ROUGH RIDER USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN 71)
THURSDAY EDITION
FLEETEX
trcsg completes fleetex
SAILOR 2.0
SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES
BY THE NUMBERS
RAMADAn: focus on islamic spiritual devotion
JULY 2 2015
Story by mc3 josh petrosino
TR CARRIER STRIKE GROUP
COMPLETESFLEETEX
A
dmiral Chester W. Nimitz once said, “There is no substitute for experience; however, when experience is not readily available, there is no substitute for training.” USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71)) conducted various fleet exercises (FLEETEX) from June 12 to 22 to build interoperability with Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group (TRCSG) ships and to exercise proficiency in command and control. “Fleet exercises are integrated joint and coalition training events to maintain proficiency across maritime warfare disciplines,” said Lt. Cmdr.
Joshua Vergow, a battle watch captain watch-stander in Tactical Flag Command Center. “It’s pretty much an exercise or event that we do as a strike group,” said Cryptologic Technician Technical 2nd Class Alexander Cady. “We work with our small boys to achieve some sort of training such as deceiving the enemy, combat drills and how we would react in a certain situation.” Involving several ships, FLEETEX is a complex evolution that requires a proactive frame of mind. Participating ships included TR, the guidedmissile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60), guided-
missile destroyers USS Farragut (DDG 99), USS McFaul (DDG 74), USS Paul Hamilton (DDG 60) and the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Duncan (D37). “Because we are a strike group, it is important for us [Theodore Roosevelt] to know how to work with our [destroyers and cruiser] effectively in any given situation,” said Cady. “If we get into a combat scenario we need to be prepared and the only way we are going to be prepared is to train. Fleet exercises help us train, not only as individual ships, but as a strike group.” During FLEETEX, TRCSG conducted air defense exercises, electronic warfare exercises, emissions control exercises and divisional tactics. These exercises involved close integration from Sailors on all ships performing their jobs in harmony. “The fleet exercise DIVTACS (divisional tactics) provided junior officers an excellent chance to hone their ship handling skills in a multi-ship environment,” said Farragut’s Lt j.g. Joshua Bowling. “The maneuvers were carefully planned and executed at distances between 500-1000 yards. Most junior officers are introduced to DIVTACS in the simulator and being able to execute these skills in the 5th Fleet area of operations proved to be an extremely valuable training opportunity.” The intricate training conducted during FLEETEX required extensive training to ensure training was effective and met all objectives. “Fleet exercises require a high level of planning and precoordination to execute events safely and effectively,” said Vergow. “The exercises were successful and there were a lot of lessons learned.”
SAILOR 2.0
BY: MC3 TAYLOR STINSON
T O DAY
THERE ARE 35 KNOWN SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED PATHOGENS INCLUDING HIV 1 AND 2
... AND MICROBIOME STUDIES ARE DEFINING MANY MORE
27% 42%
OF PEOPLE SURVEYED HAD MORE THAN ONE SEXUAL PARTNER WITHIN 90 DAYS... REPORTED PARTNERS WITH CONCURRENT SEXUAL PARTNERS WHILE ACTIVE DUTY IN A 2011 VETERANS STUDY
42%
REPORTED NOT USING A CONDOMS DURING THEIR LAST SEXUAL ENCOUNTER
M
A HL
C
A
A
I YD
E RH
R
O ON
G
>2500
GENITAL CT AND GC INCIDENCE (2011): NAVY
250
2500
>250
<250 <2500
WOMEN MEN * DOTTED LINES = GENDER SPECIFIC US RATES (15-30)
WOMEN
MEN
ION L L I 20 M CCUR O STIs AR E Y Y EVER
LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX
_
COMBINATION HIV PREVENTION
STD
TREATMENT AS PREVENTION PMTCT
VACCINES
STD TREATMENT TESTING/ COUNSELING
PrEP
MALE CIRCUMCISION
EDUCATION
MICROBICIDES
CONDOMS
“SERVICE MEMBERS NEED TO BE REMINDED THAT THERE ARE RISKS HERE AT HOME AS WELL. I THINK WE SCARE THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF OUR SERVICE MEMBERS IN FOREIGN PORTS AND COUNTRIES, BUT THEY THINK THEY’RE SAFE AT HOME. YET THE U.S. HAS THE HIGHEST RATE OF STDS AMONG DEVELOPED COUNTRIES”
- BILL CALVERT, CHAIRMAN OF DoD STD PREVENTION COMMITTEE
AVOID I N F ER T ILIT Y, S IC K N E S S AND D E AT H AN D P ROT E C T YO U R S E LF! SOURCES: DoD Survey of Helath related Behaviors. 2006 www.ha.osd/mil/special_reports/2005_Health_Behaviors_Survey_1-07.pdf Gaydos et al., N Engl J Med 1998;13: 739-744 Sadler et al., J WomensHealth 2011;20: 1693-1701 National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fact Sheet, STD Trends in the United States, 2011 National Data STDs Still A Real Threat, Even at Home, Staff Sgt, Jatgkeeb T. Rhem, USA: American Forces Press Service; May 31, 2000
18 hrs The Islamic calendar is based on the moon. Ramadan begins at sundown on the night of the ninth new moon.
From dawn to sunset, Muslims fast in devotion. It is common to have one meal (Suhoor) just before sunrise and another (Iftar) directly after sunset.
Food, water and sexual relations can only take place after sunset as an opportunity to practice self-control and to cleanse the body and mind.
Only the fit and able fast. Children, pregnant women, travellers, the elderly and the ill do not participate in fasting.
AROUND THE WORLD There are 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. Over 23% of the population are Muslim making Islam the second largest religion in the world after Christianity. CANADA
The Muslim Association celebrates Eid in Canada annually with more than 10,000 attendees.
UNITED KINGDOM Each year thousands celebrate Eid in Trafalgar Square, London with a feast, live music and a bazaar.
SOUTH AFRICA Hundreds of Muslims gather at Green Point, Cape Town on the last night of Ramadan for a sight of the New Moon.
AUSTRALIA The Mulicultural Eid Fair began in 1987 with thousands attending each year.
SAUDI ARABIA Families in Al Qassim cook a meal and invite neighbors over to celebrate Eid.
INDIA Thousands of Muslims turn out for prayer on Red Road in Rolkata every year.
information provided by yougov and three faiths forum | in f o g ra p hic b y mc 2 danica m . sirmans
During Ramadan in the Middle East ...
30%
33% Online conversation tends to be more positive
Muslims focus on spiritual devotion and read the Quâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ran. The holy book was revealed to Muhammad during the month of Ramadan.
91% 51% 79%
Twitter engagement increases by 33%
Media consumption increases by 20% and TV consumption increases tremendously
Companies shift their media events to later in the evening
Charity and good deeds have special significance during Ramadan. Muslims are obligated to share their blessings by feeding the poor and making contributions to mosques.
Fasting comes to an end at sunset in what is referred to as Itfar. Dates are usually accompanied with a traditional meal.
