Latina Hotel Workers Harness Force of Labor and of Politics in Las Vegas

Abstract: LAS VEGAS — She begins her day in black, the natural black before dawn and the requisite black of her uniform: the T-shirt, the pants, the socks, the shoes with slip-resistant treads, all black. The outfit announces deference. She crams fresh vegetables into a blender and holds a plate over its mouth as the machine whips up her green liquid breakfast. Its whine sounds the alarm for her four school-age grandchildren who, one by one, emerge sleepwalking from corners of their crammed rented house. Time to go. Before shepherding the children into her silver Jeep Patriot, the woman straps on a fabric back brace and covers it with the last piece of her uniform, a gray and black tunic. Then, above her left breast, she pins two small union buttons beside her silver name tag. The combined effect says: This is Celia. Underestimate her at your risk. Celia Vargas, 57, with dark wavy hair restrained by a clasp, works at one of the hotels in perpetual gleam along and around the Strip. She is a “guest room attendant” and a member of the Culinary Union, one of more than 14,000 who clean hotel rooms while guests donate money to the casino of their choice. Image Celia Vargas, a guest room attendant at a hotel in Las Vegas, drove her grandchildren to school on Wednesday. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Ms. Vargas, who is from El Salvador, and her Latina union colleagues are a growing force in the politics and culture of Nevada, vocal in their beliefs and expectations. Their 57,000-member Culinary Union, a powerful supporter of Nevada Democrats, is now 56 percent Latino — a jump from 35 percent just 20 years ago. “The power and courage of guest room attendants are the foundation and a big source of strength of the Culinary Union,” Bethany Khan, the union’s communications director, says. These workers, she adds, “are the majority of the middle class in Nevada.” Most of the hotels on and around the Strip are union shops, but the one that employs Ms. Vargas has yet to sign a contract. Even though its workers voted to unionize last December, and even though it is violating the law by not coming to the bargaining table — a point reinforced in a decision and order issued on Thursday by the National Labor Relations Board. So Ms. Vargas wears her back brace, hidden, but also her buttons, prominent. A wooden rosary draped over the rearview mirror sways as her Jeep wends through a working-class stretch of Las Vegas; this is not where Donny and Marie live. She drops her grandchildren at their school, then goes to the house of a friend from the Dominican Republic. She is standing outside, dressed in the same black and gray. The Jeep drives deeper into the Vegas peculiarity, past the 7-Elevens and massage parlors, the smoke shops and strip clubs. Soon the casino and hotel giants of the Strip are framing the view, including one that sticks out like a gold tooth in a wicked grin. This is where Ms. Vargas will clock in at 8:30, and where she is expected to clean a checked-out room in less than 30 minutes and a stay-over in less than 15. Every room seems to reveal something about the human condition. “Sometimes I open the door, and I say ‘Oh my God,’ ” Ms. Vargas says. “And then I close the door.” Image People leaving the Culinary Union to canvass. The union is a powerful supporter of Nevada Democrats. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Despite their name tags, guest room attendants are anonymous. They go unnoticed by many as they push their 300-pound carts to the next room, and the next. A glimpse of what is expected of these attendants can be found at the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, a joint venture between the culinary and bartenders unions and many properties along the Strip. Here, people are trained as cooks or baker’s helpers, bus persons or bar apprentices — or guest room attendants. A corner of the academy’s building features a series of mock guest rooms, each one representing a specific hotel’s style: a Bellagio suite, an MGM Grand, a Caesars Palace. Students learn how to lift mattresses without injuring their backs; how to wear gloves while reaching with care into wastebaskets; and how to maintain quality while moving quickly, because there’s always another room. “Get in and get out,” says Shirley Smith, a former guest room attendant who now trains others. Consider all the items on that cart. Linens, magazines, water bottles, coffee, toiletries, tissues, glass cleaners, disinfectants, bathrobes, dusters, a vacuum, and assorted brushes, including one for the toilet and one for the crevices around the tub and shower. Now consider the job itself. “We make the beds, dust, vacuum, mop, fill the coffee, the creamer, the sugar,” Ms. Vargas says. “We wash the toilet, the bathtub, the shower, the Jacuzzi. Worst, sometimes, is the kitchen. We clean the kitchen.” All in a half-hour. Nine, 10, 11 times a day. Image Maria Anaya practiced making a bed in the mock guest rooms at the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, where those seeking to become guest room attendants can take a two-week course. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times And when her shift ends in the early evening, Ms. Vargas has often sweated through her back brace and black T-shirt. Aching here there and everywhere, she drives home and tells her family that Grandma needs to lie down for a little bit. Grandma’s full name is Celia Menendez Vargas. She grew up in the city of Santa Ana, the daughter of a soldier and a nurse. As civil war engulfed El Salvador in the early 1980s, her husband was killed in a bus bombing, and various family members fled to asylum in Canada and Australia. She entrusted her two children to an aunt and sold her belongings to pay for illicit transport to the United States. She was smuggled in a wooden container on a truck bound for Los Angeles. “Illegal,” she says. “Like a lot of people.” She worked for four years as a live-in housekeeper, applied for residency and saved up the money to arrange for her two sons to join her legally. She remarried, gave birth to a girl in 1986, divorced and kept working. Newspaper deliverer. Garment factory worker. Babysitter. School custodian. Food-truck cook, making pupusas, those Salvadoran corn tortillas filled with cheese or meat or beans. Image Ms. Vargas, who is from El Salvador, cooked dinner at home with her grandchildren Ryan, Karla and Evalina Alonso-Molina, ages 7, 13 and 10. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times In 1996, Ms. Vargas became an American citizen. Her reasoning is familiar, yet fresh: “For me this was very important. I always think this country was the best for the future of my kids.” Friends were urging her to come to the soccer fields some Sunday and meet a man who was also from Santa Ana, but her heavy work schedule precluded romance. “Always working,” she says. “Working, work, work.” They met, finally, she and Jorge Alberto Vargas, and were married in 2003. A few years later they moved to Las Vegas, on word that jobs were plentiful in the neon oasis. Mr. Vargas, who had a work permit based on political asylum, became a chef at a casino on the Strip, and things were fine until they weren’t. Three years ago, he was detained after being arrested a second time for driving under the influence, although the family maintains his second arrest was a medical episode related to diabetes. He spent more than two years being shipped to various federal detention centers — Nevada, California, Texas, Louisiana — before being deported back to El Salvador in July. Ms. Vargas saw him last a year ago, for 30 minutes; she cries at the memory. She keeps his clothes boxed in the garage, and files document after document with the government, working toward that day when they might be reunited. This and other travails consume Ms. Vargas. But she has returned to the work force, finding a job as a guest room attendant in this glittering gold nonunion hotel. It paid a little more than $14 an hour — about $3 less than what unionized housekeepers were making, and with nowhere near the complement of benefits. Image Ivelice Martinez, who is from the the Dominican Republic, rode with Ms. Vargas to work. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Some of her colleagues began to agitate for a union vote. Union pamphlets and cards were surreptitiously exchanged in the parking lot, in the bathrooms, under tables in the employees’ dining room. Ms. Vargas joined in, motivated in part by the $17,000 in debt she had accumulated by undergoing surgery for breast cancer; she wanted better health care benefits. At one point she and a few other workers were suspended for wearing union buttons, but this concerted union activity is federally protected. After the Culinary Union filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, she was quickly reinstated with back pay, her buttons intact. It has not been easy. Downsizing after her husband’s deportation, selling her bedroom set, moving in with her daughter and her family. Publicly agitating for the union — and for the Democratic nominee for president — and then fretting that there might be retaliation at her nonunion, pro-Republican workplace. And working, constantly working. “I tell my children, we have to work,” Ms. Vargas says. “It’s not for government to support me. We work work work.” She pulls into the employee parking lot of the gold hotel, set aglow now by the unsparing morning sun. Searching for a parking spot, she passes other women, many of them also in black and gray tunics, hurrying toward the service entrance. Image Ms. Vargas wears her name tag and union buttons on her uniform. The workers at her hotel voted to unionize last year, but their employer has yet to sign a contract. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times Soon she is heading for the same door, one more guest room attendant who wears a back brace while cleaning rooms for a presidential candidate whose name is on the bathrobes she stocks, on the empty wine bottles she collects, on her name tag. He will receive her labor, but not her vote.

Hotels
Las Vegas
Casino
Nevada
Labor Unions
Hispanic Americans
Donald Trump
2016 Presidential Election


