The Rise of a New Smartphone Giant: China’s Xiaomi

Abstract: HONG KONG — In China, the smartphone battle used to be Samsung versus Apple. But not anymore. Over the summer, a Chinese company, Xiaomi, took the No. 1 position in China’s competitive market and became the world’s third-largest phone maker in the process. Founded in 2010 as a lean start-up to sell smartly designed phones at cheap prices over the Internet, Xiaomi was decidedly late to the game. Its first handset came out around the time of the iPhone 4S. But a clever social media strategy and a business plan that emphasized selling services that work on the phone helped Xiaomi build frenzied support from young and trendy Chinese. With people in China expected to buy 500 million smartphones in 2015 — more than three times as many as will be sold in the United States, according to the research firm IDC — Xiaomi is poised to cement its place as one of the most powerful phone makers in the world’s most important market. Now the company’s founders, who include the Chinese entrepreneur Lei Jun and the former Google executive Lin Bin, hope that status will help them take their brand globally. Though Xiaomi already sells internationally, next year will be the true test of whether it can continue its rise beyond China. Shunning markets like the United States and Europe, Mr. Lei and Mr. Lin are looking at huge developing countries like Brazil and India. And they hope to use e-commerce networks to sell cheap, high-quality phones and recreate their Chinese success. But there are considerable challenges. Xiaomi does not yet have much of a patent portfolio, leaving it vulnerable to lawsuits from competitors. Last week, the company was temporarily blocked from India because of a patent complaint by the Swedish telecommunications manufacturer Ericsson. And other low-cost manufacturers from China have the same idea about pushing into those emerging markets. “Selling the phone to users is a good start, but it’s really not the end of the business,” Mr. Lin said in a recent interview. “It’s actually the beginning of the business. It’s after the user buys the phone and starts using the phone that will generate extra value, to users and to us.” Image Lin Bin, Xiaomi’s president, center, and others in a “planking” challenge at company headquarters in Beijing. Recent photos of such a contest went viral in China. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times Striking similarities between Xiaomi’s well-attended product unveiling ceremonies and Apple’s tightly choreographed media events have meant that Xiaomi is often described as the Apple of China — largely successful because, some experts say, it produces cheap knockoffs of Apple’s and Samsung’s high-end phones. Yet the company is more than a copycat. In its business model and marketing, Xiaomi has out-innovated all comers in China. The online-first approach has earned Xiaomi the greatest accolade a company can receive in China: Its rivals are now copying it. The well-known telecommunications equipment makers Huawei and ZTE both have lines of phones they sell primarily online. Companies like OnePlus and Smartisan also focus on well-designed products with high-end components and sell them at a relatively low price. That imitation could prove dangerous. Analysts point out that Huawei and Lenovo can use their control of the manufacturing of parts that go into a phone to gain a cost advantage. And hipness is hard to maintain. The head of Smartisan, Luo Yonghao, for example, has made a name for his company with product announcements that resemble stand-up comedy routines. The events are so popular, the company charges admission. To be sure, Xiaomi is treated with respect by its competitors. Li Nan, vice president of the rival Meizu, which began in the early 2000s by making digital music players and aims at customers slightly older and wealthier than Xiaomi’s, likens the devotion of Xiaomi supporters to a religion. “Xiaomi fans have a high level of organization,” he said. “They love Xiaomi. It’s a form of idolatry.” Han Yu, a 24-year-old studying for his master’s degree, is one of those idolaters. He, with tens of thousands of others, helps Xiaomi test its user interface by looking for bugs and offering suggestions. Mr. Han moderates several pages on the company’s online forum, which averages 200,000 posts a day and is where fans interact with the company. Much of his personal life revolves around Xiaomi, and he says he has met many friends that way. He said he was honored when his suggestion to create a private photo folder was adopted on phones by Xiaomi. “I really enjoy the sense of participation,” Mr. Han said. Though Xiaomi makes some money on phone sales, the company’s plan is to increase profitability by selling services like entertainment and apps through the phone. The company has also started to sell other devices, like a smart television, a tablet and a fitness band, that work on its finely tuned user interface, which it built atop Google’s Android operating system. Image A customer examines Xiaomi products in Beijing. The company is known for the devoted following seen among its users. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times Xiaomi’s marketing efforts still attract plenty of attention. After an executive meeting in December, Mr. Lin proposed a “planking” competition to management. Holding their bodies rigid in a push-up position, the executives looked markedly different from traditional Chinese executives, who are rarely seen outside formal conferences. Mr. Lin, who had a Xiaomi tablet perched on his back, eventually collapsed in exhaustion. He lost, but the contest was an advertising victory. A photo of the competition quickly went out on social media and was shared on the service Weibo more than 3,000 times in the first 24 hours. For all its success, Xiaomi’s biggest challenge looms outside China. In September 2013, the company hired Hugo Barra, an old friend of Mr. Lin’s from Google, to lead the company’s international expansion. Using social media to spread word of product launches and parties, Mr. Barra has opened a number of markets in Asia. Though some aspects of Xiaomi’s business model play on the peculiarities of China, Mr. Lin said he believes it can work abroad. In particular, he said the company will target markets with large populations, a developed e-commerce infrastructure and weak telecom carriers. The last point is important because if large service providers give consumers significant handset subsidies, the edge Xiaomi gains by selling cheap phones evaporates. “I would put China No. 1, India two, Indonesia three, then hopefully follow with Brazil and Russia,” he said. “The developed countries with tightly controlled carrier networks are not in the top five.” The countries Mr. Lin identifies all have large populations who still have not bought their first smartphone, meaning Xiaomi has a chance. Still, analysts say the company will have to be skillful in adapting to the local demands of each market. In India, for example, Xiaomi, before the court order blocking it, had the foresight to cooperate with the local e-commerce firm Flipkart. Nonetheless, it must square off against several local Indian phone makers who are fighting to become homegrown heroes, much like Xiaomi. For now, investors like its chances. A new fund-raising round could rocket Xiaomi’s value to $30 billion to $40 billion, above that of its better-known rival Lenovo, according to a person familiar with the process. And investment bankers are already courting the company ahead of a potential initial public offering of stock, which company insiders say is probably years off. “Bankers are treating Xiaomi like the next Alibaba,” said one investment banker who spoke anonymously because of company policy forbidding him from speaking with the news media.

