@2:45, 3/1/14

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1

U.S.

GTT ★

By MICHAEL HOINSKI | Feb 27th 2014

2

World

Suicide Bomber Attacks Cafe in the Somali Capital

By REUTERS | Feb 27th 2014

3

Sports

Bags Barred at Boston Marathon

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | Feb 26th 2014

No backpack bombs.

4

Travel

On the Beach, on the Cheap, in Mozambique

By SETH KUGEL | Feb 28th 2014

5

U.S.

Lewis Yablonsky, Sociologist Fascinated by Sociopaths, Dies at 89

By WILLIAM YARDLEY | Feb 25th 2014

6

Opinion

Targeting the Johns in Sex Trade

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF | Feb 26th 2014

Police are beginning to realize that fighting sex trafficking and prostitution means arresting the men who sustain it. Pimps and johns.

Prostitution; Police; Human Trafficking 

All of this is unattractive.

7

Your Money

Save for Retirement First, the Children’s Education Second

By ANN CARRNS | Feb 28th 2014

Greed of all parties.

8

N.Y. / Region

Christie Allies Joked of Disrupting Traffic at a Rabbi’s House

By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and MATT FLEGENHEIMER | Feb 27th 2014

9

World

Kerry Sees Syrian Retaliation Against Rivals in Talks

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and BEN HUBBARD | Feb 26th 2014

10

World

Hamas Chases Protesters From Gaza-Israel Border

By FARES AKRAM | Feb 28th 2014

Business Day

Fed’s Aid in 2008 Crisis Stretched Worldwide

By NEIL IRWIN | Feb 23rd 2014

The Federal Reserve pumped hundreds of billions of dollars to nations to bolster global banks when dollars were scarce, newly released transcripts of 2008 Fed policy committee meetings reveal.

International Trade and World Market; United States Economy; Banking and Financial Institutions; Credit and Debt; Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (2008)

Helicopter money drops worked some.
 

12

U.S.

Pivotal Point Is Seen as More States Consider Legalizing Marijuana

By RICK LYMAN | Feb 26th 2014

13

N.Y. / Region

Nagging, as a Force for Good

By JIM DWYER | Feb 27th 2014

At a school fair at the Department of Probation in the Bronx, officers made sure that clients on probation were on the right path.

Probation and Parole; Education; Prisons and Prisoners; Vocational Training

Instruction helps.
 

14

World

South Korean Leader Assails Japan on Wartime Brothels

By CHOE SANG-HUN | Mar 1st 2014

President Park Geun-hye of South Korea urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan to acknowledge Japan’s 20th century aggressions.

Time and memory are passing.

15

Technology

Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

By DAVID STREITFELD | Feb 28th 2014 

 
Unionize.

16

N.Y. / Region

Imperfect Already?

By THE NEW YORK TIMES | Feb 25th 2014

The first PATH station platform at the developing World Trade Center hub, for riders to Hoboken, N.J., opened on Tuesday.

Transit Systems; World Trade Center (Manhattan, NY)

Yes.
 

17

Opinion

Better Lawyering for the Poor

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD | Feb 26th 2014

Don't push.

18

Business Day

A New Light on Regulators in the Dark

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON | Feb 22nd 2014

Federal Reserve transcripts show a board playing catch-up with the events of 2008.

Banking and Financial Institutions; Regulation and Deregulation of Industry

The fed got it wrong.
 

19

Automobiles

Tesla Plans $5 Billion Battery Factory for Mass-Market Electric Car

By JACLYN TROP and DIANE CARDWELL | Feb 26th 2014

Tesla, which markets a $70,000-plus electric sedan, took aim at the broader market in announcing a way to make the batteries that power the cars cheaper.

Electric and Hybrid Vehicles; Batteries; Factories and Manufacturing

Electric, rather than hybrid, vehicles have no generating capacity.
I wish them good luck with their plan.
 

20

N.Y. / Region

Effort to Delay Terror Trial of a Bin Laden Relative Fails

By BENJAMIN WEISER | Feb 28th 2014

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@10:09

1

Sports

Bags Barred at Boston Marathon

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | Feb 26th 2014

2

U.S.

Lewis Yablonsky, Sociologist Fascinated by Sociopaths, Dies at 89

By WILLIAM YARDLEY | Feb 25th 2014

Sociology can be done by counting.