Chief of Transportation Authority Must Wage a Political Battle for Funding

Abstract: After months of uncertainty, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last week threw his support behind the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s proposal to maintain and improve the region’s transit infrastructure. For the authority’s chairman, Thomas F. Prendergast, the governor’s announcement was a welcome, if belated, breakthrough. It came weeks after the end of a legislative session during which Mr. Prendergast tried, unsuccessfully, to line up lawmakers in Albany behind his $32 billion capital plan. But Mr. Cuomo’s public commitment to a slimmed-down version of the plan — and to an $8 billion state contribution to close a funding gap — is only the beginning of what promises to be a battle over how to finance the state-run authority’s capital plan and how much New York City should pay toward it. Mr. Prendergast, appointed by Mr. Cuomo two years ago and confirmed last month to a full six-year term as chairman, will be right in the middle of the fight, with the knowledge that his agenda for maintaining and modernizing the authority depends on making the plan a reality. It is not an easy spot. By all accounts, Mr. Prendergast has a handle on just about every corner of the authority, from its subways and railroads to its buses and tunnels. A 24-year veteran of the system, he says he cares deeply about its future. But he is decidedly less comfortable with the political aspects of the job. “Tom is a professional transportation manager who finds himself in the difficult position of having to navigate governor-mayor politics,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City , a powerful business group. The governor certainly did not make those politics any simpler when he delivered his announcement on the capital plan last week, pushing Mayor Bill de Blasio to do more. In the latest tussle between the two Democrats, Mr. Cuomo said New York City should contribute $3 billion , several times what the city had said it would pay over the next five years to the authority, which is controlled by the governor. On Tuesday, Mr. Prendergast sent a letter to the mayor urging him to commit to the figure, and made a rare television appearance on NY1 to argue his case, saying that the authority chiefly serves the city. Mr. Cuomo did not say where the state’s contribution would come from, offering only that he would work it out with state legislators when they returned for the next session in January. How successful Mr. Prendergast is in securing funding for his wide-ranging plan is likely to define the region’s infrastructure for decades and determine whether mass transit service turns around or continues to deteriorate. The five-year plan, which was trimmed to $29.8 billion, would pay for a host of projects across the network: new train cars and buses; updated signal systems that would allow more trains to run; countdown clocks for the lettered subway lines; and the next phase of the Second Avenue subway line. Some past chairmen have shown an independent streak and challenged state officials. But Mr. Prendergast has largely deferred to the governor, with sometimes awkward outcomes. Before a blizzard in January that was expected to hit the city hard, Mr. Prendergast said trains would keep running. A few hours later, Mr. Cuomo announced a full subway shutdown, surprising even the mayor’s office. Mr. Prendergast later said he had changed his mind and recommended the closing. Running the authority is the culmination of a dream for Mr. Prendergast, 63, who grew up in Chicago, the son of a high school football coach, and played as a boy with model trains spread out in the family’s dining room. He became the authority’s chairman and chief executive after Joseph J. Lhota resigned to run for mayor. Still, most riders might not recognize Mr. Prendergast if they were seated next to him on the train. Tall and bald with a rim of white hair, he has appeared in front of cameras before storms and after train crashes, but he does not seek the spotlight. (There certainly is no candid Twitter account like the one Mr. Lhota used to post political commentary or sports scores after “ too much wine .”) Image Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Mr. Prendergast in July 2014. Credit Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters In a recent interview, Mr. Prendergast conceded that he found the political demands of the job even harder than the crises that have come up over the course of his career, from the deadly subway derailment in 1991 at Union Square station, to the fatal Metro-North crash this year in Westchester County. “You don’t like dealing with stuff like that, but you deal with it,” he said. “But they pale in contrast to the difficulties of dealing with political issues.” That has been his focus this year, though, as he has met with state lawmakers to push the capital plan. Mr. Prendergast hoped they would take up the funding gap, which at one point stood at $15 billion and is now about $9.8 billion, during the legislative session. But legislators left last month without devoting much time to the capital budget during a tumultuous session in which the leaders of the State Assembly and Senate stepped down amid corruption charges. Mr. Cuomo had been mostly silent on the plan this year, prompting anger from transit groups that said he did not care about the plight of subway riders. Then came a coordinated response last week: Mr. Prendergast issued a new framework to fund the plan, and Mr. Cuomo appeared on television an hour later to say he supported it. This week, Mr. Cuomo went a step further, saying that he would put the $8 billion in the budget next year. “We believe in the M.T.A. capital plan,” he said on Monday at an event announcing the overhaul of La Guardia Airport. The same day, Mr. de Blasio said that the city had already met an earlier funding request from the authority and that he had questions about the framework. The mayor told reporters that he wanted more information on where the state money would come from. “We’ll be happy to talk about it once we understand the specific proposal,” he said. An alliance of over two dozen transportation and civic groups applauded the governor’s efforts to jump-start the discussions. But they expressed concern over how the state and city would generate funding for the plan and urged leaders not to rely too heavily on debt. Gene Russianoff, the staff attorney for the Straphangers Campaign, an advocacy group, said he was confident that Mr. Prendergast would guide the coming negotiations in a way that made riders a priority. “He’s going to put up a fight to make sure that the money is spent on what benefits the system rather than what might benefit an elected official,” Mr. Russianoff said. Mr. Prendergast started out at the Chicago Transit Authority in 1975 after graduating from the University of Illinois with an engineering degree. When he joined New York City Transit in 1982, subway derailments were frequent and cars were covered in graffiti. He became president of the Long Island Rail Road in 1994, and then worked in the private sector before becoming chief executive of TransLink, the transit system in Vancouver. In 2009, he returned to the authority to run the subway system and helped oversee its swift recovery after Hurricane Sandy . Mr. Prendergast lives in Brewster, N.Y., with his wife, Christine, who works at the New York Power Authority, and their two children. He usually takes the 4:30 or 4:50 a.m. Metro-North train to Grand Central, then the No. 4 or 5 subway line to the authority’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan, giving him a close look at the city’s crowded platforms. All along, he has been adamant that the largest piece of the capital plan, $20 billion for “state of good repair,” is essential because it is for maintenance to keep the system safe and reliable. David Gunn, who was Mr. Prendergast’s boss as president of the New York City Transit Authority in the ’80s, said funding would determine whether the system fell back into disrepair. “It’s a life-or-death issue to have adequate funding for state of good repair,” Mr. Gunn said from his home in Nova Scotia, where he is retired. “He knows what happens when you don’t. He’s lived it.”

Politics
New York
Subway
Bill de Blasio
Budget
Thomas F Prendergast
MTA
Andrew Cuomo
NYC
Public Transit


Germany Debates Subsidies for Solar Industry

Abstract: THALHEIM, Germany — This sad stretch of eastern Germany, with its deserted coal mines and corroded factories, epitomizes post-industrial gloom. It is a place where even the clouds rarely seem to part. Yet the sun was shining here the other day — and nowhere more brightly than at Q-Cells, a German company that surpassed Sharp last year to become the world’s largest maker of photovoltaic solar cells. Q-Cells is the main tenant among a flowering cluster of solar start-ups here in an area known as Solar Valley. Thanks to its aggressive push into renewable energies, cloud-wreathed Germany has become an unlikely leader in the race to harness the sun’s energy. It has by far the largest market for photovoltaic systems, which convert sunlight into electricity, with roughly half of the world’s total installations. And it is the third-largest producer of solar cells and modules, after China and Japan. Now, though, with so many solar panels on so many rooftops, critics say Germany has too much of a good thing — even in a time of record oil prices. Conservative lawmakers, in particular, want to pare back generous government incentives that support solar development. They say solar generation is growing so fast that it threatens to overburden consumers with high electricity bills. Solar-energy entrepreneurs warn that reducing incentives will deprive Germany of its pole position in an industry of the future. As proof, they point to the United States and Japan, which were once solar stars but have faded as their government subsidies became less enticing. The debate over solar subsidies is a test of how an environmentally minded country can move from nurturing a promising alternative energy sector to creating a mass-market industry that can compete with conventional energy sources on its own footing. It is a tricky transition, even with a sympathetic population. “Germany’s law has basically been a turbocharger,” said Anton Milner, the chief executive of Q-Cells. If the proposals being floated by the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, were adopted, he predicted, “you’d kill the industry.” Germany’s surging market has lured investors from Canada, Norway and the United States. More than 40,000 people work in the photovoltaic industry, helping to revive blighted regions like this one. On Wednesday, Q-Cells reported a 63 percent jump in its first-quarter operating profit, showing the riches to be reaped from sunshine. Leading a visitor past gleaming rows of solar panels on the roof of Q-Cells’ headquarters, Mr. Milner, a British-born former executive at Royal Dutch Shell, said Germany could not afford to blow this chance. Surely, he says, the naysayers are aware that the cost of electricity will spike along with the price of fossil fuels? Joachim Pfeiffer, a member of Parliament who is drafting the plan to cut incentives, said: “We don’t want to slaughter the solar industry; we think photovoltaic technology will have a great future. But to have that future, we can’t have overkill now.” At the heart of the debate is the Renewable Energy Sources Act. It requires power companies to buy all the alternative energy produced by these systems, at a fixed above-market price, for 20 years. This mechanism, known as a feed-in tariff, gives entrepreneurs a powerful incentive to install solar panels. With a locked-in customer base for their electricity, they can earn a reliable return on their investment. It has worked: homeowners rushed to clamp solar panels on their roofs and farmers planted them in fields where sheep once grazed. The amount of electricity generated by these installations rose 60 percent in 2007 compared with 2006, faster than any other renewable energy (solar still generates just 0.6 percent of Germany’s total electricity, compared with 6.4 percent for wind). This, in a country that gets an average of only 1,528 hours of sunshine a year, less than a third of the total daylight hours. That figure is comparable to London’s but it is one-third fewer sunshine hours than in Florence, Italy, and only half San Diego’s, making German solar installations less efficient, and their growth all the more remarkable. With wind, biomass and other alternative energy also growing, Germany derives 14.2 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. That puts it ahead of a European Union target for countries to generate 12.5 percent of electricity from alternative sources by 2010. Spain, France, Italy and Greece have copied Germany’s solar incentives. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed a plan in which utilities pay rebates to customers with solar panels, though only up to the amount of electricity they would have otherwise used from conventional energy sources. “Germany is a driving force worldwide,” said Hermann Scheer, a member of Parliament who helped write the law. “It is very important that the driving force not become a lame duck.” Christian Democrats, however, say the law has been too successful for its own good. Utilities, they note, are allowed to pass along the extra cost of buying renewable energy to customers, and there is no cap on the capacity that can be installed — as exists in other countries to prevent subsidies from mushrooming. At the moment, solar energy adds 1.01 euros ($1.69) a month to a typical home electricity bill, a modest surcharge that Germans are willing to pay. That will increase to 2.14 euros a month by 2014, according to the German Solar Energy Association. But the volume of solar-generated energy is rising much faster than originally predicted, and critics contend that the costs will soar. Mr. Pfeiffer, the legislator, said solar power could end up adding 8 euros ($12.32) to a monthly electricity bill, which would alienate even the most green-minded. With no change in the law, he says, the solar industry will soak up 120 billion euros ($184 billion) in public support by 2015. The conservatives would like to accelerate the rate at which the feed-in tariff declines, now set at 5 percent a year. Under a draft proposal, the tariff would fall 30 percent in 2009, and 9 percent a year after that. The law’s term might also be shortened to 15 years from 20. Mrs. Merkel, who boasts of her green credentials, has yet to enter the debate. Her party must win over its coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, which might be tough, given that the law was strengthened in 2004 by the last government, led by the Social Democrats. Meanwhile, solar advocates are testifying before Parliament and publishing articles defending the law. Eicke R. Weber, a prominent physicist, said the estimate of 120 billion euros in subsidies was too high because it did not take into account the rising price of conventional electricity. That, plus a gradual decline in the cost of solar, will close the price gap between conventional and solar-generated electricity by 2014 or 2015, he predicted. The actual subsidy, Mr. Weber said, will be 40 billion to 60 billion euros, a third of what the German state is paying to prop up its superannuated coal industry. “If we’re willing to burden the population with 180 billion euros of support for a dying industry, who do we worry about taking one-third of this to make Germany the world leader in photovoltaic technology?” said Mr. Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Freiburg. Defenders of solar energy see the hand of Germany’s power companies behind the effort to change the law. Reducing incentives for solar would favor wind, which is a more natural fit for the utilities, since the cost of building wind farms is too high for the average homeowner with an empty roof and an urge to generate electricity. “Solar energy is more decentralized, so the industry sees more competition from solar than from wind,” said Carsten Körnig, the managing director of the German Solar Energy Association. In the former East Germany, where scores of state-subsidized industries were shuttered after reunification in 1990, the solar industry is a welcome tonic for a depressed region. Signet Solar, an American maker of photovoltaic modules that use thin-film technology, chose to build its first factory and research center near Dresden. “We decided right from the beginning to have our main R&D in Germany,” said Gunter Ziegenbalg, Signet’s managing director. Still, there are constant reminders of how quickly Germany could lose its status. Signet is building its next factory in Madras, India; Q-Cells is building one in Malaysia. Other German companies are exploring the Mediterranean markets, particularly Spain. With more sunny days a year, Spain is likely to have a competitive solar industry that can stand on its feet before Germany’s does. And now it has put in place its own German-style incentives. “To develop a technology, you’ve got to create an industry,” said Mr. Milner, the chief executive of Q-Cells, referring to the German success story. “You can wait and wait and wait for costs to come down, but it takes too long.”

