F R O M T H E Pa G E

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

Tuesday October 27, 2009 Midnight in New York Nine pages © 2009 The New York Times

Visit The Times on the Web: www.nytimes.com

Ex-A.I.G. Chief Builds a New Venture senate leader vows to pursue a public option Maurice R. Greenberg, who built the American International Group into an insurance behemoth with an impenetrable maze of on- and offshore companies, is at it again. Even as he has been lambasting the government for its handling of A.I.G. after its near-collapse, Greenberg has been quietly building up a family of insurance companies that could compete with A.I.G. To fill the ranks of his venture, C.V. Starr & Co., he has been hiring some of the people he once employed. Greenberg may have received some unintended assistance from the U.S. Treasury. Just last week, the Treasury severely limited pay at A.I.G. and other companies that were bailed out by taxpayers. That may send more refugees into Greenberg’s arms, since C.V. Starr is free to pay whatever it wants. “Basically, he’s just starting ‘A.I.G. Two’ and raiding people out of ‘A.I.G. One,’ ” said Douglas A. Love, an insurance executive who has also hired A.I.G. talent for his company, Investors Guaranty Fund of Pembroke,

Bermuda. Greenberg’s success may be at the expense of taxpayers. People who work in the industry say that if he is already luring A.I.G.’s people, he may soon be siphoning off its business, and, therefore, its means to repay its debt to the government. “To me, it’s just going to be a matter of time before the valuation of what he’s building is greater than the valuation of A.I.G.,” said Andrew J. Barile, an insurance consultant in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. A.I.G., meanwhile, is struggling to regain its footing. The recipient of the biggest taxpayer bailout in history, it has been ordered by the government to restructure, unwind its complex derivatives and pay back the taxpayers. At 84, Greenberg remains larger than life. He spent nearly four decades forging A.I.G. out of private companies, devising its Rubik’s Cube structure and building it into the world’s largest insurance group with a $1 trillion balance sheet. He lost most of his fortune when the company nearly collapsed last year.

He was ousted from A.I.G. in an accounting scandal in 2005, and has insisted that he was not responsible for the problems that almost brought down A.I.G. last year — extremely risky trading in derivatives by its financial products unit. At the moment, C. V. Starr does not have a financial products unit, a spokesman for Greenberg said. After he was pushed out, Greenberg fought with A.I.G. over how to untangle assets that they both laid claim to. Over the summer, he won, earning the rights to $4.3 billion in A.I.G. stock that he had removed from an offshore retirement plan. The company had argued that he had improperly cashed out the stock and used the money to finance new business ventures that were competing with his former company. With his battles with A.I.G. now largely resolved, Greenberg is free to use that money for his latest ventures. Just this month, C.V. Starr leased 141,000 square feet of space on Park Avenue in Manhattan, in one of Lehman Brothers’ old headquarters. MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Investigators Say Pilots Distracted by Laptops Any employee at a company that has gone through a merger knows how distracting it can be when the new owner imposes new rules. That distraction, not a nap, was what two Northwest Airlines pilots say caused them to fly far beyond the Minneapolis airport last week, federal investigators reported Monday. The pilots told the National Transportation Safety Board that they missed their destination because they had taken out their personal laptops in the cockpit, a violation of airline policy, so the first officer, Richard I. Cole, could tutor the captain, Timothy B. Cheney, in a new scheduling system put in place by Delta Air Lines, which acquired Northwest last fall. The interim report from the safety board ran counter to theories in aviation circles last week

that the two pilots might have fallen asleep or were arguing in the cockpit. Each pilot, in separate interviews with the safety board that totaled more than five hours, denied those theories. “Both said they lost track of time,” the report stated. It also said that the pilots had heard voices over their cockpit radios but ignored them. The pilots passed breath analysis tests to check for alcohol use, and had a 17-hour break between the San Diego-to-Minneapolis trip and their previous flight. Delta, in a statement Monday, hinted strongly that the lapse could cost both men their jobs. “Using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots’ command of the aircraft during flight,” the statement said, “is strictly against the airline’s flight deck policies and violations

of that policy will result in termination.” The pilots remain suspended until completion of the airline’s investigation. The impromptu tutoring session apparently caused Cole and Cheney to ignore air-traffic controllers for about 90 minutes on Wednesday night, and forget to begin preparations for landing in Minneapolis. Instead, the plane flew about 110 miles to the skies over Eau Claire, Wis., as more than a dozen air-traffic controllers in three locations serving Denver and Minneapolis tried to get the pilots’ attention. The North American Aerospace Defense Command readied four fighter jets and had them on “runway alert” in the vicinity, according to a command spokesman.  MICHELINE MAYNARD and MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, sided with his party’s liberals on Monday and announced that he would include a government-run insurance plan in the health care legislation that he plans to take to the Senate floor within a few weeks. His proposal came with an escape hatch: A state could refuse to participate in the public insurance plan by adopting a law to opt out. Even so, the announcement was a turning point in the debate over how much of a role government should play in an overhauled health care system. With Republicans united in opposition, Reid needs support from all members of his caucus to take up the legislation. Aides said that he appeared to be short of that goal, lacking firm commitments from several senators. Should Reid prevail, both chambers in Congress would be considering bills on the floor containing a version of a government-run plan to compete with private insurers in selling health coverage to consumers. The House is still weighing what the details of its approach. Just weeks ago, the prospects for such an approach seemed remote, reflecting all-out opposition from conservatives to what they considered an excessive government role in the economy and a lack of enthusiasm from many moderate Democrats. But the idea has consistently drawn strong support in national polls, and it has backing from President Obama, though he has not insisted on it. “The best way to move forward is to include a public option with the opt-out provision for states,” said Reid, Democrat of Nevada. “I believe that a public option can achieve the goal of bringing meaningful reform to our broken system.”  ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

International

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

German Limits on War Face Afghan Reality KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — Forced to confront the rising insurgency in once peaceful northern Afghanistan, the German Army is engaged in sustained and bloody ground combat for the first time since World War II. Soldiers near Kunduz have had to strike back against a fierce campaign by Taliban insurgents, while carrying the burden of being among the first units to break the German taboo against military combat abroad that arose after the Nazi era. At issue are how long Germany will allow its troops to stay and fight, and whether they will be given leeway from their strict rules of engagement to pursue the kind of counterinsurgency being advocated by U.S. generals. For Germans, the realization that their soldiers are now engaged in ground offensives in an open-ended war requires a fundamental reconsideration of the country’s principles.

