Don’t Open This Cookie (Disastrous Day Inside)

Abstract: The messages in fortune cookies are typically vague, banal and optimistic. But some cookies are now serving up some surprisingly downbeat advice. “Today is a disastrous day. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” reads one fortune showing up around the country. “It’s over your head now. Time to get some professional help,” advises another. As the messages, contained in cookies made by Wonton Food in Queens, have spread across the country, some diners have registered their reactions online. As a result, the company has a marketing challenge on its hands. One blogger, who got the “professional help” fortune, wrote: “I shot the audacious baked item a dirty look and proceeded to eat it. And I hope it hurt.” Bernard Chow, marketing coordinator at Wonton Food, says he had not set out to insult anybody when he asked his team of freelance writers to come up with some new messages. “We wanted our fortune cookies to be a little bit more value-added,” Mr. Chow said. “We wanted to get some different perspective, to write something that is more contemporary.” Wonton Food, the largest fortune cookie maker in the country, produces about 4.5 million cookies a day. The company made headlines in 2005 when 110 people won about $19 million in the Powerball lottery after playing a “lucky number” sequence from the back of a Wonton fortune. Wonton has a catalog of 10,000 fortunes, and about a quarter of them are in rotation at any given time. It introduced 600 new ones several months ago, including about 150 in the popular “fortune-telling” category. Other message categories are humor, motivational sayings, riddles and translated Chinese idioms. “They can’t be offensive, got to be positive, and rated G,” said Derrick Wong, vice president for sales at Wonton. But, he added, as customers requested more fortunes with actual predictions rather than cryptic sayings, the writers removed their rose-colored glasses. “It’s very hard to come up with more fortunes,” Mr. Wong said. “Some people may not like them.” Some diners complained; others searched for meaningful explanations. Was one writer having a bad day? (“Perhaps you’ve been focusing too much on yourself.”) Were the cookies giving voice to worries about the economy or terrorism? (“There may be a crisis looming, be ready for it.”) Mr. Chow characterized the new fortunes as “cautious” rather than negative, and said he had received complaints about only two messages so far. One was the “disastrous day” note. The other said: “Your luck is just not there. Attend to practical matters today.” Wonton plans to remove those two from circulation, Mr. Chow said, adding that he welcomes customer feedback about the others. “I got some people saying that you’re making people think, and that’s good,” he said. "But I have people writing to me saying that it’s not positive enough.” Most people who receive one of the downbeat fortunes don’t take them too seriously. Karyn Turnbull, 33, an education software designer in Austin, Tex., said her fiancé had been warned about a “disastrous day” when they celebrated their engagement at the Chinese restaurant where they had their first date. “He laughed and said if he had gotten them before, he might not have proposed,” Ms. Turnbull said.


Jeff Zucker at CNN Hires Michael Bass, a Deputy From His NBC Past

Abstract: Jeff Zucker, who left Katie Couric’s syndicated talk show, “Katie,” at the end of last year to take over CNN Worldwide, is bringing in one of the show’s top producers to join him. Michael Bass, a longtime deputy of Mr. Zucker’s dating from their days at “Today” on NBC, left “Katie” last Friday in the latest of several backstage changes there. At CNN, Mr. Bass will be a senior vice president, reporting to Mr. Zucker, according to people at the cable news channel and at “Katie” who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the move had not been announced. A spokeswoman for CNN declined to comment on Sunday. “Katie,” by some measures the most-anticipated new day show in several years, made its debut last September. With about 2.5 million viewers a day, it immediately exceeded the other freshman talk shows, but its ratings have slipped somewhat, much to the chagrin of Ms. Couric. Recently, a competing show by Steve Harvey has been beating “Katie” among total viewers and, more important, among the middle-age women whom local stations covet during the day. Mr. Bass and Kathy Samuels were the original co-executive producers who ran “Katie” on a daily basis, with its executive producers, Mr. Zucker and Ms. Couric. Image Michael Bass will rejoin his old boss, Jeff Zucker, at CNN. Credit NBC Photo: Virginia Sherwood Mr. Zucker, a former chief executive of NBC, had been widely expected to leave the talk show, and he did so last November when he was hired by CNN, a unit of Time Warner. He started there in January, amid widespread talk in the news industry about how he would try to turn around the beleaguered company. Since then Mr. Zucker has hired several new hosts, including Chris Cuomo from ABC, Rachel Nichols from ESPN and Michaela Pereira from the Los Angeles station KTLA. Mr. Zucker had already hired Jim Murphy, a prominent producer who like Mr. Bass has experience with morning and day television, having produced “Good Morning America” on ABC and the since-canceled talk show starring Anderson Cooper. The relationship between Mr. Zucker and Mr. Bass is so strong that some of the people with knowledge of his move to CNN said they were surprised it had not happened sooner. Mr. Bass will not be replaced immediately at “Katie,” partly because the show added Ethan Nelson, another co-executive producer with a news background, two months ago. Mr. Nelson previously worked at “G.M.A.” But people at “Katie” and its distributor, the Walt Disney Company, say they expect a shake-up after the first season ends and before the second season begins. The executive who replaced Mr. Zucker just three months ago, Michael Morrison, has been marginalized, according to several staff members there, so much so that rumors are running rampant that he is about to be replaced. Mr. Morrison was hired in January from “The Martha Stewart Show,” which was televised by the Hallmark Channel before being canceled last year. A spokeswoman for “Katie” declined to comment.


Altria Said to Be in Talks With Tobacco Maker UST

Abstract: Altria Group is in advanced talks to buy UST, the maker of the popular Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco brands, for more than $10 billion, people with close knowledge of the negotiations said late Thursday. The terms could not be learned. The acquisition, which is at a delicate state and could still fall apart, would be Altria’s first major purchase since the company split in March, spinning off Philip Morris International to become an independent company focused on the overseas tobacco business and giving the Altria name to Philip Morris USA. People involved in the transaction were planning to work through the weekend to complete the deal as soon as Monday, these people said, but they suggested that the release of the news could speed up the process. “We don’t comment on any speculation that’s out there,” said David M. Sylvia, Altria’s director of media affairs. Officials at UST, which is based in Stamford, Conn., did not return messages. Speculation about the deal swirled on Thursday after UST’s chief executive, Murray S. Kessler, abruptly withdrew from an analysts’ conference, prompting a surge in the share price and heavy options trading. By the end of the day, after UST said that there had been a scheduling conflict, company shares fell back. Stock in UST, formerly the United States Tobacco Company, closed down 4 cents, at $54 a share, while Altria fell 60 cents, to $20.66 a share. UST also owns Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, which is one of the 10 largest producers of premium wines in the United States. The company has a current market capitalization of $8 billion and last year earned $520 million on revenue of $1.95 billion. Analysts have long been bullish on the deal because of Altria’s weak position in the growing smokeless tobacco market and because huge cost savings are possible by eliminating redundancies between the two companies. Both have extensive marketing and distribution operations that cater to essentially the same stores. “It’s very logical,” said Christopher Growe, an analyst in St. Louis for Stifel Nicolaus. Smokeless tobacco is one of the few areas of the tobacco business that is still growing, Mr. Growe said, adding that it has increased about 7 percent a year over the last four years. Altria, which is based in Richmond, Va., and is the nation’s largest cigarette maker, had hoped to use its potent Marlboro brand to create its own successful smokeless tobacco products. It has introduced Marlboro-brand moist smokeless tobacco and snus, which are packets filled with tobacco that are popular in Sweden. Neither product has taken off. By splitting Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International into two companies, company officials had hoped to allow the international company to pursue potentially lucrative markets in developing countries without the worries of potential litigation and legislation in the United States. The company’s strategy in the United States has been clear for some time as cigarettes sales have followed decades of decline. As part of that strategy, Philip Morris USA acquired John Middleton, a maker of cigars and pipe tobacco, last year. It has opened a research facility in Richmond to create tobacco products that are lower risk than regular cigarettes. The House has already approved legislation that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products. The measure, which the White House opposes, is expected to be taken up by the Senate this fall.

Altria Group
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Smoking and Tobacco
Philip Morris Companies Inc


Palestinian Hunger Striker Is Freed, Then Detained Again

Abstract: JERUSALEM — A Palestinian man who waged a 55-day hunger strike in prison to pressure the Israeli authorities to release him was detained on Monday, just a day after he was freed. The man, Khader Adnan , 36, was stopped after he tried to enter the walled Old City of Jerusalem to worship at the Al Aqsa Mosque on the holiest night of Ramadan, Jawad Boulus, his lawyer, said. Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police, said that Mr. Adnan did not have permission to enter Jerusalem and that he was being held for questioning. Mr. Adnan emerged as a potent symbol of resistance to the Israeli occupation for fasting at length , years apart, to demonstrate against being incarcerated indefinitely without formal charges. Most recently, Mr. Adnan was freed on Sunday after warnings by the Red Cross and Palestinian authorities that he could die if he continued his hunger strike.

