F R O M T H E PA G E S O F
Wednesday
October 14, 2009
Midnight in New York
Nine pages © 2009 The New York Times
pay czar wants Health Bill Wins One Republican Vote
a.i.g. to reduce
promised bonuses
The federal pay czar is trying to
force the American International
Group to reduce $198 million in
bonuses promised to employees
of the financial unit whose prob-
lems posed a threat to the global
financial system last year.
But the Treasury’s special
master for compensation, Ken-
neth Feinberg, is running into le-
gal hurdles because those bonus-
es fall outside new rules against
bonus payments at companies re-
ceiving government assistance.
The bonus agreements at issue
were struck before last year’s
emergency rescues by the Trea-
sury and the Federal Reserve.
The problem is a recurring one.
A.I.G. payments early this year to
the same employees elicited pub-
lic outrage, though government
officials said then that they had
little legal authority to rescind
the contracts.
To strengthen his hand, Fein-
berg is threatening to reduce
the compensation packages he
does control, according to a per-
son close to the discussions. That
could mean shrinking the pay of
other A.I.G. executives — includ-
ing its new chief, Robert Benmo-
sche — if the company does not
claw back part of the bonuses
for the people in its trading unit,
known as A.I.G. Financial Prod-
ucts.
At companies that received ex-
traordinary government support,
Feinberg’s task is to monitor and
enforce rules governing new
pay packages. He can approve
or reject cash pay that exceeds
$500,000 for top executives.
After A.I.G. paid $165 million in
bonuses to the Financial Products
group in March, it promised to try
to recover much of the money to
quell the uproar. But it has recov-
ered only $19 million of the $45
million it asked the recipients to
repay, according to a new audit of
A.I.G.’s compensation program
and government’s oversight.
MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
WASHINGTON — After
months of relentless courting and
suspense, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe,
the Maine Republican, cast her
vote with Democrats on Tuesday
as the Senate Finance Committee
approved legislation to remake
the health care system and pro-
vide coverage to millions of the
uninsured.
With Snowe’s support, the com-
mittee approved the $829 billion
measure by a vote of 14 to 9, with
all the other Republicans op-
posed.
“Is this bill all that I would
want?” Snowe asked. “Far from
it. Is it all that it can be? No. But
when history calls, history calls.
I happen to think that the conse-
quences of inaction dictate the
urgency of Congress taking every
opportunity to demonstrate its
capacity to solve the monumen-
tal issues of our time.”
Snowe’s remarks riveted col-
leagues and thrilled the White
House. President Obama had
sought her vote, hoping that she
would break with Republican
leaders and provide at least a ve-
neer of bipartisanship to the bill.
Obama described the commit-
Biden No Longer a Lone Voice on Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — From the
moment he took office, Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has
been President Obama’s in-house
pessimist on the war in Afghani-
stan, the strongest voice against
further escalation of U.S. forces.
It was a role that may have been
lonely at first, but has attracted
more company inside the White
House as Obama rethinks the
strategy he unveiled just seven
months ago.
For Biden, the role represents
an evolution in his own thinking,
a shift from his days as a liberal
hawk advocating loudly for U.S.
involvement in Afghanistan.
Year by year, the story of Biden’s
disenchantment with the Afghan
government, and by extension
with the engagement there, mir-
rors America’s slow but steady
turn against the war.
“He came to question some
Visit The Times on the Web: www.nytimes.com
tee’s action as “a critical mile-
stone” and declared, “We are
now closer than ever before to
passing health reform.” But he
added: “Now is not the time to
pat ourselves on the back. Now
is not the time to offer ourselves
congratulations. Now is the time
to dig in and work even harder to
get this done.”
The Finance Committee was
the fifth and final Congressio-
nal panel to approve a sweeping
health care bill. The legislation
still faces significant hurdles.
Aside from Snowe, no Republi-
cans have endorsed the bills.
Pressure from lobbyists is
sure to grow in coming weeks.
And many more lawmakers will
get involved in what promise to
be impassioned and highly politi-
cized debates on the floor of the
Senate and the House.
After the Finance Committee
vote, the chief architect of the
bill, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.,
the chairman of the committee,
declared: “It’s clear that health
care reform will pass this year.
Our action today provides terrific
momentum.”
But Sen. Charles E. Grassley
of the assumptions and began
asking questions about whether
there might be other approaches
that might get you as good or bet-
ter results at lower cost,” said
Richard N. Haass, the president
of the Council on Foreign Rela-
tions, who has been consulted by
Biden on the matter.
Biden’s approach would reject
the additional troops sought by
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and
leave the U.S. force in Afghanistan
roughly the same, 68,000. Rather
than emphasize protecting the
population, he would accelerate
training of Afghan forces to take
over the fight while hunting Al
Qaeda in Pakistan using drones
and special forces. He does not
favor abandoning Afghanistan,
but his view has caught on with
many liberals.
“The vice president is asking
great questions and he under-
of Iowa, the senior Republican on
the committee, said the bill put
the nation on “a slippery slope
toward more and more govern-
ment control of health care.”
The Congressional Budget Of-
fice said the bill would cost $829
billion over 10 years. The costs
include $345 billion for the expan-
sion of Medicaid and $461 billion
for subsidies to help lower-in-
come people buy insurance.
The budget office said the costs
would be completely offset by new
fees and taxes and by cutbacks in
Medicare, so federal budget defi-
cits in the next 10 years would be
$81 billion lower than now pro-
jected.
But Douglas W. Elmendorf, di-
rector of the Congressional Bud-
get Office, said his agency had not
estimated the impact of the bill on
overall national health spending,
public and private, and could not
say whether it would “bend the
cost curve,” as Obama and law-
makers want.
Likewise, Elmendorf said he
did not know for sure how the bill
would affect premiums.
ROBERT PEAR and
DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
stands this issue very, very deep-
ly,” said Sen. John F. Kerry of
Massachusetts, Biden’s succes-
sor as chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee. “He’s been
there many times.
Beyond Biden’s strategic con-
cerns, some who participated in
administration deliberations this
year said he was keenly aware
that the country, and particularly
his party’s liberal base, was grow-
ing tired of the war and might not
accept many more years of ex-
tensive U.S. commitment.
While officials anticipate that
Obama will fall somewhere be-
tween the vice president’s posi-
tion and his commanding gener-
al’s request for as many as 40,000
more troops, they agree that
Biden has been a forceful pres-
ence in shaping the choices — not
entirely unlike his predecessor,
Dick Cheney. PETER BAKER
International
Guinea Boasts of a Big Infrastructure Deal
DAKAR, Senegal — Guinea’s
military government, facing in-
ternational sanctions and heavy
strictures over a mass killing of
unarmed demonstrators, is high-
lighting a recent agreement with
a Chinese company that could
provide it with billions of dollars.
Mamadi Kallo, the military jun-
ta’s secretary of state in charge
of public works, confirmed Tues-
day that the deal had been in the
works for months, but he said it
was signed only over the week-
end, well after the civilian killings
and rapes on Sept. 28.
China has yet to confirm the
deal, leading some analysts to
suggest that the Guinean gov-
ernment was trying to bolster its
legitimacy in the face of interna-
tional condemnation. But if the
deal has progressed as Guinean
officials have described, it could
clash with the tough positions laid
out by the junta’s critics, includ-
ing France and the United States.
Many nations condemned the
Russian Foreign Minister Rejects Iran Sanctions
MOSCOW — Denting President
Obama’s hopes for a powerful al-
ly in his campaign to press Iran
on its nuclear program, Russia’s
foreign minister said Tuesday
that threatening Tehran now
with harsh new sanctions would
be “counterproductive.”
The minister, Sergey V. Lavrov,
said after meeting with Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
here that diplomacy should be
given a chance to work, particu-
larly after a meeting in Geneva
earlier this month in which the
Iranian government said it would
allow U.N. inspectors to visit its
clandestine nuclear enrichment
facility near Qum.
