ROUGH RIDER USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN 71)
CHIEFS’ EDITION
TR pins newest chiefs
44 sailors reach a milestone
September 16, 2015
chiefs’pinning 44 of the navy’s newest chief petty officers
DAY
ARABIAN GULF (Sept. 15, 2015) – Sailors salute the colors as the Chief’s Mess color guard parades the colors during a chief pinning ceremony aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). Forty-four chiefs were pinned by fellow chiefs in a traditional ceremony in the hangar bay aboard Theodore Roosevelt. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Anna Van Nuys/Released)
tr pins newest chiefs
44 sailors reach a milev-
by MC1 R. David Valdez
T
he officers and crew of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) assembled in the hangar bay, Sept. 15, to honor the 44 Sailors promoted to chief petty officer after six weeks of intensive leadership training. A Sailor’s promotion to chief is a highlight to any enlisted Sailor who achieves this rate. “It’s a big day,” said Chief Machinist’s Mate Ryan Lorbecki. “This is a day that a lot of brothers and sisters have waited for, and we’ve worked hard the last six weeks. We have a lot of people who got us to where we are: junior Sailors, chief who’ve gotten us here and our families who can’t be here today, unfortunately. It’s a really big day, and I think we all share the same type of emotions.” A common theme while on deployment, even on a cherished day like this, is the desire to celebrate the achievement with the families who support Sailors from home. “Today is the greatest day of my life,” said Chief Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Equipment) Harrison Moorer. “I wish my wife could be here with me. My family and my little girls could be here to pin me.” While TR is in an operational environment, the crew still makes a point of observing important Navy traditions, such as the chief’s pinning ceremony. TR’s Chiefs Mess used their resources to put together the traditional ceremony for the newly-promoted chiefs. “There’s no doubt that without good mentors, I wouldn’t be here right now,” said Chief Master at Arms Nicholas Sharpe, one of the newly pinned chiefs. “I was just a
knuckleheaded kid, and they turned me into a leader, into a real man, and I hope to do the same for many Sailors.” Sailors who earn the anchors of a chief embark on a new kind of life in the Navy. While there are lots of benefits, it also means stepping away from the life of a ‘blueshirt,’ or any Sailor below the rank of chief petty officer. “You look forward to all the great things you’re going to do with the brand new group of khakis,” said Chief Hospital Corpsman Misty Carlisle. “It’s also bittersweet at the same time. You are essentially leaving behind some really good first class [petty officer] friends that came up with you.” While all of the new chiefs are currently deployed aboard TR, they come from a variety of commands and personal backgrounds, but the hallmark of a chief is quality mentorship. “Mentorship plays a huge role, not only in their development as chief petty officers, but it started all the way back on the day [came into the Navy],” said TR’s Command Master Chief James Tocorzic. “I think every junior Sailor that first comes across the brow finds that Sailor they look up to and want to emulate. That’s no different for our new chief petty officers today. Through the course of their careers, they’ve been developed whether they realize it or not by both positive and some negative leaders, and they’ve put that in their toolbox and hopefully took away from the good and discarded the bad. They’ll continue to develop on that even after today, via senior chiefs, master chiefs and officers they work for, to become more effective leaders for all our junior Sailors.”
ARABIAN GULF (Sept. 15, 2015) – Newly pinned Chiefs pose for a group photo following a chief pinning ceremony aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). Forty-four chiefs were pinned by fellow chiefs in a traditional ceremony in the hangar bay aboard Theodore Roosevelt. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jennifer Case/Released)
midnight in New York F R O M T H E PA G E S O F
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2015
© 2015 The New York Times
FROM THE PAGES OF
Russian Moves in Syria Widen Mideast Role DEMOCRATS LOOK U.S. Sees Arms as Bid For Military Foothold WASHINGTON — Russia has sent some its most modern battle tanks to a new air base in Syria in what American officials said on Monday was part of an escalating buildup that could give Moscow its most significant military foothold in the Middle East in decades. Pentagon officials said the Russian weapons and equipment that have arrived so far suggests that the Kremlin’s plan is to turn the airfield south of Latakia, Syria, into a major hub that could be used to bring in military supplies for the government of President Bashar al-Assad and might also serve as a staging area for supporting Syrian forces with air strikes. “We have seen movement of people and things that would suggest the air base south of Latakia could be used as a forward air operating base,” Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Monday.