Palestinians
Hunger strike
Khader Adnan
Al Aqsa
Israel


Deadline Nears for Weather Channel Bids

Abstract: A half-dozen media companies have signaled that they plan to bid for the Weather Channel, which is up for auction, people involved in the talks said Wednesday. The suitors, these people said, include NBC, CBS , the Walt Disney Company , Time Warner, the Comcast Corporation and Liberty Media. Also, a handful of private equity firms, including Bain Capital, Providence Equity Partners and Madison Dearborn, have indicated an interest, though they are unlikely to be serious bidders because of the tight credit markets. The Weather Channel, owned by Landmark Communications, a privately held company controlled by the Batten family of Norfolk, Va., has set Friday as a deadline for preliminary bids, these people said. Landmark put the Weather Channel up for sale as part of a breakup of the company; it is separately auctioning its newspaper holdings, which include The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, The News & Record of Greensboro, N.C., and The Roanoke Times in Virginia, as well as 50 community newspapers. Landmark indicated that it is hoping to sell the Weather Channel for as much as $5 billion, these people said. However, several prospective suitors have suggested that the asking price is too high and should be $4 billion at the most. While the Weather Channel, one of the last privately owned cable channels, has received interest from many big companies, it is unclear how many of them plan to bid aggressively. Any preliminary offer is nonbinding and is part of a only first round of bids. Beyond the Weather Channel’s cable presence, bidders are said to be interested in its Web site, weather.com , which frequently ranks in the top 20 media sites by traffic, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, and has more than 30 million users. Still, no big Internet company like Google has expressed an interest in the auction Among the bidders, NBC, a unit of General Electric, appears well placed; it could merge the Weather Channel with its weather-related unit called NBC Weather Plus, a joint project of NBC News and NBC affiliates. CBS has also expressed interest; it would help the company build its cable presence. Comcast is attracted to the channel, people close to the company said, but does not appear to be prepared to bid aggressively. Disney, Time Warner and Liberty Media have signaled interest, these people said, but have expressed skepticism about the price.

Weather
Weather Channel
Television
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
National Broadcasting Co
CBS Corp
Disney Walt Co


Patriots Clinch a Bye and Lions a Rare Playoff Berth

Abstract: With the home crowd chanting “Play-offs! Play-offs!” as the final few minutes ticked away, the Detroit Lions clinched their first playoff berth since 1999 on Saturday with a 38-10 rout of the San Diego Chargers . Matthew Stafford threw three touchdown passes in the first half, then high-fived fans during a postgame victory lap around Ford Field. “You could just get a sense of how much it meant to them,” he said. “It was fun to give them that kind of joy.” The Lions (10-5) earned an N.F.C. wild card, turning around a franchise that three years ago became the first team in league history to finish 0-16. Coach Jim Schwartz said it was his idea to have the players reach out and touch the fans after Saturday’s win. Schwartz also presented a game ball to the owner William Clay Ford, whose first season leading the franchise was in 1964. “There’s going to be a time that we don’t celebrate getting to the playoffs,” Schwartz said, “but it’s not going to be tonight.” Knowing they could move into the postseason simply by winning, the Lions held the Chargers scoreless until midway through the third quarter. The Chargers (7-8) were eliminated from playoff contention. San Diego will miss the postseason for the second straight year. Their fade could cost Coach Norv Turner his job. “We all know that’s something that’s discussed at the end of the year,” Turner said. ¶ Rallying from their worst half of the season, the Patriots scored on their next five possessions and beat the Dolphins , 27-24, to clinch a playoff bye. “You don’t want to, certainly, make a habit of this,” said Tom Brady, who scored on two 1-yard sneaks and threw a 1-yard touchdown pass. The Patriots (12-3) trailed by 17-0 at halftime but made some adjustments and went to their no-huddle offense more, keeping the Dolphins (5-10) from making defensive substitutions. And Brady was on target after a first half in which heavy defensive pressure against a makeshift offensive line affected his accuracy. He completed just 7 of 19 passes for 87 yards and was sacked three times. But in the second half, he completed 20 of 27 passes and led one scoring drive after another. Backup Leads Steelers Rashard Mendenhall ran for 116 yards and a touchdown and the backup quarterback Charlie Batch played efficiently in place of the injured Ben Roethlisberger in the Steelers’ 27-0 win over the Rams. The Steelers (11-4) kept alive their hopes of a division title even with Roethlisberger (sprained ankle) watching the game from the sideline. Pittsburgh hardly needed him; its defense dominated St. Louis (2-13), which was shut out for the second time this month. ¶ The Ravens beat the Browns, 20-14, to move one step closer to clinching the A.F.C. North title. Ray Rice ran for 87 yards and caught one of Joe Flacco’s two touchdown passes for the Ravens (11-4), who led by 17-0 at halftime. Baltimore, which swept its season series with Pittsburgh, can win the division by defeating Cincinnati next week. Raiders Win in Overtime Sebastian Janikowski kicked a 36-yard field goal 2 minutes 13 seconds into overtime, giving the visiting Raiders a 16-13 victory over the Chiefs. Carson Palmer passed for 237 yards and a touchdown for the Raiders (8-7). His perfectly thrown 53-yard pass to Darrius Heyward-Bey early in overtime set up Janikowski’s winning kick. Kansas City’s Kyle Orton threw for 300 yards and a touchdown — to Dwayne Bowe with 1:02 left to tie the score. But the Raiders then went three-and-out, and Orton connected with Bowe for 25 yards and with Terrance Copper for 11 more to set up Ryan Succop for a potential winning field goal on the final play of regulation. Succop’s 49-yard try was blocked by Trevor Scott. “An ugly win is better than a pretty loss,” Palmer said. ¶ Rather than inspiring visiting Denver to another dramatic rally, Tim Tebow sealed the most dreadful performance of his two-year career by throwing four interceptions — all in the second half, and with two returned for touchdowns 18 seconds apart — as the Broncos lost to the Bills, 40-14. “My confidence is just fine,” said Tebow, who finished 13 of 30 for 185 yards. A.F.C. Wild-Card Battle Andy Dalton threw two touchdown passes and Cincinnati withstood yet another fourth-quarter comeback by Arizona, giving the Bengals a 23-16 victory over the Cardinals that kept them in the running for a playoff berth. Another small crowd at Paul Brown Stadium saw the Bengals (9-6) move a game ahead of the Jets (8-7) for the final A.F.C. wild-card spot. The Bengals can clinch the berth with a win at home next week against Baltimore. Dalton threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Jermaine Gresham and a 19-yarder to Jerome Simpson, who did a somersault over a defender and landed on both feet in the end zone. Dalton joined Peyton Manning (26), Charlie Conerly (22) and Dan Marino (20) as the only N.F.L. rookies to throw 20 touchdown passes. ¶ Matt Hasselbeck passed for 350 yards and a touchdown, and Jared Cook had 169 yards receiving to help the Titans beat the Jaguars, 27-13, in their final home game. The Titans head to Houston for the season finale with an outside shot at a playoff spot and a chance at their first winning record since 2008. In Other Games Cam Newton added to his remarkable first N.F.L. season by breaking Peyton Manning’s rookie record for passing yards and setting a franchise mark with a 91-yard touchdown toss to Brandon LaFell as the Panthers handed the Buccaneers their ninth straight defeat, 48-16. Newton entered the game needing 18 yards passing to break Manning’s rookie record of 3,739 and did so with a 7-yard pass to LaFell on the first possession. He finished with three touchdown passes and a 49-yard scoring run — he has accounted for 34 touchdowns this season — as Carolina (6-9) scored on eight of its first nine possessions. ¶ David Akers kicked four field goals, including a 39-yarder with 2:57 left, and the 49ers held on for a 19-17 victory over the Seahawks in Seattle. Akers set a league record with his 42nd field goal of the season. ¶ Minnesota lost running back Adrian Peterson and quarterback Christian Ponder to injuries on consecutive plays to start the second half, but their replacements, Toby Gerhart and Joe Webb, filled in capably and led the Vikings to a 33-26 victory over the Redskins that ended their six-game losing streak. Gerhart scampered up the sideline for a 67-yard run to start Minnesota’s next series after Peterson and Ponder were hurt and finished with 109 yards on 11 carries. Webb again made a case to be a starting quarterback by passing for two touchdowns and running for another for the Vikings (3-12).

Detroit Lions
San Diego Chargers
Football
New England Patriots
Oakland Raiders
Baltimore Ravens
Miami Dolphins


Yahoo Is Said to Rebuff Microsoft Threat Over Takeover Bid

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo is expected to respond by early Monday to a letter from Microsoft that threatened to lower the price of its buyout offer and take it directly to Yahoo shareholders, people close to the company said on Sunday. Yahoo’s response is expected to reject negotiations and explain why Yahoo’s board believes the current offer price is too low. Although Microsoft’s offer was initially valued at $31 a share, a drop in the price of Microsoft shares has reduced the offer to just over $29 a share. Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, raised the pressure on Yahoo’s directors on Saturday in a letter warning that Microsoft would begin a proxy fight seeking to oust them if the two companies did not reach a negotiated deal in the next three weeks. Senior executives from the companies have met on two occasions since Microsoft made its offer public on Feb. 1, but they have not entered formal negotiations. Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer, saying it “substantially undervalues” the company, and people close to the company suggest that Yahoo executives see no benefit to negotiating unless Microsoft raises its price. Yahoo’s board has asked Microsoft for information on antitrust issues and other matters but feels frustrated by Microsoft’s lack of response, according to people involved in the discussions, who were granted anonymity so they could discuss the confidential maneuvering. For its part, Microsoft has insisted it sees no reason to raise its bid, because Yahoo, which has discussed alternative deals with other companies, has no competing offers. “Basically Microsoft infers that Yahoo has no alternative deals in the offing, therefore there is no need to raise its price,” said Michael Klausner, a Stanford Law School professor who specializes in corporate law and governance. “Microsoft still prefers a negotiated deal to a proxy fight.” Mr. Ballmer’s letter puts pressure on the board to act quickly or face the possibility that they will fail to get the best deal possible for Yahoo shareholders, Mr. Klausner said. But waging a battle over board seats while offering a lower price for Yahoo could prove to be a gamble for Microsoft. In recent weeks, many large Yahoo shareholders have indicated that they would favor a deal with Microsoft, at a slightly higher price. It is not clear that Yahoo shareholders would be happy with a deal at the current price, let alone at a price that is even lower. Still, some experts in mergers and acquisitions say that without an alternative, Yahoo shareholders are likely to vote in favor of a Microsoft offer, even if it is lower. “Although shareholders may not be happy with a move like that, in general they will support a premium bid,” said Morton A. Pierce, who heads the mergers and acquisitions practice at Dewey & LeBoeuf, a law firm in New York. Still, Mr. Pierce says that Microsoft may still raise its bid. “Generally in situations like these, people will bump their offer to avoid the monetary and social cost of going through a proxy contest,” he said. In his letter, Mr. Ballmer noted that in the last two months, the stock market had declined and Yahoo’s business appears to have deteriorated. He also said that Yahoo had adopted a plan to retain employees in the event of a merger that would make Microsoft’s acquisition even more costly. “By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today,” Mr. Ballmer wrote. “We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.” But Yahoo has disputed the notion that its business is deteriorating. In a presentation to investors in mid-March, executives reaffirmed their earlier financial projections for 2008 and put forward bullish growth forecasts for the next three years.

