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IN THIS ISSUE
No. 40,730
Books 10
Business 16
Crossword 15
Culture 10
Opinion 8
Sports 13
ART IN MADRID
GLOBAL FAIR
GAINS RESPECT
PAGE 10
|
CU LTUR E
SUZY MENKES
THE ROMANTIC
SIDE OF THINGS
PAGE 11

|
FASHION MILAN
E-CIGARETTES
AN ON-RAMP TO
TOBACCO ROAD?
PAGE 16
|
BUSINESS
ONLINE AT INYT.COMINSIDE TODAY’S PAPER
New push against gay marriage
Opponents of same-sex marriage have
a new chance this week to play one of
their most emotional and, they hope,
potent cards: the claim that having
parents of the same sex is bad for
children. nytimes.com/us
Defining the crunch factor
How should General Mills gauge the
texture of its granola bars? A young
inventor has come up with the answer:
He calls it an organoleptic analyzer.
nytimes.com/technology
Te st case: Is college football a job?
In a hearing before the National Labor
Relations Board in Chicago,
Northwestern players have laid out an
argument that they are employees
entitled to unionize. nytimes.com/sports
Robots as U.S. border sentinels
Drug smuggling has remained

stubbornly common along the United
States-Mexico border, where robots are
a new tactic in the battle. nytimes.com/us
Ta liban launch bold attack
Taliban insurgents overran an Afghan
Army base on Sunday and killed 21
soldiers, one of the worst single blows
to government forces. nytimes.com/asia
An industry behind asylum fraud
Recently unsealed court filings offer a
look at asylum fraud among Chinese in
New York, where applicants are
regarded with suspicion. WORLD NEWS, 6
What many Scots really want
David Cameron’s praising the United
Kingdom to Scotland missed the point
that for many Scots, independence is
not about nationalism, but democracy,
Kathleen Jamie writes. OPINION, 9
Lawmakers take
control in Ukraine
KIEV, UKRAINE
BY DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Aday after President Viktor F. Ya-
nukovych fled the Ukrainian capital and
was removedfrom power by a unani-
mous vote in Parliament, lawmakers
movedswiftly on Sundaytodismantle
the remaining vestiges of his govern-
ment by firing top cabinet members, in-

cluding the foreign minister.
With Parliament, led by the speaker,
Oleksandr V. Turchynov, firmly in con-
trol of the federal government —if not
yet the country as a whole —lawmakers
began an emergency session on Sunday
by adopting a lawrestoring state own-
ership of Mr.Yanukovych’s opulent
presidential palace, which he had
privatized.
Parliament voted to grant Mr.
Turchynov authority to carry outthedu-
ties of the president of Ukraine, adding
to his authority to lead the government
that lawmakers had approved on Satur-
day.
On Saturday, after signing apeace
deal with the opposition that he had
hoped would keep him in office until at
least December, Mr.Yanukovychfled
Kiev to denounce what he called a viol-
ent coup. His official residence, his vast,
colonnaded office complex and other
once-impregnable centers of power fell
without afight to throngs of joyous cit-
izens stunned by their triumph.
While Mr. Yanukovych’s archrival,
former Prime Minister Yulia V. Ty-
moshenko, was released from a peniten-
tiary hospital, Parliament found the

president unable to fulfillhis duties and
exercised its constitutional powers to
set an election for May 25 to select his
replacement.
A pugnacious Mr. Yanukovychap-
peared on television Saturdayafter-
noon, apparently from the eastern city
of Kharkiv, near Ukraine’s eastern bor-
der with Russia, saying he had been
forced to leave the capital because of a
‘‘coup,’’ and that he had not resigned,
and had no plans to.
The president’s departure from Kiev
capped three months of protests and a
week of frenzied violence in the capital
that left more than 80 protesters dead. It
turned what began in November as a
street protest drivenbypro-Europe
chants and nationalist songs into a mo-
mentous but still ill-defined revolution.
Ms. Tymoshenko, who was jailed by
Mr. Yanukovych after losing the presi-
dential election in 2010, was released
Saturday evening from the hospital in
Kharkivwhere she had been held and
quickly made her waytoKiev.Many
Ukrainians —and virtually allof the
pro-Western protesters —believe her
conviction waspolitically motivated
and regard her as something of a mar-

tyr to their cause.
Late Saturday she appeared on the
stage in Independence Squarein a
wheelchair and delivered a speech that
was greeted by cheersand chants of
‘‘Yulia! Yulia!’’
She addressed her audience as ‘‘he-
roes,’’ and told them, ‘‘I was dreaming
to see your eyes. I wasdreaming to feel
the power that changed everything.’’
Depending on her health, Ms. Ty-
moshenko, who has complained of
chronic back problems since she was
jailed in 2011, may run for president in
vote scheduled for May, and manyof
JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Olympic finale Atthe closing of the Winter Games at Sochi on Sunday, dancers whirled and Russia celebrated its contributions to the world of culture. PAGE 13
As golden spell ends, Sochi faces reality
SOCHI, RUSSIA
BY DAVID SEGAL
Now comes the hard part.
After the closing ceremonySunday,
Sochi is confronting life after the
Olympics andthe aftermath of abuilding
boom that, for a time, made it the world’s
largest construction site. The area is
nowhome to morethan 40,000 hotel
rooms, four ski resorts, dozens of restau-
rants and retailers, five sports arenas,
one stadium, and enough roads and rail-

ways to handle 20,000 visitors an hour.
That made sense during the Games,
but what will happen when fans and ath-
letes leave? This question confronts
every Olympic city, but it seems acutely
problematic inSochi, experts say, in part
because the scale of overbuilding vastly
exceeds what occurred in Vancouver,
London and elsewhere, and in part be-
cause the area willface competition
from resort towns in other countries.
It also seems that few people in the
upper echelons of the Russian govern-
ment have given the futureofSochi
much thought.
‘‘I don’t think anyone is surewhat to
do with it,’’ said Sufian Zhemukhov, co-
author of acoming book on the Sochi
Games. ‘‘I say that because President
Putin and Prime Minister Medvedev
have changed the concept many times.
First, it wasgoing to become akind of
capital of southern Russia. Then they
talked about dismantling the arenas
and taking them north. Afew months
ago, Medvedev said they were going to
open casinos there.’’
Virtually everything about the Sochi
Games has been improvised, it seems,
and their aftermathwillnot be anydiffer-

ent. Russia’sprimary goal in 2007 was to
submit the winning bid to the Interna-
tional Olympic Committee, andoneof the
appeals of Sochi to the I.O.C. was that the
area was largely undeveloped, meaning
that Russia would have to produce lots of
spiffy new buildings and infrastructure.
ANDREA BRUCE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Latha Reddy Musukula’s husband killed himself because of debts, which have passed to
her. She has promised the money lender to repay what she owes by April.
From farmers’ suicides,
a legacy of debt in India
BOLLIKUNTA, INDIA
BY ELLEN BARRY
Latha Reddy Musukula wasmaking tea
on arecent morning when she spotted
the money lenders walking down the
dirt path toward her house. They came
in aphalanx of 15 men, by her estimate.
She knew their faces, because they had
walked down the path before.
After each visit, her husband, a farm-
er named VeeraReddy,sank deeper in-
to silence, frozen by some terror he
would not explain. Threetimes he cut
his wrists. He tied a noose to a tree, re-
lenting when the family surrounded
him, weeping. In the end he waited until
Ms. Musukula stepped out, and then he
hanged himself from apipe supporting

their roof, leaving a careful list of each
debt he owed to each money lender. She
learned the full sum then: 400,000 ru-
pees, or about $6,400.
A current of dread runs through this
farmland, wherewomen in jewel-
colored saris bend their backs overwa-
tery terraces of rice. In Andhra Pra-
desh, the southern state where Ms.
Musukula lives, the suicide rate among
farmers is nearly three times the na-
East and West clash
in leader’s hometown
DONETSK, UKRAINE
BY ALISON SMALE
A few hundred fearful pro-democracy
activists turned out on Sunday in this
hardscrabble city in eastern Ukraine,
the region where the deposed president,
Victor F. Yanukovychis believed to
have fled.
Within an hour, they were jeered by
mobs, mostly young men, masked and
carrying clubs. Eventually,the police
maneuveredbetween the two groups,
escorting away the activists and cor-
ralling but not arresting their har-
anguers, some clearly inebriated.
Thetwo gatherings illustrated the
forces still tugging at Ukraine’s future

and which have yetto be reconciled —
Ukraine’s pro-European west and its
Russian-leaning east —even now that
Mr. Yanukovych has been removed
from office.
Mr.Yanukovychhails from the mean
streets of Donetsk, wherein his youth
he went to prison twice for assault.
Where he is now is not known.
He went into hiding Sunday, a day
after a senior aide of the border protec-
tion forces, Sergey Astakhov, an-
nounced that a charter plane had been
prevented from taking off Saturday
night at Donetsk airport. Mr. Ya-
nukovych was spotted leaving the plane
SOCHI, PAGE 13
DONETSK, PAGE 4
UKRAINE, PAGE 4
INDIA, PAGE 5
SOCHI OLYMPICS
CANADIAN MEN GLIDE TO GOLD
A 3-0 victory over Sweden in hockey
capped an undefeated run in Sochi for
Canada, which defended its title. PAGE 13
NEXT GENERATION IS ON THE MOVE
Veteran Alpine skiers held their own at
the Sochi Games, but a youthful group
is showing clear advances. PAGE 14
Mexicans capture No. 1 cartel chief

Dozens of Mexican marines and police
officers, who were aided by information
from the United States, seized Joaquín
Guzmán Loera over the weekend in the
beach resort of Mazatlán without firing
a shot. WORLD NEWS, 5
Stakes high as E.C.B. tests banks
A lot is riding on the cleanup of euro
zone banks, and clarity is needed to
ensure that lenders really do get a good
scrubbing —and are able to support the
fragile economic recovery. BUSINESS, 20
THE OPULENCE YANUKOVYCH LEFT BEHIND
His compound included a golf course, a
private zoo, classic cars and a restaurant
in the form of apirate ship. PAGE 4
Yahoo steps up advertising efforts
Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo,
is trying to make the company’s ads
more compelling and to integrate them
with the news and information people
seek from the company’s websites and
mobile applications. BUSINESS, 17
President’s allies fired;
Parliament speaker gets
power to act in his stead
Deposed president finds
a tug of war in his
native eastern Ukraine
DAVID MDZINARISHVILI/REUTERS

Yulia V. Tymoshenko in Kiev, Ukraine. She
addressed her audience as ‘‘heroes.’’
JOE KLAMAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A MESSAGE FOR CHINA
A Japanese officer monitoring maneuvers in Southern California last
week as Marines and Japanese soldiers held an annual joint exercise. The forces practiced how
to invade and retake an island captured by hostile forces. WORLD NEWS, 6
2
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

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Find a retrospective of news from 1887 to
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at iht-retrospective.blogs.nytimes.com
See what readers are talking about and
leave your own comments at inyt.com
1914 Storm Drives Cruiser Ashore
A terrific gale raged over the western
Mediterranean during the early hours of

yesterday morning. Considerable dam-
age was caused to shipping, the force of
the hurricane being such that many ves-
sels dragged their anchors, while others
were driven ashore or dashed against
the quays near which they were lying.
The French armored cruiser Waldeck-
Rousseau was driven ashore at Golfe
Juan, near Cannes, off which the French
Mediterranean squadron is anchored.
The cruiser is lying in a sheltered posi-
tion in nearly two fathoms of water.
1939 Machado, Spanish Writer, Dies
COLLIOURE, FRANCE Antonio Machado,
Spanish poet and playwright, died yes-
terday [Feb. 22] in the tiny hotel of this
French village which was his home in
war-enforced exile. He was 64 years old.
A month ago M. Machado, with his fam-
ily, had fled from Barcelona with thou-
sands of other Spanish Loyalists and had
taken refuge here. With his brother, M.
Machado wrote ten plays, including
‘‘Phoenix’’ and ‘‘Juan de Manana.’’ Two
volumes of poetry, ‘‘Soledades’’ and
‘‘Campos de Castilla,’’ won him a Euro-
pean reputation. Throughout the civil
war in Spain he fought with his pen for
the Loyalist government.
vard BusinessSchool professor and the

author of ‘‘Beauty Imagined,’’ a 2010
history of the beauty industry.
Mr. Rechelbacher’s line of luxury
products ultimately included lip gloss,
hair conditioners, mascara, fragrances,
herbal teas, coffee beans, nontoxic
household cleaners, nutritional supple-
ments, jewelry and books, all carried by
25,000 stores and salons worldwide.
He did not originate the idea of organic
cosmetics; they had been manufactured
since the late 1950s by niche firms like
Yves Rocher. But with a few other ‘‘really
good entrepreneurs,’’ Professor Jones
said, including AnitaRoddick, who foun-
ded The Body Shop in Britain in 1976, Mr.
Rechelbacher helped make‘‘natural’’
health and beauty products ‘‘totally cool,
fashionable and expensive’’ and the fast-
est-growing sector of the industry.
After selling Aveda, Mr.Rechelbach-
er started Intelligent Nutrients to pro-
duce cosmetics with organic ingredi-
ents. He grew most of the ingredients on
his 570-acre organic farm in Osceola.
Horst Martin Rechelbacher was born
in Klagenfurt, Austria, on Nov. 11, 1941,
the son of Rudolf and Maria Rechelbach-
er. His father was a shoemaker. His
mother was an herbalist and apothecary

BY PAUL VITELLO
Horst Rechelbacher,an Austrian-born
hairstylist who went on to found Aveda, a
company whose pledge to eliminate toxic
chemicals from its products helped give
rise to a vast market for so-called natural
cosmetics in the United States, died on
Feb. 15 in Osceola, Wis. He was 72.
The cause was complications of pan-
creatic cancer, a family spokesman said.
Mr. Rechelbacher championed cam-
paigns to raise public awareness of po-
tentially cancer-causing ingredients in
beauty supplies.
He started Aveda in 1978, when mak-
ing fragrances and hair-care products
from herbs and other plants was widely
seen as an ephemeral pursuit, doomed
to vanish with the receding tide of the
counterculture. He made batches of his
first product, a clove shampoo, in his kit-
chen sink in Minneapolis.
By 1997,when he sold the company to
Estée Lauder for areported $300 mil-
lion, Mr. Rechelbacher had ‘‘put natural
cosmetics on the map in the United
States,’’ said Geoffrey G. Jones, a Har-
whose work inspired Mr. Rechelbach-
er’s interest in medicinal plants. At 14,
facing diminished opportunities in Aus-

tria after World War II, Horstwas ap-
prenticed to a local hairdresser’s shop.
He provedtalented; by 17, he was
working in a hair salon in Rome. After
that, he movedto salons in London and
then New York. Mr.Rechelbacher was
attending a hairstyling competition in
Minneapolis in 1965 when he wasseri-
ously injured in a car accident. After a
six-month recovery,he decided to settle
there and open a salon. It grew to become
a small chain known as Horst & Friends.
His childhood interest in herbal medi-
cine was rekindled in 1970 by an Indian
guru he had met in Minneapolis when he
attended his lecture on the ancient prac-
tice of Ayurvedic medicine, which uses
herbs and plants. (The name Aveda was
derivedfrom the Sanskrit word Ay-
urveda, which means ‘‘science of life.’’)
The encounter, he told interviewers,
inspired him to spend six months in In-
dia, wherehe learned about the herbs,
oils and plants used in the Ayurvedic
tradition of health care and aromather-
apy —skills he later applied in formulat-
ing his clove shampoos, cherry-bark
hair conditionersand lip glosses of açaí
berry and purple corn.
Mr. Rechelbacher’s signature pitch

was, ‘‘Don’tput anything on your skin
that you wouldn’t put in your mouth.’’
At sales conventions and in videotaped
interviews, he often demonstrated that
principle by drinking hair spray and
other products made by his company.
Hair spray made by some major man-
ufacturerscan contain solvents, glues,
polymers and propellants, said Janet
Nudelman, director of program and
policy at the Breast Cancer Fund, one of
a dozen nonprofit environmental and
health groups that joined forces in 2004
to start the Campaign for Safe Cosmet-
ics. Mr. Rechelbacher helped finance it.
‘‘Horst was in manyways the father
of safe cosmetics,’’ Ms. Nudelman said.
‘‘Hetook action to addressthe problem
long beforemost of us knew there was
anything to even worry about.’’
Since the 1990s, consumer groups
have raised alarms about scant govern-
ment oversight of cosmetics made with
risk-laden ingredients likeformalde-
hyde resin (used as anail strengthener
in polish), camphor (a common ingredi-
ent in aromatherapy products), dibutyl
phthalate (a solvent in nail products)
and parabens (compounds used as pre-
servatives in fragrances).

TheCampaign for Safe Cosmeticsre-
cently helped persuade Johnson & John-
son to remove two ingredients linked to
cancer from its baby shampoo.
‘‘Horst believed so deeply in our
work,’’ the group said in a statement
after his death. ‘‘Much to the chagrin of
his more mainstream peers,’’ it added,
he often handed out copies of the cam-
paign’sliterature at industry meetings.
Its headline: ‘‘Free gift of toxic chemic-
als with every cosmetic purchase.’’
JENN ACKERMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Horst Rechelbacher raised awareness
about potentially toxic beauty supplies.
Tu rmoil in Ukraine
All I’ve read about the Ukrainian people
during their crisis has impressed me. Their
bravery, pride, discipline and focus on their
ideals have been incredible. The fact that
there was no looting, wanton destruction or
further violence after they’d achieved their
goals earns my lasting respect. I wish
these fine people the very best in their new
future as a productive and successful nation.
TOMMY2TONE, EDEN PRAIRIE, MINN.
I am American, and I have lived in Ukraine
for 20 years. Almost everybody I know is
shocked and many appalled by Yulia
Tymoshenko’s being freed, and that her

first action was to go to Independence
Square and say she will run for President.
Yulia Tymoshenko is not a martyr for
freedom. As prime minister, she was as
corrupt as Yanukovych and his team.
Everybody I know agrees that the charges
were political —but she deserved to be in
jail —and should be joined by Yanukovych
and his henchmen. Ukraine needs new
leaders. There are many deserving a
chance.
ANDREW KINSEL, KIEV
I’m afraid that if Tymoshenko gets to
become president, we’ll be here again in
five years talking about protesters in the
streets of Kiev, protesting her corrupt
government.
LOU ANDREWS, PORTLAND, ORE.
This is only the first act. I wish these people
well, living in the midst of such corruption.
But I’m afraid for their lives as this tragedy
continues to spiral. Poor Ukraine, so far
from God and so close to Russia.
L. BRAVERMAN, NEW YORK
Who would have dreamed that this could
have happened during Putin’s PR
extravaganza, the Sochi Olympics? Oh, he
must have a very bad taste in his mouth.
CDC, MASSACHUSETTS
Albert R.

Hunt
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
Any suspicion that the political right,
after suffering a defeat on the debt ceil-
ing and facing threats from business
donors, is losing its clout can be dis-
missed by the fight over the United Na-
tions Convention on the Rights of Per-
sons With Disabilities.
The treaty has been ratified by 141
countries. In the United States, it is
backed by the White House, former
President George H.W. Bush, the ma-
jor disability and veterans’ advocacy
groups and many businesses.
Senate Republicans, however,
already defeated the treaty in 2012, and
it now faces an uphill slog to get the
two-thirds vote needed for ratification.
Right-wing critics —led by former Sen-
ator Rick Santorum, the Heritage Foun-
dation and some home-schoolers —
said that adopting it would allow global
enforcers to determine the treatment of
Americans with disabilities and the
permissibility of home schooling, and
that it would ease ac-
cess to abortion.
In reality, the
treaty is modeled on

the Americans With
Disabilities Act of
1990. It states that
nations must ensure
that people with dis-
abilities get the same
rights and are treated with the same
dignity as all others. It might well pres-
sure other countries to adopt American
standards.
Proponents say American leadership
is important, a demonstration of the soft
power of ideals and values. If passage
emboldens other nations to elevate
their standards, it will make life easier
for Americans with disabilities when
traveling outside the United States. De-
spite strong opposition from Senate Re-
publicans, led by Bob Corker of Tennes-
see, the treaty has a distinctively
Republican flavor. The Americans With
Disabilities Act was the signature do-
mestic achievement of Mr. Bush’s presi-
dency, and the treaty was negotiated
and supported at the United Nations by
his son’s administration. The most im-
portant champion of the treaty is the
former Senate Republican leader Bob
Dole, a disabled World War II veteran;
it is supported by another former party

leader, Bill Frist, a physician. Its chief
backers in the current Senate are John
Barrasso of Wyoming, another physi-
cian who is one of the most conserva-
tive members of the chamber, and John
McCain of Arizona, a disabled veteran.
Veterans’groups backing the treaty
include the American Legion, the Vet-
erans of Foreign Wars, the Iraq and Af-
ghanistan Veterans of America and the
Wounded Warrior Project. It is em-
braced by the United States Chamber
of Commerce and companies like Nike,
Walmart Stores, Coca-Cola and IBM.
The opposition from Mr. Santorum,
the Heritage Foundation, a slice of the
home-schooling movement and a few
right-wing Catholic organizations would
seem a mismatch. Yet these groups are
vocal, and they capitalize on many Re-
publicans’fears of challenges from the
right. The disabilities community is not
that well organized, nor does it rank
among the big campaign contributors.
Mr. Corker says his opposition is
based solely on the dangers the treaty
would pose to national sovereignty and
the threat that it would supersede
United States law and states’ rights. He
cites a 1920 Supreme Court ruling on a

migratory-bird treaty as precedent.
In the Senate, supporters are writing
in ‘‘reservations, declarations and un-
derstandings,’ ’ attesting that nothing in
the treaty would affect current law. This
is a common practice, The Economist
magazine notes, for treaties ratified by
the United States and other countries.
It makes the Corker argument spe-
cious, says Richard L. Thornburgh,
who was attorney general during
George H.W. Bush’s administration
and is an advocate of the treaty.
‘‘These reservations attached to a
treaty are part of the treaty,’’ he said.
‘‘There is nothing in this treaty that
would allow what critics allege.’’
Mr. Dole says that when he ran the
Senate, ratification ‘‘would have
passed by voice vote.’’ He remains op-
timistic that it will pass, though he says
he is worried because ‘‘a few senators
aren’t returning my calls.’’
This astounds Tim Shriver, the chair-
man of the Special Olympics. ‘‘What val-
ues here do these opponents not believe
in?’’ he asked. ‘‘This treaty brings to the
table a place where America is the shin-
ing light on the hill.’’ (BLOOMBERG VIEW)
EMAIL:

Right sets
its sights on
a U.N. treaty
IN OUR PAGES
IN YOUR WORDS
Horst Rechelbacher, 72; founded natural cosmetics company
Cheering for the home team
OBITUARY
In reality,
the treaty is
based on the
Americans
With Disabil-
ities Act.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
DONNING THE COLORS —AND FUR Olympic
fans traveled to the Sochi Games from all
over Russia. A few wore bear costumes and
capes —as much for the television cameras
as for the tourists —and they were usually
sporting the national colors.
sochi2014.nytimes.com/photos
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
|
3
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

World News
middle east europe
ANTAKYA, TURKEY

BY BEN HUBBARD
AND KARAM SHOUMALI
It appeared to be a huge step forward
for the scattered rebel groups fighting
to topple President Bashar al-Assad of
Syria: the creation of a central body of
top insurgent commanders who would
coordinate military campaigns, direct
foreign support and serveas a unifying
force for their diverse movement.
But 14 months after its creation, the
body,the Supreme Military Council, is
in disarray.Islamist groups have seized
its weapons storerooms, its members
have stolen or sold its supplies, and one
commander it armed and equipped has
publicly joined an offshoot of Al Qaeda.
The council’s fulldysfunction spilled
into public view recently when a group of
its members decided at a secret meeting
to remove its chief of staff, Gen. Salim Id-
ris, and put another man in his place.
While the opposition’s exiled leader-
ship, the Syrian National Coalition,
quickly congratulated the new leader,
the move baffled manyin the opposi-
tion, including the new leader himself,
who had not even known he wasinthe
running for the top job.
‘‘My friend called and told me, ‘Con-

gratulations,’ ’’ the new leader, Brig.
Gen. Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir, said in an in-
terview after his appointment. ‘‘I asked
him, ‘Good news?’ He said to turn on
the television.’’
‘‘I swear to God, no one wasin touch
with me,’’ he added. ‘‘I knew nothing
about it.’’
Thechaos within the opposition coun-
cil reflects the wider mistrust and intern-
al rivalries between Syria’s rebels and
their powerful foreign backersthat have
consistently undermined their ability to
form a united front against Mr. Assad.
While rebels acrossSyria sharethe
goal of regime change and often cooper-
ate in battle, recent interviews with
nearly 20 rebel commanders, fighters,
activists and logisticsofficers paint a
picture of a movement handicapped by
infighting, with many players accusing
their colleagues of choosing the expan-
sion of their ownpower over the fight
against the government.
The new chaos in the rebel leadership
comes as internationally backed talks
aimed at ending the war have failed to
makeprogress and as the Obama ad-
ministration searches for ways to put
more pressure on Mr. Assad.

Thedisorder within the council, the
umbrella group for moderate, Western-
backed rebels, leaves the United States
and its allies with one fewer reliable
partner to work with to try to affect the
course of the war.
Since its formation in December 2012,
the Supreme Military Council has never
liveduptoits name. Although it served
as a conduit for foreign military support
flowing into Syria, it never received
enough aid to fully equip its brigades.
This left fighting groups scrambling for
support and developing independent
networks of wealthySyrians or Persian
Gulf patrons, granting them indepen-
dence from the council’s leadership.
Throughout the war, the Syrian gov-
ernment has called the rebel movement
a terrorist plot backed by foreign
powers. The Supreme Military Coun-
cil’s operations lend some credence to
this argument. Qatar and Saudi Arabia,
the uprising’s two largest backers,
pushed for the body’s creation and
provided most of its support. And Tur-
keyhas allowedfighters and regular
weapons shipments to cross its south-
ern border.
But manyrebels said foreign support

has often exacerbated tensions between
groups. Persian Gulf states earmarked
portions of each shipment for their pre-
ferred brigades, making others jealous
and giving the council little control.
The Supreme Military Council ‘‘be-
came nothing more than astoreroom,’’
said Col. Ziad Obeid, acouncil member
who helped receive foreign support. ‘‘It
wasadistribution point, not amilitary
institution operating on its own.’’
As the council failed to turn the tide
against Mr. Assad, many rebels blamed
General Idris, accusing him of failing to
prevent rebel losses and the rise of
groups with links to Al Qaeda.
Ibrahim al-Hamwe,an arms coordi-
nator for the Syrian Muslim Brother-
hood, said, ‘‘There was no battle you
could point to and say, ‘The S.M.C. did
this ,’ or aforce you could saywas fun-
ded by the S.M.C.’’
Others accused the group’s members
of distributing arms to their friends or
selling them.
Safi al-Safi, who leads arebel brigade
near Hama, said he had bought 22,000
bullets and 80 assault rifles from aSu-
preme Military Council member and
sold them for a profit of more than

$20,000. ‘‘How else wasIsupposed to
feed my men?’’ he said.
Even prominent council members
sometimes helped themselves to its
arms. Last summer, fightersloyal to
Jamal Maarouf,arebel commander
based in Idlib, seized ashipment of
weapons from the council’s storehouses
on the Turkish border,according to
people present at the time. While Mr.
Maarouf did not respond to requests for
comment, one of his allies, Mohammed
Zaatar, confirmed the account.
Notable defections have also marred
the council’s image. Late last year, Sad-
dam al-Jamal, acommander who had
received arms from the group, publicly
announced that he had joined the Islam-
ic State in Iraq and Syria, an offshoot of
Al Qaeda.
General Idris’s aides declined to
make him available for an interview, but
Col. Fateh Hassoun, his deputy, ac-
knowledged the criticisms.
‘‘All of that talk is 100 percent true,’’
he said. ‘‘The S.M.C. didn’t give the
fighters what they needed because it
never got enough support.’’
Fornow, the futureof the Supreme
Military Council remains unclear.

Last week, a group of its members
met while General Idris was abroad and
made the announcement that he had
been replaced, citing the ‘‘dysfunction
that the S.M.C. has gone through in re-
cent months.’’ General Idris called the
move ‘‘illegal’’ and a ‘‘coup .’ ’
Themove wasbacked by Ahmed al-
Jarba, the president of the Syrian Na-
tional Coalition, and his supporters
have said it willpave the wayfor are-
structuring of the council to make it
more effective.
After his appointment to replace Gen-
eral Idris, General Bashir said he would
cooperate with anyone fighting to
topple the regime. But he had no con-
crete plans that might turn the council’s
fate around.
‘‘We’ll do what we can,’’ he said, ‘‘and
we’ll talk to the fighterson the ground
and, Godwilling, we’ll live up to our re-
spon s ibilit i es.’’
Forensics help Naples battle sidewalk nuisance
NAPLES, ITALY
BY JIM YARDLEY
Problems? Yes, conceded Tommaso
Sodano, the vice mayor here, Naples
has problems. Debts have reportedly
topped $2 billion. Many streets are

pocked with potholes. The police de-
partment is underfinanced, organized
crime operates like ashadow state, and
illegal dumps are scattered around
what is still a grittily beautiful port city.
And then thereiswhat dogs leave be-
hind on the sidewalks.
Naples has no shortage of that, either.
Yet to the surprise of some people, in-
cluding morethan afew Neapolitans,
the municipal administration is trying
to stakeout a reputation as acivic inno-
vator by positioning Naples at the cut-
ting edge of dog-waste eradication. By
taking DNA samples. Of dogs.
‘‘I knowsome people find it funny,’’
Mr. Sodano said, smiling, ‘‘that with all
the problems the city has, we would fo-
cus on dog poop. I know that.’’
Well, yes, maybe it is a bit funny. But
another thing also appearstobetrue:
Forthe Neapolitans who navigate the
city’s sidewalks,the initiative is not un-
welcome. In the affluent neighborhood
of Vomero, which is serving as a testing
ground for the cleanup campaign, many
residents are quite pleased, if surprised,
that it is happening in Naples.
‘‘This seems more German or Finnish
than Italian,’’ said Virpi Sihvonen, a

Finn who movedto Naples in the late
1980s after marrying a local man. In the
mornings, Ms. Sihvonen said, she often
watches a man release his three dogs in-
to the streets to run offto do their busi-
ness. He whistles, the dogs return, and
their waste is left behind. ‘‘He’s not the
only one,’’ she added.
The problem is as universal as cock-
roaches, and seemingly as unsolvable.
Urban dog ownership demands a bal-
ance of love and duty, and not everyone
is dutiful about cleaning up after a walk.
Cities have tried everything from the
postal service (a Spanish mayormailed
the stuffback to dog owners) to sham-
ing (some cities have publicized the
names of offending owners) to bribery
(some parks in Mexico City offered free
Wi-Fi in exchange for bags of waste).
Naples has opted for science and tech-
nology. The idea is that every dog in the
city will be given a blood test for DNA
profiling to create a database of dogs
and owners. When an offending pile is
discovered, it will be scraped up and
subjected to DNA testing. If a match is
made in the database, the owner will
face a fine of up to 500 euros, about $685.
The DNAinitiative might seem a tad

ambitious for Naples, acitythat
struggles to collect the garbage. Apart-
ment complexes and condo associations
across the United States are increas-
ingly using similar programs, but
Naples represents amuch bigger ca-
nine population, with estimates of more
than 80,000 dogs in the city.
Mr. Sodano and other city employees
are confident that the program will
work, noting that a similar campaign
has been successful on the nearby re-
sort island of Capri. In Naples, the cam-
paign so far is limited to Vomero and the
adjacent neighborhood of Arenella, and
costs more than $27,000. Teams of police
officers and health workers started joint
patrols in January to spread awareness
of the program and hand out a few fines.
At the city’sveterinary hospital, techni-
cians have taken blood samples from
about 200 dogs, manyof them accom-
panied by owners who were appalled by
the problem.
One drizzly morning, Capt. Enrico Del
Gaudio of the Municipal Police led a
patrol down Via Luca Giordano, a major
commercial street in Vomero, where
several residents were walking their
dogs before work. Dressed undercover

in jeans and hiking boots for the patrol,
Captain Del Gaudio is diplomatic —he
describes dog waste as ‘‘presences’’ —
and finds nothing silly about the cam-
paign. At his children’s school, he is
known as the dog-waste cop.
‘‘I’m a hero,’’ he said, laughing.
Captain Del Gaudio was especially
proud of the condition of Via Luca Giord-
ano, which wasunscathed for blocks.
Even though the city is stillbuilding its
DNAdatabase and has yetto start test-
ing what it finds, he said, the program is
already influencing public behavior.
‘‘Now, when I walk the streets, the
presences have greatly diminished,’’
Captain Del Gaudio said. ‘‘Before, it was
like an obstacle course. Every day, a
child would walk into school with a little
gift under her shoe.’’
Daniele Minichini, an official with an
independent police union, is not amused
by this use of policing resources, espe-
cially in a citythat is the headquarters
of the Camorra mafia. For two decades,
Officer Minichini has argued that
money should be spent on better equip-
ment or even uniforms for officers. He
said Naples must improve the sewage
system, the roads and other infrastruc-

ture —not focus on what dogs leave be-
hind. He also predicted that costs would
rise sharply once the program was ex-
panded to other parts of the city.
‘‘When you have a house to restore,
do youfirst build a parquet floor?’’ he
asked. ‘‘Or do you repair the walls and
the windows?’’
Mr. Sodano, the vice mayor, said the
concerns about finances and administra-
tive focus were understandable but mis-
placed. He said city officials were already
trying to claw out of debt and address the
city’s major problems. But Mr. Sodano
said the cleanup enforcement program
wasachance to demonstrate municipal
problem solving and to remind citizens
that they have responsibilities, too.
‘‘The main goal is respect for the
rule s ,’’ he said. Nor, he added, should
the city’shuge problems preclude
Naples from doing the smallthings that
keep it beautiful.
‘‘Governing Naples,’’ he said, ‘‘cer-
tainly requires a sparkle of madness.’’
Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.
Syrian rebels backed
by West face disarray
Renzi, taking
office, vows

a stable Italy
ROME
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Matteo Renzi was sworn in over the
weekend as Italy’s youngest prime min-
ister, and he promised a new era of
stable government after engineering
the removal of Enrico Letta, afellow
Democratic Party member he deemed
too timid to revive the country.
In aTwitter message before being
sworn in on Saturday, Mr. Renzi, 39, said
accomplishing his goals would be tough,
but ‘‘we’ll do it.’’
The main challenge for Mr. Renzi’s
broad coalition is the ailing economy,
which is just beginning to show signs of
rebounding after several yearsofstag-
nation. Youth unemployment is hover-
ing around 40 percent. Mr. Renzi
resigned as the mayorof Florence this
month to take up his firstnational gov-
ernment job.
He has vowed to push electoral
changes through Parliament in hopes of
ending chronic political instability by
reducing the influence of Italy’s tiny
parties.
GIANNI CIPRIANO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The cutting edge of dog-waste eradication:

a‘‘vet card’’ that stores a dog’s DNA.
Replacement of general
underscores Supreme
Military Council’s chaos
The council’s disorder leaves
Washington and its allies with
one fewer reliable partner
in confronting Damascus.
cartier.com
Haute Joaillerie ring,L’Odyssée de Cartier
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
4
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014

her supporters are eager to build a cam-
paign.
In a sign of her still formidable politic-
al influence, Ms.Tymoshenko spoke by
telephone on Sunday with the German
chancellor, Angela Merkel, as well as
with Stefan Fule, a top European Union
official, and with Senators John McCain,
Republican of Arizona, RichardJ.
Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Chris-
topher S. Murphy, Democrat of Con-
necticut. Ms. Tymoshenko also met with
ambassadors from the United States
and European Union countries.
In Kiev, Ms.Tymoshenko received an

enthusiastic but not overly exuberant
reception from the crowd in Indepen-
dence Square. The response demon-
strated her continued popularity and
status as asymbol of opposition to Mr.
Yanukovych but also underscored the
apprehension that many Ukrainians
feel toward politicians deeply connect-
ed to a government with along history
of corruption and mismanagement.
Mr. Yanukovych, meanwhile, whose
whereabouts remained unknown, ap-
peared to be losing the support of even
his former allies. On Sunday, his Party
of Regions, which days ago enjoyed a
majority in Parliament, released a state-
ment blaming him for the recent vio-
lence.
In the statement, the Party of Regions
said it strongly condemned what it
called ‘‘criminal decrees,’’ which result-
ed in ‘‘human casualties, emptied cof-
fers, huge debts and shame in the eyes
of the Ukrainian people and the whole
world.’’
‘‘All attempts to convince the presi-
dent to act differently were ignored,’’
the statement said. ‘‘Theparty was vir-
tually the hostage of one corrupt fam-
ily.’’