American military specialists analyzing satellite photographs and other information said Russia now has about half a dozen T-90 tanks, 15 howitzers, 35 armored personnel carriers, 200 marines and housing for as many 1,500 personnel at the airfield near the Assad family’s ancestral home. And more is on the way in what appears to be Russia’s attempt to increase its influence in Syria amid the civil strife there, the officials said. “There were military supplies, they are ongoing, and they will continue,” Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. “They are inevitably accompanied by Russian specialists, who help to adjust the equipment, to train Syrian personnel how to use this weaponry.” The Russians have not sent attack planes to the airfield, and the Kremlin has not said whether they will. But the military buildup by Russia, which has been supporting Assad throughout the Syrian civil war, adds a new friction point in its relations with
the United States. “I don’t believe Western governments are prepared to do very much to slow down or block the risky course the Russians are going on,” said Andrew S. Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Indeed, efforts by the United States to stop the supply flow have fallen short. At least 15 giant Russian Condor transport planes have in the past week used an air corridor over Iraq and Iran to ferry military equipment and personnel to the base, said American military officials who agreed to speak about confidential intelligence assessments on the condition of anonymity. Iraq did not shut its airspace to the Russian flights at the request of the United States, even though American diplomats raised their concerns about them with the Iraqi government on Sept. 5. American officials have refused to openly discuss their appeals to the Iraqis. ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL R. GORDON
Helicopter Crew’s Mistake Kills Tourists in Egypt CAIRO — The convoy of four sport utility vehicles full of Mexican tourists was about three hours southwest of Cairo on a typical adventure trip through the White Desert, an otherworldly landscape of monumental chalkrock formations. At around midday on Sunday, a diabetic passenger complained that she needed to eat. So, with the blessing of their police escort, and the apparent added security of an Apache military helicopter buzzing on the horizon, the group pulled off for a picnic, according to witnesses and others briefed on the trip. Then the helicopter opened fire, killing at least a dozen people — including at least two Mexicans — while wounding a tourist policeman and at least nine others. Some were gunned down as they tried to flee toward the top of a nearby sand dune, said Essam
Monem, a resident of the area who arrived that night and saw the bodies sprawled in the sand. The helicopter crew had mistaken the lunching tourists for a camp of Islamist militants operating in the area, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Monday. The error killed more tourists than any terrorist attack in recent years, raising questions about both the competence of Egypt’s security forces and the prevalence of the militants they were attempting to hunt. The deadly mistake is the latest setback facing President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s efforts to restore stability, two years after the military takeover that brought him to power. The disaster threatens to undermine a nascent recovery in the vital tourist industry, underscores a failure to re-establish public security that has driven away investors, and embarrass-
es Sisi just days after he sought a new beginning by firing his prime minister and cabinet. “What we saw was not just the lack of training of the military forces but also their desperation,” said Mokhtar Awad, a researcher at the Center for American Progress, noting that Islamic State militants in the area had also released photographs on Sunday that appeared to show they had beaten an army unit in battle earlier the same day. “It tells you how chaotic the situation is,” he said, “if they feel so desperate to put an end to this that they end up taking out what we gather is the first thing they see.” In its statement on Monday, the Interior Ministry sought to blame the tour guide — who was killed in the attack — by suggesting that the convoy had entered a “banned area” without permission. MERNA THOMAS and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
AT EXPANDED USE FOR ‘SUPER PACS’
Democrats are laying the groundwork for an ambitious reorganization of their struggling network of “super PACs” that would exploit the loopholes and legal gray areas that Republicans have used to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the 2016 campaign through such groups. The plans, laid out by the party’s top election lawyers in an emergency request filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday, would pave the way for the creation of super PACs tailored to individual House and Senate candidates. But the filing also suggests that Democrats would, if allowed, seek to use tactics pioneered by Republican presidential candidates this cycle, helping prospective candidates establish and raise money for super PACs before they officially declare their intent to run. Most strikingly, the lawyers are asking the commission to clarify how declared candidates, their campaign staffs and their volunteers can help court donors for independent super PACs. The commission’s answer could have profound ramifications for the 2016 campaign, particularly for Democrats who, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, have been reluctant to engage too closely with super PAC fund-raising. In seeking the F.E.C.’s guidance, Democrats contend that most of the activities their request describes — like having a candidate pretend to “test the waters” of a candidacy for months on end while raising money — appear to violate the law. But if regulators determine that such practices are legal, the lawyers wrote, Democratic candidates are prepared to adopt these tactics in the coming months. The lawyers signing the request — Marc E. Elias, Ezra W. Reese, Jonathan S. Berkon and Rachel L. Jacobs — work at Perkins Coie, the marquee Democratic election firm, which also represents the party’s congressional campaign committees, the presidential campaign of Clinton and a super PAC supporting her. NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 2
