F R O M T H E Pa G E

F R O M T H E PA G E S O F

Sunday November 1, 2009 8 p.m. in New York Nine pages © 2009 The New York Times

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gop candidate, Karzai Rival Said to Be Dropping Out pressed by right, abandons race A moderate Republican whose candidacy for an upstate New York Congressional seat had set off a storm of national conservative opposition, abruptly withdrew on Saturday, emboldening the right at a time when the Republican Party is enmeshed in a debate over how to rebuild itself. The candidate, Dede Scozzafava, said she was suspending her campaign in the face of collapsing support and evidence that she was heading for a loss in a threeway race on Tuesday involving Douglas L. Hoffman, running on the Conservative Party line, and Bill Owens, a Democrat. Scozzafava had been under siege from conservative leaders because she supported gay rights and abortion rights and was considered too liberal on various fiscal issues. “The reality that I’ve come to accept is that in today’s political arena, you must be able to back up your message with money — and as I’ve been outspent on both sides, I’ve been unable to effectively address many of the charges that have been made about my record,” Scozzafava said in a statement. The Republican National Committee, which had strongly backed Scozzafava’s candidacy, issued a statement applauding her decision and announcing it was now supporting Hoffman. Yet other prominent Republicans expressed concern that Scozzafava’s decision seemed likely to encourage conservatives going into next year’s midterm elections, raising the prospect of more primaries against Republican candidates that they deem too moderate. Party leaders had argued that local parties should be permitted to pick candidates that most closely mirror the sentiments of the district, even if those candidates vary from Republican orthodoxy on some issues.  (NYT)

KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdullah Abdullah, the chief rival to President Hamid Karzai, plans to announce on Sunday his decision to withdraw from the Nov. 7 Afghan runoff election, seemingly handing a new term to Karzai but potentially damaging the government’s credibility, according to Western diplomats here and people close to Abdullah. Abdullah seemed to be keeping his options open until the last second, perhaps maneuvering for more bargaining power, as he has throughout the Afghan political crisis. Those close to him, speaking on condition of anonymity on Saturday, said Abdullah had committed to leaving the runoff, but was still trying to decide whether to publicly denounce Karzai, whom he has accused of stealing the Aug. 20 election, or to step down without a fight during a news conference scheduled for Sunday morning. American and other Western diplomats said they were worried that a defiant statement by Abdullah could lead to violence and undermine Karzai’s legitimacy, and

they were urging him to bow out gracefully. Obama administration officials have scrambled for weeks to end the deadlock, trying to ensure a smooth government transition as President Obama weighs whether to increase the American military presence in Afghanistan. People close to Abdullah said that his representative met with Karzai on Saturday but that they were unable to make any progress on the issue that has brought the two campaigns to loggerheads: Abdullah’s demands that the Afghan election system be overhauled to head off more fraud in the second round. After the first round of voting, a U.N.backed panel threw out nearly a million of Karzai’s ballots — onethird of his total — on the grounds that they were fake. “Abdullah is not going to participate in the election, full stop,” said an Afghan close to Abdullah. “He is still trying to figure out what he wants to say.” If Abdullah pulls out, there would still be the question of the runoff vote itself. Afghan officials said it seemed likely that it would

simply be canceled; the possibility of Taliban violence alone would appear to render pointless another Afghan election where the winner is known in advance. Salih Muhammed Registani, one of Abdullah’s campaign managers, said he thought that Abdullah would “boycott” the election and, if he did, force its cancellation. “If they hold the election with just one candidate it would be like the former Soviet Union,” he said. The election deadlock, now in its ninth week, has highlighted the Afghan state’s fragility, as well as showing deep and growing divisions among Afghans. And it has, like so many other recent events here, posed a worsening problem for American and other Western leaders, who have found themselves stuck with a leader who has lost the support of large numbers of Afghans and whose government is widely regarded as corrupt. An Obama administration official said Saturday that the White House had not spoken to Abdullah and that it had no immediate plans to do so.  DEXTER FILKINS  and ALISSA J. RUBIN

Rebels Widen Deadly Reach Across India BARSUR, India — At the edge of the Indravati River, hundreds of miles from the nearest international border, India effectively ends. Indian paramilitary officers point machine guns across the water. The dense jungles and mountains on the other side belong to Maoist rebels dedicated to overthrowing the government. “That is their liberated zone,” said P. Bhojak, one of the officers stationed at the river’s edge in this town in the eastern state of Chattisgarh. Or one piece of it. India’s Maoist rebels are now present in 20 states and have evolved into a potent and lethal insurgency. In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period.

If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain. For India, the widening Maoist insurgency is a moment of reckoning for the country’s democracy and has ignited a sharp debate about where it has failed. In the past, India has tamed some secessionist movements by coaxing rebel groups into the country’s big-tent political process. The Maoists, however, do not want to secede or be absorbed. Their goal is to topple the system. Once considered Robin Hood figures, the Maoists claim to represent the dispossessed of Indian society, particularly the indig-

enous tribal groups, who suffer some of the country’s highest rates of poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality. Many intellectuals and even some politicians once sympathized with their cause, but the growing Maoist violence has forced a wrenching reconsideration. India’s rapid economic growth has made it an emerging global power but also deepened stark inequalities in society. Maoists accuse the government of trying to push tribal groups off their land to gain access to raw materials and have sabotaged roads, bridges and even an energy pipeline. “The root of this is dispossession and deprivation,” said Ramachandra Guha, a prominent historian based in Bangalore. “The Maoists are an ugly manifestation of this. This is a serious problem that is not going to disappear.”  (NYT)

International

Sunday, November 1, 2009

A Thirsty Plant Leaves Crops in Yemen Dry JAHILIYA, Yemen — More than half of this country’s scarce water is used to feed an addiction. Even as drought kills off Yemen’s crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by most Yemeni men (and some women) for their mild narcotic effect. The farmers have little choice: Qat is the only way to make a profit. Meanwhile, the water wells are running dry, and deep cracks have begun opening in the parched earth. “They tell us it’s because the water table is sinking so fast,” said Muhammad Hamoud Amer, a farmer who has lost two-thirds of his peach trees to drought in the past two years. “Every year we have to drill deeper and deeper to get water.” Across Yemen, the underground water sources that sus-

tain 24 million people are running out, and some areas could be depleted in just a few years. It is a crisis that threatens the very survival of this arid, overpopulated country, and one that could prove deadlier than the resurgence of Al Qaeda here. Water scarcity afflicts much of the Middle East, but Yemen’s poverty and lawlessness make the problem more serious and harder to address, experts say. The government now supplies water once every 45 days in some urban areas, and in much of the country there is no public water supply at all. Unlike some other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Yemen lacks the money to invest heavily in desalination plants. Making matters worse is the proliferation of qat trees, which have replaced other crops across much of Yemen, taking a growing share of water, according to the World Bank. The government

has struggled to limit drilling by qat farmers, but to no effect. The state has little authority outside the capital, San‘a. The lack of water is fueling tribal conflicts and insurgencies. Those conflicts, including an armed rebellion in the north and a separatist movement in the south, make it more difficult to address the water crisis. Many areas are too dangerous for government engineers or hydrologists to visit. Climate change is deepening the problem, making seasonal rains less reliable, said Jochen Renger, a water resources specialist with the German government who advises the Water Ministry. “It is a collapse with social, economic and environmental aspects,” said Abdul Rahman al-Eryani, Yemen’s minister of water and environment. “We are reaching a point where we don’t even know if the interventions we are proposing will save the situation.”  ROBERT F. WORTH

For Clinton, Little Progress for Middle East Talks JERUSALEM — Seeking to break a hardening impasse in the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met Saturday with the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to plead with him to return to the negotiating table with the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. But Abbas stood firm that Israel must halt construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem before any talks could begin, rebuffing an Israeli proposal, relayed by Clinton, to limit building to 3,000 additional housing units, the Palestinian spokesman, Saab Erakat, said on Israeli radio.