PREFER TO HAVE IFTAR WITH THEIR FAMILY SAY THEY FIND IT EASY TO FAST THINK RAMADAN IS BECOMING MORE COMMERCIAL
People are more active on social media after Iftar and before Suhoor
Facebook engagement increases by 30%
Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan as people celebrate in their finest clothes while visiting with friends and family.
midnight in New York F R O M T H E PA G E S O F
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015
Right Divided, Disciplined Left Steered Justices WASHINGTON — The series of liberal decisions delivered by the Supreme Court this term was the product of discipline on the left side of the court and disarray on the right. In case after case, including blockbusters on same-sex marriage and President Obama’s health care law, the court’s four-member liberal wing managed to pick off one or more votes from the court’s five conservative justices. They did this in large part through rigorous bloc voting, making the term that concluded Monday the most liberal one since the Warren court in the late 1960s. “The most interesting thing about this term is the acceleration of a longterm trend of disagreement among the Republican-appointed judges, while the Democratic-appointed judges continue to march in lock step,” said Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Many analysts credit the leadership of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the senior member of the liberal justices, for leveraging their four votes. “We have made a concerted effort to speak with one voice in important cases,” she said last year. The court’s conservatives, by contrast, were often splintered, issuing separate opinions even when they agreed on the outcome. The conservative justices, for instance, produced more than 40 dissenting opinions, the liberals just 13. The term was not uniformly liberal, of course. On Monday alone, the court ruled against death row inmates in a case on lethal injections and against the Obama administration in a case on environmental regulations. Nor is the court remotely as liberal as the Warren court, which issued a far greater percentage of liberal decisions, often unanimously. David A. Strauss, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said the cases the court agreed to hear this past term might have created a misperception about how liberal it has become. “It’s still a conservative court — just not as conservative as some had hoped and some had feared,” he said. ADAM LIPTAK
© 2015 The New York Times
FROM THE PAGES OF
Greece Misses Crucial Debt Payment ATHENS — Greece missed a crucial debt payment to the International Monetary Fund, the fund said early Wednesday, deepening a crisis that has haunted world leaders and financial markets over the past week. The development came as Greece’s European creditors each rejected an 11th-hour attempt by Athens to extend the international bailout program. Greece is not technically in default, but missing the payment of about $1.7 billion is yet another unmistakable warning that the country will probably be unable to meet its obligations in coming weeks to its bond holders and to the European Central Bank. That might make the bank, a chief creditor, less willing to continue emergency loans. By declaring Greece in arrears, the I.M.F. avoided using the term “default.” But Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, said Tuesday night that Greece was effectively in default and could now face even tougher conditions for a new aid
package. “I think the fact of the matter is that Greece is in default or will be in default tomorrow morning on the I.M.F. and also, I believe, on a loan to their own central bank,” Dijsselbloem told CNBC. “But they will be in default, and I don’t think I can alter that in the short term.” With just hours to go before the deadline for the payment, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, had asked the other nations that use the euro to provide another bailout that could buy Athens time to renegotiate its crippling debt load. Finance ministers of those countries discussed the proposal on Tuesday night and left open the possibility that Greece could win a new aid package, but dashed any hopes Athens had for immediate action. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had said earlier in the day that no deal with Tsipras’s government could be negotiated until after a referendum on Sunday in which Greeks will be asked to accept or reject an offer made
last week by Greece’s creditors. Greece joins the roster of countries that have missed payments to the I.M.F. Also on that list: Zimbabwe, Sudan and Somalia. Greece becomes the first developed country to miss a payment, and it was the largest missed payment in the fund’s history. Sudan still owes about $1.4 billion from loans acquired in the 1980s, according to the fund. Other countries that have fallen behind more recently include Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan. All three eventually settled their obligations to the fund. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said delinquency would put Greece in ignoble company. “They are joining countries we would normally regard as failed and failing states,” Kirkegaard said. The I.M.F. declined to comment on whether it expected Greece to make the payment it just missed sometime in the future. JIM YARDLEY and JAMES KANTER
U.S. Chamber Undermines Antismoking Measures KIEV, Ukraine — A parliamentary hearing was convened here in March to consider an odd remnant of Ukraine’s corrupt, pre-revolutionary government. Three years ago, Ukraine filed an international legal challenge against Australia, over Australia’s right to enact antismoking laws on its own soil. To a number of lawmakers, the case seemed absurd, and they wanted to investigate why it was even being pursued. When it came time to defend the tobacco industry, Taras Kachka spoke up. He argued that several “fantastic tobacco companies” had bought up Soviet-era factories and modernized them. It was in Ukraine’s national interest, he said, to support investors in the country, even though they do not sell tobacco to Australia. Kachka was not a tobacco lobbyist or factory owner. He was the head of a Ukrainian affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
America’s largest trade group. From Ukraine to Uruguay, Moldova to the Philippines, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its foreign affiliates have become the hammer for the tobacco industry, engaging in a worldwide effort to fight antismoking laws of all kinds, according to interviews with government ministers, lobbyists, lawmakers and public health groups. Facing a wave of new legislation around the world, the tobacco lobby has turned for help to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with the weight of American business behind it. While the chamber’s global tobacco lobbying has been largely hidden from public view, its influence has been widely felt. Letters, emails and other documents from foreign governments, the chamber’s affiliates and antismoking groups show how the chamber has embraced the challenge, undertaking a three-pronged strategy in its
global campaign to advance the interests of the tobacco industry. In the capitals of far-flung nations, the chamber lobbies alongside its foreign affiliates to beat back antismoking laws. In trade forums, the chamber pits countries against one another, as in the Ukraine case. And in Washington, Thomas J. Donohue, the chief executive of the chamber, has personally taken part in lobbying to defend the ability of the tobacco industry to sue under future international treaties, notably the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “They represent the interests of the tobacco industry,” said Dr. Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, who oversees the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a global anti-smoking treaty that took effect in 2005. “They are putting their feet everywhere where there are stronger regulations coming up.” DANNY HAKIM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015 2
INTERNATIONAL
Embassy Deal Spared by Bomb, U.S. Troops Face Afghans’ Wrath Reached Between KABUL, Afghanistan — A convoy of American troops survived a No U.S. troops huge suicide bomb attack in Kabul U.S. and Cuba were killed on Tuesday afternoon, only to find
WASHINGTON — The United States and Cuba will announce an agreement on Wednesday to reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, formally restoring diplomatic relations more than a half-century after they were ruptured, according to administration officials. The agreement represents the most tangible outcome to date of President Obama’s decision to reach out to the island nation and end its decades of isolation. Obama declared in December that he wanted to resume ties with Havana, and the two sides have spent the last six months in painstaking negotiations to work out details of the new embassies. Obama will announce plans to reopen the embassies in the Rose Garden on Wednesday morning. Secretary of State John Kerry will also discuss the plans in Vienna, where he is negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity in advance of the formal announcement. Kerry plans to travel to Havana for the actual opening of the embassy in July. President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1961, and the two neighbors have spent more than 50 years at odds. The United States already has a limited diplomatic outpost in Havana, called an interests section, in the same seven-story building on the Malecón waterfront that served as the embassy until 1961. After so many years as a small presence in a hostile country, the building is worn down. The State Department has said it needs $6.6 million to retrofit it to make it suitable as an embassy. But some Republicans who oppose the outreach to Cuba, calling it the appeasement of a dictatorial government, have been working to bar any financing for such work. Critics may also try to block the confirmation of a new ambassador once Obama makes a nomination. Cuba has an interests section in a stately manor in the Adams Morgan section of Washington that could be upgraded. In May, Cuba announced that its banking services for that office had been restored. PETER BAKER and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
themselves struggling against a gathering crowd of Afghans who were trying to tend to civilians wounded in the bombing. The confusing scene left one American soldier wounded, possibly by a knife, as Afghans shouted, “Death to Americans,” and accused the soldiers of opening fire on them in the frightening seconds after the suicide attack, witnesses said. The episode hinted at a lingering wellspring of anger against American troops even as the United States’ military presence in Afghanistan is receding. Around 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, in the hot midday hours of Ramadan, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb amid one such convoy, on Airport Road. The blast did not kill or seriously injure any of the soldiers, but it wounded at least 22 Afghans and killed at least one. What happened next is still being pieced together. But at some point, a member of the crowd attacked and most likely stabbed an American soldier who had exited one of the vehicles to form a cordon. A soldier opened fire, although it was unclear whether
WAKIL KOHSAR/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
the shots came before or after the crowd member’s attack. Some witnesses said the American soldiers, along with Afghan security officials who were nearby, had fired only warning shots. But other witnesses claimed that the bullets ripped through Afghans who had come to treat the wounded. This narrative quickly spread through a gathering crowd. Some members of the crowd described the stabbing of the soldier as revenge for the American gunfire. Assadullah Khan, a nearby resident who said he witnessed the events, said the brother of an Afghan man killed on Tuesday was part of a group that attacked the nearest American soldier. The Taliban claimed responsibil-
by a suicide attack Tuesday in Kabul, Afghanistan but after the blast they were confronted by an angry crowd.