Smartphone
China
Xiaomi Tech
International trade


Elite Rodeo Circuit? Whoa

Abstract: LAS VEGAS — As the 10-night National Finals Rodeo concludes here on Saturday, when world champions are crowned in events like saddle-bronc riding, calf roping and steer wrestling, professional rodeo will straddle a telling and potentially historic moment. The next big competition is scheduled for a Texas courtroom. Looking for more money and a less harrowing schedule, dozens of the sport’s biggest stars plan to start their own tour in 2016, most of them while still dabbling on the traditional circuit. Calling themselves Elite Rodeo Athletes , or E.R.A., they have a regular-season schedule (announced on Wednesday), a five-day championship planned for November in Dallas, a television contract with Fox Sports and the commitment of roughly 80 of the top athletes, each given an ownership share of the new enterprise. What they lack, in any way, is the support of the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association, the de facto governing body of the sport. This past fall, the rodeo cowboys’ association reacted to E.R.A.’s plans by changing its bylaws for 2016. Now, anyone with a financial interest in a competing rodeo association cannot buy an annual P.R.C.A. membership card, which is required to compete in any of the association’s 624 sanctioned rodeos in North America. That includes the season-ending National Finals Rodeo, which has a $10 million purse. E.R.A., in turn, filed an antitrust class-action lawsuit against the association last month in United States District Court in Dallas. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 29, and a decision is expected — and needed, both sides say — soon after. Image The roper Ryan Motes at an E.R.A. stand. The group has a season schedule, a championship, a television contract and a commitment from about 80 stars. Credit Josh Haner/The New York Times At stake are some sport-altering questions: Would E.R.A. athletes really give up the chance to compete at some of their favorite rodeo stops, including next year’s national finals? And would the P.R.C.A. really shut out dozens of its biggest stars and many of its world champions from all of its events? “It’s disappointing that they would rather just alienate some of the top athletes from the sport rather than come together and work out something that’s better for everybody,” said Bobby Mote , who has won four bareback world titles and is one of three named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, with the 13-time all-around champion Trevor Brazile and the roper Ryan Motes . “But that’s the position they’ve taken. For me, it’s a risk that I’m well willing to take.” The court fight and possible split have created an awkward subtext to the National Finals Rodeo, the sport’s premier event. The 17,000-seat Thomas & Mack Center is sold out for 10 consecutive prime-time rodeos and broadcast nationally, with all watching the top 15 season-long qualifiers compete in seven events: bareback riding, saddle-bronc riding, bull riding, steer wrestling, tie-down roping, team roping and, for women, barrel racing. But among the competitors are nearly 50 who have committed to E.R.A. in 2016. For now, they will not be allowed to compete in any P.R.C.A. rodeos as of Jan. 1, including some big indoor ones this winter, the hundreds of small ones that dot the summer calendar and next December’s national finals. The uncertainty is, as P.R.C.A. Commissioner Karl Stressman said, “the elephant in the room” at this year’s event. It has athletes, fans, stock contractors and sponsors waiting for a resolution while picking sides in a debate over what is best for a niche sport with a tight, frenzied following. Wrangler, for example, is the title sponsor for the National Finals Rodeo but has contracts with many top cowboys requiring them to compete at a minimum number of events. Many fans who have stopped at E.R.A. booths at a pair of corresponding trade shows at Las Vegas casinos this week are longtime supporters of the P.R.C.A., but they said that they liked the idea of a compact, easy-to-track tour of the best athletes. E.R.A. plans to grow to roughly 28 events within five years and sees itself as a league of the sport’s top athletes, with more than 100 combined world titles. Image Trevor Brazile, a 13-time all-around champion, at the National Finals Rodeo this week. A court fight and a possible split have created a subtext to the sport's premier event. Credit Josh Haner/The New York Times They are proven champions, most tired of the grind of crisscrossing the country at all hours and in all seasons, some putting 100,000 miles on their trucks each year to reach 100 rodeos, many of them with winning payouts of $1,000 or less, without any guarantee of prize money at all. “The ideal world would be the E.R.A. rodeos mixed in with a few of the traditional rodeos I’ve been to forever,” said Motes, one of the top ropers in the sport and a fan favorite known for his bushy goatee. The P.R.C.A. has no interest in mingling with E.R.A. It has tried over the years to elevate its top athletes above the fray of its roughly 5,000 contestants, creating higher-level circuits and increasing payouts at the National Finals Rodeo. “This is a traveling sport,” Stressman said. “And to get here, for $1 million a round, you wear a truck out, wear a trailer out.” He added: “Everybody wants to work less and make more money. I do, too. Unfortunately for this sport, it doesn’t work very well.” The P.R.C.A. believes that E.R.A. is unfairly piggybacking on its promotional heft and vast infrastructure while it builds a competitive circuit. E.R.A. promotes its athletes by listing their P.R.C.A. credentials, for example, and plans to use results from P.R.C.A. rodeos to help determine who qualifies for its circuit. Image Bobby Mote said E.R.A. was not trying “to tear rodeo apart, or to change what is going on at the 600 rodeos every year.” Credit Josh Haner/The New York Times E.R.A. argues that the P.R.C.A. is acting as an illegal monopoly, and it believes that its success will elevate the broader sport by attracting more fans, sponsors and money to rodeo. “The P.R.C.A.’s a membership-driven association, where you pay a fee to participate and all skill levels are involved,” said Tony Garritano, E.R.A.’s president and chief executive officer. “Anyone from Trevor Brazile down to me can compete. And we don’t think that’s the wrong model. We just think there’s a better way to showcase the best guys in the world.” Last year’s world champions won between about $200,000 and $500,000 in prize money through the P.R.C.A. The top 15 or so make a decent living, but it is one with plenty of costs, from equipment to time to physical pain. Few are able to rodeo as a full-time job. Growing families and responsibilities force some to step away from the grueling circuit while still in their prime. “I want to prolong my rodeo career as long as I can,” said the bareback bronc rider Kaycee Feild , who is closing in on his fifth consecutive world title. “The way the P.R.C.A. is structured, I have to go to 60 to 70 rodeos to make a living — and not a great living. With E.R.A., I can cut that in half.” Top competitors see the millions being made by athletes in other sports, but also in the rodeo event of bull riding. The Professional Bull Riders was started about 20 years ago by cowboys who felt the P.R.C.A. limited their earning potential. In 2015, its top rider, J.B . Mauney, had official earnings of $1.54 million. The top bull rider in the P.R.C.A. last year, Sage Kimzey, made $318,631 in official earnings. E.R.A., using the Professional Bull Riders as a loose model, said it will pay a total of $4.6 million in winnings next year — $200,000 at each of its eight stops (most with two nights of rodeo) and $3 million at its five-day championship at American Airlines Center in Dallas in November. “Rodeo is not going anywhere,” Mote said. “And we are making no effort to tear rodeo apart, or to change what is going on at the 600 rodeos every year. We’re talking about creating an opportunity for the top guys to go to additional places that are ultimately better for them and better for the sport.” Not all top cowboys support E.R.A. The veteran steer wrestler K. C. Jones offered his support for the P.R.C.A. in a declaration filed with the court. “They are not seeking to improve the lives of cowboys competing on the circuit,” he wrote of those starting E.R.A. “They are attempting to take money away from them by creating a competing organization that will drive the money in the industry to certain anointed ‘stars’ (i.e., themselves), while reserving the right to participate in the P.R.C.A events with the biggest purses. They — and only they — would avoid the cost, time and physical toil associated with traveling around the country and competing on the rodeo circuit.” The issue has even divided families. Jesse and Spencer Wright, two former world champions in saddle-bronc riding, signed on to E.R.A. Their brothers Jake and Cody, a two-time champion, did not. If nothing else, the prospect of E.R.A. — whether considered a competitor or a co-conspirator in rodeo — has shaken a sport steeped in tradition like few others. This week, Feild had public appearances and signed autographs for streams of fans, as most of the top cowboys do each day during the National Finals Rodeo, before sitting down for a cup of coffee. In deciding to join E.R.A., even at the risk of being an outcast in the rodeos where he has made much of his living, he said, he leaned on the advice of those like Mote and his own father, Lewis, a world champion bareback rider in the 1980s. Hours later, in front of 17,000 fans, Feild won the bareback round and the $26,230.77 prize money for first place. He did the same thing the next night, and the next. As with a lot of the top cowboys, he was on his way toward earning more in 10 days in Las Vegas than he had at 54 rodeos (a schedule interrupted by hip surgery) and countless miles and hours pursuing them. “I don’t want the P.R.C.A. to go away,” Feild said. “But there is so much more potential.”

Rodeo
Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association
Cowboy
Lawsuits
Bull riding
Professional Bull Riders
Competition law


Protesters Return to Bangkok Streets

Abstract: BANGKOK — Antigovernment protesters returned to the streets here on Sunday in a large but short-lived demonstration that underlined the persistent divisions in Thailand four months after a military crackdown. Thousands of protesters, many in their trademark red shirts, massed in front of the burned out remains of a shopping center, chanting, “People died here!” It was by far the largest demonstration since the military cleared the streets of protesters on May 19. The police asserted that protesters responded to the crackdown by staging arson attacks and destroying government offices in several cities, a charge that protest leaders have denied. “The reds are not scared anymore,” said Sombat Boonngamanong, who helped organize the protest through Facebook and other social networks. The gathering on Sunday also marked the fourth anniversary of the military coup that deposed Thaksin Shinawatra, a tycoon turned prime minister whom many of the antigovernment protesters supported. Government officials allowed the demonstration to take place despite an emergency decree that has banned political gatherings in Bangkok and several provinces. The police and protest leaders alike said they were surprised by the turnout, which Mr. Sombat estimated at 10,000. Protesters released red balloons and lit candles across an intersection that they had blocked, snarling traffic. Shopping malls in the area announced they were closing early. “A lot of my friends died here,” said Suthat Chobkan, 47, a restaurant owner from northeastern Thailand who took part in the protests this year and returned to the site of the crackdown on Sunday. “Red shirts love each other. We all have the same heart.” A total of 91 people were killed during protests in April and May, according to Bangkok Emergency Medical Services, a branch of the municipal government. The leaders of those protests are awaiting trial on terrorism charges. The government has also sought to squelch opposition by shutting down Web sites, radio stations and a television channel connected to the red shirts. The protesters appeared jovial on Sunday, but many refused to give their names, saying they feared reprisals from the government. Thailand has been racked by periodic protests and political turmoil for the past five years, partly because of the polarizing role of Mr. Thaksin, who was admired by many voters, especially in rural areas, but reviled by the Bangkok elite, who saw him as a threat to their power. The country is also divided over the future role of the monarchy, the military’s influence in politics and the power of senior civil servants. Mr. Thaksin, who was convicted of abuse of power in a highly political trial, called for reconciliation on Sunday in Twitter messages to his supporters. He said he was in Lebanon. “There has been no better time to have a dialogue,” he said in one message. “I know that people are still angry and unhappy. But I want to point out that a civilized nation must have sacrifices from people.”

Thailand
Demonstrations Protests and Riots
Bangkok (Thailand)
Politics and Government


Chinese City Official Shoots 2 Others and Kills Himself, State Media Says

Abstract: BEIJING — A city official in southwest China unleashed a barrage of gunfire on the city’s mayor and Communist Party secretary during a meeting on Wednesday, injuring them before fleeing and killing himself, the official news media reported. Privately owned guns are rare in China, because of a virtual ban on civilian use, and grisly attacks on officials by colleagues are also uncommon. So rumors of the shooting in Panzhihua, an industrial city in Sichuan Province, rippled quickly across the Chinese internet even before the local authorities confirmed the news. Panzhihua was built as part of Mao’s plans to relocate factories deep inland, where they would be protected from a feared war. But the violence in this isolated site was nonetheless an embarrassing breach of the efforts by China’s president, Xi Jinping , to remake officialdom into a clean, impeccably disciplined bureaucracy. Details were sparse, and there were no clues to the gunman’s motives. But the brief initial report in the state media sketched a scene of the head of the Panzhihua Land and Resources Bureau, Chen Zhongshu, bursting into a meeting at an exhibition center and opening fire on officials there. “The gunman stormed into the meeting, fired repeatedly at the main leading comrades of the city party committee and government and then fled,” said an online report by Sichuan Daily, an official provincial newspaper, citing the Panzhihua government press office. The suspect in the shooting, Mr. Chen, was found dead in the exhibition center. He had taken his own life, the report said without giving details. The mayor, Li Jianqin, and party secretary, Zhang Yan , were wounded and sent to the hospital, but their injuries were not considered life-threatening, the report said. Mr. Zhang, the party secretary, has worked in Panzhihua since 2006, and the mayor, Mr. Li, has worked there since last year, according to Chinese news reports . Both officials went to meetings and inspection visits with Mr. Chen previously, but there was nothing in the earlier reports to suggest that trouble had been brewing. Photographs on Chinese news websites showed armored vehicles and paramilitary troops massed outside the exhibition center in the aftermath of the violence.