While Parliament has dismissed a
number of senior officials, the defense
minister, Pavlo Lebedev, told Ukraine’s
Channel 24 that he intended to remain in
his post, and the military issued state-
ments that seemed to offer assurance
that no steps would be taken to interfere
with the provisional government.
Astatement posted on the Defense
Ministry website on Saturday, after Mr.
Yanukovych’s departure, and attributed
to the ministry and the military, reaf-
firmed the military’s commitment to the
Constitution and expressed sorrow over
the deaths in Kiev last week.
‘‘Please be assured that the Armed
Forces of Ukraine cannot and will not be
involved in any political conflict,’’ the
statement said.
It is not yetclear whether Ukrainians
in the southern and eastern regions of
the country, which host the bulk of the
country’s industrial infrastructureas
well as the heaviest concentration of
pro-Russian sentiment, would resist the
change of government in Kiev.Insever-
al cities, including Donetsk and
Kharkiv, pro-Russian demonstrators
took to the streets on Sunday, and there
have been scattered reports of clashes

between pro-Russian Ukrainians and
supporters of the protests in Kiev.
Several lawmakers expressed rising
alarm over Ukraine’s perilous economic
situation. The Russian government in
December had come to Mr. Ya-
nukovych’s rescue with a$15 billion
bailout and an offer of cheaper prices on
natural gas.
A $2 billion installment of that aid was
canceled as part of the deal reached on
Friday between Mr. Yanukovychand
opposition leaders. Western officials
have said they hope to offer assistance,
but it is unclear how quickly that help
might arrive.
Among the reasons Mr.Yanukovych
turned away from signing political and
trade accords with Europe in November
was his unwillingness to carry out pain-
ful austerity measures and other re-
forms that had been demanded by the
International Monetary Fund in ex-
change for a large assistance package.
On Sunday, the Fund’s managing di-
rector,Christine Lagarde, said that
there was concern about the political in-
stability in Ukraine and that the fund
could only provide assistance in re-
sponse to a formal request.

Speaking at the end of a meeting of
the Group of 20 finance ministers and
central bank governorsin Sydney, Aus-
tralia, Ms.Lagarde said, ‘‘If the Ukrain-
ian authorities were to ask for I.M.F.
support, whether it is policy advice,
whether it is financial support together
with economic reform discussions, we
would be ready to do that.’’
But, she said, ‘‘We need to have some-
body to talk to because any discussion
takes two.’ ’
Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s na-
tional security adviser, said Sunday that
the United States wasprepared to work
with the European Union and the Inter-
national Monetary Fund, as well as Rus-
sia, to shore up Ukraine’s nascent gov-
ernment. Speaking on the NBC News
program ‘‘Meet the Press,’’ Ms. Rice
Ukraine lawmakers move fast to cement power
UKRAINE, FROM PAGE 1
said that the United States hoped to see
constitutional change and democratic
elections in Ukraine ‘‘in very short or-
der,’’ and she added that it ‘‘would be a
grave mistake’’ for Russia to interfere
militarily.
‘‘It’s not in the interests of Ukraine or
of Russia or of Europe or of the United

States to see the country split,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s in nobody’s interest to see violence
return.’’
Oksana Lyachynska contributed report-
ing from Kiev, Michelle Innis from
Sydney and Brian Knowlton from Wash-
ington.
and getting into one of two armor-plated
vehicles that drew up to the craft.
Rumors that the president, who fled
Kiev overnight Friday, wasin a local
dacha also appeared untrue, said
Oleksiy Matsuka, editor in chief of the
newspaper Donetskiye Novosti.
While this region, a bastion of support
for his pro-Russian policies, might be a
good place to hide, it still seemed un-
likely that the president could use the
area as a rallying point.
The exact stance of the armyand se-
curityforces is murky.But influential
politicians were turning away from Mr.
Yanukovych. Thehead of his party’s
parliamentary faction denounced mis-
takes. The mayorof Kharkiv, Ukraine’s
second city, called him history, accord-
ing to the Interfax news agency.
A senior Donetsk member of the pres-
ident’s Partyof Regions brokepublicly
with Mr. Yanukovych, while Donetsk’s

mayor, Alexander Lukyanchenko, a Ya-
nukovychallywho has railed against
‘‘fascists’’ and even ‘‘Nazis’’ battling ri-
ot police in Independence Squarein
Kiev, put on his own, very east Euro-
pean display of strength.
Striking anote of abenign cityfather,
the mayorappeared near amonument
to the poet Taras Shevchenko as crowds
dispersed, plunging in to shake hands,
reassureaman waiting yearsfor anew
apartment that the problems would be
solved and warning against abreakup
of Ukraine in the pattern of Yugoslavia
in the 1990s.
It wasthe final act in an elaborate
two-hour drama, carefully managed by
the police, that included the twin rallies.
First, about 300 activists gathered for
awreath-laying ceremony at noon at
the memorial to Shevchenko, one of
Ukraine’s most reveredheroes. In a
statement, they emphasized that they
would neither try to storm administra-
tive offices, as in Kiev, nor tear down
other memorials.
The Ukrainian media have reported
16 Lenin statues have been torn down
across the center and east of the coun-
try in recent days, though on Sundayin

this coal-mining town a Communist flag
flew defiantly over a bust of Lenin.
Just an hour later,the second scene
unfolded. Hundreds of men massed on a
sidewalk, separated from the memorial
crowd by various police units, from
black-clad riot units to militia in navy
uniforms.
The taunting crowd chanted ‘‘glory’’
—not to the ‘‘heroes of Maidan’’ as the
Kiev masses do but to the Berkut, the
elite police units widely held respon-
sible for violence against Kiev demon-
strators.
After the police separated the groups,
some of the rowdy young men ran down
the street to ‘‘protect’’ the monument of
Lenin.
Vsevolod Volosnoi, a 53-year-old doc-
tor watching the scene with his wife,
Svetlana, a nurse, mirrored this general
confusion, which clouds so much of
Ukraine’s politics.
On the one hand, he assured areport-
er, ‘‘We want to live in a civilized place,
with the leadersof the democratic
movement of all the world.’’ But ‘‘not all
that came from Kiev is the voice of the
peop l e,’’ he added.
And for sure, he said, in this heavily

Russian-speaking region adjoining Rus-
sia, one cannot be deprived of one’s own
language.
That wasan allusion to the move
already voted by Parliament in Kiev to
cancel the official status of the Russian
language.
Leonid Slutsky,chairman of the Rus-
sian Parliament’s committee on dealing
with former Soviet lands, told Interfax:
‘‘They are trying in every possible way
to tear Ukraine away from Russia,’’
while counseling caution —for now.
Moves to deprive various peoples of
their languages over centuries of shift-
ing government in Eastern Europe have
always sparked the fiercest of disputes
—as, say, in the Balkans in the 1990s.
In asign that Ukraine’s political tur-
bulence is dividing even families, a well-
dressed doctor,who identified herself
only as Yelena, confided that her hus-
band and mother-in-lawwere strongly
opposed to her attendance at the pro-de-
mocracy protests here, muted as they
arecompared with those in Kiev.She
hovered nervously on the edge Sunday.
Twofriends, both teachers, and, like
her,in their 40s, came up and joked.
‘‘Fascism won’t advance!’’ chanted

their opponents. ‘‘I ask you,’’ said one of
the trio, a teacher,also named Yelena,
and wrapped in a lilac parka. ‘‘A re we
three fascists?’’
URIEL SINAI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Supporters of Viktor F. Yanukovych rallying on Sunday in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.
DONETSK, FROM PAGE 1
For deposed leader, a home region but not a rallying point
Ukrainians take stock of the opulence that a president left behind
SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Near Kiev, the golf course at the former residence of Viktor F. Yanukovych was considered open to the public over the weekend.
KIEV, UKRAINE
BY ANDREW E. KRAMER
An eerie calm and a light mist shrouded
President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s
sprawling residential compound just
outside the capital overthe weekend as
street fightersfrom the center of Kiev
made their way inside, gingerly passing
awrought-iron gate and cautioning one
another about booby traps and snipers.
They found neither on Saturday morn-
ing but discovered instead a world just as
surreal as the charred wasteland of bar-
ricades and debris on the central plaza
that they have occupied for months. It
wasavistaof bizarreand whimsical at-
tractions on a grand scale, a panorama of
waste and inexplicable taste.
They sawabout ahalf-dozen large

residences of various styles, a private
zoo with rare breeds of goats, a coop for
pheasants from Asia, agolf course, a
garage filled with classic cars and a
private restaurant in the form of a pirate
ship, with the name ‘‘Galleon’’ on its
bow and stern.
One man in the 31st Lviv Hundred, the
small band of antigovernment militants
that took control of the compound, hung
aUkrainian flag on alamp post. Afew
dozen others walked about, seemingly
dazed by what washappening.Some
raised their clubs, pipes and bats into
the air and yelled, ‘‘Glory to Ukraine!’’
and ‘‘Glory to its heroes!’’
Whether it was the toppling of Ferdin-
and Marcos of the Philippines or of Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafiof Libya,the
breaching of the presidential palace
gates is amilestone of a revolution. But
Kiev on Saturday was unusual in one
sense. Therewas no sacking. Theoppo-
sition unit that took control of the presi-
dent’s complex, called Mezhigorye, kept
it intact, at least for now. On Saturday the
president fled and the presidential guard
melted away.But members of the Lviv
Hundred, who had repeatedly confron-
ted Mr. Yanukovych’s security forces on

the streets, posted guards around his
residential compound and prevented
looting even as swarms of gawking Kiev
residents strolled through its grounds.
The reason, the street fighters said,
was to preserve evidence of the deposed
leader’s lavish lifestyle for his prosecu-
tion. One of the Lviv militants walked
onto agazebo ringed with plaster urns,
removed his green military helmet and
gazed out at the park and the Dnieper
River. Two others, in fetid, soot-
smeared clothing from the squareand
carrying baseball bats, walked into an
outbuilding,sat in chairswith plush
blue and gold upholstery, pulled large
yellow drinking glasses from a cabinet
and began to photograph one another
on their cellphones as if raising toasts.
‘‘We hoped for this but didn’t expect
it,’’ said one, Roman Dakus. Mr.Dakus
said he had been in Kiev at Indepen-
dence Square, or Maidan as it is known
here, off and on for three months. ‘‘It was
very,very difficult to stay on the square
in the cold at night. But we warmed one
another with our hearts and our souls.
He added: ‘‘People really changed
their mind-set because of these events.
Before, people thought, ‘Nothing really

depends on me.’They preferred to say
that and to think like that. But after this
situation, they think differently. They
believeintheir struggle when they are
all together.’’
Within a short time, a crowd gathered
outside the gates. The street fighters
threw them open, and Ukrainians, who
were arriving by the thousands by early
afternoon, flowed into the compound.
‘‘What a nightmare,’’ one man said in
disgust, looking at the dining room of
Mr. Yanukovych’spirate ship, moored
at the river bank, all oak and brass trim.
Thecomplex wasonce a modest gov-
ernment site that Mr. Yanukovych
turned into a private residence and then
expanded, saying acquaintances had
built or paid for manyamenities. Previ-
ous Ukrainian presidents had not lived
at the residence.
The street fighters decided not to
open the buildings, saying they would
wait for prosecutors and experts on
valuable art to arrive and assess their
contents.
Autocrats seem to have apropensity
for private zoos, and Mr. Yanukovych’s
palace complex contained multiple en-
closures for exotic animals. Rare pheas-

ants with magnificent, iridescent red
tails scratched about in their cages,
nervous from the crowds walking past
and snapping pictures. The labels on the
cages identified them as ‘‘Diamond
pheasant’’ and ‘‘Japanese long-tailed
phea s ant.’’ Other cages held dogs, and
therewere pens for goats and what ap-
peared to be rare breeds of pigs.
The street fighters also found a heap
of ash from burned documents, and
used araft to fish othersfrom where
they had been thrown into the river, lay-
ing them out carefully to dry.
The complex extended well over a
mile along the riverand wasimmacu-
lately landscaped with hedges, lawns
and birch trees, and a golf course of
graceful swales, sand traps and pools of
crystalline water. Even as the crowds
grew, there was no sign of looting.
By evening, avast traffic jam formed
on the highway from the capital, and
people walked along the road’s shoulder
to see the open palace. Thegrounds
filled with Ukrainians who said they
were awed by what they saw. ‘‘I’ve nev-
er seen luxury like this,’’ one man said.
Speaking of Mr. Yanukovych, Ihor
Knyazov, acook, said: ‘‘He couldn’t

stand up and tell the people, ‘I give up.’
So he just ran away, the coward.’ ’
Svetlana Gorbenkova, a real estate
agent walking about, said: ‘‘It’s beauti-
ful here. It’s so peaceful. But why all this
for just one person? This wasall stolen
from us. It’s obvious nowhow much he
stole. Why didn’t he give anything to the
people? When he wasrunning for pres-
ident, one of his slogans was, ‘I will
listen to every one of you.’But he didn’t
listen to any of us.’’
‘‘We want to live in a civilized
place, with the leaders of the
democratic movement of all
the world.’’
SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Bouquets and candles adorned barricades in Kiev, Ukraine, on Sunday, a day after the president’s departure capped three months of protests and a week of deadly violence in the capital.
world news europe
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
|
5
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

asia americas world news
tional average; since 1995, the number
of suicides by India’s farmers has
passed 290,000, according to the nation-
al crime records bureau, though the sta-
tistics do not specify the reason for the

act.
India’s small farmers, once the coun-
try’s economic backbone and most reli-
able vote bank, are increasingly being
left behind. With global competition and
rising costs cutting into their lean
profits, their ranks aredwindling, as is
their contribution to the gross domestic
product. If rural votersonce made their
plight into front-page news around elec-
tion time, this year the large parties are
jockeying for the votes of the urban
middle class, and the farmers’ voices
are all but silent.
Even death is astopgap solution,
when farmerslike Mr.Reddy take their
own lives, their debts pass from hus-
band to widow, from father to children.
Ms. Musukula is now trying to scrape a
living from the four acres that defeated
her husband. Around her,she sees a
country transformed by economic
growth, full of opportunities to break
out of poverty, if only her son or daugh-
ter could grasp one.
But the trap that closed on her hus-
band is tightening around her.Like
nearly every one of herneighbors, she is
locked into a bond with village money
lenders —an intimate bond, and some-

times amenacing one. No sooner did
they cut her husband’s body down than
one of them was in her house, threaten-
ing to block the cremation unlessshe
paid.
Herappeals to officials for help have
been met with indifference. Lately, her
fear has been getting the better of her.
‘‘Sure, they will pay, otherwise it
would be as if someone has broken into
our house and stolen our money,’’ said
Sudhakar Ravula, a slight man who lives
in a village about two miles away. He in-
troduces himself as a fisherman, but, un-
der questioning, fishes out apair of gold-
rimmed reading glasses and unfolds a
promissory note signed by Veera Reddy.
Four yearsago, he said, he used bor-
rowed money to lend Mr. Reddy $800, at
an annual interestrate of 24percent. Re-
minded of Mr.Reddy’s suicide, Mr.
Ravula looked impatient. ‘‘I always feel
sad for the man,’’ he said, ‘‘but commit-
ting suicide is not the right way to go
about it.’’
Stories of farmers committing suicide
may prompt shudders in gatherings of
sociologists, but the local officials have
heardit allbefore. When market re-
forms were introduced in 1991, the state

scaled down subsidies and import barri-
ers fell, thrusting smallfarmers into an
unforgiving global market. Farmers
took on new risks, switching to commer-
cial crops and expensive,genetically
modified seeds, paying moreto educate
their children in the hopes they would
land government jobs.
They found themselves locked in a
white-knuckle gamble, juggling ever-
larger loans at exorbitant interest rates,
alwayshoping a bumper harvest would
allowthem to clear their debts, so they
could take out new ones. This pattern
has left a trail of human wreckage.
On a recent afternoon, Ms. Musukula
was one of 18 women waiting outside a
pale-green government building.
Nearly every woman carried a police re-
port, identifying debt as the cause of a
farmer’s suicide —afact that should en-
title them to a one-time payment of
150,000 rupees, to be split between the
money lenders and the bereaved family,
pledged by the state government
around election time in 2004.
To receive it, they needed adesigna-
tion from the district revenue officer.
They had come to see one of the officer’s
subordinates, a local revenue officer

who might act as a gatekeeper.
They crowded into theback of his office
and tookagood look at him:P. Bhiksham,
a middle-aged man in rimless glasses, a
green toweltucked behind his back to
soak up sweat. Mr. Bhiksham listened to
two women recite the details of their hus-
bands’ deaths, and then began to speak.
Thereal problem, he said, wasthat their
husbands drank too much.
‘‘InIndia we have alot of problems,
and we have to live with them,’’ he
replied. ‘‘You have problems, and you
have to live with them. Drinking is a ma-
jor problem for most of the families. One
has to learn to run the family with
whatever resources one has.’’ He went
on to say that he had never in his career
encountered a genuine case of farmer
suicide. ‘‘We allhavefreedom to choose
our own livelihoods,’’ he said, primly,
‘‘and the land here is fertile.’’
Thewomen listened silently and filed
out. They were disappointed by what
Mr. Bhiksham had said, but not sur-
prised. Many local officials blame farm-
ers for mismanaging their finances.
‘‘The family will always tell youit’sa
farmer suicide,’’ said G. Satyanarayana,
the chief inspector at the precinct that

had registered Veera Reddy’s suicide in
2012. After glancing through the case
file, he said Mr. Reddy had been undone
by ‘‘his bad habits,’’ by which he meant
drinking. The real problem, he said, was
that local farmers were overspending
on their children’s education.
‘‘Some of the farmersare getting un-
reasonably aspirational,’’ he said.
‘‘These are small farmers from villages,
but they don’t send their kids to govern-
ment schools, but to private schools.
They are going for false prestige, they
don’t really take note of their own finan-
cial status. The mother,instead of going
out to the fields at 5 a.m., she is waiting
for the school bus at 9 a.m.’’
As for money lendersharassing wid-
ows after a suicide, he said the police
had never received anyreports of this
happening, so were powerless to take
anyaction. Probably,he said, villagers
do not go to police about money lenders
because they are afraid they will need a
loan in the future.
‘‘Nobody approaches the police,’’ he
said. ‘‘You alwayswish they would
come and complain.’’
Latha Musukula is beginning to be
undone by fear. On the morning when

the money lenders had come to her
doorstep, she tried to do what her hus-
band had always done —chitchat, put
them off for a month or two. But then
one of the money lendersdescribed the
house he planned to build on Ms.
Musukula’s land, and addressed her as
‘‘whore.’’
Ms.Musukula wassothrown offbal-
ance that she repeated the wordsthe
money lender asked her to say, prom-
ising to repaythe whole amount by
April. She had no idea how she was go-
ing to do it.
Selling the farmland, as Mr. Ravula is
urging, would leave the family without a
source ofincome,and force her toreturn
penniless to her brother’s household.
Because they cannotrepay their loans,
Ms.Musukula said, only one family in
the village is willing to talk to them.
Fingers of fear climb up her neck as
she walkstoher cornfields in the morn-
ing.The corn is shriveling for lack of wa-
ter, she can see that,and one of thefarm’s
two generatorswasjust disconnected for
nonpayment. When she went to the doc-
tor the other day, she said, he ‘‘told me
that my nerves may break soon.’’
Something similar happened in the

months beforeher husband killed him-
self,when he suddenly seemed
frightened to leave the house. Always a
drinker and an expansive host, he
seemed to retreat into himself.
‘‘He told me, ‘I am going to die. I don’t
know how you are going to take care of
the loans, because Iam going to die,’’’
she recalled. A week before he killed
himself, he said, ‘‘How will you manage
things if I die? Will you cry a lot? You’ll
be harassed by everyone.’’
We’ll scrape by, she told him then. A
couple of good harvests and we can pay
them all off.
These days it is she who disappears
into silences, and her son and daughter
who watch from a distance, uncertain of
the exact amount that the family owes.
Ms. Musukula tries to shield them from
this information, telling them to focus
on their studies, but Srilekha is 18, and
she knows. ‘‘Mommy hopes to delay the
loans and repay what we make from the
farm, but we suffer losses almost every
year,’’ she said. ‘‘My brother and I wish
that the money lenderswould wait until
we finish school and get ajob, but it is
not possible.’’
She added: ‘‘Themoney lenders will

not stop. What has to happen, will hap-
pen.’’
Harsha Vadlamani contributed report-
ing from Hyderabad, India.
ANDREA BRUCE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Anitha Amgoth, center, at the funeral in Gundenga, India, of her husband, who committed suicide. A market overhaul in the 1990s reduced subsidies and increased risk for small farmers.
A legacy of debt after farmers’ suicides
INDIA, FROM PAGE 1
DIA
INDIA
IN
CHINA
PAKISTAN
A
AN
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AN
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BayofBengal
DHRA
DH
ANDHR
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RADESH
PRA
ikun
Bollikun
unta
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Bolliku

800 km
Mexicans capture
No. 1 cartel chief
MEXICO CITY
BY RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
AND GINGER THOMPSON
Just before 7 a.m., dozens of soldiers and
police officers descended on a con-
dominium towerin Mazatlán, Mexico, a
beach resort known as much as a
hangout for drug traffickersasfor its
seafood and surf.
The forces were following yet another
tip about the whereabouts of one of the
world’s most wanted drug kingpins,
Joaquín Guzmán Loera—known as El
Chapo, or ‘‘Shorty’’ — who had eluded
such raids for 13 years since escaping
from prison in a laundry cart. With an
army of guards and lethally enforced
loyalty, he reigned over a worldwide,
multibillion-dollar drug empire that
supplied much of the illicit cocaine and
marijuana to the United States despite a
widespread, yearslong manhunt by
American and Mexican forces.
This time, however, Mr. Guzmán, be-
lieved to be in his mid-50s, did not slip
out adoor, disappear into the famed
mountains around his home in north-

western Mexico, or prove to be absent,
as he had in so manyprevious attempts
to apprehend him.He apparently had no
time to reach for the arsenal of guns and
grenades he had amassed or dash into a
storm drain or specially dug tunnel, as
the authorities said he recently did
minutes ahead of pursuers.
Mexican marines and the police,
aided by information from the United
States Drug Enforcement Administra-
tion, immigration and customs officials
and the United States Marshals Service,
took him into custody on Saturday with-
out firing a shot, according to American
and Mexican officials.
Mexico’s attorney general, Jesús Mur-
illo Karam, said a later forensic exam
made it ‘‘100 percent’’ certain the man
was Mr.Guzmán; the tests were done to
avoid the kind of embarrassment Mexic-
an officials faced in June 2012 when they
announced the arrest of Mr.Guzmán’s
son, only to later discover it was not him.
He faces many drug trafficking and
organized crime charges in the United
States, which had offered $5 million for
information leading to his arrest.
Mr. Guzmán’s organization, the Sin-
aloa Cartel, is considered the largestand

most powerful trafficking operation in
the world, with a reach as far as Europe
and Asia, and has been a main com-
batant in a spasm of violence that has
left tens of thousands dead in Mexico.
‘‘Big strike,’’ said a Twitter posting by
former President Felipe Calderón, who
had made cracking down on drug gangs
a hallmark of his tenure.
But it was the forces under the control
of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who
has sought to steer the image of Mexico
away from drug violence, that produced
the biggest arrest in a generation. While
Mr. Peña Nieto has not allowed Ameri-
can law enforcement officials the kind of
broad accessin Mexico that Mr.Calder-
ón had permitted, the United States and
Mexico have continued to work togeth-
er on big cases.
Eduardo Medina Mora, the Mexican
ambassador to the United States, said
the two governments had been working
together on the case for months. But
whether Mr. Guzmán would be extra-
dited to the United States has not been
worked out.
Representative Michael McCaul, a
Texas Republican and the chairman of
the Homeland Security Committee, on

Sunday welcomed the arrest of Mr. Guz-
mán as a ‘‘huge event’’ akin to the cap-
tureor killing of the Colombian drug
king Pablo Escobar or that of the Chica-
go gangster Al Capone.
‘‘This is an exceptional case,’’ he said
on the ABCnewsprogram ‘‘This Week.’’
‘‘This is the largest, biggest drug lord
we’ve ever seen in the world.’’
Mr. McCaul praised the antidrug ef-
forts of Mr.Peña Nieto, saying: ‘‘This is
asignificant victory for both Mexico
and the United States —this is the
world’s most notorious drug lord that
got taken down; he’s really the godfath-
er, if you will, of the cartels.’’
Noting that Mr.Guzmán had escaped
from a Mexican prison in 2001, however,
Mr. McCaul said he favored Mr.Guz-
mán’s extradition to the United States,
where he could be kept in ahighly se-
cure prison.
It remains to be seen if the arrest will
interrupt Mexico’s thriving drug trade.
The capture or killing of a drug lord
sometimes unleashes moreviolence as
internal feuds break out and rivals at-
tack. And given the efficiency of the Sin-
aloa Cartel, it is possible that the group
will manage a smooth transition to a

new leader and continue with business
as usual.
Over time, as Mr. Guzmán eluded cap-
ture, his legend and the mystery of his
whereabouts grew. But in the end, he
wascaptured not long after doing what
so manycartel bosses do: having a
party in Mazatlán.
In the years since he escaped arrest,
Mr.Guzmán took on near-mythic status.
He landed on the Forbes list of the
world’s richest people. He picked up the
tabfor entirerestaurants, or so the sto-
ries go, to ensure that diners would re-
main silent about his outings. According
to aleaked diplomatic cable, he sur-
rounded himself with an entourage of
300 armed men for protection.
Although Mr.Guzmán had remained
the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, security
analysts have long suspected that much
of the day-to-day management fell to
subordinates still at large.
Still, Mr. Guzmán’s fallcarried apo-
tent, symbolic boost for Mexican securi-
ty forces, which have killed or captured
25 of the 37 most-wanted organized
crime leaders announced in 2010.
Mr. Guzmán was born in poverty in
the foothills of the Sierra Madrein Sin-

aloa State and dropped out of school by
thirdgrade. His firstforay into drug
smuggling came in the late 1980s, when,
the State Department said, he began
working for Miguel Ángel Félix Gal-
lardo, once Mexico’s biggest cocaine
dealer, as an air logistics expert.
Mr. Guzmánastutelyexploited the co-
caine boom in the United States at the
time, making valuable contacts along
the transport chain from Colombia to
Arizona. By the time the Mexican au-
thorities captured Mr. Félix Gallardo in
1989,Mr. Guzmán had already begun
forming his own cartel.
In 1993, he was charged in the United
States with money laundering and rack-
eteering, and three months later, he was
arrested and convicted in Mexico on
drug and homicide charges and sen-
tenced to 20 years in prison.
Then, in January 2001, Mr. Guzmán’s
criminal career took a stunningturn with
his escape in the laundry cart that was
wheeled out of the prison. In what was
considered further proof of his broad-
based power, the authorities suspected
that prison officials helped him escape.
Randal C. Archibold reported from Mex-
ico City, and Ginger Thompson from

New York. Damien Cave, Paulina Villeg-
as and Karla Zabludovsky contributed
reporting from Mexico City, and Brian
Knowlton from Washington.
Troops and police, aided
by U.S. intelligence, seize
leader of Sinaloa group
Planned Pentagon cuts would take military off war footing
WASHINGTON
BY THOM SHANKER
AND HELENE COOPER
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans
to shrink the Army to its smallest force
since before World War II and eliminate
an entire class of Air Force attack jets in
a new spending proposal that officials
describe as the firstPentagon budget to
aggressively push the military offthe
war footing adopted after the terror at-
tacks of 2001.
The proposal, described by several
Pentagon officials on the condition of
anonymity in advance of its official re-
lease Monday, takes into account the fis-
calreality of an eraof government aus-
terity and the political realityof a
president who pledged to end two costly
land wars. The result will be a military
capable of defeating any adversary but
too small to carry out protracted foreign

occupations, officials said.
‘‘Youhave to alwayskeep your insti-
tution prepared, but youcan’t carry a
large land-war Defense Department
when there is no large land war,’’ a se-
nior Pentagon official said.
The official said that despite budget
reductions, the military would have the
money to remain the most capable in
the world and that Mr. Hagel’s propos-
als, which have the endorsement of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, were designed to
protect money for a continued Ameri-
canpresence in Asia and the Middle
East. Money saved by reducing the
number of personnel also would assure
that those remaining in uniform would
be well-trained and supplied with the
best weaponry, they said.
The new American way of warwill be
underscored in Mr.Hagel’s budget, as
money for Special Operations forces and
cyberwarfareisprotected. And in an in-
dication of the priority given to overseas
military presence that does not require a
land force, the proposal will—at least
for one year —maintain the current
number of aircraft carriers,sidestepping
another potential area for budget cuts.
Over all, Mr. Hagel’s proposal, the of-

ficials said, is designed to allow the
American military to fulfill President
Obama’s national security directives: to
defend American territory and the na-
tion’sinterests overseas, to deter ag-
gression —and to win decisively if
again ordered to war.
‘‘We’restill going to have a very sig-
nificant-sized Army,’’ the official said.
‘‘But it’s going to be agile. It will be capa-
ble. It will be modern. It will be trained.’’
But Pentagon officials do acknowl-
edge that budget cuts will impose great-
er risk on the armed forces if they are
again ordered to carry out two large-
scale military actions at the same time:
Success would take longer, they say, and
there would be alarger number of casu-
alties. Officials acknowledge that a
smaller military also risks inviting ad-
venturism by adversaries.
The defense secretary’s budget plans,
subject to Congressional approval, most
significantly reshape America’s land
forces, both active-duty soldiersand
those in the National Guard and Re-
serve.
The Army, which took on the brunt of
the fighting and the casualties in Af-
ghanistan and Iraq, already was slated

to drop to 490,000 troops from apost-
9/11 peak of 570,000. Under Mr.Hagel’s
proposals, the Army would drop over
coming years to between 440,000 and
450,000. That would be the smallest
Army since 1940, a year before the
United States joined World War II.
The cuts proposed by Mr. Hagel fit the
Bipartisan Budget Act reached by Mr.
Obama and Congress in December to
impose a military spending cap of $496
billion for fiscal year 2015. However, if
steeper spending reductions kick in
again in 2016 under the sequestration
law, then even moresignificant cuts
would be required in later years.
The budget to be presented on Mon-
daywillbe the firstsweeping initiative
that bears Mr.Hagel’s full imprint. Al-
though Mr. Hagel has been in office one
year, most of his efforts in that time
have focused on initiatives and prob-
lems that he inherited. In many ways
his budget provides an opportunity for
him to begin anew.
Outlines of some of the budget initia-
tiveshad surfaced in advance of Mr.
Hagel’s budget unveiling,an indication
that even in advance of its release, the
budget is certain to come under political

attack. Veterans’ organizations are ex-
pected to argue against efforts to rein in
personnel costs; arms manufacturers
and some in the services willprobably
work to reverse weapons cuts; some
members of Congress willseek to block
base closings in their districts.
Although consideration was given to
retiring an aircraft carrier, the Navy will
keep its fleet of 11 —for now. The George
Washington would be brought in for a
overhaul and nuclear refueling —a
lengthy process that couldbeterminated
in future years under tighter budgets.
Lawrence Korb, former assistant de-
fense secretary in the Reagan adminis-
tration, and now a senior fellow at the
Center for American Progress, noted
that the budget can be viewed as realist-
ic given guidance from the White House
—but he is among those who said the
cuts are truly not that significant.
Mr. Hagel ‘‘basically is a team player,’’
Mr.Korb said. ‘‘Before he came into of-
fice he talked about the bloated defense
budget. But evenwith this number, we’re
still spending in real terms more than we
spent on average in the Cold War.’’
Big rally is held
in Caracas after

Kerry’s remarks
CARACAS, VENEZUELA
BY WILLIAM NEUMAN
Antigovernment demonstrations con-
tinued to grow over the weekend in
Venezuela after Secretary of State John
Kerry markedly stepped up hiscriticism
of the government overits response to
more than two weeks of protests.
‘‘I am watching with increasing con-
cern the situation in Venezuela,’’ Mr.
Kerry said in astatement on Friday
night. ‘‘The government’s use of force
and judicial intimidation against cit-
izens and political figures, who are exer-
cising a legitimate right to protest, is un-
acceptable and will only increase the
likelihood of violence.’’
On Saturday, thousands of people in
Caracas attended one of the largest op-
position rallies yet, a sign that the
protests, which began this month with
student demonstrations against high
crime, might continue to gain strength.
‘‘Yo u have to always keep your
institution prepared, but you
can’t carry a large land-war
Defense Department when
there is no large land war.’’
EDUARDO VERDUGO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Joaquín Guzmán Loera had evaded arrest
since escaping from prison in January 2001.
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
6
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014

world news
asia
Asylum fraud in Chinatown: A New Yo rk industry
BY KIRK SEMPLE,
JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
AND JEFFREY E. SINGER
A Chinese woman walked into a law of-
fice in New York’s Chinatown and asked
to see her lawyer.She had applied for
asylum, claiming that she had been
forced to get an abortion in China to
comply with its family-planning laws,
and she was anxious about her coming
interview with immigration officials.
She had good reason to be worried:
Herclaim, invented by her lawyer’s as-
sociates, was false. But the lawyer, John
Wang, told her to relax. Theprocess, he
said, wasstraightforward, and as long
as she memorized afew details, every-
thing would be fine. ‘‘You aremaking
yourself nervous,’’ he said in Mandarin
Chinese. ‘‘A ll youwould be asked is the

same few rubbish questions.’’
‘‘Just make it up,’’ the lawyer added.
Theconversation, in December 2010,
was secretly recorded by federal offi-
cials conducting a wide investigation of
immigration fraud in NewYork’s
Chinese population. The inquiry has led
to the prosecution of at least 30 people —
lawyers(including Mr.Wang),
paralegals, interpreters and even an
employee of a church, who is accused of
coaching asylum applicants in basic
tenets of Christianity to prop up their
claims of religious persecution. All were
charged with helping hundreds of
Chinese immigrants apply for asylum
using false tales of persecution.
Thetranscript of the conversation in
Mr. Wang’s office, which was disclosed
in a court filing, offered a rare look at the
hidden side of the Chinese asylum in-
dustry in New York.
More Chinese immigrants apply for
asylum in the United States than any
other immigrant group, with the
Chinese population in New York leading
the way. Over the past six years, about
half of all applications filed by Chinese
immigrants not facing deportation were
submitted in New York City. (Compara-

ble data for asylum applications from
those in deportation proceedings was
not available.)
In fiscal year 2012, Chinese immi-
grants filed morethan 62 percent of all
asylum cases received by the federal
asylum office in NewYork, which in re-
cent years has received more Chinese
applications than the next 10 nationalit-
ies combined.
Although the prevalence of fraud is
unknown, federal officials appear to re-
gard the applicant pool in New York
with considerable suspicion. In fiscal
year 2013, asylum officers around the
country granted 40 percent of all
Chinese asylum requests, according to
government data.
In New York City, asylum officersap-
proved only 15 percent.
Peter Kwong, a professor at the City
Universityof NewYork and an expert
on the Chinese population in the city,
said it was an open secret in the Chinese
community that most asylum applica-
tions were at least partly false, from fab-
ricated narratives of persecution to
counterfeit documents and invented
witness testimony.
To asylum seekers, he said, ‘‘it’s not

an issue of right or wrong. It’s an issue
about whether they canget it and their
means to get it.’’
The growth in the Chinese asylum in-
dustry overthe past decade has coin-
cided with an increase in Chinese mi-
gration to the United States and in the
number of Chinese arriving on tempo-
rary visas, some with the intention of
staying.Many have made NewYork
City their primary destination.
From 2000 to 2011, the foreign-born
Chinese population in New York City
grew by a third, to more than 350,000
from about 261,500, and is now on the
verge of overtaking Dominicans as the
city’s largest immigrant group, accord-
ing to the city’s Planning Department.
As an increasing number of Chinese
have sought permanent immigration
status here, asylum has become apopu-
lar wayto achieve it: Asylum recipients
are granted immediate permission to
work and can apply for agreen card a
year later.
Amid this rising demand, an ecosys-
tem of law offices and other businesses
specializing in asylum —not to mention
adarker subcultureofforgers and fake
lawyers —has flourished in the

crowded office buildings of Manhattan’s
Chinatown and above storefronts along
the bustling streets of Chinese enclaves
in Flushing, Queens, and Sunset Park,
Brooklyn.
The trade has generated healthy rev-
enues. Some firms ask $1,000 to handle a
case, then they add incremental fees
that might total morethan $10,000 —
steep for most of the applicants, many of
whom arerestaurant and construction
workers, nannies and manicurists.
But some involved in the business say
they are motivated moreby politics and
moral principles than by money.
‘‘We are doing work likethe last stop
on the Underground Railroad,’’ said
David Miao, the owner of an immigra-
tion law office in Chinatown, referring to
the network of routes that helped slaves
in the American South escape to free
states in the 19th century. He was
among those indicted in the investiga-
tion that also implicated Mr. Wang; the
case became public with the unsealing
of nine indictments and aseries of raids
in December 2012. He has pleaded not
guilty to conspiracy to commit immigra-
tion fraud. ‘‘If we didn’t do this, they will
be sent back to China,’’ he said in an in-

terview. ‘‘We save lives.’’
The United States has a long tradition
of offering refuge to foreignersfleeing
persecution. Whether in the country le-
gally or not, immigrants canpetition for
asylum within one year of arriving.
They must showthey areunable or un-
willing to return to their country be-
cause they have ‘‘a well-founded fear of
persecution’’ based on their race, reli-
gion, nationalityor membership in a
particular social or political group.
In fiscal year 2012, about 56,400
asylum applications were filed in
asylum offices or in courts across the
United States. In the same year,about
29,500 people were granted asylum, the
most since 2002, when 37,000 received it.
False asylum petitions are among the
most common forms of immigration
fraud, in part because they aredifficult
to detect, experts said. Since many
claims are based on events that took
place amid armed conflict or political
turmoil, the narrativesand supporting
documents canbe hard for the Ameri-
can authorities to verify.
And while the Chinese asylum pool
has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent
years, asylum fraud cuts across all im-

migrant groups, officials said, cropping
up among populations from societies in
turmoil such as Guineans seeking
refuge from political upheaval, Afghans
fleeing war, Russians looking for sanc-
tuary from homophobia and Mexicans
running from drug violence.
Among the Chinese, the vast major-
ity of applicants claim they were either
forced to endureabortions or steriliza-
tion under China’s family planning
laws or that they fear persecution
based on their adherence to Christian-
ityor their participation in banned
groups like the Chinese Democracy
Partyand Falun Gong,aspiritual
movement that has been labeled a cult
by the government.
And while many such claims are legit-
imate, officials and industry specialists
said, an untold number are not. Mr.
Kwong said the cases were easy to fake.
Sometimes the fraud consists of little
more than embellishing stories to make
them seem morebelievable. Other
times, the accounts are complete fiction.
Narratives and documents are re-
cycled from client to client, with the
names and dates changed —though
sometimes the lawyers forget to do

even that.
Several immigrants said in interviews
that while their cases were based on
true stories of persecution, some of the
documents supporting their claims were
false. (Many Chinese immigrants inter-
viewed for this article agreed to talkonly
on the condition of anonymity.)
The dozens of people rounded up in
2012, including employees of at least 10
law firms, were accused of ‘‘weaving
elaborate fictions’’ on behalf of hun-
dreds of clients and coaching them on
howtolie during their asylum inter-
views and in court. One of the lawyers
would sign blank asylum petitions and
let others fill them out with stories he
never reviewed, prosecutors said.
Victor You, a star witness for the pros-
ecution who worked as an assistant at
several lawfirms and pleaded guilty to
immigration fraud, said he would craft a
story based on characteristics like cli-
ents’ ages and schooling. He would feed
the Falun Gong narrative to uneducated
immigrants because it was easiest to re-
member, he said in court testimony this
month. Christianity claims went to
young immigrants with at least a high
school education.