ity for the suicide bombing. But by late afternoon, much of the anger was directed against Americans. Some members of the crowd threw rocks. Others spoke of jihad. “Killing innocents permit Muslims to take weapons and stand against enemies of Islam,” said Khalid, 30, who said he witnessed the scene. “You opened fire, killing and wounded our men while they were rushing in to help their family members. This permits jihad. Get out of our country.” Members of the Afghan intelligence service arrested a number of men in the crowd, including the man believed to have stabbed the soldier, said Khan and other witnesses. JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and AHMAD SHAKIB
In Brief ISIS Allies in Gaza Target Hamas One bomb hit a Hamas security checkpoint in northern Gaza. A few days later, another blew up next to a Gaza City high-rise, and a small one targeted a chicken store owned by a Hamas intelligence official, Saber Siyam. The four attacks in May were aimed at the ruling Islamist group, Hamas. The suspected perpetrators were Hamas’s emerging rivals: extremist Islamist groups that see Hamas as insufficiently pious, and that vow loyalty to the Islamic State. While the extremists are unlikely to challenge Hamas’s firm grip on the Gaza Strip in the foreseeable future, they complicate matters by occasionally shooting rockets into Israel that could touch off a wider conflagration, if the rockets kill or maim Israeli citizens. (NYT)
Lufthansa Offers to Pay Damages More than three months after a Germanwings airliner crashed into a French mountainside, killing everyone aboard, the airline’s parent company, Lufthansa, made its first proposal to pay for emotional damages on Tuesday, offering the German victims’ families $28,000 each. Lawyers for the relatives immediately dismissed the figure as inadequate. The offer came on the same day that a task force led by the German government presented its initial recommendations for improving the monitor-
ing of pilots’ mental health, as well as systems and procedures governing access to the cockpit. (NYT)
New Cases of Ebola in Liberia More than a month after Liberia was declared free of Ebola, at least two new cases have emerged, the first discovered when the body of 17-year-old boy tested positive for the virus, officials said Tuesday. The family of Abraham Memaigar, 17, who died over the weekend, called a burial team that took swabs of the body and sent them to a laboratory. It confirmed that the boy had been infected by the virus. Late Tuesday, another person connected to Abraham tested positive for Ebola. (NYT)
Deadly Plane Crash in Indonesia A military aircraft carrying 113 people crashed into a neighborhood in the Indonesian city of Medan on Tuesday, killing all those aboard, according the chief spokesman of the country’s armed forces. By Tuesday evening, 68 bodies had been recovered as search and rescue efforts continued. The military’s chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. Fuad Basya, said that there were no survivors among the crew and passengers. The extent of casualties among civilians on the ground was unknown, as was the cause of the crash. The plane was making a routine flight, with multiple stops scheduled. (NYT)
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015 3
NATIONAL
Colleges Brace for Review of Race in Admissions The Supreme Court’s decision to reconsider a challenge to affirmative action at the University of Texas at Austin has universities around the country fearing that they will be forced to abandon what remains of race-based admission preferences and resort to more difficult and expensive methods if they want to achieve student diversity. “A broad general statement by the Supreme Court that it’s unconstitutional to consider race at all will have domino effects across the whole country, and will sweep across private universities as well as public ones,” said Tom Sullivan, president of the University of Vermont. He predicted that colleges would have to turn their attention to intensive recruitment to maintain diverse student bodies. “We would have to reorient our approach, and spend a lot more time and effort, which would be very costly, in schools that have a high percent of minority students, not just recruiting but helping
them prepare for college-level work, starting way back in middle school,” he said. Many lawyers and higher education experts said the court’s decision Monday to take a second look at the challenge to the University of Texas’ admissions decisions seemed to signal a readiness to strike down the policy, in which a quarter of the class is admitted through what is known as a holistic process, in which race may be considered as one of many factors. Over the last three decades, the court has issued several decisions on affirmative action in higher education, and most have limited considerations of race. In 2003, the Supreme Court held that public colleges and universities could not use a point system to increase minority enrollment but could take race into account in vaguer ways to ensure academic diversity. Eight states now ban race-based affirmative action, and their top public universities have different approaches to ensure racial and
economic diversity. Some give preference to working-class students, those from troubled high schools, and those whose parents did not attend college. Others have increased financial aid. A Century Foundation study, conducted in 2012, found that in most states where affirmative action was outlawed, Hispanic and black enrollment at flagship public universities rebounded after an initial drop, exceeding the levels before the ban. But the study also showed that in most of those cases, those increases did not keep up with the growing pool of Hispanic and black high school graduates. Many supporters of affirmative action were girding for the worst. “This is a very ominous sign that the court is about to destroy one of the most important avenues of equal opportunity in our society,” said Barmak Nassirian, of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. TAMAR LEWIN and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Christie to Run, Pledging ‘Truth’ About Nation’s Woes LIVINGSTON, N.J. — Gov. Chris Christie declared an uphill candidacy for president on Tuesday with New Jersey-style swagger, unconcealed disgust for Washington and a high regard for his own candor, vowing that “there is one thing you will know for sure: I say what I mean and I mean what I say.” Relying on his biggest, and perhaps his last, remaining advantage in a field of better-financed and better-liked rivals — his personality — Christie portrayed himself as the only candidate in the Republican field who is forthright and forceful enough to run the country. “We need strength and decision-making and authority back
in the Oval Office,” he said. Christie, whose dazzling rise as a national Republican in his first term was matched only by his loss of stature at home in his second, entered the presidential race bearing little resemblance to the candidate he once expected to be. Pacing the stage without a prepared text and raising his voice to a shout at times, he vowed to campaign and govern as a teller of difficult truths, even if “it makes you cringe every once in a while.” Christie took a swipe at his rivals who are in the United States Senate, like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who have never run a state government. “Unlike some peo-