After World War II, German society rejected using military power for anything other than self-defense, and pacifism has been a rallying cry for generations, blocking allied requests for any military support beyond humanitarian assistance. German leaders have chipped away at the proscriptions in recent years, in particular by participating in airstrikes in the Kosovo war. Still, the legacy of the combat ban remains in the form of strict engagement rules and an ingrained shoot-last mentality that is causing significant tensions with the United States. Driven by necessity, some of the 4,250 German soldiers here have already come a long way. Last Tuesday, they handed out blankets, volleyballs and flashlights as a goodwill gesture to residents of Yanghareq, about 20 miles northwest of Kunduz. Barely an hour later, insurgents with machine guns and rocket-

propelled grenades ambushed other members of the company. The Germans fought back, killing one of the attackers, before the dust and disorder made it impossible to tell fleeing Taliban from civilians. “They shoot at us and we shoot back,” said Staff Sgt. Erik S., who, according to German rules, could not be fully identified. “People are going to fall on both sides. It’s as simple as that. It’s war.” “The word ‘war’ is growing louder in society, and the politicians can’t keep it secret anymore,” he added. Germany’s troops are caught in the middle. In interviews last week, soldiers from the Third Company, Mechanized Infantry Battalion 391, said they were understaffed for the increasingly complex mission here. Two men from the company were killed in June, among 36 German soldiers who have died in the Afghan war.  NICHOLAS KULISH

14 Americans Dead in Afghan Helicopter Crashes KABUL, Afghanistan — Fourteen Americans were killed in Afghanistan on Monday in two crashes involving helicopters. Neither crash appeared to involve hostile fire, military officials said. In the most lethal of the two crashes, seven American servicemen and three agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration died when their Chinook twin-rotor helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan after a firefight with Taliban insurgents. Twenty-six people were injured: 11 U.S. servicemen, one American civilian and 14 Afghan soldiers.

The crash followed a gun battle with insurgents that broke out when the Americans and Afghans raided a compound believed to harbor drug traffickers. The Americans and the Afghans killed more than a dozen fighters, military officials in Kabul said. The Chinook crashed as the U.S. and Afghan forces were leaving. A spokesman for the U.S. command here said it was not disclosing the location of the crash because they wanted to protect the Americans who were working to recover the helicopter. In the second crash, four U.S. servicemen died and two were injured when two helicopters col-

lided. The military released few details, but said that insurgents were not to blame. Two other service members were killed in attacks over the weekend in eastern Afghanistan, the military said. One was killed by a homemade bomb; the other died from wounds suffered during an insurgent attack. President Obama, speaking at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., paid tribute to the American casualties, saying, “Like all those who give their lives in service to America, they were doing their duty, and they were doing this nation proud.” DEXTER FILKINS

Iraq Reaches a Voting Deal as Toll Rises in Bombings BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials reached a tentative agreement on a new election law on Monday, even as workers continued to recover more bodies from the wreckage of Sunday’s bomb attacks, including an uncertain number of children from two day care centers. The toll climbed to as many as 155 dead and an unknown number still missing. The violence appeared to have

jolted members of Parliament into action: Calling the bombings an attack on the unity government, Iraqi leaders swiftly responded with a compromise agreement on a new election law that had eluded them for weeks and threatened to delay national elections that were scheduled for January. Details of the agreement were not revealed. The bombs were in a two-ton van and a minibus, which passed

multiple security checkpoints, according to Baghdad’s governor. Trucks are banned from the streets during daylight unless they have special permits issued by the military and checked at every roadblock. “There was a ton of explosives in each vehicle and the blasts were extremely powerful,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq. ROD NORDLAND

2

in brief Karadzic Refuses To Attend Trial On the first day of his trial before a U.N. tribunal, Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader who stands accused of genocide, refused to appear in court. He sent word that he wanted more time to prepare his defense, angering a group of more than 160 Bosnians who had traveled by bus to The Hague to watch the proceedings. The sesson ended in less than 20 minutes. (NYT)

Stem-Cell Scientist Sentenced for Fraud Hwang Woo-suk, a disgraced cloning expert from South Korea who had claimed major breakthroughs in stem-cell research, was convicted Monday of falsifying his papers and embezzling about $705,000 in research funds. A judge sentenced him to a suspended two-year prison term, saying Hwang had shown remorse and had not taken research money for personal use. Seoul National University, disowned him in 2005, saying that he had fabricated the papers he had published to global acclaim. (NYT)

Uruguay Runoff A former guerrilla fighter, José Mujica, won 47.5 percent of the vote in the presidential election in Uruguay on Sunday, officials said, but he faces a runoff on Nov. 29 with Luis Alberto Lacalle, a conservative former president, who won 28.5 percent.  (NYT)

Tunisian Re-Elected President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia was elected to a fifth term with 89.6 percent of the vote against three challengers, officials said Monday.  (AP)

22 Feared Drowned Twenty-two schoolchildren were feared drowned after they plunged into a river in Malaysia while crossing a bridge that collapsed during a camping trip, officials said Tuesday.  (AP)

national

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

For Young Runaways, Sex Buys Survival ASHLAND, Ore. — She ran away from her group home in Medford, Ore., and spent weeks sleeping in parks and under bridges. Finally, Nicole Clark, 14, grew so desperate that she accepted a young man’s offer of a place to stay. The price would come later. They had sex and he soon became her boyfriend. Then one day he threatened to kick her out if she did not have sex with several of his friends in exchange for money. She agreed, fearing she had no choice. “Where was I going to go?” said Nicole, now 17 and living here. That first exchange of money for sex led to a downward spiral of prostitution that lasted for 14 months, until she escaped last year from a pimp who she said locked her in his garage apartment for months. “I didn’t know the town, and the police would just send me back to the group home,” Nicole said.

“I’d also fallen for the guy. I felt trapped in a way I can’t really explain.” Most of the estimated 1.6 million children who run away each year return home within a week. But for those who do not, the struggle to survive often means selling their bodies. Nearly a third of the children who flee or are kicked out of their homes each year engage in sex for food, drugs or a place to stay, according to studies published in academic and public health journals. This dangerous barter system can quickly escalate into prostitution. And then, child welfare workers and police officials say, it becomes extremely difficult to help runaways escape the streets. Many become more entangled in abusive relationships, and the law begins to view them as criminals. Child welfare advocates and officials in government and law enforcement say that while the

data is scarce, they believe that the problem of prostituted children has grown, especially as the Internet has made finding clients easier. “It’s definitely worsening,” said Sgt. Kelley O’Connell, a detective who until this year ran the Boston Police Department’s humantrafficking unit. “Gangs used to sell drugs,” she said. “Now many of them have shifted to selling girls because it’s just as lucrative but far less risky.” The barriers to rescuing these children are steep: cuts to mental heath services, child welfare agencies incapable of preventing them from running away, a dearth of residential programs. “These kids enter prostitution and they literally disappear,” said Bradley Myles, deputy director of the Polaris Project, based in Washington, which directly serves children involved in prostitution and other trafficking victims. IAN URBINA