Germany
Solar Energy
Energy and Power
Electric Light and Power


Germany to Close All Nuclear Plants by 2022

Abstract: BERLIN — The German government on Monday announced plans to shut all of the nation’s nuclear power plants within the next 11 years, a sharp reversal for Chancellor Angela Merkel after the Japanese disaster at Fukushima caused an electoral backlash by voters opposed to reliance on nuclear energy . The plan calls for phasing out all of Germany ’s 17 nuclear reactors — eight of which are offline — and expanding the use of renewable resources. The decision was based on recommendations of an expert commission appointed after the Japanese disaster to study an industry that generates 23 percent of Germany’s electricity. “It’s definite — the latest end for the last three nuclear plants is 2022,” said Norbert Röttgen, the environment minister. The announcement, which still faces legislative approval, was applauded by environmentalists and expected to be popular among voters. But it was greeted skeptically around Europe and within German industry. Some predicted it could harm economic growth, force Germany to import nuclear power from France, or even inflate the cost of energy across the continent. “The German decision has direct implications for Europe’s energy sector,” said Georg Zachmann, an energy expert at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels. For Mrs. Merkel, the embrace of clean energy represents a transformation based on the politics of the ballot box. Just last year, her center-right coalition forced through an unpopular plan to extend the life of nuclear power plants, with the last to close in 2036. That action inflamed public opinion but the Fukushima disaster politicized it. The nuclear crisis is widely believed to have caused Mrs. Merkel’s party to lose control of the German state of Baden-Württemberg for the first time in 58 years, in a March election that became a referendum on energy policy. By Monday, Mrs. Merkel said the country must “not let go the chance” to end its dependence on nuclear power. But her ambitious plan will not be easily achieved. The cost of plugging the gap left by the nuclear shutdown is likely to raise power costs, particularly for Germany’s globally competitive industrial sector, which consumes nearly half of the total electricity supply. Germany hopes to have renewable sources provide 35 percent of its electricity by 2020, up from about 13 percent today, and reach 80 percent by 2050. Its efforts will be watched closely, analysts said. “If the government goes ahead with what it said it would do, then Germany will be a kind of laboratory for efforts worldwide to end nuclear power in an advanced economy,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “No other country in the world is taking those steps.” Switzerland — a much smaller nation — decided this month to abandon plans to build new nuclear reactors and will phase out its existing plants when they reach the end of their normal lives. Other European countries are standing by their nuclear programs, including France, which has 58 nuclear plants and two under construction. The Netherlands, deeply committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, intends to build new nuclear plants along with developing more renewable energy sources. Britain has no plans to reduce its dependence on nuclear power. Poland, which is eager to reduce its dependence on Russian gas and oil, is committed to pursuing a nuclear energy program, despite the expense, according to recent statements by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The government’s decision drew criticism and concern from some political and business leaders. The powerful Federal Association for German Industry, known as B.D.I., sent a letter on Monday morning to the chancellery, warning her about the consequences for German business. “How will the international competitiveness of German industry be guaranteed?” Hans-Peter Keitel, B.D.I.’s president, wrote. “Industry last year accounted for two-thirds of Germany’s economic upswing.” The government said all of the details of the phase-out had not yet been decided. If the government concludes that there are not sufficient alternative sources of energy to make up for the loss of nuclear power, three of the newest nuclear plants will be allowed to remain open until 2022.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan)


Updates on Service Restoration in New York City

Abstract: NEW YORK CITY POWER ROCKAWAYS STILL LARGELY BLACKED OUT The Rockaway Peninsula remained the area worst hit by power failures as residents in homes with no light or heat grew increasingly frustrated with the Long Island Power Authority, which provides electricity there. More than 31,000 customers, nearly the entire peninsula, were without power as of Friday afternoon, the authority reported on its Web site. In the rest of the city, Con Edison reported that it had restored power to all but about 16,000 customers. But even in many areas where the power had been restored, some homes and buildings remained without electricity. The utility said it could not return power to about 35,000 customers in flood-damaged areas like Howard Beach in Queens and Red Hook and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn until electricians certified their homes as safe. PUBLIC HOUSING HOUSING AUTHORITY BUILDINGS SUFFER More than 21,000 residents in public housing remained without heat or hot water on Friday, according to the New York City Housing Authority, and another 12,800 were without power. Most of the problems were in Brooklyn, where hundreds of apartments in buildings in Coney Island and Red Hook remained without heat or electricity or both. HOMEOWNER RELIEF EMERGENCY REPAIR PLAN ANNOUNCED Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a program that, in partnership with FEMA , will send teams of contractors into neighborhoods hit hard by the hurricane to help speed home repairs, without any immediate cost to the homeowners. People can learn about and sign up for the program, called NYC Rapid Repairs, at NYC.gov or by calling 311. TRANSPORTATION  FERRY FROM THE ROCKAWAYS Mr. Bloomberg announced a temporary ferry service beginning Monday between the Rockaways and Manhattan. The service is being provided in partnership with SeaStreak. Schedules and departure locations are available at www.seastreak.com and at 311. One-way fares will be $2. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel remained closed by flood damage. Subway service is operating normally on most lines, with some exceptions. Service remains suspended on the N train between 59th Street and Coney Island in Brooklyn, the A train in Far Rockaway, the S Rockaway Park Shuttle, the 1 train between Chambers Street and South Ferry, the R train between Manhattan and Brooklyn and the J train between Chambers and Broad Streets. Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials did not estimate when service would be restored.

New York City
Power Outages and Blackouts
Public and Subsidized Housing
Federal Emergency Management Agency
Transit Systems
Hurricane Sandy (2012)
Far Rockaway (NYC)


