Sunday Sun

Morgan Stanley faced near death during the credit crisis in 2008. Then it became so cautious that it missed the stock market boom in 2009. Now, however, it appears to have found its groove.
Along with the rest of Wall Street, Morgan Stanley took a hit to revenue and profit in the second quarter, a period that included a stock market flash crash and rising fears over the European debt crisis.

Profit fell 22 percent from the first quarter to $1.4 billion, the company said on Wednesday. A year earlier, the firm posted a loss of $138 million.

Morgan Stanley’s new army of traders seemed to navigate the riled markets better than its rivals — and certainly better than Wall Street had expected.

“These were clearly challenging market conditions,” said Howard Chen, an analyst at Credit Suisse. “Morgan Stanley was less worse than others.”

Morgan was the last of the Wall Street banks to report its second-quarter earnings. Goldman Sachs disappointed markets on Tuesday with an 82 percent drop in earnings from last year, hurt by a slowdown in trading.

James P. Gorman, Morgan’s chief executive, said in a conference call with investors that worries about global growth, indebted European governments and financial regulation had bred a “lack of conviction” among investors in May and June.

That is, investors large and small pulled out of the markets, causing a slowdown in bond trading and other activities like underwriting.

The flash crash on May 6, which officials are still investigating, had a particular souring effect on investor confidence, Morgan Stanley said. Ordinary investors withdrew billions of dollars from its wealth management business, which trades stocks and bonds for small accounts.

But Morgan more than held its own in equities trading, helping to lift its overall earnings beyond analysts’ expectations — the biggest positive earnings surprise ever for Morgan, according to Capital IQ. Total revenue across all its businesses was $7.95 billion, down 12 percent from the first quarter but a 53 percent rise from a year earlier.

Morgan Stanley’s results on Wednesday caused its shares to buck a declining market and close up 6.3 percent at $26.80.

“Its equities business was flat while Goldman’s was down to the tune of 49 percent,” said Alan Villalon, a financial analyst at First American Funds, a mutual fund company in Minneapolis. “They managed the quarter better than the other players.”

Other financial giants, like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, 传世私服 also reported disappointing results from their trading operations when they announced second-quarter earnings over the last week.

Morgan Stanley scaled down its trading activities after it suffered painful losses in the turmoil of the credit crisis. That move would later disappoint its investors, when the bank missed out on the boom in markets last year. Rivals like Goldman took big bets and made hefty profits from trading. Morgan Stanley did not return to profitability until the third quarter of last year.

But it has since moved to rebuild its trading activities, adding 400 new salesmen and traders, a strategy that appears to be paying off, at least for now.

Ruth Porat, Morgan Stanley’s chief financial officer, said the firm’s larger sales force meant it could be closer to clients during the market uncertainty, a stance that helped it win some business from rivals.

“We didn’t have big misses,” she said in an interview. “We had some market gains, but it is still early days.”

Earnings were heightened by $750 million in extra revenue resulting from an accounting change in the value of its debt and by a one-time $345 million tax benefit.

Analysts said the company showed cost restraint by reducing the proportion of its revenue it set aside for salaries — despite having to pay a $361 million charge for a British bank tax on bonuses.

In its investment banking business, underwriting revenue was $597 million, 30 percent lower than a year ago. Morgan attributed the drop to “lower levels of market activity.”

Its asset management business was still losing money in the quarter. That unit is being overhauled by Gregory J. Fleming, the former Merrill Lynch executive who joined Morgan Stanley at the beginning of the year.

On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs reported a quarterly profit of $613 million, its worst quarterly performance since the depths of the financial crisis in late 2008. Its profits were hit by the turmoil in markets as well as the cost of settling a civil fraud suit with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“In some respects, M.S.’s more conservative approach to balance sheet deployment to its trading businesses since the credit crisis, which drew criticism from investors last year, may be playing to the company’s benefit in a period where deploying principal capital in fickle markets carries a higher level of risk,” Barclays Capital analysts wrote in a research note.

Looking forward, Ms. Porat said in the conference call that the global economic outlook remained a concern, but she said the fear of a double dip recession was overstated. Nevertheless, she said, it would take time for investors to regain their poise.

“We are not expecting a rapid rebound in volumes,” she said.

As part of its strategy to rebalance the bank after the big risks it took before the credit crisis, Morgan has concentrated a lot of resources on building its retail wealth management business, and this unit’s performance in the latest quarter was disappointing, analysts said.

But Mr. Gorman, who took over as chief executive from John J. Mack in January, said he was confident about its future.

“The retail investor will not disappear, I am sure,” he said. “I have been doing this for a long time.”

Guess what? Movies don’t have to be sequels or animated to do enormous box-office business in the summer.

“Inception,” a complex dramatic thriller about dream invasion, was No. 1 at North American theaters over the weekend with $60.4 million in ticket sales, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data. That total gave the star of “Inception,” Leonardo DiCaprio, the biggest opening of his career. (While “Titanic,” which starred Mr. DiCaprio, went on to become one of the highest-grossing films ever made, it took in $28 million on its first weekend.)

“Being original and fresh and different matters in this marketplace, and this movie had all of those things,” said Dan Fellman, president for domestic distribution at Warner Brothers, which produced the $160 million film in partnership with Legendary Pictures.

“Inception,” which won mostly positive reviews, was written and directed by Christopher Nolan, the cinematic powerhouse behind films like “The Dark Knight” and “Memento.”

It was not as pretty a picture for Walt Disney Studios and the producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Their action fantasy “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” starring Nicolas Cage, had a disastrous weekend, selling just $17.4 million for the weekend for a five-day total of $24.5 million.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” which cost about $150 million to make, is Mr. Bruckheimer’s fourth box-office disappointment in a row. This PG-rated movie, marketed with the clunky tag line “It’s the coolest job ever,” will now need to outperform overseas to avoid becoming a financial debacle for Disney.

