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International New York Times số ra ngày 25/2/2014
BY DAVID E SANGER BY DAVID M HERSZENHORN Not long after the uprising in Syria turned bloody in the late spring of 2011, the Pentagon and cyberwarriors at the National Security Agency developed a battle plan that featured a sophisticated cyberattack on the Syrian military and President Bashar al-Assad’s command structure The military’s ability to launch airstrikes was a particular target, along with missile production facilities ‘‘It would essentially turn the lights out for Assad,’’ said one former official familiar with the planning For President Obama, who has been adamantly opposed to direct, boots-onthe-ground intervention in a worsening crisis in Syria, cyberweapons would seem to be an obvious, low-cost, lowcasualty alternative But while he was briefed on variants of the plans — most of which were part of traditional strikes as well — he turned them down Syria was not a place where he saw the strategic value in American intervention, and even covert cyberattacks — of the kind he had ordered against Iran during the first two years of his presidency — involved range of risks The strategic considerations that have stopped Mr Obama from reaching for offensive cyberweapons his administration has spent billions helping develop — in large part in hopes that they can help avoid the need for more traditional military attacks — reflects the larger concerns about a new and untested form of warfare Just as the introduction of the airplane changed the nature of warfare in World War I a century ago, the Obama administration has been engaged in a largely secret, behind-the-scenes debate about whether cyberweapons can be deployed as an ordinary weapon, a Ukraine’s acting interior minister said on Monday that the authorities were in pursuit of the ousted president, Viktor F Yanukovych, who was believed to be in Crimea, in the south of the country, and that if found he would be arrested on charges of mass murder in the killings of dozens of the antigovernment protesters who chased him from power last week The pursuit of Mr Yanukovych, a man now widely despised even by many of his former supporters, came as the Parliament continued its efforts to rebuild the government, with hopes of appointing an acting prime minister and having the rest of a provisional government in place on Tuesday Former Prime Minister Yulia V Tymoshenko, freed from prison on Saturday, has said she does not want to be considered for the post So speculation on the premiership is now focusing on her ally Arseniy P Yatsenyuk, who has been a leader of the anti-Yanukovych street protests since they began in late November Western officials on Monday continued to praise the developments in Ukraine, saying that Parliament had successfully filled a power vacuum, and that democratic institutions had functioned successfully Russia, however, stepped up its criticism after recalling its ambassador from Kiev on Sunday ‘‘Today, I see no legitimate Ukrainian partners for dialogue,’’ the Russian prime minister, Dmitri A Medvedev, said in Sochi, a day after the close of the Winter Olympics, according to the Interfax news service ‘‘If people crossing Kiev in black masks with Kalashnikov rifles are considered a government, it will be difficult for us to work with such a government.’’ In fact, the security situation in the Ukrainian capital seemed to improve on Monday, with regular law enforcement bodies and some antigovernment fighters sharing responsibility for guarding government buildings and directing BY ANDREW HIGGINS As Ukraine’s Parliament moved to fill a power vacuum left by the ouster of President Viktor F Yanukovych, Irina Nikanchuk, a 25-year-old economist, stood outside the elected Legislature on Monday to give voice to a widespread feeling here: throw the bums out Waving a banner calling for early elections to a new Parliament, Ms Nikanchuk poured scorn on current members and opposition politicians like Yulia V Tymoshenko who have so far become the principal beneficiaries of a revolution driven by passions on the street and bubbled with disgust at Ukraine’s entire political elite Parliament has moved swiftly since Mr Yanukovych’s flight on Saturday to BY STEPHEN CASTLE AND STANLEY REED A statue based on one by Leonardo da Vinci guards a Milan racetrack, but some residents are urging a more prominent home for it They have argued over whether an independent Scotland could retain the British pound as its currency They have sparred over whether Scotland would remain in the European Union if it votes in September to leave the United Kingdom And on Monday, two of the most prominent advocates of the arguments for and against Scottish independence — Alex Salmond, restore a semblance of normal government, endorsing interim ministers and giving expanded powers to its new speaker, Oleksandr V Turchynov, an ally of Ms Tymoshenko, empowering him to carry out the duties of the president until a new election is held in May But the prospect of a new order dominated by established opposition parties, almost as discredited in the eyes of many Ukrainians as Mr Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, has left a bitter feeing that what comes next could end up disappointing as much as the government that followed the 2004 Orange Revolution ‘‘We need new people who can say no to the oligarchs, not just the old faces,’’ Ms Nikanchuk said, referring to the billionaires who control blocs of votes in Parliament but who, with a few exceptions, hedged their bets until the end about which side to support in a violent struggle between Mr Yanukovych and his opponents ‘‘Tymoshenko is just Putin in a skirt,’’ Ms Nikanchuk added, likening the newly freed former prime minister to Scotland’s first minister, and David Cameron, the British prime minister — turned to another crucial economic issue at stake in the battle: the future of the still-substantial oil and gas reserves in the North Sea In a staged but striking symbol of their differences, Mr Cameron brought the British government’s cabinet to Aberdeen, a once gritty port that is now the wealthy hub of North Sea oil and gas, only the second time in 90 years the government had met in Scotland He announced a new investment to support the energy industry and asserted that Britain’s economic size and clout are vital to keeping the profits flowing from oil and gas in the decades to come ‘‘The broad shoulders of one of the top 10 economies in the world has really got behind this industry,’’ he said of North Sea oil and gas, adding that being part of Britain also reduces the impact of sudden drops in energy prices In nearby Portlethen, Mr Salmond met separately with the Scottish government’s cabinet ministers He suggested that an independent Scotland could follow the example of Norway which has built a large sovereign wealth fund from its natural resources He also highlighted his knowledge of the energy industry, noting that he was an oil analyst in the 1980s when Mr Cameron was still at Eton, the elite English school — a continuation of political attacks on Mr Cameron as elitist and out of touch with average voters With a referendum on Scottish inde- The surprise move by the interim prime minister, Hazem el-Beblaw, could be intended to pave the way for the country’s military chief to leave his post and run for president WORLD NEWS, Harold Ramis, best known for his roles in ‘‘Ghostbusters’’ and ‘‘Stripes,’’ died on Monday from complications of autoimmune inflammatory disease He was 69 In recent cases, the United States Supreme Court has been asked to overrule important precedents and will soon review a case on a 1988 securities fraud decision WORLD NEWS, The Russian president is watching to see what happens next in Kiev now that his ally has been ousted Under Jim DeMint, the Heritage Foundation, long known as an incubator for Republican policy ideas, has become more of a political organization feeding off the Tea Party movement President Obama may have been right to keep a low profile on criminal justice reform until there was a bipartisan consensus That time is now OPINION, BUSINESS, 17 The Barcelona club paid 13.5 million euros in hopes of settling a dispute over the signing of Neymar SPORTS, 15 The Federal Reserve extended hundreds of billions to central banks from Sweden to Singapore BUSINESS, 16 CURRENCIES ’:HIKKLD=WUXUU\:?a@c@m@f@k" — Euro s Pound s Yen — S Franc NEW YORK, MONDAY 12:30PM €1= £1= $1= $1= $1.3740 $1.3740 $1.6640 $1.6610 ¥102.440 ¥102.520 SF0.8880 SF0.8880 The capture of the world’s most wanted man, El Chapo, upended assumptions about the impunity of Mexican mobsters For decades, the F.B.I.’s vehicles were off limits to New York City tow trucks Not any more STOCK INDEXES MONDAY s The Dow 12:30pm 16,288.03 s FTSE 100 close 6,865.86 t Nikkei 225 close 14,837.68 OIL +1.15% +0.41% –0.19% NEW YORK, MONDAY 12:30PM s Light sweet crude $103.18 +$1.35 ch au me t co m Addressing Parliament, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pledged to push through political and electoral reforms, and to revive the economy WORLD NEWS, Liens, the new Chaumet watch See what readers are talking about and leave your own comments at As train No 17 left Pixley, near Delano, California, last evening [Feb 24], five men boarded it Two went on the engine and covered the engineer with revolvers About two miles from the station the train was brought to a stop The other three men entered the express car and ordered the messenger to open the box, and dynamite bombs were exploded under the car In the excitement several passengers ran towards the front of the train Two of them were shot — E.S Bentley, of Modesto, who is probably fatally wounded, and Charles Gabert, of Poso, who was killed instantly The amount secured by the robbers is unknown Soviet Premier Nikita S Khrushchev says that if it were not for heavy military spending, the Soviet people could have the world’s highest living standard ‘‘Rockets and guns are not butter, meat, milk, bread or kasha (buckwheat),’’ Mr Khrushchev said in a preface to a collection of his foreign policy statements, soon to be published in Italy ‘‘Were it not for the necessity of increasing the might of our armed forces we could have steeply raised the living standard of our people and in the near future made it the highest in the world.’’ Find a retrospective of news from 1887 to 2013 in The International Herald Tribune at BY MARGALIT FOX Terry Adkins, a conceptual artist whose work married the quicksilver evanescence of music to the solid permanence of sculpture, died on Feb at his home in Brooklyn He was 60 The cause was heart failure, his dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn said A sculptor and saxophonist, Mr Adkins was at his death a professor of fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design His genre-blurring pieces, which might combine visual art, spoken-word performance, video and live music in a single installation, had lately made him ‘‘a newly minted breakaway star’’ on the international art scene, as The New York Times described him in December Mr Adkins’s work — cerebral yet viscerally evocative, unabashedly Modernist yet demonstrably rooted in African traditions — has been exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York His art is in the collections of the Hirsh- horn Museum and Sculpture Garden, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the Tate Modern in London His work will be shown this year as part of the Whitney Biennial, which runs from March to May 25 at the museum ‘‘Terry always saw object and sound and movement and words and images all as the material for his art,’’ Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said in an interview on Friday ‘‘He was so deeply inspired by aesthetics, philosophy, spirituality, music, history and culture, and he had such a fertile and generative mind, that he was always able to move between many different ideas and create a lot of space and meaning in a work.’’ To his sculpture, Mr Adkins sought to bring the fleeting impermanence of music, creating haunting assemblages of found objects — wood, cloth, coat hangers, spare parts from junkyards — that evoked vanished histories To his improvisational, jazz-inflected music, he brought the muscular physicality of sculpture, forging immense, curious instruments from assorted materi- als Many were playable, including a set of 18-foot horns he called arkaphones The sculpture and the music were meant to be experienced in tandem, and with his band, the Lone Wolf Recital Corps, Mr Adkins staged multimedia performance pieces that fused the visual and the aural Many were homages to pathbreaking figures in African-American history, among them the abolitionist John Brown, the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr., and the musicians Bessie Smith, John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix ‘‘Meteor Stream: Recital in Four Dominions,’’ for instance, was one of a cycle of works in which Mr Adkins honored Brown In that piece, performed in 2009 at the American Academy in Rome, he explored Brown’s storied past through an amalgam of music, sculpture, video, drawing and readings from Brown’s own writings In an installation devoted to Hendrix, Mr Adkins homed in on lesser-known aspects of his subject’s personal history, including his service in the early 1960s as a paratrooper in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division To research a piece on the life of the African-American explorer Matthew Henson, who accompanied Robert Peary on several expeditions, including the one Peary said reached the North Pole in 1909, Mr Adkins traveled to the Arctic to experience Henson’s milieu firsthand At its core, all of Mr Adkins’s work was about how the past suffuses the present and vice versa Terry Roger Adkins was born in Washington on May 9, 1953, into a musical household His father, Robert, a teacher, sang and played the organ; his mother, the former Doris Jackson, a nurse, was an amateur clarinetist and pianist As a young man, Mr Adkins planned to be a musician, but in college he found himself drawn increasingly to visual art He earned a bachelor’s in printmaking from Fisk University in Nashville, followed by a master’s in the field from Illinois State University and a master of fine arts degree in sculpture from the University of Kentucky Mr Adkins, who also maintained a home in Philadelphia, is survived by his wife, Merele Williams-Adkins, whom he married in 1992, along with a son and daughter His work was the subject of a major retrospective in 2012 at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y It has also been featured at P.S Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1) in Queens, the LedisFlam Gallery in Brooklyn and elsewhere In an interview with the website danaroc.com, Mr Adkins spoke of his desire to reconcile the temporal imperatives of music with the spatial ones of art ‘‘My quest has been to find a way to make music as physical as sculpture might be, and sculpture as ethereal as music is,’’ he said ‘‘It’s kind of challenging to make both of those pursuits what they are normally not able to do.’’ Two weeks ago, voters here vented their frustration at the changes happening around them and voted overwhelmingly to put a stop to mass immigration At 63.1 percent, the ‘‘yes’’ vote from Schwyz — one of the three founding cantons of the original 13th-century Swiss Confederation — was one of the highest in Switzerland, in striking contrast to the next-door urban canton of Zurich, where only 47.3 percent of voters supported the initiative, whose victory nationwide shook up Europe Evidently, the good citizens of Schwyz — all 150,000 of them — are particularly upset about the steady influx of foreigners who’ve been flocking to their region of lakes and mountains For the most part, these are not poor immigrants from different continents and cultures, whose presence elsewhere in Europe has roiled a spreading rightwing reaction In Schwyz, the new arrivals — about 2,000 to 3,000 a year — are mostly well-off, well-educated Europeans, an estimated 40 percent of them German, who have come to take specialized jobs the Swiss labor force can’t fill An inflow of German-speaking specialists coming to work in a Germanspeaking region of Switzerland, where unemployment is 1.3 percent, hardly seems justification for populist outrage Yet, according to Kurt Zibung, a member of Schwyz’s governing council and head of its economic department, people here voted on Feb ‘‘with their heart and their feelings.’’ ‘‘We have a very conservative area,’’ explained Mr Zibung, member of a political party that opposed the referendum ‘‘The vote was not against the foreigners People are just afraid that they will destroy our culture.’’ The Feb referendum — narrowly approved by 50.3 percent of Swiss voters — sent shock waves across Europe, throwing into question interlocking treaties between the European Union and Switzerland, a nonmember, in effect since 2002 One allows citizens of European Union countries to work in Switzerland, and vice versa Yet, most experts attribute Switzerland’s recent economic boom to the package deal with the Union that opened the door to European job seekers ‘‘We’ve never been as rich as we are now,’’ said Peter Fischer, economics editor at Neue Zürcher Zeitung, an authoritative economic newspaper ‘‘We have an open, healthy economy for which, yes, it is hard to find qualified people.’’ The vote on Feb revealed a divided country, with one half looking outward and the other half clinging to nostalgic notions defined by cows, Alps and picture-postcard villages ‘‘In the last two decades, Switzerland has changed, and there is now a gap between identity and reality,’’ Mr Fischer said The fact is Switzerland has been faced recently with the daunting task of absorbing 80,000 foreigners a year, a lot for a country of eight million Today, more than 20 percent of Swiss residents are foreigners, of which 85 percent are European, with Germans and Portuguese the largest groups In a place like Schwyz, this puts a strain on the local population According to Mr Zibung, housing prices have doubled, traffic has increased, and young families are moving out In the village of Muotatal, the conservative epicenter of the canton, one voter — a music teacher who declined to give her name — said she had voted for the immigration referendum without fully understanding its consequences ‘‘It was just getting to be too much,’’ she said ‘‘When the Swiss feel overwhelmed, we can’t manage.’’ Josef Gwerder, a shop owner in Muotatal, said that about 10 of the 23 apartments in his building were occupied by Austrians or Germans, many of them working in the local hospital or retirement homes Mr Gwerder voted against the initiative, but he said many of his neighbors felt disregarded by their own government and by extension, by the European Union ‘‘Voting ‘yes’ was another way of voting ‘no’ to what’s going on,’’ he said This sense of powerlessness is a sensitive subject in a country that prides itself on a tradition of direct democracy ‘‘We are always a little bit afraid that other people are giving us rules that we don’t accept,’’ Mr Zibung explained pagetwo@nytimes.com BY STEVEN LEE MYERS The sudden collapse of the Kremlinbacked government in Ukraine has for now delivered a profound setback to President Vladimir V Putin’s strategy to deepen political and economic ties with the country and thus keep it from embracing Europe Even as Russia celebrates the closing of Olympic Games that defied some dire expectations, Mr Putin now faces the task of reasserting Russia’s influence in a country that it considers a fraternal ally, one with deep cultural, social and political connections that bind it to Moscow’s orbit regardless of its new government Russia still has enormous leverage and close allies in Ukraine, particularly in the east and on the Crimean Peninsula, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and a sizable ethnic Russian population that views the leaders of the political uprising that toppled President Viktor F Yanukovych with disdain That has raised fears that Russia would use the disenchanted populations there as a pretext to intervene to reverse Ukraine’s new trajectory — even militarily, as the Kremlin did in two ethnic enclaves in 2008 in another former traffic A sense of workaday calm seemed to return to the city, even as barricades still surrounded the main protest sites But it was the chase for Mr Yanukovych that gripped the nation The acting interior minister, Arsen Avakov, who was appointed by Parliament on Saturday, wrote on his Facebook page that he was personally involved in the manhunt, perhaps in hopes that someone would find the fugitive, much as Iraqis and United States forces hunted for Saddam Hussein in 2003, or Libyans for Col Muammar elQaddafi nine years later Apparently fearing their fate — Mr Hussein was after a peremptory trial, Colonel Qaddafi shot by opponents while on the run — Mr Yanukovych fled Kiev on Friday night by helicopter Mr Avakov said that he had traveled to the Crimean city of Sevastopol on Sunday night hoping to intercept Mr Yanukovych at the airport there, but that the deposed president had not turned up as expected He said Mr Yanukovych had then fled in an unknown direction, traveling by car, and with a diminished security detail As Mr Yanukovych’s public persona morphed from feared strongman to detested fugitive, any last vestiges of support for him seemed to vanish even in the pro-Russia eastern and southern parts of the country, which had historically provided his base of political support Mr Yanukovych’s own Party of Regions, which had supported him until lawmakers began defecting over last week’s mass killings in Kiev, issued a statement on Sunday saying the country had been deceived, robbed and betrayed ‘‘All responsibility for this lies with Yanukovych,’’ the party wrote ‘‘We condemn the flight and cowardice of Yanukovych We condemn the betrayal.’’ Mr Yanukovych and his family were known to have accumulated vast wealth during his time in office, and he was believed to have access to at least one yacht that might ferry him out of Ukraine BY ALAN COWELL Brushing aside Western threats and outrage, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda significantly strengthened Africa’s antigay movement on Monday by signing into law a bill imposing harsh sentences for homosexual acts, including life imprisonment in some cases, according to government officials The move came weeks after Mr Museveni’s counterpart in Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, took similar steps, threatening offenders with 14-year prison terms The Ugandan law seemed even tougher, threatening life terms on charges such as ‘‘aggravated homosexuality,’’ referring to homosexual acts with a minor, a disabled person or someone infected with H.I.V Alluding to Western pressure to reject the bill, Mr Museveni said, according to The Associated Press: ‘‘We Africans never seek to impose our view on others If only they could let us alone.’’ He signed the legislation at his official residence at Entebbe, near the capital, Kampala, in front of government officials, journalists and a team of Ugandan scientists who had said they found no genetic basis for homosexuality — a conclusion that Mr Museveni cited in support of Soviet republic, Georgia The fears have been so palpable — and the subject of endless speculation in Ukraine and here in Russia — that President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E Rice, warned in a television interview on Sunday that it ‘‘would be a grave mistake’’ for Russia to use force ‘‘It’s in nobody’s interest to see violence return and the situation escalate,’’ Ms Rice said on NBC’s ‘‘Meet the Press.’’ How exactly Russia will respond remains to be seen, but the turmoil is certain to further strain relations with Europe and the United States, which officials here have denounced as meddling in Ukraine at the expense of Russia’s vital interests At the same time, the United States and Europe have accused Russia of trying to impose its will there Mr Putin’s envoy refused to sign the agreement mediated on Friday by three European foreign ministers to end two days of carnage in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, only to have the agreement overtaken by a political upheaval that threatens to undercut Russia’s influence over any new government The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S Peskov, complained on Sunday that while Mr Yanukovych had honored the terms of the agreement — which called On Facebook, Mr Avako, the acting interior minister, said that after abandoning his residence near the capital, Mr Yanukovych had flown by helicopter to Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, where he prepared a video statement on Saturday declaring that he remained president Then he went to the airport in Donetsk, where he and several companions sought to flee the country on Falcon airplanes Border police officers at the airport prevented the planes from flying, Mr Avakov said, and Mr Yanukovych then departed in a motorcade for the south After learning that Parliament had voted to strip him of power, Mr Yanukovych began avoiding government residences, including a presidential country house in Crimea where he had been expected to seek shelter In addition to the murder charges, there have been calls for the prosecution of Mr Yanukovych on corruption charges after the discovery of astonishing trappings of wealth at his abandoned presidential residence in a national park outside of Kiev Throughout the weekend, curious and angry members of the public streamed to the compound to gawk at the collections of expensive modern and antique cars, the private zoo and other gauche accouterments As journalists scoured the compound, sorting through a trove of documents that had been partly burned or dumped in a river, the local news media began reporting allegations of embezzlement and corruption, and new details about Mr Yanukovych’s personal life emerged The Kyiv Post, a newspaper here, said that it had found evidence that Mr Yanukovych, 63, was living at the residence with a 39-year-old girlfriend and her 12-year-old daughter from a prior relationship Mr Yanukovych has been married for 42 years, but his wife, Lyudmila, has long lived in Donetsk and typically has not performed the duties of first lady Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Moscow the new law, The A.P said While Western gay-rights campaigners have accused American evangelical Christian groups of promoting antigay sentiment in Uganda, Mr Museveni accused ‘‘arrogant and careless Western groups’’ of seeking to draw Ugandan children into homosexuality The Ugandan government spokesman, Ofwono Opondo, said Mr Museveni wanted to sign the bill ‘‘with the full witness of the international media to demonstrate Uganda’s independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation.’’ Mr Opondo announced on Twitter that Mr Museveni had signed the bill, which drew condemnation from rights groups and Ugandan activists ‘‘It’s a gloomy day, not just for the gay community in Uganda but for all Ugandans who care about human rights, because this law will affect everybody,’’ Julian Peppe Onziema, an advocate for gay rights in Uganda, told Reuters The Ugandan Parliament approved the law in December, saying it was aimed ‘‘at strengthening the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family.’’ Gay-rights activists in Uganda have vowed to oppose the law, which could jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial Western aid for new elections and a return of constitutional powers to the Parliament — his political opponents had not Instead, the Parliament has effectively seized power and is now rushing through an series of votes that have provoked rage among Russian lawmakers and commentators ‘‘It’s a confusing situation,’’ Mr Peskov said in a telephone interview from Sochi, where Mr Putin attended the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games ‘‘We have to figure out what we are facing there Is it a coup or what?’’ Mr Putin has not yet made any public statements about the latest events, as is often the case when he is confronted by unexpected challenges or crises ‘‘Let’s wait and see,’’ Mr Peskov said Mr Putin and Mr Yanukovych have spoken several times in recent weeks to discuss the situation, but Mr Peskov said he did not know whether they had spoken since Saturday, when Mr Yanukovych’s legitimacy evaporated and he fled Kiev It is clear that Mr Putin has followed the crisis intently, even as he attended to the Olympic festivities that he clearly has relished as a symbol of a new Russia On Friday he met with his national security advisers and a day later dispatched two Russian lawmakers to a regional party congress in eastern Ukraine that had been called to rally opposition to the new political authorities in Kiev Vladimir Lukin, the envoy Mr Putin sent to Kiev at Mr Yanukovych’s request during the negotiations with the Europeans, returned to Moscow and criticized the European foreign ministers as siding with ‘‘the nationalist-revolutionary terrorist Maidan,’’ referring to the square that has been the nucleus of the protests, and not the ‘‘legitimate government that they recognized.’’ Only hours before the closing ceremony in Sochi, Mr Putin spoke by telephone with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany The Kremlin said in a statement only that they discussed the situation in Ukraine, but Germany’s foreign office went further, saying that the two leaders agreed that ‘‘the territorial integrity of Ukraine must be preserved.’’ Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V Lavrov, spoke with Secretary of State John Kerry for a second time in two days, and Russia later announced that it had recalled its ambassador in Kiev because of ‘‘the deteriorating situation’’ in the country The State Department released a statement saying that Mr Kerry expressed support for the votes in Ukraine’s Parliament and called on Russia to support the transition now underway Patrick Reevell contributed reporting President Vladimir V Putin of Russia In 2009, as prime minister, Ms Tymoshenko engineered a natural gas deal with the Kremlin that helped Ukraine avoid a catastrophic energy shortage but left the country paying an exorbitant price for its natural gas supplies Ms Tymoshenko, who was imprisoned by Mr Yanukovych after losing the 2010 presidential election, had been put forward as one of three candidates for the post of prime minister, but she issued a statement on Sunday saying she had not been consulted on it and did not want to be considered for the position Still, it left open the possibility that she will run for president ‘‘The problem is that the old forces are trying to come back to take their old chairs,’’ said Vasily Kuak, a shipping broker who stood outside the Parliament building waving a sign that read, ‘‘Revolution, Not a Court Coup!’’ In Kiev, at least, nobody is publicly challenging the ouster of Mr Yanukovych and his government, although Russian-speaking regions in the east of the country are far from enthusiastic about a new order they fear could veer toward hard-line nationalist forces One of the first acts of Parliament after the flight of Mr Yanukovych, himself from eastern Ukraine, was to nullify a law that provided for the use of Russian as a second official language But even the Party of Regions, which is particularly strong in the east, has now thrown its lot in with the forces of change, denouncing the former president as it scrambles to keep itself relevant and avoid being punished for its former loyalties All the same, the sight of luxury cars’ dropping off members of Parliament at the legislature, a grand colonnaded building now guarded by ‘‘self-defense’’ units that previously battled government forces around Independence Square, has stirred dismay and anger ‘‘Again we see Mercedes and BMWs bringing deputies who are supposed to represent the people,’’ said Mr Kuak, the shipping broker ‘‘We don’t want to see these people again We want to see people from the square, from the revolution.’’ But as with any revolution, the question of who should represent the turbulent forces that created it is a difficult one The heroes are the squads of helmeted young men with clubs who risked their lives to hold back government forces as they tried early last week to seize Inde- A Russian court handed down prison sentences Monday of up to four years for seven people who took part in a 2012 demonstration against Vladimir V Putin An eighth defendant received a suspended sentence Hundreds of their supporters gathered outside the courthouse to condemn the trial and the Kremlin’s crackdown on opposition The police detained about 200 of them, accusing them of violating public order Among those detained were two members of the punk protest band Pussy Riot who had spent nearly two years in prison as punishment for their own anti-Putin protest The defendants sentenced on Monday were among 28 people rounded up after the protest on May 6, 2012, on the eve of Mr Putin’s inauguration for a third presidential term The rally turned violent after the police restricted access to Bolotnaya Square, across the river from the Kremlin, where the protesters had permission to gather The eight defendants were found guilty last week, but sentencing was postponed until Monday (AP) pendence Square, known as Maidan The center of Kiev is now scattered with shrines to those who died, each one piled with flowers left by grateful residents ‘‘We need people from Maidan, not people like you,’’ an angry woman screamed as Volodymyr Lytvyn, a former speaker of the Parliament with a reputation for shifting with the wind, left the legislature As he tried to answer questions from the crowd, protected by two bodyguards and a solid wrought iron fence, a cry went up clamoring for ‘‘lustration of everybody,’’ a term usually associated with the purge of officials and politicians suspected of serving Communist regimes before the revolutions of 1989 across Eastern and Central Europe Peppered with angry demands that Parliament raise pensions, reopen closed hospitals and find work for the jobless, Mr Lytvyn struggled to respond but essentially called for patience, a virtue that is likely to be in short supply if the interim government does not manage to convince Ukrainians that people it is working to improve their lives, not line its own pockets Mr Turchynov, the speaker and effectively Ukraine’s interim president until Gan Lin Vice Minister State Administration for Industry & Commerce People’s Republic of China Faris Abouhamad Chairman & World President International Advertising Association Maurice Lévy Chairman & CEO Publicis Groupe Sir Martin Sorrell CEO WPP 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REGISTER NOW: IAA75.ORG/BEIJING PRESENTED BY PLATINUM SPONSORS GOLD SPONSOR International Advertising Association SILVER SPONSOR SUPPORTING SPONSOR elections, is receiving credit for swiftly shepherding legislation through Parliament to establish the legal basis for a post-Yanukovych order But few see him as representing the revolution ‘‘He knows parliamentary routines but he does not have the support of the people,’’ said Nikita Kornavalov, a 29year-old teacher who left a job in Norway to support what he hopes will be a new era free of the corruption and brutality that have marred Ukraine since independence in 1991 But even many of those who want a decisive break with a political class seen as corrupt and self-serving acknowledge that the heroes of the street might not make the best rulers One of the most prominent leaders of the street forces is Dymtro Yarosh, the head of Right Sector, a coalition of previously fringe nationalist groups But his elevation to government would terrify many Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east and accelerate the risk of a dangerous break-up ‘‘Yarosh would be good in the stage security service or the police,’’ said Ms Nikanchuk, the economist, ‘‘but not as a minister.’’ Being overweight is so common in Europe that it risks becoming ‘‘the new norm,’’ with around a third of teenagers now heavier than is recommended for their health, the World Health Organization said on Monday In a report on obesity levels in 53 countries, the agency, an arm of the United Nations, said as much as 27 percent of 13-year-olds and 33 percent of 11year-olds were overweight Obesity rates among 11-year-old boys and girls were highest in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain, the report found ‘‘Our perception of what is normal has shifted; being overweight is now more common than unusual We must not let another generation grow up with obesity as the new norm,’’ said Zsuzsanna Jakab, regional director for the agency (REUTERS) pendence due in September, Mr Cameron has rationed his visits to Scotland knowing that, as an Englishman leading a Conservative Party that is unpopular with Scots, he is not the most effective advocate for the anti-independence campaign But at stake in September’s vote is the future of the United Kingdom, its place on the world stage and the reputation of Mr Cameron, who does not want to become the prime minister who presided over the breakup of Britain Because of its wider ramifications the referendum is being watched in other regions in Europe with aspirations for independence, such as Catalonia, and questions have been raised over whether Scotland would remain in the European Union and what currency it would use Most opinion polls show the majority of Scots want to stay part of Britain, though the gap may be narrowing Though he appealed to sentiment in one recent speech, Mr Cameron hopes that hard-headed economics will prove decisive in September’s poll, in which those age at least 16 and who live in Scotland can participate Mr Cameron’s message on Monday boiled down to the idea that Britain could better manage the remaining North Sea oil and gas reserves The British government on Monday announced a 100 million pound, or $166 million, investment in a gas-fired carbon capture and storage facility at Peterhead It also promised a new energy regulator and a change so that licenses for exploitation would be awarded in order to maximize recovery of remaining energy supplies But supporters of Scottish independence say that resources have been poorly managed in London, and Mr Salmond told the BBC that there had been 16 tax changes affecting the industry in 10 years and that 14 different ministers had been in charge of policy in 17 years A day of announcements began with Mr Cameron visiting an oil rig where he appeared for TV cameras in all-weather jacket and safety helmet He did not meet Mr Salmond let alone hold the face-toface debate Mr Salmond has demanded Both men know that the economy is a crucial battleground and Scots have been warned by the three main British political parties that they would lose the pound as their currency if they opt for independence Mr Salmond disputes that and has accused his critics of ‘‘bullying.’’ He also argues that an independent Scotland would automatically remain a member of the European Union — though that assertion has been rejected by Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the executive of the 28-nation bloc Though that may alarm voters, some pollsters believe that such warnings may backfire by making the ‘‘no’’ campaign seem negative Most of Britain’s remaining oil and gas resources lie off the northern part of the country in the North Sea or the Shetland Islands Lindsay Wexelstein, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an Edinburgh market research firm, estimates that 85 percent of Britain’s remaining oil and gas lies under Scottish waters One Scottish government study estimates that Scotland would have been entitled to 94 percent of the oil and gas tax receipts of about 11 billion pounds for the 2011 and 2012 fiscal year While an estimated 42 billion barrels, a very large amount, has already been produced, there may still be as much as 24 billion barrels left, which could be worth more than $2 trillion in public since spending three months in a French hospital after a stroke last April His cabinet ministers, and occasional visitors, say his mind is unaffected and his health is improving, but he has not addressed the country in 18 months and has only been shown on state television sitting down Nevertheless, he has shown a tenacity during his convalescence, replacing a number of cabinet ministers and regional officials, even removing high-level members of the powerful intelligence service Analysts have interpreted the moves as an effort to consolidate support for his re-election campaign Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal announced Mr Bouteflika’s candidacy at a news conference in the city of Oran on Sunday, The Associated Press reported Since a devastating civil war in the 1990s, Algeria has been guided by a tightly controlled state, dominated by the army and intelligence forces Political parties and social movements are given limited freedom to operate, and social tensions are defused by a mixture of police control and payments from the state Yet as controls over the printed news media have loosened and political parties have been allowed to operate, criticism has grown against the president and his aging circle, a generation of leaders who have ruled Algeria since it won independence from France in 1962 Several independent candidates have announced their intention to run for president, but few expect the vote to be fair BY CARLOTTA GALL Algerian officials have announced that the country’s ailing president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been largely incapacitated since a stroke last year, intends to run for a fourth term in an election scheduled for April 17 The announcement on Sunday ended months of speculation about the leadership of Algeria, one of the most important countries in North Africa, a region in upheaval as it deals with political changes inspired by the Arab Spring as well as the spread of terrorism Mr Bouteflika, 76, has governed Algeria for 15 years, but he has not appeared BY ELISABETTA POVOLEDO Thousands of years after the citizens of Troy learned about the complications posed by outsize equine sculptures, the modern residents of Milan find themselves embroiled, again, in a debate about how to make the most of a gift horse: a colossal bronze steed presented by a group of American donors Inspired by an uncompleted statue designed by Leonardo da Vinci (the sole clay cast was destroyed in 1499), the stallion arrived in Milan in 1999, by way of a foundry in Beacon, N.Y., and was positioned in a pedestrian piazza at the city’s racetrack in the San Siro district For its admirers, installing the sculpture in a site where it gets few visitors aside from bettors — whose interest in static horses is understandably limited — has been tantamount to putting it out to pasture Now, with the opening of the World Exposition in Milan less than 15 months away, calls have intensified to move the horse to a more visible position and even to make it a symbol of the city during the fair, which officials hope will draw millions of visitors to the Lombardy capital The bronze horse ‘‘would be a landmark,’’ a cultural monument akin to the Statue of Liberty, said Carlo Orlandini, president of the Committee for the Great Horse, a volunteer group that has lobbied for years to transfer the steed to a more decorous post ‘‘We need to persuade people that the current solution is not dignified and doesn’t correspond to the spirit in which the gift was given,’’ said Mr Orlandini, whose group is encouraging the public debate on the statue, which was broached in recent weeks by the Corriere della Sera, the Milan daily Conceived nearly four decades ago by a retired airline pilot, Charles C Dent, of Allentown, Pa., as a contemporary substitute for Leonardo’s original, the bronze statue was intended as a gift from the American people to their Italian counterparts ‘‘to honor Leonardo da Vinci and Italian Renaissance,’’ a plaque on the pedestal explains Before he died in 1994, Mr Dent involved dozens of donors to raise more than $6.5 million to cast the horse, which stands more than seven meters, or 24 feet, tall and weighs 15 tons In 1999, it was shipped to Milan and inaugurated with much fanfare at the San Siro racetrack, far from the city center BY JIM YARDLEY AND ELISABETTA POVOLEDO Making his first appearance before Parliament since becoming prime minister, Matteo Renzi on Monday called for lawmakers to have the ‘‘courage’’ to make ‘‘radical change,’’ pledged to push through political and electoral reforms, and promised bold, innovative measures to revive the moribund economy Mr Renzi, 39, the youngest prime minister in Italy’s history, spoke for roughly an hour before the Senate, which was expected to hold — and approve — a confidence vote on his new government later on Monday evening A second confidence vote is scheduled Tuesday in the lower house, where Mr Renzi’s Democratic Party holds a comfortable majority and passage is considered a certainty For Mr Renzi, the former mayor of Florence who was sworn in Saturday after forcing out a sitting prime minister from his own party, Monday’s speech was his first formal presentation of his early priorities It also provided a taste of his jaunty, confident style He seemed to relish verbally jousting with lawmakers of the opposition Five Star Movement and gave no hint of being awed by a chamber in which he has never served ‘‘Our country is rusty, bogged down,’’ he said, ‘‘immobilized by an asphyxiating bureaucracy, by rules, norms and codicils that paradoxically don’t elimi- There, it has effectively ‘‘been abandoned,’’ Mr Orlandini said A cultural and educational park that the city had agreed to build at the track as part of the donation agreement never materialized, ‘‘which was a disappointment,’’ said Peter C Dent, Charles Dent’s nephew, who has been on the board of several institutions ‘‘that look after the interests of the horse.’’ Over the years, attempts to move the horse have faced a variety of obstacles, including a vociferous residents’ committee in San Siro that wants the statue to stay City Hall also dragged its feet, if only because finding an alternative site has been a municipal brainteaser Now the citywide preparations for the World Expo, which starts in May 2015, have offered the steed’s supporters fresh hope that it will find a new home, if only for the six months of the expo’s run ‘‘I say let’s talk about it,’’ said Giangiacomo Schiavi, deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera, who recently opened a debate in the newspaper about moving the statue, which he said should be valued as a ‘‘symbol of Milan’s welcoming reception’’ for all visitors Showcasing the horse could also highlight Leonardo’s underexplored ties to Milan, he said After all, Leonardo lived in the city for nearly 20 years, leaving his masterpiece ‘‘The Last Supper’’ as the best-known testament of his stay His uncompleted horse was intended to honor a powerful 15th-century Milanese duke, Francesco Sforza Had French soldiers occupying the city not used the clay model for target practice in 1499, it would have been the largest bronze horse in existence The publicity over moving its modern successor (no easy feat in itself ) would once again focus attention on that historical link, even as the story of Charles Dent and his dream to resuscitate Leonardo’s lost horse stands as ‘‘a symbol of overcoming the impossible,’’ Mr Schiavi said But the debate on this horse’s mixed pedigree has riled some critics, described by Mr Orlandini as ‘‘purists,’’ who say that the American horse’s links with Leonardo’s lost work are questionable at best When Charles Dent engaged on his quest to rebuild Leonardo’s horse, he created a model based on the artist’s extant writings and drawings When his clay model was enlarged, however, it manifested various proportional and anatomical distortions, so in 1996 the backers drafted the American sculptor Nina nate illegality.’’ He argued that the desires and ambitions of ordinary Italians had surpassed the performance of Parliament ‘‘It is ahead of us, and it is up to us to catch up,’’ he added Focusing foremost on the economy, Mr Renzi outlined four immediate priorities: repayment of unpaid government debts to private firms by using a state investment and loan fund; support for small and medium enterprises squeezed by the credit crunch; reductions in income and labor taxes; and a comprehensive reform of the justice system, including changes to make doing business easier He also pushed for passage of a sweeping electoral reform package that he has already brokered with Silvio Berlusconi, the opposition leader and former prime minister That package would change Italy’s complex voting system to favor bigger parties and coalitions and better produce working parliamentary majorities Mr Renzi also is pushing to amend the Constitution to drastically reduce the powers of the Senate so that lawmaking authority is concentrated in the lower house ‘‘I’d like to be the last prime minister to ask this chamber for a vote of confidence,’’ he said Perhaps that goal is one reason the assembled senators only occasionally broke into meaningful applause Marco Damilano, a political commentator for the weekly magazine L’Espresso, said that Mr Renzi deliberately emphasized his role as an outsider to the political circles of Rome and that the radical changes he promised were the same things he has been talking about when he politicked nationally while serving as mayor of Florence ‘‘He acted as the mayor of Italy, but Akamu to complete the project She started from scratch, and her version, while inspired by Leonardo, ‘‘is not intended to be a recreation of his sculpture,’’ she wrote in her artist’s statement ‘‘We treat it and try to talk about it for what it is,’’ said Joseph Antenucci Becherer, vice president and chief curator of the Sculpture Program at the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Mich., which has its own version of the statue ‘‘It is an original work of art by Nina Akamu, he’s now prime minister in a ring where the rules have remained the same,’’ Mr Damilano said during a televised interview, arguing that the blasé reception to the speech by many senators portended a bumpy ride ‘‘They listened with a certain slyness: Sure, you can come and make all the promises you want, but you still have to pass through us,’’ he said Analysts say Mr Renzi is likely to face difficulties in achieving every one of his goals, including his plans to rein in the entrenched managers of Italy’s public administration ‘‘He will face a significant opposition, by trade unions to begin with,’’ said Stefano Manzocchi, professor of international economics at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome ‘‘But if he starts at the top levels, he’d have a lot of popular support.’’ Mr Renzi has been regarded as a rising star in Italian politics, especially after he was elected leader of the Democratic Party in a nationwide primary last December But his ascension to prime minister came rapidly and unexpectedly, amid growing frustrations over the inability of former Prime Minister Enrico Letta and his coalition government to approve major reforms Earlier this month, Mr Renzi called an emergency meeting of the Democratic Party, in which members voted to remove Mr Letta, a party member, and replace him with Mr Renzi He now must push through his ambitious agenda with the same fractious coalition of left and right parties that at times stymied Mr Letta Mr Renzi, a skilled communicator comfortable with social media and attuned to the power of television, has cast himself as a symbol of generational change in Italy Last weekend, he named a 16-person cabinet evenly divided between men and women — a first in Italy — with an average age of 47 The youngest cabinet members, Maria Elena Boschi and Marianna Madia, are both 33 In his speech Monday, Mr Renzi cautioned that Italy’s economic malaise is dragging down the country’s younger generation ‘‘who can’t afford to go out for pizza.’’ He said gross national product had dropped sharply since 2008 while youth unemployment had nearly doubled to 41.6 percent ‘‘These are the numbers of a crisis,’’ he said ‘‘They are the numbers of a collapse.’’ He also said that the country had an opportunity to send a signal to the rest of Europe, assuming Parliament can pass major reforms before Italy assumes its rotational turn holding the presidency of the European Union in June ‘‘We won’t be credible if we aren’t able to arrive at the European semester without sorting out the things we have to sort out,’’ he said though it’s been difficult to get that across to people.’’ He called the horse ‘‘a monument to creativity.’’ Critics of the horse are quick to underscore its modern aesthetics, deemed to be post-Leonardesque ‘‘Nina’s horse, with all due respect, would never have been accepted, because it’s a contemporary work, and it’s a bit banal,’’ said Marco Castelli, a retired businessman and an artistic-heritage promoter who has written a book about the horse There is as yet no official decision on the statue’s future Milanese officials seem receptive to a new location with the expo approaching But much may depend on whether the Great Horse committee will pay the transportation bill, estimated, conservatively, at around $412,000 The complicated logistics of moving the horse in one piece would involve various municipal departments, as it could involve cutting tram and electrical cables along the route and ensuring that roads could support the weight One possible alternative site, City Hall says, would be in front of the Sforza Castle, in an area where the expo’s information center is being built Some city lawmakers, however, argue that moving the horse just for the six-month event is a waste of resources and money at a moment when the city should be focusing on other priorities ‘‘It would be better to keep the horse at the racetrack,’’ said Enrico Fedrighini, a Milan Council member ‘‘And send expo visitors there.’’ The list of infectious diseases that could leap from remote areas of the world to strike countries thousands of miles away is growing A warning of what can happen occurred a decade ago when an outbreak in China of a mysterious new viral disease, known as SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, was covered up by the Chinese authorities, allowing infected airline passengers to carry the virus to more than two dozen other countries The disease killed nearly 800 people and caused large economic losses in Asia and Canada Now worries that such deadly viruses as Ebola might be carried from Africa to the United States and elsewhere have been joined by new concerns These include, among others: potentially dangerous strains of avian flu recently detected in China; an often lethal lung disease, known as Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, which has so far been found mostly in Saudi Arabia; multidrug-resistant strains of tuberculosis that are very difficult to treat; and a mosquito-borne viral disease known as Chikungunya fever, which was first detected in Africa, spread to Asia and Europe, and recently invaded the Caribbean It made good sense, then, when the Obama administration, after meeting last week with representatives of three United Nations agencies and 26 countries, announced an ambitious plan to improve the surveillance and treatment of infectious diseases over the next five years in up to 30 countries Although 196 countries have signed an international agreement, reached in 2005, to report outbreaks promptly to the World Health Organization and take steps to control them, the vast majority have not fully complied The odds for improvement this time around may be better The health systems in poor countries, though still fragile, have improved thanks to international programs to combat AIDS and other diseases, and those systems could be expanded The Defense Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are spending a combined $40 million this year to help detect and contain infectious disease threats in 10 countries The administration said it would propose an increase of $45 million in the C.D.C budget for 2015 to help additional countries Congress ought to approve that money A five-year program to extend assistance to 30 countries to protect their populations could cost the United States up to $1.5 billion, which would be worth spending if the initial projects prove successful Other advanced nations need to contribute money and expertise, too In Southern Florida, five Sri Lankan men were held without bond for more than three years as they sought asylum, saying they had been promised leniency in return for aiding a federal investigation of the smuggling ring that brought them into the country illegally In Springfield, Mass., a federal district judge in January ordered a bond hearing for a Jamaican immigrant and military veteran who had been held in Massachusetts jails, fighting deportation, for more than 15 months without ever receiving a bond hearing Last April, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in California, upheld a lower court’s order requiring the government to grant bond hearings to immigrants who have been held six months without such a hearing These rulings reflect the growing understanding — in the federal courts, if not at Immigration and Customs Enforcement — that the constitutional guarantee of due process demands that a detainee have a hearing within a ‘‘reasonable’’ time and that more than six months is not reasonable by any definition The Obama administration, in expanding the surge of immigration enforcement begun under President George W Bush, has detained and deported nearly two million people The majority are dealt with swiftly, without ever receiving a hearing before an immigration judge Others who challenge their deportation, like the Sri Lankans, wait for years to get a resolution of their cases Automatically granting bond hearings to immigration detainees, many of whom pose no threat, is the least the government can President Obama, who has promised to more to fix the broken immigration laws, can ensure that the sixmonth rule is adopted in immigration courts nationwide Beyond granting bond hearings, the government should use more humane and cost-effective alternatives to detention, like ankle bracelets and home monitoring Locking people up indefinitely is not a path to a more rational immigration system Like all Americans, we strongly hope that the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts lead to the peaceful dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program To achieve this key national security goal, we support a policy that complements the current negotiations with a range of congressional actions that threatens greater economic and diplomatic pressure on the Iranian government Some opponents of such a policy crudely characterize its proponents as warmongers, and fret that Tehran will walk away from the table But the critics have it backward The approach we outline offers the best chance to avoid military conflict with Iran In fact, diplomacy that is not backed by the threat of clear consequences poses the greatest threat to negotiations — and increases prospects for war — because it tells the Iranians they have nothing to lose by embracing an uncompromising position Successful negotiations between adversaries rest on the confluence of interests and goals Iran came to the negotiating table because it sought the abrogation of sanctions; we came to the table to reach an agreement that, in the words of President Obama, would ‘‘make it impossible’’ for Iran to develop nuclear weapons Our message to Tehran should be I doubt any president has been as well equipped as Barack Obama to appreciate the vicious cycle of American crime and punishment As a community organizer in Chicago in the 1980s, he would have witnessed the way a system intended to protect the public siphoned off young black men, gave them an advanced education in brutality, and then returned them to the streets unqualified for — and too often, given the barriers to employment faced by those who have done time, disqualified from — anything but a life of more crime He would have understood that the suffering of victims and the debasing of offenders were often two sides of the same coin It’s hard to tell how deeply he actually absorbed this knowledge In the Chicago chapters of his memoir, ‘‘Dreams From My Father,’’ Obama notes that in the low-income housing projects ‘‘prison records had been passed down from father to son for more than a generation,’’ but he has surprisingly little to say about the shadow cast by prisons on the families left behind, about the way incarceration became the default therapy for drug addicts and the mentally ill, about the abject failure of rehabilitation Still, when the former community organizer took office, advocates of reform had high expectations In March I will give up the glorious platform of The New York Times to help launch something new: a nonprofit journalistic venture called The Marshall Project (after Thurgood Marshall, the great courtroom champion of civil rights) and devoted to the vast and urgent subject of our broken criminal justice system It seems fitting that my parting column should address the question of how this president has lived up to those high expectations so far I’ll begin by making his excuses The president’s powers in this area are limited The action (and there is a lot of it right now) is mostly at the state level His first term was entangled in economic crisis and health care This president has faced tireless and often petty resistance from the Republican House on almost every initiative Historically Democrats have risked being Willie-Horton’ed if they don’t maintain a tougher-thantough-on-crime posture And AfricanAmerican constituents — who are also disproportionately the victims of crime — are not necessarily bleeding-heart voters In short, it was probably naïve to assume that Obama was going to be the Criminal Justice Reform President And yet Obama took office at a time of tidal shifts The economics of imprisonment, the ebbing of crime rates, the horror stories of overcrowded penitentiaries and the persistent activism of reform advocates had begun to generate a public consensus that merely caging people is not a crime-fighting strategy Fiscal conservatives alarmed at the clear: It will not achieve its objectives unless it satisfies ours Unfortunately, Iran’s leaders are acting as if they have not received that message In recent weeks, President Hassan Rouhani has declared that his government will not dismantle a single centrifuge Tehran also went beyond words by testing long-range ballistic missiles that could reach American military bases in the Middle East, as well as our ally Israel It has even dispatched warships to sail close to the maritime borders of the United States in the Atlantic Ocean We also know the Iranians have worked to deceive us in previous rounds of negotiations In 2003, when Mr Rouhani was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Tehran issued a declaration that it was suspending uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities Last year, as he ran for president, Mr Rouhani even boasted that Iran had flouted the agreement Offering inducements is not enough Diplomacy must be backed by a clear choice for the Iranian government: Either it dismantles its nuclear program so that it lacks a pathway to weapons capability or it faces greater economic sanctions and international isolation Without this clarity, no one can be surprised if Iran rejects diplomatic overtures The partial recovery of Iran’s econo- high cost of incarceration, evangelicals shocked by the waste of lives, and libertarians who spotted another realm of government power abused have clambered onto what was once a liberal bandwagon (How much those conservatives will be willing to invest in alternative ways of protecting the public — drug treatment, more intensive parole and probation programs, job training and so on — is another question.) In his first term Obama did not make this a signature issue; he rarely mentioned the subject But his proxy, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., was outspoken from the start Six months into the first term, he was already at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York talking about the social costs of mass incarceration and pressing for policies that would divert low-level drug offenders to treatment and ease the re-entry of former prisoners into a productive life In the last five years, Holder has become increasingly bold, and encountered little backlash This month he exhorted states to repeal policies that deny felons the right to vote, policies that disenfranchise 5.8 million Americans, including nearly one in 13 African-American adults He framed it not just as an act of compassion but as a way of re-engaging prodigal souls ‘‘By perpetuating the stigma and isolation imposed on formerly incarcerated individuals, these laws increase the likelihood they will commit future my in recent weeks, thanks to the relaxation of sanctions, in tandem with its continuing advanced research and development of centrifuges, highlights our concerns If Iran can achieve such progress without dismantling any part of its nuclear program, why should it make concessions? We strongly believe that the assertion by Congress of its historic role in foreign policy can, in fact, complement and enhance the administration’s efforts by forcing Iran to recognize the stark implications of intransigence The president should welcome such congressional initiatives, which would actually strengthen, not weaken, the hand of his administration in negotiations Thus we urge Congress to outline for Iran the acceptable terms of a final accord This must include, at a minimum, the dismantling of its nuclear program, so that Iran has neither a uranium nor a plutonium pathway to a nuclear weapon Second, Congress should exercise oversight to ensure that Tehran understands that our existing core sanctions architecture will remain in place for the full duration of the negotiations Third, Congress must oversee continual implementation of the interim agreement: We cannot permit Iran to violate trust again by advancing its nuclear program even as it joins negotiations Finally, we support the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act, sponsored by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s chairman, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and by Senator Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois This bill would present Iran with a menu of crimes,’’ Holder said ‘‘All that sounds very good,’’ said Michelle Alexander, the legal scholar who wrote ‘‘The New Jim Crow,’’ a scorching 2010 indictment of the racialized war on drugs ‘‘And it is good, because for decades the rhetoric was running in the other direction But if the rhetoric is not matched with action then it is fair to wonder whether the shift in rhetoric reflects significant shifts in public opinion in recent years, rather than a real commitment to these issues and a willingness to take political risks.’’ In practice, the administration’s record has been more incremental than its rhetoric By the crudest metric, the population of our prisons, the Obama administration has been unimpressive The famously shocking numbers of Americans behind bars (the U.S., with percent of the world’s people, incarcerates nearly a quarter of all prisoners on earth) have declined three years in a row However, the overall downsizing is largely thanks to California and a handful of other states In overstuffed federal prisons, the population continues to grow, fed in no small part by Obama’s crackdown on immigration violators The administration has some achievements to tout Obama signed the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, and has put some muscle behind the Smarter Sentencing Act, two measures aimed at making drug-sentencing laws less absurd Hold- consequences, including new sanctions — if, and only if, the talks fail Earlier this month, we agreed with Mr Menendez on delaying a vote in the Senate, but we remain committed to the bill’s passage Historically, presidents have resisted congressional involvement that would affect or constrain their diplomatic efforts Over the past two decades, however, both Republican and Democratic administrations have opposed Iran sanctions legislation only to embrace it later as their own At this moment, we must not allow Iran to dictate the appropriate role of Congress As long as Mr Rouhani can brazenly declare that he will not dismantle a single centrifuge as part of a final agreement, the United States Congress should proclaim that Iran will pay a steep price for its recklessness America’s elected representatives are not the problem; the unelected theocrats of Iran are Next week, more than 14,000 Americans from all walks of life will carry this bipartisan message to Capitol Hill as part of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference We support the president’s diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon We also believe the best chance for success in this purpose lies with continued congressional pressure on Iran throughout the negotiations is the president, and is the chairman of the board, of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee er has issued guidance to prosecutors to avoid routinely seeking maximum sentences for low-level offenders — though it’s not clear yet whether prosecutors are going along The administration created an Interagency Reentry Council that uses federal guidance to whittle away at the barriers to employment, housing and education so that released prisoners have some hope of becoming productive citizens At the same time, long after the War on Drugs has been recognized as a failure, there has been little serious effort to cut the number of federal drug prosecutions, or to shift money from incarceration to drug treatment Alexander cites as a significant disappointment the continued federal reluctance to decriminalize marijuana, despite Obama’s acknowledgment to David Remnick of The New Yorker that pot is less harmful than alcohol and that the laws are mostly enforced against poor minorities Another missed opportunity: He could have pushed more aggressively to fill district and circuit court vacancies with judges who would buck the status quo Obama has also been the stingiest of recent presidents in using his powers of pardon and commutation to undo the damage of the crack panic and of sentencing that keeps prisoners in lockup long past the age when they represent a danger Marc Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank with a justice reform agenda, points out that in his first term Obama pardoned one in 50 applicants while Ronald Reagan pardoned one in three Late last year Obama commuted the sentences of eight drug offenders, out of more than 8,000 federal convicts serving time under outdated crack laws Obama is, we know, a cautious man, leery of getting ahead of public opinion and therefore sometimes far behind it And some reform advocates argue that it made sense for Obama to keep a low profile until a broad bipartisan consensus had gathered That time has come Now that Obama-scorners like Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee and even Ted Cruz are slicing off pieces of justice reform for their issue portfolios, now that red states like Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri and Kentucky have embraced alternatives to prison, criminal justice is one of those rare areas where there is common ground to be explored and tested The Obama presidency has almost three years to go, and there is reason to hope that he will feel less constrained, that the eight commutations were not just a pittance but, as he put it, ‘‘a first step,’’ that Holder’s mounting enthusiasm for saner sentencing is not just talk, but prelude, that the president will use his great pulpit to prick our conscience ‘‘This is something that matters to the president,’’ Holder assured me last week ‘‘This is, I think, going to be seen as a defining legacy for this administration.’’ I’ll be watching, and hoping that Holder’s prediction is more than wishful thinking Any sentient being who walks the byways of northern Europe, so placid now with their glistening poplar trees and villages clustered around church spires, must occasionally feel the intrusion of the painful thought that beneath the soil lie the corpses of millions, young men sacrificed for the gain of a few meters, and often in Kipling’s phrase only known unto God World War I erupted at a time when much of humanity was persuaded that rapid technological development, scientific progress and accelerated communications (connectivity in today’s parlance) had consigned warfare to the past It was sparked by a single gunshot in Sarajevo, made possible by strategic miscalculation, and ended with the collapse of several empires, the world of yesterday demolished in an unimaginable bloodbath whose unsettled scores would soon produce another cataclysm In the very banality of the chain of events that led to slaughter, in its apparent unnecessariness, the Great War (in the British phrase) offers an eternal warning to those inclined to take peace for granted Peace is hard work Its alternative is never far beneath the surface It being the centennial of the outbreak of the war, numerous commemorations are planned But memorializa- tion diverges Germans, when they think about World War I, see nothing ‘‘great’’ in it Rather they see the seeds of Hitler’s rise, and it is to his war above all that they have devoted their anguished reckonings The French who, like the British, call it ‘‘La Grande Guerre,’’ have a different view; they stopped the Germans racing to Paris, as in 1871 Glory is a word that surfaces in Paris and London, notwithstanding Wilfred Owen’s dismissal of the ‘‘old lie’’: That in youth’s prime ‘‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.’’ I decided a few weeks ago to bow my head to the dead by visiting the cemetery at St Symphorien in Belgium, where the first British soldier killed on the Western Front is buried, and also what are thought to be the last Commonwealth soldiers killed In all 284 German and 230 Commonwealth servicemen find their final resting place here The cemetery, watched over by wind turbines, was deserted I was the only visitor The German graves are in gray stone, the British in white I read the names of the conscripts An ‘‘Unteroffizier Rolf Berger’’ from Hamburg, a ‘‘Musketier Otto Finke’’ from Kiel: German kids cut down It crossed my mind that perhaps the Finke family, after their loss, would end up fleeing Hitler The British and Commonwealth graves are set out in lines: Lt D.C.C Sewell, aged 20, with the inscription ‘‘Thy Will Be Done.’’ W.G Bathgate, Highlanders, 23 August 1914, ‘‘Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.’’ And that most devastating of all epitaphs: ‘‘A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God.’’ Among the crosses was a single Star of David, on the grave of Private P Goldberg of the Middlesex Regiment, died Aug 23, 1914 I was reminded of my great-grandfather’s brother, Michael Adler, a distinguished rabbi who compiled the 1916 Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers at the front during World War I and served as chaplain to Jewish soldiers I have a precious copy of the prayer book It begins with a ‘‘prefatory note’’ signed by my forbear: ‘‘It is hoped that this book will meet the wants of the very large number of English Jews who are taking part in the present Great European War.’’ The first prayer for the 16,000 British Jews on active service includes this line: ‘‘Fill our hearts with courage and steadfastness that we may perform our duty to our King and Country for the honor of Israel and the Empire.’’ The word order suggests Adler’s attempt to balance loyalties: first King, then Israel (not yet reborn as a modern state), then Empire Jewish allegiance to the crown had been questioned: Thousands of Yiddish-speaking East European Jews were not yet naturalized and so could not serve In November 1915, The Jewish Chronicle reported examples of recruiting officers saying, ‘‘Lord Kitchener does not want any more Jews in the Army.’’ But Jews clamored to prove their loyalty Adler initially encouraged them By the end of the war, however, having seen the carnage, he had other thoughts On July 6, 1918, he wrote, ‘‘All this colossal upheaval will have been in vain unless civilized mankind resolves once and for all that every effort should be made that war shall cease henceforth.’’ His words went unheeded Europe would plunge again into horror And Iron Crosses for valor at the Somme did nothing to keep German Jews from the gas Although the word turbulence doesn’t exist in Turkish, it is probably the best description of the state of politics in Turkey these days But we have other words, many of them, that denote ‘‘tension,’’ ‘‘masculinity’’ and ‘‘polarization,’’ all of which afflict the Turkish state Turkey is a liquid country, a watercourse of conflicts and contradictions The mood changes weekly, sometimes daily Until recently the country was seen as a successful combination of Islam and Western democracy, a power broker in the Middle East That view is rapidly fading, and the river that is Turkey is running faster than ever With local, presidential and general elections coming, this is a year of loud polemics and quiet concerns Citizens glance through websites dozens of times daily to see what else has happened During a vote that gave the government greater control over the judiciary, members of Parliament exchanged blows; a bloody nose was a testament to our bruised democracy Nothing reflects the tempest better than the recent proliferation of conspiracy theories Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly accused outsiders of being behind the protests in Gezi Park last summer, which left six people dead and 8,000 injured Several government officials insinuated that dark forces were operating behind the scenes, including the Jewish diaspora, the C.I.A., the BBC, CNN and the interest-rate lobby, a term for a cabal of domestic and foreign banks that officials believe want to harm Turkey to further their own interests A Turkish BBC reporter was openly accused of being a foreign spy Protesters in Taksim Square were called terrorists The German airline Lufthansa, it was suggested, was trying to scuttle an important new airport for Istanbul On social media there are endless rumors about ‘‘deep state within deep state.’’ Gradually, Turkey is turning into a nation in the grip of paranoia Nobody takes anything at face value anymore There is a growing public suspicion that the news is filtered, if not manipulated Recently leaked tape recordings revealed that opinion polls published in a major newspaper might have been tampered with to please the government Journalists have marched to protest curbs on press freedom In a country where freedom of expression is curtailed and media diversity has shriveled, social media is the only alternative platform of communication, information and misinformation A new Internet law passed by Parliament further threatens freedom of opinion, though President Abdullah Gul, who said he would approve it, has conceded that parts are problematic If the Gezi riots fueled conspiracy theories, the recent corruption investigation fanned the flames Government officials talk constantly about foreign plots Turkey has done too well, they say, and now hidden actors want to stop it from growing These accusations resonate with some segments of society Why are we so in need of contriving conspiracy theories? Part of the answer lies in the fact that Turkey is still not a mature democracy and its politics are masculinist, aggressive and polarized Turkey’s polarization affects every layer of social, cultural and economic life When checks and balances, separation of powers and media diversity are all at risk, those in power become too powerful And part of the answer lies in old fears that go back to our upbringing One of the songs from my childhood went: ‘‘One, two, three long live the Turks four, five, six, Poland plummeted seven, eight, nine, Russians are traitors ’’ We children mer- rily sang this song on the streets, declaring that the Italians were cunning, the Germans pigs We grew up believing that Turkey was surrounded on three sides by water and on four sides by enemies The Greeks aspired to reconquer Istanbul and make it Constantinopolis The Arabs were untrustworthy The Russians plotted to seize the Bosporus Everybody wanted a piece of Anatolia, our land, and a Turk’s only friend was another Turk In the past, one of the strengths of Mr Erdogan’s party, Justice and Development, was a foreign policy of ‘‘zero problems with neighbors.’’ That policy has not been sustained This government, which liberal intellectuals once supported in the hope that it would push Turkey to join the European Union, restrict the role of the military and enact democratic reforms, is nowadays reviving overused rhetoric When Mr Erdogan speaks he addresses the nation’s subconscious He speaks to our primordial fears and xenophobia And without realizing, we, millions of us, become children again, waiting in the school courtyard for the headmaster, the baba, to tell us how illintentioned every foreigner is and how united we must stand against the world Yet, at the same time, this warped mentality no longer entices Times have changed The youth are far more open to the world than the previous generations, and the people are ahead of their politicians As much as we tend to buy into conspiracy theories, we Turks have also grown very, very tired of them is the author of nine novels, including ‘‘The Bastard of Istanbul’’ and ‘‘The Forty Rules of Love.’’ It was not without reason that President Bill Clinton lavished praise on African leaders like President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda back in the late 1990s Mr Museveni, like Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, had come to office through the barrel of a gun, a depressingly familiar means of gaining power in Africa during the first three decades of independence But after ending a cycle of murderous rule by despots steeped in human rights abuses and financial corruption, the young leaders proved to be different from their predecessors Both introduced rational governance structures, presided over economic turnarounds and brought much-needed stability to their countries ‘‘One hundred years from now your grandchildren and mine will look back and say this was the beginning of an African renaissance,’’ Mr Clinton said in Accra, Ghana, in March 1998, praising a ‘‘new generation’’ of African leaders that — along with Mr Meles and Mr Museveni — included Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa But Mr Clinton spoke too soon If one of the greatest tests of revolutionaries is their capacity to voluntarily give up power, Mr Museveni and Mr Meles (who died in office in 2012) proved to be cut from a different cloth from such illustrious statesmen as Nelson Mandela and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, justly celebrated for resisting the temptation to be presidents for life Or, for that matter, from Mr Mbeki, who stepped down in 2008 after losing a battle for leadership of the African National Congress, and Mr Rawlings, who relinquished his office in 2001, thus becoming the first leader in African history who had seized power by force to yield peacefully to the democratic process Mr Afewerki and Mr Kagame, on the other hand, are still in power As for Mr Museveni, after pledging to retire following his election in 2001, the Ugandan leader abolished term limits ahead of elections in 2006 and offered himself for re-election again in 2011 Many had hoped that would be his last election But Mr Museveni, now 69, is determined to run again As autocrats often do, he is clothing his ambitions as a response to the ‘‘will of the people.’’ On Feb 11, a governing party caucus of members of Parliament ‘‘strongly’’ appealed to the president to run again This is bad news for Uganda and for East Africa Autocratic rule has the obvious effect of weakening a country’s institutions, with profound consequences for its citizens Uganda is a poor country with a percapita income of only $598 in 2012, according to the United Nations A functional government in such circumstances would have sought to speed up the process of commercial production of the substantial oil reserves discovered in the country in 2006, which the World Bank estimates have the potential of accounting for 10 to 25 percent of gross domestic product Instead, the process has been tightly controlled by the State House — the president’s official residence Thus, while Uganda remains far away from fully developing its oil industry, the comparatively well-run West African country of Ghana, which discovered its own oil reserves a year after Uganda, has already began commercial production Meanwhile, Mr Museveni continues to implement ever-harsher laws aimed at stifling domestic dissent, including the much derided Public Order Management Bill, which requires that if three or more people are to gather in public to address political issues, they need permission from the police What is to be done? Uganda is a major regional American ally with its troops having played a vital part in ousting the militant Al Shabab group from the Somali capital, Mogadishu Public pressure on the Ugandan leader is unlikely to have the desired effect, however, and can help him play the nationalist card to serve his domestic agenda Instead, the Obama administration should privately make it clear to Mr Museveni that Uganda’s interests would be better served if he oversees a democratic transition and that relations will not remain the same if he clings to power A precedent exists In Kenya, the United States ambassador to Nairobi, Johnnie Carson, played an important role in urging President Daniel arap Moi to give up power in 2002, at a time when there were attempts to amend the Constitution to allow him another run for the presidency But rather than put pressure on Mr Museveni to step down, the Obama administration has been focusing criticism on the anti-homosexuality law that Mr Museveni has thrown to his supporters This emphasis by Washington is misplaced, and will only serve the Ugandan leader’s ends Ultimately, though, only Ugandans can rid themselves of Mr Museveni’s long rule and stop their country from being left behind in the wave of progress sweeping Africa Civil society and the opposition should threaten a boycott of the next elections unless a set of changes — including the creation of an independent and impartial electoral commission, amendment of laws that restrict freedom of assembly, and the introduction of curbs on spending of state resources during campaigns — are implemented In his reformist days, President Museveni wrote a statement that he will never live down: ‘‘The problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power.’’ Today, his refusal to step down, even though his increasingly corrupt and autocratic rule is ruining his nation’s prospects, is selfish and damaging It was a former Ugandan president, Godfrey Binaisa, who with refreshing honesty told his people that he was reluctant to give up power for purely selfinterested reasons ‘‘Enno entebe ewooma,’’ he said, quoting a Luganda proverb that means ‘‘This chair is sweet.’’ President Museveni clearly agrees But he should accept that his determination to keep his grip on Uganda’s seat of power for life is the last thing his country and Africa need in the 21st century is an editor at the Nation Media Group in Kenya WINTER GAMES CELEBRATION SALE FOR 26 WEEKS SCORE ON A DIGITAL 50% OFF SUBSCRIPTION LIMITED TIME OFFER | SALE ENDS FEB 26 Celebrate the Winter Games with this special offer for a digital subscription to the International New York Times Discover a wealth of exclusive stories, opinion, video and multimedia as well as insight and inspiration from the finest reporters, editors and columnists in news bureaus around the globe Get started now at inyt.com/celebrate Offer expires 2/26/14, a.m E.T Smartphone and tablet apps are not supported on all devices Does not include e-reader editions, Premium Crosswords or The New York Times Crosswords apps Other restrictions apply BY ADAM LIPTAK Here is a good way to get a belly laugh from Justice Clarence Thomas: Suggest to him that the Supreme Court’s decisions should seldom be overruled ‘‘You are the justice who is most willing to re-examine the court’s precedents,’’ Judge Diane S Sykes told him in November, in a public conversation at an annual dinner sponsored by the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group Justice Thomas responded with a deadpan statement that the audience could tell was a joke ‘‘That’s because of my affinity for stare decisis,’’ he said, using the Latin term for ‘‘to stand by things decided.’’ Then he let out a guffaw ‘‘Stare decisis doesn’t hold much force for you?’’ Judge Sykes asked ‘‘Oh, it sure does,’’ Justice Thomas responded ‘‘But not enough to keep me from going to the Constitution.’’ He was still laughing The audience gave him a standing ovation Justice Antonin Scalia was present, and he could not have been surprised ‘‘He does not believe in stare decisis, period,’’ Justice Scalia once told one of Justice Thomas’s biographers The current Supreme Court term has been a master class in stare decisis In cases argued in the last few months, the justices have been asked to overturn or modify important precedents concerning campaign finance, abortion protests, legislative prayer and union organizing And on March 5, the court will consider a request to overrule a 1988 securities fraud decision If the court does so, it will away with most class actions for securities fraud As is his custom, Justice Thomas has not participated in the arguments this term Indeed, Saturday was the eighth anniversary of the last time he asked a question from the bench Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker recently called Justice Thomas’s silence ‘‘downright embarrassing.’’ But the real work of the Supreme Court is done in written opinions, and there Justice Thomas has laid out a consistent and closely argued judicial vision Consider his most recent statement on stare decisis It came in his majority opinion in June in Alleyne v United States, which overruled a 2002 decision on the jury’s role in criminal sentencing Overturning the earlier decision was permissible, Justice Thomas said, because the power of precedent is ‘‘at its nadir in cases concerning procedural rules that implicate fundamental constitutional protections.’’ He added that the 2002 ruling was at odds with ‘‘the original meaning of the Sixth Amendment.’’ In dissent, Justice Samuel A Alito Jr wrote that ‘‘the court’s decision creates a precedent about precedent that may have greater precedential effect than the dubious decisions on which it relies.’’ The case to be argued next week, Halliburton v Erica P John Fund, No 13317, adds an important wrinkle to the usual analysis of whether a precedent deserves to survive That is because the decision in peril interpreted a federal law, the Securities Exchange Act, rather than the Constitution In constitutional cases, the Supreme Court has the last word If it is wrong, nothing short of a constitutional amendment can change things That suggests, as Justice Thomas told Judge Sykes, that the court should be open to addressing its errors Cases in which the court interprets statutes are different In them, Congress has the last word If lawmakers disagree with the court’s interpretation of a law, all they need to is say so in a new law If Congress fails to act, it may be said to agree with the court’s decision Letting lawmakers have the last word ‘‘arises from the respect owed to the legislative branch and the reality that Congress is often better suited to evaluate whether an existing statutory rule or interpretation should be abandoned in light of changed circumstances of policy judgments,’’ Charles Fried, who served as United States solicitor general in the Reagan administration, wrote in a supporting brief urging the justices to leave the 1988 precedent alone Justice Thomas seems to agree In a 1994 concurrence, he wrote that ‘‘considerations of stare decisis have ‘special force’ in the area of statutory interpretation.’’ According to the plaintiffs in the new case, the Supreme Court has not overruled a statutory precedent in an area in which Congress has been active since 1961, in a tax case But lawyers for the defendants said the 1988 decision was entitled to ‘‘lessened precedential weight’’ because it was ‘‘largely a procedural and evidentiary construct.’’ Justice Thomas agreed that the decision ‘‘is questionable.’’ Since he will almost certainly ask no questions at the argument next week, we will have to wait until the court decides the case, probably in June, to see how just how weak his ‘‘affinity for stare decisis’’ is BY KAREEM FAHIM AND MAYY EL SHEIKH Afghan Army soldiers on Monday carrying the coffin of one of 21 comrades shot and killed in their sleep on Sunday by Taliban insurgents at a remote base in Kunar Province The authorities said the guards on duty were apparently Taliban sympathizers It was the worst loss of life for the army since 2010 rarely used covert tool or something that should be reserved for extraordinarily rare use, against the most sophisticated, hard-to-reach targets And looming over the issue is the question of retaliation — whether a cyberattack on Syria’s air power, its electric grid or its leadership would prompt Syrian, Iranian or Russian retaliation in the United States It is a debate Mr Obama has never spoken about publicly Because he has put the use of cyberweapons largely into the hands of the National Security Agency, which operates under covert authorities, there is little of the public discussion that accompanied the arguments over nuclear weapons in the 1950’s and 1960’s, or the kind of roiling argument over the wisdom of using drones, another classified program that Mr Obama only began to discuss publicly in the past 18 months But to many inside the administration, who declined to speak on the record about discussions over one of America’s most highly-classified capabilities, Syria puts the issue back on the table Mr Obama’s national security council met on Thursday to explore what one official called ‘‘old and new options.’’ One of the central issues of the debate is whether a cyberstrike on Syria would be seen as a justified humanitarian intervention — less likely to cause civilian casualties than airstrikes — or whether it would only embolden American adversaries who have been debating themselves how to use cyberweapons Jason Healey, the director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said it was ‘‘worth doing to show that cyber operations are not evil witchcraft but can be humanitarian.’’ Others caution whether that would be the perception ‘‘Here in the U.S we tend to view a cyberattack as a de-escalation — it’s less damaging than airstrikes,’’ said Peter W Singer, a scholar at the Brookings In- stitution who has published a book on cyberdefense and offense, ‘‘Cyber Security and Cyber War: What Everyone Needs to Know.’’ ‘‘But elsewhere in the world it may well be viewed as opening up a new realm of warfare,’’ he said Internally, Mr Obama has made no secret of his concerns about using cyberweapons He narrowed ‘‘Olympic Games,’’ the program against the Iranian nuclear enrichment program, to assure that it did not cripple civilian facilities, like hospitals What he liked about the program was that it was covert, and that, if successful, it could help buy time to force the Iranians into negotiations That is exactly what happened But when a technological error resulted in the broadcast of the ‘‘Stuxnet’’ virus around the world, ultimately leading to the revelation of the program’s origins with the cyberwarri- ors at the N.S.A and Israel’s Unit 6200, Mr Obama’s hopes of keeping such programs at arm’s length were dashed Since then, there has been no overt evidence that the United States has used cyberweapons in another major attack (It was considered during the NATO attacks on Libya in the spring of 2011, but dismissed after Mr Obama’s advisers warned him that there was no assurance they would work against Muammar al-Qaddaffi’s antiquated, pre-Internet air defenses.) The director of the N.S.A, Gen Keith B Alexander, said in an interview last year that cyberweapons had been used only a handful of times in his eight-year tenure But Syria is a complicated case, raising different issues than the attack on Iran did In Syria, the humanitarian impulse to something — without putting Americans at risk or directly entering the civil war — is growing inside the administration Most of that discussion focuses on providing more training and arms for ‘‘moderate’’ rebel groups But in the conversations about stepping up covert action, cyber is one tool under discussion Part of the argument is that Syria is a place where America could change its image using its most advanced technology for a humanitarian purpose ‘‘The United States has been caught using Stuxnet to conduct a covert cyber campaign against Iran as well as trawling the Internet with the massive Prism collection operation,’’ Mr Healey wrote recently ‘‘The world is increasingly seeing U.S cyber power as a force for evil in the world A cyber operation against Syria might help to reverse this view.’’ Yet that would require openly taking credit for a cyberattack — something the United States has never done Even if the United States wanted to act covertly, a cyberattack on Syria would be hard to keep secret Anything that grounded the air fleet, or turned out the lights at key facilities in Damascus and at major military outposts, would be instantly noticed — and would not necessarily be accomplished quickly United States military planners concluded after putting together options for Mr Obama over the past two and a half years that any meaningful attack on Syria’s facilities would have to be both long enough to make a difference and targeted enough to keep from making an already suffering population even worse off For those and other reasons there are doubters throughout the military and intelligence establishment ‘‘It’d be of limited utility, frankly,’’ one senior administration official said For instance, a cyberattack could disrupt or shut down the navigational systems for Syria’s aircraft, including the BY ASHLEY PARKER Representative John D Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and the longestserving member of Congress in history, announced on Monday that he would not seek re-election at the end of his current term Mr Dingell’s retirement, first announced by Detroit newspapers and confirmed by Democratic leadership aides, will come at the end of this year — the end of his 29th full term — and represents the end of a historic tenure in the House that began in 1955 That year, Mr Dingell, at the age of 29, succeeded his father after he died Mr Dingell, 87, who amassed considerable power as the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in June became the longest-serving member of Congress with 20,997 days as a representative Until then, the record had been held by Senator Robert C Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia Mr Dingell has served under 11 presidents Mr Dingell asserted jurisdiction over vast expanses of federal policy as the intimidating chairman of the energy committee In 2008, his fellow Democrats ousted him from the committee chairmanship, where he had reigned as the top Democrat for nearly 30 years Mr Dingell, feet inches tall, had grown stooped in his later years, walking with the help of a cane (from Harrods in London) or wheeling around on a motorized scooter (with a plaque proclaiming him ‘‘the Dean’’ of the House) But Mr Dingell said his retirement had as much to with the changing nature of the body in which he served as with any health concerns He had recently begun to bemoan the current culture of Congress — its members’ inability to work together and compromise — and in an interview with The Detroit News, he was even more pointed: ‘‘I find serving in the House to be obnoxious,’’ he told the newspaper ‘‘It’s become very hard because of the acrimony and bitterness, both in Congress and in the streets.’’ Mr Dingell’s retirement is also anoth- Russian-designed Mi-8 and Mi-17 helicopters that are carrying out many of the so-called barrel bomb attacks against civilians in Homs and Aleppo But Syrian commanders would most likely shift to other weapons in their arsenal, such as array of rockets and missiles, including longer-range Scud missiles, that Mr Assad’s forces have already employed with deadly affect Syria is no stranger to cyberattacks, either on the receiving or the giving end Israel’s September 2007 strike that destroyed a nuclear reactor being built in the Syrian desert was accompanied by an ingenious cyberattack that blinded the country’s air defenses When the Syrian military awoke the next morning, the reactor being built with North Korean help was a smoking hole in the ground, as were some associated facilities On the offensive end, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which follows cyberissues, assembled evidence in a report published late last year that the Syrians had used an old ‘‘spear phishing’’ scam that gets their target to click on a link in an email, in this case videos of war atrocities, to identify people who are aiding the rebel groups and get inside their computer systems And the Syrian Electronic Army, which American intelligence officials suspect is actually Iranian, has conducted strikes against targets in the United States over the past year, including the website of The New York Times Mostly, these have been denial of service attacks, annoying and disruptive, but not truly sophisticated The chances that Syria could manage a significant cyber-response is low, American officials and outside experts said But the precedent could free up the Russians and the Iranians — who also have stakes in the Syrian war, and far more capability — into a new and rapidly escalating form of warfare Eric Schmitt contributed reporting er blow for Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, who has lost several of her key liberal allies to retirement Earlier this year, Representatives George Miller and Henry A Waxman, both of California, also announced their retirements Mr Dingell became famous for his socalled Dingell-grams, the elaborate written requests for information from people or agencies he planned to investigate, and he considered his committee’s oversight powers to be far-reaching, often pointing to a map of the Earth when asked what his jurisdiction was He also became well-known for his support of progressive causes He voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act — a vote he considers his most important — and presided over the passage of Medicare (The gavel he used still sits on his desk.) Following the lead of his father, John, who introduced his own national health care legislation at the beginning of every Congress, Mr Dingell continued the tradition, and voted in favor of President Obama’s signature health care law His wife of more than three decades, Deborah, is a power in her own right in Washington She has served as an auto industry executive and is a close adviser to her husband She recently considered, but ultimately decided against, a Senate bid There is speculation that she might run for her husband’s seat Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi abruptly announced the resignation of his government on Monday after seven turbulent months of trying to contain Egypt’s political unrest and growing criticism of the cabinet’s performance Mr Beblawi was installed as prime minister last July by the military soon after it removed the country’s Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi His resignation on Monday fueled speculation that it was intended to clear the way for Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the defense minister and the dominant figure in the government, to announce his candidacy for president The interim government led by Mr Beblawi has faced persistent questions about its authority and legitimacy During its tenure, the military and the security services embarked on a ferocious campaign to suppress Mr Morsi’s supporters and other rivals, resulting in the worst mass killings in modern Egyptian history Despite infusions of cash from Persian Gulf states meant to prop up Egypt’s economy, a wave of labor strikes emerged as the latest challenge to Mr Beblawi, affecting a number of crucial groups, including police officers, textile workers, doctors and transportation employees Even though the government was under considerable pressure, one minister said the announcement came as a surprise It was made after a cabinet was convened a day earlier than had been scheduled ‘‘I walked in this morning; the resignation statement was read; I left,’’ the minister said Speaking on television afterward, Mr Beblawi complained about the strikes and ‘‘personal interests.’’ He also said, ‘‘This is the time to put the country’s interests above everyone.’’ While he allowed that the government had not achieved ‘‘complete success’’ in his tenure, he asserted that the state’s ‘‘prestige’’ had been restored, mention- ing the ratification of a new Constitution ‘‘The police and the armed forces impose the power of law on everybody,’’ he added ‘‘That doesn’t mean that there aren’t disruptions here and there, but this is a normal in a fierce confrontation with a side that doesn’t want good things for the country.’’ It was not clear who would replace the ministers who had resigned The state news media reported that they would continue to oversee their ministries until a new government was seated Field Marshal Sisi, who is seen as Egypt’s most popular political figure, has yet to formally declare that he will run for president, but people who have met with him recently speak of his candidacy as a foregone conclusion When an Egyptian delegation visited Russia this month, President Vladimir V Putin wished Field Marshal Sisi luck in his campaign • An article in the Saturday/Sunday editions about the founders of WhatsApp, the text messaging service acquired by Facebook, misstated the number of employees WhatsApp had last summer It was 40, not 30 • An obituary on Feb 13 about Marty Plissner, a longtime political director for CBS News, referred incorrectly to the origin of the phrase ‘‘too close to call.’’ It has been in use at least since 1933, when The New York Times used it in a sports column; it was not, as Mr Plissner claimed, ‘‘invented at CBS’’ in the early 1960s, although that was when CBS News began using the phrase in its coverage of elections (His erroneous claim, as noted in the obituary, also appeared in one of William Safire’s ‘‘On Language’’ columns in The Times, in 1996.) • An article in the Feb 15/16 editions about the actor Andy Karl, who plays the lead in the new Broadway musical ‘‘Rocky,’’ misidentified the musical in which he met his wife, the actress Orfeh It was ‘‘Saturday Night Fever,’’ not ‘‘Legally Blonde.’’ • An article on Friday about disillusionment among Libyans on the eve of a vote to elect members of a constitutional assembly quoted incorrectly from a law passed by Libya’s General National Congress in December It declared that Shariah should be ‘‘the source of legislation,’’ not ‘‘above the constitution.’’ .=IDEE= To be both peaceful and forceful in fashion is a special achievement And who but could have made an entire collection out of subtly redrawn silhouettes colored only in the softest green, shaded to gray? Those colors enveloped the show that closed the Milan collections on Monday ‘‘The force of green,’’ said the designer as he stood among his models after the show’s end The lineup told the whole story: a crescent moon of outfits from tailored coats, cut in the round, to long dresses Among the choices was a fresh asparagus color, with the model’s bare legs striding out of a back slit, wearing flat pumps in celery green The color focus in the collection seemed to embrace nature and the city, almost as though the designer were telling a story of a woman trapped in town who escapes to green fields The opening pieces were smart and urban, mostly pants, but they were slightly cropped and loose The same ease was found in the shorter rounded jackets made in soft flannel fabrics that dominated the collection The changes to the Armani silhouette seemed so insignificant — and yet they did so much The proportions worked fine for both flat and high heels, and when the color was gray, a handbag might be green and sparkling, a twinkling surface that also appeared on some dresses The ability to change so subtly, yet to stay yourself, is the mark of a great designer So, once again, Mr Armani’s draft of lime has earned him that status SUZY MENKES If you can’t tell the boys’ clothes from the girls’, that is just fine with Angela Missoni Like so many designers this season, she hit the sweet fashion spot by using simple, sporty shapes while putting her energy into extraordinary textures It helped that three-quarters of the show was in knit of some kind, although it was hard to believe that an apparently tweedy coat was, in fact, knitted That same reaction applied to many inventive effects of looped intarsia and chevron pattern Then there were the colors — juicy and joyous, as sunflower yellow and orange with a dash of swimming pool blue appeared on coats, pants and sweaters in this excellent collection Texture is fashion’s ongoing story for winter 2014 For the duo behind the concept is often drawn from the richness of the past, a time when it was normal to mix tweed and velvet, sprinkle an outfit with appliquèd roses or use fur buttons on a flannel jacket Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi cited their inspiration as graphic Art Deco and the lush beauty of the films of Luchino Visconti But the collection, with its pleated skirts or wafts of organza around the knees, caught the meld of fabrics that seems modern One way to define autumn 2014 fashion is the ‘‘feel’’ of winter — meaning both the fabrics and their effect told his story graphically, like a black and white movie Inspired by the watercolors of the German artist Joachim Bandau, the designer used a kind of shadow play to give a third dimension to streamlined clothes Degradations of color, as black moved to gray, had a gentle, painterly effect Cobblers, heads down, molding leather around a last, worked under the soaring stone ceiling of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan They were demonstrating the art and craft of and the company’s famous footwear in an exceptional setting Fifty historic shoes from its Florentine museum were displayed in the academy’s scenography department, where miniature buildings from small homes to vast cathedrals had been created by students The focus on Ferragamo shoes, the core of the brand, came at an interesting point in the company’s development: The fashion show held earlier as part of the autumn 2014 Milan season was probably the most convincing collection yet from the designer Massimiliano Giornetti Starting with misty gray and white checks for tailoring rounded at the shoulders, the designer focused on intense craftsmanship within a clearly drawn silhouette The textures of furry mohair sweaters or knife-pleated leather skirts created extra dimensions, as did animal prints partly saturated with black, as if paint had been thrown at them The effect of dripping color became more dramatic when lemon yellow or a pinky purple were added Both the sur- face decoration, achieved with jacquard and needle punching, and the urban sportiness of the clothes were striking And don’t forget the footwear ‘‘I loved those little boots,’’ said Hilary Swank, referring to ankle-high shiny bootees The actress said she would be confident of their comfort because that was part of Salvatore Ferragamo’s original aesthetic Take the shoes or the clothes? That is a pertinent question now that Italian accessory designers are following in the platform-soled steps of earlier design generations like Gucci and Prada Both those brands developed renowned shoe and bag houses into luxury fashion brands back in the 1990s Twenty years on, can it be done again? Diego Della Valle believes so The president and chief executive of the Tod empire has built fashion into the line and now has offered a surprise from this season Along with the footwear, with its buckled boots, knee-high in soft leather or laced high tops with splashy patterns, the designer Simon Holloway created a full collection of clothes While his men’s wear in January had A rusty orange gleaming from the surface of a purse and another, very different shade of flamingo pink were rare flourishes from This bag company was built on discretion — and on the practical effects that the designer Álvaro González has worked inside the purse He rightly understands that Valextra’s customers are looking for useful additions rather than flashy inventions Mr González is, therefore, interested in the ergonomics of leather goods, producing, for example, a wallet big enough to hold money, credit cards and a space to slide in a digital tablet The aim is to make living and traveling easier And when Mr González works the brushed surface of a burnt orange bag with embossing, the effect is as discreet as it is elegant How many aluminum drink cans will the public throw into recycling bins? It cannot be too many for Ilaria Venturini Fendi, whose imaginative use of the cans’ metal tabs seem to know no bounds They appear in many guises to decorate her bags, giving a sharp style to compare with the sportier and malleable bags that Ms Fendi has handmade in Africa The wolves howled, that particular cry across the frozen steppes that creates shivers — even if these wild animals were just on video screens, part of a stage set ‘‘Little Red Riding Hood,’’ said backstage, following that name with a list of artists, poets and writers who focused on wolves and their fictional, scary variations in fairy tales It seemed an unlikely fashion inspiration but it was extremely effective in drawing the designer away from his tendency to embrace the past as a path to a magical collection The wolves were there from the start: two animals, necks stretched, tongues hanging, as they cried toward the moon — and all this just above the hem of a rounded and regular winter coat So the embellishment went on, with been focused on tough biker stuff, this Hogan collection was whimsical, using the drawings of the artist Julie Verhoeven to suggest the 1970s as it moved to the ’80s Bold, fur-trimmed jackets in chalky whites or perhaps a fiery plum pink complemented the printed chiffon hippie-de-luxe dresses Why move into fashion when accessories are the cash cow of so many companies? ‘‘The idea is to complete our story,’’ said Mr Della Valle, explaining that while the focus may be on accessories now, companies need a wide offering Hence his brother Andrea, the group’s vice president, is expanding the range of Fay, another Tod’s brand, along with Hogan ‘‘The difference today is that we have our shops to fill Before we had to sell things to stores,’’ said Mr Della Valle to explain the strategy Tod’s, for example, already has 200 stores worldwide Yet this strategy is not universally accepted has moved in the opposite direction, putting more focus on its core products and its new but experienced shoe and bag designer, Pablo Coppola He has concentrated on quality, intriguing surface treatments and a distinct Bally look that does not require bold logos A super-glossy treatment for leather, giving it the sheen of a rubber boot but keeping a luxurious softness, was one example, made in gum pink and a rich red The same colors appeared on a red suede bag with snakeskin handles while other unexpected shades for bags included a light pistachio green and shrimp pink ‘‘Ready-to-wear is a compliment to the total look, but craftsmanship is our brand DNA,’’ said Frédéric de Narp, Bally’s chief executive That attitude was reflected in a lineup of classic court shoes: a Bally signature from pointed toe to pin-thin heel SUZY the wolf and his teeth particularly effective on a chunky sweater as a bold symbol on the chest is now all the fashion rage The color palette was perfect: a sanguine red, but the dark tones contrasting with flashes of pink and pale turquoise For embellishment, there was lace paneling, shearling and brocade — but none of those gave a heaviness to the clothes The finale was dramatic as the models mounted a scaffolding so that, as Mr Marras explained, they could get closer to the moon SUZY MENKES Suzy Menkes talks with Antonio Marras about wolves, Sardinia and a designer’s dreams MENKES The textures had a similar trajectory, with craft difficult to define from a distance, but adding to the feeling that handwork is one of the important features of Italy’s promising young designers The winter 2014 show by was one indication why LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton announced on Monday that it is taking a minority stake of about 45 percent in the designer’s company Pietro Baccari, chairman and chief executive of the LVMH brand Fendi, was at the show Mr de Vincenzo has been designing for Fendi for about 13 Another recent creation is the light switch bag It has nothing to with casting a beam on a purse’s interior (although that would be a smart invention) Instead, old switches are put to use decorating bags — one of the many inventive ways that Carmina Campus reuses castoffs SUZY MENKES years This is a young Roman designer whose skill with fur and leather is exceptional Working on the surface of fabrics, Mr de Vincenzo sent waves of material rolling down the front of a dress while the same dramatic effect was achieved on other garments with chevron work These patterns ran diagonally or on angles, making it difficult on the runway to identify the base material But the designer is also capable of creating simple clothes for his generation, like a blazer jacket with Lurex highlights melding into one another on the dress underneath Craft, imagination and originality make him a rising star at Milan Fashion Week , another name to watch, took a turn out of Africa for her new collection, focusing instead on knitwear done in Italy Each of the giant coats with bold patterns that opened the show required more than 100 hours of handwork, said the designer, Stella Maria Jean Novarino But like so much of this collection, Ms Novarino kept tripping over her own feet — literally, in the case of models in sky-high stilettos She is especially successful with print and, though the show notes talked about inspiration from the Kabuki theater of Japan, what really For the men’s wear collection last month, designers put their models inside a penitentiary For the women’s show Monday, it was a madhouse — and it was hard to decide which presentation was more discomforting As with the men’s show, the clothes were quite interesting, especially as the designers Dean and Dan Caten appear to have moved toward an early 1960s style and also offered full-on long evening gowns The story seemed to go something like this: mentally disturbed women, remembering their past of glamorous parties, were hanging out in an all-white medical area complete with wire caging They were then accompanied by two nurselike figures, in all white with helmets, which looked like André Courrèges outfits from the 1960s The design duo were on message with this nod to the A-line tailoring of the prehippie era In fact, some of the day wear had a faint resonance with this season’s Gucci collection It may be smart to extend DSquared2’s style beyond sportswear Yet the show seemed to be pushing boundaries of decency — not on the runway, but in the presentation The duo behind the label looked as upbeat and excited when they took their bow as their wacky and whimsical clothes did on the runway The idea of highlighting Eurotrash worked were the bold African-style wax prints on which she established her collection Intriguingly, it turned out that the geometric patterns on tailored pieces with clean lines were the ‘‘made in Africa’’ part of the collection, handwork from Burkina Faso The clothes for the designer’s ‘‘urban Madame Butterfly’’ were just too fancy in cut and decoration Ms Novarino needs to step back, reassess her strengths and remember that modern women should be striding, not teetering SUZY MENKES girls was only the beginning, for these feisty females seemed to have a penchant for cute animals, preferably cats and dogs, printed side by side The animals even appeared as intarsia treatment on furs The energy and sense of fun even made prints of lips, common since the era of Salvador Dali, seem fresh SUZY MENKES The closing ceremony of the Sochi Games was a celebration of everything Russian, and everything that Russia does so well A pianist filled Fisht Olympic Stadium with Rachmaninoff as dozens of grand pianos floated around the stage Sunday night Ballet dancers twirled and leapt so expertly that they surely could have won a gold medal for their efforts Massive photos of the country’s best writers — Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky — were greeted with wild applause The entire night provided a showcase for Russia’s many success stories, and like it or not, hosting an Olympics is now among them Dmitry Chernyshenko, the president of the Sochi organizing committee, told me that he considered these Olympics ‘‘impeccable,’’ and purely from an athletic standpoint, I have to agree As the two of us stood outside the main hockey arena, we looked out at the Olympic Park, which sits on the Black Sea, and marveled at what Russia had built, turning a crumbling summer vacation spot filled with Stalin-era sanitariums into a compact collection of state-ofthe-art sporting venues In a lot of ways, these Games were better than Olympics past The venues, the transportation, the setting, the security — all winning Sure, soft snow and a few unfinished hotels upset some athletes and visitors, but most of the competitors raved ‘‘I have not heard one bad thing from anyone,’’ said the hockey player Julie Chu, who won a silver medal and was the flag-bearer for the United States at the closing ceremony So why might there be some reluctance to acknowledge that these Games were so good? Maybe because the suc- cess of them also stands as a symbol of the power and influence of President Vladimir V Putin Putin lobbied Olympic officials to give these Games to Sochi, which has long been his personal getaway They did, and seven years later they were confronted with the makings of a grim sporting event Terrorist threats kept some fans and athletes’ families away Putin’s politics turned attention before the Games to human rights violations instead of athletics His disturbing record of quashing voices of dissent and his law criminalizing the spread of ‘‘gay propaganda’’ to children made the Olympics difficult for many to enjoy without reservation But as the Games went on, athletes were treated with respect, and none who wanted to express their opinions about politics were silenced, according to those I spoke with That’s what made these Games so special, said Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee’s new president ‘‘By living together under one roof in the Olympic Village, you send a powerful message from Sochi to the world, a message of a society of peace, tolerance and respect,’’ Bach said in his closing ceremony speech, which may or may not have been scripted with Putin in mind He continued, ‘‘I appeal to everybody implicated in confrontation, oppression or violence: Act on this Olympic message of dialogue and peace.’’ From his office overlooking the Olympic Park, Bach had told me that he did his best to keep Putin’s politics — and all politics — from marring the spirit of the competitions, or the events themselves He basically said he was annoyed that he had to play referee between countries and leaders who kept trying to inject politics into these Games While he did not name those world leaders, he said he did not ‘‘appreciate when governments sent political messages on the backs of their athletes.’’ It was easy to guess to whom he was referring: Putin and President Obama, who declined to attend these Olympics and sent a delegation with several openly gay members instead, presumably to make a point ‘‘This is exactly what the I.O.C doesn’t need,’’ Bach told me, referring to the attempt to politicize the Games I asked him why the I.O.C had chosen Sochi to host the Games, particularly when the city is in one of the most restive areas of the world He said it was because Russia did not have winter sports facilities after the dissolution of the Soviet Union — those facilities had been based outside Russia — and because the I.O.C wanted to help a great winter sports country build an infrastructure for winter sports That seemed like a feeble reason But double-gun anti-salute, if you will — behind Ahn’s back as the two crossed the finished line Now, he’ll be remembered for something else: being the first athlete from the Netherlands to win a medal of any kind in short track At a news conference afterward, Knegt beamed, as elated as any third-place finisher has ever looked DAVID SEGAL THE NEW YORK TIMES The 2014 Winter Olympics might be over, but lasting impressions remain with the people who covered the Games on the slopes of Krasnaya Polyana, Russia, and in the arenas in Sochi There was a ski-rental shop at the base of the gondola In exchange for 1,400 rubles (about $40) and temporary custody of my American driver’s license, I got skis, poles, boots and a helmet for the day My Olympic credential got me on the gondola and the next one and the next one, until there were no more mountains to climb and the view was all downhill Through the snow-capped peaks, the Black Sea was a dark shadow on the horizon I had an hour to kill before I met Danny Davis and Greg Bretz, American snowboarders who had agreed to let me ski with them to see how they unwound after the halfpipe competition I wove past the downhill course and a slalom training session The slopes were virtually empty I got to our prescribed meeting point at the top of the first gondola It was hot, and I stripped off my jacket and sat in the shade A man approached He wore a backpack that had a tube protruding, and he poured himself a malty-looking beverage There was a bit of foam at the top He took a sip He pointed to it and raised his eyebrows, the international gesture to ask if I wanted a cup, too In broken English, he said that it made him ski better I used two of the three Russian words I knew: Nyet, spasibo No, thank you The last thing I needed at 10:30 in the morning was a beer A woman came along, and the man cheerfully poured her a beverage Funny: A guy just hands out beers on the slopes in the morning But then she stepped into the cool shade, and I saw steam rising from her cup I looked at her quizzically The woman raised the plastic cup ‘‘Chai,’’ she said I knew another word after all It was tea I turned to the man Yes, of course Please Spasibo JOHN BRANCH Mikaela Shiffrin had won the Olympic gold medal in slalom, been saluted by the finish-line grandstand crowd in a flower ceremony, held a huge news conference before an international gathering of journalists and found time to hug countless teammates, opponents, coaches and friends With her face flushed and her eyes wide, Shiffrin was well aware she was living a shining, definitive moment in a young life But as she left the Alpine skiing area late Friday night and headed out into a new world of celebrity, there was still one little ritual to complete, something Shiffrin had been doing after ski races since she was in grade school She wanted to pose for a picture with her parents In visits to the Shiffrin home in the last year, I saw dozens of these kinds of snapshots: Shiffrin with her parents, Eileen and Jeff, at the bottom of innumerable racecourses in Colorado, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Utah, Canada and Europe In the earliest photos, she was half as tall as her parents Slowly, in more ways than one, she began to progress in stature But on the night she became the youngest Olympic slalom champion, and with the athletic world buzzing over the possibilities of an 18-year-old budding ski queen, Shiffrin abruptly stopped the whirlwind enveloping her With the slope where she had just made history behind her, Shiffrin threw an arm around each parent, handed over a cellphone and smiled for another picture This was important The photo, a twinkling image from the mountains of southern Russia late on a if the goal of the Olympics is to increase the participation in Olympic sports, they must have succeeded this time There were other, more important benefits to having the Games here More than 25,000 volunteers were needed to conduct these Olympics Many of them appeared sullen when the Games began but were smiling and dancing in the Olympic Park by the end Walking to my hotel after the closing ceremony on Sunday, I saw several of them crying in celebration The ones I spoke to over the past few weeks said working for free had been a new concept for them, as it was for many people in Russia Similarly, if the Games had not been held here, the uproar about Russia’s antigay law — among other oppressive laws — would not have been heard by so many around the world Putin got the Olympics, and his country thrived A less endearing side of Russia was exposed in the process, which might prove to be the most important success of the Games here Friday night, will look good in the family album BILL PENNINGTON There is a good chance Andi Langenhan does not remember me But for a few moments early in the Olympics, he provided some much-needed inspiration Ill, freezing and questioning my decision to make the trip, I waited for Langenhan, a German luger, to walk through the mixed zone, where reporters can speak to the athletes after their races My assignment was to find the fourth-place finisher, and Langenhan had missed a medal by 558-thousandths of a second, so he was my target Many athletes in this situation can barely hide their disappointment and dish out bromides about their respect for those ahead of them Langenhan was different He said that he had hoped to win a medal but that he was pleased that he had improved on his fifth-place finish at the Vancouver Games Bouncing with energy, he seemed eager to start training for the 2018 Games ‘‘The little man in my head always says go on, go on, go harder, for sure,’’ Langenhan, 29, said after the men’s singles competition ‘‘But I know I can it All the other guys who are unknown who come to the top 10 can reach a medal for sure, and everybody is getting older and knows what to do.’’ It dawned on me that if Langenhan could see the bright side in his dispiriting near miss, then I should be able to the same Thanks to Langenhan, my stride gained a step, and my gloom lifted KEN BELSON Yuzuru Hanyu had just become the first Japanese man to win a gold medal in figure skating It was an unlikely victory Three years earlier, Hanyu had been skating at his home rink in Sendai, near the epicenter of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck northeast Japan As the ice rumbled and pipes burst, Hanyu fled the rink, running outside in his skates, ruining his blades It might have been tempting to (AP) Toronto He knew that his victory could not really help anyone recover in Sendai He felt helpless, he said, as if he were ‘‘not making any contributions.’’ But now he had a gold medal It was at least a starting point ‘‘Perhaps,’’ Hanyu said, ‘‘there is something I can going forward.’’ JERÉ LONGMAN ascribe some civic inspiration to his gold-medal-winning performance But Hanyu, 19, self-aware beyond his years, was not a man of sentimentality He knew the limits of sport just as he had reached its zenith After his victory, Hanyu was solemn instead of celebrative He expressed gratitude to those who had lent his career financial and spiritual support At the same time, he hinted that he felt guilty for leaving home to train in Gold gets the glory, but sometimes it is the fight for the lesser medals that impresses the most In the finals of the men’s 1,000-meter short-track race, two Russians, Victor Ahn and Vladimir Grigorev, took the lead by the third lap and never lost it Sjinkie Knegt of the Netherlands, who was in last with five laps to go, slipped into third with two laps remaining, but in the crucial final turn of the last lap, he was edged to the outside of the track by Sin Da-woon of South Korea The phrase ‘‘at the wrong place at the wrong time’’ was never more apt Knegt and Sin bumped each other a bit, and then it was a three-stride dash to the line Just before they crossed, Knegt jutted out his right leg And that was the difference — a perfectly timed lunge of the foot Until that moment, Knegt was best known as the skater disqualified from the European championships for making an obscene gesture — a kind of There’s an old Norwegian fairy tale in which a huge, snarling troll challenges a lost little boy to an eating contest They sit down at a table for porridge, and the boy somehow matches the troll spoon for spoon, and then bowl for bowl And then the boy pulls ahead, putting away a bathtub’s worth of porridge while the troll struggles to take another bite The boy wins (and the troll soon dies a gruesome death) How did he it? Well, it was a bit of a cheat: The boy dumped the porridge into a bottomless bag secretly taped to his stomach But that’s not the point ‘‘The point is, he never seems full; he’s always hungry,’’ said Ole Kristian Stoltenberg, one of Norway’s most prominent biathlon commentators ‘‘And that’s Bjorndalen.’’ At the Sochi Games, Ole Einar Bjorndalen, the undisputed king of biathlon, won two gold medals, the 12th and 13th Olympic medals of his career If it’s possible to strut on cross-country skis, Bjorndalen did as he flew past the competition in race after race, his poles jauntily jutting out behind him like Fred Astaire’s umbrella At 40, Bjorndalen is old enough to be the father of some of the biathletes he dominated in the Sochi Games Benjamin Weger, a 24-year-old Swiss biathlete, remembers the first time he found himself racing against Bjorndalen ‘‘That was really a great feeling to compete with him,’’ he said ‘‘That moment was so great.’’ Weger didn’t seem too upset at being trounced by his boyhood idol ‘‘For me, biathlon is Bjorndalen, and Bjorndalen is biathlon,’’ he said Bjorndalen assumed folk-hero status so long ago that now, as he enters middle age, even his injuries have assumed a mythic grandeur In 2011, reports said he hurt his back while he was helping a friend chop firewood In Bjorndalen’s hometown, Simostranda, Norway, there’s a 10-foot bronze statue of him racing on skis King Harald V attended the unveiling The statue’s dimensions — Herculean thighs, broad shoulders — are generous Bjorndalen is surprisingly small, more elfin than titan When he takes the rifle off his back and removes the laurels from his neck, he could pass as a friendly high school gym teacher But Bjorndalen is adored like few other winter athletes In Sochi, he was one of the few foreigners whom Russian fans unequivocally embraced ‘‘He’s so amazing; he’s so determined,’’ said Tiril Eckhoff, 23, a teammate on the Norwegian team ‘‘He’s so old, too.’’ In this age of tarnished heroes, anyone who wins gold medals into his 40s has to be looked at askance Is he doping? Stoltenberg, the Norwegian commentator who has long tracked Bjorndalen’s every race, seemed offended by the question ‘‘If he tested positive for doping, I would quit my work,’’ Stoltenberg said He seemed to mean it The biathlon press corps has shown Bjorndalen a reverence that would make world leaders seethe with envy After Bjorndalen won his first gold medal of these Games, a reporter asked him what amounted to ‘‘You’re not the type of athlete to give up, are you?’’ At another news conference, after another gold medal, a reporter wanted to know what it felt like to win more medals than any Winter Olympian before him Bjorndalen sighed ‘‘Your first feeling is tiredness,’’ he said SAM DOLNICK BY RAPHAEL MINDER BY HARVEY ARATON After a Boston Celtics game last season, inside the locker room, Coach Doc Rivers singled out Jason Collins for missing a defensive assignment, for being out of position Rivers told Collins, a veteran 7-foot center, ‘‘I thought you were in the wrong spot, and that’s why I got on you in the game.’’ At which point Kevin Garnett, a surefire Hall of Famer, interjected: ‘‘He ain’t ever in the wrong spot Are you kidding?’’ Rivers subsequently looked at the game video and realized that he, in fact, had been mistaken Collins was right where he should have been The story, which Rivers shared with me in October in Los Angeles, where he now coaches the Clippers, came to mind with the announcement Sunday that Collins was finally in the position he imagined for himself last spring: the first openly gay and active athlete in one of the four major American professional sports leagues Collins, 35, agreed to a 10-day contract with the Nets — by no coincidence Garnett’s new team and the one coached by Jason Kidd, Collins’s longtime teammate when the franchise was stationed in New Jersey For this historic moment — at the end of a Winter Olympics noxiously anticipated because of a repressive law by the host country, Russia, against lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender citizens — let’s note that it was a team owned by a Russian, Mikhail D Prokhorov, that signed Collins four months into the N.B.A season John Amaechi, who played five seasons in the N.B.A and whose final game was in 2003, came out in 2007 Who would believe there have not been others? However many there were — or are — the jock fraternity world as we know it did not end, for those clinging to ignorant notions about locker room sanctity When I had lunch with the unsigned Collins in October in Los Angeles, he SUDOKU openly L.B.G.T people in their lives.’’ Taylor added, ‘‘What we’re seeing now is a critical mass of straight allies.’’ In the Nets’ case, it’s hard to imagine that Kidd, 40, and Garnett, 37, were not important allies, once it became clear that the team could not sign Glen Davis, a younger and better player They knew Collins well enough to base their decision on the fundamental realization that in addition to height, you can’t quickly teach 12 years of experience playing smart positional defense The Nets were the perfect team for Collins to walk into He broke into the N.B.A playing alongside Kidd, and had earned the trust of Paul Pierce and Garnett in Boston, and Joe Johnson in Atlanta His brother was a teammate of Deron Williams and Andrei Kirilenko in Utah ‘‘Guys already know what to expect from me,’’ Collins said ‘‘I’m not going to magically have a 40-inch vertical and shoot 3s.’’ Collins, white tape wrapped around his left wrist, stretched and ran through layup lines with his new teammates Sunday in Los Angeles before a game against the Lakers With Garnett sitting out because he rarely plays in games on consecutive nights, Collins’s opportunity figured to come sooner than later It arrived with 10 minutes 28 seconds left in the second quarter, when he stripped off his sweats and approached the scorer’s table Far from a distraction or liability, Collins can be counted on as an adult who embraces his role, no matter how few minutes he gets or how many weeks he lasts From the end of the bench, he will be ready to plant himself in the lane, grab a rebound, give a hard foul Rivers also said in October that Collins was a ‘‘really, really tough’’ guy Except Rivers used a noun much more colorful than ‘‘guy,’’ speaking the foul language of the locker room and making clear that Collins is the right man at the right time to be in the groundbreaking position he’s in, openly gay and back in the game Billy Witz contributed reporting from Los Angeles some remorse over landing his beloved soccer club in a legal quagmire He has also called on others to question the legality of some big recent soccer transfers, notably last summer’s record purchase by Real Madrid of the Welsh star Gareth Bale from the London club Tottenham Real Madrid and Tottenham diverged slightly at the time about what value they disclosed for Bales transfer, worth at least Ô90 million Including back taxes, however, it is now possible that Neymar, in fact, broke the world record for the world’s most expensive soccer transfer No 2502 Created by Peter Ritmeester/Presented by Will Shortz (c) PZZL.com Distributed by The New York Times syndicate 8 said, ‘‘I feel there are players in the league right now that, quite frankly, I’m better than.’’ At the league office, Commissioner David Stern and Adam Silver, who succeeded Stern this month, monitored the situation closely They wanted their league to move forward, to follow the popular and legal trends in the United States, the way the N.F.L probably will, or should, with Michael Sam In a telephone interview, Silver said he was ‘‘incredibly proud’’ for the league and ‘‘happy for Jason to have found a fit — poetic that he’s returning to the Nets.’’ But he added: ‘‘I’m cautious about celebrating it too much because where sports has led in so many ways, this is one of the places where we’ve trailed This should have happened long ago.’’ Hudson Taylor, the executive director of Athlete Ally, a gay rights group, has worked with incoming N.B.A players for two years, helping them to understand the issues better ‘‘The overwhelming sense I’ve gotten is that for the young players, this was no big deal,’’ Taylor said by telephone ‘‘The average age of a person coming out in the 1990s was 25 Now it’s 16 They are living in a world where there are F.C Barcelona said on Monday that it had paid 13.5 million euros in back taxes relating to the transfer last year of the Brazilian soccer star Neymar in an attempt to settle a legal dispute that had highlighted the opaque and convoluted system of payments used by soccer clubs to sign players The additional tax payment, the equivalent of about $18.6 million, which Barcelona described as voluntary, comes after the club’s president, Sandro Rosell, resigned last month, a day after a Spanish judge accepted a lawsuit accusing him of misappropriating funds as part of Neymar’s transfer The judge, Pablo Ruz, then extended the case last week to Barcelona, indicting the club for suspected tax fraud Barcelona said on Monday that it had not violated any law when it signed Neymar last summer and would continue to defend itself in the case ‘‘The club has scrupulously fulfilled its fiscal obligations in line with its awareness at the time of the contracts and agreements signed in good faith,’’ Barcelona said in a statement published after a board meeting It is unclear whether the voluntary tax payment will be sufficient to draw a line under the Spanish court case The dispute has snowballed into separate legal action in Brazil by Santos, the Brazilian club that sold Neymar to Barcelona Santos has accused Neymar’s father of keeping the club in the dark about a separate financial deal that he struck with Barcelona to transfer his son to the Catalan club Barcelona said it had agreed to pay the Ô13.5 million to the Spanish Treasury to cover any potential interpretation made concerning the contracts signed in the transfer process for Neymar, although we remain convinced that the original tax payment was in line with our fiscal obligations.’’ That amount, however, is more than what the prosecution in the case had demanded last week In its filing, the prosecutor, José Perals, estimated that Barcelona had defrauded the Spanish Treasury of Ô9.1 million by using multiple parallel contracts and ‘‘financial engineering’’ to reduce Barcelona’s tax liability The signing of Neymar last June was seen as a coup for Barcelona Neymar, the rising star of Brazilian soccer, had been targeted by several other European clubs, including Barcelona’s archrival, Real Madrid At the time of the signing, Barcelona said it had paid Ô57 million for Neymar But after Rosells abrupt departure, the club’s new management disclosed that bringing Neymar to Barcelona had cost at least Ô86 million, including Ô40 million paid to a company directly managed by Neymar’s father, Neymar da Silva The court case was triggered by a lawsuit filed last year by a Barcelona club member, Jordi Cases, who accused Rosell of covering up the actual terms of the transfer of Neymar, a prolific scorer whose full name is Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior Since then, Mr Cases has expressed 9 8 CROSSWORD | Edited by Will Shortz Fill the grid so that Solution every row, column 3x3 box and shaded 3x3 box contains each of the numbers to exactly once 9 2 10 11 12 32 33 64 65 No 2402 9 8 5 9 Test your defense in today’s deal (reported by Barry Rigal) from the ACBL Fall Championships Cover the South and West cards Against four hearts, West leads the ace of clubs, and dummy tables a minimum hand (I would say subminimum) for the three-spade overcall West continues with the three: jack, ruff by you West’s lowest club is ‘‘suit preference’’ to show strength in diamonds, the low-ranking side suit If West had a spade void, he would have led a high club at Trick Two How you defend as East? 34 Foot-pound? 36 Remote button Where Matisses 37 Driver’s license hang in N.Y.C datum Sun and moon, 38 Tomato and lettuce poetically pickers’ org Sacred Egyptian bird 39 ERNE 13 Sarcasm, informally 42 Energy 15 Paper quantity 43 Computerconnecting system, 16 Madrid tidbit for short 17 John known as the 44 Wheel connector “Teflon Don” 45 Tortilla chip dip 18 Big 47 EMIR 19 Med student course 51 Barack’s re-election 20 EPEE opponent 23 Discourteous 52 Pirate’s quaff 26 Asian-American 53 Makeshift shelters basketball sensation 55 What this puzzle’s Jeremy capitalized clues 27 “Let’s _!” are, both by definition and pun 28 ETUI Across ọ ì ọ ì ọ ì ọ × South is likely to have diamond length; µ his pattern may be 1-6-4-2 or 1-5-5-2 In å either case, to cash the ace of spades may gain and won’t cost: South will get two discards on the K-Q of spades, but å ä × unless he has the A-K of diamonds, he will still have a diamond loser å At the table East shifted to a diamond South took the ace, picked up the trumps, threw his spade loser on the king of clubs and conceded a diamond, making four Did you beat the contract? You hold: ä × µ å Your partner opens one heart, you respond one spade and he bids two clubs The opponents pass What you say? You certainly must commit to game A jump-preference to three hearts would be invitational, not forcing You would choose that action if your king of clubs were a low club With your actual hand, bid four hearts If partner has extra strength and wants to try for slam, fine Tribune Content Agency Solution to February 24 puzzle D E J A I Z O D A C L U R H O S B L A D E E A S E L D I N S I N E O K E S A R E T R E V I E S E N A L O N G A U I S A M N I M A D A T E T H E S D R A O A A M Y C R E L K E L E P R O A M R O U T E I G N O N D G A D E L A Y A G E S C A M L I V L N I I C N A A M A L G A M A T E D B Y E B Y E L O V E M E R I T W A S T E I T I N U T N E D R I A V E E I T E M M E S S O B I C A L E 60 Jupiter, to the Greeks 61 Relative of a bassoon 62 N.B.A Hall-ofFamer Thomas 66 Actress Hathaway 67 Guns, as an engine 68 Burn a bit 69 Reels’ counterparts 70 Putin put-down? 71 Once more Down Abbr on Chinese menus Lennon’s love Gymnast’s surface Highbrow theater screening Seer New mortgage deal, informally Place for an owl What can take your breath away in L.A.? Bold alternative 10 Fountain treat with cherries on top 11 Apple tablet 12 Fill to excess 14 Chicken _ 21 Diarist Anaïs 22 Runs, as a color 13 14 15 18 17 20 23 24 16 19 21 22 25 26 27 28 34 35 38 39 43 29 30 31 44 47 36 40 41 42 45 48 49 52 55 56 37 53 57 58 50 46 51 54 59 60 61 62 66 67 68 69 70 PUZZLE BY MATTHEW E PARONTO AND JEFF CHEN 23 24 25 29 30 31 32 33 Bond girl Andress Relatively near Be a goof Many a Persian Gulf war correspondent It makes MADD mad Photocopier setting: Abbr Takes care of Yanks living abroad, e.g 35 Sacred songs 40 Computer file extension 41 Pie _ mode 46 Overused plot device in soaps 48 Hearty kisses 49 Firstborn 50 Riddle-me- _ 54 Yard sale caveat 63 71 THE NEW YORK TIMES 55 Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible 56 Clinton attorney general Janet 57 Threadbare 58 Follow orders 59 Wander about 63 Holiday _ 64 Grow long in the tooth 65 Chop Maastricht The Fair that Defines Netherlands Excellence in Art 14-23 MARCH WWW.TEFAF.COM BY NEIL IRWIN Tuesday morning, Sept 16, 2008, was perhaps the darkest time for the United States economy in modern memory — even if nobody knew it quite yet It was barely 24 hours removed from the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and a few hours before the government would rescue the insurer American International Group Events had been set in motion that would drive the unemployment rate to double digits and cause half a decade of economic misery But before they would confront any of that, the men and women of the Federal Reserve received an urgent briefing on Norway A few minutes into the meeting of the Fed’s policy committee, according to newly released transcripts, William C Dudley, then the head of the markets desk at the New York Fed, brought dangerous tidings from across the Atlantic ‘‘I have just sketchy details based on a phone call,’’ Mr Dudley said, ‘‘But my understanding is that this morning Norway put in place a facility by which they are going to offer their banks dollars, up to $5 billion,’’ adding that ‘‘the fact that Norway is doing this suggests that the situation has broadened quite a bit further.’’ In conversations with counterparts at the European Central Bank, Mr Dudley said, he learned that there was ‘‘quite a bit of interest’’ in ‘‘an open facility where European banks could come and get dollars.’’ So began what would become the biggest United States government bail- out that most people not know anything about The new transcripts, released Friday after a customary five-year delay, shed light on one of the most significant but least understood parts of the Fed’s expansive rescue efforts in the crisis While reporters and lawmakers focused on the bailouts of American financial institutions, the Fed was quietly pumping hundreds of billions of dollars to bolster global banks when dollars were in short supply European banks were particularly heavy beneficiaries At their peak in December 2008, these ‘‘liquidity swap lines’’ totaled $580 billion The money was extended to 14 central banks from Sweden to Singapore, which, in turn, lent it to private banks The bailout of A.I.G., which attracted bigger headlines and louder public fulmination, was a comparatively paltry $85 billion ‘‘The crisis was global,’’ said Francesco Papadia, who helped engineer the program as markets chief at the European Central Bank and is now an affiliate fellow at Bruegel, the Belgian research organization, ‘‘and the central banks had to get global to answer the crisis.’’ The root of the problem was this: Global banks did lots of business in dollars — buying up United States mortgage-backed securities, financing international trade between companies operating around the world, and more But at that moment in 2008, private lending markets were essentially shut down Banks did not trust one another enough to lend freely the way they might in normal times Everybody was hoarding dollars at once In the United States, the Fed, the one entity in the world that can create dollars out of thin air, addressed the dollar shortage with the time-honored practice of serving as the ‘‘lender of last resort,’’ making emergency loans to banks and other financial institutions, as central banks have done for hundreds of years But the Fed was in no position legally to extend the same courtesy to international banks (Their United States affiliates were a different matter — during this period the American arms of Euro- BY JULIA WERDIGIER As it reported a profit for last year on Monday that missed analysts’ estimates, HSBC laid out how it was changing its compensation for senior executives, becoming the first major bank in London to describe how it would circumvent a new European Union cap on bonuses HSBC, which is based here, said it would award 665 of its senior managers — including its chief executive, Stuart T Gulliver, and its chief financial officer, Iain Mackay — a fixed-pay allowance as part of their compensation The allowance, which qualifies neither as salary nor bonus, would be exempt from European Union rules that limit bonuses to twice a top employee’s salary Banking giants in London, including Barclays and the offices of the American firms Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, have been seeking new ways to compensate senior staff since the industry failed to persuade Brussels not to impose the bonus rules HSBC also reported Monday that it had missed some of its own cost-cutting targets as revenue fell HSBC’s shares closed down 2.8 percent in London HSBC, one of Europe’s largest lenders, said pretax profit for 2013 rose percent, to $22.6 billion from $20.7 billion in 2012 A group of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected earnings to rise to $24.6 billion Revenue fell 5.4 percent in the year ‘‘The results were at the lower end of expectations, with difficulties in Latin America taking their toll,’’ said Keith Bowman, an analyst here at the stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown ‘‘Furthermore, some management efficiency targets were missed.’’ Mr Gulliver has closed or sold 63 businesses or investments since 2011 to focus on corporate finance products and services for faster-growing markets, including Asia and Latin America As part of the cost-cutting measures, the bank has eliminated about 40,000 jobs But lowering costs is taking more time than the bank and analysts expected Return on equity, a measure of profitability, was 9.2 percent in 2013, short of Mr Gulliver’s own goal of more than 12 percent The bank said it would continue with the strategy it announced in 2011 to cut costs, increase dividends, and improve its risk and compliance controls to avoid any potential threat from financial misdeeds HSBC said it planned further cost savings of $2 billion to $3 billion by improving some of its processes and procedures The earnings ‘‘reflected the good progress we have made in implementing the strategy that we set out in 2011,’’ Mr Gulliver said in a statement HSBC said it paid Mr Gulliver a bonus of 1.8 million pounds, or $3 million, for last year That compares with £700,000 for 2012, when HSBC agreed to pay a $1.9 billion fine in the United States to settle charges that the bank had helped drug cartels launder money HSBC, which generates most of its earnings from Asia, said the ‘‘sharp selloff’’ in some emerging markets was more ‘‘a reflection of specific circumstances rather than a generalized threat.’’ But it predicted developing economies would experience ‘‘greater volatility in 2014 and choppy markets as adjustments are made to changing economic circumstances and sentiment.‘‘ HSBC’s business in Latin America was hurt by slower economic growth last year But Mr Gulliver said he remained ‘‘optimistic about the long-term prospects of emerging markets and the opportunities for HSBC.’’ ‘‘HSBC should benefit from the continuing growth in international trade as well as increasing wealth in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East,’’ Shannon Stemm, an analyst at the brokerage firm Edward Jones in the United States, said BY KAREN STABINER The joint is jumpin’: Three mixologists in striped dress shirts, dark slacks and suspenders pour drinks almost as fast as three shuckers send platter after platter of raw oysters to their fate A bluesy soundtrack wafts over the standingroom-only din as patrons sip and slurp, oblivious to the crowd that has gathered outside for what can be a 90-minute wait It feels like o’clock on a Saturday night It is 4:30 on a dank weekday afternoon This is oyster happy hour at Maison Premiere in Brooklyn — a selection of 15 different kinds of oysters, most of them for $1 each, with a handful at $1.25 because they had to fly in from the West Coast Krystof Zizka, a co-owner of the restaurant, said he doesn’t make a penny on the oysters, though they are one of the reasons his three-year-old restaurant is so successful The cheap late-afternoon oyster is to an American restaurant what a liter bottle of Coca-Cola is to a supermarket: the loss leader that gets customers in the door, at which point they buy something else at full price It’s a nationwide binge, attributable in great part to the rapid growth of oyster farms on the East and West Coasts East Coast production alone has doubled in five years, even as wild oyster reefs approach extinction Happy-hour oysters make up 60 percent of Maison Premiere’s oyster sales, which range from 11,000 a week in winter months, when the back courtyard is closed, to a high of 14,000 a week in better weather To wash them down, customers may order a $15 glass of Chablis or one of dozens of cocktails in the $10-to-$14 range, Mr Zizka said Because oysters are not filling, people often order more food from the full-price menu, where small plates run in the low teens ‘‘That’s where we make our money,’’ he said ‘‘The people who come in aren’t cheap.’’ Cultivated oysters make up about 90 percent of raw-bar sales, and they show up as far inland as Chicago, St Louis and Minneapolis-St Paul They have the artisanal cachet attached to small suppliers; most are locally sourced, and the ones that are not local still come from small farmers, albeit on another coast They’re a low-calorie chunk of protein, and they’re a year-round crop, because careful temperature and bacteria monitoring has retired the old rule about avoiding them in the summer Diners between 18 and 34, with money to spend and a lifetime of food preferences to develop, are a perfect fit for oysters on the half shell, said Ron Tanner, a vice president at the Specialty Food Association — more likely than other age groups to buy specialty foods ‘‘It’s a generation that uses food to impress others,’’ Mr Tanner said ‘‘That’s probably behind the trend.’’ Oysters acquire their distinctive flavor based on the water in which they grow, so they give people a lot to talk about ‘‘They’re coming from great growers who are developing their own terroir, like wine growers,’’ said Jeffrey Hubbeling, general manager of Shaw’s Crab House in Chicago Fans can sound knowledgeable expounding on the relative brininess of a Sunken Meadow from Massachusetts and a Fanny Bay from British Columbia Two hours east of happy hour, at the muted, monochromatic edge of Southold Bay on Long Island, Karen Rivara, an oyster farmer, works in a si- lent world on land owned by the Peconic Land Trust She has spent a 30-year career surrounded by flasks and incubator tubs and strainers and nets Her office suite includes a tarp-skinned, iglooshaped greenhouse, an underground hatchery and an oyster barn that sits at bay’s edge, its seawater floor crisscrossed with planks for walking In 2000, she formed the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative with eight other shellfish growers Today, the cooperative sells 500,000 to 750,000 oysters a year, about double the volume of 10 years ago, with plans to increase the yield to 900,000 to one million this year Ms Rivara’s own oysters include two trademarked brands: the Mystic, a regular on the Maison Premiere menu, and the smallerrun Peconic Pearl, which Mr Zizka rarely orders because of its higher price Farms like Ms Rivara’s have supplanted the wild oyster population, which has been decimated in the past century by pollutants and disease, but farms are vulnerable to environmental threats as well: Pacific Northwest and Chesapeake Bay oyster crops have been damaged in recent years by higher acidity in the water as a result of fossil fuel emissions Ms Rivara blames increased population density and overtaxed septic systems for occasional bacteria-count spikes in her area (State inspectors regular testing.) Being a successful farmer requires not just vigilance, but also a measure of good luck It’s a painstaking, multistep process: Cooperative members start out growing four million to five million oysters but end up taking no more than 750,000 to market If not for Ms Rivara, Mr Zizka said, there would be no thriving local oyster industry If not for oyster happy hour, there would be no Karen Rivara, at least not in her current expansionist mode Recently, she had begun to think about life beyond oysters; she and her husband just moved out of the land trust’s house and into town rather than be on site 24 hours a day But happy hour has made her the focus of a lot of attention, and the promise it holds is irresistible Most restaurateurs fill otherwise empty seats with a less extravagant menu than Mr Zizka’s Kevin Faerkin, general manager of the Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant in Manhattan, said business exploded when the restaurant started serving happy-hour Blue Points for $1.25, requiring him to hire two extra servers and another shucker On the West Coast, David Lentz, chef and owner of the Hungry Cat chain in California, had similar success with a small selection of half-price oysters on what had been quiet Monday nights He now sells a total of 40 to 60 dozen oysters at his two Los Angeles locations on Mondays, double his old numbers The Lobster Place, which supplies hundreds of New York City restaurants, has had a 20 to 30 percent increase in wholesale oyster sales over the past year, both from existing clients who increased their orders and from new restaurants, said Brendan Hayes, president of the company’s retail and restaurant division ‘‘Every month,’’ he said, ‘‘we’re contacted by a new local oyster farmer about where and what they’re farming and the nuance of flavor from one variety to the next.’’ As Ms Rivara put it: ‘‘Happy hour’s good for us.’’ BY JIM YARDLEY Five global clothing brands and retailers have become the first contributors to a new fund raising $40 million for victims of the Rana Plaza factory disaster in Bangladesh, and activists also are campaigning to pressure other brands to make donations The collapse of the Rana Plaza building on April 24, killing more than 1,100 workers, was the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry It focused global attention on the unsafe working conditions in some Bangladeshi factories, the rock-bottom wages earned by workers and the lack of accountability and oversight in the supply chains for many global brands Compensating the victims or their families has been an especially complicated issue, involving months of negotiations among clothing companies, labor groups, Bangladesh’s government and Bangladeshi factory owners Those negotiations produced the Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund, which on Sunday night reported the names of the first five companies to contribute: El Corte Inglés; Inditex, which includes the brand Zara; Loblaw; Mango; and Mascot On Monday, labor groups in Bangladesh were expected to hold public events to draw attention to the hardships faced by Rana Plaza victims with the anniversary of the accident two months away Ineke Zeldenrust, the international coordinator of the Clean Clothes Campaign, a European antisweatshop group, said labor groups were also pushing for companies like Walmart, Children’s Place and Benetton — which have been linked to Rana Plaza — to make contributions so that payments can begin as soon as possible Dan Rees, a representative of the International Labor Organization, which is managing the fund, said formulas and a claims process had been established to pay lost wages, medical bills and other compensation to the roughly 4,000 victims, including survivors of the factory collapse, those who were injured and the families of the dead ‘‘The significance of this is we have a mechanism that the whole industry can support,’’ Mr Rees said ‘‘We haven’t been able to say that before What we had before was the blame game.’’ Much of the finger-pointing has centered on the question of what responsibility global brands should bear for accidents that occur in the factories that produce their garments Some brands have been concerned that agreeing to participate in a compensation fund for Rana Plaza victims could be interpreted as an admission of guilt and become a vulnerability if litigation arises Mr Rees said the Donors Trust Fund was designed so that donations would be voluntary and would not imply any legal responsibility for the accident Moreover, the fund is open to any company, organization or individual, meaning that brands not linked to the Rana Plaza factories can also contribute Donations can be public or anonymous It was not yet clear how much money the five companies had contributed Among those five companies, Mango, a Spanish brand, had initially signaled that it would not pay compensation In the months after the accident, company executives argued that Mango had placed only a sample order with a factory inside Rana Plaza, and that work on the order had not yet begun, thus absolving the brand of responsibility In December, The New York Times reported that work had already begun on the Mango order, citing interviews with factory supervisors and workers ‘‘There was an urgency among the bosses,’’ said one of the workers, Mohammed Mosharuf Hossain ‘‘The managers told us to finish the Mango products urgently.’’ In an interview Friday, a Mango representative confirmed the company would contribute to help the victims but characterized the fund as having a ‘‘charitable background’’ and said the money should not be considered compensation Nor has the company changed its position on its relationship to the factories in Rana Plaza, the representative said Ms Zeldenrust applauded Mango and others that had agreed to pay into the fund but said more brands also must contribute to reach $40 million, the estimated amount deemed necessary needed to provide full compensation She said two other retailers, Primark and Bonmarché, had signaled their intent to contribute, and Primark has already spent more than $3 million for short-term assistance to victims But Ms Zeldenrust argued that many others, including those not linked directly to Rana Plaza, must pitch in ‘‘It is a $48 billion industry worldwide,’’ she said ‘‘This is nothing.’’ BY MARK SCOTT like Apple and Samsung have displaced the Finnish firm as the world’s largest maker of high-end cellphones The aim is to attract consumers in countries like India and Brazil who are looking to buy their first smartphone to access applications like Facebook and Skype, according to Mr Elop of Nokia Yet analysts said the new phones would compete directly with low-cost Windows Phone handsets That could limit Microsoft’s ability to compete with Android competitors like Samsung because it may not attract enough customers on phones using either the Windows Phone or Android operating system Mr Elop on Monday defended his decision in 2011 to scrap Nokia’s own operating systems to focus on building a relationship with Microsoft and its Windows Phone Analysts say the choice tied Nokia to Microsoft just when the rival Android operating system was starting to gain traction with users Now, Android powers roughly 78 percent of worldwide smartphones, while Windows Phone holds less than percent of the market, according to data from Gartner ‘‘Our Windows Phone decision was to create a third ecosystem with Microsoft,’’ Mr Elop said While the Android operating system will power Nokia’s new phone, the Finnish company has adjusted the software to include using its Here software in lieu of Google Maps, and creating a tiled effect on the home screen that mimics the company’s other phones Nokia said consumers would have access to Android app stores, including its own and those from rivals like the Russian search engine Yandex Mr Elop added, however, that some Android apps used with Google’s services might not work smoothly with Nokia’s new phone Analysts said Nokia’s Android-based phone could offer consumers greater choice compared to the growing number of phones that rely on Google’s version of Android Many cellphone makers have been struggling to profit from the growing demand for smartphones because competition among makers has kept profit margins razor thin ‘‘It definitely shakes up an industry that has become fixated on incremental advances,’’ said Tony Cripps of the technology research firm Ovum ‘‘Nokia’s strength in developing markets will be a major catalyst for sales.’’ Major announcements from WhatsApp, the Internet messaging services, are like city buses: You can wait a long time for one, then two show up at once On the heels of its $16 billion deal to be bought by Facebook, WhatsApp announced on Monday that it would start offering free voice services this year — diversifying beyond its main messaging service into phone calls Speaking at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, the tech company’s chief executive, Jan Koum, said users in the second quarter would be able to make Internet calls through their smartphones similar to services that are already available on rival Internet messaging offerings like Kakao of South Korea and Viber of Cyprus WhatsApp’s voice service is expected to be available first on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems, then expand to others like Windows Phone and Blackberry, he added Mr Koum, who was born in Ukraine and moved to the United States as a teenager, also said on Monday that WhatsApp would launch a mobile brand in a partnership with the German cellphone carrier E-Plus The WhatsApp chief executive said the mobile brand would initially be available only in Germany, though he did not provide any more specifics on the product, which is expected to be launched by the end of the year ‘‘The world is moving to data very quickly,’’ Mr Koum said in a speech ‘‘Data is the next generation in what is driving the mobile industry.’’ WhatsApp’s push to offer its 465 million monthly users Internet voice calls is the first announcement since Facebook agreed to buy the San Francisco-based tech company last week for $16 billion The final price may rise to $19 billion with WhatsApp employees and founders receiving an additional $3 billion in restricted stock, which would vest over the next four years Currently, the messaging service has more than 40 million users in India, and 38 million in Brazil, according to the company The start-up also has 31 million users in Germany, though it did not provide numbers on its American user base Mr Koum played down rumors that the deal with Facebook would lead to major changes to how WhatsApp operates, including the potential addition of advertising and other revenue-generating services ‘‘For WhatsApp to be successful, it has to stay independent,’’ Mr Koum said on Monday ‘‘There are no planned changes.’’ By expanding into voice, WhatsApp is going head-to-head with the likes of Skype and traditional cellphone operators like AT&T and Deutsche Telekom Analysts say the move also could lead Facebook to revamp its own mobile offerings, which have centered on software called Home that has won few fans since launching last year Before Mr Koum took the stage on Monday, Sirgoo Lee, the co-chief executive of the rival South Korean messaging company Kakao, spoke to the audience about his company’s growth from its Asian roots to now offering Internet messaging to its global users in 14 languages each reporter is paired with an analyst — called a ‘‘data ninja’’ by the company — who uses the software to gather extensive amounts of information and then analyzes it for patterns Pairing new data-collection techniques with old-fashioned reporting is where Vocativ excels, said Scott Cohen, the company’s chief executive and former head of The Daily News’s website In a recent demonstration, an analyst recreated a search that had yielded several stories out of Egypt The analyst had pulled all the public social traffic — Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, activity in public forums — originating from a small area in Cairo over the course of two hours After analyzing the data several different ways, the analyst noticed that the Arabic phrase for ‘‘hunger strike’’ had been repeated an unusual number of times By following up, a reporter discovered that a group of female university students imprisoned for their support of the Muslim Brotherhood party were conducting a hunger strike It became an article In another instance, Vocativ discovered online chatter among Egyptian youth about parkour, an extreme sport that can involve jumping between buildings It may become a video segment For now, Vocativ, which has 80 employees, takes no advertising and is financed entirely by Mr Kochavi and his partners The plan is to make money through syndicating content or through deals like the one with MSNBC, a partnership that both side expect to grow Vocativ’s video business represents only about 20 percent of its product, but it is growing rapidly, said Noah Kotch, the company’s chief content officer and a former producer at NBC’s ‘‘Today’’ show and onetime writer at ABC News The company says that its edge comes from an ability to secure videos from places that other news organizations might never reach Mr Griffin, the head of MSNBC, was thrilled by a segment about an abandoned office tower in Caracas, Venezuela, taken over by squatters that contained video footage from the squatters themselves Yet Vocativ’s technique of plumbing the so-called deep web for information has raised questions about whether it is improperly snooping on unsuspecting citizens Company executives said that they delve only into the publicly accessible parts of the web, but acknowledged that they occasionally enter open chat rooms and not present themselves as reporters Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, says that users of social media must realize that what might seem like an intimate discussion among friends is really a public performance He also noted the special First Amendment protections afforded journalists ‘‘As a policy matter, we have an interest in not having our government looking over our shoulders, even if it is public, unless there is reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing,’’ Mr Stanley said ‘‘But the idea of restricting journalists from access to anything that is public is an idea we would scrutinize much more closely.’’ For first show, Mr Farrow, 26, the son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen (from whom he is estranged), planned a segment on the legalization of marijuana nationwide because new budget numbers in Colorado indicate that marijuana taxes could add more than $100 million a year to state coffers As part of the package, the show planned to run a Vocativ video about marijuana dealers evading taxes on their drug sales The dealers get their supplies, Vocativ learned through the Internet, by picking through cuttings disposed of in Dumpsters outside licensed marijuana growers The video, said Lauren Skowronski, an MSNBC spokeswoman, certainly presents ‘‘a unique facet of the issue.’’ BY BROOKS BARNES There are no new ‘‘Shrek’’ movies ‘‘Shrek: The Musical’’ closed on Broadway ‘‘Shrek 4-D’’ at Universal Studios Florida now plays second fiddle to a newer animation-based attraction: ‘‘Despicable Me Minion Mayhem.’’ Fade the ogre? Not if DreamWorks Animation can help it The studio and Merlin Entertainments announced on Monday a chain of ‘‘interactive entertainment experiences,’’ the first of which will open in summer 2015 in London and be called ‘‘Shrek’s Far, Far Away Adventure.’’ The introduction of the chain will include five similar attractions to be built in other cities over nine years, said Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation’s chief executive ‘‘We see this as a fantastic way to take our world-class characters and repurpose them into new lines of business,’’ Mr Katzenberg said in a telephone interview Mr Katzenberg described the envisioned DreamWorks-Merlin chain as ‘‘living theater.’’ Groups of 40 people will go on 90-minute walk-through tours of themed rooms, where actors — some in costume as ‘‘Shrek’’ characters — will perform a comedic script that includes lots of audience participation Merlin operates a similar chain called The Dungeons, which are a bit like elaborate haunted houses Mr Katzenberg has been on a crusade over the last two years to diversify his independent and publicly traded animation company, which has historically relied almost entirely on two hit movies a BY MARK SCOTT year — a risky proposition that can lead to dramatic swings in the stock price DreamWorks Animation is pushing hard into television and consumer products It recently announced a branded line of tablet computers for children and a publishing effort Its next film, ‘‘Mr Peabody & Sherman,’’ comes out March Merlin Entertainments, based in Poole, England, is the world’s No operator of themed attractions after the Walt Disney Company Merlin brands include the Legoland parks, the Eye Ferris wheels in London and Sydney, and Madame Tussauds Merlin notably wants to expand deeper into the United States Although ‘‘Shrek’’ by some measures is the most successful animation franchise of all time, the last movie in the series, ‘‘Shrek Forever After,’’ came out four years ago (A spinoff film, ‘‘Puss in Boots,’’ was released in 2011.) Is the ogre still enough of a draw? Certainly, said Mr Katzenberg, noting that the ‘‘Shrek’’ attraction will be built next to the London Eye, one of Europe’s most heavily visited tourist sites ‘‘Shrek is the torchbearer of our company,’’ he said ‘‘This keeps him fresh, fun and relevant.’’ BY LESLIE KAUFMAN When Ronan Farrow, the young human rights lawyer with a Hollywood lineage, debuted as a host on MSNBC on Monday, he had some prodigious computing power backing him up MSNBC has struck a partnership with Vocativ, a digital news start-up, to provide the new program — ‘‘Ronan Farrow Daily’’ — with up to three taped video segments a week Vocativ mines the Internet for exclusive news and other content with data-collection software traditionally used by governments and corporations Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, said Vocativ’s blend of big data and conventional reporting was an innovative approach to journalism ‘‘It is an additional tool for us,’’ he said ‘‘And who knows where it is going to go for the entire NBC News group.’’ News organizations are in a mad rush to team with new companies that they hope can give them an edge in finding story leads In forming alliances, they are also seeking to attract younger viewers who are more likely to get their news from sites like Twitter and Facebook than from the evening news In recent months, News Corporation acquired Storyful, a company that digs up and verifies news from sources like YouTube and Instagram And CNN struck a deal with Dataminr, a company Nokia, in its final weeks as an independent company, made a remarkable final display of independence on Monday Seeming to fly in the face of the mobile phone strategy of Microsoft, which is on the verge of completing a $7.2 billion takeover of Nokia’s handset business, Nokia announced its three-phone X series — its first based on the Android operating system Android software, of course, is a rival to Microsoft’s Windows Phone system Nokia’s chief executive, Stephen Elop, said the new devices, which are aimed at emerging markets, would help drive users to Microsoft services like email and cloud storage But analysts questioned whether Microsoft would continue to offer the Android-based phone after it completed its takeover of the Nokia handset division by the end of next month Microsoft has spent billions of dollars on its own operating system, Windows Phone, and it remains unclear whether the tech giant will support a phone that runs on a competitor’s software ‘‘I struggle to see where the Android phone fits into Microsoft’s long-term strategy,’’ said Roberta Cozza of the technology research firm Gartner in London ‘‘It may solve a short-term need to offer a low-cost phone, but Microsoft may struggle to convince people to use its Windows Phone software.’’ Microsoft may not see the wisdom of that has developed a Twitter-based tool used by reporters to detect developing news Meanwhile, NBC’s news operation has been especially aggressive in investing in next-generation journalism outfits Last month, NBC invested in NowThis News, a company specializing in short news clips, and announced a stake in ReCode, a technology news and conference business Certainly, Vocativ has a different pedigree than most journalism organizations Its founder, Mati Kochavi, also started AGT International, a global security firm that uses technology to gather information and perform analysis for governments and corporations The software at the heart of Vocativ, known as Open Mind, was developed as a tool for corporations to identify threats to their business Open Mind searches social media, chat rooms, documents and other public interactions on what it calls ‘‘the deep web’’ — areas often overlooked by search engines like Google The Hollywood talent agency William Morris Endeavor, which in recent years has made several digital media investments, is in negotiations for a minority stake in the company ‘‘As soon as I saw its technology, I wanted to be involved,’’ said Ari Emanuel, William Morris’s co-chief executive At first, Mr Kochavi sold his Open Mind software to governments and corporations through a company called 3iMind Then, inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings, when many of the protests surfaced on social media, Mr Kochavi the move, either The day before Nokia introduced the new phone at a packed press conference at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Joe Belfiore, who runs the Microsoft Windows Phone division, said of Nokia: ‘‘There are some things they that we are excited about, and other things that we are not so excited about.’’ On Monday, Mr Elop of Nokia focused on how the new devices — under the Nokia X brand — would help to spur sales of the company’s handsets, especially in emerging markets The new phone’s ties to Android will offer users far more applications than they can access with handsets running on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system The cellphones, which will be priced at 89 euros to 109 euros, or $122 to $150, will be aimed at customers in emerging markets, and use Nokia’s own services like maps instead of those offered by Google in the standard Android software There are no plans to sell the handsets in North America The first, low-cost version will be available immediately in certain developing economies, while two other versions with more capabilities will ship from the second quarter of the year ‘‘It introduces new customers around the world to Microsoft’s services,’’ Mr Elop said at a news conference ‘‘There’s a real opportunity in growth markets to take advantage of existing app ecosystems.’’ The decision, however, could prove short-lived While Nokia, which is based in Espoo, Finland, will remain an independent company until the deal with Microsoft closes by the end of the quarter, the American giant will control the sales and marketing all of Nokia’s handsets once the takeover is completed got the idea to also use the technology for journalism He eventually wound down 3i-Mind, and many of that company’s analysts joined Vocativ Vocativ’s technological prowess is not readily apparent from its tabloid-style home page, which in addition to stories on the tumult in Ukraine and Venezuela has articles on topless skiers and the 1990s slacker film ‘‘Reality Bites.’’ Driving its coverage is a team of longtime journalists from The Daily News, ABC, NBC and other news outlets But Vocativ’s executives said that most of its stories start with high-tech data mining At the company’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, In a blog post on Monday, Microsoft said it welcomed the inclusion of many of its services like Skype and Outlook on Nokia’s new phone It did not say if it would continue to produce the handset ‘‘Our primary smartphone strategy remains Windows Phone,’’ Microsoft said, ‘‘and our core device platform for developers is the Windows platform.’’ The uncertainty over Nokia’s new phones could potentially hamper sales of the Android-based devices, as consumers wait to see if Microsoft will support the handsets The tension will be most intense in emerging markets Like Nokia and other cellphone makers, Microsoft also has focused much of its attention on fast-growing developing economies that are expected to be the main driver for growth in the industry Nokia has suffered years of declining sales for its smartphones, as companies A panel of risk experts sees a teachable moment in Detroit’s bankruptcy and pension troubles A blue-ribbon panel of the Society of Actuaries — the entity responsible for education, testing and licensing in the profession — says that more precise, meaningful information about the health of all public pension funds would give citizens the facts they need to make informed decisions In a report that was to be released on Monday, the panel was to recommend that pension actuaries provide plan boards of trustees and, ultimately, the public with the fair value of pension obligations and estimates of the annual cash outlays needed to cover them That means pension officials would disclose something they have long resisted discussing: the total cost, in today’s dollars, of the workers’ pensions, assuming no credit for expected investment gains over the years ‘‘We think it would be a useful benchmark for plans to have,’’ said Robert W Stein, the panel’s chairman, who is both an actuary and a certified public accountant ‘‘We’re optimistic that the information would enable them to better appreciate the future and what it might bring.’’ Economists refer to this elusive number as the plan’s total liability, discounted at a risk-free rate They have called for its disclosure for years, saying it would help pension trustees make better decisions Economists have calculated rough approximations in recent years for various states and cities, but only the plan actuaries have the data needed for precise calculations For all their billions, public pension systems are largely unregulated Actuarial standards, however obscure, may be the closest thing the sector has to a uniform and enforceable code Though the actuaries who work for public pensions have the capacity to spot risks and measure shortfalls with pinpoint accuracy, it is their clients — usually the pension trustees — who call the shots And plan trustees prefer to be given traditional actuarial estimates, which are smoothed, stretched, averaged, backloaded and otherwise spread across time Such numbers generally comply with current actuarial standards, but as Detroit shows, they can also paper over looming disasters Detroit’s pension fund was said to be healthy just before the bankruptcy, but it turned out to be several billion dollars short The new liability measurement called for by the Society of Actuaries panel would not be the only number provided to the public, it would provide new insight into the market risks for pension plans and the shortfall that might have to be made up by local taxpayers if investment returns did not measure up to expectations Disclosing pension liabilities based on risk-free discount rates, however, is viewed with deep suspicion by plan trustees and the unions that represent public workers Pension officials and union leaders say the risk-free approach, if permitted, will be used to cast public pensions in the worst possible light to whip up fervor against them and justify the termination of the plans So far, the only public pension actuary who has publicly provided such numbers is Robert C North Jr., who tracks the five funds that make up New York City’s vast pension system He is also one of the 12 members of the blue-ribbon panel (Other members include New York’s former lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch; the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s former executive director, Bradley D Belt; and the Principal Financial Group’s chief executive, Larry D Zimpleman.) For New York City’s biggest fund, known as Nycers, the conventional numbers show assets of about $45 billion and liabilities of $67 billion, or a lessthan-stellar funded ratio of 66 percent But Mr North’s fair-value numbers, deep in Nycers’s annual report, show assets of $43 billion and liabilities of $106 billion, or a funded ratio of just 40 percent — a sure sign of trouble ahead as the city’s work force ages and retires The difference, $63 billion, is Nycers’s shortfall That money has to be made up before today’s city workers retire — within 14 years, on average As a result, New York’s contributions to Nycers are rising every year, squeezing the city budget and making it harder for the city to provide public services Mr North said in 2006 that he had tried to give these numbers greater prominence in the annual reports but had been blocked by the plan’s outside auditor, who said that doing so would not comply with generally accepted accounting principles Detroit felt an even bigger budget squeeze over the past decade But, unable to see the hopelessness of its situation, the city borrowed $1.4 billion from the bond markets, put that cash into its pension system and declared victory The money was invested in assets that subsequently lost value, the workers kept on accruing new benefits, tax revenues continued to falter and finally, last year, that debt was the first thing Detroit defaulted on as it hurtled toward bankruptcy The city now says the borrowing transaction was an illegal sham and has asked the bankruptcy court to void it Bondholders have been told to expect pennies on the dollar for their claims Pensioners’ losses in the bankruptcy will be softened, but some of them have been warned that their pension checks will be docked to offset improper payouts in the past Detroit might have gone bankrupt in any case, but the pain might have been lessened if better decisions had been made early to address the rising cost of the benefits in the face of the shrinking tax base For other places that may have the same problem, the panel is calling for actuaries to produce other details as well: each pension plan’s projected annual cash payments; the estimated volatility of the fund’s investment performance; and something called a ‘‘standardized plan contribution,’’ which would help all stakeholders assess whether the actual contributions to a pension fund, paid by workers and taxpayers, are reasonable and adequate ‘‘One would think that alert trustees would want to review this,’’ Mr Stein said, ‘‘and evaluate how they should respond.’’ Mr Stein said the panel had asked the Actuarial Standards Board to incorporate its recommendations into its professional standards, or perhaps into a new standard solely for public pensions Read more about deals and the deal makers Greece resumed bailout talks with its international lenders Monday, hoping to end six months of wrangling over the release of new rescue loans it needs to avoid default At stake is the disbursement of funds to repay 9.3 billion euros, or $12.7 billion, of bonds maturing in May, the biggest single debt redemption Greece faces in the next three decades The review by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund has dragged on since September, with disagreements about the extent of savings and reforms Athens must make to comply with the terms of its bailout Lenders say the government is dragging its feet over reforms, like softening employment protection and introducing more competition, for fear of hurting vested interests and losing voters’ support ‘‘For six months we’ve been going over the same issues again and again, largely because the Greek government can’t agree among themselves,’’ said a source close to the lenders Athens, in turn, say the ‘‘troika’’ of the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank is needlessly protracting the negotiations by misreading economic data, underrating Greece’s progress and demanding unpopular measures where none are needed ‘‘The troika have been tragically wrong in their forecasts, and this has created huge problems,’’ Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said this month, shortly before Athens predicted it would hit a 2013 primary budget surplus of at least Ô1.5 billion, far above troika estimates Despite the standoff, the review is expected to conclude, as all previous ones since Greece was rescued in 2010 Athens has already obtained Ô218 billion of the Ô237 billion set aside for it under the bailout, which expires this year The troika’s arrival in Athens is a signal that the sides have reached an outline agreement, though they may miss a March 10 deadline when euro zone finance ministers are scheduled to meet in Brussels to sign off on the deal Talks will focus on implementing proposals put forward last year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to make the Greek economy more competitive, like removing market barriers and unnecessary regulation in several sectors, including building materials, food and publishing, a Finance Ministry official said ‘‘The O.E.C.D reforms and the recapitalization of banks will be the main issues in this negotiation,’’ the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity The troika will not ask for any new austerity measures because it is already largely convinced that Greece will meet its fiscal targets this year, hitting a primary budget surplus of 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, the Greek official added According to both officials, the sides will probably reach an initial agreement by March 10 that will spell out the O.E.C.D reforms that Athens will need to adopt in a single law by May to obtain the funds needed to repay the bonds But delays have already caused uncertainty, undermining the hoped-for recovery, after six years of austerityfueled depression that wiped out nearly a quarter of the economy and brought unemployment to a record 28 percent A dispute between Athens and the troika over how much more additional bailout money Greek banks need is hampering their ability to lend to credit-starved companies, a senior bank executive said ‘‘The Greek banks and the Greek economy are the victims,’’ said Petros Christodoulou, deputy chief executive of National Bank, the country’s biggest lender The fragile coalition led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras needs tangible signs of recovery to face off an increasingly confident anti-bailout opposition A poor showing at municipal and European elections in May could destabilize the government, threatening to curtail its four-year term ending in mid2016 Greece’s main opposition party, Syriza, has said it will try to trigger early elections in spring 2015 by blocking the election of a new president Harry Papachristou and Lefteris Papadimas are Reuters correspondents NEXT CONFERENCE 18-19 NOV 2014 LONDON BY EDWARD WYATT AND NOAM COHEN THE TRUST WOMEN CONFERENCE IS GEARED TO ACTION LAST DECEMBER, WE TOOK 32 STRONG COMMITMENTS TO ACTION INCLUDING: Launching a network of hotlines offering support and assistance to human trafficking victims Led by Polaris Project with support from Refuge, Dasra and Tau Investment Management Developing standards to help companies avoid third party agents exploiting migrant labourers and trapping them in forced labour Led by Verite, with support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Thomson Reuters Corporation and Lexis Nexis Supporting Syrian refugees to overcome the effects of psychological stress and trauma caused by the country’s ongoing conflict Led by Dr Rola Hallam, from Hand in Hand Syria, with the support from the Arab Foundation of Care for Victims of War and Torture Launching an international campaign to raise awareness about violence in teen relationships Led by the Everyday Sexism Project with support from Human Rights Watch, Girls Not Brides, the Commission United Against Human Trafficking in Mexico and Moldova Anti-Trafficking in Persons Creating the first global website for trafficking survivors to share their stories to raise awareness about human trafficking Led by Professor Pardis Mahdavi, Pomona College, with support from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Hollaback, the Commission United against Human Trafficking (Mexico) and CulturePolitique To register your interest for Trust Women 2014, and for a full list of Actions visit: trustwomenconf.com Comcast, the largest United States cable and broadband provider, and Netflix, the giant television and movie streaming service, announced an agreement Sunday in which Netflix will pay Comcast for faster and more reliable access to Comcast’s subscribers The deal is a milestone in the history of the Internet, where content providers like Netflix generally have not had to pay for access to the customers of a broadband provider But the growing power of broadband companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T has given those companies increased leverage over sites whose traffic gobbles up chunks of a network’s capacity Netflix is one of those sites, accounting for nearly 30 percent of all Internet traffic at peak hours The agreement comes just 10 days after Comcast agreed to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, an acquisition that would make Comcast the cable provider to nearly one-third of American homes and the high-speed Internet company for close to 40 percent Federal regulators are expected to scrutinize whether that deal would thwart competition among cable and Internet providers It is also unclear whether the deal between Comcast and Netflix violates the principles of what is known as net neutrality, under which all content providers have equal and free access to consumers People close to the deal charac- BY DAVID BARBOZA The Sina Corporation, one of China’s biggest Internet portals, is preparing an initial public offering in the United States for Weibo, its Twitter-like microblogging service, according to people close to the matter The offering, which has not been formally announced, could raise up to $500 million Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse have been selected to underwrite the offering, according to the people close to the matter Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse declined to comment on Monday, and a Sina representative could not be reached for comment Sina’s push to list one of its most popular units comes at a time when Chinese Internet companies are on a manic ac- terize it as a common arrangement Content companies frequently pay a gobetween to carry traffic to a broadband provider, which then moves through its system and into a consumer’s home In a news release announcing the deal, the companies said, ‘‘Netflix receives no preferential network treatment under the multiyear agreement.’’ Details were not disclosed, but a person close to the companies said it involved annual payments of several million dollars Others, including Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and advocate for net neutrality, said the interconnection agreement between Comcast and Netflix was one of the first such arrangements in which a broadband provider like Comcast had extracted payment to send specific content through the ‘‘on ramp’’ to its network ‘‘This is the water in the basement for the Internet industry,’’ Mr Wu said, the first in what could be a flood of such deals ‘‘I think it is going to be bad for consumers,’’ he added, because such costs are often passed to the customer One fear is that if such deals become common, only the wealthiest content companies will be able to afford to pay for them, which could stifle the next Netflix from ever getting off the ground The agreement follows a January ruling from a federal appeals court that struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules, saying the agency had overstepped its authority This type of deal between Comcast and Netflix might have been forbidden under a liberal reading of the F.C.C.’s rules The announcement on Sunday confirmed reports that had trickled out last week, as close watchers of Internet traffic detected a more direct Internet path of Netflix videos to Comcast users In recent months, Netflix reported that delivery speed of its content to Comcast subscribers had declined by more than 25 percent, resulting in frequent interruptions and delays for customers trying to stream television shows and movies delivered through Netflix Customers of other providers, including Verizon, also reported delays Comcast, Verizon and other Internet service providers denied that they were playing any role in slowing down traffic Instead, they blamed the intermediaries that Netflix used to deliver its content to Comcast on its way to consumers They said that those companies were trying to shove too much data through too small a system The agreement, which is expected to be put fully into effect in the coming weeks, had been many months in the making, starting well before the Time quisition spree Over the last two years, China’s big three Internet companies — Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent — have spent several billion dollars acquiring Chinese start-ups and international online game companies They have been buoyed by huge stockpiles of cash and soaring stock prices This year, two of China’s biggest ecommerce companies — Alibaba and JD.com — are expected to go public in the United States The Alibaba offering, which has not been finalized, could be the biggest stock offering in history, valuing the company at more than $100 billion Sina saw its fortunes rise several years ago when microblogging services became popular in China Sina’s Weibo led the way, followed by Tencent’s own microblogging service Last year, Alibaba paid $586 million to buy an 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo, valuing the company at $3.3 billion The other 71 percent stake is held by Sina, which is based in Beijing Some analysts now project that Sina’s Weibo unit could be worth $5 billion, even more than its parent, which is listed on Nasdaq The popularity of Sina’s microblogging service has been undermined by government censorship and the spectacular rise of Tencent’s instant-messaging application, WeChat, or Weixin, in Chinese The WeChat service bears some resemblance to the American start-up WhatsApp, which Facebook just agreed to acquire for up to $19 billion Chinese Internet companies are goliaths in their own right Alibaba, which is privately owned, is now valued at about $130 billion and Hong Kong-listed Tencent is trading at close to $130 billion The market value of Nasdaq-listed Baidu is $60 billion Warner Cable announcement The contours of a deal were reached after a meeting between Brian L Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, and Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, as well as the engineering teams of both companies, said sources close to the deal The arrangement will deliver an ‘‘even better user experience to consumers, while also allowing for future growth in Netflix traffic,’’ the companies said in their joint statement Sunday Netflix will now deliver its content directly to Comcast and will now essentially have its own on ramp to Comcast customers BY JIM YARDLEY Pope Francis announced a major restructuring of the Vatican’s outdated administrative and economic bureaucracy on Monday as he established a new agency to oversee budgets and financial planning and also created a powerful auditor-general to guard against fiscal mismanagement The changes are the latest example of how Francis is moving to confront management problems in the Vatican as part of his broader mandate to reform the Roman Curia, the administration that runs the Holy See He has begun shuffling personnel while also speaking out against careerism in the Roman Catholic Church, especially inside the Vatican To lead the new Secretariat of the Economy, Francis selected Cardinal George Pell, the archbishop of Sydney, who is also one of the eight cardinals serving on a special commission advising the pope on administrative reform and other issues Shortly before pean banks took billions in emergency loans.) So the Fed and its international counterparts turned to a tool that had been used only on a much smaller scale, for instance during the disruptions after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks The idea is simple: The Fed sends dollars to, say, the European Central Bank in exchange for a comparable value of euros, plus interest The bank then lends those dollars to European banks against collateral At a fixed date, the transactions are reversed; the Fed gets its dollars back and the European Central Bank gets its euros back Ultimately, the Federal Reserve and American taxpayers profited from the arrangement No one had ever imagined such transactions could be used on such a huge scale ‘‘If I had said to the F.O.M.C in 1998 that 10 years later you’ll have $600 billion in credit outstanding to foreign central banks, they would have said you’re nuts,’’ said Edwin M Truman, a former head of the Fed’s international division, referring to the policy committee, the Federal Open Market Committee Mr Truman is now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics The program started with the central banks of major industrialized nations, including the European Central Bank, Bank of England and Swiss National Bank But that fall, the Fed began mak- ing arrangements with emerging nations’ central banks At the October meeting where Fed officials agreed to swap lines with Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and Singapore, Timothy F Geithner, then chief of the New York Fed, framed the decision in part as the United States’ fulfilling its role as issuer of the world’s most widely used currency ‘‘Another way to think about this is that the privilege of being the reserve currency of the world comes with some burdens,’’ Mr Geithner said during the meeting, on Oct 28 and 29 ‘‘Not that we have an obligation in this sense, but we have an interest in helping these guys mitigate the problems they face in dealing with currency mismatches in their financial systems.’’ That said, Fed officials, then and now, framed the program as intended to help the United States economy After all, international banks were supporting lending in the United States by buying securities backed by Americans’ home mortgages, credit cards and other debts If the dollar crisis continued, there could be even more of a fire sale of those securities, driving up interest rates in the United States and making credit even harder to obtain ‘‘To the rest of the world, I don’t think these transcripts are going to be very reassuring,’’ said Eswar S Prasad, a Cornell economist and author of ‘‘The Dollar Trap,’’ a book that examines the currency swaps ‘‘What they show is that the U.S policy makers are very narrowly focused on U.S interests, and their actions are not so much determined by any moral obligation to save the world economy, but rather a clear self-interest in preserving U.S economic interests.’’ The Fed rejected some nations that wanted dollar swaps but that were not important enough, in Fed leaders’ judgment, to American economic interests to warrant participation The transcripts redact the names of those countries, but diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks indicate that they included Indonesia, Turkey and the Dominican Republic The Fed was approached by other countries, Nathan Sheets, then the leader of the Fed’s international finance division, said at the October 2008 meeting ‘‘But we have not encouraged that,’’ Ben S Bernanke, then the Fed chairman, chimed in ‘‘We have done everything we possibly can discourage it,’’ Mr Sheets added ‘‘We’re not advertising.’’ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Warren E Buffett is offering a refresher course on his approach to investing in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders Mr Buffett’s full letter won’t be released until Saturday, but Fortune magazine published an excerpt of it online Monday A writer for Fortune, Carol Loomis, who is a longtime friend of Mr Buffett’s, edits his annual letter The billionaire uses two personal real estate investments he made to demonstrate some of his key principles including: focus on what an investment will produce, not its price; stick to what you know; and don’t try to predict what the economy or stock market will ‘‘You don’t need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns But if you aren’t, you must recognize your limitations and follow a course certain to work reasonably well,’’ Mr Buffett wrote ‘‘Keep things simple and don’t swing for the fences When promised quick profits, respond with a quick ‘no.’’’ The examples Mr Buffett cited were For online listings and past performance visit Francis was elected pope last March, Cardinal Pell was openly critical of mismanagement under Pope Benedict XVI — in particular a scandal over private letters leaked by Benedict’s butler ‘‘It would be useful to have a pope who can pull the show together, lift the morale of the Curia and strengthen a bit of the discipline there,’’ Cardinal Pell told The Associated Press at the time One question that still remains unanswered is the fate of the Vatican Bank, officially known as the Institute for the Works of Religion Magistrates in Italy are investigating allegations of money laundering linked to the bank Meanwhile, a management team, appointed by Benedict in the final days of his papacy to address the problems, has been poring over the bank’s accounts, looking for irregularities, while also working to bring the institution into compliance with international norms Francis has not yet signaled his plans for the bank — one possibility would be to shut it down — and the announcement on Monday did not mention it ‘‘We have not yet heard any decisions or deliberations,’’ said Max Hohenberg, a spokesman for the bank But Alberto Melloni, a historian of the Vatican, said the latest changes signaled a further diminution of the bank, which once operated with independence and limited oversight, factors that contributed to the recent scandals He said now the bank would serve essentially as ‘‘a wallet’’ while economic decision-making would be made in the new Secretariat of Economy He also said the appointment of Cardinal Pell underscored the growing influence of the ‘‘Group of Eight’’ cardinals over functions once dominated by the Curia Francis has pledged to bring greater transparency and collegiality to the workings of the Vatican, and the announcement on Monday said the new Secretariat was created to help ‘‘simplify and consolidate existing management structures and improve coordination and oversight.’’ The new auditor-general, who will be directly appointed by the pope, will be ‘‘empowered to conduct audits of any agency of the Holy See and the Vatican City State, at any time,’’ the Vatican said his 1986 purchase of a 400-acre Nebraska farm and his 1993 purchase of a retail property near the campus of New York University Both purchases were made after prices collapsed Mr Buffett said he did not know much about farming or retail, but he knew enough to determine that the farm near Tekamah would remain productive and that the retail center would keep appealing to N.Y.U students He also said the largest tenant in the New York property had an underpriced lease that would expire in nine years Mr Buffett said he could tell both investments had little downside even though he had only visited the farm twice and had never seen the New York retail property Over the years, Mr Buffett has not sought out any price quotes on his farm or retail property, and he is not inclined to sell Mr Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman and chief executive, said stock investors should not be eager to sell just because the market offers them price quotes all the time Mr Buffett compared the stock market to having a moody farm investor shout out the price of Mr Buffett’s farm every day ‘‘If his daily shout-out was ridiculously low, and I had some spare cash, I would buy his farm,’’ Mr Buffett said ‘‘If the number he yelled was absurdly high, I could either sell to him or just go on farming.’’ Andy Kilpatrick, who wrote ‘‘Of Per- manent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett,’’ said the essay offered a good summary of the techniques Mr Buffett used to become one of the world’s richest men ‘‘It was a great treatise on value investing,’’ Mr Kilpatrick said Mr Buffett said he learned the keys to investing by reading the former Columbia University professor Ben Graham’s book ‘‘The Intelligent Investor.’’ Mr Buffett went on to study under Mr Graham and later work with him But for investors without the skills or time to estimate the value of investments, Mr Buffett repeated his standard advice: make regular purchases of a low-cost stock index fund ‘‘So ignore the chatter, keep your costs minimal, and invest in stocks as you would in a farm,’’ he said International Funds For information please contact Clare Chambers Fax +44 (0)20 7061 3529 | e-mail cchambers@nytimes.com www.morningstar.com/Cover/Funds.aspx February 24, 2014 d 5JH=JACE? -KH *@ , ,156 )JAH=JELA 1LAIJAJI Ý "$!' m 5JH=JACE? -L=HE?D =F @ J@ 2; 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FHAE ?D=HCA 2=HEI AN?D=CA )IJAH@= AN?D=CA A EIGKJA@ A=HEAH NJ HACEIJAHA@ MEJD HACK=JHO =KJDHEJO 2 E@@A B >E@ =@ BBAHA@ FHE?A - AIJE=JA@ FHE?A O FHE?A ?=?K=JA@ @=OI FHEH J FK>E?=JE >E@ FHE?A 6DA =HCE= IO>I E@E?=JA BHAGKA?O B GKJ=JEI IKFFEA@ @ @=EO M MAA > >EJDO B BHJECDJO H HACK=HO J JME?A MAAO JDO E JME?A JDO 6DA @=J= E JDA EIJ =>LA EI JDA =L IKFFEA@ >O JDA BK@ CHKFI J 41/56)4 1J EI ?=JA@ =@ HABH=JA@ EJ JDA EIJ >ABHA >AEC JH=IEJJA@ J JDA 106 6DA 106 HA?AELAI F=OAJ BH BK@ CHKFI J FK>EID JDEI EBH=JE 41/56)4 =@ JDA 106 @ J M=HH=J JDA GK=EJO H =??KH=?O B JDA EIJ JDA @=J= B JDA FAHBH=?A B BE@AI B JDA K@ /HKFI =@ ME J >A E=>A BH JDA EIJ JDA @=J= B K@ /HKF J =O ANJAJ 6DA EIJ EI J =@ ID= J >A @AAA@ J >A = BBAH >O JDA 106 H 41/56)4 J IA IA?KHEJEAI H ELAIJAJI B =O E@ 1LAIJAJI ?= B= =I MA =I HEIA 2=IJ FAHBH=?A @AI J CK=H=JAA BKJKHA IK??AII 1J EI =@LEI=>A J IAA =@LE?A BH = GK=EBEA@ E@AFA@AJ =@LEIH >ABHA ELAIJEC The Independent Mark of Quality Morningstar Analyst Research and Ratings for Funds www.morningstar.co.uk Walk down memory lane with me to wintertimes in years gone by, when bad weather routinely caused passengers on hundreds of flights to be stranded on airplanes that had pulled away from the gate but then sat idled on tarmacs, neither taking off nor returning to the terminal, for three, five, even 12 hours and more Oh, the horror stories we heard about desperate and angry passengers, some sick; wailing babies; overflowing toilets; wretched ventilation; frantic flight crews An average of 1,500 domestic flights in each of the worst years, 2007 and 2008, were stranded on tarmacs for three hours or longer, the Transportation Department said During late 2006 through 2009, I often heard from stranded, angry passengers on such flights — some of whom called on their cellphones or emailed directly from stricken planes One of my favorite stories came from a passenger named Mark Veil, who was among the 150 stuck for over 10 hours on an American Airlines flight diverted by storms to Austin, Tex., on Dec 29, 2006 As conditions on the plane worsened, ‘‘I finally took out my cellphone, which has a function to flash an attention light, and began signaling SOS out my window, over and over,’’ he said On another plane sitting nearby on the tarmac, a passenger named Kate Hanni, already horrified by the atrocious conditions on her own plane, happened to look out her seat window and saw Mr Veil’s signal flashing through the gloom ‘‘I’m trying to figure out what the heck it was,’’ Ms Hanni told me later, ‘‘and then I realized: dit-dit-dit * dah-dah-dah * dit-ditdit * SOS! I don’t know Morse code, but everybody knows SOS.’’ The SOS did not bring help, but it did help Ms Hanni in her determination to take action in the weeks and years that I grew up in the Midwest and didn’t fly much when I was younger Now, as a consultant and author of ‘‘Your Network Is Your Net Worth,’’ I’m traveling all the time I find business travel tiring, so I can’t say I love it But I love being able to support myself in a nontraditional way Another bright spot is that I get to connect with people I find people fascinating, and I really believe in the power of networking So if a fellow passenger wants to talk, I’m all for it I met a violinist once and wound up helping him with a benefit concert I met a gentleman who was a guard in an art gallery He was so excited to talk about his work, because he said no one ever talks to the guards in art galleries I met a young man who was raised by his father His father was very proud of him, and he always wanted his son to better and be the first in the family to go to college So this young man joined the Navy and talked to me about what it was like living on a submarine Traveler’s forecast Sh Showers S Sun Sn Snow SS Snow showers T Thunderstorms W Windy Tuesday ˚C ˚F Abu Dhabi 28/17 Almaty -6/-15 Athens 14/6 Bangkok 34/25 Barcelona 14/9 Beijing 12/3 Belgrade 12/4 Berlin 11/3 Boston -1/-6 Brussels 10/4 Buenos Aires 22/14 Cairo 21/10 Chicago -8/-19 Frankfurt 14/5 Geneva 12/4 Hong Kong 23/19 Istanbul 8/5 Jakarta 29/23 Johannesburg 23/12 Karachi 30/16 Kiev 1/-4 Lagos 31/25 Lisbon 16/9 London 10/5 Los Angeles 21/12 Madrid 12/2 Manila 31/24 Mexico City 26/9 Miami 29/21 Moscow 1/-8 Mumbai 32/20 Nairobi 29/16 New Delhi 24/10 New York 0/-4 82/63 21/5 57/43 93/77 57/48 54/37 54/39 52/37 30/21 50/39 72/57 70/50 18/-2 57/41 54/39 73/66 46/41 84/73 73/54 86/61 34/25 88/77 61/48 50/41 70/54 54/36 88/75 79/48 84/70 34/18 90/68 84/61 75/50 32/25 Wednesday ˚C ˚F S 29/17 S -6/-19 PC 14/7 S 34/25 PC 13/5 PC 13/1 S 15/4 S 11/4 PC -2/-9 R 9/3 PC 23/13 S 21/11 PC -11/-18 C 11/3 Sh 6/-1 C 24/19 Sh 7/4 T 30/23 C 24/12 S 30/16 C 2/-5 PC 31/25 PC 15/8 PC 10/5 PC 20/13 PC 11/0 S 31/24 PC 26/9 T 29/20 S 1/-6 H 32/20 C 29/14 H 24/11 SS -1/-7 84/63 21/-2 57/45 93/77 55/41 55/34 59/39 52/39 28/16 48/37 73/55 70/52 12/0 52/37 43/30 75/66 45/39 86/73 75/54 86/61 36/23 88/77 59/46 50/41 68/55 52/32 88/75 79/48 84/68 34/21 90/68 84/57 75/52 30/19 There is no dispute on this point, and the group Ms Hanni founded takes well-deserved credit from passengers — and blame, from the airlines ‘‘While we are not happy about the performance during this winter, with the massive number of cancellations and disruptions, the fact that we’ve had virtually no, or very few, of these strandings is really a success story,’’ said Paul Hudson, the president of FlyersRights.org ‘‘There’s always talk about regulation being a big problem for airline industry, but it’s hard to explain, especially in light of this bad weather, how we didn’t have more strandings this winter.’’ Noted, said Joshua Marks, chief executive of masFlight But Mr Marks and Mr Hudson agree that the issue is more complicated than airlines’ simply fixing the tarmac strandings because of the threat of huge fines, including canceling flights in advance out of fear that the weather might cause those fines ‘‘We have compound factors at work this winter,’’ Mr Marks said, explaining that the tarmac-delay rules might have combined with new federal regulations on the number of hours pilots could work without rest, known as Part 117 rules, to account for some of the many cancellations this year ‘‘It’s hard at this point to try to single out what was being caused by the tarmac-delay rule and what’s been caused by 117,’’ he said, ‘‘and in many respects the two are linked,’’ as airlines try to calculate the odds of prompt sanctions in any given situation ‘‘There’s balance between those two factors and how much the cancellations were caused by the fact that the weather was just terrible,’’ he said At present, with domestic flight cancellations since December now at a number that exceeds the total of all commercial flights in any three average days, passengers who need to rebook canceled flights have been experiencing difficulties That is because airlines have consolidated and reduced the number of flights, while most flights continue to take off with nearly all seats already occupied ‘‘So there is the inconvenience of people being delayed up to three to five days but not being stranded,’’ Mr Hudson said ‘‘The biggest problem right now is to recover from these storms, because the airlines don’t have sufficient reserves.’’ In the past two years, tarmac delays of over three hours have ticked up slightly — to 83 domestic flights last year, according to the Transportation Department Not all such delays lead to fines But last October, the department announced the largest fine yet assessed, $1.1 million against United Airlines for 13 individual delays exceeding three hours during severe thunderstorms at O’Hare airport in Chicago Still, after the delay rules took effect in April 2010, ‘‘controllable tarmac delays all but vanished,’’ according to a report, ‘‘Tarmac Rule: Three Years Later’’ by the aviation data consulting firm masFlight He had some amazing photographs and told me about the sounds that whales make He’s now in law school in California, and I actually gave a presentation to his class Sometimes you meet humble, unassuming people who help you put things in perspective I was on a flight after I had given a presentation and was seated next to an older gentleman Some people might not even want to start a conversation with someone older They don’t know what they’re missing I’m guessing the gentleman was in his 70s because he told me he bought his first and only new car in 1971, and he referred to it as a muscle car He even had a picture of it on his iPad I found out that he had flown from Fargo, N.D., for a memorial service for members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also known as the Night Stalkers One of his family members was part of this regiment and had died in the Philippines He pulled out a program for the service that was filled with names and dates for the fallen He SHOWERS FINLAND SNOW ICE SWEDEN 5-10 LATVIA S PC C S Sh PC S C Sn C PC S PC C Sh PC C T T S PC T PC PC PC PC PC PC S S H PC H Sn RUSSIA 0-5 Meteorology by AccuWeather Weather shown as expected at noon on Tuesday BELARUS GERMANY 10-15 POLAND UKRAINE CZECH REP SLOV 0-5 5-10 AUSTRIA HUNGARY 5-10 10-15 ITALY 5-10 ALB 10-15 10-15 GREECE SPAIN SYRIA 15-20 LEBANON 15-20 MOROCCO ISRAEL TUNISIA JORDAN ALGERIA 20-25 SAUDI ARABIA 15-20 20-25 EGYPT LIBYA 25-30 20-25 Nice Osaka Paris Riyadh Rome San Francisco Sao Paulo Seoul Shanghai Singapore 14/8 13/4 11/3 27/16 14/7 17/10 31/22 12/1 11/9 32/25 57/46 55/39 52/37 81/61 57/45 63/50 88/72 54/34 52/48 90/77 C PC R S PC PC T S R PC 15/8 14/7 10/2 28/15 15/9 15/10 32/23 14/4 14/5 32/25 59/46 57/45 50/36 82/59 59/48 59/50 90/73 57/39 57/41 90/77 Sh PC C S Sh R S PC C S 2013 ’14 UNITED STATES S&P 500 52-week 1,857.83 +23.7% +21.58 EUROPE DJ Stoxx 50 3,157.31 +25.64 +22.4 –27.99 +31.2 JAPAN Nikkei 225 14,837.68 +5% –5 –10 2013 €1= $1.37 closed the impact of tightening liquidity but not yet feeling the benefit of the recovery in the developed economies The euro zone’s weak growth is not yet giving much impetus to emerging-market exports A rise in an American manufacturing survey in February to its highest in four years provides reassurance on the United States’ economy, but offers little to global markets As long as the American recovery remains on track, the Federal Reserve’s tightening of monetary policy will continue unabated For global markets, this new split looks like the opposite of its predecessor — a deflationary wave sweeping over asset prices A stronger dollar seems likely It may exert fresh pressure on commodity prices, aiding developed-economy consumers but harming emerging-market export earnings Stronger developed growth will eventually improve the outlook for emerging economies But the split will not heal soon IAN CAMPBELL +5.2% YEN +0.001 –10.7 +0.003 +9.8 POUND £1= $1.66 For years it was emerging economies good, developed economies bad Now emerging economies are in trouble while the developed ones are slowly recovering For global asset prices, the combination looks the opposite of its bubbly predecessor As the United States and Europe headed into the Great Recession, the momentum of emerging economies did not flag Their growth was aided by capital fleeing developed markets and by commodity prices driven higher by quantitative easing and a devalued dollar The battle by central banks in the developed economies to avert deflation and reverse recession at home proved inflationary for emerging markets, and for global asset and commodity prices Now the balance has shifted Emerging economies’ steam has run out, in part because of the gradual tightening of American monetary policy Chinese efforts to reduce liquidity and weaken the renminbi are also making markets uneasy A further concern is the serious unrest in Ukraine, Turkey and Venezuela Emerging economies are caught in an awkward middle ground, reeling from ’14 52-week EURO ¥100= $0.98 generosity The bid puts Scania’s enterprise value at Ô16.7 billion, or 12.6 times 2016 earnings before interest and taxes According to Starmine, that’s a 29 percent premium to the European machinery sector and a 56 percent markup on a rival truck maker, Volvo Shareholders, though, will have a long wait Because of the truck industry’s long product lifecycle, it will take up to 15 years for the savings to flow through Moreover, VW is asking its own shareholders to pitch in Ô2 billion, or almost a third of the price of the deal, by buying preferred shares from the company Minority shareholders usually deserve an incentive to sell, and Scania’s have that But the deal reinforces a reputation VW has for being stingy to shareholders Despite a 14 percent dividend increase in 2013, for example, it pays out only 22 percent of its earnings — a third less than Daimler and BMW Volkswagen says it needs the capital increase, through the sale of the preferred shares, to protect its rating But the company has almost Ô17 billion of net cash VW should treat its own shareholders as generously as Scania’s OLAF STORBECK 0% –20 –40 2013 ’14 OIL Nymex light sw crude 52-week $103.18 a barrel +12.1% +0.98 GOLD New York $1,336.70 a tr oz.+16.60 –16.1 CORN Chicago $4.50 a bushel –0.04 –35.1 Data as of 1700 U.T.C Source: Reuters Graphs: Custom Flow Solutions BY KELLY DINARDO 5-10 LOW Volkswagen shareholders concerned with the here and now are about to be hit by a truck VW, Europe’s largest automaker, is offering 6.7 billion euros, or $9.2 billion, in cash to buy out Scania’s minority owners Not only is that a whopping premium, it’ll also take years for cost savings to materialize On top of that, Volkswagen wants its own shareholders to dig into their pockets to help finance the deal Creating a leading truck maker has long been a priority for VW Starting in 2000, the automaker built up a 62.6 percent stake in Scania and has taken control of MAN, the German trick manufacturer Pooling purchasing power alone should create more than Ô200 million of synergies by the end of this year Volkswagen reckons it should be able to squeeze an additional Ô650 million a year of savings when it takes full ownership of Scania Once taxed, capitalized and discounted at percent a year, these additional synergies are currently worth around Ô2.7 billion On paper, thats Ô400 million more than the premium VW is forking over and appears to justify the company’s MOSTLY CLOUDY ESTONIA LITH HIGH +10 For more independent commentary and analysis, visit www.breakingviews.com STATIONARY COMPLEX WARM COLD –5-0 FLURRIES 0-5 +20 As told to Joan Raymond 0-5 RAIN +30% shared some details about his family member and I learned a lot about the Night Stalkers I couldn’t help but be in awe of what people sacrifice for our country And then I heard about my seatmate He was a farmer who at one time had 5,000 acres that he farmed with his brothers Now, he farms with his son — mostly corn, soybeans and grain He said he loves seeing things grow, and he loves his job feeding people He pulled out his iPad again and showed me his crops, his rescue dogs and his cars I also learned how farming changed I was astounded He uses a GPS unit to help plant rows of crops Apparently, when he puts down lines of fertilizer, all the data is stored on a jump drive, and then, when he goes to plant seeds, he simply pulls the data and gets very specific calculations and directions for his seeds He likened it to Google Maps This was one of the best business flights I’ve ever taken I learned so much from him, and to be honest, I’ve never looked at a loaf of bread the same way again I know the work that goes into it Some people might get excited about sitting next to a celebrity As far as I’m concerned, this gentleman was a celebrity The kind that really matters T-STORMS High/low temperatures, in degrees Celsius and degrees Fahrenheit, and expected conditions C Clouds F Fog H Haze I Ice PC Partly cloudy R Rain followed Working indefatigably through grass-roots organizing, she started a group and a website called FlyersRights.org that over two years later (and despite sustained derision from the airline industry) achieved its goal: ‘‘passengers’ rights’’ provisions in federal law and a federal rule that set fines of as much as $27,000 per passenger for airlines that keep passengers stuck for over three hours on planes that leave the gate but remain on the tarmac Let’s look now at the mess in air travel this winter season, in which horrible weather caused airlines to cancel a total of 95,576 flights from December through Feb 14, according to the flightinformation service FlightView That is more than twice the number of flights canceled in the same period a year ago And more than 15,000 additional flights have been canceled since Feb 14 Yet during this stretch of cancellations and extremely bad weather, which directly or indirectly affected all of the major United States airports, there were only a few reports of excessive tarmac strandings like those that occurred by the thousands during bad weather from 2006 through 2009 Stockholm Sydney Taipei Tel Aviv Tokyo Toronto Tunis Vienna Warsaw Washington 6/0 29/20 26/17 19/12 13/3 -6/-16 18/8 12/3 7/-2 5/-2 43/32 84/68 79/63 66/54 55/37 21/3 64/46 54/37 45/28 41/28 S PC S Sh S SS PC S S C 4/0 32/21 25/18 18/10 14/6 -9/-16 18/9 12/3 6/0 1/-8 39/32 90/70 77/64 64/50 57/43 16/3 64/48 54/37 43/32 34/18 PC PC PC Sh S Sn Sh PC S Sn After graduating from college, Tom Allen searched for an escape from an unfulfilling, deskbound career A plan to bike through a few countries snowballed into a four-year trip through 32 countries, from his home in England through Europe, the Middle East and down the northeastern edge of Africa Throughout the journey Mr Allen, 31, shot more than 300 hours of video, showing him contracting malaria in Sudan and meeting his future wife in Armenia ‘‘A lot of the time, I was just talking to the camera like an old mate, trying to sort out my thoughts,’’ Mr Allen said ‘‘It was really quite raw.’’ But on his return to England, the BBC director James Newton watched the footage, realized there was a story to be told and turned it into the feature-length film ‘‘Janapar: Love on a Bike,’’ available on DVD and on iTunes, Amazon Instant Play and Google Play Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with Mr Allen about his adventure We planned for about 10 months before we left, but we ended up pitching the plans we made We had an overall direction, but it was fun to not be rigid in getting there It made it more interesting We weren’t comparing what we saw with our eyes with what we saw on the map We’re in a new town, and let’s just see Cycling and walking are a great way to be spontaneous You’re not restricted by the schedules of buses or planes When you go off on your own, you have to deal with this voice in your head who is always rabbiting thoughts at you It does take a bit of adjustment After that, it’s making good decisions You have to make every decision on your own, and that can be scary You make a lot of mistakes You don’t have anyone with you to share the highs You end up learning a lot about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses The hospitality It was very hum- bling, awesome I spent hundreds of nights in people’s homes There were epic views and amazing downhills, but the people with very little means saying come stay the night was the restoreyour-faith-in-humanity kind of stuff I would drop an occasional email from an Internet cafe I didn’t bring a phone Five years later mobiles have become ubiquitous Today, you’d be tweeting from Sudan I feel lucky that I couldn’t that That kind of experience is about the present moment and present place Being half involved and thinking this would be a nice Instagram photo isn’t the point It gives you a massively broader context for how the world looks and how you live in it Even if the result is learning your friends and family back home are more important It’s always going to be different for everyone The real beauty is how personal it is ) +KJ )>LA 9)6+0-5 BY VICTORIA GOMELSKY In October 2003, Maximilian Büsser, managing director of Harry Winston Rare Timepieces, was on a flight from Singapore to Geneva when he began to sketch the outlines of Horological Machine No 1, a daringly original watch that would soon herald the birth of his own radical brand Mr Büsser had not registered a name for his company but he knew how it would appear on the dial: B&F, for Büsser & Friends, reflecting a concept he had pioneered while working on Winston’s celebrated Opus series: Assemble a group of friends skilled in the horological arts and put them to work crafting an iconoclastic timepiece Dissuaded from using B&F by his trademark attorney, who argued that he would have to contend with lawyers from Bell & Ross — a Swiss watch brand that often goes by the initials B&R — Mr Büsser reluctantly agreed to add his first initial to the moniker, making it MB&F ‘‘But I really didn’t want to,’’ he said, lamenting MB&F’s asymmetry and over-emphasis on his contribution (as opposed to that of his ‘‘friends’’) There was also the name’s glaring unconventionality Switzerland’s best known watch names tend to pay homage to the luminaries of watchmaking past: the Pateks, Philippes, Breguets and Piguets of the world, men of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries who laid the foundation for a Swiss cottage industry that last year exported roughly $24 billion in watches around the globe To some early critics, Mr Büsser’s playful choice lacked gravitas ) +76 )*8- ‘‘The first graphic designer I worked with told me it was a crappy name,’’ Mr Büsser recalled ‘‘He said, ‘You’re in luxury — you can’t sell a $200,000 watch with friends in the name That’s for Mickey Mouse.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s the only way I can convey what I want to convey.’ And that’s what we did It’s funny — success makes you sexy.’’ The history of consumer goods and services is dominated by companies that eschewed tradition, logic, and good sense when choosing names for their products As a prime example, Steve Manning, founder of Igor, a naming and branding agency based in Sausalito, Calif., cited Sir Richard Branson’s famous gamble ‘‘If you’re crazy enough to paint Virgin on the side of an airline, people are going to give you the benefit of the doubt that something different is going on here,’’ he said Today, the practice of baptizing watches with names — be they functional, experiential or evocative — is so common that it hardly seems possible timepieces once were sold generically But it took the Swiss until the 20th century to catch on to the power of a brand name Once they did, the industry spawned a bevy of iconic timepieces whose equally iconic names hold the keys to a parallel reading of watchmaking history The first Swiss brand to break with tradition by choosing a made-up word for its products was, paradoxically, founded by a Bavarian living in London According to his memoir, Hans Wilsdorf was riding atop a double-decker bus when ‘‘a good genie whispered’’ in his ear a ‘‘short yet significant word’’: Rolex In 1908, Mr Wilsdorf registered the trademark that would establish his brand ‘‘as the international mark of success,’’ said Jake Ehrlich, editor and publisher of RolexMagazine.com Whether Rolex would have climbed to the top of the watchmaking heap with a different name is impossible to know ‘‘It’s a chicken or egg scenario,’’ said Amit Dev Handa, the luxury timepiece concierge of the Mandarin Oriental in Las Vegas ‘‘The names of these watches are all very easy to pronounce and they give people a point of reference.’’ Take what many consider to be Mr Wilsdorf’s greatest creation, the Rolex Oyster, the first water-resistant watch, unveiled in 1927 Associating his luxury timepiece with the image of a sea-dwelling mollusk, the pioneering marketer conveyed an essential point about his product: It concealed something rare and valuable When Mr Wilsdorf added the word Perpetual to the name in 1931, denoting the model’s first-of-its-kind self-winding wristwatch movement, he all but sealed its groundbreaking legacy Louis Cartier, a contemporary of Mr Wilsdorf, shared the Rolex founder’s preference for straightforward product names that conjured a clear image The first Cartier Tank watch, designed in 1917, was purportedly modeled on the overhead view of an Allied tank: the brancards evoked the treads of the vehicle, while the case represented the cockpit That the watch industry’s first enduring product names emerged in the years bookending the Great War is no coincidence At the time, ‘‘images of American soldiers smoking cigarettes, with BY ARTHUR TOUCHOT Although 3-D printers may be the coolest kids on the block, most watch brands not want anything to with them The machines are not precise enough, at least not yet, to print out mechanical watch movements, according to Iain Todd, a professor of metallurgy and materials processing at the University of Sheffield in Britain Yet other watch parts can, and should, be printed ‘‘You can really phenomenal things around what you put your movement in, especially with the cases,’’ Mr Todd said in a phone interview this month A handful of industrial designers are exploring those possibilities ‘‘I don’t understand why the watch industry isn’t employing 3-D printing,’’ said Timur Pinar, who designed a stainless steel watch case last year using SolidWorks, a software tool developed by the French company Dassault ‘‘Engineers use it to design planes, so it’s safe to say a watch case wasn’t these enormous strap watches on their wrists’’ began to appear, said Michael Friedman, historian and development director for the Swiss brand Audemars Piguet It was the advent of the wristwatch era and the industry’s budding marketers seized the opportunity to make a name for their brands — literally At Jaeger-LeCoultre, for example, the legendary 1931 Reverso had its roots in a conversation that took place on the sidelines of a polo match in India An officer of the British Raj is said to have challenged the Swiss businessman César de Trey to devise a timepiece that could withstand the rigors of the game, said Jaeger-LeCoultre’s artistic director Janek Deleskiewicz Named for the Latin phrase ‘‘I turn around,’’ a reference to its unique swiveling case design, the Reverso remains a pillar of the Jaeger-LeCoultre brand But the name of the person who first uttered the by-now timeless moniker has been lost to history When asked who coined the name, Mr Deleskiewicz said, simply, ‘‘the product itself’’ — the implication being that the Reverso and other revered watch models emerged from their makers with their marketing messages wholly intact, like tiny, ticking Aphrodites More than just magical combinations of syllables, however, the industry’s lasting names are love letters to the decades in which they were conceived The 1952 Breitling Navitimer, a ‘‘navigational timer’’ for pilots; the 1955 IWC Ingénieur, designed explicitly for engineers; and the 1957 Omega Speedmaster, a chronograph that went to the moon and back, were introduced at a time when ‘‘science was considered to solve all human problems,’’ said Georges Kern, chief executive of IWC, referring to the notions of progress and mathematical precision embodied within their monikers By the 1960s, watch names reflected the era’s more cooperative spirit In 1969, for instance, Zenith unveiled El Primero, the first self-winding chronograph While the words translate from the Spanish as ‘‘the first,’’ Zenith’s chief executive, Jean-Frédéric Dufour, maintains that the name is actually taken from Esperanto, a constructed language that resonated with linguists of the 1960s, when it still seemed possible that a common language could stave off world conflict The outlook in Switzerland turned inward with the onset of the ’70s The 1972 Royal Oak by Audemars Piguet — a groundbreaking timepiece lauded for what was then considered an audaciously designed stainless steel case by Gérald Genta — evoked a regal, old world association at a time when the Swiss were rapidly losing market share to the upstart Japanese The oak in question was the tree in which King Charles II of England supposedly hid during the battle of Worcester in 1651, when he evaded capture by Oliver Cromwell’s army As the ‘‘Me Decade’’ gave way to the ‘‘Greed Decade,’’ the tenor of the names shifted again The Polo, a 1979 introduction from Piaget, channeled the ultimate rich person’s pastime to invoke the notion of casual elegance: ‘‘Polo was a very exclusive game matching the sort of clientele Piaget was aiming at,’’ said its chief executive, Philippe LéopoldMetzger At Patek Philippe, widely considered the world’s most sought after watch brand, it took until the late 1980s for the company to codify its timepieces into formal collections The round watches were labeled Calatravas, after the company’s symbol, the Calatrava Cross, named for a 12th century Spanish order of Cistercian knights that was meaningful to the founders, Antoni Patek and Franciszek Czapek, both of whom were of Polish Catholic origin Patek Philippe’s rectangular-shaped watches were called Gondolos, after a loyal Brazilian retailer, Chronometro Gondolo, in whose honor the watchmaker once manufactured a rectangular Art Deco-style timepiece Among hardcore fans of the brand, however, names play second fiddle to another form of nomenclature ‘‘When you go to dinner with a group of Patek collectors, they speak in numbers,’’ said John Reardon, international co-head of Christie’s watch department, alluding to the mostly four-digit reference numbers that collectors wield as if they were codes to a private bank account — which, in a sense, they could be, so rare and valuable are many of the timepieces they identify Once the new millennium began, the mechanical watchmaking renaissance was in full swing and the financial crisis was still eight years away, which helps explain why the names conceived during this period — including the independent Mr Büsser’s clinically titled Horological Machines — were as bold as the attitudes that created them Hublot’s Big Bang collection was the brainchild of its chief executive, JeanClaude Biver, who was searching for a name that captured his watchmaking philosophy of ‘‘fusion,’’ in which traditional techniques meet technical innovation He referred to the collection’s signature combination of gold and rubber: ‘‘Normally, those two elements in nature don’t belong together,’’ Mr Biver said ‘‘After the Big Bang, gold was under the earth and rubber was in the tree, but in the Big Bang, they were one.’’ Mr Biver said he did not struggle with the name On the contrary: ‘‘It was one night, in November 2004, and it took me a dinner with some red wine,’’ he noted Today, watch companies are much more deliberate about how they choose their names Tudor, founded in 1946 by Mr Wilsdorf as a sister brand to Rolex, much of a problem,’’ he said Drawing the 3-D model took a month, after which he sent the design to Materialise, a Belgian pioneer in additive manufacturing — the technical name for 3-D printing — to make the prototype Mr Pinar said he designed a skeletonized case to exploit the properties of laser sintering, the 3-D printing technology that uses a computer-controlled laser beam to build complex forms by fusing successive layers of powdered metal into the desired shape ‘‘It’s one of the best ways to make such parts,’’ he said ‘‘It helps us produce tangible models quickly.’’ Still, Mr Pinar put an old ETA Swiss mechanical movement into the case For clockwork precision, ‘‘there is a certain level of craftsmanship expected,’’ he said ‘‘3-D printing hasn’t arrived at that point.’’ That is particularly true at the top end of the market, Mr Todd said ‘‘You’ll always need to make your own old-fashioned mechanical movement if you want to be considered a high-end brand,’’ he said Among the first brands to make watches with 3-D printed cases on a commercial scale is rvnDSGN, set up by Zach Raven, a designer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2011 ‘‘It was my wife’s idea,’’ Mr Raven said, adding that he did not know if the project would work when he started After a first, slightly crude, prototype made in stainless steel infused with bronze, Mr Raven moved on to titanium, employing a variant of the process that was far more precise The sintering process leaves its mark on the surface of the case, giving it a characteristic, resolutely modern look ‘‘We choose to leave the subtle grain because it enhances the story of how the watch was made,’’ Mr Raven said in a phone interview The process can also be applied to more precious metals, including gold In November, the British brand Hoptroff, which makes classic-looking watches with unusual electronic complications, became the first watchmaker to create 3-D printed gold cases, presented at last year’s SalonQP London watch show Laser sintering ‘‘can achieve things you simply can’t achieve with milling,’’ said Richard Hoptroff, co-founder of the brand, which offers three wristwatch worked with Nomen, a Paris-based naming company, to coin the names of its Grantour and Pelagos collections The former is a synthesis of the Italian words gran turismo and describes a sports watch designed to appeal to car enthusiasts, while the latter is a dive watch named after ‘‘a Greek word defining the deeper part of the sea and, in particular, the kind of creatures that live there,’’ said Davide Cerrato, head of marketing and product development Even more painstaking was the ‘‘art project’’ approach watchmaker Felix Baumgartner and designer Martin Frei employed when brainstorming the name for Urwerk, the subversive luxury watch brand they debuted in 1997 ‘‘Ur — it’s like going to the origin, to the beginning of time,’’ said Mr Frei, who was inspired by the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, where timekeeping began ‘‘The next word, werk, is of course ‘work,’ like in English But if you have it with Uhrwerk, it means movement It was a play on words, this idea of a business that deals with the philosophical matter of time.’’ In stark contrast to Urwerk’s earnestness is the irreverence that Shinola brought to its naming process The founders of the Detroit-based watch brand were in a Dallas boardroom discussing names for their new American watch company when someone uttered an old-timey insult and bells went off The antiquated name belonged to a 19thcentury American shoe polish brand, until the company foundered in the middle of the last century, leaving its intellectual property rights ripe for the taking ‘‘To find a name that is part of the common vernacular but you don’t have any understanding of what it is — it’s kind of amazing,’’ said the creative director, Daniel Caudill He added that Shinola’s choice of name underscored a fundamental brand quality: ‘‘We don’t take ourselves too seriously.’’ The company hammered that point home last spring, when it came time to name its first ladies watch, a cushion-shaped model with a stylishly thin strap According to ads touting The Gomelsky, the watch was ‘‘randomly named after the first person we met after we couldn’t come up with anything better.’’ That the complete stranger Shinola immortalized with its ladies timepiece happened to be a watch journalist named Victoria Gomelsky — check the byline of this article to appreciate the meta-narrative — made the story only that much better Unknown to her, she had walked into the brand’s booth at the Baselworld watch fair in Switzerland last April at the exact moment that the company’s chief executive, Tom Kartsotis, had issued a dictum ‘‘The very first person who walks in the booth, we’re going to name it after them,’’ Mr Caudill recalled ‘‘It was kind of in jest But the reality is everyone loved it.’’ Never mind that The Gomelsky’s namesake was born in Russia, contradicting Shinola’s Americanmade ethos, which the company expresses rather clearly in its other model names, The Runwell, The Brakeman and The Birdy The story of the meetand-greet in Basel trumped all Still, even Mr Caudill admits that some names have their limits ‘‘We have a Runwell bike; eventually we’ll have a Runwell bag, a Runwell shoe,’’ he said ‘‘But no, there won’t be any Gomelsky beer cozies.’’ models with 18-karat gold cases, priced at 5,000 pounds, or about $8,300 A highcomplication pocket watch, the Hoptroff No.10, is planned for introduction this year Inspired by Patek Philippe’s Calibre 89 and Harrison’s Sea Watch No.1, the No.10 has been conceived as a navigational aid, and will feature no fewer than 48 indicators, including celestial functions, temperature, pressure, humidity and compass heading The particular look that results from the laser fusion process, not unlike the texture of a used sheet of sandpaper, is one that ‘‘nobody else will be able to replicate without laser sintering,’’ Mr Hoptroff said This may be one reason why large, established brands have not yet adopted the technology, he suggested ‘‘Larger companies have invested in certain looks, and in certain machinery,’’ he said ‘‘There’s probably very little reason for them to rush into something new because they have an accepted brand and look.’’ But for smaller brands manufacturing in restricted batches, the 3-D technology offers significant benefits, he said ‘‘Because we make only a few watches every time,’’ Mr Hoptroff explained, ‘‘we can easily customize watches within a collection, or adjust for changes between each print.’’ ) +76 )*8- ) +76 )*8- BY NAZANIN LANKARANI BY NINA SIEGAL Ticktock, ticktock: Earthly time can be so ho-hum, hands finding the same positions on the dial day after day Add celestial time to that mix, though, and things can become a lot more interesting Consider the Midnight Planetarium Poetic Complication timepiece that Van Cleef & Arpels introduced this year at the Salon de la Haute Horologie in Geneva: It measures time according to the movements of six planets as they orbit the sun, true to the actual length of each orbit Mercury, for example, revolves around the sun in 88 days, while Jupiter takes almost 12 years, and Saturn more than 29 Each of the small planets built into the watch face moves at exactly that rhythm Depending on his or her age, a wearer of the watch may not live to see Saturn make its full turn on the dial ‘‘Every day, your dial is different and the positions never come back — not in a normal lifetime,’’ said Daniel Reintjes, chief executive and creative director of Christiaan van der Klaauw, a Dutch watchmaking company that specializes in astronomical watches, and which developed the Midnight Planetarium for Van Cleef & Arpels ‘‘Maybe in about a million years.’’ The watch contains 396 separate parts, and the Saturn dial may be the slowest part ever built into a watch, Mr Reintjes said Van Cleef & Arpels offers an 18-karat rose-gold version for 180,000 euros, or $242,000; a diamond-encrusted version is Ô240,000 Van Cleef & Arpels designed the watch, but it chose to work with Christiaan van der Klaauw, a small watchmaking atelier in Joure, a town in the northern Dutch province of Friesland, because of its reputation for astronomical complications ‘‘It was pretty obvious to the development team that Christiaan van der Klaauw were the best partners in the field,’’ said Lea Dassonville, Van Cleef’s deputy watch marketing director ‘‘They’re experts, but they’re really willing to dream and to challenge their own technical approach to things to make it work.’’ That expertise has been nurtured since 1974, when a Frisian clockmaker, Mr van der Klaauw, noticed a waning interest in old-fashioned clocks, and switched to watchmaking ‘‘It’s the same design — but a much smaller version,’’ Mr Reintjes said In the same atelier that Mr van der Klaauw opened that year, five watchmakers now create about 300 watches a year, each by hand The ateliers watches retail for anywhere from Ô7,500 to Ô100,000 The least expensive, the CVDK Ceres 1974, is a relatively straightforward hour, minutes and second watch that also shows the moon phase The most expensive is the CVDK Planetarium Aquarius, the first in a planned series of 12 unique zodiac-sign watches, sporting a solid gold watch face decorated by the famed Dutch engraver Kees Engelbarts with an image of the water bearer It incorporates what Mr Reintjes says is the smallest mechanical planetarium in the world There is such a high demand for Christiaan van der Klaauw astronomical watches that there is a waiting list of up to a year, depending on the complications Mr Van der Klaauw, now 70, has mostly retired from the business, passing it on to Mr Reintjes a few years ago And although the Netherlands is not known for its watchmaking history, it holds a special place in astronomy and the measurement of time Christiaan Huygens, a 17th-century Dutch mathematician and philosopher, discovered the rings of Saturn and its major moon, Titan He also invented the pendulum clock, which ticks out seconds — so in a sense, he invented the second The country’s first university, Leiden University, is also home to one of the world’s oldest astronomical observatories, built in 1633 An amateur Dutch astronomer named Eise Eisinga built the world’s first planetarium in Frankener, the Netherlands, in the late 18th century Still operational, it is now a Unesco World Heritage Site Mr Reintjes says that he has been approached by other watch and jewelry brands to make astronomical watches, but he has declined since the atelier lacks the resources for new projects ‘‘The big brands are more interested in astronomical watches right now, because if you’re concentrated only on hours and minutes on your dial, then some day everyone’s doing the same thing,’’ Mr Reintjes said ‘‘You can make a different color and a different hand, in numbers or letters, but you’re all working with the same information ‘‘If you’re working with a more astronomical theme, the moon, the planets, you have the sidereal day, you have the stars, you have so much more.’’ Mrs Dassonville said she also had witnessed a rise in interest in astronom- Vincent Perriard is betting on innovation; Christophe Claret is shifting downmarket; Sylvère Demonsais is gearing up production; and Pierre Jacques is gearing down ‘‘Whatever works’’ could be this year’s motto for Switzerland’s independent watchmakers, who are navigating a stagnant market that seems determined to stay that way After a record year and double-digit growth in 2012, Swiss watch exports grew just 1.9 percent last year, according to figures released this month by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry Exports reached 21.8 billion Swiss francs, or $24.5 billion ‘‘We expect growth to remain flat in 2014,’’ Jean-Daniel Pasche, president of the federation, said in an interview in December Despite that lackluster prospect, a July report by the consulting firm Deloitte, based on a survey of 53 industry executives, found that 65 percent expected growth in their business this year, while 91 percent said the introduction of new products was a priority Mr Perriard, the chief executive of HYT, or The Hydro Mechanical Horologists, a young and futuristic brand that combines hydraulics with mechanical watchmaking, echoes that sentiment ‘‘Last year, we increased the size of our research and development department from two to 24,’’ Mr Perriard said ‘‘In 2013, we delivered 210 pieces This year, we hope to deliver 600.’’ ‘‘Our order books are full through 2014,’’ he continued ‘‘There are buyers out there.’’ H1, the brand’s first watch, introduced in 2011, won the Innovation prize at the prestigious Geneva Grand Prix awards HYT added a second model last year, again combining hydraulics with a handmade mechanical movement Prices for the H1 start at 43,000 francs, or $47,000, and the H2 at 95,000 francs Still, not everybody is so optimistic: ‘‘There may be a boom in the watch market, but we are going counter-current to curb our growth this year,’’ said Mr Jacques, chief executive of De Bethune ‘‘We will concentrate on making fewer pieces.’’ Founded in 2002, De Bethune is known in the industry as a laboratory for research and development — at the Geneva fine watch salon, or SIHH, in January it presented four new models The brand produced 400 timepieces last year This year, Mr Jacques said, production is likely to be lower ‘‘We want to continue to make a desirable product rather than saturate the market,’’ he said ical complications this year at the Salon de la Haute Horologie, the fine watch show in Geneva last month ‘‘There were quite a lot of watches displaying different kinds of astronomical complications, and an exhibition on watchmaking being a daughter of astronomy,’’ she said ‘‘It’s really a trend.’’ ‘‘From a philosophical point of view, there’s a dimension of having the universe on your wrist,’’ she added ‘‘In a world where there’s so much uncertainty, having something that projects your life to a higher dimension like that resonates a lot.’’ In contrast, Laurent Ferrier, a highend brand founded in 2008, is planning to expand: ‘‘We finished last year with about 100 timepieces delivered, fewer than expected,’’ Mr Demonsais, the chief executive, said ‘‘This year, we are planning to deliver 150.’’ Other brands like Christophe Claret, a high-end manufacturer based in Le Locle, Switzerland, are shifting to lowerpriced models ‘‘Slowdown in China had a negative impact on our sales, and we are making up for that loss with more affordable products this year — like the Poker,’’ Mr Claret said in an email The Poker, an interactive watch that doubles as a Texas Hold’em poker game, completes the brand’s gambling trilogy alongside its Blackjack and Baccara models Introduced at the Geneva salon last month, The Poker sells for $175,000 to $190,000 Prices for timepieces by the brand are typically around $330,000 ‘‘It is a greater challenge for a small high-end brand like ours to find new markets than it is for large watch brands,’’ Mr Claret said ‘‘Our advantage is the originality of our product.’’ In the current market, originality is the key to survival for many brands, said Mr Perriard of HYT ‘‘The small, high-end independents fall into two categories — those with working capital and those without,’’ he said ‘‘The former must redouble on innovation and marketing; and many in the latter group will disappear.’’ ) +76 )*8- When the horologist Roger Smith received a request from 10 Downing Street, the British prime minister’s office, to make a wristwatch for a national marketing campaign, he thought it was an opportunity to put a new face on an old tradition Holding up the finished watch in January, in his Isle of Man workshop, Mr Smith pointed to its silver dial, decorated with a motif recalling the British flag, known as the Union Jack ‘‘The complexity of the dial is what I’m most proud of,’’ he said ‘‘We went to extraordinary lengths to make it resemble the flag — that took three months.’’ The dial is composed of 34 parts, making it one of the most complex ever fashioned by hand ‘‘Roger is the current guardian of a method of making watches that is completely unique,’’ said Justin Koullapis, co-founder of the vintage watch retailer Watchclub, in London, and a self-taught watch repairer who has taught at the watch school at Birmingham City University ‘‘Every part that is possible to be made by hand is made by hand,’’ Mr Koullapis said ‘‘He starts with a pile of metal and turns it into a watch.’’ ing from him the full range of watchmaking skills and inheriting his workshop on the Isle of Man when Mr Daniels died in 2011 One of the most significant components of Mr Smith’s watch for the marketing campaign is his own evolution of Mr Daniels’s iconic co-axial escapement, a game-changing invention that reduced friction within a watch to almost zero Finding a way to make Mr Daniels’s invention dramatically lighter, Mr Smith has produced a movement that can oscillate faster with reduced momentum forces, making it even more accurate The Isle of Man, halfway between the English mainland and Ireland, is far from Britain’s industrial heartland But it was once the center of an ancient Celtic trading empire and — equidistant among England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales — it offers an unexpectedly fitting setting for a symbol of a national craft tradition The GREAT campaign, which began in 2012 alongside preparations for the London Olympic Games, ‘‘aims to raise international awareness of the country’s unique assets,’’ Mr Bird said ‘‘Roger Smith’s watches are the first production watches to have been designed and made entirely within the British Isles for over 50 years.’’ The watch is technically ‘‘very advanced,’’ he added, ‘‘but it shows oldfashioned hand-craftsmanship, quality and an approach to watchmaking that I think is quite rare in modern mechanical watchmaking today.’’ Mr Smith, working with a team of seven, produces just 10 watches a year ‘‘Financially it’s been a long road, and ‘‘Everyone loves the idea of a bespoke suit because it is unique and such craftsmanship is a rarity — it is no different with watches,’’ Mr Koullapis added ‘‘Roger is a master of every single discipline We have only had two or three people in the past 300 years who have done that.’’ When the government wanted to spotlight a craftsman epitomizing Britain’s traditional industrial skills for its ‘‘GREAT Britain’’ marketing campaign, Mr Smith was a natural choice, said Conrad Bird, the campaign’s director ‘‘Watchmaking is a unique niche industry, one of many sectors we want the GREAT campaign to help highlight,’’ he said The dial, and every single component of the watch movement, was made by hand in the watchmaker’s workshop, ‘‘drawing on over 300 years of British watchmaking history,’’ he said ‘‘Britain did pioneer many of the developments in time-keeping instruments,’’ said Alan Midleton, curator and librarian of the British Horological Institute ‘‘This is often forgotten.’’ British clock and watchmakers have been responsible for some of the most important developments in watchmaking over the centuries: In 1664, Robert Hooke perfected the balance spring; in the next century John Harrison made the first marine chronometers; in 1924, John Harwood developed the self-winding movement In 1974, George Daniels invented the co-axial escapement, a design that virtually eliminated sliding friction, increasing accuracy and reducing the need for lubrication in watch movements Mr Smith, who was born in Manchester, England, apprenticed with Mr Daniels and became his heir, learn- we nearly went bust quite a few times,’’ he said Still, standing by his principles has paid off: Now ‘‘we have a constant waiting list of clients,’’ he said ‘‘I think as our world has become more saturated with technology, people are increasingly taking pleasure in seeing a watch that has been almost entirely handmade People who come to us love the fact that every piece has been made from scratch ‘‘You don’t get that story with a Quartz watch.’’ The workshop is a rare sight in today’s world In one room, a craftsman is engraving the surface of a piece of silver, soon to become a dial, turning the handle of an iron machine dating from the 1820s Mr Daniels refurbished the machine after finding it in an old factory in Clerkenwell — once the heart of London’s watchmaking and jewelry district ‘‘Today, nearly all watch dials are pattern-stamped,’’ Mr Smith said, ‘‘but George mastered the trade of handturning these patterns We continue to use it because it is still the best way.’’ BY SARAH J WHITEHEAD BY DESIREE AU La Chaux-de-Fonds, a few miles south of the French border in the Swiss Jura mountains, has been an important watchmaking center for centuries Some of the industry’s top names, such as Rolex, Omega and Girard-Perregaux, are linked to the town For the past 10 years, Steven Holtzman, a businessman who lives in San Diego, has made it his base for a quixotic watchmaking adventure Mr Holtzman, who built his career for 20 years selling and marketing Swiss watches in the United States, initiated a concept in 2005 with a business model very different than that of the major brands Mtres du Temps, or Masters of Time, specializes in bringing together all-star teams of master craftsmen and watch designers to collaborate on and develop strikingly original timepieces An independent company, it does not market itself with expensive ad campaigns or celebrity endorsements It released only 200 pieces last year and does not show at trade events such as the BaselWorld fair or the Geneva watch show, the Salon International de Haute Horlogerie Yet its models, simply named Chapter One, Two and Three, command anywhere from $80,000 to over $500,000 ‘‘I felt there was a void in the industry with brands where there was a true connection between the watchmakers whose names were on the watch and the actual end-consumer who wore the watches,’’ said Mr Holtzman, speaking from his California home, from where he travels monthly to Switzerland ‘‘So many brands bear the name of a creator who has been dead for many years and once created a masterpiece Then I asked myself if watchmaking can be taken to another level where the watchmakers themselves could be introduced to the consumer.’’ He also gave himself a bigger challenge of ‘‘pairing up’’ watchmakers Like MB&F, another craft brand founded at about the same time by the watch industry executive Maximilian Büsser, ‘‘the idea is to highlight the collaboration aspect,’’ Mr Holtzman said Though similar in ethic, the two brands are wide apart in design — MB&F aims for radical futurism, while MDT is about classical complexity So far, some of the best names in the business have gotten behind the drawing board for Mr Holtzman, including Roger Dubuis, Peter Speake-Marin, Daniel Roth and Christophe Claret The process of getting each pair to work together is akin to asking Beethoven and Brahms to compose a joint con- certo He first took the idea to Roger Dubuis, who started his own brand after years spent working on complication models at Patek Philippe and who codeveloped the world’s first perpetual calendar bi-retrograde movement for Harry Winston Mr Holtzman had distributed Roger Dubuis watches in South America ‘‘He was the man who introduced me to the world of haute horology,’’ he said As an experienced marketer, Mr Holtzman knew that MDT’s watches would need a shared ‘‘DNA’’ to give the brand a clear identity That, he decided, should be the inclusion of a roller complication, often found in old clocks, to display days, moon phases or a second time zone ‘‘I wanted to integrate this into a mechanical watch, which made MDT pieces different but yet familiar,’’ Mr Holtzman said ‘‘This was the mandate we gave to watchmakers, to bring a new perspective to timepieces.’’ Chapter One, developed by the watchmakers Christophe Claret and Peter Speake-Marin, with early input from Mr Dubuis, took three years to develop Chapter Two was developed by Daniel Roth and Mr Speake-Marin, while Chapter Three is a collaboration between Kari Voutilainen and Andreas Strehler The watches are called Chapters because the goal, for Mr Holtzman, is to ‘‘tell a story.’’ ‘‘It’s pretty amazing to work with the best, to see what goes on through their minds,’’ he said ‘‘Their ability to figure ways of making hundreds of little micro mechanical components all come together is like listening to Beethoven.’’ When he started the brand he traveled through Europe, discussing his project with master watchmakers While it often piqued their interest, most did not find the idea of collaboration appealing ‘‘Watchmakers usually work solo,’’ Mr Holtzman said ‘‘They thought the idea of needing two is somehow a marketing scheme It took some convincing that two, working together, could possibly realize something different — and one plus one can equal three.’’ With a limited production capacity, MDT is sold through a small group of retailers It has only one flagship boutique, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Mr Holtzman is considering opening a second store in China with partners and has looked at several cities, including Shanghai, Hangzhou and Dalian He warned that there was a risk attached: ‘‘It’s a big deal to open and manage your own boutique and detrimental if you end up closing it.’’ Still, he said, ‘‘we have much interest from Chinese collectors who are world travelers — and they seek our brand.’’ He sees no rush to expand his business ‘‘We often sell to kings and queens and we are far from entry level,’’ he said ‘‘We will never be mainstream.’’ www.chanel.com ... had lately made him ‘‘a newly minted breakaway star’’ on the international art scene, as The New York Times described him in December Mr Adkins’s work — cerebral yet viscerally evocative, unabashedly... long — choreographically speaking — since France invaded New York in the spring of 2001 with France Moves, a festival programmed by Yorgos Lukos, the artistic director of the Lyon Opera Ballet This... irresistible Most restaurateurs fill otherwise empty seats with a less extravagant menu than Mr Zizka’s Kevin Faerkin, general manager of the Grand Central Oyster Bar and Restaurant in Manhattan,