Psychology is not amenable to statistics.

 

3

Opinion

Targeting the Johns in Sex Trade

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF | Feb 26th 2014

4

N.Y. / Region

Christie Allies Joked of Disrupting Traffic at a Rabbi’s House

By SERGE F. KOVALESKI and MATT FLEGENHEIMER | Feb 27th 2014

5

World

Kerry Sees Syrian Retaliation Against Rivals in Talks

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and BEN HUBBARD | Feb 26th 2014

6

World

Hamas Chases Protesters From Gaza-Israel Border

By FARES AKRAM | Feb 28th 2014

7

Business Day

Fed’s Aid in 2008 Crisis Stretched Worldwide

By NEIL IRWIN | Feb 23rd 2014

8

U.S.

Pivotal Point Is Seen as More States Consider Legalizing Marijuana

By RICK LYMAN | Feb 26th 2014

9

World

South Korean Leader Assails Japan on Wartime Brothels

By CHOE SANG-HUN | Mar 1st 2014

10

N.Y. / Region

The Once and Future Gowanus

By GINIA BELLAFANTE | Feb 21st 2014

The Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn is home to a polluted canal, yet it has rising housing values and residents who want to see it prosper without becoming the next Dumbo.

Real Estate and Housing (Residential); Affordable Housing; Gentrification

We will have to build it ourselves. 
There is no cheap space in New York City.

11

Technology

Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

By DAVID STREITFELD | Feb 28th 2014

12

N.Y. / Region

Imperfect Already?

By THE NEW YORK TIMES | Feb 25th 2014

The first PATH station platform at the developing World Trade Center hub, for riders to Hoboken, N.J., opened on Tuesday.

Transit Systems; World Trade Center (Manhattan, NY)

Chewing gum.
 

13

Opinion

Better Lawyering for the Poor

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD | Feb 26th 2014

14

Business Day

A New Light on Regulators in the Dark

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON | Feb 22nd 2014 

Only the future can be changed.
Lessons not yet learned.
 

15

Automobiles

Tesla Plans $5 Billion Battery Factory for Mass-Market Electric Car

By JACLYN TROP and DIANE CARDWELL | Feb 26th 2014

Get it done.

16

N.Y. / Region

Effort to Delay Terror Trial of a Bin Laden Relative Fails

By BENJAMIN WEISER | Feb 28th 2014

Revenge.

17

Sports

Rugby Title Goes Down to the Wire

By HUW RICHARDS | Feb 23rd 2014

England kept its title hopes alive with its best match yet, leaving four teams tied for the lead and two games to go in the Six Nations championship.

Rugby (Game)

Not my game.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/ncaabasketball/index.html

"CONNECTICUT 72, RUTGERS 35 Breanna Stewart and Bria Hartley each scored 20 points to help No. 1 Connecticut earn a home win over No. 24 Rutgers and remain unbeaten.

The victory gave the Huskies at least a share of the inaugural American Athletic Conference regular-season title. The Huskies (30-0, 17-0 A.A.C.) will play No. 3 Louisville on Monday with a chance to win the conference championship outright. If Louisville wins, a coin flip will determine the top seed for the conference tournament.

UConn held Rutgers scoreless for 5 minutes 20 seconds in the first half and gradually extended its lead. Rutgers (21-7, 12-5) missed six shots in that span. (AP)"

18

In Our Pages: February 28

By INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE | Feb 27th 2014

From The International Herald Tribune.

Capital Punishment; Jury System; Murders and Attempted Murders; Spanish Civil War (1936-39)

1964
"DALLAS — Jack Ruby’s lawyers jolted the courtroom here today with the suggestion that killing a Communist may not deserve the death penalty. As the selection of a jury for Ruby’s trial entered its tenth day, defense attorney Joe H. Tonahill asked the 99th prospective juror: ‘‘Would you consider it un-Texan to be a member of the first jury in America to give the death penalty for shooting a Communist?’’ President Kennedy’s accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, whom Ruby shot to death before a nation-wide television audience last November, was an avowed Marxist. Ruby watched unperturbed from the defense table today."

19

Automobiles

G.M. Announces Repairs in Recall of 1.4 Million Cars

By CHRISTOPHER JENSEN | Feb 27th 2014

The company will begin replacing ignition switches on the small cars affected by the recall.