Yahoo Inc
Microsoft Corp
Mergers Acquisitions and Divestitures
Computers and the Internet


Bernanke Faces Bear Stearns Queries

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Long before taking office as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke wrote an article with some other academics calling for the Fed to demystify its actions and pronouncements. “The ‘just trust us’ approach may work in a period when the chair and the board of governors command widespread support,” he and three colleagues wrote in Foreign Affairs. “But the happy state of affairs will not last forever.” It certainly did not survive beyond last month. That was when the Fed played midwife in JPMorgan Chase ’s absorption of the investment firm Bear Stearns , while accepting $30 billion worth of questionable mortgage-related assets as collateral for a Fed loan that enabled the deal. The Bear Stearns arrangement, brokered amid fears of a global financial disaster, was accompanied by many other steps, including establishment of a new lending facility for investment banks and efforts to pump liquidity into the turbulent financial markets. Taken together, most experts say that what the Fed has done in the last several months is unparalleled in modern times. Indeed, the Bear Stearns deal relied on a provision of the Federal Reserve Act not used since the 1930s. As a result, investment experts, many Americans and most members of Congress are bursting with questions. Mr. Bernanke has yet to explain, for example, exactly how he negotiated the Bear Stearns deal, how he decided to accept the $30 billion in dubious collateral, who set the share price for Bear Stearns and what role was played by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former Goldman Sachs executive. On Wednesday the Fed chief begins two days of testimony, his first opportunity to answer some of these questions. They are certain to focus not only on Bear Stearns but also on why the Fed and others let things deteriorate to the point of crisis, and whether their actions should serve as a precedent or guideline for the future of regulation of the financial sector. “There’s a lot of concern that this was done ad hoc,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, which is to hold the hearings on Wednesday, referring to Bear Stearns. “The irony is that very few people are saying, ‘You shouldn’t have done it.’ A lot of people have questions about the before and after.” Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has also signaled that at his panel’s hearing on Thursday he will ask Mr. Bernanke about Bear Stearns and why the financial sector’s problems were allowed to fester. The nation’s trust in the Fed and the administration, Mr. Dodd said this week, “has been shattered — not because regulators did too much, but because they did too little.” Both Mr. Bernanke and Timothy F. Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, who worked on the Bear Stearns deal, have an unusually delicate challenge at the hearings, many specialists say. On the one hand, they are expected to be quite explicit, detailing the enormous risks they saw in the global financial system if they did not act. On the other hand, they are said to be extremely concerned about not stoking anxieties further; both are known to think that the situation remains perilous. “I think he’s going to get more praise than criticism,” said Alan S. Blinder, an economics professor at Princeton and a former Fed vice chairman, referring to Mr. Bernanke. “But what nobody’s done yet, because Secretary Paulson has been unwilling to, and the Fed is too taciturn, is to explain clearly to the public what they saw happening and the time and why they acted as they did,” Mr. Blinder added. Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Geithner have also not commented specifically on Mr. Paulson’s proposals to overhaul the regulatory superstructure that is charged with overseeing the American financial landscape. Many expect them to steer clear of specifics but to warn that if the Fed were given greater authority, it should also be given tools to exercise it, possibly including ways to ensure that financial institutions like investment banks adhere to tough standards of safety and solvency. Fed lawyers argue that the agency’s actions were consistent with Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, which gives it authority to lend not just to banks, but to any corporation or partnership that cannot get credit elsewhere. The statute was last used in the 1930s, when the Fed lent small sums in the range of a few hundred thousand dollars to companies with good balance sheets that were engulfed in the banking crisis of the Great Depression. It was revised in the 1960s to provide funds to troubled savings and loan concerns, but was not used at that time. The Bear Stearns action may have been consistent with the Fed’s mandate, but it also is widely seen to have thrust the Fed into a new world, for the first time making it a holder of a package of mortgage assets, the value and even the content of which have not been disclosed. Much has been made in Congress about the possibility of the Fed taking a loss at the taxpayers’ expense. To avoid a conflict of interest, the Fed has tapped BlackRock Financial Management, a private company that manages more than $1 trillion in assets, to assess the value of the securities and secure the best value for them. “The Fed has been active, innovative and aggressive, but there are questions about its transparency,” said Lawrence H. Meyer, an economist and former Fed governor. Its actions, he said, “go against a longstanding principle of the Fed not taking on such an explicit credit risk.” A final question that Mr. Bernanke is certain to be asked is whether the Fed’s actions in shoring up one financial institution conflicts, at least potentially, with its other goal of keeping inflation under control. “The key theoretical question is whether the lender of last resort should also supervise monetary policy,” said Martin Mayer, author of several books on the banking system. “Monetary policy really has to be made for the sake of the country and the economy, not one piece of it.” But others say that the Fed is accustomed to balancing the goals of preserving economic growth while curbing inflation by raising interest rates. “At times those goals are in conflict,” said Robert E. Litan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and longtime economic policy adviser. “The old saying is, you can’t hit two targets with one arrow. You can’t hit two targets at the same time, always and all the time. Clearly they’ve put aside inflation concerns for the moment, because they don’t want the economy to tank.”

Mortgages
Credit
Federal Reserve System
Bear Stearns Cos
Bernanke Ben S
House of Representatives
Senate Committee on Banking
Morgan J P Chase & Co
Banks and Banking