When clients veered off-script during
interviews with asylum officers, prose-
cutors said, some interpreters would
falsely translate the client’s words.
Of the eight lawyersindicted, officials
said, Mr. Wang was one of the most pro-
lific. From 2010 to 2012, his office filed
more than 1,300 asylum petitions with
the New York asylum office.
His methods were revealed in the re-
cording of his discussion with the
Chinese client, who was preparing to tell
immigration officials that she had been
forced to get an abortion because she
had become pregnant out of wedlock.
Mr. Wang and a paralegal briefed her
on the sequence of fictitious events she
had to memorize: the missed period, the
knock at the door,government officials
hauling her to a clinic, the feeling of a
medical tool inside her,the dates of her
trip to the United States.
He said asylum was nearly a foregone
conclusion: Cases like hers were getting
approved without a problem. ‘‘It’s too
easy,’’ he said.
More than half of the defendants have
pleaded guilty, including Mr. Wang, who
was sentenced in December to two
years of probation.

HIROKO MASUIKE/THE NEW YORK TIMES
A federal agent at a New York law office during a raid in December 2012, when the F.B.I. arrested lawyers and other employees of the firm.
U.S Japan exercise
serves notice to China
CAMP PENDLETON, CALIF.
BY HELENE COOPER
In the early morning along a barren
stretch of beach herethis month, Japa-
nese soldiers and American Marines
practiced how to invade and retake an
island captured by hostile forces.
Memo to Beijing: Be forewarned.
One Marine sergeant yelled for his
men, guns drawn, to push into the right
building as they climbed through the
window of an empty house meant to
simulate a seaside dwelling. TheMar-
ines had poured out of four amphibious
assault vehicles as another group of
smaller inflatable boats carrying Japa-
nese soldiers landed in an accompany-
ing beachhead assault.
There were shouts in Japanese. There
were shouts in Marine English. There
was air support, from Huey and Cobra
helicopters hovering above. Then Navy
hovercraft roared in, spitting up a spray
of seawater before burping out Hum-
vees and more Japanese troops, their
faces blackened with camouflage paint.

American military officials, viewing
the action from a nearbyhillside, in-
sisted that the annual exercise, called
Iron Fist, had nothing, nothing to do with
last fall’s game of chicken between
Tokyo and Beijing overislands that are
largely piles of rocksinthe East China
Sea. But Lt. Col. John O’Neal, command-
er of the15th Marine Expeditionary Unit,
said that this year,the Japanese team
came with ‘‘a new sense of purpose.’’
‘‘There arecertainly current events
that have added emphasis to this exer-
cise ,’ ’ Colonel O’Neal said, as Japanese
soldiers made their wayup into the
rocksbeforedisappearing into the hills
above the beach. ‘‘Isthere aheightened
awareness? Yes.’’
In the United States military, com-
manders are increasingly allied in
alarm with Japan over China’s flexing of
military muscle. Capt. James Fanell, di-
rector of intelligence and information
operations with the United States Pa-
cific Fleet, recently said in San Diego
that China was training its forces to be
capable of carrying out a ‘‘short, sharp’’
war with Japan in the East China Sea.
In asign of continuing concern, Gen.
Ray Odierno, the Armychief of staff,

wasin China overthe weekend seeking
to improve the limited relationship be-
tween the American and Chinese milit-
aries, perhaps through exchanges of top
officers. In recent years, the Pentagon
has worried about the buildup of China’s
military and a lack of transparency
among its leaders.
The islands at the center of the dis-
pute, known as the Senkaku in Japan
and the Diaoyu in China, areaseven-
hour boat ride from Japan, and even
farther from China. Japan has long ad-
ministered the islands, but they are also
claimed by China and Taiwan.
Last year, China set off a trans-Pacific
uproar when it declared that an ‘‘air de-
fense identification zone’’ gave it the
right to identify and possibly take mili-
tary action against aircraft near the is-
lands. Japan refused to recognize
China’s claim, and the United States de-
fied Chinabysending military planes in-
to the zone unannounced —even as the
Obama administration advised Ameri-
can commercial airlines to comply with
China’s demand and notify Beijing in
advance of flights through the area.
A few weeks later, Japan’s prime min-
ister,Shinzo Abe, approved afive-year

defense plan that took his pacifist nation
further toward its most assertive mili-
tary posture since World War II.
This year, when Japanese troops
showed up for the exercise with the
Marines at Camp Pendleton, they came
bulked up. Instead of the platoon of 25
soldiers they sent to the exercise in 2006,
the first year it was conducted, nearly
250 arrived. They brought along their
own Humvees, gear and paraphernalia
for retaking islands —or, in Marine par-
lance, ‘‘amphibious assault with the in-
tent to seize objectives inland.’’
The monthlong exercise, which ends
on Monday, has been spread over a wide
section of Southern California. There
wasthe amphibious assault at Camp
Pendleton, mortar shoots at the Marine
Corps Air Ground Combat Center at
Twentynine Palms and live firing exer-
cises at San Clemente Island. There was
anighttime raid at NavalAmphibious
Base Coronado, presumably out of sight
of guests sipping Champagne on the
verandas of the Hotel del Coronado a
short distance away.
This year’s Iron Fist, Colonel O’Neal
said, is the most involved operation so
far.The exercise included drones and

the kinds of air support that would be
needed to protect Japanese and Ameri-
can troops retaking an island.
ForJapan, the exercise is a‘‘valuable
opportunity where we can learn tech-
niques from the U.S. forces,’’ Col.
Matushi Kunii, commander of the West-
ern Army Infantry Regiment, said at the
opening ceremony last month.
Tokyo sends bigger force
to annual military drills
in Southern California
ONLINE: SEEKING BETTER MILITARY TIES
As tensions rise in Asia, an American
general is working on improving contacts
with China’s military. nytimes.com/asia
Explosions
near protest
sites kill 3
in Thailand
BANGKOK
BY THOMAS FULLER
Threepeople were killed near antigov-
ernment protests in Thailand over the
weekend as the country’s protracted
power struggle devolved further into vi-
olence.
Two attacks —one on Saturdayinan
eastern province bordering Cambodia,
which left one person dead, and the

second on Sunday in one of this city’s
busiest shopping areas —were carried
out with what the authorities said were
military-grade weapons, including
grenades.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra
condemned the attacks as ‘‘terrorist acts
for political gains’’ while protestersis-
sued astatement saying that the attacks
were an attempt to justify the govern-
ment’s continuation of the emergency se-
curity measures it imposed last month.
The explosions here on Sunday, which
killed two people and wounded 22, were
set off near a major intersection that
protesters have blocked for several
weeks. A courthouse herewas also the
target of an attack, but the grenade that
was used failed to detonate.
The protest movement, which is seek-
ing to overthrow Ms. Yingluck’s govern-
ment, is allied with shadowy armed
groups whose members engaged in gun
battles with the police last week.
A United Nations statement issued
after that round of violence said it was
‘‘alarming that armed clashes with
high-powered weaponry can occur in
the middle of Bangkok.’’ It called on
both sides to ‘‘disassociate themselves

from armed groups.’’
Suthep Thaugsuban, a former deputy
prime minister who is the main protest
leader, warned government supporters,
the so-called Red Shirts, that they would
be ‘‘served popcorn’’ if they came too
close, a reference to a gunman allied
with the protesters who fired an assault
weapon at government supportersthis
month that he had partially concealed
inside a corn-seed bag.
Charupong Ruengsuwan, the head of
Pheu Thai, the governing party, told a
gathering of Red Shirts on Sunday that
in the ‘‘fight this time death will be real.’’
Mr.Charupong, the government’s in-
terior minister,said 10 million guns are
registered in Thailand.
‘‘These are guns for self-defense,’’ he
said. ‘‘If anyone underestimates the
power of the people, you’ll know about
it.’’
Celebratethe Winter Games with this special offer foradigital subscription
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MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
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INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

Education
CAIRO
BY URSULA LINDSEY
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
The indictment here of a well-known
professor on charges of espionage has
sparked new concerns about academic
freedom in Egypt. Themilitary-backed
government is carrying out a wide-
spread crackdown on theMuslimBroth-
erhood, the Islamist group that until last
year governed the country. Some polit-
ical scientists saythey can no longer
speak freely for fear of being accused of
supporting the Brotherhood.
That is what Emad el-Din Shahin, a
professor of public policyat the Ameri-

can University in Cairo, said happened
to him. Mr.Shahin, editor in chief of The
Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Poli-
tics and a former visiting professor at
Harvard University, is a defendant in
what prosecutors have dubbed ‘‘the
greatest espionage case in the country’s
modern history.’’
Mr. Shahin’s co-defendants are mostly
senior membersof the Muslim Brother-
hood, including former President Mo-
hamed Morsi, who wasousted by the
armyfollowing mass protests last sum-
mer. Among the specific charges against
the professor areespionage, leading an
illegal organization, providing a banned
organization with information and finan-
cial support, calling for the suspension of
the Constitution, preventing state insti-
tutions and the authorities from per-
forming their functions, harming nation-
al unityand social harmony, and trying
to change the government by force.
‘‘It was a shock. I never thought they
would go this far,’’ Mr. Shahin told The
Chronicle from the United States, where
he was attending a conference when
news of the charges became public, in
late January.The professor,who has re-
mained abroad ever since and who

denies allthe charges, said the accusa-
tions were payback for his criticism of
the military-backed government.
‘‘It is part of a deliberate attempt to
stifle anytype of independent or critical
position with regard to the coup,’’ said
the professor. ‘‘They arewidening the
scope of the crackdown against any
type of opposition.’’
The Committee on Academic Free-
dom of the Middle East Studies Associ-
ation of North America issued a state-
ment this month calling on the Egyptian
government to drop the charges. ‘‘The
membersofour committee knowDr.
Shahin to be a person of the utmost in-
tegrity and an Egyptian patriot who
would never harm his home country,’’
the statement said.
Thecase has raised concerns among
Western academics who study the
Middle East, said Nathan J. Brown, the
association’s president, aprofessor of
political science and international af-
fairs at George Washington University.
‘‘When someone like Emad is treated
likeathreat to the state, youwonder
what kind of a state it is,’’ he said.
‘‘Academicsare beginning to think
twice about visiting Egypt,’’ he added.

‘‘They think they canbe harassed for
who they meet with and for public state-
ment s .’’
Last year two Canadian academics
were detained for nearly two months
after being accused by Egyptian prose-
cutors of ‘‘participating with members
of the Muslim Brotherhood’’ in an at-
tack on apolice station. While neither is
a political scientist, their case showed
the risks facing visiting professors.
Mr. Shahin’s case has drawnthe most
public attention, but other academics
also face prosecution for public state-
ments. Amr Hamzawy, a professor of
political science, also at the American
UniversityinCairo, has been charged
with ‘‘insulting the judiciary’’ for apost
on Twitter criticizing a court ruling. Mr.
Hamzawy has played a prominent polit-
ical role in the last three years, winning
a seat in Parliament and leading a liber-
al party. He has also criticized the mili-
tary’s ouster of Mr. Morsilast summer
and the crackdown on Islamists that has
left more than 1,000 dead and tens of
thousands in prison.
Facultymembersand students at the
American University in Cairo have cir-
culated astatement in support of Mr.

Shahin, saying that he ‘‘advocates for a
free and democratic Egypt.
‘‘He, likeall Egyptians, has aright to
his opinions and beliefs,’’ it adds. ‘‘The
Egyptian government responded to Dr.
Shahin’s beliefs by charging him with
crimes he did not commit.’’
Egyptian academicsat other institu-
tions have been less outspoken. Hassan
Nafaa, aprofessor of political science at
Cairo University, brushed aside ques-
tions about the charges against Mr. Shah-
in and Mr. Hamzawy,saying he was not
aware of the particulars of their cases.
‘‘In this moment the country is facing
an exceptional situation,’’ Mr. Nafaa
said. ‘‘The university is not really busy
with so-called academic freedom.’’
The priority, said Mr. Nafaa, is ending
the chaos on Egyptian campuses, where
Islamist students have led protests and
tried to disrupt examinations, and have
been violently repressed by the police.
The deep divisions in Egypt have
made some political scientists hesitate
to speak publicly on current events. Mr.
Shahin said one Egyptian colleague de-
cided not to attend aGeorgetown Uni-
versity conference in late January —en-
titled ‘‘Egypt and the Struggle for

Democracy’’ — for fear of reprisals.
‘‘At least Mubarak’sregime was
aging,lesscentralized, so therewas
room for dissent,’’ he said, referring to
former President Hosni Mubarak.
‘‘This regime is very brutal and trying
BY CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE
This month’s Swiss referendum vote for
tighter immigration laws is already af-
fecting the country’s role in, and access
to, some European education programs.
Erasmus+, the newest iteration of the
popular European student exchange
program, and Horizon 2020, an 80-bil-
lion-euro, or about $110 billion, research
program led by the European Union
that started in January, have become
bargaining chips in bilateral negoti-
ations between the Union and Switzer-
land that have takenplace on the heels
of the Feb. 9 Swiss vote.
A week after the referendum, the Swiss
government backed away from an agree-
ment to allow citizens of Croatia, which
joined the Union in July,towork freely in
Switzerland. Last week, the Union sus-
pended planned talks on Swissparticipa-
tion in Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020.
‘‘For the moment, negotiations that
would have extended Horizon 2020 and

Erasmus to Swissresearchers and stu-
dents are put on hold,’’ said Pia Ahrenk-
ilde Hansen, a spokeswoman for the
European Commission, the executive
arm of the European Union.
Switzerland, which is not a member of
the European Union, has a series of in-
terlinked bilateral agreements with the
bloc, signed overthe past few decades,
that provide for reciprocal freedoms of
movement and trade, and access to labor
markets, education and other services.
Immigration quotas, mandated by the
referendum vote, would contravene
some of those freedoms. Under amutual
dependencyclause, a breach of anyof
the treaties would require all of them to
be renegotiated.
While the details of Switzerland’s fu-
tureimmigration laws arestillbeing
hashed out, any curtailment of the exist-
ing bilateral agreements for free cross-
border movements mayjeopardize the
country’s participation in the European
Union’s higher education programs.
Swissuniversities hosted some 41,809
foreign postsecondary students in 2011,
according to the most recent figures
from Unesco, including 27,940 from
European Union countries.

Of these, about 3,000 were in Switzer-
land as Erasmus exchange students,
while about the same number of Swiss
students were studying elsewherein
Europe under the program.
On Jan. 1, Erasmus was beefed up
with more funding to become
Erasmus+. Switzerland, an associate
member of Erasmus, wasexpected to
segue into the successor program.
Horizon 2020, the latest iteration of a
Europe-wide research program, also of-
ficially started last month. As with
Erasmus, it wasassumed that Swiss
participation would be sealed in formal
talksthis month. That is assumed no
longer.
Horizon 2020 is important as asource
of European funding for research and as
a catalyst for cross-border academic
collaborations.
Swiss researchers arealready less
present in such collaborations than oth-
er European researchers, Antonio
Loprieno, the president of the Rectors’
Conference of the Swiss Universities,
told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in an in-
terview after the referendum. ‘‘If, be-
cause of the withdrawal of Horizon 2020,
the dialogue is reduced even further,it

could become quite difficult,’’ Mr. Lopri-
eno said.
Some foreign students already living
and studying in Switzerland fear that
when the immigration overhaul is final-
ized they may not be able to stay on for
further degrees, or to work.
‘‘In the long term, it all depends on
how it is implemented,’’ said Carl
Thomas Bormann from Germany, a
third-year chemistry student at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Zurich.
Mr.Bormann said that like manyof
his foreign classmates, he could have
imagined a futureworking in Switzer-
land after completing his degrees. His
future is less certain now.
‘‘I can’tsay what it is going to look
like for me in 10 years,’’ he said.
The European Students Union, an
umbrella organization that represents
47 national student unions in 39 coun-
tries, has publicly demanded that the
immigration overhaul exclude stu-
dents.
‘‘Switzerland is on aslippery slope of
isolating its students and academics
from the outside world,’’ said Elisabeth
Gehrke, the vice chairwoman of the

European Student Union, in a state-
ment.
Ms. Gehrke said that the union would
do everything to support Swiss mem-
bers, but added: ‘‘We will stand behind
the E.U. if they take a strong stance on
this .’ ’
TORONTO
BY ELAINE R. SMITH
Student internships have come in for
criticism in Canada, as elsewhere, over
the past year, drawing fire for putting
pressure on students to work long hours
for little or no pay.
Matthew Ferguson, the brother of an
Albertaman who died while driving
home from an unpaid internship, began
a grass-roots campaign last summer to
protect interns from exploitation. His
brother, Andrew Ferguson of St. Albert,
Alberta, astudent at Northern Alberta
Institute of Technology, died after a 16-
hour day at a radio station where he was
doing his internship, supplemented by
additional paid shifts.
In another case, Jainna Patel, a stu-
dent who was an unpaid intern with Bell
Mobilityin 2012, filed a complaint with
the federal government, alleging that
the terms of the internship had violated

labor laws. Ms. Patel sought back pay,
claiming that the company had
provided her with no educational bene-
fit and had required her to do the same
work as paid employees.
The complaint was rejected in October
and Ms. Patel has since filed an appeal.
Meanwhile, her case and that of Mr. Fer-
guson have touched a nerve among stu-
dents and employers nationwide.
BrentRathgeber,amember of Parlia-
ment for Edmonton-St. Albert, supports
Mr. Ferguson’s campaign to close the
federal regulatory gapand presented
Mr. Ferguson’s petition in Parliament
last fall.
Mr. Rathgeber maintains that the
total hoursof work, paid and unpaid,
should be considered when using stu-
dent labor. Paying astudent makes him
or her an employee, so the Employment
Standards Act would need revision to
provide interns with the same protec-
tions as other employees.
‘‘We should amend the federal regula-
tion s ,’’ he said. ‘‘Once an employer-
employee relationship exists, the total
hours of work should be covered.’’
Unpaid internships are another mat-
ter. As an offshoot of post-secondary

education, they fall under provincial ju-
risdiction. While Mr. Rathgeber has no
direct oversight, he said he would be re-
luctant to see unpaid internships disap-
pear entirely because of the learning op-
portunities they provide.
COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO (LEFT); HANAFY/DEMOTIX, VIA CORBIS (ABOVE)
Amr Hamzawy, above,has been charged with ‘‘insulting the judiciary’’ for a post on Twitter criticizing a court ruling. Emad el-Din Shahin, left, has been indicted on charges of espionage.
Political scientists say
they face prosecution for
criticizing government
Cross-border exchanges
become bargaining chips
in European Union talks
Concern grows over academic freedom in Egypt
Drawing boundaries around internships
www.chr o nicle.com
‘‘I don’t want to see too much regula-
tion that would result in alack of avail-
able internships,’’ he said ‘‘but there
should be some regulation required re-
garding how hardemployers work
these young men and women.
‘‘Thereshould be some sort of rules
or contract in place between the spon-
soring employer and the institution that
prevent indentured servitude.’’
Jessica McCormick, who heads the
Canadian Federation of Students, which
represents about 600,000 students

acrossCanada, said that her organiza-
tion supported the idea of paid intern-
ships, especially since many students
were already working to help pay for tu-
ition.
‘‘When students areexpected to pay
higher tuition fees and work for free, it’s
increasingly difficult for them to take on
that burden,’’ she said. ‘‘I would say it’s
exploitative for students to give their
labor for free, especially given the cli-
mate where post-secondary education
is increasingly unaffordable.’’
Theeconomic climate has helped
draw attention to the injustices created
by unpaid internships, said Angella
MacEwen, a senior economist with the
Canadian Labour Congress, an um-
brella organization for Canadian labor
unions and provincial federations.
‘‘Employers are able to exploit youth
because the situation is so direthat
people areliterally willing to work for
free to get into the Canadian labor mar-
ket,’’ said Ms. MacEwen. ‘‘It’s a symp-
tom of broader problems.’’
The University of Waterloo in Ontario
is renowned for its system of co-op pro-
grams that offer students work experi-
ence and remuneration.

Students in Waterloo’s cooperative
education program have an entire or-
ganization supporting them.
Co-ops are not the same as intern-
ships, said Peggy Jarvie, the executive
director of cooperative education and
career action at Waterloo.
The two terms ‘‘areoften used inter-
changeably, but I think they are quite
different,’’ she said. ‘‘Internships are
one-time wonders, but a co-op is a re-
peated experience in aprogram that is
part of an academic program.’’
Theuniversityhas been offering co-
operative work experience to its stu-
dents since its founding in 1957. The
founders, a group of forward-thinking
businessand industrial leaders, chose a
co-op model to allowstudents to altern-
ate classroom terms with work terms.
The model helped to meet Canada’s
need for engineers at the time, while
giving students on-the-job experience.
‘‘Co-op first and foremost wascreated
as alearning methodology,’’ Ms. Jarvie
said. ‘‘Thestudents learn what they
study better if they get to practice it a few
times. They see the relevance and are
more engaged in subsequent terms.’’
All six faculties at Waterloo offer co-

op programs, with 123 to choose from in
total, she said. Thewhole system is ac-
credited by the Canadian Association
for Co-operative Education.
Of Waterloo’s 30,000 undergraduates,
58 percent are involved in the co-op pro-
grams, which call for them to allocate at
least 30 per cent of their schooling to
work experience courses. There are
morethan 19,000 work terms scheduled
for 2014, and Ms.Jarvie points to the
practical benefits that this choice
provides to the university’s students.
‘‘They learn about the type of work
they want to do after graduation and the
environment that makes them most sat-
isfied, from huge multinationals to tiny
start-ups and everything in between,’’
she said.
to consolidate power and assert its con-
trol over the political arena.’’
‘‘I won’t publish anything critical
while I’m here,’’ said a political scientist
currently working in Egypt who asked
not to be identified for fear of reprisals
from the authorities. Theforeign re-
searcher, who had previously done
work on the Muslim Brotherhood, said
that under Mr. Mubarak, even though
the Islamic group was an illegal organi-

zation, the authorities did not object to
academics meeting with its members.
Now ‘‘they don’t want anyone to
present anything that is sympathetic or
humanizing’’ of the Islamist group,
which the government has officially
designated a terrorist organization, the
researcher said.
‘‘They also makean enormous net-
work of wonderful connections at the
workplace and among other students by
the time they graduate.’’
Co-op students are eased into the
workplace by many helping hands. Dur-
ing the academic term leading up to
their first work term, they arerequired
to take an online cooperative funda-
mentals course that teaches them how
to search and apply for jobs and howto
ensuresuccess once they’ve entered
the workforce.
‘‘It coaches them on typical things
like organizational culture, workplace
norms, understanding expectations and
being part of a team,’’ said Kerry Ma-
honey, Waterloo’s director of career ac-
tion and international employment.
During each work term, the students
are also required to take an online profes-
sional development course that address-

es useful workplace skills such as prob-
lem solving and project management.
Weian Zhao, an assistant professor of
stem cellbiology at the Universityof
California, Irvine, has seen the benefits
of all this coaching firsthand. He first
encountered Waterloo co-op students
during a post-doctoral fellowship at
HarvardUniversity. When he set up his
own research lab, he advertised avail-
able co-op positions on JobMine, a web
app where Waterloo students can post
resumes and search for jobs posted by
employers.
‘‘They’re dedicated, smart and they
work hard,’’ he said.
‘‘They start doing co-ops from their
first year, so when we get students in
their thirdyear, they aremature and
professional. The school really prepares
them well.’’
Mr.Zhao, anative of China who
graduated from Shandong University in
2000 and earned adoctorate at McMas-
ter University, in Ontario, said he tried
to give students whom he took on a valu-
able career experience.
‘‘I prefer to assign them individual
projects, just like I do for Ph.D. students,’’
he said: ‘‘For most of the kids, it’s a very

good investment for their futurecareers.
It builds their C.V.’s nicely and helps them
really make their career decisions.’’
Akash Kapoor, now a master’s degree
student in accounting at Waterloo, fin-
ished his undergraduate studies there
with three work terms under his belt.
‘‘I’m grateful for the program for
sure,’ ’ he said. ‘‘We actually get to
graduate with experience that willhelp
us attain full-time positions.’’
Students and lawmakers
say exploitation is being
sold as work experience
Swiss referendum poses
threat to study programs
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
A student, Payal Gandhi, learning on the
job. The University of Waterloo builds paid
work experience into its study courses.
ONLINE: MORE COVERAGE
Past articles and education news:
nytimes.com/education
‘‘Employers are able to exploit
youth because the situation is
so dire that people are literally
willing to work for free to get
into’’ the labor market.
8
|

MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

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Opinion

President Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s head of state, has now
joined Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the
government’s assault on free speech. On Tuesday, Mr. Gul
approved a new law, passed earlier by Parliament, that is
intended to help protect Mr. Erdogan and his allies from a
widening corruption scandal by tightening government
control of the Internet. It would allow the authorities,
without a court order, to block web pages under the guise
of protecting personal privacy, and to collect users’
browsing histories.
Even before Mr. Gul acted, Turkey already had tough
laws blocking thousands of websites, including gay dating
sites and news portals considered favorable to Kurdish
militants. According to Reuters, Google reported in
December that requests from Turkish authorities to
remove content from its sites had risen nearly 10 times
during the first half of 2012. In the first six months of 2013,
Google was asked to delete more than 12,000 items, making
Turkey the No. 1 country seeking to excise Google content.
The new law is a transparent effort to prevent social
media and other sites from reporting on a corruption
scandal that reportedly involves bid-rigging and money
laundering. In one audio recording, leaked last month to
SoundCloud, the file-sharing site, Mr. Erdogan is said to be
heard talking about easing zoning laws for a construction
tycoon in exchange for two villas for his family.
The law is just the latest blow to Turkey’s democracy.
After more than a decade in power, Mr. Erdogan has become
more authoritarian and, as a result, increasingly embattled.
The legislature has done little to stop him. Last Saturday, the

Parliament, in a 20-hour session that involved a bloody
fistfight, approved a bill that would tighten the government’s
grip on the judiciary. On Thursday, Reuters reported that
Mr. Erdogan had drafted a new law that would expand
powers for his intelligence agency, including eavesdropping.
The European Union and the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe have spoken out against these
developments. The United States has also weighed in but
not strongly enough. President Obama, who once had a
close relationship with Mr. Erdogan, finally spoke to him
on Wednesday after months of indirect communication. It
was unclear from a White House statement, however,
whether Mr. Obama had explicitly pointed out the perilous
course Mr. Erdogan is on, a message he needs to hear.
Dmitri Trenin
MOSCOW Viktor F. Yanukovych of
Ukraine and the Ukrainian opposition
leaders signed an agreement on Friday
that ended the deadly protests in Kiev
by promising a new constitution and
early elections. But the Russian presi-
dent’s envoy to Kiev refused to co-sign
it. While Moscow welcomed an end to
the violence, it basically viewed the
agreement as a diktat by the Western-
backed Ukrainian opposition. The op-
position has seized power in Kiev, and
Moscow is wary that the crisis will not
end anytime soon. Some radical groups
remain well-armed; there are deep

political, cultural and regional cleav-
ages in Ukrainian society; the coun-
try’s elites are in disarray; and its eco-
nomic situation is rapidly deteriorating.
The mess is very much Ukraine’s own,
and Russia has far less influence on it
than is commonly appreciated.
The most popular myth about Mos-
cow’s role in the Ukrainian crisis is that
Mr. Yanukovych has been but a puppet
of President Vladimir V. Putin. In real-
ity, Mr. Putin has been very frustrated
with his Ukrainian counterpart. To Mr.
Putin, Mr. Yanukovych is unreliable,
forever vacillating between the Euro-
pean Union and Russia; and now, a
totally spent force, he has fled from
Kiev to Kharkiv, a Russian-speaking
city in eastern Ukraine. Moscow knows
that the Ukrainian oligarchs, most of
whom used to support Mr. Yanukovych,
are largely anti-Russian. Though they
in effect rule Ukraine, they fear being
taken over by the richer business gi-
ants next door. Even those who made
their money in Russia, like the protest-
funder Petro Poroshenko, prefer to
keep it in the West.
The protests erupted when Mr. Ya-
nukovych refused to sign the so-called

association agreement between Ukraine
and the European Union, which would
have established a free-trade area,
among other things. Despite what he
claims, it wasn’t the Kremlin that made
him do that. Moscow had clearly
signaled it did not want Kiev to sign the
deal when it introduced de facto sanc-
tions on Ukrainian
products last year,
but ultimately Mr. Ya-
nukovych was guided
by his own calcula-
tions, rather than Mr.
Putin’s admonitions
or advice. The funda-
mental reason Mr. Ya-
nukovych demurred
was fear that he
would not be re-elect-
ed in 2015 if he signed
the agreement. At some point he realized
that the deal would bring no financial
support from the European Union and so
no way to offset the inevitable drop in
trade with Russia or cushion the blow to
Ukraine’s Soviet-era heavy industry.
During the months of standoffs in
Kiev, Russia’s actual role was much
more modest than advertised by the in-

ternational media or the rumor mill in
Kiev. The Russian ambassador to
Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, was con-
spicuously absent from public view.
The Kremlin ordered all Duma mem-
bers to stay out of Ukraine. Dmitry Ro-
gozin, a deputy prime minister and a
former Russian ambassador to NATO
with a knack for making in-your-face
comments about the West, has largely
remained silent on Ukraine. The only
Russian official to display any continu-
ous interest in Ukraine was Sergey
Glazyev, Mr. Putin’s adviser for Eurasi-
an integration, who spoke at confer-
ences and wrote articles about the high
costs of Ukraine’s turn to the European
Union.
Mr. Putin did receive Mr. Yanukovych
several times, in Sochi and Moscow. And
in December Russia did offer to buy $15
billion in Ukrainian-government bonds
—dwarfing any conditional aid the
European Union could cough up via the
International Monetary Fund —and
lower by one-third the price of its gas
shipments to Ukraine. This financial
support was extended without any
strings attached, with the dual purpose
of helping Ukraine avoid a likely default

and building goodwill for closer econom-
ic relations in the future.
But it was a risky proposition, given
the political uncertainties in Kiev. And
the move may be ineffectual. Moscow’s
gesture of support was built on the be-
lief, which Mr. Putin himself has ex-
pressed, that Ukrainians and Russians
are one people. This obviously is not
true, if only because Ukrainians them-
selves are not —at least not yet —one
people. Just compare Lviv and Se-
bastopol: Western Ukraine, which was
annexed by the Soviet Union only un-
der Stalin, is vehemently anti-Russian;
the east and the south are Russophone,
with the Crimea mostly Russian ethnic-
ally. To the vast majority of the elite in
Ukraine, the country’s independence
from the Soviet Union meant, above all,
independence from Russia. There are
virtually no Ukrainian politicians who
can be called pro-Russian: This simply
goes against the grain of Ukraine’s na-
tional idea.
Thus Mr. Putin’s offer that Ukraine
and Russia forge closer economic inte-
gration by way of a customs union are
not very compelling to many Ukraini-
ans. The idea also is potentially hazard-

ous for Russia. Under that scheme,
Moscow would need to pump a lot more
money into Ukraine and give it a large
say in joint bodies such as the Eurasian
Economic Commission, with little guar-
antee that Ukraine wouldn’t break
away again once it recovered from its
current financial crunch.
Ukraine’s‘‘February Revolution’’
may be a blessing in disguise for Mos-
cow, as it could help debunk the notion
that Russia cannot be a great power
without Ukraine as its junior partner.
Moscow does not need to govern more
people; it needs to raise the health, edu-
cation and work standards in its own
people’s lives.
Despite what some Ukrainians sus-
pect, Moscow is unlikely to try bringing
about the breakup of Ukraine in order
to annex its southern and eastern parts.
That would mean civil war next door,
and Russia abhors the idea. Moscow’s
best option at this point is to stand back
and wait, while quietly favoring decen-
tralization in Ukraine. Although feder-
alization is seen in Kiev and western
Ukraine as a step toward ultimate par-
tition, it could in fact help hold Ukraine
together. With more financial and cul-

tural autonomy, the country’s diverse
regions could more easily live and let
live, and keep one another in check.
Promoting decentralization in Ukraine
would be a realistic long-term strategy
for Russia, something Moscow has
lacked so far.
DMITRI TRENIN is director of the Carnegie
Moscow Center.
A developer
wants to get
rid of a fa-
mous bull-
fighting
scene.
The largest and most endangered Picasso many of us have
never seen lives on Park Avenue, in the Seagram Building.
To get to it, walk to East 52nd Street, past the idling Town
Cars, through the door of the Four Seasons restaurant. Give
a nod to the friendly coat-check guy, then head up the stairs,
into the soaring space of the Grill Room, where the city’s
uppermost crust is having lunch or drinks. Keep going into
the corridor that leads to the Pool Room. Look right, and up.
‘‘Le Tricorne,’’ a bullfighting scene painted in 1919, was
part of a stage curtain for the Ballets Russes. It is 19 feet by
20 feet and has hung in that space since the Four Seasons
opened in 1959, though for how much longer, nobody knows.
Aby Rosen, the developer who controls the building,
wants to get rid of it. There’s not much he can do to the rest
of the restaurant’s interior, a masterwork of Modernism

designed by Philip Johnson and declared a landmark in
1989. But the Picasso is not protected, because it is not
considered integral to the architecture. Mr. Rosen does not
own the curtain —the New York Landmarks Conservancy
does —but he may be able to evict it.
Mr. Rosen, saying the curtain needed to go so he could
repair the limestone wall around it, tried to have the
curtain taken down on Feb. 9. The conservancy sued,
arguing that removing the brittle 95-year-old curtain
would likely destroy it. A State Supreme Court judge
agreed to halt any move pending a hearing on March 11.
The conservancy and its supporters may not have the
legal grounds to defeat Mr. Rosen, but they are clearly
hoping that public sentiment will soften his heart. They
fear not just harm to the curtain, but aesthetic damage to
Johnson’s magnificent space, which critics note was
designed as a Gesamtkunstwerk, an artistic whole
dependent upon all its parts, from the walls and lights
down to the flatware and plates. A writer in The New York
Review of Books, sharply questioning Mr. Rosen’s taste
and decency, recently rhapsodized about the Picasso’s
‘‘dusky mauve and ochre tonalities’’ and ‘‘palpable
Iberian duende,’’ which —so you don’t have to look it up —
is what flamenco music and Javier Bardem also have.
TURKEY’S INTERNET CRACKDOWN
A PICASSO IN TROUBLE
A new curb
on free ex-
pression is
an assault

on democ-
racy.
What the West must do for Ukraine
Why Russia won’t interfere
Ulrich Speck
BRUSSELS Thanks in part to the coor-
dinated efforts of Germany, Poland,
France and the United States, irrevoc-
able change has finally come to
Ukraine, with President Viktor F. Ya-
nukovych’s flight from Kiev and Parlia-
ment’s vote to call for new elections in
May.
But the powers still have urgent work
to do. Ukraine could either descend into
chaos or right itself on a path toward a
new democratic stability. The Euro-
pean powers and the United States
must offer the country all possible sup-
port to move toward the latter.
The first and most urgent step for
Western leaders is to send unequivocal
messages to Moscow that any support
by Russia for the southern and eastern
regions of Ukraine to break away from
the rest of the country would be met
harshly, and result in a general recon-
sideration of relations with Russia on
all levels.
In parallel, they must make sure that

their own resources, and those of the
European Union institutions in Brus-
sels, are available to political leaders in
Kiev to assist them in their transition to
a new regime.
Moreover, Ukraine’s crisis isn’t just
political: The country faces economic
default without support. It had been re-
lying on Russia for that help, and now
Europeans and Americans must quickly
work with the International Monetary
Fund to provide a financial lifeline to
Kiev and to prepare longer-term eco-
nomic-assistance programs; they must
also be ready to give direct emergency
aid by themselves, if needed.
Simply by announcing a readiness to
commit to these steps, they would be
providing enormous help to the forces
committed to change in Ukraine.
Besides getting through the first days
and weeks, there are two great political
risks the West must help Ukraine to ad-
dress. One is the inevitable attempt to
undermine an emerging order. The
protest movement that began last No-
vember, centered in Kiev’s Indepen-
dence Square, has won. But it is quite
possible that the forces that supported
the former regime, especially in the

east and south of the country, are going
to contest the new order.
And it is questionable whether the
Kremlin will accept a loss of influence in
Ukraine. Mr. Putin had high hopes of
making Ukraine a key ally in his
planned Eurasian Union. He may have
decided that Mr. Yanukovych was too
unreliable an ally, but that does not
mean he will accept a revolution against
him. (Mr. Yanukovych, who reportedly
fled to the eastern city of Kharkiv, near
the border with Russia, said he had
been forced to leave the capital because
of an illegal ‘‘coup d’état.’’)
The second risk is that the new re-
gime will look like the one installed
after the Orange Revolution in 2004:
years of painful stalemate, political in-
stitutions blocking each other, perma-
nent infighting and no clear separation
between political and economic power.
It is primarily up to the Ukrainian
people to put their still-young country on
a new path. Many have demonstrated
incredible courage over the last weeks.
But a post-Yanukovych Ukraine will still
be a fragile state with weak institutions.
Since it declared independence from
the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991,