American officials said Clinton had not urged Abbas to accept the offer in their nearly two-hour meeting, which was arranged hastily and took place in the Persian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi. But they said she was eager to close the gap between the two sides. “It’s not for us to make a counteroffer,” said a State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. “It’s for us to work with both sides and see if we can’t narrow those positions to a point where negotiations make sense.” Later, Clinton arrived in the Israeli capital for evening meetings with Netanyahu and his senior

ministers, before flying on Saturday night to an Arab regional conference in Morocco. Clinton’s meetings with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders raised the Obama administration’s engagement in a diplomatic process that had been largely delegated to its special envoy, George J. Mitchell. While Mitchell has already made more than a dozen trips to the region, Clinton had been to Israel only once as secretary of state. Mitchell accompanied Clinton to her meetings, which in addition to Abbas included the crown princes of Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.  MARK LANDLER

Dalai Lama Defends a Trip to a Region in Dispute BEIJING — The Dalai Lama said Saturday that the Chinese government was wrong to attribute political motives to his travels, including a planned trip in early November to a Buddhist mountain enclave in northeastern India that China claims as its territory. “The Chinese government considers me a troublemaker, so it is my duty to create more trouble,” he joked, according to The As-

sociated Press. “The Chinese government politicizes too much wherever I go. Where I go is not political.” The Chinese government has protested the Dalai Lama’s plans to visit the Tawang region of Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian state that borders Chinese-ruled Tibet and the nation of Bhutan. China claims that Tawang is historically part of Tibet, which China has controlled since 1951.

The Chinese government has said the Dalai Lama’s plan to visit there affirms his “splittist” intentions. China has long accused him of advocating for Tibetan independence, even though the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, says he wants only genuine autonomy for Tibet. India says a self-governing Tibet ceded Tawang to Britishruled India in a treaty signed in 1914.  EDWARD WONG

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in brief Arrest in U.N. Attack The authorities have arrested eight people, including one in Saudi Arabia, in connection with the deadly attack on a U.N. guest house last week, the Afghan intelligence chief said Saturday. The intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, said those arrested claimed the assailants, who were killed in the attack, came from the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Saleh’s comments are likely to intensify criticism of the security provided to U.N. employees working in Afghanistan. The United Nations has already said that it took too long for Afghan police and NATO troops to respond to the attack on Wednesday, in which eight people, including five U.N. staff members, were killed.  (AP)

AIDS in S. Africa South African President Jacob Zuma last week definitively rejected the stance of his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, who denied the viral cause of AIDS and the critical role of antiretroviral drugs in treating it. In a country that now has more H.I.V.-infected people and annual AIDS deaths than any other, Zuma issued a clarion call on Thursday for a battle against the disease.  (NYT)

Investigator Killed A senior Iraqi police officer who was investigating last week’s deadly suicide bombings, which struck at the heart of the government, was killed in his office on Thursday night, according to security officials. They said the officer, Maj. Arkan Hachim, was gunned down by a suspect in the bombings who had been brought in for questioning.  (NYT)

S. Korean Troops South Korean announced plans on Friday to send troops and police officers to Afghanistan to help protect its aid workers. The plans, if approved by Parliament, will reinstate a South Korean military presence in Afghanistan two years after the country withdrew its 200 troops from there.  (NYT)

national

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Corzine Courts Obama Backers in Final Push NEWARK, N.J. — In the final hours of this intensely fought campaign, supporters of Gov. Jon S. Corzine are knocking on doors with a message for people who voted for Barack Obama: Your president needs you. In an effort they are calling “Yes We Can 2.0,” Corzine campaign officials are devoting millions of dollars and thousands of volunteers to try to bring back to the polls those 442,000 New Jersey residents who had never voted before Obama’s election last November. They are flooding them with phone calls, mail and text messages, hoping to contact each of them at least eight times before Tuesday. With the president significantly more popular than Corzine in New Jersey, the governor has lashed himself to Obama, and will appear beside him on Sunday on the president’s third visit to the state to campaign on Corzine’s behalf.

Whether or not the first-time Obama voters turn out could make a crucial difference in this race. Most polls show Corzine and his Republican opponent, Christopher J. Christie, running neck and neck two days before the election. The outcome could also help answer a question nagging at Democrats nationally: Can they keep engaging those drawn to the polls by Obama’s charisma and historic campaign, or will last year prove a one-time surge for the party? The governor’s race in Virginia is also being closely watched for what it may say about Obama’s ability to persuade supporters to back other Democrats. The Democrat, Creigh Deeds, is trying to draw Obama’s backers with rallies and fliers showcasing him in photographs with the president. But the situation is tricky there; Obama is not as popular in Virginia as he is in New Jersey,

and Deeds, who trails the Republican, Bob McDonnell, by double digits in most polls, has distanced himself from some of the president’s domestic policies. In New Jersey, even Corzine’s most ardent supporters acknowledge that selling him to Obama admirers is not easy. On the surface, it would be hard to imagine two political figures more different. Obama is charismatic and eloquent, while Corzine is self-effacing and an often meandering public speaker. And more significant, Corzine bears the burden of the state’s gloomy economy and reputation for corruption. Jason O’Donnell, the Corzine campaign’s field director in Hudson County, acknowledged the challenge. “There’s only one Barack Obama,” he said. “Jon Corzine may not be as dramatic, but he’ll be a great partner for the president.”  DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

Top Democrats Push for Plans to Trim Deficit WASHINGTON — Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats, the White House and Congressional leaders are weighing options for narrowing the gap, including a bipartisan commission that could force tax increases and spending cuts. But even the idea of a panel to bridge the partisan divide has run into partisan objections. Many Democrats are loath to cede such far-reaching decisions to a commission and doubt Republicans’ willingness to compromise. And most Republicans remain ada-

mantly opposed to tax increases. “If we have the same process and the same people, we are going to get the same results,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who recently met with President Obama to discuss the idea. “The Democratic Party wants to spend more than we can afford, the Republican Party tends to want to cut taxes more than we can afford. So we are stuck.” Concerns about the deficit are building even as the White House and Congress continue to add to it with tax cuts and spending to stimulate the economy. Yet those costs do not trouble most economists and market analysts. The

main driver of long-term deficits is the chasm between the benefit programs Medicare and Medicaid and federal tax collections, which are at one of their lowest levels in many decades. The administration argues that Obama’s proposed health care overhaul is “the most significant act we could take to tackle the deficit,” as Christina D. Romer, the chairwoman of his Council of Economic Advisers, said in a speech last week. But it remains unclear how much the health care legislation would slow the growth of Medicare and Medicaid.  JACKIE CALMES  and CARL HULSE

California’s Fiscal Health Continues to Deteriorate LOS ANGELES — Just three months after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut, taxed and line-item-vetoed away a two-year budget gap of $26 billion, California faces billions of dollars in new shortfalls, with the problem likely to deepen in the next fiscal year. At a recent conference here on the condition of California’s fiscal health, the state treasurer, Bill Lockyer, called the budget “a train wreck.” And, he added, “it’s going to get worse.”