Letters to the Editor

Abstract: To the Sports Editor: Re “Yankee Who Lived a Dream Says It’s Near End,” Feb. 13: My dad had Joe DiMaggio. I had Mickey Mantle. And my sons have Derek Jeter for one more season. Jeter has been a great Yankee and an admirable man. He is worthy of being another link in the Yankees chain that connects the generations. PAUL MENDELOWITZ Park Ridge, N.J.  To the Sports Editor: I have been a die-hard Mets fan all my life, but as a baseball fan, I have to admit that Derek Jeter is perhaps the best middle infielder I have ever seen. At the many Yankees games I have attended, Jeter’s greatness was obvious in terms of baseball instincts, clutch hitting, acrobatic fielding and team leadership. TONY VENEZIA Mamaroneck, N.Y.  To the Sports Editor: The retirement of Derek Jeter after this 2014 season draws yet again a sharp contrast between him — a Yankees superstar respected and admired on and off the field, a likely first-ballot Hall of Fame choice — and Alex Rodriguez, once another Yankees superstar, now relegated to a disgraceful exit from the game, perhaps permanently. BARBARA RINGEL New York  To the Sports Editor: From a lifelong Bostonian and Red Sox fan: Yankees players come and go, but they are not usually revered here. Derek Jeter is the exception. He is a throwback to the Yankees of old. He will be missed, and I hope the folks at Fenway will pay him special honor. DAVID CURTIS Boston  To the Sports Editor: Here’s hoping Derek Jeter enjoys a full 162-game final season so the nation can give this living legend a proper farewell. R. P. SMITH Marshfield, Mass. Sam’s Impactful Step To the Sports Editor: Re “N.F.L. Prospect Proudly Says What Teammates Knew: He’s Gay,” Feb. 9: Next year, I will proudly buy a Michael Sam jersey for my son. I am a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and I am raising my son as a Steelers fan. If we are lucky, Sam will end up with the Steelers. He exudes the kind of courage and self-confidence that I hope my son will aspire to. BEN FUSSINER Culver City, Calif.  To the Sports Editor: At the risk of sounding homophobic, I wondered why Missouri’s Michael Sam or anyone else announces that he or she is gay? Who asked? Who cares? It’s nobody else’s business. These public proclamations are really getting tiresome. JACK BRAY Cullman, Ala.  To the Sports Editor: Women’s teams acknowledge gay players without creating so such turmoil, but openly gay male professional players are still a rarity. With every person who has the courage to come out, our society is one step closer to embracing them as normal. FELICITAS HEINEN Fairfield, Conn.


Tower Planned Atop Port Authority Bus Terminal in New Wave of Development

Abstract: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has revived plans to build a sleek 40-story office tower over the north wing of the West Side bus terminal at the suddenly hot intersection of Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street. Under the terms of a deal worth as much as half a billion dollars, which will be announced this morning, officials and real estate executives say a joint venture of Vornado Realty Trust and the Lawrence Ruben Company will erect a deck over the existing four-story bus terminal on which they will build the 1.3-million-square-foot office tower. Much of the money from the sale of the development rights would be used to refurbish the entire Port Authority Bus Terminal, an aging and gloomy structure that stretches from 40th to 42nd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. The terminal’s exterior would be given a major face-lift and 18 bus platforms would be added, along with retail space and improved interior circulation for the 200,000 commuters who use the building daily. The Port Authority, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the developer will attend a news conference at the bus terminal today to unveil the deal. Officials were reluctant to provide details before then. “We’ve been working very hard to reach an agreement that leverages substantial private money to reinvest for the benefit of our customers, the neighborhood and the region,” said Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority. There is certainly plenty going on at this once sleepy crossroad. Across Eighth Avenue from the terminal’s north wing, SJP Properties is building a 40-story office tower. Another tower is in the works on the north side of 42nd Street, just west of Eighth Avenue, where 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, the hospital workers’ union, is close to selecting a developer for its property, which comprises three adjoining parcels that extend to 43rd Street. And farther north, Local 6 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union is about to put its property — the entire blockfront between 44th and 45th Streets, on the west side of Eighth Avenue — on the market. Like 1199, that union wants to remain in place but take advantage of the real estate market to raise money. The New York Times recently completed its new tower on Eighth Avenue, opposite the bus terminal’s south wing. A number of residential buildings are being built on Eighth Avenue north of 42nd Street. The plan to build over the bus terminal first emerged nearly a decade ago. At that time, the construction boom was one block east, in then-dowdy Times Square, where Broadway intersects Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street. The Condé Nast tower, at 4 Times Square, was followed by the Reuters Building, two other office towers, new restaurants, movie theaters and nightclubs. By 1999, the Port Authority offered to sell the development rights over the bus terminal and eventually selected Vornado and the Ruben Company to build a 37-story tower and renovate the north wing in an attempt to smooth commuters’ passage. In return, the developer was to pay more than $110 million. There was a tentative deal to build a headquarters for Cisco Systems, but the dot-com boom collapsed in 2000, along with plans for the tower. Litigation ensued between the developer and the Port Authority. Nevertheless, residential developers began pushing westward to 12th Avenue with rental apartments and even condominiums, which would have been unthinkable only five years earlier. Last year, Anthony Coscia, the chairman of the Port Authority, revived discussions with Steven Roth, the chairman of Vornado, about the project, which is subject to approval at the Port Authority’s Dec. 18 board meeting. Under the terms of the deal, the developer would get the development rights under a 99-year lease in return for providing the Port Authority with annual rent payments, a percentage of the revenue and a small stake in the project. Two executives who have been briefed on the terms said the deal was worth $400 million to $500 million. The developer plans to hold an architectural competition for the building’s design, an official said. Vornado and the Ruben Company have a year to complete their plans and four years to build the tower, according to officials. Vornado, in partnership with the Durst Organization, is also bidding for the 26-acre development over the West Side railyards, and in a separate partnership with the Related Companies is proposing the $14 billion transformation of the Penn Station area, which includes building a new Penn Station, demolishing Madison Square Garden and building a ring of office towers on the surrounding land.

Office Buildings and Commercial Properties


Steele Keeps Frys.com Lead

Abstract: Brendan Steele did just enough to keep the lead at the Frys.com Open in Napa, Calif., shooting a three-under-par 69 for a one-shot lead over Andrew Loupe and Kevin Na. Loupe had five straight birdies early and four straight birdies late for a 63, while Na had a 64. ■ Lydia Ko and Sung Hyun Park rebounded to top the crowded leader board in the L.P.G.A.’s KEB Hana Bank Championship in Incheon, South Korea. In position to take the top spot in the world, the second-ranked Ko overcame a double bogey with two late birdies for a three-under-par 69. Park had a 67 to match Ko at 13 under. ■ Andy Sullivan of England shot a four-under 67 in windy conditions to take a five-shot lead into Sunday’s final round at the Portugal Masters in Vilamoura. ■ The defending champion Michael Allen shot a three-under 69 for a share of the lead with Scott McCarron in the Champions Tour’s San Antonio Championship. Fred Couples was a stroke back along with Bernhard Langer, Scott Dunlap and the first-round leader Wes Short Jr.


U.S. General Sees Success in Afghanistan Even if Pakistan Fails to Act

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, the No. 2 commander in Afghanistan, said Tuesday that the United States and NATO could succeed in the war even if Pakistan refused to shut down a lawless frontier sanctuary that militants use for staging attacks on forces across the border in Afghanistan. In comments that sought to make a virtue of a now-acknowledged reality, General Rodriguez, the NATO and American commander in charge of the day-to-day fighting in Afghanistan, said that while the United States continued to press Pakistan to root out the militants from their haven in the northwest tribal region of North Waziristan, the United States could still win militarily if the Pakistani Army did not act. “That’s not a mission-stopper in my mind,” General Rodriguez told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. He did not provide a definition of winning militarily. The general’s assessment is the latest evolution in the thinking of American intelligence and counterintelligence officials, who have been long frustrated by Pakistan but say that the country’s inaction has produced at least one unintended benefit: The concentration of so many militants in North Waziristan makes it easier for American drones to hit them. Nonetheless, General Rodriguez’s comments are at odds with recent remarks by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said last month that “we cannot succeed in Afghanistan without shutting down those safe havens.” A White House strategic review of Afghan policy in December came to much the same conclusion. Two classified United States intelligence reports late last year similarly concluded that there was a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunted down the insurgents near the border. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said that historically it had often been difficult if not impossible to defeat an insurgency when it enjoyed a cross-border haven. He cited as examples the North Vietnamese, who had havens in Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War, and the Algerians, who had havens in Tunisia when they were fighting to gain independence from France. There have been cross-border havens for insurgents in Iraq as well, Mr. Hoffman said, citing foreign fighters from Syria and Iranian support for Shiite militias. Iraq, Mr. Hoffman said, is so far a qualified success, so with cross-border havens over all “the historical record isn’t benign, but recent history is perhaps a bit kinder.” General Rodriguez also said that he did not yet know to what extent the Taliban would be able to reconstitute itself for the spring fighting season after a battering from United States, NATO and Afghan forces late last year. Counterterrorism experts view it as the essential question of how deep the Taliban bench is, which will determine whether President Obama’s decision to order an additional 30,000 American forces to Afghanistan in 2010 — the full complement arrived by September — has worked. General Rodriguez did say that he anticipated that the Taliban would regroup in the spring with a new approach. “I think they’re going to come back with a different type of strategy,” he said, “which I believe is going to be focused on the leadership much more than it ever has.” In other words, he said, the Taliban are likely to focus on the assassination of Afghan political leaders and on planting roadside bombs, rather than fighting with American troops — in part, he suggested, because the battles took a toll on the Taliban in 2010. “They will not be as direct in their confrontations as they were last year,” he said. But asked if the insurgents were “on the ropes yet,” General Rodriguez replied, “No, the Taliban is not on the ropes yet.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


Colombia: Suspects in Killing of DEA Agent Handed to U.S.

