home. He had hoped private citizens would raise enough money to move the house and turn it into a museum, but by last fall it was clear that would not happen. Still, he said, the home’s long, ugly farewell was worth it. “By leaving this house that everybody sees, a lot of people know about this scholar-athlete, a great entrepreneur, a leading citizen,” he said. “See, it was all part of my plan!” Don’t get Mr. Finch started on the idea that the house also represents Bridgeport’s failure to advance the so-called Steel Point project, hailed for nearly 20 years as the cornerstone of the city’s revival. Once planned as a seven-million-square-foot mix of commercial and residential high-rises, the proposal is now roughly half the size. Developers remain committed to the project, Mr. Finch said, but their partnership recently expired and one developer lost his financing during the recent global credit squeeze. “It’s complicated,” he said. For now, the area is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence to prevent dumping, and garbage sprouts through the patchy grass that is being swallowed by mud. Mr. O’Rourke, meanwhile, will get a statue, most likely at Harbor Yard, the minor-league ball field just across the water from his old home. That he deserves a monument seems beyond debate. In addition to his playing career, O’Rourke was a city impresario of sorts who owned and ran Newfield Park, a minor league stadium on the East End of Bridgeport. There, he hosted Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other legends for Sunday games as they shuttled between Boston and New York. The son of an Irish immigrant of modest means, O’Rourke was also the first team owner in the area to hire an African-American, and when he wasn’t financing real estate deals or arguing legal cases, he could be found playing catch with the neighborhood children. He had Thurman Munson’s build, Teddy Roosevelt’s bluster and Walt Frazier’s weakness for ten-dollar words. Nicknamed Orator Jim, O’Rourke once unloaded this argument on an umpire, “I am conversant with the conglomeration of facts in this case, and as my optical eyesight is of extreme excellence, I am positive of your misinformation.” Michael J. Bielawa, a Bridgeport librarian and poet, unearthed this quote for his book, “Bridgeport Baseball” (Arcadia Publishing). Mr. Bielawa and Bernard Crowley, a former Bridgeport resident and marketing executive, stumbled on O’Rourke’s history in the 1980s, and helped bring the story to Mr. Finch’s attention. The two men started a nonprofit organization, the First Hit, in 2003, and spent the past several years marching in St. Patrick’s Day parades and issuing an annual award in the ballplayer’s name, in hopes of raising awareness and money. Now, standing outside the O’Rourke house with Mr. Crowley on the day after the mayor’s visit, Mr. Bielawa said a statue would work just fine. “The house was the biggest piece of memorabilia, sure, but we have to be realistic about these things, you know?” Mr. Bielawa said. “It’s the bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, we need that hit. We’ll bunt instead of trying to hit a home run.” “We’ll take a walk,” Mr. Crowley said. “Just get on base.” “Right,” Mr. Bielawa said. “Even the count. Just work it out.”

Law and Legislation
Athletics and Sports
Bridgeport (Conn)
O’Rourke James Henry


Sebastian Coe Seeks to Rebuild Trust in Track and Field

Abstract: RIO DE JANEIRO — The door opened to the president’s box on Wednesday, and Sebastian Coe, standing and watching the steeplechase below, was outlined against a backdrop of empty blue seats in the vast Olympic Stadium. This is not the color scheme that track and field needs at this historically fraught stage. It is definitely not the look Coe was hoping for when he supported Rio (and South America) as host of the Olympic Games for the first time, and enthusiastically provided counsel to the Rio leadership. At the last Summer Olympics in London, Coe, twice a gold medalist runner at 1,500 meters, was in charge of the Games as head of the organizing committee. That 2012 show was a hit, and so was Coe’s sport, with full houses the rule. Four years later, Coe is back in another exposed post as president of the International Association of Athletics Federations , track and field’s world governing body. Coe has plenty of bigger concerns, including saving his sport and coping with internet death threats. But the empty seats look too much like a metaphor for the state of the sport’s credibility. “We do have to be clear; London was not the norm,” Coe said. “This is a stadium that is not easy to get to, and we’ve worked closely with the local organizing committee to try and do the best we can.” Brazilians have no great cultural affinity for track and field, and times are tough here. Nonetheless, after one week of competition and some of the smallest crowds in the modern history of Olympic track and field, it seems fair to think the sport could have done better (selling a bunch of tickets when Usain Bolt runs does not count). As for the longer-term issues, Coe and his growing number of consultants and new hires, including the just-appointed I.A.A.F. chief executive Olivier Gers, will keep trying to rebuild a semblance of trust in their sport. Doping has been far too common, oversight far too uneven (see Kenya and Russia for holes in the dragnet). Credibility was further shattered by charges of corruption against Lamine Diack, the former association president who is accused of demanding bribes to cover up positive drug tests. “You know when you want to clean your room or your house?” the American decathlete Ashton Eaton said in a recent interview. “It gets messier before it gets cleaner. I kind of feel like that’s the phase we’re in.” Coe and the association’s council have approved major structural changes , which will be put to a vote at a special congress of all national federations in December. The plan is to rewrite the association’s constitution and separate its powers, creating genuinely independent oversight of doping and ethics and significantly increasing gender balance in governance. Rising to the Challenge 9 Photos View Slide Show › Image Doug Mills/The New York Times “Young people are not just looking at us as a sport; they are looking at us and asking a very fundamental question: Do we look like the world they live in?” Coe said. “And there are parts of us that don’t. We are a 50-50 sport out there in the stadium, and yet in Europe, up until May, in 51 federations, you only had one female president.” This was a job — for now unpaid — that Coe coveted. And yet it has often looked like a classic case of be careful what you wish for. The I.A.A.F.’s decision in November to suspend the Russian federation from the sport and the upholding of that decision in June to include the Rio Games have generated criticism inside and outside the Olympic bubble. The British news media has reported that Coe received death threats in Russian, something Coe does not deny but refuses to discuss. “It’s fine; it’s fine,” he said, looking rather ashen when the subject was broached. The subject is no joke. Yuliya Stepanova, the Russian whistle-blower now at an undisclosed location in the United States with her husband, Vitaly, underscored the point this week when she said, “If something happens to us, you should know it’s not an accident.” The British authorities have been consulted on Coe. Security around him is tighter than usual, but he is still getting in his morning runs on the beach in Rio. He denies persistent rumblings that he and Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee president, have grown more distant because of the Russian ban, which Bach’s committee did not dispute but chose not to extend to all sports at the Rio Games. “I don’t see it like that,” Coe said. “Thomas and I, we have known each other for 35 years. I know his attitude about performance-enhancing drugs. It’s exactly the same as mine.” On Tuesday, they sat side by side in the Olympic Stadium. Has the relationship between the longtime allies changed? “I hope not; I see no reason why it should,” Coe said. “We’ve all had to make difficult decisions here, and we all have made decisions that we clearly have felt were in the best interests of our organization, but I am grateful to the I.O.C. for having respected the decision the I.A.A.F. made.” Image I.A.A.F. President Sebastian Coe, with tie, sat next to I.O.C. President Thomas Bach at Olympic Stadium in Rio this week. Credit Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images And yet, to leave the Russian question up to individual federations looked very much like a cop-out. “I don’t see it like that,” Coe said. “I see this as a decision that reinforced the autonomy of the individual federations.” Coe pointed out that the other federations did not have as much time to act on Russia before Rio as the I.A.A.F. had. Still, there is considerable resentment as well as support from inside the Olympic movement. And there will continue to be great resentment from Russian athletes who missed the Games. Those include the star pole-vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, who despite Russia’s ban was elected on Thursday by her fellow athletes to the I.O.C. Athletes Commission and thus a temporary spot on the committee. But Coe said the focus would soon be to get Russia back inside the tent. “I certainly didn’t come into the sport to stop people from competing,” he said. Another task force, whose members are in Rio, has been formed to lay out the conditions for Russia’s return. As for the empty seats in the Olympic Stadium, Bolt won the gold medal in the 200 meters on Thursday night before a good-sized crowd, and next year he should bring back more buzz when the world championships return to London. But Doha, Qatar, the host of the 2019 championships, with its small population base and Bolt probably retired, could be a harder sell. But the Olympics remain the most important shop window for track and field, as Coe well knows; they helped make him an enduring star at home. The question for Tokyo in 2020: How to avoid looking like yesterday’s sport when the world could actually be paying attention? “We will look afresh at our approach to a lot of things,” Coe said. “We want to look at timetables. We want to look at our broadcast relationships, and we want to make sure our sport is being shown to be what it is. We’ve had three world records here, and as of the other day, we’ve had 35 national records. This has been top-drawer athletics.” But as Coe, whose temples are grayer than they were a year ago, knows too well, quality is only one part of the formula. The much trickier part is getting a rightly disillusioned public to believe in what it might happen to see.