Battle of G.O.P. Ideology in Congressional Race WATERTOWN, N.Y. — From a command center inside the Days Inn here, activists from around the country are fighting to preserve what they see as the integrity of the Republican Party. Urged on by leaders like Sarah Palin and Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, they have come to defeat Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate for Congress, whose views on abortion, same-sex marriage and taxes they deem insufficiently conservative. They have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the effort, running 800 radio spots and recruiting 200 volunteers to work

the polls on Election Day. Many of the activists readily acknowledge that their efforts could deliver the election to the Democratic candidate, Bill Owens, but say it is more important to send a message than to win. “This is the shot that needs to be fired to Republican leaders to wake them up,” said former Rep. Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado. The seat became vacant after President Obama appointed John M. McHugh, the long-serving Republican congressman, as Armey secretary. It is the only Congresssional race next week. Scozzafava has been endorsed by the Republican leadership

in Congress and has received $1 million from the National Republican Congressional Committee. But the conservative establishment in Washington is throwing its support behind Douglas L. Hoffman, an accountant who is running on the state’s Conservative Party line. Scozzafave, who serves in the State Assembly, said that while her view of the Republican Party is more expansive than some conservatives might like, Republicans should be focused on growing their numbers even if it means accepting candidates whose opinions are unorthodox. JEREMY W. PETERS

Fans Crusading to Reunite Religion and Football FORT OGLETHORPE, Ga. — After Sept. 11, the football cheerleaders at a public high school here wanted to make the Bible a bigger part of Friday night games. They painted messages like “Commit to the Lord” on paper banners that the players charged through onto the field. The school district ended that tradition after a parent expressed concern that it could prompt a First Amendment lawsuit. Now,

a month later, the new policy has produced a reaction by the fans, who are displaying more biblical verses in the stands. This town of 9,600 people has taken up the cause of the cheerleaders. Calling themselves Warriors for Christ (the team is called the Warriors), fans have held rallies at churches and a local polo field and sold more than 1,600 Tshirts bearing passages from Deuteronomy and Timothy.

On game nights, the stadium of the school, Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High, just south of Chattanooga, is dotted with signs reading “You Can’t Silence Us” and “Living Faith Outloud,” along with biblical verses. Kaitlynn Corley, 18, a cheerleader, said the ban had put a damper on her senior year, preventing her from singing “Jesus Loves You” with other fans.  ROBBIE BROWN

3

in brief Plea in Terror Case A Jordanian accused of trying to blow up a Dallas skyscraper with what he thought was a car bomb pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. The man, Hosam Maher Smadi, 19, faces one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and one count of bombing a public place. A trial date was set for Dec. 7. The authorities said they arrested Smadi on Sept. 24 after he parked a truck in a garage beneath the 60-story Fountain Place office building in downtown Dallas. Once he was at a safe distance, Smadi dialed a cellphone he thought would ignite a bomb in the vehicle, but the device was actually a decoy provided by F.B.I. agents posing as operatives of Al Qaeda, according to the F.B.I.  (AP)

Translator Shortage The F.B.I.’s collection of wiretapped phone calls and intercepted e-mail has been soaring in recent years, but the bureau is failing to review “significant amounts” of such material partly for lack of translators, according to a Justice Department report released Monday. The inspector general’s report showed that the number of the bureau’s linguists — both staff members and contractors — had fallen slightly to 1,298 as of September 2008, from a peak in 2005. It met its hiring targets in 2008 for only 2 of 14 targeted languages.  (NYT)

Government Offers Vaccine Assurance Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius promised that, despite delays, there would eventually be enough swine flu vaccine for all Americans. “The vaccine is coming out the door as fast as it comes off the production line,” she said. The secretary appeared on news programs to deliver the assurance. Slow growth of the vaccine in eggs and production problems at the five companies making the vaccine mean the country will have only about 30 million doses by the end of this month.  (NYT)

business

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

DJIA

9,867.96

D 104.22

Dollar/YEN

NASDAQ

2,141.85

D 12.62

10-yr treasury 3.55% U 0.06

92.21 U 0.11

gold (ny) $1,038.50 D 16.90 crude oil

ING Is Ordered by Europe to Sell 2 Units A year ago, governments around the world scrambled to pull their biggest banks from the brink of collapse. Now, policy makers are wrestling with just how much to rein in the financial behemoths that contributed to the crisis. How large and interconnected banks should be, and whether they should ever be bailed out again by taxpayers, boils down to whether financial institutions should be allowed to become too big to fail. Regulators are already putting down some markers. On Monday, the Dutch financial conglomerate ING Group became the first bank to be ordered broken up by regulators as the price for a taxpayer bailout of 10 billion euros ($14.9 billion). Under pressure from the Euro-

pean Commission, the bank announced plans to accelerate the sale of its insurance operations and its Internet banking business in the United States to refocus on its European customer base. ING nearly collapsed last fall under a mountain of troubled American mortgage assets. Other European banks propped up by taxpayer money, like the Royal Bank of Scotland and Commerzbank of Germany, could soon face pressure to sell major businesses, too. In the United States, regulators have opposed strict size limits on banks, and have so far focused on whether banks are too big to manage. Federal regulators ordered Citigroup, perhaps the most troubled large American bank, for example, to streamline

its operations, but stopped short of breaking up the company. This week, American lawmakers are expected to bring the global debate about whether banks are too big to manage — or just too big — to the top of the regulatory agenda. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. and the House Financial Services Committee Chairman, plans to introduce proposals to make it easier for regulators to take control of large, failing financial firms and, if necessary, split them up. Fear that new rules could make financial companies more stable, but potentially less lucrative to investors, sent bank stocks tumbling on Tuesday. The KBW index of bank stocks fell 4 percent.  ERIC DASH  and CHRIS NICHOLSON

CNN Last in Cable News Prime-Time Ratings CNN, which created the allnews cable network almost 30 years ago, hit a new competitive low with its prime-time programs in October, with three of its four programs between 7 and 11 p.m. finishing fourth and last among the cable news networks. It was the first time that the programs had ever performed that poorly against their news network competitors. October was also the third month in the last year that CNN as a network finished fourth behind the three other cable news networks in prime time with the audience that the networks rely on for advertising sales. CNN had a strong performance

in the election year of 2008, but the channel’s prime-time numbers are down 22 percent from 2007. The development comes at a time when the commercial environment has become challenging for nearly all news organizations, including newspapers and magazines. In an era when the relationship between the White House and Fox News is making headlines, and when the ideological rivalry between MSNBC on the left and Fox News on the right is commanding the spotlight, CNN has little from a news angle to stir consistent interest from viewers. As a consequence, CNN’s posi-

tion in prime-time programming, the most profitable area of the cable news business, has been undermined by the strength of competing channels that focus largely on opinion-based programs during those hours. CNN itself is responsible for one of those competitors, having installed some popular opinionated hosts at its sister network HLN, formerly Headline News, which has emerged in recent months as a stronger performer in prime time than CNN itself. In October, CNN’s programs were behind not only Fox and MSNBC, but HLN as well.  BILL CARTER

Autopsy Says Madoff Investor Drowned in His Pool An autopsy shows that Jeffry M. Picower, a prominent philanthropist accused of reaping about $7 billion in profit from Bernard L. Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme, drowned on Sunday after having a heart attack. Picower was found at the bottom of the swimming pool at his oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, Fla. The Palm Beach police confirmed the cause of death on Monday after an autopsy by the Palm Beach County medical examiner.