INTERNATIONAL
Premier Ousted E.U. Fails to Agree on Modest Plan for Migrants BRUSSELS — Even as three In Australia more countries followed GermaSoldiers were in introducing border checks to After Party Vote nycontrol deployed a flood of migrants, the Eu-
SYDNEY, Australia — Malcolm Turnbull, a former investment banker and lawyer, was poised to become the prime minister of Australia on Monday night after defeating Tony Abbott in a vote of Liberal Party lawmakers. The vote was the second challenge to Abbott’s leadership in seven months. He came to power in September 2013. Turnbull, 60, is a moderate Liberal whose views, most recently on same-sex marriage, had conflicted with those of Abbott, 57. The Liberals, despite their name, are the more conservative of Australia’s two major parties. The new prime minister is likely to be more open to the outside world and less conservative in approach than Abbott. Michael Fullilove, the executive director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, said that “when it comes to foreign policy issues, he is less Manichean, in the sense of being black and white, less prone to seeing the world through a security prism.” He said Turnbull was also more alert to the risks of climate change. And while he would have to convince conservative colleagues of the need for a change in government policy, Fullilove described him as a “force.” Turnbull won the support of 54 of his party colleagues, compared with 44 who voted in favor of Abbott’s retaining the party leadership. MICHELLE INNIS
ropean Union on Monday failed to agree on a modest plan that would force individual countries to take in a share of some of the hundreds of thousands now seeking asylum in Europe. Gathering in Brussels for an emergency meeting, interior ministers from across Europe agreed to share 40,000 migrants sheltering in Greece and Italy, but only on a voluntary basis, a watered-down version of a plan announced in May. But as the meeting stretched into the evening, there seemed little prospect that ministers would endorse a new plan put forward last week by Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, for a program of resettlement for a further 120,000 asylum seekers that would be compulsory for member countries. Diplomats said ministers had agreed in principle to this number but not on how it would be divided among different countries. Dis-
SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
cussion on that will resume next month. In a sign of the disharmony caused by Europe’s worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, the ministers decided not to issue a joint final statement and asked Luxembourg, which holds a rotating presidency, to issue a summary of their conclusions in its name, a senior diplomat said. The haggling in Brussels over the distribution of 160,000 migrants — a small part of the total — played out as Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands introduced border controls on Monday, following a decision by Germany on
on Monday near Roszke, Hungary, close to the Serbian border, as Budapest continued to try to seal off that border.
Sunday to set up checks on its own southwestern frontier and halt train traffic with Austria. The reintroduction of border controls was the most serious challenge in years to Europe’s system of passport-free travel across much of the Continent and threatened to create an unpredictable patchwork of complications and potentially risky obstacles for migrants seeking to make their way to preferred destinations in places like Germany or Sweden, where benefits are greater and the processing of asylum applications moves faster. (NYT)
Intelligence Chief Fired in a Shake-Up of Security Forces TUNIS — In a move that has surprised and enthralled many Algerians, the ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has replaced his powerful intelligence chief in a shake-up of the security forces. The replaced official, Mohamed Mediene, headed the intelligence service for 25 years. Over that time he became a feared figure as he built the service into an im-
mensely powerful institution, often referred to as a state within a state, which dominated the country’s fight against militants, but also political and social life. Mediene’s removal, announced unexpectedly on Sunday, came just a few weeks after the arrest of a former intelligence chief, Abdelkader Ait-Ouarabi, and the removal of several other intelli-
gence officials. These steps have been viewed in Algeria as the fulfillment of Bouteflika’s long-stated aim to exert more civilian control over the military. Bouteflika, 78, who had a stroke in 2013, has confounded critics, securing a fourth term in office and now removing political adversaries in the intelligence service. CARLOTTA GALL
In Brief Hundreds of Inmates Escape Taliban fighters raided the main prison in the southern province of Ghazni early on Monday, freeing hundreds of inmates after detonating explosives at the entrance and killing police guards, Afghan officials said. Sediq Sediqqi, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Interior, said the attack began at 2 a.m., when the insurgents set off a car bomb, then killed four of the prison guards and wounded seven others in a shootout. “There were 436 prisoners in the jail; 351 of them escaped,” Sediqqi said. (NYT)
Fires Diminish Air Quality Billowing smoke from Indonesian forest