California finance officials say the state is facing a shortfall of roughly $7 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and several estimates have that gap ballooning to between $10 billion and $20 billion in the next fiscal year. Like many other states, California is facing continued revenue shortfalls as personal income and corporate taxes falter. But California lawmakers are also facing the implosion of expected cost

savings, as lawsuits and other factors have reduced or eliminated savings that were figured into the budget passed last July. High unemployment and an overall sluggish economy have led to lower-than-expected revenues flowing in. The state’s combined personal, corporate and sales taxes fell more than $1 billion below projections for the first quarter of the year, according to the state controller, John Chiang.  JENNIFER STEINHAUER

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in brief Secret C.I.A. Jails F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “How close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw,’ ” according to hundreds of pages of partly declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department. The documents include handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials, discussing the possibility of prosecuting some employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.  (NYT)

Battle Over Petition On Tuesday, voters in Washington State will decide whether to extend to registered domestic partners the same rights married couples have, short of marriage. But the campaign over the referendum, placed on the ballot by opponents of same-sex marriage, has been overshadowed by one issue: whether the individual names of the petitioners should be made public, and ultimately, circulated on the Web. The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in last week, deciding to let stand a lower court ruling that ordered Washington’s secretary of state not to disclose the names of the signers. The Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the issue, and it is unclear whether it will.  (NYT)

New Terror Concern After disrupting two recent terrorism plots, U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that extremist groups in Pakistan linked to Al Qaeda are planning smaller operations in the United States that are harder to detect but more likely to succeed than the spectacular attacks they once emphasized, senior counterterrorism officials say. In both cases, the main defendants are long-term residents of the United States with substantial community ties who traveled to Pakistan, where they trained with extremist groups affiliated with Al Qaeda.  (NYT)

Arts

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Almodóvar and Cruz: Soul Mates Sitting in an East Side hotel suite in early October, across from the writer-director Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz picked up a glossy magazine and gazed admiringly at the cover photograph of Uma Thurman. “It’s good,” she said, turning the picture toward Almodóvar. He leaned toward it, enthusiastically assessing Thurman’s pose and cropped blond coiffure. “Yes, yes,” he said to Cruz, accelerating from English into Spanish as his mind started racing along tracks of celluloid. “It’s true,” he said, laughing. “I really am fascinated by actresses, by everything they do, even by the dressing room, which is the sanctum sanctorum of any actress. And I am especially fascinated by actresses who play actresses.” Which is precisely what Cruz does in “Broken Embraces,” Almodóvar’s fourth collaboration with her — and, she said, her most difficult. In the movie, which closed this fall’s New York Film Festival and opens in theaters on Nov. 20, she plays Lena, a rich man’s kept woman, who has the chance to fulfill, however briefly, her long-deferred dream of being a movie star when she becomes romantically involved with a director (Lluís Homar). Lena, a heartbreaking figure whose own identity is so unformed that she is only too eager to become someone else (early in the movie, she is costumed and styled as Audrey Hepburn), is “maybe the saddest character I ever wrote,” Almodóvar said. “She has a past she doesn’t like at all, so when she finds she can impersonate someone, it’s like having a new life. She is hard — a fallen angel. And that is the biggest challenge I have given Penélope so far.” Almodóvar’s films with Cruz have often found the sweet spot where the ornate trappings of melodrama eventually fall away to reveal deeper and more complicated emotions and motives. They’ve also offered Cruz some of her richest opportunities. In the 1997 thriller “Live Flesh,” she dominates the first 10 minutes, playing an impoverished prostitute in 1970 Madrid who gives birth on a city

bus. Two years later, when he was casting “All About My Mother,” which would win the Oscar for best foreign-language film, Almodóvar called upon her again, this time to play a nun. Even as she falls into an affair with a transvestite and becomes H.I.V.-positive, she remains the film’s sweetest, purest presence. And in the 2006 drama “Volver,” Cruz earned her first Academy Award nomination for playing a determined widow who was an amalgam of women from Almodóvar’s childhood in La Mancha, albeit with a little Sophia Loren thrown in. “Someone asked me, ‘Is she a muse for you?,’ ” said Almodóvar. “Well, yes. She is a muse for me in the sense that a muse is someone who makes you better than you are.” “No, no,” replied Cruz, shaking her head and smiling. “I know exactly how good you are.” The chemistry Almodóvar, 60, and Cruz, 35, share would almost seem romantic if he were not one of the world’s best-known openly gay directors and she were not linked in the tabloids to the actor Javier Bardem. Over their first three films, she rode the emotional waves of each new role — “In Pedro’s movies I am always either dying or having babies,” she said — and their kinship developed. When she won her supportingactress Oscar last year for Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” she thanked Almodóvar effusively. If “Broken Embraces” didn’t strain their bond, it was still taxing. “This was the movie where I cried the most between takes,” Cruz said. Almodóvar took pleasure even on the hardest days of shooting. “All the difficulties actresses have at the moment they are acting really interest me,” he said. “At that time, the director is like the husband, the lover, the friend, the mother, the father, the psychiatrist. But there’s also a point when the director has to be terribly cruel, because actresses sometimes have to face their own demons.”  MARK HARRIS

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The Examined Life Is Worth Staging Lynn Redgrave, sitting with her dog, Viola, in her bouquet-filled dressing room at the Manhattan Theater Club, was describing the exact moment in 2003 that she jettisoned her inner critic and fearmonger. She needed to draw on that newfound clarity and peace this year: “Nightingale,” her introspective one-woman play about her grandmother, opens here on Tuesday, she is coping with the recent death of her niece Natasha Richardson, and she herself just underwent treatments at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Redgrave, a member of the famous acting clan that has also produced her father, Sir Michael Redgrave, and her older sister, Vanessa Redgrave, discussed all that during a recent interview. The clarity, she said, came after she had had a mastectomy and chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2003 and had plunged back into work. She was coping with her usual opening-night jitters while waiting to take the stage as the prim Miss Fozzard in “Talking Heads,” at the Minetta Lane Theater. “I was standing there and I thought, ‘Why would I get in my way?’ ” Redgrave said. “At that point in 2003, I didn’t know how it’s all going to turn out because my cancer was a big tumor when it happened.” “I could be dead, but I’m not,” she recalled thinking. “Here I am. I’m not dead.” “And to this day, everything has changed,” Redgrave continued, explaining that previously she had often been very critical of herself. “And I’m not afraid.” “Nightingale” is a series of family stories and dialogues (real and imagined) about love, marriage and motherhood, with a shifting series of characters impersonated by Redgrave. She said that links to her relatives are important to her understanding of herself. “I have this thing, it’s like holding hands, even dead or alive, but holding, holding because then somehow it makes me O.K., I’m being held steady,” she said. FELICIA R. LEE

From Debauched Rock Star to Laid-Back L.A. Artist With a Solo Album Julian Casablancas, savior of debauched New York City rock ’n’ roll, is sober now and living in Los Angeles. The shaggy-haired frontman of the Strokes, who not so long ago could be seen stumbling home from East Village bars around dawn, a rightly sloppy paragon of the city’s resurgent downtown scene, is currently renting a white Spanish-style house in the Silver Lake neighborhood. He just bought a car for $1,000: a ’92 Cutlass. He likes the sunshine. He is smitten. “It’s fun; I won’t lie,” he said on a recent visit back east. “L.A.’s kind of, like, seven really cool towns. It’s so laid-back. If you go in the right spot, you can walk around, and you don’t need a car. It’s a lot easier to eat healthy. And the weather!”