Congo and Angola Agree to Suspend Mass Expulsions
JOHANNESBURG — Tens
of thousands of people — some
of them wrenched from their
homes with only the clothes on
their backs — have been expelled
from both Angola and Congo in
what has been a tit-for-tat immi-
gration dispute.
But after weeks of acrimony,
both countries on Tuesday agreed
to suspend the expulsions, said
Congo’s information minister,
Lambert Mende.
massacre and swiftly backed
away from any agreements with
the military government after its
soldiers fired upon protesters in a
stadium in the capital, Conakry.
On Tuesday, a group comprising
the European Union, the African
Union and the United Nations,
among others, called for the
junta’s “withdrawal,” and some
of Guinea’s neighbors in West Af-
rica have threatened sanctions.
For the second straight day,
shops, businesses and offices
stayed shut in Conakry, as resi-
dents observed a call by unions to
stay home to protest the killings.
There was little traffic, and the
city was quiet, residents said.
Kallo insisted the deal had been
signed with a private company,
not the Chinese government, and
that it had agreed to invest “up to
$7 billion” in electricity and aero-
nautics infrastructure — an enor-
mous sum for a country whose
gross domestic product is only
$4.5 billion. Guinea’s capital has
“Threats, sanctions and threats
of pressure in the current situa-
tion, we are convinced, would be
counterproductive,” he said.
Three weeks ago, President
Dmitri A. Medvedev said that “in
some cases, sanctions are inevi-
table.” This was viewed by some
U.S. officials as a sign that Rus-
sia was finally coming around to
the Obama administration’s view
that Iran is best handled with di-
plomacy backed by a credible
threat of sanctions.
It also came after the Obama
administration announced it
would retool a European mis-
sile defense system opposed by
Russia. That move was thought
The expulsions began in An-
gola, where the government has
been annoyed by the many im-
poverished Congolese who cross
the border. Some fled the war in
their homeland. Others crossed
in search of an economic lift, in-
cluding those who hope to pluck a
fortune in the diamond fields.
“We never challenged the ex-
pulsions themselves; we chal-
lenged the way they were being
conducted — all the beating of
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
shaky electricity at best and the
sprawling country of 10 million,
about the size of Oregon, is virtu-
ally without internal air links.
“How the Chinese are to be
compensated hasn’t been decid-
ed,” Kallo said.
Elsewhere in Africa, China has
been fiercely determined in its
pursuit of minerals, often absent
considerations of how countries
are governed, and analysts said
an unusual number of Chinese
nationals had been observed over
recent months at Guinea’s minis-
try of mines.
One expert on Africa-China
relations, David H. Shinn, a for-
mer ambassador to Ethiopia
and Burkina Faso, said “the an-
nouncement remains something
of an embarrassment to China
and plays into its policy of em-
phasizing state sovereignty and
avoiding interference in gover-
nance and human rights issues in
other countries.”
 ADAM NOSSITER
to have paid dividends for the
White House when Medvedev
appeared to throw his support be-
hind Obama on Iran, though U.S.
officials say the Russian presi-
dent was also likely to have been
reacting to the disclosure of the
nuclear site.
After the meeting with Lavrov,
Clinton met Medvedev later on
Tuesday, and administration offi-
cials said he did not retreat from
his support in his discussions with
her. But he said nothing about
Iran publicly before or after the
meeting. Prime Minister Vladi-
mir V. Putin, who has been skep-
tical of sanctions, was in China on
a trade mission.  (NYT)
people and looting their goods,
even sometimes their clothes,”
Mende said. “We began our own
expulsions as a kind of retalia-
tion.”
The largest share of the forc-
ibly returned Angolans came
from the province of Bas-Congo.
Most of the Congolese expelled
from Angola were taken from an
area around the city of Soyo or the
enclave of Cabinda.
 BARRY BEARAK
2
in brief
Romanian Vote
The government of Romania
collapsed after a vote of no con-
fidence on Tuesday. The toppling
of Prime Minister Emil Boc’s
centrist government reinforced
the sense of political upheaval
in Eastern and Central Europe,
where the governments of Hun-
gary, the Czech Republic and
Latvia have collapsed in recent
months amid economic hard
times.  (NYT)
Request for Asylum
The Iranian filmmaker Narg-
es Kalhor, daughter of President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s ad-
viser on cultural and media af-
fairs, has applied for asylum in
Germany, a spokesman for the
Nuremberg Human Rights Film
Festival said. Kalhor was at-
tending the festival to present
her film “Darkhish,” which con-
demns torture and totalitarian-
ism.  (AP)
Execution Appeal
Diplomatic officials and
rights groups in Britain are
waging a campaign to save
the life of Akmal Shaikh, 53, a
British man who has been sen-
tenced to death for drug smug-
gling by a Chinese court despite
signs of mental illness. Chi-
na rarely executes foreigners.
Shaikh, who has been sharing a
cell with 20 other prisoners in
Urumqi, the regional capital of
Xinjiang, has one remaining ap-
peal, to the Supreme People’s
Court in Beijing.  (NYT)
Mobster’s Funeral
With an array of pinstripes,
leather coats and facial scars,
princes of the Russian under-
world gathered on Tuesday
to say farewell to a king. Vy-
acheslav K. Ivankov, a Rus-
sian crime boss who survived
tangles with the K.G.B., the
F.B.I. and violent criminals in a
bloody career that spanned de-
cades, was laid to rest at a Mos-
cow cemetery. Ivankov died on
Friday in a Moscow hospital
from complications stemming
from a gunshot wound he re-
ceived in an apparent assassi-
nation attempt in July. He was
69. (NYT)
national
Still on the Job, but Making Half as Much
MECHANICSVILLE, Va. —
The captain’s hat with its oak-
leaf clusters sits atop a bookcase
in Bryan Lawlor’s home, out of
reach of the children. His uniform
still displays the four stripes of a
commercial airline captain, but
the hat stays home. Rules forbid
that extra display of authority,
now that Lawlor has been down-
graded to first officer.
He is now in the co-pilot’s seat
in the 50-seat ExpressJet com-
muter planes he flies, not for any
failure in skill. He wears his cap-
tain’s stripes to make that point.
But with air travel down, his em-
ployer cut costs by downgrad-
ing 130 captains, those with the
lowest seniority, to first officers,
automatically cutting the wage of
each by roughly 50 percent — to
$34,000 in Lawlor’s case.
The demotion, the cut in pay to
less than his wife, Tracy, makes
as a fourth-grade teacher, have
diminished Lawlor, in his own
eyes. He still thinks he will return
Drawbacks Found in Popular Prostate Surgery
Prostate cancer patients who
chose minimally invasive sur-
gery, rather than more exten-
sive operations to remove the
prostate, reported higher rates
of long-term problems, including
impotence and incontinence, ac-
cording to one of the largest stud-
ies to compare outcomes to date.
Patients achieved similar
rates of cancer control regard-
less of which surgery they had,
the analysis found.
The study, published in the
Journal of the American Medi-
cal Association, raises questions
about the claims made regarding
the superiority of minimally in-
vasive laparoscopic and robotic-
Some States Forgo Road Signs on Stimulus Program
The Great Depression had its
red, white and blue “U.S.A. Work
Program” signs and the ubiqui-
tous “We Do Our Part” blue eagle
emblems, which can still be seen
in the credits of films of the era.
This recession has green high-
way signs telling drivers when
construction work was paid for
by the stimulus program — but
not in Georgia, which just be-
came the latest of at least half a
dozen states to forgo the signs as
to being the family’s principal
breadwinner, although as the
months pass he worries more. “I
don’t want to be a 50-year-old pilot
earning $40,000 a year,” he said.
In recent decades, layoffs were
the standard way of cutting la-
bor costs. Reducing the wages
of those who remained on the job
was considered risky: the best
workers would jump to another
employer. But now pay cuts are
occurring more frequently than
at any time since the Great De-
pression.
State workers in Georgia are
taking home smaller paychecks.