fires has engulfed Singapore and much of Malaysia, reducing air quality to unhealthy levels. The Pollutant Standards Index, Singapore’s main measure of air pollution, rose to 222 early Monday, the highest level in a year and above the official “very unhealthy” mark set at 200, according to the National Environment Agency. In neighboring Malaysia the pollution index indicated unhealthy levels early Tuesday through broad swaths of the country. The haze affects the region every year and is caused largely by slashing and burning Indonesian forests to clear the land for agriculture. Indonesia’s government has sent planes and helicopters to try to extinguish the fires by dropping water, and more than 1,000 soldiers have been sent to Sumatra to help fight the blazes. (AP)
Rocket Launch Stirs Suspicion North Korea indicated Monday that it was preparing to put a new satellite into orbit using a rocket that is widely seen as an intercontinental ballistic missile in the making. Officials and analysts in the region have speculated that the North will launch a long-range rocket with a satellite on board around Oct. 10. North Korea has said its space program is peaceful, and an aerospace official quoted by the state’s Korean Central News Agency said the satellite would gather data for weather forecasting. But after the country put a small satellite into orbit in December 2012, the United States and its allies worried that in the process, the North was learning how to build long-range ballistic missiles. (NYT)
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 3
NATIONAL
Amid California Flames, Escapes and Choices MIDDLETOWN, Calif. — As they watched the sky go black and flames race toward their homes, the artists and campers, retirees and families living in this mountain town knew it was time to flee. Some, fearing the drought-fueled fires raging across California, had bags packed, ready to go. Others did not. So as the fire crested a ridge line on Saturday afternoon, people grabbed insurance papers and birth certificates, shoes and extra socks. They loaded up antique rugs but left behind a mother’s quilts. They wrangled horses and pets. Steve Shurelian, 60, picked up an ailing neighbor. Neighbors screamed at one another to get out. By night, escaping families were driving through curtains of flame. “I felt like it was the end times,” said Janis Irvin, who believes her house was destroyed. “It was red and black and boiling.” By late Monday, 11,000 firefighters across California were still
battling to contain a dozen large wildfires that had destroyed hundreds of homes, displaced 13,000 people and turned neighborhoods into char. A least one person was killed, an elderly woman with disabilities unable to escape when her house here in Lake County caught fire, officials said. The blaze that began in Lake County, called the Valley Fire, has burned across 61,000 acres, and was only 5 percent contained. In Middletown, most of downtown — including a new arts center and Noble’s Saloon — survived untouched, while entire neighborhood blocks were heaps of ash. Grape fields were scorched black. A scrim of smoke continued to rise from the tinder-dry mountains that ring the town. A trickle of people were allowed to return on Monday, to inspect their homes and retrieve livestock, but hundreds more were still sleeping on cots or in tents at evacuation shelters on the northern and southern edges of the fire.
“I’m looking for my wife,” one man said as he walked into the cafeteria of a Red Cross evacuation center at the Napa County Fairground, about 30 miles from Middletown. Over crumb cake and pancakes, neighbors reunited, asked about each other’s homes and recalled the how the erratic, whipping winds had brought the fire down from the mountainsides on Saturday and transformed their town into an inferno. “It did things fire isn’t supposed to do,” said Capt. Mike Walton, a bulldozer operator with Cal Fire, the state fire agency, who escorted a friend into Middletown to see his destroyed home. “Fire does weird stuff. But look at this.” Originally from Philadelphia, Shurelian said he had become enraptured with the quiet beauty of the area, its streams and woods and hummingbirds. He said he believed his home was gone. “It’s a special area,” he said. “It was all I really required in life. Now, it’s toast.” JACK HEALY
The Lobbyist With a Six-Figure Government Job WASHINGTON — In this city with a grand tradition of government officials who pass through the revolving door into a world of big paychecks, Jeffrey Farrow stands apart. While earning more than $100,000 a year as executive director of a tiny federal agency called the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, which has only one fulltime federal employee, Farrow has simultaneously helped collect as much as $750,000 a year in lobbying fees. His clients have included the governments of Puerto Rico and the Republic of Palau. He managed this feat while
running one of dozens of agencies that can get lost in the vast government — this one responsible for identifying and helping preserve cemeteries and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe that are important to American Jews and others. One agency staff member has alleged that Farrow handled some of his lobbying work while at the offices of the agency. “A bizarre tale,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., in a letter he sent last month to Lesley Weiss, the chairwoman of the 30-year-old commission. “This lobbyist used federal personnel and resources to run a profitable personal busi-
ness advancing the interest of foreign agents.” Farrow declined requests for comment, and Weiss did not return calls seeking comment. Warren L. Miller, a former federal prosecutor who served for over a decade as chairman of the commission, said that he had been unaware that Farrow was also working as a registered foreign agent — a type of lobbyist hired by a foreign government, like Palau. But Miller said Farrow had done nothing wrong because he works as a contractor, rather than as a full-fledged federal employee, even with his title of executive director. ERIC LIPTON