Issue for Athletes: Protest on Darfur at Olympics

Abstract: Whether speaking to a group of young softball players or plying her teammates with literature, Jessica Mendoza , a 27-year-old outfielder on the United States Olympic softball team, does not hesitate to speak her mind about the killings in Darfur . But Ms. Mendoza stops short of publicly condemning China , which has close ties to the government of Sudan , because she says it is impolite to criticize her Olympic hosts and because one of her sponsors, Nike , has a major marketing presence in China. With growing protests in Tibet and pressure mounting on Olympic sponsors to denounce China for its policy on Darfur, socially conscious athletes said they were struggling to figure out how to honor their beliefs while also respecting the purpose of the Olympic Games — the celebration of athletic excellence. “I feel like there’s no one out there who would think that it’s a controversial issue to talk about 400,000 people being killed in Darfur right now,” said Ms. Mendoza, who helped the American team win a gold medal in Athens in 2004. “But I’m not about to go into China and tell their government what to do.” This week, Ms. Mendoza said she would let her Nike representatives know about her participation in Team Darfur, a coalition of more than 200 athletes seeking to raise awareness about what Congress and President Bush consider genocide in Darfur. “I want them to know what my role is,” she said. When she is not in uniform competing, Ms. Mendoza plans to wear her Team Darfur wristbands around Beijing , and she hopes to visit the Darfur region after the Olympics. Brad Greiner, the cofounder of Washington -based Team Darfur and a former water polo player for U.C.L.A., said these personal and business considerations had kept some well-known athletes from joining the coalition. Many are wary of speaking out, he said. Last year, the basketball star LeBron James , of the Cleveland Cavaliers , would not sign a letter written by a teammate, Ira Newble, criticizing China for its Darfur policy, according to news reports. Mr. James, who is expected to play for the United States team in Beijing, said at the time that he needed more information. He has a $90 million endorsement contract with Nike. The decision of whether to be an advocate carries risks for lesser-known athletes as well. “This is their one time every four years to make money for a lot of sports,” said Mr. Greiner, 24, who added that the group would intensify its push to sign up top athletes in the months leading up to the Summer Games. “So they need to take that into consideration when making a decision about whether or not to speak about Darfur.” Athletes have few formal guidelines to follow when deciding whether to take a public stand while in Beijing. Rule 51 of the Olympic charter, the constitution of the Olympic movement, forbids athletes from participating in a “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda” at Olympic sites. When the International Olympic Committee identifies a possible violation of Rule 51, it asks the Olympic Committee of the athlete’s country to investigate. Depending on the outcome, Olympians can be disqualified or sent home. The question of whether Olympic athletes will have the right to express political views in Beijing erupted in February, after news that Britain and New Zealand were planning to require that athletes sign contracts barring them from speaking about politically sensitive issues. Both countries quickly reversed course. The United States Olympic Committee permits athletes to express their opinions, provided they do not violate the charter, according to Darryl Seibel, a U.S.O.C. spokesman. Gary Hall Jr. , who is trying to reach his fourth Olympics in swimming, said the U.S.O.C. would send subtle messages about avoiding controversial subjects during athlete media and cultural training for the Games. “It’s discouraged, that’s clearly understood,” Mr. Hall said. A 10-medal winner, Mr. Hall said he avoided speaking about politics, but he has been outspoken on subjects related to doping in sports. “There’s a time and place for the issues and causes,” he said. “The Olympic Games and politics don’t go together well.” Giselle Davies, a spokeswoman for the International Olympic Committee, said athletes would not be punished for answering reporters’ questions honestly. Some athletes said they were willing to do whatever it took to draw attention to their cause, even if it meant getting expelled from the Olympics. Emanuel Neto, who expects to make the Angolan national basketball team, said he grew up surrounded by war and famine and, as a result, has empathy for the people of Darfur. “I’ve seen what those kids are going through and it’s really, really bad,” said Mr. Neto, 23, a senior at Stony Brook University and a member of Team Darfur. “It doesn’t matter at this point what will happen to me. What matters to me the most is that something has to be done.” Although it is uncommon for sponsors to bar athletes from expressing political views, that could change if the situation worsens in Tibet and more athletes begin to speak out, said Alison Barnwell, a former athlete marketing coordinator for the U.S.O.C. “Especially if a company does business in China, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see them start adding in clauses that say athletes can’t make negative remarks about the situation,” she said. The free speech issue could be skirted, she said, by arguing “they didn’t want their sponsorship to become a political platform for an athlete.” Anne Putz, Reebok’s head of corporate public relations, said in a statement that the company does not prohibit its athletes from expressing personal opinions. Reebok sponsors the Norwegian cyclist Thor Hushovd, who announced last week that he may boycott the Olympic opening ceremony to protest the Chinese crackdown on Tibetans. “We support our athletes 100 percent on the field, providing them with the best products to help them achieve their goals,” Ms. Putz said. “Off the field, we never influence our athletes about their personal views.” A Nike spokesman said that the company does not limit or censor athletes’ comments. “Over the years, Nike athletes have spoken their mind on issues, and we support our athletes’ right to do so,” KeJuan Wilkins, a Nike spokesman, said in a statement. Joey Cheek, a gold-medal winner in speedskating in 2006, thinks his activism has attracted sponsors. “I think that my earning potential has probably increased because I tried to focus on things that were more than just sports,” he said. Cheek founded Team Darfur with Greiner. Many standard sponsorship contracts contain clauses that could be used to terminate an athlete’s contract in the event a corporation wanted to sever ties. Peter Carlisle, the managing director of Olympics and action sports for the Octagon agency, which represents the American swimmer Michael Phelps , said many contracts contain language that allows companies to cancel a contract if an athlete does anything to materially damage the company or its brand. Although the clauses typically govern extreme immoral behavior, “if that language is in there, theoretically, a company could argue that something the athlete says can trigger it,” said Mr. Carlisle, adding that he would be surprised if a company invoked the clause for speaking out on human rights. In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Mr. Phelps said his mind was not on politics. “I’m looking forward to going over there and competing and representing my country the best way I can,” he said. “That’s what I’m focused on.” The U.S.O.C. requires all American participants to attend a two-day “ambassador” training course on topics like Chinese culture and Olympic values, but only minimally addresses speaking to the news media, Mr. Seibel said. He said athletes were taught that “when you go to the Olympic Games, you go as a representative of our country, as a representative of your sport, as a member of the worldwide Olympic family, and as a guest of the host country.” “And every one of those roles carry with them some important responsibilities and expectations,” he added. Mr. Hall said he received U.S.O.C. media training at previous Olympic Games. He said athletes were advised to steer clear of sensitive subjects. If a reporter asks a question about a controversial topic, he said, the trainers suggested that athletes try to redirect the question. Athletes have often used the Olympics to advance their political beliefs, said David Wallechinsky, an Olympic historian. In 1906, the Irish athlete Peter O’Connor, angered that he had been placed on the British team, climbed a flagpole and waved the Irish flag after winning a silver medal. In Berlin in 1936, two Korean athletes complained to the news media that the Japanese — who then occupied Korea — had forced them to take Japanese names and wear the Japanese uniform. Perhaps the best-known examples are the American sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who at the 1968 Games in Mexico City raised their clenched fists on the medal podium during the playing of the national anthem in a salute to black power. The action enraged the Olympic organizers, and Mr. Carlos and Mr. Smith were soon ushered out of the country. Now, 40 years later, their action is celebrated as heroic. “I just don’t see how you can separate the Olympics from politics,” Mr. Wallechinsky said. “The Olympics is part of the world, period.”


Europeans Set to Debate Size of Permanent Bailout Fund

Abstract: COPENHAGEN — How big is big enough for a permanent bailout fund for the euro zone? When finance ministers meet here Friday and Saturday, they will seek to agree on a figure large enough to deter speculators from further driving up the borrowing costs of countries like Spain, but not so large as to risk the creditworthiness of countries like Germany. The wrangling over the size of the fund, which would act as a firewall to protect the euro zone if another country faltered, is the latest challenge the currency union faces as it seeks to overcome a crisis of confidence that was set off two years ago by Greece’s severe indebtedness. One of the plans the ministers could agree to would resemble a suggestion by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany early in the week: letting a temporary fund called the European Financial Stability Facility, or E.F.S.F., which has aided Greece, Ireland and Portugal, continue to operate beside a new, permanent fund, the European Stability Mechanism, or E.S.M. That would bring the total lending capacity of the firewall to nearly 700 billion euros, or $934 billion. And by allowing the facility to make new loans until mid-2013, the ministers would make an additional 240 billion euros available — but temporarily. Such loans would be made only “in exceptional circumstances following a unanimous decision of euro area heads of state or government notably in case the E.S.M. capacity would prove insufficient,” according to a copy of a draft statement from euro zone finance ministers that was circulating Thursday. In the absence of any new lending, “the combined lending ceiling of the E.S.M. and the E.F.S.F. will thus be set at 700 billion euros for the period after mid-2013,” the statement said. Ministers also could agree to capitalize the permanent fund more quickly than previously planned by making the final installment of five payments of 16 billion euros each in the first half of 2014. Each 16 billion euro installment is leveraged to create lending capacity of about 100 billion euros, bringing total firepower to 500 billion euros. The draft could change during the gathering, which will include the governors of the central banks of all European Union member states. Views differ sharply across Europe, and the world, on how to build the most effective firewall. So-called maximalists like Ángel Gurría, secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , based in Paris, have repeatedly called for a fund of about 1 trillion euros. Mr. Gurría said this week that the “mother of all firewalls” was necessary to prevent another crisis in Europe. A firewall amounting to 1 trillion euros would be an effective “nuclear” deterrent against speculative threats to the euro zone, François Baroin, the French finance minister, told BFM Business television Thursday. A commitment by Europe to put more of its own resources at stake could also nudge donors to the International Monetary Fund, including the United States and China, to pledge more to the fund. That would give the fund, which has taken part in the three euro zone bailouts, more resources to help bail out other European countries, if necessary. But the maximalist approach has inflamed some European leaders, who say putting up so much money could encourage some countries to reduce their commitments to austerity and could put at even greater risk the taxpayers in Germany and elsewhere who would bear the bailout funds’ liabilities. In an apparent swipe at Mr. Gurría’s suggestion of a 1 trillion euro fund, Steffen Siebert, the German government spokesman, said Wednesday that it was “regrettable that in these discussions obviously no figure is high enough.” Such suggestions are counterproductive, Mr. Siebert said, as “they further unsettle the markets.” Speaking late on Thursday in Copenhagen, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, suggested that any sum agreed to by ministers on Friday would not be more than 800 billion euros. The future leadership of the euro zone is another topic likely to be discussed at the meeting, but probably on the margins. The current leader of the so-called Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers is Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg. His term will end in June, and speculation is widespread that his successor could be Mr. Schäuble. But such an appointment also could make it more difficult to keep another German, Klaus Regling, at the head of the stability facility.