Ukraine has lived uncomfortably be-
tween the European Union and Russia.
Despite some progress, it failed to build
stable and trustworthy institutions.
That’s why so much of the country has
put its hopes in the European Union;
Ukrainians saw that their neighbors
who had joined it —Hungary, Poland,
Romania, Slovakia —were doing very
well. All the bloc
offered last year was
an ‘‘association,’ ’
which does not in-
clude the promise of
membership, and a
free-trade agreement.
Because the offer
was so weak, the
door was open for
Mr. Putin to sabotage
it and for Mr. Ya-
nukovych to reject it. Now the Euro-
pean Union needs to come back with a
better offer —not just association, but
membership.
Doing so would unleash a new dy-
namic. It would embolden a new leader-
ship in Kiev and give them enough au-
thority to push through painful but
necessary economic and government

reforms. A process of transformation
would kick off. Urgently needed foreign
investment would rush in. It would sig-
nal to the entire country that a better
future is possible.
The key to this approach lies in Berlin.
In the 1990s, it was Chancellor Helmut
Kohl, Angela Merkel’s mentor, who
pushed through the enlargement of the
European Union to include former mem-
bers of the Soviet bloc as a way to stabi-
lize Germany’s Eastern neighborhood.
His successor, and Ms. Merkel’s pre-
decessor, Gerhard Schröder, continued
on that path. But Ms. Merkel, in office
since 2005, has been reluctant to follow
in their steps so far. Wary of Russian
opposition and unwilling to press a
more active foreign policy, Berlin in re-
cent years has been reluctant to
provide leadership in eastern Europe.
Ms. Merkel must now show courage
and strategic competence. If Eastern
Europe becomes unstable, Germany
will be affected too —and deeply so.
Only Berlin has the necessary weight
and connections to bring all key players
on board to make significant change
possible.
Seen by many as the European Un-

ion’s leading power, Germany can bring
France on board, a necessary condition
for getting the bloc fully behind a new
approach to Ukraine. Moreover, Berlin,
with its strong economic ties with Mos-
cow, is able to keep the West’s relations
with Moscow on track. And Berlin pulls
enough weight in Washington to put to-
gether a common trans-Atlantic
strategy.
In the last weeks and days in Ukraine
we saw how fast things can deteriorate
in Eastern Europe. Germany and the
European Union must significantly
step up their engagement and be ready
to take more risks. If Berlin does not
take the lead, nobody else will.
ULRICH SPECK, a foreign policy expert, is a
visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, the
European center of the Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace.
Moscow
should stand
back from the
mess in
Ukraine
while quietly
favoring the
country’s de-
centralization.

The E.U.
should offer
full member-
ship to
Ukraine, and
Germany
must take the
lead.
REUTERS
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
|
9
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

Haider Ali Hussein Mullick
WASHINGTON Last week, a Pakistani
Taliban commander reported the exe-
cution of 23 Pakistani frontier troops
held hostage; two weeks ago, a suicide
bomber killed nine Shiite Muslims in
Peshawar. In response, Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif’s government has
conducted retaliatory airstrikes but has
only suspended, not abandoned, its
foolhardy strategy for peace: keep try-
ing to talk the Pakistani Taliban into
disarming, in exchange for halting mili-
tary operations against them.
These peace talks will fail. They are
an effort to surrender, and they ignore

what most Pakistanis want: to regain
control of their country from this
deadly insurgency.
So Mr. Sharif should end the talks
definitively and have the army mount a
strong land offensive to drive the Paki-
stani Taliban out of their mountainous
stronghold south of Peshawar once the
snows melt this spring. It is there that
the group poses the greatest risk to Pa-
kistan’s people, and to America’s sup-
ply line to Afghanistan. The United
States should help the army prepare.
In the last decade, the Pakistani
Taliban and associated groups, operat-
ing from the northwest, have terrified
much of Pakistan. They have killed
more than 18,000 civilians, including
more than 2,000 Shiites and 5,500 police
officers and soldiers. A sense of siege
prevails west of the Indus River, even
though that area is garrisoned by Paki-
stan’s military.
Much of the problem can be laid at
the feet of Pakistan’s leaders. For de-
cades, with government acquiescence,
Pakistan’s military and its intelligence
agency have used radical Islamist
groups to foment insurgencies in Af-
ghanistan and Kashmir. The groups re-

cruit and train ideologues and fighters;
raise funds; run seminaries and busi-
nesses; broadcast hatred of their polit-
ical and religious enemies; and get hos-
pital treatment when they are
wounded. The military’s original goal
was to counter Indian regional influ-
ence, but the cost to Pakistanis has
been the failure of their state. Now the
extremists increasingly target the very
military that armed and encouraged
them.
In other words, Pakistan’s luck has
run out. You can sway an insurgent to
fight ‘‘injustice’’ in a neighboring coun-
try like India, but once his leaders feel
they have impunity, you can’t stop them
from acting independently or exploiting
local grievances. These days, as much as
the Pakistani Taliban hate Indians and
Americans, they hate other Pakistanis
more. Acting in tandem with Al Qaeda,
the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba
and other lethal groups, the Pakistani
Taliban has slaughtered Shiites, Christi-
ans, Indians, Americans, Afghans and
polio prevention workers, often with the
state looking the other way.
Pakistan’s decade-long response has
been based on a fallacy: that the military

could target ‘‘bad’’ insurgents (those
fighting Pakistan’s army and citizenry),
while it worked with ‘‘good’’ ones (those
fighting India). In reality, the two types
are increasingly indistinguishable and
have killed a great many times more
Pakistanis than Indi-
ans. For example,
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the
group responsible for
the 2008 Mumbai at-
tacks, also has sup-
ported anti-Shiite
death squads. And
the Haqqani network,
which has fought In-
dian influence in Af-
ghanistan, has also helped Al Qaeda and
the Pakistani Taliban kill Pakistanis.
Last year, a poll conducted by the
Pew Research Global Attitudes Project
found that 93 percent of Pakistanis said
terrorism was a big problem, while only
45 percent worried that much about In-
dian influence in Afghanistan. Never-
theless, peace efforts have kept chasing
the dream of compromise. In 2004, 2006
and 2008, Pakistan’s army signed deals
that gave insurgents territory, am-
nesty, reparations, exemption from

constitutional rules —along with time
to rearm, regroup and resume their at-
tacks. The record of mayhem, which
has included attacks on major military
headquarters, has left one mediator de-
fending the current talks with this lo-
gic: ‘‘If America, with all its might,
couldn’t win in Afghanistan, how can
we win against the Pakistani Taliban?
They have scores of suicide bombers.
We must negotiate.’’
But that is nonsense. Of course Paki-
stan’s army can’t expect to win the war
by simply killing enough of the enemy.
It must also focus on winning over the
local populace by assuring their safety.
But the army showed in 2009 that it
could do this: After the Taliban seized
the peaceful Swat Valley and proceeded
to behead policemen, flog women and
keep girls like Malala Yousafzai from
attending school, the army swept in.
Aided by new training and tactics, and
with an infusion of American dollars
and equipment, the troops took back
the area and then kept control of it —a
first for them since 9/11. And most of
the two million displaced residents re-
turned home.
Today, most Pakistanis want to apply

the ‘‘Swat Valley model’’ to North
Waziristan, the nerve center of the Pa-
kistani Taliban. Prime Minister Sharif,
in a Jan. 29 speech defending negoti-
ations, admitted as much. ‘‘I know if the
state today decides to use force to elim-
inate the terrorists, the entire nation
will support it,’’ he said.
What he should have added was that
peace talks would make the most sense
after Pakistan’s troops took the area
from the insurgents. Today, the Taliban
demand nothing less than blanket im-
munity, a return of prisoners, the exit of
all Pakistani troops, an end to Ameri-
can drone strikes, the abandonment of
secular education and the severance of
ties between the United States and Pa-
kistan. Defeating them in battle might
allow Pakistan to demand, instead, that
the Taliban accept the rule of law.
That outcome would benefit the
United States. We need Pakistan as a
strategic ally, and we need both its sta-
bility and a good working relationship
with its leaders to help keep its 100 or so
nuclear warheads from falling into ter-
rorist hands. Nevertheless, our rela-
tionship has been strained for decades
by mutual distrust —largely traceable,

on the American side, to Pakistan’s re-
luctance to directly confront the dan-
gerous partners it has coddled for so
long.
So in preparation for a spring offen-
sive, America should now offer Paki-
stan intelligence, surveillance and re-
connaissance support, as well as
humanitarian assistance for those cit-
izens whom fighting would inevitably
displace. It is an opportunity to start
building trust between our two coun-
tries by helping Pakistan take on its
worst internal threat, one that menaces
the democracy that Pakistanis crave.
HAIDER ALI HUSSEIN MULLICK, an adjunct
professor at the Naval War College, is ed-
itor in chief of The Fletcher Security Re-
view.
Ross
Douthat
The last time geopolitics intruded into
an Olympics, during the 2008 Beijing
Games, Vladimir Putin was the crisis’s
winner: his military delivered a decis-
ive spanking to Russia’s neighbor
Georgia, whose government had fatally
overestimated the West’s willingness
to intervene on its behalf. The mini-war
sent a clear message: after a long peri-

od of retrenchment, the Russian bear
still had an appetite for power politics,
and the claws to satisfy it.
Today the Olympics are on Russian
soil, and violence is convulsing another
nation in Moscow’s traditional orbit.
But the crisis in Ukraine is sending a
rather different message. So far, events
in Kiev have been a lesson in the limits
of Russian influence, and the implaus-
ibility of Putin’s claim to offer a rival
civilizational model to the liberal demo-
cratic West.
That such a rivalry is Putin’s goal
seems clear enough. After a century in
which Russia styled itself a revolution-
ary power fighting the West’s reaction-
ary capitalists, the former K.G.B. man
has sought a return to the ideological
role his nation played under the czars
—as a conservative bulwark against
the West’s revolutionary liberals.
As The Week’s Michael Brendan
Dougherty has pointed out, this back
flip has been visible across the post-9/11
era. But it’s been thrown into relief by
Putin’s recent domestic gambits —the
blasphemy trial for Pussy Riot, the
crackdown on gay rights, the rhetoric
contrasting Russia’s‘‘traditional val-

ues’’ with American and Western Euro-
pean relativism.
Crucially, this rhetoric isn’t just for
domestic consumption: it’s also pitched
to the developing world. In the British
Spectator, Owen Matthews argues that
just as it did in the Communist era,
‘‘Moscow is again building an interna-
tional ideological alliance,’’ with Putin
offering himself up as a potential leader
for ‘‘all conservatives who dislike liber-
al values,’’ no matter what country they
call home.
But there is a vast difference be-
tween Putin’s grand strategy and both
its Czarist and its Soviet antecedents.
The czars sought a ‘‘Holy Alliance’’
to defend a still-extant ancien régime —
a rooted, hierarchical system that still
governed many 19th-century European
societies. But today’s Russia, brutal-
ized by Communism
and then taken over
by oligarchs and
grifters, is not a tra-
ditional society in
any meaningful
sense of the term,
and the only thing it
has in common with

many of its potential
developing-world allies is a contempt
for democratic norms. In the Romanov
era, the throne-and-altar idea still had a
real claim to political legitimacy. But
there is no comparable claim Putin can
make for his own authority, and no sim-
ilar mystique around his client dicta-
tors, be they Central Asian strongmen
or Bashar al-Assad.
The Soviets’ claim to be in history’s
vanguard, meanwhile, earned them al-
lies and fellow travelers not only in Latin
America, Asia and Africa, but among the
best and brightest of the liberal West. No
comparable Western fifth column seems
likely to emerge to enable Putin’s goals.
A few voices on the American right have
praised his traditionalist rhetoric —but
only a few. As beleaguered as America’s
social conservatives sometimes feel,
we’re a long distance from signing up as
useful idiots for a thuggish, obviously
opportunistic ‘‘family values’’ crusade.
Which is not to say that Putin’s geo-
political approach is all folly. On the
contrary, he often plays the great game
far more effectively than his European
and American counterparts.
But the weakness of Russia, its gov-

ernment’s corruption and the unat-
tractiveness of its alleged traditional-
ism all combine to foreclose his
grandest ambitions.
This is basically what we’re watching
happen in Ukraine. Despite the blun-
ders of the European Union —which
courted Kiev without seeming to real-
ize that Russia might make a counterof-
fer —Putin is struggling to win a battle
for influence in a country that both the
Romanovs and the Soviets dominated
with ease.
And the struggle is particularly
telling given that the Great Recession
exposed the E.U. as a spectacularly
misgoverned institution, whose follies
consigned many of its member states to
economic disarray. Yet even that record
hasn’t persuaded the majority of
Ukrainians to warm to Moscow’s em-
brace instead. It takes much more than
mere misgovernment to make the
European project less attractive than
Putin’s authoritarian alternative.
For an interesting parallel to Putin-
ism’s problems, consider what’s hap-
pening halfway around the world, in
Venezuela, where the laboratory Hugo
Chávez built for ‘‘Bolivarian Revolu-

tion’’ is descending into the same kind
of violence as in Ukraine.
Like Putin’s traditionalism, Chávez’s
neosocialism was proposed as an ideo-
logical challenger to the American-led
world order. (And Chávez had more
American cheerleaders than does
Putin.) But like Putinism, Chavismo
lacks basic legitimacy absent the threat
of violence and repression.
The lesson in both cases is not that
late-modern liberal civilization neces-
sarily deserves uncontested domi-
nance.
But 25 years after the Cold War, from
Kiev to Caracas, there is still no plausi-
ble alternative.
Sylvie Kauffmann
Contributing Writer
Brussels may call them the villains, but
we should be grateful for the Swiss.
Their Feb. 9 vote in favor of reintrodu-
cing immigration quotas for citizens
from the European Union, by a very
narrow margin of 50.3 percent, could
well prove to be a salutary shock.
The trouble over migration within
Europe has been brewing for months,
but it finally took a small, very rich
country outside the union, with a

dreamlike unemployment rate of 3.5
percent and a tradition of politically in-
correct referendums, to force us to take
a hard look at this crucial issue.
In fact, the Swiss have succeeded
where David Cameron failed. The Brit-
ish prime minister tried to kick-start a
debate in the European Union when he
called last November for immigration
restrictions, but he framed it in the
wrong terms.
When Europeans talk about immigra-
tion, it can be confusing. Immigrants
are people arriving from outside the
European Union, mostly from Africa
and Asia; their movement is heavily
regulated by the union’s member states.
Migration refers to citizens of the Euro-
pean Union moving from one member
state to another. Free movement of
people is a cornerstone of the European
Union; Martin Schulz, president of the
European Parliament, even described it
as one of the union’s ‘‘greatest suc-
cesses.’’ Latvian electricians can live
and work in Britain, Spanish engineers
can move to Germany and Dutch pen-
sioners can retire to the south of France.
And they have, by the millions.
Free movement worked beautifully

as long as the European Union was
small and prosperous. With a big wave
of enlargement in 2004, when eight
former east bloc nations joined the un-
ion, came the first tide of migrants, as
Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians and others
began to move around in search of bet-
ter wages. In 2007, two more countries,
Romania and Bulgaria, were allowed
in, on the condition that their citizens
wait another five years, until Jan. 1,
2014, to look for work elsewhere. At the
time, nobody paid much attention.
Then came the sovereign debt crisis,
changing everything. As recession hit
several euro-zone countries and unem-
ployment soared, foreigners no longer
felt as welcome as before. Native anxi-
ety began to spread. The extreme right
became more vocal. Anti-immigrant
and Euroskeptic movements took off.
Mainstream political parties panicked.
Under pressure from the U.K. Indepen-
dence Party, Mr. Cameron pledged to
hold a referendum on Britain’s mem-
bership in the European Union.
This is how one of Europe’s ‘‘major
successes’’ turned into a political liabili-
ty. Politically speaking, the Swiss refer-
endum is a disaster because elections to

the European Parliament are just three
months away, and fears are growing
that anti-European
Union parties could
collect as much as
one-third of the vote.
Just look at who re-
joiced first after the
Swiss poll: Nigel Far-
age, the U.K. Inde-
pendence Party lead-
er; Marine Le Pen,
head of the National
Front in France; and
Geert Wilders of the
Party for Freedom in the Netherlands.
(A tweet by Mr. Wilders said it all:
‘‘What the Swiss can do, we can do too:
cut immigration and leave the EU.’ ’)
In a way, the free movement of
people is like the euro: an achievement
of historic proportions but politically ill-
conceived. On a continent where 70
years ago people were still slaughter-
ing one another, today 500 million cit-
izens can live wherever they wish in 28
countries. Yet, even if the free move-
ment of people was rightly seen as a pil-
lar of a new European community, its
proponents could not foresee either the

fall of the Iron Curtain or the euro
crisis, both of which put millions of
people on the move. Like the common
currency, free movement is an attribute
of federal systems —but the European
Union is not a federal state.
Many of the arguments used by
politicians opposed to immigration are
not supported by the facts. Last month
the British government shelved a re-
port on ‘‘benefit tourism’’ for lack of ev-
idence. The Financial Times reported
government statistics showing that the
number of European Union migrants
moving to Britain were balanced by
those of Britons living abroad.
When Mr. Cameron calls for rules to
stop ‘‘vast migrations’’ within the un-
ion, he has in mind the 600,000 Poles liv-
ing in Britain. But he forgets to mention
the 2.2 million Britons living in Europe,
nearly 800,000 of whom chose Spain.
Mobility, after all, is a two-way street.
As regards benefits, migration experts
have found that citizens from Eastern
Europe who move to Western Europe
are mostly young and trained —and so
less likely to use national health or so-
cial services, and more likely to work
and pay taxes.

A new Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development study
shows that, since the beginning of the
financial crisis, mobility inside the
European Union has been even higher
than in the United States. Migration
has in effect become an adjustment me-
chanism in response to labor market
shocks. This is why Germany has wel-
comed not only cheap factory workers
from the East but also unemployed
graduates from Southern Europe,
whom Der Spiegel dubbed ‘‘The New
Guest Workers.’’ And why the British,
French and German public health sys-
tems, hit by shortages of physicians,
have welcomed Romanian doctors,
14,000 of whom have left their country
since it joined the union.
The Romanian and Bulgarian inva-
sion of Britain after Jan. 1 predicted by
Mr. Farage hasn’t materialized: Those
people left their countries years ago,
mostly for Italy and Spain. Bulgaria
saw its population drop from 9 million
in 1989 to 7 million in 2012 as people
either moved away or stopped having
children.
But perceptions do matter, and the
Swiss vote can’t be dismissed. If the

overdue debate on migration finally
happens, European politicians should
eschew an all-or-nothing mind-set and
focus on correcting the migration im-
balances within the union. As for the
euro, they may well find that the solu-
tion is more integration, not less. And
any discussion about the consequences
of the free movement of people within
the union can’t be a substitute for a new
and much-needed approach to external
immigration which, judging by the
number of boats tragically sinking off
Lampedusa, shows no signs of abating.
SYLVIE KAUFFMANN is the editorial director
and a former editor in chief of Le Monde.
The games Putin plays
Pakistan mustn’t surrender
The Swiss wake-up call
The events in
Ukraine offer
a lesson in
the limits of
Russia’s grand
strategy.
If the overdue
debate on mi-
gration finally
happens,
European

politicians
should eschew
an all-or-noth-
ing mind-set.
opinion
The disunited kingdom
Kathleen Jamie
ORKNEY,SCOTLAND With a referen-
dum on Scottish independence from the
United Kingdom only seven months
away, political rhetoric is escalating,
and so is fear-mongering.
In recent weeks George Osborne, the
chancellor of the Exchequer, warned
that an independent Scotland might not
be able to use the British pound as its
currency, and the European Commis-
sion president, José Manuel Barroso,
suggested that it would be ‘‘extremely
difficult, if not impossible’’ for Scotland
to remain in the European Union. These
assertions are highly contestable.
Other leaders are trying for a softer
touch.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister
David Cameron entered the fray, with a
speech intended to remind Scots of the
many virtues of staying in the United
Kingdom. He called on the people of
England, Wales and Northern Ireland

to urge us Scots not to leave. ‘‘Get on
the phone, get together, email, tweet,
speak. Let the message ring out from
us to the people of Scotland —let the
message be this: We want you to stay.’’
The address has been called the
‘‘love-bomb’’ speech, but even though
it was directed to the Scottish people, it
wasn’t delivered on Scottish soil. It
came from the Olympic velodrome built
for the 2012 Summer Games in London.
Mr. Cameron chose the stadium as his
venue because of its symbolism: The
cyclist Chris Hoy, a Scot, won two gold
medals here in 2012 as part of ‘‘Team
G.B.’ ’ This sporting triumph unleashed
something Mr. Cameron calls ‘‘patriot-
ism.’ ’ And there we have it: Team G.B.,
‘‘patriotism’’ and U.K. flags. This was
his pro-Union stall, belatedly set out.
But the trouble with addressing Scot-
land from London is that you have to
shout very loud. And many of us Scots
have grown weary of being shouted at
by ministers of governments we have
emphatically not elected and whose
policies we have rejected over and over
again.
Mr. Cameron told us that a move by
Scotland for independence would undo

‘‘centuries of history.’ ’ Actually, it’s
only three: England and Scotland
entered into a political union in 1707. Mr.
Cameron also appealed to something
he called ‘‘fusion of bloodlines,’’ as if we
were racehorses. He reminded the cit-
izens of the U.K. that we are united by
family ties. Of course we are, but that
won’t change if Scotland becomes inde-
pendent. My own family is typical: My
husband is English (and plans to vote
an enthusiastic
‘‘yes’’ for Scottish in-
dependence); my
sister-in-law is
Welsh; my brother
and his family are
settled in the Repub-
lic of Ireland, which
is of course an inde-
pendent state —and
so what?
The prime minister
also appealed to the
security of being part
of ‘‘something bigger’’ and argued that
a disunited United Kingdom would no
longer be a ‘‘major global player.’’ We
would no longer have ‘‘the finest armed
forces on the planet.’’ We would no

longer be ‘‘world-beating’’ — whatever
that means.
Many Scots believe an alternative
narrative: That even though the refer-
endum was brought about by the Scot-
tish Nationalist Party, it is less about
nationalism than about a crisis of de-
mocracy that has built up over the last
30 years. Scotland gets what the south
of England wants, regardless of its own
aspirations and its own votes. (Cur-
rently that means a government domi-
nated by Conservatives, even though
only one of the 59 Scottish MP’s is a
Conservative). Westminster imposes
policies that many Scots consider irrel-
evant at best, and self-serving and
cruel at worst.
Many believe that under ‘‘Team
G.B.’ ’ our industries have been swept
away (under a Cameron predecessor,
Margaret Thatcher), our social con-
tract torn up, the fabric of our commu-
nities assaulted, our poor demonized,
our immigrants deported, and our so-
cial services starved, withdrawn,
privatized.
I’m writing from the Orkney islands
in the far north of Scotland, a place of
sea and hills, with a dynamic economy

based on agriculture and oil, with as
many links to Norway as to London.
Here the terms ‘‘British’’ and ‘‘United
Kingdom’’ already feel remote. It is odd
to hear them used as rallying cries;
they awake no sentiment any more.
Those of us who want Scotland’s in-
dependence want it because we have
no further interest in being part of a
U.K. ‘‘brand’’; we no longer want to
punch above our weight. We seek a
fresh understanding of ourselves and
our relationships with the rest of
Europe and the wider world. If Scotland
were independent, we would have con-
trol over our own welfare and immigra-
tion policies, look more to our Scandina-
vian neighbors and rid ourselves of
nuclear weapons.
We want independence because we
seek good governance, and no longer
think the Westminster government of-
fers that, or social justice or decency.
We find the prospect of being a small,
independent nation on the fringe of
Europe exciting, and look forward to
making our own decisions, even if that
means having to fix our own problems.
We’ll take the risk.
KATHLEEN JAMIE is a poet and essayist and

the author, most recently, of ‘‘Sight li ne s.’ ’
Cameron’s
‘‘love-bomb’’
speech missed
the point. For
many Scots,
independence
is not about
nationalism,
it’s about
democracy.
With terrorist
killings rising,
Pakistan must
stop talking to
the Taliban
and attack it
instead.
MOHAMMAD SAJJAD/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Women near the site of a Peshawar attack.
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
10
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014

Russians. The People Behind the Power. By
Gregory Feifer. Illustrated. 372 pages.
Twelve. $28.
Words Will Break CementThe Passion of
Pussy Riot. By Masha Gessen. 308 pages.

Riverhead Books. Paper, $16.
BY JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN
Gregory Feifer’s ‘‘Russians: The
People Behind the Power’’ joins a list of
classic books by Western correspon-
dents who have covered the politics
and culture of what was once the Soviet
Union. Hedrick Smith, Robert G. Kais-
er, David K. Shipler and David Rem-
nick, among others, wrote acclaimed
accounts of what they witnessed as the
Soviet Union first challenged the West
and then gradually collapsed under the
weight of a sclerotic regime.
In August 1991, Mr. Feifer was a uni-
versity student spending a summer in
Moscow when a group of hard-line
Communist officials tried to carry out a
coup in a last-ditch effort to prolong So-
viet rule. Their failure only sped up the
process of dissolution and led to an ini-
tial period of such euphoria that many
people inside and outside the country
believed —as did Mr. Feifer himself —
that ‘‘the U.S.S.R. would be a part of the
international community, enjoying the
West’s previously unimaginable free-
dom and prosperity.’’
It was not to be. Boris Yeltsin, who
succeeded Mikhail Gorbachev and in-

tended to preside over a democratic
renaissance, failed to hold the Commu-
nist Party accountable for its crimes, to
create institutions guaranteeing the
rule of law and to ensure that the coun-
try’s vast mineral and energy resources
would be administered for the benefit of
the entire Russian people. His failures
gave democracy a bad name and
sapped whatever confidence a majority
of Russian citizens might once have en-
tertained about the virtues of a more
Western-oriented political system.
It seemed like a miracle when the So-
viet Union fell apart with hardly a whiff
of violence, but the first Chechen war,
which Yeltsin initiated in December
1994, was only a harbinger of the con-
tinuing ethnic violence and acts of ter-
rorism that have marred the Russian
political landscape ever since —all of
which made it easier for a former
K.G.B. officer like Vladimir Putin to as-
sume power and pick up the pieces.
Mr. Feifer returned to Russia in 1999
as a journalist and stayed for eight
years, many of them as the Moscow
correspondent for the radio station
NPR. His upbringing —his father is a
distinguished writer and historian and

his mother a rebellious Russian-born
bohemian —instilled in him a deep at-
tachment to the country’s culture and
history. Mr. Feifer’s fluency in Russian
and his academic training in history
prepared him well for his work. The
particular strength of his account is
how he places his reporting of the coun-
try’s myriad and devastating problems
within a broad understanding of Rus-
sian (and not just Soviet) history.
Mr. Feifer loves Russia, making his
depressing account all the more
poignant: He records a relentless de-
cline in population; a staggering level of
alcoholism and domestic violence; in-
creasing rates of AIDS and tuberculos-
is. It is hardly surprising that Russian
men have a life expectancy of only 64
years, on a par with Belarus and
Ukraine and among the lowest in
Europe. But in the face of these demo-
graphic and societal challenges, Mr.
Putin focuses on the assertion of geo-
strategic influence. ‘‘Putin has used
control over the energy sector to pursue
his goal of restoring Russia to the ranks
of the great powers,’’ Mr. Feifer writes.
This pursuit of international prestige,
including the holding of the 2014 Winter

Olympics in Sochi, cannot substitute,
however, for democratic reform.
As Mr. Feifer details corruption from
Moscow to Kamchatka and Vladivos-
tok, he concludes that ‘‘Putin is chief
among a collection of officials whose
roles more closely resemble those of
Mafia dons than public servants.’’ The
exploitation of Russia’s mineral and en-
ergy reserves has made a number of
people extraordinarily wealthy, includ-
ing government and corporate bureau-
Culture
art books
ONLINE: THE LITERARY LIFE
Read reviews, profiles of authors and
more at nytimes.com/books
BOOK REVIEW
crats, but the prevalence of Bentleys on
Moscow streets —Mr. Feifer observes
that ‘‘displays of extravagance can be
as appalling as Communist deprivation
was grim’’ — cannot camouflage the de-
cay that is undermining society at large.
Mr. Feifer writes that ‘‘the wealthy
also know in their bones that their
power is fragile, as do the rulers about
their own.’’ But there is room for dis-
agreement here: Mr. Putin, his associ-
ates and the compliant oligarchs

around them continue to behave with
overbearing confidence.
The Russia of Yeltsin provided a
modicum of hope for the country’s fu-
ture. But Mr. Putin has been pressuring
groups that monitor elections or human
rights, branding them as ‘‘foreign
agen t s.’’ Mr. Feifer concludes his book
by introducing a lonely group of democ-
racy activists who continue to docu-
ment abuses and challenge the Kremlin.
Masha Gessen complements Mr.
Feifer by concentrating on some of these
Russian activists —the ones who em-
ploy humor and street theater to chal-
lenge officialdom. The significance of
‘‘Words Will Break Cement’’ — the title
is drawn from the work of Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn —is its demonstration that
Pussy Riot’s rambunctious confronta-
tions with the authorities are the result
of several years of growing frustration
with Mr. Putin’s rule. Not for them the
respectful protests, vigils and appeals by
dissidents like those of the Brezhnev era.
The genius of the Russian punk band
and the performance art group Voina
(meaning War), to which some of Pussy
Riot’s members also belonged, has been
to employ guerrilla street theater and a

sense of humor along with unbridled
profanity —all the better to skewer the
pretensions of power and privilege that
Mr. Putin insists are his due. Who is to
say that the action of Voina in June 2010,
when it painted the image of an erect
phallus on a drawbridge in St. Peters-
burg, which pointed to the headquarters
of the secret police, was any less effec-
tive an expression of moral outrage than
a book by Solzhenitsyn?
In the case of Pussy Riot, their
protests culminated in February 2012,
when five women dressed in balaclavas
and colorful clothing danced and sang
inside the Cathedral of Christ the Sa-
vior, calling for Mr. Putin to go. They
chose this Moscow church because Rus-
sian Orthodox leaders had grown close
to the Kremlin. The ‘‘performance’’ las-
ted hardly a minute, was poorly video-
taped and left the band discouraged
about its success. But when the regime
issued an indictment against them five
days later, they went into hiding. It took
another week or so for security officials
to track them down.
If the Kremlin had not decided to pros-
ecute members of the band so severely
—two of the women were sentenced to

two years in a labor camp —it would
have been easy to dismiss their perfor-
mance as a sophomoric prank. But the
overreaction of the regime and the
church hierarchy put them on the world
stage.
‘‘Words Will Break Cement’’ makes
clear that Pussy Riot is more than just a
small group of disorderly anarchists
akin to the American Yippies of the late
1960s, who once dropped dollar bills
onto the floor of the New York Stock Ex-
change. To understand their courage
and thoughtfulness, you need only to
read their statements in court or the
ones they issued after their early re-
lease from prison last December. With
humor, passion and no small risk to
themselves, they intend to continue con-
fronting the Putin regime, pressing for
the release of other political prisoners.
With the irrepressible band on hand, the
dour and autocratic Vladimir Putin can
expect to have his hands full.
Joshua Rubenstein was a longtime staff
member of Amnesty International USA.
His latest book is ‘‘Leon Trotsky: A Revo-
lutionary’s Life.’’
Tragedy and farce
in Putin’s Russia

‘‘The wealthy also know in
their bones that their power is
fragile, as do the rulers about
their own.’’
JASON SZENES/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
Maria Alyokhina, left, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot. With humor, passion
and no small risk, the group intends to continue confronting the Russian government.
Global reach for smaller fairs
MADRID
BY SCOTT REYBURN
There are, according to the latest reliable
estimate from The Art Newspaper,278
art fairs in the world. For cash-rich, time-
strapped contemporary art buyers,fairs
have an obvious appeal: New artists can
be discovered in an afternoon; hundreds
of dealers can be met in just a few days.
But most buyers can’t get to all of
them. ‘‘Must attend’’ fixtures —like Art
Basel, Frieze London and Art Basel
Miami Beach —remain locked in the
busy collectors’ electronic diaries, leav-
ing amass of ‘‘might attend’’ fairs com-
peting for the attention of the art
world’s globe-trotting clientele.
Arco Madrid, whose 33rd edition
opened to V.I.P.visitorson Tuesday, is
one of the more highly regarded. The fair
has the challenge of taking place not
only in a soulless exhibition multiplex on

the outskirts of the Spanish capital, but
in an economy that’s still battered by re-
cession, stifling domestic demand.
Arco’s solution, under the directorship
of Carlos Urroz, has been to internation-
alize its exhibitor list and program —
this year the focus was on Finland —and
to spend 4.5million euros, or about $6.2
million, on inviting 500 selected collect-
ors and curators from all over the world
to the event.
Even though the fair pays for the trips,
plentyof international megagallerists
and their billionaire clients still give
Madrid a miss. Yet Spain’s links to the
emerging economies of Latin America
have encouraged a growing number of
dealers and collectors from that region to
attend, and the fair is growing in stature.
‘‘We sell mostly to museums and
foundations at Arco,’’ said Marina Buen-
dia, a director of Vermelho, one of 10 São
Paulo dealers among the 219 exhibitors
at the fair.Her cutting-edge contempor-
ary gallery also exhibits at Frieze.
‘‘We’ve been at Arco for six years and
things are getting better,’ ’ she said.
‘‘Otra Frontera,’’ a2013 conceptual
wall sculpture made out of a sieve by the
Argentinian artist Nicolás Robbio, was

among Vermelho’s early sales, to a
Colombian collector for $4,000. (Dealers
at art fairs can choose in which currency
to price their works. Vermelho opted for
U.S. dollars, the international currency
of the art market.)
Arco is ‘‘an important event for Latin
American dealers,’’ said the São Paulo-
based gallerist Luciana Brito, who was
showing 2009-2010 landscape photocol-
lages by the German-trained Brazilian
artist Caio Reisewitz, priced from ¤4,000
to ¤20,000. ‘‘We get to meet alot of mu-
seum curators and directors.’’
Early purchases at the five-day fair,
which ended on Sundayand which last
year attracted 100,000 visitors, tended to
be at modest price-points. Galería Elvira
González, from Madrid, sold the 1984
Robert Mapplethorpe photograph
‘‘Pheasant’’ to aSpanish foundation for
¤13,000. On the second dayofthe fair
González sold the 2008 Miquel Barcelo
canvas, ‘‘Dogon - 2,’’ reminiscent of a
cave painting,for about ¤430,000, one of
the few confirmed bigger ticket sales
Before and after that appointment he
was an active private buyer himself,
putting together his own ‘‘Kabinet van
tekeningen,’’ or cabinet of drawings.