Abstract: Seven Colombians accused of involvement in the stabbing death of a United States drug agent were handed over to American authorities on Tuesday at a police base in Bogotá. The men had been indicted in the United States for the murder of James Watson, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, in Bogotá. The authorities said the motive was robbery and was unrelated to Mr. Watson’s drug enforcement work. The suspects will stand trial in Virginia.

Colombia
DEA
Murders
James Watson
US
Drug Abuse


Investigators Review Events Leading to Shooting of Officer

Abstract: Investigators on Friday began piecing together the events that led to the fatal shooting of an off-duty New York City police officer by a fellow officer who mistook him for an armed criminal on a dark and mist-shrouded street in East Harlem late Thursday night. The slain plainclothes officer, Omar J. Edwards, 25, of Brooklyn , who was assigned to patrol housing projects, was shot in the arm, chest and hip after a team of three other plainclothes officers in a car saw him chasing a man on East 125th Street between First and Second Avenues with his gun drawn, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said. Sources identified the officer who fired the shots as Andrew Dunton, a four-year veteran of the force from Long Island . According to investigators, Officer Dunton and the two other officers assigned to the anticrime unit in the 25th Precinct got out of their vehicle and confronted Officer Edwards. On Friday, the department was investigating whether the officers had identified themselves or demanded that Officer Edwards drop his weapon before Officer Dunton opened fire. The medical examiner said three of six bullets fired from the officer’s 9-millimeter Glock struck Officer Edwards, who had just come off duty and was not wearing a bulletproof vest. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner, Ellen Borakove, said Friday afternoon that although the official cause of death was a gunshot wound to the chest, the round that killed Officer Edwards entered the left side of his back, hit his heart and left lung and lodged itself in the front of his chest. Officer Edwards, a recently married father of two from Brooklyn, was taken to Harlem Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead at 11:21 p.m. No one else was injured. "While we don’t know all of the details of what happened tonight, this is a tragedy,” Mayor Bloomberg said during an early morning news conference at the hospital. “Rest assured we will find out exactly what happened here and see what we can learn from it so it can never happen again.” The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau , said his office was investigating the shooting and that the case would be presented to a grand jury. But he cautioned that it was standard procedure to bring all police shootings before a grand jury, except in very few cases in which it is clear that the shooting was justified. “Whenever there’s any question about justification, it goes to the grand jury,” Mr. Morgenthau said. The shooting has once again raised questions about departmental procedures involving communications among plainclothes officers — particularly those in different units — as well as issues of race. Officer Edwards was black, and Officer Dunton is white. The Rev. Al Sharpton said on Friday that he was “concerned of a growing pattern of black officers being killed with the assumption that they are the criminals.” “This calls for federal investigation and intervention to sort out the facts and bring about a just resolve,” Mr. Sharpton said. “Can police investigate themselves fairly and impartially? It would seem very difficult at best and unlikely in fact.” Mayor Bloomberg said on his morning radio show that investigators were reviewing security tapes of the shooting, which he maintained was not deliberate, and interviewing witnesses. Investigators were also questioning the man Officer Edwards had been chasing. "The only thing that can come out of this is to improve procedures so perhaps it doesn’t happen again," the mayor said. "We all know policing is a dangerous job and accidents happen when people have guns in their hands, even legal guns in this case which they are authorized and trained to use." He added: “It’s easy for people to say, ‘oh, you know, how can this happen,’ but when the adrenaline is running, and you don’t know where the bullets are coming from, and you don’t know who that person is on the other side of the street, it’s easy to second guess. That’s why they are trained. Can you ever do enough training? I suppose not.” The department’s policy manual — the Patrol Guide — is specific in putting the responsibility on the off-duty officer in such situations. In one section, titled "confrontation situations," it says that if an off-duty officer is trying to make a arrest and is confronted by an on-duty officer, that the off-duty officer must abandon the arrest effort and comply with the on-duty officer’s orders. "In such encounters, the actions of the members in the first few seconds are of vital importance," the guide states. "It must be absolutely clear in the minds of all members of the service that in any confrontation, the burden of proving identity rests on the confronted officer, whether on or off duty. The challenging officer, however, also has a responsibility to use sound tactics and judgment in approaching the situation." For member of the Police Department, the tragedy was compounded because Officer Edwards’s father-in-law is also a police officer stationed in the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn, officials said. Officer Edwards, who joined the force in July 2007, was working as part of an Impact Response Team, a roving team of officers that supplements the department’s prime crime-suppression program: Operation Impact. The program teams new officers with seasoned supervisors to flood areas where crime is surging. Mr. Kelly said the tragic string of events began when Officer Edwards left duty about 10:30 p.m., approached his car and saw that a man had broken the driver’s side window and was rummaging through the vehicle. The two scuffled, and the man escaped Officer Edwards’s grip by slipping out of his sweater. A police official said officers at the scene learned that Officer Edwards was a colleague only when they ripped open his shirt in an effort to revive him and saw a Police Academy T-shirt. They then searched his pants pockets and found a badge. Officer Dunton and his two colleagues in the car that spotted Officer Edwards — one of them a sergeant — were all assigned to the anti-crime unit from the 25th Precinct. Investigators were interviewing the two officers in the car who did not fire at Officer Edwards. The department does not interview officers involved in fatal shootings until a prosecutor determines whether criminal charges will be brought. The man who apparently broke into Officer Edwards’s car, Miguel Santiago, was also being interviewed by investigators, officials said. The police said his five previous arrests include charges of robbery, assault and drug violations. There have been at least two cases of off-duty police officers being shot by colleagues in the New York region in recent years. In January 2008, a Mount Vernon officer, Christopher A. Ridley, 23, was killed by Westchester County police officers in downtown White Plains as he tried to restrain a homeless man whom he had seen assault another person. And in February 2006, a New York City officer, Eric Hernandez, 24, was fatally shot by a fellow officer while responding to a 911 call about a fight at a White Castle restaurant in the Bronx . Thursday night’s shooting occurred near the approach to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (formerly the Triborough). Maalik Lane, 20, was waiting for a bus nearby at 125th Street and Third Avenue when, he said, he heard more than five gunshots. “I saw police, up to 20 police cars,” driving by at high speeds, said Mr. Lane, who lives on Wards Island. “I was, like, someone is having a shootout with police. The bus driver said, ‘Somebody shot the police.’ ” Mr. Lane added, “I feared for my life.” Just before 1 a.m. Friday, the ambulance parking bay at the hospital had been roped off, with six police officers standing sentry. More than a dozen officers, some in uniform, others in plain clothes, paced and waited for news. After the news conference, about 3 a.m., officers left the hospital, several in tears and consoling one another. On Friday morning, members of the Police Department’s football team, commiserated over their teammate, colleague and friend — “a great guy,” as Det. Ed Gardner put it — during a practice at Erasmus Hall High School. "We are a little sluggish today," said Detective Gardner, one of the team’s administrators. "Everybody is like, it is like you are missing a family member." It was not long ago that the team lost another member to friendly fire: Officer Eric Hernandez. "Omar is the same type of person," he said. "A great man." Detective Gardner said that Officer Edwards, though not a starter, played on the team last year. This year he was taking time off because of his recent marriage. "He was a team player, he said, “and he was all about team."