Automobiles; Automobile Safety Features and Defects; Recalls and Bans of Products

"General Motors again apologized on Thursday and said that it hoped to start repairing the cars in early April."

20

Opinion

The Record of Israel's Universities

Feb 28th 2014

Readers respond to Thomas L. Friedman's recent column on an open online course at Israel's Technion.

Philanthropy

Window dressing.

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@21:00

1

Opinion

Support Your Local Slaughterhouse

By NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN | Mar 1st 2014

2

U.S.

With Vacancies High, G.O.P. Primaries in Texas Set Up a Scramble to the Right

By MANNY FERNANDEZ | Mar 1st 2014

3

N.Y. / Region

Effort to Delay Terror Trial of a Bin Laden Relative Fails

By BENJAMIN WEISER | Feb 28th 2014

4

World

Pro-Hezbollah Song Opens Musical Front in Civil War Over Syria

By BEN HUBBARD and HWAIDA SAAD | Mar 1st 2014

5

Opinion

The N.F.L. Begins to Wake Up

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD | Feb 28th 2014

There is no reason professional football players should be immune from modern standards of workplace conduct.

Bullies; Sexual Harassment; Indecency, Obscenity and Profanity; Discrimination

The N.F.L. intentionally destroys players.
 

6

Business Day

G.A.O. Finds Little Evidence Pilots Are in Short Supply

By JAD MOUAWAD | Feb 28th 2014

Regional airlines have complained they cannot find qualified pilots and might need to cut back service as a result.

Airlines and Airplanes; Shortages; Labor and Jobs

The airlines must pay a living wage.
 

7

Business Day

Fed’s Aid in 2008 Crisis Stretched Worldwide

By NEIL IRWIN | Feb 23rd 2014

8

Opinion

Targeting the Johns in Sex Trade

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF | Feb 26th 2014

9

U.S.

An Eye on Runoffs, Candidates Mind Tactics in Primaries

By AMAN BATHEJA | Mar 1st 2014

The high number of statewide races drawing multiple candidates this year is expected to lead to an unusually large second round after Tuesday’s voting.

Elections, Governors; Elections, State Legislature; Elections, Attorneys General

Splits in the G.O.P. are a good thing.
 

10

U.S.

Pivotal Point Is Seen as More States Consider Legalizing Marijuana

By RICK LYMAN | Feb 26th 2014

11

U.S.

Ohio Gay-Marriage Push Divides Some Advocates

By TRIP GABRIEL and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG | Feb 23rd 2014

Activists seek the repeal of a constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage in Ohio, but other gay rights leaders caution that “2014 is not the year.”

Same-Sex Marriage, Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships; Referendums; Constitutional Amendments; Elections, Governors

"Brenda Millhouse, another volunteer, said the opposition of some gay rights groups had pushed her into action. “I have a partner,” she said. “I’d like to marry her someday. If people say, ‘I’m going to wait for somebody else to tell me it’s O.K. to do all I think is right,’ nothing would ever change in this country.”"

12

Opinion

Health Security and Infectious Disease

Feb 28th 2014

Experts in infectious diseases and veterinary medicine respond to an editorial.

Preventive Medicine; Epidemics; SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)

Yes.
 

13

Sports

Bags Barred at Boston Marathon

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | Feb 26th 2014

14

Technology

Engineers Allege Hiring Collusion in Silicon Valley

By DAVID STREITFELD | Feb 28th 2014

15

U.S.

Lewis Yablonsky, Sociologist Fascinated by Sociopaths, Dies at 89

By WILLIAM YARDLEY | Feb 25th 2014

16

N.Y. / Region

Bin Laden Relative’s Lawyers Claim Mistaken Identity as Trial Nears

By BENJAMIN WEISER | Feb 27th 2014

17

World

Kerry Sees Syrian Retaliation Against Rivals in Talks

18

World

As Africans Surge to Europe’s Door, Spain Locks Down

By SUZANNE DALEY | Feb 27th 2014

Large groups of sub-Saharan immigrants have been charging the fences into a Spanish enclave in Morocco, raising alarms over their efforts and the officials’ response.

Immigration and Emigration; Illegal Immigration

Send them to Germany.
 