About 1,000 of Mr. Altena’s purchases
will be sold by his family at Christie’s in
a series of four auctions in London, Am-
sterdam and Paris this year and next,
estimated at £10 million.
‘‘Altena wasone of those collectors
who had an amazing reputation as a
connoisseur,’’ said the London-based
specialist dealer Stephen Ongpin, who
underbid Mr. Black on the Raphael
to sellfor at least £1.5 million. It will be
the most highly valued lot in a 70-lot sale
at Christie’s in London on July 10 of
Dutch and Flemish drawings from the
collection.
A pen-and-ink study of a mutilated
hand by the 16th-century Dutch Man-
nerist artist Hendrick Goltzius is anoth-
er desirable trophy, priced at £300,000 to
£500,000. Goltzius, at the age of 1,
burned his hands on burning coals, and
the after-effects were also recorded in a
similar, much-admired drawing in the
Teylers Museum, Haarlem, in Holland.
‘Mona Lisa’of philately
Though they’re no longer collected in
quite the same quantityas they once
were by short-trousered schoolboys,
stamps can still be worth serious
amounts of money.

The British Guiana One-Cent Magenta
is among the most valuable. This British
colonial pennyissue from 1856, resem-
bling ahexagonal redblob, became the
most expensive stamp in the world in
1922 when it sold at auction for $35,000.
It has remained the Mona Lisa of phil-
ately since then, selling to the American
chemical heir John E. du Pont for a re-
cord $935,000 in 1980. Du Pont died in
prison in 2010, after being convicted in
1997 of the murder of an Olympic wres-
tling champion.
The One-Cent Magenta will be sold by
Du Pont’s estate at Sotheby’s NewYork
on June 17 with an estimate of $10 mil-
lion to $20 million, far in excessofthe
current auction record of about $2.2 mil-
lion for a single stamp. No work of art
has consistently broken auction records
in this way.
Arco Madrid extends
influence with focus on
Latin American market
CHRISTIE’S
during the early stages of Arco.
This week brings another smaller fair,
Art14 in London, and the Armory Show
in NewYork follows the next. Theart
fair merry-go-round keeps turning, and

for the moment at least, there’s no sign
of it slowing down.
Demand for drawings
Drawings are becoming an unlikely hot
stock these days. Long regarded as a
slightly arcane category of art collect-
ing, they’ve nonethelesssparked some
exceptional auction prices during the
last 18 months.
TheNew York-based private equity
magnate Leon Black paid 29.7 million
pounds, or about $49.5 million, for
Raphael’s ‘‘Head of a Young Apostle’’ at
Sotheby’s London in December 2012.
Earlier this month, the Jan Krugier col-
lection of 19th- and 20th-century draw-
ings raised £74.8 million, almost three
times the modest lowestimate (also at
Sotheby’s London).
With big-beast collectors like Mr.
Black spending millions at the top end of
the market, now is as good a time as any
to announce the sale of the collection of
I.Q. van Regteren Altena (1899-1980).
Mr. Altena was head of the department
of prints and drawings at the Rijksmu-
seum in Amsterdam from 1948 to 1962.
Spain’s links to Latin America’s
emerging economies have
drawn a growing number

of dealers and collectors
from that region.
GÉRARD JULIEN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Above, a sculpture by the Venezuelan artist Manuel Mérida at the Arco art fair in Madrid. Below, figure studies by Peter Paul Rubens for his painting ‘‘Samson and Delilah.’’
drawing. ‘‘He was buying when there
were hundreds of auctions and he could
easily make discoveries.’’
One of Mr. Altena’s discoveries, back
in the 1920s, was Peter Paul Rubens’s
only known drawing for his 1609-10
painting, ‘‘Samson and Delilah,’’ now in
the National Gallery in London. That
early masterpiece, produced in Antwerp
soon after he returned from Italy in 1608,
shows what an innovative artist Rubens
could be before he made a fortune out of
decorating the royal palaces of Europe.
The pen-and-ink drawing is estimated
GALERIA VERMELHO
‘‘Otra Frontera,’’ a 2013 conceptual wall sculpture by Nicolás Robbio, which
the Brazilian gallery Vermelho sold at Arco for $4,000.
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
|
11

.= IDEE=
SUZY MENKES special report
Taking a scalpel to all that is fancy, yet
controlling pattern in a defined space. It

sounds so easy. Yetonly a designer of
the caliber of Tomas Maier at BOTTEGA
VENETA can pull off such a combination.
His show went against most of the
trends for winter 2014: only the smallest
sprinkling of coats; no pants at allfor
his purposeful, modern woman, but a
Realists vs. romantics
ROMANTICS, PAGE 12
Therewas not achurch, across or aSi-
cilian landscape in sight as DOLCE & GAB-
BANA sent out its winter 2014 show on
Sunday. Instead, falling snow, the bare
branches of winter trees and
Tchaikovsky’s soaring music started a
fashion fairy tale.
It had allthe magical elements of tra-
ditional children’s books: appliqués of
cats on their wayto the moon, patterns
of keys to the castle door and gilded
‘‘handsome prince’’ clothes with em-
bedded jewels. They created a costume
scenario that wasboth whimsical and
charming because the story line fitted
Take the water or the wine —the transparent freshness of
a fast-running stream or the lush richness of a bottle of red.
Realists versus romantics is that choice in fashion terms.
few skirts and sweaters, which are a
fashion story of this new season.
Yet the Bottega Venetashow wasex-

ceptional and striking because the de-
signer worked with geometric lines to
turn soft into sharp, and vice versa.
The collection was built on dresses:
slim, overthe knee, just apair of boots or
And Milan fashion’s long weekend was divided between
the two approaches, even as fabric research and subtle
use of color brought the sides together.
REALISTS, PAGE 12
GIO STAIANO, GUILLAUME ROUJAS/NOWFASHION.COM
BOTTEGA VENETA
MARNI
DOLCE & GABBANA
EMILIO PUCCI
www.dior.com
12
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

FASHION
MILAN special report
ROBERTO CAVALLI
The Romantics
and the realists
REALISTS, FROM PAGE 11
right in with the duo’s romantic vision,
from furry bonnets to flat shoes laced
with gilding.
‘‘Every woman wants to be a fairy,’ ’

chorused Stefano Gabbana and Domen-
ico Dolce backstage. The two had
proved that they could enlarge their
repertoirebeyond digital prints and Si-
cilian images.
The clothes may have been fancybut
they were surprisingly wearable, even
when coats and dresses were decorated
to the hilt. Long, light gowns wafted the
show into evening (always supposing
wovenembellished shoes and bags
count as daywear). Just in case the
spellwas too powerful, the designers
slipped in one of their iconic, square-
necked shapely black dresses. And the
finale featured a corps de ballet with sil-
ver winking on brief,black modern
sportswear.
Theknitwear effects at EMILIO PUCCI
were as enticing as they were unexpec-
ted. Abrand founded in Florence and
based on the colorsof the Mediter-
ranean suddenly looking north?
But by going back to his ownNorwe-
gian roots, with Nordic knit patterns
melded into his body-conscious clothes,
the designer Peter Dundas found a win-
ning formula.
‘‘It was going home. I looked to the
nort h ,’’ he said backstage. ‘‘But when I

started looking at Eskimos and Nava-
jos, Lapps and American Indians —
they were all alike.’’
Theresult was apowerful and cred-
ible meld of cultures. Theshowopeners
were intensely printed dresses with
matching boots or with pattern treat-
ments on fur and wool. By the time an
Inuit knit patterned jacket with asnow
white color had appeared the message
was clear: Northern Lights.
But Mr. Dundas made afine job of en-
suring that his inspirations were global
and local. He balanced the Nordic knits
with Florentine flourishes, including
evening dresses of wafty chiffon in
Emilio Pucci’s spirit. While there were
plenty of the designer’s familiar dresses
with cut-away backs for a sexy exit line,
two standout pieces were velvet pant-
suits: papal crimson with an orange
blouse for Florence, dark green with a
yellow top for the north. The best of both
worlds.
ROBERTO CAVALLI’s showwas hot, red
hot, flames licking from a circle in the
center of a runwaythat a moment be-
shoes with flame-shaped cutouts licking
the ankle. Those same flames might
climb from the hemline of a beige dress in

an extraordinary piece of craftsmanship.
But it was the way that optical illusion
lines rakedthrough the dresses that
needed a mathematician to understand.
Here was a zigzag creating a sense of
long and short; there, a firework of ex-
ploding lines.
And often these graphic additions un-
folded into pleats to loosen the cloth
away from the flesh, while others used
eye-popping geometry that looked like
Op Art from the 1960s.
‘‘Optical illusions, David Bowie,’’ Mr.
Maier said backstage, bringing the sing-
er into this mix, without giving away
what led him to create such a confident
and convincing show.
The difference between streamlined
complexity and perplexing the audience
is everything at a fashion show. Unfor-
tunately, MARNI’s woman-into-bird col-
lection fell into the latter category.
Of course there were more than appli-
cations of feathers and fur from the
waist downward on a tailored coat.
Some of the swings of compass and
square to create geometric shapes
showed splendid tailoring skills.
And the art of craft wasglorified both
on the bare wallsblotched with arty

markings and on dresses splodged with
color.
But what did it alladd up to on the
hanger or, more important, on the body?
Some of the fur, which was this com-
pany’s starting point, was bold and
beautiful: a coat flagged with vertical
fore had been doused with water.
And so it waswith the collection: a
light start with silver gray jackets,
trimmed with fur, set above skinny
pants —the materials embossed with a
metallic sheen. With horsy accessories,
they looked like a Cavalli cavalry on for-
ward march.
Then came a surge of fiery red, drop-
ping down to dark embers within one
outfit, but the colorsmostly burning
bright, especially for the furs.
ROMANTICS, FROM PAGE 11
stripes of red, white and royal blue fox.
Remove the ginger fur collar and it
would have been perfect.
So the story went. Smart tailoring,if
only the ballooning raglan sleeves on
the jacket had not been paired with puz-
zling flaps and folds on the skirt; a sleek
camel colored jacket, but shown with a
skirt that looked likeunraked hay, and
then the other way around for a grassy

cape top and camel skirt.
Consuelo Castiglioni’s fertile imagi-
nation is admirable. But the show
needed an injection of that vital fashion
quality: simplicity.
A hard/soft collaboration at JIL
SANDER, using color to sweeten the plain
shapes, wasworked efficiently by the
design team that is again without Ms.
Sander’s guidance after yet another of
her walkouts.
The show started on an unfortunate
note, a pale blue coat that pulled awk-
wardly across the model’s miniscule
hips. But, in general the clothes were
slightly sporty with loose coats and
simple dresses. Theresult was stream-
lined but not minimalist.
Color wasmore than a saving grace.
It was a beautiful addition to the clean
lines and artful simplicity.
The palette seemed to have been
taken from semi-precious stones: the
watery amethyst or aquamarine, deep-
ening to turquoise; and a tourmaline
that was the ginger shade of whiskey.
Thecolors took the collection in afresh
different direction, without anymajor
statement.
SUZY MENKES

Zegna had alittle lamb, its face as white
as snow —orany other color from
shocking pink through mauve to tur-
quoise, chosen by Stefano Pilati for the
AGNONA cashmere brand.
Gildo Zegna, chief executive of his
family company, turned to Mr. Pilati, the
design force behind Zegna men’s wear,
to transform Agnona into a range of ra-
tional and functional clothes.
Add the actress Dree Hemingway,
great-granddaughter of the American
author,as the face of Agnona —press-
ing her wild hair and soft skin against a
newborn lamb in the advertising cam-
paign —and you have a striking push
forward for this first real collection, fol-
lowing the ‘‘zero’’ line, his debut, last
season.
‘‘It is very exciting for Stefano to be
able to play around with the archive fab-
ricsfromlightweight cashmeretomo-
hair in fantastic colors. Plus, we have
accessories and we are making Agnona
into aglobal brand,’’ said Mr. Zegna,
talking about store openings as well as
the brand’s focus on craft, shown in the
wave pattern effects worked in wool.
The executive emphasized the impor-
tance of artisanal work, all of which was

‘‘made in Italy.’’
Mr. Pilati’s skill is in creating intricate
cuts and shapes that appear so simple:
a navy double-faced coat, roomyand el-
egant; or afirst stab at evening wear in
beautifully draped long back dresses.
A new series of handbags, led by the
‘‘Cara,’’ poised on a displaytable sup-
ported by afaux goat’s leg, showed just
howseriously Mr. Zegna is taking the
development of his brand.
SUZY MENKES
Agnona going global
ONLINE: INTERNATIONAL STYLE
Suzy Menkes talks about the Agnona
line with Gildo Zegna of Ermenegildo
Zegna inyt.com/style
JIL SANDER
The designer took his bow leaning on
a rhinestone-embellished walking stick
after recent hip surgery.Maybe it was
wishful thinking that prompted him to
call the collection ‘‘a dance of energy,’’
as the more sportypieces and narrow
pants switched to a1920s feel: flat-front
dresses with geometric patterns and
the inevitable flapper fringe at the hem.
Thecollection was stronger beforethe
models climbed down from their horses
and took to the dance floor.

SUZY MENKES
AGNONA
GUILLAUME ROUJAS, REGIS COLIN/NOWFASHION.COM;
COURTESY OF AGNONA
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
|
13
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

Sports
o lymp i cs
SOCHI, RUSSIA
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Flushed with pride after a spectacular
showing at the costliest Olympics ever,
Russia celebrated 17 days of sports-
driven global unity on Sunday night
with a farewell show that handed off the
Winter Games to their next host, Py-
eongchang in South Korea.
‘‘Russia delivered all what it had
promised,’’ the head of the International
Olympic Committee said.
Raucous spectators chanted ‘‘Ro-ssi-
ya! Ro-ssi-ya!’’ — ‘‘Russia! Russia!’’ —
before being surrounded by multi-
colored fireworks and carried through a
visually stunning, sometimes surreal-
istic panorama of Russian history and
culture. The crowd was in a partymood

after the high-security Games passed
without feared terror attacks.
‘‘This is the new face of Russia —our
Russia,’’ said Dmitry Chernyshenko,
head of the Sochi organizing committee.
He called the Games ‘‘a moment to cher-
ish and pass on to the next generations.’’
In a charming touch, the Sochi organ-
izers used the ceremonyto makeajoke
at their own expense. Dancersin shim-
mering silver costumes formed them-
selves into four rings and aclump in the
center of the stadium. That wasawink
at a technical glitch in the Feb. 7 opening
ceremony, when one of the five Olympic
rings in awintry opening scene failed to
open. The rings were supposed to join
together and erupt in fireworks.
This time, it worked: As the Russian
president, Vladimir V. Putin, watched
from the stands, the dancersin the
clump waited a few seconds and then
formed aring of their own, making five,
drawing laughs from the crowd.
The closing ceremony, a farewell from
Russia, with pageantry and protocol,
started at 20:14 local time —anod to the
year that Putin seized upon to remake
Russia’s image with the Olympics’
powertowow and concentrate global

attention and huge resources.
‘‘Now we cansee our country is very
friendly,’’ said Boris Kozikov of St.
Petersburg, Russia. ‘‘This is very im-
portant for other countries around the
world to see.’’
The $51 billion investment —topping
even Beijing’s estimated $40 billion lay-
out for the 2008 Summer Games —
transformed a decaying resort town on
the Black Sea into ahousehold name.
All-new facilities, unthinkable in the So-
viet era of drab shoddiness, showcased
how far Russia has come in the two de-
cades since it turned its back on com-
munism.
But the Olympic showdidn’t win over
critics of Russia’s backsliding on de-
mocracy and human rights under Putin
and its institutionalized intolerance of
gays. While securitywas a potential
problem going in, it appeared to be a big
success coming out: Feared attacks by
Islamic militants who threatened to tar-
get the Games didn’t materialize.
Despite the bumps along the way, the
I.O.C. president, Thomas Bach, used the
closing ceremonyto deliverarobustly
upbeat verdict of the Games, his firstas
I.O.C. president. He was particularly en-

thusiastic about the host city itself.
‘‘What took decades in other parts of
the world was achieved here in Sochi in
just seven years,’’ Bach said in declar-
ing the Games closed.
As dusk fell, Russians and interna-
tional visitorsstreamed into the stadi-
um for theceremony featuring theextin-
guishing of the Olympic flame. Dayand
night, the flame became a favorite back-
drop for ‘‘Sochi selfies,’’ a buzzword
born at these Games for the fad of ath-
letes and spectators taking do-it-your-
self souvenir photos of themselves.
Russia celebrated itself and its rich
gifts to the worlds of music and literat-
urein the ceremony. Performersin
smart tails and puffy white wigs per-
formed a ballet of grand pianos, pushing
62 of them around the stadium floor
while the soloist Denis Matsuev played
Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2.
There was, of course, also ballet, with
dancersfromthe Bolshoi and the Mari-
insky, among the world’s oldest ballet
companies.
The winnersofRussia’s record 13 gold
medals marched into the stadium carry-
ing the country’s white, blue and red
flag, which was raised alongside the

Olympic flag.
Putin smiled as he stood beside Bach,
and he had reason to be pleased.
Russia’s athletes topped the Sochi
medals table, both in golds and total —
33. That represented astunning turn-
around fromthe 2010 Vancouver Games.
There, a meager 3 golds and 15 total for
Russia seemed proof of its gradual de-
cline as a winter sports powersince the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Russia’s
bag of Sochi gold wasthe biggest haul
HOCKEY SOCHI, RUSSIA
BY KEN BELSON
Canada’s men’s hockey team was one of
the favorites to win the gold medal here
when the Winter Games began, and
throughout the tournament it lived up to
the billing,steamrolling Norway and
Austria before winning battles over Fin-
land, Latvia and the United States.
The Canadians had so many weapons
that it was easy to overlook Sidney
Crosby, their captain and perhaps their
most talented player. Beforethe gold
medal game against Sweden on Sunday,
he had no goals and just two assists.
But with a flair for the dramatic,
Crosby made his presence felt on Sun-
day when he scored a breakaway goal in

the second period thatseemedto deflate
the Swedish team that struggled to keep
up with the Canadians for much of the
game. Canada won, 3-0, and defended
its Olympic title.
Canada is the first team to repeat as
Olympic champions since the Soviet
Union in the 1980s.
Sweden, which won the gold medal in
1994 and 2006, settled for the silver
medal here. Finland wonthe bronze
medal by beating the United States, 5-0,
on Saturday.
Canada also won the gold medal in the
women’s tournament.
Crosbywas one of 11 teammates who
also playedon the men’s gold medal
team in Vancouver. He had four goals
and three assists in that tournament.
Crosby has regained his form with the
Pittsburgh Penguins after several sea-
sons battling injuries, including aseri-
ous concussion.
In the gold medal game, as always, he
remained amajor threat. With lessthan
five minutes left in the second period, as
Canada poured on the shots and stifled
Sweden’smomentum, Crosbyraced
down the left side, shifted to his right
and flipped abackhand shot beyond the

left skate of Sweden’s sprawling goal-
tender, Henrik Lundqvist.
Crosby’s first goal of the tournament
put Canada up, 2-0, and brought loud
cheers from the sizable Canadian con-
tingent in the Bolshoi Ice Dome. It also
turned an otherwise tight game into one
dominated by the Canadians.
‘‘It was nice to get that one and get
the cushion,’’ Crosby said. ‘‘We all knew
the U.S. game wasour best game, and
we allfelt if we playedthe exact same
way, we’d get the same result.’’
Crosby said Canada’s victory here
was not as dramatic as the gold medal
the team won four years ago. Indeed,
beforethe game Sunday, Canada and
Sweden were evenly matched, both
with 5-0 records.
Theteams skated with energy and
purpose in the first period before
Canada broke through at the 12:55 mark
when Jeff Carter fired a pass to Jonath-
an Toews, who was in front of the net
and tipped it between Lundqvist’s legs,
for his first goal of the tournament.
‘‘It’s a big disappointment, obviously,
being this close to agold medal,’’ Lund-
qvist said. ‘‘But I think Canada defin-
itely deserved to win tonight. They were

the better team.’’
Lundqvist said injuries played no part
in his team’s performance. Sweden
played without the star forward Nicklas
Backstrom, who did not dressfor the
game after reportedly testing positive
for a banned substance, which his
Olympic committee said was in an al-
lergy medication he has been taking for
years.
Powerhouse:
Canadian
men glide to
a gold medal
BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
The bad news is behind the Sweden goaltender, Henrik Lundqvist. With this goal, Chris Kunitz of Canada drove the third and final nail into Sweden’s 3-0 loss on Sunday. Canada retained the gold it had won in the 2010 Games.
JOSH HANER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Russian flourishes as the Games closed Sunday included a ballet of grand pianos.
ever by a non-Soviet team.
Russia’s golden run started with Ev-
geni Plushenko leading Russia to victory
in team figureskating.Putin wason
hand for that,one of severaltimes that he
popped up at venues across the Games.
Russia’s last gold came Sundayin
four-man bobsled. The Games’ signa-
ture moment for home fans was Adelina
Sotnikova, cool as ice at 17, becoming
Russia’s first gold medalist in women’s
Olympic figure skating.

Notall of the headlines out of Sochi
were about sports. Organizers faced
criticism going in about Russia’s strict
policies toward gays, though once the
Games were underway, most every ath-
lete chose not to use the Olympic spot-
light to campaign for the cause. An ac-
tivist musical group and movement,
Pussy Riot, appeared in public and was
horsewhipped by Cossack militiamen,
drawing international scrutiny.
During the last days of competition,
Sochi competed for attention with vio-
lence in Ukraine, Russia’sneighbor and
considered a vital sphere of influence by
the Kremlin.
The country delivered. Ultimately,
more than 220 miles of roads and
bridges were built, along with 700 sports
grounds and overhauls and renovations
to the power grid, the airport and
sewage system.
The committee got its wish, Russia got
its Games and now Sochi is at risk of be-
coming a gold-rushtown that just ran out
of gold. A recent report by Moody’s In-
vestors Service said that the area would
need to double its flow of visitors, to at
least five million a year to keep those ho-
tels full, and that is highly unlikely. The

report said real estate companyesti-
mates were that occupancyrates could
fall to 35 percent to 40 percent.
It is unclear whereadditional tourists
will come from. Likemany hoteliers
here, Brian Gleeson, the general man-
ager of the Radisson Blu Beach Resort
and Spa, is not looking to the United
States market, and he has written off
Europeans for at least ayear. Therea-
son is that many Europeans have better
options closer to home, and they must
have visas to visit Russia.
‘‘What we need to do is focus on get-
ting the home market up and running,’’
he said on a recent afternoon. ‘‘That’s
145 million people, and we need to get
very creative about giving those people
a reason to choose Sochi.’’
One obvious asset is the Olympics it-
self and the objects and buildings it has
left behind. Buthotels have to be abit coy
about promoting this particular attrac-
tion. An intellectual property law passed
in Russia, at the behest of the I.O.C., puts
certain words —likeOlympics and rep-
resentations of the Olympic rings —out
of bounds in advertising.
‘‘So here’s our campaign for the wed-
ding market,’’ said Gleeson, opening a

ring binder filled with print ads in Rus-
sian. ‘‘It says, ‘Add your ring to our col-
lection in Sochi.’Here’s one for families:
‘Bring out the champion in your child.’’’
What about those tourists who want
summer sun or winter snow? Many in
the moneyed class of Russia prefer for-
eign destinations. A flight from Moscow
to Sochi is two hours. You canspend an-
other hour inthe air and go toInnsbruck,
Austria, where youare unlikely to en-
counter the weather anxieties that led
Russia to stockpile millions of cubic feet
of snow in preparation for the Games.
During the summer,Sochi’s tradition-
al peak, it competes for upper-class
rubles with beach towns like Cesme, Tur-
key. As for the middle and lower classes,
they may be priced out of Sochi, where
one-star hotels start around $140 a night.
Thestrange truth about these
Olympics is that little has been built
with long-term profits in mind, said
Martin Müller, a professor of geography
at the University of Zurich, who spent
five years studying the area. At the start
of the planning of the Games, private in-
vestment was meant to contribute more
than half of the costs. As more projects
turned out to be unprofitable, the Rus-

sian government stepped in.
Now, Müller estimates that the public
is paying morethan 90 percent of the
Games’ reported $51 billion cost.Muchof
what has been built is not regarded here
as an investment at all, but rather as a
kind of national project for the people.
When taxpayers were not footing the
billdirectly, they were paying indirectly,
courtesy of outlays by companies like
Gazprom, the natural gasbehemoth. The
vast majority ofthe company is owned by
the state, and it was tasked with bank-
rolling the construction of the LauraSki
Resort, which has morethan nine miles
of trails.The resort, along withthesite for
the biathlon and cross-country competi-
tions, only a gondola ride from the base of
the Laura Resort, cost close to $3 billion.
It is unclear what plans Gazprom has
for continuing to advertise and operate
Lauracenter. Emails to the company
were not returned.
Adding to the sense that Sochi was
not built for long-term prosperityare
the dozens of businessmen who won
contracts for other projects, large and
small. Müller said that profits in these
cases were often pocketed soon after
bids were won.

One upshot is that many buildings
were constructed on the cheap. Müller
said that hemet with engineers incharge
of qualityassurance and that ‘‘they told
me there is no quality to assure.’’
‘‘Quality wasn’t an issue,’’ Müller
said. ‘‘It wasn’t demanded by investors,
and nobody asked for it.’’
That means many of these hotels will
incur huge upkeep costs far sooner than
well-built structures. Add in the prob-
lem of enormous overcapacityof hotel
rooms, and you understand why Müller
is predicting losses and bankruptcies.
Not everything in Sochi was built with
such seemingly limited ambitions. The
Rosa Khutor ski resort, which held ski
and snowboard events like aerials and
halfpipe, has 18 ski lifts, 48 miles of
slopes, six hotels in operation and four
others near completion.Take one look at
it —across between an Alpine nirvana
and a chalet-theme strip mall —and you
knowthis is supposed to be adestina-
tion with legs.
But Rosa Khutor is only one part of
Sochi. Forthe place to thrive more
broadly,manyhere believethat the
Russian government needs to promote
it. That does not seem to be happening.

‘‘The government has the intention to
promote Sochi asa destination, but there
is no specific plan about how to do that,’’
Ekaterina Shadskaya, a director at the
Russian Union of Travel Industry, said in
an email. ‘‘President Vladimir Putin de-
clared that Sochi will not be included in
the government program of tourist de-
velopment in Russia, because allthe in-
frastructure is already implemented.’’
AFormula One track is under con-
struction, and some of the arenas could
be converted into exhibition halls or
used by professional teams for practice.
When Russia hosts soccer’s World Cup
in 2018, some games will be played here.
But those events will use only afrac-
tion of the capacity. Müller thinksthat
Sochi has agood chance to become, in
effect, a ward of the state, subsidized for
the sake of warding off accusations that
the Olympics were a multibillion-dollar
mistake. But that future is hardly guar-
anteed. ‘‘Economic forecasts predict
low growth for Russia in coming years,’’
he said, ‘‘and therewill be more urgent
projects as well.’’
After cost questions and security worries, a proud Russia closes Games
‘‘What took decades in other
parts of the world was

achieved here in Sochi in just
seven years.’’
‘‘They told me there is no
quality to assure. Quality
wasn’t an issue. It wasn’t
demanded by investors.’’
As gold moments dim, Sochi faces reality
SOCHI, FROM PAGE 1
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
14
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014

sports
o lymp i cs
OLYMPICS SOCHI, RUSSIA
BY KEN BELSON
The absurdity of the juxtaposition of the
capitalistic orgy known as the
Olympics, and the dacha of Josef Stalin,
a leader of the proletariat, became jar-
ringly apparent at asecurity gate here
in the hills overlooking the Black Sea.
On a sunnyday recently,aguardin
military fatigues refused to let avisitor
in to see the summer home, which is now
a museum. Calls to the curator offered
no relief.Then atour bus packed with
dignitaries from Samsung, the electron-
icsgiant and Olympic sponsor,pulled

up. They had rented the dacha for the af-
ternoon. No other visitors were allowed.
Achampion of collectivism, Stalin
would no doubt have frowned on a corpo-
ration’s renting his summer home. But
that wasthen. Vladimir Putin’s Russia
spent $51 billion to stage these Winter
Games, a two-week extravaganza that
provides a platform for the world’s best
athletes as well as corporations that
want to wrap their soda and cellphones in
the feel-good cloak of international sport.
Yet lost in the blizzard of dollar signs
is a historical twist: Sochi might not
have won the bid for the Winter Games
if it were not for Stalin. From 1937 until
his death 16 years later, Stalin visited his
dacha for long stretches to soak in So-
chi’s fresh air, mild weather and hot
springs and to help soothe his many
aches and pains, physical and psychic.
The country’s political elite took their
cue from Stalin and also built homes
here. Putin has apresidential residence
not far from where Stalin stayed, and his
love for Sochi is one reason he pushed
hard for the city to host the Olympics.
‘‘Stalin turned this place into a resort
and, indirectly,heplayed arole in at-
tracting the Olympics,’’ Natalia Medve-

deva, aguide at the dacha, said the day
after Samsung had left. ‘‘As we say these
O LYMPICS
Roundup
BOBSLED
Russian claims his 2nd gold,
giving his country13 over all
Alexander Zubkov was given a daunt-
ing assignment for his home Olympics.
His task: Take to Russian ice and make
history, against drivers who have been
beating him for years.
No problem. Zubkov drove Russia to
victory in the four-man bobsled race
Sunday, adding that gold to his two-
man from earlier in the Sochi Games
and making him the sixth pilot to sweep
those events at an Olympics. Until now,
no one had ever achieved that feat on
home ice, but this track was built for
Zubkov and he proved to be its master.
Zubkov’s victory was Russia’s 13th
gold of the Sochi Games, two more than
the next-closest country, Norway. Rus-
sia, with 11 silvers and 9 bronzes, also
led in total medals, with 33. The United
States had a total of 28 medals, second-
best. (AP)
CROSS-COUNTRY
Norwegian wins 6th gold,

a career mark for women
Marit Bjorgen became the most decor-
ated female Winter Olympian in history,
leading a Norwegian sweep in the wom-
en’s 30-kilometer cross-country ski race.
Bjorgen won her sixth Olympic gold
medal, to go with three silvers and a
bronze. Her career total of 10 puts her
ahead of the Russian cross-country ski-
er Lyubov Egorova, who won six gold
medals and three silver ones. Two other
women have 10 medals in cross-coun-
try, but fewer golds. Therese Johaug
took the silver medal and Kristin Stoer-
mer Steira was third on Saturday. (AP)
DOPING
Austrian skier tests positive for EPO
The Austrian cross-country skier Jo-
hannes Dürr was been kicked out of the
Sochi Games after testing positive for
EPO, a blood booster, the country’s
Olympic committee said Sunday. It was
the fifth doping case of the Olympics, but
the first serious one. The four other
cases involved minor stimulants that can
be found in food supplements. None of
the five athletes won medals in Sochi. (AP)
PROTESTS
French trio to keep ski cross medals
The three Frenchmen who swept the

podium in the Winter Olympics free-
style ski cross event will keep their
medals after the Court of Arbitration
for Sport, or CAS, on Sunday dismissed
a protest by officials form Canada and
Slovenia. (REUTERS)
S P E E DS K AT I NG
Dutch take both team pursuit events
The Netherlands capped a dominant
speedskating performance with gold
medals in the men’s and women’s team
pursuit on Saturday, raising the na-
tion’s haul to 8 golds and 23 medals
over all entering Sunday. (AP)
and Mancuso, who willall be 33 years
old in 2018, will stillbethreats to skiers
like Shiffrin, Fenninger and Gut, who is
only 22.
Miller willmost likely be retired by
2018, as will Croatia’s Ivica Kostelic, an-
other medalist at the Sochi Games. Will
the American Ted Ligety, the gold
medalist here in the giant slalom, still be
a force four years from now when he is
also 33? Or will it be the 22-year-old
Alexis Pinturault’s turn? The French
tech event specialist wonhis first
Olympic medal in the Sochi Games.
Or will the 2018 Winter Olympics
make a star of Norway’s Henrik Kristof-

fersen, who at 19 yearsold became the
youngest male Alpine Olympic medalist
on Saturday with a bronze in the sla-
lom.
There is ample time to ponder these
questions, but clearly a changing of the
guard is looming. Miller —whose six
Olympic medals are the second most in
Alpine history, after Kjetil Andre
Aamodt of Norway, who had eight —
may hold on until 2015, but it is hard to
see him competing past that.
Svindal was expected to medal in one
or two events but instead, the 31-year-
old, five-time world champion was kept
offany podium. Vonn, who did not com-
pete here because of aknee injury,has
set the 2018 Olympicsasagoal —and
she’s good at goal setting —but first she
has to re-establish herself after a second
major reconstructive knee surgery.She
may not return to racing until January.
Mancuso hinted that she would be
back in 2018, but it wasmoretelling that
after she was asurprising bronze
medalist in the super combined, she
skied without much dynamism in her
next three events here. It was as if the
Olympic spirit had run out on the four-
time Olympic medalist.