The move is temporary but it’s emblematic of the changes in his life in the last few years: from wild-living rock star to steady artist and mindful family man, with he and his wife, Juliet, expecting their first child. On Tuesday his first solo album, “Phrazes for the Young,” will be released on Cult Records/RCA. Cult is his own, newly started and self-financed imprint, with a handful of bicoastal employees. He wrote and arranged all the music and played much of it himself. In Los Angeles he’s been getting a band together and prepping for a tour that will include a series of residencies with elaborate stage shows. Evident ambition has replaced obtuse ennui. “With this record the goal was always to try to take, like, cool, underground-type music

and try to make it popular somehow,” Casablancas, 31, said over a Saturday dinner at an Italian restaurant in the East Village. Far from the disaffection of the Strokes’ records, “Phrazes” seems mostly well adjusted. “I’m a happy guy,” he said, offering a dimpled grin. Still, he added: “I never wanted to do a solo record, to be honest. I just felt like I had no choice.” Jason Bentley, the musical director of KCRW radio in California, said he was “a little surprised, but pleasantly so” by the album, though he expected only hard-core Strokes fans to seek out the record. But, he added, “There is a chance that the pop appeal of these songs will establish a new fan base on its own merits.”  MELENA RYZIK

business

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Can Citigroup Carry Its Own Weight? Over the past 80 years, the U.S. government has engineered not one, not two, not three, but at least four rescues of the institution now known as Citigroup. In previous instances, the bank came back from the crisis and prospered. Will Citigroup rise again from its recent near-death experience? The answer to that question concerns not only the 276,000 employees who work at what was once the world’s largest bank, but the taxpayers as well. Even as Citigroup’s stock has soared from a low of $1.02 to its current $4.09 — and the company has eked out a $101 million profit in the third quarter along the way — it’s still unclear whether it can climb out of the hole that its former leaders dug before and during the mortgage mania. If Citigroup remains stuck, taxpayers will be on the hook for outsize losses. Citigroup remains a sprawling, complex enterprise, with 200 mil-

lion customer accounts and operations in more than 100 countries. And when people talk about institutions that have grown so large and entwined in the economy that regulators have deemed them too big to be allowed to fail, Citigroup is the premier example. As a result, the government has handed Citigroup $45 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program over the last year. Through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., a major bank regulator, the government has also agreed to back roughly $300 billion in soured assets that sit on Citigroup’s books. Even as other troubled institutions recently curtailed their use of another F.D.I.C. program that backs new debt issued by banks, Citigroup has continued to tap the arrangement. Chris Whalen, editor of the Institutional Risk Analyst, calls Citigroup “the queen of the zombie dance,” referring to the group

of financial institutions that the government has on life support. Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup’s C.E.O., said in an interview that he was confident that Citigroup was on the right course, focusing on global banking and shedding segments of the company — like insurance and the brokerage business — that aren’t part of that mission. Neil M. Barofsky, special inspector general of TARP, has assembled a team to examine how Citigroup is using taxpayer funds. Concerns about oversight are shared by others, particularly financial analysts. “Traditional banking is still in a recession, and the situation is very tenuous,” said Janet Tavakoli, founder of Tavakoli Structured Finance, a consulting firm. “If we do get our money back from Citi, some of it will be the money we printed to give to them.”  ANDREW MARTIN and  GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Time Heals Everything in Quarterly Statements Though stocks have soared more than 50 percent since the market hit bottom in March, the sentiment of individual investors is hardly euphoric. In fact, the percentage who say they are “bullish” today is only slightly higher than it was in the summer, when the market was much lower, according to a survey by the American Association of Individual Investors. Yet these attitudes could change soon, but not because anything has changed in the market. It’s simply that time is passing, and the quarterly performance reports sent to investors will soon no longer highlight the worst of

last year’s losses. At the moment, the quarterly brokerage and 401(k) plan statements still reflect an important time lag. Open a recent statement and you’re likely to find that despite their gains of late, most of your stock investments still lost money for the 12 months through the third quarter. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, for example, was off nearly 7 percent in the 12 months ended Sept. 30. Fast-forward to current figures, which won’t be reflected in most investment reports for weeks. Even after Friday’s losses, many numbers look much better. Investors may think the market

has improved tremendously over the last few weeks. It hasn’t. It’s just that by the end of October, the market was more than a year beyond the swoon that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers. People are often told that they should invest for the long run, but Greg Schultz, a principal at Asset Allocation Advisors, a financial planning firm in Walnut Creek, Calif., said that “shorter time frames actually impact investor psychology more.” “Investors aren’t looking at 10 years,” he said. “They’re looking at how they’ve been doing over 6 months, 9 months, 12 months.”  PAUL J. LIM

Ford’s Plan to Cut Costs Falls Short in Union Vote DEARBORN, Mich. — Union workers at the Ford Motor Co. have refused to help the company make more cuts to its labor costs. Changes to the workers’ contract that would have allowed the cuts appeared headed for certain defeat Saturday after about 72 percent of workers voted to reject the deal, according to a tally compiled by The New York Times from results at separate plants.