ple who offer themselves for president in 2016, you won’t have to wonder whether I can do it or not,” he said, invoking the “economic calamity” he said he inherited in 2010 and the “unprecedented natural disaster,” Hurricane Sandy, that he weathered as governor. But he reserved his deepest disdain for Congress and for the president’s stewardship of foreign affairs, and extended that critique to President Obama’s former secretary of state. “After seven years of a weak and feckless foreign policy run by Barack Obama, we better not turn it over to his second mate, Hillary Clinton,” Christie said. MICHAEL BARBARO
Court Rules N.S.A. Can Resume Its Bulk Data Collection WASHINGTON — The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled late Monday that the National Security Agency may temporarily resume its once-secret program that systematically collects records of Americans’ domestic phone calls in bulk. But the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that it would ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which had ruled that the program was illegal,
to issue an injunction to halt the program, setting up a potential conflict between the two courts. The program lapsed on June 1, when a law on which it was based, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, expired. Congress revived that provision on June 2 with a bill called the USA Freedom Act, which said that the provision could not be used for bulk collection after six months. The six-month period was in-
tended to give intelligence agencies time to move to a new system in which the phone records would stay in the hands of phone companies, though the agency would still be able to gain access to the records. But Congress did not include language authorizing bulk collection even for the six-month transition. As a result, it was unclear whether the program had a lawful basis to resume in the interim. CHARLIE SAVAGE
In Brief Report Says Officers Escalated Tensions When heavily armed police officers swarmed the streets of Ferguson, Mo., after the fatal shooting of a young, unarmed black man, they only worsened tensions and made it harder to regain control, a draft report from the Justice Department has concluded. The report describes a chaotic scene in which the police violated people’s constitutional rights. Written by the Justice Department’s community policing unit, the report is intended to help police departments improve their policies and tactics. It follows two other lengthy civil rights reports — the first cleared Officer Darren Wilson of wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, and the second found widespread discrimination within the Ferguson Police Department. (NYT)
States Snub Drug O.K.’d for Executions Several death-penalty states that continue to scramble for limited supplies of execution drugs showed no signs of adopting the drug that was upheld by the Supreme Court on Monday, lawyers and opponents of capital punishment said Tuesday. In Texas, the state prison system has a supply of the drug on hand — midazolam, a short-acting sedative — but appeared to have no plans to start using it. On Monday, Ohio issued a new lethal-injection protocol that no longer calls for midazolam. (NYT)
Homeowners Can Sue Over Earthquakes The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that homeowners who have sustained injuries or property damage from rampant earthquakes they say are caused by oil and gas operations can sue for damages in state trial courts, rejecting efforts by the industry to block such lawsuits from being decided by juries and judges. The case has been closely watched both by the energy industry and by fracking opponents across the United States, and the 7-to-0 ruling opens the door for homeowners in a state racked by earthquakes to pursue oil and gas companies for temblor-related damage. (NYT)
BUSINESS
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015
THE MARKETS
Cautious Optimism as Merger Deals Near Peak of 2014. And it approached the $2.3 trillion worth of deals announced in the first half of 2007, still remembered as one of the most buoyant times for mergers. “What’s been remarkable has been the consistent appetite within boards and management teams for more growth,” Chris Ventresca, the global co-head of mergers and acquisitions at JPMorgan Chase, said in an interview. Driving much of the activity is the continued consolidation among huge swaths of industry. Much of the consolidation this year has arisen within the worlds of telecommunications and health care, where many of the big players have felt compelled to become even bigger by swallowing up competitors. Charter Communications, for instance, finally succeeded in making a deal
to buy Time Warner Cable. And the biggest American health insurers are circling one another, eager to cut costs and bolster their presence in lucrative areas like Medicare. Anthem has proposed buying Cigna for $47 billion; Humana is weighing takeover approaches from the likes of Aetna and Cigna; and UnitedHealthcare has expressed interest in buying Aetna. And to pay for a deal, companies have made use of both cheap debt, still plentiful seven years after the financial crisis, and rising stock valuations that have made them more comfortable using some of their shares. “Confidence is king, and we’re getting closer to normal,” analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote in a recent report on merger activity. MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
Donna Karan Steps Down as Head of Iconic Brand In a major shift for American fashion, Donna Karan, the 66-year-old founder and chief designer of Donna Karan International, announced on Tuesday that she was leaving the helm of the house that bears her name. Karan will remain as an adviser to Donna Karan International, but devote more time to her Urban Zen line, which centers on wellness and artisanal goods. LVMH Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton, the French conglomerate that bought the house in 2001, said there were no immediate plans to replace her as a designer, and the main Donna Karan collection would be suspended. It will not hold a show at New York Fashion Week in September.
Instead, according to an announcement, the company will reorganize its teams and structure to “substantially increase its focus on the DKNY brand,” the company’s more accessible line, which is responsible for 80 percent of Donna Karan International revenue. “It’s a big corporate move and strategy statement,” said Robert Burke, founder of an eponymous luxury consultancy and former fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman. The decision also reflects a reality of the New York fashion world, which has seen an explosion in the contemporary market in recent years thanks to brands such as Tory Burch, Alexander
Wang and Rag & Bone. In April, LVMH acknowledged the importance of the sector by naming buzzy young designers like Maxwell Osborne and DaoYi Chow of the haute streetwear brand Public School as creative directors of DKNY, to much fanfare. At the time, Pierre-Yves Roussel, chairman of the LVMH Fashion Group, said that LVMH “knows for a fact that most people who buy DKNY did not even know it was by Donna Karan.” The retirement of Karan’s longterm right hand, Patti Cohen, in May led to speculation that Karan might also soon step down. VANESSA FRIEDMAN and JACOB BERNSTEIN