So are the tens of thousands of
employees in California’s pub-
lic university system. The steel
company Nucor and the technol-
ogy giant Hewlett-Packard have
embraced the practice. So have
several airlines and many small
businesses.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics
does not track pay cuts, but it sug-
gests they are reflected in the
assisted surgeries, which have
led to a surge in the popularity of
the procedures in recent years.
“People intuitively think that a
minimally invasive approach has
fewer complications, even in the
absence of data,” said Dr. Jim. C.
Hu, the study’s lead author, who
is director of urologic robotic and
minimally-invasive surgery at
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
in Boston. He added, “I think the
technology has been oversold.”
Harvard researchers assessed
the outcomes of 1,938 men who
had minimally invasive prostate
surgery and 6,899 men who had
open surgery. All the patients
were 65 or older.
a waste of money.
The signs, which proclaim
“Project Funded by the Ameri-
can Recovery and Reinvestment
Act” over the red, white, blue and
green logo of the stimulus, cost an
average of $1,200 apiece in Geor-
gia, said David Spear, the press
secretary for the Georgia Depart-
ment of Transportation. The sign
issue became a lightning rod for
critics of the stimulus, and many
of them complained to the depart-
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
steep decline of total weekly pay
for production workers, pilots
among them, representing 80 per-
cent of the work force. That index
has fallen for nine consecutive
months, an unprecedented string
over the 44 years the bureau has
calculated weekly pay. The old
record was a two-month decline,
during the 1981-1982 recession.
“What this means,” said Thom-
as J. Nardone, an assistant com-
missioner at the bureau, “is that
the amount of money people are
paid has taken a big hit; not just
those who have lost their jobs, but
those who are still employed.”
Bryan and Tracy Lawlor, both
34, have hidden their straitened
circumstances from their four
young children. But as their sav-
ings dwindle, Christmas, a key in-
dicator in the Lawlor family, will
mean fewer presents this year.
“You don’t want to see disap-
pointment on their faces; that
makes me feel horrible,” Lawlor
said.  LOUIS UCHITELLE
Men in the study who under-
went minimally invasive surgery
had shorter hospital stays, fewer
respiratory complications and
other surgical complications.
But they had more complications
involving the genital and uri-
nary organs immediately after
surgery, with 4.7 percent having
those complications, compared
with 2.1 percent of the open sur-
gery patients.
When researchers looked at
complications more than 18
months later, they found that
men who had minimally invasive
surgery were at greater risk of
suffering from incontinence and
erectile dysfunction.  (NYT)
ment about their cost.
“The more we reflected on it,
the more we realized they were
absolutely right: it’s not the best
use of the money,” said Spear,
who added that the decision would
save money that could be spent on
more construction work.
The use of signs for stimulus
projects was strongly encour-
aged by the Federal Highway
Administration but not required.
MICHAEL COOPER
3
in brief
Sentence Reduced
In Spying Case
A federal judge in Miami ap-
proved a lighter sentence Tues-
day for one of five Cubans con-
victed in 2001 of spying on anti-
Castro Cuban exiles. In Cuba,
the five are considered political
prisoners, and the Cuban gov-
ernment has lobbied for their
release, arguing that they were
not spying on the United States
so much as trying to ferret out
right-wing anti-Castro terror-
ists. On Tuesday, Judge Joan
A. Lenard replaced the life sen-
tence for one of the men, Anto-
nio Guerrero, with a sentence of
262 months, or almost 22 years,
which means he will be out of
prison in about seven years,
counting time served since his
1998 arrest and time off for
good behavior. Guerrero, a U.S.
citizen, was convicted of spying
while working at the Naval Air
Station in Key West.  (NYT)
Lower Minimum
When Coloradoans voted to
tie the state’s minimum wage
to inflation, they were trying
to make sure low-wage work-
ers did not fall too far behind
the cost of living. But their vote
has had an unintended con-
sequence: Colorado plans to
lower its minimum wage next
year because of falling inflation
rates, becoming the first state
in the nation do so. The state’s
Department of Labor and Em-
ployment said it planned to low-
er the wage to $7.24 from $7.28.
The federal minimum is $7.25
an hour, and it is illegal for
most businesses in Colorado to
pay workers less than that, so
virtually all low-wage workers
will see a drop of only 3 cents
per hour.  (NYT)
Shelter Defies Town
Brookville, Pa., which tried to
shut down a church-run home-
less shelter, has agreed to pay
the church $100,000 to settle a
civil suit. The First Apostles’
Doctrine Church, which runs
the Just for Jesus shelter near
the business district, sued the
town in November, saying it
was infringing on its religious
liberty. (NYT)
business
DJIA 9,871.06 D 14.74
NASDAQ 2,139.89 U 0.75
E-Mail Shows Concerns Over Merrill Deal
It was Jan. 15, and the govern-
ment was about to hand Bank of
America its second taxpayer life-
line as the bank was drowning in
losses from its recent marriage to
Merrill Lynch.
Kenneth D. Lewis, the chairman
of Bank of America, and other top
executives convened a late after-
noon conference call to explain
the bank’s latest problems to the
board: Not only was the govern-
ment making the new multibillion
dollar bailout on punishing finan-
cial terms; Merrill’s losses — al-
ready thought to be steep — were
far worse than the bleak estimates
tallied just several weeks earlier.
As Lewis and the other execu-
tives continued their briefing, one
board member minced no words
in his assessment of the situation.
“Unfortunately it’s screw the
Justices to Hear Appeal by Former Enron Chief
WASHINGTON — The Su-
preme Court on Tuesday agreed
to hear an appeal from Jeffrey K.
Skilling, the former Enron Corp.
chief executive who was sent to
prison in 2006 for his role in the
company’s spectacular collapse.
Skilling argued that a law un-
der which he had been convicted
was unconstitutionally vague and
that he had not received a fair
trial in Houston, the city where
Enron was based and which bore
the brunt of its demise.
The law Skilling challenged
makes it a crime to “deprive an-
other of the intangible right of
honest services.”
Federal prosecutors have used
Saudis Seek Compensation If Exports of Oil Fall
Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist
other oil-producing countries to
support a provocative idea: if
wealthy countries reduce their
oil consumption to combat global
warming, they should pay com-
pensation to oil producers.
The oil-rich kingdom has
pushed this position for years in
earlier climate-treaty negotia-
tions. While it has not succeeded,
its efforts have sometimes de-
layed or disrupted discussions.
The kingdom is once again gear-
ing up to take a hard line on the is-
Dollar/YEN 89.76 D 0.08
10-yr treasury 3.35% D 0.03
shareholders!!” Charles K. Gif-
ford wrote to a fellow director
in an e-mail exchange that took
place during the call.
“No trail,” Thomas May, that
director, reminded him, an ap-
parent reference to the inadvis-
ability of leaving an e-mail thread
of their conversation.
The e-mail messages, reviewed
by The New York Times, were
handed over to the House Com-
mittee on Oversight and Govern-
ment Reform this week as Bank
of America opens a collection of
documents that it has kept secret
about the ill-fated merger. While
the e-mail does not show that the
bank deliberately kept vital in-
formation on the deal from share-
holders, it opens a window onto
the concerns harbored by several
board members over the Merrill
the law to combat public corrup-
tion and fraud by corporate of-
ficials. The law does not require
prosecutors to prove theft of
money or property but only that
defendants have been disloyal to
or dishonest with their constitu-
ents or employers.
Skilling argued that the court
should require that prosecutions
of employees of private compa-
nies be limited to cases in which
defendants had obtained some
private gain at the expense of
their employers.
In his brief asking the Supreme
Court to hear his case, Skilling
said that his conduct “even if
wrongful in some way, was not
sue at international negotiations
scheduled for Copenhagen in De-
cember.
The chief Saudi negotiator, Mo-
hammad al-Sabban, described
the position as a “make or break”
provision for the Saudis, as na-
tions stake out their stance ahead
of the global climate summit
scheduled for the end of the year.
“Assisting us as oil-exporting
countries in achieving economic
diversification is very crucial
for us through foreign direct in-
vestments, technology transfer,
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
gold (ny) $1,064.30 U 7.20
crude oil $74.15 U 0.88
deal.