The hope is that “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” will mimic the pattern of 传奇世界 “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” Mr. Bruckheimer’s previous outing with Disney. “Prince,” made for about $200 million, was a dud in North America, selling only about $89 million. But overseas sales of $237 million eased the pain a bit.

Chuck Viane, Walt Disney Studio’s president for distribution, did not respond to phone and e-mail messages on Sunday.

In limited release overseas, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sold an additional $8.3 million. For the weekend in North America it was third behind the holdover hit “Despicable Me,” which sold $32.7 million for a new total of $118.4 million. This animated title, from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, is another example of an original idea succeeding. Amid a sea of sequels — “Shrek Forever After,” “Toy Story 3” — “Despicable Me” broke through the old-fashioned way: a well-executed story backed by smart marketing.

In fourth place “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” (Summit Entertainment) continued its powerful run with $13.5 million for a new total of $264.9 million. Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story 3” was fifth with $11.7 million for a new domestic total of $362.7 million.

The unexpectedly strong performance of “Inception” — surveys that track audience interest had indicated an opening of about $40 million — helped keep the summer box office buoyant. Between May 7 and Sunday, moviegoers spent $2.7 billion on tickets, a 2 percent increase over the same period last year, according to Hollywood.com.

With American commanders pushing to expand the number of armed village forces in areas where their troops and the local police are scarce, the Afghan president is signaling

that he has serious concerns that such a program could return the country to warlordism, challenging the power of the central government.
The village forces have been one of the top subjects under discussion in frenetic daily meetings for the past week between Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American military

commander in Afghanistan, and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president. The two are scheduled to meet again on Tuesday, according to senior NATO military officials here.

They will discuss a modified version of the plan that tries to assuage Mr. Karzai’s doubts by agreeing to his request that the Afghan government be involved at every stage of

the program. Officials close to both the Afghans and the Americans sound cautiously optimistic that they will reach an agreement in the next few days.

“We have to make sure that we don’t develop militias or any other kinds of forces that might undermine the government and become another kind of instability,” said the

president’s spokesman, Waheed Omar.

Among Mr. Karzai’s demands are that any local force be under the control of the local Afghan police commander, wear uniforms, be paid through the Ministry of Interior, and be

under the ministry’s command, Mr. Omar said.

“Our concern comes from what we experienced in our history where governments in the 1980s developed local militias that then became a source of problems for law and order in

the country,” he said, noting that the Soviets, who then ruled Afghanistan through local proxies, created armed local forces that provoked anti-Soviet forces to rebel against

them.

For the American military and especially General Petraeus — who witnessed a widespread Sunni insurgency in Iraq rapidly dwindle after the creation of local protection forces,

many of whose members had previously been insurgents — it is important to see if there is a way to change the balance of power, especially in remote local communities, where

the Taliban might otherwise gain ground.

“It could be a real game changer, but only if done very carefully, correctly and with proper oversight and supervision,” said a senior military official in Kabul.

American military officials say that they are prepared to accede to Mr. Karzai’s demands and that there will be procedures to vet members of the forces and track their weapons.

The debate between Mr. Karzai and General Petraeus picks up the thread of a 传奇私服 running disagreement between the Afghan government and

the Americans over the sustainability of backing local groups outside of the government, even if they offer to join the Americans in fighting the Taliban.

The discussion also takes place against a backdrop of a growing number of shadowy, often semiofficial armed forces that operate under an array of titles, but that ultimately

have only tenuous ties to the central government. These groups are the latest iteration of militias that have plagued the country for much of the past 30 years.

“Essentially, the use of militias has been a bitter experience in Afghanistan,” said Nasrullah Stanekzai, a law professor at Kabul University and Mr. Karzai’s legal adviser,

who said he was not speaking on behalf of the government.

“It will be a disaster to form militias, because the government will not be able to control them,” Mr. Stanekzai said. “The United States should know that Afghanistan is

different from Iraq, that we are in a frail state coming out of years of civil war caused by militias.”

The village defense forces, which General Petraeus and his predecessor, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, wanted to expand, and the new version that is now under discussion, were

first set up in a test form by Special Operations forces in a handful of communities. They were intended to act as local protection in areas where there were neither Afghan

police officers nor army units nor many American forces.

In addition, there are a number of other militia-type organizations, including many security companies, some of whom wear police uniforms but do not answer to the local police

chief. There are also armed groups with darker intentions, like ones that sprang up in Kunduz to fight the Taliban but that soon began to prey on locals. And there are tribal

groups that have the blessing of the Americans to keep the Taliban out of their communities.

With such a legacy, Mr. Karzai’s government, while willing to accept the need for local protection forces, wants to be sure that their numbers are kept to a minimum, Mr. Omar

said.

Defense analysts think the program is unlikely to grow in the way the Sunni Awakening did in Iraq, where it eventually had more than 100,000 members, said Stephen Biddle, a

senior defense analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“A very significant fraction of former Sons of Iraq were former insurgents who switched sides,” Mr. Biddle said, referring to the Awakening. “This is not a situation where

the local Taliban are going to come over to a local village security program and work with a local American brigade.”

However the program develops, Mr. Karzai’s government wants to be sure that it can dismantle it if need be, Mr. Omar said.

“If they become a problem,” he said, “the president wants to be sure the national security forces can deal with them.”

For months, the dissolution of the marriage of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ owners, Jamie and Frank McCourt, has riveted this town, with public revelations concerning huge hair

-care budgets, lavish homes and a Russian seer hired to send the team good vibes.
But next month (or sooner, as a settlement may be in the offing), the couple will have their day in court and something far more significant to this city will be adjudicated:

the fate of the team itself.