Obama Arrives in Washington After Train Trip

Abstract: BALTIMORE — President-elect Barack Obama stepped onto a vintage train car, built at a time when a black man’s ascendancy to the presidency was impossible in America, and traveled Saturday to Washington in a three-day prelude to his inauguration as the nation’s 44th president. As he did throughout his campaign, Mr. Obama evoked imagery of Abraham Lincoln, in word and deed, as he took an abridged version of Lincoln’s journey by rail to the capital before his own inaugural festivities in 1861. The trip offered Mr. Obama one more opportunity to savor his victory before he inherits the challenges that await him. “While our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not,” Mr. Obama said before the train ride began. “What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed. “What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry — an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.” The trip picked up momentum as it drew closer to Washington, with larger crowds gathering to wave, cheer and merely catch a glimpse of Mr. Obama, who on Tuesday will be the first African-American sworn in as president. Mr. Obama opened his inauguration celebration at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, where a few hundred supporters gathered to send him off. He was joined on stage by his wife, Michelle; their two daughters, Malia and Sasha; and a contingent of friends from Chicago and beyond who have been by the family’s side on their two-year odyssey to the White House. The train sounded its whistle and pulled from the station about 11:30 a.m., with the conductor booming, “Welcome aboard the 2009 inaugural train to D.C.” Hundreds of people gathered alongside the track, at train crossings, in backyards and on rooftops, waving homemade signs and small American flags at the train. Those who came to witness the moment, even to catch only a peek of the train, stood in single-digit temperatures, with the wind chill below zero. At one point, Mr. Obama stood on the outdoor platform of his private car, which was draped in red, white and blue bunting. He waved and smiled as he sounded the train’s whistle three times. (“You’re never too old to toot the horn,” he said later, talking to some of his guests on board.) When Mr. Obama arrived at the first stop in Wilmington, Del., the crowd spilled from an outdoor plaza at the train station as Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family climbed aboard after a rally. They held a rally in Baltimore before arriving by nightfall at Union Station in Washington, where a large crowd gathered along Pennsylvania Avenue to see Mr. Obama as he was taken to Blair House, the family’s temporary residence. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we’ll see the spring again,” Mr. Biden said to shivering supporters in Delaware, his home state, who had been waiting for hours at the rally. “But I’ll tell you: spring is on the way with this new administration.” As the train entered Maryland, about a dozen pickups and cars parked haphazardly in a harvested corn field. People stood outside their vehicles, capturing the moment with their cell phones or hand-held video cameras. “We are praying for you,” said one sign, written with a shaky hand, which was held by a woman standing at Edgewood Station, not far from Baltimore. The route was scripted with echoes of history in mind, with the trip beginning in Philadelphia, where the Constitution was written, and continuing to Delaware, where the Constitution was first ratified. At each stop, the 10-minute speeches from Mr. Obama were imbued with a sense of history, particularly as he called on Americans “to reach for the promise of a better day, and to do the hard work of perfecting our union once more.” For all the pomp and celebration surrounding the slow-motion trek to Washington, a two-hour journey that stretched into more than seven, the underlying mood was a far more serious one than on most days of the presidential campaign. He has often delivered similar speeches with lofty tones, but the moment took on more gravity with the presidency less than three days from being his. “We recognize that such enormous challenges will not be solved quickly,” Mr. Obama said to a crowd of about 40,000 people in a downtown Baltimore square. “There will be false starts and setbacks, frustrations and disappointments. I will make some mistakes, and we will be called to show patience even as we act with fierce urgency.” While the day was choreographed with a Lincoln-era nostalgia in mind, the train ride was very much a modern-day affair, with cable television networks broadcasting live from a dining car and from satellite trucks parked along the route. It was an opportunity for Mr. Obama to turn the conversation, at least for now, away from the criticism of his economic stimulus plan and other stumbles in his transition, back to his victory in November. Jacqueline Tinsley, 56, was among those who turned out to see Mr. Obama as he began his journey to Washington. She volunteered throughout the course of his campaign, well before even she believed that his quest would be a success, and said she could not miss this moment, which she believes will be etched in the nation’s history. “In all my life, I never thought that there would be a black president,” Ms. Tinsley said, taking her seat in the hall of the train station in downtown Philadelphia. “When he first started, I didn’t know how much of a chance he had, but over time, you could see it within him. I know he can’t live up to every expectation, but he has something that we need at this time.” Mr. Obama and his family were riding a private rail car called the Georgia 300, built in 1939, which has carried former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. At the time the car first went into service, getting a job as a railroad porter was among the highest aspirations for a black man in America. It was the same blue vintage rail car that carried Mr. Obama on a tour through Pennsylvania during his primary campaign, a few days before losing that state to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. “It was actually one of my favorite times on the campaign,” Mr. Obama told his guests aboard the train on Saturday. Although Lincoln provided the inspiration for the train trip to Washington, Mr. Obama did not mention him by name in his remarks, though he has referred to him again and again as a historical beacon for his own candidacy. But Mr. Obama filled his addresses with phrases associated with Lincoln, including the “better angels” call to action. “We should never forget,” Mr. Obama said, “that we are the heirs of that first band of patriots, ordinary men and women who refused to give up when it all seemed so improbable; and who somehow believed that they had the power to make the world anew. That is the spirit that we must reclaim today.” Mr. Obama invited a few dozen guests, most of whom he had met during the course of his presidential campaign, to join him on the symbolic last leg of his journey to the nation’s capital. There was the Fischer family from Beech Grove, Ind., whose home Mr. Obama stopped by for lunch one day last spring as he sought to show his connection to working families. There were the Girardeaus, a family from Kansas City, Mo., whose living room he sat in to watch his wife deliver her speech at the Democratic convention. And there was Lilly Ledbetter, a woman for whom the Fair Pay Act was named, after her long struggle with Goodyear to receive equal wages with men. “Theirs are the voices I will carry with me every day in the White House,” Mr. Obama said. “Theirs are the stories I will be thinking of when we deliver the changes you elected me to make.”

Inaugurations
Obama Barack
United States Politics and Government


Supreme Court Complicates Corruption Cases From New York to Illinois

Abstract: WASHINGTON — After Dean G. Skelos, the once-powerful New York state senator, was sentenced last month on federal corruption charges, one of his lawyers asked the judge to allow Mr. Skelos to remain free on bail while he appealed his conviction. Her argument: A case pending in the United States Supreme Court, challenging the conviction of former Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, could help undermine the criminal charges against Mr. Skelos. “It is extremely likely that the court will reverse the conviction in Governor McDonnell’s case,” Alexandra A. E. Shapiro, the lawyer, told the judge. Her prediction proved accurate. And within moments after the Supreme Court reversed Mr. McDonnell’s conviction on Monday, defense lawyers from Illinois to New York were citing the unanimous ruling as grounds to challenge past and pending criminal corruption cases brought by the Justice Department. “This is a sign of the court saying to prosecutors, ‘You are overreaching,’” said Leonard Goodman, a lawyer for former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, who was convicted on corruption charges in 2011 and is scheduled to be resentenced in August. “They think they have unfettered discretion to take down any elected officials.” Current and former prosecutors strongly disagreed. In Manhattan, a spokesman for Preet Bharara, the United States attorney there, said in a statement on Monday, “While we are reviewing the McDonnell decision, the official actions that led to the convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos fall squarely within the definition set forth by the Supreme Court today.” Mr. Bharara has repeatedly said he remains committed to ending a pattern of corrupt acts by elected officials, and most recently, his office won the convictions of Mr. Skelos and Mr. Silver, a former State Assembly leader. Still, there was agreement among legal experts on Monday that the ruling would make it harder for the government to win corruption convictions. For the second time since 2010, the court narrowed the avenues that prosecutors have to file such charges. The decision could even discourage some cases from being brought in the first place. “The bar is now higher in terms of what you have to prove,” said Randall D. Eliason, a former chief of the public corruption section at the United States attorney’s office in Washington. “This will leave a lot of unsavory conduct unpunished.” Mr. McDonnell was accused of accepting gifts, loans and vacations from an affluent Virginia businessman who wanted the governor’s help dealing with state officials. “Our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes and ball gowns,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court, adding that “setting up a meeting, talking to another official or organizing an event (or agreeing to do so) — without more” — does not fit the definition of an “official act.” In 2010, in a decision also involving so-called honest services fraud, the Supreme Court set aside the conviction of Jeffrey K. Skilling — the former chief executive of Enron, the bankrupt energy company — ruling that the law could be used to prosecute only bribery or kickbacks, not more limited actions like “self dealing,” in which an official secretly takes an action for personal gain. Image Sheldon Silver, New York’s former Assembly speaker, leaving a Manhattan court in May after being sentenced to 12 years in jail. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal nonprofit group, said the combination of rulings was likely to have a major impact because elected officials involved in wrongdoing often did not have the power to personally deliver the favor that had been requested. Mr. Bookbinder said examples of cases that might now be harder to prosecute included those of Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California, who pushed the Defense Department to select a particular contractor after receiving gifts and pleaded guilty in 2005 , and Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, who was convicted in 2009 of taking bribes from a company that asked him to press executive branch officials to buy its products. “The Supreme Court seems to be giving people a way to go ahead with corrupt conduct, with kind of a wink and a nod,” Mr. Bookbinder said. Joel Bertocchi, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago, cautioned against overstating the impact of Monday’s ruling. “Having the same set of facts, they may be able to file different charges,” he said. But defense lawyers and some conservative legal groups that have been critical of the Justice Department said they hoped the ruling would bring real change. They argued that the government had, in its zeal to win headlines, filed charges in recent years for activities that did not meet the standard for federal corruption. “Once again, it has taken the U.S. Supreme Court to remind prosecutors that they do not have a blank check to read all kinds of unintended and overly broad criminality into vaguely worded statutes passed by Congress,” said E. G. Morris, a lawyer in Austin, Tex., and the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The precise impact of the McDonnell ruling on the Skelos and Silver cases was not immediately clear. Lawyers for Mr. Skelos, the former State Senate majority leader and a Republican, had no comment on the decision. But at Mr. Skelos’s sentencing last month, Rahul Mukhi, a prosecutor in Mr. Bharara’s office, argued that Mr. Skelos’s corrupt acts had gone far beyond those taken by Mr. McDonnell, and that the cases were not “factually analogous.” “McDonnell involved only meetings,” Mr. Mukhi said. “This case involved, overwhelmingly, legislation.” Mr. Bharara’s office had said, for example, that Mr. Skelos supported legislation in Albany to benefit companies that arranged payments to his son, Adam B. Skelos, who was convicted along with his father. The elder Mr. Skelos received a five-year prison term ; his son was sentenced to six and a half years. Lawyers for Mr. Silver, a Democrat who received a 12-year sentence , said Monday that the McDonnell decision “will be central” to their client’s appeal. The lawyers, Steven F. Molo and Joel Cohen, said the decision “makes clear that the federal government has gone too far in prosecuting state officials for conduct that is part of the everyday functioning of those in elected office.” Noel J. Francisco, who argued Mr. McDonnell’s case before the Supreme Court, said that he hoped the ruling would be the end of his client’s prosecution and that the charges would be dropped entirely. “They brought the case they brought,” he said, “because that was the most they could get a conviction on. That theory has been squarely rejected.”