Shortly after May’s remark
about an email trail, Gifford said
his comments were made in “the
context of a horrible economy!!!
Will effect everyone.”
“Good comeback,” May re-
plied. A spokesman for the bank
declined to comment about the
meaning of the e-mail messages.
The bank, which resisted inves-
tigators’ efforts to identify the
executives who failed to disclose
Merrill’s losses to shareholders,
is now planning to send more doc-
uments in the next week to Con-
gress, as well as to the attorney
general of New York and the Se-
curities and Exchange Commis-
sion, which are all investigating
the Merrill merger.
 LOUISE STORY
 and ERIC DASH
the crime of honest-services
fraud, because the government
conceded that his acts were not
intended to advance his own in-
terests instead of Enron’s.”
Unless the law is interpreted
to require proof of such a private
gain by the defendant, Skilling’s
brief said, it has the effect of
“impermissibly criminalizing
whatever wrongful or unethical
corporate acts a given prosecu-
tor decides to attack.”
In January, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in
New Orleans, largely accepted
Skilling’s characterization, and
vacated his sentence. Skilling has
not yet been resentenced.(NYT)
insurance, and funding,” Sabban
said in an e-mail message.
This Saudi position has
emerged periodically as a source
of dispute since the earliest glob-
al climate talks, in Rio de Janeiro
in 1992.
Petroleum exporters have
long used delaying tactics dur-
ing climate talks. They view any
attempt to reduce carbon emis-
sions by developed countries as a
menace to their economies.
 JAD MOUAWAD
 and ANDREW C. REVKIN
4
nikkei 10,076.56 U 60.17
ftse 100 5,154.15 D 56.02
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Dominican .0277 .0277 36.10 36.10
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Europe 1.4709 1.4778 .6798 .6767
Hong Kong .1290 .1290 7.7500 7.7501
Japan .01113 .01129 89.84 88.52
Mexico .07539 .07531 13.264 13.277
Norway .1769 .1772 5.6515 5.6440
Singapore .7162 .7198 1.3962 1.3893
So. Africa .1354 .1366
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7.3875 7.3199
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CIT Chief Will Resign
The CIT Group, the business
lender, said Tuesday that its chair-
man and chief executive, Jeffrey
M. Peek, would resign at the end of
the year. Devastated by the down-
turn in the credit markets, CIT has
been trying to avoid bankruptcy
for months as it restructures its
operations. The company said
that a search committee is form-
ing to find a successor . (AP)
Business
Slump Strengthens China’s Export Presence
SHANGHAI — With the global
recession making consumers and
businesses more price-conscious,
China is grabbing market share
from its export competitors, so-
lidifying a dominance in world
trade that many economists say
could last long after any econom-
ic recovery.
China’s exports this year have
already vaulted it past Germany
to become the world’s biggest ex-
porter. Now, those market share
gains are threatening to increase
trade frictions with the United
States and Europe.
China is winning a larger piece
of a shrinking pie. Although world
trade declined this year because
of the recession, consumers are
demanding lower-priced goods
and Beijing, determined to keep
its export machine humming, is
finding a way to deliver.
The country’s factories are
aggressively reducing prices —
Some Still Hope to Sell Music by the Month
SAN FRANCISCO — The idea
of selling monthly subscriptions
to a vast catalog of online music
has met with only limited suc-
cess. That isn’t stopping a new
batch of entrepreneurs from try-
ing to make it work.
The latest and perhaps most
surprising entrants to the field
are the European entrepreneurs
Niklas Zennstrom and Janus
Friis. In 2001, they created and fi-
nanced Kazaa, one of the original
peer-to-peer file sharing services
that hurt the music industry. The
two have created and financed
a secretive startup called Rdio,
For Safety’s Sake, Hybrid Cars May Include Some Artificial Vroom
For decades, automakers have
been on a quest to make cars
quieter: an auto that purrs, and
glides almost silently in traffic.
They have finally succeeded.
Plug-in hybrid and electric cars,
it turns out, not only reduce air
pollution, they cut noise pollution
as well with their whisper-quiet
motors. But that has created a
different problem. They aren’t
noisy enough.
So safety experts, worried that
hybrids pose a threat if pedes-
trians, children and others can’t
hear them approaching, want au-
tomakers to supply some digital-
allowing China to gain ground in
old markets and make inroads in
new ones.
The most striking gains have
come in the United States, where
China has displaced Canada this
year as the largest supplier of im-
ports.
In the first seven months of
2008, just under 15 percent of
American imports came from
China. Over the same period this
year, 19 percent did. Meanwhile,
Canada’s share of American im-
ports fell to 14.5 percent, from
nearly 17 percent.
Besides increasing its share of
many American markets, China
is increasing the value of exports
in absolute terms in some catego-
ries. In knit apparel, for instance,
American imports from China
jumped 10 percent through July
of this year — while America’s
imports from Mexico, Hondu-
ras, Guatemala and El Salvador
with offices in Los Angeles and
San Francisco.
Rdio and similar startups are
reinventing a concept pioneered
earlier this decade by Rhapsody,
a service majority owned by
RealNetworks, and the tamed
version of Napster, now owned
by Best Buy. A few hundred
thousand Rhapsody and Napster
subscribers pay monthly fees of
around $15 for the right to stream
an unlimited number of songs, at
any time, from their PCs and mo-
bile devices.
But with modest membership
growth at best, neither service
ly enhanced vroom. Indeed, just
as cellphones have ring tones,
“car tones” may not be far behind
— an option for owners of electric
vehicles to choose the sound their
cars emit.
Working with Hollywood spe-
cial-effects wizards, some hybrid
auto companies have started tin-
kering in sound studios, rather
than machine shops, to customize
engine noises. The Fisker Karma,
an $87,900 plug-in hybrid expected
to go on sale next year, will emit a
sound — pumped out of speakers
in the bumpers — that the com-
pany founder, Henrik Fisker, de-
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
plunged 19 to 24 percent in each
country, according to Global
Trade Information Services.
A similar tale is told around the
world, from Japan to Italy.
One reason is the ability of Chi-
nese manufacturers to quickly
slash prices by reducing wages
and other costs in production
zones that often rely on migrant
workers.
Factory managers here say
American buyers are demand-
ing they do just that. “The buyers
are getting more and more tough
in bargaining for lower prices, es-
pecially American buyers,” says
Liao Yuan, the head of interna-
tional trade at the Changrun Gar-
ment Company, which is based in
southern China and exports jeans
to Europe and the United States.
“They offer $2.85 per pair of jeans
for a package of a dozen, when the
reasonable price is $7.”
 DAVID BARBOZA
has managed to challenge iTunes,
with its many millions of users —
or enticed music lovers from pi-
rating music.
But as CD sales continue to
plummet, and the music industry
searches for a profitable future,
entrepreneurs with various ap-
proaches believe they can finally
make music subscriptions work.
Rdio is hoping to introduce a mu-
sic subscription service by early
next year that offers seamless ac-
cess to music from both PCs and
cellphones. The big challenge will
be to get licenses from the major
music labels. BRAD STONE
scribes as “a cross between a star-
ship and a Formula One car.”
Nissan is also consulting with
the film industry on sounds that
could be emitted by its forthcom-
ing Leaf battery-electric vehicle,
while Toyota has been working
with the National Highway Traf-
fic Safety Administration, the
National Federation of the Blind
and the Society of Automotive
Engineers on sounds for electric
vehicles.