New Rumor of Snowden Flight Raises Tensions

Abstract: It began as a seemingly offhand remark by the president of Bolivia, who suggested during a visit to Moscow that he might be happy to host Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive former security contractor who is desperate to find asylum. It escalated into a major diplomatic scramble in which the Bolivian president’s plane was rerouted on Tuesday, apparently because of suspicions that Mr. Snowden was aboard. By day’s end, outraged Bolivian officials, insisting that Mr. Snowden was not on the plane, were accusing France and Portugal of acting under American pressure to rescind permission for President Evo Morales’s plane to traverse their airspace on the way back to Bolivia. Low on fuel, the plane’s crew won permission to land in Vienna. “They say it was due to technical issues, but after getting explanations from some authorities we found that there appeared to be some unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on the plane,” the Bolivian foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, told reporters after the plane touched down in Vienna, where Mr. Morales was spending the night. “We don’t know who invented this big lie,” the foreign minister said at a news conference in La Paz, Bolivia. “We want to express our displeasure because this has put the president’s life at risk.” Rubén Saavedra, the defense minister, who was on the plane with Mr. Morales, accused the Obama administration of being behind the action by France and Portugal, calling it “an attitude of sabotage and a plot by the government of the United States.” There was no immediate response by officials in Paris, Lisbon or Washington. “We were in flight; it was completely unexpected,” Mr. Saavedra said on the Telesur cable network. “The president was very angry.” Speaking by phone with Telesur, Mr. Saavedra said that Mr. Snowden was not on the plane. Later, Reuters cited an unidentified Austrian Foreign Ministry official as saying the same thing. Bolivian officials said they were working on a new flight plan to allow Mr. Morales to fly home. But in a possible sign of further suspicion about the passenger manifest, Mr. Saavedra said that Italy had also refused to give permission for the plane to fly over its airspace. Later he said that France and Portugal had reversed course and offered to allow the plane to fly through their airspace after all. On Monday, Mr. Morales, who was attending an energy conference in Moscow, was asked in an interview on the Russia Today television network if he would consider giving asylum to Mr. Snowden, 30, who has been holed up at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for more than a week, his passport revoked by the United States. Image Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, was attending an energy conference in Moscow when he was asked in an interview if he would consider giving asylum to Edward J. Snowden. Credit Maxim Shemetov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images “Yes, why not?” Mr. Morales responded. “Of course, Bolivia is ready to take in people who denounce — I don’t know if this is espionage or monitoring. We are here.” He said, though, that Bolivia had not received a request from Mr. Snowden, despite news reports to the contrary. It was already clear by then that the Moscow conference had been overshadowed by the drama of Mr. Snowden and his disclosures about American intelligence programs, which have deeply embarrassed the Obama administration. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, who was also at the conference, had suggested he might offer Mr. Snowden asylum but did not plan to fly him to Venezuela. But Mr. Morales’s remarks appeared to open the door. At least that was the way they were interpreted. The problems began even before Mr. Morales left Moscow, Mr. Choquehuanca said. On Monday, Portugal, without explanation, had withdrawn permission for Mr. Morales’s plane to stop in Lisbon to refuel, the foreign minister said. That required Bolivian officials to get permission from Spain to refuel in the Canary Islands. The next day, after taking off from Moscow, Mr. Morales’s plane was just minutes from entering French airspace, according to Mr. Saavedra, when the French authorities informed the pilot that the plane could not fly over France. There was also plenty of confusion in Moscow over how Mr. Snowden could possibly have left undetected on a government aircraft. Government planes carrying foreign officials to diplomatic meetings in Moscow typically arrive and depart from Vnukovo Airport, which is also the main airfield used by the Russian government, rather than from Sheremetyevo, where Mr. Snowden arrived from Hong Kong on June 23 hours after American officials had sought his extradition there. The speculation that Mr. Snowden would hitch a ride on a government jet was discounted by the fact that the plane would have to first make a quick flight from one Moscow airport to the other. In an interview with the television station Russia Today, Mr. Maduro said he would consider any request by Mr. Snowden. Then, ending the interview with a dash of humor, he said, “It’s time for me to go; Snowden is waiting for me.”

Bolivia
France
Portugal
Evo Morales
Venezuela
Edward Snowden
Nicolas Maduro
Government Surveillance
NSA


For Working Families Party, Inquiries Without End

Abstract: It is a backhanded tribute to the power of the left-leaning Working Families Party that it keeps being subjected to the legal equivalent of a full-body scan. A prominent Republican former deputy mayor sued the party, claiming all manner of dastardly deeds arising from a 2009 City Council race on Staten Island. He succeeded in closing down its for-profit campaign arm. Then federal prosecutors issued subpoenas and examined mountains of records before shrugging and advising that they had found no whiff of wrongdoing. The New York City Campaign Finance Board, whose staff deliberates with the speed of a Bleak House barrister , has examined the finance reports of many candidates supported by the party and has found no grand violations. Still the investigations keep coming, the most recent and curious run by a sardonic and politically connected Brooklyn lawyer by the name of Roger Bennet Adler. Three years ago, the Staten Island district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr. , submitted a secret application to state court requesting that it appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Working Families Party and that same Staten Island race. Two years after that, a state judge secretly appointed Mr. Adler as special prosecutor. Now Mr. Adler has filed subpoenas of his own. He frames his central question as a straightforward one: Did the Working Families Party sell a retail service — campaign management and canvassing — to favored candidates at a wholesale price? “I would say,” Mr. Adler told me, “that this case involves fairness.” Except that the Working Families Party might reasonably ask if fairness has anything to do with this. It has survived cascading investigations, only to find its fate in the hands of a man with scant prosecutorial experience. Avi Schick, a former state deputy attorney general, now represents the party in what has been a long and costly slog. “It seems,” Mr. Schick says, “to be nothing more than a prosecutor who has identified a target and is now in search of a crime.” This war comes laden with easily understood consequences. This is a mayoral election year, and the Working Families Party , which rests on the shoulders of many of the city’s most powerful unions, could take the role of sharp-elbowed kingmaker. At the very least, it will back a host of Council candidates, and if its track record is any indication, it could help tip the balance toward a new left-liberal speaker. The party’s political ascendance comes at an intriguing pass in city politics. The Democratic mayoral candidates lust after the party’s endorsement. And the Republican Party more closely resembles Sybil, that woman of fractured personalities. Its county chieftains have embraced several different candidates, and the Staten Island borough president, a Conservative Party member, even hints he’ll support Christine C. Quinn , a liberal Democrat. The Working Families Party is deeply liberal; Mr. Adler is that rare Democratic bird who is a donor to the Conservative Party. The Working Families Party put a shoulder hard to the wheel for gay marriage; he wrote the Conservative Party’s amicus brief just the same. If he endorses one side, the Working Families Party is consistently found on the other. Mr. Adler argues none of this points to malice. He is a late-middle-aged lawyer who can take his bruises. But as New York is thick with former prosecutors, why not find one with more experience and less baggage? That question has no answer. State court suggests it went door to door, shaking a tin cup in hopes of attracting a prosecutor to this case. And David Bookstaver, the spokesman for the state’s court system, says the Working Families Party may have waited too long to file an objection, submitted last week, to the special prosecutor. This is a curious suggestion, as nearly every step took place in secret. The Working Families Party is no naïf. Its decision to establish a for-profit arm may have been too cute by half. The Giuliani aide, Randy Mastro, forced it to shut down this service, and to pay his legal bills as well. Still, Mr. Mastro’s dark talk of electoral conspiracies remains fantastical. The Campaign Finance Board recently completed audits of the 2009 Council elections. The Brooklyn Council representatives Brad Lander and Steve Levin took Working Families Party endorsements that year and paid for its services. In each case, the board offered a clean bill of health. Perhaps one day this will extend to the party itself.

Working Families Party
City Council races
Campaign finance
Campaign Finance Board NYC
Daniel M Donovan Jr
New York City Council
NYC


Massachusetts Republicans Pick Nominee for Governor

Abstract: WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Energized by Scott Brown ’s upset victory in the United States Senate race, Massachusetts Republicans have chosen Charles Baker as their nominee for governor to face the Democratic incumbent and presumed candidate, Deval Patrick , this fall. Mr. Baker, the former president of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, won the endorsement on Saturday over Christy Mihos during the Republican State Convention. Mr. Baker’s likely opponent in the general election will be Mr. Patrick, who still faces a challenge for the Democratic nomination by a community activist, Grace Ross, and State Treasurer Timothy Cahill, who left the Democratic Party so he could run against the incumbent as an independent. “This is not a complicated race,” Mr. Baker told the roughly 3,000 delegates attending the convention after his selection. “The choices are clear. If you like more out-of-control state spending, then vote for Deval Patrick. He’s your guy. If you believe state government doesn’t need serious reform, but more patronage and insider deals, then vote for Tim Cahill. But if you believe, like me, that Massachusetts cannot afford four more years of tax-and-spend mediocrity ... then you should vote for me. I’m your guy.” The selection of Mr. Baker showed a party further united in the aftermath of Mr. Brown’s election in January to the Senate seat that was held for decades by Edward M. Kennedy , a Democrat. It also cleared the way for Mr. Baker to be the Republican Party ’s unchallenged candidate in a general election The party also endorsed Mr. Baker’s running mate, State Senator Richard Tisei, for lieutenant governor; State Representative Karyn Polito for treasurer; and a former Massachusetts Turnpike board member, Mary Z. Connaughton, for auditor. No Republican candidate stepped forward for attorney general, the sixth constitutional office in the state, but the party decided to allow Kamal Jain, a high-tech executive, to also appear on September’s primary ballot for auditor, after he initially appeared to fall short of the necessary support. Mr. Baker, who was budget chief in the Republican administration of former Gov. William F. Weld in the 1990s, was the clear favorite for governor among the delegates. But Mr. Mihos aimed for a primary showdown, and he needed the support of only 15 percent of the delegates to qualify. In the end, he garnered just 318 votes to Mr. Baker’s 2,544 — about 11 percent. Mr. Mihos had argued that a robust campaign would generate news coverage for Republican candidates up and down the ballot. “Let’s have a primary, and let’s take this to all the people,” he said to a tepid reception from the delegates. Afterward, Mr. Mihos said he planned to support Mr. Baker. “The people spoke,” he said. “I’ve been an outsider, and as an outsider, you make a lot of enemies.” Baker aides had aimed to avoid a divisive and expensive primary, which would have expended resources they want to use in the fall campaign. They summoned former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, the party’s unsuccessful 2006 candidate for governor, to nominate Mr. Baker. Mr. Mihos briefly left the Republican Party in 2006 to challenge Ms. Healey as an independent. The Baker camp was also trying to husband its money and energy because of the prospect of a three-way race. Mr. Cahill is trying to claim the same ground as Mr. Baker as the fiscally conservative alternative to Mr. Patrick. He shook hands outside the convention hall where the Republicans were meeting, saying he plans to work any large crowd.