With Short Story by King, Audiobooks Branching Out In Stephen King’s memoir, “On Writing,” he gives aspiring authors this advice: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” He might have added another tip, a practice he says has benefited him as a writer perhaps even more: listen. King credits his decades-long obsession with audiobooks with sharpening his prose. “If you listen to something on audio, every flaw in a writer’s work, the repetitions of words and the clumsy phrases, they all stand out,” he
said. “As a writer, I say to myself, how will that sound?” This week, King will find out whether his fans share his appetite for narrated books. In an unusual experiment, he released a new short story, “Drunken Fireworks,” as an audiobook exclusive on Tuesday morning, months before the story arrives in print. Though he risks disappointing fans of his print books, King is betting that “Drunken Fireworks” will turn more of his readers into audiobook converts. “Every now and then, the dis-
cussion will come up, ‘Are audiobooks as good as books in print?’ and the answer to me is a no-brainer,” he said. “Yes, they are, and they might even be better.” The arrival of “Drunken Fireworks” as a stand-alone work of audio is the latest sign that audiobooks, which were once little more than an afterthought for writers and publishers, are evolving into a vibrant and independent art form. Digital audiobooks have become one of the fastest growing categories in publishing. ALEXANDRA ALTER
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4,790.20
ASIA/PACIFI C JAPAN
HONG KONG
CHINA
NIKKEI 225
HANG SENG
SHANGHAI
U
125.78 0.63%
U
20,235.73
283.05 1.09%
U
26,250.03
224.76 5.55%
4,277.79
AMER I CAS
U
CANADA
BRAZIL
TSX
BOVESPA
63.18 0.44%
89.96 0.17%
U
14,553.33
MEXICO
BOLSA 308.12 U 0.69%
53,104.17
45,018.47
COMMODIT IES/BONDS
D
GOLD
10-YR. TREAS. CRUDE OIL YIELD
7.00
U
$1,171.50
0.02 2.35%
U
1.14 $59.47
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)
.7704 2.6524 .3224 1.5705 .8006 .1613 .1493 .0223 .1311 1.1147 .1290 .0082 .0635 .1275 .7423 .0822 .0009 .1207 1.0692
Dollars in fgn.currency
1.2980 .3770 3.1020 .6367 1.2491 6.2000 6.6975 44.8500 7.6300 .8971 7.7509 122.49 15.7374 7.8419 1.3471 12.1649 1119.0 8.2819 .9353
Source: Thomson Reuters
ONLINE: MORE PRICES AND ANALYSIS
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Shortly after the financial crisis, even merger bankers and lawyers — among the most optimistic lot on Wall Street — fretted that the good times might never come back. Now those advisers can’t stop working, even as some worry that the merger cycle has hit its peak — or that an unforeseen crisis could end the party. The number and dollar volume of deals announced in the first half in 2015 have not just surpassed those of last year, which was a healthy one for corporate transactions. They are also on pace to catch up with 2007, the last year of unbridled merger optimism before the financial crisis. Nearly 20,000 deals worth $2.2 trillion have been announced this year as of June 29. That is about 40 percent higher, in terms of dollar value, than the first half
4
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BUSINESS
The Bonds and Inaction That Broke Puerto Rico When Puerto Rico’s governor announced on Monday that the commonwealth could not pay its $72 billion in debt, many wondered how a small, seemingly low-key American island in the Caribbean could have amassed a debt big enough to crush it. The answer lies in a confluence of factors, including American investors’ desire to avoid taxes; the mutual fund industry’s practice of competing on the basis of yield; complacency about the practice of long-term borrowing to plug holes in budgets; and laws that supposedly give bond buyers ironclad guarantees. That brew of incentives has produced truly staggering numbers. On a per-capita basis, Puerto Rico has more than 15 times the median bond debt of the 50 states, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The governor, Alejandro García Padilla, said on Monday that at the rate the debt situation is developing, every man, woman and child on the island would owe creditors $40,000 by 2025. “We cannot allow the heavy weight of the debt to bring us to our knees,” the governor said, proposing a debt restructuring. For years, investors were lining up to lend Puerto Rico money, so it was easier to borrow than to fix any number of financial or structural shortcomings. Many of the
RICARDO ARDUENGO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
lenders were middle-class Americans who knew little or nothing about Puerto Rico, but simply opted for one of the many tax-exempt municipal bond funds that have become popular. Such funds have appeared to offer both low risk and a tax shelter, making Puerto Rico’s bonds extremely attractive and relatively easy to market. It is estimated that 75 percent of the mutual funds tracked by Morningstar now hold at least some Puerto Rico debt. As if that wasn’t enough, Puerto Rico made borrowing even more attractive. Its constitution contains an unusual clause that requires general-obligation bonds to be paid ahead of virtually any other government expense. And in case more reassurance was needed, the government created backstops, lockboxes and guar-
Signs posted on the doors of a closed bank in San Juan, Puerto Rico, say: “No to the value added tax. Let the rich pay for the crisis.”
antee mechanisms, identifying specific revenue streams and promising them to certain groups of bondholders. But over the long term, it left less and less money to provide government services. “This is the main problem with the muni market,” said Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics. “We don’t worry, generally, about how bond proceeds are spent. We worry about how bonds are repaid.” But if the bond payments cease, general-obligation bondholders will sue. And because Puerto Rico is a commonwealth, it has no way to seek shelter in bankruptcy court. Without the automatic stay of bankruptcy, a “negotiated moratorium” that García Padilla wants could swiftly devolve into a destructive creditors’ free-for-all. MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
Hedge Funds Fight to Save Puerto Rico Investments Hedge funds like Appaloosa Management, Paulson & Company and Blue Mountain Capital gathered in a conference room at the Barclays offices in Midtown Manhattan last September to talk about what was then the hottest trade: Puerto Rico. An hour into the conversation, however, it became clear that if things started going badly, not everyone in the room was going to get along. Some had wagered on real estate, while others had bought up the debts of the central government and its troubled electric utility. Those divisions intensify an increasingly contentious battle the hedge funds are beginning to wage to salvage an investment that, less than a year ago, looked like a sure thing. This week’s announcement by Gov. Alejandro García Padilla of Puerto Rico that the commonwealth may seek to delay debt
5
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015