Picower had been under growing pressure for months as he faced litigation over his disputed role in the Ponzi scheme operated by Madoff, who was arrested in December and pleaded guilty in March to operating a long-running fraud that cost thousands of victims billions of dollars. The Palm Beach police reported that emergency personnel had been called to the Picower home at 12:09 p.m. on Sunday by Picower’s wife, Barbara, who said she had found her husband in the pool

nikkei

$78.68 D 1.82

at the family home. He could not be revived and was pronounced dead at 1:30 p.m. at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach. The Picowers’ lawyer, William D. Zabel, said that Picower, who was 67, had a history of heart problems and had Parkinson’s disease. Picower was a well-known Wall Street investor and had a professional and personal relationship with Madoff that went back several decades.  DIANA B. HENRIQUES

ftse 100

4

10,362.62 U 79.63 5,191.74 D 50.83

N.Y.S.E. Most Active Issues Vol. (100s) Last Chg. Citigrp 6293073 BkofAm 3728419 SPDR 2286573 SPDR Fncl 1183035 DirFBear rs 990732 GenElec 956539 iShEMkts 779567 iShR2K 671295 Pfizer 634393 FordM 602221

4.27 15.40 106.91 14.71 20.68 15.01 40.25 59.52 17.12 7.47

Nasdaq Actives Vol. (100s) Microsoft 1218847 PwShs QQQ 1031329 Intel 622411 ETrade 614669 Cisco 453487 FifthThird 333576 Amazon 312710 Oracle 279706 DryShips 268585 SanDisk 244979

Bid 28.68 42.99 19.83 1.60 23.70 9.52 124.64 21.99 6.89 24.01

Amex Actives Vol. (100s) Last Oilsands g CelSci NthgtM g NovaGld g GoldStr g Sinovac Rentech KodiakO g Taseko GrtBasG g NwGold g

90734 65873 45911 39014 37462 32481 30104 27688 27218 25912 25361

1.36 1.33 2.72 4.58 3.35 8.06 1.50 2.28 2.92 1.50 3.85

– – – – + – – – – –

0.19 0.82 1.17 0.39 1.31 0.19 0.51 0.54 0.13 0.16

Chg. + – + – – – + – – +

0.66 0.14 0.05 0.06 0.47 0.82 6.15 0.06 0.14 1.89

Chg. – + – – – + – – – – –

0.14 0.02 0.05 0.39 0.24 0.57 0.07 0.19 0.11 0.06 0.25

Foreign Exchange

Fgn. currency Dollars in in dollars fgn.currency Mon. Fri. Mon. Fri.

Australia .9140 .9214 Bahrain 2.6523 2.6521 Brazil .5762 .5833 Britain 1.6303 1.6311 Canada .9368 .9503 China .1464 .1464 Denmark .1996 .2015 Dominican .0278 .0277 Egypt .1830 .1827 Europe 1.4859 1.5002 Hong Kong .1290 .1290 Japan .01084 .01085 Mexico .07599 .07670 Norway .1775 .1799 Singapore .7144 .7171 So. Africa .1319 .1336 So. Korea .00084 .00084 Sweden .1455 .1473 Switzerlnd .9814 .9913

1.0941 1.0853 .3770 .3771 1.7355 1.7145 .6134 .6131 1.0675 1.0523 6.8288 6.8295 5.0100 4.9628 35.98 36.12 5.4645 5.4725 .6730 .6666 7.7504 7.7500 92.21 92.10 13.159 13.036 5.6341 5.5589 1.3998 1.3945 7.5840 7.4850 1180.5 1188.3 6.8729 6.7889 1.0189 1.0087

FairPoint Bankruptcy FairPoint Communications sought bankruptcy protection on Monday after struggling to absorb phone lines purchased from Verizon Communications. FairPoint reached an agreement with secured lenders on a restructuring plan that would reduce its debt by $1.7 billion, the company said in a statement.  (Bloomberg)

business

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

For Delphi Pensioners, Union Label Helps WARREN, Ohio — Bruce Gump and his neighbors feared for their retirement checks when the federal government took over the pension plans at Delphi, the big auto parts maker where they once worked. But four months later, Gump finds himself in a far more perilous condition than his neighbors. On his street, he is the only Delphi worker whose pension benefits may be cut. His neighbors all belong to unions and have received a lifeline in an unprecedented deal related to the government-supervised bankruptcy of General Motors, the onetime parent of Delphi. (G.M. spun off the parts division as a separate company 10 years ago.) Gump and some 21,000 other salaried workers and retirees are furious that their roughly 46,000 union co-workers at Delphi have had their benefits restored, apparently with government largesse, and they have not.

“They’ve been relatively well taken care of,” he said. “But I’m being thrown out with yesterday’s trash.” The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures pension plans, caps the amount of benefits it will pay, using a formula based on age and the type of benefits an employee earned. But in a side arrangement, G.M. is agreeing to pay special supplements, called top-ups, so that Delphi’s union retirees get everything they were promised. The automaker is drawing the money from its own pension fund, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. In a sense, the G.M. pension fund is being weakened to help the Delphi union members. Gump and others suspect the Treasury Department told G.M. to pay the supplements in its roles as the company’s largest shareholder and the financier of its restructuring through the

Troubled Asset Relief Program. Obama administration officials confirmed that they brought the parties together to negotiate a resolution of Delphi’s pension failure, but said they did not dictate the outcome. The difference between the haves and have-nots at Delphi is not between the highly paid and lower-wage earners. As a senior engineer, Gump simply did not belong to a union. Neither did Delphi’s thousands of other engineers, bookkeepers, clerks, quality controllers, purchasing agents and other white-collar employees. They may have earned more in some cases, but they did not have the chance to earn paid overtime the way union members did in good years. Records show the average pay for a non-union worker just shy of 50 years old, with 20 to 24 years’ service, was about $96,000.  MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

5

in brief Verizon Profit Falters Verizon Communications’ third-quarter profit fell 9 percent, less than expected, from the same period last year as wireless subscriber gains offset slower-than-anticipated growth in its television service. Verizon Wireless added a net 1.2 million mobile customers, beating the average estimate of one million from five analysts contacted by Reuters. (Reuters)