Massachusetts
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
Elections
Republican Party
Baker Charles
Politics and Government
Patrick Deval L
Brown Scott P
Kennedy Edward M


Sudanese Expatriates in U.S. Vote in Referendum

Abstract: NASHVILLE — At 8 a.m. on an unusually frigid Sunday here, Apai Mabior was standing in a long line shivering. Mr. Mabior, 31, had driven all night, making a 10-hour trip from Jacksonville, Fla., to the closest place he could cast his vote in the referendum on whether southern Sudan should separate from the north and become an independent country. “With no car, we would have even made it by foot, you know,” he said. Mr. Mabior, like many waiting behind him, left southern Sudan — he at age 7. He had been tending his family’s cattle when northern troops attacked his village, so he walked 15 days to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. He eventually became one of the young male members of the Sudanese diaspora in the United States, known as the Lost Boys . Now, here at the Lost Boys Center and Gallery, he was joining 915 others from as far away as Mississippi and Georgia to cast a vote that would be recorded by polling officials in Sudan. “This opportunity will never come again in my lifetime,” he said. “If I vote, I can keep alive the people who have died for this. They will not see this day, but they will feel it.” At the other official polling places set up across the United States, Sudanese expatriates also cast votes, after trips in packed vans and family cars. In all, 8,789 Sudanese expatriates registered to vote in Omaha; Phoenix; Dallas; Seattle; Chicago; Boston; Alexandria, Va.; and Nashville, according to David Buom Choat, a political affairs officer with the Government of South Sudan’s missions abroad office in Washington. He was in Nashville to monitor the voting. “I will eat the fruit of my struggle,” Jacob Ruei, who drove from Harrisburg, Pa., to Alexandria, said by telephone. “It is a payback to those who have passed.” Although the ballot was secret, it was difficult to find one person at the Nashville center who wanted to keep the country unified. Like in Sudan, the voting will continue through the end of the week, although a majority of southern Sudanese living in the United States were expected to vote Sunday. Friends who had met in refugee camps were reunited, lost cousins were discovered. But for most, it was a deeply moving day of independence after decades of civil war and millions of lives lost. Josephine Pita, her finger still wet with blue ink, leaned against a wall and wept after she had voted. Mr. Choat reached out to comfort her. “You have done it, you have done it,” he said. The United States registration and voting process had been organized by the International Organization for Migration and the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission . To register, people had to travel in November to one of the eight polling places and prove they were from southern Sudan, using current or expired documents. Poll workers interviewed those without papers to determine whether applicants qualified. The resulting registration cards were treated like gold, locked in closets or given to trusted relatives until Election Day. Just before the doors opened at 8 a.m. here, with several official observers watching, two plastic ballot boxes were secured with numbered yellow plastic ties, each set of digits read aloud and recorded. Voters then spent the day making their way to voting booths and, finally, to an inkwell. To prevent fraud, each voter dipped an index finger when casting a vote. “They didn’t want anything to go wrong,” said Lois Moreno, the president of the board of the city’s Lost Boys Foundation. “They didn’t want anyone to say that the vote in Nashville didn’t count.” The preparation was spiritual, as well. On Saturday, two dozen people gathered in a small red house behind a Baptist church on the outskirts of Nashville. The makeshift church was not much more than a basement room with a folding table for an altar and a beat-up electric organ. For hours, Christine Tartisio, 37, sat and prayed for independence. She recalled the day she had left, a little girl forced to run from her school when troops invaded. Her parents were killed, she said, and she spent years in refugee camps in Uganda. In 1998, she left Africa for Nashville. Mrs. Tartisio has gone back twice, looking for her parents’ graves. And, like many who have made it to the United States, she offered some small amount of financial help to one of the poorest regions on earth. She said she voted so that her three young children, all born in the United States, might one day be able to visit and help build a new southern Sudan. She also voted, she said, so that her parents’ deaths would not be in vain. “We walked through a stream of blood, all of us,” she said. “So we must do this.”

Sudan
Referendums
United States
Elections
Americans Abroad
Immigration and Emigration
Refugees and Displaced Persons


Rajon Rondo Expands His Game, and the Celtics’ Success

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — Rajon Rondo will not enter a 3-point shooting contest any time soon. In his expanding repertory, Rondo’s perimeter shooting is a work in progress. But when he drives to the basket, he can split a forest of players in the lane and pull the ball behind his back as though it were tethered to his fingers like a yo-yo. Rondo’s entire package is only as strong as its weakest point, which is why last summer Celtics Coach Doc Rivers sent him to the shooting guru Mark Price , a two-time 3-point contest winner. Rivers made the appointment after the Orlando Magic played off Rondo as if he were contagious in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. They dared him to shoot and Rondo often obliged as the Celtics were eliminated in seven games. In one game, he missed 9 of 12 shots, and he missed 10 of 12 in another. Rivers sent Rondo to Price not only to help him improve his shooting accuracy but also to give him a shot of confidence. “If you go to a swing coach, if you’re talking golf, you immediately have better confidence,” Rivers said. “I thought he needed improvement in his shooting technique, which he did. But he also needed the confidence, and I thought that happened this summer with him.” On Thursday in Game 1 of the N.B.A. finals, the Celtics will face the Los Angeles Lakers with the same starting five they had two years ago when they defeated the Lakers to win their 17th championship. That does not mean the Celtics are the same team. Rondo has energized their surprising playoff run this season. In the 2008 finals, he was the supposed weak link in the Celtics’ chain until he sent the Lakers reeling in Game 2 by collecting 16 assists. That was Rondo’s awakening. His arrival came in last season’s playoffs when he was mostly matched against Chicago’s Derrick Rose in the first round. This season, Rondo, 24, is considered a locker-room leader, along with the probable Hall of Famers Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. Without his development, the Celtics would not be in the finals. “He’s a better basketball player than he was two years ago,” Rivers said. “Our players trust him now.” When Rivers, his players and even Rondo discuss the origins of Rondo’s stellar play, the word confidence is often heard. “I’m a pretty confident guy,” Rondo said. “I think with success comes confidence, so right now, I’m doing pretty good on the court. I’m pretty successful being such a young point guard.” Celtics center Kendrick Perkins said: “He might be the most arrogant guy on our team and nobody really knows. He’s got a quiet arrogance about himself. “I think everybody wants to choke him at times,” Perkins said and then quickly added, “In a good way, though.” Rondo’s confidence and cockiness are spawned by his preparation. “That’s where it comes from,” said Doug Bibby, Rondo’s coach at Louisville’s Eastern High School. “His preparation leads to the opportunity.” Rondo and Price never met until Rondo arrived at Price’s Georgia gym at Suwanee Sports Academy . They reviewed footwork, balance and release points. Rondo often viewed himself while shooting in front of a mirror, so he could capture his form. “Rajon had what I call a flying elbow,” said Price, who is the Atlanta Hawks’ shooting coach and a shooting tutor to other N.B.A. players. “He had too much motion by the time he released the ball and put the ball behind his head a little bit. He has to keep the elbow beneath the ball and have a little bit more of a quicker release as well.” They both left impressed. Rondo told Bibby that he appreciated that Price was not in his face, but would stay in the background, offering assistance when warranted. Price saw a player with an obsession to improve. Rondo notched a career-high 459 field goals this season, although the number is inflated by the layups his quickness creates. While he made only 17 of 80 3-point attempts, Rondo is finding a comfort zone by spotting up at the free-throw line’s elbow. “When he’s getting more confident, the next step will be stepping out of his range to the 3-point line,” Price said, again using the word so often related to Rondo. On Wednesday, Pau Gasol laid out the Lakers’ defensive scheme against Rondo. The plan is simple in theory, difficult in reality. “You’ve got to be alert and constantly on him, know that you’ve got to invite him to take some jumpers so he doesn’t get into the lane and get everybody else going,” Gasol said. Earlier in his career, the invitation would have unnerved Rondo. His mission would be to prove them wrong, one jumper at a time. “I don’t think he takes it personal anymore,” Rivers said. “I think he looks at it as: ‘It doesn’t matter who’s guarding me. At the end of the day, I’ve got to run the team.’ ” Now, he stays within the offense, picking and choosing, slicing and dishing and shooting only when in rhythm — not as a first option, but not as his last either. “He’s just showing the world what he’s made of,” Garnett said. “The future is scary.”