The notion that battery E.V.’s
and plug-in hybrids might be too
quiet has gained backing in Con-
gress, among federal regulators
5
in brief
Ford and Union Deal
DETROIT — The United Au-
tomobile Workers union is ask-
ing 41,000 members who work
at the Ford Motor Co. to ap-
prove a tentative deal that gives
the automaker some of the
same concessions that General
Motors and Chrysler already
received. The deal, announced
Tuesday by Ford and the union,
contains a six-year freeze on
wages for newly hired workers,
combines some job classifica-
tions and limits the union’s abil-
ity to strike. In return, workers
would get a $1,000 bonus next
year and Ford would make fu-
ture product commitments at
five assembly plants. (NYT)
Cisco Buys Starent
Cisco Systems on Tuesday an-
nounced that it would pay $35 a
share, or $2.9 billion, for Star-
ent Networks, which makes
products that help wireless tele-
communications companies
ship large volumes of data to
phones and computing devic-
es. The deal represents about a
20 percent premium over Star-
ent’s closing price on Monday of
$29.03 a share.  (NYT)
Europe Shoe Duties
BRUSSELS — The European
Union’s executive is proposing
to extend antidumping duties
on shoes imported from China
and Vietnam for a minimum of
15 months, a compromise that
aims to satisfy shoemakers and
retailers alike in Europe. (NYT)
and on the Internet. The Pedes-
trian Safety Enhancement Act of
2009, introduced early this year,
would require a federal safety
standard to protect pedestrians
from ultra-quiet cars.
Paul Scott, vice president of the
advocacy group Plug In America,
said he would prefer giving driv-
ers control over whether the mo-
tor makes noise, unlike, say, the
Fisker Karma, which will make
its warning noise automatically.
“Quiet cars need to stay quiet —
we worked so hard to make them
that way,” he said.
 JIM MOTAVALLI
journal Wednesday, October 14, 2009 6

Exiled From School, H.I.V.-Infected Orphans Learn a Bitter Lesson

AN NHON TAY, Vietnam — The first day school together with the infected orphans. wouldn’t let their children go to school with
of school was a special one last month for Some of the parents hastily backed away me because they are scared of my disease.”
the 15 children from the Mai Hoa orphanage when the orphans walked past. The girl said she understood their reac-
here. They are infected with H.I.V., the virus After a short standoff, the principal, who tion.
that causes AIDS, and for the first time they had agreed to accept the orphans, told Bao “If I were a normal child, I would be
would be allowed to attend the local primary that their papers were not in order and that afraid, too, because I wouldn’t understand,”
school. they could not stay. she said. “I would feel the same way. But I
“The children were so excited,” said Sister The children returned to the orphanage, wouldn’t have acted the way they did.”
Nguyen Thi Bao, who runs the orphanage just a short walk down a country road, where Bao and officials of the district and the
and had been lobbying for three years to they continue to study in small classrooms, school, the An Nhon Dong Elementary
enroll them in the government school. “They still exiled from the uninfected world. School, have met with the parents since then,
had been wishing for this day to come.” “I was so happy to go to the school,” said but they remain adamant.
But when they arrived, they found an up- a 12-year-old fourth-grader for whom Bao “I don’t want my child to be with the AIDS
rising by the parents of the other students, insisted on anonymity to keep her from the children,” Nguyen Thi Thuy, 36, said the
who refused to let their children enter the spotlight. “But then I saw that some parents other day as she brought her 8-year-old son
to school. “He could be injured, and it’s easy
crossword Edited By Will Shortz to transmit the disease through blood. And
once you’re sick, it’s difficult to become a
PUZZLE BY RICHARD SILVESTRI
ACROSS 43 Inflicted upon 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
normal person again.”
1 Gallows-shaped 44 Analgesic’s target
One after another, parents who arrived
letter 46
14 15 16 with their children on small motorbikes
6 1975 musical 48 Teeming 17 18 19
raised their voices in agreement. If the or-
with the song
51 Atom ___, 1960s phans came back, said a man who gave his
“Believe in
Yourself,” with cartoon superhero 20 21 22 name only as Tam, he would pull his 6-year
“The” 52
23 24
old son out again.
9 Perle who 59 Hazardous The story is not surprising, said Eamonn
inspired “Call Me 60 Tease 25 26 27 28 29 30 Murphy, country director in Vietnam for
Madam” mercilessly, with Unaids, the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting
14 Not native “on” 31 32 33 34 35
61 Sign up
agency.
15 Stand buy
62 “___ inside”
36 37 38 39 40 “You go to any rural environment in Asia,
16 Sing the praises
of (slogan) and you are going to have similar reactions,”
41 42 43
17 Attacked 63 Sculpting medium he said. “The general lack of understand-
18 The Caribbean, 64 Desolate 44 45 46 47 ing leads to this inappropriate reaction and
for one 65 Plow man fear.”
48 49 50 51
19 Alternative to 66 In accordance Most of the parents here are farmers with
Rover or Rex with 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 little education, but the prejudice seemed to
20 67 Fillers of library extend to city folk as well.
23 Wriggly fish shelves 59 60 61
About 290,000 people in Vietnam, a country
24 Wise old Greek 62 63 64 of 86 million, carry H.I.V. today, and the gov-
DOWN
25 ernment estimates that 5,100 are children.
1 Duds 65 66 67
30 Subject of some Although the law requires equal treatment,
tables 2 Banned apple
spray 10/14/09 (No. 1014) almost none of them have been accepted in
31 Cook’s wear
3 Dress not for the 10 Blow the whistle 32 Wood-smoothing 46 Wild ass schools because of the fears of other chil-
32 “Now I get it!”
self-conscious on tool 47 Paper size: Abbr.
dren’s parents, Nguyen Vinh Hien, the depu-
33 Essence of a
4 Butcher’s stock 11 Thickset 33 Founder and
48 Biting
ty minister of education, said last month.
person, one
might say 5 Non-pro? 12 Trunk first queen of He said the ministry would try to enroll at
Carthage 49 Perform very well
36 What this 6 Bathes 13 Shorten the least half of these children in government
sleeves on, e.g. 34 Reply to the Little 50 Coffee grounds
puzzle’s four 7 Standard of
Red Hen and orange schools by next year, but the experience of
missing clues perfection 21 Get an eyeful
peels, typically the Mai Hoa orphans suggests that this will
spell, in order 35 In a bit
8 Passion 22 Univac’s not be easy. SETH MYDANS
51 On the double
41 Slalom section 9 Became predecessor 37 Arrestable
offense 53 Tap trouble
42 “Frasier” role engaged 25 Massachusetts
getaway, with 38 Endless years 54 Dry run
“the” 39 What summers 55 Sondheim’s “___
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE
26 Piece of music do the Woods”
M A M A S G A D M I S S 27 Scepter toppers 40 Nervous 56 Fill by force 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
A M A N A I P O S A C T A 28 “My mama done mannerism •
57 Washington Tom Brady, Editor
L I T T L E J O H N R E A L ___ me” 44 Sarah Jessica chopping down
29 Italian diminutive of “Sex and the the cherry tree, e-mail: digesteditor@nytimes.com
A S T R O S E A S T L A
ending City” e.g. •
A S H Y L E T T E R H E A D TimesDigest Sales Office
S H A N E S O R T A G A 30 Tue. plus two 45 Tartan pattern 58 Part of B.P.O.E.
phone: (212) 556-1200
C U R I O A B A S E fax: (646) 461-2364
H E I R T O T H E T H R O N E For answers, call 1-900-289-CLUE (289-2583), $1.49 a minute; e-mail: timesdigest@nytimes.com
T A P E S O R I O N or, with a credit card, 1-800-814-5550. •
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opinion
editorials of the timeS
That Promised Financial Reform
Pretty much everyone agrees on the causes
for the country’s financial mess: predatory
lenders, weak regulation and risky financial
instruments. Congress’s willingness to ad-
dress those problems will have its first real
test on Wednesday when the House Financial
Services Committee puts finishing touches
on what could be essential reform legislation
— or a major disappointment, depending on
what they do.
At the top of the committee’s agenda is
regulation of the dangerously opaque mul-
titrillion-dollar derivatives’ market. Next on
the agenda is the creation of a new Consumer
Financial Protection Agency to oversee the
consumer-credit offerings of banks and other
financial firms — including mortgages, credit
cards and overdraft “protection.”
Both reforms are crucial, and both are in
danger of being irreparably weakened.
Derivatives are supposed to help inves-
tors and businesses manage risk, but their
unchecked and unregulated use led to the fi-
nancial crash.