In 2004, the McCourt Broderick Limited Partnership bought the Dodgers from the News Corporation for 430 million almost totally leveraged dollars. Now, the couple are engaged in

a bitter battle over whether Mrs. McCourt, who was fired as the team’s chief executive during last season’s playoffs, has any claim on the team.

The inauspicious doings are something that New York baseball fans, some still smarting over the Dodgers’ move 3,000 miles west from Brooklyn more than a half-century ago, might

perhaps enjoy.

But in Los Angeles, where residents are united over precious little across this sprawling town except their sports teams, the spectacle of a messy marital unraveling that in any

way threatens their franchise has sparked ire.

“Certainly what is going on with the McCourts is something that concerns a lot of hard-core fans,” said Ernest Reyes, who blogs at Blue Heaven, which chronicles the Dodgers

and baseball ephemera. “The last thing you want to see is money we spend on the team being spent on these kinds of things.”

The case centers on a single document signed during their 31-year marriage that delineates the team as Mr. McCourt’s property and the couple’s multiple homes as hers.

Mr. McCourt’s legal team sees the matter as a simple contract dispute, in which they are confident they will prevail. “She has no interest in the Dodgers,” said his divorce

lawyer, Stephen Susman, in an interview here.

Mrs. McCourt’s team, led by David Boies, has framed it as one of sexual injustice, in which an angry husband is trying to deprive a woman who spent most of her adult life

helping him build a successful family business of money, power and a job. After firing Mrs. McCourt, her husband also declined to provide alimony until ordered to — at a lower

rate than she requested — by a judge. He believes Mrs. McCourt is entitled to half the appreciation of the Dodgers under this state’s community property law.

“I think she has been treated very shabbily,” Mr. Boies said, adding, 传奇私服 “I think she deserves justice, and that is what we are in the

business of doing.”

In an extensive interview in her Beverly Hills office, Mrs. McCourt, who said she has dreamed of owning a baseball team since she was a child, made it clear that she would not

go down without a fight. She says her ultimate goal is to be a co-owner and executive of the Dodgers.

“I love business — love, love, love,” she said. “There a side of me that feels like I am fighting for women. It’s a real old-boys’ network in sports, and I think there’s

a real undercurrent here to fight for what is right.”

In 2003, the McCourt Broderick Limited Partnership, its fortunes built in commercial real estate development, made a play for the Red Sox but was beaten out by John Henry, who

then owned the Florida Marlins. Major League Baseball courted them to buy another team, and executives pulled out a map and showed them what was available. As it turned out, at

least two of the teams in California were for sale, she said, and Los Angeles instantly intrigued.

The team was losing money hand over fist under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch, and its record was poor. Still, it was a leap for the McCourts, who have four grown sons. “We

didn’t have a single friend there,” she said. “I had no memory of ever even being in Los Angeles. It was weird for a lot of reasons.”

The deal was fashioned in two unusual ways: it was almost entirely financed by the News Corporation and banks, and the McCourt partnership was the sole owner, rather than part

of a syndicate, which is more common.

The early years seemed good ones — the team became worth more and was more visible in the postseason. But Mrs. McCourt claims her husband was increasingly frustrated with her

high profile within the Dodgers and in Los Angeles, and hectored her constantly about it. Mr. McCourt’s lawyers says she was fired for having a romantic relationship with a

Dodger’s security employee.

“That’s a distraction,” Mrs. McCourt said and insists that her husband wanted her out of the way.
Central to this dispute is a document the couple had drawn up in Boston that states that their homes would be in her name, and the business assets in his. (Today, the equity

value of the seven residential properties — four in California — in question is estimated to be between $75 million and $100 million. The value of the Dodgers is estimated to

be more than $700 million.)
This agreement was created, both sides agree, to protect the homes from his creditors as he often made high-risk, highly leveraged deals, like the one to buy the team.

His lawyers contend that this document, along with one provided to Major League Baseball (whose spokesman would not comment on the case or explain team ownership practices) that

certifies Mr. McCourt as the owner of the team, make the cut-and-dried case for his sole ownership.

Mr. Boies said the document may be fraudulent, because earlier copies of it kept the team as community property. “They have not established, and it is doubtful that they can

establish, that the marital property agreement is an authentic document,” he said. (Mr. Susman contends there was simply a typographical error in that document that was

corrected before the agreement was signed.)

Further, Mr. Boies asserts, under California’s family laws, each spouse in a divorce has an equal interest in all marital property regardless of whose name it is held in, and

any agreements signed are presumptively invalid if they give one spouse a disproportionate share of the marital goods.

Finally, a home-equity loan taken out on at least one home to help finance some of Mr. McCourt’s business concerns commingles the team and homes in a way that makes it harder

to prove she has no claim on the team, he said.

Marshall Grossman, the lawyer for the Dodgers, says this is all poppycock. “There was no chicanery here,” he scoffed. “It’s simply a case of buyer’s remorse.”

Experts in family law said the case was complex because it mixes business ownership with marital property.

“Even though the main agreement might have purported to solve problems regarding debt and creditors, it is without doubt intended to avoid the community-property system of

California,” said Anthony Miller, a professor of family law at Pepperdine University. He added, “Perhaps between high-rollers like the McCourts, the marital finances are like

any other business, but to my mind there are countless other marriages 传奇私服 where one of the partners to the marriage should be protected,

” one of the key purposes behind California’s community-property laws.