Police
Omar J Edwards
Andrew P Dunton
NYPD


Cognitive Dissonance in Monkeys - The Monty Hall Problem

Abstract: The Monty Hall Problem has struck again, and this time it’s not merely embarrassing mathematicians. If the calculations of a Yale economist are correct, there’s a sneaky logical fallacy in some of the most famous experiments in psychology. The economist, M. Keith Chen, has challenged research into cognitive dissonance, including the 1956 experiment that first identified a remarkable ability of people to rationalize their choices. Dr. Chen says that choice rationalization could still turn out to be a real phenomenon, but he maintains that there’s a fatal flaw in the classic 1956 experiment and hundreds of similar ones. He says researchers have fallen for a version of what mathematicians call the Monty Hall Problem, in honor of the host of the old television show, “Let’s Make a Deal.” Here’s how Monty’s deal works, in the math problem, anyway. (On the real show it was a bit messier.) He shows you three closed doors, with a car behind one and a goat behind each of the others. If you open the one with the car, you win it. You start by picking a door, but before it’s opened Monty will always open another door to reveal a goat. Then he’ll let you open either remaining door. Suppose you start by picking Door 1, and Monty opens Door 3 to reveal a goat. Now what should you do? Stick with Door 1 or switch to Door 2? Before I tell you the answer, I have a request. No matter how convinced you are of my idiocy, do not immediately fire off an angry letter. In 1991, when some mathematicians got publicly tripped up by this problem, I investigated it by playing the game with Monty Hall himself at his home in Beverly Hills, but even that evidence wasn’t enough to prevent a deluge of letters demanding a correction. Before you write, at least try a few rounds of the game, which you can do by playing an online version of the game . Play enough rounds and the best strategy will become clear: You should switch doors. This answer goes against our intuition that, with two unopened doors left, the odds are 50-50 that the car is behind one of them. But when you stick with Door 1, you’ll win only if your original choice was correct, which happens only 1 in 3 times on average. If you switch, you’ll win whenever your original choice was wrong, which happens 2 out of 3 times. Now, for anyone still reading instead of playing the Monty Hall game, let me try to explain what this has to do with cognitive dissonance. For half a century, experimenters have been using what’s called the free-choice paradigm to test our tendency to rationalize decisions. This tendency has been reported hundreds of times and detected even in animals. Last year I wrote a column about an experiment at Yale involving monkeys and M&Ms . The Yale psychologists first measured monkeys’ preferences by observing how quickly each monkey sought out different colors of M&Ms. After identifying three colors preferred about equally by a monkey — say, red, blue and green — the researchers gave the monkey a choice between two of them. If the monkey chose, say, red over blue, it was next given a choice between blue and green. Nearly two-thirds of the time it rejected blue in favor of green, which seemed to jibe with the theory of choice rationalization: Once we reject something, we tell ourselves we never liked it anyway (and thereby spare ourselves the painfully dissonant thought that we made the wrong choice). But Dr. Chen says that the monkey’s distaste for blue can be completely explained with statistics alone. He says the psychologists wrongly assumed that the monkey began by valuing all three colors equally. Its relative preferences might have been so slight that they were indiscernible during the preliminary phase of the experiment, Dr. Chen says, but there must have been some tiny differences among its tastes for red, blue and green — some hierarchy of preferences. If so, then the monkey’s choice of red over blue wasn’t arbitrary. Like Monty Hall’s choice of which door to open to reveal a goat, the monkey’s choice of red over blue discloses information that changes the odds. If you work out the permutations (see illustration), you find that when a monkey favors red over blue, there’s a two-thirds chance that it also started off with a preference for green over blue — which would explain why the monkeys chose green two-thirds of the time in the Yale experiment, Dr. Chen says. Does his critique make sense? Some psychologists who have seen his working paper answer with a qualified yes. “I worked out the math myself and was surprised to find that he was absolutely right,” says Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard. “He has essentially applied the Monty Hall Problem to an experimental procedure in psychology, and the result is both instructive and counter-intuitive.” Dr. Gilbert, however, says that he has yet to be persuaded that this same flaw exists in all experiments using the free-choice paradigm, and he remains confident that the overall theory of cognitive dissonance is solid. That view is shared by Laurie R. Santos, one of the Yale psychologists who did the monkey experiment. “Keith nicely points out an important problem with the baseline that we’ve used in our first study of cognitive dissonance, but it doesn’t apply to several new methods we’ve used that reveal the same level of dissonance in both monkeys and children,” Dr. Santos says. “I doubt that his critique will be all that influential for the field of cognitive dissonance more broadly.” Dr. Chen remains convinced it’s a broad problem. He acknowledges that other forms of cognitive-dissonance effects have been demonstrated in different kinds of experiments, but he says the hundreds of choice-rationalization experiments since 1956 are flawed. Even when the experimenters use more elaborate methods of measuring preferences — like asking a subject to rate items on a scale before choosing between two similarly-ranked items — Dr. Chen says the results are still suspect because researchers haven’t recognized that the choice during the experiment changes the odds. (For more of Dr. Chen’s explanation, see TierneyLab .) “I don’t know that there’s clean evidence that merely being asked to choose between two objects will make you devalue what you didn’t choose,” Dr. Chen says. “I wouldn’t be completely surprised if this effect exists, but I’ve never seen it measured correctly. The whole literature suffers from this basic problem of acting as if Monty’s choice means nothing.”

Psychology and Psychologists
Monkeys and Apes
Science and Technology
Mathematics


Leadership Rift Latest Problem for Locked Out Referees

Abstract: An apparent rift in the leadership of the N.B.A. referees union has become the latest obstacle to resolving a contract dispute and ending the lockout of the referees. The referees rejected the N.B.A.’s latest proposal Sunday, by an overwhelming margin of 43 to 14, after a divided executive board made its presentation on the proposal during a meeting in Washington. After the vote, the union’s lead negotiator, Lamell McMorris, announced that he would step aside and let the board take the lead in further talks. It was a highly unusual move, and one that, according to two people in the union, reflected philosophical differences between McMorris and the five-man board. The rift became evident during the membership meeting. According to one veteran referee, McMorris and a majority of the board initially recommended approval of the N.B.A.’s proposal. Two board members spoke out strongly against it, however, undercutting McMorris and creating confusion among the membership, the referee said. During the debate, a third board member changed his stand and joined the dissenters, creating a majority opposing the deal. That account of the meeting was confirmed by a second person who was in attendance. Both people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing private deliberations. The board members have declined to comment, but a representative for the National Basketball Referees Association , speaking on the board’s behalf, disputed the account. “The executive board is in complete agreement,” said the representative, Lloyd Pierson. McMorris has not commented beyond a statement he released Monday that announced his withdrawal from the process. He said his decision was “in the best interest of the N.B.A. referees and the league.” No talks are scheduled, and the N.B.A. appears to be growing impatient. Replacement referees are lined up to officiate in the preseason, starting with Thursday night’s game between Denver and Utah. The regular season begins Oct. 27. In a memo sent to teams Tuesday, the N.B.A.’s general counsel, Rick Buchanan, said league officials “have no expectation of concluding a timely labor contract with the N.B.R.A., and are proceeding with replacement referees.” Buchanan made an oblique reference to the division within the union, noting, “This is not the first time that commitments made by the N.B.R.A.’s negotiators were not met.” Buchanan has previously said McMorris reneged on agreed-upon points. The league and the referees have been at odds over several issues, including retirement benefits and the use of Development League referees for some N.B.A. games. In its latest offer, the N.B.A. made two significant compromises. The league now proposes to use Development League referees for 50 assignments a season, down from 75. The league also offered to retain the old severance package — worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the most tenured referees — for another two years, thus allowing older referees a chance to take the payout if they retire during that window. The league still wants to eliminate the severance package over time, although that would mostly affect new referees. In a statement, the union said that referees “are eager to get back to work” and “are doing everything possible to get a contract done.” The task of negotiating a new deal now falls to the union’s general counsel, Brian Lam, and the executive board, which is composed of five veteran referees: Steve Javie, Bennett Salvatore, Bill Spooner, Joey Crawford and Bob Delaney. McMorris remains involved, although not in a leading role. His conflict with the board raises the possibility that the union could end its association with McMorris after this round of labor talks.

Basketball
National Basketball Referees Assn
Officiating (Sports)


Books on Veterans, Civil Rights and Sacred Places

Abstract: The war in Vietnam ended four decades ago, but it still weighs on the men and women who served there, and even on those who, for one reason or another, did not. Philip F. Napoli, an assistant history professor at Brooklyn College, movingly delivers a belated salute to the former group in “Bringing It All Back Home: An Oral History of New York City’s Vietnam Veterans” (Hill and Wang, $27). In addition to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Water Street downtown, 27 parks, playgrounds and memorials are dedicated to New Yorkers who died fighting in the war. Professor Napoli, who helped research Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation,” focuses on the living memory of survivors who returned bearing poignant and sometimes painful stories. They include a lawyer whose combat experience later helped him defend a man accused of murdering a police officer; a black soldier and his colorblind white comrades; a university administrator who helped establish the Water Street memorial; a nurse who staged an antiwar hunger strike at a field hospital; and a three-time Purple Heart recipient who counsels disabled veterans. Over six years, Professor Napoli interviewed about 200 of the 80,000 or so veterans who grew up or live in New York. The results shatter stereotypes of a lost generation. He writes: “There are stories here of substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but also stories of redemption; stories of grief, but also of service; stories of pain, but also of transcendence.” ● While some Brooklynites were stationed overseas, others were fighting racism at home. Brian Purnell, an assistant professor of Africana studies and history at Bowdoin College, profiles this mostly forgotten group in “Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn” (University Press of Kentucky, $40). That struggle began in earnest in 1960 when a chapter of the congress, also known as CORE, was formed in Brooklyn to mount a nonviolent but sometimes disruptive and desperate campaign for equal opportunity. Most notable was its 1964 World’s Fair stall-in traffic blockade. But the chapter’s victories were piecemeal, and the frustrations of defeated activists fueled the developing black power movement. Still, in dutifully reconstructing the era, Professor Purnell recalls “tangible and symbolic” local accomplishments: some apartments and a handful of jobs for black people; improved sanitation in Bedford-Stuyvesant; a focus on how racial discrimination shaped public education. “These achievements mattered a great deal to the citizens who benefited from Brooklyn CORE’s efforts,” he writes, “and to the women and men in Brooklyn CORE who tried to force citizens to see discriminatory practices many believed did not exist or were simply invisible.” ● Need a respite from conflict, foreign and domestic? Terri Cook, an author and tour guide, offers one in “Sacred Havens of Brooklyn: Spiritual Places and Peaceful Grounds” (The History Press, $19.99). If the borough doesn’t always seem synonymous with spirituality, not for nothing was it christened the borough of churches. Ms. Cook takes readers on an inviting tour of local religious institutions, graveyards, parks and other sacred and secular sanctuaries, all organized by neighborhood. “Many say that Brooklyn’s diversity is reflected in clusters of ethnic restaurants and multiple styles of architecture,” she writes. “I believe its distinctness lies in its sacred havens.”