Congress should require that all of the
dealers and users of derivatives — including
banks, hedge funds and corporations — con-
duct their trades on exchanges where they
would be subject to regulation and public
scrutiny. Regulators could create exceptions
for customized contracts that are negotiated
one-on-one for truly complex and unique cir-
cumstances. But most derivatives contracts
are highly standardized and can be, and
should be, exchange-traded.
One Protection for Prisoners
The practice of keeping female prisoners
in shackles while they give birth is barbaric.
But it remains legal in more than 40 states,
and prisoners’ rights advocates say it is all
too common. A federal appeals court has now
found that the shackling of an Arkansas in-
mate may have violated the Constitution —
but the margin was uncomfortably close.
Shawanna Nelson, a nonviolent offender,
was 29 years old and six months pregnant
when she arrived in Arkansas’s McPherson
Unit prison in 2003. When she went into labor,
she was taken to a civilian hospital. Although
there was no reason to consider her a flight
risk, her legs were shackled to a wheelchair,
and then, while she went through labor, to the
sides of a hospital bed.
Nelson testified that the shackles prevent-
ed her from moving her legs, stretching or
changing positions during the most painful
part of her labor. She offered evidence that
the shackling had caused a permanent hip in-
jury, torn stomach muscles, an umbilical her-
nia that required an operation and extreme
mental anguish.
In a suit against prison officials, Nelson
charged that her Eighth Amendment right to
Unfortunately, the proposed legislation has
too many loopholes and exemptions. Many
corporations and hedge funds would still be
able to trade standardized derivatives pri-
vately. That may protect bank profits — with-
out transparency, there is no chance for com-
parison shopping — but it would put taxpayers
at risk of a repeat calamity.
Like the banks, some corporate investors
in derivatives resist exchange trading. They
argue that more regulation would raise their
transaction costs. That’s debatable, but even
if true, somewhat higher costs would be a
small price to pay for stability.
The threats to the consumer protection
agency are even more blatant. To curry fa-
vor with the banks, several lawmakers are
intent on amending the legislation so that no
state could impose its own consumer protec-
tion laws on banks. That would be a mistake
because many states have demonstrated the
will and the expertise to protect consumers.
But federal rules were issued in 2004 that basi-
cally barred states from enforcing their laws
over national banks. That short-circuited
state efforts to control, among other things,
the subprime lending that sparked the crisis.
Some lawmakers are also intent on weaken-
ing the proposed power of the new agency to
examine the books of the firms that it would
regulate. Routine inspection of an institu-
tion’s books is essential to understanding the
institution’s products and practices. Without
such knowledge, consumer protection would
be compromised.
be free of cruel and unusual punishment had
been violated. She won an early ruling from
the trial court, but a three-judge panel of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
rejected her suit. Now, the full appeals court
has reversed that decision, ruling with a 6-to-
5 vote, that a jury could find that Nelson’s
shackling was unconstitutional. The court re-
lied in part on a 2002 Supreme Court holding
that Alabama’s practice of tying prisoners to
a hitching post violated the Eighth Amend-
ment.
The ruling should help persuade other
courts and state legislatures that the shack-
ling of pregnant prisoners is unconstitution-
al.
Several states have already made the prac-
tice illegal under certain circumstances —
including New York, which did so this year.
Elizabeth Alexander, director of the Amer-
ican Civil Liberties Union’s prison project,
called the circuit court’s ruling “thrilling,”
given how conservative the federal courts
have been on prison issues. It is clearly an
important victory. Sadly, it is also a sign of
how low the bar has been set for the humane
treatment of prisoners.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 7
thomas l. friedman
Not Good Enough
BERLIN — If President Obama can find a
way to balance the precise number of troops
that will stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan,
without tipping America into a Vietnam there,
then he indeed deserves a Nobel Prize — for
physics.
For my money, though, I wish there was
less talk today about how many more troops
to send and more focus on what kind of Afghan
government we have as our partner.
Election monitors suggest that as many as
one-third of votes cast in the Aug. 20 election
are tainted and that President Hamid Karzai
apparently engaged in massive fraud to come
out on top. Yet, he is supposed to be the bridge
between our troop surge and our goal of a sta-
ble Afghanistan. No way.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is asking for
thousands more troops, is not wrong when he
says a lot of bad things would flow from losing
Afghanistan to the Taliban. But I keep asking
myself: How do we succeed with such a taint-
ed government as our partner?
I know that Jefferson was not on the ballot.
But there is a huge difference between “good
enough” and dysfunctional and corrupt. There
are way too many Afghans who think our part-
ner, Karzai and his team, are downright aw-
ful.
I am not sure Washington fully understands
just how much the Taliban-led insurgency is
increasingly an insurrection against the be-
havior of the Karzai government. Too many
Afghan people now blame us for installing and
maintaining this government.
The Karzai government has a lot in com-
mon with a Mafia family. Where a “normal”
government raises revenues from the people
— in the form of taxes — and then disperses
them to its local and regional institutions in
the form of budgetary allocations or patron-
age, this Afghan government operates in the
reverse. The money flows upward from the
countryside in the form of payments for of-
fices purchased or “gifts” from cronies.
What flows from Kabul, the experts say, is
permission for unfettered extraction, protec-
tion in case of prosecution and punishment in
case the official opposes the system or gets
out of line. We have to be careful that we are
not seen as the enforcers for this system.
While visiting Afghanistan last July, I met
a provincial governor who every U.S. official
told me was the best and most honest in Af-
ghanistan — and then, they added, “We have
to fight Karzai every day to keep him from be-
ing fired.” That is what happens to those who
buck the Karzai system.
This is crazy. We have been way too polite,
and too worried about looking like a colonial
power, in dealing with Karzai. I would not add
a single soldier there before this guy takes vis-
ible steps to clean up his government in ways
that would be respected by the people. We
can’t want a more decent Afghanistan than
the country’s own president.
sports Wednesday, October 14, 2009 8

Barring Rain, Yanks Consider 3-Man Rotation in brief

There was baseball at Yankee
Stadium on Tuesday, pitchers
facing hitters in the sunshine as
the Yankees stayed sharp for
Game 1 of the American League
Championship Series against the
Los Angeles Angels on Friday.
But Joe Girardi, the manager
with a usually sunny outlook, saw
clouds.
In a conference call, Girardi
said the Yankees might use only
three starters in the A.L.C.S.,
meaning the Game 1 starter C.C.
Sabathia could work Game 4 on
three days’ rest. But if one of the
first two games is rained out, it
could scramble the plan.
“You go into a series with a plan
in mind,” Girardi said. “Obvious-
ly, weather can always change a
lot of different things, depending
on how we are this weekend, Fri-
day and Saturday. In the 10-day
forecast I looked at, it looks like
Goodell Objects to Limbaugh’s Ownership Bid
BOSTON — Commissioner
Roger Goodell cast doubt on Rush
Limbaugh’s viability as an N.F.L.
owner Tuesday, saying that “divi-
sive comments are not what the
N.F.L. is all about.”
“I’ve said many times before,
we’re all held to a high standard
here,” Goodell said. “I would not
want to see those comments com-
ing from people who are in a re-
sponsible position in the N.F.L.
— absolutely not.”
Goodell emphasized that it was
extremely early in the process
and that the Rosenbloom family,
which owns the St. Louis Rams, is
not even fully committed to sell its
we have some rain in the fore-
cast, so that could change things.
But we are definitely considering
possibly going to a three-man ro-
tation in this round.”
As it stands, Game 1 is sched-
uled to start Friday at 7:57 p.m.,
with Game 2 slated to start Satur-
day at the same time. The teams
are off Sunday before Games 3
and 4 at Angel Stadium on Mon-
day and Tuesday. Then the series
pauses again for a day before re-
suming in a possible fifth game
next Thursday.
If the games are played as
scheduled, Sabathia could start
Game 4 on three days’ rest and
come back for a possible Game 7
on four days’ rest. No pitcher has
started three games in a postsea-
son series since Arizona’s Curt
Schilling against the Yankees
in the 2001 World Series, but Sa-
bathia seems capable.
majority stake in the team.