payments has thrown the hedge funds’ strategies into turmoil. Even debts that appeared to be secure now seem in jeopardy, sending hedge funds and other investors scrambling to re-examine their legal rights and potential remedies should the government push for a restructuring. A vast restructuring of the commonwealth’s general obligation bonds could scare away more risk-averse investors from buying Puerto Rico for many years to come, causing major problems for the hedge funds. “Those investors are not coming back,” said Robert Donahue, a managing director at Municipal Market Analytics. “The hedge funds miscalculated and they are feeling the pain.” While some hedge funds managers say they were caught off guard by García Padilla’s call for a debt restructuring, they are not panicking, even as the price of
some of their bond holdings have fallen 17 percent in the last two days. They see the governor’s announcement as more of an opening salvo in a negotiation rather than an indication of imminent and widespread defaults, particularly on debts that Puerto Rico constitution says must be repaid. Some analysts say the governor’s announcement may have been intended in part to drive down the value of the hedge funds’ bonds so that the firms would be more willing to agree to concessions in order to minimize their losses. “The Puerto Rico government has engaged in the creation of a crisis where there isn’t one,” said Hector Negroni, a principal at Fundamental Advisors, which owns Puerto Rico debt. “But I don’t think they will ultimately flout the rule of law.” MICHAEL CORKERY and ALEXANDRA STEVENSON
MOST ACTIVE, GAINERS AND LOSERS % Volume Stock (Ticker) Close Chg chg (100) 10 MOST ACTIVE Bankof (BAC) 17.02 Apple (AAPL) 125.43 MBIA (MBI) 6.01 Micros (MSFT) 44.15 Genera (GE) 26.57 Pfizer (PFE) 33.53 Micron (MU) 18.84 Intel (INTC) 30.42 Chemou (CC WI) 16.00 AT&T (T) 35.52
+0.13 +0.90 ◊0.36 ◊0.22 ◊0.07 ◊0.06 +0.11 +0.03 +0.50 ◊0.25
+0.8 +0.7 ◊5.7 ◊0.5 ◊0.3 ◊0.2 +0.6 +0.1 +3.2 ◊0.7
888395 443124 432104 359405 354409 348920 346784 340863 317380 313618
% Volume Stock (Ticker) Close Chg chg (100) 10 TOP GAINERS RCSCap (RCAP) Advaxi (ADXS) Epizym (EPZM) CodeRe (CDRB) Juno (JUNO) Fitbit (FIT) Progen (PGNX) Alder (ALDR) Gordma (GMAN) Allian (AOI)
7.66 20.33 24.00 32.37 53.33 38.23 7.46 52.97 6.13 23.91
+1.68 +3.07 +3.53 +4.28 +7.03 +4.95 +0.90 +6.03 +0.65 +2.50
+28.1 +17.8 +17.2 +15.2 +15.2 +14.9 +13.7 +12.8 +11.9 +11.7
35189 27471 9526 679 156831 125394 16432 27970 7750 2339
% Volume Stock (Ticker) Close Chg chg (100) 10 TOP LOSERS Apollo (APOL) 12.88 AMBACF (AMBC) 16.64 Tuesda (TUES) 11.27 OFG Bn (OFG) 10.67 Abeona (ABEO) 5.06 ValueL (VALU) 10.38 FenixP (FENX) 10.02 Schnit (SCHN) 17.47 Towers (TW) 125.80 Egalet (EGLT) 14.43
◊2.66 ◊3.08 ◊1.93 ◊1.59 ◊0.75 ◊1.42 ◊1.09 ◊1.80 ◊12.18 ◊1.14
◊17.1 ◊15.6 ◊14.6 ◊13.0 ◊12.9 ◊12.0 ◊9.8 ◊9.3 ◊8.8 ◊7.3
128490 43860 43664 31793 11363 236 3025 10892 58795 2358
Source: Thomson Reuters
Stocks on the Move Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Tuesday: Treehouse Foods Inc., up $6.89 to $81.03. The food and beverage company saw its shares rise after competitor ConAgra Foods Inc. said it would exit the private label business. Willis Group Holdings PLC, up $1.50 to $46.90. The insurer will combine with financial services company Towers Watson & Co. in an all-stock deal worth about $18 billion. Sony Corp., down $1.97 to $28.39. The company will issue shares as part of a plan to raise $3.6 billion, partly to increase production of image sensors. Juno Therapeutics Inc., up $7.03 to $53.33. The drug developer will get a $1 billion investment from Celgene in a deal to develop cancer and autoimmune disease treatments. Apollo Education Group Inc., down $2.66 to $12.88. The for-profit education company’s third-quarter revenue fell short of forecasts and it lowered its outlook. Schnitzer Steel Industries Inc., down $1.80 to $17.47. The recycler of scrap metal reported better-than-expected fiscal third-quarter earnings, but its revenue fell short of forecasts. (AP)
FOOD
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015
6
COOKING IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Summer Seafood Boils Take on Local Flavor A seafood boil is one of the great communal eating experiences of an American summer. On the shores of the Great Lakes, cooks with a taste for Scandinavian tradition heat caldrons over wood to prepare whitefish or trout scented with bay and allspice. Near the Gulf of Mexico, propane tanks roar under pots of crab punched up with elaborate spice blends only a Cajun could decipher. And along the mud marshes in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, shrimp fresh from the net simmers gently next to corn on the cob and sausage. The seafood and the seasoning may be different, but all summer boils have one thing in common. “You are talking about messy and minor-league foods that are a pain to work with,” said Sandy Oliver, a historian of American food who lives in Islesboro, Me. “All you end up with is a mess in the kitchen,” Oliver said. “But outdoors, it’s gobs of fun.” In the pantheon of great American seafood boilers, it would be difficult to find someone as precise about the craft as Ben Moïse, a retired South Carolina game warden. His specialty is the Frogmore stew. The first thing to know about Frogmore stew is that it contains no frogs. The second is that it’s not much of a stew. At its most basic, the Frogmore is a mix of shrimp, sausage and corn that have been boiled briefly in spiced water. The odds are good that if you go to a summer party along the coast
HUNTER MCRAE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Frogmore stew has boil basics like shrimp, sausage and corn. of Georgia or South Carolina, the host will make one. It is communal eating at its best. It is easy to find dozens of recipes for a Lowcountry boil, many of which add blue crab and vegetables like boiled red potatoes and onions. “Gilding the lily,” Moïse said. Onions make the shrimp too slippery to peel, he said, and starch from the potatoes can make the shrimp stick to the shells. There has been little scholarly examination of the polyamorous marriage of potatoes, corn and seafood in the nation’s boils. The trio shows up in the New England clambake and its boiled version. Lobster boils, too, rely on potatoes and corn to round out supper. In Texas, where children learn early how to catch crab with a chicken neck on a string, a summer seafood boil will feature either blue crab, shrimp or both
.Beer is essential. Sometimes it goes in the pot, but more often keeps everyone entertained during the hours it takes to crack enough crabs for a proper supper. But in the Chesapeake Bay area, they wouldn’t dream of boiling a crab. In the mid-Atlantic, crabs are steamed, then sprinkled with Old Bay seasoning. The wildest boiled seafood in the country remains in the Acadiana region of Louisiana, where it’s not unusual to see a seafood-boiling rig being pulled behind a pickup truck. Crawfish boiling season ends in the late spring, giving way to summer shrimp and crab boils. Whatever the region or style, America’s summertime seafood boils all share one sure pleasure. As Moïse put it, “If you are standing up and eating with your fingers, you got to be having a good time.” KIM SEVERSON
The Magic of Cooking Hobo Packs
RYAN CONATY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
A simple hobo pack with beef, vegetables and ketchup stewed over hot coals.