Fewer Paper Readers The two-decade erosion in newspaper circulation is looking more like an avalanche, with figures released Monday. In the six months ended Sept. 30, sales fell by 10.6 percent on weekdays and 7.5 percent on Sundays, from the same period a year earlier, for several hundred papers reporting to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.  (NYT)

journal

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

6

A Hypnotizing Hunt for Mushrooms Leaves Russians Bewildered MOSCOW — Earlier this month, a sodden and unshaven man emerged from the woods near the southern Russian village of Goryachy Klyuch, telling rescuers he spent three nights perched in trees to get away from jackals. A similar tale came from the taiga near Irkutsk, in Siberia, where a 22-year-old man wandered for five days, covering himself with pine boughs at night to ward off frostbite. Eleven time zones to the west, near the Baltic Sea, a search and rescue team found an elderly couple in a swamp where they had spent the night, the wife in what officials described as “a state of panic.”

crossword ACROSS 1 Mountains 6 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” has five of these 11 “Spare” thing at a barbecue 14 Eskimo 15 Instrument played with a bow 16 Gate guess: Abbr. 17 Solid with four triangular faces 19 Scoundrel 20 Lone Star Stater’s northern neighbor 21 Unnamed person 23 Part of a word: Abbr. 25 Chief of staff in the Obama White House 28 Alternative to an iron, in golf 30 Sword fight, e.g. 31 Midway between sober and drunk 32 “Dies ___” (hymn) 33 Seat where people may sing 32-Across 34 Knee’s place 35 Start of the Bible 37 Post-W.W. II demographic, informally 41 Bit of wordplay

ANSWER TO R O M A

O P A L

L A P P

A C R E

L E X L U T H O R

C O M A S

O S A G E

V I X E N

F R E E B I E O N E E Y E D

E A S Y C O L N I F X F T E M R E R S A S U P

It happens every mushroom season. Russians are passionate about gathering mushrooms, an ancient pastime they call the “quiet hunt,” and routinely become so hypnotized that they get hopelessly lost. Regional searchand-rescue teams fan out on foot or in helicopters, occasionally enlisting tracking dogs or parachute jumpers, and newspapers retell their stories with gusto. Fall has drawn Russians into the forest for too many centuries to count. Even hardened urbanites whisper endearments to the wood spirits before turning their eyes to the ground, a gesture to their pagan ancestors. But Aleksandr Kuznetsov, who founded an online

Edited By Will Shortz PUZZLE BY CHUCK DEODENE

Boar’s mate 43 x, y and z, in math 44 Commercial writers 47 1958 sci-fi classic, with “The” 48 Population fig., e.g. 49 High muck-amuck 52 Lifesaving team, for short 53 Most difficult 54 Loretta who sang “Don’t Come Home A’ Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” 56 Cobbler’s tool 57 Shouter of this puzzle’s circled sounds 62 “Didn’t I tell you?” 63 John Lennon’s “Instant ___!” 64 Explosive 65 Word repeated after “If at first you don’t succeed” 66 Bird of prey’s dip 67 Previously, in poetry 42

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First thing usually car hit by a bowling ball 4 Captain for Spock 22 Riddles and McCoy 23 Big swallow 5 Series of steps 24 Days of ___ between floors 26 Colors 6 “___ been there” DOWN 27 Kitten’s plaint 7 Reinforcements 1 Quarry 29 Part of a pool for 8 Tiny bit to eat diving 2 Suffix with propyl 34 Like an offer 9 Flower that’s under PREVIOUS PUZZLE 10 Redwood City’s actual value county 36 Places for tanning A S S N S A C K 11 Win back, as 37 Idiot S H O O A U R A losses 38 Reach as far as F O X M U L D E R 39 500 sheets A T A L T I M A 12 Online music mart T H A S B E E N 40 Old trans-Atlantic 13 By a hair speedsters A I M T O A A H E D

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For answers, call 1-900-289-CLUE (289-2583), $1.49 a minute; or, with a credit card, 1-800-814-5550. Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 5,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year). Mobile crosswords: nytimes.com/mxword. Annual subscriptions are available for the best of Sunday crosswords from the last 50 years: 1-888-7-ACROSS. Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

“mushroomers’ club,” said he believes Russians’ sense of the natural world has dulled over the generations, leaving them too often disoriented in the woods. “People are leaning on technology, forgetting that nature is still nature,” said Kuznetsov, a Muscovite, whose Web site advertises a mobile global positioning system as “the mushroomer’s best friend.” “Civilization carries a certain negative side, and people are losing their natural instincts,” he added. “They are city people now.” City people or not, they creep out with wicker baskets at dawn, when mist is still rising from the earth, looking for humid sunwarmed spots where mushrooms have risen overnight. True devotees are unapologetically competitive, hiding their secrets from the neighbors and slyly covering their baskets with cloth when someone approaches. At its best, mushroom hunting is a trance state, blotting out everyday concerns like the passage of time, or the way home. Herein lies the problem. Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations does not keep statistics on lost mushroomers, and a spokeswoman said the number of the missing was so small as to be statistically irrelevant. But reports trickle out from regional rescue services throughout the fall: The western region of Kaluga conducted 21 searches for mushroom-hunters, of whom seven were brought to safety, five were found dead and nine were still missing. Perm reported 11; Irkutsk had carried out 35 by late August. Aleksandr Zmanovsky, who leads a rescue team near Bratsk, in Siberia, said nearly every year someone goes into the wild and is never found — often because of bears, who so thoroughly bury the remains of the body that “we will never find anything.” An older generation knew how to navigate by the angle of the light, he said. “If a person just puts on his sneakers and goes into the taiga, or someone drives him there and he doesn’t know where he is, then of course he gets lost,” Zmanovsky said. “I call those people the children of asphalt, those who grew up in the city. People who grew up in villages, they don’t get lost.”  ELLEN BARRY

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opinion

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

7

editorials of the timeS

bob herbert

The Case for More Stimulus

Changing the World

The consensus among economists is that the recession is over. Corporate profitability has been boosted by job cuts, pay cuts and a drive to restock depleted inventories. Immense federal stimulus has jolted the economy. But what happens when those measures run their course? The economy is going to need more government support, or it is bound to be very weak for a very long time, and vulnerable to a relapse. Unemployment is expected to worsen well into next year. Foreclosures are expected to rise. State and local governments face budget shortfalls in 2010 that are as bad or worse than this year’s. Yet Washington is not providing a coherent plan for effective stimulus. The Senate has been hamstrung for nearly a month over the most basic relief-and-recovery boost: an extension of unemployment benefits. The Obama administration has called for an expensive crowd-pleaser of dubious effectiveness: sending every Social Security recipient an extra $250. And Washington is mired in a warped political debate. Republicans say continued economic weakness is proof that February’s stimulus package failed. Lawmakers in both parties fret that large budget deficits preclude more stimulus, lest the burden of debt outweigh the benefit of deficit spending. Both arguments are wrong. If anything, ongoing economic problems are a sign that stimulus needs to be bolstered. Deficits are a serious issue, but the immediate need for stimulus trumps the longer-term need for