Books
Brian Purnell
Terri Cook
NYC
Philip F Napoli


For Ramadan, Teenagers Are Hungry but Fine With That

Abstract: Why was Jay Mustafic, 14, wearing slippers over his tube socks the other afternoon on a basketball court in his neighborhood in Ridgewood, Queens? The slippers — technically more like slides — are to ward off temptation. For a teenage boy who is fasting during Ramadan on a hot August afternoon, temptations abound. Ice cream. Water. Basketball. There is no prohibition against playing basketball during Ramadan, a monthlong period of fasting and self-reflection for Muslims, but it has the unfortunate side effect of dehydrating its players. “Since I get thirsty, I don’t want to play that much,” Jay explained. He has fasted from sunup to sundown each day since the holiday started Aug. 11. “So I play with socks and slippers. We all do.” He pointed to a friend, also an observant Muslim, sitting one bench down at the basketball court, in flip-flops. The slippers and flip-flops slow the boys down and send a clear signal: game not on. The end of August can be an achingly melancholy season, tinged with regret and premature nostalgia for a summer not yet over. But for New York’s observant Muslim teenagers — most start fasting no later than puberty — summer as they knew it summarily ended when daytime fasting began curtailing their options. Out: jaunts to the beach (too thirst-inducing). Out: pizza lunch with friends. Out: playing basketball for keeps. Summertime Ramadan has its profound pleasures, many Muslims say — what better time for a holiday of socializing and staying up late? In daylight, the usual tradeoffs might be more painful. Its observance seals off so many rites of youth, leaving behind the heat and days so long that even the sun seems too hot to hurry. Maybe the sun is fasting, too. Not that you would catch anyone at the park in Fresh Pond, a Ridgewood neighborhood with a sizable population of Albanian Muslims, complaining. “I can handle it,” said Jay, a narrow line of a teenager. “I feel like God is liking me even more since I started fasting.” Ramadan, in some ways, seems perfectly designed for teenagers’ summer sleeping habits. Since the fast began, both Jay and his friend from the court, Sandin Hoxha, who is also 14, have stayed up until the early hours of the morning so they could sleep through many of the hours of want. Jay is still awake when his family rises to eat before sunrise. He plays video games and watches “Three’s Company” reruns until about 6 a.m., then sleeps until 3 p.m., by which time the evening break-fast banquet is in sight. Even when it is not Ramadan, many teenagers here would not emerge from their homes until the late afternoon, anyway. At that time the young men congregate at the park and the young women walk up and down Fresh Pond Road, some in shorts, some in long sleeves and jeans, in deference to the holiday or year-round family policy about Muslim modesty. Around the corner from the park, Amela Ukosata and Dafina Ukosata, 17-year-old cousins, left their air-conditioned apartments at around 5 p.m. on Thursday to sit on a neighbor’s front stoop. Unlike Sandin and Jay, Amela and Dafina said they keep regular hours during Ramadan. “The point is not to sleep all day,” Amela said. “It’s to do it for God — to have to resist.” Also, she added, to foster empathy for those who go without. “But” — and here Amela smiled at Jay and Sandin, who had left the basketball court and were now hovering nearby — “boys are different.” It was not clear whether she was vindicating their strategy, or suggesting that, as boys, they could hardly be expected to handle it. The young women said they spent their fasting days inside. “With the long hair, and we can’t wear shorts — it’s just too hot,” explained Amela. They pass the hours with family, playing Albanian card games and watching movies. “It’s all about being mad mellow,” Amela said. “It’s cool, too — it lets you find out who you are, too. You have more time to look at yourself.” As much as they all appreciate the holiday, Dafina acknowledged that around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, time starts to crawl: “I’m just waiting on the hours.” So what would she say is the most profound way that Ramadan is different for teenagers than it is for their parents? “Basically, we complain more about it,” she said. “We’re young. There’s a lot of things we want to do.”

Ramadan
Islam
Teenagers and Adolescence
Ridgewood (NYC)


The Artificial Leaf Is Here. Again.

Abstract: General Electric is promoting a feel-good collection of videos these days. Called “Focus Forward,” it promises “short films, big ideas.” Each of these mini-docs triumphantly chronicles an innovative idea, like Daniel Nocera’s. This Harvard chemist has pioneered the artificial leaf, an invention that generates energy more or less the way a tree does. Light strikes a container of water and out bubbles hydrogen, an energy source. The three-minute film about his idea blazes with shafts of light spangling off leaves, and its soundtrack clocks more crescendos per minute than a high-school cello recital. There are many low-angle shots of a towering Mr. Nocera telling us that his device will one day be in people’s homes, pumping out energy. “Close your eyes,” the colossus says, and “think about your house being its own power station.” Here’s the thing: Such artificial-leaf optimism could also be found a year ago in a Los Angeles Times article that held the artificial leaf “could create enough clean fuel to power a home for a day in developing countries.” And the year before that, in The New Yorker, where Mr. Nocera said the artificial leaf would “turn a home into ‘a self-sufficient power station.’ ” Or go back one more year, to the pages of The New York Times, where Mr. Nocera said, “Our goal is to make each home its own power station.” So, all right already. Where’s my power station? Prowl the edges of contemporary invention, and you experience a lot of this frustration. A scientist announces a breakthrough in, say, battery technology or algae biofuel, and the talk ramps up quickly to full-throttle utopian, tapping into a frontier dream that’s so alluring to Americans: energy from light, self-sustaining, untethered from the grid. But there always seems to be an obstacle between the big idea and self-sufficiency. Sometimes, it’s the idea itself — a technological bug that seems fixable turns out to be weird and inscrutable. (Consider the jet pack with its cascade of problems: fuel, weight, the preposterously unaerodynamic design of the human body.) But in this case, the technology is sound, say researchers including David Tiede of the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. Mr. Nocera’s idea is based on photosynthesis. When light bombards your average leaf, it splits water in the leaf into oxygen, which we breathe, and then binds the hydrogen with carbon dioxide to ultimately make carbohydrates, its food — which, depending on what new diet book is trending, is sometimes food for us, too. Mr. Nocera’s leaf mimics this process. A vessel of water is exposed to light. A silicon strip coated in catalysts breaks down the water molecule such that on one side oxygen bubbles up, and, on the other, hydrogen, which can be used as a fuel. “You can drop it in a glass of water and hold it up to a window,” he said. “You won’t need heavy engineering.” Maybe the problem is danger? Hearing about that stored hydrogen, I had a one-word question: Hindenburg? That wasn’t the gas burning, Mr. Nocera said, plunging into this notorious dispute : “All the hydrogen was gone immediately. What you were watching was the shellac on the Hindenburg burn.” In fact, he says, his idea is as safe as that of another project on which he has worked, the development of a flow battery that relies on liquids to store energy on a large scale, That system, he said, "is based on water, so if there was a catastrophe we’d just need a mop.” The leaf and its technology have been replicated many times, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin and Free University Berlin , so technological obstacles in creating cheap, reliable, nonpolluting energy aren’t the problem. In fact, the issue isn’t the invention at all — it’s how to use it. “If I give you a canister of hydrogen that we got from the artificial leaf, you can’t use it right away,” Mr. Nocera said. To do so, you need a fuel cell, which can turn hydrogen into electricity. There are efforts to begin incorporating such energy technology into daily life. A number of auto companies have developed hydrogen-powered cars, such as the Honda FCX Clarity and the Mercedes F-Cell. But this is merely the beginning of a much larger change that’s needed. Discovering a brilliant way to efficiently generate hydrogen is hard enough. Then there’s everything that comes after, such as getting consumers accustomed to what’s needed for it to work, such as fuel cells — which convert hydrogen into usable electricity. This is comparable to what Elon Musk struggles with in selling Tesla’s electric cars. He has to persuade the public not only to buy a new kind of car, but all that goes with it: the infrastructure of batteries, charging stations, high-voltage home plugs and new kinds of auto mechanics. “Whenever you make something that’s two steps removed from an infrastructure, that’s the big problem you have going to market: You have to change an entire infrastructure,” Mr. Nocera said. “If we had fuel cells in your house and your car, then everybody would be trying to implement the artificial leaf right now.” The other obstacle is the marketplace. Only a few years ago, he said, “the magic number was $3 ‘gas gallon equivalent.’ ” In other words, could he produce the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline and keep costs around $3? Even as he closed in on that number, the old fossil-fuel industry pulled the rug out from under him with a surge in cheap natural-gas extraction, driven by hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Seemingly overnight, the magic number became “a buck fifty,” he said. But therein lies a glimmer of hope. Hydrogen can be produced by fracking, although it comes at a cost of carbon pollution. Still, widespread fracking might lead to widespread hydrogen use. In fact, the United States Senate revived a Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Caucus in 2012. “Fracking could drive the establishment of an infrastructure for using hydrogen at the home,” Mr. Nocera said. “And then the next thing everybody might say is, yeah, but that hydrogen is making CO 2 . Then the artificial leaf would show up. So it’s kind of weird. Fracking is killing me right now, but in the long run it could be an asset.” In brief, the perfect fuel exists. What doesn’t exist is everything between this new fuel and, say, your electric coffee bean grinder. “And this is my ultimate vision and I believe it will happen sometime,” Mr. Nocera said, unable to resist. “Your house will be its own gas station.”