Höfl-Riesch had the best 2014 of her
age class among the women, with two
medals. But in the end, Höfl-Riesch also
looked likeaveteran caught in the buzz
sawofayouthful revolt during the final
women’s event of the Sochi Alpine com-
petition.
Shiffrin had stormed to acommand-
ing lead halfway through women’s sla-
lom on Friday. Höfl-Riesch, the defend-
ing Olympic champion in the event and
a three-time Olympic gold medalist, was
in second place.
In the final sequence of the race, the
two would make consecutive runs down
a pitched slalom course with dicey snow
conditions.
The powerful, 5-foot-11 Höfl-Riesch
went first and appeared out of sync from
the start. She slid offher intended line
several times, fought to regain her
rhythm but then lurched through a
series of arduous turns. She completed
the second run with the ninth-best time
and a look of bewilderment on her face.
Shiffrin, who was 5 years old when
Höfl-Riesch won her firstinternational
ski race, roared down the same course,
and, though she made a significant mis-
take, she finished more than a second

ahead of the defending Olympic cham-
pion.
Höfl-Riesch, alwaysmagnanimous,
complimented her adolescent rival af-
terward.
‘‘Mikaela is going to win many, many
races,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m surethis is only
the beginning.’’ It maybeonly the be-
ginning but the rest of the story,and
rivalry, is far from over.
The next day Shiffrin announced that
she wanted to win each of the five
Alpine events at the 2018 Winter
Olympics.
ALPINE SKIING
KRASNAYA POLYANA, RUSSIA
BY BILL PENNINGTON
One of the earliest images of the 2014
Winter Olympics Alpine competition
wasBode Miller streaking down the
treacherous downhill course far ahead
of the field in training.
Miller,anOlympian since 1998, was
somehowturning back the clock and
had made himself the clear favorite in
the firstski racing event of the Sochi
Games.
Twoweeks later,the 36-year-old
Miller, hobbled by two sore knees, with-
drew from the concluding men’s event,

the slalom, which almost certainly was
his last chance to create afinal Olympic
impression in along and record-setting
career.
But by then, 18-year-old Mikaela Shif-
frin had wonthe women’s slalom, 24-
year-old Anna Fenninger had rescued a
struggling Austrian ski team with two
gutsy medal performances and another
Austrian, the 23-year-old Matthias May-
er, had defeated Miller in the downhill.
The Alpine races of the Sochi
Olympics were not strictly a youth
movement —Tina Maze of Slovenia, 30
years old and in her prime, proved why
she wasthe best women’s skier in the
world last year with two gold medals,
and the 29-year-old Maria Höfl-Riesch
of Germany continued her climb toward
the Olympic women’s recordfor most
Alpine medals with a gold and a silver.
But therewas an evident advance of
the next generation of dominant skiers.
Other recent Olympics featured
Miller, Lindsey Vonn, Aksel Lund Svin-
dal and Julia Mancuso, who combined
for 10 medals at the 2010 Vancouver
Olympics, but the Sochi Games were the
showcase for other faces, from Switzer-
land’s Lara Gut, who wonher first

Olympic medal, to Austria’s Nicole
Hosp, who won two medals, to Christof
Innerhofer,who was asurprising two-
time medalist for Italy.
Looking ahead four years, the early
story line is whether Vonn, Höfl-Riesch
FABRICE COFFRINI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Record setter Mario Matt of Austria, who turns 35 in April, became the oldest Olympic Alpine gold medalist by winning the men’s slalom. He had never finished higher than 34th in three earlier Olympic races.
How Stalin paved the way for Sochi Games
days, he was a lobbyist for the city.’’
Of course, being alobbyist wasnot
Stalin’s main mark on history. Under his
iron-fisted rule of nearly three decades,
millions were killed, starved and sent
into exile.
In light of this history, the magnitude of
the moneymaking at the Olympics made
avisit to Stalin’s dacha, about 20 miles
from the Olympic Park, somewhat incon-
gruous. Though designed as a hideaway
safe from assassins and prying eyes, the
dacha is nowpart of a complex of high-
end sanitariums known as Green Grove.
Befitting aman like Stalin, who was
shrouded in mystery during his life, there
are multiple legends about the place. Ac-
cording to one telling,the dacha had no
rugs because Stalin thought they were
too luxurious. In another,Stalin wanted
to be able to hear the footsteps of anyone

approaching. (He supposedly fired staff
members for walking too quietly.)
Thearchitect, Miron Merzhanov, in-
cluded abubbling fountain in the court-
yard of the dacha, only to be told by Stal-
in’s security chief that the leader, who
was set to arrive for the first time the
next day, hated noise. The fountain was
covered over, they say.
Money is being spent to fix the dacha,
but it is still a bit of a mess. Paint is peel-
ing, fabric is threadbareand the fur-
nitureisbeaten up. Desksand cabinets
are stuffed in sparebathrooms. Tables
and chairs from modern times fill rooms.
Stalin had amovie viewing room,
whereheliked to watch westerns and
Charlie Chaplin while sitting in a high-
backed sofa that he had filled with
horsehair because he believed it would
stop an assassin’s bullet.
Stalin’s simple bed and a wardrobe
are next to the sofa. Behind his desk is a
life-size wax figurewith apipe in his
right hand. Blink twice and it looks like
Saddam Hussein. Below a glass plate on
the desk is a front page from Pravda, the
partypaper that he helped create. Be-
hind the wax Stalin is a map of the So-
viet empire that he helped build.

The principal sentiment of the
dacha’s9,000 square feet, which wasin
Stalin’sEmpire style, is modestyand
sturdiness. Thearchitect’s design was
meant to evoke Stalin himself,Medve-
deva said. ‘‘It reflected the appearance
and role of Stalin in this dacha: It’s a bit
short, strong,and sitting on top of a
mountain,’’ she said.
These aremodern times and the com-
panyrunning the dacha has abusiness
to promote. Visitorscan rent one of the
12 bedrooms for about 16,000 rubles, or
about $450 anight. Threemeals aday
are included.
The larger question is what Stalin
would have thought of the Olympics
coming to Sochi.
Unlike Putin, who likes to flex his
muscles and go shirtless, Stalin wasnot
much of an athlete. Unable to swim and
5 feet 4 inches tall, he walked in his in-
door pool, which was filled with only five
feet of seawater. He playedbilliards
with his right hand because of a de-
formed left hand, and apparently took
offense if friends let him win.
His main activities were playing
chessand taking walks, smoking apipe
and watching movies.

Medvedeva, the guide, said Stalin ap-
preciated massculture, so perhaps he
would have understood the utility of
hosting the Olympics. The Soviet Union
joined the Olympics only in 1952, the
year before Stalin died.
‘‘I’m not sure he would have liked it
because he did everything according to
Soviet principles, and he never liked
private business,’’ said Galina Se-
menowa, aresearcher at the Sporting
Glory of Sochi Museum. ‘‘He didn’t build
anything for sports. His aim was to build
a health resort for the Soviet people.’’
JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Stalin’s bed and coat are on display at his dacha in the mountains near Sochi, Russia.
OLYMPICS SCOREBOARD
SUNDAY
COUNTRY GSBTOTAL
Russia 13 11 933
United States 9712 28
Norway 11 51026
Canada 10 10 525
Netherlands879 24
Germany 86519
Austria485 17
France447 15
Sweden266 14
Switzerland 63211
China 3429

South Korea 3328
Czech Republic 2428
Slovenia 2248
Japan143 8
Italy 0268
Belarus 5016
Poland411 6
Finland 1315
Britain 1124
Latvia022 4
Australia021 3
Ukraine101 2
Slovakia 1001
Croatia010 1
Kazakhstan001 1
(AP)
CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING
ICE HOCKEY
SNOWBOARDING
SPEEDSKATING
MEDALS STANDINGS
MEN’S MASS START (50KM)
SUNDAY
1. Alexander Legkov, Russia, 1:46:55.2.
2. Maxim Vylegzhanin, Russia, 1:46:55.9.
3. Ilia Chernousov, Russia, 1:46:56.0.
4. Martin Johnsrud Sundby, Norway, 1:46:56.2.
5. Sergei Dolidovich, Belarus, 1:47:09.5.
6. Robin Duvillard, France, 1:47:10.1.
7. Anders Soedergren, Sweden, 1:47:13.0.

8. Daniel Richardsson, Sweden, 1:47:19.6.
9. Johan Olsson, Sweden, 1:47:27.3.
10. Iivo Niskanen, Finland, 1:47:27.5.
MEN’S GOLD MEDAL
SUNDAY
Canada 3, Sweden 0
(AP)
MEN’S PARALLEL SLALOM
SATURDAY
GOLD MEDAL
W, (3) Vic Wild, Russia, (0.00, 0.00).
L, (7) Zan Kosir, Slovenia, (+0.12, +0.11).
BRONZE MEDAL
W, (1) Benjamin Karl, Austria, (0.00, 0.00).
WOMEN’S PARALLEL SLALOM
GOLD MEDAL
W, (13) Julia Dujmovits, Austria, (+0.72, 0.00).
L, (9) Anke Karstens, Germany, (0.00, +0.12).
BRONZE MEDAL
W, (5) Amelie Kober, Germany, (0.00, 0.00).
(AP)
MEN’S TEAM PURSUIT
SATURDAY
GOLD MEDAL
1. (W) Netherlands (Jan Blokhuijsen, Sven Kramer, Koen
Verweij) (OR).
1. (L) South Korea (Joo Hyong Jun, Kim Cheol Min, Lee Seung
Hoon).
BRONZE MEDAL
2. (W) Poland (Zbigniew Brodka, Konrad Niedzwiedzki, Jan

Szymanski).
2. (L) Canada (Mathieu Giroux, Lucas Makowsky, Denny
Morrison).
WOMEN’S TEAM PURSUIT
GOLD MEDAL
1. (W) Netherlands (Marrit Leenstra, Jorien ter Mors, Ireen Wust)
(OR).
1. (L) Poland (Katarzyna Bachleda - Curus, Katarzyna Wozniak,
Luiza Zlotkowska).
BRONZE MEDAL
2. (W) Russia (Olga Graf, Yekaterina Lobysheva, Yuliya Skokova).
2. (L) Japan (Misaki Oshigiri, Maki Tabata, Nana Takagi).
(AP)
ONLINE: COMPLETE SPORTS RESULTS
sochi2014.nytimes.com
BOBSLED
ARMANDO BABANI/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
From left: Therese Johaug, Marit Bjorgen and
Kristin Stoermer Steira swept the podium.
WOMEN’S MASS START (30KM)
SATURDAY
1. Marit Bjoergen, Norway, 1:11:05.2.
2. Therese Johaug, Norway, 1:11:07.8.
3. Kristin Stoermer Steira, Norway, 1:11:28.8.
4. Kerttu Niskanen, Finland, 1:12:26.9.
5. Eva Vrabcova - Nyvltova, Czech Republic, 1:12:27.1.
6. Aurore Jean, France, 1:12:27.5.
7. Coraline Hugue, France, 1:12:29.5.
8. Emma Wiken, Sweden, 1:12:31.6.
9. Seraina Boner, Switzerland, 1:12:35.0.

10. Laura Orgue, Spain, 1:12:37.3.
Veteran skiers hold their
own, but a youth group
is showing clear advances
MEN’S FOUR-MAN
SUNDAY
1. Russia 1 (Alexander Zubkov, Alexey Negodaylo, Dmitry
Trunenkov, Alexey Voevoda), 3:40.60.
2. Latvia 1 (Oskars Melbardis, Daumants Dreiskens, Arvis
Vilkaste, Janis Strenga), 3:40.69.
3. United States 1 (Steven Holcomb, Curt Tomasevicz, Steve
Langton, Chris Fogt), 3:40.99.
4. Russia 2 (Alexander Kasjanov, Ilvir Huzin, Maxim Belugin,
Aleksei Pushkarev), 3:41.02.
5. Britain 1 (John James Jackson, Stuart Benson, Bruce Tasker,
Joel Fearon), 3:41.10.
6. Germany 1 (Maximilian Arndt, Marko Huebenbecker,
Alexander Roediger, Martin Putze), 3:41.42.
7. Germany 2 (Thomas Florschuetz, Joshua Bluhm, Kevin Kuske,
Christian Poser), 3:41.51.
8. Switzerland 1 (Beat Hefti, Alex Baumann, Juerg Egger,
Thomas Lamparter), 3:41.75.
9. Canada 1 (Lyndon Rush, Lascelles Brown, David Bissett,
Neville Wright), 3:41.76.
10. Germany 3 (Francesco Friedrich, Jannis Baecker,
(AP)
Toward 2018: The next generation on the move
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
|
15

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

NONSEQUITUR PEANUTSDOONESBURY
GARFIELD CALVIN AND HOBBES
WIZARD of ID DILBERT
Across
1 Knocked off
6 Parsley bit
11 German auto known
by its manufacturer’s
initials
14
Online publication
15 Maine university town
16 Vote for
17 Isn’tserious
19 Hosp.areas for
lifesaving operations
20 Suffix with lemon or
orange
21 Pick up the tab for
someone
22
News item of
passing concern?
23 Compete
24 Computer memory
unit
27 Weapons depot
31 French girlfriend

32 Cheech’s partner in
1970s-’80smovies
33 Writer ___ Rogers
St. Johns
36 Lucyof“Charlie’s
Angels,”2000
39 Author who created
the characters
named by the starts
of 17-, 24-, 49- and
61-Across
42 Ensign’s org.
43 Spittin’___
44 Actor MacLeod of
old TV
45 Romantic outing
47 Having sides of
different lengths, as
atriangle
49 Maryland home of
the Walter Reed
medical center
53 Mrs., in Marseille
54 Newswoman Logan
55 Three-time A.L.
batting champion
Tony
57 Notbright
60 Smart___ whip
61 Chemical compound

in “poppers”
64 Nov. follower
65 Centuries-old object
66 Roof overhangs
67 Antlered animal
68 Justice Kagan
69 Considers
Down
1 ___ vu
2 Sportshirtbrand
3 It holds back the
water in Holland
4 Suffix with serpent
5 Place to lay an egg
6 Peeved
7 Like some televised
tourneys
8 Whatatravel
planner plans
9 Quaint lodging
10 The Almighty
11 1957 Everly Brothers
hit with the repeated
lyric “Hello loneliness”
12 Deserve
13 Trash
18 Kind of rug or code
22 Geisha’s sash
23 “___, vidi, vici”
25 Black-tie party

26 United, as
corporations or
labor unions
27 Rights org.
28 Greek R’s
29 Film score
30 Dalai ___
34 ___ Hammarskjöld,
former U.N. secretary
general
35
Hurricane centers
37
“Put ___ writing!”
38 ___ Reader
(alternative magazine)
40 Iowa State’s home
41
Racer Yarborough
46 “I’ve gotit!”
48 The year 906
49 Bit of grass
50 Artist’sstand
51 Holmes’s creator
52 Tuckered out
56 Ancient Peruvian
57 Action from a
springboard
58 Thing
59 Pigsty

61 “What___ the
chances?”
62 Singer To rmé
63 “Norma ___”
CROSSWORD
|
Edited by Will Shortz
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60 61 62 63
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Solution to February21puzzle
PUZZLE BY ADAM G. PERL THE NEW YORK TIMES
TRAMP CABS SPOT
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Created by PeterRitmeester/Presented by Will Shortz
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(c) PZZL.com Distributed by The New Yo rk Times syndicate
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BRIDGE
|
Frank Stewart
Michael Rosenberg owns a reputation as
a superb declarer. At the ACBL Fall
Championships in Phoenix, he was at the
helm in today’sdeal in aBoard-a-Match
event, where overtricks were vital.
Against four hearts West led the queen
of diamonds. Rosenberg played low from
dummy, ruffed and led the king of clubs
to West’s ace. He won aspade shift with
his ace, took the queen of clubs, ruffed a
club in dummy and led the king of dia-
monds: ace, ruff. That playtransferred
the defenders’ diamond guardtoWest,
who wasalso likely to have spade length
for his double.
Fifth Club
Declarer ruffed another club and drew
trumps. When he cashed his good fifth
club at the 11th trick, West had to reduce
to one spade to keep the jack of dia-
monds; dummy stillhad the ten. Rosen-
berg discarded the diamond and won the
last two trickswith the K-9 of spades,
making six.
West might have found atrump lead. Then South would have had to guess well for 11

tricks.
This week: Phoenix action.
Daily Question: You hold: ä Q 10 7 4; × 7 6; µ Q J 8 4 2; å A 7. The dealer, at your left,
opens one heart. Your partner doubles, you jump to two spades and he raises to three
spades. What do you say?
Answer: Your two spades promised a good nine points to an unappealing 11 points
and invited game. Partner’s raise gives you a chance to make the final error. Although
your high-card values are limited, your distribution is attractive. If you’re vulnerable,
bid four spades.
Tribune Content Agency
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rugby soccer sports
RUGBY TWICKENHAM, ENGLAND
BY HUW RICHARDS
Some years, the Six Nations champion-
ship is like a procession. In 2014 it more
closely resembles acavalry charge,
with four teams tied for the lead with
two wins apiece and two games to go.
There will be no Grand Slam this year,
since every team has already lost a
game. But England stillcan win the
Triple Crown—when one of the four
British and Irish teams beats the other
three —if it defeats Wales on March 9.
But welcome as that would be —Eng-
land’s last Triple Crown was in 2003 —it
would be merely astep toward the
greater prize of winning the champion-
ship. As Ireland Coach JoeSchmidt said
after his team fell Saturday at England,
13-10, ‘‘TheSix Nations is stillthe over-
riding piece of silverware.’’

The lossended Ireland’s hopes of a
Slam to mark the final season of its long-
time icon, Brian O’Driscoll, who on Sat-
urday tied a record with his 139th inter-
national match. With one more cap, he
will pass George Gregan of Australia.
England kept its title hopes alive with
the best match yetin this season’s tour-
nament. Both teams played with fero-
cious intensity, and the lowscoring re-
flected brilliant defense rather than any
lack of attacking intent. There were long
passages of unbroken play, as each
team sought a rare opening.
A gripping firsthalf somehow ended
with only a single score, Owen Farrell’s
24th-minute penalty that gave England a
3-0lead. After the break, Ireland took
control. Fullback Rob Kearney scored
from a brilliantly worked move, and then
Jonny Sexton added the conversion and a
penalty to take the visitors to a 10-3 lead.
Victory would have givenIreland its
fifth Triple Crown since 2004, and Eng-
land briefly threatened to capsize in
front of its own fans. Instead it struck
back. Farrell landed another penalty,
and then the feisty fullback Mike Brown
made a stunning clean break to create a
try for scrumhalf Danny Care, whose

supporting run was perfectly timed.
That ended the scoring, but not the ac-
tion, as Ireland pressed hard in the last
24 minutes. Nobody could begrudge
Brown his Man of the Match award, but
it might equally have gone to Joe
Launchbury, the young lock at the heart
of a fine display by England’s forwards.
‘‘We’ve learned to absorb pressure
and not panic,’’ said England Coach Stu-
art Lancaster, who praised his team’s
ability to ‘‘ride those momentum shifts
and come out the other side still ready to
play.’’
Conclusive wins overScotland and
Wales in the opening rounds mean that
Ireland leads England, Wales and
France on the tiebreaker —points dif-
ference. Victories in its remaining
matches at home against Italy and then
at France would probably makeIreland
the champion.
France, the other team to have won its
first two matches, lost its unbeaten re-
cord when it went down to Wales, 27-6,
in Cardiff.
‘‘Wales did not have to do anything
special to win,’’ said France Coach Phi-
lippe Saint-André. He wasnot being a
gracelessloser, merely bemoaning the

litanyof errorsbyhis own team, which
meant the match was effectively decided
in the first 10 minutes Friday night.
Two cheaply conceded penalties were
all that the surefooted Welsh marks-
man, Leigh Halfpenny, needed to claim
points, while a defensive slapstick by
France —scrumhalf Jean-Marc
Doussin and fullback Brice Dulin body-
checked each other into the ground —
let Welsh center George North add five
morepoints with asimple opportunist’s
try.France never recovered, and the fi-
nal margin of defeat was its heaviest
against Wales since 1931.
‘‘We’reback in contention, with abig
match to come in a couple of weeks,’’
said Wales Coach Warren Gatland, who
sawhis biggest lineup decision —drop-
ping the veteran scrumhalf Mike Phil-
lips —pay off as Rhys Webb’s quick
movesgave fresh life to the Welsh at-
tack. Gatland’s captain, Sam Warbur-
ton, subdued so far this year, was back
to his very best, although he wasfortu-
nate to be awarded a second-half try
after an interminable video review.
‘‘We won’tneed anyextramotivation
with England next,’’ said Gatland. ‘‘If
anything Imay have to bring them

down a little.’’
While the leaders areclosely packed,
thereis daylight at the bottom of the
standings. Italy looks set for its 10th
last-place finish in 15 Six Nations after
losing Saturday at home, 21-20, to the
competition’s other perennial struggler,
Scotland.
Duncan Weir, Scotland’s midfield
playmaker, dropped a goal in the final
seconds of a fluctuating contest to steal
the victory. ‘‘I had plentyofdoubts he
would do it,’’ said Scotland’s interim
coach, Scott Johnson. ‘‘I’ve watched
him for the last three weeks and he nev-
er looked like kicking one.’’
HadScotland lost, it might have
blamed one of its own. Tommaso Allan,
the dual national who played for Scot-
tish junior national teams beforeopting
for Italy,scored the first of his team’s
two tries and claimed 13 points in all.
Rob
Hughes
GLOBAL SOCCER
LONDON The day after Manchester
United made Wayne Rooney the
highest-paid player in Britain, a fan (or
fans) of an opposing team threw coins
at him as he prepared to take a corner

kick.
Rooney’s reaction was measured and
mature. He picked the loose change off
the turf, handed it to the referee, and
got on with his game. For good mea-
sure, Rooney later scored the goal of
the game in United’s 2-0 victory at Lon-
don’s Crystal Palace.
The pittance hurled at the player is
no laughing matter. Coins thrown in an-
ger or derision can blind. It was at this
same ground 19 years ago where Eric
Cantona launched a kick into the face
of a fan who had taunted him.
The Crystal Palace is no palace. It is
a throwback to how older stadiums
used to be, with the front tier of spec-
tator seats almost within touching dis-
tance of the players on the field.
Rooney did well not to respond with
anger or aggression. In fact, he
channeled his own mercurial mix of the
belligerence and beauty into the class
act of the game when he scored the
second conclusive goal of Saturday’s
match.
Manchester United had by then worn
down the well-organized defiance to its
patently greater talents. Palace had
played on the back foot, until a clumsy

tackle by Marouane Chamakh upended
United fullback Patrice Evra just inside
the penalty box. With consummate
ease and might, Robin van Persie dis-
patched the penalty kick.
That was the second-best kick of the
match. Six minutes later, Rooney
topped it. Juan Mata and Evra set up
the incisive attack down the left before
Rooney let fly with a line of four de-
fenders retreating in front of him.
It was the kind of skill that might
make Rooney worth his wages. Bal-
anced like a ballerina on the toes of his
left foot, he let the ball come across his
body before applying a touch with his
right foot that sent it powerfully and
precisely into the corner of the net.
Very few players can pull off a volley
as sweet as that. It is not a skill that
can be taught. It is born of rare instinct
and technique, and it allows Rooney to
swipe his foot across the ball so that it
rises and arcs beyond the reach of the
goalkeeper.
‘‘I’ve been trying to let my football
do the talking,’’ Rooney later said on
television.
He was replying not just to the ques-
tion about what comes into his head

when such an opportunity presents it-
self. The real and ongoing questions
surrounding Rooney have been about
his protracted negotiations before he
signed a new contract on Friday that
ties him to United until 2019.
The haggling had been going on all
season long, following attempts by
Chelsea to entice him away. José Mour-
inho returned as Chelsea team man-
ager last summer, and as he had done
in a previous spell there, Mourinho in-
dulged in public debate about the best
player of an opposing team.
Chelsea tried, and ultimately failed,
to lure Steven Gerrard from Liverpool
in 2005. It tried, and failed, to get
Rooney. The end result on both occa-
sions was that Mourinho destabilized
two opposing clubs, which were made
to spend time, energy, and vastly more
money to keep their key player.
Gerrard stayed, and he still is cap-
tain of Liverpool.
Rooney’s agent held United to
ransom, not for the first time, to keep
its own player. The old contract, which
had 18 months left, was replaced by a
new one that is reportedly worth
300,000 pounds per week, or about $26

million per year.
There might be some leeway in those
figures. Rooney and United neither
confirm nor deny the sums. They tried
to manage the news through packaged
releases via the Manchester United TV
outlet that has broadcast rights over
what amounts to news conferences.
On one hand, it suits the club to show
its ambition to hold on to a star player.
On the other, the salary figures are be-
tween the club, the player and the tax
authorities.
The best guess is that Rooney is
guaranteed slightly less, about $21 mil-
lion a year. But the club will use its
commercial muscle to get him top dol-
lar from personal sponsors like Nike
and Samsung.
The deal —besides being the envy of
Crystal Palace fans —reinforces
United’s intentions not to be outbid for
a star player.
The club is expected to reap about
420 million pounds of income in the cur-
rent financial year. It would have to
pay considerably more, in both transfer
fee and wages, if it tried to find an ad-
equate replacement for Rooney.
Now 28, Rooney has shown year

after year that he has the muscle, the
aptitude and the team spirit to thrive in
the physical intensity of English soccer.
Right now, Mesut Ozil, Arsenal’s re-
cord-setting acquisition, is omitted from
the team because his skills and confi-
dence have waned in his first season in
the Premier League. Ozil will come
back. He has even more vision, a more
refined soccer brain, than Rooney.
Whether he could slog through 10
seasons, as Rooney already has, is a
gamble. And so, in a sense, is whether
Rooney can do it for another five sea-
sons. There are a lot of miles on
Rooney’s engine. He runs 10 kilometers
every game and is heavily built; there
is a reason why Saturday’s goal was
his first in the league since Christmas.
Rooney had been a frequent visitor
to the trainer’s table for a deep groin
strain. Throwing money at him cannot
put that right.
A star player proves his worth
CARL COURT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Wayne Rooney signed a contract that made
him the highest-paid player in Britain.
Rugby title going down to the wire
England’s victory keeps
4 teams in contention for

Six Nations champion
EDDIE KEOGH/REUTERS
Danny Care on his way to scoring a try for England in its 13-10 victory over Ireland.
Wayne Rooney has shown year
after year that he can thrive.
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
16
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014

In digital,
giants get
lion’s share
Economic
View
ROBERT H. FRANK
It’s clear that the lives of many artists
are being transformed by digital technol-
ogy. But competing schools of thought
cite the very same technology in support
of strikingly different conclusions.
One group, for example, says the abil-
ity to distribute the best performers’
products widely at low cost portends a
world where even small differences in
talent command huge differences in re-
ward. That view is known as the ‘‘win-
ner take all’’ theory.
In contrast, the ‘‘long tail’’ theory
holds that the information revolution is

letting sellers prosper even when their
offerings appeal to only a small fraction
of the market. This view foresees a
golden age in which small-scale creat-
ive talent flourishes as never before.
These dueling theories strike close to
home. My personal intellectual bets
have given me a strong rooting interest
in the winner-take-all view. But even
the most flint-eyed economist has a ro-
mantic side. That
part of me wants the
long-tail outlook to
prevail, and not just
because of its hopeful
message for under-
dogs.
My youngest sons
make up two-thirds of
the Nepotist, a band
in the hypercompetit-
ive indie music scene
of New York City. I’d love to see them
make it. But I fear that the evidence sup-
ports the winner-take-all theory’s pre-
diction that they face almost prohibitive
odds.
That theory has a venerable history.
The British economist Alfred Marshall
was among the first to describe how

19th-century advances in transporta-
tion enabled the best producers to ex-
tend their reach. Piano manufacturing
was once widely dispersed, for ex-
ample, simply because pianos were so
costly to transport. But with each ex-
tension of canal, rail and road systems,
shipping costs fell sharply, and at each
step production became more concen-
trated. Worldwide, only a handful of pi-
ano makers remain, as producers with
even a slight edge have ultimately cap-
tured most of the industry’s income.
Inspired by Marshall, the Duke econo-
mist Philip Cook and I argued in our 1995
book, ‘‘The Winner-Take-All Society,’’
that superstars have been dominating
markets as never before. Analogous
forces help explain the surge in income
inequality that began in the late 1960s. In
Superstars
dominate
sales, but
there are
more ways for
newcomers to
display their
talents.
BANGALORE, INDIA
BY MARK BERGEN

Snapdeal, the online marketplace that
has become known as the eBay of India,
is now drawing parallels with another
e-commerce powerhouse, Alibaba of
China.
India, with its lowerincomes, credit
card use and Internet penetration, lags
well behind China in online shoppers.
But that also means India’s e-commerce
market has room to grow, and the indus-
try’s leadersare trying to convince the
financial world that Alibaba’s success
can be replicated in their country.
Kunal Bahl, the 30-year-old chief ex-
ecutive of Snapdeal, recently toured Sil-
icon Valley, where the company is seek-
ing investments.
Since 2011, Snapdeal has raised more
than $200 million from investors, includ-
ing Intel Capital, the venture capital arm
of the chip maker, and Nexus Venture
Partners, an Indian fund. In June, eBay,
the American online auction company
that Snapdeal is most often compared
with, led a $50 million round of strategic
funding in the Indian company.
Mr.Bahl said Snapdeal planned to go
public but would not specify a date. In
an interview with VentureBeat, a tech-
nology Website, he said he was plan-

ning an initial public offering in the
United States.
An I.P.O.would come after the com-
pany reached $1 billion in sales, Mr.
Bahl said in an interview with TheNew
York Times. ‘‘We’ll be there in a matter
of months,’’ he added.
Thebrokerage firm CLSAforecasts
that Indian e-commerce willexpand
from $3.1 billion now to $22 billion in five
years. Flipkart, acompany similar to
Amazon.com that sells books, clothes
and electronics online, predicts amar-
ket of $70 billion by 2020.
As the projections have grown rosier,
technology investors have poured in
funds. In a report last May, Allegro Ad-
visors, an investment bank, said 53 e-
commerce companies in India had se-
cured $853 million in venturecapital
funds in the previous three years.
But now, financing is slowing, and sev-
eral online retailers are shutting down.
‘‘Thee-commerce landscape in India
is becoming clearer,’’ said Deepak
Srinath, a partner at Allegro. ‘‘It’s a two-
horse race: It’s Snapdeal and Flipkart.’’
Flipkart has netted $540 million in
funding since it began in 2007,including
a $160 million investment in October. (In

2012, a government agency began inves-
tigating whether Flipkart, which had re-
ceived venture funds from American
firms, had violated foreign investment
laws.)
Flipkart’s marketplace has 1,000
sellers and 14 million registered users,
well below Snapdeal’s totals. For the fi-
nancial year that ended last March,
KAINAZ AMARIA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Flipkart.com parcels. Snapdeal and Flipkart are the two leading online retailers in India, and both said they were considering I.P.O.s.
ONLINE, PAGE 18
ECONOMIC VIEW, PAGE 18
Flipkart posted revenue of $190 million.
But Mr. Srinath said Flipkart was
leading in name recognition —acrucial
category in India, wherebrand and ser-
vice matter immensely. When Motorola
Mobility introduced its newest phone in
India, on Feb. 6, it chose Flipkart as its
exclusive vendor for early sales. ‘‘It’s
almost like e-commerce is synonymous
with Flipkart,’’ Mr. Srinath said.
Likewise, Flipkart has broadcast its
desire to file an I.P.O., although it has no
‘‘fixed timelines,’’ a spokeswoman
wrote by email. The company expects to
hit $1 billion in sales by 2015.
To warrant a large valuation, either
company would need to mimic

Alibaba’s spectacular success in China
and quickly reach 100 million shoppers
in their home market.
This is unlikely, said atechnology in-
dustry adviser,because while Indian e-
commerce companies may be increas-
ing their sales, they are not adding new
users as quickly as they claim. The ad-
viser asked for anonymitybecause his
data on the companies was not public.
Until either companygoes public,
parsing their financial dataisdifficult,
said Aditya Rath, an associate director
at PricewaterhouseCoopers India. ‘‘I
would not be overly enthusiastic about
sale s ,’’ he cautioned.
In 2007, Mr. Bahl, a graduate of the
Wharton businessschool at the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, wassettling into
corporate life in the United States, first
with Deloitte, then Microsoft. But then
his visa renewal was rejected, leading
him to return to India.
‘‘It was ablessing in disguise,’’ he
said in an interview.
After starting Snapdeal, he became a
poster boyfor the faults of America’s
visa policy and was the center of aUSA
Today article in 2011 on the technology
brain drain in the United States.

At that time, the New Delhi-based
Snapdeal had about 400 employees.
India’s ambitious answers in the online market
Snapdeal and Flipkart
hope to mimic success
story of China’s Alibaba
E-cigarettes: A path to tobacco, or from it?
BY SABRINA TAVERNISE
Dr.Michael Siegel, a hard-charging
public health researcher at Boston Uni-
versity, argues that electronic ciga-
rettes could be the beginning of the end
of smoking in America. He sees them as
a disruptive innovation that could make
cigarettes obsolete, as the computer did
to the typewriter.
But his former teacher and mentor,
Stanton A. Glantz, aprofessor of medi-
cine at the UniversityofCalifornia, San
Francisco, is convinced that e-cigarettes
mayerase the hard-won progress
achieved over the past half-century in
reducing smoking. He predicts that the
modern gadgetry will be a glittering
gateway to the deadly,old-fashioned
habit for children and that adult smokers
will stay hooked longer,now that they
can get a nicotine fix at their desks.
These experts represent the two
camps now at war over the public health

implications of e-cigarettes. The
devices, intended to feed nicotine addic-
tion without the toxic tar of convention-
al cigarettes, have divided a normally
sedate public health community that
had long been united in the fight against
smoking and Big Tobacco.
The essence of their disagreement
comes down to asimple question: Wille-
cigarettes cause more or fewer people to
smoke? The answer matters. Cigarette
smoking is still the single largest cause of
preventable death in the United States,
killing about 480,000 people a year.
Dr.Siegel, whose graduate school
manuscripts Dr.Glantz used to read,
says e-cigarette pessimists arestuck on
the idea that anything that looks like
smoking is bad. ‘‘They are so blinded by
this ideologythat they arenot able to
see e-cigarettes objectively,’’ he said.
Dr.Glantz disagrees. ‘‘E-cigarettes
seem likeagood idea,’’ he said, ‘‘but
they aren’t.’’
Science that might resolvequestions
about e-cigarettes is still developing, and
many experts agree that the evidence so
far is too skimpy to draw definitive con-
clusions about the long-term effects of
the devices on the broader population.