Pope Offers Apology, Not Penalty, for Sex Abuse Scandal

Abstract: VATICAN CITY — Faced with a church sexual abuse scandal spreading across Europe , Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday apologized directly to victims and their families in Ireland , expressing “shame and remorse” for what he called “sinful and criminal” acts committed by members of the clergy. But the pope did not require that Roman Catholic leaders be disciplined for past mistakes as some victims were hoping, nor did he clarify what critics see as contradictory Vatican rules that they fear allow abuse to continue unpunished. “You have suffered grievously, and I am truly sorry,” the pope said in a long-awaited, eight-page pastoral letter to Irish Catholics. “Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated.” He also criticized Ireland’s bishops for “grave errors of judgment and failures of leadership.” The letter was written in language that was at once impassioned, personal and sweeping. And the pope did take the relatively rare step of ordering a special apostolic delegation to be sent to investigate abuse in unspecified dioceses in Ireland. But even that decision raised questions among many who wondered what the investigators might unearth beyond what the Irish government found in two wide-ranging and scathing reports released last year. One report found systemic abuse in church-run schools; another said the church and the police in Ireland had systematically colluded in covering up decades of sexual abuse by priests in Dublin . The pope has apologized before for sexual abuse scandals, most notably when meeting with victims in the United States in 2008. But the letter once again showed the difficulties facing Benedict, as a problem that he felt he had already decisively addressed appears to be intensifying, with hundreds of new allegations of sexual abuse surfacing. The crisis also stands to damage Benedict’s central goals of fortifying the church and fighting secularism in Europe. The letter was especially anticipated, coming after weeks of damaging reports in several countries that brought the scandal close not only to the leader of Ireland’s church, but also to the pope himself. Last week, a psychiatrist who treated a priest decades ago in a German archdiocese run by the future pope said he had repeatedly warned that the priest, who was accused of sexually abusing boys, should never work with children again. The priest was re-assigned to parish work almost immediately after his therapy began, and one of Benedict’s deputies at the time has taken responsibility for that decision. Less than five years later, the priest was accused of molesting other boys, and in 1986 was convicted of sexual abuse. The pope did not address that case in his letter to the Irish, nor did he call for Cardinal Sean Brady , the head of the Irish church, to resign. Cardinal Brady said last week that he would step down if the pope asked, after revelations that he took part in a church investigation in 1975 in which two children were forced to sign secrecy oaths. The letter also remained tightly focused on Ireland — to the dismay of many victims’ groups around the world — even as the crisis has widened to include Catholics in Austria , the Netherlands and Germany . “I find that deceitful because we know that this is a global and systemic problem in the global church,” said Colm O’Gorman, the co-founder of a victims’ group who said he was sexually abused by a priest as a teenager in Ireland in the early ’80s. “It’s all about protecting the institution and, above all, its wealth.” “The greatest contribution the pope could have made was to stop the abuse of victims, and he’s not even done that,” he added. In recent years, the Catholic Church in the United States has paid over $2 billion in abuse settlements. In Ireland, some parishes have said they may have to take up a Sunday collection to help fund abuse settlements. For many Catholics, the letter offered a critical test of whether the pope can stem a crisis that has shaken the credibility and authority of the Roman Catholic Church in other parts of the world. Even as Benedict urged Irish clergy to cooperate with civil justice authorities, the abuse scandals have put to the test a Vatican culture of protecting its own even in the face of crimes against civil and canon law. While many Irish Catholics were hoping for concrete measures after the government reports that criticized Vatican norms for dealing with the abuse, Benedict instead offered a prescription for how to renew their faith. He urged all Irish clergy to go on a spiritual retreat and suggested that dioceses set aside special chapels where Catholics could pray for “healing and renewal.” “There’s a strong tendency to approach this as a problem of faith, when it is a problem of church management and a lack of accountability,” said Terrence McKiernan, founder and president of BishopAccountability.org , which tracks church records on abuse cases. In a statement, the group said the “most glaring” omission in the letter was Benedict’s “failure to acknowledge his own culpability,” adding that, “he pointedly does not include himself in his criticism of church leaders.” In a news conference on Saturday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, defended the pope’s statements, saying the document was intended as a pastoral letter, not an outline of “administrative or juridical measures.” Indeed, Benedict spoke movingly and directly to the pain of victims. “Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen,” the pope wrote. He added, “I know some of you find it difficult even to enter the doors of a church after all that has occurred.” The pope told abusers to “submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy.” The letter is to be read aloud in churches across Ireland on Sunday. In a homily Saturday after reading the letter, Cardinal Brady made no reference to the possibility of resigning. “Let us pray that the Holy Father’s pastoral letter will be the beginning of a great season of rebirth and hope in the Irish church,” he told worshipers at a morning Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, Northern Ireland . Beyond revealing decades of abuse, the Irish government’s reports issued last year found that the church did not routinely inform civil authorities about priests who had committed felonies. Four Irish bishops offered their resignation in the wake of the publication of the report on Dublin in November, but the pope has accepted only one. As reports of abuse cases have spread, many questions have been raised about the line between Vatican secrecy and civil judicial process. Some Irish church officials have said the problem has been deepened by confusion over the interpretation of a 2001 directive by Benedict, then a cardinal, reiterating a strict requirement for secrecy in handling abuse cases. The directive also gave the authority for handling such cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Benedict was prefect of the congregation from 1982 until becoming pope in 2005. Some see an inherent contradiction between the directive and the Vatican’s telling local dioceses to cooperate with civil justice. The Vatican says that its secrecy norms help protect the victims. In his letter, Benedict spoke of “a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches,” to violations of canon law. The pope attributed that problem in part to “a misplaced concern for the reputation of the church and the avoidance of scandal.” And he said that bishops should “continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence.” In the case in Germany in 1980 that made headlines recently, Benedict, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, allowed a priest who was accused of molesting boys to move to Munich for therapy. The diocese he oversaw did not notify civil authorities of the sexual abuse allegations.

Apologies
Pope Benedict
Ireland
Catholic Church
Rape


Novak Djokovic Stunned by Denis Istomin in 2nd Round of Australian Open

Abstract: MELBOURNE, Australia — In one of the biggest upsets in Australian Open history, Novak Djokovic, a six-time champion in the tournament, was defeated in five sets in the second round by Denis Istomin, a wild card from Uzbekistan ranked 117th in the world. With Istomin’s stunning 7-6 (10-8), 5-7, 2-6, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 victory, Djokovic, ranked No. 2, suffered his earliest defeat in a Grand Slam tournament in nearly nine years. It was also the latest blow to Djokovic’s battered aura of invincibility. In June, after winning the French Open for the first time, the elastic Serb held all four Grand Slam singles titles at the same time. Now, he is the reigning champion only in Paris. Image Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan, ranked 117th in the world, gave Djokovic his earliest defeat in a Grand Slam tournament in nearly nine years. Credit Clive Brunskill/Getty Images “He was an underdog, but he didn’t show any nerves in the big moments,” Djokovic said about his opponent after the match. “Surely he didn’t play that many big matches, but just everything came together for him. It was the right moment for him, the right day, and he was better.” Djokovic was upset in the third round of Wimbledon last year by an American, Sam Querrey, surprised in the final of the United States Open by Stan Wawrinka, and then shocked on Thursday afternoon by Istomin, who made it into the Australian Open only by winning an Asian wild-card event. But although Djokovic and the other members of the so-called Big Four have dominated tennis over the last decade, there is great depth and danger at the lower levels. Istomin, a 30-year-old in wraparound sunglasses, made it clear from the start that this could be a struggle. The opening game required 16 minutes before Djokovic won it and raised both arms in celebration. But Istomin would be the one exulting nearly five hours later, when he finished off the biggest win of his career with a powerful first serve down the middle that Djokovic, one of the best returners in history, lunged for and reached with his backhand but could not manage to put back in play. “First of all, I feel sorry for Novak; I was playing so good today,” Istomin said after the match. “I surprised myself as well.” Istomin played remarkable tennis under pressure. Not known for his mobility, he was able to reboot rallies with sliced “squash” shots and to create power when he needed it. “So many lines!” Djokovic complained at one frustrated stage as Istomin hit another winner. But though this might have been vintage Istomin, it was far from vintage Djokovic. At his best, the 29-year-old is one of the most consistent baseline players in history. On Thursday, he had more unforced errors (72) than winners (68), and he also looked tentative at some major turning points. “There was intensity, of course,” Djokovic said. “We played four-and-a-half hours. It’s just that, you know, it’s one of these days when you don’t feel that great on the court, don’t have much rhythm, and the player you’re playing against is feeling the ball very well. So, you know, that’s sport.” His defeat leaves Andy Murray, the world’s No. 1 player, as the favorite to win his first Australian Open title. But Istomin’s big moment will give many lesser-ranked men faith that they, too, can play the match of their lives in Rod Laver Arena.