Intelligence Chief’s Olive Branch to Trump Gets Twisted in Translation

Abstract: ■ James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, offered a public olive branch to President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday night, which Mr. Trump appears to have twisted. ■ Mr. Trump appoints Rudolph W. Giuliani to head his cybersecurity review. ■ L.L. Bean finds itself in the middle of a Trump storm. ■ Team Trump went to war with the news media after Mr. Trump’s contentious news conference. Image President-elect Donald J. Trump at his news conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan on Wednesday. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times Clapper tries to smooth the waters, but Trump’s response contradicts him In an extraordinary statement on Wednesday night, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said he had reached out to Mr. Trump, a man who compared the intelligence agencies to Nazis , to try to ease the president-elect’s concerns. Mr. Clapper said he had expressed his “profound dismay” at leaks that have emerged since the intelligence chiefs briefed Mr. Trump last Friday on Russia’s efforts to help elect him president. And he disavowed any authorship of the dossier of unsubstantiated compromising material that Russia is reported to have on the incoming president: “I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. intelligence community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the I.C. The I.C. has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policy makers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.” Mr. Trump returned the favor with his own Twitter post Thursday morning: Someone is lying here. Mr. Clapper’s statement was explicit: The intelligence community “has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable” — a far cry from a “false and fictitious” denunciation. Of course, Mr. Clapper will soon be heading to the exits, replaced by former Senator Dan Coats , assuming Senate confirmation. So whether peacemaking at the top will ease the ill will in the rank and file of the Trump White House and the intelligence agencies has yet to be determined. Giuliani named to head cybersecurity review Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and one of Mr. Trump’s most stalwart loyalists, finally has a job in the administration: heading Mr. Trump’s promised effort to combat cyberattacks . “As the use of modern communications and technology has moved forward at unparalleled speed the necessary defenses have lagged behind. The President-elect recognizes that this needs immediate attention and input from private sector leaders to help the government plan to make us more secure. Mr. Giuliani was asked to initiate this process because of his long and very successful government career in law enforcement and his now sixteen years of work providing security solutions in the private sector.” Mr. Giuliani, as chairman of the global cybersecurity practice at the law firm Greenberg Traurig, brings expertise, but his experience in complex communications policy is checkered. His tenure as mayor is still haunted by the decision to place an emergency command center at the World Trade Center over the opposition of the New York Police Department. The command center, of course, was destroyed by the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. L.L. Bean finds itself in Trumpian storm L.L. Bean, known for its preppy sportswear, rubbery boots and New England reserve, finds itself in an unexpected position: the crossfire of the Trump wars. When it came to light that Linda Bean, the granddaughter and heir of the company founder Leon Leonwood Bean, bankrolled a pro-Trump political action committee, opponents vowed to boycott. A group called Grab Your Wallet led the charge, nevermind that Ms. Bean’s real empire is in lobsters, not Bean boots . It’s all of a piece now — especially once the president-elect inserted himself into the fray on Twitter. The company very much does not want to be part of this fight. In a Facebook post, Shawn Gorman, L.L. Bean’s executive chairman , said: “We are deeply troubled by the portrayal of L.L. Bean as a supporter of any political agenda. L.L. Bean does not endorse political candidates, take positions on political matters, or make political contributions. Simply put, we stay out of politics. To be included in this boycott campaign is simply misguided, and we respectfully request that Grab Your Wallet reverse its position.” There is another problem with Mr. Trump’s intervention. It could contravene ethics rules that prohibit government endorsements of privately made products. Subpart G - Misuse of Position Subpart G contains four provisions designed to ensure that employee do not misuse their official positions. These include: A prohibition against employees using public office for their own private gain for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom they are affiliated in a non-Government capacity, or for the endorsement or any product, service, or enterprise. Trump team in open warfare with news media It’s hard to know which of Mr. Trump’s relationships is worse: with the intelligence agencies or with the news media. After the president-elect’s contentious news conference on Wednesday, his first as president-elect, indeed his first since July, Mr. Trump graciously posted on Twitter on Thursday morning: The soon-to-be White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, seemed to revel in the cage match that is Mr. Trump’s interaction with the news media. Mr. Spicer’s toughest words were aimed at CNN’s Jim Acosta, who stood at the news conference to demand a question after Mr. Trump attacked his network as “fake news.” Of course, in the Trump era, both sides can get mileage out of the spectacle. Schumer comes out against Sessions’s confirmation Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, plans to announce on Thursday that he will oppose a fellow senator, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, when his nomination as attorney general comes to a vote, saying he is not confident that Mr. Sessions would “serve as an independent check on the incoming administration.” Questioning Mr. Sessions’s commitment to the nation’s most vulnerable citizens, Mr. Schumer’s statement reads: “The attorney general of the United States has a sacred obligation to enforce our laws and uphold the constitution. The law gives a voice to the voiceless, it protects the oppressed from the powerful and it defends the rights of all people, regardless of gender, sexuality or religion. The attorney general must wake up every single day ensuring the rights of all Americans: immigrants, minorities, young and old, gay and straight, disabled and not are protected. Every right — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the freedom to vote or any other enshrined in our Constitution or the law — must be protected for every American.” The decision does not leave Mr. Sessions’s ultimate confirmation in doubt. No Republican has come out against him, and more conservative Democrats, such as Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, may well support him. But it does mean that the final Sessions vote is likely to be split largely along party lines.

US
US Politics
Donald Trump
James R Clapper Jr
Jefferson B Sessions III


Calipari Gets a Raise

Abstract: Kentucky Coach John Calipari will receive a raise after guiding the Wildcats to the N.C.A.A. basketball title. The university said it awarded an 8.3 percent increase annually in his guaranteed compensation over the remaining seven years of his contract, now worth $36.5 million. Calipari will receive $5.2 million annually from endorsements, base salary and retention bonuses for each of the next six years. The deal increases to $5.3 million in 2018-19. He can also earn up to $850,000 a year in performance bonuses.

Calipari John
Basketball (College)
University of Kentucky


U.S. Terror Hearing Explores Use of Miranda Warning

Abstract: Almost two years ago, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent was in Nigeria to question an Eritrean man who was in custody on suspicion of supporting terrorism. The suspect, Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed , had already been interrogated by other American officials for intelligence-gathering purposes, without having been read his rights. The F.B.I. agent was there for a different purpose: a “clean” interrogation. He would apprise Mr. Ahmed of his Miranda rights — including the right to remain silent and to have counsel — and then interview him, in hopes of winning a confession that could be used in a prosecution in civilian court. But suppose the suspect, who was also known as Talha, refused to waive his rights and answer questions? The agent proposed an idea in an e-mail to his colleagues and to prosecutors. “We’ve planned that in the event that T does not waive his rights, we could continue as another ‘dirty’ interview,” the agent wrote in an e-mail at 11:54 a.m. on Jan. 3, 2010. In the debate over using civilian trials for terrorists, one of the key issues — the ability to first question a suspect to gain critical intelligence on terrorist cells or plots and still pursue a criminal prosecution — is getting an early test in Mr. Ahmed’s case in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Lawyers for Mr. Ahmed have asked a judge to suppress statements that the United States government has said he made after waiving his Miranda rights and being interrogated by the F.B.I. in Nigeria. They claim that any such waiver was not voluntary and thus any statements he made are inadmissible. The hearing on the defense motion, which began on Thursday, has provided an unusually revealing look at how American officials are carefully navigating through a kind of hybrid version of Miranda, first trying to get intelligence through “dirty,” or un-Mirandized, interviews and then having different “clean team” interrogators read the same suspects their rights in the hopes that they will waive them and continue to talk. One issue is how much distance American officials kept between the “dirty” and “clean” interviews, and whether the line between the two was blurred, possibly tainting any waiver of his rights. Mr. Ahmed, 37, who has been living in Sweden, has since been indicted in Manhattan on charges that include providing material support to Al Shabab, a terrorist group based in Somalia. The indictment says that Mr. Ahmed received jihad training and bomb-making instruction in Shabab military camps in Somalia in 2009, and that when he was taken into custody in Nigeria in November 2009 on an immigration violation, he was found with bomb-making documents. His interrogations, first by the Nigerians, then by unspecified American officials for intelligence purposes, and finally by the F.B.I. “clean team” agents, took place over the next few months, according to court testimony and statements by a prosecutor. He was finally sent to Manhattan for arraignment in March 2010. The agent’s e-mail referring to a “dirty” interview is not public. But as the suppression hearing began last Thursday, the judge, P. Kevin Castel, directed that a prosecutor read parts of the e-mail into the record during a discussion about how much of it could be made available to Mr. Ahmed’s defense lawyers. The prosecutor, Jocelyn E. Strauber, said that by “dirty,” the F.B.I. agent was simply referring to an un-Mirandized interview. In describing the Jan. 3, 2010, e-mail, Ms. Strauber explained to the judge that its author, Special Agent Maged Sidaros, was engaging in an internal discussion with other F.B.I. personnel and federal prosecutors, presumably in Manhattan, about “the possibility of a different kind of interview should his interview not proceed as planned.” She also read briefly from an earlier e-mail from the agent, in which there appear to be questions about whether he is to participate in a Mirandized or un-Mirandized interview. “We discussed the fact that Jim and I were of the impression that we were the ‘dirty’ team,” he wrote, according to what Ms. Strauber read in court. Then subsequent clean team interviews “would be conducted by others,” the agent added. Ms. Strauber noted that when Agent Sidaros arrived in Nigeria, he received a summary of the statements Mr. Ahmed had made to Nigerian officials, but was given only scant information about the un-Mirandized interview of Mr. Ahmed by the Americans, which occurred on Dec. 31, 2009. “Just the fact that it occurred, that it took about three hours, and who participated in it, at least on the U.S. side,” Ms. Strauber said. The agent would testify, she said, that he specifically requested that the Mirandized interviews be conducted “in a different place, involve different people, and be spaced apart in time from the Dec. 31 interview.” The spacing had been about five days, she added, and Judge Castel indicated that he wanted an even more precise time. “I may need to know what time on Dec. 31 it ended,” he said. Prosecutors declined to comment, as did Mr. Ahmed’s lawyers and the F.B.I.

Miranda v Arizona (Supreme Court Decision)