Co-ownership of a team, if history is any guide, seems unlikely. “The rule of thumb when there is a dispute,” said Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp, a sports business

consulting firm based in Chicago. “You can almost take it to the bank there will be some change of ownership.” He added, “These are assets that have so much visibility and

lifestyle associated with them that separation among owners is messy anyway, and when you add to that an extreme with two partners getting a divorce it might be the worst

possible situation.”

For a day, at least, Wall Street got its groove back.

The stock market staged its biggest rally since May on Wednesday, driving the Dow Jones industrial average above 10,000, as investors rushed to buy blue-chip shares near their lowest levels this year. The hope was that coming quarterly earnings reports would show major corporations were weathering these hard economic times better than many had expected.

Many ifs remain. A disappointing showing by any number of companies could easily send the market tumbling anew. So could worrisome developments in Europe, where authorities are in the midst of assessing the financial strength of major banks.

But on Wednesday, the old worries were cast aside. The broad stock market jumped 3.13 percent as investors concluded the recent sell-off was overdone and that the economy might be stronger than many had believed. To some, stocks simply seemed too cheap to resist. Investors who for weeks had sought shelter in the relative safety of United States Treasury securities reversed their trades and headed back into stocks.

Adding to the buoyant mood was news suggesting that retail sales were growing briskly this year, a sign that recession-weary consumers were spending again. Sales probably grew at an average annual rate of 4 percent during the first five months of retailers’ current fiscal year, the sharpest gain since 2006, the International Council of Shopping Centers said.

And so a few hard numbers — and a lot of hope — sent the market soaring. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which only two days ago had sunk to a 10-month low, rose 32.31 points, or 3.13 percent, to 1,060.27. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 274.66 points to 10,018.28, its first close above 10,000 since June 28. The Nasdaq composite index rose 65.59 points to 2,159.47.

Financial shares paced the gains after the State Street Corporation, the big custody bank, posted stronger-than-expected second-quarter profits. The results — 93 cents a share, excluding one-time items — raised hopes that other big banks would report similarly robust results over the next two weeks.

Shares of State Street rose 9.9 percent. JPMorgan Chase, which reports 传奇私服 second-quarter results next week, increased 5 percent. American Express and Bank of America each rose more than 4 percent. Small and midsize regional banks posted even bigger gains.

Retailers also gained on the news from the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group. Thirty of the 31 stocks in the S.& P. retail industry index advanced.

But beyond the outlook for a particular company or industry was a sense that investors were regaining their nerve after a dismal first half for the stock market. Treasury securities, which had soared in recent weeks, driving the yield on benchmark 10-year Treasuries below 3 percent, abruptly reversed course and tumbled. The 10-year Treasury fell 14/32 to 104 13/32. Its yield rose to 2.98 percent from 2.93 percent. The euro rallied to a six-week high against the dollar.

“It looks like the ‘re-risking’ trade is coming back on,” said Matthew S. Rothman, global head of quantitative equities strategy at Barclays Capital.

Analysts said the prospect of authorities in Europe releasing details this week of so-called stress tests of some of the Continent’s banks also fueled the day’s optimism. Even if the tests identified problems within some of Europe’s banks, at least they would end the uncertainty about the state of the financial system that had been weighing on world markets, analysts said.

“The market is just happy the tests are coming out,” said Win Thin, currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York. “There has always been this suspicion about whether they are hiding something or not.”

After the broad stock market lost about 7 percent during the first six months of the year, various market indicators started to suggest that the market had fallen too far, too fast. For instance, the so-called relative strength index for the S.& P. 500, which measures the index’s advances and declines, registered just above 30 on Monday. A reading of 20 to 30 is generally considered a sign that the market is oversold.

In a research note, UBS analysts said: “Stock investors were probably looking for a decent excuse to re-enter the market in a new quarter at more attractive levels.”

Mr. Rothman of Barclays Capital said that sentiment had “really just changed on a dime for reasons that are difficult to figure out.” But he said that it was investors’ evolving view about the health of the United States and European economies, rather than news on specific companies or industries, that was driving the market’s moves.

“It’s about the question, are we in an early cyclical recovery, or going back to depression?” he said.

Few cities are as generous as New York when it comes to matching political contributions raised by candidates for public office.
In big election years, the city has given anywhere from $4 million to $42 million to candidates in an effort to limit the influence of special interests and level the playing field for candidates of modest means.

There were, though, supposed to be limits to the city’s generosity. Candidates who accepted taxpayer money and did not empty their campaign accounts in the course of their election fights were obliged by law to return all surplus money to the city.

But the city, while handing out a total of roughly $120 million to candidates over the years, has been unable to recover much of the money it is owed.

Tens of thousands of dollars that candidates initially reported as surpluses appear to 传奇私服 have dribbled away as the city took years auditing campaigns to determine how much might be owed. There are also candidates who have seemed to be in no hurry to settle up. Today, for instance, two dozen candidates owe a total of $800,000 from publicly subsidized races in 2001, 2003 and 2005.

Though it has sought to clarify its rules, the city has also struggled to stay a step ahead of candidates who avoid meaningful repayment by using surplus campaign funds to hire lawyers during the audits to challenge the city’s calculation of what they owe, or by paying penalties with surplus funds they would otherwise owe the city.

And to this day the city cannot keep publicly financed candidates from using legal loopholes to funnel leftover money to political or charitable causes of their choosing. Quirks in the rules governing runoff elections, for instance, have allowed two former City Council speakers, Peter F. Vallone Sr. and A. Gifford Miller, to shift six-figure surpluses of campaign money into political action committees they controlled.

For their part, some candidates correctly point out that the city’s Campaign Finance Board, which is responsible for protecting tax dollars and the public interest, is not always careful to make sure that what it publishes about candidates’ finances on its Web site is accurate and up-to-date.