In a Christian Stronghold, Sanders Cites Golden Rule LYNCHBURG, Va. — Sen. Bernie Sanders took his message of confronting inequality to unfamiliar ground on Monday at Liberty University, a leading evangelical Christian college, where he sought to build what he called “common ground” with students, beginning with the foundations of Christianity itself: the Bible. Sanders, who is Jewish and is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, was
greeted politely. He noted that he and the audience members would have views “on a number of important issues that are very, very different,” especially on abortion and same-sex marriage. But he then spoke almost entirely on the issue of poverty and income inequality, borrowing from his traditional stump speech while framing the populist message within the confines of a sense of social justice and faith.
“I want all of you, if you would, to put this in the context of the Bible, not me,” Sanders, of Vermont, told the crowd of nearly 12,000 at a college where attendance at convocation is usually compulsory. His speech was peppered with repeated calls for “morality” and “justice” when he spoke about issues that have been central to his campaign, like fighting childhood poverty and raising the minimum wage. NICK CORASANITI
In Brief Defiant Clerk Allows Same-Sex Licenses Undaunted in her religious faith but facing the specter of another courtroom reckoning, Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Ky., clerk who was jailed for defying a federal judge’s order that she issue marriage licenses, said Monday that she would not stop her employees from processing licenses for same-sex couples. But the condition that Davis attached to her admittedly makeshift solution — that the licenses would lack her authorization — was the latest indication that her protracted legal and political battles would not go away soon. Davis’s strategy could spur new litigation to challenge the disputed licenses, and it was unclear how Judge David L. Bunning of Federal District Court, who jailed Davis on Sept. 3, would respond. (NYT)
Suspect in Shooting Of Trooper Is Killed A Kentucky state trooper was killed during a traffic stop in Western Kentucky on Sunday night, and officials said on Monday that the suspected gunman had been fatally shot after refusing to drop his weapon. The suspect was identified as Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, 25, of Missouri, the police said. Johnson-Shanks was shot multiple times by the police after he refused to drop his weapon and then aimed it in the troopers’ direction, the police said. (NYT)
Showdown in Debate Donald J. Trump has criticized Carly Fiorina’s looks, saying of his only female Republican rival: “Look at that face! Would anybody vote for that?” He has gleefully declared how “viciously” she was fired by Hewlett-Packard. On Wednesday, Trump will share a stage with Fiorina for the first time, in the second Republican presidential debate. Political strategists warn male candidates to use caution when debating against a female rival. But almost never before in American presidential politics has a candidate who has drawn charges of sexism and bullying been forced to personally confront the female recipient of his insults on live television. (NYT)
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 4
BUSINESS
THE MARKETS
Rise in Interest Rates Could Roil Wall Street an increase in interest rates. “I believe that Wall Street is better prepared for a market event than it was in 2008, partially as a result of regulation but, more importantly, as a result of experience,” said Arthur Levitt Jr., a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A liftoff in rates may not happen this week. After a violent downturn in global stock markets last month, prompted by concerns about China, traders are now betting that the big day is more likely to happen at the Fed’s December meeting. But an increase in rates, whenever it comes, could still roil markets, make it harder for many firms to raise money and expose new frailties in the system. In theory, a small increase in interest rates should not be enough
to wreak havoc. If the economy is reasonably healthy, and corporate earnings continue to grow steadily, then stock and bond prices should not be vulnerable. Still, some analysts have a darker view of the links between the Fed’s $3.5 trillion stimulus, Wall Street and the wider economy. They say that financial markets have played a central role in funneling trillions of dollars into investments and activities that will prove unsustainable when interest rates go up. “The Fed is supposed to remove the punch bowl just as the party gets going,” said Albert Edwards, a strategist with Société Générale, in an email. “It is already well past midnight, but the guests will keep partying until they drop if you ply them with even more alcohol.” PETER EAVIS
Autoworkers Go to Fiat Chrysler for First Talks Contract talks intensified on Monday between the United Automobile Workers union and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which was selected by the union to be the first among Detroit’s three carmakers to negotiate a new national labor agreement. The current four-year contracts between the U.A.W. and General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler were to expire at midnight on Monday. All three companies have been in negotiations with the union since July. But the U.A.W.’s president, Dennis Williams, surprised industry observers on Sunday by targeting Fiat Chrysler — which, because it is the least profitable of the three, is expected to have the
toughest negotiation — to reach the first settlement. Williams has said his top priority is to negotiate wage increases for veteran workers, who earn about $28 an hour, as well as entry-level employees, who earn from $16 to $19 an hour. The union is seeking to close the pay gap between the tiers of workers, and possibly limit the number of lower-paid employees at each of the three companies. More than 40 percent of Fiat Chrysler’s 36,000 union workers in the United States are entry-level employees — a sore point with union officials. By contrast, about 20 percent of the union members at G.M. and Ford are paid the lower wage scale.