Boy Scout camp introduced us to hobo packs, bundles of cut-up ingredients wrapped in foil packets and cooked in the coals of a campfire. Ours combined ground beef, potatoes, carrots and a ton of ketchup. The act of pulling a package out of the fire and opening it, wondering whether you had succeeded in creating dinner (or just a pile of ashes), provided culinary drama of the highest order. And the combination of ketchup and meat juices was our first experience with what you might call, if you were feeling generous, making a sauce. Most important, though, was
that these foil-wrapped meals made us heroes to our fellow campers. Over the years, as our horizons have expanded from the local campground to the hot-weather regions of the world, we’ve seen other examples of cooking in ashes, with banana leaves most often filling in as the wrapping. But we’re partial to the approach that was one of our earliest and most rewarding cooking experiences. When you try it, remember that when it’s done properly, some of the food will hover on the border between charred and burned. And that’s usually the part that tastes best. JOHN WILLOUGH
Roasts on a Stick When I was a 10-year-old kid in Western Michigan, I discovered Sydney Pollack’s melancholic masterpiece “Jeremiah Johnson.” One particular scene stuck with me. It’s near the end, as Johnson is roasting a rabbit on a stick over an open fire. He looks up from his meal and is surprised by the arrival of an old mentor who saved him from starvation at the film’s beginning. Johnson effortlessly plucks a cooked leg from the rabbit and tosses it up. The mentor offers his compliments: “You cook good rabbit, Pilgrim.” It’s a scene both poignant and symbolic, and it changed my life — at least from a culinary perspective. From then on, I was committed to mastering the art of cooking meat on a stick. I’ve always been an avid hunter, so I’ve enjoyed an endless supply of ingredients. Yet my early attempts were all failures, yielding meals of rabbit, squirrel, grouse and even snapping turtle that were blackened on the outside, raw in the middle and rubbery throughout. I didn’t make meaningful progress until adulthood, when I was fortunate to travel and eat with indigenous hunters in Asia and South America. I discovered the three requirements for success: skin, distance and time. The animal’s skin must be kept intact to prevent moisture loss, the meat needs to be kept far away from the ravages of direct flame and you need to give it plenty of time for the heat and smoke to work their magic. Finally, about a quarter-century after watching “Jeremiah Johnson,” I enjoyed a resounding success while roasting a wild mallard on willow skewers above a fire in central Alaska. The meal was sublime and has proved to be easily replicable. STEVEN RINELLA
STUART ISETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
When roasting game over an open fire, keep the skin on.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015 7
JOURNAL
Ballerina Is Taking a Step 75 Years in Coming companies in the 21st century, despite the work of pioneering black dancers who broke racial barriers in the past. And it showed how media and communications have changed in dance, with Copeland using modern tools — an online ad she Misty made for Under Armour Copeland has been viewed more than 8 million times — to spread her fame far beyond traditional dance circles. “I had moments of doubting myself, and wanting to quit, because I didn’t know that there would be a future for an African-Ameri-
Misty Copeland was fast becoming the most famous ballerina in the United States — making the cover of Time magazine, being profiled by “60 Minutes,” becoming a social media sensation and dancing ballet’s biggest roles on some of its grandest stages. But another role eluded her: She still was not a principal dancer. Until Tuesday, when Copeland became the first African-American woman to be named a principal in the 75-year history of American Ballet Theater. Even as her history-making promotion was celebrated by her many fans, it raised all-too-familiar questions about why African-American dancers, particularly women, remain so underrepresented at top ballet
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can woman to make it to this level,” Copeland said on Tuesday. “At the same time it made me so hungry to push through, to carry the next generation. So it’s not me up here — and I’m constantly saying that — it’s everyone that came before me that got me to this position.” Fittingly, the moment of her promotion was captured on video and shared on Instagram. “Misty, take a bow,” Kevin McKenzie, Ballet Theater’s artistic director, is seen saying, before colleagues congratulate Copeland, who seems to be fighting back tears. Her promotion was lauded on Twitter by Hillary Clinton and Prince, who featured her in a video. Over the past year, whenever Copeland, 32, danced leading roles with Ballet Theater her performances became events, drawing large, diverse, enthusiastic crowds to cheer her on at the Metropolitan Opera house, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the David H. Koch Theater. After she starred in “Swan Lake” with Ballet Theater last week — becoming the first African-American to do so with the company at the Met — the crowd of autograph-seekers was so large that it had to be moved away from the stage door area. And in a break with ballet tradition, Copeland was unusually outspoken about her ambition of becoming the first black female woman named a principal at dancer by Ballet Theater, one of the nation’s most prestigious companies, which is known for its international roster of stars. She wrote about her goals and struggles in a memoir published last year, “Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina.” Jennifer Homans, the author of “Apollo’s Angels,” a history of ballet, said ballet had fallen far behind other art forms, like theater, when it comes to diversity — making what she called the “phenomenon” of Copeland all the more important. “What she has come to represent is so important in the dance word, and in the ballet world in particular,” said Homans. “I think it’s about time. But I don’t think it’s enough.” MICHAEL COOPER
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OPINION
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015
EDITORIALS OF THE TIMES
Gov. Christie’s Phony Truth-Telling On his new website, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey portrays himself as a guy who gets attacked for “telling it like it is,” but that’s what his mom told him to do from her deathbed. It is part of the legend Christie has cultivated for many years, with startling success. He is described as “brash” and “bold,” with a certain rough charisma that his political opponents just cannot handle. “I get accused a lot of times of being too blunt and too direct and saying what’s on my mind just a little bit too loudly,” he says in the first video for his presidential campaign. It’s fundamentally nonsense. There are lines between brash and belligerent, between open and obnoxious, and between “telling it like it is” and not telling the truth. Christie crosses those lines all the time, as Tom Moran, the editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger of Newark, documented in a blistering column about Christie’s “catalog of lies.” “Don’t misunderstand me. They all lie, and I get that,” Moran wrote of politicians in general. “But Christie does it with such audacity, and such frequency, that he stands out.” Sometimes, Christie poses as a reasonable person who can reach across party and ideological lines. During his first campaign for governor in 2009, he vowed that he would hold public employees’ pensions “sacred,” and then made cutting those pensions a centerpiece of his new administration. Just three weeks ago, Christie bragged that his pension reforms had won a major court victory, when in fact the court ruled them unconstitutional. Sometimes, Christie wants to make himself a strong right-winger. He told an anti-gun-control crowd in South Carolina in June, for example, that all of New Jersey’s gun laws preceded
his tenure and “no new ones have been made since I’ve been governor.” Actually, he signed three major pieces of gun-control legislation. Christie presents himself as a paragon of political virtue, but he seems to have fabricated a friendship with King Abdullah II of Jordan to justify accepting about $30,000 in gifts from the monarch. And there is, of course, the infamous “Bridgegate” scandal, in which close associates and political appointees of Christie paralyzed traffic to punish a local politician for failing to endorse the governor’s re-election bid. Two of those officials have been indicted, and one has pleaded guilty. Christie is responsible at the very least for creating the atmosphere that led his associates to conclude that such conduct on his behalf was appropriate. Christie said in announcing his candidacy on Tuesday that he would provide “growth and opportunity for every American.” But as governor he has increased the tax burden on the working poor while vetoing a bill to raise the minimum wage to a paltry $8.50. On the positive side, he does not deny climate change — so far — and has taken some constructive stands on immigration. But he opposes same-sex marriage and blocked legislation to allow it. He also has participated in the right-wing assault on Planned Parenthood, which restricts women’s access to cancer screenings, prenatal care and family planning. Expect to hear a lot about Christie’s common touch, his “straight talk” and his love for Bruce Springsteen. It’s a smoke screen. Look behind it at the governor whose own constituents say by an overwhelming majority that he has done a bad job, should not run for the White House and would make a bad president.
Needed Update for Overtime Pay The Labor Department’s new proposal to update the overtime-pay rules would give millions of American workers a toehold in the middle class. By raising the salary threshold for overtime, which has barely budged since 1975, nearly five million more people would start earning overtime pay, according to White House estimates. The new rules would also help remedy a severe imbalance in the economy. Since 1979, pay for the median worker has risen only 9 percent even as worker productivity has grown 64 percent. Theoretically, productivity gains should translate into higher pay, allowing the middle class to grow and prosper. But that hasn’t happened, in large part because many employees are not paid time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours a week. Under current rules, salaried workers are not eligible for overtime if they earn enough to qualify as executives, professionals or administrators. The proposal would raise the salary threshold that defines those positions. Today, employees can be considered part of the
top ranks — and generally ineligible for overtime — once their salary reaches a paltry $455 a week, or $23,660 a year. The new threshold in 2016 would be $970 a week, or $50,440 a year, about where it would be if it had kept pace with inflation over the decades. At or below that level, salaried workers are automatically eligible for overtime. (The current rules for hourly workers would remain intact.) If a business does not want to pay the newly required overtime, it could hold salaried employees to 40 hours a week. That would not harm the employees, because they are not paid by the hour; rather, it would give them more time off at no less pay. And if employers hire new employees to do work previously performed by those who put in unpaid overtime, the economy would benefit from the added job growth. There will be inevitable blowback from business interests, but their Republican allies in Congress should think twice about backing them up: No party and no politician that opposes the new overtime rules can credibly claim to care about the middle class.