Responding to that criticism, Eric Friedman, the board’s spokesman, said: “There are 1.2 million transactions in the database available for public view, and 1,700 campaigns over the course of the program. Anybody in a government agency or any long-running concern that deals with this kind of volume will have challenges assuring everything is accurate.”

Given that, it is nearly impossible to say how much money the city has missed out on over the years in repayments from candidates it helped underwrite. What seems clear is that the city is in no position to lose track of even small sums when it is cutting library hours and closing senior centers to balance its budget.

June M. Eisland, an unsuccessful candidate for Bronx borough president in 2001, spent years in court fighting the city’s attempts to recover some of the $300,000 it had given her campaign. Helping her do battle were two of the city’s pre-eminent election lawyers, Henry T. Berger and Laurence D. Laufer, a former general counsel of the Campaign Finance Board who now advises campaigns.

Ms. Eisland and her lawyers succeeded in carving out $130,000 she had raised in prior 传奇私服 races, depriving the city of much of what it thought it was due.

Under New York law, the Campaign Finance Board approves all public matching contributions, under formulas that have become sweeter over time. Currently, the city gives candidates $6 for every $1 in qualifying gifts raised from private donors. In certain circumstances, candidates can receive as much as $8.57 for every $1 raised on their own. “It is an extremely generous match,” said Mr. Laufer, the lawyer.

The board monitors the use of the public money — demanding and examining candidates’ detailed expenditure reports — and is the ultimate bill collector when it finds that campaigns have unspent funds or other debts to the city. But less than $10 million of the $120 million that the board has handed out since its inception in 1988 has come back to taxpayers, judging from campaign reports and other statistics posted on the board’s Web site.

To be sure, a lot of the money is properly spent on campaigns, and board officials argue that the benefits of publicly financed elections far outweigh what they contend are the smaller amounts that may get lost in the process.

“At the end of the day, New Yorkers can have confidence that their politics are cleaner and freer from influence, and that’s what their investment gets them,” said Mr. Friedman, the spokesman for the board.
“There will always be challenges in collecting money from people who do not want to pay,” he acknowledged. But he said, “We’re here to watch that investment pretty closely.”

He and his colleagues also reject the idea that they take any of the shenanigans lying down.

They point to more than 40 cases they have litigated in court, and more if small-claims court is counted. Eight staff members, they said, are dedicated to collecting surplus money, and Thacher Associates, an investigative firm, is on call for occasional help.

One oft-used weapon for trying to recover money is publishing the names of those who resist the board’s demands for repayment or remittance of penalties. As of last month, a couple dozen individuals who ran for city offices from 2001 to 2005 were listed as owing a combined $797,293 in “outstanding repayments of public funds,” reflecting unspent funds and other overdue obligations.

Michael Roth was one. He garnered a mere 3 percent of the vote when he ran for 传奇私服 City Council in 2005 but has hardly faded from view.

The board initially ordered him to repay all $20,392 of the public funds he got, once auditors found scads of expenses he had charged to the campaign, including dog food and liquor bought during the race, and sushi dinners and airline tickets bought months after the election.

According to Mr. Friedman, Mr. Roth paid the last of what he owed on June 23, nearly five years after his race.

Some candidates seem to be less receptive than others to the public shaming or to the board’s ability to withhold future financing.

Miguel Martinez is listed on the board’s Web site as owing $128,786 from the 2001 race that put him on the City Council. Currently serving five years in federal prison for misusing money intended for nonprofit organizations in his district, he may not be concerned about repaying the city for its help in getting him elected.

There are also 13 instances in which the board has granted extensions to candidates who “are engaged in efforts” to resolve debts or other obligations totaling $594,000. Lawyers familiar with the deferred payment plans say the recipients pay no interest and sometimes have as long as 10 years to settle up.

The Rev. Edward J. Norman, a 2001 contender for the City Council, was the beneficiary of one such deal. Troubled by sloppiness in his campaign spending reports, the board initially dunned him the entire $65,496 that he had received in public matches. But the board reduced what he owed to $39,179 once he had better documented his spending, and gave him until last year — eight years after his race — to pay off the last of it.

“If they added interest, I’d still be paying back,” said Mr. Norman, the pastor of the Union United Methodist Church in Brooklyn. He chalked up his errors to the inexperience of a first-time candidate, unsupported by party operatives or professional advisers.

In more than a few cases, candidates argue that the board’s assessment of their financial performance is flawed or mistaken. And sometimes those candidates are right.

Just the other day, the board confirmed that information on its Web site 传奇私服 concerning Norman Siegel’s 2001 race for public advocate and William C. Thompson’s 2001 race for city comptroller was incorrect. Double-counting by its computer program had made it inaccurately look as if both campaigns had hung on to huge six-figure surpluses.

“The numbers in 2001 are just wrong,” Mr. Siegel said in an interview.

He later said the board had acknowledged its error and was correcting the data. Proud he had run clean campaigns and was on good terms with the board, he said, “I’ll have to re-evaluate them now in light of this.”

The board’s next challenge will involve trying to collect some $9 million in potentially recoverable funds from the $27 million it gave campaigns in 2009. But it looks as though it will be years before it is clear how much the watchdogs actually win back.

Two suicide bombers struck Pakistan’s most important Sufi shrine on Thursday night, a devastating attack by hard-line militants on the moderate, more flexible blend of Islam that is practiced by most Pakistanis.
The bombers attacked in the city of Lahore just before midnight, the peak worship time for the shrine, known as Data Ganj Baksh. Thousands of people were at the shrine at the time, according to the Pakistani police. At least 37 were killed and 175 injured, according to police officials.

The strike on such a revered place of worship is certain to enrage Pakistanis, who are growing weary of violence that has spiked in the past four years. It is part of a pattern of increased violence in Pakistan’s heartland, the province of Punjab, a troubling expansion of the Taliban insurgency tormenting the country’s western border.