19

Technology

The Rolling Robot Will Connect You Now

By ANNE EISENBERG | Mar 1st 2014

Telepresence machines may soon become inexpensive enough for more everyday use, as a conduit for virtual visits among family and friends.

Robots and Robotics; Computers and the Internet; Telephones and Telecommunications; Elderly; Videophones and Videoconferencing; New Models, Design and Products

No hugs, kisses or swings.  Presence but no contact.

 

20

Opinion

Better Lawyering for the Poor

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD | Feb 26th 2014

ok

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/opinion/krugman-the-inflation-obsession.html?ref=paulkrugman

"Recently the Federal Reserve released transcripts of its monetary policy meetings during the fateful year of 2008. And boy, are they discouraging reading.

Partly that’s because Fed officials come across as essentially clueless about the gathering economic storm. But we knew that already. What’s really striking is the extent to which they were obsessed with the wrong thing. The economy was plunging, yet all many people at the Fed wanted to talk about was inflation.

Matthew O’Brien at The Atlantic has done the math. In August 2008 there were 322 mentions of inflation, versus only 28 of unemployment and 19 of systemic risks or crises. In the meeting on Sept. 16, 2008 — the day after Lehman fell! — there were 129 mentions of inflation, versus 26 mentions of unemployment and only four of systemic risks or crises.

Historians of the Great Depression have long marveled at the folly of policy discussion at the time. For example, the Bank of England, faced with a devastating deflationary spiral, kept obsessing over the imagined threat of inflation. As the economist Ralph Hawtrey famously observed, “That was to cry ‘Fire, fire!’ in Noah’s flood.” But it turns out that modern monetary officials facing financial crisis were just as obsessed with the wrong thing as their predecessors three generations before.

And it wasn’t just a bad call in 2008. Much supposedly informed opinion has remained fixated on the supposed threat of rising prices despite being wrong again and again. If you spent the last five years watching CNBC, or reading The Wall Street Journal opinion pages, or for that matter listening to prominent conservative economists, you lived in a constant state of alarm over runaway inflation, which was coming any day now. It never did.

What accounts for inflation obsession? One answer is that obsessives failed to distinguish between underlying inflation and short-term fluctuations in the headline number, which are mainly driven by volatile energy and food prices. Gasoline prices, in particular, strongly influence inflation in any given year, and dire warnings are heard whenever prices rise at the pump; yet such blips say nothing at all about future inflation.

They also failed to understand that printing money in a depressed economy isn’t inflationary. I could have told them that, and in fact I did. But maybe there was some excuse for not grasping this point in 2008 or early 2009.

The point, however, is that inflation obsession has persisted, year after year, even as events have refuted its supposed justifications. And this tells us that something more than bad analysis is at work. At a fundamental level, it’s political.

This is fairly obvious if you look at who the inflation obsessives are. While a few conservatives believe that the Fed should be doing more, not less, they have little if any real influence. The overall picture is that most conservatives are inflation obsessives, and nearly all inflation obsessives are conservative.

Why is this the case? In part it reflects the belief that the government should never seek to mitigate economic pain, because the private sector always knows best. Back in the 1930s, Austrian economists like Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter inveighed against any effort to fight the depression with easy money; to do so, warned Schumpeter, would be to leave “the work of depressions undone.” Modern conservatives are generally less open about the harshness of their view, but it’s pretty much the same.

The flip side of this antigovernment attitude is the conviction that any attempt to boost the economy, whether fiscal or monetary, must produce disastrous results — Zimbabwe, here we come! And this conviction is so strong that it persists no matter how wrong it has been, year after year.

Finally, all this ties in with a predilection for acting tough and inflicting punishment whatever the economic conditions. The British journalist William Keegan once described this as “sado-monetarism,” and it’s very much alive today.

Does any of this matter? It’s true that the Fed hasn’t surrendered to the sado-monetarists. Notably, it didn’t panic in 2011, when another blip in gasoline prices briefly raised the headline rate of inflation, and Republicans began inveighing against the “debasement” of the dollar.

But I’d argue that the clamor from inflation obsessives has intimidated the Fed, which might otherwise have done more. And it has also been part of a general climate of opposition to anything that might address our continuing jobs crisis.

As I suggested, we used to marvel at the wrongheadedness of policy makers during the Great Depression. But when the Great Recession struck, and we were given a chance to do better, we ended up repeating all the same mistakes.

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