Virginia
Sheldon Silver
Supreme Court,SCOTUS
Gifts to Public Officials
Bribery and Kickbacks
Robert F McDonnell
Dean G Skelos
Ethics Misconduct Malfeasance


Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Abstract: Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com . Q. Is the voice-over announcer in the FiOS Quantum commercials for Verizon the comedian Daniel Tosh, from “Tosh.0” on Comedy Central? A. The voice belongs to another television comedian, dear reader: “Ty Burrell of ‘Modern Family’ fame,” says John Bonomo, a spokesman at Verizon. The commercials featuring Mr. Burrell’s voice are created by McCann Erickson Worldwide in New York, part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. Q. There’s a commercial for the Verizon Wireless XLTE network that starts in a convenience store and ends in a sports bar. In the store, all the brands are not visible or blurry but for one, Slim Jim meat snacks, which figures in the guy’s fantasy of being a hero by stopping a robber holding up the store by lassoing him with a rope made of Slim Jims. Is that the result of a deal with Slim Jim, or was the brand included to make the scene seem more real? A. “Yes, we did connect with Slim Jim in order to leverage the brand in the ad,” says Debra Lewis, a spokeswoman at Verizon Wireless. “Over all, we felt it brought additional reality to what is a fantasy sequence.” The commercial that incorporates Slim Jim, a brand owned by ConAgra Foods, was created by McGarryBowen in New York, part of the Dentsu Aegis Network division of Dentsu.

Daniel Tosh
ConAgra Foods
advertising,marketing
Verizon Communications


Botanists Debate the Benefits of Assisted Migration

Abstract: CHICAGO — Pitcher’s thistle, whose fuzzy leaves and creamy pink puffs once thrived in the sand dunes along several of the Great Lakes, was driven by development, drought and weevils into virtual extinction from the shores of Lake Michigan decades ago. But in the 1990s, seeds collected from different parts of the thistle’s range were grown at the Chicago Botanic Garden and planted with the help of the Morton Arboretum along the lake, in Illinois State Beach Park, north of Chicago near the Wisconsin state line. The plants from Indiana’s dunes to the south are doing well; the plants that had come from the north are failing. With those mixed results in mind, scientists from the botanic garden are sending teams out across the Midwest and West to the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin to collect seeds from different populations of 1,500 prairie species by 2010, and from 3,000 species by 2020. The goal is to preserve the species and, depending on changes in climate, perhaps even help species that generally grow near one another to migrate to a new range. “In 50 to 100 years, because habitats or climates are so altered, we might end up trying to move species in a restoration context, in assemblages of species,” said Pati Vitt, a conservation scientist and curator of the Dixon National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank at the botanic garden. The garden is seeking permits to test the concept with the thistle, by pushing it into new, colder territory along the shores of Lake Ontario. “It may be the best test case for moving an individual species outside its range,” Dr. Vitt said. But assisted migration, as it is called, is a hotly debated issue. On one side are those like the botanic garden scientists, who argue that the risks are better than doing nothing. “We recognize that climate change is likely to be very rapid and that seeds only disperse a few hundred yards, half a mile at most, naturally,” said Kayri Havens, the botanic garden’s director of plant science and conservation. “They’ll need our help if we want to keep those species alive.” Other scientists argue that tinkering with the complexity of habitats is courting disaster — and huge expense. “Even given our best science, we’re not good at predicting which species will be invasive,” said Jason S. McLachlan, a biologist at the University of Notre Dame who has studied postglacial population spread. “And it’s going to be especially complex as climates change.” The American beech, for example, was so rare during the ice age that it is rarely found in fossils. “It may have been one of those rare and unusual species we think about saving with approaches like assisted migration,” Dr. McLachlan said. Now, the beech is so abundant in Eastern forests, he said, it is shading out “almost all other species.” Dr. McLachlan and other scientists have formed a working group on managed relocation , financed by the National Science Foundation and the Cedar Tree Foundation, to open up the discussion to citizens, economists, natural resource managers and policy makers. While the debate proceeds, scientists at the botanic garden are building the seed collection and assessing the adaptability of different populations of species. Dr. Vitt and Dr. Havens recently showed off the new Rice Science Center, which has laboratories and a 420-square-foot seed vault with floor-to-ceiling stainless steel shelves. When temperatures in the giant humidity-controlled freezer stabilized at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit at the end of September, they moved collections of 800 Midwestern species — some made up of 300,000 seeds — from their old home in four large freezers, hardly different from the kind a large family might use to store home-grown produce and a side of beef. “The first time I walked in here, I started to cry,” Dr. Vitt said. “I know what having this will allow us to do in the future. It’s the most important conservation work the garden can be doing.” The prairie effort is part of a Bureau of Land Management project called Seeds of Success, which intends to collect seeds of the entire flora of the United States, except for species already under protection and recalcitrant species, or those that cannot survive long-term storage. That is 14,000 native plant species. Seeds of Success, started in 2001 in response to a Congressional mandate to plant native seed in restoring public lands destroyed by wildfire, began its far more ambitious initiative in June 2008. A consortium of botanic gardens and other institutions have sent 65 teams across the country, which so far have collected groupings of 3,200 species. “We hope to collect 20 populations across the species’ range so we can get 95 percent of the genetic diversity of the species,” said Peggy Olwell, the plant conservation program manager at the bureau. “Because frankly, we don’t know what it is we’re going to need when we’re talking restoration in light of climate change. It’s going to be one big experiment.” Seeds of Success sends one collection of every species to the Millennium Seed Bank Project, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , in Britain, which intends to collect 25 percent of the world’s flora by 2020. Seeds are also stored at the National Center for Genetic Resource Preservation in Fort Collins, Colo., and the Western Regional Plant Introduction Station in Pullman, Wash. The Dixon seed bank at the Chicago Botanic Garden houses not only species from the tallgrass prairie, but also natives of the bogs, dunes and other ecosystems in the prairie region. It also includes the working collections of species singled out for restoration. “In the Midwest, we have about 200 that are going to be very important,” Dr. Havens said. “These are the matrix species, the bread-and-butter species that can be used in restorations after disturbance to really stabilize the community.” Climate models all show temperatures rising, but they do not agree on the prairie’s future climate. “Some models show us with more Virginia-like ecosystem, some say more like Texas,” Dr. Havens said. In a paper to be published in the journal Biology Conservation and available now online , Dr. Vitt, Dr. Havens and three other scientists at the botanic garden outline a framework for assisted migration, calling first for a globally unified seed banking strategy, which involves collecting genetically diverse populations of each species, accompanied by provenance data like GPS coordinates, soil type and the structure of the surrounding plant community. They also propose how to predict where species can be relocated. The scientists are just beginning to test their theories in seven climate change gardens planted this fall across the country. Each contains genetically identical clones of plants grown from seed collected in four hardiness zones (4, 5, 6 and 7). Three sites are in the Chicago area, with the others in Boston; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Seattle; and Washington. Students and volunteers will collect data on the species, and can compare their gardens with others through a webcam system. “If plants grown from seed collected in Zone 4, 5 or 6 can’t withstand Texas conditions,” Dr. Havens said, “that’s a good sign they’re going to become extinct here, if there’s no way for them to migrate on their own or human-assisted.” Collecting all the native species in the United States, as well as developing restoration techniques and growing huge amounts of seed will take about 10 years and cost about $500 million, Dr. Havens said — a cost that she argues is well worth it. Dr. Vitt said: “I won’t be around in 100 years, but if the research isn’t there, we won’t know how to do it on that scale. That’s why the seed bank is so important. “For now, we are trying to follow Aldo Leopold’s maxim: ‘The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces.’ ”

Flowers and Plants
Invasive Species
Global Warming
Science and Technology


Yankees to Open 2016 Season at Home Against Astros

Abstract: When the Yankees finally shake the pointlessness of trying to hit Dallas Keuchel and the disappointment of their season ending in Tuesday night’s 3-0 wild-card loss to the Houston Astros , they can look forward to a fresh start in 2016. But it is probably best that the they do not look too far ahead. On opening day, at Yankee Stadium, the feelings of futility and frustration are sure to come cascading back. Their opponent that day: the Astros , who are as certain to start Keuchel as the Yankees’ pinstripes are straight. The usual opening day optimism, when every team is undefeated, stands as little chance of blossoming in the Bronx on April 4 as the Yankees’ bats had against Keuchel this season. Keuchel, a left-hander with a distinctive bushy beard, pitched 22 scoreless innings against the Yankees, allowing 12 hits (11 of which were singles) and two walks while striking out 28. Alex Rodriguez, the designated hitter, called Keuchel a left-handed Greg Maddux, who is in the Hall of Fame. Third baseman Chase Headley said: “I go back and watch my at-bats and I don’t know if he threw a ball over the plate to me all night. You have to tip your cap.” On the bright side, after opening day, the Yankees will have plenty of time to take their minds off Keuchel. They will not see him again until the end of July, except perhaps in their nightmares.