“This is a barbaric attack,” wrote Raza Ahmed Rumi, a Pakistani expert on Sufism, on his Web site. The shrine, he said, “is not just another crowded place — it represents a millennia of tolerant Sufi Islam which is directly under attack by the puritans.”

The bombers detonated their explosives in the basement and inside the shrine, after a Sufi ceremony of singing and prayer, according to a witness, Muhamed Yusef, who was interviewed on Pakistani television. The police retrieved the heads of two of the bombers and estimated their ages as 17 and 22, the television reports said.

The blasts left a sickening scene of devastation. The Express 24/7 television network in Pakistan showed the shrine’s interior littered with bodies, prayer rugs and debris from the blast. Blood pooled on the white marble floor. Crowds gathered outside the shrine after the bombing, shouting, crying and protesting the attack.

“Those who still pretend that we are not a nation at war are complicit in these deaths,” said Farahnaz Ispahani, a spokeswoman for President Asif Ali Zardari.
传奇私服
传奇私服
Sufism is a mystical form of Islam brought into South Asia by wandering thinkers who spread the religion east from the Arabian Peninsula. They carried a message of equality that was deeply appealing to indigenous societies torn by caste and poverty. To this day, Sufi shrines stand out in Islam for allowing women free access.

In modern times, Pakistan’s Sufis have been challenged by a stricter form of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia. That orthodox, often political, Islam was encouraged in Pakistan in the 1980s by Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the American-supported dictator. Since then, the fundamentalists’ aggressive stance has tended to eclipse that of their moderate kin, whose shrines and processions have become targets in the war here.

In March 2009, militants in western Pakistan blew up the Rahman Baba shrine, the burial place of a revered Sufi poet. Data Ganj Baksh, or Giver of Treasures, draws Muslims from all over Pakistan and is the symbol of Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital.

The shrine is dedicated to a Persian-speaking mystic, Ali bin Usman al-Hajveri, who journeyed to Lahore with Central Asian invaders in the 11th century. He settled outside the city, a stopover on the trade route to Delhi, started a meditation center and wrote a manual on Sufi practices.

“How long will we be mere spectators and see our great city blown to bits — culturally and physically?” Mr. Rumi wrote. He said that threats last year caused the shrine to close for a few days. “This time the worst of nightmares has come true.”
传奇私服
传奇私服

The stock market roared back to life on Thursday, driving the Dow Jones industrial average firmly above 10,000, as investors latched on to hopes that maybe, just maybe, the economic scene was not quite as bleak as it seemed.
After weeks of violent swings, driven largely by concerns over the unfolding financial crisis in Europe, bargain-hunters swooped in. The broad stock market leapt almost 3 percent in its biggest one-day gain in two weeks.

For a day, at least, fears that the nation’s fragile economic recovery might falter were cast aside. A stream of upbeat economic reports overseas prompted some investors to reverse their bearish bets with a rush of buy orders.

But few investors or analysts seemed convinced that the market — down roughly 11 percent from its April highs — was finally out of the woods. Indeed, some suggested Thursday’s gains might prove fleeting, given the nervousness pervading the markets.

“Investors are spooked very easily by the smallest negative news stories now, and it won’t take a lot for the Dow to be trading back to 10,000 as early as tomorrow,” said M. Jake Dollarhide, the chief executive of Longbow Asset Management.

Even before the opening bell sounded, it looked like a good day for Wall Street. Thursday’s rally began early, in Asian markets, and then spilled over into European trading. The United States market gathered momentum into the close of New York trading, as some traders reversed short positions, or bets that stocks would decline in value.

By the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 273.28 points, or 2.76 percent, at 10,172.53. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 2.95 percent, or 31.15 points, to 1,086.84, while the Nasdaq was up 2.77 percent, or 59.86 points, to 2,218.71.

The rally was broad and swift. Energy shares led the charge. BP, which has lost nearly half its value since the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, jumped 10 percent. Only a day before, BP had plunged nearly 16 percent after lawmakers called on the company to suspend its dividends and its advertising to pay for the costs of the cleanup.

Driving the gains were several economic reports, mostly from overseas, that seemed to point to a sustainable global recovery. The European Central Bank slightly raised its forecast for economic growth in the euro zone this year, while the Japanese government reported that its economy grew 1.2 percent in the first quarter.

A stronger-than-expected employment report in Australia and news that New Zealand was confident enough in its economic prospects to raise interest rates added to the sense of optimism, as did better-than-expected results on weekly jobless claims in the United States.
discount mbt shoes**
mbt schuhe**
Good news also came from China, in the form of surprisingly strong export figures. To some, the data — a trade surplus of $19.5 billion in May — suggested that China’s economy remained robust, despite troubles elsewhere in the world.

“China has been the economic juggernaut, and at least it’s not falling apart,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, vice president for energy at MF Global.

Others, however, insisted that the Chinese economy would ultimately slow down, posing a risk to growth worldwide.

“Whether it’s going to be a soft landing or hard landing — that to me is the most fundamental risk,” said Stephen P. Wood, market strategist for Russell Investors. “That’s really the big wild card.”

Mr. Wood said a slowdown in China was “inevitable.”

Indeed, many on Wall Street say they believe the economic outlook remains murky at best.

A report showing that weekly unemployment benefit rolls in the United States fell by 255,000 to a seasonally adjusted 4.5 million, the lowest total since December 2008, provided some relief to downbeat news of late. But the report was not enough to persuade economists that unemployment would decline markedly soon.

Scott J. Brown, chief economist of Raymond James, said the jobs numbers from Thursday and last Friday indicated a “long hard slog” ahead.