deficit reduction. A self-reinforcing stretch of economic weakness would be far costlier than additional stimulus. The Senate could take a step in the right direction by extending unemployment benefits without further delay. That is the single most effective way to boost consumption and preserve jobs, because it creates spending that would otherwise not occur. Next, Congress and the administration should agree on ways to ease the dire financial condition of the states. Most important is continued aid for Medicaid programs. Governors will begin to prepare their new budgets in early 2010, and those budgets will be in effect for a year, starting in July. So the states need to know soon what to expect from the federal government through mid-2011. As long as the states are suffering, any economic recovery efforts by the federal government will be undermined. Other measures being floated are less effective than unemployment benefits and aid to states. Many of the $250 checks to Social Security beneficiaries will not be spent quickly. Proposals to extend and expand the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers are even less well targeted. Since it was enacted in February, only an estimated 15 percent of buyers who claimed the credit needed the money to make the purchase. To be effective as stimulus, cash must be targeted to needy populations. The housing market would be better served by a reinvigorated attempt to reduce foreclosures.

Trying Karadzic Radovan Karadzic, accused of ordering some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, is still tormenting his victims. More than 160 Bosnian Muslims traveled to the Hague for the start of the former Bosnian Serb leader’s war crimes trial on Monday only to have him boycott the proceeding. Judges with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yuogoslavia adjourned the session and promised to begin on Tuesday with or without Karadzic in the dock. The trial must go ahead. After so many years of anguish, the relatives of the thousands of who were killed deserve a chance at justice. It took 13 years and enormous international pressure to persuade Serbian authorities to finally arrest Karadzic. (He was living in Belgrade posing as a New Age healer.) He faces 11 charges of war crimes and genocide for his role in the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and the so-called ethnic-cleansing campaign against Bosnian Muslims and Croats. Slobodan Milosevic played similar games with the court for four years, only to die of a heart attack before a formal verdict was ren-

dered. Karadzic seems equally determined to mock the court and draw things out. He refused to send a lawyer to the hearing, refused to enter pleas, and, unsuccessfully, claimed immunity from prosecution, asserting that he had cut a deal with the former U.S. envoy, Richard Holbrooke, in 1996. Holbrooke has denied this. The court must accord Karadzic appropriate rights, but it cannot let him control the process. Karadzic’s trial is not the only unfinished business in the Balkans. His military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, is believed to be still hiding in Serbia. We doubt the claims of Serb officials who say they don’t know where he is. The war in Bosnia is over, but the peace deal enshrined a political system that continues to promote division rather than conciliation. The United States and European states recently proposed a comprehensive plan to stabilize Bosnia and clear the way for the country to join the European Union — including by breaking down official ethnic divisions and improving the rule of law and human rights practices. Persuading Bosnia’s leaders to choose that route will be as important to exorcising the Balkan ghosts.

One of the most cherished items in my possession is a postcard that was sent from Mississippi to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in June 1964. “Dear Mom and Dad,” it says, “I have arrived safely in Meridian, Mississippi. This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wonderful and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy.” That was the last word sent to his family by Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old college student who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, along with fellow civil rights workers Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, on his first full day in Mississippi — June 21, the same date as the postmark on the card. The postcard was given to me by Andrew’s brother, David, a good friend. Andrew came to mind over the weekend as I was thinking about the sense of helplessness so many ordinary Americans have been feeling as the nation is confronted with one enormous, seemingly intractable problem after another: the wars; the economic downturn; the home foreclosure crisis. Americans have tended to watch with a frightening degree of passivity as crises of all sorts have gripped the country and sent millions of lives into tailspins. Where people once might have deluged their elected representatives with complaints, joined unions, resisted mass firings, marched for social justice and created new civic organizations to fight for the things they believed in, the tendency now is to assume that there is little or nothing ordinary individuals can do about the conditions that plague them. This passivity and sense of helplessness most likely stems from the refusal of so many Americans over the past few decades to accept personal responsibility for the policies and choices that have led the country into such a dismal state of affairs, and to turn their backs on any obligation to help others who were struggling. Being an American has become a spectator sport. With that kind of attitude, Andrew Goodman would never have left the comfort of his home. The nation’s political leaders and their corporate puppet masters have fouled this nation up to a fare-thee-well. We will not be pulled from the morass without a big effort from an active citizenry, and that means a citizenry fired with a sense of mission and the belief that their actions can make a difference. It can start with just a few small steps. Rosa Parks helped transform a nation by refusing to budge from her seat. Maybe you want to speak up publicly about an important issue, or host a house party, or perhaps arrange a meeting of soon-to-be dismissed employees, or parents at a troubled school. It’s a risk, sure. But the need is great, and that’s how you change the world.

sports

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

in brief

Matchup Has Potential to Bring Drama Back The Yankees have been away How many indelible moments from the World Series since 2003, have there been in that time? Not and in the meantime, baseball’s many. showcase has flopped on Will this World Series a national scale. be better, a classic on the Baseball There have been calevel of the Twins and the Analysis thartic championships for Braves in 1991, or even the old hardball towns: Boston, Chi- Angels and the Giants in 2002? It cago, St. Louis and Philadelphia is impossible to say, of course, but waited decades for the titles that it sure seems likely. Neither team arrived in the interim. But none of will be a pushover. those World Series captured the The Phillies have won their last country. Baseball needs the Yan- five postseason series, losing only kees and the Phillies to reverse once each round and going 11-1 at that trend. Citizens Bank Park. The Yankees For the first time, five consecu- are 7-2 this postseason, winning all tive World Series have lasted only five games at Yankee Stadium. four or five games. The Red Sox Both teams can structure their swept the Cardinals in 2004, the starting rotations the way they White Sox swept the Astros in want, leading with the former Cy 2005, the Cardinals bounced the Young winners C.C. Sabathia of Tigers in five in 2006, the Red Sox the Yankees and Cliff Lee of the swept the Rockies in 2007, and the Phillies in Game 1. (Both are forPhillies trumped the Rays in five mer Indians, another bit of misery last October. for Cleveland’s tortured fans.)