Novak Djokovic
Denis Istomin
Australian Open
Tennis


Cuomo Orders SUNY to Overhaul Its Sexual Assault Rules

Abstract: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Thursday that he had instructed the State University of New York to overhaul its approach to preventing, investigating and prosecuting sexual assault, including making affirmative consent the rule on all 64 of its campuses. Mr. Cuomo, announcing the change at a news conference in Manhattan, said SUNY’s new approach, which is to be put into effect in the next 60 days, would eventually lead to a statewide law regulating sexual assault policies at all New York colleges and universities. Calling campus sexual assault a national epidemic, the governor said : “This is Harvard and Yale and Princeton, Albany and Buffalo and Oswego. It is not SUNY’s problem by origination. I would suggest it should be SUNY’s problem to solve and SUNY’s place to lead.” SUNY’s approach resembles that recently set by California, by defining consent as an affirmative act, in which both partners must express their desire to engage in each sexual act. Previous consent is not sufficient, and people who are physically helpless, mentally incapacitated or asleep are considered unable to consent at all. “Consent is clear, knowing and voluntary,” the SUNY rules will say. “Consent is active, not passive. “Silence, in and of itself, cannot be interpreted as consent.” Consent need not be verbal, but it must be unambiguous and mutual. “Consent to any one form of sexual activity cannot automatically imply consent to any other forms of sexual activity,” the rules will say. The proposed changes also include a Sexual Assault Victims’ Bill of Rights, a simple and widely distributed document to inform victims of their right to go to the police, as well as campus security, with complaints; a promise of immunity for students who report sexual assault but who might have been violating laws or campus rules, like the prohibition on under-age drinking; a statewide program to train college officials on how to prevent assaults and respond to them when they do occur; and an education campaign for students and parents alike. The consent policy alone represents a major change, not just in sexual dynamics but also in dynamics among SUNY campuses, which until now have been left to hammer out their own sexual assault policies without regard for the policies at the other 63 schools. Many of them already require some form of affirmative consent, but often with varying degrees of specificity. At SUNY Adirondack, a community college in Queensbury, consent is defined in a single paragraph — and further distilled to this concise bottom line: “Clear, unambiguous and voluntary agreement between the participants to engage in specific sexual activity.” At SUNY Brockport, the document defining the college’s interpretation runs across pages, with 21 bullet points. Brockport offers students tips like “Good suggestions for gaining consent” (“Is it O.K. if I take off my pants?”) and “the ‘Dude’ Routine,” a way to check in on friends you fear may need assistance at a party. “Knock or slightly open a closed door and with any excuse starting with ‘dude’ (it somehow makes it more believable) to check the situation,” the guide advises. “ ‘Dude, I thought this was the bathroom.’ ” Linda Fairstein, the novelist and former sex crimes prosecutor, will serve as a special adviser to the university system while it puts the changes into effect. SUNY encompasses almost a half-million students, at two-year community institutions and colleges with bachelor’s and graduate programs. Excluding the community colleges, the university reported 238 sexual assault complaints among 219,000 students during the 2013-14 academic year. To explain the need for these policies, Mr. Cuomo — who pointed out that he is the father of three girls — cited statistics on how many college women are victimized and how many do not report the assaults, and called the numbers “breathtaking.”


Police Cleared in 2011 Death That Incited British Riots

Abstract: LONDON — The man whose death at the hands of a police officer in 2011 set off riots that shocked Britain was killed lawfully, a jury found on Wednesday, issuing a decision that was sharply criticized by the dead man’s family. Mark Duggan, who was 29, was shot dead by the officer in August 2011 in the Tottenham neighborhood of north London. After his death, protesters in north London confronted police officers and violence erupted, spreading first to other parts of London and then to other urban areas across England. The police struggled to contain a level of unrest for which they proved ill-prepared. Image Riot police officers confronted protesters in north London in August 2011. Credit Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Britons were unnerved both by the widespread looting and burning of shops, and by the revelation that some of those who were prosecuted for violence came from comfortable, middle-class backgrounds. On Wednesday, the inquest jury at the Royal Courts of Justice decided, by a vote of 8 to 2, that Mr. Duggan had been killed lawfully. The decision was greeted with shouted protests , and the dead man’s mother, Pamela Duggan, left the court in tears. Carole Duggan, Mr. Duggan’s aunt, rejected the verdict, saying her nephew had been “executed.” The main point in dispute during the inquest was whether Mr. Duggan was armed when he was shot. The jurors concluded that Mr. Duggan did not have a gun at that moment, but they also said it was more likely than not that he had thrown a firearm from a taxi just before he was killed. The verdict was welcomed by the Metropolitan Police. Mark Rowley, an assistant police commissioner, said that armed officers were sent out thousands of times a year and fired shots only once or twice a year. Image Mark Duggan's mother, Pamela Duggan, and her son Marlon Duggan spoke to journalists outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Wednesday. Credit Dan Kitwood/Getty Images “These careful tactics have significantly reduced gun crime,” Mr. Rowley said in a statement read outside the court. “It is significant, then, that a jury of Londoners, who have seen and heard all the evidence, have today concluded that not only was the operation to stop Mark Duggan in the taxi conducted in a way which minimized, to the greatest extent possible, recourse to lethal force, but that Mark Duggan had a gun, and also that our officer had an honest and reasonable belief that Mark Duggan still had the gun when he shot him,” he added. But the member of Parliament who represents Tottenham, David Lammy, said the police’s reputation had not emerged unscathed. “Policing in this country, as in any democracy, depends on consent, trust and legitimacy,” he said. “The shooting of Mark Duggan exposed just how fragile these bonds are.” “I have seen firsthand in Tottenham how, when efforts are made on both sides, these relationships improve significantly,” Mr. Lammy added in a statement. “It is imperative that this process now continues with renewed vigor.”

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


The Burgers Are Back

Abstract: After a fire closed it for winter repairs, the Blazer Pub in Purdys is back in business. Scrubbed and repainted, this casual roadhouse has rarely missed a beat in its 30 years of operation, the last 15 under the O’Leary family. Little has changed over the years, and that’s the way Blazer customers like it. Advice to dine early in order to miss the crowd would be fruitless. On a weeknight at 6, we snagged the last available table and were spared standing on a line that within minutes snaked out the door. The short menu focuses on burgers — fat, juicy and hand formed — and sandwiches and what goes with them. We sampled the cheeseburger ($7.25) and the Blazer Burger ($8.75), which comes with grilled onions, cheese, bacon and tomato. We favored the plainer cheeseburger but added tasty sides of coleslaw and potato salad ($2.75 each) and grilled onions. Mildly spicy, warming Blazer chili was even better with cheese and onion, for an extra 50 cents. We took home half of the huge grilled-chicken Caesar wrap ($8.50) but polished off the accompanying thick-cut fries on the spot. Sandwiches like turkey, B.L.T. and hot corned beef are also available, as are salads like Cobb ($9.75) and Caesar ($6.75). A whole onion, which explodes into a weird chrysanthemum shape at a dunk in hot oil, is not a personal favorite, but to the restaurant’s credit, all frying seemed to use fresh, clean oil. A few booths offer their occupants a bit of uninvaded space; otherwise, tables and chairs crowd the two dining rooms, one with a lively bar. Service is remarkably patient and efficient. The Blazer Pub, Route 22, Purdys. (914) 277-4424. Cash only. Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11:45 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 11 p.m. Reservations taken for groups of more than five.


Young North Korean Defectors Struggle in the South

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Seong-cheol is a survivor. He left his home in North Korea at the age of 8 for a Dickensian existence, begging on the streets with a pack of boys when famine struck and his parents could not feed him. By his account, he endured several stays in brutal North Korean and Chinese prisons for attempting to cross the border into China. But when he finally made it to South Korea, and freedom, Mr. Kim faced an obstacle that even his considerable street smarts could not help him overcome. He had placed into a university under a new affirmative action program, but was haunted by the deprivations of his past and quickly slipped behind South Korean classmates who had already made it through years of an extremely competitive education system. “I just couldn’t shake the memory of hunger from my mind,” said Mr. Kim, 26, who dropped out after just one semester and fell into a deep, alcohol-fueled depression. Mr. Kim is part of a growing number of defectors who are making their way south — the number has increased sevenfold to 23,000 in the last decade — and posing a growing challenge for South Korea. Attempts at integration, including government-run crash courses on life in the capitalist South, have had mixed results, leaving many North Koreans unable to adapt to South Korea’s high-pressure society or overcome their stereotype as backward country cousins. The government had hoped that education might close the chasm, offering piecemeal steps over the last decade that evolved into a full-fledged affirmative action program, which gives young North Koreans the chance to bypass grueling entrance exams to enter top universities. Now, even that stopgap measure appears to be failing as large numbers of North Koreans are dropping out, creating new worries that they and other defectors could become part of a permanent underclass. “These children are simply not equipped for South Korea’s fiercely competitive society,” said Shin Hyo-sook, a specialist in education at the North Korean Refugees Foundation, a newly created government research institute. “They suffer identity issues due to their extreme experiences.” The difficulties have come despite the fact that the government and universities have tried to give them an additional leg up, offering the approximately 500 defectors enrolled in South Korean universities free tuition, government-paid housing and living stipends. And the problems are likely to get more pronounced as defectors increasingly include whole families and children who left without their parents. Officials say the difficulties tend to appear at university because it is the first time that the defectors, who are sent to special remedial elementary and high schools after arriving, find themselves in the same classroom with South Korean students. Many South Koreans had assumed that a shared language and culture would help defectors ease past the educational gaps, but the defectors say the extra help is not enough to catch up with South Korean classmates who spent the evenings and weekends of their childhood at cram schools preparing for entrance exams. Most of the North Koreans, often from that nation’s lower social rungs, have at most a few years of elementary school education more focused on political indoctrination than reading and math, defectors say. An even bigger challenge, educators say, are the defectors’ emotional problems. While South Korean officials say they have not concluded whether these children suffer cognitive deficiencies from malnutrition, they say the North Koreans often suffer depression, anger and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress. What is clear is the result: education experts say that at many universities, half or more of North Korean defectors are dropping out, though the problem is so new that complete statistics do not exist. (The dropout rate among South Koreans is just 4.5 percent.) One North Korean who barely avoided that fate is Kim Kyeong-il, whose family reached the South in its second attempt to defect seven years ago. After the first attempt, when he was 9, he says, he was thrown into a North Korean prison where he barely survived the beatings and starvation that claimed the life of his father. After arriving in the South at 17 and going to a special remedial school, he got a chance to enter Korea University, one of the country’s most prestigious schools. But he found himself way behind in English, which he was not taught in virulently anti-Western North Korea. He was even behind in Korean, having reached only the fourth grade in the North. In lectures, he did not understand the professors’ jokes about South Korean pop culture, but laughed anyway to avoid sticking out. “I felt like someone from the 1970s who was put on a time machine and dropped in the 21st century,” said Mr. Kim, 24, a senior majoring in Chinese language. He said many of his classmates shun him for his northern accent, and for his small stature likely caused by inadequate nutrition. He avoided dropping out by transferring to Seoul’s Yonsei University, another high-level university but one that has been cited as a model for the support it offers defectors. The university offers its approximately 50 North Korean students free tutoring and psychological counseling, according to Jeong Chong-hun, a professor who advises the North Koreans there. “They risked their lives to seek freedom here, so it’s our obligation to help,” he said. Still, he said some students grow so isolated or bitter that they skip classes, and even there, a third of the defectors do not finish school. One North Korean student at Yonsei committed suicide. Kim Seong-cheol, the former street beggar, said his own feelings of intense isolation contributed to his leaving school. His relatively coddled classmates, he said, could not possibly understand the traumas that he had suffered — the wrenching decision to leave his parents to survive or the pain of being shocked with electric prods in prison camps. And they were unburdened by the nightmares that jolted him awake at nights, leaving him too exhausted to study. In the worst dream, he relived the death of his best friend, over and over. The boy died in front of him, choking on a stolen ball of rice as an angry merchant kicked him. But after a year of heavy drinking and never leaving his government-paid apartment during the day, Mr. Kim decided it was not in his nature to give up. He enrolled at a new school, Konkuk University in Seoul, and changed his major from computer science to real estate, in part because it seemed easier. “I must succeed this time,” said Mr. Kim, now a junior. “But whatever I do here, I still always ask myself, ‘What am I? Where do I belong?’ ”