“The recovery should continue, but it may not be strong enough to push the unemployment rate down very much,” Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Wood said American economic data like Thursday’s claims numbers were “not bad, but not great.”

“Jobless rate leads to consumer confidence, which leads to consumer spending,” Mr. Wood said. “The key is consumption. The employment situation is the basis for consumer sentiment and behavior. And we’re seeing stabilization and a modest improvement in that.”

Mr. Woods acknowledged that risks from the oil spill and the European debt crisis could still affect the United States’ growth, which the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, indicated would be 3.5 percent this year as long as the markets held.

Mr. Fitzpatrick said the news from China was more significant than the increase in jobless claims. “But to say they’re going to carry the entire world out of a recession is out of the question if their customers around the world are mired in a recession,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.

In Europe, the Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, settled 2 percent higher, while the FTSE 100 index added 0.92 percent in London.
传奇私服**
传奇私服**

This is not going to be a good summer for air travelers.
They face a potential combination of crowded flights, high fares and labor disruptions. And that does not even consider the possibility of more canceled flights because of new penalties for airlines that encounter long tarmac delays or the potential of continued disruption in Europe from the volcano ash drifting from Iceland.

Demand for business and leisure travel is expected to be stronger this summer than last, mbt shoes** which means travelers will be fighting for seats that have been reduced significantly during the recession.

According to an analysis of first- and business-class travel in the first quarter by the International Air Transport Association, the trade group for the airline industry, the number of passengers traveling in these classes was 7.6 percent higher than in the period a year earlier. The number of passengers in economy was up 7.4 percent in the same period.

Growth in all classes of service is “being driven by business travel, rather than leisure,” the group’s analysis said. “As business confidence and world trade have turned up sharply, business travelers have returned. Consumer confidence has not recovered in the same way as business confidence.”

Major corporate travel agencies in the United States are also reporting strong growth in flying by business travelers. Dale Eastlund, senior director of the consulting group of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, the corporate travel management company, said airline bookings by North American corporate customers were up 15 percent in the first quarter, compared with the same period in 2009.

Michael Steiner, executive vice president of Ovation Corporate Travel in New York, said the number of airline transactions by Ovation’s corporate customers was 22.5 percent higher in the first four months of 2010, compared with the same period in 2009, while the number of airline transactions by its leisure customers was up 39 percent.

These double-digit increases in demand are in no way being matched by similar increases in the number of seats. The Air Transport Association, the trade group of the American airline industry, said domestic capacity will be only 0.2 percent higher this summer than last, while capacity on international routes will be up 6.6 percent.

“Seats will be limited,” said Michael Derchin, airline analyst for CRT Capital Group in mbt tunisha shoes** Stamford, Conn. “It’s going to be a more difficult travel experience for business people, with 90 percent load factors in the peaks.”

The inevitable outcome of limited seats and stronger demand will be higher fares, at least compared with the greatly depressed levels of 2009.

Business- and first-class fares are up 10 percent globally from their “low point in mid-2009, but they’re still a lot lower than they were prerecession,” said Brian Pearce, chief economist of the international airline industry group. “It indicates the development of a relative shortage of seats.”

From January to April, the average ticket price booked by a corporate customer of Ovation Travel climbed 16.2 percent, Mr. Steiner said.

Mathias Eichelberger, director of airline relations for Egencia, the corporate travel division of Expedia, agreed that fares were rising. “There are going to be very full flights with high prices, especially on trans-Atlantic routes,” he said. “I think leisure travel on the trans-Atlantic is going to come back stronger, with a stronger dollar and overall consumer confidence.”

Another result of more crowded flights could be a dearth of desirable seats, like those on aisles or in exit rows.

“Flights are going to be full,” Mr. Eastlund warned. “In many instances, business travelers will end up in the middle seat.”

And upgrades, which have not been plentiful recently — at Ovation Travel, for example, mbt safiri shoes** business traveler upgrades plummeted 21 percent from January to April — are expected to be even scarcer during the peak summer months.

“It will be much more challenging to get upgraded, because of the lack of capacity and the high number of frequent fliers,” Mr. Eastlund said.

Disruption in flying is also possible this summer because of labor problems. Already, British Airways has been dealing with on-again, off-again strikes by its cabin crew, while the management of American Airlines is preparing for a possible strike by its flight attendants.

The volcano in Iceland could also create further disruptions for travelers. Jennifer Wilson-Buttigieg, co-president and co-owner of Valerie Wilson Travel, a corporate travel company in New York, said she was advising clients with connecting flights in any city in Europe “to build in a few extra hours for connecting time.”

The Transportation Department’s new regulations governing tarmac delays could wreak further havoc with air travel this summer because of the potential for thunderstorm delays, some experts say. Under the new rules, the government has said it will fine carriers in the United States as much as $27,500 for each passenger if they keep people on domestic flights waiting for more than three hours on the tarmac without letting them get off.

“I guess airlines will err on the side of caution” if they are considering canceling a flight, Mr. Derchin said, adding that the result could be “more cancellations than normal.” And if capacity is tight, it could be hard to rebook passengers from canceled flights.

To make business air travel as manageable as possible, corporate travel executives suggest 传奇私服** booking as far in advance as possible to get the lowest fares and best seats available, and developing a backup plan in case of delays.

They also point out that some frequent American travelers can use automated kiosks to pass through United States customs as part of the Global Entry program. The executives note, too, that the Transportation Security Administration runs a Black Diamond program at many of the major airports that designates security lanes for travelers familiar with the agency’s rules.

There is usually an alternative to air travel “if the potential for disruption is too great,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, travel analyst for Forrester Research. “Take the train, drive or turn to technology.” That way, he said, business travelers can avoid “the hassle factor and not compete for overhead bin space with families.”