Ford needed 9,000 more votes for passage, with fewer than 7,000 votes outstanding to be either cast or counted through Sunday. Ford, which said it needed the changes to reduce some advantages the union gave to General Motors and Chrysler as those companies headed into bankruptcy in the spring, is not expected to seek a new deal. The Ford proposal, which was supported by the union’s leader-

ship, would have frozen the pay of newly hired workers and banned the union from striking in order to demand higher pay or benefits until 2015. In return, Ford promised to pay each worker a $1,000 bonus in March 2010 and to guarantee the assignment of new products to some plants, creating or saving a total of about 7,000 jobs, according to calculations by union leaders. NICK BUNKLEY

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in brief 401(k)’s Getting Respect, For Now In light of recent downturns, some financial experts have declared that 401(k)’s are a poor way to save for retirement, partly because market volatility can make them vulnerable. What? Was it all a big mistake? That has to be a distressing idea for many investors who’ve been spiriting money away in 401(k)’s week after week, year after year. Employers and financial companies have done a great job of convincing workers that 401(k)’s are a good idea. In the private sector, total assets in 401(k)-type accounts surpassed assets in pension-type accounts starting in 1996, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Total individual retirement account assets overtook pension assets in 1998. To certain experts, 401(k)’s might not be ideal, but they’re all some investors have. And declarations about how awful they are may evaporate in the next sustained upturn (and return when a new downturn hits).  (NYT)

Rising Rates For Credit Cards Have you checked the interest rates on your credit cards lately? Odds are they’re going way up. That’s because credit-card companies are rushing to raise rates and tack on extra fees ahead of a law slated to take effect Feb. 22 that is supposed to limit such moves in the future. In some cases, rates are doubling to as high as 30 percent or more, even for people who pay their bills on time. The maneuvering by the card companies is serving up another blow to American consumers who are already struggling with their finances. U.S. lawmakers let that happen by giving the card companies nine months to prepare for the rules. “The delay allowed them to restock their arsenal with weapons,” said Lloyd Constantine, an attorney who has spent 22 years litigating cases tied to the credit-card industry.  (AP)

Crossword — Edited By Will Shortz

Sunday, November 1, 2009

6

THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY MAGAZINE CROSSWORD PUZZLE 1

COMPOUND FRACTURES

BY MATT GINSBERG AND PETE MULLER / EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ

2

3

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17

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6

7

8

1 Tops 5 Quilt filler 9 Detest 14 Some I.R.A.’s 17 Some extra books 19 Softly 20 Post a modern status update 22 Eyewear providing hindsight? 24 French town 25 Restrain 26 Game in which a player may be schneidered 27 Repeated a Benjamin Franklin electrical experiment 29 Peanut-loving ghost? 32 Intermittent revolutionary? 33 Afflicts 34 “___ Can Cook” (onetime PBS show) 35 Leader against the Aztecs 36 Hearing aids, briefly 37 Christianity, e.g.: Abbr. 38 Bluff bit 40 Desert stream A R M E Y

B O Y L E

B I G M O U I N T A S H S A S

T O N A L

O X E Y E

O Y V E Y

P A V E

S E D A N

A T E S T

A E B A D R A G O A L I N M E N P T I M H E N E A L H A C O R T L B O X M O R O E R T O S S P O S C U M V A N N E R K I L I E T E R E R S

N S E A N L I A L D D I E D W Y O E E R O S S H O I N L D A E A R R T S S O A N N G T H A S I G J E

D E F I N E R S E V E N I L O S T I T

A K T N A E I S T O A F S I K T I E O N W O R E E L S E Y O N I D L L U O P V A A P O B U T L T E O

B A U M

C A D E T T E

E Q U A T E S

D P U P I T I S I A L E S L E S T R A C I H O R I T S E S T N E L

D U N C E S A Z O D Y E A N O T R I

R I L L S

I N O U T

C O P E

G I Z M O

A D L E R

G E E S E

G E T O V E R I T

U E S T E D E T U D E

S H E E R

Answer to puzzle for 10/25/09

90 Man’s name meaning “young man” 91 Coward with a pen 92 ___ gratification 93 Boombox button 95 Hannibal of “The Silence of the Lambs” 97 Old TWA hub: Abbr. 98 Three or four 99 “Maybe” music? 101 Dreams that don’t die? 104 1946 John Hersey book 105 Runner Budd 106 Simile words 107 Japanese financial center 108 Bug that never takes a ride? 113 Deux of these are better than one 114 “As You Like It” setting 115 Hustle 116 60 minuti 117 “This I Promise You” group, 2000 118 “Bill ___ History of the United States” 119 Détente DOWN

1 Limo, e.g. 2 Form of the Egyptian god Thoth 3 Paunch 4 Gives up on 5 What “two” meant, historically 6 iPhone download 7 Broadway, say 8 Append 9 Give ___ on the back 10 Inexpensive pen 11 Greatly reduced 12 Trading unit 13 Fairy tale sister 14 Sporty Toyota 15 River areas named for their shape 16 Mettle or metal 18 “The Human Stain” novelist

30

13

43

51

41

64

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80 88 93

76 81

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52 59

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36

40 45

58

16

28

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57

15

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34 38

14 21

24 27

31

33

99

12

20

26

37

56

11

23 25

29

10

19

22

41 Emulate a grandparent, maybe 43 Rare mushroom? 47 “Uh-uh” 51 Backrub response 52 It comes before the carte 53 Put away 55 Some sushi bar orders 56 Give up smuggled goods? 62 Guards against chapping 64 Area code 801 area 65 Swamp thing 66 Use www.irs.gov, say 68 Not exciting 69 1989 Madonna hit 71 High-school athletic star at a casino? 74 ___ area 75 Indian government of 1858-1947 77 Word from Antony to Cleopatra 78 Parisian roll call response 79 Barack Obama, for one 81 Noble Les Paul? 88 “As ___ Dying”

ACR O S S

9

18

47 54

55

62

63

67

68

72

73

77

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82

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90

84

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111 112

119

(No. 1101)

20 Big Super Bowl expense 21 Like online medical advice for kids? 23 Pompom holder 28 Had as a base 29 One of three brothers in the Old West 30 White ones are little 31 Swimmer Diana 32 Fountain order 35 Kind of bean 38 Blacken 39 Go over and over 40 Director, writer and actor in “The Woman in Red,” 1984 42 Age-old robbers’ target 44 Vegetable that gives you an emotional release? 45 Eng. or Span. 46 “Lux et Veritas” collegian 48 Belief of about 11/2 billion

49 Pause producer 50 City near Düsseldorf 54 Bias 56 New York politico Andrew 57 Follower of each or no 58 Source of a “giant sucking sound,” according to Ross Perot 59 Common cause of a 3-Down 60 Not fun at all 61 Mad man? 63 Opposite of plus 67 “Dona ___ and Her Two Husbands” 70 Lever or level 72 “The Big Country,” for one 73 Sci. specialty 76 Peachy-keen 80 “Happy Days” role 82 Poker star Phil 83 Like some stock market highs and lows 84 Lone

85 Strip, sand and stain 86 Tommie of the Amazins 87 Tugboat services 89 Sammy Davis Jr. autobiography 93 Hunt’s “Mad About You” co-star 94 Slips 96 They’ve got promise 97 Like many an oath 98 Dormant Turkish volcano 99 Candid, maybe 100 Botanist Gray and others 101 Popinjay 102 Mings, e.g. 103 Job precursor: Abbr. 105 97.5% of a penny 109 X 110 Manage, with “out” 111 ___ premium 112 Mint

Answers to this puzzle will appear in next Sunday’s TimesDigest, and in next Sunday’s New York Times. You can get answers to any clue by touch-tone phone: 1-900-289-CLUE (289-2583), $1.49 a minute; or, with a credit card, 1-800-814-5550.