Daniel Nocera
Hydrogen
Photosynthesis
Energy industry
Inventions and Patents
Science and Technology


From Boko Haram’s Birthplace, Instagram Posts Beyond ‘Death and Despair’

Abstract: MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Her hometown, the birthplace of Boko Haram , is filled with sad stories. Fati Abubakar roams the streets to find the happy ones. It is not always easy. With a camera slung over her shoulder, Ms. Abubakar, 30, documents the people of Maiduguri , a busy capital in northeastern Nigeria, determined to show the world that life continues despite years of violence that has killed thousands of people, many in the city limits. Inspired by Instagram accounts like @humansofny , which captures the lives of New Yorkers “one story at a time,” Ms. Abubakar snaps portraits of vendors, refugees and students, posting them to Instagram at @bitsofborno with quotations or captions that describe them. Boko Haram has affected nearly all of her subjects in some way. “When they say there’s an insurgency here, people assume it’s nothing but death and despair,” Ms. Abubakar said. “I want to change the image. You can see, everyday life continues.” In Maiduguri, she has become somewhat of a celebrity. Civilian vigilante militia members posted in the city to guard against Boko Haram look out for her, beating back children who flock to her as she goes about her work. “Bits of Borno! Bits of Borno!” a group of boys who follow her Instagram account shouted to her this month as she walked past the pool table where they were gathered. Fans of having their photos taken, they were happily indulged by her. Ms. Abubakar gracefully wove through the crowded, chaotic Monday Market in the middle of the city as though she had wheels instead of feet under her long orange and yellow dress. Carts overflowed with onions, watermelons, peanuts, bars of soap and popcorn. She stopped to snap a photo of a man selling flour from a wheelbarrow, white streaks across his face and hands. “We never get anything from the government,” he complained. “No water, no electricity.” The wind picked up and blew away some of his flour. Ms. Abubakar moved on. One subject, Rhoda Yusuf, a stone-faced woman with gold hoop earrings, told Ms. Abubakar that she had moved to the city after fleeing Boko Haram fighters who were closing in on her village. She works as a housekeeper from time to time but does not earn enough to survive. Ms. Abubakar chatted with the woman and walked away. “I asked her if there was anything else to say outside of her problems. She said no, nothing else.” She photographed two boys, both named Abba, wearing giant straw hats. Then she squatted to speak with a beggar, an older man in a satiny white robe sitting on a bridge over a dry riverbed covered with garbage. She takes down all their stories in curlicue handwriting in her square notebook after asking the same simple question: How is life in Maiduguri? “Everything is expensive,” said Zanab Abubakar (no relation to Ms. Abubakar), a market shopper who came to buy food and resell it elsewhere. Ms. Abubakar took her picture and sighed, putting down her notebook. “That’s the general theme you hear,” she said. “Even if you’re looking for happy stories.” Usually the happiest stories come from children. And so @bitsofborno, named because Maiduguri is the capital of Borno State, is rife with photos of children playing in a swing, beaming in newly donated clothing and standing alongside a friend with arms slung around each other. Ms. Abubakar, a slender woman with a soft voice and sharp points of view, remembers the Maiduguri of her youth as a happy place where she went to school, weddings and parties with neighbors. “It was a very peaceful, quaint small town,” she said. But in the mid- to late 2000s, when she was in her 20s, the insurgency began to seize Maiduguri. A firebrand named Mohammed Yusuf had been preaching in one of the neighborhoods, his speeches denouncing Western education becoming more and more radical. Ms. Abubakar recalls women starting to dress more conservatively, with gowns that stretched to the ground. Mr. Yusuf’s cultlike teachings formed the genesis of Boko Haram. Neighbors killed neighbors. Sons ran off to join the militants, while other sons were killed by the group. Gunshots and explosions were common throughout the city. Nigerian soldiers responded with heavy force, blasting away at the group and eventually routing much of the movement in 2009. Mr. Yusuf, the group’s founder, was killed in police custody . It seemed that Boko Haram had been defeated. But the insurgency was far from over . Boko Haram members fled to the countryside from Maiduguri, which back then had about two million inhabitants. Villagers seeking safety from the group began pouring in, by some estimates doubling the city’s population. The desperate newcomers camped out in large groups in hospitals or college campuses, where they remain, living in squalor. The city would never be the same. Now, yellow motorized tricycles zip across lanes of traffic; motorcycles were banned here after being used in numerous suicide bombings. Rifts have grown in what was once a tolerant community. A man sipping beer on a recent warm night at the Lake Chad Club, a private bar and tennis club, declared all Muslims were members of Boko Haram. Residents and even some aid workers denounce hostages taken by Boko Haram as willing participants in the insurgency. And the threat of violence is all around. On Monday, two men blew themselves up after being denied entrance to a mosque, which they apparently wanted to bomb. Earlier this month, two men wearing suicide vests were gunned down before they could detonate their bombs outside the city’s central bank. And not long ago, a bomber succeeded, in a deadly explosion in front of a government building. During the most violent parts of the insurgency in Maiduguri, Ms. Abubakar’s parents — her mother is a civil servant, her father a businessman — sent her to London for schooling. While there, she obsessively tracked the news. Hearing what people were saying about her hometown was depressing. “Everyone focused on the trauma,” she said. “They were labeling us as post-traumatic-stress civilians. But when I came home, I saw people were bouncing back.” Ms. Abubakar wanted to show the humanity in Maiduguri when she returned. Her photos tell stories of residents’ hard journeys to safety from their home villages and the difficulties of living in crowded Maiduguri, where there are few jobs. But many posts are hopeful. “I’ve been living in Maiduguri for 30 years. I love the town because of how peaceful it was before the insurgency. But because of the attacks, it has lost some of its peaceful nature. So many were killed,” reads the lengthy caption under a photo of a woman listed only as Mrs. Chidinma, pictured slouching in her shiny dress. “But still, forget the insurgency issue for a minute, we love this place. We love the people.” Some residents are confused by Ms. Abubakar. For starters, she is not married in a region where girls marry as teenagers. And she often walks around town by herself, a risk in an area where out-of-place women are suspected of being suicide bombers. Older women who see her roaming the city often tsk-tsk her, thinking she has no job or ambition. “They think I should be married and have kids, that I’m wandering aimless,” said Ms. Abubakar, who has a day job at an aid group. She has an undergraduate degree in nursing and a graduate degree in public health from London South Bank University. But most of all, people are baffled by the young Muslim daughter of Maiduguri who takes photographs. Local journalists said they could recall no other female Nigerian photographer in Borno State, and few in the entire nation. As it picks up a following, Ms. Abubakar’s work is starting to lead to help for the people she photographs. Some of her followers in recent weeks have sent donations of cash and clothing to subjects whose stories she tells. “You can see some good coming from this,” she said.

Boko Haram
Instagram
Nigeria
Maiduguri Nigeria
Photography
Terrorism


A Transformation, Not a Transition, for Manchester United

Abstract: LONDON — The cycle of sports can be brutally unforgiving. Lionel Messi takes a couple of months off to mend a thigh injury, and he drops to being only the second-best player in his game. Manchester United enters a transitional phase after 26-plus years under the same management, and not only does the team fall from first to seventh in its domestic league, but the club’s stock price is down 17 percent from a high reached last May after United won its 20th league title. Form is temporary. Maybe Messi and the owners of United are playing the longer game. The Argentine has one eye on trophies with Barcelona, the other on the 2014 World Cup for Argentina. The Press Association on Monday drew a comment from United that the Glazer family, which owns United, “takes a long-term view about the share prices and the value of the club.” That came after the shares fell this week to just above $15, compared with the $14 at which the club was floated in the summer of 2012. The Glazers are businessmen first. They have owned the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the N.F.L. since 1995 , and it has been a decade since the head of the family, Malcolm, leveraged about $1.3 billion to buy United a club now valued at $3.16 billion . The English club vies with Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich as the giants of their sport. Any prize money they get for winning on the field is dwarfed by what they receive from television, sponsorships and merchandising around the globe. Manchester’s fame still has one foot in the club that was rebuilt out of the devastation of World War II and that rebounded in style and spirit after its great team, the Busby Babes, was decimated in a plane crash on a runway of the old Munich airport in 1958. That spirit, augmented by the skills of players from Bobby Charlton to Cristiano Ronaldo, fashioned its legend and still feeds the global image that is Manchester United. Lest we forget, Alex Ferguson, the team manager at Old Trafford for more than 26 years, signed off last June with England’s league trophy firmly in hand. He chose his own successor, a fellow Scot in David Moyes, and handed him a playing squad in need of major restructuring. Indeed, Ferguson summed up his own success as the art of managing change. We stand now at midseason of Moyes’s first season at United. The team sits in seventh place in the Premier League, which means it will struggle to finish as one of the four English teams to qualify for next season’s Champions League, let alone retain its domestic title. Moyes is not, and could never be, a second Sir Alex Ferguson. He has similar Glaswegian roots, the same accent to his voice, and a shared belief that, no matter how famous and celebrated the players, success is built upon a solid work ethic. Image David Moyes faces many tough personnel decisions in the coming days. Credit Peter Powell/European Pressphoto Agency Even Ferguson acknowledges that times have changed, and instilling that ethic gets harder by the season. Not only that, but in the Internet age, former triumphs are about as useful as yesterday’s stock valuation. Here’s the rub. There is a gigantic banner rolled out at every Old Trafford match proclaiming Moyes “The Chosen One.” The fans behind that banner were asked by Ferguson to give his successor time, and they are doing that. But they see last season’s stars fading before their eyes. In defense, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic are aging, vulnerable to injuries and no longer the indomitable forces they were. In attack, both Wayne Rooney and last season’s top scorer in the league, Robin van Persie, have been missing with more injuries. In midfield, the engine room of a team, there is no one like the now retired Paul Scholes to make the passes. It is an indictment on Ferguson’s rebuilding, rather than Moyes’s inheritance, that Ryan Giggs, at 40, is more reliable as a creative source than Tom Cleverley, who was nurtured to be Scholes’s successor. Giggs has been more of a starter under Moyes than the Brazilian, Anderson, who is about to be sold, or Marouane Fellaini, whom Moyes persuaded United to buy from his former club, Everton. Fellaini, another player who is injured right now, is a fighting soldier, but he has little of the guile required of a United playmaker. Moyes faces up to the most public job in English soccer. The Glazers, on Ferguson’s advice, gave him a six-year contract. But the needs are immediate: Moyes has to take stock and decide whether, for example, the Japanese midfielder Shinji Kagawa is a key component or if he is expendable. Multiply that decision by 10 or 12, and you have some idea of the task. Add the fact that the Glazers, who live in Florida, allowed Ferguson to leave at the same time as David Gill, the chief executive and its savvy negotiator for many of the Ferguson years. Not only is Moyes new to the dressing room and not only is he trying to win as many as three games a week, but he is travelling Europe in search of potential replacements. He was in Italy last Sunday, running his eyes over, among others, Paul Pogba, a French talent that Ferguson allowed to leave. Pogba, 20, is headstrong and his agent demands top dollar, but United lost him to Juventus. Now that he is growing strong, Juve will ask a price that is exaggerated because of the interest that Paris Saint-Germain, with its Qatari backers, is showing in the same player. This is not exclusive to United. Chelsea was negotiating with Benfica to buy back Nemanja Matic, a player it exchanged for David Luiz three years ago. And Chelsea, with its Russian owner, and Manchester City, financed by the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, do not obey normal market pricing. Both pay what it takes, often way above true value, to stockpile players. Manchester United, Moyes and the Glazers are not simply in transition. They are in a transition like no other.