Sabathia and Lee have dominated this postseason, with a combined earned run average of 0.96 in six starts. In Pedro Martinez, Cole Hamels and Joe Blanton, the Phillies have three other starters who have won a World Series game. The Yankees have Andy Pettitte, who will pitch in his eighth World Series. The Yankees’ other starter, A.J. Burnett, was hit hard in the first inning of his last start, against the Angels in Game 5. But otherwise he has been stingy for about six weeks. As compelling as the starters will be, the most interesting dynamic will probably come in the late innings. The Yankees’ Mariano Rivera and the Phillies’ Brad Lidge are the only closers this postseason without a blown save. Yet both teams are known for late-inning comebacks.  TYLER KEPNER

N.F.L. Study of Dementia Has Flaws, Experts Say The N.F.L. and its doctors have consistently dismissed independent studies showing unusual cognitive decline in former players. They insist that a long-term study by the league’s committee on concussions, expected to be published in several years, will be the authoritative analysis. But that study is fraught with statistical, systemic and conflictof-interest problems that make it inappropriate to examine the issue, according to many experts in epidemiology, dementia and health policy who assessed the study’s design. Another voice belonged to a member of the House

Judiciary Committee, which will hold a hearing on football brain injuries Wednesday. “Hey, why don’t we let tobacco companies determine whether smoking is bad for your health or not?” said Rep. Linda T. Sanchez, Democrat of California and a member of the Judiciary Committee. “It’s a very appropriate metaphor.” Every independent expert in epidemiology and neurology contacted by The New York Times cited at least one of the following issues: that the study’s paucity of subjects will leave it unable to find any statistically significant

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 65/ 48 0 57/ 53 R 71/ 53 PC Albuquerque 52/ 39 0 63/ 33 PC 54/ 42 PC Boise 62/ 46 0 45/ 37 C 47/ 29 PC Boston 57/ 45 0 56/ 44 PC 53/ 47 Sh Buffalo 64/ 37 0 60/ 44 PC 55/ 45 Sh Charlotte 61/ 48 0 61/ 52 R 76/ 57 C Chicago 55/ 51 0.37 57/ 42 PC 60/ 46 C Cleveland 69/ 41 0 61/ 45 PC 61/ 46 Sh Dallas-Ft. Worth 61/ 52 0.34 67/ 46 PC 71/ 52 S Denver 53/ 21 0 54/ 31 C 34/ 29 Sn Detroit 64/ 42 0 61/ 48 C 62/ 50 Sh

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

72/ 62 56/ 41 90/ 61 88/ 73 49/ 42 60/ 46 88/ 66 63/ 46 82/ 59 55/ 32 68/ 57 52/ 46 56/ 52 64/ 45

2.01 0.26 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.15 0.32 0

difference in dementia rates; that a study financed by the N.F.L. and run by its committee doctors cannot be considered trustworthy; and that Dr. Ira Casson, the league’s primary voice in discrediting all outside evidence, should not personally be conducting all of the neurological examinations. The critics said their primary concern was that an improperly conducted study, should it claim no discernible cognitive decline among players, could mislead the public about the seriousness of football brain injuries.  ALAN SCHWARZ 70/ 54 PC 58/ 36 PC 70/ 60 S 88/ 79 PC 58/ 37 S 61/ 49 C 88/ 72 T 60/ 48 Sh 88/ 57 S 41/ 37 SS 67/ 53 W 52/ 45 C 57/ 47 Sh 60/ 49 Sh

80/ 54 PC 62/ 44 PC 68/ 53 S 90/ 80 PC 55/ 41 C 58/ 51 R 90/ 72 PC 61/ 52 Sh 64/ 57 PC 40/ 28 C 68/ 50 S 51/ 45 C 64/ 48 PC 64/ 52 R

FOREIGN CITIES Acapulco Athens Beijing Berlin Buenos Aires Cairo

Yesterday Today Tomorrow 95/ 77 0 86/ 77 C 86/ 73 C 72/ 63 0.35 75/ 59 R 72/ 57 PC 69/ 54 Tr 64/ 45 S 72/ 48 S 55/ 46 0.02 56/ 50 C 52/ 45 Sh 64/ 45 0 75/ 50 PC 81/ 57 PC 84/ 72 0 90/ 72 PC 91/ 70 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

8

Coyotes Lose Game, But Agree to Sale The Rangers beat the Phoenix Coyotes, 5-2, on Monday at Madison Square Garden, winning for the first time in four games as Marian Gaborik scored twice to gain a share of the league goalscoring lead. The night may prove to significant for Phoenix. The bankrupt Coyotes seemed to move one step closer to staying in the Phoenix area under new ownership. The Coyotes’ owner, Jerry Moyes, agreed to sell to the N.H.L.  (NYT)

McGwire to Coach Mark McGwire is back in baseball, reunited with Tony La Russa as the St. Louis Cardinals’ hitting coach. La Russa agreed to return for a 15th year as manager on Monday with a one-year contract, the first time he hasn’t had a multiyear deal with the team. All of his coaches will return except for Hal McRae, who will be replaced by McGwire. (AP)

nfl scores SUNDAY’S LATE GAMES Arizona 24, N.Y. Giants 17 MONDAY Philadelphia 27, Washington 17

NHL scores SUNDAY’S LATE GAMES San Jose 4, Philadelphia 1 Los Angeles 6, Columbus 2 Vancouver 2, Edmonton 0 MONDAY Rangers 5, Phoenix 2 Montreal 3, Islanders 2, OT Chicago 3, Minnesota 1 77/ 61 58/ 50 61/ 45 86/ 73 91/ 79 67/ 63 62/ 50 78/ 54 74/ 57 45/ 30 40/ 36 90/ 77 64/ 43 59/ 46 85/ 73 72/ 50 84/ 44 49/ 45 63/ 57 61/ 55 53/ 41 49/ 45 51/ 46

0.08 0.05 0 0 0.12 0 0 0 0.01 0 0.02 0.04 0.01 0.04 0.01 0 0 – 2.56 0.71 0 0.91 Tr

68/ 55 PC 61/ 55 R 63/ 43 PC 81/ 73 S 88/ 79 S 70/ 63 C 64/ 57 C 75/ 57 S 72/ 54 Sh 50/ 36 C 45/ 39 R 89/ 79 S 64/ 46 PC 57/ 52 C 81/ 72 T 73/ 57 S 79/ 43 PC 48/ 36 Sh 66/ 59 C 73/ 55 PC 57/ 48 C 51/ 41 C 50/ 43 C