G ET H OME D ELIVERY OF T HE N EW Y ORK T IMES . C ALL 1-800-NYTIMES

opinion

Sunday, November 1, 2009

editorials of the timeS

Mandates and Affordability If Congress approves health care reform, virtually all Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. That raises a question: Will the policies be affordable? People everywhere are complaining that relentlessly rising costs are making health insurance unaffordable. The situation is especially dire for millions of Americans who are uninsured, self-employed or whose employers do not offer subsidized group coverage. A survey by the Commonwealth Fund found that 73 percent of the adults who tried to buy insurance on the open market over a threeyear period never bought a plan — because they could not afford it, could not find a plan that met their needs or were turned down. Pending legislation would help some of them by preventing rejections or high charges based on health status and by setting minimum benefit requirements. But many people who might still find the premiums too high will face an agonizing choice: buy insurance coverage or pay a penalty of hundreds or even thousands of dollars per family. Successful reform will provide financial support for those who need it and is the only way to finally guarantee coverage for tens of millions of uninsured Americans. • Here is a look at some of the issues behind the affordability debate: Why is a Mandate Necessary? It is important that everyone be required to buy insurance, either from their employers or on new insurance exchanges. Reliable studies show that people who lack insurance seldom get regular medical care and therefore suffer more severe illness and death than those who are insured. When they do get sick, they often turn to expensive emergency rooms for free care — driving up costs for everyone else. Finally, the health care reforms, which require insurers to accept all applicants, will not work well unless nearly everyone carries health insurance. Unless the pool includes a large number of healthy people, the costs for everyone on the exchange will be too high. Will Premiums Go Up or Down? Those forced to buy their own insurance could choose from an array of private plans — and possibly a public plan — that will be offered on the exchanges. There is sharp debate over whether these plans would be less or more expensive than plans that would be available on the open market. Insurance industry studies contend that premiums would go up because various fees imposed on health insurers and health care providers to pay for covering the uninsured would inevitably get passed on to consumers. We believe premiums would come down for several reasons. Companies would no longer need to spend as much money on administrative costs, to screen out people with pre-existing conditions (prohibited by all reform bills). If they wanted to participate on the exchanges

(and have access to millions of new customers), the companies would also be forced to compete with other private plans, and possibly a public option, encouraging them to lower premiums and accept lower profits. Will There Be Help? Right now, only the poorest Americans get help, through the statefederal Medicaid program. The bills in both houses would expand eligibility for Medicaid to cover millions more people, and lower the contributions of the poorest Americans. For those buying policies on the exchanges, perhaps 30 million people in all, the bills would provide tax-credit subsidies to help low- and middle-income people pay the premiums. People would have to pay specified percentages of their income toward the premium, ranging in the House bill from 1.5 percent for those barely above Medicaid level to 12 percent for those earning four times the poverty level, or $88,000 for a family of four. That sounds like a substantial hit at the upper end — $10,560 for a family of four before subsidies kick in. But it is comparable to what many workers are currently willing to pay for their group policies. What’s Affordable? No one has a clear answer, and various experts use different approaches to calculating affordability. Some estimate what people would have to pay for such other necessities as housing, food, day care, transportation and taxes, and then see how much is left over that could pay for health insurance. Others look at what people at various income levels are paying for health insurance today, without a requirement. By either yardstick, Jonathan Gruber, a prominent health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes that all of the pending bills in Congress would make health insurance affordable to the vast majority of Americans and that none of the bills would require anyone to buy insurance they could not afford. Which Version Is More Affordable? The House bill, unveiled last week, seems a safer bet than the Senate Finance bill (which must still be merged with another Senate bill) to make coverage affordable and widespread. It has stronger penalty provisions for individuals who decline coverage, thus making it more likely that the pools on the exchanges would be large enough to spread the risk. It would require employers to offer health coverage and pay a substantial share of the premiums or face a very stiff penalty, thus easing the burden on many workers. And it would provide relatively generous subsidies. Congressional leaders will have to meld the versions in coming weeks. We believe that a final bill should include a strong mandate, a public option and generous subsidies. That is the best chance of covering the maximum numbers of Americans and making insurance affordable. We believe that right now the House version does all of that best.

7

maureen dowd

Port Mortuary’s Pull WASHINGTON — Michelle had gone up to New York to watch the World Series opener with Jill Biden and Yogi Berra. The president had dinner with Sasha and Malia. Then, shortly before midnight, he boarded Marine One and flew to Dover Air Force Base. On the tarmac in the darkness, he stood at attention, saluting, as 18 flag-draped cases were taken off an Air Force C-17 and carried to Port Mortuary by military teams in camouflage fatigues and black berets. The parade of death included casualties from America’s most horrific day in Afghanistan in four years, and its bloodiest month of the war. It may have been a photo op, another way Obama could show he was not W., the president who started the Iraq war in a haze of fakery and then declined to ever confront the reality of its dead. Certainly, as Obama tries to figure out how to avoid being a war president when he’s saddled with two wars, he wants as much military cred in the bank as he can get. But it was also a genuinely poignant moment. It is how we want our presidents to behave, doing the humane thing especially when it’s hard. And Obama, who called it “a sobering reminder’’ of sacrifices made, signaled to Americans that he will resist blinders as he grapples with the conflicts he inherited. Leave it to Liz Cheney, in her bid to outCheney her scary dad, to suggest that Obama is a crass publicity-seeker. “I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras,’’ she told a Fox News radio host. She’s right: There were no press cameras at Dover in the previous administration. There was also no W. While Bush occasionally visited the wounded and the families of those killed, he never went to Dover to salute the fallen. And he barred any media coverage of it, trying to airbrush the evidence that the wars he started were not the cakewalks he had promised. Obama, the wunderkind who came out of nowhere to win the presidency, was supposed to push America out of the ditch and into a glittering future. But modernity is elusive when you’re in a time machine to the 14th century called Afghanistan. The tableau of Obama at Dover evoked the last line of “The Great Gatsby:” “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” As Obama comforted families at a tragic moment, he also had to contemplate a tragic dimension of his own presidency: It’s nice to talk about change, but you can’t wipe away yesterday. What he had in mind for renovating society hinged on spending a lot of money on energy, education, the environment and health care. Instead, he has been trapped in the money pits of a recession and two wars. For now, the man who promised revolution will have to settle for managing adversity. It is, as Yogi Berra said, “déjà vu all over again.”

sports

Sunday, November 1, 2009

In 26-Mile Slog, a Shortcut Can Be Tempting Two California women running together in last year’s New York City Marathon needed more than four hours to cover the first 16 miles. Then, they seemingly transformed into elite athletes, their finishing times suggesting a world-record pace through the marathon’s toughest section. Turns out, they had taken a shortcut. They ran in only four boroughs, skipping the Bronx and making a beeline for the finish line. They cheated. And they were not alone. Thirty years after Rosie Ruiz infamously combined distance running and subway riding, some marathoners still succumb to temptation and take unscrupulous means to the end. Last year, 71 runners in the New York City Marathon were disqualified for various viola-

tions of race rules — at least 46 of them for reducing the marathon to something less than 26.2 miles. An untold number of runners escape detection, marathon officials said. Surely some cheats will prosper among the 42,000 entered in Sunday’s race. Mary Wittenberg, the race director, called the number of cheats shocking. She added, “We have a duty to make sure that everyone who crosses our famed finish line earns the medal they achieve.” Runners have found several ways to skirt the rules. Some take shortcuts, stepping off the course and rejoining it closer to the finish, often sneaking into Central Park once they enter Manhattan near Mile 16. Other racers hand their identities to faster runners, by giving them their designated bibs or the electronic timing sen-

sors that attach to their shoes to officially record progress at intervals on the course. It falls on Tom Kelley, the marathon’s director for race scoring, and other staff members to comb through race data and catch those who have cheated. He has been the marathon’s hall monitor for years, so he knows how to find stories of transgressions in the streams of timing data. The New York Road Runners, the marathon’s organizer, gives each runner with suspicious times a chance to explain. When Kelley is confident that cheating has occurred, he may issue a lifetime ban from the race. He said some Europeans caught taking shortcuts had explained that in their culture, any long run was a marathon. “They don’t understand it’s a set distance,” he said.  ANDREW W. LEHREN