Limbaugh has teamed with
Dave Checketts, a former Madi-
son Square Garden executive, in
a bid to buy into the Rams. But
Goodell’s comments were a thin-
ly-veiled signal that Limbaugh’s
bid — even if it were the highest —
would most likely not receive sup-
port from owners. Three-quarters
of the 32 owners must approve a
sale, meaning just nine of them
can scuttle a deal.
Goodell, who presides over a
league whose players are 65 per-
cent black, took the extraordinary
step of addressing an ownership
bid early because a brushfire had
Sabathia worked 253 innings
in 2008, when he made his final
four starts on short rest, includ-
ing a playoff loss for Milwaukee.
With 230 innings this season and a
long rest before Game 1, Sabathia
would seem to be ready for an ex-
tra start in the A.L.C.S.
“We talked about the impor-
tance of trying to win Game 3 so
we could set up our rotation the
way we wanted to, and not getting
him to 250 innings during the reg-
ular season allows us to consider
that,” Girardi said.
The weather may dictate other-
wise. With showers in the forecast
for Friday and Saturday — as well
as Sunday’s day off — one of the
first two games could be rained
out. The teams could conceivably
lose the day off between Games 2
and 3, forcing the Yankees to use
a fourth starter for Game 4.
 TYLER KEPNER
sprung up last week when Lim-
baugh’s interest in the Rams be-
came public.
Since then, retired and current
players, who generally have little
to say about ownership transac-
tions, have voiced concern about
Limbaugh’s interest in the Rams,
with some saying players would
not play for him.
One of Limbaugh’s most contro-
versial quotes came in 2003 while
he was employed by ESPN. He
suggested that Donovan McNabb
got credit for the Eagles’ suc-
cesses because the news media
wanted him to succeed because
he is a black quarterback. (NYT)
Player in Car Crash
ARLINGTON, Va. — Charlie
Davies, a 23-year-old forward
for the U.S. men’s national team,
was in serious but stable condi-
tion on Tuesday after sustaining
several broken bones and a lac-
erated bladder in a one-vehicle
accident in which another per-
son was killed. Davies under-
went several hours of surgery at
Washington Hospital Center af-
ter a car he was riding in struck
a metal guardrail on the George
Washington Memorial Parkway
around 3:15 a.m. (AP)
Patriots Sign Seau
Junior Seau, 40, is back with
the New England Patriots, com-
ing out of retirement a third
time to sign a contract Tuesday
for a 20th season. The signing of
Seau, a 12-time Pro Bowl line-
backer, was announced by Ver-
sus, the television network on
which he has a show.  (AP)
Top Skier Retires
Hermann Maier, the Austri-
an star, announced his retire-
ment at 36, ending one of the
most successful careers in Al-
pine skiing. Maier’s nearly 14-
year career included 2 Olympic
gold medals, 3 world titles and 4
overall World Cup crowns.(AP)
NHL scores
MONDAY’S LATE GAMES
Phoenix 1, San Jose 0, SO
TUESDAY
Buffalo 6, Detroit 2
Columbus 2, Calgary 1
Colorado 4, Toronto 1

WEATHER
High/low temperatures for the 20 hours ended at 4 p.m.
yesterday, Eastern time, and precipitation (in inches)
for the 18 hours ended at 2 p.m. yesterday. Expected
conditions for today and tomorrow.
Weather conditions: C-clouds, F-fog, H-haze, I-ice, PC-
partly cloudy,R-rain, S-sun, Sh-showers, Sn-snow, SS-
snow showers, T-thunderstorms, Tr-trace, W-windy.
U.S. CITIES
Yesterday Today Tomorrow
Atlanta 73/ 57 0 60/ 59 Sh 66/ 50 C
Albuquerque 74/ 59 0 76/ 52 S 77/ 51 S
Boise 65/ 41 0 64/ 49 C 65/ 48 PC
Boston 53/ 46 0.31 51/ 38 S 49/ 36 C
Buffalo 50/ 42 0 45/ 32 PC 44/ 29 PC
Charlotte 76/ 46 0 52/ 50 R 55/ 45 C
Chicago 47/ 34 0.02 48/ 38 C 47/ 40 Sh
Cleveland 52/ 48 0 48/ 37 C 48/ 37 C
Dallas-Ft. Worth 69/ 63 0.25 84/ 67 C 75/ 66 PC
Denver 52/ 34 0 62/ 36 PC 64/ 37 S
Detroit 50/ 43 0 48/ 37 C 49/ 38 C
Houston
Kansas City
85/ 73
46/ 41
0.04
0
91/ 74 PC
46/ 40 C
91/ 75 PC
48/ 42 C
Los Angeles 69/ 61 0.03 68/ 61 Sh 80/ 59 S
Miami 91/ 80 0 91/ 79 S 92/ 77 PC
Mpls.-St. Paul 39/ 26 0 44/ 35 C 44/ 36 Sh
New York City 64/ 50 0 54/ 44 S 51/ 42 C
Orlando 92/ 73 0 90/ 71 PC 88/ 73 T
Philadelphia 68/ 46 0 56/ 41 PC 52/ 42 R
Phoenix 82/ 66 0 88/ 66 S 95/ 68 S
Salt Lake City 66/ 51 0.05 60/ 49 R 65/ 44 PC
San Francisco 65/ 59 1.70 70/ 59 Sh 71/ 58 C
Seattle 57/ 46 0 59/ 48 R 60/ 49 Sh
St. Louis 51/ 44 0 50/ 43 C 49/ 43 Sh
Washington 73/ 50 0 54/ 45 PC 49/ 44 R
FOREIGN CITIES
Yesterday Today Tomorrow
Acapulco 94/ 79 0 88/ 75 PC 88/ 75 Sh
Athens 76/ 72 0 73/ 54 S 73/ 55 Sh
Beijing 74/ 54 Tr 68/ 54 S 70/ 54 PC
Berlin 49/ 36 0.16 45/ 36 C 43/ 36 R
Buenos Aires 78/ 57 0 63/ 48 Sh 64/ 46 PC
Cairo 87/ 72 0 90/ 73 C 97/ 79 PC
Cape Town
Dublin
77/ 52 0.12
59/ 41 0
66/ 56 PC
61/ 45 PC
61/ 54 R
57/ 45 PC
Geneva 56/ 45 0 50/ 36 S 46/ 32 S
Hong Kong 89/ 79 Tr 86/ 75 R 84/ 73 PC
Kingston 90/ 79 0.01 88/ 79 S 90/ 77 S
Lima 71/ 61 0 68/ 61 C 68/ 57 C
London 62/ 41 0 64/ 46 PC 63/ 46 PC
Madrid 78/ 50 0 73/ 54 S 68/ 48 S
Mexico City 73/ 57 1.30 79/ 52 PC 81/ 52 PC
Montreal 44/ 37 0.18 41/ 28 C 43/ 25 PC
Moscow 55/ 41 0.30 61/ 52 PC 54/ 41 PC
Nassau 91/ 79 Tr 93/ 79 S 93/ 79 PC
Paris 60/ 41 0 57/ 41 S 55/ 37 S
Prague 45/ 37 0.24 43/ 37 Sh 39/ 36 Sn
Rio de Janeiro 82/ 72 0.12 84/ 68 PC 93/ 70 C
Rome 67/ 48 0.08 68/ 48 PC 66/ 52 S
Santiago 60/ 45 0 65/ 43 PC 68/ 43 PC
Stockholm 41/ 36 – 46/ 36 PC 50/ 36 PC
Sydney 78/ 63 0 68/ 55 PC 73/ 54 PC
Tokyo 77/ 63 Tr 70/ 57 PC 70/ 55 S
Toronto 51/ 39 0.01 45/ 30 PC 45/ 32 C
Vancouver 51/ 45 0 55/ 46 R 57/ 48 Sh
Warsaw 44/ 40 0.12 36/ 32 Sn 36/ 32 C
sports journal
An Old Reliable at the Old Ball Game
The way baseball stadium
menus have changed in recent
years, an updated verse of “Take
Me Out to the Ball Game” might
include the lyric, “Buy me some
sushi and lobster rolls,” rather
than peanuts and Cracker Jack.