Manchester United
Manchester United
Malcolm Glazer


Broadband to Be Available for More Commercial Use

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is seeking to nearly double the wireless communications spectrum available for commercial use over the next 10 years, an effort that could greatly enhance the ability of consumers to send and receive video and data with smartphones and other hand-held devices. President Obama will sign a presidential memorandum on Monday that aims to make available for auction some 500 megahertz of spectrum that is now controlled by the federal government and private companies, administration officials said Sunday. Most of that would be designated for commercial use in mobile broadband and similar applications, though aspects of the plan will require Congressional approval. The effort embraces recommendations made by the Federal Communications Commission in its National Broadband Plan, which was released in March and encourages the expansion of high-speed wireless broadband services. But some aspects could be opposed by television broadcast companies, which will be asked if they want to give up some of their spectrum for auction. Cable companies that have invested heavily in wired telecommunications networks could also lose from the new direction. Proceeds from the auctions would go in part to finance the construction of improved communications systems for police, fire and other public safety agencies. Law enforcement agencies have proposed that parts of the newly available wireless spectrum be used for a dedicated broadband public safety network. Roughly 45 percent of the spectrum to be auctioned would come from federal government agencies that will be asked to give up allocations that they are not using or could share, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the announcement. The remainder would come from unused spectrum already scheduled for auction or from broadcasters and other spectrum licensees who would be offered incentives to give up or share parts of their communications airwaves. Currently, the spectrum for wireless communications is about 547 megahertz. Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic policy, is expected to detail the broadband effort in a lunchtime speech in Washington to the New America Foundation, a public policy institute. “This initiative will catalyze private sector investment, contribute to economic growth, and help to create hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Mr. Summers said in a statement. “This policy is a win three times over. It creates prosperity and jobs while at the same time raising revenue for public purposes like public safety and increasing our ability to compete internationally.” While it is not unexpected that the Obama administration would embrace some of the recommendations of the National Broadband Plan, the announcement is significant because it puts momentum behind actions that the F.C.C. does not have the authority to take on its own. Specifically, the presidential memorandum will direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to identify federally controlled communications bands that can be made available within five years for exclusive or shared use by commercial companies. Negotiations have been continuing between the White House and federal departments including defense, justice, state, Treasury and energy, which use dedicated government spectrum for official and classified communications. The administration is expected to ask Congress to approve the use of some of the proceeds from an auction of federal spectrum to finance the upgrading of government communications equipment and systems. Congress would also need to approve the F.C.C.’s use of so-called incentive auctions of spectrum that is already allocated to private companies, including broadcast networks. Those auctions would pay broadcast networks and others to give up unused portions of the spectrum that they license from the federal government, which would then be licensed to or shared with wireless companies. Finally, Congress would have to designate how the money generated by auctions should be spent. The plan seeks to use some of the proceeds to build the public safety network that would allow police and fire departments from different jurisdictions to talk to one another in emergencies — something that generally is not possible now and that was identified as an issue on 9/11. Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the F.C.C. and an Obama appointee, welcomed the administration’s initiative on Sunday. “The administration’s strong actions on wireless broadband will move us significantly toward sustainable economic success, robust investment, and global leadership in innovation,” he said. In the long term, companies that are developing emerging wireless technologies could benefit from the greater availability of wireless spectrum, industry analysts say. Consumers also could benefit from the actions, as wireless communications continue to improve and more convenient devices are made widely available. Some spectrum also would be made available for free, unlicensed use by start-up companies and others, administration officials said. Such unlicensed spectrum has previously helped in the development of cordless phones, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth applications. Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, a consumer-oriented policy group, said the interest of consumers will be most helped by auctions that help to promote competition between wireless companies rather than entrenching the dominant providers in the market. Since the release of the F.C.C.’s broadband plan, some broadcasters have expressed doubts about the spectrum allocation recommendations. Dennis Wharton, an executive vice president at the National Association of Broadcasters, said that while expanding broadband is important, it should not be done at the expense of broadcasting, which provides free, local television service to tens of millions of Americans. “We appreciate F.C.C. assurances that further reclamation of broadcast television spectrum will be completely voluntary,” Mr. Wharton said. With the recent conversion of analog broadcast signals to digital, broadcasters returned 108 megahertz of spectrum to the government for auction. Some of the wireless companies that bought that spectrum have not developed all of it, leaving broadcasters wary of giving up more of their holdings to companies that might simply warehouse it, industry officials say.

Wireless Communications
Auctions
Federal Communications Commission
Obama Barack


Lenders to the Poor Adopt Guidelines

Abstract: MEXICO CITY — For months, the fellowship of institutions providing microfinancing has been angrily divided over the actions of one of its own. Compartamos, a fast-growing Mexican bank, went public in April 2007 and sold $468 million in shares on the Mexican stock market and gave the cash to its investors. Critics said the bank, based here, was putting profit ahead of clients, contrary to the altruistic ideals of microlending, which specializes in giving tiny loans to the poorest of the poor. In its defense, Compartamos said that the stock sale showed private investors that microfinance could be profitable and would attract more private capital to the industry. Now, it seems, the two sides have reached a truce. This week, Compartamos joined a group of microfinancing organizations to announce a code of conduct to protect the microlenders’ clients from being exploited. Organizations signing the code say it is meant to reaffirm the principles of microlending and set microlenders, which showed the poor were good credit risks, apart from consumer lenders entering the market. But the campaign was also prompted by the reaction against Compartamos, the microfinancing institution that began as a nonprofit and is now a fully fledged bank with one million clients. Critics say that interest rates charged by Compartamos are too high — some as high as 100 percent — even though the bank’s costs have fallen. “There was a lot of concern, and there still is, that it’s very difficult to differentiate finance from microfinance because, look, everyone is coming in,” said Lynne Patterson, the founder of Pro-Mujer, a network of Latin American microlenders that signed the code. “What people were able to agree on is that we want to protect the client.” Microfinancing, the practice of lending tiny sums of money to poor women to start their own businesses, has grown into a global industry since it began in the 1970s. Institutions involved now range from local nonprofit microlenders to commercial institutions that raise capital on financial markets and return profits for investors. As microfinance has grown, the debate over how commercial it should be has gotten louder. It took a yearlong protest of the Compartamos initial public offering to mobilize the industry. In April, Deutsche Bank convened some 25 industry leaders for a two-day conference in Tarrytown, N.Y. The code is the outgrowth of that meeting. “The level of disagreement was probably not as great as it seemed,” said Elisabeth Rhyne, the managing director of the Center for Financial Inclusion in Washington, which promotes commercial models of microfinancing with a social mission. “You have people who have common ground for 75 percent of what they do.” What came out of the New York conference, she said, was an agreement that “this industry needs to assert its brand much more clearly.” The code requires institutions to avoid reckless lending that can lead to excessive indebtedness, a worry in light of the “stunning example of the subprime crisis,” said Ms. Rhyne. It calls on institutions to adopt transparent pricing along with collection practices that are not abusive, and it commits lenders to protect clients’ privacy and to offer them a way to resolve problems when they cannot pay. Carlos Danel, a co-founder of Compartamos who was at the New York meeting, said the code of behavior “comes out of the worry that the industry is more diverse. But we can set up some rules of the game over how we treat people.” Since the code has no enforcement mechanism, the next step is to set up ways to measure how well microlenders are putting the rules into practice. That is where Compartamos may be able to shake off its strongest critics. “If we’re able to establish a microbankers’ code of conduct and if Compartamos is at the center of delivery on that,” Alex Counts, the president of the Grameen Foundation, which supports microfinancing programs around the world, said, “that would go a long way to address their critics.”

Mexico
Microfinance
Finances
Economic Conditions and Trends
Banco Compartamos SA
Deutsche Bank AG