China Aims to Tighten Its Borders Against Foreign Place Names

Abstract: HONG KONG — There is a Vancouver Forest in Beijing, a Thames Town in Shanghai and an Oriental Yosemite in Dalian, China . China ’s suburbs have been filling up lately with housing developments whose names and architectural styles are meant to evoke the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, anywhere but China. And the authorities don’t like it. The minister of civil affairs, Li Liguo, said on Tuesday that “bizarre” names that “damage sovereignty and national dignity” or “violate the socialist core values and conventional morality” would be stamped out, the state news agency Xinhua reported . And it is not just foreignness he objects to. The report quoted Mr. Li as saying that excessively grandiose or strange names for roads, bridges, buildings and residential compounds would also face scrutiny. Housing developments have been the biggest generators of odd names. Beijing alone has a Chateau Regalia, a Rose and Ginkgo, Merlin Champagne Town, Le Leman Lake Villa, Beijing Riviera and International Wonderland. Developers say the international flavor helps sell houses. On the outskirts of Beijing, the Jackson Hole resort community , known in Chinese as Hometown America, attracts residents dreaming of a “free and uncomplicated life.” Tides of embrace or rejection of foreign arts, styles and philosophies have ebbed and flowed through Chinese history. In recent years, officials have tried to push back against Western values in textbooks and English-language acronyms in television and radio broadcasts . The concern over place names has been raised as part of an official Chinese geographical survey that began in 2014. Along with an explosion in foreign names, there has also been a noticeable disappearance of traditional names, Mr. Li said. The survey found that since 1986, 60,000 township names and 400,000 village names had fallen out of use as a result of development and urbanization, The Beijing News reported . It was not supposed to happen. There has been a regulation on the books in China since 1996 that prohibits the use of the names of foreign people or places for locations in China, including housing developments, The Beijing News said. But the rule has had little impact. Once a name is in use, though, changing it can be problematic. Officials tried to rename a street in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, ostensibly because the Chinese character used to represent its foreign name was often mispronounced by people unfamiliar with the place, China National Radio said. But residents objected and filed a lawsuit to block the change, citing the potential loss of historical identity. Previous efforts to change foreign place names in China have not been wholeheartedly embraced, either. In the southeastern city of Fuzhou, a housing development known as Fontainebleau was ordered by local officials to change its name, which became Gaojiayuan. Afterward, one resident complained to a local newspaper that she missed her bus stop after the signs were changed. And a real estate agent confessed that while the official name was now Gaojiayuan, for the purpose of selling houses it would always be called Fontainebleau.

China
Suburb
Housing
Real Estate
Geographic Names
Commercial Real Estate


Falklands Voters Back British Rule Nearly Unanimously

Abstract: LONDON — When the news reached London on Tuesday that 99.7 percent of Falkland islanders who had participated in a referendum had voted “yes” on retaining their ties with Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron was delighted. The result, he said, proved that the islands were “British through and through.” “The Falkland islanders couldn’t have spoken more clearly,” he said. “They want to remain British, and that view should be respected by everybody, including by Argentina.” In Buenos Aires, though, Argentine officials dismissed the referendum as irrelevant, describing the dispute over the islands as a matter of sovereignty, not popular will. No vote by British “settlers,” they said, however lopsided, could trump Argentina’s historic claim to the archipelago that Argentines call Las Malvinas. And so, at the end of the latest chapter in a push-pull over the islands dating back decades, matters appeared to stand pretty much where they had before the islanders, prodded by the Cameron government, called the referendum in response to a resurgence of nationalist fervor over the issue in Argentina. The dispute, it seemed, will continue to rumble on at the United Nations, with neither London nor Buenos Aires showing any readiness to cede ground. The vote among the islanders on Sunday and Monday had been expected to produce the landslide that it did because most voters hold British citizenship. Of 1,517 votes cast, 1,513 were in favor of the islands’ retaining “their status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom,” as the ballot question put it, and only three were opposed. Island officials recorded one vote as “unaccounted for,” meaning lost. Officials said 92 percent of eligible voters turned out. Mr. Cameron went before television cameras to hail the result as a triumph — a rare one, electorally, for the prime minister, whose government has been trounced in several recent by-elections at home. Calling the Falklands result “the clearest possible,” he said the Argentine government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner should take “careful note.” He added that Britain would always defend the islands, a reference to the 1982 war that Britain won after Argentine forces occupied the islands, which lie nearly 8,000 miles from Britain and barely 300 miles from Argentina in the south Atlantic. More than 900 lives were lost in the 10-week conflict, more than two-thirds of them Argentine military personnel, but some Argentine political and military officials have hinted at a new attempt to seize the islands by force. Britain has bolstered its defenses with a new military airfield, the deployment of Typhoon fighter-bombers, and a garrison with 1,200 civilian and military personnel. Mr. Cameron said the islanders were entitled to the right of self-determination under the United Nations Charter, and were not colonialists, as Argentina has said. “The Falkland Islands may be thousands of miles away but they are British through and through, and that is how they want to stay, and people should know we will always be there to defend them,” he said. “Now other countries right across the world, I hope, will respect and revere this very, very clear result.” Argentina’s formal response to the vote is expected this week in resolutions by both chambers of Argentina’s Congress.

Falkland Islands
Referendum
Argentina
Great Britain


Three Years After Shooting, Victims Still Struggle

Abstract: “You could hear the fear in the air. People were screaming. Everyone was running. You didn’t feel like the fight was over.” That is how Ryan Cunanan of Daly City remembers the shooting spree in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood on Halloween night 2006. “It was pretty scary,” he said, “but my running was getting slower. I knew something was funny because my sock felt wet.” He took off his shoe, “and it was like a waterfall” of blood. He had been shot in the right foot. In the end, he was one of nine people wounded. Three years after the melee, victims like Mr. Cunanan are speaking publicly for the first time. What emerges is a multifaceted story of loss: the loss of a popular city tradition, of a sense of safety and a more general loss, the loss of trust in government to do the right thing. City leaders are now apologizing and admitting that the wounded did not receive the help they should have. “How the city took care of the victims was very poorly done,” said Mr. Cunanan, 28. He believes he was abandoned, with no assistance or even the courtesy of an update on the investigation. Instead, he received bills for use of the city’s emergency services. When he could not pay right away, collection agencies wrecked his credit. It was only last month — with new insurance coverage — that he was able to have a surgeon at Kaiser remove the slug from his foot. An understanding employer allowed Mr. Cunanan to work from home during the monthlong recuperation. All told, “I lost a year and a half of my life,” the affable Mr. Cunanan said. He smiled when asked if he felt lucky or unlucky. “I’m a half-full type of guy,” he replied. Even with the bullet in his foot, he ran the Bay to Breakers race. Twice. Thinking back to that Halloween, he recalled hearing two men arguing. Then the images return, mostly as close-ups of hands. “Next thing you know a guy pulls out a gun,” he said. “I have an image of another guy grabbing his arm, and that’s why he was shooting randomly. “I didn’t know I was shot. It felt like just a pinch. Maybe it was the adrenaline. I was pushing my girlfriend out of the way, like Kevin Costner instincts kicked in.” Mr. Cunanan had just started a new job and had yet to qualify for health insurance. Bills for the ambulance and San Francisco General Hospital, plus follow-up treatment, totaled nearly $10,000. He was told to pay those bills out of his own pocket. He would find out later, in a chance encounter with a stranger who had noticed his limp, that the state’s Victim Compensation Program paid in such circumstances. Eventually that happened, but by then his credit history was scarred. Tani Elliott, 27, of Noe Valley also had her bills paid by the victims’ fund, eventually. But collection agencies hounded her for more than a year, bringing back painful memories with demand letters, “haunting you in your mailbox,” she said. The police reports indicate a gunshot grazed Ms. Elliott’s head. She said that was false. She, too, has never heard from investigators. On her own, she returned to the scene to retrace her steps and confirmed what she had always known: she had been trampled in the terrified stampede that followed the gunshots, her head bashed into the curb. Ms. Elliott had been dressed in a skunk costume. “I called myself road kill,” she joked. Then she dismissed her own remark, just as she once dismissed the notion that her injury had not been her fault. “I blamed myself for a very long time for being there and putting myself in danger,” she said. She remains scared and said she would not attend large events where alcohol was served. When told the victims’ stories, Supervisor Bevan Dufty said: “I’m devastated to hear that; I wish I’d known. I’d like to express my apology that they were not responded to appropriately and that we’ve almost compounded the tragedy that they’ve experienced.” The Castro is in Mr. Dufty’s district, and he took the lead on reconfiguring San Francisco’s communal Halloween celebration, first trying to make it safe and then eventually canceling the event after the shootings. He blames gangs for the trouble. So do the police, who remain frustrated by the inability to make an arrest, said Deputy Chief David Shinn. Ballistics tests identified the gun fired that night, but it was covered in multiple DNA matches, making it impossible to connect to one person. Those involved in the violence “used the crowd as a shield,” Mr. Shinn said. Mr. Shinn offered the department’s apologies for not updating the victims and said the case was “inactive” unless new evidence emerged. Investigators will look at the newly retrieved bullet from Mr. Cunanan’s foot. In the meantime, the Halloween celebration in the Castro is still canceled. Saturday is expected to be a low-key night, with festivities kept indoors. The two victims plan to stay away.