North Korea
South Korea
Defectors (Political)
Colleges and Universities
Depression (Mental)


Senate Ethics Panel Asks That Ensign Inquiry Be Reopened

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Senator John Ensign ’s top aide warned him in 2008 that his office might be breaking the law by helping a former staff member build up a lobbying business. The senator let out a long groan, then said they should help the former employee anyway, according to a remarkably detailed Senate report that urged the government to consider criminal charges against Mr. Ensign. The report issued Thursday, a result of the most extensive Senate ethics investigation in at least two decades, describes the actions inside the senator’s office as he sought to manage the fallout from an affair with the wife of one of his former senior aides. Perhaps seeking to cover up the wrongdoing, staff members deleted incriminating e-mails, and the senator himself may have lied under oath to thwart a separate investigation by the Federal Election Commission , according to the bipartisan report. Mr. Ensign’s actions were so brazen and improper that had he not resigned last week he might have been the first senator expelled in nearly 150 years, said Senator Barbara Boxer , a California Democrat who is the Ethics Committee chairwoman. “This Ensign case was a sad chapter for the Senate,” Ms. Boxer said, “but a far sadder chapter for those whose lives were affected and destroyed by his actions.” The Senate Ethics Committee took the unusual step of releasing the results of its investigation into Mr. Ensign, even though it no longer has the power to punish him. The report cited evidence that Mr. Ensign, a Republican of Nevada , conspired to help Douglas Hampton, his former aide, violate federal law by knowingly allowing him to lobby Mr. Ensign’s office despite a one-year lobbying ban. Mr. Ensign had an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia Hampton, and the work as a lobbyist was meant to replace Mr. Hampton’s Senate salary, according to a plan the senator and Mr. Hampton devised. Mr. Ensign may also have violated federal law by asking his parents to make what the Ethics Committee believes was an illegal $96,000 severance payment to the Hamptons , the report said. Mr. Ensign’s lawyers released a statement Thursday disputing that he broke any laws or rules. “Senator Ensign has admitted and apologized for his conduct and imposed on himself the highest sanction of resignation,” the statement said. “But this is not the same as agreeing that he did or intended to violate any laws or rules.” The Ethics Committee examined more than 500,000 pages of documents, interviewed or deposed 72 witnesses, and issued nearly three dozen subpoenas. It also took the unusual step of bringing in a special counsel — Carol Elder Bruce, a former federal prosecutor — to help in the final stages of the 22-month inquiry. Ms. Boxer and Senator Johnny Isakson , Republican of Georgia , the vice chairman, said the public release of the investigative findings and the referral to the Justice Department were necessary because Mr. Ensign’s actions and abuses reflected on the integrity of the Senate as a whole. The investigation started after Mr. Ensign admitted in June 2009 that he had had an affair with Mrs. Hampton, even while her husband — once one of the senator’s best friends — was working alongside Mr. Ensign in Washington. At the time, Mr. Ensign described it as a personal failure that in no way affected his actions as a senator. But The New York Times reported in late 2009 that Mr. Ensign had called at least a half-dozen prominent Nevada businessmen in the aftermath of the affair and urged them to hire Mr. Hampton as a consultant, an account confirmed Thursday by the ethics investigators. While Mr. Ensign cast these phone calls and conversations as typical references for a staff member, the committee found that “Mr. Ensign used his office and staff to intimidate and cajole constituents into hiring Mr. Hampton.” When one Las Vegas developer indicated that he was not interested, the senator had an aide pass word to the developer that he was officially “cut off” from contact with Mr. Ensign’s office and to “jack him up to high heaven” over his refusal. At least two companies, an airline and an electric utility, ultimately enlisted Mr. Hampton as a lobbyist. Within days, he contacted Mr. Ensign’s office for help. One aide to Mr. Ensign is quoted as saying that he told the senator’s chief of staff, John Lopez, that “this is illegal activity, that it’s got to stop.” Mr. Lopez said he alerted Mr. Ensign, but was told to allow the contacts to continue, but make sure that Mr. Lopez was the only one whom Mr. Hampton spoke with. For instance, Mr. Lopez told ethics investigators that he helped set up meetings for the senator with AllegiantAir, a client of Mr. Hampton’s, to try to resolve a regulatory dispute and improve the airline’s relations with federal aviation officials. Mr. Lopez, who was given immunity to testify, said that “sitting here today, it’s painfully clear to me” that in acting as a go-between “we were being influenced to make a favorable outcome for Allegiant, there’s no question.” The $96,000 payment may have been illegal because Mrs. Hampton was a former campaign aide, and it could be construed as an illegal campaign contribution by Mr. Ensign’s parents, funneled to her through the senator’s political accounts.. As Mr. Ensign prepared to admit to the public that he had had an affair, he drafted a statement in which he called this money a severance payment. But his lawyer had told him that “if that statement doesn’t get the attention of the U.S. attorney’s office, then nothing will,” according to the report. So Mr. Ensign changed his public statement to describe it as a gift, the report says. He also allowed his staff to delete e-mails in his personal account where these early drafts had been stored. And then he provided false or misleading statements to the Federal Election Commission about the nature of the payment, the Ethics Committee said. Both the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department had conducted their own investigations. The Ethics Committee urged Thursday that they be reopened. Mr. Hampton is so far the only person to have been charged with wrongdoing, as he was arrested in March on charges of violating the one-year ban. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer said yesterday that he had no comment. Mr. Isakson told reporters that it would now be up to the Justice Department to decide whether criminal action was warranted. The Senate’s role, he said, “is over.” Ms. Boxer said that despite the Justice Department’s earlier decision not to pursue charges against the senator, she was confident that prosecutors would examine closely the Ethics Committee’s findings of numerous potential violations of the law, including perjury and obstruction of justice. “They will look at it,” she said. “They have to look at it.” Mr. Ensign has already been replaced in the Senate by former Representative Dean Heller, a Republican who is now running for a six-year Senate term. Mr. Ensign’s resignation took place one day before he was scheduled to give sworn testimony in the investigation, which was nearly complete. The move to leave the Senate voluntarily came as somewhat of a surprise, because when Mr. Ensign announced in March that he would not run for re-election, he insisted he would remain in office until his term expired at the end of 2012. “Resigning would be admitting guilt,” he said, “and I did not do the things that they’re saying.”