Crew Chief Prepares for Last Race With Busch TALLADEGA, Ala. — Kyle Busch celebrated 12 wins with the crew chief Steve Addington, including a comeback victory last year at Talladega Superspeedway. It seemed like a lifetime ago, though, on Friday as Addington prepared for his final weekend with Busch. He will call Sunday’s race at Talladega and then hand the job to Dave Rogers in a firing that admittedly left Addington “pretty confused.” “Do I agree with it? No,” Addington said. “But it is what it is, and I felt like we had a good run.” Busch said the decision was

made by the team owner Joe Gibbs and the president J.D. Gibbs, and it was based on a lack of consistency this season. “It seems like we’re either feast or famine we’re either going to win the race or finish 30th,” Busch said. “Some of that’s my fault, some of that’s just not having the right stuff for me, and Joe and J.D. felt like we needed to try something new to get something of a more consistent basis and championship-caliber.” Addington and Busch charged out of the gate at the start of the 2008 season. Busch moved to Joe Gibbs Racing after he was fired

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, PCpartly cloudy,R-rain, S-sun, Sh-showers, Sn-snow, SSsnow showers, T-thunderstorms, Tr-trace, W-windy.

U.S. CITIES Yesterday Today Tomorrow Atlanta 70/ 55 0.22 63/ 45 S 69/ 44 S Albuquerque 54/ 33 0 65/ 38 S 67/ 41 S Boise 55/ 37 0 54/ 40 PC 56/ 35 PC Boston 73/ 47 0 58/ 52 PC 53/ 42 PC Buffalo 63/ 51 0.18 48/ 39 PC 53/ 39 PC Charlotte 71/ 59 0 55/ 51 Sh 63/ 44 PC Chicago 47/ 40 0 53/ 35 PC 56/ 45 PC Cleveland 72/ 50 0.57 51/ 40 PC 55/ 35 PC Dallas-Ft. Worth 71/ 42 0 75/ 47 S 74/ 51 S Denver 50/ 32 0 54/ 28 S 48/ 28 PC Detroit 64/ 48 0.26 50/ 37 PC 53/ 38 C

Houston Kansas City Los Angeles Miami Mpls.-St. Paul New York City Orlando Philadelphia Phoenix Salt Lake City San Francisco Seattle St. Louis Washington

73/ 46 56/ 39 82/ 53 90/ 79 45/ 35 71/ 55 88/ 68 72/ 55 77/ 50 56/ 39 59/ 52 58/ 52 56/ 43 70/ 58

0 0 0 0 0.05 0.05 0 0.10 0 0 0 0.27 0 0.02

from Hendrick Motorsports, and Addington got the job of trying to rein in Nascar’s wild child. He made it look easy with immediate results. They almost won the season-opening Daytona 500, and got their first win together three weeks later with a victory at Atlanta. But a summer slump cost him a spot in the Chase. Busch missed the final qualifying spot by just 8 points. Now, six races later, Gibbs officials decided to make a switch atop the pit box. Rogers, crew chief for Gibbs in the Nationwide Series, will replace Addington beginning next week at Texas. (AP) 74/ 47 67/ 43 86/ 57 88/ 75 54/ 34 59/ 51 86/ 68 59/ 52 85/ 55 57/ 36 66/ 55 53/ 47 59/ 41 58/ 50

S S S S C PC PC PC S PC PC PC S PC

76/ 49 61/ 45 88/ 59 88/ 73 49/ 39 57/ 45 84/ 68 60/ 44 88/ 57 58/ 37 74/ 55 53/ 45 63/ 42 60/ 43

S PC S S PC S PC PC S S S PC PC PC

FOREIGN CITIES Acapulco Athens Beijing Berlin Buenos Aires Cairo

Yesterday Today Tomorrow 90/ 75 0 88/ 75 PC 90/ 75 PC 60/ 53 0 61/ 48 W 61/ 46 PC 57/ 41 0.24 37/ 23 R 37/ 21 S 44/ 34 0 46/ 34 C 45/ 41 R 64/ 57 0 70/ 61 T 81/ 61 T 81/ 66 Tr 75/ 64 PC 73/ 61 S

Cape Town Dublin Geneva Hong Kong Kingston Lima London Madrid Mexico City Montreal Moscow Nassau Paris Prague Rio de Janeiro Rome Santiago Stockholm Sydney Tokyo Toronto Vancouver Warsaw

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in brief All-Williams Final The Williams sisters are headed for another title matchup. Venus, the defending champion, defeated Jelena Jankovic, 5-7, 6-3, 6-4, in one semifinal Saturday at the Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha, Qatar. Caroline Wozniacki retired against Serena in the other, trailing by 6-4, 0-1, because of an apparent abdominal injury. Serena, who secured the yearend No. 1 ranking this week, and Venus will play for the title Sunday.  (AP)

Match Play Finals Anthony Kim reached his first Volvo World Match Play Championship final by beating Robert Allenby of Australia, 5 and 4, on Saturday in Casares, Spain. Kim, who beat Allenby, 5 and 3, at the Presidents Cup, rallied from an early two-hole deficit, pulling away at the 27th hole in near-perfect conditions at the Finca Cortesin course.  (AP)

NBa scores FRIDAY’S LATE GAMES Phoenix 123, Golden State 101 Dallas 94, L.A. Lakers 80

NHL scores FRIDAY’S LATE GAMES Forida 6, Dallas 5 Anaheim 7, Vancouver 2 San Jose 3, Colorado 1 SATURDAY Philadelphia 6, Carolina 1 Boston 2, Edmonton 0 Atlanta 3, Ottawa 1 New Jersey 2, Tampa Bay 1

74/ 57 0 61/ 50 0.24 53/ 46 0 86/ 75 0 90/ 75 0 69/ 63 0 64/ 52 0.02 77/ 52 0 79/ 55 0.59 58/ 52 0.07 32/ 27 Tr 88/ 75 0 61/ 41 0 35/ 23 0 83/ 70 0 64/ 46 0 78/ 55 0 43/ 27 0 76/ 64 0 71/ 61 0 62/ 52 0.23 56/ 53 0.31 38/ 25 0

72/ 55 PC 57/ 45 R 64/ 48 C 84/ 70 PC 88/ 77 S 72/ 63 PC 64/ 50 R 72/ 57 PC 72/ 45 C 48/ 32 C 30/ 28 C 88/ 77 S 63/ 55 R 50/ 36 C 88/ 70 S 63/ 46 PC 77/ 43 C 43/ 36 C 81/ 61 S 77/ 54 Sh 46/ 39 PC 54/ 45 PC 39/ 30 PC