Halloween
Murders and Attempted Murders
San Francisco (Calif)
Medicine and Health


Retirees Filling the Front Line in Market Fears

Abstract: Older Americans with investments are among the hardest hit by the turmoil in the financial markets and have the least opportunity to recover. As companies have switched from fixed pensions to 401(k) accounts, retirees risk losing big chunks of their wealth and income in a single day’s trading, as many have in the last month. “There’s a terrified older population out there,” said Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College . “If you’re 45 and the market goes down, it bothers you, but it comes back. But if you’re retired or about to retire, you might have to sell your assets before they have a chance to recover. And people don’t have the luxury of being in bonds because they don’t yield enough for how long we live.” Today’s retirees have less money in savings, longer life expectancies and greater exposure to market risk than any retirees since World War II. Even before the last week of turmoil, 39 percent of retirees said they expected to outlive their savings, up from 29 percent in 2007, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, an industry-sponsored group in Washington . “This really highlights the new world of retirement,” said Richard Johnson, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington. “It’s a much riskier world for retirees, because people don’t have defined-benefit plans. They have pots of money and they have to worry about making it last.” Carol J. Emerson, 65, sees herself as particularly vulnerable. Her annual income of $50,000 comes almost entirely from dividends, and she says she is worried that as her stocks decline, some of those dividends will fall, too. “If I were guaranteed that the dividend would remain unchanged, I could ignore that the underlying value of my stocks has eroded,” she said. “But that is not the way it works. If the value of the stocks doesn’t go up again, there are not a lot of companies that can keep on paying a 16 percent dividend.” Nevertheless, Ms. Emerson decided to push ahead last week with the rebuilding of her sun porch in Ventura, Calif., not wanting to endure any longer the discomfort of life in a mobile home with a leaky and rusting porch. “I don’t obsess about what is happening, but it is always in the back of my mind,” Ms. Emerson said, adding that she would cancel the $30,000 project if she lost faith that stocks would rebound in her lifetime. “I can sustain the ups and downs, as long as the downs are followed by ups,” Ms. Emerson said, “but I cannot sustain a constant slow erosion. I am assuming, despite all the terrible news, that somehow things will get better.” Older people with few assets, including the one-third of retirees who rely on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income, may not suffer directly from the decline in the stock market, but they feel the pain of higher gas and food prices and reductions in volunteer services like Meals on Wheels, which have been curtailed because of fuel costs. The collapse of the housing market has hit older homeowners. According to the Center for Retirement Research, Americans over age 63 pulled $300 billion out of their home equity through refinancing from 2001 to 2006, lowering their net worth. Surveys by AARP , the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and the Employee Benefit Research Institute have found that more workers nearing retirement age are putting off their plans to retire, curtailing contributions to their 401(k) accounts and borrowing from the accounts to pay for living expenses, including credit card and mortgage debt. After three decades of decline, a higher percentage of Americans older than 55 are now working than at any time since 1970, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Some are working because they want to, but many because they need to. The McKinsey Global Institute reported in June that the typical worker would have to work to age 70 to maintain his or her standard of living in retirement. Mary O’Connell, 76, and her husband, S. F., 78, of St. Peters, Mo. , retired without pensions and with meager benefits from Social Security, counting on income from four stocks. But the bulk of the stock was in Bank of America , whose stock has dropped by nearly a third since the start of the year, including 10 percent last week. “It’s been horrible,” Ms. O’Connell said. “I can’t cash anything because the value has deteriorated so much that I would lose money. And even if I did I’d face capital gains tax that would wipe out what little bit I’d get.” At the same time, she said, her “safe” investments — her certificates of deposit — have rolled over to lower interest rates, reducing a reliable stream of income. Ms. O’Connell said she did not follow her stocks too closely because it would only make her depressed. “We figure we worked all our lives,” she said. “This is something we wanted to enjoy. Now that’s taken away from us.” For many older people, last week’s turmoil on Wall Street was just the latest in a series of shocks that have eroded their stability. When Robert Waskover, 79, was asked how the economy was affecting him, the first thing he mentioned was gas prices. Mr. Waskover, who sells insurance part time in Palm Beach Gardens , Fla., said he and his wife, Barbara, 75, were being squeezed from all sides: rising expenses for gas, food and health care; lower income from his business; and the collapse in value of their home and stock portfolio. Mr. Waskover described a one-two punch from the economy. First, his expenses started to exceed his income, so he began occasionally selling some of his stock. Then the stock prices fell, so any sale meant taking a loss. “Now I’m looking to see if I can take a bridge loan on the house so I can draw on that,” he said. “We’ve been watching every penny. And everything keeps going up and up.” Corlette McShea, 61, of Libertyville, Ill., is one of those worried about how she will live in retirement. Ms. McShea, who works nearly full time for a market research company, has scrimped to build a nest egg — buying her house for cash after a divorce settlement, building a 401(k) account and buying a seven-year, $30,000 annuity from the American International Group . Then she discovered the annuity was not protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation . As A.I.G. teetered this month, Ms. McShea tried to call the number given to her for A.I.G. “Their office is in Texas , so after the hurricane, the office is not even open so I couldn’t talk to anybody,” she said. She was willing to pay a penalty for early withdrawal, she said, but at 61, “how do you recoup any of this?” At the same time, other parts of the economy are closing in around her. Though her home is paid off, her property taxes have risen to nearly $14,000 a year, up from $5,000 when she bought the house 10 years ago. She was counting on the annuity to pay the taxes. “What a terrible situation that you have a house that is paid for and you can’t even afford to stay in it because the real estate taxes keep going up,” she said. “In my neighborhood, there’s houses up and down the street that are for sale and not even an offer. I’m stuck. I’m stuck with the house; I don’t know what my investments are doing; and here’s this annuity with A.I.G. that is in jeopardy. Every way I look, I’m feeling kind of scared and panicked.” Younger people, of course, have been feeling the market’s pain as well. But for some — including those who have felt priced out of the housing market — the dips mean a chance to get in. For older people, there is no upside to the distress. “They’ve got to adjust their expectations of retirement,” said Martin Baily, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution . “The market will recover, but you won’t.”

Retirement
Pensions and Retirement Plans
Stocks and Bonds
Personal finance
US Economy
401k
Asset allocation
Old age,elderly,senior citizens


Though Adversaries, Auto Talk Leaders Have Much in Common

Abstract: DETROIT, Sept. 16 — Ron Gettelfinger, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, and Rick Wagoner, the chief executive of General Motors , may seem to be at opposite ends of the automotive spectrum. But as the union and the company tried to reach agreement on a new contract over the weekend and avoid a strike, some notable similarities between the men became apparent. Both are running institutions that once dominated the American automobile industry but have been diminished as Japanese companies have made deep inroads here. Both have devoted their careers to the organizations they run. Each generally displays a steady exterior but can show flashes of temper when events do not go his way. Most important, both Mr. Gettelfinger and Mr. Wagoner have everything on the line in negotiations that continued Sunday at a U.A.W.-G.M. education center in Detroit. Contracts covering 73,000 workers expired at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday. “The very survival of these institutions is now at risk,” said John Casesa, an industry analyst with the Casesa Shapiro Group. The weight of the industry is on the shoulders of G.M., as the lead negotiator with the union. The U.A.W. has not been in formal contact with officials at Ford Motor or Chrysler since selecting G.M. as its strike target on Thursday. At the time, it told executives there that it planned to resume talks this Wednesday, assuming a deal had been reached at G.M., a person with knowledge of the conversation said Sunday. Those talks would be delayed, however, if discussions with G.M. dragged on, or if there was a strike, this person said. While Mr. Wagoner has been on hand during the talks, he has not played a day-to-day role in the bargaining at G.M., where contracts have been extended hour to hour. Traditionally, chief executives receive regular reports on the progress of their team, which in Mr. Wagoner’s case includes the company’s chief financial officer, Frederick A. Henderson; its president for North America, Troy Clarke; and its vice president for North American labor relations, Diana D. Tremblay, the first woman to play so prominent a role in negotiations. Mr. Gettelfinger has his own team, led by Cal Rapson, the union’s president for the G.M. department, who previously served as a regional director with responsibilities that included plants in Flint, Mich. He is also getting advice from a retired union official, Frank Musick, who was close to Mr. Gettelfinger’s predecessor, the late Stephen P. Yokich. Like Mr. Yokich, Mr. Gettelfinger has played his cards extremely close, keeping a lid on information from the talks taking place inside what some U.A.W. officials have nicknamed “the fortress.” Industry leaders, including Mr. Wagoner; Ford Motor’s chief executive, Alan R. Mulally; and Robert L. Nardelli, the new head of Chrysler, held a conference call on Saturday to discuss the negotiations. Mr. Gettelfinger, who came up through the ranks at Ford, has departed from Mr. Yokich in one major way. While Mr. Yokich successfully fought off the companies’ efforts to erode gains made by the union since World War II, Mr. Gettelfinger’s tenure has been marked by a series of concessions to the carmakers. They have included the deals with G.M. and Ford that required workers and retirees to pay more for health care coverage; lower wages at the bankrupt Delphi Corporation, a parts supplier once owned by G.M.; and retirement incentives and buyout deals offered to workers at the three Detroit automakers and Delphi over the last year. More than 80,000 workers opted for those arrangements, leaving Mr. Gettelfinger with a total work force at the Detroit companies of just fewer than 200,000 workers, or a fifth the number who worked at car plants in 1980. Local union officials, for their part, say they understand the pressure faced by Mr. Gettelfinger. “Yokich was a different kind of president in a different time,” said Debbie Kirchner, the recording secretary for U.A.W. Local 598 in Flint, founded after a historic sit-down strike in 1937. “I stand by Gettelfinger,” said Sylvia West, who has worked at G.M.’s truck plant in Flint for three years. Standing outside the union hall, where dozens of workers were gathering for a membership meeting, Ms. West added, “I don’t want a strike, but if he says we should, I’m behind him 100 percent.” Barring that, any deal Mr. Gettelfinger reaches is bound to look much different from the contracts union members have become accustomed to approving. If Mr. Wagoner gets his way, G.M. will shift its $55 billion liability for worker and retiree health care to the union, which would run a giant trust called a voluntary employee benefit association. Mr. Wagoner has pushed for the trust in an effort to jump-start the competitiveness of G.M. in North America, where it continues to lose money even as its operations around the world flourish. “By putting our global resources together, it really shows what a global G.M. team can accomplish,” Mr. Wagoner told the radio host Paul W. Smith at the Frankfurt Motor Show last week. But G.M.’s foreign gains will mean little, Mr. Casesa said, if Mr. Wagoner does not address his biggest problems at home. Likewise, Mr. Gettelfinger must prepare his members for a future far different from the one they thought awaited them, he said. “G.M. is running out of capital, the U.A.W. is running out of members,” Mr. Casesa said. “The only solution for them both is to embrace radical change.”

United Automobile Workers
Automobiles
General Motors Corp
Gettelfinger Ron
Wagoner G Richard Jr