Senate
John Ensign
Nevada
Douglas Hampton
Cynthia Hampton
Senate Committee on Ethics


Mexican Drug Kingpin Sentenced to 25 Years in Secret Hearing

Abstract: HOUSTON — One of the most brutal and feared drug kingpins in Mexican history was sentenced this week to 25 years in prison during a highly secretive hearing here that was closed to the public to protect the lives of everyone involved, according to a court transcript unsealed Thursday. Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the head of the Gulf Cartel, which controls much of the cocaine traffic across the border in South Texas, has agreed to cooperate with the federal government, according to the transcript. Mr. Cárdenas pleaded guilty to five counts in a lengthy indictment, including drug dealing, money laundering and the attempted murder and assault of federal agents. He also forfeited $50 million in assets. The sentencing took place in a federal courtroom in Houston behind locked doors and armed guards before Judge Hilda G. Tagle, who granted the government’s request to bar the public. Only two members of Mr. Cárdenas’s family and a handful of federal agents were present. Judges often seal particular documents in drug and terrorism trials to protect informants or continuing investigations, but it is highly unusual to seal a sentencing hearing for security reasons. “I apologize to my country, Mexico , to the United States of America, my family, to my wife especially, my children, for all the mistakes I made,” Mr. Cárdenas, 42, said in court. He added, “I am remorseful.” Judge Tagle said people she had encountered whose lives had been ruined by the drug trade and the violence it generated had weighed heavily in her mind in deciding whether to accept the prosecutor’s recommendation of 25 years. “Kidnappings, extortion, gun battles in the streets, a desperate economy, innocence lost — that is your legacy to your country, to our communities on both sides of the border, and to society,” the judge told Mr. Cárdenas, according to the transcript. Before his arrest in Mexico in March 2003, Mr. Cárdenas ran a small empire of drug smugglers and gunmen in his home state, Tamaulipas, moving tons of cocaine every year into the United States. Law enforcement authorities on both sides of the border said he was famed for vicious violence against his enemies and for recruiting former military commandos to serve as his gunmen, known as Zetas. Even from his Mexican jail cell, he continued to oversee the cartel’s operations, law enforcement officials say. But in 2007, President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, having begun an offensive against drug dealers, broke with policy and extradited Mr. Cárdenas along with 14 other major figures from the Mexican underworld. Since then, Mr. Cárdenas has been cooperating with the United States authorities, as his organization has been weakened by arrests and by a lack of strong leadership at the top, experts on Mexican drug cartels said. The Zetas, meanwhile, have broken off and became a separate criminal operation that now controls the lucrative crossing at Laredo, Tex. In recent weeks, there have been a series of gun battles between the Zetas and the remnants of Mr. Cárdenas’s organization in towns along the Texas border as they vie for turf. “Ever since he’s been in the United States, he’s been cooperating,” said George W. Grayson, a professor at the College of William & Mary who studies the Mexican cartels. “He may be more inclined to talk about the Zetas given the hammer-and-tong conflict between them and the Gulf Cartel.” The sentencing and the two years of legal maneuvering before it were handled with the utmost secrecy. At the request of prosecutors, Judge Tagle sealed dozens of documents in the case, from those related to Mr. Cárdenas’s plea agreement to descriptions of his assets. The final hearing on Wednesday was not even put on the court’s docket until hours after it was over. In the transcript, the judge explained that the United States Marshals Service had asked to keep the public from witnessing the hearing because it would jeopardize the safety of Mr. Cárdenas. The threat was never explained in court, and the affidavit requesting the unusual level of secrecy was itself sealed. Judge Tagle agreed to the request, saying there was a good chance, if she opened the hearing, that “the defendant, court personnel, United States marshal personnel, other courthouse personnel and the general public will be placed in imminent danger.” Several experts on criminal law said it was extremely rare for a judge to bar the public from the sentencing of an organized crime figure. It is more often the case that a judge will seal some documents related to a criminal’s plea agreement on the theory it could upend an investigation. And in some cases, a judge will close a sentencing hearing if the defendant is going to talk about his cooperation with investigators. But even in cases involving terrorists and American mobsters, most sentencing proceedings are public.

Cartels
Mexico
Extradition
Drug Abuse and Traffic
Guillen Osiel Cardenas
Crime and Criminals
Plea Bargaining
Sentences (Criminal)


Yankees Near Deal With Rivera, and Bridge Gap With Jeter

Abstract: On Friday morning, Yankees General Brian Cashman rappelled down 21 stories of a building in Stamford, Conn., as he prepared for his Sunday debut as a Christmas elf. But he was just getting going. As the day progressed, he moved closer to completing a $30 million deal with Mariano Rivera that will keep the best reliever in baseball history in a Yankee uniform for two more seasons. And more important, Cashman and other Yankee executives were said to be making significant progress toward resolving the protracted and at times contentious contract stalemate with Derek Jeter, the team’s shortstop, captain and icon. In many ways, the Jeter negotiations have been a bigger challenge for Cashman than the high-rise in Stamford. Jeter and his agent, Casey Close, had been seeking a new deal of four to five years at $23 million to $24 million a year. The Yankees, mindful of Jeter’s age, 36, and his sharp drop-off in offense in 2010, had settled on a three-year, $45 million offer. That gap led to angry feelings on both sides, but a continuing effort this week to create a more cordial atmosphere and resolve the dispute has appeared to produce results. On Tuesday, the two sides met in Tampa, with Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing general partner, taking part. On Thursday, the Yankees indicated to Close that they might be open to a fourth year in their offer and might go as high as $18 million a year. On Friday, Close and the Yankees talked again, according to a person in baseball with knowledge of the matter. “It’s going in the right direction,” the person said. Whether a deal can be reached this weekend before the winter meetings begin, and whether Jeter might accept a contract that would contain even a small pay cut from the $18.9 million he averaged in a 10-year contract that ran from 2001 to 2010, remain to be seen. But for the first time, the Yankees appear optimistic that a deal may be taking shape. As for the Rivera contract, it was essentially put in motion Thursday night during several hours of negotiations between Cashman and Fern Cuza, Rivera’s agent. Although Rivera, 41, is a free agent like Jeter, little attention had been paid to the status of his contract talks because it has been widely assumed that he and the Yankees would agree on a new contract without having to endure the type of standoff that negotiations with Jeter have created. Still, Cashman was mindful that as he negotiated with Rivera, the Yankees’ longtime rivals, the Boston Red Sox , were also making a two-year offer to the future Hall of Famer. It is quite possible the Red Sox knew they had no real chance of signing Rivera but offered him two years as a tactic to force Cashman to do the same and thus spend more money. Cashman might have been hoping to sign Rivera to one year plus an option, or even just a flat one-year deal, but the Boston offer probably made that harder to do. Boston’s closer is the 30-year-old Jonathan Pabelbon, who is a year from free agency and endured the worst season of his career in 2010, when he had eight blown saves and an unintimidating 3.90 earned run average. There was immediate speculation in Boston that the Red Sox would have cast Pabelbon aside if Rivera had actually agreed to move to Fenway, but the notion of Rivera’s walking away from the only team for which he has ever played seemed unrealistic from the start. Instead, he will stay where he is, defying all logic as he remains impossibly hard to hit season after season even as the years and his innings pitched continue to mount. His workload decreased slightly in 2010, but he still had a sterling 1.80 E.R.A. along with 33 saves. For his career, he has 559 saves and a 2.23 E.R.A. But most remarkable are the numbers he has compiled in his long run of postseason games. In that category, Rivera has pitched 139 2/3 innings with an 0.71 E.R.A., allowing just 11 earned runs and 2 home runs. He has an 8-1 record in October (and November) as well as 42 saves. In addition to negotiating with Rivera and Jeter, Cashman found time in recent days to talk trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers , who were attempting to broker a deal that would have sent catcher Russell Martin, a two-time All-Star, to the Bronx, in exchange for the Yankees’ young backup catcher, Francisco Cervelli. The Yankees were interested, seeing Martin as a more attractive safety net than Cervelli as they phase out Jorge Posada from behind the plate and begin to phase in 21-year-old Jesus Montero. But concerns about the 27-year-old Martin’s health — he sustained a right hip fracture last season — derailed the deal. In turn, the Dodgers decided to nontender Martin by the Thursday night deadline, making him a free agent. He made $5 million in 2010 and was due for a raise in arbitration. Whether the Yankees might still be interested in pursuing him is unclear. But Cashman is definitely monitoring the status of the free-agent outfielder Carl Crawford, who is the top position player available this winter. Cashman has talked to the representatives for Crawford, although he has not made an offer. Crawford, who is 29, hit .307 last season and stole 47 bases in his ninth and presumably last year as a Tampa Bay Ray. Crawford is not the Yankees’ top free-agent priority. The left-hander Cliff Lee is. But if Cashman were to lose out to the Texas Rangers in the battle for Lee, leaving the Yankees with unspent millions, he might try to sign Crawford, who is seeking a multiyear deal of over $100 million. If Crawford came aboard, Cashman would presumably seek to trade one of his three starting outfielders — Nick Swisher, Brett Gardner or Curtis Granderson. But for Cashman, Lee comes before Crawford. And before Cashman gets to Lee, he would like to re-sign Jeter. And he seems to be getting closer.