L.S.U.’s Mad Hatter Delights Fans or Drives Them Daffy

Abstract: BATON ROUGE, La. — On a cruelly hot August day, Les Miles, wearing purple shorts and a black vest over a white, long-sleeve T-shirt, sat at a table in his office after practice. He was eating what his secretary, Ya’el Lofton, said was the same lunch he had eaten nearly every day of his eight-year tenure as Louisiana State’s football coach: a Cobb salad with grilled chicken and ranch dressing, washed down with diet iced tea. “You’re going to find me to be a very boring man,” Miles said between bites. He eats grilled fish with steamed vegetables for dinner most nights, Lofton said. Moments later, the subject of music came up, and Miles, 59, reached for his smartphone. He pressed play, and what came blaring out might be the last thing anyone would guess to be the most recent song played from his iTunes library. “This is Treal Lee and Prince Rick,” Miles said as he listened to a song by the rap duo featuring a profane title. After mentioning that Zac Brown Band and Toby Keith were also among his favorites, Miles played “How to Love” by the New Orleans-born rapper Lil Wayne. “I honestly think that there’s something really special to his stuff,” Miles said in a lowered voice. “I really, truly think that he’s exceptional as an artist.” And that pretty much sums up everything L.S.U. fans love and loathe about Miles. His regimented, conservative food choices represent his frustrating, stubborn tendencies: repeatedly running the option to the short side of the field with little success, for example. On the other hand, his fondness for hip-hop music represents the delightfully unpredictable side of Miles that many fans have come to love: going for it on fourth down five times in a game or throwing the ball into the end zone in the final seconds when a chip-shot field goal would win the game. The maddening enigma that is Les Miles will be on display again Saturday, when L.S.U. plays at Georgia. I should know. I’m an L.S.U. fan. Recently, I was talking with a friend who loves Alabama about how being a rabid sports fan is one of the few forms of insanity deemed acceptable by modern society. We discussed last year’s L.S.U.-Alabama game and how it affected each of us, leading us to feel seemingly the full spectrum of human emotion within the span of a few hours. I recalled that heartbreaking 21-17 loss and how after the game I found myself, once again, cursing the day Nick Saban left Baton Rouge to coach the Miami Dolphins. Image Miles inside his office at L.S.U. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times Then we talked about the differences between Miles and Saban. My friend made an interesting point, something I had never really considered. “With Saban as your coach, winning sometimes isn’t even fun,” he said. “The goal of Saban is not to have fun; it’s just to win. With Les, it’s always kind of fun and lighthearted, even if you lose. When you go to a football game, you’re paying money to watch people play with a ball. You get your money’s worth with Les.” It was a reminder that sports are entertainment, Miles is entertaining, and the way he coaches is entertaining. What happens when L.S.U. takes the field on Saturdays this fall should not affect my life any more than what happens in the latest episode of my favorite television show. But that isn’t reality. Before meeting with Miles, I spent a couple of minutes waiting in the office with Lofton, his secretary. An athletic department staffer came in to tell Lofton that a young soldier had stopped by to present Miles with a gift: the soldier’s Purple Heart. “He got hit by an I.E.D., and he’s been in a hospital for a year recovering,” Lofton said. “We get that kind of thing all the time. People dying and their last wish is to get a note from Coach or to talk to him or to take their picture with him. We get that kind of thing all the time. Les won’t accept that.” When Miles found out about the soldier’s offering, he was jarred. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Are you kidding me?” After I left Miles’s office, I received a text message from a friend responding to my question about what to discuss with the coach. He told me to tell Miles that he cannot walk into the Superdome without recalling “the worst day of my life” — L.S.U.’s 21-0 loss to Alabama in the Bowl Championship Series title game in 2012 . It was a stark example of how conflicted L.S.U. fans are when it comes to Miles, and probably always will be. Despite the success of the “Miles Method” — a national title in 2007, two Southeastern Conference titles, 85 career wins — a recent poll found Miles’s overall approval rating (40 percent) in Louisiana to be only three percentage points higher than that of Saban, whom Miles replaced and who now leads rival Alabama to national championships. Public Policy Polling, the group that conducted the poll, said Miles’s rating was “ shockingly low for someone who’s accomplished as much as him. ” I sometimes wonder if anyone will ever fully understand him. I tried to over the course of our interview, but I was left with new layers of head-scratching idiosyncrasies to consider. ON MOVIES Miles loved “ The Wolverine .” “I thought that that was a pretty nice little sci-fi kind of thing, you know, a make-you-feel-good story,” he said. “It was a nice day for the old brain.” But he hated “ This Is the End ,” which he walked out of. (“That was the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.) Image Miles and the L.S.U. football team during a recent practice. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times ON DRINKING “I’ve never walked into a bar in this state or in the last eight years as the head coach of L.S.U., nor have I drank a beer at a public place,” Miles said. “I’ve probably had as many as six or eight beers in the eight years I’ve been here.” He said he was a borderline teetotaler because he represented the university, and he worried that in the era of smartphones it would be too easy for someone to take an unflattering photograph of him drinking. ON HIS CLAPPING Miles explained the evolution of his distinctive manner of clapping, which often involves his being hunched over as he smacks his palms together with his fingers spread wide. As it turns out, it is all about preventing injury. “You can’t be soft-handed; it has to be an aggressive clap,” he said before a demonstration. “You keep your fingers out so that you don’t get them caught in between, you know what I’m saying? If you get them in between here” — he gestured to the area between his fingers — “it can be an ineffective clap and you can get hurt. Injuries can occur if you don’t keep your fingers spread.” ON HIS HATS Miles, who has become so identified with his hats that his nickname is the Mad Hatter, said that the hats he wore while playing baseball as a child “always had a nice little bend to them — they had some simple structure,” but that today’s hats are made to be worn differently, and the way they fit his head when pulled down snugly is “not the look for me.” So instead, he chooses to keep some space between his skull and the top of his hat, which he said was the way the coaches he played for and worked for early in his career wore their hats. He also talked about wanting to have a good “dress hat,” the one he will wear on the sideline this year. “I think I have me a dress ball cap for games that looks appropriate,” Miles said. He then went into his closet to retrieve the dress hat for this season. He emerged beaming like a child who had just unwrapped a toy. ON L.S.U. FANS Miles insisted that despite the mixed feelings about him among fans, he is never confronted by unhappy Tigers supporters in public. “If they have something bad to say to me, they keep it; they don’t say it to me,” Miles said. “The people of this state and the community that represents this school have been so kind to my wife and my family. I love them.” ON FOOD When Miles was asked about his favorite places to eat, he insisted that he seldom dined out or deviated from his daily regimen of Cobb salads and fish. But he was more creative when asked what he would want for a last meal. “I’m going to have a New York strip; I’m going to have it medium,” he said. “I’m going to have it with all the Cajun spice and salt and heavy, heavy pepper. And it’s going to be about an inch and a half to two inches thick. It’s not going to be real, real, real red. It’s going to be pink. I’m going to have corn.” Corn on the cob? “No, cream corn. I’m also going to have a little mashed potatoes, but not much. A salad, a light salad. Diet Coke. And then I’m going to have some ice cream — Blue Bell ice cream, Cookies ’n Cream — if it’s my last meal. If it’s not my last one and I’ve got a couple of years to live, I’m going to go with a little frozen yogurt.”

Les Miles
Football
Louisiana State University
College Sports
College football


In South Korea, Retirement Can Be Elusive

Abstract: SEOUL, South Korea — At the Coex Convention Center in this city’s southern district, a site best known for sleek business exhibitions, Kang Dal-soo, 76, joined the rush to check out the “silver job fair” offering 2,000 private sector and 4,700 public sector jobs for retirees. “It seems I need to learn text messaging in order to deliver flowers,” Mr. Kang said anxiously after an interview at a courier company’s booth. He wanted to work — even though flower delivery was not his ideal job — but he was worried about having to master a new technology and wondered if he would be able to keep the job even if he got it. Silver job fairs, established to find jobs for people 60 and older, have mushroomed across South Korea in the past year as part of a government effort to assist a rapidly growing population of older Koreans adrift in a changing society. Until recently, the notion of older people having to look for jobs did not cross the minds of most South Koreans. The traditions of Confucianism hold that adult children should take primary responsibility for the care of their aging parents, who would enjoy respect and high status as sovereigns of the household. But this practice is crumbling under the weight of longer life spans and changes in family structure, and many Koreans are entering the later stages of their lives unprepared. A government survey released in July found that fewer than 27 percent of Koreans 60 and older had made any provision for their post-retirement years beyond investing in their children’s education. Now, many of these older Koreans are dismayed to find themselves dependent on their children, often in cramped urban settings, with very different priorities. These days, if adult children are willing to take in elderly parents, they often make it clear that they expect those parents to do household chores and look after the grandchildren, prospects that can make the parents think twice about moving in. According to the National Statistics Office, 48.3 percent of South Koreans 65 and older were living with their children in 2007, compared with 72.4 percent in 1990. The government is scrambling now to fill the gap in support, and older job seekers are responding. This year employers have received an average of three applications for every job offered at the fairs, compared with 1.5 applications in previous years. A government pension system, financed in part by employee contributions, was introduced in 1988 for retirees over 60. But only 28 percent of the working population is covered. Many Koreans of that age, particularly those who worked as farmers, never held jobs that qualified for such pensions. For those who did, many are not receiving the monthly allowance, which averages less than $193, because they chose to take their pension in a lump sum at retirement. In 2004, the government ordered the National Pension Service to try to find jobs for older workers. By 2006, the project was made permanent, overseen by a new independent body called the Korea Labor Force Development Institute for the Aged. Job placements rose from about 30,000 in 2004 to more than 83,000 in 2006 and 196,000 in the first half of this year. Despite that progress, there still are not enough openings for older job seekers. So local governments have been creating publicly financed “silver jobs,” like chaperons for children returning home from late-night cram schools, gas station attendants, opinion survey interviewers and wedding officiators. Then they urged potential private employers to set up booths at silver job fairs. The government offers subsidies to private companies that hire older people and pays half the roughly $163 in monthly wages for each person employed by the public sector. At the Seoul silver jobs fair, desperation was in the air as 30,000 or so people crowded the booths exploring openings for work most had never expected they would need. Han Teresa, a job placement counselor who had helped organize the fair, described a man in his early 70s who had flopped down on a chair in front of her. “He said, ‘I thought I’d die a few years after I retired,’ ” Ms. Han said. “ ‘I never believed I’d be alive for another 10 years or so.’” Lee Eun-seok, 77, who had applied for a job as a garbage sorter, said, “I hope my daughter-in-law asks us to live with them soon.” Her eldest son and his wife had been citing the lack of a spare bedroom for the delay, she said. But Mrs. Lee’s husband, Han Chul-soo, 78, said he feared that none of their four sons would ever invite them to move in. And so he joined his wife at the fair doing what was once the unthinkable: looking for a job. Nam Su-hyun, 30, had come to the job fair to submit résumés for his 63-year-old father, who had objected that he would lose face if he had to do so himself. “I want my father to work rather than just moping at home,” Mr. Nam said.