Those goals will be hard to reach at Fiat Chrysler. Because of the big number of entry-level workers, Fiat Chrysler’s overall labor costs are lower than those at G.M. and Ford. Fiat Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, has pushed to end the two-tier wage system. Instead, he advocates a single wage scale that falls somewhere in between the tiers. The union, however, is unlikely to agree to any cut in wages for its veteran workers. This year’s negotiations have been emotionally charged from the start, as union leaders have vowed not to make concessions to the companies as they did in previous deals. BILL VLASIC
Trump Quickly Sells Miss Universe Organization Donald J. Trump has sold the Miss Universe Organization to the talent agency WME-IMG, the company announced on Monday. The sale, the financial terms of which were not disclosed, came after a rough summer for the organization’s Miss USA beauty pageant in which two television partners dropped the broadcast in response to comments Trump made about illegal immigrants during his presidential campaign. NBC, a part owner of the Miss Universe Organization, backed out of the broadcast and said that
Trump would not be welcomed back as the host of “The Celebrity Apprentice.” (NBC announced that Arnold Schwarzenegger would replace him). Trump filed a $500 million suit against the pageant’s other television partner, the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision. On Friday, NBC confirmed that it had sold its stake in the Miss Universe Organization to Trump. It appears that sale was just the prelude for Trump to spin off the organization — which includes the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA
and Miss Universe pageants — to WME-IMG. After NBC backed out of the broadcast, Miss USA was picked up by the cable channel Reelz, and had a significantly smaller viewership: 925,000 viewers compared with the 5.6 million people that watched it on NBC last year. The chief executive of Reelz, Stan E. Hubbard, said last month that the Miss USA broadcast was a one-time event for the cable channel and that the beauty pageant belonged “on a broadcast network.” JOHN KOBLIN
DJIA
D
NASDAQ
84.35 0.51%
D
16,348.74
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16.58 0.34%
D
4,805.76
10.88 0.55%
1,950.17
E UR OP E BRITAIN
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D
33.17 0.54%
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6,084.59
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10,131.74
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AS I A / PAC I F I C JAPAN
HONG KONG
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NIKKEI 225
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D
298.52 1.63%
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17,965.70
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21,561.90
3,114.87
A M E R I C AS
D
CANADA
BRAZIL
MEXICO
TSX
BOVESPA
BOLSA
85.06 0.63%
968.39 U 2.09%
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47,368.39
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C OM M OD I T I E S /BO N D S
U
GOLD
10-YR. TREAS. CRUDE OIL YIELD
4.20
D
$1,107.70
0.01 2.18%
D
0.73 $44.43
FOREIGN EXCHANGE Fgn. currency in Dollars
Australia (Dollar) Bahrain (Dinar) Brazil (Real) Britain (Pound) Canada (Dollar) China (Yuan) Denmark (Krone) Dom. Rep. (Peso) Egypt (Pound) Europe (Euro) Hong Kong (Dollar) Japan (Yen) Mexico (Peso) Norway (Krone) Singapore (Dollar) So. Africa (Rand) So. Korea (Won) Sweden (Krona) Switzerland (Franc)
.7135 2.6539 .2622 1.5424 .7541 .1571 .1517 .0222 .1277 1.1323 .1290 .0083 .0597 .1221 .7111 .0742 .0008 .1212 1.0334
Dollars in fgn.currency
1.4015 .3768 3.8139 .6483 1.3261 6.3664 6.5923 45.0100 7.8300 .8832 7.7494 120.22 16.7515 8.1873 1.4063 13.4800 1181.8 8.2542 .9677
Source: Thomson Reuters
ONLINE: MORE PRICES AND ANALYSIS
➡
The moment that Wall Street has long been dreading could happen this week. The Federal Reserve on Thursday may increase interest rates for the first time in over nine years. A rise would be the beginning of the end of a monetary stimulus policy that lifted stock and bond markets to new heights and brought the good times back to Wall Street after the 2008 crash. History, however, shows that booms financed with cheap money often leave the financial system weaker, not stronger. Most analysts aren’t expecting 2008-style instability, unless, say, China’s economic problems worsen sharply. The Obama administration’s overhaul of Wall Street appears to have made the largest banks more resilient to the sort of stress that can follow