Baseball
Boston Red Sox
Los Angeles Dodgers
New York Yankees
Rivera Mariano
Cashman Brian
Martin Russell
Crawford Carl
Cervelli Francisco


Dow Plunges 680 Points as Recession Is Declared

Abstract: December blew in with a mighty chill on Wall Street. In six and a half hours on Monday, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index declined nearly 9 percent — the type of collapse that, historically, has taken years to occur. But in 2008, a year that has now been officially declared to be in recession, the drop registered with a resigned sense that, yes, this awful year still has yet another month to go. The sell-off, which erased nearly all the gains enjoyed by the stock market in Thanksgiving week, came as investors flocked to the safety of government notes, driving their yields to near record lows as concern mounted that the economy could get much worse before it improves. Investors have long assumed that the country was in recession, and analysts said that after last week’s gains, including the biggest five-day rally in decades, a sell-off was to be expected. But perhaps not this fast — and not this deep. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 679.95 points or 7.7 percent, all but wiping out a 783-point gain built up last week. The S.& P. 500 gave back 80 points of the 96-point gain from the same period. The Nasdaq composite index was also off 9 percent. “I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that we unwound much of last week’s gains,” said Douglas M. Peta, an independent market strategist. “But it was a surprise that the unwinding was all in a single session.” Anxiety is mounting that a quick recovery for the economy no longer seems probable. The nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, charged with officially dating recessions, has declared that the economy had been languishing in one since December 2007. “To find out that we are 11 months into the recession with no end in sight, I think that concerns people,” Mr. Peta said. “It makes them say, gee, we’re right back into the territory of the 1980, 1981 twin recessions” — and past the more modest dips of the early 2000s and 1990s. The Institute for Supply Management recorded the worst reading on the health of the manufacturing industry since 1982. “However you look at the numbers, the message is the same: manufacturing is in free fall, with output collapsing,” Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics wrote in a note to clients. “We see no prospect for near-term improvement.” That view may be underscored on Friday, when the government is expected to report that employers shed more than 300,000 jobs in November, a fresh sign of the problems facing American workers and businesses. Worries about the economy were most pronounced in the debt market, where yields on 10- and 30-year Treasury securities fell near their record lows. Investors rushed to buy government notes, considered the most reliable investment, pushing the price on the 10-year note up 1 22/32, to 108 26/32, causing the yield, which moves in the opposite direction, to fall to 2.73 percent, from 2.92 percent late Friday. Earlier, the yield fell as low as 2.65 percent, the lowest level since the Federal Reserve’s records began in 1962. The yield on the 30-year bond dropped to 3.24 percent after briefly hitting a record low of 3.18 percent. Some hedge fund and mutual fund managers, anticipating big redemption requests from clients, may also have seen last week’s rally as a good signal to sell assets at a decent price. With the new year looming, many funds and banks are looking to shore up their balance sheets so they can put their best fiscal face forward to investors awaiting year-end reports, leading some analysts to fret that markets may become more volatile as December wears on. “There are stories of hedge funds putting up gates and putting halts on redemptions,” said Todd Salamone, an analyst at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. “Fund managers are looking at last week’s rally as a good opportunity to raise cash to meet future redemptions.” The major indexes fell by hundreds of points just after the opening bell, led by huge declines in shares of financial firms. Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley shares all dropped more than 20 percent. Most other major Wall Street banks were also in double-digit percentage declines. Shares of retail companies also slumped on concern that retailers might see only modest gains as consumers remained prudent this holiday season. The daily decline of financial stocks in the S.& P. 500 was 17 percent — the worst decline for any sector in at least two decades. “Financials led the rally on the way up, and they’re leading on the way down,” said Anthony Conroy, head equity trader at BNY ConvergEx Group. Despite the sharp sell-off, it was also remarkable that on one of the worst single-day sessions in decades, there was little panic to be seen on Wall Street. “Investors have slowly become accustomed to it, after seeing it day after day for month after month,” Mr. Salamone said. “A year ago, a 9 percent move would have raised a lot more eyebrows than it does today.” Concern over a slowing economy, which may cut demand, pulled oil prices down $5.15 to settle at $49.28 barrel in New York trading. The declines on Wall Street came after stocks fell in Europe and most of Asia, regions that are also being stung by the economic downturn. Benchmark indexes in Paris and Frankfurt were down more than 5 percent, and London’s FTSE-100 dipped 5.2 percent. The Nikkei 225 index fell 4.6 percent on Tuesday morning. Following are the results of Monday’s Treasury auction of three- and six-month bills:

Dow Jones Stock Average
Stocks and Bonds


At Least 10 Die in Rare Violent Clash in Kazakhstan

Abstract: MOSCOW — What appeared to be an attempt by local authorities to oust striking oil workers from a square in the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan went horribly wrong on Friday, ending in at least 10 deaths in clashes with the police. For six months, the normally repressive government had allowed the workers to occupy the square, in the western oil town of Zhanaozen, where they demanded better wages. That changed after the strikers shifted their focus to political demands this week, including the right to form independent parties. In response, the authorities announced plans to hold a state-sponsored New Year’s holiday party for children on the site, apparently in a ruse aimed at providing an excuse to clear out the workers. In an online video said to be shot at the scene, protesters are shown pushing past police lines to dismantle a stage for the party, then overturning a tree decorated for the holiday. It also showed police officers firing into the air. The confrontation appears to be the most violent in the sprawling former Soviet republic since independence was declared 20 years ago. The country, strategically important to the United States for its enormous oil reserves, has been considered a stable, though repressive, state in the otherwise politically shaky region of Central Asia. Although its longtime leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is autocratic and intolerant of dissent, he has not had to face open rebellion in a country that has grown wealthier on its oil riches. The government acknowledged that 10 people had died, though reporters who spoke to people there before communications were cut said there were reports of scores of fatalities as the police shot into the crowd. The authorities did not provide an account of the clash. By the afternoon, witnesses said, a government building and the headquarters of a state oil company were burning. Even the lower death toll of 10 reported by the government would be the highest loss of life in a protest in Central Asia, the five largely Muslim countries to Russia’s south, since the Arab Spring revolts began. Leaders throughout this region have been unnerved by events in the Middle East, but largely felt that the dynamics were so different that their countries would escape the unrest. This month, thousands of protesters gathered in a square in Moscow in the largest display of dissent in Russia in years. It is unclear if the violence on Friday in Kazakhstan presages more unrest, or will remain a local issue. Mr. Nazarbayev, a former Soviet apparatchik who took over his country after declaring independence 20 years ago on Dec. 16, which is celebrated as Independence Day in Kazakhstan, had already responded to the toppling of Arab leaders by announcing a move to a multiparty Parliament. Elections are scheduled for January. The striking oil workers in Zhanaozen had argued with workers erecting the stage, a holiday tree and large felt tents on Thursday. The practice of scheduling events for children, like fairs or circuses, in politically important public spaces has become a common tactic by authoritarian governments in the former Soviet Union to discourage protests. Askhat Daulbayev, Kazakhstan’s prosecutor general, said Friday in televised remarks that “having rudely violated the public order, the protesters attacked the policemen, toppled the New Year’s tree, destroyed the yurts placed there because of the holiday, as well as the stage and set a police bus on fire.” Mr. Daulbayev said protesters attacked the police “using firearms and cold steel.” Zhana A. Baitelova, a reporter at Respublika, an independent newspaper in Almaty, the commercial capital, said protesters speaking on cellphones described a scene of escalating chaos as the police tried to defend the stage and decorations for the holiday event. “Police used gas at first, then fired in the air, and then it was panic,” she said. “They are trying to make hooligans out of the protesters, saying they attack children,” she added. But the town is small, and most residents work in the oil fields. “The children are the children of strikers. This is crazy.” The Echo of Moscow radio station reported that by Friday evening armored personnel carriers were patrolling the town. Vesti, a Russian television channel, showed video of the smoldering remains of burned cars on the streets. The oil workers walked off their jobs last spring in a dispute about pay for dangerous work; hundreds were subsequently fired. In July, many began camping in the city square in an indefinite protest, a rare challenge to the government. The strikes disrupted the output from the company, Kazmunaigaz, but did not spread to Western operations, like Chevron’s Tengiz oil field, not far away in the same arid, flat expanse on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea that is the source of Kazakhstan’s oil wealth.

Kazakhstan
Strikes
Police
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Deaths (Fatalities)