77/ 54 C 54/ 43 PC 57/ 39 R 77/ 61 W 88/ 77 S 70/ 64 C 55/ 46 R 61/ 50 C 72/ 48 PC 50/ 32 PC 32/ 27 PC 90/ 77 S 54/ 50 R 45/ 38 R 91/ 72 S 66/ 50 Sh 64/ 39 PC 43/ 37 C 84/ 63 PC 63/ 46 R 50/ 37 C 54/ 43 Sh 39/ 30 PC

sports journal

Sunday, November 1, 2009

9

Selig Sets the Tone for Redemption With McGwire The World Series moved to Instead, he set a tone for redempPhiladelphia, where the Yankees tion. and the Phillies were scheduled During a phone interview on to play Games 3, 4 and 5. But the Friday, he explained why. “I most jarring baseball news came can’t be disingenuous,” he said. before the Series began “If Tony La Russa and Sports with the announcement Dave McKay and Dave Of that Mark McGwire, Duncan and Bill DeWitt The Times the disgraced home run and all these people who slugger, was returnlived with him, know William C. ing to baseball. The St. him, want him back, I Rhoden Louis Cardinals said last don’t have any reason to Monday that he would be tell them no.” their hitting coach. Fairly or not, McGwire is More stunning than that was identified with the use of perCommissioner Bud Selig’s enformance-enhancing drugs in dorsement of the hire. Selig’s ofbaseball. In 1998, McGwire and fice had been lobbied for months Sammy Sosa reignited waning by Cardinals ownership, the front passion for baseball with a chase office and Manager Tony La for Roger Maris’s single-season Russa, whom McGwire played home run record, which McGfor in Oakland and in St. Louis. wire won with 70 homers. The The Cardinals didn’t need Selig’s commissioner’s office, baseball permission to hire McGwire, but executives, even the news media they needed his blessing. offered daily paeans to McGwire. Selig could have remained McGwire retired in 2001, besilent or could have said that fore baseball began its investigahe had a problem with the hire. tion into the use of performance-

enhancing drugs. He was never formally accused or indicted, but he was one of the threads that unraveled baseball’s steroid scourge when an Associated Press reporter, Steve Wilstein, saw a container of androstenedione in McGwire’s locker. McGwire admitted taking the androstenedione, an over-thecounter muscle-building product. It was legal at the time, and not disallowed by Major League Baseball, though it later barred the use of androstenedione. McGwire was also linked to the use of performance-enhancing substances that were not barred by baseball when he was playing. An F.B.I. steroid sting operation conducted in the early 1990s linked McGwire and Jose Canseco to a steroid dealer. Selig is open about his admiration for McGwire. His relationship with Barry Bonds is hardly as cordial. Bonds is not a warm and fuzzy hero, and he has been

linked to the Balco case and is awaiting trial on perjury charges. But amnesty should be about being even-handed, not favoring personal pets. Asked about Bonds’s future if acquitted on perjury charges, Selig said that if a club wanted to hire him as a player or a coach, “I don’t think there will be an issue.” That’s not good enough. As he did with McGwire, Selig should advocate for a player like Bonds or any other player linked to performance-enhancing drugs who has been acquitted or not formally charged. His legacy as baseball commissioner will be defined by the scourge of performance-enhancing drugs. The strongest statement he can make is not simply welcoming back an immensely popular player like McGwire. The strongest step toward redemption is going down as the commissioner who welcomed Barry Bonds back to the fold.

A California Derby Is at the Center of M.L.S. Playoffs CARSON, Calif. — Julian Valentin has been ill with the flu most of the week, which means that no matter how much disinfectant he sprayed around the cozy twobedroom apartment he shares near the beach, his roommate, Ante Jazic, has not been around. Jazic has preferred to stay with his girlfriend. Perhaps, in the interest of cohabitational harmony — as well as good health — this arrangement is all for the best. This Sunday and next, the Los Angeles Galaxy, of which Valentin is a member, and Chivas USA, for whom Jazic plays, will face off in the first round of the M.L.S. playoffs. It is a home-and-home series, which makes it a little uncomfortable for these teams because, like Jazic and Valentin, they live under the same roof. The teams not only share the same stadium, the Home Depot Center, they share the same weight room, advertising representatives and parking lot. Their locker rooms are along the same corridor. Upstairs, the teams’ offices are separated by 35 paces down a hallway. But mi casa es su casa? “It will be uneasy,” Galaxy midfielder Chris Klein said. “And

I think after the first game, it will be even more so.” Intracity rivalries extend to the postseason occasionally. The Mets and the Yankees played their Subway Series in 2000, the Rangers and the Islanders have met many times in the N.H.L. playoffs, and the Giants and the Athletics crossed the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for the 1989 World Series. But, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, this is the first time that two American professional sports teams using the same facility have met in the playoffs since the 1944 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns, who shared Sportsman’s Park. The added air of win or go home — or is it win or stay home? — should heighten what has been a fierce rivalry. David Beckham was welcomed to it two years ago with a boot to the midsection from the Chivas captain, Jesse Marsch, which set off a red-card-inducing melee between the teams. In three matches this season, 91 fouls were committed and 4 players ejected. “The Super Clasicos are different, the atmosphere, the intensity,” Jazic said, referring to the

rivalry by its nickname. “I know nobody wants to go a whole year — until the next playoffs — having to see the guy who knocked you out.” Since Chivas USA arrived as an expansion club in 2005, it has presented, along with the Galaxy, a clash of cultures. As Jorge Vergara, the owner of the storied Mexican club Chivas de Guadalajara and a part owner of Chivas USA, declared at the time, “It’s the Latinos versus the Gringos, and we’re going to win.” The best representation of the competing philosophies is in the faces of two players who may be sharing space at midfield: Beckham and Jorge Flores. The world-famous Beckham arrived in 2007 with paparazzi and klieg lights. The locally little-known Flores came after an “American Idol”-like tryout on Spanish-language television. Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns the Galaxy and the stadium, has sought star power to sell its product, bringing in Beckham and Landon Donovan, whose combined salary of more than $7.4 million exceeds the payroll of every other team in the league. Until this season, the Galaxy led M.L.S. in attendance

since moving into the Home Depot Center in 2003. The crowds are mostly suburban, well heeled and generally look like the team, which is mostly white and Anglo. At Chivas practices, most of the communication between players takes place in Spanish. But Chivas has had a harder time winning over the vast Latino soccer audience, which turns out in droves to watch the top Mexican or European clubs but not for former Mexican stars past their prime, like Paco Palencia and Claudio Suárez. “We’re separate, but equal,” said Jazic, who has played for both organizations. “It’s the same distance we cover, but not the same ground.” Still, the rhetoric has toned down on both sides, as Chivas’s bravado has been beaten down on the business side, and the Galaxy’s runaway hubris has been clipped after the first two seasons of the Beckham experiment proved disastrous. “The animosity that happens now is strictly on the field as opposed to off the field,” Marsch said. “Before, they always looked down on us. I don’t think they do that anymore.” BILLY WITZ