‘‘The popularityis outpacing the
knowledge,’’ said Dr. Michael B. Stein-
berg,associate professor of medicine at
the Robert Wood Johnson Medical
School at Rutgers University. ‘‘We’ll
have a better idea in another year or two
of howsafe these products are, but the
question is, will the horse be out of the
barn by then?’’
This high-stakes debate overwhat e-
cigarettes mean for the nation’s 42 mil-
lion smokers comes at a crucial mo-
ment. Soon, the Food and Drug Admin-
istration is expected to issue
regulations that would give the agency
control overthe devices, which have
had explosive growth virtually free of
any federal oversight.
In the Europe Union, lawmakerslast
autumn rejected a proposal to regulate
e-cigarettes as pharmaceuticals, leav-
ing the decision up to individual coun-
tries. But e-cigarette sales were con-
fined to adults, and manufacturers were
required to adhere to the same advertis-
ing and marketing rules that apply to
conventional cigarettes.
But the restrictions may be tightened.
In December,the European Union and
its executive arm, the European Com-

mission, agreed to a ban e-cigarettes
across Europe if any three of the Union’s
28 member countries decided to prohibit
them. So far no country has, although
France is considering prohibiting their
use in all public areas where traditional
cigarettes are banned.
In the United States, the new federal
rules willhave broad implications for
public health. If they are too tough, ex-
perts say, they risk snuffing out smalle-
cigarette companies in favor of Big To-
bacco, which has recently entered the
business. If they are too lax, sloppy man-
ufacturing could lead to devices that do
not work properly or even harm people.
Andmany scientists saye-cigarettes
willbetruly effective in reducing the
death tollfrom smoking only with the
right kind of federal regulation —for ex-
ample, rules that make ordinary ciga-
rettes more expensive than e-cigarettes,
or that reduce the amount of nicotine in
ordinary cigarettes so smokersturn to
e-cigarettes for their nicotine.
‘‘E-cigarettes arenot amiracle cure,’’
said David B. Abrams, executive direc-
tor of the Schroeder National Institute
for Tobacco Research and PolicyStud-
ies at the Legacy Foundation, an anti-

smoking research group. ‘‘They need a
little help to eclipse cigarettes, which
arestill the most satisfying and deadly
product ever made.’’
Nicotine, the powerful stimulant that
makes cigarettes addictive, is the cru-
cial ingredient in e-cigarettes. With e-
cigarettes, nicotine is inhaled through a
liquid that is heated into vapor.
American ales of e-cigarettes more
than doubled last year from 2012, to $1.7
billion, according to Bonnie Herzog,an
analyst at Wells FargoSecurities. Ms.
Herzog said that in the next decade, con-
sumption of e-cigarettes could outstrip
that of conventional cigarettes.
Public health experts liketosay that
people smoke for the nicotine but die
from the tar. And the reason e-cigarettes
have caused such a stir is that they take
the deadly tarout of the equation while
offering the nicotine fixand the sensa-
tion of smoking. For all that is unknown
about the new devices —they have been
on the American market for only seven
years —most researchers agree that
puffing on one is far lessharmful than
smoking a traditional cigarette.
But then their views diverge.
Pessimists like Dr.Glantz say that

while e-cigarettes might be good in the-
ory, they are bad in practice. The vast
majority of people who smoke them now
also smoke conventional cigarettes, he
said, and thereislittle evidence that
much switching is happening.E-ciga-
rettes may even prolong the habit, he
said, by offering adose of nicotine at
times when getting one from a tradition-
al cigarette is inconvenient or illegal.
What is more, criticssay, they make
smoking look alluring again, with im-
ages on billboards and television ads for
the first time in decades. Dr. Glantz said,
‘‘I feel like I’ve gotten into atime ma-
chine and gone back to the 1980s.’’
Researchers also worry that e-ciga-
rettes could be a gateway to traditional
cigarettes for young people. The
devices are sold on the Internet. The li-
quids that make their vapor come in fla-
vors like mango and watermelon. Celeb-
rities smoke them: Julia Louis-Dreyfus
and Leonardo DiCaprio puffed on them
at the Golden Globe Awards.
Asurvey from the Centersfor Disease
Control and Prevention found that in
2012, about 10 percent of high school stu-
dents said they had tried an e-cigarette,
up from 5 percent in 2011. But 7 percent of

those who had tried e-cigarettes said
they had never smoked atraditional cig-
arette, prompting concern that e-ciga-
rettes were, in fact, becoming a gateway.
E-cigarette skepticshave also raised
concerns about nicotine addiction. But
manyresearchers saythat the nicotine
by itself is not aserious health hazard.
Nicotine-replacement therapies like
lozenges and patches have been used
for years. Some even argue that nicotine
is alot like caffeine: an addictive sub-
stance that stimulates the mind.
‘‘Nicotine may have some adverse
health effects, but they arerelatively
minor,’’ said Dr. Neal L. Benowitz, a pro-
fessor of medicine at the University of
California, San Francisco, who has
spent his career studying the pharma-
cology of nicotine.
Another ingredient, propylene glycol,
the vapor that e-cigarettes emit is alung
irritant, and the effects of inhaling it over
time are a concern, Dr. Benowitz said.
But Dr. Siegel and others contend that
some public health experts, after a
single-minded battle against smoking
that has run for decades, are too inflex-
ible about e-cigarettes. The strategy
should be to reduce harm from conven-

tional cigarettes, and e-cigarettes offer
a way to do that, he said, much as giving
clean needles to intravenous drug users
reduces their odds of getting infected
with the virus that causes AIDS.
Solid evidence about e-cigarettes is
limited. A clinical trial in New Zealand,
which many researchers regard as the
most reliable study to date, found that
after six months about 7 percent of
people given e-cigarettes had quit
smoking, aslightly better rate than
those with patches.
‘‘The findings were intriguing but
nothing to write home about yet,’’ said
Thomas J. Glynn, a researcher at the
American Cancer Society.
In Britain, researchers say that trends
are heading in the right direction.
‘‘Motivation to quit is up, successof
quit attempts are up, and prevalence is
coming down faster than it has for the
last six or seven years,’’ said Robert
West, director of tobacco studies at Uni-
versity College London. It is impossible
to knowwhether e-cigarettes drove the
changes, he said, but ‘‘wecan certainly
say they are not undermining quitting.’’
The scientific uncertainties have in-
tensified the public health fight, with

each side seizing on scraps of new data
to bolster its position.
One recent study in Germanyon
secondhand vapor from e-cigarettes
prompted Dr.Glantz to write on his
blog, ‘‘More evidence that e-cigs cause
substantial air pollution.’’ Dr. Siegel
highlighted the same study,concluding
that it showed‘‘no evidence of asignifi-
cant public health hazard.’’
That Big Tobacco is now selling e-cig-
arettes has contributed to skepticism
among experts and advocates.
Cigarettes went into broad use in the
1920s —and by the 1940s, lung cancer
rates had exploded. More Americans
have died from smoking than in all the
wars the United States has fought.
Smoking rates have declined sharply
since the 1960s, when about half of all
men and a thirdof women smoked. But
progress has slowed, with a smoking
rate now of about 18 percent.
‘‘Part of the furniture for us is that the
tobacco industry is evil and everything
they do has to be opposed,’’ said John
Britton, aprofessor of epidemiology at
the Universityof Nottingham in Eng-
land, and the director for the U.K. Cen-
ter for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies.

‘‘But one doesn’t want that to get in the
way of public health.’’
Liz Alderman contributed reporting.
CHRIS POLYDOROFF/ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Enjoying an e-cigarette at a store in Woodbury, Minn. American sales of the tar-free devices more than doubled last year, to $1.7 billion.
The scientific uncertainties
have intensified the public
health fight, with each side
seizing on scraps of new data.
Business
For complicated cellular needs,
operators tap simple streetlight
BARCELONA, SPAIN
BY MARK SCOTT
Cellphone operators worldwide are
struggling to keep pace with individu-
als’ growing demand for mobile data.
The rise of smartphones like Apple’s
iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has
allowed consumers to stream videos
and download large files onto their
handsets, putting increased strain on
carriers’networks.
In response, mobile operatorsand
network infrastructureproviders are
looking for ways to beef up cellular cov-
erage.
On Monday, Ericsson of Sweden and
Philips of the Netherlands plan to an-
nounce their own solution to this prob-

lem, when the two European technology
companies announce a project that
combines city street lighting with mo-
bile phone infrastructure.
Under the plans, the companies will
incorporate cellular network antennas
into energy-efficient LED streetlights
that can be placed in parts of cities
where carriers want to enhance their
network coverage.
By combining their infrastructure
with streetlights, operatorscan expand
their networks in built-up urban areas
where they might find it difficult to get
approval to installcumbersome hard-
ware like cellular base stations.
Philips and Ericsson also saythey
plan to offer cash-strapped citygovern-
ments anew source of income in the
form of payments from carriers that
want to rent out space on the street-
lights.
The companies add that the energy-
efficient LED streetlights offer around
50 percent in cost savings compared
with traditional lighting.
‘‘This is the best waytostrengthen
mobile networks,’’ Hans Vestberg, Eric-
sson’s chief executive, said in an inter-
view. ‘‘We can’t get any big sites for mo-

bile equipment anymore. This allows us
to reuse existing infrastructure.’’
The two companies have been work-
ing with Verizon Wirelesson a pilot
project in the United States over the last
year.Ericsson and Philips nowwant to
roll out the idea globally, and are cur-
rently in talks with representatives of
American and European cities about
howto modify the streetlights to meet
local needs. The companies declined to
say with which cities they are in discus-
sions.
‘‘This is aconcept that has resonance
in allparts of the world,’’ Frans van
Houten, Philips’s chief executive,said
in an interview. ‘‘You can’t have a single
design for all cities. Thelook and feel of
the streetlights are very important.’’
As carriers likeDeutsche Telekom of
Germanyand China Mobile spend bil-
lions of dollars to upgrade their net-
works, analysts say telecommunica-
tions companies have looked to partner
with other industries and with local gov-
ernments to find new locations for mo-
bile phone infrastructure.
Such partnerships offer achance to
reduce costs, as multiple companies can
share the price of installing high-speed

mobile data equipment everywhere
from in bus stations to trash cans.
The deals also allow carriers to gather
additional information on customer
habits, analysts said. With expanded
coverage, operators can build up a bet-
ter picture of how individuals use their
networks.
‘‘Collaboration can lead to new busi-
nessmodels. It offers carriersthe
chance to get real-time dataon con-
sumers,’’ said Sylvain Fabre, atelecom-
munications analyst at the research
firm Gartner in London. ‘‘If you can get
close enough, you can get real insights
into users’ activities.’’
‘‘This is the best way to
strengthen mobile networks.
This allows us to reuse
existing infrastructure.’’
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014
|
17
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

THESUCCESSES
OF SOCHI
Also online at
SOCHI2014.NYTIMES.COM
DON’T MISS ASPECIAL REPORT

WEDNESDAY,FEBRUARY 26 IN THE
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
technology business
A big bet on intimate friendships
BY JENNA WORTHAM
Theaddressbook is making abillion-
dollar comeback.
Weary of noisy social networksfilled
with mundane updates from the most
remote acquaintances, millions of
people have turned to their smartphone
address books —and the diverse array
of messaging services that rely on them,
like Snapchat, Secret, Kik and Whats-
App —for moreintimate social connec-
tions. Now the stampede toward those
messaging services has Silicon Valley’s
giants scrambling to catch up.
Being able to tap into this address-
book messaging is a major reason Face-
book decided that WhatsApp, the most
popular of these services, was worth as
much as $19 billion in a deal announced
last week. In buying WhatsApp, Face-
book is betting that the future of social
networking will depend not just on
broadcasting to the masses but also on
the ability to quickly and efficiently
communicate with your family and
closest confidants —those people you

care enough about to have their num-
bers saved on your smartphone.
Facebook has long defined the digital
social network, and the average adult
Facebook user has morethan 300
friends. The company’sstrategy has
mostly been about making that circle of
friends even bigger, cajoling users into
combining their friends, former friends,
co-workers, second cousins and every-
one they’veevermet into asingle, bal-
looning social network.
But the average adult has far fewer
friends —perhaps just a couple in many
cases, researchers say—whom they
talk to regularly in their real-world so-
cial network.
‘‘The prominence of the address book
simply reflects the shift in relevance on
the Internet to cater to the most univer-
sal and basic human need: communica-
tion ,’ ’ David Byttow, a founder of a new
messaging application called Secret,
said in an email. ‘‘Theaddress book is a
simple, reusable list for anyapplication,
and simplicity always wins.’’
Services like Instagram, Google Plus,
Twitter and Facebook encourage users
to sharefrom the rooftop every life
event and moment as material to be

viewed and commented on. TheInter-
net enabled that sort of broad outreach
as never before, and the services contin-
ue to grow;morethan a billion people
have signed up on Facebook alone.
Yetthe popularityofprivate-
messaging applications like WhatsApp,
which has more than 450 million users,
suggests that despite all the technolo-
gical advances in recent decades,
people still craveto communicate in
small groups and often just with one
other person at a time.
‘‘There’s a very human need for inti-
mate, one-to-one communications,’’
said Susan Etlinger, an analyst with Al-
timeter Group, who studies social tech-
nologies.
While the original ideas behind ser-
vices likeFacebook and Twitter may
have been to connect people, Ms.Et-
linger said, they have ‘‘evolved into a
news feed,’’ one that is increasingly
clogged by advertisements, brands and
near-strangers, all competing to be seen
and heard.
In addition, many people maybe
growing tired of worrying about howan
image or status update will be per-
ceivedby their broader social network

of employers, in-laws and ex-flames.
‘‘Contacting someone on Facebook is
the equivalent of opening up the phone
book and calling someone,’’ said Scott
Feinberg, 22, a user of WhatsApp. ‘‘With
WhatsApp you’ve givenme your num-
ber and actually want me to contact
you.’’
Facebook and other major tech
companies have tried several times to
roll out their own messaging applica-
tions, but none have caught on likethe
products introduced by start-ups. Mes-
senger, Facebook’sflagship chat
product, was originally conceived as an
alternative to email but is primarily
used by people on Facebook to send
notes to their friends within the net-
work.
Mark E. Zuckerberg, the chief execu-
tive of Facebook, acknowledged those
shortcomings in a call to investorsand
analysts after the WhatsApp announce-
ment. He also said his interest in Whats-
App came from realizing that ‘‘it’s a ser-
vice for very quick and reliable real-time
communication with allyour contacts
and small groups of people.’’
Some analysts took Mr. Zuckerberg’s
move to buyWhatsApp as a signal that

Facebook was vulnerable despite its
huge user base.
For the most part, though, the new so-
cial networks that focus on smaller
groups of people are being used in addi-
tion to services likeFacebook and Twit-
ter, not instead of them, a point that Mr.
Zuckerberg made on the call with in-
vestors.
‘‘WhatsApp also complements our
services and will add a lot of new value
to our community,’’ he said.
Whether the two kinds of social net-
works can coexist and thrive remains to
be seen. It could well be that younger
Facebook users, who tend to have more
friends on the service than older users,
have more of a need for a separate ser-
vice.
But with the addition of WhatsApp,
Facebook has positioned itself to be
ready if the move away from its core of-
ferings is swift.
It could turn out that the dominant
messaging platform has stillnot
emerged. David Lee, an investor who is
one of the founders of the prominent Sil-
icon Valley firm SV Angel, said that he
waswatching the next-generation mes-
saging category with intense interest.

But he said it wasnot yet clear which
ones would have long-term staying
power.
According to Mr. Lee, these apps take
offbecause people can quickly import
their friends. But once people get bored
or distracted by the latest hot app, ‘‘it’s
just easier to switch and move on to the
next one.’’
The services that stick around, he
said, willbethe ones that people return
to every day.
Adam Ludwin, aserial entrepreneur
who is working on a new messaging ap-
plication, Ether,said that Facebook was
future-proofing itself for a coming sea
change in social media: In the near
term, a person’s mobile number will be
as tied to their digital identityastheir
Facebook, Google or Twitter account.
‘‘The address book is a very unique
thing that sits on the phone and isn’t
available to the desktop world,’’ Mr.
Ludwin said. ‘‘It allows you to build ser-
vices that have the potential to grow
very fast.’’
Chiqui Matthew, 35, who works in fi-
nance, said he preferred services like
WhatsApp. ‘‘I fear all communication in
the digital age is being reduced to shout-

ing in acrowded theater,’’ he said in an
email. ‘‘Everything is absolute, declar-
ative, exclaimed, public and generally
lacking in the nuance of face-to-face
conversation. I like the digital version of
a‘cocktail party whisper.’ An intimation
meant to be intimate.’’
But even Mr. Matthew has not given
up on Facebook completely. He made
his comment after responding to a Face-
book post.
In buying WhatsApp,
Facebook sees future in
limited communications
DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Mark E. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of
Facebook, said that WhatsApp would com-
plement the social media giant’s services.
GRAND VISIONS OF MAGIC NUMBERS
Onlookers in Silicon Valley technology
circles are redefining what it means to
be rich, Nick Bilton writes. PAGE 20
Chief renews Ya hoo’s perennial battle to bolster ad revenue
SUNNYVALE, CALIF.
BY VINDU GOEL
To Marissa Mayer, the chief executive of
Yahoo, fashion magazines like Vogue
and InStyle have achieved the holy grail
of advertising.
‘‘Theads in those magazines areas

interesting as the photo shoots and the
arti c les,’’ she said in an interview last
week at the company’s Silicon Valley
headquarters. ‘‘I miss the ads when
they are not there. I feel less fulfilled.’’
This year,her goal is to start making
the ads on Yahoo just as compelling and
just as integrated with the news and in-
formation people seek from her com-
pany’s websites and mobile applications.
Ms. Mayer, who oversaw Google’s
signature search products for several
years, also hopes to develop new search
tools and ads geared to mobile users—
Yahoo’sfirst steps to innovate in its
original business since 2010, when it
began a10-year deal to outsource its
search function to Microsoft.
‘‘We’re not sure that a list of links that
people have to pick through is the right
experience on the phone, and we’re go-
ing to start to play with context, applica-
tions, other ways to address those
search needs,’’ she said.
Better,moreuseful ads would cer-
tainly make Yahoo’s 800 million
monthly usersand its legions of advert-
isers happier all around.
But for Yahoo, much more is at stake.
New ad formats that go beyond the

company’s traditional banner and
search ads are its best hope of finding
fresh sources of income, which is badly
needed to reverse years of decline.
Rebuilding Yahoo’s advertising busi-
ness is an immense challenge that has
toppled several previous chief execu-
tives of the company.
‘‘They’ve just hemmed and hawed
over the last couple of years, and it
doesn’t help that they have had execu-
tive turnover,’’ said David Cohen, chief
investment officer of Universal Mc-
Cann, an advertising agency that is part
of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
Last month, Ms. Mayer firedher top
ad executive, Henrique de Castro, who
was widely considered ineffective de-
spite his hefty paycheck. She said she
would lead advertising efforts herself
while continuing to run the rest of the
company.
Competitors like Facebook and Twit-
ter, the masters of so-called stream ads,
and Google, the king of search, aren’t
waiting for her to catch up.
‘‘They are taking share from Yahoo,’’
said Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at
Pivotal Research Group. ‘‘The window
of time isn’t going to last much longer.’’

Yahoo’s rivals areparticularly strong
on mobile devices, where Yahoo earns
virtually no revenue despite the fact
that about half its usersaccess its ser-
vices that way.
Ms. Mayer seems undaunted.
‘‘We have had really great success
over the course of 2013 in getting in
place atremendous team as well as
building and launching new products.
And we’vegot traffic up,’’ she said. Ms.
Mayer noted the release of popular apps
like Yahoo Weather and Yahoo News Di-
gest, as well as new versions of Flickr
and Yahoo Mail —though userswere
critical of changes to both.
‘‘We’re very focused on revenue
now,’’ she continued. ‘‘The path to rev-
enue is really about delivering for ad-
vertisersads that perform in whatever
format or setting our usersare working
in and making those ads really enhan-
cing for the user experience.’’
In the last few months, Yahoo has laid
out several new advertising initiatives.
Some of them make it easier for mar-
keters to use computers to buy tradi-
tional ads and to take better advantage
of Yahoo’s dataon its userstotarget
their pitches.

However, the company is also begin-
ning to push into two of the hottest areas
of Internet advertising: stream ads, in
which marketing messages are mixed
in with the feed of news headlines and
other information, and so-called native
ads, which are sponsored articles or
photos that resemble regular editorial
content.
One early example: Recipes from
Knorr, the soup brand owned by Uni-
lever, aresprinkled amid regular arti-
cles from Yahoo writers, food
magazines and blogs on Yahoo Food,
the digital magazine the company intro-
duced about six weeks ago.
On Yahoo Food, the Knorr ads, with
headlines like ‘‘Dear Mac and Cheese: A
Love Letter,’’ don’tlook much different
than surrounding articles like‘‘Foods
You Didn’t Know You Could Fry.’’
Ms. Mayer, who said the digital food
and tech magazines have already attrac-
ted more than 10 million unique visitors
since their relaunch in early January,
said she planned to extend the approach
to other Yahoo topic channels likenews,
finance, sports, travel and style.
Yahoo is also using Tumblr, the blog-
ging site it acquired last year,to help

brands easily build their own promo-
tional sites with content that can be pro-
moted and shared among Tumblr users.
The artificial sweetener Splenda, for ex-
ample, is dishing up daily ideas for cut-
ting down on calories, like eating oat-
meal instead of granola or using
Splenda instead of sugar to sweeten
chicken wings.
When stream and native ads are done
well, they can be quite effective.
But too many of Yahoo’s stream ads
are unrelated to the content around
them, said Dan Greenberg, chief execu-
tive officer of Sharethrough, asoftware
company that integrates brand content
from companies likeIntel, Pepsi and
McDonald’s into the feeds of publishers
like Forbes and Time Inc.
‘‘They’ve made it native in form but
not in function,’’ he said. ‘‘You’re going
to erode consumer trust.’’
Ms. Mayeralso intends to create new
mobile tools for consumersand advert-
isers, taking advantage of aprovision in
the company’s search contract with Mi-
crosoft that permits Yahoo to go its own
way on mobile.
On Wednesday, the company intro-
duced Gemini, a platform that allows

advertisers to buy mobile search ads,
web ads and mobile stream ads through
a single marketplace.
And last month, Yahoo bought Aviate,
astart-up working on an Android app
that tries to anticipate the needs of
phone usersbased on their location, the
time of day, and their past habits.
Although the Microsoft partnership is
a significant part of Yahoo’s business,
accounting for nearly one-third of Ya-
hoo’s revenue, Ms. Mayersaid that mo-
bile opens up opportunities to try differ-
ent approaches.
Creating new revenue streams from
scratch is difficult for anycompany, al-
though Facebook, which turned itself in-
to a mobile advertising juggernaut in
little more than ayear,proved it canbe
done.
After recent meetings with Yahoo ex-
ecutives, ‘‘we’re encouraged by the
kind of direction they’re heading in,’’
said Mr. Cohen, whose ad agency works
with major brands like Coca-Cola, John-
son & Johnson and Chrysler.
So far,investors have also cut Ms.
Mayer some slack because of the soar-
ing value of Yahoo’s stakein Alibaba, a
Chinese e-commerce company.

But Yahoo’s ownfinancial perfor-
mance has been disappointing.Reven-
ue fell6percent last year,and akey
measureof the company’s operating
profits fell 11 percent.
Ms. Mayerhas felt the pain in her
pocketbook.
In early February, the company’s
boardof directorsforced her to give up
stock options with apaper profit of $4.5
million for failing to meet performance
targets, according to securities filings.
Yahoo’s chief financial officer, Kenneth
Goldman, had to forfeit options with a
profit of $1.5million. (The givebacks
were a small portion of their Yahoo
stock and option holdings.)
Ms.Mayer said the board’s decision
was fair.
‘‘We made adeliberate decision to in-
vest, and that ultimately caused our op-
erating income to decline somewhat,’’
she said.
‘‘But we’re motivated by making the
right decisions for the company to get
us on a long-term path for healthy
growth,’ ’ she added.
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES-AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
Marissa Mayer, the chief executive of Yahoo, is seeking compelling new ad formats that harmonize with the editorial content of the company, which badly needs fresh sources of income.
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

18
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014

business
media technology
Briton finds CNN crowd is a tough fit
David
Carr
THE MEDIA EQUATION
There have been times when the CNN
host Piers Morgan didn’t seem to like
America very much —and American
audiences have been more than willing
to return the favor. Three years after
taking over for Larry King, Mr. Morgan
has seen the ratings for ‘‘Piers Morgan
Live’’ hit some new lows, drawing a
fraction of viewers compared with
competitors at Fox News and MSNBC.
It has been an unhappy collision be-
tween a British television personality
who refuses to assimilate —the only
football he cares about is round, and
his lectures on guns are rife with snob-
bery —and a CNN audience that is in-
trinsically provincial. After all, the
people who tune in to a cable news net-
work are, by their nature, deeply inter-
ested in America.

CNN’s president, Jeffrey Zucker, has
lots of problems, but none bigger than
Mr. Morgan and his plum 9 p.m. time
slot.
For a cable news station, major sto-
ries are like oxygen. When something
important or scary happens in Amer-
ica, many of us have an immediate re-
flex to turn on CNN. When I find Mr.
Morgan telling me what it all means, I
have a similar reflex to dismiss what
he is saying. He just got here.
Given his lack of history in this coun-
try and his incuriosity now that he is
here, there is no way that Mr. Morgan
can speak credibly
on the meaning of
significant American
events. It’s an unten-
able situation that
will be resolved soon-
er rather than later.
I received a return
call from Mr. Morgan
and was prepared for
an endless argument
over my assump-
tions. Not so. His show, he conceded,
was nearing its end.
‘‘It’s been a painful period, and lately

we have taken a bath in the ratings,’’
he said.
‘‘Look, I am a British guy debating
American cultural issues, including
guns, which has been very polarizing,
and there is no doubt that there are
many in the audience who are tired of
me banging on about it,’’ he said.
‘‘That’s run its course, and Jeff and I
have been talking for some time about
different ways of using me.’’
Mr. Morgan said that his show, along
with much of the rest of CNN, had been
imprisoned by the news cycle and that
he was interested in doing fewer ap-
pearances to greater effect —big, ma-
jor interviews that would be events in
themselves. It was the first time that
both he and the CNN executives I
talked to had acknowledged that his
nightly show was on the way out.
Because of the absence of news and
competition from the Winter Olympics,
this has been a rugged week ratings-
wise —just 274,000 people were watch-
ing during all of CNN’s prime-time
shows and only 64,000 in the 25-to-54
age group that advertisers care about —
with ‘‘Piers Morgan Live’’ on the bleed-
ing edge of that spiral. On Tuesday, his

ratings in that demographic would not
have filled up Yankee Stadium.
Mr. Zucker, the former chief of NBC,
inherited Mr. Morgan from Jonathan
Klein, his predecessor, but it is now his
problem to fix. In the year he has been
there, CNN has introduced promising
shows around the edges and will be un-
veiling documentaries along the lines
of the very successful ‘‘Blackfish’’ to
run on Thursday in the 10 p.m. slot.
But the chronic troubles of prime
time remain. Sometime before the net-
work ‘‘upfront’’ events in April, when
advertisers buy commercial time for
the fall season. Mr. Zucker will signal
how he will fix CNN’s prime-time prob-
lem, and that will begin with Mr. Mor-
gan, whose contract ends in Septem-
ber.
Mr. Morgan is not without skills.
While working as a newspaper editor
and television personality in Britain, he
was involved in a number of controver-
sies but developed a reputation as a tal-
ented, probing interviewer. In his cur-
rent role, he has shown an ability not
only to book big guests —the former
president Bill Clinton, Warren Buffett
and the real Wolf of Wall Street among

them —but to dig in once they are on
the set.
‘‘I think I can credibly do news and
the ratings reflect that, but it is not
really the show that I set out to do,’’ he
told me. ‘‘There are all kinds of people
who can do news here. I’d like to do
work —interviews with big celebrities
and powerful people —that are better
suited to what I do well and fit with
what Jeff is trying to do with the net-
work.’’
Old hands in the television news
business suggest that there are two
things a presenter cannot have: an ac-
cent or a beard. Mr. Morgan is clean
shaven and handsome enough, but
there are tells in his speech —the way
he says the president’s name, for one
thing (Ob-AA-ma) —that suggest that
he is not from around here.
There are other tells as well. On Fri-
day morning, criticizing the decision to
dismiss a cricket player, he tweeted,
‘‘I’m sure @StuartBroad8 is right and
KP’s sacking will ‘improve perfor-
mance’ of the England team. Look for-
ward to seeing this at T20 WC.’ ’
Mr. Morgan might want to lay off the
cricket references if he is worried

about his credibility with American
audiences. Insular as it seems, best to
pay some attention to the country you
purport to cover.
People might point to Simon Cowell
as a man with an accent and a pen-
chant for slashing discourse that Amer-
icans have loved, but Mr. Cowell is
dealing with less-than-spontaneous
musical performances, not signal
events in the American news narrative.
There was, of course, the counter-
example of David Frost, who did im-
portant work in news, but Mr. Frost did
popular special reports and was not a
chronic presence in American living
rooms.
Mr. Morgan had the misfortune of
sliding into the loafers of Mr. King,
who, for all his hard news shortcom-
ings, was a decent and reliable stand-in
for the average Joe.
In a sense, Mr. Morgan is a prisoner
of two islands: Britain and Manhattan.
While I may share his feelings about
the need for additional strictures on
guns, having grown up in the Midwest,
I know that many people come by their
guns honestly and hold onto them
dearly for sincere reasons.

Mr. Morgan’s approach to gun regu-
lation was more akin to King George
III, peering down his nose at the un-
ruly colonies and wondering how to
bring the savages to heel. He might
want to recall that part of the reason
the right to bear arms is codified in the
Constitution is that Britain was trying
to disarm the citizenry at the time.
He regrets none of it, but under-
stands his scolding of ‘‘stupid’’ oppo-
nents of gun laws was not everyone’s
cup of tea.
‘‘I’m in danger of being the guy
down at the end of the bar who is al-
ways going on about the same thing,’’
he said. ‘‘I’m sure there are plenty of
people in the heartland who are pissed
off about this British guy telling them
how to lead their lives and what they
should do with their guns.’’
In the current media age, no one is
expected to be a eunuch, without val-
ues or beliefs, but Mr. Morgan’s lectur-
ing on the evils of guns have clanked
hard against the CNN brand, which, for
good or ill, is built on the middle way.
We don’t look for moral leadership
from CNN, or from a British host on a
rampage. Guns, along with many other

great and horrible things, are knit into
the fabric of this country. There are
folkways peculiar to America that Mr.
Morgan is just learning, including the
fact that if you want to stick out, you
first have to work on fitting in.
CHESTER HIGGINS JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES
Piers Morgan on the set of his show, which he said was ending: ‘‘It’s been a painful period, and lately we have taken a bath in the ratings.’’
The only
football he
cares about is
round, and
his lectures
on guns are
rife with
snobbery.
Now, its staff of 1,300 coordinates deliv-
eries to 4,000 towns and cities in India.
In 2010, Snapdeal.com began opera-
tions primarily as a website for restau-
rant discounts. A year later, the company
received its first significant investment,
from Nexus Venture Partners, and
changed into its current form, a market-
place for Indian sellers and buyers to find
one another. Today, it lists goods from
20,000 merchants in a variety of catego-
ries and has 20 million registered users.
Mr. Bahl, whose father ran a small
automotive parts business, casts Snap-

deal as a champion of tiny enterprises in
the country.‘‘Irrespective of who you
maybe, youhavealevel playing field
against anyone in the market,’’ he said.
At the moment, India’s online retail-
ers aresheltered from competition
abroad, thanksto the government. In
2012, India’scabinet opened the retail
sector to foreign direct investment but
excluded e-commerce.
India’s market, furthermore, is di-
verse and complex, traits that give local
companies a leg up. A total of 65 percent
of Snapdeal’s customerspay in cash,
and other companies see even higher
rates. India’s poor roads and highways
make logistics difficult.
Mr.Bahl said Snapdeal had adapted
enough to the peculiarities of India to
handle competition. When asked about
his better-funded rivals, he said: ‘‘It’s
not about the money that youhave in
the bank; it’s how youspend it. This is a
game of execution. India’snot an easy
market to execute in.’’
India’s answers in online market
ONLINE, FROM PAGE 16
domain after domain, we reasoned, tech-
nology has enabled innovative business
models to serve broader markets. Local

accountants have been displaced by tax
software, brick-and-mortar shops by
Amazon.com and other online retailers.
And now, there is even worry that live,
in-theater HD broadcasts of Metropolit-
an Opera performances could displace
local opera companies across the land.
But similar advances in production
and distribution methods also exert
countervailing effects. As the former
Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson
explained in his 2006 book, ‘‘The Long
Tail’’ (the title refers to a property of
statistical distributions), digital technol-
ogy has made music, books, movies and
many other goods economically viable
on a much smaller scale than before.
For example, films once generated
revenue only by mustering large-
enough audiences to justify screenings
in theaters. Many niche offerings, like
Hindi-language movies in medium-size
American cities, were simply not vi-
able. Services like Netflix, however,
changed all that. Because digital
movies cost next to nothing to ship,
people can now watch them without
having to assemble a posse of ticket
buyers.
Long-tail proponents often portray

best-selling entertainment as lowest-
common-denominator compromises
whose only real advantage is lower cost
made possible by large-scale distribu-
tion and sales. If technology makes
scale less important, they argue, people
will turn to the more idiosyncratic of-
ferings that they really prefer. In prin-
ciple, at least, this creates exciting new
possibilities for small-scale sellers.
In practice, however, winner-take-all
effects still appear to dominate. Long-
tail proponents predict that the least-
popular offerings should be capturing
market share from the most popular.
But as Anita Elberse, a professor at the
Harvard Business School, recounts in
her 2013 book ‘‘Blockbusters,’ ’ the en-
tertainment industry’s experience has
been the reverse. Digital song titles
selling more than one million copies, for
example, accounted for 15 percent of
sales in 2011, up from 7 percent in 2007.
The publishing and film industries ex-
perienced similar trends.
What’s happening? One possibility is
that today’s tighter schedules have
made people more reluctant to sift
through the growing avalanche of op-
tions confronting them. Many con-

sumers sidestep this unpleasantness
by focusing on only the most popular
entries.
The growing supply of social infor-
mation may also be enhancing our op-
portunities for discussing films and
books with friends. Consuming best
sellers has always made it easier to
have such conversations, and the ex-
pansion of social media has reinforced
that tendency.
But most important, winner-take-all
forces may be strengthening because
better-informed consumers are reject-
ing the long-tail premise that popular-
ity means low quality. It’s easy to offer
examples of blockbusters that were ut-
terly mediocre —think ‘‘Transform-
ers,’’ perhaps, or Milli Vanilli —yet
they’re surely exceptions to the general
tendency for popularity and quality to
go hand in hand. Films like ‘‘The God-
father’’ and bands like the Beatles were
not lowest-common-denominator com-
promises.
Still, the growing market share of top
sellers doesn’t invalidate the promise
of small-scale creative energy. Using
big data, producers can now take aim at
highly idiosyncratic buyers, and online

searches help many such buyers find
just the quirky offerings they’re seek-
ing.
Creative people have never had bet-
ter opportunities to display their talent.
Websites and YouTube links now place
their songs and stories within easy
reach of almost everyone. These chan-
nels are the new minor leagues for pro-
ducing tomorrow’s superstars. And be-
cause the cost of access is so low, mar-
kets for creative endeavor are becom-
ing more meritocratic. If something
really good comes along now, it’s far
more likely that people will discover it.
No doubt, I’m biased, but I think that
my sons are good enough to break out
in today’s music market. Yet a stark
reality persists: Because there are
thousands of talented bands today,
their odds of stardom are vanishingly
small.
ROBERT H. FRANK is an economics profes-
sor at the Johnson Graduate School of
Management at Cornell University.
In digital,
giants get
lion’s share
ECONOMIC VIEW, FROM PAGE 16
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INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

Economic
Outlook
PHILIP BLENKINSOP
REUTERS
BRUSSELS Euro zone inflation figures
to be released Friday will be firmly in
the sights of financial markets eager to
establish whether the European Cen-
tral Bank has enough ammunition to
quickly ease monetary policy.
Inflation in the 18-member zone unex-
pectedly slowed to 0.7 percent year on
year in January, matching a four-year
low set last October and confounding ex-
pectations for an increase to 0.9 percent.
The E.C.B. cut its main refinancing
rate to a record low of 0.25 percent in
November and decided this month to

keep it at that level, though the bank
could signal a possible move in March,
when the governing council next meets.
Mario Draghi, president of the cen-
tral bank, said the governors had not
acted because of the complexity of the
situation and the need to have more in-
formation. By the next meeting, on
March 6, they will have forecasts ex-
tending into 2016.
The February inflation figure coming
out on Friday could influence those
forecasts.
‘‘The big issue is whether they are
comfortable with their medium-term
trajectory. That’s obviously something
that’s going to get revised down a bit,’’
said David Mackie, chief European
economist at JP Morgan. ‘‘Next week’s
reading will in some sense influence
their thinking.’’
Further data on individual countries
could lead to the January inflation fig-
ure being revised up to 0.8 percent on
Monday, but the consensus view is for a
0.7 percent reading for February.
Commerzbank, which predicted the
0.7 percent figure in January, sees a fur-
ther drop to 0.6 percent for February.
Christoph Weil, economist at the Ger-

man bank, said this would prompt the
E.C.B. to reduce its 2014 and 2015 infla-
tion forecasts each by 0.2 percentage
points from already low levels of 1.1 and
1.3 percent respectively. ‘‘It’s a close
call, but we see the E.C.B. cutting in-
terest rates,’’ Mr. Weil said. The market
consensus is for no further cut.
Inflation data will arrive at the same
time as unemployment figures. The
typically lagging indicator is expected
to show no improvement in January
from the 12.0 percent rate of December.
Across the Atlantic, the debate con-
tinues about whether the U.S. econo-
my’s apparent weakness at the start of
this year is purely a temporary blip
caused by an exceptionally cold winter
or something longer-lasting.
The chairwoman of the Federal Re-
serve, Janet Yellen, will testify before
the Senate Banking Committee on
Thursday, two weeks after she told the
House Financial Service Committee
that the central bank would keep on re-
ducing its stimulus.
Lawmakers may ask whether she
has a different view on the weather
question, though few expect an abrupt
change.