Knicks Start Practice With a Coach of Fewer Words

Abstract: WEST POINT, N.Y. — After the first practice of his second season with the Knicks, Coach Derek Fisher revealed that he had altered his approach. He was doing less talking. “I think the players will appreciate that quite a bit,” he said. On Tuesday, the Knicks opened training camp here with a new cast of characters and a slightly refurbished coaching style from Fisher, who sounded eager to do everything he could to avoid the pitfalls of his debut season. Carmelo Anthony, the team’s most handsomely paid employee, said he noticed some differences. Gone were the constant interruptions. “They did their talking early for a couple minutes,” Anthony said, referring to Fisher and his assistants, “and then they explained the drills, and then we got out there and got after it.” Fisher, who spent much of his first season wearing the troubled look of a meter reader, said he began to tinker with his practice tactics over the summer after studying film of teams that had won championships running the triangle offense — namely, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls. Those teams did not always run the cleanest versions of the triangle, Fisher said. They made sloppy passes. They misread cuts. (Fisher, of course, would know, having won five championships with the Lakers as a point guard.) “But they just figured out a way to get it done,” he said. “That’s really, I think, what was most enlightening for me over the summer as I was continuing to put more pressure on myself to figure out how to make this work for them. Ultimately, it’s really them making it work for themselves, and I’m just here to try to guide them a little bit.” Along those lines, Fisher indicated that his new way of doing business — less chatting, more working — was partly designed to give his players more freedom and more of a sense of responsibility. The game does not always need to be so rigid, Fisher said. Indeed, there were many possessions last season during which the Knicks appeared to be methodically working through the steps of their offense without even looking at the basket. “I think every coach in every sport is trying to find ways to structure efficient practices and not have guys feel like they’re being overtaught,” Fisher said. “That’s the No. 1 priority for us, to make sure that when we’re on the court and we’re in between the lines that we’re creating an environment where guys are working hard, where there’s passion and enthusiasm for what we’re doing.” He added, “That means we can’t talk as much, and that starts with me.” Anthony, who had season-ending knee surgery in February, was a full participant in Tuesday’s practice. Although medical personnel cleared Anthony of restrictions entering camp, Fisher said the team would continue to monitor Anthony’s progress and exercise caution. Anthony, Fisher said, sometimes needs protection from himself. “I don’t expect he’ll want to hold himself out,” Fisher said, “but we’ll try our best to manage it.” If Tuesday signified a fresh start for Anthony, Fisher appeared to be embracing the team’s undefeated record, too. Anthony said that Fisher seemed more confident and comfortable than he had at the start of training camp a year ago, when he was just months removed from the end of his playing career. “He understands what he wants, what he wants to get out of this,” Anthony said. “You can already feel that, his vibe.” Fisher will continue to work in the considerable shadow of Phil Jackson, who, as team president, pledged last week to become more involved in the Knicks’ day-to-day operations. On Tuesday, Fisher bristled when he was asked whether Jackson had been a vocal presence at practice. “He doesn’t coach the team,” Fisher said. “I coach the team, so he wasn’t involved in that way.” As Fisher pointed out, the wins and losses will continue to belong to him. His first season was one to forget, and he will enter his second with a .207 winning percentage, which ranks 292nd out of 315 on the career N.B.A. coaching list, according to the Basketball Reference website . Among coaches who have spent a full season on the bench, only Brian Winters (.196), Quinn Buckner (.159) and Bill Hanzlik (.134) have won a lower percentage of their games. While there is room for improvement, any coach would have had trouble coaxing more victories from last season’s roster, which was hindered by injuries and a clear lack of talent. Fisher cycled through 36 starting lineups. He can only hope for more stability this season. Then again, nobody has illusions of a ticker-tape parade. “We’re not in that conversation at the moment,” Fisher said. Still, Fisher dismissed the suggestion that the season would be another cog in a long-term rebuilding project, citing the ages of veterans like Anthony (31), Jose Calderon (34) and Arron Afflalo (29). Anthony, for example, has many fine qualities as a basketball player. Patience is probably not one of them. “They want to win now,” Fisher said. “We’re not pacing ourselves, I guess, for success. We want to find a way to get there as fast as possible.”

Knicks
Coaches
Derek Fisher
Phil Jackson
Basketball


CASH Music Brings an Open-Source Ethos to Bands

Abstract: When Maggie Vail first heard about open-source software, she said, “it felt like punk rock.” Ms. Vail, a longtime member of the independent rock music scene, is one of the executive directors of CASH Music , a nonprofit group that wants to bring some of punk’s do-it-yourself spirit to an area that many musicians find frustratingly complex and expensive: managing their music and fan interactions online. CASH, which stands for Coalition of Artists and Stakeholders, is part of a growing market of behind-the-scenes companies like Topspin Media and Bandcamp that handle the kind of business tasks that used to be the domain of record labels — marketing, merchandising and Web distribution among them. But unlike most of those companies, which take fees on transactions, CASH offers its services free and uses open-source software that can be customized by anyone. In that way, it is a kind of Linux for musicians. CASH was founded by two performers, Kristin Hersh and Donita Sparks, as a way to release their music, and has grown into a portfolio of Web tools for artists and labels. It offers ways to stream music securely and control access to files online, as well as widgets to sell music, collect e-mail addresses and do various forms of marketing. If that sounds like a threat to the profit-making players in the “direct to fan” market, as it is known, it is not an accident. The open promise of the Internet, CASH says on its Web site, “has quickly become another avenue controlled by various middlemen and gatekeepers looking for their percentage or to build another business on the backs of creators without proper or fair compensation.” Until recently, CASH had raised less than $25,000, said Jesse von Doom, its other executive director and resident programming guru. But to finance its operations, it started a campaign last month on the online fund-raising site Kickstarter , offering fan-investors an album of songs donated by several bands and labels. It raised $61,000, more than double its goal. Ms. Vail and Mr. von Doom, who both worked for Kill Rock Stars, a label that has released music by Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith and Bikini Kill, speak of CASH in both idealistic and practical terms. They say they are raising the ante for artist-centered technology, not posing a threat to any industry. “We’re not looking to put Bandcamp out of business,” Mr. von Doom said. “We are just saying that if you want to do it differently, if you want to control the whole thing, it’s over here.” But CASH is already taking business from other services. It has begun to turn up in campaigns by prominent indie acts like Andrew Bird and Sleigh Bells, and its clients say that CASH’s secure streams are particularly effective in limiting one of the industry’s constant worries: pre-release music leaks. Graeme Flegenheimer, a publicist for indie bands, estimates that CASH saves his acts about $10,000 a year in expenses, and he credited it with preventing leaks on an anticipated new album by the group the Men. “We were super nervous that it was going to leak, with all the buzz the band was getting,” Mr. Flegenheimer said. “But CASH totally protected it.” Ian Rogers, the chief executive of Topspin, said the market was big enough for plenty of players. “The entire direct-to-consumer effort stands to benefit from a viable open-source solution in our space,” he said. Ms. Vail, Mr. von Doom and their clients also stressed the group’s nonprofit status as a sympathetic advantage in an industry filled with start-up companies that need to return money to their investors. Instead of venture capitalists, a majority of CASH’s board is made up of musicians, like Ms. Hersh and Dave Allen of Gang of Four. Robbie Mackey, director for digital marketing for Mom and Pop Records, said he had used a variety of direct-to-fan services. “We work with Topspin, and love it,” he said. “But with CASH, they are in a position where the bottom line isn’t necessarily a financial bottom line. It’s what helps musicians.” As a nonprofit, Ms. Vail said, it cannot be bought or taken public. And since its open-source code is free for anyone to use and to help develop, it cannot be shut down or revoke user licenses. “This code will live on,” Ms. Vail said, “even if CASH doesn’t.”

CASH Music
Music
Open-Source Software
Advertising and Marketing
Computers and the Internet


Cuomo Disparagement of Weiner Is Now Called a Joke

Abstract: ALBANY — Have you heard the one about the governor and the missed punch line? Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office said on Thursday that the governor was just kidding when he offered a disparaging assessment of Anthony D. Weiner’s campaign for mayor of New York City — the second time in a little over a month that reporters have been told that they failed to understand comedy à la Cuomo. The audience lacking an appreciation of a gubernatorial wisecrack this week was the editorial board of The Post-Standard of Syracuse. Mr. Weiner, who declared his candidacy on Wednesday, had resigned from Congress after acknowledging that he had sent sexually explicit images and messages online to women he did not know. Stephen A. Rogers, the chairman of Syracuse Media Group, asked Mr. Cuomo, who, like Mr. Weiner, is a Democrat, what his reaction would be if voters were to elect Mr. Weiner mayor. “Shame on us,” the governor said, according to a transcript published by The Post-Standard. Mr. Cuomo’s response, the first high-profile condemnation of Mr. Weiner’s candidacy by a New York Democrat, ricocheted across the Web on Thursday. The Drudge Report featured the remark as its lead story. There was only one problem, at least according to the governor’s office. The comment by Mr. Cuomo, an administration official said, was “made in jest.” Image Gov. Andrew Cuomo spoke with an editorial board. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times “As the governor has said many times, he has no plan to endorse in this year’s mayoral primary,” said the official, who asked for anonymity to discuss Mr. Cuomo’s wit. The administration official did not explain what was funny about the exchange. Asked about Mr. Weiner at an appearance in New Paltz on Thursday afternoon, after the remark in Syracuse had been made public, Mr. Cuomo was diplomatic. “I don’t have an official position on the mayor’s race,” he said, “and I’m going to leave it at that.” The Weiner witticism is not the first to fall flat for Mr. Cuomo. Or perhaps the missed joke has emerged as the governor’s newest way to distance himself from an ill-advised comment. At a news conference last month, Mr. Cuomo expressed disdain for publicly introducing bills for consideration by the Legislature, indicating that he preferred to hammer out legislation behind closed doors. The comment attracted attention, since Mr. Cuomo has been criticized for an opaque approach to governing. Again, there was only one problem: The no-fun Albany press corps, known at the Capitol as the Legislative Correspondents Association, did not seem to realize that the governor’s lengthy explanation of legislative strategy was a joke. “I should have known better than to try to have fun with the L.C.A. at a press conference,” Mr. Cuomo said in a radio interview the next day. “They say, ‘Oh, lighten up and have some fun and just be yourself and be light and happy,’ ” he added. “And then you have a little fun and then they take it seriously.”