66/ 54 PC 63/ 54 PC 66/ 48 PC 81/ 73 S 86/ 79 S 70/ 63 C 70/ 55 PC 75/ 57 PC 75/ 54 C 50/ 37 C 41/ 39 Sh 89/ 79 S 66/ 48 C 57/ 46 C 77/ 70 R 70/ 55 PC 84/ 45 PC 41/ 36 C 73/ 59 PC 70/ 55 PC 50/ 46 R 48/ 39 C 48/ 39 C

sports journal

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

For Managers, Head Games and Gut Feelings Philadelphia Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel is a 65-year-old potbellied baseball lifer who honed his instincts in minor league outposts like Colorado Springs and Wisconsin Rapids, Wis. He comes armed with data but is more likely to play a hunch, to go with his gut. His counterpart on the Yankees, Joe Girardi, is a 45-year-old workout fanatic with a degree in industrial engineering from Northwestern. As much as any manager around, he is comfortable with statistics and employs a modern approach to his job. Manuel has proved that his method works, guiding the Phillies to a World Series title last year and to a second consecutive National League pennant. Girardi’s does, too, and the contrast in managerial styles will serve as a fascinating backdrop to the World Series, which begins Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium. The teams are evenly matched, each boasting relentless lineups, lefthanded aces and rosters replete with strong-willed players. How Manuel and Girardi react to the other’s moves could determine the champion. A former hitting coach, Manuel is attuned to the offensive side of baseball. He plays for big innings,

eschews the bunt — the Phillies’ 55 sacrifices were the secondfewest in the N.L. — and is apt to let hitters swing at 3-0 pitches. A former catcher, Girardi has a keen understanding of pitchers, knowing when they need a break and what they can handle. His decision to have Jose Molina catch A.J. Burnett in the playoffs has not hurt the Yankees. Catchers often make good managers, and Girardi made up for an absence of minor league managing experience by applying teachings from role models like Tony La Russa, Don Zimmer and his college coach, Ron Wellman. He learned a great deal from watching Zimmer, the Yankees’ longtime bench coach, interact with Joe Torre, who once complimented Girardi by calling him “Don Zimmer with stats,” a tribute to his meticulous nature. “Numbers are extremely important, and I do a lot of research in numbers,” Girardi said in an interview last month. “But when you make that split-second decision, you’ve got to go by your gut. And sometimes, the risk you take is really worth the reward.” Girardi apprenticed under Torre, serving as his bench coach in 2005. That season, Girardi kept a binder that tracked manage-

rial strategies and opponents’ tendencies, and he also helped the Yankees’ catchers prepare by streamlining the game plans. To Girardi, one of the worst things anyone can say is that he was unprepared. Manuel managed 1,198 games in the minor leagues, starting in 1983 for a Minnesota Twins’ Class A affiliate in Wisconsin Rapids. He mowed the grass, chalked the foul lines and installed the pitching rubber and home plate at the beginning of the season. “I didn’t know nothing about the game, and I mean that,” Manuel said. “The only thing I knew how to do was play right field and play some first base, and I thought I could hit.” As a minor league manager, Manuel did not have detailed scouting reports, video resources or binders of statistics the way he does now, so he learned to trust his instincts and develop a feel for his players’ strengths and weaknesses. “It’s easy to look at matchups and cover your butt by sticking to them,” said Pete Mackanin, the Phillies’ first-year bench coach. “But there’s so much more involved. If it were easy to go strictly by numbers, anybody could do it.” BEN SHPIGEL

9

n.h.l. standings EASTERN CONFERENCE

Atlantic

W L OT Pts GF GA

Pittsburgh Rangers Devils Phila. Islanders

9 8 6 5 1

Northeast

W L OT Pts GF GA

Buffalo Montreal Ottawa Boston Toronto

6 6 5 5 0

Southeast

W L OT Pts GF GA

Wash. Atlanta Tampa Carolina Florida

6 4 3 2 2

2 3 3 3 4 1 5 2 4 7 2 3 3 5 6

0 1 0 1 5 1 0 2 1 1

18 17 12 11 7 13 12 12 11 1

37 46 26 31 22 26 30 30 30 15

25 33 22 27 37 16 32 26 32 35

2 14 37 30 1 9 28 24 3 9 24 32 3 7 24 34 1 5 19 35

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Central

W L OT Pts GF GA

Chicago Columbus St. Louis Detroit Nashville

7 6 4 3 3

Northwest

W L OT Pts GF GA

Colorado Calgary Edmonton Vancou. Minnesota

8 7 6 6 3

Pacific

W L OT Pts GF GA

L.A. San Jose Dallas Phoenix Anaheim

8 7 5 6 3

3 4 4 4 6 1 2 4 5 8 4 4 2 4 5

1 15 36 27 0 12 33 34 1 9 24 25 2 8 25 31 1 7 18 33 2 1 1 0 0 0 1 4 0 1

18 15 13 12 6 16 15 14 12 7

38 41 38 31 23 44 42 37 26 22

26 33 33 28 35 38 35 32 22 31

Will the Real Brett Favre Please Stand Up?

Call to Curb Spending

Brett Favre looked glassy-eyed Sunday night after he took one last hard hit from the Pittsburgh Steelers, but the Minnesota Vikings’ first loss of the season will take only a little shine off the return of the prodigal Favre in Green Bay next week. Favre will protest that these games do not really mean much to him, but consider this: when the Vikings hosted the Packers a few weeks ago, Favre broke from his routine of going on the field early to throw the ball around and chat up his buddies from the other team. Favre is such a worldclass schmoozer that when Steve Mariucci took the San Francisco 49ers into Lambeau Field to play the Packers years ago, Favre stopped throwing his warm-up passes, walked over to Mariucci and 49ers quarterback Steve Young, and said, “Let’s take a picture,” Mariucci recalled, adding: “So the three of us took pictures.”

MIAMI — From stratospheric coaches’ salaries to a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots of college sports, university presidents say they are very worried about the commercialization of intercollegiate athletics. Yet they feel powerless to do much about it, according to a survey of 95 presidents released Monday by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a watchdog group. The survey, which was limited to presidents of universities that are members of the Football Bowl Subdivision, is seen as a first step by the Knight Commission in addressing what many consider the most pressing issue facing college sports today: how to defuse the “arms race” in spending by the nation’s top college sports programs and ensure that institutions with smaller budgets can continue to compete. (NYT)

Don’t expect the class reunion routine Sunday. Mariucci, who remains close to Favre, says he expects Favre to warm up indoors instead, shielding himself from the weirdness of the situation. Joe Montana took Kansas City into the playoffs after he left the 49ers, but at least the two teams were not hated division rivals. There has been nothing to compare to Favre’s flight from Green Bay to the Vikings, with a stopover in New York, especially now that the Packers (4-2) and the Vikings (6-1) are in a genuine race for the National Football Conference North title, with the Packers just a game and a half behind. “I’m glad the first game with them is over,” Favre said Sunday night about playing the Packers. “My career with Green Bay speaks for itself. That won’t change. For three hours, I’ll be on the other side. Do I know what that will feel like? I have no idea.”

Maybe a little like that hit James Harrison put on him on the final play of the Steelers game. Favre has insisted he is not motivated by revenge against the Packers and General Manager Ted Thompson, but Mariucci suspects otherwise. “I think that’s human nature,” he said. So far, Favre has proved that he was right about wanting to go to the Vikings. His comfort level in the offense, which is virtually identical to the one he ran in Green Bay, is obvious. For all the early hosannas thrown his way in the first half of his Jets season, it does not take much film study to see the difference. Still, there were a few moments Sunday when Favre looked as if he was channeling his lone Jets season, raising the question of whether another late-season tailspin is coming up as rapidly as the gray hair in his beard.  JUDY BATTISTA