After a week featuring a promising
survey of U.S. manufacturers, but a de-
cline of housing starts, factory activity
and home sales, there will be more data
on home prices and sales, consumer
confidence and durable goods orders.
In China, meanwhile, the economy
really is weakening.
Activity in China’s factories shrank
again in February, a survey showed,
the minor slowdown in the world’s
second-largest economy enough to up-
set markets across the region.
In Japan, data due Thursday are ex-
pected to show factory activity acceler-
ated in January, after disappointing
fourth-quarter growth figures cast
doubt on the effectiveness of the ag-
gressive stimulus of Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe’s year-old government.
Corner
Office
ADAM BRYANT
DAVID ROSENBLATT is chief executive of
1stdibs, an online marketplace for high-
end goods, including art, antiques, jewelry
and furniture.
Q. Were you in leadership roles early
on?
A. I was president of my class and co-

president of my debating society in
high school. But leadership was never
my goal. I studied liberal arts, and ma-
jored in East Asian studies in college.
My father was in Foreign Service roles,
and I always assumed I would end up in
the Foreign Service. After I graduated,
I lived in Asia for a few years.
My first real work experience after
school was in investment banking. I
learned pretty quickly that that wasn’t
a world I wanted to be a part of. What I
love about the Internet is the ability to
create or change an industry as op-
posed to simply participate in one that
already exists.
Q. Tell me more about your parents.
A. My father had a lot of work in the Pa-
cific. I traveled quite a bit with him,
which kind of stoked my interest in
Asia in particular. He’s a lawyer by
training, and he’s very much a linear
thinker. My mother’s a psychotherap-
ist, author and teacher, and she’s much
more of an intuitive and empathetic
thinker. I probably skew more to her
side than I do my father’s. Leadership
is about people, so having that sensitiv-
ity is important.
There’s a story about my mother that

had a big impact on me. When I was a
kid growing up in Washington, I used to
take the same bus home every day. One
day, my mother happened to take the
bus with me, and the place we were go-
ing to was between two stops. She’s Is-
raeli, so she has the same healthy dis-
regard for rules that many Israelis
have.
She walked up to the bus driver and
said, ‘‘Excuse me, but would it be possi-
ble to stop the bus in between these two
stops so we can get out?’’ The bus
driver agreed to do it, and probably
two-thirds of the other people on the
bus got out.
I just remember thinking that all
these people are taking the bus every
single day of their lives, and two-thirds
of them really wanted to get off at a
spot other than the bus stops. Yet it
took someone to ask the bus driver a
question to do something different, and
many people benefited from it. That
story has always stuck in my mind as
an example of the importance of not
taking things as a given. That’s sort of
the philosophy of the Internet as a
whole.
Q. Other important lessons you’ve

learned over your career?
A. When I was first promoted to C.E.O.,
the hardest thing to figure out was, how
do I spend my time? On any given day,
a C.E.O. could do almost anything or
nothing, and it would likely have little
or no impact on the company, at least in
the short term. So I had to develop a set
of rules to figure out how to manage my
time.
I learned Rule No. 1 from Irv Grous-
beck, who teaches an entrepreneurship
class at Stanford Business School. And
that is, very simply, ‘‘You can hire
people to do everything but hire
peop l e.’’ Rule No. 2 that I think about
every day is, ‘‘Only do the things that
only I can do.’’ So if it’s someone else’s
job to do it, I try not to do it. If I find my-
self doing too many of those things that
are actually someone else’s job, then it
relates back to Rule No. 1 —Iprobably
don’t have the right person in that role.
But just like anyone in any role, it’s
important to understand, where is my
comparative advantage? What am I
better at than almost anyone else? To
the extent that there is something
you’re better at than most other people,
you should do it, and then you should

just make sure that your team comple-
ments you. The hard thing for many
C.E.O.s, because this job requires a cer-
tain level of confidence, is to figure out
what you’re not good at and acknowl-
edge that, and then hire to offset your
own limitations.
Q. What else about your leadership ap-
proach?
A. I try to invest quite a bit of time in de-
veloping chemistry and sense of team
among my direct reports. Generally my
feeling is that companies are like famil-
ies, in the sense that if the parents get
along, then it’s likely that the rest of the
family will be relatively harmonious.
But if the parents don’t get along, it’s
highly likely that there’s going to be
conflict in the rest of the family that, to
some degree, mirrors the conflict be-
tween the parents.
And if the executive team is talented
and unified in their approach, treats
each other with respect and communic-
ates openly, their behavior will be
mirrored by everybody in the company.
Q. How do you hire? What questions do
you ask?
A. My approach is pretty straightfor-
ward. I like to ask people to walk me

through their lives from the time they
were young through the present. I pay
particular attention to transitions, be-
cause I think that says a lot about
people’s values and judgment, and the
basis on which they make decisions.
Why did you pick this school instead
of that school? Why was this the right
first job? Why did you take two years
off?When you left that company, what
choices did you have, and why did you
pick Door No. 1 instead of Door No. 4?
I find that if you listen to the narrat-
ive of people’s lives, you get a better
sense of them as people and as profes-
sionals than any other approach I’ve
taken. It can also uncover whether
there might be problems. People are
creatures of habit, and they tend to re-
peat patterns, even in different con-
texts. Do they have a pattern of job-
hopping? That is a particularly deadly
characteristic, in my point of view.
It’s O.K. —in fact, it’s a positive —to
make mistakes in judgment at some
point in your life. But did the person un-
derstand it? Did they take the time to
figure it out? Did they then repeat it?
It’s not really what they did that is im-
portant to me. It’s how they reached

those decisions.
Teamwork at the top is mirrored below
EARL WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
David Rosenblatt stressed the importance of hiring to offset your own limitations.
technology economy business
Sources: Governments, International MonetaryFund, World Bank
REUTERS
Asnapshot of key figures for the world’slargest economies.
Economy watch
COUNTRY
G.D.P.
in billions
in 2012
G.D.P.GROWTH
Year over year
INFLATION
Year over year
JOBLESS
CURRENT
ACC’T/G.D.P.
in 2012
†
Harmonized figures
§
Urbanend June
‡
Quarteronquarterannualized
Topeconomic releases expected this week, including the median forecast
of analysts surveyed by Reuters and the last reported figure.
Global economic indicators

‡
Quarter on quarter
†
Year on year *Purchasing managers' index
Mon. Germany
Tue. S. Africa
Tue. U.S.
Wed. U.S.
Thu. Spain
Thu. Germany
Thu. Germany
Fri. Japan
Fri. Italy
Fri. Euro zone
Fri. Euro zone
Fri. India
Fri. U.S.
Fri. Canada
Fri. U.S.
Fri. U.S.
Ifo business climate for February110.6 110.6
Gross domestic product
‡
for Q4 0.7%
Consumer confidence for February80.3 80.7
New home sales for January400,000 414,000
Gross domestic product final
‡
for Q4 0.3% 0.3%
Unemployment rate sa for February6.8% 6.8%

Inflation preliminary
†
for February1.1% 1.2%
C.P.I.
†
corenationwide for January1.2% 1.3%
Unemployment rate for January12.7% 12.7%
Inflation rate flash
†
for February0.7%
Unemployment rate for January12.0% 12.0%
Gross domestic product
‡
for Q3 4.9% 4.8%
Gross domestic product preliminary
‡
for Q4 2.5% 3.2%
Gross domestic product
‡
annualized for Q4 2.5% 2.7%
Chicago P. M.I.* for February57.0 59.6
Reuters/Univ.ofMich. sentiment final for February81.2 81.2
United States
Euro zone
China
Japan
Germany
France
Brazil
Britain

Italy
Russia
India
Canada
Mexico
South Korea
$16,245 3.2%
‡
–2.7% 1.5% 6.6%
12,199 0.5 1.9 0.7 12.0
8,221 7.7 2.3 2.5 4.1
§
5,960 1.1
‡
1.0 1.6 3.7
3,430 1.3 6.9 1.2
†
6.8
2,614 0.3 –2.2 0.8 10.9
2,253 2.2 –2.4 5.6 4.3
2,477 2.8 –3.8 2.0 7.1
2,014 –0.8 –0.7 0.6
†
12.7
2,030 1.2 3.7 6.1 5.6
1,842 4.8 –4.8 5.1 n.a.
1,821 2.7
‡
–3.4 1.2 7.0
1,177 1.3 –1.2 4.5 4.3

1,130 3.9 3.8 1.1 3.2
MEDIAN
FORECASTDAYCOUNTRYINDICATOR
PRIOR
PERIOD
ONLINE: LATEST MARKET NEWS
Indexes, stock quotes and currency
rates. inyt.com/business
Markets await euro zone inflation data
BY BRIAN X. CHEN
One company used sensors to read body
movements. Another recommended TV
programs. Several othersoffered loca-
tion and mapping services.
All of them had at least one thing in
common: They were among the more
than 20 relatively small companies
Apple says it has bought within the past
15 months.
As fellow techgiants have reached bil-
lion-dollar deals in recent yearstoadd
significant new arms to their businesses
—likeFacebook buying WhatsApp for
as much as $19 billion, and Microsoft
buying Nokia’shandset businessfor
more than $7.1 billion —Apple has ven-
tured down a different path.
The companyhas avoided jaw-drop-
ping takeovers in favorofaseries of
smaller deals, using the companies to

buttress or fill agap in products that
already exist or are in development.
Still, in the past few years, Apple has
gradually increased its overall spending
on these acquisitions. In thelast quarter,
for instance, Apple spent $525 million on
acquisitions, nearly double what it spent
in the same period a year ago.
And while the deals may be small —
particularly given Apple’s nearly $160
billion cash hoard—they offer aunique
windowinto where the secretive com-
panyisheaded and which products and
services it is trying to build or improve.
Apple’s biggest acquisition last year
wasPrimeSense, acompany with about
150 employees that Apple bought for
$300 million to $350 million, according to
reports. PrimeSense developed sensors
that helped Microsoft let Xbox owners
control games using body movements,
and some analysts sayApple could
eventually apply PrimeSense’s skills
and technology to a television set. Apple
also bought Matcha.tv, a service that re-
commended things to watch on TV,an-
other acquisition that signals its strong
interest in the living room.
And Apple’s purchase of location data
services likeLocationary, HopStop and

Embark suggests a steadfast interest in
Internet services —especially map-
ping, where Apple has been harshly
criticized for lacking the competence of
two competitors, Google and Nokia.
‘‘They’re pre-emptively investing in
areas wherethey think thereare oppor-
tunities to grow,’’ said Ben Bajarin, a
consumer technologyanalyst for Creat-
ive Strategies who follows Apple.
‘‘Without doubt Apple is abit morefo-
cused and lean in their approach and
disciplined about the things they buy.’’
But as the growth of Apple’s profit has
slowed in the past couple of years, some
pundits and analysts have called for the
company tobreak into other markets and
create new revenue streams through a
game-changing deal. Investors and ana-
lysts have suggested that Apple should
buy Tesla to build cars, Facebook to get
into advertising,Netflix to get deeper in-
to the entertainment industry and even
Yahoo to get into the search business.
Apple declined to comment for this ar-
ticle, but none of those possibilities ap-
pear close to coming true.
Still, TimothyD. Cook, the company’s
chief executive, has said in the past that
Apple would have no problem paying

billions for another companyifitwould
help Apple make more quality products.
And the companyis well awarehow a
blockbuster deal can help. In 1996, Apple
acquired NeXT,the computer company
founded by Steven P. Jobs after he had
been forced out of Apple, largely to
bring Mr.Jobs back to the company. It
turned out to be one of the most trans-
formative tech acquisitions in history:
With Mr. Jobs back at the helm, Apple
rose from near-bankruptcy into a domi-
nant company.
But in general, spending huge amounts
of money to buy another company comes
with major risks, said Brent Thill, an ana-
lyst for UBS, afinancial services com-
pany that has clients in the tech industry.
For one, the foundersof an acquired
company —the star talent who receive
the most money in ahigh-paying acqui-
sition —often tend to take the money
and run to another new venture. For an-
other, therecan be cultural disagree-
ments: A small company that is focused
on introducing new technologies may
not line up with the interests of its own-
er, which is to rake in greater profit.
Also, when a smallcompanymerges
with abigger business, it becomes less

nimble because it is tied to legacytech-
nologies of a larger corporation, and it
canno longer innovate as quickly to
keep up with competitors.
Thehistory of the tech industry is
littered with big deals that turned out
poorly. In 2010, Hewlett-Packard bought
Palm, the struggling mobile device
maker,for $1.2 billion —and shuttered
Palm’soperations after releasing the
TouchPad, a tablet that wason sale for
about seven weeks before it was killed.
Similarly, last year Google bought the
legacy handset maker Motorola Mobil-
JAMES BEST JR./THE NEW YORK TIMES
ity for $12.5 billion and, after sales of its
firstflagship smartphone were disap-
pointing, reached a deal to sell it to
Lenovo for $2.9 billion.
‘‘A lot of the tech acquisitions, in my
opinion, have gone wayoff the tracks,’’
Mr. Thill said.
Apple has kept the stakes low in recent
years. Many of the companies it has
bought had as few as one or two people,
like SnappyLabs, a one-man developer of
a camera app. The founder, John
Papandriopoulos, an electrical engineer,
had developed an app to make the
iPhone’s camera take high-resolution

photos at a faster frame rate than Apple’s
built-in camera software.Apple bought
the companythis year and made Mr.
Papandriopoulos a software engineer.
These tinyacquisitions, made in large
part to add the skills of an individual as
much as the company, are known as ac-
quihires in Silicon Valley. Most other ma-
jor tech companies makethem fre-
quently as well. Facebook has been
especially keen about buying small
companies, as in its acquisitions of Be-
luga, agroup messaging app, to improve
Facebook’s messaging services, and of
Push PopPress, a digital book maker, to
make its newsreader Paper.
When Apple buys a start-up with
more than a couple of people, it is often
looking for groups with specific skills
who work well together as a team, ac-
cording to aperson who worked at a
start-up Apple acquired last year,who
spokeonthe condition of anonymitybe-
cause he wasnot authorized to speak to
the media. Apple then takes these small
teams and assigns them to new projects
or pairs them with older teams at Apple.
Other dealsare made in an effort to
quickly blend new technology into exist-
ing products. For example, its 2008 pur-

chase of PA Semi, a chip maker, helped
Apple designmore advancedprocessors
for iPhones and iPads. And its 2012 ac-
quisition of AuthenTec helped enablethe
fingerprint-sensing technologythat
eventually wound up in new iPhones.
Other deals are clearly part of Apple’s
effort to playcatch-up in one particular
area: maps. In 2012, Apple updated the
built-in maps software for its mobile
devices to replace Google’s mapping
data with its own. Apple’s maps, which
were lackluster compared with
Google’s, quickly drew scrutiny.
To help the companycatch up, last
year it bought Embark and Hopstop,
which provide public transit directions,
and WiFiSlam, acompanythat
provided maps for indoor areas.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
REUTERS
The world’s top economies have em-
braced agoal of generating morethan
$2 trillion in additional gross domestic
output over five years while creating
tens of millions of new jobs, signaling
optimism that the worst of crisis-era
austerity was behind them.
The final communiqué on Sunday
from the two-day meeting of Group of 20

finance ministersand central bankers
in Sydney said they would take concrete
actions to increase investment and em-
ployment, among other overhauls. The
group accounts for about 85 percent of
the global economy.
‘‘We will develop ambitious but real-
istic policies with the aim to lift our col-
lective G.D.P.by more than 2 percent
above the trajectory implied by current
policies over the coming 5 years,’’ the
communiqué read.
‘‘We areputting anumber to it for the
first time —putting areal number to
what we are trying to achieve,’’ Joe
Hockey,the Australian treasurer and
host for the meeting, told a news confer-
ence. ‘‘We want to add over $2 trillion
morein economic activityand tens of
millions of new jobs.’’
The dealwassomething of a feather in
the cap of Mr. Hockey, who spearheaded
the push for growth in the face of some
skepticism, notably from Germany.
‘‘What growth rates canbe achieved
is aresult of a very complicated pro-
cess,’’ Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s
finance minister, said after the meeting.
‘‘The results of this process cannot be
guaranteed by politicians.’’

The International Monetary Fund has
forecast global growth of 3.75 percent
for this year and 4 percent in 2015.
Therewas anod to concerns by
emerging nations that the Federal Re-
serveconsider the effects of its policy
tapering —its gradual reduction in eco-
nomic stimulation efforts —which has
led to some capital flight from morevul-
nerable markets.
Mr.Hockey said that there had been
honest discussions among memberson
the effects of tapering and that Janet L.
Yellen, the newly installed Fed chairwo-
man, had been ‘‘hugely impressive’’
when dealing with them.
Shopping list signals path Apple hopes to tread
G-20 vows
$2 trillion lift
to economy
‘‘They’re pre-emptively
investing in areas where they
think there are opportunities
to grow.’’
INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES
20
|
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 24, 2014

business

INTERNATIONAL TRAVELER
UPSCALE WEEKEND TOURS CATER
TO AMBITIOUS THRILL SEEKERS
Epic Tomato, a London-based bespoke
travel company specializing in adven-
ture trips, recently started mini-expedi-
tions, called Epic Weekends, designed
for time-pressed but thrill-seeking trav-
elers.
Among the choices are a three-night
skiing and trekking expedition in the
remote fjords of Norway, where guests
will sleep on a traditional Scandinavian
yacht and sail around the Lofoten ar-
chipelago; a three-night getaway to
Morocco’s Sahara desert region, where
they will sleep at a Berber camp, take a
quad bike trip in the desert and have
the chance to ride a zip line in the foot-
hills of the Atlas Mountains; and a
three-night climbing trip to the summit
of the 13,000-foot Mount Kinabalu in
Malaysia.
CHEF PLAYS HOST ON BIKE CIRCUIT
SAMPLING CUISINE OF SARDINIA
Ciclismo Classico has enlisted the skills
of a James Beard Award-winning chef
(and former competitor on the Ameri-
can television show ‘‘Top Chef Mas-
ters’’) to entice tourists into a culinary-

focused bike tour through Sardinia. The
tour will be a combination of eating and
exercise, with the chef, Jody Adams, as
host.
Ms. Adams, owner of the restaurants
Rialto and Trade and an avid bicyclist
who has pedaled across the state of
Massachusetts on several occasions,
will guide this seven-day, almost 200-
mile cycle trip through the Mediter-
ranean island, stopping to taste local
wines and cuisine. Riders will begin in
Tresnuraghes, in the west, continuing
along the coast to the Sinis peninsula
and Cabras, and then turn southeast to
end in Pula at the island’s southern tip.
Riders on the tour will be stopping for
samples along the way at vineyards,
olive groves, markets and local restau-
rants. But they will also visit some of the
island’s historic sites, like mining towns,
ancient Phoenician and Roman settle-
ments and archaeological dig sites. The
first trip runs Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, at a start-
ing rate of $5,395.
CALIFORNIA CLUB OFFERS TASTINGS
FOR CONNOISSEURS OF AGAVE
A resort in Southern California is capit-
alizing on the recent proliferation of
mezcal and other agave-derived liquor

Hugo
Dixon
POLITICAL ECONOMY
A lot is riding on the cleanup of euro
zone banks that is being overseen by
the European Central Bank. The pro-
gress so far is encouraging. But clarity
is needed on a few points to ensure that
lenders really do get a good scrubbing
and so are able to support the zone’s
fragile economic recovery.
The E.C.B. is in the midst of a so-
called comprehensive assessment of
euro zone banks. This has two ele-
ments: an ‘‘asset quality review,’’ or
A.Q.R., to determine whether the loans
and other assets held on their balance
sheets are valued properly, and a
‘‘stress test’’ to check whether they
could withstand a severe economic
downturn.
To pass the test, banks are supposed
to have a ‘‘common equity tier 1 capital
ratio,’’ a measure of balance sheet
strength, of 8 percent in the baseline
scenario and 5.5 percent in the adverse
scenario. The whole exercise is sup-
posed to be finished by October before
the E.C.B. officially takes over from the
national authorities in November as

the lead supervisor for the zone’s
banks.
The hope is that investors will at last
have confidence that the numbers in
bank balance sheets are accurate and
will lend to banks more freely. Banks
would also lend to each other. With the
money markets functioning normally
again, banks would have more confi-
dence to lend to companies and con-
sumers, giving a lift to economic activity.
That is what happened when the
United States and Britain put their
banks through severe stress tests five
years ago. Unfortunately, the euro zone
put its lenders through a series of sham
Note, first, that banks that fail the
stress test will not necessarily have to
raise capital, so long as they pass the
asset quality review. They may, in-
stead, be able to repair their balance
sheets by selling assets and retaining
earnings.
But even if they do need capital,
many banks should be able to sell
equity in the markets. Conditions are
much improved since the peak of the
crisis two years ago.
Even Monte dei Paschi, the troubled
Italian lender, was able to get an equity

issue underwritten last year, although
its largest shareholder ultimately ve-
toed the plan.
Of course, some banks may be so
weak that they cannot issue equity. But
that does not mean governments have
to ride to the rescue. They could force
banks’junior bondholders to convert
their debt into equity or even close
them down.
Admittedly, in some cases, shutting
banks may be too risky, meaning gov-
ernments may have to bail them out.
But do not expect a flood of rescues.
After all, the main problem cases —
Spain, Ireland and Greece —have all
had megabailouts. If recapitalization is
needed, the sums will not be as big.
What’s more, Greece, perhaps the
biggest worry, still has cash in its bank
rescue fund that could be used for the
job. Meanwhile, other countries where
tests. They gave clean bills of health to
Irish, Spanish and Cypriot banks, which
virtually blew up soon afterward.
There are several reasons why
things may be different this time.
For a start, this is the first stress test
the E.C.B. has overseen. It knows that
if it flunks this exercise, its own credi-

bility will be shot to bits.
What’s more, this is the first time the
zone has put banks through an asset
quality review. Previous exercises just
had a stress test and so did only half
the job.
Then there’s the fact that the E.C.B.
is using multicountry teams to minim-
ize the risk that national supervisors
might turn a blind eye to problems at
their local champions. It has also em-
ployed outside consultants to avoid
groupthink.
Skeptics still fear the E.C.B. will pull
its punches because governments have
not yet spelled out what they will do if
banks fail the test and need rescuing.
Given that, the central bank will not
want lots of lenders to fail, as that could
set off a panic, or so the argument goes.
Although all euro zone countries have
promised to provide backstops if
needed, many have not given the details.
That’s regrettable. But fears that this
will undermine the validity of the tests
are exaggerated because the amount of
money that might need to be provided
by governments is probably quite small.
PETER DASILVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Brian Acton, left, and Jan Koum, the co-founders of WhatsApp, at the company headquar-

ters in Mountain View, Calif. Mr. Koum stands to make $6.8 billion on the Facebook deal.
Disruptions
NICK BILTON
SAN FRANCISCO ‘‘What’s your num-
ber?’’
That’s a question you keep hearing in
technology circles these days. It asks
how much money it would take for you
to sell your start-up, quit your job or
close your venture capital fund —and
maybe, just maybe, walk away from it
all.
What’s your number?
We now know the answer to that
question for Brian Acton and Jan
Koum, the pair behind WhatsApp. After
insisting that they would not sell their
mobile messaging company to a be-
hemoth like Google or Yahoo, they are
selling to Facebook for what could add
up to a mind-bending $19 billion. That
means WhatsApp, a five-year-old busi-
ness with 55 employees, is worth more
than Alcoa, Campbell Soup, Coach,
Gap, Harley-Davidson, Kohl’s, Macy’s,
Southwest Airlines and Xerox, to name
a few.
Nineteen. Billion. Dollars. It seems
surreal. But these are heady times in
technology —and everyone, it seems,

is rethinking his or her number. David
Karp sold Tumblr for $1.1 billion, but
Evan Spiegel turned down $3 billion for
Snapchat.
Lesser lights are redefining what it
means to be rich, at least here in the in-
sulated bubble of the tech scene. It is
little wonder that the private buses that
ferry employees of Apple, Facebook
and Google to Silicon Valley have, for
some, become symbols of income in-
equality in this city.
For most people, and in most places,
asking someone, ‘‘What’s your num-
ber?’’ would be like asking ‘‘What su-
perpower would you
like?’’ Not in Silicon
Valley in 2014.
A few weeks ago,
over dinner with half
a dozen entrepre-
neurs and venture
capitalists, the ques-
tion came up again.
The table, which in-
cluded a few people
already worth more than $100 million,
went quiet. One man in his late 30s
twirled the stem of his wine glass as he
thought. Then he tipped back his head,

downed his pinot noir and said, ‘‘one
billion,’’ his glass landing back on the
table with a thud. ‘‘That’s it. That’s my
number. One billion dollars.’’
The others nodded.
John Gabbert, chief executive of
PitchBook Data, a database of private
equity deals and industry players, said
that 10 years ago, entrepreneurs were
more down to earth about their num-
bers. He pointed to Plumtree Software,
which went public in 2002 and raised
$42 million in its initial public offering.
‘‘The founders of Plumtree probably
made $5 to $10 million each from the
I.P.O.,’’ Mr. Gabbert said. ‘‘That looked
like success back then. That’s pretty
good money. You could live forever on
that .’ ’
Which brings us back to WhatsApp.
Mr. Koum will personally make about
$6.8 billion on this deal —the rough
equivalent of San Francisco’s annual
budget.
However this acquisition plays out
for Mark E. Zuckerberg —whether it
propels Facebook to new heights by
powering its mobile and international
ambitions, or ends up looking like a top-
of-the-market clunker —even many

people who follow technology were
floored by the price. For that much
money, Mr. Zuckerberg could have
bought all 30 National Basketball Asso-
ciation teams.
‘‘It doesn’t matter how you look at
this number, it’s an outrageous amount
of money,’’ said Glen Allmendinger,
president of Harbour Research, an In-
ternet strategic consulting and re-
search firm.
Still, Mr. Allmendinger said he did
not think the deal would pop the tech
bubble. To the contrary: It will affect
what other tech companies will be will-
ing to sell for in the future. ‘‘This sets a
new bar for other start-ups,’’ he said.
Over at Snapchat, Mr. Spiegel, who is
23, apparently thought $3 billion was
not enough for a company that, as yet,
does not turn a dime of profit. But
here’s another question: When is your
number big enough? The most expen-
sive homes in the Bay Area top out at
around $30 million. Pick up a few fancy
cars at $100,000 a pop. Throw in a Bent-
ley for $175,000, a weekend place in
Sonoma for $5 million, a modest pied-à-
terre in Manhattan for around $5 mil-
lion —fine, make it $10 million. And a

top-of-the-line private jet for around $50
million. With expenses, taxes and what
not, you’re barely past $100 million.
Of course, you could give away a lot
of your number money. But Silicon Val-
ley billionaires, with the exception of
Mr. Zuckerberg, are not known for their
philanthropy. And giving away millions
or billions isn’t as easy as it sounds (al-
though this is a problem many of us
would love to have).
‘‘You can’t just give a billion dollars
away,’ ’ said Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of
Wired magazine and an influential
technology theorist. ‘‘You need an
infrastructure to give it away. You need
a staff and support and you need to
make sure it gets to the right people.
Spending a billion dollars is really,
really hard.’’
Mr. Kelly said that Bill Gates had to
start the Bill & Melinda Gates Founda-
tion, which has 1,194 employees —
about 22 times as many as WhatsApp —
to figure out how to give his part of his
fortune away.
So what’s your number? In Silicon
Valley, people often laugh when I tell
them mine. I’ll say this much: It’s a lot
less than $1 billion.

IN DIGITAL, IT’S THE GIANTS
WHO GET THE LION’S SHARE
PAGE 16
|
BUSINESS FRONT
banking problems could be exposed,
such as Germany, are mostly rich
enough to fend for themselves. Even
Italy can borrow money in the market
at attractive rates.
Still, there are concerns. One is that
the adverse scenario against which
banks will be tested will be too soft.
The details will not be published until
late April.
Another worry is that banks will re-
spond to the assessment by delever-
aging their balance sheets. If many
lenders do this simultaneously, that
could curtail lending to the real econo-
my and so hold back the recovery.
There is evidence that banks did pre-
cisely this late last year, knowing that
the assessment would be performed on
their end-2013 balance sheets.
Those that fail the test may continue
to deleverage if they decide this is bet-
ter for shareholders than raising
equity.
It will be hard for the E.C.B. to

handle this risk, because there could be
a conflict between what is good for in-
dividual banks and what is good for the
macro economy. Managing the conflict
will require considerable judgment.
That’s why the bank that will be under-
going the severest test in the coming
months is the central bank itself.
Hugo Dixon is editor at large of Reuters
News.
ANGELOS TZORTZINIS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A closed branch of Bank of Cyprus. Euro zone banks are undergoing a so-called comprehensive assessment by the European Central Bank.
distilleries to draw new devotees to a
members-only club. The Rancho Valen-
cia Resort and Spa, near San Diego, re-
cently started its All Agave Project, a
series of seminars and tastings for the
cocktail crowd.
The project, created by Chris Sim-
mons, the hotel’s certified catador, or
taster, offers guests and visitors sever-
al options to get to know more about
Mexican liquors —in particular, exotic
tequilas and their more potent country
relatives, mezcal, bacanora and sotol,
many of which were banned from sale
until the 1990s.
The All Agave Tasting Tour, hosted in
the resort’s Pony Room lounge, teaches
guests about the history of the craft.

Stakes high
as E.C.B.
tests banks
After the big deal for WhatsApp, grand visions of magic numbers
THIS WEEK'S HOLIDAYS
Banking and government offices may
be closed or services curtailed in these
countries and their dependencies be-
cause of national and religious holi-
days.
MONDAY Estonia
TUESDAY Kuwait
WEDNESDAY Kuwait
THURSDAY Mauritius, Sri Lanka
FRIDAY Taiwan
SATURDAY Bosnia and Herzegovina,
South Korea (REUTERS)
Onlookers in
the insulated
technology
scene are
redefining
what it means
to be rich.
REUTERS BREAKINGVIEWS
R.B.S. likely to refocus, after years of loss
Italy needs to be ruthless on bad loans
Royal Bank of Scotland has finally
wised up. The British bank is likely to
announce that it is shrinking its invest-

ment bank further when it releases its
full-year results on Thursday. In 2007,
the bank’s operation, known then as
Global Banking & Markets, employed
more than 24,000 people. The final
count could be about a quarter of that.
British taxpayers, who still own 80
percent of R.B.S., may wonder why it
has taken six years to restructure the
investment bank. When R.B.S. was
bailed out in 2008, it did not require
much foresight to realize that citizens
who had paid the bailout bill would not
be eager to continue supporting a
bloated investment bank and its ways,
like high salaries and bonuses that per-
sist even when profits are scarce.
After the rescue, though, the govern-
ment had a different idea. It told the en-
tity created to supervise the govern-
ment’s bank holdings, UK Financial
Investments, to ‘‘maximize the value of
the taxpayer stake.’’ R.B.S., which had
2 trillion pounds, or $3.3 trillion, worth
of assets on its balance sheet and the
former investment banker Stephen
Hester as chief executive, seemed
destined to become a British version of
JPMorgan Chase.
At first, it seemed plausible. The in-

vestment bank contributed more than
80 percent of R.B.S.’s operating profit in
2009, and a third in 2010. But even be-
fore Mr. Hester resigned last year, it
was clear that something had gone
awry. While Mr. Hester made brisk pro-
gress shrinking R.B.S.’s balance sheet,
the investment bank kept losing staff
and money.
Politicians gradually changed their
perspective as they realized that shares
in a bank that could not pay a dividend
would be difficult to sell. Mr. Hester’s
successor, Ross McEwan, was given a
different mandate: Create a bank
whose business is more about lending.
Mr. McEwan has already announced
that the bank will set aside £7.5 billion
to cover potential fines for misconduct
and has set about dropping noncore
businesses. That is a retreat from the
vision of becoming the next JPMorgan.
But taxpayers have probably lost out
because of the government’s slow
awakening.
GEORGE HAY
Italian banks need to shed their bad
debts to start lending again. The classic
solution —selling poor loans to a nation-
al ‘‘bad bank’’ — would require Italian

taxpayers to pay a bigger bill at a time
when state debt is already 133 percent of
gross domestic product. Matteo Renzi,
who was sworn in Saturday as prime
minister, should try something different.
Italy has managed to create a non-
performing-loans headache without the
property booms that occurred in Spain
or Ireland. According to the Bank of
Italy, nonperforming loans in 2013
totaled 156 billion euros, or $214 billion,
up 25 percent from the year before.
With banks more averse to risk, corpo-
rate lending has contracted every
quarter since early 2012.
Mr. Renzi could follow the examples of
Spain and Ireland, establishing a bad
bank, partly state funded, to buy lenders’
worst assets at steep discounts. But
Italy’s private sector should be able to
bear the costs. Healthier lenders might
be able to set up internal bad banks. That
would keep the loans on their balance
sheets but in a discrete silo.
But the cleanest solution is to sell the
bad loans. This has been hard in the
past: With Italy’s tortuous legal sys-
tem, potential investors have offered
low prices, and banks have lacked cap-
ital to take the hit. Yet investors in non-

performing loans may settle for lower
returns, partly as Italy’s own perceived
creditworthiness has improved.
Meanwhile, banks are starting to
raise capital, with ¤5.8 billion of rights
issues due this year. The past govern-
ment also helped banks by giving them
tax breaks for recognizing losses and re-
structuring the Bank of Italy’s reserves,
which increased profits for the lenders
that own stakes in the central bank.
Mr. Renzi should be ruthless. Italy’s
weak loan growth and low interest rates
have left it with too many unprofitable
banks, and consolidation is long over-
due. The euro zone’s nascent single res-
olution mechanism means politicians
have the cover to wind down banks not
worth saving. Mr. Renzi should seize
the opportunity.
NEIL UNMACK
For more independent commentary and
analysis, visit www.breakingviews.com
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SWEDEN
POLAND
GERMANY
CZECH. REP.
SLOV.
AUSTRIA
BELARUS
LITH.
LATVIA
HUNGARY
TUNISIA
LIBYA

EGYPT
SAUDI
ARABIA
JORDAN
MOROCCO
ALGERIA
ITALY
SWITZ.
FRANCE
RUSSIA
MOSTLY
CLOUDY
STATIONARY
COMPLEX
WARM
COLD
SHOWERS
FLURRIES
SNOW
RAIN
ICE
T- STORMS
HIGH
LOW
Traveler’s forecast
High/low temperatures, in degrees Celsius and
degrees Fahrenheit, and expected conditions.
C
Clouds
F Fog

H Haze
I Ice
PC Partly cloudy
R Rain
Sh Showers
S Sun
Sn Snow
SS Snow showers
T Thunderstorms
W Windy
Abu Dhabi 28/17 82/63 S 28/18 82/64 S
Almaty -9/-16 16/3 Sn -4/-12 25/10 S
Athens 14/9 57/48 R 14/7 57/45 PC
Bangkok 34/24 93/75 PC 34/24 93/75 PC
Barcelona 14/7 57/45 PC 15/8 59/46 S
Beijing 11/2 52/36 S 13/2 55/36 PC
Belgrade 10/3 50/37 C 13/5 55/41 S
Berlin 11/2 52/36 S 12/4 54/39 S
Boston 0/-7 32/19 PC -1/-7 30/19 PC
Brussels 12/7 54/45 H 11/4 52/39 R
Buenos Aires 27/15 81/59 PC 22/15 72/59 PC
Cairo 23/13 73/55 PC 22/11 72/52 S
Chicago -7/-12 19/10 PC -8/-19 18/-2 PC
Frankfurt 12/4 54/39 S 13/6 55/43 Sh
Geneva 12/1 54/34 S 11/4 52/39 C
Hong Kong 21/18 70/64 C 22/19 72/66 PC
Istanbul 9/6 48/43 Sh 7/5 45/41 R
Jakarta 29/23 84/73 Sh 30/23 86/73 Sh
Johannesburg 23/15 73/59 R 23/14 73/57 C
Karachi 30/15 86/59 PC 30/16 86/61 S

Kiev 3/-3 37/27 S 1/-3 34/27 C
Lagos 31/25 88/77 C 31/25 88/77 C
Lisbon 14/9 57/48 PC 15/7 59/45 C
London 12/7 54/45 PC 11/5 52/41 C
Los Angeles 22/12 72/54 PC 21/12 70/54 PC
Madrid 12/3 54/37 PC 13/3 55/37 PC
Manila 30/23 86/73 S 31/24 88/75 S
Mexico City 25/9 77/48 S 26/10 79/50 PC
Miami 29/21 84/70 PC 28/21 82/70 T
Moscow 2/-5 36/23 C 1/-7 34/19 S
Mumbai 31/21 88/70 PC 31/21 88/70 S
Nairobi 29/15 84/59 PC 29/16 84/61 C
New Delhi 24/10 75/50 PC 25/10 77/50 PC
New York 3/-4 37/25 PC 0/-4 32/25 Sn
Nice 14/6 57/43 S 14/9 57/48 PC
Osaka 11/4 52/39 S 11/-1 52/30 PC
Paris 14/6 57/43 PC 10/3 50/37 R
Riyadh 26/15 79/59 PC 27/15 81/59 S
Rome 14/4 57/39 S 14/6 57/43 PC
San Francisco 19/9 66/48 PC 18/11 64/52 C
Sao Paulo 30/21 86/70 T 29/20 84/68 T
Seoul 10/2 50/36 S 11/1 52/34 S
Shanghai 13/9 55/48 C 11/10 52/50 R
Singapore 31/24 88/75 PC 31/24 88/75 PC
Stockholm 8/1 46/34 C 6/1 43/34 PC
Sydney 28/20 82/68 PC 28/20 82/68 PC
Taipei 22/15 72/59 PC 24/16 75/61 PC
Tel Aviv 20/13 68/55 PC 18/12 64/54 PC
Tokyo 9/4 48/39 PC 13/5 55/41 PC
Toronto -7/-15 19/5 SS -7/-17 19/1 C

Tunis 18/6 64/43 S 19/7 66/45 C
Vienna 11/4 52/39 S 12/4 54/39 S
Warsaw 6/-2 43/28 PC 5/0 41/32 S
Washington 6/-4 43/25 PC 5/-2 41/28 C
Monday Tuesday
˚C ˚F ˚C ˚F
Meteorology by
AccuWeather.
Weather shown
as expected
at noon on
Monday.