New York
Andrew Cuomo
Anthony Weiner
Politics
NYC
Mayoral races


Mayor Pleads for Sustenance, Not Cuts, From the State

Abstract: ALBANY — In tones both emphatic and empathetic, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pleaded with state legislators on Thursday to refrain from cutting $656 million in state aid to New York City over the next 18 months, saying that such cuts could force the city to raise taxes and slash programs. Mayor Bloomberg said he understood that the recession, coupled with the state’s projected $15 billion budget deficit, required sacrifices by all residents, and that “the city can’t be exempt.” But he warned that the city had already done a lot to “stretch every dollar,” noting that he issued a directive last month to city agencies to identify an additional $1.4 billion in spending cuts in the next fiscal year. “I understand all localities are being asked to take a bitter pill,” he said, testifying at a joint legislative budget hearing. “I don’t think it’s fair that New York City is being asked to swallow an entire bottle.” If the city does get not its fair share, he continued, he will probably have to suggest painful cuts in education and personnel, as well as tax increases, which he later declined to specify. “We have got down to a level at this point where all the cuts from now on will be in the classroom,” he said. In an annual ritual, New York’s mayor heads up to Albany in the dead of winter, just as the state budget process is getting under way, to ask for more money and reinforce the argument that the city is not being treated fairly. The city delivers almost half of all state tax revenues, but makes up only 40 percent of the population. But this year is different, Mr. Bloomberg noted, because of the recession, the prospect of drastically lower tax revenues for years to come, and the state’s projected deficit. So instead of heaping criticism on the governor — as he did when the governor’s last name was Pataki or Spitzer — Mr. Bloomberg took pains to leaven his criticism of Gov. David A. Paterson’s budget proposal with praise. “We have a great deal of sympathy,” he said at a news conference after the hearing. “We’re going to have to make choices, none of which will be easy or cost-free or painless. I just want to make sure that New York City is treated fairly.” At the same time, Mr. Bloomberg said, he found that the legislators sitting in on the hearing had been a bit more hospitable than usual. “It was a lot less contentious,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “I think there is an understanding by those people that were sitting on that panel that they’re going to have to face similar kinds of problems, and it’s not business as the same old ways. We are fundamentally in a different world today than we were 12 months ago and each of the preceding years. The time for grandstanding or the time for politics as usual has come and gone.” It was an assessment that legislators did not dispute. In a statement after the hearing, Senator Carl Kruger , a Brooklyn Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee, said legislators had agreed that “we need to reform the way we think about money, along with the way we’ve grown accustomed to spending it.” Mr. Bloomberg estimated that Mr. Paterson’s budget proposal, if enacted, would result in an overall drop of $1.6 billion in revenue for the city. Of that figure, $656 million would come from the city’s share of a state program called Aid and Incentives for Municipalities, while $770 million would be cuts in financing for education, Mr. Bloomberg said. At the same time, Mr. Bloomberg used the hearing to touch on an education issue that is sure to dominate politics in Albany later this year: mayoral control over the city’s schools, which he won in 2002. “To go back would be a sin,” he said. Mr. Bloomberg also discussed measures to control rising pension costs. One new proposal that could save millions of dollars without costing a single job, he said, would place 21,000 employees enrolled in the Board of Education retirement system into a larger system, like the ones used by teachers and civil servants. Another plan, already mentioned by Mr. Paterson, would reduce benefits for newly hired state and local workers by creating a new pension category, and would require employees to work longer and retire later to receive pension benefits. “If you don’t do it now, you’re never going to do it,” Mr. Bloomberg said. Mr. Bloomberg also spelled out a group of proposals that have already been mentioned, or are perennial favorites of his. These include tort reform, rooting out Medicaid waste and fraud, a charge of five cents for every plastic bag shoppers use at New York City stores, and reducing or eliminating the unincorporated business tax. Still, there were also moments when Mr. Bloomberg displayed his trademark exasperation in dealing with Albany. He urged the Legislature, for instance, to force the Public Service Commission to spend $175 million for projects intended to improve energy efficiency. The financing was approved by the commission in June, but is being held in escrow. “It’s just the most ridiculous thing,” the mayor said.

New York City
Public Service Commission
Bloomberg Michael R
Budgets and Budgeting
Politics and Government
Taxation
Pensions and Retirement Plans
Recession and Depression
Kruger Carl


East Asia’s Small Edens of Trade Wilt as Need for Exports Dries Up

Abstract: SINGAPORE — As trade withers around the world and freighters sit empty at anchor, some of the most vulnerable economies are proving to be small, extremely globalized trading centers like Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan — and that is prompting a rethinking of their economic development strategies. Half a century of swiftly growing exports, accompanied by an expansion into international services like finance, has transformed all three economies’ urban areas into some of the world’s most modern cities. Millions of farmers have been lifted out of poverty. But that progress has now been thrown into reverse with some of the world’s steepest plunges in economic activity. In Singapore, where manufacturing still dwarfs finance in employment and share of economic output, tens of thousands of factory workers have been cut back to three or four days a week and their wages per hour reduced as well. In Taiwan, the crucial electronics sector has put close to 200,000 workers on long-term unpaid vacations as exports have plummeted by more than half. In Hong Kong, a desperate woman who had lost her job threatened suicide while speaking to the territory’s chief executive, Donald Tsang, during a call-in radio show last Thursday. In all three, the ever rising wave of global economic troubles is known as the “financial tsunami,” a reference to the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. But it is the collapse of exports, not financial markets, that is prompting questions about how to limit vulnerability in the future. “The financial tsunami makes it possible to rethink our economic development strategy as to whether we should rely so much on exports,” President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan said in an interview in Taipei. “When the times were good everyone praised us — now times are bad, we think we should attach more emphasis on domestic demand instead of putting all our eggs in one basket.” Exporters in East Asia are suffering particular harm now because retailers and other importers in the West have not just cut back their orders to match falling sales. Importers have gone much further, often halting orders so as to draw down inventories to low levels consistent with a weak economy. “Why is it the consumption only slows down 2 or 3 percent and our exports slow down 40 percent?” said York Liao, the secretary general of President Ma’s Council for Economic Planning and Development. The answer, he added, is a temporary drawdown in inventories by foreign buyers, plus East Asia’s reliance on exports of discretionary products like flat-panel television sets, for which sales have fallen especially quickly. The standard policy prescription for most Asian countries in the current downturn is to build up domestic demand and reduce their dependence on exports for growth. But that may not be so easy. Stimulating consumption has long been difficult in East Asia, and seldom more so than when citizens are especially leery of borrowing and worried about losing their jobs. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have the added problem of aging populations with strong traditions of saving a lot and consuming little. In the face of sharp slowdowns, large developed economies typically spend heavily on government stimulus programs, as the United States and Japan are trying to do. All three economies are in fact trying some form of stimulus, but for them extra spending on roads and subways can easily translate into more imports of steel and other materials. “You can’t classically apply a stimulus to demand here without a lot of it leaking out,” said Koh Boon Hwee, the chairman of DBS Bank in Singapore. In addition, their dependence on trade and opposition to protectionism make them reluctant to impose any version of the “Buy American” provision in the United States stimulus plan so as to keep more of the spending at home. Singapore, where the population is just 4.6 million compared with Taiwan’s 23 million, is particularly vulnerable to a decline in trade. It typically imports unfinished products, does some processing of the goods and then exports them, so the total dollar value of its exports and imports is far larger than its gross domestic product — about three and a half times as much, in fact. With so much of its output dependent on trade, much of it handled by multinationals with large long-term investments here, Singapore is struggling mightily. With multinationals like General Electric running into difficulty, Singapore is shifting its strategy to luring more but smaller foreign investments from medium-size companies. It has also accelerated the construction of a government-financed town of research labs, offices and apartments for the biomedical, materials sciences and new media industries, after putting the brakes on construction a year ago because of high steel and cement prices. But in the short term, “there’s no hope for us if the global economy goes down,” said Philip Yeo, the special adviser to the prime minister for economic development. Taiwan, where for years the government encouraged information technology companies with tax breaks, cheap land, loans and more, is probably the most endangered of the small Asian economies. The result of that government largess is an economy extremely dependent on a single industrial sector that has been devastated by plunging worldwide sales of electronics. “Half of the industries just got a bad cold, they probably can recover quickly — the other 50 percent, they’ve got, not cancer, but close,” said Preston W. Chen, a chemicals tycoon who is also the chairman of Taiwan’s Chinese National Federation of Industries. Small economies are trying in different ways to snuggle up to China, the last economy in East Asia that combines a large domestic market and a faint glow of growth. Taiwan is in the earliest stages of negotiating a free trade pact with the mainland, while Singapore signed one on Oct. 23 and Hong Kong has signed a series of six increasingly broad trade agreements with the mainland since 2003. Hong Kong, with just seven million people, “is a very small market by any standard, but we see there is even greater potential in this mainland market,” said Rita Lau, Hong Kong’s secretary of commerce and economic development. But few in the region now want to see further expansion of the role of exports in their economies. “The tsunami won’t last forever, so we will still attach a lot of importance to exports,” said President Ma of Taiwan. “But perhaps the percentage won’t be that large.”

Far East South and Southeast Asia and Pacific Areas


Serie A Penalizes Teams

Abstract: Atalanta will start the Serie A season with a 6-point penalty for its role in the latest Italian match-fixing scandal, and its captain, Cristiano Doni, has been barred for three and a half years. In the lower divisions, Benevento received a 9-point penalty, Ascoli was docked 6 points and Piacenza received a 4-point penalty. ¶ Colombia’s Coach Hernan Dario Gomez resigned after reports that he struck a woman in a bar. The Colombian soccer federation said in a statement that Gomez “assumed the consequences of his acts.” (AP)