8
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
A Good Bad Deal? It’s still not clear whether the last remaining obstacles to a deal that would restrict Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon in return for lifting sanctions will be resolved. But it is stunning to me how well the Iranians have played a weak hand against the United States. You’d never know that “Iran is the one hemorrhaging hundreds of billions of dollars due to sanctions,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment. And “it’s Ali Khamenei, not John Kerry, who presides over a population desperate to see sanctions relief.” Yet, for the past year, every time there is a sticking point, it keeps feeling as if it’s always our side looking to accommodate Iran’s needs. I wish we had walked out just once. When you signal to the guy on the other side of the table that you’re not willing to either blow him up or blow him off — to get up and walk away — you get the best bad deal nonviolence can buy. Diplomatic negotiations always reflect the balance of power, notes Johns Hopkins University foreign policy specialist Michael Mandelbaum, writing in The American Interest. “In the current negotiations ... the United States is far stronger than Iran, yet it is the United States that has made major concessions.” Why? Mandelbaum writes: “Surely the main reason ... is that, while there is a vast disparity in power between the two parties, the United States is not willing to use the ultimate form of power and the Iranian leaders know this.” But is it still possible to get a good bad deal — one that, while it does not require Iran to dismantle its nuclear enrichment infrastructure, shrinks that infrastructure for the next 10 to 15 years? A deal that also gives us a level of transparency to monitor that agreement and gives international inspectors timely intrusive access? One that restricts Iran from significantly upgrading its enrichment capacity, as the bipartisan group of experts convened by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy proposed? Yes. A good bad deal along such lines is still possible — and that will depend on the details now being negotiated at this 11th hour. Such a deal would enable the president to say to a skeptical Congress and Israel that he has gotten the best bad deal that an empty holster can buy, and that it has bought time for a transformation in Iran that is better than starting a war. But beware: This deal could be as big, if not bigger, an earthquake in the Middle East as the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Arab world today has almost no geopolitical weight. Egypt is enfeebled, Saudi Arabia lacks the capacity to project power and Iraq is no more. An Iran that is unshackled from sanctions and gets an injection of more than $100 billion in cash will be even more superior in power than all of its Arab neighbors. Therefore, the United States needs to take the lead in initiating a modus vivendi between Sunni Arabs and Persian Shiites and curb Iran’s belligerence toward Israel. If we can’t help defuse those conflicts, a good bad deal could very easily fuel a wider regional war.
HOMETOWN HERO
Benny Brockington chief warrant officer - 3
DEPT/DIVISION: Supply/S-2 HOMETOWN: Kingstree, South Carolina WHY HE CHOSE THE NAVY:
To honor the hard work of my mother, who raised me
as a single parent.
HIS FAVORITE PART OF THE JOB:
Teamwork and the ability to meet new people
and make new friends.
PROUDEST NAVY MOMENT: Receiving my commission as chief warrant officer in 2008.
SHOUT OUT: The food service team for their hard work and support to the mission.
FUN
FACT
I have logged a total of 55,155 push-ups since deployment started.
HOMETOWN HERO
Punam Gurung
CULINARY SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS
DEPT/DIVISION:
Supply/S-2
HOMETOWN: Pokhara, Massachusetts
WHY SHE CHOSE NAVY: For better opportunities.
HER FAVORITE PART OF THE JOB: When we pull into different ports.
PROUDEST NAVY MOMENT: When I got a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
FUN
FACT
Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m from Mt. Everest, Nepal.
SHOUT OUT: To Supply S-2 food service for always working so hard, even when it goes unnoticed.
W
WHAT’S ON underway movie schedule
THURSDAY JULY 2, 2015
Staff Commanding Officer
Times Ch 66
Ch 67
Ch 68
0900
ROCKY III
THE DUFF
300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE
1100
THE LONGEST RIDE
THE BOUNTY
THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2
1330
THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY
MORTDECAI
GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE
1530
ZERO DARK THIRTY
HARRY POTTER, CHAMBER OF SECRETS
INTERSTELLAR
1830
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2
GHOSTBUSTERS 2
2030
ROCKY III
THE DUFF
300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE
2230
THE LONGEST RIDE
THE BOUNTY
THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2
0100
THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY
MORTDECAI
GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE
0300
ZERO DARK THIRTY
HARRY POTTER, CHAMBER OF SECRETS
INTERSTELLAR
0600
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2
GHOSTBUSTERS 2
Capt. Daniel Grieco Executive Officer
Capt. Jeff Craig Public Affairs Officer
Lt. Cmdr. Reann Mommsen Media Officer
Lt. j.g. Jack Georges Senior Editor
MCC Adrian Melendez Editor
MC2 Chris Brown MC2 Danica M. Sirmans Layout and Design
MC2 Danica M. Sirmans rough rider contributers
MC3 Josh Petrosino MC3 Taylor Stinson Theodore Roosevelt Media
MOVIE TRIVIA
Q: WHAT MOVIE WAS SHOT ENTIRELY IN GREEN SCREEN? A: See in the next edition of the Rough Rider.
command ombudsman
cvn71ombudsman@gmail.com
Previous Question: WHICH MOVIE FEATURES THE ACTUAL VOICE OF A NAVAL LEADER SERVING TODAY? WHO IS THAT LEADER? Answer: CAPTAIN PHILLIPS FEATURES VCNO ADMIRAL MICHELLE HOWARD’S VOICE OVER THE 1MC DURING PHILLIPS’ RESCUE. HOWARD LED THE MISSION AND ENSURED PHILLIPS’ SAFETY.
friday
JULY 3, 2015
WHAT’S ON underway movie schedule
Times
Ch 66
THE AGE OF ADALINE
Ch 67
Ch 68
HOME
MEN IN BLACK
1100
FURIOUS 7
THE HELP
ROBOCOP
1330
THE COUNSELOR
THE BUCKET LIST
RESIDENT EVIL
1530
LES MISERABLES
HARRY POTTER, PRISONER OF AZKABAN
BATMAN BEGINS
1830
CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER
RAT RACE
THE WOMAN IN BLACK
2030
THE AGE OF ADALINE
HOME
MEN IN BLACK
2230
FURIOUS 7
THE HELP
ROBOCOP
0100
THE COUNSELOR
THE BUCKET LIST
RESIDENT EVIL
0300
LES MISERABLES
HARRY POTTER, PRISONER OF AZKABAN
BATMAN BEGINS
0600
CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER
RAT RACE
THE WOMAN IN BLACK
0900
*Movie schedule is subject to change.
The Rough Rider is an authorized publication for the crew of USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). Contents herein are not necessarily the views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, Department of Defense, Department of the Navy or the Commanding Officer of TR. All items for publication in The Rough Rider must be submitted to the editor no later than three days prior to publication. Do you have a story you’d like to see in the Rough Rider? Contact the Media Department at 443-7419 or stop by 3-180-0-Q.
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