Since 1908, the iconic Cracker
Jack brand has been helpfully
promoted by the song, a mainstay
of the seventh-inning stretch. But
ballpark food options are vastly
different than they were even a
decade or two ago.
Baseball fans can buy Rocky
Mountain oysters (bull testicles)
in Denver, crab cakes in Balti-
more, cheese steaks in Philadel-
phia and fish tacos in San Diego. It
can be harder to name what food
and beverages cannot be found at
the ballpark than to name what
can.
All that would seem to threaten
Cracker Jack’s vaunted culinary
place in baseball culture. Yet con-
cession managers consider it a
do-not-disturb item amid an ev-
er-changing menu. The caramel
corn with a prize inside survives,
even flourishes.
“It does still have relevance,”
said Kevin Haggerty, who over-
sees concessions at Fenway Park
in Boston, where more than 1,000
bags (no longer boxes) of Cracker
Jack are sold in a typical game.
After Loss, Angry Jets Wag Fingers at the Mirror
A day after the Jets blew three
fourth-quarter leads against the
Miami Dolphins on national tele-
vision, Kris Jenkins, nose tackle
and defensive leader, broke his
silence. Jenkins, who declined to
speak with reporters after the
Jets’ 31-27 loss on Monday night,
was still frustrated, angry and
embarrassed.
“Now, the philosophy has to
change,” Jenkins said Tuesday
in an interview. “With all our
talents, I don’t think there’s any-
thing wrong with talking a little
trash. But you have to back it up.
We have a coach I love. He is go-
ing to demand a challenge. Play-
ers have to understand what that
means and play up to that level.
“If not, it’s going to be a long
season,’’ Jenkins added. “Be-
cause basically, every week
we’re picking a fight.”
Jenkins said Coach Rex Ryan
“ripped everybody” before the
team flew home to New Jersey,
“It’s part of the ballpark experi-
ence. It is still a good snack. It sells
well. It holds its place in the sales
mix. And it’s in the song.”
Long a staple of a ballpark’s
barebones selection — a tradi-
tional list including hot dogs, pea-
nuts and soda — Cracker Jack has
withstood the rapid expansion of
items offered, including recent
trends toward local delicacies
and healthier fare.
Aramark, the company that
runs concessions at 13 major
league ballparks, including Fen-
way Park, says that overall food-
concession sales are on the rise.
Cracker Jack, according to sev-
eral concession managers, is as
reliably consistent as anything on
the menu.
In Philadelphia, Cracker Jack
sales have been remarkably
constant for more than 20 years,
said Nick Brigandi, a financial
analyst who serves as the vending
manager for Citizens Bank Park
hawkers, the roaming people who
sell concessions from the aisles.
From 500 to 600 bags of Cracker
Jack are sold at a typical Phillies
game.
Cracker Jack, sold in 2.75-ounce
bags for about $4, is an impulse
buy, Brigandi said. It is not af-
fected by the sales of items con-
sidered more of a meal, like hot
landing around 5 a.m. Ryan told
reporters Tuesday in a confer-
ence call that he did not sleep. In-
stead, he watched game film that
was more horror movie before
turning his attention to Buffalo,
the Jets’ opponent Sunday.
Ryan labeled his team’s prac-
tice tempo last week “horrible,”
and Jenkins agreed with the as-
sessment. Jenkins, 30, banished
thoughts of retirement this off-
season by surveying the talent
that surrounded him and thinking
the Jets could win a Super Bowl
this season.
He does not care, he said, if
teammates talk less trash or
more. “But the level of play has
to definitely increase,” said Jen-
kins, who had three tackles. “I
mean me, everybody. Regard-
less of what our record says, that
game was horrible. The defense
just played horrible. It’s hard to
take that, as a man.”
The Dolphins played their own
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
dogs and personal pizzas.
“Nobody is going to buy Crack-
er Jack because it’s their main
item,” Brigandi said. “Your soda
buyer is going to buy Cracker
Jack. Your beer buyer is going to
buy peanuts.”
Cracker Jack has even with-
stood the Yankees. In 2004, they
swapped Cracker Jack for an-
other caramel corn, Crunch ’n
Munch. Fans rebelled, using a
double-barreled argument of ball-
park tradition and the seventh-
inning lyrics. Two months later,
Cracker Jack was back.
Cracker Jack was invented
in the late 1800s when the broth-
ers Louis and F.W. Rueckheim
mixed popcorn and peanuts with
molasses. A salesman, the story
goes, took a bite in 1896 and said,
“That’s crackerjack!” A brand
was born. (The name is singular,
never the plural Cracker Jacks,
although many concession price
boards and some hawkers stick
an “s” at the end.)
Cracker Jack’s continuing suc-
cess has much to do with tradition,
part of the lure of baseball, too.
“It’s usually the kids who want
it,” said Greg Copeland, a Fen-
way Park hawker carrying a bag
of Cracker Jack on a recent night.
“A lot of people get it to give to
their kids.” JOHN BRANCH
role in the Jets’ demise. Coach
Tony Sparano and the offensive
coordinator Dan Henning played
master strategists, running boot-
legs, fake bootlegs, three-step
drops, seven-step drops, wide
receiver screens, running back
screens, and sets with anywhere
from no receivers to four.
The Dolphins stymied the Jets’
pass rush by using maximum
protection — two tight ends, two
running backs and a receiver —
to eliminate pass-rushing lanes.
They sent running backs Ronnie
Brown and Ricky Williams right
at the defense, daring it to stop the
run — and then ran for 151 yards.
Along with three leads, the Jets
also squandered a chance to take
sole possession of first place in the
American Football Conference
East, along with a three-game
lead on the Dolphins. Instead,
they were left with a short week
and an experience Ryan called
humbling. GREG BISHOP
9
AP Top 25
The Top 25 teams in The Associated
Press college football poll, with first-
place votes in parentheses, records
through Sept. 26 and previous ranking:
Record Pvs
1. Florida (55) 4-0 1
2. Texas (1) 4-0 2
3. Alabama (4) 4-0 3
4. LSU 4-0 7
5. Boise St. 4-0 8
6. Virginia Tech 3-1 11
7. Southern Cal 3-1 12
8. Oklahoma 2-1 10
9. Ohio St. 3-1 13
10. Cincinnati 4-0 14
11. TCU 3-0 15
12. Houston 3-0 17
13. Iowa 4-0 —
14. Oklahoma St. 3-1 16
15. Penn St. 3-1 5
16. Oregon 3-1 —
17. Miami 2-1 9
18. Georgia 3-1 21
18. Kansas 4-0 20
20. BYU 3-1 19
21. Mississippi 2-1 4
22. Michigan 4-0 23
23. Nebraska 3-1 25
24. California 3-1 6
25. Georgia Tech 3-1 —
Others receiving votes:
Missouri 175, Auburn 171, South
Carolina 154, South Florida 145,
UCLA 41, Utah 25, Wisconsin 20,
Notre Dame 7, Arizona St. 4, North
Carolina 2, Stanford 2.
Despite Firings,
Offenses Struggle
N.F.L. coaches are copycats
by nature. But it may be a long
time before someone copies the
trend that swept training camp
this summer: firing the offen-
sive coordinator on the eve of
the season. The three teams
that did it — the Buffalo Bills,
the Kansas City Chiefs and the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers — are
a combined 1-14.
The Bills’ Dick Jauron ap-
pears to have the least job se-
curity of the three. Buffalo’s
no-huddle system has created
more confusion than points.
Changing coordinators was
not enough for Tampa Bay’s
Raheem Morris; he has already
changed quarterbacks.
But the Chiefs’ Todd Ha-
ley may have the most prob-
lems. In addition to the league’s
30th-ranked offense, he has the
league’s worst defense — the
only one allowing more than 400
yards a game.  (NYT)