Information on all United States stocks, plus bonds, mutual funds, commodities and foreign stocks along with analysis of industry sectors and stock indexes:
nytimes.com/markets
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 5
BUSINESS
Satisfying a Frenzy for New Vinyl Records BORDENTOWN, N.J. — The machines at Independent Record Pressing whirred and hissed as they stamped out a test record. The business’s owners waited anxiously for Dave Miller, the plant manager, to inspect the stillwarm slab of vinyl. “That’s flat, baby!” Miller said as he held the record, to roars of approval and relief. “That’s the way they should come off, just like that.” Independent Record Pressing is an attempt to solve one of the riddles of today’s music industry: how to capitalize on the popularity of vinyl records when the machines that make them are decades old, and often require delicate and expensive maintenance. The six presses at this new 20,000-square-foot plant, for example, date to the 1970s. Vinyl, which faded with the arrival of compact discs in the 1980s, is having an unexpected renaissance. Last year more than 13 million LPs were sold in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the highest count in 25 years, making it one of the record business’s few growth areas. But the few dozen plants around the world that press the records have strained to keep up with the demand, resulting in long delays and other production
KARSTEN MORAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
problems, executives and industry observers say. It is common for plants to take up to six months to turn around a vinyl order — an eternity when listeners are used to getting music online instantly. “The good news is that everyone wants vinyl,” said Dave Hansen, one of Independent’s owners and the general manager of the alternative label Epitaph. “The bad news is everything you see here today,” he added, noting that the machines had to be shut down that day because of the rising temperature of water used as a coolant. To replace an obsolete screw in one machine, Independent spent $5,000 to manufacture and install a new one. The vinyl boom has come as streaming has taken off as a listening format and both CDs and downloads have declined. The
Old presses are being restored and put to work making vinyl records, a niche product in demand from younger music enthusiasts.
reasons cited are usually a fuller, warmer sound from vinyl’s analog grooves and the tactile power of a well-made record at a time when music has become ephemeral. Most surprising is the youth of the market: According to MusicWatch, a consumer research group, some 54 percent of vinyl customers are 35 or younger. Hansen and Darius Van Arman, a founder of Secretly Group, a consortium of small record companies that is a partner in Independent, said they believed their customers were often discovering new music through streaming and then collecting it on LPs. “None of this was supposed to happen, and yet it’s happened,” said Michael Fremer, a senior contributing editor at Stereophile magazine and a longtime champion of vinyl. BEN SISARIO
Despite Shake-Up at Top, United Faces Steep Climb The merger of Continental Airlines and United Airlines in 2010 was supposed to combine Continental’s reputation for solid customer service with the broader reach of United’s domestic and international network. Instead, the five-year-old marriage has turned into an exercise in frustration for United fliers, with frequent delays, canceled flights and lost bags. Like many fans of the former Continental, Paul Wigdor, a managing director at Ascendant Advisors, an investment advisory firm based in Houston, still bemoans the loss of the airline. “Continental was probably the best airline in my opinion that you could travel on pre-United,” said Wigdor, a New Jersey resident who flies about twice a month to Houston from Newark on United. “I would say United is one of the lowest.”