South Korea
Retirement
Elderly
Local Government
Labor and Jobs


Obama Says Coalition Is in Long-Term Fight Against Militants

Abstract: WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday predicted “periods of progress and setbacks” in the war against Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria as he sought to demonstrate a unity of purpose during an unusual face-to-face meeting with senior military chiefs from 21 nations. In remarks after a 90-minute session at Andrews Air Force Base, Mr. Obama defended the coalition’s “important success” against the Islamic State, including the defense of the Mosul Dam in Iraq in the summer. But he said the coalition of nations allied against the militants should understand that “this is going to be a long-term campaign.” The president offered his cautionary message even as his strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State with an air campaign is coming under increasing attack from critics who say the United States and its coalition partners are losing ground against the enemy. In Syria, the militants continued to make gains in their battle for the town of Kobani, on the border with Turkey, despite a barrage of airstrikes from American and Saudi warplanes on Monday and Tuesday. In Iraq, Islamic State fighters have seized vast parts of Anbar Province and have pushed within about 15 miles of Baghdad. Iraqi Army forces withdrew on Monday from a base near the town of Hit, in Anbar, after an advance by Islamic State fighters. The retreat by the Iraqi Army raised new questions about Mr. Obama’s hopes for an air campaign that would support local ground forces. In a briefing with reporters, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, defended the president’s approach in the region, saying that there are “specific episodes” in recent months that serve as evidence that the president’s strategy against the Islamic State, sometimes called ISIS or ISIL, is working. But like the president, Mr. Earnest also suggested that success will not be quick or easy in the region, and he urged patience in judging the effort. “I don’t think anybody has sought to leave you or anyone else with the impression that these kinds of airstrikes were going to dramatically reverse the situation on the battlefield overnight,” Mr. Earnest told reporters. “They won’t.” Mr. Earnest also played down concerns about Turkish airstrikes against Kurdish insurgent positions in southeastern Turkey on Monday. Mr. Earnest said that the United States government continued to have conversations with Turkey’s political and military leaders about its role in the fight against the Islamic State. He said a team of American military specialists was in Turkey to continue those talks. “Not only will we continue to be in touch with them on operationalizing the commitments they’ve already made but also having ongoing discussions with them about additional commitments they could make to support this broad international coalition,” Mr. Earnest said. The president’s talk with the foreign military commanders provided a rare venue for Mr. Obama, who usually reserves his public time for meetings with the political leadership of the countries he has persuaded to be part of the military coalition in the region. United States military officials invited their counterparts to what White House aides described as a two-day seminar at the secure Air Force base in Maryland that is better known as the home base of the president’s plane. In addition to the foreign military officers, most of the president’s senior national security advisers also attended. Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel did not attend because they were traveling, officials said. In his brief remarks, Mr. Obama described the fight against the militants in Iraq and Syria as an “ideological” battle that would need to include economic development for the countries involved and the communication of an “alternative vision” to those who would otherwise be attracted to fight for the Islamic State. The all-day gathering began with remarks from Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Lloyd Austin, the head of the military’s Central Command, which is overseeing the armed campaign against the Islamic State. After intelligence and operations briefings from American officers, the participants engaged in a series of discussions, including an assessment of the threat that the Islamic State poses and how the flow of thousands of fighters from around the world has fueled the strife in Syria and Iraq, according to one participant. The uniformed officers who participated were from Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Netherlands, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Iraq
Syria
Turkey
ISIS,ISIL,Islamic State
Barack Obama
US Military


Nashville Council Rejects $100 Million Flood-Protection Plan

Abstract: ATLANTA — The Metro Council in Nashville rejected a contentious $100 million flood-protection proposal Tuesday night that had been criticized for focusing on the downtown area at the expense of other, lower-profile neighborhoods in the Tennessee capital. The proposal had been heavily promoted by Mayor Karl Dean. The council voted, 19 to 18, to remove the funding for the flood control system, which included a flood wall and a pumping system, from the capital improvement budget of the combined city-county government. It was a notable defeat for Mr. Dean, who will leave office in September after two terms in office, in accordance with term limits. Mr. Dean had promoted the system as one of many ways the city could protect Nashville from future flooding of the Cumberland River and other waterways after a deluge and flood in May 2010 killed 10 people in Davidson County, which encompasses the city, and damaged or destroyed 11,000 properties. But the system became the subject of a debate over spending priorities that many other communities are grappling with as they face the possibility of more intense flooding because of climate change. In Nashville, some critics said the downtown flood protection proposal would have protected only a few high-profile assets, like the symphony hall and a new convention center. They argued that the money would be better spent buying and demolishing homes in flood-prone areas. The council also rejected financing on Tuesday for two other proposals the mayor supported: a jail consolidation plan and a new police headquarters on the north side of the city. Tim Garrett, a member of the Metro Council, said that more time and information was needed to adequately consider the plans. “I haven’t seen anything about the flood wall, any type of engineering report, and neither did anybody else for that matter,” Mr. Garrett said Wednesday morning. Michael Cass, a spokesman in the mayor’s office, said that Mr. Garrett and other council members had “multiple opportunities to learn about the proposal,’’ including a May 4 special committee meeting in which council members were briefed by the city’s water services director. In a statement, Mr. Dean noted that the city had had two major floods in his eight years in office. “Moving forward with the flood protection system would have been the responsible thing to do as we work to protect all of Nashville from future floods,” he said.


Illnesses Afflict Homes With a Criminal Past

Abstract: WINCHESTER, Tenn. — The spacious home where the newly wed Rhonda and Jason Holt began their family in 2005 was plagued by mysterious illnesses. The Holts’ three babies were ghostlike and listless, with breathing problems that called for respirators, repeated trips to the emergency room and, for the middle child, Anna, the heaviest dose of steroids a toddler can take. Ms. Holt, a nurse, developed migraines. She and her husband, a factory worker, had kidney ailments. It was not until February, more than five years after they moved in, that the couple discovered the root of their troubles: their house, across the road from a cornfield in this town some 70 miles south of Nashville , was contaminated with high levels of methamphetamine left by the previous occupant, who had been dragged from the attic by the police. The Holts’ next realization was almost as devastating: it was up to them to spend the $30,000 or more that cleanup would require. With meth lab seizures on the rise nationally for the first time since 2003, similar cases are playing out in several states, drawing attention to the problem of meth contamination, which can permeate drywall, carpets, insulation and air ducts, causing respiratory ailments and other health problems. Federal data on meth lab seizures suggest that there are tens of thousands of contaminated residences in the United States . The victims include low-income elderly people whose homes are surreptitiously used by relatives or in-laws to make meth, and landlords whose tenants leave them with a toxic mess. Some states have tried to fix the problem by requiring cleanup and, at the time of sale, disclosure of the house’s history. But the high cost of cleaning — $5,000 to $100,000, depending on the size of the home, the stringency of the requirements and the degree of contamination — has left hundreds of properties vacant and quarantined, particularly in Western and Southern states afflicted with meth use. “The meth lab home problem is only going to grow,” said Dawn Turner, who started a Web site, www.methlabhomes.com , after her son lost thousands of dollars when he bought a foreclosed home in Sweetwater, Tenn., that turned out to be contaminated. Because less is known about the history of foreclosed houses, Ms. Turner said, “as foreclosures rise, so will the number of new meth lab home owners.” Meth contamination can bring financial ruin to families like that of Francisca Rodriguez. The family dog began having seizures nine days after the Rodriguezes moved into their home in Grapevine, Tex., near Dallas , and their 6-year-old son developed a breathing problem similar to asthma , said Ms. Rodriguez, 35, a stay-at-home mother of three. After learning from neighbors that the three-bedroom ranch-style home had been a known “drug house,” the family had it tested. The air ducts had meth levels more than 100 times higher than the most commonly cited limit beyond which cleanup is typically required. The former owner had marked “no” on a disclosure form asking whether the house had ever been a meth lab, Ms. Rodriguez said. But because he is now in prison for meth possession, among other things, the Rodriguezes decided there was nothing to gain by suing him. They moved out, throwing away most of their possessions because they could not be cleaned, and are letting the house go into foreclosure. “It makes you crazy,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Our credit is ruined, we won’t be able to buy another house, somebody exposed my kids to meth, and my dog died.” Federal statistics show that the number of clandestine meth labs discovered in the United States rose by 14 percent last year, to 6,783, and has continued to increase, in part because of a crackdown on meth manufacturers in Mexico and in part because of the spread of a new, easier meth-making method known as “shake and bake.” There are no national standards governing meth contamination. Congress ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to publish cleanup guidelines by the end of 2008, but the agency is still reviewing a draft version. Without standards, professional cleaners say, it is easy to bungle a job that often requires gutting and repeated washing. About 20 states have passed laws requiring meth contamination cleanup, and they use widely varied standards. Virtually all the laws hold the property owner financially responsible; Colorado appears to be the only state that allots federal grant money to help innocent property owners faced with unexpected cleanup jobs. In other states, like Georgia , landlords and other real estate owners have fought a proposed cleanup law. After the Holts bought their house here, Tennessee passed such a law. But since 2005, only 81 of 303 homes placed under a resulting quarantine have been cleaned, according to the state, which has one of the few registries tracking meth lab addresses. The law applies only if the police find a working meth lab at the house, and Jerry Hood, a lawyer and cleanup contractor hired by the Holts for the decontamination work, said many houses in the county had escaped the legislation. The health effects of meth contamination are frequently difficult to prove, and research is scant. But John W. Martyny, a meth expert at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver , said living in a former meth lab made children more likely to develop learning disabilities and caused long-term respiratory and skin problems. Even brief exposure can have severe effects, Dr. Martyny said. A 2007 study by the Denver center found that more than 70 percent of law enforcement officials who had inspected meth labs subsequently reported health problems. To Ms. Holt’s horror, inspectors found high concentrations of meth on her kitchen countertops, where she sterilized bottles, prepared baby food and doled out snacks. “We had no idea that we were starting a family in a meth house,” she said. “We bought a house that eventually was going to sentence our family to death.” When the family left the house, moving in with Mr. Holt’s parents, their health problems largely subsided. The children no longer needed medication to breathe. The migraines and the kidney ailments vanished. But the heartaches continued. Ms. Holt has been working two jobs to earn money to pay for her house’s remediation, which has proceeded in fits and starts with donations from church fund-raisers and local businesses. And Anna, 2, had a relapse and had to return briefly to the hospital. “We don’t know what it’s going to be in the future,” Ms. Holt said, standing in the barren, unfinished structure that was once her dream home and reflecting on her children. “This meth contamination is all their immune systems have ever known.”

Methamphetamine
Drug Abuse
Medicine and Health