The ocean caught fire.
As it blazed, a dense column of black smoke rose toward the sky. Oily water, the color of strong tea, slopped up the sides of boats. The breeze carried an acrid smell, like gasoline fumes.

Aboard the research vessel F.G. Walton Smith, anxiety was growing.

Five scientists and six students had come to study the oil leak and its effect on the sea. They brought flasks and gloves, refrigerators and freezers, tiny tools and huge cylinders of gas.

They were not looking for oil on the surface, where it was so thick in places that it was being burned off, 传奇私服** but for plumes of fine oil droplets far beneath the waves.

The stakes were high. Two weeks earlier, when some of these scientists had disclosed evidence of undersea oil plumes, their claim had been greeted skeptically by the government. The scientists’ credibility was on the line.

If the plumes did exist, much of the wisdom about combating oil spills might need to be reconsidered. The plumes would suggest that any future oil leak in deep water could be expected to do much of its damage in the sea, not on shore.

But where were the plumes?

After a slow start, American science is finally beginning to tackle the oil disaster in earnest. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency charged with monitoring the health of the oceans, is sending multiple boats into the gulf. The National Science Foundation, another arm of the government, is issuing rapid grants to finance academic teams, including the one aboard the Walton Smith. BP, the oil company responsible for the spill, has pledged $500 million for research. And scientists like those aboard the Walton Smith are getting emergency financing from the government for their studies.

This stepped-up effort is starting to bear fruit. This week, another research vessel confirmed the existence of a huge undersea plume. And on Thursday, a team of scientists appointed by the Obama administration offered a more credible estimate of the flow rate at the broken well, putting it at two to four times the previous calculation.

That higher estimate only added to the sense among academic scientists that much of the oil must be hovering in the deep sea, instead of surfacing. The goal of the researchers aboard the Walton Smith was to nail the existence of such deep-sea plumes beyond any doubt.

They sailed early this week from Gulfport, Miss., and went back to the spot where they had originally discovered a large plume. It was no longer there.

All one afternoon, the Walton Smith hopscotched across the gulf. The top scientists on board, Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia and Vernon Asper of the University of Southern Mississippi, peered intently at instrument readouts, hoping for a signal.

Down to the bottom of the sea went a huge apparatus designed to test the water and grab samples of it. 传奇sf** The results kept coming up clean.

Then, late in the afternoon of the second day at sea, the entire scientific crew suddenly leapt to attention.

The boat had arrived at a new sampling site, west of the oil leak, and the instruments were traveling once again to the bottom. In a clean ocean, they would be expected to produce fairly straight lines on a graph.

Instead, wild squiggles were showing up. The display looked like one of those seismograph readings taken in the throes of an earthquake. At three different depths, the instruments picked up plumes of material drifting through the deep ocean.

Dr. Asper stood back, arms crossed, watching the squiggles appear. “To see something like this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said. “It’s really remarkable.”

Soon, a giant winch on the rear of the boat hauled special bottles back from the deep, carrying water samples. The younger researchers rushed to the rear deck.

Working quickly in a daisy chain, circling the bottles, they filled small vials and other containers, then hustled back to their makeshift laboratory on the main deck of the Walton Smith.

Over the next few hours, they filtered some of the water. They shook some samples. They stirred some. They pickled some. They bubbled gases through the water. They refrigerated some vials. They froze some more.

Then they got ready to do it all again.

Within a day, word would come that a separate university vessel, the Weatherbird II, had discovered a giant plume stretching in the other direction from the broken well, toward Mobile Bay. That one threatens some of the finest fishing territory in the gulf.

It will take weeks of laboratory work to confirm with certainty that the plumes are made of oil droplets, or more likely, some complex mixture of oil and natural gas. If that idea holds up, the existence of these undersea plumes may well turn out to be the major scientific discovery of the great oil spill of 2010.
It could take years for scientists to assess the deep-sea damage fully, if that is even possible. Among other problems, gulf researchers have long been hobbled by a critical shortage of vessels equipped for oceanography.
Only a handful of such ships ply the Gulf of Mexico, and the best-outfitted boats tend to work for the oil industry.传奇sf** Exploring and protecting the gulf has simply not been as high a national priority as drilling it for oil.

Still uncertain are the fates of deep coral reefs that live in the gulf, as well as the condition of a unique cluster of bottom-dwelling organisms only nine miles from the damaged well. The ultimate impact the spill will have on commercially important fish like tuna and snapper is anyone’s guess.

As the week wore on, the Joye-Asper team found more and more evidence for the existence of the plumes.

The water samples they pulled up suggested that any oil in the plumes was highly diffuse — not even visible to the naked eye. But when several gallons of the water were forced through a fine filter, tiny black oil droplets appeared.

Even in that diffuse form, the plumes were having a drastic impact on the chemistry of the ocean, with dissolved oxygen levels plunging as each plume drifted through the sea.

That, Dr. Joye said, was most likely because bacteria were ramping up to consume the oil and gas — a good thing, over all, but it was creating a heavy demand for oxygen and other nutrients. Aside from the toxic effect of the oil, the declining oxygen was a potential threat to sea life.

Slowly, as the Walton Smith and other boats worked the gulf this past week, the weird physics of a deep-water well blowout came into better focus. The idea that oil rises quickly to the surface of an ocean may be one of the casualties of this disaster.

“Nothing really makes sense out here,” Dr. Joye said as her ship plowed through orange slicks of oil. “I don’t know that you can necessarily trust your intuition.”

From the bridge of the ship, Capt. Shawn Lake made an announcement. Everyone rushed to the outside decks.

Once again, in the middle distance, the ocean was burning.