Among his complaints: poor service, choppy Wi-Fi and — after United cut back on perks and upgrades — little appreciation of frequent fliers, like himself, who log tens of thousands of miles a year. “l feel like at 100,000 miles, somebody should care and make me feel like a valued customer,” Wigdor said. “You’re treated as just a commodity.” In large part, the merger is still a work in progress. Labor relations are sour, customer satisfaction is low and the basic measurements of the airline’s operational performance are dismal compared with its main rivals. Passengers surveyed by Skytrax, an airline quality rating agency, give United a grade of 3 out of 10, the same as the low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines. (American earned a 4, Delta got a 5 and top-rated carriers like Singapore Airlines, All Nippon Airways and
Qatar Airways received a 7.) On-time performance is one of the biggest problems for United. In July, for instance, about 25 percent of all United flights did not land on time, ranking the airline ninth among 13 domestic airlines, according to FlightStats. This compared with 18 percent for Delta Air Lines and an industry average of 22 percent. United had the second-lowest percentage of completed flights after WestJet in July, the last month for which government statistics were available. “If you’re not getting the fundamentals right, if you don’t have an airline that travelers can trust to depart and arrive on time, if you don’t stick to your schedule, you don’t have the foundations for an airline,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and founder of Atmosphere Research Group. JAD MOUAWAD and MARTHA C. WHITE
MOST ACTIVE, GAINERS AND LOSERS % Volume Stock (Ticker) Close Chg chg (100) 10 MOST ACTIVE Apple (AAPL) Bankof (BAC) Solera (SLH) Alcoa (AA) FCX (FCX) Chesap (CHK) Genera (GE) FordMo (F) Fronti (FTR) Intel (INTC)
115.31 15.96 53.66 9.38 11.16 7.92 24.77 13.78 5.22 29.39
+1.10 ◊0.08 +4.21 ◊0.27 ◊0.24 +0.35 ◊0.18 +0.07 ◊0.10 ◊0.08
+1.0 ◊0.5 +8.5 ◊2.8 ◊2.1 +4.6 ◊0.7 +0.5 ◊1.9 ◊0.3
582716 503651 343714 312084 282295 281047 262365 260912 255217 240638
% Volume Stock (Ticker) Close Chg chg (100) 10 TOP GAINERS Shiloh (SHLO) Treven (TRVN) Axovan (AXON) HTGMol (HTGM) ConsWa (CWCO) Nathan (NATH) ClearS (CLIR) Bellic (BLCM) aTyrPh (LIFE) Chico’ (CHS)
10.26 11.84 16.59 8.00 11.62 37.10 6.96 18.83 18.73 16.66
+1.64 +1.59 +1.91 +0.84 +1.19 +3.67 +0.67 +1.78 +1.77 +1.54
+19.0 +15.5 +13.0 +11.7 +11.4 +11.0 +10.7 +10.4 +10.4 +10.2
2151 40817 11536 130 1791 536 2295 5035 1929 77335
% Volume Stock (Ticker) Close Chg chg (100) 10 TOP LOSERS Raptor (RPTP) Timken (TMST) Mannin (MN) Horseh (ZINC) LivePe (LPSN) EPEngr (EPE) Tuesda (TUES) PzenaI (PZN) Centur (CENX) Bonanz (BCEI)
7.52 12.55 7.42 5.85 8.25 5.21 7.23 8.08 5.27 5.73
◊4.51 ◊3.05 ◊0.90 ◊0.66 ◊0.90 ◊0.48 ◊0.66 ◊0.73 ◊0.43 ◊0.46
◊37.5 ◊19.6 ◊10.8 ◊10.1 ◊9.8 ◊8.4 ◊8.4 ◊8.3 ◊7.5 ◊7.4
200395 29100 3904 25305 6884 38165 7854 723 19219 26356
Source: Thomson Reuters
Stocks on the Move Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Monday: Solera Holdings Inc., down $4.21 to $53.66. The insurance claims software company is being acquired by Vista Equity Partners for about $3.74 billion. Cantel Medical Corp., down 15 cents to $50.86. The medical and surgical products company is buying medical device company Medical Innovations Group for $79.5 million in cash. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., down $2.03 to $62.60. The Barron’s published a bearish report saying the Chinese e-commerce company is facing increasing competition and uncertainty. Apple Inc., up $1.10 to $115.31. The technology company said preorders for its latest iPhone models are strong and that it expects to sell more than 10 million in the first weekend. Raptor Pharmaceuticals Corp., down $4.51 to $7.52. The drug developer’s potential liver disease drug failed to meet key goals in a pivotal study and it could end development. Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc., up $5.31 to $18.76. The drug developer’s abuse-resistant pain drug was recommended for approval by a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel. (AP)
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